Possibly, I'm Insane

chocolamousse

It’s odd to John how familiar it’s become for him to spend Christmas at a grand estate. It’s all so beloved to him now as the place where so much perfect madness happened. He navigates its layout, including its multiple staircases. He recognizes the sounds of its various antique clocks around the hallways. But mostly he associates the house with the smells of Christmas: the freshness of the greenery, the spices from the mulled wine, the rich steam of decadent puddings. John would marvel at the Christmases he experiences here – but he marvels daily at Sherlock, so that’s nothing new.

“What is it?” Sherlock asked, sniffing the glass suspiciously.

“It’s eggnog,” Lestrade replied, amused. “Never had eggnog before?”

“When I was little,” John said, “I thought it was eggsnog.”

“And that you had it whilst snogging? Like mistletoe?”

“No, that it was made by eggs snogging.”

“How can eggs snog?” Sherlock demanded severely. “They don’t have mouths.”

“I was a kid, Sherlock.”

Sherlock scoffed, like even a child should have realized eggs don’t have mouths. He said, “What’s it made of?”

“You can’t tell the chemical composition just by taking a sip?” Lestrade asked sarcastically.

Sherlock took a sip. “Maybe.”

charisstoma

Sherlock hates to admit there’s anything he can’t do, but—

“What should I get John for Christmas?” he asks Mrs. Hudson. Getting a…boyfriend…a Christmas gift is simply outside of his area of expertise.

Mrs. Hudson says archly, “If I were you, I’d clean the bathtub. A proper scour.”

“Why?”

“Didn’t you just run an experiment with human ears and hydrochloric acid?”

“Human noses,” Sherlock corrected her. “But yes.”

“John loves a bath, you know.”

“I did wipe the bathtub down when I was done with it!”

“Bleach it, Sherlock Holmes. John would appreciate it.”

It turns out that John does.  

“And here is another one for your collection,” Sherlock announced extravagantly.

When John was a baseball player, he did indeed have an extensive collection of things with sentimental value, and those were things like baseballs, gloves, bats.

But now that he had this new life in London with Sherlock, when Sherlock announced there was another one for his collection, it was now apt to be a particularly gruesome and perplexing murder.

John said, “I don’t think I like to say that I collect murders…”

Sherlock said, “No, you collect intriguing and problematic puzzles. That’s how you ended up with me.”

hominysnark

Sherlock was, predictably, willing to engage in the decorating of gingerbread people if it meant they could be decapitated or otherwise mutilated with plenty of red icing to represent the blood gushing from gory wounds.

John remarked, “To any other child, this might be traumatic.”

Oliver happily munched on a severed leg.

“What’s traumatic about this?” Sherlock demanded. “It’s a fake murder! True trauma is having to sit and listen to the vapid conversation of Mrs. Hudson’s so-called ‘baking friends.’” Sherlock’s voice dripped scorn.

John laughed. “Were you enlisted to help bake the gingerbread?”

“It was torture,” Sherlock clipped out.

kleoette

The headmaster insisted on summoning Oliver’s fathers, who arrived expecting the worst.

Dad said, “What’s all this? The school is still standing. I thought at least you would have caused some damage if you did indeed orchestrate an explosion. As I was told.” Dad frowned at the headmaster.

Oliver said, “It wasn’t an explosion, it was a little bit of sodium and potassium in water.”

“Not ‘a little,’” the headmaster harrumphed. “A great deal. The laboratory is unusable now.”

“It’s science,” Dad snapped. “Science never hurt anybody.”

“Not entirely true,” said Papa, and, “We’ll pay for it to be cleaned.”

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.

Requested by K2togYO

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.