Like Coming Home

Shuffle. Blink. Smile. Shuffle.

It began like this, slow and tentative, a two-letter word here and there. "Hi." "Hey." "How are you?" "Good. And you?" "Likewise."

Not the conversation two young boys should be having, but conversation no less. They learnt everything about each other through their mothers and their siblings and the odd photo album left abandoned on the stairs. They knew of each other's hobbies through the other's boasting father. They could recognize each other's voices after seven years of forcibly spending summer together, for the sake of high school friendships and memories that were sure to be of value, for generations to come, two families touching but never linking, never becoming.

The summer John turned five, Aunt Violet Holmes invited them to her family's cabin as she had been doing ever since before John was born. Unlike last summer, however, this time her belly wasn't swollen - she had lost a lot of weight, in fact - and all of a sudden she didn't have just one baby boy but two!

John remembered looking at Sherlock Holmes for the very first time. A tuft of wild, curly black hair, small fingers reaching out and gripping, groping, snapping, slapping, a little wet mouth gurgling and wry, blue eyes that were so blue and so transparent John couldn't decipher how the baby could see out of them. Mycroft Holmes - the only Holmes boy John was used to - had pushed him aside, run to the cradle and had declared, loudly, "He's my brother."

John didn't have a brother. John had a sister, Harriet, whom he began calling Harry before anyone else did. Harry was rash and bold and outgoing, and while she always played with John and never left him alone, she never made for much company either. Harry was always interested in hanging out with the other girls in her grade, and when John was five and Harry was ten, she was constantly on the phone talking to whatshername from Grade School.

John didn't have friends, either. He was far too shy and introverted, and while his teacher knew behind the dry exterior was an exceptionally bright student, precious few boys and girls in kindergarten have the time and patience to break through John Watson's shell.

And Mycroft Holmes, Mycroft, he scared John. John was terrified of the boy who was but his age and yet so smart, with all those long words coming out of his mouth. John was always in awe of how the boy knew things without being told, and yet something about that unending knowledge kept John at bay, always hovering around Mycroft but forever out of reach, just by an inch, keeping his distance. "He'll either become a genius or a sociopath," his mother would tell him every summer night at the Holmes' cabin, tucking him in, turning off the light.

^-v-^-v-^

It became apparent the summer John turned twelve, that Mycroft was destined to become the genius. Sherlock Holmes, however, was an entirely different case.

That was the summer John spent watching. He watched how Sherlock followed their mothers around the house, butting in and asking the silliest questions - why is the sky sometimes dark and sometimes light? why do people cry when someone dies? why hasn't daddy come home yet - it's been two years! - questions that John never thought of asking. And he got answers that John thought he'd eventually get - the earth revolves around the son, my darling, and tears leak out when your heart bleeds, as for your father, oh! the chicken's nearly done, set the table please?

John was taken by a different kind of awe when it came to Sherlock. Sherlock, who tried acting so high and mighty with his talk about terminal velocity - he was seven - but still followed Mycroft around like a pecking bird, struggling so hard to prove himself to his genius of a brother, caring very deep down that nobody liked him and probably nobody ever would.