There was a small snowfall in London on the night of December 16th 2013. The blanket of snow was just beginning to cover the cobblestone pavement, and the colored lights of the diner next door lit the white with red, blue, and green. It was just beginning to feel like Christmas on Baker Street.
"It's like our very own Harry Potter story."
Sherlock looked at John as if he had grown another head. It was worse than that. There was a child on their doorstep, what were they supposed to do with a child? Raise it? John had already picked up the child and cradled him in his own arms; they had just embarked on the journey of their own relationship, and a child? Was this some kind of sick joke? Sherlock took a breath and began analyzing the child itself. It had the brightest blue eyes, and a skin as light as porcelain, the little bits of hair that he had we're growing in black, and his jaw line was high on his face even for a baby.
"There's a note." John had interrupted his thought process.
"What?"
"There's a note Sherlock." He slowed his words, enunciating each sound.
Name him. He's yours now. I don't want him. I can't take care of him.
"Uhm, Sherlock, he looks just like you."
"What?"
"You know for a consulting detective, you're awfully slow." John was joking around, but Sherlock was at a loss for words. He could, as John put it "outlive God in trying to get the last word," but it was true, this child looked exceptionally like him.
"Have you ever…? You know?"
"No. God no. I…"
John had begun rocking the child back and forth, bringing him into the warmth of 221B Baker Street, Sherlock following him, shutting the door, still not able to decide how he felt about this. 'How could the child be his? It had to be his, but how?'
"What should we call him?"
"Huh?"
"Seriously Sherlock, what should we call him?"
"You're not serious!" They couldn't keep the child, they had no idea where he came from, or what the motive of the person who left the child had been.
"Stop analyzing this Sherlock. It's a baby, a living breathing human. Here hold him."
John had sat Sherlock down on their couch positioning his arms in the correct placement for holding a newborn baby, and then placed him lovingly in his partner's arms. Sherlock looked down at the being in his arms. The baby was the spitting image of himself as a newborn, he sighed and tried to put on a little smile for the baby, who giggled and waved his arms at Sherlock. Something swelled inside him, it felt the same as the first time that he and John had shared their first kiss, or when they had decided to move into the same room, but it was different, and something changed inside him.
"We should call him 'Hamish.'"
"Hamish?"
"Yes, John. Hamish. I'm not sure that I am the one that is slow in this situation."
John looked confused, and then set himself down next to Sherlock, letting the baby take his pinky in his little hand. "Are you sure we should name him that?"
"Well, when Adler had been here, you had made the joke that we should name our firstborn 'Hamish.' It's not a bad name, I quite like it."
"I had been joking but…"
"But?"
"I like Hamish, he looks like a Hamish." Sherlock smiled, pressed a kiss to John's temple and then looked back to the baby, who yawned and rubbed his eyes. Hamish looked as if he wanted to stay awake and take in everything around him, but his eyes fluttered shut and his thumb went into his mouth as he shifted into a sleep state.
"We have to go and get supplies tomorrow. We can move him into my old room. For now, he'll have to sleep on the armchair in our room, at least until we can buy a crib."
"That sounds good." Sherlock himself was beginning to grow tired, which nearly never happened, he yawned and got up from the sofa bringing Hamish who was still nestled into the crook of his arm. John followed him to the bedroom at the end of the hall.
In the dim light of their bedroom, Sherlock transferred the baby into John, who had already laid a bed that the baby could not fall from, in the chair that sat in the corner of the room. Sherlock had begun to strip to his boxers when he felt a pair of arms snake around him, and a kiss press to his shoulder, then his neck. "You're actually quite good with him."
Sherlock managed to spin himself around in John's arms and wrap his own around his lover's neck while kissing his forehead, then lips. "So are you."
"Well, I'm a doctor." Sherlock laughed a little, then untangled himself from John to put on a shirt. Sherlock snuggled under the covers waiting for John to join him, when John kissed Hamish's forehead, whispering so that Sherlock could barely hear, "Goodnight, Hamish Watson-Holmes."
