Nature and Nurture (6/?)
Apr. 24th, 2013 11:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
earlgreytea68Title - Nature and Nurture (6/?)
Author -![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
earlgreytea68
Rating - Teen
Characters - Sherlock, John, Mrs. Hudson
Spoilers - Through "The Reichenbach Fall"
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on.
Summary - The British Government accidentally clones Sherlock Holmes. Which brings a baby to 221B Baker Street.
Author's Notes - Thank you to hobbitts for permission to use the art in the icon, and to everyone on Twitter who helped name the baby, and to everyone on Tumblr was who was supportive and encouraging while I was going crazy over this, and to arctacuda, who's been reading this over for me and making sure it works and I'm not going crazy.
Chapter One - Chapter Two - Chapter Three - Chapter Four - Chapter Five
Oliver wormed his way irreversibly into life at 221B within days. John had liked his life before Oliver’s arrival, he had liked having Sherlock back, he had liked the friendship they had forged for themselves. He worked at the clinic when they were between cases and an extra hand was needed, or otherwise tagged along to crime scenes, or vetted clients with Sherlock, or blogged about their experiences. The consulting detection earned them a steady and reliable income, given the level of fame they’d achieved, and their life together had settled into as much of a routine as it ever achieved.
Oliver should have felt like a spanner thrown into their system, and yet he didn’t. That was helped in great part by the fact that they happened to enter a bit of a lull in business just as Oliver entered their lives, which gave them time to adjust around him without trying to balance the other demands on their time. They went for walks in the park, Sherlock deducing for them, to show off for John’s sake and to educate for Oliver’s sake. John sat with Oliver on his lap and read him the morning newspaper—nothing too upsetting, but he was hoping to encourage Oliver to take an interest in current events beyond crimes; Sherlock sat with Oliver on his lap and read him chemistry textbooks. Oliver seemed to enjoy either activity, although John suspected it had more to do with Oliver’s craving to be near someone, to have someone communicating with him. They ate too much Chinese takeaway, because John couldn’t be bothered to cook, but then that was nothing unusual. Mrs. Hudson made them a great deal of tea, but then that was also nothing unusual.
Mycroft stopped by more often than he usually did, but they tolerated him. Oliver seemed wary of him, and John wondered at the evidence that Sherlockian distrust of Mycroft Holmes was apparently genetically embedded. Unless Oliver connected Mycroft with the first three months of his life. At any rate, Mycroft seemed to genuinely care about Oliver, and inquired after him and watched him raptly. He held him awkwardly the one time John suggested it, and Oliver had turned an appalled what-are-you-thinking look on him, and so John had never repeated the experiment. Sherlock seemed to think Mycroft only cared about Oliver to the extent that he was a scientific curiosity, but John wasn’t so sure; he thought Sherlock had never been entirely fair to Mycroft when it came to Mycroft’s emotions.
Their kitchen was cleaner than it had ever been, more devoid of experiments than John had ever known it to be, because Oliver had become Sherlock’s experiment for the time being, and Sherlock was very proud of himself when Oliver accomplished rolling over and sitting up on his own in short order, and Sherlock moved on to crawling, demonstrating it by crawling himself all over the sitting room floor. Oliver laughed at him, which made Sherlock complain that the baby wasn’t taking the lesson at all seriously, and John wondered how he had been happy before this. Even more amazingly, John wondered that it had never occurred to him that he might want this.
Oliver had been with them a week, a week of relative calm, death-free and toxic-accident-free, and Sherlock had not been bored once.
John sat with his blog open and stared at it.
“You’ve got nothing to say,” Sherlock remarked, from where he was sitting on the floor teaching Oliver chemical equations with the visual aids of the big, bright blocks Mrs. Hudson had bought for the baby.
“Well, I don’t want to talk about Oliver. I don’t want to make him…blog fodder.”
“Why don’t you put on your blog that he has no idea the sun goes ‘round the moon?”
“Sherlock, he doesn’t know what the sun and moon are.”
“You could put that on your blog. ‘Oliver is clever when it comes to rolling over but he is spectacularly ignorant about some things, like what the sun and the moon are.’”
“Are you ever going to get over that?” John asked.
“No,” Sherlock responded, simply, and then, “Oliver, take that blue block out of your mouth, we need it to represent carbon.”
Oliver gave Sherlock a look that did not seem to bode well for Sherlock getting the blue block. Sherlock sighed and seemed to come to the same conclusion, turning to John.
“We need a case,” he said.
“Do you think so?”
“Yes. You need something to blog about. You like to tell people things, and you want to tell everyone about Oliver, and you can’t, so we need to give you something else to tell people.”
“Oh, is that why we’ve been solving crimes all this time? So that I can have something to blog about? How selfless of you.”
Sherlock grinned at him.
Oliver gurgled a bit around the blue block in his mouth, his contribution to the conversation.
Sherlock said, “See, Oliver would enjoy a case as well.”
John hesitated.
Sherlock narrowed his eyes. “You don’t think Oliver should come investigating with us.”
“It isn’t exactly safe, is it?” John admitted, reluctantly, because he hadn’t wanted to have this conversation until it was absolutely necessary.
Sherlock had been reclining casually, but now he sat up, sharp and displeased. “Do you think I would put him in danger?”
“I think you have a different definition of ‘danger’ than most other people,” said John, delicately.
Sherlock pressed his lips together and breathed hard. Oliver, noticing his mood, gave John his what-have-you-done-now look. Then Sherlock stood, stiff and jerky, unlike the fluid smoothness with which he normally moved.
“Sherlock,” said John.
“No. Absolutely. You’re right. It’s a miracle I haven’t baked him in the oven yet.” Sherlock pulled on his coat as he spoke.
“That isn’t what I mean, and you know it. Where are you going?”
“Out.”
“Out where?”
“Somewhere that’s interrogation-free. I’d take Oliver but I’m sure you’re concerned I’d leave him unattended in his pram or sell him to a drug dealer for a hit.”
“Sherlock,” said John, sharply, but Sherlock had already left the room, and John could hear his steps jogging firmly down the staircase. The front door opened and closed. “Dammit,” muttered John, scrubbing a hand over his face, and then looked at Oliver, who looked displeased with him. “That could have gone better,” John allowed.
***
Sherlock did not come back, and Oliver grew progressively unhappier the longer he was deprived of him. John realized that Sherlock really kept Oliver occupied with just his fact of being. John understood that, because Sherlock had always had the same effect on John. John experienced a moment of kinship with Oliver, and Oliver’s mood devolved rapidly into what was clearly a Sherlockian sulk. Nothing John did impressed him. He turned up a disdainful nose when John tried to build towers with the blocks, tried to rip the pages of the chemistry textbook when John tried to read it to him, and absolutely positively refused to eat anything. John walked the floor with him, bouncing him soothingly and trying to hum an approximation of the songs Sherlock played for him on the violin and thinking that it was possible he was going to kill Sherlock when he got back because now they had a baby and he couldn’t disappear like this.
Mrs. Hudson was eventually pulled upstairs by the sound of Oliver’s unrelenting cries.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“He’s Sherlock, is what’s wrong with him,” answered John, grimly.
“Oh, poor thing,” clucked Mrs. Hudson. “He probably has a tummy ache.”
“No.” John shook his head. “He’s fine. He’s sulking. It’s just that he’s a much louder sulker than Sherlock.”
“Here, let me see him,” Mrs. Hudson offered, and John handed Oliver across. “There, there, what are you sulking about, love?”
Oliver cried harder and kicked his feet for good measure.
“I think you were having more success,” remarked Mrs. Hudson, and handed him back over.
Oliver did quiet at being back in John’s arms, and even stopped crying, with a little hiccup. He looked up at John with Sherlock’s gray-green-blue eyes, wet with tears that were running down his face, and John was at the end of his rope and still his heart broke. “Okay,” he said, gently. “Stop. I’m not going to leave you. Okay?”
Oliver, taking sobbing little breaths, closed his little fist into John’s shirt, as if to keep him there, and John brushed a kiss over the damp, dark curls.
“Where’s Sherlock?” asked Mrs. Hudson.
“He is also sulking, only he went out of the house to do it.”
Mrs. Hudson’s eyebrows skidded upward. “He went out to sulk?”
“We had a disagreement,” John admitted.
“An actual one?” and John knew that Mrs. Hudson meant, As opposed to the disagreements you think you have but you don’t really mean because you normally let Sherlock do whatever he likes.
“Well, he went out to sulk,” John pointed out.
“Oh, dear. Well, I wouldn’t worry about it. All couples have domestics after bringing a baby home. New babies are stressful.”
John sighed and didn’t even bother to correct Mrs. Hudson’s assumption, because, frankly, he was raising a baby with the man and they had had a domestic about it. “Thanks,” was all he said. “And thank you for coming up to check on him. He seems calmer now.”
“I think he realized it could be worse and you could have given him to me and then he’d have neither one of you,” said Mrs. Hudson, with wry affection. “You be good for your papa,” she warned Oliver.
Oliver, one hand now clasped around John’s index finger, regarded her suspiciously, as if fearful she was going to snatch him away, and snuggled closer to John.
“Thanks again, Mrs. Hudson. Good night,” said John, and, after she had left, turned his attention back to Oliver, who had stopped crying but still looked miserable, red and tear-stained, lower lip trembling. “I’d never get rid of you,” John told him. “Silly baby. We’re keeping you forever. And your father will eventually come home, it’s just that he’s an enormous git, and you can tell him that I said that when he gets back.”
Oliver sniffled and looked unimpressed, but he did seem much less agitated than he had. Loath to put him down now that he was quiet, John walked around with him, tidying the flat a bit, and eventually Oliver fell asleep against him.
This left John with a dilemma. It was now late enough that Oliver should pretty much sleep through the night, if his lack of dinner didn’t wake him up before then. John could have taken Oliver up to his bed but he was scared to sleep in the same bed at Oliver, scared he’d accidentally roll over onto him and suffocate him, or have a nightmare and lash out and harm him. So no, Oliver had to go in his cot.
But that introduced more problems. The cot was in Sherlock’s room. If John went to bed in his own room, an entire floor away, he was worried he wouldn’t hear Oliver if Oliver cried for him. There was no baby monitor in the flat, because all of the surveillance around their flat interfered too much with the reception. So John found himself sitting on Sherlock’s bed reading.
And the next thing he knew he was jerking awake and Sherlock was crawling into the bed next to him.
At least, he hoped it was Sherlock.
“Sherlock?” he slurred out, trying to rub the sleep out of his eyes, just to make sure. The room was dark. Sherlock must have turned off the light.
“Yes,” he confirmed. “I’m home. Go back to sleep.”
“Where have you been?” John glanced around the room but didn’t see a digital clock anywhere.
“London,” answered Sherlock, laconically.
“Oh, you didn’t hop over to Belgium? Good to know.”
Sherlock chuckled, which John supposed was a good sign. “Go back to sleep,” he said again.
John had no intention of going back to sleep. It was one thing to fall asleep in Sherlock’s bed while he was out. It was another thing to just…sleep in Sherlock’s bed with him. But John reached out and put the book on his chest on the bedside table and slid down on top of the duvet and stared up into the darkness. He was no longer sleepy, he was thoughtful, and he wanted to start a conversation with Sherlock and didn’t know how to.
Sherlock started it for him, rolling toward him. “Why Belgium?” he asked.
John shrugged. “Why not?”
Sherlock took a deep breath. “His life expectancy is between one-third and one-half of our life expectancy.”
“You don’t know that,” John said, because he had hoped that Sherlock had not done research into other mammalian clones, but when did Sherlock ever leave any subject unexhausted?
Sherlock made a skeptical sound, a distressed sound.
“I know that you would never hurt him,” John said, turning his head, even though in the darkness all he could make out was Sherlock’s silhouette. “I didn’t mean to imply that I thought you ever would.”
“You think I’d do it unintentionally.”
John hesitated. “I—”
“You like it, you know.” Sherlock’s voice was sharp, slicing. “You like the danger, you like the rush of adrenaline, if I tried to protect you from all of it, you’d never have it. And I cannot believe that it has managed to escape your notice that, whenever it’s truly dangerous, I exclude you. Or were you too busy being hurt about that whenever it happened to notice that I was protecting you?”
John fell silent, realizing it suddenly. He thought of whenever Sherlock lied about his whereabouts, where he was going, what he was doing, and how frequently those occasions were the riskiest of Sherlock’s life. And John was always furious at being excluded afterward, thinking that, had he been there, things would have gone differently. And Sherlock, all along, had been thinking that, had John been there, John might have been the one in danger.
“Sherlock,” John started, not sure what he was going to say next.
“I have tried to keep you safe. And I am not always successful. So you’re right. The likelihood seems high that I will hurt him no matter what I do.” Sherlock sounded glum and resigned now.
Which John never liked. Sherlock was many things, but the thing John lived most in fear of was Sherlock depressed. He hated the terror of that darkness that sometimes came in and sat heavily on Sherlock’s chest and pulled him beyond John’s reach. “Okay.” John turned fully onto his side to face Sherlock. “Stop it. Is this what you’ve been doing, wandering around London thinking about this? He’d not be better off without you, so get that thought out of your head right now, Sherlock Holmes. He cried all night because you weren’t here. He loves you—”
“He’s used to me now—”
“No, he loves you. And, more importantly, he needs you. He’s you, remember? What would happen to him without you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he’d grow up absolutely normal. Maybe he wouldn’t be…Maybe we should have let him be adopted. I thought he’d like a good crime scene.”
John decided that what he most wanted was to go back in time and stop himself from ever saying anything about the crime scene. “Sherlock—”
“Maybe if you took him to feed ducks every day or something like that, maybe he’d like that just as much.”
“Stop it,” John said, fiercely. “You don’t believe that. You’d find that deadly dull, and he is you, remember?”
“But who am I, John? I spent all day thinking…He has my DNA, so he looks like me, but who’s to say that he’d like a good crime scene, that he’d have an affinity to chemistry? Is that genetically dictated? Given a normal childhood, a loving childhood, given you, who’s to say he wouldn’t be more like…you?”
“If you think,” John said, flatly, “for even a second, in that stupid, stupid brain of yours, that I would ever let you leave me to do this without you—”
“You’re very good at it, John, and you could—”
“I don’t want to do it without you,” John heard himself say, and he knew this was true, that he’d been thinking it from the moment Sherlock had first pulled Oliver into his arms, but he hadn’t yet said it out loud and it seemed a momentous thing to say. He was glad of the dark.
Sherlock was a silent for a moment. “Really?” he asked, dubiously.
“Really. I can’t imagine doing this with anyone but you. I can’t imagine a life I would want any more than the life I have now. I chose you such a long time ago, Sherlock. You have always been my first choice. Oliver doesn’t change that. How could you forget that? After everything we’ve been through, to not respect the fact that I chose you and you know that.”
Another long moment of silence. “I always worry you’ll get bored,” said Sherlock, after a second.
John blinked. “You always worry I’ll get bored?”
“Yes. Of course. I know you think I don’t realize it but I know I’m difficult to live with, I know my life is unconventional, I know half the time you’d like to wring my neck and so far that moment has always passed and you’ve always seemed content again, but eventually you could have enough and get bored with it and want something more…normal. And now there’s a baby, and I didn’t intend to use him as a trap for you, not entirely, but it’s possible that I did, a little bit, and if you want out, if you want out with him—”
“Shut up,” John cut him off, furiously. “Just shut up. You jumped off a building and made me think you were dead for an entire year, and I forgave you, and how you can ever harbor any doubts about my commitment to you in the wake of that is…is…incomprehensible to me. I am here. I am not bored. I am never bored. I worry you’ll grow bored. I worry now we have Oliver, and eventually you’ll grow bored with him and you’ll resent him—”
“How could I ever grow bored with him? You spent the evening with him, he never does anything boring.”
Sherlock’s tone was honest, and John thought that Sherlock believed that, could not imagine a time when he might find the constancy of the baby to be unbearable. Sherlock loved Oliver so ridiculously much, thought John. It was utter madness for Sherlock to suggest for even a second that he could be capable of walking away from Oliver, even for his own good, because Sherlock was clearly over the moon for him.
John didn’t say that, because John thought that Sherlock wasn’t used to thinking of himself as loving people as much as Sherlock loved Oliver, and that pointing that out to him might cause either panic or denial. And John didn’t want to point out the obviousness that Sherlock was prone to boredom, that his attention was held by so few things. John didn’t want to think about it, he didn’t want to worry about it. He was so content, he was so happy. What harm would it do, for a little while longer, to let himself live in that happiness? To find a way to preserve it?
So John just said, “Crime scenes, with the police all around us, crime scenes are as safe as the world ever gets. But I draw the line at stakeouts.”
After a moment, Sherlock giggled. Actually giggled. “What do you think Sally will say?” he asked.
“You’re a terrible person,” John said, relaxing back onto Sherlock’s bed with him.
“You don’t really think so.”
“Oh, no?”
“You chose me.”
John smiled and closed his eyes and settled deeper into the pillow under his head. In another minute, he was going to get up and go to his own bed, but for now he was warm and content, with Sherlock beside him radiating renewed reassurance and Oliver’s breaths comforting from the cot in the corner. “I did,” John agreed. “Idiotic prat.”
Next Chapter
Author -
earlgreytea68Rating - Teen
Characters - Sherlock, John, Mrs. Hudson
Spoilers - Through "The Reichenbach Fall"
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on.
Summary - The British Government accidentally clones Sherlock Holmes. Which brings a baby to 221B Baker Street.
Author's Notes - Thank you to hobbitts for permission to use the art in the icon, and to everyone on Twitter who helped name the baby, and to everyone on Tumblr was who was supportive and encouraging while I was going crazy over this, and to arctacuda, who's been reading this over for me and making sure it works and I'm not going crazy.
Chapter One - Chapter Two - Chapter Three - Chapter Four - Chapter Five
Oliver wormed his way irreversibly into life at 221B within days. John had liked his life before Oliver’s arrival, he had liked having Sherlock back, he had liked the friendship they had forged for themselves. He worked at the clinic when they were between cases and an extra hand was needed, or otherwise tagged along to crime scenes, or vetted clients with Sherlock, or blogged about their experiences. The consulting detection earned them a steady and reliable income, given the level of fame they’d achieved, and their life together had settled into as much of a routine as it ever achieved.
Oliver should have felt like a spanner thrown into their system, and yet he didn’t. That was helped in great part by the fact that they happened to enter a bit of a lull in business just as Oliver entered their lives, which gave them time to adjust around him without trying to balance the other demands on their time. They went for walks in the park, Sherlock deducing for them, to show off for John’s sake and to educate for Oliver’s sake. John sat with Oliver on his lap and read him the morning newspaper—nothing too upsetting, but he was hoping to encourage Oliver to take an interest in current events beyond crimes; Sherlock sat with Oliver on his lap and read him chemistry textbooks. Oliver seemed to enjoy either activity, although John suspected it had more to do with Oliver’s craving to be near someone, to have someone communicating with him. They ate too much Chinese takeaway, because John couldn’t be bothered to cook, but then that was nothing unusual. Mrs. Hudson made them a great deal of tea, but then that was also nothing unusual.
Mycroft stopped by more often than he usually did, but they tolerated him. Oliver seemed wary of him, and John wondered at the evidence that Sherlockian distrust of Mycroft Holmes was apparently genetically embedded. Unless Oliver connected Mycroft with the first three months of his life. At any rate, Mycroft seemed to genuinely care about Oliver, and inquired after him and watched him raptly. He held him awkwardly the one time John suggested it, and Oliver had turned an appalled what-are-you-thinking look on him, and so John had never repeated the experiment. Sherlock seemed to think Mycroft only cared about Oliver to the extent that he was a scientific curiosity, but John wasn’t so sure; he thought Sherlock had never been entirely fair to Mycroft when it came to Mycroft’s emotions.
Their kitchen was cleaner than it had ever been, more devoid of experiments than John had ever known it to be, because Oliver had become Sherlock’s experiment for the time being, and Sherlock was very proud of himself when Oliver accomplished rolling over and sitting up on his own in short order, and Sherlock moved on to crawling, demonstrating it by crawling himself all over the sitting room floor. Oliver laughed at him, which made Sherlock complain that the baby wasn’t taking the lesson at all seriously, and John wondered how he had been happy before this. Even more amazingly, John wondered that it had never occurred to him that he might want this.
Oliver had been with them a week, a week of relative calm, death-free and toxic-accident-free, and Sherlock had not been bored once.
John sat with his blog open and stared at it.
“You’ve got nothing to say,” Sherlock remarked, from where he was sitting on the floor teaching Oliver chemical equations with the visual aids of the big, bright blocks Mrs. Hudson had bought for the baby.
“Well, I don’t want to talk about Oliver. I don’t want to make him…blog fodder.”
“Why don’t you put on your blog that he has no idea the sun goes ‘round the moon?”
“Sherlock, he doesn’t know what the sun and moon are.”
“You could put that on your blog. ‘Oliver is clever when it comes to rolling over but he is spectacularly ignorant about some things, like what the sun and the moon are.’”
“Are you ever going to get over that?” John asked.
“No,” Sherlock responded, simply, and then, “Oliver, take that blue block out of your mouth, we need it to represent carbon.”
Oliver gave Sherlock a look that did not seem to bode well for Sherlock getting the blue block. Sherlock sighed and seemed to come to the same conclusion, turning to John.
“We need a case,” he said.
“Do you think so?”
“Yes. You need something to blog about. You like to tell people things, and you want to tell everyone about Oliver, and you can’t, so we need to give you something else to tell people.”
“Oh, is that why we’ve been solving crimes all this time? So that I can have something to blog about? How selfless of you.”
Sherlock grinned at him.
Oliver gurgled a bit around the blue block in his mouth, his contribution to the conversation.
Sherlock said, “See, Oliver would enjoy a case as well.”
John hesitated.
Sherlock narrowed his eyes. “You don’t think Oliver should come investigating with us.”
“It isn’t exactly safe, is it?” John admitted, reluctantly, because he hadn’t wanted to have this conversation until it was absolutely necessary.
Sherlock had been reclining casually, but now he sat up, sharp and displeased. “Do you think I would put him in danger?”
“I think you have a different definition of ‘danger’ than most other people,” said John, delicately.
Sherlock pressed his lips together and breathed hard. Oliver, noticing his mood, gave John his what-have-you-done-now look. Then Sherlock stood, stiff and jerky, unlike the fluid smoothness with which he normally moved.
“Sherlock,” said John.
“No. Absolutely. You’re right. It’s a miracle I haven’t baked him in the oven yet.” Sherlock pulled on his coat as he spoke.
“That isn’t what I mean, and you know it. Where are you going?”
“Out.”
“Out where?”
“Somewhere that’s interrogation-free. I’d take Oliver but I’m sure you’re concerned I’d leave him unattended in his pram or sell him to a drug dealer for a hit.”
“Sherlock,” said John, sharply, but Sherlock had already left the room, and John could hear his steps jogging firmly down the staircase. The front door opened and closed. “Dammit,” muttered John, scrubbing a hand over his face, and then looked at Oliver, who looked displeased with him. “That could have gone better,” John allowed.
***
Sherlock did not come back, and Oliver grew progressively unhappier the longer he was deprived of him. John realized that Sherlock really kept Oliver occupied with just his fact of being. John understood that, because Sherlock had always had the same effect on John. John experienced a moment of kinship with Oliver, and Oliver’s mood devolved rapidly into what was clearly a Sherlockian sulk. Nothing John did impressed him. He turned up a disdainful nose when John tried to build towers with the blocks, tried to rip the pages of the chemistry textbook when John tried to read it to him, and absolutely positively refused to eat anything. John walked the floor with him, bouncing him soothingly and trying to hum an approximation of the songs Sherlock played for him on the violin and thinking that it was possible he was going to kill Sherlock when he got back because now they had a baby and he couldn’t disappear like this.
Mrs. Hudson was eventually pulled upstairs by the sound of Oliver’s unrelenting cries.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“He’s Sherlock, is what’s wrong with him,” answered John, grimly.
“Oh, poor thing,” clucked Mrs. Hudson. “He probably has a tummy ache.”
“No.” John shook his head. “He’s fine. He’s sulking. It’s just that he’s a much louder sulker than Sherlock.”
“Here, let me see him,” Mrs. Hudson offered, and John handed Oliver across. “There, there, what are you sulking about, love?”
Oliver cried harder and kicked his feet for good measure.
“I think you were having more success,” remarked Mrs. Hudson, and handed him back over.
Oliver did quiet at being back in John’s arms, and even stopped crying, with a little hiccup. He looked up at John with Sherlock’s gray-green-blue eyes, wet with tears that were running down his face, and John was at the end of his rope and still his heart broke. “Okay,” he said, gently. “Stop. I’m not going to leave you. Okay?”
Oliver, taking sobbing little breaths, closed his little fist into John’s shirt, as if to keep him there, and John brushed a kiss over the damp, dark curls.
“Where’s Sherlock?” asked Mrs. Hudson.
“He is also sulking, only he went out of the house to do it.”
Mrs. Hudson’s eyebrows skidded upward. “He went out to sulk?”
“We had a disagreement,” John admitted.
“An actual one?” and John knew that Mrs. Hudson meant, As opposed to the disagreements you think you have but you don’t really mean because you normally let Sherlock do whatever he likes.
“Well, he went out to sulk,” John pointed out.
“Oh, dear. Well, I wouldn’t worry about it. All couples have domestics after bringing a baby home. New babies are stressful.”
John sighed and didn’t even bother to correct Mrs. Hudson’s assumption, because, frankly, he was raising a baby with the man and they had had a domestic about it. “Thanks,” was all he said. “And thank you for coming up to check on him. He seems calmer now.”
“I think he realized it could be worse and you could have given him to me and then he’d have neither one of you,” said Mrs. Hudson, with wry affection. “You be good for your papa,” she warned Oliver.
Oliver, one hand now clasped around John’s index finger, regarded her suspiciously, as if fearful she was going to snatch him away, and snuggled closer to John.
“Thanks again, Mrs. Hudson. Good night,” said John, and, after she had left, turned his attention back to Oliver, who had stopped crying but still looked miserable, red and tear-stained, lower lip trembling. “I’d never get rid of you,” John told him. “Silly baby. We’re keeping you forever. And your father will eventually come home, it’s just that he’s an enormous git, and you can tell him that I said that when he gets back.”
Oliver sniffled and looked unimpressed, but he did seem much less agitated than he had. Loath to put him down now that he was quiet, John walked around with him, tidying the flat a bit, and eventually Oliver fell asleep against him.
This left John with a dilemma. It was now late enough that Oliver should pretty much sleep through the night, if his lack of dinner didn’t wake him up before then. John could have taken Oliver up to his bed but he was scared to sleep in the same bed at Oliver, scared he’d accidentally roll over onto him and suffocate him, or have a nightmare and lash out and harm him. So no, Oliver had to go in his cot.
But that introduced more problems. The cot was in Sherlock’s room. If John went to bed in his own room, an entire floor away, he was worried he wouldn’t hear Oliver if Oliver cried for him. There was no baby monitor in the flat, because all of the surveillance around their flat interfered too much with the reception. So John found himself sitting on Sherlock’s bed reading.
And the next thing he knew he was jerking awake and Sherlock was crawling into the bed next to him.
At least, he hoped it was Sherlock.
“Sherlock?” he slurred out, trying to rub the sleep out of his eyes, just to make sure. The room was dark. Sherlock must have turned off the light.
“Yes,” he confirmed. “I’m home. Go back to sleep.”
“Where have you been?” John glanced around the room but didn’t see a digital clock anywhere.
“London,” answered Sherlock, laconically.
“Oh, you didn’t hop over to Belgium? Good to know.”
Sherlock chuckled, which John supposed was a good sign. “Go back to sleep,” he said again.
John had no intention of going back to sleep. It was one thing to fall asleep in Sherlock’s bed while he was out. It was another thing to just…sleep in Sherlock’s bed with him. But John reached out and put the book on his chest on the bedside table and slid down on top of the duvet and stared up into the darkness. He was no longer sleepy, he was thoughtful, and he wanted to start a conversation with Sherlock and didn’t know how to.
Sherlock started it for him, rolling toward him. “Why Belgium?” he asked.
John shrugged. “Why not?”
Sherlock took a deep breath. “His life expectancy is between one-third and one-half of our life expectancy.”
“You don’t know that,” John said, because he had hoped that Sherlock had not done research into other mammalian clones, but when did Sherlock ever leave any subject unexhausted?
Sherlock made a skeptical sound, a distressed sound.
“I know that you would never hurt him,” John said, turning his head, even though in the darkness all he could make out was Sherlock’s silhouette. “I didn’t mean to imply that I thought you ever would.”
“You think I’d do it unintentionally.”
John hesitated. “I—”
“You like it, you know.” Sherlock’s voice was sharp, slicing. “You like the danger, you like the rush of adrenaline, if I tried to protect you from all of it, you’d never have it. And I cannot believe that it has managed to escape your notice that, whenever it’s truly dangerous, I exclude you. Or were you too busy being hurt about that whenever it happened to notice that I was protecting you?”
John fell silent, realizing it suddenly. He thought of whenever Sherlock lied about his whereabouts, where he was going, what he was doing, and how frequently those occasions were the riskiest of Sherlock’s life. And John was always furious at being excluded afterward, thinking that, had he been there, things would have gone differently. And Sherlock, all along, had been thinking that, had John been there, John might have been the one in danger.
“Sherlock,” John started, not sure what he was going to say next.
“I have tried to keep you safe. And I am not always successful. So you’re right. The likelihood seems high that I will hurt him no matter what I do.” Sherlock sounded glum and resigned now.
Which John never liked. Sherlock was many things, but the thing John lived most in fear of was Sherlock depressed. He hated the terror of that darkness that sometimes came in and sat heavily on Sherlock’s chest and pulled him beyond John’s reach. “Okay.” John turned fully onto his side to face Sherlock. “Stop it. Is this what you’ve been doing, wandering around London thinking about this? He’d not be better off without you, so get that thought out of your head right now, Sherlock Holmes. He cried all night because you weren’t here. He loves you—”
“He’s used to me now—”
“No, he loves you. And, more importantly, he needs you. He’s you, remember? What would happen to him without you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he’d grow up absolutely normal. Maybe he wouldn’t be…Maybe we should have let him be adopted. I thought he’d like a good crime scene.”
John decided that what he most wanted was to go back in time and stop himself from ever saying anything about the crime scene. “Sherlock—”
“Maybe if you took him to feed ducks every day or something like that, maybe he’d like that just as much.”
“Stop it,” John said, fiercely. “You don’t believe that. You’d find that deadly dull, and he is you, remember?”
“But who am I, John? I spent all day thinking…He has my DNA, so he looks like me, but who’s to say that he’d like a good crime scene, that he’d have an affinity to chemistry? Is that genetically dictated? Given a normal childhood, a loving childhood, given you, who’s to say he wouldn’t be more like…you?”
“If you think,” John said, flatly, “for even a second, in that stupid, stupid brain of yours, that I would ever let you leave me to do this without you—”
“You’re very good at it, John, and you could—”
“I don’t want to do it without you,” John heard himself say, and he knew this was true, that he’d been thinking it from the moment Sherlock had first pulled Oliver into his arms, but he hadn’t yet said it out loud and it seemed a momentous thing to say. He was glad of the dark.
Sherlock was a silent for a moment. “Really?” he asked, dubiously.
“Really. I can’t imagine doing this with anyone but you. I can’t imagine a life I would want any more than the life I have now. I chose you such a long time ago, Sherlock. You have always been my first choice. Oliver doesn’t change that. How could you forget that? After everything we’ve been through, to not respect the fact that I chose you and you know that.”
Another long moment of silence. “I always worry you’ll get bored,” said Sherlock, after a second.
John blinked. “You always worry I’ll get bored?”
“Yes. Of course. I know you think I don’t realize it but I know I’m difficult to live with, I know my life is unconventional, I know half the time you’d like to wring my neck and so far that moment has always passed and you’ve always seemed content again, but eventually you could have enough and get bored with it and want something more…normal. And now there’s a baby, and I didn’t intend to use him as a trap for you, not entirely, but it’s possible that I did, a little bit, and if you want out, if you want out with him—”
“Shut up,” John cut him off, furiously. “Just shut up. You jumped off a building and made me think you were dead for an entire year, and I forgave you, and how you can ever harbor any doubts about my commitment to you in the wake of that is…is…incomprehensible to me. I am here. I am not bored. I am never bored. I worry you’ll grow bored. I worry now we have Oliver, and eventually you’ll grow bored with him and you’ll resent him—”
“How could I ever grow bored with him? You spent the evening with him, he never does anything boring.”
Sherlock’s tone was honest, and John thought that Sherlock believed that, could not imagine a time when he might find the constancy of the baby to be unbearable. Sherlock loved Oliver so ridiculously much, thought John. It was utter madness for Sherlock to suggest for even a second that he could be capable of walking away from Oliver, even for his own good, because Sherlock was clearly over the moon for him.
John didn’t say that, because John thought that Sherlock wasn’t used to thinking of himself as loving people as much as Sherlock loved Oliver, and that pointing that out to him might cause either panic or denial. And John didn’t want to point out the obviousness that Sherlock was prone to boredom, that his attention was held by so few things. John didn’t want to think about it, he didn’t want to worry about it. He was so content, he was so happy. What harm would it do, for a little while longer, to let himself live in that happiness? To find a way to preserve it?
So John just said, “Crime scenes, with the police all around us, crime scenes are as safe as the world ever gets. But I draw the line at stakeouts.”
After a moment, Sherlock giggled. Actually giggled. “What do you think Sally will say?” he asked.
“You’re a terrible person,” John said, relaxing back onto Sherlock’s bed with him.
“You don’t really think so.”
“Oh, no?”
“You chose me.”
John smiled and closed his eyes and settled deeper into the pillow under his head. In another minute, he was going to get up and go to his own bed, but for now he was warm and content, with Sherlock beside him radiating renewed reassurance and Oliver’s breaths comforting from the cot in the corner. “I did,” John agreed. “Idiotic prat.”
Next Chapter
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Date: 2013-04-25 04:42 am (UTC)It's adorable how Oliver is so attached to Sherlock.
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Date: 2013-04-25 12:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-25 05:06 am (UTC)Nah. (And anyway, I think neither of them would want to get up to anything while Oliver was in the room.)
Is life expectancy for clones really that short? Because it means Oliver's got, at best, 30-40 years. That's just...frightening, and sad and horrible and no wonder it makes Sherlock ache. Look at where Sherlock was when he was 30, he wasn't even himself by that point, he hadn't even gotten to the good part yet!
(Which, of course, is his life with John.)
(Could you maybe be even more fabulous than usual and tell us in the next chapter that this information is of course incorrect and that Oliver will, in fact, live forever? I will totally bake you brownies or something of equal awesomeness.)
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Date: 2013-04-25 12:46 pm (UTC)From the (brief) research I did into Dolly the sheep, Dolly lived about a third as long as a regular sheep, and the Internet tells me that's typical for clones, that their lifespan is much shorter than the average. There's some debate that that has to do with the fact that they're clones of creatures who have already lived half of their lives, so they start life middle-aged in some weird way, or something. I figured that Sherlock would surely have stumbled upon the same research as I did in the course of looking into cloning. And you're right, that Sherlock took at least thirty years to figure out even the most basic things about his life, so he's horrified at how short a period of time that is for Oliver to have. It might be driving his insistence that they give Oliver exactly what he needs immediately, so he won't waste time being confused about himself.
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Date: 2013-04-25 05:27 am (UTC)I like that Mycroft is trying and that John knows that he is trying. Baby steps.
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Date: 2013-04-25 12:47 pm (UTC)And yes, eventually they will get to the Met. They are being very slow!
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Date: 2013-04-25 12:33 pm (UTC)”“How could I ever grow bored with him? You spent the evening with him, he never does anything boring.”
Oh yes, he’s a Sherlock clone alright!!
My favourite bit in this chapter, though (apart from Sherlock coming back and getting into bed with John – where he belongs) was the image of Oliver and Mycroft . . .
He held him awkwardly the one time John suggested it, and Oliver had turned an appalled what-are-you-thinking look on him, and so John had never repeated the experiment.”
Definitely a Sherlock clone!
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Date: 2013-04-25 01:09 pm (UTC)And ha! Poor Mycroft. He really is trying with Oliver, he's just not a baby person!
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Date: 2013-04-25 12:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-25 01:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-25 03:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-25 11:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-25 01:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-25 01:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-25 01:03 pm (UTC)It then shattered again at Sherlock's pronouncment that clones only live half as long. No parent should outlive their child. :'(
Ollie has to learn, and I'm sure he'll grab onto this quickly, that Mrs. Hudson is the best surrogate Grannie ever and she'll be giving him biscuits and sweets all the time (once he's old enough for them).
Ha, John. You are SSSOOO not getting out of that bed until morning has risen and baby Ollie demands some breakfast. :D
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Date: 2013-04-25 01:12 pm (UTC)Oh, yes, once Ollie is old enough to appreciate biscuits and sweets, Mrs. Hudson is going to be his *favorite.* ;-)
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Date: 2013-04-25 04:09 pm (UTC)This story is just terrific and happy-making and warm, even when the boys are fighting.
And I am very much enjoying the different romantic trajectories of this story and Bang and Clatter. They are both inevitable in an extremely satisfying way, but so different in tone and plot.
Thank you for writing!!
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Date: 2013-04-25 11:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-25 04:42 pm (UTC)(Of course, John is just as clueless about his own feelings... :D)
I think my favorite mental image from this chapter is this:
Sherlock moved on to crawling, demonstrating it by crawling himself all over the sitting room floor. Oliver laughed at him, which made Sherlock complain that the baby wasn’t taking the lesson at all seriously
I can just SEE it!
*going back to read the chapter for the 4th time*
ETA: THIS clone has very good genes and will live to a nice satisfactory age. Maybe not to 110, but certainly to 70 or 80. I have spoken.
(Right? Right?)
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Date: 2013-04-25 11:59 pm (UTC)And yeah, then John has his own blind spots. They suit each other, don't they?
Hee! You have spoken! ;-)
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Date: 2013-04-26 12:22 am (UTC)That would definitely explain a lot of the attitude. *nods*
And they do suit each other, yep!
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Date: 2013-04-26 05:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-26 08:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-27 01:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-25 07:46 pm (UTC)I'm shattered to realize that Ollie may only have 30 years or so but delighted he'll be cherished and loved by such awesome dads and extended family.
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Date: 2013-04-26 12:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-25 10:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-26 12:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-25 10:52 pm (UTC)I am completely delighted you have already written this baby Oliver because it is delightful and now I don't have to write it because this fits the bill perfectly.
I do have a horrific vision of Mycroft keeping a room full of lactating women hostage and plugged into a bunch of Medela Pumps...but I wouldn't put that past Mycroft, not at all.
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Date: 2013-04-26 12:06 am (UTC)And I envisioned Mycroft as being pretty passive in the cloning operation. Like, he knew of it, but I don't think he was actively involved in how it was functioning...until he noticed that the DNA used in Baby #523 was listed as belonging to Sherlock Holmes.
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Date: 2013-04-26 02:19 am (UTC)[...]
he was sitting on the floor teaching Oliver chemical equations with the visual aids of the big, bright blocks Mrs. Hudson had bought for the baby.
I love that, it's so adorable. John is not more sensible than Sherlock, after all. :D I especially love nothing too upsetting, as if it would make a difference.
he thought Sherlock had never been entirely fair to Mycroft when it came to Mycroft’s emotions.
Poor Mycroft. He's kind of the baby's uncle and brother, and I suppose that, on top of that, he sees the baby who Sherlock was once in Oliver, which Sherlock and John don't, of course. I guess he loved his baby brother about thirty years ago, and finding him again now, in a way, must be a little overwhelming for him. And Oliver rejects him. Ouch. Earlgreytea, this man needs a bit of Mystrade! :D
Oliver had been with them a week, a week of relative calm, death-free and toxic-accident-free, and Sherlock had not been bored once.
Yes, this sentence deserves its own paragraph.
“Are you ever going to get over that?” John asked.
“No,” Sherlock responded, simply
*giggles* Probably not, indeed!
John realized that Sherlock really kept Oliver occupied with just his fact of being. John understood that, because Sherlock had always had the same effect on John.
So, Oliver is like Sherlock and also like John, in some ways. It's perfect!
it was possible he was going to kill Sherlock when he got back because now they had a baby and he couldn’t disappear like this.
Yep. Not a couple.
He looked up at John with Sherlock’s gray-green-blue eyes, wet with tears that were running down his face, and John was at the end of his rope and still his heart broke. “Okay,” he said, gently. “Stop. I’m not going to leave you. Okay?”
Oliver, taking sobbing little breaths, closed his little fist into John’s shirt, as if to keep him there, and John brushed a kiss over the damp, dark curls.
Awww. So, so sweet. I can imagine the way John must feel seeing so much emotion and innocence in Sherlock's eyes. I wonder if he ever saw the real Sherlock's eyes show so much. (The reunion scene, maybe?) And Oliver clutching John's shirt to prevent John from abandoning him... Poor baby, what with his traumatic past and the fact that he might have inherited Sherlock's insecurity... No wonder John's heart breaks.
http://ashi323.tumblr.com/post/38230436313/every-thing-is-okay
"I’d never get rid of you,” John told him. “Silly baby. We’re keeping you forever."
I love that because John implies that Sherlock and him will be together for ever. :D
There was no baby monitor in the flat, because all of the surveillance around their flat interfered too much with the reception.
Well, at least it would keep Mycroft's minions busy: "This is a red alert! It seems the baby needs a new nappy. I repeat, the baby needs a new nappy. Over."
So John found himself sitting on Sherlock’s bed reading.
*grins inwardly and rubs her hands with anticipation*
And the next thing he knew he was jerking awake and Sherlock was crawling into the bed next to him.
YES! Also, I suppose he's not naked. *sighs*
At least, he hoped it was Sherlock.
Yes, he must hope so at so many levels. :D
Sherlock took a deep breath. “His life expectancy is between one-third and one-half of our life expectancy.”
But Oliver is special, he showed it already, so the standard life expectancy doesn't imply to him, does it? *is a bit worried* *wants a long and happy life for Oliver*
even though in the darkness all he could make out was Sherlock’s silhouette.
Speaking of making out... *sniggers shamelessly* Ahem. Sorry.
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Date: 2013-04-26 02:20 am (UTC)But, you idiot, Oliver is like John, he loves you and needs you and is happier with you!
Maybe he’d grow up absolutely normal. Maybe he wouldn’t be…
So much pain hidden behind these suspension points!
Given a normal childhood, a loving childhood, given you, who’s to say he wouldn’t be more like…you?
Such a great praise and such a token of trust.
He was glad of the dark.
Me too! Now, John, while you're at it, tell him everything you feel! ;-)
I chose you such a long time ago, Sherlock. You have always been my first choice.
Wow. If this is not a declaration of love I don't know what a declaration of love is.
And now there’s a baby, and I didn’t intend to use him as a trap for you, not entirely, but it’s possible that I did, a little bit, and if you want out, if you want out with him—”
In the same sentence he admits that he needs John, that he might have used Oliver to keep him and that he's ready to sacrifice himself and to give John something he loves deeply. Again, wow.
John didn’t say that, because John thought that Sherlock wasn’t used to thinking of himself as loving people as much as Sherlock loved Oliver, and that pointing that out to him might cause either panic or denial.
Are we allowed to replace Oliver with John here? :-)
And John didn’t want to point out the obviousness that Sherlock was prone to boredom, that his attention was held by so few things. John didn’t want to think about it, he didn’t want to worry about it. He was so content, he was so happy. What harm would it do, for a little while longer, to let himself live in that happiness? To find a way to preserve it?
A bit angsty. John probably thinks about himself as much as about Oliver when he's afraid of Sherlock's tendency to get tired of things, and it's going to worry him until, I suppose, the Final Epiphany. :D Don't worry, John, the author believes in happy endings!
“What do you think Sally will say?” he asked.
And Anderson!
“You’re a terrible person,” John said, relaxing back onto Sherlock’s bed with him.
Wait, it deserves italics. John relaxes onto Sherlock’s bed. With him. Big step!
In another minute, he was going to get up and go to his own bed
No no no no no. Let me write the first sentence of the next chapter for you. "And the next thing he knew he was jerking awake and Sherlock was snuggled up against him and he had never felt so well." There. :D
Terrific chapter. I love the conversation in the dark. It allows Sherlock and John to open their hearts to each other and to tell things they're probably not ready to tell in broad daylight. I also love that the conversation is as much about what binds them together as about what binds them to Oliver. I love this story more and more and I loved it so much already. :-)
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Date: 2013-04-26 05:28 pm (UTC)Yes, Sherlock has a terribly painful childhood, poor thing. We're going to be learning more about it, I promise!
John and Sherlock say SO MUCH to each other, say SO MUCH MORE than "I love you," and yet never recognize it.
Got to introduce some angst there! What would a fic be without it? ;-)
I do think it's easier for them to have conversations like that in the dark. They never talk about such things by broad daylight! :-)
Glad you're enjoying!
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Date: 2013-04-26 05:26 pm (UTC)I think it's nice to think that Oliver may genetically be all Sherlock, but he really is turning out to be a nice blend of Sherlock and John.
It's true, Oliver's tears are doubly difficult for John, because they come from a baby but they also come from Sherlock's eyes, and John can't imagine Sherlock ever being so sad, he couldn't bear it.
Thanks for the link to that fanart! It was adorable!
John always thinks in terms of forever. He's just so stubborn in not acknowledging it!
That would definitely be Mycroft's idea of helping out with the baby!
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Date: 2013-04-27 04:43 am (UTC)So.........if the sample was taken and frozen when Sherlock was a teenager doing experiments on his own samples, then I think we're doing well (only if my friend didn't lie to me, of course)
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Date: 2013-04-28 05:31 am (UTC)