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If one were to take a tour around 221B, one would notice several things:
- the chemistry set that has taken over the kitchen
- and the one in the bathroom.
- the Cluedo board knifed to the wall
- another knife (possibly a Bowie knife?) keeping the mail organized on the mantle.
- one bedroom in use as a bedroom
- and one in use as a catch-all storage space, mainly filled with boxes of books, fancy-dress clothes, a footlocker, and three spare first-aid kits (because in 221B, one is never enough).
But something missing from this flat is the colour green.
There is no plant life in 221B.
Some might argue the point. After all, there is furry, fuzzy mould growing on several surfaces in the flat, some even in plain sight. Sherlock Holmes would disagree with you; moulds, after all (he would sneer) are fungi, and fungi are not plants; they are in a completely different kingdom from plants.
No, there are no plants in Sherlock and John’s flat.
This is primarily because both of them are absolute crap at taking care of plants. One would think that men of science would be good with plants. After all, plants require time, care, and effort to flourish. Like a broken bone needs time to set, or a culture needs time to grow. But while John and Sherlock are both, in their own ways, patient men, neither of them have much in the way of a green thumb. Truthfully, it is because they are both so busy that they really just… forget about the plants.
There has been greenery in the flat before. John often receives flowers from his patients as a thank-you, and once he got a nice little potted mum from the daughter of an elderly lady for whom he made a house call in the middle of the night. He’s usually diligent about putting the cut flowers with water in an empty bottle or graduated cylinder or whatever’s handy, but more often than not, the water evaporates and the flowers shrivel up. And he forgot the mum in the back of the cab on his way home; it was adopted by the cab driver, who took it home to his wife. The mum, truthfully, had a much better life there than the slow, agonizing death it would have suffered in 221B.
~~
“Yoo hoo! Boys!”
“In the kitchen, Mrs. Hudson!” John is finishing the washing up. (Since he and Sherlock have had their little chat on Domestic Division of Labour, one of John’s jobs is the washing up. Sherlock’s job is to cook and not destroy the kitchen or incorporate noxious and possibly fatal substances into their food.) Sherlock is in the shower.
“I brought you a little something. My niece has a little greenhouse behind her cottage, and she sent several of these up, and I thought you boys might like one!” She presents the gift with a flourish, and John dries his hands of soapy water to take it.
It’s in an earthen brown plastic pot, with the little saucer on the bottom to catch the drips. It’s small, green and leafy. It’s got deep purple flowers, and several more unopened buds. John blinks; the only plants he’s passingly familiar with are those in the medical field, like digitalis.
“It’s an African violet, dear! Very lovely, low-maintenance, blooms all year round if you look after it properly! Perfect for your flat, I thought. They like lots of light. I’ll just put it on the windowsill then, dear?”
John, holding his damp tea towel, doesn't know how to respond. So, he defaults into Polite John Watson mode. “Thanks, Mrs. Hudson. So very thoughtful of you. Tea?”
“Oh no dear, must dash. Callie sent me with so many plants, I really must sort everything out. Enjoy!” And she sets the little plant on the windowsill in the sitting room, and with a little wave, lets herself out.
John really doesn’t know what to say. Mrs. Hudson, despite her refrain of “not your housekeeper”, is constantly bringing things over, but they’re more of the edible variety. This is the first time she’s given them something more or less permanent. He sighs and returns to his dishes.
When he’s drying the last plate (no spotty, drip-dried plates in his kitchen), Sherlock wanders in. He’s wearing his thin grey pajama pants, but he’s shirtless and there’s a towel around his neck. His damp curls are lying haphazardly, and are already threatening to dry in a look John can only describe as “mad-scientist”. Half his face is shaved, but the other side is still foamy with shaving lather. “John, if you put some tea on now, I’ll be done when it’s—" He stops talking, and his eyes narrow. “What is that?”
John fills the kettle and flicks the switch. “It’s an African violet. Mrs. Hudson just ran it up for us.”
The consulting detective approaches it like it’s hemlock. His eyes narrow further as he stares at it. “Hmm… Saintpaulia ionantha, I believe. Native to areas of Tanzania and Kenya.” He turns around to look at John. “So why is it in our flat?”
John shrugs as he pulls out two mugs and two teabags. “I told you, Mrs. Hudson brought it. She has a niece with a greenhouse or something. Nice of her, I thought. Don’t you like it?”
Sherlock turns back to the innocent green plant and touches a soft leaf with a forefinger. “What’s to like, really? It’s not sentient or anything. It’s just a plant in a pot.” But his voice is low as he speaks.
Hot water poured and sugar added, John makes his way to the sofa. “Finish shaving, Sherlock. Your tea will be just cooled when you’re done,” he says, setting the tea down carefully on the coffee table. He presses a kiss to the back of Sherlock’s neck where it meets his spine, just under the towel. “It’s just a plant; it’s not going anywhere.”
Sherlock reaches behind him and squeezes his hand, then goes back to the bathroom.
~~
After a few hours of crap telly, John decides to turn in. He tousles Sherlock’s now-fuzzy curls and kisses his cheek. “Coming to bed?”
Sherlock doesn’t look up from his book, but gives a low hum. “Yes, in a bit, John.” He takes John’s hand and kisses the inside of his wrist while turning the page. “Later.”
John is used to this. He ruffles the dark curls again and goes upstairs. Sleep is easy to find, tonight.
~~
When John wakes up, it’s dark, and he can feel that Sherlock has not come to bed at all, rather than come and gone. When he checks his watch, it’s only two-thirty. He sighs and pads back down the stairs.
Sherlock is in the same place on the sofa. The fire has completely died down, and he’s sitting with just a small table lamp on; the rest of the flat is dark. He’s put his book off to the side and is balancing his laptop on his knees; it lights his face with its glow, setting the angles of his face into sharp relief. He doesn’t look up when John pulls the blanket from the back of his chair, wraps himself up and sits down.
“What are you looking at?” John asks quietly.
Sherlock says nothing, and then closes the laptop and switches off the lamp. In the darkness, he leans against John, who frees an arm from the blanket and wraps it around the detective’s thin frame. He kisses Sherlock’s temple and says nothing.
Sherlock snuggles closer and puts his head on John’s shoulder. “When I was young,” he says slowly, “I would go and visit my grandmother in France. She had a house – a cottage, really – in the countryside in Provence. Just me; Mycroft was usually at school.” He sighs. “And she and I would spend a month there, just, working. I say working, but it really wasn’t anything like. We looked at plants and insects; she gave me my first chemistry set. She was intelligent, my grandmother, she was wise. She was an amateur chemist, and a botanist. She would pick lavender and dry it, and use it in everything. People would come from all around to speak with her, to get her advice, sometimes just for tea. She made fantastic biscuits, John. Shortbread with lavender; I’ve never had anything like them since. She died when I was thirteen; complications from lupus.” John hugs him closer.
“My grandmother was a brilliant woman. She was formidable, like Mummy, but knew when the situation called for kindness. You remind me of her in many ways, John.” He stops speaking again, and John can feel his fingers tracing circles on his thigh.
“But what I remember most about her was her garden. She had a beautiful garden, almost riotous. It was so different from home, with the manicured lawns, everything in its place. Her garden was almost wild, overgrown. But if you looked closely, you could see that everything was there with a purpose, for a reason. There was one corner filled with… I don’t remember, exactly, but it attracted butterflies like nothing else. The garden and the cottage were surrounded by a low stone fence, and along the back, she had pots and pots of violets. All sorts, John, just beautiful. I remember as a boy, seeing them spilling out of pots, and some, just neat and tidy, like this one.
“When she died, she left the cottage to me in her will. I haven’t been for so long; Mummy often spends time there, but I can never seem to get there. But the caretakers send me updates. The garden is much the same; a little more overgrown, perhaps, but there are still violets on the back of the wall. The last photo I saw, they seemed to be holding their own against the ivy that crept in, somehow.”
The two men sit quietly in the dark. Finally Sherlock opens the laptop again and turns it to John.
How to Grow Perfect African Violets
~~
Sherlock throws himself completely into the care of his new plant.
He waters it.
He turns it so it gets even light.
He moves it away from the light. Then towards it. He tries different windowsills, including the one in their bedroom. John quite enjoys waking up to the cheeky purple flowers, but Sherlock decides that the wrong kind of light comes in there (“not enough natural light, John, too many buildings in the way”) and returns it to its original place.
He re-pots it in a bigger pot. Then in a slightly smaller one.
He fertilizes it.
He protects it, fiercely. The day a wandering cat makes its way onto the sill to examine the flowers, Sherlock sprays it with his plant mister until it yowls and beats a hasty retreat, all wet whiskers and bushy tail.
He talks to it.
“How does the skull feel about your conversations, Sherlock?”
“Oh please, John. Horatio is not the jealous type.”
He even names it.
“Walter?” John asks in disbelief.
“Yes. After Baron Walter von Saint Paul-Illaire, the discoverer of the plant.” John rolls his eyes and says nothing.
After two weeks, Sherlock brings home another African violet, with white flowers.
“Saintpaulia rupicola,” he explains. “I want to crossbreed them.”
“I don’t want to know if this one has a name, Sherlock.”
~~
But one day, tragedy.
John comes home before Sherlock, who is at NSY finishing some paper work. He’s received a text with strict instructions to turn Walter a quarter-turn clockwise when he gets home, and then another quarter-turn an hour before sunset. He is not to touch the white plant.
I’ll be home when I deal with this, the bane of my existence. SH
Privately, John feels the plant is the bane of his existence, what with all the obsessive instructions and turnings and precisely measured waterings, but it makes Sherlock happy. There haven’t been any explosions or acid burns for weeks now, and tiny shoots are greening up the series of smaller pots next to Walter.
John sighs and goes to turn Walter, and this is when tragedy strikes.
For years afterwards, John will maintain it was an accident, it was a complete accident, and Sherlock will flap around the flat like an overgrown chicken, waving his hands and insisting that there are no such things, that John must have had it in for Walter, that his action was practically Freudian.
What happens is this:
John is trying carefully to turn Walter, without dislodging its hybrid offspring. The windowsill is by now very crowded, and as he turns the original, padre de familia violet, he accidentally nudges one of the smaller pots, and as he makes a grab for it, his elbow knocks into Walter, and sends the pot over the edge of the open window…
…crashing down on the pavement in front of Speedy’s Café.
John is frozen. All he can do is stare out the window at the mess of leaves, flowers and dirt lying in shards of pottery below.
He doesn’t know how long he stares at the ruined violet. It could be mere minutes, or maybe an hour, but one thing is certain: John is still staring out the window when a cab pulls up and Sherlock alights.
It feels like John is under water.
He watches Sherlock walk slowly to the mess on the pavement, and poke at the dirt and the soft leaves with a long index finger. Then he sees Sherlock straighten, and look up. And if John was frozen before, he is stone now.
Sherlock quietly comes up the stairs. He goes through the sitting room without a word, fetches a new pot and a small hand broom from under the sink and wordlessly exits again.
John watches as Sherlock carefully sweeps his plant and as much soil as he can into the new pot, then sweeps up the pieces of the old one and carefully disposes of them in the bin outside Speedy’s. Then Sherlock enters silently again, gets his bag of potting soil, and carefully re-pots Walter. Then he stares at John disconcertingly until John backs away from the windowsill. Without a word, Sherlock places his violet and turns it lovingly. He gives it one hundred millilitres of water and smooths a finger gently over the velvety leaves. Then he turns to glare at John.
“Sherlock, it was a complete accident, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to, er, knock your, your, Walter out the window. I was turning it, and I jostled one of the smaller ones, and I went to grab it, and I just knocked it out, and I’m sorry!” John cannot believe how much he’s babbling. It doesn’t help that Sherlock’s glaring at him like a mum who just caught her son in the jam, and is listening to him deny it, even though the evidence is all over his face.
Sherlock stares at him for what feels like a lifetime, then turns and leaves the room.
John feels terrible.
~~
In the evening, when John has finished the washing up, Sherlock comes into the sitting room, fresh from the shower, and John is struck by the similarity to a night weeks ago, when Mrs. Hudson dropped off the violet and this whole thing started.
John sighs. He’s apologised, he’s said his piece, and if Sherlock won’t talk to him there’s nothing he can do. He turns back to the worktop and clicks on the kettle, gets out two mugs, two teabags, and the sugar.
He is, quite honestly, surprised when he feels Sherlock come up behind him and wrap his arms around his waist. Sherlock rests his head on John’s shoulder; he smells of conditioner and shaving gel. His hair is still wet, and it drips little rivulets down the side of John’s neck and dampens his collar.
“I’m sorry for being a git,” Sherlock says, his voice muffled in John’s neck.
John hugs Sherlock’s long arms tighter to his sides. “You have nothing to be sorry for. I’m the one who broke Walter.”
Sherlock nuzzles closer; his hair drips into John’s ears. “I got too invested. In a plant. Too invested, John.” He sighs. “I really shouldn’t have named it, I don’t think.”
John smiles. “That was a bit weird, to be honest.” He leans into Sherlock. “But I understand why you did it.”
The kettle clicks, and John frees one hand to pour hot water. As he adds sugar, he says, “But you got to it in time, don’t you think? It should be okay, right?”
Sherlock kisses the side of his neck. “We’ll see, I suppose.”
~~
In less than a week, it becomes clear that Walter is not okay. Its leaves start to turn yellow and droopy, and petals fall from the flowers. On one occasion, when Sherlock turns it, purple rains down like confetti.
Despite Sherlock’s best efforts, it is soon obvious that it is time to let Walter go. And one day, when John gets home from work, it is just… gone, and there is an empty space on the windowsill.
He can’t help but feel a little sad.
Soon, unfortunately, the other violets begin to meet the fate so many cut flowers have met in 221B. Sherlock is busy solving a case, and they are rather neglected, and eventually just wither away.
One morning, John meets Mrs. Hudson as he is binning the last of Walter’s offspring.
“John! How on earth! What did you do to these poor plants?”
John sighs. “I don’t think Sherlock and I are cut out for plant ownership, unfortunately, but we gave it our best.”
“Really John. African violets almost delight in neglect! A bit of sun, a bit of water, they practically grow themselves!”
He pats the good lady’s arm. “Yes, but, there’s neglect, and there’s neglect. Walter had a good run, thanks to Sherlock, but really, Mrs. Hudson, we’re just not… plant people.”
She frowns, confused. “Walter?”
John can’t help chuckling. “It’s nothing, just a little violet joke of Sherlock’s. You know how he is.” He offers his arm. “Can I get you some tea?”
“That would be nice, thank you dear,” she says with a smile, taking his arm. “Such a gentleman. My hip isn’t what it used to be, you know.”
As John escorts Mrs. Hudson inside, the breeze picks up. It sweeps up a little bit of soil from the bin, and deposits it (with its miniscule cargo) into a corner behind 221B Baker Street.
Where it seeks the sun, and the rain, and thrives.
For Maggie_Conagher. Click here to read her marvellous work!