Chapter Text
After discovering that no one at Holmes manor cared enough about his presence to notice his absence, he made a point of being absent as often as possible. He visited the forest more and more as time went by. At first, he only went for a few hours every week. Then, he’d be gone for whole days. Until he spent more of his days in the forest than at home. Until he only rode home when John physically forced him out of the forest when the sun set, and forbade him to ride back after the sun rose. The forest began to feel more like home than the dreary old house that bore his name.
And John felt more like family than any human he’d ever known. It had only known the strange fae boy for a few weeks, yet already he felt like a brother to him. Like a real brother who cared about him, not the overbearing, prying, yet woefully oblivious brother that Mycroft pretends to be.
It was towards that sense of home and family that he rode towards that morning. If you could call it morning. The sun hadn’t yet risen. The horizon had just begun to show the barest hint of pink. But Sherlock didn’t care. It would be light enough by the time he reached the forest. That’s all that mattered. As far as he was concerned, the sun in the sky was only sand in an hourglass, counting down the moments until he could see John.
This morning, he was particularly eager because he’d brought his newfound brother a present. He thought of it as a kind of birthday present, although the fair folk don’t celebrate birthdays and neither of them had any clue of when John was born or if he was even born. For all they knew, he could have sprouted out of the ground. But none the less, Sherlock thought it fit to celebrate his friend’s continued existence. With a crossbow.
He adjusted his present’s position against his back as he guided his horse off the main road. Sherlock didn’t want his present to be too obvious, but a crossbow is a difficult thing to disguise. Not that it really mattered, because there was a large chance that John had never seen one before and Sherlock was being an utter idiot. But idiot or not, he was going to do this properly.
So he adjusted his cloak to conceal the lump in his back as he made his way to the burrow that John used as shelter. It used to be a fox den buried in the root system of an old tree but John, with his sparkling ingenuity and unlimited amount of time, expanded it until it fit him comfortably. During a particularly close call with a bear, they both even managed to squeeze into it at the same time. It was not terribly comfortable. But it was safe. And warm. Sherlock paused just as he began to see John’s glow emanating from the ground.
It was then that he realized exactly how early it was and John didn’t seem like much of a morning person. Sherlock doubted the fae boy would react well to being rudely awakened at sunrise.
Sherlock admitted to himself that maybe it’d be better to wait until John awoke of his own accord.
He took a seat by John’s fire pit, just a few feet away from the burrow, wondering if breakfast would be worth the walk back to his horse. He glanced at the lemony light peeking out of the inconspicuous little hole in the ground and decided against it. But the morning chill was beginning to get unbearable, so he gathered some wood, found two sticks and made an attempt at rubbing them together. As he had lived a sheltered life in a bustling manor with many servants and more sophisticated tools, he had never actually learned how to light a fire in the woods. He’d seen John do it dozens of times though and the mechanics of it seemed ludicrously simple. Take wood, apply friction, add more wood slowly so as not to smother it.
Apparently, although the theory is fairly simple, the ability to actually do it was much more difficult and probably required magic. Sherlock had broken about three pairs of sticks and all of his patience when John’s head poked out of the burrow.
“Sherlock!” He groaned, his eyes squinting against the sun. “What the bloody hell are you doing up there?”
Sherlock kicked at the pile of wood, blaming it for prematurely waking John. “Trying to make a fire. But apparently I’d have to be fucking faerie!”
John rolled his eyes audibly as he ducked back into the ground. “Just, give me a second. I’ll build one.”
Sherlock threw himself onto a nearby rock, glaring at the fire pit as if that might make it burst into flame. Then John climbed up from his nest in the ground. Hair rumpled, posture loose and naked as the day he born. Sherlock leapt to his feet and turned his back, both in attempt to give his friend some privacy and hide his burning face.
“Oh calm down, it’s not like you’re seeing anything new. We’re both equally equipped.” John grumbled as he rooted around the various nooks and crannies where he stored his belongings.
Sherlock choked with the realization that, while their ‘equipment’ was similar, they were a far, far cry from equal. And his certainly did not shine like a candle. He thought it best not to mention it.
“You didn’t think I slept in the burrow fully clothed, did you? It’s fairly clean, for a hole in the ground, but it’s still a hole in the ground.” John continued grumbling over the sound of splashing water as he washed up. “What’s that on your back? It looks like you’ve grown a second head.”
“It’s… nothing. A gift. It’s silly, really.” Sherlock bumbled, still trying to regain his natural complexion.
“Oh, may I see?” John’s voice was uncomfortably close behind him now.
“Are you dressed?”
John huffed a laugh in response. “Yes, Sherlock.”
Sherlock looked over his shoulder to make certain, sighing with relief when he saw John was speaking the truth. He shrugged off his cloak and drew the crossbow from its sling, presenting it to John.
He accepted it carefully, looking it over with confusion and fascination. “What is this? Some sort of contraption?”
“It’s a crossbow. It works a little like that sling shot of yours, but with much more power.” Sherlock explained, the chill becoming unbearable in the absence of his cloak. “I’ll show you how to use it, once you get a fire going.”
John rolled his eyes and set it aside. Sherlock found it rather surprising that a fire wasn’t the first thing on his mind, as he was wearing only a flimsy tunic. “I don’t know why you can’t do it yourself. Doesn’t anyone in your fancy castle know these things?”
“I am perfectly capable of lighting a fire, thank you very much. But not with crude sticks as you do. I’m not entirely convinced you’re not using some strange magic to conjure up sparks at will.” Sherlock huffed, sitting in the grass by the fire pit as John fiddled with a branch. He pulled his cloak back on while he watched John work.
John chuckled. “I assure you, it’s not magic. If it were, it’d be a lot quicker and a whole lot more dramatic.”
“What are you doing with that?” Sherlock asked, leaning closer to watch John scrape at one end of the branch with a sharpened rock.
“I’m making a sort of wedge shape in the end. That way, it’ll make a groove in the other piece of wood. But first I have to flatten out that surface.” John explained what he was doing as he did it, going slower than he usually did so Sherlock could follow along. Sherlock wasn’t exactly an expert on fire-lighting by the end of it, but he had a vague understanding of the process that he could work with.
“Now, will you show me how to work that crossbow?” John asked, with obvious excitement. Sherlock sighed and huddled further under his cloak. Although he would’ve liked to say yes, the cold had made his fingers stiff, which would make operating a crossbow a lot more difficult.
“What, now? Aren’t you cold?”
“The cold doesn’t bother me so much. Neither does heat. I think it’s got something to do with… this.” John gestured vaguely to himself, indicating his ever-present aura.
“So, that isn’t just… how your skin is?” Sherlock had always been unbearably curious about that particular feature of John’s appearance.
John shook his head. “It… sits on top of my skin. I can feel it if I concentrate, but mostly it’s like air. It’s there, but I don’t notice it.”
“And it protects you from the cold.”
“It protects me from many things.” John responded, just as eager to answer Sherlock’s questions as he was to ask them. Without warning, he thrust his hand into the growing fire. Sherlock gave a shout of alarm but quickly realized that while the fire licked at his hand like an overeager puppy, John showed no sign of pain. When John pulled it out, Sherlock instantly grabbed it to make a more thorough inspection of the damage, or lack of which.
“Did you feel anything?” Sherlock asked as he turned the appendage over in his hands. It was warm, but pleasantly so. The skin underneath the strange barrier was completely unmarred, the firm structure of muscle and bone underneath it was still perfect in every way.
“I felt heat. The soft ash at the bottom of the pit. The charred wood.” John answered, giggling as Sherlock pulled at a bit of loose skin. He pulled the strange boy’s hand closer to his face, squinting as he contorted the fingers in different ways.
“I can see it now. The place where the skin ends and the… shield begins.” It was a thin layer, no more substantial than fuzz on a peach, but if he looked very closely, he could see it bend where he came in contact with John. He played with it with is for a few minutes, tapping John’s skin in different ways to see how the aura would react. He found that approaching it with force caused it to resist, keeping his finger a needle’s point away from touching skin. But it was more malleable under gentler touches, bending enough to allow contact. “That’s fascinating.”
“Ok, that’s quite enough.” John grumbled, pulling his hand back into his own possession. While he didn’t mind indulging his friend’s curiosities, no one enjoyed being studied like a rare butterfly. “Could you show me how the crossbow works now?”
Sherlock pouted a little at being deprived of his explorations, but nodded.
“Go stand by that pile of wood.” He instructed, walking to a large tree at the other end of the clearing. He drew a knife he kept in his belt and carved a rough circle in the trunk. Once he had a half-decent target drawn up he walked back to John, who making himself look ridiculous by trying to find a way to hold the bow without looking ridiculous. Sherlock took the contraption from him and loaded it with one of the arrows he had in his pocket. “You brace it against your shoulder like so…”
Sherlock ran through a few demonstrations at John’s request, elaborating on various parts of the process until the target tree was studded with arrows and even more were lost to the bushes. By the time he handed the crossbow over, John knew exactly what he was doing.
But whether or not he could do it was anyone’s guess.
John took two tries to load the bow because it slipped off his shoulder the first time. But he loaded it. Then, he took a full minute to aim it correctly. Which was good. It was better to take time and be cautious than to shoot himself in the foot. Like Sherlock did his first time with a bow. Then he pulled the trigger, letting the arrow fly far and fast. A full yard away from the tree.
“You missed.” Sherlock announced. “But… Not bad for your first shot.”
“No, I didn’t.” John turned to face Sherlock, beaming. A fat bird fell from the tree. “Thank you Sherlock. It’s an excellent gift. I’ll never go hungry again.”
“Glad to hear it.” Sherlock replied as John walked off to fetch their lunch. Once he was out of ear shot he mumbled something under his breath. “Happy birthday.”