The Baker Street Record
A/N: Presenting: an epic Sherlock Holmes/House of Leaves crossover. This was written for Part III of the Sherlock Holmes kinkmeme over at sherlockkink. It was a long and wonderfully arduous process and certainly the most rigorous exercise in dual pastiche (not to mention HTML) that I've ever engaged in. The original prompt was made by buriedbooks in Part II, then
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Holmes was, unsurprisingly, adverse to the idea.
“If we stop now, Watson, we shall lose sight of our objective entirely,” he said distractedly, his attention quite fixed on a sheaf of papers covered in illegible scrawling.
“Our objective?” I said wearily. “We don’t even know what that is, Holmes.”
He gave me a brief, sharp stare, but said nothing and shortly went back to his examination. He was still quite sore at me for my treatment of the matter of the inexplicable door, and it had been especially hard to provoke friendly conversation of late.
“Consider this,” he said.6
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“I do not want to,” I said. “Holmes, please. I’ve already purchased us tickets. I did so a week ago, before any of this happened. I thought you might like to go.”
“What is it?” he said, maintaining a veritable mask of indifference.
“A concert,” I said. “A Russian string quartet is performing some works by Beethoven. Only you already hadn’t been out of the house in a long while, and, well, I had thought you might like to go.”
He said nothing and did not move, though I noticed his eyes were no longer focused attentively on the papers he held in his hands.
“I think it would do us both a world of good to get out of the house, even for just a little while,” I pressed him, gently. “We can come back to the case with our minds refreshed.” I attempted to play into his hand using what I knew of his tastes. “A little German music, for our health.”
He paused, then returned to scanning the pages. “Are they box seats?” he asked with an air of nonchalance.
They were always box seats. “Yes, Holmes,” I said patiently.
He paused again, then, at long last, he set the papers aside and looked at me. “Yes, Watson,” he said softly. “I think I should like that very much.” An awkward hesitation fell between us. “Thank you.”
I met his eyes for a few moments before I felt compelled to turn away. “Come on, we’ll be late.”
We made our way to the concert hall in relative silence.
[6]: It is difficult to say whether this design is the scratching out of anything at all, given its oddly neat and symmetrical design. Close observation led me to count fourteen lines down and fourteen characters on either side of the more concentrated area in the center, which is 8 by 14 characters, excluding the centered name of the client. Watson (or perhaps Asterion) seemed oddly preoccupied with the number fourteen in this case. What any of this could mean I do not dare guess at. There is, however, more than enough cause to infer that when here referenced the number fourteen stands for “infinite.”˟
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