#phantomssiren

There had been no warning to the holiday presents from Mrs. Hudson this year. With John abandoning Baker Street for Mary, Sherlock found that his landlady was allowed to go unchecked during the holidays. He was more than willing to admit that he had been more than a little distracted by his new project— alternating between flattering and threatening the Norse god that had returned with him from his mission to bury the last remnants of Moriarty. He never really knew just how much work went into steering a well-meaning Mrs. Hudson away from knitting.

And she had a good eye for sizes.

At least he wasn’t alone in this misery.

“Just one picture, dears. Of the two of you.” Mrs. Hudson had surprised them at the kitchen table— apologizing for interrupting their work (and ignoring how much of it involved bits of dead things and old boos), before presenting them with holiday jumpers. “You’ll look so darling.”

For whatever reason, though Sherlock had seen Loki weave spells that could take down armed men, disable traps, and conjure weapons from god-knows-where, it was the god who decided to humour Mrs. Hudson. The man Sherlock had seen fend off whole teams of hired assassins with a dagger, cooed over the motherly instincts of the Baker Street landlady. At least in this persona of “Victor Trevor”, it was a more believable act.

At least until he was expected to wear one of the jumpers. Sherlock had grabbed the least-offensive one first— it was simple, and green, and clearly the attempt Mrs. Hudson had made after she remembered just where these gifts were going. It would have been fine if not for the misshapen star on the chest.  

Loki, to his credit simply pulled the second jumper— one of Mrs. Hudson’s more ambitious attempts with blues, reds, and silvers— and glared at Sherlock’s polite smile. The promise of a slow and tortuous death for anything remotely “holiday” themes shared between them. But this was for Mrs. Hudson at the moment, and as intrusive as she could be, there was no force in the universe that would have a tenant of Baker Street refuse her anything at Christmas.

The jumpers were stripped off as soon as the flash of the camera was done, and hugs distributed.

“The reindeer on yours was very fitting, dear,” Mrs. Hudson said as she hugged the man, and patted his shoulder. “Thank you for indulging me, dears. I’ll bring up some nibbles later for you. And, Sherlock, you must remember to give me your mother’s address to send this in her card this year. I don’t want to pester Mycroft for it again.”

He didn’t actually mean to do it. No one put real fucking candles on the holiday tree any more. It just wasn’t done. And there, the fucking Holmes clan, just had to have a tree that looked like it was out of Harry fucking Potter, with candles and ribbon, and a huge fucking sign plastered to its branches just screaming and fucking dancing with “I’m flammable!”

 It started innocently enough. A few drinks, a few stories from the office. He had just got into retelling Jamie’s latest strike against that bloody leaky intern who nearly put months’ worth of NHS reform policy on hold (and Malcolm will swear to heaven and the PM’s office that he knew nothing about Jamie’s methods for plugging up that fucking sieve), when the tree spontaneously fucking combusted like it was the middle child not getting enough attention.

 The enormous fucker was just asking for it, really. And the whole Holmes brood should have been smart enough to know that “antique decorations” was practically a death sentence when you get more than one of them standing around and admiring the fucking view like it was some Christmas card Mycroft had the bad judgement to invite Sherlock into.

 As it was, the crazy fucker was already picking through the smouldering rubble.

 He could work with that. Sherlock liked “experiments” or whatever the hell he called those health hazards clearing out half the fucking population of Baker Street. This sort of destruction was entirely normal for that particular Holmes. He’d be fine.

 Besides, former drug addict, with a boyfriend addicted to being a vigilante? It’s this year’s Christmas miracle that only the tree went up.

 By the time Malcolm had finished telling the exasperated responding team the story, he was almost glad he had knocked over that candle.