Love is a Much More Vicious Motivator (Teenlock AU)

Chapter 4

Hello,

Wow! 32 reads! Doesn't sound like much, but it means the world to me. Thank you, thank you, and thank you again!

So... I'm introducing Sherlock to rugby! I play rugby, so I know the sport, and I just thought it would be a good way of bringing the two of them together. Don't hate me... give it a go. You might like it.

One last thing. Chard23 basically wrote the whole description of the library, which I think you'll agree is a thing of beauty. So I'll be dedicating this chapter to her once I can work out how. I couldn't have asked for any better, so if she's reading (she'd better be) thank you so much! ;)

Thanks to all for sticking with me...

~The Effect

***

Sherlock spent the rest of the day thinking. As a winger, he could survey the whole team with ease. He wouldn't always be necessary to the phase of play, so he could see John in a different environment.

Sherlock thought about what John had said. We need a spare lock, centre and winger. This meant that Sherlock would only be used as a spare. This would not do. The substitutes' bench would not provide a good working environment.

John had seemed impressed by Sherlock's pace, but that alone wouldn't get him a place on the first team. No, he needed to have the skills. Passing would pose no issue, the maths was simple; ball is oval, must go backwards.

Tackling... This was where the problem lay. Sherlock thought for a bit, then got up and slipped into his coat.

John was reading a book, and tracked Sherlock's movement as Sherlock crossed the room.

"Where are you going?"

"Library." Sherlock replied quickly.

John acknowledged this. "Want me to come with you?"

Sherlock shook his head. "I'm quite capable of reading on my own, thank you."

John raised an eyebrow, then returned to his book.

Sherlock breezed from the room, the door clicking shut behind him.

He ran down the stairs and into the main foyer of the school, then pushed through the door on the opposite side of the room.

Three corridors confronted him. He rolled his eyes, he had had access to the school through Mycroft for a long time, by now, and knew the route by heart. He turned sharp left, then slipped down a narrow, winding corridor - shortcut - before taking two right turns in rapid succession.

He came to a plain black door, much like all the others in the school.

The library was magnificent. There was simply no other word for it. Concealed behind the understated doorway lay a world of mystique and magic. The age of the room was evident; the high, panelled ceilings, graceful windows tumbling from the top of the wall all the way to the carpeted floor, and the smell - not musty and not at all unpleasant, but the smell of experience, of generations of books, old and new, being thumbed in a kind of feverish delight which seems common to those who love books, and as any book lover will know, cannot quite be paralleled by any other experience.

Upon entering, through the rabbit hole which the doorway had become, the reader was presented with a small open space, which was clearly the reception, if you will. The floor was lined with a plush carpet of deepest red, understated and yet almost a breathing part of the library, as though it was the lifeblood of all the books which had given their souls to the great mahogany shelves, stretching far farther than the eye could see, a great mahogany labyrinth of knowledge which even the bravest scholars thought twice about entering. The story was that a boy in his first year had been lost in there for three days, finally finding his way out when he recognised a book on the application of thermodynamic equations to the aerospace industry. It was an entirely believable statement. Had they been keeping a Minotaur hidden away amongst the books on theoretical quantum mechanics, it was unlikely anyone would have noticed.