Chapter Text
It started with her appetite.
Normally Sherlock would eat only when absolutely necessary or when John issued some sort of a threat. He considered it an accomplishment of the highest order if he got two full meals into her a day. But sometime in the middle of January she switched gears suddenly and couldn’t seem to stop eating. When John came into the kitchen to find Sherlock munching out of a bag of crisps while scrolling through emails he was flabbergasted. He was hesitant to comment for fear that he might break the spell and send her back to her old ways, so he simply carried on as if nothing had happened and started actually shopping for two.
The next sign should have been the sleep.
Sherlock Holmes’s sleep patterns were nothing a normal, healthy human being should aspire to match. She had a habit of going without for days when she was on a case and then sleeping for sixteen-hour stretches when there was nothing on. The first time she actually went to sleep during a case John was actively alarmed. Sherlock woke up in the morning furious and grumbling about physical weaknesses and influenza, so John chalked it up to a bout of some kind of virus, even when Sherlock started not only sleeping for actual eight-hour stretches (though not always at night or during reasonable midnight-to-eight-A.M.-type hours) but also taking occasional thirty-minute naps during the day. They weren’t always noticeable, because Sherlock tended to take said naps in untraditional positions, such as in the exact same ball of frustration in which she sulked or sitting at the table with one hand on her chin and the other on her laptop keyboard. When John worked up the nerve to ask, she said she was experimenting with the amount of sleep she got and whether or not it improved her output.
“Oh? And how’s that going?” John asked, only slightly skeptical.
“I haven’t enough data to come to a reliable conclusion,” she replied shortly.
It was also no cause for worry when John arrived home from the clinic to find Sherlock seated in her chair across from Mycroft, legs crossed and face looking crosser. Impromptu visits from Mycroft were well within the norm.
He gave John a thin smile once he had shut the door. “Ah, the happy husband returns,” he said smoothly.
Sherlock made a short huffing sound like a peevish dragon.
“Getting a bit ahead of ourselves there, Mycroft,” said John.
He laughed, which was cause for worry. “Yes, I suppose,” he said cryptically.
Sherlock squinted at him. “Surely you have someplace you ought to be?”
Mycroft checked his watch and grimaced. “Yes, as a matter of fact. Mustn’t stray too far. Especially not with that business over in Honduras on...though you certainly don’t need to hear about that.”
Sherlock scowled and followed her brother with her eyes until the door shut behind him, at which point she sprang to her feet and grabbed her shoes.
“I’m going out.”
John blinked, bemused. “Out?”
“Yes, out,” she said testily. “Is there a problem?”
“Well, er, no, I was just...do you need me?”
“No. Pass me my coat.”
He did so and she shrugged it on. “Care to tell--”
“Not at the moment, no.”
“Ah. Nice.”
Sherlock buttoned up her coat, huffed impatiently, took John by the shoulders, and kissed him briefly on the lips. “John,” she said, holding him firmly by the jaw, “it is of the utmost importance that I not tell you the subject of this particular experiment until I am absolutely sure of the accuracy of my results. Do you understand? Nod if you do.”
John sighed and nodded.
Sherlock smiled. It was small and brief, but oddly calming. “I shan’t be gone long,” she said, and was out the door in nothing flat.
John retreated to the couch and switched on the telly for a few episodes of Blackadder. He fell asleep sometime around the beginning of the second series.
By the time Sherlock reappeared the DVD had reached its end some hours ago and the television was now showing its screensaver. The slam of the door woke John instantly.
He rubbed his forehead and checked at the time. His eyes widened. “Sherlock, where the hell--”
He stopped.
Sherlock had shed her coat onto the floor and tossed her scarf on top of it. She had untied her hair and was now running her fingers through it, scratching her scalp and pacing back and forth across the kitchen in strange patterns. Her brow was furrowed so deeply it wrinkled her entire face.
It was more worked-up than John had seen her since the swimming pool and Moriarty.
“Alright,” he said, getting to his feet, “what’s wrong?”
She shook her head violently, clapping both hands to her forehead. “I’ve been astoundingly unobservant,” she said fiercely. “Stupid! Stupid of me not to notice!”
John blinked the lingering drowsiness out of his eyes. “What? Sherlock--”
She stopped abruptly and slammed her hands onto the kitchen table, knocking over an empty beaker. “I’m an idiot. I’m one of them. It’s the only explanation.” She pressed her hands over her eyes and heaved a heavy, shuddering sigh.
Oh God. Oh dear God please no, was all John could think.
Sherlock Holmes was not crying. She could not be crying. As an infant in the crib she’d probably eschewed tears in favor of forcing her caregivers to deduce her needs. Nevertheless, she gave another sigh, this time accompanied by a hitch in her breath that definitely meant tears.
John crossed the room and hesitantly laid a hand on her shoulder, as if he were afraid of startling her. “Sherlock?” he said tentatively.
She rubbed her eyes furiously. When she let her hands fall to her sides (but one drifted down to John’s on her shoulder, to his everlasting shock), her eyes were red at the edges but her face was dry. “I’ve been at Bart’s,” she said evenly.
John’s mind immediately began flicking through the worst explanations. Sherlock’s mother dead. Life-threatening tumors, blood clots, drug relapses...
“I’ve done all the tests in triplicate. I’m positive.” She laughed humorlessly. “Extremely positive, in fact. Positive beyond a doubt.”
Oh Christ, it’s HIV, and we’ve been having sex without a condom. I’m the stupid one.
“Sherlock,” John said very quickly in a very low voice. “You need to tell me what’s happening.”
Sherlock took a deep breath and turned round to face John, but did not meet his eyes. Instead she fixated somewhere around his chin area. “What’s happening,” she said, “is that my last menstrual period was eight weeks ago.”
The room suddenly seemed very bright and full of much less air. John felt all the blood drain from his face.
“Sherlock,” he said faintly, “could you, er, run that past me again?"
“Eight weeks.” There was a strange buzzing in his ears that he had come to associate with major trauma, like being shot. “And three different tests. Checked. Repeatedly.”
“Thought that’s what you said.”
He slid to the floor.
Sherlock resumed her pacing. “And I haven’t the slightest idea of what to do. Do you know how often that happens to me, John? Not very, that’s for fucking sure.”
This really is quite a bit like the pool, John thought from where he sat on the floor.
“I will sue the life out of the bloody manufacturers of these useless bloody things.” She poked herself in the underside of the arm where her birth control implant was located. “I will even let Mycroft help. I will destroy them.”
John shook his head.
“All of the signs were there, I was just ignorant. Inexcusable behavior. Tired, hungry, headaches, my breasts have grown half a cup size in two weeks...”
John filed that fact away for future confirmation.
“...on top of which I didn’t even notice I was late for four bloody weeks.” She whirled and frowned at John. “How long have you been there?”
“Forty years.”
Sherlock huffed impatiently.
“Since you told me we were...”
She laughed again. “Haven’t said it either. Ridiculous behavior. Eight letters, describing the physical state of gestating a fetus.”
“And there we are. I’ve found another word I can’t bring myself to say.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You’re a medical man. Aren’t you experienced in these matters?”
“Not as they apply to me and my girlfriend!”
She threw up her arms. “Oh, bloody hell! I’m pregnant! Expecting! Gravid! Just chock-fucking-full of BABY!”
John stared at her for a moment. Sherlock stared back, her face sweaty and chest heaving.
Then he laughed, loud and long.
Sherlock spent a moment staring at him like he was mad before realizing she was laughing along.
She laughed until her knees gave out and she sank to the floor beside him, putting a hand on his shoulder to steady herself. He grabbed her hair and kissed the top of her head, still laughing all the while.
By the time they calmed, they were both lying flat on their backs under the table, hands clasped together. John turned his head. There were two spots of color in Sherlock’s cheeks, highlighting her fine, high cheekbones.
“What the hell,” he said. “We’ve got this.”
She turned her head and cocked a skeptical eyebrow. “We have?”
“Mm-hm. Know why?”
“Aching to.”
“Because I’m John Bloody Watson, and you’re Sherlock Fucking Holmes,” he said, punctuating his words with several pokes to her ribs. She chuckled and dodged the last one.
“So that’s the extent of this conversation.”
“Yep. I’d figured you’d mostly made your mind up anyway, you were just looking for a bit of confirmation.”
There was a moment of silence.
“I love you,” Sherlock said. She sounded surprised.
John smiled. “Yep. You do.”
“Oh?”
“Alright, you old nag, I love you too.”
They held hands there for some time, not moving, lying in the moonlight as Sherlock’s other hand rested just this short of carelessly on her belly. It would have been entirely indifferent had she not started to stroke it back and forth, as if feeling for information she did not have yet but knew was forthcoming.