if_inconvenient | (no subject)

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&cal

(no subject)

Sherlock does not want to be at school today. For once in his life he is something less than indifferent to the occasional stare and snicker, the looks of familiar contempt from those who have been around long enough to get used to him. His mood has been fluctuating wildly between rage and despair since yesterday morning. He knows his self-control is good enough to keep him from reacting to any taunts with violence, but nothing will stop him from wanting to. Which is unsettling in itself.

He has a duty, though, one that cannot be ignored. And if he is going to show up at school again, he may as well do the job properly. He is on time for every class before lunch, polite if not friendly when circumstances call for conversation, crisply dressed—in trousers, thank you; he does not think he could bear the reactions to another skirt. The only signs that anything is wrong are the dark circles under his eyes and the tension that stands in sharp contrast to his usual indolence.

At noon on the dot he is in the cafeteria waiting for Bella Swan.

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Some people might offer a hug. Hugs are nice; Bella is not averse. But she doesn't know what Sherlock thinks of them, and she does know what he thinks of logic, so instead she continues,

"And now that you know about it, you can work on it. That's the comforting part," she adds. "I find it very comforting to know that I do not have to submit helplessly to things about myself that I don't like. I haven't always been successful in eradicating them, but I can at least modify or temper them. And you have far more experience than I do in personality modification." Which, she thinks, is putting it mildly.

"Also true," he says with the first smile he has had all day.

Bella smiles back, pleased with her success.

"Thank you," he says, very earnestly.

"You're welcome," she answers sincerely.

After a pause, she asks,

"Do you think Tony would be willing to talk to me about his experience?"

"He might. I am not sure."

There would be other complications, of course. Sherlock is under no illusions about Tony's ability to keep secrets in the midst of emotional turmoil.

Then again...

"I would ask you to keep the conversation turned away from the circumstances of Obadiah's death, if you did speak with him."

"I can do that." It's a reasonable request. The subject would be particularly upsetting for Tony, especially with its relative newness (moreso than his parents, anyway), and it's not relevant to the information Bella wants.

"Thank you," he repeats.

"Upsetting him unduly would be unkind, counterproductive, and make a bad first impression."

And she doesn't want to make a bad first impression on Sherlock's -

On Sherlock's what, exactly? What is the correct term? Parent? She sets that aside as a question more appropriately asked later. Whatever the relation, Tony is important to Sherlock. That matters.

That matters to Bella.

Sherlock smiles again.

"True on all counts. I knew there was a reason I liked you."

Bella looks pleased again.

"Can you give me his number?" she asks. "I'd like to talk to him after - oops."

Her attempts to extract her cellphone from her pocket have resulted in knocking her sandwich to the floor. She sighs and leans down to pick it up.

Her appetite is still AWOL, anyway.

"Of course."

He hesitates only briefly before adding, "Do you mind if I listen?"

Bella wraps her now-inedible sandwich back up in its wrapper, considering the question. She doesn't much like the idea, but she has no intention of asking Tony anything she would want to conceal from Sherlock, and it's likely Tony would tell him if she did, anyway.

"Why?"

He hesitates again.

Well, in for a penny, in for a pound.

"I have his phone tapped. With his knowledge and permission. I am going to have access to the conversation anyway; I would rather you knew and approved than otherwise."

She flicks him an annoyed look.

"Then you should just have told me that," she points out. "Your question implied a choice on my part, which was misleading."

Sherlock is quiet for a moment.

"I'll accept it for this conversation," she decides, because the only compelling reason not to is a desire to punish Sherlock for his untruthfulness, which is not worth cutting herself off from whatever Tony might give her, "but if I have reason to talk to him in future I will wish to renegotiate. I value my privacy."

"And at some point when I have caught a few hours of sleep I will be happy to engage you in a lengthy discussion of the ethics of eavesdropping."

"I am not a threat to Tony that requires monitoring," she informs him. "I do require that you obtain my consent before you listen in on any of my conversations, and I explicitly do not consent otherwise. If you do it anyway, I will be extremely put out. Is that clear?"

"Perfectly."

There is not a chance he can avoid it, of course. Not a bloody hope in hell. He does not feel like informing her of this just so she can be appropriately annoyed, but no good can come of hiding it either.

"And when I inevitably feel the need to listen in anyway, either for your safety, someone else's, or other urgent reasons that have not yet occurred to me, I will tell you about it afterward."

"If there is time, you will discuss it with me beforehand."

She cannot argue with the fact that emergencies do arise. Time is not always a resource. Sometimes it is necessary to act first and worry about making apologies later.

"And we will discuss this further to be sure that our definitions of acceptable exceptions are the same."

"I do not think they are likely to be. If there is an opportunity to ask or at least to let you know beforehand, of course I will take it, but when I am confronted with a situation where I believe I will need to know something there are very few considerations that will prevent me from finding it out."

"I will need to satisfy myself on your ability to distinguish between needing to know and merely wanting to know."

She is well familiar with the latter and equally aware that it does not constitute the former.

"Needing to know covers things that contribute non-trivially to an ongoing investigation or to someone's safety or happiness, or that concern myself or my family directly. Wanting to know covers every other fact in the world."

"Safety is an acceptable consideration," she tells him. "The rest we will need to discuss more in-depth" - she glances at the clock on the dashboard - "later, because Charlie is already on the fence about my spending time with you, and his deciding that you are a bad influence that causes me to skip class may render further conversation a moot point."

She turns off the air conditioner and pockets her keys.