Sherlock Holmes fic: Insistence On Sameness (2/2)

[joe_pike_junior]

Title: Insistence On Sameness (2/2)
Author:
armchair_elvis

Summary: "My brother wishes to relocate from our country house and take lodgings in London. I am willing to pay you to assist my brother in achieving that goal." AU: Holmes is autistic. Holmes, Watson, and Mycroft, with guest appearances by Moriarty and Mrs. Hudson. >10,000 words.

Notes: Gen, no warnings. I wouldn't have been able to finish this without the help of
nightdog_barks, daasgrrl and hannahrorlove.

The title is taken from an early explanation of one of the characteristics of autism. This fic is set in the Victorian era and thus predates the understanding of the brain and mind that we have today. Psychiatry as we know it was in its infancy. The term autism did not exist.

Watson has not yet finished his breakfast when Mrs. Hudson knocks on the door and introduces a small neat man, who steps into the sitting room and announces in a clear dispassionate voice that he has an urgent message for Mr. Sherlock 'Olmes.

Holmes emerges barefoot from his room and reads the letter, waving the commissionaire away with his free hand. Watson hands the man a halfpenny from his pocket and ushers him out the door.

Holmes thrusts the envelope toward Watson, his eyes on the carpet. "We must go to Lauriston Gardens."



Watson reads over the letter as Holmes finishes dressing. A man has been found dead in an unoccupied house off the Brixton Road. Well-dressed, splattered in blood, and apparently without injury. The note is signed Yours faithfully, Tobias Gregson.

"This is terrible!"

"It is certainly a little out of the common," Holmes remarks as he emerges from his room. "Indeed, there are several points of interest about it."

Watson gathers together two overcoats and his walking cane and makes sure that he has enough money for a cab to Brixton and back. Holmes clatters down the front stairs and stands by the front door, worrying at the fingers of his left hand with that of his right.

"You know this Gregson?" Watson pulls on his coat and hands Holmes his own.

"I have corresponded with him at length. He and a fellow named Lestrade are the least stupid of the Scotland Yarders. Some day I shall have to tell you about the Affair of the Aluminium crutch."

And then they're in the cab, and Holmes says nothing, except for a few absent phrases that Watson cannot make out, such as the movement is based in Ohio and no furniture in the front room. He's rubbing his hands together. "Perhaps you could tell me about the Aluminium Crutch," Watson ventures, and to his surprise Holmes launches into a rapid-fire explanation of the case.

Lauriston Gardens is a shabby, disreputable little street. There is very little traffic, and the sounds of the main road a few streets away are muffled. The street smells of smoke and brackish water. It is a cloudless day, and Watson welcomes the feel of the sun on his skin. Holmes walks back and forth on the strip of watery grass that flanks the path, busily clasping and unclasping his hands.

The door is narrow and unpainted, the wood grey and weathered. On Watson's knock it is opened by a pale blond man with a thin moustache. "Sherlock Holmes, I presume." He puts out a large cold hand and Watson takes it.

"I fear that you are mistaken, sir," Watson says, flustered. "I am Dr. John Watson, Mr. Holmes' assistant."

"Indeed," Gregson says, as if he does not have time for trifles. "And where is Mr. Sherlock Holmes?"

"He won't shake your hand," Watson says in an undertone, "don't be offended." Then he calls for Holmes, who is on his hands and knees examining the path.

"The path has been trampled by several policemen, and most of the evidence has been obscured." Holmes approaches the door, speaking to the ground between his feet.

Gregson looks him up and down, casting a flat policeman's eye over his now-muddy trousers and the way that his eyes slide away from eye contact the way magnets do when the poles are the same. Watson wonders if he or Mycroft shouldn't have prepared them somehow, but would that be worse?

"It is very kind of you to have come," Gregson finally says. "I have had everything left untouched."

"Did you come here in a cab?" Holmes says, coming forward a little. Gregson casts a quizzical look at Watson, as if he's asking if there is some kind of joke.

"No, sir."

"Did Lestrade?"

Gregson smiles jocularly, as if he is trying to break the ice. "Lestrade's a bit much of a penny-pincher for that, sir."

Holmes repeats himself, his voice flat. "Did Lestrade catch a cab?"

Gregson's brow crinkles. "Mr. Holmes, I just--"

"He meant no, Holmes." Watson doesn't know what he can say to make them understand, to make this easier.

A shorter, wider man with dark hair appears from the hall leading to the back yard as Holmes is examining the body. Lestrade.

"This is Dr. Watson," Gregson says. "And that is Mr. Sherlock Holmes." Lestrade places a warm callussed hand in Watson's, then puts his hands on his hips and looks Holmes up and down. Watson watches as he and Gregson share one of those cryptic looks common among policemen.

"Found anything?"

Holmes says nothing.

It is a large bare room, smelling of dust and rising damp and blood and meat. The dead man lies on his back, grimacing at the ceiling, his bared teeth gleaming where the light from the single window hits them. There are great gouts of blood scattered around the room, and the deepest puddle of it, to one side of the man's head, has not yet darkened from scarlet to brown. Holmes flutters around the room, examining everything from the man's coat buttons to his lips.

Then he stands up and walks around the perimeter of the room several times, his coat-tails streaming out behind him. He strokes his beard with an index finger and thumb. He takes out his tape measure and measures the distance between several equally indistinguishable marks on the wall.

Watson hears the rustle of starched cotton as Lestrade crosses his arms across his chest. He is gazing at Holmes with something approaching contempt, and Watson feels his cheeks redden.

"It is not his blood," Lestrade says.

"Obviously not," Holmes says, his voice high and irritated. "It belongs to the man who lured him here and killed him."

There is a silence, just the gritty noise of Holmes' shoes moving over the dusty floor.

"Je ne sais pas," Holmes says. I don't know. He clears his throat several times, and Watson shifts his weight to his other leg.

"Holmes?"

"Van Jensen, Utrecht, 1834. Where are the contents of this man's pockets?"

A golden watch and chain, the fat links rusty with blood. A leather note-case, some pocket change that Holmes sifts through with an index finger, his mouth clamped down into a thin line.

Holmes turns his back on the crime scene and walks rapidly down the hallway, outside into the cool air. They follow him. The floorboards in the hall creak and the smell of rising damp is stronger. There is an old-fashioned wallpaper on the walls here, peeling, and Watson vaguely wonders if a house-proud woman picked it out, twenty or thirty years ago.

Holmes stands outside, his skin white in the bright sun. "We shall need to get a cab, Watson."

"Wait," Lestrade says. "What are your findings here?"

"I could discover very little," Holmes says, addressing himself again to the churned-up mud of the path. "The entire scene has been trampled by clumsy policemen."

Lestrade raises his eyebrows and Gregson has opened his mouth to say something else when Holmes continues in the same high, irritated, remote voice.

"The murder was a man taller than six feet with small feet and a red face. He wore square-toed boots and smoked a Trichinopoly cigar. He came here by four-wheeler and his victim came into the house on his own two feet. The horse had a new shoe on the off fore-leg."

Gregson grins.

"If this man was murdered, Mr. Holmes, how was it done?" Lestrade crosses his arms across his broad chest again.

"Poison," Holmes says, and that is all he will say.

...

"Listen to this, Watson!" Holmes sits reading the newspaper, his toast forgotten in front of him. "The man was apprehended, it appears, in the rooms of a certain Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who has himself, as an amateur, shown some talent in the detective line, and who, with such instructors, may hope in time to attain to some degree of their skill."

"Indeed," Watson says, his voice carefully level. "You are also mentioned by name in this morning's Times."

He passes the newspaper over to Holmes, who carefully reads the paragraph Watson points out to him.

"Well," he says. "That is gratifying."

"Holmes," Watson says, "They have treated you here with such contempt! They have made Lestrade and Gregson out to be skilled professionals and you the bumbling amateur!"

"That is of no consequence to me, Watson," Holmes says. "I wager this little mention will bring more work my way."

It matters to Watson. What matters more is the contempt he saw in Lestrade's eyes.

The next time that Mrs. Hudson announces Lestrade at the door, Watson bounds up from his desk and down the stairs quick enough to meet Lestrade half way.

"Good day, Lestrade," he says with false bonhomie, loud enough to carry up the stairs, and when Lestrade puts his hand in his Watson pulls him off-balance, so he half-stumbles to the next riser. He blocks Lestrade's left with his right elbow and then puts his hand on the front of Lestrade's shirt and twists it savagely, not caring if he has caught the skin up in the taut cotton.

Watson draws Lestrade's face closer to his own, so close that he can smell the cigarette he smoked in the cab and the aftershave he splashed on this morning.

"Holmes may not be aware of the scorn you have for him, Lestrade," Watson whispers. "But I am, and if I ever hear that anybody at Scotland Yard has treated him with anything less than the respect accorded a gentleman, I will make your life very difficult."

"You? How?" Lestrade whispers back, his voice low and angry. Watson lets go of the front of the shirt and allows Lestrade to push past him, his shoulders high.

"Holmes has friends in high places, Lestrade. He's not an idiot, merely eccentric. You'd do well to remember that."

By the time they reach the sitting room Lestrade has smoothed down the front of his shirt and plastered a stiff smile on his face. Watson watches him carefully, all the same.

…

Watson comes home from his club to find a small, dirty-looking boy sitting on a chair opposite the settee. The boy is wearing a threadbare workman's shirt that is much too big for him and a pair of trousers that stop at mid-ankle. Holmes is sitting on the settee, leaning forward, his hands steepled under his chin.

"What happened next?"

"I saw 'im get out the carriage."

"You are certain that it was him?"

"Wot?"

"You are certain that it was him, Wiggins?"

"It were 'im. The other stayed up in the carriage. Shorter feller in a brown suit, like. Hat pulled down over his eyes."

"And did you observe if he was carrying anything."

"He had a packidge under his arm. Sumfin wrapped up in brown paper."

"Your accent is truly fascinating to me. I had little idea that people really spoke like that."

Holmes leans back, half-closing his eyes. The small boy remains on the seat, swinging his legs slightly. After a short pause Holmes takes a shilling from his pocket and hands it to the boy.

"Until next week, then. Don't hesitate to send a telegram if anything out of the ordinary happens. I will reimburse you."

"Yessir."

The boy clatters down the stairs and down onto the street.

"Have you taken to spying now, Holmes?"

Holmes does not reply. He lights his pipe and smokes it silently on the settee, stock-still except for the fingers of his right hand, which beat a nervous tattoo against his leg. Watson goes to his room to change. When he returns, Holmes is sitting at his desk, engaged in the energetic collation of a huge pile of notes and telegram flimsies and newspaper clippings.

Dinner is potato and leek soup followed by roast lamb. Watson particularly enjoys Mrs. Hudson's roast lamb. Holmes takes a few spoonfuls of the soup then pushes it away from him.

"Have you ever heard of a man called Moriarty, Watson?"

"I can't say that I have," Watson says after some little deliberation. No doubt he will have heard of Moriarty soon.

"He is a mathematician. He is best known for a series of lectures he delivered on the physics of moving objects."

Watson takes a mouthful of lamb, chews and swallows it. Holmes is engaged in filling up his pipe, his eyes on the geometric embroidery pattern at the centre of the tablecloth.

"Now that you mention it, I have heard something of him."

"I know appalling things about Professor Moriarty. He has enjoyed a parallel career to his academic one."

Then Holmes goes to his desk and takes a bloated Manila file from the top drawer. He places it in the middle of the table, narrowly missing knocking over the water carafe. He takes out sheafs of paper, a scrapbook, a one-inch Ordnance Survey map of London scrawled all over with his unsteady handwriting.

Five years ago Professor Moriarty embedded himself in the London underworld, pulling over himself a suffocating array of subterfuges and criminal networks and false trails. Now he sits in the middle of his own tightly-woven web. The only question left to Watson is why. He supposes that Moriarty is the sort of person who would say why not?

Prostitution. Opium. Smuggling, poisonings, heads caved in on deserted country lanes. London, Liverpool, Manchester. Holmes believes that Moriarty has paid operatives as far away as Dublin and Paris.

"I wager that I'll have discovered everything I need to know about Moriarty in six months," Holmes says. "Everything I need to know to defeat him. This is why I came to London."

It takes Moriarty three months to notice.

...

A woman has been found dead in St. James Park, a train ticket from a small station in the Scottish Highlands the only clue as to her identity.

That is, apart from the brand of snuff she uses and her custom-made shoes and the shape of her big toe. But those things have not furnished Holmes with enough detail.

It is bitter midwinter and Victoria station is cold and echoing, poorly heated and filled with the same smothering coal smell as the whole of London. Watson is walking a step behind Holmes, half-guiding him to the train. Holmes does not do well in train stations. Watson had the cab drop them off at the entrance that would provide the shortest route to the Scottish platforms.

Watson has his valise in one hand and his walking cane in the other, and he is trying to decide whether the ABC guide had the train as 11.23 or 11.32 when a shortish man with a bland face swings a heavy police-issue nightstick into his stomach. He doubles over, gasping, black dots swimming like bonfire ash in front of his eyes, and then there is another blow across his shoulder (that one sends a stinging tingling pain down his weaker left arm), and then the bland-faced man is walking rapidly away as two equally unmemorable men nod at each other and turn away, leaving Holmes curled in on himself about three feet ahead of Watson.

Holmes is curled on his side. Watson climbs to his feet, the cold of the marble seeping though the knees of his trousers.

There is a bobby approaching from the other side of the vast echoing chamber and the station is full of rushing people and scuffing feet and the chuffing noise of trains. Most of the passersby give Holmes a wide berth. When Watson puts a hand on Holmes' shoulder he shies away and takes a deep breath and moans raggedly. The sound makes Watson's stomach clench. Then Watson puts the reassuring weight of his overcoat over Holmes' shoulders and puts one of his hands on Holmes' shoulder and squeezes it and says "Come on, old boy. Get up."

A fat woman in a ridiculous hat comments loudly to the rat-faced woman walking next to her, wondering out loud why such people are allowed out in society. Watson finds himself quite uncharitably wishing that her face will sprout a large unsightly wart or growth, then perhaps her rat-faced friend will not want to go about in public with her.

Holmes clears his throat and coughs, and Watson puts his hands on Holmes shoulders and pulls him up into a sitting position.

"Stand up unless you want to explain yourself to that policeman," Watson says, hating that he has to resort to such petty emotional subterfuge. He puts his arm around Holmes ribs and allows Holmes to brace himself against his shoulder.

Holmes gives a sharp wet gasp and puts a hand against his side.

"Hurts."

The bobby finally approaches them. He has a mild questioning look on his face, his hand resting casually on his nightstick.

"Everything orright here?"

"Yes," Watson says. "My friend here is feeling unwell. We will be catching a cab home now."

"I thought I might have seen you in an altercation over here, that's all."

"You misunderstand, sir." Watson says, allowing some of his anger and frustration to leak into his voice, giving it a steely battleground edge. He knows how to treat this man as a subordinate.

"Very well, then," the bobby says.

Holmes walks very stiffly. Watson doesn't like the look of that, doesn't like the twisted cast to Holmes' mouth or his fragile silence or the way he gasps when the cold air hits his lungs, the shallow breath ghosting around his lips like a comma.

...

While Holmes is undressing Watson goes takes some sterile water and morphia and mixes a fresh dose.

"This will help with the pain," Watson says, shaking the bottle. He washes his hands at the basin, dries them, then takes the needle from a basin of sterile alcohol and draws a fifth of a grain of morphia into the hypodermic syringe.

The skin of Holmes' forearm is so white that the veins stand out in sharp relief.

Holmes falls into a fitful sleep ten minutes later. Watson is confident that the cracked rib is only that, and is in no danger of piercing the lung. Mrs. Hudson comes upstairs bearing a tray of tea and toast, and she makes a little tutting noise before she bends over to pick Holmes' crumpled clothes off the floor.

"Wouldn't want this to go through the wash," she says, putting a plain white envelope on Holmes' desk.

A cheap envelope, a blank piece of paper. No address, no salutation, just a neat sentence written in a spidery hand. Watson wonders if it is the professor's writing.

This is your final warning.

…

Mycroft closes Holmes' bedroom door softly behind him. Then he goes to the mantlepiece and lights a cigarette, dashing his match angrily into the fire.

"I see," he says.

"A nightstick," Watson says. "A well-organised attack."

"Or a lead-filled cane," Mycroft says. "Until I saw the bruise I could have convinced myself that it was a random occurrence."

"You saw the note?"

"Yes, although I can tell nothing from it other than that it was written on a train and that the writer can afford more expensive paper. No doubt my brother could deduce more from it. I doubt he needs to."

"As far as I know there have been no others," Watson says.

Mycroft crosses his arms and blows an angry line of smoke at the floor.

"You will forgive me if this question is impertinent, doctor, but where were you while these men were cracking my brother's ribs with a nightstick?"

"I was -- Someone winded me. It was all over before I could get up."

"Oh," Mycroft says. "I am sorry to hear that. I had it from Mr. Stamford that you made quite a name for yourself as an amateur boxer before you went to Afghanistan." He appears chastised. Watson wonders what else Mycroft knows about him.

"I did," he says. "But sometimes you only need one good blow to fell an opponent. He got one on me."

Watson wants to unbutton his waistcoat and shirt and show Mycroft the angry red mark that stretches across his ribs and stomach, the way it will deepen into a purple bruise that nags at him when he stands up and when he dresses.

…

They are in the thundering church-like quiet of the Stranger's Room again and Mycroft puts his hand on Watson's shoulder.

"Another thing, old boy. I've added a codicil to my will, asking that it not be read until five years after my death. Sherlock is my main beneficiary, but I am concerned that some of my cousins may learn from historical antecedent and challenge the will on the grounds that he is 'mentally incompetent'." A brief flare of scorn.

"But why five years?"

"To give you time, Watson, to give you time."

What for? You mean Holmes and I? What are you planning?

Mycroft's eyes are bland and his secretary has envelopes bearing the crest of military intelligence on his desk. He spends all day in his office doing sums, Holmes says. What sort of sums put the plainclothes man at the end of the corridor? What sort of sums put Turkish cigarettes in his desk and bring the telegrams that Mycroft sometimes receives at the club: telegrams from Germany and India and Russia. Telegrams bearing mysterious names, sometimes no more than a series of numbers.

The questions Watson wants to ask of Mycroft all die in his throat.

A week later Watson learns that Mycroft is making arrangements regarding the appointment of his successor.

…

Mycroft will not allow Holmes to leave their rooms. He works feverishly for weeks, snapping at Mrs. Hudson and leaving overdrawn pots of tea on every surface. Every time Watson leaves to send a telegram or dash to the post office or the library, a short, broad-shouldered man with a bland face meets his eye from a bench or a doorway or street corner. Mycroft's man.

It is early spring, and London is muddy and crisp and alive when Holmes hands a large Manila folder to Lestrade. Everything is tied up neatly; Holmes has let Professor Moriarty tie his own noose. He intercepted letters meant for the man's subordinates and cracked the code the criminals used in the agony column of the Times.

Lestrade hurries away to let Scotland Yard spring its much less intricate trap, and Watson persuades Holmes to change his shirt, to sleep.

But then Mycroft clatters up their stairs with a bruise on his right cheek and a handkerchief wound around the fingers of his left hand. Knife, Watson diagnoses. There is cracked dried blood on Mycroft's knuckles, blood leaking tacky through the white cotton.

"Pack some things, Doctor, we must leave for the Continent in fifteen minutes."

Mycroft goes into Holmes' room, where he is sleeping off the exertion of the investigation. Watson can soon hear the throb of raised voices through the walls.

The leave in ten minutes, Watson carrying two hurriedly-packed valises and Holmes his violin.

They are walking down Baker Street in the direction of Regent's Park when a sharp cracking noise sends Watson's nerves singing. Broken glass rains down around them, the window of their front room. And then they are running.

…

On the train to Bonn Mycroft and Holmes conduct a long conversation in rapid French. It seems fluent to Watson, not undermined by the uncertainty that so many Englishmen have with the language.

"It is the least preferable outcome but it seems the most likely," Mycroft finally says in English, exasperated, and he turns to look at the scenery.

Holmes lights his pipe and puts one of his long nervous hands against the cool glass of the window. He hums and hums and nobody says a word.

…

Meiringen is ridiculously cheerful. The air has a cleanness to it that is entirely unlike London and the trees are sprouting delicate green buds. Watson is wary whenever he hears a British accent, but there is no sight of Moriarty, only students on geological excursions and schoolgirls on tours.

The path to the falls has been worn smooth by generations of day-trippers with stout boots and alpenstocks. The roar of the falls is like an afterthought at first, so faint it could be the wind. The path grows steeper, and the air is colder, and Watson has the unshakeable feeling that something is dreadfully wrong.

The falls are around the next bend and the sound dominates every thought. Holmes is uncomfortable with it. His eyelids are clamped down to slits, and his hands run nervously through his messy hair. Travel wearies him, and the stress and uncertainty of the last weeks have spread his resolve very thin.

A cry travels up the path behind them, a sweaty messenger from the hotel in the town. A Mr. Lestrade has left an urgent message for Mr. Sherlock Holmes. If Herr Holmes could return to the hotel? A deep line carves down between Holmes' eyes and he puts his palm against a cold grey boulder as if to steady himself.

"Go," Mycroft says. "I will see you in Rosenlaui tomorrow."

"Be strong, brother," Holmes says. Then he turns his back and hurries away down the path. Watson has his eyes on Mycroft for another few seconds, and he sees the look of happy surprise on his face. It is such an un-Holmes thing to say. But then Mycroft raises his hand to Watson, bidding him farewell, and Watson follows Holmes. It is cooler under the shade of the trees, and the path is dappled in light and shadow. Watson remembers that, the way the trees seem to play with the light.

There is no message, of course, and when they breathlessly arrive back at the last turn of the path before that roaring nothingness, the place where the Earth seems to end, there is only Mycroft's walking stick leaning against a boulder and a note held down by his cigarette case.

Holmes wordlessly passes the pages to Watson, his face empty. The note says in part: It is a simple calculation, my life for his. It does not seem simple to Watson, but he has never considered himself to be exceptionally rational, only brave and romantic and a little stupid.

Holmes lays himself flat against the path and screams himself hoarse, yelling into the nothingness of the rushing water and the sweet ozone smell of the mist. Watson cannot tell what he is saying, if he has any words.

Holmes stands up and wavers for a second, overwhelmed by the rushing susurration of the water and the clear sunlight and the two sets of footprints that end abruptly at the edge of the cliff. Then he puts his head up to the sky and clamps his hands over his ears and screams, an animal sound torn from him by grief and self-reproach. It hurts Watson to hear it.

"I should have known! I should have known!"

How Watson got Holmes down off that path, he will never know. When they arrive back at the Englisher Hof, Holmes is silent, half-supported by Watson, his voice hoarse, his eyes red.

…

They arrive back in London to a hero's welcome. Holmes will hear nothing of his own achievements. He will barely eat, he does nothing but sleep. Watson occupies himself in gently rebuffing the enquiries of Holmes' family and helping Scotland Yard to iron out the last kinks in the case. Holmes emerges from his room once a day if that. Watson is deeply tired, and he finds himself bitterly wishing that he could behave as Holmes does.

Watson yearns for Mycroft's advice.

He takes Holmes back to the family seat. Holmes stays in his old room for days, rattling chemical bottles and rustling papers. Watson sleeps restlessly in a guest room, jolted into insomnia by the unfamiliar surroundings.

One morning Holmes emerges and greets Watson with something more than the cold disregard for everything he has shown in the previous weeks.

"Will I show you the folly, doctor?"

They walk across the fields, wet heat rising from the sun-warmed grass. Holmes starts to chatter about Roman artifacts and something called the Ribchester Helmet, and Watson just listens.

…

Summer. Baker Street is sweltering, and Watson would rather be in the country where there are things like streams to bathe in and cellars to cool beer in. But Holmes insisted on going back to London to immerse himself in investigating a jewel theft. It does not seem like such an interesting case to Watson, rather a sordid and unimaginative one. Watson is attempting to write and not having much luck with it.

Holmes is sitting at the settee, smoking his pipe and worrying away at his beard with a thumb and index finger.

"Perhaps you would be more comfortable if you shaved."

"Hmm?" Holmes looks up, startled.

"Some say it is uncomfortable to have a beard in the summer. You might be more comfortable if you shaved."

"I never learnt," Holmes says absently. "I don't like the way it feels."

Three hours later, after a flurry of telegrams and a great deal of pacing back and forth and shouting, Holmes sits himself on the settee, absently takes a sip from a cup of tea that must be long-cold, and lights his pipe.

"I think that you may be right," he says as if resuming a conversation from minutes ago. "It would be a relief to be rid of this oppressive beard."

So Watson takes out his shaving brush and his razor strop and the basin from his bedroom. He mixes up the lather and applies it to his face, then stands at the mirror in the hall, looking into Holmes' eyes through the mirror.

"You should put hot water on your face first," he says. "It prepares the skin."

He applies the lather, the soapy-clean smell of it strong and comforting in his nostrils, and then he stretches the skin of his neck with his left hand as he shaves with his right. Watson always shaves his neck first, has done so since his father taught him to shave, in much the same way he is teaching Holmes now. Life has a funny way of looping in on itself.

"Make the first pass with the grain," Watson says. "That means as the hair grows."

Watson washes his face and dries it. It is strange, to be shaving now in the mid-afternoon. The smell of the soap is morning-strong against Watson's skin and he feels as if he is slipping back in time. Holmes seems so present, next to him, so tall and white and intense. He can smell Holmes' tobacco, as well, can see the slightly shiny knees of his well-brushed suit.

"Would you like to try?"

"I might cut myself."

"There is a chance of that. Breathe out to keep your hands steady."

Watson strops his razor and hands it to Holmes.

"I'll watch you," he says, his voice carefully casual.

Holmes bends over the basin and sluices water over his face.