CONSULTING DETECTIVE

Imogene,

If you've found this letter, then my predictions were (of course) correct, and you did infact take my dressing gown with you. Unusually sentimental of you, but I must admit I'm quite touched.

Now do please stop rolling your eyes. I am well aware that 1. You are only going to be away for four days and 2. I can get near-instant gratification by sending you a text message, but I simply thought that this would be a touch more dramatic. Not nearly as dramatic as stealing your brother's clothes, but here we are.

You're currently composing... Something... Downstairs on the piano. It does sound lovely, if a touch too melancholy. Ease back on the ebony, sister mine. I know you're going to miss me, but surely there will be enough at the cottage to keep you occupied. If not, well... You have an awfully good imagination. Use it. And failing that, just keep your mobile phone switched on. I predict a few restless nights for the pair of us.

I don't expect you to write back, seeing as you'll probably beat your reply home, but do let me know when you've found it. I'd quite like to revel in my own smugness.

What did I say about rolling your eyes?

Sherlock

“ Bloody right it is, ” John muttered under his breath as he crumpled up the piece of paper, fully intending to bin it right then and there. He wasn’t about to admit to Sherlock ( or to himself, for that matter ) that he himself had made a similar list in his mind the night after Mary had told him the news. 

John had never imagined himself the marrying sort. He’d certainly never expected to father a child. It wasn’t that he’d been actively against it ; it simply hadn’t seem to be in the cards for him. One could argue that pursuing a career in the Army that kept him on tour until his late thirties hadn’t exactly increased his chances at family life much. Some measure of self-insight and honesty might lead to the very obvious conclusion that John liked his life as it had been for a long time ; free of any true restrictions, with a skill set that allowed him access to potentially dangerous situations, no questions asked.

Not exactly the sort of lifestyle befitting of a child. But now there was Rosie. And Sherlock. And their clients. And somehow, so far, they’d made it work. Somehow, amidst the mystery and mayhem, John was able to be a father, and a doctor, and be allowed to run around criminal London with Sherlock nearly every night. Who had proven to be a shockingly excellent godfather to Rosie. And John? John was happy. Guilt-ridden, ashamed, but happy even so.

The apology still took him completely off-guard. He turned around, crumpled piece of paper still in hand, to blatantly stare at the other man for a moment.

“ You’re— Sorry, could you just repeat that? Think I might be hearing things. ”

“Yes, mercilessly funny, John. You know if the Doctor thing doesn’t work out, you could always turn your hand to comedy.”

Taking a step closer to the other man, Sherlock deftly plucked the now rather worse-for-wear looking bit of paper from his grasp and shoved it unceremoniously into the inside pocket of his blazer, lest Mrs Hudson decided to go through their rubbish again— then he really wouldn’t hear the end of it.

Of course, the list in itself, by itself, achieved nothing (...other than upsetting John, apparently). For it to serve even a fraction of it’s intended purpose, it would require not only the very hypothetical notion that Sherlock decided to grow a pair (as his sister so eloquently put it) and actually admit his romantic 'feelings’ to his friend and former flatmate, but the even more hypothetical and categorically unlikely event that the very much heterosexual man in question felt the same way. 

“I presume she’s told you our news, then.”

He spends a moment focusing on adjusting his cufflinks, simply out of fear of catching his brother’s eye whilst discussing such a topic. Even after all of these years, broaching personal matters still wasn’t quite their area.

The idea of Imogene as a mother was mortifying enough to briefly distract John from the first frissons of anger he’d felt just a moment ago. Searching Sherlock’s face, John found nothing but an expression he could safely label as genuine based on years of ( infuriating ) experience. He cleared his throat, lowering the piece of paper as he did so.

“ ——— Right. ”

An awkward silence descended on the room. They’d come a long way since the early days, but that didn’t mean either of them was particularly good at… this. Ironically, Sherlock still tended to be the more emotionally expressive one between the two of them.

“ Right, ” John repeated, not quite knowing what to do when faced with Sherlock’s immediate regret. “ Well. Glad that’s sorted. Maybe hang this up in her flat instead, yeah? ”

“You can throw it away.” Came his almost too quick retort, accompanied with a blasé wave of his hand in the general direction of the bin. “It’s all nonsense anyway.”

Which, again, wasn’t strictly a lie. 

The godforsaken list had indeed been his sister’s idea, though the reasoning behind it differed somewhat. After finally admitting to Imogene that maybe he wasn’t entirely opposed to the idea of his relationship with John Watson being something other than platonic (for there was little he could hide from that woman), it was swiftly brought to his attention that in pursuing romantic entanglement with a single Father, the title of step-parent more often than not would come as part of the package deal. Joy unbounded.

In the end, the formation of the list had done little more than, well, list, funnily enough. Staggering facts such as, if you have a child, you’ll have to change nappies. You’ll have to feed them. You’ll have to child-proof your flat. You’ll have to deal with toys everywhere. You’ll have to put up with cbeebies on the telly. You’ll become incredibly attached to them. You’ll end up worrying about them constantly... And so on, and so forth. For all intents and purposes, it did it’s job. A fine list indeed.

Something Sherlock hadn’t expected it to do, though, was lead him the very real conclusion that, well— he did all of those things for Rosie already. 

@consultdetect

“ … ”

       ‟ Now come on, Sherlock. Don’t be boring. We all know you like to boast of your big brain, so use it. ” Though there was something about watching Sherlock Holmes squirm as he tried to figure it out. ‟ Faking your own death should be child’s play to you by now. ”

@consultdetect

The natural conclusion he came to (admittedly after a brief flurry of inward panic) was that the whole situation had to be playing out in his mind. Jim Moriarty was, beyond all logical doubt, dead. He had watched it happen for christ’s sake, if the recent events at Sherrinford hadn’t confirmed it enough. Certainly not a new occurrence by any stretch, conjuring such an apparition; but it had been quite some time since the cell in which his brain kept his Machiavellian counterpart had let him out to play.

@consultdetect​

“ What is this? ”

The piece of paper was snatched from the fridge and held aloft as John strode back into the sitting room, displeasure tensing the lines of his mouth and shoulders. It would be a few years still before Rosie would be able to read, but the list was hurtful even so.

( The advantages and disadvantages of being child-free? Seriously? )

“ Sherlock. What the hell is this? ”

Bugger.

“A joke, between my sister and I. She— seems to think it’s time for her to settle down and have children, whereas I believe she would be an atrocious mother.”

Well it’s certainly not all lies.

Twins.

@consultdetect​‌:

Keep reading

“You’re well aware that’s not my intention, Victor. But if you’re going to be a child and put it like that, then so be it. Somebody needs to be the mature one and apparently it’s going to be me.”

She can hear his parting words as she turns on her heels and walks towards the exit of the café, though they’re rendered practically void, for it’s exactly what she’s intending to do. With her hand placed upon the door, she turns to look over her shoulder briefly, her expression placid, blank.

“—I think you’ll probably want to be there for this, don’t you?”

And with that, she pushes open the door and embarks on the short journey from Speedy’s up to 221b, brazen in her stride, not bothering with the trivialities of knocking, knowing Victor would be just behind her. Once upstairs, she finds the Detective in his armchair, violin in his grasp, strings being plucked idly as if in thought. Having him in front of her all of a sudden brings to mind the reality of what she was about to do, what she was about to say, though none of that mattered. Victor, (thought she would loathe to admit it), was right. The only one that can but an end to this, no matter the outcome, was him.

“Sherlock, there’s something we need to discuss.”

He’s first stirred from his trance by the sound of two sets of footsteps ascending the stairs of 221b. His first assumption, as ever, is clients; which is followed by the incredibly strong urge to go and shut himself in the bathroom and pretend he isn’t home. But after observing the gait of the anonymous strides for a moment longer, it’s easy for him to put names to the guests before they appear in the doorway, and when they do— judging by their mutual expressions— he almost wishes that the pair had been clients. 

His fingers pause against the strings of his violin as his gaze flits between the forms of Irene and Victor, his own expression a rare display of perplexed. One did not need to be skilled in the methods of deduction to know that whatever needed to be discussed was not going to be a walk in the park, so to speak. 

[ text: Sherlock ] You don’t need to say anything. Simply play it to me when I return. VT

[ text: Sherlock ] Happy birthday, kitten. VT

[ sms; Victor ] Of course. Without a doubt. SH

[ sms; Victor ] You’re making your absence incredibly difficult to deal with. SH