John didn't want to babysit. At all. Period. He didn't particularly like children and loathed the idea of being stuck with an annoying snot nosed brat for the indefinite future. Alas, he had been forced by his mother, as a 'favour' to her good friend. As much as he was dreading it, he was getting thirty quid as payment, which was more money that the twelve year old had ever been promised in his entire life. So there was that.
As his mum pulled up onto the Holmes' driveway at five o'clock, it became very clear that thirty pounds was not much to the Holmes family. It was hardly a blip on their radar. Their house was huge, at least compared to the home John shared with his parents. The lawn was trimmed impeccably and everything seemed to be spotless. It all made John feel inferior and very out of place.
His mum waved him goodbye and drove off, promising to pick him up at ten. John was left to wander to the front door alone. Even the door was intimidating, made of dark wood with a shiny bronze knocker. He grabbed the cold metal tentatively and knocked it three times. Less than a minute later, the door creaked open and John saw the figure of a lean young man standing in the doorway, wearing a shirt and tie. He looked maybe sixteen years old. He looked John up and down sceptically.
Rolling his eyes, the man looked over his shoulder and yells up the stairs. "Mum, the babysitters here," He turns back to look at John and sighs. "You should come in,"
John mumbles a thank you and steps inside the house. The inside of the house is just as neat and clean as the exterior. John feels even more out of place than before. "Take off your shoes," orders the man, as he goes into the kitchen. John hears a whistling kettle and the man speaks up. "How do you take your tea?" he asks.
"Milk and two sugars, please," replies John, confused, as he takes off his shoes and deposits them in the cupboard underneath the stairs. "How do you know I drink tea?"
"Isn't it obvious?" the man sighs, seemingly annoyed. "Oh yeah. I forget that… Never mind. It doesn't matter. Your teeth. They have tea stains. That also tells me that you left the house in a rush this morning and didn't have time to brush them. Likely overslept, judging by the bags under your eyes. Undiagnosed insomnia most likely but your mother won't take you to a doctor. She thinks you're just being a teenager. She's wrong of course," The man smiled smugly.
"What the…" John was bewildered. "You could figure all that out by looking at me? That's incredible,"
"It really isn't. I'm just being perceptive," he says, secretly pleased at the compliment. The two hear gentle footsteps coming down the stairs. Moments later, an elegant woman wafted into the room dressed in a neat black dress. She was clutching the hand of a small boy, who looked about nine years old at Johns best guess. The boy was wearing a navy blue t-shirt with a blue grey anchor on the front and comfy looking jeans that were just a little big on him. His dark hair covered his blue-green eyes as he looked away from John shyly.
"Kid, this is John. He'll be looking after you while Mummy and Daddy go to the university with Mycroft, okay?" the woman says gently, letting go of the boy's hand. "Why don't you say hello and tell him your name?"
The boy nods, still a bit nervous. Quietly, he pipes up. "Hello Mister. I'm Sherlock. It's nice to meet you,"
"Hi Sherlock," replies John softly, crouching down to Sherlocks level "You can call me John if you want. Mister's a bit proper, right?"
"Okay, John," Sherlock shifts on his heels "I like pirates. Do you like pirates?" John nods, deciding he'll play along with Sherlocks interests. "Do you want to play pirates with me?" Sherlock asks politely, just managing to hide his excitement.
"Sure thing buddy," says John "Why don't you go get everything ready while I have a little chat with your Mommy," Sherlock nods eagerly before bounding up the stairs. His excitement makes John chuckle.
"Thanks for doing this for us John. I know this was a little last minute but it's really important to Mike that his Father and I are there during his talk at the University," said Mrs Holmes.
John turned to Mycroft, slightly surprised. "You're doing a talk at the university! That's so cool! What are you gonna talk about?"
Mycroft smiled smugly "Supersymmetry and how it pertains to String theory. I wouldn't expect you to know what that is," he sneered concendingly.
"I don't, but it sounds really cool," replied John with a smile. He was used to not understanding things, what with his sister being so much smarter than him and always showing off her intelligence.
Mrs Holmes interjects into the conversation "Anyway, Sherlocks bedtime is at eight. You can make him and yourself a frozen pizza each for dinner and don't answer the door for anyone but us. We'll be back at half eight" she explained.
"Sounds good," John replied
John trotted up the stairs after waving the Holmes family goodbye. He looked down the hallway and immediately knew which room was Sherlock's. It wasn't difficult to figure out, what with the helpful sign taped on the door, which had 'Sherlock's Room' scribbled in bright red crayon. He creaked open the door and saw the boy struggling to heft a large, heavy looking box across the room. Wordlessly, John stepped in, helping Sherlock carry it into the centre of the neat bedroom.
The box was a dark grey material, with white stitching. It was big, maybe coming up to John's waist, and very heavy. The lid had a sturdy looking handle, which John gave a sure tug. The lid stiffly lifted away revealing... Lego? It was nearly divided in two by a plastic partition, with white bricks on one side and red bricks on the other. In the middle of the partition was a small plastic handle. John pulled on the handle. As the tray lifted away, another layer of bricks, this time blue and green, was revealed. It occurred to John that this box was a bit like a toolbox, only with layers of bricks inside instead of hammers and saws and what not.
After pulling out each of the ten or so trays, John looked out across the sea of carefully organised plastic bricks. There were so many colours. White and red and yellow and blue and black and green and... there was a lot. Okay. He had never seen so much Lego in one place. He and his sister only had one shoebox of Lego each and they thought they had a hoard of bricks.
He looked at Sherlock, who was already rooting around in the trays, and asked what the bricks were for. "Playing pirates, silly," grinned Sherlock. "How can we play pirates without ships?" The brick were for making ships. That made sense, John thought. He tried to sneak a glance at the beginnings of Sherlock's boat, which made Sherlock grab it and pull it away. "No peeking! That's cheating," he whined. John threw his hands up and backed away, making his own ship in his own area.
The two reconvened after a brief period of time, each holding their creations. John was kind of proud of his. It was a little ramshackle but it had all the right parts in all the right places. Roughly. And it was mostly the correct colours. Sort of. Probably the best thing he had ever made. Anyway, it had to be better than whatever this little kid could do. Right?
He was wrong. So very wrong. If John's boat was a pretty painting, Sherlock's boat was the Mona Lisa. It was extremely well constructed, neat and, though John wasn't incredibly well versed on the subject, seemed to be quite historically accurate. It even had masts and sails, which Johns boat did not. It also dwarfed John's ship in sheer size.
"So, what do we do now?" asked John, hiding his shame at being bested in a ship-building contest by a nine-year-old.
"We have a fight, obviously!" answered Sherlock excitedly. Sherlock grabbed his vessel and handed the other to John. "I'm a Pirate ship and you're a French merchant ship,"
After a long arduous fight involving a mild scuffle with a Kraken (don't ask) and small tantrum from Sherlock ( "Don't be stupid! They used Francs in France not doubloons!"), the two boys lay exhausted on the floor, their ships lying limp beside them. Eventually, Sherlock stood up and started taking his boat apart, organising the bricks by colour and putting them away.
John was puzzled. He had never seen a child actively choose to tidy up after themselves before. He and sister hated tidying up after playtime and would drag their feet for hours, trying to avoid it. Sherlock stared at John incredulously and spoke up, agitated "You have to tidy up after yourself too. Those are the rules," he explained.
The two tidied up in a companionable silence. John put away all the trays and, with Sherlocks help, pushed the box into the corner of the room. "Now that we've finished tidying up, why don't we go make ourselves some dinner?" he suggested.
John sat Sherlock down on the sofa and told him to put something he wanted to watch on the tv. He bustled around the kitchen, putting the pizza in the already heated oven and setting the timer. Privately, he wondered what kinds of shows the kid would be a fan of. Wandering back into the front room, he found his answer.
Was that… the history channel? Yep. He was not wrong, that little kid was watching a historical documentary and enjoying it. This boy just got weirder and weirder. Whatever, it was something to watch. John even found himself getting invested in the subject of the documentary, even being disappointed when the timer buzzed, summoning him to the kitchen. Plating them up, he called Sherlock into the kitchen.
John was looking around in the drawers for a pizza cutter but he couldn't find it. When he asked Sherlock about it, the boy gave him a puzzled look. "Do you mean the scissors? They're in the drawer next to the fridge,"
Scissors? John's brain skipped a beat. Who used scissors to cut pizza? The Holmes family were really peculiar. Whatever. When in Rome…
He sat down on the couch next to Sherlock, going to cut the pizza with the scissors. He would get used to it. Nope. Still weird. At least the pizza was good.
Once all the pizza was eaten and the documentary finished, John and Sherlock found themselves with an hour or so to kill before Sherlock's bedtime. John asked what Sherlock wanted to do and the boy decided on drawing. The two went upstairs and sat at the little table in Sherlock's room, as Sherlock doled out sheets of paper and bundles of colouring pencils.
John wasn't much into drawing but Sherlock was really trying and it made him want to give it a go too. In the end, John produced a pretty decent, if childish picture of a house on a hill. After a while, Sherlock proudly presented his masterpiece, which was, like most things the boy did, very impressive.
He had drawn a boat, a lot like the one he had made from Lego, and standing on the bow of the ship were two familiar looking people, wearing pirate hats. "It's us!" proclaimed the small child proudly. "Do you like it?" Now that John was thinking about it, the sketch did kind of look like the two of them. The taller figure had John's short blond hair and the other had Sherlocks messy long hair.
"I love it!" he announced, with a reassuring smile. Glancing up at the analogue clock on the wall, he realised that it was eight o'clock. Sherlock's bedtime. How had the hours passed so quickly? "Well buddy, it's time for bed. Why don't you put on your pyjamas while I go wash up our plates?" he continued. Sherlock nodded in agreement.
Once the plates were washed, dried and put away, John went to check that Sherlock was in bed, which he was. But he wasn't asleep.
"John, I can't sleep. Will you read me a story?" Sherlock whined. Agreeing, John browsed the bookshelves for a suitable book. Hidden away on the bottom shelf, next to a book on Mathematics and a copy of the Necronomicon, was a thin tatty paperback that John recognised instantly.
"Sherlock. Have you read Treasure Island?" he asked brandishing the tome. The bewilderment on Sherlocks face showed that be had not. Surprising, considering what a pirate fanatic the kid was.
"It's a book about this kid called Jim and a bunch of pirates-" he began, before being cut of by an excited voice.
"Pirates! That sounds awesome," exclaimed Sherlock excitedly "Can you read that one to me?"
"Okay," said John, walking over to the boys bed and taking a seat on the edge. "Squire Trelawnay, Dr Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island…"
At ten o'clock, John's mom came to pick him up. He'll admit he felt a bit sad to leave, having gotten attached to the boy. Maybe he would babysit the Sherlock again. For the money, of course. And no other reason. Obviously.