Possibly, I'm Insane

chocolamousse

There was mistletoe hung all over the house and Sherlock was annoyed by it.

“I know,” John agreed, “it’s a lot, but I think your mother is just happy we’re happy.”

“It’s like she’s testing us,” Sherlock spat out, “to make sure we’re really dating this year. But anyway, mistletoe is a terrible tradition. Christmas traditions are awful.”

“I don’t believe you really think that,” John said, mindful of the twelve days.

Sherlock continued, “A special plant for kissing, but where’s the plant for nuzzling? Not enough nuzzling is being encouraged,” Sherlock sulked. “Absolutely unacceptable.”

John, charmed, promptly nuzzled him.

rifleman_lincoln

“No,” Sherlock says, “no, no, and no.”

“Hang on—” John begins.

“No, Oliver has rejected all of these.”

“Oliver has rejected all of the Christmas decorations?”

“They’re all tedious, aren’t they, Ollie?”

Oliver nodded.

John didn’t bother to ask why a three-year-old had such opinions on Christmas decorations. “But you love the tree,” he said.

“We’ll allow the tree,” Sherlock said, “but none of the inane elves or grinning reindeer or macabre snowmen.”

“Macabre?”

“That one’s definitely a murderer.”  

“We keep that one.” Oliver pointed.

“Oh, yes,” Sherlock agreed. “That one came from Mrs. Hudson, we’re keeping that one.”

kleoette

“I think it’s preposterous,” Oliver said. Preposterous was four-year-old Ollie’s favorite word.

“What is this time?” John asked, because everything was preposterous these days.

“The idea that a fat man could deliver all the presents in the world in a single night being pulled by reindeer. Coming down everyone’s chimney. It’s preposterous. Why doesn’t everyone else see it?”

“Maybe they like to believe in a bit of magic.” John regarded this little miracle child fondly. “I know I believe in a bit of magic.”

Oliver huffed.

But he didn’t tell his classmates there was no such thing as Father Christmas.

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There comes a day when John suggests that Oliver should move out of a cot and into a proper bed.

“He’ll move out of a cot when he’s ready,” Sherlock sniffs.

“But I think we should encourage it,” John explains.

“Why?”

“Why?”

“Why do we need to encourage it?”

“It’s part of growing up.”

Sherlock scoffs.

“He can’t sleep in a cot forever.”

“He can do whatever he wants, he’s Oliver Watson-Holmes. Don’t try to tell him when he has to sleep in a bed.”

Oliver gives John a defiant look over his anatomically-correct heart puzzle.

It’s a difficult transition.

np_complete

The flat was in an uproar when John got back from getting milk. “What is it?” he asked, watching Sherlock dash around. “What’s happened?”

“We’ve got a case,” Sherlock answered. “A very important case. Hurry up, we must investigate.”

John hurriedly put the milk away, prepared to leave again. “What case?”

“Someone—” Sherlock knotted his scarf firmly—“has stolen Mrs. Hudson’s wreath from the front door.”

John paused. “That’s the very important case?”

“I am not going to let these hooligans destroy Mrs. Hudson’s Christmas.”

“You told her the wreath was stupid,” John pointed out.

“That’s different, let’s go.”

chocolamousse

What to Get the Person Who Has Everything! proclaimed the headline.

“Useless,” muttered Sherlock. Nobody had everything. What people had were enough things that it was difficult to make an impression. That was Sherlock’s problem: When you gave someone all Twelve Days of Christmas, what could you get them after that?

The article suggested Chocolate! Sherlock scoffed.

But then he considered the things that one could do with chocolate. Unclothed. Scientifically. Maybe that article did have a point.

“What are you getting John for Christmas?” Mycroft asked.

“When you eliminate the impossible,” Sherlock said, “whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”

“So Santa left us a bunch of birds in cages.”

Sherlock scowled. “No, no, that’s impossible, we are eliminating that.”

“What other possibility is there?”

“Mycroft.”

John snorted. “Mycroft is impossible, Santa is the improbable option.”

“My mother,” Sherlock suggested.

“How would your mother know exactly which days of Christmas you’d failed to gift me? Did you tell her?”

“My mother’s very clever,” Sherlock faltered. Then, “Mrs. Hudson.”

“No way. Guess again.”

“It can’t be Santa,” Sherlock despaired.

“Ho ho ho,” said John.

Oliver got the idea while studying their Christmas tree. There was an obvious pattern to the branches. It wouldn’t be difficult to do.

“What are you thinking?” asked Papa. “It makes me nervous every time I see either of you so lost in thought.”

“I’m plotting out climbing the tree,” answered Oliver.

“Not our Christmas tree!” Papa exclaimed.

“Of course not. It’s covered in ornaments.”

Oliver tested his theory when they went on a holiday to the Cotswalds because there was a serial killer there. He was right: Climbing trees was a science.

It was getting down that was tricky.

hominysnark

“E is for electrolyte,” Sherlock told Oliver. “That’s a substance that dissociates into ions in solution and acquires the capacity to conduct electricity.”

“I highly doubt that is what it says in the book ‘A is for Alligators,’” remarked John.

“I’m not telling him E is for elephant,” Sherlock said. “That’s nonsensical.”

John supposed it was predictable when, months later, Oliver pointed to a picture of an elephant and exclaimed, “’lectrolyte!”

“That’s an elephant,” Lestrade said.

“‘Lectrolyte!” Oliver repeated stubbornly.

“Electrolyte, Ollie,” Sherlock said, “very good.”

Lestrade said, “Is it worth it to argue about this?”

“No,” said John immediately.

chriscalledmesweetie

Sherlock came down with a case of hiccups on Christmas Eve.

“Conveniently timed to avoid going to church with me,” John remarked.

“That’s not—what’s happening—anyway—I will find—a scientific way—to destroy these.”

“Don’t sound so violent about it,” John said fondly, and kissed the top of his head as he left.

Sherlock hiccupped.

His mother unhelpfully said, “It’s probably nerves, you know.”

Sherlock glared at her. “Nerves over what?”

“Over the fact that you ought to be proposing to John,” she replied simply.

“I will conquer these with science,” Sherlock vowed. And then hiccupped. Bloody hell.