The Neck of the Bottle [H/W, R]
Title: The Neck of the Bottle
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes
Pairings: Holmes/Watson
Rating: R
Word Count: 3,226
Summary: Response to prompt #3 “Addiction” @ holmeswatson09
Warnings: Drug use
Disclaimer: I didn't make them up, but I don’t think I’ve been any crueller to them than any ‘reputable’ pastiche writer.
Withdrawal
It has been twelve hours and seventeen minutes since the last injection. It has been eleven hours and eight minutes since Watson’s return from his afternoon rounds and ten hours exactly since he opened the landing window and hurled my syringe out to shatter on the flagstones below. Nine hours and fifty-one minutes since I slammed the door of my bedroom and picked up my violin and eight hours and twenty minutes since I threw the bow at the locked door in response to Watson’s eloquent apology, cracking it clean through the middle.
The polished wood glimmers slightly in the light from the dying fire, its beauty undiminished for being broken, and my traitorous hand itches for it. I can clearly imagine the curved timber fitting perfectly between my thumb and fingers and my left hand, still gripping the neck of the instrument, tightens, fingertips moving through a phantom portamento. My frustration at the enforced silence boils over and I set the violin aside before drawing my fingernails very carefully across the inside of my forearm.
I repeat the motion, curving my neatly trimmed nails into claws and pulling. My soft flesh gives and then tears and the relief stings my eyes and burns hot on my cold skin. I let the tears fall; it is no shame to me in this locked room.
“Holmes,” even in that single whispered syllable, Watson’s concern is evident. I am not yet grateful enough for his intervention nor desperate enough for his presence that I will offer him absolution or
agreement and so I bite my tongue, hard, and with the metallic tang of blood in my mouth I turn my back to the door and let my eyelids fall closed. With the last traces of the drug fleeing my system, sleep comes easily and the soft, insistent knocking fades away.
My dreams are undefined, menacing and full of shadowy figures and cold light. The shadows linger when I open my eyes and I realise after a few frantic moments that my fire has died and that the warm glow of the sitting room lamps no longer spills in around my door. The sky beyond my narrow window is starless, an eerie murk of low clouds that glow with faintly reflected light from the city and both house and street are quiet as the grave.
The hunger gnaws at me; a sort of heat in the pit of my stomach. I know from experience that during the next forty-eight hours it will climb slowly up my spinal cord and settle at the back of my skull,
rising in pitch to a screaming, sobbing desire that echoes through my body like the spell of a Fury. It is then that I will break my silence; first to reason with him, using whatever little logic remains to me to convince him to administer the drug to me. When logic fails,
I will bargain and curse and finally beg and though he will cry with me he will not capitulate.
I know not whether my reaction to withdrawal is typical. Addicts are, by necessity, a secretive breed. It has always seemed to me, though, that it is much like falling into a bottle; one can see the world moving outside but the view is warped and distant, the only clear view being up through the neck. That one clear patch inspires not hope of escape but a deep depression, focussing always on the slippery surface of the glass and not on the method by one which might achieve freedom.
In fact, one would be best pleased to not escape at all but to remain at the bottom of this bottle for all of one’s days, as long as one could continue to travel the unmapped roads of one’s mind that are laid open with each fresh injection.
The drug does not free one from the bottle, you understand; it simply makes the deprivation of liberty easier to bear.
When next I open my eyes it is to the filtered, silvery light that passes for sunshine in London in December. The room is freezing and the seductive smell of tobacco and burning apple-wood are drifting up from the closed door. Watson’s mood has doubtlessly taken a tenebrous turn; on any other morning there would be breakfast on the table and coffee poured but those convivial scents are tellingly absent.
There are few things in this world that can turn John Watson away from his victuals, but I myself am amongst those limited factors. Temper tantrums and drug withdrawal are, of course, not my preferred mien; generally I prefer a more pleasurable pastime to distract him from his board and when I do, I am far too wise to ever voluntarily interrupt his fast-breaking.
This morning it is probably just as well, really, as even the thought of food causes my stomach to twist and contract. Later, that appetite, suppressed as it has been, will return with great vengeance but I am still now craving only the needle.
He doesn’t look up when I enter, but the susurrous scratch of pen and paper halts abruptly and the chink of his nib in the ceramic well is jarring to my overextended senses.
“I’ve thrown it away,” he says casually, as though it is nothing when we both know that it is, indeed, everything.
I take my pipe down from the mantle and begin filling it from the Persian slipper. There are three carefully hollowed volumes lying open by the foot of the bookcase and I turn my eyes deliberately away, cataloguing by habit the unfamiliar disorder of my worktable and drawers. When his voice comes again, it is close and soft; accompanied by the radiant heat of his chest against my back.
“Mrs Hudson cleaned the pantry herself,” he murmurs, taking the pipe from my limp fingers and striking a match.
“And the lumber room?” I ask.
“I found the wicket,” he says by way of an answer, handing me the lit pipe, “doing duty as an airing rail in the oriental robe.”
“I’m not really feeling fit enough for an innings just now, dear fellow,” I retort wearily, folding myself into the window seat and drawing up my knees. He sits beside me, and I tuck my bare toes in under his good thigh.
“Perhaps at the weekend, then,” he offers absently, stroking the chilled skin just above my ankle.
“Perhaps,” I push out between clenched teeth as the hunger strikes me anew.
Recovery
It has been eight hours since Watson lifted his head from my lap, buttoned my flies and shifted onto the opposite bench of our private compartment and seven hours, forty-three minutes since we alighted from the train at a charming little red-roofed station house. Six and one-half hours have passed since we were met at the same station house by a shining black hansom and surly driver in the service of one Mister Fredrick Thurston-Smith of High Crompton.
Mister Thurston-Smith, together with Constable John McMahon introduced us to the former Mrs Johanna Thurston-Smith, and two hours ago the Constable and I clapped her husband in darbies and saw him into the same splendid cab in which Watson and I had recently arrived. Unfortunately, two hours and three minutes ago I came a spectacular cropper into Mrs Thurston-Smith’s ornamental pond and I stand now before the tiny fire in The Fox and Hound Upon-The-High-Crompton-Green’s second-best room with nothing but a red woollen blanket between the good Constable and my own skin. Watson is downstairs with the proprietress attempting to bargain for some vital items from her departed husband’s wardrobe, my own garb now resembling some horrific costume from a children’s pantomime; filthy and tangled with stinking weeds.
“I am sorry, Mr Holmes,” the Constable is saying “if only we’d caught him up at the stables, you and the Doctor’d be on your way home now, dry and safe as houses,” he finishes guiltily.
It was McMahon’s own chapped, clumsy fingers that failed to fasten the darbies correctly the first time, allowing the blackguard to slip out of them and escape; necessitating my pursuit of him through a hedge maze and, ultimately, into the ornamental pond.
It is one of Watson’s particular gifts to always arrive precisely when he is needed, and tonight is no exception; he enters the room without knocking at exactly the right moment to interrupt what would have doubtlessly been a thoughtless and offensive riposte as to the efficacy of law enforcement outside of London. And within London, for that matter.
“I can’t vouch for the currency of fashion, old man,” he says casually, as if I was not completely unclad and making war upon a police officer, “but they are serviceable enough. Now do be a good sport, Holmes, and get dressed so that we may vacate this-”
Watson breaks off his speech and looks at McMahon with surprise, but without apology. I think he had rather expected that the only officer on duty might have other, more important, tasks to perform tonight than watching me undress. Hypocritical of him, really, but I would never presume to tell him so.
“-charming little village and leave the good Constable here to his own business.” He finishes smoothly, tossing me a pair of trousers and setting to work fastening collar and cuffs to the shirt thrown over his arm. The wool is rough against my bare thighs but not altogether unpleasant and the slight flush on Watson’s freckled cheekbones is a convincing reason not to make a fuss.
“Oh, you’ll not be leaving tonight,” McMahon exclaims as I am buttoning my shirt. I keep my back to him and say cheerily
“We wouldn’t want to be a bother to anyone, we’ll just get-”
“You misunderstand me, Mr Holmes,” the Constable insists, “You can’t leave because there ain’t another train until daybreak.”
My heart sinks. I push my cufflinks ruthlessly through the starched shirt, half listening to Watson and McMahon as they discuss railway timetables and where the best breakfast is to be had. The best breakfast, I wish to inform him, is had in London at my own table and is consumed directly after an exquisitely pleasurable petit mort and a hot bath. Watson knows this already, of course, and the Constable will not benefit from our shared knowledge in the slightest so I keep resolutely silent until he is gone.
Watson locks the door, taking care to test the handle before pocketing the key. He takes his watch from his waistcoat and sets it on the mantle, flicking it open quickly as he does so. “Nine hours and fifteen minutes,” he says conversationally, unbuttoning his coat. My own clothes now neatly arranged, I take a seat in one of the overstuffed chairs that flanks the fire.
“My dear fellow,” I exclaim “is it possible that I could have been so careless?” I hold out a hand to him, but he ignores it pointedly until both coat and waistcoat are hung upon a chair back. When he does take my hand I pull him down into my lap, one hand on his hip and the other already searching out his collar buttons.
“How have you fared, Doctor?” I ask politely, dropping his collar to the floor and pulling his shirt from his trousers. “Tell me truly, now.”
“Poorly, my dear Holmes,” he murmurs, tangling a hand in my damp hair “poorly indeed. It is a cruel thing,” he adds, shifting to straddle my thighs “to leave a fellow in such a fix as you did this morning and then put yourself on display before the fire like Greek statuary, right under the eyes of a policeman.”
“Heartless,” I agree against the skin of his throat, “what an utter cad I am, Watson, to have left you wanting for so long.” I push the shirt from his shoulders and moved my lips to his collarbone “How can I begin to make amends for my trespass?”
He thrusts his hips downwards against me and when we are pressed together tightly and his swollen flesh is burning me through the layers of wool he gasps and then a throaty chuckle tickles my lips; his laughing words rumbling from deep in his chest.
“I’m sure you’ll think of something, Holmes, you are a genius after all.” My laugh becomes a groan when his eyes darken and the humour falls from his face to reveal something very like desperation as he bends to kiss my lips.
When we climb into our carriage the next morning our only witnesses are birds and a rather somnolent badger dozing in the heather by the side of the tracks. My borrowed suit, having been cast quite carelessly upon the floor the previous evening , is crumpled and my skin smells of lye soap from a rather hasty and heartless scrubbing to remove the sour scent of algae but I am glad to be going home and gladder still to be shut up with Watson in a private compartment for the next hour at least.
Once the conductor is on his way and the door is locked, I pull the blinds and ostentatiously flip my watch from my pocket.
“Seven hours and thirty-three minutes, old chap,” I declare, re-seating myself opposite Watson. He glances up at me with a bland expression but after a moment’s thought folds his paper and puts it aside, slipping from his seat and coming to rest before me with his broad hands on my knees, eyes wicked and hungry and very blue.
Relapse
It has been nine months and three days since my encounter with Professor Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls. Eight months and fourteen days ago I received a telegram from my brother Mycroft advising me that no trace could be found of Colonel Moran, and that if I ever hoped to return to London I should ‘get a move on’ and find him. One month ago yesterday I arrived in Zagreb to accept an appointment in the name of Felix Gruber to the University’s School of Philosophy as a research chemist.
Twenty-three days ago I met an Englishman with burnished hair and blue eyes in a street café and followed him back to his hotel room. When he took my cock into his (admittedly gifted) mouth I bit clean through my lip to keep the whispered John from rolling off my tongue. Twenty-two days ago I walked from the suite without waking him and straight into an apoteka, purchasing a syringe and a bottle of Cocaine solution.
The laboratory is housed high within the School of Philosophy, and were I of a mind I could look out over the University grounds and toward the city centre, bustling and brightly despite the late hour. Tonight, though, I have no desire for crowds or lights or shining snow; I desire only quiet and darkness and, much to my shame, the needle. It has occupied my thoughts more or less constantly since that first dose, administered with shaking fingers by the open window of my rented garret.
Before that afternoon there were many things I desired; deeply worn wants I had carried under my skin right across the continent and back. I wanted safety; I wanted respite; I wanted my old pipe and my violin and my brother and strongly brewed Darjeeling but most of all I wanted John Watson.
After all those long empty months I still slept on one side of the bed with my arm thrown out where another body should lie and I still dreamed of his skin under my hands and woke, gasping, with his name on my lips. For every morning that began in aching pleasure and slick skin I felt myself slip further and further down the sheer walls of my addict’s bottle until one day there was nothing but the Cocaine remaining to keep me from madness.
Craving the drug is simple. I desire it, and it is there.
Days slip into months and shortly it is spring again. The statues that line the streets and plazas shine in the pale sunlight and the paved streets rush with melting snow. When the University closes its classrooms at the onset of summer I switch my Cocaine for Morphine and spend long drowsy days on the rocky shore of a seaside town. By night I play my fiddle in a dance hall, and in the early mornings I keep company with the young artists and musicians that gather at the pier to swim in the freezing water. The stars are bright and wild and the sky is deepest blue and for the first time I do not wish for fog.
I do not return to Zagreb when the leaves begin to fall. I follow a cellist with fine, pale skin and flaming hair to Amsterdam where I put down my fiddle and take up a paintbrush. I paint portraits for tourists and indulgent impressionist pieces full of light and colour; blues and golds and earthy browns that remind me of the taste of tea and Indian tobacco, and of the lingering scent of lye soap.
The cellist smokes Opium; he says he prefers the sweet languor of it to the dizzy whirl of a Morphine needle. One frigid night in July he does not return to our rooms and when finally I rouse myself to seek him in the darkened, red walled den above the river street he is already pale and cold.
For two weeks and three days I lie sick and shivering in my locked room. The black downswing into hopelessness and desperation that are a mark of all fruit of the poppy consume me and I sink, unresisting, deep into a sucking mire of fear and evil dreams.
Two weeks, four days and some uncounted hours after my last dose of Morphine I rise early and pack what little I own into a shabby valise. A single unsold canvas remains in the corner of the room and I remove it from the frame, folding it carefully into a waterproof wrapping and tucking it into my bag between layers of patched and faded clothing. The glimmer of blue and gold lingers in my vision long after the canvas is hidden away.
Winter has melted away while I was lost, and I realise with a shock when I am booking my steamer passage that a year has passed since my death. I thank the clerk somewhat dazedly and take my ticket, heading for the docks.
We leave with the evening tide, when the sun is a dazzling red gold upon the endless deep blue waves. The cabin boy brings my tea and I thank him in stilted English, my tongue twisted and awkward after months of Dutch, Portuguese, Croatian, German and French.
When the sun is gone we are beset by a thick fog and I think longingly of brandy and of the bearskin rug. I think of my brother, closeted in his office at Whitehall, waiting for my wires. I think of Moriarty and Moran and of my own self; once again clear-headed and strong.
I think of my addict’s bottle, and how I might manage to stopper it once and for good. I think of broad calloused hands and wicked eyes and John Watson, and the hunger begins to fade.
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes
Pairings: Holmes/Watson
Rating: R
Word Count: 3,226
Summary: Response to prompt #3 “Addiction” @ holmeswatson09
Warnings: Drug use
Disclaimer: I didn't make them up, but I don’t think I’ve been any crueller to them than any ‘reputable’ pastiche writer.
Withdrawal
It has been twelve hours and seventeen minutes since the last injection. It has been eleven hours and eight minutes since Watson’s return from his afternoon rounds and ten hours exactly since he opened the landing window and hurled my syringe out to shatter on the flagstones below. Nine hours and fifty-one minutes since I slammed the door of my bedroom and picked up my violin and eight hours and twenty minutes since I threw the bow at the locked door in response to Watson’s eloquent apology, cracking it clean through the middle.
The polished wood glimmers slightly in the light from the dying fire, its beauty undiminished for being broken, and my traitorous hand itches for it. I can clearly imagine the curved timber fitting perfectly between my thumb and fingers and my left hand, still gripping the neck of the instrument, tightens, fingertips moving through a phantom portamento. My frustration at the enforced silence boils over and I set the violin aside before drawing my fingernails very carefully across the inside of my forearm.
I repeat the motion, curving my neatly trimmed nails into claws and pulling. My soft flesh gives and then tears and the relief stings my eyes and burns hot on my cold skin. I let the tears fall; it is no shame to me in this locked room.
“Holmes,” even in that single whispered syllable, Watson’s concern is evident. I am not yet grateful enough for his intervention nor desperate enough for his presence that I will offer him absolution or
agreement and so I bite my tongue, hard, and with the metallic tang of blood in my mouth I turn my back to the door and let my eyelids fall closed. With the last traces of the drug fleeing my system, sleep comes easily and the soft, insistent knocking fades away.
My dreams are undefined, menacing and full of shadowy figures and cold light. The shadows linger when I open my eyes and I realise after a few frantic moments that my fire has died and that the warm glow of the sitting room lamps no longer spills in around my door. The sky beyond my narrow window is starless, an eerie murk of low clouds that glow with faintly reflected light from the city and both house and street are quiet as the grave.
The hunger gnaws at me; a sort of heat in the pit of my stomach. I know from experience that during the next forty-eight hours it will climb slowly up my spinal cord and settle at the back of my skull,
rising in pitch to a screaming, sobbing desire that echoes through my body like the spell of a Fury. It is then that I will break my silence; first to reason with him, using whatever little logic remains to me to convince him to administer the drug to me. When logic fails,
I will bargain and curse and finally beg and though he will cry with me he will not capitulate.
I know not whether my reaction to withdrawal is typical. Addicts are, by necessity, a secretive breed. It has always seemed to me, though, that it is much like falling into a bottle; one can see the world moving outside but the view is warped and distant, the only clear view being up through the neck. That one clear patch inspires not hope of escape but a deep depression, focussing always on the slippery surface of the glass and not on the method by one which might achieve freedom.
In fact, one would be best pleased to not escape at all but to remain at the bottom of this bottle for all of one’s days, as long as one could continue to travel the unmapped roads of one’s mind that are laid open with each fresh injection.
The drug does not free one from the bottle, you understand; it simply makes the deprivation of liberty easier to bear.
When next I open my eyes it is to the filtered, silvery light that passes for sunshine in London in December. The room is freezing and the seductive smell of tobacco and burning apple-wood are drifting up from the closed door. Watson’s mood has doubtlessly taken a tenebrous turn; on any other morning there would be breakfast on the table and coffee poured but those convivial scents are tellingly absent.
There are few things in this world that can turn John Watson away from his victuals, but I myself am amongst those limited factors. Temper tantrums and drug withdrawal are, of course, not my preferred mien; generally I prefer a more pleasurable pastime to distract him from his board and when I do, I am far too wise to ever voluntarily interrupt his fast-breaking.
This morning it is probably just as well, really, as even the thought of food causes my stomach to twist and contract. Later, that appetite, suppressed as it has been, will return with great vengeance but I am still now craving only the needle.
He doesn’t look up when I enter, but the susurrous scratch of pen and paper halts abruptly and the chink of his nib in the ceramic well is jarring to my overextended senses.
“I’ve thrown it away,” he says casually, as though it is nothing when we both know that it is, indeed, everything.
I take my pipe down from the mantle and begin filling it from the Persian slipper. There are three carefully hollowed volumes lying open by the foot of the bookcase and I turn my eyes deliberately away, cataloguing by habit the unfamiliar disorder of my worktable and drawers. When his voice comes again, it is close and soft; accompanied by the radiant heat of his chest against my back.
“Mrs Hudson cleaned the pantry herself,” he murmurs, taking the pipe from my limp fingers and striking a match.
“And the lumber room?” I ask.
“I found the wicket,” he says by way of an answer, handing me the lit pipe, “doing duty as an airing rail in the oriental robe.”
“I’m not really feeling fit enough for an innings just now, dear fellow,” I retort wearily, folding myself into the window seat and drawing up my knees. He sits beside me, and I tuck my bare toes in under his good thigh.
“Perhaps at the weekend, then,” he offers absently, stroking the chilled skin just above my ankle.
“Perhaps,” I push out between clenched teeth as the hunger strikes me anew.
Recovery
It has been eight hours since Watson lifted his head from my lap, buttoned my flies and shifted onto the opposite bench of our private compartment and seven hours, forty-three minutes since we alighted from the train at a charming little red-roofed station house. Six and one-half hours have passed since we were met at the same station house by a shining black hansom and surly driver in the service of one Mister Fredrick Thurston-Smith of High Crompton.
Mister Thurston-Smith, together with Constable John McMahon introduced us to the former Mrs Johanna Thurston-Smith, and two hours ago the Constable and I clapped her husband in darbies and saw him into the same splendid cab in which Watson and I had recently arrived. Unfortunately, two hours and three minutes ago I came a spectacular cropper into Mrs Thurston-Smith’s ornamental pond and I stand now before the tiny fire in The Fox and Hound Upon-The-High-Crompton-Green’s second-best room with nothing but a red woollen blanket between the good Constable and my own skin. Watson is downstairs with the proprietress attempting to bargain for some vital items from her departed husband’s wardrobe, my own garb now resembling some horrific costume from a children’s pantomime; filthy and tangled with stinking weeds.
“I am sorry, Mr Holmes,” the Constable is saying “if only we’d caught him up at the stables, you and the Doctor’d be on your way home now, dry and safe as houses,” he finishes guiltily.
It was McMahon’s own chapped, clumsy fingers that failed to fasten the darbies correctly the first time, allowing the blackguard to slip out of them and escape; necessitating my pursuit of him through a hedge maze and, ultimately, into the ornamental pond.
It is one of Watson’s particular gifts to always arrive precisely when he is needed, and tonight is no exception; he enters the room without knocking at exactly the right moment to interrupt what would have doubtlessly been a thoughtless and offensive riposte as to the efficacy of law enforcement outside of London. And within London, for that matter.
“I can’t vouch for the currency of fashion, old man,” he says casually, as if I was not completely unclad and making war upon a police officer, “but they are serviceable enough. Now do be a good sport, Holmes, and get dressed so that we may vacate this-”
Watson breaks off his speech and looks at McMahon with surprise, but without apology. I think he had rather expected that the only officer on duty might have other, more important, tasks to perform tonight than watching me undress. Hypocritical of him, really, but I would never presume to tell him so.
“-charming little village and leave the good Constable here to his own business.” He finishes smoothly, tossing me a pair of trousers and setting to work fastening collar and cuffs to the shirt thrown over his arm. The wool is rough against my bare thighs but not altogether unpleasant and the slight flush on Watson’s freckled cheekbones is a convincing reason not to make a fuss.
“Oh, you’ll not be leaving tonight,” McMahon exclaims as I am buttoning my shirt. I keep my back to him and say cheerily
“We wouldn’t want to be a bother to anyone, we’ll just get-”
“You misunderstand me, Mr Holmes,” the Constable insists, “You can’t leave because there ain’t another train until daybreak.”
My heart sinks. I push my cufflinks ruthlessly through the starched shirt, half listening to Watson and McMahon as they discuss railway timetables and where the best breakfast is to be had. The best breakfast, I wish to inform him, is had in London at my own table and is consumed directly after an exquisitely pleasurable petit mort and a hot bath. Watson knows this already, of course, and the Constable will not benefit from our shared knowledge in the slightest so I keep resolutely silent until he is gone.
Watson locks the door, taking care to test the handle before pocketing the key. He takes his watch from his waistcoat and sets it on the mantle, flicking it open quickly as he does so. “Nine hours and fifteen minutes,” he says conversationally, unbuttoning his coat. My own clothes now neatly arranged, I take a seat in one of the overstuffed chairs that flanks the fire.
“My dear fellow,” I exclaim “is it possible that I could have been so careless?” I hold out a hand to him, but he ignores it pointedly until both coat and waistcoat are hung upon a chair back. When he does take my hand I pull him down into my lap, one hand on his hip and the other already searching out his collar buttons.
“How have you fared, Doctor?” I ask politely, dropping his collar to the floor and pulling his shirt from his trousers. “Tell me truly, now.”
“Poorly, my dear Holmes,” he murmurs, tangling a hand in my damp hair “poorly indeed. It is a cruel thing,” he adds, shifting to straddle my thighs “to leave a fellow in such a fix as you did this morning and then put yourself on display before the fire like Greek statuary, right under the eyes of a policeman.”
“Heartless,” I agree against the skin of his throat, “what an utter cad I am, Watson, to have left you wanting for so long.” I push the shirt from his shoulders and moved my lips to his collarbone “How can I begin to make amends for my trespass?”
He thrusts his hips downwards against me and when we are pressed together tightly and his swollen flesh is burning me through the layers of wool he gasps and then a throaty chuckle tickles my lips; his laughing words rumbling from deep in his chest.
“I’m sure you’ll think of something, Holmes, you are a genius after all.” My laugh becomes a groan when his eyes darken and the humour falls from his face to reveal something very like desperation as he bends to kiss my lips.
When we climb into our carriage the next morning our only witnesses are birds and a rather somnolent badger dozing in the heather by the side of the tracks. My borrowed suit, having been cast quite carelessly upon the floor the previous evening , is crumpled and my skin smells of lye soap from a rather hasty and heartless scrubbing to remove the sour scent of algae but I am glad to be going home and gladder still to be shut up with Watson in a private compartment for the next hour at least.
Once the conductor is on his way and the door is locked, I pull the blinds and ostentatiously flip my watch from my pocket.
“Seven hours and thirty-three minutes, old chap,” I declare, re-seating myself opposite Watson. He glances up at me with a bland expression but after a moment’s thought folds his paper and puts it aside, slipping from his seat and coming to rest before me with his broad hands on my knees, eyes wicked and hungry and very blue.
Relapse
It has been nine months and three days since my encounter with Professor Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls. Eight months and fourteen days ago I received a telegram from my brother Mycroft advising me that no trace could be found of Colonel Moran, and that if I ever hoped to return to London I should ‘get a move on’ and find him. One month ago yesterday I arrived in Zagreb to accept an appointment in the name of Felix Gruber to the University’s School of Philosophy as a research chemist.
Twenty-three days ago I met an Englishman with burnished hair and blue eyes in a street café and followed him back to his hotel room. When he took my cock into his (admittedly gifted) mouth I bit clean through my lip to keep the whispered John from rolling off my tongue. Twenty-two days ago I walked from the suite without waking him and straight into an apoteka, purchasing a syringe and a bottle of Cocaine solution.
The laboratory is housed high within the School of Philosophy, and were I of a mind I could look out over the University grounds and toward the city centre, bustling and brightly despite the late hour. Tonight, though, I have no desire for crowds or lights or shining snow; I desire only quiet and darkness and, much to my shame, the needle. It has occupied my thoughts more or less constantly since that first dose, administered with shaking fingers by the open window of my rented garret.
Before that afternoon there were many things I desired; deeply worn wants I had carried under my skin right across the continent and back. I wanted safety; I wanted respite; I wanted my old pipe and my violin and my brother and strongly brewed Darjeeling but most of all I wanted John Watson.
After all those long empty months I still slept on one side of the bed with my arm thrown out where another body should lie and I still dreamed of his skin under my hands and woke, gasping, with his name on my lips. For every morning that began in aching pleasure and slick skin I felt myself slip further and further down the sheer walls of my addict’s bottle until one day there was nothing but the Cocaine remaining to keep me from madness.
Craving the drug is simple. I desire it, and it is there.
Days slip into months and shortly it is spring again. The statues that line the streets and plazas shine in the pale sunlight and the paved streets rush with melting snow. When the University closes its classrooms at the onset of summer I switch my Cocaine for Morphine and spend long drowsy days on the rocky shore of a seaside town. By night I play my fiddle in a dance hall, and in the early mornings I keep company with the young artists and musicians that gather at the pier to swim in the freezing water. The stars are bright and wild and the sky is deepest blue and for the first time I do not wish for fog.
I do not return to Zagreb when the leaves begin to fall. I follow a cellist with fine, pale skin and flaming hair to Amsterdam where I put down my fiddle and take up a paintbrush. I paint portraits for tourists and indulgent impressionist pieces full of light and colour; blues and golds and earthy browns that remind me of the taste of tea and Indian tobacco, and of the lingering scent of lye soap.
The cellist smokes Opium; he says he prefers the sweet languor of it to the dizzy whirl of a Morphine needle. One frigid night in July he does not return to our rooms and when finally I rouse myself to seek him in the darkened, red walled den above the river street he is already pale and cold.
For two weeks and three days I lie sick and shivering in my locked room. The black downswing into hopelessness and desperation that are a mark of all fruit of the poppy consume me and I sink, unresisting, deep into a sucking mire of fear and evil dreams.
Two weeks, four days and some uncounted hours after my last dose of Morphine I rise early and pack what little I own into a shabby valise. A single unsold canvas remains in the corner of the room and I remove it from the frame, folding it carefully into a waterproof wrapping and tucking it into my bag between layers of patched and faded clothing. The glimmer of blue and gold lingers in my vision long after the canvas is hidden away.
Winter has melted away while I was lost, and I realise with a shock when I am booking my steamer passage that a year has passed since my death. I thank the clerk somewhat dazedly and take my ticket, heading for the docks.
We leave with the evening tide, when the sun is a dazzling red gold upon the endless deep blue waves. The cabin boy brings my tea and I thank him in stilted English, my tongue twisted and awkward after months of Dutch, Portuguese, Croatian, German and French.
When the sun is gone we are beset by a thick fog and I think longingly of brandy and of the bearskin rug. I think of my brother, closeted in his office at Whitehall, waiting for my wires. I think of Moriarty and Moran and of my own self; once again clear-headed and strong.
I think of my addict’s bottle, and how I might manage to stopper it once and for good. I think of broad calloused hands and wicked eyes and John Watson, and the hunger begins to fade.