A/N: Uploaded chapter 4 and 5 tonight, make sure you read both!
Warning for kissing.
The big game is the next day. It's the most important game of John's high school career, and everyone makes it known. He's not nervous, though.
For the occasion, students got a half day off of school to get ready for the game. John takes Sherlock to his house so his mom can make them lunch, then afterwards they go out to the vineyard.
They find a grassy area under a tree despite the grass dying because of the late October weather change. It's a gorgeous day out, only slightly windy but warm when it hasn't been lately, so they sprawl out next to each other in the shade.
John takes Sherlock's hand between them. Sherlock's stomach flutters in amazing ways. He's never felt this way before; never has he ever felt this comfortable with another person. He's never felt pleasure in anything so mundane as laying under a tree either, but here he is. With the quarterback of the football team.
"Your mama's real nice," Sherlock says. "She's a good cook. And she doesn't make me drink milk like my dad does."
John laughs. "I'll tell her. And it wouldn't kill you to drink a little bit of milk every once in a while. Milk helps you grow and you're smaller than me."
"I'm almost three years younger than you."
"Not so! You were born in '13, I was born in '10."
Sherlock looks at John. "That's three years, bud."
John goes straight-faced. "Oh."
Sherlock laughs and looks up at the sky again. "We shouldn't be out here, we should be studying first grade addition."
John playfully shoves him.
Sherlock smiles at him.
They fall silent once again, Sherlock thinking about their wide age difference and John wondering about Sherlock's mother. He decides to ask, even though part of him is telling him not to.
"Say, Sherlock?"
"Yes, John?"
"What happened to your mother?"
"Uhm..." Sherlock clears his throat. "She died."
John looks at him. "When?"
"Let's see...I was about five, so...ten years I guess."
"What happened?"
Sherlock shrugs. "Dunno. She was sick, I guess. No one told me. One day she went to see her doctor and she didn't come home."
"I'm sorry," John says.
"It's alright."
"Do you miss her?"
Sherlock shrugs again. "Sometimes. Don't remember much of her to miss, but sometimes I miss her hugs and her hair."
"Her hair?"
"Her hair always smelled like roses, I remember that."
"That's a good memory."
"It is," Sherlock agrees. He looks over at John. "Why're you askin'?"
"Just curious, that's all."
"Alright," Sherlock says, now looking up to count the leaves left on the tree above them.
"You can talk to me about anything, if you ever need to."
"I know that," Sherlock replies, squeezing John's hand.
John squeezes back. "Can I ask you something else now?" he asks.
"Sure, anything."
"What did you think of me before we met?" John asks next.
Sherlock stops counting leaves. "What do you mean?"
John shrugs. "Sometimes I fear what people think of me. I've got money, and I don't want people to think it affects me as a person."
"I don't think it does," Sherlock says. "I know you're a swell guy now."
John laughs. "Now you do," he retorts. "What did you think before we met?"
Sherlock squeezes his hand again, this time in a comforting way. "I thought you were like them. I thought you were going to throw me into a dumpster if I made it known that I was tutoring you outside of school."
"You thought I was like the bad boys?"
Sherlock nods. "Trust me, I've never been so delighted to be wrong."
John smiles at him.
"But..." Sherlock sighs. "I did think one other thing about you."
John looks at him curiously. "What's that?"
Sherlock blushes. "I...I thought you were really..."
John turns onto his side and props himself up on one elbow. "Dumb? Rude? A bad athlete?"
Sherlock throws an arm over his face. "Cute..." he mumbles.
John laughs and tugs at Sherlock's arm. "Don't be embarrassed!" He turns onto his belly and scoots closer to Sherlock so his chin can rest on Sherlock's chest.
Sherlock peaks under his arm. "It's not embarrassing?"
"No, of course not," John says.
Sherlock lifts his hands to place on the back of John's head.
John leans up to kiss him once, then lays back down on his chest.
"What did you think of me?" Sherlock asks a few minutes later with his fingers pleasantly tangled in John's sun-bleached blond hair.
"The same thing I think about you now," John says, "That you're a loud know-it-all who tells people things other people don't know and likes a good beatin'."
Sherlock laughs and swats at his head. "Hey!"
John looks up at him. "You thought I was a jerk!"
"Well, I don't now!"
John laughs and kisses him again.
The absolute ease of it sends Sherlock aflutter.
"We ought to do something," John says after a while longer, still laying firmly on Sherlock's flat chest.
"We're doing something now," Sherlock informs him, carting his fingers through the dirty tangles of John's hair. John can take a bath every night and still have tangles, and it's something that Sherlock loves.
"No, go out."
Sherlock tenses under him. "Out?"
"Yeah. Movie show, dancin', spend an afternoon down at the beach? What'd'ya say?"
Sherlock shrugs.
John tilts himself up on his elbows. "You don't want to?"
"I just...I like being confined by the gates of the vineyard. It's scary out there. What if someone doesn't agree?"
"That's nonsense. Boys hang out with boys all the time."
Sherlock still frowns.
John brushes his lips against Sherlock's. "We can't hide in the vineyard forever," he says.
"Why not?"
"Love shouldn't have to hide. Don't you love me?"
"Of course."
"Then I'm taking you out tomorrow night."
There's not much disagreement you can give when the most powerful stud at school has you pinned to the grass in his daddy's vineyard. All fear subsides when John kisses him again; the world is right.
Of course John wins the big game. Practically alone, if not for his one main wide receiver. John throws four touchdowns, each over at least twenty yards, and one touchdown he ran only four yards for.
Scouts don't care how far you ran, they care that you did.
"Boy has the ability to pull touchdowns from a hat," the USC scout says.
Sherlock's sitting near them with the Watson family in the bleachers, all the scouts known because they're wearing fancy suits with their school's pin stuck to their chest.
"See that?" they all mutter to each other.
The Harvard scout missed it.
"Dove past three defenders to get into a safe passing zone," Yale explains.
"Just threw that thirty-eight yard pass on one foot," UCLA adds.
Harvard laughs in disbelief. "I want him," he says.
Sherlock, for the first time, realizes that John going to Harvard too could be a possibility.