It began with Sherilyn being steadily less physically affectionate than she normally was and more regular in her eating habits. Then came the getting up long before Matthew did and his concern was officially drawn at that point. What was going on with her? Was she alright? Was she avoiding him for some reason? His suspicions grew when he woke up one morning to the sound of Sherilyn retching in the bathroom. He scrambled to put on his glasses and get out of the bed before half-stumbling into the bathroom. Sherilyn sat on the floor next to the toilet, looking ghost white and shaking slightly.
"I don't think that dinner I had with Jean after the case last night agreed with me," she groaned. Matthew sighed, knowing that she was probably lying. He sat down with her and held her hair back for her while she finished emptying her stomach. He rubbed her back soothingly and she stopped shaking. When she was done, she cleaned herself up and got dressed.
"I don't think you should be working, Sherilyn. You're ill."
"I'm fine. That was the last of it, I believe." She'd definitely been lying, then. Before Matthew could say anything else, she grabbed her coat and scarf and dashed out of 221B.
The next clue was how her changes in mood suddenly became much more violent than usual. One moment, she'd be happily twiddling away at a microscope in the lab at Bart's, the next she'd be reducing some poor intern to tears, and then she'd retreat to her husband's office to exhibit symptoms of depression. Eventually, she wouldn't let Matthew touch her and he was beginning to wonder if she was being harmed and/or threatened by another criminal mastermind.
"Sherilyn, please tell me what's going on. Whatever it is, I don't want you to suffer alone." Matthew told the detective one afternoon while she was bent over a body in the morgue. He'd chosen this moment to say it because Jean was on holiday with Mark, so they were alone. He couldn't talk to her at home because Sherilyn spent most of her time there these days in her mind palace. It'd be like talking to a rock.
"Nothing is going on. What ever gave you that ridiculous notion?" She responded without even looking up from the cadaver.
"You've been acting oddly." The haste with which Sherilyn made an excuse to leave after that only confirmed Matthew's assertion. He texted her several times that day, only to receive no answer. He decided he'd call up Georgia in the morning and discuss all of this with her. His his last shift ended at half past eleven at night and he went home to find Sherilyn fast asleep in their bed, looking like an exhausted uni student. Quietly, he changed into his pajamas, lay down beside her, and took off his glasses. Without thinking, he reached out to wrap his arm around her waist. His palm brushed across her stomach and he paused. Her belly was firm and formed a slight dome.
Oh God. The possible explanation he'd been skirting around for ages was the actual explanation. Sherilyn was pregnant.
Matthew lay paralyzed by shock and uncertainty. What should he do? If he asked her about this, she'd know he'd touched her and she'd be cross. If he didn't, she'd keep avoiding him until it became quite obvious that she was pregnant. After a while, he opted to ask her in the morning and reluctantly retracted his hand.
He managed to wake up in time to catch her coming out of the bathroom in her favourite dressing gown of blue silk with her hair tied up in her towel.
"Morning," she greeted casually, not looking at Matthew. He nearly knocked his glasses to the floor in reaching for them.
"Areyoupregnant?" It came out suddenly and all at once. He didn't want to miss his opportunity. Sherilyn froze halfway to the wardrobe.
"What?" There was an edge to her tone that struck fear in Matthew, but he took a deep breath and plowed on.
"Are you...are you pregnant?" This was followed by a lengthy pause in which everything was so still and quiet that the man almost thought he'd accidentally stopped time. Sherilyn wasn't facing him, but he could tell from the tension in her shoulders that she was heatedly debating with herself in her head about how to answer.
"Yes." Her answer was so soft that he almost didn't hear it. Slowly, he got up and came to stand before her.
"Why didn't you tell me sooner? Why make me worry about all that strange behaviour?" Matthew made sure his tone was as benign as possible. He didn't want to upset his wife.
"I..." Sherilyn appeared to struggle to give a decent reason, which told Matthew that it was just one of those things she had difficulty talking about, like love.
"May I touch you?" the pathologist asked with a shy smile. Sherilyn nodded and he pulled her into his arms.
"Don't tell anyone," she whispered into his ear. "Especially not Maybelle." Matthew chuckled at this. They both knew Maybelle Holmes would never leave her sister alone if she found out about this. It was understandable that Sherilyn would want to delay that as long as possible.
"What about Jean? And Mark?" Sherilyn took a step back to glare at her husband for this. He awkwardly ran his hand through his short brown hair. "Right. Well...you seem a few months along..." It was finally starting to sink in that they were expecting. He was going to be a father. The father of Sherilyn Holmes' child. Sherilyn Holmes was pregnant. Holy shit.
"Yes, Matthew, I'm with child. Now that we've got that settled, would you mind taking your eyes off my midriff and making breakfast?" The man was jolted out of his revery by Sherilyn acting considerably more like herself than she had been for a while. He grinned sheepishly and gave her a quick kiss before shuffling into the kitchen. A few minutes later, while he was placing a pan in the sink (the side not filled with biohazards), thin arms wrapped around his middle and he could feel Sherilyn's full lips press a kiss to the side of his neck. He'd missed these sorts of gestures. The moment he turned around, he got an even better one. Sherilyn took his face in her long, thin hands and pulled him to her for a good snog. Clearly she'd missed him too.
"Breakfast is on your desk, love," Matthew stated, clearing his throat, after Sherilyn pulled away. She smirked and he straightened his glasses, blushing.
Things went somewhat back to normal after that, with the addition of Sherilyn letting her husband in on all the goings-on of her condition. Toby also seemed to be aware of what was happening with her and would insist on curling up by her chair when she watched crap telly. Mr. Hudson noticed and commented. That's how he found out. Then came Jean, who found out while they were huddled together on the floor of a walk-in closet, hiding from their adversary. Not long thereafter, she received a lecture on 'Things You Shouldn't Keep From Your Best Friend'. Of course, once Jean knew, Mark knew, and then it snowballed from there. Eventually, Lestrade stopped giving her cases.
"Take it easy, Sherilyn. I know you want to work, but this is your first child and your body will thank me later. Trust me. I didn't want to go off work either when I had my first kid, but I learned my lesson," she'd said one morning when the consulting detective showed up in her office. Sherilyn was henceforth resigned to private cases until the media caught sight of her growing abdomine. The tabloids were splashed with headlines like 'BOFFIN HOLMES AND BABY?' and 'GENIUS DETECTIVE EXPECTING'. She stopped getting clients after that, which served as fuel to the fire that was her continual anger at the media. After Jean blogged about it, Sherilyn got a box from her fans that was full of congratulatory cards which had things on them like doodles of babies wearing deerstalkers and selfie photos of fans holding well wishing signs and smiling. Sherilyn didn't know whether to find it disgusting or endearing.
Maybelle was intolerable when she found out. She showed up at 221B, trying to get Sherilyn to see all the best doctors and stay at the Holmes Estate. She also tried to suggest names, but neither Sherilyn nor Matthew were having any of that.
"It's my bloody child, Maybelle!" Sherilyn had snapped at her sister after clearing her plate of four slices of buttered toast. "You can name a new Holmes after great-grandfather when you get pregnant." This was answered with Maybelle's customary grimace. Matthew simply smirked from behind the latest issue of a pathology journal. They'd decided to name the baby Cypress Tesla Holmes as a gender neutral homage to science. It's auntie was the last person who was likely to convince them to change that.
"Let it go, Maybelle." Matthew warned when he sensed that Sherilyn was on the verge of a tirade. The elder Holmes reluctantly obeyed.
With no cases and increased moodiness, Sherilyn was even more of a handful at home than usual, but Matthew coped as calmly as he could manage. Fortunately, Sherilyn eventually found a good distraction in reading every book on pregnancy and child rearing ever. She also took to going to St. Bart's with Matthew and following him around while she read (he and Michelle Stamford refused to let her work in the lab- too many dangerous chemicals and thus a bad place for pregnant women). He liked it because they got to quietly enjoy each other's presence and he could keep an eye on her. She sometimes made snarky comments about whatever she was reading, which amused Matthew to no end.
Sherilyn, when she wasn't desperately trying to mentally control her unstable hormones, treated her pregnancy like a captivating science experiment. She wrote down quite a lot of the experience in a notebook. The detail was astonishing. It gave Matthew an extremely vivid idea of what it was like to be bearing a child. Reading her journal, he came to realize that they had never once questioned whether or not they would have children. He'd always thought Sherilyn wouldn't be interested, but now he knew that the complete opposite was true. That was why she'd not been at all upset about getting pregnant. That knowledge left him quite jubilant.
When the time came for little Cypress to be born, they were rather conveniently already in a hospital. Sherilyn nearly knocked out an intern on her way out of the morgue, an extremely anxious Dr. Hooper following close behind. From the way she was gritting her teeth and glaring at everything, he could tell she was in a great deal of pain but was supressing it. She collapsed to her knees with a cry of agony while they were in the lift and Matthew ended up carrying her because the pain was too much for even her to stand.
"This level of pain is not what I expected," she managed to groan as Matthew lifted her.
"Sherilyn, this is your first child. Some things are bound to be unexpected. Just breathe." It was as much for him as it was for her. The last thing he needed right now was to be plagued with the thought of there being something potentially wrong. Once the nurses had Sherilyn in a bed, Matthew took hold of her hand and she gripped it with almost crushing force. They were in for a long, rough night of the detective screaming in pain and barking at the nurses to tell them how to do their jobs. Jean and Mark showed up two hours in and the former was able to persuade her best friend to just let people work and focus on her own task.
Cypress was born at four in the morning after putting his mother through hours and hours of labour, thus setting the tone for what his family was certain would be a long life of disturbing people's otherwise ordinary lives. Sherilyn fell asleep holding him close to her and Matthew couldn't remember ever having been more content.