Chapter Text
Waking in the middle of the night was nothing new to John Watson. But it felt different now. The nightmares had always fired him out of sleep like a bullet from a gun. He'd crash into consciousness as if it were a pane of glass and come to on the alert, with every muscle strained, his jaw clenched, his teeth sore from grinding, the adrenaline still pulsing, but slowly beginning to ebb away.
These days, sleep was not so much oblivion as a kind of misty country into and out of which he kept straying. He surfaced gradually. Usually he heard her first. That tiny, high-pitched cry, amplified by the baby monitor, and behind it the muffled sound of Rachel's actual voice, just a fraction of a pitch lower. John was keeping a little log, trying to decode the different sounds. He thought he had managed to differentiate the cry of discomfort from the cry of hunger. Sherlock was of course reading the log when John wasn't looking, and would occasionally toss little darts of sarcasm at unhelpful moments. "Even Lestrade," he had been heard to observe only yesterday evening, "could, from the tone and frequency of this particular vocalization, deduce the existence of gas bubbles in Rachel's stomach."
John had promised Mary that they wouldn't name their daughter after Sherlock. Well, they hadn't. Exactly.
But this time it wasn't Rachel's voice on the monitor. It was Sherlock's.
John sat up and squinted at the grainy image on the monitor's tiny screen. Sherlock was sitting in John's old armchair, which had been moved into what used to be John's bedroom, but was now possibly the least attractive nursery in London. They had made an effort. Most of the clutter had been swept into the closet, John's bed had been dismantled and stored in one of the vacant apartments, and a miniature fridge did double duty as an end table next to the chair opposite the little white crib, which had been found at a rummage sale and spirited into 221B during the dead of night. It had been a very efficient operation--even Mrs. Hudson never knew--but of course the conditions of secrecy, and the personalities of the individuals to whom the mission had been entrusted, meant that it was a little short on brightly colored objects and jingly soft toys. The only thing in the room that actually looked as if it might have been bought in advance by someone expecting a baby was a flight of vividly pink flamingoes making its way across the wall above the crib toward the window at the end. Sherlock's initial reaction to them was almost literally emetic. But he accepted them now with only the most perfunctory of scowls. He was secretly pleased, John thought, that Rachel's room could almost be described as a study in pink.
Sherlock's bare legs, too long for the chair, were stretched out before him. Sherlock's only concession to the new arrival, in terms of his sleeping attire, was a ratty pair of black shorts and a gray London 2012 Olympics T-shirt which John was pretty sure had at one point belonged to a murder victim. Certainly it was too large for Sherlock, who was cradling Rachel, still swaddled in the pink blanket Lestrade had given her, in the crook of one wiry arm. Her little head, with its sprinkling of strawberry blond fuzz, was propped up at what Sherlock considered the optimal angle, and Sherlock's other hand held the bottle, expertly positioned so as to minimize the possibility of air bubbles. Sherlock's new project was a scientific study on the gastrointestinal vicissitudes of bottle-fed babies. He had designed his own app to record the data involving times and amounts of feeding and number and duration of burps. John had offered the app for free on the blog. So far there were over a hundred thousand downloads.
John's mobile lay on top of the fridge. Sherlock appeared to be listening to it. The voice on the phone came through the monitor only as a faint buzzing sound.
Sherlock's head tilted back, the dark curls spilling over the top of the armchair. Though the image wasn't good enough to show it, John himself could imagine Sherlock's eyes closing, the way the light from the Teletubbies lamp that Donovan had fished out of some rubbish tip would strike the exposed curve of Sherlock's throat.
"Oh that is good," Sherlock's voice murmured. "Tell me more."
There was another buzzing from the phone. It produced in Sherlock a little writhe of arousal that was now achingly familiar to John.
"How big is it?" A low chuckle from Sherlock's throat. "Is it big enough to hurt?"
Another short bleat from the phone, and Sherlock took in a long slow breath. He let it out in a gasp, as his eyes flew open.
"Yes! YES!"
John was at the bedroom door and into the hallway before he realized how angry he was. He tried to pull himself up when he reached the entrance to what was now Rachel's room. She could not, after all, understand words; but his temper would do her no good.
"Sherlock," John barked, as the door banged open.
Sherlock looked up at him with that same infuriating innocence John had seen on his face in that crack house. "Oh, hello, John."
"I'm glad you're helping with the feedings," John bit off, as he stalked over to the mini fridge, "but maybe nobody's ever explained to you that you should not feed a baby while you're having phone sex --"
John snatched up the mobile, then looked down at the caller ID on the screen.
"...with my sister."
John glared at Sherlock. Sherlock began trying not to laugh.
"John!" Harry's voice was perfectly audible now, blaring up through the phone. "Will you please talk to your boyfriend about the concept of normal business hours?"
"He called you?" John said, a little foggily, as his fatigued brain attempted to readjust his understanding of the situation. "It's three in the morning."
"I left that man five voicemails today about the Magnussen decision," Harry snapped. "Five. And when does he call back? Now. Just because he's up warming bottles and changing nappies doesn't mean we all are."
With a smile that warned of future mischief, Sherlock heaved himself out of the chair, Rachel still in one arm, and set the bottle down on the fridge. He walked to the dressing gown that he'd thrown over the edge of the crib and extracted his own mobile. While John struggled to soothe Harry's ire, Sherlock began looking something up.
"So the decision came down today?" John murmured, rubbing his eyes with his free hand.
"Yes," Harry said. "Four hundred thousand pounds, John. Plus court costs."
John's hand dropped. His eyes snapped open.
"Say it again," he said. And now, at last, he understood. "Say it again, slowly."
"Charles Augustus Magnussen," Harry said, slowly, "has been found guilty of libel under English defamation law and now he owes me four. Hundred. Thousand. Pounds."
"Oh my God," John said. He could feel laughter bubbling up from his stomach, making his head even lighter. "Oh my God."
"It is fantastic, isn't it?" Harry said. She was almost giddy. "I'm going to set up a trust for Rachel. I'll set up a trust for you and Sherlock. Maybe I'll set up trusts for Molly and Lestrade. TRUSTS FOR EVERYONE!"
Over Harry's laughter, he heard a bleating noise come through the phone that sounded exactly like someone else's mobile phone ringing.
John glanced over at Sherlock. He had his own mobile to his ear, and one index finger laid against his lips.
Faintly, John could hear the murmuring of another woman's voice on Harry's end. "Oh criminy. Is it morning already?"
He thought that in this other woman's voice he could detect perhaps just a hint of an Irish accent.
"What in the name of..." Harry muttered.
"Hello?" said the other woman's voice, groggily.
Sherlock's voice floated over from across the room, breezy and conversational. "Oh, hello, Janine. I was just up, you know, doing baby things, and I thought that, since we're in a good place now, I'd call and chat--"
"SHERLOCK!" Harry shouted. "You MISERABLE FUCKER!"
Barely a second later, through Harry's phone, John heard the now unmistakeable tones of Janine on the warpath.
"Oh Sherl. This is really beyond the beyonds. Can't you deduce who I'm sleeping with without waking a girl up in the middle of the night? I have to work tomorrow."
"Sherlock," John hissed.
"Well, really, John. I think it in very poor taste for your sister to be moving in on my fiancee, so soon after the end of our engagement."
"Not funny, Sherlock," Janine's voice said. "Good night. Sleep tight. Don't worry at all about my sneaking up on you while you sleep and shaving you bald as an egg, because I'm totally not going to come in there and do that one night if you don't stop messing. Good night."
"So," John said, since Harry still seemed to be seething on the other end. "You and Janine."
"Yes," Harry sighed.
"Now that the case is over."
"Yes," Harry muttered.
"And...for real."
"YES!" Harry snapped. "Yes, for real, at least for right now."
"Well then," John said, blinking. "There it is."
There was an awkward silence.
"Tell Sherlock," Harry finally said, "that he should be checking the financial pages. The stock price of CM Ltd. has been in free fall ever since the judgment was announced this morning. Six months ago, four hundred thousand pounds would have been nothing to Magnussen. Give it another six months and Magnussen may have to declare bankruptcy just to pay my damages. Also Sherlock may be interested to know that several other plaintiffs have announced plans to initiate libel actions against Magnussen or against CM Ltd."
John gazed down at the phone, suddenly awash in filial affection.
"Thanks, Harry," he said. "Get some sleep."
"I'll do my best. How's Rachel?"
"Oh, she's fine. She's great. Eats like a horse and just last week she slept through the night once."
"Does she like the flamingoes?"
"They're great, yeah. Thanks so much for putting them up for her."
"Well, that wallpaper will give her nightmares if something's not done about it. Good night, John."
John hung up. He looked over at the crib. Sherlock was just laying Rachel back into it. Her eyelids were drooping, and her little round face had that expression of serenity that could be produced only by a warm bottle and a full stomach. John watched Sherlock withdraw his hands, gently, careful not to wake her, and straighten up slowly. Half the time, Sherlock looked at Rachel as if she were only a particularly intriguing experiment. But there were these moments, when John knew there was more to it.
Sherlock turned to him. John caught the glint in his eye, and began to feel as if he might just die of joy.
"We hit him where he lives," John murmured.
"We hit him where he lives, John," Sherlock repeated, in that thrilling and intense whisper he now used so often around the flat. "His blood's in the water and the sharks are on the move. Every day, a little more of the flesh will be torn from the bones of Charles Augusts Magnussen and his rapidly collapsing media empire. He will be bled by inches over months and years. I love this verdict. It is the gift that will never stop giving."
Sherlock strode past John to the doorway. John followed him into the bedroom. Neither of them had had a good night's sleep in months. But at the moment, neither of them were tired.
END CHAPTER ONE