The Bang and the Clatter (22/36)
Jul. 22nd, 2013 09:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
earlgreytea68Title - The Bang and the Clatter (22/36)
Author -![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
earlgreytea68
Rating - Teen
Characters - John, Sherlock
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 - Chapter Nineteen - Chapter Twenty - Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
John was in bed when Sherlock came in. He wasn’t sleeping. He’d given it a try, but it had been clear he wasn’t going to fall asleep without Sherlock in the bed, possibly wasn’t going to fall asleep even with Sherlock in the bed. So he was lying in bed watching a terrible movie he’d come across and ignoring ESPN, where his ridiculous besotted interview about Sherlock was on practically constant repeat and making him feel sick.
He heard the door to the suite open and close, and he muted the television and waited, hoping that Sherlock would come to bed. He at least came into the bedroom, although he leaned against the wall just inside the door and looked at John, making no move toward the actual bed. The light from the television flickered over him, and John could tell even by its feeble glow that Sherlock looked exhausted.
“The rumors will start tomorrow,” Sherlock said, eventually. “Probably they’ve already started tonight. There isn’t really anything I can do about that.”
John turned off the television. He looked at Sherlock: exhausted, worried, his. “Come to bed,” he said.
There was a pause before Sherlock crawled onto the bed next to him.
“At least take your shoes off,” said John, “if you’re not going to get undressed.”
“You know what I’m saying to you, right?”
John sighed and scrubbed his hands over his face. “Yes. I know what you’re saying. Honestly, we were lucky the rumors stayed quiet for as long as they did. We’ve been…reckless.”
“And you’re a terrible actor, John. You’re terrible at it.”
“I know.” John sighed again, rolling to his side and drifting closer to Sherlock. “I had the best day,” he said, honestly, his throat hurting with the weight of the honesty, with how wonderful it had all been. “Until the moment you left. It was the best day. Really. I couldn’t… You left, and I was irritated with you for leaving, and I gave the interview because I was annoyed with you.”
“What did you think was going to annoy me about the interview?” Sherlock sounded honestly perplexed.
John laughed. Said so bluntly, it did sound idiotic. “I have no idea. I wasn’t being rational. The ‘tedious’ thing, I guess. I thought it might make you flinch, if I reminded you of that.”
“You destroyed the effect of that by continuing to talk.”
“I know I did. What can I say? I’m foolish when it comes to you.”
Sherlock hesitated. John sensed it through the darkness. He thought of the nights during spring training when Sherlock had crawled into his bed, he thought of laying next to him aching with want and unable to act on it.
“You said lovely things,” Sherlock said, finally, carefully, as if unsure of himself. “They were lovely, beautiful things.”
John moved, because now he could. He tucked himself against Sherlock’s chest and marveled as Sherlock adjusted subtly to fit him there. All those nights he’d lain awake, unable to sleep, because he had wanted this man, he had genuinely never seen it happening. John closed his eyes and cuddled closer to Sherlock and said, “I meant every single word.”
“I know,” Sherlock replied. A beat. “So did every viewer at home.”
John chuckled, because it was, on some level, ridiculous. “That bad?”
Sherlock shifted, tangling their legs together. “What do you want to do about this?”
“What is there to do about it?”
“We can try to quell the rumors.”
“How can we do that?”
“Well, I started it tonight, going out without you. You could date someone, I could date someone.”
John was silent for a very long moment. He went over everything in his head. He said, eventually, slowly, choosing his words, “I never wanted to be The Gay One. You know? I never wanted to be… I wanted people to say, ‘Oh, John Watson, he was a decent catcher, had a few good seasons, didn’t he? Was pretty good at fixing broken pitchers.’ I didn’t want people to say, ‘Oh, John Watson, he was the one who was gay.’ I wanted a legacy that was more than… I can’t help who I’m attracted to, I can’t help being gay, but I felt like I could control the career I was going to have, I could make it a non-issue, why shouldn’t it be? The way it would have been a non-issue if I wasn’t gay. I just wanted to be a baseball player. I actually like being a baseball player. I know you don’t understand, but I—”
“Shh.” Sherlock’s hand soothed its way up and down his arm. “I do understand. I understand you. I don’t care, you know I don’t care, but I understand that you do care, and that’s enough for me.”
“And before there was you, I thought I’d just pretend forever. I thought that I could. It didn’t seem likely to me, that anything like this would ever come along.”
Sherlock was silent, and John wished he would say something, because he wanted to know Sherlock’s reaction to that. Sherlock’s fingers skimmed over his arm, and finally Sherlock spoke. “Your mother said to tell you that you’re only hurting yourself, trying to pretend.”
John blinked up at the ceiling. “You talked to my mother about this?”
“I ran into her in the lobby. I apparently did not look my best. I really rather hate martinis, you know. She gave me a chocolate chip cookie.”
John tried to make sense of this stream-of-consciousness explanation, then gave up and made a noise of frustration, similar to Sherlock’s ugh noise. He must be picking up on that, he thought. “I just don’t know why it has to be so complicated.” He moved, dislodging Sherlock’s stroking hand, in order to prop himself up enough to be able to look down at him. “You’re you. Look at you. You’re…gorgeous. You’re amazing. You’re clever and you’re unforgettable. You’re the sexiest player in baseball, and you could have absolutely anyone, and do you know how much it kills me not to be able to say to everyone, ‘Back off, he’s mine, yes, that—’” John gestured vaguely in the air, taking in all of Sherlock—“‘that entire incomparable being has chosen me’? Do you know how much I long to say that?”
Sherlock’s eyes were picking up whatever light there was in the room, gazing up at him solemnly. “You could do that, John. You could do that tomorrow. You could do it now. Ring ESPN and tell them just that. Tell them to call me for verification and I’ll say, ‘Yes, absolutely, why has anyone in the history of time ever chosen anyone other than John Watson for a partner?’ Or not. Don’t say anything. We’ll come up with a plan we can live with to stop people talking. I genuinely don’t care, either way, I’ll do whatever you want, but I need for you to—” Sherlock cut himself off.
“What?” asked John. “Be honest with me. Don’t hold anything back about this. We’ll never get through this if we’re not honest about it.”
“I need for you to be happy, John,” Sherlock said, quickly. “I don’t care what it takes, I don’t care what you need for me to do to get you there, but I need for you to be happy. I can’t bear it if anything about this makes you unhappy, anything about me.”
John was a little bewildered by this. How could Sherlock, quick and perceptive as he was, have any doubt that nothing about him made John even slightly unhappy? “I’m very happy. Can’t you tell? Come on, I’m a terrible actor, so you say,” he teased, gently.
“I can tell. That’s the problem. You were so happy today. I could tell you were so happy. The happiest I’ve ever seen you.”
“That’s funny,” remarked John.
“What’s funny about it?”
“I thought the same thing about you today.” John leaned down, brushed a brief kiss over Sherlock’s mouth.
“And you’re not happy now,” Sherlock continued.
“Yes, I am.”
“Not as happy as you were. And that’s my fault.”
“How is any of this your fault? Even a little bit your fault?” Sherlock was very still underneath him, and John made connections he should have made much sooner. He drew back. “What does Moriarty have to do with this?” He saw Sherlock’s silhouette shake its head but he persisted. “What does Moriarty have to do with you?”
Sherlock shook his head again.
“Sherlock.” John drew back, sitting up. “What the hell happened at the All-Star Game last year?” John leaned over, turning on the light. “You want to make me happy? Here you go.” John lifted his palms toward Sherlock in a prompting, invitational gesture.
Sherlock made his ugh noise and put his arm over his eyes against the harshness of the lamp. John thought he might try to dodge and not respond, but instead he said, sounding miserable, “It doesn’t really have anything to do with last year’s All-Star Game. Last year’s All-Star Game was…well, he would say it was collateral damage.”
“Collateral to what?” asked John, patiently, because Sherlock was at least talking now, and that was a good sign.
Sherlock was silent for a moment. “You have to understand how boring I find baseball. Under normal circumstances…I understand how you feel about it, so you have to make yourself understand how I feel about it. And the truth is that I don’t care about it. I was so bored, after the first few games, after the novelty had worn off. I was selected for the All-Star Game that year, and I went because it was something to do.”
John remembered the game. He barely remembered Sherlock at it, though. Remembered the selection, which had made sense because Sherlock’s rookie season had been genius. Remembered vaguely that Sherlock hadn’t pitched that year, had been held in reserve in case the game went into extra innings.
“I never ended up playing,” Sherlock continued. “I sat in the bullpen the entire game, bored, so bored, but Moriarty was there, and he was bored, too, and we talked. I was showing off. I said that I had statistical analyses that could predict the outcomes of a vast majority of baseball games. I mean, there were margins for error, of course, nothing in baseball is quite that straightforward, I know that’s what you love about it. But I’ve always been able to hold the equations that matter in my head about this game. I’ve always been able to predict, with decent accuracy. So I told Moriarty this. Like I said, I was showing off, and he was…the only person to be interesting in a very long time. He told me to prove it. No one, John, has ever told me to prove something without my immediately doing whatever it would take to prove it. Do you understand?”
John understood enough to be able to draw conclusions. “You proved it.”
“Of course I did.”
“And Moriarty was betting on the games.”
“I didn’t know he was, at first. I suppose I should have. But it wasn’t like I was doing anything like that with the information. It wouldn’t even have occurred to me to… Why would I…? Anyway, yes, that’s what he was doing.”
“Sherlock, that can get him banned. Forever.”
Sherlock barked harsh laughter. “You think Moriarty got his hands dirty? You think Moriarty ever even came close to getting his hands dirty?”
John drew another conclusion. “Moran.”
“Exactly. You are scintillating this evening, John.”
“All right. Who cares? Moran, Moriarty, who cares? We can go to the Commissioner with this—”
Sherlock took his arm away from his eyes, looking at John for the first time. And John was surprised to see that Sherlock was angry. When he spoke, his words were harsh and quick and raw, like the breaths he was taking. “No, we can’t, John. The information came from me. I was young, and I was stupid, and it came from me. I call the Commissioner of Baseball, about Moran, about Moriarty, about any of it, and there’s no way they go down without dragging my career along with them. And there’s a lot I don’t care about when it comes to this ridiculous game, but I am bloody good at this. I’ve done fantastic things, and I deserve every single accolade, every single record, every single statistic, and I will not have them stripped from me. I will not.”
John regarded him. And understood. He’d feel the same way, if it was him. Hell, he was trying to protect his career by keeping his homosexuality a secret, and theoretically that would do nothing official to tarnish his career. He couldn’t imagine facing down a legitimate threat to everything he’d done. And Sherlock might not care about the storied history of the game he was playing, but Sherlock cared about his accomplishments and deserved to. John nodded, to show he understood, and Sherlock seemed to marginally relax.
“You stopped feeding the information to Moriarty,” John concluded.
“Of course I did.”
“He hates you.”
“I don’t have time to worry about what he thinks about me.”
“Yes, you do. That’s why you reacted the way you did when he showed up at the field today. You were so obviously concerned he’d do something to me, and it’s because of this, isn’t it? This is him, these rumors. I mean, they’ve been simmering, percolating, and I didn’t help things, but he’s going to give them the nudge they need to tip over the edge.”
Sherlock exhaled in the direction of the ceiling. “We had this little spark, you and I. I was watching it for you, making sure it stayed contained, because I knew you cared about it. All he had to do was blow on it, just a little bit. We’re going to have a wildfire soon.” Sherlock took a deep breath. “And he always said he’d burn the heart out of me.”
John was suddenly furious. He wished Moriarty was in front of him, because he would kill him for this. No wonder Sherlock had been an aloof, standoffish, reluctant baseball player, human being. Who wouldn’t be, with a first and only “friend” who had done all this? No wonder Sherlock had been so guarded about the size of his heart, so cautious about giving away any little piece of himself, any hint of how deeply he felt things. John thought of how long it had taken Sherlock to relax around him, of how easily Sherlock could still close himself off and up with alarming alacrity, and he hated Moriarty with the coolness of a fatal bullet.
“I don’t want it this way,” announced John.
Sherlock looked at him, looking a bit surprised at his obvious fury.
“I don’t want the fact of us to be some sodding pawn in some chess game Moriarty thinks he’s playing with you. That’s not fair. We are ours, we belong to us. How dare he—?”
“Do you think he cares?”
“We will fight it. We will make him look ridiculous. We will discredit everything he says. And then, when we’re through with that, we’ll go make out on the pitchers’ mound at the end of a game and we’ll tell the world ourselves, our way, the way we want to.”
“Is that what you had planned?” asked Sherlock. “A snog during a conference about the next pitch?”
“No,” John snapped. “Of course not. I am just saying that it should be ours to control, ours to tell the way we want to. We won’t hide forever. I never thought we would. But I thought I could have this one last season to my career, one last hurrah of being just John Watson, just to see what people would say about me at the end of it all. And if this was just something that happened, I would be fine with this, but I won’t have Moriarty take it away from me.”
“See,” groaned Sherlock, and covered his eyes with his arm again. “This is all my fault. If I hadn’t—”
John pulled Sherlock’s arm away from his eyes. “It is not your fault,” he said, firmly. “You were eighteen, you were a kid, fresh out of rehab, bored, lonely, and this is not your fault.”
Sherlock looked momentarily startled, and then scowled. “I wasn’t—”
“Oh, stop it. I’m the world’s foremost expert on you, remember? Not you.”
“You didn’t even know me then.”
“I don’t think there was any time in your life when I didn’t know you. I’ve known you forever; I was just waiting to meet you.”
Sherlock blinked up at him. “I want to tell you that doesn’t make sense, but I can’t.”
John smiled. Then he started laughing.
“What?” asked Sherlock.
“Nothing.” John shook his head, still laughing. “You just…delight me.”
Sherlock looked pleased. “Good, then.” And then troubled. “I wish I knew how.”
“You just do. Don’t overthink it.” John leaned down and settled himself back into the perfect-fit of Sherlock’s angles. Breathe, he thought. This is all yours, all this joy and happiness, and it’s going to stay all yours. No one is going to take it from you, least of all Moriarty.
“What do you want to do tomorrow?” Sherlock asked, eventually.
John didn’t want to think about it anymore. John wanted to fall asleep just like this, surrounded by Sherlock. He wanted to wake up the same way. He wanted to do it the rest of his life. He rubbed his cheek against Sherlock’s chest. “I want to wake up with your heartbeat in my ear.”
“That can be arranged.”
“And your hand sneaking its way into my pants.”
“That can definitely be arranged,” Sherlock agreed.
“I want to start an All-Star Game. I want to have the game of my bloody life. I want you to have the game of your life, too. Sod all the rumors for the day. For the night. We’ll go out afterward, somewhere loud and raucous. We’ll let people toast us. We’ll get roaringly drunk. You will make me keep my hands to myself in the cab, but you’ll give up as soon as we get back here, and I will rip your suit off of you as soon as you close the door to the suite. We’ll probably never make it to the bed.”
Sherlock appeared to be pretending to give this serious consideration. “Fine,” he said, eventually, with mock gravity. “That’s a plan that could work.”
John giggled and kissed Sherlock’s chest, through the expensive fabric of his shirt, trying to get at the heartbeat he could hear.
“What will we do the day after tomorrow?” Sherlock asked.
John settled back onto Sherlock’s chest and closed his eyes. “Find a woman for one of us to date,” he said.
Next Chapter
Author -
earlgreytea68Rating - Teen
Characters - John, Sherlock
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 - Chapter Nineteen - Chapter Twenty - Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
John was in bed when Sherlock came in. He wasn’t sleeping. He’d given it a try, but it had been clear he wasn’t going to fall asleep without Sherlock in the bed, possibly wasn’t going to fall asleep even with Sherlock in the bed. So he was lying in bed watching a terrible movie he’d come across and ignoring ESPN, where his ridiculous besotted interview about Sherlock was on practically constant repeat and making him feel sick.
He heard the door to the suite open and close, and he muted the television and waited, hoping that Sherlock would come to bed. He at least came into the bedroom, although he leaned against the wall just inside the door and looked at John, making no move toward the actual bed. The light from the television flickered over him, and John could tell even by its feeble glow that Sherlock looked exhausted.
“The rumors will start tomorrow,” Sherlock said, eventually. “Probably they’ve already started tonight. There isn’t really anything I can do about that.”
John turned off the television. He looked at Sherlock: exhausted, worried, his. “Come to bed,” he said.
There was a pause before Sherlock crawled onto the bed next to him.
“At least take your shoes off,” said John, “if you’re not going to get undressed.”
“You know what I’m saying to you, right?”
John sighed and scrubbed his hands over his face. “Yes. I know what you’re saying. Honestly, we were lucky the rumors stayed quiet for as long as they did. We’ve been…reckless.”
“And you’re a terrible actor, John. You’re terrible at it.”
“I know.” John sighed again, rolling to his side and drifting closer to Sherlock. “I had the best day,” he said, honestly, his throat hurting with the weight of the honesty, with how wonderful it had all been. “Until the moment you left. It was the best day. Really. I couldn’t… You left, and I was irritated with you for leaving, and I gave the interview because I was annoyed with you.”
“What did you think was going to annoy me about the interview?” Sherlock sounded honestly perplexed.
John laughed. Said so bluntly, it did sound idiotic. “I have no idea. I wasn’t being rational. The ‘tedious’ thing, I guess. I thought it might make you flinch, if I reminded you of that.”
“You destroyed the effect of that by continuing to talk.”
“I know I did. What can I say? I’m foolish when it comes to you.”
Sherlock hesitated. John sensed it through the darkness. He thought of the nights during spring training when Sherlock had crawled into his bed, he thought of laying next to him aching with want and unable to act on it.
“You said lovely things,” Sherlock said, finally, carefully, as if unsure of himself. “They were lovely, beautiful things.”
John moved, because now he could. He tucked himself against Sherlock’s chest and marveled as Sherlock adjusted subtly to fit him there. All those nights he’d lain awake, unable to sleep, because he had wanted this man, he had genuinely never seen it happening. John closed his eyes and cuddled closer to Sherlock and said, “I meant every single word.”
“I know,” Sherlock replied. A beat. “So did every viewer at home.”
John chuckled, because it was, on some level, ridiculous. “That bad?”
Sherlock shifted, tangling their legs together. “What do you want to do about this?”
“What is there to do about it?”
“We can try to quell the rumors.”
“How can we do that?”
“Well, I started it tonight, going out without you. You could date someone, I could date someone.”
John was silent for a very long moment. He went over everything in his head. He said, eventually, slowly, choosing his words, “I never wanted to be The Gay One. You know? I never wanted to be… I wanted people to say, ‘Oh, John Watson, he was a decent catcher, had a few good seasons, didn’t he? Was pretty good at fixing broken pitchers.’ I didn’t want people to say, ‘Oh, John Watson, he was the one who was gay.’ I wanted a legacy that was more than… I can’t help who I’m attracted to, I can’t help being gay, but I felt like I could control the career I was going to have, I could make it a non-issue, why shouldn’t it be? The way it would have been a non-issue if I wasn’t gay. I just wanted to be a baseball player. I actually like being a baseball player. I know you don’t understand, but I—”
“Shh.” Sherlock’s hand soothed its way up and down his arm. “I do understand. I understand you. I don’t care, you know I don’t care, but I understand that you do care, and that’s enough for me.”
“And before there was you, I thought I’d just pretend forever. I thought that I could. It didn’t seem likely to me, that anything like this would ever come along.”
Sherlock was silent, and John wished he would say something, because he wanted to know Sherlock’s reaction to that. Sherlock’s fingers skimmed over his arm, and finally Sherlock spoke. “Your mother said to tell you that you’re only hurting yourself, trying to pretend.”
John blinked up at the ceiling. “You talked to my mother about this?”
“I ran into her in the lobby. I apparently did not look my best. I really rather hate martinis, you know. She gave me a chocolate chip cookie.”
John tried to make sense of this stream-of-consciousness explanation, then gave up and made a noise of frustration, similar to Sherlock’s ugh noise. He must be picking up on that, he thought. “I just don’t know why it has to be so complicated.” He moved, dislodging Sherlock’s stroking hand, in order to prop himself up enough to be able to look down at him. “You’re you. Look at you. You’re…gorgeous. You’re amazing. You’re clever and you’re unforgettable. You’re the sexiest player in baseball, and you could have absolutely anyone, and do you know how much it kills me not to be able to say to everyone, ‘Back off, he’s mine, yes, that—’” John gestured vaguely in the air, taking in all of Sherlock—“‘that entire incomparable being has chosen me’? Do you know how much I long to say that?”
Sherlock’s eyes were picking up whatever light there was in the room, gazing up at him solemnly. “You could do that, John. You could do that tomorrow. You could do it now. Ring ESPN and tell them just that. Tell them to call me for verification and I’ll say, ‘Yes, absolutely, why has anyone in the history of time ever chosen anyone other than John Watson for a partner?’ Or not. Don’t say anything. We’ll come up with a plan we can live with to stop people talking. I genuinely don’t care, either way, I’ll do whatever you want, but I need for you to—” Sherlock cut himself off.
“What?” asked John. “Be honest with me. Don’t hold anything back about this. We’ll never get through this if we’re not honest about it.”
“I need for you to be happy, John,” Sherlock said, quickly. “I don’t care what it takes, I don’t care what you need for me to do to get you there, but I need for you to be happy. I can’t bear it if anything about this makes you unhappy, anything about me.”
John was a little bewildered by this. How could Sherlock, quick and perceptive as he was, have any doubt that nothing about him made John even slightly unhappy? “I’m very happy. Can’t you tell? Come on, I’m a terrible actor, so you say,” he teased, gently.
“I can tell. That’s the problem. You were so happy today. I could tell you were so happy. The happiest I’ve ever seen you.”
“That’s funny,” remarked John.
“What’s funny about it?”
“I thought the same thing about you today.” John leaned down, brushed a brief kiss over Sherlock’s mouth.
“And you’re not happy now,” Sherlock continued.
“Yes, I am.”
“Not as happy as you were. And that’s my fault.”
“How is any of this your fault? Even a little bit your fault?” Sherlock was very still underneath him, and John made connections he should have made much sooner. He drew back. “What does Moriarty have to do with this?” He saw Sherlock’s silhouette shake its head but he persisted. “What does Moriarty have to do with you?”
Sherlock shook his head again.
“Sherlock.” John drew back, sitting up. “What the hell happened at the All-Star Game last year?” John leaned over, turning on the light. “You want to make me happy? Here you go.” John lifted his palms toward Sherlock in a prompting, invitational gesture.
Sherlock made his ugh noise and put his arm over his eyes against the harshness of the lamp. John thought he might try to dodge and not respond, but instead he said, sounding miserable, “It doesn’t really have anything to do with last year’s All-Star Game. Last year’s All-Star Game was…well, he would say it was collateral damage.”
“Collateral to what?” asked John, patiently, because Sherlock was at least talking now, and that was a good sign.
Sherlock was silent for a moment. “You have to understand how boring I find baseball. Under normal circumstances…I understand how you feel about it, so you have to make yourself understand how I feel about it. And the truth is that I don’t care about it. I was so bored, after the first few games, after the novelty had worn off. I was selected for the All-Star Game that year, and I went because it was something to do.”
John remembered the game. He barely remembered Sherlock at it, though. Remembered the selection, which had made sense because Sherlock’s rookie season had been genius. Remembered vaguely that Sherlock hadn’t pitched that year, had been held in reserve in case the game went into extra innings.
“I never ended up playing,” Sherlock continued. “I sat in the bullpen the entire game, bored, so bored, but Moriarty was there, and he was bored, too, and we talked. I was showing off. I said that I had statistical analyses that could predict the outcomes of a vast majority of baseball games. I mean, there were margins for error, of course, nothing in baseball is quite that straightforward, I know that’s what you love about it. But I’ve always been able to hold the equations that matter in my head about this game. I’ve always been able to predict, with decent accuracy. So I told Moriarty this. Like I said, I was showing off, and he was…the only person to be interesting in a very long time. He told me to prove it. No one, John, has ever told me to prove something without my immediately doing whatever it would take to prove it. Do you understand?”
John understood enough to be able to draw conclusions. “You proved it.”
“Of course I did.”
“And Moriarty was betting on the games.”
“I didn’t know he was, at first. I suppose I should have. But it wasn’t like I was doing anything like that with the information. It wouldn’t even have occurred to me to… Why would I…? Anyway, yes, that’s what he was doing.”
“Sherlock, that can get him banned. Forever.”
Sherlock barked harsh laughter. “You think Moriarty got his hands dirty? You think Moriarty ever even came close to getting his hands dirty?”
John drew another conclusion. “Moran.”
“Exactly. You are scintillating this evening, John.”
“All right. Who cares? Moran, Moriarty, who cares? We can go to the Commissioner with this—”
Sherlock took his arm away from his eyes, looking at John for the first time. And John was surprised to see that Sherlock was angry. When he spoke, his words were harsh and quick and raw, like the breaths he was taking. “No, we can’t, John. The information came from me. I was young, and I was stupid, and it came from me. I call the Commissioner of Baseball, about Moran, about Moriarty, about any of it, and there’s no way they go down without dragging my career along with them. And there’s a lot I don’t care about when it comes to this ridiculous game, but I am bloody good at this. I’ve done fantastic things, and I deserve every single accolade, every single record, every single statistic, and I will not have them stripped from me. I will not.”
John regarded him. And understood. He’d feel the same way, if it was him. Hell, he was trying to protect his career by keeping his homosexuality a secret, and theoretically that would do nothing official to tarnish his career. He couldn’t imagine facing down a legitimate threat to everything he’d done. And Sherlock might not care about the storied history of the game he was playing, but Sherlock cared about his accomplishments and deserved to. John nodded, to show he understood, and Sherlock seemed to marginally relax.
“You stopped feeding the information to Moriarty,” John concluded.
“Of course I did.”
“He hates you.”
“I don’t have time to worry about what he thinks about me.”
“Yes, you do. That’s why you reacted the way you did when he showed up at the field today. You were so obviously concerned he’d do something to me, and it’s because of this, isn’t it? This is him, these rumors. I mean, they’ve been simmering, percolating, and I didn’t help things, but he’s going to give them the nudge they need to tip over the edge.”
Sherlock exhaled in the direction of the ceiling. “We had this little spark, you and I. I was watching it for you, making sure it stayed contained, because I knew you cared about it. All he had to do was blow on it, just a little bit. We’re going to have a wildfire soon.” Sherlock took a deep breath. “And he always said he’d burn the heart out of me.”
John was suddenly furious. He wished Moriarty was in front of him, because he would kill him for this. No wonder Sherlock had been an aloof, standoffish, reluctant baseball player, human being. Who wouldn’t be, with a first and only “friend” who had done all this? No wonder Sherlock had been so guarded about the size of his heart, so cautious about giving away any little piece of himself, any hint of how deeply he felt things. John thought of how long it had taken Sherlock to relax around him, of how easily Sherlock could still close himself off and up with alarming alacrity, and he hated Moriarty with the coolness of a fatal bullet.
“I don’t want it this way,” announced John.
Sherlock looked at him, looking a bit surprised at his obvious fury.
“I don’t want the fact of us to be some sodding pawn in some chess game Moriarty thinks he’s playing with you. That’s not fair. We are ours, we belong to us. How dare he—?”
“Do you think he cares?”
“We will fight it. We will make him look ridiculous. We will discredit everything he says. And then, when we’re through with that, we’ll go make out on the pitchers’ mound at the end of a game and we’ll tell the world ourselves, our way, the way we want to.”
“Is that what you had planned?” asked Sherlock. “A snog during a conference about the next pitch?”
“No,” John snapped. “Of course not. I am just saying that it should be ours to control, ours to tell the way we want to. We won’t hide forever. I never thought we would. But I thought I could have this one last season to my career, one last hurrah of being just John Watson, just to see what people would say about me at the end of it all. And if this was just something that happened, I would be fine with this, but I won’t have Moriarty take it away from me.”
“See,” groaned Sherlock, and covered his eyes with his arm again. “This is all my fault. If I hadn’t—”
John pulled Sherlock’s arm away from his eyes. “It is not your fault,” he said, firmly. “You were eighteen, you were a kid, fresh out of rehab, bored, lonely, and this is not your fault.”
Sherlock looked momentarily startled, and then scowled. “I wasn’t—”
“Oh, stop it. I’m the world’s foremost expert on you, remember? Not you.”
“You didn’t even know me then.”
“I don’t think there was any time in your life when I didn’t know you. I’ve known you forever; I was just waiting to meet you.”
Sherlock blinked up at him. “I want to tell you that doesn’t make sense, but I can’t.”
John smiled. Then he started laughing.
“What?” asked Sherlock.
“Nothing.” John shook his head, still laughing. “You just…delight me.”
Sherlock looked pleased. “Good, then.” And then troubled. “I wish I knew how.”
“You just do. Don’t overthink it.” John leaned down and settled himself back into the perfect-fit of Sherlock’s angles. Breathe, he thought. This is all yours, all this joy and happiness, and it’s going to stay all yours. No one is going to take it from you, least of all Moriarty.
“What do you want to do tomorrow?” Sherlock asked, eventually.
John didn’t want to think about it anymore. John wanted to fall asleep just like this, surrounded by Sherlock. He wanted to wake up the same way. He wanted to do it the rest of his life. He rubbed his cheek against Sherlock’s chest. “I want to wake up with your heartbeat in my ear.”
“That can be arranged.”
“And your hand sneaking its way into my pants.”
“That can definitely be arranged,” Sherlock agreed.
“I want to start an All-Star Game. I want to have the game of my bloody life. I want you to have the game of your life, too. Sod all the rumors for the day. For the night. We’ll go out afterward, somewhere loud and raucous. We’ll let people toast us. We’ll get roaringly drunk. You will make me keep my hands to myself in the cab, but you’ll give up as soon as we get back here, and I will rip your suit off of you as soon as you close the door to the suite. We’ll probably never make it to the bed.”
Sherlock appeared to be pretending to give this serious consideration. “Fine,” he said, eventually, with mock gravity. “That’s a plan that could work.”
John giggled and kissed Sherlock’s chest, through the expensive fabric of his shirt, trying to get at the heartbeat he could hear.
“What will we do the day after tomorrow?” Sherlock asked.
John settled back onto Sherlock’s chest and closed his eyes. “Find a woman for one of us to date,” he said.
Next Chapter
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Date: 2013-07-23 02:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-07-23 03:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-03 03:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-03 03:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-07-23 04:08 am (UTC)btw, I saw this in the news this week and immediately thought of this fic. :D
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Date: 2013-08-12 03:03 am (UTC)AWESOME. Thanks for passing that link alone!
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Date: 2013-07-23 06:45 am (UTC)You've got me feeling so bad for them, yet so so happy. Argh!
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Date: 2013-08-12 03:11 am (UTC)Bad and happy is kind of how they feel!
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Date: 2013-07-23 09:05 am (UTC)At the end of this fic though all I can say is "NOOOO JOHN! That is a bad idea, BAD idea John!" I don't see how this is going to make our little Sherly happy in the long run.
Keep up the good work - I'll be here anxiously awaiting your updates! :)
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Date: 2013-08-12 03:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-07-23 11:38 am (UTC)John settled back onto Sherlock’s chest and closed his eyes. “Find a woman for one of us to date,” he said.
This will not end well.
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Date: 2013-08-12 03:18 am (UTC)And I'm glad you liked the Moriarty thing!
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Date: 2013-07-23 01:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-12 03:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-07-23 06:50 pm (UTC)I very much hope the first line of the next chapter says something like "Sherlock laughed his deep, joyous laugh at John's wicked suggestion" !!!
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Date: 2013-08-12 03:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-07-23 08:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-12 03:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-07-24 02:16 am (UTC)And I did not see that about Moriarty. It did not occur to me that he would be betting on the games. Of course he was. Of course he would.
I do hope that Sherlock takes the idea of one of them dating a woman in good part. I believe I see where Molly's going to come in!
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Date: 2013-08-12 03:38 am (UTC)And I'm glad the Moriarty thing worked for you!
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Date: 2013-07-24 11:12 am (UTC)*smacks John*
*smacks John again for good measure*
Which means, of course, that Sherlock is going to find a girl for one of them to date (Molly? Irene? Mary? Sarah?), and then they'll date her, and the guy dating her is going to be miserable, and the guy not dating her is going to be miserable, and the girl will be miserable, and everyone's just headed for a whole bunch of angsty misery, and Moriarty will be gloating in the corner. And probably still betting on games, the rat. I hope you have something planned where he gets caught and Sherlock isn't implicated in anything.
You know, you have got to plan these chapters of yours a little better. Can't you post extreme fluff from N&N when you post the extreme angst from B&C, or vice versa? Or at least not post two cliffhangery things at once? Or are you just this sadistic?
(No, wait, I saw all the red marks on my chapters, I know the answer to that question; never mind.)
Fine. I'm going to go code and post the first chapter of Mise, let's see if that makes you happy! Thhhhbbbttt:::::
*goes, returns to smack John a third time*
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Date: 2013-08-12 03:43 am (UTC)Hahahaha, those red marks weren't sadistic! A lot of them were *nice*! (I think?) And yes! Posting "Mise" *does* make me happy!
And yeah, it's weird how the chapter postings line up and seem to reflect each other.
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Date: 2013-07-24 11:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-12 03:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-07-25 09:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-13 03:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-09 12:16 am (UTC)John was in bed when Sherlock came in. He wasn’t sleeping.
That augurs well.
There isn’t really anything I can do about that.
I like the way he keeps on wanting to protect John. This helplessness must be awful for him.
We’ve been…reckless.
Yes, but as a illustrious writer said (http://earlgreytea68.livejournal.com/381548.html), “Being reckless.” Lestrade grinned at him. “It’s a hell of a lot of fun, I promise.” ;-)
“And you’re a terrible actor, John. You’re terrible at it.”
“You said lovely things,” Sherlock said, finally, carefully, as if unsure of himself. “They were lovely, beautiful things.”
And he's so unused to hear beautiful things about himself.
“Well, I started it tonight, going out without you. You could date someone, I could date someone.”
Uh-oh. I'm not sure it's not a Bit Not Good.
I never wanted to be The Gay One.
Poor John, who wants to be defined according to his skills in a society so prone to define people according to their sexual orientation.
We’ll never get through this if we’re not honest about it.
Ah, at last! Do talk to each other, boys!
What the hell happened at the All-Star Game last year?
Yes, WHAT? (I love it when John wants to know what I want to know!)
And Moriarty was betting on the games.
Bastard. (Not you, Moriarty.) Also, it's a clever transposition of Moriarty's evilness in the baseball world.
he hated Moriarty with the coolness of a fatal bullet.
I think it's time to remember John that a baseball thrown 90 mph has about the same energy as a 0.22 caliber bullet fired from a handgun. *feels vindictive*
“Is that what you had planned?” asked Sherlock. “A snog during a conference about the next pitch?”
Oh yes! Yes please! :D
“I don’t think there was any time in your life when I didn’t know you. I’ve known you forever; I was just waiting to meet you.”
Sherlock blinked up at him. “I want to tell you that doesn’t make sense, but I can’t.”
Aww. I can't either. It's beautiful.
“And your hand sneaking its way into my pants.”
307!!!
“That’s a plan that could work.”
I hope you'll tell us everything about that. Especially the post-game part. :D
“Find a woman for one of us to date,” he said.
Argh. The cliffhanger. Er... Molly? Irene? They'd provably be very happy to oblige. Not... Not Mrs Hudson, still? :D Also, for which of them???
Another gorgeous conversation in the dark, you write these scenes so well. I love the way John goes all BAMF to protect their love (even if I have doubts about his plan!). I'm glad to know what happened between Sherlock and Moriarty, now we and John know as much (or nearly as muchç) as Sherlock. I wonder what is going to happen next!
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Date: 2013-08-29 03:39 am (UTC)Sherlock doesn't like to be helpless. Sherlock doesn't *accept* being helpless very well at all.
Ha! I'd almost forgotten that "reckless" meant so much to that particular version of Mystrade.
lolololol - Excellent gif use!
Sherlock is unused to hearing people say nice things about him. Without qualification like that. He knows the verdict is that he's a good pitcher, but John's verdict is that he's a good *person,* and Sherlock can't wrap his mind around that.
John, as you say, has an excellent point. He thinks his sexuality should be irrelevant to how he plays baseball. And it should be.
Ha! I think John was thinking even *longer* than 307! ;-)
I write them laying in bed together in the dark A LOT. Hmm.