Love is a Much More Vicious Motivator (Teenlock AU)

Chapter 5

Hello again,

I know the last chapter didn't achieve much, and it was a bit of a filler, but I hope this one will achieve more.

As always, keep commenting, voting, and reading! I love your comments!

Love you all,

~The Effect

***

John rolled over. He checked his phone, and the time read 19:17. Dinner was at 19:30, so John got up and walked to the door. He slipped his jacket over his shoulders, and was just leaving when he remembered.

Sherlock.

How could he have forgotten the boy with the raven curls. Sherlock hadn't returned from his trip to the library, and John didn't want to butt in, but Sherlock probably needed something to eat.

John jogged down the stairs and crossed the foyer, passing through the door on the opposite side of the room.

He faced the three corridors. From the morning, he knew the way to the canteen. He paused for a second. He also knew the way to the library. John stood still for a moment, other students milling around him, then turned sharp left.

He took a little while finding the library, taking three wrong turns and going into one wrong room, before he came to the black wooden door that Sherlock had passed through.

Pushing through the doorway, John felt all the breath leave his lungs in one, awestruck, whoosh. The towering shelves, the crimson carpets, the twisting staircase to a second floor, containing more shelves, more books, more desks, which lay littered around.

John took this in in a second. He then approached the librarian, a gentle woman with a warm smile.

"Do you know if Sherlock Holmes is here? Tall boy, dark, curly hair?"

"Oh, I know Sherlock." The woman cocked an eyebrow. "He's in there somewhere. Upstairs, but deep in the shelves. You'll struggle to find him, but if you want to try..." She gestured to the upstairs section of the library with one broad sweep of her arm. John studied the maze and acknowledged the challenge, then realised he had already made a subconscious decision.

"Thank you. I think I'll search for him. He needs to come to dinner."

"Oh, he doesn't tend to bother with meal times. When he came before, he would spend whole days in his little cubby hole, wherever that may be... But he'd spend all day every day for about a week."

"Really?" John raised an incredulous eyebrow. "I think I'll find him anyway."

"Suit yourself." The woman shrugged and John made his way to the foot of the staircase. As he climbed, he trailed a hand along the polished wood handrail. It was smooth and flawless under his palm.

At the top of the stairs, John only paused for a split second to orientate himself, then he dived in. It didn't look too complex, and the shelves weren't too tightly packed...

18 minutes and 27 seconds later, John was regretting his decision. As it turned out, the shelves got more and more tightly packed, and the route John had taken to get in there had vanished from his mind. So he turned endless corners, getting hopelessly lost.

But it's a library! He thought. How can you get lost in a school library? And so far, he hadn't come across another human being, never mind the particular curly haired boy he was looking for. He hadn't seen a trace of Sherlock Holmes.

John worked himself into a frenzy, turning corner after corner, completely unaware of his location. He whirled around the end of one bookshelf, and walked smack into another. Reeling, John lifted a hand to his nose, hoping it wouldn't start bleeding. To his right was a desk, so he slumped into the chair, cradling his bruised nose, and feeling utterly useless.

"John?" John jumped about a foot then leapt to his feet, spinning around and nearly cracking his head on another shelf but for a long, slender arm that was stretched defensively out before him.

"Sherlock. I have been looking for you all over this godforsaken library, and in return, it has been trying to kill me."

"Not everywhere. If you were keeping track of what shelves you passed, you would know that you've been running between four or five of the same shelves."

"Really?"

"Really." John sighed. He took in the pile of books under Sherlock's arm.

"Metal nitrates and their uses?"

Sherlock gave John a look.

"Indeed."

"Okay." John stood awkwardly for a moment. "I suppose you know the way out, then?"

"I don't need to go to dinner, John."

"How did you- yes you do." John stated.

"I ate yesterday. I have no need for any more food, it slows down my brain functions."

"That's not true." John made a mental note to get Sherlock to as many mealtimes as possible. This was clearly the root of his thinness.

"John."

"No, don't give me any of that 'brain function' crap. You need some food."

"John."

"I'm a doctor in training! I know about how the body functions with too little food."

"John."

"You're too thin. It's not healthy."

"John, you're a doctor."

"Yes, I am."

"How do you fix a nosebleed?" Sherlock cocked an eyebrow in a way which said he knew exactly how to deal with a nosebleed, and was asking for a different reason.

"Why?" John asked, narrowing his eyes.

"You have one, and that is-was a rather nice shirt."

John glanced down at his pale yellow polo neck. Sure enough, there were a few drops of dark crimson spotting it.

"Oh, Jesus." John pinched the bridge of his nose and tipped his head forwards. "Do you have a-"

Sherlock pushed a wad of neatly folded tissues into his free hand. John grunted his thanks and held them up to his nose.

"We need to go, Sherlock. To dinner." John's voice was muffled through the tissues.

"I think you're rather more in need of a sink and some water, at the moment."

"Sherlock..." John warned.

"We're going back to the room. You are cleaning your nose up, and then we can go from there."

"Okay." John relented.

Sherlock lead John back through the shelves with a practiced ease. John kept his face tilted downwards to stem the flow of blood from his nose, so Sherlock held a hand out behind him in John's line of sight so John could follow him easily.

Back at the room, Sherlock flopped onto his bed and John slipped into the bathroom. His nose had stopped bleeding, but the dried blood was caked around his nostrils and on his top lip. He sighed and filled the sink with water.

Two minutes later, the water was a cloudy red, and John had cleaned the last of the blood from his bruised nose.

Sherlock poked his head hesitantly around the door. "Are you... Are you okay?"

"Fine, thanks. I'm all cleaned up, so we can head down to dinner."

"John..." Sherlock rolled his eyes, "I really don't need to go to dinner."

"Yes, you do." John put his hand at the small of Sherlock's back and steered him to the door, noting how Sherlock flinched, ever so slightly, at the physical contact.

John grabbed his jacket and tossed Sherlock's long Belstaff at him. At the door, John gave Sherlock one last shove and Sherlock relented, walking out of the room unaided. Together they left the dorms and went to dinner.