Fic: The Baker Street Nativity (John/Sherlock, NC-17)

[swissmarg]

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Title: The Baker Street Nativity (On AO3)
Author: swissmarg
Beta reader: ruth0007
Rating: NC-17
Word count: This chapter: 2,716 / Total: 99,662
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Summary: Fusion with Nativity! (2009 movie starring Martin Freeman). Sherlock is a primary school teacher and John is assigned to be his classroom assistant. Together, they are charged with putting on the school's Nativity play. What could possibly go wrong?
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: This is a transformative work inspired by the BBC television series Sherlock, created by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, and the 2009 movie Nativity! from Mirrorball Films. All song lyrics are from Nativity!
Notes: You don't need to have seen Nativity! in order to understand (and hopefully enjoy) this. If you have seen Nativity!, the role played by Martin Freeman (Paul Maddens) in the movie is filled by Sherlock here, and John is in the role played by Marc Wootton (Dominic Poppy), so you may want to take a few moments to adjust your set before beginning. I have generally followed the plot of the movie, but obviously some additions and adjustments were necessary, as the movie was not a romance between these two characters at all. And pretty much the whole point of writing this was to get John and Sherlock together. So, it's like an AU fusion. ;)

A big thank you to ruth0007 for beta-reading this and giving invaluable feedback. Thank you also to the members of the sh_britglish community for pertinent advice on British culture and institutions. And finally, thank you to tryslora and her tireless cheerleading efforts during the Word Wars on hd_writers over the past few months. This would truly never have seen the light of day without her.

Master Post with links to all chapters




Chapter One - The Baker Street School

Sherlock Holmes strode past the news agent (something about the euro; dull) and on into the park, where the groundskeeper (widowed, lost last night's bet on the football match; dull and dull) was unwittingly obliterating evidence of the crimes that had taken place the previous night (underage alcohol consumption, pickpocketing, public indecency; dull, dull, dull). He stopped at Speedy's for a cup of coffee - black, three sugars (the young woman behind the counter had a boyfriend from Liverpool and was reading philosophy in her third semester but considering taking a gap year in Italy: honestly, did no one have any imagination any more?) - and took exactly two sips for quality control before continuing to the school.

The Baker Street Primary School was a low, boxy product of utilitarian 1970s brick-and-glass design. It smelt permanently and inexplicably - despite an entire afternoon wasted in an attempt to discern the source - of wet dog overlaid with industrial disinfectant, and had a reputation for mediocrity that everyone, students, teachers, administrators, and alumni alike, worked hard to maintain. Sherlock was no exception. Teaching certainly hadn't been his first - or second, or fifth - choice for a career, but after being dismissed from the conservatoire, he hadn't had a lot of options. He'd transferred his credits to the Open University, finished his BA through correspondence while he was in rehab, and talked his way into a position at the struggling private school. It had been five years now, and this would probably be his last. Especially after the incident with little Seb Wilkes. Or so the head teacher, Greg Lestrade, had hinted heavily, if Sherlock didn't 'adjust his attitude'. Something which Sherlock, of course, had no intention of doing. It wasn't his fault that the child was an idiot, and unable to handle being told so.

Sherlock stopped off at the teachers' lounge to check his inbox. The room was filled with the murmur of voices as the other teachers finished preparing for their classes or gossiped in the last few minutes before the warning bell rang to signal the start of classes. This was the worst part of the day. He could deal with the children, barely - none of them expected him to be nice or polite or, dullest of all, sociable. Not that any of the adults at the school did either by now, but the accusation was still there, the finger-pointing, both overt and subtle, at his failure to conform to some random set of useless rules he'd never agreed to in the first place.

"Hey, Sherlock." Mike Stamford turned around and put an elbow over the back of his chair. "Here's one for you: I'll bet you can't guess what news I got yesterday."

"I never guess," Sherlock said as he skimmed, then binned, the accumulated memos. He wondered what exactly it would take to make Stamford stop talking to him altogether.

"All right, deduce, then," Stamford went on amiably. "As you say. Go on, I'd be surprised."

The rest of the teachers were more or less surreptitiously listening in by this point. The jackals. Sherlock frowned and took a sip of his coffee. It was the perfect temperature now. If he got this over with quickly, he might still be able to enjoy it.

"It's not a party trick," he said, but looked at Stamford anyway. He was grinning from ear to ear; not an unusual look for him, granted, but there was an extra shininess to his cheeks this morning. It took Sherlock all of five seconds to arrive at his conclusion: "Your wife's pregnant."

Stamford's mouth dropped open, his face a caricature of astonishment. "Someone told you!" He looked around. "Molly, did you tell him?"

Molly Hooper flicked her eyes to Sherlock and away again, shaking her head. As she did so, her ponytail swung earnestly back and forth. "I swear I didn't." Her ears were already turning red, as they always did when she talked to, about, or in the vicinity of Sherlock. Another point of tedium. Sherlock had tried embarrassing her, belittling her, and flat-out insulting her, all to no avail. In fact, the attention had only seemed to flatter her. He was now resorting to ignoring her.

"It's obvious," Sherlock said to Stamford, because, truth be told, he enjoyed this part, and he certainly wasn't going to let Stamford off for dragging him into this. "First, you alerted me to the fact that you specifically received some news, so something personal. Further, it must be something you consider good news, judging by the fact that your face has been frozen in that ridiculous rictus since I entered the room. Most likely one of the big three: money, career, or family.

"A lottery win wouldn't be considered 'news' for you to receive. Inheritance? Unlikely, as that would entail someone close to you having died, and you're too obviously happy for that. Plus, you find discussing one's personal financial situation to be indelicate. New job? It's the wrong time of year for a teacher to be changing positions, and you're well satisfied with your job here, God knows why, so you won't have been looking to change. Leaves family.

"Your shirt is unironed and you've a mug of that horrendous instant stuff from here rather than your usual travel cup from home. Conclusion: your wife didn't iron your shirt or make you coffee this morning, and heaven forbid you do either yourself. She's therefore either out of town or ill. She's a librarian so would need to work today, with no reason for her to be travelling on business. The only other reason she'd have gone somewhere without you is if someone in her family had died; again, your demeanour doesn't support that conclusion. You've been married for almost a year and you're a practicing Catholic. That, together with a posited illness on her part, suggests morning sickness." Sherlock raised an eyebrow at Stamford.

"Why, yes," he said with an incredulous laugh. "That's-"

Sherlock interrupted: "Obvious, yes. And now I suppose you expect congratulations for working out the mechanics of something that literally billions of other idiots around the world do every day, largely without conscious thought. "

The smile froze, then slid off Stamford's face. The bell rang. The other teachers slowly got to their feet, some shooting Sherlock disapproving looks occasionally mixed with pity, which didn't make any sense; he wasn't the one who was going to have a young of the species hanging off him for the next twenty years. Others were shaking Stamford's hand and patting him on the back, offering him both congratulations and commiserations.

Sally Donovan paused next to Sherlock on her way out. "Couldn't you, just once, act like a decent human being?" she hissed. "I can't believe people actually allow you near their children."

"Something you'll never have to worry about," Sherlock said. "What with your biological clock ticking down its last few seconds."

Donovan's face hardened. It looked like she wanted to shoot something back at him. Instead, she stepped back, shaking her head and holding her hands up in surrender. "You'd better get to your class. Before you're written up for tardiness," she said and disappeared down the hall.

The rest of the morning didn't get any better. Sherlock's coffee had gone cold by the time he was able to drink it, his pupils were even slower and stupider than usual, and the pièce de résistance came when Lestrade announced at assembly that Sherlock would be in charge of the end-of-term Nativity play.

"What were you thinking, putting me in charge of the play?" Sherlock demanded later in Lestrade's office. "I thought we agreed after what happened five years ago I wouldn't do it again." He paced in the small room like a caged tiger, trying to figure out what Lestrade's motive could possibly be for such a hateful move. Sherlock hadn't done anything particularly awful lately, certainly nothing that deserved a punishment this extreme.

Lestrade leaned back in his chair. "I like to think you've matured since then."

Sherlock stopped his pacing and gave Lestrade a sceptical look. "That's entirely beside the point. This cannot possibly have a good outcome. The children are literally useless. They are congenitally unable to produce anything of merit."

Lestrade sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "That's exactly what I mean. You can't put down these kids like that. After what you did to that Wilkes boy-"

Ah, so that was it. Although it wasn't as if Sherlock were really at fault. "He was educationally subnormal!" Sherlock pointed out, quite reasonably. There was even a psychological assessment to back him up. "He didn't belong at this school anyway."

"You launched into him, in front of everyone, and didn't let up even when half the class was in tears along with him. You can't do that, Sherlock. It's a primary class, not the final judgment. He'll likely have lasting psychological damage. Do you even get that? These are kids. They're highly impressionable, and we're not just entrusted with teaching them to read and do sums-"

"Am I being let go?" Sherlock interrupted as the pieces fell into place. Lestrade was trying to force him to quit rather than firing him outright, likely in some misguided attempt to allow Sherlock to save face. "It'll be difficult to get a replacement in the middle of the term like this." And even more difficult for Sherlock to get another teaching position, even without the onus of being sacked.

"You're not being let go," Lestrade said with a weary sigh. "God knows why, but the board have let you off with a warning. But this is it." He underscored his point by poking a finger in Sherlock's direction. "I heard the Wilkeses had to be talked down from involving their solicitor."

"Why put me in charge of the play then? You can't really mean for me to do it. Is this some sort of punishment to try and keep me in line?" Sherlock asked, genuinely curious as to how that would work.

"No, that's not the punishment. I've put you in charge of the play because I think it will do both you and the kids good to interact out of the classroom. Take the pressure off, that sort of thing. I also happen to think you'll be quite good at it, and we need someone to take the reins if we're to have a chance at competing with the Blackwood School. With Mrs Prince gone, you're the only teacher with any sort of practical experience in the arts-"

"Yes, because a term and a half of training as a classical violinist makes me the go-to person for herding a pod of illiterate year threes through twenty minutes of flubbed lines, costume malfunctions, and backstage meltdowns."

"If they're illiterate it's on you, and it had better go at least half an hour." Lestrade gave him a pointed look.

Sherlock glowered mutinously.

Lestrade relented, saying, "Look, if you're worried about what happened five years ago... I think you've adjusted your expectations accordingly in the mean time. You know what these kids can do, and what they can't. You're not going to get BAFTAs and BRITs out of them. Just have them sing a couple of carols and walk through the parts. The script's already been written for two thousand years."

"So has Moran's review. If this is about besting Blackwood, we might as well spare everyone the embarrassment right now. Moran's in Moriarty's pocket. Have you forgotten what he wrote last time? 'A Christmas calamity...Sherlock Holmes' Nativity was abysmal... minus two stars'," Sherlock mimicked.

"All right, never mind about that, forget I said anything. This isn't about Blackwood or Moriarty. This is about you and these kids and showing everyone what this school can do." Lestrade pointed his pen at Sherlock. "I want you to go out there and work with those kids and get the best you can out of them. I think they might surprise you, and you might just surprise yourself."

"Doubtful, but I see that I have no choice," Sherlock muttered. Not if he wanted to keep this job, and he did, at least until he figured out something else to do. There was a time when he would have vacated his desk without a second thought, but Lestrade was unfortunately correct in one thing: Sherlock had changed over the past several years. He didn't like to think he was more responsible, necessarily - that would mean he did things because other people expected him to - but he was more aware of consequences, and losing his only source of income from one day to the next with no replacement in sight for the forseeable future would bring all sorts of very nasty consequences with it, things he would really rather not have to deal with like banks and creditors and the unemployment office, along with the even worse prospect of 'I-told-you-sos' and 'oh-Sherlock-you-didn'ts'.

"No, you really don't," Lestrade agreed with Sherlock's assessment, far too cheerfully for Sherlock's liking. He leaned forward and shuffled through some papers on his desk. "Oh, and by the way, the punishment is, you're getting a classroom assistant," he said without looking up.

Sherlock stared. "You're joking."

Lestrade had the good sense to look apologetic. "The board insisted."

"A chaperone, in other words."

"He's a nice chap, I think you'll like him."

"You think I'll-" Sherlock echoed incredulously. "No. I refuse. This is insulting and demeaning. I put up with that inane mentoring rot the first year, and we both know how that turned out."

"You're not really in a position," Lestrade said mildly. "Look, I don't know, think of it as you mentoring him."

"You are not saddling me with a teacher trainee."

Lestrade wiggled a pen up and down between his fingers. "No. No, I'm not. In fact, I'm not quite sure why he's agreed to come." An interesting furrow appeared between his eyebrows.

Sherlock's ears pricked up at that. "Oh?" he said, pretending at nonchalance.

Lestrade pulled a folder off his desk and read something out of it. "Yeah, army doctor, actually. Invalided out a couple of months ago. Mike Stamford put us in touch. Old classmate or something. Name's John Watson."

Sherlock was more interested than he wanted to be. "I suppose he thinks he'll be giving orders, instilling military discipline, that sort of rot."

"Give him a chance before you pass judgment. What is it you always say? Don't jump to conclusions without all the evidence?"

"Never theorise without all the facts," Sherlock muttered, trying to stop from doing exactly that.

"Right. He may surprise you. And like I said, you don't really have a choice. So, make the best of it. And Sherlock... relax! Have fun. And play nice."

Sherlock withdrew, grumbling loudly but inwardly chomping at the bit to find out just what the story was with this John Watson.

Mrs Hudson, the school secretary, greeted him on his way out. "Oh Sherlock, dear, here are those copies you needed." She held up a stack of papers.

"Thank you, Mrs Hudson," he said crisply, reaching out for them. He would never have thought to thank anyone else for doing something for him, but with Mrs Hudson he never considered not thanking her. It was all the more strange because she never really seemed to be bothered by his lack of social niceties; not that she didn't notice them or even take him to task for it, but she never took it as a personal affront, and was never anything but unfailingly generous to him. It was a puzzle, but somehow it engendered in Sherlock the impulse to indulge her with just those forms and rituals that she didn't seem to miss.

"Yes, well, you're perfectly capable of using the copier yourself, you know. If word gets out they'll all be wanting me to do theirs."

"I won't tell anyone," Sherlock said in a loud whisper and took the papers.

"Oh, you," she scolded him, but it was good-natured. "That was the last time, mind. I'm not your P.A."

"You're a star, Mrs Hudson," Sherlock called back over his shoulder on the way out.

%%%%%%

Go to chapter two

Comments

[romeny.livejournal.com]

New to the fandom and Sherlock (bbc) anyway. Linked here for FSS. Enjoyed the chap and will read more this evening.

[swissmarg]

Great, I hope you enjoy the story!