Disclaimer.
Peas can be hidden in a variety of places. Prompt from 1butterfly_grl1.
(April/May John is 7.)
Chapter 12.
"Sherlock." John sing-songed. Sherlock raised an eyebrow not taking his attention away from the current slide under his microscope.
"Sheerrlloocckk." John dragged out the letters in Sherlock's name whilst sitting on the top steps of the flat and tying his shoelaces.
"What?" Sherlock snapped irately. John scowled, not at the sharp tone but because Sherlock had forgotten...again.
"You're supposed to take me to the park." John sighed crossing his arms.
"Later." Sherlock said absently, shrugging and swapping the slide. John huffed and kicked the stairs grumpily. John amused himself for a few minutes seeing how hard he could actually kick the wooden steps but when he realised that Sherlock didn't even notice (and his feet hurt) he stopped.
John stuck his tongue out at Sherlock, who again didn't notice. He played a game of pulling faces at Sherlock unnoticed.
"Sherlock, can I go to the park now?" John asked ten minutes after he had first posed that question.
"Sure, sure." Sherlock responded absent minded. John grinned shrugging on his coat and dashing outside.
Sherlock switched his slide again quelling the nagging feeling that he was missing something...
Two minutes later Sherlock jumped up triumphantly holding up a slide.
"John! It was the baker!" Sherlock exclaimed in the same bright tones that always heralded the end of a case. Silence greeted his statement and Sherlock looked around the flat. His eyes darted to the door and he paled, dashing out only just remembering to grab his coat.
xxx
"So why is the sky blue?" John asked curiously reigning in his smugness at finally going to the park.
He knew he wasn't allowed to go to the park by himself so when Sherlock had accidently said he could go John had hurried outside and waited just round the street corner from 221 B. As expected it took less than three minutes before Sherlock was standing in front of him arms crossed and a large scowl on his face.
And because Sherlock was outside they had to go to the park now.
"Plebeian question. Do try to be original." Sherlock sniffed. Didn't every child ask that particular question? Couldn't John at least try to be interesting. John huffed staring around. He would have to ask Greg soon, Greg always answered his questions.
They were nearly at the playground when John asked another question.
"What do worms do? And how do they move?" John asked curiously eyeing a pink coloured worm as it slowly made its way across the ground. Sherlock crouched down with John and they watched the worms slow progress.
"That is a Lumbricus terrestris or, as it is more widely known as a common earthworm. You see those ring like segments that make up the body of the worm? Well those are called annuli which are covered with lots of tiny hairs that help the worm move and burrow. These little hairs are called setae; they are more like small bristles than hairs. They like to burrow in the earth during the day, normally close to the surface, and then at night they usually feed above ground.
When they burrow they eat the soil, extracting the nutrients from the decomposing organic matter, like roots and leaves. They are necessary for soil health because they transport nutrients through the soil through their waste and they churn up the soil when they move about." Sherlock explained quietly.
"Sam said that when a worm is cut in half it makes two worms." John stated. Sherlock shook his head.
"Your football playmates are dull. That is a blatantly incorrect statement." Sherlock scoffed standing up and shooing John towards the children's play park inside the park grounds.
"My friends aren't dull!" John protested with a tolerant eye roll that was far too adult an expression for a seven year old to sport. Sherlock snorted but didn't deign to disagree out loud any further.
"Twenty minutes only! I have to speak to Lestrade later." Sherlock informed John already tapping away on his phone. Waiting for a child to finish playing was boring. At least with his phone he could hack Scotland Yard's files and solve some of the cold cases by simply reading the information off of his phone.
It frustrated Lestrade no end when he did that.
Sherlock had learnt that children's sense of timing was horrendous and only rarely did that fact actually benefit him.
"John! You've had twenty minutes!" Sherlock called impatient to leave.
"What? But it's only been like five." John protested already walking over although the reluctance was clear on his face as he jumped down from the monkey bars. Sherlock barely restrained himself from rolling his eyes.
"It has been twenty minutes and I despair for your incorrect use of grammar. Your use of the English language is appalling." Sherlock sniped. It had barely been fifteen minutes but John didn't need to know that.
John pouted but took Sherlock's hand without prompting.
Sherlock hopped out of the cab outside of Scotland Yard John still attached to his hand.
Sherlock had found the best way of keeping track of a young child was to have them beside you at all times. Unfortunately that just wasn't practical. And Sherlock got frowned at when he glued his and John's hands together.
It was a safe adhesive! The glue was usually used for piano strings and such, maybe it wasn't quite so safe had John been silly enough to eat it.
John wasn't that silly...anymore.
Tying their wrists together was an idea that was discarded before he had even implemented it, the string would have got in the way of everything. A child harness was an acceptable idea but they were sized for toddlers not seven going on eight year olds.
Sherlock had muttered something about getting a dog lead but even John had glared at him for that particular comment.
"Look there's Donovan, go and pester her." Sherlock said pointing John to Donovan's office where he could see her through the glass, filling in sheets and sheets of paperwork. John, far too happily in Sherlock's opinion, scampered off to Donovan's office.
xxx
Sally nearly jumped up in relief when her office door opened; maybe there was a case so she could put off doing more horrendous paper work? Sally immediately quelled such thoughts; she didn't want another case because that meant another victim, bad thoughts.
She smiled when she caught sight of the young boy who entered though and without any guilt whatsoever she packed away the unfinished paperwork ready to talk with or play with John.
"Sally, why is the sky blue?" John asked pulling the chair that was opposite Sally's own chair over to the other side of the desk and right next to Sally's own.
Sally blinked at the unexpected question before riffling through her draws and finding a glass prism paperweight her cousin had given her months ago and she had completely forgotten about.
"Well, we think the light from the sun is white but really it is every colour combined. Now each colour has different sized waves, a bit like different radio stations and..."
John listened to Sally explain using the glass prism and her desk lamp as teaching aids. He didn't quite understand everything she said and he posed question here and then to clarify. It was interesting though and he didn't know why Sherlock had said it was such a boring question, it was fascinating.
Sherlock again refrained from rolling his eyes as John nattered on and on about what he and Sally had done and that refraction was cool, showing all the pretty colours white light contained.
They were heading over to Barts to visit Molly...well to visit the labs but Molly would let them in.
Apparently Lestrade needed more proof that it was the baker which Sherlock scoffed at. They had the coffee brand what more did they need?!
While the police were probably bungling up his deductions Sherlock had decided to do something actually worthwhile with his time: check what bruise patterns a 5 millimetre diamond could cause on a freshly dead corpses neck, there was a diamond on the wife's ring but Sherlock wasn't sure if she had done it or it was the mark from the child's toy train.
John would distract Molly from trying to make tedious conversation with him and Molly would distract John. Perfect.
"Molly?" John asked curiously as Molly scraped a skin sample off of a cadaver's foot.
"Yes, John?" Molly asked absently as she noted down her findings.
"How many bones does the body have?" John asked curiously. Molly smiled.
"Well technically it depends on how you count it and how old the person is but we generally say an adult has..."
Sherlock extracted John from Molly's lecture with more than a little resistance from the young boy who seemed to want to spend longer in Molly's presence for some reason.
Sherlock tuned out John's chatter as they again made their way to Scotland Yard. Honestly, did the police need him to hold their hands while they search for leads? Why they didn't just listen to him to begin with was beyond Sherlock. Well, he knew they had to use certain procedures and bow down to their superiors but still.
John had remarked more than once that Sherlock would have been an awful policeman. He would have solved cases with ease and quickly but the paperwork would never be done, the police department sued when Sherlock insulted everyone and Sherlock would only randomly report for work, the rest of the time spent so caught up in his experiments that he forgot which day it was. Sherlock resented the implication that he would be a worse policeman than Donovan but he had reluctantly agreed with John on his other points.
Sherlock absently shooed John over to Donovan once more as he strode swiftly through the various offices searching for Lestrade.
John huffed when he realised Sally wasn't in her room and he went looking for someone else he knew.
Sherlock scowled as he and John exited Scotland Yard. He had spent ten minutes looking for John only to find the boy chatting with Anderson of all people! And the police were being stupid...again.
Sherlock glanced at his watch frowning in annoyance. It was nearly time for John's dinner. Angelo didn't do take away but he made an exception for Sherlock, John wouldn't mind Italian for the fifth night in a row surely.
John would also need watering.
Donovan had given John a drink when they went to Scotland Yard the first time but that was at least three hours ago and when he had researched it he learnt that children needed water frequently.
"Hello dears." Mrs Hudson greeted them as they entered the flat, John was being surprisingly quiet and Sherlock looked down to make doubly sure he was still there.
"Hi!" John greeted jolting out of his thoughts with a wide grin. Mrs Hudson tended to mother John now in nearly exactly the same way she mothered him as an adult and John adored it the same now as he had as an adult.
"Shall I pop on some dinner for you? I think I still have some chicken in breadcrumbs for you dear." Mrs Hudson offered already bustling off.
Sherlock divested himself of his coat and gloves eyeing John's pink hands. He swore he had brought the child gloves recently, where on earth had John put them now? He handed John a glass of milk and tided away the remnants of his experiments. He had only recently begun actually tidying away things, he didn't exactly want John to poison himself by accident. John as an adult knew what was likely to be dangerous and what wasn't but children were remarkably obtuse at times.
John amused himself until Mrs Hudson announced she had brought dinner for them and that you'd better eat young man. (She wasn't directing that stern comment to John.)
Sherlock eyed the food disinterestedly but since he wasn't on a case he didn't particularly mind refuelling.
Mrs Hudson poured John some of that horrid sickly squash, the orange sticky stuff before leaving them to their meal with the usual 'not your house keeper'.
Sherlock tapped away on his phone.
"John put those peas back on your plate." Sherlock admonished not taking his eyes off the small screen in front of him. John jumped peas spilling off his fork and onto the floor when he realised he had been caught.
Sherlock looked up with a raised eyebrow, his expression saying something along the lines of 'you'll have to do better than that'. His eyes widened when he caught sight of the deceptively innocent boy across the table from him.
"John...how on earth did you get peas up there?!" Sherlock queried incredulously, eyeing the peas balanced on the kitchen light.
John quietly ate the rest of his dinner.
xxx
"Are you going to get him a tutor or something?" Lestrade asked Sherlock curiously while John scampered about in the background playing with his plastic jet fighter.
Sherlock frowned.
"Why on earth would I do that?" Sherlock asked as though mentally revaluating Greg's mental acumen once again. Greg rolled his eyes.
"Well the kid'll need something to do; he can't just spend all his time playing around."
"There would be little point getting John a tutor, he remembers things children his age are taught and will remember things he learnt at school as he ages." Sherlock stated dismissively.
"Greg! Greg! Daniel told me how aeroplanes fly an' how they don't just fall cause of gravity! An' did you know that most adults have 206 bones in their body, Molly explained that depending on how you count...and that you start off with more bones but when you get to adult age you have 206. Did you know the sky is blue 'cause of refraction and that sunlight is every colour merged together? I would have thought it would be brown like when I mix up all my paints but Sally says it works differently with light. An' did you know that worms are nec-cess-cess-ary for spreading the nutt-rents around the soil?" John babbled on about what he had learnt the other day.
Greg grinned once he had puzzled out John's fast paced one sided conversation.
"Don't worry. It seems like he's got a bunch of teachers ready when he has questions." Greg grinned before John dragged him into explaining why clown fishes were called clown fishes.