The Bang and the Clatter (18/36)
Jun. 21st, 2013 10:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
earlgreytea68Title - The Bang and the Clatter (18/36)
Author -![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
earlgreytea68
Rating - Teen
Characters - John, Sherlock, Mrs. Hudson
Spoilers - Through "The Reichenbach Fall"
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on.
Summary - Sherlock Holmes is a pitcher and John Watson is a catcher. No, no, no, it's a baseball AU.
Author's Notes - Many, many thanks to arctacuda, for helping with the writing and for uncomplainingly beta-ing when I whine.
Chapter One - Chapter Two - Chapter Three - Chapter Four - Chapter Five - Chapter Six - Chapter Seven - Chapter Eight - Chapter Nine - Chapter Ten - Chapter Eleven - Chapter Twelve - Chapter Thirteen - Chapter Fourteen - Chapter Fifteen - Chapter Sixteen - Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
The article was the first thing John Watson spotted on the kitchen table that morning, the newspaper having been folded open to it for his benefit. But it was far from being the only thing on the kitchen table. Sherlock’s experiments on rainwater having been pushed aside—John didn’t know the point of them and had stopped asking—there was now a pile of newspapers and magazines clustered there. John regarded it for a moment in silence. From the living room came the sound of Sherlock’s violin. Had Sherlock gotten him all the newspapers? It seemed unlike him. Sherlock was ruthlessly unsentimental about his own career, kept none of his press clippings or even any of his more important baseballs. Maybe Sherlock had decided to be sentimental about John’s career, though?
John carried the first newspaper into the living room with his tea and said to Sherlock’s back, “The newspapers? And stuff?”
“Not me,” replied Sherlock, without turning around and without breaking stride in his violin-playing. “Mrs. Hudson.”
That made much more sense. Mrs. Hudson was very sweet. At first, when Sherlock had suggested they share Sherlock’s place rather than John’s house—which Sherlock maintained they both hated, only John was too stupid to have realized that yet—John had agreed that it would be fine in order to save the epic sulk he feared otherwise.
And then he’d found out that Sherlock lived in an apartment over Mrs. Hudson’s garage. John had refused, digging his heels in, but Sherlock’s pouting had indeed been monumental, and John had eventually relented and saw immediately why Sherlock had been so determined. The apartment suited Sherlock. He had somehow already filled it with so many scattered belongings that John couldn’t imagine that he’d ever lived anywhere else. And Mrs. Hudson plainly doted on Sherlock. John thought that Mrs. Hudson’s fussing over him was unnecessary to Sherlock’s ego and also thought that Mrs. Hudson’s fussing over him was exactly what Sherlock needed. John had not yet met Sherlock’s mother, and Sherlock never mentioned her, but John was willing to bet she hadn’t doted on Sherlock.
Mrs. Hudson fluttered in and out of the apartment with food and groceries and tea, always reminding them perfunctorily that she wasn’t their housekeeper. John had realized immediately that there was no way they could maintain for Mrs. Hudson the façade of just being good friends. The apartment had two bedrooms, but Mrs. Hudson was in and out so much that John was convinced it was only a matter of time before she walked in on something at least mildly inappropriate. It turned out, though, that hiding it was not at all necessary. In fact, Mrs. Hudson had seemed to have known right away, and John had wondered if Sherlock had mentioned it to her. When John brought it up, Mrs. Hudson looked at him in surprise and said, “Sherlock doesn’t talk about his personal life. But he mentioned you to me, just once, just something you’d said to him at the field, and I knew immediately he was over the moon for you. I’ve never heard him mention anyone by name, ever.” Mrs. Hudson said that like it was so simple, unpacking groceries from a bag. “It’s so good he has you. I’ve always worried about him. The only person he’s ever had is that terrible brother of his, and he doesn’t count. But now he has you, so we can worry about him together, so it’s half the worry for each of us.” Mrs. Hudson had smiled at him brightly, and John had started to ask if she could keep it quiet, but then Mrs. Hudson had cut him off by saying, “My lips are sealed,” and pretending to zip them shut and throw away the key. And then she’d told the press she had two studio apartments over her garage, which had helped a great deal with the suspicious nature of the living arrangements. Mrs. Hudson was the only other person John had ever seen Sherlock demonstrably affectionate with, and John completely understood why.
“That was nice of her,” said John, settling into what had become his chair. “I’ll have to thank her. Are you excited?”
“About?”
“The All-Star Game.”
“Not particularly.”
John regarded Sherlock’s back. They had been cohabitating for several months now, and for the most part John had grown used to Sherlock’s quirks, but there were times when John still found Sherlock touchy and difficult to read. Like now.
John sighed, concluding, “I bet you don’t see the point.”
“I see the point,” said Sherlock, stiffly, after a moment. “It’s an honor to be selected.”
“You’re saying that for my benefit.”
“You’re delighted. You should be. It’s a good thing, John.”
“A good thing for small people with small brains like me,” remarked John, without rancor, and sipped his tea. “You’ve gone before.”
“Yes,” answered Sherlock, briefly.
“You’ve never started before. Surely you’re pleased about that. You’re having the season of your career so far.”
“You promised me a perfect game.”
“Give me time. Baseball’s a marathon.” John watched Sherlock play his violin, the sun making a halo out of his riotous curls. John loved to watch Sherlock play the violin. Sherlock always moved with grace, but John couldn’t let himself enjoy it on the baseball diamond anymore. There were too many sharp eyes on him, watching his every move. There were already too many photos for John’s liking, photos of the two of them in which John was sure his heart was in his eyes, in which he thought everyone would look at the way he was looking at Sherlock and know. So, at work, John refused to let himself think too hard about what a beautiful pitcher Sherlock was. Which meant he appreciated the violin-playing a great deal. It was always private, and always gave John the opportunity to sit and admire Sherlock, the lean, gorgeous, elegant lines of him as he coaxed beautiful music from the instrument. Usually, Sherlock playing the violin led to sex. John actually glanced at his watch to check the time.
Sherlock hit a sour note, which made John wince and look up at him in surprise. Sherlock never made a mistake playing the violin. Sherlock himself seemed irritated by it. He screeched the bow along the strings and then turned from the window and stalked across the room to place the violin gently on his chair. No matter how upset he was, John had never seen Sherlock mistreat the violin.
“You okay?” John asked him.
“I’m fine,” Sherlock said, and disappeared into their bedroom and slammed the door.
John lifted his eyebrows. “Okay,” he said to his cup of tea, and looked through the rest of the newspaper. Sherlock in a mood was best left to get himself out of it. John wondered idly if Mrs. Hudson would stop by with some freshly baked cookies. That would make up for Sherlock’s mood.
John’s phone buzzed with a text. John expected it to be Sherlock, texting to tell him to come into the bedroom and fetch his slippers for him or something. It was Clara. John had never really made the fight up with Harry, and nothing emphasized that more than getting a text from Clara instead of her. Congrats on the ASG! read the text. And then a smiley face. John looked at the text. He thought it was trying too hard to be normal and cheerful. John had been ignoring the Harry situation, half because he didn’t know what to do about it and half because he had just wanted to be enjoying this honeymoon period with Sherlock. He had never had a relationship that had made him so incredibly happy all the time. Just looking at Sherlock and thinking how, amazingly, he was his, filled his chest with joyful buoyancy, and he had been selfish enough to want to relish it. John stared at the text for a long time before slowly typing back a simple Thanks. God, he was a coward. He kind of wanted to ask Sherlock how he had kicked his drug addiction, but they never talked about the drugs. John thought it was understandable that it wasn’t one of Sherlock’s favorite topics of conversation, the same way John appreciated that Sherlock didn’t ever want to talk about John’s psychosomatic leg injury, which now bothered him so seldomly that he sometimes forgot he had ever had it.
The thought of Sherlock’s past, though, brought up a foggy memory of stalking his Wikipedia entry when they’d first met. The All-Star Game brawl with Moran.
John got up and walked into their bedroom. Sherlock was laying on his back in the middle of the bed, staring up at the ceiling, his fingers steepled together in his thinking pose.
“You’ve received a text from Clara,” said Sherlock.
John ignored this. “You got in a brawl with Moran at the last All-Star Game.”
“She sent you platitudes, so now you’re worried about Harry,” continued Sherlock.
John looked at him in the bed. He was whippet thin, and there was strength there, yes, surprising steel, but John could think of no one he knew less likely to start a brawl. “A brawl? Seriously?”
“You should stop worrying about Harry. You’re excited about the All-Star Game, think about that instead. Leave Harry until after the season; it won’t make a difference.”
“We’re not talking about Harry, Sherlock,” John said, firmly.
Sherlock sighed up at the ceiling. “Do you think I can’t hold my own in a fistfight, John?”
John snorted. “I think you probably know some ridiculously obscure form of karate.”
Sherlock flickered a smile at the ceiling.
“Is that why you’re not excited about the All-Star Game? Because Moran will be there again?”
Sherlock looked up at the ceiling for a long moment, then he shifted his gaze to John, ocean-blue-green-gray and just as unfathomable, just as unerring and undeniable. “Don’t worry about Moran,” he said. “Don’t worry about me. Don’t worry about Harry. Don’t worry about anything. You’ll start the All-Star Game and you’ll have a fantastic time. I’ll start with you. You’ll have fun. It’ll be poetry for you. It’ll be a symphony.”
There was something he was missing, thought John. Something about Moran. But he was also aware Sherlock was offering him this to be nice to John. Sherlock couldn’t have cared less about the pomp and circumstance of the All-Star Game selection, but he knew it meant something to John, and he wanted John to enjoy it, and John didn’t want to belittle the gift being offered. After the All-Star Game, thought John, they’d talk about Moran. Until then, he’d just keep Moran away from Sherlock Holmes. Easily done.
***
John’s birthday.
Sherlock stared at the date on the top of the newspaper he’d retrieved that morning from where it had been left at their hotel room door. He’d known, of course, that it was John’s birthday, he hadn’t forgotten, he just didn’t know what he was supposed to be doing for John’s birthday. He didn’t know what John would expect. Sherlock tried to think of everything he knew about American birthday traditions. A cake ought to be involved, and candles, and a gift of some sort, but Sherlock had no gift to give John. He’d considered it, but he had no idea what that gift might be, what the social expectations were.
Sherlock took the newspaper back into their bedroom, where John was sprawled on his stomach and snoring lightly, and crawled onto the bed with it and waited for John to wake up, which he did with drowsy snuffling, instinctively nosing his way closer to Sherlock, curling toward his warmth.
“You awake?” he mumbled, finally, into Sherlock’s T-shirt.
“Yes,” Sherlock affirmed.
“Mmmm, good,” said John, and pressed a wet kiss through Sherlock’s T-shirt.
“Were you not going to do that if I wasn’t awake?” asked Sherlock, amused.
“Oh, no, I was doing it either way,” John responded, nosing Sherlock’s T-shirt out of the way to press an open-mouthed kiss just to the left of his belly button.
Sherlock looked down at his sleep-tousled gold-brown head moving over him and said, “You are going in quite the wrong direction.”
“Uh-uh,” John denied, around his tongue, lavishing attention on the trail of hair leading downward. “This is definitely the right way.”
“I would agree with you on almost every other morning, but today is your birthday and I really do think we should have this situation the other way around.”
John froze and then lifted his head up, managing to look comically startled whilst sprawled between Sherlock’s legs. “How did you know that?”
“How did I know it’s your birthday?” Sherlock couldn’t believe John was asking him that.
“I’ve never told you.”
“It’s on your Wikipedia, John.”
“Oh, bloody hell, it is,” John realized. “Dammit. I didn’t want you to know.”
“What?” Sherlock blinked. “Why not?”
“I don’t want a big fuss made over it.”
“Oh, darn,” said Sherlock. “Now I have to cancel the huge surprise party I was hosting after the game tonight.”
“You’re joking, right?”
“Please, John, of course I’m joking.” Sherlock rolled his eyes and squirmed and wriggled and coaxed until he got John farther up his body, sprawled over his chest, catching his weight as best as he could. “You should know that I am never going to throw you a surprise party.”
“Thank God,” said John, and kissed him.
Sherlock let himself be distracted for only a few moments—maybe closer to a minute—before easing John out of the kiss and saying, “Why?”
“Why what?”
“You would never have thought that I’d make a big fuss over this. Why didn’t you want me to know?”
“Because you are so young that you still think birthdays in this business ought to be celebrated, and I didn’t really want to be reminded of that,” said John, wryly.
Sherlock considered this. He thought he could tell John that he wasn’t old, but John would dismiss this as further evidence of their age difference. He thought he could try to wave away the age difference, but that would provoke a conversation about the age difference that Sherlock thought wouldn’t be productive, so he said instead, “Well, I, for one, think we should celebrate the few birthdays we have left where you’re virile and strong.”
“You are a bastard,” John told him, but he leaned down and kissed him anyway.
***
John sent All-Star Game tickets to his parents and to Harry and Clara and the kids. He couldn’t not. It was his last All-Star Game, and he was starting. He had to include his family, even if he was feuding with Harry and had been less than forthcoming with his parents about Sherlock.
Sherlock was curious about that fact, but he didn’t seem to harbor ill will about being a secret.
“Why wouldn’t you come out to your parents?” he had asked. “Surely the fact that you have a homosexual sister would make the conversation easier.”
“No. I don’t know. Somehow it feels different for me. There are all these expectations on the son. The baseball-playing son.”
Sherlock shrugged, as if indifferent to the entire situation, which miffed John enough to say, “Why haven’t you come out to your parents?”
“I didn’t know I was gay,” pointed out Sherlock, calmly, and then, thoughtfully, after a second, “I didn’t know I was anything.”
John shook his head a bit.
“You always shake your head when I say that,” remarked Sherlock, matter-of-factly. “Like I’m lying about it.”
“I don’t think you’re lying. I just can’t believe my tremendous luck that nobody prior to me thought to thoroughly seduce you.”
Sherlock lifted his eyebrows in what looked like genuine amusement. “John, people have been thoroughly seducing me almost constantly for a decade now.”
“Ah,” said John, dryly, thinking that the Sherlockian ego was well and truly intact.
“You’re just the only one I ever wanted to actually accomplish it,” Sherlock continued, casually, the way he always said things like that, as if they were nothing. Which made John drag him to bed and thoroughly seduce him.
But he knew that he surprised Sherlock, on the Sunday night before the All-Star Game, by knocking on the door to his suite. Separate suite, thought John. They still always had separate suites. They never used both suites anymore, but the presence of John’s family in the same hotel had led him to go to his own suite, and then he had walked around it finding it cavernous and empty and lonely and now he found himself knocking on Sherlock’s door.
Sherlock answered, dressed as impeccably as he always was, in the plum shirt today. He took in John’s suit.
“Don’t criticize the tailoring,” John told him, and watched him swallow whatever he’d been about to say. John pushed his way into the suite. Sherlock’s jacket was folded over the back of the couch, and he’d already managed to colonize much of the floor of the living area with breakdowns of American League batters. “Taking this whole thing seriously, aren’t you?”
“Good practice for the World Series,” Sherlock pointed out.
John stuck his hands in his pockets and forced himself to look at Sherlock. “I think you should come to dinner with us.”
Sherlock watched him closely, barely a flicker of reaction in his eyes. “All right,” he agreed, mildly.
John frowned. “That’s it? ‘All right’? No…surprise? No ‘Are you sure about this, John?’”
Sherlock was already pulling his jacket on. “You’re not sure about it. This isn’t how you behave when you’re sure about things. And you’re almost always sure about things. You’re extremely decisive. I’ve never seen you dither so long about something as you have about this.”
“I haven’t been dithering.”
Sherlock ignored him. “But you want me. Isn’t that what you told me you’d decided? You wouldn’t let me preemptively break up with you. You want me and you want this and you’re stubborn about the things you want, so I knew eventually you’d stop dithering and you’d come to the conclusion that you have to get this over with sooner or later. So no, I’m not surprised. Shall we go?”
Sherlock was walking to the door. John had expected to have a little more time to get used to what felt like his sudden decision on his part. “Wait,” he protested. “Can we just—?”
“No,” Sherlock snapped, abruptly, and turned back to him. “We can’t. I detest indecision, you know. I hate checked swings. If you’re going to strike out, bloody commit to it.”
John blinked, then rose to meet Sherlock’s anger. “You’re a pitcher, of course you think that way. Nobody expects you to get any hits.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t try.”
“Are you seriously going to have an argument with me about this right before dinner with my parents?”
“No. I wasn’t going to have an argument with you about anything. I was merely going to go to dinner. But then you went and second-guessed everything, again, and—”
“This is not an easy decision, Sherlock. This is not something you just…do on the spur of the moment. And I’ve done it on the spur of the moment here—”
“The spur of what moment? We’ve been shagging for three months and five days. Exactly what about this is ‘spur of the moment’ by any definition of that phrase? It’s not like I suddenly snuck up on you on the airplane or something. You have known about me for literally months. This shouldn’t be ‘spur of the moment,’ all this time later. You should have made this decision ages ago. I can’t believe you haven’t. I hate that you haven’t.”
“It’s my decision,” John pointed out, hotly. “There’s no requirement that I act on a timeline—”
“It isn’t a question of timing, John,” Sherlock retorted. “It’s the fact that you’re behaving this way about it. I don’t care that we’re a secret to the rest of baseball, I genuinely don’t. That makes perfect sense to me, it’s none of their business. But you’re close to your parents. Closer than I am to mine, at least. You actually talk to them on a regular basis. And you haven’t mentioned me to them. Not even obliquely. You have deliberately not mentioned me. You have omitted me.”
John narrowed his eyes. “Do you eavesdrop on my conversations?”
“Of course I do, John, don’t be an imbecile,” Sherlock answered, impatiently. “But that isn’t the point.”
“If I told them about you, Sherlock, they would know, immediately, how I feel about you. Do you understand me? It would be obvious. It is obvious. I can’t talk about you objectively. People bring you up and I grin like a complete fool. Do you even watch my press conferences? It’s ridiculous. I look like a blushing schoolboy on the topic of you, and the press might be too stupid to draw conclusions from that, but my parents wouldn’t be.”
“If that’s true, then your parents know already. And who cares?” Sherlock sliced in, sharply. “Why should you care? So your parents would know. Is it because they would know you were gay? Or is it because they would know it was me?”
John stared at him. The silence in the hotel room was ringing following Sherlock’s shout. Sherlock suddenly fidgeted, looking uncomfortable, as if he’d just realized how much he’d given away there, that he hadn’t intended to give away so much. He moved away from the door, over to the window of the suite, presenting John with his back. John turned to watch him. “Sherlock,” he said. “It’s not about you.”
“Isn’t it?” Sherlock leaned against the window, talking to the city outside.
“No,” John insisted. “It’s not.”
Sherlock sighed heavily.
“Hey.” John, his voice sharp, stalked into the living area, trying to force Sherlock’s still, unmoving form to look at him. “Don’t pretend you know more about me. Not on this.”
“World’s foremost John Watson authority,” Sherlock reminded him, dully. “I do know more about you. I always know more about you. You have skewed self-perception. And I’ve been making deductions. You tell them everything that brings you joy. Everything. Normally that’s about baseball, because it used to be that baseball was your great source of happiness. But you tell them everything, you exult, you should hear the detail you go into on a particularly good at-bat, a particularly well-called game. Me, you never mention. Me, you dismiss, brush aside when asked. And I thought, Would you do that if you had met someone normal? If it wasn’t me? If it was someone who…was normal?”
Idiot, idiot, idiot, John told himself and squeezed his eyes shut and closed his hands into fists and hated himself. Because he knew that someone at some point had told Sherlock that there was something wrong with who he was, and John had been so determined to never do that to him, and he had managed to get Mycroft entirely out of their lives and Sherlock relaxed and open with him and now he had ruined everything by being a coward with his parents.
He opened his eyes. Sherlock was still leaning against the window, still looking down at the city below. “If I had met someone normal,” John said, his throat aching with regret, “I would never have told my parents about him, because there would have been nothing to tell. It had to be you, Sherlock. It was only ever going to be you.”
“Your parents are knocking on your hotel room door,” Sherlock replied.
John heard it then, a dull knocking from down the hallway. “It isn’t because of you.”
“You said,” Sherlock responded, mildly.
John hated the mildness. Sherlock had shut down, wrapped himself in intellect, the way he did when he was hurt. John recognized the tactic and hated that he had inspired it. He took a few steps closer to Sherlock, carefully. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I made you think, or feel—I’m sorry. Come to dinner.”
“Definitely not.”
“Sherlock—”
“You’re feeling guilty now. I didn’t mean to do that. I meant to give you time. I meant to see if you would— I didn’t mean to— I have batting statistics to study.”
Sherlock never cut himself off, never stumbled over his words. John felt powerless and terrible. “Come to dinner,” he said again, helplessly.
Sherlock shifted just slightly, just enough to meet his eyes. His were flat and gray. “No,” he said, firmly.
John thought pushing the issue might make things worse. He chewed on his bottom lip nervously and tried to think how he was going to fix it. “It isn’t about you, Sherlock. I mean, it wasn’t—I didn’t—I’m so sorry.”
“I heard you the first, second, and third times you apologized. You should really go to dinner, John.”
John hesitated. He didn’t want to leave things like this. He wanted to brush a quick kiss over Sherlock’s lips, but he was terrified Sherlock would flinch or draw backward and he couldn’t deal with that rejection. Maybe he should just go to dinner, he thought. Maybe he would go to dinner, and they would both settle down over the course of the evening’s separation, and then when he got back from dinner Sherlock would listen to his apologies and actually believe them and it was all going to be fine.
Distantly, down the hall, his parents had now started calling for him through the door. Any minute now they were going to decide he had died and call hotel security.
“Okay,” he said, because he didn’t have time to think about it anymore. “Please make sure you order yourself something to eat.”
Sherlock didn’t even bother to lie about it. He just rolled his eyes. John thought the odds Sherlock would eat that night were slim to none. He’d have to remember to bring him something to eat when he got back. A peace offering was definitely called for, anyway.
Next Chapter
Author -
earlgreytea68Rating - Teen
Characters - John, Sherlock, Mrs. Hudson
Spoilers - Through "The Reichenbach Fall"
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on.
Summary - Sherlock Holmes is a pitcher and John Watson is a catcher. No, no, no, it's a baseball AU.
Author's Notes - Many, many thanks to arctacuda, for helping with the writing and for uncomplainingly beta-ing when I whine.
Chapter One - Chapter Two - Chapter Three - Chapter Four - Chapter Five - Chapter Six - Chapter Seven - Chapter Eight - Chapter Nine - Chapter Ten - Chapter Eleven - Chapter Twelve - Chapter Thirteen - Chapter Fourteen - Chapter Fifteen - Chapter Sixteen - Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
The article was the first thing John Watson spotted on the kitchen table that morning, the newspaper having been folded open to it for his benefit. But it was far from being the only thing on the kitchen table. Sherlock’s experiments on rainwater having been pushed aside—John didn’t know the point of them and had stopped asking—there was now a pile of newspapers and magazines clustered there. John regarded it for a moment in silence. From the living room came the sound of Sherlock’s violin. Had Sherlock gotten him all the newspapers? It seemed unlike him. Sherlock was ruthlessly unsentimental about his own career, kept none of his press clippings or even any of his more important baseballs. Maybe Sherlock had decided to be sentimental about John’s career, though?
John carried the first newspaper into the living room with his tea and said to Sherlock’s back, “The newspapers? And stuff?”
“Not me,” replied Sherlock, without turning around and without breaking stride in his violin-playing. “Mrs. Hudson.”
That made much more sense. Mrs. Hudson was very sweet. At first, when Sherlock had suggested they share Sherlock’s place rather than John’s house—which Sherlock maintained they both hated, only John was too stupid to have realized that yet—John had agreed that it would be fine in order to save the epic sulk he feared otherwise.
And then he’d found out that Sherlock lived in an apartment over Mrs. Hudson’s garage. John had refused, digging his heels in, but Sherlock’s pouting had indeed been monumental, and John had eventually relented and saw immediately why Sherlock had been so determined. The apartment suited Sherlock. He had somehow already filled it with so many scattered belongings that John couldn’t imagine that he’d ever lived anywhere else. And Mrs. Hudson plainly doted on Sherlock. John thought that Mrs. Hudson’s fussing over him was unnecessary to Sherlock’s ego and also thought that Mrs. Hudson’s fussing over him was exactly what Sherlock needed. John had not yet met Sherlock’s mother, and Sherlock never mentioned her, but John was willing to bet she hadn’t doted on Sherlock.
Mrs. Hudson fluttered in and out of the apartment with food and groceries and tea, always reminding them perfunctorily that she wasn’t their housekeeper. John had realized immediately that there was no way they could maintain for Mrs. Hudson the façade of just being good friends. The apartment had two bedrooms, but Mrs. Hudson was in and out so much that John was convinced it was only a matter of time before she walked in on something at least mildly inappropriate. It turned out, though, that hiding it was not at all necessary. In fact, Mrs. Hudson had seemed to have known right away, and John had wondered if Sherlock had mentioned it to her. When John brought it up, Mrs. Hudson looked at him in surprise and said, “Sherlock doesn’t talk about his personal life. But he mentioned you to me, just once, just something you’d said to him at the field, and I knew immediately he was over the moon for you. I’ve never heard him mention anyone by name, ever.” Mrs. Hudson said that like it was so simple, unpacking groceries from a bag. “It’s so good he has you. I’ve always worried about him. The only person he’s ever had is that terrible brother of his, and he doesn’t count. But now he has you, so we can worry about him together, so it’s half the worry for each of us.” Mrs. Hudson had smiled at him brightly, and John had started to ask if she could keep it quiet, but then Mrs. Hudson had cut him off by saying, “My lips are sealed,” and pretending to zip them shut and throw away the key. And then she’d told the press she had two studio apartments over her garage, which had helped a great deal with the suspicious nature of the living arrangements. Mrs. Hudson was the only other person John had ever seen Sherlock demonstrably affectionate with, and John completely understood why.
“That was nice of her,” said John, settling into what had become his chair. “I’ll have to thank her. Are you excited?”
“About?”
“The All-Star Game.”
“Not particularly.”
John regarded Sherlock’s back. They had been cohabitating for several months now, and for the most part John had grown used to Sherlock’s quirks, but there were times when John still found Sherlock touchy and difficult to read. Like now.
John sighed, concluding, “I bet you don’t see the point.”
“I see the point,” said Sherlock, stiffly, after a moment. “It’s an honor to be selected.”
“You’re saying that for my benefit.”
“You’re delighted. You should be. It’s a good thing, John.”
“A good thing for small people with small brains like me,” remarked John, without rancor, and sipped his tea. “You’ve gone before.”
“Yes,” answered Sherlock, briefly.
“You’ve never started before. Surely you’re pleased about that. You’re having the season of your career so far.”
“You promised me a perfect game.”
“Give me time. Baseball’s a marathon.” John watched Sherlock play his violin, the sun making a halo out of his riotous curls. John loved to watch Sherlock play the violin. Sherlock always moved with grace, but John couldn’t let himself enjoy it on the baseball diamond anymore. There were too many sharp eyes on him, watching his every move. There were already too many photos for John’s liking, photos of the two of them in which John was sure his heart was in his eyes, in which he thought everyone would look at the way he was looking at Sherlock and know. So, at work, John refused to let himself think too hard about what a beautiful pitcher Sherlock was. Which meant he appreciated the violin-playing a great deal. It was always private, and always gave John the opportunity to sit and admire Sherlock, the lean, gorgeous, elegant lines of him as he coaxed beautiful music from the instrument. Usually, Sherlock playing the violin led to sex. John actually glanced at his watch to check the time.
Sherlock hit a sour note, which made John wince and look up at him in surprise. Sherlock never made a mistake playing the violin. Sherlock himself seemed irritated by it. He screeched the bow along the strings and then turned from the window and stalked across the room to place the violin gently on his chair. No matter how upset he was, John had never seen Sherlock mistreat the violin.
“You okay?” John asked him.
“I’m fine,” Sherlock said, and disappeared into their bedroom and slammed the door.
John lifted his eyebrows. “Okay,” he said to his cup of tea, and looked through the rest of the newspaper. Sherlock in a mood was best left to get himself out of it. John wondered idly if Mrs. Hudson would stop by with some freshly baked cookies. That would make up for Sherlock’s mood.
John’s phone buzzed with a text. John expected it to be Sherlock, texting to tell him to come into the bedroom and fetch his slippers for him or something. It was Clara. John had never really made the fight up with Harry, and nothing emphasized that more than getting a text from Clara instead of her. Congrats on the ASG! read the text. And then a smiley face. John looked at the text. He thought it was trying too hard to be normal and cheerful. John had been ignoring the Harry situation, half because he didn’t know what to do about it and half because he had just wanted to be enjoying this honeymoon period with Sherlock. He had never had a relationship that had made him so incredibly happy all the time. Just looking at Sherlock and thinking how, amazingly, he was his, filled his chest with joyful buoyancy, and he had been selfish enough to want to relish it. John stared at the text for a long time before slowly typing back a simple Thanks. God, he was a coward. He kind of wanted to ask Sherlock how he had kicked his drug addiction, but they never talked about the drugs. John thought it was understandable that it wasn’t one of Sherlock’s favorite topics of conversation, the same way John appreciated that Sherlock didn’t ever want to talk about John’s psychosomatic leg injury, which now bothered him so seldomly that he sometimes forgot he had ever had it.
The thought of Sherlock’s past, though, brought up a foggy memory of stalking his Wikipedia entry when they’d first met. The All-Star Game brawl with Moran.
John got up and walked into their bedroom. Sherlock was laying on his back in the middle of the bed, staring up at the ceiling, his fingers steepled together in his thinking pose.
“You’ve received a text from Clara,” said Sherlock.
John ignored this. “You got in a brawl with Moran at the last All-Star Game.”
“She sent you platitudes, so now you’re worried about Harry,” continued Sherlock.
John looked at him in the bed. He was whippet thin, and there was strength there, yes, surprising steel, but John could think of no one he knew less likely to start a brawl. “A brawl? Seriously?”
“You should stop worrying about Harry. You’re excited about the All-Star Game, think about that instead. Leave Harry until after the season; it won’t make a difference.”
“We’re not talking about Harry, Sherlock,” John said, firmly.
Sherlock sighed up at the ceiling. “Do you think I can’t hold my own in a fistfight, John?”
John snorted. “I think you probably know some ridiculously obscure form of karate.”
Sherlock flickered a smile at the ceiling.
“Is that why you’re not excited about the All-Star Game? Because Moran will be there again?”
Sherlock looked up at the ceiling for a long moment, then he shifted his gaze to John, ocean-blue-green-gray and just as unfathomable, just as unerring and undeniable. “Don’t worry about Moran,” he said. “Don’t worry about me. Don’t worry about Harry. Don’t worry about anything. You’ll start the All-Star Game and you’ll have a fantastic time. I’ll start with you. You’ll have fun. It’ll be poetry for you. It’ll be a symphony.”
There was something he was missing, thought John. Something about Moran. But he was also aware Sherlock was offering him this to be nice to John. Sherlock couldn’t have cared less about the pomp and circumstance of the All-Star Game selection, but he knew it meant something to John, and he wanted John to enjoy it, and John didn’t want to belittle the gift being offered. After the All-Star Game, thought John, they’d talk about Moran. Until then, he’d just keep Moran away from Sherlock Holmes. Easily done.
***
John’s birthday.
Sherlock stared at the date on the top of the newspaper he’d retrieved that morning from where it had been left at their hotel room door. He’d known, of course, that it was John’s birthday, he hadn’t forgotten, he just didn’t know what he was supposed to be doing for John’s birthday. He didn’t know what John would expect. Sherlock tried to think of everything he knew about American birthday traditions. A cake ought to be involved, and candles, and a gift of some sort, but Sherlock had no gift to give John. He’d considered it, but he had no idea what that gift might be, what the social expectations were.
Sherlock took the newspaper back into their bedroom, where John was sprawled on his stomach and snoring lightly, and crawled onto the bed with it and waited for John to wake up, which he did with drowsy snuffling, instinctively nosing his way closer to Sherlock, curling toward his warmth.
“You awake?” he mumbled, finally, into Sherlock’s T-shirt.
“Yes,” Sherlock affirmed.
“Mmmm, good,” said John, and pressed a wet kiss through Sherlock’s T-shirt.
“Were you not going to do that if I wasn’t awake?” asked Sherlock, amused.
“Oh, no, I was doing it either way,” John responded, nosing Sherlock’s T-shirt out of the way to press an open-mouthed kiss just to the left of his belly button.
Sherlock looked down at his sleep-tousled gold-brown head moving over him and said, “You are going in quite the wrong direction.”
“Uh-uh,” John denied, around his tongue, lavishing attention on the trail of hair leading downward. “This is definitely the right way.”
“I would agree with you on almost every other morning, but today is your birthday and I really do think we should have this situation the other way around.”
John froze and then lifted his head up, managing to look comically startled whilst sprawled between Sherlock’s legs. “How did you know that?”
“How did I know it’s your birthday?” Sherlock couldn’t believe John was asking him that.
“I’ve never told you.”
“It’s on your Wikipedia, John.”
“Oh, bloody hell, it is,” John realized. “Dammit. I didn’t want you to know.”
“What?” Sherlock blinked. “Why not?”
“I don’t want a big fuss made over it.”
“Oh, darn,” said Sherlock. “Now I have to cancel the huge surprise party I was hosting after the game tonight.”
“You’re joking, right?”
“Please, John, of course I’m joking.” Sherlock rolled his eyes and squirmed and wriggled and coaxed until he got John farther up his body, sprawled over his chest, catching his weight as best as he could. “You should know that I am never going to throw you a surprise party.”
“Thank God,” said John, and kissed him.
Sherlock let himself be distracted for only a few moments—maybe closer to a minute—before easing John out of the kiss and saying, “Why?”
“Why what?”
“You would never have thought that I’d make a big fuss over this. Why didn’t you want me to know?”
“Because you are so young that you still think birthdays in this business ought to be celebrated, and I didn’t really want to be reminded of that,” said John, wryly.
Sherlock considered this. He thought he could tell John that he wasn’t old, but John would dismiss this as further evidence of their age difference. He thought he could try to wave away the age difference, but that would provoke a conversation about the age difference that Sherlock thought wouldn’t be productive, so he said instead, “Well, I, for one, think we should celebrate the few birthdays we have left where you’re virile and strong.”
“You are a bastard,” John told him, but he leaned down and kissed him anyway.
***
John sent All-Star Game tickets to his parents and to Harry and Clara and the kids. He couldn’t not. It was his last All-Star Game, and he was starting. He had to include his family, even if he was feuding with Harry and had been less than forthcoming with his parents about Sherlock.
Sherlock was curious about that fact, but he didn’t seem to harbor ill will about being a secret.
“Why wouldn’t you come out to your parents?” he had asked. “Surely the fact that you have a homosexual sister would make the conversation easier.”
“No. I don’t know. Somehow it feels different for me. There are all these expectations on the son. The baseball-playing son.”
Sherlock shrugged, as if indifferent to the entire situation, which miffed John enough to say, “Why haven’t you come out to your parents?”
“I didn’t know I was gay,” pointed out Sherlock, calmly, and then, thoughtfully, after a second, “I didn’t know I was anything.”
John shook his head a bit.
“You always shake your head when I say that,” remarked Sherlock, matter-of-factly. “Like I’m lying about it.”
“I don’t think you’re lying. I just can’t believe my tremendous luck that nobody prior to me thought to thoroughly seduce you.”
Sherlock lifted his eyebrows in what looked like genuine amusement. “John, people have been thoroughly seducing me almost constantly for a decade now.”
“Ah,” said John, dryly, thinking that the Sherlockian ego was well and truly intact.
“You’re just the only one I ever wanted to actually accomplish it,” Sherlock continued, casually, the way he always said things like that, as if they were nothing. Which made John drag him to bed and thoroughly seduce him.
But he knew that he surprised Sherlock, on the Sunday night before the All-Star Game, by knocking on the door to his suite. Separate suite, thought John. They still always had separate suites. They never used both suites anymore, but the presence of John’s family in the same hotel had led him to go to his own suite, and then he had walked around it finding it cavernous and empty and lonely and now he found himself knocking on Sherlock’s door.
Sherlock answered, dressed as impeccably as he always was, in the plum shirt today. He took in John’s suit.
“Don’t criticize the tailoring,” John told him, and watched him swallow whatever he’d been about to say. John pushed his way into the suite. Sherlock’s jacket was folded over the back of the couch, and he’d already managed to colonize much of the floor of the living area with breakdowns of American League batters. “Taking this whole thing seriously, aren’t you?”
“Good practice for the World Series,” Sherlock pointed out.
John stuck his hands in his pockets and forced himself to look at Sherlock. “I think you should come to dinner with us.”
Sherlock watched him closely, barely a flicker of reaction in his eyes. “All right,” he agreed, mildly.
John frowned. “That’s it? ‘All right’? No…surprise? No ‘Are you sure about this, John?’”
Sherlock was already pulling his jacket on. “You’re not sure about it. This isn’t how you behave when you’re sure about things. And you’re almost always sure about things. You’re extremely decisive. I’ve never seen you dither so long about something as you have about this.”
“I haven’t been dithering.”
Sherlock ignored him. “But you want me. Isn’t that what you told me you’d decided? You wouldn’t let me preemptively break up with you. You want me and you want this and you’re stubborn about the things you want, so I knew eventually you’d stop dithering and you’d come to the conclusion that you have to get this over with sooner or later. So no, I’m not surprised. Shall we go?”
Sherlock was walking to the door. John had expected to have a little more time to get used to what felt like his sudden decision on his part. “Wait,” he protested. “Can we just—?”
“No,” Sherlock snapped, abruptly, and turned back to him. “We can’t. I detest indecision, you know. I hate checked swings. If you’re going to strike out, bloody commit to it.”
John blinked, then rose to meet Sherlock’s anger. “You’re a pitcher, of course you think that way. Nobody expects you to get any hits.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t try.”
“Are you seriously going to have an argument with me about this right before dinner with my parents?”
“No. I wasn’t going to have an argument with you about anything. I was merely going to go to dinner. But then you went and second-guessed everything, again, and—”
“This is not an easy decision, Sherlock. This is not something you just…do on the spur of the moment. And I’ve done it on the spur of the moment here—”
“The spur of what moment? We’ve been shagging for three months and five days. Exactly what about this is ‘spur of the moment’ by any definition of that phrase? It’s not like I suddenly snuck up on you on the airplane or something. You have known about me for literally months. This shouldn’t be ‘spur of the moment,’ all this time later. You should have made this decision ages ago. I can’t believe you haven’t. I hate that you haven’t.”
“It’s my decision,” John pointed out, hotly. “There’s no requirement that I act on a timeline—”
“It isn’t a question of timing, John,” Sherlock retorted. “It’s the fact that you’re behaving this way about it. I don’t care that we’re a secret to the rest of baseball, I genuinely don’t. That makes perfect sense to me, it’s none of their business. But you’re close to your parents. Closer than I am to mine, at least. You actually talk to them on a regular basis. And you haven’t mentioned me to them. Not even obliquely. You have deliberately not mentioned me. You have omitted me.”
John narrowed his eyes. “Do you eavesdrop on my conversations?”
“Of course I do, John, don’t be an imbecile,” Sherlock answered, impatiently. “But that isn’t the point.”
“If I told them about you, Sherlock, they would know, immediately, how I feel about you. Do you understand me? It would be obvious. It is obvious. I can’t talk about you objectively. People bring you up and I grin like a complete fool. Do you even watch my press conferences? It’s ridiculous. I look like a blushing schoolboy on the topic of you, and the press might be too stupid to draw conclusions from that, but my parents wouldn’t be.”
“If that’s true, then your parents know already. And who cares?” Sherlock sliced in, sharply. “Why should you care? So your parents would know. Is it because they would know you were gay? Or is it because they would know it was me?”
John stared at him. The silence in the hotel room was ringing following Sherlock’s shout. Sherlock suddenly fidgeted, looking uncomfortable, as if he’d just realized how much he’d given away there, that he hadn’t intended to give away so much. He moved away from the door, over to the window of the suite, presenting John with his back. John turned to watch him. “Sherlock,” he said. “It’s not about you.”
“Isn’t it?” Sherlock leaned against the window, talking to the city outside.
“No,” John insisted. “It’s not.”
Sherlock sighed heavily.
“Hey.” John, his voice sharp, stalked into the living area, trying to force Sherlock’s still, unmoving form to look at him. “Don’t pretend you know more about me. Not on this.”
“World’s foremost John Watson authority,” Sherlock reminded him, dully. “I do know more about you. I always know more about you. You have skewed self-perception. And I’ve been making deductions. You tell them everything that brings you joy. Everything. Normally that’s about baseball, because it used to be that baseball was your great source of happiness. But you tell them everything, you exult, you should hear the detail you go into on a particularly good at-bat, a particularly well-called game. Me, you never mention. Me, you dismiss, brush aside when asked. And I thought, Would you do that if you had met someone normal? If it wasn’t me? If it was someone who…was normal?”
Idiot, idiot, idiot, John told himself and squeezed his eyes shut and closed his hands into fists and hated himself. Because he knew that someone at some point had told Sherlock that there was something wrong with who he was, and John had been so determined to never do that to him, and he had managed to get Mycroft entirely out of their lives and Sherlock relaxed and open with him and now he had ruined everything by being a coward with his parents.
He opened his eyes. Sherlock was still leaning against the window, still looking down at the city below. “If I had met someone normal,” John said, his throat aching with regret, “I would never have told my parents about him, because there would have been nothing to tell. It had to be you, Sherlock. It was only ever going to be you.”
“Your parents are knocking on your hotel room door,” Sherlock replied.
John heard it then, a dull knocking from down the hallway. “It isn’t because of you.”
“You said,” Sherlock responded, mildly.
John hated the mildness. Sherlock had shut down, wrapped himself in intellect, the way he did when he was hurt. John recognized the tactic and hated that he had inspired it. He took a few steps closer to Sherlock, carefully. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I made you think, or feel—I’m sorry. Come to dinner.”
“Definitely not.”
“Sherlock—”
“You’re feeling guilty now. I didn’t mean to do that. I meant to give you time. I meant to see if you would— I didn’t mean to— I have batting statistics to study.”
Sherlock never cut himself off, never stumbled over his words. John felt powerless and terrible. “Come to dinner,” he said again, helplessly.
Sherlock shifted just slightly, just enough to meet his eyes. His were flat and gray. “No,” he said, firmly.
John thought pushing the issue might make things worse. He chewed on his bottom lip nervously and tried to think how he was going to fix it. “It isn’t about you, Sherlock. I mean, it wasn’t—I didn’t—I’m so sorry.”
“I heard you the first, second, and third times you apologized. You should really go to dinner, John.”
John hesitated. He didn’t want to leave things like this. He wanted to brush a quick kiss over Sherlock’s lips, but he was terrified Sherlock would flinch or draw backward and he couldn’t deal with that rejection. Maybe he should just go to dinner, he thought. Maybe he would go to dinner, and they would both settle down over the course of the evening’s separation, and then when he got back from dinner Sherlock would listen to his apologies and actually believe them and it was all going to be fine.
Distantly, down the hall, his parents had now started calling for him through the door. Any minute now they were going to decide he had died and call hotel security.
“Okay,” he said, because he didn’t have time to think about it anymore. “Please make sure you order yourself something to eat.”
Sherlock didn’t even bother to lie about it. He just rolled his eyes. John thought the odds Sherlock would eat that night were slim to none. He’d have to remember to bring him something to eat when he got back. A peace offering was definitely called for, anyway.
Next Chapter
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Date: 2013-06-22 03:28 am (UTC)=/ John got to up his game and quit hiding. It's hurting Sherlock and Sherlock already got his own insecurities to handle.
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Date: 2013-06-22 03:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-22 04:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-22 08:16 am (UTC)I'm afraid this won't end well. I get why John has to leave but I have a feeling things will spiral out of control in his absence.
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Date: 2013-06-23 12:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-23 12:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-22 05:57 am (UTC)So good.
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Date: 2013-06-23 12:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-22 02:43 pm (UTC)I have a suspicion that Sherlock won't be pacified with dinner and another apology.
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Date: 2013-06-23 12:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-22 04:26 pm (UTC)(But then, I get John's hesitancy. Funny, isn't it...there are always fics where John has the sexual identity crisis, or the concern about coming out - but Sherlock doesn't. At least, not in the fics I've seen. I wonder, is that a general preconception within fandom that having such a crisis is somehow less logical, and thus something Sherlock wouldn't do? This tangent is probably not making a lick of sense; never mind me, I'm just being thinky or something.)
But a fight the night before an All-Star Game does not sound like it's going to feed into John's sports superstitions very well. And if Sherlock is hurt over John's denial, is he still going to show up tomorrow morning with tea?
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Date: 2013-06-23 12:39 am (UTC)And I like that tangent, because it's true: John is always the one with the identity crisis. I think that it's written that way because it really does make sense. Once Sherlock decides to accept the emotional fact that he's in love, Sherlock is done pretending. Sherlock doesn't care what people think, so he doesn't care what people think about *him.* He doesn't care if people know or not. John is the one who cares about reputation and things of that nature.
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Date: 2013-06-24 09:23 pm (UTC)Not to mention the 307 seconds of spectacular sex! :D
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Date: 2013-06-25 12:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-22 04:49 pm (UTC)This is not going to be good for either of them.
I'm on side with Sherlock here, I think it's time for John to man up to his family. Harry and Clara already know. I don't think it's going to go as badly as John seems to think.
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Date: 2013-06-23 12:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-22 07:53 pm (UTC)And this one seems to be deteriorating, too, now.
It's horrible seeing them caught up in misunderstandings; it's a rather big occasion - the ASG coming up, birthday already here and the parents to see ... but now it's all been spoiled.
It's quite true, 'the course of true love never did run smooth', but it's truly not nice seeing them this way.
And then there's the threat of Moran hanging over them, too!
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Date: 2013-06-23 12:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-22 09:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-23 12:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-22 11:48 pm (UTC)Sherlock has a really good point here. I just want to give him a big hug! Hopefully, John can make it up to him.
I am intrigued by the Moran issue. I can't imagine Sherlock in a brawl (though I'd like to see it!).
Thanks for your amazing stories and sharing your talent with us.
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Date: 2013-06-23 12:55 am (UTC)Sherlock does have a point, and he's so hurt, poor thing.
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Date: 2013-06-24 09:20 pm (UTC)Aha! We get closer to canon! Is the address 221B Hamburger-Bun-Maker Street? (Well, it's America.)
John thought that Mrs. Hudson’s fussing over him was unnecessary to Sherlock’s ego and also thought that Mrs. Hudson’s fussing over him was exactly what Sherlock needed.
So true.
John was convinced it was only a matter of time before she walked in on something at least mildly inappropriate.
Oh well. As long as we're here to see that too... :D
“Yes,” answered Sherlock, briefly.
Ahem. I don't like this briefly. (I'm not criticise your writing, I mean it sounds there's something ominous going on!)
Sherlock hit a sour note, which made John wince and look up at him in surprise. Sherlock never made a mistake playing the violin.
Damn. It bodes ill for sex.
he had been selfish enough to want to relish it.
This is so John. Thinking he's selfish because he wants to enjoy his new happiness.
John’s psychosomatic leg injury, which now bothered him so seldomly that he sometimes forgot he had ever had it.
I'm afraid it will bother him a lot very soon.
“Don’t worry about Moran,” he said. “Don’t worry about me. Don’t worry about Harry. Don’t worry about anything. You’ll start the All-Star Game and you’ll have a fantastic time. I’ll start with you. You’ll have fun. It’ll be poetry for you. It’ll be a symphony.”
That's lovely from Sherlock, who wants John to think only about him so often.
Until then, he’d just keep Moran away from Sherlock Holmes. Easily done.
*crosses her fingers but has doubts*
Sherlock took the newspaper back into their bedroom, where John was sprawled on his stomach and snoring lightly, and crawled onto the bed with it and waited for John to wake up, which he did with drowsy snuffling, instinctively nosing his way closer to Sherlock, curling toward his warmth.
I think John is going to get his gift after all, and a delightful one. ;-)
“I would agree with you on almost every other morning, but today is your birthday and I really do think we should have this situation the other way around.”
I'm not sure if that's what social expectations are but... :D
“You’re just the only one I ever wanted to actually accomplish it,” Sherlock continued, casually, the way he always said things like that, as if they were nothing. Which made John drag him to bed and thoroughly seduce him.
*seconds the idea*
We’ve been shagging for three months and five days.
Thrilling that he's been counting. ;-)
You should have made this decision ages ago. I can’t believe you haven’t. I hate that you haven’t.
He usually looks so indifferent but he's so insecure inside. And now he's going to think John is ashamed of him and... *starts to angst*
Or is it because they would know it was me?
Damn.
Maybe he would go to dinner, and they would both settle down over the course of the evening’s separation, and then when he got back from dinner Sherlock would listen to his apologies and actually believe them and it was all going to be fine.
Yes, yes, I'm sure it will be like this and everything will be well and they'll have amazing make-up sex, won't they? *smiles nervously at you*
Oh God there will be angst. Is Moran in the same hotel? Is Moriarty around? Sherlock is so overwhelmed and vulnerable at the moment, and so easy to hurt. And why did you mention his past drug addiction? *gasps* I hope he will stay in his room tonight. And now I'm going to bite my nails until the next chapter. I've just noticed this one is the 18/36 chapter. I don't know if I must rejoice (there are 18 chapters to come yet, yay!) or worry (all these possibilities of angst, dammit!). :D
P.S. Did you read 1000 Watsons walk into a bar... (http://archiveofourown.org/works/854115)? There are mentions of your Eton!John and your baseball!John! :-)
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Date: 2013-06-25 12:32 am (UTC)Always beware when Sherlock is brief...
John always feels guilty when he's thinking about himself.
Sherlock doesn't get what John loves about baseball but he understands that John does love it.
Hee! You only count when you care! ;-)
Even John can be fooled by Sherlock's apparent indifference sometimes.
Ha! I hadn't seen that fic! Thanks for pointing it out to me!
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Date: 2013-06-28 05:04 am (UTC)It's interesting to have John being the clueless one in the relationship for a change, although I do get his fears re his parents, at least a bit.
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Date: 2013-07-07 02:53 am (UTC)