Nature and Nurture (32/?)
Nov. 6th, 2013 10:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
earlgreytea68Title - Nature and Nurture (32/?)
Author -![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
earlgreytea68
Rating - Adult
Characters - Sherlock, John
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, and to flawedamythyst, who took one for the team and made sure that my British sounded, well, a bit more British.
Chapter One - Chapter Two - Chapter Three - Chapter Four - Chapter Five - Chapter Six - Chapter Seven - Chapter Eight - Chapter Nine - Chapter Ten - Chapter Eleven - Chapter Twelve - Chapter Thirteen - Chapter Fourteen - Chapter Fifteen - Chapter Sixteen - Chapter Seventeen - Chapter Eighteen - Chapter Nineteen - Chapter Twenty - Chapter Twenty-One - Chapter Twenty-Two - Chapter Twenty-Three - Chapter Twenty-Four - Chapter Twenty-Five - Chapter Twenty-Six - Chapter Twenty-Seven - Chapter Twenty-Eight - Chapter Twenty-Nine - Chapter Thirty - Chapter Thirty-One
Oliver fell asleep early, worn out from the emotional ordeal of the doctor’s appointment. Sherlock sat at the desk with various blood-stained pieces of cloth laid out all around him and typed up observations and gradually became aware of John leaning against the kitchen doorframe, watching him, his arms and ankles casually crossed.
It was the time of the night when John normally made them tea, but he didn’t seem to be about to offer that. Sherlock lifted his eyebrows at him and said, “What?”
John had a smile playing about his lips, small and a bit smug, and Sherlock wasn’t sure what to make of it. “You think you know,” John said. “But you don’t.”
“I don’t know what?” asked Sherlock, annoyed, because he hated when John spoke in incoherent riddles like that.
John pushed himself off of the doorframe and walked over to the desk slowly. “You think you know how much I love you.” John drew to a halt in front of him, and Sherlock looked up at him in confusion. “But you have no idea.”
“John—” Sherlock began, shifting in the chair to face him.
“No. Quiet.” John suddenly sank to his knees, putting a hand on either arm of Sherlock’s chair. “You have no idea how much I love you. You know that I love you, I know that you know that. You think it’s something I fell into. You think you’re so very lucky that you somehow tricked me into thinking that this was what I wanted. You’re not sure how you accomplished it. So I’ll tell you: There was no trick, Sherlock. This isn’t a magic show, you and I. You’re thinking that someday I’ll come to my senses and realize what I’ve done, realize that I could have so much more than you, someone so much better than you, someone normal who wouldn’t accidentally set my socks on fire, who wouldn’t fill the cutlery drawer with caterpillars, who wouldn’t drive me mad and make me want to tear my hair out, and, oh, my God, Sherlock, I need you to understand that that is not true. You haven’t hit me over the head, this isn’t some kind of post-traumatic stress disorder, I haven’t lost my mind. I love you. I love you more than I thought it was possible to love another human being. I didn’t know you could meet a person, a stranger, and have him fill in everything inside of you that was empty. I thought being alive meant you just learned how to live with that emptiness. I didn’t know it was possible to love the way I love you. That’s why it took me so long to realize it. This isn’t what people write songs about, because they couldn’t, because they couldn’t possibly put into words what love is, because it’s this, and it’s…everything. I love you. And you don’t know how much. Because I love you so much that I’m wondering how I tricked you into thinking that I was what you wanted, I love you so much that I’m sure that someday you’ll come to your senses and realize what you’ve done, realize that you could have so much more than me, someone so much better than me.”
Sherlock stared at him. He thought that he should say something but he was oddly unable to breathe. There was not enough space in his chest, as if his ribcage had compressed around his lungs. If he was about to die, he could not imagine a better moment to go out on.
“So stop, love,” John whispered, and leaned forward and fluttered a kiss over Sherlock’s right eye, dragged his mouth in breaths of kisses over to Sherlock’s left eye. “Stop.” He kissed over one cheekbone, and then the other. “Stop ever thinking that you’ll take whatever scraps I’ll give you.” John’s lips grazed along Sherlock’s left ear, down his jaw. “Because I’m giving you everything.” John finally reached his mouth. “Everything,” he breathed out, achingly.
Sherlock closed his hands into John’s hair and reached out to pull him into a kiss, and Sherlock would have made it hot and hungry and desperate, but John slowed it down, pulling back the slightest bit from the edge where Sherlock was sitting. He kissed, leisurely and adoring, like he had the rest of his life to finish the kiss, as his fingers undid Sherlock’s shirt with the same excruciating slowness, inching it out of his way until he could finally spread his hands along Sherlock’s chest.
And then he stopped kissing him. He leaned his forehead against Sherlock’s and breathed.
“John,” Sherlock started, his voice rough.
“Shh.” John kissed under his jaw, and then down his throat, and then down his chest, nudging the shirt aside as he went, and Sherlock felt oddly limp and boneless, settling deeper into the chair and leaning his head back and closing his eyes and feeling the effort of his breaths. And John loved him. How John loved him. When had that happened? How had that happened? Sherlock felt confused and discombobulated and John felt utterly fantastic, tugging Sherlock’s shirt the rest of the way out of his trousers and dragging his lips across Sherlock’s abdomen.
And then John pulled back.
Sherlock, finally concluding that John wasn’t going to resume his ministrations, managed to lift his head up and look blearily down at him, crouched between his knees, his hair a spiky mess and his eyes impossibly dark and impossibly blue.
“Come to bed with me,” John said, almost a question, almost uncertain, as if he was unsure Sherlock would.
Sherlock nodded, and John stood and reached out a hand, which was silly, because Sherlock could stand up all on his own, but Sherlock took the hand and let John lead them to the bedroom, because it seemed somehow important for John to do this.
They undressed in the bedroom, in a silence that Sherlock didn’t want to breach. He felt like John was the one who ought to break it.
John stood in front of him and looked at him closely, and Sherlock looked steadily back at him, waiting to see what he was going to say.
What John said was, “One day—and I don’t know when this day happened, just that it did—one day I fell to pieces at your feet. And you put me back together again.”
Sherlock blinked at him, because he didn’t know what to say to that.
John took a step closer to him, and then another step, which had the effect of backing Sherlock right up to the bed and then onto the bed, and John said, “I am going to absolutely take you apart.”
Which sounded like an excellent idea to Sherlock.
And then John was on top of him. And he whispered, “And then I’ll put you back together.”
And Sherlock nodded.
And the thing was that Sherlock always thought that John dissolved him into pieces. But John seemed very intent that evening. Maybe it was that John was paying so much attention, was focusing so hard, but Sherlock felt that every touch of his mouth to his skin was drowning in love, that every sweep of his fingertips was suffocating in adoration, and Sherlock felt over-sensitized to all of it, like he couldn’t bear it, like he was filled to the brim with emotion. And he always felt that way when it came to John, had been feeling that way for so long that he had forgotten how painful it had been in the early days, to love him in such an all-consuming way and to have nowhere to direct it, to have no idea what to do with it, to just have it flopping around inside of him, clamoring to get out of him. Now it could get out, when he was filled to the brim, and he knew he was speaking, could hear his voice, and had no idea what he was saying, if it made any sense, and found he didn’t care, because what mattered was why he was talking, and he knew John knew that. And he was damp with sweat and desperate with desire and drunk with love, high with it, it swirled through him, as sharp and sluggish as any drug he’d ever tried, and his cells ached, wanted, craved, and when he climaxed it was no rush of pleasure but a slow build that crashed over him and dragged him inexorably under until he had no idea where he ended and the rest of the universe started.
“Me, too, love,” John murmured over him, dotting kisses onto his fevered face. “Me, too. All of it.”
And Sherlock suddenly understood what John had meant when he’d said that he would take him apart. Because Sherlock find himself clambering to get as tangled into John as he could get, wanting to get closer, shuddering with the pain of not being able to just live in John, and he heard himself say, heard the barely suppressed sob in the words, “You can’t ever leave me. Please. Never. I don’t know what I would…”
“Shh,” John said, and let him unravel.
And Sherlock understood what John had meant when he’d said he’d put him back together again.
Sherlock, spent and exhausted but more deeply content than he could ever remember being, ever, lay against John, and said, almost conversationally, as if the fact of it was something to be examined in a scientific manner, “There is nothing you could do, ever, that I wouldn’t forgive.”
“When you love,” responded John, his fingers tracing a pattern up Sherlock’s shoulder, “you love.”
“What would be the point of doing it halfway?” asked Sherlock, genuinely perplexed by the idea.
John nosed his way behind Sherlock’s ear and then rested there, breathing. “You’re amazing,” he said.
Sherlock smiled. And then, after a second, started giggling.
“What?” asked John, confused, giving him room to roll about in mirth.
Sherlock turned to face him, grinning. “Do you know that you do that out loud?”
John laughed. “Sorry,” he said. “I’ll stop.”
“No, no,” Sherlock told him, gravely. “It’s fine.”
***
Time passed. And Oliver grew. He learned how to crawl, and caused John to panic over his newfound mobility and install gates in every doorway of the house, which made Sherlock complain that Oliver had learned a new talent and John had punished him by putting him in prison. John stood fast on the gates, because they only made sense, but he thought of Sherlock’s words every time he came across Oliver sitting forlornly by a gate, glaring at him and clearly planning his escape. He was Sherlock’s clone, John expected him to learn how to open the gate locks any minute now. Which was why he agreed that Sherlock could give him lessons in ascending and descending staircases. Supervised lessons. And as these lessons consisted mainly of Sherlock himself crawling up and down the stairs while Oliver sat in John’s arms and stared at him, John thought they were quite brilliant.
Oliver also started talking a bit more properly. His fondness for dead died off, replaced by a zealous affection for the word no. Yes was beyond him, but no was beloved. He said no constantly: to most questions he was asked but also just to the things that John and Sherlock did. John would choose a jumper for the day and walk into the sitting room and Oliver would look up from his skull and his blanket and say, “No,” and John would find himself in the bedroom choosing a different jumper. Sherlock thought this was hilarious until the day Sherlock set forth a long hypothesis about his current experiment that Oliver listened to closely, gnawing on his pirate flag teething ring, and then responded to with a thoughtful, “No.”
Oliver’s third word after no was please, but Oliver only used that to manipulate. He would point to whatever he wanted and bat his long eyelashes and say, “Please?” He didn’t use this very often on Sherlock, because Sherlock basically always gave Oliver everything he wanted, immediately, with no further pleading necessary. He used it on John, and normally to very great effect. John was always reminded of Sherlock when Oliver did this, of Sherlock turning on a pout because he thought it would get results. John had always been very good at resisting Sherlock, but Oliver always added in a bit of a lip tremble and some shimmering tears and, sod it all, the kid was very good. John thought he really needed to steel himself or Oliver was going to run roughshod and be enormously spoiled.
Who the hell was he kidding? thought John one night, sitting by the fire and pretending to read a novel but secretly watching Oliver with Sherlock, while Sherlock held up a variety of objects and Oliver signaled approval or disapproval and Sherlock made notes for his spreadsheet of Oliver’s Preferred Toys. Oliver, John thought, was already the most spoiled baby in Great Britain.
Oliver’s fourth word was Papa. John thought Oliver had probably learned it because he thought it would be useful for further manipulation, but it didn’t matter. The truth was that, the day Oliver first said it to him, John had walked in to fetch him from his cot and Oliver’s face had lit up and he had said, “Papa,” as if the sight of him was the best gift Oliver had ever been given, and John might have actually got teary-eyed. He had always assumed that Sherlock was Oliver’s favorite, his preferred parent. Certainly Oliver seemed to watch Sherlock’s every move, hang on his every word. John had not expected to be the first named parent. John had expected Papa to be way down on Oliver’s list of necessary words. And maybe Oliver had moved it up his queue for manipulative purposes, but John found he didn’t care.
John thought Sherlock might be sensitive about being the first named parent. John said something like, “He probably learned ‘Papa’ first because he plans to exploit it the way you’ve learned to exploit ‘John.’”
Sherlock had looked at him and said, “Not quite that way, I hope.”
“No. But, you know. The general idea.”
“John,” Sherlock had said, turning away in that manner he had when he’d lost interest in something. “I long ago knew you would be his favorite. Why would you think you wouldn’t be his favorite, when you’re mine?”
Oliver’s fifth word was Dada, said complainingly one day when Sherlock had been unforgivably distracted by something that wasn’t Oliver, and Sherlock looked up in absolute shock, and John had never been so grateful to be allowed to witness something as he was the look on Sherlock’s face in that moment. Oliver was looking at him, holding out a fake pair of forceps that Molly had given him, looking for all the world like a surgeon who had asked for assistance and not got it quickly enough, and Sherlock abandoned the experiment he’d been wrapped up in and smothered Oliver in kisses, which had made Oliver squawk in indignation before giggling, forceps completely forgotten.
Sometimes at night John couldn’t sleep. He had never been an especially good sleeper, too many years of messing with his schedule. He slept far more than the other inhabitants of his flat—even the baby one—but that wasn’t saying much, and he suspected that life with them had thrown him off even more. He tried to keep to a sleep schedule, but there were some nights when he went to bed while Sherlock was playing the violin to Oliver, and he would lay there and listen to them in the other room and definitely not sleep. Oliver would talk in the spaces between music, the few words he knew interspersed with the other sounds he was working into his repertoire, and Sherlock would respond, and John felt like they were having deep and serious discussions about the merits of Mozart versus Wagner, and in those moments John could not believe how astonishingly well everything about his life worked.
It had its annoying aspects, of course. Sherlock was never going to be especially helpful when it came to keeping their kitchen stocked with items necessary to human sustenance, and that was not going to change now that there was a baby or now that they were shagging. And yes, sometimes John felt a bit like the hired help, every so often, when Sherlock was in an ordering-around mood and Oliver had been fussy and John was just snappish. But then Sherlock would do something, some amazing Sherlockian thing. Never anything simple like making John a cup of tea or offering to run to the shops, of course, but things that were somehow better than that. John might come home to a new novel sitting on his chair, and Sherlock would say something derogatory about how dull it looked but John would know that Sherlock had deliberately gone out and bought him that. Or Sherlock would take a break from his experiment or his case or his sulk or whatever it was and sit Oliver on his lap and teach him out of John’s old textbook on communicable diseases, which would keep Oliver out of John’s hair and quiet long enough for John to feel less in demand. Once, amazingly, John came home to the kitchen completely cleared of body parts. Sherlock had mumbled something about needing to make space for new body parts, but John had kissed him soundly, knowing that it had been a peace offering for a disagreement about Sherlock forgetting to drain the baby’s bath water out of the bath.
Mycroft dropped by more frequently than Sherlock would have liked, but John generally thought he was quite inoffensive and Oliver seemed to be getting cautiously used to him (buoyed by the fact that Mycroft often brought him newspapers from work, having discovered that Oliver’s favorite occupation was the ripping of newspapers; John thought it possible theirs was the only baby on the planet who routinely crumpled up Le Monde, the New York Times, the Daily Mail, and several dailies from the Middle East, China, and Japan). Harry came out of rehab and continued to appear to be doing well. She never visited Baker Street, because she claimed that Sherlock made her nervous, so John took Oliver to meet her at neutral locations. She always seemed fine, and Sherlock never made any comments one way or the other, so John decided to believe that she was fine, with no indications otherwise. She doted on Oliver, but Oliver seemed reserved with her. There were a few select people with whom Oliver was effusively taken, and they tended to be the same select people with whom Sherlock was taken: Mrs. Hudson, Molly, even Lestrade. John wasn’t sure if this was some sort of genetic predisposition or if Oliver was picking up on Sherlock’s cues about these particular people, responding well to them because he knew his father relaxed in their presence, trusted them. Outside of that inner circle, Oliver was cautious, more inclined to watch than participate. John realized that Sherlock’s wariness with the general public was not entirely the result of a painful childhood, as Oliver seemed to share it and John could not imagine Oliver feeling any more secure, any more showered with love. There was an essential shyness, John thought, that would have made Sherlock seem standoffish if you were looking at it the wrong way, and Sherlock’s parents clearly had been. Oliver was simply slow to warm to people, as if he couldn’t immediately see the point much of the time, and he was that way with Harry. Not that Harry seemed to notice, because Harry thought Oliver was absolutely brilliant. John always wanted to point out that Oliver was Sherlock and Harry was oddly terrified of Sherlock, but he bit his tongue on that point.
Mrs. Hudson continued to dote on Oliver, which was useful, as they left him behind whenever crime investigation seemed like it might veer into danger. They took him whenever they were going to a crime scene or to a morgue or to other less exciting places. Oliver loved all of it. Sometimes Molly got pressed into emergency baby-sitting when they went off somewhere they couldn’t take him, and Molly said he was always an angel because she would just sit and show him internal organs and explain what disease had affected them and he always listened with wide-eyed interest and chewed on whatever toy had been brought along.
Sherlock would also leave Oliver with Lestrade, if it made sense, but he refused to leave him with anyone else from Scotland Yard, and John didn’t blame him, because it wasn’t as if the rest of Scotland Yard had ever proven themselves to care overly much about the things that Sherlock cared about. Donovan and Anderson were both tolerant of Oliver but in the same vein that they had eventually grown tolerant of John, as if it wasn’t worth the argument anymore and they’d go along with it by grumbling their disapproval constantly. Oliver ignored them with Sherlockian alacrity, although John knew Sherlockian alacrity well enough by now to know that it was possible Oliver was actually very hurt underneath it all, and John always made sure to be extra-doting of Oliver after a brush with Donovan or Anderson.
Yes, he was spoiling the baby, and he knew he was, but he’d decided the baby deserved a bit of spoiling.
Some of their clients cooed at him. Oliver always responded by gazing at them impassively and Sherlock would always say, bluntly, “Don’t talk to him like that, he’s not an idiot.” More of the clients seemed a bit uncertain of him, but, since Oliver was always rapt when there was a client telling a story, they always soon came to like him, and eventually John knew that Oliver simply became a fixture, part of their public persona. They kept details about him to a minimum, as Sherlock had always requested, but they couldn’t help that people knew there was a baby, and John rather liked that people seemed to approve of this baby, since Oliver was a pretty perfect baby.
Who refused to walk. Sherlock seemed to think he should have taken his first steps, although Sherlock was always anxious to hit the next milestone once any milestone had been achieved. Oliver stood a lot, but showed absolutely no inclination to take any steps anywhere, and the more Sherlock pestered him about it, the more Oliver seemed to become entrenched in the commitment to spend the rest of his life crawling everywhere.
“Aren’t you bothered by it?” Sherlock complained on a rainy evening in late November.
“Why should it bother me? It’s not like he’s eleven years old and being lazy or something, Sherlock. He’s a baby. He’ll walk when he’s ready.”
“He’s doing it as a personal slight,” said Sherlock, and frowned at Oliver.
Oliver looked his best impression of innocent and said, “Dada.”
“Don’t even try that with me,” Sherlock told him, and collapsed backward onto the sofa.
John ignored him, sliding from his chair to the floor so he could sit next to Oliver. “Daddy’s going to sulk now because you’re not mobile enough for him. But when you are more mobile, he’ll do nothing but complain at how you’re going to get into everything.”
“No, I won’t,” said Sherlock, voice muffled against the couch cushions.
Oliver, delighted to have a fellow occupant of the floor, beamed, “Papa,” and then crawled away at the warp speed he had perfected, glancing over his shoulder to make sure John was following.
So John followed, chasing after him good-naturedly, and Oliver laughed and crawled between the legs of the desk with a lot more ease than John could. John backed up and intercepted him on his way out from under the desk, which sent Oliver into convulsions of pleasure at John’s cleverness.
“You’re just encouraging him,” Sherlock mumbled from the sofa.
John glanced up at him, letting Oliver go. Sherlock was watching them, as Oliver crawled away from him, and John obediently set off after him again. “I don’t know why this is encouraging him. I don’t know why he likes this. This is absolute murder on your knees.”
“More so than other activities performed on one’s knees?” queried Sherlock.
“Well, not quite the same result to look forward to,” remarked John, glancing back at Sherlock, who flickered a smile at him.
John tackled Oliver again, who giggled and squirmed in his grasp, and John stood and swung him up into his arms and said, in wonder, “When did you get so big, hmm?” Because Oliver was never going to be a chubby baby, but he had lengthened and put on weight to match it, and John tried to think of how tiny Oliver had been when Mycroft had first walked in with him and could barely remember it.
He kissed Oliver’s head and swung him through the air and then landed him with a gentle plop on Sherlock’s chest.
“Dada,” Oliver told him, pleased to see him, and touched his nose.
“Yes, yes,” said Sherlock, pretending to be disgruntled and not fooling Oliver for a minute. “Hello.” He smoothed Oliver’s flyaway curls.
John sat in his chair and regarded the pair of them. “We should have a party for him.”
“A party,” Sherlock told Oliver. “Your father and his predilection toward having other people around.”
“He’s going to be one. We should celebrate.”
Sherlock looked at Oliver for a moment, who had wrapped his hand around Sherlock’s index finger and was biting on it enthusiastically, before saying, “Yes. We should.”
“The first of many,” John said, firmly, reading the reflective melancholy of Sherlock’s tone.
Sherlock turned his head toward him and smiled. “Yes, Captain Watson,” he said.
John smiled back and slid back down to the floor and crawled over to the sofa. Oliver and Sherlock watched him, Oliver with interest, Sherlock with pleased amusement.
“What are you doing?” asked Sherlock, with mock exasperation.
“Kissing you,” said John, and did.
“You’re ridiculous,” Sherlock said into his mouth.
“You love it,” John promised him.
“No,” contributed Oliver, clearly miffed at no longer being the center of attention.
“One second, Ollie,” John told him, “let me give your father a proper snog.”
Oliver interrupted the proper snog by basically crawling his way between them, and then he settled on Sherlock’s shoulder and looked up at John and looked so content to be exactly where he was, cozily settled between the two of them, that John ended up spending the rest of the evening sitting by the sofa on the floor while Sherlock complained about every single thing on the telly and Oliver made little affirmative noises of agreement.
Next Chapter
Author -
earlgreytea68Rating - Adult
Characters - Sherlock, John
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, and to flawedamythyst, who took one for the team and made sure that my British sounded, well, a bit more British.
Chapter One - Chapter Two - Chapter Three - Chapter Four - Chapter Five - Chapter Six - Chapter Seven - Chapter Eight - Chapter Nine - Chapter Ten - Chapter Eleven - Chapter Twelve - Chapter Thirteen - Chapter Fourteen - Chapter Fifteen - Chapter Sixteen - Chapter Seventeen - Chapter Eighteen - Chapter Nineteen - Chapter Twenty - Chapter Twenty-One - Chapter Twenty-Two - Chapter Twenty-Three - Chapter Twenty-Four - Chapter Twenty-Five - Chapter Twenty-Six - Chapter Twenty-Seven - Chapter Twenty-Eight - Chapter Twenty-Nine - Chapter Thirty - Chapter Thirty-One
Oliver fell asleep early, worn out from the emotional ordeal of the doctor’s appointment. Sherlock sat at the desk with various blood-stained pieces of cloth laid out all around him and typed up observations and gradually became aware of John leaning against the kitchen doorframe, watching him, his arms and ankles casually crossed.
It was the time of the night when John normally made them tea, but he didn’t seem to be about to offer that. Sherlock lifted his eyebrows at him and said, “What?”
John had a smile playing about his lips, small and a bit smug, and Sherlock wasn’t sure what to make of it. “You think you know,” John said. “But you don’t.”
“I don’t know what?” asked Sherlock, annoyed, because he hated when John spoke in incoherent riddles like that.
John pushed himself off of the doorframe and walked over to the desk slowly. “You think you know how much I love you.” John drew to a halt in front of him, and Sherlock looked up at him in confusion. “But you have no idea.”
“John—” Sherlock began, shifting in the chair to face him.
“No. Quiet.” John suddenly sank to his knees, putting a hand on either arm of Sherlock’s chair. “You have no idea how much I love you. You know that I love you, I know that you know that. You think it’s something I fell into. You think you’re so very lucky that you somehow tricked me into thinking that this was what I wanted. You’re not sure how you accomplished it. So I’ll tell you: There was no trick, Sherlock. This isn’t a magic show, you and I. You’re thinking that someday I’ll come to my senses and realize what I’ve done, realize that I could have so much more than you, someone so much better than you, someone normal who wouldn’t accidentally set my socks on fire, who wouldn’t fill the cutlery drawer with caterpillars, who wouldn’t drive me mad and make me want to tear my hair out, and, oh, my God, Sherlock, I need you to understand that that is not true. You haven’t hit me over the head, this isn’t some kind of post-traumatic stress disorder, I haven’t lost my mind. I love you. I love you more than I thought it was possible to love another human being. I didn’t know you could meet a person, a stranger, and have him fill in everything inside of you that was empty. I thought being alive meant you just learned how to live with that emptiness. I didn’t know it was possible to love the way I love you. That’s why it took me so long to realize it. This isn’t what people write songs about, because they couldn’t, because they couldn’t possibly put into words what love is, because it’s this, and it’s…everything. I love you. And you don’t know how much. Because I love you so much that I’m wondering how I tricked you into thinking that I was what you wanted, I love you so much that I’m sure that someday you’ll come to your senses and realize what you’ve done, realize that you could have so much more than me, someone so much better than me.”
Sherlock stared at him. He thought that he should say something but he was oddly unable to breathe. There was not enough space in his chest, as if his ribcage had compressed around his lungs. If he was about to die, he could not imagine a better moment to go out on.
“So stop, love,” John whispered, and leaned forward and fluttered a kiss over Sherlock’s right eye, dragged his mouth in breaths of kisses over to Sherlock’s left eye. “Stop.” He kissed over one cheekbone, and then the other. “Stop ever thinking that you’ll take whatever scraps I’ll give you.” John’s lips grazed along Sherlock’s left ear, down his jaw. “Because I’m giving you everything.” John finally reached his mouth. “Everything,” he breathed out, achingly.
Sherlock closed his hands into John’s hair and reached out to pull him into a kiss, and Sherlock would have made it hot and hungry and desperate, but John slowed it down, pulling back the slightest bit from the edge where Sherlock was sitting. He kissed, leisurely and adoring, like he had the rest of his life to finish the kiss, as his fingers undid Sherlock’s shirt with the same excruciating slowness, inching it out of his way until he could finally spread his hands along Sherlock’s chest.
And then he stopped kissing him. He leaned his forehead against Sherlock’s and breathed.
“John,” Sherlock started, his voice rough.
“Shh.” John kissed under his jaw, and then down his throat, and then down his chest, nudging the shirt aside as he went, and Sherlock felt oddly limp and boneless, settling deeper into the chair and leaning his head back and closing his eyes and feeling the effort of his breaths. And John loved him. How John loved him. When had that happened? How had that happened? Sherlock felt confused and discombobulated and John felt utterly fantastic, tugging Sherlock’s shirt the rest of the way out of his trousers and dragging his lips across Sherlock’s abdomen.
And then John pulled back.
Sherlock, finally concluding that John wasn’t going to resume his ministrations, managed to lift his head up and look blearily down at him, crouched between his knees, his hair a spiky mess and his eyes impossibly dark and impossibly blue.
“Come to bed with me,” John said, almost a question, almost uncertain, as if he was unsure Sherlock would.
Sherlock nodded, and John stood and reached out a hand, which was silly, because Sherlock could stand up all on his own, but Sherlock took the hand and let John lead them to the bedroom, because it seemed somehow important for John to do this.
They undressed in the bedroom, in a silence that Sherlock didn’t want to breach. He felt like John was the one who ought to break it.
John stood in front of him and looked at him closely, and Sherlock looked steadily back at him, waiting to see what he was going to say.
What John said was, “One day—and I don’t know when this day happened, just that it did—one day I fell to pieces at your feet. And you put me back together again.”
Sherlock blinked at him, because he didn’t know what to say to that.
John took a step closer to him, and then another step, which had the effect of backing Sherlock right up to the bed and then onto the bed, and John said, “I am going to absolutely take you apart.”
Which sounded like an excellent idea to Sherlock.
And then John was on top of him. And he whispered, “And then I’ll put you back together.”
And Sherlock nodded.
And the thing was that Sherlock always thought that John dissolved him into pieces. But John seemed very intent that evening. Maybe it was that John was paying so much attention, was focusing so hard, but Sherlock felt that every touch of his mouth to his skin was drowning in love, that every sweep of his fingertips was suffocating in adoration, and Sherlock felt over-sensitized to all of it, like he couldn’t bear it, like he was filled to the brim with emotion. And he always felt that way when it came to John, had been feeling that way for so long that he had forgotten how painful it had been in the early days, to love him in such an all-consuming way and to have nowhere to direct it, to have no idea what to do with it, to just have it flopping around inside of him, clamoring to get out of him. Now it could get out, when he was filled to the brim, and he knew he was speaking, could hear his voice, and had no idea what he was saying, if it made any sense, and found he didn’t care, because what mattered was why he was talking, and he knew John knew that. And he was damp with sweat and desperate with desire and drunk with love, high with it, it swirled through him, as sharp and sluggish as any drug he’d ever tried, and his cells ached, wanted, craved, and when he climaxed it was no rush of pleasure but a slow build that crashed over him and dragged him inexorably under until he had no idea where he ended and the rest of the universe started.
“Me, too, love,” John murmured over him, dotting kisses onto his fevered face. “Me, too. All of it.”
And Sherlock suddenly understood what John had meant when he’d said that he would take him apart. Because Sherlock find himself clambering to get as tangled into John as he could get, wanting to get closer, shuddering with the pain of not being able to just live in John, and he heard himself say, heard the barely suppressed sob in the words, “You can’t ever leave me. Please. Never. I don’t know what I would…”
“Shh,” John said, and let him unravel.
And Sherlock understood what John had meant when he’d said he’d put him back together again.
Sherlock, spent and exhausted but more deeply content than he could ever remember being, ever, lay against John, and said, almost conversationally, as if the fact of it was something to be examined in a scientific manner, “There is nothing you could do, ever, that I wouldn’t forgive.”
“When you love,” responded John, his fingers tracing a pattern up Sherlock’s shoulder, “you love.”
“What would be the point of doing it halfway?” asked Sherlock, genuinely perplexed by the idea.
John nosed his way behind Sherlock’s ear and then rested there, breathing. “You’re amazing,” he said.
Sherlock smiled. And then, after a second, started giggling.
“What?” asked John, confused, giving him room to roll about in mirth.
Sherlock turned to face him, grinning. “Do you know that you do that out loud?”
John laughed. “Sorry,” he said. “I’ll stop.”
“No, no,” Sherlock told him, gravely. “It’s fine.”
***
Time passed. And Oliver grew. He learned how to crawl, and caused John to panic over his newfound mobility and install gates in every doorway of the house, which made Sherlock complain that Oliver had learned a new talent and John had punished him by putting him in prison. John stood fast on the gates, because they only made sense, but he thought of Sherlock’s words every time he came across Oliver sitting forlornly by a gate, glaring at him and clearly planning his escape. He was Sherlock’s clone, John expected him to learn how to open the gate locks any minute now. Which was why he agreed that Sherlock could give him lessons in ascending and descending staircases. Supervised lessons. And as these lessons consisted mainly of Sherlock himself crawling up and down the stairs while Oliver sat in John’s arms and stared at him, John thought they were quite brilliant.
Oliver also started talking a bit more properly. His fondness for dead died off, replaced by a zealous affection for the word no. Yes was beyond him, but no was beloved. He said no constantly: to most questions he was asked but also just to the things that John and Sherlock did. John would choose a jumper for the day and walk into the sitting room and Oliver would look up from his skull and his blanket and say, “No,” and John would find himself in the bedroom choosing a different jumper. Sherlock thought this was hilarious until the day Sherlock set forth a long hypothesis about his current experiment that Oliver listened to closely, gnawing on his pirate flag teething ring, and then responded to with a thoughtful, “No.”
Oliver’s third word after no was please, but Oliver only used that to manipulate. He would point to whatever he wanted and bat his long eyelashes and say, “Please?” He didn’t use this very often on Sherlock, because Sherlock basically always gave Oliver everything he wanted, immediately, with no further pleading necessary. He used it on John, and normally to very great effect. John was always reminded of Sherlock when Oliver did this, of Sherlock turning on a pout because he thought it would get results. John had always been very good at resisting Sherlock, but Oliver always added in a bit of a lip tremble and some shimmering tears and, sod it all, the kid was very good. John thought he really needed to steel himself or Oliver was going to run roughshod and be enormously spoiled.
Who the hell was he kidding? thought John one night, sitting by the fire and pretending to read a novel but secretly watching Oliver with Sherlock, while Sherlock held up a variety of objects and Oliver signaled approval or disapproval and Sherlock made notes for his spreadsheet of Oliver’s Preferred Toys. Oliver, John thought, was already the most spoiled baby in Great Britain.
Oliver’s fourth word was Papa. John thought Oliver had probably learned it because he thought it would be useful for further manipulation, but it didn’t matter. The truth was that, the day Oliver first said it to him, John had walked in to fetch him from his cot and Oliver’s face had lit up and he had said, “Papa,” as if the sight of him was the best gift Oliver had ever been given, and John might have actually got teary-eyed. He had always assumed that Sherlock was Oliver’s favorite, his preferred parent. Certainly Oliver seemed to watch Sherlock’s every move, hang on his every word. John had not expected to be the first named parent. John had expected Papa to be way down on Oliver’s list of necessary words. And maybe Oliver had moved it up his queue for manipulative purposes, but John found he didn’t care.
John thought Sherlock might be sensitive about being the first named parent. John said something like, “He probably learned ‘Papa’ first because he plans to exploit it the way you’ve learned to exploit ‘John.’”
Sherlock had looked at him and said, “Not quite that way, I hope.”
“No. But, you know. The general idea.”
“John,” Sherlock had said, turning away in that manner he had when he’d lost interest in something. “I long ago knew you would be his favorite. Why would you think you wouldn’t be his favorite, when you’re mine?”
Oliver’s fifth word was Dada, said complainingly one day when Sherlock had been unforgivably distracted by something that wasn’t Oliver, and Sherlock looked up in absolute shock, and John had never been so grateful to be allowed to witness something as he was the look on Sherlock’s face in that moment. Oliver was looking at him, holding out a fake pair of forceps that Molly had given him, looking for all the world like a surgeon who had asked for assistance and not got it quickly enough, and Sherlock abandoned the experiment he’d been wrapped up in and smothered Oliver in kisses, which had made Oliver squawk in indignation before giggling, forceps completely forgotten.
Sometimes at night John couldn’t sleep. He had never been an especially good sleeper, too many years of messing with his schedule. He slept far more than the other inhabitants of his flat—even the baby one—but that wasn’t saying much, and he suspected that life with them had thrown him off even more. He tried to keep to a sleep schedule, but there were some nights when he went to bed while Sherlock was playing the violin to Oliver, and he would lay there and listen to them in the other room and definitely not sleep. Oliver would talk in the spaces between music, the few words he knew interspersed with the other sounds he was working into his repertoire, and Sherlock would respond, and John felt like they were having deep and serious discussions about the merits of Mozart versus Wagner, and in those moments John could not believe how astonishingly well everything about his life worked.
It had its annoying aspects, of course. Sherlock was never going to be especially helpful when it came to keeping their kitchen stocked with items necessary to human sustenance, and that was not going to change now that there was a baby or now that they were shagging. And yes, sometimes John felt a bit like the hired help, every so often, when Sherlock was in an ordering-around mood and Oliver had been fussy and John was just snappish. But then Sherlock would do something, some amazing Sherlockian thing. Never anything simple like making John a cup of tea or offering to run to the shops, of course, but things that were somehow better than that. John might come home to a new novel sitting on his chair, and Sherlock would say something derogatory about how dull it looked but John would know that Sherlock had deliberately gone out and bought him that. Or Sherlock would take a break from his experiment or his case or his sulk or whatever it was and sit Oliver on his lap and teach him out of John’s old textbook on communicable diseases, which would keep Oliver out of John’s hair and quiet long enough for John to feel less in demand. Once, amazingly, John came home to the kitchen completely cleared of body parts. Sherlock had mumbled something about needing to make space for new body parts, but John had kissed him soundly, knowing that it had been a peace offering for a disagreement about Sherlock forgetting to drain the baby’s bath water out of the bath.
Mycroft dropped by more frequently than Sherlock would have liked, but John generally thought he was quite inoffensive and Oliver seemed to be getting cautiously used to him (buoyed by the fact that Mycroft often brought him newspapers from work, having discovered that Oliver’s favorite occupation was the ripping of newspapers; John thought it possible theirs was the only baby on the planet who routinely crumpled up Le Monde, the New York Times, the Daily Mail, and several dailies from the Middle East, China, and Japan). Harry came out of rehab and continued to appear to be doing well. She never visited Baker Street, because she claimed that Sherlock made her nervous, so John took Oliver to meet her at neutral locations. She always seemed fine, and Sherlock never made any comments one way or the other, so John decided to believe that she was fine, with no indications otherwise. She doted on Oliver, but Oliver seemed reserved with her. There were a few select people with whom Oliver was effusively taken, and they tended to be the same select people with whom Sherlock was taken: Mrs. Hudson, Molly, even Lestrade. John wasn’t sure if this was some sort of genetic predisposition or if Oliver was picking up on Sherlock’s cues about these particular people, responding well to them because he knew his father relaxed in their presence, trusted them. Outside of that inner circle, Oliver was cautious, more inclined to watch than participate. John realized that Sherlock’s wariness with the general public was not entirely the result of a painful childhood, as Oliver seemed to share it and John could not imagine Oliver feeling any more secure, any more showered with love. There was an essential shyness, John thought, that would have made Sherlock seem standoffish if you were looking at it the wrong way, and Sherlock’s parents clearly had been. Oliver was simply slow to warm to people, as if he couldn’t immediately see the point much of the time, and he was that way with Harry. Not that Harry seemed to notice, because Harry thought Oliver was absolutely brilliant. John always wanted to point out that Oliver was Sherlock and Harry was oddly terrified of Sherlock, but he bit his tongue on that point.
Mrs. Hudson continued to dote on Oliver, which was useful, as they left him behind whenever crime investigation seemed like it might veer into danger. They took him whenever they were going to a crime scene or to a morgue or to other less exciting places. Oliver loved all of it. Sometimes Molly got pressed into emergency baby-sitting when they went off somewhere they couldn’t take him, and Molly said he was always an angel because she would just sit and show him internal organs and explain what disease had affected them and he always listened with wide-eyed interest and chewed on whatever toy had been brought along.
Sherlock would also leave Oliver with Lestrade, if it made sense, but he refused to leave him with anyone else from Scotland Yard, and John didn’t blame him, because it wasn’t as if the rest of Scotland Yard had ever proven themselves to care overly much about the things that Sherlock cared about. Donovan and Anderson were both tolerant of Oliver but in the same vein that they had eventually grown tolerant of John, as if it wasn’t worth the argument anymore and they’d go along with it by grumbling their disapproval constantly. Oliver ignored them with Sherlockian alacrity, although John knew Sherlockian alacrity well enough by now to know that it was possible Oliver was actually very hurt underneath it all, and John always made sure to be extra-doting of Oliver after a brush with Donovan or Anderson.
Yes, he was spoiling the baby, and he knew he was, but he’d decided the baby deserved a bit of spoiling.
Some of their clients cooed at him. Oliver always responded by gazing at them impassively and Sherlock would always say, bluntly, “Don’t talk to him like that, he’s not an idiot.” More of the clients seemed a bit uncertain of him, but, since Oliver was always rapt when there was a client telling a story, they always soon came to like him, and eventually John knew that Oliver simply became a fixture, part of their public persona. They kept details about him to a minimum, as Sherlock had always requested, but they couldn’t help that people knew there was a baby, and John rather liked that people seemed to approve of this baby, since Oliver was a pretty perfect baby.
Who refused to walk. Sherlock seemed to think he should have taken his first steps, although Sherlock was always anxious to hit the next milestone once any milestone had been achieved. Oliver stood a lot, but showed absolutely no inclination to take any steps anywhere, and the more Sherlock pestered him about it, the more Oliver seemed to become entrenched in the commitment to spend the rest of his life crawling everywhere.
“Aren’t you bothered by it?” Sherlock complained on a rainy evening in late November.
“Why should it bother me? It’s not like he’s eleven years old and being lazy or something, Sherlock. He’s a baby. He’ll walk when he’s ready.”
“He’s doing it as a personal slight,” said Sherlock, and frowned at Oliver.
Oliver looked his best impression of innocent and said, “Dada.”
“Don’t even try that with me,” Sherlock told him, and collapsed backward onto the sofa.
John ignored him, sliding from his chair to the floor so he could sit next to Oliver. “Daddy’s going to sulk now because you’re not mobile enough for him. But when you are more mobile, he’ll do nothing but complain at how you’re going to get into everything.”
“No, I won’t,” said Sherlock, voice muffled against the couch cushions.
Oliver, delighted to have a fellow occupant of the floor, beamed, “Papa,” and then crawled away at the warp speed he had perfected, glancing over his shoulder to make sure John was following.
So John followed, chasing after him good-naturedly, and Oliver laughed and crawled between the legs of the desk with a lot more ease than John could. John backed up and intercepted him on his way out from under the desk, which sent Oliver into convulsions of pleasure at John’s cleverness.
“You’re just encouraging him,” Sherlock mumbled from the sofa.
John glanced up at him, letting Oliver go. Sherlock was watching them, as Oliver crawled away from him, and John obediently set off after him again. “I don’t know why this is encouraging him. I don’t know why he likes this. This is absolute murder on your knees.”
“More so than other activities performed on one’s knees?” queried Sherlock.
“Well, not quite the same result to look forward to,” remarked John, glancing back at Sherlock, who flickered a smile at him.
John tackled Oliver again, who giggled and squirmed in his grasp, and John stood and swung him up into his arms and said, in wonder, “When did you get so big, hmm?” Because Oliver was never going to be a chubby baby, but he had lengthened and put on weight to match it, and John tried to think of how tiny Oliver had been when Mycroft had first walked in with him and could barely remember it.
He kissed Oliver’s head and swung him through the air and then landed him with a gentle plop on Sherlock’s chest.
“Dada,” Oliver told him, pleased to see him, and touched his nose.
“Yes, yes,” said Sherlock, pretending to be disgruntled and not fooling Oliver for a minute. “Hello.” He smoothed Oliver’s flyaway curls.
John sat in his chair and regarded the pair of them. “We should have a party for him.”
“A party,” Sherlock told Oliver. “Your father and his predilection toward having other people around.”
“He’s going to be one. We should celebrate.”
Sherlock looked at Oliver for a moment, who had wrapped his hand around Sherlock’s index finger and was biting on it enthusiastically, before saying, “Yes. We should.”
“The first of many,” John said, firmly, reading the reflective melancholy of Sherlock’s tone.
Sherlock turned his head toward him and smiled. “Yes, Captain Watson,” he said.
John smiled back and slid back down to the floor and crawled over to the sofa. Oliver and Sherlock watched him, Oliver with interest, Sherlock with pleased amusement.
“What are you doing?” asked Sherlock, with mock exasperation.
“Kissing you,” said John, and did.
“You’re ridiculous,” Sherlock said into his mouth.
“You love it,” John promised him.
“No,” contributed Oliver, clearly miffed at no longer being the center of attention.
“One second, Ollie,” John told him, “let me give your father a proper snog.”
Oliver interrupted the proper snog by basically crawling his way between them, and then he settled on Sherlock’s shoulder and looked up at John and looked so content to be exactly where he was, cozily settled between the two of them, that John ended up spending the rest of the evening sitting by the sofa on the floor while Sherlock complained about every single thing on the telly and Oliver made little affirmative noises of agreement.
Next Chapter
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no subject
Date: 2013-11-07 03:28 am (UTC)___
I love how John did his very best to convince Sherlock that he really, really does love him. And I love just as much that bit of dialogue harking back to that first crime scene--PERFECT!
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And as for all the beautiful, precious, hilarious, adorable scenes from Oliver's first year... avndaoheiakdjkfdaddasfadffdjka! *Kermit flail* *in love*
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ETA: There was an essential shyness, John thought, that would have made Sherlock seem standoffish if you were looking at it the wrong way
YES. This really makes perfect sense! It would absolutely explain the dramatic persona--because if you hide behind a persona, you hold people at a distance. And same with clients--that's dealing with people as a Detective, not as a person. Yes.
no subject
Date: 2013-11-07 04:38 am (UTC)Beauty!
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Date: 2013-11-07 05:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-07 04:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-07 06:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-07 07:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-07 10:58 am (UTC)What a lovely, happy chapter. I thought one of Oliver's words might be 'snog' but I'm much more pleased with Papa and Dada, etc.
Nearly one? Wow . . . time flies!!
no subject
Date: 2013-11-07 01:27 pm (UTC)I really needed this, the last three weeks have been really busy and I'm also trying to get organized to go away for a week. ANYWAY, this provided a much needed break from reality. Thank you!
Sherlock seemed to think he should have taken his first steps, although Sherlock was always anxious to hit the next milestone once any milestone had been achieved.
Oh Sherlock, Ollie's going to go from crawling to running. He'll skip over walking completely because it's too slow and boring.
Also, I'm kinda hoping Ollie adds Gran or Nana, meaning Mrs. H, to his vocabulary.
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Date: 2013-11-07 03:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-07 03:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-07 04:41 pm (UTC)It has made a week of returning to work after seeing David Tennant in the flesh, much more bearable!
Sending virtual Hearts and flowers to you coz actual hearts and flowers might make a huge mess and not be very nice but yeah... lovelyxxx! xoxoxo
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Date: 2013-11-07 07:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-08 01:43 am (UTC)I love the little glimpses into Ollie's first year! Being the genius child that he is, I'm sure the idea of learning to walk is just tedious- he'll just study Sherlock until he has worked out the geometry of balancing, and one day he'll just start running around checking on all the experiments :)
no subject
Date: 2013-11-08 01:49 am (UTC)He also hates when he doesn't know something. Especially if it's something that John knows. :D
Sherlock nodded, and John stood and reached out a hand, which was silly, because Sherlock could stand up all on his own, but Sherlock took the hand and let John lead them to the bedroom, because it seemed somehow important for John to do this.
This is so Sherlock. He can't help analysing what has nothing to do with analysis but even if something is anything but logical he accepts it because that pleases John.
John said, “I am going to absolutely take you apart.”
Which sounded like an excellent idea to Sherlock.
And to me. Especially since there's no ellipsis after that this time. :D
“There is nothing you could do, ever, that I wouldn’t forgive.”
I hope you don't plan to put that to the test. *looks at you nervously*
He learned how to crawl, and caused John to panic over his newfound mobility and install gates in every doorway of the house, which made Sherlock complain that Oliver had learned a new talent and John had punished him by putting him in prison.
It's just an incentive for Oliver to learn to climb. :D
He would point to whatever he wanted and bat his long eyelashes and say, “Please?”
Aww, who could resist that? And he's already learnt the Eyelash Power...
John had always been very good at resisting Sherlock, but Oliver always added in a bit of a lip tremble and some shimmering tears and, sod it all, the kid was very good.
I'm afraid Sherlock will also add a bit of a lip tremble and some shimmering tears now that he can see it works with John. :D
“I long ago knew you would be his favorite. Why would you think you wouldn’t be his favorite, when you’re mine?”
AWWWWW...
John backed up and intercepted him on his way out from under the desk, which sent Oliver into convulsions of pleasure at John’s cleverness.
John must be glad there's at least one Holmes he can impress so easily. Although I'm certain Sherlock experiences the same convulsions of pleasure when John says something clever at a crime scene but he's better at hiding them. :D
“Dada,” Oliver told him, pleased to see him, and touched his nose.
And we all know this is his way of cheering Daddy up when he seems a bit down!
“The first of many,” John said, firmly, reading the reflective melancholy of Sherlock’s tone.
Ouch. I hadn't detected this melancholy. Ouch.
Lovely chapter. John's speech in the first part is so touching and full of love, if Sherlock still feels insecure after that it's hopeless. :D And it shows so well how love and fear are linked. The bed scene is great because it's both hot (oh yes) and very moving. I'd like to know what Sherlock's words are but you make us imagine them very well. The "Time passed" part is delightful, I love these domesticity scenes. Nothing really happens, it's just life going on, but you manage to make it charming. There's a French proverb saying that happy people's lifes are not worth writing but you certainly prove it wrong. You say that people couldn’t possibly put into words what love is, but let me quote John (in a much more depressing context but please let's not dwell on it): you could! :D
P.S. Your icon breaks my heart every time you post a new chapter. The artist really needs to draw a happy baby Sherlock now, as happy as Oliver! :D
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Date: 2013-11-08 04:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-09 02:41 am (UTC)