Fic: Bel Canto - 12/16 (BBC Sherlock)
Title: Bel Canto
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 7.6k out of 126k
Betas: vyctori, seijichan, lifeonmars
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: After years of waiting for wealthy patrons to faint, Dr John Watson discovers a far more interesting patient in the opera house basement. (AU through a Phantom of the Opera lens.)
Warnings: Violence, internalized homophobia, eventual character death
Op. 20, No. 1
Op. 20, No. 2
Op. 20, No. 3
Op. 20, No. 4
Op. 20, No. 5
Op. 20, No. 6
Op. 20, No. 7
Op. 20, No. 8
Op. 20, No. 9
Op. 20, No. 10
Op. 20, No. 11
Op. 20, No. 12
Op. 20, No. 13
Op. 20, No. 14
Op. 20, No. 15
Op. 20, No. 16
“The Earl wants to speak with you,” John announces through the door. A prolonged pause follows before Miss Adler responds.
“Is that our maintenance man? Come in, I could use you.”
He has no doubt she means that in a very literal sense. He complies all the same. At the sight of Miss Adler behind her folding screen, he closes the door behind him. “I’m afraid it’s rather urgent.”
Visible above the chin, she lifts her eyes to the ceiling, an unmistakable if silent curse regarding his stupidity. “Then I’ll need you to do up my back, won’t I?” Holding the back of her dress shut behind her, she comes around the folding screen and turns with a great rustling of cloth. Blue and layered and lovely, the dress is complicated enough in design that John lacks the vocabulary to name the specific parts. Buttons, he knows. A long, fiddly row of them that turns his fingers clumsy and awkward.
“Sorry,” he apologises. “Out of practice.” Though Mary had only ever had the two dresses with this sort of back. She’d preferred laces over buttons.
“Urgent, you said?” Her hair shifts as she turns her head, looking over her shoulder.
“When the Earl calls for you, it’s always urgent,” John says slowly, focusing on keeping a professional manner. Buttoning a woman up is much the same as stitching one, except with much more smooth skin and a noticeable absence of blood and pain.
“I can’t imagine what he would want with me now.” She gathers her lower hanging tresses out of the path of the buttons. “You’ve done a thorough job of ending his brother’s little game.”
Whatever her aim, she fails to draw blood with such a comment. He steadily nears the top of the row. “I didn’t realise the ‘little game’ involved you so deeply.”
She peers over her shoulder, a frown enhancing her features rather than marring them. “That was entirely the point.”
John frowns in turn, but he finishes buttoning up the dress. It seems excessively complicated, putting so many buttons out of reach. How in the world had she planned on doing it up by herself?
His eyes widen and his stomach plummets. “Would, erm.”
“It’s urgent, yes. I heard you.” She gestures towards the door.
John stands his ground, abruptly certain. “Miss Norton is behind your folding screen, isn’t she? You’ve been trying to distract me from it.”
The consummate actress, Miss Adler feigns very convincing surprise at the question. Normally John wouldn’t ask, normally John wouldn’t press, but there is only so long he can stand to be played as someone else’s little game.
“Good afternoon, Miss Norton,” John calls.
A small pause. “Good afternoon,” Miss Norton replies from behind the screen. “I promise I’m not eavesdropping.” Her audible nervousness ruins his moment of petty victory.
To Miss Adler, John mouths, How much does she know?
“Kate keeps my secrets,” Miss Alder answers, which is no answer at all. She checks herself in the long mirror upon the back of the dressing room door.
“Is it more terrible news?” Miss Norton asks. Her voice comes from the edge of the folding screen now, as if she were fighting the urge to peek out.
John hesitates, but Lord Holmes had said to explain on the way. “We’re to perform a new opera and Miss Adler is to play the lead.”
Miss Adler begins to laugh, a haughty, dismissive sound. Then she looks into John’s eyes and immediately falls silent. The expression upon her features twists and melts, straining from doubt toward belief. Hesitation blocks this path, the surety of a cruel jest.
“It’s no joke,” John says. “The lead part is a trouser role.”
“Who would write an opera to star a contralto?”
Though the composer ought to be obvious, John answers “Sherlock Holmes” all the same.
A noise escapes from behind the folding screen and Miss Norton appears, her state of dress impeccable but her hair entirely dishevelled. Freshly released from her usual braid, it tumbles into a snarl. “He’s written you an opera?”
“Darling, he’s written me a role.” Miss Adler’s low tone soothes before striking at John. “Tell me, Dr Watson, what are the specifics of this opera?”
“A variation on Antony and Cleopatra, focusing on the formerly Roman soldiers. You’d be the young soldier who survives his captain and takes charge at the end of act three, when the captain dies in his arms.”
A smile plays about Miss Adler’s lips, but even this cannot out-dazzle the sudden light in her eyes. “And is the captain a baritone?”
“I, yes, I believe so.”
Miss Adler looks to Miss Norton as if to indicate that all is well, but this piece of information only compels Miss Norton’s frown to deepen. “He’s not being very subtle, Irene. We both know Mr Holmes fancies you as a man.”
“As a man, yes, but not, I think, as a soldier.” Her gaze settles upon John’s face in a languid inspection. “We’d both look dreadful with moustaches, I’m afraid.”
Precisely why John shaved his off years ago. “Sorry, why is the baritone important?”
“Mr Holmes is a baritone.” Miss Norton makes a futile attempt to smooth back her hair. Ultimately, she settles for containing it behind her shoulders.
With a small shake of her head, Miss Adler returns to her to murmur something. Each fits into the space of the other like a book onto its shelf, like a picture within its frame. Though the women do not touch, the compulsion to look away takes John by the eyes. He averts his gaze to the floor.
“Go on then,” Miss Norton urges quietly. “I’ve always wanted to see you showered with roses.”
“It could be dangerous,” John warns the rug. “The opera ghost enjoys his arson.”
Though Miss Adler doesn’t laugh, light mockery fills her voice. “Every opera house has a ghost. No other contralto has a leading role. Lead on, Dr Watson.”
They bid Miss Norton a quick farewell and exit into the hall.
“You don’t lock the door,” he notes.
“What’s life without a little risk?”
They turn the corner. “I wasn’t kidding about the ghost coming after you.”
“I’ll move my valuables and beware of smoke bombs.”
“Not funny.”
“Most plans aren’t,” she agrees.
It will be too late to ask by the time they reach Mr Havill’s office, too late in the crowded hallway before his door. This ought to act as a restraint upon John’s tongue, but still he says, “I thought Mr Holmes was a tenor.”
“Baritone,” she corrects. “His range is wasted on him.”
His range? She knows his range. But she can’t possibly. Has he sung for her? He would have to have sung for her, for her to know his range. Why on Earth would Holmes sing for her? He’d only sung for John to distract him. Only after months of asking and prodding had he given in for John. Only after shoving his tongue down John’s throat and fondling his arse, only after rubbing his clothed prick across John’s front, only then had Holmes sung for John. Holmes had done it to overwhelm John. He’d kept John off his balance even if he hadn’t quite kicked John’s legs out from under him.
There is nothing in all the world that could put Miss Adler off-balance, let alone keep her there. That being the case, why sing for her? And what the hell is “fancying her as a man” supposed to mean? As a man fancies a woman, surely, but Holmes doesn’t fancy women. Or perhaps he does, women as well as men.
But of course he doesn’t. The issue over creating an heir wouldn’t exist if Holmes fancied women. If Miss Adler were some sort of exception then, that would be different.
It isn’t impossible. Obviously, John doesn’t fancy men. Two men seemed a trend, but one man is an exception at best. One man under dubious conditions, at that. John must have recognised Vernet in Holmes with some forgotten, voiceless corner of his mind. The intimacy of their conversations in the candlelight must have bled through. And then, in turn, John must have recognised Holmes in Vernet. In each case, he’d thought he’d known the man more deeply than was otherwise explainable. Now he knows better. Now he sees the exception for what it was.
Though John ought to have known Holmes wasn’t above playing with his head, John certainly knows Miss Adler enjoys that variety of game. Perhaps that’s what bends Holmes toward her. It would make for a surprisingly neat business. Except for Miss Norton, of course. Terrible for the poor woman’s heart to be caught up in this mess.
Before John can ask Miss Adler anything ill-timed and socially impertinent, they reach the small gathering of senior staff outside Mr Havill’s office. Miss Adler knocks twice upon the door and enters at the sound of the Earl’s voice. Everyone else remains in the hallway.
A light touch at John’s elbow startles him from his thoughts. He blinks down into earnest eyes.
“Has Mr Holmes really written her an opera?” Miss Hooper asks.
John frowns. “Who told you that?”
“I know I’m not supposed to tell,” Mrs Hudson says, “but it seemed so obvious that’s what they want to try.” Though her words are apologetic, her voice and face shine with pride. “Is that what is it, John?”
John doesn’t quite hesitate before he nods, but he feels as if he’s supposed to. “It’s not finished. I mean, it nearly is, but act four is incomplete.”
Mr Johnson’s eyebrows rise. “Who is he collaborating with?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Who is the composer?” Mr Johnson asks.
“Uh,” John says, because Vernet is no answer at all. That would be, as it always was, a lie.
“He does try to keep it private,” Mrs Hudson quickly says. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“What’s the setting?” Molly asks. “I don’t know how many new costumes we can make at this point.”
“Alexandria, the end of Cleopatra’s reign.”
“Egypt, thirty years before the birth of Jesus Christ.” Molly chews on her lip. “We can do that. I think.” Beside her, Hopkins nods encouragingly. “I think we can do that. We have a few dresses we might be able to swap around...”
“Somehow, I don’t think that will be a problem,” John assures her.
“That isn’t the problem at all,” Mr Havill agrees. “If it isn’t complete, I can hardly see how we can attempt it. All the opera ghost will have to do is stand back and not interrupt the performance.”
“I’m sure we could put something together,” Mr Johnson says. “As long as we supply an ending, the opera ghost should try to attack. He might, at least.”
“With Mr Holmes putting his libretto up as bait, he ought to,” says Green.
Mrs Hudson makes a noise of disagreement. “His opera.”
“He wrote the score, then?” Mr Johnson asks, the ever-present furrows in his brow deepening. “Who is the librettist?”
“He wrote all of it,” Mrs Hudson says.
There is a slight pause.
“...Again,” Mr Havill says, “it may be in the opera ghost’s benefit to simply stand back and wait.”
“What are you saying?” Mrs Hudson asks in the tone of a woman who knows exactly what’s being said.
“Mr Holmes has an excellent ear,” Mr Johnson begins. “However, an opera written for a--”
“He didn’t write it for her,” John interrupts. “He simply... wrote it.”
“Even so,” Mr Johnson replies.
“It’s extraordinary,” John continues, undeterred. “If we can manage to stage it, it will work. If the ghost doesn’t interrupt us on the premiere, he’ll have to on the second night.”
“Dr Watson, considering your area of expertise,” Mr Johnson begins.
“Considering that opera typically bores me to tears, I’d say my endorsement ought to count for something.”
Mr Havill clears his throat. “Gentlemen. Nothing has yet been decided.”
A sullen, highly unprofessional silence fills the hall. As the minutes slowly pass, they tilt their heads toward the office door. At last, it opens.
“Everyone inside,” Lord Holmes instructs. “We’re about to be very busy.” He smiles at Mr Johnson and Mrs Hudson, but, as John reaches the door, says, “Dr Watson, surely someone is in need of you elsewhere.”
John nearly swallows his tongue. “Of course, my lord.”
“Very good,” Lord Holmes replies. With that, he vanishes from the doorway. Miss Hooper looks back at John uncertainly until John nods. With an apologetic look that promises news to come, Hopkins closes the door.
In the flurry of planning that follows, it is Miss Hooper, not Hopkins, who keeps John informed. He makes the mistake of telling her that a light load makes him restless and, as a direct result, is handed a threaded needle. The seamstresses were among those hit hardest by the poisoning, a fate Miss Hooper seems to have escaped by forgetting to eat.
“Roman soldiers are easy enough,” Miss Hooper explains. “We just need more of them than we’ve had before. If we’re very, very quick, we might be able to go up within the week.”
“Let’s hope February is an improvement.”
“Hard for this year to get any worse,” she agrees before immediately knocking upon the wooden table. Even the practical workers in a theatre are full of superstition. “Anyway, Mr Holmes is having copies made of the existing material tonight and tomorrow. Rehearsal ought to begin tomorrow afternoon.”
“That’s quick.”
“Needs to be.” She leans in close, dropping her voice. “Honestly, I’m more worried about the opera being finished than the rehearsals starting.”
John arranges his features into an expression of polite interest.
“Mr Holmes looked a bit ill, honestly. Nervous. I think it’s because Mr Johnson doubts him. You could tell how it hurt him.” She wears a soft, sad sort of frown. “It’s not really fair, making him give it up like this.”
John nearly pricks himself. “Sorry? ‘Give it up’?” This is what Holmes has always wanted. “He’s having it staged.”
“To be ruined,” Miss Hooper replies. “We’re going to be advertising it as his so the ghost will have to ruin it.” The slightest hint of amusement, as if trying to cheer John up: “Mr Holmes wants to put an advertisement in the paper telling the ghost that Box Five has been reserved for him.”
His stomach sinks. “That could end terribly.”
“Sort of the point, though,” Miss Hooper says.
John nods and they work on in silence.
That night, he returns home early and attempts to wait up for Mrs Hudson. When the hours turn from large to small, he retires to bed with his mind still full of questions.
His luck proves better in the morning. Despite her late night, Mrs Hudson is up early. John finds her working at the breakfast table, paper before her and pencil in hand.
“Is that how you sort out the choreography?” John asks, taking his seat.
Mrs Hudson hums. “Only the outline of the idea so far. Sherlock was very specific about the naval battle. We’ll have the boats upstage and the soldiers downstage-or are they sailors here? The men, at any rate, they’ll be here, like so on each side. The Egyptian men ought to be the most visible, of course, so the stage looks positively desolate when they leave. You see, Cleopatra’s ship enters here with Antony’s below it. When she leaves, he turns to follow and, oh, I love this bit! It’s not a stage turn. No, he’ll turn his back on his men. And the audience, but I like that somehow, for this. He completely ignores everyone to chase after her.”
“It’s very fitting,” John agrees, looking for an opening in her monologue.
“I can’t do the finer work until I hear the orchestra play it, but I mostly know what each part ought to sound like.”
“It’s still not finished, though,” John says. “I mean. I thought it wasn’t finished. The fourth act.”
“Sherlock’s doing his best,” she assures him. “He’s a bit stuck here and there, but he’ll have something in time.”
“Will it work?” he asks.
“Which part? The performance or the trap?”
“The performance,” John says. “Rushed like this, set up to fail, it’s not... Is it going to become one of those haunted scores that no one will touch?”
“We can only hope not, dear. That’s what the police will be there for.”
That’s what they were there for at the Masquerade, John doesn’t say. Instead, he agrees, “We can hope.”
“Are we late?” John asks, handing Mrs Hudson down from the carriage. He pays the cabbie before following Mrs Hudson up the opera house stairs.
“They should only be just starting,” Mrs Hudson assures him. In through the front doors, across the lobby, and as John opens the door to the house, the sounds of an orchestra tuning reach them. Mrs Hudson smiles. “Oh, good.”
They slip inside and John follows Mrs Hudson down the aisle, carrying her writing case as well as his medical bag. Upon finding a particular row in the stalls, Mrs Hudson edges between the seats before sitting down with a remarkable sense of purpose. John sits beside her and helps her with the writing case.
“Oh, no, I always start with pencil, dear. Here we are.” She sets up the small folding desk across the armrests of her seat. “First thoughts, you know.”
“I thought you’d already heard parts of it,” John half-asks.
“Show anyone before it’s finished?” Mrs Hudson smiles as if John has intentionally told a joke. “I’m still amazed he’s let this much go. He’s hidden himself away somewhere with act four, though. No one’s allowed to see. That’s going to be a problem if he can’t complete it quickly.”
John frowns a bit, but the orchestra finishes tuning and Mr Johnson directs the musicians into silence. Mrs Hudson smoothes her paper down on the writing desk and waits, pencil carefully in hand.
Mr Johnson lifts his hands, wrists arched upward and frozen upon the cusp of true motion. The instruments rise. A pause, as if for breath. For the brass and woodwinds, perhaps it is. One of Mr Johnson’s hands begins to tap in midair, a quick marching rhythm that the soles of John’s feet recognise faster than his eyes do.
Leaning forward in a slight bow, Mr Johnson nods with the downbeat, and so the overture begins. Once lifted by a single violin, the familiar strain bursts into the air with the force of strings, of mallets, of human breath. The idealised general leads on once more, a figure so far removed into John’s past that he had been nearly forgotten.
The general falters with a key change and the young soldier struggles on in his wake all the same. Here the song of home, here the longing for Rome, and there the captain, as steady and measured in his theme as he is in his character. The song of the mutiny blazes up against him only to falter and fall, and the sound of it pulls John underground, down into the tunnels. His mind stands in the abandoned chamber amidst shadows framed by candlelight.
The naval battle arrives too soon and drags John with it. Though the nature of the fugue was well-explained to him in the darkness, such a piece cannot be performed upon a single instrument. For the first time, he sees as well as hears the battle, observes the clamour of the woodwinds against the clamour of the brass. Assaults of sound surge from both sides of the pit, each firing into the other and seeking to wound.
The battle rages in a brief, complicated swirl, a number of the musicians audibly fumbling their parts. Mr Johnson spurs them on, and Cleopatra takes flight with her ships in tow. In the resulting tumult, the mutiny looms anew. For the second time, the steady captain stands tall and firm, his stable rhythm unifying the whole of the orchestra before, without warning, he falters. He falls with the pounding of drums and leaping warning of a piccolo.
With this shortest moment of foreshadowing, the overture flies away from sorrow and into warlike grief. Desperation mounts, the thrum of it shaking through John’s seat and into his bones. With the assaults of the closing act rising to their fever pitch, the overture concludes with fearsome crescendo, pulling John forward in his seat despite his knowledge of the end, despite his knowledge of its entirety.
“Good God,” whispers an unexpected voice from behind them.
John twists about in his seat to find Mr Havill sitting behind Mrs Hudson. How Mr Havill snuck in without John noticing is an utter mystery.
“That is extraordinary,” Mr Havill continues, breathless. “Dr Watson, I understand your confidence now.”
Before the stage, Mr Johnson directs his orchestra to a previous page and the battle begins anew, stumbling over itself in fresh missteps.
“Provided we can practice quickly enough,” Mr Havill amends. “Do you know his progress on act four?”
“He’s over halfway finished with the score, sir,” John answers, the words leaving his mouth before his mind has time to batter Holmes’ name against Vernet’s mask. “I think he already has all of the themes he needs-they were all in the overture, as far as I can tell-but he’ll be fitting them together in different ways for act four. Honestly, it’s not the score we have to worry about. The libretto always gives him the most trouble.”
“A week’s worth of trouble?”
“Less, I’d say, provided he’s, um.” John’s gaze lifts reflexively upward, seeking out the closed curtains of Box Five. “Sorry, provided he’s... Ah, no, I’ve lost that thought, I’m afraid.” A lie, but provided he’s anything like Vernet is hardly an answer.
“When did he tell you this?” Mrs Hudson asks, a concerned sort of frown hovering about the far side of her face where Mr Havill can’t see it.
“Around his birthday.” The day before, John’s sure she’ll realise.
“Before the poisonings, after the fire?”
John nods.
“Has he had much progress since then?” Mr Havill asks.
“I, er. I think he’s stagnated somewhat. What with the night watches and the poisoning.”
Mrs Hudson shifts in her seat to look down at her much-marked paper. Though her posture remains as flawless as ever, her expression is very sad. Behind her, Mr Havill very fortunately doesn’t notice. Nor will he, provided John can keep the guilt from his features.
“Presently, I’m letting Mr Holmes use my office to work in,” Mr Havill says. “Lord Holmes claims his brother will be able to work faster under these conditions, but I would like my office back.”
“I’m sorry to hear it,” John replies. “I’m sure he understands the inconvenience.” And is ignoring the consequences anyway.
“If he’s willing to share his work with you,” Mr Havill begins.
“Ah,” John interrupts. “Ah, uh, no. Sorry, sir. If he’s working on the libretto, the worst thing I could do would be to pop in and speak English near him.”
Mr Havill nods as if this is a fair point. Perhaps he thinks John still privy to Holmes’ creative secrets. To be fair, it would be an easy assumption. “Understandable, Dr Watson.” He looks past John and Mrs Hudson toward the orchestra as Mr Johnson begins the first act. “I must say, I’m much more confident, hearing this. Please don’t pass this on, but it’s hardly a time to appear desperate.”
“It isn’t at all, sir,” John agrees. “If anything, I’d say this is a show of confidence.”
Mr Havill hums his agreement. For a long moment, they continue listening.
With Mr Havill behind him, John can’t slip away into memory the way the music coaxes him to. It tempts and beckons, reminding him of when even his nightmares were useful, when the worst memory inside his head had a purpose beyond torment. Horrors he’d never been able to burden Mary with, regardless of how she’d asked; these he gave freely to a stranger in the dark. He’s not sure how, honestly, only that Vernet had told him what his opera needed and John had responded in the only way that made sense at the time.
When Mr Havill rises, John turns to acknowledge him. Busy with her choreography, Mrs Hudson writes on, oblivious.
“Oh, Dr Watson. To be clear, you aren’t technically on-duty.” Mr Havill’s expression does not quite contain an apology. “With the poisoning cleared up and no patrons in sight, there’s exceeding little sense in providing you with a shift today. Not until the dancers’ feet are at risk once more. With rehearsal fully underway, perhaps then.”
“I understand,” John says. His house might be gone, but his bank account is untouched. He doesn’t particularly mind, comfortable enough in his new living situation. “I thought I’d keep Mrs Hudson company.”
“By all means.”
They say their short goodbyes before Mr Havill departs. John folds his hands in his lap. He listens to familiar music turned strange by its many layers, like an old story told with the wrong voice.
“Is he a baritone?” John asks Mrs Hudson.
“Mr Havill?” she asks, without looking up.
“No, Holmes.”
Mrs Hudson’s hand stalls upon her lap desk. “John,” she says kindly, “if you want to let go, you ought to let go.”
“That’s not, no. I’m not... I wasn’t. Really. It’s something Miss Adler mentioned yesterday. And what with him using two different voices, I was wondering.”
Mrs Hudson frowns at him curiously. “Two different voices?”
“He was deeper when he was pretending to be Vernet.”
Mrs Hudson mouths these words, repeating them as if to better divine their meaning. Honest puzzlement dominates her features. “He was more relaxed, if that’s what you mean.”
“I... what? No, I mean his voice was substantially deeper. By a lot.”
“He was more relaxed,” Mrs Hudson repeats. To her, this is clearly the same as what John is saying, which makes absolutely no sense at all. “His voice goes up when he’s uncomfortable, always has. Though ‘uncomfortable’ might be too strong a word. Pressured? When he thinks he has to be polite.”
“It was hardly accidental.” It couldn’t have been, not with such consistent, different voices. One light and polished, the other dark and ragged: there’s no other answer. “He was doing it intentionally. For months.”
Mrs Hudson looks back and forth between her paper and the stage. John knows he’s making her deeply uncomfortable, but he can’t seem to stop.
“It’s bizarre, that’s all. I honestly have no idea what his real speaking voice is. And how did no one else notice? ‘Mr Holmes’ voice just jumped up an octave, I wonder what that’s about.’ Did no one really notice?”
“John Watson, this is neither the time nor place,” Mrs Hudson chides. “And I already told you, that’s his polite voice. He started doing it to mock Mycroft when he was younger, and now he talks like that to everyone.”
But not to Mrs Hudson or Miss Adler, it seems, and not as a masked man in the basement.
“I’m sorry, but I’m busy at the moment. You know we need to work quickly.”
“I know,” John says. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t-I’ll stop forcing you between us. I should know better.”
Mrs Hudson pats his hand, but she does it distractedly. “Thank you, dear.”
John nods, forcing himself silent. He lasts as long as he can before the music is too much. Lovely and absolutely wrenching, it reaches too far into him. It’s been too much inside of him from the beginning.
He reminds himself that he is not, after all, on duty today. He reminds himself that there is no sense in barging into Mr Havill’s office and interrupting Holmes’ work. There will be time enough for arguments once the opera is finished and the ghost captured.
Before he can do anything too foolish, he makes his excuses to Mrs Hudson and heads out for an early lunch. He doesn’t return.
The day drags on in a restless, unending haze. He has nothing to do. He no longer owns any books. His backlog of medical journals shall never be caught up on. Not that he was likely to get around to that anyway, but he had been intending to for months.
The weather is too terrible to stay outside for any length of time, regardless of how his restless legs long for a walk. With the cold rain and biting wind, the short distance from hansom to front door is miserable enough. He wastes the day away with this and that, but before Mrs Hudson returns, he retires to bed. He can hear her when she comes in. He thinks of going down and thinks better of it. Holmes may tear her between the two of them, but John will do no such thing.
With that vicious thought, John rolls over and attempts to sleep. He attempts for a very long time.
The following day is worse than the one before, but the day after that, the rehearsals are well-underway in all regards. With the dancers in motion and the singers exercising their voices, John at last has cause to be on call.
For a few hours, John sits in the stalls, watching an imaginary drama take physical form. Mrs Hudson knows what she’s doing with the choreography. The movement of the dancers reminds John of something he’s certain he’s seen before, but knows he never has. He recognises the motions of Vernet’s hands, the tight whirling motions of his enthusiasm. Not for the first time, John wonders how well Mrs Hudson knows the inside of Vernet’s head. Of Holmes’, he means.
John enjoys watching this rehearsal more than he can remember watching any other. He’s unreasonably disappointed when Mrs Hudson calls for a break and Mr Johnson agrees.
At loose ends, John wanders backstage and up into the workshops. He has to keep out of the way, which he does. Miss Hooper is pleased to see him for all of the half-minute she has to spare, but after that, John bids a hasty retreat. There is truly nowhere he won’t be underfoot, save for the house.
He’d forgotten how it used to be like this. Those days before there was an underground chamber to disappear to, how had he lived? An inability to remember idle hours hardly means that time didn’t exist. He’d frittered it away through one method or another, but what were those methods? His feet demand he rise and descend the stairs to a secret door. Had they demanded something else before, or had he been content to sit in a stupor when his services were unneeded?
It annoys him not to know. He checks his new watch, checks it and checks it, but time does not pass. Neither does the urge to do something.
He takes a walk. Not outside, not into that gloom, but a walk about the opera house lobby. He looks at the paintings. He looks at the architecture and attempts to summon the interest men are meant to exhibit when left alone to look at architecture.
When his eyes grow bored, his feet move on. They carry him with a fresh sense of purpose, stopping before a door, and his hand rises to knock out a quick series of taps.
“Yes?” calls a light, detested voice.
John enters Mr Havill’s office and shuts the door behind him.
Holmes sits at the desk, the usual orderliness of its surface replaced by a clutter of paper, pen and ink. Behind him, his jacket adorns the chair, his abandoned cravat across it. In waistcoat and shirtsleeves, Holmes scratches away at his score with his collar unbuttoned and his hair a mess. Agitated fingers have raked deep lines through the pomade-sleeked strands of his hair. The open violin case sits against the base of a cabinet, the instrument prepared, the bow ready. A dusting of rosin coats the strings and body between the bridge and fingerboard.
Holmes doesn’t look up. “I didn’t tell you to come inside.”
John’s mouth works, a futile motion. He fists his hands and pushes through the shock of finding Holmes this way. “There will never be a good time to ask, so I might as well ask now. Why did you do it?”
With deliberate fuss, Holmes dips his pen into the ink. “You’ll have to be more precise, Doctor. I’m afraid I’ve done many things.”
“I understand the composing in the basement. That bit, fine. You’re absurd, I understand that. I don’t understand why you would play both sides.”
“Both sides of what?”
“Why the hell did you approach me as you?” John demands. He storms forward as close as he can without kicking the desk. He might kick it if Holmes won’t look at him. “You were stuck as, as Vernet, so, yes, fine. But anything else, that’s not you being blown about by the winds of fate. You can’t simply pass the blame onto your lord brother for that. You knew what you were doing. You knew you were lying to me from both sides.”
Holmes lifts his eyes from the paper, the better to mock John as an idiot. “You think I approached you?”
“Yes! What else could you call it?”
Holmes groans as if John is the one entirely missing the point. Once dropped, his voice remains in its lower register. “You wanted to help. You were eager for the work.”
“What are you-I’m not talking about the work.”
“No?” As if this is the only conceivable option.
“No.”
“Then you acknowledge the investigation as necessary,” Holmes concludes. He turns his eyes forcefully to the desk’s surface. “I see no sense in discussing anything else.”
Arms crossed over his chest, John stares at him. “Oh,” he says. “That’s what we’re doing. Nothing to talk about, nothing to dwell on, move along, there’s a good chap.”
“You do so love being a good chap,” Holmes agrees, his pitch sweeping upward into false pleasantness. His polite voice, John’s foot. “A truly good chap would close the door on his way out.”
“I’ll leave when you answer the question.”
Holmes groans yet again before gesturing to his papers with twin sharp, chopping motions. “I have work to do. Surely you of all people will understand that.”
John leans forward and blocks his light.
“You are currently delaying the plan you yourself proposed to catch the opera ghost.” Though Holmes’ remark is nearly idle, he avoids John’s gaze. “Well done. You’re a marvel of efficiency.”
John holds firm. “We can argue for an hour, or you can tell me what in the world you were thinking. Your choice.”
“It hardly matters when you won’t listen either way.” As if John is the one being purposefully obtuse and obstinate.
“Spell it out for me. Use small words. As monosyllabic as you like, by all means.”
“You were the obvious choice for the investigation. Your behaviour was markedly different. I interpreted the change incorrectly.”
“Sorry,” John says. “I might be missing something, but what part of my behaviour told you to lie to me for half a year?”
Holmes looks up only to frown at him. “That was always the arrangement. No, don’t interrupt-it was. We discussed it. I couldn’t tell you. You accepted this. Never in a long term sense, but you were willing to accept it.”
“That direction of it, yes,” John agrees. “This direction of it, no.”
“What direction?”
“You,” John says. “As... you. You approached me like a stranger.”
Slowly, Holmes’ head tilts. “We just agreed I couldn’t tell you.”
“Then you shouldn’t have approached me!”
Holmes nearly gapes at him. “The investigation was necessary. We agreed not two minutes ago.”
John stares back. “I don’t mean the investigation. I mean the Masquerade. And Christmas.”
If anything, Holmes’ confusion only worsens. “You mean sending you to keep Mrs Hudson company?” He must be feigning ignorance. It’s so obvious John could almost laugh.
“I mean your proposition on the stage and, and taking off my shoes.”
Holmes’ expression hardens, stone-like. “Ah. You believe my primary motive to be buggery.”
Though John feels his face flushing, he doesn’t disagree. He doesn’t look away.
“You’re wrong, of course. My primary motive is the work, Doctor,” Holmes tells him, and in that moment, his voice is entirely Vernet’s. “It is always the work. I would have thought you’d remember that. Sadly, overestimating you seems to be a habit of mine.” His manner, his ire, his form: all is wholly Vernet’s.
“Then why did you say yes?” John doesn’t specify and hardly needs to. His hands are shaking, fisted at his sides.
“Oh, why did I catch you when you flung yourself at me? Hm, I haven’t the foggiest. Clearly, I should have stomped on your heart and thrown it back at you. Would that have been kinder? Is that what it’s called when one acts contrary to one’s interests?”
“What about a warning?” John demands.
“A warning for what?” Holmes throws himself backward in Mr Havill’s chair in an agitated sprawl. His upturned palms demand answers. “‘Look out, we’re both about to get precisely what we want, except you’re too stupid to see that!’ Is that what you want? And it is want, not wanted. I gave you your warnings. You brushed them aside. I told you that you loved a fantasy, and you insisted you loved my character. You’d no idea what it was then and know even less now, but you insisted.
“What is it you wish to chastise me for, hm? Failing to recognise the abysmal risk that is Dr John Watson? You’re perfectly content to fling yourself at a masked stranger in the basement, but I, oh no, I am too odious. A deranged dreamer is well and good, but only if he comes free of entanglements. Or, God forbid, wealth and breeding. Can’t have that.”
“Maybe, just maybe, it’s because you’re a controlling arse.”
Holmes rolls his eyes. “I corner you once-”
“You had me running about all December!” A month of entertainments and outings in the guise of work.
“Oh dear, how dare I give you something useful to do. You’re right: I’m a complete and utter villain. How terribly cruel of me to predict your behavioural patterns. I’m sure you put up with having nothing to do today for nearly an hour before you came to bother me.”
Nearly half an hour, but John is hardly about to correct him. Even so, it must show on his face. Holmes’ answering smile is too ugly to deserve the name.
“You were at loose ends and came running back to me,” Holmes muses. His smirk grows into a sneer. “How vexing for you.”
John tries to breathe, tries to shout, and accomplishes nothing.
“We’ll revert,” Holmes proposes. “You’d rather jump off a bridge than go without purpose. That’s unchanged. I need to finish this. Also unchanged.”
“What are you asking?”
“I am telling you to sit down and be quiet.” Holmes picks up his pen, its ink long since dried on its nib.
“I refuse.”
“Fine. Leave. Off you go.”
John hesitates, abruptly trapped with the realisation that, whichever way John turns, Holmes can only win.
“You’ll spend the rest of the day wandering about in the hope that someone will need you. Unlikely with the acrobat killed and no replacement evident. Unless the death threats toward the singers come true in the next few hours, there is absolutely nothing for you out there.”
Knowing that Holmes is baiting him does nothing to defend John against his logic. Knowing what Holmes wants from him is no help either. “You’re writing the bit at the end where the young soldier is cornered and scared. The part where he regrets ever trusting the captain at all.”
“Before being horrifically killed, yes.”
It’s no threat, only a crisp confirmation. Even so, it rings false.
“I thought he was going to die hopeful,” John says. That’s what Vernet had said. “He’s supposed to have another change of heart before he dies.”
“I’ve changed my mind,” Holmes answers. “I’ve seen enough changes of heart lately, haven’t you?”
John nearly goes to the door. He should. He ought to.
Instead, he sits down.
Holmes neither blinks nor stares at him, but his confused flicker of a gaze is enough for John to feel pleased with himself.
“The old ending was better,” John says. “The variety made it more of a kick in the teeth.”
This time, Holmes stares. He inhales, filling his lungs as another man might load a cannon. Then, without warning, his eyes widen, and he scrambles for one sheet of paper buried beneath the others. He sets to his task without a single word, let alone another attack.
John waits a moment, unsure when the flurry will end. As it continues on, he simply sits and watches. His stomach twists and turns over as if digesting something he oughtn’t to have eaten. If an accident does occur, he thinks Mrs Hudson might know to look for him here. He isn’t certain.
The longer Holmes writes, the more his attention recedes from the room. The windows behind him spill less light than a smattering of candles. The table before him only exists to hold his materials. Holmes only lifts his gaze to John in order to stare through him. Vernet might have done the same, once. The ill-fitting mask had made it impossible to tell.
As the minutes pass and the clock ticks ever onward, a familiar, slightly manic energy creeps over Holmes. It wraps about his head, tilting it, before seizing his hands and bidding them to set down their pen. The first motions of conducting chop the air. As Holmes’ lips silently move, his gesticulating hands smooth their course. The sequence is long and yet distinct: each time Holmes is forced to repeat it, John sees a precise reproduction of what has come before.
Once, only once, Holmes groans and drags his hands through his hair. With a smear of pomade upon his fingers, he surfaces from his composing trance long enough to wipe it off on his trousers. His curls struggle to fall free. One flops over his forehead. Though Holmes ignores this, John can’t help his staring.
While hardly the most inappropriate behaviour John’s exhibited toward him, the staring grows awkward and strange. John has to look down, look away, and still his gaze snaps back to where Holmes is so completely inside his own world. Unheard music bids his dark head to nod a steady beat while his fingers tap an entirely different rhythm. He mouths the words, repeating and repeating as he sets them into ink.
Realising that his back aches, John shifts in his borrowed chair. His shoulder clicks. He stands to stretch.
The tapping ceases as Holmes reaches toward him without looking. “Almost finished.”
“I was just--”
“Almost finished.” The two words spill into each other as if pulled out of him with a great, rushed effort.
John sits.
The writing continues, the composing, the scratching of the pen. What sort of nerve does it take, to compose in pen? What characteristic arrogance.
The almost drags on. Ten minutes. Twenty. John’s stomach clenches and growls. He can’t remember when he last ate. He’s been in here all afternoon.
The pen stops scratching.
John looks up.
Holmes shifts through his papers, his eyes scanning down each page. “Oh,” he says, a soft, surprised sound.
“What is it?” John asks.
The search continues. Carefully handling one sheet, Holmes studies the drying ink. “It’s finished.”
John stands. As if he would be able to tell by looking, he comes to the desk to see. The ink still gleams, but the gleam settles. Even upside-down, the variable quality of the writing is obvious. Here Vernet’s cramped scrawl, there Holmes’ pristine cursive, the transitions between the two gradual where they aren’t abrupt.
They wait for the ink to dry. Then, carefully, Holmes stacks the papers into a neat pile. His hands remain set upon it, securing it to the desk, holding it tight until its existence becomes certain.
With a slow lift of the head, Holmes looks up at him. A single question dominates his eyes, his mouth, the set of his jaw, darkened with a natural shadow. “I...” His deep voice falters, lifts. “What do I do now?”
“You give this to Mr Johnson,” John says. “Copies must be made.”
“Yes,” Holmes says. His gaze falls to the paper beneath his hands. “Yes.”
“And then you must go and eat something,” John continues.
Holmes frowns.
“Mr Johnson, then dinner,” John repeats.
After a small pause, Holmes nods. He stands with a great cracking of his back. His eyes return to the desk, return and return again even as he sets the violin away. His violin, John supposes. The same careful touch, the same hands upon the wood. Yes, his violin.
Once Holmes secures the case, he secures the score. Lost and small despite his great height, he turns to John. “The Gloriana? For dinner.”
“I’m not giving you dietary requirements. I’m only telling you to eat.”
“Hardly what I meant, Doctor,” Holmes replies.
John holds his gaze. “I know what you meant.”
Holmes says nothing, instead looking down at his opus.
John opens the door for him, and Holmes exits without another word.
previous | next
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 7.6k out of 126k
Betas: vyctori, seijichan, lifeonmars
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: After years of waiting for wealthy patrons to faint, Dr John Watson discovers a far more interesting patient in the opera house basement. (AU through a Phantom of the Opera lens.)
Warnings: Violence, internalized homophobia, eventual character death
Op. 20, No. 1
Op. 20, No. 2
Op. 20, No. 3
Op. 20, No. 4
Op. 20, No. 5
Op. 20, No. 6
Op. 20, No. 7
Op. 20, No. 8
Op. 20, No. 9
Op. 20, No. 10
Op. 20, No. 11
Op. 20, No. 12
Op. 20, No. 13
Op. 20, No. 14
Op. 20, No. 15
Op. 20, No. 16
“The Earl wants to speak with you,” John announces through the door. A prolonged pause follows before Miss Adler responds.
“Is that our maintenance man? Come in, I could use you.”
He has no doubt she means that in a very literal sense. He complies all the same. At the sight of Miss Adler behind her folding screen, he closes the door behind him. “I’m afraid it’s rather urgent.”
Visible above the chin, she lifts her eyes to the ceiling, an unmistakable if silent curse regarding his stupidity. “Then I’ll need you to do up my back, won’t I?” Holding the back of her dress shut behind her, she comes around the folding screen and turns with a great rustling of cloth. Blue and layered and lovely, the dress is complicated enough in design that John lacks the vocabulary to name the specific parts. Buttons, he knows. A long, fiddly row of them that turns his fingers clumsy and awkward.
“Sorry,” he apologises. “Out of practice.” Though Mary had only ever had the two dresses with this sort of back. She’d preferred laces over buttons.
“Urgent, you said?” Her hair shifts as she turns her head, looking over her shoulder.
“When the Earl calls for you, it’s always urgent,” John says slowly, focusing on keeping a professional manner. Buttoning a woman up is much the same as stitching one, except with much more smooth skin and a noticeable absence of blood and pain.
“I can’t imagine what he would want with me now.” She gathers her lower hanging tresses out of the path of the buttons. “You’ve done a thorough job of ending his brother’s little game.”
Whatever her aim, she fails to draw blood with such a comment. He steadily nears the top of the row. “I didn’t realise the ‘little game’ involved you so deeply.”
She peers over her shoulder, a frown enhancing her features rather than marring them. “That was entirely the point.”
John frowns in turn, but he finishes buttoning up the dress. It seems excessively complicated, putting so many buttons out of reach. How in the world had she planned on doing it up by herself?
His eyes widen and his stomach plummets. “Would, erm.”
“It’s urgent, yes. I heard you.” She gestures towards the door.
John stands his ground, abruptly certain. “Miss Norton is behind your folding screen, isn’t she? You’ve been trying to distract me from it.”
The consummate actress, Miss Adler feigns very convincing surprise at the question. Normally John wouldn’t ask, normally John wouldn’t press, but there is only so long he can stand to be played as someone else’s little game.
“Good afternoon, Miss Norton,” John calls.
A small pause. “Good afternoon,” Miss Norton replies from behind the screen. “I promise I’m not eavesdropping.” Her audible nervousness ruins his moment of petty victory.
To Miss Adler, John mouths, How much does she know?
“Kate keeps my secrets,” Miss Alder answers, which is no answer at all. She checks herself in the long mirror upon the back of the dressing room door.
“Is it more terrible news?” Miss Norton asks. Her voice comes from the edge of the folding screen now, as if she were fighting the urge to peek out.
John hesitates, but Lord Holmes had said to explain on the way. “We’re to perform a new opera and Miss Adler is to play the lead.”
Miss Adler begins to laugh, a haughty, dismissive sound. Then she looks into John’s eyes and immediately falls silent. The expression upon her features twists and melts, straining from doubt toward belief. Hesitation blocks this path, the surety of a cruel jest.
“It’s no joke,” John says. “The lead part is a trouser role.”
“Who would write an opera to star a contralto?”
Though the composer ought to be obvious, John answers “Sherlock Holmes” all the same.
A noise escapes from behind the folding screen and Miss Norton appears, her state of dress impeccable but her hair entirely dishevelled. Freshly released from her usual braid, it tumbles into a snarl. “He’s written you an opera?”
“Darling, he’s written me a role.” Miss Adler’s low tone soothes before striking at John. “Tell me, Dr Watson, what are the specifics of this opera?”
“A variation on Antony and Cleopatra, focusing on the formerly Roman soldiers. You’d be the young soldier who survives his captain and takes charge at the end of act three, when the captain dies in his arms.”
A smile plays about Miss Adler’s lips, but even this cannot out-dazzle the sudden light in her eyes. “And is the captain a baritone?”
“I, yes, I believe so.”
Miss Adler looks to Miss Norton as if to indicate that all is well, but this piece of information only compels Miss Norton’s frown to deepen. “He’s not being very subtle, Irene. We both know Mr Holmes fancies you as a man.”
“As a man, yes, but not, I think, as a soldier.” Her gaze settles upon John’s face in a languid inspection. “We’d both look dreadful with moustaches, I’m afraid.”
Precisely why John shaved his off years ago. “Sorry, why is the baritone important?”
“Mr Holmes is a baritone.” Miss Norton makes a futile attempt to smooth back her hair. Ultimately, she settles for containing it behind her shoulders.
With a small shake of her head, Miss Adler returns to her to murmur something. Each fits into the space of the other like a book onto its shelf, like a picture within its frame. Though the women do not touch, the compulsion to look away takes John by the eyes. He averts his gaze to the floor.
“Go on then,” Miss Norton urges quietly. “I’ve always wanted to see you showered with roses.”
“It could be dangerous,” John warns the rug. “The opera ghost enjoys his arson.”
Though Miss Adler doesn’t laugh, light mockery fills her voice. “Every opera house has a ghost. No other contralto has a leading role. Lead on, Dr Watson.”
They bid Miss Norton a quick farewell and exit into the hall.
“You don’t lock the door,” he notes.
“What’s life without a little risk?”
They turn the corner. “I wasn’t kidding about the ghost coming after you.”
“I’ll move my valuables and beware of smoke bombs.”
“Not funny.”
“Most plans aren’t,” she agrees.
It will be too late to ask by the time they reach Mr Havill’s office, too late in the crowded hallway before his door. This ought to act as a restraint upon John’s tongue, but still he says, “I thought Mr Holmes was a tenor.”
“Baritone,” she corrects. “His range is wasted on him.”
His range? She knows his range. But she can’t possibly. Has he sung for her? He would have to have sung for her, for her to know his range. Why on Earth would Holmes sing for her? He’d only sung for John to distract him. Only after months of asking and prodding had he given in for John. Only after shoving his tongue down John’s throat and fondling his arse, only after rubbing his clothed prick across John’s front, only then had Holmes sung for John. Holmes had done it to overwhelm John. He’d kept John off his balance even if he hadn’t quite kicked John’s legs out from under him.
There is nothing in all the world that could put Miss Adler off-balance, let alone keep her there. That being the case, why sing for her? And what the hell is “fancying her as a man” supposed to mean? As a man fancies a woman, surely, but Holmes doesn’t fancy women. Or perhaps he does, women as well as men.
But of course he doesn’t. The issue over creating an heir wouldn’t exist if Holmes fancied women. If Miss Adler were some sort of exception then, that would be different.
It isn’t impossible. Obviously, John doesn’t fancy men. Two men seemed a trend, but one man is an exception at best. One man under dubious conditions, at that. John must have recognised Vernet in Holmes with some forgotten, voiceless corner of his mind. The intimacy of their conversations in the candlelight must have bled through. And then, in turn, John must have recognised Holmes in Vernet. In each case, he’d thought he’d known the man more deeply than was otherwise explainable. Now he knows better. Now he sees the exception for what it was.
Though John ought to have known Holmes wasn’t above playing with his head, John certainly knows Miss Adler enjoys that variety of game. Perhaps that’s what bends Holmes toward her. It would make for a surprisingly neat business. Except for Miss Norton, of course. Terrible for the poor woman’s heart to be caught up in this mess.
Before John can ask Miss Adler anything ill-timed and socially impertinent, they reach the small gathering of senior staff outside Mr Havill’s office. Miss Adler knocks twice upon the door and enters at the sound of the Earl’s voice. Everyone else remains in the hallway.
A light touch at John’s elbow startles him from his thoughts. He blinks down into earnest eyes.
“Has Mr Holmes really written her an opera?” Miss Hooper asks.
John frowns. “Who told you that?”
“I know I’m not supposed to tell,” Mrs Hudson says, “but it seemed so obvious that’s what they want to try.” Though her words are apologetic, her voice and face shine with pride. “Is that what is it, John?”
John doesn’t quite hesitate before he nods, but he feels as if he’s supposed to. “It’s not finished. I mean, it nearly is, but act four is incomplete.”
Mr Johnson’s eyebrows rise. “Who is he collaborating with?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Who is the composer?” Mr Johnson asks.
“Uh,” John says, because Vernet is no answer at all. That would be, as it always was, a lie.
“He does try to keep it private,” Mrs Hudson quickly says. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“What’s the setting?” Molly asks. “I don’t know how many new costumes we can make at this point.”
“Alexandria, the end of Cleopatra’s reign.”
“Egypt, thirty years before the birth of Jesus Christ.” Molly chews on her lip. “We can do that. I think.” Beside her, Hopkins nods encouragingly. “I think we can do that. We have a few dresses we might be able to swap around...”
“Somehow, I don’t think that will be a problem,” John assures her.
“That isn’t the problem at all,” Mr Havill agrees. “If it isn’t complete, I can hardly see how we can attempt it. All the opera ghost will have to do is stand back and not interrupt the performance.”
“I’m sure we could put something together,” Mr Johnson says. “As long as we supply an ending, the opera ghost should try to attack. He might, at least.”
“With Mr Holmes putting his libretto up as bait, he ought to,” says Green.
Mrs Hudson makes a noise of disagreement. “His opera.”
“He wrote the score, then?” Mr Johnson asks, the ever-present furrows in his brow deepening. “Who is the librettist?”
“He wrote all of it,” Mrs Hudson says.
There is a slight pause.
“...Again,” Mr Havill says, “it may be in the opera ghost’s benefit to simply stand back and wait.”
“What are you saying?” Mrs Hudson asks in the tone of a woman who knows exactly what’s being said.
“Mr Holmes has an excellent ear,” Mr Johnson begins. “However, an opera written for a--”
“He didn’t write it for her,” John interrupts. “He simply... wrote it.”
“Even so,” Mr Johnson replies.
“It’s extraordinary,” John continues, undeterred. “If we can manage to stage it, it will work. If the ghost doesn’t interrupt us on the premiere, he’ll have to on the second night.”
“Dr Watson, considering your area of expertise,” Mr Johnson begins.
“Considering that opera typically bores me to tears, I’d say my endorsement ought to count for something.”
Mr Havill clears his throat. “Gentlemen. Nothing has yet been decided.”
A sullen, highly unprofessional silence fills the hall. As the minutes slowly pass, they tilt their heads toward the office door. At last, it opens.
“Everyone inside,” Lord Holmes instructs. “We’re about to be very busy.” He smiles at Mr Johnson and Mrs Hudson, but, as John reaches the door, says, “Dr Watson, surely someone is in need of you elsewhere.”
John nearly swallows his tongue. “Of course, my lord.”
“Very good,” Lord Holmes replies. With that, he vanishes from the doorway. Miss Hooper looks back at John uncertainly until John nods. With an apologetic look that promises news to come, Hopkins closes the door.
In the flurry of planning that follows, it is Miss Hooper, not Hopkins, who keeps John informed. He makes the mistake of telling her that a light load makes him restless and, as a direct result, is handed a threaded needle. The seamstresses were among those hit hardest by the poisoning, a fate Miss Hooper seems to have escaped by forgetting to eat.
“Roman soldiers are easy enough,” Miss Hooper explains. “We just need more of them than we’ve had before. If we’re very, very quick, we might be able to go up within the week.”
“Let’s hope February is an improvement.”
“Hard for this year to get any worse,” she agrees before immediately knocking upon the wooden table. Even the practical workers in a theatre are full of superstition. “Anyway, Mr Holmes is having copies made of the existing material tonight and tomorrow. Rehearsal ought to begin tomorrow afternoon.”
“That’s quick.”
“Needs to be.” She leans in close, dropping her voice. “Honestly, I’m more worried about the opera being finished than the rehearsals starting.”
John arranges his features into an expression of polite interest.
“Mr Holmes looked a bit ill, honestly. Nervous. I think it’s because Mr Johnson doubts him. You could tell how it hurt him.” She wears a soft, sad sort of frown. “It’s not really fair, making him give it up like this.”
John nearly pricks himself. “Sorry? ‘Give it up’?” This is what Holmes has always wanted. “He’s having it staged.”
“To be ruined,” Miss Hooper replies. “We’re going to be advertising it as his so the ghost will have to ruin it.” The slightest hint of amusement, as if trying to cheer John up: “Mr Holmes wants to put an advertisement in the paper telling the ghost that Box Five has been reserved for him.”
His stomach sinks. “That could end terribly.”
“Sort of the point, though,” Miss Hooper says.
John nods and they work on in silence.
That night, he returns home early and attempts to wait up for Mrs Hudson. When the hours turn from large to small, he retires to bed with his mind still full of questions.
His luck proves better in the morning. Despite her late night, Mrs Hudson is up early. John finds her working at the breakfast table, paper before her and pencil in hand.
“Is that how you sort out the choreography?” John asks, taking his seat.
Mrs Hudson hums. “Only the outline of the idea so far. Sherlock was very specific about the naval battle. We’ll have the boats upstage and the soldiers downstage-or are they sailors here? The men, at any rate, they’ll be here, like so on each side. The Egyptian men ought to be the most visible, of course, so the stage looks positively desolate when they leave. You see, Cleopatra’s ship enters here with Antony’s below it. When she leaves, he turns to follow and, oh, I love this bit! It’s not a stage turn. No, he’ll turn his back on his men. And the audience, but I like that somehow, for this. He completely ignores everyone to chase after her.”
“It’s very fitting,” John agrees, looking for an opening in her monologue.
“I can’t do the finer work until I hear the orchestra play it, but I mostly know what each part ought to sound like.”
“It’s still not finished, though,” John says. “I mean. I thought it wasn’t finished. The fourth act.”
“Sherlock’s doing his best,” she assures him. “He’s a bit stuck here and there, but he’ll have something in time.”
“Will it work?” he asks.
“Which part? The performance or the trap?”
“The performance,” John says. “Rushed like this, set up to fail, it’s not... Is it going to become one of those haunted scores that no one will touch?”
“We can only hope not, dear. That’s what the police will be there for.”
That’s what they were there for at the Masquerade, John doesn’t say. Instead, he agrees, “We can hope.”
“Are we late?” John asks, handing Mrs Hudson down from the carriage. He pays the cabbie before following Mrs Hudson up the opera house stairs.
“They should only be just starting,” Mrs Hudson assures him. In through the front doors, across the lobby, and as John opens the door to the house, the sounds of an orchestra tuning reach them. Mrs Hudson smiles. “Oh, good.”
They slip inside and John follows Mrs Hudson down the aisle, carrying her writing case as well as his medical bag. Upon finding a particular row in the stalls, Mrs Hudson edges between the seats before sitting down with a remarkable sense of purpose. John sits beside her and helps her with the writing case.
“Oh, no, I always start with pencil, dear. Here we are.” She sets up the small folding desk across the armrests of her seat. “First thoughts, you know.”
“I thought you’d already heard parts of it,” John half-asks.
“Show anyone before it’s finished?” Mrs Hudson smiles as if John has intentionally told a joke. “I’m still amazed he’s let this much go. He’s hidden himself away somewhere with act four, though. No one’s allowed to see. That’s going to be a problem if he can’t complete it quickly.”
John frowns a bit, but the orchestra finishes tuning and Mr Johnson directs the musicians into silence. Mrs Hudson smoothes her paper down on the writing desk and waits, pencil carefully in hand.
Mr Johnson lifts his hands, wrists arched upward and frozen upon the cusp of true motion. The instruments rise. A pause, as if for breath. For the brass and woodwinds, perhaps it is. One of Mr Johnson’s hands begins to tap in midair, a quick marching rhythm that the soles of John’s feet recognise faster than his eyes do.
Leaning forward in a slight bow, Mr Johnson nods with the downbeat, and so the overture begins. Once lifted by a single violin, the familiar strain bursts into the air with the force of strings, of mallets, of human breath. The idealised general leads on once more, a figure so far removed into John’s past that he had been nearly forgotten.
The general falters with a key change and the young soldier struggles on in his wake all the same. Here the song of home, here the longing for Rome, and there the captain, as steady and measured in his theme as he is in his character. The song of the mutiny blazes up against him only to falter and fall, and the sound of it pulls John underground, down into the tunnels. His mind stands in the abandoned chamber amidst shadows framed by candlelight.
The naval battle arrives too soon and drags John with it. Though the nature of the fugue was well-explained to him in the darkness, such a piece cannot be performed upon a single instrument. For the first time, he sees as well as hears the battle, observes the clamour of the woodwinds against the clamour of the brass. Assaults of sound surge from both sides of the pit, each firing into the other and seeking to wound.
The battle rages in a brief, complicated swirl, a number of the musicians audibly fumbling their parts. Mr Johnson spurs them on, and Cleopatra takes flight with her ships in tow. In the resulting tumult, the mutiny looms anew. For the second time, the steady captain stands tall and firm, his stable rhythm unifying the whole of the orchestra before, without warning, he falters. He falls with the pounding of drums and leaping warning of a piccolo.
With this shortest moment of foreshadowing, the overture flies away from sorrow and into warlike grief. Desperation mounts, the thrum of it shaking through John’s seat and into his bones. With the assaults of the closing act rising to their fever pitch, the overture concludes with fearsome crescendo, pulling John forward in his seat despite his knowledge of the end, despite his knowledge of its entirety.
“Good God,” whispers an unexpected voice from behind them.
John twists about in his seat to find Mr Havill sitting behind Mrs Hudson. How Mr Havill snuck in without John noticing is an utter mystery.
“That is extraordinary,” Mr Havill continues, breathless. “Dr Watson, I understand your confidence now.”
Before the stage, Mr Johnson directs his orchestra to a previous page and the battle begins anew, stumbling over itself in fresh missteps.
“Provided we can practice quickly enough,” Mr Havill amends. “Do you know his progress on act four?”
“He’s over halfway finished with the score, sir,” John answers, the words leaving his mouth before his mind has time to batter Holmes’ name against Vernet’s mask. “I think he already has all of the themes he needs-they were all in the overture, as far as I can tell-but he’ll be fitting them together in different ways for act four. Honestly, it’s not the score we have to worry about. The libretto always gives him the most trouble.”
“A week’s worth of trouble?”
“Less, I’d say, provided he’s, um.” John’s gaze lifts reflexively upward, seeking out the closed curtains of Box Five. “Sorry, provided he’s... Ah, no, I’ve lost that thought, I’m afraid.” A lie, but provided he’s anything like Vernet is hardly an answer.
“When did he tell you this?” Mrs Hudson asks, a concerned sort of frown hovering about the far side of her face where Mr Havill can’t see it.
“Around his birthday.” The day before, John’s sure she’ll realise.
“Before the poisonings, after the fire?”
John nods.
“Has he had much progress since then?” Mr Havill asks.
“I, er. I think he’s stagnated somewhat. What with the night watches and the poisoning.”
Mrs Hudson shifts in her seat to look down at her much-marked paper. Though her posture remains as flawless as ever, her expression is very sad. Behind her, Mr Havill very fortunately doesn’t notice. Nor will he, provided John can keep the guilt from his features.
“Presently, I’m letting Mr Holmes use my office to work in,” Mr Havill says. “Lord Holmes claims his brother will be able to work faster under these conditions, but I would like my office back.”
“I’m sorry to hear it,” John replies. “I’m sure he understands the inconvenience.” And is ignoring the consequences anyway.
“If he’s willing to share his work with you,” Mr Havill begins.
“Ah,” John interrupts. “Ah, uh, no. Sorry, sir. If he’s working on the libretto, the worst thing I could do would be to pop in and speak English near him.”
Mr Havill nods as if this is a fair point. Perhaps he thinks John still privy to Holmes’ creative secrets. To be fair, it would be an easy assumption. “Understandable, Dr Watson.” He looks past John and Mrs Hudson toward the orchestra as Mr Johnson begins the first act. “I must say, I’m much more confident, hearing this. Please don’t pass this on, but it’s hardly a time to appear desperate.”
“It isn’t at all, sir,” John agrees. “If anything, I’d say this is a show of confidence.”
Mr Havill hums his agreement. For a long moment, they continue listening.
With Mr Havill behind him, John can’t slip away into memory the way the music coaxes him to. It tempts and beckons, reminding him of when even his nightmares were useful, when the worst memory inside his head had a purpose beyond torment. Horrors he’d never been able to burden Mary with, regardless of how she’d asked; these he gave freely to a stranger in the dark. He’s not sure how, honestly, only that Vernet had told him what his opera needed and John had responded in the only way that made sense at the time.
When Mr Havill rises, John turns to acknowledge him. Busy with her choreography, Mrs Hudson writes on, oblivious.
“Oh, Dr Watson. To be clear, you aren’t technically on-duty.” Mr Havill’s expression does not quite contain an apology. “With the poisoning cleared up and no patrons in sight, there’s exceeding little sense in providing you with a shift today. Not until the dancers’ feet are at risk once more. With rehearsal fully underway, perhaps then.”
“I understand,” John says. His house might be gone, but his bank account is untouched. He doesn’t particularly mind, comfortable enough in his new living situation. “I thought I’d keep Mrs Hudson company.”
“By all means.”
They say their short goodbyes before Mr Havill departs. John folds his hands in his lap. He listens to familiar music turned strange by its many layers, like an old story told with the wrong voice.
“Is he a baritone?” John asks Mrs Hudson.
“Mr Havill?” she asks, without looking up.
“No, Holmes.”
Mrs Hudson’s hand stalls upon her lap desk. “John,” she says kindly, “if you want to let go, you ought to let go.”
“That’s not, no. I’m not... I wasn’t. Really. It’s something Miss Adler mentioned yesterday. And what with him using two different voices, I was wondering.”
Mrs Hudson frowns at him curiously. “Two different voices?”
“He was deeper when he was pretending to be Vernet.”
Mrs Hudson mouths these words, repeating them as if to better divine their meaning. Honest puzzlement dominates her features. “He was more relaxed, if that’s what you mean.”
“I... what? No, I mean his voice was substantially deeper. By a lot.”
“He was more relaxed,” Mrs Hudson repeats. To her, this is clearly the same as what John is saying, which makes absolutely no sense at all. “His voice goes up when he’s uncomfortable, always has. Though ‘uncomfortable’ might be too strong a word. Pressured? When he thinks he has to be polite.”
“It was hardly accidental.” It couldn’t have been, not with such consistent, different voices. One light and polished, the other dark and ragged: there’s no other answer. “He was doing it intentionally. For months.”
Mrs Hudson looks back and forth between her paper and the stage. John knows he’s making her deeply uncomfortable, but he can’t seem to stop.
“It’s bizarre, that’s all. I honestly have no idea what his real speaking voice is. And how did no one else notice? ‘Mr Holmes’ voice just jumped up an octave, I wonder what that’s about.’ Did no one really notice?”
“John Watson, this is neither the time nor place,” Mrs Hudson chides. “And I already told you, that’s his polite voice. He started doing it to mock Mycroft when he was younger, and now he talks like that to everyone.”
But not to Mrs Hudson or Miss Adler, it seems, and not as a masked man in the basement.
“I’m sorry, but I’m busy at the moment. You know we need to work quickly.”
“I know,” John says. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t-I’ll stop forcing you between us. I should know better.”
Mrs Hudson pats his hand, but she does it distractedly. “Thank you, dear.”
John nods, forcing himself silent. He lasts as long as he can before the music is too much. Lovely and absolutely wrenching, it reaches too far into him. It’s been too much inside of him from the beginning.
He reminds himself that he is not, after all, on duty today. He reminds himself that there is no sense in barging into Mr Havill’s office and interrupting Holmes’ work. There will be time enough for arguments once the opera is finished and the ghost captured.
Before he can do anything too foolish, he makes his excuses to Mrs Hudson and heads out for an early lunch. He doesn’t return.
The day drags on in a restless, unending haze. He has nothing to do. He no longer owns any books. His backlog of medical journals shall never be caught up on. Not that he was likely to get around to that anyway, but he had been intending to for months.
The weather is too terrible to stay outside for any length of time, regardless of how his restless legs long for a walk. With the cold rain and biting wind, the short distance from hansom to front door is miserable enough. He wastes the day away with this and that, but before Mrs Hudson returns, he retires to bed. He can hear her when she comes in. He thinks of going down and thinks better of it. Holmes may tear her between the two of them, but John will do no such thing.
With that vicious thought, John rolls over and attempts to sleep. He attempts for a very long time.
The following day is worse than the one before, but the day after that, the rehearsals are well-underway in all regards. With the dancers in motion and the singers exercising their voices, John at last has cause to be on call.
For a few hours, John sits in the stalls, watching an imaginary drama take physical form. Mrs Hudson knows what she’s doing with the choreography. The movement of the dancers reminds John of something he’s certain he’s seen before, but knows he never has. He recognises the motions of Vernet’s hands, the tight whirling motions of his enthusiasm. Not for the first time, John wonders how well Mrs Hudson knows the inside of Vernet’s head. Of Holmes’, he means.
John enjoys watching this rehearsal more than he can remember watching any other. He’s unreasonably disappointed when Mrs Hudson calls for a break and Mr Johnson agrees.
At loose ends, John wanders backstage and up into the workshops. He has to keep out of the way, which he does. Miss Hooper is pleased to see him for all of the half-minute she has to spare, but after that, John bids a hasty retreat. There is truly nowhere he won’t be underfoot, save for the house.
He’d forgotten how it used to be like this. Those days before there was an underground chamber to disappear to, how had he lived? An inability to remember idle hours hardly means that time didn’t exist. He’d frittered it away through one method or another, but what were those methods? His feet demand he rise and descend the stairs to a secret door. Had they demanded something else before, or had he been content to sit in a stupor when his services were unneeded?
It annoys him not to know. He checks his new watch, checks it and checks it, but time does not pass. Neither does the urge to do something.
He takes a walk. Not outside, not into that gloom, but a walk about the opera house lobby. He looks at the paintings. He looks at the architecture and attempts to summon the interest men are meant to exhibit when left alone to look at architecture.
When his eyes grow bored, his feet move on. They carry him with a fresh sense of purpose, stopping before a door, and his hand rises to knock out a quick series of taps.
“Yes?” calls a light, detested voice.
John enters Mr Havill’s office and shuts the door behind him.
Holmes sits at the desk, the usual orderliness of its surface replaced by a clutter of paper, pen and ink. Behind him, his jacket adorns the chair, his abandoned cravat across it. In waistcoat and shirtsleeves, Holmes scratches away at his score with his collar unbuttoned and his hair a mess. Agitated fingers have raked deep lines through the pomade-sleeked strands of his hair. The open violin case sits against the base of a cabinet, the instrument prepared, the bow ready. A dusting of rosin coats the strings and body between the bridge and fingerboard.
Holmes doesn’t look up. “I didn’t tell you to come inside.”
John’s mouth works, a futile motion. He fists his hands and pushes through the shock of finding Holmes this way. “There will never be a good time to ask, so I might as well ask now. Why did you do it?”
With deliberate fuss, Holmes dips his pen into the ink. “You’ll have to be more precise, Doctor. I’m afraid I’ve done many things.”
“I understand the composing in the basement. That bit, fine. You’re absurd, I understand that. I don’t understand why you would play both sides.”
“Both sides of what?”
“Why the hell did you approach me as you?” John demands. He storms forward as close as he can without kicking the desk. He might kick it if Holmes won’t look at him. “You were stuck as, as Vernet, so, yes, fine. But anything else, that’s not you being blown about by the winds of fate. You can’t simply pass the blame onto your lord brother for that. You knew what you were doing. You knew you were lying to me from both sides.”
Holmes lifts his eyes from the paper, the better to mock John as an idiot. “You think I approached you?”
“Yes! What else could you call it?”
Holmes groans as if John is the one entirely missing the point. Once dropped, his voice remains in its lower register. “You wanted to help. You were eager for the work.”
“What are you-I’m not talking about the work.”
“No?” As if this is the only conceivable option.
“No.”
“Then you acknowledge the investigation as necessary,” Holmes concludes. He turns his eyes forcefully to the desk’s surface. “I see no sense in discussing anything else.”
Arms crossed over his chest, John stares at him. “Oh,” he says. “That’s what we’re doing. Nothing to talk about, nothing to dwell on, move along, there’s a good chap.”
“You do so love being a good chap,” Holmes agrees, his pitch sweeping upward into false pleasantness. His polite voice, John’s foot. “A truly good chap would close the door on his way out.”
“I’ll leave when you answer the question.”
Holmes groans yet again before gesturing to his papers with twin sharp, chopping motions. “I have work to do. Surely you of all people will understand that.”
John leans forward and blocks his light.
“You are currently delaying the plan you yourself proposed to catch the opera ghost.” Though Holmes’ remark is nearly idle, he avoids John’s gaze. “Well done. You’re a marvel of efficiency.”
John holds firm. “We can argue for an hour, or you can tell me what in the world you were thinking. Your choice.”
“It hardly matters when you won’t listen either way.” As if John is the one being purposefully obtuse and obstinate.
“Spell it out for me. Use small words. As monosyllabic as you like, by all means.”
“You were the obvious choice for the investigation. Your behaviour was markedly different. I interpreted the change incorrectly.”
“Sorry,” John says. “I might be missing something, but what part of my behaviour told you to lie to me for half a year?”
Holmes looks up only to frown at him. “That was always the arrangement. No, don’t interrupt-it was. We discussed it. I couldn’t tell you. You accepted this. Never in a long term sense, but you were willing to accept it.”
“That direction of it, yes,” John agrees. “This direction of it, no.”
“What direction?”
“You,” John says. “As... you. You approached me like a stranger.”
Slowly, Holmes’ head tilts. “We just agreed I couldn’t tell you.”
“Then you shouldn’t have approached me!”
Holmes nearly gapes at him. “The investigation was necessary. We agreed not two minutes ago.”
John stares back. “I don’t mean the investigation. I mean the Masquerade. And Christmas.”
If anything, Holmes’ confusion only worsens. “You mean sending you to keep Mrs Hudson company?” He must be feigning ignorance. It’s so obvious John could almost laugh.
“I mean your proposition on the stage and, and taking off my shoes.”
Holmes’ expression hardens, stone-like. “Ah. You believe my primary motive to be buggery.”
Though John feels his face flushing, he doesn’t disagree. He doesn’t look away.
“You’re wrong, of course. My primary motive is the work, Doctor,” Holmes tells him, and in that moment, his voice is entirely Vernet’s. “It is always the work. I would have thought you’d remember that. Sadly, overestimating you seems to be a habit of mine.” His manner, his ire, his form: all is wholly Vernet’s.
“Then why did you say yes?” John doesn’t specify and hardly needs to. His hands are shaking, fisted at his sides.
“Oh, why did I catch you when you flung yourself at me? Hm, I haven’t the foggiest. Clearly, I should have stomped on your heart and thrown it back at you. Would that have been kinder? Is that what it’s called when one acts contrary to one’s interests?”
“What about a warning?” John demands.
“A warning for what?” Holmes throws himself backward in Mr Havill’s chair in an agitated sprawl. His upturned palms demand answers. “‘Look out, we’re both about to get precisely what we want, except you’re too stupid to see that!’ Is that what you want? And it is want, not wanted. I gave you your warnings. You brushed them aside. I told you that you loved a fantasy, and you insisted you loved my character. You’d no idea what it was then and know even less now, but you insisted.
“What is it you wish to chastise me for, hm? Failing to recognise the abysmal risk that is Dr John Watson? You’re perfectly content to fling yourself at a masked stranger in the basement, but I, oh no, I am too odious. A deranged dreamer is well and good, but only if he comes free of entanglements. Or, God forbid, wealth and breeding. Can’t have that.”
“Maybe, just maybe, it’s because you’re a controlling arse.”
Holmes rolls his eyes. “I corner you once-”
“You had me running about all December!” A month of entertainments and outings in the guise of work.
“Oh dear, how dare I give you something useful to do. You’re right: I’m a complete and utter villain. How terribly cruel of me to predict your behavioural patterns. I’m sure you put up with having nothing to do today for nearly an hour before you came to bother me.”
Nearly half an hour, but John is hardly about to correct him. Even so, it must show on his face. Holmes’ answering smile is too ugly to deserve the name.
“You were at loose ends and came running back to me,” Holmes muses. His smirk grows into a sneer. “How vexing for you.”
John tries to breathe, tries to shout, and accomplishes nothing.
“We’ll revert,” Holmes proposes. “You’d rather jump off a bridge than go without purpose. That’s unchanged. I need to finish this. Also unchanged.”
“What are you asking?”
“I am telling you to sit down and be quiet.” Holmes picks up his pen, its ink long since dried on its nib.
“I refuse.”
“Fine. Leave. Off you go.”
John hesitates, abruptly trapped with the realisation that, whichever way John turns, Holmes can only win.
“You’ll spend the rest of the day wandering about in the hope that someone will need you. Unlikely with the acrobat killed and no replacement evident. Unless the death threats toward the singers come true in the next few hours, there is absolutely nothing for you out there.”
Knowing that Holmes is baiting him does nothing to defend John against his logic. Knowing what Holmes wants from him is no help either. “You’re writing the bit at the end where the young soldier is cornered and scared. The part where he regrets ever trusting the captain at all.”
“Before being horrifically killed, yes.”
It’s no threat, only a crisp confirmation. Even so, it rings false.
“I thought he was going to die hopeful,” John says. That’s what Vernet had said. “He’s supposed to have another change of heart before he dies.”
“I’ve changed my mind,” Holmes answers. “I’ve seen enough changes of heart lately, haven’t you?”
John nearly goes to the door. He should. He ought to.
Instead, he sits down.
Holmes neither blinks nor stares at him, but his confused flicker of a gaze is enough for John to feel pleased with himself.
“The old ending was better,” John says. “The variety made it more of a kick in the teeth.”
This time, Holmes stares. He inhales, filling his lungs as another man might load a cannon. Then, without warning, his eyes widen, and he scrambles for one sheet of paper buried beneath the others. He sets to his task without a single word, let alone another attack.
John waits a moment, unsure when the flurry will end. As it continues on, he simply sits and watches. His stomach twists and turns over as if digesting something he oughtn’t to have eaten. If an accident does occur, he thinks Mrs Hudson might know to look for him here. He isn’t certain.
The longer Holmes writes, the more his attention recedes from the room. The windows behind him spill less light than a smattering of candles. The table before him only exists to hold his materials. Holmes only lifts his gaze to John in order to stare through him. Vernet might have done the same, once. The ill-fitting mask had made it impossible to tell.
As the minutes pass and the clock ticks ever onward, a familiar, slightly manic energy creeps over Holmes. It wraps about his head, tilting it, before seizing his hands and bidding them to set down their pen. The first motions of conducting chop the air. As Holmes’ lips silently move, his gesticulating hands smooth their course. The sequence is long and yet distinct: each time Holmes is forced to repeat it, John sees a precise reproduction of what has come before.
Once, only once, Holmes groans and drags his hands through his hair. With a smear of pomade upon his fingers, he surfaces from his composing trance long enough to wipe it off on his trousers. His curls struggle to fall free. One flops over his forehead. Though Holmes ignores this, John can’t help his staring.
While hardly the most inappropriate behaviour John’s exhibited toward him, the staring grows awkward and strange. John has to look down, look away, and still his gaze snaps back to where Holmes is so completely inside his own world. Unheard music bids his dark head to nod a steady beat while his fingers tap an entirely different rhythm. He mouths the words, repeating and repeating as he sets them into ink.
Realising that his back aches, John shifts in his borrowed chair. His shoulder clicks. He stands to stretch.
The tapping ceases as Holmes reaches toward him without looking. “Almost finished.”
“I was just--”
“Almost finished.” The two words spill into each other as if pulled out of him with a great, rushed effort.
John sits.
The writing continues, the composing, the scratching of the pen. What sort of nerve does it take, to compose in pen? What characteristic arrogance.
The almost drags on. Ten minutes. Twenty. John’s stomach clenches and growls. He can’t remember when he last ate. He’s been in here all afternoon.
The pen stops scratching.
John looks up.
Holmes shifts through his papers, his eyes scanning down each page. “Oh,” he says, a soft, surprised sound.
“What is it?” John asks.
The search continues. Carefully handling one sheet, Holmes studies the drying ink. “It’s finished.”
John stands. As if he would be able to tell by looking, he comes to the desk to see. The ink still gleams, but the gleam settles. Even upside-down, the variable quality of the writing is obvious. Here Vernet’s cramped scrawl, there Holmes’ pristine cursive, the transitions between the two gradual where they aren’t abrupt.
They wait for the ink to dry. Then, carefully, Holmes stacks the papers into a neat pile. His hands remain set upon it, securing it to the desk, holding it tight until its existence becomes certain.
With a slow lift of the head, Holmes looks up at him. A single question dominates his eyes, his mouth, the set of his jaw, darkened with a natural shadow. “I...” His deep voice falters, lifts. “What do I do now?”
“You give this to Mr Johnson,” John says. “Copies must be made.”
“Yes,” Holmes says. His gaze falls to the paper beneath his hands. “Yes.”
“And then you must go and eat something,” John continues.
Holmes frowns.
“Mr Johnson, then dinner,” John repeats.
After a small pause, Holmes nods. He stands with a great cracking of his back. His eyes return to the desk, return and return again even as he sets the violin away. His violin, John supposes. The same careful touch, the same hands upon the wood. Yes, his violin.
Once Holmes secures the case, he secures the score. Lost and small despite his great height, he turns to John. “The Gloriana? For dinner.”
“I’m not giving you dietary requirements. I’m only telling you to eat.”
“Hardly what I meant, Doctor,” Holmes replies.
John holds his gaze. “I know what you meant.”
Holmes says nothing, instead looking down at his opus.
John opens the door for him, and Holmes exits without another word.
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