The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
Title: The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
Rating: G
Characters: Sherlock, John, Lestrade, brief OC's
Words: ~5,000
Summary: A modernization of The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, sort of. No geese were harmed or mentioned in the making of this fic. A jewel is stolen on Christmas Eve. John and Sherlock play at being the Grinch.
Notes: This was a gift for the lovely xxbakacoconutxx. Merry Christmas, darling. Your physical copy has a lot more Stuff than this version, obviously.
It was the middle of the night, and freezing. John’s hands were stuffed deep into his pockets, his shoulders hunched to bring his face closer to the warmth of his coat. He’d forgotten his gloves in his hasty retreat from Harry’s flat. The text had come about fifteen minutes earlier - an address, followed by, Your urgent assistance required. S.H. Sherlock tended to text about John’s urgent assistance being required when the milk was gone or there was something that needed holding, but tonight he didn’t mind it. It wasn’t that he disliked his sister - he just desperately hated her friends. They frayed his very last nerve, all of them artists or writers or, God forbid, playwrights whose every single word was high-voiced and snide, who looked down their noses at Harry’s strange younger brother, Oh, did you know that he was in the army? John hadn’t felt younger than Harry since Harry began showing up at three in the morning off her face and needing someone to help her to bed and leave her paracetamol and water for the morning, but surrounded by those people he felt all of nine again. And Harry herself changed when she was in the thick of that crowd, into the type of person who said darling in perfect seriousness, who laughed too brightly and too loud.
The street was lined on both sides with buildings shut-up and cold, but for the fairy lights still blinking in the windows, reflecting back white-gold from the wet pavement. Very cold, very wet. Christmas Eve in London.
“It certainly took you long enough.”
John steadfastly refused to jump at the sound of Sherlock’s voice from the shadows. He turned, eyes straining in the dark, to find Sherlock’s pale face looming out of an alleyway between two tall blocks of flats. He was leaning against one of the buildings, his hands in his pockets, his body curled in against the cold. It struck John that the image was almost romantic -- the reflected glow of fairy lights dappling Sherlock’s face, his coat, in clean yellowish light, his expression carefully schooled, almost bored. All the picture needed was a cigarette glowing forgotten between two long white fingers. It all made Sherlock look so much younger.
“You didn’t have to stand out in the cold,” John heard himself say.
Sherlock stood upright, away from the wall, his hands still hidden away. “I was waiting.”
“You could have done that inside somewhere.” John shook his head. “If I’d known you were that much of an idiot, I’d have found a cab.”
Sherlock’s eyes flickered over John, up and down, and John had that now-normal feeling of being read. Opened up, moved around a bit and put back together seamlessly. Sherlock was the fastest of surgeons in that regard. The corners of his lips twitched. “It was as bad as you were dreading, then.”
John hadn’t said a word about the party to Sherlock, who had been out nearly all day at any rate working a case, something about a jewel thief. But of course he’d known anyway, because information came like oxygen to him, the wanker. “Quite,” John sighed, in an exhale that let all of the breath out of his body, deflating him utterly. “I hope whatever you’ve called me out here for is more interesting than what Lady Gaga wore in Paris yesterday.”
Sherlock’s raised eyebrow asked very clearly, Lady who? But he let the comment slide and sidled up next to John, lifting his eyes to the building on their right. “I make no promises,” he said, “but it’s very probable.” He started to move, and John moved with him, along the pavement toward the entrance, their steps in time and echoing in the mostly-silent street. “I haven’t explain this case to you, have I?”
“I’ve hardly seen you today for more than five minutes,” John muttered, “so spectacularly no.”
Sherlock looked at him, head cocked, eyebrows lowered. The light from a streetlamp washed over his face, coppering his hair and highlighting his frown as he stopped walking. “Are you angry that I didn’t drag you out of bed this morning when Lestrade called?”
John sighed again, his breath frosting in the air, and halted as well. “No,” he managed, struggling not to look like an idiot and probably failing. “I’m just tired and annoyed about Harry’s ridiculous party. Go on.” John gestured at him. “Explain.”
Sherlock nodded and made as if to move. Then he stopped and looked over at John again. “I have no idea why you went if you knew you wouldn’t enjoy yourself.”
John was exasperated. “She’s my sister, Sherlock. When she invites me to things, I should at least attempt to go to them.”
“But do you honestly think she cared if you were there or not?”
John squeezed the bridge of his nose between two fingers and muttered, “I suppose explaining that it doesn’t matter won’t do any good. You would hardly show up to one of Mycroft’s do’s out of brotherly duty.”
Sherlock scoffed, but he was smiling. “I hardly think my brother is capable of gathering people together for anything pleasant. Any party he planned would invariably conclude with the silent takeover of a small third-world country.”
John smiled at that. It was amusing, no matter how eerily true it was. “Can you imagine what the door prizes would be?”
Sherlock smothered a laugh and drew them both up to the rows of names beside the entrance to the building. John was now used to this, which showed that one can get used to anything, up to an including illegally gaining access to someone’s flat. Sherlock used a holiday themed excuse this time - a surprise for my brother, he lives in the flat above yours, Christmas and all - and then they were inside, with John’s face and fingers tingling as the blood returned to them, flushed red and shivering. “Anyway,” he said, flexing his hands in the warm air, “you were saying about the case?”
“Right,” Sherlock said. His face was hardly any redder for the warmth, as smooth and pale as ever, as though his blood was always pulled toward his chest and heart, and never touched the rest of him at all. “Lestrade called this morning and asked me to help him find a jewel stolen from a private gallery off of Oxford street.”
“A single jewel?” John asked, frowning.
“The single jewel,” Sherlock said, with every emphasis on the word. “The blue carbuncle. The most coveted jewel in the collection.”
“Funny name for a jewel.”
Sherlock looked at him blandly. “’Carbuncle’ refers to the shape. It’s an archaic term for cabochon. A convex top and a flat base, smooth rather than faceted. It is worth about half a million pounds.”
“And it was stolen this morning?”
Sherlock nodded. “Lestrade has a man in custody, a heating repairman who was alone with the stone for about five minutes, but his allegations are ridiculous and don’t reflect the facts.” Sherlock sighed. “He’d do well to leave logic to those who are actually capable of it from time to time.”
John rolled his eyes. “Yes, we know you’re brilliant, please continue.”
Sherlock gave him a sideways glance, but went on anyway. They were moving down the hall, toward the lifts. “Given the information I had, my prime suspect was one of the security guards who was working for the building while the jewel was stolen. I used the story he gave to the police to retrace his steps back home that morning.” Sherlock pressed the call button for the lift. “Then I found the jewel.”
The lift opened with a ding, and John’s eyebrows rose. “You found the jewel? Then what are we doing here?”
Sherlock stepped inside, and John quickly followed. Pushing the button for the sixth floor, Sherlock said, “Well, I didn’t find it, exactly. I found where he had hidden it.” He glanced at John, his lips tugging upward, obviously delighted with this part of the story.
The feeling was contagious. John returned the smile lopsidedly as they began to rise. “Where was that, then?”
“In the jewelry counter at the John Lewis department store on Oxford Street.”
John took a moment to think about that, and then he burst into surprised laughter. “He hid the jewel with a bunch of other jewels?”
Sherlock grinned at the reaction, pleased. “More specifically, he hid it in a box beneath the counter, thinking that it would be left untouched until he could return and reclaim it after he spoke to the police.”
John’s smile started to widen. “Can I wager a guess on what happened next?”
Sherlock spread his hands in a please go on gesture.
“He came back,” John said, with a bubble of laughter in his throat, “expecting to find the jewel exactly where he left it. But when he opened the box, it was gone. Someone had set it out in the display case and then sold it.”
The lift dinged once more and opened, depositing them on the sixth floor. “Almost exactly right,” Sherlock said, “but for the part where he was discovered behind the counter and marched out of the store by security. The girl working behind the counter told me the entire story. Apparently she’d been scandalized by the whole scenario.” Sherlock’s mocking voice carried down the door-lined hall, and he lowered it, drawing closer to John to keep himself heard. “She said he kept returning all day, so I waited. And wouldn’t you know it, there he was, after three hours of enduring ridiculous Christmas music at a nauseating volume.”
John smothered his smile at the sour look on Sherlock’s face. “So what are we doing here? Isn’t that enough to arrest him on?”
“Not quite,” Sherlock murmured. They started down the hall. “The store’s CCTV footage was corrupted, and I didn’t have any other proof that the stone had been in the store at all, besides a girl of questionable memory.” He stopped at a door just like all of the others. “So we’re here to steal it back.”
John stopped short.
This was suddenly less fun than it had been a minute ago.
“I’m sorry, we’re doing what now?” John watched as Sherlock knelt in front of the door and slipped something from his pocket and opened it. A lockpicking kit. Oh, lovely. “No,” he said, and, “No, really,” and, “How did you get this address in the first place? These are the people who bought the blue carbuncle?”
“You’d be surprised how willingly people will divulge information when you flash a badge in their faces.” Sherlock was slipping his slim tools into their proper places in the door, entirely concentrated on the task, talking lightly, as if lost.
“Lestrade’s badge?” John asked. He looked up at the ceiling and failed to count to ten. “Is there anything you won’t stoop to?”
“Very little,” Sherlock murmured. There was a click in the door. He rose and put his hand on the knob, before turning his head to look at John. His smile was a direct challenge. “Feel free to stand out in the hall. Or return to Baker Street. I’m sure Mrs. Hudson would love some company.” He slipped the kit back in his pocket, his eyes all fire on John’s.
A muscle in John’s leg twitched. He rolled his eyes and muttered darkly, “If we’re caught, I’m leaving you for the wolves.”
“Noted,” Sherlock said, and cracked open the door to slip inside. John followed very closely, damning his own ridiculous need for danger.
The flat was very dark inside. With the door silently shut behind them, the front hall was nothing but black, bloomed softly at the very end with faint patterns of red, green, blue, yellow against the white wall. The Christmas tree, then, in the next room.
“They leave their tree on all night,” John muttered. “It’s a wonder they haven’t burned the building down.”
“That would require a major fault in the wiring of the lights,” Sherlock said in a very low voice. “I am consistently amazed by the things you will buy into.”
John was defensive. “It seemed logical.”
“Once again, logic - best left to those who are capable of it.”
John was still pressed against the front door in the dark. “Are we going to move before the New Year?” he asked, annoyed.
In answer, Sherlock started away, and John followed. It grew brighter with each new step, with the glow at the end of the hall and his eyes adjusting, and he could see the careful tread of Sherlock’s feet against the hardwood, the way he moved to avoid the parts of the floor which might squeak and wake the people sleeping further off into the flat. He followed as best he could, walking where Sherlock walked, using whatever sixth sense he had to his advantage.
At the end of the hall, in the mouth of the sitting room, they both stopped and looked up to stare.
“That,” John said, “is the ugliest Christmas tree I have ever clapped eyes on.”
Sherlock was silent, but it was an assenting sort of silence.
The tree was strung with multi-colored lights, the sort that blinked and chased each other and were probably a serious danger to those with epilepsy. It was bedecked with lights, branches hanging heavy with them, and with candy canes, the sort which were striped with other colors and tasted like fruit instead of peppermint, which was basically sacrilege in John’s mind. Also hanging and grinning cheerily and monstrously from every branch were two-inch-high ceramic gingerbread people, poorly painted and decidedly discomfiting, their large black eyes penetrating even across the room. And that wasn’t to mention the wealth of terribly made cardboard, paper, crayon, popsicle stick and glue decorations formed crudely by tiny hands.
And then there was the pile of presents beneath it.
This part hadn’t really occurred to John until exactly that point.
“Sherlock,” he said quietly, “did you have some sort of plan for finding out which box had the necklace in it?”
Sherlock looked over at him. “We open them.”
“No,” John said again. “No, I will not be the Grinch in this ridiculous - whatever this is. We are not opening other peoples’ presents.”
Sherlock stepped toward the tree. “How else do you expect to find it?” he asked. He swept his arm to incorporate the piles of boxes. “Shake them, see if they rattle?”
John was seriously regretting having ever agreed to come up here with Sherlock without having a basic idea of what they would be doing once inside. “We are going to do this methodically. It should be in a small, square box, shouldn’t it? The kind they pack jewelry in at those display counters? We’ll weed them out of the larger boxes.” He walked across the room and knelt in front of the tree, feeling ridiculous. “This is one of your worst ideas, by the way.”
“I think it’s a rather good one.” Sherlock knelt nearby and reached into the piles blindly, searching for boxes of the right shape.
The presents were all wrapped in brightly colored paper - this seemed to be a trend, in this family - and all of it was metallic and reflective, and after a few minutes of staring down at them he had to look away - towards Sherlock, who was pawing around the base of the tree, frowning quietly to himself. “What?” John asked.
“Hmm?” Sherlock hummed. He looked up to see John watching him, then raised his eyebrows slightly. “Oh,” he said. “It’s nothing.” He continued going through the packages, taking the larger ones and putting them off to the side in order to see better. “I was just thinking about what my mother would have to say about this sort of tree.”
John grinned. “My mother would say it was charming,” he said, “but she always did have terrible taste. Why? What would she think?”
Sherlock smirked into the pine needles. The dancing lights caught and flashed against the skin of his face, his eyes, his hands against the wrapped presents, red and blue and yellow and green. “My mother was very traditional about Christmas,” Sherlock murmured, as if amused. “Plain trees with candles. All very proper. She would think this was absolutely vulgar.”
John glanced up at it. There was an LED-laden plastic angel at the peak. “I would have to agree with her, probably.”
Sherlock set aside two boxes which met the dimensions they were looking for, raising and lowering one shoulder. “It’s all ridiculous to me, at any rate.”
John smiled. “I’m surprised you could resist the call of a dry tree and an open flame when you were younger.”
Sherlock hummed. “It’s possible that we lost a tree or two that way.”
John rolled his eyes. “Of course you did.”
It only took another few minutes of searching to be sure that the boxes they had scavenged were the only ones present that appeared to be the correct size and shape.
Sadly, there were six of them.
“Can you narrow it down?” John asked, hesitant, staring at the six perfectly matching boxes.
“It would be faster to open them.”
“It would also be a lot more conspicuous.”
Sherlock looked at him blandly from across the small row of boxes. “More conspicuous than the fact that the necklace you bought for your wife has gone missing?”
John held on. “Slightly more conspicuous than that, yes.”
Sherlock sighed and lifted the first box in the row up to his eyes. “It isn’t this one,” he said. “Look at the paper. This isn’t the sort of paper you would wrap an expensive jewel in.” The paper had snowmen on it. They were dancing. Sherlock set the box aside. “Probably something for a child. That also goes for this one.” He picked up another box and set it with the other. The third, he lifted and held in front of his eyes for a moment. “The paper is right, but this still isn’t the one we’re looking for. Look at the tape.” He held it out for John to see. “Frayed and lifting in some places. This has been wrapped for more than two weeks. It wasn’t bought today.” He tossed it aside with the others, then picked up the fourth. Once again, he held it in front of his eyes. He stayed for a moment, considering, turning it back and forth. Then he shook his head. “Still not right. The folds are bulky and uneven - the wrapper used too much paper, but didn’t go back to fix his mistake.”
John frowned. “How does that have anything to do with this being the necklace?”
Sherlock glanced at him. “If you were going to give your wife something this valuable, probably a spur-of-the-moment purchase prompted by a work bonus or a promotion which you have yet to reveal, you would make the wrapping perfect. You would do it over and over again until it was right. Wouldn’t you?”
John was surprised. He shook his head. “I have honestly no idea how to think of these things. I really don’t.”
Sherlock set the fourth package aside and picked up the final two. “We’re left with these,” he said, turning them about, examining each one closely. “Almost no difference between the two of them. We’ll have to open them.” He met John’s eyes. “Unless you happen to have a superpower that I am unaware of.”
John sighed, annoyed. “Let’s get it over with, then.”
Sherlock lifted a box and was just starting to dig open the paper (with a pleased expression on his face, as though he was amused and delighted to be opening someone else’s Christmas present) when there was a cough from the doorway.
Both of them spun to look in that direction.
A little girl stood there, hair in lopsided braids, a bear clutched to her side, wide-eyed and frowning in the dark. “Santa?” she asked.
Sherlock and John met eyes. John winced. Sherlock seemed to be making rapid calculations in his head, before he turned back to her and answered, “Yes. I’m Santa.”
The girl tilted her head, still frowning big-eyed and concerned. “Who’s that, then?” she asked, pointing at John.
“My elf,” Sherlock said.
John just barely resisted the urge to kick him. All he could do instead was wave and smile weakly at the girl, who looked hardly over four years old, and perhaps just tired enough to go back to bed without much urging.
Her eyes were on Sherlock’s hands, still clutching the maybe-necklace. “Why’re you opening our gifts, Santa?”
Sherlock met John’s eyes, for once - for once - at a complete loss. John smirked in spite of himself at the helpless look on Sherlock’s face. How does one stay in character when one is pretending to be Father Christmas?
“It’s broken, sweetheart,” John answered for him. “Santa is going to open it up and fix it, then put it back just the same as it was. Is that all right with you?”
The girl nodded, braids bobbing rapidly up and down. “Why’re you so thin, Santa?”
“Santa’s on a diet,” John said. He was slowly rising to his feet, gesturing for Sherlock to stay on the floor. “Mrs. Claus thought he was setting a bad example.” He shuffled very slowly and quietly over to the girl. “You should be asleep, though, shouldn’t you?”
She shook her head, her eyes turned up to John. “I can stay awake. I’m good at staying awake. Can I go on the sled with you?”
Her voice was getting louder, and John knelt down to her level, putting his hand carefully on her shoulder, hushing her softly. “The sleigh is on the roof. It would be dangerous for you to go up there. Besides, if you stay out here while Santa opens that present to fix it, you might see it. Don’t you know what happens when you see your presents before Christmas morning?”
She frowned and shook her head again, making the braids swing back and forth.
John let his voice drop into a sad whisper. “They disappear!”
Her eyes widened, and her hold on the bear tightened. “Oh no!”
John nodded sternly. “So you should go straight to bed, don’t you think?”
She nodded, then peered over his shoulder. “Good night, Santa. Happy Christmas.”
Sherlock waved vaguely in her direction. “Happy Christmas,” he muttered.”
She went off down the hall, very quiet in her pyjamas, and John watched with bated breath until her door closed lightly and the light behind it went out.
He turned on his knee and looked at Sherlock.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said. “Please.”
Sherlock was ripping the wrapping paper off of the first box and opening it to see what was inside when a man came barreling down the hall from the opposite direction with a cricket bat held over his head.
John was up off of the floor in a flash, with his hands on the cricket bat, holding it still. “Sir, calm down,” he said, straining against the man trying to tug the bat away from him, standing awkwardly close to a person dressed in nothing but an undershirt and reindeer boxers at one in the morning. “We can explain why we’re here.”
“You’ll want to start doing that very quickly,” the man ground out. “And get your hands off of those!” he shouted around John.
And then, out of sight, a window in the kitchen was violently and loudly smashed.
What ensued was ridiculous chaos. It ended with Sherlock’s suspect cornered in the kitchen under the combined threat of a cricket bat and an angry four-year-old attempting to defend her emaciated Santa. In the confusion, the fact that John and Sherlock had broken in and started rooting through presents was conveniently forgotten as the police were called and the little girl was calmed down.
The wife, John noticed, couldn’t seem to stop laughing at the situation, even as her daughter started weeping because she’d seen the present Sherlock opened. (A CD. Not the necklace.)
Lestrade arrived a scant ten minutes after being called, coming into the flat with a swarm of officers, who made a bee-line for the kitchen and the man, James Ryder, security guard cum jewel thief, being held at bay. Lestrade lingered in the sitting room, one raised eyebrow directed at Sherlock, standing in front of the tree with a small wrapped box in his hand.
“For you,” he said, handing it over. “Should make you rather happy, I think.”
Lestrade seemed ready to ignore the box in favour of reminding Sherlock what is and is not against the law - breaking and entering included in the former list, not the latter - but Sherlock’s significant nod at the package made him roll his eyes and tear the paper off, letting it fall messily to the floor.
The stamped John Lewis on the top of the box made him frown, but it made John’s eyebrows get lost somewhere in his hairline.
When Lestrade pulled off the top of the box, his breath stopped.
It was the blue carbuncle, nestled safely over sheets of tissue paper, shining, reflecting the still-dancing lights of the tree.
Lestrade tore his eyes away from the necklace to look up at Sherlock. “You really are a mad genius, aren’t you?”
At that sort of compliment, Sherlock could only look very deeply pleased.
There was a tree in the sitting room at 221B.
The presence of the tree was not entirely unanticipated; Mrs. Hudson had been complaining all month that he and John were the least festive persons she had ever met. Not even a wreath on your door. Two young men like you! It’s a shame. Her own flat was filled to the brim with decorations which began to sing in wheezy, tinny voices whenever someone breathed too loudly in the room, always prompting a touched, faraway look to break over her face, as though every jangling tune had some heartwarming memory attached to it.
“You know what’s most surprising to me right now,” John said slowly beside him, still halfway through taking off his coat as he was when he’d noticed the tree about a minute previous, “is that you aren’t currently chucking it in the street.”
“I am capable of self-control,” Sherlock murmured, still staring at it. It was modestly decorated, showing that Mrs. Hudson was at least moderately capable of the same; tastefully hung with red and gold decorations, white lights neat and even. It wasn’t an ugly tree. If it had been something similar to her ridiculous ensemble downstairs, he might have chucked it into the street anyway, damn self-control. If it had been a plain tree with candles, he might have set fire to it first.
John finished getting out of his coat and hung it up, before crossing past Sherlock and toward the tree, bending down to have a closer look. “She put gifts beneath it,” he said, sounding surprised.
Sherlock, still unmoving, still in his coat, gave a dismissive shrug. “Some from Mycroft, I would assume.” Obviously picked out by his assistant. “Something tasteful but useless, as always.”
“We can’t all buy you a shrunken head,” John muttered, crouching to lift up the packages and look at the tags. “How would you return them?”
A smile touched Sherlock’s lips, but John couldn’t see it with his back turned. Sherlock pulled off his scarf and turned around to hang his coat up behind the door, as John went through the small pile of gifts.
“Some from Mrs. Hudson, as well,” he said, setting those two brightly colored packages aside. He looked back over his shoulder, grinning. “Can you deduce the presents?”
Sherlock let himself match the grin. “Wouldn’t that be against the holiday spirit?”
“It never seemed to stop you before. Ah!” John reached further under the tree, grabbed something and pulled it out into the light. He stood up and turned around. “Here,” he said, offering it. A gift, wrapped very simply and cleanly, with no tags to identify giver and receiver. “With any luck I’ll be in bed until noon, so you should have this now.”
Sherlock frowned down at the package in John’s hand. In retrospect, it was obvious that John would have gotten him something for the holiday. The idea hadn’t occurred to him, but it should have. It was an oversight. “You bought something for me.”
John looked caught somewhere between smiling and rolling his eyes. “I did, yeah,” he said. “And I’m a bit tired, so if you wouldn’t mind taking it and letting me go to bed, I would be greatly appreciative.”
Sherlock reached out and took it. He continued to frown at it. “I didn’t get anything for you,” he admitted.
John laughed. “I honestly didn’t expect you to.”
Sherlock looked back at him. “It slipped my mind.”
John’s face had a sweet expression, softened by the lights of the tree glowing behind him. It wasn’t really an expression that Sherlock was familiar with on John, but it made something in his chest twinge pleasantly and unexpectedly. John let out a little breath. “I really don’t care.”
“I’ll find you something.”
John started moving for the door. “Again, I really don’t care.”
“I’ll find something anyway.”
“Tired. Don’t care.”
“Good night,” Sherlock called after him when he was in the doorway, halfway out.
John stopped to look over his shoulder, smiling. “Good night, Sherlock. Happy Christmas.”
Sherlock nodded. “Happy Christmas.” It was maybe the first time he’d meant the blessing in his entire life, and that was certainly something. He listened to John’s boots on the stairs, all the way up to his room, and then the door closing.
He looked back over his shoulder at the tree, still glimmering in the dim light, still strangely unobtrusive in its corner. It was an odd gift, but even Sherlock could see - it was a nice thought.
He settled into a chair and tore the package open.
4:25am
Emily Post’s “Etiquette”?
S.H.
You opened it, then?
What could have possibly made you
think that I would be interested
in this?
S.H.
You obviously haven’t read it before.
You’re welcome. I’m ignoring the rest
of your texts. Go to sleep.
This is absolute rubbish.
S.H.
It makes excellent kindling, though.
S.H.
Rating: G
Characters: Sherlock, John, Lestrade, brief OC's
Words: ~5,000
Summary: A modernization of The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, sort of. No geese were harmed or mentioned in the making of this fic. A jewel is stolen on Christmas Eve. John and Sherlock play at being the Grinch.
Notes: This was a gift for the lovely xxbakacoconutxx. Merry Christmas, darling. Your physical copy has a lot more Stuff than this version, obviously.
It was the middle of the night, and freezing. John’s hands were stuffed deep into his pockets, his shoulders hunched to bring his face closer to the warmth of his coat. He’d forgotten his gloves in his hasty retreat from Harry’s flat. The text had come about fifteen minutes earlier - an address, followed by, Your urgent assistance required. S.H. Sherlock tended to text about John’s urgent assistance being required when the milk was gone or there was something that needed holding, but tonight he didn’t mind it. It wasn’t that he disliked his sister - he just desperately hated her friends. They frayed his very last nerve, all of them artists or writers or, God forbid, playwrights whose every single word was high-voiced and snide, who looked down their noses at Harry’s strange younger brother, Oh, did you know that he was in the army? John hadn’t felt younger than Harry since Harry began showing up at three in the morning off her face and needing someone to help her to bed and leave her paracetamol and water for the morning, but surrounded by those people he felt all of nine again. And Harry herself changed when she was in the thick of that crowd, into the type of person who said darling in perfect seriousness, who laughed too brightly and too loud.
The street was lined on both sides with buildings shut-up and cold, but for the fairy lights still blinking in the windows, reflecting back white-gold from the wet pavement. Very cold, very wet. Christmas Eve in London.
“It certainly took you long enough.”
John steadfastly refused to jump at the sound of Sherlock’s voice from the shadows. He turned, eyes straining in the dark, to find Sherlock’s pale face looming out of an alleyway between two tall blocks of flats. He was leaning against one of the buildings, his hands in his pockets, his body curled in against the cold. It struck John that the image was almost romantic -- the reflected glow of fairy lights dappling Sherlock’s face, his coat, in clean yellowish light, his expression carefully schooled, almost bored. All the picture needed was a cigarette glowing forgotten between two long white fingers. It all made Sherlock look so much younger.
“You didn’t have to stand out in the cold,” John heard himself say.
Sherlock stood upright, away from the wall, his hands still hidden away. “I was waiting.”
“You could have done that inside somewhere.” John shook his head. “If I’d known you were that much of an idiot, I’d have found a cab.”
Sherlock’s eyes flickered over John, up and down, and John had that now-normal feeling of being read. Opened up, moved around a bit and put back together seamlessly. Sherlock was the fastest of surgeons in that regard. The corners of his lips twitched. “It was as bad as you were dreading, then.”
John hadn’t said a word about the party to Sherlock, who had been out nearly all day at any rate working a case, something about a jewel thief. But of course he’d known anyway, because information came like oxygen to him, the wanker. “Quite,” John sighed, in an exhale that let all of the breath out of his body, deflating him utterly. “I hope whatever you’ve called me out here for is more interesting than what Lady Gaga wore in Paris yesterday.”
Sherlock’s raised eyebrow asked very clearly, Lady who? But he let the comment slide and sidled up next to John, lifting his eyes to the building on their right. “I make no promises,” he said, “but it’s very probable.” He started to move, and John moved with him, along the pavement toward the entrance, their steps in time and echoing in the mostly-silent street. “I haven’t explain this case to you, have I?”
“I’ve hardly seen you today for more than five minutes,” John muttered, “so spectacularly no.”
Sherlock looked at him, head cocked, eyebrows lowered. The light from a streetlamp washed over his face, coppering his hair and highlighting his frown as he stopped walking. “Are you angry that I didn’t drag you out of bed this morning when Lestrade called?”
John sighed again, his breath frosting in the air, and halted as well. “No,” he managed, struggling not to look like an idiot and probably failing. “I’m just tired and annoyed about Harry’s ridiculous party. Go on.” John gestured at him. “Explain.”
Sherlock nodded and made as if to move. Then he stopped and looked over at John again. “I have no idea why you went if you knew you wouldn’t enjoy yourself.”
John was exasperated. “She’s my sister, Sherlock. When she invites me to things, I should at least attempt to go to them.”
“But do you honestly think she cared if you were there or not?”
John squeezed the bridge of his nose between two fingers and muttered, “I suppose explaining that it doesn’t matter won’t do any good. You would hardly show up to one of Mycroft’s do’s out of brotherly duty.”
Sherlock scoffed, but he was smiling. “I hardly think my brother is capable of gathering people together for anything pleasant. Any party he planned would invariably conclude with the silent takeover of a small third-world country.”
John smiled at that. It was amusing, no matter how eerily true it was. “Can you imagine what the door prizes would be?”
Sherlock smothered a laugh and drew them both up to the rows of names beside the entrance to the building. John was now used to this, which showed that one can get used to anything, up to an including illegally gaining access to someone’s flat. Sherlock used a holiday themed excuse this time - a surprise for my brother, he lives in the flat above yours, Christmas and all - and then they were inside, with John’s face and fingers tingling as the blood returned to them, flushed red and shivering. “Anyway,” he said, flexing his hands in the warm air, “you were saying about the case?”
“Right,” Sherlock said. His face was hardly any redder for the warmth, as smooth and pale as ever, as though his blood was always pulled toward his chest and heart, and never touched the rest of him at all. “Lestrade called this morning and asked me to help him find a jewel stolen from a private gallery off of Oxford street.”
“A single jewel?” John asked, frowning.
“The single jewel,” Sherlock said, with every emphasis on the word. “The blue carbuncle. The most coveted jewel in the collection.”
“Funny name for a jewel.”
Sherlock looked at him blandly. “’Carbuncle’ refers to the shape. It’s an archaic term for cabochon. A convex top and a flat base, smooth rather than faceted. It is worth about half a million pounds.”
“And it was stolen this morning?”
Sherlock nodded. “Lestrade has a man in custody, a heating repairman who was alone with the stone for about five minutes, but his allegations are ridiculous and don’t reflect the facts.” Sherlock sighed. “He’d do well to leave logic to those who are actually capable of it from time to time.”
John rolled his eyes. “Yes, we know you’re brilliant, please continue.”
Sherlock gave him a sideways glance, but went on anyway. They were moving down the hall, toward the lifts. “Given the information I had, my prime suspect was one of the security guards who was working for the building while the jewel was stolen. I used the story he gave to the police to retrace his steps back home that morning.” Sherlock pressed the call button for the lift. “Then I found the jewel.”
The lift opened with a ding, and John’s eyebrows rose. “You found the jewel? Then what are we doing here?”
Sherlock stepped inside, and John quickly followed. Pushing the button for the sixth floor, Sherlock said, “Well, I didn’t find it, exactly. I found where he had hidden it.” He glanced at John, his lips tugging upward, obviously delighted with this part of the story.
The feeling was contagious. John returned the smile lopsidedly as they began to rise. “Where was that, then?”
“In the jewelry counter at the John Lewis department store on Oxford Street.”
John took a moment to think about that, and then he burst into surprised laughter. “He hid the jewel with a bunch of other jewels?”
Sherlock grinned at the reaction, pleased. “More specifically, he hid it in a box beneath the counter, thinking that it would be left untouched until he could return and reclaim it after he spoke to the police.”
John’s smile started to widen. “Can I wager a guess on what happened next?”
Sherlock spread his hands in a please go on gesture.
“He came back,” John said, with a bubble of laughter in his throat, “expecting to find the jewel exactly where he left it. But when he opened the box, it was gone. Someone had set it out in the display case and then sold it.”
The lift dinged once more and opened, depositing them on the sixth floor. “Almost exactly right,” Sherlock said, “but for the part where he was discovered behind the counter and marched out of the store by security. The girl working behind the counter told me the entire story. Apparently she’d been scandalized by the whole scenario.” Sherlock’s mocking voice carried down the door-lined hall, and he lowered it, drawing closer to John to keep himself heard. “She said he kept returning all day, so I waited. And wouldn’t you know it, there he was, after three hours of enduring ridiculous Christmas music at a nauseating volume.”
John smothered his smile at the sour look on Sherlock’s face. “So what are we doing here? Isn’t that enough to arrest him on?”
“Not quite,” Sherlock murmured. They started down the hall. “The store’s CCTV footage was corrupted, and I didn’t have any other proof that the stone had been in the store at all, besides a girl of questionable memory.” He stopped at a door just like all of the others. “So we’re here to steal it back.”
John stopped short.
This was suddenly less fun than it had been a minute ago.
“I’m sorry, we’re doing what now?” John watched as Sherlock knelt in front of the door and slipped something from his pocket and opened it. A lockpicking kit. Oh, lovely. “No,” he said, and, “No, really,” and, “How did you get this address in the first place? These are the people who bought the blue carbuncle?”
“You’d be surprised how willingly people will divulge information when you flash a badge in their faces.” Sherlock was slipping his slim tools into their proper places in the door, entirely concentrated on the task, talking lightly, as if lost.
“Lestrade’s badge?” John asked. He looked up at the ceiling and failed to count to ten. “Is there anything you won’t stoop to?”
“Very little,” Sherlock murmured. There was a click in the door. He rose and put his hand on the knob, before turning his head to look at John. His smile was a direct challenge. “Feel free to stand out in the hall. Or return to Baker Street. I’m sure Mrs. Hudson would love some company.” He slipped the kit back in his pocket, his eyes all fire on John’s.
A muscle in John’s leg twitched. He rolled his eyes and muttered darkly, “If we’re caught, I’m leaving you for the wolves.”
“Noted,” Sherlock said, and cracked open the door to slip inside. John followed very closely, damning his own ridiculous need for danger.
The flat was very dark inside. With the door silently shut behind them, the front hall was nothing but black, bloomed softly at the very end with faint patterns of red, green, blue, yellow against the white wall. The Christmas tree, then, in the next room.
“They leave their tree on all night,” John muttered. “It’s a wonder they haven’t burned the building down.”
“That would require a major fault in the wiring of the lights,” Sherlock said in a very low voice. “I am consistently amazed by the things you will buy into.”
John was defensive. “It seemed logical.”
“Once again, logic - best left to those who are capable of it.”
John was still pressed against the front door in the dark. “Are we going to move before the New Year?” he asked, annoyed.
In answer, Sherlock started away, and John followed. It grew brighter with each new step, with the glow at the end of the hall and his eyes adjusting, and he could see the careful tread of Sherlock’s feet against the hardwood, the way he moved to avoid the parts of the floor which might squeak and wake the people sleeping further off into the flat. He followed as best he could, walking where Sherlock walked, using whatever sixth sense he had to his advantage.
At the end of the hall, in the mouth of the sitting room, they both stopped and looked up to stare.
“That,” John said, “is the ugliest Christmas tree I have ever clapped eyes on.”
Sherlock was silent, but it was an assenting sort of silence.
The tree was strung with multi-colored lights, the sort that blinked and chased each other and were probably a serious danger to those with epilepsy. It was bedecked with lights, branches hanging heavy with them, and with candy canes, the sort which were striped with other colors and tasted like fruit instead of peppermint, which was basically sacrilege in John’s mind. Also hanging and grinning cheerily and monstrously from every branch were two-inch-high ceramic gingerbread people, poorly painted and decidedly discomfiting, their large black eyes penetrating even across the room. And that wasn’t to mention the wealth of terribly made cardboard, paper, crayon, popsicle stick and glue decorations formed crudely by tiny hands.
And then there was the pile of presents beneath it.
This part hadn’t really occurred to John until exactly that point.
“Sherlock,” he said quietly, “did you have some sort of plan for finding out which box had the necklace in it?”
Sherlock looked over at him. “We open them.”
“No,” John said again. “No, I will not be the Grinch in this ridiculous - whatever this is. We are not opening other peoples’ presents.”
Sherlock stepped toward the tree. “How else do you expect to find it?” he asked. He swept his arm to incorporate the piles of boxes. “Shake them, see if they rattle?”
John was seriously regretting having ever agreed to come up here with Sherlock without having a basic idea of what they would be doing once inside. “We are going to do this methodically. It should be in a small, square box, shouldn’t it? The kind they pack jewelry in at those display counters? We’ll weed them out of the larger boxes.” He walked across the room and knelt in front of the tree, feeling ridiculous. “This is one of your worst ideas, by the way.”
“I think it’s a rather good one.” Sherlock knelt nearby and reached into the piles blindly, searching for boxes of the right shape.
The presents were all wrapped in brightly colored paper - this seemed to be a trend, in this family - and all of it was metallic and reflective, and after a few minutes of staring down at them he had to look away - towards Sherlock, who was pawing around the base of the tree, frowning quietly to himself. “What?” John asked.
“Hmm?” Sherlock hummed. He looked up to see John watching him, then raised his eyebrows slightly. “Oh,” he said. “It’s nothing.” He continued going through the packages, taking the larger ones and putting them off to the side in order to see better. “I was just thinking about what my mother would have to say about this sort of tree.”
John grinned. “My mother would say it was charming,” he said, “but she always did have terrible taste. Why? What would she think?”
Sherlock smirked into the pine needles. The dancing lights caught and flashed against the skin of his face, his eyes, his hands against the wrapped presents, red and blue and yellow and green. “My mother was very traditional about Christmas,” Sherlock murmured, as if amused. “Plain trees with candles. All very proper. She would think this was absolutely vulgar.”
John glanced up at it. There was an LED-laden plastic angel at the peak. “I would have to agree with her, probably.”
Sherlock set aside two boxes which met the dimensions they were looking for, raising and lowering one shoulder. “It’s all ridiculous to me, at any rate.”
John smiled. “I’m surprised you could resist the call of a dry tree and an open flame when you were younger.”
Sherlock hummed. “It’s possible that we lost a tree or two that way.”
John rolled his eyes. “Of course you did.”
It only took another few minutes of searching to be sure that the boxes they had scavenged were the only ones present that appeared to be the correct size and shape.
Sadly, there were six of them.
“Can you narrow it down?” John asked, hesitant, staring at the six perfectly matching boxes.
“It would be faster to open them.”
“It would also be a lot more conspicuous.”
Sherlock looked at him blandly from across the small row of boxes. “More conspicuous than the fact that the necklace you bought for your wife has gone missing?”
John held on. “Slightly more conspicuous than that, yes.”
Sherlock sighed and lifted the first box in the row up to his eyes. “It isn’t this one,” he said. “Look at the paper. This isn’t the sort of paper you would wrap an expensive jewel in.” The paper had snowmen on it. They were dancing. Sherlock set the box aside. “Probably something for a child. That also goes for this one.” He picked up another box and set it with the other. The third, he lifted and held in front of his eyes for a moment. “The paper is right, but this still isn’t the one we’re looking for. Look at the tape.” He held it out for John to see. “Frayed and lifting in some places. This has been wrapped for more than two weeks. It wasn’t bought today.” He tossed it aside with the others, then picked up the fourth. Once again, he held it in front of his eyes. He stayed for a moment, considering, turning it back and forth. Then he shook his head. “Still not right. The folds are bulky and uneven - the wrapper used too much paper, but didn’t go back to fix his mistake.”
John frowned. “How does that have anything to do with this being the necklace?”
Sherlock glanced at him. “If you were going to give your wife something this valuable, probably a spur-of-the-moment purchase prompted by a work bonus or a promotion which you have yet to reveal, you would make the wrapping perfect. You would do it over and over again until it was right. Wouldn’t you?”
John was surprised. He shook his head. “I have honestly no idea how to think of these things. I really don’t.”
Sherlock set the fourth package aside and picked up the final two. “We’re left with these,” he said, turning them about, examining each one closely. “Almost no difference between the two of them. We’ll have to open them.” He met John’s eyes. “Unless you happen to have a superpower that I am unaware of.”
John sighed, annoyed. “Let’s get it over with, then.”
Sherlock lifted a box and was just starting to dig open the paper (with a pleased expression on his face, as though he was amused and delighted to be opening someone else’s Christmas present) when there was a cough from the doorway.
Both of them spun to look in that direction.
A little girl stood there, hair in lopsided braids, a bear clutched to her side, wide-eyed and frowning in the dark. “Santa?” she asked.
Sherlock and John met eyes. John winced. Sherlock seemed to be making rapid calculations in his head, before he turned back to her and answered, “Yes. I’m Santa.”
The girl tilted her head, still frowning big-eyed and concerned. “Who’s that, then?” she asked, pointing at John.
“My elf,” Sherlock said.
John just barely resisted the urge to kick him. All he could do instead was wave and smile weakly at the girl, who looked hardly over four years old, and perhaps just tired enough to go back to bed without much urging.
Her eyes were on Sherlock’s hands, still clutching the maybe-necklace. “Why’re you opening our gifts, Santa?”
Sherlock met John’s eyes, for once - for once - at a complete loss. John smirked in spite of himself at the helpless look on Sherlock’s face. How does one stay in character when one is pretending to be Father Christmas?
“It’s broken, sweetheart,” John answered for him. “Santa is going to open it up and fix it, then put it back just the same as it was. Is that all right with you?”
The girl nodded, braids bobbing rapidly up and down. “Why’re you so thin, Santa?”
“Santa’s on a diet,” John said. He was slowly rising to his feet, gesturing for Sherlock to stay on the floor. “Mrs. Claus thought he was setting a bad example.” He shuffled very slowly and quietly over to the girl. “You should be asleep, though, shouldn’t you?”
She shook her head, her eyes turned up to John. “I can stay awake. I’m good at staying awake. Can I go on the sled with you?”
Her voice was getting louder, and John knelt down to her level, putting his hand carefully on her shoulder, hushing her softly. “The sleigh is on the roof. It would be dangerous for you to go up there. Besides, if you stay out here while Santa opens that present to fix it, you might see it. Don’t you know what happens when you see your presents before Christmas morning?”
She frowned and shook her head again, making the braids swing back and forth.
John let his voice drop into a sad whisper. “They disappear!”
Her eyes widened, and her hold on the bear tightened. “Oh no!”
John nodded sternly. “So you should go straight to bed, don’t you think?”
She nodded, then peered over his shoulder. “Good night, Santa. Happy Christmas.”
Sherlock waved vaguely in her direction. “Happy Christmas,” he muttered.”
She went off down the hall, very quiet in her pyjamas, and John watched with bated breath until her door closed lightly and the light behind it went out.
He turned on his knee and looked at Sherlock.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said. “Please.”
Sherlock was ripping the wrapping paper off of the first box and opening it to see what was inside when a man came barreling down the hall from the opposite direction with a cricket bat held over his head.
John was up off of the floor in a flash, with his hands on the cricket bat, holding it still. “Sir, calm down,” he said, straining against the man trying to tug the bat away from him, standing awkwardly close to a person dressed in nothing but an undershirt and reindeer boxers at one in the morning. “We can explain why we’re here.”
“You’ll want to start doing that very quickly,” the man ground out. “And get your hands off of those!” he shouted around John.
And then, out of sight, a window in the kitchen was violently and loudly smashed.
What ensued was ridiculous chaos. It ended with Sherlock’s suspect cornered in the kitchen under the combined threat of a cricket bat and an angry four-year-old attempting to defend her emaciated Santa. In the confusion, the fact that John and Sherlock had broken in and started rooting through presents was conveniently forgotten as the police were called and the little girl was calmed down.
The wife, John noticed, couldn’t seem to stop laughing at the situation, even as her daughter started weeping because she’d seen the present Sherlock opened. (A CD. Not the necklace.)
Lestrade arrived a scant ten minutes after being called, coming into the flat with a swarm of officers, who made a bee-line for the kitchen and the man, James Ryder, security guard cum jewel thief, being held at bay. Lestrade lingered in the sitting room, one raised eyebrow directed at Sherlock, standing in front of the tree with a small wrapped box in his hand.
“For you,” he said, handing it over. “Should make you rather happy, I think.”
Lestrade seemed ready to ignore the box in favour of reminding Sherlock what is and is not against the law - breaking and entering included in the former list, not the latter - but Sherlock’s significant nod at the package made him roll his eyes and tear the paper off, letting it fall messily to the floor.
The stamped John Lewis on the top of the box made him frown, but it made John’s eyebrows get lost somewhere in his hairline.
When Lestrade pulled off the top of the box, his breath stopped.
It was the blue carbuncle, nestled safely over sheets of tissue paper, shining, reflecting the still-dancing lights of the tree.
Lestrade tore his eyes away from the necklace to look up at Sherlock. “You really are a mad genius, aren’t you?”
At that sort of compliment, Sherlock could only look very deeply pleased.
There was a tree in the sitting room at 221B.
The presence of the tree was not entirely unanticipated; Mrs. Hudson had been complaining all month that he and John were the least festive persons she had ever met. Not even a wreath on your door. Two young men like you! It’s a shame. Her own flat was filled to the brim with decorations which began to sing in wheezy, tinny voices whenever someone breathed too loudly in the room, always prompting a touched, faraway look to break over her face, as though every jangling tune had some heartwarming memory attached to it.
“You know what’s most surprising to me right now,” John said slowly beside him, still halfway through taking off his coat as he was when he’d noticed the tree about a minute previous, “is that you aren’t currently chucking it in the street.”
“I am capable of self-control,” Sherlock murmured, still staring at it. It was modestly decorated, showing that Mrs. Hudson was at least moderately capable of the same; tastefully hung with red and gold decorations, white lights neat and even. It wasn’t an ugly tree. If it had been something similar to her ridiculous ensemble downstairs, he might have chucked it into the street anyway, damn self-control. If it had been a plain tree with candles, he might have set fire to it first.
John finished getting out of his coat and hung it up, before crossing past Sherlock and toward the tree, bending down to have a closer look. “She put gifts beneath it,” he said, sounding surprised.
Sherlock, still unmoving, still in his coat, gave a dismissive shrug. “Some from Mycroft, I would assume.” Obviously picked out by his assistant. “Something tasteful but useless, as always.”
“We can’t all buy you a shrunken head,” John muttered, crouching to lift up the packages and look at the tags. “How would you return them?”
A smile touched Sherlock’s lips, but John couldn’t see it with his back turned. Sherlock pulled off his scarf and turned around to hang his coat up behind the door, as John went through the small pile of gifts.
“Some from Mrs. Hudson, as well,” he said, setting those two brightly colored packages aside. He looked back over his shoulder, grinning. “Can you deduce the presents?”
Sherlock let himself match the grin. “Wouldn’t that be against the holiday spirit?”
“It never seemed to stop you before. Ah!” John reached further under the tree, grabbed something and pulled it out into the light. He stood up and turned around. “Here,” he said, offering it. A gift, wrapped very simply and cleanly, with no tags to identify giver and receiver. “With any luck I’ll be in bed until noon, so you should have this now.”
Sherlock frowned down at the package in John’s hand. In retrospect, it was obvious that John would have gotten him something for the holiday. The idea hadn’t occurred to him, but it should have. It was an oversight. “You bought something for me.”
John looked caught somewhere between smiling and rolling his eyes. “I did, yeah,” he said. “And I’m a bit tired, so if you wouldn’t mind taking it and letting me go to bed, I would be greatly appreciative.”
Sherlock reached out and took it. He continued to frown at it. “I didn’t get anything for you,” he admitted.
John laughed. “I honestly didn’t expect you to.”
Sherlock looked back at him. “It slipped my mind.”
John’s face had a sweet expression, softened by the lights of the tree glowing behind him. It wasn’t really an expression that Sherlock was familiar with on John, but it made something in his chest twinge pleasantly and unexpectedly. John let out a little breath. “I really don’t care.”
“I’ll find you something.”
John started moving for the door. “Again, I really don’t care.”
“I’ll find something anyway.”
“Tired. Don’t care.”
“Good night,” Sherlock called after him when he was in the doorway, halfway out.
John stopped to look over his shoulder, smiling. “Good night, Sherlock. Happy Christmas.”
Sherlock nodded. “Happy Christmas.” It was maybe the first time he’d meant the blessing in his entire life, and that was certainly something. He listened to John’s boots on the stairs, all the way up to his room, and then the door closing.
He looked back over his shoulder at the tree, still glimmering in the dim light, still strangely unobtrusive in its corner. It was an odd gift, but even Sherlock could see - it was a nice thought.
He settled into a chair and tore the package open.
4:25am
Emily Post’s “Etiquette”?
S.H.
You opened it, then?
What could have possibly made you
think that I would be interested
in this?
S.H.
You obviously haven’t read it before.
You’re welcome. I’m ignoring the rest
of your texts. Go to sleep.
This is absolute rubbish.
S.H.
It makes excellent kindling, though.
S.H.