still we're often told
first second third fourth
(now)
The dream is of gallows and shallow graves. Watson is being buried alive, and then dug up by graverobbers and sold to the medical college. Watson is lying on a metal table, split open from bow to stern, all his wet shivering viscera on display under white lights.
He will be dismantled, Watson knows. The surgically-masked men who huddle over him like vultures will cut out his lungs and heart, flay the skin from his bones. Watson will be portioned out into glass jars, put on display for everyone to see.
He wakes up with a gasp. There is pressure on his chest that he thinks is internal until Gladstone snuffles and wiggles, making his presence known.
Watson opens his eyes, and finds that he is lying on the floor of the hotel room with his dog sprawled on top of him. A dizzying pain in his head and the sour taste in his mouth remind him how much he had to drink last night, and Watson bites back a groan as light lances into his eyes.
Shovelling Gladstone onto the floor, Watson sits up carefully, fingers soft on his temple. He checks his coat pockets and is pleasantly surprised to note that for once he has not been robbed.
"Small graces, Gladstone," Watson says, and the pup snorts in his agreeable manner.
The doctor gains his feet, the room yawing violently for a moment before his head clears. There is dingy sunlight coming through the window and Watson is irrevocably drawn, blinking up at the pale blue sky with something like awe. It feels like it's been years since he's seen it.
"Summer is coming," Watson tells his dog. Engrossed in chewing the leather off Watson's shoes, Gladstone does not answer.
Watson takes the shoes and puts them on a high shelf, far from any canine vandals. He wolfs down a stale piece of bread left over from a night or two ago, and goes downstairs in search of a hot cup of tea and some breakfast for his dog. There is a telegram waiting for him at the front desk of the hotel, and Watson tears it open right there in front of the gerontic clerk hacking through a bad catarrh.
In bold black ink, in shouting capital letters, with unimpeachable formality, Holmes has invited him to tea.
It is entirely unexpected, and an airy startled sound punches out of Watson. The bit of paper trembles momentarily in his hand. Watson goes back upstairs, feeling like he's walking in his sleep. His bad leg is fomenting a minor rebellion, the muscles knotting slowly, and Watson thinks distantly that it must be Sunday.
He sits down in the chair by the window, feeling heavy, and digs out the small wrapped pack of bangers he picked up for Gladstone. The pup dances around, rearing up to prop his forepaws on Watson's legs, panting at the doctor.
"What am I to make of this, boy?" Watson asks, fingering the telegram. Gladstone munches away joyfully, ignorant of every broken heart.
"He means to ensnare me again," Watson says. He bends to scratch between Gladstone's ears, his mind inhabiting another room, halfway across town. "I fear he already has."
Watson sighs. He sets the telegram down and unearths his cigarette case, the movements of his hands swift and unthinking. The sulphurous smell of the struck match invades his skull, and then the richer tobacco takes its place. Watson breathes deep and he is in Afghanistan, smoking crouched in a ditch waiting for the men to come with the stretchers, two dead and mutilated bodies on the ground before him. That scene has come back to Watson at the first inhale of every cigarette he's smoked since; it's become a part of the habit as much as the glazed lightheadedness, the quick energy flickering under his skin.
Immediately upon leaving Baker Street, lo these three months past, Watson had purchased a sack of Holmes's specific blend of Turkish shag, and rolled his own cigarettes with it because he still could not abide smoking a pipe. He had thought of it like a palliative, a way to wean himself off the soul-deep craving he had for his friend's presence, but it had only made the problem worse. The smell of Holmes in Watson's desolate hotel room made it akin to living with a ghost. Watson threw out most of the sack unsmoked, and went back to his own cheaper factory-made brand.
A precarious cylinder of ash has formed at the end of Watson's cigarette, and he lifts it gently to his mouth, trying not to disturb its perfect shape, see how long he can make it grow. In his mind, he can hear Holmes deriding him for playing with his cigarette like a boy just picking up the habit, and Watson imagines blowing smoke rings at him in response, a halo around Holmes's mocking half-smile.
The doctor sighs again. Everything comes back to Holmes; he has re-routed all of Rome's roads.
"It's an insane scheme, as I'm sure you'll agree," Watson says to Gladstone, who is sprawled out on his belly in the patch of sunlight like a flour sack with legs. "I can't understand how his reason led him to such a dubious conclusion."
Out in the street, the day is progressing with a new standard of verve, no doubt owing to the finally clear sky. Carriages rattle, horses snort and stamp with solipedous righteousness, business of all stripes legal and not is being conducted with bonhomie, men gladhanding each other, hats tipped back. Watson scowls at the bustling scene, not appreciating the rosy picture it presents of the world.
"Returning to Baker Street is not an option," Watson states, and ruminates on it, and is flummoxed to find that it is a blatant falsehood. He swallows, closing his hand into a fist. "It--it is an option. Very well. Just as fleeing to Hong Kong is an option, just as all things are possible--fine. It is an option, but I will not take it. He thinks I am scraping along at the edge of existence here, but we're not in such bad shape, are we?"
Gladstone begins to snore. Watson lights another cigarette, his hands alive with trembling.
"My pension is adequate, and soon enough I'll be fit to see patients, and then perhaps a private practise; who can say what will happen? I certainly don't require an allowance. The gall of the man, I mean to say."
Watson trails off. He presses his thumb into the burnt match and comes away with a tiny smear of black char. That dishonest taste lingers on his tongue; he knows better than to trust anything that comes out of his mouth that has been taught to lie so well. There is no one listening to him at all now, human or animal.
Holmes is arguing inside his head, issuing his deductions like proclamations and his requests like demands. That certainty of his, that fundamental presumption that the machinations of his mind would produce the only proper version of truth, it was without a doubt one of Holmes's most invaluable assets, and the one Watson had always coveted beyond reason.
Holmes tells him, you are miserable, and Watson agrees that this is the case. It would be pointless to deny it. Holmes further informs him, you are not miserable when you are in my company, and Watson agrees with that as well, though he is compelled to rebut that he is many, many other things when in his friend's company.
None of the things you are when you are with me are undesirable, Holmes parries, a saucy grin on his envisioned face, and Watson puts a hand over his eyes, breathing out a shaky breath.
"If I return," and Watson is whispering now, keeping secrets, "how long can I possibly resist him?"
He might last a week, perhaps two. Watson can see it all very clearly. He would attempt to maintain a veneer of polite affection but it would crumble. Holmes would smile or pick up his violin or call him 'dear boy' or simply exhale in a particular manner, with a particular tilt to his head, and Watson would be helpless before him once again.
It's a weakness, and one no less damaging than the one for drink that has already taken his father and brother away from him. Watson cannot be expected to withstand such things.
"All right," and his voice still shows no more than a shadow of its strength. "We will take tea with Mister Holmes. And I, I will explain it to him again. I'll make him understand. "
Watson snuffs out his cigarette, the last ringlet of smoke dissipating. He stares out the window at the scrubbed blue world, sunlight catching on metal like tiny starbursts, and thinks that at least it's a lovely day.
*
Gladstone seems to recognise Baker Street. He barks coming up the front steps, stubby tail wagging madly. When Mrs Hudson bends down to pet him, he licks her hand like she's family. Watson has the dog's lead wrapped tightly around his palm, casting glances up the seventeen steps to the door of the sitting room and working to screw his courage to the sticking point so he can actually make the climb.
Mrs Hudson tells him that she's already brought Holmes his tea, tells him, "He could use the company," and Watson doesn't want to think about the implications of that.
He carries Gladstone up the stairs because a bulldog's body is not built for mountaineering. Watson's feet feel made out of lead, his doubt suffocating. He always manages to forget how strongly this place affects him until he is within its walls once more.
Rapt under the spell, Watson opens the door of the sitting room without knocking first, but of course Sherlock Holmes does not need such an overt warning to know who has come into his home.
The detective is sitting on the floor in front of Watson's former chair, newspapers strewn around him in haphazard piles. Holmes's hands are dark with smudgy ink, his hair an absolute wreck, still in his dressing gown at four o'clock in the afternoon, and Watson's legs feel watery for a moment, his balance precarious.
Holmes gives him a cordial smile that hangs patently crooked on his face. "Ah, Doctor Watson. So good of you to make it."
Watson finds it difficult to look directly at his friend, and distracts himself with putting Gladstone down on the floor and unhooking his lead. The pup immediately sets to exploring the esoteric junkyard that constitutes Holmes's domain. Watson takes off his hat and pulls the brim between his fingers.
"Thank you for the invitation," he says to Holmes, momentarily grateful for the strictures of British custom.
Inclining his head to the side, Holmes's keen eyes dissect Watson briefly before saying, "Have a seat, my dear man."
Holmes is sitting directly in front of Watson's chair. For some reason it feels unsporting to point this out, and so Watson takes the chair the detective usually favours, with the loose armrest and discoloured China-shaped stain on the seat from a chemical experiment gone awry. The room looks odd at this angle, nothing quite where Watson expects it to be.
"Still with the mongrel, eh?" Holmes says, casting Gladstone a suspicious eye as the dog came sniffing around his newspapers.
"Yes, I find him quite. Companionable."
A knowing smirk twists on Holmes's mouth. "You always did have unorthodox taste in such things."
Watson blinks, and doesn't answer right away. There is something missing from the room, something subtly different from their other recent meetings. The urgency has faded along with Holmes's deathless anger; perhaps it's only lurking under the surface, but Watson will take this strange peace for as long as it lasts.
"I trust you have been well?" Watson asks. Holmes moves one shoulder in a shrug.
"No, not particularly. Dark night of the soul and so forth." An eloquent flick of Holmes's hand dismisses the topic as beneath his interest, and he proceeds, "You have something you wish to tell me."
A minute flinch capsizes Watson's features. He glances at Holmes and Holmes is staring steadily back. There is an unreal quality to the air, the frank and ceaseless awareness of the space between them.
"Yes," Watson manages, because he is not a coward; all else aside, he has never been a coward. When he runs away, it's for much better reasons than fear. "I do not like the manner in which our last few conversations ended. I spoke in anger; I believe we both did."
"Anger?" Holmes expels a tense breath, the edge of his mouth curving cynically. "Is that what you think it was?"
"Please, let me speak. This is. Difficult." Watson swallows hard, one hand clenched on the loose armrest as if it were a weapon. "I need to explain to you why I can't move back in here, and why I, I, I can't see you anymore."
The detective tips his head back and gives Watson a flat look, his eyes splashed with gold from the lamp and appearing almost reptilian. Watson can see the cogs clicking in Holmes's mind; already he's preparing his counterattack.
"It's the last thing I want to do," Watson tells him, broken-voiced. "But I cannot trust myself around you. I own this weakness entirely, and if I can't overcome it then I must remove myself from the temptation."
"That being me?" Holmes asks with a damnable cold smile.
"That being you." Watson looks away. "I wish I could be a friend to you as I once was, but I am not that man any longer. And I apologise. I know you don't--you don't believe me, but I am sorry."
A moment stretches out between them like the shadow of a tree. Watson watches Gladstone investigating the tottering stacks of books that do not fit on the bookshelves. The doctor is in a state of readiness, muscles vibrating as subtly as violin strings.
"You've exceeded yourself, Watson," Holmes says without a jot of humour. "Correct in almost every particular, and yet still blind to the larger picture. "
Watson lifts a hand to cover his eyes, exhaling. "It's easy for you to make sport of me-"
"Yes, it is. However, that's not what I'm doing here, you can be assured." Holmes cracks two knuckles, muffled gunshots. "Would you like me to show you where you've erred?"
"Do I have a choice?"
"You always have a choice," Holmes says sharply, and Watson feels it like ice down the back of his collar. They stare at each other for another long second, and then Watson's eyes jump away, spooked.
"All right," Holmes says, and pops another knuckle. He's nervous, Watson realises, feigning his usual mastery. "You say you will not see me again, but you have demonstrated no ability to stay away."
"I. I have tried-"
"You haven't, really. Oh, I'm sure in the moment each encounter seemed both unique and wholly necessary--you could not afford your bond, you had no way to pay your cab fare, you wished for me to call off the Irregulars--but from an objective standpoint the pattern of your behaviour is clear."
Knowing he will regret it, Watson asks, "What pattern is that?"
"You are bound to me, as I am bound to you," Holmes tells him baldly. "You cannot remove me from your affections, or your thoughts, or your life. You might as well stop trying."
Watson shakes his head, disbelief and a weird creeping hope at war within him. "Your arrogance knows no bounds."
"And that comes as a surprise to you?"
"No, I just-" and Watson stops, slows himself down. Holmes turns him around so easily; Watson knows he needs to be careful here.
"The depth of our regard for each other is the problem," Watson says. "I could not spend every day in your company and still abstain from your bed."
"You haven't been listening to me," Holmes says, his patience as thin and insubstantial as lace. "I have already told you: we will not resurrect that aspect of our relationship. You may not trust yourself, but I invite you to consider the fortitude of my will. I don't make the same mistake twice."
The word falls like a black rock into a pond, and Watson repeats dumbly, "A mistake."
"Yes, Watson, a mistake." A flash of something tightens Holmes's expression, an admixture of sorrow and determination. "It was other things as well, but most certainly a mistake."
Watson looks away, drawn to the painless scene beyond the window, the horses and people and rats all lucent in the sunlight. There is something stuck like a bone in his throat, and he remembers Holmes asleep beside him on a floor in France, tobacco in his hair and firelight on his face, the blankets a storm with the two of them as the eye, the peaceful centre. Watson sets his teeth to the inside of his lip, and forces the memory back down under the surface.
He glances at Holmes. The detective stares back, steady as the horizon.
"I suppose you're right," Watson says softly.
"Of course I'm right. You should know by now never to doubt me, my dear boy."
"I don't." With true effort, Watson meets Holmes's gaze. "I never do."
A ghost of a smile crosses Holmes's face, the slightest lightening of his eyes, and he inclines his head faintly to the side.
"That is only partially true, but I appreciate the sentiment. Now, here," and Holmes rises from the floor, a loose page of newspaper fluttering down in his wake. "I believe you were promised tea."
"Tea?" Watson echoes as if he's never heard the word.
"Likely cold by now, but a soldier doesn't complain, does he?"
Holmes busies himself with pouring them each a cup, his back half-turned to Watson. The doctor watches him, heart-sore and bemused. Gladstone pokes his head from beneath the settee, and comes out to investigate Holmes's ankles. High-stepping around the puppy, Holmes brings Watson his tea and Watson takes it with numb hands, thanking him by rote.
"So," Holmes says, leaning against the window with saucer and cup in hand. "Do you have any other arguments to offer against my proposal?"
"Yes," Watson answers at once, although he is distracted by the astonishing simplicity of drinking tea with Holmes again in this beloved room, crowded with the detritus and debris of the detective's work, skulls and maps and decanters of poison, a fetal shark in a glass jar, a four-fingered monkey paw clenched forever around an invisible branch, each artifact bizarre and possibly dangerous, and Holmes in the middle of it all, the point at which everything else converges. This place has been blown up in Watson's mind until it shines unreachably like El Dorado or Atlantis, and now here he is again.
"Expound upon them, by all means." Holmes cedes the floor, waiting expectantly, almost eagerly.
Watson starts to speak, and then stops, runs a quick internal inventory. There are other reasons; there must be. He has been living alone for the whole of this brutal season, inebriated and ill-used and sick from loneliness, and why, why? What were his reasons?
"I, I won't let you keep my money for me," the doctor says, and it sounds good, plausible and defensible. "And I certainly won't take an allowance."
Holmes crooks the smallest smile, because Watson is speaking in the future tense, even if it is in the negative as well.
"It's your money; of course you may do with it as you please. I merely offered for the sake of your peace of mind."
That is too egregious to let pass, and Watson shoots his erstwhile friend an exasperated look.
"My peace of mind is forfeit the moment I move back in here."
A piece of light jolts through Holmes's eyes, and he sets down his cup and saucer on the windowsill. The high tinkling sound of china clinking is all that betrays Holmes's unsteady hands; his face is as watchful and conniving as always.
"You've never had much use for it, anyway," Holmes tells him.
Watson lifts his eyebrows. "Haven't I?"
"No. Peace of mind is the refuge of uninteresting people."
"And we are certainly not that."
Holmes grins. "Certainly not."
A breath sticks in Watson's lungs as he looks up at Holmes, feeling stilled, the moment becoming momentous. His resistance has eroded and they both know it; no rock is strong enough to withstand the endless crash of the ocean.
"Holmes," Watson says, and his voice breaks. He stops, mortified, and clears his throat. "Tell me why again."
There is no hesitation. "Because we are meant to be together," Holmes says. "Our greatest trials are yet to come, villains and dangers of which we cannot yet conceive, and we shall face them shoulder to shoulder and unafraid. You are going to save my life and I am going to save yours. We are fated for incredible things, you know."
And it's easy then, terrifyingly so. It's the single step off the top of a bridge, the diving joy of the steepest fall. All Watson has to say is, "Yes," and then he watches in quiet amazement as Holmes smiles, and breathes out as if for the first time in years.
*
*
(next)
Watson will move back into the rooms at Baker Street.
It will take him no more than a single afternoon; all of his belongings will fit inside a steamer trunk and two battered unmatched suitcases that Holmes unearthed for him to use. It will seem almost unbearably odd, standing in the daylight with his whole life boxed up at his feet, Gladstone barking at the horses in the road. Watson will have the feeling that he is setting off on a long journey; he will say goodbye to the clerks and shopkeepers in the defiant tones of a man who does not intend to return.
There will be trouble from the start. Holmes will be superior and cruel and leave the clothes he borrowed from Watson on the floor, crumpled and stained and burned, and Watson will forbid him from entering his room and purchase a brass lock for the door and it will have absolutely no effect. Watson will retaliate in childish ways, putting salt in the sugar cup, hiding Holmes's pipe, letting Gladstone lick the spoon on the detective's dinner tray, and there will be a petty satisfaction in it, a mean smile etched on the doctor's face. Holmes will see most of the tricks coming, but he will say nothing and react with the anticipated surprised irritation, respecting the new friction between them, the way they do not fit in quite the same ways.
But they will still fit. They will eat breakfast in silent fellowship, passing newspapers and sharing toast. They will spend days in a single room, talking and arguing and playing cards, etiolated away from the sun, bereft of company save for each other, and it will not seem stilted or uncomfortable; they will never run short of air to buoy the conversation.
This plain kind of brotherhood will eat at both of them sometimes. Holmes will stand too close, and touch Watson when it is not at all necessary, and Watson will twitch and flinch and look hunted. The vast sea underneath everything that they say to each other will roil and storm, and they will find themselves on edge, fraught with tension, their glances electrically charged. Watson's ears will go red and Holmes's eyes will start to burn.
And then Holmes will remove himself, swiftly and irrevocably, disappearing from the flat for a day or two and leaving Watson to wander their rooms talking to Gladstone and forgetting to eat. The night will be a short cycle of madness: the first few hours obsessively trying to determine where Holmes might have gone, the desperate schemes to find him and shove him against the nearest wall, the wild things that Watson might tell him, the irreplaceable taste of Holmes's mouth under his again, and then anger will set in, and then black depression, and then as the sun rises his frantic temper will subside and he will miss only his dear friend again, and not the man he once loved.
They will never discuss these intervals, and the incidences will grow more and more infrequent as the years pass. Eventually, Watson will barely notice when Holmes touches him. Eventually, Holmes won't mean anything by it at all.
Years will go by. Watson's limp will improve as his injury fades into the past. Holmes will buy him a cane that conceals a sword, and Watson will be absurdly pleased with the gift, and carry it with him everywhere he goes. He will learn to fight with it and it will be like walking without pain again.
Holmes will take cases that are no better than throwing himself in front of a train, and Watson will rescue him, revive him, repair him--whatever is required. Watson will not complain about the peril, the pale shaking ghost of himself that Holmes becomes when suffering from traumatic shock, because in some askew part of his mind Watson feels that he does not have the right; he has damaged Holmes to a greater degree than that to which any petty thug could hope to aspire, and any protests he might make will ring hollow and remain unspoken.
And Holmes will live, every time. Occasionally it will be a matter of inches, of fractured seconds, and Watson will be sick with terror, knowing that nothing has changed and Holmes's death is still only a prelude to his own, but there must be an angel watching over at least one of them because Holmes will come out of each near-fatal experience more alive than before. Both of them will become halfway convinced of the detective's complete invulnerability, but they won't talk about that.
They won't talk about a lot of things. Their life will be kinetic, crowded with action and fondly biting humour and sharp grins traded across violent rooms, and it will be easy to set aside the morose moments that pass between them, the quiet sense of loneliness that sometimes pervades their sitting room even with both of them there. It's only an undercurrent, a low mournful theme played on woodwinds, and as a general rule they will be able to ignore it.
Time will pass and pass and pass. Gladstone will grow grizzled and long-suffering, his puppyish enthusiasm melting into an aggrieved dignity combined with overarching laziness. Scattered flecks of silver will appear in Holmes's beard. Watson will age subtly on the outside, mostly just around the eyes. Mrs Hudson's eldest son will die of malaria on a missionary trip to Africa, and she will wear black for a year, weep in the pantry, and emerge a changed woman, harder and colder and farther away from the world. Their unorthodox patchwork family will thrive in secret, the seventeen steps chipped and worn under their feet. Holmes and Watson will both forget that they are orphans for months at a time.
Their vices will surround them. The allure of falling cards and clicking dice will never fully dim for Watson, and Holmes will have his chequebook after all, locked safely away in the drawer. It will never sit right with Watson, shame churning his stomach every time he sees Holmes writing the rent cheque for both of them, but the doctor will show only deferent gratitude, teeth clenched in the back of his mouth. Watson will understand, at long last, that his life is not what he expected because he is not the man he expected to be, and eventually he will make his peace with it.
Holmes will take up cocaine as a way to kill time and almost end up killing himself. Holmes has always been susceptible to dark patches, spates of misery, and the cocaine will be better than matches in a mineshaft, lighting the way back to the surface. When his heart is running like a rabbit and his hands are shaking so fast they look blurred, Holmes will feel delirious and eagle-eyed and confident, untouchable. The shattered bits of his heart, ever a sad heap in the pit of his stomach, will be shunted aside, forgotten, and he will be a young man again. Watson will never understand what it means to him.
They will argue about that, and about the chaotic state of the sitting room, and the best way to get to Charing Cross, and where to go to dinner. They will argue about whose waistcoat Holmes is wearing, and whether or not the biscuit fed to the now-unconscious Gladstone was tainted. They will argue about small things instead of arguing about big things, and it will prove a winning strategy.
And then it will be a decade later. Victoria will continue to reign, the great clock at Westminster will keep its eternal watch, and across the sky the sun will sweep.
There will be another long rainy spring, and to his immense surprise Watson will fall in love for the second time in his life, and that will be Mary. She will take him entirely off-guard.
Watson will return to Baker Street one night in a daze, his hand still warm from hers, his face still bright with flush from the brief touch of her lips, and he will stammer the news to Holmes, wringing his cane between his hands, "I, I, I mean to marry her, Holmes, I do," and even with the circumstances as they are, the doctor will not be able to keep the foolish grin off his face.
That will hurt Holmes, that grin, that look of desperate joy that he has not seen on his friend's face in ten years, but he will play it off with a sneer and a gibe, and offer no congratulations. He will dedicate the next several months of his life to breaking up the engagement and keeping Watson with him.
It will not work. Nothing will work, and Watson will leave. Holmes will be obliged to watch him go, and to smile while he's doing it. His face will feel permanently deformed from the effort.
After the wedding, Holmes will spend two days drunk in his room above the Punchbowl, dreaming terrible dreams of the past, the immitigable glare of sunlight off the Seine, the suffocating confines of a train compartment. He will awake to see Watson crouched beside his pallet with a weary battered look on his face, his hand in Holmes's hair. Holmes will think he's still dreaming.
Watson will say his name like a plea, his thumb rubbing the smooth plain of Holmes's forehead. Holmes will stare up at him, poled and quiescent with inebriation.
"This is unnecessary," Watson will tell him in a hoarse whisper. "I am not worth this."
Holmes will not laugh at that, but only because he won't have the strength. He will push Watson's hand away, and tell him to go home to his wife. Watson will not listen; he never does the first time.
"Holmes, please, you mustn't take it to heart. It, it's been so long now."
That will be as close as either of them has yet come to mentioning the six short months when they fulfilled every kind of love for each other. Watson will not be able to look at Holmes, his gaze downturned and stuck on the dull gleam of his wedding band. Holmes will watch his friend through blackened eyes, seeing the husband in him, the temperate gentleman. As ever, Holmes will attempt to explain.
"It's a wake, Watson," Holmes will say, and he will reach back for the bottle on the table. "I am drinking to our memory."
Watson's expression will collapse, dismay clouding his features--he will not understand.
"We are not dead," Watson will tell him, a forlorn edge to it.
"Don't be so literal. I am drinking to the men we once were, and to the mistakes of our youth--God bless them, every one."
Stricken, Watson will move to rise, no doubt to run away as he so loves to do, and Holmes will grab his arm, pull the doctor down to sit beside him on the bed. Holmes will snatch the single smudged glass off the table and pour Watson a dram of sour-smelling whiskey.
"Drink with me, old boy," Holmes will say, and his life will hang in the balance with that one request, the whole world holding its breath.
Watson will take the glass, and a wall will come crashing down inside Holmes, and the doctor will tilt his hand, offering a toast. Holmes will tap the neck of the bottle against Watson's glass and say:
"To the first great love of your life."
And Watson will smile, and hide his mouth behind the glass, and murmur just loud enough to be heard, "To you, my dear," and the next toast Holmes makes will be to the future.
THE END
Endnotes: William Ewart Gladstone was prime minister four times, which makes him really convenient for fic writers who like to keep dates fuzzy.
He's not England's greatest P.M., though, that's still Pitt the Elder (cue Barney: "LORD PALMERSTON." Cue Wade Boggs punched in the face. Awesomeness).
Also, hardest title to come up with in like a year. Other contenders included: 'Common Sin,' 'Highest Regard/In the Highest Regard,' 'Scar Map,' and 'Dark Night of the Soul and So Forth.' None of these quite fit, and the eventual choice is a little square on the nose, but, eh. Such is the lame of titling stories.
and, the initial idea:
the end of the affair, though of course it will not really be called that. pick it up after they have broken it off and watson is living in a hotel because it is very much too painful, but then slowly holmes draws him back in and convinces him that they can live and work together, that they need to, and never mind that they used to be in love. meanwhile, flashbacks to how it began (and these will be holmes, dear holmes so stuck in the past) and why it did not last. it did not last because watson was fundamentally not built to accept life as a minor planet in orbit around holmes's star. it didn't last because in loving holmes, watson becomes something less. you'll need both parts, the future to explain the past and vice versa.