The brownstone was more noisy than usual that night, and that’s saying something, considering Sherlock Holmes and Joan Watson were the tenants of that house. Apart from the odd experiments, the shouting and the banging of the music at late hours, Joan and Sherlock had been behaving quite well, recently, at least as far as noise was concerned. Tonight’s noise, then, was caused by neither of them, but by a newest addition to the household: a little four-month old baby called Tom. He was Joan’s adopted son, had been for a little over a month.
Baby Tom had brought laughter, love and excitement to their lives, which truthfully wasn’t short of excitement due to the somewhat dangerous lives both Sherlock and Joan led. But they were incredibly happy with their lives and their co-living; which was unconventional perhaps, but full of joy.
Joy, however, was not the word Joan would apply to that night. Tom was very cranky and having a hard time falling asleep, Joan was in her bedroom attempting to calm him down. It was way past midnight, only the bedside lamp was on in an attempt to keep lightning to a minimum, and yet Tom’s loud wailing could be heard in the entire brownstone.
He had been fed, changed and burped; he didn’t have a fever and didn’t seem to have a colic either, but Joan was becoming impatient and hopeless at his crying son without knowing what to do.
“Come on Tom, why don’t you fall asleep? What’s wrong?” she asked hopelessly, almost begging to his son to tell her what she could do to calm him down.
It was at that point when there was a soft knock on her door.
“Come in” she said, and the door opened slowly while Sherlock’s face peeked through the little space “Sherlock? What’s going on? Sorry, I can’t seem to…”
She didn’t continue as the wailing of the little baby grew louder by the minute. Joan wasn’t looking at Sherlock, instead she was looking at the baby she was holding and rocking, still trying to calm him. She’d been at that for almost an hour now though, and she was exhausted.
“No need to apologize, Watson” Sherlock gently whispered as she completely opened the door and entered, taking a few steps to get closer to her “may I?”
He gestured the baby and Joan frowned. Not because she didn’t trust him with Tom, she obviously did, but the fact that Sherlock was offering to do something about his wailing was… surprising, to say the least. He was not a baby person; she knew that.
Despite having encouraged and supported Joan’s decision to become a mother, Sherlock had never showed any interest in becoming a father himself, and even if they shared some responsibilities in the care of the little baby, Joan still considered parenthood to be her own responsibility, not his. Giving up the baby so she could rest was definitely not being consistent with what she’d promised she’d do since she started thinking of adopting.
Sherlock seemed to notice her internal battle as he took another step, closing the already small distance between them, his shoes close to her bare feet. He gently looked at her, smiling softly despite Tom’s loud cries, and waited.
She then seemed to accept, and reluctantly she handed Tom over, who was still crying loudly, his little arms flailing, his legs kicking and his hands scratching his face angrily. As soon as Sherlock took him in his arms, though, he seemed to become a bit calmer. Sherlock skilfully shifted him so that he was laying, his arm supporting the baby’s back, his head gently cradled in the crook of his elbow, and his face close to his chest.
Very slowly he started to hum while he started to move around the room gently rocking him, Joan observed him with eyes wide open as both of them saw Tom growing quieter as he heard Sherlock’s rumble and humming sounds. Sherlock took one of the little hands, which had been closed into fists as he cried, and took the little fingers between his, caressing them while he moved around the room. It took a while but Sherlock was persistent, and soon enough Tom’s cries subsided. He whimpered from time to time, but it was clear he was exhausted, and Sherlock shushed him every time a sob came out of his mouth without stopping his soothing movements. In a few more minutes, he was fast asleep.
Sherlock went back to Joan, who’d been rooted to the spot in the middle of the room observing him moving around, and showed the baby to her. Tom was breathing calmly, one of his hands grabbing Sherlock’s pinky finger, and he was finally sleeping. Joan moved one of her fingers to Tom’s face to wipe the tears that were still there, the baby stirred but didn’t wake up. She looked at the baby with a look of adoration in her eyes, and gently petted the baby’s black and abundant hair.
“Thank you, Sherlock” she whispered, not looking at him but at the baby in his arms, still finding it difficult to believe that Sherlock had cradled Tom with so much spontaneity and so little effort, as if making babies fall asleep was what he’d been doing all his life.
She’d never thought Sherlock would be comfortable around kids, even if this was Joan’s kid, but she’d been incredibly wrong. The fact that Sherlock was still gently holding Tom while also looking at the sleeping baby, instead of quickly handing him over to his mum, was proof of that. Of course he’d held Tom before, but the way he was doing it now, looking at him with pure devotion in his eyes, told Joan that he loved that little person in his arms as much as her. The way he kept glancing at Joan suggested that he was also a bit worried, though.
“I can stay if you want” Sherlock offered in a whisper. At those words Joan’s head shot up, looking at him with a question in her eyes. He sighed “Watson, you’re exhausted. Look at you. When was the last night that you rested as much as your body needed?”
Joan didn’t answer, she wasn’t sure she could. It had been so long since her last entire night sleeping… true, Tom hadn’t been the beginning of her all-nighters, cramming for med school exams, the long nights beside her sober clients, and the cases Sherlock and her worked together had a lot to do with it. But when she was approaching the limit of her possibilities her body would give up and she would fall asleep anywhere in the brownstone (the table, the sofa, the floor…). Other times Sherlock had made a snarky remark about her sleepy state, or gently steered her towards her bedroom, depending on what mood he was in. In any case, he had actually forced her to go to sleep many a night.
Now, however, when she reached those same limits, she had a baby to care for and couldn’t allow herself the rest she so desperately needed.
“It’s been too long, I assure you” Sherlock continued, while Joan didn’t answer “I, on the contrary, slept last night. I can manage a night of interrupted sleep, but you need to rest. So, I can stay with him, make sure he has what he needs and give him his midnight bottle. You can go to my bedroom and sleep there, he won’t wake you up when he cries.”
Joan sighed, she was frantically thinking of something, anything, to excuse Sherlock of this tremendous responsibility he’d just put on his shoulders.
“No Sherlock” she refused, shaking her head “Tom is my responsibility. Sleepless nights are mine to bear, not yours.”
“And I told you long before Tom arrived into our lives” Sherlock countered, “I’m not capable of not being involved.”
Joan sighed again and brought her hand to her forehead, she was sensing a headache coming. She really could use the few hours of sleep. Sherlock disentangled his hand from Tom’s soft grip and allowed his hand to travel to her cheek, gently caressing it with the back of his index and middle finger. Joan looked up at him, a bit startled, but her expression softened when she looked at Sherlock and saw the affection he held in his eyes and soft smile.
“Tom is your son, not mine. I understand that. But you’re…” Sherlock stopped mid-sentence, as if thinking the perfect words “you’re both my family. And I won’t let anything happen to any of you.”
Joan’s eyes filled up with unshed tears as she looked at Sherlock straight in the eyes. His look was determined; and held such emotion and such promise that Joan couldn’t keep a straight face anymore, and allowed the tears to escape from her eyes. Sherlock’s thumb traced the path the rebel tears had left in her cheek, drying it.
“I have a duty of care, to you and to Tom. And right now, taking care of you means letting you my room so you can get a night of full, uninterrupted sleep” Sherlock continued, while his fingers still caressed Joan’s cheek “when things go wrong, this house, this family, is a weight not only yours to bear, Watson. It’s ours.”
Later, Joan would tell herself that the exhaustion was talking for her. Truthfully, she could envision Sherlock’s inviting bed downstairs, with his light brown linen and his wooden floor, surrounded by his scent… to say that it was appealing to her was an understatement.
“All right. I’ll go” she finally accepted. Sherlock beamed a wide grin at her words, and she couldn’t help but admire it and memorize it for later. Even years after their friendship had started, it was not so often Sherlock would smile so openly, so freely “but only because you slept last night”
“Whatever you say, my dear Watson” he teased while he opened the door for her and she crossed the threshold, turning around.
She leaned forward to place a gentle kiss on the baby’s forehead, gently brushing his dark hair away from his face. While she was doing that, she noticed a hand at the back of her spine, pulling her closer to Sherlock until their bodies were touching, and a pair of lips gently kissing the top of her head.
“Sleep well, Joan” his soft, velvet voice whispered in her hair. She smiled and found herself flushing; she didn’t even know how Sherlock did it. Her back straightened and her head shifted slightly, to be able to look at him, and she smiled. Then she leaned forward again, this time she placed a kiss on his stubbled cheek.
“You too, Sherlock” she whispered close to his ear before she turned around and went downstairs, hearing Sherlock humming gently before closing the door.
