A/N: I literally have no idea how this turned into a crossover. It was supposed to be about Sherlock having to babysit the Watson's baby for a while, and then I dropped in a cameo to make people squeal, and then I ended up making it a full-fledged Doctor Who crossover. Please enjoy and review! I do not own either of these fabulous shows.
Sherlock Holmes, Babysitter (by Consultation Only)
Mary called and demanded him to babysit.
Mary never asked him to babysit; in fact, when he had informed her that he was totally opposed to the idea of babysitting an eight-month-old, she had vehemently agreed that it would be a terrible idea, as had John.
So why she had called him in a frenzy, saying she was bringing Willie over in five minutes, was quite beyond his normal levels of deductive ability.
Was John ill? No, that was out of the question. John would never get ill when he had an eight-month-old living with him in the same house. Had Mary gotten called in to work, despite her extended maternity leave? She would have (metaphorically speaking) beaten her boss over the head with the phone and gone back to sleep. Was there some sort of overseas emergency? Had another of Mary's longtime enemies caught up with her again? Had John been called back to Afghanistan?
The impatient pounding on the door interrupted Sherlock's increasingly disturbing train of thought and he quickly rose from his chair to let Mary in, who was holding the chubby-faced baby girl on her hip.
"Thank you so much, Sherlock. It's a bit of an emergency and I don't have time to explain," she paused to catch her breath, and Sherlock could tell that she had not only sprinted up the stairs but was also incredibly nervous, as she was breathing very hard. "John and I've met this really strange person and we have to go immediately!"
She shoved the baby toward him and his long white fingers closed awkwardly around her midsection as she turned around quickly and began to disentangle herself from the diaper bag.
He looked Willie up and down before starting to realize his previous concerns hadn't been understated. "Who did you say you met?"
He really had no idea what he was doing. He couldn't keep holding her out in front of him like this for several hours, could he?
"It's pretty easy, Sherlock. Bottle every three hours and a nap every four!"
She threw down the diaper bag, dashed down the steps—and was gone.
A look of alarm crossed Sherlock's face. "But what if they coincide?" he exclaimed, trying to follow her, but afraid he would drop the baby if he moved too quickly. "Mary, come back!"
The door slammed at the bottom of the stairs.
Too late.
Sherlock tried not to panic. He looked back from the steps to the child, to the steps, back to the child, down at the diaper bag, and took a very large, deep breath.
He was clever. No, he was VERY clever. He could do this.
"Mrs. Hudson?!"
No answer.
"Mrs. Hudson, you know how you were moaning to me the other day that you hadn't held a baby in a while? I might possibly have a solution…"
What had she had said earlier? Oh, right.
Her sister was in town and they would be out shopping and to the theater.
In a scenario in which he interrupted their film with a squalling child, just how upset would they be?
Speaking of squalling, however, Willie didn't look too happy about being suspended in midair. She started to fuss, and Sherlock attempted to settle her across his chest so he could move, clinging to her with both hands like his parents had taught him to hold breakable objects when he was little.
His laptop was sitting on the desk ten feet away. All he had to do was make it over there.
One step, two ste—
And in spite of the dense network of experimental objects and knickknacks scattered precariously across the floor, Sherlock tripped over the rug.
He gasped and barely caught himself before he landed right on top of the child, squashing her into rug-Willie-and-Sherlock soup. In doing so, however, he jostled her in his arms and had to let go with one arm, and she began crying in earnest.
"Oh—um, hush—it's okay," Sherlock hummed nervously, trying to stand up. Willie's head flopped backward, unsupported, and he cringed as he rotated her into a better position. Babies were so tremendously delicate! Why did they have to make them this way?
Meticulously, he picked his way through the mess on the floor and landed, with a sigh of relief, on the chair in front of his computer. Glancing down at Willie, who was squalling VERY angrily about being splayed uncomfortably over his collar, he figured he'd better stick with first things first.
His first search term, typed with one hand, was "Holding techniques for eight-month-old children."
Apparently, Google was more interested in 'child development' and what the babies themselves could hold at eight months, not the far more obvious subject of how caretakers could hold on to them.
He tried a more generic search term: "How to hold a baby."
He had to turn up the volume on an "Infant Care" YouTube video all the way to hear it over Willie's squalling. She was starting to get sweaty and drooling against his clothes, and he wondered if it were easier for babies to get overheated than humans. Perhaps he could give her some water—but did babies drink water or just milk?
Within a few minutes, however, Sherlock was fully practiced up on the 'chest-to-chest', 'stomach-to-stomach', 'cradle', 'football', and 'lap' holds, Willie being the willing participant for said practicing as he kept his eyes glued to the screen.
He then remembered Mary's instructions and glanced at the clock. It was one-thirty; which meant Willie would need a bottle at four-thirty, unless Mary had already fed her, in which case—
Trying not to alarm himself even more, he quickly turned back to the screen. "Can babies drink water?" was the next search term he typed in.
The general results described consequences of giving water to babies younger than six months as "possible seizures, coma, loss of electrolytes, etc." Sherlock glanced down at Willie again and decided that the two-month age difference was negligible when it came to those kinds of symptoms. He would definitely stick to the bottles.
Next question: "How do you know when a baby should be given a bottle?"
He scrolled through a whole page of information until he got to a source that looked at least somewhat scientific. He read through more information on breastfeeding than he'd seen in his life (and it wasn't the first time he'd researched the topic) before coming to the bottle section. "The number of times an infant should be bottle-fed varies widely."
He glared darkly at the screen.
"HOW DO YOU GET A BABY TO STOP CRYING?!"
Google suggesting tacking on, "when babysitting," so he added that, too. After all, he was 98% sure Willie was only upset because Sherlock wasn't her mummy.
When he was done, he carefully stood up, shifting her weight in his increasingly aching arms, and making his way over to the diaper bag. There were THREE bottles in there. Nine hours, right? How long was Mary planning on being gone?
He tried to think. Willie couldn't verbally tell him if she was hungry. Should he wave a bottle in front of her face and see if she responded? Her dark blue eyes lit up wide when she saw the nipple and she quieted for a few seconds, but almost immediately started wailing again.
Sherlock groaned and headed to the fridge to dispense the first two bottles (carefully ensuring Willie didn't see the appendages trailing out of a Styrofoam cup on the top shelf, because that would be irresponsible), then sat in his armchair and attempted to give the bottle to the child.
Eagerly, she leaned in to suck it, took two sips, and burst out crying again, great fat tears rolling down her pudgy little cheeks.
"Oh, why can't anything be logical with you?" Sherlock exclaimed, leaning his head over the back of the chair. "Either you're hungry and you drink it, or you're not and you don't! There's no point in crying about it!"
For the next twenty minutes, Sherlock attempted every infant consolation technique he could think of or find on the Internet. He tried pulling funny faces, he tried checking her diaper (that one would go his list of BIG favors Mary owed him), he made an attempt to sing lullabies, he tried teaching her to recognize photos of famous criminals, he tried propping her up on the couch and imitating every vocal-like sound she uttered on his violin, and even tried ignoring the crying completely and taking a phone call from Lestrade.
THAT was his most terrible idea yet, because his excuses for the background noise soon ran out and Lestrade absolutely flipped out when he heard the truth, letting him off saying he wanted no part in the matter because Sherlock caring for a small child was certain to end in DISASTER!
Finally, Sherlock did the unthinkable.
Tentatively, he raised the phone to his ear and waited for the dial tone to stop.
"Hello? Sherlock?"
"Mummy? Mummy, I need immediate assistance; DON'T tell Dad. Or Mycroft."
"Sherlock, listen, tell your brother to phone me immediately. He's had me hunting around the whole house for his umbrella, but I think it's a ruse because I can't find it anywhere. Tell him the next time he wants to express his frustrations to tell me to my face, or I'll s—"
"Mummy, just because we both live in London doesn't mean we actually talk to each another," Sherlock interrupted impatiently. "Now, help me and my weeping namesake before she cries into a conniption!"
"Are you—" Violet Holmes started. "Is that a baby? Tomas, Sherlock is babysitting! Not very successfully, I'm afraid, but did you ever think—"
"Mummy!" Sherlock snapped. "Just tell me—please, tell me—that I was clever enough at eight months not to cry without purpose for hours on end?"
"Oh, heavens no, dear, you were like a tiny-pink version of a werewolf, now, don't get me started. One minute you'd be larky, and the next, I thought your voice would break the cabinet windows!"
Sherlock hung his head desperately.
"…and then, Daddy would hold those stupid glasses of his, and let you play with them, and I thought you would chew on them and hurt yourself but it didn't help either—"
"HOW DO I MAKE IT STOP?!" he bellowed into the receiver.
"Try using one of those rice-bag things, and warming it up," Sherlock could hear his father call from his chair.
"Oh, don't be ridiculous," Violet responded, "the poor little thing's only eight months! She'd choke if it got under her head—and Sherlock would make it too hot or not warm enough besides."
Sherlock's eyes glazed over as he listened to their bantering, his head starting to hurt from the constant crying in his left ear.
"Did you warm up her bottle when you gave it to her?" Violet's voice returned after a few moments.
"I was supposed to?" Sherlock griped, juggling the bottle he'd pulled from the fridge with the phone and the baby.
"Yes, just pop it in a saucepan for a few minutes. With water, Sherlock, or else it'll melt."
"Just don't stick it in the microwave! What a disaster that would be," laughed Tomas, again from the armchair.
"Oh, no, certainly don't stick it in the microwave. Remember when Kels did that by accident? Oh, and do you remember that other time with the microwaveable vitamin-packs?" the two began laughing uproariously on the other end.
"Fine. I'll try that!" Not amused, Sherlock shouted into the receiver so they would hear. He pressed the button to end the call—and dropped his phone on the hardwood, cracking the top of the screen.
Sherlock bit his lip, having to suppress a serious urge to scream like a little child. Slowly, he took a deep breath, trying to use his mind palace to temporarily imagine he was somewhere without any crying babies—perhaps a crime scene—even the sniveling relatives of a victim would be preferable to the outright wailing of an infant.
With a huge sigh, he readjusted her on his shoulder so she was better positioned, headed to the kitchen, and turned on the stove, grabbing a panful of water to heat the milk in.
Without warning, Willie flopped over and launched out of his arms toward the hot stove.
"Wil—!" he gasped her name, swinging them both around to avoid her colliding with the stove. The pan clattered to the floor, knocking one of his experiments to the ground in shattered glass and chemicals, spilling everywhere besides.
Shaking, he grabbed Willie from under her arms and held her up to be certain she was all right, looking over every inch of fat baby skin before he was satisfied she hadn't been burned at all.
Suddenly he realized.
She had stopped crying.
She had actually stopped crying.
"That—that doesn't make any sense whatsoever!" he exploded. "You almost got burned! By a stove! It's the first time you've had a reason to be crying this whole day! Why stop now?"
She only giggled in response. Flabbergasted, he carried her back into the living room, determined to figure this out. Her giggles grew more infectious, and Sherlock got the feeling she was laughing at him.
"I've not got the slightest idea why you're doing that, but I'm very, very glad you are," he chuckled, finally collapsing on the sofa, giving her a friendly poke and evoking another convulsive baby laugh.
For a second, he settled her on his lap and just let go of her, letting her clumsily attempt to grab his coat and climb up the front of him. "Remind me to tell your mother I'm never going to babysit again," he scolded. She looked up at him with an inquisitive, innocent look in her blue eyes. "Or—perhaps," he grinned, "just by consultation only."