Nature and Nurture (52/57)
Apr. 2nd, 2014 09:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
earlgreytea68Title - Nature and Nurture (52/57)
Author -![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
earlgreytea68
Rating - Teen
Characters - Sherlock, John, Sarah
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 - Chapter Forty-Seven - Chapter Forty-Eight - Chapter Forty-Nine - Chapter Fifty - Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter 52
John behaved as if he thought Sherlock was going to cause a fuss at the surgery. As if Sherlock had ever caused a fuss at the surgery. Sherlock had always been a model of patience and tolerance in the face of abject stupidity at the surgery.
John had called in a favor from Sarah, which meant they had to deal with Sarah. She gave him that smile she always gave him to pretend that she liked him when she had hated him from the very beginning. Sherlock didn’t smile back. Sherlock wasn’t interested in social niceties. He was holding Oliver, who had been heavily bundled up by John as if it was the middle of winter, and seemed too miserable to even complain about miserable. His breaths were heavy through his mouth and interspersed with coughing, and he had a fist clenched in Sherlock’s collar as if to anchor him there and make sure he wasn’t going anywhere.
“Hello, you lot,” said Sarah, although she was really only greeting John. “What can we do for you?”
John gave her his typical John-Watson-is-nice-to-all-people-even-idiots smile. “Like I said on the phone, Oliver’s sick.”
“I know, I’m sorry to hear that,” crooned Sarah. “What’s wrong with the little tyke?” She adopted that tone of voice people used to talk to babies.
Oliver hated that tone of voice unless it came from Molly or Mrs. Hudson, because Molly and Mrs. Hudson were in the small group of people who were excused silliness. Oliver shrank closer against Sherlock and turned his face fully into Sherlock’s shoulder.
“Don’t touch him,” Sherlock warned her, and took a step away from her just to emphasize the point. He had a sudden vivid memory of being touched constantly, by people who had never bothered to ask if he wanted it, who never did it lovingly or carefully or like he was anything other than a specimen, pick up an arm and jab in a needle. Oliver liked being cuddled and hugged and held and Sherlock didn’t want him to have any bad associations with touch.
Sarah lifted her eyebrows and looked at John. Sherlock knew that look. Get your husband under control, said that look.
John ignored the look. Sherlock loved John fiercely. John said, “It’s just a cold, he had a fever a couple of days ago but it was mild and it didn’t last long. He’s just terribly congested at the moment and I think it’s draining down his throat and he’s refusing to drink anything. Or eat anything, but that’s less concerning, really, he’s not much of an eater under the best of circumstances. Anyway, I’m concerned he might be getting dehydrated. I know I can check for the signs myself, but I thought it best to get an impartial judge involved.”
John was speaking very jovially and Sherlock thought he was making it sound as if everything was fine and light and not the world’s most alarming situation. Sherlock said, “He’s been getting worse all day.”
“Because he hasn’t been drinking anything,” John added.
John was obsessed with the drinking thing, thought Sherlock.
“Okay. Well, then, let’s get you set up in an examination room and I’ll take a look at him.”
Sarah showed them into a room and then disappeared to do something or other. Sherlock didn’t care enough to deduce.
“Why is she examining him?” Sherlock demanded of John. “If he needs to be hydrated, let’s just get him hydrated.”
“She’s examining him because she’s a good doctor, Sherlock, and he’s her patient.”
“He doesn’t feel well. The last thing he feels like doing is dealing with tiresome people like her.”
Sarah came back into the room and gave him a bright look that told Sherlock she’d heard what he said.
He didn’t care. He had been sick not long ago, and dealing with Mycroft had been unbearable. He couldn’t imagine having to deal with this strange woman who didn’t like them.
“It won’t be long,” Sarah said, and walked around so she could catch a glimpse of Oliver’s face, still half-hidden against Sherlock’s coat. “What do you say, Ollie? Do you call him Ollie?”
“We do, yes,” said Sherlock.
Sarah lifted her eyebrows, giving him one of her looks again, and said, “Okay,” in a tone of voice that meant not okay you’re a lunatic.
“I don’t think it’s anything more than a cold,” said John, which Sherlock found alarming.
“I’d like to at least listen to his chest,” said Sarah.
“Oh!” exclaimed John, and Sarah jumped, startled, in reaction. “Stethoscope. Yes. He likes those.” John slipped Sarah’s out from around her neck, held it up to Oliver. “What’s this for, Ollie?”
Oliver turned his face a tiny bit more toward John. He eyed the stethoscope and said, suspiciously, “Deep breath,” and then coughed pathetically.
“Yes,” John agreed, beaming with pride. “Show Sarah how good you are at deep breaths.” John held the stethoscope up to Oliver’s chest and indicated that Sarah should put it in her ears. “Deep breath, Ollie, there you go.”
Oliver just coughed unpleasantly.
“It’s pneumonia, isn’t it,” Sherlock said, flatly.
Sarah took the stethoscope off. “It isn’t, actually. Just a bit of congestion. Not pneumonia.”
“His lips are dry,” John said, “and he’s been growing more listless the longer he goes without drinking.”
“Not moving in the right direction, but not terribly alarming. When was his last wet nappy?”
“This morning,” said John.
“No,” Sherlock interrupted, slowly, and John turned to look at him. Sherlock glanced at his watch. “I changed him two hours, seventeen minutes ago,” Sherlock told him.
John blinked. “You did? Where was I?”
“Fussing about lunch.”
“And he was wet then?” John asked.
Sherlock nodded.
“You didn’t tell me.” John sounded accusatory and vaguely hurt.
Sherlock glanced briefly at Sarah and wished she wasn’t in the room. He could see now why a wet nappy would have been an important detail but in the midst of all the panicking they’d been doing, he hadn’t focused on it. It was incredibly out of character and he hated that Sarah was witnessing it. “You didn’t ask,” he said, a bit defensively.
“You are going to be as good as new, Ollie. Your dads are just panicking a little bit.” Sarah grinned at John as if this was adorable.
Oliver mumbled, “Sodding stupid,” against Sherlock, turning his face tightly into him again.
“What did he say?” asked Sarah, sounding as if she couldn’t be sure she’d heard him correctly.
“So he’s fine, then, isn’t he?” asked John, quickly, and Sherlock ducked his head down and whispered into Oliver’s ear, “Yes,” so that Oliver would know his assessment was correct. It was important to reinforce when Oliver made intelligent observations.
“Yes,” said Sarah. “You could try a salt-water flush to clear out his passages and see if you can alleviate the pain in his throat. And warm beverages might feel better to him. Tea, for instance.”
“We’ve tried, he’s been refusing it,” said John.
“Ice, then. Really, you should take a deep breath here. He’s fine. If he doesn’t have a wet nappy in the next four or five hours, take him to an A&E.”
John lifted his eyebrows and looked at her dubiously. “Four or five hours? You wouldn’t recommend taking him somewhere so we could hydrate him now, before he gets worse?”
Sarah cocked an eyebrow at him. “I’m sure he’ll start drinking soon. Do you want to stick unnecessary needles in your child?”
Oliver knew the word needle very well. “No,” he said, firmly, from Sherlock’s arms.
“Oliver’s spoken,” remarked Sarah. “And we can see who he takes after, can’t we?” Sarah looked at him pointedly.
Sherlock glared at her. He hoped Oliver was as well.
***
“Well, that was pointless,” John said, putting their umbrella up and making sure Oliver was bundled well enough. Oliver coughed and sneezed and looked miserable. “Sorry I dragged you both out for nothing.”
“It wasn’t nothing,” Sherlock said. “Oliver’s sick and Sarah’s an idiot. We can go to another surgery, if you like.”
John sighed. “No. She’s right that he isn’t really dehydrated if you just changed a wet nappy two hours ago. I should have asked you before I insisted we come here.”
“I should have told you. I didn’t think of it,” admitted Sherlock.
“Why would you have? I’m theoretically the doctor here,” grumbled John.
“John,” said Sherlock, calmly, as they started walking, John trying to keep the umbrella balanced over Oliver’s head. “Everything’s perfectly alright.”
“Why are you so calm about this?”
“Haven’t you noticed? Only one of us is allowed to panic at a time. This is your turn.”
“If you can be this calm, why aren’t you this calm all the time?”
“Because it would bore you to tears. It would bore me to tears, too.”
John rolled his eyes and they walked toward Baker Street in silence.
Eventually Sherlock said, “This is our regular puddle experiment time, isn’t it, Ollie?”
Oliver sneezed.
“No puddles for us today,” said Sherlock, as they walked. “But maybe we’ll treat hydration like an experiment, hmm? We’ll try all sorts of beverages. And all different flavorings. How many flavorings do you think we can come up with? This might be fun.”
Sherlock seemed bright at the prospect of an experiment. John hoped it brightened Oliver as well. He walked along with them, feeling out-of-sorts that he had let himself overreact. Sherlock hopped over a puddle and John heard Oliver giggle a bit in reaction, which was a good sign, John thought. Maybe they’d get him inside and Oliver would start drinking again and tomorrow he’d wake up good as new.
Sherlock practically skipped up the steps, ignoring John’s attempts to keep the umbrella over Oliver. John sighed and paused to lower the umbrella and shake it out. Something out of the corner of his eye caught his attention as he did so, but when he looked up to see it straight-on, there was nothing there. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just Baker Street, as Baker Street always was. No Peter Thorpe. And yet John stood half-in and half-out of their doorway and felt a creeping coldness on the back of his neck, where such things started.
“John?” Sherlock called down to him. “Leave the bloody umbrella, you look ridiculous with it anyway. Come up and help with the experiment.”
John took a deep breath and closed the door and made sure it was locked. He was behaving absurdly today. He had overreacted about Oliver and allowed Sarah to let him look like an idiot in front of both Sherlock and Oliver, and now he was pretending like he had instincts about government clone doctors. When nothing on the back of his neck had alerted him to Thorpe on the day Thorpe had actually shown up.
He walked up the stairs, where Sherlock had shoved everything on the kitchen table over and was now pouring various fluids into glasses. Oliver was standing on a chair watching the procedure.
The experiment took the remainder of the afternoon and most of the evening. John was relieved it kept the two of them busy, and even more relieved when Sherlock discovered that Oliver adored ice lollies. Sherlock poured water into test tubes and froze it and Oliver clenched them in flannel-covered fists, dripping water all over the place and having a blast. John was fine with that because Oliver was drinking, and Oliver actually started to perk up as the night wore on, much more like his usual self. By eleven he was playing Cluedo with Sherlock. Which involved Sherlock showing him the cards and Oliver saying no to basically every single one and throwing it across the room, and then at the end Sherlock said, “Yes, well done, it’s a stupid game because it doesn’t acknowledge that the victim did it.”
John smiled at their ridiculousness and sprawled on the sofa and just watched them. He wasn’t in the mood to get involved himself, and both Sherlock and Oliver seemed to sense it, engaged in their own projects. Oliver spoke to Sherlock in long speeches about a structure Sherlock was building with the periodic table blocks, and Sherlock reacted to him, saying yes or no or hmm or really and sometimes responding in whole paragraphs. John wondered if Sherlock really understand what Oliver was saying better than John did or if he was just better at faking it, because Oliver never got annoyed at not getting his point across, and, indeed, he ended up collapsing onto Sherlock’s lap and watching contentedly as Sherlock followed his dictatorial demands about where the blocks should be placed.
“He’s falling asleep on your lap,” John said, finally, because it was true.
“I know,” Sherlock said, putting his finishing touches on his tower. “I’ll take him up in a second.”
John yawned and looked at his watch. Midnight. He thought how the day had started and thought it had been the longest day of his life.
Sherlock eventually got up with Oliver, who made a squawk of protest at being moved. John could hear him upstairs murmuring to him. He was telling him a story, John thought. Reading to him. Something. The sound of them upstairs was soothing. John went into the bathroom to get ready for bed, and he was just finishing brushing his teeth when Sherlock slipped into the bathroom behind him, wrapped his arms around him from behind, pressed a kiss into the nape of his neck. That was a move John performed on Sherlock frequently; he smiled at the reversal of it, which Sherlock had clearly meant to be comforting. How much comforting, John thought, had Sherlock done since the day Thorpe had spoken to him on the doorstep?
“Long day,” Sherlock mumbled into the back of John’s neck.
John looked at him in the mirror, smiled fondly. “Yes,” he agreed.
“Come to bed,” Sherlock said, and kissed his way along John’s hairline, up behind his ear, where he trailed off into a nuzzle.
“Sherlock,” said John, and turned in his arms. “I’m fine.”
Sherlock blinked innocently. “I didn’t say you weren’t.”
“Don’t treat me like glass,” said John. He was saying it lightly, but he meant it.
“I’m not. I never do.”
“I’m tired of this,” John said, suddenly. He hadn’t expected to say it, and he hoped Sherlock didn’t take it as a criticism.
Sherlock evidently didn’t. “I know,” said Sherlock, his eyes steady on his, as if he’d known this was coming.
John sighed. Of course Sherlock had known. What was even the use of talking to Sherlock sometimes?
“Get it out,” Sherlock said, as if reading John’s thoughts. Which he probably was. “You need to. Get angry. Get furious. Tell me.”
“I feel like I’m on the edge of a panic attack all the time. And I don’t notice it until something happens that—Until I overreact over something that I should have known, until I’m standing in our doorway convinced that someone’s out there when no one’s there, until I think that someone’s drugged Molly and stolen our child, and then I realize that it’s been there all along, the panic, just always there, and I’m tired of it. I’m exhausted.” John hadn’t expected to talk so long, he hadn’t expected to have so much to say.
“Feel better?” Sherlock asked, after a moment.
“No,” John almost snapped. “I don’t. That’s the problem.”
“How long did it take you to stop seeing me every time you closed your eyes?” Sherlock asked, evenly. “After I jumped?”
John winced. Just what he needed, to dredge up other things he had to cope with. “Sherlock—”
“I’m just saying, you’re not patient with yourself. You’re not patient with how your mind has to process things.”
“Look at who’s talking about being patient with human brains,” John pointed out.
Sherlock shook his head a bit. “I’m impatient with other human brains. Your human brain happens to be my favorite, so I’m trying to get you to be kind to it.”
John thought abruptly he might cry, which was so ridiculous, so instead he pulled Sherlock in and put his face against his shoulder and said, “You’re such a ridiculous git, I can’t stand you,” which was the opposite of what he meant.
“I know,” Sherlock said.
“And you’re fine with this. You haven’t—”
“I wasn’t there,” Sherlock interrupted him. “You were the one who was there. Thorpe is nothing but an abstraction in my head, a story you told me, like a gunshot wound in Afghanistan. You were there, you dealt with him, he’s very real and very concrete. You’re always the one who has to experience the terrible things, because you’re the strong one. I just hear about them through you. So don’t judge yourself against me and how I’m handling it. I know it’s driving you mad, and stop it. I wasn’t there. If I’d been there, I would have had a nervous breakdown by now. The only way I’m keeping myself together is because they’ve all been abstract threats in my head, all of them, everything that could go wrong. Of course it’s worse for you. You looked into his eyes and you heard his voice and you were exposed with Oliver whilst it was all happening. I know you’re tired of it. But you’re not being weak, love. Stop being angry with yourself over it.”
Sherlock almost never called him love, John thought. He called Oliver love sometimes, but seldom used endearments with John. John didn’t doubt Sherlock loved him, it wasn’t like he needed a term of endearment to sell him on that, but still, it was nice to hear.
"Let's go to bed," John suggested.
“That’s what I said in the first place,” Sherlock pointed out.
John chuckled.
***
Oliver was better the next day, and even better the day after that. By the third day, when Lestrade called with a crime, John thought that Oliver was well enough to take him along. The outing did him good, and the crime was solved quickly, and Oliver flirted with all of the Met, basically, and John went to bed that night pleased.
It was raining again the following day, harder than it had rained the day before, and Sherlock and Oliver were both infected with a post-case sulk.
“Nothing will ever be interesting ever again,” Sherlock told the ceiling dramatically.
“No,” said Oliver. Then, “Yes,” apparently unsure which one would agree with his father, and then he pulled himself up to drape himself dramatically on Sherlock’s chest, staring up at the ceiling with him.
John looked at the pair of them and tried not to smile. “You need to get back into your routine. What about your puddle experiment?”
Oliver sat up immediately. “Puddle, Daddy,” he said, and pulled Sherlock’s hair.
“It’s raining, Ollie,” Sherlock told him.
“I thought that was the point of the puddle experiment.”
“He just got through being sick.”
“Days ago now. He’s fine.”
Sherlock turned his head to look over at John. “And you’re better.”
“Maybe talking about it helped,” John admitted.
“I was right as usual,” Sherlock told Oliver. “Make a note in your mind palace, love.”
“Wrong,” argued Oliver, doing it automatically, because sometimes he liked to practice his Sherlockian habit of being contrary just for the sake of doing it.
Sherlock got them bundled up and John sent them off with a smile and they came back crowing with pleasure over the puddle experiment and their outing and John shook his head and life at Baker Street settled all around him, warm and bright against the damp outside.
Next Chapter
Author -
earlgreytea68Rating - Teen
Characters - Sherlock, John, Sarah
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 - Chapter Forty-Seven - Chapter Forty-Eight - Chapter Forty-Nine - Chapter Fifty - Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter 52
John behaved as if he thought Sherlock was going to cause a fuss at the surgery. As if Sherlock had ever caused a fuss at the surgery. Sherlock had always been a model of patience and tolerance in the face of abject stupidity at the surgery.
John had called in a favor from Sarah, which meant they had to deal with Sarah. She gave him that smile she always gave him to pretend that she liked him when she had hated him from the very beginning. Sherlock didn’t smile back. Sherlock wasn’t interested in social niceties. He was holding Oliver, who had been heavily bundled up by John as if it was the middle of winter, and seemed too miserable to even complain about miserable. His breaths were heavy through his mouth and interspersed with coughing, and he had a fist clenched in Sherlock’s collar as if to anchor him there and make sure he wasn’t going anywhere.
“Hello, you lot,” said Sarah, although she was really only greeting John. “What can we do for you?”
John gave her his typical John-Watson-is-nice-to-all-people-even-idiots smile. “Like I said on the phone, Oliver’s sick.”
“I know, I’m sorry to hear that,” crooned Sarah. “What’s wrong with the little tyke?” She adopted that tone of voice people used to talk to babies.
Oliver hated that tone of voice unless it came from Molly or Mrs. Hudson, because Molly and Mrs. Hudson were in the small group of people who were excused silliness. Oliver shrank closer against Sherlock and turned his face fully into Sherlock’s shoulder.
“Don’t touch him,” Sherlock warned her, and took a step away from her just to emphasize the point. He had a sudden vivid memory of being touched constantly, by people who had never bothered to ask if he wanted it, who never did it lovingly or carefully or like he was anything other than a specimen, pick up an arm and jab in a needle. Oliver liked being cuddled and hugged and held and Sherlock didn’t want him to have any bad associations with touch.
Sarah lifted her eyebrows and looked at John. Sherlock knew that look. Get your husband under control, said that look.
John ignored the look. Sherlock loved John fiercely. John said, “It’s just a cold, he had a fever a couple of days ago but it was mild and it didn’t last long. He’s just terribly congested at the moment and I think it’s draining down his throat and he’s refusing to drink anything. Or eat anything, but that’s less concerning, really, he’s not much of an eater under the best of circumstances. Anyway, I’m concerned he might be getting dehydrated. I know I can check for the signs myself, but I thought it best to get an impartial judge involved.”
John was speaking very jovially and Sherlock thought he was making it sound as if everything was fine and light and not the world’s most alarming situation. Sherlock said, “He’s been getting worse all day.”
“Because he hasn’t been drinking anything,” John added.
John was obsessed with the drinking thing, thought Sherlock.
“Okay. Well, then, let’s get you set up in an examination room and I’ll take a look at him.”
Sarah showed them into a room and then disappeared to do something or other. Sherlock didn’t care enough to deduce.
“Why is she examining him?” Sherlock demanded of John. “If he needs to be hydrated, let’s just get him hydrated.”
“She’s examining him because she’s a good doctor, Sherlock, and he’s her patient.”
“He doesn’t feel well. The last thing he feels like doing is dealing with tiresome people like her.”
Sarah came back into the room and gave him a bright look that told Sherlock she’d heard what he said.
He didn’t care. He had been sick not long ago, and dealing with Mycroft had been unbearable. He couldn’t imagine having to deal with this strange woman who didn’t like them.
“It won’t be long,” Sarah said, and walked around so she could catch a glimpse of Oliver’s face, still half-hidden against Sherlock’s coat. “What do you say, Ollie? Do you call him Ollie?”
“We do, yes,” said Sherlock.
Sarah lifted her eyebrows, giving him one of her looks again, and said, “Okay,” in a tone of voice that meant not okay you’re a lunatic.
“I don’t think it’s anything more than a cold,” said John, which Sherlock found alarming.
“I’d like to at least listen to his chest,” said Sarah.
“Oh!” exclaimed John, and Sarah jumped, startled, in reaction. “Stethoscope. Yes. He likes those.” John slipped Sarah’s out from around her neck, held it up to Oliver. “What’s this for, Ollie?”
Oliver turned his face a tiny bit more toward John. He eyed the stethoscope and said, suspiciously, “Deep breath,” and then coughed pathetically.
“Yes,” John agreed, beaming with pride. “Show Sarah how good you are at deep breaths.” John held the stethoscope up to Oliver’s chest and indicated that Sarah should put it in her ears. “Deep breath, Ollie, there you go.”
Oliver just coughed unpleasantly.
“It’s pneumonia, isn’t it,” Sherlock said, flatly.
Sarah took the stethoscope off. “It isn’t, actually. Just a bit of congestion. Not pneumonia.”
“His lips are dry,” John said, “and he’s been growing more listless the longer he goes without drinking.”
“Not moving in the right direction, but not terribly alarming. When was his last wet nappy?”
“This morning,” said John.
“No,” Sherlock interrupted, slowly, and John turned to look at him. Sherlock glanced at his watch. “I changed him two hours, seventeen minutes ago,” Sherlock told him.
John blinked. “You did? Where was I?”
“Fussing about lunch.”
“And he was wet then?” John asked.
Sherlock nodded.
“You didn’t tell me.” John sounded accusatory and vaguely hurt.
Sherlock glanced briefly at Sarah and wished she wasn’t in the room. He could see now why a wet nappy would have been an important detail but in the midst of all the panicking they’d been doing, he hadn’t focused on it. It was incredibly out of character and he hated that Sarah was witnessing it. “You didn’t ask,” he said, a bit defensively.
“You are going to be as good as new, Ollie. Your dads are just panicking a little bit.” Sarah grinned at John as if this was adorable.
Oliver mumbled, “Sodding stupid,” against Sherlock, turning his face tightly into him again.
“What did he say?” asked Sarah, sounding as if she couldn’t be sure she’d heard him correctly.
“So he’s fine, then, isn’t he?” asked John, quickly, and Sherlock ducked his head down and whispered into Oliver’s ear, “Yes,” so that Oliver would know his assessment was correct. It was important to reinforce when Oliver made intelligent observations.
“Yes,” said Sarah. “You could try a salt-water flush to clear out his passages and see if you can alleviate the pain in his throat. And warm beverages might feel better to him. Tea, for instance.”
“We’ve tried, he’s been refusing it,” said John.
“Ice, then. Really, you should take a deep breath here. He’s fine. If he doesn’t have a wet nappy in the next four or five hours, take him to an A&E.”
John lifted his eyebrows and looked at her dubiously. “Four or five hours? You wouldn’t recommend taking him somewhere so we could hydrate him now, before he gets worse?”
Sarah cocked an eyebrow at him. “I’m sure he’ll start drinking soon. Do you want to stick unnecessary needles in your child?”
Oliver knew the word needle very well. “No,” he said, firmly, from Sherlock’s arms.
“Oliver’s spoken,” remarked Sarah. “And we can see who he takes after, can’t we?” Sarah looked at him pointedly.
Sherlock glared at her. He hoped Oliver was as well.
***
“Well, that was pointless,” John said, putting their umbrella up and making sure Oliver was bundled well enough. Oliver coughed and sneezed and looked miserable. “Sorry I dragged you both out for nothing.”
“It wasn’t nothing,” Sherlock said. “Oliver’s sick and Sarah’s an idiot. We can go to another surgery, if you like.”
John sighed. “No. She’s right that he isn’t really dehydrated if you just changed a wet nappy two hours ago. I should have asked you before I insisted we come here.”
“I should have told you. I didn’t think of it,” admitted Sherlock.
“Why would you have? I’m theoretically the doctor here,” grumbled John.
“John,” said Sherlock, calmly, as they started walking, John trying to keep the umbrella balanced over Oliver’s head. “Everything’s perfectly alright.”
“Why are you so calm about this?”
“Haven’t you noticed? Only one of us is allowed to panic at a time. This is your turn.”
“If you can be this calm, why aren’t you this calm all the time?”
“Because it would bore you to tears. It would bore me to tears, too.”
John rolled his eyes and they walked toward Baker Street in silence.
Eventually Sherlock said, “This is our regular puddle experiment time, isn’t it, Ollie?”
Oliver sneezed.
“No puddles for us today,” said Sherlock, as they walked. “But maybe we’ll treat hydration like an experiment, hmm? We’ll try all sorts of beverages. And all different flavorings. How many flavorings do you think we can come up with? This might be fun.”
Sherlock seemed bright at the prospect of an experiment. John hoped it brightened Oliver as well. He walked along with them, feeling out-of-sorts that he had let himself overreact. Sherlock hopped over a puddle and John heard Oliver giggle a bit in reaction, which was a good sign, John thought. Maybe they’d get him inside and Oliver would start drinking again and tomorrow he’d wake up good as new.
Sherlock practically skipped up the steps, ignoring John’s attempts to keep the umbrella over Oliver. John sighed and paused to lower the umbrella and shake it out. Something out of the corner of his eye caught his attention as he did so, but when he looked up to see it straight-on, there was nothing there. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just Baker Street, as Baker Street always was. No Peter Thorpe. And yet John stood half-in and half-out of their doorway and felt a creeping coldness on the back of his neck, where such things started.
“John?” Sherlock called down to him. “Leave the bloody umbrella, you look ridiculous with it anyway. Come up and help with the experiment.”
John took a deep breath and closed the door and made sure it was locked. He was behaving absurdly today. He had overreacted about Oliver and allowed Sarah to let him look like an idiot in front of both Sherlock and Oliver, and now he was pretending like he had instincts about government clone doctors. When nothing on the back of his neck had alerted him to Thorpe on the day Thorpe had actually shown up.
He walked up the stairs, where Sherlock had shoved everything on the kitchen table over and was now pouring various fluids into glasses. Oliver was standing on a chair watching the procedure.
The experiment took the remainder of the afternoon and most of the evening. John was relieved it kept the two of them busy, and even more relieved when Sherlock discovered that Oliver adored ice lollies. Sherlock poured water into test tubes and froze it and Oliver clenched them in flannel-covered fists, dripping water all over the place and having a blast. John was fine with that because Oliver was drinking, and Oliver actually started to perk up as the night wore on, much more like his usual self. By eleven he was playing Cluedo with Sherlock. Which involved Sherlock showing him the cards and Oliver saying no to basically every single one and throwing it across the room, and then at the end Sherlock said, “Yes, well done, it’s a stupid game because it doesn’t acknowledge that the victim did it.”
John smiled at their ridiculousness and sprawled on the sofa and just watched them. He wasn’t in the mood to get involved himself, and both Sherlock and Oliver seemed to sense it, engaged in their own projects. Oliver spoke to Sherlock in long speeches about a structure Sherlock was building with the periodic table blocks, and Sherlock reacted to him, saying yes or no or hmm or really and sometimes responding in whole paragraphs. John wondered if Sherlock really understand what Oliver was saying better than John did or if he was just better at faking it, because Oliver never got annoyed at not getting his point across, and, indeed, he ended up collapsing onto Sherlock’s lap and watching contentedly as Sherlock followed his dictatorial demands about where the blocks should be placed.
“He’s falling asleep on your lap,” John said, finally, because it was true.
“I know,” Sherlock said, putting his finishing touches on his tower. “I’ll take him up in a second.”
John yawned and looked at his watch. Midnight. He thought how the day had started and thought it had been the longest day of his life.
Sherlock eventually got up with Oliver, who made a squawk of protest at being moved. John could hear him upstairs murmuring to him. He was telling him a story, John thought. Reading to him. Something. The sound of them upstairs was soothing. John went into the bathroom to get ready for bed, and he was just finishing brushing his teeth when Sherlock slipped into the bathroom behind him, wrapped his arms around him from behind, pressed a kiss into the nape of his neck. That was a move John performed on Sherlock frequently; he smiled at the reversal of it, which Sherlock had clearly meant to be comforting. How much comforting, John thought, had Sherlock done since the day Thorpe had spoken to him on the doorstep?
“Long day,” Sherlock mumbled into the back of John’s neck.
John looked at him in the mirror, smiled fondly. “Yes,” he agreed.
“Come to bed,” Sherlock said, and kissed his way along John’s hairline, up behind his ear, where he trailed off into a nuzzle.
“Sherlock,” said John, and turned in his arms. “I’m fine.”
Sherlock blinked innocently. “I didn’t say you weren’t.”
“Don’t treat me like glass,” said John. He was saying it lightly, but he meant it.
“I’m not. I never do.”
“I’m tired of this,” John said, suddenly. He hadn’t expected to say it, and he hoped Sherlock didn’t take it as a criticism.
Sherlock evidently didn’t. “I know,” said Sherlock, his eyes steady on his, as if he’d known this was coming.
John sighed. Of course Sherlock had known. What was even the use of talking to Sherlock sometimes?
“Get it out,” Sherlock said, as if reading John’s thoughts. Which he probably was. “You need to. Get angry. Get furious. Tell me.”
“I feel like I’m on the edge of a panic attack all the time. And I don’t notice it until something happens that—Until I overreact over something that I should have known, until I’m standing in our doorway convinced that someone’s out there when no one’s there, until I think that someone’s drugged Molly and stolen our child, and then I realize that it’s been there all along, the panic, just always there, and I’m tired of it. I’m exhausted.” John hadn’t expected to talk so long, he hadn’t expected to have so much to say.
“Feel better?” Sherlock asked, after a moment.
“No,” John almost snapped. “I don’t. That’s the problem.”
“How long did it take you to stop seeing me every time you closed your eyes?” Sherlock asked, evenly. “After I jumped?”
John winced. Just what he needed, to dredge up other things he had to cope with. “Sherlock—”
“I’m just saying, you’re not patient with yourself. You’re not patient with how your mind has to process things.”
“Look at who’s talking about being patient with human brains,” John pointed out.
Sherlock shook his head a bit. “I’m impatient with other human brains. Your human brain happens to be my favorite, so I’m trying to get you to be kind to it.”
John thought abruptly he might cry, which was so ridiculous, so instead he pulled Sherlock in and put his face against his shoulder and said, “You’re such a ridiculous git, I can’t stand you,” which was the opposite of what he meant.
“I know,” Sherlock said.
“And you’re fine with this. You haven’t—”
“I wasn’t there,” Sherlock interrupted him. “You were the one who was there. Thorpe is nothing but an abstraction in my head, a story you told me, like a gunshot wound in Afghanistan. You were there, you dealt with him, he’s very real and very concrete. You’re always the one who has to experience the terrible things, because you’re the strong one. I just hear about them through you. So don’t judge yourself against me and how I’m handling it. I know it’s driving you mad, and stop it. I wasn’t there. If I’d been there, I would have had a nervous breakdown by now. The only way I’m keeping myself together is because they’ve all been abstract threats in my head, all of them, everything that could go wrong. Of course it’s worse for you. You looked into his eyes and you heard his voice and you were exposed with Oliver whilst it was all happening. I know you’re tired of it. But you’re not being weak, love. Stop being angry with yourself over it.”
Sherlock almost never called him love, John thought. He called Oliver love sometimes, but seldom used endearments with John. John didn’t doubt Sherlock loved him, it wasn’t like he needed a term of endearment to sell him on that, but still, it was nice to hear.
"Let's go to bed," John suggested.
“That’s what I said in the first place,” Sherlock pointed out.
John chuckled.
***
Oliver was better the next day, and even better the day after that. By the third day, when Lestrade called with a crime, John thought that Oliver was well enough to take him along. The outing did him good, and the crime was solved quickly, and Oliver flirted with all of the Met, basically, and John went to bed that night pleased.
It was raining again the following day, harder than it had rained the day before, and Sherlock and Oliver were both infected with a post-case sulk.
“Nothing will ever be interesting ever again,” Sherlock told the ceiling dramatically.
“No,” said Oliver. Then, “Yes,” apparently unsure which one would agree with his father, and then he pulled himself up to drape himself dramatically on Sherlock’s chest, staring up at the ceiling with him.
John looked at the pair of them and tried not to smile. “You need to get back into your routine. What about your puddle experiment?”
Oliver sat up immediately. “Puddle, Daddy,” he said, and pulled Sherlock’s hair.
“It’s raining, Ollie,” Sherlock told him.
“I thought that was the point of the puddle experiment.”
“He just got through being sick.”
“Days ago now. He’s fine.”
Sherlock turned his head to look over at John. “And you’re better.”
“Maybe talking about it helped,” John admitted.
“I was right as usual,” Sherlock told Oliver. “Make a note in your mind palace, love.”
“Wrong,” argued Oliver, doing it automatically, because sometimes he liked to practice his Sherlockian habit of being contrary just for the sake of doing it.
Sherlock got them bundled up and John sent them off with a smile and they came back crowing with pleasure over the puddle experiment and their outing and John shook his head and life at Baker Street settled all around him, warm and bright against the damp outside.
Next Chapter
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Date: 2014-04-06 05:11 pm (UTC)Way to send shivers down my spine there. I'm now a wee bit terrified of what might happen. Whatever John saw out of the corner of his eye, it's something to be worried about I'll just bet.