John

Harriet had been absolutely right.

John had tried, really tried, to take his eyes away from centre stage to zero in on his sister, but his brain had ardently refused to comply.

Now, among the masses of frilly skirts and the smell of makeup, John struggled to spot the person who was the reason he'd come to this at all.

Not that he had any regrets about coming. He still felt weightless inside, like a hot air balloon drifting aimlessly among the clouds. There was helium in his lungs, and carbonated infatuation bubbling in his veins.

He liked it.

"John!"

He whipped his head around to check for the source of the voice, finding his sister barrelling towards him. He threw on a smile, guilt clawing at him with glass claws because he hadn't really paid much attention to her while she danced. His attention had diverted entirely.

She ran up to him, engulfing him in an embrace and locking her arms around his neck.

"Um - you were so good," John stuttered.

"What?" Harry broke away from him, her eyes still shining.

"The dance," he muttered, his eyes skittishly dodging her own. "You were...You were good."

Harriet tilted her head, smiling confusedly at her brother.

And she laughed.

"It's fine, no one can ever see past Sherlock when he's onstage," she stated. "S'not your fault. You don't have to pretend."

Sherlock.

John only nodded. It was the only thing he was capable of doing. His head was spinning. The only thing he saw through a haze of static and blending oil colours was a grinning Harriet Watson.

"So..." John fumbled in his confusion. "Why are you still grinning like a bloody shark in my face?"

If anything, her smile grew wider and more coy. And a little bashful.

"I just had my first kiss," she whispered to him, her black pupils blown wide, red lips stretched to reveal pearly white teeth.

John nearly choked. "You - what?"

"I don't know, either!" she went on excitedly. "I mean, one moment we were just talking, nothing specific, just talking, and then out of nowhere she takes this curl-" she took a bit of the shorter hair that had fallen out of her bun, "-and tucks behind my ear, and she looks at me, and says I was so good, and I couldn't breathe, John, it was completely mad, and then she kissed me."

Oof, John thought. Brotherhood has evolved.

Man up.

"That's..." John shook his head, almost in disbelief, "...awesome. I'm happy for you. Although, um..." his eyes flickered down and back up to hers, "...did you say she kissed you?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I did."

Nothing. No apologies. No shame.

Just a blatant statement. Yes, I had coffee this morning. No, I don't want to go today. Yes, she kissed me.

Yes, she kissed me.

John stared at Harriet for a little longer than a while.

She was starting to squirm a little. "Erm...John? Hello?"

He didn't tell her how proud he felt. He didn't open up about the one boy in eighth grade who had stolen a kiss from him in the locker room. How he'd cradled his head and put his fingers in his hair. He didn't say anything about how he envied her because she was so very okay with it. She didn't question it, she just went with it.

All he said was, "I'm dying to meet her."

"You will, soon," Harriet smiled. "But for now, I'm up for dinner. Italian?"

"If I had a choice, I'd have some Chinese, but since Mum only ever has half-cooked pasta, Italian it is."

Harriet was lost in a dreamlike daze as they walked home side by side. Her fingers drifted to the side of her mouth and she would smile a drunken smile every so often. John watched everything and everyone. Cars. Red, blue. Trees, chipmunks. Oh, look, a bird.

But his head still spun.

It practically whirred and groaned, John could hear the gears shuffling over to make room for the new information that had worked its way into his brain. Rusty wires and long-dead circuits hummed to life, clouding his senses with a constant electric buzz. Left ear to right, it went on and on.

He never noticed exactly when Harriet started talking to him. Well, talking at him. John was still in the theatre, the back of his eyelids branded with the image of feather-light toes and enchanting smirks.

He didn't hear his mother ask why he wasn't hungry when he wordlessly trudged up the stairs to his room. He couldn't have cared less. Only one word made its way through to John's conscious mind.

A name, in fact.

"Sherlock," he whispered to himself, tasting the word as it spun off his tongue, like the music box ballerina in Harriet's room. The name wore satin slippers and it floated off his skin right as John sank into his mattress, face obscured from the real world through a plush white pillow.

Sherlock

What was he supposed to call a situation where a girl who flirted at him shamelessly turned out to be dating another girl?

Whatever it was, it was utterly relieving.

Irene had stopped tailing him wherever he went, since she was now occupied with keeping the other girl - Hannah, or something - very entertained, in ways that made Sherlock want to shoot himself just to spare his sanity.

Oh, well.

Sherlock only wanted to dance. He could put up with hormone-drunk lesbians.

And so he kept his eyes searingly sharp, blazing right through the mirror into his reflection as he twirled and stepped and leaped. He ignored the sweat that trickled into the roots of his hair and down his back, soaking his shirt in a matter of minutes. He liked this disconnected feeling, like the studio door kept the rest of the world at bay while he battled the definition of excellence.

He always practiced with this intensity; he claimed that it helped him be calm and think. Individually. He couldn't do both together, he wasn't a witch. Who thinks calmly?

Sherlock liked the way time slowed into a hundred fractionated seconds when he raised an arm in a delicate curve, or a long leg in a ruthless sweep. He liked this feeling of being entirely submerged in an atmosphere of comfort, since he wasn't familiar with it.

And so he danced on and on.

John

John didn't know why he volunteered to pick up Harriet from her class. His mum was baffled, since he had never shown the slightest inclination to be a part of the outside world in general, unless it was with Greg and Molly. And here he was, pushing open the door to the building that bred perfection in heaps.

He didn't know what he hoped to achieve. Maybe he just wanted in on a little bit of something that the boy that night - Sherlock - had adopted and made his own. Maybe he wanted to discover something that he wasn't expecting, something that would take his breath away.

Me

Well, he got what he wanted. HAHAHAHA

John

He seated himself on a bench outside the dance studio, because that is what benches are for.

And he waited.

For a ridiculously long time.

Where is she?

John craned his neck the slightest bit, his eyes darting covertly to the doorknob like he was about to rob a bank. His tongue stuck out to the side as he hesitated, but eventually a split-second and a metallic twist later, he was inside a dance room.

And he couldn't -

Breathe.

That had been a performance. It was a stage, and lights, and costumes, and makeup. It was meant to be seen. In John's opinion, it deserved to be seen.

This was what really happened backstage. The sweat dampening the white T-shirt and chocolate curls, body movements effortless and frankly a little entrancing, eyebrows knitted in concentration, hanging over a blazing iris.

This was a forbidden sight. John should leave. No one should know the magician's secret, they said. It spoils the magic tricks.

John disagreed. If he ever saw a ballet performance again, he would think it twice as magical.

He trod lightly. Crystal clear notes rung out from the speakers, and Sherlock's feet seemed to be puppeteered by an invisible pianist with invisible strings; their synchronicity was so unnerving. John found a spot at the long bar to his left and leaned on it so that his legs didn't just decide to give out.

Sherlock

He was alone, it was just him and the music. The only thing he could see in the mirror was himself.

And then that number increased to two. A distraction wrapped in a light blue jumper and blond hair and denim jeans danced a tentative waltz into a corner and stayed there.

Sherlock pushed him out of his mind. Unimportant.

The boy sneezed, his eyes widening apologetically at the disturbance he'd caused.

Sherlock mentally shook his head. Trivial. Inhale. Exhale.

But after about five minutes of this awkward jig of stolen glances and wide eyes, Sherlock had had enough. He exhaled shortly through his nose, miffed at not being able to focus with this...boy around.

"Sorry," though he was aware he sounded nothing like it, "but do you have a purpose of any kind?"

The boy's eyes widened.

"I-I'm John," he shouldered the bag slung over his shoulder uncomfortably.

Sherlock didn't want to, but he began to store things - important things - in the department of this mundane new name. Sandy blond hair. Tan skin. Light stubble. Bluish-hazel eyes.

"I don't care," Sherlock stated emotionlessly.

John

He was even more breathtaking in person, John was sure of it.

And his voice, his voice reverberated until only baritone soundwaves rebounded from John's right ear to his left. Right. Left. Right. Left.

Sherlock sighed exasperatedly, turning to face the mirror once more. His left shoulder had just replaced his right when-

"I saw you," John blurted.

Sherlock whipped around, looking a little angry, yes, but also curious. Those eyes housed a blazing, unmistakable hunger for information.

"Do you have a death wish? I'd like to carry on with a productive practice session, if you don't mind."

"The other night, I saw you," John went on, the nervousness melting away into the mud on the soles of his shoes.

Comprehension bloomed in Sherlock's eyes, and maybe even a little smugness sparked up in those irises. "Oh," the right corner of his sculpted - sculpted?  - lips dragged upwards into a confident smirk. "What did you think?"

"Well, it was my first time watching ballet-"

A crease slashed Sherlock's brow. "But you enjoyed yourself?"

"And I'm not a huge fan of it, either-"

"But you thought it was alright?"

"And, obviously, I'm no critic-"

"But you thought it was-"

"It was fantastic."

"What?"

"Without a doubt, the best thing I've ever been to. Oh, my God," John laughed, "it's not even up for debate."

He didn't recall making any conscious advances, but there's not much time to reconsider your actions when you're two feet away from someone.

From this distance, John could point out a crystalline bead of sweat that hung like a dewdrop from a strand of chestnut hair; he could smell a light dash of cologne; he could see that Sherlock's eyes weren't ice-blue at all, as they had looked the other night. They were fluid, ever-changing, and utterly debilitating.

Oh, Lord.

Sherlock

Oh, Lord.

John wasn't fawning over Sherlock. He wasn't ogling him, like all the others who met Sherlock after seeing him dance.

John simply...looked.

And Sherlock was on the edge. It was a chasm he stood on the brink of; give in to blatant kindness or stand in lonely indifference.

Some tiny bell went off in Sherlock's head, reminding him that John had just complimented him, and that a response from his side was in order.

"Thank you, John," Sherlock said sincerely.

Nothing came out of John's mouth. Not a word. Not even a single exhale pried his lips apart as his eyes seemed to latch onto every part of Sherlock's face.

It made Sherlock want to hide.

Because maybe there were things, things that John would see, things Sherlock wanted to keep hidden forever. The grit in a sensitive instrument, the fly in the ointment. Maybe Sherlock wanted to be worthy of every compliment that came out of John's mouth so desperately that he'd hide every imperfection in himself, because this person, this chance meeting was not going to come round again.

The chasm was growing, calling for Sherlock to fall, to fall, to fall.

And then the breath left John's mouth in a frail whisper.

"Fantastic."

And Sherlock fell.

John

Maybe distracting a dancer from his practice was wrong. Maybe there were rules.

John didn't want to think of them.

They had been sitting on the rooftop for twenty minutes. In that time frame, they exchanged just enough words to make John feel like he had known Sherlock all his boring, dull life.

The only way he knew that wasn't true was because of the fact that if he'd known Sherlock all his life, it wouldn't have been boring or dull by any definition.

Harriet

When Harriet came looking for John, she saw him smile like he never had before, laughing like he never would again. So she smiled at Irene once more and told her to pass John a message saying that she'd left. Irene nodded and raised a pale, delicate hand in farewell.

John

Sherlock had to leave, and he gave John a smile that almost resembled "sorry".

When he took John's hand, prickly tendrils of electricity shot up John's arm.

When he brushed his lips over John's knuckles, John felt himself go absolutely weightless.

And when Sherlock turned at the roof entrance with two fingers pressed to his smiling lips, John smiled back.

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

OOF sorry

yo wodup worrrrrld

tbh the only part I liked about this was the last bit

one more part to satin and then most of my time will be dedicated to precious

ALSO ALSO THIS IS IMPORTANT thank you so so much for the reads and comments and votes on precious it means the world to me y'all have no clue

NO CLUE

YOU HEAR ME

but yea new chapter up soon, if you haven't read it, check it out if you wanna. If you don't, thanks for reading these lil shots

Y'ALL ARE FRICKIN PRECIOUS

MY PRECIOUSSSSS

yeah im done

ok peace humans

and others

~A.M.