Blame the Trees
Beta: sweetestdrain
Brit-picker: fear3loathing
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Holmes/Watson
Warnings: Homophobia, Victorian sexual mores
Word Count: 8,300
Summary: Watson moves back into Baker Street after the events of "The Empty House" only to discover Holmes has been keeping secrets.
A/N: This is a gift for cathedralcarver, who had a hankering after some ACD slash. Hope you like it, friend! Big thanks to fear3loathing for the Brit-picking pinch hit!
Blame the Trees
“This is the last of it,” Watson announced upon the delivery of his medical texts back to Baker Street. He received no reply from his indifferent audience, the smoking lump on the settee. In truth, selling his practice and moving from the house he had shared with his wife back to his rooms with Holmes was both simple and relieving. He had few items which were truly his: his clothing, his books, his journals, his writing desk, his typewriter, sundry medical supplies. Mary’s items, decorations and books, clothing and trinkets, had been packed away and disseminated amongst her friends and relations long before Holmes’s unexpected return. Rattling about in the house he once shared with her was a dull ache Watson was thankful to ease with his permanent absence.
The movers made quick work of it all and soon Watson was left only with the unenviable task of unpacking and arranging his belongings in his old bedchambers. He had the uncanny sense of slipping into motions he had already performed and experienced as if he were the phantom in a horror tale of his own - déjà vu. The clever, sensual French, with words for everything bodily and cerebral. He had done precisely this, of course, thirteen years ago when first he made the acquaintance of one Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Back then, Mrs. Hudson had aided him in this endeavour, but she was not as hale as she had once been, and Watson did not have the heart to work her beyond preparing his bed for a familiar inhabitant. When she began to help, as was her keen and industrious way, Watson sent her away by pleading a widower’s desire to be alone with his thoughts. She hummed and pursed her lips in a moue of sympathy, patting his shoulder. She had been in attendance at Mary’s funeral, had been witness to his erect spine and stony expression.
“Oh, Dr. Watson,” she cried, “I’m so glad you’ve returned. You and Mr. Holmes can keep one another company again. You’ll neither of you have to be alone anymore.”
Watson felt a brittle smile overtake his lips, and his chest tightened at her words. He swallowed and collected himself.
“Everything will be as it was, Mrs. Hudson. Right as rain.”
Mrs. Hudson beamed and clasped her hands together. “I’ll get started on supper,” she said. “Will Mr. Holmes be dining tonight, do you think?”
“I shall prod him with a stick and get an answer for you post-haste, Mrs. Hudson.”
Mrs. Hudson feigned a gasp. “You wicked man,” she whispered, eyes atwinkle, and departed.
Watson sat upon the edge of his old bed with a heavy sigh. He rubbed at his old war wound and stood again to begin putting his clothes away in the wardrobe. You are a wicked man, he castigated himself. To forget your wife so easily. To use her as an excuse. He had spared no thought to Mary’s memory since Holmes had returned so improbably, so ecstatically, to his life. In a moment of brutal honesty, Watson acknowledged that she had been absent from his thoughts for longer than that. He had buried much with her death, her body not least among the casualties.
A rustle from the door and a familiar voice startled him from his reverie.
“Woolgather any more intently, Watson, and you shall surely strain something. Your moustache, perhaps.”
Watson looked up to see Holmes lounging carelessly against the jamb, a threadbare dressing gown slipping from his shoulders and a pipe hanging from the thin twist of his smirking lips.
“Holmes. I didn’t see you there.”
“Obviously.” Holmes sniffed and looked down his hawkish nose at the array of garments piled on Watson’s bed. “Settling in, I see.”
“Now who is being obvious?” Watson ribbed him with a smile ticking in the corner of his mouth. Holmes sent him a sour look. “You could make yourself useful and help me to unpack some of these boxes.”
Holmes shrugged and gave his pipe a long draw. Smoke whirled about him as he let it escape his lungs.
“You sent away your help,” he said. “Who am I to extend my hand when it would only be refused, or, worse, bitten?”
“So you’re here simply to be a nuisance, then.” Watson raised his eyebrows and turned his back to Holmes to hang a shirt. “Very well.” He had learned, many years ago now, that the best means of handling Holmes when he was being particularly contrarian was to ignore him. Nothing galled him so much.
“Watson.”
Watson gave no answer, but continued to put away his clothes.
“Watson.”
Watson began to whistle, and behind him he heard an exasperated sigh, the clunk of a pipe being set down, and finally the sound of Holmes’s put-upon compliance. When Holmes came up beside him, shirt to hang in hand, Watson slid him a smile. Holmes returned with a small one of his own.
“I must express my gladness that you are here, Watson,” he said, letting his gaze fall from Watson’s own. “These have not been the same rooms without you, nor I the same man.”
Watson turned to face his companion fully, a furrow in his brow. Holmes studiously avoided his eyes and slid another shirt onto another hanger. Watson had never before heard Holmes speak so nakedly of sentimental things, the softer emotions. He could speak at length about Watson’s own admiration of him, but Watson had long resigned himself to the knowledge that Holmes’s answering regard was largely unspoken. His acknowledgment so recently that he wished to see Watson in his customary chair in Baker Street had been its own revelation, a sentiment, Watson thought, brought on by the strain of the day. Watson had not been expecting conversation to follow in a similar vein ever again.
Watson ventured to rest a hand on Holmes’s sharp shoulder.
“My dear Holmes,” he said. “You must know it is likewise my highest honour and greatest joy to return here.”
Holmes met Watson’s eyes at last, the familiar steel of them gone soft with surprising depth. Watson let himself smile fully up into the face he had missed so well these last three years.
“Oh, Watson, how you look at me,” Holmes murmured, dark lashes dropping to shutter his eyes. The irises were silver slits when Watson became aware of the heat of Holmes’s body, his proximity. Surely they had stood so close before? Watson could not recall, but Holmes’s smell was familiar and made something inside Watson ache. Watson drew his hand from Holmes’s shoulder and stepped to the side. The space between them eased the sudden tension about his diaphragm. I am merely acclimating once again to his presence, Watson thought. With time we will once again be as brothers, like before.
“It would please Mrs. Hudson if you would partake of supper tonight,” he said into the wardrobe, touching idly the sleeves of his hanging shirts. “As it would please your long-suffering doctor.”
Holmes gave a long exhale and removed himself from the space immediately in front of the wardrobe.
“I find I have little appetite, Watson,” he said in a tone of regret, and Watson turned to find Holmes rubbing at his temples, facing away from him. Watson took a step toward him, concerned.
“Holmes, are you all right?”
Holmes turned back to him with a tight, false smile distorting his expression and doing little to hide the wounded look in his eyes.
“It is nothing, my friend,” he said. “Come, we will put away more of your things.”
“It is not nothing, Holmes,” Watson said crossly. “You’re pale as a ghost and flashing me lies in the guise of amiability. I am not stupid, Holmes.”
Another snort, as derisive as Watson had ever heard.
“That is up for debate,” Holmes snapped. He shoved a shirt into Watson’s hands and whirled about to leave, but Watson, reflexes ever quick in the presence of a dangerous animal, caught him by his dressing gown and yanked him back. He brought up a defensive arm, but Watson merely stilled and secured him.
“In one breath you exalt my companionship, in the next you cannot insult me quickly enough. I grow weary of your exercising your pendulous moods upon my person.” Watson took a breath to calm his racing heart and released his captive. Holmes, face drawn and haggard with a high flush amid the pallor, swallowed audibly, but stayed. Watson gentled his tone and said, “Come Holmes. I am your friend, and a doctor. Tell me what ails you.”
Holmes drew himself up, tall and dignified and ever imposing. Watson was not a small man, but Holmes was ever capable of making him feel as such.
“You cannot help me,” Holmes said carefully. Watson perceived that the air of confidence he put on was just that: an air. “It is a malady with no cure as I have yet been able to find.”
“Holmes. I assure you, between us we will find a solution. Tell me. Is it something you contracted abroad?”
Holmes barked out a bitter, ugly laugh. “Would that it were, Watson,” he said. “I am afraid I have been suffering its effects for well over a decade.”
Watson gripped him by the arms, aghast.
“Holmes! You have a chronic affliction and never sought my assistance? Surely together-”
“No, Watson,” Holmes said. He extracted Watson’s hands from his body and placed them gently back at Watson’s side. “I resigned myself to weathering this alone long ago. I merely forgot that in a moment of weakness. A momentary lapse, nothing more.”
Watson pressed his lips together.
“Is it cocaine again, Holmes? Withdrawal can be harrowing, but you need not suffer alone.”
One corner of Holmes’s mouth lifted in a wry, sad smile.
“Oh, Watson. Ever steadfast.”
“Please.” Watson preferred not to plead with pertinacious men, but, as ever, Holmes was an exception. “Please, Holmes. Allow me to seek a cure with you. Barring the existence of one, surely we can find some way to ease your distress.”
“A fool’s hope, Watson.”
“Now see here, Holmes-”
“No, my good doctor. I do not mean to impugn your character again. That is my ailment: a fool’s hope. I have found the well a bottomless one, no matter the means of draining it.”
Watson frowned and made an abortive attempt to clasp Holmes’s shoulders again, only to be thwarted by Holmes’s upraised hands.
“Perhaps it would be best were you not so free with your touch, Dr. Watson.”
“Holmes. I must admit I do not understand you. What hopes do you speak of? Surely it can’t be as bad as all that?” A pernicious suspicion began to dog Watson’s mind: could this be Holmes in love? Only those burned by Cupid’s arrow spoke of hope in so anguished a manner. He cast the thought aside as soon as he had articulated it in his mind - doubtless if Holmes had had a petite amie for the duration of their friendship, Watson would know, or Holmes would be married. He could not even countenance the presence of a woman of childbearing age, unless she were a prodigiously clever thief who also happened to be a world-renowned contralto.
“My God, Holmes, is this about Irene Adler?”
Holmes scoffed and spun to put away more of Watson’s clothes.
“How singularly preposterous,” he said, “and unobservant, and impossible, and-”
“Holmes!”
“I said ‘well over a decade,’ Watson.” Holmes’s hands were quick now, hanging trousers, flinging paired socks into drawers with unnecessary aggression. “Thirteen years to be precise.”
Watson went still. Holmes could not mean his words the way Watson interpreted them. It was criminal. It was blasphemous. It was against nature. Besides, Holmes was above such base urges. It was Watson’s own folly and perversion that led him to such repulsive thoughts.
“Holmes. Please explain yourself.”
Holmes faced him, tall as ever, but shoulders slumped in a defeat Watson had never before seen befall him.
“As I said, Doctor. I merely indulged a foolish hope once again. I shall endeavour not to henceforth.”
Watson stilled the tremor that threatened to wrack his body, but he could do nothing about the icy fist which had gripped his innards so tightly.
“Damn you, Holmes,” Watson whispered fiercely. Holmes blinked at him, betraying his surprise. “You ruin everything, always.”
Holmes closed his eyes and turned toward the door.
“We can go on as before. Nothing need change.”
“Everything has changed. You cannot expect me-”
Holmes was suddenly very close again, his colour high and his eyes burning. Watson’s breath locked in his throat, and he found himself paralysed by the intensity of Holmes’s gaze.
“I expect nothing, Watson. Do you understand me? I expect nothing from you.”
“Deviants of your sort cannot control themselves!” Watson cried. “It is in your nature.” He cringed to hear the note of hysteria in his own voice. That the words drained Holmes’s face of colour curdled something in Watson’s gut, but his tongue seemed intent on exercising itself further. “You understand, Holmes, that I ought to call upon Detective Inspector Lestrade immediately.”
Holmes stepped back and nodded. He cast his eyes toward the ceiling for a moment before moving toward the door.
“Dr. John H. Watson,” he said as if pondering. “Upholder of unjust laws. Queen and country to the very last. Yes, I understand. I will leave you to it.” As he closed the door behind him, he added, “Ask yourself this before you seek to condemn me for the workings of my ill-used heart, Watson: have I ever, in the tenure of our intimate friendship, given you cause to question the nature of that friendship, or threatened your morals or modesty with my attentions?”
The door clicked shut after him, and Watson was left alone with his quivering spine, his enflamed sense of outrage, and an overwhelming shame that he was sure he would choke on.
But why should he feel ashamed? He was not the invert with deviant appetites. Unbidden, images of Holmes locked in countless configurations of the carnal embrace with brutal, faceless men flashed behind Watson’s eyes. He snarled and tried to banish them, but the images washed over him, as unrelenting as the tide. Holmes’s face twisted in a rictus of pleasure the likes of which Watson had never seen nor imagined him capable of, men with their filthy hands pawing his ivory skin, men who would use him ill, men who could not love him like a woman could. Men who would not know the first thing about his work, his methods, his intellect, how he cultivated his knowledge. Men who did not, could not, would never understand the workings of his mind or his jealously guarded heart. Men whose interests were solely base, rooted in the elegant lines of Holmes’s body, the cut of his jaw. Men who had no concept of what treasure they held and debased and failed to cherish. Men. Men. Men.
Watson clutched at his hair as he sank into the mattress, heedless of the books and suit coats and linens strewn all about him. He lay there, mind whirling with the foulest perversions, until there came a timid knock at his door. He sprung to a sitting position and called out a suspicious, “Who is it?”
“It’s Mrs. Hudson, dear. Am I to understand Mr. Holmes won’t be coming down for supper?”
Watson scrubbed at his eyes, and then let a fist come to rest over his hammering heart. He felt as though ragged talons had sunk into it, and removing them would cause more damage than leaving them there.
“Only he left in quite a hurry,” Mrs. Hudson went on, “and you know him, Dr. Watson - he might come back in two hours famished or in a week unable to stand the sight of a dinner roll. Do you know which it is this time?”
Watson’s mind stuck on Mrs. Hudson’s choice of words - you know him, Dr. Watson. And he did. God, he did, better than anyone. Holmes was a puzzle-solver and a justice-seeker. Holmes was a scientist possessed of a meticulous and maddening mind. Holmes was Watson’s friend, and a truer one he had never had. Invert though he may be, Holmes’s parting words stung in their deliverance of the truth: Holmes had never hurt him with his misplaced affections. Holmes was capable of a decade’s worth of discretion. If Holmes had perverse appetites, Watson had never found any evidence of them. It was Watson who had been disloyal to their friendship with his threats. And now Holmes was gone, God only knew where. Well - God and John Watson.
“I don’t know,” he said loudly enough for Mrs. Hudson to hear. “Why don’t I go find him and ask?”
He stood and opened the door, and Mrs. Hudson looked up at him with amusement lighting her expression.
“Oh you needn’t trouble yourself like that, Dr. Watson,” she said. “You know how he gets - off on a tear, impossible to find.”
“I have an idea,” Watson said.
-
Watson found him at the rank boxing rings of dubious legality, stripped to his trousers, hands wrapped, lingering at the edges of the current match. Watson managed to sneak up on the great Sherlock Holmes - but he was too ashamed of his previous behaviour to savour the moment properly. Over the din of the crowd, Watson shouted into Holmes’s ear, “Come home and spare me the inconvenience of stitching you up.”
Holmes whipped around, wild-eyed, only to scowl at Watson most frightfully. Watson sighed and leaned toward him again, mouth to ear.
“I behaved abominably,” he said. “Let me apologise properly at home, where you’re not likely to be pummelled to death.”
Holmes, like a bird in a fit of pique, shrugged him off, all ruffled feathers, and stalked away.
“Come now, Holmes,” Watson said, fighting through some onlookers to follow after him. “Be reasonable.”
“Reasonable?” Holmes was suddenly close up, spittle on Watson’s face. “How dare you bandy about words you are incapable of enacting yourself.”
“You startled me, Holmes! But I have reconsidered my position, and I shan’t…” Here, Watson pitched his voice low. “I shan’t contact our mutual acquaintance on the subject of our discussion.”
Holmes’s face, just now twisted into a hateful sneer, hardened and bled of all emotion. Watson’s heart stammered against his ribs at the sight.
“How generous of you, Watson. Truly, a saint walks among us. Should I kneel? Kiss your feet? What are the rules of conduct in the presence of such magnanimous spirit?”
“Holmes-”
But Watson’s voice was swallowed in the announcement of the next match - Holmes’s - and the resultant cacophony.
Watson watched Holmes use his whipcord body in concert with his magnificent mind to best his bigger, heavier, stupider opponent with grace and ease. Watson found himself admiring Holmes’s form and marvelling at his cunning. He was so absorbed in the spectacle of Holmes’s abilities on display that it did not even occur to him to place a wager.
Later, Holmes, victorious but battered, allowed Watson to accompany him back to Baker Street in a hansom cab, though he stared out the side at London passing by and stayed as far from Watson as was possible while remaining on the inside of the carriage.
“You’re going to give Mrs. Hudson a dreadful fright,” Watson murmured when the cab stopped in front of 221B. Holmes shot him a chilly, superior look and left Watson to pay the driver.
By the time Watson was up the seventeen steps, Holmes was ensconced in his own bedchambers, the door quite firmly shut. Watson collected his medical bag and went to lay three polite knocks on Holmes’s door.
“Let me put iodine on your cuts and scrapes, Holmes. And assess some of them for stitches.”
The door creaked open by a sliver, and Watson squared his shoulders to enter. Holmes was shirtless in half-profile in the shafts of sunlight streaming in from the window. He looked powerful, bruised and bleeding though he was, and he raised his chin in proud defiance upon Watson’s entrance. Watson swallowed.
“Sit,” he said, gesturing to the edge of the bed. Holmes complied, though he made it plain with his bearing that he did so under duress, and Watson sat in a chair opposite him. He removed some clean rags from his bag and dabbed them with iodine before getting to work on the marks that littered Holmes’s front, his neck, his face. He saw new scars, scars made by wounds he had not been there to nurse, and the talons in his heart twisted. “You’re getting far too old for this,” he muttered, and Holmes stiffened. “I’m getting far too old for this.”
“You’ve no right-”
Watson cut him off. “I am your friend, Holmes,” he said forcefully, enunciating each syllable with exaggerated care. “That will never change.” He watched Holmes’s Adam’s apple give a convulsive bob as he daubed his collarbone. “I am permitted to fret.”
Holmes’s breath left him unsteadily.
“I will never make mention of - of my irregularity again, Watson, I-”
Watson hushed him. “The fault is mine for blundering where I was not welcome,” he said. “I pushed when I should have recognised your reticence as your rightful need for privacy. We will go on as before, like you said, save for two things.”
Warily, Holmes eyed him.
“And what are those?”
“You will consider accepting my sincerest apologies and forgiving me my boorishness. Because I am sorry, Holmes, terribly sorry.” Watson paused to gather all his soldierly courage. “And if you seek companionship from those such as yourself, I wish never to know. You must be as discreet as you have been over the duration of our friendship.”
Holmes was silent, and Watson was still.
“You are forgiven, Watson,” he said at last, and Watson’s breath came easier. “As for the other, you have no cause to trouble yourself. I am quite… solitary.”
Watson found himself stamping on the incongruous and paradoxical urges to cheer at Holmes’s pronouncement and to protest that he should find someone else to engage his affections, someone more appropriate - someone female, perhaps. He shied from examining either desire. In the end, he merely nodded, and continued to tend Holmes’s wounds in silence.
-
Time passed, and they did not speak of Holmes’s peculiarity. Watson was almost able to forget about it completely, except for the way Holmes would, once in a while, slant a soft look his way when he thought Watson did not have his wits about him. Watson found himself curiously unperturbed by those rare occasions, however - he knew himself to be quite out of practice in dealing with Holmes after three years’ separation and even more away from Baker Street. Perhaps Holmes had always looked at him in that way, and it had never given him pause before. As Holmes made no untoward advances, who was Watson to say what his particular looks meant? For all Watson knew, Holmes was merely thinking, and Watson had got caught in the line of his long stare into the oblivion of his mind. Sometimes, however, in dead night when Watson was disturbed by troubled dreams, he considered whether it were the truth that Holmes cast his eyes in his direction out of deeper feeling, and whether it were not a kindness on his own part to allow Holmes that smallest of pleasures. And whether, sin or not, Watson enjoyed the great man’s quiet attentions.
As the weeks ticked by, they took on a number of small cases which proved to be of little interest to Holmes, and Watson imagined he could predict Holmes’s oncoming fit of languor the way a sailor predicts a storm. Such black moods were often accompanied by his partaking of that foul solution of his, and thus Watson redoubled his efforts at entertaining him. They stepped out to the symphony and the opera, they sought, purchased, and made study of obscure volumes on a vast array of subjects, they went to London Zoo and various museums and all sorts of unusual enclaves about town. Still Holmes languished, monosyllabic and smoking endlessly. Watson hid his damnable Moroccan case, though he knew his efforts would be futile in the face of Holmes’s deductive prowess.
And then, a client. An interesting client.
A case, a villain, a chase through London streets. Watson’s blood was up and he was almost delirious with exhilaration. Holmes had all but delivered the culprit to Scotland Yard, and now the pair of them ran through alleys and winding side streets to lose the lackeys who set off after them. When at last they dropped their tails and stopped to catch their breath, Watson let out a whoop and clutched Holmes about the shoulders.
“My God, man!” he exclaimed. “I feel young again!”
Holmes laughed, a dear and rusty thing to Watson’s ears, and he grasped at Watson’s elbows in return.
“Don’t kid yourself, old boy,” he said. “You’ll be grousing about your shoulder come morning.”
“It’ll match your creaking knees!” Watson retorted, laughing. Holmes himself was smiling down at him, eyes lit with sparks of amusement, and Watson was overcome by the sudden need to be closer to Holmes, to immerse himself in that fathomless grey. He slid his hands from shoulders to neck and gave Holmes’s collarbones a squeeze. He could feel Holmes’s laboured breath against his own lips, the light touch of Holmes’s forehead against his own.
“Watson-”
“I am so pleased you’re back, Holmes,” Watson blurted. “I am so very, very pleased.” He had not even been aware the words sat on his tongue at the ready, but there they were, irretrievable from the ether. Watson found he could not regret them.
Holmes’s breath did not seem to be calming, but he nodded and placed his own hands over Watson’s in a firm grip.
“It was my dearest wish to return to you, Watson,” he whispered, though it was late and they were quite alone.
Watson’s chest was suddenly insufficient containment for his heart, swelled as it was by Holmes’s words. It seemed so inconsequential a thing, nothing at all, to cross the scant distance between them and press his lips to Holmes’s own. The kiss was chaste, but Watson felt it like sparks along his spine. Holmes issued a small whimper, the sound of a man relieved of great burden. Watson, heart hammering, pressed closer and grasped Holmes tighter until at last Holmes wrapped his arms around Watson and parted his lips to allow him entrance.
I’m kissing Holmes, Watson thought. I’m kissing Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective and madman. Man. Man. Man.
Under slick tongue and warm lips, it was difficult to grasp at the reasons Watson should neither be doing this nor enjoying it so well. Distantly, it occurred to him that it was indeed quite different from kissing a woman - the cavern of Holmes’s mouth was larger, his lips thinner, his tongue more insistent. The rough scrape of a day’s worth of stubble made itself known, but Watson found it, Holmes, the entire endeavour, unspeakably pleasing.
His body proved itself a needful thing, and Holmes’s was in a similar state. Watson became aware that he was pressing Holmes to a wall and rutting against him most shamelessly, but before he could put himself to right, Holmes sank to his knees before him and made quick work of the buttons on his trousers. Watson gasped Holmes’s name, whether in surprise or warning, he did not know, but then Holmes, his dearest, most intimate friend, had swallowed his manhood and was sucking its turgid length with enthusiasm to rival a starving man at a feast. Watson’s breath stuttered, his knees threatened to buckle, and he grasped at Holmes’s shoulders. Holmes was relentless and, as with anything he set his mind to, prodigiously skilled - damn him, allowing other men into his bed, into his mouth, Watson would never allow it again, ever again.
“Watson, I didn’t know you cared,” came a wry voice below him. Watson glanced downward to see Holmes’s face flushed and happy, and it eased the sting of embarrassment at having been caught speaking of his jealousies aloud. Obscenely, Watson’s own member bobbed eagerly about Holmes’s mouth, but before shame could sweep hot over Watson’s skin, Holmes took him back between his lips and sucked him down as he worked both hands at the base. Watson threw his head back and gave a strangled shout. He felt Holmes’s answering chuckle, but Holmes neither yielded in his ministrations nor spoke again.
Watson, to his mortification, had always been a bit talkative in the carnal act. He murmured all manner of obscenities and benedictions, threats and promises, accusations and exaltations. After some time, he felt Holmes’s actions become sloppier and more desperate until, around his mouthful of Watson, he gave a muffled scream, then slackened.
“Oh, Holmes,” Watson said urgently, “did you spend just now? I should dearly have liked to see that. Holmes, Holmes.”
Holmes was panting even as he pumped Watson into the warm suction of his mouth. Watson blinked down at Holmes’s face, at the sight of his manhood slick with Holmes’s saliva and stretching Holmes’s lips widely, lewdly. His own pleasure tightened and sharpened until, with a hoarse cry, he spent down Holmes’s welcoming throat.
Holmes sucked at him until he was dry, laved him clean, and tucked him back into his trousers with a queer, loving little pat of farewell. Watson took the opportunity to sink to the ground, heedless of the state of his trousers, and joined Holmes in propping himself up against the wall they had used so ill. Holmes was a warm, solid presence beside him, and they did not speak while they both caught their breath in the hazy aftermath of pleasure.
When at last the starbursts cleared from his vision, Watson turned his head to look at Holmes. He was looking fondly at Watson already, eyes soft.
“I would lay heavy odds on your wife never having performed such a depraved and delicious act upon your person, Watson,” Holmes said with a sly sideways smile. His voice was a low, dark rumble, made so by Watson’s ardor.
Abruptly Watson went cold all over and his innards locked in a knot. His demeanour must have registered the change, for Holmes was stiff and upright beside him, mouth tense and pursed as if in regret.
“Watson, I-”
“Do not speak. God. Oh, God, Holmes, what have you done?”
“I? What have I done, Watson?”
Watson sprang to his feet and Holmes followed with his usual damnable grace, expression shuttered.
“Yes, you!” Watson pushed at his shoulders. Holmes, perfectly capable, Watson knew, of fending him off, merely let himself be pushed once again against the wall. “What have you done to me? You incubus, you monster. You scramble my mind, you make me believe I want vile, impossible things! You make me forget my wife - you make me mourn you as I could never mourn her! You drain my grief and my sympathy so there is nothing left for anyone else! You harden my heart to everyone who is not you and by God, Sherlock Holmes, I hate you for it. I hate you, do you hear me?”
Holmes pushed Watson away with enough force to send him stumbling. Watson scowled to see Holmes straighten his clothing so primly, as if he had not just performed an ecstatic and highly illegal act of fellatio upon Watson’s person.
“I never took you for a coward, Watson,” he said in a conversational tone. “I shall endeavour never to make such a grave error in judgment again.” With that, he left Watson filthy and shamed in an alley.
Watson looked up into London’s night sky, where there were no stars.
-
Watson sank into the sagging mattress in the only rooms he could find available for the night. They seem to have been alternately neglected and abused, but Watson had weathered worse as a solider, and he was well aware of the adage about beggars and choosers. He removed his shoes with great force and let his garments lie where they landed as he disrobed carelessly. When he was down to his small clothes, he snuffed out the lantern the toothless innkeeper had given him, and curled onto his side to will himself to sleep. He kicked the bedding and flipped to his opposite side. He flopped onto his back. He battered the lumpy pillows until they resembled something he might use to rest his head upon rather than something he might seek to consume with gravy. He rolled onto his stomach and threw the pillows away completely. He huffed into stale sheets.
“Damn you, Holmes,” he muttered, not for the first time since parting ways with him in the alley.
In the dark, he had nothing to occupy him but his thoughts, and they ran in only one direction: Holmesward. He imagined Holmes’s mouth, quirking as it did in his version of a smile, sealing itself over Watson’s most intimate appendage, hardening at the abuse spouting from Watson's lips. He thought of the stormy depths of Holmes’s eyes when he looked at Watson in his singular way, when he gazed up at him from between his legs, when he turned his back to walk away.
Watson snarled and burrowed his face further into the mattress. He did not want to think on Holmes’s wounded demeanour. He was the one who had betrayed Watson, not vice versa. He’d turned Watson - a doctor, a soldier, an upstanding citizen and his only bosom friend - into a deviant!
Watson rolled onto his side again and took a deep breath before letting it out in a long, measured exhale.
Take some responsibility, man, he thought in a voice suspiciously like that of his major, a gruff man whose eyes never stopped scanning the horizon. You kissed him first. You wanted to kiss him, to feel him beneath your hands, to be the thing that took him apart with pleasure. Never, ever forget that, solider.
Watson squeezed his eyes shut. Yes, he had wanted those things. He had been the one to steal the breath from Holmes’s lungs. He could no more blame Holmes for his perversion than he could the blame the trees when wind rustled their leaves. Holmes simply was.
If only he didn’t look at me so, came the contrarian thought. If only he weren’t so brilliant. If only his eyes weren’t that particular shade of grey. If only his legs weren’t quite so well-formed, or his shoulders so broad and sharp. Surely it’s all his fault.
Watson flipped violently to his opposite side. “Stop it,” he hissed into the bedding. “Stop this.”
He tried to think of Mary, of the gentle way she touched him when they made love, but she was sunken and wasted by illness in his memory. All recollections of her were tarnished by his own guilt. And there was the core of it: if Watson had failed as a husband, if he failed now as a man in mourning, that was his own shortcoming. That had nothing whatever to do with Holmes’s wiles. Watson had wished to cherish his wife, but instead he left her for adventures at Holmes’s side at every opportunity, until Holmes was dead and Watson’s heart was a husk with nothing left to offer her. When she took ill, he pledged to himself that he would be dutiful and kind, and he was. It would be his last act as husband - perhaps the only true act as husband he had ever committed. That all others fell short or remained empty or broken promises could not be placed on anyone’s shoulders but Watson’s own.
He tried to think of other women with whom he had had intimate encounters in years past. John Watson had never lacked company wherever he was, but now, with the smell of Holmes still clinging to his skin, with his last intimate touch from a woman years ago now, the memories slid from his mind like oil, and all he could think of was Holmes. Holmes and his damnable eyes.
Holmes, and how he had looked when Watson called him a monster, told him he hated him.
Watson swung his legs over the edge of the mattress to sit up, planted his elbows on his knees, and scrubbed at his hair.
How many times was he going to have to apologise for his behaviour in regards to Holmes’s proclivities and the reprehensible way he handled Holmes’s softer feelings?
“Countless times, no doubt,” Watson sighed. He caught sight of himself in a mirror on the opposite wall. Dark as it was, he imagined he could make out new lines the past few hours had carved into his face. He knew with sudden clarity that he could not return to Baker Street unless it was to accept Holmes as he was, inverted affections and all, and to take Holmes into his arms as he would a cherished spouse. As he should have with Mary, who, God help him, could never compare to Holmes. Poor Mary had never stood a chance, and Watson was the worst sort of cad.
He had betrayed both of the people he loved.
Watson passed a hand over his haggard face. He knew his friendship with Holmes was over. His intimate partnership with Holmes, should he have the courage to embrace it, was a bud about to bloom. He could allow it to do so, or he could cull the blossom before it unfurled.
Watson stood and leaned close to the mirror, hands braced on the vanity.
“What do you want?” he asked his reflection.
It gave no answer, and Watson fancied he could measure the deepening furrow between his brows.
“You could find a new flat, or buy your old practice back. You could step out with the next pretty girl you meet.” He swallowed. “You could never see him again.” Watson’s stomach flipped, went cold.
He took a shaking breath, steadied himself on his feet, and squared his shoulders. He looked himself right in the eye and faced what he feared to be the cruelest truth.
“Invert,” he whispered, and his heart gave a pang. “You will have to hide always. You will have a life of hardship, of avoiding the scrutiny of your friends and relations, of acting falsely lest you give away your secret. You will never be able to be at ease.”
His reflection was a man he hardly recognised. When had he got so old? The years had slid past him seemingly without his notice. The end of the century was racing toward him. He was forty-two years of age. He should have a beautiful, dutiful wife. A gaggle of charming children. A successful practice.
Instead, he had Holmes.
The man in the mirror cracked a rueful smile.
“If,” he said, “he’ll still have you.”
-
Watson returned to Baker Street about breakfast time and encountered Mrs. Hudson in the entryway.
“Oh, Dr. Watson! Mr. Holmes said not to expect you, and he was himself in one of his intolerable strops, so I’ve not lain out a meal!”
“Don’t trouble yourself, Mrs. Hudson,” Watson said. “I took tea and toast before my arrival.”
Mrs. Hudson clucked and bustled back into her own rooms with a parting warning.
“You’d best to avoid Mr. Holmes, Dr. Watson,” she said. “He’s a right terror this morning.”
Watson sighed, braced himself, and made his way up the seventeen steps into 221b. He pushed open the door only to meet with a cloud of smoke billowing outward with a great sense of drama. His eyes watered and he coughed, waving a hand in front of his face.
“Good God,” he gasped. “I’m not even sure there is any oxygen left in here, Holmes.”
“Oh, you’re here,” came Holmes’s deep voice from somewhere in the vicinity of the settee. Watson recognised the tone: falsely light, reasonable, and sure to eviscerate whosoever crossed its path. “Perhaps you have come to make certain I know how vile a man I am and to turn me in to the Yard. Or is it that you want another chance to spend yourself on me, and then abuse me?”
Watson tried to cross the room only to be thwarted by broken china, chemistry equipment, cooked eggs, and books strewn across the floor. He moved with ginger, strategic steps before reaching the window and throwing it open. Smoke poured out and cleared the sitting room. Watson restrained the expression of exasperation which threatened to cross his face when he looked down at Holmes lounging on the settee, pipe dangling from his lips. An imperious brow challenged him. Holmes’s eyes gave away nothing, but Watson’s own surely did. Holmes groaned and looked away.
“Ah. Choice number three: grovelling. Spare me, Watson.”
“Holmes. Let me speak my piece, at least.”
“No, let me.” Abruptly Holmes was on his feet, pipe forgotten. “‘Oh Holmes,’” he snivelled, pitching his voice high. “‘When I think of the grief I have caused you, I am the very picture of desolation. Please, allow me back into your affections so that I may bask in them, toy with them, and mistreat them again and again. But wait! Stand back! Don’t get so close, old boy, lest you infect me with your queer little turns. I am not a deviant like yourself, except when it suits me. Oh, touch me, Holmes!’” Holmes clasped his hands together in front of his chest, eyes big with performance.
Watson pursed his lips, and then, like shucking a disguise, Holmes was himself again, a sneer in his lips, arms languid at his sides. Then, just as suddenly, he sank back into the settee as if unspeakably exhausted.
“Is that about the run of it, Watson?” he asked. “Can we skip the spectacle?”
Watson sighed and took a seat beside him. He studiously ignored the way Holmes recoiled from his proximity.
“You paint a painfully accurate portrait, Holmes, unflattering as it is. I shan’t dispute it. I should only like the chance to rectify my misdeeds.”
Holmes gave a snort, but Watson sensed it was half-hearted. Holmes peered at him through half-mast lashes, by means of peripheral vision. Watson took an edifying breath.
“When Mary died, I felt nothing. I was not bereaved in the manner expected of a widower. You see, I had already endured the greatest loss of my life, and I had no grief to spare my poor Mary when the time came.”
Holmes had trained his attention now on the bearskin rug beneath his feet.
“Watson,” he said before Watson could go on. “I should not have said what I said about her last night. It was deplorable. Forgive me.”
Watson stilled the hand that itched to cover Holmes’s own.
“There is nothing to forgive,” he said. “Or, if there is, it is only because I drove you there with the magnitude of my self-deception. May I continue, Holmes?”
A pale, elegant hand swept outward as if in invitation.
“I realised last night that I held you responsible for my deficiencies as a husband, and that cross is mine alone to bear. If I chose you over Mary for the duration of my marriage, so much so that your death dealt a blow from which I thought I would never recover, that was not the flaw in your character but in mine. Such ignorance of the workings of my own heart was my betrayal - of you, of her, even of myself. Blaming you for my choices only compounded my considerable failings. I am done with that, Holmes. I see things clearly now.” Watson’s heart stumbled, and he cleared his throat. “I see what is between you and me clearly now.”
Holmes looked up, and Watson knew he did not imagine the warm flare of hope that lighted Holmes’s eyes.
“And what is that, my dear doctor?”
Watson reached out at last to rest his hand on Holmes’s. He pushed his fingers between Holmes’s own and was met with an answering squeeze. It eased a great weight Watson had not known he carried.
“An unassailable bond,” he said. “An ardent friendship as foundation for transcendent intimacy. Holmes, you are and have always been the keeper of my most profound affections. It seems foolish, in retrospect, to think I could ever have believed otherwise. My heart has been pledged to you quite from the beginning, and that is why I was an abysmal husband to poor Mary. If you will allow me the privilege of a second chance-”
“Twenty-ninth chance,” Holmes cut in.
Watson paused, agog. “Twenty-ninth?”
“Twenty-ninth.”
“By what count have I-”
“Thirteen on the day of your wedding alone.”
“Holmes, my dear man, I never-”
“I have had many years to endure your obliviousness and its resultant callousness, Watson.” Holmes gave his hand another squeeze, and his mouth curved upward in his particular way. Watson caught the sparkle in Holmes’s eye. “It has yet to cool my ardor. I’m afraid you’re a lifelong affliction. But please, continue your declarations. They soothe and amuse me.”
Watson flattened his lips in an expression of chagrin, but he knew he was merely disguising - badly - a smile.
“You are an incorrigible man,” he said with teasing reproach. “You will never make it easy for me, will you?”
“Now Watson, however would we pass our time if things were easy?” The question was playful, but Watson caught in Holmes’s face a lurking shadow. He was remarkably easy to read like this, Watson realised, in these moments of tenderness and warmth. He was afraid of being a disappointment, of being abandoned again due to his own eccentric nature.
Watson only smiled and leaned in to kiss the tempting pulse point in Holmes neck. He was gratified to receive a tremble, and an arm about his shoulders, embracing.
“I would never choose differently, Holmes,” he assured him. “Never let it be said that John Watson shied from a challenge.”
Holmes hid the fullness of his smile in a kiss, and Watson’s skin felt electrified. He allowed himself to be pulled atop Holmes on the settee, and they lay there for a long while kissing, enjoying the surrender of reunion.
Eventually, though the space was cramped, they settled on their sides, Watson’s front pressed into Holmes’s back, arm slung about his waist. They neither of them wished to disturb the delicacy of the moment by repairing to their bedchambers. Holmes was stroking Watson’s fingers as if memorising, and perhaps he was. Watson tucked a smile at the thought into the nape of Holmes’s neck.
“Do you remember, Holmes, the week we spent on the continent before your long departure? When we indulged in leisurely walks taking in the sights and spent long hours speaking together on all subjects? When our intimacy so free and easy a thing? I think on it often - how it seemed a moment out of time, joy suspended. I used to think it both a gift and a curse - that I got to preserve one perfect week with you before so much sorrow.” In his arms, Holmes had gone preternaturally still. Unease bloomed in Watson’s gullet. “Holmes?”
“The week we spent rambling together in Switzerland, Watson, was a kernel of brightness I struggled to recall during the black moods I fell into subsequent to our separation. You will recall that I felt my confrontation with the Professor was imminent - I remember thinking that should I meet my end there, with my steadfast Boswell at my side, I could do so without regret, in the period of my most enduring contentment. To be with you so comfortably in an idyllic setting, danger be damned, was a source of much buoyancy for me. My death, I thought then, could be a happy one.”
“Do not speak of such things,” Watson replied, voice gruff. He leaned his forehead carefully against Holmes’s shoulder and rested his palm upon a bony hip. “It is over; you are home and we are together.”
Holmes turned onto his back to face Watson. He curled his fingers around Watson’s hesitantly, as if thankful for the privilege, and let a smile touch his lips.
“As it should be,” he said. Watson answered with a smile of his own.
“Perhaps we should take another such holiday, Holmes,” he said. “A real one, without a case, to make new memories untouched by dark deeds. The south of France, perhaps, or even Italy?”
Holmes snorted. “I think I should like to remain in London for the time being, old boy. I have been too long removed from her choked air and uneven streets.”
“Ah,” Watson said faintly. He cleared his throat. “Quite right. A foolish passing fancy, nothing more.”
Holmes settled further into the settee and cupped Watson’s face with both hands. Watson swallowed and closed his eyes as Holmes nudged at his nose with his own.
“Not foolish,” he murmured. “We now have at our disposal great stores of time with which to take a holiday, do we not?”
Watson nodded.
“So,” Holmes went on. “We will take one later. We will take many later. For now let us stay here and be the scourge of London crime and confound Lestrade at every turn, yes?”
“Yes,” Watson laughed, “yes, Holmes. Always.”
He surrendered to the singularity and inevitability of Holmes’s kiss. In it, he found the balm of absolution and the means to mend his battered heart. He stroked reverently at the stubble along Holmes’s jaw and thought, At last. At long, long last.
End
Brit-picker: fear3loathing
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Holmes/Watson
Warnings: Homophobia, Victorian sexual mores
Word Count: 8,300
Summary: Watson moves back into Baker Street after the events of "The Empty House" only to discover Holmes has been keeping secrets.
A/N: This is a gift for cathedralcarver, who had a hankering after some ACD slash. Hope you like it, friend! Big thanks to fear3loathing for the Brit-picking pinch hit!
Blame the Trees
“This is the last of it,” Watson announced upon the delivery of his medical texts back to Baker Street. He received no reply from his indifferent audience, the smoking lump on the settee. In truth, selling his practice and moving from the house he had shared with his wife back to his rooms with Holmes was both simple and relieving. He had few items which were truly his: his clothing, his books, his journals, his writing desk, his typewriter, sundry medical supplies. Mary’s items, decorations and books, clothing and trinkets, had been packed away and disseminated amongst her friends and relations long before Holmes’s unexpected return. Rattling about in the house he once shared with her was a dull ache Watson was thankful to ease with his permanent absence.
The movers made quick work of it all and soon Watson was left only with the unenviable task of unpacking and arranging his belongings in his old bedchambers. He had the uncanny sense of slipping into motions he had already performed and experienced as if he were the phantom in a horror tale of his own - déjà vu. The clever, sensual French, with words for everything bodily and cerebral. He had done precisely this, of course, thirteen years ago when first he made the acquaintance of one Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Back then, Mrs. Hudson had aided him in this endeavour, but she was not as hale as she had once been, and Watson did not have the heart to work her beyond preparing his bed for a familiar inhabitant. When she began to help, as was her keen and industrious way, Watson sent her away by pleading a widower’s desire to be alone with his thoughts. She hummed and pursed her lips in a moue of sympathy, patting his shoulder. She had been in attendance at Mary’s funeral, had been witness to his erect spine and stony expression.
“Oh, Dr. Watson,” she cried, “I’m so glad you’ve returned. You and Mr. Holmes can keep one another company again. You’ll neither of you have to be alone anymore.”
Watson felt a brittle smile overtake his lips, and his chest tightened at her words. He swallowed and collected himself.
“Everything will be as it was, Mrs. Hudson. Right as rain.”
Mrs. Hudson beamed and clasped her hands together. “I’ll get started on supper,” she said. “Will Mr. Holmes be dining tonight, do you think?”
“I shall prod him with a stick and get an answer for you post-haste, Mrs. Hudson.”
Mrs. Hudson feigned a gasp. “You wicked man,” she whispered, eyes atwinkle, and departed.
Watson sat upon the edge of his old bed with a heavy sigh. He rubbed at his old war wound and stood again to begin putting his clothes away in the wardrobe. You are a wicked man, he castigated himself. To forget your wife so easily. To use her as an excuse. He had spared no thought to Mary’s memory since Holmes had returned so improbably, so ecstatically, to his life. In a moment of brutal honesty, Watson acknowledged that she had been absent from his thoughts for longer than that. He had buried much with her death, her body not least among the casualties.
A rustle from the door and a familiar voice startled him from his reverie.
“Woolgather any more intently, Watson, and you shall surely strain something. Your moustache, perhaps.”
Watson looked up to see Holmes lounging carelessly against the jamb, a threadbare dressing gown slipping from his shoulders and a pipe hanging from the thin twist of his smirking lips.
“Holmes. I didn’t see you there.”
“Obviously.” Holmes sniffed and looked down his hawkish nose at the array of garments piled on Watson’s bed. “Settling in, I see.”
“Now who is being obvious?” Watson ribbed him with a smile ticking in the corner of his mouth. Holmes sent him a sour look. “You could make yourself useful and help me to unpack some of these boxes.”
Holmes shrugged and gave his pipe a long draw. Smoke whirled about him as he let it escape his lungs.
“You sent away your help,” he said. “Who am I to extend my hand when it would only be refused, or, worse, bitten?”
“So you’re here simply to be a nuisance, then.” Watson raised his eyebrows and turned his back to Holmes to hang a shirt. “Very well.” He had learned, many years ago now, that the best means of handling Holmes when he was being particularly contrarian was to ignore him. Nothing galled him so much.
“Watson.”
Watson gave no answer, but continued to put away his clothes.
“Watson.”
Watson began to whistle, and behind him he heard an exasperated sigh, the clunk of a pipe being set down, and finally the sound of Holmes’s put-upon compliance. When Holmes came up beside him, shirt to hang in hand, Watson slid him a smile. Holmes returned with a small one of his own.
“I must express my gladness that you are here, Watson,” he said, letting his gaze fall from Watson’s own. “These have not been the same rooms without you, nor I the same man.”
Watson turned to face his companion fully, a furrow in his brow. Holmes studiously avoided his eyes and slid another shirt onto another hanger. Watson had never before heard Holmes speak so nakedly of sentimental things, the softer emotions. He could speak at length about Watson’s own admiration of him, but Watson had long resigned himself to the knowledge that Holmes’s answering regard was largely unspoken. His acknowledgment so recently that he wished to see Watson in his customary chair in Baker Street had been its own revelation, a sentiment, Watson thought, brought on by the strain of the day. Watson had not been expecting conversation to follow in a similar vein ever again.
Watson ventured to rest a hand on Holmes’s sharp shoulder.
“My dear Holmes,” he said. “You must know it is likewise my highest honour and greatest joy to return here.”
Holmes met Watson’s eyes at last, the familiar steel of them gone soft with surprising depth. Watson let himself smile fully up into the face he had missed so well these last three years.
“Oh, Watson, how you look at me,” Holmes murmured, dark lashes dropping to shutter his eyes. The irises were silver slits when Watson became aware of the heat of Holmes’s body, his proximity. Surely they had stood so close before? Watson could not recall, but Holmes’s smell was familiar and made something inside Watson ache. Watson drew his hand from Holmes’s shoulder and stepped to the side. The space between them eased the sudden tension about his diaphragm. I am merely acclimating once again to his presence, Watson thought. With time we will once again be as brothers, like before.
“It would please Mrs. Hudson if you would partake of supper tonight,” he said into the wardrobe, touching idly the sleeves of his hanging shirts. “As it would please your long-suffering doctor.”
Holmes gave a long exhale and removed himself from the space immediately in front of the wardrobe.
“I find I have little appetite, Watson,” he said in a tone of regret, and Watson turned to find Holmes rubbing at his temples, facing away from him. Watson took a step toward him, concerned.
“Holmes, are you all right?”
Holmes turned back to him with a tight, false smile distorting his expression and doing little to hide the wounded look in his eyes.
“It is nothing, my friend,” he said. “Come, we will put away more of your things.”
“It is not nothing, Holmes,” Watson said crossly. “You’re pale as a ghost and flashing me lies in the guise of amiability. I am not stupid, Holmes.”
Another snort, as derisive as Watson had ever heard.
“That is up for debate,” Holmes snapped. He shoved a shirt into Watson’s hands and whirled about to leave, but Watson, reflexes ever quick in the presence of a dangerous animal, caught him by his dressing gown and yanked him back. He brought up a defensive arm, but Watson merely stilled and secured him.
“In one breath you exalt my companionship, in the next you cannot insult me quickly enough. I grow weary of your exercising your pendulous moods upon my person.” Watson took a breath to calm his racing heart and released his captive. Holmes, face drawn and haggard with a high flush amid the pallor, swallowed audibly, but stayed. Watson gentled his tone and said, “Come Holmes. I am your friend, and a doctor. Tell me what ails you.”
Holmes drew himself up, tall and dignified and ever imposing. Watson was not a small man, but Holmes was ever capable of making him feel as such.
“You cannot help me,” Holmes said carefully. Watson perceived that the air of confidence he put on was just that: an air. “It is a malady with no cure as I have yet been able to find.”
“Holmes. I assure you, between us we will find a solution. Tell me. Is it something you contracted abroad?”
Holmes barked out a bitter, ugly laugh. “Would that it were, Watson,” he said. “I am afraid I have been suffering its effects for well over a decade.”
Watson gripped him by the arms, aghast.
“Holmes! You have a chronic affliction and never sought my assistance? Surely together-”
“No, Watson,” Holmes said. He extracted Watson’s hands from his body and placed them gently back at Watson’s side. “I resigned myself to weathering this alone long ago. I merely forgot that in a moment of weakness. A momentary lapse, nothing more.”
Watson pressed his lips together.
“Is it cocaine again, Holmes? Withdrawal can be harrowing, but you need not suffer alone.”
One corner of Holmes’s mouth lifted in a wry, sad smile.
“Oh, Watson. Ever steadfast.”
“Please.” Watson preferred not to plead with pertinacious men, but, as ever, Holmes was an exception. “Please, Holmes. Allow me to seek a cure with you. Barring the existence of one, surely we can find some way to ease your distress.”
“A fool’s hope, Watson.”
“Now see here, Holmes-”
“No, my good doctor. I do not mean to impugn your character again. That is my ailment: a fool’s hope. I have found the well a bottomless one, no matter the means of draining it.”
Watson frowned and made an abortive attempt to clasp Holmes’s shoulders again, only to be thwarted by Holmes’s upraised hands.
“Perhaps it would be best were you not so free with your touch, Dr. Watson.”
“Holmes. I must admit I do not understand you. What hopes do you speak of? Surely it can’t be as bad as all that?” A pernicious suspicion began to dog Watson’s mind: could this be Holmes in love? Only those burned by Cupid’s arrow spoke of hope in so anguished a manner. He cast the thought aside as soon as he had articulated it in his mind - doubtless if Holmes had had a petite amie for the duration of their friendship, Watson would know, or Holmes would be married. He could not even countenance the presence of a woman of childbearing age, unless she were a prodigiously clever thief who also happened to be a world-renowned contralto.
“My God, Holmes, is this about Irene Adler?”
Holmes scoffed and spun to put away more of Watson’s clothes.
“How singularly preposterous,” he said, “and unobservant, and impossible, and-”
“Holmes!”
“I said ‘well over a decade,’ Watson.” Holmes’s hands were quick now, hanging trousers, flinging paired socks into drawers with unnecessary aggression. “Thirteen years to be precise.”
Watson went still. Holmes could not mean his words the way Watson interpreted them. It was criminal. It was blasphemous. It was against nature. Besides, Holmes was above such base urges. It was Watson’s own folly and perversion that led him to such repulsive thoughts.
“Holmes. Please explain yourself.”
Holmes faced him, tall as ever, but shoulders slumped in a defeat Watson had never before seen befall him.
“As I said, Doctor. I merely indulged a foolish hope once again. I shall endeavour not to henceforth.”
Watson stilled the tremor that threatened to wrack his body, but he could do nothing about the icy fist which had gripped his innards so tightly.
“Damn you, Holmes,” Watson whispered fiercely. Holmes blinked at him, betraying his surprise. “You ruin everything, always.”
Holmes closed his eyes and turned toward the door.
“We can go on as before. Nothing need change.”
“Everything has changed. You cannot expect me-”
Holmes was suddenly very close again, his colour high and his eyes burning. Watson’s breath locked in his throat, and he found himself paralysed by the intensity of Holmes’s gaze.
“I expect nothing, Watson. Do you understand me? I expect nothing from you.”
“Deviants of your sort cannot control themselves!” Watson cried. “It is in your nature.” He cringed to hear the note of hysteria in his own voice. That the words drained Holmes’s face of colour curdled something in Watson’s gut, but his tongue seemed intent on exercising itself further. “You understand, Holmes, that I ought to call upon Detective Inspector Lestrade immediately.”
Holmes stepped back and nodded. He cast his eyes toward the ceiling for a moment before moving toward the door.
“Dr. John H. Watson,” he said as if pondering. “Upholder of unjust laws. Queen and country to the very last. Yes, I understand. I will leave you to it.” As he closed the door behind him, he added, “Ask yourself this before you seek to condemn me for the workings of my ill-used heart, Watson: have I ever, in the tenure of our intimate friendship, given you cause to question the nature of that friendship, or threatened your morals or modesty with my attentions?”
The door clicked shut after him, and Watson was left alone with his quivering spine, his enflamed sense of outrage, and an overwhelming shame that he was sure he would choke on.
But why should he feel ashamed? He was not the invert with deviant appetites. Unbidden, images of Holmes locked in countless configurations of the carnal embrace with brutal, faceless men flashed behind Watson’s eyes. He snarled and tried to banish them, but the images washed over him, as unrelenting as the tide. Holmes’s face twisted in a rictus of pleasure the likes of which Watson had never seen nor imagined him capable of, men with their filthy hands pawing his ivory skin, men who would use him ill, men who could not love him like a woman could. Men who would not know the first thing about his work, his methods, his intellect, how he cultivated his knowledge. Men who did not, could not, would never understand the workings of his mind or his jealously guarded heart. Men whose interests were solely base, rooted in the elegant lines of Holmes’s body, the cut of his jaw. Men who had no concept of what treasure they held and debased and failed to cherish. Men. Men. Men.
Watson clutched at his hair as he sank into the mattress, heedless of the books and suit coats and linens strewn all about him. He lay there, mind whirling with the foulest perversions, until there came a timid knock at his door. He sprung to a sitting position and called out a suspicious, “Who is it?”
“It’s Mrs. Hudson, dear. Am I to understand Mr. Holmes won’t be coming down for supper?”
Watson scrubbed at his eyes, and then let a fist come to rest over his hammering heart. He felt as though ragged talons had sunk into it, and removing them would cause more damage than leaving them there.
“Only he left in quite a hurry,” Mrs. Hudson went on, “and you know him, Dr. Watson - he might come back in two hours famished or in a week unable to stand the sight of a dinner roll. Do you know which it is this time?”
Watson’s mind stuck on Mrs. Hudson’s choice of words - you know him, Dr. Watson. And he did. God, he did, better than anyone. Holmes was a puzzle-solver and a justice-seeker. Holmes was a scientist possessed of a meticulous and maddening mind. Holmes was Watson’s friend, and a truer one he had never had. Invert though he may be, Holmes’s parting words stung in their deliverance of the truth: Holmes had never hurt him with his misplaced affections. Holmes was capable of a decade’s worth of discretion. If Holmes had perverse appetites, Watson had never found any evidence of them. It was Watson who had been disloyal to their friendship with his threats. And now Holmes was gone, God only knew where. Well - God and John Watson.
“I don’t know,” he said loudly enough for Mrs. Hudson to hear. “Why don’t I go find him and ask?”
He stood and opened the door, and Mrs. Hudson looked up at him with amusement lighting her expression.
“Oh you needn’t trouble yourself like that, Dr. Watson,” she said. “You know how he gets - off on a tear, impossible to find.”
“I have an idea,” Watson said.
-
Watson found him at the rank boxing rings of dubious legality, stripped to his trousers, hands wrapped, lingering at the edges of the current match. Watson managed to sneak up on the great Sherlock Holmes - but he was too ashamed of his previous behaviour to savour the moment properly. Over the din of the crowd, Watson shouted into Holmes’s ear, “Come home and spare me the inconvenience of stitching you up.”
Holmes whipped around, wild-eyed, only to scowl at Watson most frightfully. Watson sighed and leaned toward him again, mouth to ear.
“I behaved abominably,” he said. “Let me apologise properly at home, where you’re not likely to be pummelled to death.”
Holmes, like a bird in a fit of pique, shrugged him off, all ruffled feathers, and stalked away.
“Come now, Holmes,” Watson said, fighting through some onlookers to follow after him. “Be reasonable.”
“Reasonable?” Holmes was suddenly close up, spittle on Watson’s face. “How dare you bandy about words you are incapable of enacting yourself.”
“You startled me, Holmes! But I have reconsidered my position, and I shan’t…” Here, Watson pitched his voice low. “I shan’t contact our mutual acquaintance on the subject of our discussion.”
Holmes’s face, just now twisted into a hateful sneer, hardened and bled of all emotion. Watson’s heart stammered against his ribs at the sight.
“How generous of you, Watson. Truly, a saint walks among us. Should I kneel? Kiss your feet? What are the rules of conduct in the presence of such magnanimous spirit?”
“Holmes-”
But Watson’s voice was swallowed in the announcement of the next match - Holmes’s - and the resultant cacophony.
Watson watched Holmes use his whipcord body in concert with his magnificent mind to best his bigger, heavier, stupider opponent with grace and ease. Watson found himself admiring Holmes’s form and marvelling at his cunning. He was so absorbed in the spectacle of Holmes’s abilities on display that it did not even occur to him to place a wager.
Later, Holmes, victorious but battered, allowed Watson to accompany him back to Baker Street in a hansom cab, though he stared out the side at London passing by and stayed as far from Watson as was possible while remaining on the inside of the carriage.
“You’re going to give Mrs. Hudson a dreadful fright,” Watson murmured when the cab stopped in front of 221B. Holmes shot him a chilly, superior look and left Watson to pay the driver.
By the time Watson was up the seventeen steps, Holmes was ensconced in his own bedchambers, the door quite firmly shut. Watson collected his medical bag and went to lay three polite knocks on Holmes’s door.
“Let me put iodine on your cuts and scrapes, Holmes. And assess some of them for stitches.”
The door creaked open by a sliver, and Watson squared his shoulders to enter. Holmes was shirtless in half-profile in the shafts of sunlight streaming in from the window. He looked powerful, bruised and bleeding though he was, and he raised his chin in proud defiance upon Watson’s entrance. Watson swallowed.
“Sit,” he said, gesturing to the edge of the bed. Holmes complied, though he made it plain with his bearing that he did so under duress, and Watson sat in a chair opposite him. He removed some clean rags from his bag and dabbed them with iodine before getting to work on the marks that littered Holmes’s front, his neck, his face. He saw new scars, scars made by wounds he had not been there to nurse, and the talons in his heart twisted. “You’re getting far too old for this,” he muttered, and Holmes stiffened. “I’m getting far too old for this.”
“You’ve no right-”
Watson cut him off. “I am your friend, Holmes,” he said forcefully, enunciating each syllable with exaggerated care. “That will never change.” He watched Holmes’s Adam’s apple give a convulsive bob as he daubed his collarbone. “I am permitted to fret.”
Holmes’s breath left him unsteadily.
“I will never make mention of - of my irregularity again, Watson, I-”
Watson hushed him. “The fault is mine for blundering where I was not welcome,” he said. “I pushed when I should have recognised your reticence as your rightful need for privacy. We will go on as before, like you said, save for two things.”
Warily, Holmes eyed him.
“And what are those?”
“You will consider accepting my sincerest apologies and forgiving me my boorishness. Because I am sorry, Holmes, terribly sorry.” Watson paused to gather all his soldierly courage. “And if you seek companionship from those such as yourself, I wish never to know. You must be as discreet as you have been over the duration of our friendship.”
Holmes was silent, and Watson was still.
“You are forgiven, Watson,” he said at last, and Watson’s breath came easier. “As for the other, you have no cause to trouble yourself. I am quite… solitary.”
Watson found himself stamping on the incongruous and paradoxical urges to cheer at Holmes’s pronouncement and to protest that he should find someone else to engage his affections, someone more appropriate - someone female, perhaps. He shied from examining either desire. In the end, he merely nodded, and continued to tend Holmes’s wounds in silence.
-
Time passed, and they did not speak of Holmes’s peculiarity. Watson was almost able to forget about it completely, except for the way Holmes would, once in a while, slant a soft look his way when he thought Watson did not have his wits about him. Watson found himself curiously unperturbed by those rare occasions, however - he knew himself to be quite out of practice in dealing with Holmes after three years’ separation and even more away from Baker Street. Perhaps Holmes had always looked at him in that way, and it had never given him pause before. As Holmes made no untoward advances, who was Watson to say what his particular looks meant? For all Watson knew, Holmes was merely thinking, and Watson had got caught in the line of his long stare into the oblivion of his mind. Sometimes, however, in dead night when Watson was disturbed by troubled dreams, he considered whether it were the truth that Holmes cast his eyes in his direction out of deeper feeling, and whether it were not a kindness on his own part to allow Holmes that smallest of pleasures. And whether, sin or not, Watson enjoyed the great man’s quiet attentions.
As the weeks ticked by, they took on a number of small cases which proved to be of little interest to Holmes, and Watson imagined he could predict Holmes’s oncoming fit of languor the way a sailor predicts a storm. Such black moods were often accompanied by his partaking of that foul solution of his, and thus Watson redoubled his efforts at entertaining him. They stepped out to the symphony and the opera, they sought, purchased, and made study of obscure volumes on a vast array of subjects, they went to London Zoo and various museums and all sorts of unusual enclaves about town. Still Holmes languished, monosyllabic and smoking endlessly. Watson hid his damnable Moroccan case, though he knew his efforts would be futile in the face of Holmes’s deductive prowess.
And then, a client. An interesting client.
A case, a villain, a chase through London streets. Watson’s blood was up and he was almost delirious with exhilaration. Holmes had all but delivered the culprit to Scotland Yard, and now the pair of them ran through alleys and winding side streets to lose the lackeys who set off after them. When at last they dropped their tails and stopped to catch their breath, Watson let out a whoop and clutched Holmes about the shoulders.
“My God, man!” he exclaimed. “I feel young again!”
Holmes laughed, a dear and rusty thing to Watson’s ears, and he grasped at Watson’s elbows in return.
“Don’t kid yourself, old boy,” he said. “You’ll be grousing about your shoulder come morning.”
“It’ll match your creaking knees!” Watson retorted, laughing. Holmes himself was smiling down at him, eyes lit with sparks of amusement, and Watson was overcome by the sudden need to be closer to Holmes, to immerse himself in that fathomless grey. He slid his hands from shoulders to neck and gave Holmes’s collarbones a squeeze. He could feel Holmes’s laboured breath against his own lips, the light touch of Holmes’s forehead against his own.
“Watson-”
“I am so pleased you’re back, Holmes,” Watson blurted. “I am so very, very pleased.” He had not even been aware the words sat on his tongue at the ready, but there they were, irretrievable from the ether. Watson found he could not regret them.
Holmes’s breath did not seem to be calming, but he nodded and placed his own hands over Watson’s in a firm grip.
“It was my dearest wish to return to you, Watson,” he whispered, though it was late and they were quite alone.
Watson’s chest was suddenly insufficient containment for his heart, swelled as it was by Holmes’s words. It seemed so inconsequential a thing, nothing at all, to cross the scant distance between them and press his lips to Holmes’s own. The kiss was chaste, but Watson felt it like sparks along his spine. Holmes issued a small whimper, the sound of a man relieved of great burden. Watson, heart hammering, pressed closer and grasped Holmes tighter until at last Holmes wrapped his arms around Watson and parted his lips to allow him entrance.
I’m kissing Holmes, Watson thought. I’m kissing Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective and madman. Man. Man. Man.
Under slick tongue and warm lips, it was difficult to grasp at the reasons Watson should neither be doing this nor enjoying it so well. Distantly, it occurred to him that it was indeed quite different from kissing a woman - the cavern of Holmes’s mouth was larger, his lips thinner, his tongue more insistent. The rough scrape of a day’s worth of stubble made itself known, but Watson found it, Holmes, the entire endeavour, unspeakably pleasing.
His body proved itself a needful thing, and Holmes’s was in a similar state. Watson became aware that he was pressing Holmes to a wall and rutting against him most shamelessly, but before he could put himself to right, Holmes sank to his knees before him and made quick work of the buttons on his trousers. Watson gasped Holmes’s name, whether in surprise or warning, he did not know, but then Holmes, his dearest, most intimate friend, had swallowed his manhood and was sucking its turgid length with enthusiasm to rival a starving man at a feast. Watson’s breath stuttered, his knees threatened to buckle, and he grasped at Holmes’s shoulders. Holmes was relentless and, as with anything he set his mind to, prodigiously skilled - damn him, allowing other men into his bed, into his mouth, Watson would never allow it again, ever again.
“Watson, I didn’t know you cared,” came a wry voice below him. Watson glanced downward to see Holmes’s face flushed and happy, and it eased the sting of embarrassment at having been caught speaking of his jealousies aloud. Obscenely, Watson’s own member bobbed eagerly about Holmes’s mouth, but before shame could sweep hot over Watson’s skin, Holmes took him back between his lips and sucked him down as he worked both hands at the base. Watson threw his head back and gave a strangled shout. He felt Holmes’s answering chuckle, but Holmes neither yielded in his ministrations nor spoke again.
Watson, to his mortification, had always been a bit talkative in the carnal act. He murmured all manner of obscenities and benedictions, threats and promises, accusations and exaltations. After some time, he felt Holmes’s actions become sloppier and more desperate until, around his mouthful of Watson, he gave a muffled scream, then slackened.
“Oh, Holmes,” Watson said urgently, “did you spend just now? I should dearly have liked to see that. Holmes, Holmes.”
Holmes was panting even as he pumped Watson into the warm suction of his mouth. Watson blinked down at Holmes’s face, at the sight of his manhood slick with Holmes’s saliva and stretching Holmes’s lips widely, lewdly. His own pleasure tightened and sharpened until, with a hoarse cry, he spent down Holmes’s welcoming throat.
Holmes sucked at him until he was dry, laved him clean, and tucked him back into his trousers with a queer, loving little pat of farewell. Watson took the opportunity to sink to the ground, heedless of the state of his trousers, and joined Holmes in propping himself up against the wall they had used so ill. Holmes was a warm, solid presence beside him, and they did not speak while they both caught their breath in the hazy aftermath of pleasure.
When at last the starbursts cleared from his vision, Watson turned his head to look at Holmes. He was looking fondly at Watson already, eyes soft.
“I would lay heavy odds on your wife never having performed such a depraved and delicious act upon your person, Watson,” Holmes said with a sly sideways smile. His voice was a low, dark rumble, made so by Watson’s ardor.
Abruptly Watson went cold all over and his innards locked in a knot. His demeanour must have registered the change, for Holmes was stiff and upright beside him, mouth tense and pursed as if in regret.
“Watson, I-”
“Do not speak. God. Oh, God, Holmes, what have you done?”
“I? What have I done, Watson?”
Watson sprang to his feet and Holmes followed with his usual damnable grace, expression shuttered.
“Yes, you!” Watson pushed at his shoulders. Holmes, perfectly capable, Watson knew, of fending him off, merely let himself be pushed once again against the wall. “What have you done to me? You incubus, you monster. You scramble my mind, you make me believe I want vile, impossible things! You make me forget my wife - you make me mourn you as I could never mourn her! You drain my grief and my sympathy so there is nothing left for anyone else! You harden my heart to everyone who is not you and by God, Sherlock Holmes, I hate you for it. I hate you, do you hear me?”
Holmes pushed Watson away with enough force to send him stumbling. Watson scowled to see Holmes straighten his clothing so primly, as if he had not just performed an ecstatic and highly illegal act of fellatio upon Watson’s person.
“I never took you for a coward, Watson,” he said in a conversational tone. “I shall endeavour never to make such a grave error in judgment again.” With that, he left Watson filthy and shamed in an alley.
Watson looked up into London’s night sky, where there were no stars.
-
Watson sank into the sagging mattress in the only rooms he could find available for the night. They seem to have been alternately neglected and abused, but Watson had weathered worse as a solider, and he was well aware of the adage about beggars and choosers. He removed his shoes with great force and let his garments lie where they landed as he disrobed carelessly. When he was down to his small clothes, he snuffed out the lantern the toothless innkeeper had given him, and curled onto his side to will himself to sleep. He kicked the bedding and flipped to his opposite side. He flopped onto his back. He battered the lumpy pillows until they resembled something he might use to rest his head upon rather than something he might seek to consume with gravy. He rolled onto his stomach and threw the pillows away completely. He huffed into stale sheets.
“Damn you, Holmes,” he muttered, not for the first time since parting ways with him in the alley.
In the dark, he had nothing to occupy him but his thoughts, and they ran in only one direction: Holmesward. He imagined Holmes’s mouth, quirking as it did in his version of a smile, sealing itself over Watson’s most intimate appendage, hardening at the abuse spouting from Watson's lips. He thought of the stormy depths of Holmes’s eyes when he looked at Watson in his singular way, when he gazed up at him from between his legs, when he turned his back to walk away.
Watson snarled and burrowed his face further into the mattress. He did not want to think on Holmes’s wounded demeanour. He was the one who had betrayed Watson, not vice versa. He’d turned Watson - a doctor, a soldier, an upstanding citizen and his only bosom friend - into a deviant!
Watson rolled onto his side again and took a deep breath before letting it out in a long, measured exhale.
Take some responsibility, man, he thought in a voice suspiciously like that of his major, a gruff man whose eyes never stopped scanning the horizon. You kissed him first. You wanted to kiss him, to feel him beneath your hands, to be the thing that took him apart with pleasure. Never, ever forget that, solider.
Watson squeezed his eyes shut. Yes, he had wanted those things. He had been the one to steal the breath from Holmes’s lungs. He could no more blame Holmes for his perversion than he could the blame the trees when wind rustled their leaves. Holmes simply was.
If only he didn’t look at me so, came the contrarian thought. If only he weren’t so brilliant. If only his eyes weren’t that particular shade of grey. If only his legs weren’t quite so well-formed, or his shoulders so broad and sharp. Surely it’s all his fault.
Watson flipped violently to his opposite side. “Stop it,” he hissed into the bedding. “Stop this.”
He tried to think of Mary, of the gentle way she touched him when they made love, but she was sunken and wasted by illness in his memory. All recollections of her were tarnished by his own guilt. And there was the core of it: if Watson had failed as a husband, if he failed now as a man in mourning, that was his own shortcoming. That had nothing whatever to do with Holmes’s wiles. Watson had wished to cherish his wife, but instead he left her for adventures at Holmes’s side at every opportunity, until Holmes was dead and Watson’s heart was a husk with nothing left to offer her. When she took ill, he pledged to himself that he would be dutiful and kind, and he was. It would be his last act as husband - perhaps the only true act as husband he had ever committed. That all others fell short or remained empty or broken promises could not be placed on anyone’s shoulders but Watson’s own.
He tried to think of other women with whom he had had intimate encounters in years past. John Watson had never lacked company wherever he was, but now, with the smell of Holmes still clinging to his skin, with his last intimate touch from a woman years ago now, the memories slid from his mind like oil, and all he could think of was Holmes. Holmes and his damnable eyes.
Holmes, and how he had looked when Watson called him a monster, told him he hated him.
Watson swung his legs over the edge of the mattress to sit up, planted his elbows on his knees, and scrubbed at his hair.
How many times was he going to have to apologise for his behaviour in regards to Holmes’s proclivities and the reprehensible way he handled Holmes’s softer feelings?
“Countless times, no doubt,” Watson sighed. He caught sight of himself in a mirror on the opposite wall. Dark as it was, he imagined he could make out new lines the past few hours had carved into his face. He knew with sudden clarity that he could not return to Baker Street unless it was to accept Holmes as he was, inverted affections and all, and to take Holmes into his arms as he would a cherished spouse. As he should have with Mary, who, God help him, could never compare to Holmes. Poor Mary had never stood a chance, and Watson was the worst sort of cad.
He had betrayed both of the people he loved.
Watson passed a hand over his haggard face. He knew his friendship with Holmes was over. His intimate partnership with Holmes, should he have the courage to embrace it, was a bud about to bloom. He could allow it to do so, or he could cull the blossom before it unfurled.
Watson stood and leaned close to the mirror, hands braced on the vanity.
“What do you want?” he asked his reflection.
It gave no answer, and Watson fancied he could measure the deepening furrow between his brows.
“You could find a new flat, or buy your old practice back. You could step out with the next pretty girl you meet.” He swallowed. “You could never see him again.” Watson’s stomach flipped, went cold.
He took a shaking breath, steadied himself on his feet, and squared his shoulders. He looked himself right in the eye and faced what he feared to be the cruelest truth.
“Invert,” he whispered, and his heart gave a pang. “You will have to hide always. You will have a life of hardship, of avoiding the scrutiny of your friends and relations, of acting falsely lest you give away your secret. You will never be able to be at ease.”
His reflection was a man he hardly recognised. When had he got so old? The years had slid past him seemingly without his notice. The end of the century was racing toward him. He was forty-two years of age. He should have a beautiful, dutiful wife. A gaggle of charming children. A successful practice.
Instead, he had Holmes.
The man in the mirror cracked a rueful smile.
“If,” he said, “he’ll still have you.”
-
Watson returned to Baker Street about breakfast time and encountered Mrs. Hudson in the entryway.
“Oh, Dr. Watson! Mr. Holmes said not to expect you, and he was himself in one of his intolerable strops, so I’ve not lain out a meal!”
“Don’t trouble yourself, Mrs. Hudson,” Watson said. “I took tea and toast before my arrival.”
Mrs. Hudson clucked and bustled back into her own rooms with a parting warning.
“You’d best to avoid Mr. Holmes, Dr. Watson,” she said. “He’s a right terror this morning.”
Watson sighed, braced himself, and made his way up the seventeen steps into 221b. He pushed open the door only to meet with a cloud of smoke billowing outward with a great sense of drama. His eyes watered and he coughed, waving a hand in front of his face.
“Good God,” he gasped. “I’m not even sure there is any oxygen left in here, Holmes.”
“Oh, you’re here,” came Holmes’s deep voice from somewhere in the vicinity of the settee. Watson recognised the tone: falsely light, reasonable, and sure to eviscerate whosoever crossed its path. “Perhaps you have come to make certain I know how vile a man I am and to turn me in to the Yard. Or is it that you want another chance to spend yourself on me, and then abuse me?”
Watson tried to cross the room only to be thwarted by broken china, chemistry equipment, cooked eggs, and books strewn across the floor. He moved with ginger, strategic steps before reaching the window and throwing it open. Smoke poured out and cleared the sitting room. Watson restrained the expression of exasperation which threatened to cross his face when he looked down at Holmes lounging on the settee, pipe dangling from his lips. An imperious brow challenged him. Holmes’s eyes gave away nothing, but Watson’s own surely did. Holmes groaned and looked away.
“Ah. Choice number three: grovelling. Spare me, Watson.”
“Holmes. Let me speak my piece, at least.”
“No, let me.” Abruptly Holmes was on his feet, pipe forgotten. “‘Oh Holmes,’” he snivelled, pitching his voice high. “‘When I think of the grief I have caused you, I am the very picture of desolation. Please, allow me back into your affections so that I may bask in them, toy with them, and mistreat them again and again. But wait! Stand back! Don’t get so close, old boy, lest you infect me with your queer little turns. I am not a deviant like yourself, except when it suits me. Oh, touch me, Holmes!’” Holmes clasped his hands together in front of his chest, eyes big with performance.
Watson pursed his lips, and then, like shucking a disguise, Holmes was himself again, a sneer in his lips, arms languid at his sides. Then, just as suddenly, he sank back into the settee as if unspeakably exhausted.
“Is that about the run of it, Watson?” he asked. “Can we skip the spectacle?”
Watson sighed and took a seat beside him. He studiously ignored the way Holmes recoiled from his proximity.
“You paint a painfully accurate portrait, Holmes, unflattering as it is. I shan’t dispute it. I should only like the chance to rectify my misdeeds.”
Holmes gave a snort, but Watson sensed it was half-hearted. Holmes peered at him through half-mast lashes, by means of peripheral vision. Watson took an edifying breath.
“When Mary died, I felt nothing. I was not bereaved in the manner expected of a widower. You see, I had already endured the greatest loss of my life, and I had no grief to spare my poor Mary when the time came.”
Holmes had trained his attention now on the bearskin rug beneath his feet.
“Watson,” he said before Watson could go on. “I should not have said what I said about her last night. It was deplorable. Forgive me.”
Watson stilled the hand that itched to cover Holmes’s own.
“There is nothing to forgive,” he said. “Or, if there is, it is only because I drove you there with the magnitude of my self-deception. May I continue, Holmes?”
A pale, elegant hand swept outward as if in invitation.
“I realised last night that I held you responsible for my deficiencies as a husband, and that cross is mine alone to bear. If I chose you over Mary for the duration of my marriage, so much so that your death dealt a blow from which I thought I would never recover, that was not the flaw in your character but in mine. Such ignorance of the workings of my own heart was my betrayal - of you, of her, even of myself. Blaming you for my choices only compounded my considerable failings. I am done with that, Holmes. I see things clearly now.” Watson’s heart stumbled, and he cleared his throat. “I see what is between you and me clearly now.”
Holmes looked up, and Watson knew he did not imagine the warm flare of hope that lighted Holmes’s eyes.
“And what is that, my dear doctor?”
Watson reached out at last to rest his hand on Holmes’s. He pushed his fingers between Holmes’s own and was met with an answering squeeze. It eased a great weight Watson had not known he carried.
“An unassailable bond,” he said. “An ardent friendship as foundation for transcendent intimacy. Holmes, you are and have always been the keeper of my most profound affections. It seems foolish, in retrospect, to think I could ever have believed otherwise. My heart has been pledged to you quite from the beginning, and that is why I was an abysmal husband to poor Mary. If you will allow me the privilege of a second chance-”
“Twenty-ninth chance,” Holmes cut in.
Watson paused, agog. “Twenty-ninth?”
“Twenty-ninth.”
“By what count have I-”
“Thirteen on the day of your wedding alone.”
“Holmes, my dear man, I never-”
“I have had many years to endure your obliviousness and its resultant callousness, Watson.” Holmes gave his hand another squeeze, and his mouth curved upward in his particular way. Watson caught the sparkle in Holmes’s eye. “It has yet to cool my ardor. I’m afraid you’re a lifelong affliction. But please, continue your declarations. They soothe and amuse me.”
Watson flattened his lips in an expression of chagrin, but he knew he was merely disguising - badly - a smile.
“You are an incorrigible man,” he said with teasing reproach. “You will never make it easy for me, will you?”
“Now Watson, however would we pass our time if things were easy?” The question was playful, but Watson caught in Holmes’s face a lurking shadow. He was remarkably easy to read like this, Watson realised, in these moments of tenderness and warmth. He was afraid of being a disappointment, of being abandoned again due to his own eccentric nature.
Watson only smiled and leaned in to kiss the tempting pulse point in Holmes neck. He was gratified to receive a tremble, and an arm about his shoulders, embracing.
“I would never choose differently, Holmes,” he assured him. “Never let it be said that John Watson shied from a challenge.”
Holmes hid the fullness of his smile in a kiss, and Watson’s skin felt electrified. He allowed himself to be pulled atop Holmes on the settee, and they lay there for a long while kissing, enjoying the surrender of reunion.
Eventually, though the space was cramped, they settled on their sides, Watson’s front pressed into Holmes’s back, arm slung about his waist. They neither of them wished to disturb the delicacy of the moment by repairing to their bedchambers. Holmes was stroking Watson’s fingers as if memorising, and perhaps he was. Watson tucked a smile at the thought into the nape of Holmes’s neck.
“Do you remember, Holmes, the week we spent on the continent before your long departure? When we indulged in leisurely walks taking in the sights and spent long hours speaking together on all subjects? When our intimacy so free and easy a thing? I think on it often - how it seemed a moment out of time, joy suspended. I used to think it both a gift and a curse - that I got to preserve one perfect week with you before so much sorrow.” In his arms, Holmes had gone preternaturally still. Unease bloomed in Watson’s gullet. “Holmes?”
“The week we spent rambling together in Switzerland, Watson, was a kernel of brightness I struggled to recall during the black moods I fell into subsequent to our separation. You will recall that I felt my confrontation with the Professor was imminent - I remember thinking that should I meet my end there, with my steadfast Boswell at my side, I could do so without regret, in the period of my most enduring contentment. To be with you so comfortably in an idyllic setting, danger be damned, was a source of much buoyancy for me. My death, I thought then, could be a happy one.”
“Do not speak of such things,” Watson replied, voice gruff. He leaned his forehead carefully against Holmes’s shoulder and rested his palm upon a bony hip. “It is over; you are home and we are together.”
Holmes turned onto his back to face Watson. He curled his fingers around Watson’s hesitantly, as if thankful for the privilege, and let a smile touch his lips.
“As it should be,” he said. Watson answered with a smile of his own.
“Perhaps we should take another such holiday, Holmes,” he said. “A real one, without a case, to make new memories untouched by dark deeds. The south of France, perhaps, or even Italy?”
Holmes snorted. “I think I should like to remain in London for the time being, old boy. I have been too long removed from her choked air and uneven streets.”
“Ah,” Watson said faintly. He cleared his throat. “Quite right. A foolish passing fancy, nothing more.”
Holmes settled further into the settee and cupped Watson’s face with both hands. Watson swallowed and closed his eyes as Holmes nudged at his nose with his own.
“Not foolish,” he murmured. “We now have at our disposal great stores of time with which to take a holiday, do we not?”
Watson nodded.
“So,” Holmes went on. “We will take one later. We will take many later. For now let us stay here and be the scourge of London crime and confound Lestrade at every turn, yes?”
“Yes,” Watson laughed, “yes, Holmes. Always.”
He surrendered to the singularity and inevitability of Holmes’s kiss. In it, he found the balm of absolution and the means to mend his battered heart. He stroked reverently at the stubble along Holmes’s jaw and thought, At last. At long, long last.
End