AN: I'm trying to get back into writing this story so I will be editing the chapters. So it has taken so long for, well, anything. There have been some computer issues. This is the revised first chapter. Read it if you want. Or not, if you don't.
Chapter 1 The Arcade
Bright flashing lights. A too loud buzz of voices offset by high laughs and shouts. The ring of games, tickets zipping out, music blaring, the dings of hits and misses.
Sherlock isn't quite sure why Mycroft has abandoned him in the cesspit called an "arcade." It isn't like the teenager stuck around to play anything and happened to forget his little brother when he left. No, Mycroft left shortly after depositing a couple of handful of tokens in Sherlock's pockets. Meanwhile, the room around him is a seething, writhing mass of adolescent horror and the seven-year-old quickly makes his escape.
Scaling the games without getting spotted isn't as easy as he probably makes it seem. There are so many cameras and watchful parents for much of anything to evade attention for long. But Sherlock is small. His awkwardly angular limbs
- "Does he eat enough, dear?" asked one of the women as his mother's tea parties. A too thin litter boy glares from his him hiding place under the stairs. One of the boards flip up and reveals his mother's parlor.
His mother laughed. It was not the smooth one that he was used to, but harsh and self-depreciating. "Under threat of having it pumped into his stomach, yes. Getting food into that boy is like trying to skin an elephant - it takes forever and the mess almost isn't worth it." The other ladies tittered and conversation moved on. -
fit together almost like puzzle pieces allowing him into the smallest darkest places available. It is challenging, moving in the space provided behind some of the games so they do not overheat in sumer, but he manages, winding up on top of a locker of some type. His position allows him an excellent vantage point for viewing the entirety of the arcade.
Sneering slightly, Sherlock settles into his habit of people watching. Nothing of interest really catches his eye and the lives of those below him are so ridiculously easy to discern that he does it almost on autopilot.
There is a boy playing Whack-a-Mole to the far left. His movements are jerky, his hits overly hard. He doesn't really pay attention to the points that gather on the display, just adds more tokens. The the game pauses to scroll out his winning tickets and he glares at the few mother-father-children groups. - His parents are fighting. He's taking his frustration out on defenseless plastic animals. He hates that other people can be happy while he is not.
A pair of fraternal twins are surrounded by a group of high school boys where they are participating in a pinball challenge. The girl is winning, a wide grin on her face, hair up in a sloppy bun. She has a gym bag at her feet with the name of an expensive private school plastered on it. Before arriving at the arcade she changed clothes, obviously more comfortable in street attire than the uniform, but she doesn't want her old friends thinking she's changed now that she goes to a fancy school.
It is all so obvious, so tedious. The boy by the pool table has a crush on his best friend, but doesn't want to be found out as gay. A young girl hiding behind a shooting game is picked on almost constantly by her older sister. She is both fearful and near the point of violent rage. A woman by the counter is having an affair, likely with her boss.
Quite by accident Sherlock finds his attention drawn to a group of children around his age. They are a rowdy bunch, pushing and shoving to get to the front so they can see what is happening, but for the moment seem content to spend their tokens huddled around one of the claw machines. It is amusing how few of them actually succeeds in grabbing a toy, and none manage to drop one in the bin. One by one they all lose interest, or tokens, and leave to find new games or relatives who can provide them with more.
Sherlock snorts, fingers drifting to the pocket full of tokens Mycroft had insisted he have. It wouldn't be terribly hard to grab a toy with the stupid claw and prove to the other children that he will always be superior. Whenever he was forced to interact with children his age they would give him such arrogant looks.
-"Sherlock can't play right!" one would say. The others would all laugh, united against a common victim. "Can't even play pretend. The knights always win! The dragon always dies! Don't you get it?"
"But the dragon would have the tactical advantage," he'd insist amid the jeers."It can spray fire from a long distance, far greater than any weapon a knight would have-"
"Shut up! You're so stupid!" And chants of 'Sherlock's Stupid!' would arise from within the mocking, hateful laughter.-
To be able to prove, for once, that he's better than them at something they take pleasure in - a grin breaks across the pale boy's face and he leaps down off his perch, landing with a confident grace only a child could takes seconds to arrive at the claw game, and his unexpected presence draws the other children out of the mob. Sherlock stands still for just a moment, the required three tokens in his hand, studying the multicolored mess of toys. One of the tines on the claw is weak, this he knows from previous observation. However, if he grabs two toys, the two in the far right corner that pin each other down, he will be able to use that third tine as a balancing point and drop both toys in the bucket.
The tokens slip easily into the coin slot and a flashing light indicates he can move the claw. It take a bit of careful maneuvering with the controller as he is unfamiliar with how it moves, but only takes a moment to become accustomed. Then Sherlock has the claw hovering over his chosen prises. He smirks and pushes the little red button, watching with unconcealed glee as the two toys are scooped up just as he predicted. The other kids gasp in awe, shoving at each other, whispering loudly over the background music. Anderson, a boy two years ahead of Sherlock in school, roughly pushes the younger boy away from the game as soon as he has his prizes.
Tiring of the excitement, Sherlock retreats to his previous perch with his toys. They are dumb, but soft with plush fur and pastel colors. One he believes to be a dog, the other a rabbit, but it is hard to tell as they both look so similar. Still, it is more than the other kids have so he plays with them drearily when people watching begins to take on a monotonous feel.
It isn't until the mob of children, mostly Anderson and his friends, disperses from around the claw machine that Sherlock finally allows his sight to drift in that direction again. A little blonde boy with his left arm wrapped in a bright blue cast is standing in front of the glass box, a small hand resting on the controls. Sherlock knows that the boy doesn't have any more tokens, having watched him spend all of them easily beating a group of teenagers at one of the first person shooting games. The boys had been less than pleased, but a girl a few years younger than the offended teenagers quickly pulled her brother away. After, Sherlock had seen the little blonde give all his tickets to a toddler. She had really wanted one of the prizes and almost had enough tickets to get it, but neither she nor her brothers had enough tickets. The boy had just smiled and handed over his hard earned bundle.
Interested despite himself, Sherlock watches as the boy looks around carefully before slipping unnoticed into the bucket. First one foot, then his injured arm, disappears before he ducks into the seemingly very small space, completely concealed. Intrigued and wondering how the smaller boy manages to do anything with a broken arm, let alone fitting into a bucket designed for small stuffed toys, the curly haired boy settles in to observe. From his vantage point he can see the careful shifting of toys and a flash of golden hair before everything is still again and the blonde is once again out in the open. No one except for Sherlock has noticed the short excursion into the claw machine.
Right before the little blonde disappears into the crowd he looks up. Brown clashes with blue for a second before the other boy's face lights up in a brilliant grin, one front tooth missing. Sherlock manages a smile back, barely, and the blonde skips off, hedgehog and black cat tucked safely under his broken arm.