Fic: Variations of Use (Sherlock)
Title: Variations of Use
Author: aubkae
Fandom: Sherlock (pre-canon)
Rating: R
Wordcount: 5000
Characters/Pairing: Sherlock-focused, with Sherlock/Victor Trevor, Sebastian Wilkes, Mycroft Holmes, Greg Lestrade, and eventual Sherlock/John
Disclaimer: ACD's and BBC's. Not mine, I make no profit
Warnings: An honest and unglorified portrayal of drug addiction. General self-destructiveness, a bit of sex, one scene of brief mild dub-con. Nothing is graphic.
Notes: Thank you the_sammykinz for betaing, Courtni for encouraging me to go for it and endlessly discussing this with me, and both of you for handholding and fangirling.
Sherlock's smile is crooked and shaky and uncertain what it's doing on his face, but Victor just smiles back. And then there's Sebastian, and a mirror, and a razor, and a straw. He smiles at Sherlock like he has a secret.
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Sherlock lies back on the concrete and raises his cigarette to his lips. Above him, the stars are bright in a clear and cool night. As far as he can tell - and he'd be able to tell - no one else comes up to this rooftop, which means he can stay here and enjoy the view and the rare quiet.
His head spins. He needs to eat in the next 24 hours or risk losing consciousness. Tedious.
Sherlock inhales too deeply and winces. His ribs are going to cause him pain for days it seems, and the split in his lower lip keeps reopening. The cigarette ends all around him are stained red.
He doesn't care, he tells himself. Not about any of it. Not about any of them.
--
He meets Victor Trevor when he trips over Victor's dog. It turns out that being bitten by even a small dog is quite excruciating, especially when one ignores the wound until it turns puffy and red, resulting in a trip to A&E and more than week of hobbling about.
Victor apologizes too much. He pops by too often for politeness. He becomes a fixture in Sherlock's life out of sheer persistence.
It's weeks later when Sherlock understands; they're leaning over a textbook nominally doing coursework but really laughing as Sherlock deduces passersby. Victor's laugh is loud and cheerful. It should be annoying, but somehow it isn't at all. Sherlock looks at Victor and Victor looks at Sherlock and Victor says "I'm glad you're my friend."
Sherlock's smile is crooked and shaky and uncertain what it's doing on his face, but Victor just smiles back.
--
Sherlock manages to break an engagement and a decade-long friendship over breakfast.
"Don't mind them," Victor says. "Bunch of useless overdramatic arseholes."
"All I said was the truth," Sherlock says, though it comes out muffled and wrong because of the ice he's holding to his nose. "They should want to know."
He tells them things they didn't even know about themselves. They tell him only what he's always known, call him the things he's always been called, and he wishes -
Victor lays a hand on Sherlock's back, and doesn't say anything.
--
Sebastian Wilkes is leaning against the wall when Sherlock comes out for a cigarette after class.
"I have a proposition for you," he says. "A trade."
"What could I possibly want from you?" Sherlock says, wary. Sebastian was to be the best man at the ill-fated wedding, but he's been lusting after the now-single girl for months now, so really this conversation could go either way.
Sebastian knocks the ash off the end of his cigarette and meets his eyes. "You have all this... data, but you don't know how to use it. I could use some information, and making connections is what I do. I know almost everybody, how to make them like me enough, what buttons to push to get what I want. Whatever that might be."
"I can find that sort of thing out myself," Sherlock says, after just too long of a pause, because he can, it's true, but he gets himself banned for life and hated as often as he gets himself welcomed with open arms, and he does so hate to ask Mycroft for anything. "Why should I care to learn it anyway?"
Sebastian shrugs. "It's just another game. You like games, don't you, freak? It's useful, and I'm better at it than you. That's why it's a trade." He drops his cigarette, grinds it with his shoe, and holds out his hand.
--
"He's just using you," says Victor.
"Obviously." Sherlock frowns at his pipette. "I'm using him too."
Victor sighs, bending back to his notes. His arm brushes up against Sherlock's and disrupts his concentration for at least three minutes. This has become a trend.
Sherlock knows what it means, of course, but he flatly refuses to think about it.
--
He plays the devil on Sebastian's shoulder, whispering the details that no one else sees. Seb shows him the threads of power and influence and how to pull them just right. He's steadily amassing a collection of people who owe him favours; he could get almost anything he wanted if he put some effort into it.
"And that one's running around on his girlfriend with another man," Sherlock says over his drink while Sebastian pretends not to be talking to him. "You can tell because of the watch. Can't any of these people control themselves? It's all about sex."
Sebastian turns and gives him a long look. Sherlock isn't sure what kind of look it is, so he just stares back. Usually that works; he's been told making eye contact with him is unnerving. The corner of Sebastian's mouth quirks up and his gaze travels down Sherlock's body instead of darting away.
Clearly Sherlock has missed something. Annoying.
Sherlock's a quick learner; he won't have use for Seb for much longer. Really, he's just keeping him around for entertainment value, little as there is of that.
--
Sherlock finishes all of his coursework, as well as the interesting half of Victor's.
"But it's not even February," Victor says, staring around at the explosion of papers and experiments in Sherlock's room.
Sherlock sighs and flops back on his bed. "Why bother to spread it out over so long when it can all be completed in a few days? It's nonsensical."
"Is that... you're not even reading history."
Sherlock sighs again, louder. "Unbearably tedious, I'm afraid. You'll have to do that one yourself."
Victor stands there and stares for a long moment. For some reason it makes Sherlock feel twitchy. He curls up on his bed with his back to Victor.
"Do you want to... do something?" Victor says, uncertainly.
Sherlock muffles his voice in his arms. "Everything is boring."
Victor says "Okay," and shuts Sherlock's door quietly behind him as he goes.
Sherlock has a brief moment where setting fire to all the papers seems like the thing to do, but he ends up falling into an exhausted and restless sleep before he can make a decision.
--
Victor tricks and forces him into eating, drags him out to restaurants and hands him food which ends up in his mouth when he's not paying attention. He's looking a bit less gaunt and he's not sure if he likes it. There's something appealing about the clarity of hunger.
--
It's on the tail end of a three day insomnia jag when Sherlock ends up trapped at a tedious and overwhelmingly packed party, being jostled by elbows and gossiped about while he tries to look aloof and like he belongs here at the same time.
Seb's relaxed and smiling; Sherlock's uncomfortable and anxious. The alcohol makes it all seem a bit easier, but he can't think when he's been drinking and that's never acceptable.
He wants to leave and never talk to people again. He wants to get out of his own skin. He wants to know what it's like, to not be bored all the time, to be able to stop thinking, even for a moment. He wants and he wants, so many impossible things.
There's Sebastian, and a mirror, and a razor, and a straw. He smiles at Sherlock like he has a secret.
He doesn't care what they think of him, he doesn't. They're all idiots. He hates them all.
Euphoria, Seb says, like everything is clear.
Sherlock just wants to know.
--
"It's an experiment," Sherlock tells him.
"Right," Victor says.
--
Sherlock stays awake longer than ever before, forgets to eat, makes several important breakthroughs in his ongoing chemical studies, and feels just... good. He wonders if this is what other people experience, when they call themselves happy.
--
"Playing politics, little brother?"
"Playing implies enjoyment. It's unbelievably monotonous without... help; I can see why you like it so."
"I can understand your need for a little exploration, but cocaine and 'clubbing' seems rather crass. If you would just -"
"No. I'm not your puppet."
Mycroft purses his lips. Sherlock tells him he ought to visit his tailor before he bursts the seams of his bespoke suit.
--
Sebastian pushes him up against the brick wall of the alley and kisses him hard, shoves a leg between his thighs and rocks into him.
Sherlock's mind is far away, shining glass and colours and numbers and perfect obvious details written everywhere telling him everything he could ever want to know, and it doesn't really hit him what's happening until Seb's undoing his trousers. He shoves him off, wipes his mouth, makes a kind of wordless confused noise.
"What?" Sebastian says, breathing hard. He leans over Sherlock, hands on the wall to either side of his head.
Sherlock doesn't know. His body apparently has no problems. He thinks of Victor, for no reason at all. He can't focus, anxiety prickling at the edges of his thoughts and muddling them.
"It's just getting off, I'm not going to try and date you or anything."
It shouldn’t hurt, because he doesn’t want to date Sebastian either, or get off with him, or spend any time at all with him. And yet.
He feels sick; his thoughts slide away where they were so clear a moment ago, unspooling threads. He wants it back. Clarity.
"Coke makes me so fucking horny," Seb says and leans in again. "You must be too; I saw how much you took."
Sherlock rubs his hands over his cheeks and pulls them away to stare at them. They're shaking and wet. He's not crying, is he? No, it's sweat. Sebastian's mouth connects with his chin as he moves his face to the side. "Seb -"
Sebastian's hand comes up to his throat and Sherlock has a moment of real panic, despite the fact that he's trained and Sebastian isn't and he could certainly defend himself if Seb should decide to push it. He can't breathe suddenly, hyperventilating and unable to get enough oxygen. He gasps again and again, and all of his thoughts fly all over his head. He imagines catching them in his fingers, fluttering black things, putting them back where they belong.
Seb's pressing fingers against his throat. "Your pulse is off the fucking charts. Fuck. I'm not getting busted for you."
"Then leave," Sherlock says, gritting his teeth as it all suddenly makes sense, the signs lining up with a shock and a wave of nausea. He tries not to lean on Sebastian. They're still pressed together and it's making his skin crawl. He tries to push at Seb's chest, his hands limp and foreign, but Sebastian's already moving back.
"I'll call -"
"Don't," Sherlock says. He closes his eyes, tries to breathe, pulls a number out of the chaos in his head. "Get me to a phonebox."
It's not exactly the highlight of Sherlock's life, getting fetched like a lost child by one of his brother's anonymous assistants while he's collapsed in a phonebox having an overdose, Seb having deserted him, not that he'd expect or want any differently.
--
"It was a miscalculation," Sherlock says. "It won't happen again."
Mycroft doesn't believe him; Sherlock doesn't care.
--
"Don't ever do that again," Victor says. He looks a wreck, the signs of worry and stress written all over him in his sloppy attempt at shaving, his stale coffee breath, the line in the middle of his forehead, his hands trembling ever so slightly. There's a lurching sensation going on in Sherlock's chest. It's not entirely pleasant.
Sherlock shakes his head; Victor kisses him.
--
There really isn't space on Sherlock's bed for this, but Victor's entwined their legs and they fit, somehow. The room smells of old paper, and a little of burnt plastic, and of Victor's shampoo. Victor holds him like there's nowhere else he'd rather be.
He gasps when Victor's hand slips under his shirt to stroke along his bare skin.
"You've never done this before, have you?" Victor says quietly, and Sherlock presses his face into Victor's shoulder before he shakes his head.
Victor threads his fingers through Sherlock's hair, rubs his back, trails kisses down the side of his face until he reaches Sherlock's mouth.
"I'm not going to push you," Victor says, and Sherlock just doesn't know what to do with that.
--
He avoids Sebastian and Sebastian avoids him, except for business.
"Thought maybe I'd have to find another customer," Seb says, handing over the packet.
"Don't be stupid." Sherlock tucks it in his pocket. "I'm not going to run scared because of one time, especially when there were so many variables in play that could have led to a negative result."
Sebastian smirks; Sherlock glares at him and leaves.
--
"Only when I'm running experiments," Sherlock tells him.
"Right," Victor says.
--
He's not used to wanting touch. It's all seemed too much trouble before.
Victor's bed has clean white sheets and a grey duvet, soft against Sherlock's bare skin. Victor's hands are soft too, the hands of someone who's never done manual labour or played an instrument regularly or gotten in fistfights. You can tell so much about someone by their hands. Sherlock has a violinist's hands, calloused since he was five, a chemist's hands, spotted and stained. There are three sticking plasters on the left one where he caught himself with a scalpel, scars on his knuckles from boxing, and a cigarette burn on the back of the right one, round and deliberate.
Victor's fingertips ghost over the sharp point of Sherlock's hipbone. "Touch me," Victor whispers, and Sherlock does, hands on each other until all Sherlock can do is shake and make stupid noises, but it doesn't matter because Victor is doing the same, kissing him hard and pushing into his hand and Sherlock's pretty sure he's not going to be able to lose control, except that then he does.
Victor holds him after; Sherlock wishes he could crawl inside Victor and stay. It's irrational. It's endorphins and hormones. He runs his fingers along the bumps of Victor's spine, presses his mouth to the pulse at his throat.
"That was brilliant," Victor says and Sherlock shuts his eyes.
It feels like all he does nowadays is crave.
--
The ceiling was once white.
"Ah," Victor says, and sits beside him.
There's no reason to move. No reason to do anything. Everything is grey, and pointless, and empty.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Victor says, and Sherlock swallows.
"All right," Victor murmurs after some time. He lies down beside Sherlock, not touching, just there.
It's hateful, having him here to see this. Sherlock wants to curl up around Victor, but Victor should stay the only spot of light, untainted by the black hole inside Sherlock.
--
"Only when it's really useful," Sherlock tells him.
"Right," Victor says.
--
He needs his sense of smell, he tells himself, but the truth is there's something about the pain of the needle breaking skin. He has two stashes now, the one Victor pretends he doesn't monitor, and the other one.
--
"It's not you," Sherlock says.
Victor looks up at the ceiling. Sherlock can't read his expression, which is infuriating.
"It's not," he says again. "I do want - it's just..." If this attempt at reassurance doesn't work, he doesn't really have any other ideas. His body is just uselessly conflicted and refusing to cooperate.
"It's the fucking cocaine, that's what it is," Victor snaps, getting up out of bed and yanking his shirt out from under Sherlock's thigh.
Sherlock looks down at where Victor's still half-hard. "I could - even if I don't - I could -"
Victor goes still. He puts the rest of his clothes back on and walks out.
--
Cutting down his usage is slightly more difficult than he had anticipated. The problematic physical effect goes away, but Victor is... not the same. Their tentative exploration of each other stalls, and Sherlock misses it like he would never have imagined. His skin misses Victor, no matter how illogical that might be; the air between them feels tingling and heavy.
It's just easier, with the cocaine, everything is easier, and he doesn't want to stop a good thing. Victor's aversion to it is the only problem. It makes everything so unambiguous, his thoughts falling into place effortlessly. He can see everything, the edges defined instead of just noise. He can keep going for days and days, not sleeping, not eating, the demands of the body overruled by the mind.
It should be perfect, really.
Victor's asleep in Sherlock's bed. Sherlock stays up all night smoking on the rooftop, thinking and not reaching any kind of conclusion.
--
Denial becomes more difficult when he walks to Sebastian's at three in the morning because he can't wait any longer, when he has to avoid rolling up his sleeves in front of anyone, when he starts lying to Victor's face.
--
The morocco case hits the wall and cracks, and falls, and spills its contents across the floor. Sherlock stares not at the case, antique wood and twisted hinges, not at the evidence, new needles and bottles and packets, but at Victor's heaving chest.
"You can't -" Victor says, voice tight and hard. "You're injecting. You can't expect me to just -"
"I don't expect anything from you." Sherlock keeps his voice toneless, watches Victor hold his breath and let it out.
"I will not love a junkie," Victor says, and Sherlock wonders if this is what it's like to have your ribs broken open and your heart ripped out, not because of 'I will not,' because he knew Victor had a spine, and not because of 'a junkie,' because he knows everything about himself, doesn't he, doesn't he, but because of that other word, that other word, and stupid stupid stupid Sherlock, never sees these things coming, all of these feelings and he just can never tell for sure.
He gasps in air again and again but the pain in his chest doesn't get better and he can't look at Victor, actually cannot, so he looks at the drugs.
"I'm taking this and destroying it," Victor says after a moment, and Sherlock nods, jerky like his spine and his skull don't connect properly.
--
Withdrawal is the single worst experience of Sherlock's life. His brain refuses to function, refuses to focus on anything, his thoughts all skittering anxiety and empty black in turns. He's exhausted but can't sleep, and he stares straight ahead for hours as Victor pets his hair. It's really more painful than comforting. Good, he thinks, and digs his nails into his own skin.
--
Sherlock's changing his shirt when Victor grabs his wrist, fingers tight around the bones.
"What?" he says, and then realizes. He wants to jerk his arm out of Victor's hand, settles for making a fist and biting his lip.
Victor stares for a long moment while Sherlock tries to breathe normally, then strokes up his wrist and forearm to touch a fingertip to the worst of it, so gently, and Sherlock can't help it, he has to pull away, has to. Victor looks up at him with devastation clear in his eyes, just for a second, before he gets up and leaves.
Sherlock's wearing long sleeves and curled up in bed when Victor gets back an hour later. He keeps his eyes closed as Victor slides into bed behind him and kisses the back of his neck.
Eventually, he sleeps.
--
Victor lets Sherlock explore him everywhere, catalogue the effects of fingers and tongue on all of his skin. Sherlock still feels not right, craves it without warning and for no reason. His mind still betraying him, popping up images and ideas and the echoes of sensations, circling back to it again and again and again and again and again.
He memorizes the details of Victor's body and tries to block out the noise.
Victor turns them over and presses Sherlock into the bed, every touch saying pay attention, pay attention, pay attention to this and not to that, pay attention to your body now and not the endless scratching thoughts that never stop. Victor's mouth on him is devastating. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't.
--
He's clean for a month before Victor invites him to his family home for the summer.
He's there for a day before Victor shows him off to his father like his deductions are something to be proud of, something interesting and unique. He's nominally in the guest room, but it's right beside Victor's and he knows where he'll be sleeping.
Victor's father likes him, which is oddly pleasing, and admires his deductive abilities, which is even more so. "That's a real talent you have there," he says over dinner. "You could run rings around those idiots at the Yard. People need that sort of thing, when they have a problem that needs solving and it's all too complex for the rest of us. There'd be a good career in that for you if you play your cards right."
Sherlock stammers; Victor smiles at him with affection plain all over his face.
Then Victor's father gets a visitor, someone from his past obviously connected to something secret and shameful, and it all goes to shit.
Victor and his father get into a screaming row while Sherlock's in the next room pretending to be reading, and then he's passed out drunk on the sofa when they get back from the walk that was supposed to calm Victor down.
Victor's knuckles are white and his breath is too careful as he shuts his bedroom door behind them. Sherlock offers sex because he's not any good at affection, but apparently that's wrong too.
He leaves, finally, because he can't think of anything else to do. Victor pretends to want him to stay; it's hurtful and hateful, because Victor should know better than to try and lie, as if Sherlock could be fooled.
--
Withdrawal isn't any better the second time around.
He doesn't tell Victor about the lapse or how he quit again alone locked in his rooms. It's easy to hide it when Victor barely contacts him for the rest of the summer.
--
The connection is poor, white noise and seconds of silence breaking up Victor's voice. Sherlock covers his other ear and says "Victor? Speak up."
He hears Victor take a breath, crackling with static, and Victor's voice hitches when he says, "My father's dead."
Sherlock doesn't know what to say. Everything he can think of is the wrong thing. He clutches the phone to his ear and what comes out of his mouth is: "Is it suspicious?"
Victor laughs, but it's all wrong and Sherlock should have just kept his mouth shut until Victor said something more and gave him a better indication of the appropriate response. Stupid, stupid.
"Well, yes." Victor's breath is wrong too, and Sherlock just can't handle it if Victor starts to cry, he has no idea what the etiquette is for that and even if he knew he'd probably be rubbish at that too.
Victor does start crying, but he pretends he doesn’t and so Sherlock pretends too.
"I need you," Victor says. Sherlock goes.
--
"What are we...?" Sherlock says, and then stops, unable to finish. "You've been so - and we haven't talked -"
"Look, I just... I can't do this right now," Victor says, pressing his hands against his eyes. "I'm making funeral arrangement. Just - I can't. We'll talk in the morning if we must."
Sherlock spends the night awake, staring up at the ceiling in the guest room alone, and he leaves in the morning without talking to Victor. He tells himself it's to make things easier for Victor, but that's not quite true.
He solves the case though, the strange case of the Gloria Scott and Victor's father, and that's something. Victor said he appreciated that. He thinks back to what Victor's father said, about making a career out of his little tricks, and he thinks... maybe. There are so many interesting crimes.
--
It doesn’t help this time, though Sherlock takes more and more to try and chase it, seeking the way it was before, even a moment of it before it all comes apart, but no. The euphoria stays out of reach, always, and it makes everything louder until it's all just screaming.
Sherlock can read his own life in the disaster of his rooms. He throws his papers at the wall, follows it with glassware and ceramic, but it doesn't help. He feels like he's going to come out of his skin, all of it peeling back to reveal something dark and writhing.
He curls up as much as he possibly can, digs his fingers into his hair.
He has a few sedatives left from the time Mummy made him see a therapist. He just needs to sleep.
--
Victor looks awful. Sherlock feels even worse than the last time he woke up in hospital.
"Sherlock," Victor says, and stops, and swallows. "Do you know what...?"
"I'm aware," Sherlock says. His voice sounds strained and rough. Possibly he was yelling. Or intubated. He doesn't know, and he picks at the hospital blanket covering his body.
"Did you..." Victor swallows again. "Were you trying to...?"
"It was an accident," Sherlock says, flatly.
Victor's hand on his own makes him flinch. "I still care about you," he says.
Sherlock breathes carefully and doesn't say anything.
--
Now in the third time around, it's almost like he's getting used to this.
--
Victor stays until Sherlock's clean. Sherlock wishes he would just leave if he's going to leave, but he's too weak to say it, not when he can have more of Victor's touches, Victor's hand on his back or stroking his hair, to memorize and catalogue and keep. He blames this emotionality on the withdrawal, viciously cuts himself down for the sentiment.
He doesn't hate Victor, not really. Only a lunatic would stay with Sherlock, and Victor is just too normal and too good. He buried his father not two weeks previous. Sherlock is that one bit of upheaval too much, the final straw that breaks Victor and sends him away.
It's fine.
He knows it's time when Victor hovers in his doorway like he's an unwelcome guest. As if he hasn't practically lived here on and off for months. As if the sheets don't still smell of him.
"You took the job," Sherlock says, not looking up from his book.
"I have to get away." Victor sounds resigned, and exhausted, and if Sherlock was a better person he might feel guilty.
"Yes," Sherlock says. It's just a statement. He spoils the effect by looking up, even though he knows he can't keep the rawness of it out of his eyes. Victor's face looks strained and grey. His lips are chapped where he's been biting them in anxiety, and Sherlock's a little bit grateful for that at least, signs that Victor does care.
Victor takes a deep breath, raises his hand, touches one fingertip to Sherlock's jawline, and turns away again, shutting the door behind him with a soft thud.
Sherlock smokes until he feels sick, and then he curls up in bed with his knees tucked up by his chin. He tells himself that he's not going to use.
--
The fourth time around is somehow the worst of all, and not even because Mycroft drags him out to some unbearable centre and huffs disapprovingly at him. No, the worst part is that it's pointless. He's barely through the worst of it when he ends up at Sebastian's again.
"I wonder what you'd do for it," Sebastian says. He stares at Sherlock for a long moment while Sherlock does a poor job of covering his desperation, and then he takes Sherlock's money and hands over the cocaine. His pity is somehow worse than the alternative. Sherlock does a line there in Seb's kitchen.
--
It's better to be alone. He has a career to build. The work is even more engaging than he imagined, and that's all that matters.
He solves problems for money, and favours, and a carefully crafted reputation. He avoids Mycroft, finds another dealer, and eventually starts showing up at crime scenes. Nobody listens to him, until someone does.
Lestrade's the best of the lot, listening when Sherlock talks and asking intelligent questions on occasion. It's after several accurate tips and a few steps closer to the promotion Lestrade so badly wants that Sherlock shows up at a murder investigation staggering and wild-eyed.
He's expecting to be taken in to the station. Instead, Lestrade drives him home, hauls him up the stairs to his terrible flat with its mould and its mice and its nicotine-stained walls. He rubs Sherlock's back as he vomits nothing but acid, pretends not to notice the tears he can't suppress.
Sherlock solves the case for him, sitting there side by side leaning against the bathtub.
Lestrade's silent for a long moment, and then he gives Sherlock an offer, and an ultimatum. The drugs, or the work. Sherlock swears at him for ten minutes straight, but Lestrade understands the variations of gratitude.
--
It's a cold winter night, but the fire crackles in the fireplace. They've just completed a case and put a murderer in custody, they're both pleasantly full of some very good curry, and they have a whole evening ahead of them.
Sherlock stretches out on the sofa with his legs on John's thighs, wiggling his toes. John makes a pleased little hmm noise and wraps his hand around Sherlock's ankle, rubs his fingers over the raised white scars.
"What on earth did this?" he asks. "Is it a dog bite?"
Sherlock takes a slow breath. He props himself up on his elbows, keeping his legs on John's lap, and looks at John. John looks back, nothing but honest curiosity on his face.
John's face always tells the truth.
Sherlock takes another breath, and begins: "Let me tell you about the case of the Gloria Scott, as you would title it, back in uni when I got my start as a consulting detective..."