Takes A Little Mistake
There was something going on, Sherlock could read it on his friends' face. All three of them where watching him with shocked eyes, as if they were children with their hands in the metaphorical cookie jar. The few telling signs quickly let him know why they had suddenly stopped talking the second he had arrived: it was about John. And wasn't it always?
Sherlock sighed, and ran a hand through his curls. "What is it?" He asked, and all the others shifted awkwardly, none of them wanting to speak. "Just out with it." He snapped. Lately, he did not have the patience to deal with this sort of things, he just wanted to graduate early and forget everything that had happened in that tedious school.
"John is having a party at his house." Irene said, figuring the other two would not dare to tell him.
"So?" The younger boy asked. "It's not like you haven't gone to his parties before." He commented, even if his sole name made something hurt inside him. "I told you it's fine if you are still his friends." However, the expressions on the others' faces displayed an amount of hesitancy which spelled there was more. He could tell, he hadn't skipped two years of schooling for nothing.
"It's not just that." Greg said, confirming his deductions, but explained no further. Irene was looking at her nails as she always did when she was avoiding something.
"Well?" He prompted, even if the knot in his throat was growing larger and larger; he was now certain he would not like what would come next. He wished his friends would just stop talking around it and say it already.
"Mary is going." Molly blurted.
A deep silence seemed to fall between them. The statement somehow worse than he thought it would be. "So, they're-" The curly-haired boy started, but found he couldn't finish. He adjusted the strap of his satchel and tried to keep the pain from his face. It had already been two months, yet he could not help feeling like he died a little every time he heard that name. "It's fine," He lied, shaking himself to appear unaffected. "Have fun at the party." He said to the concerned faces of his friends and took off, not wishing to stay around for them to pity him.
His story with John was a complicated one. They had started as acquaintances, introduced by a mutual friend when he was in 10th year and John in 11th, quickly becoming best friends by the end of the day. He had fallen in love with the blonde exactly seven days, three hours and forty three minutes after meeting him, and had continued to pine after him for more than a year until all his friends were nearly sick of hearing the name John come out from his lips.
Six months ago, John had asked him to a dance, masking the real reason for the date as a matter of convenience. Needless to say, by the end of the night they were caught snogging outside the school building.
The first three months they were together, Sherlock could no have been happier and it had seemed the same for the older boy, yet by month number four their relationship had gone downwards. Relationships are always a trying matter, and lack of communication meant they were fighting most of the time -making their friends uncomfortable again for a completely different reason- and when they were not hurling insults at each other, they weren't speaking. Battling a war of ice that could have frozen the equator.
Everybody said their situation was not healthy, bordering on pathological, yet they couldn't seem to stop. At the end of the day, neither of them was able to take that sort of life anymore. After a particularly bad fight, words were exchanged, and the word 'done' was uttered. Sherlock thought they would make up as they always did; yet the next day at school, when he saw the blonde sitting again with his rugby mates instead of what had become their shared table, talking with Mary -who had a crush on John since they met- the younger boy knew it was over. Since then, he refused to answer every and all calls and texts from him.
Their break up had left their friends torn between the two, and the separation had left Sherlock destroyed. Yet, they assured them that they were both fine, that their group didn't have to disintegrate, but they knew it wasn't really possible. Both of them took themselves out of the equation. It wasn't that they were actually avoiding each other, except that they were. Sometimes they would get stuck with their friends when the other was around, but they had stopped showing their faces where they knew the other could be. Hence, the reason he refused to go to the party.
Sherlock had already resigned himself to a night of experiments and lingering heart-ache when his phone chimed with a text. He knew he should ignore it. It was probably just Irene trying to figure out if he was on his way to eating ice-cream straight out of the carton and proceeding to die of diabetic coma and heart-break.
When he got up to turn off his phone and avoid being bothered for the rest of the night, a couple of texts from Greg made him pause.
[Recieved] Fri 11:28pm.
"Moriarty is here Molly locked in the loo"
Moriarty was basically the worst person on the whole school. A bully in sheep's clothing on best days, a pure bastard on his mild ones. He had dated and used sweet Molly for over a month, he was the reason Irene was suspended for inappropriate behaviour last year; and as if that wasn't enough, the aspiring detective knew his own 'fall' was yet to come. Sherlock almost dropped his phone in his haste to open the second message.
[Recieved] Fri 11:29pm.
"Come quickly"
No matter how much he didn't want to step inside John Watson's house ever again, everyone knew the only reason Jim was there was to draw him out, and the only way to make him stop was going to that stupid party and stopping him himself. Their antagonism was very famous in school, and Moriarty must have identified the perfect way to win this battle: to play it in a too familiar ground.
Sherlock arrived there nearly eight minutes later. Making his way quickly through drunk students and enamoured couples, all the way to the toilet where he deduced Molly must have hidden from that serpent. He knocked on the door to try and draw his friend out, but found the restroom empty. Confused at his mistake in location, he stood back. He must be too emotionally stunted tonight to have miss-deduced.
As he was about to turn around and search for another bathroom, he saw his friends standing behind him. Molly looked fine, if a bit guilty, but the other two wore matching expressions of determination that had the younger boy reeling. He only got those looks at the interventions Mycroft held for him, he did not wish to see them now, coming from his friends while he was standing in John's sitting room. That meant something the curly-haired boy didn't want to believe.
"You tricked me!" He accused, anger seething from his eyes. The loud music did nothing to drown out his outraged yells. "You lied to me to make me come!" Sherlock declared, already trying to push his way past them to return home.
The other three students grabbed him and kept him in place, not letting him go in the least. "You have to speak to him, Sherlock!" Greg insisted, stopping him from wriggling his way out of the grip.
"Fuck off." Sherlock said applying some of the self-defence knowledge he possessed to twist himself free of his so-called friends. They had him backed into a corner, but that could easily be solved. He dodged their reaching limbs, trying to grasp him again, and was now ready to walk away from the place.
"This is killing you!" Greg shouted, and by then most of the people around had stopped and were staring at the confrontation. "You need to yell at him or something, anything that will get things off your chest." Wrath made Sherlock halt his exit, taking him back to clarify something, even if he knew the best option would be to go out, get inside his car and drive away.
"You have no right," He started, with a venom that he had never used on them before. "No right to make that decision for me." He eyes filled with tears, as shocked people looked on to see the great, aloof Sherlock Holmes start losing his mind over it.
"You won't make it other wise, and you know it." Irene chimed in, crossing her arms over her chest, and not really knowing how much she was provoking the brunette to act, to dish out and say things he should probably not say.
"Leave me alone," He countered, clenching his fists and feeling melted fire running through his whole body. "You don't get to have a say in my life." Betrayal and the other heart-breaking feelings he had been denying for the past two months were piling up, and seemed ready to come out in the worst possible ways. "You want me to get things off my chest, don't you?" Sherlock challenged. "If it's so easy, why do I have to come and save you every time Moriarty appears?" He directs the attack to Molly first, ignoring her shocked face for the sake of the argument, grasping at straws to regain some of the control he had lost. "And you?" He asked Lestrade. "What about the fact that you haven't talked to your dad in months," Like a wounded animal he was lashing out, wanting to make all of them understand why you should never get too close to him.
"Sherlock," Mike Stamford said, trying to calm him down. If he weren't so riled up, the aspiring detective would laugh at the irony that technically, this was all Mike's fault for introducing them.
"No," He refused, watching as the host of the party arrived at he circle around them, clearly looking for the reason of the disturbance. Good, let him look. "They need to hear this, and you, Irene," His voice was shaking, tears were streaming down his face, and he was sure he was having an attack of some sort, but he couldn't stop, he just needed something to stop him. "If it's so easy to deal with these things, then what about you 'little miss heart-breaker,'?"
"Sherlock, don't." Lestrade interrupted, while Molly just shook her head, trying to prevent what they knew was about to happen, yet that made no difference at all. They couldn't stop him, nobody could. Not even himself.
Sherlock continued, looking at Irene with an expression that showed how the anger was gone, and the harm was not intentional anymore. Desperation the only thing present in his frame. "When will you tell everyone that your'e g-"
"Sherlock!" John yelled in that authoritative voice, and it startled the younger boy mid-rant. "Stop." He commanded, and all the emotion seemed to begin seeping out of Sherlock.
"Just..." He gave one last token fight, feeling drained and ready to plummet to the floor.
"Stop." John said much calmer, almost gentle; as if he was afraid any rash move would sent him spiralling again.
Sherlock nodded weakly and stopped, breathing rapidly and turning his face up to see his hurt friends and shocked classmates watch him make a mess of himself. He turned around and staggered out of the crowd, planning to just run as far away as he could. His friends made to follow him, but John raised a hand to stop them and said, "No, let me." And ran outside to catch up with his ex-boyfriend.
Once John got outside, he noticed Sherlock was half-knelt on the floor, emotion had always been too hard to handle for him. He gathered him up and helped him walk to his house, managing to guide him all the way to his bedroom before the brunette came back to himself enough to notice what was happening. Sherlock collapsed on the bed, but shook off the blonde's hand off his shoulder.
"Calm down," He said, coming to sit next to the curly-haired boy. Watching as his breathing returned to normal and his limbs stopped shaking. "Don't try." That was a thing John used to say to him all the time when they were dating, and even before that. Whenever the genius got too overwhelmed by something, his mind tried to make up for it by transforming those emotions into cold facts, making an effort to bury those feelings, which always resulted in the exteriorisation of said frustration. After the night Sherlock explained to John exactly what happened, John had set out to find a way to make him give up that fight, to let the sentiment pass over him without attempting to just get rid of it. "It's alright." He said, and felt an immediate change in the other.
"Hello, John." Sherlock said dumbly, once he was well enough to speak again. Rubbing one of his arms as he always does when he's anxious.
"Hi, Sherlock." The other responded with much more grip on the situation, even if talking alone with your ex is always going to be awkward business. He gave him a weak encouraging smile and stayed there, really happy to have the other beside him.
"I'm sorry to have ruined your party." The younger man admitted, even if he never really cared about social gatherings, John always had; ruining his was something Sherlock felt he should apologise for, even if it all was technically his friends' fault.
The blonde surprised him when he answered. "It was shit anyway. I'm actually thankful for the distraction." His hands came to halt the nervous scratching movement. Retreating them once the other had stopped.
"I need to go," The younger man said, making to stand up and leave the room. John was quicker than him in the state he currently was, so he kept him there, sitting on the bed. Not letting him go away from him again.
Without knowing why, John decided it was time to man up and say those words he had wanted to say ever since that big fight they had. "I'm sorry." just tumbled out of his mouth like it was the right and true thing to do. He knew he should've said it sooner, but the fear of what that would mean had stopped him, they both had battled with that fear for too long, he knew that now, and he was damned if he let that happen again.
Sherlock raised his head to look at him; confused, but as if a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. "I never wanted us to end like that." John said, reaching out his hand to touch that of the younger boy, a stubborn expression marking his young face. "I never wanted us to end, period." The blonde admitted, and it had Sherlock paralysed, not really comprehending what was happening. "I've been stupid, and I let you deal with all of this on your own, and I miss you." The blonde tried to explain, not knowing it was just making the other boy more confused.
It may not be possible, but John was determined to get the boy back, actually had been wanting to since about two hours after they broke up, but figured it would be too soon. It would not change the way they treated each other if they just swept that fight under the rug as they always did. Seeing Sherlock loose himself like that let him know that those feelings were not gone for the other boy either. He realised now that this was it, they had managed to get to their breaking point, and the chance to be with the madman again was in idea with which he was still in love, just as much as he was still in love with the aspiring detective in front of him. He had to make Sherlock see, to make him understand what he knew.
He grabbed the other and pressed him against his own body, physically recognising the exact moment Sherlock deduced what he wanted. The clasping fingers were all the answer he need to keep going. "All those arguments we had in fear of losing each other have to end," He started, in lieu of explaining why he was currently clutching the other tightly to his chest. "We need to stop acting as if the other is going to simply run away first chance he gets."
Sherlock looked up from his warm embrace, granting him with a tiny smile. "But we did," He argued, always ready to see all the possible problems that might present along the line, but also admitting they had both failed to fight for their relationship, too heart-broken to really try and fix things, John was right, that had to end. "We won't do that again." He promised for the both of them, and John could see a spark of hope grow inside those beautiful eyes.
He gently raised the other's head and met his gaze. "No, we won't." He confirmed and leaned down to kiss those lips he had missed for more than two months. The other reciprocated quickly, and soon all the apprehension was escaping from both of them, now committed to meet in the middle. To work together as they had done too many times before.
"Being your ex-boyfriend was the worst thing in the universe." Sherlock confessed, and hugged the older boy closer. "Never allow me to be that again." He pleaded and the other smiled sincerely.
"Never." John responded and cradled him back into his arms, it was alright now, the fight was done, and they had both made it back home.
Author's note: You always look mad when you're dreaming.
Inspired by the additional Hesitant Alien track: Don't Try.
Let me know what you think.