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It had been Mrs Hudson who’d brought the lights, nestled in a box full of tinsely garland and sprigs of greenery, two Christmases ago, now. John had harbored no particular urge to decorate the flat, but it had seemed to him that if Mrs Hudson could tolerate bullet holes in her walls and thumbs in the crisper, the least he could do would be to oblige her urge to make the building a bit more festive.
He’d expected Sherlock to object, or at least to offer an unending stream of condescending remarks as John strung white lights over the mirror and decked out the skull in a tiny Christmas hat (Had Mrs Hudson truly bought a hat for the skull? he’d wondered, and even now the recollection made him smile). But Sherlock had kept quiet, pretending to be absorbed in the slides under his microscope, until John reached the coloured strands of old C7 fairy lights that were clearly meant for the front windows.
“It can’t have escaped your notice that we don’t have a ladder, John,” Sherlock had said, and John had rolled his eyes, amused despite himself.
“It hasn’t,” he’d said. “And thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Confidence has nothing to do with it. You are simply not tall enough to reach the top of the window casings.”
John had considered, for a moment, simply giving up and returning the lights to the box, but he’d had C7s as a child, and they were the one thing from Mrs Hudson’s selections that he might have chosen himself. Large bulbs, a soft glow that made everything feel warm and homey—
“Then come and help me, you great giraffe,” he’d said.
Sherlock had given him a tiny half-smile and set aside his microscope, rising from his chair and dragging it to the window.
John had stepped on a bulb, and Sherlock had tried to hide the broken one behind the curtains and wobbled so dangerously on the chair that he’d had to step onto the bookcase, gripping the curtain rods for balance and hissing “bloody buggering fuck,” and somehow the image of a swearing, dangling Sherlock wrapped in fairy lights had set John to giggling until he couldn’t breathe, and he’d sat down on the couch, gasping and picking broken glass out of his shoe.
Later, Mrs Hudson had brought up a plate of cookies and a set of reindeer antlers (which Sherlock had roundly refused to put on), and Sherlock played the violin while John sat in his chair and watched the play of gold and green and Christmas red on the planes of Sherlock’s face.
*
The next year, he had barely been able to look at the box, and he’d shoved it, unopened, through the door to Sherlock’s empty room, where dwelled a whole host of things that John couldn’t bear to look at. Mrs Hudson would just have to understand.
*
This Christmas, things are different. Sherlock is back, for one, and though it has been months since he reappeared like a miracle, John still isn’t used to it. Everything that should feel familiar, doesn’t, and he’s forever coming around the corner to the kitchen and startling to find Sherlock at the table and chemicals in the sink. The door, which should look right with a long dark coat hanging on the back of it, sometimes takes John’s breath away, and he finds himself being careful with Sherlock, and careful was never a thing he could have said characterized their life before.
Sherlock feels the change, too, he knows. He knows because Sherlock hung the lights without being asked, because in the evenings, when they’ve finished their takeaway and the long span of time between dinner and bed begins its inexorable stretch, Sherlock looks at him so helplessly—what did they used to do with their nights when there were no cases on? John knows the answer; he knows they watched crap telly and that he laughed and laughed when Sherlock would deduce the talk show guests; he knows they read and talked and lived here in this flat, but he can’t find his way back, and it seems that every night he’s simply waiting to make his escape upstairs, away from those pleading eyes.
“Come along, John,” Sherlock says, and John glances up at him sharply. “Oh, and do put on a jacket. It’s Christmas.”
“Has Lestrade called?” John asks. “On Christmas Eve?” He feels slightly hopeful. Things are always easier when there’s a case, when he’s able to remember what role he plays in Sherlock’s life, when they can work together without thinking.
“I think even we can be expected to take this evening off,” Sherlock says dryly.
“Then what?”
“Church, John. And hurry up about it. The service starts at half eight.”
“Church?” John says incredulously, but Sherlock herds him up the stairs to find something suitable to wear.
*
“I still don’t know why we’re going to church,” John says as he huffs alongside Sherlock into Bryanston Square. Their breath colors the air before them; St Mary’s looks regal, lit gold against the night. “Are you working on a case? Should I have brought my gun?”
“To church, John? Really?”
John shakes his head silently and takes his place beside Sherlock in the pew. It’s the carol service, John sees, and he is surprised again to see Sherlock paging through a hymnal, marking the songs.
*
The rector drones on in welcome, and John looks about him. The lights are dimmed for the evening service, and the pews are packed. He and Sherlock have arrived just in time, and they are tucked into a back corner, which feels about right for two people who have no business being there at all. It is impossible, though, not to feel anything when the processional begins, even if it is just nostalgia, just the recollected anticipation of Christmas Eve, or the strange solemnity of a ritual conducted over hundreds of years.
Sherlock rises to his feet, and John quickly follows as the littlest acolytes make their way past.
The choir begins, and Sherlock’s rich baritone rings out beside him, filling the small space that is the two of them in the corner of a pew, and John finds himself singing in answer, singing so that Sherlock’s voice is not the only thing that he can hear.
O come, all ye faithful
Joyful and triumphant
O come ye, o come ye to Bethlehem
Come and behold him—
John’s voice holds its own, a fair tenor, less public-school than Sherlock’s but no worse for the comparison. He sings with fervor, because Sherlock’s voice is strong and because they feel isolated back here, as if no one will really hear them, despite that the church is packed with people. There is a pocket here, of just John’s voice, of just Sherlock’s, and the heavy organ, the lights, the scent of candle wax and Christmas.
John knows the words, knows them without really knowing, having committed them to memory so long ago that it feels as if he was born with them. He doesn’t need the hymnal in his hands (though he is glad for the anchor of something to hold onto), and so he glances over at Sherlock, who is also not looking at the hymnal. Sherlock is drawn up to his full height; his chin is up, and there is a faraway look in his eyes as he sings, as if he is only a vessel, and the words of ancient joy and rebirth are simply pouring through him.
As he watches Sherlock, John is struck with a feeling that he remembers from their time before, the sudden realisaton that Sherlock has a past, that he hasn’t just sprung, fully formed, into John’s life, but that there was once a boy Sherlock, perhaps one who attended church with his family on Christmas and hoped for a chemistry set. There is a human beneath that calculating facade, a human who may be feeling as rudderless and frightened as John himself is, who has come back to something he knows, and who has brought John along with him.
O come let us adore him
O come let us adore him
John really lets it go now, lets his voice join Sherlock’s and raise it, and Sherlock looks over at him for a moment and nods before returning his eyes to the front. The second verse begins and neither of them hesitate but plunge right in without looking, and John feels such a host of emotions that it is difficult to name them. His voice sounds better this way, raised and sure and blending with Sherlock’s, and suddenly he wishes he could take Sherlock’s hand and squeeze, to let him know that he’s really not sorry, he’s never been sorry, and he’d take him back a thousand times if only he’d just stay forever.
The song ends too soon; six verses are not enough time to sing through all that they need to say to one another.
*
It is not a long walk back to Baker Street. The streets are busy with churchgoers hurrying home in the cold, and neither John nor Sherlock speaks, though the silence is easy, a deep breath after so much song.
When they reach their own front door, Sherlock opens it and lets John step through first, so that he is following John up the stairs to the flat, careful still.
The lights are on; they’ve left them on tonight for the holiday, and the flat is warm and glowing with light.
“Play for me?” John says. The words seem loud after their silence, their very long silence.
Sherlock nods and retrieves his violin, raising it to his shoulder in a fluid motion that John had almost forgotten. The notes begin—not a hymn, as John suspected, but something quiet and lyric of Sherlock’s own devising—and John watches him, unabashed. Sherlock’s face changes in the glow of the fairy lights—now sunken and hollow, all sharp edges and valleys, now warm and pink and vital.
When the song ends, Sherlock looks at him, a question in his eyes, but John shakes his head and stands. He crosses the room and stands beside Sherlock in the window, looking out into the street. Sherlock comes to him like a child, folds into him, his violin still dangling from one hand and his face pressed into John’s shoulder. John holds on, breathes the air scented with Sherlock’s hair, Sherlock’s skin, the fabric of his shirt.
It is Christmas, and Sherlock is home.