Blind Affection
TITLE: Blind Affection
FANDOM: Sherlock Holmes '09
PAIRING: Blackwood/Coward
NOTE: Dear Self, why do you never write nice things?
WARNINGS: Language and scenes of a sexual nature.
Blackwood knew that it is possible to blind someone so completely that you can remove your mask altogether. This, of course, takes time. He and Coward had been given plenty of that. Still, Blackwood had been careful. It was one thing to hold sway over the masses, but a true friend was a far more important acquisition. You couldn’t unveil the hidden reality too soon. Leave that long enough and, to the true friend, the change would be indiscernible.
Of course, Blackwood had fucked dear Coward before. At first, seldom, as he knew instinctively that seldom was the way Coward liked it. They first met as undergraduates at Cambridge. It didn’t take Blackwood long to dissemble Coward’s personality. To begin with, Coward had always been attracted to secrecy. It had started off as shyness and a silent, non-reaction to the scoldings from his widowed, manic, overbearing mother. It turned, churning away inside him with the roll of the years. It turned into a desire to do unacceptable things and keep them quiet. This was how he was when Blackwood met him. He was in love with his own silence, and deaf to the noise he made in keeping it.
Blackwood kindly gave Coward a secret to keep. It left the man with a satisfying feeling of having disobeyed his mother. But it was also a safe, comforting secret with which to begin life outside of Eton, where similar secrets were commonplace.
Besides this, Blackwood soon became fond of Coward. He calculated his worth with minute, practical detail and found it satisfactory. Also, he was perfectly aware that Coward adored him. Adored him with an instinctive, violent need. Coward harboured the kind of affection that afflicts both the religious fanatic and the madwoman in cheap fiction.
“You’re staring at me again,” Coward half smiled, breaking an egg into a glass.
Breakfast time was upon them, and hangovers too.
“What would you prefer me to look at?” asked Blackwood, evenly. And then, when Coward made no signs of answering, “I like the view.”
Coward put the morning-after-mixture down on the table. His hand lingered on the table’s surface too long. Blackwood caught it up and brought it to his mouth, not even kissing the knuckles, merely grazing them with his lips.
That was the entirety of their interactions for that day. Only a few minutes later, Blackwood watched from the window as Coward strode back to his rooms. He closed the curtains and touched the lips that had touched the hand.
Another thing about Coward: he loved pomp. He positively lapped up the gaudiness of the Order. As the years went on, Blackwood catered to this as well. When the banal secrecy of sex began to wear, the doings of the Order piqued Coward’s interest. Sex became a pleasure for its own sake but the Order invigorated it.
Blackwood made a good show for Coward. Coward was the only person he would make such an effort for. He was always careful with Coward.
On this particular evening, circumstances were quite different to usual. Coward, hungry as ever for the knife’s point, hot candle wax and cold stone slab, was put out. Only a little, but the feeling was there. Blackwood sensed this and he felt the briefest flicker of regret. It seemed, briefly, that he had miscalculated the moment somehow. He should have left his reveal for a later date; maybe he should have abandoned it altogether.
Coward sat on the bed, smoking a cigarette. Blackwood leant against the mantelpiece, watching Coward in the lined and spotted old mirror.
The cheap, dirty room felt so alien to Coward, but not so much as his dearest friend juxtaposed against it. No one looked more stripped than Blackwood in that room, turning to lean his naked body against the wall.
There was no magic in Blackwood; he had known that for a long time. But Coward knew that there was something powerful nonetheless. It was a power that was real, that compelled him, and that he now felt he had been allowed to fully understand. He had been allowed a glimpse of the true form. Blackwood had chosen to share it with him and no one else.
At the realisation, Coward pushed himself off the bed and onto his knees. Blackwood walked a few steps to meet him, whereupon Coward grabbed both his hands.
“You must not,” Coward said earnestly, “You mustn’t share this with anyone but me.”
Blackwood freed one of his hands. He stroked Coward’s raised face, as Coward looked up at him, fierce and expectant.
“I never planned to,” Blackwood assured him, “You’re the only one I trust.”
The thrill of the words struck Coward with a renewed energy. His body responded to them instinctively. Not knowing how else to express the craving, the pleasure and the gratitude, he caught hold of Blackwood’s buttocks and pressed his lips to the man’s left thigh. He worked him with his tongue, quickly moving to take Blackwood’s cock into his mouth.
Coward’s reverence was more than a little ridiculous, but it suited Blackwood very well. He loved the boy very much for it, in all sincerity. He would always give him his affection in all the ways he knew how.