Fic: Bel Canto - 8b/16 (BBC Sherlock)
In the morning, he escorts Martha to the train station. It may be better said that a police officer escorts John and Martha to the train station. The kind treatment nearly undoes poor Martha. John hardly has the heart to admit that Mrs Hudson wouldn’t permit him out of the house for any other reason. He may have hidden his medical bag atop Martha’s luggage.
“There will be an officer waiting for you down the line,” Inspector Dimmock promises her. Though none find John’s former maid particularly important within the context of the opera house disasters, no one denies that an attack on John may spread to her. Any who dares interrupt my work shall have it visited upon him, their ghost had written, and Martha had saved John’s life the night of that retribution. With luck, any suspicious movement to follow her out of London will be noticed by the police.
They part ways with well wishes before Inspector Dimmock accompanies John to the opera house. John frets through the hansom ride only for Dimmock to leave him at the opera house doors. He thanks the officer before quickly entering. He deposits his coat and hat in the cloakroom only to be enveloped in a flurry of attention upon his return to the lobby. Before he can fend off the onslaught of relief, concern, and rumour, Mr Havill appears. They discuss John’s health, his home, his current arrangement, and all manner of things before John’s voice wears.
“Mrs Hudson had warned you wouldn’t be up to snuff,” Mr Havill says.
“I’m hardly unfit for duty, sir.”
Mr Havill smiles blandly. “Never let it be said that you are.”
Inwardly writhing, John survives until the early afternoon. His recent scrape with death forces John into unwanted attention and fuss. With the matinee underway, his chance finally arrives. He excuses himself from the moderately soothing company of Miss Hooper, avoids Mrs Hudson on his way down through the building, and slips at last beneath what has become his favourite staircase.
No lantern waits for him behind the secret door, but John has come prepared with matches. He lights the first and walks by its faint glow before realising a trail of dropped matches should hardly be left to Vernet’s door. From then on, he walks in darkness, one hand upon the wall, the other tight about the handles of his bag. His steps turn to round, crescent motions, feeling out the floor before confidently settling. Less confidently as his leg begins to ache. So walking, the journey drags on.
At last, he sees the shine beneath the awaited door. He hears motions from within, rough and agitated.
Steeling himself with a long breath, the musty air tickling his throat, John knocks.
“Go away!” Vernet shouts. “I am busy, Mrs Hudson!”
“I’m not Mrs Hudson!” John answers. The way his leg pains him, however, he might as well be.
There is a loud silence. There is a loud crash of motion, Vernet doubtlessly scrambling for his mask. When the motion finishes, John opens the door and willingly limps into the lion’s den.
“Get out!” Vernet stabs at the doorway with his finger. Hair wild, he stands between a single table and the remains of his desk, disassembled and broken into rough pieces upon the floor. All the light in the small, high chamber comes from the candles upon the sole remaining table. For the first time in the months John has known this room, not a single paper adorns table or floor. Even Vernet’s violin has vanished. No longer a home, the space is now little more than an anonymous cellar.
Something sticks in John’s throat. The memory of soot, perhaps. “Christ, you’ve been busy.”
“Get out.” Vernet gestures a second time, more emphatic than before. “I don’t want you here. Leave.”
“If you’re throwing these in the flooded tunnel, I can help,” John offers. Until his leg gives out, at least. “You wouldn’t need to break the table apart to carry it.”
“I don’t want your help,” Vernet spits. “Do you have any idea what harm your ‘help’ has already done?”
That’s hardly fair. “If you hadn’t pulled the box curtain back, no one would have seen you!”
“Do you think I care about being seen?” Vernet flings his hands down in wild gesticulation. “Do you think anything matters except the work?”
“I’m sorry you have to leave. But you still have your opera, that hasn’t-”
“Do I?” Vernet demands, thrashing the air. “My opera? Do I have it?”
“You-where is it?”
“It’s ruined!” Beneath the rage, Vernet bellows his absolute distress. “Months wasted! The score, the libretto-everything!”
No. Hand on the cool wall, John leans heavily. He can’t seem to breathe. “What happened?”
“Your help.”
“I don’t... It’s not, not burnt? Or moulded, or... The papers are untouched?”
“And the opera ruined,” Vernet confirms. “Months of living underground and for what? For nothing!”
“It can’t be ruined.” John sets down his medical bag and edges farther into the room. “You still have it. You can still finish it.”
“It can’t be finished. Don’t you see that?” He throws his arms wide. “It’s over!”
“You can write somewhere else. I know you don’t want to-”
“But I’ll have to now, won’t I?” Vernet concludes for him, his voice a low, mocking threat. “This place is ruined now.”
“The police won’t always be about.”
“No, of course not! They’ll be long gone before the taint of your ‘help’ fades.”
“What the hell have I done wrong?” John demands, raging forward. Vernet backs away from him, a hand seeking the wall before his shoes hit against it. The distance galls John worse than any words could. “You asked for my help! Those were your questions, your interviews. Do you think I told you my nightmares for my own amusement? I-”
A spasm of coughing takes him. He steps back, turning his head to the side, into his shoulder, and raises a palm toward Vernet.
Vernet waits for the moment the coughing stops, then immediately speaks over John. “That is entirely the problem. The shaping may be mine, but the content is yours. It is no longer my opera. You are too much inside to be removed. I want you out, I cannot get you out, and therefore, I must be rid of you.
“In short: leave.”
Not at all swayed by this semblance of reason, John stands his ground. “I don’t speak Italian,” he says, counting upon his fingers. “I don’t write music. Beyond one exceptionally ill-fated attempt at the clarinet, I don’t play music either. I can’t sing. I don’t even particularly enjoy opera.” He switches hands. “You composed it. You wrote it down. You arranged the libretto. You lived in a disused tunnel for months for it. You researched. That’s all. Research. A treatise on cardiac arrest is hardly owned by the corpse.”
“None of that matters,” Vernet states. His mask gleams in the candlelight as he turns his face away. “Get out.”
John doesn’t move. John cannot move.
Vernet rounds on him in an instant. “Leave!”
“You can still finish it.”
“There is no point in completing a pile of garbage, Doctor. At any stage of completion, it is already a pile of garbage.”
“You can’t possibly think that.” Protective rage and true indignation are merely brothers, not identical twins. John knows the one from the other. If John ever had a life’s work, he might defend it like this. “I’ve seen you dance around in circles at your own score.”
“What does it matter? You don’t even care for opera!”
“Well,” John says tentatively, “you don’t finish it, I’ll never find you again.”
“At last,” Vernet replies, “a silver lining.”
John storms out. Without a word, without a thought, John storms out into the dark tunnel. Almost immediately, he returns. Pressing forward in the attempt to drive John out, Vernet stops mid-step before they can collide. His curls flop over his forehead, a darling motion that shatters John’s rage.
He fists his hands to prevent their shaking. “If you’re intent to be rid of me, there’s no use in my keeping silent.”
“You’ll tell the police on me, is that it?” Vernet looms tall in the flickering light.
“Don’t be an arse.” John smiles at the thought, actually smiles at the absurdity. “And don’t be stupid. It doesn’t suit you.”
“If it’s not a threat, I can hardly see the importance of anything you might have to say.”
“That is the most irrational...” John checks his speech, stops himself from walking down that path. If Vernet thinks himself under attack while the police scour the opera house for a masked phantom, then it’s not without reason. The fear of the police is legitimate. The fear of betrayal, however, is itself a betrayal.
“I’ve lied to the police for you,” John tells him. “The police, Inspector Lestrade, Mr Havill... The woman who saw you thinks she’s going mad around the edges because of the doubt I put in her head. I lied to a very dear friend for you. So whatever the hell you think I’ve done to attack you-”
“I don’t care,” Vernet interrupts. “Get out.”
“Not until I’ve said my piece.”
Vernet groans, stomping away across the remains of his desk. “I don’t care!” He ruffles his hair into disorder even more wild. Another groan. “Say it as quickly as you can, then leave.”
“You’re my best friend,” John says. “You’re the most brilliant, bizarre, volatile, terrifyingly intelligent man I’ve ever met. I have told you, in detail, things I’ve never so much as mentioned to anyone else, save for those who lived them with me. And sometimes not even them. I trust you, you tit, for whatever that’s worth. I spent a month waiting to see you.”
“You can’t guilt me into behaving.”
“I’d never expect to. But I did spend a month waiting to see you.”
“And here I am!” Vernet turns with a flourish. “Now leave.”
John shakes his head. “I need to say-”
“Then say it,” Vernet snaps.
“I love you.”
Vernet freezes for all of an instant. A heartbeat later, he tears through John like a train through a paper wall. “Oh, what a good man to love his friends! How terribly sweet! What a touching tale. ‘Stop this cruelty-I love you!’ Touching, indeed.”
“I’m in love with you,” John corrects, mouth dry, his voice a rasp. “I know the difference.”
“Your joke isn’t amusing, Doctor.”
With planted feet and lifted chin, John stands firm. There is nothing Vernet can do to him worse than what silence, the necessity of silence, would inflict upon him. “I wanted you with me on Christmas. I was going to invite you to a walk in the park, single-file, and swear to never turn round. I, I wrote down a list of everything I wished to speak with you about, all through December.” Roughness rises through his throat and, sandpaper-like, scrapes against all his words. He pauses only in the attempt to cough it out, a useless effort.
“I attended a masquerade,” he continues. “I thought every white mask I saw would stop my heart, but there were no tall men in white masks. Well over a hundred guests present and I know that. Jesus Christ, I know how many were half-white. Eight. Five white on the left side, three on the right.
“And I, God. You’ve no idea what I walked away from. Vernet, I am stupidly, absurdly loyal to you.”
“Be quiet!” Vernet storms toward him but stops beyond John’s reach. Bits of the desk crack beneath his feet. “You don’t even know who I am!” The deep roar of his voice echoes from the ceiling and walls.
John waits for more, waits for the rest of it. He waits for something other than the heaving of Vernet’s slim chest, than the colour rising up his pale throat. He waits for Vernet’s trembling fists to fly, for his acidic tongue to bite.
When nothing befalls him, John answers in the remains of his voice, “I know your character. That has nothing to do with your name. And I hardly fell in love with your face.” He smiles weakly.
Vernet turns away, hands gripping his hair. He cuts an agonised shape, his form cast in flickering shadows against the wall. “What did I do?” he asks, voice low and rough. Exactly the sort of tone used for innocent matters which have taken a criminal turn.
“The bit where the captain stops the soldier from joining the mutiny,” John says. Wrapping himself about John and whispering Italian in his ear. “Did you intentionally write that as a seduction?”
“No,” Vernet answers without hesitation. He does not turn around. He does not look at John.
“...Oh.” His voice is little more than a croak. He clears his throat. “Then it was all in my head.” Backwards. He’d had the two of them backwards the entire time. “I-” He coughs again. “I apologise. Well... thank you. For saying so. And, ah. I’ll, I’ll go.”
Vernet shifts. Slightly, so slightly. “It wasn’t written as a seduction.” Immensely soft and nearly strained, his voice caresses John’s ears rather than lashing at them.
Thickly, John swallows. “Was it... acted as one?”
No reply comes from Vernet. No sound from his lips, no motion of his head. His body as static as the rounded features of his mask, Vernet stands before him as a statue.
The first step sends a fresh ache through John’s leg. The second and third do not. He navigates the remains of the desk to stand behind Vernet. To touch his elbow, nothing more. To touch his sleeve without daring to grip.
As if a violin string upon a slipping peg, the tension in Vernet’s arm unwinds, loosens, its trembling pitch fading into silence.
John relinquishes the fabric for the sake of reaching for his hand, but the loss of contact startles Vernet into turning, a rush of anxiety in the harshness of his breath. John catches his hand. He does so poorly, his right hand curling around the back of Vernet’s left. John sets his thumb against Vernet’s palm, against the scar of their joint making. Vernet’s flingers close about his thumb immediately, painfully hard.
Beneath the curve of the mask lies the half-hidden curve of Vernet’s jaw, pale skin peppered with stubble. Though Vernet averts his face, he drifts forward as John shifts closer. Rough and strange, Vernet’s skin welcomes John’s lips, soft and yielding over hard bone. Vernet’s answering sigh puffs against John’s cheek.
“Yes?” John rasps, hoarse for more reasons than he can name.
With an impatient groan, Vernet seizes John by the lapel and presses their mouths together. Their noses knock, skin and porcelain. Rough and solid, the motion knows only desperation before John eases it into tenderness. Vernet’s mouth is soft and warm. His lips taste of cold air and a startled gasp. His tongue tastes of tinned peaches.
John releases Vernet’s hand to better twine his arms about narrow shoulders. Vernet drags him closer, closer still, their bodies straining against the difference between their heights. Their feet shuffle, step upon each other. Their knees bump.
Each new angle of their mouths forces John’s nose into Vernet’s mask. No amount of adjusting can overcome this. Only light, brushing kisses will serve, but those do not suffice. In search of more, John reaches up for thick, dark curls only for Vernet’s hands to clamp about his wrists.
“Don’t,” Vernet gasps, tearing his mouth away. He presses a porcelain brow against John’s heated skin. “It’s inconvenient, but it stays.”
John’s eyes cross in the attempt to make out the colour of Vernet’s. Blue? Dark blue? His eyes are but shadow and gleam. “I wasn’t...”
“Then what?” The wary accusation would offend were it not so delectable.
John mumbles something about his hair.
Vernet’s vicelike grip relents but does not relinquish him. He chuckles, low and rumbling. “What about my hair?”
“I won’t know until you let me touch it, will I?” John counters.
Vernet rumbles all the deeper, a hum of liquid pleasure. He releases one of John’s wrists to hold his mask in place. “Go on, then,” he whispers in a needlessly sultry dare.
John kisses him first, deep and slow. He draws Vernet’s lower lip gently between his teeth before treating it with fleeting flicks of the tongue. Though this provokes little response from Vernet, it leads to Vernet replicating the motion upon John’s mouth in short order. Clutching at the back of Vernet’s jacket, his other hand buried in dark curls, John largely maintains his balance. Largely.
Vernet’s lips travel across John’s cheek, his jaw, his throat. Open-mouthed kisses hover above John’s collar. John’s gasps echo off the ceiling, pain and pleasure twining as stubble scrapes against the healed burns on his neck. And, God, teeth.
“No marks...!” He tugs at Vernet’s hair harder than intended, but Vernet only groans against his skin. The mask knocks against John’s jaw.
“Fine.” Petulant and sullen.
John dips his head to kiss Vernet’s pout. “I can only stay until the end of the matinee. Have to be seen after that.”
Vernet nips at his mouth before promptly shoving his hands into John’s jacket pockets. John startles under the touch, but Vernet merely frowns. “Where’s your watch?”
“Don’t have one.”
“You do, I’ve seen it.”
“It’s, ah. Broken,” John answers. Melted, he means. He attempts another kiss only for his nose to botch it up against the mask. Though open from nose to chin at the width of Vernet’s mouth, such space is hardly enough for John’s purposes. Being poked in the cheek by the porcelain nose is hardly a thrill either.
Vernet pulls back with a wry twist of the lips. He pulls out his own perfectly functional watch, keeping it carefully cradled in his hand. “We’ve two hours before you’ll be missed.”
“Two?” The future at once stretches and looms, infinite and instant.
“Perhaps two and a half, though we’ll need to make you presentable.” Vernet tucks his watch away. He leans in, the slide of his mouth lovely and soft before John pulls back.
“What then?” John asks.
Quite possibly, Vernet rolls his eyes. “Then we straighten your jacket and hope your flush recedes.” Again, he pursues.
John lifts a hand, forestalling distracting kisses only to have them visited upon his fingers. He shivers, staring. Each fingertip receives its share of tender affection. “And after that, when will I see you again?”
Vernet certainly rolls his eyes this time. “Really, Doctor? Two hours to use me as you will, and that is your first thought?”
“Maybe if you hadn’t started off with ‘I never want to see you again’-”
Vernet releases him immediately.
John catches his hand. “I want more than two hours. That’s all I meant.”
“What do you want?”
John draws Vernet back to him. He takes in the tall form, the inescapable masculinity, the ever-wild hair. “To be near you,” he begins. “Often, if possible.”
Vernet sets his lips against John’s forehead. Framed by his mask, his lips buzz there as he asks, “How would you accomplish this?”
“I’m looking for new accommodations. We might be neighbours. Failing that,” he adds at Vernet’s dismissive amusement, “if you don’t have accommodations of your own in London, it’s hardly unheard of for an artist or musician to need a flatmate.”
For far too long a moment, Vernet’s mouth remains motionless against his skin. “You want to live together.”
“Maybe? Someday. If it’s to be all or nothing, I want all.”
“And what would we tell people, hm?”
“Oh, I don’t know. ‘He perpetually needs an audience while composing, and I enjoy the violin. Yes, that composer. No, you can’t have free tickets.’ Seems simple enough.” He turns his head to kiss Vernet’s throat, to brush his lips over a racing pulse.
Vernet’s hands cup John’s neck, thumbs before his ears. He forces John back to better stare at him, to better beg him with half unseen eyes. “You mean it now.”
“Later, too,” John promises, annoyed by his doubt. “It’s not a way I’ve lived before, but I’m certainly willing to attempt it.”
“I need you to stop talking.”
“I need you to trust me.”
Vernet lunges forward, silencing John with his mouth. Hard, angry, Vernet presses for dominance, for domination. He bites and controls, dizzyingly harsh. A new method of kissing entirely, and John welcomes it. Perhaps this viciousness ought to threaten, but it only arouses. He holds tight even as he melts beneath the onslaught, his hands tangled in Vernet’s curls, securing that mouth all the tighter against his own. He answers in kind, enjoying the tussle.
John’s eagerness only serves to enrage Vernet more. Muttered insults double as broken endearments. “You unobservant--!” He relinquishes his hold on John’s neck and face to snatch John’s hands down from his hair. A finger snags on the mask’s band, dragging porcelain features down. For an instant, John catches sight of a forehead of mere flesh over bone.
Then Vernet shoves him back and rights the mask over his face.
Panting, they stand apart.
“I wasn’t going to,” John swears. “I didn’t mean to do that.”
Vernet doesn’t seem to hear him. “You’re in love with a fantasy,” he states, his musical voice turned flat and bare. “You don’t see it, but it ends the moment this comes off.” He touches his mask.
John’s mouth twitches. “You can’t be that ugly.”
“I’m being serious, Doctor.”
“So am I. What is it, boils? A terrible burn? Scarred by acid? Freckles?”
Vernet groans. “Who do you think I am outside of this room? Tell me, Doctor, have you ever considered that?”
“I know you hate it.” John presses back into Vernet’s space. “I know that whatever comforts you have elsewhere don’t compare to your music. I think you must have trouble focusing or maybe trouble finding time alone. You... have a family, but not one of your own making. You’re well-educated and love the arts. You...” His voice fading, he clears his throat. “You said once that you can imitate emotion but you can’t imagine it. I don’t think that’s true. You’re unrestrained here. You’re, you’ve pent up everything. Outside, I mean.”
“An entirely different man,” Vernet confirms. He folds his arms between them, two slim lines of a barrier.
“Maybe you act like one. Personally, I’m still betting on an arrogant, self-absorbed prick who hates sitting still unless it’s for his music.”
“Doctor-”
“As well as a genius, a master violinist, and the most passionate man I’ve ever had the good fortune to meet.” His sore throat utterly ruins the moment of sincerity. Painfully, he coughs against his sleeve.
Vernet drifts closer. His hand settles upon John’s elbow, under it, a cautious motion of support.
“Not contagious,” John rasps.
“Smoke inhalation so seldom is. Is the damage permanent?”
John shrugs a little, unsure. “You heard?”
Vernet nods. He touches John’s face where John had nicked himself with his new razor. “A broken watch and a new suit, not fitted: you lost the entirety of your bedroom. The rest of the house as well, I’d imagine. Though your medical bag is heavier than usual. Was that all you saved?”
“Nearly.” John’s hands return to Vernet’s lapels. “Can we not talk about that right now?” A little more talking will do his voice in entirely.
“No more talking,” Vernet agrees. Hardly what John meant, but he fails to protest when Vernet leans down. John rises on tiptoe to kiss a porcelain nose. Vernet’s laugh is little more than a surprised exhale. John treasures it all the same.
“One moment,” Vernet murmurs. He pulls away from John with lingering touches, a slow, sumptuous extraction. “I’ve had a thought. My coat’s in the back room.” His tone dries John’s mouth in a way that has nothing to do with soot and everything with heat.
Vernet is hardly gone before he reappears in the doorway. A long black scarf hangs from his hand. It sways as Vernet draws closer.
Lifting his face, John closes his eyes. He grins at Vernet’s sharp inhale, but his grin melts into seriousness at the first touch of cashmere against his skin. Softly, deftly, Vernet winds the fabric about his head, over his eyes. The flickering red of candlelight against his eyelids recedes into warm darkness. The scarf draws tighter as Vernet secures it. Truly, an innovative use for a scarf pin.
“Can you see at all?”
John shakes his head.
Vernet’s hands lift from his skin. For a moment: silence. John forgets to exhale, and he doesn’t hear Vernet breathe.
A footstep, Vernet’s, and a second. The long presence before John moves toward the table. Vernet’s back is turned, must be.
A swift motion, the scrape of sleeves against the body: Vernet’s hands rise to his face.
In the eternal silence to follow, John turns to track him, strains to hear him. At last, a sound, lower than expected. A soft click.
The mask is on the table.
John reaches blindly, his hand stretched toward the quiver of tension that is his friend. Vernet takes him by the wrist before taking him by the mouth. The taste of tinned peaches has long since faded. All that remains is the man.
Every sigh of breath and whisper of fabric expands to fill the chamber. The wet sounds of their lips, the low rumble in Vernet’s chest, the soft surrender of cloth as John slides his hands against Vernet’s waistcoat, beneath his jacket; all of these capture John’s ears, his absolute attention.
Already low upon John’s back, Vernet’s hands drift lower still, fingertips toying with the slit in John’s jacket. Cool air slips beneath as the flap rises. John shivers beneath his hands, presses into his kisses. “Oh, God.”
Even lower now, Vernet’s hands. No rough grab, no crass squeeze, but a slow caress of fingertips until his palms cup. He draws John against him, shifting his weight, his stance. Trailing kisses across skin and cashmere, Vernet murmurs something John fails to hear over his own moan. Heat, heat against his front, heat pressing back, hot and firm beneath tented trousers.
“Fucking Christ.” He drops his forehead against Vernet’s shoulder, biting hard on his lip.
“None of that.” Vernet’s hand sweeps up his spine to pull at the back of his collar. “If I didn’t want to see you, I’d have blown out the candles.”
John’s fingers dig into Vernet’s hips.
“Oh, do you like that? Fumbling in the dark.”
“I’m there already,” John gasps.
Low and indulgent, Vernet chuckles against his ear. “Shall I join you?”
“Please.” With sight stolen, all that remains is touch and taste, sound and smell. The darkness heightens each sensation until Vernet could overwhelm with a whisper. Could and does.
“One moment, Doctor.” For a second time, Vernet peels their bodies apart, a momentary and agonising separation. His footsteps are quick, certain. One soft puff of breath follows another. The scent of warm wax is overcome by the whiff of smoke.
Involuntary, John tenses.
“Candles only,” Vernet assures him. “We’re not on fire.”
“Don’t be an arse.”
Another puff of breath. The last one. The smallest trace of heat vanishes before Vernet returns to warm him. “Ever the invincible soldier.” Vernet whispers now, caught in the softening effect of darkness. “Has it been since your army days?”
Too busy finding Vernet’s lines beneath his jacket, John fails to follow. Lines and, oh, that is a very fine curve, a lovely arse indeed. “What?”
Vernet’s teeth scrape down John’s nose, a light scrape and a light nip to the tip. “Your wild youth, Doctor. How many men among the women?” His voice darkens with a jealous edge.
John snickers, then giggles. He feels rather than sees the incredulous expression inches from his own face and innately knows it must be exquisite. He laughs until he coughs, until his body is shuddering and Vernet rubbing his back. Vernet pulls him close to better unfasten the scarf, as if this will promote better breathing. He drapes the cloth over John’s shoulders. John blinks his eyes against the darkness without success. Underground, there is no light whatsoever.
“I’m almost afraid to ask,” Vernet remarks dryly. That nearly sets John off again, though it jangles his nerves with thoughts of Holmes.
“None,” John rasps.
“You never acted?”
“Never wanted.”
“...No one?” Vernet asks, remarkably offended for someone who ought to be flattered. “No one ever?”
“Not compared to you,” John says, defensive, and Vernet responds to this very positively, very thoroughly.
Breathless, lips bruised, face burning from the drag of stubble, John can only endure the onslaught for so long. Vernet takes time to cool, spends a lifetime mapping John’s face with fingers and lips. Long before John can take his turn, his leg tires and threatens to give way. Vernet sets him against the table to lean, never pausing. Any attempt to reciprocate immediately results in firm hands about his wrists and a scolding tongue against his lips.
“Let me,” Vernet murmurs each time. A sweet gift to give, John gives it freely. A lingering eternity of kisses and caresses whet his appetite, but they do not satisfy his hunger. There’s only so long anyone could be expected to remain passive with Vernet theirs to touch.
“My turn,” John eventually has to insist.
Another reach, another restraining hold. Nothing playful remains in Vernet’s grip. “Don’t.”
“All right. I’m sorry.” He lets his hands settle on Vernet’s shoulders, then brings them down to his waist. “I’m sorry.” Voice failing him, he tucks his face against Vernet’s neck and mouths the words there. John can wait. He knows he can wait. But, God, does he want. He clasps his arms about Vernet’s middle, hands warm between waistcoat and jacket.
Vernet sets his chin against the side of John’s head, undeterred by the pomade. He grips tightly, too tightly, and no touch or kiss can ease his tension. Vernet seems fit to break apart beneath his hands and lips, his confidence given way to something tremulous and tender. They stand this way for much too long, precious minutes falling away with John unable to reclaim or reassure. Such a strange thing to attempt, holding someone so much taller than himself. Thin but solid, and so remarkably present in his anxiety. A small eternity passes.
Much too soon, Vernet pulls back, smoothing his scarf over John’s shoulders. His hand dips beneath John’s jacket to filch his matches. “Need to check the time.”
John shakes his head in the darkness. “No,” he whispers. “Not in the least.” He knows all too well how rapidly time escapes in Vernet’s company.
Soft lips press against his forehead. Vernet turns his back and scrapes a match alight. The sudden light, even shielded by Vernet’s body, makes John’s eyes water. He hears the click of a watch opening. A moment later, Vernet shakes out the match. “Forty or so minutes left.”
“Of the two hours?”
“Yes.”
John’s stomach plummets. They’ve lingered even more than intended. His bruised lips confirm it. He reaches in the dark. Vernet’s hand finds his cheek and they kiss hard and deep. John forces himself to break away before he’ll have no alternative but to return above while still completely rumpled.
“I’ll come back during the evening showing,” John whispers.
“Mm. We’ll discuss the logistics then.”
“You... Yes?”
“Discuss,” Vernet repeats, a wary word, but John hardly cares.
“However long you need. Just promise me I’ll see you again. Swear you won’t vanish.”
Vernet presses another kiss against John’s forehead. He remains there and sighs.
“Vernet?”
“You’ll see me again,” Vernet answers with more resignation than John can stand. “I promise.”
“But-”
“I’ve had a few thoughts about act four,” Vernet interrupts.
John blinks. His eyelashes brush against Vernet’s chin. In the dark, there’s no need to hide his grin. “Not ruined, then?”
“As if your idiocy could dampen my genius. I’m merely stuck on the libretto again. Any attempt to write only put your voice in my head going round and round. You’ve no idea how annoying it was. Or perhaps you have.”
John steps on his foot.
Vernet chuckles, a warm purr against his skin. “In any case, it stalled my progress considerably. However, if your company is not to be denied to me after all, we must make up for lost time.”
“‘Denied’ to you? You were the one doing the denying.”
“I may have been overly anxious,” Vernet admits.
John knows an apology when he hears one, especially one made precious by its rarity. “Will further reassurance be necessary?”
“Yes,” Vernet replies instantly. “Give it here.” The tip of his nose slides against John’s. His breath heats John’s lips anew.
“I want to live with you,” John says. “I’m tired of a quiet house. I know you come with noise and I want that.”
The attempted kiss stops before it can begin.
“Would you be willing?” John asks.
“I’m willing,” Vernet replies, and the words audibly cost him.
“That’s all I ask.” He gives Vernet his awaited kiss, but Vernet pulls away with his typical abrupt passion.
“We’re running out of time to work. And you must become slightly less dishevelled. A waste, but a necessary one.”
Uncertain whether to gape or laugh, John keeps his hands on Vernet’s back as Vernet reaches around him toward the table. A light scraping sound, the mask over wood. He feels rather than hears Vernet settle the mask over his own features. Vernet strikes another match and relights the candles.
John slips around his side to find reddened lips and hair more disorderly than he’s ever known it. Vernet’s jacket is rumpled from John’s hands. White and pristine, only the mask remains unaltered.
Vernet eyes him in turn before straightening John’s cravat and collar. He smoothes John down and tucks him into place. He pulls John away from the table and circles about him once, twice, hands trailing. With long, expressive fingers, he makes a few vague flicking motions at John’s hair. “Presentable.”
John gestures to his own neck. Vernet inspects him for marks, peering much more closely than necessary. He turns John this way and that to better catch the light. With a grin, John claps Vernet’s scarred hand in his and settles a palm against his trim waist.
Vernet laughs, a startled sound that takes some tension with it. Some, only some. “Music first, Doctor. Dancing later, perhaps.”
Is his violin in the back room with his coat? John’s eyes flick to the door.
“Act four,” Vernet whispers in his ear. “Curtain opens. Chorus of soldiers, fresh from their defeat at sea.”
With no further warning, Vernet begins to sing. Softly at first, strained Italian full of grief and anguish. Vernet draws back, growing in volume with each word, each phrase, and John permits him the space. As if the man himself were one great instrument, Vernet’s voice soars to the heights of the ceiling before swooping low, before plunging, biting.
The music turns to combative terror, a protest of the heart. If this was what Vernet had trapped in his mind for a month, John can and readily does forgive their earlier spat. To hear him at last, John might forgive anything. Vernet sings with his eyes fixed upon John’s face, his gaze utterly immobile as his arms gesture, hands open wide and beckoning.
John knows this theme, the song of a thwarted mutiny, the theme of a man who would follow his captain rather than his home. Shivers race up his spine, prickle along his back as Vernet’s voice brings his body to resonate in enchanted sympathy.
The opening of the act merges into the drama of one scene and the next. Vernet is an army, the Egyptian court. He is one man, several. He is, for one moment, unmistakeably Cleopatra. His pitch rises to unexpected heights, a range of notes John would expect from a piano, not from a man. He articulates a duet, conveying general and soldier each in their turn with little more than the motions of his hands and the nuance of his voice, perfect and clear and shining.
He cuts off rather than concludes, a puppet cut from the strings of his music.
As his heart pounds, John slowly remembers how to breathe.
For the first time in an untold age, Vernet looks away from him. He clears his throat. “It needs work.”
“God, I love you.”
Vernet nearly laughs. He ducks his head, at any rate, and he checks his watch. “You’ll be late, Doctor.”
John can’t seem to move. “Then you’d best kiss me quickly.”
Vernet complies, pinning his scarf in place about John’s neck as he does. He pulls away with a sharp turn of the head. “Go. Before you’re missed.”
“I have to be gone before I’m missed,” John counters, wearing out his voice for a good cause.
With a roll of his eyes, Vernet physically guides John to the door and puts the medical bag into his hand. “You will be,” Vernet promises. He returns John’s matches. “Now go.”
John kisses him a final time before venturing out. His leg aches from the hours spent standing, leaning, trembling, but he’ll be able to sit down soon enough. With infinite care, he opens the hidden door and ducks through it without dirtying his trousers. He nearly falls. Regretfully, achingly, he unpins the scarf and secrets it away in his medical bag.
Climbing up the stairs leads to a surprising amount of pain. Upon encountering Miss Hooper and her untold, if not unforeseen, concern for his condition, he explains that he was forced to sit down in a removed location, nothing more. Exercise on the stairs has done him more harm than good, he’s afraid. He apologises profusely as she reminds him of the recent attempt on his life. She offers to procure him a cane from the props. He declines.
Mrs Hudson, it’s clear, knows where he’s been. She says nothing where others can hear. Being a fully grown man and as brave as he will ever be, John decides that discretion is the better part of valour. He’ll avoid her until matters with Vernet are settled. Does she think poorly of him for this, so soon after Holmes? Does she know the extent of Holmes’ wishes toward him, let alone John’s toward Vernet? Unable to discern any of these answers, John keeps his distance. He’ll doubtlessly pay for it on the ride home.
The hours pass with agonising slowness, a quick dinner here, an excruciating wait there. When the opera begins, John takes up his usual position in the hall, awaiting a patron to turn patient. His hand remains on his medical bag, against the scarf inside. At long last, after the beginning of the second act, John escapes.
Limping worse than the morning after the fire, he braves the staircase into the basement. Now unable to handle his bag and matches at once while keeping a hand on the wall, John abandons the bag by the secret door. He waves out each match as it’s about to burn him, keeping the extinguished ends in his hand against the wall.
When he returns to Vernet’s shut door, no light shines from beneath. With no small grin, John shakes out the match, knocks, and enters.
“Hello again,” he calls as firmly as his throat will allow. The words echo oddly, as if the chamber has grown larger. “Vernet?”
“Vernet?” the room cries in return.
John strikes a fresh match and holds it high. His pinprick of light shines in a cold chamber devoid of furniture, music, and man. It soon singes his fingers and, with a shaking breath, he blows it out.
da capo
previous | next
“There will be an officer waiting for you down the line,” Inspector Dimmock promises her. Though none find John’s former maid particularly important within the context of the opera house disasters, no one denies that an attack on John may spread to her. Any who dares interrupt my work shall have it visited upon him, their ghost had written, and Martha had saved John’s life the night of that retribution. With luck, any suspicious movement to follow her out of London will be noticed by the police.
They part ways with well wishes before Inspector Dimmock accompanies John to the opera house. John frets through the hansom ride only for Dimmock to leave him at the opera house doors. He thanks the officer before quickly entering. He deposits his coat and hat in the cloakroom only to be enveloped in a flurry of attention upon his return to the lobby. Before he can fend off the onslaught of relief, concern, and rumour, Mr Havill appears. They discuss John’s health, his home, his current arrangement, and all manner of things before John’s voice wears.
“Mrs Hudson had warned you wouldn’t be up to snuff,” Mr Havill says.
“I’m hardly unfit for duty, sir.”
Mr Havill smiles blandly. “Never let it be said that you are.”
Inwardly writhing, John survives until the early afternoon. His recent scrape with death forces John into unwanted attention and fuss. With the matinee underway, his chance finally arrives. He excuses himself from the moderately soothing company of Miss Hooper, avoids Mrs Hudson on his way down through the building, and slips at last beneath what has become his favourite staircase.
No lantern waits for him behind the secret door, but John has come prepared with matches. He lights the first and walks by its faint glow before realising a trail of dropped matches should hardly be left to Vernet’s door. From then on, he walks in darkness, one hand upon the wall, the other tight about the handles of his bag. His steps turn to round, crescent motions, feeling out the floor before confidently settling. Less confidently as his leg begins to ache. So walking, the journey drags on.
At last, he sees the shine beneath the awaited door. He hears motions from within, rough and agitated.
Steeling himself with a long breath, the musty air tickling his throat, John knocks.
“Go away!” Vernet shouts. “I am busy, Mrs Hudson!”
“I’m not Mrs Hudson!” John answers. The way his leg pains him, however, he might as well be.
There is a loud silence. There is a loud crash of motion, Vernet doubtlessly scrambling for his mask. When the motion finishes, John opens the door and willingly limps into the lion’s den.
“Get out!” Vernet stabs at the doorway with his finger. Hair wild, he stands between a single table and the remains of his desk, disassembled and broken into rough pieces upon the floor. All the light in the small, high chamber comes from the candles upon the sole remaining table. For the first time in the months John has known this room, not a single paper adorns table or floor. Even Vernet’s violin has vanished. No longer a home, the space is now little more than an anonymous cellar.
Something sticks in John’s throat. The memory of soot, perhaps. “Christ, you’ve been busy.”
“Get out.” Vernet gestures a second time, more emphatic than before. “I don’t want you here. Leave.”
“If you’re throwing these in the flooded tunnel, I can help,” John offers. Until his leg gives out, at least. “You wouldn’t need to break the table apart to carry it.”
“I don’t want your help,” Vernet spits. “Do you have any idea what harm your ‘help’ has already done?”
That’s hardly fair. “If you hadn’t pulled the box curtain back, no one would have seen you!”
“Do you think I care about being seen?” Vernet flings his hands down in wild gesticulation. “Do you think anything matters except the work?”
“I’m sorry you have to leave. But you still have your opera, that hasn’t-”
“Do I?” Vernet demands, thrashing the air. “My opera? Do I have it?”
“You-where is it?”
“It’s ruined!” Beneath the rage, Vernet bellows his absolute distress. “Months wasted! The score, the libretto-everything!”
No. Hand on the cool wall, John leans heavily. He can’t seem to breathe. “What happened?”
“Your help.”
“I don’t... It’s not, not burnt? Or moulded, or... The papers are untouched?”
“And the opera ruined,” Vernet confirms. “Months of living underground and for what? For nothing!”
“It can’t be ruined.” John sets down his medical bag and edges farther into the room. “You still have it. You can still finish it.”
“It can’t be finished. Don’t you see that?” He throws his arms wide. “It’s over!”
“You can write somewhere else. I know you don’t want to-”
“But I’ll have to now, won’t I?” Vernet concludes for him, his voice a low, mocking threat. “This place is ruined now.”
“The police won’t always be about.”
“No, of course not! They’ll be long gone before the taint of your ‘help’ fades.”
“What the hell have I done wrong?” John demands, raging forward. Vernet backs away from him, a hand seeking the wall before his shoes hit against it. The distance galls John worse than any words could. “You asked for my help! Those were your questions, your interviews. Do you think I told you my nightmares for my own amusement? I-”
A spasm of coughing takes him. He steps back, turning his head to the side, into his shoulder, and raises a palm toward Vernet.
Vernet waits for the moment the coughing stops, then immediately speaks over John. “That is entirely the problem. The shaping may be mine, but the content is yours. It is no longer my opera. You are too much inside to be removed. I want you out, I cannot get you out, and therefore, I must be rid of you.
“In short: leave.”
Not at all swayed by this semblance of reason, John stands his ground. “I don’t speak Italian,” he says, counting upon his fingers. “I don’t write music. Beyond one exceptionally ill-fated attempt at the clarinet, I don’t play music either. I can’t sing. I don’t even particularly enjoy opera.” He switches hands. “You composed it. You wrote it down. You arranged the libretto. You lived in a disused tunnel for months for it. You researched. That’s all. Research. A treatise on cardiac arrest is hardly owned by the corpse.”
“None of that matters,” Vernet states. His mask gleams in the candlelight as he turns his face away. “Get out.”
John doesn’t move. John cannot move.
Vernet rounds on him in an instant. “Leave!”
“You can still finish it.”
“There is no point in completing a pile of garbage, Doctor. At any stage of completion, it is already a pile of garbage.”
“You can’t possibly think that.” Protective rage and true indignation are merely brothers, not identical twins. John knows the one from the other. If John ever had a life’s work, he might defend it like this. “I’ve seen you dance around in circles at your own score.”
“What does it matter? You don’t even care for opera!”
“Well,” John says tentatively, “you don’t finish it, I’ll never find you again.”
“At last,” Vernet replies, “a silver lining.”
John storms out. Without a word, without a thought, John storms out into the dark tunnel. Almost immediately, he returns. Pressing forward in the attempt to drive John out, Vernet stops mid-step before they can collide. His curls flop over his forehead, a darling motion that shatters John’s rage.
He fists his hands to prevent their shaking. “If you’re intent to be rid of me, there’s no use in my keeping silent.”
“You’ll tell the police on me, is that it?” Vernet looms tall in the flickering light.
“Don’t be an arse.” John smiles at the thought, actually smiles at the absurdity. “And don’t be stupid. It doesn’t suit you.”
“If it’s not a threat, I can hardly see the importance of anything you might have to say.”
“That is the most irrational...” John checks his speech, stops himself from walking down that path. If Vernet thinks himself under attack while the police scour the opera house for a masked phantom, then it’s not without reason. The fear of the police is legitimate. The fear of betrayal, however, is itself a betrayal.
“I’ve lied to the police for you,” John tells him. “The police, Inspector Lestrade, Mr Havill... The woman who saw you thinks she’s going mad around the edges because of the doubt I put in her head. I lied to a very dear friend for you. So whatever the hell you think I’ve done to attack you-”
“I don’t care,” Vernet interrupts. “Get out.”
“Not until I’ve said my piece.”
Vernet groans, stomping away across the remains of his desk. “I don’t care!” He ruffles his hair into disorder even more wild. Another groan. “Say it as quickly as you can, then leave.”
“You’re my best friend,” John says. “You’re the most brilliant, bizarre, volatile, terrifyingly intelligent man I’ve ever met. I have told you, in detail, things I’ve never so much as mentioned to anyone else, save for those who lived them with me. And sometimes not even them. I trust you, you tit, for whatever that’s worth. I spent a month waiting to see you.”
“You can’t guilt me into behaving.”
“I’d never expect to. But I did spend a month waiting to see you.”
“And here I am!” Vernet turns with a flourish. “Now leave.”
John shakes his head. “I need to say-”
“Then say it,” Vernet snaps.
“I love you.”
Vernet freezes for all of an instant. A heartbeat later, he tears through John like a train through a paper wall. “Oh, what a good man to love his friends! How terribly sweet! What a touching tale. ‘Stop this cruelty-I love you!’ Touching, indeed.”
“I’m in love with you,” John corrects, mouth dry, his voice a rasp. “I know the difference.”
“Your joke isn’t amusing, Doctor.”
With planted feet and lifted chin, John stands firm. There is nothing Vernet can do to him worse than what silence, the necessity of silence, would inflict upon him. “I wanted you with me on Christmas. I was going to invite you to a walk in the park, single-file, and swear to never turn round. I, I wrote down a list of everything I wished to speak with you about, all through December.” Roughness rises through his throat and, sandpaper-like, scrapes against all his words. He pauses only in the attempt to cough it out, a useless effort.
“I attended a masquerade,” he continues. “I thought every white mask I saw would stop my heart, but there were no tall men in white masks. Well over a hundred guests present and I know that. Jesus Christ, I know how many were half-white. Eight. Five white on the left side, three on the right.
“And I, God. You’ve no idea what I walked away from. Vernet, I am stupidly, absurdly loyal to you.”
“Be quiet!” Vernet storms toward him but stops beyond John’s reach. Bits of the desk crack beneath his feet. “You don’t even know who I am!” The deep roar of his voice echoes from the ceiling and walls.
John waits for more, waits for the rest of it. He waits for something other than the heaving of Vernet’s slim chest, than the colour rising up his pale throat. He waits for Vernet’s trembling fists to fly, for his acidic tongue to bite.
When nothing befalls him, John answers in the remains of his voice, “I know your character. That has nothing to do with your name. And I hardly fell in love with your face.” He smiles weakly.
Vernet turns away, hands gripping his hair. He cuts an agonised shape, his form cast in flickering shadows against the wall. “What did I do?” he asks, voice low and rough. Exactly the sort of tone used for innocent matters which have taken a criminal turn.
“The bit where the captain stops the soldier from joining the mutiny,” John says. Wrapping himself about John and whispering Italian in his ear. “Did you intentionally write that as a seduction?”
“No,” Vernet answers without hesitation. He does not turn around. He does not look at John.
“...Oh.” His voice is little more than a croak. He clears his throat. “Then it was all in my head.” Backwards. He’d had the two of them backwards the entire time. “I-” He coughs again. “I apologise. Well... thank you. For saying so. And, ah. I’ll, I’ll go.”
Vernet shifts. Slightly, so slightly. “It wasn’t written as a seduction.” Immensely soft and nearly strained, his voice caresses John’s ears rather than lashing at them.
Thickly, John swallows. “Was it... acted as one?”
No reply comes from Vernet. No sound from his lips, no motion of his head. His body as static as the rounded features of his mask, Vernet stands before him as a statue.
The first step sends a fresh ache through John’s leg. The second and third do not. He navigates the remains of the desk to stand behind Vernet. To touch his elbow, nothing more. To touch his sleeve without daring to grip.
As if a violin string upon a slipping peg, the tension in Vernet’s arm unwinds, loosens, its trembling pitch fading into silence.
John relinquishes the fabric for the sake of reaching for his hand, but the loss of contact startles Vernet into turning, a rush of anxiety in the harshness of his breath. John catches his hand. He does so poorly, his right hand curling around the back of Vernet’s left. John sets his thumb against Vernet’s palm, against the scar of their joint making. Vernet’s flingers close about his thumb immediately, painfully hard.
Beneath the curve of the mask lies the half-hidden curve of Vernet’s jaw, pale skin peppered with stubble. Though Vernet averts his face, he drifts forward as John shifts closer. Rough and strange, Vernet’s skin welcomes John’s lips, soft and yielding over hard bone. Vernet’s answering sigh puffs against John’s cheek.
“Yes?” John rasps, hoarse for more reasons than he can name.
With an impatient groan, Vernet seizes John by the lapel and presses their mouths together. Their noses knock, skin and porcelain. Rough and solid, the motion knows only desperation before John eases it into tenderness. Vernet’s mouth is soft and warm. His lips taste of cold air and a startled gasp. His tongue tastes of tinned peaches.
John releases Vernet’s hand to better twine his arms about narrow shoulders. Vernet drags him closer, closer still, their bodies straining against the difference between their heights. Their feet shuffle, step upon each other. Their knees bump.
Each new angle of their mouths forces John’s nose into Vernet’s mask. No amount of adjusting can overcome this. Only light, brushing kisses will serve, but those do not suffice. In search of more, John reaches up for thick, dark curls only for Vernet’s hands to clamp about his wrists.
“Don’t,” Vernet gasps, tearing his mouth away. He presses a porcelain brow against John’s heated skin. “It’s inconvenient, but it stays.”
John’s eyes cross in the attempt to make out the colour of Vernet’s. Blue? Dark blue? His eyes are but shadow and gleam. “I wasn’t...”
“Then what?” The wary accusation would offend were it not so delectable.
John mumbles something about his hair.
Vernet’s vicelike grip relents but does not relinquish him. He chuckles, low and rumbling. “What about my hair?”
“I won’t know until you let me touch it, will I?” John counters.
Vernet rumbles all the deeper, a hum of liquid pleasure. He releases one of John’s wrists to hold his mask in place. “Go on, then,” he whispers in a needlessly sultry dare.
John kisses him first, deep and slow. He draws Vernet’s lower lip gently between his teeth before treating it with fleeting flicks of the tongue. Though this provokes little response from Vernet, it leads to Vernet replicating the motion upon John’s mouth in short order. Clutching at the back of Vernet’s jacket, his other hand buried in dark curls, John largely maintains his balance. Largely.
Vernet’s lips travel across John’s cheek, his jaw, his throat. Open-mouthed kisses hover above John’s collar. John’s gasps echo off the ceiling, pain and pleasure twining as stubble scrapes against the healed burns on his neck. And, God, teeth.
“No marks...!” He tugs at Vernet’s hair harder than intended, but Vernet only groans against his skin. The mask knocks against John’s jaw.
“Fine.” Petulant and sullen.
John dips his head to kiss Vernet’s pout. “I can only stay until the end of the matinee. Have to be seen after that.”
Vernet nips at his mouth before promptly shoving his hands into John’s jacket pockets. John startles under the touch, but Vernet merely frowns. “Where’s your watch?”
“Don’t have one.”
“You do, I’ve seen it.”
“It’s, ah. Broken,” John answers. Melted, he means. He attempts another kiss only for his nose to botch it up against the mask. Though open from nose to chin at the width of Vernet’s mouth, such space is hardly enough for John’s purposes. Being poked in the cheek by the porcelain nose is hardly a thrill either.
Vernet pulls back with a wry twist of the lips. He pulls out his own perfectly functional watch, keeping it carefully cradled in his hand. “We’ve two hours before you’ll be missed.”
“Two?” The future at once stretches and looms, infinite and instant.
“Perhaps two and a half, though we’ll need to make you presentable.” Vernet tucks his watch away. He leans in, the slide of his mouth lovely and soft before John pulls back.
“What then?” John asks.
Quite possibly, Vernet rolls his eyes. “Then we straighten your jacket and hope your flush recedes.” Again, he pursues.
John lifts a hand, forestalling distracting kisses only to have them visited upon his fingers. He shivers, staring. Each fingertip receives its share of tender affection. “And after that, when will I see you again?”
Vernet certainly rolls his eyes this time. “Really, Doctor? Two hours to use me as you will, and that is your first thought?”
“Maybe if you hadn’t started off with ‘I never want to see you again’-”
Vernet releases him immediately.
John catches his hand. “I want more than two hours. That’s all I meant.”
“What do you want?”
John draws Vernet back to him. He takes in the tall form, the inescapable masculinity, the ever-wild hair. “To be near you,” he begins. “Often, if possible.”
Vernet sets his lips against John’s forehead. Framed by his mask, his lips buzz there as he asks, “How would you accomplish this?”
“I’m looking for new accommodations. We might be neighbours. Failing that,” he adds at Vernet’s dismissive amusement, “if you don’t have accommodations of your own in London, it’s hardly unheard of for an artist or musician to need a flatmate.”
For far too long a moment, Vernet’s mouth remains motionless against his skin. “You want to live together.”
“Maybe? Someday. If it’s to be all or nothing, I want all.”
“And what would we tell people, hm?”
“Oh, I don’t know. ‘He perpetually needs an audience while composing, and I enjoy the violin. Yes, that composer. No, you can’t have free tickets.’ Seems simple enough.” He turns his head to kiss Vernet’s throat, to brush his lips over a racing pulse.
Vernet’s hands cup John’s neck, thumbs before his ears. He forces John back to better stare at him, to better beg him with half unseen eyes. “You mean it now.”
“Later, too,” John promises, annoyed by his doubt. “It’s not a way I’ve lived before, but I’m certainly willing to attempt it.”
“I need you to stop talking.”
“I need you to trust me.”
Vernet lunges forward, silencing John with his mouth. Hard, angry, Vernet presses for dominance, for domination. He bites and controls, dizzyingly harsh. A new method of kissing entirely, and John welcomes it. Perhaps this viciousness ought to threaten, but it only arouses. He holds tight even as he melts beneath the onslaught, his hands tangled in Vernet’s curls, securing that mouth all the tighter against his own. He answers in kind, enjoying the tussle.
John’s eagerness only serves to enrage Vernet more. Muttered insults double as broken endearments. “You unobservant--!” He relinquishes his hold on John’s neck and face to snatch John’s hands down from his hair. A finger snags on the mask’s band, dragging porcelain features down. For an instant, John catches sight of a forehead of mere flesh over bone.
Then Vernet shoves him back and rights the mask over his face.
Panting, they stand apart.
“I wasn’t going to,” John swears. “I didn’t mean to do that.”
Vernet doesn’t seem to hear him. “You’re in love with a fantasy,” he states, his musical voice turned flat and bare. “You don’t see it, but it ends the moment this comes off.” He touches his mask.
John’s mouth twitches. “You can’t be that ugly.”
“I’m being serious, Doctor.”
“So am I. What is it, boils? A terrible burn? Scarred by acid? Freckles?”
Vernet groans. “Who do you think I am outside of this room? Tell me, Doctor, have you ever considered that?”
“I know you hate it.” John presses back into Vernet’s space. “I know that whatever comforts you have elsewhere don’t compare to your music. I think you must have trouble focusing or maybe trouble finding time alone. You... have a family, but not one of your own making. You’re well-educated and love the arts. You...” His voice fading, he clears his throat. “You said once that you can imitate emotion but you can’t imagine it. I don’t think that’s true. You’re unrestrained here. You’re, you’ve pent up everything. Outside, I mean.”
“An entirely different man,” Vernet confirms. He folds his arms between them, two slim lines of a barrier.
“Maybe you act like one. Personally, I’m still betting on an arrogant, self-absorbed prick who hates sitting still unless it’s for his music.”
“Doctor-”
“As well as a genius, a master violinist, and the most passionate man I’ve ever had the good fortune to meet.” His sore throat utterly ruins the moment of sincerity. Painfully, he coughs against his sleeve.
Vernet drifts closer. His hand settles upon John’s elbow, under it, a cautious motion of support.
“Not contagious,” John rasps.
“Smoke inhalation so seldom is. Is the damage permanent?”
John shrugs a little, unsure. “You heard?”
Vernet nods. He touches John’s face where John had nicked himself with his new razor. “A broken watch and a new suit, not fitted: you lost the entirety of your bedroom. The rest of the house as well, I’d imagine. Though your medical bag is heavier than usual. Was that all you saved?”
“Nearly.” John’s hands return to Vernet’s lapels. “Can we not talk about that right now?” A little more talking will do his voice in entirely.
“No more talking,” Vernet agrees. Hardly what John meant, but he fails to protest when Vernet leans down. John rises on tiptoe to kiss a porcelain nose. Vernet’s laugh is little more than a surprised exhale. John treasures it all the same.
“One moment,” Vernet murmurs. He pulls away from John with lingering touches, a slow, sumptuous extraction. “I’ve had a thought. My coat’s in the back room.” His tone dries John’s mouth in a way that has nothing to do with soot and everything with heat.
Vernet is hardly gone before he reappears in the doorway. A long black scarf hangs from his hand. It sways as Vernet draws closer.
Lifting his face, John closes his eyes. He grins at Vernet’s sharp inhale, but his grin melts into seriousness at the first touch of cashmere against his skin. Softly, deftly, Vernet winds the fabric about his head, over his eyes. The flickering red of candlelight against his eyelids recedes into warm darkness. The scarf draws tighter as Vernet secures it. Truly, an innovative use for a scarf pin.
“Can you see at all?”
John shakes his head.
Vernet’s hands lift from his skin. For a moment: silence. John forgets to exhale, and he doesn’t hear Vernet breathe.
A footstep, Vernet’s, and a second. The long presence before John moves toward the table. Vernet’s back is turned, must be.
A swift motion, the scrape of sleeves against the body: Vernet’s hands rise to his face.
In the eternal silence to follow, John turns to track him, strains to hear him. At last, a sound, lower than expected. A soft click.
The mask is on the table.
John reaches blindly, his hand stretched toward the quiver of tension that is his friend. Vernet takes him by the wrist before taking him by the mouth. The taste of tinned peaches has long since faded. All that remains is the man.
Every sigh of breath and whisper of fabric expands to fill the chamber. The wet sounds of their lips, the low rumble in Vernet’s chest, the soft surrender of cloth as John slides his hands against Vernet’s waistcoat, beneath his jacket; all of these capture John’s ears, his absolute attention.
Already low upon John’s back, Vernet’s hands drift lower still, fingertips toying with the slit in John’s jacket. Cool air slips beneath as the flap rises. John shivers beneath his hands, presses into his kisses. “Oh, God.”
Even lower now, Vernet’s hands. No rough grab, no crass squeeze, but a slow caress of fingertips until his palms cup. He draws John against him, shifting his weight, his stance. Trailing kisses across skin and cashmere, Vernet murmurs something John fails to hear over his own moan. Heat, heat against his front, heat pressing back, hot and firm beneath tented trousers.
“Fucking Christ.” He drops his forehead against Vernet’s shoulder, biting hard on his lip.
“None of that.” Vernet’s hand sweeps up his spine to pull at the back of his collar. “If I didn’t want to see you, I’d have blown out the candles.”
John’s fingers dig into Vernet’s hips.
“Oh, do you like that? Fumbling in the dark.”
“I’m there already,” John gasps.
Low and indulgent, Vernet chuckles against his ear. “Shall I join you?”
“Please.” With sight stolen, all that remains is touch and taste, sound and smell. The darkness heightens each sensation until Vernet could overwhelm with a whisper. Could and does.
“One moment, Doctor.” For a second time, Vernet peels their bodies apart, a momentary and agonising separation. His footsteps are quick, certain. One soft puff of breath follows another. The scent of warm wax is overcome by the whiff of smoke.
Involuntary, John tenses.
“Candles only,” Vernet assures him. “We’re not on fire.”
“Don’t be an arse.”
Another puff of breath. The last one. The smallest trace of heat vanishes before Vernet returns to warm him. “Ever the invincible soldier.” Vernet whispers now, caught in the softening effect of darkness. “Has it been since your army days?”
Too busy finding Vernet’s lines beneath his jacket, John fails to follow. Lines and, oh, that is a very fine curve, a lovely arse indeed. “What?”
Vernet’s teeth scrape down John’s nose, a light scrape and a light nip to the tip. “Your wild youth, Doctor. How many men among the women?” His voice darkens with a jealous edge.
John snickers, then giggles. He feels rather than sees the incredulous expression inches from his own face and innately knows it must be exquisite. He laughs until he coughs, until his body is shuddering and Vernet rubbing his back. Vernet pulls him close to better unfasten the scarf, as if this will promote better breathing. He drapes the cloth over John’s shoulders. John blinks his eyes against the darkness without success. Underground, there is no light whatsoever.
“I’m almost afraid to ask,” Vernet remarks dryly. That nearly sets John off again, though it jangles his nerves with thoughts of Holmes.
“None,” John rasps.
“You never acted?”
“Never wanted.”
“...No one?” Vernet asks, remarkably offended for someone who ought to be flattered. “No one ever?”
“Not compared to you,” John says, defensive, and Vernet responds to this very positively, very thoroughly.
Breathless, lips bruised, face burning from the drag of stubble, John can only endure the onslaught for so long. Vernet takes time to cool, spends a lifetime mapping John’s face with fingers and lips. Long before John can take his turn, his leg tires and threatens to give way. Vernet sets him against the table to lean, never pausing. Any attempt to reciprocate immediately results in firm hands about his wrists and a scolding tongue against his lips.
“Let me,” Vernet murmurs each time. A sweet gift to give, John gives it freely. A lingering eternity of kisses and caresses whet his appetite, but they do not satisfy his hunger. There’s only so long anyone could be expected to remain passive with Vernet theirs to touch.
“My turn,” John eventually has to insist.
Another reach, another restraining hold. Nothing playful remains in Vernet’s grip. “Don’t.”
“All right. I’m sorry.” He lets his hands settle on Vernet’s shoulders, then brings them down to his waist. “I’m sorry.” Voice failing him, he tucks his face against Vernet’s neck and mouths the words there. John can wait. He knows he can wait. But, God, does he want. He clasps his arms about Vernet’s middle, hands warm between waistcoat and jacket.
Vernet sets his chin against the side of John’s head, undeterred by the pomade. He grips tightly, too tightly, and no touch or kiss can ease his tension. Vernet seems fit to break apart beneath his hands and lips, his confidence given way to something tremulous and tender. They stand this way for much too long, precious minutes falling away with John unable to reclaim or reassure. Such a strange thing to attempt, holding someone so much taller than himself. Thin but solid, and so remarkably present in his anxiety. A small eternity passes.
Much too soon, Vernet pulls back, smoothing his scarf over John’s shoulders. His hand dips beneath John’s jacket to filch his matches. “Need to check the time.”
John shakes his head in the darkness. “No,” he whispers. “Not in the least.” He knows all too well how rapidly time escapes in Vernet’s company.
Soft lips press against his forehead. Vernet turns his back and scrapes a match alight. The sudden light, even shielded by Vernet’s body, makes John’s eyes water. He hears the click of a watch opening. A moment later, Vernet shakes out the match. “Forty or so minutes left.”
“Of the two hours?”
“Yes.”
John’s stomach plummets. They’ve lingered even more than intended. His bruised lips confirm it. He reaches in the dark. Vernet’s hand finds his cheek and they kiss hard and deep. John forces himself to break away before he’ll have no alternative but to return above while still completely rumpled.
“I’ll come back during the evening showing,” John whispers.
“Mm. We’ll discuss the logistics then.”
“You... Yes?”
“Discuss,” Vernet repeats, a wary word, but John hardly cares.
“However long you need. Just promise me I’ll see you again. Swear you won’t vanish.”
Vernet presses another kiss against John’s forehead. He remains there and sighs.
“Vernet?”
“You’ll see me again,” Vernet answers with more resignation than John can stand. “I promise.”
“But-”
“I’ve had a few thoughts about act four,” Vernet interrupts.
John blinks. His eyelashes brush against Vernet’s chin. In the dark, there’s no need to hide his grin. “Not ruined, then?”
“As if your idiocy could dampen my genius. I’m merely stuck on the libretto again. Any attempt to write only put your voice in my head going round and round. You’ve no idea how annoying it was. Or perhaps you have.”
John steps on his foot.
Vernet chuckles, a warm purr against his skin. “In any case, it stalled my progress considerably. However, if your company is not to be denied to me after all, we must make up for lost time.”
“‘Denied’ to you? You were the one doing the denying.”
“I may have been overly anxious,” Vernet admits.
John knows an apology when he hears one, especially one made precious by its rarity. “Will further reassurance be necessary?”
“Yes,” Vernet replies instantly. “Give it here.” The tip of his nose slides against John’s. His breath heats John’s lips anew.
“I want to live with you,” John says. “I’m tired of a quiet house. I know you come with noise and I want that.”
The attempted kiss stops before it can begin.
“Would you be willing?” John asks.
“I’m willing,” Vernet replies, and the words audibly cost him.
“That’s all I ask.” He gives Vernet his awaited kiss, but Vernet pulls away with his typical abrupt passion.
“We’re running out of time to work. And you must become slightly less dishevelled. A waste, but a necessary one.”
Uncertain whether to gape or laugh, John keeps his hands on Vernet’s back as Vernet reaches around him toward the table. A light scraping sound, the mask over wood. He feels rather than hears Vernet settle the mask over his own features. Vernet strikes another match and relights the candles.
John slips around his side to find reddened lips and hair more disorderly than he’s ever known it. Vernet’s jacket is rumpled from John’s hands. White and pristine, only the mask remains unaltered.
Vernet eyes him in turn before straightening John’s cravat and collar. He smoothes John down and tucks him into place. He pulls John away from the table and circles about him once, twice, hands trailing. With long, expressive fingers, he makes a few vague flicking motions at John’s hair. “Presentable.”
John gestures to his own neck. Vernet inspects him for marks, peering much more closely than necessary. He turns John this way and that to better catch the light. With a grin, John claps Vernet’s scarred hand in his and settles a palm against his trim waist.
Vernet laughs, a startled sound that takes some tension with it. Some, only some. “Music first, Doctor. Dancing later, perhaps.”
Is his violin in the back room with his coat? John’s eyes flick to the door.
“Act four,” Vernet whispers in his ear. “Curtain opens. Chorus of soldiers, fresh from their defeat at sea.”
With no further warning, Vernet begins to sing. Softly at first, strained Italian full of grief and anguish. Vernet draws back, growing in volume with each word, each phrase, and John permits him the space. As if the man himself were one great instrument, Vernet’s voice soars to the heights of the ceiling before swooping low, before plunging, biting.
The music turns to combative terror, a protest of the heart. If this was what Vernet had trapped in his mind for a month, John can and readily does forgive their earlier spat. To hear him at last, John might forgive anything. Vernet sings with his eyes fixed upon John’s face, his gaze utterly immobile as his arms gesture, hands open wide and beckoning.
John knows this theme, the song of a thwarted mutiny, the theme of a man who would follow his captain rather than his home. Shivers race up his spine, prickle along his back as Vernet’s voice brings his body to resonate in enchanted sympathy.
The opening of the act merges into the drama of one scene and the next. Vernet is an army, the Egyptian court. He is one man, several. He is, for one moment, unmistakeably Cleopatra. His pitch rises to unexpected heights, a range of notes John would expect from a piano, not from a man. He articulates a duet, conveying general and soldier each in their turn with little more than the motions of his hands and the nuance of his voice, perfect and clear and shining.
He cuts off rather than concludes, a puppet cut from the strings of his music.
As his heart pounds, John slowly remembers how to breathe.
For the first time in an untold age, Vernet looks away from him. He clears his throat. “It needs work.”
“God, I love you.”
Vernet nearly laughs. He ducks his head, at any rate, and he checks his watch. “You’ll be late, Doctor.”
John can’t seem to move. “Then you’d best kiss me quickly.”
Vernet complies, pinning his scarf in place about John’s neck as he does. He pulls away with a sharp turn of the head. “Go. Before you’re missed.”
“I have to be gone before I’m missed,” John counters, wearing out his voice for a good cause.
With a roll of his eyes, Vernet physically guides John to the door and puts the medical bag into his hand. “You will be,” Vernet promises. He returns John’s matches. “Now go.”
John kisses him a final time before venturing out. His leg aches from the hours spent standing, leaning, trembling, but he’ll be able to sit down soon enough. With infinite care, he opens the hidden door and ducks through it without dirtying his trousers. He nearly falls. Regretfully, achingly, he unpins the scarf and secrets it away in his medical bag.
Climbing up the stairs leads to a surprising amount of pain. Upon encountering Miss Hooper and her untold, if not unforeseen, concern for his condition, he explains that he was forced to sit down in a removed location, nothing more. Exercise on the stairs has done him more harm than good, he’s afraid. He apologises profusely as she reminds him of the recent attempt on his life. She offers to procure him a cane from the props. He declines.
Mrs Hudson, it’s clear, knows where he’s been. She says nothing where others can hear. Being a fully grown man and as brave as he will ever be, John decides that discretion is the better part of valour. He’ll avoid her until matters with Vernet are settled. Does she think poorly of him for this, so soon after Holmes? Does she know the extent of Holmes’ wishes toward him, let alone John’s toward Vernet? Unable to discern any of these answers, John keeps his distance. He’ll doubtlessly pay for it on the ride home.
The hours pass with agonising slowness, a quick dinner here, an excruciating wait there. When the opera begins, John takes up his usual position in the hall, awaiting a patron to turn patient. His hand remains on his medical bag, against the scarf inside. At long last, after the beginning of the second act, John escapes.
Limping worse than the morning after the fire, he braves the staircase into the basement. Now unable to handle his bag and matches at once while keeping a hand on the wall, John abandons the bag by the secret door. He waves out each match as it’s about to burn him, keeping the extinguished ends in his hand against the wall.
When he returns to Vernet’s shut door, no light shines from beneath. With no small grin, John shakes out the match, knocks, and enters.
“Hello again,” he calls as firmly as his throat will allow. The words echo oddly, as if the chamber has grown larger. “Vernet?”
“Vernet?” the room cries in return.
John strikes a fresh match and holds it high. His pinprick of light shines in a cold chamber devoid of furniture, music, and man. It soon singes his fingers and, with a shaking breath, he blows it out.
da capo
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