Fic for mundungus42: The Truth of the Musgrave Ritual - Part 2
Title: The Truth of the Musgrave Ritual
Recipient: mundungus42
Author: mydwynter
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson (ACD Canon & Granada Series)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings/Kinks/Contents: First time, case fic, romance.
Summary:
It is my custom, you may have noticed, to save those little cases which we have solved until such time as danger to those involved has passed, or until Holmes otherwise suggests I may write about them.
The happenings at Hurlstone Hall, however, received a very different treatment indeed.
I sat on my bed after supper, reading a paperback novel which, though it edified me almost not at all, still held at bay the flickering curiosity about the future. Just as I expressed to myself the relief that Holmes was not there to chide me for my reading material, he knocked at my door and entered without waiting for my response.
"Do you believe Musgrave-that having been dismissed Brunton simply disappeared himself?" Holmes threw himself next to me with his usual disregard for propriety between us. My heart began to pound.
"After bargaining Musgrave down from immediate dismissal, to save his sense of pride, as Musgrave described?" I set my book aside. "I'm not sure I do, no."
"Nor do I." Holmes pillowed his hands beneath his head. "It is very curious."
"I find it more curious that a case should crop up while we are supposed to be on holiday." I settled further, my back against the headboard, Holmes's dark head at my hip.
"Do you indeed." Holmes looked up at me, and the corner of his mouth quirked.
"Not really, no."
"Ha!" He rolled over into a strange contortion, his body facing me but his head twisted and propped so he could continue to watch my face. It looked uncomfortable.
I slid down, then, so we were all at a level. Holmes's face was so very, very close to mine. "I don't suppose you knew this was going to happen?"
"Not at all." He smiled. "Have you any ideas?"
"I admit, I'd put it from my mind after supper." I was having a great deal of difficulty not looking at his mouth.
"Pity. I would have appreciated your perspective."
"Would you have?"
"Of course. Your opinion is indispensable to me."
"Is that so."
"Quite."
From only a few inches away, his back to the firelit room, Holmes's eyes looked very dark. I felt a tremendous compulsion to scoot closer but held my ground; our relationship was intimate enough to warrant such close quarters, but there was no reason to reduce the distance, no matter how much I wanted it.
Now, please don't think me ignorant. I knew even at the time that our connection was unnaturally strong, and that my affection for Holmes may have ranged slightly into murky waters, but even then I did not think we were in any danger. We'd been friendly for so long, and been through so much, and knew each other so well, that I always supposed our relationship to be more brotherly than anything else. He was like no friend I'd ever had, my Holmes, and even if I knew what deviant behaviours he'd been up to at university that was nothing to me. I loved him like my own heart, and that wouldn't change.
Down at our sides, I reached for Holmes's hand and touched it gently with my fingertips. Our fingers entwined. "I'm happy to give my opinion whenever you ask it of me, Holmes."
"And sometimes when I don't ask it of you."
"Of course."
Holmes smiled and gently dragged our hands up between our chests, and with his dry, warm, spindle-fingered hand he cradled mine to his ribs, an echo of our position last night. My heart beat faster and my mouth was dry. "Whichever it is, I am thankful for it."
I didn't understand where this sudden flood of truth was coming from, but that didn't mean I wasn't appreciative of it. It was a rare day when Holmes admitted aloud I was more than his biographer. The days when his words exceeded appreciation and strayed into affection were even fewer and farther between. My heart seemed to expand in my chest.
There was a heavy moment dragged out, then, as we looked at each other. I could not find the right words to express what I was feeling, nor could I find words even to continue the teasing note of our conversation. So instead I simply looked back at him and studied the lines on his forehead and at the corners of his eyes, and I enjoyed the steady pulse of his heart through his ribcage and into the backs of my fingers.
He licked his lips. "It's late."
"Somewhat," I said.
"I should go. I'd like to think through this tidy problem before we continue our treasure hunt in the morning."
"You could think here."
The corner of his mouth twitched into a part-smile; not unfriendly, but not an expression of humour either. He let go of my hand and slipped gracefully from my bed. "Good night, Watson," he said at the door.
"Good night, Holmes." I was tremendously sorry to see him go.
The next morning dawned dark and miserable and cold, and no better for Rachel having vanished in the night.
Musgrave woke me earlier than expected, and once again I was left without a decent breakfast in order that we should join Holmes down at the edge of the mere, to where her footsteps disappeared into the gravel. He looked moderately well-rested, and was wrapped once more in that damned-ridiculous shawl, but still I was inordinately pleased to see him.
He barely looked at me, however; a group of farmhands had just finished dragging the mere and had come up empty when there was a cry from further on down the bank. We all took off running to find another man pulling out of the water a cloth sack, dripping and entangled with weed.
"What does it contain?" I asked.
"Nothing of value," Holmes said, having ripped it open. Its contents appeared to be only mud and sludge and dirty bits of metal.
"Thrown in by anybody at any time," Musgrave said.
"No, recently, or the water would have rotted the bag." Holmes was tremendously disappointed with the lack of clue, as, I must say, was I. "Well, it would explain her journey to the mere, but then…where did she go?"
We all examined the find in the library after first cleaning it in a large earthenware bowl (which doubtless cost a fortune but Musgrave found mouldering in a corner of his study. Would that we all could abuse such treasures). Unfortunately, nothing illuminating came of it. Gone was Brunton, gone was Rachel, and all we had to show for our efforts was a pile of rusted and discoloured metal and a few pebbles. Musgrave wondered aloud why anyone would have bothered to throw the rubbish into the lake in the first place.
Holmes began the steady pacing that presaged an announcement. I watched him wind himself up then declare it was his opinion there were not three mysteries here, but only one, and the key to all of them lay in the ritual which Brunton had been so interested in researching that he'd risked his situation to get it. Stroking the back of his hair in the way which never failed to distract me, he reread the ritual and stopped to addressed us.
"Under the elm," he declared.
It was as good a place as any to begin.
Musgrave led us to the remaining stump of an ancient and venerable elm which had towered over the lawn when he had been a boy.
"I suppose it's impossible to tell me how high it was," Holmes asked, gesturing with his cane.
"I can tell you that at once. It was sixty-four feet." Musgrave had had a tutor who was more than a little obsessed with trigonometry.
"Tell me. Did Brunton ever ask you such a question here on this lawn?"
After a moment, recollection lighted Musgrave's grey face. He told us how one day he'd found Brunton here, on Musgrave’s own private lawn, strolling about with a cigarette. When approached, Brunton had only said he was there to settle a wager about the height of the tree. After Musgrave had told him the height was sixty-four feet, Brunton had seemed satisfied and wandered off.
"I'm afraid I'd completely dismissed it from my mind," Musgrave told us.
It was at that point I noticed Holmes staring at a fixed point above our heads. I turned around and stepped in close to his back-far closer than perhaps necessary-to see where he was looking. I was astonished to see that there, on the top of the weathervane, was the iron silhouette of an oak tree, as plain as day. I wondered that no one following the treasure hunt of the ritual had before noticed it. On the heels of that thought was a second one: perhaps someone had, and perhaps that someone had been Brunton?
If we had our elm, and we had our oak, we then had to determine where the shadow would have fallen if the elm had not been cut down. The answer to that lay with the same branch of mathematics which brought us our elm's height.
Trigonometry.
I was deadly sick of tying knots in rope.
My story for The Strand allocated the task to Sherlock. I was pleased to be writing myself out of the story because I would not want anyone to know it was I who, instead of questioning Holmes's methods, continued to knot nearly a hundred feet of rope without asking why, in the name of our Lord, I could not simply mark the rope with paint or string or something which did not require me to pull the entirety of the rope back through itself at every yard.
Have you ever tried to knot a hundred feet of rope? It is a misery.
Grumpy with both myself and Holmes, I allowed myself to be directed about like a piece of Holmes's scientific equipment until we-Musgrave, Holmes, I, our hundred yards of rope and a fishing rod Holmes had specially selected from all the rods in the house-were gathered out on the lawn near the site of the elm. From there, it became clear what Sherlock's plan was: he measured the length of the fishing rod's shadow at nine feet, and from that extrapolated that the shadow of the elm was 96 feet, and in the same direction.
When we stretched out the thrice-damned rope, we discovered at the full 96 feet a divot in the ground which Holmes maintained must have been left by Brunton. It was not proof he had found the treasure, but it was good evidence that he had been on the same track as we.
We paced out the full force of the Ritual, 64 steps and 42 and 36, and we were nearly through the last set of 25 when fate brought us up against the edge of the moat. What else was there to do but row across to the tiny door we could see in the wall, directly across from us? Musgrove provided the muscle, I provided the steering, and Holmes…Holmes stood upright and tall in the bow like Boadicea on her chariot, leading her troops out against the Roman invaders.
He clambered into the small room, took four steps in, and deflated. There was no way this was our spot.
"I don't believe it," he said, banging his cane on the flagstone floor.
"Some mistake in your calculations," I offered.
"That's impossible." And too right, especially since we were not chiefly relying on my arithmetic alone.
Holmes puzzled over the pristine, unbroken surface of the tiny storeroom, and Musgrave pointed out, quite rightly, that the stones hadn't been moved in many a year. I, on the other hand, was undeterred. I reread the ritual from the paper, sounding everything out to make sure I did not miss a clue, when I came upon it. "Holmes!" I said, joy filling me at being the one to notice. As you can imagine, it did not please me to have to give Musgrave the credit in my published work. "You've forgotten the 'and under'!"
We all looked down. It fell out, then, as it did in the published tale, that there was a cellar below us, as old as the house. And in that cellar was a heavy stone trap door with Brunton's muffler tied to the handle. And there, under that trap door, was poor Brunton, dead with a stifled expression upon his face and with a plain wooden chest next to him.
The next deviation the published tale took was to describe us summoning police to aid us in lifting the stone. In truth our strength was enough to shift it, but I thought it better to say that the official services were there with us, for that would give credence to my story and plant in the reader's thoughts that perhaps, when a possible dead body and ancient treasure are in the mix, we ought not have been doing it alone. We were, of course; Holmes would not have stood for having his crime scene trampled by a million cloddish feet. Not when he had a chance first to examine it all on his own.
It was only after we had uncovered Brunton's body that we brought the police in on our little tale, but even then we tailored our stories to excise all mention of the Musgrave Ritual. When the Inspector inquired what Brunton had been doing in a disused part of the house, Musgrave replied,
"A butler's duties are many and varied, Inspector. I can't possibly answer that question."
I put in my oar as well. "Well no one would have heard his cries for help in that part of the house, that is the point surely, Inspector."
The Inspector seemed suspicious but inclined to believe until the officers removed the body. It was then that the gamekeeper's daughter, Janet, Brunton's most-recent dalliance, came over into a screaming fit.
"Rachel! She done it! She killed him! That's why she ran away!"
I very nearly rolled my eyes and buried my head in my hand but with every fibre of decorum restrained myself. If we were going to convince the police to rule it an accident and get on their way without poking their noses too far into the Ritual, this was no way to do it. Still, I thought it would not be a very bad thing to have an answer as to what had happened to Rachel. It seemed clear that she was, in fact, gone. The Inspector went to have a word with Janet, and he seemed anxious to have a word with Rachel as well. As to the latter, I felt inclined to wish him good luck.
Musgrave and I exchanged a look and went to go see what Holmes was up to.
'What Holmes was down to' would have been a more apt turn of phrase. We found him half in the hole, investigating the scene of Brunton's death with a dour expression plastered on his face.
"I must confess that so far I am disappointed in my investigation." He had expected to solve the matter upon finding the place referred to in the Ritual, but he remained as in the dark as Brunton had been, stuck in that hole until death. His perplexedness remained, and as he sat to stew over the matters of how Brunton had come to be there, and where Rachel had gone, I explained to Musgrave Holmes's method in such circumstances.
"He... he puts himself in the man's place having first gauged his intelligence and then he...he tries to imagine how he himself would have proceeded in similar circumstances."
"In this case Brunton's intelligence is first rate," Holmes murmured.
"So you see it is unnecessary to make allowance for the personal equation."
Musgrave gave me a look of incomprehension. Sometimes my ability to explain such concepts to men who are not of science escapes me. I could explain how, in astronomy, different observers may record different times for the same event. I could explain how that may throw off calculations. But Holmes has never been overly fond of astronomy even if it did grant us this terminology, and I didn’t like to vex him while he was thinking. So instead of a full explanation, I simply said:
"As the astronomers have dubbed it."
I thought it had been explanation enough, but Musgrave gave me another strange look. No doubt he was wondering how astronomic theory applied to the fate of his servants. I felt his stare burning into the side of my face. Instead of engaging, however, I stared at Holmes staring into space and tried my most innocent of expressions.
When Holmes spoke, it was trance-like, quiet and even. He described Brunton's discovery of the trapdoor, his failed attempt to lift it even with the aid of his muffler tied around the handle, and his enlistment of Rachel, who he thought still loved him in spite of all her words of hate. Holmes cast his gaze around us at the wood covering the floor.
He dove for a piece near his left knee and lifted it up reverently. It bore a mark across the middle, as if a heavy edge had put its full weight on it and crushed the fibres. "There is a slight indentation on this log." Holmes selected another one. "And on this."
He supposed-as we all did, by this point-that they had used the scattered firewood to prop up the lid, bit by bit, until it was opened enough for Brunton to drop down into the hole. And there he was when the lid fell shut and quite literally sealed his fate. If Rachel had been there to see it, and had not called for help but instead had let Brunton suffocate there, it would certainly explain her mad behaviour the next morning.
Holmes dropped entirely down into the hole and lifted up the box for us to examine. Musgrave and I pawed through it, finding only fungi.
"But what was in the box, Holmes?" I wondered aloud.
In answer, one of Holmes's hands emerged from the darkness, pinching a coin between forefinger and middle finger. I have mentioned Holmes's hands before, but I have never allowed myself to ruminate so fully as I've wanted on their grace, on their dexterity, and how the sight of them, bare to the elbows, makes me want to do inexplicable things. This time was no different, and I'm afraid it was even worse having had those fingers wrapped around mine two nights in a row. Holmes and Musgrave spoke words, but they remained unheard while I was captivated instead by the beauty of Holmes's hands. When he wished to be extricated from the depths, I admit that I jumped eagerly to be the one to clasp them and pull him up.
It was with great ambivalence that I let him go.
Back in the house, Holmes rubbed those hands together vigorously in preparation for his grand revelation, the pièce de résistance with which he most liked to reveal his best deductions. The fire in his eyes lit me from within.
A few minutes with the contents of the bag fished from the mere, and Holmes became excited. "Gentlemen," he said, and held out his hand. "Look."
One of the pebbles, upon closer examination, was nothing less than a jewel. "A family heirloom," I supposed aloud.
"It's possible," Musgrave said. He confirmed that yes, his ancestor was a prominent cavalier, and a friend to Charles II in his wanderings.
With great theatricality, Holmes revealed then that the dull and filthy bits of metal we had been holding in our hands was in fact the ancient crown of the kings of England. He quoted the Ritual as he arranged the pieces of metal on a tray.
"Whose was it? His who is gone. That was the execution of Charles. And then who shall have it? He who will come. That was Charles the Second, whose advent was already foreseen. There can, I think, be no doubt, gentlemen, that this battered and shapeless diadem once encircled the brows of the royal Stuarts."
In front of him was a circle, and it did then seem a plausible story.
"How then came it to my family?" Musgrave said, a logical question.
Holmes went into some paroxysm of conjecture, his usual sort, wherein he described how when Charles the First was executed his crown was broken into pieces and sold for a thousand guineas, and from that moment forth its whereabouts were never known. He supposed it fell into Musgrave hands where it stayed, some forebear having died before explaining the Ritual's true nature. And from that day to this, the only relic which passed from father to son was the Ritual itself, hollow of meaning and lacking import.
"Until at last it came within reach of a man who tore its secret out of it and lost his life in the venture," Holmes said, and all three of us fell quite silent.
Supper that evening was a somber affair. Rather than try to catch the last train Holmes and I decided to stay until the morning, and so we were treated to a lavish meal lacking much in any conversation and full to the brim with unfocused staring. I had to ask Holmes twice to pass the sliced carrots, and at one point Musgrave missed the mutton on his plate several times with his fork before eventually skewering it.
I would have expected Holmes to be more jovial after the conclusion of such a case, but instead his conversation seemed more pensive than pleasant. I retired soon afterward, leaving Holmes to spend some quiet time with his old school friend as I holed myself up for some quiet thinking of my own.
It was gone eleven by the time Holmes pushed into my room, as I'd half expected him to. He was already in his nightshirt, bare-footed, with that bloody shawl wrapped around him. I myself was in bed and under the blankets, trying to finish my novel before we got back home to work and bustle, before I would have to write up this case and send it off to my literary agent.
He bustled into the room as if he had every right to be there, but then stopped short at the edge of the bed. He looked at me like a pleading puppy-dog.
"Oh, fine," I said, and pulled back the covers. "But leave that blasted shawl out of it. Lord only knows where it's been."
He dropped the shawl where he stood and crawled into my bed. At the time I barely noted the racing of my heart, but in the years after I had ample time to note my trepidation, my excitement, my terror. After dropping my book over the side of the bed I flicked the blankets over the two of us and scooted down to face him. It felt like playing schoolboys, in a way, and a traitorous part of my mind reminded me just what he had gotten up to when he had been at university. Rather than causing me to recoil, instead I found myself sinking further into the bed.
"What do you suppose happened to Rachel?" he asked me, his voice low. It hadn't very far to carry.
"Is this in my capacity as-"
"As my partner in detection, as an observer of the human condition, as one who has seen many things in our years together. What do you suppose happened?"
"I suppose." I sighed, and it ruffled the soft fringe of hair flopping over onto the pillow. He must have bathed after supper. "I suppose she must have fled, fearing that we would find out what she and Brunton had done. Your reputation casts a far net, Holmes. She must have suspected that you would find Brunton in due course, and know her to have a hand in his death. Barring that, she must have been too upset to remain in a household where she and Brunton had been so happy, knowing his fate so intimately. Even if it had been accidental, the fall of the trap door, she could have gone for help."
I found myself wondering why Brunton did not shy away from dropping into a hole which took two to open, and which could fall shut with the slightest breath of wind. I should have been fearful of doing so. Holmes, as usual, read the thoughts on my face.
"He did not have his Watson with him. He trusted where he should not."
I looked into his eyes, shadowed as they were from the firelight in the room. They still seemed to glow.
"It always pleases me to hear of your trust," I said quietly.
"I trust you with my life," he said, and very small smile graced the corners of his mouth. If I did not know him as well as I did I would not have seen it. He shocked me by placing his palm on the side of my face. It was warm and dry and comforting, like being cradled. "I am certain of your love."
I could not look away. "Are you?"
"I am sure of it."
My heart pounded in my ears. A most tender feeling rose up and thickened my throat as I gazed back at those clear, grey eyes, that aristocratic jut of nose, that sharp-tongued slash of mouth. It was a face familiar to me as breathing, and I adored it. I loved the brain behind it, as well, and the heart on the body that housed it. I was grateful for him, and the resolution of this case had made that perfectly clear.
Holmes's mouth tightened as if he steeled himself for something, then he scooted forward to curl up against my body, seeking comfort. I had no choice but to wrap my arms about him and hold him even closer.
"Are you warm enough?" I whispered. He nodded. I chafed my palms against his back just in case. My cheek against his hair registered softness, and I smelled soap and aftershave. My heart clenched in my chest. Gently, slowly, I bumped my mouth against his head, a clumsy buss that did nothing to dispel the tension in my throat and indeed only made my heart beat harder. Tenderness seemed to well up in my fingers and toes and teeth and eyelids, making them ache.
"Are you unwell?" Holmes asked. I realised I had been breathing like a steam train. I shook my head and skated my cheek along his hair again.
Holmes tucked himself in tighter against my chest, and his breath was hot in the placket at the collar of my nightshirt. I wrapped my arms more firmly around his back. It felt no more or less intimate than our usual casual touches, but it felt a hundred-fold more satisfying. To be holed up together in bed, warm against the chill of one of the oldest inhabited houses left in England, it felt as if we were a united front against the cold.
"I am certain of you, too," I said.
I realised that the movements of his head were Holmes pressing soft, gentle kisses to my neck, the one after the other. It clenched something in my chest, and my breath halted. When I sucked in more air, I shook. Holmes resumed kissing me, a slow, deliberate trail up to my jaw. I squeezed my eyes closed against the emotion that rose up in me, at the strange beauty of it, at the way I loved him so much in that moment that it pained me. Every few seconds, I had to force myself to breathe.
Holmes was trembling in my arms when he reached my mouth, and when he pressed the first kiss to my lips, I let him. When he pressed the second, I pushed my lips forward to meet his. When he pressed the third, I tilted my head, opened my mouth, and was lost.
It was glacially slow, and exploratory, and we both shook with the power of it. I felt both weak and strong concurrently, my body so confused by the welter of signals it was processing that it was like flying and swimming and running all at the same time. Holmes, here, so intimate and close and so beloved…
I heard myself whimper.
Holmes rolled forward, pressing against me even more strongly, as if our two bodies might overlap. I felt weighted down, surrounded, safe, and even when his thigh slid between mine I wasn't alarmed. All I wanted was more closeness, more delicious heat. I crushed him to my chest, broke the kiss, and tried to breathe. His ribs were heaving against mine.
"Watson…" I heard him murmur. Something in me broke, and I had to bury my face against his shoulder and try to reintegrate myself.
I felt so much I could scarcely make sense of it all. I was almost over-warm now, and sweating. I was having trouble pulling in enough air. I was immensely confused about the physical performance we were enacting right then, but above those things I felt love-so much love I was drowning in it. I felt it in every place my body touched Holmes, which, since he was lying on top of me, was nearly everywhere, and it suffused my every capillary and vein and organ and artery. If this was what others felt when they indulged in such acts, I understood without a doubt why they did it.
I loved him, and it was so much a part of my being that I could not have separated myself from it if I tried.
He nudged a kiss to my neck and another to the hinge of my jaw. I buried my fingers in his hair and tilted my head into a kiss as thick and redolent with emotion as the ones that came before. He shifted, and I realised he was hard at my hip. A strange desire overtook me: to feel him come to pieces, shattering with ecstasy in my arms. I wanted him to feel physical bliss, and more than that I wanted to be the one to do it to him. I wanted to share with him the connection that sort of intimacy could forge; links made of shared moments, links annealed by pleasure.
With this in mind I slipped my fingers under the hem of Holmes's nightshirt. The solidity of his thigh enchanted me, as it always did whenever I was reminded that on top of those bones was a layer of muscle and skin and little else. Sometimes it entertained me to think of him as a wisp of fog, liable to float away in a strong wind, but here was my proof he was otherwise: solid muscle over strong bone, wiry hair over smooth skin. Touching Holmes's thigh without seeing it inflamed me. I captured his mouth with a kiss and skated my palm up toward his groin.
He made a quiet noise into our kiss, and I felt him grasp my pillow at one side of my head as he supported his weight on his elbows. He began to shake again. "Shh…" I soothed my palm down his back with one hand, even as explored the region between his legs with the other.
I felt more wiry hair, and warmth, and soon the soft, unyielding firmness of his manhood. I touched him and his head fell forward with a whimper. I let my fingertips stray more southerly, and they encountered his sack, heavy with the seed I wanted to make him spill. He shifted, and I felt his breath tremble as he exhaled.
It was warm under the blankets, but I could not bear the thought of exposing this to light and air. This was private, between we two. Touching him like this was something just for us alone. Tenderness made my jaw ache and my bones feel like melting wax. I pressed my forehead to his temple. "Holmes." My heart, I wanted to say, but I kept my teeth together and breathed through it.
His inhalation broke and shattered against my skin and I knew I had him for as long as I wanted him. Thus fortified, I wrapped my hand around him and pulled. He jerked in my arms and released a long, low moan into my shoulder to muffle it.
"Shh…" I reminded him, and began to frig him steadily, smoothly, for all that the angle pained my wrist. His trembling increased in amplitude. I heard him stifling noises deep in his throat.
After a few moments I felt him scrabbling at the hem of my own nightshirt, pushing it up to my waist. I must confess it wasn't until that moment that I considered reciprocation, but his hand returned then to the pillow beside my head instead of touching me in the place I craved.
I both heard and felt his breath become heavier, and heavier, and heavier. I was sweating beneath him, the place where we touched becoming humid. He pressed his mouth to my shoulder and he exhaled three long, low, whispered cries before I felt him begin to come apart against me. He shook with the effort, spilling himself all over my hand and hip, his body jerking. Sympathetic pleasure rose up in me, and I felt myself rise at the feel, at the smell, at the muffled sound of him. I had brought the man in my arms brilliant pleasure and release, and my body woke up aching for the same.
He slumped and caught his breath against my neck. Every moment or so, he twitched with the echo of his climax. I wrapped my arms as tight around him as I could manage and held him there, supporting him on his journey back to earth from ethereal bliss.
"Holmes," I said, and saying his name helped ease a measure of the ache I felt in my chest.
We spent several minutes still locked together as he came back down, and then he shifted to one side. "Are you interested in…" he said, and reached beneath the covers to trail his fingers over my growing member.
Oh, and those fingers. I felt myself reach up to meet them with a thousand memories of their grace and dexterity rushing through my mind. His touch burned like exquisite flame and I felt the heat in me flare up and threaten to consume me from the inside out.
He chuckled quietly. "Yes, then," he said, and from that moment my entire existence was in his capable hands. He brought me to my fall carefully, with great precision, each stroke and flick of his thumb causing me to climb higher and higher toward a plateau of joy. He hooked his other thumb into my mouth to anchor me to him, and sucking it muffled the sounds I made as pleasure rolled through me.
All at once, he stopped. I opened my eyes to see him pass his hand over his mouth and then the pleasure was back two-fold, three-fold, a hundred-fold as his skin slicked and sped over mine. I felt climax tugging at my heels like the incipient pull of the tide before suddenly, before I was ready, like a wave it was upon me. Gorgeous pleasure rose up and overflowed, and the spill was liquid and pulsing and complete.
Soaked in lethargy I jerked against Holmes as my body repeatedly spasmed, not completely finished squeezing out bliss. It came in short bursts even while my bones's threat to melt to wax seemed finally to come true. I wanted to hold on to him, but I could not move.
He came to me instead, resettling our clothes between us and fitting our bodies tightly together. He whispered against my neck. "I trust you with my life," he said.
"I hope I shall remain equal to the task," I said.
"I have no doubt of it."
My brain would roil in the days and weeks to come with the full measure of what we'd done, but in that moment I was perfectly content. The wind howled outside, but inside the stone pile of the ancient house, in the quiet and empty wing, we were secure and safe and together, a force against the world.
After a few minutes of a shared and silent communion Holmes extricated himself from my bed and slipped back into his room. I fell asleep almost immediately, my body and mind wrung too dry for any more activity that night.
In the dawn, I awoke with a shock to find the maid laying the fire. My system was on high alert, and where ordinarily I would have slept through such an everyday occurrence, my brain had apparently been playing look-out. Assured that everything was fine I attempted to fall back asleep. It was a failure. Too concerned about the future, I tossed and turned and fretted before finally giving up and ringing for a bath.
Evidence of last night was on the inside of my nightshirt and all over my body. Distinctly remembering my boyhood days I scrubbed at the cloth as best I could and hung it to dry near the fire. As for myself, I cleaned most away with my morning supply of hot water and, when it was ready, let the bath carry away any remaining residue. My heart beat quicker with the secrecy of what I'd done-of what we'd done-and I wondered whether it would ever happen again.
More than that, I wondered if it could happen again, and how often, and if this degree of stealth was going to punctuate my mornings for the rest of my mortal life.
I came down to breakfast late, once again. I found it a fitting coda to our visit that only on the last day would I manage to have a complete meal of egg and soldiers, sitting down at table, like a civilised being.
Holmes was there already. He didn't look up when I entered the room, but only mumbled me a 'good morning' on the heels of Musgrave's welcome. My heart clenching with fear and confusion, I sat and accepted my plate. I tried to be reasonable about Holmes's dismissive greeting-on the whole, it was not out of the ordinary in the least for him to ignore me until he was ready to grant my existence, and it had long since ceased to bother me-but after our indiscretion in the night I confess I let my imagination run away with me.
Meal thus ruined, I swallowed down my food with little pleasure, answered Musgrave's few questions about our travel plans, and fled back upstairs to pack. Not ten minutes later Holmes entered the room. He walked straight up to where I stood, shoving clothing into my gladstone, and spoke directly into my ear.
"I cannot look at you."
My breakfast churned. Something of it must have shown in my face, for he took one look at me and rolled his eyes.
"Oh, Watson, don't be ridiculous," said aloud, a familiar tone which did very little to ease my distress. He stepped in close again. "If I look at you, I'm afraid I'll betray myself, and that will not do."
"Betray yourself?" I said.
"My thoughts are fixed on last night, and my body yearns for more." I felt myself begin to blush. "If our friendship is going to be cemented in such a way, I will have to create some manner of distance between us until I am certain I can hide it. As brilliant at disguises as you believe me to be, some things cut too close to the bone not to visibly flinch."
I tried to stifle a smile, and I did not look at him even when he pulled back to glance at my face.
"Plus, you really are a most abominable actor," he said as a parting shot, and in a trice he had left the room.
I allowed myself to grin, then, and packing up my few remaining belongings was a much more enjoyable activity once I knew that I would soon be heading for home, where a new life awaited us, a life of secrets and stealth, but shared. He trusted me with his life, and in return I trusted him, and I had no doubt that whatever trials would come we would face them together.
I folded up a damp and sticky nightshirt. Whatever the future held, however, we would certainly have to wash our own linens.
On the dog cart home, Holmes put as much space between as as he could. I did not blame him; I wanted to hold him and speak softly and touch him, and not only did I know that sort of behaviour was verboten, I also did not expect a relationship with this particular person ever to be that gentle.
"Was it chance that the wood slipped? Was she only guilty of silence?" I said. "She had a passionate, Celtic soul."
He leaned back against the cushions like a visiting dignitary and waved about his cigarette. "I'm not sure I approve of this new habit of yours."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Have you learned nothing from our investigations?"
I searched my memory. Was there something in our past that held the key to Rachel's actions? I must admit, I had no vantage point from which to comprehend leaving a former lover to that sort of fate, even if our relationship had ended. I shook my head.
"You cannot expect to fully place yourself in the shoes of a perpetrator if you do not understand the human condition, and you will not understand the human condition if you insist on making these wild, unfounded judgements."
Once again I shook my head.
"Watson, why do you continually insist upon describing Rachel as a Celtic soul? Her family is originally from somewhere near Essex. Surely even you can hear it in her speech. Must you categorise people in such a brash and overly-romantic way?"
I frowned. "Just for that, when I submit this story to the Strand, I will take every opportunity to describe her thus. I will do it to vex you." I wanted to call him several rude names, but the presence of the driver as well as the curious expression on Holmes’s face stopped me. "What?"
"The Strand," he said.
Casting a glance at the driver, I nodded. "I am aware. I spent some time this morning thinking about just that subject. Do not distress yourself. This time I think I won't receive much censure from you if I take some liberties with the truth?"
He too glanced at the back of the driver's head. "Not at all."
"It is settled, then. I will write it up as I plan to, an exciting tale of your solo adventure at Hurlstone, and all will be well."
"And all manner of thing will be well," Holmes said, and he passed his thumb over the back of my hand as he went to his pocket for another cigarette. I turned my head and smiled. It was turning out to be a most beautiful autumn day.
Recipient: mundungus42
Author: mydwynter
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson (ACD Canon & Granada Series)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings/Kinks/Contents: First time, case fic, romance.
Summary:
It is my custom, you may have noticed, to save those little cases which we have solved until such time as danger to those involved has passed, or until Holmes otherwise suggests I may write about them.
The happenings at Hurlstone Hall, however, received a very different treatment indeed.
I sat on my bed after supper, reading a paperback novel which, though it edified me almost not at all, still held at bay the flickering curiosity about the future. Just as I expressed to myself the relief that Holmes was not there to chide me for my reading material, he knocked at my door and entered without waiting for my response.
"Do you believe Musgrave-that having been dismissed Brunton simply disappeared himself?" Holmes threw himself next to me with his usual disregard for propriety between us. My heart began to pound.
"After bargaining Musgrave down from immediate dismissal, to save his sense of pride, as Musgrave described?" I set my book aside. "I'm not sure I do, no."
"Nor do I." Holmes pillowed his hands beneath his head. "It is very curious."
"I find it more curious that a case should crop up while we are supposed to be on holiday." I settled further, my back against the headboard, Holmes's dark head at my hip.
"Do you indeed." Holmes looked up at me, and the corner of his mouth quirked.
"Not really, no."
"Ha!" He rolled over into a strange contortion, his body facing me but his head twisted and propped so he could continue to watch my face. It looked uncomfortable.
I slid down, then, so we were all at a level. Holmes's face was so very, very close to mine. "I don't suppose you knew this was going to happen?"
"Not at all." He smiled. "Have you any ideas?"
"I admit, I'd put it from my mind after supper." I was having a great deal of difficulty not looking at his mouth.
"Pity. I would have appreciated your perspective."
"Would you have?"
"Of course. Your opinion is indispensable to me."
"Is that so."
"Quite."
From only a few inches away, his back to the firelit room, Holmes's eyes looked very dark. I felt a tremendous compulsion to scoot closer but held my ground; our relationship was intimate enough to warrant such close quarters, but there was no reason to reduce the distance, no matter how much I wanted it.
Now, please don't think me ignorant. I knew even at the time that our connection was unnaturally strong, and that my affection for Holmes may have ranged slightly into murky waters, but even then I did not think we were in any danger. We'd been friendly for so long, and been through so much, and knew each other so well, that I always supposed our relationship to be more brotherly than anything else. He was like no friend I'd ever had, my Holmes, and even if I knew what deviant behaviours he'd been up to at university that was nothing to me. I loved him like my own heart, and that wouldn't change.
Down at our sides, I reached for Holmes's hand and touched it gently with my fingertips. Our fingers entwined. "I'm happy to give my opinion whenever you ask it of me, Holmes."
"And sometimes when I don't ask it of you."
"Of course."
Holmes smiled and gently dragged our hands up between our chests, and with his dry, warm, spindle-fingered hand he cradled mine to his ribs, an echo of our position last night. My heart beat faster and my mouth was dry. "Whichever it is, I am thankful for it."
I didn't understand where this sudden flood of truth was coming from, but that didn't mean I wasn't appreciative of it. It was a rare day when Holmes admitted aloud I was more than his biographer. The days when his words exceeded appreciation and strayed into affection were even fewer and farther between. My heart seemed to expand in my chest.
There was a heavy moment dragged out, then, as we looked at each other. I could not find the right words to express what I was feeling, nor could I find words even to continue the teasing note of our conversation. So instead I simply looked back at him and studied the lines on his forehead and at the corners of his eyes, and I enjoyed the steady pulse of his heart through his ribcage and into the backs of my fingers.
He licked his lips. "It's late."
"Somewhat," I said.
"I should go. I'd like to think through this tidy problem before we continue our treasure hunt in the morning."
"You could think here."
The corner of his mouth twitched into a part-smile; not unfriendly, but not an expression of humour either. He let go of my hand and slipped gracefully from my bed. "Good night, Watson," he said at the door.
"Good night, Holmes." I was tremendously sorry to see him go.
The next morning dawned dark and miserable and cold, and no better for Rachel having vanished in the night.
Musgrave woke me earlier than expected, and once again I was left without a decent breakfast in order that we should join Holmes down at the edge of the mere, to where her footsteps disappeared into the gravel. He looked moderately well-rested, and was wrapped once more in that damned-ridiculous shawl, but still I was inordinately pleased to see him.
He barely looked at me, however; a group of farmhands had just finished dragging the mere and had come up empty when there was a cry from further on down the bank. We all took off running to find another man pulling out of the water a cloth sack, dripping and entangled with weed.
"What does it contain?" I asked.
"Nothing of value," Holmes said, having ripped it open. Its contents appeared to be only mud and sludge and dirty bits of metal.
"Thrown in by anybody at any time," Musgrave said.
"No, recently, or the water would have rotted the bag." Holmes was tremendously disappointed with the lack of clue, as, I must say, was I. "Well, it would explain her journey to the mere, but then…where did she go?"
We all examined the find in the library after first cleaning it in a large earthenware bowl (which doubtless cost a fortune but Musgrave found mouldering in a corner of his study. Would that we all could abuse such treasures). Unfortunately, nothing illuminating came of it. Gone was Brunton, gone was Rachel, and all we had to show for our efforts was a pile of rusted and discoloured metal and a few pebbles. Musgrave wondered aloud why anyone would have bothered to throw the rubbish into the lake in the first place.
Holmes began the steady pacing that presaged an announcement. I watched him wind himself up then declare it was his opinion there were not three mysteries here, but only one, and the key to all of them lay in the ritual which Brunton had been so interested in researching that he'd risked his situation to get it. Stroking the back of his hair in the way which never failed to distract me, he reread the ritual and stopped to addressed us.
"Under the elm," he declared.
It was as good a place as any to begin.
Musgrave led us to the remaining stump of an ancient and venerable elm which had towered over the lawn when he had been a boy.
"I suppose it's impossible to tell me how high it was," Holmes asked, gesturing with his cane.
"I can tell you that at once. It was sixty-four feet." Musgrave had had a tutor who was more than a little obsessed with trigonometry.
"Tell me. Did Brunton ever ask you such a question here on this lawn?"
After a moment, recollection lighted Musgrave's grey face. He told us how one day he'd found Brunton here, on Musgrave’s own private lawn, strolling about with a cigarette. When approached, Brunton had only said he was there to settle a wager about the height of the tree. After Musgrave had told him the height was sixty-four feet, Brunton had seemed satisfied and wandered off.
"I'm afraid I'd completely dismissed it from my mind," Musgrave told us.
It was at that point I noticed Holmes staring at a fixed point above our heads. I turned around and stepped in close to his back-far closer than perhaps necessary-to see where he was looking. I was astonished to see that there, on the top of the weathervane, was the iron silhouette of an oak tree, as plain as day. I wondered that no one following the treasure hunt of the ritual had before noticed it. On the heels of that thought was a second one: perhaps someone had, and perhaps that someone had been Brunton?
If we had our elm, and we had our oak, we then had to determine where the shadow would have fallen if the elm had not been cut down. The answer to that lay with the same branch of mathematics which brought us our elm's height.
Trigonometry.
I was deadly sick of tying knots in rope.
My story for The Strand allocated the task to Sherlock. I was pleased to be writing myself out of the story because I would not want anyone to know it was I who, instead of questioning Holmes's methods, continued to knot nearly a hundred feet of rope without asking why, in the name of our Lord, I could not simply mark the rope with paint or string or something which did not require me to pull the entirety of the rope back through itself at every yard.
Have you ever tried to knot a hundred feet of rope? It is a misery.
Grumpy with both myself and Holmes, I allowed myself to be directed about like a piece of Holmes's scientific equipment until we-Musgrave, Holmes, I, our hundred yards of rope and a fishing rod Holmes had specially selected from all the rods in the house-were gathered out on the lawn near the site of the elm. From there, it became clear what Sherlock's plan was: he measured the length of the fishing rod's shadow at nine feet, and from that extrapolated that the shadow of the elm was 96 feet, and in the same direction.
When we stretched out the thrice-damned rope, we discovered at the full 96 feet a divot in the ground which Holmes maintained must have been left by Brunton. It was not proof he had found the treasure, but it was good evidence that he had been on the same track as we.
We paced out the full force of the Ritual, 64 steps and 42 and 36, and we were nearly through the last set of 25 when fate brought us up against the edge of the moat. What else was there to do but row across to the tiny door we could see in the wall, directly across from us? Musgrove provided the muscle, I provided the steering, and Holmes…Holmes stood upright and tall in the bow like Boadicea on her chariot, leading her troops out against the Roman invaders.
He clambered into the small room, took four steps in, and deflated. There was no way this was our spot.
"I don't believe it," he said, banging his cane on the flagstone floor.
"Some mistake in your calculations," I offered.
"That's impossible." And too right, especially since we were not chiefly relying on my arithmetic alone.
Holmes puzzled over the pristine, unbroken surface of the tiny storeroom, and Musgrave pointed out, quite rightly, that the stones hadn't been moved in many a year. I, on the other hand, was undeterred. I reread the ritual from the paper, sounding everything out to make sure I did not miss a clue, when I came upon it. "Holmes!" I said, joy filling me at being the one to notice. As you can imagine, it did not please me to have to give Musgrave the credit in my published work. "You've forgotten the 'and under'!"
We all looked down. It fell out, then, as it did in the published tale, that there was a cellar below us, as old as the house. And in that cellar was a heavy stone trap door with Brunton's muffler tied to the handle. And there, under that trap door, was poor Brunton, dead with a stifled expression upon his face and with a plain wooden chest next to him.
The next deviation the published tale took was to describe us summoning police to aid us in lifting the stone. In truth our strength was enough to shift it, but I thought it better to say that the official services were there with us, for that would give credence to my story and plant in the reader's thoughts that perhaps, when a possible dead body and ancient treasure are in the mix, we ought not have been doing it alone. We were, of course; Holmes would not have stood for having his crime scene trampled by a million cloddish feet. Not when he had a chance first to examine it all on his own.
It was only after we had uncovered Brunton's body that we brought the police in on our little tale, but even then we tailored our stories to excise all mention of the Musgrave Ritual. When the Inspector inquired what Brunton had been doing in a disused part of the house, Musgrave replied,
"A butler's duties are many and varied, Inspector. I can't possibly answer that question."
I put in my oar as well. "Well no one would have heard his cries for help in that part of the house, that is the point surely, Inspector."
The Inspector seemed suspicious but inclined to believe until the officers removed the body. It was then that the gamekeeper's daughter, Janet, Brunton's most-recent dalliance, came over into a screaming fit.
"Rachel! She done it! She killed him! That's why she ran away!"
I very nearly rolled my eyes and buried my head in my hand but with every fibre of decorum restrained myself. If we were going to convince the police to rule it an accident and get on their way without poking their noses too far into the Ritual, this was no way to do it. Still, I thought it would not be a very bad thing to have an answer as to what had happened to Rachel. It seemed clear that she was, in fact, gone. The Inspector went to have a word with Janet, and he seemed anxious to have a word with Rachel as well. As to the latter, I felt inclined to wish him good luck.
Musgrave and I exchanged a look and went to go see what Holmes was up to.
'What Holmes was down to' would have been a more apt turn of phrase. We found him half in the hole, investigating the scene of Brunton's death with a dour expression plastered on his face.
"I must confess that so far I am disappointed in my investigation." He had expected to solve the matter upon finding the place referred to in the Ritual, but he remained as in the dark as Brunton had been, stuck in that hole until death. His perplexedness remained, and as he sat to stew over the matters of how Brunton had come to be there, and where Rachel had gone, I explained to Musgrave Holmes's method in such circumstances.
"He... he puts himself in the man's place having first gauged his intelligence and then he...he tries to imagine how he himself would have proceeded in similar circumstances."
"In this case Brunton's intelligence is first rate," Holmes murmured.
"So you see it is unnecessary to make allowance for the personal equation."
Musgrave gave me a look of incomprehension. Sometimes my ability to explain such concepts to men who are not of science escapes me. I could explain how, in astronomy, different observers may record different times for the same event. I could explain how that may throw off calculations. But Holmes has never been overly fond of astronomy even if it did grant us this terminology, and I didn’t like to vex him while he was thinking. So instead of a full explanation, I simply said:
"As the astronomers have dubbed it."
I thought it had been explanation enough, but Musgrave gave me another strange look. No doubt he was wondering how astronomic theory applied to the fate of his servants. I felt his stare burning into the side of my face. Instead of engaging, however, I stared at Holmes staring into space and tried my most innocent of expressions.
When Holmes spoke, it was trance-like, quiet and even. He described Brunton's discovery of the trapdoor, his failed attempt to lift it even with the aid of his muffler tied around the handle, and his enlistment of Rachel, who he thought still loved him in spite of all her words of hate. Holmes cast his gaze around us at the wood covering the floor.
He dove for a piece near his left knee and lifted it up reverently. It bore a mark across the middle, as if a heavy edge had put its full weight on it and crushed the fibres. "There is a slight indentation on this log." Holmes selected another one. "And on this."
He supposed-as we all did, by this point-that they had used the scattered firewood to prop up the lid, bit by bit, until it was opened enough for Brunton to drop down into the hole. And there he was when the lid fell shut and quite literally sealed his fate. If Rachel had been there to see it, and had not called for help but instead had let Brunton suffocate there, it would certainly explain her mad behaviour the next morning.
Holmes dropped entirely down into the hole and lifted up the box for us to examine. Musgrave and I pawed through it, finding only fungi.
"But what was in the box, Holmes?" I wondered aloud.
In answer, one of Holmes's hands emerged from the darkness, pinching a coin between forefinger and middle finger. I have mentioned Holmes's hands before, but I have never allowed myself to ruminate so fully as I've wanted on their grace, on their dexterity, and how the sight of them, bare to the elbows, makes me want to do inexplicable things. This time was no different, and I'm afraid it was even worse having had those fingers wrapped around mine two nights in a row. Holmes and Musgrave spoke words, but they remained unheard while I was captivated instead by the beauty of Holmes's hands. When he wished to be extricated from the depths, I admit that I jumped eagerly to be the one to clasp them and pull him up.
It was with great ambivalence that I let him go.
Back in the house, Holmes rubbed those hands together vigorously in preparation for his grand revelation, the pièce de résistance with which he most liked to reveal his best deductions. The fire in his eyes lit me from within.
A few minutes with the contents of the bag fished from the mere, and Holmes became excited. "Gentlemen," he said, and held out his hand. "Look."
One of the pebbles, upon closer examination, was nothing less than a jewel. "A family heirloom," I supposed aloud.
"It's possible," Musgrave said. He confirmed that yes, his ancestor was a prominent cavalier, and a friend to Charles II in his wanderings.
With great theatricality, Holmes revealed then that the dull and filthy bits of metal we had been holding in our hands was in fact the ancient crown of the kings of England. He quoted the Ritual as he arranged the pieces of metal on a tray.
"Whose was it? His who is gone. That was the execution of Charles. And then who shall have it? He who will come. That was Charles the Second, whose advent was already foreseen. There can, I think, be no doubt, gentlemen, that this battered and shapeless diadem once encircled the brows of the royal Stuarts."
In front of him was a circle, and it did then seem a plausible story.
"How then came it to my family?" Musgrave said, a logical question.
Holmes went into some paroxysm of conjecture, his usual sort, wherein he described how when Charles the First was executed his crown was broken into pieces and sold for a thousand guineas, and from that moment forth its whereabouts were never known. He supposed it fell into Musgrave hands where it stayed, some forebear having died before explaining the Ritual's true nature. And from that day to this, the only relic which passed from father to son was the Ritual itself, hollow of meaning and lacking import.
"Until at last it came within reach of a man who tore its secret out of it and lost his life in the venture," Holmes said, and all three of us fell quite silent.
Supper that evening was a somber affair. Rather than try to catch the last train Holmes and I decided to stay until the morning, and so we were treated to a lavish meal lacking much in any conversation and full to the brim with unfocused staring. I had to ask Holmes twice to pass the sliced carrots, and at one point Musgrave missed the mutton on his plate several times with his fork before eventually skewering it.
I would have expected Holmes to be more jovial after the conclusion of such a case, but instead his conversation seemed more pensive than pleasant. I retired soon afterward, leaving Holmes to spend some quiet time with his old school friend as I holed myself up for some quiet thinking of my own.
It was gone eleven by the time Holmes pushed into my room, as I'd half expected him to. He was already in his nightshirt, bare-footed, with that bloody shawl wrapped around him. I myself was in bed and under the blankets, trying to finish my novel before we got back home to work and bustle, before I would have to write up this case and send it off to my literary agent.
He bustled into the room as if he had every right to be there, but then stopped short at the edge of the bed. He looked at me like a pleading puppy-dog.
"Oh, fine," I said, and pulled back the covers. "But leave that blasted shawl out of it. Lord only knows where it's been."
He dropped the shawl where he stood and crawled into my bed. At the time I barely noted the racing of my heart, but in the years after I had ample time to note my trepidation, my excitement, my terror. After dropping my book over the side of the bed I flicked the blankets over the two of us and scooted down to face him. It felt like playing schoolboys, in a way, and a traitorous part of my mind reminded me just what he had gotten up to when he had been at university. Rather than causing me to recoil, instead I found myself sinking further into the bed.
"What do you suppose happened to Rachel?" he asked me, his voice low. It hadn't very far to carry.
"Is this in my capacity as-"
"As my partner in detection, as an observer of the human condition, as one who has seen many things in our years together. What do you suppose happened?"
"I suppose." I sighed, and it ruffled the soft fringe of hair flopping over onto the pillow. He must have bathed after supper. "I suppose she must have fled, fearing that we would find out what she and Brunton had done. Your reputation casts a far net, Holmes. She must have suspected that you would find Brunton in due course, and know her to have a hand in his death. Barring that, she must have been too upset to remain in a household where she and Brunton had been so happy, knowing his fate so intimately. Even if it had been accidental, the fall of the trap door, she could have gone for help."
I found myself wondering why Brunton did not shy away from dropping into a hole which took two to open, and which could fall shut with the slightest breath of wind. I should have been fearful of doing so. Holmes, as usual, read the thoughts on my face.
"He did not have his Watson with him. He trusted where he should not."
I looked into his eyes, shadowed as they were from the firelight in the room. They still seemed to glow.
"It always pleases me to hear of your trust," I said quietly.
"I trust you with my life," he said, and very small smile graced the corners of his mouth. If I did not know him as well as I did I would not have seen it. He shocked me by placing his palm on the side of my face. It was warm and dry and comforting, like being cradled. "I am certain of your love."
I could not look away. "Are you?"
"I am sure of it."
My heart pounded in my ears. A most tender feeling rose up and thickened my throat as I gazed back at those clear, grey eyes, that aristocratic jut of nose, that sharp-tongued slash of mouth. It was a face familiar to me as breathing, and I adored it. I loved the brain behind it, as well, and the heart on the body that housed it. I was grateful for him, and the resolution of this case had made that perfectly clear.
Holmes's mouth tightened as if he steeled himself for something, then he scooted forward to curl up against my body, seeking comfort. I had no choice but to wrap my arms about him and hold him even closer.
"Are you warm enough?" I whispered. He nodded. I chafed my palms against his back just in case. My cheek against his hair registered softness, and I smelled soap and aftershave. My heart clenched in my chest. Gently, slowly, I bumped my mouth against his head, a clumsy buss that did nothing to dispel the tension in my throat and indeed only made my heart beat harder. Tenderness seemed to well up in my fingers and toes and teeth and eyelids, making them ache.
"Are you unwell?" Holmes asked. I realised I had been breathing like a steam train. I shook my head and skated my cheek along his hair again.
Holmes tucked himself in tighter against my chest, and his breath was hot in the placket at the collar of my nightshirt. I wrapped my arms more firmly around his back. It felt no more or less intimate than our usual casual touches, but it felt a hundred-fold more satisfying. To be holed up together in bed, warm against the chill of one of the oldest inhabited houses left in England, it felt as if we were a united front against the cold.
"I am certain of you, too," I said.
I realised that the movements of his head were Holmes pressing soft, gentle kisses to my neck, the one after the other. It clenched something in my chest, and my breath halted. When I sucked in more air, I shook. Holmes resumed kissing me, a slow, deliberate trail up to my jaw. I squeezed my eyes closed against the emotion that rose up in me, at the strange beauty of it, at the way I loved him so much in that moment that it pained me. Every few seconds, I had to force myself to breathe.
Holmes was trembling in my arms when he reached my mouth, and when he pressed the first kiss to my lips, I let him. When he pressed the second, I pushed my lips forward to meet his. When he pressed the third, I tilted my head, opened my mouth, and was lost.
It was glacially slow, and exploratory, and we both shook with the power of it. I felt both weak and strong concurrently, my body so confused by the welter of signals it was processing that it was like flying and swimming and running all at the same time. Holmes, here, so intimate and close and so beloved…
I heard myself whimper.
Holmes rolled forward, pressing against me even more strongly, as if our two bodies might overlap. I felt weighted down, surrounded, safe, and even when his thigh slid between mine I wasn't alarmed. All I wanted was more closeness, more delicious heat. I crushed him to my chest, broke the kiss, and tried to breathe. His ribs were heaving against mine.
"Watson…" I heard him murmur. Something in me broke, and I had to bury my face against his shoulder and try to reintegrate myself.
I felt so much I could scarcely make sense of it all. I was almost over-warm now, and sweating. I was having trouble pulling in enough air. I was immensely confused about the physical performance we were enacting right then, but above those things I felt love-so much love I was drowning in it. I felt it in every place my body touched Holmes, which, since he was lying on top of me, was nearly everywhere, and it suffused my every capillary and vein and organ and artery. If this was what others felt when they indulged in such acts, I understood without a doubt why they did it.
I loved him, and it was so much a part of my being that I could not have separated myself from it if I tried.
He nudged a kiss to my neck and another to the hinge of my jaw. I buried my fingers in his hair and tilted my head into a kiss as thick and redolent with emotion as the ones that came before. He shifted, and I realised he was hard at my hip. A strange desire overtook me: to feel him come to pieces, shattering with ecstasy in my arms. I wanted him to feel physical bliss, and more than that I wanted to be the one to do it to him. I wanted to share with him the connection that sort of intimacy could forge; links made of shared moments, links annealed by pleasure.
With this in mind I slipped my fingers under the hem of Holmes's nightshirt. The solidity of his thigh enchanted me, as it always did whenever I was reminded that on top of those bones was a layer of muscle and skin and little else. Sometimes it entertained me to think of him as a wisp of fog, liable to float away in a strong wind, but here was my proof he was otherwise: solid muscle over strong bone, wiry hair over smooth skin. Touching Holmes's thigh without seeing it inflamed me. I captured his mouth with a kiss and skated my palm up toward his groin.
He made a quiet noise into our kiss, and I felt him grasp my pillow at one side of my head as he supported his weight on his elbows. He began to shake again. "Shh…" I soothed my palm down his back with one hand, even as explored the region between his legs with the other.
I felt more wiry hair, and warmth, and soon the soft, unyielding firmness of his manhood. I touched him and his head fell forward with a whimper. I let my fingertips stray more southerly, and they encountered his sack, heavy with the seed I wanted to make him spill. He shifted, and I felt his breath tremble as he exhaled.
It was warm under the blankets, but I could not bear the thought of exposing this to light and air. This was private, between we two. Touching him like this was something just for us alone. Tenderness made my jaw ache and my bones feel like melting wax. I pressed my forehead to his temple. "Holmes." My heart, I wanted to say, but I kept my teeth together and breathed through it.
His inhalation broke and shattered against my skin and I knew I had him for as long as I wanted him. Thus fortified, I wrapped my hand around him and pulled. He jerked in my arms and released a long, low moan into my shoulder to muffle it.
"Shh…" I reminded him, and began to frig him steadily, smoothly, for all that the angle pained my wrist. His trembling increased in amplitude. I heard him stifling noises deep in his throat.
After a few moments I felt him scrabbling at the hem of my own nightshirt, pushing it up to my waist. I must confess it wasn't until that moment that I considered reciprocation, but his hand returned then to the pillow beside my head instead of touching me in the place I craved.
I both heard and felt his breath become heavier, and heavier, and heavier. I was sweating beneath him, the place where we touched becoming humid. He pressed his mouth to my shoulder and he exhaled three long, low, whispered cries before I felt him begin to come apart against me. He shook with the effort, spilling himself all over my hand and hip, his body jerking. Sympathetic pleasure rose up in me, and I felt myself rise at the feel, at the smell, at the muffled sound of him. I had brought the man in my arms brilliant pleasure and release, and my body woke up aching for the same.
He slumped and caught his breath against my neck. Every moment or so, he twitched with the echo of his climax. I wrapped my arms as tight around him as I could manage and held him there, supporting him on his journey back to earth from ethereal bliss.
"Holmes," I said, and saying his name helped ease a measure of the ache I felt in my chest.
We spent several minutes still locked together as he came back down, and then he shifted to one side. "Are you interested in…" he said, and reached beneath the covers to trail his fingers over my growing member.
Oh, and those fingers. I felt myself reach up to meet them with a thousand memories of their grace and dexterity rushing through my mind. His touch burned like exquisite flame and I felt the heat in me flare up and threaten to consume me from the inside out.
He chuckled quietly. "Yes, then," he said, and from that moment my entire existence was in his capable hands. He brought me to my fall carefully, with great precision, each stroke and flick of his thumb causing me to climb higher and higher toward a plateau of joy. He hooked his other thumb into my mouth to anchor me to him, and sucking it muffled the sounds I made as pleasure rolled through me.
All at once, he stopped. I opened my eyes to see him pass his hand over his mouth and then the pleasure was back two-fold, three-fold, a hundred-fold as his skin slicked and sped over mine. I felt climax tugging at my heels like the incipient pull of the tide before suddenly, before I was ready, like a wave it was upon me. Gorgeous pleasure rose up and overflowed, and the spill was liquid and pulsing and complete.
Soaked in lethargy I jerked against Holmes as my body repeatedly spasmed, not completely finished squeezing out bliss. It came in short bursts even while my bones's threat to melt to wax seemed finally to come true. I wanted to hold on to him, but I could not move.
He came to me instead, resettling our clothes between us and fitting our bodies tightly together. He whispered against my neck. "I trust you with my life," he said.
"I hope I shall remain equal to the task," I said.
"I have no doubt of it."
My brain would roil in the days and weeks to come with the full measure of what we'd done, but in that moment I was perfectly content. The wind howled outside, but inside the stone pile of the ancient house, in the quiet and empty wing, we were secure and safe and together, a force against the world.
After a few minutes of a shared and silent communion Holmes extricated himself from my bed and slipped back into his room. I fell asleep almost immediately, my body and mind wrung too dry for any more activity that night.
In the dawn, I awoke with a shock to find the maid laying the fire. My system was on high alert, and where ordinarily I would have slept through such an everyday occurrence, my brain had apparently been playing look-out. Assured that everything was fine I attempted to fall back asleep. It was a failure. Too concerned about the future, I tossed and turned and fretted before finally giving up and ringing for a bath.
Evidence of last night was on the inside of my nightshirt and all over my body. Distinctly remembering my boyhood days I scrubbed at the cloth as best I could and hung it to dry near the fire. As for myself, I cleaned most away with my morning supply of hot water and, when it was ready, let the bath carry away any remaining residue. My heart beat quicker with the secrecy of what I'd done-of what we'd done-and I wondered whether it would ever happen again.
More than that, I wondered if it could happen again, and how often, and if this degree of stealth was going to punctuate my mornings for the rest of my mortal life.
I came down to breakfast late, once again. I found it a fitting coda to our visit that only on the last day would I manage to have a complete meal of egg and soldiers, sitting down at table, like a civilised being.
Holmes was there already. He didn't look up when I entered the room, but only mumbled me a 'good morning' on the heels of Musgrave's welcome. My heart clenching with fear and confusion, I sat and accepted my plate. I tried to be reasonable about Holmes's dismissive greeting-on the whole, it was not out of the ordinary in the least for him to ignore me until he was ready to grant my existence, and it had long since ceased to bother me-but after our indiscretion in the night I confess I let my imagination run away with me.
Meal thus ruined, I swallowed down my food with little pleasure, answered Musgrave's few questions about our travel plans, and fled back upstairs to pack. Not ten minutes later Holmes entered the room. He walked straight up to where I stood, shoving clothing into my gladstone, and spoke directly into my ear.
"I cannot look at you."
My breakfast churned. Something of it must have shown in my face, for he took one look at me and rolled his eyes.
"Oh, Watson, don't be ridiculous," said aloud, a familiar tone which did very little to ease my distress. He stepped in close again. "If I look at you, I'm afraid I'll betray myself, and that will not do."
"Betray yourself?" I said.
"My thoughts are fixed on last night, and my body yearns for more." I felt myself begin to blush. "If our friendship is going to be cemented in such a way, I will have to create some manner of distance between us until I am certain I can hide it. As brilliant at disguises as you believe me to be, some things cut too close to the bone not to visibly flinch."
I tried to stifle a smile, and I did not look at him even when he pulled back to glance at my face.
"Plus, you really are a most abominable actor," he said as a parting shot, and in a trice he had left the room.
I allowed myself to grin, then, and packing up my few remaining belongings was a much more enjoyable activity once I knew that I would soon be heading for home, where a new life awaited us, a life of secrets and stealth, but shared. He trusted me with his life, and in return I trusted him, and I had no doubt that whatever trials would come we would face them together.
I folded up a damp and sticky nightshirt. Whatever the future held, however, we would certainly have to wash our own linens.
On the dog cart home, Holmes put as much space between as as he could. I did not blame him; I wanted to hold him and speak softly and touch him, and not only did I know that sort of behaviour was verboten, I also did not expect a relationship with this particular person ever to be that gentle.
"Was it chance that the wood slipped? Was she only guilty of silence?" I said. "She had a passionate, Celtic soul."
He leaned back against the cushions like a visiting dignitary and waved about his cigarette. "I'm not sure I approve of this new habit of yours."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Have you learned nothing from our investigations?"
I searched my memory. Was there something in our past that held the key to Rachel's actions? I must admit, I had no vantage point from which to comprehend leaving a former lover to that sort of fate, even if our relationship had ended. I shook my head.
"You cannot expect to fully place yourself in the shoes of a perpetrator if you do not understand the human condition, and you will not understand the human condition if you insist on making these wild, unfounded judgements."
Once again I shook my head.
"Watson, why do you continually insist upon describing Rachel as a Celtic soul? Her family is originally from somewhere near Essex. Surely even you can hear it in her speech. Must you categorise people in such a brash and overly-romantic way?"
I frowned. "Just for that, when I submit this story to the Strand, I will take every opportunity to describe her thus. I will do it to vex you." I wanted to call him several rude names, but the presence of the driver as well as the curious expression on Holmes’s face stopped me. "What?"
"The Strand," he said.
Casting a glance at the driver, I nodded. "I am aware. I spent some time this morning thinking about just that subject. Do not distress yourself. This time I think I won't receive much censure from you if I take some liberties with the truth?"
He too glanced at the back of the driver's head. "Not at all."
"It is settled, then. I will write it up as I plan to, an exciting tale of your solo adventure at Hurlstone, and all will be well."
"And all manner of thing will be well," Holmes said, and he passed his thumb over the back of my hand as he went to his pocket for another cigarette. I turned my head and smiled. It was turning out to be a most beautiful autumn day.