That Familiar Sound

It would have been another fortnight until he knocked upon that door again, Sherlock predicted.

Not because he had given himself a subconscious schedule, or because he couldn't last any longer. Nothing like that. Sherlock reasoned that it was a natural and sensible length of time. A pair of weeks, complete with all days present. A neat and tidy amount of time.

He wasn't even aware that he couldn't even fool himself.

So it was while fully expecting it to be a clean fortnight that Sherlock had thrown himself into another case, a meagre excuse for a puzzle pulled from Lestrade's cold cases in an obvious attempt to occupy him. Sherlock wasn't inept enough at social interaction to miss the sympathy in the Detective Inspector's eyes, and he found himself completing the case in hours and not returning to the Yard.

He had yet to speak to his brother again since the night of the Aquarium, but whereas no Yard meant a lamentable lack of new work, Sherlock viewed avoiding his overbearing older brother as a blessing.

That morning he'd sent Mrs Hudson scuttling away after twenty minutes of her fussing over him, doing so for her own benefit because he was growing irritated and the Sherlock Holmes of now-a-day preferred to send her off to save her from the worse snapping and vicious expelling of his vocabulary that would come after a further twenty minutes. Or god forbid an hour.

But Sherlock was feeling restless, and ten minutes after shooing her from the pile of papers and books and teaspoons and whatnot that she'd been tidying, the sight of it kept retuning to the corner of his eyes and driving him quite mad.

So with a despairing sigh he had rolled himself from his sprawl on the couch to cross the room and deal with the infernal thing, a tower of mess that was no different from the others in the flat. Ones they had lived with every day, adding to and subtracting from as they saw fit. Sherlock halted his thought process from meandering towards the conclusion that his new-found irritation with this particular pile could be credited both to his annoyance at Mrs Hudson's suffocating sympathy and his own current state of mind.

Which was more erratic than he could truthfully say it usually was.

Sherlock lifted things haphazardly, deliberately, creating more chaos in the sea of chaos, tossing file folders and books into exceptionally untidy heaps depending on what he was going to do with them. Teaspoons clanged satisfyingly against the units in the kitchen when he tossed them towards the sink without really taking aim. A pile of Egyptian sand scattered over the floor and into the air, coating a zip-locked square of bloody carpet and tangling in a coil of Highland cow hair as Sherlock swept the whole lot out of his way with his sleeve.

He continued on like this for several minutes until a familiar sound stopped him cold.

A sound he wasn't expecting to hear. One he wasn't prepared to hear.

His gaze located the upturned, twisted-and-not-really-folded newspaper, locking on a prominent point and doing nothing else. If Sherlock were in the state of mind for metaphors and imagery he might have likened the sensation he was feeling right then to a suctioning of all the air in his vicinity. As it were, he was most decidedly not in the frame of mind for such things, and so he did no such thing.

But the sound, now that circled in his ears, long after the abrupt clatter had ended, and Sherlock did not move for several very long moments.

Sherlock took those long moments to convince himself to pick the damned newspaper up to collect the fallen item underneath. He couldn't say why he'd needed so long for a simple synapse firing of his movement.

The newspaper crinkled, loud in his hands even though he knew it wasn't loud at all. And underneath was the soft yellow fabric that should not have felt so significant but yet was anyway. Sherlock reached to retrieve it from the floor, feeling the sensory memory of it in his fingers. It made that familiar, mundane rattling noise again, the one that so fascinated Rosie.

Evening found Sherlock perched in John's chair, the rattle in his hands and a blank look on his face, a studious glaze in his eyes.

"It's her favourite," Mary argued, tucking her hair behind one ear and leaving a streak of flour across her cheek, "I think it could be the colour. Or maybe the fabric, it's the only soft one she has."

John made an agreeing hum, reaching up from his seat at the dining table to rub his thumb across the crest of his wife's cheek, removing most of the flour. She thanked him with a peck to the top of his head before returning her attention to the batter she was mixing, John returning to his newspaper.

"Then she is no exceptional child." Sherlock murmured, half to Mary and half to Rosie herself as he handed back the rattle, "If she were, she would throw out the toys she didn't want, in a logical manner."

"Sherlock," John broke in, eying his partner over the table with an exasperated tone in his voice, "babies aren't supposed to be logical. They're babies."

Mary chuckled, setting down the bowl with a satisfied look on her face, rinsing her hands under the tap before reaching for the cling filmed package of fish she'd taken from the fridge.

"It's her favourite." she said again, watching Sherlock retrieve the rattle once more from the corner of her eye, her hands stalling on the film, "She throws it because she wants you to give it back."

When Sherlock looked over, shooting Rosie a look when she dropped the rattle from her highchair yet again, Mary smiled softly at him.

"She wants you to play with her, Sherlock. She wants your attention."

"So she has the intelligence of a dog." Sherlock grumbled, lifting the toy once more and waving it a little awkwardly in front of the baby's face to earn a gurgled laugh before placing it gently in her hand again.

John looked up, before glancing around to see his wife watching Sherlock and Rosie with a fond expression.

"She's not the one who keeps picking it up." he answered, lifting his newspaper a little higher than necessary to hide the smile he was wearing.

Sherlock deigned not to hear him.

The morning was only Day Number Nine, but Sherlock excused the fact that it wasn't a clean fortnight on the basis that Rosie would want her favourite rattle. After all, the book had most definitely said that familiar things were important.

He was only looking out for Rosie's best interests.