John blew on his hands; London's winters were not usually so icy-cold as this one, at least not 'til January. It took some brisk rubbing to bring movement back into his knuckles – he fumbled his keys a few times, getting the front door open – and a bit more before he trusted his fingers to keep hold of the post, piled on the table in the hallway. John shifted through it as he clattered up the stairs.
"Two more today," he said, fishing the distinctive-looking envelopes out from amidst the bills, the adverts, and a few of the endless catalogues. One was red and almost square, the other long and a bit narrow – not so different from the standard utility bill really, but made of the sort of paper that says special.
Sherlock gave only a toneless hum, difficult to detect through the thrum of plucked chords as he stood by the window in his dressing gown.
Tossing the other lot into one of the chairs under the desk, John laid the two envelopes carefully on top of one of the more deliberate-looking stacks of books and then went for the knife on the mantel. The steady tunk-tunk-tunk of the violin set a tempo ticking in his mind, a bit too quick for him to keep pace with. His hand caught the knife at an awkward angle, and was still a bit stiff with cold besides; the handle dug painfully into the webbing by his thumb.
"Damnit," he muttered, as he gave the thing a good wrench. It came away as if in deference to his anger, which was already beginning to give way to embarrasssment. Blushing slightly under the detached scrutiny that Sherlock (who had not actually moved) was no doubt thinking in his direction, John forced himself to take a deep breath, turning the knife over in his hands. Two, three, inhale, exhale. The musty smell of Baker Street mixed with the bitter rasp of the ashes of yesterday's fire, sour from the water John had poured on the last embers. Sherlock had actually fallen asleep on the couch last night, and though it was down to a faint pulse of the blazing heartbeat that had warmed them all evening, a rash of home fires in the news had made John cautious. Sherlock would have scoffed, had he been awake. But there was no adrenaline high to be had from smoke inhalation, of course, and John pared off the most dangerous edges where he could.
Inhale, exhale. He did feel calmer. The beat of blood in his hand no longer seemed important. He collected the two envelopes and took them to his chair as Sherlock switched to bowing scales.
The knife made a satisfying slide through the top of red envelope, reminding him of the upward-downward slope of the sounds resonating from Sherlock's violin, and the card slipped out as if oiled. "Helen Stoner," John said, pitching his voice to carry over the notes. He ran his finger along the artfully frayed edge of the handmade paper. "Lovely card as always." He tucked it back under the tongue of its envelope. The other one looked more like ordinary post; the handwritten address was the giveaway. The flap of the narrow envelope came open at his touch, and he pulled out several typed folded sheets. He scanned the first several lines in confusion until he saw a name he recognized.
"Ellman Jarvis died," he said.
Sherlock turned from the window, eyebrows raised and bow stilled. "Another jealous massage therapist?"
"N-ooope," John said tentatively; he had started to read instead of scanning for key facts. "Stomach cancer, looks like." He winced; that was a nasty one. "It looks like we're on his niece's Christmas list now. The one in America."
Sherlock gave a small hmph. "Somebody should inform her about airmail paper," he said somewhat sourly. Likely irritated that he hadn't worked that last bit out for himself, then.
"If her uncle's estate has come through, she's probably not too worried about a bit of extra postage," John replied absently, falling back into the letter and Sherlock returned to his scales. Massachusetts sounded a lot nicer than Florida, which Mrs. Hudson would tell him about occasionally when she had had a nip of sherry and was feeling expansive. There was a picture at the bottom of the second page, the colors a bit off as they tended to be when printed to ordinary paper, but the sentiment still vivid: their client from two summers ago (thinner, probably already ill, but the broad and crooked smile was unmistakable) with an arm around his niece (different smile, same nose and chin) and the other hand on the shoulder of a doe-eyed boy of about ten who might as well have been on loan from a mobile phone commercial, all on a backdrop of brilliant autumn foliage. The golden retriever had apparently become bored with posing and was galloping eagerly toward the camera, filling the bottom-right foreground, and all three of the humans were laughing. John couldn't help smiling back at them, the man they had known for perhaps a month now gone and the family that was missing him. The leaves really were something. Sherlock had pretended he hadn't heard, of course, but John had thought that the niece's invitation to visit had been sincere – or at least Jarvis seemed to think so when he told them.
"Well," John said, "I'm after tea." He stood up. "I'll just put these on the mantelpiece, shall I?"
"No to tea," Sherlock said, with his hand out. He never looked at most of the cards, at least not that John ever saw, but the ones Helen sent were always minor feats of paper architecture – or combinations of unusual base substances, more like – and he liked to examine them up close. John handed off the card on his way to the fireplace, and frowned as he contemplated the crowded mantel. John glanced at the letter in his hand. The skull was already sharing space – Sherlock had thrown a wobbly when John had tried to move it to the end-table – and he didn't think the letter would look like much, wedged in around the edge of the mirror as they had started to do when the cards first crossed into double digits a few years ago. In the end, he stuck the solstice card from Sally Barnicot (pretty enough, but the pre-printed text was a bit embarrassing, he had thought, though Sherlock had only smiled) and a rather ghoulishly jolly polar bear under the tinsel draped over the mirror and set the letter accordion-like on its side, second page first so that the Jarvises and their dog smiled out at the room.
A few minutes later, his hands wrapped around a warm mug and Sherlock crooning out some sort of Dickensian air on his violin, John felt warmth soak him through, and the last of the tension drain out of his back. Sherlock was turned toward the window again, and John followed the familiar lines of blue-draped arms and back with his eyes while his mind followed the melody to parts unknown, places he knew intimately by feel after so many years of liquid sound, but could never find words to describe.
The music came to an end with a series of conciliatory flourishes in a major key. It occurred to John, in that corner of his brain that kept track of all the exits at the cinema and keyed in on the defensible ground cover at picnics, that the piece seemed a bit syrupy for Sherlock's tastes; so it was if anything a bit reassuring to see Sherlock shake his shoulders, a moue of distaste on his face, after the last note had dissolved.
"Why'd you play it, then?" John asked.
"'Tis the season,'" Sherlock replied sourly. Disdain remained in the set of his face even as his hands laid the instrument to rest in its case with gentle attention. John watched that, too, waiting out the hiatus in the conversation.
With the violin case tucked (relatively) safely away behind his chair, Sherlock marched round to the front of it, grabbed the edges of his robe, and pulled them more tightly around himself as he flopped down into the chair, sighing dramatically. "There's no escaping it."
John gave him a quick smile. "Sheer force of will isn't enough?"
Another scowl. "No."
John chuckled; he knew it would only curdle Sherlock's mood more deeply to see himself being laughed at, but John did feel entitled, seeing as how he put up with the rest of it. Sherlock only sniffed loudly and slouched lower, to John's further silent delight.
A few minutes passed, and John's joy subsided.
"What," said Sherlock, who was apparently not so deep in the cave of rancor that he had stopped observing.
John had become – not sad, exactly, but was sliding in that direction. Leave it to Sherlock to see it before he did. He pursed his lips in thought.
"You didn't used to–" he stopped. Talking about Sherlock's two years away was still something he wasn't good at. "Before, I mean. You could…" he bit his lip as he bit down on the thought, no more machine language, ever again. "Not switch it on and off, but— all the rubbishy parts of the holidays…."
"Most of it," Sherlock put in.
"Yeah, all right – it never bothered you if you didn't want it to. You just… deleted, filtered, I don't know."
Sherlock shifted, unwrapping into a softer kind of quiet.
"Why do they send cards, do you think," he said, his voice low and quiet, "so many years later, these people who have met us only a few times. Why, still."
John cracked his knuckles thoughtfully, one hand wrapped around the other. He knew why, clear as day, clear as anything; the hard part was making it into an answer to a question that somebody would ask. Sherlock still came out of left field, sometimes, asking about things John had assumed everybody knew, but it was different, ever since he came back: confusion, not like he was looking at it like a specimen on a slide.
"They remember you. They, ah. Want you to know that they haven't forgotten what you did. For them." John drew in a breath, caught himself; was he really going to say this to Sherlock Holmes, of all people? Apparently he was: "Kind of a Christmas miracle… they might. Fancy it. You know." He winced; said aloud, it was, actually, as trite as he'd feared.
But Sherlock did not sneer, or scoff; he only caught the tail of his dressing-gown cord between his fingers and fiddled with it.
"There's Christmas paraphernalia all over the word, you know," he said, still quiet, not lecturing. "Viet Nam, Singapore… in the supermarkets, I mean, and the malls. It made me—" he stopped. "It was."
John waited.
"I thought of you often," he said at last. He was still playing with the belt of his dressing gown. "Of you and Mrs. Hudson and… everyone."
John swallowed. "And you were trying not to."
Sherlock gave a fretful sigh. "I wasn't trying. That's the problem."
John wasn't certain he was following. "And you – can't shut it off now?"
Sherlock pulled a brief face; John had gotten it wrong. "I don't… want to. Anymore."
"Ah." John folded his hands and tried to make an "I understand perfectly" face and hoped it would do. He really didn't know what to make of the bits and pieces that had trickled out of Sherlock every now and again about his time away. But he could see well enough that this Sherlock was different, in small ways the man himself was still discovering. John felt a surge of affection for his wonderful, confusing flatmate, drawn slightly closer to the rest of the human race by the fact that he also found himself confusing sometimes.
"I still don't enjoy the trappings of the season," Sherlock clarified. He scooted himself up to sitting properly and clapped his hands to the arms of the chair. "The adverts are hideous, it's all too loud, and even the music that otherwise wouldn't be dreadful is spoiled in the execution, or because somebody has decided that an accordion is an appropriate vehicle for Brahms. But simply ignoring it has become— unacceptable."
John shook his head in a sort of half-joking wonder. "Sherlock Holmes, a convert to peace, love, and goodwill toward man."
"Don't be ridiculous, John," Sherlock countered. "Most people, at least in urban environments, are if anything more apt to display hostility toward strangers and casual acquaintances during the holiday season."
"So you don't love everybody more, then," John said, by way of clarification.
Sherlock threw John a look of mild surprise. "What? Of course not. People are in general at their least palatable this time of year."
John tapped his empty mug into his palm a few times, now that there was no more tea to drink. "It's people in particular, then."
Sherlock scoffed. "Have you only just begun paying attention?" He stopped, abruptly. "Although to be fair, it is perplexing. That ordinary people should become more odious, while…" he bit his lip, and a moment later crumpled his face as if in concentration, but at last gave a sharp huff. Nothing further appeared to be forthcoming.
"Yeah," said John agreeably.
Sherlock nodded. He seemed almost abashed. A moment later he took up the tail of his dressing gown, picking at it as he had the belt a few moments before.
"I'm going to put the kettle back on," John announced, pushing to his feet. "Do you want some this time?"
"All right," Sherlock said. John nodded over his shoulder and went into the kitchen.
"I detest mince," Sherlock called out to him, over the rising hiss of the kettle.
"Yeah, noted." John pulled down another mug, a faded souvenir from Bath that had been at Baker Street longer than John had, and probably belonged to Mrs. Hudson. He smiled, a little, running his finger along the raised tracery of the illustrated trees in the background.
"D'you think you might ever want to see New England?" he asked a moment later, as he set Sherlock's tea down on the little table beside him. It took only a second for the awkwardness to catch up with him. "If you didn't – I mean, if you weren't…."
"Hmm?" Sherlock had apparently disappeared into his own head for a few minutes. "Oh, no. Never been." Sherlock watched as John lowered himself back into the chair, slowly to keep the mug steady. His eyes were very bright, John noticed as he took a first careful sip.
"Is it a place you'd like to see?" Sherlock asked.
John took another pull of tea. "It is, I think. In the autumn, sometime."
Sherlock tipped his head, as if in thought. "I suppose it's possible," he said. He looked back at John. "I would like that, I think," he said, smiling at John tentatively. "If we were to go. I would like that."
John smiled back, holding Sherlock's eyes until the hesitancy melted away. "I would like that, too."