earlgreytea68 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
earlgreytea68) wrote2013-08-26 11:23 pm
earlgreytea68) wrote2013-08-26 11:23 pm
Entry tags:
The Bang and the Clatter (30/36)
Title - The Bang and the Clatter (30/36)
Author -![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
earlgreytea68
Rating - Teen
Characters - John, Sherlock, Lestrade
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 - Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
John had seen injuries come on slowly, insidiously, a torturous decline, and the day Mike Ryan refused to be taken out of the game in favor of the closer because he wanted to protect his lead was the day John realized he had to admit Ruiz was injured. He’d been putting it off, despite Sherlock’s continued protestations about it, because he’d had quite enough to deal with, considering his new status as Champion of Gay Rights. But Ruiz had been steadily blowing saves, and John couldn’t have his pitchers straining themselves to compensate for it. He had a meeting with Lestrade and Dimmock and everyone agreed to put Ruiz on the fifteen-day DL.
Except that, when he got back from the fifteen-day DL, he still wasn’t right. Sherlock had made two starts in the interim and pitched at nearly his old level of brilliance, nary a flinch from him at being back on the mound, and that had been good news, but the lack of a dependable closer was starting to get to the team, and the diagnosis on Ruiz that finally came in was not good.
Sherlock’s bulletin board was crowded with upcoming batters and obscure equations only Sherlock could understand, but on the right-hand side John had tacked up the league standings, and Sherlock had left it. Every day they were home John watched them lose ground. The day they fell out of the wild card, Sherlock said, bitterly, “A team can’t get by on one good pitcher and one passable one. We need a closer.”
John agreed, although he didn’t know what was to be done about it. They were late into August, there wasn’t much time left to make up the ground they’d lost, and the team was tired, disgruntled, morale low with the loss of Ruiz. John kept hoping Sherlock would pitch a perfect game and get them out of it, give them a bit of an emotional lift, but Sherlock had been nibbling around the edges of perfection, not quite getting it to slot into place yet.
Eventually Lestrade called John over just as he was getting done warming West up for his start. “I need to talk to you about the closer situation,” said Lestrade, shifting all around uncomfortably.
John lifted an eyebrow. “Do you have any ideas? Because Pomoko’s clearly not working out. Not everyone’s cut out to be a closer, you know, takes a special sort of…bloodthirstiness.”
“We think we can get Moriarty,” Lestrade blurted out.
John blinked at him. “Speaking of bloodthirstiness,” remarked John, slowly, processing.
“Ben’s been sniffing around, he thinks Moriarty’s gettable, and it’d be a huge coup, the best closer in baseball right now, and we need him, we need him badly.”
“Yeah,” agreed John, “only your ace pitcher hates him. And vice versa.”
“I know.” Lestrade looked anxious. “I was hoping you could smooth that over.”
“You realize I’m just gay,” John pointed out. “I’m not magic.”
“He will listen to you, John. You are the only one he will—”
“I don’t want Moriarty on the team. Forget about Sherlock. I don’t want him on the team. He’ll be bad for team chemistry, and he’ll be disastrous for Sherlock. We can still win without Moriarty; we can’t win without Sherlock.”
“No offense, John, but Sherlock only pitches every fifth day. Moriarty, as a closer, would have a bigger impact.”
“Sherlock’s the leader of this team—”
“You’re the leader of this team,” Lestrade cut him off, quietly. “Sherlock’s louder, so he attracts more attention, but you’re the man every single one of them looks to for direction. If this gay story had broken with anyone but you at the center of it, it would have been a complete disaster.”
“You don’t think this has been a complete disaster?” asked John, in disbelief.
“No, I think it’s been pretty damn impressive, frankly. Opinion on Sherlock is split, but opinion on you is universal. They respect you, and they’ll listen to what you say, Sherlock included. He might pout more about it than the rest of them, but he’ll listen to you in the end.”
“I disagree with a lot of that, but it doesn’t matter,” said John. “I don’t want Moriarty on the team. I’m not convincing anyone it’s a good idea, because it’s not a good idea.”
Lestrade looked exasperated. “What could you possibly have against Moriarty?”
John thought of Sherlock, naïve and vulnerable and sharing confidences. “It’s personal, okay?”
“No, it isn’t okay,” snapped Lestrade. “Because this is about your little gay love affair spilling over into the business of baseball, which is not okay with me. I don’t care what the hell goes on with you and Sherlock in the privacy of your own home, but I’m not running my team like this is a high school and you two are prom king and queen and decide who gets to be popular and who’s kicked out of your clique. He’s the best closer in the game. There are lots of people who have personal issues with Sherlock, but you’d agree with me that they’d be stupid not to snatch him up if he was available, because he’s the best there is. How can the same not apply to Moriarty?”
“Because there’s nothing wrong with Sherlock. Moriarty is…a terrible person.”
“You think there’s nothing wrong with Sherlock because you’re in love with him. The rest of baseball thinks he’s a pretty terrible person. It’s all a matter of perspective, John. Change yours.”
“You’re wrong,” insisted John. “You don’t even believe that. You like Sherlock, and I know you don’t like Moriarty, and this is a mistake, to pull the trigger on this deal based solely on statistics and not to take your gut feeling about this into account. And you know it’s wrong.” John set his jaw. “I’m not telling him. You’re going to tell him yourself.”
“John—”
“No,” retorted John, sharply. “That’s about my little gay love affair spilling over into the business of baseball, which is not okay with me. If I wasn’t sleeping with him, you’d never make me tell him. That’s your job as his manager, not my job as his catcher. And I’m not going to do it as a favor to you because I’m his boyfriend, either. You talk to Sherlock, you do it when he gets here, and you leave me out of it, the same way you would have before. I wouldn’t want my sex life changing the way your clubhouse runs, Lestrade, right?” John asked the question with a hard edge of sarcasm, and then turned suddenly, calling almost blindly to the first pitcher he saw, “Oi! Jeremy! Grab your glove, you’re throwing a few.”
“Jeremy’s throwing?” asked Sherlock, and John turned again, surprised to see him, standing in the dugout frowning.
“When did you get here?” said John.
“Just now. Why? And why is Jeremy throwing?”
“Jeremy’s throwing because I need a game of catch. Don’t worry, I won’t over-exert him. In the meantime, Lestrade’s going to explain to you why I need a game of catch.” John fixed Lestrade with a hard look. “Aren’t you, Lestrade?”
Lestrade looked furious in return but John didn’t care. As John stalked off, he heard Sherlock say to Lestrade, “Uh-oh. You’ve managed to upset John. That does not bode at all well for this conversation.”
***
Sherlock never considered it a good thing when John was upset. If he was the cause of it, he suffered inevitable guilt over it, even if he was right, and he didn’t approve of that. If he wasn’t the cause of it, he suffered an inevitable compulsion to want to kill the person who had caused it, and he thought John probably wouldn’t approve of that. Sherlock could probably pull it off without getting caught, but John still wouldn’t be happy to know he’d done it, even with the best of intentions (i.e., John’s lack-of-upset-ness).
So Sherlock frowned at Lestrade and waited for him to speak and hoped he looked sufficiently thunderous to make Lestrade regret upsetting John.
“Maybe we should go to my office,” Lestrade hedged, being fidgety.
Sherlock frowned a little harder, trying to deduce what Lestrade might say that was going to be so earth-shattering as to have upset John and to have the potential to upset Sherlock as well. It wasn’t like they were going to stop playing baseball, or be forced to break up or something. Was one of them dying? No, that would have provoked a different kind of emotion in John.
“No,” he replied. “You told John here, you can tell me here.”
Lestrade looked away, out to the field, then to his shoes, then to the field again, anywhere but at Sherlock. And he said, “We’re trading for Moriarty.”
Sherlock felt his eyes widen in shock. He was almost never shocked these days. Pretty much it only happened when John Watson caused it. It was almost more shocking that he was shocked. “I can’t have heard you correctly,” he said, seizing on the one thing that actually made sense.
Lestrade looked grim and still didn’t meet his eyes. “You heard me correctly.”
“But…we’re past the trade deadline. You’ll never get him through waivers.”
“We did.”
“You got him through waivers? Oh. Wait. Of course. Stupid, stupid, of course you could get him through waivers, nobody wants him, he’s like poison to a team. Why would you ever pick him up, Lestrade; how insufferably moronic can you be?”
Lestrade dared to look at him then. “We need a closer, Sherlock.”
“Bloody hell, I’ll be the closer.”
“You’re a starter.”
“I could be a closer.”
“Stop it. It’s done now. We needed a closer, he’s the best closer in baseball, and we’re going through with the trade.”
“I won’t work with him,” Sherlock asserted, stubbornly.
“Yes, you will.”
“Or what? You’ll sue me? Trigger some ridiculous clause in my contract? Oh, dear.” Sherlock tsk’d dramatically and looked at his throwing arm. “I do think I felt something pop in my shoulder. My arm feels quite dead. Don’t think I’ll be able to throw for a while.”
“You’ll play with him,” Lestrade told him, quietly, evenly, firmly, “because you want John to win a World Series. And this is the team you have to win it with, and you know that. This is your season. So you’ll play with Moriarty because you know we can’t win the World Series without an ace. The same way we can’t win it without a closer. We can’t win it for John.”
Sherlock stared at him. And then he managed, “That’s emotional blackmail.” Because it was. It suddenly became clear to him why Mycroft had always said caring wasn’t an advantage. It wasn’t. Lestrade was right, Sherlock couldn’t bear not to get John his World Series, and that meant making whatever team he had at his disposal work, even if that team included Moriarty.
“John’s fighting back against this out of some sort of misguided loyalty to you,” Lestrade continued.
Sherlock looked out at John, playing catch in the outfield with Jeremy Glennane. He said, “He’s fighting back against this because he’s clever and this is an idiotic idea.”
“It’s the team he has. You want to win the World Series, you work with it. And you make sure he does, too.”
Sherlock didn’t want to win the World Series: John did. Sherlock tightened his hands into fists and clenched his teeth together and wished he could kill Lestrade or throw a tantrum or find some cocaine. He turned his head away from John, looked back at Lestrade. “This is a mistake. I’m telling you right now that it’s a mistake. Bring Moriarty in. Fine. Keep him away from me, and keep him away from John. I’ll make sure we still win the World Series, and then I will walk out of this contract, and I will walk out of baseball, and I will leave you with Moriarty.”
Lestrade looked a little incredulous. “That’s it? That’s your threat?”
“That’s the worst threat there is,” said Sherlock.
***
The lack of sleeping coming from the other side of the bed was extremely loud. Sherlock never stayed in bed when he couldn’t sleep. Sherlock got up, got his violin, played music through the wee hours, thought himself through whatever it was. Most of the time, John spent those nighttime concerts with his head buried under his pillow, wishing to sleep through the racket. Every once in a while he begged Sherlock to stop playing, usually by distracting him with other things. John never thought he’d lie in bed wishing Sherlock would go somewhere and play his violin.
John rolled toward Sherlock, not quite touching him, looking at his silhouette. He was on his back, looking up at the ceiling.
“Shut up,” said John, softly.
He could envision the frown Sherlock was making. He could hear it in Sherlock’s voice, when he replied, “I didn’t say anything.”
John reached out and traced a finger along the curve of Sherlock’s ear, knowing it by heart in the darkness. “You were thinking,” John responded, still soft, feeding Sherlock a line he’d heard him say.
Sherlock huffed out something that could have been laughter, caught by surprise. John, pleased to have accomplished that much, leaned forward and kissed the ear he’d just been tracing. Sherlock didn’t move away, but he didn’t move closer, either. He didn’t react at all.
John rested his head next to Sherlock’s on Sherlock’s pillow, crowding him a bit, testing. Sherlock didn’t object, which John considered another good sign. So John picked up Sherlock’s hand and threaded their fingers together and murmured, “Don’t worry about him, love.” John brought their joined hands to his lips, brushed a kiss over the knuckle of Sherlock’s index finger. “What can he do to us, hmm?”
“Quite a lot,” responded Sherlock, dryly.
“Nothing that would make me leave you,” John said, firmly. “Nothing that would make you leave me.”
“You say that as if that’s the worst thing that could happen.”
“It is.”
Sherlock rolled to face John, keeping their hands intertwined. “I can think of so many things that would be worse.”
“That’s because you think too much.”
“This is a game. He wants to be on our team. He’s gone to an awful lot of trouble to get himself there.”
“You think this is part of a master plan?”
“Yes.”
“A master plan to do what?”
“I don’t know. To do something worse.”
“And I suppose you’re trying to develop a master plan to counter his master plan?”
“Of course.”
John sighed. “All this planning, all this game-playing.”
There was a moment of silence. “I got you involved in all this and I—”
“Stop it, Sherlock,” John interrupted, harshly, and miraculously, Sherlock actually did stop talking. John tipped his head until it nudged against Sherlock’s. “Tell me about London,” he said.
“I’ve told you everything there is to know about London,” replied Sherlock, sounding exasperated.
“No, you haven’t. That’s why you love London: because you’ll never know everything there is to know about it. So tell me something about it. Tell me something you love about it.”
Sherlock sighed and was silent for long enough that John thought he wasn’t going to respond. But then he did start talking, a story about a cup of tea and a day-old newspaper and some connection between the two of them that John didn’t worry himself about. He listened to Sherlock’s voice and kept his hand firmly in his and imagined all the worse things Moriarty could do.
***
The first terrible thing that Moriarty did involved Wagner. In retrospect, John thought that this should not have been as surprising as it was, that the evil he’d been bracing himself for would concern classical music, and that Sherlock would react as if it had been an attempted assassination on the Queen.
“The Wagner?” he bellowed at Lestrade when Lestrade brought it up. They’d been summoned, the two of them, to a special meeting in Lestrade’s office. John thought that special meetings that involved only the two of them were never a good sign. Sherlock was pacing in tight little circles around Lestrade’s tiny office, his hands tearing through his hair in agitation. “He cannot have the Wagner.”
“He claims that it would be the perfect closer entry music. He wants it to complement your choice. He says you can pick another bit of opera, or maybe something else, and it’ll go nicely with the Wagner when he comes in to relieve you. He suggested Tchaikovsky.”
Sherlock stared at Lestrade, his eyes wide and his mouth open, and John thought that, from the expression on his face, this was the most shocking thing Sherlock had ever heard. “Tchaikovsky?!” he choked out, as if he wasn’t getting enough oxygen, and John thought he might collapse dramatically.
“Yeah.” Lestrade looked incredibly confused by Sherlock’s overwrought reaction to all of this. “Something wrong with Tchaikovsky?”
“He wants me to use Tchaikovsky as my music? You might as well cover me in maple syrup and roll me around in icing sugar!”
“Uh,” said Lestrade, and looked uncomfortably at John, “I don’t really want to know about—”
“Oh my God, it has nothing to do with our sex lives.” Sherlock rolled his eyes so hard John winced. “It’s saccharine.”
Lestrade hesitated. “What is?”
“Tchaikovsky.”
“Can we move off the topic of the music, please?” Lestrade requested.
“Look, it’s obvious Moriarty is doing this to see how much power he has,” John contributed, “and you’re playing right into his hands by even bringing this up. This is Sherlock’s team, not Moriarty’s, and it’d function a hell of a lot better if you’d nip this in the bud right now.”
“I don’t decide whose team it is, John, the players do.”
“They take your lead. Go back to Moriarty and tell him the Wagner belongs to Sherlock, and he can use the Tchaikovsky.”
“No, never mind, let him have it,” inserted Sherlock, suddenly, sounding much calmer than he had ten seconds earlier.
John looked at him in surprise. “What?”
Sherlock was looking hard at him, that look that meant that the million thoughts going on behind those indescribable eyes were ones John wasn’t sure he wanted to know but definitely needed to know. “Let him have the Wagner. I’ll come up with something else. It’s your team.”
“What?” said John.
“It isn’t my team. You always think it’s my team. It’s your team. They pay attention to you. They follow your lead. It’s your team, and you’re right. You’re sitting here so calm and unruffled, and that’s what we need to be, we need to be exactly like that. This is what Moriarty wants, he wants me to dig in my heels about the Wagner, or sulk about it; he wants to throw me off. So let’s not let him.” Sherlock looked at Lestrade. “Tell him he can have the Wagner. I’ll come up with something else to use and get back to you. Also, tell him he’s not going to be relieving me.” Sherlock pulled open Lestrade’s office door and walked through it.
John sighed and looked at Lestrade. “This is a nightmare and it’s just beginning. You are an idiot to think this can work.”
“He’s a fantastic closer, John.”
“Not everything in life is about baseball.”
“Which is what is the problem with this team right now,” Lestrade retorted, and John flinched a little bit, because maybe he did think that part of the stumbling the team was doing was as a result of the interpersonal rapids the team was negotiating.
John left Lestrade and caught up with Sherlock, who had gotten stuck waiting impatiently for the elevator.
“Brand new stadium,” he complained as John came up, “and they managed to find an elevator from 1902.” He hit the button a few more times.
John watched him. “Is this you being calm and unruffled?”
“As a matter of fact, yes,” snapped Sherlock.
“You can’t pitch nine innings a game for the rest of the season.”
“Watch me.”
“Sherlock.”
“Then I’ll make sure they’re blow-outs, one way or the other. I’m not giving him the satisfaction of coming in and finishing things out for me.”
“It’s his job.”
The elevator finally arrived, and Sherlock darted onto it, as if he thought maybe he could get it to leave without being stuck with John on it, too. John stepped calmly onto it behind him.
“I’m not going to let you throw your arm out trying to prove a point. I don’t even know what point you’d be trying to prove. He screwed you over years ago and got under your skin, and he’s been exploiting it ever since because he can and because you’re letting him. Ignore him. He’s childish and stupid and we have baseball to play. You are the most beautiful pitcher I have ever watched throw and I will not take even the slightest risk of him depriving the world of that. Plus, I can’t win the World Series without you.”
Sherlock stared at the buttons for the floors as the elevator moved excruciatingly downward, then he actually smiled a bit. He looked over to John. “I’m your favorite.”
“Yes,” said John, relieved at the smile. “You’re my favorite. You are pure poetry, and I won’t let anything get close to jeopardizing that.”
Sherlock shook his head a little bit, looking serious again. “You think it’s all childish games; you don’t understand why I’m so concerned about it. Because it all seems like childish games until he’s holding the means of the destruction of your career in his back pocket. And I don’t really care about my career, but you care desperately about yours, and he knows that, so please be careful. I’m not worried about me or my ridiculous poetic pitching motion. I’m much more worried about you.”
“I’m one of the world’s first gay baseball players,” remarked John, trying to keep it wry and light. “What could Moriarty possibly do to ruin my career given that?”
Next Chapter
Author -
earlgreytea68Rating - Teen
Characters - John, Sherlock, Lestrade
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 - Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
John had seen injuries come on slowly, insidiously, a torturous decline, and the day Mike Ryan refused to be taken out of the game in favor of the closer because he wanted to protect his lead was the day John realized he had to admit Ruiz was injured. He’d been putting it off, despite Sherlock’s continued protestations about it, because he’d had quite enough to deal with, considering his new status as Champion of Gay Rights. But Ruiz had been steadily blowing saves, and John couldn’t have his pitchers straining themselves to compensate for it. He had a meeting with Lestrade and Dimmock and everyone agreed to put Ruiz on the fifteen-day DL.
Except that, when he got back from the fifteen-day DL, he still wasn’t right. Sherlock had made two starts in the interim and pitched at nearly his old level of brilliance, nary a flinch from him at being back on the mound, and that had been good news, but the lack of a dependable closer was starting to get to the team, and the diagnosis on Ruiz that finally came in was not good.
Sherlock’s bulletin board was crowded with upcoming batters and obscure equations only Sherlock could understand, but on the right-hand side John had tacked up the league standings, and Sherlock had left it. Every day they were home John watched them lose ground. The day they fell out of the wild card, Sherlock said, bitterly, “A team can’t get by on one good pitcher and one passable one. We need a closer.”
John agreed, although he didn’t know what was to be done about it. They were late into August, there wasn’t much time left to make up the ground they’d lost, and the team was tired, disgruntled, morale low with the loss of Ruiz. John kept hoping Sherlock would pitch a perfect game and get them out of it, give them a bit of an emotional lift, but Sherlock had been nibbling around the edges of perfection, not quite getting it to slot into place yet.
Eventually Lestrade called John over just as he was getting done warming West up for his start. “I need to talk to you about the closer situation,” said Lestrade, shifting all around uncomfortably.
John lifted an eyebrow. “Do you have any ideas? Because Pomoko’s clearly not working out. Not everyone’s cut out to be a closer, you know, takes a special sort of…bloodthirstiness.”
“We think we can get Moriarty,” Lestrade blurted out.
John blinked at him. “Speaking of bloodthirstiness,” remarked John, slowly, processing.
“Ben’s been sniffing around, he thinks Moriarty’s gettable, and it’d be a huge coup, the best closer in baseball right now, and we need him, we need him badly.”
“Yeah,” agreed John, “only your ace pitcher hates him. And vice versa.”
“I know.” Lestrade looked anxious. “I was hoping you could smooth that over.”
“You realize I’m just gay,” John pointed out. “I’m not magic.”
“He will listen to you, John. You are the only one he will—”
“I don’t want Moriarty on the team. Forget about Sherlock. I don’t want him on the team. He’ll be bad for team chemistry, and he’ll be disastrous for Sherlock. We can still win without Moriarty; we can’t win without Sherlock.”
“No offense, John, but Sherlock only pitches every fifth day. Moriarty, as a closer, would have a bigger impact.”
“Sherlock’s the leader of this team—”
“You’re the leader of this team,” Lestrade cut him off, quietly. “Sherlock’s louder, so he attracts more attention, but you’re the man every single one of them looks to for direction. If this gay story had broken with anyone but you at the center of it, it would have been a complete disaster.”
“You don’t think this has been a complete disaster?” asked John, in disbelief.
“No, I think it’s been pretty damn impressive, frankly. Opinion on Sherlock is split, but opinion on you is universal. They respect you, and they’ll listen to what you say, Sherlock included. He might pout more about it than the rest of them, but he’ll listen to you in the end.”
“I disagree with a lot of that, but it doesn’t matter,” said John. “I don’t want Moriarty on the team. I’m not convincing anyone it’s a good idea, because it’s not a good idea.”
Lestrade looked exasperated. “What could you possibly have against Moriarty?”
John thought of Sherlock, naïve and vulnerable and sharing confidences. “It’s personal, okay?”
“No, it isn’t okay,” snapped Lestrade. “Because this is about your little gay love affair spilling over into the business of baseball, which is not okay with me. I don’t care what the hell goes on with you and Sherlock in the privacy of your own home, but I’m not running my team like this is a high school and you two are prom king and queen and decide who gets to be popular and who’s kicked out of your clique. He’s the best closer in the game. There are lots of people who have personal issues with Sherlock, but you’d agree with me that they’d be stupid not to snatch him up if he was available, because he’s the best there is. How can the same not apply to Moriarty?”
“Because there’s nothing wrong with Sherlock. Moriarty is…a terrible person.”
“You think there’s nothing wrong with Sherlock because you’re in love with him. The rest of baseball thinks he’s a pretty terrible person. It’s all a matter of perspective, John. Change yours.”
“You’re wrong,” insisted John. “You don’t even believe that. You like Sherlock, and I know you don’t like Moriarty, and this is a mistake, to pull the trigger on this deal based solely on statistics and not to take your gut feeling about this into account. And you know it’s wrong.” John set his jaw. “I’m not telling him. You’re going to tell him yourself.”
“John—”
“No,” retorted John, sharply. “That’s about my little gay love affair spilling over into the business of baseball, which is not okay with me. If I wasn’t sleeping with him, you’d never make me tell him. That’s your job as his manager, not my job as his catcher. And I’m not going to do it as a favor to you because I’m his boyfriend, either. You talk to Sherlock, you do it when he gets here, and you leave me out of it, the same way you would have before. I wouldn’t want my sex life changing the way your clubhouse runs, Lestrade, right?” John asked the question with a hard edge of sarcasm, and then turned suddenly, calling almost blindly to the first pitcher he saw, “Oi! Jeremy! Grab your glove, you’re throwing a few.”
“Jeremy’s throwing?” asked Sherlock, and John turned again, surprised to see him, standing in the dugout frowning.
“When did you get here?” said John.
“Just now. Why? And why is Jeremy throwing?”
“Jeremy’s throwing because I need a game of catch. Don’t worry, I won’t over-exert him. In the meantime, Lestrade’s going to explain to you why I need a game of catch.” John fixed Lestrade with a hard look. “Aren’t you, Lestrade?”
Lestrade looked furious in return but John didn’t care. As John stalked off, he heard Sherlock say to Lestrade, “Uh-oh. You’ve managed to upset John. That does not bode at all well for this conversation.”
***
Sherlock never considered it a good thing when John was upset. If he was the cause of it, he suffered inevitable guilt over it, even if he was right, and he didn’t approve of that. If he wasn’t the cause of it, he suffered an inevitable compulsion to want to kill the person who had caused it, and he thought John probably wouldn’t approve of that. Sherlock could probably pull it off without getting caught, but John still wouldn’t be happy to know he’d done it, even with the best of intentions (i.e., John’s lack-of-upset-ness).
So Sherlock frowned at Lestrade and waited for him to speak and hoped he looked sufficiently thunderous to make Lestrade regret upsetting John.
“Maybe we should go to my office,” Lestrade hedged, being fidgety.
Sherlock frowned a little harder, trying to deduce what Lestrade might say that was going to be so earth-shattering as to have upset John and to have the potential to upset Sherlock as well. It wasn’t like they were going to stop playing baseball, or be forced to break up or something. Was one of them dying? No, that would have provoked a different kind of emotion in John.
“No,” he replied. “You told John here, you can tell me here.”
Lestrade looked away, out to the field, then to his shoes, then to the field again, anywhere but at Sherlock. And he said, “We’re trading for Moriarty.”
Sherlock felt his eyes widen in shock. He was almost never shocked these days. Pretty much it only happened when John Watson caused it. It was almost more shocking that he was shocked. “I can’t have heard you correctly,” he said, seizing on the one thing that actually made sense.
Lestrade looked grim and still didn’t meet his eyes. “You heard me correctly.”
“But…we’re past the trade deadline. You’ll never get him through waivers.”
“We did.”
“You got him through waivers? Oh. Wait. Of course. Stupid, stupid, of course you could get him through waivers, nobody wants him, he’s like poison to a team. Why would you ever pick him up, Lestrade; how insufferably moronic can you be?”
Lestrade dared to look at him then. “We need a closer, Sherlock.”
“Bloody hell, I’ll be the closer.”
“You’re a starter.”
“I could be a closer.”
“Stop it. It’s done now. We needed a closer, he’s the best closer in baseball, and we’re going through with the trade.”
“I won’t work with him,” Sherlock asserted, stubbornly.
“Yes, you will.”
“Or what? You’ll sue me? Trigger some ridiculous clause in my contract? Oh, dear.” Sherlock tsk’d dramatically and looked at his throwing arm. “I do think I felt something pop in my shoulder. My arm feels quite dead. Don’t think I’ll be able to throw for a while.”
“You’ll play with him,” Lestrade told him, quietly, evenly, firmly, “because you want John to win a World Series. And this is the team you have to win it with, and you know that. This is your season. So you’ll play with Moriarty because you know we can’t win the World Series without an ace. The same way we can’t win it without a closer. We can’t win it for John.”
Sherlock stared at him. And then he managed, “That’s emotional blackmail.” Because it was. It suddenly became clear to him why Mycroft had always said caring wasn’t an advantage. It wasn’t. Lestrade was right, Sherlock couldn’t bear not to get John his World Series, and that meant making whatever team he had at his disposal work, even if that team included Moriarty.
“John’s fighting back against this out of some sort of misguided loyalty to you,” Lestrade continued.
Sherlock looked out at John, playing catch in the outfield with Jeremy Glennane. He said, “He’s fighting back against this because he’s clever and this is an idiotic idea.”
“It’s the team he has. You want to win the World Series, you work with it. And you make sure he does, too.”
Sherlock didn’t want to win the World Series: John did. Sherlock tightened his hands into fists and clenched his teeth together and wished he could kill Lestrade or throw a tantrum or find some cocaine. He turned his head away from John, looked back at Lestrade. “This is a mistake. I’m telling you right now that it’s a mistake. Bring Moriarty in. Fine. Keep him away from me, and keep him away from John. I’ll make sure we still win the World Series, and then I will walk out of this contract, and I will walk out of baseball, and I will leave you with Moriarty.”
Lestrade looked a little incredulous. “That’s it? That’s your threat?”
“That’s the worst threat there is,” said Sherlock.
***
The lack of sleeping coming from the other side of the bed was extremely loud. Sherlock never stayed in bed when he couldn’t sleep. Sherlock got up, got his violin, played music through the wee hours, thought himself through whatever it was. Most of the time, John spent those nighttime concerts with his head buried under his pillow, wishing to sleep through the racket. Every once in a while he begged Sherlock to stop playing, usually by distracting him with other things. John never thought he’d lie in bed wishing Sherlock would go somewhere and play his violin.
John rolled toward Sherlock, not quite touching him, looking at his silhouette. He was on his back, looking up at the ceiling.
“Shut up,” said John, softly.
He could envision the frown Sherlock was making. He could hear it in Sherlock’s voice, when he replied, “I didn’t say anything.”
John reached out and traced a finger along the curve of Sherlock’s ear, knowing it by heart in the darkness. “You were thinking,” John responded, still soft, feeding Sherlock a line he’d heard him say.
Sherlock huffed out something that could have been laughter, caught by surprise. John, pleased to have accomplished that much, leaned forward and kissed the ear he’d just been tracing. Sherlock didn’t move away, but he didn’t move closer, either. He didn’t react at all.
John rested his head next to Sherlock’s on Sherlock’s pillow, crowding him a bit, testing. Sherlock didn’t object, which John considered another good sign. So John picked up Sherlock’s hand and threaded their fingers together and murmured, “Don’t worry about him, love.” John brought their joined hands to his lips, brushed a kiss over the knuckle of Sherlock’s index finger. “What can he do to us, hmm?”
“Quite a lot,” responded Sherlock, dryly.
“Nothing that would make me leave you,” John said, firmly. “Nothing that would make you leave me.”
“You say that as if that’s the worst thing that could happen.”
“It is.”
Sherlock rolled to face John, keeping their hands intertwined. “I can think of so many things that would be worse.”
“That’s because you think too much.”
“This is a game. He wants to be on our team. He’s gone to an awful lot of trouble to get himself there.”
“You think this is part of a master plan?”
“Yes.”
“A master plan to do what?”
“I don’t know. To do something worse.”
“And I suppose you’re trying to develop a master plan to counter his master plan?”
“Of course.”
John sighed. “All this planning, all this game-playing.”
There was a moment of silence. “I got you involved in all this and I—”
“Stop it, Sherlock,” John interrupted, harshly, and miraculously, Sherlock actually did stop talking. John tipped his head until it nudged against Sherlock’s. “Tell me about London,” he said.
“I’ve told you everything there is to know about London,” replied Sherlock, sounding exasperated.
“No, you haven’t. That’s why you love London: because you’ll never know everything there is to know about it. So tell me something about it. Tell me something you love about it.”
Sherlock sighed and was silent for long enough that John thought he wasn’t going to respond. But then he did start talking, a story about a cup of tea and a day-old newspaper and some connection between the two of them that John didn’t worry himself about. He listened to Sherlock’s voice and kept his hand firmly in his and imagined all the worse things Moriarty could do.
***
The first terrible thing that Moriarty did involved Wagner. In retrospect, John thought that this should not have been as surprising as it was, that the evil he’d been bracing himself for would concern classical music, and that Sherlock would react as if it had been an attempted assassination on the Queen.
“The Wagner?” he bellowed at Lestrade when Lestrade brought it up. They’d been summoned, the two of them, to a special meeting in Lestrade’s office. John thought that special meetings that involved only the two of them were never a good sign. Sherlock was pacing in tight little circles around Lestrade’s tiny office, his hands tearing through his hair in agitation. “He cannot have the Wagner.”
“He claims that it would be the perfect closer entry music. He wants it to complement your choice. He says you can pick another bit of opera, or maybe something else, and it’ll go nicely with the Wagner when he comes in to relieve you. He suggested Tchaikovsky.”
Sherlock stared at Lestrade, his eyes wide and his mouth open, and John thought that, from the expression on his face, this was the most shocking thing Sherlock had ever heard. “Tchaikovsky?!” he choked out, as if he wasn’t getting enough oxygen, and John thought he might collapse dramatically.
“Yeah.” Lestrade looked incredibly confused by Sherlock’s overwrought reaction to all of this. “Something wrong with Tchaikovsky?”
“He wants me to use Tchaikovsky as my music? You might as well cover me in maple syrup and roll me around in icing sugar!”
“Uh,” said Lestrade, and looked uncomfortably at John, “I don’t really want to know about—”
“Oh my God, it has nothing to do with our sex lives.” Sherlock rolled his eyes so hard John winced. “It’s saccharine.”
Lestrade hesitated. “What is?”
“Tchaikovsky.”
“Can we move off the topic of the music, please?” Lestrade requested.
“Look, it’s obvious Moriarty is doing this to see how much power he has,” John contributed, “and you’re playing right into his hands by even bringing this up. This is Sherlock’s team, not Moriarty’s, and it’d function a hell of a lot better if you’d nip this in the bud right now.”
“I don’t decide whose team it is, John, the players do.”
“They take your lead. Go back to Moriarty and tell him the Wagner belongs to Sherlock, and he can use the Tchaikovsky.”
“No, never mind, let him have it,” inserted Sherlock, suddenly, sounding much calmer than he had ten seconds earlier.
John looked at him in surprise. “What?”
Sherlock was looking hard at him, that look that meant that the million thoughts going on behind those indescribable eyes were ones John wasn’t sure he wanted to know but definitely needed to know. “Let him have the Wagner. I’ll come up with something else. It’s your team.”
“What?” said John.
“It isn’t my team. You always think it’s my team. It’s your team. They pay attention to you. They follow your lead. It’s your team, and you’re right. You’re sitting here so calm and unruffled, and that’s what we need to be, we need to be exactly like that. This is what Moriarty wants, he wants me to dig in my heels about the Wagner, or sulk about it; he wants to throw me off. So let’s not let him.” Sherlock looked at Lestrade. “Tell him he can have the Wagner. I’ll come up with something else to use and get back to you. Also, tell him he’s not going to be relieving me.” Sherlock pulled open Lestrade’s office door and walked through it.
John sighed and looked at Lestrade. “This is a nightmare and it’s just beginning. You are an idiot to think this can work.”
“He’s a fantastic closer, John.”
“Not everything in life is about baseball.”
“Which is what is the problem with this team right now,” Lestrade retorted, and John flinched a little bit, because maybe he did think that part of the stumbling the team was doing was as a result of the interpersonal rapids the team was negotiating.
John left Lestrade and caught up with Sherlock, who had gotten stuck waiting impatiently for the elevator.
“Brand new stadium,” he complained as John came up, “and they managed to find an elevator from 1902.” He hit the button a few more times.
John watched him. “Is this you being calm and unruffled?”
“As a matter of fact, yes,” snapped Sherlock.
“You can’t pitch nine innings a game for the rest of the season.”
“Watch me.”
“Sherlock.”
“Then I’ll make sure they’re blow-outs, one way or the other. I’m not giving him the satisfaction of coming in and finishing things out for me.”
“It’s his job.”
The elevator finally arrived, and Sherlock darted onto it, as if he thought maybe he could get it to leave without being stuck with John on it, too. John stepped calmly onto it behind him.
“I’m not going to let you throw your arm out trying to prove a point. I don’t even know what point you’d be trying to prove. He screwed you over years ago and got under your skin, and he’s been exploiting it ever since because he can and because you’re letting him. Ignore him. He’s childish and stupid and we have baseball to play. You are the most beautiful pitcher I have ever watched throw and I will not take even the slightest risk of him depriving the world of that. Plus, I can’t win the World Series without you.”
Sherlock stared at the buttons for the floors as the elevator moved excruciatingly downward, then he actually smiled a bit. He looked over to John. “I’m your favorite.”
“Yes,” said John, relieved at the smile. “You’re my favorite. You are pure poetry, and I won’t let anything get close to jeopardizing that.”
Sherlock shook his head a little bit, looking serious again. “You think it’s all childish games; you don’t understand why I’m so concerned about it. Because it all seems like childish games until he’s holding the means of the destruction of your career in his back pocket. And I don’t really care about my career, but you care desperately about yours, and he knows that, so please be careful. I’m not worried about me or my ridiculous poetic pitching motion. I’m much more worried about you.”
“I’m one of the world’s first gay baseball players,” remarked John, trying to keep it wry and light. “What could Moriarty possibly do to ruin my career given that?”
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