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Sherlock lay beside John, head propped up, ankles crossed in front of him, fingers steepled and tucked beneath his chin. Thinking pose in full effect. He was trying to quiet his mind enough to sleep. If not as deeply as John, limbs thrown octopus wild, then at least deeply enough to gain a few REM cycles before morning came.
For awhile, Sherlock slept daily, when Theo was born and demanded attention and Sherlock couldn’t tune the world out fully and just think because suddenly here was this baby whose existence depended on his attention and John couldn’t do it all on his own.
Sometimes he was out securing more necessities and others he had simply dropped into a dead faint from over exertion and poor self care and tuning all his instincts into Theo. And Sherlock couldn’t fault him for the faint. Engaging with the world full time was exhausting. He didn’t know how normal people functioned.
On more than one occasion, Sherlock had found himself so worn out as to actually have fallen asleep unintentionally and would stay so for more consecutive hours than he ever had in his entire adult life theretofore. He would wake and be appalled at all of the time he’d wasted sleeping instead of the million and one productive things he could have been doing. But he could not deny that his body felt rejuvenated for it, which he refused to admit to John whom would have just forced the issue of more regular lengthy rest periods. Every several days was regular.
Now, with Theo older and demanding less attention, Sherlock was able to drift more and his insomniatic tendencies were reasserting themselves. He would find himself awake long after John and Theo had retired, deeply immersed in his current experiments or case notes or his music or his head. He would come back outside of himself to the darkness long having settled over London and on occasion to daylight reintroducing herself.
Sherlock tried to lull his brain with melodies he and John had used on Theo when he was very young and resisting naps. John had bought the music boxes with pre-recorded songs on them but Sherlock had found the music trite and uninspired. He’d disposed of the music boxes and wrote Theo songs himself on his violin and recorded those until sometimes he, too, would fall asleep to the sweet melodies, Theo on his lap or nearby and both drifting off to the sounds of Sherlock playing his son to sleep and softly, in almost whispered words, singing the few words he’d penned to some of the songs.
These songs and their accompanying memories helped soothe Sherlock- of Theo young, at only months, at 2, at 3, in Sherlock’s arms or in his lap or lounging across the whole of Sherlock, taking up as much space of Sherlock’s person as his little infant and toddler body could possess. Breathing and snoring and shifting, trying to make himself comfortable, cuddling closer and digging himself a deeper mark in Sherlock’s heart.
Sherlock settled down with these thoughts, prepared to once again let his memories and melodies tease him into slumber when he heard a creak. A sound on the stairs. Descending. Little but growing feet making their way toward Sherlock with quiet steps. A soft tap on the door that couldn’t quite be qualified as a knock then that, too, was creaking in entrance.
Theo stuck his head round the opening and peered in through the poor light of the hallway and the dim glow of John’s digital clock.
“Papa? Daddy?” Theo whispered, hesitant, unsure.
He didn’t wait for an answer before moving deeper into the room. He closed the door, shutting out even the hallway’s weak gleam, moving about this confidently, if nothing else. He made his way to the bed he’d been in countless times- slept in, jumped in, played in, hid in. He found his way to Sherlock’s side and tried again.
“Papa?”
Sherlock moved slowly as not to scare him and held out his hand. Theo either saw or sensed the silent invitation as he used that hand to lever himself upon the bed and Sherlock’s person, shifting down and cuddling in like he had when he was a slightly younger child.
Theo had not sought a cuddle in awhile. At six, Theo already had friends whose fathers were teaching them early on about how to go about “being a man.” Seeking physical affection was apparently very high on the list of “don’ts,” and so Theo, in his desire to fit in, had refrained.
Sherlock and John had always tried to teach Theo that it was okay to want a hug, or a kiss, or just a smile directed your way.
Sherlock did not come from a tactile family. They eschewed touch as if it would physically harm them to partake. Their affection was of the cold kind. A sort of pride, in things one of them accomplished. A stilted conversation, when one was forced to have one. A nod of approval, when one did something deemed acceptable and befitting of the family. His family was present, and they cared, but they were never demonstrative, never close. Sherlock did not think he had actually touched Mycroft, let alone hugged him or anything of the sort, since he was in short pants.
John came from a more open family. They hugged and kissed and smiled and laughed. But even with them Sherlock would sometimes tell someone was running from something. He could never tell how, he could never say from what.
So John was the touchy one in their relationship. At least at the start. He opened Sherlock up to it and eventually made him realise that it was acceptable for him to want those things, too. To initiate an affection if he was desirous or in need of one. And they impressed this one Theo. John, who was used to it, but whose affection had layers, and Sherlock, who had not grown up knowing such affection and refused to allow his son to be raised the same or to return to that condition himself.
Sherlock stroked Theo’s hair where he laid his long body along Sherlock’s.
“Nightmare?” he queried.
“Mm,” Theo affirmed.
He lay against Sherlock’s chest and wound his arms around Sherlock’s back, pressing in further to his father.
They lie there awhile, Sherlock stroking Theo’s hair and rubbing soothing patterns onto his back. He began to hum, one of the tunes he’d written for his boy years ago. One to replace the trite and uninspired children’s melodies of the world.
He hummed, then he began to sing, in a voice soft and low, not made for singing but still perfectly able to carry a tune. And he’d sing this one until he was without voice.
“As I watch you sleeping
Listening to your deep breathing
I whisper secret things into your ear
You are loved, you are loved, you are loved
From the moment you drew breath
Until the one that claims my death
You are loved
I thank the world that you are mine
And will be ‘til the end of time
You are loved
So my darling, take your rest
You are safe and you are blessed
You are loved.”
Sherlock finished singing and hummed the last few measures of the song. Theo tightened his arms around Sherlock’s back and squeezed.
“I love you, Papa.”
“I love you, too, Theodore.”
They lay in silence for awhile until Sherlock asked, “Would you like to sleep here tonight?”
A barely perceptible head bob upon Sherlock’s chest gave the answer. Sherlock felt it more than saw it.
“Come on, then,” he said as he shifted them to their sides with Theo lying between he and John, how it had been so many nights before.
Theo crawled beneath one of John’s splayed arms and pushed his leg into a more comfortable position for himself. John adjusted to the shifting by bringing his body inwards, automatically curling towards the body curling towards his. Sherlock joined the melee by curling his own chest against Theo’s back, making them an indecipherable mass of limbs how he liked it.
One of John’s arms reached out to tuck Theo closer against his chest and the other moved across Sherlock’s body until it found his hand and John laced their fingers. Sherlock looked at him to discover John’s eyes were glued to his and practically bursting with affection. He kissed the top of Theo’s now snoring head, looked at Sherlock, and said, “You are both loved.”