Archive of Our Own

John smiled at Jenny. He wanted to talk to her, but she was surrounded by her friends, and he didn’t want to talk to them. He had no friends yet himself, but he knew it wouldn’t take long. “My loving little golden boy,” his mother called him. He would make friends easily, she had said, and of course she was right.

But the boys had all gone off somewhere else, and the only girl he wanted to talk to was with other girls.

That’s okay, he thought. I’ll just walk.

John liked walking. He didn’t always get to walk alone, because his mother said it was dangerous, and he didn’t like walking with Harry, because she never waited for him to catch up. He’d be taller than her one day, though, and then he’d get to walk faster than her and leave her behind too.

The school was nice. There were these pretty green plants up the side. He wondered if the school needed to be watered to keep growing, like his mother’s garden. Did people remember to water his school? John began to worry. What if his school withered and blew away, like Harry’s flower when she forgot?

Maybe he’d find some water.

There was a little trickle of water that looked like a teeny river close by. John had seen a river once. It had been grey and ugly. This little river was much smaller, but it was prettier. Maybe when rivers grew up, they got grey, like people.

John rounded the corner toward the river, and heard a splash, and boys’ laughter. Was this where all his classmates went? Were they playing in the water?

That sounded fun. Maybe he should play in the water with them after he watered the school.

As he approached the group of boys, he saw that only one of them was actually in the water. Maybe they were taking turns? That would make sense, in such a small river.

John paused. Only… only this game didn’t seem very fun. The boys kept bending down and throwing mud at the one in the water. The boy just sat there. His hair was so full of mud that it hung limply around his face, leaving smears of dirt on the little space that hadn’t already been hit by the stuff being thrown by the other boys.

John stared. The boy was looking down, as if he didn’t even notice the boys or the mud. As if the water he was sitting in was just really, really interesting, like how John felt when he watched his favourite telly program.

But still, John didn’t like this game. He wanted to stop it.

Then the boy sitting in the water looked up, right at him. John didn’t know how the boy had known he was there, but the boy had looked up anyway. And his eyes were so blue, and they made him feel angry. But not at the muddy boy. At the other ones, the ones throwing mud.

He remembered something his favourite telly program had said once, that bullying was mean, and that it was about a bunch of people attacking a person by themselves, and how that was bad. But even if the telly hadn’t told him that, he’d have known it anyway.

A feeling welled up in his chest that he’d never had before. He’d once seen a cat attack a big dog. It had bristled up to twice its size, and just exploded into a fury of nails and hissing, and that’s how John felt. Like if he didn’t start moving, he’d turn into a snarling, angry bundle of John-fur.

“Hey!” he shouted. His voice was louder than he’d ever heard it, and it echoed off the walls of the courtyard. The other boys jumped, and turned to look at him, eyes wide. “Hey!” he shouted again, and started running straight for them.

John wasn’t really sure what he would do when he reached them, but maybe the other boys did, because they started running.

“John’s crazy!” one yelled.

“Let’s get out of here!”

John stopped and stuck his tongue out at their retreating backs. He wasn’t crazy. He was just the only one that knew bullying was bad, he guessed.

John looked down at the boy in the water. At some point, the boy had picked up a stick, and was pushing the end into the mud, making a rather fantastic squelch.

“Hey,” John said again, only much softer this time.

The other boy didn’t say anything, but poked the mud again.

Squelch.

“You’re in my class, right?”

Squelch squelch.

“What’s your name?”

The boy paused for a moment, and then muttered, “Holmes.”

“Holmes?”

“Sherlock Holmes.”

“Huh.” Funny name, John didn’t say. He didn’t think it would be nice to say that to a boy that had just had mud thrown at him. “I’m John. Watson. John Watson.” He held his hand out. He really didn’t think Sherlock needed to be sitting in the mud anymore.

Sherlock twitched, and then stared at John’s hand, blinking the dirt out of his eyes. He glanced up, looking at John’s face for the first time since John had chased off the others, and then back down at John’s hand. “Do you… want my stick?”

“What?” John frowned. “Your hand. I wanna help you up.”

“Oh.” Sherlock stared at John’s hand for a long time. John began to wonder if there was something wrong with it. “Thank you,” Sherlock said, and placed his hand in John’s.

John didn’t make as many friends in school as his mother had thought he would. He was Sherlock’s friend, so a lot of other people didn’t like him as much.

John didn’t care, though. He was Sherlock’s friend, and that was more than enough for anybody. Sherlock had the best ideas. No one else played games like they did. Once, they’d gone back to the little river (“Brooke,” Sherlock had told him snottily. John didn’t like the way Sherlock talked sometimes, but he forgave Sherlock because Sherlock was so smart and interesting).

He had told Sherlock his idea about the school being a plant, and Sherlock had laughed. John liked it when Sherlock laughed, because it didn’t happen a lot, but that laugh hadn’t been very nice. Then Sherlock had stopped, and looked at John with interest. “Do you want a plant house, John?”

John took a long time to think it through. Sherlock had taught him it was always better to think before doing anything. “I think it’d be kind of neat. Your house would start small, but then it would keep growing, so by the time you’re grown up and have a family, it’ll be all big. You won’t have to keep moving every time your family gets bigger.”

Sherlock made a face. “I don’t know if I can make one that nice. But we can make a house out of those big leaves over there.” He pointed to the overgrown area no one ever went to.

John’s eyes sparkled. “We could play adventurers! Living in our plant house!”

Sherlock smiled back. John always liked it when he made Sherlock smile like that.

They played explorers for a really long time. John was better at the adventure stuff, but Sherlock was always better at finding things. They’d found a frog once, dragging its leg behind itself. Sherlock wanted to kill it so he could figure out how it moved, but John stopped him. “We’ll take care of it and get it better, and then you can watch it move,” he’d said, tears in his eyes.

Sherlock had looked at him, and nodded.

They named the frog “Hopper” (“Boring,” Sherlock said, but all the names he came up with were long ones John couldn’t remember). They pretended they’d saved Hopper from a crocodile. John had wrestled the crocodile while Sherlock snuck in and saved their frog. Despite this, Hopper was the bravest frog in the world, Sherlock insisted. It was impossible to be anything but when it was around John all the time, Sherlock had said, hugging Hopper to his chest.

John had flushed, and his chest had swelled with pride. When Sherlock said stuff like that, he meant it.

Sherlock always got to school before John. He’d curl up in their plant house and play with Hopper until John got there, and Sherlock would always look at John like he was happy to see him. John wondered sometimes if Sherlock was so happy because he wasn’t sure if John would come back. John didn’t understand it. He’d never missed a single day of school, so Sherlock shouldn’t be afraid of being alone.

One day, Sherlock didn’t look happy to see him. He looked up at John with wide eyes, but didn’t say anything. In his hands was Hopper, sleeping.

“What’s wrong, Sherlock?” John felt a twinge in his chest. What if Sherlock didn’t want to play with him anymore? What would he do without Hopper and their leaf house and their adventures and… and Sherlock?

“Hopper’s dead,” Sherlock said quietly. His hands cradled their frog, gentler than John had ever seen him.

“Oh,” John said. He didn’t really understand what that meant, so he did what he always did when he didn’t understand. He asked Sherlock. “He won’t wake up?”

Sherlock looked down at Hopper and whispered, “I don’t know.”

It was the first time John had known Sherlock not to know the answer to something.

Sherlock didn’t usually pay attention in class. He already knew how to read, and he thought the teacher was stupid, so he usually slept or looked out the window or tried to get John’s attention.

But the day after Hopper died, Sherlock came to class with a big book. John had never seen a book so big. Even the school for older kids Harry went to didn’t use books that big. John wondered how Sherlock had managed to carried it.

When Sherlock sat down next to him, John asked, “What’s that for?”

“I need to know,” Sherlock said.

“About what?”

“Death.”

The teacher got really upset when she saw what Sherlock was reading, and took it away. Sherlock was really upset, so John got mad, and had to be sent out of the classroom.

His parents weren’t happy with him. They both came to pick him up that day, even though his mother was the one that usually did it.

Sherlock had waited with John, even though he wasn’t in as much trouble as John was. He’d been allowed to have his big book back, but he hadn’t opened it again. Sherlock had never seen John’s dad before, and his eyes narrowed as he watched the adults go into the classroom together.

“I don’t like your dad,” Sherlock said.

John nodded. He wasn’t surprised.

Sherlock didn’t say anything when John came to school the next day with bruises.

Not long after that, John came to school, more quiet than Sherlock had ever seen him.

“Do you want to play on the swings?” Sherlock asked. Neither of them had been back to the plant house since Hopper died.

John shook his head.

“Do you want me to tell you a story?” Sherlock asked. John always liked his stories.

Another head shake.

“Do you want to go play with the other kids?” Sherlock asked, desperate.

“We’re moving.” John’s voice was so quiet, taut with suppressed tears, that Sherlock only heard him because he’d been straining to hear John’s voice for so long.

He hadn’t wanted to hear this, though. “… What…?”

“We’re moving,” John said again, louder. “Dad’s t-” He paused. “Tr- Moving in his job, and we have to go with him. Dad said he wanted to get me away from…” He frowned. “Another really big word. But it sounded mean, and it was about you.”

“John…”

“I don’t want to move, Sherlock. You won’t be where we move.”

Sherlock sprang into a flurry of motion. He grabbed John and pulled him close, arms tight and fists clenched into John’s shirt.

He didn’t remember the last time he’d hugged someone.

He’d have probably liked this one more if he’d done it sooner, before John was leaving.

Why hadn’t he hugged John before?

Wasted.

He felt hot wetness hit his shoulder, and John’s arms curled just as tightly around him. Sherlock never cried, but he cried now. No one had ever cried for him before. “I’ll find you,” he promised.

“What?” John’s voice was high and shaky, and Sherlock’s arms wrapped tighter.

“I’ll find you,” he repeated, his voice growing in strength. “It might take me a while, but I promise I will.”

“Okay, Sherlock,” John said, immediately comforted. Everything Sherlock said was always true.