Nature and Nurture (33/?)
Nov. 12th, 2013 10:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
earlgreytea68Title - Nature and Nurture (33/?)
Author -![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
earlgreytea68
Rating - Teen
Characters - Sherlock, John, Mrs. Hudson, Mycroft, Lestrade, Molly, Harry
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.
What's this, you say? An early chapter? Why, yes! Because tomorrow I leave for LONDON. And, speaking of, we're having a fangirly meet-up. If you happen to be in London this Saturday, we're meeting at 10:30 at the Sherlock Holmes statue at the Baker Street Tube station for a trip to the Sherlock Holmes Museum.
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 - Chapter Thirty-Two
The Christmas tree was up for Oliver’s birthday party. Oliver loved the Christmas tree. John thought it probable Oliver would cry when they took it down, because Oliver was that attached to it. He would sit for hours and study it, and John would watch him closely, braced for a sudden stealth attack that would cause the tree to topple over. But Oliver always just turned his head eventually and looked at John and said, wonderingly, “Papa,” and gestured at the tree. John thought he was asking why they hadn’t had the tree up all along.
Sherlock’s interest in the Christmas tree was that he was busy conducting an experiment about tree sap that required tree sap to get stuck on every single thing in the flat, including Oliver’s hair, which did not lead to a pleasant evening and there was much cursing by John in between Oliver’s screams of outrage and Sherlock insisting that it had all been a worthy sacrifice “for science.”
John cleaned the entire flat for Oliver’s birthday and told Sherlock, “So help me God, if you get any sap anywhere in this flat for the next twenty-four hours, I will ‘science’ you into sleeping out on the doorstep for the next week.”
Sherlock blinked at him and pointed out, “It’s December.”
“Which is why you’d better be very careful about the sap, yeah?”
Sherlock looked horrified.
John grinned at him and said, “What if I give you something better to do for an hour or so?”
“An hour?” said Sherlock, and lifted an eyebrow at him.
“Do you know how much I hate you?” John told him.
Sherlock grinned and pulled John’s jumper off of him.
And there was no sap anywhere in the flat but the tree when the guests started arriving.
John had urged people not to bring presents, but that had clearly meant nothing, since everyone walked in with presents. Mrs. Hudson arrived with a present and a cake, even though John had baked one.
“I told you I was baking one,” he reminded her, accepting her cake, which was lovely and had blue frosting roughly reminiscent of Oliver’s eyes. It looked delicious, and John was sure it was, but he had really wanted to bake Oliver’s birthday cake himself, out of some strange sort of possessiveness.
“Yes, dear,” Mrs. Hudson told him, vaguely, and took Oliver out of Sherlock’s arms.
Sherlock was smirking, because Sherlock had been dubious about John tackling the cake.
“Shut up,” John told him, and brought the cake into the kitchen.
Mycroft arrived with a small entourage of men carrying a box. And another cake, this one a ridiculously elegant affair that looked in danger of toppling over.
“I baked a cake,” John said, a little annoyed now.
“Yes, Sherlock told me,” Mycroft remarked, blandly, directing one of his men to put the cake into the kitchen.
“I am not a bad cook, you know,” John said, to whoever might be listening. “If I didn’t cook, we’d all starve.”
“You do order a lot of takeaway,” Mrs. Hudson said, and then, when John glared at her, “Well, sometimes I have to answer the door, dear, because the two of you are terrible at answering the door.”
“Because Sherlock is always breaking the doorbell. And you’re an ungrateful prat,” he told Sherlock.
“I love you,” Sherlock told him, pleasantly, and kissed him.
John kissed him back but also pulled a little bit at his hair, as if that would teach him any sort of lesson.
“One thing I’m definitely grateful for is that the two of you don’t do that stuff at crime scenes,” announced Lestrade, walking into the flat with a bottle of wine and a party hat with a large shiny green pompom on the top.
“Oh, excellent, you brought wine,” said John, taking the wine.
“And a terrible hat,” remarked Sherlock.
“It’s for the birthday boy.” Lestrade put it on Oliver’s head.
Oliver scrunched up his face and gave Lestrade an I-always-suspected-you-were-insane-thank-you-for-this-final-proof look. “No,” he said.
“And I thought we might need wine,” remarked Lestrade, ignoring Oliver’s displeasure.
“We definitely need wine,” said Mycroft, stepping forward to take the wine from John. “Well done.”
Lestrade blushed.
John stared at him and narrowed his eyes.
Molly said, “Yoo-hoo! I thought I’d come right up?”
“Yes, yes,” John said, letting Lestrade escape into the kitchen. With Mycroft, John noted.
Molly was holding a teddy bear with a large red bow.
“We said no presents,” John told her.
“I know, but I saw this and couldn’t resist.”
“No, no, no,” Oliver said behind him, and John turned his head. Oliver had pushed the hat off his head but was still telling it no where it was laying on the floor.
“Look what Molly brought you,” John told Oliver.
“Here you are, Ollie,” said Molly, brightly, as she presented him with it. “Happy birthday!”
Oliver looked intrigued by the teddy bear. Probably because he wasn’t used to stuffed animals that weren’t somehow also chemical equations. He was holding his skull, though, which prevented him from being able to grab for the teddy bear.
John anticipated his issue and took the skull so that Oliver could reach for the teddy bear. Oliver pulled it in experimentally, and then pressed his face into its fur with a giggle of approval.
Sherlock appeared over Mrs. Hudson’s shoulder, peering down at Oliver and the teddy bear. “What is that?”
“It’s a teddy bear, Sherlock,” John told him.
“It’s called Teddy.”
Sherlock stared at Molly. “It’s a teddy bear called Teddy.”
Molly blinked. “Yes?” she offered.
“That’s as if Mycroft handed us a baby and John and I decided to call him Human.”
John rolled his eyes. “Give it another name, then.” He looked at his watch, then put the skull down and pulled out his mobile and texted his sister. Running late? You’ve missed seventeen different cakes arriving and a lot of presents that I told people not to bring.
“What is this enormous box?” asked Lestrade, nudging it with his toe.
John turned and noted that Lestrade and Mycroft had both emerged from the kitchen. Lestrade was holding a glass of wine. Mycroft was offering a glass to Molly, pouring it smoothly.
“Mycroft brought it,” John answered. “Even though I said no presents.”
“What’s a birthday without presents?” countered Mycroft, producing another wine glass for Mrs. Hudson, who had to juggle Oliver to take it, blushing.
“Ah, yes, that’s right, I forgot how traditionalist the Holmes brothers are in these matters,” remarked John, dryly.
Sherlock had walked over to the present, looked down at it, and then began opening it.
“Hey!” protested John.
Sherlock looked up at him. “Aren’t you meant to open birthday presents?”
“Oliver is meant to open the birthday presents! They’re his!”
“Oliver isn’t going to open birthday presents, he’s twelve months old,” scoffed Sherlock.
John crossed his arms and regarded him. “This from the man who yesterday was complaining to me that Oliver hadn’t yet mastered the art of using a pipette.”
Sherlock ignored him, pulling the wrapping paper off the present and handing it to Oliver, who looked overwhelmed by the riches of a teddy bear and wrapping paper. Then Sherlock opened the box and said, “Oh, for God’s sake, Mycroft.”
“What is it?” asked John, walking over so he could look into the box, accepting the wine Mycroft pressed into his hand absently. And then he said, pleasantly surprised, “It’s a rocking horse.” And it was, a very handsome, obviously expensive one, painted in an attractive dappled gray. John pushed his wineglass into Sherlock’s hand and wrestled the rocking horse out of the box with Lestrade’s help. And then he looked up at Sherlock, who looked disgruntled. “But this is lovely. Why are you frowning? It’s a lovely gift, Mycroft.”
“He knows I hate horses,” Sherlock bit out.
John glanced at him in surprise. “Do you? You’ve never mentioned that.”
“Why would I ever have mentioned it?” Sherlock demanded.
“What do you hate about horses?”
“It was a bad experience as a child,” inserted Mycroft. “I thought we could save Oliver from the same issue.”
“Come here, Ollie, let’s have a look,” said John, taking Oliver out of Mrs. Hudson’s arms and placing him carefully on the rocking horse.
Oliver had to drop his teddy bear and his wrapping paper to grab hold of the reins, and he looked a bit dubious about the whole thing.
“Look at that,” Mycroft said. “He’s a natural.”
Something occurred to John. He looked up at Mycroft. “This isn’t about turning him into some ridiculous aristocrat with a house in Cornwall, is it?”
Mycroft gave him his best long-suffering eyeroll.
“Mycroft loves horses,” said Sherlock, in the same tone of voice he would have used for Mycroft kicks puppies.
“Nothing wrong with horses,” said Lestrade.
“Do you ride?” Mycroft asked him.
“Uh, no,” answered Lestrade.
“Shame,” said Mycroft.
John looked between the two of them and drew his eyebrows together and decided that he wasn’t sure if he really wanted to know. Then Mrs. Hudson came forward with her gift, which was a brightly colored book about bumblebees, and Oliver sat on his periodic table blanket surrounded by his riches and poring over the illustrations in the book, with breaks for wrapping paper crumpling.
Mrs. Hudson said, “We should have cake.”
“Oh!” said Molly. “Wait! Before Oliver makes a mess of himself, we should get some pictures.”
“Yes,” said John, firmly, because he didn’t think they had nearly enough pictures. “Sit down,” he told Sherlock, who looked inclined to shrink away. Sherlock obeyed, settling on John’s chair, and John picked up Oliver and dropped him on Sherlock’s lap and then perched on the arm of the chair. “Smile,” he commanded, smiling himself.
Molly snapped several photos.
“Did they smile?” John demanded.
“Sort of,” said Molly, diplomatically.
John dragged his fingertips through the hair on the nape of Sherlock’s neck, and Molly snapped several more photos. In the kitchen, there was a bit of a commotion going on with the cakes.
John looked at his watch. “I’m going to ring Harry,” he said.
“Yes,” agreed Sherlock. “John, there’s something you should know.”
John felt his stomach sink. This was it, he thought. This was when Sherlock was going to tell him that Harry had fallen off the wagon months ago.
But Sherlock just said, “It has nothing to do with your cooking abilities. Or baking abilities, I suppose I should say.”
John blinked, confused. “What?”
“The reason why everybody brought cakes. They have every confidence in your ability to bake a cake. They worry about a cake baked in my kitchen, that despite your best efforts it’ll be contaminated with some experiment. So. I thought you should know.”
Odd thing to want to make sure he understood, thought John, but nice of Sherlock to clarify it for him. “Okay,” he agreed, because that did make some amount of sense; John himself sometimes worried about the food he made in the kitchen. “Please be a good host for the next few seconds while I ring Harry and don’t start any fights or explode anything or anything.”
“John,” huffed Sherlock, complainingly.
John pressed a kiss to the top of his head and pulled his mobile out and went into their bedroom and shut the door and took a deep breath and called Harry. Who did not answer. John frowned and looked at his watch again, even though he knew exactly what time it was and exactly how late Harry was. For her nephew’s first birthday party. The only first birthday party he would have, after all.
John left a message, which he thought was ill-advised even as he did it, but he was irritated enough to let his temper let him be reckless. “Yeah, Harry, where are you?” was the entire message.
And it was so annoying, because it should have been a good day. It had been a good day. His son had turned one and he was surrounded by people who loved him, who had brought him presents and made him cakes, and these people would be there to love him through whatever mistakes John might make with him, and John was aware that there was no way he would get everything right and that they needed to give Oliver a support system for back-up. And Oliver was surrounded by love, Oliver would never be lonely, all of these people would always look out for Oliver. And everything had been going so well, as well as a party with Sherlock and Mycroft in the same room could ever have been expected to go, and he had been lulled into a false sense of security, and he had really never entertained the possibility that Harry would…that she would…
John stood at the window and closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against it. It was freezing cold, because it was a bitter day outside.
Sherlock didn’t knock, and John wasn’t sure he’d expected him to. He heard the door open and then close and then Sherlock said, “They’ve got three different cakes with a candle each.”
John thought of Sherlock reassuring John about his baking ability. “You knew. You knew she was late because she’s off somewhere getting drunk.”
There was a moment of silence. “Did you speak to her?”
“No, of course I didn’t speak to her,” John snarled. “Do you really think she would answer the phone when she can see it’s me calling and she knows that she can’t—Never mind.” John straightened from the window. “Never mind. It’s Oliver’s birthday. I’m not letting her ruin it.” John walked over to where Sherlock was standing uncertainly by the door.
“John,” said Sherlock.
John shook his head. “Not now, okay?” he said, tightly. “He’s only going to get to do this for the first time once. I want to watch his face when we sing to him, I want to blow out his candles, I want to let him make a mess of his cake. That’s what I want to do. Okay?”
Sherlock nodded, and John opened the bedroom door.
***
Sherlock was furious. Because John was unhappy. And John shouldn’t ever be unhappy.
John had desperately wanted Oliver’s birthday party. Sherlock hadn’t really cared, and Sherlock was willing to admit that Oliver had no idea what a birthday even was. But John had wanted to throw a birthday party, and so Sherlock had gone along with it, and if Harry hadn’t been an idiot then it all would have gone well. Sherlock was polite to Mycroft, even when Mycroft had bought Oliver an obnoxious present, and they had posed for photos, and Oliver had been delighted by everything, and it should have been a bloody good day, it would have been, if Harry hadn’t gone and failed so spectacularly.
John thought they needed to eat something other than cake. Sherlock disagreed, but John was restless and would not be dissuaded and seized on the opportunity to get out of the flat and take a walk, which was always John’s preferred method of working through something that had upset him. So Sherlock let him go. He laid on the floor whilst Oliver crawled all over him, dragging his teddy bear and his wrapping paper, and stoked his fury at a low simmer.
Oliver, having pulled himself over the twin mountains of Sherlock’s legs, looked back at the skull on the opposite end of the blanket and pointed and said, “Please?”
Sherlock leaned over to grab it for him, and that was when the doorbell buzzed, and Sherlock knew immediately that it was Harry. He was actually surprised, because he had not expected Harry to show up. Harry never showed up at Baker Street. As today had proved, Harry almost never came to Baker Street, even when she was invited.
Sherlock looked over what Oliver was wearing. A sleepsuit. Good. Warm enough that he should be fine if Sherlock bundled him in a blanket. Sherlock got to his feet.
Oliver had looked in the direction of the door at the sound of the doorbell. Now he looked up at Sherlock and said, very clearly, “Client.”
Another day, Sherlock would have had John’s baby book out immediately to record the new word—and the fact that it had been used in perfect context—but Sherlock just replied, “No, your bloody difficult aunt Harry,” and swept Oliver up and into his arms. He grabbed his coat on his way out of the flat and used it to wrap up Oliver, like an impromptu blanket, leaving just Oliver’s head sticking out of the charcoal wool. And then he headed down the stairs.
He opened the door just as Harry had turned to start walking away. She looked up in surprise, and she was very clearly drunk, listing a bit to the side, balance off, eyes bloodshot, lips chapped. Sherlock took all of this in at a glance, as he tucked the bundle of Oliver and his coat up against him and frowned at her from the doorway. Harry smiled at him, wide and alcohol-lubricated, with an edge of fear in her eyes, as if he might be tricked into thinking she was sober.
“Did you think no one would be home?” he demanded.
“I—I didn’t…” Harry drew herself up, staggering only a little bit, and Sherlock saw the moment when she decided belligerence would be appropriate, would separate her from the knowledge of having disappointed John, would allow her to blame it all on someone else. She said, “What’s the matter? John won’t speak to me?”
“John’s not here. John’s taking a walk. You almost ruined Oliver’s birthday,” Sherlock snapped at her.
Harry did look abashed at that. “I didn’t…I didn’t mean to…” She took a deep breath. “It’s so hard. You have no idea. It’s so hard.”
“I have every idea,” Sherlock cut in, brittly.
“Oh, because you conducted some sort of experiment on it?” said Harry, bitterly. “It’s so easy for you to be so smug and so judgmental—”
“John was so excited today,” Sherlock interrupted. Because this entire conversation was missing the point, talking about Harry, talking about Sherlock, it was all beside the point, and the point had been John. “He was so excited. He was so looking forward to celebrating, to celebrating Oliver and to celebrating you, and I have been trying so hard to give him everything he could possibly want, and the only piece of the puzzle I couldn’t control was you, and how could you—”
“Shut up!” Harry shouted at him. “Do you ever stop being so much bloody better than everyone else?”
“That is so much more than enough,” John’s voice lashed out, lethally quiet.
Sherlock looked at him in surprise. How had John snuck up on them? Had he been that lost in the disagreement? He was standing with the bag of takeaway in his hand and glaring at Harry. Sherlock hoped he was never the object of such a glare from John.
“Sherlock, you don’t have a hat on the baby,” said John, evenly, without ever taking his eyes off of Harry.
Sherlock looked at Oliver, who was watching everything that was happening very closely. This was a true observation, but he didn’t see the relevance of it at the moment.
“John,” Harry said, turning to him pleadingly. The alcohol made her sloppy, made her overbalance as she put a placating hand on his arm, jostling their takeaway and making John wince a bit at how much weight his bad shoulder suddenly absorbed. “You have to understand—I had to have just a little—if I was going to—I mean, if I was going to face him—you’ve got to understand—he’s so terrifying and he’s so—”
Sherlock didn’t know whether or not to say anything to defend himself, but he didn’t have to, because John laughed harshly, a laugh that had Harry swallowing what she would have said next. “You’re going to blame him? Really? When he was the one to convince me to give you this chance?” John shook her hand off his arm and walked past her.
“It’s just that he’s so posh and thinks he’s better than us and—”
John paused with his foot on the first step and looked back at her, sounding honestly perplexed when he said, “I don’t know why you think I would love him if he was really like that. I don’t know why you’ve got it in your head that he would…or that I would…I don’t know what to do anymore, Harry. I’m wrung out. I’m exhausted. And I think I’m…I think I’m done. I think I can’t…I’m…I…Yeah.”
He went to turn away again, and Harry said, begged, “John.”
John half-turned back and just said, in response, “Harriet.”
Which seemed to do something to Harry, made her disintegrate somehow, crumple. John turned his back, walking up to Sherlock and then past him, saying, “Sherlock, you’ve got to put something over his head if you’re taking him out in the cold.”
Sherlock glanced uncertainly at Harry, before turning to follow John inside. John was already halfway up the stairs. “John,” he said.
“We’re not discussing it, Sherlock,” he replied without pausing, and disappeared into their flat.
Sherlock looked at Oliver, who looked thoroughly astonished by everything he had just witnessed. “No,” he said, very eloquently.
Sherlock had to agree with that assessment.
Not knowing what else to do, he followed John into their flat. John was organizing takeaway on the kitchen table. He’d already put the kettle on, too. Clearly, John was doing everything normal that he could think to do. He turned and pulled out forks, put them on the table. Turned and took mugs out of the cupboard. Turned and put the forks back in the drawer. Then said, under his breath, “Bugger,” and pulled the forks back out.
“Papa,” said Oliver at that point.
John put the forks on the table and looked at them for a second, and then turned and took Oliver in a fluid motion and put his nose in his hair and breathed. He was holding him so tightly that Sherlock expected Oliver to protest and also understood why Oliver didn’t.
“He said a new word,” ventured Sherlock, trying for normalcy.
John shifted to look questioningly at Sherlock.
“Client,” Sherlock supplied.
“Two syllables,” said John, and kissed Oliver’s head. “Did you put it in the book?”
“Not yet.”
“I’ll do it.” John, still holding Oliver snugly, walked out of the kitchen with him and into the sitting room.
Sherlock followed, wishing he didn’t feel so out of his element. He detested not knowing what to do next. He wished he hadn’t let his fury drive him down the stairs to talk to Harry. He should have just let her turn around to go home and saved John the entire scene.
He watched John pull the baby book off its shelf and open it and blurted out, “Are you angry with me?” Which was the stupidest, most selfish thing for him to say, and he knew it as soon as it came out of his mouth and wanted to take it back.
“I’m not angry with you,” John said to the book.
Sherlock decided to take him at his word. Anyway, if he said anything else, he’d probably make everything a great deal worse. What was it about wanting to make John happy that turned him into an idiot who did the exact opposite?
He walked into the kitchen, cursing himself in a silent frenzy in his head, and began blindly scooping takeaway onto plates, because it gave him something to do.
John eventually followed him into the kitchen. “Sherlock,” he said.
Sherlock mechanically kept moving food from container to container and looked up at John in dread.
“I have everything I want. And I had a wonderful day.”
So he had heard that bit. Sherlock had assumed he had, based on the timing of John’s interruption, but now it was definitely confirmed. Sherlock laughed humorlessly. “You absolutely did not.”
“Yes. I did. It was a wonderful party. Thank you for going along with it.”
Sherlock put the spoon he’d been using down with a sudden clatter. “Stop it,” he said.
“What?”
“Stop trying to make me feel better, stop trying to comfort me.”
“I’m just—”
“You want to get things back to normal, and the quickest way for you to do that is to take care of someone, and you know I’m upset, so you’ve come in here to take care of me, but I’m upset because you’re upset, so we’re stuck in some kind of vicious circle right now, you and I. So stop comforting me. If you’re angry with me, be angry with me.”
“I’m not angry with you,” John insisted.
“But you’re angry.”
“Of course I’m angry, Sherlock,” John snapped, and then took a deep breath and looked at Oliver in his arms. “I meant what I said,” he said, slowly, sounding so swamped with sadness that Sherlock felt as if his very veins were twitching in anxious desire to make John happier.
“Which part?” asked Sherlock, desperate for a clue as to what he could do.
“I’m exhausted,” John answered, eyes still locked on Oliver.
John was exhausted! Excellent! He looked exhausted! This was something Sherlock could help with! “I can take care of him the rest of the night,” Sherlock offered, enthusiastically, reaching for Oliver. “You know Ollie and I are experts at keeping each other company all night.”
John looked at him with an expression Sherlock couldn’t read, but he didn’t think it was a bad expression.
“So you can rest,” Sherlock clarified, when John stayed just standing there.
“Yeah,” John agreed, eventually. “Okay. I’m not hungry, anyway.” John leaned over and kissed Oliver’s head. “Happy birthday, little one,” he said, and then he kissed Sherlock’s cheek on his way out of the kitchen.
Sherlock checked the security of the gates in the doorways and then let Oliver down to roam whilst he played through a full selection of John’s favorite pieces on the violin. When he was done, Oliver was yawning and lolling sleepily against his teddy bear, so Sherlock collected him and took him upstairs and read John’s blog entry on the pink lady case to him until he fell asleep.
Then Sherlock went downstairs and considered what to do. He’d been hoping that Oliver would stay up a bit later to distract him a little longer, but Oliver had had a busy day. They had all had inexcusably busy days.
Sherlock glanced at their closed bedroom door, then decided that John would not object to having him there in bed with him if he woke during the night. John preferred to have Sherlock in the bed, Sherlock knew.
Sherlock went into the room and crawled into the bed next to John as carefully as he could.
John mumbled, “I am really, really, really not in the mood.”
Sherlock looked at the shape of him in the dark in surprise. “That’s not why I—I thought you might want me to be in the bed with you. I mean, you like having me in the bed. You’ve said that you…” Sherlock stopped talking because he didn’t think was being anything other than imbecilic.
There was a moment of silence, then John said, “Yes. Yes, I like having you in the bed. Sorry. Yes.”
Sherlock laid down carefully, making sure not to crowd him, but John shifted until they were pressed together and Sherlock took the invitation and snaked an arm around John’s chest.
John intertwined their fingers and said, “And the violin-playing was beautiful, thank you.”
“I didn’t mean to keep you up,” Sherlock said into John’s hair, voice muffled. “I meant to lull you to sleep.”
John laughed, the same sort of harsh, cold, unamused laugh he’d laughed at Harry. “I love that you thought I could fall asleep.”
“You said you were exhausted,” Sherlock pointed out, a bit hurt.
“I didn’t mean it literally, Sherlock.”
“Oh,” Sherlock realized, because, put that way, he did feel stupid.
John picked up Sherlock’s hand in his own and brought it to his mouth and pressed his lips into the palm.
And then he said, shakily, “Sherlock. I love you. But if you ever do that to me…to us…ever…”
Sherlock thought of addictions. He thought of how you could be convinced that you were handling them, in control of them, and then end up missing the most important things because the addictions had all along been controlling you. Sherlock had experience in that that he hated to admit. Sherlock pressed his face into John and thought of his current addictions, of the way John smiled at him, of the sound Oliver made sometimes when he caught sight of him, and thought that if there were any addictions he was never going to be able to break, whose withdrawal would kill him, it was those. Sherlock could handle the continued denial of every controlled substance, so long as he kept John Watson with him in Baker Street and the baby in the nursery.
“I know,” Sherlock replied, and held John that much more tightly. “I know.”
Next Chapter
Author -
earlgreytea68Rating - Teen
Characters - Sherlock, John, Mrs. Hudson, Mycroft, Lestrade, Molly, Harry
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.
What's this, you say? An early chapter? Why, yes! Because tomorrow I leave for LONDON. And, speaking of, we're having a fangirly meet-up. If you happen to be in London this Saturday, we're meeting at 10:30 at the Sherlock Holmes statue at the Baker Street Tube station for a trip to the Sherlock Holmes Museum.
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 - Chapter Thirty-Two
The Christmas tree was up for Oliver’s birthday party. Oliver loved the Christmas tree. John thought it probable Oliver would cry when they took it down, because Oliver was that attached to it. He would sit for hours and study it, and John would watch him closely, braced for a sudden stealth attack that would cause the tree to topple over. But Oliver always just turned his head eventually and looked at John and said, wonderingly, “Papa,” and gestured at the tree. John thought he was asking why they hadn’t had the tree up all along.
Sherlock’s interest in the Christmas tree was that he was busy conducting an experiment about tree sap that required tree sap to get stuck on every single thing in the flat, including Oliver’s hair, which did not lead to a pleasant evening and there was much cursing by John in between Oliver’s screams of outrage and Sherlock insisting that it had all been a worthy sacrifice “for science.”
John cleaned the entire flat for Oliver’s birthday and told Sherlock, “So help me God, if you get any sap anywhere in this flat for the next twenty-four hours, I will ‘science’ you into sleeping out on the doorstep for the next week.”
Sherlock blinked at him and pointed out, “It’s December.”
“Which is why you’d better be very careful about the sap, yeah?”
Sherlock looked horrified.
John grinned at him and said, “What if I give you something better to do for an hour or so?”
“An hour?” said Sherlock, and lifted an eyebrow at him.
“Do you know how much I hate you?” John told him.
Sherlock grinned and pulled John’s jumper off of him.
And there was no sap anywhere in the flat but the tree when the guests started arriving.
John had urged people not to bring presents, but that had clearly meant nothing, since everyone walked in with presents. Mrs. Hudson arrived with a present and a cake, even though John had baked one.
“I told you I was baking one,” he reminded her, accepting her cake, which was lovely and had blue frosting roughly reminiscent of Oliver’s eyes. It looked delicious, and John was sure it was, but he had really wanted to bake Oliver’s birthday cake himself, out of some strange sort of possessiveness.
“Yes, dear,” Mrs. Hudson told him, vaguely, and took Oliver out of Sherlock’s arms.
Sherlock was smirking, because Sherlock had been dubious about John tackling the cake.
“Shut up,” John told him, and brought the cake into the kitchen.
Mycroft arrived with a small entourage of men carrying a box. And another cake, this one a ridiculously elegant affair that looked in danger of toppling over.
“I baked a cake,” John said, a little annoyed now.
“Yes, Sherlock told me,” Mycroft remarked, blandly, directing one of his men to put the cake into the kitchen.
“I am not a bad cook, you know,” John said, to whoever might be listening. “If I didn’t cook, we’d all starve.”
“You do order a lot of takeaway,” Mrs. Hudson said, and then, when John glared at her, “Well, sometimes I have to answer the door, dear, because the two of you are terrible at answering the door.”
“Because Sherlock is always breaking the doorbell. And you’re an ungrateful prat,” he told Sherlock.
“I love you,” Sherlock told him, pleasantly, and kissed him.
John kissed him back but also pulled a little bit at his hair, as if that would teach him any sort of lesson.
“One thing I’m definitely grateful for is that the two of you don’t do that stuff at crime scenes,” announced Lestrade, walking into the flat with a bottle of wine and a party hat with a large shiny green pompom on the top.
“Oh, excellent, you brought wine,” said John, taking the wine.
“And a terrible hat,” remarked Sherlock.
“It’s for the birthday boy.” Lestrade put it on Oliver’s head.
Oliver scrunched up his face and gave Lestrade an I-always-suspected-you-were-insane-thank-you-for-this-final-proof look. “No,” he said.
“And I thought we might need wine,” remarked Lestrade, ignoring Oliver’s displeasure.
“We definitely need wine,” said Mycroft, stepping forward to take the wine from John. “Well done.”
Lestrade blushed.
John stared at him and narrowed his eyes.
Molly said, “Yoo-hoo! I thought I’d come right up?”
“Yes, yes,” John said, letting Lestrade escape into the kitchen. With Mycroft, John noted.
Molly was holding a teddy bear with a large red bow.
“We said no presents,” John told her.
“I know, but I saw this and couldn’t resist.”
“No, no, no,” Oliver said behind him, and John turned his head. Oliver had pushed the hat off his head but was still telling it no where it was laying on the floor.
“Look what Molly brought you,” John told Oliver.
“Here you are, Ollie,” said Molly, brightly, as she presented him with it. “Happy birthday!”
Oliver looked intrigued by the teddy bear. Probably because he wasn’t used to stuffed animals that weren’t somehow also chemical equations. He was holding his skull, though, which prevented him from being able to grab for the teddy bear.
John anticipated his issue and took the skull so that Oliver could reach for the teddy bear. Oliver pulled it in experimentally, and then pressed his face into its fur with a giggle of approval.
Sherlock appeared over Mrs. Hudson’s shoulder, peering down at Oliver and the teddy bear. “What is that?”
“It’s a teddy bear, Sherlock,” John told him.
“It’s called Teddy.”
Sherlock stared at Molly. “It’s a teddy bear called Teddy.”
Molly blinked. “Yes?” she offered.
“That’s as if Mycroft handed us a baby and John and I decided to call him Human.”
John rolled his eyes. “Give it another name, then.” He looked at his watch, then put the skull down and pulled out his mobile and texted his sister. Running late? You’ve missed seventeen different cakes arriving and a lot of presents that I told people not to bring.
“What is this enormous box?” asked Lestrade, nudging it with his toe.
John turned and noted that Lestrade and Mycroft had both emerged from the kitchen. Lestrade was holding a glass of wine. Mycroft was offering a glass to Molly, pouring it smoothly.
“Mycroft brought it,” John answered. “Even though I said no presents.”
“What’s a birthday without presents?” countered Mycroft, producing another wine glass for Mrs. Hudson, who had to juggle Oliver to take it, blushing.
“Ah, yes, that’s right, I forgot how traditionalist the Holmes brothers are in these matters,” remarked John, dryly.
Sherlock had walked over to the present, looked down at it, and then began opening it.
“Hey!” protested John.
Sherlock looked up at him. “Aren’t you meant to open birthday presents?”
“Oliver is meant to open the birthday presents! They’re his!”
“Oliver isn’t going to open birthday presents, he’s twelve months old,” scoffed Sherlock.
John crossed his arms and regarded him. “This from the man who yesterday was complaining to me that Oliver hadn’t yet mastered the art of using a pipette.”
Sherlock ignored him, pulling the wrapping paper off the present and handing it to Oliver, who looked overwhelmed by the riches of a teddy bear and wrapping paper. Then Sherlock opened the box and said, “Oh, for God’s sake, Mycroft.”
“What is it?” asked John, walking over so he could look into the box, accepting the wine Mycroft pressed into his hand absently. And then he said, pleasantly surprised, “It’s a rocking horse.” And it was, a very handsome, obviously expensive one, painted in an attractive dappled gray. John pushed his wineglass into Sherlock’s hand and wrestled the rocking horse out of the box with Lestrade’s help. And then he looked up at Sherlock, who looked disgruntled. “But this is lovely. Why are you frowning? It’s a lovely gift, Mycroft.”
“He knows I hate horses,” Sherlock bit out.
John glanced at him in surprise. “Do you? You’ve never mentioned that.”
“Why would I ever have mentioned it?” Sherlock demanded.
“What do you hate about horses?”
“It was a bad experience as a child,” inserted Mycroft. “I thought we could save Oliver from the same issue.”
“Come here, Ollie, let’s have a look,” said John, taking Oliver out of Mrs. Hudson’s arms and placing him carefully on the rocking horse.
Oliver had to drop his teddy bear and his wrapping paper to grab hold of the reins, and he looked a bit dubious about the whole thing.
“Look at that,” Mycroft said. “He’s a natural.”
Something occurred to John. He looked up at Mycroft. “This isn’t about turning him into some ridiculous aristocrat with a house in Cornwall, is it?”
Mycroft gave him his best long-suffering eyeroll.
“Mycroft loves horses,” said Sherlock, in the same tone of voice he would have used for Mycroft kicks puppies.
“Nothing wrong with horses,” said Lestrade.
“Do you ride?” Mycroft asked him.
“Uh, no,” answered Lestrade.
“Shame,” said Mycroft.
John looked between the two of them and drew his eyebrows together and decided that he wasn’t sure if he really wanted to know. Then Mrs. Hudson came forward with her gift, which was a brightly colored book about bumblebees, and Oliver sat on his periodic table blanket surrounded by his riches and poring over the illustrations in the book, with breaks for wrapping paper crumpling.
Mrs. Hudson said, “We should have cake.”
“Oh!” said Molly. “Wait! Before Oliver makes a mess of himself, we should get some pictures.”
“Yes,” said John, firmly, because he didn’t think they had nearly enough pictures. “Sit down,” he told Sherlock, who looked inclined to shrink away. Sherlock obeyed, settling on John’s chair, and John picked up Oliver and dropped him on Sherlock’s lap and then perched on the arm of the chair. “Smile,” he commanded, smiling himself.
Molly snapped several photos.
“Did they smile?” John demanded.
“Sort of,” said Molly, diplomatically.
John dragged his fingertips through the hair on the nape of Sherlock’s neck, and Molly snapped several more photos. In the kitchen, there was a bit of a commotion going on with the cakes.
John looked at his watch. “I’m going to ring Harry,” he said.
“Yes,” agreed Sherlock. “John, there’s something you should know.”
John felt his stomach sink. This was it, he thought. This was when Sherlock was going to tell him that Harry had fallen off the wagon months ago.
But Sherlock just said, “It has nothing to do with your cooking abilities. Or baking abilities, I suppose I should say.”
John blinked, confused. “What?”
“The reason why everybody brought cakes. They have every confidence in your ability to bake a cake. They worry about a cake baked in my kitchen, that despite your best efforts it’ll be contaminated with some experiment. So. I thought you should know.”
Odd thing to want to make sure he understood, thought John, but nice of Sherlock to clarify it for him. “Okay,” he agreed, because that did make some amount of sense; John himself sometimes worried about the food he made in the kitchen. “Please be a good host for the next few seconds while I ring Harry and don’t start any fights or explode anything or anything.”
“John,” huffed Sherlock, complainingly.
John pressed a kiss to the top of his head and pulled his mobile out and went into their bedroom and shut the door and took a deep breath and called Harry. Who did not answer. John frowned and looked at his watch again, even though he knew exactly what time it was and exactly how late Harry was. For her nephew’s first birthday party. The only first birthday party he would have, after all.
John left a message, which he thought was ill-advised even as he did it, but he was irritated enough to let his temper let him be reckless. “Yeah, Harry, where are you?” was the entire message.
And it was so annoying, because it should have been a good day. It had been a good day. His son had turned one and he was surrounded by people who loved him, who had brought him presents and made him cakes, and these people would be there to love him through whatever mistakes John might make with him, and John was aware that there was no way he would get everything right and that they needed to give Oliver a support system for back-up. And Oliver was surrounded by love, Oliver would never be lonely, all of these people would always look out for Oliver. And everything had been going so well, as well as a party with Sherlock and Mycroft in the same room could ever have been expected to go, and he had been lulled into a false sense of security, and he had really never entertained the possibility that Harry would…that she would…
John stood at the window and closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against it. It was freezing cold, because it was a bitter day outside.
Sherlock didn’t knock, and John wasn’t sure he’d expected him to. He heard the door open and then close and then Sherlock said, “They’ve got three different cakes with a candle each.”
John thought of Sherlock reassuring John about his baking ability. “You knew. You knew she was late because she’s off somewhere getting drunk.”
There was a moment of silence. “Did you speak to her?”
“No, of course I didn’t speak to her,” John snarled. “Do you really think she would answer the phone when she can see it’s me calling and she knows that she can’t—Never mind.” John straightened from the window. “Never mind. It’s Oliver’s birthday. I’m not letting her ruin it.” John walked over to where Sherlock was standing uncertainly by the door.
“John,” said Sherlock.
John shook his head. “Not now, okay?” he said, tightly. “He’s only going to get to do this for the first time once. I want to watch his face when we sing to him, I want to blow out his candles, I want to let him make a mess of his cake. That’s what I want to do. Okay?”
Sherlock nodded, and John opened the bedroom door.
***
Sherlock was furious. Because John was unhappy. And John shouldn’t ever be unhappy.
John had desperately wanted Oliver’s birthday party. Sherlock hadn’t really cared, and Sherlock was willing to admit that Oliver had no idea what a birthday even was. But John had wanted to throw a birthday party, and so Sherlock had gone along with it, and if Harry hadn’t been an idiot then it all would have gone well. Sherlock was polite to Mycroft, even when Mycroft had bought Oliver an obnoxious present, and they had posed for photos, and Oliver had been delighted by everything, and it should have been a bloody good day, it would have been, if Harry hadn’t gone and failed so spectacularly.
John thought they needed to eat something other than cake. Sherlock disagreed, but John was restless and would not be dissuaded and seized on the opportunity to get out of the flat and take a walk, which was always John’s preferred method of working through something that had upset him. So Sherlock let him go. He laid on the floor whilst Oliver crawled all over him, dragging his teddy bear and his wrapping paper, and stoked his fury at a low simmer.
Oliver, having pulled himself over the twin mountains of Sherlock’s legs, looked back at the skull on the opposite end of the blanket and pointed and said, “Please?”
Sherlock leaned over to grab it for him, and that was when the doorbell buzzed, and Sherlock knew immediately that it was Harry. He was actually surprised, because he had not expected Harry to show up. Harry never showed up at Baker Street. As today had proved, Harry almost never came to Baker Street, even when she was invited.
Sherlock looked over what Oliver was wearing. A sleepsuit. Good. Warm enough that he should be fine if Sherlock bundled him in a blanket. Sherlock got to his feet.
Oliver had looked in the direction of the door at the sound of the doorbell. Now he looked up at Sherlock and said, very clearly, “Client.”
Another day, Sherlock would have had John’s baby book out immediately to record the new word—and the fact that it had been used in perfect context—but Sherlock just replied, “No, your bloody difficult aunt Harry,” and swept Oliver up and into his arms. He grabbed his coat on his way out of the flat and used it to wrap up Oliver, like an impromptu blanket, leaving just Oliver’s head sticking out of the charcoal wool. And then he headed down the stairs.
He opened the door just as Harry had turned to start walking away. She looked up in surprise, and she was very clearly drunk, listing a bit to the side, balance off, eyes bloodshot, lips chapped. Sherlock took all of this in at a glance, as he tucked the bundle of Oliver and his coat up against him and frowned at her from the doorway. Harry smiled at him, wide and alcohol-lubricated, with an edge of fear in her eyes, as if he might be tricked into thinking she was sober.
“Did you think no one would be home?” he demanded.
“I—I didn’t…” Harry drew herself up, staggering only a little bit, and Sherlock saw the moment when she decided belligerence would be appropriate, would separate her from the knowledge of having disappointed John, would allow her to blame it all on someone else. She said, “What’s the matter? John won’t speak to me?”
“John’s not here. John’s taking a walk. You almost ruined Oliver’s birthday,” Sherlock snapped at her.
Harry did look abashed at that. “I didn’t…I didn’t mean to…” She took a deep breath. “It’s so hard. You have no idea. It’s so hard.”
“I have every idea,” Sherlock cut in, brittly.
“Oh, because you conducted some sort of experiment on it?” said Harry, bitterly. “It’s so easy for you to be so smug and so judgmental—”
“John was so excited today,” Sherlock interrupted. Because this entire conversation was missing the point, talking about Harry, talking about Sherlock, it was all beside the point, and the point had been John. “He was so excited. He was so looking forward to celebrating, to celebrating Oliver and to celebrating you, and I have been trying so hard to give him everything he could possibly want, and the only piece of the puzzle I couldn’t control was you, and how could you—”
“Shut up!” Harry shouted at him. “Do you ever stop being so much bloody better than everyone else?”
“That is so much more than enough,” John’s voice lashed out, lethally quiet.
Sherlock looked at him in surprise. How had John snuck up on them? Had he been that lost in the disagreement? He was standing with the bag of takeaway in his hand and glaring at Harry. Sherlock hoped he was never the object of such a glare from John.
“Sherlock, you don’t have a hat on the baby,” said John, evenly, without ever taking his eyes off of Harry.
Sherlock looked at Oliver, who was watching everything that was happening very closely. This was a true observation, but he didn’t see the relevance of it at the moment.
“John,” Harry said, turning to him pleadingly. The alcohol made her sloppy, made her overbalance as she put a placating hand on his arm, jostling their takeaway and making John wince a bit at how much weight his bad shoulder suddenly absorbed. “You have to understand—I had to have just a little—if I was going to—I mean, if I was going to face him—you’ve got to understand—he’s so terrifying and he’s so—”
Sherlock didn’t know whether or not to say anything to defend himself, but he didn’t have to, because John laughed harshly, a laugh that had Harry swallowing what she would have said next. “You’re going to blame him? Really? When he was the one to convince me to give you this chance?” John shook her hand off his arm and walked past her.
“It’s just that he’s so posh and thinks he’s better than us and—”
John paused with his foot on the first step and looked back at her, sounding honestly perplexed when he said, “I don’t know why you think I would love him if he was really like that. I don’t know why you’ve got it in your head that he would…or that I would…I don’t know what to do anymore, Harry. I’m wrung out. I’m exhausted. And I think I’m…I think I’m done. I think I can’t…I’m…I…Yeah.”
He went to turn away again, and Harry said, begged, “John.”
John half-turned back and just said, in response, “Harriet.”
Which seemed to do something to Harry, made her disintegrate somehow, crumple. John turned his back, walking up to Sherlock and then past him, saying, “Sherlock, you’ve got to put something over his head if you’re taking him out in the cold.”
Sherlock glanced uncertainly at Harry, before turning to follow John inside. John was already halfway up the stairs. “John,” he said.
“We’re not discussing it, Sherlock,” he replied without pausing, and disappeared into their flat.
Sherlock looked at Oliver, who looked thoroughly astonished by everything he had just witnessed. “No,” he said, very eloquently.
Sherlock had to agree with that assessment.
Not knowing what else to do, he followed John into their flat. John was organizing takeaway on the kitchen table. He’d already put the kettle on, too. Clearly, John was doing everything normal that he could think to do. He turned and pulled out forks, put them on the table. Turned and took mugs out of the cupboard. Turned and put the forks back in the drawer. Then said, under his breath, “Bugger,” and pulled the forks back out.
“Papa,” said Oliver at that point.
John put the forks on the table and looked at them for a second, and then turned and took Oliver in a fluid motion and put his nose in his hair and breathed. He was holding him so tightly that Sherlock expected Oliver to protest and also understood why Oliver didn’t.
“He said a new word,” ventured Sherlock, trying for normalcy.
John shifted to look questioningly at Sherlock.
“Client,” Sherlock supplied.
“Two syllables,” said John, and kissed Oliver’s head. “Did you put it in the book?”
“Not yet.”
“I’ll do it.” John, still holding Oliver snugly, walked out of the kitchen with him and into the sitting room.
Sherlock followed, wishing he didn’t feel so out of his element. He detested not knowing what to do next. He wished he hadn’t let his fury drive him down the stairs to talk to Harry. He should have just let her turn around to go home and saved John the entire scene.
He watched John pull the baby book off its shelf and open it and blurted out, “Are you angry with me?” Which was the stupidest, most selfish thing for him to say, and he knew it as soon as it came out of his mouth and wanted to take it back.
“I’m not angry with you,” John said to the book.
Sherlock decided to take him at his word. Anyway, if he said anything else, he’d probably make everything a great deal worse. What was it about wanting to make John happy that turned him into an idiot who did the exact opposite?
He walked into the kitchen, cursing himself in a silent frenzy in his head, and began blindly scooping takeaway onto plates, because it gave him something to do.
John eventually followed him into the kitchen. “Sherlock,” he said.
Sherlock mechanically kept moving food from container to container and looked up at John in dread.
“I have everything I want. And I had a wonderful day.”
So he had heard that bit. Sherlock had assumed he had, based on the timing of John’s interruption, but now it was definitely confirmed. Sherlock laughed humorlessly. “You absolutely did not.”
“Yes. I did. It was a wonderful party. Thank you for going along with it.”
Sherlock put the spoon he’d been using down with a sudden clatter. “Stop it,” he said.
“What?”
“Stop trying to make me feel better, stop trying to comfort me.”
“I’m just—”
“You want to get things back to normal, and the quickest way for you to do that is to take care of someone, and you know I’m upset, so you’ve come in here to take care of me, but I’m upset because you’re upset, so we’re stuck in some kind of vicious circle right now, you and I. So stop comforting me. If you’re angry with me, be angry with me.”
“I’m not angry with you,” John insisted.
“But you’re angry.”
“Of course I’m angry, Sherlock,” John snapped, and then took a deep breath and looked at Oliver in his arms. “I meant what I said,” he said, slowly, sounding so swamped with sadness that Sherlock felt as if his very veins were twitching in anxious desire to make John happier.
“Which part?” asked Sherlock, desperate for a clue as to what he could do.
“I’m exhausted,” John answered, eyes still locked on Oliver.
John was exhausted! Excellent! He looked exhausted! This was something Sherlock could help with! “I can take care of him the rest of the night,” Sherlock offered, enthusiastically, reaching for Oliver. “You know Ollie and I are experts at keeping each other company all night.”
John looked at him with an expression Sherlock couldn’t read, but he didn’t think it was a bad expression.
“So you can rest,” Sherlock clarified, when John stayed just standing there.
“Yeah,” John agreed, eventually. “Okay. I’m not hungry, anyway.” John leaned over and kissed Oliver’s head. “Happy birthday, little one,” he said, and then he kissed Sherlock’s cheek on his way out of the kitchen.
Sherlock checked the security of the gates in the doorways and then let Oliver down to roam whilst he played through a full selection of John’s favorite pieces on the violin. When he was done, Oliver was yawning and lolling sleepily against his teddy bear, so Sherlock collected him and took him upstairs and read John’s blog entry on the pink lady case to him until he fell asleep.
Then Sherlock went downstairs and considered what to do. He’d been hoping that Oliver would stay up a bit later to distract him a little longer, but Oliver had had a busy day. They had all had inexcusably busy days.
Sherlock glanced at their closed bedroom door, then decided that John would not object to having him there in bed with him if he woke during the night. John preferred to have Sherlock in the bed, Sherlock knew.
Sherlock went into the room and crawled into the bed next to John as carefully as he could.
John mumbled, “I am really, really, really not in the mood.”
Sherlock looked at the shape of him in the dark in surprise. “That’s not why I—I thought you might want me to be in the bed with you. I mean, you like having me in the bed. You’ve said that you…” Sherlock stopped talking because he didn’t think was being anything other than imbecilic.
There was a moment of silence, then John said, “Yes. Yes, I like having you in the bed. Sorry. Yes.”
Sherlock laid down carefully, making sure not to crowd him, but John shifted until they were pressed together and Sherlock took the invitation and snaked an arm around John’s chest.
John intertwined their fingers and said, “And the violin-playing was beautiful, thank you.”
“I didn’t mean to keep you up,” Sherlock said into John’s hair, voice muffled. “I meant to lull you to sleep.”
John laughed, the same sort of harsh, cold, unamused laugh he’d laughed at Harry. “I love that you thought I could fall asleep.”
“You said you were exhausted,” Sherlock pointed out, a bit hurt.
“I didn’t mean it literally, Sherlock.”
“Oh,” Sherlock realized, because, put that way, he did feel stupid.
John picked up Sherlock’s hand in his own and brought it to his mouth and pressed his lips into the palm.
And then he said, shakily, “Sherlock. I love you. But if you ever do that to me…to us…ever…”
Sherlock thought of addictions. He thought of how you could be convinced that you were handling them, in control of them, and then end up missing the most important things because the addictions had all along been controlling you. Sherlock had experience in that that he hated to admit. Sherlock pressed his face into John and thought of his current addictions, of the way John smiled at him, of the sound Oliver made sometimes when he caught sight of him, and thought that if there were any addictions he was never going to be able to break, whose withdrawal would kill him, it was those. Sherlock could handle the continued denial of every controlled substance, so long as he kept John Watson with him in Baker Street and the baby in the nursery.
“I know,” Sherlock replied, and held John that much more tightly. “I know.”
Next Chapter
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no subject
Date: 2013-11-13 04:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-13 06:48 am (UTC)God, poor, poor John. And Sherlock, who just wants John to be happy. In ever incarnation that's all he wants.
no subject
Date: 2013-11-13 02:34 pm (UTC)And all of the feels it gave me.
And how hints of Mystrade just magically snuck in there, making me gigglesnort.
Safe Journey!
no subject
Date: 2013-11-13 02:36 pm (UTC)Beautiful. A child's wonder at a Christmas tree never gets old.
It's great that Oliver's picked up on the word client. It's great wondering which words he considers important!
"Sherlock could handle the continued denial of every controlled substance, so long as he kept John Watson with him in Baker Street and the baby in the nursery."
Well it was an exhausting day for everyone. The last few paragraphs made me tear up a little, but I'm glad they're back in one bed together.
PS. Thank you for writing this before your trip. Hope you have a brilliant time in London!!
no subject
Date: 2013-11-13 08:04 pm (UTC)And John came so close to getting that perfect birthday party! I love that Oliver is so delighted with everything (except that hat--no, no, no! Ha!!!), from the magic of the decorated tree to the wrapping paper to the teddy that he's still dragging around after everyone leaves.
___
ETA: Have the best time in London!
no subject
Date: 2013-11-14 01:58 am (UTC)Have a lovely time in London!
no subject
Date: 2013-11-15 02:03 am (UTC)Completely and utterly adoring Oliver, who is by far the most adorable fictional Holmes fandom baby ever.
I hope you are having a fantastic time in London! I'm so jealous!
no subject
Date: 2013-11-17 10:16 pm (UTC)He'll just have to say, "We really must get rid of all these needles." That should help. :D
Sherlock insisting that it had all been a worthy sacrifice “for science.”
Nothing justifies an attack on Sherlock's or Oliver's curls, nothing, not even science. *adores the said curls*
“What if I give you something better to do for an hour or so?”
[...]
Sherlock grinned and pulled John’s jumper off of him.
Oh, they're going to do the washing?
“I told you I was baking one,” he reminded her, accepting her cake
But there's no such thing as too much cake!
And another cake, this one a ridiculously elegant affair that looked in danger of toppling over.
For once he has a good excuse to eat cake...
“We definitely need wine,” said Mycroft, stepping forward to take the wine from John. “Well done.”
Lestrade blushed.
Ah! I wondered how the Mystrade had been going since the wedding!
“Give it another name, then.”
I hope he won't give it the name of a famous serial killer. That would be inappropriate.
“Oliver isn’t going to open birthday presents, he’s twelve months old,” scoffed Sherlock.
Also, maybe Sherlock can't resist opening a present when he has an opportunity. I don't think he opened a lot when he was a child...
Sherlock ignored him, pulling the wrapping paper off the present and handing it to Oliver, who looked overwhelmed by the riches of a teddy bear and wrapping paper.
I hope he won't prefer the wrapping paper eventually. It's so frustrating when that happens.
John looked between the two of them and drew his eyebrows together and decided that he wasn’t sure if he really wanted to know.
But I want to know! :D It seems the idyll is still in its early stages.
John dragged his fingertips through the hair on the nape of Sherlock’s neck, and Molly snapped several more photos.
He should touch Sherlock's nose. It makes Oliver giggle, it could work with Sherlock. Maybe it's a Holmes thing. Maybe John could tell Greg. :D
The only first birthday party he would have, after all.
I first read The only and first birthday party he would have. You scared me to death!
You knew she was late because she’s off somewhere getting drunk.
John is so pessimistic. Harry could be late because of something else. She could be dead, for example. (What do you mean, "Not better"? God, you're never satisfied.)
John thought they needed to eat something other than cake.
*is puzzled* Why? :D
Now he looked up at Sherlock and said, very clearly, “Client.”
Don't tell me he recognised the single ring and the maximum pressure just under the half second!
“No, your bloody difficult aunt Harry”
Oh! He sweared in front of Oliver!
“Sherlock, you don’t have a hat on the baby”
Yes, Sherlock should have put the pompom hat on him. Oliver would have been delighted.
Then said, under his breath, “Bugger,” and pulled the forks back out.
“Papa,” said Oliver at that point.
Well, no wonder he's shocked. Two swear words in ten minutes! :D
He was holding him so tightly that Sherlock expected Oliver to protest and also understood why Oliver didn’t.
Because Oliver understands that Papa needs comfort or because he's choking? :D
He walked into the kitchen, cursing himself in a silent frenzy in his head
I love silent frenzy. I think your choice of words is perfect to express the slight panic and the helplessness Sherlock must feel at this moment.
“Sherlock. I love you. But if you ever do that to me…to us…ever…”
HEY! NO NO NO NO NO! Well, Sherlock would probably have already relapsed if he was due to relapse, after all he went through while he was "dead". *tries to cheer herself up*
no subject
Date: 2013-11-17 10:17 pm (UTC)And also there was Mystrade.Harry's relapse is a sad thing but it makes your story all the more credible. You make us feel John's distress so well (he's a natural "fixer" and he's able to fix a lot but he can't manage to fix someone who's so dear to him), and Sherlock's too (he can control a lot but not what matters most). I hope the next chapter will be happier for them! Oliver is, as usual, adorable.And I hope you had a happy time in London! :-)
no subject
Date: 2013-11-18 05:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-29 12:35 am (UTC)I'm not going to dwell though. On to the next chapter!