From a prompt on tumblr (again). Thankyou so much for reading! This fic is for Holly.
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters or anything argh. If I did, we'd have season three by now.
Swing-Sets and Memories
Sherlock, still riding the adrenaline rush of being right, insisted that he and John walk home.
He loved being right, proving himself. It wasn't just to important people, like John, or Mycroft, or Lestrade-it was also to himself.
John, still slightly out of breath from their chase and arrest, was too tired to argue.
Even if you did argue and you ended up getting your way, Sherlock had cunning and painful ways of getting his own back, John had discovered.
He didn't really mind. Sherlock looked so handsome, with his damnably perfect curls, his eyes still sparkling bright and cheeks still flushed pink with excitement and the energy of the chase.
Sherlock sighed and took John's hand in his, slowly beginning to walk back in the direction of 221b.
They had decided not to call themselves 'boyfriends', but in fleeting, perfect moments like this, with their fingers intertwined and the content sense of just being together, made John want to jump up and down with happiness and yell to the world that this Sherlock was his Sherlock.
He settled instead for making a contented noise and swinging their interlinked arms.
On their stroll back to the flat, they went through a park. It was getting dark now, slowly, and night's cold fingers were beginning to clutch at the city.
The empty play equipment looked sadly deserted, like an abandoned relic.
John stopped.
He had the most peculiar feeling he'd been here before.
"What?" said Sherlock, staring at John, who had a curious expression on his face. "What is it?"
"I don't…know." replied John slowly.
He sat on a nearby park bench and studied the park around him.
"I have this strange feeling I've been here before…" he said, looking at Sherlock, who had sat down next to him.
Sherlock shrugged. He knew he'd been here before; Mycroft had taken him here frequently when he was a small child.
"You know," said John softly, "I think I used to play here…"
Sherlock studied his face with interest. A delightfully joyful smile was spreading over John's face, lighting up his eyes and curling the corners of his mouth.
When John smiled like that, Sherlock couldn't help but be sentimental. He wanted to freeze the moment and carry it around with him. John just looked so happy and peaceful…so very perfect.
John was aware he was smiling, but he wasn't concentrating on it: a memory had taken him by the shoulders and tugged him backwards through the swirling vortex of time.
He was little, maybe four or five.
It was a delightfully sunny afternoon.
His mother had taken Harriet to the park near her work, and the play equipment was crawling with young kids, all screaming and laughing.
John was daunted. He was quite shy and quiet as a child.
"Please, Harry, will you play pirate captains with me?" he asked his older sister.
"No, Hedgehog," she'd replied. "I don't want to play pirate captains. I want to go on the slippery-dip. Go and ask somebody else."
John sighed. If Harriet didn't want to play pirate captains with him, then nobody would.
He wandered over to a tall tree and sat as its base, twirling a leaf between his fingers and humming a song he'd learnt in preschool to himself.
He could see Harriet, now swinging viciously through the monkey bars, and wished he had somebody to play with.
John was so wrapped up in watching the swarming mass of kids on the equipment and in the sandpit that he failed to notice another boy sitting down next to him.
"Would you like to play with me?" asked the other boy and John turned with a start.
"Woah!" he exclaimed. The other boy was dressed in a pirate costume, complete with a hat and cutlass. He had bright blue eyes and dark curls were poking out from under the rim of his hat.
"You can borrow my hat, if you'd like," said the other boy. "We can play pirates."
John grinned. "Yeah! Let's play pirate captains!"
The other boy smiled back shyly and handed John his hat, shaking out his curls. "Alright," he said agreeably. "I'm Cap'n Holmes, terror of the high seas!" he exclaimed, drawing his cutlass and standing up.
"And I'm Cap'n Watson, feared by all who've heard my name!" said John in reply, jamming the hat on his head and brandishing the leaf as a sword.
Captain Holmes giggled and then, sticking out his hand, said more seriously, "I'm Sherlock."
Captain Watson laughed and shook his hand. "John." he said, by way of a reply.
The two smiled at each other and before long, they were sailing around, marauding the high seas and pillaging ships of their booty.
"Sherlock!" called a voice. Captain Holmes adjusted his eyepatch and sighed grumpily. John stopped forcing a defenceless naval commander to walk the plank and gave him a questioning look.
Before Sherlock had a chance to reply, a taller teenage boy appeared.
He had a pimply face with irregular stubble and hair slicked with copious amounts of gel to one side of his forehead. He was holding a backpack in one hand and the other was holding a thick, boring looking novel.
"Oh no!" yelled Sherlock. "It's the deadly Mycroft, tentacled sea monster of the deep!" And with that, he launched himself at the older boy's neck and pulled him over.
John giggled.
"Sherlock." said Mycroft sternly.
Sherlock crossed his arms. "What?" he said, not without a touch of attitude.
"Come on, we've got to go home. We can't be late for dinner again, or Mummy won't let us come to the park anymore," said Mycroft, picking himself up and dusting off his neatly straightened pants. "Now say goodbye, time to go."
John handed Sherlock his hat back sadly.
"Well, I have to go," said Sherlock dispiritedly. "It was lovely playing with you."
"Aye, aye, cap'n!" said John in reply and the two boys giggled.
"Bye, Sherlock." said John, as Mycroft took Sherlock's small hand in his.
"Bye!" said Sherlock, waving over his shoulder to John.
As Mycroft and Sherlock walked away, John could hear Sherlock saying, "One day, I'll be a real pirate captain, Mycroft, and you won't be able to stop me from playing as long as I want!"
John watched his new friend disappear across the park and hurried over to where his mother and Harriet were waiting for him.
John smiled to himself as the memory dissipated, and, turning to Sherlock, in order to tell him about it (Sherlock loved hearing about John's life. He always said he needed the most data he could gather for his test subjects.), when he was hit with a sudden realisation.
"You!" he said, turning to face Sherlock.
Sherlock smiled bemusedly.
"We played together! You had a hat…and Mycroft was a deadly tentacle monster of the deep!" John said, beginning to smile.
Sherlock nodded.
John stood up and walked over to the deserted play equipment, dragging Sherlock with him by the hand.
"I looked for you every time after that, when I came here." John said quietly.
"Me too," said Sherlock. "I suppose it was just one of those serendipitous moments of perfect childhood timing."
John laughed. "Yes, Sherlock the poet, that's exactly what it was."
Taking Sherlock's hand in his, he kissed him lightly on the cheek and said playfully, "Let's go on the swings?"
Sherlock chuckled. "Aye, aye, Cap'n!"
Although by then it was truly night time and the play equipment was only lit by the cheap glare of a fluorescent streetlamp, the couple stayed on the swings until the sun began to rise again, enjoying each other's company and the memories they shared.