Fic ~ One True Study
Title ~ One True Study
Fandom ~ Sherlock Holmes
Rating ~ PG
Disclaimer ~ I disclaim disclaimers and claim Holmes’ weighted riding crop.
Notes ~ I have decided that I need a new method for dealing with my work stress, and here it is. Every time I find myself about to snap, I’m going to write a ficlet or drabble. Title from a Pierre Charron quote, “The true science and study of man is man.”
One True Study
Living with Sherlock Holmes, as I had, for the past few years, I’d grown used to waking to find my companion already in my bedchamber. He once told me that sleep was no friend of his…not even my sleep, it sometimes seemed. I comforted myself with the knowledge that any sleep I sacrificed was for the greater good. Tallying the fortunes, reputations, and even lives that Holmes and I saved, it seemed worth a few hours sleep.
At least, that is what I tried to tell myself, upon waking in the still dark hours to find Holmes sitting at the foot of my bed. The flaw in such reasoning was that we were not currently engaged in a case of any kind. Our last, a nasty bit of business related to a gang of burglars who’d beaten a night watchman into a coma, had satisfactorily concluded the day before. We had taken a quiet dinner, after which Holmes passed the evening on the settee with a book until I bade him goodnight.
“My dear Watson, are you aware that you sigh heavily in your sleep?” Holmes said then. “It’s a particularly sad sort of sigh, as though all the sorrows of the world weigh upon your dreams.”
Resisting the urge to sigh heavily while awake, I said, “Really, Holmes, it is quite late. Or early. I do not care which unless someone is in urgent need of medical attention.”
“I recall in the first days of our acquaintance, you would sometimes wake in a fever, crying out. I always assumed it was some recalled horror of war that troubled you, but that was before I knew the full depths of your vivid and romantic imagination. What wonders must inhabit your dreams, Watson. I should like very much to know them, but I am afraid that I do not dream myself.”
“Holmes…have you indulged in the contents of your small Moroccan box again?”
“If you are referring to cocaine, I have not. I was considering it, I admit, but I have decided to embark on a new field of study to occupy myself, until such time as I find a new case, that is.”
Settling back under my blankets, I threw an arm over my eyes. “Oh, really? And what is it you shall be occupying yourself with this time?”
“Why, you, my dear doctor. You.”
The End