A/N: Finally got this edited to my satisfaction. Well, the first bit anyway. There's doubtless going to be more at some point. I had sort of decided on not posting it until the whole thing was finished but you know how I am with WIPs. If I don't post at least part of it I'll never get done.

So… here you go! First chapter of the oft-requested reunion fic. Warning for copious amounts of d'aww.

Note if you have arrived here through the 'new stories' queue: this is part of the Can't Rewind Verse series. It features an original character who served as a romantic interest for Sherlock in another fic of mine. You can probably still read this without knowing the backstory but it might seem a little silly lacking context.

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It was the usual bedlam of a recent crime scene, the smouldering ruins of a block of flats in the background, officers milling about the premises, everything ensconced by ubiquitous yellow tape. John meandered along in the wake of Sherlock's billowing coat and tried not to let his eyes dwell too long on the ambulances parked helter-skelter amongst the debris. No casualties, thank god, but the tenants of the unfortunate building all seemed to be in various states of treatment for injuries ranging from mild burns to smoke inhalation.

Sherlock, in his usual manner, completely ignored the chaos around him. He made a beeline for the figure of Lestrade standing near a cordoned-off patch of pavement. John was quite certain they weren't welcome here - Sherlock hadn't even been contacted about this case, after all; he'd just caught a mention of it on the news and decided for whatever inscrutable reason that the flat fire had to be connected to an ongoing investigation of his.

As John had expected, Lestrade wasted no time in making a half-hearted attempt to shoo the both of them off his crime scene.

"Sherlock, honestly, you can't just-" he started, exasperated, as Donovan glared from behind him. Sherlock promptly cut over the imminent lecture.

"Witnesses?"

Lestrade worked his jaw a tick, looking like he wanted to argue, then simply sighed and indicated a man sitting on the bonnet of a parked squadcar some metres off. "Just the one."

Sherlock didn't even wait to hear the witness' name, just sauntered boldly toward the car and the figure seated atop it. The bloke had his head down, rummaging through his trouser pockets for something, and thus didn't immediately notice when Sherlock started in with his usual condescending clip of an interrogation.

"You were a personal friend of the chief suspect, present in his flat from the time of four in the morning to seven in the evening, ample opportunity to observe his behaviour hours before the fire," Sherlock rattled off impatiently as they neared the witness. Finally the man looked up with a confused expression on a soot-streaked, freckled face. His gaze darted toward John first before flicking over to Sherlock... whereupon his round, amber-brown eyes seemed to widen in shock. He froze in place with his hand half out of his pocket.

Sherlock, of course, merely carried on speaking, his gaze having flitted off into the clouds of smoke some seconds ago as if actually paying attention to the person he was talking to were beneath him.

"What precisely did he say in reference... to..."

John shot a startled look sidelong as Sherlock abruptly trailed off mid-sentence. Beside him the detective had finally shifted his gaze away from the smoke and trained it on the witness' face. Their expressions now mirrored twin looks of abject shock as they stared each other down.

"What's wrong?" John flitted his eyes back and forth between the two men, instantly on the alert. What? Was there a hidden weapon? Did the bloke have a gun on him?

"... oh," Sherlock muttered after a rather long pause. He seemed to have frozen with his hands tucked neatly behind his back, posture a picture-perfect image of calm poise. The collected stance stood in ridiculous contrast to the look of stunned surprise on his face.

"Bloody..." The witness' voice faded out as he slowly moved his hands away from his pockets. Freckled cheeks bunched up a bit in a tiny, half-bewildered smile, one hand going to rub nervously at the back of his head as he tried again with a more appropriate reply. "Er... hi?"

Sherlock just kept staring. John, for his part, was beginning to feel very out of the loop. Lacking anything to say, however, he held his tongue and watched with interest as Sherlock's ramrod-straight posture seemed to melt into an awkward, fidgety quest for something to do with his hands.

"What are you doing at a flat in Islington?" the detective asked rather suddenly, sounding a tad bit scandalised. He'd finally shoved his fists into the front pockets of his greatcoat in an odd sort of defensive-looking posture and stood half-glaring at the man in front of them.

"I, er... my friend lives here?" The witness gave them a slightly confused shrug and another befuddled smile. His accent was difficult to place - estuary, mostly, but with buried hints of a cockney drawl and some vague northern influences. "Or, I mean... he did, anyway. It's a bit burnt now."

Sherlock frowned. "You've relocated to Lancaster. Bit of a trip just to visit a friend."

"Well it was more for business, mostly. London's got a better import selection on woodwinds so I figured I'd..." The man's words cut off suddenly and he shot Sherlock a vaguely affronted look. His accent seemed to slip a few notches toward cockney in apparent annoyance. "Oi hang on - you been keepin' tabs on where I live?"

Sherlock's arms stiffened in his pockets as he hunched his shoulders slightly. "No."

The two of them stared each other down for a few seconds. Finally the witness snorted, and, laughing, allowed his expression to crack into a wide grin.

"You haven't changed a bit, have you?"

"Is that a bad thing?" Despite the bland monotone of Sherlock's voice his bearing remained rigid, defensive almost. John glanced between the two men again. Clearly they knew each other from somewhere. Former friends, maybe? But then Sherlock had always been quick to assert that he didn't do 'friends', so...

Rather than answer Sherlock's question the man merely shook his head, a smile still playing at his lips. He shoved a hand through short, soot-stained hair and glanced behind them at the tangle of police officers milling about the investigation scene.

"Bit of a career change, this, ain't it? Never expected you of all blokes to be a cop..."

"I'm not a cop. I'm a private detective." Sherlock's expression flitted towards an annoyed frown. "The Met recruits me for consultation whenever their stupidity gets the better of them. Which is always."

"I think in this case you more recruited yourself," John pointed out, feeling as if he should at least try and keep the facts straight. Sherlock shot him an irritated sidelong glance.

"Eric," he intoned blandly, still fixing John with an annoyed look. He turned his head back to the witness and gestured to his flatmate before continuing. "This is John Watson, my... assistant. John, Eric Crenshaw."

"Cheers," Crenshaw greeted and flashed a wide, cheerful smile as he accepted John's handshake. After a pause he glanced between the two of them, expression gone a bit odd but still firmly on the side of friendly. "Er... so you two are...?"

John fought the urge to sigh. Yep, and there they went again - because clearly he and Sherlock were shagging each other. John forced back an exasperated expression and opened his mouth to correct the ubiquitous mistake. Why did everyone always guess that? Did he and Sherlock really look that much like a gay couple?

Before John could say anything, though, and for the first time in living memory... he was beaten to the punch.

"Flatmates," Sherlock cut in quickly. Rather too quickly, all things considered. John startled, shot him a baffled look (Sherlock giving a damn what people assumed about them? What parallel universe had they stumbled into?) and Sherlock cleared his throat awkwardly before continuing in a less abrupt tone. "... just flatmates. John accompanies me on investigations because he's an adrenaline junkie."

"Oi," John objected, frowning. Neither of the other two seemed to be paying him much heed however.

"Oh! Well that's gre- I mean, erm..." Crenshaw coughed and looked elsewhere, a slight flush creeping up his freckled cheeks. "That is... thought he looked a bit old for you? Ah, no offence there, mate," he added toward John with a wince.

John shrugged. "None taken." He glanced back to Sherlock, who appeared to be having a great deal of trouble deciding what to say next, and furrowed his brows in bemusement. Well that was odd, wasn't it? Considering the great prat nearly always had a scathing reply at the ready... honestly if John didn't know better he'd classify this whole interaction as an awkward meeting between exes.

Turning back to Crenshaw (who was also looking rather tongue-tied; good lord this was just going nowhere fast, wasn't it?) John decided he'd best try to salvage a shred of professionalism. He dug his notepad from the inside pocket of his coat and flipped it open with a matter-of-fact clearing of his throat. Both other men seemed to startle a bit and shifted their attention towards him.

"About your friend, then?" he asked amicably. Crenshaw pressed the palms of his hands together in a strange gesture and nodded somewhat absently, glancing to the ruined building behind them.

"Mick, y'mean... right, er..." He cleared his throat, and with his next words the slur of cockney which had begun to creep into his speech over the last few minutes had morphed back into a more business-like Estuary clip. "Well he was acting a bit strangely most of the day, really. Pacing round muttering to himself. He's a pretty weird bloke normally though so I didn't think much of it. I left at ten or so this morning, was out meeting with suppliers until around four, then I came back to fetch some paperwork. When I walked in Mick was carrying this little red horse statue about - he usually kept it on the coffee table, you know, decorative thing - and he was shouting how he had to get rid of it right away or something terrible would happen. And then-"

"You heard alarms or cries from the other tenants indicating that the building was on fire and evacuated, obviously," Sherlock cut in. His mysterious fit of nerves earlier seemed to have subsided into something more approaching his usual aloof attitude. "Mick disappeared in the chaos and hasn't responded to any calls or texts. The police will have found the horse statue shattered on the pavement nearby, revealing it to have been concealing detailed notes concerning the arson in his handwriting, leading to his declaration as the primary suspect."

John waited for the inevitable baffled look, questions of 'how did you know that' or some otherwise bewildered reaction from the witness. Jarringly, though, Crenshaw just carried on with the conversation unruffled, behaving as if Sherlock's interjection were perfectly normal.

"Yeah. Only it's weird 'cause Mick was about the last guy you'd expect to be an arsonist, of all things. Bloke's seriously phobic of fire. Won't even touch the stove, panics if he sees a box of matches. I can't imagine how he managed to set a whole building alight..."

"Clearly he was framed." Sherlock had pulled his mobile from his pocket and flicked a few keys to bring up a photo. He handed the device to Crenshaw. "Same horse figurine?"

"Yep." Crenshaw raised his eyebrows at the phone and turned it over to look at the back casing. "Is this the new Blackberry? What'd you pay for it?"

"Nothing. Mycroft foisted it on me." Sherlock rather uncharacteristically allowed his phone to remain in Crenshaw's possession as he turned to beckon Lestrade over. It took a few tries to get the DI's attention, but the man soon caught sight of Sherlock's impatient waving and raised his arms in a 'can't you see I'm busy?' posture. Sherlock just beckoned him again, glaring, and with a put-upon roll of his eyes Lestrade left a few parting words with the officer he'd been speaking to and started toward them.

"Sherlock, I've got an investigation to run. If you've tied everything up in a neat little bow that's great but I still have to manage the-"

"The next target will be an odd-numbered home in Hackney's St. Elphin's Park development. Your arsonist will arrive near midnight tonight to lay incendiaries and will walk with a pronounced limp. Use the manufacturer's seal of the horse figurine to find others who purchased the same item within a two-week timeframe of the first incident."

"What first incident?" Lestrade's expression was set in its usual mix of confusion, grudging respect, and mild exasperation.

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "The hotel fire in Haringey, clearly."

"Clearly," Lestrade repeated in a flat voice. He shifted one hand to his hip while the other scrubbed tiredly through his hair. "Right, I have no idea what fire you're referring to... but well enough, we'll look into it. Hackney's next, you said?"

Sherlock nodded. Lestrade dropped the hand from his head and retrieved a notebook from his coat pocket to jot down the instructions. Once done he looked over Sherlock's shoulder to Crenshaw still sitting on the bonnet of the squad car behind them.

"Sorry if he's given you any trouble, sir. Consulting detective for the arson case... gets a bit abrasive, but he's the best we've got for this sort of investigation."

Crenshaw smiled and glanced toward Sherlock with something like fond pride. "I'm alright," he assured brightly. He'd been fiddling idly with Sherlock's phone for the last few minutes and, seeming to remember he was holding it, now handed it back. Sherlock accepted it without much thought and slipped it into his trouser pocket.

Lestrade watched the exchange with a slight lift of his browline and shot a questioning glance to John, who just shrugged. Old mates from somewhere, apparently, but beyond that John really had no clue what had prompted Sherlock's trust in the bloke.

"Am I free to go, then?" Crenshaw asked of Lestrade. Free of an object to fret with his hands shifted to lightly pressing his palms together instead. "It's getting a bit late and there's not too many hotels nearby, so..."

Lestrade tucked his notepad away in his coat pocket. "You spoke to someone about lost property?" Crenshaw nodded. "Long as we've got contact information you're welcome to leave, then. Be sure to check any messages. Sherlock, I'll be e-mailing you later and if you've put me in your spam filter again I swear to-"

"Go and oversee your minions, Lestrade. You'll find Donovan's police badge caught on a fence railing near the east entrance." Sherlock waved a dismissive hand in the direction of the milling officers and turned back towards Crenshaw. Lestrade paused a moment, likely meaning to ask after the badge comment, before a voice crackled through the handset on his belt.

"DI Lestrade, sir, I think I've lost my-"

Lestrade sighed irritably to himself and turned to walk off, barking a 'fence railing, east entrance' into his radio as he went. John was left with Sherlock and Crenshaw once more.

"Well then, shall we-" John started, but Sherlock's attention was elsewhere.

"All the hotels within reasonable distance will have filled up with displaced residents by now," he said to Crenshaw, expression gone somewhere oddly stern mixed with what John could only describe as vague embarrassment. Honestly, his cheeks were even colouring a bit. Whoever this freckled bloke was he'd certainly cornered the market on eliciting uncharacteristic reactions from Sherlock Holmes.

Crenshaw grimaced and rubbed at the back of his neck. "God, yeah... I hadn't really budgeted for it but I s'pose I'll have to-"

"Our flat has a sofa."

John startled and looked over to Sherlock, who seemed every bit as taken off-guard by his own words as John was. His eyes widened in alarm but he'd fixed his gaze determinedly on Crenshaw's face, seemingly unwilling to acknowledge that his cheeks had flushed pink and his posture had gone taut again.

Crenshaw's hand froze at the back of his neck and he looked over to Sherlock. "Er..."

"It would be the more logical option considering you're planning to remain in the city for at least a week and don't have the finances for an extended hotel stay nor excessive cab fare," Sherlock rattled off quickly. Trying to save face, it seemed. He was still blushing, though, which rather ruined the attempt. "John and I live in Westminster by the Baker Street tube station."

"Christ, that'd... that'd actually be really convenient?" Crenshaw glanced at the pavement, biting his lip - and bloody hell, but now he'd gone red too? John tried to force the juvenile smirk off his face. Good lord if this was some sort of ex-boyfriend he was never going to let Sherlock hear the end of it.

"It's fine by me," he put in helpfully. "I'm scheduled clinic hours for the next few days anyway, flat'll be empty."

Crenshaw opened his mouth, but Sherlock seemed to have decided already. "Settled, then. I'll fetch a cab." And without waiting for a reply he marched resolutely off to hail a taxi.

John looked after him, then back to Crenshaw. The poor lad's cheeks had gone bright red, palms pressing together in what appeared to be a nervous habit. Despite all efforts not to John found himself smiling in amusement. He shifted his weight to the balls of his feet and casually allowed his hands to fall into an idle parade rest posture behind his back.

"You two knew each other quite well, then, I'm guessing?" he asked with perhaps a tad more of a teasing inflection to his voice than was strictly necessary... but really now, this was bloody hilarious. Sherlock was behaving like an awkward teenager over some freckled bloke from Lancaster with a working-class accent and sensible trousers. Whatever the history was here it had to involve something scandalous.

"Y-yeah. We were..." Crenshaw glanced up toward Sherlock, now hailing a cab by the kerb several metres off, then looked back to John with a sheepish smile and a shrug. "Erm... housemates? Just for a month or so, back when we were kids."

"Kids?"

"Nineteen, twenty-ish." The young man quirked a small smile to himself and pushed off the bonnet of the squadcar to finally stand on his own two feet, grabbing as he did so the grey coat he'd had lying beside him. "It was a pretty weird time in my life, to be honest. In both our lives."

John wanted to ask him to elaborate, but Sherlock shouted something indistinct, beckoning them impatiently by the roadside where a cab was now pulling up to the kerb. Crenshaw tugged his wool jacket on over his shirt and together they set off toward the taxi.

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Sherlock was stuck somewhere between being very cross with himself and pleased giddiness. On the one hand what in hell's name had prompted him to offer their sofa to someone he hadn't spoken to in nearly a decade, and whom he'd originally known for less than a month!? ... On the other it was Eric and Eric was more or less technically speaking the only serious romantic relationship Sherlock had ever had in his life and for some asinine reason his brain refused to stop falling all to pieces over that fact. And so there he was, trapped vacillating randomly from one emotion to the other like a broken metronome.

Eric grinned as he and John came within speaking distance. "So do you have some kind of obsession with poncy coats, or what? That thing's got to be worth more than my house."

He'd learnt to mask the cockney quite well, hadn't he? Barely perceptible now. Presumably he'd done so for business reasons, make himself sound more trustworthy to clients and employees, facilitate better relationships with investors. A vast improvement over the nigh-incomprehensible jumble of speech Sherlock remembered. Which made this vague sense of disappointment over the lack of slurred nonsense coming out of the man's mouth rather frustratingly confusing. Why did Sherlock care, honestly? He'd hated that stupid accent.

The jab about coats, though... He raised a brow at Eric's attire - brown trousers with a grey woollen peacoat. That jacket had to be at least as expensive as Sherlock's greatcoat, well over the thousand pound range, so the man was hardly in a position to throw stones.

"No more than you, apparently," Sherlock retorted blandly as they climbed into the cab (John on the end and Eric in the middle seat, somehow, and Sherlock wasn't entirely sure why that pleased him so much) and let John give the driver directions. Sherlock glanced toward Eric, meaning to ask after his business in London, but was distracted by the man's sleeve. A tear there had been sewn shut at some point, and the material was slightly discoloured, frayed... oh bloody hell, that wasn't just an expensive coat, that was...

"That's- you kept it?"

Eric shot him an embarrassed sidelong look and shrugged. "S'a nice jacket."

"It's been eight years," Sherlock snapped, disgruntled. How in hell had he even managed to keep the thing in wearable condition after so long!? On the far side of the cab John raised his eyebrows but didn't bother asking what they were on about.

"So what do you do in Lancaster?" the doctor inquired instead, falling easily into his usual role of facilitating elements of social interaction which Sherlock had declared intolerably dull, like small talk. In this case, though, Sherlock found he was rather interested in the answer. Not that he hadn't picked up quite a few clues from Eric's speech and appearance already (t-shirt from a Lancaster music programme under his half-buttoned overshirt, brief mention of 'woodwinds' and of meeting with suppliers) but it would be good to know what he'd been up to. For curiosity's sake, obviously, nothing but a healthy interest in facts.

"I run a music school for kids, teach 'em how to play instruments and sing. It's done really well, actually." Eric smiled, all modest pride, and Sherlock found himself completely lost for what to say. That was... well, it was exactly what Eric would do, wasn't it? And damned to hell if it weren't distressingly endearing. He told himself the pleased flush through his chest was a response to the knowledge that his leftover trust fund money had been put to decent use. Certainly nothing so sentimental as happiness for Eric's success.

"You're a musician, then?" John continued. He'd either not noticed the odd expressions warring for control of Sherlock's face or chosen not to acknowledge them, something Sherlock was rather grateful for.

"Guitarist, yeah. I've picked up enough piano to get by, though, and most everything else in the school. You kinda have to know your way around the basics at the very least if you're looking to hire anyone competent enough to teach."

The conversation from there veered towards things Sherlock was relieved to find extremely dull. Seemed no amount of being disgustingly happy for Eric could make a discussion of financial structuring and client relations halfway interesting, so at least he knew his brain was still functioning normally on some level. By the time they arrived back at the flat he was even beginning to settle back into his usual anti-social mental patterns. Bored, annoyed, crowded. More than ready to be done with all this interacting-with-people nonsense and get back to his work.

Eric trailing after them into the stairwell, though, and John introducing him in passing to Mrs Hudson, somehow conspired to set Sherlock back into a state of awkward fidgeting once more. Concerned for what Eric would think of the flat, of the half-tidy disaster of a sitting room, of the haphazard pile of chemistry supplies on the table. Ugh and the couch was too small to expect someone to sleep on comfortably - why had he offered it in the first place? This was ridiculous, he shouldn't have-

"Hah! Is that a cow skull with headphones on?"

"It's a bison," Sherlock corrected vaguely, speech stuck on autopilot while his brain chased itself in circles. He hung up his coat beside John's and had a brief loss for what to do with his hands before shoving them roughly in his trouser pockets. "... the headphones were a gift from a client."

Eric laughed. "I gotta find one of those things for the school lobby, that's brilliant."

And Sherlock found himself smiling, because hah - someone else thought the bison was funny. John had been after him to take the headphones off at the very least (some nonsense about professionalism when clients came round), Mycroft had deemed it unbearably childish while Lestrade seemed to regard it with the same bland exasperation he afforded any other strange whim of Sherlock's. Well sod the lot of them and their stupid opinions - it was brilliant.

Eric was now looking bemusedly to the spraypaint smiley-face on the wall, and Sherlock quickly took it upon himself to explain where that had come from. And the bullet holes. Eric snickered the whole way through.

"Well I mean what else are you gonna do with a can of paint but vandalise a wall?" Eric agreed, grinning. "Good aim on the eye holes though, blimey."

"John was upset about me discharging a weapon indoors."

Eric made a pfft noise and shrugged one shoulder. "Stuff 'im, didn't hurt nobody."

"That's what I said, and Mrs Hudson deducted damages from the rent the next month to cover the plaster repair on the other side so I still don't see what all the fuss was about."

Eric laughed again, and Sherlock smiled. And for just a moment he forgot about the arson case and the nicotine patch starting to wear off on his arm. For a moment he was twenty years old again, not a shred of responsibility to his name and nothing to concern himself with besides making sure he had enough cash to buy a half-gram and a pack of cigs.

And perhaps he could bring himself to admit that those times hadn't been entirely unpleasant. Oh, make no mistake, he'd never want to go back; nothing excused the hellish roller coaster of highs and crashes, constant danger of living amongst criminals, being led around like a dog on a chain on nothing but the promise of more drugs... never, ever again.

But there had been some bright points... one in particular, really. A single upside amidst the disaster of his life back in those days. Freckles and a silly accent, laughing over stupid things they both found funny even when everyone else called them childish. Dark alleys, nicked cigarettes, the smell of marijuana clinging to a mop of messy brown hair...

Sod it all, he'd actually missed this. He'd missed Eric.

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John wasn't sure he'd ever be able to stop smiling to himself like an idiot. Off in the other room Sherlock was busy explaining where every single odd or out-of-place object in the sitting room had come from, sounding for all the world like an excited little boy, while Crenshaw chimed in with snickering and amused comments every other sentence in a tone every bit as enthused as Sherlock's. Against everything John had come to expect of his flatmate it seemed Sherlock Holmes was actually managing to get on famously with someone. It was both adorable and strangely unsettling all at once.

He wondered if he shouldn't just abandon the tea and disappear to his room, give the two some space to catch up. No sooner had he had the thought, though, than he found himself instead crowded into the kitchen by two exuberant twenty-eight year olds.

"She lets me take body parts from the morgue so long as I promise to bring them back. I've even gotten a severed head before."

"What'd you need a severed head for?"

"Nothing, I just wanted to see if she'd let me have it. Made up some excuse about testing saliva... Here, see, eyeballs!"

Sherlock had been rummaging around in the fridge as he spoke and now emerged with, as promised, a baggie full of eyeballs. Crenshaw laughed and reached out to take the bag.

"Ah gross, they squish!"

"Don't pop them," Sherlock admonished, then squeezed one of them himself and snickered along with Crenshaw when the pupil bulged out.

John leant against the countertop behind him with his arms crossed, watching the display bemusedly. Hadn't even been re-acquainted with the bloke for two hours and already Sherlock had progressed to the rare 'behaving like a schoolboy on a sugar rush' level of friendly interaction. And Crenshaw had said they'd been housemates? No way. Something more than that, surely...

"John, what did you do with the tongue?" Sherlock was back in the fridge again. John grimaced slightly - that bloody fixation with body parts, good god.

"I gave it back to Molly after you left it in the crisper drawer again," John explained with an annoyed frown. "I told you I was going to."

"What!? No you didn't!" Sherlock stuck his head over the door and pouted at John. Beside him Crenshaw was smirking, expression almost fond.

"You know I did, and I made sure you were paying attention this time so if you've forgotten that's on you."

Sherlock huffed but didn't pursue the matter further. Instead he grabbed the bag of eyeballs back from Crenshaw, tossed them in the fridge (on their proper shelf, John was relieved to see) and turned to drag their guest off toward the rest of the flat.

"Never mind, there's a skeletonised rat in my room-"

Crenshaw's face went faintly pink, making John smirk to himself. Sherlock, of course, completely failed to pick up on the possible implications of leading someone by the hand to his bedroom and remained blithely unconcerned as they left the kitchen.

John lingered behind, shaking his head bemusedly. Kids.

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