[FIC]Shatter These Walls 5/?
I just can't justify holding this chapter hostage until the weekend even though it's the longest one yet. It's also the darkest one yet, and if you'd kindly heed the warnings I'd be much obliged. I don't want to be responsible for any mental trauma incurred.
Massive kudos to jg5799 who took over the huge task of unraveling my voice from the characters'. My editing was sub-par with this chapter and she's still managed to make it sound right. Thank you ever so much!
Title: Shatter These Walls
Author:
starlightshade
Beta:
jg5799
Pairing: Holmes/Watson, Watson/Mary mentioned (which is why I didn't tag it), everything else is up in the air atm.
Spoilers: for both movies.
Rating: NC-17/M
Warnings: Plot. Talking. Flowery prose. M/M. Holmes' misogyny. Drunkenness. Dub-con. Rough sex. Emotional fuck-up. Amateur musicology/music theory. Now with bonus Mycroft! More warnings will be given with subsequent chapters.
Prompt:: Watson likes rough sex but doesn't want to hurt Mary. Holmes offers to help out, pretending to like it.
X-posted? Yes.
Disclaimer: No money made. No ownership claimed. Fair use applies.
Finding that 5 isn't 1? Read the others here: Chapter 01, Chapter 02, Chapter 03, Chapter 04
Chapter 5
There had been little in the matter of personal choice for Holmes in his hasted return to Baker Street after Mycroft had assured them the case would be mostly settled within the hour. He was rather weak and in more than a little bit of discomfort, slumping sideways into the swaying, bouncing cab seat. His whole body was burning with pain, but he wouldn't ever differ in his actions could he find a chance to repeat them.
Watson's preliminary affections, as practiced, perfunctory, short and rough as they had been, had caused him to sustain a bit of damage from the more elaborate efforts thereafter due to the length of time it had been since he'd engaged in any such... sport. It had been all he could do to hide that from the doctor as he pulled himself together upon his discovery of his dearest friend's inability to look him in the eye, nothing on Holmes’ mind but somehow finding a remedy, turning the clock back to when they could easily gaze upon one another.
Demeaning himself and their... encounter should have alleviated the doctor's conscience and hopefully made him disinclined to confess to his wife, maybe ensuring further closeness of that kind, the likes of which Holmes had never thought of desiring yet found himself impossibly attracted to nonetheless. Why, then, had it felt as though the dirt clinging to his skin had stained deeper in that moment, why had the lie not fallen from his lips as easily as usual?
Watson's undivided attention on himself was a heady rush, better than cocaine even, and he couldn't help but crave a repeat no matter the consequences for his body or sense of self. The absence of it was worse than any withdrawal, a shattering of something that only left cutting shards behind.
He curled himself deeper into Watson's coat, trying to ignore the stings and sharp, harsh throbs his body gave at the action. Walking the streets, on bare feet nonetheless, standing up straight, giving no sign that anything untoward had happened, fooling even Mycroft (as much as his brother could be fooled)- his mind was starting to feel fevered, as though it couldn't be contained by his skull anymore. It had been a long day, and an endless night, and an eternal hour until he'd got leave to return to his lair.
He desperately needed to calm down, needed the well-known surroundings of his flat in Baker Street to soothe the brain overtaxed by days of unending observations.
Holmes' senses were not necessarily sharper than those of other humans. He simply lacked the filters that others had to protect them from the influx of pure data that battered their consciousness every single moment, which caused him to observe where others merely saw, or heard. The one he'd always been able to control, to a point, had been his sense of touch. Clothing could become unnoticed, a constant invariable presence that he could ignore. He was shy to initiate contact with other humans primarily because he didn't care to add another dimension to his observations of them. Refusing to even shake their hands in greeting as Mycroft was wont to didn't make do in his line of work, and thus he'd been forced to instate some sort of control mechanism where he primarily paid attention to his other senses as a manner of keeping himself in line instead.
Now, Watson had shattered whatever barriers had been left, and Holmes was reeling in response. Mycroft had taken one look at him in the street outside the telegraph office, had called his driver to bring his cab around and urged him to center himself at home, not that Holmes would be capable of anything else. His brother, somehow seeing that there was something wrong, had taken care never to touch him, directing him with hands held a breath away from brushing across Watson's coatsleeves. Mycroft couldn't deduce what had happened, the injuries incurred during his brief time in captivity masked the others, but he was certain that there was more he was hiding and he'd have to try and send him on the wrong track when they met up at the Diogenes Club.
His hands were picking at the hems of these now, taking in the texture of the rough wool tempered by the cotton that it had been blended with, a soft shade of greyish blue quite similar to Watson's eyes when he was calmly contemplative. His ears were picking up and registering the sounds of London with the unforgiving exactness of the violinist he was, his sense of smell was being overwhelmed by a thousand scents wafting through the closed windows of the cab, his eyes were closed but behind his eyelids, between the starbursts of concussion, he could still see Watson's face as he pounded into him, releasing the inhibitions that fettered him so tightly all the time. How beautiful his friend was when he was beyond all propriety, how much more extraordinary his seemingly ordinary being became (ordinary only in the eyes of ordinary people, so much more to Holmes at all times but never more than then). His skin was flushed, rough and dry in patches and soft in others, warm, infused with the scent of Watson that managed to drown out all others even as they mingled in Holmes' mind.
Holmes whimpered, a foreign sound even to his own ears. It had been years since he'd lost control to this extent, and it wasn't ever getting easier. Memories, deductions, extrapolations started their mad dance, tearing at him, almost as painful as the mud clinging to his skin, abrading it, being picked up by the little streams of blood from his wounds and incorporated into the scabs forming. It was too much, there was the fishmonger two streets down; as usual, he'd been scammed on his purchases at the market. There was the candlemaker, beeswax and paraffin, and there was the chemist next door and there it was, at last, 221B Baker Street, unmistakably. Hurry, hurry.
Holmes threw himself from the cab, his shoeless feet picking up the mud of the curb, tracking it to and across the threshold and up the seventeen steps. Watson's coat was thrown in the direction of the potted plant, his chemicals were burning in his nostrils, and he'd never been so grateful to Mrs. Hudson's foresight in installing modern amenities within their flat as he was now. The bathtub, equal in grandeur to the one that had brought about the end of Lord Thomas Rotheram at the hands of Blackwood, filled quickly.
Hot water sluiced across his sensitized skin, finally taking with it all the detritus picked up in a day of being unclothed in the London filth. He ripped his tattered smallclothes off, letting the soap erase whatever unpleasantness remained of his adventure, took a deep breath of clean, sweet-smelling and moist air and centered himself upon the overly fast thrum of the pulse in his veins.
It took him minutes of merely counting the expansions and contractions of his heart muscles, but he could open his eyes again without immediately going into what he'd termed a sensory chaos. His thoughts were marching in their complicated but logical order, his mind obeyed its master, and he could decide upon his readiness to sort through the happenings of the night.
First, though, assessment. He was still very sore, as he'd known he'd be. He'd lost several layers of skin along his back where the rough, half-wet mud had scraped and torn. He was littered in bruises, some of them small and circular and definitely caused by Watson's hungry mouth. Ghosting his fingers over them felt anything but painful, and he quickly decided he'd refrain from doing so until he'd finished inspecting his body for fear of falling prey to the distracting reaction they evoked in other parts of his body.
Watson had used him well- touching his entrance was painful enough that he couldn't even bear the thought of exploring inside. Since he wasn't bleeding he was certain it was unnecessary, but he'd nonetheless try to apply some ointment as soon as he left the bath.
The wound on his head was inconsequential. It had stopped haemorrhaging by the time they had reached the telegraph office, and as long as he took care in washing his hair for a few more days it shouldn't start again. The ringing in his ears was more worrisome, but it, too, had taken a downturn after reaching the sanctuary of his rooms and he was hopeful he'd be rid of the bothersome noise in a week or two. Bruises were nothing new to London's foremost sleuth, and he paid them no heed. They would vanish with/after a few days' rest.
Holmes rested his head on the blessedly cool rim of the tub, allowing the stresses and tribulations to fall away to the sounds of Sarasate playing Paganini's Capricci (1)in his head, entering the memory as deeply as he ever could without being lost in it.
Watson would be home now, too.
Home with Mary.
Holmes scrubbed at his arms, angrily clenching his hands into fists once he realized the action. He would not dwell on mere happenstance. Had Watson not been so angry the night before, had he not been so vulnerable, their encounter wouldn't have come to pass.
The soothing technicality of Paganini descended into the driven illogicality of Beethoven's Ninth, not the fourth movement known so well but the first, soaring scales of hope dragged down whenever they attempted to rise above the marching meter of the bass notes, the true essence of a composition in a minor key. And yet... that piece somehow rose above the premise set out in the massive opening chords, refusing its destiny in the sturm and drang of the fourth movement's finale, changing minor to major, despair to the iconic Ode to Joy.
Holmes knew better than to delude himself into thinking the piece a simile for his life.
The bath water had turned cold and tepid, greyish like a typical London day. Holmes rose laboriously, every move encumbered by the stiffness of his muscles and the remainder of his and Watson's... well, having sex. It was, he admitted to himself, nothing but cowardice to keep floridly describing the act even in his own mind when it had been him who had acquiesced to it, even suggested it as a means of helping Watson be his usual calm and placid self.
Pragmatic as he could be, he searched his drawers for the lotion he'd lathered on the scars Moriarty had given him. It should suffice in treating the irritation around his anus, even though it burned cold as he rubbed it in, courtesy of the menthol used in its production no doubt.
Setting his emotional disturbances as far as could be from his conscious mind while settling his dressing gown-clad body on the settee, he went back to examining his actions, the utter folly he'd exhibited when being ambushed, the tempestuous conclusion with guns and blood and sex.
He'd never thought about Watson as a sexual entity before tonight, and frankly it still scared him to think of his doctor as the savage tearing his clothes apart, but now that the can had been opened the worms were escaping. He couldn't brace his thoughts as he compared the flawless, if scarred, body of the ex-soldier to the pasty, dandyish creatures he'd dallied with at university- never to this extent, his need for control and distaste of human contact had barred him from going further, but he had dallied.
He'd thoroughly studied the females of the species during that same period, managing to charm his way into polite society and even the most coveted ballrooms of the peerage with an ease that had left even his brother stunned. All he had taken away from those encounters, though, was that while not exactly always weak-minded, females were weak in body (even his most recent study object, Miss Irene Adler, had been pleasing to the eye but had not followed through on that promise by being adequate to the type of situations she got herself in. She had gotten Watson injured, and badly, as a result of her weakness, which he wasn't about to forget easily. There would be no forgiveness for her, ever, or at least as long as Watson bore the scars of that horrifying explosion). Invariably, women were also wily, annoyingly dishonest and utterly incapable of any consistent and logically driven behavior. The daughters of the gentry were the worst. He'd escaped marriage once by the skin of his knuckles (thoroughly torn and more than broken) and the virtue of his prodigious fighting skills (evaded the bullet, faked his death (loss of a good disguise persona, that one), and the rather unfortunate-looking suitor to the lovely lady had been sufficiently lacking in intellect to even believe the simple ruse).
As for the males, in particular one special male, his curiosity was far from sated. His body was shying away from the experience, reminding him of the pain it was still in, but his mind was already yearning to disseminate more data about Watson, unknown data about Watson, the man who was fascinating him after more than ten years of cohabitation.
It was a good thing Holmes had been as diligent as possible in his recovery from his Moriarty-induced infirmity. A less flexible partner would have suffered from far more than just muscle soreness after Watson was through with them. No wonder they called him Three Continents!
He didn't know whether to be grateful for the concussed haze that had dropped over him by the time Watson had got to that cellar or not. On the one hand, everything after that gunshot was out of focus, dulled down and filtered through the inability to focus he'd acquired in conjunction with his new future scar, on the other hand, he was definitely feeling... feelings that had no right to exist within his logical mind.
He would need to try and recover from that as well as the physical wounds.
Already, his mind was crying out for him to reconnect with Watson, to get that close again, to feel the other man as he had before. The physicality he could skip, but the closeness... He hadn't known Watson could get that close to him, that he could have him as a part of his own body, his own mind, driven by the same need and into the same direction and just being one. He hadn't known it could be like this, it had never been like this with all those females, or the other males. It had always been messy, and distasteful, and too close, but like with everything else about him, Watson broke that rule as well. There was no such thing as too close with Watson. The closer the better.
Reduced to the sense of touch, his vision blurred, his hearing consumed by the bells in his mind, the smells of the place overwhelming his sensitive nose, he'd been thoroughly pulled under Watson's spell. Hands, rough and smooth and short-nailed and competent had held him and molded him and burned him and healed him and broken him. Hands on his pectorals, on his biceps, on his triceps, over and over again. Watson's mouth, hot and sharp and sweet and wet and everywhere.
Watson had enveloped him entirely, and he'd been able to let go completely. No more thinking, no more trying to order and control the uncontrollable, there had just been sensation, glorious sensation for a few precious moments before pain and shame and confusion had robbed him of his safe haven.
He couldn't deny that he'd be hard-pressed to meet Watson the way he'd met him before, on equal footing. Watson had become his entire world for a while, he'd let him, and then he'd left him, weaker than before and, on his own terms, submissive.
Crawling away from the warmth of his best friend, denying himself the illusion that they had both been wanting whatever it was that had happened, had been hard. It was far from the hardest thing he'd ever done (willingly going to his death, and not telling Watson, still held that dubious honor), but it was up there.
There was a bit of irritated, red skin on his shoulder that didn't fit the pattern of having been bitten or sucked on. It felt like a sunburn, just... scratchier. Watson's mustache, his mind supplied, scratching over the area while he had sucked on the tendons in Holmes' neck. He worried at it for a little while with the calloused fingertips of his left hand, testing the sensations, glorying in the tingling that shot through his nerves and culminated in a warm, glowing feeling in his lower belly.
Pulling his dressing gown tighter around himself, he rang for Mrs. Hudson. The case was over for now, until he could muster the energy and will to look for Eddie Chung. His body needed food, he needed to sleep, needed the clarity that came after sleep to be able to deal with Mycroft at the Diogenes.
"Just leave it here, Nanny," he dismissed his landlady airily, far too busy working through the way Watson had arranged his legs over the doctor's shoulders, how he'd managed to stretch that far after having been tied to a chair for the better part of a day.
He carefully flexed his feet, testing the muscles in his calf and wincing as a cramp shot up from his sole to his thigh. The hot soak had done him well, though, and the cramps were fleeting and hardly worth paying attention to, not when he still had Watson's rough voice shouting his release into his ear.
Breakfast was devoured methodically, Holmes working from the hardest to the softest texture this time, then he cleared the remnants of the completed case off his bed and fell, still in only his dressing gown, onto the disheveled eiderdown and into a deep, exhausted sleep.
-----
Mycroft was prattling on about something entirely inconsequential, as was his wont. His brother just loved to show off his political prowess, and to make matters worse, Watson seemed to love to allow him to do that.
Holmes was almost missing Simza's practical cynicism even if the woman herself - for all that she'd been an asset during their adventure - had been entirely too focused on using Holmes for her own gain. She'd have put a stop to all this posturing, this exchanging of polite tidbits of uselessness in a moment.
However, she was traveling with her marauding band of gypsies somewhere in Southern France, and he had no intention of undertaking the journey there just so he would have someone to act as intermediary between himself, his brother and his best friend.
Watson was slightly skittish, and Holmes himself was not too comfortable in his own skin yet. Finding clothes that were soft enough to bear on a dermis that wasn't only bruised and broken from beatings and rubbing along the ground but also extremely sensitized due to long-time exposure to less than amenable temperatures had been a chore. Convincing Mrs. Hudson to drop everything else and instead focus on getting said clothing into a wearable state had been another. Finally ready to face the day, there had been a line at his preferred telegraph office and he'd had to use a secondary location. The meeting between the three of them had been arranged, though, and one thing was to be said for the Diogenes Club, as little as it agreed with Holmes in all other matters: Their culinary service was excellent, and as he was still in need of recuperating, he'd partaken of the potted shrimp (served on a Sunday, Mycroft's doing no doubt) with gusto.
The distraction the food offered was more than welcome, since Watson and he existed in a limbo state of agitated attempts at in turn ignoring each other, then trying to turn to each other only to shy away as though poked by the remarkable pronged instrument that had got Dredger off his back so long ago.
He toyed with the idea of driving the doctor to complete distraction by lacing his leg behind the one Watson had outstretched between the table, but managed to control the urge when he saw Watson's slight yawn hidden behind his hand. Mycroft's palavering was hard on the doctor's concentration, then, too.
"Thank you, Mycroft," he interjected, once his brother had found a natural stopping point of a split second in his monologue. How could a person talk as much as Mycroft and still have the ability to talk more when incited? "I believe Dr. Watson has an engagement with his wife this afternoon, though, so if you could allow us our leave?"
"Doctor, how remiss of me to keep you from your wife this long. Of course, you must be anxious to see her again, a most delightful young lady, best among her specimens if I may say so."
Holmes shook his head and grabbed Watson's sleeve before the doctor could ask his brother what Mycroft had meant by that comment.
"One could almost envision oneself sharing one's living quarters with a woman like her, maybe for an extended amount of time like, a month. However, I am certain you will find, in retrospect, that my brother, though quite demanding in his own right, is far removed from the hysteria that follows those young creatures around and will prove to have been the better choice in companions, as far as cohabitation goes."
"Yes, yes, I'm certain," Holmes demurred, now openly pulling the unresisting Watson, who was caught between exasperation and anger at yet another Holmes slighting his wife- or was he? Watson's face was hard to read in these instances, he tended to just show fury around the hard lines of his mouth under his mustache and the stiff tenseness of his posture. His forearms were corded with muscle ready to explode, and Holmes was getting anxious to see neither his brother nor his dearest doctor harmed in any way.
"Sherlock, would you stay a moment longer, please? I have several more details to ask of you concerning a certain Irish gentlewoman's bastard..."
"Certainly. Always good to see you, Watson."
"It was a pleasure having your company, doctor." Mycroft, who hadn't moved from his chair, dismissed Watson and the footman who had come to the Strangers' Room to fetch him with all the grace of centuries of breeding. Watson frowned but went, so he really had made a promise to his wife, then.
Holmes didn't think she'd suspected anything, she would have been much more reluctant to let her husband accompany him otherwise, as she, like every woman, would surely be useless at hiding feelings of jealousy; she wouldn't have let Watson part from her without a word to him that would have tensed him up beyond what had passed between Holmes and him.
Holmes paced in front of the fireplace, the fire extinguished in deference to the rising temperatures the uncharacteristically sunny day had brought about. His hands locked firmly in the small of his back, he longed for his pipe to fiddle with to avoid answering to, and looking at, his older, and so much sharper brother.
"Brother, I wonder... your timing... Sherlock, what has happened between the good doctor and you?"
Holmes flinched. He could no more control the reflex than he could keep away from Watson.
"Nothing of import, brother," he said, dismissively relaxing his posture and keeping his face slack.
"I have been reading you and Dr. Watson both since you first moved into 221b together," Mycroft kept on. "You have never been this uncomfortable in the doctor's presence, not even after the first time he had to come to your rescue and you managed to upend an entire fishmonger's barrel of fish entrails over his head. You were closer to him then than you were today, and it has nothing to do with your... absence."
"That was an honest and forgivable mistake as Watson had taken care to disguise himself and I didn't know him that well yet... Oh. Don't give me this... this spiel of yours, Mycroft. You know exactly what happened, just as I know what your secretary is doing spending most of his time at your townhouse or the estate. Don't take me for an imbecile, brother."
"I am not, Sherlock." Mycroft dropped all pretense, his voice suddenly devoid of the mockery and artifice he injected into every one of his conversations. "I am, however, aware of both your and the doctor's circumstances and may be in the unique position to... provide some assistance, given your acceptance of any such help."
"There is nothing you can do to help." Holmes was facing the fireplace, his mind in turmoil while his speech was still calm. "Watson has made his choice. Both of us have had a moment of... losing control. You know how it affected me so you also know I have dealt with the aftermath and am once again in a condition to work." As long as you keep your mind from it, never think of it again, his traitorous brain supplied.
"I will concentrate on bringing down the syndicate involved in the forgeries if I can make contact with your colonial agent. Watson will have his practice, and his wife, and the dog, and their house and... that will have to suffice. He will render aid when I request it, I am sure of that, but I ask that you, brother, do not do so again. I will not have Watson be at the mercy of the puppetmaster of Her Majesty's government."
"Always so loyal, both of you. Two blind fools stumbling around each other."
"Fool I may be, but blind I am not. My mind is on the work, Mycroft, and I have to keep it there if you want to see the end of this one branch of the Triads, and the criminals of London to quake in fear."
"I wish for you it weren't so, Sherlock," Mycroft sighed, popping a biscuit in his mouth and swallowing it with the last of his overly sweet tea.
"On the danger of sounding like a trite everyman, brother: If wishes were horses..."
"We'd all be drowning in horseshit." The brothers shared a fleeting, unguarded grin of childhood memories and exasperated nannies coming after them with Cook's wooden spoon.
"I will see to it that you receive a visit from Mr. Chung, Sherlock," Mycroft promised.
"Thank you, Mycroft." For all of it, went unsaid.
-----
Holmes was kept busy with a flurry of small, unimportant cases in the following weeks. He was rather put out at the amount of time his body took in regenerating itself to fighting condition, but until then he had to rely on alternative methods of procuring enough income to sustain his lifestyle than an evening at the Punchbowl. Most of the work could be done by correspondence, and as long as he had a soft pillow to sit on and could take regular breaks to clear his mind by stimulating it he was as good as he could be. He simply took care to have nothing to remind him of shipbuilding, the Thames, or Watson in his vicinity. He even locked up Watson's rugby ball in the chest of drawers in the entrance hall. According to his calculations, it would take about a month for Mrs. Hudson to discover it in there (she stored her winter gloves in it and wouldn't be inclined to use them in the clement weather) and return it to Holmes.
He visited with Watson a few days after the conjoined appearance at the Diogenes Club, and was welcomed so warmly into the house by both the doctor and his wife that Watson couldn't have told her everything about their night on the docks. Watson, for his part, seemed quite alright with Holmes entering his personal space- his demeanor, his entire bearing, suggested he had put that night behind him as a nightmare born of desperation. Holmes was willing to go with it, he had other matters to attend to, and as he'd told his brother, he had recaptured his ability to dissociate himself from anything interfering with his work.
Mary Watson insisted on feeding him a ghastly cake she had made herself, apparently under the guidance of their housekeeper, but if the woman's baking skills were truly so poor he'd have to revise his theory about Watson's weight gain. Maybe she was better with savory dishes. Or maybe it had been the housekeeper's interference that had ensured the relative unpalatability of the sweet, clay-like... thing he'd been served.
He smiled and complimented her on her house though, innocently asking whether she planned to decorate the marquetry tables matching the chairs in the drawing room with lace doilies anytime soon and earning a cuff in the side from Watson followed by chuckling and, of course, a quick retelling of their encounter with Madam Rosa.
"Of course, from the moment she mentioned the warts I knew who it was that had set the gypsy upon me, and who had given her your name, and he was standing right beside me at that time. Without her interference I might have never walked into Madison and Haig's to buy your ring."
"Which you lost immediately thereafter to one of the potatoes," Holmes said, falling silent as he caught on to Mrs. Watson's rather indignant look.
"So that is where you were when you should have been meeting my parents."
"No." Holmes continued. In for a penny, in for a pound and how come Watson hadn't told her the whole story yet? "Watson was gracious enough to follow me to the slip where Dredger let loose an unfinished steel ship."
"You had forgotten your revolver- again."
"And you brought yours in its stead, again. Which is why I will always say that it is good to see you, because you usually carry upon your person the means to my salvation."
There was an awkward silence falling over the table after that. Holmes quickly excused himself, needing to be away from the deep-seated hurt of seeing Watson being so... reasonable about the entire sequence of events. He didn't take a cab, deciding instead to slink into the shadows and start his own search for the rather elusive Eddie Chung- he'd let the Irregulars loose.
It was drinking, heavily, with some rather pungent characters in one of the more infamous gambling establishments near Bethnal Green in the East End after he could at last move without undue stiffness, that brought the first hint of the Colonial agent's presence, a shadow of the flicker of a braid, blacker than night. Holmes followed with his eyes, noting the direction, but was stalled from his pursuit by the slapping down of a hand of cards as their gamble progressed. He took a sip of his dark ale, of surprising quality for such a location, and quickly ran through the cards that had already fallen, the ones he held, and the likely combinations in the hands of the other five gamblers at his table. He knew he stood a good chance of bluffing them all out- the deserter, run away before he could have been shipped off to war, was fingering his gold earring nervously. The drunk butcher, whose rotten teeth could only ever chew the tenderest of his wares, was kneading his trouser leg under the table and the Quadrant lounger, a foreigner out for an adventure, was rather too blasé about his hand so he would be in for a loss as well.
The Italian who had folded first, of course, knew this one was a lost round. Holmes' mind spun as he tried to focus on their table, and their table alone, but there were three men playing a game of dice behind him, and one of them was using a loaded die, sounding more hollow against the wooden table than its companions.
He hadn't won in a couple rounds, he finally decided, and waited out the round, weathering the supposedly sneaky and sharp observations of his person as he retreated further into his disguise of a down-on-his-luck third son who had rather chosen a life of labor than the Church.
Watson entering the same tavern that he was in was one chance in a million.
Watson being drunk enough to instigate a bar fight with a man even heavier than most of Holmes' Punchbowl opponents was even rarer.
He, of course, abandoned the cards, the money, the gambling, and went to his friend's aid, promptly finding himself tossed out arse over tit and limping home to Baker Street with Watson.
Watson was listing heavily to the side, despite Holmes' best efforts at holding him up. He was slurring his words badly enough that Holmes wasn't even sure if he was speaking Dari, Pashto or English, but he caught that there had been yet another fight with Mary- this time about the night-time visits of some of his Irregulars. Hauling the doctor back to more well-lit, more civilized streets and procuring a cab gave him ample opportunity to curse his association with Holmes, and Holmes' Irregulars, and his inability to say no when someone was in need of treatment- "One of your best traits, dear doctor!"- and Mary's expectations of him moving to the countryside a few years hence when he could not ever imagine leaving the city behind.
"When did the countryside come up?" Holmes asked.
"When she was talking about children," Watson hiccuped as he tried to hold himself upright in the swaying cab.
"Children." Holmes knew of children, of course. They were loud, generally procured more of a mess than his most ambitious experiments and were unformed human beings that, through a rather unscientific method known as "raising" could be made into adequate, boring, normal grown human beings to pollute the streets with their averageness.
"She thinks it is time we think about adding one to our family- we haven't even been married all that long yet! Want to enjoy my relations with her a little longer... but she's not interested at all if there are no children." He spat.
Holmes sighed, and lugged Watson's nearly dead weight up the stairs to the flat. He, too aware of the last time he had been under the influence of a mind-altering substance, had kept his intake of alcoholic beverages to a minimum, had not even finished his first tankard of ale despite keeping it flowing at his table.
"Let's get you to bed, dear fellow," he said, wrestling Watson's coat off his shoulders - he'd bought a new one, as he'd known he would, the same dark blue-gray wool..
"Bed!" Watson agreed enthusiastically, grabbing at Holmes and toppling him to the floor. "You will come to bed with me, you said so. Barter system!"
Swallowing against the bile threatening to rise in his throat at the thought of having to explain yet another unexplainable happenstance, Holmes let himself be carried by Watson's greater physical strength and didn't even put up a token resistance as he was divested of his clothing. Watson did not allow him to touch him, shedding layers until he stood buck-naked, unsteadily wavering on his feet and looking to be as far from Baker Street as his travels had ever taken him.
"Holmes," he finally said as he laid eyes on the detective, lying on his back on the tiger skin rug, one knee raised, looking pointedly at his friend's midsection and the lack of an erection there. "You're a pretty man."
Holmes, not really feeling that he favored that description, made to protest. Seeing Watson naked, in the glow of the gas lighting in their living room, was heady. The doctor was well-muscled but lean, a fencer, a fighter, a boxer of conventional style, right-dominant. His limp was eradicated by the dampening effect of the cheap Scotch he had drunk, tainting his breath, making Holmes feel as though he was breathing in flames with every puff of air they shared as Watson leaned over him.
"Pretty." Watson nodded again, lowering himself until his full length was pressed against Holmes, naked skin sliding against naked skin, scarred shoulders cast in juxtaposition to each other, pale and golden and dark and light. Holmes couldn't help but arch into the contact, feeling Watson so close after weeks of denying himself that he had ever felt him like that before was too much of a good thing, and he had to keep himself in the present by starting to recite the periodic table of the elements under his breath.
"Talking too much," Watson slurred, pressing his mouth against Holmes' chin in a blind search for his lips, and Holmes quickly corrected him, abandoning his recitation for a kiss that left him wanting for air, and his mouth tasting of Watson's and the cheap Scotch. Holmes moved, trying to heave Watson's weight off him as it was becoming hard to breathe, but the doctor would have nothing of that. Snatching both of Holmes' hands in one of his own- despite being long-fingered, Holmes had very slim hands and wrists, and Watson had no trouble in keeping him restrained especially since Holmes didn't want to risk injury to his dearest companion by abruptly dislodging him and tossing him against any one of the sharp corners that were ever-present in his vision (mantlepiece, fire grate, fire poker, couch leg, table legs).
"Mmh, Holmes... you taste so good." Watson moved lower with his kisses, biting at Holmes' collarbones and chest now, his nipples hardening into little nubs against Holmes' own and a stirring beginning down below.
"Need you," he said, and Holmes, overwhelmed with Watson's scent enveloping him, the sharp hurt where the tiger's teeth were scraping against his fingers, the soft glow of the light making the sweat on Watson's back seem more precious than diamonds, nodded.
"You have me," he said, wriggling his hands and laughing as Watson laughed because Holmes couldn't free himself.
Watson was trying to rise up on his elbows now, seemingly trying to find the hand that was holding Holmes' hostage and failing.
"I'll keep them there if you want me to," Holmes offered, surprising himself for he couldn't abide being helpless, ever- but this was Watson, and therefore the very definition of safety.
"Good. S'good." Watson agreed, and finally lifted himself up only to roughly grab one of Holmes' legs and throw it over his shoulder.
"Watson, wait!" Holmes shouted at the sudden tearing stretch going through his thighs. Watson, though, was mumbling to himself, smoothing his hands over Holmes' skin, making appreciative noises.
"S'nice. You're all smooth except where you aren't," he rambled. Holmes was fighting the urge to push Watson off of him, consequences be damned, as his legs were on fire and now Watson's fingers were traveling roughly over his perineum, ignoring his half-hard cock and trying to aim at his hole.
"Stop! Watson, stop, we need-"
"S'all good. Don't worry. Nice and easy. Trust me, I'm a doctor." Holmes' choked on a cry at that; fingertips were stabbing at his hole, scratching, tearing, scrabbling. The first time Watson had ever said that to him, barreling through the crowd gathered around Holmes laid out on the floor after someone had stabbed him, on their celebratory night following the infamous barrel of fish entrails. Holmes' eyes were watering with the pain now, whatever interest his body had had in the proceedings waning as Watson forced his index finger into him to the first knuckle.
"Tight and warm," was muttered into Holmes' ear as Watson's head was lowered to his shoulder and his entire weight came crashing down onto the detective's body, his cock aligning with Watson's with a gasp and a slide of sweaty skin against sweaty skin.. "Need to get in... let..."
The finger was withdrawn, and Holmes could see the frustration building on Watson's face as he tried and failed to get hard. He was humping Holmes' crotch roughly, painfully so. Holmes attempted futilely to extend the leg forced high against his chest by Watson lying on it to offer an alternative. Watson, single-mindedly, was trying to insinuate his hands between their bodies again after having extracted them to brush Holmes' hair from his eyes in an almost tender gesture. Everything was starting to blur around the edges as Holmes, short of breath and tired and exhausted after days of following leads to nowhere, became overwhelmed by Watson.
He was all elbows and knees, ungracefully knocking against tender places, Holmes' stomach, thighs, groin, trying to find a way to fight off the alcohol's spell. Holmes, defeated, gave up keeping his hands above his head where he'd promised Watson they'd stay, tried to gentle the soldier emerging from his caring doctor by rubbing his hands up and down Watson's back- smooth skin over muscle, peppered with tiny scars, then the small, puckered entry wound high over Watson's shoulder blade, ringed by burn scars from the factory explosion; the bullet had been fired from above, it had penetrated at an angle and exited lower on the side of Watson's ribcage where the so much more massive scar of the exit wound sat. The pucker on his shoulder was not the only one, there was another one, on Watson's thigh, not one but two bullets then, fired directly after another, hitting almost at the same time, one staying inside the body as the surgery scars on Watson's leg attested, the other passing through, so much less damage from a through-and-through. There was little body hair on Watson, but his arms and legs were hairy, and rough just like the jagged fingernail leaving its marks on his hipbone, tearing his focus from general Watson-watching to the specifics of the moment and the reddening of Watson's cheeks as his frustration made him thrust even harder, nausea now building as Holmes' body rebelled against the rough treatment of his most sensitive areas.
He carefully slipped a hand between their bodies, grabbing Watson's cock, hot and like wrinkly silk as it tried to fill with blood.
Watson had given up on humping Holmes, instead watching him with glittering eyes, pupils dilated so much that even over this close distance Holmes must have been blurred to his sight. He smoothed his free hand's palm over Watson's soft cheeks, his cheekbones arched so differently from his own, those blue eyes, the gentle frown upon his brow. Holmes smiled at Watson, the pain forgotten, this adorable, confused expression taking it all away.
"Holmes," he said, as though seeing the detective for the first time. Holmes returned his hand to his face, spit in it, trying not to think of the properties of human saliva and especially not the bacteria living therein, and grabbed brought their cocks together in his palm, saliva-slick fingers now gliding over them so easily, and it was starting to feel good again.
"You know, you don't have to be drunk for us to do this," Holmes whispered as softly, as gently as he could so as not to destroy the wondering abandonment being painted on Watson's handsome features.
"Holmes," Watson slurred again.
"Very good, Watson," Holmes couldn't keep from coming out of his mouth, even as he quickened his pace, feeling close. His tone was still gentle, though, at odds with his biting words. "I see you're regaining your faculties."
Watson shuddered against him, something wet and hot splashing Holmes' thighs, easing the way even more especially as Watson's cock was deflating and it was so much easier to just hold onto his own, and he was getting close, just a moment now, and Watson's face, so beautifully enraptured, so unrestrainedly sensual was better than anything he'd ever seen, heard, felt, smelled, touched before, and he wanted to freeze and to keep it and to make it his for all time.
"Mary," Watson groaned. His eyes slid closed as Holmes' hand froze where it was tracking Watson's hairline, all thoughts of lust and satisfaction forgotten, until a snore emerged from the now entirely limp body.
Holmes' mind was blank as he gently, so very gently, rolled his friend onto his back, pillowing his head on the tiger's and carefully tucking him into the soft rug that had served this purpose before.
Still numb, still frozen in time he gathered his and Watson's clothes, carefully laid them over the back of his favorite armchair, and retreated into his own bedroom, softly, very softly closing the door behind him that hadn't been closed (unless he was very cross with Watson) since the doctor had come to his rescue for the second time in a single day, three months and five days after making his acquaintance.
Only once he had laid down in the middle of the bed, pulled his pillows under his head the way he liked them and arranged his body under the eiderdown did he allow his mind to wander from the immediate again. Now that he no longer had any necessary actions to perform he didn't need to keep it together anymore.
For tonight, just for as long as Watson slept and Holmes had himself as his only companion, just for the few hours until dawn he would allow himself to break. He knew he would pick up the pieces again once the new day came, because that was what he did, no matter what, he couldn't be permanently broken, but he could do so in the interim.
He curled into the smell of Watson left on his chest, clutching the sheets to himself like a child would a preferred toy, and definitely didn't cry or swallow down the bile that threatened to rise as he thought of where Watson would rather be right now. Once again, he was swamped by sensation. It would be indelible, as anything concerning Watson was, it registered on the emotional level and that meant it would never go away.
He had a high pain threshold- he'd kept moving through injuries that would have laid lesser men out cold, kept fighting while his life blood was soaking his clothes and he'd been frozen to the core in the maelstrom of sharp rocks and churning water and still his mind had come through.
Nothing compared to this, though. This was deliberate. It was a crippling blow to the heart, one that even his adrenal extract wouldn't let him recover from. To only just realize what he had, to be going forth bright-eyed and hopeful and just so naïve, and then to be used and tossed aside like the brilliant, stupid lout that he was (oh, Watson had called him that too often for him not to have internalized it, as incorrect as it was, he wasn't a lout, never a lout, he was too balanced for that, a fool maybe, that would be another name Watson kept calling him). The physical pain was negligible this time- Watson's fingers, though dry, had been trembling too much to find their goal in a satisfying manner, and his prick, though struggling valiantly, had been kept at half-mast by the mix of blood and ethanol coursing through Watson's veins.
Watson's kisses were still burning against his lips, his cheeks, his chest. He had been allowed a glimpse of heaven- and one word, just one word, had brought him back down to Earth, lower than that, tossed him among the scum to mingle with his ilk.
He, the one who knew every single person's dirty secret the minute he met them- well, give him an hour if he was having an off day- had become one himself. A dirty secret to end all dirty secrets, not only scandal but also merely a body, not even a name anymore, at least not one of his own. He was nothing but a substitute for something, someone, so much more desirable, and that was the worst pain of his life, and it was entirely in his mind that he felt it.
Holmes would have laughed if it wasn't for the tight band ensnaring his breath, trapping it deep in his chest where it was left to fester and rot with what was left of his heart after Watson was through with it.
He didn't cry that night, the numbness, the feeling of loss and being used and therefore useless erasing the tears before they had a chance to cool down his burning eyes.
He didn't cry the next day, either, when Watson, waking in confusion, had had no memory of what they had done before and had even joked that Holmes must have found himself a vixen upon discovering the bruising, purple mark on his collarbone as he'd forgotten- forgotten! Him!- to put on a cravat.
Watson had whistled jauntily walking out the door, extolling the virtues of drinking water while drinking alcohol, and Holmes should have rather done the same for then he wouldn't have to deal with a face that would frighten little children with the dark circles under his eyes and the frown lines on his forehead.
Holmes had smiled, instead, and wished the doctor a good day and that he hoped to see him at the concert the next weekend.
There had been no working through the memories this time. He buried them, locked them, threw away the key and went back to his work- and if Mrs. Hudson was a little more shocked than usual at his coarse language and brusqueness, then that was just his frustration about Mycroft's slowness in keeping his promises and the talents in subterfuge of a certain Chinese. And when everything came to a head just a few days later, with Mycroft and Eddie Chung and Watson all congregating in the sitting room of Baker Street, and he was hustled off on the fastest steamer to Hong Kong together with all the aforementioned except for his brother it definitely wasn't equal amounts of trepidation and relief that made his heart beat faster and his hands tremble.
For what was there to fear if Watson was by his side?
(1)I'm not sure if Sarasate ever played Paganini. They were virtually contemporaries and both well-known virtuosos composing for themselves. For this story, however, he has.
Chapter end notes:
So, it's definite. I'm breaking the weekend update rule and will post whenever, hopefully once a week or I'll warn you. I hope you got through this long chapter while still entertained, and that you weren't unwarned about the happenings therein.
Please tell me what you thought of it! Thanks so much, and I'm looking forward to reading you soon :)
Massive kudos to jg5799 who took over the huge task of unraveling my voice from the characters'. My editing was sub-par with this chapter and she's still managed to make it sound right. Thank you ever so much!
Title: Shatter These Walls
Author:
starlightshade
Beta:
jg5799
Pairing: Holmes/Watson, Watson/Mary mentioned (which is why I didn't tag it), everything else is up in the air atm.
Spoilers: for both movies.
Rating: NC-17/M
Warnings: Plot. Talking. Flowery prose. M/M. Holmes' misogyny. Drunkenness. Dub-con. Rough sex. Emotional fuck-up. Amateur musicology/music theory. Now with bonus Mycroft! More warnings will be given with subsequent chapters.
Prompt:: Watson likes rough sex but doesn't want to hurt Mary. Holmes offers to help out, pretending to like it.
X-posted? Yes.
Disclaimer: No money made. No ownership claimed. Fair use applies.
Finding that 5 isn't 1? Read the others here: Chapter 01, Chapter 02, Chapter 03, Chapter 04
Chapter 5
There had been little in the matter of personal choice for Holmes in his hasted return to Baker Street after Mycroft had assured them the case would be mostly settled within the hour. He was rather weak and in more than a little bit of discomfort, slumping sideways into the swaying, bouncing cab seat. His whole body was burning with pain, but he wouldn't ever differ in his actions could he find a chance to repeat them.
Watson's preliminary affections, as practiced, perfunctory, short and rough as they had been, had caused him to sustain a bit of damage from the more elaborate efforts thereafter due to the length of time it had been since he'd engaged in any such... sport. It had been all he could do to hide that from the doctor as he pulled himself together upon his discovery of his dearest friend's inability to look him in the eye, nothing on Holmes’ mind but somehow finding a remedy, turning the clock back to when they could easily gaze upon one another.
Demeaning himself and their... encounter should have alleviated the doctor's conscience and hopefully made him disinclined to confess to his wife, maybe ensuring further closeness of that kind, the likes of which Holmes had never thought of desiring yet found himself impossibly attracted to nonetheless. Why, then, had it felt as though the dirt clinging to his skin had stained deeper in that moment, why had the lie not fallen from his lips as easily as usual?
Watson's undivided attention on himself was a heady rush, better than cocaine even, and he couldn't help but crave a repeat no matter the consequences for his body or sense of self. The absence of it was worse than any withdrawal, a shattering of something that only left cutting shards behind.
He curled himself deeper into Watson's coat, trying to ignore the stings and sharp, harsh throbs his body gave at the action. Walking the streets, on bare feet nonetheless, standing up straight, giving no sign that anything untoward had happened, fooling even Mycroft (as much as his brother could be fooled)- his mind was starting to feel fevered, as though it couldn't be contained by his skull anymore. It had been a long day, and an endless night, and an eternal hour until he'd got leave to return to his lair.
He desperately needed to calm down, needed the well-known surroundings of his flat in Baker Street to soothe the brain overtaxed by days of unending observations.
Holmes' senses were not necessarily sharper than those of other humans. He simply lacked the filters that others had to protect them from the influx of pure data that battered their consciousness every single moment, which caused him to observe where others merely saw, or heard. The one he'd always been able to control, to a point, had been his sense of touch. Clothing could become unnoticed, a constant invariable presence that he could ignore. He was shy to initiate contact with other humans primarily because he didn't care to add another dimension to his observations of them. Refusing to even shake their hands in greeting as Mycroft was wont to didn't make do in his line of work, and thus he'd been forced to instate some sort of control mechanism where he primarily paid attention to his other senses as a manner of keeping himself in line instead.
Now, Watson had shattered whatever barriers had been left, and Holmes was reeling in response. Mycroft had taken one look at him in the street outside the telegraph office, had called his driver to bring his cab around and urged him to center himself at home, not that Holmes would be capable of anything else. His brother, somehow seeing that there was something wrong, had taken care never to touch him, directing him with hands held a breath away from brushing across Watson's coatsleeves. Mycroft couldn't deduce what had happened, the injuries incurred during his brief time in captivity masked the others, but he was certain that there was more he was hiding and he'd have to try and send him on the wrong track when they met up at the Diogenes Club.
His hands were picking at the hems of these now, taking in the texture of the rough wool tempered by the cotton that it had been blended with, a soft shade of greyish blue quite similar to Watson's eyes when he was calmly contemplative. His ears were picking up and registering the sounds of London with the unforgiving exactness of the violinist he was, his sense of smell was being overwhelmed by a thousand scents wafting through the closed windows of the cab, his eyes were closed but behind his eyelids, between the starbursts of concussion, he could still see Watson's face as he pounded into him, releasing the inhibitions that fettered him so tightly all the time. How beautiful his friend was when he was beyond all propriety, how much more extraordinary his seemingly ordinary being became (ordinary only in the eyes of ordinary people, so much more to Holmes at all times but never more than then). His skin was flushed, rough and dry in patches and soft in others, warm, infused with the scent of Watson that managed to drown out all others even as they mingled in Holmes' mind.
Holmes whimpered, a foreign sound even to his own ears. It had been years since he'd lost control to this extent, and it wasn't ever getting easier. Memories, deductions, extrapolations started their mad dance, tearing at him, almost as painful as the mud clinging to his skin, abrading it, being picked up by the little streams of blood from his wounds and incorporated into the scabs forming. It was too much, there was the fishmonger two streets down; as usual, he'd been scammed on his purchases at the market. There was the candlemaker, beeswax and paraffin, and there was the chemist next door and there it was, at last, 221B Baker Street, unmistakably. Hurry, hurry.
Holmes threw himself from the cab, his shoeless feet picking up the mud of the curb, tracking it to and across the threshold and up the seventeen steps. Watson's coat was thrown in the direction of the potted plant, his chemicals were burning in his nostrils, and he'd never been so grateful to Mrs. Hudson's foresight in installing modern amenities within their flat as he was now. The bathtub, equal in grandeur to the one that had brought about the end of Lord Thomas Rotheram at the hands of Blackwood, filled quickly.
Hot water sluiced across his sensitized skin, finally taking with it all the detritus picked up in a day of being unclothed in the London filth. He ripped his tattered smallclothes off, letting the soap erase whatever unpleasantness remained of his adventure, took a deep breath of clean, sweet-smelling and moist air and centered himself upon the overly fast thrum of the pulse in his veins.
It took him minutes of merely counting the expansions and contractions of his heart muscles, but he could open his eyes again without immediately going into what he'd termed a sensory chaos. His thoughts were marching in their complicated but logical order, his mind obeyed its master, and he could decide upon his readiness to sort through the happenings of the night.
First, though, assessment. He was still very sore, as he'd known he'd be. He'd lost several layers of skin along his back where the rough, half-wet mud had scraped and torn. He was littered in bruises, some of them small and circular and definitely caused by Watson's hungry mouth. Ghosting his fingers over them felt anything but painful, and he quickly decided he'd refrain from doing so until he'd finished inspecting his body for fear of falling prey to the distracting reaction they evoked in other parts of his body.
Watson had used him well- touching his entrance was painful enough that he couldn't even bear the thought of exploring inside. Since he wasn't bleeding he was certain it was unnecessary, but he'd nonetheless try to apply some ointment as soon as he left the bath.
The wound on his head was inconsequential. It had stopped haemorrhaging by the time they had reached the telegraph office, and as long as he took care in washing his hair for a few more days it shouldn't start again. The ringing in his ears was more worrisome, but it, too, had taken a downturn after reaching the sanctuary of his rooms and he was hopeful he'd be rid of the bothersome noise in a week or two. Bruises were nothing new to London's foremost sleuth, and he paid them no heed. They would vanish with/after a few days' rest.
Holmes rested his head on the blessedly cool rim of the tub, allowing the stresses and tribulations to fall away to the sounds of Sarasate playing Paganini's Capricci (1)in his head, entering the memory as deeply as he ever could without being lost in it.
Watson would be home now, too.
Home with Mary.
Holmes scrubbed at his arms, angrily clenching his hands into fists once he realized the action. He would not dwell on mere happenstance. Had Watson not been so angry the night before, had he not been so vulnerable, their encounter wouldn't have come to pass.
The soothing technicality of Paganini descended into the driven illogicality of Beethoven's Ninth, not the fourth movement known so well but the first, soaring scales of hope dragged down whenever they attempted to rise above the marching meter of the bass notes, the true essence of a composition in a minor key. And yet... that piece somehow rose above the premise set out in the massive opening chords, refusing its destiny in the sturm and drang of the fourth movement's finale, changing minor to major, despair to the iconic Ode to Joy.
Holmes knew better than to delude himself into thinking the piece a simile for his life.
The bath water had turned cold and tepid, greyish like a typical London day. Holmes rose laboriously, every move encumbered by the stiffness of his muscles and the remainder of his and Watson's... well, having sex. It was, he admitted to himself, nothing but cowardice to keep floridly describing the act even in his own mind when it had been him who had acquiesced to it, even suggested it as a means of helping Watson be his usual calm and placid self.
Pragmatic as he could be, he searched his drawers for the lotion he'd lathered on the scars Moriarty had given him. It should suffice in treating the irritation around his anus, even though it burned cold as he rubbed it in, courtesy of the menthol used in its production no doubt.
Setting his emotional disturbances as far as could be from his conscious mind while settling his dressing gown-clad body on the settee, he went back to examining his actions, the utter folly he'd exhibited when being ambushed, the tempestuous conclusion with guns and blood and sex.
He'd never thought about Watson as a sexual entity before tonight, and frankly it still scared him to think of his doctor as the savage tearing his clothes apart, but now that the can had been opened the worms were escaping. He couldn't brace his thoughts as he compared the flawless, if scarred, body of the ex-soldier to the pasty, dandyish creatures he'd dallied with at university- never to this extent, his need for control and distaste of human contact had barred him from going further, but he had dallied.
He'd thoroughly studied the females of the species during that same period, managing to charm his way into polite society and even the most coveted ballrooms of the peerage with an ease that had left even his brother stunned. All he had taken away from those encounters, though, was that while not exactly always weak-minded, females were weak in body (even his most recent study object, Miss Irene Adler, had been pleasing to the eye but had not followed through on that promise by being adequate to the type of situations she got herself in. She had gotten Watson injured, and badly, as a result of her weakness, which he wasn't about to forget easily. There would be no forgiveness for her, ever, or at least as long as Watson bore the scars of that horrifying explosion). Invariably, women were also wily, annoyingly dishonest and utterly incapable of any consistent and logically driven behavior. The daughters of the gentry were the worst. He'd escaped marriage once by the skin of his knuckles (thoroughly torn and more than broken) and the virtue of his prodigious fighting skills (evaded the bullet, faked his death (loss of a good disguise persona, that one), and the rather unfortunate-looking suitor to the lovely lady had been sufficiently lacking in intellect to even believe the simple ruse).
As for the males, in particular one special male, his curiosity was far from sated. His body was shying away from the experience, reminding him of the pain it was still in, but his mind was already yearning to disseminate more data about Watson, unknown data about Watson, the man who was fascinating him after more than ten years of cohabitation.
It was a good thing Holmes had been as diligent as possible in his recovery from his Moriarty-induced infirmity. A less flexible partner would have suffered from far more than just muscle soreness after Watson was through with them. No wonder they called him Three Continents!
He didn't know whether to be grateful for the concussed haze that had dropped over him by the time Watson had got to that cellar or not. On the one hand, everything after that gunshot was out of focus, dulled down and filtered through the inability to focus he'd acquired in conjunction with his new future scar, on the other hand, he was definitely feeling... feelings that had no right to exist within his logical mind.
He would need to try and recover from that as well as the physical wounds.
Already, his mind was crying out for him to reconnect with Watson, to get that close again, to feel the other man as he had before. The physicality he could skip, but the closeness... He hadn't known Watson could get that close to him, that he could have him as a part of his own body, his own mind, driven by the same need and into the same direction and just being one. He hadn't known it could be like this, it had never been like this with all those females, or the other males. It had always been messy, and distasteful, and too close, but like with everything else about him, Watson broke that rule as well. There was no such thing as too close with Watson. The closer the better.
Reduced to the sense of touch, his vision blurred, his hearing consumed by the bells in his mind, the smells of the place overwhelming his sensitive nose, he'd been thoroughly pulled under Watson's spell. Hands, rough and smooth and short-nailed and competent had held him and molded him and burned him and healed him and broken him. Hands on his pectorals, on his biceps, on his triceps, over and over again. Watson's mouth, hot and sharp and sweet and wet and everywhere.
Watson had enveloped him entirely, and he'd been able to let go completely. No more thinking, no more trying to order and control the uncontrollable, there had just been sensation, glorious sensation for a few precious moments before pain and shame and confusion had robbed him of his safe haven.
He couldn't deny that he'd be hard-pressed to meet Watson the way he'd met him before, on equal footing. Watson had become his entire world for a while, he'd let him, and then he'd left him, weaker than before and, on his own terms, submissive.
Crawling away from the warmth of his best friend, denying himself the illusion that they had both been wanting whatever it was that had happened, had been hard. It was far from the hardest thing he'd ever done (willingly going to his death, and not telling Watson, still held that dubious honor), but it was up there.
There was a bit of irritated, red skin on his shoulder that didn't fit the pattern of having been bitten or sucked on. It felt like a sunburn, just... scratchier. Watson's mustache, his mind supplied, scratching over the area while he had sucked on the tendons in Holmes' neck. He worried at it for a little while with the calloused fingertips of his left hand, testing the sensations, glorying in the tingling that shot through his nerves and culminated in a warm, glowing feeling in his lower belly.
Pulling his dressing gown tighter around himself, he rang for Mrs. Hudson. The case was over for now, until he could muster the energy and will to look for Eddie Chung. His body needed food, he needed to sleep, needed the clarity that came after sleep to be able to deal with Mycroft at the Diogenes.
"Just leave it here, Nanny," he dismissed his landlady airily, far too busy working through the way Watson had arranged his legs over the doctor's shoulders, how he'd managed to stretch that far after having been tied to a chair for the better part of a day.
He carefully flexed his feet, testing the muscles in his calf and wincing as a cramp shot up from his sole to his thigh. The hot soak had done him well, though, and the cramps were fleeting and hardly worth paying attention to, not when he still had Watson's rough voice shouting his release into his ear.
Breakfast was devoured methodically, Holmes working from the hardest to the softest texture this time, then he cleared the remnants of the completed case off his bed and fell, still in only his dressing gown, onto the disheveled eiderdown and into a deep, exhausted sleep.
-----
Mycroft was prattling on about something entirely inconsequential, as was his wont. His brother just loved to show off his political prowess, and to make matters worse, Watson seemed to love to allow him to do that.
Holmes was almost missing Simza's practical cynicism even if the woman herself - for all that she'd been an asset during their adventure - had been entirely too focused on using Holmes for her own gain. She'd have put a stop to all this posturing, this exchanging of polite tidbits of uselessness in a moment.
However, she was traveling with her marauding band of gypsies somewhere in Southern France, and he had no intention of undertaking the journey there just so he would have someone to act as intermediary between himself, his brother and his best friend.
Watson was slightly skittish, and Holmes himself was not too comfortable in his own skin yet. Finding clothes that were soft enough to bear on a dermis that wasn't only bruised and broken from beatings and rubbing along the ground but also extremely sensitized due to long-time exposure to less than amenable temperatures had been a chore. Convincing Mrs. Hudson to drop everything else and instead focus on getting said clothing into a wearable state had been another. Finally ready to face the day, there had been a line at his preferred telegraph office and he'd had to use a secondary location. The meeting between the three of them had been arranged, though, and one thing was to be said for the Diogenes Club, as little as it agreed with Holmes in all other matters: Their culinary service was excellent, and as he was still in need of recuperating, he'd partaken of the potted shrimp (served on a Sunday, Mycroft's doing no doubt) with gusto.
The distraction the food offered was more than welcome, since Watson and he existed in a limbo state of agitated attempts at in turn ignoring each other, then trying to turn to each other only to shy away as though poked by the remarkable pronged instrument that had got Dredger off his back so long ago.
He toyed with the idea of driving the doctor to complete distraction by lacing his leg behind the one Watson had outstretched between the table, but managed to control the urge when he saw Watson's slight yawn hidden behind his hand. Mycroft's palavering was hard on the doctor's concentration, then, too.
"Thank you, Mycroft," he interjected, once his brother had found a natural stopping point of a split second in his monologue. How could a person talk as much as Mycroft and still have the ability to talk more when incited? "I believe Dr. Watson has an engagement with his wife this afternoon, though, so if you could allow us our leave?"
"Doctor, how remiss of me to keep you from your wife this long. Of course, you must be anxious to see her again, a most delightful young lady, best among her specimens if I may say so."
Holmes shook his head and grabbed Watson's sleeve before the doctor could ask his brother what Mycroft had meant by that comment.
"One could almost envision oneself sharing one's living quarters with a woman like her, maybe for an extended amount of time like, a month. However, I am certain you will find, in retrospect, that my brother, though quite demanding in his own right, is far removed from the hysteria that follows those young creatures around and will prove to have been the better choice in companions, as far as cohabitation goes."
"Yes, yes, I'm certain," Holmes demurred, now openly pulling the unresisting Watson, who was caught between exasperation and anger at yet another Holmes slighting his wife- or was he? Watson's face was hard to read in these instances, he tended to just show fury around the hard lines of his mouth under his mustache and the stiff tenseness of his posture. His forearms were corded with muscle ready to explode, and Holmes was getting anxious to see neither his brother nor his dearest doctor harmed in any way.
"Sherlock, would you stay a moment longer, please? I have several more details to ask of you concerning a certain Irish gentlewoman's bastard..."
"Certainly. Always good to see you, Watson."
"It was a pleasure having your company, doctor." Mycroft, who hadn't moved from his chair, dismissed Watson and the footman who had come to the Strangers' Room to fetch him with all the grace of centuries of breeding. Watson frowned but went, so he really had made a promise to his wife, then.
Holmes didn't think she'd suspected anything, she would have been much more reluctant to let her husband accompany him otherwise, as she, like every woman, would surely be useless at hiding feelings of jealousy; she wouldn't have let Watson part from her without a word to him that would have tensed him up beyond what had passed between Holmes and him.
Holmes paced in front of the fireplace, the fire extinguished in deference to the rising temperatures the uncharacteristically sunny day had brought about. His hands locked firmly in the small of his back, he longed for his pipe to fiddle with to avoid answering to, and looking at, his older, and so much sharper brother.
"Brother, I wonder... your timing... Sherlock, what has happened between the good doctor and you?"
Holmes flinched. He could no more control the reflex than he could keep away from Watson.
"Nothing of import, brother," he said, dismissively relaxing his posture and keeping his face slack.
"I have been reading you and Dr. Watson both since you first moved into 221b together," Mycroft kept on. "You have never been this uncomfortable in the doctor's presence, not even after the first time he had to come to your rescue and you managed to upend an entire fishmonger's barrel of fish entrails over his head. You were closer to him then than you were today, and it has nothing to do with your... absence."
"That was an honest and forgivable mistake as Watson had taken care to disguise himself and I didn't know him that well yet... Oh. Don't give me this... this spiel of yours, Mycroft. You know exactly what happened, just as I know what your secretary is doing spending most of his time at your townhouse or the estate. Don't take me for an imbecile, brother."
"I am not, Sherlock." Mycroft dropped all pretense, his voice suddenly devoid of the mockery and artifice he injected into every one of his conversations. "I am, however, aware of both your and the doctor's circumstances and may be in the unique position to... provide some assistance, given your acceptance of any such help."
"There is nothing you can do to help." Holmes was facing the fireplace, his mind in turmoil while his speech was still calm. "Watson has made his choice. Both of us have had a moment of... losing control. You know how it affected me so you also know I have dealt with the aftermath and am once again in a condition to work." As long as you keep your mind from it, never think of it again, his traitorous brain supplied.
"I will concentrate on bringing down the syndicate involved in the forgeries if I can make contact with your colonial agent. Watson will have his practice, and his wife, and the dog, and their house and... that will have to suffice. He will render aid when I request it, I am sure of that, but I ask that you, brother, do not do so again. I will not have Watson be at the mercy of the puppetmaster of Her Majesty's government."
"Always so loyal, both of you. Two blind fools stumbling around each other."
"Fool I may be, but blind I am not. My mind is on the work, Mycroft, and I have to keep it there if you want to see the end of this one branch of the Triads, and the criminals of London to quake in fear."
"I wish for you it weren't so, Sherlock," Mycroft sighed, popping a biscuit in his mouth and swallowing it with the last of his overly sweet tea.
"On the danger of sounding like a trite everyman, brother: If wishes were horses..."
"We'd all be drowning in horseshit." The brothers shared a fleeting, unguarded grin of childhood memories and exasperated nannies coming after them with Cook's wooden spoon.
"I will see to it that you receive a visit from Mr. Chung, Sherlock," Mycroft promised.
"Thank you, Mycroft." For all of it, went unsaid.
-----
Holmes was kept busy with a flurry of small, unimportant cases in the following weeks. He was rather put out at the amount of time his body took in regenerating itself to fighting condition, but until then he had to rely on alternative methods of procuring enough income to sustain his lifestyle than an evening at the Punchbowl. Most of the work could be done by correspondence, and as long as he had a soft pillow to sit on and could take regular breaks to clear his mind by stimulating it he was as good as he could be. He simply took care to have nothing to remind him of shipbuilding, the Thames, or Watson in his vicinity. He even locked up Watson's rugby ball in the chest of drawers in the entrance hall. According to his calculations, it would take about a month for Mrs. Hudson to discover it in there (she stored her winter gloves in it and wouldn't be inclined to use them in the clement weather) and return it to Holmes.
He visited with Watson a few days after the conjoined appearance at the Diogenes Club, and was welcomed so warmly into the house by both the doctor and his wife that Watson couldn't have told her everything about their night on the docks. Watson, for his part, seemed quite alright with Holmes entering his personal space- his demeanor, his entire bearing, suggested he had put that night behind him as a nightmare born of desperation. Holmes was willing to go with it, he had other matters to attend to, and as he'd told his brother, he had recaptured his ability to dissociate himself from anything interfering with his work.
Mary Watson insisted on feeding him a ghastly cake she had made herself, apparently under the guidance of their housekeeper, but if the woman's baking skills were truly so poor he'd have to revise his theory about Watson's weight gain. Maybe she was better with savory dishes. Or maybe it had been the housekeeper's interference that had ensured the relative unpalatability of the sweet, clay-like... thing he'd been served.
He smiled and complimented her on her house though, innocently asking whether she planned to decorate the marquetry tables matching the chairs in the drawing room with lace doilies anytime soon and earning a cuff in the side from Watson followed by chuckling and, of course, a quick retelling of their encounter with Madam Rosa.
"Of course, from the moment she mentioned the warts I knew who it was that had set the gypsy upon me, and who had given her your name, and he was standing right beside me at that time. Without her interference I might have never walked into Madison and Haig's to buy your ring."
"Which you lost immediately thereafter to one of the potatoes," Holmes said, falling silent as he caught on to Mrs. Watson's rather indignant look.
"So that is where you were when you should have been meeting my parents."
"No." Holmes continued. In for a penny, in for a pound and how come Watson hadn't told her the whole story yet? "Watson was gracious enough to follow me to the slip where Dredger let loose an unfinished steel ship."
"You had forgotten your revolver- again."
"And you brought yours in its stead, again. Which is why I will always say that it is good to see you, because you usually carry upon your person the means to my salvation."
There was an awkward silence falling over the table after that. Holmes quickly excused himself, needing to be away from the deep-seated hurt of seeing Watson being so... reasonable about the entire sequence of events. He didn't take a cab, deciding instead to slink into the shadows and start his own search for the rather elusive Eddie Chung- he'd let the Irregulars loose.
It was drinking, heavily, with some rather pungent characters in one of the more infamous gambling establishments near Bethnal Green in the East End after he could at last move without undue stiffness, that brought the first hint of the Colonial agent's presence, a shadow of the flicker of a braid, blacker than night. Holmes followed with his eyes, noting the direction, but was stalled from his pursuit by the slapping down of a hand of cards as their gamble progressed. He took a sip of his dark ale, of surprising quality for such a location, and quickly ran through the cards that had already fallen, the ones he held, and the likely combinations in the hands of the other five gamblers at his table. He knew he stood a good chance of bluffing them all out- the deserter, run away before he could have been shipped off to war, was fingering his gold earring nervously. The drunk butcher, whose rotten teeth could only ever chew the tenderest of his wares, was kneading his trouser leg under the table and the Quadrant lounger, a foreigner out for an adventure, was rather too blasé about his hand so he would be in for a loss as well.
The Italian who had folded first, of course, knew this one was a lost round. Holmes' mind spun as he tried to focus on their table, and their table alone, but there were three men playing a game of dice behind him, and one of them was using a loaded die, sounding more hollow against the wooden table than its companions.
He hadn't won in a couple rounds, he finally decided, and waited out the round, weathering the supposedly sneaky and sharp observations of his person as he retreated further into his disguise of a down-on-his-luck third son who had rather chosen a life of labor than the Church.
Watson entering the same tavern that he was in was one chance in a million.
Watson being drunk enough to instigate a bar fight with a man even heavier than most of Holmes' Punchbowl opponents was even rarer.
He, of course, abandoned the cards, the money, the gambling, and went to his friend's aid, promptly finding himself tossed out arse over tit and limping home to Baker Street with Watson.
Watson was listing heavily to the side, despite Holmes' best efforts at holding him up. He was slurring his words badly enough that Holmes wasn't even sure if he was speaking Dari, Pashto or English, but he caught that there had been yet another fight with Mary- this time about the night-time visits of some of his Irregulars. Hauling the doctor back to more well-lit, more civilized streets and procuring a cab gave him ample opportunity to curse his association with Holmes, and Holmes' Irregulars, and his inability to say no when someone was in need of treatment- "One of your best traits, dear doctor!"- and Mary's expectations of him moving to the countryside a few years hence when he could not ever imagine leaving the city behind.
"When did the countryside come up?" Holmes asked.
"When she was talking about children," Watson hiccuped as he tried to hold himself upright in the swaying cab.
"Children." Holmes knew of children, of course. They were loud, generally procured more of a mess than his most ambitious experiments and were unformed human beings that, through a rather unscientific method known as "raising" could be made into adequate, boring, normal grown human beings to pollute the streets with their averageness.
"She thinks it is time we think about adding one to our family- we haven't even been married all that long yet! Want to enjoy my relations with her a little longer... but she's not interested at all if there are no children." He spat.
Holmes sighed, and lugged Watson's nearly dead weight up the stairs to the flat. He, too aware of the last time he had been under the influence of a mind-altering substance, had kept his intake of alcoholic beverages to a minimum, had not even finished his first tankard of ale despite keeping it flowing at his table.
"Let's get you to bed, dear fellow," he said, wrestling Watson's coat off his shoulders - he'd bought a new one, as he'd known he would, the same dark blue-gray wool..
"Bed!" Watson agreed enthusiastically, grabbing at Holmes and toppling him to the floor. "You will come to bed with me, you said so. Barter system!"
Swallowing against the bile threatening to rise in his throat at the thought of having to explain yet another unexplainable happenstance, Holmes let himself be carried by Watson's greater physical strength and didn't even put up a token resistance as he was divested of his clothing. Watson did not allow him to touch him, shedding layers until he stood buck-naked, unsteadily wavering on his feet and looking to be as far from Baker Street as his travels had ever taken him.
"Holmes," he finally said as he laid eyes on the detective, lying on his back on the tiger skin rug, one knee raised, looking pointedly at his friend's midsection and the lack of an erection there. "You're a pretty man."
Holmes, not really feeling that he favored that description, made to protest. Seeing Watson naked, in the glow of the gas lighting in their living room, was heady. The doctor was well-muscled but lean, a fencer, a fighter, a boxer of conventional style, right-dominant. His limp was eradicated by the dampening effect of the cheap Scotch he had drunk, tainting his breath, making Holmes feel as though he was breathing in flames with every puff of air they shared as Watson leaned over him.
"Pretty." Watson nodded again, lowering himself until his full length was pressed against Holmes, naked skin sliding against naked skin, scarred shoulders cast in juxtaposition to each other, pale and golden and dark and light. Holmes couldn't help but arch into the contact, feeling Watson so close after weeks of denying himself that he had ever felt him like that before was too much of a good thing, and he had to keep himself in the present by starting to recite the periodic table of the elements under his breath.
"Talking too much," Watson slurred, pressing his mouth against Holmes' chin in a blind search for his lips, and Holmes quickly corrected him, abandoning his recitation for a kiss that left him wanting for air, and his mouth tasting of Watson's and the cheap Scotch. Holmes moved, trying to heave Watson's weight off him as it was becoming hard to breathe, but the doctor would have nothing of that. Snatching both of Holmes' hands in one of his own- despite being long-fingered, Holmes had very slim hands and wrists, and Watson had no trouble in keeping him restrained especially since Holmes didn't want to risk injury to his dearest companion by abruptly dislodging him and tossing him against any one of the sharp corners that were ever-present in his vision (mantlepiece, fire grate, fire poker, couch leg, table legs).
"Mmh, Holmes... you taste so good." Watson moved lower with his kisses, biting at Holmes' collarbones and chest now, his nipples hardening into little nubs against Holmes' own and a stirring beginning down below.
"Need you," he said, and Holmes, overwhelmed with Watson's scent enveloping him, the sharp hurt where the tiger's teeth were scraping against his fingers, the soft glow of the light making the sweat on Watson's back seem more precious than diamonds, nodded.
"You have me," he said, wriggling his hands and laughing as Watson laughed because Holmes couldn't free himself.
Watson was trying to rise up on his elbows now, seemingly trying to find the hand that was holding Holmes' hostage and failing.
"I'll keep them there if you want me to," Holmes offered, surprising himself for he couldn't abide being helpless, ever- but this was Watson, and therefore the very definition of safety.
"Good. S'good." Watson agreed, and finally lifted himself up only to roughly grab one of Holmes' legs and throw it over his shoulder.
"Watson, wait!" Holmes shouted at the sudden tearing stretch going through his thighs. Watson, though, was mumbling to himself, smoothing his hands over Holmes' skin, making appreciative noises.
"S'nice. You're all smooth except where you aren't," he rambled. Holmes was fighting the urge to push Watson off of him, consequences be damned, as his legs were on fire and now Watson's fingers were traveling roughly over his perineum, ignoring his half-hard cock and trying to aim at his hole.
"Stop! Watson, stop, we need-"
"S'all good. Don't worry. Nice and easy. Trust me, I'm a doctor." Holmes' choked on a cry at that; fingertips were stabbing at his hole, scratching, tearing, scrabbling. The first time Watson had ever said that to him, barreling through the crowd gathered around Holmes laid out on the floor after someone had stabbed him, on their celebratory night following the infamous barrel of fish entrails. Holmes' eyes were watering with the pain now, whatever interest his body had had in the proceedings waning as Watson forced his index finger into him to the first knuckle.
"Tight and warm," was muttered into Holmes' ear as Watson's head was lowered to his shoulder and his entire weight came crashing down onto the detective's body, his cock aligning with Watson's with a gasp and a slide of sweaty skin against sweaty skin.. "Need to get in... let..."
The finger was withdrawn, and Holmes could see the frustration building on Watson's face as he tried and failed to get hard. He was humping Holmes' crotch roughly, painfully so. Holmes attempted futilely to extend the leg forced high against his chest by Watson lying on it to offer an alternative. Watson, single-mindedly, was trying to insinuate his hands between their bodies again after having extracted them to brush Holmes' hair from his eyes in an almost tender gesture. Everything was starting to blur around the edges as Holmes, short of breath and tired and exhausted after days of following leads to nowhere, became overwhelmed by Watson.
He was all elbows and knees, ungracefully knocking against tender places, Holmes' stomach, thighs, groin, trying to find a way to fight off the alcohol's spell. Holmes, defeated, gave up keeping his hands above his head where he'd promised Watson they'd stay, tried to gentle the soldier emerging from his caring doctor by rubbing his hands up and down Watson's back- smooth skin over muscle, peppered with tiny scars, then the small, puckered entry wound high over Watson's shoulder blade, ringed by burn scars from the factory explosion; the bullet had been fired from above, it had penetrated at an angle and exited lower on the side of Watson's ribcage where the so much more massive scar of the exit wound sat. The pucker on his shoulder was not the only one, there was another one, on Watson's thigh, not one but two bullets then, fired directly after another, hitting almost at the same time, one staying inside the body as the surgery scars on Watson's leg attested, the other passing through, so much less damage from a through-and-through. There was little body hair on Watson, but his arms and legs were hairy, and rough just like the jagged fingernail leaving its marks on his hipbone, tearing his focus from general Watson-watching to the specifics of the moment and the reddening of Watson's cheeks as his frustration made him thrust even harder, nausea now building as Holmes' body rebelled against the rough treatment of his most sensitive areas.
He carefully slipped a hand between their bodies, grabbing Watson's cock, hot and like wrinkly silk as it tried to fill with blood.
Watson had given up on humping Holmes, instead watching him with glittering eyes, pupils dilated so much that even over this close distance Holmes must have been blurred to his sight. He smoothed his free hand's palm over Watson's soft cheeks, his cheekbones arched so differently from his own, those blue eyes, the gentle frown upon his brow. Holmes smiled at Watson, the pain forgotten, this adorable, confused expression taking it all away.
"Holmes," he said, as though seeing the detective for the first time. Holmes returned his hand to his face, spit in it, trying not to think of the properties of human saliva and especially not the bacteria living therein, and grabbed brought their cocks together in his palm, saliva-slick fingers now gliding over them so easily, and it was starting to feel good again.
"You know, you don't have to be drunk for us to do this," Holmes whispered as softly, as gently as he could so as not to destroy the wondering abandonment being painted on Watson's handsome features.
"Holmes," Watson slurred again.
"Very good, Watson," Holmes couldn't keep from coming out of his mouth, even as he quickened his pace, feeling close. His tone was still gentle, though, at odds with his biting words. "I see you're regaining your faculties."
Watson shuddered against him, something wet and hot splashing Holmes' thighs, easing the way even more especially as Watson's cock was deflating and it was so much easier to just hold onto his own, and he was getting close, just a moment now, and Watson's face, so beautifully enraptured, so unrestrainedly sensual was better than anything he'd ever seen, heard, felt, smelled, touched before, and he wanted to freeze and to keep it and to make it his for all time.
"Mary," Watson groaned. His eyes slid closed as Holmes' hand froze where it was tracking Watson's hairline, all thoughts of lust and satisfaction forgotten, until a snore emerged from the now entirely limp body.
Holmes' mind was blank as he gently, so very gently, rolled his friend onto his back, pillowing his head on the tiger's and carefully tucking him into the soft rug that had served this purpose before.
Still numb, still frozen in time he gathered his and Watson's clothes, carefully laid them over the back of his favorite armchair, and retreated into his own bedroom, softly, very softly closing the door behind him that hadn't been closed (unless he was very cross with Watson) since the doctor had come to his rescue for the second time in a single day, three months and five days after making his acquaintance.
Only once he had laid down in the middle of the bed, pulled his pillows under his head the way he liked them and arranged his body under the eiderdown did he allow his mind to wander from the immediate again. Now that he no longer had any necessary actions to perform he didn't need to keep it together anymore.
For tonight, just for as long as Watson slept and Holmes had himself as his only companion, just for the few hours until dawn he would allow himself to break. He knew he would pick up the pieces again once the new day came, because that was what he did, no matter what, he couldn't be permanently broken, but he could do so in the interim.
He curled into the smell of Watson left on his chest, clutching the sheets to himself like a child would a preferred toy, and definitely didn't cry or swallow down the bile that threatened to rise as he thought of where Watson would rather be right now. Once again, he was swamped by sensation. It would be indelible, as anything concerning Watson was, it registered on the emotional level and that meant it would never go away.
He had a high pain threshold- he'd kept moving through injuries that would have laid lesser men out cold, kept fighting while his life blood was soaking his clothes and he'd been frozen to the core in the maelstrom of sharp rocks and churning water and still his mind had come through.
Nothing compared to this, though. This was deliberate. It was a crippling blow to the heart, one that even his adrenal extract wouldn't let him recover from. To only just realize what he had, to be going forth bright-eyed and hopeful and just so naïve, and then to be used and tossed aside like the brilliant, stupid lout that he was (oh, Watson had called him that too often for him not to have internalized it, as incorrect as it was, he wasn't a lout, never a lout, he was too balanced for that, a fool maybe, that would be another name Watson kept calling him). The physical pain was negligible this time- Watson's fingers, though dry, had been trembling too much to find their goal in a satisfying manner, and his prick, though struggling valiantly, had been kept at half-mast by the mix of blood and ethanol coursing through Watson's veins.
Watson's kisses were still burning against his lips, his cheeks, his chest. He had been allowed a glimpse of heaven- and one word, just one word, had brought him back down to Earth, lower than that, tossed him among the scum to mingle with his ilk.
He, the one who knew every single person's dirty secret the minute he met them- well, give him an hour if he was having an off day- had become one himself. A dirty secret to end all dirty secrets, not only scandal but also merely a body, not even a name anymore, at least not one of his own. He was nothing but a substitute for something, someone, so much more desirable, and that was the worst pain of his life, and it was entirely in his mind that he felt it.
Holmes would have laughed if it wasn't for the tight band ensnaring his breath, trapping it deep in his chest where it was left to fester and rot with what was left of his heart after Watson was through with it.
He didn't cry that night, the numbness, the feeling of loss and being used and therefore useless erasing the tears before they had a chance to cool down his burning eyes.
He didn't cry the next day, either, when Watson, waking in confusion, had had no memory of what they had done before and had even joked that Holmes must have found himself a vixen upon discovering the bruising, purple mark on his collarbone as he'd forgotten- forgotten! Him!- to put on a cravat.
Watson had whistled jauntily walking out the door, extolling the virtues of drinking water while drinking alcohol, and Holmes should have rather done the same for then he wouldn't have to deal with a face that would frighten little children with the dark circles under his eyes and the frown lines on his forehead.
Holmes had smiled, instead, and wished the doctor a good day and that he hoped to see him at the concert the next weekend.
There had been no working through the memories this time. He buried them, locked them, threw away the key and went back to his work- and if Mrs. Hudson was a little more shocked than usual at his coarse language and brusqueness, then that was just his frustration about Mycroft's slowness in keeping his promises and the talents in subterfuge of a certain Chinese. And when everything came to a head just a few days later, with Mycroft and Eddie Chung and Watson all congregating in the sitting room of Baker Street, and he was hustled off on the fastest steamer to Hong Kong together with all the aforementioned except for his brother it definitely wasn't equal amounts of trepidation and relief that made his heart beat faster and his hands tremble.
For what was there to fear if Watson was by his side?
(1)I'm not sure if Sarasate ever played Paganini. They were virtually contemporaries and both well-known virtuosos composing for themselves. For this story, however, he has.
Chapter end notes:
So, it's definite. I'm breaking the weekend update rule and will post whenever, hopefully once a week or I'll warn you. I hope you got through this long chapter while still entertained, and that you weren't unwarned about the happenings therein.
Please tell me what you thought of it! Thanks so much, and I'm looking forward to reading you soon :)