I'm Down Shouting Names at the Flickering Screen [Open]

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

WHO| Howard and anyone!
WHAT| Howard decides to get serious about the Games.
WHERE| Tribute Lounge
WHEN| Post-Arena
WARNINGS| Swearing.

There's been enough hiding. There's been enough moping. Howard knows that this feeling of motivation is fleeting, and that just means he has to cling to his productivity for as long as he can before it slips back into despair. Before he thinks about how he's going to die again. Before he wonders where Eponine is. Before he thinks about how she left him like his parents did. Before he cries.

So instead of feeling that, he's going to feel something else. He's going to feel entertained. And possibly, he'll learn something along the way; it's about time he forces himself to study. About time he moves past the squeamish feelings of seeing people he knows bleed and scream on the screen and actually starts taking notes on who to ally with and who to stab in the back, or, potentially, in the front.

He sits in a Tribute lounge with snacks, feet propped up on a glass coffee table, starving body covered in comfy clothes his stylists won't let him wear outside, a fluffy blue bathrobe and canvas cargo pants. His hand periodically moves from its path between bowl of snacks and his mouth to grab a cup of melted butter.

He doesn't care how tacky or unhealthy is it. He covers that bowl of popcorn in butter and plops down on the couch, munching away at it as he watches Wesker and Maximus attack each other.

Comments

[alldeduction]

Sherlock only smiles - cold and sharp and cruel. He kicks some of the popcorn out from under his feet.

"I wouldn't have had to. Somehow I doubt you would be flinging popcorn if he was here."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Howard would love nothing more than to turn it back around on Sherlock, to make some cutting observation that would slice him up inside. But Sherlock's cold and composed and so precisely the opposite of how Howard feels, like a person cobbled together out of multiple broken parts wearing his injuries out for display.

He resists the urge to ask how Sherlock knew.

So instead he says "Fuck you. I hope you have to watch him die again next time."

[alldeduction]

The smile disappears instantly. Sherlock's face is complete stone. It isn't the face he gives an annoyance. It's the utter impassiveness that appears on his face when he's facing a threat. When he's face to face with a serial killer, and John's in the firing line.

Sherlock has always been used to jeers about himself. Taunts of pyschopath and serial-killer-in-waiting would sting in a quiet, persistent way, but he could always ignore them.

This was different. This was about John. And he wasn't going to settle back and listen to threats about John, not after everything and certainly not from Howard who John considered a friend. Sherlock immediately crossed the distance between them, right up to Howard as close as he could get without touching him, and with completely cold toneless voice said:

"Say that again."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

No one likes feeling threatened, but Howard hates it more than most, especially when someone's using their height and invading his physical space to do it. He shrinks, takes a step back, before he even realizes that he's doing it. His breathing starts to constrict again.

He wants to repeat it, but he doesn't mean it, not at all. He doesn't want John to die, but in the same way, he doesn't really want John to win and leave one less decent person taking up a spot in the Games. That he knows that's selfish and that that does, essentially, mean he wants John to die is a sort of cognitive dissonance that he can't comb through right now.

His breaths turn into shallow gasps and the trembling in his hand returns, and after a few moments of holding Sherlock's gaze, he retreats back to the couch. He couldn't hold onto that anger long enough to keep saying things he doesn't mean. With the anger goes that motivation he had this morning to set Eponine aside and not feel anything while he studied the Games, and he turns off the TV and stares into space, not caring if Sherlock's still there.

It's all pointless, this studying. Howard should know by now that nothing is ever going to get better, and maybe not coming back after the next Arena will be merciful. There's something tempting about a sleep uninterrupted by nightmares, or waking up crying, or tossing and turning.

He sinks into the robe and pulls it up around his face, even though he knows it's completely useless to try and hide the fact he's crying from Sherlock fucking Holmes.

[alldeduction]

It certainly wasn't the reaction that Sherlock was expecting, and he stood uselessly for a long moment, torn between the boiling anger he still felt and the dawning realization that perhaps Howard had only really said it to get at him.

Perhaps dealing with teenagers as if they were serial killers was a little... not good.

He turned away and turned back to his seat, brushing a few loose pieces of popcorn onto the floor before sitting down. He was not used to introspection but he couldn't help tracing back over the conversation to figure out exactly what he had done to get the reaction that he did.

He was suddenly overcome with the feeling that John would be very not happy with him making Howard cry.

So he only sat, ignored Howard crying across from him, and sulked as he stared at the door and waited for John.

[drpsychosomatic]

John surfaced a few moments later, beginning to cross the floor towards Sherlock when he stopped, noticing Howard crying into his robe. His eyes flicked from Sherlock to the boy and back again, the wheels turning as he fitted the puzzle together.
Bit not good, Sherlock.

He cleared his throat. "Sorry I'm late, I was-" he pointed back towards his suite. "Had some things to do."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Howard glances up and out of the robe when he hears John's voice, then he retreats into hiding again - this time getting up and moving behind the couch, sitting down and out of sight. He doesn't want to talk about it, and he's glad John didn't ask or even overtly pay him mind. He curls up in a ball and breaths slowly into his hands, pausing only to wipe the tears that keep insisting on falling and his nose that keeps leaking.

He tells himself if he really wanted to hide he'd leave entirely, but some possessive, curious part says to at least stay in the room and try to glean something from whatever exchange happens next.

Or, he admits to himself, the truth is he can't motivate himself right now to care enough to go back upstairs.

[alldeduction]

Sherlock had an expression on his face that could only be described as somewhere between the look a puppy gives when it knows it has peed on the carpet, and justified righteous indignation.

He stood as gracefully as he could but still had to kick some of the popcorn out of the way as he stepped over. "Yes. Well. At least you're here now," he said, as if the entire exchange was really John's fault in the first place.

[drpsychosomatic]

"I wasn't really aware I had to make sure I was around constantly to stop you picking fights with teenagers," John told him, an eyebrow raised. It was entirely obvious that Sherlock was going to get a talking to later.

"Are you ready to go?"

[alldeduction]

Sherlock's lips thinned and his eyes darkened as the complete injustice of John claiming that he picked the fight washed over him, to the point that he was angry enough that he didn't even bother to explain himself. He simply glared and then immediately went for the door.

[drpsychosomatic]

John sighed, just about restraining himself enough that the urge to roll his eyes stayed just that, an urge. There was clearly something Sherlock felt he was being unreasonable about, and he didn't want to even try unpicking it in front of an audience.

He followed Sherlock out, making a note to catch up with Howard later and make sure he was alright.

[alldeduction]

Sherlock marched in silence, right to the door and out through it, not bothering to look back to see if John was following him. The oddly cut, slightly iridescent long coat billowed around his legs as he stalked into the capitol, ignoring the lights of the city and making a beeline straight to the park, which was his sole place of refuge, these days.

[drpsychosomatic]

John caught up easily enough this time, wetting his lips and clearing his throat.

"Alright, so what did he do," he asked, resignedly.

[alldeduction]

"Nothing. Obviously. I felt like a fight," Sherlock bit at him, bitterly. He turned his collar up as if against the wind, but it was too warm to really warrant such an action.

[drpsychosomatic]

John did roll his eyes then, shaking his head.
"Oh, I'm sorry, Sherlock, did you want me to defend your honour from the crying teenager hiding behind the sofa? I'm sure whatever he did, your retaliation was completely measured and proportionate."

[alldeduction]

He was expecting a talking to. He knew what he had done was not good, but he didn't expect John to ridicule him. The rage boiled up so badly that he didn't know what to do with it.

"Yes, of course." He snapped. "I was the one who wished you dead and I was the one who wanted to watch you die in his arms." It rushed out of him before he could stop it, an angry hurt wave. "Out of all the people in the world determined to make me the villain, I thought that you--" But he bit it off there, deliberately and forcefully, less for John's sake and more of his own. He turned on his heel and started storming off.

[drpsychosomatic]

John stopped, staring with his mouth open for a beat or two before hurrying to catch up.

"He said what? Sherlock-- Sherlock, stop."

[alldeduction]

Sherlock either couldn't or wouldn't stop, or even slow down, for several minutes, propelled onwards by righteous fury, but eventually he allowed John to catch up and ground to a halt.

It was necessary. He needed to be detached, and he wasn't, and the fact that Howard had gotten under his skin so quickly and effectively was terrifying to him. But having even just a couple minutes to cool down kept him from immediately launching a barrage at John. Instead he just came to a stop, still raging silently. There was no way to tell John an accurate description of what happened. He threw popcorn at me, I threw it back, he dumped his popcorn on me and then I made a perfectly reasonable deduction about his sleeping habits and relationship arrangements and then he said that he wanted me to watch you die again somehow did not feel like something that would make a very good impression either way, and saying it would force Sherlock to admit that he was more shaken about the whole thing than he had told John before. So instead he just stood, stewing in his own rage.

[drpsychosomatic]

"He said he wanted to watch me die?" John asked, bewildered. "Howard's... he's got some problems, but I didn't realise..."

[alldeduction]

"He said he wanted me to watch you die. Again." Sherlock clarified, still angry and still bitter but at least John wasn't accusing him anymore and was actually willing to listen. "He said he hoped for it."

[drpsychosomatic]

He frowned, pursing his lips together. Howard had said that? He knew he had a bit of a vicious streak, but he'd never imagined anything of that level of vitriol being thrown around- wishing someone dead.

"Okay, why?" he asked, cautiously. "He didn't just say that, did he?"

[alldeduction]

Sherlock looked away, then, trying to find a way to put the rest of the situation in a way that wouldn't just end up with John yelling at him, but he was having a hard time engineering a way in which that was possible.

"I commented on his sleeping arrangements." Sherlock said, and then looked at John and added in a hasty rush: "He was throwing popcorn at me, for no reason other than the fact that I was there and when I retaliated he dumped all of it on me. So I observed. I didn't say anything that wasn't true."

[drpsychosomatic]

He sighed. That definitely sounded more like Howard, sadly enough.

"And Howard gave you more than enough rope to hang him with. What on earth did you say to him, to make him think he had to go for threatening you with watching me die?"

[alldeduction]

"That he'd been sleeping outside, for a week. And that his girlfriend has obviously left him."

He had the decency to look at least a little ashamed, at that, and he didn't meet John's eye.

[drpsychosomatic]

"Well, there you go. You went for the jugular and he lashed out," John sighed, scrubbing at his hair. "He's... a kid, Sherlock. A scared kid who doesn't always have the best handle on himself. He didn't mean it."