On the last day of school, John was ecstatic. After he gave a quick hug to all his friends, he made his way over to Sherlock.
"Have a great summer John," Sherlock said quietly.
John smiled. "You too. France will be beautiful. Remember to take lots of photos of the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre."
Sherlock, as expected, rolled his eyes. "There are more landmarks in France then just the Eiffel Tower and Louvre in Paris.
"And I bet you know all of them."
He shrugged. "Probably."
A laugh bubbled from John's chest, and he momentarily stopped thinking about how he wouldn't be seeing Sherlock for two months.
"So, when are you leaving?" he asked.
"Two days from now."
"And when are you coming back?"
"A week before school starts again."
"Oh." That was all John could say.
After sharing a brief hug, they parted ways. John watched Sherlock walk into a sleek black car.
John sat down on a bench in the garden, waiting for his mom to come and pick him up. Idly, John watched a squirrel skitter across the grass.
He felt strangely disoriented.
John thought he could still feel the lingering warmth from their hug, and suddenly he felt an overwhelming urge to chase after that black car. He wouldn't be seeing Sherlock for two months and John didn't want to let go of him for even a second.
Sitting here, on this lone park bench, the intensity of what he felt for Sherlock reached out and touched his every nerve. It was bewildering and almost painful, how much he wished Sherlock was here.
"John," a voice interrupted his thoughts. "What are you still doing here?"
John looked up and saw Irene. He forced down his tidal wave of emotions and smiled at her. "I'm waiting for my mom to get here."
"Same," she replied.
There was a silence, and John could feel Irene's gaze on him. Studying him.
"What's wrong?" She asked, sighing and sliding onto the bench next to him.
John blinked and looked at her, feigning innocence.
"Oh don't give me that look," she said exasperatedly. "It's about Sherlock isn't it?"
John crossed his legs and looked away.
She sighed again. "Boys. So oblivious. It's so obvious that you love him. I've seen the way you look at him. You light up when he's around, in a way that you never do when you're around Greg, Molly, or me. And every time you—"
John interrupted, "no, You guys are my friends."
"Well obviously. But you don't care about us like that. You don't know what you look like when you see Sherlock." She laughed, shaking her head. "It's blindingly obvious how much you like him."
"I-" John didn't know what to say. He didn't even see a point in denying it anymore.
"I don't know what to do," John finally said. "Sherlock doesn't, he doesn't do that. And I just-it just hurts. Everything. You know. There's this longing in my heart and it hurts so much, and I want to run straight to him and never let him go, but I also want to just take off in the other direction as fast as I can." John laughed, hollow and mirthless. "Because I know every second with him I fall further, and one day I'll be ripped apart when he finally leaves." His voice cracked at the end.
"Hey," she said gently but firmly, "don't think like that. I might not know how Sherlock thinks, hell, no who does. He's a mystery. But I know that he cares a lot for you."
John snorted. "Yeah right."
Irene fixed him with stern stare. "I am the expert on relationships and love and sex. Trust me."
John sighed in response but didn't say anything else.
"You guys have three years to work this out. And I am confident that you will."
"He doesn't think of me in that way, and even if he did, I won't jeopardize our friendship for some half-lived romance that'll probably end with one of us hating each other," John said, looking down at the grass.
"Not if you don't let it."
Silence followed.
A few minutes later, his mom's car appeared. He stood up and wished Irene a great summer.
He had walked away when Irene stood up and shook her head, her lips pursued. "Boys."
After he got home, John grabbed a book and sat down on his bed.
Two seconds after opening it, he sighed and slammed it closed.
Then he lied down and stared at the ceiling, listening to the hum of the air conditioning. He proceeded to not think about Sherlock for the next two hours.
Surprisingly, summer didn't pass as agonizingly slowly as John feared it would. The seconds that he didn't spend pondering Sherlock were spent on playing on a rugby team in a nearby park, and rereading textbooks.
When he told his mom about his grades, she didn't look angry or upset, just mildly disappointed. And that was a punch in the gut. With a pat on the back and her telling him that it wasn't his fault, John felt like the worst person ever. His mom didn't know that he was pretty much disregarding anything and everything of importance to go running off with Sherlock to catch a burglar on the Thames or what ever other case that John could inevitably follow Sherlock.
Trying to not fall in the pit of self-pity/hatred was the main reasons he started spending most of his days playing rugby, a sport he never really seriously considered until this year.
The strangest thing was, during the summer, John's life almost went back to normal. Of course he still thought about his mad roommate far more than what's healthy, but John felt that maybe things were sliding back to what they were before Sherlock.
He started going back to his original passion of becoming a doctor, studying the books that he meant to read during the school year. Now, without Sherlock by his side, John begun to find it impossible and ridiculous that he could have ever abandoned his studies completely.
But then there were the dreams, dreams that completely went against every single ordinary moment he had in the life he thought he was finally getting back. The dreams were just recollections of wild chases through London, of those feelings he wanted to recapture so badly again. The truth was, there was a strange freedom he felt with Sherlock, and knowing that feeling made everything he did now seem so utterly dull and pointless.
It was these thoughts that kept him up at night. John was spiraling down a staircase of self-destruction every moment with Sherlock and he knew it. But John also knew he would give anything just for one more second with him.
To say he was unsure heading back on the first day of school at Newberry was quite the understatement.