you're looking happily deranged
first second third fourth
(now)
Watson wakes up in Hyde Park.
He doesn't know that's where he is at first. He is dreadfully cold. He is in his stocking feet. There is an ache installed in his head like a set of metal pincers around his skull. He can barely see through the throb of it, and his stomach roils, clutches and swoons.
Watson rolls over and gets sick on the grass. His vision splinters, silver and glass, and he hurts all over. A long few minutes pass as Watson cringes and shudders, half-curled in a ball.
It's raining. Of course it is raining--it never stops. There is something terribly wrong with this world where it never stops raining.
Slowly, the doctor pulls himself together. Awareness coalesces, and when he wedges his eyes open he can see again. He pushes himself up carefully, his head hanging down. He can see his feet, thin stockings gone sheer in the rain and looking faintly bluish. They feel frozen stiff. In addition to his shoes, he's missing his hat, cane, cigarette case, and watch and chain.
You've been robbed, Watson is informed by the part of his mind that keeps track of that kind of thing. He finds a large misshapen lump on his head, tender and sore. You've been knocked unconscious. Nausea means you likely have concussion.
His head begins to spin and so he lies back down, staring up at the dawn sky coloured like dust and rust. That small voice tells him, you are a wreck, sir.
The previous night reassembles, pictures filtering and jostling into sequence. It was nothing out of the ordinary, just a drink and a game and then more drinks, more games, and that skinny youth with black hair and rapiers in his eyes, who had lured Watson into the alley and gone to his knees as the doctor had clutched the coins tight enough to leave impressions on his palm. A typical pathetic scene, and Watson lets it cloud, retreating into the jagged mess of his headache, his poor ill-used frame.
It doesn't matter what happened last night. Watson struggles to his feet and it doesn't take the first time, his legs jellying and crashing him back onto the grass. He builds up his strength, breathing deeply and looking out at the mild bend of the Serpentine. On his second attempt, he stays standing, and makes it out of the park to the street.
The day is just beginning. The rain has softened to mist, the overcast sky lowering, fresh sunlight barely seeping through. The flanks of the carriage horses gleam like silk. Watson feels wretched and chilled to the bone, his soaked clothes clinging to him. He is very aware that he isn't wearing shoes. There are only a few people on the street, all of them hidden under hats and umbrellas. The doctor cannot make out a single face.
Watson cannot walk anywhere like this, and so he flags down a cab. He has no money, and so he tells the driver to take him to Baker Street, his weariness drugging him to resignation. He already owes Holmes so much; it's like spitting in the ocean.
His key still works in the door. Hearing the tumblers turn and fall is more affecting than it should be; it's as if he's pulled Excalibur from the stone. It's been two months since he's been here. Each of the seventeen steps feels like a year taken off his life.
He finds Holmes in the sitting room, lying on the settee but not asleep, or at least, not as soon as Watson cracks the door. Holmes's eyes are watchful and black-seeming from across the room, betraying no surprise whatsoever.
Watson sways, holding on to the doorknob and shivering incessantly in his wet clothes. He asks miserably, "Might I trouble you for cab fare, my dear man?"
Holmes studies him for a long moment or two, and then moves finally, sitting up and hooking his braces back over his shoulders. His mouth curls in a cynical little smile.
"My coat is on the chair," Holmes says, tipping his chin.
Watson fetches it and empties the pockets. He goes down to pay the cab and returns shamefaced, his stockinged feet leaving long damp marks on the carpet. His heart is pounding, and he glances helplessly at the place on the landing where Holmes once moved beneath his body. This whole house is haunted.
Holmes is off the settee when Watson comes back in, over by his desk fiddling with a jerry-built gas burner that wasn't there when Watson left. Without looking up, Holmes tells him:
"Find some dry clothes, unless contracting pneumonia is one of your objectives for the night."
Dimly relieved to be given a straightforward task, Watson obediently goes into Holmes's room. In the wardrobe he finds two of his own shirts, hostages that Holmes has taken, but Watson leaves them where they are. He selects a shirt with a singed sleeve that belongs to his one-time friend, feeling sentimental and woozy. Holmes's shirts have always been just the slightest bit too small for him, each breath drawing the fabric just barely taut. The trousers are too short, and they make him feel like he's once again fifteen years old and suddenly six feet tall.
Watson hesitates a moment before returning to the sitting room. It's a bad business all around, falling back on Holmes like this. It's not good for either of them.
There's nothing for it. He's here now. He's wearing Holmes's shirt. Watson takes a deep breath, and reemerges.
Holmes is sitting in his standard chair, his pipe lit and his eyes narrow against the smoke. Watson stands awkwardly for a moment, fingering the burnt bit of sleeve and not quite looking at his friend, and then he beelines for the whiskey. It's easier to speak once he has something to occupy his hands.
"I am keeping a careful account-" Watson begins, and Holmes cuts him off with a laugh, a coarse sound like metal scraping on stone.
"I am honoured to join the ranks of your creditors," Holmes says. "Quite a sizable crowd by now, aren't we?"
Watson coughs, and takes a long steadying draught. The pain in his head batters into surf against his skull. He wishes Holmes would stop looking at him; it's possible that he's never wished for something less likely.
"Are you working?" Watson asks.
Holmes smirks at the abrupt change of subject, and answers, "Of course."
"Anything of interest?"
"No, Watson, in your absence I've developed a taste for the mundane."
A caustic smile wrenches briefly across Watson's mouth, and he rolls his eyes, fortifies himself with another drink. His mind races for something pithy to say, but nothing comes; he's lost his touch for this kind of thing. An ocean of silence stretches between them.
"I find myself in need of your advice," Holmes says a long moment later.
Watson twitches. He gives Holmes a wide-eyed look, not entirely trusting him. "With regards to what?"
"This unfortunate situation of ours." Holmes's hand moves with weary elegance, encompassing the both of them. "I pray you forgive my boldness, but I am somewhat lacking in confidants, you understand."
"Yes," Watson agrees. There is no need to think about that. Losing Holmes's companionship has felt like a return of the Black Death, like half of everyone Watson knows is dead.
Holmes searches him, scrapes the pith from under Watson's skin before dragging contemplatively on his pipe.
"So, here it is," Holmes says. "The dissolution of our partnership appears to have sent you down a rather dark path. It's entirely your own fault, of course, and yet I find myself loath to leave you to the consequences."
Watson takes his drink over to his old chair and sinks down into it. The sigh of the leather taking his weight is so distinct and familiar that he flinches. Still not looking at Holmes, Watson trains his gaze on the tilted amber glow of the whiskey in the glass.
"You've seen me only at my very worst," Watson says, shaky and not up for the fight. "And only very rarely. Day to day, I assure you, I am a much different man."
Holmes gives him a scathing look. "I know all about your day to day, Watson, so please don't lie to me. It's terribly off-putting."
"I'm not-" Watson cuts himself off, blinks fast a few times. "Have you--do you have somebody spying on me?"
"Of course I have somebody spying on you," Holmes says sharply. "In fact, I have seven people spying on you--I've added you to the Irregulars' list of observation targets." He glares at Watson, daring him to object.
Watson can't answer for a long moment, stupefied and knowing he shouldn't be surprised at all. All of his recent memories suddenly have rat-faced boys scurrying through them, small dirty hands nicking into his pockets. A quick righteous flare of anger sparks to life in his stomach and he grabs hold of it frantically, prays it grows big enough to obscure everything else.
"You would violate my privacy," Watson begins to say, his voice climbing, but Holmes barks laughter and interrupts to say harshly:
"Violated worse things than that, haven't I?"
A flush springs to Watson's face, and he feels absurdly, stupidly young for just a moment, hating the bitter knowledge in Holmes's face, all that goddamn wisdom. The doctor's hand is closed perilously tight around the glass. He tries to make his eyes like stone.
"It's no longer any of your business what I do," Watson tells him.
Holmes laughs again, a jeering grin catching briefly on his lips. "My apologies, have we never met?"
"I am not one of your cases. You cannot treat me like a, a, a suspect in some crime."
"A suspect? No, my dear boy, you were tried and convicted long ago."
A pointed piece of silence falls between them at that. Watson stares at Holmes, anger and guilt at war inside of him. There is a sneer on Holmes's face, the circles under his eyes deep enough to look carved. There is something wounded about the line of Holmes's shoulders.
You did this to him, the small voice leaps to point out. Watson crushes it back down, swallowing hard. He drags his eyes off Holmes, and gazes out the window at the lightening day.
"To return to my point," Holmes says in a clipped tone. "I do not intend to let you continue this exceptionally roundabout method of suicide that you have devised."
"And what, pray tell, do you propose to do about it?"
"You're going to move back in here," Holmes tells him plainly. "And I'm going to keep your money and furnish you with an allowance."
"What?" The word shoots out of him, gusty with disbelief. Watson feels like he's been punched in the chest. "What?"
Holmes shrugs, his head held in that infuriatingly regal manner than he had. "I'm sure it seems sudden-"
"Sudden? It seems bloody ludicrous."
Holmes scowls at him. "May I finish? Thank you. Now, I'm sure it seems sudden, but once we sort out the details you'll see that I am right."
"No," Watson says, and for some reason he's terrified. "Absolutely not, Holmes, I can't move back here."
"What, because of our former regard for each other?" With a scoff and an airy wave, Holmes dismisses that. "The first attempt ended badly enough I think we both know better than to stir that pot again, eh?"
Watson just blinks at him, panicked and befuddled, the whiskey trembling in the glass. He can't quite believe that Holmes is actually serious, but surely he wouldn't joke about this. The wound is far from healed; sometimes Watson feels like it's still actively bleeding.
"It cannot be argued now," Holmes continues. "The crucial lesson to be absorbed from our history is that we are successful as friends and colleagues, and greatly less so as sexual partners. So, we'll focus our attentions on the former and leave the latter with the other misadventures of our past. No need to salt the earth, after all."
There isn't enough whiskey in the world for this conversation, really. Watson curls a hand around the lump on his head, an unconsciously defensive gesture. Holmes is sitting back, observing Watson's reaction with subtle precision. Watson is trying to keep his face still, trying not to show the malicious welter of thoughts spinning in his mind, but he doubts he's having much luck. His vocal chords feel paralysed; even if he knew what to say, it would be of no use to him.
Holmes tips his chin a fraction of an inch, and Watson reads volumes: impatience and anxiety and the beginnings of an exhausted resignation, and underlying all of it is that dull pang of longing that never leaves Holmes's eyes anymore.
"You appear less than enthused, Doctor."
Watson shakes his head, stammers, "H-how could you want me back here?"
"If you'll recall, I never wanted you to leave."
"No, Holmes, I, I," and Watson feels thick-tongued and witless, speaks without thinking, "I can't live with you. It hurts to even look at you."
"Why?" Holmes asks, too fast, shielding a stark look of offence. "What have I ever done to cause you pain?"
"It's what I've done to you," Watson cries, a frayed crack in his voice. "Seeing what I've done to you--that pains me."
Holmes's face reveals shock for a moment, wounded and outraged, and then a wall goes up, and his mouth twists in a hateful shape.
"Of course," Holmes snarls. "You gamble away every penny you have and by this time next month you'll be a full-fledged drunkard as well, but I am too pathetic a sight for you to bear."
Watson shakes his head again, his hands clenching futilely. His throat is choked off, his stomach a shrunken pit. Holmes has affected that famous slow-burning look of contempt, difficult to withstand at the best of times. Watson's mind crowds with things that he will never speak out loud.
It's that you loved me, Watson will not say to him. It's that you loved me truly and entirely, as no one else ever has, as you never believed you could, and I gave it up. I killed something in you so utterly, you'll never admit that it was ever there. When I look at you, all I see is its absence.
Watson cannot say any of that to Holmes. Instead he stands on unsteady legs and says weakly, already bracing for the blow, "I'm sorry."
The sneer on Holmes's face digs deeper. "For which incident, specifically?"
"All of them, I, I'm sorry about everything," Watson says, and then he can't stand listening to himself, seeing that hateful look on Holmes's face, and he moves swiftly for the door. "I must go."
"You're still not wearing any shoes," Holmes says, and Watson doesn't care. He goes anyway, casting one desperate look back over his shoulder to see Holmes watching him with his eyes ablaze, as furious and helpless as an unarmed man in the middle of a war.
The small voice in Watson's head sadly echoes, you loved me, and then he leaves.
*
*
(then)
A debased bounder named Cyril Willingham tried to kill Holmes on Thursday, and escaped into the bowels of the city swearing to return and finish the job, and so Friday found the detective and his doctor on board a ship to Calais.
Fleeing the country was not Holmes's first choice of actions, and yet he was somehow outvoted in their constituency of two. Watson had been possessed of enough stubbornness for ten men, his jaw set in a obstinate line and his eyes glittering.
"Paris," the doctor said through gritted teeth. "Until the villain is captured or determined to have left the city."
Indignation rich in his voice, Holmes had demanded of his friend, "Did Admiral Nelson retreat?" but Watson hadn't wavered. He had finished stitching up the long gash across Holmes's chest and told him plainly, "You may make the trip of your own free will or unconscious and shoved into a seabag--it's your decision entirely."
Holmes had scowled and grumbled and muttered imprecations against so-called loyal sons of the crown who hared off to France at the slightest provocation, but he allowed Watson to have his way. Holmes had two cracked ribs that made each breath an exhausting ordeal. It was just easier to do as Watson asked.
So they alit on the Gallic shore, and hastened to catch the train to the capital. Watson put a solicitous hand on Holmes's elbow as he mounted the iron steps, but Holmes shook him off, shot him an admonishing glare at which the doctor only rolled his eyes.
Their compartment aboard the train was small enough that their knees touched as they sat across from each other. Holmes was winded and pained and not interested in talking about it, so he immersed himself in a French newspaper, leaving Watson to his own devices.
Nothing compelling had happened since they'd left London, Holmes found. His mind softened at the edges, English and French blending indistinctly. His chest ached, an iron weight pressing his lungs as flat as foolscap. This was the worst kind of pain, tied to every breath and impossible to ignore.
Searching for any kind of distraction, Holmes let his eyes fall subtly on his friend. Watson was leaning against the window, reading a yellow-back with a garish pirate ship cleaving the wide blue on the front cover. Holmes smirked behind the newspaper, absently devising ways that he might take advantage of Watson's penchant for the sensational.
The countryside spilled past, rustic and coloured like Irish hills diluted in milk. Farmhouses sagged like clumps of dirt on the horizon. A man driving a coffle of cows took his hat off as the train went past, as if they were royalty or war dead.
Watson set aside his book and rose to take off his jacket. Holmes watched the slim line of his torso twisting as he stretched to secure the jacket in the bin overhead. A bit of Watson's shirt came untucked from his trousers, and without thinking Holmes reached out to push it back into place. Watson looked down at him, a half a smile on his face.
"Thank you, Holmes."
"Can't have you looking unkempt, can we?"
"Evidently not."
"It reflects badly on both of us," Holmes told him seriously. "Who would trust the judgement of a detective who has elected to travel with such a disreputable companion?"
"I certainly wouldn't dream of it."
Their badinage was cut short as Watson checked that the lock on the door was turned and then sat back down, letting his knee rest against Holmes's rather deliberately. Holmes raised his eyebrows, and Watson gave him a secretive smile. Immediately, Holmes's mind showed him all the vastly superior things that Watson could be doing with his mouth right now.
"My dear man," Holmes murmured, and let his lips curve in a lazy smile. He watched Watson's eyes darken, still as fascinated as the first time he'd seen it.
In a move too seamlessly graceful to seem real, Watson slid off the seat onto his knees, and set his hands carefully on Holmes's legs. A breath caught in Holmes's throat and he reached out, wanting to touch Watson's rough face and then his hair, the sweet curve of the back of his neck. Watson caught his wrist, pushed his hand back down.
"You mustn't exert yourself," Watson said, culturing his voice in such a way that heat suffused Holmes's body. "You are an injured man."
"Your position does not exactly inspire calm repose," Holmes pointed out, sounding disappointingly breathless already.
"Have some self-control, Holmes," Watson said, and bent his head to press his mouth to the inside of Holmes's thigh.
The sound that came out of Holmes was new, a kind of strangled gasping cry. He twisted his hands in his own clothes to keep from reaching again, biting his lip and thinking crazy rushing things, cannonballs and rail-less trains filling his mind with thunder. It happened so quickly every time. His body had learned to respond to Watson's hands, his skin recognising him by touch alone.
Watson went to work on Holmes's trousers, and as a pre-emptory effort to avoid finishing with unfortunate celerity, the detective tipped his head back and started talking.
"Hidden depths, Watson, I mean to say--dear Lord. Ah. Your, your ever-expanding limits, I just cannot--and how was I meant to know, I ask you that? No, don't stop, that was entirely rhetorical, I assure you. Here--oh, and there, and. Good, yes. Good. It's just. It's remarkable, all these things I never knew you would do. All this--oh. D-debauchery on public trains, I, I, I never imagined the day. My own dear Watson, yes, yes, sweet Christ, man, please," and then his hearing went away for awhile.
Holmes knew he was still talking because Watson reached up and pushed fingers into his mouth. Watson's fingers were rough and tasted faintly of the alcohol with which he'd cleaned Holmes's wounds. Holmes curled his tongue, sucked him in. Watson moaned around Holmes's prick and the vibration spurred through the detective's body. His hips jerked forward, and he felt Watson's nose press into his body. Holmes was breathing too hard; his chest was on fire.
Watson didn't draw out the matter, for various reasons medical and discretionary. With the utmost efficiency he took his fingers from Holmes's mouth and brought them down, a brief wet touch on the place where Holmes's leg met his body and then two fingers sliding into him, gritty and unsparing and beautiful, just beautiful. Holmes arched his back and it felt like his ribcage was collapsing, his heart crushed. He gasped from the pain, and came in a blinding rush down Watson's throat.
It took him several minutes to recover. His body felt improperly wired, unable to separate out pain from pleasure. Holmes was delirious, exalted, shivering under his skin. As his mind cleared, he became aware of Watson's head resting on his leg, and then his own hand, curled in Watson's short hair.
Holmes opened his eyes. Watson was watching him, and an idiotic little thrill went through Holmes, as familiar as his own name by now. That had been the very first symptom, that girlish glee every time Holmes had Watson's full attention. If Holmes could have had his way, Watson would never look anywhere else.
"Remarkable is not enough of a word for what you are," Holmes told him in a hoarse tone, his fingers moving lightly over Watson's hair.
A smile bent Watson's mouth, and he turned his head to press a kiss to the inside of Holmes's wrist before rising and bringing their mouths together for a real one. Holmes licked the insides of Watson's cheeks, sucked his lower lip just enough for it to swell the slightest bit.
Watson pulled back, rolled his forehead on Holmes's. "Did you strain your ribs?"
"No. Come here." Holmes lifted his lips to Watson's again, kissed him for long drifting moments, eyes blissfully shut. The train rattled around them, miles and miles of this sister country vanishing unseen behind them.
When Watson pulled away, his face was flushed and his eyes overly bright. Holmes slid his hand up Watson's leg, brushed his fingers across the front of his trousers. Watson hissed, arrested Holmes's hand with his own.
"You don't need to-" Watson began, and Holmes gave him a wicked smile.
"It's not against the law here, you know."
"Yes, I know." Watson's fingers braceleted Holmes's wrist, held him down. "You are still hurt."
"I'm fine, I told you," and Holmes was distracted, rubbing at the fine weave of Watson's trousers, leaning close and ignoring the petulant throb in his chest, the weak deflated feeling of his lungs.
"Holmes," Watson said, trying to be stern but discomposure leaked from his voice like rain through thatch. "You must--take care."
Holmes wasn't listening to him, staring down at his hand wrapped around Watson's thigh, struck by the ashen scars over his knuckles, the crinkled patch of skin where he had suffered a bad burn several months ago. It seemed inexplicable that he could forever carry the marks of a hundred minor forgotten injuries, and yet there would never be any evidence that he had once touched John Watson.
"If I asked you to put out a cigarette on my hand, would you?" Holmes asked.
Watson blinked, a vague muddled horror seeping into his gaze. "No. I--no. Why would you ask me that?"
Angling forward, tracing his fingers on the seam of Watson's trousers, Holmes kissed Watson's cheek, the steady line of his jaw. Watson tipped his head back, breathing out loudly through his nose.
"I wish to take you with me wherever I go. I wish to bear your scars," Holmes murmured against his friend's throat.
Watson gasped, and brought his hands forcefully to Holmes's head, drawing him back. Watson's eyes were lit, outraged and righteous and blue.
"I will not mutilate you," the doctor stated plainly.
Holmes laughed. "Rather too late for that, eh?"
Shock trembled across Watson's features, his mouth falling open for a moment, and he pulled away from Holmes, his hands retreating. Holmes cursed inwardly, seeing the shadow fall over his friend's face.
"Don't take on so," Holmes told him. "I was speaking metaphorically."
"Is that supposed to appease me?" Watson snapped.
"Obviously," Holmes snapped right back. His mood was blackening swiftly, the pain in his chest growing more insistent by the second. "But you appear determined to misunderstand me at every turn."
"I understand you perfectly well, old boy," Watson said, and got to his feet, reaching a hand up to steady himself on the overhead rack. He glared down at Holmes, colour high on his face, all the hardness in his expression betrayed by the soft unstable shape of his mouth.
"I've no interest in indulging your tendencies towards self-harm," Watson told him. "If that is what you were expecting of me, then perhaps it's best that we leave this thing behind us."
A flurry went through Holmes's mind, bolts of fear and anger over a bone-deep, life-swallowing foundation of refusal, thinking as if the words were branded in fire, no no, absolutely not.
He sat up too quickly, his ribs moaning, and grabbed Watson's arm, hauled him back onto the seat. Watson jounced, rapped his elbow against the window and hissed through his teeth. Holmes flattened a hand on his aching chest, and told the doctor:
"The only thing we're leaving behind us is this ridiculous argument."
Face arranged in a careful scowl, Watson shook his head tightly. "It's not ridiculous-"
"It is, quite appallingly so. Here, sit down," Holmes insisted, gripping Watson's arm as he tried to stand again.
"Refrain from manhandling me, if you please." Watson jerked out of Holmes's hold, but stayed on the seat, crossing his arms over his chest and glaring out the window at the ever-passing countryside.
"Watson," Holmes said, his voice becoming steely. "That your temper runs hot I can accept without judgement, but if you insist on abandoning reason as your blood rises, that will prove to be a daunting obstacle between us."
Watson shot him a look that felt like a claw raking through Holmes's stomach, all bottled rage and deep hurt. "Pray forgive me for introducing such inconveniences into your life."
"Will you be quiet," Holmes said sharply, not intending to sound cruel but that was how it came out. The muscle in Watson's jaw flexed, and he turned his furious gaze back to the window.
"I am trying to explain something to you," Holmes told him, tight with restraint. "This, this thing, our--our regard for each other. Emotional entanglements are well-known to fog the finer workings of the mind, but surely we can manage to stay above the fray. Logic only deserts the man who deserts it."
"Logic," Watson said, his lip curled in disgust as if speaking of a child-murderer. "The only true love of your life."
That blow landed cleanly, and took Holmes's breath away. He blinked at Watson, stunned and fatally wounded in some invisible way, and then defiance poured through him, a fanatical adolescent urge to speak the truth and the truth alone, no matter the damage it might do.
"The first, at any rate," Holmes told him, and saw light-coloured surprise dart across Watson's face, there then gone faster than a blink. Holmes looked down at the floor, his eyebrows pinching together.
There was a moment of tense silence, and then Watson said, the better part of the anger washed out of his voice, "I cannot keep my heart and mind so discrete. I do not have the faculty for it. You. You make it very difficult for me to think straight."
Holmes tamped down a smug smile, and squashed completely the mindless grin that also tried to surface. He made a small thoughtful noise instead, nudging his knee into his friend's.
"Perhaps that will lessen with time," Holmes said diplomatically.
Watson half-smiled, and shook his head. "It presaged this new regard of ours; indeed, it dates back to the day I met you. The handicap appears to be quite firmly entrenched."
"Well." Holmes rubbed his chin, stealing glances at Watson and seeing the harsh flush recede from his face. "Quite a quandary."
Watson rolled his eyes, and Holmes knew that they were past the most urgent danger. Nothing could be overly wrong with the world if Watson was rolling his eyes at him.
"Haven't you made solving quandaries your life's work?"
"I have, conveniently enough." Holmes's knee rested against Watson's in a very matey way, and he cast an approving eye over the situation. "Here's what we'll do, my boy. When you find that the tempests of emotion have obscured your better senses, you may rely on me to provide you with the perspicacity that you lack."
The doctor made a scoffing sound, and shifted so that he was leaning into Holmes. "The perspicacity to see that you are right and I am wrong in all things?"
"I would not abuse your trust in such a way," Holmes said immediately. "I would not lie to you. Not in these matters."
Watson hummed in the back of his throat, considering. Holmes stared at his profile, Watson's eyes still set on the window. It had been a month since he had first laid his hands on Watson, ten minutes since Watson had gone to his knees between Holmes's legs, almost exactly one year since they had met and taken rooms together. Already, Holmes knew that this was going to be the great story of his life, this perfectly ordinary man with his perfectly ordinary demons and the irreplaceable home they had made with each other. John Watson had overrun his defences without even trying, and now he would be in the background no matter where fate led Sherlock Holmes, no matter how many decades they had before them, together or apart.
All of that was plain; Holmes understood everything that had happened to him. It didn't mean much until Watson understood it as well.
"Why did we argue just now?" Watson asked, testing him.
"Various reasons. My carelessness of thought and speech at a moment of psychological vulnerability. Your paranoia about my well-being, especially by my own hand, which has been naturally heightened along with our regard for each other. The general stresses of the relationship that we have thus far largely ignored in favour of experimenting with new sexual positions--I speak both of the inherent legal and social risks, and the inevitable friction that will develop between two people attempting to exist wholly within the constraints of a partnership. Also, being in a different country helps."
"Does it?" Watson said, his body shaped into a loose curve against Holmes's own.
"Lowers the inhibitions," Holmes explained. "Different battlefield, different rules of engagement."
"There's an appropriate metaphor."
"Thank you, old boy." Feeling slightly invincible, Holmes tapped his fingers on Watson's knee. "It was only a skirmish, of course."
"Of course." Watson tilted his head towards Holmes, gave him a quiet smile. "We will have worse, you know."
Holmes reached up, brushed his thumb across Watson's cheek, and said, "Yes, I know."
And then they were in Paris. They stayed for three weeks, in the apartment where Holmes's grandmother had been born and lived and died. There were mice scratching in the walls, rust gathered darkly in the joints of the fixtures. In the afternoons, they walked along the Seine and talked about the Thames. At night, they spread bedding in front of the fire, wrestled like brothers on the floor. Holmes woke up with Watson's head on his stomach. He woke up stuck to his friend, the blankets wrenched around their knees. He woke up to stars falling across the piece of sky he could see through the window, flashes of light like sparked matches, and Watson's hand curled hotly around his hip.
It was springtime. Watson knew only as much French as every English schoolboy grudgingly learned, and so Holmes shepherded him through the ancient city, ordered his meals for him, called him mon cher docteur. They spent every waking moment together, and never once did the conversation flag. When Holmes received the telegram informing him that Cyril Willingham had been apprehended, he waited four days to tell his friend, and only then did they return to their own cold country.
*
*
(now)
Watson does not see Holmes for several weeks after leaving Baker Street wearing the detective's clothes and no shoes. Time stretches out like a man on the rack, days blurring together with drink and games and rain. Upon waking, his leg is as sore as if it still carries the bullet, a radiating ache that never recedes far enough to be forgotten. Watson limps through the city, hollow-eyed and approaching desperate.
With all of his waning strength, Watson attempts to keep Holmes's absurd proposal out of his mind. The trouble is Holmes's surety; it was not an offer so much as a prediction. Holmes is convinced that Watson will live in Baker Street again, and Watson has always been excessively susceptible to the detective's version of truth.
But, no. Watson resolves himself: he will overcome this on his own. He could not hold his head up as a man otherwise. He has been to war and witnessed the blackest kinds of depravity, and if he can survive that, he can survive this.
So he tacks postcards to the wall of his hotel room, and becomes acquainted with the shopkeepers on his new block, settling in securely and waiting for that sense of home to be reborn within him. The small voice in his mind laughs at his folly, but Watson is learning to ignore it.
He stumbles home drunk one night, proud that he still has enough coins in his pocket to jingle. His cane skids on the damp paving stone, the street far from steady beneath his feet.
Watson is thinking of Holmes, which is a known hazard of spending so much of his time drunk. Watson is thinking of the three weeks they spent in Paris some four months ago, Holmes lying shirtless in the nest of blankets on the floor, Holmes peering at the stone gargoyles as if he could glare them down from their perches, Holmes folding a hand around his friend's elbow and guiding him through the softer city. Those long days spent walking along the river together in the sun, and the raw weight of Holmes's heart in Watson's hands.
Paris, Watson thinks, Paris is where I loved him the most.
Someone is whimpering from an alley. Watson stops, leans hard on his cane. He squints into the dark and the whimper sounds again, high-pitched and helpless.
It's another battered child, Watson thinks, another mistreated son of the city. He hovers at the mouth of the alley, feeling at the stones with his cane, and thinks that he should leave well enough alone before he ends up back in gaol. The whimpering does not stop, and Watson finds that he has no intention of leaving.
"Ho there," Watson says experimentally. He expects a cry for mother and mercy, but instead is rewarded with an anxious bark. Watson blinks in surprise, and crouches, holds his hand out.
After a few hesitant seconds, a bulldog pup comes slinking cautiously out of the alley, ducking its blocky head and eyeing Watson with patent distrust. Watson makes small hushing sounds as the pup sniffs at his hand, stoically allows the doctor to rub the top of its head.
"What are you doing out here alone?" Watson asks. The pup nudges at his wrist, whining plaintively. Watson gathers the pup carefully to him, checking for any obvious injuries. The pup is male, white with splotches of brown, squat solid body squirming under Watson's hands. He's healthy, panting warmly and rubbing his cold nose on Watson's palm.
"All right," Watson says softly. He cradles the pup's head in one hand, turning big wet eyes up to him. "You'd better come with me, my boy. This night is not fit for man nor beast."
The pup yips, which Watson takes as acquiescence. He scoops up the little dog and tucks him inside his coat, feeling the small weight of paws pressing on his chest, and takes him back to his room.
They become fast friends. Watson empties out an old medical bag and refills it with bits of cloth so the pup will have a place to sleep. He adds the butcher's shop to his daily peregrinations, his pockets stuffed with scraps wrapped in wax paper, the pup leaping around his feet as he catches the scent. Watson finds that the hours of staring out the window while smoking cigarettes are less damaging to his psyche when he has a pup slumped across his lap.
Having the dog improves Watson's circumstances in more concrete ways as well. His dwindling wound pension will not support him, his awful habits, and a canine dependent all at once, and so the doctor is obliged to prioritise. His patronage of taverns and tables falls off accordingly, and he finds himself resurfacing from the morass of his dissolution. It is slow and painstaking, but for whole days at a time, his mind remains clear.
He calls the dog, 'Dog.' Sometimes he tries out other names--Rex and Bully and the like--but none of them take. The pup only answers a call when Watson has food in his hand.
When the doctor comes into the room, the dog trots over to butt at his shoes and lick his trousers. It is an incalculable relief to be greeted again, to feel that there is at least one being on the planet who would miss him if he were gone.
Out walking the dog in the park, Watson is accosted by a child with slight features reminiscent of a mongoose, hands crusted and black with grime. The boy puts himself in Watson's path, and the dog barks his consternation.
Watson raises his eyebrows. "Do you require assistance, lad?"
The boy's face crunches in a scowl, finding Watson lacking in some way. He points a grubby finger at the dog. "What's your dog's name?"
Watson blinks. "I have yet to decide."
"He doesn't have a name?" At the shake of Watson's head, the boy frowns darkly. "How can ye have a dog without a name?"
Shrugging, Watson says, "I appear to be managing."
The boy is greatly displeased with him, stamping his foot on the ground. "I'm meant to learn the dog's name!"
Immediately, matters become clear to Watson. He sighs, rubs his shoulder with a weary hand. "Tell Mister Holmes I'll invite him to the christening."
Caught, at once flushed with dismay, the boy shouts, "I don't know no Mister Holmes," and then he spirits away, a tubercular blot on the delicate pastel colours of the women's skirts before disappearing into the crowd.
Watson crouches beside his dog, taking a bit of biscuit from his pocket and feeding it to him. The pup snuffles happily and licks the crumbs off Watson's palm. Watson scratches his ears, murmurs to him, "You are a great improvement over my last companion, I hope you know. Cleaner, far more amiable, better behaved in company. I do not need to worry about you."
The dog looks up at Watson adoringly. Watson's chest feels tight, and he stands, tugs the lead. The two walk on, linked together by a thin piece of leather, each wordlessly grateful that he is no longer alone.
*
Two days later, Watson takes his dog to Baker Street.
He cannot quite parse his motivations. To be sure, there is an element of spite involved. Holmes has ruthlessly diagnosed Watson, the fledgling drunk, the luckless gambler, and expected him to come crawling back home with his belly to the ground. Watson cannot bear the idea of Holmes thinking so ill of him; it makes him dejected and furious at the same time. He's bringing the dog at least partly so that Holmes might think he has been easily replaced.
There are other factors at play, of course. At the end of the day, it has been better than a month since Watson has seen his old friend. The lack has left the doctor skittish and worn, his nerves horribly frayed.
Also, he loves the dog, an affection so sudden and uncomplicated it seems miraculous. Watson wants to have his two favourite creatures in the same room; it doesn't seem like too much to ask.
Mrs Hudson opens the door to him, and though she is not the type of woman for eruptive joy at an unexpected reunion, it is clear that she is pleased to see him again. She scolds him for his leanness, asks him how he has been occupying his time and Watson lies as simply as breathing. He holds the pup in his arms and Mrs Hudson cups her work-reddened hands around his squarish head, cooing softly.
Watson cannot keep his eyes from darting up the stairs, his skin feeling too tight. Eventually, Mrs Hudson notices his preoccupation and shoos him upstairs after extracting a promise to take some food with him when he goes.
The seventeen steps have never seemed quite so mountainous. The pup wriggles against Watson's chest, paws planted on his shoulder, and Watson holds him like a shield, a precious offering.
Holmes is at his desk, bent over with jeweler's loupe screwed into his eye. He doesn't look up as Watson comes in, says in an unreadable tone:
"Good morning, Doctor. To what do I owe the pleasure?"
Watson finds himself struck dumb. The dog speaks for him, an inquisitive yelp that brings Holmes's head up. The detective scrutinises the pair of them from across the room, his face made lopsided and mechanistic by the loupe. Holmes's mouth is thin and hard, his cheeks drawn.
"So this is the hound," Holmes says.
Catching one of the dog's paws between his thumb and fingers in a nervous gesture, Watson answers, "One of your minions communicated your interest in becoming acquainted with him."
"A former minion, I think you'll find. Discreet acts of espionage proved not to be his forte." Holmes pulls the loupe out his eye. "All right, bring him here, let's have a look."
Watson brings the dog over and sets him on top of the newspaper on Holmes's desk. The dog circles a few times, curious, tongue lolling out of his mouth. Holmes inspects him, tipping the pup's head this way and that. The pup gnaws harmlessly at Holmes's wrist, and Watson experiences a strange blooming feeling in his chest as he sees the slightest smile glint across Holmes's face.
The detective looks up. "He's the spit and image of the prime minister."
"Is he?" Watson manages, his throat dry.
Holmes nods assuredly, tugging on the pup's ears. "Seems better-tempered, as well."
"Yes, he--he's a good dog."
"Well then, we must name him. It isn't right, a dog without a name."
As he speaks, Holmes lowers his face until he is on eye-level with the pup, and they share a long moment of regard. The dog stands still with his head cocked slightly to the side, studying the detective as much as the detective is studying him. Watson watches them, wondering why it has become so difficult for him to swallow, and breathe, and think.
"Gladstone," Holmes pronounces. The dog barks, and Holmes nods. "His name is clearly Gladstone. The prime minister will be honoured, I'm sure."
Watson's hands curl into fists at his sides, and a witless smile takes control of his expression. Holmes glances up at him, one hand scruffing between Gladstone's ears. Their eyes meet with a crack so palpable that Watson shivers.
"We," Watson begins, but his voice is a hoarse rasping thing and so he stops, clears his throat into his fist. "We'll have to get another named Disraeli for him to fight."
The joke works marginally well. Holmes's mouth quirks a fraction of an inch, and he huffs out through his nose. Gladstone pads across the desk to Watson, his whole backside wagging with his tail. Watson pets him, happy to have something to do with his hands.
"So, Doctor," Holmes says, and his voice has changed ever so subtly, taking on the barest edge of frost. "You have finally come to see me without the impetus of a crisis."
Picking up his dog, Watson takes the chair near the window, where a litter of ash and wizened matches lets him know that Holmes too has spent his time sitting and staring.
"I wished for you to meet my dog," Watson says honestly enough, and then adds, "And to ask again that you call off your surveillance of me."
"No, I don't think that will be happening."
"Holmes-"
"There's no point, Watson." Holmes is implacable, face set like a portrait. "The best you can do is badger me into a false promise, and I know how you hate it when I lie to you."
"Why?" Watson asks, too sharp. "Do me the small courtesy of answering that, at least. What possible satisfaction could you be deriving from second-hand accounts of my movements?"
Holmes laughs at him. It carries a cruel jarring undertone and Gladstone lifts his head off Watson's knee to bark back at him.
"It's extraordinary that you still know so little of me," Holmes says. "I derive no satisfaction from it. I am compelled, do you understand that? You may have removed yourself from my scrutiny, but that hasn't left me any less captivated. My methods have merely adapted to the distance."
Watson shakes his head. "You cannot expect me to tolerate such excessive invasiveness."
"I don't. I expect you to come to your senses and move back in here so that my invasiveness might become redundant."
A breath sticks in Watson's throat. He curls his fingers under the plain collar he'd bought for Gladstone. "We have already discussed this."
"No, we attempted a discussion, which was curtailed rather abruptly by you charging out into the rain without so much as a by-your-leave. Or shoes, for that matter."
Holmes leans back in his chair, delving into the doctor with his dark eyes jittery with interest. Watson withstands it, his shoulders straight and a dull flush colouring his face. He doesn't say anything.
"You look better than when last we spoke," Holmes admits at length, grudging.
Watson latches onto it with the fervour of a new convert. "Yes, I have--I have been better able to sleep, of late."
This is actually a lie; caring for Gladstone had taken Watson away from the bottle and without its stuporous mercy the nights are long and wakeful.
"Hmm," Holmes says, and Watson doesn't think the detective believes him. A slithering bit of petulance introduces itself into Watson's mood.
"You also look well," Watson says, making the insincerity plain in the curdled edge of his voice.
Holmes's eyes narrow. He is worn, reduced, as if the first layer of muscle has been carved away, and his eyes, still brilliant, still capable of freezing time, are sunken, ringed with the kohl of insomnia. He is wearing one of Watson's shirts, the seam ripped so the sleeve hangs open to his elbow, and Watson can see the prominent bones of his wrist pressing hungrily against the skin.
"Flattery will get you nowhere," Holmes tells him. "Particularly such a blatantly false strain of it."
Watson moves his shoulders in half a shrug. He pets his dog and looks away out the window, down at the grey rustle of the morning. Holmes huffs; he has never liked it when Watson turns his attention elsewhere.
"Perhaps this is one of those instances where I expect too much of you, but I thought it'd be rather obvious by now," Holmes says.
"What's that?"
"Neither of us has benefited from this separation. It has been nearly three months now; how much longer would you have us suffer in isolation?"
Gladstone squirms on Watson's lap and so he sets the pup on the floor to explore the jumbled chaos of the room, innocent and unafraid. The doctor weaves his fingers and rubs his thumb on the palm of his hand, not meeting Holmes's eyes.
"I had my reasons for leaving, and those reasons have not changed," Watson says to the books on the shelf behind Holmes, which lean precariously against each other like drunken friends.
Holmes makes a dismissive sound in the back of his throat--"tchah!"--and says, "You left because you were frightened of the extent of your feelings for me, and mine for you."
"That--that is not-"
"That is what happened," Holmes says, as sharp as a sabre. "Please do not insult me with obfuscation."
Watson says nothing. He stares at the books on the shelf and kneads his hands together, his throat ducking with compulsive swallows. It is impossible for him to refute Holmes.
"Now," Holmes continues, a ghostly chill crystallising his words. "As we will no longer be engaging in those certain behaviours that so damagingly honed our affection for each other, we no longer need fear a second like catastrophe. You may resume your rightful place at my side sanguinely, and in good faith."
Insane man, Watson thinks with something like desperation, though Holmes is as reasoned and articulate as ever, as devastatingly honest as he once swore he would be. Watson has feared the truth from Holmes for a long time now. It's much easier for him to think of his friend as mad.
"I do not see how removing the, the, the physical aspect of our relations is going to resolve the emotional dilemma," Watson manages at last.
"Then you're not looking closely enough." The casual superiority in Holmes's voice makes something yearn fiercely within Watson for a moment. The detective goes on, "We were friends once. That was an agreeable state of affairs, was it not?"
Watson's mouth opens, because it is a simple question, with only one legitimate answer, but Holmes does not wait for him. Holmes is reading from a script in his mind, the finely-hewn arguments that he has had weeks to prepare. Already, a deep sense of inevitability has begun to creep down Watson's spine.
"It is plain to me now, where we went astray. Most of the blame is mine, I'm afraid. I did not fully comprehend what was happening to me, and so acted in advance of the facts--it was an unpardonable breach of my standards. I instigated our sexual relationship intending to dispel the unfortunate desires that had developed between us. This was clearly misguided. We achieved the precise opposite."
Here Holmes stops, and his expression briefly becomes so wistful it seems crippling, breaking on the angles of his eyebrows. Watson sits still, his vision fuzzy for a moment but then he realises it's because he's holding his breath. The moment plays out.
"So, we have made mistakes. So be it. There is a chance here, Watson, a chance. There is no mercy in this world, but on the rarest of occasions there is redemption."
Holmes's voice catches and cracks, and he flinches, balls his fist on the desk and pushes on ahead.
"We can solve this," Holmes says, as certain as the sea. "There is no point in denying the scope of the feeling between us, and so we must reform it, bend it to a better purpose. We shall be brothers, you see."
Holmes takes a fast breath as if he means to continue, but then says no more. He leaves it there between them, a gauntlet thrown down. A long spate of silence becomes like a living thing in the room, a tangible presence.
With all the care he possesses, Watson answers, "I do not think of you in that way."
A bit of light flinches through Holmes's eyes. "You can learn."
"As you have? You are able to look at me and not want-" and Watson stops short, bites his tongue.
"Don't be absurd," Holmes says. "I am not able to think of you and not want you. That's not that point. It's action that matters, Watson--it's the deed itself. Everything else is of the mind, and you cannot be made culpable for the deceits of your mind, not so long as your hands stay clean."
Watson shakes his head, but his throat does not seem to work, and he knows that Holmes is winning. Holmes is pulling him back in, inch by inch and word by word, every second that Watson breathes the air of this well-loved room and understands it as home. Leaving this place is going to feel like a flaying, Watson knows, and that is Holmes's fault. Everything is Holmes's fault.
"It won't work," Watson says, somewhat breathless. "We cannot live in such proximity and still keep our distance."
"You exhibit a disturbing lack of faith, old boy."
"Holmes-"
"You miss my company," Holmes interrupts. His eyes are ablaze; he can sense Watson struggling futilely in the palm of his hand. "You miss these rooms, and the view out of that window."
"Of course I do, but that isn't-"
"You become something less when you are not with me," Holmes says baldly, and Watson's body jerks, a moment of pained shock.
"Please, stop talking," Watson says like a prisoner begging for bread. Holmes pays him exactly no heed.
"I don't mean to suggest that you're alone in your trials. I am only half a man myself, you know. It's been a miserable spring."
"Holmes, please."
It's too loud, the stentorian echo clapping against the walls, and Holmes stops, his eyes going very wide and his throat bobbing. Holmes is shaking, Watson notices in a far-off kind of way. The fine falling spikes of his hair are trembling against his forehead.
"You'll convince me," Watson tells him with an edge of desperation. "You know the sway you have over me, you know that I cannot--I cannot think."
"You have me for that," Holmes says.
"Yes, and a great deal of good you've done me," Watson says on a sneer, his lip curled for a moment before he eradicates it. He takes a breath, pulls himself under control. "I should go."
"Oh yes, run away again, and just when things are getting interesting."
"Be quiet," Watson says sharply as he stands. His legs feel made of water, the familiar creak of pain lancing through him.
Holmes levels a captious look at him, his eyes flat and as keen as a knife's edge. "You ask such impossible things of me."
"I ask the impossible? You, you are insufferable, you are not human," and Watson is almost sputtering, stupid with anger and several other things. He whistles curtly and Gladstone emerges from beneath the sideboard, trundling over to sniff at the doctor's shoes and trousers. Watson picks the dog up, forcibly keeping his shoulders straight.
"You're going to regret all of this, you know," Holmes tells him as Watson hurries for the door.
"I regret it already," Watson says without thinking, and he is mindless enough to look back, and see the hard flash of pain across Holmes's features, and then the door is shut between them and Watson is alone on the landing with Gladstone in his arms.
Watson counts the seventeen steps as he walks down. Pressure builds like sinking underwater, all his vital organs smashed flat, and he stumbles through the front door, back into the wet drone of the midday world.
Pulling his coat over Gladstone's curled shivering body, Watson spares a glance up at the windows of 221B, and there is Holmes silhouetted and austere through the sparkling glass. Their eyes meet through the distance and the weather, and Watson finds his mouth curling in a bitter half-smile. Holmes has played him perfectly, of course. It might be weeks before Watson's obstinate pride allows him to return home, but the crux of the matter is unchanged: Holmes will win.
Given enough time, Holmes always wins.
*
*
onwards