A/N: Merry Christmas y'all! Hope you have a wonderful time and I hope you enjoy this if you take the time to read it. :P The second section will make more sense if you've read the story I'm working on now, but it'll make sense either way so you don't have to. I suppose you could see the ending as slash, but I didn't write it that way. Then again, of course, I'm not you, am I? Well, anyways, enjoy! (By the by, belive it or not, I don't own this.) ^-^
Sherlock didn't remember his first Christmas, but it was a nice one; well back before things had started going wrong, when he was blissfully oblivious to the world around him. His unusually intense gaze focused in on the flashing toy his brother had found for him at the store earlier. He smiled, grasped it in his hands, and rolled around on the floor, but he didn't make a sound. Despite being almost a year old, he had yet to make a single noise, and his parents were growing slightly concerned. But they pushed that to the backs of their minds, focusing instead on being a family and enjoying the holiday. All in all, Sherlock Holmes' first Christmas was a standard one. Since he was the youngest child, they made him Baby Jesus in the church Christmas play, which was only slightly hindered by the fact that he started feeling his oats about halfway through and decided that he was going to climb out of the cradle and explore, play be damned. The only thing that kept him in was being wrapped up like a sausage roll, and finally just falling asleep right at the end. Afterward, they all went home, where he slept calmly through the night, and Sherlock's first Christmas became a part of the past.
When he was ten years old, his Christmas wasn't so good, and Christmas Eve found him staring at Rebecca's ceiling. He rolled over on the couch as Rebecca came in, doing her best to smile brightly at him.
"We're about to head on over to the church for the service. You want to come with? It'll be fun, and I don't want you to be left here alone." Sherlock shrugged halfheartedly and sat up. He didn't say a word as he followed Rebecca's parents and brother out to the car, and he gazed off into the distance at the clear night sky. "It's pretty outside, ain't it?" Rebecca remarked quietly. Sherlock didn't respond. He sat at the back during the church service, and afterward he joined Rebecca by the organ while everyone else moved off for food in the parish hall. She was tapping out notes at random and slid over on the bench so he could join her. They pulled open the hymnal the organist had been using, which was still full of Christmas songs.
"I'll play the chords if you play the melody," Sherlock told her. They stayed there until one in the morning perfecting the timing until they decided to go and get some food before they left. "I have to go back home again tomorrow," Sherlock said. It was Rebecca's turn to stare out the window.
"I know. But that's tomorrow."
He didn't really remember Christmas when he was twenty. There wasn't much to remember, not after the drugs had their way with his mind, and shortly after twelve thirty a.m. Christmas Day, he found himself lying on a bench in Hyde Park with no memory of how he'd gotten there. He stared up at the overcast sky as he tried to shake off the residual delirium and find his way back to somewhere, but the trouble was he didn't have anywhere to go. A small boy of about five wandered by with his father, coming home from church, and meandered his way up to Sherlock. The two engaged in a minor staring contest before the boy tilted his head to the side and blinked. His father came over and told the boy to stop bothering him, to which he responded,
"I'm not bothering him. I wanted to give him these." He held up three brownies covered with plastic wrap and turned back to Sherlock, continuing, "You're really skinny, so you need to eat more, and mama makes really good food. Besides, since she gave them to me, they're mine, so now I can give them to you." Without bothering to wait for a response, he plopped the brownies down on the bench and bounced off toward his home. And that was the only thing Sherlock remembered from Christmas when he was twenty.
Three years after that, he was more or less in the same state, except instead of a park bench, he found himself picking the lock on Lestrade's front door when it opened before he could get it. A teenage girl leaned out from behind it and arched an eyebrow at him.
"Hey dad, you've got a visitor!" She moved off, leaving the door open. Lestrade came up and saw Sherlock, who stood outside, not sure what to say.
"I need a place to stay." Lestrade nodded, not surprised. He let Sherlock in, left him in the living room, and moved off to find his wife. His wife was understandably reluctant to let a drug addicted stranger stay in their house, but Lestrade would rather have the man at his house than wandering around on the streets and risking his life. While Sherlock sat in the living room, a little boy of about two entered and did his best to climb up onto the couch, but was having little success. Sherlock reached down and pulled him up onto the cushion, after which the boy did his best to crawl onto Sherlock like a human jungle gym. Sherlock was trying to push him off of his chest when Lestrade came back in.
"Tim, get down." He pulled the little one off of Sherlock and set him on the floor. "Um, we're about to go to church, but you can come or stay here if you like." Sherlock flicked his gaze toward the older man.
"I'll stay." Around twelve fifteen, before the rest had gotten back from the service, Sherlock fell asleep on the couch, where Lestrade found him and covered him up. And that was how he spent Christmas when he was twenty-three.
Five years after that, things had finally gotten better. He and John bounded up the stairs, laughing about the case they'd just wrapped up. It was a long story, but it involved a fistfight an old grudge and Santa getting a flying tackle into the mall fountain, and they were glad to be done with it. It was about six thirty on Christmas Eve when they made it back, trying to slip in a couple hours of relaxation before the night.
"Didn't your mum want you to go to the Christmas service tonight?" John asked the taller man. He nodded.
"She wants me to bring you along too. We'll need to leave at ten to make it there on time." Sherlock lay himself out flat on the couch and picked up his violin, playing nothing in particular. John wandered over to listen.
"Here, move your feet, I want to sit down." Sherlock slid his feet up off the cushion and John seated himself next to him. Sherlock continued playing, this time switching to an old American carol, slow and calm, closing his eyes. He looked more peaceful than John had seen him in a long time. John smiled to himself. "I got you a gift." He handed Sherlock a small, unwrapped Christmas ornament. It was shaped like a roll of crime scene tape, and Sherlock couldn't help but smile at it. "I got that while you were having the rugby match with Santa Claus. I thought you'd like it."
"Thanks. Now I need to get you something." John snorted and rolled his eyes. Sherlock grinned, lifted his violin back up, and continued playing the same song. The two men sat there comfortably for a couple more hours before going to his mother's house. And so, that was how Sherlock passed his twenty-eighth Christmas.