The Drabble Series: Buttons
Sherlock wishes he had eyelids, yet all his makers gave him were buttons.
He would also like joints, yet all he has is twigs.
Sherlock would like a heart, perhaps feelings, but he’s stuck with nothing but snow.
He can recall the children running past, but not what happened before that. Nor what happened after, for that matter.
All he knows is that he’s really cold.
Sherlock doesn’t see. Sherlock’s buttons are shiny and he uses them to observe. He looks at people and calculates. He calculates and waits, because those are the things Sherlock is best at.
He can’t get to the homes in front of him, not even if he wanted to, and everytime he sees a mother calling her children inside for a hot drink, he would feel something if he could.
He spends his nights thinking and attempting to shiver and he spends his days jealously onlooking children wrapped up in coats.
He listens, his snowy brain remembering and discarding, and watches each day as the same man walks to and fro the park, his cane tapping tiny dots into the slowly melting white.
He remembers his face, can almost read his thoughts in the expression and starts hoping, after two-something days that the man will look his way once.
It takes the man a week to notice him.
It takes him another day to stop and stare, and from then on, everytime the man stops to push the button on Sherlock’s snowy belly back, Sherlock thinks he hears beating in his ears.
After four days, the man brings along a carrot and sticks it in his face, and suddenly Sherlock is overwhelmed with smells so incredible his brain nearly shuts down.
The next day, John doesn’t stop.
Sherlock takes a few seconds to think about this, thinks he hears the beating again, but tries not to notice the man returning from the park within minutes.
He attempts to not notice the man for another three days; goes back to freezing and staring at his fallen buttons.
After this, his eyes fall out, and one of his twigs gets taken. He doesn’t mind. He’s seen the others wither and disappear into a heap much earlier and has accepted his fate for what it was.
His thoughts remain silent until he feels something.
He feels something being wrapped around his nonexistant neck and suddenly feels a lot warmer.
He knows he shouldn’t. Knows he ought to be cold, knows feeling warm was a dangerous thing, but then his eyes are popped back in and his bottom button gets stuck back on, and while his arm is still missing, the sight of the man, army doctor, invalided, dishwater hair, is enough to warm him.
He feels warm for days after, and when he feels his face running and his legs disappear, he isn’t particularly worried.