Fic and Art: The Days Are Just Packed
Title: The Days Are Just Packed (Sherlock/Calvin and Hobbes crossover)
Pairing: Gen (Kid!fic)
Rating: PG
Warnings: None, really. A teensy bit of language.
Summary: The thing about Sherlock, you see, is that he’s terribly clever, and he understands that most people would run about screaming their heads off if they saw a real live panther walking about.
Word Count: 3300
Author's Notes: I just...I don't even know. First I drew the picture, and then the plotbunnies started a'coming and they just WOULDN'T STOP. Calvin and Hobbes was such a major part of my childhood that I just had to try my hand at a crossover, and I won't lie, this does strange things to my heart.
The drawing that begat this madness. Now, on to the fic....
John gets Sherlock (or the other way round, according to Sherlock) on his sixth birthday. John finds a big box sitting on the end of his bed that morning, and he tears off the Scooby-Doo wrapping paper while his mum watches from the doorway. When he reaches inside and pulls out Sherlock (he hadn’t named him yet, of course, but in the interest of clarity he ought to be referred to that way regardless), his mum says, “He’s to protect you on your adventures.”
John promptly goes out and drags Sherlock through six mud puddles and two hedges on a quest to find the football he lost yesterday. Not only does Sherlock survive the wild outdoors, but in the end he’s the one who finds the football sitting in one of the flowerbeds next door. From that day on, John and Sherlock are inseparable.
-
It takes John a week and two days to name Sherlock. He tries a different name every day, but none of them feels right. He finally finds the right one by closing his eyes and putting his forefinger down on a map of Australia. When he tries it out, Sherlock smiles and says that’s the right one, John, and John, of course, agrees.
-
Around most people, Sherlock is a black, stuffed, plushy sort of doll of an unspecified feline species (a panther, John insists firmly, he’s not a cat). He’s got a big, shiny black nose, white paws and belly, and soft, tufty ears and whiskers. He also wears a blue scarf that John knotted around his neck one chilly day and kind of forgot to take off. Sherlock doesn’t seem to mind, and John thinks the shade of blue suits him very well. Besides, it makes for a convenient handhold, because when other people are around John has to carry Sherlock.
The thing about Sherlock, you see, is that he’s terribly clever, and he understands that most people would run about screaming their heads off if they saw a real live panther walking about. So he only comes to life when it’s only him and John, who is far too sensible to be frightened of a silly old cat.
-
John is six and a quarter years old and 100 centimeters tall (well, really he’s 99 and three quarters, but Sherlock says it’s okay to lie when it’s only a quarter of a centimeter). He has blond hair and greeny-blue eyes and big ears that stick out from his head like the handles on teacups. His mum tells him he’s a nice boy; he doesn’t talk back to his parents, he likes going to school, and he only hits his sister when she hits him first.
Sherlock is not very nice; he says mean things about people sometimes, but that’s only because he’s a lot smarter than they are and so he thinks they’re boring. He doesn’t like going to school, but that’s because he’s much too clever and already knows everything that the teacher says. John doesn’t take him to school because he gets dreadfully grumpy and whispers to John in class besides, and John doesn’t want to get into trouble for not listening to teacher.
-
Sherlock does get John into trouble sometimes, though. John knows he doesn’t mean to, but when John’s mum tells him to clean his room Sherlock always wants to do fun things and John can’t always say no. When John’s mum finds the two of them climbing up a bookcase to see what the living room looks like from above, John tries to explain that it was all Sherlock’s idea, but she puts him in time-out anyway. John hates being in time-out because he has to sit in the corner and Sherlock gets locked up in the linen cupboard, way on the top shelf where John can’t reach him. When he does something really bad and gets a really long time-out, sometimes John cries because he misses Sherlock so much.
-
When John’s not in school or in trouble, he and Sherlock go on adventures. Sometimes they take the big cardboard box that the fridge came in out of the garage and build a spaceship out of it and go explore weird new planets (Sherlock is very good at making scary alien noises). Other times, they turn the box on its end and make it into a magic police box. John likes wearing his mum’s striped scarf and his dad’s big black hat and running about like the silly man on the telly (Sherlock’s always his companion; John likes it that way because it’s true).
But mostly they’re detectives. John likes this the most because they don’t have to go anywhere; when you’re a detective, you can have an adventure right in your own house. Sherlock is a very, very good detective. He can tell all sorts of things about people from the kind of clothes they’re wearing and how they walk and talk. His eyes aren’t as good as John’s, though, so John finds him a magnifying glass and ties it to his left paw with one of Harry’s hair bands so he doesn’t lose it.
They make a very good team and solve all sorts of mysteries, all of which John names and writes down in his journal. There’s The Sign of Four, where John finds a number four mysteriously written in the middle of the sidewalk and Sherlock figures out that it’s part of a hopscotch court that got washed away by the rain. Then there’s The Adventure of the Speckled Band, where Harry accuses John of getting ink spots on her favorite belt but they figure out that it’s actually grape juice. And there’s also The Crooked Man, where John finds one of his action figures all bent on the floor and his mum finally admits to accidentally smushing it with the vacuum cleaner.
Solving mysteries is John’s favorite thing, and he knows it’s Sherlock’s, too. When they solve a particularly good one, John’s mum makes cookies and they eat them right out of the oven when they’re still hot and gooey. Sometimes John burns his mouth on the hot chocolate chips, but he doesn’t mind.
-
Harry is John’s sister. John doesn’t much like her because she thinks she’s really cool because she’s nearly ten and has her own record player. John doesn’t understand the point of the record player because all she does is use it to play songs about queens dancing and boring things like that. What does John care about a bunch of guys shouting out a string of letters? One time, he looked into Harry’s room and saw her listening to that song and making the shapes of the letters with her arms. She screamed at him and chased him away, but he still laughed at her for a week.
Someday, he thinks, he’ll get in there and do something fun with that record player. He’d sort of like to put Sherlock on it and let him ride around in circles like a little roller coaster, but he has to be sneaky because Harry made him promise to never, ever touch it (he doesn’t like breaking promises but figures they don’t count for much when you only make them to your dumb sister).
It’s not fun when Harry gets mad at him because she hits awfully hard for a girl, even if she does wear leotards and legwarmers that make her look like a stupid ballerina (you can’t even dance, he points out, and she rolls her eyes and says he doesn’t know anything about fashion and god why is he so stupid). Sherlock says he shouldn’t bother with her, and, as usual, he’s right.
-
John’s dad doesn’t like Sherlock very much, and one day he takes him away and puts him up on the top shelf in the linen cupboard. John gets very upset because he doesn’t understand why; they haven’t even done anything bad today, and John’s mum said she forgave them for pouring all the milk down the sink yesterday. When John starts to cry, his dad gets very angry and starts shouting at his mum.
“I told you not to give him that damn doll,” he shouts, and John cries harder because Sherlock’s not a doll, he’s an animal. “Look at him! Crying like a little girl because I’ve taken his bloody cat away.”
“Don’t be cruel,” John’s mum pleads, and when she kneels down John runs into her arms and sobs into her shoulder. “He loves Sherlock.”
“Sherlock-what, that thing’s got a name now?”
“Of course he’s got a name,” John’s mum snaps, and John squeezes his eyes shut because now she sounds angry, too, and he hates it when his parents are angry at each other. “He’s John’s friend, David, whether you like it or not.”
“That stuffed cat is his only friend, Lydia,” John’s dad yells, and John wants to tell him he’s wrong, that he’s got some friends in school and it’s not his fault that Sherlock’s better than all of them, but he’s too scared to talk. “Our son is turning into some kind of, of schizophrenic antisocial recluse because of that stupid bloody doll!”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” John’s mum says angrily, standing up and taking John by the hand. “Come on, darling, let’s go get Sherlock.”
While she takes Sherlock down from the shelf in the cupboard, John wipes his nose on his sleeve and tries to stop crying because it’s making his dad angry. He thinks so, at least; his dad gets angry a lot about things that don’t make any sense to John. At least his mum gets angry over sensible things, like breaking vases or scuffing new shoes or stuffing pipe cleaners up the bathroom faucet or breaking the rabbit ears off the telly and running about wearing them as a hat. But sometimes his dad comes home late at night and thumps on things and shouts a lot and sometimes even falls over, and John has to put a pillow over his head because if he listens too closely he gets scared and starts to cry.
John is very glad when his mum gives Sherlock back to him and they can run off to John’s room together, because Sherlock always hugs him tightly and tells him stories so that he doesn’t have to listen to his parents fight.
-
One day, John’s mum gives him a plate of brownies. Ordinarily, he’d be thrilled, but before he can start to eat them she tells him to take them down the street to number 245 where the new neighbors live.
“They’ve just moved here from Ireland and they don’t know anybody,” she explains, pushing him out the front door. “Go be nice and tell them you live down the street at number 221. I hear they have a son your age; maybe you’ll make a friend. Don’t make that face, John, go on.”
John already has the only friend he’ll ever need, but he decides not to tell his mum that. Instead, he trots obediently down the steps and his mum says that’s a good boy and closes the front door behind him.
“D’you think she’d notice if I took a brownie?” he asks Sherlock, who’s trying to fluff his whiskers back to normal (John’s mum put him in the wash yesterday because he and John were painting the TARDIS blue and Sherlock had a bit of an accident with the paint tin).
“Probably not,” Sherlock shrugs. “The new neighbors don’t know how many brownies she put on the plate, and she won’t know how many are left when you give them to the neighbors.”
John considers this, decides that Sherlock’s logic is sound (of course it is, Sherlock’s always right), and takes a brownie. Naturally, he shares it with Sherlock, who has a particular fondness for chocolate.
“Mum says we can build a fort in that knobbly old tree in the yard,” John tells Sherlock excitedly. He always has to fill Sherlock in on the news after he’s been in the wash. “What should we call it? A secret fort’s got to have a name.”
“Hmm,” Sherlock says thoughtfully through a mouthful of brownie. “How about…221B?”
“But Sherlock,” John frowns, “Our house is called 221.”
“And so the fort will be the house, part two,” Sherlock explains smoothly. “221, B.”
John nearly drops the plate of brownies when he hugs Sherlock, because really sometimes he’s so clever John just can’t bear it. He wishes he was as clever as Sherlock.
-
When John rings the bell at number 245, the door is opened by a little boy. He’s John’s age but smaller, with a black bowl cut and big, big dark eyes.
“Hi,” John says. The boy just stares at him, so he holds out the brownies and says, “These are for you.”
“Thanks,” the boy says, taking the plate and setting it down somewhere behind him, out of sight. “I’m Jimmy.” His voice is high-pitched and odd, with an accent that John’s never heard before. He supposes this must be what Irish people sound like.
“I’m John,” John says, trying to smile even though Jimmy’s not. His mum always tells him to smile when he meets new people, so he always does. “I live down the street, in 221.”
Jimmy points to Sherlock and says, “I like your cat doll.”
“He’s not a cat,” John explains patiently, “He’s a panther. And he’s not a doll, he’s an animal. His name is Sherlock.” He holds Sherlock up and uses his non-magnifying-glass paw to wave at Jimmy.
“That’s a stupid name,” Jimmy says, and John frowns because why is he being so rude? John’s being nice just like his mum told him to; he even brought brownies. Jimmy’s got no right to be mean about Sherlock.
“Is not,” John retorts, turning and stomping away from Jimmy’s front door. “I’m going home!”
“Thanks for the brownies, stupid!” Jimmy shouts after John.
Clenching his fists, John turns around and yells, “I hope they make you sick!” But Jimmy’s already slammed the door shut.
When they get home, Sherlock turns to John and says, “I don’t like him.”
“Me neither,” John agrees. “Oh, well.”
They spend the rest of the day making pictures of dinosaurs with the dead leaves in the backyard.
-
The next day, Sherlock disappears.
John spends the whole morning looking for him and even gets into a fight with his mum because she wants him to come home for lunch but he doesn’t want to because he hasn’t found Sherlock. After he wolfs down his peanut butter sandwich and guzzles his class of milk (and makes his mum say slow down John for heaven’s sake you’ll choke yourself), he runs back outside and keeps looking for Sherlock.
He finally finds him in the alley that runs along the backs of all the houses on his street. He goes out there to see if Sherlock climbed through the gap in the fence in the yard, but then he smells something burning and follows the scent just like he and Sherlock always do when they’re solving a case. He follows it all the way down to the back of number 245, where he finds Jimmy dangling Sherlock over a little fire and singing the fur off his ears.
He screams and tries to yank Sherlock away, but then Jimmy yanks back and there’s a loud rrrrrip noise and when John looks down he’s holding Sherlock’s tail and Jimmy’s got the rest of him and then John gets so angry that he can’t keep himself from jumping on Jimmy and hitting him until he lets Sherlock go. They wrestle in the alley until Jimmy’s parents hear the screaming and run out to stop them. When they pull them apart, Jimmy’s trying to hit John over the head with a rock and John’s bleeding from a scratch in his cheek and sobbing because Sherlock’s broken and Jimmy was hurting him and it’s bad and wrong and he’s so angry.
John’s mum has to come over and take him home, and for all that Jimmy’s parents apologize she’s still frigid and angry and that makes John feel a little better. When they get home, she puts a band-aid on John’s face and sews Sherlock’s tail back on, and afterwards they all eat chocolate ice cream and watch Doctor Who.
That night, John brushes the bald patches on the tops of Sherlock’s ears and says, “You were very brave.”
“It didn’t hurt very much,” Sherlock shrugs, but from his eyes John knows he’s lying. “Besides, I knew you’d find me. And look, we’ve got matching scars now.”
John brightens up because it’s true, and Sherlock adds, “It makes you very dashing, you know, having scars. You’re not a proper detective if you haven’t been in a little bit of danger.”
“All the same, though,” John frowns, “I don’t think we should do that again. I don’t like it when you’re in danger.”
“It won’t happen again,” Sherlock promises, and John hugs him extra tightly, just to be sure.
-
Sherlock helps John blow out the candles on his seventh birthday cake, and together they open their presents (after all, their birthdays are on the same day). John’s mum gives him a brand-new green bike helmet to replace the one he cracked open on the sidewalk last week (he and Sherlock were trying to see if they could build up enough speed to ride John’s bike into outer space). In another box is another, smaller helmet for Sherlock, blue to match his scarf. They try them out on John’s bike that very afternoon, and John almost rides into a tree because Sherlock makes him laugh so hard.
-
Two weeks later, John discovers that he can’t fit through the gap in the fence in the yard anymore. His mum measures him and says he’s 107 centimeters tall, and that’s without lying about a single quarter of a centimeter. Sherlock smiles and says, “When you grow up, you’re going to be the tallest man in the world.”
-
When the summer holidays begin, John’s mum asks him if he wants to invite any friends over to play. John is perplexed; why would he need to invite friends over when the best friend of them all sleeps in his bed?
“But, sweetie, won’t you get bored?” his mum asks, and John gets even more confused. He’s never bored. He’ll never need another friend as long as Sherlock is around.
That day, he and Sherlock build a blanket fort in his bedroom (221B never got built, and since John’s dad isn’t around anymore to help them with the power tools they just make do with sheets) and sit inside it all morning, drinking lemonade and eating marshmallows straight out of the bag.
“I’m going to be a doctor when I grow up,” John declares, downing half his glass of lemonade in one gulp. “I’m gonna travel all over the world and make people better when they’re sick and cheer them up when they’re sad.”
“I think you’d be very good at that, John,” Sherlock says with a smile, spearing a marshmallow with one claw and eating it up in one bite (it always takes John two, so he's very jealous).
“What about you?” John asks, looking curiously up at his friend. “Where will you go when you grow up?”
Sherlock just smiles at him and says, “Wherever you go, John.”
“Really?”
Sherlock nods, and John knows he means it but he makes him triple super-secret pinky promise anyway.
After lunch, they get on John’s bike and make a map of the neighborhood, complete with danger warnings (biting Chihuahua in this yard, Harry and her dumb friends hang out in this park, mean old lady in this house), reminders of cool things (loads of tin cans in this alley, cheap candy in this store, funny skwurl sqwerl skuwerral squirrels in this tree), and X’s for the treasure that they will, at some point in the summer, bury. John laughs when he thinks of what his mum said; how on earth could he be bored? As long as Sherlock’s around, the days are just packed.
---------------------------------
A few notes about various cultural references:
Of course, I simply couldn't resist working in a Doctor Who reference (or three). Basically, I figured that if John's around 35ish in the show, he'd have been six somewhere around 1981, which is during the era of the 4th Doctor.
Same sort of logic applies to Harry's musical taste, though since she's a teenybopper I figured she'd think she was super cool for listening to music that was 3 years old at the time (besides, only the grooviest ten-year-olds jam to ABBA and the Village People).
There is (according to Wikipedia) actually someplace in Australia named Sherlock. I just had a bit of a puzzle trying to figure out how a six-year-old would come up with the name in a universe where Arthur Conan Doyle's stories don't exist. So, naturally, Australia saved me.
Although I drew him to look a lot like Calvin, in my head tiny!John more closely resembles baby Martin Freeman, whose picture you can find here (on the right).
All of John and Sherlock's cases are, in fact, real Sherlock Holmes stories (though they don't, of course, bear any resemblance to the mysteries little John solves).
Finally, I will confess that I am not British, so if there's any Brit-picking that needs to be done I most definitely welcome it. Thanks! <3
Pairing: Gen (Kid!fic)
Rating: PG
Warnings: None, really. A teensy bit of language.
Summary: The thing about Sherlock, you see, is that he’s terribly clever, and he understands that most people would run about screaming their heads off if they saw a real live panther walking about.
Word Count: 3300
Author's Notes: I just...I don't even know. First I drew the picture, and then the plotbunnies started a'coming and they just WOULDN'T STOP. Calvin and Hobbes was such a major part of my childhood that I just had to try my hand at a crossover, and I won't lie, this does strange things to my heart.
The drawing that begat this madness. Now, on to the fic....
John gets Sherlock (or the other way round, according to Sherlock) on his sixth birthday. John finds a big box sitting on the end of his bed that morning, and he tears off the Scooby-Doo wrapping paper while his mum watches from the doorway. When he reaches inside and pulls out Sherlock (he hadn’t named him yet, of course, but in the interest of clarity he ought to be referred to that way regardless), his mum says, “He’s to protect you on your adventures.”
John promptly goes out and drags Sherlock through six mud puddles and two hedges on a quest to find the football he lost yesterday. Not only does Sherlock survive the wild outdoors, but in the end he’s the one who finds the football sitting in one of the flowerbeds next door. From that day on, John and Sherlock are inseparable.
-
It takes John a week and two days to name Sherlock. He tries a different name every day, but none of them feels right. He finally finds the right one by closing his eyes and putting his forefinger down on a map of Australia. When he tries it out, Sherlock smiles and says that’s the right one, John, and John, of course, agrees.
-
Around most people, Sherlock is a black, stuffed, plushy sort of doll of an unspecified feline species (a panther, John insists firmly, he’s not a cat). He’s got a big, shiny black nose, white paws and belly, and soft, tufty ears and whiskers. He also wears a blue scarf that John knotted around his neck one chilly day and kind of forgot to take off. Sherlock doesn’t seem to mind, and John thinks the shade of blue suits him very well. Besides, it makes for a convenient handhold, because when other people are around John has to carry Sherlock.
The thing about Sherlock, you see, is that he’s terribly clever, and he understands that most people would run about screaming their heads off if they saw a real live panther walking about. So he only comes to life when it’s only him and John, who is far too sensible to be frightened of a silly old cat.
-
John is six and a quarter years old and 100 centimeters tall (well, really he’s 99 and three quarters, but Sherlock says it’s okay to lie when it’s only a quarter of a centimeter). He has blond hair and greeny-blue eyes and big ears that stick out from his head like the handles on teacups. His mum tells him he’s a nice boy; he doesn’t talk back to his parents, he likes going to school, and he only hits his sister when she hits him first.
Sherlock is not very nice; he says mean things about people sometimes, but that’s only because he’s a lot smarter than they are and so he thinks they’re boring. He doesn’t like going to school, but that’s because he’s much too clever and already knows everything that the teacher says. John doesn’t take him to school because he gets dreadfully grumpy and whispers to John in class besides, and John doesn’t want to get into trouble for not listening to teacher.
-
Sherlock does get John into trouble sometimes, though. John knows he doesn’t mean to, but when John’s mum tells him to clean his room Sherlock always wants to do fun things and John can’t always say no. When John’s mum finds the two of them climbing up a bookcase to see what the living room looks like from above, John tries to explain that it was all Sherlock’s idea, but she puts him in time-out anyway. John hates being in time-out because he has to sit in the corner and Sherlock gets locked up in the linen cupboard, way on the top shelf where John can’t reach him. When he does something really bad and gets a really long time-out, sometimes John cries because he misses Sherlock so much.
-
When John’s not in school or in trouble, he and Sherlock go on adventures. Sometimes they take the big cardboard box that the fridge came in out of the garage and build a spaceship out of it and go explore weird new planets (Sherlock is very good at making scary alien noises). Other times, they turn the box on its end and make it into a magic police box. John likes wearing his mum’s striped scarf and his dad’s big black hat and running about like the silly man on the telly (Sherlock’s always his companion; John likes it that way because it’s true).
But mostly they’re detectives. John likes this the most because they don’t have to go anywhere; when you’re a detective, you can have an adventure right in your own house. Sherlock is a very, very good detective. He can tell all sorts of things about people from the kind of clothes they’re wearing and how they walk and talk. His eyes aren’t as good as John’s, though, so John finds him a magnifying glass and ties it to his left paw with one of Harry’s hair bands so he doesn’t lose it.
They make a very good team and solve all sorts of mysteries, all of which John names and writes down in his journal. There’s The Sign of Four, where John finds a number four mysteriously written in the middle of the sidewalk and Sherlock figures out that it’s part of a hopscotch court that got washed away by the rain. Then there’s The Adventure of the Speckled Band, where Harry accuses John of getting ink spots on her favorite belt but they figure out that it’s actually grape juice. And there’s also The Crooked Man, where John finds one of his action figures all bent on the floor and his mum finally admits to accidentally smushing it with the vacuum cleaner.
Solving mysteries is John’s favorite thing, and he knows it’s Sherlock’s, too. When they solve a particularly good one, John’s mum makes cookies and they eat them right out of the oven when they’re still hot and gooey. Sometimes John burns his mouth on the hot chocolate chips, but he doesn’t mind.
-
Harry is John’s sister. John doesn’t much like her because she thinks she’s really cool because she’s nearly ten and has her own record player. John doesn’t understand the point of the record player because all she does is use it to play songs about queens dancing and boring things like that. What does John care about a bunch of guys shouting out a string of letters? One time, he looked into Harry’s room and saw her listening to that song and making the shapes of the letters with her arms. She screamed at him and chased him away, but he still laughed at her for a week.
Someday, he thinks, he’ll get in there and do something fun with that record player. He’d sort of like to put Sherlock on it and let him ride around in circles like a little roller coaster, but he has to be sneaky because Harry made him promise to never, ever touch it (he doesn’t like breaking promises but figures they don’t count for much when you only make them to your dumb sister).
It’s not fun when Harry gets mad at him because she hits awfully hard for a girl, even if she does wear leotards and legwarmers that make her look like a stupid ballerina (you can’t even dance, he points out, and she rolls her eyes and says he doesn’t know anything about fashion and god why is he so stupid). Sherlock says he shouldn’t bother with her, and, as usual, he’s right.
-
John’s dad doesn’t like Sherlock very much, and one day he takes him away and puts him up on the top shelf in the linen cupboard. John gets very upset because he doesn’t understand why; they haven’t even done anything bad today, and John’s mum said she forgave them for pouring all the milk down the sink yesterday. When John starts to cry, his dad gets very angry and starts shouting at his mum.
“I told you not to give him that damn doll,” he shouts, and John cries harder because Sherlock’s not a doll, he’s an animal. “Look at him! Crying like a little girl because I’ve taken his bloody cat away.”
“Don’t be cruel,” John’s mum pleads, and when she kneels down John runs into her arms and sobs into her shoulder. “He loves Sherlock.”
“Sherlock-what, that thing’s got a name now?”
“Of course he’s got a name,” John’s mum snaps, and John squeezes his eyes shut because now she sounds angry, too, and he hates it when his parents are angry at each other. “He’s John’s friend, David, whether you like it or not.”
“That stuffed cat is his only friend, Lydia,” John’s dad yells, and John wants to tell him he’s wrong, that he’s got some friends in school and it’s not his fault that Sherlock’s better than all of them, but he’s too scared to talk. “Our son is turning into some kind of, of schizophrenic antisocial recluse because of that stupid bloody doll!”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” John’s mum says angrily, standing up and taking John by the hand. “Come on, darling, let’s go get Sherlock.”
While she takes Sherlock down from the shelf in the cupboard, John wipes his nose on his sleeve and tries to stop crying because it’s making his dad angry. He thinks so, at least; his dad gets angry a lot about things that don’t make any sense to John. At least his mum gets angry over sensible things, like breaking vases or scuffing new shoes or stuffing pipe cleaners up the bathroom faucet or breaking the rabbit ears off the telly and running about wearing them as a hat. But sometimes his dad comes home late at night and thumps on things and shouts a lot and sometimes even falls over, and John has to put a pillow over his head because if he listens too closely he gets scared and starts to cry.
John is very glad when his mum gives Sherlock back to him and they can run off to John’s room together, because Sherlock always hugs him tightly and tells him stories so that he doesn’t have to listen to his parents fight.
-
One day, John’s mum gives him a plate of brownies. Ordinarily, he’d be thrilled, but before he can start to eat them she tells him to take them down the street to number 245 where the new neighbors live.
“They’ve just moved here from Ireland and they don’t know anybody,” she explains, pushing him out the front door. “Go be nice and tell them you live down the street at number 221. I hear they have a son your age; maybe you’ll make a friend. Don’t make that face, John, go on.”
John already has the only friend he’ll ever need, but he decides not to tell his mum that. Instead, he trots obediently down the steps and his mum says that’s a good boy and closes the front door behind him.
“D’you think she’d notice if I took a brownie?” he asks Sherlock, who’s trying to fluff his whiskers back to normal (John’s mum put him in the wash yesterday because he and John were painting the TARDIS blue and Sherlock had a bit of an accident with the paint tin).
“Probably not,” Sherlock shrugs. “The new neighbors don’t know how many brownies she put on the plate, and she won’t know how many are left when you give them to the neighbors.”
John considers this, decides that Sherlock’s logic is sound (of course it is, Sherlock’s always right), and takes a brownie. Naturally, he shares it with Sherlock, who has a particular fondness for chocolate.
“Mum says we can build a fort in that knobbly old tree in the yard,” John tells Sherlock excitedly. He always has to fill Sherlock in on the news after he’s been in the wash. “What should we call it? A secret fort’s got to have a name.”
“Hmm,” Sherlock says thoughtfully through a mouthful of brownie. “How about…221B?”
“But Sherlock,” John frowns, “Our house is called 221.”
“And so the fort will be the house, part two,” Sherlock explains smoothly. “221, B.”
John nearly drops the plate of brownies when he hugs Sherlock, because really sometimes he’s so clever John just can’t bear it. He wishes he was as clever as Sherlock.
-
When John rings the bell at number 245, the door is opened by a little boy. He’s John’s age but smaller, with a black bowl cut and big, big dark eyes.
“Hi,” John says. The boy just stares at him, so he holds out the brownies and says, “These are for you.”
“Thanks,” the boy says, taking the plate and setting it down somewhere behind him, out of sight. “I’m Jimmy.” His voice is high-pitched and odd, with an accent that John’s never heard before. He supposes this must be what Irish people sound like.
“I’m John,” John says, trying to smile even though Jimmy’s not. His mum always tells him to smile when he meets new people, so he always does. “I live down the street, in 221.”
Jimmy points to Sherlock and says, “I like your cat doll.”
“He’s not a cat,” John explains patiently, “He’s a panther. And he’s not a doll, he’s an animal. His name is Sherlock.” He holds Sherlock up and uses his non-magnifying-glass paw to wave at Jimmy.
“That’s a stupid name,” Jimmy says, and John frowns because why is he being so rude? John’s being nice just like his mum told him to; he even brought brownies. Jimmy’s got no right to be mean about Sherlock.
“Is not,” John retorts, turning and stomping away from Jimmy’s front door. “I’m going home!”
“Thanks for the brownies, stupid!” Jimmy shouts after John.
Clenching his fists, John turns around and yells, “I hope they make you sick!” But Jimmy’s already slammed the door shut.
When they get home, Sherlock turns to John and says, “I don’t like him.”
“Me neither,” John agrees. “Oh, well.”
They spend the rest of the day making pictures of dinosaurs with the dead leaves in the backyard.
-
The next day, Sherlock disappears.
John spends the whole morning looking for him and even gets into a fight with his mum because she wants him to come home for lunch but he doesn’t want to because he hasn’t found Sherlock. After he wolfs down his peanut butter sandwich and guzzles his class of milk (and makes his mum say slow down John for heaven’s sake you’ll choke yourself), he runs back outside and keeps looking for Sherlock.
He finally finds him in the alley that runs along the backs of all the houses on his street. He goes out there to see if Sherlock climbed through the gap in the fence in the yard, but then he smells something burning and follows the scent just like he and Sherlock always do when they’re solving a case. He follows it all the way down to the back of number 245, where he finds Jimmy dangling Sherlock over a little fire and singing the fur off his ears.
He screams and tries to yank Sherlock away, but then Jimmy yanks back and there’s a loud rrrrrip noise and when John looks down he’s holding Sherlock’s tail and Jimmy’s got the rest of him and then John gets so angry that he can’t keep himself from jumping on Jimmy and hitting him until he lets Sherlock go. They wrestle in the alley until Jimmy’s parents hear the screaming and run out to stop them. When they pull them apart, Jimmy’s trying to hit John over the head with a rock and John’s bleeding from a scratch in his cheek and sobbing because Sherlock’s broken and Jimmy was hurting him and it’s bad and wrong and he’s so angry.
John’s mum has to come over and take him home, and for all that Jimmy’s parents apologize she’s still frigid and angry and that makes John feel a little better. When they get home, she puts a band-aid on John’s face and sews Sherlock’s tail back on, and afterwards they all eat chocolate ice cream and watch Doctor Who.
That night, John brushes the bald patches on the tops of Sherlock’s ears and says, “You were very brave.”
“It didn’t hurt very much,” Sherlock shrugs, but from his eyes John knows he’s lying. “Besides, I knew you’d find me. And look, we’ve got matching scars now.”
John brightens up because it’s true, and Sherlock adds, “It makes you very dashing, you know, having scars. You’re not a proper detective if you haven’t been in a little bit of danger.”
“All the same, though,” John frowns, “I don’t think we should do that again. I don’t like it when you’re in danger.”
“It won’t happen again,” Sherlock promises, and John hugs him extra tightly, just to be sure.
-
Sherlock helps John blow out the candles on his seventh birthday cake, and together they open their presents (after all, their birthdays are on the same day). John’s mum gives him a brand-new green bike helmet to replace the one he cracked open on the sidewalk last week (he and Sherlock were trying to see if they could build up enough speed to ride John’s bike into outer space). In another box is another, smaller helmet for Sherlock, blue to match his scarf. They try them out on John’s bike that very afternoon, and John almost rides into a tree because Sherlock makes him laugh so hard.
-
Two weeks later, John discovers that he can’t fit through the gap in the fence in the yard anymore. His mum measures him and says he’s 107 centimeters tall, and that’s without lying about a single quarter of a centimeter. Sherlock smiles and says, “When you grow up, you’re going to be the tallest man in the world.”
-
When the summer holidays begin, John’s mum asks him if he wants to invite any friends over to play. John is perplexed; why would he need to invite friends over when the best friend of them all sleeps in his bed?
“But, sweetie, won’t you get bored?” his mum asks, and John gets even more confused. He’s never bored. He’ll never need another friend as long as Sherlock is around.
That day, he and Sherlock build a blanket fort in his bedroom (221B never got built, and since John’s dad isn’t around anymore to help them with the power tools they just make do with sheets) and sit inside it all morning, drinking lemonade and eating marshmallows straight out of the bag.
“I’m going to be a doctor when I grow up,” John declares, downing half his glass of lemonade in one gulp. “I’m gonna travel all over the world and make people better when they’re sick and cheer them up when they’re sad.”
“I think you’d be very good at that, John,” Sherlock says with a smile, spearing a marshmallow with one claw and eating it up in one bite (it always takes John two, so he's very jealous).
“What about you?” John asks, looking curiously up at his friend. “Where will you go when you grow up?”
Sherlock just smiles at him and says, “Wherever you go, John.”
“Really?”
Sherlock nods, and John knows he means it but he makes him triple super-secret pinky promise anyway.
After lunch, they get on John’s bike and make a map of the neighborhood, complete with danger warnings (biting Chihuahua in this yard, Harry and her dumb friends hang out in this park, mean old lady in this house), reminders of cool things (loads of tin cans in this alley, cheap candy in this store, funny skwurl sqwerl skuwerral squirrels in this tree), and X’s for the treasure that they will, at some point in the summer, bury. John laughs when he thinks of what his mum said; how on earth could he be bored? As long as Sherlock’s around, the days are just packed.
---------------------------------
A few notes about various cultural references:
Of course, I simply couldn't resist working in a Doctor Who reference (or three). Basically, I figured that if John's around 35ish in the show, he'd have been six somewhere around 1981, which is during the era of the 4th Doctor.
Same sort of logic applies to Harry's musical taste, though since she's a teenybopper I figured she'd think she was super cool for listening to music that was 3 years old at the time (besides, only the grooviest ten-year-olds jam to ABBA and the Village People).
There is (according to Wikipedia) actually someplace in Australia named Sherlock. I just had a bit of a puzzle trying to figure out how a six-year-old would come up with the name in a universe where Arthur Conan Doyle's stories don't exist. So, naturally, Australia saved me.
Although I drew him to look a lot like Calvin, in my head tiny!John more closely resembles baby Martin Freeman, whose picture you can find here (on the right).
All of John and Sherlock's cases are, in fact, real Sherlock Holmes stories (though they don't, of course, bear any resemblance to the mysteries little John solves).
Finally, I will confess that I am not British, so if there's any Brit-picking that needs to be done I most definitely welcome it. Thanks! <3