Work Text:
He unlocks the door to 221B, but just as he’s about to thump up the stairs, he sees the footprints and freezes mid-step.
His eyes rapidly travel up the steps following the light, muddy tread pattern of John’s boots, noting immediately that the weight distribution shows he’s carrying something heavy and ungainly with considerable effort.
Rosie. Asleep, limp, awkwardly balanced on his right side. He pictures John carrying Rosie home from preschool, her head slowly drooping onto his shoulder, John taking the opportunity to nuzzle her wild hair in this brief, sweet moment of babyness, gradually grimacing as she gets heavier with every step.
Sherlock squints at the bootprints, purses his lips. Her backpack is slung on his left arm. The bag is unzipped, apparently, due to the single tape-and-construction paper creation that’s drifted out and become stuck between the banister rungs. He’s carrying her backpack and…something else, something noisy he’s trying to keep quiet as he laboriously climbs, a crackly plastic bag, perhaps.
Sherlock walks up the stairs on tiptoe, retrieves the bit of art from the rungs that upon closer inspection is saturated with acid-green crayon scribbles, overlaid with so much clear tape that it’s nearly lacquered. He opens the door to their flat soundlessly and sees the boot prints leading through the kitchen and into Rosie’s room. The backpack has been dropped onto John’s chair, indeed unzipped.
It’s quiet in the flat, but Sherlock doesn’t think he’ll find Rosie asleep in her bed, John conked out in the rocker nearby with his book open in his lap. A quick glimpse into Sherlock’s old bedroom, now an explosion of legos, picture books and soft animals, walls covered in her art (he tacks up the acid-green paper to join the others) proves his assumption. John’s bootprints lead to her bed where the disruption of the blankets show she laid, however briefly, asleep. Long enough for John to sit in the rocker and take off his boots which are still there. Curiously, all of her pillows are missing from her small bed.
There was a nap, but it was disrupted early (they were warned about this, of course, the end of Naps, which means he should drink a strong cup of tea soon to better cope at bedtime when she’s gone wild with adrenaline, running around the flat screaming about the many delights of excrement).
Back in the kitchen, he examines the abandoned remnants of an experiment, several of his beakers strewn about the counter with a stool pulled up, each one filled with a mixture of vividly colored liquid, sticky with residues of (he tastes) flour, food coloring, baking soda, cocoa powder, bubble bath. There is something else, ah yes. Pulverized graham crackers. He smiles proudly, surveying the countertop. She even used his mortar to do the job.
But this couldn’t have lasted longer than 15 minutes, not judging by the quantity of ingredients used combined with the half-sink of dishes John was able to clean in the time she was occupied. “She normally would have been at this for at least another 15 minutes, but she… yes, she got hungry.”
In his chair (always in his chair) he finds her small blue plastic sectioned plate with the debris of a snack, surprisingly only half-finished. Mozzarella stick sliced into coin-size pieces to be habitually dipped in…
Ketchup. He winces. Damn, they were out of ketchup. Yes, there were the clear signs of a tantrum over this transgression in routine - his papers flung behind the chair, and even some cheese coins thrown across the room all the way to their desks. Well aimed, he thinks with admiration.
He absently picks up the bits of cheese as he stalks back across the room, noting the recent addition on John’s white board by the door (newly-installed to help them remember to pick up things at the shops). The ink that has written ‘ketchup’ is very firmly pressed with three lines of emphasis beneath it. Must’ve been a doozey of a tantrum. But something quieted her…distracted her. “She remembered something… something more attractive than Experiments…”
Yes, there on the coffee table is the other bag John had been carrying, thin plastic with a gaudy yellow smiley face saying “Thank You!” that only comes from the corner shop that Rosie begs him to stop at on the way home from school. A fresh Robots in Action coloring book is on the floor under the table. Sherlock crouches, thumbs through it, already half-filled with scrawls and blooms of crayon that were surely accompanied by a running soundtrack of destruction and explosions. The crayons have been abandoned around the book, peeled and snapped and rubbed down to nubs. He stands. Little peelings of crayon paper are in the cracks of the sofa cushions, the impression of John’s body spanning both cushions plus a cold half-drunk cup of tea showing that John was on hand to assist, but clearly worn out by the tantrum and attempting to take advantage of her preoccupation with a half-hearted nap.
But they’re not here anymore, not for at least an hour judging by the temperature of the tea and coagulation of the milk on the surface. Rosie’s little red galoshes are by the door and John’s coat is on the hook, so they haven’t left, meaning… Sherlock experimentally tiptoes up the stairs.
He pokes his head around the doorframe of he and John’s bedroom and grins. Their bed has been transformed into a brilliant fort, blankets strung up with pins, ‘walls’ reinforced with pillows, clearly every pillow in the flat (which answers that puzzle). There are signs of a battle - the rug scuffed with footfalls and somersaults. He can picture John laughing through his best baddie snarl, ducking foam blocks chucked by Pirate Rosie from the deck of her ship. They’re strewn around on the floor with three days’ of their discarded clothes, John’s wooden sword flung aside as he fell, defeated by a tiny blonde pirate.
He tiptoes through the rubble and peeks inside the flap of the fort. In the gloom of the blankets he can just make out the dandelion flax of Rosie’s head snuggled against John’s chest. John is snoring quietly, his eye-patch askew. Sherlock’s heart squeezes as he’s met with the mingled smell of Rosie and John, the two people he loves best in all this world, their breath soft and rhythmic with sleep.