The Bang and the Clatter (28/36)
Aug. 19th, 2013 11:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
earlgreytea68Title - The Bang and the Clatter (28/36)
Author -![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
earlgreytea68
Rating - Teen
Characters - John, Sherlock, Lestrade, Dimmock
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 - Chapter Twenty-Three - Chapter Twenty-Four - Chapter Twenty-Five - Chapter Twenty-Six - Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Sherlock changed into his uniform for purposes of throwing and then settled deep into one of the clubhouse’s armchairs to wait for John to get there.
Lestrade arrived before John and lifted his eyebrows at him. “You’re not usually the first person in the clubhouse.”
“Yes, very observant of you, Lestrade,” drawled Sherlock, annoyed to have to talk to yet another person who wasn’t John.
“Where’s your better half?”
“Home. Or on his way here. One or the other.”
Lestrade had walked over to stand in front of the armchair, and now he hesitated and dithered and looked generally undecided about something.
Sherlock sighed and said, “Out with it.”
“The rumors are…” Lestrade stopped, as if trying to find a word.
“Persistent,” Sherlock supplied.
“To say the least.”
“Given that the rumors are true, that’s not surprising,” Sherlock pointed out.
“No one’s asked me yet, not outright.”
“They’re all professional sports writers, and what does our personal life have to do with any of it?”
“They’re going to ask eventually. Eventually it’s going to become so much of a distraction that they’ll feel justified. Eventually the size of the story, the first gay players in baseball, and they’re a pitcher and his catcher, it’s going to be too much for them to resist breaking anymore, Sherlock.”
“We aren’t the first gay players in baseball. Don’t be an idiot, Lestrade. We wouldn’t even be the first out gay players in baseball. There was Glenn Burke before us, but everyone just ignores him, and let’s not even get into how wrong that is. And Donovan’ll be the first one to ask about it. She’s always hated me. Did you know she’s shagging Anderson? Hypocrite,” muttered Sherlock.
“Sherlock,” said Lestrade, sounding exasperated.
“What is it that you want me to say?” demanded Sherlock.
“What I should say.”
“You should say the truth. Of course.”
There was a moment of silence. “And John’s okay with that?”
Sherlock frowned in annoyance. “Would I do anything John wasn’t okay with?”
“I don’t think so, but please remember that this caring you is still very new to me.”
Sherlock rolled his eyes.
Lestrade spoke again after another moment of pointless hesitation. “If the two of you are going to go public, then you need to go public here in the clubhouse first, to the team.”
“We’re not going to hold a press conference,” said Sherlock, impatiently.
“But you’re going to confirm everything, so you should think about talking to the team first.”
Sherlock said, “Ugh. The team will be miserable. They’ll be nice to John, of course, everyone loves John, and they’ll have no problem with John being gay. Their only problem will be the fact that he’s chosen me.”
“What does it matter what they think,” Lestrade inserted, calmly, “seeing as how John clearly has chosen you.”
Sherlock hated it when Lestrade made good points. So instead he ignored him.
Lestrade knew when he was being ignored. He sighed. “All right, well, talk to John about it, see what he wants to do, okay? In the meantime, how are you? How are you feeling?”
“I’m fine,” said Sherlock, waving his hand about, hoping Lestrade would take the hint and be swatted away like a fly.
He did, with another heavy sigh, like Sherlock was tremendously difficult to deal with. Well, who had asked him to come down and talk to him anyway?
Luckily, John was the next person into the clubhouse, although he led with questions along the same line as Lestrade had finished with. “You okay?”
“Fine,” said Sherlock, standing easily. “Took you long enough.”
“Yeah, well, it was a long travel day yesterday.” John was giving him an assessing look. “You don’t usually throw the day before you pitch.”
“I don’t have much of a routine, you know that. And I felt like throwing.” Plus, added Sherlock, silently, I needed to get you out of our bugged flat. As things went, the clubhouse wasn’t much better. He wanted to get John out to the bullpen, where they would be reliably alone at this time of day. So he said, “Hurry and change, I’ll wait for you in the bullpen.”
John eventually joined him in the bullpen, and Sherlock threw a few pitches, automatically, without really thinking. The point of this had not been pitching, and truthfully he wasn’t normally in favor of a throwing session the day before he pitched, so he didn’t want to overdo it in the name of the espionage Moriarty was forcing him to engage in.
So he carefully threw ten not-very-hard pitches then walked over to where John rose from his crouch, pushing his mask off and looking sardonic. Sherlock wasn’t fooling him, clearly.
“What the hell is this about, Sherlock?” he demanded as soon as Sherlock got close enough.
“There are going to be photos of me at a coffee shop with Irene Adler,” said Sherlock, without preamble.
John looked alarmed. “What? Why? Did the two of you go to a coffee shop last night?”
“No, but I’m going to meet her at one this afternoon.”
John’s face hardened now. “No,” he said. “I told you not to—”
“It has nothing to do with tricking anyone. I need to talk to her.”
“About what?”
Sherlock lifted a shoulder in a casual shrug. “Sherlock’s Sweeties things.”
“You’ve never taken any interest in anything Sherlock’s Sweeties related. This is about Moriarty.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Don’t tell me not to worry about it. I worry about you.”
“And I am absolutely fine. I am no longer a naïve eighteen-year-old, John. I’m not going to do anything to ruin anything.”
John didn’t look convinced.
Sherlock decided to rush headlong into the next point before John could say anything else. “The photos might help buy us a little bit of time, though, because someone’s finally going to come right out and ask the question sooner rather than later, and you should be thinking about what you want to do about the clubhouse situation.”
“There shouldn’t be any clubhouse situation. This is ridiculous. What should it matter that we’re sleeping with each other?”
“It shouldn’t. People are morons.” Sherlock almost leaned down to brush a casual kiss over John’s lips but caught himself. John looked at him in alarm, and Sherlock, feeling an answering alarm, took a step away from him. When had that become so automatic a thing for him to do that he nearly did it in public like that? Sherlock cleared his throat and took the baseball cap off his head and said, “Be thinking about how you want to handle it.”
John nodded and cleared his own throat. “Please be careful with Irene Adler.”
“She’s not going to pull a gun on me at a coffee shop.”
“We’re baseball players, Sherlock, not mobsters.”
“Or detectives.”
“Is that what you expect solving crimes is going to be like? Guns all over the place?”
“It’s a good thing that you’re such a good shot, isn’t it?” said Sherlock. “I’ll be back by the time of first pitch,” he promised, and left John leaning against the wall of the bullpen.
***
They weren’t quite fighting but they weren’t quite not fighting, either. Sherlock was refusing to divulge what his meeting with Irene had been about, and John didn’t know what was worse: the idea that Sherlock was lying to him and was moving forward with the plan to date Irene, or the idea that Sherlock was up to something major and wasn’t telling John what it was. Either way, John was not pleased, and he had let it be known he wasn’t pleased, and although they had not had any sort of loud row about it, they were not having the smoothest game of their partnership. Pitch calls had turned into wars of John’s signs and Sherlock’s frowning shake-offs, and it was clear from the very first inning that this was not going to be Sherlock’s perfect game. And John didn’t even try to make it any better. Usually he sat next to Sherlock in companionable silence when the team was batting, but he sat on the opposite end of the dugout, pointedly, and Sherlock put a towel over his head and pretended not to notice he wasn’t there because he was the world’s most stubborn human being.
Lestrade came up in the third inning, when they were losing by two, and began, haltingly, “Is he…? Are you…?”
“It’s all fine,” John told him, firmly. “He’s a bit off tonight, that’s all. He can’t be perfect every night.”
Lestrade stole a glance at the glowering presence of Sherlock. “Well. No.”
“There are theoretically batters on this team,” Sherlock said, loudly, clearly very aware of Lestrade’s whispered consultation with John, “who are theoretically capable of hitting.”
This caused massive amounts of grumbling from the rest of the team, and John sighed and said to Lestrade, “Please just drop everything, you’re making it worse. I’m handling it.”
“You’re not ‘handling’ me,” Sherlock told John during a conference on the mound in the fourth inning, when Sherlock was surrounded by loaded bases and in an even more terrible mood than he had been during the bottom of the third.
“No, I agree, I’m doing a very poor job of it at the moment, but that’s mostly because you’ve started keeping secrets.”
Sherlock looked frustrated and irritated. “I’m not keeping secrets, John—”
“I don’t want to hear your semantics justification for why you won’t tell me what’s going on with Irene. I also don’t want to use conferences on the mound for relationship stuff, okay? Get yourself a nice double play, you’ll be fine.” John turned on his heel and stalked away before Sherlock could say another word, because he didn’t want Sherlock to say another word.
He didn’t even bother to call the next pitch. Sherlock had gotten himself into the bases loaded mess, and John knew the fury he’d be subject to if John tried to take control here and tell him what pitch to throw, so he let Sherlock decide for himself. The pitch Sherlock threw actually wasn’t bad, designed to provoke a ground ball or a line drive, which was what they needed. It was just bad luck. The batter connected sharply, the crack of a well-hit ball echoing through the stadium, and it all happened so quickly, before any of them could hope to have any reaction time. The line drive went straight to Sherlock, hit him solidly on the side of his head, and he crumpled immediately to the ground.
John didn’t think. He couldn’t. He couldn’t think of the fact that there was a baseball game going on, that there were outs to be made and people running the bases. He ran to the pitcher’s mound, throwing his mask off, shaking his glove off his hand, and sliding to his knees next to Sherlock’s unmoving body. Sherlock was breathing, his chest rising and falling gently, and John thanked God for that in a brief, fervent prayer.
“Sherlock,” he said, and shook him. “Sherlock. Come on, love, open your eyes, hmm?” Sherlock’s eyelids flickered, and he frowned with the effort, but he did open his eyes. “There you go,” said John, encouragingly, although Sherlock didn’t look quite able to focus on him, blinking frantically.
“John?” said Sherlock, sounding dazed and not at all like himself.
“Yes. It’s me.” John held up two fingers. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
Sherlock frowned in concentration. “Three? No, four.”
Not promising, thought John, as Sherlock’s eyes fluttered closed again.
Dimmock and Lestrade and one of the trainers had now made it to the mound.
“Ask him what inning it is,” said Dimmock.
“I can’t do that,” John snapped, although he was honestly surprised by how calm he sounded, “because he’s not actually conscious right now.”
Sherlock did seem to be making an effort to be conscious again, his eyes opening and then closing again almost immediately. “I’m fine,” he slurred out.
“You’re definitely not fine,” John informed him.
“I’m taking John’s side on this one,” said Lestrade, as the trainer leaned over Sherlock and fiddled with him. Lestrade turned, gesturing for a stretcher. John realized the ambulance had driven out from the outfield and that the rest of the team was gathered in a loose circle in the infield, trying to figure out what was going on.
The paramedics ran over with the stretcher. Sherlock was out again as they hefted him onto it, although he seemed to rally a bit once he was on it, opening his eyes briefly and scrunching up his face in a frown immediately, and John wondered how much his head was hurting him to be provoking that reaction from him. John went to follow the paramedics as they jogged toward the ambulance, but Lestrade caught his arm and John looked at him impatiently.
“Where do you think you’re going?” asked Lestrade.
“I’m going with him,” said John. He thought that should be obvious.
“No, you’re not. John, we’re in the middle of a game, and it’s not your—”
“I am going,” John bit out, through gritted teeth, “with him, and if you try to keep me out of that ambulance I will punch you right here on this field, I swear to God.”
Lestrade looked at him for a moment, then apparently believed him, because he dropped John’s arm and said, “All right. Go,” and nodded toward the ambulance.
John took off like a shot, following into the back of the ambulance just before they closed the door.
“You’re coming with us?” asked one of the paramedics, shocked, because there was really no precedent for this.
“Yes,” John said, setting his jaw again in preparation for arguing, but the ambulance, anxious to get off the field, just jerked into motion.
Sherlock seemed to be more awake, although he was still blinking his eyes as if he couldn’t quite focus. But he said, “John?”
“Yes.” John pushed past a paramedic, who looked at him in annoyance, and settled by Sherlock’s head. “Right here.”
“Tell them no narcotics,” said Sherlock, scrunching up the features of his face into another wincing frown again.
One of the paramedics snorted. “You must have a massive headache, you’ve got to take something.”
But John caught the subtext of what Sherlock was saying, and thought of drugs in Sherlock’s past, of overdoses and addictions and withdrawals, and said to the paramedic, “Nothing strong.”
The paramedic shrugged. “Well, I guess it’s his head.”
“Is the game over?” Sherlock asked, muzzily.
John looked at him in alarm, since he’d just been pitching the fourth inning. “No, the game’s not over.”
“Then why aren’t you catching?”
“Because you don’t remember what inning we were just in and there’s no way I’m letting you out of my sight until you start making sense again.”
“Okay,” Sherlock agreed, sleepily, instead of protesting that he always made sense, and John’s chest actually clenched with fear over how out-of-character he was behaving.
“Try to keep him awake,” the other paramedic said to him, and leaned over to give Sherlock a mild shake. “Come on, Sherlock, stay with us.”
John nodded his understanding of what the paramedic was saying and said, “Sherlock, talk to me.”
“Mmmm,” mumbled Sherlock. “I’m fine, I’m awake.” He opened his eyes briefly, focused on John, and then closed them again. “You’re spinning, stay still.”
“I will do my best,” said John, and resisted all of the urges he was having, to brush his hand through Sherlock’s hair, to take Sherlock’s hand, to put his head down next to his.
“Is the game over?” Sherlock asked again.
“No,” said John, trying to be patient and not sound panicked. “Fourth inning, remember? It was in the fourth inning. But you got hit in the head by a line drive, so we’re taking you to the hospital.”
“I’m fine,” said Sherlock, eyes closed.
“Talk to me, Sherlock.” John tried to fish for something baseball-related for them to discuss, but he didn’t want to quiz Sherlock on the algorithm of a good curveball, and Sherlock didn’t have unmathematical things to talk about where baseball was concerned, nothing like a favorite stadium to pitch in or a pitching mentor or anything like that.
“About what?” asked Sherlock, barely enunciating the words, losing the ts on the ends.
The paramedics were no longer fussing. Apparently Sherlock’s vitals checked out and there was nothing to be done until the CT scan at the hospital. John had been in baseball long enough to know how concussions worked, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t terrifying to have Sherlock being so very not himself.
“Anything you want,” John told him, deciding that Sherlock could pick whatever topic he felt like and babble on about it until they got to the hospital.
“You are the world’s most delightful human being,” said Sherlock, and John’s eyes widened. He looked at the paramedics, who looked back at him with eyebrows raised.
“Pick another topic,” John said, desperately.
“But you’re my favorite topic,” Sherlock replied, stubbornly.
“That’s, um, nice, but—”
“Come to bed,” suggested Sherlock.
John looked at the paramedics. “He’s disoriented.”
“Not for sex, though, because my head is killing me,” continued Sherlock, slurring his words but not quite enough to make them incomprehensible.
The paramedics’ eyebrows lifted farther.
“Very, very disoriented,” said John. “Or making a clever joke. Or…” John sighed and rubbed his hand over his face and said, “Or you’re the first eyewitnesses to the biggest baseball story of the year. Congratulations.”
Next Chapter
Author -
earlgreytea68Rating - Teen
Characters - John, Sherlock, Lestrade, Dimmock
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 - Chapter Twenty-Three - Chapter Twenty-Four - Chapter Twenty-Five - Chapter Twenty-Six - Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Sherlock changed into his uniform for purposes of throwing and then settled deep into one of the clubhouse’s armchairs to wait for John to get there.
Lestrade arrived before John and lifted his eyebrows at him. “You’re not usually the first person in the clubhouse.”
“Yes, very observant of you, Lestrade,” drawled Sherlock, annoyed to have to talk to yet another person who wasn’t John.
“Where’s your better half?”
“Home. Or on his way here. One or the other.”
Lestrade had walked over to stand in front of the armchair, and now he hesitated and dithered and looked generally undecided about something.
Sherlock sighed and said, “Out with it.”
“The rumors are…” Lestrade stopped, as if trying to find a word.
“Persistent,” Sherlock supplied.
“To say the least.”
“Given that the rumors are true, that’s not surprising,” Sherlock pointed out.
“No one’s asked me yet, not outright.”
“They’re all professional sports writers, and what does our personal life have to do with any of it?”
“They’re going to ask eventually. Eventually it’s going to become so much of a distraction that they’ll feel justified. Eventually the size of the story, the first gay players in baseball, and they’re a pitcher and his catcher, it’s going to be too much for them to resist breaking anymore, Sherlock.”
“We aren’t the first gay players in baseball. Don’t be an idiot, Lestrade. We wouldn’t even be the first out gay players in baseball. There was Glenn Burke before us, but everyone just ignores him, and let’s not even get into how wrong that is. And Donovan’ll be the first one to ask about it. She’s always hated me. Did you know she’s shagging Anderson? Hypocrite,” muttered Sherlock.
“Sherlock,” said Lestrade, sounding exasperated.
“What is it that you want me to say?” demanded Sherlock.
“What I should say.”
“You should say the truth. Of course.”
There was a moment of silence. “And John’s okay with that?”
Sherlock frowned in annoyance. “Would I do anything John wasn’t okay with?”
“I don’t think so, but please remember that this caring you is still very new to me.”
Sherlock rolled his eyes.
Lestrade spoke again after another moment of pointless hesitation. “If the two of you are going to go public, then you need to go public here in the clubhouse first, to the team.”
“We’re not going to hold a press conference,” said Sherlock, impatiently.
“But you’re going to confirm everything, so you should think about talking to the team first.”
Sherlock said, “Ugh. The team will be miserable. They’ll be nice to John, of course, everyone loves John, and they’ll have no problem with John being gay. Their only problem will be the fact that he’s chosen me.”
“What does it matter what they think,” Lestrade inserted, calmly, “seeing as how John clearly has chosen you.”
Sherlock hated it when Lestrade made good points. So instead he ignored him.
Lestrade knew when he was being ignored. He sighed. “All right, well, talk to John about it, see what he wants to do, okay? In the meantime, how are you? How are you feeling?”
“I’m fine,” said Sherlock, waving his hand about, hoping Lestrade would take the hint and be swatted away like a fly.
He did, with another heavy sigh, like Sherlock was tremendously difficult to deal with. Well, who had asked him to come down and talk to him anyway?
Luckily, John was the next person into the clubhouse, although he led with questions along the same line as Lestrade had finished with. “You okay?”
“Fine,” said Sherlock, standing easily. “Took you long enough.”
“Yeah, well, it was a long travel day yesterday.” John was giving him an assessing look. “You don’t usually throw the day before you pitch.”
“I don’t have much of a routine, you know that. And I felt like throwing.” Plus, added Sherlock, silently, I needed to get you out of our bugged flat. As things went, the clubhouse wasn’t much better. He wanted to get John out to the bullpen, where they would be reliably alone at this time of day. So he said, “Hurry and change, I’ll wait for you in the bullpen.”
John eventually joined him in the bullpen, and Sherlock threw a few pitches, automatically, without really thinking. The point of this had not been pitching, and truthfully he wasn’t normally in favor of a throwing session the day before he pitched, so he didn’t want to overdo it in the name of the espionage Moriarty was forcing him to engage in.
So he carefully threw ten not-very-hard pitches then walked over to where John rose from his crouch, pushing his mask off and looking sardonic. Sherlock wasn’t fooling him, clearly.
“What the hell is this about, Sherlock?” he demanded as soon as Sherlock got close enough.
“There are going to be photos of me at a coffee shop with Irene Adler,” said Sherlock, without preamble.
John looked alarmed. “What? Why? Did the two of you go to a coffee shop last night?”
“No, but I’m going to meet her at one this afternoon.”
John’s face hardened now. “No,” he said. “I told you not to—”
“It has nothing to do with tricking anyone. I need to talk to her.”
“About what?”
Sherlock lifted a shoulder in a casual shrug. “Sherlock’s Sweeties things.”
“You’ve never taken any interest in anything Sherlock’s Sweeties related. This is about Moriarty.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Don’t tell me not to worry about it. I worry about you.”
“And I am absolutely fine. I am no longer a naïve eighteen-year-old, John. I’m not going to do anything to ruin anything.”
John didn’t look convinced.
Sherlock decided to rush headlong into the next point before John could say anything else. “The photos might help buy us a little bit of time, though, because someone’s finally going to come right out and ask the question sooner rather than later, and you should be thinking about what you want to do about the clubhouse situation.”
“There shouldn’t be any clubhouse situation. This is ridiculous. What should it matter that we’re sleeping with each other?”
“It shouldn’t. People are morons.” Sherlock almost leaned down to brush a casual kiss over John’s lips but caught himself. John looked at him in alarm, and Sherlock, feeling an answering alarm, took a step away from him. When had that become so automatic a thing for him to do that he nearly did it in public like that? Sherlock cleared his throat and took the baseball cap off his head and said, “Be thinking about how you want to handle it.”
John nodded and cleared his own throat. “Please be careful with Irene Adler.”
“She’s not going to pull a gun on me at a coffee shop.”
“We’re baseball players, Sherlock, not mobsters.”
“Or detectives.”
“Is that what you expect solving crimes is going to be like? Guns all over the place?”
“It’s a good thing that you’re such a good shot, isn’t it?” said Sherlock. “I’ll be back by the time of first pitch,” he promised, and left John leaning against the wall of the bullpen.
***
They weren’t quite fighting but they weren’t quite not fighting, either. Sherlock was refusing to divulge what his meeting with Irene had been about, and John didn’t know what was worse: the idea that Sherlock was lying to him and was moving forward with the plan to date Irene, or the idea that Sherlock was up to something major and wasn’t telling John what it was. Either way, John was not pleased, and he had let it be known he wasn’t pleased, and although they had not had any sort of loud row about it, they were not having the smoothest game of their partnership. Pitch calls had turned into wars of John’s signs and Sherlock’s frowning shake-offs, and it was clear from the very first inning that this was not going to be Sherlock’s perfect game. And John didn’t even try to make it any better. Usually he sat next to Sherlock in companionable silence when the team was batting, but he sat on the opposite end of the dugout, pointedly, and Sherlock put a towel over his head and pretended not to notice he wasn’t there because he was the world’s most stubborn human being.
Lestrade came up in the third inning, when they were losing by two, and began, haltingly, “Is he…? Are you…?”
“It’s all fine,” John told him, firmly. “He’s a bit off tonight, that’s all. He can’t be perfect every night.”
Lestrade stole a glance at the glowering presence of Sherlock. “Well. No.”
“There are theoretically batters on this team,” Sherlock said, loudly, clearly very aware of Lestrade’s whispered consultation with John, “who are theoretically capable of hitting.”
This caused massive amounts of grumbling from the rest of the team, and John sighed and said to Lestrade, “Please just drop everything, you’re making it worse. I’m handling it.”
“You’re not ‘handling’ me,” Sherlock told John during a conference on the mound in the fourth inning, when Sherlock was surrounded by loaded bases and in an even more terrible mood than he had been during the bottom of the third.
“No, I agree, I’m doing a very poor job of it at the moment, but that’s mostly because you’ve started keeping secrets.”
Sherlock looked frustrated and irritated. “I’m not keeping secrets, John—”
“I don’t want to hear your semantics justification for why you won’t tell me what’s going on with Irene. I also don’t want to use conferences on the mound for relationship stuff, okay? Get yourself a nice double play, you’ll be fine.” John turned on his heel and stalked away before Sherlock could say another word, because he didn’t want Sherlock to say another word.
He didn’t even bother to call the next pitch. Sherlock had gotten himself into the bases loaded mess, and John knew the fury he’d be subject to if John tried to take control here and tell him what pitch to throw, so he let Sherlock decide for himself. The pitch Sherlock threw actually wasn’t bad, designed to provoke a ground ball or a line drive, which was what they needed. It was just bad luck. The batter connected sharply, the crack of a well-hit ball echoing through the stadium, and it all happened so quickly, before any of them could hope to have any reaction time. The line drive went straight to Sherlock, hit him solidly on the side of his head, and he crumpled immediately to the ground.
John didn’t think. He couldn’t. He couldn’t think of the fact that there was a baseball game going on, that there were outs to be made and people running the bases. He ran to the pitcher’s mound, throwing his mask off, shaking his glove off his hand, and sliding to his knees next to Sherlock’s unmoving body. Sherlock was breathing, his chest rising and falling gently, and John thanked God for that in a brief, fervent prayer.
“Sherlock,” he said, and shook him. “Sherlock. Come on, love, open your eyes, hmm?” Sherlock’s eyelids flickered, and he frowned with the effort, but he did open his eyes. “There you go,” said John, encouragingly, although Sherlock didn’t look quite able to focus on him, blinking frantically.
“John?” said Sherlock, sounding dazed and not at all like himself.
“Yes. It’s me.” John held up two fingers. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
Sherlock frowned in concentration. “Three? No, four.”
Not promising, thought John, as Sherlock’s eyes fluttered closed again.
Dimmock and Lestrade and one of the trainers had now made it to the mound.
“Ask him what inning it is,” said Dimmock.
“I can’t do that,” John snapped, although he was honestly surprised by how calm he sounded, “because he’s not actually conscious right now.”
Sherlock did seem to be making an effort to be conscious again, his eyes opening and then closing again almost immediately. “I’m fine,” he slurred out.
“You’re definitely not fine,” John informed him.
“I’m taking John’s side on this one,” said Lestrade, as the trainer leaned over Sherlock and fiddled with him. Lestrade turned, gesturing for a stretcher. John realized the ambulance had driven out from the outfield and that the rest of the team was gathered in a loose circle in the infield, trying to figure out what was going on.
The paramedics ran over with the stretcher. Sherlock was out again as they hefted him onto it, although he seemed to rally a bit once he was on it, opening his eyes briefly and scrunching up his face in a frown immediately, and John wondered how much his head was hurting him to be provoking that reaction from him. John went to follow the paramedics as they jogged toward the ambulance, but Lestrade caught his arm and John looked at him impatiently.
“Where do you think you’re going?” asked Lestrade.
“I’m going with him,” said John. He thought that should be obvious.
“No, you’re not. John, we’re in the middle of a game, and it’s not your—”
“I am going,” John bit out, through gritted teeth, “with him, and if you try to keep me out of that ambulance I will punch you right here on this field, I swear to God.”
Lestrade looked at him for a moment, then apparently believed him, because he dropped John’s arm and said, “All right. Go,” and nodded toward the ambulance.
John took off like a shot, following into the back of the ambulance just before they closed the door.
“You’re coming with us?” asked one of the paramedics, shocked, because there was really no precedent for this.
“Yes,” John said, setting his jaw again in preparation for arguing, but the ambulance, anxious to get off the field, just jerked into motion.
Sherlock seemed to be more awake, although he was still blinking his eyes as if he couldn’t quite focus. But he said, “John?”
“Yes.” John pushed past a paramedic, who looked at him in annoyance, and settled by Sherlock’s head. “Right here.”
“Tell them no narcotics,” said Sherlock, scrunching up the features of his face into another wincing frown again.
One of the paramedics snorted. “You must have a massive headache, you’ve got to take something.”
But John caught the subtext of what Sherlock was saying, and thought of drugs in Sherlock’s past, of overdoses and addictions and withdrawals, and said to the paramedic, “Nothing strong.”
The paramedic shrugged. “Well, I guess it’s his head.”
“Is the game over?” Sherlock asked, muzzily.
John looked at him in alarm, since he’d just been pitching the fourth inning. “No, the game’s not over.”
“Then why aren’t you catching?”
“Because you don’t remember what inning we were just in and there’s no way I’m letting you out of my sight until you start making sense again.”
“Okay,” Sherlock agreed, sleepily, instead of protesting that he always made sense, and John’s chest actually clenched with fear over how out-of-character he was behaving.
“Try to keep him awake,” the other paramedic said to him, and leaned over to give Sherlock a mild shake. “Come on, Sherlock, stay with us.”
John nodded his understanding of what the paramedic was saying and said, “Sherlock, talk to me.”
“Mmmm,” mumbled Sherlock. “I’m fine, I’m awake.” He opened his eyes briefly, focused on John, and then closed them again. “You’re spinning, stay still.”
“I will do my best,” said John, and resisted all of the urges he was having, to brush his hand through Sherlock’s hair, to take Sherlock’s hand, to put his head down next to his.
“Is the game over?” Sherlock asked again.
“No,” said John, trying to be patient and not sound panicked. “Fourth inning, remember? It was in the fourth inning. But you got hit in the head by a line drive, so we’re taking you to the hospital.”
“I’m fine,” said Sherlock, eyes closed.
“Talk to me, Sherlock.” John tried to fish for something baseball-related for them to discuss, but he didn’t want to quiz Sherlock on the algorithm of a good curveball, and Sherlock didn’t have unmathematical things to talk about where baseball was concerned, nothing like a favorite stadium to pitch in or a pitching mentor or anything like that.
“About what?” asked Sherlock, barely enunciating the words, losing the ts on the ends.
The paramedics were no longer fussing. Apparently Sherlock’s vitals checked out and there was nothing to be done until the CT scan at the hospital. John had been in baseball long enough to know how concussions worked, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t terrifying to have Sherlock being so very not himself.
“Anything you want,” John told him, deciding that Sherlock could pick whatever topic he felt like and babble on about it until they got to the hospital.
“You are the world’s most delightful human being,” said Sherlock, and John’s eyes widened. He looked at the paramedics, who looked back at him with eyebrows raised.
“Pick another topic,” John said, desperately.
“But you’re my favorite topic,” Sherlock replied, stubbornly.
“That’s, um, nice, but—”
“Come to bed,” suggested Sherlock.
John looked at the paramedics. “He’s disoriented.”
“Not for sex, though, because my head is killing me,” continued Sherlock, slurring his words but not quite enough to make them incomprehensible.
The paramedics’ eyebrows lifted farther.
“Very, very disoriented,” said John. “Or making a clever joke. Or…” John sighed and rubbed his hand over his face and said, “Or you’re the first eyewitnesses to the biggest baseball story of the year. Congratulations.”
Next Chapter
