Then Fall, Caesar (IDES OF MARCH!!!)
title: Then Fall, Caesar
fandom: Sherlock Holmes
Pairing: Holmes/Watson
rating: R
warnings: sexual content, description of injury, Shakespeare nerdiness
words: 5,890
summary: "A soothsayer bids you beware the Ides of March." When Holmes gets an idea in his head that he won't give up, there is only way around it, and that is, of course, for Watson to assume the role of a historic Roman general in a most ridiculous investigation on a most significant day.
author's note: IT'S THE IDES OF MARCH, GUYS!!! I love Julius Caesar, the play by William Shakespeare, and now is the Ides of March. This is, in a way, a tribute to that fabulous play, and to the fabulous Cassius and Brutus, as well as a day that makes me smile every time it rolls around.
paperclipbitch, taconaco and avalonauggie give me so much encouragement, and it's just FABULOUS! Thanks, dears.
It is not every day that Holmes accepts cases of such simplicity, especially not when his intelligence is practically begged of him by Lestrade himself, come straightaway from, as he says with a shudder that I know Holmes will mock later, “the ghastly scene.”
Holmes, taking this physical slip-up as a sign of weakness, feels all the more powerful for it; he leans back in his chair and extricates his pipe and tobacco tin from his jacket pocket, making it clear that he plans to stay just where he is. But something soon draws him upright again, some thought that he does not reveal immediately, his pipe inches from his lips.
“Watson? I pray you,” he inquires instead. “What’s today?”
“Why, it is March the fifteenth,” I reply unflappably, for it has been a very long time since I’ve felt even remotely surprised with how easily Holmes manages to lose track of days.
“Is it?”
“Yes.” I bristles ever so slightly at his doubt. “I am sure of it.”
“What’s the address?” Holmes says, closing his loose grasp on his pipe into a fist and springing out of his chair. He is out on the street and hailing a hansom without another word, without even waiting to hear the answer. Fortunately, Lestrade tells me the address instead, and I join Holmes moments later, both my jacket and his forgotten one draped over my arm. We set off together, leaving the inspector to his own devices.
“Most remarkable,” Holmes crows, nudging my arm excitedly with his elbow. “Such a remarkable coincidence!”
“Your being called upon by the Yard?” I respond dryly. “Yes, most remarkable. I’ve never seen that happen before.”
“Watson, you have no idea what this even is,” he scolds, jabbing again with his elbow. “The fifteenth of march... do you know what this means?”
“It means,” I enlighten him, “that since it is past noon, and since March has thirty-one days, you have wasted away exactly half of them, idling in our rooms.”
“Beware the Ides of March,” he recites, sounding very pleased with himself despite the foreboding warning. “It was on this day the great Caesar was felled by his most-trusted companions. How such an important date has escaped you, I can’t quite bring myself to comprehend.”
“Need I remind you, it very nearly escaped you as well,” I tell him, gently, though not without a hint of provocation. “If not for me, I’m afraid you would not know what day it was at all.”
“Hush,” Holmes says dismissively, fixing his gaze ahead. I shove him back with my own elbow, but he doesn’t respond, aside from his lips twitching, possibly involuntarily, into a very small, very restrained smile.
The victim, as Lestrade had informed us back at Baker Street, suffers from multiple stab wounds, and is found in an alley off Fleet Street. The Yarders standing guard reluctantly step aside for Holmes, who does not so much as acknowledge them. I tip my hat at them in his stead, as an apology for the aloof nature that I’d be lying if I said he only assumes when he is distracted by a crime scene.
“It matters not what day it is,” Holmes announces out of the blue as he scans they alley, looking seemingly everywhere but the corpse. From his forceful tone, it can be assumed that he is talking to the Yarders, though the way that he keeps his back turned, and the very slight cock of his head in anticipation of a response, makes it clear that he is speaking directly to me. “Criminals of London will never rest.”
I choose to ignore him, focusing instead on the task at hand. “This man has been dead for five hours, possibly six.”
“And was he the emperor of Rome?” Holmes quips.
“That, you can deduce for yourself,” I say, and continue with my own investigations, for it seems that Holmes does not plan on being any help. “However, he did not die here. He was killed elsewhere and brought to this alley sometime later.”
“When you are finished stating the obvious, would you be so kind as to assist me with something?”
As if I wasn’t already assisting him, I swallow any intention of actually shedding light on such an obvious verity. As I begin the awkward process of manipulating my wounded leg to let me stand back up, Holmes holds up a hand to stop me.
“Just there is fine,” he says, “no need to get up.”
“Very well.” I yield, secretly rather happy about this new arrangement, and try then to be as subtle as humanly possible as I rub the heel of my hand down the muscles of my thigh.
I am considerably less happy once Holmes makes his actual request:
“If you would be so kind as to simply insert your hand into the victim’s abdominal wound for me, that would be most helpful-”
“Holmes!”
“Watson!” he counters, completely scandalized, which is typical when he makes irrational and completely insufferable requests. “You are a doctor, are you not?”
“If you would like to tamper with the... with the victim, then be my guest,” I say, “but do it yourself. I will have no part in this.”
“Tampering with the victim... why that is a most preposterous assumption. This is nothing of the kind,” he assures me, although he continues to maintain that damnable distance he has assumed from the corpse, leaning back against the alley wall. “This, my dear doctor, is retrieval of evidence.”
Since we are actually on a case, rather than in a situation where I try, and fail, to maintain normalcy in one of the many social situation that I am prone to finding myself in, and since Holmes is talking about something that sounds like it just might be relevant to said case, I cannot actually argue.
“That bulge in his ribcage,” Holmes waves his hand vaguely towards what is indeed an abnormal shape protruding from the man’s chest. “I want to know what it is.”
So it comes to pass that, for the first time, Holmes manages to ruin a shirt of mine that he has not, at that time, stolen from me. For some reason, possibly the fact that I choose to dwell on such a detail, it does not occur to me to unbutton and roll up my sleeve before plunging my right arm, slowly and hesitantly, into the gaping hole in the victim’s abdomen.
I swallow any and every thought and feeling that pushing my hand through the innards of a corpse might stir within me, swallow hard. I keep my mouth shut tight and breathe through my nose until my fingers come in contact with something hard that isn’t a rib at all. I draw a quick breath of surprise in through my lips, and then close my fingers around the object.
It slips out with very little resistance, a knife, completely covered in the victim’s congealed blood.
Holmes finally decides to approach the corpse then, his face alight with a disturbing sort of excitement. “Is that a dagger that I see before me?” he bellows with much theatrical grandeur and waving about of his arms. Not nearly as amused as he is, I extend my arm fully, craning my neck away from both the bloody weapon and Holmes’ flailing arms, making clear that I intend on having no further part in this nonsense.
“What is it about today and William Shakespeare?” I ask, already weary of what I know will, as long as Holmes has anything to do with it, which at that point I was surely convinced he does, be another long and trying day.
“The Ides of March are come,” Holmes states, rather predictably as he plucks the knife out of my now equally bloody hand.
“Aye, Caesar,” I sigh, giving up my resistance, “but not gone.”
It must thrill him, my reluctant but inevitable surrender to his whims. He is not surprised, because hardly anything surprises him, though lord knows I still try to. But he is pleased, and it shows, the way his eyes crinkle at the corners with a smile that doesn’t show anywhere else, the quick nod he sends in my general direction, and the way that he pays me no more discernible attention until we are safe in a hansom and on the way to the address of the knife maker, which Holmes reveals after wiping away some blood with the sleeve of the shirt that he is wearing, which is also mine..
And so it comes to pass that Holmes manages also to ruin a pair of my pants, for I have no handkerchief to wipe my hand clean with. I mark the right leg of my pants with a bloody handprint as I brace myself and stand up, for Holmes is already striding purposefully out of the alley and waving at a passing hansom. He is proud, he is happy, and he is still obviously thrilled about this case falling on this particular day, for he continues to ramble on, without fail, about that damn Roman Emperor.
“Caesar himself wrote the soothsayer off as a dreamer,” he says, “took no heed of his prediction. Which, of course, was a very poor decision indeed, since it saw him run through with knives and perhaps even dumped in an alley not unlike the very one we have just inspected.”
“Caesar,” I say, “was not dumped in an alley.”
Holmes has no response to this, just shrugs and stares straight ahead, pretending to be distracted by the scenery, though I know that so much more is going on inside his head.
“I don’t want to hear about Caesar any longer,” I tell him, futilely, “I’m tired of metaphors.”
“Does it not make you think, Watson? Something enormous could be afoot, and you are so unaffected as to dismiss it on the basis of your being ‘tired of metaphors’?”
He expects me to explain, I know this, but metaphors aren’t the only thing that I’ve grown weary of. “Yes,” I tell him instead.
This throws him, or at least he acts like it does, and he splutters and stammers and puts on a very convincing show of how baffled and ashamed he is with my lack of curiosity.
I suppose that he soon tires of my lack of response, so he finally drops the bloody subject. “Lovely weather,” he remarks, and it is, for once. There is an uncharacteristically blinding sun in the sky and the air is clear, unblemished by clouds or mist.
“It is quite a day,” I agree.
“...for a murder.”
“Holmes!”
“The Ides of March, Watson!” He protests, “The Ides of March.”
“I am aware of the date,” I snap. “I don’t want to hear another word about the bloody ides of March!”
Unfortunately, it does not matter what I want, and Holmes continues on about Caesar for the rest of the carriage ride. I suspect that he does it to spite me, and so I spite him right back and don’t say a single thing, because I know how much it frustrates him when his deliberately baited hooks return untouched.
Our visit with the knife seller proves most fulfilling, providing us with both the names and addresses of the last three men who had purchased that particular model of knife. I am convinced that it is because of my blood-soaked sleeve and hand that he was so willing to comply.
We proceed then to the address of the most recent buyer, for Holmes, after careful examination of the weapon, is able to deduce that, aside from slashing up the unfortunate victim, it has hardly been used at all. He spends our trip to the knife buyer’s home coming to this conclusion, examining the blade, which is now sticky as the blood is drying. As grateful as I am for his distraction, I must also admit that all his talk on the subject of the Ides of March makes it so that I can scarcely think of anything else.
When we reach the entrance to a large brownstone not unlike our own home in Baker Street, Holmes announces to me, “I would like for you to knock on the door.” It is a much simpler request than his previous one, and I do not protest, rapping my knuckles against the door.
“Again,” Holmes says, and I abide, knocking a few more times afterwards when it is clear, from the silence inside the house, that no one is within. “Come, then,” he says, turning around and walking back down the stairs.
I do not move. “Where are we going?”
“Quick walk around the block,” he says, his voice hushed as he pulls me down the stairs with no regard for the fact that I nearly trip and fall as he knocks me off balance. Around the block we go. Holmes stops to peer into various windows, be they shops or places of residence. I maintain a reasonable distance from him, lest it appear that I am somehow part of his voyeurism.
“There was never any proper investigation done on Caesar’s murder,” he says. “Did you know that?”
“Of course not,” I say. “You weren’t alive yet.”
He frowns at me. “What I mean to say, if you would be so kind as to actually listen to me, is that everybody knew who had killed Caesar; there was no mystery, for he was killed in public.” He pauses, considering for a moment. “At least, there was no obvious mystery.”
“And are you perhaps wondering what it was?”
“Not in the least.”
“No? Pity,” I say, not even trying to sound interested. What does interest me, however, is that our walk around the block leads us right back to the home of the knife buyer, as roundabout walking patterns so often tend to do. The interesting part of this is that Holmes walks right back up the steps to the front door from which we had just come, and knocks.
He motions for me to join him at his side. I linger on the sidewalk, reluctant, for my leg is aching so that I would rather not subject it to any more steps than are necessary (and steps leading up to a home that has just been proven empty are quite unnecessary indeed).
“Come on,” Holmes barks, and since I cannot possibly imagine what is the reason by the sudden urgency I hear in his voice, I ascend the stairs. No sooner do I reach his side does the front door open, revealing a young maid no older than fourteen, who opens the door just enough to so that we can see her pale, trembling face.
“Beggin’ your pardon, gentlemen,” she says, stammering to catch her breath when I notice that she has caught sight of my hand, still covered in blood. “Ma-master Norton is not in at the moment.”
“Norton, is it?” Holmes says, and I turn from the horrified looking girl to see that my companion is now smiling charmingly at her. “We’ll only just be a moment, won’t we Watson?”
“Indeed,” I say, following the lead that he has subtly, although inevitably, taken. I turn back to the girl and smile in a way that would have been quite charming, had my hand not been stained red.
The girl’s eyes keep darting from Holmes to myself, and she chews her lip for a moment before blurting out, all in a rush, “I’m afraid you are going to have to come back later.”
The next moment happens very quickly. The maid decides, terrified, to slam the door in our faces. Holmes, unsurprisingly, expects it, and jams the bloody knife in the doorway before its too late. The maid is screaming as he pushes the door open. “Like I said,” he says casually, “we will only be a moment.”
I am torn between running up yet another flight of stairs, and staying back to try and calm the girl. Her screaming will not make this any easier. The mystery, though, eventually catches up with me. Just minutes earlier, whoever was here had pretended not to be, for what is bound to be an intriguing reason. Rather than miss a detail, and because Holmes has a knife and it is the Ides of March and I have no idea what will result, I ignore the maid and take the stairs two at a time.
Though Holmes’ back is to me when I follow him into the sitting room, I know that he is smiling; I can hear it in his voice: “Master Norton, is it?”
The man in question is standing in the center of the room, legs apart, knees slightly bent. I bend my own knees in anticipation of having to chase him, for he has a look of poorly disguised fear pulled tight across his otherwise youthful and attractive face.
“Who are you?” he says harshly. “What are you doing in my house?”
With a snort of a laugh, Holmes raises the knife and points it at Norton. “Come, now. Don’t insult me.”
Norton’s face twists thoughtfully. He looks at Holmes, then looks at me, then looks at the window, and lets all his breath out in a loud, miserable sigh. “Oh, bugger.”
I tackle him to the floor with relative ease, for he takes off running in my general direction. Holmes lunges after him, all the while waving that damnable knife, and I have to fight him off on top of keeping Norton pinned to the ground.
“Trying to escape?” Holmes crows, as I shove him, hard, with my elbow, the only appendage I am free to move at the time.
“Go and fetch the police. I have him pinned,” I command. “Go!”
“I will do no such thing,” says Holmes, leaning over me and pointing with the knife.
“Holmes, I have him.”
“I will not leave this room,” he proclaims, stubborn as ever I have known him to be. Thankfully, he falls back, standing still, though slightly looming over me. I am undisturbed, though; actually, I find myself rather grateful that he has stopped trying to attack Norton.
However, in that he does nothing to help what is clearly sapping my energy, I find myself growing increasingly exasperated, frustration growing with my exhaustion. “What will you have me do?”
“Please, let me go!” Norton moans, his strength fading beneath my body weight pressing him into the floor.
Holmes kicks him with the tip of his left foot. “Quiet, you.”
“You don’t understand,” he screams. “Please, I can explain. You must let me go, please!”
“You won’t be able to convince him, I’m afraid,” I tell him, almost pitying his effort. After all, he does not know Holmes, and therefore doesn’t know how futile any attempt at rationality is with him.
It was rather fortunate that I had not stayed back to calm the maid, for it is her screaming brings two officers running in soon after. They have Norton cuffed and ready to be taken away when Holmes calls them to a halt.
“A moment, officers! I have but one question for our man, here.”
I push myself up from the ground and raise a hand in warning. “Holmes, he is being taken into custody. There is no need.”
“Quiet,” he says, completely focused on Norton. “I would just like to know one thing.”
Norton glares at the carpet. “Why I did it? Is that it?”
“No, no, that’s quite amusing of you to think so. What I want to know...” he says, “I want to know who it was you played.”
“Played?”
“You know exactly what I am talking about,” says Holmes. “Who did you play?”
Finally, it hits Norton that he is not long for this earth, and indulges in what may be his very last chance at both personal and professional pride. He lifts his head up and looks directly at Holmes. “Cassius,” he says. With a nod of Holmes’ head, the guards take their leave and bring Norton to meet his fate.
“I dare say the great Julius Caesar was not killed with a cheese knife,” Holmes calls after him in a bemused fashion, turning to me and shaking his head gravely. “Amateur.”
“So,” I say from the armchair I had taken to once I no longer had to manhandle the criminal, “why was I not invited to see Julius Caesar?”
Holmes’ eyebrows go up, his forehead crinkling. “Beg pardon?”
“You hate going to the theatre alone, as I well know,” I remind him, “and yet you saw our fellow’s show without me.”
“Not at all, my dear,” he says in that condescending tone of his that makes me feel incredibly stupid.
“Then how...?” I ask reluctantly, for I do believe that I already know exactly what Holmes’ answer will be.
“I know that you have grown rather fatigued of my telling you this, but today is, after all...”
“The Ides of March,” I interject, hurrying him to his point.
“So of course he is an actor,” he concludes. “He has no books on his shelves, no art of any significant quality on his walls. Were he not an actor, he would have never read Julius Caesar, and why else, on such a day as this, would anyone else but a man of the theatre commit such a murder in the first place? Where would he even have come up with such an idea otherwise?”
It is a stretch, even for him, but I do not argue. Then again, this was a rather simple case, hardly even a case at all. The yard would have figured it out sooner or later, though most likely not soon enough to catch Norton.
However, I find it interesting that the man was so quick to confess. He could have denied it, but all it took was a look at the knife in Holmes’ hand, and Norton simply gave up. Of course, he made one last break for freedom that I quickly aborted, but only as an afterthought. I puzzle over this, and, from his silence, so does Holmes. The last words he speaks to me before lapsing into a thoughtful silence are, “Come, Watson, before the Yard arrives. What care have I in telling them the details, when they can simply read it in your publication next month?”
I take this as a hint, and, upon returning to Baker Street, spend the rest of the evening committing the day’s adventures to paper. It is not a particularly engaging case, even less engaging when I remove the excessive characterizations that would peg Holmes and myself as the inappropriate acquaintances that our public behavior suggests, and it goes by fairly quickly compared to some of our other encounters.
Holmes hides away in his bedroom, clattering about behind the closed door for hours, until, after enough time passes for me to think that his emerging has merely to do with the fact that he is probably hungry, he comes out. He is still fully dressed, although his hair is significantly messier than it has been, a sure sign that he had been fidgeting and twisting locks of it in his fingers as he undoubtedly struggles to wrap his head around Norton’s bizarre resignation.
“The Ides of March,” he says to me, and then falls silent for a long moment before finding his thought. “He says he played Cassius. Cassius falls on his sword when he realizes that he is about to be caught, which is as much of a surrender as I can imagine. But what else is there?”
I set my notebook down on the desk and stand. “Must there be more?”
“Yes,” he says. “There is always more
“Alright, then,” I say gently, helpfully. If I cannot drag Holmes’ singular mind from the superstition of the unfortunate date, I decide, tired enough of this foolishness, to give the man what he so obviously wants. I say obviously, though in truth Holmes’ interests are far from obvious; they are guarded, like a dragon sitting atop a mountain of treasure, and I only recognize them because I have lived with the man for so long that I’ve become conditioned to his peculiarities. “Who are we, then?”
Holmes is stunned into blessed silence, although now it is the most inappropriate of times for such things, and I urge him further. “Which one of us represents Brutus and which one Cassius?”
And because he still does not answer, I decide for him; after all, I must put his mind to rest somehow, or else he will never sleep. Having already hung up my coat, I first unbutton my waistcoat, quickly and efficiently, not needing to make a show of it.
“Well, then,” Holmes breathes, taking in the sight of my undressing before him. “I can see that you have already chosen.” He adds, “Cassius,” spoken softer than the rest of what he has said.
I slip off my bracers and begin to unbutton my shirt.
Holmes watches me. “Any particular reason why we need to assume such roles at all?”
“Why, it is the Ides of March, dear fellow,” I smile, sliding my shirt off my shoulders and dropping it in the nearest chair. “Nothing else would fit such a special day.”
He does not move as I unbutton my trousers. I decide not to let them fall to the floor just yet, and hold them up. Holmes is frozen, unblinking, waiting.
“And besides,I find myself quite taken with the relationship of the two. It is a power struggle, their friendship,” I tell him, enjoying that it is I, for once, who gets to do the explaining. I speak slowly, because he is hanging on my every word and I love it. “Though both are appointed members of Caesar’s court, it is Brutus who holds the higher position. Cassius is jealous, naturally.”
Holmes interrupts me. “Are you?”
“Jealous?”
He shrugs, breaking his stare suddenly and looking anxiously at the ceiling.
“I was talking about Cassius,” I remind him.
“Some say that Cassius only suggested murdering Caesar to impress Brutus,” Holmes says, as if he is confessing to a great historical truth, though his sheepish smile tells me otherwise.
“Does anyone honestly say that?” I don’t believe a word of it.
“I do,” he says.
“Well, you are a somebody,” I admit, and finally I let go of my trousers, slipping them, along with my undergarments, to the floor. I step out of them and kick them aside. “So... are you?”
“Impressed?” he says, though it only sounds like a question because of what precedes it. Otherwise, it sounds dangerously like approval, and a confession, and a request, and an invitation, giving me leave to act on the impact that I clearly have on him. So I do nothing. I stand there, naked, and consider the possibility of putting my clothes away properly if Holmes continues to be difficult.
“Are you?” I say again, because even though I know that he is doing everything to admit that he is well and truly impressed (everything but actually telling me, with words, ‘yes I am impressed’), I want to hear it. With my ears, from his mouth.
In truth, I know I never will hear it. He will never say these words, because he knows that he doesn’t need to. He knows that I know how he feels, or else I would not be so confident with my own actions. Though this does not dissuade me from trying all the same to draw the words out of him, it does keep me from feeling disappointed when I fail.
How can I be disappointed, when his response is to strip off his clothes as hurriedly as he possibly can? His coat is thrown to the ground, with my own waistcoat following moments after. He slips out of his bracers like they are shackles. I hear the faint sound of seams tearing as he pulls his, my shirt off over his head. Shoes are kicked off, and then finally, trousers. For some amusing reason that I never say anything about, he keeps his socks on.
Such a trifle is soon out of my mind entirely, for he lets me take his face between my hands as I pull him close. In that moment, holding him there as I move in to kiss him, but just before our lips meet, my hands on his face are the only place where our bodies touch. It is such a simple thing, so chaste, considering our mutual states of undress, and yet it is more contact than we have made all day. So often is his hand around my arm, or his elbow nudging against mine, but skin to skin is a singular and very private affair. I treasure these moments.
Then I kiss him, and then his tongue slips into my mouth, and eventually our naked bodies are pressed entirely together. I treasure these moments as well.
Sometimes Holmes resists me. There are times when I have to physically force him around, against a wall or over the bed, to make him submit to me, and not just on days when I don’t have it in me to submit to him, or anyone. But tonight, for some reason, possibly this damnable holiday, or perhaps because he has made me stick my hand into a corpse, he waits until I break our kiss to draw in a breath of air, and then, wordlessly, he turns away from me. He brings his arms up, like wings, and splays his hands flat, palms resting against what is probably the only clean spot of wall we have left. He turns his head to the side and leans his cheek, as well as the rest of him, against the wall too, so that I can only see half of his face, and I find that the breath I had been meaning to take is now much harder to come by.
It doesn’t worry me, Holmes’ uncharacteristic and total submission to me, because he never does anything that he does not want to do. So I reward him with gentleness, wrapping my left arm across his chest and, after guiding my cock inside him, bringing my right hand around to his own member.
His breathing is erratic, and his entire body jumps as I press inside him, slowly, for I am making the conscious effort to be gentle tonight. I press a kiss to his shoulder, and he sighs. I press up against him, pressing him into the wall with every thrust, where he remains for the entirety of our lovemaking. The only change I notice in him is when he balls his hands into fists.
I feel the sweat building between our bodies. The room is entirely too warm, and our exertions are doing nothing to help the suffocating humidity. It fills me with a sense of urgency, although to achieve what, I cannot be sure. I cannot, however, be sure of anything in this moment, as my body shudders its climax, like a wave crashing onto shore; entirely expected, and yet surprising nonetheless.
Holmes tenses. I am still inside him, but he himself has not yet reached his peak. I forgo my previous intentions of being gentle, dragging my free hand quickly up his front, all the while pumping faster and harder with my other. His eyes are closed, his breath coming in gasps in tandem with my rhythm, and still, his head is turned to the side, so that I can see only half of it; left eye, half his mouth, hanging slack, and his left ear. I lean forward and catch his ear lobe with my teeth, my lips closing to suck on it.
When I use my tongue, flicking lightly against his ear in my mouth, I can feel his breath hitch and stutter, and he cocks his head up towards me, asking, begging. I can feel that he is close, his entire body wracked with shuddering tension that continues to build, in my hand, and sandwiched between me and the wall. My hand around his hard, swollen cock grows impatient, with the rest of me, and I continue to make use of the leverage I have against him.
I can hear words on his breath now, the faintest sound; “Forever,” he says, “and forever,” repeating it like a chant. Forever and forever. I squeeze, I suck, I press and pull and bring him ever closer.
Finally, a low moan starts at the back of his throat that is eventually ripped from him into a sharp cry, and he jerks once more beneath me before slumping against the wall, spent. When I release his ear and finally pull out of him, he finally turns back to me, shifting around so that his back is now to the wall. He leans his full weight on it, and is smiling, his eyes half closed, the picture of satisfaction. His red, swollen left ear stands out in sharp contrast of his right one, but before I can properly consider seeing to the second, Holmes wraps his arms around my neck and pulls my head down.
He kisses me gently, his lips moving slowly, and I feel my heart racing in distinct opposition. But he is falling, his tired body sliding down the wall, and his arms around my neck pull me down to the floor with him. Beds, even couches, are too far away, and we crawl, dragging our weary selves to the tiger skin rug near the fireplace. Pillows and blankets are scattered around us, and I drag the first quilt my hand comes in contact with over Holmes and myself. We lie there, sprawled on the floor, panting, touching only in the places where coincidence sees to our limbs falling near enough to touch.
Eventually, our ragged breathing returns to normal. The first sound that I am aware of is the ticking of the clock on the mantlepiece. I am lying on my stomach, and the tiger rug scratches my cheek as I crane my neck around to look at the time.
“Well,” I announce, “it’s over.”
Holmes mumbles something into the carpet, and then turns his head to the side, to me. “Midnight?”
“Nearly half past,” I tell him, feeling more relieved than just the cause of my satisfied exhaustion would induce. “March sixteenth.”
“Pity,” Holmes says. I smile despite myself, and then stifle it before I turn my head back around to face Holmes. His eyes are closed, his head resting on the tiger head. One arm is wrapped around the head, fingers in the tiger’s open mouth. The other snakes across the carpet and reaches for me. “How ever are we going to kill the emperor now?”
“You will think of something,” I tell him, reaching across the rug and taking his hand in mine. “That, I have no doubt.”
In three-hundred and sixty four more days, it will be the Ides of March once again. I can only hope that when that day dawns again, and Holmes asks for the date, I will have the good sense to remember to give him the wrong one.
fandom: Sherlock Holmes
Pairing: Holmes/Watson
rating: R
warnings: sexual content, description of injury, Shakespeare nerdiness
words: 5,890
summary: "A soothsayer bids you beware the Ides of March." When Holmes gets an idea in his head that he won't give up, there is only way around it, and that is, of course, for Watson to assume the role of a historic Roman general in a most ridiculous investigation on a most significant day.
author's note: IT'S THE IDES OF MARCH, GUYS!!! I love Julius Caesar, the play by William Shakespeare, and now is the Ides of March. This is, in a way, a tribute to that fabulous play, and to the fabulous Cassius and Brutus, as well as a day that makes me smile every time it rolls around.
paperclipbitch, taconaco and avalonauggie give me so much encouragement, and it's just FABULOUS! Thanks, dears.
It is not every day that Holmes accepts cases of such simplicity, especially not when his intelligence is practically begged of him by Lestrade himself, come straightaway from, as he says with a shudder that I know Holmes will mock later, “the ghastly scene.”
Holmes, taking this physical slip-up as a sign of weakness, feels all the more powerful for it; he leans back in his chair and extricates his pipe and tobacco tin from his jacket pocket, making it clear that he plans to stay just where he is. But something soon draws him upright again, some thought that he does not reveal immediately, his pipe inches from his lips.
“Watson? I pray you,” he inquires instead. “What’s today?”
“Why, it is March the fifteenth,” I reply unflappably, for it has been a very long time since I’ve felt even remotely surprised with how easily Holmes manages to lose track of days.
“Is it?”
“Yes.” I bristles ever so slightly at his doubt. “I am sure of it.”
“What’s the address?” Holmes says, closing his loose grasp on his pipe into a fist and springing out of his chair. He is out on the street and hailing a hansom without another word, without even waiting to hear the answer. Fortunately, Lestrade tells me the address instead, and I join Holmes moments later, both my jacket and his forgotten one draped over my arm. We set off together, leaving the inspector to his own devices.
“Most remarkable,” Holmes crows, nudging my arm excitedly with his elbow. “Such a remarkable coincidence!”
“Your being called upon by the Yard?” I respond dryly. “Yes, most remarkable. I’ve never seen that happen before.”
“Watson, you have no idea what this even is,” he scolds, jabbing again with his elbow. “The fifteenth of march... do you know what this means?”
“It means,” I enlighten him, “that since it is past noon, and since March has thirty-one days, you have wasted away exactly half of them, idling in our rooms.”
“Beware the Ides of March,” he recites, sounding very pleased with himself despite the foreboding warning. “It was on this day the great Caesar was felled by his most-trusted companions. How such an important date has escaped you, I can’t quite bring myself to comprehend.”
“Need I remind you, it very nearly escaped you as well,” I tell him, gently, though not without a hint of provocation. “If not for me, I’m afraid you would not know what day it was at all.”
“Hush,” Holmes says dismissively, fixing his gaze ahead. I shove him back with my own elbow, but he doesn’t respond, aside from his lips twitching, possibly involuntarily, into a very small, very restrained smile.
The victim, as Lestrade had informed us back at Baker Street, suffers from multiple stab wounds, and is found in an alley off Fleet Street. The Yarders standing guard reluctantly step aside for Holmes, who does not so much as acknowledge them. I tip my hat at them in his stead, as an apology for the aloof nature that I’d be lying if I said he only assumes when he is distracted by a crime scene.
“It matters not what day it is,” Holmes announces out of the blue as he scans they alley, looking seemingly everywhere but the corpse. From his forceful tone, it can be assumed that he is talking to the Yarders, though the way that he keeps his back turned, and the very slight cock of his head in anticipation of a response, makes it clear that he is speaking directly to me. “Criminals of London will never rest.”
I choose to ignore him, focusing instead on the task at hand. “This man has been dead for five hours, possibly six.”
“And was he the emperor of Rome?” Holmes quips.
“That, you can deduce for yourself,” I say, and continue with my own investigations, for it seems that Holmes does not plan on being any help. “However, he did not die here. He was killed elsewhere and brought to this alley sometime later.”
“When you are finished stating the obvious, would you be so kind as to assist me with something?”
As if I wasn’t already assisting him, I swallow any intention of actually shedding light on such an obvious verity. As I begin the awkward process of manipulating my wounded leg to let me stand back up, Holmes holds up a hand to stop me.
“Just there is fine,” he says, “no need to get up.”
“Very well.” I yield, secretly rather happy about this new arrangement, and try then to be as subtle as humanly possible as I rub the heel of my hand down the muscles of my thigh.
I am considerably less happy once Holmes makes his actual request:
“If you would be so kind as to simply insert your hand into the victim’s abdominal wound for me, that would be most helpful-”
“Holmes!”
“Watson!” he counters, completely scandalized, which is typical when he makes irrational and completely insufferable requests. “You are a doctor, are you not?”
“If you would like to tamper with the... with the victim, then be my guest,” I say, “but do it yourself. I will have no part in this.”
“Tampering with the victim... why that is a most preposterous assumption. This is nothing of the kind,” he assures me, although he continues to maintain that damnable distance he has assumed from the corpse, leaning back against the alley wall. “This, my dear doctor, is retrieval of evidence.”
Since we are actually on a case, rather than in a situation where I try, and fail, to maintain normalcy in one of the many social situation that I am prone to finding myself in, and since Holmes is talking about something that sounds like it just might be relevant to said case, I cannot actually argue.
“That bulge in his ribcage,” Holmes waves his hand vaguely towards what is indeed an abnormal shape protruding from the man’s chest. “I want to know what it is.”
So it comes to pass that, for the first time, Holmes manages to ruin a shirt of mine that he has not, at that time, stolen from me. For some reason, possibly the fact that I choose to dwell on such a detail, it does not occur to me to unbutton and roll up my sleeve before plunging my right arm, slowly and hesitantly, into the gaping hole in the victim’s abdomen.
I swallow any and every thought and feeling that pushing my hand through the innards of a corpse might stir within me, swallow hard. I keep my mouth shut tight and breathe through my nose until my fingers come in contact with something hard that isn’t a rib at all. I draw a quick breath of surprise in through my lips, and then close my fingers around the object.
It slips out with very little resistance, a knife, completely covered in the victim’s congealed blood.
Holmes finally decides to approach the corpse then, his face alight with a disturbing sort of excitement. “Is that a dagger that I see before me?” he bellows with much theatrical grandeur and waving about of his arms. Not nearly as amused as he is, I extend my arm fully, craning my neck away from both the bloody weapon and Holmes’ flailing arms, making clear that I intend on having no further part in this nonsense.
“What is it about today and William Shakespeare?” I ask, already weary of what I know will, as long as Holmes has anything to do with it, which at that point I was surely convinced he does, be another long and trying day.
“The Ides of March are come,” Holmes states, rather predictably as he plucks the knife out of my now equally bloody hand.
“Aye, Caesar,” I sigh, giving up my resistance, “but not gone.”
It must thrill him, my reluctant but inevitable surrender to his whims. He is not surprised, because hardly anything surprises him, though lord knows I still try to. But he is pleased, and it shows, the way his eyes crinkle at the corners with a smile that doesn’t show anywhere else, the quick nod he sends in my general direction, and the way that he pays me no more discernible attention until we are safe in a hansom and on the way to the address of the knife maker, which Holmes reveals after wiping away some blood with the sleeve of the shirt that he is wearing, which is also mine..
And so it comes to pass that Holmes manages also to ruin a pair of my pants, for I have no handkerchief to wipe my hand clean with. I mark the right leg of my pants with a bloody handprint as I brace myself and stand up, for Holmes is already striding purposefully out of the alley and waving at a passing hansom. He is proud, he is happy, and he is still obviously thrilled about this case falling on this particular day, for he continues to ramble on, without fail, about that damn Roman Emperor.
“Caesar himself wrote the soothsayer off as a dreamer,” he says, “took no heed of his prediction. Which, of course, was a very poor decision indeed, since it saw him run through with knives and perhaps even dumped in an alley not unlike the very one we have just inspected.”
“Caesar,” I say, “was not dumped in an alley.”
Holmes has no response to this, just shrugs and stares straight ahead, pretending to be distracted by the scenery, though I know that so much more is going on inside his head.
“I don’t want to hear about Caesar any longer,” I tell him, futilely, “I’m tired of metaphors.”
“Does it not make you think, Watson? Something enormous could be afoot, and you are so unaffected as to dismiss it on the basis of your being ‘tired of metaphors’?”
He expects me to explain, I know this, but metaphors aren’t the only thing that I’ve grown weary of. “Yes,” I tell him instead.
This throws him, or at least he acts like it does, and he splutters and stammers and puts on a very convincing show of how baffled and ashamed he is with my lack of curiosity.
I suppose that he soon tires of my lack of response, so he finally drops the bloody subject. “Lovely weather,” he remarks, and it is, for once. There is an uncharacteristically blinding sun in the sky and the air is clear, unblemished by clouds or mist.
“It is quite a day,” I agree.
“...for a murder.”
“Holmes!”
“The Ides of March, Watson!” He protests, “The Ides of March.”
“I am aware of the date,” I snap. “I don’t want to hear another word about the bloody ides of March!”
Unfortunately, it does not matter what I want, and Holmes continues on about Caesar for the rest of the carriage ride. I suspect that he does it to spite me, and so I spite him right back and don’t say a single thing, because I know how much it frustrates him when his deliberately baited hooks return untouched.
Our visit with the knife seller proves most fulfilling, providing us with both the names and addresses of the last three men who had purchased that particular model of knife. I am convinced that it is because of my blood-soaked sleeve and hand that he was so willing to comply.
We proceed then to the address of the most recent buyer, for Holmes, after careful examination of the weapon, is able to deduce that, aside from slashing up the unfortunate victim, it has hardly been used at all. He spends our trip to the knife buyer’s home coming to this conclusion, examining the blade, which is now sticky as the blood is drying. As grateful as I am for his distraction, I must also admit that all his talk on the subject of the Ides of March makes it so that I can scarcely think of anything else.
When we reach the entrance to a large brownstone not unlike our own home in Baker Street, Holmes announces to me, “I would like for you to knock on the door.” It is a much simpler request than his previous one, and I do not protest, rapping my knuckles against the door.
“Again,” Holmes says, and I abide, knocking a few more times afterwards when it is clear, from the silence inside the house, that no one is within. “Come, then,” he says, turning around and walking back down the stairs.
I do not move. “Where are we going?”
“Quick walk around the block,” he says, his voice hushed as he pulls me down the stairs with no regard for the fact that I nearly trip and fall as he knocks me off balance. Around the block we go. Holmes stops to peer into various windows, be they shops or places of residence. I maintain a reasonable distance from him, lest it appear that I am somehow part of his voyeurism.
“There was never any proper investigation done on Caesar’s murder,” he says. “Did you know that?”
“Of course not,” I say. “You weren’t alive yet.”
He frowns at me. “What I mean to say, if you would be so kind as to actually listen to me, is that everybody knew who had killed Caesar; there was no mystery, for he was killed in public.” He pauses, considering for a moment. “At least, there was no obvious mystery.”
“And are you perhaps wondering what it was?”
“Not in the least.”
“No? Pity,” I say, not even trying to sound interested. What does interest me, however, is that our walk around the block leads us right back to the home of the knife buyer, as roundabout walking patterns so often tend to do. The interesting part of this is that Holmes walks right back up the steps to the front door from which we had just come, and knocks.
He motions for me to join him at his side. I linger on the sidewalk, reluctant, for my leg is aching so that I would rather not subject it to any more steps than are necessary (and steps leading up to a home that has just been proven empty are quite unnecessary indeed).
“Come on,” Holmes barks, and since I cannot possibly imagine what is the reason by the sudden urgency I hear in his voice, I ascend the stairs. No sooner do I reach his side does the front door open, revealing a young maid no older than fourteen, who opens the door just enough to so that we can see her pale, trembling face.
“Beggin’ your pardon, gentlemen,” she says, stammering to catch her breath when I notice that she has caught sight of my hand, still covered in blood. “Ma-master Norton is not in at the moment.”
“Norton, is it?” Holmes says, and I turn from the horrified looking girl to see that my companion is now smiling charmingly at her. “We’ll only just be a moment, won’t we Watson?”
“Indeed,” I say, following the lead that he has subtly, although inevitably, taken. I turn back to the girl and smile in a way that would have been quite charming, had my hand not been stained red.
The girl’s eyes keep darting from Holmes to myself, and she chews her lip for a moment before blurting out, all in a rush, “I’m afraid you are going to have to come back later.”
The next moment happens very quickly. The maid decides, terrified, to slam the door in our faces. Holmes, unsurprisingly, expects it, and jams the bloody knife in the doorway before its too late. The maid is screaming as he pushes the door open. “Like I said,” he says casually, “we will only be a moment.”
I am torn between running up yet another flight of stairs, and staying back to try and calm the girl. Her screaming will not make this any easier. The mystery, though, eventually catches up with me. Just minutes earlier, whoever was here had pretended not to be, for what is bound to be an intriguing reason. Rather than miss a detail, and because Holmes has a knife and it is the Ides of March and I have no idea what will result, I ignore the maid and take the stairs two at a time.
Though Holmes’ back is to me when I follow him into the sitting room, I know that he is smiling; I can hear it in his voice: “Master Norton, is it?”
The man in question is standing in the center of the room, legs apart, knees slightly bent. I bend my own knees in anticipation of having to chase him, for he has a look of poorly disguised fear pulled tight across his otherwise youthful and attractive face.
“Who are you?” he says harshly. “What are you doing in my house?”
With a snort of a laugh, Holmes raises the knife and points it at Norton. “Come, now. Don’t insult me.”
Norton’s face twists thoughtfully. He looks at Holmes, then looks at me, then looks at the window, and lets all his breath out in a loud, miserable sigh. “Oh, bugger.”
I tackle him to the floor with relative ease, for he takes off running in my general direction. Holmes lunges after him, all the while waving that damnable knife, and I have to fight him off on top of keeping Norton pinned to the ground.
“Trying to escape?” Holmes crows, as I shove him, hard, with my elbow, the only appendage I am free to move at the time.
“Go and fetch the police. I have him pinned,” I command. “Go!”
“I will do no such thing,” says Holmes, leaning over me and pointing with the knife.
“Holmes, I have him.”
“I will not leave this room,” he proclaims, stubborn as ever I have known him to be. Thankfully, he falls back, standing still, though slightly looming over me. I am undisturbed, though; actually, I find myself rather grateful that he has stopped trying to attack Norton.
However, in that he does nothing to help what is clearly sapping my energy, I find myself growing increasingly exasperated, frustration growing with my exhaustion. “What will you have me do?”
“Please, let me go!” Norton moans, his strength fading beneath my body weight pressing him into the floor.
Holmes kicks him with the tip of his left foot. “Quiet, you.”
“You don’t understand,” he screams. “Please, I can explain. You must let me go, please!”
“You won’t be able to convince him, I’m afraid,” I tell him, almost pitying his effort. After all, he does not know Holmes, and therefore doesn’t know how futile any attempt at rationality is with him.
It was rather fortunate that I had not stayed back to calm the maid, for it is her screaming brings two officers running in soon after. They have Norton cuffed and ready to be taken away when Holmes calls them to a halt.
“A moment, officers! I have but one question for our man, here.”
I push myself up from the ground and raise a hand in warning. “Holmes, he is being taken into custody. There is no need.”
“Quiet,” he says, completely focused on Norton. “I would just like to know one thing.”
Norton glares at the carpet. “Why I did it? Is that it?”
“No, no, that’s quite amusing of you to think so. What I want to know...” he says, “I want to know who it was you played.”
“Played?”
“You know exactly what I am talking about,” says Holmes. “Who did you play?”
Finally, it hits Norton that he is not long for this earth, and indulges in what may be his very last chance at both personal and professional pride. He lifts his head up and looks directly at Holmes. “Cassius,” he says. With a nod of Holmes’ head, the guards take their leave and bring Norton to meet his fate.
“I dare say the great Julius Caesar was not killed with a cheese knife,” Holmes calls after him in a bemused fashion, turning to me and shaking his head gravely. “Amateur.”
“So,” I say from the armchair I had taken to once I no longer had to manhandle the criminal, “why was I not invited to see Julius Caesar?”
Holmes’ eyebrows go up, his forehead crinkling. “Beg pardon?”
“You hate going to the theatre alone, as I well know,” I remind him, “and yet you saw our fellow’s show without me.”
“Not at all, my dear,” he says in that condescending tone of his that makes me feel incredibly stupid.
“Then how...?” I ask reluctantly, for I do believe that I already know exactly what Holmes’ answer will be.
“I know that you have grown rather fatigued of my telling you this, but today is, after all...”
“The Ides of March,” I interject, hurrying him to his point.
“So of course he is an actor,” he concludes. “He has no books on his shelves, no art of any significant quality on his walls. Were he not an actor, he would have never read Julius Caesar, and why else, on such a day as this, would anyone else but a man of the theatre commit such a murder in the first place? Where would he even have come up with such an idea otherwise?”
It is a stretch, even for him, but I do not argue. Then again, this was a rather simple case, hardly even a case at all. The yard would have figured it out sooner or later, though most likely not soon enough to catch Norton.
However, I find it interesting that the man was so quick to confess. He could have denied it, but all it took was a look at the knife in Holmes’ hand, and Norton simply gave up. Of course, he made one last break for freedom that I quickly aborted, but only as an afterthought. I puzzle over this, and, from his silence, so does Holmes. The last words he speaks to me before lapsing into a thoughtful silence are, “Come, Watson, before the Yard arrives. What care have I in telling them the details, when they can simply read it in your publication next month?”
I take this as a hint, and, upon returning to Baker Street, spend the rest of the evening committing the day’s adventures to paper. It is not a particularly engaging case, even less engaging when I remove the excessive characterizations that would peg Holmes and myself as the inappropriate acquaintances that our public behavior suggests, and it goes by fairly quickly compared to some of our other encounters.
Holmes hides away in his bedroom, clattering about behind the closed door for hours, until, after enough time passes for me to think that his emerging has merely to do with the fact that he is probably hungry, he comes out. He is still fully dressed, although his hair is significantly messier than it has been, a sure sign that he had been fidgeting and twisting locks of it in his fingers as he undoubtedly struggles to wrap his head around Norton’s bizarre resignation.
“The Ides of March,” he says to me, and then falls silent for a long moment before finding his thought. “He says he played Cassius. Cassius falls on his sword when he realizes that he is about to be caught, which is as much of a surrender as I can imagine. But what else is there?”
I set my notebook down on the desk and stand. “Must there be more?”
“Yes,” he says. “There is always more
“Alright, then,” I say gently, helpfully. If I cannot drag Holmes’ singular mind from the superstition of the unfortunate date, I decide, tired enough of this foolishness, to give the man what he so obviously wants. I say obviously, though in truth Holmes’ interests are far from obvious; they are guarded, like a dragon sitting atop a mountain of treasure, and I only recognize them because I have lived with the man for so long that I’ve become conditioned to his peculiarities. “Who are we, then?”
Holmes is stunned into blessed silence, although now it is the most inappropriate of times for such things, and I urge him further. “Which one of us represents Brutus and which one Cassius?”
And because he still does not answer, I decide for him; after all, I must put his mind to rest somehow, or else he will never sleep. Having already hung up my coat, I first unbutton my waistcoat, quickly and efficiently, not needing to make a show of it.
“Well, then,” Holmes breathes, taking in the sight of my undressing before him. “I can see that you have already chosen.” He adds, “Cassius,” spoken softer than the rest of what he has said.
I slip off my bracers and begin to unbutton my shirt.
Holmes watches me. “Any particular reason why we need to assume such roles at all?”
“Why, it is the Ides of March, dear fellow,” I smile, sliding my shirt off my shoulders and dropping it in the nearest chair. “Nothing else would fit such a special day.”
He does not move as I unbutton my trousers. I decide not to let them fall to the floor just yet, and hold them up. Holmes is frozen, unblinking, waiting.
“And besides,I find myself quite taken with the relationship of the two. It is a power struggle, their friendship,” I tell him, enjoying that it is I, for once, who gets to do the explaining. I speak slowly, because he is hanging on my every word and I love it. “Though both are appointed members of Caesar’s court, it is Brutus who holds the higher position. Cassius is jealous, naturally.”
Holmes interrupts me. “Are you?”
“Jealous?”
He shrugs, breaking his stare suddenly and looking anxiously at the ceiling.
“I was talking about Cassius,” I remind him.
“Some say that Cassius only suggested murdering Caesar to impress Brutus,” Holmes says, as if he is confessing to a great historical truth, though his sheepish smile tells me otherwise.
“Does anyone honestly say that?” I don’t believe a word of it.
“I do,” he says.
“Well, you are a somebody,” I admit, and finally I let go of my trousers, slipping them, along with my undergarments, to the floor. I step out of them and kick them aside. “So... are you?”
“Impressed?” he says, though it only sounds like a question because of what precedes it. Otherwise, it sounds dangerously like approval, and a confession, and a request, and an invitation, giving me leave to act on the impact that I clearly have on him. So I do nothing. I stand there, naked, and consider the possibility of putting my clothes away properly if Holmes continues to be difficult.
“Are you?” I say again, because even though I know that he is doing everything to admit that he is well and truly impressed (everything but actually telling me, with words, ‘yes I am impressed’), I want to hear it. With my ears, from his mouth.
In truth, I know I never will hear it. He will never say these words, because he knows that he doesn’t need to. He knows that I know how he feels, or else I would not be so confident with my own actions. Though this does not dissuade me from trying all the same to draw the words out of him, it does keep me from feeling disappointed when I fail.
How can I be disappointed, when his response is to strip off his clothes as hurriedly as he possibly can? His coat is thrown to the ground, with my own waistcoat following moments after. He slips out of his bracers like they are shackles. I hear the faint sound of seams tearing as he pulls his, my shirt off over his head. Shoes are kicked off, and then finally, trousers. For some amusing reason that I never say anything about, he keeps his socks on.
Such a trifle is soon out of my mind entirely, for he lets me take his face between my hands as I pull him close. In that moment, holding him there as I move in to kiss him, but just before our lips meet, my hands on his face are the only place where our bodies touch. It is such a simple thing, so chaste, considering our mutual states of undress, and yet it is more contact than we have made all day. So often is his hand around my arm, or his elbow nudging against mine, but skin to skin is a singular and very private affair. I treasure these moments.
Then I kiss him, and then his tongue slips into my mouth, and eventually our naked bodies are pressed entirely together. I treasure these moments as well.
Sometimes Holmes resists me. There are times when I have to physically force him around, against a wall or over the bed, to make him submit to me, and not just on days when I don’t have it in me to submit to him, or anyone. But tonight, for some reason, possibly this damnable holiday, or perhaps because he has made me stick my hand into a corpse, he waits until I break our kiss to draw in a breath of air, and then, wordlessly, he turns away from me. He brings his arms up, like wings, and splays his hands flat, palms resting against what is probably the only clean spot of wall we have left. He turns his head to the side and leans his cheek, as well as the rest of him, against the wall too, so that I can only see half of his face, and I find that the breath I had been meaning to take is now much harder to come by.
It doesn’t worry me, Holmes’ uncharacteristic and total submission to me, because he never does anything that he does not want to do. So I reward him with gentleness, wrapping my left arm across his chest and, after guiding my cock inside him, bringing my right hand around to his own member.
His breathing is erratic, and his entire body jumps as I press inside him, slowly, for I am making the conscious effort to be gentle tonight. I press a kiss to his shoulder, and he sighs. I press up against him, pressing him into the wall with every thrust, where he remains for the entirety of our lovemaking. The only change I notice in him is when he balls his hands into fists.
I feel the sweat building between our bodies. The room is entirely too warm, and our exertions are doing nothing to help the suffocating humidity. It fills me with a sense of urgency, although to achieve what, I cannot be sure. I cannot, however, be sure of anything in this moment, as my body shudders its climax, like a wave crashing onto shore; entirely expected, and yet surprising nonetheless.
Holmes tenses. I am still inside him, but he himself has not yet reached his peak. I forgo my previous intentions of being gentle, dragging my free hand quickly up his front, all the while pumping faster and harder with my other. His eyes are closed, his breath coming in gasps in tandem with my rhythm, and still, his head is turned to the side, so that I can see only half of it; left eye, half his mouth, hanging slack, and his left ear. I lean forward and catch his ear lobe with my teeth, my lips closing to suck on it.
When I use my tongue, flicking lightly against his ear in my mouth, I can feel his breath hitch and stutter, and he cocks his head up towards me, asking, begging. I can feel that he is close, his entire body wracked with shuddering tension that continues to build, in my hand, and sandwiched between me and the wall. My hand around his hard, swollen cock grows impatient, with the rest of me, and I continue to make use of the leverage I have against him.
I can hear words on his breath now, the faintest sound; “Forever,” he says, “and forever,” repeating it like a chant. Forever and forever. I squeeze, I suck, I press and pull and bring him ever closer.
Finally, a low moan starts at the back of his throat that is eventually ripped from him into a sharp cry, and he jerks once more beneath me before slumping against the wall, spent. When I release his ear and finally pull out of him, he finally turns back to me, shifting around so that his back is now to the wall. He leans his full weight on it, and is smiling, his eyes half closed, the picture of satisfaction. His red, swollen left ear stands out in sharp contrast of his right one, but before I can properly consider seeing to the second, Holmes wraps his arms around my neck and pulls my head down.
He kisses me gently, his lips moving slowly, and I feel my heart racing in distinct opposition. But he is falling, his tired body sliding down the wall, and his arms around my neck pull me down to the floor with him. Beds, even couches, are too far away, and we crawl, dragging our weary selves to the tiger skin rug near the fireplace. Pillows and blankets are scattered around us, and I drag the first quilt my hand comes in contact with over Holmes and myself. We lie there, sprawled on the floor, panting, touching only in the places where coincidence sees to our limbs falling near enough to touch.
Eventually, our ragged breathing returns to normal. The first sound that I am aware of is the ticking of the clock on the mantlepiece. I am lying on my stomach, and the tiger rug scratches my cheek as I crane my neck around to look at the time.
“Well,” I announce, “it’s over.”
Holmes mumbles something into the carpet, and then turns his head to the side, to me. “Midnight?”
“Nearly half past,” I tell him, feeling more relieved than just the cause of my satisfied exhaustion would induce. “March sixteenth.”
“Pity,” Holmes says. I smile despite myself, and then stifle it before I turn my head back around to face Holmes. His eyes are closed, his head resting on the tiger head. One arm is wrapped around the head, fingers in the tiger’s open mouth. The other snakes across the carpet and reaches for me. “How ever are we going to kill the emperor now?”
“You will think of something,” I tell him, reaching across the rug and taking his hand in mine. “That, I have no doubt.”
In three-hundred and sixty four more days, it will be the Ides of March once again. I can only hope that when that day dawns again, and Holmes asks for the date, I will have the good sense to remember to give him the wrong one.