Sherlock's Christmas Gift
On Christmas Day, a heavy snow fell on London. Sherlock wrapped his black coat tighter around himself and walked briskly, trying to dispel the pent-up restlessness and inexplicable, lingering unease in his heart with his footsteps. He needed a little stimulation, something to temporarily free his overactive mind from the shadows of the manor.
He stopped in his tracks as he passed a small café near Paddington Station.
A man sat by the window. A man who stood out from his surroundings.
The man was wearing a worn-out military-style overcoat, not buttoned up properly, revealing a faded shirt underneath. He looked somewhat tired and was intently reading a newspaper, with a steaming cup of cheap coffee beside him.
What caught Sherlock's attention was not his dejected state, but the extremely natural sense of relaxation and... a gentle tranquility that emanated from his posture.
In his eyes, the city was full of anxiety, calculation, haste and pretense, but this man possessed a rare, almost dull, composure and an inner stability that came after weathering a storm.
His blond hair was slightly disheveled, his profile was gentle, and his brows were slightly furrowed, as if he was seriously considering the contents of the newspaper.
Sherlock's observation was almost instantaneous: a soldier, wounded (his right shoulder stiffened unnaturally), recently returned home (his shoes had a special kind of mud found only near docks), financially strapped but with a strong sense of self-respect (his coat was old but clean, and his coffee was the cheapest), and upright (his focused expression while reading the newspaper). A soul struggling in the mud, yet striving to maintain its inner order.
Just as Sherlock was about to look away, the man seemed to sense the gaze and looked up.
Their eyes met.
Those were gentle blue eyes, tinged with a hint of confusion and weariness. There was no wariness, no curiosity, only a frank inquiry.
Sherlock's mind ceased all its complex deductions at that moment. An unprecedented, peculiar impulse seized him—not observation, not analysis, but an almost instinctive urge to approach this "stability." He needed it. He needed this calm fulcrum to counter the wildly spinning hurricane in his world.
Sherlock pushed open the door of the café, walked in, and went straight to the man's table.
The man looked at him with some surprise.
Sherlock took a deep breath and spoke in a rapid, somewhat neurotic tone that even he found unfamiliar: "Afghanistan or Iraq?"
The man paused, his confusion deepening, mixed with astonishment—the astonishment of having been stripped bare and seen through.
He gave a slight, wry smile: "Afghanistan."
Sherlock's lips seemed to curve into a barely perceptible smile, as if he had solved an intriguing puzzle. He stared intently into those gentle blue eyes and posed his second question, a more absurd, more untimely, yet undeniably urgent one: "What are your thoughts on the violin?"
"What?" The other person was stunned.
“The violin.” He spoke rapidly. “Sometimes I’ll go an entire day without saying a word, just playing this thing that others might find a bit boring. So the person I’m with always needs to be someone who can tolerate the violin, or at least not hate it, like my sister. Damn, what am I saying?”
The noisy background sounds in the café seemed to vanish instantly. The man—Dr. John H. Watson—was completely stunned. He stared at the impeccably dressed yet excited young aristocrat with curly hair, as if he were looking at a riddle that had fallen from the sky. After a few seconds of silence, the weary confusion in Watson's eyes was slowly replaced by a deeper curiosity and a hint of… strange, unconventional amusement.
He put down the newspaper, leaned forward slightly, and gave a genuine smile that was tinged with helplessness and a hint of amusement: "Who are you?"
Sherlock looked into the other man's blue eyes, which were no longer merely calm but now tinged with vibrant color, and felt a warm, long-lost sense of ease. He pulled out the chair opposite Watson and sat down.
“Sherlock Holmes. And you?” This was the first time in his life he had ever asked someone’s name.
"John H. Watson."
London outside the window remained gloomy and overcast. But in this unassuming little café near Paddington Station, the gears of fate unexpectedly meshed between an unconventional genius and a military doctor searching for a home, at the tail end of the Christmas season.
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