As The Months Go By
Disclaimer: I do not own Sherlock or any of the characters, they belong to the BBC, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and any other respective owners. I also don't own anything I reference throughout.
A/N: So I've had this little parent!lock idea on a word document for about a year or so now and I watched Sherlock again with my mum recently and had a lot of JohnLock feels so I decided to *finally* write it. There may be some trigger material, particularly in the first chapter (e.g childbirth, complications, minor character death ect) but aside from that I think this is quite a nice, neutral fic. I put it as a mature rating because of the mature subject matter of raising a child, plus some minor violence (obvs in Sherlock's kind of work) and some minor, but not especially explicit, sexytime scenes. Set after Scandal, so with S1 and S2 spoilers. Hope y'all enjoy xx
Chapter One - Due Date
"Sherlock, why on Earth didn't you tell me?"
Sherlock sighed and continued typing on his laptop, updating a case on his website about a man who had been murdered by three garden peas.
"It didn't seem important at the time."
"IMPOR...IMPORTANT!" John stopped himself, pressing his fingers to his lips, something Sherlock realised he always did when he tried to calm himself down. Why he was so pre-occupied with Sherlock's affairs, however, he would never know.
"Sherlock," began John again, "you are having a baby."
Sherlock gave him no response and John felt the ire rise in his stomach. "You are having a baby!"
Sherlock shut his laptop with force. "John, I am not having a baby. I'm a sperm donor, nothing more, do you understand?"
"So you just thought one day you'd donate sperm?" Asked John incredulously.
"Of course not," answered Sherlock, "Maggie's a friend of mine from university. She doesn't have any other family, she wanted a child. I did her a favour."
John was shaking his head, Sherlock frowned. "What's the problem?" He asked.
John laughed humourlessly. "The problem, Sherlock, is what if this doesn't go smoothly?"
"Why wouldn't it?" Asked Sherlock, "I mean, statistically births are..."
"No," John cut him off, "I mean, what if you can't give this baby up?"
Sherlock must have missed the complete seriousness on John's face because he merely rolled his eyes. "Come on, John, be realistic. I've never felt emotionally attached to anything in my life."
John bowed his head, he knew that shouldn't hurt, he knew that there were more pressing matters at hand and on top of things he knew it was complete bullshit but just hearing Sherlock say it made it worse.
"You know what?" John asked rhetorically. "You are the cleverest man in the whole universe and at exactly the same time you are the most stupid."
Sherlock frowned but John didn't have anything more to say, he walked out of the flat, wringing his hands together, trying not to care as much as he did.
….
John sat in a cafe, nursing a hot cup of coffee, warming his cold hands. Across the table from him, Greg Lestrade was sipping his own cappuccino, staring back at John with concern.
"Sherlock is having a baby." John reiterated, more like he was talking to himself than to Lestrade.
"Well, it's not like he's actually having a baby." Lestrade added in.
John looked up at him disbelievingly. "I'm sorry, what part of having a biological baby with a woman is not having a baby?" He asked testily.
"Well, yeah okay," Lestrade conceded, taking another sip of coffee, "but still, it's not like Sherlock is settling down or anything, he's helping out a friend. Besides, everyone has babies at some point."
"Sherlock doesn't." John responded immediately. "He just...can't."
"Hey, nothing's going to change." Lestrade reminded him. "A kid isn't going to hold Sherlock back, you're both still going to be doing the same things you always did."
John shook his head. "You see, that's not the problem."
"Then what is?"
"What if Sherlock really doesn't care about this child? I mean, it's due in two weeks and he's already pretty nonchalant, he didn't even tell me about it. What if he sees his baby for the first time and he feels...nothing."
Lestrade shrugged but there was discomfort in his eyes. "Then he'll just be being Sherlock."
John rubbed his forehead. "Sometimes it scares me that Sherlock might be this heartless creature. But then what if he does fall in love with this child?"
John chuckled humourlessly.
"Sherlock's life is going to turn completely upside down and he doesn't even know it."
"You're just gonna have to be there for him when it happens."
"You really think Sherlock is going to let get anywhere near?" John asked dryly, raising an eyebrow.
"Well, you are his best friend, aren't you?" Lestrade shot back, chuckling as he took another gulp of coffee.
John shook his head before he sighed frustratedly, leaning precariously far back on his chair whilst grasping his fingers on the edge of the wooden table until his knuckles paled. The action didn't go unnoticed by the detective inspector.
"It was never meant to be this way." John finally said, humourless smile finding its way onto his grim expression.
"Sherlock and I were supposed to..." But he had no idea how he was supposed to finish that sentence.
"I know." Was all Lestrade said in response, all mirth gone from his voice. Because he did know. He did.
…
"You have to go."
"No I don't."
"Yes, Sherlock, you do."
"I don't see what you're making such a big fuss out of this, John."
It was the complete lack of emotion in Sherlock's voice that irritated him the most. He wanted to shout, dear God did he want to shout in Sherlock's face about how he needed to get his blasé arse to the hospital immediately but logically realised that all that would do was garner a negative response from the consulting detective. So, instead of shouting, he pressed his fingers to his lips for a moment, regaining composure before he started again slowly.
"Sherlock. Maggie is being induced, this is your child. You need to go, you need to support her. You said she had no one else."
Sherlock fixed John with a stare so intense that it could almost be called accusing.
"John, pray tell me why you care so much about her birthing situation."
John liked to think that he had no idea why he was getting so involved in Sherlock's affairs, and why he was pressing for Sherlock to attend the birth of his first born but the answer presented itself to him quite neatly.
"Because I know what it's like to be alone." He replied honestly.
Sherlock's face made no change but the look in his eye did, his pupils seemed to immediately dilate, the whites of his eyes glazed over as if they'd frozen or turned to glass.
"Okay." Was all Sherlock said before he closed his laptop and stood. "Statistically, the labour time scale is between four and eight hours so we shouldn't be there all..."
The relief that was coursing sweetly through John Watson immediately dissipated as he fixed Sherlock with a confused stare.
"We? You...want me to come with you?"
"Of course." Sherlock said, eyes trained on him as he wrapped a navy blue scarf around his neck. "It was your suggestion, after all."
John rolled his eyes but liked to think that Sherlock was just really subtly asking for his support at such a time.
By the time they'd reached the hospital, John's stomach was churning inside him. Although he was a specialised field medic, he'd learned about pregnancy and child birth during his training and was consciously aware of all the complications that could arise, to mother and child.
As he glanced across to Sherlock in the back seat of the cab, still ridiculously calm and collected and lost in his phone, he wondered how much birthing knowledge he had tucked away in his mind palace.
John would wager not a lot, and everything he did know would probably be purely theory. Not to mention the fact that, although John was fairly certain Sherlock had another brother aside from Mycroft, he was still the youngest of the Holmes family and had no pregnancy or baby siblings in his memory.
They were directed to the birthing suite by the receptionist and by the time they got there, there were already two nurses waiting outside.
A young male turned to them and his eyes lit up.
"Ah, which one of you is 'Dad'?" He asked brightly.
John watched Sherlock's jaw set and was waiting for him to coolly explain how he was nothing more than a sperm donor but instead he merely nodded.
"That would be me." He said slowly.
The other nurse, a middle-aged female, smiled before beckoning him forward. "Okay, if you'd like to follow me. You'll have to wait outside, I'm afraid." That last bit, however, was directed at John.
John's stomach was churning far too loudly for her words to really register so he merely nodded at her.
"Yeah, I'll be out here if you need me...Sherlock." His hand enclosed around the detective's bicep before he could be dragged away. Sherlock merely regarded him with an empty expression.
"Good luck." Was all John could say.
"I'm doing this for you, John." Sherlock said pointedly, before pulling his arm free and disappearing into the birthing suite; long coat flicking out behind him.
The fluttering that came from John's heart was almost painful and he forced himself to calm down as he looked around the now empty corridor.
He found his way to an uncomfortable plastic chair against the wall, a pile of dog-eared health magazines perched on the small coffee table beside it.
But he didn't pick up a magazine, he instead contented himself by practically shoving his entire fist into his mouth and bouncing his knees worriedly, wondering exactly what it was that Sherlock had gotten himself into.
…
The two nurses took Sherlock to the bed that Maggie was in and he was struck, almost immediately, by just how sickly she looked.
The small, almost neat swell at her stomach was covered by a floral hospital gown and her legs were splayed at an awkward, uncomfortable angle.
Her usual chestnut ringlets were sweat-dampened and rat-tailed, her pink skin was a dark red and her eyes looked sunken in and drawn out. But as she lifted her gaze to him, a smile broke out across her face.
"What is it? What's wrong?" Sherlock asked the female nurse before she had a chance to bustle off.
"Bacterial infection," the nurse said in a hushed voice, "she's been suffering with it for most of the pregnancy, we're worried it could develop into T.S.S."
The words 'TOXIC SHOCK SYNDROME' blared in front of Sherlock's eyes as he made the known link with dead, diseased blood and shook the mental image quickly away.
"What about a ciserian?" He asked hopefully. "Wouldn't that minimise a risk?"
"Sherlock..." Maggie said weakly.
"I'm afraid we may be too far gone now to try that, she's already beginning to dilate." And with that, the nurse shot off before he could ask anymore questions, like he was an idiot who wouldn't understand her explanations.
He fought off a frown and replaced it with a large, reassuring smile as he perched himself on the bed next to his childhood friend and slipped his hand into hers. It was cold and clammy and he wanted to retract his own immediately but he didn't.
"I was worried you weren't going to come." She said in a breathy voice.
He felt an uncharacteristic stab of guilt in his stomach, mainly from seeing her in the state she was in, but forced the guilt down.
"Of course." He said quickly. "Err...I didn't want you to be alone."
Tears were suddenly falling down her face as she grasped Sherlock's hand painfully tight. "I knew I could count on you, Sherlock." She said, smiling. "I don't know how I can ever thank you."
He shook his head gently. "You don't have to..."
She arched off the bed suddenly, grunting in pain from the sudden contraction that had swept through her straining muscles and Sherlock winced at the nails biting into the flesh of his palm before he quickly reasoned that he wasn't the one pushing a 7lb baby out of a centimetre hole.
"So, have you named him yet?" He asked quickly, in an attempt to distract her. She was breathing heavily, beads of sweat dripping from her forehead but she managed to shake her head.
"No, not yet. Wanted him to...to introduce himself..."
Sherlock nodded seriously as he eyed the pert bump at her stomach. It seemed awfully small, perhaps he would only be a tiny little thing.
Sherlock shook his head minutely as he stared. He understood the basic mechanics of parenthood, and of apparent unconditional love but now he was faced with the birth of his first born and he felt...nothing. Absolutely nothing.
He felt more care and concern for his very fragile friend, but he couldn't recall exactly why he'd agreed to such a thing in the first place.
When she'd invited him around for dinner all those months ago and breached the subject, he'd been all too quick to accept.
At the time it had seemed so...logical. It made perfect sense for her to want his sperm rather than anyone else's. He was brilliant, moderately attractive, healthy and with no genetic diseases and dispositions and he knew he would never have a romantic and familial bond with anyone for it to be a problem.
But surely it couldn't have been all logic, surely he must have helped her because he cared for her? Or was it because he had a lack of care for her? Would it be as easy for him to hand over such a thing to, say, John?
Regardless of this, he still found himself leaning into her and saying quietly, "listen, Maggie...I..." He swallowed. "If you ever need...you know...money or...you can count on me, you know that, don't you?"
She barely got out another tearful nod before she was arching off the bed again, this spasm seemed to shake her entire frame and lasted twice the length of the last one.
"Err...err...nurse!" He called out suddenly, surprisingly unsure of what to do as she let go of his hand and dug her nails into the linen beneath her, ripping it apart as if it were made of paper.
Sherlock stared, appalled, as concealed blood seeped from beneath her dressing gown and jumped immediately from the bed. Despite the fact he'd physically sniffed corpses before, he suddenly felt the urge to vomit.
Then people in scrubs were swarming around her and a pair of hands tangled in Sherlock's arms and were pulling backwards.
"What is it, what's happening?" He asked, looking around himself blindly to find the male nurse from before giving him a distressing look.
"You'll have to wait outside," he said frantically, "we don't have much time."
"Much time for what, what's happening?" Sherlock pressed.
"I'm sorry." Was all he said. "Just wait outside with your friend, we'll let you know the minute we know anything." And with that, he'd rushed back over to Maggie's bed.
Sherlock span on his heel but they'd pulled the sky blue curtain around her bed.
Despite his better judgement, he turned back and headed for the door. Her pained grunts followed him out.
…
"Queen Elizabeth II's predecessor?" John mused quietly to himself, tapping his pen against the thin paper agitatedly.
"King George VI." Came Sherlock's dull voice from his side.
John turned his head immediately, wincing at the stab of pain in his shoulder, as he watched Sherlock sink down onto the plastic chair next to his, face drawn and expression blank.
"Sh...Sherlock..." John began, throwing his crossword aside. "What happened? She couldn't have..."
"She hasn't." Sherlock interrupted, eyes still unwavering and dead ahead. "They...something is wrong."
"Like what?" John asked, feeling a pit form in his stomach.
"Toxic shock, they think." He replied.
John closed his eyes, remembering all too clearly the amputation case files he'd read on that particular issue, or worse.
"Do you know much about it?" John asked, interlocking his fingers tightly.
"A bit." Sherlock replied, inclining his head to John. "Blood poisoning, right?"
John nodded, mouth suddenly dry. "Don't worry," he attempted a shallow smile. "People recover from it all the time. Women are strong creatures."
"Are newborns?" Was all Sherlock said. It was a quiet, dejected sentence and John had no idea how to respond. He wanted to reach out, unsure whether he wanted to put an arm around him or maybe just hold his hand, but he couldn't.
All they could do was wait.
John rubbed his face with his hand for a moment before he seized his crossword from where he'd haphazardly thrown it.
"Err...okay, six down. Largest ocean in the world."
Sherlock didn't answer for a moment, and John doubted he was going to, but he eventually said "pacific."
…
John leaned against the wall, feeling decidedly weak as he covered his face with his hand.
Sherlock had been gone a long while and he was unsure if he was supposed to wait for him, but he supposed he would have done even if Sherlock had told him to go.
He checked his watch. Seven forty-five AM. He winced but dared not close his eyes, lest sleep overcome him and he collapsed onto the hospital floor.
Although pure anxiety was the only thing keeping him awake in that moment, he wondered where Sherlock was, and what they were saying to him. And what had happened to the baby.
Oh Christ, he thought to himself as his head swam.
…
Sherlock watched the saddened look in the doctor's eyes and believed it.
He himself felt too hollow and too empty for any kind of expression, let alone feeling.
"I'm so sorry, Mr. Holmes. This is an unexpected tragedy, I can understand how difficult this must be for you."
Sherlock knew that later he would claim that he'd felt detached from such human emotion but in reality, it was difficult for him.
He didn't understand what he was supposed to be feeling, or the empty pull in his stomach. He felt like he needed to sleep but knew that he wouldn't.
"Where is she?" He asked quietly.
"They've taken her body down to the morgue, to be formally identified by a family member..."
"She didn't have any family." Sherlock quickly supplied. "Orphan, between foster homes, nothing stuck..." The tragedy of what had occurred suddenly impressed upon him and he felt the tiredness in his sore eyes, he momentarily closed his lids and when he opened them he saw the doctor staring at him with a look of forlorn pity.
Sherlock was passed caring.
"Then, I'm afraid, we'll have to ask you to..."
Sherlock nodded quickly, familiar with the procedure of body identification, he'd done it enough times. To cadavers or murder victims but never before to a friend, to the mother of his...
His stomach swam and he clutched at his side, worried for a moment that bile would rise in his throat but it didn't.
He followed the doctor silently down to the morgue. Wishing, bizarrely, that they were in Barts and he could see Molly's sympathetic smile, or that John was by his side as he always was.
He couldn't even shake the thoughts off, he was so drained, he just let his mind wander where it may into far off, sleep-deprived open spaces; it was sufficient distraction from what he was about to do.
That was what it had always been about. Distraction.
Sherlock never felt fear, he couldn't recall a time in his life when he had. Of course, worry and stress in the form of fear had been a constant in his childhood, from bullies to his dysfunctional excuse for a family but real, bone-trembling fear was alien to him.
But he felt something akin to it, something in his gut close to terror as he looked down upon her and felt the same emptiness inside of him. He'd seemed to care for her so greatly in her time of need but now she looked so cold and calm, it was like the logical part of his brain was telling him she didn't require his comfort any more so he wasn't offering her any.
There were few times in his life that he worried he was genuinely messed up. He'd half-accepted within himself that he was a bad person that worked in a different way to the rest of the world but it was times like this that he worried he was a monster.
He quickly identified her and signed his name next to hers. Maggie Camplin.
Having already memorised the schematics of the building, the minute they left the morgue, Sherlock made a beeline for the reception area where he'd left John but was held back by a gentle hand on his arm. He wished people would stop touching him.
"Mr. Holmes." The doctor said gently, pulling him back ever so slightly. "The birthing suite is back this way."
"The birthing suite?" Sherlock asked, confusion finding its way into his dull voice.
The doctor, however, seemed to think he was confused about something else.
"Yes, I know. I'm afraid with all the commotion we didn't have time or staff to move your son from the suite. He's asleep in one of the incubators, but don't worry, he's absolutely fine."
The doctor's smile was supposed to be reassuring but all Sherlock felt was a cold twist inside of himself. He felt no joy at the miracle of the child's arrival, just a cold dread at the fact that it was alone in the world, just like its mother had been.
Except, of course, that it wasn't alone. In all the chaos, it had a living, breathing father.
"We want to do some more tests..." The doctor was babbling but Sherlock barely registered his words, knowing that if anything were truly wrong then they would have taken it down to intensive care and not left alone in an incubator in the birthing suite.
He suddenly felt angry at the man stood next to him and was grateful when he left his side to respond to an emergency page.
Sherlock hesitated as he reached the door he'd been stood by with John nearly ten hours ago. His fingers ghosted against the door handle and he was met with the warring feelings of wanting to run inside and run out in the other direction and never look back.
Sherlock was unused to feeling compromised and wished, fervently, that this intense and unfair night were over so things could go back to normal. He wanted, for the first time in a long time, to sleep.
Instead, he gently pulled the door open and walked slowly inside. The first thing he saw was the bed Maggie had been in and it felt like he was intruding on her sacred memory.
He glanced at the spooled-out bed covers and the sky blue curtains and felt ill, closing his eyes as he felt the image burn itself into his memory.
He inclined his head away from the sight and was greeted by the transparent, perspex incubator.
He felt all the air inside of him disappear as he looked at it. It was tiny, not unnaturally so, perhaps about six or seven pounds, but it still looked tiny. It wasn't the healthy colour of newborns in films, instead its skin was vaguely purple, its bones looked practically non-existent, like it was made of wet clay or putty.
Vulnerable. The word Sherlock was looking for was vulnerable.
He felt a tear slide down his cheek as he looked at it, at him, he mentally corrected himself. His son.
The little boy that had no one in the world but Sherlock Holmes.
Sherlock pressed his fingers to his cheek as he felt more tears, coming thick and fast, and then his hand was covering his face and he was shaking.
To lose control of one's composure was one thing but to lose control of one's bodily function was something else entirely.
He watched - he couldn't look away - the almost imperceptible rise and fall of his tiny stomach as his healthy lungs filled with his first breaths.
He unconsciously took a step forward before he stilled himself, he knew he couldn't touch him even if he wanted to but he didn't want to, he didn't want to risk staining him with his fingers.
So he kept his distance, covering his eyes and breathing heavily. He'd always felt that he was something akin to godlike, but now that he actually was, he didn't feel empowered or unbeatable.
He felt weak and cold and useless, envying, almost immediately, the calm breaths of the feeble being in front of him when he could barely control his own.
...
A/N: Just wanted to clarify this whole 'statistically no one dies in childbirth anymore and it's a cheesy plot device thing', my mother nearly died from TSS (toxic shock syndrome) whilst giving birth to my brother but luckily recovered after a painful week in hospital so it's more common than you think.