Fathers of the Bride
Note: I wrote this as a Mother Of The Bride gift to laurtew for her daughter's wedding. I wasn't planning on posting it, but filled with Royal Wedding Feels (Princess Madeleine of Sweden married Christopher O'Neill today) I'm doing it anyway. This is also my first serious attempt with Johnlock, so now that bridge is crossed.
Summary: John and Sherlock's only daughter is getting married.
-x-
”John!”
The utter frustration in Sherlock’s voice made John chuckle, but he made his best to stifle it; Sherlock was close enough to a nervous breakdown without John laughing at him. It was hard not to at least smile though, because John found it completely endearing how his husband’s otherwise so steady hands couldn’t stop trembling for long enough put in cufflinks.
“Let me,” John said, offering to do what Sherlock had more or less already ordered him to. “There you are.”
“Thank you,” Sherlock muttered, pulling slightly on his sleeves to make everything just right. Everything had to be just right today.
“Remember to breathe, Sherlock,” John said, kissing him gently.
“How on earth can you be this calm?”
John chuckled again, without trying to hide it this time. “Believe me, I’m not. I just got steady hands under pressure.”
Sherlock took a deep breath. “I can’t believe….”
“I know. It’s….”
“I still say letting her outside the flat before she turned 30 was a bad decision.”
“Mm, I agree.”
“Home schooling.”
“Yes. And no internet.”
“Or mobile, what were we thinking buying her a phone?”
They looked at each other, smiling in a mixture of joke and sincerity.
“Our little girl is getting married,” Sherlock whispered, resting his forehead against John’s. All John could do was nod, because there was suddenly a lump in his throat that prevented him from speaking.
They stood like that for a long time, just trying to grasp the surrealism of what Sherlock just had said. Their daughter, their only child, was getting married in just a couple of minutes. They had adopted her four months before her sixth birthday, but by then she had already been living with them for nineteen months. She had been, as Sherlock so gracefully had put it once, “left-overs” from a case; her mother was a victim of Russian trafficking and her father was probably of Indian decent judging by her features. She should have disappeared in the welfare system, put into a foster home or perhaps even an orphanage. She should have walked out of their life twenty-one years ago and not on this beautiful May day, but she hadn’t… and she wasn’t really disappearing now either.
Not really.
-x-
Sherlock came back down to the bedroom after putting the girl down in her own bed after she had fallen asleep next to John.
“Everything okay?” John asked drowsy, turning on his side to look at Sherlock.
Sherlock nodded, starting to get undressed. “She almost woke up when I put her down, but she’s still asleep.”
John nodded, handing Sherlock the old t-shirt he used as a pyjamas.
“She used it as a blankie again,” John said, cherishing the short glance he got of Sherlock’s bare torso - after starting to share the flat with a child both of them had stopped sleeping in the nude.
“I’ve been thinking,” Sherlock said as his head popped out of the t-shirt. “She’ll start school in September.”
“Yes."
“You’re her doctor and I’m the man who lives with you.”
“We are her foster parents.”
“Yes, and that gives us exactly no authority beyond bedtimes and ‘Finish your vegetables.’” Sherlock lifted the covers and made sure to nuzzle up close to John. They shared a quick kiss.
“Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?” John asked.
“Yes.”
“You know we have to be married to be able to adopt her.”
“Yes.”
John chuckled. “Are you proposing to me, Sherlock?”
“Yes.”
They looked at each other, Sherlock looking very serious and John equally amused.
“All right,” John then said. “Stop by the surgery tomorrow at lunch and we’ll go and deal with the paperwork.”
“Romantic.”
“About as romantic as your proposal.”
Sherlock smiled. They kissed again before Sherlock lay his head down on John’s chest, settling in to sleep.
“I’m taking your name,” Sherlock said, yawning. “If we’re going to be a family we should have the same name and she’ll have it difficult enough without being a Holmes.”
John kissed his hair. Sherlock never stopped surprising him.
-x-
“We should probably go,” John finally whispered, and now it was Sherlock’s turn to just nod in response.
They took each other’s hands as they walked across the hall from the room where they had been getting dressed. From the other side of the closed door they could hear four women giggling. Looking at each other John and Sherlock both took a deep breath before knocking on the door.
The women became quiet.
“Who is it?” asked one of them - Joanne, maid of honour.
“Dads,” John said. Sherlock rolled his eyes, he had never liked John’s habit of pluralise them like that. “Can we come in?”
Joanne opened the door slightly, peeking out to see if they really were who they said they were, before opening the door properly to let them in.
“We’ll give you some time,” she said, smiling brightly, nodding for the other two bridesmaids to follow her. “See you in a bit, Sana.”
Sana, or Oksana Watson as had been her legal name for nineteen years, absently waved her friends off because her main focus had suddenly become her two fathers.
“What do you think?” she asked, holding out her arms and giving them a small turn so that they could see all of her. All John and Sherlock could do was smile. They had seen the dress before, they had even seen it on her before, but nothing was quite the same as seeing her in the white dress, with pearls in her black hair and a bouquet of pink roses in her hand on her wedding day.
“It’s not too late to lock her in a tower, is it?” John asked breathlessly.
Sherlock shook his head. “No, I was just thinking the same thing.”
“Perhaps buy a dragon to guard her.”
“Yes.”
Oksana laughed. “What are you two talking about?”
“Nothing,” her dads said, exchanging a half-embarrassed smile.
She rolled her eyes, but smiled just as much as before. “Seriously, what do you think?”
“You look perfect,” John said. “Far too grown up.”
“You’ve said that since I was ten.”
“I’ve been thinking it since you were eight.” John took a short step closer and gave her a small kiss on the cheek. “You’re beautiful.”
“And, dad?” Oksana asked, turning to Sherlock.
“I agree with John.”
“You think I look perfect?”
“I think you are perfect.”
“Dad…” Oksana breathed out the word, her eyes slowly filling up with tears. Father and daughter looked at each other for a moment before Oksana walked over to him and hugged him tightly, giving John a chance to discreetly dry his eyes.
“We love you,” Sherlock said, meeting John’s eyes over her head. John smiled and nodded.
-x-
John and Oksana sat on the sofa, Sherlock was standing on the other side of the coffee table, his arms crossed. John found him intimidating and wished he would sit down.
“Do you understand?” John asked, trying very hard to ignore Sherlock and focus all his attention on the five year old girl.
Oksana nodded.
“No, you don’t,” Sherlock said.
“Sherlock!”
“She doesn’t!”
John sighed, rubbing his face. “Oksana, is Sherlock right?”
The girl nodded again. John smiled, grateful that Sherlock at least didn’t say “Told you so.”
“It’s all right to say that you don’t understand,” John told her. “What is it you don’t understand?”
“I don’t know.”
Sherlock sighed in frustration.
“Sherlock,” John said sharply. “Go and make tea. Now.”
Sherlock obeyed, walking straight to the kitchen and John waited until he heard the kettle boiling before he turned back to Oksana.
“Don’t mind Sherlock,” he said, smiling. “You know how he is.”
Oksana nodded.
“So, Sherlock and I would like to adopt you,” John told her again. “If we did, it would mean that you’d be our daughter.”
She nodded again.
“Ask if you have questions,” said Sherlock, suddenly standing in the opening to the sitting room. John mentally sighed and gave him a look. Oksana, on the other hand, nodded.
“Would I keep my room?” she asked.
“Yes,” John answered and Sherlock nodded. “The only thing that would be different is that we’d be your - ”
“Legal guardians.”
“-parents.”
“Don’t be absurd, John.”
John sighed. “Weren’t you making tea?”
“We already are her parents,” Sherlock said, ignoring his husband. “It’s her legal guardians that we’re not.”
“Tea, Sherlock,” John said, having a very hard time not smiling affectionately at him.
He turned back to Oksana. “Sherlock’s right, the only thing that would change is that he and I would be your legal guardians instead of Mrs Taylor. You’d still have your room upstairs, and play on the same football team, and have the same friends.”
“Would you be my dads?” Oksana asked.
Sherlock dropped something in the kitchen. John glanced in that direction to make sure Sherlock wasn’t about to faint.
“Yes,” John said. “You don’t have to call us that, if you don’t want to, but you can.”
She nodded.
“You could also take my… our last name if you’d like,” John continued but added quickly: “Or you can keep your mother’s name. Or use both. Whatever you’d like.”
Sherlock came back again, carrying three steaming mugs of tea. He put them all down on the coffee table before handing Oksana and John one each and sitting down on the table in front of them.
“You wouldn’t mind having two dads?” Sherlock asked, John noticing a tremor in his voice.
Oksana shook her head, slightly confused.
“And you want to keep living with us?”
She nodded.
John and Sherlock looked at each other, exchanging a brief, overwhelmed smile.
“I’ll call Mycroft,” Sherlock said, getting up from the table.
“Call?”
“There are favours you don’t ask for over text,” Sherlock said, disappearing to the kitchen again.
“What do you say, should we order pizza for dinner?” John asked Oksana, smiling in a confused relief.
The girl looked insecure, but then, without warning she reached out and hugged John. John held her, resting his head against hers, and the world felt completely right and whole all of a sudden. Sherlock came back to the sitting room, looking pale and shaken. They met each other’s eyes and Sherlock nodded.
John smiled.
“We love you,” he told the small girl who still clung to him, without taking his eyes from Sherlock who just stood there watching them, smiling.
-x-
There was a light knock on the door. “Watsons to the altar,” Joanne said without opening the door. “Countdown’s started.”
“We’re coming,” John said as Sherlock reluctantly let go of Oksana.
They helped her putting down the veil - an object of huge discussion beforehand - after wishing her good luck and John had given her cheek another kiss.
The bridesmaids were already lined up outside the doors when they came, but they waved and whispered good lucks up until the very moment the organ started to play a by Sherlock composed wedding march.
“This is it,” Oksana whispered just before it was their turn to start walking down the aisle. John and Sherlock looked at each other, the weight of the words making them both pale. They walked slowly towards the altar, John on Oksana’s left side and Sherlock on her right. Both John and Sherlock had offered to not walk her down the aisle so that she wouldn’t have to choose between them if she had wanted a more traditional in-march with just one parent. Her response had been either both of them or none of them, though “none” had never really been an option.
At the end of the aisle John lifted her veil again, and they kissed her cheeks. She squeezed their hands before leaving them behind to instead take the hand of the two years older Anthony Wang. John and Sherlock sat down in the front row.
John took Sherlock’s hand without even noticing it until the priest asked who gave away this woman in marriage, because as they answered “We do” Sherlock squeezed his hand so hard John had to fight not to scream.
The priest nodded, turning back to the couple in front of her.
“Then I ask you, Anthony, will you take Oksana to be your wedded wife, to live together according to God's law in the holy estate of matrimony? Will you love her, comfort her, honour and keep her, in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all other, keep only unto her, so long as you both shall live?”
“I will.”
“And will you Oksana take Anthony to be your wedded husband, to live together according to God's law in the holy estate of matrimony? Will you love her, comfort her, honour and keep her, in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all other, keep only unto him, so long as you both shall live?”
“I will.”
Sherlock closed his eyes, feeling as if something had been ripped from his chest. He didn’t understand why he had such a strong emotional response to any of it. Not much was going to change today. Oksana had been an adult for seven years, she had moved away from home six years ago and she had been with Anthony for four. Nothing about this over-sentimental ceremony would change anything in his relationship with their daughter. He hoped.
The bride and groom said their vows and Sherlock opened his eyes just as Anthony’s best man gave him the ring.
“Repeat after me,” the priest asked Anthony. “With this ring I wed you.”
“With this ring I wed you,” Anthony started to repeat after the priest.
John reached out to take Sherlock’s other hand as well, needing all the skin-to-skin contact he could get while still remaining appropriate. It didn’t make him noticeably calmer, but it was nice to feel the warmth and to know that he wasn’t the only one with a lump building up in his chest.
“I pronounce that they be man and wife together, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”
The newlyweds kissed and turned around, both smiling happily, tears wetting Oksana’s lashes as she turned to meet her dads’ eyes. They both smiled back, blinking a bit more frequently than they normally did.
“That was that, then,” Sherlock whispered breathlessly as the organ started to play the out-march (that too composed by Sherlock) and the congregation stood up to follow the newlyweds out the church.
John squeezed his hands tightly and nodded. That was that.
-x-
Even with the help of Mycroft Holmes the adoption process was a long and tedious one. Thanks to Mycroft they didn’t have to deal with most of it themselves anyway. Not to mention that just in time for their home inspection four men came to clean and childproof the entire flat. Then, a day in July, the only thing that was left to do was to sign the paperwork.
Mrs Taylor came by Baker Street when John was done with work on an otherwise very ordinary Thursday. She had a colleague with her, a Judge Baxter, and they had invited Mrs Hudson and Mycroft to be witnesses.
Sherlock seemed annoyed, but John could tell it was mostly nerves. John couldn’t deny that he was nervous too, but he kept telling himself that it was just a piece of paper, it wouldn’t change their day-to-day life very much.
Judge Baxter and Mrs Taylor went through and explained all the formalities. John nodded and asked a couple of questions since he felt obligated to do so, but Sherlock just sat next to him flipping through the papers on his own.
“Oksana,” Judge Baxter said when they had reached the end of the legal part of it all. “Do you want to continue to live with Dr and Mr Watson and having them as your legal parents?”
Oksana nodded, making everyone in the room breathe a little bit easier. It wasn’t customary to ask such young children outside the psychological evaluations done by social services, but Judge Baxter found it polite to do so anyway if the child was present. If she had said no at this point it wouldn’t have changed the decision already made by the family court, but it would probably have made it a bit uneasy.
“Good,” Judge Baxter said, smiling, and then he handed over the court ruling for John and Sherlock to sign. Mrs Taylor had already signed, giving up all legal authority over Oksana.
John and Sherlock looked at each other, nodding, before John took the pen and signed at the dotted line. He handed the pen to Sherlock who did the same. His signature looked a bit forced since he wasn’t used to his new surname yet. Then it was Mrs Hudson’s and Mycroft’s turn to sign that they had witnessed the process and lastly the judge signed as well.
John smiled. “So that was that.”
Sherlock couldn’t take his eyes off the document, but nodded. That was that.
-x-
John and Sherlock knew the schedule for the day would be tight and they weren’t actually surprised when they didn’t have time to do more than congratulate the newlyweds on the church step. It still felt lonely and completely overwhelming as they sat in the back of a black limousine on their way to the reception. John rested his head against Sherlock’s shoulder as they rode to The Savoy in silence.
To have the reception at The Savoy was a wedding gift from Mycroft. Sherlock hadn’t been at all pleased with this, but seeing that it had taken exactly three seconds between Mycroft offering and Oksana accepting the offer by kissing her uncle on the mouth there really wasn’t anyone who cared about what Sherlock thought. John was just happy that most of the actual arrangements were put on someone other than him.
Mycroft and his people had really outdone themselves John and Sherlock noticed as they stepped into the reception hall. It was beautiful and elegant, still it looked intimate and down-to-earth. Not even as close to “Royal Wedding” as Sherlock had feared. It looked like Oksana and Anthony, everything from the plain, white plates and the small, pink table pieces to the glasses of champagne served at the door.
They took a glass each, but barely even tasted the champagne. The guests of honour were still to arrive and the room filled with chatter. In the middle of all the light chaos an odd sensation of calm came over John and it took him a moment to realise that it was because Sherlock had placed a hand on his lower back.
He sighed. “Twelve hours.”
“At the most.”
John nodded. Twelve hours, and then it would be over. In twelve hours there wouldn’t be anything that could ruin Oksana’s wedding day. Twelve more hours to worry about over cooked vegetables, drunken relatives, and wedding cakes tipping over. Just another twelve hours to keep the world perfect before they could relax.
As the guests started to find their seats Joanne and Patrick - the best man - walked out on the small stage, getting everyone’s attention by tapping a fork against a champagne glass. John and Sherlock also sat down and politely, but impatiently, watched as Oksana and Anthony’s friends introduced themselves as toastmaster and -mistress for the evening, informed about the room’s emergency exits, and told a couple of bad and ill-rehearsed jokes.
“Now, the moment you have been waiting for, Ladies and Gentlemen,” Patrick said, and Sherlock could swear that Joanne winked at them. “Let me introduce: Mr and Mrs Watson.”
John blinked, staring at the stage where Oksana and Anthony now entered under excited cheering from the guests. Sherlock was just as taken by the introduction and when John searched for his hand on the table he took it. Both Oksana and Anthony met their eyes, smiling widely, and it wasn’t until they waved that John and Sherlock managed to smile back.
“I love you,” Oksana mouthed, and her dads nodded before she and Anthony turned to smile and wave at the other guests as well.
John was moved to tears when he and Sherlock looked at each other.
“Did you know?” John asked.
Sherlock shook his head. The crazy kids had taken John’s name, just like he once had. They had taken their name. Unembarrassed Sherlock leaned in and kissed John, they would always be a family.
Summary: John and Sherlock's only daughter is getting married.
-x-
”John!”
The utter frustration in Sherlock’s voice made John chuckle, but he made his best to stifle it; Sherlock was close enough to a nervous breakdown without John laughing at him. It was hard not to at least smile though, because John found it completely endearing how his husband’s otherwise so steady hands couldn’t stop trembling for long enough put in cufflinks.
“Let me,” John said, offering to do what Sherlock had more or less already ordered him to. “There you are.”
“Thank you,” Sherlock muttered, pulling slightly on his sleeves to make everything just right. Everything had to be just right today.
“Remember to breathe, Sherlock,” John said, kissing him gently.
“How on earth can you be this calm?”
John chuckled again, without trying to hide it this time. “Believe me, I’m not. I just got steady hands under pressure.”
Sherlock took a deep breath. “I can’t believe….”
“I know. It’s….”
“I still say letting her outside the flat before she turned 30 was a bad decision.”
“Mm, I agree.”
“Home schooling.”
“Yes. And no internet.”
“Or mobile, what were we thinking buying her a phone?”
They looked at each other, smiling in a mixture of joke and sincerity.
“Our little girl is getting married,” Sherlock whispered, resting his forehead against John’s. All John could do was nod, because there was suddenly a lump in his throat that prevented him from speaking.
They stood like that for a long time, just trying to grasp the surrealism of what Sherlock just had said. Their daughter, their only child, was getting married in just a couple of minutes. They had adopted her four months before her sixth birthday, but by then she had already been living with them for nineteen months. She had been, as Sherlock so gracefully had put it once, “left-overs” from a case; her mother was a victim of Russian trafficking and her father was probably of Indian decent judging by her features. She should have disappeared in the welfare system, put into a foster home or perhaps even an orphanage. She should have walked out of their life twenty-one years ago and not on this beautiful May day, but she hadn’t… and she wasn’t really disappearing now either.
Not really.
-x-
Sherlock came back down to the bedroom after putting the girl down in her own bed after she had fallen asleep next to John.
“Everything okay?” John asked drowsy, turning on his side to look at Sherlock.
Sherlock nodded, starting to get undressed. “She almost woke up when I put her down, but she’s still asleep.”
John nodded, handing Sherlock the old t-shirt he used as a pyjamas.
“She used it as a blankie again,” John said, cherishing the short glance he got of Sherlock’s bare torso - after starting to share the flat with a child both of them had stopped sleeping in the nude.
“I’ve been thinking,” Sherlock said as his head popped out of the t-shirt. “She’ll start school in September.”
“Yes."
“You’re her doctor and I’m the man who lives with you.”
“We are her foster parents.”
“Yes, and that gives us exactly no authority beyond bedtimes and ‘Finish your vegetables.’” Sherlock lifted the covers and made sure to nuzzle up close to John. They shared a quick kiss.
“Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?” John asked.
“Yes.”
“You know we have to be married to be able to adopt her.”
“Yes.”
John chuckled. “Are you proposing to me, Sherlock?”
“Yes.”
They looked at each other, Sherlock looking very serious and John equally amused.
“All right,” John then said. “Stop by the surgery tomorrow at lunch and we’ll go and deal with the paperwork.”
“Romantic.”
“About as romantic as your proposal.”
Sherlock smiled. They kissed again before Sherlock lay his head down on John’s chest, settling in to sleep.
“I’m taking your name,” Sherlock said, yawning. “If we’re going to be a family we should have the same name and she’ll have it difficult enough without being a Holmes.”
John kissed his hair. Sherlock never stopped surprising him.
-x-
“We should probably go,” John finally whispered, and now it was Sherlock’s turn to just nod in response.
They took each other’s hands as they walked across the hall from the room where they had been getting dressed. From the other side of the closed door they could hear four women giggling. Looking at each other John and Sherlock both took a deep breath before knocking on the door.
The women became quiet.
“Who is it?” asked one of them - Joanne, maid of honour.
“Dads,” John said. Sherlock rolled his eyes, he had never liked John’s habit of pluralise them like that. “Can we come in?”
Joanne opened the door slightly, peeking out to see if they really were who they said they were, before opening the door properly to let them in.
“We’ll give you some time,” she said, smiling brightly, nodding for the other two bridesmaids to follow her. “See you in a bit, Sana.”
Sana, or Oksana Watson as had been her legal name for nineteen years, absently waved her friends off because her main focus had suddenly become her two fathers.
“What do you think?” she asked, holding out her arms and giving them a small turn so that they could see all of her. All John and Sherlock could do was smile. They had seen the dress before, they had even seen it on her before, but nothing was quite the same as seeing her in the white dress, with pearls in her black hair and a bouquet of pink roses in her hand on her wedding day.
“It’s not too late to lock her in a tower, is it?” John asked breathlessly.
Sherlock shook his head. “No, I was just thinking the same thing.”
“Perhaps buy a dragon to guard her.”
“Yes.”
Oksana laughed. “What are you two talking about?”
“Nothing,” her dads said, exchanging a half-embarrassed smile.
She rolled her eyes, but smiled just as much as before. “Seriously, what do you think?”
“You look perfect,” John said. “Far too grown up.”
“You’ve said that since I was ten.”
“I’ve been thinking it since you were eight.” John took a short step closer and gave her a small kiss on the cheek. “You’re beautiful.”
“And, dad?” Oksana asked, turning to Sherlock.
“I agree with John.”
“You think I look perfect?”
“I think you are perfect.”
“Dad…” Oksana breathed out the word, her eyes slowly filling up with tears. Father and daughter looked at each other for a moment before Oksana walked over to him and hugged him tightly, giving John a chance to discreetly dry his eyes.
“We love you,” Sherlock said, meeting John’s eyes over her head. John smiled and nodded.
-x-
John and Oksana sat on the sofa, Sherlock was standing on the other side of the coffee table, his arms crossed. John found him intimidating and wished he would sit down.
“Do you understand?” John asked, trying very hard to ignore Sherlock and focus all his attention on the five year old girl.
Oksana nodded.
“No, you don’t,” Sherlock said.
“Sherlock!”
“She doesn’t!”
John sighed, rubbing his face. “Oksana, is Sherlock right?”
The girl nodded again. John smiled, grateful that Sherlock at least didn’t say “Told you so.”
“It’s all right to say that you don’t understand,” John told her. “What is it you don’t understand?”
“I don’t know.”
Sherlock sighed in frustration.
“Sherlock,” John said sharply. “Go and make tea. Now.”
Sherlock obeyed, walking straight to the kitchen and John waited until he heard the kettle boiling before he turned back to Oksana.
“Don’t mind Sherlock,” he said, smiling. “You know how he is.”
Oksana nodded.
“So, Sherlock and I would like to adopt you,” John told her again. “If we did, it would mean that you’d be our daughter.”
She nodded again.
“Ask if you have questions,” said Sherlock, suddenly standing in the opening to the sitting room. John mentally sighed and gave him a look. Oksana, on the other hand, nodded.
“Would I keep my room?” she asked.
“Yes,” John answered and Sherlock nodded. “The only thing that would be different is that we’d be your - ”
“Legal guardians.”
“-parents.”
“Don’t be absurd, John.”
John sighed. “Weren’t you making tea?”
“We already are her parents,” Sherlock said, ignoring his husband. “It’s her legal guardians that we’re not.”
“Tea, Sherlock,” John said, having a very hard time not smiling affectionately at him.
He turned back to Oksana. “Sherlock’s right, the only thing that would change is that he and I would be your legal guardians instead of Mrs Taylor. You’d still have your room upstairs, and play on the same football team, and have the same friends.”
“Would you be my dads?” Oksana asked.
Sherlock dropped something in the kitchen. John glanced in that direction to make sure Sherlock wasn’t about to faint.
“Yes,” John said. “You don’t have to call us that, if you don’t want to, but you can.”
She nodded.
“You could also take my… our last name if you’d like,” John continued but added quickly: “Or you can keep your mother’s name. Or use both. Whatever you’d like.”
Sherlock came back again, carrying three steaming mugs of tea. He put them all down on the coffee table before handing Oksana and John one each and sitting down on the table in front of them.
“You wouldn’t mind having two dads?” Sherlock asked, John noticing a tremor in his voice.
Oksana shook her head, slightly confused.
“And you want to keep living with us?”
She nodded.
John and Sherlock looked at each other, exchanging a brief, overwhelmed smile.
“I’ll call Mycroft,” Sherlock said, getting up from the table.
“Call?”
“There are favours you don’t ask for over text,” Sherlock said, disappearing to the kitchen again.
“What do you say, should we order pizza for dinner?” John asked Oksana, smiling in a confused relief.
The girl looked insecure, but then, without warning she reached out and hugged John. John held her, resting his head against hers, and the world felt completely right and whole all of a sudden. Sherlock came back to the sitting room, looking pale and shaken. They met each other’s eyes and Sherlock nodded.
John smiled.
“We love you,” he told the small girl who still clung to him, without taking his eyes from Sherlock who just stood there watching them, smiling.
-x-
There was a light knock on the door. “Watsons to the altar,” Joanne said without opening the door. “Countdown’s started.”
“We’re coming,” John said as Sherlock reluctantly let go of Oksana.
They helped her putting down the veil - an object of huge discussion beforehand - after wishing her good luck and John had given her cheek another kiss.
The bridesmaids were already lined up outside the doors when they came, but they waved and whispered good lucks up until the very moment the organ started to play a by Sherlock composed wedding march.
“This is it,” Oksana whispered just before it was their turn to start walking down the aisle. John and Sherlock looked at each other, the weight of the words making them both pale. They walked slowly towards the altar, John on Oksana’s left side and Sherlock on her right. Both John and Sherlock had offered to not walk her down the aisle so that she wouldn’t have to choose between them if she had wanted a more traditional in-march with just one parent. Her response had been either both of them or none of them, though “none” had never really been an option.
At the end of the aisle John lifted her veil again, and they kissed her cheeks. She squeezed their hands before leaving them behind to instead take the hand of the two years older Anthony Wang. John and Sherlock sat down in the front row.
John took Sherlock’s hand without even noticing it until the priest asked who gave away this woman in marriage, because as they answered “We do” Sherlock squeezed his hand so hard John had to fight not to scream.
The priest nodded, turning back to the couple in front of her.
“Then I ask you, Anthony, will you take Oksana to be your wedded wife, to live together according to God's law in the holy estate of matrimony? Will you love her, comfort her, honour and keep her, in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all other, keep only unto her, so long as you both shall live?”
“I will.”
“And will you Oksana take Anthony to be your wedded husband, to live together according to God's law in the holy estate of matrimony? Will you love her, comfort her, honour and keep her, in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all other, keep only unto him, so long as you both shall live?”
“I will.”
Sherlock closed his eyes, feeling as if something had been ripped from his chest. He didn’t understand why he had such a strong emotional response to any of it. Not much was going to change today. Oksana had been an adult for seven years, she had moved away from home six years ago and she had been with Anthony for four. Nothing about this over-sentimental ceremony would change anything in his relationship with their daughter. He hoped.
The bride and groom said their vows and Sherlock opened his eyes just as Anthony’s best man gave him the ring.
“Repeat after me,” the priest asked Anthony. “With this ring I wed you.”
“With this ring I wed you,” Anthony started to repeat after the priest.
John reached out to take Sherlock’s other hand as well, needing all the skin-to-skin contact he could get while still remaining appropriate. It didn’t make him noticeably calmer, but it was nice to feel the warmth and to know that he wasn’t the only one with a lump building up in his chest.
“I pronounce that they be man and wife together, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”
The newlyweds kissed and turned around, both smiling happily, tears wetting Oksana’s lashes as she turned to meet her dads’ eyes. They both smiled back, blinking a bit more frequently than they normally did.
“That was that, then,” Sherlock whispered breathlessly as the organ started to play the out-march (that too composed by Sherlock) and the congregation stood up to follow the newlyweds out the church.
John squeezed his hands tightly and nodded. That was that.
-x-
Even with the help of Mycroft Holmes the adoption process was a long and tedious one. Thanks to Mycroft they didn’t have to deal with most of it themselves anyway. Not to mention that just in time for their home inspection four men came to clean and childproof the entire flat. Then, a day in July, the only thing that was left to do was to sign the paperwork.
Mrs Taylor came by Baker Street when John was done with work on an otherwise very ordinary Thursday. She had a colleague with her, a Judge Baxter, and they had invited Mrs Hudson and Mycroft to be witnesses.
Sherlock seemed annoyed, but John could tell it was mostly nerves. John couldn’t deny that he was nervous too, but he kept telling himself that it was just a piece of paper, it wouldn’t change their day-to-day life very much.
Judge Baxter and Mrs Taylor went through and explained all the formalities. John nodded and asked a couple of questions since he felt obligated to do so, but Sherlock just sat next to him flipping through the papers on his own.
“Oksana,” Judge Baxter said when they had reached the end of the legal part of it all. “Do you want to continue to live with Dr and Mr Watson and having them as your legal parents?”
Oksana nodded, making everyone in the room breathe a little bit easier. It wasn’t customary to ask such young children outside the psychological evaluations done by social services, but Judge Baxter found it polite to do so anyway if the child was present. If she had said no at this point it wouldn’t have changed the decision already made by the family court, but it would probably have made it a bit uneasy.
“Good,” Judge Baxter said, smiling, and then he handed over the court ruling for John and Sherlock to sign. Mrs Taylor had already signed, giving up all legal authority over Oksana.
John and Sherlock looked at each other, nodding, before John took the pen and signed at the dotted line. He handed the pen to Sherlock who did the same. His signature looked a bit forced since he wasn’t used to his new surname yet. Then it was Mrs Hudson’s and Mycroft’s turn to sign that they had witnessed the process and lastly the judge signed as well.
John smiled. “So that was that.”
Sherlock couldn’t take his eyes off the document, but nodded. That was that.
-x-
John and Sherlock knew the schedule for the day would be tight and they weren’t actually surprised when they didn’t have time to do more than congratulate the newlyweds on the church step. It still felt lonely and completely overwhelming as they sat in the back of a black limousine on their way to the reception. John rested his head against Sherlock’s shoulder as they rode to The Savoy in silence.
To have the reception at The Savoy was a wedding gift from Mycroft. Sherlock hadn’t been at all pleased with this, but seeing that it had taken exactly three seconds between Mycroft offering and Oksana accepting the offer by kissing her uncle on the mouth there really wasn’t anyone who cared about what Sherlock thought. John was just happy that most of the actual arrangements were put on someone other than him.
Mycroft and his people had really outdone themselves John and Sherlock noticed as they stepped into the reception hall. It was beautiful and elegant, still it looked intimate and down-to-earth. Not even as close to “Royal Wedding” as Sherlock had feared. It looked like Oksana and Anthony, everything from the plain, white plates and the small, pink table pieces to the glasses of champagne served at the door.
They took a glass each, but barely even tasted the champagne. The guests of honour were still to arrive and the room filled with chatter. In the middle of all the light chaos an odd sensation of calm came over John and it took him a moment to realise that it was because Sherlock had placed a hand on his lower back.
He sighed. “Twelve hours.”
“At the most.”
John nodded. Twelve hours, and then it would be over. In twelve hours there wouldn’t be anything that could ruin Oksana’s wedding day. Twelve more hours to worry about over cooked vegetables, drunken relatives, and wedding cakes tipping over. Just another twelve hours to keep the world perfect before they could relax.
As the guests started to find their seats Joanne and Patrick - the best man - walked out on the small stage, getting everyone’s attention by tapping a fork against a champagne glass. John and Sherlock also sat down and politely, but impatiently, watched as Oksana and Anthony’s friends introduced themselves as toastmaster and -mistress for the evening, informed about the room’s emergency exits, and told a couple of bad and ill-rehearsed jokes.
“Now, the moment you have been waiting for, Ladies and Gentlemen,” Patrick said, and Sherlock could swear that Joanne winked at them. “Let me introduce: Mr and Mrs Watson.”
John blinked, staring at the stage where Oksana and Anthony now entered under excited cheering from the guests. Sherlock was just as taken by the introduction and when John searched for his hand on the table he took it. Both Oksana and Anthony met their eyes, smiling widely, and it wasn’t until they waved that John and Sherlock managed to smile back.
“I love you,” Oksana mouthed, and her dads nodded before she and Anthony turned to smile and wave at the other guests as well.
John was moved to tears when he and Sherlock looked at each other.
“Did you know?” John asked.
Sherlock shook his head. The crazy kids had taken John’s name, just like he once had. They had taken their name. Unembarrassed Sherlock leaned in and kissed John, they would always be a family.