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“Are you wearing my shirt?”
Molly jumped slightly at the sound of John’s voice in the doorway. She’d hoped he wouldn’t come home to find her rifling through his drawers, or wearing his clothes, but nope. Fate had it in for her. “Um...I ended up getting soaked through and through on my way here, so it was a choice between a shirt and jumper of yours or one of Mrs. Hudson’s dresses. I’m sorry if it looked like I was snooping.”
John grinned a bit and then came into his room. “Sherlock’s been through them about nine hundred times a week. Trust me, there’s nothing in there I care if you find.” He went over and picked out a red and black checkered jumper from the bottom of one of the piles in the drawer. “It shrunk a bit last time it got washed. Should fit you better than the rest.”
“Thanks,” she said, giving him a wide smile. She unfolded it and then slipped it over her head, glad for the warmth. “You have quite a collection.”
“Suppose so,” he said, surveying the drawer. “There are two more drawers filled with them and then that.” He turned and indicated his footlocker. “That’s for the really horrid ones.”
Molly chuckled. “Oh, we all have some of those hanging around, don’t we? I bet even Sherlock does.”
“Not a one,” John said, shaking his head. “I might have taken the opportunity when he was drugged up after meeting The Woman to snoop a bit. Fair’s fair, after all.”
“That’s true. Maybe we should get him one for Christmas.”
“Maybe,” he said thoughtfully. “Want to see them?”
“Sure!” she replied enthusiastically. Truth be told, she loved jumpers of all sorts, and the more eye-gougingly horrid, the better. John didn’t know it, but she’d been reigning champion of Barts’s Horrible Christmas Jumper competition ever since her first holiday there. She took a certain sense of pride in that. Probably came from her father and his love of the garish ones.
He went to the footlocker and opened it, and Molly grimaced at the bright neon yellow and orange and green jumper nestled in the top right corner. Immediately she was in love and she picked it up. “Practical gift from my sister,” he said.
“Practical if you walk at night,” she replied, running her hands over it. It was actually quite nice quality.
“That isn’t even the worst,” he said, beginning to dig through the footlocker. Jumper after jumper came out and Molly oohed and ahhed in delight at each one. Eventually, though, every eyesore was packed away and then the trunk was closed, the only exception being the neon one, which John had decided Molly could keep. She cradled it to her chest and beamed at him. “Thank you, John.”
“Welcome,” he said. “You said you have worse than mine?”
“Oh, much worse,” she said. “You should come round and see them.”
“Maybe I will,” he replied. “Next week?”
She nodded. “All right. I’ll have the sweater I’m wearing washed for you.”
“Deal,” he replied.
---
When John came over the next week she was all set. All of her best collection was out for him to see. The holiday jumpers, the golf jumpers her dad had worn before he’d had to give up the sport, the jumpers her mother had knitted for her when she’d taken up the hobby...they were all there for him to marvel at. And marvel he did, saying he couldn’t believe some of the things people in her family, or she herself, had actually worn. But he had seemed to take a liking to one of the better-knitted jumper her mother had made with a red and white chevron pattern, so she let him take that one, even if the arms were a tad bit too long.
They had tea in her kitchen afterward, the knitted jumper folded neatly beside John, and he tilted his head slightly. “It’s nice to meet someone else who likes jumpers. Sherlock says wearing them makes me look like a round hedgehog looking for a place to curl up and hibernate, but I like them. They’re comfortable.”
“I wonder what he thinks about mine,” she said, picking up her cup and taking a sip.
“Nothing he’s said to me one way or the other,” he replied. “But I like yours, even if some are far too garish to ever be seen in public again.”
“Oh, I agree on that score,” she said with a nod. “Could be fun to add to the collection, though.”
“Yeah,” he replied.
Molly was silent for a moment and then her eyes widened. “Why don’t we make a thing of it? Every so often we’ll re-compare our collections. See who now has the most garish. And then, to make it all worthwhile, maybe donate some less eye-bleedingly awful ones at the same time? There’s got to be organizations that will take good jumpers.”
“Sounds like it could be fun,” he said, setting his cup down and holding out his hand. “You’re on.”
She set her cup down as well and shook his hand. “Good. May the best woman win.”
“Don’t you think you’re being a bit presumptuous?” John asked, raising an eyebrow as he let go of her hand.
“Oh, John Watson, you have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into...” she said with a smile.