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“Well, the conductor says it will be a couple of hours, at least,” John said, slipping into his seat beside Sherlock. “I sure hope none of these people are claustrophobic.”
Sherlock didn’t look up from his copy of Modern Forensics, although he hummed in acknowledgment. “If they are, perhaps one of them might have a panic attack. That could be mildly interesting.”
“Sherlock!” John scolded. “Don’t say that. Panic attacks can be seriously debilitating. And the last thing we need is one on the train. They’re not contagious per se, but there are studies showing that they can spread through a group. I know you always say multiple murders are Christmas, but I for one would like to get through a Christmas without witnessing it.”
Sherlock turned a page irritably. “John, please. If it weren’t for the fact that you insist on dragging me to my parents’ for this ghastly dinner, we wouldn’t even be here. I could be on my sofa, reading in peace without that horrid man whose diet puts even Mycroft’s to shame…” He indicated the man in the corner who could be charitably described as ‘corpulent’. “… exuding his cheap vodka-soaked fumes, mixed with coffee, everywhere. He’s not fooling anyone, by the way. Everyone in his life knows he’s a closet alcoholic.”
“Sherlock…” John said warningly.
“Oh, please. And if that one…” He flicked his magazine in the direction of a woman with hair dyed a shade of orange not found anywhere in nature. “… doesn’t stop ogling you, I shall have to take drastic measures to show her that yes, we are in fact together. But I know that public displays of affection embarrass you, so I shall refrain, for your sake.” He rested one hand lightly on John’s knee. “For now, this should be enough. If it’s not, I will send a more obvious signal.”
“I don’t think it worked,” John reported, after glancing over his copy of the Guardian. “She seems intrigued. The old lady in the corner looks a bit disgusted, though, so well done there!”
Sherlock sighed. He removed his hand and turned another page, then snapped his magazine down in a huff. “This is intolerable. We cannot stay another minute. Come along, John.” He rose gracefully, put his folded journal under one arm and helped John to his feet with a hand to the shorter man’s elbow. “I need a drink.”
“But you don’t drink.”
“I do, when the occasion calls for it, and it most definitely calls for it now. I believe the dining car was only two away.”
They negotiated the narrow aisle carefully, hitting a snag only when an officious conductor tried to prevent them from leaving the car. A glare from Sherlock soon smoothed their passage, and almost immediately they were seated in the dining car, Sherlock sipping a brandy while John nursed an overpriced lager. Fairy lights sparkled and twinkled across and behind the bar, and artificial holly was placed at evenly spaced intervals. The effect was surprisingly tasteful, John felt.
“Happy?”
Sherlock swirled his brandy thoughtfully. “Quite.” He sipped more brandy, grimacing. “One would think that for the price of this, let alone of the tickets, they would have something a little better.”
“Snob,” John said affectionately.
“And you love it.”
They drank silently, Sherlock observing the others in the dining car, John observing Sherlock.
“What was your worst Christmas?” Sherlock asked abruptly.
“What?”
“Your worst Christmas. Clearly, not the obvious,” he added hastily; while they had discussed Sherlock’s absence at length, neither of them were interested in dealing with the rawness of those times spent apart. “As a child, or in the military.”
John turned his glass in his hands. “I guess, as a child, it would be the first Christmas Harry came home drunk. She was fifteen, I was twelve, and she missed church, so our parents were already pretty upset. And then she came home completely shit-faced, her bra sticking out of her sleeve, at three in the morning, and my parents just lost it. There was yelling, and screaming, and throwing things… I was supposed to get a train set, a proper one, the H/O scale model, and I had… but when I opened it, it was in about a thousand pieces, since my dad had thrown it through the front window. My mum just sat on the sofa and cried her eyes out, and the neighbours called the police. It couldn’t have been any worse in a film, really.”
Sherlock sipped more terrible brandy. “And that was the start of her alcoholism?”
“Probably not, but it’s when our parents found out. It damn near killed my mum. Her dad was a drunk too, and she thought she’d escaped that when she married my dad. It does run in families, though.”
Sherlock nodded. “Addiction does follow family lines. Yours was gambling, I believe.”
John pushed his empty glass away, and asked the bartender for some water. “Yeah. It got bad in Afghanistan; all that forced inactivity. Some days, nothing to do but sit around and play cards, you know? And then the action starts, but it never lasts long. A lot of hurry up and wait, the military. When I got out, it was part of my counselling.”
“At least your therapist did her job in that area. Otherwise, she was next to useless.”
“Why do you ask, though? Seems a bit… depressing, for Christmas.”
“Just making conversation.” Sherlock swallowed the last of his brandy and set the snifter down with a thunk on the bar. He shook his head when the bartender held up the bottle questioningly. “Mine was when my uncle died.”
John choked on his water. “What, like at dinner?”
“Just so, John. I’m sure you expected me to say something about Mycroft and I getting into an argument, or me being high, or our father being stern and uncompromising, but really, it was when Uncle Ian died in front of the fire. He was elderly, past ninety, and so he had dinner in the drawing room, since the dining room was much too cold for him. Those old houses, so draughty, you know.
“We were eating, and the maid came in and whispered something to Father. She looked terrified, and I knew then, what had happened. But really, it wasn’t her fault. She’d just had the misfortune of finding the old goat.”
“Old goat!” John didn’t know whether to laugh or reprimand Sherlock. “Good Christ, Sherlock!”
“Well, he was. He was garrulous and rude, and he smelled like a barn. He used to pinch my cheek so hard…” Sherlock reached out to demonstrate, but John ducked away. “But we would have a plate sent in for him, since he couldn’t eat at table with the rest of the family.”
“So the maid came in…” John prompted.
“And whispered to my father. And he nodded, and swallowed his ham, and set his fork down, and said ‘Well, Ian’s gone to a better place. Celeste, is there more gravy?’ And my mother, who was Ian’s great-niece and really the only person who had any sort of affection for him, calmly excused herself, dropped her napkin on her chair, and went into the kitchen.
“My mother is not an emotional woman, John,” Sherlock continued. “She is always the picture of calm and poise. But she did love Uncle Ian, and she did find Christmas stressful, since we always hosted the extended family. She took to her bed, and we didn’t see her again until past New Year’s.”
“My God, Sherlock!”
Sherlock waved his hand. “Oh, she was fine. She was just overwhelmed. If nothing else, it put an end to the large Christmas dinners, and Christmases after were always just us, perhaps a few younger relatives. Much more intimate, which we all preferred, especially Mycroft. He has… difficulties, eating in large groups. Our grandmother once reprimanded him, at a birthday party, for his appalling manners, and eating in public has distressed him ever since.”
“How kind of her.”
“I should perhaps add that it was my birthday party. And he was ten.”
“Good Christ, Sherlock. She sounds like a piece of work.”
“Oh, she was.” Sherlock signalled for a glass of water, and one for John. “Thankfully, she died soon after. But poor Mycroft was never the same.”
“I can imagine.” John squeezed his lemon wedge into his water and dropped the mangled remains in after the juice. “You shouldn’t tease him, though. Knowing that, it just seems cruel.”
“On the contrary. Mycroft was so terrified of eating, he dropped an alarming amount of weight, very quickly. He would only eat properly if he could do so in his room, alone.”
Clinking the ice cubes in his glass, John reflected on this new information. He’d always felt rather uneasy when Sherlock teased Mycroft about his weight, but clearly it was Sherlock’s way of telling his brother when he looked healthy. Which, John had to admit, he did. Sherlock could definitely stand to put on a few pounds, but from a medical standpoint, and just from looking at him, Mycroft was well within normal ranges for a man of his age and height.
Besides, who was he to judge? It may look odd from the outside, but at least Mycroft and Sherlock talked to each other, which was more than he could say for his relationship with Harry. The last time they’d spoken, John had used some of the more colourful phrases he’d learned from the Americans he’d served with, and Harry had hung up the phone in tears.
The two of them sipped water silently, listening to the sounds of equipment grinding in the tunnel outside. The busiest travel day of the year was the worst possible time for a piece of track to come loose, but at least it was being repaired immediately.
John roused himself and called for another beer; sod the cost. “So then, what was your best Christmas? Surely not the same one,” he teased. “Even … how old were you when your uncle died?”
“Nine,” Sherlock replied; he seemed to be peering at the labels on the bottles behind the bar.
“Even a nine-year-old Sherlock could see there was no great mystery there. People get old; they die. So I’m hoping your best Christmas wasn’t one that included a body?”
“Actually, the best one, as a child, was the Christmas after Uncle Ian. It was the first one without the masses of relatives and people in the house, just the four of us. My father was home from Borneo – he was a botanist, I think I’ve told you – and my mother was on her holiday break from the university. We went to the cottage.”
“Same one we’re headed to now, right?”
“Yes, the very same. It’s been in the Holmes family for nearly a century. Rather than have Christmas in the manor house, we went to the cottage and had a quiet one. I got my first microscope that year, and Mycroft got me a chemistry set. Not one of the toy sets they have now, but a proper set, with real chemicals.”
John laughed and drained his water glass, setting it aside and picking up his beer. “Can I assume Sherlock at ten blew up the kitchen?”
Sherlock smiled, a genuine smile. “Not quite. My mother showed me a few simple experiments. She’d also got me a book, and we spent the rest of the week working on a few things. My father had donated some plant extracts, and I was able to produce a credible liquid digitalis. It wasn’t potent enough to treat anything of consequence, but I was quite proud, for a first attempt.”
Sipping his beer, John smiled. “Somehow I pictured you and Mycroft growing up like the typical poor little rich boys. You know, absent parents, raised by staff, more money than you knew what to do with. It’s a bit odd, picturing you and your mum at the kitchen table, mixing acids and bases.”
More and more people had trickled in to the dining car, and the bartender set a menu in front of Sherlock. “We’ll be starting the dinner service soon, gents,” he said. “You can stay here at the bar, or we can set you up at a table.”
John twisted on the stool, cracking his spine. He grimaced. “I think I need to sit in a proper chair,” he said. “My back needs a rest. Over there by the window okay?”
Sherlock nodded his assent, and John took his beer with him, sighing in relief as he sank into the padded chair. “I think I’m getting too old to perch on a bar stool.”
“You definitely aren’t doing your posture any favours by slouching all the time,” Sherlock said, his tone just touching on supercilious.
John flicked a crumpled paper wrapper from a straw at him. “Shut it, you. At least I’m not the one always hunched over the kitchen table!” Sherlock chuckled as he picked the bit of paper out of his hair and rolled it between his thumb and forefinger. They sat in the rapidly filling dining car in silence, breaking it only to order a light meal from the waiter.
“Well, then,” Sherlock said, still playing with the bit of paper, “you may as well tell me. What’s your best Christmas?”
“As a child?” When Sherlock nodded, John sifted through his memories. “Probably the year before the worst one. The last year my Gran Watson was with us. I think her dying probably set Harry down her road, you know? She was really close with Gran, and watching her … she died of MS. It was really hard for Harry. She was only fourteen when Gran was dying, and my parents were wrapped up dealing with the estate, and I think Harry just found stress relief where she could. But the Christmas before Gran died, it was perfect. We had snow, but not too much that it was impossible to travel. The weather wasn’t too cold, and both my parents were working, so we actually had a proper dinner, you know, with a goose and everything. Harry hadn’t started drinking yet, and my dad had got me a new pair of football boots.” He finished his beer and set it aside, just as the waiter deposited his fish and chips and Sherlock’s club sandwich on the table.
Sherlock immediately started disassembling his sandwich, setting the bread aside. He nibbled on the crispy bacon, and made a neat pile of the rest of the fillings. He picked up his fork and cut the tomato into bite-sized chunks. “And as an adult?”
John sprinkled malt vinegar on his chips and popped one in his mouth. For train food, it was surprisingly good, crispy and hot. He chewed thoughtfully as he watched Sherlock polish off the tomato and start on the sliced turkey.
“I think it was our first Christmas together. You know, the one with the awful party? Yeah, Jeannette broke up with me and you were horrible to Molly and Greg, and Irene Adler faked her death, and Mrs Hudson and I were afraid you’d go off and do something stupid, but before that, at least, it felt like a good Christmas. I just felt like I was in a good place. We’d been friends for almost a year, and I… I think I was already a little… You know. Even though I was dating Jeannette, it was kind of a relief when she dumped me. And even though there was all that drama…”
He trailed off, breaking his fish into smaller pieces. It was thickly battered, with a good amount of spice, one of the better meals he’d had in recent memory. “I don’t know. I guess that when I came home from Afghanistan, I was just at loose ends, you know? And then Mike introduced us, and, well, you know. And then it was the first Christmas I’d had in ten years where I wasn’t in the desert, up to my elbows in blood and shrapnel. So, even though I got dumped, and you made Molly cry, and Greg wanted to punch your lights out, it was still a pretty damn good Christmas.”
He took a bite and chewed as he watched Sherlock finish the turkey and crumble the rest of the bacon into dust on his plate. When the other man didn’t respond, he shrugged and signalled for another beer.
There was a lurch, and the train started moving again. The other passengers in the dining car cheered sporadically as the train picked up speed and exited the tunnel.
“I would be in complete agreement, John,” Sherlock said slowly as he finished shredding his bacon and started on the bread. “Were it not for this year.”
Startled, John looked up from his supper. “What? We’ve been stuck in a train for over three hours, two of them stationary. We’re on our way to visit your parents, which you have whinged about nonstop for three days, without grounds I might add, since I’ve met them and I know they’re perfectly lovely people. The weather is the coldest it’s been in five years, and if the driver is delayed and we can’t find a cab, there is a very real possibility of us getting frostbite or worse. I did get you a little gift, which you’ve probably deduced, and I’m sure you know it’s not a microscope or a chemistry set. So while this is definitely not in my list of worst Christmases ever, I’m not sure it will make the top five. Why is this one of your best?”
Sherlock looked at him steadily, as he continued to destroy the toast from his sandwich. He helped himself to one of John’s chips, face twisting as he got a mouthful of vinegar. “Because you’re here, John. The entire time I was away…” His gaze flickered to the side almost imperceptibly, before returning to meet John’s. “The entire time, I thought about you. Every day. And Christmas was just another day, then. It was just a day where I either hid in my dingy flat, or cheap hotel room, or, one year, in a very nice suite in Tunis, or it was a day where I went out and hunted. There was nothing Christmas about it, John. Once I shot a man in the lobby of a hotel. His blood didn’t show against the red garland on the walls.”
John was horrified, but he tried not to let it show on his face. Sherlock had never spoken so candidly about his time away before, and while he wished he hadn’t chosen such a public venue, he’s not going to stop Sherlock now that he’s talking.
Sherlock shifted his gaze, so he was looking off in the distance rather than directly at John. “The first one was hard. I was in New York, and the whole city was rainy, but it was lit up, there were lights everywhere. It doesn’t get properly dark in New York, and there are so many people. It took me until New Year’s Eve to find and kill my target there. And then I left.
“The second one was worse. I was in Tbilisi, huddled in a tiny flat above a restaurant. It had a broken window and no heat and it was probably as cold as it was now. And I was waiting for my man to come out of the bar across the street, trying to keep my hands warm. I had a cheap pistol I’d picked up outside Kyiv, and the cold kept locking the trigger mechanism. I’m surprised it didn’t misfire and blow my hand off.
“And the less said about the third, the better.”
Sherlock helped himself to more of John’s chips. “So, even though we’re trapped on a train for twice as long as we ought to be, and even though it’s minus twenty-five outside, and even though we’re on our way to see my parents, who are perfectly lovely but let’s be realistic, will make a fuss over you and give you new flannel pyjamas. They will make you hot and cranky and it will be unbearable to share a bed with you. And even though I know you did not get me a new microscope, and you are correct, I did deduce my gift and I think it’s perfect, thank you. So despite all of those things, this is still my best Christmas. Because it’s with you.”
John’s face felt unbearably hot in the close confines of the train car. He knew that Sherlock had done some terrible things and lived in absolute misery while he was away, but he never dreamed that something as simple as this, sharing space and time and meal with one’s best friend—rather, more than that, one’s partner—would be enough to bring peace to one’s heart.
He cleared his throat. “Well, then,” he said, and picked up his glass. There was only an inch or so of lager left, but it was enough. “I propose a toast. That wherever we may find ourselves on 25 December, whether in our flat with our friends, or with your parents, or here on a train in the middle of the West Country, it will be Christmas.”
Sherlock gravely clinked his glass with its bare half-inch of water in the bottom, against John’s. “Then to Christmas, wherever it may be found.”