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❧ Close Enough to Hurt Me • Holmes/Watson
Close Enough to Hurt Me
Holmes/Watson
❧ 2.2k
❧ spoilers for Game of Shadows
Close enough to start a war
All that I have is on the floor
God only knows what we're fighting for
All that I say, you always say more
The dawn crested as the train to Reichenbach trundled on, unaware of the gravity of where it was headed. It was mostly a deserted train, but tucked away in a room toward the back, three very tired stowaways slumped against their stolen seats, exhausted to the bone.
Simza was asleep, her cheek pillowed on Holmes's lap. He was stroking her hair, an utterly faraway look in his eyes, and it was all too easy for me to guess what he was thinking about. A handkerchief spotted with blood, a sudden passionate fear in my friend's voice.
She had been a warning, nothing more. I can kill what you love before you even realize I'm there.
If he'd truly wished to break Holmes, after all, it wasn't Irene he would have gone after. Killing Irene had merely made him angry.
Only killing that very thing that keeps him breathing could possibly stop that beautiful, beautiful man.
It wasn't as if I didn't know. He'd made his position quite clear, several times. He'd begged me, both with and without words, not to do this. He was - an incredibly selfish man, but with me, an honest one. Of course I knew he loved me. Of course I knew that leaving him would have... disastrous effects.
But I thought, just as selfishly as he, that as long as I was still alive, he would be, too.
We stared each other down in that train compartment, and looking back, it's easy to see what he was doing. Memorizing me. Soaking me in. He knew where this night would end, all along, and he'd just wanted a little piece of me to take with him when he fell.
I simply looked at him because I liked to, and I thought that, for me, this would be goodbye. Not in the same way he did - but I was a married man now, and I would not - could not - indulge myself in this way any longer.
We looked at each other and drank in beauty, each knowing the end was near.
"Watson--"
"I can't," I said, before he could even begin. If he spoke to me now, he would win. I knew he would. He has the devil's own way with words, and my heart was far too tired to handle it. "Yes. The answer to your question, back at the factory - it's yes, Holmes. I would've thought you could deduce that yourself."
He let out the breath he'd been holding slowly, his eyes fixed at a point on the rather atrocious carpet. "I did," he muttered. "But there is a large difference between what I know you to be feeling, and what you know."
I'll admit I was affronted by that. Not because it was presumptuous and self-righteous and painful, but because it was true. It was a terrible thing, to love a man who would never let you figure things out for yourself, who could not help but know everything about you before you even started living it.
It was one of the many reasons I'd had to do this in the first place. "...I was happy," I said, carefully. "And I knew it. I am always happy at your side, and with a gun in my hand, all the more so." I told him the truth, because that, at least, I owed him. I had already crushed his heart like a grape some months ago, when I'd announced my intentions to cease our affair and marry. Anything I told him now, in this coda to our short duet, could not possibly hurt him more.
Or so, perhaps, I thought. I didn't see it then but when I look back, I can clearly remember the way his lips twitched and his brow furrowed and something flinched, ever so slightly, in the corner of his eyes. As Holmes expressions went, it was one of a deep and sudden pain.
He didn't say it. I didn't say it. I suppose he saw it in my mouth or my eyes or my hands, that we were through, finished, that this was the absolute last time we would work together as partners and no, that did not mean we could be anything more, not even for a train ride.
I didn't see how much I'd hurt him, but then, I did not know that this was the dawn of the last day I would see him alive.
I stared out the window, watched the mountains slide by, and thought about Mary.
Not what Holmes might've assumed I was thinking. He still didn't know of how we'd met, of what she'd said to me that day. You're in so much pain, she'd said, stroking her hand down my face. I'm sure he loves you very much, but that's no reason for him to be so cruel. I realized I'd just spent three hours talking of nothing but Sherlock Holmes, and it was terribly unfair. To her, yes, and to myself. Was I nothing without the man?
Staring out at the snow in Switzerland, I had the painful, frightening thought that nothing about that question had changed.
Under haunted skies I see you
Where love is lost your ghost is found
I braved a hundred storms to leave you
As hard as you try, no, I will never be knocked down
The month is May, and I still feel as though someone has taken a scalpel to my chest and removed everything inside worth living for.
It had taken a month to get out of bed, a month to start writing. Months slipped by as I could think of nothing but It shouldn't be like this and I blamed myself, how could I not? Maybe if I loved him more, maybe if I let myself love him, maybe if I wasn't so callous and cruel and heartless and-
It was difficult, but slowly, bit by bit, the memories trickled back. Of how things were before, how miserable I was, how cheap and lonely and hurt. For he did know how best to hurt me, and did so effortlessly, without even trying. Some days it seemed like everything he did was another stab wound. With his words, with his possessions, with that little bottle of cocaine.
And then he would play the violin for me in the middle of the night to apologize, and my heart would be utterly lost all over again.
I have yet to come to a conclusion, whether it was worth it, loving Sherlock Holmes. Mary seems to think it was. The piles of heavily edited stories for the Strand agree with her. Even Inspector Lestrade, and Clarkey, and Gregson - any man who knew him, who knew us, has told me, without words, that for better or worse, they miss him.
There are days I cannot get up, cannot face the world without him. There are days I am glad, viciously, painfully glad that he is gone. But there is never a day I do not think of him.
I won't let you close enough to hurt me,
No, I won't rescue you to just desert me
I can't give you the heart you think you gave me
It's time to say goodbye to turning tables
I must say, when the package first arrived, the only thing I felt was joy.
It didn't occur to me, what it all meant. I was simply happy, purely and simply happy, that he was alive and breathing. I did not think anything beyond that.
Then I entered my study and found him, in that ridiculous costume of his, bent over my writing desk.
And I saw red.
I said some very inconsiderate things, which I shall not repeat, suffice to say that I am a soldier and a writer both, and thus my vocabulary is quite broad indeed. He turned a shade of white I have never seen before, and made straight for the window - to what purpose I will never know, it's quite a three-story drop.
I got to him first, grabbed him by his arm and yanked him in, and I do truly believe that time actually stopped for a moment, and it caught back up we were suddenly and inexplicably kissing, without any sort of thought or consideration on my part.
I suppose you can surmise what happened next. It had been such a long time since I'd seen him, and my absolute fury at being left alone for that very same stretch of time, left under the impression that he was dead, of all things - it quite incensed us both, and I'm afraid men can't always tell where anger ends and brawling lust begins.
After, when we lay draped over that same armchair Holmes had blended himself into, I finally got something a bit more coherent out.
"I thought you were dead," I whispered, then corrected myself. "You let me believe you were dead. For a good six months, at the very least."
"Quite," he said, and I was surprised. He didn't seem to be qualifying it in the least, nor look particularly guilty.
"...And this, just after you threw my wife from a train in the process of--"
He interrupted me. "Ruining your honeymoon, yes, Watson."
I paused. My lips were on his hair; he had curled himself into a ball upon my lap, and in this position I could feel how very much thinner he'd become. "...Saving our lives," I murmured. "That was what I was going to say, my dear boy."
He twitched. I did not expect it, as I truly hadn't realized I'd used that endearment so casually. But I held on.
"I'm sure you've your reasons, and I'm going to demand to hear them, once we're a little more proper and you've put back those papers you hid." I tightened my arms once more - he is considerably stronger, but I had the advantage of him in the form of quite a few more square meals, and because I know he can't resist me. He never has been able to, really. "However, there is just one question I'd like to ask you, first."
He went very still, almost eerily so. "Pose it."
I took in a deep breath.
You see, it was somewhere between realizing that I could not be alive without him; recognizing that, against all odds, I was; and the simple fact that I did love him, and it wasn't some gallant, Byronic, heartbreaking thing. I, John Watson, a soldier and a doctor and a husband, am a bit more than a bit in love with Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective and violinist and quite insane. When you love someone, you listen to them, but only when your own heart agrees. And you tell them your opinions, because they're based on that most holy of emotions, but if they do not listen that is all right, too. Because they are human, and being human is about making choices, and having choices to make.
"I don't intend to leave my wife, for I've come to grow very fond of her," I said, and my fingers smoothed over Holmes's impatient hands. "And I do believe, my dear, that you have as well. But - "
And here was the difficult part, the part that was going to take all my skills to set out perfectly.
"...I've also come to realize that I can still love you, as much as I always have, without giving up the life I've always wanted."
Sherlock Holmes blew out a long, irritated sigh of a breath.
"If you'd figured that out sooner, we'd've wasted a hell of a lot less time," he muttered, and I smacked him.
"No more of that," I said. "Clothes. Mary, God love her, is far too smart not to know but I shan't be indecent about it."
"Ah," Holmes said, as he slipped into a fresh pair of non-camouflaging pants. "There is also the little matter of why I let you believe I was dead, which, I assure you, was no mean feat. However, we have, if I may ask for your cooperation, a hard and dangerous night's work in front of us. It shall have to wait until half-past nine, when we start upon the notable adventure of the empty house."
Next time I'll be braver
I'll be my own savior
When the thunder calls for me
Next time I'll be braver
I'll be my own savior
Standing on my own two feet
Holmes/Watson
❧ 2.2k
❧ spoilers for Game of Shadows
Close enough to start a war
All that I have is on the floor
God only knows what we're fighting for
All that I say, you always say more
The dawn crested as the train to Reichenbach trundled on, unaware of the gravity of where it was headed. It was mostly a deserted train, but tucked away in a room toward the back, three very tired stowaways slumped against their stolen seats, exhausted to the bone.
Simza was asleep, her cheek pillowed on Holmes's lap. He was stroking her hair, an utterly faraway look in his eyes, and it was all too easy for me to guess what he was thinking about. A handkerchief spotted with blood, a sudden passionate fear in my friend's voice.
She had been a warning, nothing more. I can kill what you love before you even realize I'm there.
If he'd truly wished to break Holmes, after all, it wasn't Irene he would have gone after. Killing Irene had merely made him angry.
Only killing that very thing that keeps him breathing could possibly stop that beautiful, beautiful man.
It wasn't as if I didn't know. He'd made his position quite clear, several times. He'd begged me, both with and without words, not to do this. He was - an incredibly selfish man, but with me, an honest one. Of course I knew he loved me. Of course I knew that leaving him would have... disastrous effects.
But I thought, just as selfishly as he, that as long as I was still alive, he would be, too.
We stared each other down in that train compartment, and looking back, it's easy to see what he was doing. Memorizing me. Soaking me in. He knew where this night would end, all along, and he'd just wanted a little piece of me to take with him when he fell.
I simply looked at him because I liked to, and I thought that, for me, this would be goodbye. Not in the same way he did - but I was a married man now, and I would not - could not - indulge myself in this way any longer.
We looked at each other and drank in beauty, each knowing the end was near.
"Watson--"
"I can't," I said, before he could even begin. If he spoke to me now, he would win. I knew he would. He has the devil's own way with words, and my heart was far too tired to handle it. "Yes. The answer to your question, back at the factory - it's yes, Holmes. I would've thought you could deduce that yourself."
He let out the breath he'd been holding slowly, his eyes fixed at a point on the rather atrocious carpet. "I did," he muttered. "But there is a large difference between what I know you to be feeling, and what you know."
I'll admit I was affronted by that. Not because it was presumptuous and self-righteous and painful, but because it was true. It was a terrible thing, to love a man who would never let you figure things out for yourself, who could not help but know everything about you before you even started living it.
It was one of the many reasons I'd had to do this in the first place. "...I was happy," I said, carefully. "And I knew it. I am always happy at your side, and with a gun in my hand, all the more so." I told him the truth, because that, at least, I owed him. I had already crushed his heart like a grape some months ago, when I'd announced my intentions to cease our affair and marry. Anything I told him now, in this coda to our short duet, could not possibly hurt him more.
Or so, perhaps, I thought. I didn't see it then but when I look back, I can clearly remember the way his lips twitched and his brow furrowed and something flinched, ever so slightly, in the corner of his eyes. As Holmes expressions went, it was one of a deep and sudden pain.
He didn't say it. I didn't say it. I suppose he saw it in my mouth or my eyes or my hands, that we were through, finished, that this was the absolute last time we would work together as partners and no, that did not mean we could be anything more, not even for a train ride.
I didn't see how much I'd hurt him, but then, I did not know that this was the dawn of the last day I would see him alive.
I stared out the window, watched the mountains slide by, and thought about Mary.
Not what Holmes might've assumed I was thinking. He still didn't know of how we'd met, of what she'd said to me that day. You're in so much pain, she'd said, stroking her hand down my face. I'm sure he loves you very much, but that's no reason for him to be so cruel. I realized I'd just spent three hours talking of nothing but Sherlock Holmes, and it was terribly unfair. To her, yes, and to myself. Was I nothing without the man?
Staring out at the snow in Switzerland, I had the painful, frightening thought that nothing about that question had changed.
Under haunted skies I see you
Where love is lost your ghost is found
I braved a hundred storms to leave you
As hard as you try, no, I will never be knocked down
The month is May, and I still feel as though someone has taken a scalpel to my chest and removed everything inside worth living for.
It had taken a month to get out of bed, a month to start writing. Months slipped by as I could think of nothing but It shouldn't be like this and I blamed myself, how could I not? Maybe if I loved him more, maybe if I let myself love him, maybe if I wasn't so callous and cruel and heartless and-
It was difficult, but slowly, bit by bit, the memories trickled back. Of how things were before, how miserable I was, how cheap and lonely and hurt. For he did know how best to hurt me, and did so effortlessly, without even trying. Some days it seemed like everything he did was another stab wound. With his words, with his possessions, with that little bottle of cocaine.
And then he would play the violin for me in the middle of the night to apologize, and my heart would be utterly lost all over again.
I have yet to come to a conclusion, whether it was worth it, loving Sherlock Holmes. Mary seems to think it was. The piles of heavily edited stories for the Strand agree with her. Even Inspector Lestrade, and Clarkey, and Gregson - any man who knew him, who knew us, has told me, without words, that for better or worse, they miss him.
There are days I cannot get up, cannot face the world without him. There are days I am glad, viciously, painfully glad that he is gone. But there is never a day I do not think of him.
I won't let you close enough to hurt me,
No, I won't rescue you to just desert me
I can't give you the heart you think you gave me
It's time to say goodbye to turning tables
I must say, when the package first arrived, the only thing I felt was joy.
It didn't occur to me, what it all meant. I was simply happy, purely and simply happy, that he was alive and breathing. I did not think anything beyond that.
Then I entered my study and found him, in that ridiculous costume of his, bent over my writing desk.
And I saw red.
I said some very inconsiderate things, which I shall not repeat, suffice to say that I am a soldier and a writer both, and thus my vocabulary is quite broad indeed. He turned a shade of white I have never seen before, and made straight for the window - to what purpose I will never know, it's quite a three-story drop.
I got to him first, grabbed him by his arm and yanked him in, and I do truly believe that time actually stopped for a moment, and it caught back up we were suddenly and inexplicably kissing, without any sort of thought or consideration on my part.
I suppose you can surmise what happened next. It had been such a long time since I'd seen him, and my absolute fury at being left alone for that very same stretch of time, left under the impression that he was dead, of all things - it quite incensed us both, and I'm afraid men can't always tell where anger ends and brawling lust begins.
After, when we lay draped over that same armchair Holmes had blended himself into, I finally got something a bit more coherent out.
"I thought you were dead," I whispered, then corrected myself. "You let me believe you were dead. For a good six months, at the very least."
"Quite," he said, and I was surprised. He didn't seem to be qualifying it in the least, nor look particularly guilty.
"...And this, just after you threw my wife from a train in the process of--"
He interrupted me. "Ruining your honeymoon, yes, Watson."
I paused. My lips were on his hair; he had curled himself into a ball upon my lap, and in this position I could feel how very much thinner he'd become. "...Saving our lives," I murmured. "That was what I was going to say, my dear boy."
He twitched. I did not expect it, as I truly hadn't realized I'd used that endearment so casually. But I held on.
"I'm sure you've your reasons, and I'm going to demand to hear them, once we're a little more proper and you've put back those papers you hid." I tightened my arms once more - he is considerably stronger, but I had the advantage of him in the form of quite a few more square meals, and because I know he can't resist me. He never has been able to, really. "However, there is just one question I'd like to ask you, first."
He went very still, almost eerily so. "Pose it."
I took in a deep breath.
You see, it was somewhere between realizing that I could not be alive without him; recognizing that, against all odds, I was; and the simple fact that I did love him, and it wasn't some gallant, Byronic, heartbreaking thing. I, John Watson, a soldier and a doctor and a husband, am a bit more than a bit in love with Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective and violinist and quite insane. When you love someone, you listen to them, but only when your own heart agrees. And you tell them your opinions, because they're based on that most holy of emotions, but if they do not listen that is all right, too. Because they are human, and being human is about making choices, and having choices to make.
"I don't intend to leave my wife, for I've come to grow very fond of her," I said, and my fingers smoothed over Holmes's impatient hands. "And I do believe, my dear, that you have as well. But - "
And here was the difficult part, the part that was going to take all my skills to set out perfectly.
"...I've also come to realize that I can still love you, as much as I always have, without giving up the life I've always wanted."
Sherlock Holmes blew out a long, irritated sigh of a breath.
"If you'd figured that out sooner, we'd've wasted a hell of a lot less time," he muttered, and I smacked him.
"No more of that," I said. "Clothes. Mary, God love her, is far too smart not to know but I shan't be indecent about it."
"Ah," Holmes said, as he slipped into a fresh pair of non-camouflaging pants. "There is also the little matter of why I let you believe I was dead, which, I assure you, was no mean feat. However, we have, if I may ask for your cooperation, a hard and dangerous night's work in front of us. It shall have to wait until half-past nine, when we start upon the notable adventure of the empty house."
Next time I'll be braver
I'll be my own savior
When the thunder calls for me
Next time I'll be braver
I'll be my own savior
Standing on my own two feet