Story time: I accidentally deleted 'Love Dissected', which sucks because I think that people were actually reading it/reviewing it. Anyway, it's re-uploaded with a few edits. Please enjoy.
Saturday morning found John Watson pacing in front of Coach Hester's office, silently rehearsing his plea to stay on the team. He still felt woefully unprepared when a thickset man with a crew cut cracked the door open, looking bleary-eyed despite the steaming mug of coffee in his hand.
"Watson, what the hell are you doing here?" Hester glanced at his wristwatch. "It's barely seven."
John rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet, sweat gathering on his palms.
"Sir-I've-failed-a-class-and-I'm-going-to-be-kicked-off-the-team," John said very quickly. Hester blinked twice, rubbed his eyes, then waved a pudgy hand.
"Repeat that, lad. Didn't catch anything you just said."
"I'm failing History," John muttered. "I'm going to be kicked off the team, aren't I?"
Hester heaved a sigh and took a long drink of coffee.
"Bloody school says I'll have to bench you until you're not failing, but you're not officially off the team," he said after a long while. John attempted to suppress a shout of joy, settling instead for a wide grin and shaking Hester's hand.
It was too early to tell anyone else the good news, so John wandered the empty campus alone, breathing in the icy morning air with a sense of relish. Everything seemed so much easier, so much more optimistic, in the light of day. Burns was a harsh grader who seemed to enjoy giving his students impossibly difficult assessments, but John hadn't been booted off the team. His lifeline had yet to be severed.
Then he saw him-striding across the grassy quad, arms laden with heavy books, was none other than Sherlock Holmes. John froze. His ticket back on the team was walking towards him, and his tongue felt heavier than lead.
"Holmes!" John croaked, before the other boy could make it to the stairwell. "I, uh-"
Sherlock drew closer, a look of extreme suspicion plastered on his pale face.
"I know who you are," he announced quietly. "You're John Watson, the footballer."
John almost said "congratulations", but decided to keep the sneering remarks at bay. Sherlock Holmes might be unpopular, but he was smart. Very smart.
"Look, I need your help."
Sherlock smirked.
"I know."
"Know what?" John stammered. Sherlock casually shifted the enormous stack of books from one hip to the other.
"Burns approached me yesterday. I'll extend my tutoring services to you, free of charge."
John stepped backwards, shocked at both Sherlock's arrogance and the fact that Burns had taken charge of the situation. I must be failing badly, John thought. His stomach lurched a little. Still, he felt relieved that the confrontation was over with, and that it had taken place in a deserted part of the campus. The last thing he wanted people to see was his cavorting about with the school freak.
"Seven o'clock this evening, my room?" Sherlock suggested, raising one eyebrow.
"Can't," John replied shortly. "I've got to go to something..."
Sherlock eyed him with distaste.
"A social event, I assume."
John didn't answer.
"You're going to have to make sacrifices if you want to succeed, you know," Sherlock said sternly. He sounded all to much like Burns, and John rolled his eyes. Still, the boy had a point. John was no stranger to hard work-but he had never struggled academically before this. A few C's in Math and French, but otherwise he was a painfully average student.
"Fine," he conceded. "I'll see you then, Holmes."
At seven o'clock, John slunk up the second story to dormitory room 221. The rest of the team had rejoiced in the good news, but John had noted with disappointment that no one seemed to care when he turned down an invitation to a party-or rather, a group of students standing around smoking and drinking near the old rock quarry.
John scouted the hall first, making sure no one would see him entering Sherlock's dorm room. He felt almost guilty for doing so. John's mother had always taught him to treat everything with kindness, to be gentle towards every living creature. He wondered what she would think of Sherlock. He knocked on the door, and a voice replied faintly,
"Enter."
John edged inside, locking it behind him. Sherlock was sprawled on the bed nearest the window, a thick book propped open on his stomach. The interior of the room was dim, lit by a single lamp on the bedside table. Posters depicting various anatomical portraits covered the wall above Sherlock's bed, and clothing and books were tossed haphazardly about the living quarters.
He must be one hell of a roommate, John thought. Then he realized that the other bed in the room was curiously empty, neatly made, as though it hadn't been slept in in a very long while.
"Where's your roommate?" John asked, gesturing to the bed. Sherlock sat upright; the book tumbled onto the floor and John noted that it was entitled Jack the Ripper: London's Most Notorious Serial Murderer and His Crimes.
"He requested a dormitory transfer upon arrival," Sherlock replied. His voice was quiet, but there was no malice. "Never even set foot inside the room."
John realized that he felt vaguely uncomfortable with this information. Part of him chorused,
Can you blame him?, but the other half felt that it must be deeply saddening to realize that no one could stand to even share the same living quarters as you.
"Oh," was all he said. There wasn't much else to say; John didn't know anything about Sherlock, and he felt sure that Sherlock couldn't give a rat's ass about him. Not that he minded-it was better this way.
"Let's get started, then," said Sherlock briskly. He snatched John's history textbook and started leafing furiously through it, stopping on Chapter Four: The Great War.
"Good stuff," he mused, running his finger over a diagram of the expansion of the Ottoman Empire. John snorted, then realized that Sherlock wasn't joking around.
"So what are you struggling with?" Sherlock asked, his voice carrying an ever-so-slightly snide tone. John wanted to say 'everything', but settled for,
"World War One stuff. The Ottoman Empire. Austria-Hungary. Those are the quizzes that I failed."
One of Sherlock's dark eyebrows arched-nearly disappearing into his shaggy fringe of hair-as if he couldn't fathom what failing anything was like.
"I've never had trouble with history before," John offered weakly. "Just this class, I don't know why..."
Sherlock sniffed, still scanning the page.
"When did trench warfare begin?" He barked suddenly. John started a little, then stammered,
"Nineteen something. Nineteen-fourteen?"
Sherlock shrugged and turned the page.
"I guess you're not an imbecile."
"Thanks," John muttered sarcastically.
"I mean, you're not a lost cause...unlike most of your brutish friends."
He meant the football team, John knew. He chose to ignore the remark, instead reaching for the book.
"Look, I'll just do my homework and you correct it." And stop insulting my friends while you're at it, he added silently.
"Fine by me," Sherlock sniffed. He snatched his Jack the Ripper book off the floor and began reading. John worked steadily through the homework questions at the end of the chapter. It was difficult to concentrate with Sherlock sitting next to him, breathing loudly through his nose and flipping the pages loudly-how in the hell do you even read loudly, John wondered. And he could practically feel Sherlock judging him. He snuck a glance at the other boy, but Sherlock appeared engrossed in his gory book.
"I'm done," John announced after a few minutes of struggling to remember how Archduke Ferdinand had been assassinated. Sherlock closed the book with a snap and glanced over the paper.
"Wrong. Incorrect. Only half right."
He produced a red pen seemingly out of thin air and went to work, leaving a flurry of red markings on John's homework. Every time the pen scratched out another mistake, John felt his heart sink a little more.
"Five out of ten," Sherlock reported, handing the paper back. "Unimpressive." His voice was flat, he sounded bored.
John flushed.
No wonder they all hate him, he though savagely. Sherlock Holmes is enough to drive anyone up the wall.
"Fine," John snapped, snatching his paper and going to work. As he redid his map of the Byzantine Empire and stumbled through a lengthy free-response about the role of the Ottoman Empire, he could feel Sherlock's pale blue gaze on him. Watching him, judging him.
"Done," he muttered after a few minutes, shoving the paper towards Sherlock. The other boy took it, glanced over it, and let it float to the desk.
"It's fine," he answered, voice still vaguely disinterested. "All correct."
John breathed a sigh of relief, eager to get away from the dim, cluttered room and Sherlock's superior attitude. He stuffed the paper into his satchel and hurried towards the door.
"Thanks, Holmes," he said quietly when he reached the door. But Sherlock had reburied his nose in the enormous book, apparently cutting himself off the rest of the world. John left, closing the door behind him, unsure of whether or not the other boy had heard him.