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John Watson frowned as he looked across the table at his son’s concerned face.
‘Anything bothering you, Hal?’ he asked. Hamish looked up from his plate and shook his head, still silent. His thick black curls were still tousled from sleep and clear blue eyes were distant. John raised an eyebrow and looked further. ‘You know you can talk to me if there’s anything bother you, yeah?’ Hamish nodded, still silent.
John decided to give up and proceeded to clean up after their breakfast. It was no use waiting for Sherlock, he’d be out til God knows when, since they’d had just finished a case the day before and he had spent three days without sleep. Hamish excused himself quietly and went back upstairs into his room. It was odd, he usually watched the Discovery Channel on Saturday mornings after breakfast. With a sigh, John put away the last plate and climbed the stairs towards his son’s bedroom. He knocked on the door and entered, finding Hamish curled up on the corner of his bed, holding onto his pet hedgehog — Frank.
‘What is wrong, Hamish? I’m worried about you,’ John said, sitting next to him and gently rubbing his back. Hamish looked at him, his eyes glassy, filled with tears. John could feel his heart drop at the sight of his tiny seven-year-old crying. He picked him up immediately and propped him on his lap, giving him a tight hug. Then Hamish began to sob and it was like John’s world had ended. He had never seen his son so sad.
‘I’m sorry…’ Hamish said, sniffling and grasping his toy more tightly. ‘It’s… stupid…’
‘No, it’s not, Hamish. If it makes you sad, then it isn’t stupid,’ John told him with his best assertive voice. With a nod, Hamish buried his face further on John’s chest. ‘Can you tell me what happened now?’
Hamish sat up to look at him, wiping his nose with the sleeves of his pyjama shirt. ‘We made angels at school, for the Christmas tree…’ John nodded, familiar with the tradition of the Christmas Tree Angel Art Project, which Hamish seemed to love, while Sherlock found it absolutely ridiculous. ‘And mine was really pretty, it had papier-mache wings that took me three days to make, and long curly nylon hair,’ he continued. ‘Mrs Godfrey said that it was one of the best in the class!’ John smiled down at his son’s proud face, which fell as he continued. ‘But Emmerick Clinton, he’s tall and cranky, and his parents are getting a divorce — I can tell because of his backpack — and he doesn’t like me.’
‘Why not?’
‘He says I’m too much of a “smarty-pants” for my own good, which is ridiculous because my cleverness has nothing to do with my pants!’ Hamish said, and John chuckled. ‘Anyway, he doesn’t like me, so he pushes me around sometimes. Not all the time, because I ignore him, but yesterday, when we were all about to show our final project, he stomped towards me and picked it up, the angel, I mean, and threw it on the floor.’ Hamish teared up again and a few more tears fell. ‘And it was really pretty, and you and Father would have been proud of me because of it, but now it’s ruined and Christmas is ruined because there is no angel to put on top of the tree!’
‘Oh, Hamish…’ John hugged him closer, trying to think of a solution for this problem. ‘Your father and I are proud of you anyway, son, so don’t worry about that…’ he told him earnestly. ‘As for the angel… Well, we can always make another one.’
‘What?’ something in Hamish sparked up again and John chuckled. ‘We can?’
‘Of course! It’ll be fun, come on.’
John and Hamish made their way down the stairs, then John went into his and Sherlock’s bedroom to wake him up.
‘Rise and shine, princess, we’ve got things to do!’ he said, shaking his husband by the shoulder and receiving and grunt in response. John pushed a bit more, managing to get a sleepy, grumpy Sherlock up and into his dressing gown.
‘What now?’ Sherlock asked hoarsely. John smiled at him.
‘Well, Hamish had a problem with his art project, so we are going to help him build another angel!’
Sherlock rolled his eyes, but complied, mostly because of his half-asleep state than anything, really. In twenty minutes, the family of three was sitting around the desk in the sitting room, in front of a bunch of art material. They stared at it for a long time.
‘What now?’ asked Sherlock. ‘You both know that I am not an artistic person.’
Hamish shrugged. ‘Well, in class we normally have a model upon which to work…’
John raised an eyebrow. ‘This isn’t gonna work, is it?’
The three of them stared at each other for a few beats, then burst out laughing. Hamish had long forgotten his sadness, Sherlock was fully awaken, and John was just beaming at how weird and perfect his family was.
After a few minutes of laughter and a few more minutes of recovering from said laughter, John stood up and went for the kitchen.
‘How about we forget all this and do something nice today?’
‘Can we go ice skating?’ asked Hamish, already jumping from his seat towards his bedroom to change, not eve giving time for John to reply. Sherlock chuckled and entered the kitchen, hugging John from behind.
‘Apparently we’re going ice skating…’ he said, his mouth right against John’s ear, making the hairs on the nape of his back stand. John turned to face him and gave him a peck on the lips.
‘Indeed to are, then,’ he turned around, encircling Sherlock with his arms. He looked up and, standing on his tiptoes, kissed him. They spent a few minutes just enjoying each other, when Hamish came back and sighed.
‘Can we go?’ he asked, sounding bored and disgusted. John and Sherlock parted, chuckling and went to change, being followed by Hamish’s voice, ‘and no monkey business, we’ve got a lot to do!’