I Know Your Face

Welcome to the Cruel World

           

"I can't take this anymore; you know what they're saying about me?" John asked.
"Ya, that you let the team down, disgraced your own name; I heard a rumor you were going to be expelled." Mary pointed out with a disappointed sigh.
"How many rumors do you hear in a day Mary?" John wondered.
"Too many for all of them to be true." Mary admitted. John shook his head, hiding his face behind his hands for a moment and groaning loudly.
"This isn't my fault; I don't know why everyone's treating me like some sort of traitor." He muttered.
"Well, I think I've got an idea on how to get back at the true culprit." Mary said with an evil smile.
"Sherlock?" John whispered hopefully. Mary's smile faded for a moment, as if she thought her boyfriend was idiotic.
"No, Mr. Anderson, we're going to kill his cat." She said sarcastically.
"That's evil; you should never kill a cat." John decided flatly, and Mary just groaned, shaking her head and looking like she wanted to hit something.
"Yes, of course it's Sherlock!" Mary insisted, leaning forward so that they could talk in whispers.
"So what's your plan?" John wondered.
"You won't like it at first, but in the end it's going to be brilliant." Mary admitted.
"Alright, go on then." John insisted, leaning closer in anticipation. This was going to be good, he could just tell, Mary really did have a knack for knowing how to ruin people's lives.
"Well, we both know that Sherlock's about as lonely as if gets, right?" she asked.
"I've never seen him talk to anyone, no. How does that help us?" John wondered. Mary just laughed evil, tapping her toes in excitement.
"Alright, alright, and we think that he's gay, right?" she wondered. John withdrew a little bit, looking at her in surprise.
"Where are you going with this?" he wondered suspiciously, looking around the room to see if anyone else was listening in on their conversation.
"We're going to give him a boyfriend, or at least a secret admirer. And he's going to think that someone likes him, that someone thinks he's as beautiful as he thinks he is, and then we're going to break his heart." Mary decided proudly. John blinked at her, thinking that it was a reasonable enough plan but he couldn't possibly see how it was going to work.
"And how are we going to do that?" he wondered in confusion. Mary dug her phone out of her pocket proudly, pulling something up on it for a moment.
"Well, we're going to need about thirty dollars, and this." She said proudly, holding up her phone so that John could see a brown wig on Amazon, costing thirty dollars. He looked up at her in horror, shaking his head as quickly as possible to show his disinterest.
"No, absolutely not." John decided flatly. Mary's smile dropped for a moment, as if trying to decide if John was actually being serious.
"Come on John, it'll be amazing!" she insisted.
"I am not going to pretend to be in love with Sherlock, that's just...ew." John insisted, throwing up a little bit in his mouth.
"John imagine the look on his face when we tell him the truth. Imagine the tears." Mary insisted.
"That's inhumane, even for us." John decided. Mary groaned, shaking her head in exasperation. John had to admit, he was tempted, but to have to pretend to fall in love with Sherlock Holmes, that was a little bit out of his comfort zone.
"We can do anything we like to him as long as we have his heart, our mystery man can break up with him, we could make his relationship public, out him before he wants to, we can torment him, we can do whatever we want!" Mary insisted in excitement.
"I don't think it's right to mess with someone's emotions like that, I mean, even Sherlock doesn't deserve that." John defended. Mary sighed, stuffing her phone back in her pocket as if she were really done right now. Obviously she was in love with this plan, obviously she had spent a long while thinking about it, but that didn't make it right. John really didn't want to hurt someone else that badly.
"Think about it John, will you? Just remember what he did to you, what he did to the team." Mary insisted.
"Technically it's my fault; I was the one trying to get away with it." John insisted.
"But if Sherlock hadn't been there, you would've succeeded." Mary pointed out. "If it wasn't for Sherlock Holmes, none of this would be happening." It took about two hours of thinking for John to finally come upon a decision, and it wasn't his own brain that was able to convince him, but Sherlock Holmes himself. It took the time of a whole English class with Mary and the walk between classes for John to finally realize that he needed to do something now, because as soon as he walked into that history room he saw Sherlock sitting in the back of the class. Just that look on his face, the look of silent heroics made John want to stick the chalk from the back board into his ears. He saw that Sherlock was looking extra feminine toady as well, with his hair perfectly brushed down to every last curl, his jacket ironed and lint rolled, his dance shoes sitting still under his desk. John growled to himself and took his seat, casting horrible looks over in Sherlock's direction as if trying to catch his eye. He wanted to talk to him, he wanted to tell Sherlock what his tattling had done not only to John but to the team, but Sherlock's nose was buried in a book, and he wasn't looking towards John any time soon. So John got to his feet, deciding that he didn't just want to sit around and wait for Sherlock to catch his eye. If he wanted to confront Sherlock on his faults then he might as well do it himself. John marched over to where Sherlock was seated, no one really noticing the quarrel that was about to go down as they were all taking their seats and mingling among themselves.
"Well I hope you're happy with yourself." John growled, crossing his arms and standing above Sherlock menacingly. Sherlock looked up with a look of pure carelessness, as if bothered that John was getting in the way of his precious reading time.
"Why would I be happy with myself?" Sherlock wondered, looking rather confused, as if he had no idea what had done the day previous.
"You ruined my life! I thought you might want to know, you know, so you can put it down in your scrapbook or something." Joh snapped.
"I don't have a scrapbook." Sherlock defended, looking away from John and going back to his book.
"Look at me when I'm intimidating you." John insisted, wrestling the book out of Sherlock's hands and shutting it without putting the bookmark back in.
"I know what page I was on, that doesn't scare me." Sherlock insisted.
"And what if I read you the ending?" John wondered.
"It's a biography; I think I can guess how it ends." Sherlock said simply.