His Majesty, The Queen

There Are Worse Things Than Losing

After about ten minutes the first teammate slunk his way out of the locker room, a younger looking boy who probably sat on the bench the whole game. Nonetheless he was dragging his feet across the grass field, as if trying to tear it up as much as possible in repayment for allowing them to lose on home field.
"We should go!" Sarah exclaimed, starting her way down the now empty bleachers and down onto the deserted field to watch for their boys to come out of the locker rooms. There was a steady trickle now, though still no sign of the boys they awaited. The girls used this little hiatus to stuff all of their pompoms away, not wanting the boys to be reminded too much of their own hopeful spirits at the beginning of the second half. They had to forget about the pressure and the publicity for a little while now, and just focus on recovering from such a loss. Their happiness was more important to Sherlock than was any stupid rivalry, and if they let this loss get to their overall high spirits then it would prove to be a disastrous pastime. Sherlock didn't want to see them upset for the next month, and he certainly didn't want to be around when they got whooped once more for their silly little championships. Mike was the first one out, and despite his seemingly miserable composure he still allowed himself a cheerful little smile upon seeing Sarah on the field waiting for him.
"Mike, you were amazing tonight." she assured, rushing up to him and tackling him in her embrace. The boy gave a little chuckle, though he didn't sound very convinced that her words had any meaning behind them.
"It was a terrible game, we were all off." he admitted at last. "At full strength we'll get them, though. They should be worried about championships, we're coming back for blood."
"That you are." Sarah agreed, wiggling away just enough to plant a kiss onto Mike's lips. He received that a bit better, and returned the kiss before just hooking the girl under his arm and approaching the rest of his fan base.
"Greg will be out in a moment." he assured. "As for John...well the boy's distraught. If he doesn't drown himself in the showers I'm sure he'll be dragging his feet for a while."
"Oh he always takes these silly little games too seriously." Mary scoffed, "He lets it get to him. As if it's all his fault."
"In his mind it is. He's captain, but he did all he could. I keep telling him that he was the one who kept us in the game so long, but he's not listening to it." Mike grumbled.
"Poor John." Molly mumbled, all the while Sherlock's heart had grown equally cold. He didn't like the idea of John wallowing in his own misery, especially when such misery had no logical reasoning behind it. He was taking the team's loss and placing it upon his own shoulders, undoubtedly breaking himself in the effort. Sherlock's affections for him were so inconvenient, especially in times like this, when he felt that he could do absolutely nothing to rescues John from himself. If he had any power over John's emotions then he would be able to go in there and help, though he was left just to stand here and brood with the rest of them, using up the extent of his power as he stood and hoped that John might be okay, rather than being able to console him personally. For a while they just stood there anxiously, waiting now for Greg to appear. When at last he did he looked crestfallen, though a quick hug from Molly was enough to get him looking a bit better. His face was pale and his hair was wet, and he was looking upon those opposing bleachers as if he was staring down the Devil himself.
"We'll get them next time. God, we're going to clobber them." he promised, shaking his head and kissing Molly a bit tiredly before slumping down to the grass.
"Is John coming out?" Mary asked, though with a tone of inconvenience rather than concern. As if she was sick of being single right now while her friends got to enjoy the company of their boyfriends.
"Oh who knows? He threw a fit when I asked him when he was going to come out, starting punching the lockers. Thought it best to just leave him be." Greg admitted with a sigh.
"He can't really be that upset?" Sherlock muttered worriedly, looking back towards the locker room doors and wondering just what John was getting up to inside. He hoped that he wasn't taking this all too personally; he hoped that he wasn't taking the loss out on himself somehow.
"Oh he's upset." Mike assured with a sigh, sitting down upon the grass as well as if he figured there was nothing more he could do tonight except wait. Surely the boys were exhausted from the game, and all of this wallowing defeat probably wasn't helping. After about five minutes their worries began to mount, as everyone had now fallen onto the cold grass, sitting under the lights of the stadium and watching the doors as if expecting John to appear through them any moment now. Though when every moment passed their concerns doubled, until at last Sherlock was filled with such fear that he almost couldn't stand it anymore.
"Should one of us go in there, make sure he's alright?" he suggested apprehensively, looking towards Greg and Mike so as to see which of them would like to volunteer.
"He won't listen to a word we say." Greg admitted with a little grumble. "I'd even think he's mad at us, for losing the game."
"Well that's not your fault either. The other team was just better why do people have to blame themselves? It's childish." Sherlock grumbled.
"That's just the sort of logic he needs right now." Mike decided at last, looking towards Sherlock with something of a conniving sparkle in his eye. Sherlock hesitated, glancing at Mary as if to look for the final confirmation of their spur of the moment plot. And just as he feared, she looked as though her brain was hatching its own ideas as well.
"Well I'm not going in there. He'll kill me for sure." Sherlock insisted with a little frown. Well of course he'd take the opportunity to be alone with John, though not in a time like this! Not when the boy was all riled up from defeat and from blame, in which he might impale anyone who tried to talk sense into him. Sherlock certainly wasn't big enough to defend himself, and would make only too easy a target. Though perhaps that's what they were looking for, someone so small and so meek that John would have no choice but to calm down, on fear of killing the middle man.
"I think he'll listen to you." Greg admitted with a nod.
"Mary should go in, she's his girlfriend!" Sherlock insisted, though he wasn't entirely sure why he was offering up Mary for this sentimental opportunity. They were rivals in the game for John's heart, and here he was just offering Mary the play that could change the course of the game. Here they were in the first half, with that woman up by seven points...and here was Sherlock's chance to perhaps tie it up completely.
"I can't go in there, it's a men's locker room." Mary protested, though she didn't sound very confident. As if she was using that as an excuse not to face down her angry boyfriend, at the fear of being yelled at or worse. Perhaps she didn't think that she was enough to calm him down, and therefore was prepared to throw the weakest member of their friend group at him like a piece of raw meat to a hungry lion.
"Go ahead then, Sherlock. He'll listen to you I'm sure. You're neutral in all of this; you don't even know how to play football." Mike suggested.
"Oh great, and so my ignorance is going to calm him down?" Sherlock scoffed.
"Yes!" Greg agreed, getting to his feet now and trying to usher Sherlock up off of the grass. Sherlock sighed, shaking his head but at last pushing himself to his feet. He felt as though he had no other choice, and if this would prove to be a touching moment in their relationship then perhaps he ought to just go for it. "It's that door there." Greg explained meaninglessly, as they had all been staring at the same door for the past ten minutes waiting in vain for John to arrive.
"Alright, alright." Sherlock muttered, shaking Greg's arm off of his shoulder and giving one helpless glance back towards his crowd, all of which seemed to be urging him on. Even Mary, who he thought perhaps saw him as a threat, waved him on with encouragement. Perhaps this was only because Sherlock had never experienced one of John's fits before; perhaps he was the only one stupid enough to approach him at such a desperate time. All the same he pushed open the door, stepping into what could only be described as a stinky, steamy, and disgusting concrete bunker. He had never really been in a proper locker room before, though this one bore all the signs of being incredibly uncomfortable. The lockers were rusted and nearly falling apart, with the boy's names written in duct tape along the tops so as to be easily replaced or covered when they graduated. The floors, walls, and ceilings were all made of the same scratchy concrete, and the benches were nailed to the floor so as to ensure that no one picked them up and used them as a weapon. The entire place smelled like body odor, and from the back of the locker room he could hear the sound of running water. All of the steam was compiling from that room, a room which must be where the showers were. Sherlock hesitated at the door, wondering if the worst part this might not be John's anger, but instead his nudity. Sherlock may be infatuated, but he still was plenty modest. He wasn't entirely sure he was ready for such an eyeful, and certainly not under these circumstances. For a moment he was almost reluctant to go any farther, wishing to recruit Mary to do all this instead. Though he knew that he had to keep going, he knew that he was John's only hope to ever show his face to the public again.
"John?" Sherlock called out, lingering a bit closer to the distant shower room yet not yet daring to enter. He heard nothing in response, though the ever monotonous sound of water did get interrupted for a split second, as if someone had rearranged themselves under the shower head.
"John we're worried about you." He admitted quietly, forging ever farther and ducking off towards the side of the shower room, so that he could call inside without looking in.
"Worried about me?" John's voice clarified, followed up with the sound of spitting, as if he had gotten a mouthful of shower water and didn't very much like the taste.
"Yes." Sherlock agreed. "You've been in here a long while."
"That's you Sherlock, isn't it?" he asked quietly, his voice now more audible, as if he had at last stuck his head out of the water and allowed for correct annunciation.
"Yes it's me." Sherlock agreed in an equally quite voice, knowing just by the clarification that his own appearance had meant at least something. As if his being here really was the best choice out of the lot after all. For a moment there was silence, though the water seemed to be running uninterrupted now, as if John had left the stream entirely. Sherlock listened closely, almost hearing wet footprints along the tiles.
"John there's no need to take this all upon yourself." Sherlock reminded him, though he suspected that his words would be in vain. Nevertheless he let them out there, just in case his sympathetic narratives were just what John had been waiting to hear.
"No?" he clarified with something of a doubtful laugh. "Not upon me? I'm the captain, Sherlock. It's my team...my responsibly. My loss. Personally."
"If you were the only one out there on the field then yes, I would agree with you. But I'm about to get angry if you try to forget about the whole rest of your team. Yes, they might have underperformed, but that's not on you." Sherlock growled, though it was rather hard to summon emotion into his words when he could do nothing but stare at a blank wall.
"We're like a machine, Sherlock. A winning machine. And I'm the engine. I failed tonight, and the entire team broke down. The entire machine just..." John ended his sentence with a yell, followed immediately by a sickening sound of knuckles upon concrete, as if he had tried to punch the wall but found that it wasn't nearly as satisfying as he expected.
"John, like any machine, if one part goes down the whole thing breaks. Take a car for example. The engine could be running fine, but all the wheels may have popped. You're not going to go anywhere like that." Sherlock pointed out, using John's own rather weak simile against him. Perhaps that was an argument he could begin to understand, for his words were delayed and he finally appeared from around the corner. Thankfully he had covered himself with a towel, though he was looking just as wet and miserable as Sherlock had imagined. His hair was plastered down over his forehead, and his limbs were dripping in water he had not bothered to clean off. His face was downturned into a permanent frown, and his eyes were heavy and exhausted. Though he was in one piece, with no sign of any damage except emotional trauma.
"John..." Sherlock muttered, in something of an empathetic yet teasing way. As if John's appearance was like a child who had finally arrived back from their temper tantrum.
"You watched the whole game?" John clarified, shouting just above the sound of the water hitting the floor and the drain gurgling to keep up.
"Yes. I saw you score that touchdown; I saw the fire in your eyes." Sherlock agreed.
"You're not a hawk, Sherlock. You couldn't have seen that." John growled, turning away in some spite back to where the shower was running. Almost as if he wanted to just fall back into the stream of hot water and ignore the world for a little while longer.
"Perhaps not." Sherlock insisted, lunging out and catching John's arm in his hand, touching him in such an instinctive manner that he had not yet understood the severity of his actions, not the consequences. He hesitated, seeing that John's eyes had flashed something rather dangerously in their midst. Nevertheless, Sherlock had to continue on.
"Perhaps not. But I felt it. I didn't see the excitement but I felt what you were feeling, I felt it in my chest like a match struck. It was excitement, it was power, purpose. It was the chance to be a hero in front of the whole school. You were that hero, John. You still are." Sherlock assured, staring that boy into the eyes as if to try to convey his own emotions. As if to try to radiate positivity, and even just a bit of affection. As if to try to remind John that he really wasn't useless, no matter how hard he tried to convince himself otherwise. Though his words bounced off the boy like a rubber ball, and Sherlock found that John was no more moved by his poor attempts of preaching than he might have been by any one of Greg or Mike's little motivational quotes. He was in a desperate state, that was for sure, and his hazel eyes looked broken.
"It's just a game." Sherlock reminded him weakly, trying to go a completely different route after noticing that his first attempt was not working. At last John wriggled his arm away from Sherlock's grasp, though he did not move away so soon. Almost as if he liked to be within arm's reach, as if he was going to find use in that after all. Sherlock almost felt the need to move away, fearing now that a punch was going to be flying up towards his jaw any moment now.
"You say, Sherlock, that scoring is like a fire? A fire that we both felt?" John wondered rather mockingly, as if Sherlock's words meant nothing to him for the time being.
"Yes, that's what I said." Sherlock agreed quietly. John donned a smile, though not the pleasant sort at all. It was the type of smile that had no happiness in it at all, the type of smile that was merely there to demonstrate their delight at sharing their own pains with someone else. The sort of smile that should make someone afraid. Yet Sherlock didn't have time to run, for John grabbed his wrist rather agressivley and held him without the intention of letting go.
"Well then, in contrast Sherlock, let me allow you the feeling of losing." John muttered, tugging Sherlock over to where the shower was still running. John reached through the flow of water and turned the knob all the way to the left, changing the temperature of the water so quickly that the room took upon a freezing feeling almost immediately. Sherlock shivered, nervous as to what John's intentions were.
"Scoring is like fire, losing is like ice. You felt one; let me invite you to the other." John growled, taking Sherlock by the shoulders and pushing him into the stream of water. Sherlock was immediately soaked with what could only be water on the verge of freezing, as if it would turn just one degree colder it would solidify into a block of ice and come tumbling down onto Sherlock's head with concussion worthy force. It was cold enough to make the boy begin shivering, cold enough for him to try to struggle out of the stream of water, only to find himself completely trapped by John's force. He was keeping him there by the shoulders, keeping him steadied within the freezing water as if as his own sort of punishment. Sherlock's face was impeded by the shower, and he could only see just snippets of his captor through the water that was pooling between his eye lids. His lips began to fill with the frigid water, and he was beginning to inhale droplets when faced with no better alternate. Soon he was soaked to the bone, his shoes filled and every inch of his skin drenched. It was a terrible feeling indeed, though perhaps there was some benefit in it. If this was what John felt after having to hand the win to the Sandringham Serpents, well it certainly wasn't a good feeling at all.
"You feel that, Sherlock?" John growled with a strained voice, almost as if he was about to break down into tears. "That's defeat. That's public humiliation. It's failure."
"There are worst things than defeat in football." Sherlock winced, though he was beginning to grow uncomfortably cold...almost dangerously so. His words were being spit through the stream, his eyes were now basically waterlogged, and he felt admittedly close to hypothermia. Now of course he was a drama queen in all aspects, and perhaps would not be facing such serious consequences from a mere dip in freezing water. All the same, it felt life threatening to be standing there for so long. Especially when John's grip never faltered, and the look in his eyes remained nothing less than blood thirsty.
"Name them." he challenged at last, after a mere moment of hesitation.
"War." Sherlock said right off of the bat, staring with wide eyes now as he allowed the water to just pool up inside of his eyelids. "War, dying in a trench, fighting for your country but in vain. Being sent away from your home, because it's being...it's being bombed. Being sent away from your family because they have all lined up before the firing squad." Sherlock's words fell away, and at last he felt a final jolt of John's arms, pushing him through the water and into the back wall where at last he could stand clear of the stream. He lay back against the freezing tile, staring at John through the water now, knowing that it proved to be a barrier none of them dared cross. He blinked the water away from his eyes and spat it from his mouth, though he continued to stare, stare now as John's grip slackened and the boy began to realize what a fool he had ultimately made of himself. Sherlock didn't say anything else; he really didn't feel as though he needed to. Thankfully he seemed to have put John's little trifles into perspective, and showed him that he really just needed to gain some perspective in the matter. There were more important things than football games; there was life and death, freedom and bondage... war and peace. At last John let his grip go, and in something of a little fit he turned the water off with an aggressive turn of the handle. With that he turned away without a word, shaking his head as he pulled his towel away from his hips so as to dry off the rest of himself, perhaps with the intentions of at last getting dressed. Sherlock let his head fall back onto the tile, shivering madly as he stared at the back wall so as to maintain John's privacy. He was dripping wet himself, though he didn't know where the towels were and frankly he was much too afraid to ask.