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“The princess, sitting in the hall of four-and-twenty windows, sent a slave to find out what the noise was about, who came back laughing, so that the princess scolded her.”
Sherlock smiles softly as John’s voice fills the room. His eyes are shut, body curled so that his knees just barely press up against John’s legs. There’s no book to sit in his hands, John reciting the story by memory. Instead he uses his free hands to brush through Sherlock’s curls, and to keep him by his side. Sherlock doesn’t mind, reveling in the touch: it wasn’t often that he got this. As a child, he’d rarely been read to or told bed time stories. It didn’t bother him much at the time, and he still wasn’t sure if he’d have preferred it. Fiction wasn’t something he took much stock by. It was pointless stuffing; just something to fill the mind with. There was no practical application.
“At that instant the vizier, who saw that the crowd had forced their way into the courtyard and were scaling the walls to rescue Aladdin, called to the executioner to stay his hand. The people, indeed, looked so threatening that the Sultan gave way and ordered Aladdin to be unbound, and pardoned him in the sight of the crowd.”
It was different with John; different than it had been the few times his mother, or Mycroft, had read to him. Those times hadn’t been particularly enjoyable. His mother had done it out of a feeling of necessity: a family wasn’t a family unless the mother read to the children, right? Mycroft had read to him for much the same feeling of necessity, but a necessity to try and fix things. John didn’t try to fix him, or do it because he thought he had to. He did it because he wanted to, and left it up to Sherlock if he wanted to listen or not.
“‘That is not in my power,’ said the genie; ‘I am only the slave of the ring; you must ask the slave of the lamp.’”
He listens.
“‘Now I know,’ cried Aladdin, ‘that we have to thank the African magician for this! Where is the lamp?’”
It’s not the story he listens to-fiction is pointless-it’s the changes in John’s tone; the adaptation of voices and different inflections for characters; the contentment he can hear. It’s better than the story. The story is fiction, false, just words and clutter, but John’s voice is real. It’s a fact. It’s something that Sherlock can understand.
“Aladdin went back to the princess, saying his head ached, and requesting that the holy Fatima should be fetched to lay her hands on it. But when the magician came near, Aladdin, seizing his dagger, pierced him to the heart.”
He likes it when John tells him stories.
“After this Aladdin and his wife lived in peace. He succeeded the Sultan when he died, and reigned for many years, leaving behind him a long line of kings.”