Mrs. Hudson heard the front door of the building slam shut and a rare quiet settled over 221. Mrs. Hudson decided to take advantage of this, gathering together some biscuits and the kettle that had just finished boiling and carried it all upstairs.
“Yoo hoo,” she called. The door was cracked. She pushed it the rest of the way open, looked over to Sherlock’s chair…and nearly dropped the tea tray. She hurried forward to set it on the table by John’s chair. “Sweetie! Sherlock, Sherlock, what happened?” Mrs. Hudson wasn’t sure she had ever seen Sherlock cry, especially not like this – an ugly, silent sobbing, his face buried in his hands while his shoulders shook. Mrs. Hudson stepped forward, perhaps to put a hand on his shoulder.
“Stop!” Sherlock said frantically, his voice thick with tears. “You’re going to -” he hiccuped. “Going to step on it.” He bent to scoop up a book at her feet. She half-expected him to clutch it to his chest, but instead he walked straight to the bookshelf. Mrs. Hudson didn’t miss how he hesitated in front of the fire, and for a moment she was terrified she was going to have to dive for whatever-it-was to stop him from making an emotional decision. But instead he shelved it, and stayed there staring at the shelf.
“I need to call Molly,” he murmured.
“An experiment? That’ll set you to rights,” Mrs. Hudson said fondly. Sherlock shook his head, still staring at the bookshelf.
“No. Maybe. I don’t know.” Sherlock hesitated. “No, John needs help with Rosie, and I need to go solve something. Anything.”
“John was doing just fine! He’s gone off to the shops with her, hasn’t he?”
“Yes, but she gets sensory overload at the shops. He’ll need someone level-headed to help her calm down when he gets back.”
“And why can’t you do that?” Mrs. Hudson asked, perhaps a little accusingly. Sherlock hesitated – this one much longer than his others.
“The violin irritates him. I told him I was – practicing a composition, and he – he said to stop being such a self-absorbed tit while Rosie was trying to sleep.”
Mrs. Hudson looked at him for a long time. “…It was a lullaby just for her, wasn’t it?”
“That doesn’t matter,” Sherlock said quickly. “The only way I know how to soothe her – to soothe anyone – is with the music. And if that’s not going to work…” Sherlock paused. “Just – let Molly in when she gets here, won’t you? I have to go pop into Greg’s office. Make myself of use.”
He asks it on John’s birthday, in the morning, and John scoffs that Angelo’s has yet to get a kids’ menu and if Sherlock thinks John is going to make separate meals for himself and Rosie, he’s gone round the bend.
Back to January, and Mrs. Hudson is puttering around the room, putting books back in their places.
“John, are you going to do anything nice for our boy on his birthday?”
John looks up and gives Mrs. Hudson a look that Sherlock can’t quite decipher – bitter? Amused? Skeptical?
“You know Sherlock thinks birthdays are overrated, Mrs. Hudson. Besides, it’s not as though Sherlock did anything special for mine.”
Sherlock shuts himself in his room for the rest of the day.
x
It was a beautiful day. The sun had been out, the ducks had flocked around their offerings of sunflower seeds and lettuce, and Sherlock had counted at least 23 bees, though he’d been more focused on watching Rosie’s expressions.
“Do you want to get some gelato?” he asks, smiling.
“We had popsicles before we went out, Sherlock,” John said, sounding tired and disappointed. “Do you want her to be awake all afternoon?”
x
Well. He knows better than to ask John to go on their flat-mate anniversary now. Asking on the anniversary of the night he came back to life results in a dead-eyed, unamused look, and an ominous twitching of John’s fingers.
Asking on the anniversary of the night Mary died, thinking John needed cheering up – well, that leaves him ashamed of not having predicted the reaction. He tries not to leave the flat until the black eye has returned to a normal color and his split lip no longer stings.
Fearing the worst but knowing John needs a distraction, no matter what it is, on the day that would’ve been his anniversary with Mary, Sherlock asks.
John sneers at him. “Christ, Sherlock, what are you going to do, wear a blonde wig and put on a falsetto? Jesus, just leave me alone and make sure Rosie doesn’t wake up.”
x
Sherlock isn’t sure why he never stops asking. Hope, he supposes, is a resilient thing, even as fragile as it is.
😥 honestly though, Sherlock is just trying his very best in what limited ways he is capable of….And instead, John is always reading his intention in the worst possible way 😢
I BEG FOR A HAPPY ENDING PLEASE!
And if ‘happy’ at this point is everyone giving John an intervention and telling him to stop be such a dick then yes!
I’m having a good writing day, @kickingroses, so I’ll give some happiness a shot.
More than once since Mary’s death, Greg had found Sherlock in his office, sitting quietly. And it wasn’t that he would ask for a case, exactly. He said ‘put me to use’, and it gave Greg a bad feeling. Last time, he had told Sherlock there had been nothing on (a lie) and asked if Sherlock would mind terribly forging his signature on a couple of forms to make the paperwork go faster – it would be incredibly useful.
Greg’s heart nearly broke as Sherlock held out his hand for a pen.
Greg had been trying for weeks to figure out where this had come from. He’d talked to Mycroft, who said he knew but was sworn to secrecy about. Mycroft’s lips had been pursed in a way that said Sherlock had pulled out whatever ‘big guns’ he had left to keep Mycroft from getting involved.
Greg talked to Molly next – she told him in a hushed voice about the CDs Sherlock had given her for when she babysat, a beautiful and haunting set of piano and violin duets that had probably taken months to put together, and how Sherlock had warned her never to tell John who had played or composed the pieces on the CD.
When Greg took Mrs. Hudson aside to ask her when Sherlock had gotten like this, Mrs. Hudson’s face had darkened and grown a little – ashamed? “…I know I should tell you, Inspector. But I’m not sure I can. I used the baby monitors to spy on him a bit once. ….’Your life is not your own. Keep your hands off it’. Inspector, I don’t know if I can take them away from him. As much as they’re what’s bad for him, they might be the only thing keeping him together. Back in Florida…Frank could be such a sweetheart sometimes, and he was the hottest man I’d known before or since. And when he wasn’t….” Mrs. Hudson had trailed off.
Greg was quiet for a minute. “You think – John?” Greg scoffed, a bit bewildered.
Mrs. Hudson gave him a level stare and Greg’s skin crawled. “Yes, I think John. And it’s not only that looking after John and Rosie is all that’s holding him together. If John didn’t have Sherlock – well – I’m worried…” Mrs. Hudson trailed off, biting her lip.
“You’re afraid he’d turn on Rosie,” Greg said harshly, the steel of a homicide investigator in his voice. Mrs. Hudson flinched a little and didn’t nod, but she didn’t deny it either.
xx
Mycroft had convinced Sherlock to go to a spa of all things. He had assured Sherlock that Molly’s schedule would be made free to look after Rosie, if it was necessary, but that Sherlock had been much too tense and he needed a haircut. Greg had been worried Sherlock wouldn’t accept the offer – that he would feel he didn’t deserve it or he would be terrified to leave Rosie alone. But after weeks of deliberation and long talks with Molly, he had finally gone, and now Greg was perched in John’s chair and Mycroft’s in Sherlock’s while Molly and Mrs. Hudson sat tensely on the sofa.
John walked in and nearly walked out.
“What’s going on?” he asked slowly.
“What’s going on,” Greg said, standing and squaring his shoulders, “is that you’re lucky what you’ve been doing to Sherlock doesn’t fall under the legal definition of domestic abuse. And you’re very lucky he hasn’t come to me looking to press assault charges.”
And then John was stiff, his nostrils flaring. “Assault -!?”
“Oh, John,” Mrs. Hudson snapped, and John’s head whipped around to look at her. “Do you think I’m blind and stupid on top of being old? You thought I was going to miss his black eye? You thought I was going to believe him when he said a suspect hit him on a case? He hasn’t been taking cases that might turn into a fight with a suspect since you started dumping Rosamund on him without even giving him warning! And even when you do that, you don’t trust that he can take care of her! You used to love his compositions, the ones for you, but now he’s not allowed to compose for Rosie?”
“He hasn’t written anything for -” John was stopped by Mycroft rising and walking over to John, ice in his eyes as he held out a sheaf of papers.
“Lullaby of the Flora,” Mycroft pronounced. “My baby brother quite likes wordplay. If he was going to write something for someone with the nickname of ‘Rosie’, what on Earth do you think he’d name a composition for her?”
John glared.
“Sand and Blood is another interesting one, although I’m not sure he’s kept the sheet music for it. He memorized it years ago. Back as early as 2010, perhaps. The last time he had to soothe someone to sleep,” Mycroft said – there was something offensively controlled in his voice. As though Mycroft would sneer at him, but John wouldn’t be intelligent enough to understand if Mycroft did. John blinked. He couldn’t really miss the message behind the title, and it was hard to misinterpret who it was written for.
“I – okay, fine, he wrote songs for us,” John said, wary.
“John. I want you to tell me something. Tell me honestly. What have you been saying to him? Have you called him useless?” John’s silence was all the answer Greg needed. Greg balked. “He did paperwork for me, John. Paperwork. Because I said it would be useful!”
“Dr. Watson, he hasn’t gone to Angelo’s in months. He has stopped playing his violin. He rarely speaks to us. He takes care of your daughter as if she were his own and yet feels as though he is only ruining her. And despite what I like to pretend, my little brother has always enjoyed a touch of flamboyancy. And yet it took him a month to agree to go to a spa as repayment for a favor he did me, because he was worried you wouldn’t be able to find anyone to look after Miss Rosamund. I should have you – how would your crude little spy movies put it? – disappeared.”
John flinched.
“But I won’t. Because he loves you. I will, however, pay for whatever form of therapy or rehab you think may work for you, as many times as you need to go there for it to actually work,” Mycroft said finally.
John stared, and his eyes roamed over his friends – over Sherlock’s friends. He closed his eyes, sank to the floor, and began to cry, nodding. “Yes,” he gasped. “Yes, fuck. I’m so sorry.”
“I,” Mycroft growled, suddenly uncontrolled, “am not the one you need to apologize to! You are only still here because my brother has more forgiveness in him than I would’ve thought possible of any human being! You are going to apologize to Sherlock, Dr. Watson, do you understand?”
“Yes,” John sobbed. “Yes, yes, yes.”
THANK YOU! THANK YOU!
I don’t even care that much at this point about John getting better or if he continues being a prick – I just like it being acknowledged that Sherlock has a circle of friends who adore him and would no way let John get away with this (nor his behaviour to Rosie). I hated how we didn’t see any reaction from any of them when John said he hit Sherlock.
If anything John is the one that Mrs. Hudson should have said “Get out of my house, you reptile” to.
I love every part of this, and YES everything @kickingroses said
Leaving tungle.hell like rats on the Titanic 