Sadie

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As per usual on his day off, John had gathered the paper and his coffee, and proceeded to camp out on the couch for his mid-morning break. Still in his gown, he sat his cup on the low table within easy reach, put his feet up and stretched out, and then unfolded his paper and flipped to the sports to see if his boy’s had been holding their own.

And, as per usual on John’s day off, Sherlock set his barely-touched coffee in the sink, shed himself of his pajama bottoms, waited until he heard John turn away from the sports page, and then followed him into the sitting room where he crawled up onto the couch and stretched himself out on top of John.

“Mm,” John hummed as he kissed the top of Sherlock’s head and maneuvered one arm so he could lay it across the other man’s shoulders without letting go of his paper.

He waited to see if it was one of those days.

After a few lovely, sun-warm minutes of quiet cuddling, John heard the soft ‘nuk-nuk-nuk’ that meant Sherlock was sucking his thumb.

John grinned and folded his paper over so he could hold it in one hand, then curled his free one through Sherlock’s hair. “One of those days, huh?” he asked, without expecting an answer. He already knew.

Sherlock curled into an impossibly, adorably smaller little bundle at John’s side.

He could feel the motions of Sherlock’s jaw as he suckled, now. “Ah-ah,” John said, giving Sherlock’s head a gentle nudge with his chin. “You know you’re not supposed to suck your thumb, love.” John had called a brief interlude on the thumb-sucking when he noticed marks on both the knuckle of the detective’s thumb AND the bridge of his nose, where his fingers rested. In the meantime, while the marks faded, he tried to keep the little oral-fixator hooked on his dummies. “Go get one of your dummies–”

Sherlock began to whinge, until John interrupted him with “–and then we’ll go to the park. Does that sound fun? Would you like lunch at the park?”

Sherlock went quiet, then sat up and rested his chin on John’s chest and blinked up at him. “Yeah?!” he asked with a muted awe.

“We can, IF,” John said, talking over the gasp that had escaped his little boy; “If you can get up without a fuss and get a dummy like I asked you to.”

Sherlock scrambled to get off of the couch and John did what he could to avoid taking any elbows or knees to the tender bits. He smiled as he heard Sherlock thumping through the flat, excited as can be by the prospect of getting to feed the ducks and have chips for lunch.

John sighed a soft, relaxed kind of sigh…it was one of those days.

Sherlock was back shortly. But, instead of climbing back onto the couch (and John) as John thought he would, he just stood there by John’s head, waiting.

John finally looked up to see what the hold-up was.

Sherlock was stood there looking back and forth between each of his hands, which were both closed in loose fists.

“What’cha got there, muffin?”

Sherlock frowned slightly, before setting each object on the table in front of John:

Two dummies…one pink, the other blue.

John grinned. “Sweetheart, you can’t have both…I know you like to, but it makes your mouth hurt, remember?”

Actually, Sherlock’s personal record was six–that’s right, SIX– dummies at once, and that had lasted for a good half hour before he’d complained about his tongue feeling funny.

Cute as hell, though.

Sherlock glanced at him, still frowning, and shook his head.

“No? Then why’d you bring two, baby?”

Sherlock shrugged before taking his thumb back into his mouth.

John reached up and took his wrist, pulling it right back out again. “No-no, use your words like a big boy.”

Sherlock’s frown turned into a full pout, bottom lip poking out and all. 

“No, no no nononono.” John used Sherlock’s wrist to tug him over, and sat Sherlock in his lap. “No, leet’s not fuss just yet…give Daddy a chance to figure it out, yeah?”

Sherlock perched on John’s knee and nodded, all while eyeing the two dummies on the table.

John began to put his deductive skills to use. “Okay, so,” he mused, one hand on his chin. “I told you to pick a dummy. But you brought me two dummies.”

Sherlock leaned his cheek against the top of John’s head and nodded.

“Meaning….hm. Meaning…you didn’t want to pick?” John hazarded a guess.

Sherlock nodded again.

“You want me to pick.”

Sherlock nodded a third time, and patted John’s cheek.

John chuckled; “So it’s Daddy’s job to pick today. Alright, I can do that,” he said. “Let’s see, pink, or bl–”

John stopped short.

The colours.

Sherlock had hundreds, literally hundreds, of dummies to pick from, in every sort of colour, size, shape, and design. He could have brought a green one, or a yellow one, or a black one, a white one, a spotted one, a striped one, the possibilities were just about endless…

And yet, he’d brought a pink one, and a blue one.

…John wasn’t just picking a dummy today.

It wasn’t the first time Sherlock had asked him to make this choice…in fact, they’d done it a handful of times before. Just not recently.

So, it was that kind of day.

John turned his gaze up at his little boy, who’d gone back to staring at the pair of dummies, the tip of his thumb resting just at the curve of his lower lip.

Well, in that case…not a little boy, then. Not today.

John reached out and picked up the baby pink, heart-shaped dummy and Sherlock sat up, suddenly back to full attention.

A faint blush dusted the tops of his cheeks as John slipped the dummy through his–her, parted lips.

“There,” John said, patting Sherlock’s backside. “Is my little Miss happy now?”

Sherlock nodded shyly as the blush spread, matching the dummy in a rather fetching way.

“Sweet girl. Can you snuggle with Daddy until he finishes his paper?”

Soon, the pair were back to their morning cuddle positions, with John reading out the obituaries as his fingers teased and twirled Sherlock’s curls into ringlets that were befitting of any little Princess.

It was one of those days.