Chapter 10
John arrived home to what many would describe as a war zone. John wouldn't, but then, John had been in a war zone, and no matter how chaotic screaming four year olds can be, it doesn't really compare. For one thing, war zones are often quieter. And the splashes of red one might see are not usually accompanied by blue, orange, and yellow.
There was paint everywhere. On the wall over the sofa mostly, where he could just make out a giant sheet had been hung up and draped over the furniture in some probable attempt to contain the madness. It hadn't worked. The rainbow explosion leaked out, colors swirling together in places into a sickly brown color but mostly just in splotches and handprints all over the wall, floor, and the furniture where the sheet had pulled back. And the children.
They were facing away from him, armed with paint brushes that they wielded like wands, covered from head to toe in colors. Some of which looked quite deliberate, like the sun drawn on one of the little girl's sleeves and the lines and circles adorning all their faces. But mostly it was drippings and hand prints, a wild kaleidoscope of hues splattered over once pristine over-sized white shirts and it positively coated tiny bare feet.
"Red! Blue! Yellow!" The shriek of tiny voices filled the air. "Pink! Pearl!"
"Pur-ple." And of course Sherlock was there, leading the chaos, his usually pristine clothes covered in hand prints and his face painted as though he were only another over grown child himself.
"John! Johnjohnjohnjohnjohnjohn!" And that was all John had time to observe before a small colorful blur with familiar black hair was hurtling itself towards him and colliding into his legs. The shouting abruptly stopped and four faces were turned towards him in the uncertain manner of the very young who had only just realized their fun might be a bit naughty right when a grown up arrived to catch them at it. Sherlock, who had been beaming excitedly as any of the children a moment before, was now looking around the room as though only just noticing the mess they had made before his eyes turned back to John, and then down to the colorful creature currently grounding said colors deep into John's nicer pair of trousers.
"Uncle John?" Harry's excited cry had trailed off into uncertainty, the small arms still wrapped tightly around him. Absently, and still feeling a bit in shock, John found himself patting the boy's head while stepping slowly further into the room as the small arms loosened and then released him. When he had left this morning, everything had been perfectly normal. There had been one child and Sherlock to look after him. Now there were four children…and still only Sherlock to look after them. Neville and Susan he recognized. The other little girl only looked vaguely familiar.
"Yes, John, hello…how was your date?" Sherlock asked, all the while eyeing him carefully. His eyes kept going down to his knees and John found himself glancing down himself, to see the blue and green handprints. Harry finally saw himself what he had done. His eyes opened very wide.
There was a moment of complete calm, when every possible outcome was in perfect balance and John could see every one, from screaming and crying and Harry hiding under the sink again to angry parents and loss of control to discipline and scrub brushes and lessons learned. And John looked down at Harry and the hand prints, and he made the only possible decision.
"Hello, Harry." He picked him up, spreading the paint now to his nice shirt, "It looks like you've been having fun." And he smiled.
The answering smile was worth every hour that was to come scrubbing away paint and the loss of one of his nicest suits combined.
"John," Sherlock said, his expression still cautious but some of the earlier excitement slowly leaking back in, "We have been conducting an experiment with finger paints and 'accidental' glutinic discharges." Finger paint. So it should wash out. Thank God.
"Experimenting on the children?" John asked, eyebrow raised, as he slowly walked further into the room with Harry, making sure to keep his expression light.
"With the children," Sherlock stressed.
"We make the colors change!" Neville said, his usually quiet voice exuberant.
"I'm control!" the strange girl then told him proudly, pointing down at her white shirt where he could, indeed, just make out the word 'control' beneath the splatters of paint. Now that he looked closer, all the shirts had words on them. Neville's said 'subject B'.
"And what's your name, sweetheart?" John asked, kneeling in front of 'Control' and setting Harry back on the floor. Harry was obviously still uncertain over this turn of events because he didn't let go of John's shirt.
"Licia," the little girl answered, and promptly she held out her hand to shake his. He took it, his eyes turning expectedly up towards Sherlock.
"Alicia Lestrade; Greg's niece. He had to leave suddenly, police duties, and I said it was fine."
"Very nice to meet you, Alicia; I'm Dr. John Watson. You can call me John."
"Are you Harry's other daddy?" she asked. John blinked. Before he could answer, Susan was whispering urgently into Alicia's ear in what was probably meant to be quiet, her eyes wide and solemn while Neville looked on worriedly.
"They're his uncles, Licia! His Mommy and Daddy died in the war!"
"I'm sorry!" Alicia cried, eyes wide at this unexpected tragedy, and she threw her arms around Harry and started to cry. Susan immediately threw her arms around Alicia, leaving Neville standing alone with his dripping paint brush, looking about two seconds away from deciding to cry himself. Harry, for once, wasn't crying. He also hadn't let go of John's shirt, despite the unexpected assault from the two girls.
Of course it is at this moment, as the room descended once more towards chaos, that the door opened.
"Hey, sorry I…ah…" the man in the door began before trailing off as he took in the paint and the crying children.
"Uncle Greg!" Alicia wailed, disentangling herself from Harry and Susan so that she could hurl herself towards Lestrade. John only just thought to catch her in time before Lestrade's uniform was treated with the same design as his own trousers.
"So what's going on?" Lestrade asked, seeming more bemused than upset at the state of his niece. "What happened to finger painting on paper? In the kitchen?"
"Scientific experiment. Subjects, line up! Control, take your place!" And to the astonishment of John and Lestrade, the four children immediately scrambled to move into a line, after a brief confusion over whose paint brush was whose.
"I'm 'control'!" Alicia explained once again, this time to her uncle. All four children looked eager to show off their roles.
"Subject A, B, C, show your color," Sherlock instructed, and Susan held up her paint brush to announce, "Red!" A glob of red paint flew towards the sheet hung on the wall, the splatter quite a bit larger than would be expected from the amount of paint on the brush.
"Yellow!" Neville exclaimed next with a slight jump, his yellow paint exploding over the red.
"Blue!" Harry's exclamation came almost as enthusiastically, though he was still watching John carefully for signs of disapproval. Blue paint splashed over the sheet.
"Control?" Sherlock asked. Alicia didn't just have a paint brush; she had a whole array of cups in front of her, all different colors. She grabbed a brush out of one.
"Green!" she exclaimed. Immediately Harry and Neville stepped forward together, and with Alicia's own enthusiastic though not particularly impressive green splatter, they both tossed their colors, creating a glob of green paint at the center. A call for 'purple' from Control had Neville falling back and Susan stepping forward. Orange, predictably, came next. At the end of their impromptu show, the children looked at John, Lestrade, and somewhat at Sherlock, waiting for their reaction.
"That was brilliant!" John announced, mostly to the children but his eyes turned to take in Sherlock as well.
Lestrade was the only one who thought to get a picture. Thankfully, he seemed thoroughly amused, even when it came to the prospect of how to clean everything up.
"I am sorry, John," he said later, when they were alone in the kitchen and surveying the remaining mess from the original hand painting experience while Sherlock was still trying in the other room to convince his troupes to concentrate on disappearing the paint by magic. Lestrade's apology might have been more sincere if he would stop grinning, though there was a hint of tiredness and regret hiding just behind his joviality. "I never meant to leave him alone with Alicia and Harry, let alone all four after that woman suddenly showed up and insisted those other two had a play date. It really was an emergency."
"I understand those," John was quick to assure him, "And I've come home to worse. Him and his bloody experiments. At least this time there isn't actual blood. Paint should wash out. Er…shouldn't it?"
"…Right. You would think…being washable…so it says on the label." From the other room, a half shrieked chant was taken up led by Sherlock's deeper voice of 'go paint go!'. The children were still at it when Sherlock joined them in the kitchen, looking just as paint splattered as before. His expression was not so much guilty as artfully contrite, though he couldn't quite hide the way his eyes still danced with interest and excitement. It also didn't help his attempt towards seriousness that he still had vivid painted lines drawn down his nose and over his cheeks.
"Perhaps if we attached a hose to the sink?" he suggested.
Lestrade and John looked at each other and then looked at the mastermind behind the art project.
"We?" John asked, directing his response towards Lestrade, "Do you think there is a 'we' in this cleanup, Greg?"
"I think that Sherlock has been doing such a good job minding the children that I'd hate to deprive him of finishing it. Tea, John?"
"A splendid idea, Greg. I'll just put the kettle on."
Sherlock huffed, looking at them with disgust. "Fine. John, Greg, will you please help me to clean up the paint caused by my very successful experiment proving that the term 'accidental magic' is inaccurate and misleading even taking aside the insistence of using the term 'magic'."
John continued in his movements to turn the kettle on.
"What's wrong; did your magic stop working?" Lestrade asked while clearing aside the paintings left on the table to have a place for the mugs.
"It's all about the release of intense desires," Sherlock explained, sounding exasperated now, though whether it was with the need to explain or the situation in general it was hard to tell, "As it turns out, small children have a much stronger desire to make colors than to make them go away. Sherry could probably do it, but I didn't think you'd want him worked up into a state of needing everything clean."
"No," John agreed quickly, "No, we'll just have to do it the old fashioned way."
"Really?" Sherlock asked, looking unexpectedly thrilled.
"And by 'we', he means 'you'," Lestrade interjected. Sherlock glanced at John, waiting a second to see if he was going to contradict him and offer his help after all. When that didn't come, his expression fell back to sulking.
"Fine." He stormed back into the other room where the children were still running wild. A moment later they heard his voice booming over theirs, calling them to order. John hesitated, on the verge of following.
"Let him," Lestrade insisted, putting out his hand to draw him back, "He's done fine so far. I never would have believed it at the beginning of all this, but he really isn't half bad."
"I suppose he can't possible make more of a mess cleaning than he did…making the mess," John agreed, but he still hesitated. It felt wrong to be hiding in the kitchen while Sherlock was out there doing who knows what to the children. The kettle began to whistle.
Somehow, John managed to get through the ritual of tea making without looking out the door, not even when he heard Susan and Alicia's indignant cry that they were girls.
"He's probably trying to get them all in the tub together," Lestrade reasoned calmly and without a hint of worry while they listened to Sherlock's slightly bewildered response of 'What does it matter? You're four years old."
"Four and a half!" "Four and three quarters!" were the responses to that. John and Lestrade resolutely did not move to help, sitting with their backs to the living room. They were just taking their first sips of tea when Harry found his way into the kitchen, walking up to John and tugging at his shirt for attention.
"Yes, Harry?" John asked, smiling gently. The boy was damper than he had been before but still covered in paint. He looked anxious.
"I clean?" he asked, twisting John's shirt in his hand while he stared at him.
"Sorry?" John asked, confused, reaching down to pull the boy into his lap. "What's wrong, Harry?"
"I clean?" the boy asked again anxiously, twisting around so that he could look at John's face. Sherlock appeared in the door suddenly as though at a run, though he stopped abruptly when he saw them.
"Lost someone?" Lestrade asked with a gentle smile over the cup he was nursing in his hands. Beyond him, they could still hear the other children screaming.
"No, of course not," Sherlock answered, and after sending a surprisingly soft smile towards John and Harry, he backed out of the room, scowling again. John barely noticed. Whatever was going on in the other room, John had stopped listening to try and work out what was upsetting Harry. The boy still hadn't answered properly, now twisting his own shirt in his hands.
"I'm sorry, Harry, I don't understand," John told him. "What do you want. Do you want to be clean?"
"I…yes? I…can clean paint? And get star?"
"Do you want a star for cleaning the paint?" John asked, face wrinkled in confusion, before he finally understood. One of Harry's goals on his wall chart was to not clean except for putting away his toys. And now suddenly they were telling him to help clean the living room. John considered for a moment how to respond. "Did you help make the mess?" he asked at last.
"…Maybe?" Harry was watching him closely.
"When you help make a mess, then you help to clean it up. And then you get a star."
Harry considered this.
"I not bad?"
"Never," John insisted, his arms involuntarily tightening around the small boy.
Lestrade cleared his throat, looking slightly embarrassed to be sitting there at such an intimate moment, though his eyes were shining. "Perhaps we've made Sherlock stew long enough." He suggested, setting down his mug. John nodded but wasn't quite able to bring himself to put Harry down. He carried him instead, something Harry seemed content to let him do for the moment, more than content if the grip around his neck was anything to go by.
They walked into the next room. And found it amazingly spotless.
Sherlock looked ridiculously smug despite the colored lines still covering his face as he took down the faintly stained sheet to reveal pristine wallpaper and an unblemished sofa. Around him, three children inspected their clean skin and white shirts, unmarked except for the labels Sherlock had given them. Mrs. Longbottom was also there in a ridiculous hat with her wand still held out.
"There you are, Harry, dear," she said, before waving her wand again. Something wet and cold washed over them and Harry gave a surprised gasp before hiding his face in John's shoulder. It was the bad shoulder and John gave a soft 'oof' but otherwise gave no notice. Mrs. Longbottom frowned. The paint covering Harry from head to toe and the stains on John's clothes had washed clear away, but there were still smears of paint where John had gotten it on his hands and one streak of blue across his jaw.
"Interesting," Sherlock said, "the glutinium energy is able to affect our clothes but not our skin."
"Neville, Susan, where are your clothes?" Mrs. Longbottom demanded sharply, and the two children stopped inspecting themselves to look guiltily around for their misplaced items.
"I kept them safe," Sherlock answered for them, his tone equally as sharp before he turned and marched up to Harry's room. He came back swiftly with a bundle of clothes and shoes. There was more confusion while they all sorted out whose was whose and then again when the girls refused to change with the boys.
Still, they were all sorted in the end. And if Alicia somehow ended up with a shirt with hearts that lit up when she smiled and turned black when she cried while Susan's pink shirt now clashed horribly with her red hair…well, they each insisted it was the same shirt they had come in.
"And what do you say now?" Mrs. Longbottom demanded to her grandson.
"Thank you for having us Mr. Sherlock and Dr. John," Neville said dutifully, his eyes down on his toes.
"It was lots of fun being a expertment!" Susan added, "And playing with Sherry and Licia."
"Experiment," Harry said unexpectedly, lifting his head up at last. Sherlock stopped scowling towards Mrs. Longbottom to beam at Harry.
"Say goodbye to Harry Potter, Neville, Susan. Susan's father is expecting her home soon."
"Oh, do you plan these things with the parents?" Sherlock asked, sounding perfectly pleasant and innocent, "I thought it was usual to take children about without plan or asking first before leaving them with near strangers."
"Goodbye, Sherry, goodbye Licia!" Susan and Neville said not quite in tandem while Mrs. Longbottom huffed indignantly.
"Good day," John offered pleasantly, for once not caring to apologize for Sherlock, and the old woman finally left with Neville and Susan in tow.
"I suppose we had better be going too," Lestrade said, after they were gone, "Thank you again, Sherlock. You did well."
"Of course I did," Sherlock answered, but he couldn't quite contain his surprised grin or the way he stood just the slightest bit taller.
"Well," John said, when it was just the three of them, "That worked out well. Though it didn't all come out of the sheet, I see."
"I think it was the glutinic force behind the paint," Sherlock answered, studying the stained sheet with a thoughtful expression.
"Yes. And all that remains is to finish cleaning. Right Harry?"
"I clean mess and get star," Harry answered authoritatively, no longer hiding in John's shoulder.
"What mess?" Sherlock demanded, "It's all clean now! Or do you want me to wash you?"
"The kitchen, Sherlock," John reminded him, "There's still paint all over the kitchen."
"We clean mess," Harry said again, squirming in John's hold until he set him down. Back on the floor, Harry determinedly marched up to Sherlock and grabbed at his hand, tugging at him.
"Oh, very well," Sherlock said with an exaggerated sigh, "We mess, we clean."
John gave them a good five minutes and took the time to wash the paint from his own hands and face before he gave in and joined them.
He let Sherlock walk around for the rest of the evening before pointing out he still had paint on his face.
All in all, it wasn't a bad day.