Descensus in cuniculi cavum
At 11:35 p.m., the following Thursday, Harcourt lay sprawled across John's bed, looking more ready for sleep than studying, in John's opinion, wearing his favorite flannel pajama pants and a grey t-shirt that might have once been blue. His Latin textbook, large and heavy though it was, rested on his face.
John had chosen the less comfortable but more productive option of sitting at his desk in the Chair of Pain. The blank notebook page in front of him was rapidly filling with his neat handwriting, taking notes on anatomy. He rubbed his eyes and checked to see if there was any tea in any of the cups scattered across his desk. No such luck. He sighed, and turned to find Harcourt in repose.
"Not going to get much out of the text that way, you know. It's been proven that learning by osmosis doesn't work." He stood and walked over to the bed, lifting the book from Harcourt's face and smiling down at him. Harcourt blinked sleepily.
"Did you say something?" He reached toward the book in John's hand. "I'm not done yet, I still have twenty pages to go."
John dropped it on his chest and Harcourt grunted. "Ow."
"I'm going to get some tea - do you want any?"
"Access to the dining hall after hours, aren't we special?"
"The deal I made with last year probably still holds, don't you think? As long as I'm quiet so she can pretend she doesn't hear me, and make sure it's all cleaned up after. And I need to bring my cups down." John surveyed the array of cups on his desk. "I should probably do that."
Harcourt sat up and opened his textbook.
"Quid ego Latinis studebat?" he groaned.
"Quis vos es an ineptus." John answered, beginning to collect the dozen or so cups into two precarious stacks. "Want to help me with these, do you think? At least two are yours."
"Two of twelve? Hardly. You can do it yourself - it isn't like you aren't back and forth to the dining hall three times a day - you could bring them back before it gets to this point, young man." Harcourt tried to look stern, but failed, his one visible blue eye shining. "How long has it been?"
"Oh, maybe a week…" John added one more cup to his second stack and stood back to look at his handiwork, thinking that one of the cups, actually, was Sherlock's from the tea they shared the previous Saturday, Sherlock's first day at Harrow, his first day as John's sheep. The last day John had spoken to him, in fact.
The week between their tea and this moment, here with Harcourt, everything seeming so normal, had gone by quickly. Classes and studying, rugby and meals in the dining hall, and late night tea over books and conversation. Stacks of accumulated cups. Moments passed. Normally.
John had tried knocking on Sherlock's always-closed door a few times over the week, just to check up on him, to see if he was settling in alright, but had gotten no answer. Standing in the hall, silent, he'd strain his ears to hear if the pale boy was there at all and sometimes thought he could hear the rustling of papers, the clinking of a spoon in a teacup, footsteps moving across the floor. He half-hoped Sherlock might pull the door open in answer to his silence, like he did that first day when John stood in the hall juggling his cups of tea, with no idea what awaited him.
The first morning after they met, John saw Sherlock in the dining hall, making his way across the room, half a head taller than everyone else, carrying a cup of tea and somehow weaving his way through the crowd with his nose buried in a book. He settled in a relatively quiet corner, speaking to no one. Nothing about his posture or attitude invited interruption, so John left him alone. But John watched him, Sherlock. He couldn't not.
That smile, that laugh. And those eyes.
John had gone to Mrs. Hudson immediately after their first meeting to tell her that Sherlock had refused his offer to Shepherd. She didn't seem surprised. "Well," she said, "it isn't like boarding school is something new for the poor child. But I was hoping he might take to you. Don't worry yourself overmuch, John. But, if you think of it, perhaps you could just keep half an eye, for me?"
John said he would, and left Mrs. Hudson standing in the dining hall with a pensive look on her face. Poor child?
Harcourt had asked about Sherlock only once. It was that same evening. "So," Harcourt had said, bouncing down onto John's bed with a stack of books and a determined air. "How's your new sheep? How many days am I going to have to go without your company while you tend your fragile new charge?" His voice was light, but John felt the concern behind it. Harcourt had never been very good at sharing John - at least with his sheep. Just being with their group of friends was fine, but Harcourt tended to get a bit, John supposed you could call it jealous, when John had to spend time with new boys, outside Harcourt's immediate purview.
John smiled at the boy on his bed, stepping close to shove that unruly lock of hair back, so he could see into both Harcourt's eyes. "None at all, as it turns out," he said. "He's an old hand at boarding, apparently, and feels like he'll be fine on his own. Mrs. Hudson said I could let it slide, since it isn't like he's some spoiled shell too big for his britches. I'm just to check in on him once in awhile, see how he's getting on."
Harcourt grinned and pushed his head against John's hand, where it still held that lock of hair. "Excellent. Good to hear. I get so put out without you, no one can bear me."
"So I've heard," John said, smiling back. "Perhaps we should get to work."
And now it was five days later, and barring glimpses in the dining hall and out on campus (John was relieved to see Sherlock looked as silly as everyone else in his Harrow straw hat - it would have been unbearable if he hadn't) there had been no contact between them. It was so confusing, and frustrating. What had he done to make Sherlock shutter himself up like that when things had been going along so swimmingly? He replayed the conversation, over and over, but found nothing that made sense. Sherlock had been shining, and then he was gone. And John kept hearing that laugh, in his head, it seemed to be the sound that woke him in the morning, the last thing he heard before he want to sleep at night.
And he very much wanted to talk to someone about it. But there wasn't anyone. He wanted to tell someone about this boy, this boy he met, who was so incredibly brilliant and difficult and somehow charming. He wanted to tell someone about that smile, that laugh. He wanted to work it through with someone, figure out why Sherlock Holmes suddenly occupied such a huge space in his thoughts when they had only spent about fifteen minutes together.
He certainly couldn't talk to Harcourt about it. That would be a very not good thing. Harcourt had mentioned Sherlock one time in the past week, after the initial question about how much of John's time the new boy would be taking up. "God!" He had charged into John's room Tuesday evening after dinner. Harcourt had been at a meeting of the Classical Language Club, a membership which even John had a difficult time understanding since Harcourt so loathed studying Latin. Still, he was better at it than anyone John knew, actually able to speak the dead language almost as easily as he could speak English - at least as far as John could tell with his own mediocre grasp. "What a bloody pain in the ass!" The slim blond boy flung himself dramatically on John's bed.
John looked up from his own Latin studies and sighed. He knew he wouldn't get any more work done until Harcourt had told his tale of woe. "What is it, then?" He closed his book.
"Bloody Holmes. He's such a - God, I don't know if there's even a word in English - odbilis misera bastardus - " Harcourt flopped back onto the bed and covered his eyes with his hands. "Speaks Latin like an Ancient Roman. And ancient Greek, like he was born to it. And Hebrew. Who speaks Hebrew?"
Ah.
"So we've got some competition, finally, do we?" John got up and went to sit next to the boy on the bed. "For God's sake, Harcourt. Don't be such a prat. It's just Latin." He smiled. "And Greek. And Hebrew…" He tugged at Harcourt's hands until he could see the other boy's face. Harcourt's great secret, hidden beneath an irresponsible and, well, slightly air-headed facade, was that he was brilliant. He slacked on studying for exams because he could. He complained about having to do homework because he was bored. But he was also incredibly competitive and worked to stay at the top not only of his classes, but the school as well. "Some people are just good at languages, you know." John resisted the urge to push the hair out of Harcourt's face, but still smiled fondly down at him.
Harcourt reached his hand up to cover John's smile. "Stop looking at me like that, you prat. People will talk."
"No one can see," John said, behind the hand. "And you're being so ridiculous. I can't help it."
"To hell with you, then," Harcourt flipped on his side, his back to John. "That bastard is in all my classes. And he's good at everything. It's maddening. And he's so damn smug about it - he was correcting the beak in Chemistry lab yesterday and he was right." He flipped back over. "I'm going to have to work to keep up, Watson. I hate that."
John gave in to the urge, and pushed his hand into Harcourt's hair, looking into both his bright blue eyes. "I know you do, you idiot. It'll be good for you, though. You got lazy in the last year with no one to battle it out with."
"Well, I've got you. Your exams are as good as mine."
"Only because I work hard - it's a lot easier for you. Maybe he just works hard."
"No," Harcourt's eyes turned inward for a moment. "No, I don't think so. I think he's just bloody brilliant and it pisses me off." He looked back up at John. "I am a prat, aren't I?"
"You are," but said with affection. "Now either go get your books so you can pretend to study along with me, or else go find someone else to terrorize. I've got to study my Latin." John stood and crossed the room to his easy chair, and picked his book up off the seat. "Get on with you then."
Harcourt smiled. "I'll get my books," and rose, heading for the door. Then he turned.
"You always make me feel better, Watson. Don't know what I would do without you." Then he was gone.
John picked up the two towers of teacups, found the balance that might maybe keep them upright and unbroken for the trip down the stairs and into the kitchen. "Fine, then, I'll do it myself, you lazy bastard. Do you want me to bring you a cup?"
Harcourt had flopped over onto his stomach, his book now in the proper orientation for reading on John's pillow. He didn't look up. "Yes, please, that would be lovely."
"All right then, I won't be long," and he stepped through the open door and into the hall, pausing for the merest moment before the door across from his. John could see light coming through the crack at the bottom. He considered knocking, but then realized he had no hands to do so. And Harcourt was waiting for him. He shrugged to himself and continued down the hall, then the stairs - very carefully.
John successfully reached the dark front hall and moved toward the doors to the dining hall, passing through the bright cold squares of moonlight coming through the windows, patching the floor. He loved wandering through Grove House at night, when it was so silent and still, so different from the raucous daytime house. He paused in the middle of the floor, looking out through the tall windows at the trees casting long dark shadows across the moonlit lawn. So quiet. He loved his house, and Harrow, and at moments like these was so immensely grateful for the scholarship that put him here, among these boys, giving him the opportunity for the education his father never had. It was hard to imagine in just a few short months - less than a year - he would be leaving forever, off to study medicine in London. Without Harcourt. That would certainly be very, very strange. It was impossible to imagine life without him. Without that bright, cheerful smile, without those aquamarine eyes, without the color and energy he brought to John's life.
John turned away from the view and continued into the dining hall, passing through like a shadow, navigating between the tables and chairs partly with the moonlight, partly from memory. The cups shifted and clinked in their piles, but remained stable enough until he reached the kitchen door and went to set one pile on the table so he could open it. As he put it on the table, the cups started to slip sideways - not such a terrible thing, a few broken cups, but John didn't want to make any nose that might disturb Mrs. Hudson in her room directly above. It all seemed to be happening in slow motion, the pile tilting precariously left while John tried to bring his hand back to steady it without the cups in the other hand tipping as well. He wasn't going to make it -
But then a third hand came out of the shadows, and the impending disaster was brought to a halt.
Time sped back up.
"Perhaps you should carry fewer cups next time. You just have to look at them to see they aren't meant to be stacked like that," Sherlock said, stepping out of the dark.
