This fic was written for surprisingly-okay-is-my-division as a part of the tumblr exchangelock What if exchange. My prompt was "What if John and Sherlock went to the same high school (in America) and didn't know it?"
An interesting question. I've decided to let the boys wonder about that themselves, and the result is this fic. A series of What ifs, stretching from shortly after "A Study in Pink" to their retirement in Sussex.
Important note: I am really sorry about Baby Watson. :-(
###
"What if we had been introduced to each other at that high school?" John muses.
He had moved in with me only two months ago. We were going through the file Mycroft had made on John. The one he had given me in confidance, for my eyes only. There we found it, a little glitch in fate. We had been at the same school at the same time for six months. Washington International High School, me a first grader, him a teenager already. Never noticed each other of course.
Would he have liked me? No idea. I still try to get my mind around the fact that he seems to like me now. Still wonder why he does.
"You would have surely been a cute little school boy," John goes on, eyes sparkling a bit.
I panic. I don't know if he likes me, but I know that he admires me. Obvious deduction, really. Praises me on crime scenes. Apparently impressed by my appearance. Is he becoming a friend? If yes, he would be the first one ever. He would never, ever have admired the clumsy little six-year-old that was bullied for being too small, too bright, too weak.
So I huff and tell him a lie. Something down the line of "I've never been cute, I always wore Spencer Hart".
John believes it, and shakes his head, still a bit amused. We drop the subject. One week later he corrects me when I tell Wilkes that he is my friend.
###
"What if he hadn't received that phone call?" John asks when we are on our way back home. His hair still smells of chlorine and Semtex. I know because I had the strangest urge to sniff at it secretly.
But I don't want to think about what might have been. (Too scary.) I want to think about "Sherlock, run!" I want to think about "Are you okay?" and about "People might talk." So I remain quiet and fall into pace with him as we walk home, side by side.
###
"What if you were here now?" I ask him inside my mind palace while hiding behind a tent in Malaysia. Shot. Well, just a little. A flesh wound, nothing serious. Not half as bad as what happened in Brazil. Or so I tell myself, waiting for nightfall so I can come out of hiding, find a local doctor and leave this forsaken place.
Only to proceed to Kyoto, where I will further unravel the spider net. Alone. I might have miscalculated how lonely I would feel after leaving John behind. His scream still in my ear. His "No, he's my friend. He's my friend. Please." still running around in my brain.
I might have miscalculated how much my feelings for him have grown over the last months.
"I would take care for you, of course," he states warmly inside my mind, and I believe him.
But it won't be long now. Maybe another six month or so. Nine at most. And then I will be back in London, and we will be back at Baker Street and he will be waiting for me and everything will be as it was.
###
"What if the two of you had met there?" Mary asks when she finds the note on Washington International School in my Stag Night folder. (The fact that she just took the folder without asking still rankles me. But she smiles, and I am trying to be happy for John so hard that I let it pass without comment.)
I remember the first time John and I talked about it. Remember the lie I told him and feel the need to stick to it, "John wouldn't have liked me. I was a rather posh little boy."
There is something mean in her eyes, just for a second. "Oh, come on, Sherlock," she says then with a faked jovial smile and nudges my arm, "You have been so arrogant and so small. I bet you were bullied all the time."
Which hurts because it is true. Does she know that it hurts? Better not think about that. Better continue being happy for John.
For John, who frowns at her comment. Who looks at me for a moment and then states calmly, "Really? I wish I had known you back then. I would have protected you." Then he continues choosing flowers for the church, as if he had not just said the most touching thing in my entire life.
###
"What if she is right?" John says when we are sitting in the waiting room of the morgue, so softly I can barely hear him.
I want to answer him, but there is a strange lump in my throat and a stinging in my eyes that make it impossible to speak. So instead I reach for his (right) hand and squeeze it as hard as I can. Of course she is not right!
Well, yes, true, it was John who started the little domestic this morning. And yes, it had not been the first one that week. And yes, it was John starting that little fight that made Mary so angry she decided to take Jessie to the museum alone by car instead of walking to the park with her and John.
But it is not John's fault that Marc Davidson decided to drive to work even though he had had a lot more than just one drink too much only five hours ago. It is not John's fault that Davidson had started his car not ten seconds earlier or five minutes later.
It is not John's fault that the Mercedes hit Mary's Volvo right into the passenger's side. That Davidson has been driving so fast that even with safety seat and side airbags and side-collision protection Jessie's tiny body didn't stand a chance.
Mary only suffered a few scratches.
Surely her blaming John for their baby daughter's death was simply a natural reaction to the shock she suffered.
###
"What if you move back to 221b?" I suggested when John came back from the nth unsuccessful flat viewing. The two of us were standing in their house. Mary had already removed her stuff and herself, John's things were half-heartedly packed into boxes that were still open.
He looked at me, surprise written all over his face for a second. Then he frowned. "Only until you'll find a proper place to stay," I quickly add. The frown disappeared. (But not to make space for a smile. It felt like we buried his smile together with Jessie.
"Well," he said. Nodded. Looked at the ground. Shuffled his feet. Nodded once more. "But only until I find something on my own."
That was three months ago. His boxes are still half-packed. So am I.
###
"What if I'll never be able to love you back?" he murmurs, pressing his face against my throat. Hiding from the world within this safe haven built with rumpled sheets and dried semen and me.
"I will love you all the same," I whisper, holding him tight, hoping that I will never have to find out if I am telling the truth or not.
###
"Oh, what if you had met at that school?" Mummy asks delighted. It's Easter Monday, and John and I are sitting in my parents kitchen. Don't know how I happened to spend the holidays with them. There is a slight residue of a memory inside my head. John talking to Mummy on the phone, asking me something about "would you mind" and "only three days".
I didn't listen of course, because I knew I wouldn't mind anything John wanted. I was still drunken from hearing "I love you too" from him for the first time in my life, and whatever it was that John wanted, he would get it from me anyway.
Apparently he wanted us to spend the Easter Holidays with my parents.
Damn.
Mummy is still beaming at us, and I am completely stunned because John is secretly holding my hand underneath the kitchen table. Stupid, I think, we had sex more often than I can count. Why is holding hands silencing me completely?
"Oh, I have heard that Sherlock was bullied at lot back then," John finally says (without letting go of my hand). "I guess I would have protected him."
Yes, he would have. Like he always does. But Mummy is not done with the topic yet. "Don't reduce him to a bullying victim, John. Sherlock has always been such a warm-hearted little boy. Always eager to help whenever he could. Hasn't he, Edward?"
I blush, and Dad muses, with a warm smile on his face, "God, yes. Remember when Redbeard had hurt his leg? Sherlock insisted on carrying him upstairs and downstairs all the time. He was only slightly taller than that dog." His eyes get lost in the past, "Redbeard bore it as patient as possible."
I can see John imagining little me and my dog, fighting our way upstairs. My blush deepens, but the pressure on my hand increases too.
"I was very angry when we were in America," John says, "with my father starting to drink and my mum ignoring it. Felt alone rather often."
"Sherlock would have found ways to cheer you up, I'm sure," Mummy laughs, "Would have smuggled extraordinary stones into your locker, or interesting dead birds."
"He still does," John tells her, and stands up to press a little kiss on my head before getting us another glass of wine. The light-headedness I feel surely comes from said wine.
###
"What if we really grow old?" John marvels. He is standing next to me in the garden of a lovely little cottage in Sussex, the glow of a warm September evening highlighting his hair (completely grey already). We have just solved a murder out here in the countryside, and still have three hours left before the next train takes us back to London.
I watch John closely (always love to do that). It's not only his hair. There are wrinkles on his face that have not been there fifteen years ago, when he walked into the lab of St. Bart's, not knowing how that moment would change our lives forever. His movements have slowed down a little, just like mine.
How do you tell the love of your life that he is rather old-ish already? Better not at all.
"I always thought we would die in a spectacular attempt to save half of London's population," he goes on, and I cannot help but chime in.
"Not an attempt. We would have succeed, saving millions of lives and would die at the same time."
"Yes, very important, that," he agrees. "I don't want to survive you."
I watch a bee that lazily flies from one flower to the next. "What if we go here when we grow old?" I ask, and deduce from his smile that he would really love that. Need to tell Mycroft to get us a cottage. No need to tell John now. Wait until he realizes that we are old indeed.
###
"What if we had met at that High School in Washington?" I say when we are sitting in front of the fireside, huddled against each other as closely as his arthritis and my stiff knee allow.
He smiles (like I knew he would), pulls me even closer (like I knew he would) and kisses my (white) hair. "Oh, we would have ruled that school," he said, his voice warm with affection and shaped by decades of loving and happiness.
Just like I knew he would.