A/N: John gets up to no good in this chapter. But don't worry. It all ends up good. At the end. You have to get through a few chapters of angst first.
John is discharged two days later. James takes him for the last once-over from his doctor, and he leaves John alone to talk with the doctor.
"What's been on your mind, son?" the doctor asks. "Your dad says you've been acting funny lately."
John shrugs. "Just the usual stuff, sir. School, football and basketball, baseball's comin' up-"
"Girls?" the doctor asks.
John shakes his head. "No, sir."
"Ahh, yes," the doctor says. "Your daddy tells me you're, uh…now what's the correct term? Not one for the ladies, right son?"
John laughs. "Well, I…I'm not not one for the ladies, I just…I've been seein' this boy."
"Ahh," the doctor says. "The boy who's been around while you're here?"
"Yes, sir."
"You two look happy," the doctor says. "So, what's the problem?"
"Just usual teen stuff, sir."
"Trouble on the intimacy front?"
John hesitantly nods.
"Well, not much you can do about that, son. Stress, anxiety, I can fix. Lack of sex, that's not anything I can help with."
John laughs. "My dad," he explains, "He says I should just find a girl who'll go with me. What do you think, doc?"
"You love that boy, Watson?"
John nods. "Yes, sir. I do."
"Then don't. Love's not anything you find every day. You can control it. It doesn't control you."
"Alright," John says, then gets up to leave.
John doesn't call Sherlock once he's out. He feels guilty that he can't control his thoughts and feelings. He thinks there's something wrong with him, but when every boy in the locker room is talking about the girly they took out the weekend before, and even his sister is getting more than he is, well it's enough to drive a man crazy.
Instead, he calls Charlotte. She's a red headed junior who's just as modern as he is.
He takes her to the beach. She tells him he's brilliant, gorgeous, the most talented boy she's ever seen. She tells him he can take her places, anywhere he wants.
John doesn't mean to do anything with her on the beach. He wants to take her home, to a bed, or he'd even settle for the backseat of his car. But he can't hold it any longer.
It's impossibly pleasurable, better than he thought it'd be. He finally feels relief, but all he can think of is Sherlock.
Sherlock lets John have his space. He hopes that by the end of school, after graduation, John will call. Sherlock knows John loves him too much to leave for USC without saying goodbye, and he hopes that will re-spark the flame they had for all those months.
Prom comes four weeks before graduation, and of course Sherlock didn't expect John to take him. John wouldn't, no matter how much John talks of being more open at school. No matter how much John says things like, "The future is now," and "We can't hide forever," dances are for boys and girls and that's final.
Still, he wish he had a little bit of warning before he heard at school that John took Lucy, a perky brunette sophomore who has a list of boys she's gone out with longer than her high school career.
After the weekend of prom, Sherlock finds out that John got invited to play football on a full-ride scholarship from USC. Thomas told him, and Sherlock's surprised Thomas is still talking to James after the boys broke up.
"Business is business, son," Thomas says.
"Uh-huh," Sherlock agrees.
Part of Sherlock still has faith that John's not having sex with these girls. How can he? John loves Sherlock. He doesn't love those girls.
With two weeks left of school, Sherlock decides it's better if he focuses on his studies. He stops watching John in the hall, he stops going to John's baseball games. He doesn't even plan on attending John's graduation, even though Thomas received an invitation for the whole family in the mail. He puts John out of his immediate thoughts and locks him away in an easily accessible room in his Mind Palace.
Sherlock goes to English class one day and ignores the stares he receives from fellow students, mostly the stares from the mean girls who sit behind him so they can not-so-secretly read the answers on his quizzes. He confusedly sits in his seat at the front of the class and takes his book out without saying a word.
The girls behind him whisper.
"Got plans for the weekend?" one asks.
"Sure," her friend says. "I've got a date."
"Oh? With who? Got some daddy up north you didn't tell me about?"
Her friend laughs. "I'm going out with John Watson. You know him?"
Sherlock sucks in a quick breath. His cheeks heat up and he instantly feels nauseous.
"Know him? Who doesn't?"
Another girl laughs. "I heard Lucy knew him last."
Sherlock's heart just about breaks.
"Ain't she pregnant?"
Sherlock snaps a pencil in his hands.
The girls behind him gasp.
"Everything alright, Mister Holmes?" his teacher asks.
Sherlock doesn't trust himself to speak. His breathing is growing faster and faster, his heart is beating rapidly. He's had anxiety attacks before; he knows this is the early stages of one.
He nods instead of saying anything.
"Good. Why don't you read today's poem, please?"
Sherlock frowns, then finds the right page in his book and begins to read.
"What though the radiance
Which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,"
Sherlock swallows hard. His breathing speeds up more. He pants shallowly and his head begins to feel light. Thinking of John and that girl, all the other girls, is unbearable.
"Though nothing can bring back the hour—"
He thinks about wanting John back. Getting John back would stop him from going out with the girls.
"Of splendor in the grass,
of glory in the flower,"
If I'd just let him… Sherlock thinks. Let him have what he wanted and he wouldn't have had to get it from someone else.
"We will not grieve, not rather find
Strength in what remains behind;"
He can't, he can't, he can't cry now. John is gone. John is not his anymore, and he's got nobody to blame but himself.
"In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;"
Suffering, suffering, suffering…
"In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind."
Harvard isn't worth this. He wants John, he needs John.
He lets out a soft sniffle. The girls behind him giggle.
Sherlock looks up at his teacher.
"What does it mean, Mister Holmes?"
Sherlock wipes his nose with the back of his hand. "It, uh, it means that…we are innocent until we grow, and that innocence is corrupted with...with things like sex and new knowledge and...all of that."
Sherlock sniffles again. His innocence is still there. If it wasn't, would he be happy?
"And we can never get it back," he continues. "And we have to move on and grown after it."
He lets a tear fall.
"Do you need to be excused, Mister Holmes?"
Sherlock vigorously nods, then runs out of class.
He doesn't make it down to the bathroom before he passes out.