(no subject)

[theonewhocounted]

She thought it would be hard to get Sherlock to agree to take a holiday together. He didn't seem to be much for vacations. But it had turned out to be a surprisingly easy sell. All she had to do was mention that it would mean missing Christmas dinner at his parent's cottage and he started searching for flights and hotels immediately. She could have pointed out that it was likely his parents would just invite them another time, but that seemed neither here nor there. They were going to take a holiday and she was exceedingly pleased.

The morning of their flight, Molly was giving Mrs. Hudson directions on caring for Toby while they were away. Sherlock was buzzing around, not at all hiding his impatience to just be off already - especially when Molly preceded to then say her goodbyes to the cat.

"Now you be good," she said to the feline. "Mummy will be back before you know it."

She could hear Sherlock's impatient eye roll from across the room as she kissed the top of Toby's head and then straightened up before grabbing her coat.

"All right. I'm ready now. Let's call the cab."

Comments

[punchmeitssubtext]

Christmas had, historically, been sort of a miserable time for Sherlock. As a child he'd been to far too many family parties with far too many cousins who smelled like tomato soup, where he'd been subjected to far too much noise and general overstimulation. Though he had a soft spot for the Nutcracker--one of the first ballets he'd seen as a boy--and he loved the rush of peace that came late on Christmas Day when everyone had gone home and it was over, Christmas itself hadn't been a great deal of fun. Now that he was an adult who could choose what to do with his time, the idea of choosing to celebrate was far more appealing, especially since it was with the woman he loved.

A cursory internet search had revealed to him that many couples experienced some sort of anxiety when going away on holiday for the first time. Oddly, Sherlock found he wasn't particularly nervous about anything in their relationship: the past two months had been good, as they truly settled into being flatmates as well as lovers. Even his pre-holiday visit with Eurus had been strangely peaceful, the two of them improvising a variation on a Debussy sonata to one another.

(That didn't stop him from having occasional nightmares about losing everything he'd managed to rebuild for himself. But the threat in those always came from the outside world, not the idea of someone he loved turning against him.)

And now, they were spending Christmas together. Trying to change the future so the past wouldn't cast its shadows as heavily.

Or they would if they made it to Heathrow on time.

"I called the cab two minutes ago," he said, tucking his phone back into his pocket, before pointing at Toby to address him. "And you, don't eat or urinate on anything else I own. Mittens."

(Okay, he'd had to get used to living with a cat. Which wasn't as consumingly euphoric as most cat fanciers made it seem.)