Yo world

Ballet!lock it is

Or is it Dance!lock

We will never know

But this is a little longer than my other ones

Alright go be free kids

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

Sherlock

One, two, three. One, two, three.

Hands around her waist. One, two - and lift, and back down. Two, three.

Three fouettes, three pirouettes and FREEZE -

Head up, smile -

And back, two, three, one, two, three.

C major on the piano. Low bow. Point. Take her hand and sashay off the stage.

And Sherlock always got the applause he deserved. Even if it was just practice.

When people asked what the Holmes' youngest son did in his free time, they usually ended the conversation soundlessly, sealing it with a pair of wide eyes and lips pursed in disapproval.

Because how dare a handsome, intelligent young man take up something like ballet?

Sherlock tended to actively swerve past profanity where he could help it, but there were a few choice words he'd refrained from using when the last family - the Walters, wasn't it? - had asked his mother why she'd let her son prance around in tights for the better part of his day.

Turned out, he wouldn't have the chance to get back at them - Violet Holmes had promptly sent them home without so much as a 'Thank you for coming, Martha, Thomas, it was a pleasure.' Nor did she express a great desire to have them over again. At all. Ever.

Well, Sherlock's mother was several things, but a liar was not one of them.

Out of his seventeen relatively boring years, Sherlock had been dancing for eleven. He'd taken to the dance floor immediately, the soles of his slender feet light and quick and graceful, practically sculpted to a perfect pointe. Within a year, there was satin on his feet, black lustre racing up to his shins.

And here he was, top of his class, subject of envy of the boys (though there were hardly any) and subject of interest to the girls. The girls were singularly the worst part about dancing, they were like leeches if they got assigned to him. Of course, barely any of them made par, except Irene - she was decent when it came to ballet. Brilliant, actually.

And she was smart, too. And pretty, and curvy, and dangerous.

Would've been Sherlock's first candidate for a "romantic entanglement", but he had one qualm about...well, to put it bluntly, sex.

He didn't feel things like that. A smirk or a wink or a bite of a lip from Irene Adler or Everly Thompson would've been enough to send any sane man swooning; Sherlock had seen all of them, and had returned to his bar exercises, shaking his head in mild disgust.

He sighed to himself as he undid his ballet shoes, sitting on the floor by the mirror. Every day was the same.

John

"Mum," John tried for the millionth time, exasperation creeping into his tone.

"John," his mother shot back, slinging a towel across her right shoulder and pinning him with a chastising glare. "That was not a request. I'm not giving you an option. It's Harriet's first performance, and you have to be there because we can't."

"You and your absent drunkard ex-husband?" John reminded her scathingly. His mother still made the mistake of saying "we" and "us" sometimes, like her divorce had never happened. He pitied her sometimes.

His mother's eyes hardened, but almost in a weary sort of way. "Don't make this harder than it already is." She sighed, sitting back on her heels behind her laundry basket. She looked up at him with sweet, tired eyes. "Please, John? Please?"

The irritation clawed at John's insides. He was pissed off, mad at his father for leaving them, at his mother for making him go a stupid ballet performance, at his sister for doing ballet in the first place.

He found himself nodding in resignation. "Alright, Mum."

~

John had to consciously bite his tongue each time some random guy ran his eyes down his sister in a way that irked the big brother in him. He discreetly slipped a hand behind Harriet as she nervously made her way forward, and shot one guy a glare and an obscene hand gesture before taking her shoulder and steering her inside.

"Christ, I'm so nervous," Harry spouted, tugging on the end of her cardigan. Her usually confident, crass eyes darted around John's features, like he held some kind of refuge for her in the line of his brow. He rolled his eyes and put his arms around her.

"You'll be fine, you're a brilliant dancer, Harry," he smiled. She pulled away, shaking her head.

"It never matters how good you are if he's dancing on stage, too," she said cryptically. And, if John wasn't mistaken, a few drops of bitter jealousy simmered just beneath the surface.

"Who?"

"Sh-" Harry started, but her eyes widened as they caught on something past John's shoulder. "-it!"

"Curious name," he joked, a little miffed at not being given a straight answer. But he never got one, because his sister had darted after the ballet master who had just caught her eye.

John watched her walk away, briefly considering leaving. He could spend a little while with Greg and Molly, maybe go watch a movie and come pick up Harriet in time.

He shook his head, sighing. Don't be ridiculous. Find a seat.

How long was this? Two hours?

He stepped into the theatre, heavy velvet drapes hiding what looked like a great big stage. Elegant lighting bathed everything from the carpeted floor to the sky-high ceiling in a golden glow, and John couldn't help feeling as though this place was where surreal things crystallized into reality.

He checked his phone. 4:30. Rubbed his palms together. Found a seat, excellent progress.

And he waited.

Sherlock

A curl dangled rebelliously on his pale forehead, and he sent a pale finger to flick it back into the masses of his perfectly coiffed chocolate hair. His eyes steeled as he took one last look at his reflection, and his resolve steeled as he took one last deep breath to calm his nerves.

His stage fright was an old forgotten story, but everyone keeps childhood in a little golden attic, with lullabies and bedtime stories.

He stepped out of his mental solitude just as Irene came up to him, looking almost freakishly impeccable with her pale face, bloodred lips and sparkling eyes. She stepped a little too close for Sherlock's comfort, eyeing him head to toe and back.

"Don't let your hands slip," she said in a hushed voice, probably intended to sound seductive. Her lips curled mischievously. "I could get hurt."

"Don't tempt me," Sherlock shot back impassively, turning to face the stage as he took his place in the wings. He could almost hear the wistfulness in her smirk as she disappeared backstage to emerge from the other side of the stage.

Sherlock straightened his spine, rolling his shoulders back and tipping his chin up, a confident smile gracing his features. He held his hands to his face, fingers lightly trilling imaginary tiles in the air. He did this before every performance, but he had no clue why. It was the kind of thing that was welcomed into his routine without really being discussed by his brain cells.

The dull roar of dramatic drums brought Sherlock's eyes to the present. He met Irene's eyes and sashayed onstage, the curtains still obscuring the audience's view of the people behind them. He poised himself, toes pointed, back stock straight, porcelain features unnaturally smeared into what he hoped resembled some beautiful unspoken emotion.

Arms up. Chin up.

And the curtains parted.

And Sherlock moved.

John

A tingle curled into the base of John's stomach when he heard the drums began to sound throughout the theatre. He physically shrunk into his seat as the light dimmed, but he was pulled back up, almost magnetically, as the curtains parted.

His breath was so violently torn from his trachea that he physically gasped out loud.

Black, black, black, striking blue, creamy white, dark chocolate.

John felt like an impostor. Everyone here in this room had come prepared for this, they deserved to witness what was happening on that stage. Him attending this concert was a fluke, a random dice roll that landed him in this position - it had left him feeling branded on his neck, on his forehead, that he was so, so privileged to be watching.

The images seared themselves into John's brain mercilessly, embossing tissue and nerve endings with black shoes and brown curls and ice-blue eyes. Everything was toned muscle and shocking precision and ice-blue eyes.

Somewhere in the back of his head, John heard Harriet's voice. "It never matters how good you are if he's dancing on stage, too."

But all that was a whisper, a forgotten ripple in the ocean of static buzzing in John's eardrums as piano notes crackled through his system. His heart swelled with every impossibly graceful leap, an involuntary sigh escaping his lips as the boy onstage swept a flawless, artful arm out towards the audience.

The music turned dark. John had never made the effort to discern any kind of hidden meanings in art forms, but before him was the result of efforts and efforts to compose and personify tragedy and love and loss and beauty, and holy mother of God, those eyes-

They seemed to look straight at him, pierce him like a needle through a cushion. Again, and again, as the boy turned like an arrow on a compass, John felt like the northern lights.

He was alight. His heart was racing, throwing itself against his rib cage and cracking down its septum, and he was alight.

That gaze, it shot aquamarine bullets back at him repeatedly as the dancer pirouetted impossibly fast, his head whipping around and stalling just long enough for the audience to see the enjoyment dance crystals into his eyes.

John temporarily forgot where he was, who he was. His mind was vacant, save for this stage and this boy.

The boy in question looked entirely unstoppable. His toned alabaster arms would have cleanly decapitated anything stupid enough to come in his way. He was a tornado, and John could feel himself getting swept along.

He didn't even realise when it finished.

And when it did, a shocked tear broke the surface of his cornea. The audience seemed to have held its breath all the while, and John was no exception. He wanted to trap these two hours in a jar, and let it out for the world to see. He wanted to scrawl his initials on it and tuck it under his bed forever, and draw on its ethereality when life got too strange.

But for now, he brought his hands together to join in the thunderous applause.

Sherlock

One more masterpiece - he felt it as the floor shook with ecstatic tremors, like it was thanking Sherlock for dancing all over it.

Sherlock tapped his foot minutely, as if to say, "You're welcome."

He took Irene's hand and smiled, bowing to the audience. He got bored quite often, but he'd never tire of this, this...electricity.

The rush. He fed on it, it fueled the insane artist in him. It was the best kind of addiction a person could have.

~

Backstage, Sherlock promptly inserted his mental earplugs to shut out the clamour of compliments that positively assaulted him. So he could move his body rhythmically. Pretty well. He knew that, and he appreciated genuine praise. But that didn't mean he'd sign your tit.

Sherlock was flattered, sure. But he was not a hormonally malfunctioning lowlife.

He sighed a very burdened, exhausted exhale as he made his way to the dressing room, sitting on the floor to unlace his shoes. He watched his black slippers leave his sore feet and let out a relieved sigh as he ran a massaging palm along the arch of his foot.

"Hey, Sherlock," said a smiling girl in the doorway. "I think you just made fairy princesses a real thing."

"Am I that stunning, Miss Hooper?" Sherlock feigned a self-indulgent hand frame, tipping his chin up like one of those helpless plastic models. Molly laughed at his sarcasm and let herself in, plopping herself in a chair against a wall.

"You were," she shrugged, "good tonight."

"A compliment," Sherlock's eyes widened as he shook his head. "Oh, it's definitely the end times."

"Not just yet, dearest," Molly rolled her eyes with a twinkle in her eye and genuine affection in her smirk.

"What's Mum making for dinner?" Sherlock asked as he wiped a little makeup by his eyes. He had known Molly his whole life, they practically shared parents. So whoever she called "Mum", he called "Mum". Not much to it.

"Soup, soup and other assorted delicacies," she enunciated jokingly.

"Soup it is," Sherlock nodded, packing up his shoes and rising to a stand, slipping into comfortable converse.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

YOOOOOOOO

RHWNNSKANSJSNDNNXJS

I LOVE THE ONES WITH HIM DOING BALLET AHAHAHAHAHA SO CUTE

sorry yes hiiiiIIIII I MISSED Y'ALL

I DON'T EVEN KNOW Y'ALL

oh well

the jooohhhnnnloooocckkkk is coming

dont worry bbys

sorry I'm excited I went first day first show for spiderman: far from home like yISSSSSSSS

and then again because it's brilliant actually

ok peace

stay happy

~A.M.