Fic for saki101: Something Borrowed
Title: Something Borrowed
Recipient: saki101
Author: meredydd
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock/John est. relationship, mentions of consensual poly relationship of other characters.
Rating: PG...if you squint. Very fluffy.
Warnings: spoilers for S2... in case anyone still needs that warning...
Summary: “They'll pick her on up Christmas Eve, John. Don't give me that look-I have permission to keep the baby with us until then.” Bit of fluff, domesticity and hints of a kid!fic...
It wasn't often John had a lie-in. Not since Sherlock's return, not since the detective business had become a booming one, clients from the wealthy to the barely-scraping-by all seeking out the vindicated, famous, brilliant Sherlock Holmes for their detecting needs. Thanks to a friend from uni, John had managed to get a website going and streamlined the inquiry process with a form for potential clients to fill out and an automated payment system for them to deposit the required percentage of their fee before Sherlock took their case. If he took their case. That's not to say that the Met still didn't come calling, and that they didn't still get, as Mrs. Hudson called them, walk-ins. But it did make things so much nicer on Saturday mornings, when there was nothing on, for John to know that the website was busily perking away, requests being itemized by keywords and other factors before being sent to his inbox. It made the rare lie-in so much less...stressful, he decided, stretching so that his toes poked out beneath the duvet and curled in the cold air of the bedroom. Christ! Did he break the heat again? “Sherlock!” Sliding from the bed, feet into slippers and dressing gown hastily donned, John padded from their shared bedroom and into the living room. “Sherlock, why is the heat... Oh.” Sitting in the middle of the room was a playpen littered with toys in virulent shades of pink and purple, a blanket in similar yet pastel tones, and Sherlock's niece Pippa. Phillipa Georgina Rebecca Hooper Lestrade-Holmes, Mycroft would be quick to remind anyone calling her that, but Pippa didn't care one way or the other. She was only ten months old and, at the moment, seemed intent on eating Sherlock's hair. “I didn't know we were to have visitors.” John tugged his dressing gown tighter, then paused. “Wait, where's her parents?”
Sherlock, frowning slightly, disentangled Pippa's fingers from his (now sticky) curls, did not meet John's gaze. “Out. For the weekend.” Setting Pippa down on the floor, he stepped over her cooing form and picked up a small stack of file folders in danger of toppling off the coffee table. “Or possibly until Monday.”
“For the-Sherlock!” John scooped up Pippa before she could roll under the table and smoothed her onesie over her back, making shushing noises as she began to whimper. “What the Hell, Sherlock? We're not set up to take care of her for that many days! We don't have anywhere for her to sleep since you turned my room into a storage closet from Hell and the kitchen isn't fit to prepare formula in, much less real food, suitable for a baby!”
Sherlock looked up, face a study in neutral, and said in very bored tones, “John, I'm a genius, not an idiot. I cleaned the kitchen this morning, before prying Pippa away from Molly.”
“Prying? Sherlock--” Pippa was starting to squirm and make grabby hands at her Uncle Sherlock, but John didn't like the looks of the dish Sherlock had plucked from behind the sofa and was holding in front of himself as if it were a salver of the finest...whatever goes on a salver.
Now, Sherlock did look annoyed. “John, do you take me for a monster? Molly was simply experiencing very typical separation anxiety. Lestrade and my brother wanted to take her to Sussex for a few days and I offered to mind Pippa.”
“Doesn't Molly's mother usually watch Pippa?”
“Mmmm.” Sherlock, arms full of plate and files and a shoe, bustled past, heading for the bedroom, eyes carefully averted.
John knew that sound. It was the sound of Sherlock avoiding. Pippa uttered a fairly definite complaint, arms reaching for the bright purple crocodile in the playpen, so John seized the moment. Setting her down, making sure there was nothing within reach that was not suitable for baby mouths, hands, or skin in the playpen, he took off after Sherlock. “What's going on, dearest?
“We're minding Pippa. Nothing sinister about it, John. Really, you act as if I'm going to lose the child or set her alight or something.” He looked up from where he had been most decidedly not putting away his files and stared at a spot somewhere over John's left shoulder, not meeting his very pointed glare. “Why must you assume I'm horrible with children? Have I ever done or said anything to make you think I'd be some sort of...of...” He frowned, his face looking as if he had just bitten into an orange and discovered it was a lemon instead. “Some sort of fairy tale witch, bent on causing her demise!”
There's the headache...I was wondering what was taking so long... “For fuck's sake... Okay. Maybe I'm being a bit too harsh but I just woke up and find out we're babysitting your niece for three, possibly four days and...and why are you giving me that hurt puppy look?”
Sherlock made a rude, nasal noise and whirled away, flinging himself practically into his open wardrobe and rummaging for an outfit other than worn track pants and a nearly transparent-with-age t-shirt. He muttered something under his breath before emerging with a charcoal grey suit and a dark red shirt. “What?”
“What'd you say? I couldn't hear you whilst you were looking for possibly the worst outfit possible to wear while babysitting a ten month old!” John grabbed the clothes from Sherlock and elbowed past, replacing everything in the wardrobe and returning with the one pair of jeans Sherlock owned and a plain grey t-shirt. “There. Easier to clean mushed up carrots off of that than your ridiculous silk numbers.”
“Am I ridiculous, then? So I'm a monster, apparently, unable to care for Pippa without threat of imminent demise, and I'm ridiculous on top of that. Lovely. One wonders why you're marrying me, then!” He jerked his sleep shirt off with hardly a care for tearing it and flung it across the room. Pippa's coos were becoming louder, more demanding, punctuating the burgeoning argument with a sense of urgency. “Fine. You think this is such a bad idea, you call Lestrade and tell him to come get their daughter.”
“Sherlock, stop.” John made a grab for Sherlock's arm, missing and grabbing air instead. “Sherlock, I wake up on my first day off in three weeks to find we're sitting your niece, I'm entirely unprepared, and I have no idea why you've taken a sudden interest in child rearing other than it's for an experiment but I can't see Mycroft, Lestrade, or Molly letting you anywhere near Pippa if that was your intent...”
“Our niece.”
“What?”
“She's our niece, John. Practically, anyway. We're to be married in less than a month. She'll be your niece, too, then.” Sherlock pulled the fresh shirt on with considerably more care than he removed the previous one. “I love her, you know. Sentimental as the notion is, I do love Pippa. She's...” he made a vague gesture, face wrinkling as he skimmed the edges of his mind palace for something, some way to explain... “She's everything good about people and, while I know that will change as she ages, and I will likely decide she's awful when she's a teenager, right now, she's...not. And I love her.” He finally met John's stare. “And I'm lying. Even if she's awful when she's older, I will most likely find it charming and encourage the behavior, so long as it annoys my brother.”
John couldn't help the bark of laughter that escaped him at that bit of honesty. “So you decided you wanted to babysit Pippa the Potentially Terrible for...fun? I'm sorry, Sherlock, but even with that admission, you're not the sort to just up and offer to put your life on hold like this.” He closed the distance between them and, this time, Sherlock let John touch him, hand against arm, hand against ribs. “You seemed very adamant that she's my niece now, too...” he trailed off, hoping Sherlock would complete that lead.
“When people marry,” Sherlock said slowly, carefully, “they often desire a family.”
John felt an odd twist in his belly, almost panic but not as unpleasant. “Sherlock...do you...do you want a family?” He had thought of it, but he had never dreamed Sherlock might have, as well. It was an idea, a tiny notion, John kept secreted away in the back of his mind, played with on some nights when he felt lonely, when he felt the years whizzing past, the idea of a little one to love and cherish and parent... He realized that Sherlock was silent, and that the quality of the silence was very pointed. “Um...”
“I don't know. But you... part of you...does.”
John sighed, closed his eyes for a moment, and sighed again. When he opened his eyes, Sherlock was staring at him with open curiosity. John tangled their fingers together and tugged gently, leading Sherlock into the living room where Pippa made a happy, chortling noise upon seeing them. She rolled onto her tummy and commando-crawled across the playpen, scooting onto her side, then her bottom, to wave the purple crocodile up at them. “Sherlock, this,” he waved his fingers at Pippa, agreeing that her crocodile was, indeed, lovely and likely the best thing ever, “isn't a weekend responsibility. It's all day, every day.”
“It is a little girl, John!”
“Don't get your knickers in a twist! The it I'm referring to is parenting! It's fine, well, and good that you-that we take care of Pippa for a few days, but it's not the same. You can't take a few days of playing nanny and decide from that alone if you want to be a dad.”
Sherlock reached down and picked up Pippa, tucking her against his hip and doing a poor job of hiding the kiss he brushed over her hair. “Do I need to remind you that I'm not an idiot? I'm aware that being a parent is not something to be taken lightly, that it is not, in and of itself, an experiment and that it is not something I can just bin if it's not how I hypothesized. I asked-yes, asked-to mind Pippa while they were on holiday because...because I want to have children, John. A child. One day. Not... not tomorrow, not next week, maybe not for years, but...” He trailed off, running a finger down Pippa's cheek before meeting John's surprised gaze. “Not for an experiment, either. And with no one else but you. I...greatly desire...to see a child with your eyes. Your smile. Someone we can raise to be intelligent, strong in mind and body and spirit... Someone...someone...”
John smiled faintly. “Someone to take over the family business when we're old?”
Sherlock barely hid his smirk. “Something like that.”
John felt lost, confused, amused, love... All in a twisting, bubbling ball in his chest. Sherlock was back to not meeting his gaze, Pippa was back to reaching for her Uncle Sherlock's hair, and John still had not had his tea. “So this is a test run, but not.”
“I wanted to see how you reacted around an infant over the long term,” Sherlock admitted softly, unwilling to startled Pippa as she tangled her fingers into his fringe. “I've never seen you around one for more than an hour or two at a time. I find children fascinating. They're without artifice... they have so much potential. And,” he smiled down at Pippa, “it doesn't hurt that, the ones related to me anyway, are exceptionally intelligent and beautiful.”
“Oh, Lord, please give her Greg's ego and Molly's sense of humility,” John muttered, smiling at Sherlock's snort of derision. John shook his head and finally turned to pad into the kitchen for tea. “ The heat's out in our room, did you know?”
“It was too hot in there for Pippa. I'm putting her bassinet in there before nap time.”
“Wait, she's sleeping with us?” John stuck his head out of the kitchen. “Sherlock...”
“As you pointed out, the upstairs room is storage space for now. Besides, it's best if infants are in close proximety to their caregivers in these early stages. How else will we know if she awakens in the night and needs a clean nappy? Or has a bad dream?”
John sighed again, more pointedly, and tried not to listen to Sherlock telling Pippa all about Doctor Spock and how so much research has been done since that man's time on infants and growth. Water in the kettle, switch flipped on, John froze, had a thought, and strode back into the living room. “Wait, you're saying that you don't know if I, a doctor, will be a good parent? I know how to keep a baby safe and healthy, thank you very much!”
“Mmmm. But you don't know how to be around children without being a doctor first, do you?”
John opened his mouth to protest, and froze again. Damn it. Sherlock was right. “Shut up.”
Sherlock's smile grew. “I borrowed this baby for a good reason, John. To give you a chance to experience parenting for yourself. I may not be a father but I've had my share of cousins and now a niece to care for... You're going to have a perfect opportunity to experience the joys of childcare firsthand and send her home when her parents are back from Sussex. Give you plenty of material to dwell upon in the coming months when the subject of our theoretical progeny are brought up by relatives, friends and strangers after our wedding.”
John rolled his eyes and turned to rescue the now-boiling water. “Right.”
“In fact,” Sherlock called, “I think now is the perfect moment to being your introduction, John. Our niece needs a clean nappy.”
John smiled beatifically, stirring his tea as he moved to stand in the doorway once more. “Sherlock, I may never have babysat extensively, I may not have had little cousins or much younger siblings... but I know one of the most important rules of parenting. Sharing responsibilities.” He saluted Sherlock with his mug and turned to saunter back into the bedroom. “You change her, I'll get the next feeding.”
“You're a heartless man, John Watson.”
“Not heartless, just smart!”
Pippa, judging by her shouted giggle, seemed to agree.
Recipient: saki101
Author: meredydd
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock/John est. relationship, mentions of consensual poly relationship of other characters.
Rating: PG...if you squint. Very fluffy.
Warnings: spoilers for S2... in case anyone still needs that warning...
Summary: “They'll pick her on up Christmas Eve, John. Don't give me that look-I have permission to keep the baby with us until then.” Bit of fluff, domesticity and hints of a kid!fic...
It wasn't often John had a lie-in. Not since Sherlock's return, not since the detective business had become a booming one, clients from the wealthy to the barely-scraping-by all seeking out the vindicated, famous, brilliant Sherlock Holmes for their detecting needs. Thanks to a friend from uni, John had managed to get a website going and streamlined the inquiry process with a form for potential clients to fill out and an automated payment system for them to deposit the required percentage of their fee before Sherlock took their case. If he took their case. That's not to say that the Met still didn't come calling, and that they didn't still get, as Mrs. Hudson called them, walk-ins. But it did make things so much nicer on Saturday mornings, when there was nothing on, for John to know that the website was busily perking away, requests being itemized by keywords and other factors before being sent to his inbox. It made the rare lie-in so much less...stressful, he decided, stretching so that his toes poked out beneath the duvet and curled in the cold air of the bedroom. Christ! Did he break the heat again? “Sherlock!” Sliding from the bed, feet into slippers and dressing gown hastily donned, John padded from their shared bedroom and into the living room. “Sherlock, why is the heat... Oh.” Sitting in the middle of the room was a playpen littered with toys in virulent shades of pink and purple, a blanket in similar yet pastel tones, and Sherlock's niece Pippa. Phillipa Georgina Rebecca Hooper Lestrade-Holmes, Mycroft would be quick to remind anyone calling her that, but Pippa didn't care one way or the other. She was only ten months old and, at the moment, seemed intent on eating Sherlock's hair. “I didn't know we were to have visitors.” John tugged his dressing gown tighter, then paused. “Wait, where's her parents?”
Sherlock, frowning slightly, disentangled Pippa's fingers from his (now sticky) curls, did not meet John's gaze. “Out. For the weekend.” Setting Pippa down on the floor, he stepped over her cooing form and picked up a small stack of file folders in danger of toppling off the coffee table. “Or possibly until Monday.”
“For the-Sherlock!” John scooped up Pippa before she could roll under the table and smoothed her onesie over her back, making shushing noises as she began to whimper. “What the Hell, Sherlock? We're not set up to take care of her for that many days! We don't have anywhere for her to sleep since you turned my room into a storage closet from Hell and the kitchen isn't fit to prepare formula in, much less real food, suitable for a baby!”
Sherlock looked up, face a study in neutral, and said in very bored tones, “John, I'm a genius, not an idiot. I cleaned the kitchen this morning, before prying Pippa away from Molly.”
“Prying? Sherlock--” Pippa was starting to squirm and make grabby hands at her Uncle Sherlock, but John didn't like the looks of the dish Sherlock had plucked from behind the sofa and was holding in front of himself as if it were a salver of the finest...whatever goes on a salver.
Now, Sherlock did look annoyed. “John, do you take me for a monster? Molly was simply experiencing very typical separation anxiety. Lestrade and my brother wanted to take her to Sussex for a few days and I offered to mind Pippa.”
“Doesn't Molly's mother usually watch Pippa?”
“Mmmm.” Sherlock, arms full of plate and files and a shoe, bustled past, heading for the bedroom, eyes carefully averted.
John knew that sound. It was the sound of Sherlock avoiding. Pippa uttered a fairly definite complaint, arms reaching for the bright purple crocodile in the playpen, so John seized the moment. Setting her down, making sure there was nothing within reach that was not suitable for baby mouths, hands, or skin in the playpen, he took off after Sherlock. “What's going on, dearest?
“We're minding Pippa. Nothing sinister about it, John. Really, you act as if I'm going to lose the child or set her alight or something.” He looked up from where he had been most decidedly not putting away his files and stared at a spot somewhere over John's left shoulder, not meeting his very pointed glare. “Why must you assume I'm horrible with children? Have I ever done or said anything to make you think I'd be some sort of...of...” He frowned, his face looking as if he had just bitten into an orange and discovered it was a lemon instead. “Some sort of fairy tale witch, bent on causing her demise!”
There's the headache...I was wondering what was taking so long... “For fuck's sake... Okay. Maybe I'm being a bit too harsh but I just woke up and find out we're babysitting your niece for three, possibly four days and...and why are you giving me that hurt puppy look?”
Sherlock made a rude, nasal noise and whirled away, flinging himself practically into his open wardrobe and rummaging for an outfit other than worn track pants and a nearly transparent-with-age t-shirt. He muttered something under his breath before emerging with a charcoal grey suit and a dark red shirt. “What?”
“What'd you say? I couldn't hear you whilst you were looking for possibly the worst outfit possible to wear while babysitting a ten month old!” John grabbed the clothes from Sherlock and elbowed past, replacing everything in the wardrobe and returning with the one pair of jeans Sherlock owned and a plain grey t-shirt. “There. Easier to clean mushed up carrots off of that than your ridiculous silk numbers.”
“Am I ridiculous, then? So I'm a monster, apparently, unable to care for Pippa without threat of imminent demise, and I'm ridiculous on top of that. Lovely. One wonders why you're marrying me, then!” He jerked his sleep shirt off with hardly a care for tearing it and flung it across the room. Pippa's coos were becoming louder, more demanding, punctuating the burgeoning argument with a sense of urgency. “Fine. You think this is such a bad idea, you call Lestrade and tell him to come get their daughter.”
“Sherlock, stop.” John made a grab for Sherlock's arm, missing and grabbing air instead. “Sherlock, I wake up on my first day off in three weeks to find we're sitting your niece, I'm entirely unprepared, and I have no idea why you've taken a sudden interest in child rearing other than it's for an experiment but I can't see Mycroft, Lestrade, or Molly letting you anywhere near Pippa if that was your intent...”
“Our niece.”
“What?”
“She's our niece, John. Practically, anyway. We're to be married in less than a month. She'll be your niece, too, then.” Sherlock pulled the fresh shirt on with considerably more care than he removed the previous one. “I love her, you know. Sentimental as the notion is, I do love Pippa. She's...” he made a vague gesture, face wrinkling as he skimmed the edges of his mind palace for something, some way to explain... “She's everything good about people and, while I know that will change as she ages, and I will likely decide she's awful when she's a teenager, right now, she's...not. And I love her.” He finally met John's stare. “And I'm lying. Even if she's awful when she's older, I will most likely find it charming and encourage the behavior, so long as it annoys my brother.”
John couldn't help the bark of laughter that escaped him at that bit of honesty. “So you decided you wanted to babysit Pippa the Potentially Terrible for...fun? I'm sorry, Sherlock, but even with that admission, you're not the sort to just up and offer to put your life on hold like this.” He closed the distance between them and, this time, Sherlock let John touch him, hand against arm, hand against ribs. “You seemed very adamant that she's my niece now, too...” he trailed off, hoping Sherlock would complete that lead.
“When people marry,” Sherlock said slowly, carefully, “they often desire a family.”
John felt an odd twist in his belly, almost panic but not as unpleasant. “Sherlock...do you...do you want a family?” He had thought of it, but he had never dreamed Sherlock might have, as well. It was an idea, a tiny notion, John kept secreted away in the back of his mind, played with on some nights when he felt lonely, when he felt the years whizzing past, the idea of a little one to love and cherish and parent... He realized that Sherlock was silent, and that the quality of the silence was very pointed. “Um...”
“I don't know. But you... part of you...does.”
John sighed, closed his eyes for a moment, and sighed again. When he opened his eyes, Sherlock was staring at him with open curiosity. John tangled their fingers together and tugged gently, leading Sherlock into the living room where Pippa made a happy, chortling noise upon seeing them. She rolled onto her tummy and commando-crawled across the playpen, scooting onto her side, then her bottom, to wave the purple crocodile up at them. “Sherlock, this,” he waved his fingers at Pippa, agreeing that her crocodile was, indeed, lovely and likely the best thing ever, “isn't a weekend responsibility. It's all day, every day.”
“It is a little girl, John!”
“Don't get your knickers in a twist! The it I'm referring to is parenting! It's fine, well, and good that you-that we take care of Pippa for a few days, but it's not the same. You can't take a few days of playing nanny and decide from that alone if you want to be a dad.”
Sherlock reached down and picked up Pippa, tucking her against his hip and doing a poor job of hiding the kiss he brushed over her hair. “Do I need to remind you that I'm not an idiot? I'm aware that being a parent is not something to be taken lightly, that it is not, in and of itself, an experiment and that it is not something I can just bin if it's not how I hypothesized. I asked-yes, asked-to mind Pippa while they were on holiday because...because I want to have children, John. A child. One day. Not... not tomorrow, not next week, maybe not for years, but...” He trailed off, running a finger down Pippa's cheek before meeting John's surprised gaze. “Not for an experiment, either. And with no one else but you. I...greatly desire...to see a child with your eyes. Your smile. Someone we can raise to be intelligent, strong in mind and body and spirit... Someone...someone...”
John smiled faintly. “Someone to take over the family business when we're old?”
Sherlock barely hid his smirk. “Something like that.”
John felt lost, confused, amused, love... All in a twisting, bubbling ball in his chest. Sherlock was back to not meeting his gaze, Pippa was back to reaching for her Uncle Sherlock's hair, and John still had not had his tea. “So this is a test run, but not.”
“I wanted to see how you reacted around an infant over the long term,” Sherlock admitted softly, unwilling to startled Pippa as she tangled her fingers into his fringe. “I've never seen you around one for more than an hour or two at a time. I find children fascinating. They're without artifice... they have so much potential. And,” he smiled down at Pippa, “it doesn't hurt that, the ones related to me anyway, are exceptionally intelligent and beautiful.”
“Oh, Lord, please give her Greg's ego and Molly's sense of humility,” John muttered, smiling at Sherlock's snort of derision. John shook his head and finally turned to pad into the kitchen for tea. “ The heat's out in our room, did you know?”
“It was too hot in there for Pippa. I'm putting her bassinet in there before nap time.”
“Wait, she's sleeping with us?” John stuck his head out of the kitchen. “Sherlock...”
“As you pointed out, the upstairs room is storage space for now. Besides, it's best if infants are in close proximety to their caregivers in these early stages. How else will we know if she awakens in the night and needs a clean nappy? Or has a bad dream?”
John sighed again, more pointedly, and tried not to listen to Sherlock telling Pippa all about Doctor Spock and how so much research has been done since that man's time on infants and growth. Water in the kettle, switch flipped on, John froze, had a thought, and strode back into the living room. “Wait, you're saying that you don't know if I, a doctor, will be a good parent? I know how to keep a baby safe and healthy, thank you very much!”
“Mmmm. But you don't know how to be around children without being a doctor first, do you?”
John opened his mouth to protest, and froze again. Damn it. Sherlock was right. “Shut up.”
Sherlock's smile grew. “I borrowed this baby for a good reason, John. To give you a chance to experience parenting for yourself. I may not be a father but I've had my share of cousins and now a niece to care for... You're going to have a perfect opportunity to experience the joys of childcare firsthand and send her home when her parents are back from Sussex. Give you plenty of material to dwell upon in the coming months when the subject of our theoretical progeny are brought up by relatives, friends and strangers after our wedding.”
John rolled his eyes and turned to rescue the now-boiling water. “Right.”
“In fact,” Sherlock called, “I think now is the perfect moment to being your introduction, John. Our niece needs a clean nappy.”
John smiled beatifically, stirring his tea as he moved to stand in the doorway once more. “Sherlock, I may never have babysat extensively, I may not have had little cousins or much younger siblings... but I know one of the most important rules of parenting. Sharing responsibilities.” He saluted Sherlock with his mug and turned to saunter back into the bedroom. “You change her, I'll get the next feeding.”
“You're a heartless man, John Watson.”
“Not heartless, just smart!”
Pippa, judging by her shouted giggle, seemed to agree.