Johnlock January 2025 #5 - Scarf
Written for prompts posted by @chriscalledmesweetie.
Chapter rating G.
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He always wears one, unless it’s sweltering out. No matter what he says (no, I don’t) he flings it around his neck to look cool, just before popping up the collar on that coat that probably cost the month’s rent on my old bedsit, as he strides off from a crime scene or an unsatisfactory interview in a whirl and flounce of textiles.
I don’t know what made me decide this was a project for anybody but a madman. He can buy the best of Gucci or Burberry’s. But once I got the idea into my head – well, a scarf is traditionally the knitter’s maiden project, so how hard could it be? I found a ruinously priced, fine wool that was the uncanny grey-blue-violet of his eyes, heathered with little threads of the auburn that a strong light picks up in his hair; I bought every skein they had in the shop, along with a pair of size-thirteen needles, and some rubbish acrylic for practice. I kept it all at the surgery, where things tend to be feast or famine; at breaks when I could get them, coming in early, staying a little late, I’d work at the online directions (which told me, first off, not to choose small needles or fine yarn for my first go, but bollocks to that).
I’d meant it for Christmas, but I’d barely gotten a dozen clean rows of the crap hot-pink acrylic done by then (“Is it for your little girl? That’s sweet,” said Chandra, who handles the front desk, and showed me how to cast off without making a tit of myself). By Twelfth Night I’d only just got the courage to start with the proper stuff, soft as sunbeams and shimmering in the right light. Valentine’s Day came and went, and I’d had to undo two rows and managed a little over a foot; at this rate I might have something by midsummer.
I didn’t expect it to be so restful. Eventually, you get a rhythm, and your hands get sure, just as they do with surgery. It gave me back a little of the way it felt to know where and how to make an incision, or when the suture’s just right, the feeling of a craft you don’t get from writing for ‘flu meds or ordering an X-ray. With every inch of narrow rows the sound of guns got more distant (the dreams had never really stopped, just become more jumbled), the shock and grief of believing he was dead (those dreams had remained crystal clear) more remote. It became worth doing in its own right.
“That’s a nice bit of work,” said Chandra one day in May, when things had been busy and I’d broken the knitting bag out for the first time in a couple of weeks. “Almost done?”
“Might be ready for next Christmas,” I said ruefully.
“It’s very long for a little one,” she said.
“She likes Doctor Who,” I smiled. Rosie doesn't know Doctor Who from Dr. Seuss, and I barely do, but I remembered one of those blokes had a scarf that trailed into next week.
And so I worked away, and there were cases, and baby teeth, and quarrels about fridge space (sometimes, too, the chance to snatch a late morning’s doze, snuggling and chaffing each other about who had the worst bed-head), until one scorching day in August I’d knotted the last of the tassels at each end.
He was festooned over the sofa, dressing gown open, silk pyjama pants slung low at his hips, looking criminally gorgeous when I came in from the surgery. The flat was an oven. I keep saying we should look into aircon.
“Brought you something,” I said. He looked up with a flicker of interest.
“It’s a scarf,” he said, a slight frown line flickering between his brows.
“Brilliant deduction, master detective,” I said, trying to sound casual, because now, holding it up, I could see every lump and uneven stitch, and the place where I tried to hide a knot and did a rubbish job.
“John, it’s thirty degrees. Outside.”
“I meant to have it ready before –”
“You made that.”
“Um. Yeah.”
“For me.”
“Uh. Huh.”
“Here.” He rose, took it out of my hands and inspected it while I reconsidered all my life choices; belted the heavy silk gown snugly at his waist, and hurled the scarf around his neck with his customary flair.
“It’s perfect,” he said.
He wore it till bedtime, even though at nightfall the flat was still stifling. “Rosie, look what your Da made me.”
“Me one?” said Rosie.
“Um.”
“We’ll pick out the wool together,” Sherlock said to her affirmatively, hoisting her into her cot.
He’s worn it every day since the autumn weather set in. It doesn’t swirl around his neck like the plaid Burberry when he tosses it on, or have the buttery feel of the violet cashmere, but sometimes I notice him stroking it absently with his fingers.
I should have Rosie’s done in time for Christmas.
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