swissmarg | Fic: The Baker Street Nativity (2/23)

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Title: The Baker Street Nativity (On AO3)
Author:

swissmarg
Beta reader:

ruth0007
Rating: NC-17
Word count: This chapter: 3,733
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?

See chapter 1 for more extended notes, disclaimers, and acknowledgments.

Chapter Two - The Classroom Assistant

The next Monday morning, Sherlock paused outside of room 221B before entering. Rather than the usual high-pitched screeches and scraping of furniture across the floor as the pupils settled into their seats for the morning, a chorus of off-key but enthusiastic voices singing more or less in unison drifted through the half-open door. Sherlock peeked inside.

The students were gathered around a man (ex-military, forty-ish, irregular sleep patterns) sitting at one of the tables. So this was the classroom assistant. So far, completely unremarkable. He was wiggling his fingers and appeared to be leading them in song. Sherlock started thinking of ways to make him leave of his own accord. Their enunciation was terrible and there was little resemblance to a melody, but it sounded like something about a child named Susie. Utter twaddle in any case. And the bell signalling the start of lessons had already rung.

Sherlock swung the door the rest of the way open and strode in. "What's going on here?" he said in a commanding tone.

The singing came to a ragged end. The pupils giggled and whispered to each other as they shuffled quickly to their places. The man pulled himself stiffly to standing. Sherlock noticed the cane only now - left-handed, non-dominant arm injured, rank of at least captain, possibly major, given his age.

"Mr Holmes, I'm John Watson." The man smiled and switched the cane to his other hand in order to shake Sherlock's hand - right-handed shooter - without adjusting his stance. His previous assessment screeched to a blinding halt and did a whiplash-inducing about-face. Sherlock felt a tingle of excitement and rapidly re-evaluated the input thus far received. A good series of deductions should set things off to a promising start.

"Yes," he said coolly. "Mr Lestrade told me you would be joining us. Insomnia or nightmares?"

"I beg your pardon?" Watson's smile faltered.

"The reason you don't sleep well. Are you awakened by nightmares, or do you have a hard time falling asleep in the first place? Although I suppose it could be both."

Watson shook his head slightly, as if to clear it of cobwebs. "Sorry, how did you...?"

Sherlock allowed himself a small, self-satisfied smile. The students were all quiet as mice in their seats now, their eyes riveted on the pair. This would be as good a lesson as any; better, in fact, than reciting spellings, forty-five percent of which they were bound to miss anyway. He walked toward the front of the class as he began.

"It's obvious. Well, perhaps not to you," he allowed, "but to anyone with half a brain who actually uses it to observe what's directly in front of them.

"To start with: the injury to your shoulder was traumatic, likely received under hostile fire." He turned back toward Watson and conceded, "Lestrade told me you were in the army, although I can see that for myself: your haircut, the way you stand-" Sherlock made a sweeping gesture in the other man's direction. "Most people would think it was your leg that was injured, but that's purely psychosomatic: even now, you're putting weight on it and you've practically forgotten about the cane." Sherlock smirked at it, even as Watson gripped it more firmly and leaned into it.

"You hold the cane in your left hand, but it's your left leg that gives you trouble. Awkward, not to mention that you're left-handed. So why not carry the cane in your right hand, as would be natural? Because it can't bear weight. Your handshake is firm and confident, so no injury to the hand, wrist, or arm. Must be your shoulder. The fact that you experience psychosomatic pain in your leg indicates that the actual injury was traumatic, probably greatly so. Could have been a horrible accident, but given that you were stationed in a war zone, I'm going to go with hostile fire. How are we doing so far?"

Watson looked incredulous, one half of his mouth quirked up as if he wasn't certain whether he was meant to laugh or not. "Right, that's... Did someone give you access to my file? I wasn't aware I'd included any of that in my application-"

"Are you even listening?" Sherlock scolded him. "There's no file, no one told me anything. Your own body gives you away."

"What about the nightmares then? You said you could tell I had nightmares." The man seemed downright eager to hear more.

"I wasn't sure whether it was nightmares or insomnia," Sherlock corrected him, "but thank you for answering the question. To return to my explanation, if whatever happened to you was traumatic enough to cause psychosomatic pain, it stands to reason that you suffer more generally from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Sleep disturbances are a common symptom. You have dark circles under your eyes, and the skin of your face is slack and sallow. Simple enough."

Half of the children's mouths were hanging slightly agape. Watson regarded him keenly. Sherlock began to feel the slightest bit uncomfortable. Which was ridiculous. He'd been correct on every count.

"Are you quite finished?" Watson asked.

"Well, I could go on, but I do have a lesson plan to get through." Sherlock picked up a stack of worksheets from the desk with an unnecessary flourish.

"That," said Watson into the silence, "was absolutely astounding."

Sherlock looked up. He couldn't detect a trace of sarcasm. And far from looking dismayed, embarrassed, or angry, as people tended to when Sherlock was done with them, Watson had a look of frank admiration on his face. That was... unexpected. Sherlock tried to suppress the flutter of what had to be curiosity that knocked against his ribs.

"What, you-" Sherlock said, unable to completely erase all traces of surprise from his voice, "you think so?"

"Extraordinary. Completely inappropriate and an egregious breach of privacy, but really quite extraordinary. You must know that."

He did, of course he did. The point was, only very rarely did anyone else acknowledge it. "That's not what people usually say," Sherlock admitted.

"What do they usually say then?"

Sherlock glanced at the little faces gawping up at him. "Something not quite as flattering." He couldn't suppress a grin.

Watson grinned back. And at that small gesture, that tiny moment of understanding and shared humour, something clicked inside Sherlock. He didn't know whether it was a switch that had been turned on or possibly off, but it was accompanied by the same feeling of exhilaration and dread that he'd had when he took his first hit after getting out of rehab the first time. That blissful completion of filling an emptiness coupled with the certain knowledge that the emptiness would only reappear in a more vicious way once the drug wore off. He'd trained himself to live with the emptiness, to skirt it or even, if he was very disciplined, ignore it. He wasn't at all certain he welcomed John Watson reawakening it, even if it did feel good at the moment.

"Well, it was," Watson affirmed. "Extraordinary, I mean. Can you do that with anyone?"

An unfamiliar emotion spread through Sherlock's chest - pride, perhaps, unadulterated by disapproval or rejection. "Yes, of course," he said, still studying Watson, looking for some chink in his honest facade, some hidden reserve of pitch being held in readiness for an attack. There was definitely something there, but it didn't seem threatening. At least, not toward Sherlock. "It's simple application of logical, deductive principles based on systematic observation," he explained.

"Well, I've never seen anything like it."

The moment stretched into something undefined as they held each other's eyes. Watson's were blue, Sherlock noted, but even as he thought that they shifted into gray and something flickered behind them, something hidden that had Sherlock looking deeper, all thought of the children around them forgotten.

Watson moved first, giving himself a barely noticeable shake and flicking the tip of his tongue out to lick his bottom lip before saying, "Right, well, I'm actually here to assist you. Greg said something about a play-"

Sherlock surfaced. He gave himself a shake, looking away and taking a step back toward his desk. Watson wasn't going to be taking over, no matter how interesting he was turning out to be. Lestrade might have been right when he said that this man might surprise him.

"I told Lestrade I had no need of an assistant," Sherlock said, "but as you're here you can sit over there and stay out of the way." Sherlock indicated a child-sized chair next to the back wall and began passing out the worksheets. He needed to regroup, he needed time to think, away from all of these distractions.

Watson's mouth pressed closed, but he squared his shoulders and went over to the seat. Sherlock frowned when he saw the difficulty with which the man manoeuvred himself into the too-small chair. Watson's leg stuck out stiffly, and he had to turn to the side to keep it out of the way. Well, he could have said something if it was uncomfortable, Sherlock decided. He determined to ignore him and continue as usual.

Predictably, the pupils were depressingly slow to grasp anything. Throughout the lesson, Watson sat there, back straight, his hands (non-smoker, surgeon - what was a left-handed army surgeon doing with gun calluses on his right hand?) resting palms-down on his knees, his eyes monitoring the pupils and all but ignoring Sherlock. This, of course, was highly distracting, and Sherlock had to refrain more than once from addressing him directly in a bid for his attention.

It didn't take long before Sherlock snapped at a boy whose strong Estuary-inspired accent with its T-glottaling and flat vowels grated on Sherlock's nerves even when he wasn't saying something that flew in the face of all reason and common sense. Out of the corner of his eye, Sherlock saw Watson look down and away. The judgment on his behaviour grated, and Sherlock struggled with the impulse to lash out at the pupils even more in retaliation. The fact that he was responding in such an emotional way disgruntled him more, however, and he resolved to suppress any reaction to either Watson's presence or the children's stupidity.

In the last ten minutes of the period, the children worked silently on their worksheets while Sherlock walked amongst them, pointing out errors. When he neared the back of the room, Watson raised a finger and caught his eye.

"You don't have to put your hand up to talk to me," Sherlock murmured, but he stopped and leaned down, his hands in his pockets. Watson's eyes were definitely blue, and Sherlock revised his estimate of the man's age downward by five years. His skin was prematurely aged from being in the sun, and the lack of sleep had dragged his eyes and jowls down.

"Right, no," Watson said in a soft voice, "only I thought we were supposed to be doing a play." He had his hands clasped, his elbows resting on his knees, and his face was tilted expectantly up toward Sherlock.

Sherlock had the inconvenient impulse to say or do something that would cause the other man to smile. Instead, he answered irritably, "This isn't a rehearsal for a play. This is a language arts class."

Watson blinked, then said, "Yes, right, that's entirely reasonable. But I think they've had enough of sitting. Look at them, they can barely concentrate." He nodded his head toward the children, and indeed, many were either staring out the window or doodling on their paper. One girl was slowly consuming one of her plaits.

"Right!" Watson exclaimed suddenly and clapped his hands once. The sound startled the children to attention. "Who wants to do a play?"

There was an immediate hubbub as the children jumped up and started cheering.

"No, no, stop-" Sherlock tried to say, but his protests were drowned by the children's enthusiastic shouts.

Watson was directing the children to move their desks aside, and that was where Sherlock drew the line.

"Quiet. Quiet!" he bellowed. "Alfie, that means you." He pointed at a boy who was lifting his chair onto a desk. Everyone stopped what they were doing and turned toward Sherlock. "The next person to so much as touch his table will be in detention for the remainder of the term."

The children barely had time to sit down again before the bell rang for break time. Again, there was a swell of small voices cheering, accompanied by a mass rush for the door. Sherlock was about to round on Watson when the man darted past him, hustling the last couple of children out with him.

"Watson! Mr Watson! Dr Watson!" Sherlock shouted, but it was too late. Watson was in the corridor, tossing jackets to the children and tying on scarves. In a matter of moments, the entire brood was running out to the school yard.

Sherlock went to the window. Watson was running around with the children, joining in their games. Sherlock looked around the classroom. Watson's cane lay forgotten on the floor where he had been sitting. Sherlock snorted and looked out the window again. He knew that he should do everything in his power to get rid of Watson. The argument he would present to Lestrade practically wrote itself. Watson undermined Sherlock's authority, contributed nothing useful, was disruptive, and didn't have the first idea about respect or discipline. To say nothing of the fact that he couldn't carry a tune to save his life, making him less than useless when it came to putting on a musical theatre. Sherlock didn't know what Lestrade had been thinking. The fact that he was psychologically unstable was the last nail in his coffin.

And then there were the things that Sherlock would never say, not to Lestrade, not to anyone. The things he stirred up in Sherlock, the fact that Sherlock actually wanted to see him again. The fact that he couldn't predict what he himself would do if given more access to Watson. No, Sherlock had no doubt what his next move would be: he would speak to Lestrade after school. Sherlock would agree to put in a minimal effort toward the play and present the facts regarding Watson in a clear and logical manner. Lestrade wouldn't have any choice but to capitulate.

Watson was playing leapfrog with the children now, with no sign of a limp or injury. They seemed to have taken to him quickly; Sherlock had to admit he was engaging, his smile and enthusiasm infectious. Strictly to the children, of course. He only had to get through the rest of the day, and then Watson would be gone.

With that thought in mind, the situation became more manageable, and the rest of the day passed without incident. Sherlock even found that he was able to indulge some of Watson's whims with the pupils. It made for less friction, and it was only one day. Tomorrow, things would be back to normal.

When the final bell rang, Watson went out to make sure that galoshes and mittens ended up on the correct extremities while Sherlock tidied the room. Sherlock heard the last little voices calling out, "See you tomorrow, Mr Watson!" and then Watson was back inside, perched on one of the pupils' desks.

Sherlock set down the books he was holding and leaned back against his desk, his arms crossed. He was prepared to make a little speech about what an educational experience this day had been all told, but it really wasn't going to work.

However, he only got as far as "Well, it's been very-" when Watson spoke over him, saying, "Can I just say, I've really enjoyed today. The kids are great, and you're-" He waved his hand toward Sherlock. "I think I can really learn something from you. And I'm not saying that to be facetious, I really mean it. That thing you did, with the..." He looked to Sherlock for the word.

"Deductions," Sherlock supplied suspiciously. He knew he should leave, go see Lestrade and do what he'd planned, but he was curious where Watson was going with this.

"Deductions, yes, right, brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. And the kids, again. Great." He licked his lips; Sherlock recognised the gesture, now that it had manifested a few more times during the day. It meant Watson was thinking something he didn't want to say. Something that made him uncertain, something he wasn't sure would be well received. Not a criticism, though. Sherlock already had a good handle on his repertoire of facial expressions for that.

"So, tomorrow we start on the play?" Watson prompted. "I, er... Not that I'm any good, but I can play the keyboard a bit. Chords, nothing fancy. So, I could. If it would be helpful." At Sherlock's blank look, he hurried on to ask, "Do you have a script or anything?"

"Not as such, no."

"Right," Watson said slowly, "well, I was thinking, do you want to come for a Sausage Sizzler?" He pointed vaguely over his shoulder.

"I'm sorry?"

"The takeaway down the road, I saw on my way in, they do these sausages with tomato ketchup and a... roll, thing. Do you want- I mean, I quite fancy one, but you could just get a coffee or something and we could go over to the park, toss some ideas around."

"No, I'm-" Sherlock was unsettled. Was he being asked out on a date of some sort? "Dr Watson, I-"

"John, please, there's no reason to be formal when it's just us, is there? John." He pointed at himself. "And you're Sherlock-"

"Sherlock," Sherlock said with him, immediately feeling like an idiot for doing so.

John beamed, and Sherlock felt like much less of an idiot. Then he felt even more of an idiot, because he was actually having an emotional reaction - not just one, an entire series - to someone he would never see again. Never would find out how exactly he had been injured or why he was here or how many colours his eyes could turn, and in what circumstances - Sherlock stopped the thought process abruptly. That was certainly enough of that. Instead, he fell back on his standard rejection to personal advances, speaking in a near monotone as he looked at the top of John's right ear.

"As to the park and so on: no, but thank you for your interest. I'm flattered but I don't think that it would be appropriate-"

"No, God," John interrupted quickly, "not at all, no! I only meant- No, not like that! Not that there would be anything wrong with it, but I wasn't-" He tucked his hands up under his arms and exhaled, calming himself. "There's the play to be getting on with. Is all I meant. If you'd rather, I can email you something tonight."

Sherlock blanked his expression. John wasn't following the standard reaction pattern of agitation, apologies, and attempts at humour. He was holding Sherlock's eye, speaking firmly, not backing off. Sherlock must have misinterpreted.

"That won't be necessary," Sherlock said coolly. "I'm perfectly capable of preparing a script for a primary school Nativity on my own."

"Of course you are, only I thought I was meant to be helping you. You have all of your regular lessons to prepare. My mum was a teacher, so I know there's a lot more work to it that what shows up in here, and Greg said you didn't exactly volunteer for this, so-"

"I said I'd take care of it."

John held up his hands in surrender. "All right. Have it your way. But if you change your mind or need to contact me-" He dug out his mobile and clicked through a few screens, then held it out to Sherlock. "Here, this is my number."

Sherlock took the phone and copied the number into his own.

"So I'll see you tomorrow then?" John said.

Sherlock nodded absently, using the last few seconds to glean several more pieces of information from the phone before handing it back. It wasn't until John was out the door that Sherlock remembered the cane that was stashed under his desk. Or the fact that he'd meant to tell him he needn't return tomorrow.

Sherlock stared at the entry he'd just made into his address book. John Watson. This was getting complicated. No need to deviate from his original plan, however. In fact, his own uncharacteristic behaviour only strengthened his resolve to carry through. He didn't like being made to feel uncomfortable in his own classroom, and he certainly didn't need someone else traipsing into his life and trying to tell him what he should be doing. He grabbed the cane and went down the hall.

"John Watson has to go," Sherlock said without preamble. He stabbed the cane down onto the floor of the head teacher's office. It would have been a more impressive gesture if it hadn't been rubber-tipped.

Lestrade swiveled away from his computer so that he could see Sherlock. "What's this about?"

"He's a disruptive influence, he contributes nothing of value, he has no ear for music, and..." Sherlock flourished the cane. "He poses a potential physical threat."

Lestrade screwed up his face. "You think he's going to whack someone with his cane? Not that you wouldn't deserve it," he muttered, then looked at the cane more sharply. "Hold on, why do you have his cane? Sherlock, you can't nick a man's cane."

"Give me some credit," Sherlock said. "He forgot it. The man is unstable. He suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He could snap at any time."

Lestrade relaxed and folded his hands over his stomach. "Says the man who arrived with a diagnosis of emotionally unstable personality disorder on his record."

Sherlock looked thunderous. "That's not fair."

"No, and neither are your accusations against John. Look, I had my eye on him today, don't worry. He was good with the kids, and they obviously like him. I think he balances you out well. The two of you could make a good team. Now give him his cane back and don't come back until you have your programme for the Nativity ready to print." He turned back to his computer. Sherlock didn't fail to notice the smug look on his face.

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