Outside temperatures soared to summer-like heights for the fourth day in a row, while rare cloudless skies allowed the sun to beat down on the asphalt, kicking the mercury ever higher day after day as heat ricocheted up and down Baker Street in both directions. Of course, it had to be during a week of uncharacteristic October warmth that the hydronic heating system in the building should decide to go on the fritz, flooding each floor with unbearable mugginess on account. Opening the windows provided no respite during the day, and though the apartments could be cooled considerably at night, it never mattered much by mid-morning when the inside temperatures were suddenly on par with the outside. The stifling stillness of the air rendered the front parlour only marginally more habitable than the back bedroom.
Thus, Sherlock Holmes sat in his chair across from the television, a bag of frozen peas balanced on top of his head, the drapes drawn tight against the blaze of the midday sun. Two rotating fans blew tepid air across his skin, but didn't seem to provide much more relief than having the window open had done; beads of sweat stood up against the skin of his forearms, at the nape of his neck, and along his brow.
There was nothing for him to do. So he sat, patiently, waiting for the promise of rain and cooler weather to be delivered across the city, watching Christmas movies.
Sherlock's relationship with Christmas was a fraught one. As a child, the existence of a day in which he would be lavished with gifts for simply being present in the same room as certain members of his family was not without its charms, although he could have easily done without the yearly Christmas jumper knitted for him by his Nan. But he was not taken in entirely. In his first year at nursery school, he (correctly) deduced that Santa Claus was not a real person by comparing samples of his mother's handwriting with the gift tags on "Santa's" presents, and when—in an act of community service, he thought—he brought the proof to school to enlighten his classmates, his parents subsequently incurred the wrath of nearly two dozen angry sets of parents whose distraught children had come home in tears over the revelation.
For two years of his early adolescence, he outsourced his Christmas gift-buying to various neighbourhood children as a time-saving maneuver, although most of these "employees" were quite limited in the areas they could conceivably travel to so he was stuck giving gifts of boxed candy, cheap perfume, and checkout line paperback novels from the chemist's shop two blocks away.
And at the age of 17, his impassioned defence of the Grinch—who, he claimed, had a perfectly legitimate noise complaint against the citizens of Whoville and was somewhat within his rights to lay siege to their village—caused his beleaguered mother so much grief that she hid all of his presents and filled his stocking with coal before retreating to the back garden to chain smoke three cigarettes in what became the first and last time either he or Mycroft had ever seen her smoke.
He spent all of his university Christmas holidays at school after that.
Of course, he understood the draw of Christmas—the midwinter festivity, celebrating with light on the long dark nights, surrounded by people with whom you enjoyed spending time (because that stuff was important to neurotypicals.) There were always a handful of times every year when he wished he could, temporarily, suspend his rationality and give in to the season. But inevitably seeing the normally sane people he worked and socialized with completely lose their minds and dig themselves into end-of-calendar-year credit card debt for tacky gifts and tackier decor struck him as self-indulgent silliness on par with the belief in a miraculous virgin birth. It simply did not compute.
So on this blazing hot mid-autumn day, as he sat watching film after film, attempting to reproduce the chill of winter in the sauna that was currently his flat, he was surprised to feel a twinge of longing. Nostalgia and sentiment not being his forte, it was perhaps unsurprising that Sherlock did not long for the disappointing Christmases of his own past but for the idyllic Christmases of the collective consciousness; for yule logs and fir trees and mulled wine and carollers and even department store Santa Clauses. The kind of Christmas you'd find on 34th Street or in Bedford Falls or the Chicago belonging to the McAllisters and Griswolds.
This was the Christmas he suddenly decided he wanted to have.
In London, of all cities.
He was going to need a few things. Tradition dictated a certain amount of baking was required, as was the procurement of a festive meal consisting of some manner of poultry, a boiled root vegetable or two, and—for some reason—cranberries. There was the requisite Christmas card mailout—certainly the only time of year when the Royal Mail justified its continued existence, based solely on the number of cards his mother still posted at the beginning of December. What about Christmas music? The thought of Christmas gifts momentarily caused him a slight panic, but it was October and online shopping was a beautiful thing. Gifts would naturally mean he'd need a tree under which to put them. And, of course, recipients for the gifts. Which meant he'd need to drum up a guest list…
There was a lot of work to do. And he was definitely going to need some help…
Downstairs, the plumbers had arrived. He could hear the clank of their tools and thudding work boots on the stairs to the basement.
Sherlock paid them no mind.
He had a party to plan.