Nature and Nurture (47/57)

[earlgreytea68]

Title - Nature and Nurture (47/57)
Author -earlgreytea68
Rating - Adult
Characters - Sherlock, John, Mrs. Hudson
Spoilers - Through "His Last Vow"
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 - Chapter Thirty-Two - Chapter Thirty-Three - Chapter Thirty-Four - Chapter Thirty-Five - Chapter Thirty-Six - Chapter Thirty-Seven - Chapter Thirty-Eight - Chapter Thirty-Nine - Chapter Forty - Chapter Forty-One - Chapter Forty-Two - Chapter Forty-Three - Chapter Forty-Four - Chapter Forty-Five - Chapter Forty-Six

John spent the first part of the ballet with his hand around his mobile in his lap in case it should vibrate, spending so much of his time looking down at it to make sure it didn’t light up that he barely registered any of the dancing at all. The music seemed pretty, but he was barely paying attention to that, either.

Beside him, Sherlock was very still, and eventually John stole a glance at him, half-annoyed he didn’t seem as keyed up with nervous energy as John was. He was watching the ballet raptly, leaning forward in his seat, his fingers steepled into thinking pose while his eyes avidly tracked the dancers’ movements on stage. John didn’t even think he was blinking. He was so intent that John momentarily forgot to stare at his mobile, caught up instead on staring at his husband, unnaturally beautiful when he was passionately taken with something, no matter what it was.

He really loves this, thought John, and it was not that he hadn’t believed it when Sherlock had said he liked dancing, just that he hadn’t expected it to be so demonstrably true. Sherlock loved serial killers and chemistry and violins and his Belstaff coat and ballet. John suddenly wondered what else Sherlock loved, how much else John hadn’t yet uncovered about him.

The lights startled him when they came up for the interval. He blinked to get accustomed to the brightness.

Sherlock turned to him and said, “We can leave.”

“Leave? What are you talking about?”

“I don’t think you’ve seen a single arabesque of this ballet.”

John didn’t want to point out that he didn’t even know what an “arabesque” was. “But you’re enjoying it a great deal.”

Sherlock shrugged. “It’s fine.”

Liar, thought John, fondly. “We’re staying,” he said, firmly.

Sherlock regarded him, then said, “Ring Mrs. Hudson. I’ll be right back.” And then he stood and slid into the crowd.

John rang Mrs. Hudson.

“Really, John, there’s nothing to worry about,” Mrs. Hudson told him. “We’re playing with these body part puzzles you got for him.”

John felt like a nervous mother hen and hated that about himself. Oliver was going to find him suffocating and rebel and go live in a commune somewhere, thought John. He was not going to spend the rest of this ballet fretting. He was going to actually watch it. Or at least watch Sherlock if he couldn’t manage watching the stage. He was going to enjoy this.

His phone buzzed with a text, and John thought it would be Sherlock, but it was Mycroft.

No unusual activity around Baker Street. Well-being of OCWH has been personally confirmed. –Mycroft Holmes

Ridiculous, thought John. And yet it was quite possible he had fallen into the Sherlockian trap of not truly appreciating how valuable it could be to be loved by Mycroft Holmes.

So John texted back. Thanks. You were right, Sherlock loves the ballet.

He didn’t receive a reply, but he hoped Mycroft might be pleased.

Sherlock came back with a tumbler of whiskey that he handed to John.

“What’s this?” John asked, as he took it.

“Not poisoned,” Sherlock said, and resumed his seat.

“In case you didn’t deduce it, you don’t need to get me drunk.”

“Oh, I know you have every intention of having your way with me after you dramatically re-present me with that wedding ring you have tucked in your pocket,” said Sherlock, lightly.

John frowned a bit. “Sherlock.”

Sherlock looked at him. “Sorry. Did you want that to be a surprise?”

John shook his head and sipped his whiskey and decided it wasn’t worth the argument.

“I thought you might enjoy the ballet better with whiskey,” said Sherlock.

“It isn’t that I don’t like the ballet,” John protested, weakly.

“It’s that your Captain Watson head is working overtime moving us into defensive positions against every person in London. Did Mrs. Hudson say Oliver was fine?”

“Yes,” John admitted.

“Right. Drink up.” Sherlock nudged the tumbler toward John’s mouth.

The lights flashed for the end of interval, and John sipped at his whiskey. Sherlock next to him slouched down, very different from the leaning-forward posture he’d employed during the first part of the ballet. He tipped his head very close to John’s, practically pushing himself into John’s seat in an effort to get close to him. John couldn’t tell if this was some sort of odd seduction technique or if Sherlock was trying to optimize some weird ballet viewing perspective that John didn’t know about. He wasn’t keen about the former, so he hoped it was the latter: It wasn’t that he didn’t want to be seduced, but he didn’t want to get thrown out of the Royal Ballet for public indecency when they were surrounded by people who would not miss anything seduction might lead to.

“Sherlock,” John said, trying to reclaim a bit of his space. “Do you just want to switch seats?”

“No, this is fine,” said Sherlock. “Or it would be if you’d stop squirming all around. You’re disturbing the man on your left who’s in the middle of trying to get off with that woman, a tricky endeavor as you know so well.”

“There are so many different things about that speech that I want to address that I don’t know where to start,” hissed John, as the lights went down finally.

“Shhh,” Sherlock warned him, and shifted his head still closer.

It wasn’t a cuddle. John thought he could at least understand if Sherlock put his head on his shoulder, settled into a snuggle, but instead Sherlock was keeping his head tipped slightly up, so that they were sitting in a weird sort of half-embrace. And then Sherlock started whispering, so low John would have thought he was imagining it if he didn’t feel the rush of air against his ear, and John realized why he’d shifted so close.

"A full performance of this ballet would run approximately three hours, not counting time for intervals,” said Sherlock’s faint whisper. “So it is nearly always cut. The Royal Ballet has decided to open this second act with the beginning of what is technically Act III of the full ballet: Les Noces de Désiré et d'Aurore. You see here we begin with a Marche, which will soon segue into Grand polonaise dansée. They have made some changes but generally they are following the original choreography of Marius Petipa, who was the ballet master of the Imperial Ballet. Petipa was born into a family of performers and aside from being choreographically inclined also played the violin…”

Sherlock kept up his commentary. Sometimes it was about the lives of the dancers they were watching, of previous famous dancers to have played the role, of Tchaikovsky and Petipa and other Imperial Russian ballet greats. Sometimes it was the choreography, crooning French into his ear. Sometimes it was about the orchestration, about someone’s violin being slightly off-tempo, about the harpist hitting a single wrong note. John sat, Sherlock’s voice in his ear, and thought that it was possible he’d been selling the ballet short all of his life.

Then Sherlock stopped talking, shifting away from him.

John looked at him, annoyed that Sherlock would cut off the monologue, because he’d been enjoying it.

Sherlock was working his mobile out of his coat. He frowned down at it, then slipped it back in his coat and slipped his way out of the row.

“Sherlock,” John hissed at him, which caused several people to shush him. Annoyed, John struggled his way out of the row, accomplishing it with not nearly as much grace as Sherlock had. He tripped and fell over people and a general wave of hushed cursing followed him out of the theater.

Sherlock was in the lobby. He’d already retrieved his coat and was whirling it on.

“What’s wrong?” John demanded. “Is it Oliver?”

“No,” Sherlock answered. “There’s been a murder. Lestrade needs our help.”

John decided that a murder was the only thing that Sherlock definitely liked enough to give up the rest of the ballet. “What sort of murder?”

“A good one. Closed door. And an hysterical maid.” Sherlock waved a taxi over and held the door open for John.

“An hysterical maid?” John echoed.

“Claridge’s,” Sherlock said to the cabbie, and then turned to John. “Ring Mrs. Hudson and tell her something’s come up and we’ll be later than expected.”

“We can go and retrieve Ollie,” John offered, already reaching for his mobile.

“When we’ve already got a baby-sitter? And Lestrade is fighting with the PA to keep the body where it is?”

“The PA?” John felt like he had no idea what was going on, as he dialed Mrs. Hudson.

“Yes, it’s apparently some famous actress or something.” Sherlock waved his hand negligently.

“Is it? Who?” John listened to Mrs. Hudson’s phone ring.

Sherlock shrugged.

Mrs. Hudson answered with, “John, dear, everything’s quite alright.”

“I know, Mrs. Hudson. We’ve been called to a crime scene, can you watch Oliver a bit longer for us?”

“Oh, don’t worry about a thing, dear! Ollie and I will just have a nice sleepover!” Mrs. Hudson assured him.

“Thanks,” John said, as he hung up his phone.

Sherlock was frowning as he texted frantically on his own phone.

“What’s wrong?”

“Scotland Bloody Yard can’t keep from ruining everything. At least they’ve got the PA occupied elsewhere, so we’ll have the crime scene to ourselves. Here we are.”

The cab drew to a stop and Sherlock leaped out, leaving John to pay, as usual. John followed Sherlock into Claridge’s, where he’d actually never been before. Sherlock was moving swiftly, so John had no time to really admire the gleaming marble and dripping chandeliers. Sherlock strode through the lobby as if he owned the place, saying a grave Good evening to the desk attendant and then ducking them into the elevator.

“Do you know where you’re going?” John asked.

Sherlock looked at him in amusement. “Why are you whispering?”

“I don’t know,” said John, a little defensively. “It seemed like we should whisper. Where’s Greg?”

“I told you.” The elevator opened onto a floor and Sherlock strode confidently out of it. “Keeping the PA occupied.”

John looked up and down the deserted hallway. “And what are we doing?”

Sherlock was fiddling with something at the door. “Breaking in.”

“Hang on,” said John. “You can break into an electronic hotel room lock?”

Sherlock gave him a look.

“Does Lestrade know we’re breaking into this crime scene?”

“Yes,” said Sherlock, as the lock beeped. He threw the door wide open.

John stepped through, prepared for the spectre of a beautiful dead woman on the bed, but the bed was empty. The room was empty. The bath, maybe? But before he could even complete that thought, he found Sherlock on top of him, mouth capturing his in a bruising, single-minded kiss.

John tried to keep hold of the thoughts in his head, except that Sherlock seldom kissed him quite like this, and everything inside John scattered to pieces. Sherlock shoved at his suit jacket, but didn’t succeed in getting it off him, just succeeded in trapping John’s arms in it and then pushed him back to the bed. He landed on his back with his arms still trapped underneath him, and Sherlock followed him down, stretched over him, kissed him filthily. John wriggled, trying to get his arms free and not caring overly much when Sherlock was kissing him like that.

Sherlock’s hands were at his fly, unzipping and then stroking and John tore his mouth away, squirming and gasping.

“Jesus, let me catch my breath,” said John.

“Not a chance,” said Sherlock, and produced lube from somewhere with the flourish of a magician.

“There’s no murder, is there?”

“There’s no murder.”

“This was a set-up.”

“Angry?”

“Christ, no.”

“Happy anniversary, John,” said Sherlock, and used a hand slathered in lube to slide over both of them at once.

John couldn’t help but arch, to thrust upward against Sherlock, against the friction of him. Sherlock was good at this. Sherlock was excellent at this. And he knew it. One of his special show-off skills was that he was could gauge John’s reactions well enough to pace them both to simultaneous orgasms. Which he proved again in record time.

Afterwards, he rolled off John but stayed pressed against his side.

John, finally free enough to fully move, struggled out of his suit jacket and looked down at the rest of his rumpled, ruined suit. His wedding suit. Which he’d worn out of sentimentality.

He collapsed back onto the bed. “You secretly hate this suit, don’t you?”

“I adore that suit. I can’t keep my hands off you in that suit,” replied Sherlock.

“You’ve ruined it.”

“I’ll send it to Mycroft for cleaning.”

“Don’t you dare,” said John, appalled, and, when Sherlock was silent, “Sherlock. I mean it.”

Sherlock huffed as if he thought John was unreasonable to not want to ask his brother to literally clean up their sexual indiscretions. “Fine. But it’s your favorite sexual position that caused the problem.”

“Is it my favorite?” John considered. “It is, isn’t it?”

“Trust me, John,” said Sherlock, long-suffering.

John tried to catch his breath, then said, “When did you plan this?”

“When Mycroft gave us the ballet tickets. I decided we should get something out of the evening that we both enjoyed.”

“Well, well done, you, on that front.”

“I know,” said Sherlock, smugly.

“Do you have a brilliant Sherlockian plan for how we’re getting out of here and back to Baker Street in any semblance of respectability?”

There was a moment of silence. “I admit we weren’t supposed to still be mostly dressed for any of…that.”

John couldn’t help it: He laughed. He laughed until his stomach hurt from laughing. And then he rolled over to drape himself across Sherlock’s chest and said, “I love you.”

Sherlock smoothed a hand over his hair and smiled but looked thoughtful. He said, seriously, “I’ve genuinely no idea why.”

“That’s because you’re an idiot,” said John, and smiled. “Shall I give you your present now?”

“Shall I pretend to be surprised?”

“Prat,” said John, and rolled away from him to snag his suit jacket and pull it back, taking the rings out of the pocket. “One for you and one for me.” He handed Sherlock his.

Sherlock held it up to the light, tipping it so he could read the inscription. And then he smiled. “And what does yours say?”

“What do you think it says?”

“Or Iraq.”

“Indeed it does.”

“Good choice,” Sherlock said, and lifted his head far enough to kiss John.

John caught his head before he could lay it back down, kept it close so that Sherlock had to take what he was saying seriously. “Sherlock, this has been, by far, the happiest year of my entire life. And that wasn’t just Oliver. That was you. Every moment with you, making me happier than the moment before. That’s why I love you. And if you don’t know that by now, then I am doing a terrible job as a husband.”

“You’re the most perfect husband in the world,” said Sherlock, solemnly.

“Thank you, I’ve always thought I’m pretty great.”

Sherlock chuckled and laid his head back down and took a deep, luxurious breath, relaxed and content.

John said, “Why did you insist on wedding rings?”

Sherlock had his eyes closed when he answered. “Why did you assume I wouldn’t?”

“You’re not a traditionalist. The marriage makes sense for legal technicalities, but I didn’t think you were being…sentimental about it.”

“It’s not sentiment. It’s evidence.”

“Evidence?”

“That once upon a time the best person on the planet wanted me to be his enough that he agreed to be mine in return.”

John smiled and pulled himself up Sherlock’s body and kissed him. “That’s sentiment. You and your poet’s soul. Violins and ballet.”

“Ballet is as brutal as crime, you know. As brutal as a murder. Or a suicide. The lengths to which they go, the lengths to which they push themselves…but you’d never know. That’s the point. You’re not supposed to know. All dance is complex and intricate but done correctly it’s supposed to look easy. Like a good murder.”

“Only you,” John murmured, and tucked his head under Sherlock’s chin and yawned and said, “We should go, before we fall asleep.”

“We’ve got the room all night.”

“But we didn’t tell Mrs. Hudson we’d be out all night. She’ll worry.”

“She thinks we’re at a crime scene.”

“It’s rude to leave her there taking care of our child while we shag.”

“We already shagged, we’re just sleeping now. And Oliver will be sleeping by now anyway.”

“I’m sorry, we are talking about our son Oliver, right? The one who never sleeps because his clone father has him on a terribly indulgent, nonexistent schedule because of some misguided belief that sleep is an unnecessary waste of time?”

“It would be an unnecessary waste of time for me to rebut all the falsities in that sentence,” rejoined Sherlock.

John chuckled and forced himself out of the warm cocoon of Sherlock, going into the bathroom to try some attempt at cleaning himself up. The bathroom distracted him by being incredible, however.

“Sherlock?” he called.

Sherlock appeared in the doorway, looking like a quizzical and ravished mess.

John pointed to the shower, multiple showerheads, big enough for two. “We’re not leaving here until we put this shower to good use.”

Sherlock lifted an eyebrow. “I thought you were against making Mrs. Hudson baby-sit whilst we shagged?”

“That was before I saw the shower. Take off your clothes.”
"Really, John? That’s optimistic of you, isn’t it?”

“Hope springs eternal,” said John, and turned on the shower.

Next Chapter