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“It’s freezing in here,” John says over the ring of their shoes on bare concrete. “He’s not going to last long.”
“Thank you, John,” Sherlock says without looking back at him. “I had no idea.”
John bites back any retort; it was a pretty redundant observation, and he doesn’t want to distract Sherlock any more than he already has. Sherlock walks through the near-darkness, gaze skimming the broken crates and torn plastic sheeting littering the warehouse floor. He pauses, head canted slightly.
“There,” Sherlock says, and wheels round by a hundred and eighty degrees, striding back past John with his coat flapping around him.
“Where?” John says, jogging after him.
Sherlock’s on his knees on the wet concrete, tossing aside torn plastic to reveal a plastic basket containing a rumpled blue blanket and –
“Found you,” Sherlock says, both of his large thin hands scooping into the basket and between the folds of the blanket and lifting the tiny infant out.
There’s a soft, weak cry as Sherlock stands up. John’s already shaking his phone out of his pocket, turning his face half aside as he punches buttons. But he can’t unhook his eyes from Sherlock, from Sherlock’s hand going to the open neck of his own shirt and yanking another couple of buttons open, lifting the baby against his pale bare skin and then folding the fronts of his coat across the two of them so that only a curve of tiny skull remains visible below his chin.
“We found him,” John says into his phone. “Warehouse at the very end of Adelaide Wharf, we need an ambulance and heat.”
“There you are,” Sherlock is murmuring, one hand splayed on his coat front and the other curling around the back of the baby’s head. “Nice and cozy.”
His eyes are crinkling at the corners, his mouth curving in a smile.
“That was quite an adventure, wasn’t it?” he says, his lips almost touching the baby’s head. “You’ll have lots more adventures, I dare say … it’s a world brimful of adventures … you’ll like it.”
John hangs up the phone, and slips it back into his pocket, and takes an uncertain step towards Sherlock.
“You – you’re – ”
Sherlock lifts an eyebrow questioningly, but it doesn’t displace the smile on his lips or the formless murmur of sound he’s making.
“You’re – good at that,” John says. “You – actually look like you don’t – hate him.”
Sherlock’s hand moves protectively higher on his coat front.
“Hate him? Why would I hate him?” he frowns.
“Because you … hate everybody.”
“I hate fools,” Sherlock says. “He’s not a fool … he may be the child of fools, and surrounded by fools, and he may very well grow up to be a fool, but he’s not one yet … and he may not grow up to be one. He could grow up to be anything at all, even a consulting detective, if people just leave him alone.”
He tips his face down again, the hollow below his cheekbone fitting to the curve at the top of the baby’s head, and starts to sway his weight from side to side a little. And John hears the ambulance siren in the distance, and Sherlock’s eyes flicker closed and he hums his breath out tunelessly.