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"Hold his head up...there you go. You've gotta just...there. Support his neck. You've got it. Look at you..."
John rocked back on his heels to get a better look at the sight before him. Sherlock, holding their son for the first time.
Calvin's face was wrinkly and red, his eyes screwed shut, all of two hours old. Sherlock looked incredibly awkward, all angles and sharp lines folded around the soft little bundle in his arms.
John couldn't help the amazed breath that slipped past his lips, soul soaring, head reeling. "Wow..."
Sherlock looked up at him, a jerky movement of his head and neck as he held his body perfectly still. "Like so?"
"Just like so..." John reached out to stoke the tiny hand peeping out from the woolly green blanket.
Calvin wriggled at the touch, instinctively grasping at John's finger. Sherlock looked panicked. "He's moving."
John's giggle could not be contained. "Yeah, he'll do that."
"But what do I--"
Calvin, reacting to the sudden tension in Sherlock's--in his dad's--arms, began to squall and thrash.
"John!"
"Oh, for..." Still laughing, John leaned forward and adjusted Sherlock's hold on Calvin, nestling him more comfortably against Sherlock's chest. "Hold him, he needs to know you've got him...let him hear your heartbeat. There, Cal...we've got you..." John rubbed his back, looking up to meet Sherlock's wide eyes over their son's head.
"John," Sherlock's voice was an unfamiliar croak and he reached out his free hand to grasp John's shoulder.
The fear in his husband's face sent a jolt straight through him, rocking his normally firm foundation, the parameters of Sherlock-can-do-anything that defined his world. He reached up to cover Sherlock's hand with his own, and Sherlock gripped his fingers painfully hard.
"Me too," John answered the unspoken words. "Christ, I'm terrified."
Sherlock's brows drew together for a moment, considering him, then his expression cleared. He nodded and squeezed John's hand before letting him go, dropping his hand to rest atop Calvin's bonnetted head. John felt his own heart lighten and start to race and he lifted himself up on his knees to kiss Sherlock.
---
They were called out later to sign another round of paperwork. As they entered the sterile office room John felt Sherlock stiffen beside him as he caught sight of Jenny, already seated in front of the desk. Calvin's mother looked tired, but otherwise much as she had before any of this had happened. Wrapped in a loose sweater with a knit shawl around her shoulders, John wouldn't have guessed that she had just given birth.
He made a move toward one of the other chairs but Sherlock linked their arms together and stood his ground, not wanting to sit, not wanting to spend more time in this room than necessary. John squeezed his arm, but his husband did not look at him.
The adoption agent began to explain the forms laid out before them, reiterating to Jenny that once she had signed the relinquishment, there was no changing her mind. Jenny reached for the pen before he'd finished speaking, signing her name in a weary scrawl across the bottom of the page. Sherlock's fingers dug into John's wrist.
Looking between John and Sherlock, the man said, "Miss Sparks has indicated her desire to check out as soon as we are done here. Would you consent to a visitation with the child before she leaves?"
Jenny shook her head, pushing pen and paper away. "I just want to go home. I want to forget this ever happened. I don't want to see him, I never want to hear about him." She looked up at him. "Can I leave, now?"
Sherlock kept John pinioned to his side, his left arm through John's right, even as they added their signatures to the forms. When it came to the matter of the name on the birth certificate, Sherlock spoke for the first time since entering the room. "Calvin Jack Watson."
Their son's surname had been a source of contention for weeks. John had assumed they would give him both their names, and had grown deeply attached to the sound of it. Calvin Jack Holmes-Watson. Sherlock had insisted, unequivocally and irrationally, that it would simply be Calvin Jack Watson. Sherlock had spent the night away from the flat the first time they had fought about it.
"Calvin Jack Holmes-Watson...it's a good name."
"I wasn't aware we had discussed the issue of his surname yet."
"I - didn't realize that a discussion was necessary. I just assumed -"
"Yes, please stop doing that, John. You know how bothersome it is. He will be Calvin Watson."
"Oh, so you get to make the decision, do you?"
"The name is mine; I believe I should have more weight in saying whether or not it gets passed to my son,"
"Your son, is it? Thought he was to be ours. And, as ours, he ought to have the names to show for it. And anyway...I love your name, Sherlock. And Calvin will do it proud."
"I have absolutely no doubt about that. My concern lies...in whether the name would do him proud. And I know it would not. He....the name Holmes does not belong to a long line of good men. Or any good men. I don't want him to be burdened with that. He will be a Watson. That is a name that will do him well, and won't let him down. Please, John."
Remembering the urgency in his voice, the sincerity of his plea, John looked at Sherlock, took in the set of his jaw and the tight lines around his eyes, and decided this was not the time to argue. In any case, they had another twenty-four hours to report the birth to the registry; there would still be time to discuss it. Later, when Sherlock was in a better frame of mind. John wasn't sure what to make of it, this sudden stiffness in his bearing, the discomfort pouring off him as Jenny signed away all claim to the child she'd carried for nine months. He let Sherlock pull him from the room as soon as they were done, cutting off John's attempt to bid their child's mother farewell.
Out in the hallway, breathing deeply through his nose, Sherlock continued to lead them, not back toward the visiting room they'd been set up with on the maternity floor, but out the door toward the main road in front of the hospital, hailing a cab. It was snowing again and John shivered, thinking of his hat and gloves sitting, warm and useless, on a table two storeys up, and slid gratefully into the heated interior of the cab. As soon as Sherlock gave the direction to the cemetery, John realised he wasn't surprised at all.
He'd wondered for a long time if Sherlock would ever take him to see Jack's final resting place. If he would ever be introduced to the child whose name his son would bear.
He wondered, as they drove, if Sherlock himself knew why he was taking John there. Or if he was taking John at all - if this was something Sherlock was doing for himself and John, as was so often the case, was simply along for the ride.
He wondered if Sherlock was meditating on the cruelty of a world that sent beloved children to early graves, breaking hearts and destroying families, while other, healthy children were discarded by parents who didn't want them.
He wondered if Sherlock realised how lucky Calvin Jack was, to have him for a father.
---
"I believe," Sherlock said after a long while, the first words he'd spoken since their return to the hospital and their son, "that we have obtained the perfect child."
John chuckled and shifted closer to Sherlock on the couch, folding the blanket back from Cal's face to get a better look at him. "Is that so?"
"Indeed. Mark the proportions of his face. His nose and chin, the relative position of his eyes...his face conforms to measurements defined by the golden ratio. He is remarkably symmetrical. He is healthy and fully-developed, requiring no further immediate medical attention. Also..." He looked up from where he had been fixated on the sight of Calvin's tiny fingers wrapped around John's pinkie, "he seems to be fond of you. He is already displaying good judgment."
John's heart knocked hard against his ribs as he looked from his son's face to his husband's. Sherlock tore his eyes away from Calvin to look at him, his own eyes fever-bright, as alive and wild as John had ever seen them. John licked his lips and Sherlock pressed their foreheads together painfully, breathing hard.
"I love you," Sherlock whispered, the words barely hitting the air before he was kissing John, his passion, as always, taking John by surprise and reminding him that in many ways he hadn't know how to be alive before he met Sherlock. He was all but gasping when Sherlock broke away from him and added, "So much."
"Yeah," John traced the line of Sherlock's brows, his angular cheekbones, with a steady hand. He wanted to say it back, but Sherlock knew it and didn't care for being reminded of facts he already knew. "I'm aware."
Sherlock kissed him once more and was smiling when he pulled away, nodding once. "And I believe that I will love Calvin, too."
John watched Sherlock stroke the wisps of silky hair on Calvin's forehead, frowning. He hesitated before he asked, "You 'believe'?"
"Yes" John glanced up at his face to see that line between Sherlock's eyebrows that appeared when he was perplexed and enjoying it; giving himself over to an irresistible puzzle. "It's...odd. Fascinating, really. I feel...already...very attached to him. He is not mine; he is not the product of my labour, or yours, or my own genetics or yours. He is no different from any other child in the world, really, and has no more claim to my attention than any other. All of this is obvious, I know. That's why it's so odd that I already feel...something. Not love, perhaps, not yet, however I'm not worried any longer that I won't grow to love him."
John cosied tighter against Sherlock, snaking an arm around his waist and pressing a kiss to the curls over his temple. "I had no idea you were so worried about that."
Sherlock stroked Calvin's cheek with a delicate finger. "I was curious, mainly. Worried is perhaps the wrong word. You were so certain that would love this child as 'your own,' it seemed reasonable to assume that, if I could see him as yours I would come to love him just as much."
John watched Calvin resettle his tiny fists against Sherlock's chest. "That's why you were so set on surrogacy, at first. You wanted him to be mine."
Sherlock insinuated his finger into Calvin's left hand, not taking his eyes from the baby. "Does that surprise you? You're the only person I've ever loved, John."
"Hey..." John pulled him closer, shaking his head. "That's not true. What about Jack--"
Sherlock shook his head, his eyes going shuttered, body tensing. "That was different."
Besides himself and Jack, on the short list of people John would say that Sherlock loved, Lestrade was at the top. And, as though summoned by that thought and the name of his dead son, Lestrade chose that moment to rap lightly on the door and step into their little sanctuary. At his appearance Sherlock's expression relaxed and he smiled. Greg smiled back, the expression melting years off his face, and John had the oddly detached impression that he was looking back through time, seeing the both of them as they had been before John ever met them; back before death had touched them so intimately.
Lestrade's nose was red, cheeks raw and chapped from the chill of the cemetery. He stopped just inside the door, tugging off his gloves and shrugging out of his coat, eyes fixed on the tiny bundle in Sherlock's arms.
Sherlock turned Calvin around to face Lestrade, and John saw Cal's eyes open, blinking bright and blue and brilliant and stealing all thought away. Lestrade felt the effect too, apparently - the man looked like he had forgotten how to breathe.
"Greg," Sherlock said softly, "this is your Godson, Calvin."
Like moving through water, Lestrade approached them. He knelt in front of Sherlock, and without protest - already a hundred times more at ease with the precious burden than he had been that morning - Sherlock shifted Calvin, passing him gently into Lestrade's waiting arms.
"Well, hey there, little one..." Lestrade breathed, standing and holding Cal against his chest as John had taught Sherlock to do, already rocking him gently, gazing down into his wide eyes. "Oh, you're a gorgeous one, aren't you? Just look at you..." He trailed off, wandering a few paces away, still murmuring to Calvin, a string of incoherencies that tugged at John's heartstrings. Through the fog his mind had become, he wondered if Lestrade had held a child since his own Jack was a baby.
Nearly an hour later Lestrade was sitting in the arm chair, giving Calvin his bottle. Sherlock was slumped against John, mental exhaustion making its way into his limbs. John was stroking the back of his wrist, soothing him, thinking that they ought to take Lestrade's advice and get plenty of rest before they brought Calvin home the next day.
Lestrade broke the silence as Calvin detached from the bottle and gave a tremendous yawn. Lestrade set it aside to position him more comfortably in his arms. Smiling down at the infant, he said, "Mrs Hudson will be thrilled, yeah? A baby in Baker Street."
John grinned and nodded. "We didn't tell her Jenny had gone into labour. She'd be all over us right now, can you imagine?"
Lestrade grinned. "Your flat will be a proper danger zone, you know. A Holmes, a Watson, and a Holmes-Watson. Calvin Jack Holmes-Watson, quite the mouthful, that. Or is it 'Watson-Holmes'? Sorry, I never asked."
John shifted uncomfortably as beside him Sherlock straightened, drawing himself up.
"It's just 'Watson,' actually."
Lestrade looked at Sherlock, surprised. "Really?"
"Really," John cut in, squeezing Sherlock's hand. "Cos I didn't feel like having a row as we were doing the papers and I haven't got this one to see reason yet. So, yes, as of this moment he's officially just Calvin Jack Watson."
Sherlock's voice was tight as he replied, not matching John's light tone, "I've told you, I don't wish to pass on my name to our son."
"And I've told you, despite all that it's the right thing to do. He's ours, love. We're making the future, now, not dwelling in the past. Cal will be perfect, no matter what his names are."
Sherlock didn't respond beyond a slow shake of his head, lips drawn into a thin line.
"Well," the DI murmured as Calvin stared up at him, wrapping his tiny fingers around Lestrade's thumb, "either way, sunshine, we're glad to have you with us. Welcome to the world, darling boy. Little Calvin Jack."