The Seventeenth Step

Audiofic

Sun, 27 Dec 2009 00:10:42 GMT

In a very surprising turn of events, general_jinjur was taken with the notion to record audiofic of two of my scribblings, Four Minor Interludes for the Solo Violin and its sequel, Hallowed Be Thy Name. It's an incredible compliment, of course, and immensely flattering. Should any of you like to give a listen to her renditions, and possibly thank her for being so incredibly fabulous, you are very welcome to do so.

Here you are:

http://audiofic.jinjurly.com/four-minor-interludes-for-solo-violin-and-hallowed-be-thy-name-audiobook

It must be the Christmas season making her so generous,
Kate

Thoughts Without Words II

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 23:28:23 GMT

Rating: PG

About the characters: they are far too good to be mine.

I mingled backstage briefly with Charles afterwards--and with Mutton, and David, and Pitch-Pipe, and Marcello, and Ribbon, and Pierre. I felt twenty years old again, and my all too serious troubles surely belonged to someone else. The professional violinist enjoying a drink with his colleagues of many years after a fine performance surely could not have called his dearest friend an indolent pensioner mere hours before. We shared a bottle of tepid champagne and made short work of another in that dingy little room, and then I stood to my full height and lit a cigarette from my case.

"She was marvelous," Pitch-Pipe squeaked. "Tell her we said so."

"Completement, tout a fait magnifique," Pierre added, swinging his champagne glass emphatically. "Suggest to her please for me that I one day die in her lap."

"I think you've suggested that a number of times before," I observed mildly.

"Women relish repetition," Marcello boomed, opening a fresh bottle of something dubious he had produced from a bag in the corner. "Trust me. They eat repetition like caviar."

"Oui, exactement ca," Pierre agreed. "Please do so kind as to tell her again, Sherlock. I will have your debt if you make any progress for me."

"I don't suppose that Sherlock has changed his mind about allowing me to die in his lap, come to think of it?" Ribbon wondered teasingly, the bright green ribbon which harnessed his spectacles fluttering as he moved his oboe case away from Marcello's enthusiastic pouring. The liquid appeared to be gin. "Just a little death is all I ask."

"Do you mean to say you haven't already?" Mutton wondered. "That's frankly shocking."

"Ribbon, you are well aware that Tristan would have me by the bollocks within ten minutes, and I don't fancy falling afoul of a high court judge. I shall tell her you all adore her, then, shall I?" I smiled, turning to go as I donned my hat.

Cries of Yes! and For the eternity! and To our deaths! followed me as I tripped up the staircase. There was one dressing room with some style in that gilded little music box of a concert hall, and it housed the shining gem of the evening's programme. The hallway was bare enough, but the air was warmer here. There was a good fire going in her chamber, I had no doubt, for she would want to change before returning home or going out for the evening. Stopping myself from simply opening the door, I knocked.

"Do come in," she called out in response.

When I entered the prettily decorated alcove, the diva sat on a long low sofa, resplendent in sapphire taffeta, smoking a small cigarette languidly. The fire was blazing but comfortable, and it cast a warm orange wash over the perfume bottles and sprays of hothouse flowers. Her deep brown eyes darted coldly to meet mine.

"If it isn't Mr. Sherlock Holmes," she said frostily. "You have a nerve, coming here, sir."

"Mrs. Godfrey Norton," I replied, sweeping my hat off my head. "I can only reply that I desire nothing better than to make amends."

Mrs. Irene Alder Norton, upon first glance at her, is for an instant quite angelic in appearance. By angelic, of course, I do not mean innocent, but powerfully, blindingly beautiful. After that first glace, however, Irene looks like a mere mortal again, or she does to me: a lovely heart-shaped face, its freckles hidden under a hint of powder, a mind sharp as a scythe hidden in turn behind the fair face. With my predilections, I am at liberty to cherish things about her other than her face and her eggshell decolletage...and so the feature I like best is the golden flecks in the brown pool of her eyes which remind me I am in the presence of someone every bit as intelligent as I am. Her dark amber hair was pulled up into a complicated arrangement, her lips blushed with champagne and song, her determined chin at a most unwelcoming angle.

She scrutinized me in silence. The woman is exceptionally good at silence, very nearly as good as she is at sound. So a long pause, followed by, "I find that difficult to believe."

"Set any price, and I will exceed it, you have my word. Now, what have I done?"

Irene blinked in disbelief for a moment, but the warmth of my declaration must have affected her. Expertly, she raised an eyebrow.

"You've entirely disappeared for...let me see...very nearly six months," she replied, putting out the cigarette in the porcelain tray at her elbow.

"My caseload might be an effective excuse, but I know you would see through such a prevarication. As it happens, I am simply miserable and avoiding all sympathetic human contact. Because you are the most sympathetic and charming of all human contact ever recorded, I have avoided you especially. Now, do hurry up and forgive me and begin our conversation again the proper way."

I thought for several seconds that she was truly too angry to comply with my request. Then she shrugged her shoulders, cleared her throat, and turned into another person entirely. Still Irene, but the Irene I had known nearly ten years before.

"There you are!" she cried, smiling broadly as she threw a hand out towards me. "Of course I knew it was you from the very first note. Had you not come to see me, I should have been quite heartbroken."

I went to her, lifting the balletic hand and running my lips over it. "Mrs. Norton," I smiled.

"Was that better?"

"Considerably."

She threw her arms around my neck. It was not the sort of thing I would be able to tolerate from many people, but from Irene physical contact is not merely tolerable but very comforting.

"We were always going to be famous, the two of us, and now look at you!" she laughed. "I hear of you everywhere since Dr. Watson became your chronicler."

"I'm no more famous than you are," I demurred.

"Oh, my dear boy, I am not famous at all. I am infamous, which is quite a different story. I'm tremendously proud of you, in any event, even if you have abandoned me. Tell me what I was doing all the afternoon. I made seven stops, and I want you to recite every one of them."

"Apart from your tailor, your tobacconist, and your new solicitor, I can see nothing."

Stepping away from me, Irene slid her warm hands down my arms. "Not my dressmaker?"

"No, I said your tailor," I smiled. "I don't suppose I should have noticed as quickly if you were still lying in state over there, but you aren't wearing stays."

"I could pretend my diaphragm prefers it, but by this point in my career I could probably sing from the inside of an iron maiden if it was required of me. And so I will own that you are entirely correct." Irene dropped into her dressing table chair tiredly, pulling rings off her fingers. "Would you like a drink?"

"I just have done."

"That is a very poor and not very relevant answer," she smiled. "And from the look in your eyes, I believe you are about to make the implication that I am somehow intoxicating enough without aid, and perhaps make romantic suggestions on your colleagues' behalf. Do refrain."

"Well, if you don't care for flattery any longer, what can I do for you in its stead?" I laughed.

"Help me with this, will you?" she murmured absently.

Softly, I went behind Irene's chair. I have not the slightest, smallest stirring of sexual feeling toward her, have never done toward any woman, but she admittedly brings out the feline in me: a desire to gentle, to caress. All that milky skin, on this occasion still more of it revealed by the dramatic v-cut of the back of her sapphire evening gown, a tasteful circlet of diamonds round her neck. She had wanted me to remove them, so I undid the clasp and then handed them to her. When the whole of her neck from hairline to mid-spine was exposed, I ran my fingertips down it softly. She shivered. But I didn't want to return to my seat, so I remained behind her, reaching with subtle fingers into her hair.

It took a moment, but she relaxed against the back cushion of her velvet chair, watching me in the mirror as I collected pins. One, two, three...I was methodical about it. I always am, about her hair. It is a thing of considerable beauty, after all--a great coil of auburn waves, shining like the brightest days of October, and she is justly proud of it. I confess myself something of a sensualist, whether the topic be music, or the rich salty depth of caviar, or the cut of an artfully made dinner jacket (such as the one I was wearing), and Irene's hair is no exception. I started at the crown, where her maid had swept it up into a stately arch, gathering pins amid the amber waves as if I was turning tiny keys. One strand unlocked, then another. I felt my mind beginning to clear, as if I had been already half an hour deep into Eastern meditation. She held a hand up, and I placed a small group in her palm.

"It's bad tonight, isn't it?" Irene asked me, her voice sure but gentle. "Whatever have you done?"

"Not a thing in the world," I replied. "There is nothing I am more practiced at accomplishing, in fact, than nothing."

I met her eyes in the mirror. One of her arched little brows had raised. "Are you truly planning to spend your entire life pining for someone who resides twenty yards away from your bedroom door?"

"Yes. Stated in that light, it does not sound precisely ideal, but apparently yes."

"Why apparently?" Irene can catch the subtlest of my phrases and demand I explain it, a remarkable talent. "So you did make some sort of overture?"

"Your choice of words is amusing, my dear girl, for the overture did literally take musical form. As a matter of fact, I have recently discovered that when I play my fiddle and he is in the room, I cannot stop myself declaring my body and soul his twin slaves. Unfortunately, he has not...noticed."

"Sherlock," she smiled, "not everyone can speak the violin."

"Ah, but he can, or I shouldn't love him in the first place."

A piece of her hair, on the front left side, had come entirely free in a lustrous rope. I carded my fingers through it and placed it over her shoulder. It was light as featherdown, one of the very few soft things about Irene, along with her skin and her heart. The rest is carved of alabaster. There was a complicated circle of braid to manage next, as I tried to slip the smooth little invaders away without dragging them across her scalp. I love working with my fingers--an unbreakable combination lock will do for a workday, or a delicate chemical experiment, but Irene's hair is worth a month of Sundays thinking about it. There is scarcely anything more delicious to a man with severely heightened senses than acts as simple as locating and removing a finite series of pins.

"Do you wish we had never fooled him, then?" she asked next.

There lay the crux of the matter, of course. Years before, I had come by a new flatmate.

John Watson was handsome, and though exhausted and feverish he was also wonderful. He was all the notes of my violin spun out into the perfect constellation of melody, twisting through me like a Chopin phrase. Unfortunately, I had quite sworn off the softer emotions at the time, only talking of them in concert with a gibe and a sneer. And I was also a coward who had absolutely no intention of ever falling in love with anyone ever again, let alone with the man who was beginning to be my dearest friend. So rather than trust myself not to make a mistake, I had engaged my theatrical friends in a ruse. Watson had thought he was taking part in a ruse, all right, but a ruse directed at Irene. He had been mistaken. I had retained a photograph, and a plausible story about a married woman who would haunt me for all time, and he had believed me. I would have time, I thought, to recover from the surprising fact of him, and all would be well. All was not well, as it happened.

It was easy to convince Watson I was fascinated by Irene, for I am. But only in the sense that I am fascinated by the religious music of Lassus or interested in solving bizarre salt derivatives. She is a friend and a puzzle and an artist.

Pretending she could be more than that was no harder than pretending to be a brain without a heart.

As for Irene, she had wanted to get married. She had wanted very badly to marry a charming barrister called Godfrey Norton, and she did not mind in the slightest fooling Watson while she did it, as a favour to me. I was still witness at her wedding, as she had long insisted. The bride's best man. Had I known then what I do now, I could have saved myself years of dreaming the same dream and thus laundering my own nightshirts, and Irene...well, I could have saved Irene a great deal.

I wish on occasion--very rarely, I grant--that I were less clever. The scheme had worked to perfection. The one moment I had thought our plan nearly ruined was when I laid eyes on our ridiculous friend Bartholomew in his nightmarish King-of-Bohemia getup, but Watson understands music rather better than he does fashion, bless his boundless heart. Otherwise that scarlet-lined cape...dear Heaven above, and when I think of the fur-topped boots, and the yards of trim, and the sheer amount of pomade the man had been wearing, I would dissolve into fits of laughter if I were capable of such in my current mood. I may be an invert, but Bartholomew is a pillowman.

"I could certainly find it in my heart to wish that we had never fooled him, if I supposed that I would prove any decoration to the man, but I do not."

"Are you in earnest?"

"Of course of I am. I am always in earnest. I have been since I was fourteen," I teased her, with a joke entirely too off its colour for a lady. What of that? She knew me as a reed-thin fiddle player wandering Europe, as queer then as I am today.

I found a starflower nestled in among the pins where no one could ever have glimpsed it and carefully removed the blossom. Had she been expecting a lover tonight? Godfrey was a cad and a bounder, and I had vowed to thrash the hide off him the moment he set foot in London again, but I knew him to be nowhere near the city. Never mind. If she was expecting a more useful sort of man than I happened to be, she would tell me. I tucked the flower in my buttonhole and set myself back to the solidity of the pins.

"But surely the situation is impossible," Irene argued.

"The situation may be impossible, but it's also deserved. You have no notion the sort of tortures I put that fellow through as it is, Irene."

"Some notion, perhaps, of the tortures."

"It's uncanny," I mused, drawing my nails through a newly freed lock. "I have never loved anyone like this, never, the sort of love that Baroque operas are written about, and what do I do? I torment him at every available opportunity. I am out at all hours, when I know he worries for my safety. I am abrupt with him at times--churlish, inelegant, and that is not even who I am."

"You've always barked orders at the men you admire," she observed. "That conductor in Salzburg, do you remember him? With the devastating moustache and the soulful brown eyes? You demanded he mark your entrance more clearly. I've never seen anything like it--he was very nearly dead of apoplexy ten minutes into the first rehearsal."

"But he marked my entrance more clearly, and I made it up to him afterward," I replied dryly.

She laughed gaily, and her laugh as always reminded me of how very American Irene is. It was not a polite titter meant to acknowledge the speaker, nor yet a suppressed exclamation as our decorous females tend to do, but a laugh. Irene's merriment is as much a satin-throated explosion as it is anything else, and a laugh quite infectious in nature. Nearly an enviable one--mine is as silent as the grave.

"So," she sighed when she was through, "you are an utter cad to him, out of habit if not inclination. How does he respond?"

I frowned, not only at the question but at a tangle I had discovered nestled in the depths of all that artistry atop her head. The day I hurt her taking down her hair is the day I resign the position permanently.

"He possesses various defenses. He ignores me. He laughs at me. He returns my fire, although in such a gentlemanly fashion that it always turns out he has never said anything out of turn. And finally, he fixes me with a look as if to say, 'I know you do not like to hurt me, so I am at a loss to know why you should insist upon it so frequently.'"

"That's amazing," she murmured.

"Yes, I know he is."

"No, what you just managed without training as a ladies' maid--it hurts dreadfully to take down a fashionable snarl like that, when Cecile does it."

The first time I took down Irene's hair had been on a train, a journey between Vienna and Paris on an operatic tour of La donna del lago, and a mistake had been made about sleeping cars. We were fast friends by that time, and so affected not to be sleepy at all, preferring to drink in a private sitting car and watch the lights of the towns fade and talk of music all the night through. I was twenty, Irene nineteen. We were sharing a cigarette at four in the morning when she began rubbing at her temples in exhaustion, and I simply leaned over and began taking it down. I think it was the greatest liberty I have ever taken with anyone, but she knew even then I was no threat to her. In fact, she made a point of ribbing me over the lovelorn dandies I had been abandoning from town to town, congratulating me that my approach would be unlikely to lead to any unexpected heirs fifteen years later.

"What of you?" I asked, not really desiring a new topic but aware that one was required. One cannot wax on about holding an eternal torch for a man who resides forty feet away from one's own bedroom for longer than ten minutes without feeling entirely ridiculous--and I had truly missed Irene. "Any conquests?"

"One," she said with a strangely wistful smile. "Of the Sapphic variety, for the first time in...oh, years. Is it years now? And this...this, Sherlock, will shock you immensely."

"You revealed to her the jealously guarded secret that feminine hysteria treatments could be come by more passionately than a visit to a neurologist?"

"Yes, of course I did," she smiled, "but I found myself...not begrudging, precisely, never that, but...damn it, what do I mean to say? What I wanted wasn't her, when it came down to the fact. Her attributes were never in question; barely five foot waifs of the Musetta type I find endlessly charming, particularly when she is fluent in Czech, of all the lovely happenstances in the world, but there was an inexplicable...weariness to it all. Perhaps I find I have reached a point in my life when I have very little desire to teach anyone anything."

"Admittedly, that is not what I expected you to say. I have never known you to flinch from beneficial carnal instruction."

"I was in the mood to be owned, and I wasn't," she said softly. "It wasn't her fault. Sometimes one would prefer to hand over the reins a bit."

"I am past distinguishing separate erotic moods," I admitted. "It has been over six months, after all. I would probably accept the advances of a French poodle if it were groomed deceptively enough."

"Whyever has...six months?" she asked, blankly shocked.

"Because one doesn't go out in search of a new umbrella when what one requires is a roof over one's head. Or at least, the thinking man cannot manage to stomach it."

"Do you know what I think?" She looked down at the surface of her vanity, and then back up at my ravens'-head countenance in the mirror, pale and aristocratic and now that I noticed it, terribly sad. "I think the Doctor loves you."

I was silent. Silent for too long for Irene not to smile at me.

"Why, don't you think he loves you? See the way he follows you, the sort of dangers you lead him into, and he questions none of them."

"He may well act as if he harbours some affections for me, to be sure."

"I am right, then, and your problem is solved."

"Irene, even if you were right, what the devil does that solve?" I demanded acidly. "Suppose he does not love me, and I tell him the fix I'm in. He is shocked, he thinks it over, he recovers, he offers his hand in friendship to me, and he slowly but surely leaves our home--feeling for my situation but finding it impossible to make me a positive answer, he departs, knowing my mind will ever tend toward his...charms. Heartbreaking. Suppose he does love me? Suppose he accepts my offer, knowing nothing of the sort of life I lead or the consequences it could have for him, blindly following me out of a misplaced platonic attachment?"

"The sort of life you lead?" she laughed. "It's the same life, Sherlock. Yours and his. Twenty hours a day, if not more, between the fact of your cohabiting and the fact of your remarkable gift for detection. You are only talking about the addition of four hours."

"God, but those four hours," I could not help but sigh tragically.

This provoked a long, throaty laugh. "Poor little darling."

"It happened in the very first glimpse I had of him, if you can believe it. That was why I went to you for help in the first place. He has a face that a man might die for."

She grinned. "I must admit to you, when a being of that quality appears in my view, I take notice. The first time I saw you together, I supposed your current residence a Heaven, not a Purgatory."

"It'll be Hades itself if I don't do something about it soon. Those four hours will be the death of me."

It might seem strange, our talking about such things together. A gentleman in a sordid and dangerous profession and an artistic lady of questionable background, pondering the deeper mysteries of sex. Theatrical people are of a different breed, however, and Irene and I of a still different breed from that. The first time we had such a conversation, it had been my doing. Irene had spent two full days casting her lovely almond eyes at the strapping managing director of the opera house we had landed ourselves in, without any sign of impending success. Then I had, in her full view for a lark, dropped my pocket handkerchief of all things. Once I had thanked the gentleman for its return, I joined her in the alcove stairs leading up to the fly system and the huge painted backdrops. "That, o Goddess of the Feminine," I had said, "is how it's done." She couldn't look at my pocket handkerchief for a full week without laughing, and after that we made considerable hay out of the "divvying up of spoils." I only wished the current topic were so trivial.

"Those four hours could surely be improved if you weren't acting such a callow suitor."

"I'll ruin him."

"Why should you ruin him, if you love him?"

"Because of who and what I am, and who and what he is not," I replied, smiling ruefully at her. "But I need not pretend to you that my motives for remaining silent are entirely altruistic. The other half is pure terror."

"But why should such a kindly fellow as that frighten you?"

"For the same reason," I sighed. "Because of who and what I am, and who and what he is not."

The crux of the matter was, whereas I am defenseless against the whims of music, John Watson seemed to be defenseless against me. I am his Achilles heel, whether he loves me or not. As such, knowing my own volatility as I do, I have come to see myself as something of a hazard where he is concerned. An unsheathed weapon which could easily maim a man I would die for in a heartbeat, if only he asked me. It was a neat level of hell, and if I had believed in his existence, I would have congratulated the Evil One for his creative irony.

Irene frowned, but not in disagreement. She was merely thinking. "I see the same gentility in him that you do, but I would term it strength and not weakness. His innocence is the pliable sort, I think, a kind of natural resilience against the dark. I know you to own a shadowed side, my darling, but you would never exploit him, knowing it is there."

"I already have done."

"How?"

"By allowing him to see that I need him more than anything in the world. That is a heavy chain, Irene, when presented unasked-for. That's what I've done."

"I would wager that he does not see it as the great burden you do," she said in a peculiarly soft tone. "Your needing someone is...I don't know if you realize it, but for a man of your independence to need anyone is quite wonderful. I think so, at any rate."

For a moment I could think of nothing to say. Irene drew a melancholy little breath. It confused me, but I didn't want her to see it. So I reached up and tugged at a pair of ivory combs, and then my fingers were lost in a cascade of auburn, gushing in innumerable satin ripples down over her slender back. A mind like mine lives for moments such as these--when what was once a mystery, an impenetrable knot, is suddenly untied and the strands lie before you. Every separate piece visible, the origins and the ends made clear. Smiling, I handed over her combs. And even then I lingered, savouring the tactile reward in my fingertips of a problem solved.

"Irene," I ventured, "do you ever think of hell?"

"Life with Godfrey, you mean?" she answered coolly. "Not unless I see it. It has nearly faded entirely, I am happy to tell you."

"No, no," I hastened to say, drawing my fingers through the tighter waves at the nape of her neck, "not the man who resides safely distant in Marseilles and whose satisfaction I would demand on the instant he set foot in Lille and so much as glanced at a seaworthy craft." She smiled at me, a thank you, and I continued. "I mean damnation."

"What has damnation to do with a champion of justice?"

"Nothing, I suppose, but...do you never wish to be different than you are?"

"Oh," she sighed. "Yes. Yes, I do see what you mean. And yes, I...often wish that. It was cantata fifty-four that did this to your mood, wasn't it? I know how you are when Bach worms his way into your blood. Well, dearest, they do say you can ask forgiveness and all will then be quite magically well again."

The snide tilt which sprang to my lips was not directed at Irene, but at myself. "May one be pardon'd and retain the offense?" I inquired.

Irene's eye had wandered away, however, looking at nothing in the vicinity of her vanity table. Suddenly she gripped one of my hands, my right hand, and brought it palm facing outward to the side of her face before letting it slip through her fingers.

"You needn't worry about hell, Sherlock Holmes," she whispered. "Hell is living in solitary confinement. And you, my friend, are not alone."

"I've upset you," I said quickly. "We'll talk of--"

"No, let us continue to talk of you," she suggested with a laugh that was almost a groan. She let her head fall into her hands for a moment, elbows resting on the vanity, and then she rose to her feet and turn to face me. Mrs. Irene Norton, dressed as if for a ball with her hair falling helter-skelter round her shoulders. "I have no advice to beg of you in return, after all, for I know how to live my life. So let us talk of you for a while longer, and see if we make any progress."

"I find that the act is inconvenient to you," I protested in what was genuinely more concern than the parody of it.

"What might I be doing at this very moment that you are inconveniencing?" she cried, her voice shaking. "Drinking champagne at a gala? Listening to callow beaus who want to be taught how to suffer for love? Lying in my bed watching the earth revolve? Do any of those things sound preferable to you? No, let us get back to the true topic of conversation, which is you, has always been you, from the instant you arrived."

"Irene, do stop this."

She gripped me by the lapels. "Make me stop it."

In an effort to steady her, for her weight was slipping God only knows where, my hands went round her waist.

"Remind me where we left off," she demanded violently. "Oh, yes, you were in love."

"None of my deliberate doing, I assure you," I snapped, badly startled.

"I know just what you must do," she whispered through her tears. "No, don't speak, I beg of you. Grant me only that, if nothing more. You must go at once to Covent Garden--"

"Irene," I pleaded.

"Mark me!" she cried, shaking me by my dinner jacket. "You must buy three dozen hothouse roses, only the best variety, the exquisite sort we always used to tease one another over finding in our dressing rooms. Spend a fortune. That shouldn't be difficult, considering the time of year. Make certain every stem is perfect, every petal pristine. Take them home to him. When you open the door and you find him there, do not give them to him--lay them all at his feet. Spread them out a little, kneeling. When you have done that, look up at him. Don't speak at first. Then say--"

"Stop it now," I ordered, trying only to keep a steady hold of her.

"Say, 'Ask me for anything on earth.' And then--"

"Irene, why in bloody hell would you ask me to propose to John Watson in the exact same fashion that Godfrey Norton, curse him for an utter villain, proposed to you?" I demanded.

"So that some good might come of it," she gasped. "So that you don't end up like me."

When the tears fell in earnest a moment later, she did let me hold her. But not for long. After a minute had passed, she pushed me gently away and went back to her vanity table, passing a silken kerchief over her eyes. Then she folded it, looking at me once more in the mirror.

"Life is tempo, Sherlock," she said quietly. "You live it at various speeds and urgencies, and the only thing worth wishing for is that you live the right one at the right time. Look at me. I am allegretto grazioso, have been all my days, and it will never avail me a thing. I am a happy person who is unhappy by purest accident, but what of that? So be it. Now, you, on the other hand, are living vivacissimo, and con brio at that, so as not to fall apart when you stop. You have to change it, Sherlock. Change it for me if not for yourself. Join the Doctor in his cantabile, if only for interludes, and be happy with him. You think slowing down at all will drop you straight into hell, but it won't--and even if it does on occasion, he will be there with you. Tell me you will change your tempo, my darling, and that you'll do it tonight."

"I have never before even attempted such a thing," I said to her helplessly.

"Then I shall put it another way. On the next occasion you come here, Mr. Holmes, I need you to belong to him. Will you do that for me?" she whispered.

I think I stopped breathing for a moment. I hated myself for it, but I could not help it any more than an animal can control flinching away from a fire. This was wrong, in every way, and in an instant of panic, I could only ask myself how much of it was my fault.

Irene walked, swaying her perfect curves, over to a dressing screen in the corner of the room with a Japanese scene of cherry blossoms painted upon it. She was behind the barrier for two minutes, facing away from me. When she emerged, she was utterly bare.

I knew in my mind she was exquisite even as my tastes screamed otherwise. The curves of her breasts were supple with candlelight and shadow, and the gentle arc of her thighs mysterious and sweetly simple all at once. It had been literally years since I had seen the nude figure of a woman, and I was surprised by how comely she was in an abstract sense--pleasing in the most elemental way, like the fall of a French phrase or a patch of bluebells in the woods. The quality of Irene's skin is the sort you sometimes see in medieval paintings, a pale virginal translucency although Irene is no virgin. One can see that she is not. There is a nearly invisible lash scar just above the jut of her hip bone on the left hand side. She walked straight up to me and put a hand on my chest.

"Forgive me," I asked her.

She nodded. Her face was horribly expressionless. Then she smiled at me, or tried to.

"I already have," she said. "And anyway, there was nothing whatever to forgive. I am fond of everything you are, and the things you find beautiful make you Sherlock Holmes. I only grew used to your needing me, a little. That's all. A bad habit when one is alone--but you are a man who understands bad habits, and so will pardon me in turn for having missed you so while you were gone."

Irene went to a wardrobe and began pulling out pieces of men's attire. They were all tailored to fit her frame, but they hid her femininity wonderfully, and her curves were slowly hidden away from me again. A pair of drawers. An undervest, tighter than any man would wear it, hugging her torso. Black trousers, and the rounded swell of flesh entirely disappeared. A shirt of sky blue that suited the richness of her coloring beautifully, and her bosom was gone. A waistcoat, a collar, a cravat expertly tugged into place and then fixed with a pearl in the mirror. Reaching for a loose ribbon, she tied her hair back, and I wondered what George Sand must have looked like dressed very nearly as Irene was now--walking the streets of Paris thinking feverishly of Frederic Chopin, dismissing cold reason "deliberately and with a sort of frantic joy." When Irene returned to me, she stood on the tips of her booted toes and kissed me on the cheek, very much like herself again.

"Just as a temporary and frivolous measure this evening, I would pay a thousand pounds for you to be fooled by this costume," she said coyly.

I was startled into laughing, which pursed her mouth in amusement. She reached forward and plucked the starflower from my lapel. I had forgotten it was there. She tucked it behind her ear.

"Irene, will you tell me one thing, even if I don't merit the confidence?"

"Provided it is not the name of my tailor. There ought to be one man in London more dashing than you are on the streets, and I fully intend to remain that personage."

I hesitated, but I had to know. My curiosity is a living devil and I am well aware of it, a monster just as insatiable as sin itself. Sometimes I wonder what lengths I might be driven to in order to ascertain exact data, and I shudder at myself.

"Before you married him, did you love Godfrey Norton?"

Irene's warm brown eyes peered at me for a moment as if she were very far away, perhaps in another world entirely. "I love him even now. What a damnable, vile--you spoke of hell a moment ago. Well, there we have a still better definition for the word hell than solitude. If I were to see him again in the flesh, the wretched creature, I don't even know that I could--"

"But you never shall," I assured her. "See him again in the flesh, I mean to say. That is where I come in."

When she smiled that time, it dawned on me that it was the first instant she had felt truly pleased since the moment of my arrival. Or perhaps valued is a more apt word.

"Let us roam the night free as the wild forest wolves, bound only by our honours and the limits of our invention," she suggested, linking her arm with mine as I reached for my hat and she did the same. "Separately, of course. Hunters such as we two do not trail their prey in packs. Although once, when I was in Milan, I met with the most delectable trio--two young actors in a touring production of The Tempest, one with an Italian belle on his arm who didn't speak a word of English, and after sharing a bottle of brandy we--"

"Trade secrets," I admonished her with a single finger tapping my lips.

"I knew you hadn't drunk enough champagne."

When the chill of the night surrounded us and the door of the music hall's side entrance had closed, we slowed our pace as we walked toward the street beyond. The little amount of snow which had managed to fall in that narrow space was improbably white for London, a rare swath of virgin ground that sparkled in the moonlight. I caught the drape of my watch chain in my fingertips, clasping the gold sovereign, and I lifted it in the direction of Irene's eyes.

"I wouldn't wear this if I didn't truly need you, you know."

"Buy the roses and do as I say this very night," she commanded all too hoarsely when we reached the pavement. "Promise me."

"I promise," I replied.

"Then ravish him until he has forgotten all language save the word 'more,' and you've--"

"For mercy's sake, desist, my dear girl."

Bending down, I kissed her fingertips.

"Goodnight, Irene."

"Goodnight, Mr. Sherlock Holmes," she smiled as we turned in opposite directions.

The weather had turned altogether freezing as I turned back towards the main thoroughfares. I bought the three dozen roses because I had promised her, but I gave them away one by one. A lady with a foxfur hat, a gentleman with a lavender cravat, a girl in a short cape. They thought me drunk, perhaps, but I didn't care. I didn't want them in my house.

In our house.

All the time I walked, I thought it through.

I still had over a dozen blooms in my hands, having dropped several upon doorsteps to provide the occupants with pleasurable mysteries, when I heard an unmistakable sound. It was the sound of a good violinist playing a very, very bad violin.

This particular violinist was so skilled, in fact, that Schubert's unmatchable Serenade reached my ears rising and falling and entirely intact. And suddenly I was the same as the waves in the Channel far away and the arch of the bare tree branches and the white flakes which were beginning to fall from the sky, and I caught my breath when I could manage to employ any of my muscles usefully. The flute embellishments were singing in my head from memory, but before I was accosted or robbed, I managed to pull myself together and seek out the player.

He was twelve, if even that. He stood on the corner of two wide streets not far from the edge of the Park, under a gas lamp, playing a battered instrument without so much as fingerless gloves on. Only a thin coat with discernible holes under the arms. I went over to him and set the remaining roses against the wall in the snow. He stopped.

"You won't keep those long, settin' em down that way," he observed.

"You can sell them, if you like," I replied. "I don't need them."

His grime-ringed eyes squinted darkly at me. "Now, see here, Mister, I'll play another for you and gladly, but I ain't one for--"

"Nothing of the kind," I said firmly. "I only wondered if I might join you for a brief while."

The boy's eyes lit on my violin case and he granted me a wry smile. "Not too keen on home and hearth just now?"

"I cannot quite stomach the notion yet," I granted easily, pulling out my own instrument when he comprehended I meant him no harm.

"Had a row with her, did you? You oughter keep the roses, then. That says pax better than most anything."

"Truly?"

"My da used to bring daises some summers," he shrugged. "When he still came round."

"And it worked, you say?"

"Like a charm. Before he'd had a drink, anywise," he added.

"Back to the Schubert, then," I sighed, "whilst I consider it."

I think we played for an hour, all told. Serenade is what I recall best, for that was one of the loveliest duets I have ever participated in, but we went on afterwards into Handel and God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen and six or seven music hall tunes. When the boy's hat was full of money and his fingers looked blue enough to fall off, I sank down to my haunches to put my Strad back in its case.

"If you ever require a somewhat warmer occupation, I am often in need of assistance," I said, looking into his eyes. They were green. They flared with suspicion again at this remark, but I forestalled it. "To be honest, it's mainly reconnaissance work, although you could as easily call it spying. You needn't give me your name, but tell me, my good man, can you read if I write something down for you?"

"Why would I want to read something from the likes of you?" he challenged, his eyes flicking away abashedly.

Still hovering near the ground, I found a pencil stub and drew a simple sketch in my pocketbook. I tore out the page and handed it to him.

"You see the Park, where the trees are?"

He nodded reluctantly.

"And the grid of streets? In what street is that star with the three numbers writ next to it, do you suppose?"

"That's easy enough. Baker Street."

"Well, that is where I live, and my name is Sherlock Holmes." Rising, I offered him my hand. "Farewell, my good man. Thank you for your company."

I was ten steps away when he called, "You've forgot the roses."

"I haven't," I smiled. "Consider them my payment for Serenade when you sell them." I tipped my hat to him.

I was twenty further steps along when he blurted, "Cartwright!"

I stopped again. All the money was safely stowed in his pockets now, the roses in his arms a promise of considerably more, and the hat back on his small head.

"Tom," he added, coughing and then drawing his sleeve over his mouth. "Tom Cartwright."

"It is my very great pleasure to meet you, Cartwright," I announced.

And then there was no good thing to be done for him save only walking away.

I hastened my pace. There was not much left to consider by that time, and I was nearly home. Time enough, however, to wonder whether the five minutes' journey remaining was sufficient to work out the way the universe was constructed, so that I could better guess whether I might be granted my heart's desire if I asked for it prettily enough. Time enough for panic. And time enough also for an inkling of relief that it would all soon be over one way or the other, even if my life was finished. The simplicity was appealing.

Either God was merciful to cruel men, or He was not. That was all there was to it.

There are those who know me who would laugh to think I believe in God or Fate or what you will. But that is because they pay me too much attention when I speak. I may not think often about the solar system, may in fact make childish and flippant remarks about it, but nevertheless I know it is there. As for a Clockmaker, I grant I cannot see Him. But both science and art inform me daily of Him, and while I have devoted my life to the former, the latter rules my soul. There are so many things in this world which could not exist save in the presence of a benevolent Mind. The flowers. Bravery. Climax. The candour of children. These doubtless all exist for scientific reasons, as Darwin has proven, and yet from them one can easily deduce an artful Presence behind the practical value. As for art itself, there are five separate composers who have utterly convinced me there is a God, and ten more that at the very least there is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will. Art is not necessary for life to exist, and yet it has been given to us. And how many other superfluities, how many sacred extras, can I list? Laughter. Mortality. Empathy.

Forgiveness from a loved one when a man has made an unforgivably stupid mistake.

I turned onto Baker Street, staring at the snow caked into the windowsills. So few steps remained to be taken, so very few, and yet how difficult every one of them was. I should not have been surprised if I had fallen through the pavement, I felt so heavy in my own skin. Then my key was out and a moment later I was inside.

A light shone from the upper storey through the crack below the door.

I made it as far as the banister rail before I gripped it with both hands, my brow falling to meet the newel post. I stayed like that, just breathing, for nearly two minutes, I think.

Slower. It won't hurt you.

I breathed, through my nose like a swift and silent predator, and tried harder.

Vivace.

I exhaled, my fingers clutching the wood with a passion.

There, see the difference? You are still here. Allegro moderato, now.

I made my mind a deliberate blank for three entire seconds before it flew back to him.

Better. Be still, be still, be still. Allegretto. Good man. Now moderato expressivo. Please. If you can only reach--

The door above me creaked open and I could see Watson silhouetted in the firelight. When he glimpsed me, his head tilted in concern automatically before it returned to a more distant attitude of lingering anger. Then he came a few steps forward, reaching out to touch the identical newel post above me. He didn't say a word.

I placed my foot on the first step. I think it was the hardest thing I've ever done. By the time I had nearly reached Watson's level, I thought I was going to explode with the severity of my nerves, but all at once he stepped down to meet me and I arrested my climb. I gripped the banister rail. We could neither of us see each other very well, in the dim spill of light from the sitting room fire. Nevertheless I could discern every particle of his being, for I had studied them all so devoutly that I would know them in the pitch dark.

"I am never going to Heaven," I told him.

Watson had been two steps above me. Now he stepped further down, and in that position he was precisely my height. Our eyes bored straight through one another, and I could feel the very breath from his lips. My friend's hand reached up to catch at my shoulder.

"My dear fellow, whatever can you mean? Are you all right?"

I shook my head and took his hand off my shoulder. Once I had it, however, I did not give it back to him. I held it with both my own, running my fingers over his palm, trying to breathe. Our bodies were very nearly touching, and I know the fabric of my waistcoat brushed his lapel.

Those four hours. I would give anything on earth for them.

"I didn't even know you believed in God, Holmes."

As it happens, evidence of His existence appears before my eyes nearly every morning, I could have said. At around nine, usually. I never mentioned it to you.

He smelled faintly of sage and the cigar he had been smoking. I would give up eternity itself for those four hours. Bach had the music that coursed through his brain, but I knew a still headier paradise than that. Bach, I fear, was not nearly so enthusiastic a sinner as am I.

"For mercy's sake, Holmes, has something terrible happened? Please say something. I never met a nobler man than you in all my life, so I can at least assure you that you are wrong to--"

"I'm not going to Heaven, my friend," I insisted though my throat seemed to be malfunctioning. "I am a rogue and a liar and a coward and--oh, countless other things. But what I meant to ask you--I think, very probably, I could have my piece of Heaven here with you. In London."

Watson stopped breathing.

"Here I could be pardoned, and yet retain the offense," I added.

He gazed back at me, perfectly still.

"I wouldn't deserve it," I continued blindly, looking down. "But Christ, how I would try."

John Watson's other hand came up to still my caressing of his fingers. He waited, for an embarrassingly long period, until I finally managed to look him in the face once more.

"You already told me that earlier this evening when you played your violin, didn't you?" he inquired.

"Yes," I whispered.

"How extraordinary," he murmured. "I thought I only heard what I wished you were saying. Forgive me."

Thoughts Without Words I

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 23:13:43 GMT

Rating: PG

About the characters: they are far too good to be mine.

The dream always began the same way.

He was walking down a grimy London street with his back to me. His neatly fitted grey overcoat was buttoned and his collar was turned up against the wind, his silk top-hat on his head. Occasionally he wore lighter clothing, but it was December, so I was dreaming what he had worn to pay the Yard a call with me the previous day. The weather in the dream likewise reflected the true conditions I saw through our window that morning before settling into a bored, melancholy horizontal S-curve on the settee, so Watson was striding through pale drifts of snow, nodding good evening through the pale windows of familiar shops and once stopping to flick a coin at a beggar girl selling brilliant scarlet ribbons.

And I was following him, as I always was.

I never knew where he was going, only that I must keep him in sight at all costs and that with my particular skills he would never see me unless I desired it. On one occasion last summer I had flown after him through the Park in August invisible as a spirit, but that afternoon I was simply well-wrapped and as deft as I am in life. The snowdrifts which had been beautiful only that morning were already caked with grime. I recognized nothing, yet I knew precisely where I was. I could hear carolers blithely mutilating I Saw Three Ships, and strangely the shaky tune followed the two of us even after we had passed the ragged band of singers and moved into a narrower passage. Under ordinary circumstances, such blaringly discordant sounds would have scraped my nerves raw, for I am extraordinarily sensitive to auditory signals. But this was a dream. So I walked on, unhindered by the cacophony, all my thoughts on my friend.

Watson, broad-shouldered and easy of step, turned down a second alleyway. I should have taken greater care with following him down such a narrow space had I been doing it in fact, but I suddenly found gravity no longer applied to my person--or rather, it had re-oriented itself--and I continued walking along the upper reaches of the corridor's wall. And now that we were hidden from all eyes, visible only to cold red brick and colder snow and coldest of all the grey firmament above us, I willed him to stop just as I always did and he paused as if I had called out his name.

"Holmes?" he said softly, turning round.

I wandered a few more paces along the wall approximately six feet above the ground until I was just above his head and then knelt with one knee to the brick. The orientation was bizarre on that occasion, but the rest was exactly the same. I said nothing. I never do.

"There you are," he said, smiling when his eyes drifted up at last. "I was looking everywhere for you."

Now we came to the part which always occurred so very naturally that I marveled at it even when I awakened in a severely compromised state--or worse still, no longer a compromised state at all. I reached my right hand out toward his perfectly sculpted face and I kissed him. As it happens, and to no one's particular surprise, the angle at which you can kiss a fellow when gravity places you on a brick wall and him on the solid earth happens to be an especially deep one. The carolers were still clanging in my ears, but astonishingly I didn't care. The only things I cared about were the soft brush of his immaculate moustache, the pulse pounding in his neck beneath my fingers, the fact that his lips were bizarrely warm for having drunk in so much of London in the dead of winter, the ache in my chest which threatened to awaken me and very often did before anything else could take place, the quiet desperation of my breathing.

The dream could go in any number of directions from this point. Only once had it ever awoken me with a muffled scream, as I discovered my lips had burned horrible searing wounds into his features. Usually the predictable took place, and I made love to him in some fashion. These fashions were wondrously varied and encompassed acts I would be reluctant to name, let alone perform in an empty public space, as we generally did in these fevered visions. Once I pulled away from his lips when I discovered there was a wedding ring in my mouth underneath my tongue, and I handed it to him. Once he drew out his service revolver at the end of the passionate act and challenged me to a duel. Twice he clapped a pair of derbies on me, to which I objected rather less than might be assumed, and told me I belonged to him now.

Once I turned him in an instant into a pillar of salt. Sodom, which looked remarkably like London, was burning around our ears. I think I awoke with actual tears in my eyes on that occasion, gasping for air.

But no such dark thing happened that late afternoon. The wind through the alley bit at me, and yet I was not cold, for nothing apart from the task of kissing John Watson existed as of that moment. The carolers stopped, thank Christ. My left hand had just gripped his collar with an animal's raw affection when the sound of a door creaking awakened me and my eyes flew open.

The light had already faded considerably from when I had curled myself up to sleep through a dreary span of daytime. John Watson was taking off his gloves, his affable, square-jawed good looks only heightened by the cold.

"Never fear," he called out, turning to face the door as he shut it. "I have paid them, so the remarkably discordant purveyors of seasonal cheer have cleared off to darken another entryway."

When he rounded the settee, his agile mouth twisted into an apologetic curve. "I'm sorry, Holmes, I didn't mean to wake you."

Watson's golden brown hair was slightly tousled from his hat, his blue eyes brighter than a lapis-hued Madonna in a church window due to the frigid weather. His lips were reddened also, and a charming flush rested along his cheekbones. Stretching my arm where it had fallen asleep beneath my head, I shifted to greet him at least in posture if not in words, yawning, thanking fair fortune with all my heart that he had not been delayed by a few minutes longer. A delightful spectacle that might have proven. I pulled my legs in as far as I could, a friendly invitation for him to sit down. Finally I raised my torso and draped an arm languidly along the back of the sofa.

He did sit, barely an inch from my knees, still smiling ruefully.

"I should not have been asleep much longer--or if I had, I should have slipped into a nightmare," I muttered tiredly. "That mortifyingly out-of-tune choir had penetrated my consciousness. I owe you an immense debt of gratitude."

"I haven't any doubt you would have performed the same heroic act for me," he grinned. "Think nothing of it."

"You risked shattered eardrums at that proximity."

"It is not my habit to flinch from danger. In any case, they were blocking our door."

Blinking, I rested my head on my hand, trying to shake off the unguarded drowsiness which is caused by falling asleep in a warm sitting room in December. That quality of innocent haze was allowing me to stare at my flat mate in what for me was naked adoration. In another man, it might well have looked like mild interest, I grant.

"Sleep well otherwise?"

"Mm."

Such questions do not require a response.

"I had hoped you would drop off. Between our caseload and this weather...well, you've been seeming a bit frayed of late, my dear fellow."

We fell into a companionable silence there before the fire, for he knew I was only half listening. What he did not know was precisely why.

Some of the things I want to do to that poor fellow would make a hardened sailor blush for shame, but countless others are as adolescent as they are ridiculous. I want to press my cheek against his bare collarbone and listen. I never see his hands resting idly on the breakfast table but that I long to weave my fingers into them. I want more than anything in the world to say the word John, and over and over again, in a hundred different subtleties of sound, in the mornings and in the evenings and from behind a newspaper and dressed for the opera in a hansom and utterly bare of clothing. (There are some who call me unduly arrogant, but with my capacity to understand the music of words, I am confident I could say John very well indeed.) I am a grown man, and yet I want to curl up with my head in his lap and do nothing save listen to the rain thrumming against our windows. I want it to be raining for that exact purpose. On this occasion, my hand was actually lifting in the air in the direction of his cheekbone before I caught myself and smoothed back my own hair. It was a mess, of course.

"I told Mrs. Hudson to wait dinner. I'd a late lunch at the club, and you never eat before nine in any event."

"Watson, the subject of dinner does not interest me in the slightest."

"You really ought to humour the man who just saved you from a jews-harp, a pennywhistle, and four semi-inebriated...hmm. By the sound of them, I suppose they were basset hounds, though I cannot be certain."

The things he does to the very flow of my blood cannot possibly be set down in English. I could try French, but Spanish might do better. And the not-having-him was beginning to cause me to disintegrate at a cellular level. Or so it felt.

"Yes, I shall have to reward you at once, with such a debt of honour on my conscience," I sighed, awakening a fraction more fully. "And in doing so, I think I can kill two birds with one stone, by driving the remnants of the most unholy desecration of I Saw Three Ships I have ever experienced from both our minds. In fact, there is not a moment to lose."

I stood up. I stretched. I went to the sideboard and poured two brandies, passing one to Watson and leaving the other to rest there. I knitted my fingers and turned my palms out, pulling the sleepy cords of muscle. Then I bent in the direction of my Strad case.

"Is it possible to desecrate I Saw Three Ships?" Watson wondered, sipping his brandy. "The tune is already unbearable at the best of times."

"I had assumed the same, but apparently we were theorizing in advance of the facts."

My friend laughed. I picked up my instrument, practically the inanimate extension of my literal self, and tuned it softly. The moment I had finished, I fended off an onslaught of nerves. I already knew for an irrevocable fact what I was going to play.

It was the risk of my life, and I knew that too. But I felt as if I had no choice in the matter, thrown off my guard as I was every time I set eyes on him. Things had been building to a head for months now; I was indeed frayed past my capacity to endure; and I was yet relaxed enough to risk placing my soul on the sitting room carpet and asking whether he might care to have the ownership of the blasted thing.

Again.

The other pieces simply had not been powerful enough. If Mendelssohn's Opus 64 in E Minor did not accomplish my ends, nothing could help me save admitting to an impeccable gentleman that I am the world's most practiced liar.

Watson would understand. He had to. He knew me through and through and, while his perception of music is not the wildly comprehensive sort I both glory in and suffer from, his perception of me is profound. Uncanny, at times. And beyond his perception, his appreciation of my talents would work in my favour. It had to.

I was coming further unraveled every day.

Watson's appreciation of my musical ability, as a matter of fact and while I am on the subject, adds another element of dimension to an activity I had already supposed the definition of the word sublime.

Well, that is not quite right. Sometimes music is sublime, only sometimes, and obviously sometimes it is difficult and dangerous and disturbing. At times it haunts, and at other times it caresses. I've fallen feather-lightly to sleep listening to music, for instance. Yet sometimes it wrenches me from the inside out in a fashion which seems exactly halfway between a knife wound and a sexual climax. (I've experienced the former as well as the latter, and I know of which I speak.)

Explaining this phenomenon to my peers would be, for obvious reasons, an ill-advised exercise. No one wants to hear their lover or friend or acquaintance describe music as a benevolent succubus--no, that's disgusting, it would obviously be an incubus in my case--but in any event, it would never do to tell anyone that music flows within my entire body until I'm flooded with liquid sound. It sounds quite wrong. All I can state for a definite fact is that, whereas most elements of day-to-day human experience I can keep firmly outside the walls of my inner self, music seeps straight through my pores and into my bloodstream where it has its way with me. Why this should be, I don't know. Perhaps I trust music. It was the constant companion of my childhood, after all. But that seems facile. What I mean to express is that music, be it a soaring uplift or a wrenching ode in a minor key, crawls into every single one of my crevices--the spaces between the bones of my fingers, the crannies which separate my ribs from my spine, the very hollows of my skull. Perhaps that's why I play it so well.

But here lies my point: when I am playing music alone, it possesses me utterly. When I am playing music with John Watson watching, I am somehow able to possess it.

I took a breath and tucked my fiddle under my chin.

Mendelssohn's greatest violin work begins with the most sweetly longing melody. And the consequent is hardly less throbbing than the antecedent--by the time I had twice articulated it, nearly resolving though never reaching a true completion, there wasn't any difference between me and my violin any longer. It was a phrase said to have given Mendelssohn himself no peaceful quarter, gently fragmenting the inside of his head. And I pulled it into our sitting room with my bow that early evening in December, like a spirit of the wild woods beyond London summoned to a magician's side with an ancient word.

But at this point--whereas had I been alone I would already have been seeing abstract notes in three dimensions behind my closed eyelids or tasting the mathematical pattern in a spiraling seashell or smelling salt water in eighth notes--I was still myself. And the only other thing in the world apart from the music was him. Listening to me.

My playing has been called far too many things by too many people for me to detail in full. My top notes have been decreed lambent and my low tones lush. My mind is constructed with such a love of precision that someone once called my bowing so pristine as to be almost virginal, and yet my embellishments for the same piece were termed dulcet yet perplexingly cutting. We none of us ever know what we look like when we are playing, still less how those looks affect others, but a lover who happened to be a fine operatic tenor once told me I looked like two things when I played: how he felt when singing from Rodelinda, regina de' Longobardi, or else how I myself looked in the final two breathless seconds of an orgasm. Others have proven still more creative in their descriptions: a sound which opens like an unfolding sunrise was perhaps too complimentary to be believed. The abstract of the ripely sensual makes no sense whatsoever, but what can a man expect from a Russian critic? Fully, deeply felt but demented nevertheless was one of my favourites.

That early evening, I took every single element of myself and gave them all to my friend.

I passed through tenderly held sustains of simplest perfection into brilliant washes of semiquavers. My high notes were light as gossamer, glowing like candle flames, and I seemed to be breathing through my fingers. There is a modulation into G major like rapids flowing into a lake, and, as we fell together into the shimmering water, John Watson and I, I could have sworn the notes were touching him. Merest mistlike ghost whispers on the backs of his hands, some of them, and then during the cadenza a waterfall of pure sensation from his hair down his spine. I don't think my hands have ever put as much raw courage into a sword as I did the ricochet arpeggios leading to the closing, nor have I ever in my life touched any man's body with as much passion as that music was tearing from me. And then, miracle of miracles, the final passage within the rippling coda hovered so gently through my fingertips that I may as well have left the earth behind entirely.

Save that John Watson was still here.

I stopped at the end of the first movement because if I didn't glance up and see what his face looked like in that moment, I thought the world might possibly end.

Watson likewise opened his eyes. He did not quite seem to know where he was any longer. Neither did I, for that matter.

I stared back at him. Say something.

He leaned forward with his hands clasped, his blue eyes shining, and all I could think was beautiful. So beautiful.

Say something.

"My dear man, you have an incredible talent," he declared gravely. "I have never heard anything like you before in all my life. You are to be congratulated."

That was the wrong something.

And I wasn't to be congratulated at all, for I had my health and my art and my career and none of it mattered. Congratulations would be merited when I had him too. I take the crown for the greediest man alive, I don't doubt, but then I can do nothing by halves.

I set my violin back in its case with a nod. "Thank you." I looked at the clock. There was time. I could escape him yet, if only for the evening. I dove toward my bedroom.

"Holmes, where are you going?" he called out.

I slammed the door, though I honestly hadn't meant to. Then I went to change my clothing, cursing the day I met the man and cursing myself for an arrogant imbecile at the same time. After digging a little, I had everything I needed. Ivory cravat, pure silk waistcoat the colour of porcelain, sweeping black tails. I dressed very carefully and ran a comb through my dark hair. I looked...well, I looked effective for my purposes, but only if he chose to notice. Then I swept back into the room, ignoring his surprised stare, and went for my violin case.

"Holmes, where on earth are you bound dressed like that?" Watson smiled. "Buckingham Palace?"

"Out. Do not wait up for my return, dear chap."

"Is it a matter of some importance, then?" he asked, concern creeping into his tone.

"I really cannot be expected to provide detailed diagrams of my activities for no purpose other than to satisfy the idle curiosity of an indolent pensioner," I drawled as I donned my greatcoat. "Farewell, and best of luck finding another source of entertainment for the night."

The sensation a man experiences when his mouth is saying something his brain produced and his conscience finds basely horrifying is not unlike the feeling of a priceless vase slipping through one's fingers to shatter on the ground, or (as once happened to me during a winter in my childhood) breaking through a sheet of ice one thought solid as paving stones. I cannot say more about it other than to mention that it is worse than either of these, infinitely more harrowing in fact, and that every time I bring it upon myself I hope before the initial shock of pain hits me--and it hits me as squarely as it hits my target, that much I know in my bones--that it will be the last time.

It never is the last time, unfortunately. It never will be the last time, either, until the week or so before I die.

I was out the door before I could register the hurt on Watson's face. As I tripped down the stairs and into the city, I realized for the first time that my motives were more confused than even I had been aware.

I was fleeing more than him that night. I was fleeing the man I became in his company.

It was all my own fault, of course, but how to undo what had already been done some two years before? The gold sovereign on my watch chain glinted under a gas lamp against the shimmering ivory cloth. A reminder of my accursed precautions. A token of friendship, yes, but also a symbol of the heartless automaton. A coin to pay the calculating machine.

Penny for the Guy? I thought ironically, and made a sharp turn through a darkened mews.

Cabs were plentiful, but the bitter air stung my cheeks and I deserved it, so I kept walking. I strode through streets of brick and streets of granite, past the sable branches of the Park, with the rough kerbstones beneath my polished boots and my fiddle tucked under my arm. The small and private concert hall, when I reached it, was lit like a celestial Christmas tree. By small and private, I mean to write a euphemism for exclusive and opulent, and they had outdone themselves in its construction. But I ignored the white flare of candlelight beyond the marble columns at the front of the tiny palace and steered myself backside to the artists' entrance.

Two dim, bare hallways took me to a staircase, and the staircase took me to the pit. A warm, dusty, oily, ashen scent of footlights filled my nostrils. The ensemble for the evening's performance was a small one by the looks of the music stands, but I had expected that, for I knew precisely who the featured artist was to be. The musicians were still arriving singly, rubbing their fingers, having left their coats and gloves in the impossibly cramped green room upstairs. How it is possible for some of the finest opera houses and concert halls in the world to forget that musicians also appreciate open rooms and adequately stuffed furnishings is beyond me, but a truism nevertheless.

"Sherlock Holmes," a reedy voice said tragically as its owner descended the last of the steps.

"My dear Ambrose," I smiled, saluting him. "You are reprieved."

"Get out of here," Ambrose growled, adjusting his cravat as he approached me. "I need the money. I don't care what you sound like, or what you are thinking, or what you are to her, whatever you are. And I don't care where you've been all this time either, for I've seen your name often enough in the newspapers. Move along, you, before you begin to test my patience. Go on, shoo. Get away from my chair."

Ambrose Smith is a short, sniveling, oblivious, vicious-tempered, dense sort of fellow with side whiskers and hazel eyes which never, ever look at you while he is speaking. In addition, he is a brilliant violinist, although not nearly so brilliant as I am. (His clarity of articulation may be on par with mine, and his range of tone quality is admirable; however, his spontaneous immediacy is sadly lacking.) He is intensely unlikeable. But he is easily dealt with.

"Suppose they don't pay me," I mused. "Suppose they pay you, and I don't say a word. All I require of you just now, my good man, is your absence."

"You're off your head, and I've always said so."

"Here is what I propose: you spend the night at your leisure, wandering the streets of our fair city with a comely lass on your elbow or some such thing, all the while being paid to be here, with this additional pound note from me in your pocket. What do you think of it?"

Charles Hendrickson, the older but quietly sweet-faced second chair fiddle for the evening, sprung open his case while affecting not to be amused by this negotiation. But I could see in the angle of his neat blond eyebrows that it amused him considerably. It is difficult not to be fond of Charles, for he is a wonderfully decent man despite an affection for finger slides which has always left me a little baffled.

"Just because you're in love with her doesn't give you the right to order me around," Ambrose observed nastily.

Charles snorted softly when my eyebrows reached approximately the level of the exquisite crystal chandelier high above.

"Well, it doesn't," Ambrose groused. "And anyway, she's married."

"Yes, I noted and docketed that salient fact on the occasion of her wedding day," I agreed. "In person."

"Ambrose, just where have you been all these years?" Charles put in doubtfully.

"What do you mean?" Ambrose questioned.

"That's Sherlock Holmes you're speaking with. On the subject of a married woman."

"And so?"

I sighed, examining my fingernails idly. "The only topic which ought to be on your mind just now, Ambrose, is deciding what variety of sport you will hit upon once you have ascended those stairs and passed through the hallway and are taking your ease in the heart of London. With five pounds in your pocket. On a personal note, I can heartily recommend Bunburying, or the playing of backgammon, or any number of Greek pastimes, though on second thought perhaps you ought to think of something less...overtly social in nature."

Charles was smiling by this time at my string of filthy encoded suggestions, but Ambrose had grown a bit purple. "You think I don't know an indorser when I see one? Even if that sod has taken the back passage with half the mandrakes in Christendom--"

"My blushes, sir," I interrupted.

"--and he likely enough has done, that doesn't mean he's not obsessed with her," Ambrose hissed at Charles, thoroughly annoyed.

A new tactic was required. A far colder, not to say crueler one.

"Jealousy does not become you, my good man," I said coyly.

"Jealousy?" Ambrose spluttered. "Well, if that doesn't take the prize. Of all the--you're--"

"Yes, yes, yes, go on. What would you care to call me? I've always thought the term barber's chair quite effective for conjuring the image of a well-used piece of live furnishings. But what you'd like to say is that she won't be overjoyed to hear me playing in your stead. And I'm very much afraid, my dear Ambrose, that you can't."

Ambrose should never have brought up the subject, unfortunately. I am allowed a thousand liberties in her presence he is not, but I am not the first-chair violinist who happens to be in love with her.

"You've always been mad for her," he snapped, colouring. "Just admit it! Why else would a sane, reasonable man work for no pay?"

I satisfied myself with a roll of my eyes in lieu of response, for--knowing Ambrose's gambling woes as I did--it would have been rather uncharitable to say that the last thing I needed in the world was more money.

I ought to mention here that the same absolute secrecy I maintain about myself in police, legal, social, and professional circles is matched in an orchestra pit by the perfect candour of a man who knows he is safe from all harm. The depravities which are habitually discussed in orchestra pits the world over could whiten a weak man's hair. There is security in numbers, and in art, and in fraternity--and in any case I could never have hidden it from them completely, for I've a tendency to treat lovers as if they were pocket handkerchiefs. Prim and bigoted as he was, Ambrose was right about me. But even Ambrose Smith has his noble qualities, even apart from a first-rate attack and a flawless left-hand pizzicato; had a policeman ever asked him a question regarding my predilection for offenses against the person, he would have replied in a heartbeat that Sherlock Holmes was a madman about whom he knew nothing, and that he only desired to keep it that way.

We musicians take care of our own, and it doesn't matter a whit whether or not we like them.

"Who ever said Sherlock Holmes was a sane man?" Charles asked easily. "Or a reasonable one? And when have you ever won an argument with him, even before he took to practicing logic for a living? Now, do toss off, Ambrose, there's a good fellow. You're only wasting your own time. I'll keep your score when he's through with it, and give it back to you tomorrow."

At last, with an exceedingly disgruntled cough and several venomously muttered remarks regarding being cudgeled about by a lobcocked Mary when he was only doing his job, Ambrose made himself absent with five additional pounds in his pocket. I seated myself and leafed through his pages. They were jotted with all his personal scribblings in atrociously crude handwriting, but no matter. When I found what was to be my first effort for the evening, my heart positively skipped a single beat--a lost spasm of muscle, never born, swept away in a stately progression of notes. It was even better than I expected. Simpler, and altogether wonderful.

I cast a happy glance at Charles. He merely sniffed, although he was smiling too. "Why you are such a fool for this cantata is quite beyond me. Although I'll be the last to deny that she does it justice. I suppose that's why you're here tonight, after all this time away from us?"

"For Bach's early religious musings?" I asked innocently, pulling out my bow.

"No, I mean to say--Ambrose talks nothing but bollocks, the poor besotted wretch, but surely you're here to play for her again?"

"Blasphemy. I am here exclusively for you, Charles my darling, and your divinely rich finger vibrato."

He chuckled. "My vibrato, as you call it, belongs to Annie and Annie alone, you grossly flirtatious pinchcock."

"Charles, why must you insist upon breaking my heart each and every time I see you?" I lamented blithely. "I could butter all the buns in the world, but lacking yours--"

"If you are going to be loathsome and inexcusable, you will leave me no choice but to cause you physical harm. After I have heard you play it again, of course. To break your arm beforehand would be a ghastly waste." Charles winked at me almost imperceptibly.

We tuned briefly when we were assembled. The conductor arrived. He raised an eyebrow at me, but then he shrugged as if it made no difference to him. As indeed, it didn't, for he knew me well enough. No sane person complains of substituting an excellent violinist with a masterful one.

Applause above us, then, for she had arrived. Something about the lights shifted, or perhaps it was only my spirit stirring, and underneath the clapping of the audience above me I imagined the susurration of a silken train, the whisper of lace as she nodded and smiled and bowed. I lifted my beloved fiddle as Charles did the same, eying the the slender conductor's hands. He breathed in, his shoulders rising for our benefit, and in that instant before the music started, something within me left the earth just as it always did. I could feel us living, we two violinists, and the violist, and the cellist, could feel us about to commence something divine.

Then we began to play the title aria of Widerstehe doch der Sünde, and nothing beyond the reach of our sound existed any longer.

The chord which begins it is an uneasy dominant seventh, utterly untamed, the sound of all the guilt and present sorrow and yet-unhatched vice in the corrupted currents of this world. Then a melting cadence, a steady uplift. We set off stately and slow with the cello throbbing through all my organs. The lilting phrase of the very first measure whispered in prophecy of what was to come, a generous little melody falling into steadily repeated quarter notes, and those notes anchored us to the natural world in a perfectly straight line. Without those notes, none of the rest would make sense, but they sound like a call to a lover who lingers inches from your embrace. Afterwards we were twisting and binding, flowing and following, caressing before abandoning, inside and around each other in the most intimate act I had experienced in many months. The polished legato phrases were carrying me upward inexorably, and I felt a dazzling ache in the depths of me at the loveliness of it. Widerstehe doch der Sünde is not a difficult piece to play, in fact it is very simple, but oh how I adore it--the painful stillness of my sustains as the melody bowed under me, the playful interludes of synchronous harmony in which we all came together, the moment when I was the one soaring through the night sky above the rest, the rich pulse of the viola and the thrum of the cello, all echoing one another until I didn't know where I ended and a very young Bach strolling through Weimar with Heaven in his head began.

This account takes us exactly ten bars in--after ten bars, she began to sing, and I closed my eyes for a moment to simply breathe it.

She is a contralto, by nature as well as by profession. Where a countertenor lends an air of floating light to the piece, her voice mingles earth and satin and honey and blood. I could taste them when I heard her. The muscles of my arm sent harmonies to entangle themselves with the notes in her open throat, our sound as artful and yet elemental as a snowflake, and I think in that instant I loved her. It was a lament but not a confession, it was the meaning of symmetry matched with the continual threat of imbalance, and she was the sinner caught in the maw of the world.

Hold steadfast against sin, she was singing. The German filtered sketchily through my mind. I still haven't reached a perfect translation. Poisonous are its delights.

Never a truer word sung, of course, but when has foreknowledge stopped a genuine sinner? And I am a genuine sinner if ever one was born on God's earth. A man who is, as a wiser fellow than me once said, to double business bound, neglecting everything he ought to hold most dear.

An empty shadow. A whited sepulcher.

I knew that voice so well, and yet suddenly it was not her voice at all--she was all of us, falling to the ground torn to pieces with bloody desire, the simplicity of the melody the only thing that kept my heart from breaking. Even the fairest sort of transgression, she was saying, was an empty void.

It is the apple of Sodom...and those who are with it united shall never reach God's heavenly realm.

At least, I thought during a shimmering rest and for the five hundredth time since I had first tasted Sodom's irresistible forbidden fruit, I knew what I was in for.

I have never been ashamed of who I am, in the strictly carnal sense. It is a vice in me, doubtless, that my natural instinct is to cherish my vices and not shun them. But one pays for one's pleasures in this world, so I cannot help but think the same principle applies in the next. And I am far crueler than anyone I would ever allow to savour an eternal reward.

Her voice, richer than melted gold, sank into minor deviations as she warned us all to no avail against the designs of Satan which tarnish the glory of God. I do not believe Satan exists--even though I have seen him with my own eyes, staring back from the faces of scores of murderers and predators and turncoats. Hell exists, surely, or there is no justice in creation, but men are evil enough without diabolical otherworldly assistance. But I do believe in God, even though I have never seen Him. I believe in Him because of gifts like her voice. Strange perhaps to disbelieve in something I have seen personally while giving full credit to the invisible, but I was never given the choice of how music would make me feel. Long-held notes floating above the strings faded to piano and then grew into a rolling vibrato which pulsed out of her frame like her heartbeat. When she flitted from note to note I mirrored her in counterpoint, when she flew from branch to branch I sustained long caressing tones, and when I fell silent the others were all around me.

We repeated the theme in a darkly intricate degradation of its first clean song, rife with accidentals and the pitfalls of the everyday. And then she was singing again, and our sins were what bound us to the world. Our atrocities made us all the same.

Sin was our gravity. And music the only thing stronger.

Prayer is an exhaustive waste of my time; there is nothing honest I can say to Him of which He is not already aware. As for being dishonest and flattering while my thoughts remain below, words without thoughts never to Heaven go. But what of thoughts without words? Surely something of the purity of grace I feel when my violin translates for my spirit reaches His ears in spite of my transgressions, or whereto serves mercy? As we glided to the final phrases, it seemed almost possible.

As if I was flawed, hopelessly so, and yet somehow...intended. As if I belonged in the world.

I had pure peace for a moment, when it was over.

We moved steadily on to the next movement. But not before I caught Charles smiling at me with a wondering expression, shaking his head as he deftly turned his page.

"Say hello to your Annie for me," I whispered just before the start.

"That I shall," Charles returned. "She'll be forever sorry not to have heard you again. God knows I would have been."

Hallowed Be Thy Name: Epilogue

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 20:31:58 GMT

About the characters: they are far too good to be mine.

Rating: NC-17

It was four more days before the morphine was completely out of my system and cocaine was approaching its previous status as a necessary but recreational--non-medicinal--device. Those four days were unpleasant, but Watson made them bearable. He also wired Brother Mycroft that we were both safe and the threat permanently dispatched. Lestrade, who seems despite his manners to be one of the single most useful people I know, wrote my statement himself. The Munros dispatched me a lengthy and entirely too sentimental thank you letter, with a bottle of champagne I could not have afforded even if I had pawned my entire wardrobe and my violin. I ordered Mrs. Hudson to chill it and opened it that very evening, which the Doctor protested but which I thought eminently practical. I wanted to share expensive champagne with the Doctor, and there he was. My usual stomach had returned to me. He had hung my door back on its hinges, which was surely cause for several toasts. Life is transient. Why wait?

The next morning, Billy knocked at the sitting room door in his ostentatious way and then entered, carrying a wire. I asked Watson, out of habit, to read it.

"Your brother wants to see you," he reported. "Today, this afternoon if possible, at his lodgings."

We took a leisurely lunch together and then set off, walking for a few pleasant miles before hailing a cab. But as we approached the door of my brother's shabby-genteel boarding house near London Bridge, I began to sense that something was utterly wrong. There were movers bustling about, carrying draped furniture down the stairs and depositing it with no great care in a waiting lorry. My hands turned cold when I spied Mycroft's wardrobe.

He was leaving me.

He was going back to that wretched hulking house, with its horrible damp grounds and its mildewed outer hallways and its drafty fireplaces. He couldn't, I thought with all the panic of a child. No, no, no. He couldn't leave.

I had always assumed my brother had taken up residence in London following the completion of his studies so that he would be able to glare dourly at me from a closer distance. I was already here, after all, taking sporadic courses at University when I could scrape the money together, and sleeping with snidely droll fops for the use of their beds. My brother found a position at Whitehall where he was steadily relied upon if not well paid, and every so often he would demand to know whether I was alive. I would meet him on the University grounds or else in a coffeeshop or at his lodgings for dinner, and he would set in quietly drilling me. When you are studying, are you making certain your mind is fully focused? Have you given any real thought to the practical side of this so-called independent consulting detective enterprise? Where do you reside this month, I wonder? Please tell me you are living discreetly enough for your own good, if not his? You do realize if I ever see you in a green carnation, I shall cause you no end of trouble? I am not overly familiar with the subject, I grant you, but there have been advancements in the realm of protective sheepskin, or so I hear--do you know of them? Are you safe, my dear boy?

Safe.

He couldn't leave. Who would ever ask me such ghastly questions again if he left?

I swallowed hard when I caught the Doctor staring at me and hurried up the stairs past a workman descending with an umbrella stand under his arm. My brother stood in the exact center of his carpet overseeing things.

"For Heaven's sake, do be careful with that box of paperwork," he called out after one of his hirelings. "They are not the sort of documents which can be allowed to fly away. Here, leave it. I shall carry that down myself. Ah, Sherlock," he remarked. "Thank you for coming. Happy to see you, Dr. Watson."

Watson had stepped into the room after me, neatly dodging a traveling desk. "Likewise, Mr. Holmes. You seem in the midst of a change of lodgings."

"Couldn't be helped, now my circumstances have altered somewhat," Mycroft sighed. "It's a terrible expense and bother, not to mention an utter drain on my energy, but look at these rooms. They aren't fit for a factory chandler."

He was right, I thought as I looked around me. I had always known them to be plain. But my brother could never bear the thought of taking a fellow lodger, and so he made what sacrifices were necessary in order to live alone. How could a crumbling pile of a house in the middle of the woods be any better, I wondered desperately.

"Sherlock, you appear rather green," Mycroft remarked. "I would offer you a chair, but there are none left. Have you caught a touch of influenza?"

"No," I sniffed, "although I appreciate your concern. How long has this great shift been in the works?"

"Ever since Father died, I suppose," he shrugged. "When you were offered the chance to share a charming flat in Baker Street, with numerous improved amenities, did you not jump to claim your good fortune?"

I could not credit it at first, but he actually winked at John Watson. The act was nearly inconceivable. I felt myself beginning to turn purple, and then faded back to white again when I recognized he would no longer be anywhere near enough to approve or disapprove of my deviant sex partners. Watson, once he had absorbed the ramifications of the aforementioned wink, had the gall to laugh. With his entire body, as usual.

"I cannot speak for your brother, but I myself was in dreadful lodgings," he said evenly, suppressing a grin as he leaned his back against the bare wallpaper. "Baker Street was a marked improvement in every conceivable way."

"Delighted to hear it. Sherlock, what is wrong with you? Shall I summon an ambulance?"

I could not believe he did not understand what was troubling me. I had one brother, one relation, one family member, one, and he was leaving me for a rotting mansion filled with wretched memories.

"Mycroft," I began. But my voice sounded wrong, so I stopped.

"Sherlock," he replied, and waited.

I swallowed again. If he wanted to leave, it was his business, and after all I had preferred to be a reliable free tumble in the hay rather than live in similar places. Trading sex for room and board was not always a complete travesty, in my experience, but I could not see my fastidious, monkish brother taking a similar route. I was willing to do a great many things that surely he was not, and I could truthfully claim to have enjoyed most of them. It only hurt me that he was going where I would never follow him. It did not seem fraternal to depart for the one place in the world I would never set foot in again. I held out my hand.

"Goodbye, Mycroft," I said as steadily as I could. "I don't know when I shall see you again, but in the meanwhile I wish you all the luck in the world."

"All the luck in the world?" he asked, shaking my hand soberly with his eyebrows raised to their highest height. "Will it prove so long a period that I require so much luck? Are you leaving London, perchance?"

My hand froze. "You are moving away from here. You inherited the estate."

"Which I am selling." He was trying not to smirk at me. "I've taken lodgings in Pall Mall. I've always loved Pall Mall. I can practically see Whitehall from there. Four great, airy rooms, and all to myself. Why are you laughing so, my dear brother?"

I couldn't answer him. I was laughing so hard that I had to lean forward with my hands on my knees for a moment. When I looked up at him, the Doctor was laughing too, although audibly and not because he had been fooled. He was laughing because it had been so long since he had seen me that happy.

"You truly imagined I would return to that godforsaken manor?" Mycroft asked me wryly. "For Heaven's sake make a logical inference or two, my boy. If I were moving to the countryside, would I have wrapped my settee in a single layer of burlap? Have you any observational skills whatsoever?"

"No," I gasped, trying to stop laughing. "I haven't. Why did you want to see me, then, if you are only moving to Pall Mall?"

He walked over the the box of paperwork sitting on the floor and labouriously went down on one knee. "There are some things pertaining to the estate we must settle."

"I'm not touching a scrap of it," I smiled, attempting to get my breath back. "As you reap the rewards, so you perform the labour, my dear Mycroft."

"You don't quite understand," he sighed, heaving himself up again. "He's bequeathed you six thousand pounds."

Six thousand pounds.

I ought to have responded, but I seemed to have forgotten the whole of the English language apart from the word no. That was the one word I could recall which meant, that isn't possible, stop lying to me, whatever cause could you have to invent such a cruel joke, it cannot be so. So I heard myself breathing, "No."

"Oh, yes," Mycroft drawled. "And it amounts to nearly all the securities, once I have liquidated them. When I sell the house and all the properties, I shall still come out the winner, my boy, but I trust you will not begrudge me. If you ever need more, you have only to ask for it. But you see, as you have never possessed quite this much money before, I plan to keep the split uneven in case you prove a wretched manager. I very much doubt that will happen, as you are somewhat intelligent, but call it a whim on my part. I cannot give you more nearly so easily if you already have half."

I was not listening to him. I was thinking about two things instead.

First, I was thinking what it would mean to have six thousand pounds. I would live off the interest. I would take only those cases which presented remarkable features of interest, making no exceptions. I would charge fixed, reasonable rates so that the poor could consult me as easily as the rich. I would turn away from cases of no benefit to my mind. And the Doctor. Dinners at Simpson's and oysters for tea, and we'd go to the opera whenever we pleased. For Heaven's sake, I was composing half-rhymed couplets about it. With the meals I was planning for him, he would have no choice but to gain ten more pounds. But we would never leave Baker Street while we worked as private agents, never, for we had earned that space and it was ours. We could work for just exactly as long as we liked until we were middle-aged, provided he still loved me, and then retire to someplace ridiculous like Sussex and take up absurd hobbies. I would send Wiggins to University when he was old enough, and Billy too, and Cartwright, and none of them would ever take off all their clothing for penury's sake, as I had done. I could be of real benefit to the boys--almost a father, but without the element of fear. I would buy Mrs. Hudson new carpeting. I would find Reggie Asquith in Yorkshire and pay him for my dental work. I would live.

I was also thinking about the will. And about my father. And I was struggling not to drift apart in tiny separate pieces.

"It's all right, my boy," Mycroft said simply. "Steady on. Shall I read it to you? It's very brief."

I nodded.

He commenced in the middle. "'I do hereby beneath all properties, securities, land holdings, furnishings, and other residue of the Holmes estate to my elder son Mycroft Holmes, with a single exception: that he provide in either cash or cheque the single payment of six thousand pounds to my younger son, Sherlock Holmes, with the intent that he use the sum to set himself up in the path he sees fit.'"

I could not breathe. "He disinherited me. You saw him do it. For having pronounced cote du veau correctly, or else for putting sachets of dried chamomile in my dresser drawers, I cannot recall. Do you remember? It was just after he called me a vile little buggerer, I believe."

"Well, clearly he un-disinherited you," Mycroft observed testily. "Watch your language, petit frere, for mercy's sake. You were not born in a Limehouse dockyard, wheresoever you choose to pass your time as an adult and whatsoever leisure activities you choose to revel in. I'll thank you to keep a civil tongue in my dwelling, even if it is bereft of furniture. Particularly as regards yourself."

(I would pay a small fortune--and I now have one--to be able to recall just what Watson looked like during this portion of the conversation. I do understand that my brother and I, for various reasons, are...unnaturally frank with one another. And as I recall, apart from the wretched fight, Watson had never seen us in action. He had certainly never seen us bandy the subject of casual sodomy as if it were a shuttlecock. The wink had been so well received that I wonder if he was amused by it. His expression, however, is regrettably lost to time.)

"I always watch my language, and very carefully," I snapped. "My tongue is merely adhering to facts. I'm simply quoting our father, who art in...hell, I can only assume, unhallowed be his name."

"Heaven or hell, he left you a large sum of money. And do not accuse me of forgery. I should simply have given you half if this were not already set down."

I heard Watson returning from the outer hallway, not having realized he'd left. He hoisted a cane-backed chair in his hands, the one I had seen on the landing. He set it down with an expression which brooked no argument. "Sit," he ordered.

I did. I think my limbs were shaking rather badly. I cannot recall.

"But why?" I whispered, almost inaudibly. I could feel both of Watson's hands on my shoulders.

"Perhaps because he loved Mother, and you're nearly an exact copy of her," Mycroft suggested tonelessly. "Perhaps because he was sorry to have caused you any harm. Which do you prefer?"

I thought it over.

"I don't know."

"Well, you are allowed your choice of them," he shrugged. "I need your signature on these legal documents. Here, and just there. Take them with you, for I've lost my pens already. You can send them back to me by courier."

Ridiculous alternative explanations were filtering through my head. Because he supposed a queer more likely to carry on the family name than a celibate--two men having sex at least involves ejaculate, after all, however improbable conception might prove. Because he was coerced by a new lover. Because six thousand pounds is nearly, though only nearly, the proper recompense for having left a person huddled in the corner like a kicked dog on too many occasions. Because he was afraid of hell. Because when he dragged me home all those many times, it was due to his having missed me. Because his mind finally snapped.

Watson eventually took the papers from Mycroft and put them in his inner pocket, seeing that I was sitting perfectly still.

"Thank you, Mycroft," I said dazedly. "I suppose we ought to leave you to it."

"Very considerate of you," he smiled as I rose to my feet. "I hope to see you within the fortnight at Pall Mall. I cannot tell you how gratified this financial freedom makes me. It feels as if all my fondest desires are within my grasp. Perhaps I shall found my own club in which the members are expressly forbidden to speak to one another, and commence spending all my time there. Oh, and Doctor Watson?"

We were halfway to the door. "Mr. Holmes?" he answered warmly.

"Do try not to tire of Sherlock for some little period, if you find it possible. He very nearly told me a few minutes ago that he would miss me terribly if I left London. He quite failed at the end, but you saw how close he came to it. I cannot help but think your influence is positive."

Watson, smiling wistfully, replied, "If you will pardon my saying so, your brother is much more likely to tire of my company than I of his, I assure you, Mr. Holmes."

I looked down at Watson's sun-faded brown head from my greater height. Then I looked across at my brother on an identical plane. He was staring at me with an amused twist to his thin lips. He has watched me in just such a fashion ever since first I came into the world, and he is the only one who can claim so any longer. And there are several excellent reasons for him to hate me, including the trouble I have caused him, but he refuses to entertain a one of them. He is one of the best men I know.

"I would miss you terribly if you left London, brother mine," I said. I meant every word.

"Dear me," he smiled. "You are not getting more than six thousand pounds unless you need it, petit frere, or years from now you are discovered to have been very prudent with the initial sum. Now, run along."

When we reached the outdoors, four of the workmen would have certainly trampled me with a dining service had John Watson not dragged me out of harm's way. We walked away from Mycroft's old habitat, breathing London air in silence. I don't know how long we walked. I always know where I am, but in a wondrous city like London, I do not always know where I am going. My friend could probably hear my mind working, so furiously was it clanging between my ears, but he said nothing, only allowed me some peace.

I vaguely recall his leading us into a cafe. Then I believe we sat at a friendly wooden table off in the corner where no one could possibly hear us. Two pints of ale appeared in front of us, and I have no idea how they came to be there. Then Watson spoke, and I snapped out of my dazed state.

"Are you all right, my dear fellow?"

I thought about it long and hard. And against every one of my screaming instincts replied, "No, I'm not all right in the slightest just now. But I think very possibly I will be later. When I've had a little time."

Dr. Watson smiled very slightly, but it was a smile with such an intensity of affection that he may as well have been beaming at me. He leaned toward me and rested his elbows on either side of his glass. "I have something important to say to you."

What more wretched, panic-inducing words exist in any language under the sun? And since I am a supremely composed person, I think I only lifted an eyebrow, but Watson knows me rather well and interpreted it correctly.

"No, no, dearest, it has nothing to do with you." His smile faded into a rueful frown at one corner of his full mouth, tugging his moustache toward his ear. It was altogether new, and the most endearing expression I had ever seen, but before I could fully bask in it, it settled into a pensive look I knew rather better. "Well, it does have to do with you, but it has rather more to do with me. You see, I think I ought to warn you that my health is improving considerably. I cannot say with any truth that I am like myself again, but I am growing steadily to be like...like whatever new person I shall eventually become. It's growing closer. I am far less panicked, and less ill, and less confused, and a very great deal of the credit for that goes to you. I shall never be able to repay you for what you have done for me, especially since you don't understand what you've done for me and would never believe me if I tried to convince you." He looked down, suddenly rather abashed, with the muscles surrounding his eyes constricting uncomfortably. This expression was, shockingly, also new. Before I could so much as begin to document that look, he declared with purposeful smoothness, "I am grateful to you. I will always be grateful, to the end of my days. But now that I am feeling so much better, I think you ought to know that you are no longer the one who makes all the rules."

I blinked at him.

"You make most of the rules," he said wryly. "And within the scope of certain of your...talents, you may feel free still to make all of them, as I've never objected to a single thing you've ever enacted upon...ever enacted, in that sense. But I've a few rules of my own, now. They're very simple. No more morphine. No more starving. No more martyrdom. No matter how well-intentioned. Cocaine vexes me greatly, but we'll cross that bridge later. Having a slight appetite is acceptable, for I know you can't help it, but three days without food is not. And if you ever again punish yourself the way you did a few days ago, no matter how genuinely guilty you feel, you will wish you had not. Do I make myself perfectly clear?"

"I..." I was forced to swallow, as I seemed to have forgotten the way to begin a proper sentence steadily.

Watson took a sip of his beer, which allowed me more time. But all I managed to stammer was, "Why the devil are you telling me this now?"

"Very simple. Now, you don't need to live with anyone unless you desire to do so. For the very first time, from what I understand, in your entire adult life. Two things have changed monumentally for you in the past hour, Sherlock Holmes: financial independence, and voluntarily complied-with rules. You will always, God willing, have the former, but you may take or leave the latter."

I can hardly fathom, recalling it now, how the look on his sweet, weathered, still-boyish face could possibly have been so very vulnerable. What he was asking me was no more than what my brother had asked--to be well, and not sorry, so that he could see it. It meant he loved me. It was no threat or ultimatum, nothing he ought to have worried over no matter how masterful or (incredibly, unfathomably) wealthy I happened to be. But as I have already said, the man suffers from several bizarre misconceptions. Or perhaps we were so accustomed to having no money that having money had thrown his nerves into some disorder. I still don't know. I haven't the smallest notion. Ninety-five percent of him, at present accounting, is a complete mystery to me. But I already loved him and honoured him, so it was no great sacrifice to obey him as well.

"If you are willing to continue living with me now I'm financially solvent, I am willing to obey the rules you've set out," I answered him. "Obedience is...not a strong suit with me. But I accept."

He blew out a long breath and then drew a hand gently across his brows, smiling all the while. "Thank you. I feared I would offend you."

"On the contrary."

"I was really quite concerned I might."

"Watson, you may not be an invalid any longer, but I'm beginning to think you might be a lunatic."

He threw his head back and laughed so hard he would have drawn looks in our direction had the room not been so dark and so full. When he could breathe again, he joked, "I ought to have pressed my advantage rather further, I see."

I shrugged. "Well, if you should think of any other precepts you'd like me to obey, do apprise me of them."

His eyes glinted. "Shall I?"

"If you promise to continue on as my flatmate, certainly." I took a sip of the beer, but found I wanted something else far more. I rose to my feet and held out a hand.

"Come with me, my dear fellow. Come home."

That was a week ago this Friday. And today, just after taking a small dose of cocaine, I found the latest manuscript. Sherlock Holmes was a man who seldom took exercise for exercise's sake. And I could not comprehend it, and then I was confounded by it, and then it distressed me so badly that I took the second dose of cocaine. And now, standing in my bedroom staring at the blasted thing with my sleeve rolled neatly down again, I can hear Watson stirring in the bed behind me.

"Oh," he says softly. "I forgot I left that there. It isn't quite...finished."

"Did you intend to hide it?" I inquire, sharper than I mean to.

"No, of course not. But one doesn't like to see unfinished projects bandied about."

I tap my long fingers on it for a moment. Then I give in to temptation or frustration and demand to know just what is this object I've stumbled across. And why have so many other tales in Watson's handwriting begun popping up near the butter dish? What does he want me to say about them? He looks immediately defensive, as he has every right to do. Sitting up, Watson draws the sheets over his lap and makes an effort to appear more dignified, more perceptive, and less sleepy.

"I meant for it to be a short story. I mean, they're all short stories. I think...well, perhaps I'm wrong, but I need a new profession, you see. I have no intention of being either a ghastly doctor or a professional invalid. My writing has been said to be...quite good, Holmes. Maybe publishable. In essence, that document in your hand is the story of what befell us in Norbury."

Regrettably, I glare daggers at him.

"In essence, it's nothing of the kind. Had you just said 'in form,' or 'in name,' you would have a point, but in essence, this is a complete fabrication."

"Holmes, I--I didn't mean to anger you with my portrayal of your character," he says, visibly hurt. "I'll--"

"My character is perfectly fine. I've a sense of humour, or I'd have long ago passed out of the world. And when you tease me, I know how well you are faring, dear chap. The rest is what troubles me."

"But the rest is quite good!" he protests, now entirely vexed at me. "The mystery holds together, and the descriptions, and--Holmes, you've read other of my drafts before now and never been this critical. I need not publish an account of failure if--"

"My pride is such, Watson, that publishing an account of my failure could not possibly even dent it. You could publish a brief account of me failing as your initial offering and I would not even blink. Put it anywhere. Put it in the Strand, for all I care."

"Holmes--"

"No, please, I insist. Write me down an ass, have me beaten by a society female if you so desire, and then shout it to all the world in a family magazine."

"Lower your voice," he pleads. "If not my portrayal of you--and I do apologize for the twitting, if it in any way irks you--then what is wrong with them?"

"You aren't in them!" I cry. I lift the papers and then drop them to the table again. Then I walk forward and kneel onto the bed, advancing until we are mere inches apart. I want to understand this, and I want him to grasp the question. "Where are you? You say this is publishable. That several of them are. I agree with you. I have every admiration for what could be a very lucrative new career for you. But think about it, darling--people will surely tire of hearing so much about me exclusively."

His lips purse, and a line forms between his brows. "As much of myself as I wish to be in them is there."

"But--"

"Do you really suppose I wish to spend time describing myself, love? I am not as I used to be. I am very, very changed, though you are in no position to recognize it. I was another man once. I cannot pretend otherwise, and you know it."

"You change everything else about the ways things actually happened. I am the only remotely recognizable figure in them. And I love you. Why can you not--"

He flinches. "I change them as I please, I admit, but it would kill me to write, 'the heartily healthy and sound Dr. John Watson darted up his seventeen foyer steps to take his tea.' Do not ask me to do such a thing."

"But why do you write them this way at all?" I plead with him. "I need to know."

"There are two reasons. One, when I was in the war..." he clears his throat. "I wrote in a journal about my day to day hardships. I changed the endings as it suited my pleasure. Take for example the case of a battle in which we had been routed, or a soldier who died screaming for his mother. I changed them. The battle was won with miraculously few casualties, and the soldier lived, and I recorded in my diary that I mailed a letter for him to his kin saying he would be returning home within the month. It was the Afghan War that made me begin altering stories. I grew used to relying on it, as a way of making my days less black. Along with the morphine, as you know."

I am numb with fear already. For him to doctor our facts means they are harrowing, surely, and that he wishes not to remember us as we truly are. I can understand why, but nevertheless it cuts deeply. When he sees my expression, he reaches for my hand and kisses it, tender and slow, on my palm. He sets it down on his breastbone.

"The other reason is that men like us must take precautions. I wish to publicize your remarkable talents, but I can hardly be very literal about us, can I, no matter how your consulting firm might benefit from a bit of press? Perhaps twenty or thirty years from now, someone from the Force may notice that two bachelors have been residing happily together all their lives. Fifty years from now, suspicions may run still higher. Questions could easily arise, you see. We need a proper smokescreen."

And now I've done it. Again. There is so much cocaine trickling through my system that I could put my head through a window. Why would I ruin a moment like this, if he means what I think he does? Why can I not discern what percentage of my pulse galloping and my eyes dimming is chemical, and what is my natural reaction to the most wonderful thing anyone has ever said to me? Why have I impaired myself to the point that I know he can see it, and still worse that I cannot answer him with any elegance? I am so astounded that I say the first thing which enters my head.

"Do you know, John Watson, I would marry you if only I could," I whisper.

He laughs gaily. He still has my hand, so he does not brush his own hair back this time. But the laugh is nevertheless with his entire being, as it always is, and in a voice as deep and polished as antique wood, and his blue eyes close for a moment.

"You don't need to marry me for our relations to be...well, hallowed, my dear fellow," he says. "But if you asked, I would certainly say yes. Sod my short stories. You're rich, you know."

I laugh at that, right along with him. The word sounds ridiculous when applied to me. I am still thinking of all the freedoms it will give me, and the strange way my father seems to have set me free of him of his own volition.

"Let us just assume I am married to you, and leave it at that," he suggests. "What will be your first extravagance now you are a wedded man of considerable means?"

"I've been entertaining the most delicious fantasies of bursting in upon Reggie without an appointment and handing him the ten quid I owe him," I say thoughtlessly. "He would blush to the tips of his ears at the sight of me, which would be enormously amusing."

"Who is Reggie?" the Doctor smiles. "An old flame of yours, perhaps?"

I freeze for a moment. And then it is all--in spite of everything that has ever happened to me--so absurdly simple.

"Did I never tell you of Reginald 'Spots' Asquith?"

"I don't think so."

I have, of course, but in French. I can't very well expect him to recall something he could not even understand.

"Have you ever heard my Newcastle accent?"

His eyes narrow in amusement. "Your Edinburgh is splendid, as are your Liverpool and your Welsh and your American. But Newcastle--no, I don't believe I have. Why do you ask? Was this fellow Mr. Asquith from Newcastle?"

"He didn't sound it. But thereby hangs a sordid tale of crime and punishment," I grin. "And a tale in which I have enacted a starring role literally hundreds of times. I could never decide whether my favourite line he'd written for the part was, 'You know why you are here, Mr. Asquith, and we complete the projects we begin at this institution, so I'll thank you to get on your knees and finish while I watch you at work,' or else perhaps, 'Now, just reach back and spread yourself, Mr. Asquith, and you shall properly thank me for your chastisement.'"

"Good lord," he marvels, his sculpted jaw dropping. "Your Newcastle accent is first-rate. And I don't blame you. They are...profoundly compelling, the both of them. Might I ask, if I have a thorough grasp of the situation and will not offend you, which of his lines you most enjoyed?"

Considering, I remark, "I suppose the request, 'I beg that you give me an additional twenty with your hand, sir, as my shameful crime seems too personal to finish with the cane,' always struck me as rather inspired."

The Doctor is laughing helplessly, and now his hand at last rises to grip at his hair in disbelief. "Inspired? It's unparalleled genius."

"That wasn't the half of it. The real story involved a good deal more in the way of atmosphere and stage properties."

I tell it to him. He laughs in all the right places, every one of the moments which privately used to bring me nearly to tears with amusement at my poor lover's expense, and remarks that what Reggie lacked in imaginative variety, he seemed to have made up for in the initial superb quality of the scene, and roundly congratulates him. He says he would enjoy meeting him, but if I suspected it might conceivably make Reggie uncomfortable or cause him any pain that I ought to go alone to return his ten pounds. Then he asks me if I suppose I can prove inventive enough to somehow deflower (in technique or positioning) my none-too-virginal spouse, and gives me ten minutes to think it over.

I have come to the conclusion recently that even if I am not now--nor ever shall be--all right, with considerable effort I can yet be very happy. I shall require three things at minimum for this scheme to work, or all will fall to pieces: I shall need cases to keep my mind occupied, and my brother to stay in London, and the Doctor in my bed. But I am going to make every attempt to keep those three factors present, and as for the rest, I shall do what I can. I am wondering now whether lowering my cocaine solution to seven or eight percent, and forever refraining from the habit whenever there is a case to keep me focused, might be the beginning of an atonement for the life of John Openshaw. And even if it is not, it would be a gesture of my great sorrow, at the same time as it would please the Doctor. I shall ask him about it, when all is clear in my head. He does seem, as surprising as it is, to think himself likely to remain with me, so I do not suffer for lack of time to think it through.

That is the one paramount blessing upon which all the rest hinges, I know--John Watson is my religion, my avocation, my single hallowed addiction. And merely writing his name, seeing the letters as they are formed by the pen in my hand, is enough to make all the rest of it disappear.

Wait a moment.

He never said so. But...now I think I may know why there is so much of me in his stories. Perhaps. Though to believe for good and all he truly feels that way about me would be...life-altering. I cannot really suppose he has done the same thing that I just have? Can I?

Well, bless his fictions, then. He can write me down all he likes, and if it's my name he needs, he can have it. He can own it for the rest of his days. It was never of any use to me, after all.

Hallowed Be Thy Name IV

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 20:30:00 GMT

About the characters: they are far too good to be mine.

Rating: NC-17

Darkness fell at some point during my journey. The shabbiness of my brother's neighbourhood quite depresses me, and more so at night. This distaste robbed me of the hesitation I would otherwise have felt in confronting him again with such a nasty display of temper still upon my conscience. I rang the bell without a second thought, and then stood staring at my hand, hoping against hope that perhaps I had dreamed the whole episode--that I had in fact never made the implication that my brother would ever enjoy applying something heavy to my hide for a lark.

Mycroft was a long time coming to his door. When he saw me, he stepped back without any expression whatsoever. It must have been challenging, my face looking the way it did, but he is still more self-possessed than I am.

"How was the funeral?" I inquired.

"Sad. Poorly attended. Difficult. What are you doing here?"

"I need your help," I said.

That raised an eyebrow. "Do you indeed? I had supposed you were past all that, now I am--'lord of the manor,' was it?"

I winced. I deserved whatever I got from Mycroft, and I knew it. But there were lives at stake and one of them was mine. One of them was even more important than that.

"I've fallen afoul of some rather interesting characters," I confessed to him.

"Well, it was only a matter of time, wasn't it? Let us be practical. The way you carry on."

"No, not homosexual. Interesting. Violent. Mycroft, I need you. Please."

He sighed somewhere deep in his bulky chest and consulted the time on his watch. The answer he received from the pocket timepiece vexed him considerably, and he scowled at it in a cold fury. "You look a fright, you know. You'll terrify my fellow impoverished tenants. Are you going to come inside, Sherlock, or shall I continue standing here in my open doorway at an angle clearly inviting you in for a while longer?"

"I didn't suppose you'd want me...in," I whispered.

"For pity's sake, dear child, come inside before I collapse on my feet."

I did. He lumbered back to his desk, a shabby piece of abused wood covered in papers and three candles. He was working by candlelight again, and clearly on a number of differing projects. Mycroft loathes candlelight, for it makes his eyes tired, but he also abhors wasting funds by way of gas. When I peered down at the papers curiously, he dropped a huge atlas over the top of them and glared at me, nodding in the direction of an adjacent chair. I made an effort to look as if sitting in it had been my own idea and then crossed my legs. He was not fooled.

"It's ridiculous, really," he told me dourly. "I am a subordinate with no ambitions of any kind, will receive neither honour nor title, collect a pitiful yearly salary, and yet see the floodgates of information they have opened to your humble sibling. Should I like, I may orchestrate a coup. Every department has taken to passing me their problems, as if I can shear through Gordian knots."

"I'd wager you can."

"Flattery will accomplish you nothing whatsoever, young man. What have you done?"

I told him, ending with the words "Ku Klux Klan."

He whistled. "You sound in a pretty fix. Do please tell me you have taken precautions in getting here?"

"Of course I have, but I need to know where this villain has come from. I suspect he arrived in the wake of Effie Munro's daughter Lucy, for I received the first warning following that case, but I need to know passenger manifestos to be certain. They arrived on a barque called the Lone Star. That much I can manage tomorrow when the offices open, but only you can use your Whitehall contacts to identify any known or suspected Klansmen. My strong inclination is to infer that a Klansman from the same vessel, quite clearly a madman to boot, followed Lucy Hebron to Norbury when he questioned why she was traveling with a white nursemaid, but then was immediately distracted by an even greater affront to his sensibilities in a nearby household. John Openshaw had a housekeeper of African descent. Beautiful, from what I'm told. Whether they were living in sin together or not is beside the point--to a vengeful maniac, even the indication meant death. Better to prevent what he perceived as Effie Munro's crime than to dwell on a well-guarded little girl. And now, you see, he has diverted his very single-minded attention to your younger brother, who orchestrated the reconciliation between the diversely ancestored members of the Munro household. He may perhaps even have realized Openshaw consulted me. The scoundrel considers me a nemesis. I need you to pick a likely suspect or two from a list of names for me by consulting the American police."

Mycroft was nodding gravely, scratching notes in his drunken crab script in the margin of a document on the edge of his desk. "You'll wire me the passenger list?"

"As soon as ever I can."

"Where is your Dr. Watson?"

"At home, with a loaded gun in his hand and a police inspector at his elbow. I must get back to him."

"I should say you must. I'll alert the proper channels that there has recently landed a very unsavoury element, and on the moment I hear word from the authorities in America, you can rely on my immediate telegram."

"Thank you for helping me," I breathed. "I didn't suppose--"

"When have I ever refused you help without your asking, let alone your asking twice?" he retorted disgustedly. "Your regard for my sympathetic character knows no bounds, does it?"

"After what I said, it seemed a great deal to ask."

His face softened. "We cannot help who we are, Sherlock, only what we do and how often. And I assure you that nothing you are capable of doing could cost you my fraternity. In any event, wiring America on the subject of Klansmen will be thrilling in comparison to my current vast roster of duties. It may perhaps prove the most enjoyable thing I have ever done for you. I cannot claim to have enjoyed stealing the garret key and smuggling you raw carrots and leftover meat pies."

I felt a damnable lump rising in my throat and forced it back down where it belonged. "I still hate raw carrots and meat pies," I admitted.

"As I should have done in your place."

"I never thanked you properly. I think if you had not been there, I may have lost my mind as thoroughly as Father had."

"You've no need to thank me for anything," he replied quietly. "You've never needed to thank me. You've only a lifelong obligation to perform regular maintenance on the project I started--that is to say, your upkeep. What the devil have you been doing with yourself, Sherlock? I would not be exaggerating to state that you look more than half dead."

"Only just half," I attempted with what must have been a ghastly smile, but I had forgotten my lip was split and winced at the end of it.

No one can sigh more deeply than my brother, and that was one of his finest efforts.

"You realize, all joking aside, that anyone who dares to lay a hand on you for the rest of our lives has me to answer to, don't you? Now, who hit you?"

I hesitated, and the sigh was repeated with the addition of uncrossed arms and his hands passing up and down his heavy face.

"I'll try better, Mycroft," I promised him. "I couldn't truthfully say that yesterday, but now--I spoke with my friend, you see. The Doctor. And I'll try. To...to take more care with myself."

"Your friend," Mycroft mused. He steepled his fingers. "I rather like your friend. He seems steady. He is twice the man that most of your other...attachments have been. With noted exceptions. Please tell me your lip has nothing to--"

"For the love of God, Mycroft, I'm an invert, not a masochist," I countered emphatically. "I've known several masochists, and trust me, you are not looking at one."

"Sherlock, as compelling as an account of the masochists you have known--doubtless in the Biblical sense, I am under no illusions on the subject--would prove, I only meant to confirm he is good to you."

"He's miraculous," I murmured. "The only one I've ever met who treats me as well as you do."

He nodded. "Go back to him, then. Wire me the instant you've news."

On my way to the door, I stopped. I had just come to a realization. And as it happened, it was a rather shameful one.

"Mycroft, would it have been very much easier for you if I had accompanied you to the ceremony?"

He considered. When he did, I had my answer, and I cursed myself for the seven hundredth time that week. But nevertheless I waited for his reply. He dragged himself up and walked over to me.

"I should never have asked you, petit frere," he concluded. "And in retrospect, no, it would not have. I should have been obliged to keep you well and calm and away from Remy Verner's throat. He asked after you, by the way. He wants to treat you to a meal at his surgeons' club. You ought to take him up on it, get a little of your own back."

He looks so much older than I. My grey eyes are often enough cutting as metal, and I know it, but my brother's are swiftly fading to charcoal. Mycroft was born on the Continent, a full seven years before me, and although we never speak of it I believe there were several miscarriages my mother survived between he and I and between my sister and myself. She was only thirty-two when they placed her in the ground. But seven years does not account for Mycroft's looks. Somehow privation turned me into a marble-hewn youth, still the image of myself at twenty-one, while my brother grows prematurely withered for all his bulk. The war against chaos damages a person.

"I don't know how to protect you in turn," I confessed. "But I would like to have said that I tried. I could not have accompanied you, but I'm very sorry for it."

"Don't be sorry," he smiled, putting both his long arms round my shoulders sadly. "I don't want you to be sorry, you must understand. Just be well, so that I can see it."

I clung to my brother for a long moment, a shamefully passionate moment, and then I left without a word. By the time I had run most of the way back to the well-lit roads, the fact that the two men I loved best in the world could be so good to me had settled under my skin, and was no longer burning in my eyes like smoke from a structure fire.

I came in the back way again, scraping my shin on the fence as I scaled it, and then crept round the scullery to the darkened staircase. I was not, I repeat, afraid of a man who had clearly only managed to kill another after having lured him down to the Embankment. But I had no notion of where the villain was hiding, after all, or whether he had procured accomplices, and still worse I had no evidence against the invisible fiend as of yet. Setting my foot on the stair, I glanced upward. The shadowy figure of the Doctor, having heard me enter with senses honed by battlefields, stood in the doorway to the sitting room with a gun gripped lightly in his fingers.

"It's only me," I mouthed softly, raising a hand.

"Of course it's you." His rich, slightly Scottish voice fell upon my ears like the crimson leaves which blanket Regent's Park in the autumn. "I think I can recognize my own flatmate in the dark."

He did not mean the flatmate portion. That was for Lestrade's benefit, who now crowded behind him. But he did mean the my own segment of the sentence, and when I looked up at him gratefully, he knew I had understood.

The state of the sitting room told me several things as they stepped aside to allow me through the door.

There was a deck of cards on the dining table, stacked but recently used. Two new glasses had made an appearance, and an empty bottle of Beaune sat upon the sideboard. Books had left the shelves and been discussed on the indented settee cushions. But the room was not the only evidence at hand. What was still more telling--telling to an almost unholy degree of obtuseness--was that Lestrade's tie had left his neck behind a little. He had loosened it. In my house, no less.

I turned my face to the sideboard to hide my exhausted smile and fetched out another bottle and a third glass. Leave John Watson alone for two hours, and the man will form a fast friendship. I had thought as much. He seemed to have fallen into a warm companionship with me in about five minutes, after all, and had once covered my share of the rent without even idly wondering whether I'd bring him off in exchange for it. The man trusts his fellows. Now I just had to make certain I left him to his own devices more often among worthy men. That would be wretchedly difficult for an arrogant narcissist like me, but worth it to see him happy.

"Tell us, my dear fellow," Watson said when I had a drink in my hand, "what is going on?"

We sat down, Watson in his chair and Lestrade and I on the sofa, and I told them all about it. I began with the Ku Klux Klan, which organization I had studied as part of my general researches, moved on to our despised efforts on behalf of Lucy Hebron, and ended with the suggestion that I had become, along with the Doctor and for the second unwelcome time in my life, an idee fixe.

"First thing in the morning you must go to the naval offices and send the passenger manifesto from last arrival of the barque Lone Star to my brother," I finished to Lestrade. "He'll determine who the culprit is likeliest to be, or so I hope. When we've an idea who we're looking for..."

"We look for him," Watson finished coolly, draining his wine. "Lestrade, when Mr. Mycroft Holmes wires you back in the morning or early afternoon, we'll hope to see you here?"

"Of course, Dr. Watson," Lestrade smiled. Then his smile faded, and his squeezed-together face with its close-set eyes darkened a little. I asked myself why, but nothing came to mind.

"Then good night to you, Inspector. I'm very grateful for the company you provided. And I assure you, my own aunt would never have suffered such a pleasurable offer to be wasted, maiden or no."

Lestrade laughed conspiratorially at this bizarre private joke, looking as if Watson had just handed the lonely little ferret a pearl beyond price, nodded to us both, and departed. It was a swift and unnecessary exit. What was more, he had looked...not frightened, not that exactly, but concerned somehow, as if he needed to be elsewhere very badly. I turned to stare at the Doctor, my eyes wondering what had just happened as the firelight played over the planes of his cheekbones.

"Look at your hands," he said quietly.

I did. They were twitching and every so often jumping slightly, and the very moment I saw them the pain of morphine's absence hit my entire torso like a freight train. I felt myself turning the colour of my own eyes. My insides were twisting violently, and whereas I had thought the room warm enough a moment ago, now that I knew my own condition it was suddenly deathly cold.

"In that case, I don't blame him," I gasped. "He suffers enough at my hands without being forced to watch a degenerate go through morphine withdrawal."

Watson was already returning from my bedroom by that time, with my morocco case in his hands. The one I had hidden away from his sight for six months, and which I had been forced to bid him fetch for me so that I could accomplish the feat of rising from my bed that afternoon. His steady, professional hands were already opening it, already preparing a dose of the cocaine I kept in ready supply as I looked at him miserably.

"You aren't a degenerate," he smiled. "Or at least, Lestrade doesn't think so. And neither do I. You really are a bit hard on people at times, you know, Holmes. Under all that bluster, I believe the Inspector admires you."

"I'm hard on everyone," I sighed. "To every man his just deserts. I don't enjoy it any more than Lestrade does. As you pointed out, I subject myself to the same treatment and come off the worse for it."

"How I manage to rate so highly is utterly beyond me, then."

"I know it is. That's a part of the reason. A fraction, but there you are."

"In any case, it wasn't him I was protecting. You would have noticed sooner or later when you came down from your mental flight of logical inference that you were shaking like a leaf, and what I'm doing now would have mortified you much more than the Inspector."

"What it is you're doing, then?" I asked in disbelief as he rolled up my sleeve.

"Preventing you from entering the throes of full morphine withdrawal until after your life is no longer threatened by another element entirely," he replied with a sort of sad, calm resignation. "One threat to your life at a time."

I couldn't watch him do it. I tried to, for I've no fear of needles by this time, but the act was a grotesque one. It took him only a little longer to find a good vein in all that mess than it would have taken me, for he is an excellent doctor.

And I knew why he refused to use my right arm, though it would have been twenty times easier. He wanted that one unblemished. Pure.

I only wished I could have known what he was thinking as he penetrated me in a way he never had before, deftly pushing the little piston home with the ease of long practice. I had only ever done such a thing to myself, in solitude. Even earlier that afternoon, I had insisted on going about the act alone. Within a few seconds, the labyrinth my stomach had twisted itself into lessened to a mere maze. And in another few seconds, I understood a tiny fraction of John Watson for the very first time. I may as well say the skies opened. It was a heavenly sensation which had nothing to do with the drug. For he had previously been a weightless cipher I had been frantically trying to keep within my grasp--but that act, in that moment, I at last understood, even if it was only a fragment of him. I opened my eyes again. I wanted to see the man who loved me so profoundly he would actually give me a dose of a substance he despised. He was only a foot away from my face, kneeling on the carpet before me to give the injection, returning the syringe to the case.

"Do you recall when you were ill with fever, and I wanted nothing on earth more than to learn a way to fix it?" I asked. "That night before we first came together, when I wanted like nothing I'd ever wanted to ease your pain?"

Lids blinked over the blue for a moment as he set the case on the table, and then his hands came down to grip my knees. "I didn't know you felt quite that way at the time. I should never have let you return downstairs. But in any case...yes?"

"That's what you look like now. The way I felt."

My friend leaned forward until our lips met. It was a gentle kiss. He didn't want to do the cut any further damage. But it proved none the less heady for its softness, the way champagne is none the less potent for being half air. Our lips and breath tangled together with no thought of deepening it, for it was already perfect as it was.

It lasted longer than any kiss of that nature I had ever experienced. When he finally drew back an inch, Watson smiled. "And do you recall what you promised me, when I teasingly doubted my nerves could stand the degree of pleasure you were planning to inflict on my person?"

I nodded. I remembered it as if it were five minutes previous. I remembered because I had wanted to tell him how I felt about him without telling him I loved him, for fear it would drive the poor man straight out the door.

"Well, now it is my turn," my boy announced, standing up. "I will take care of you."

"Where are you going?"

"Come with me, love, I want to show you something."

Watson took me back to my bedroom. He brought his service revolver with him and placed it on the bedside table. He helped me with buttons, and folded my waistcoat over a chair, and built up the fire until it was blazing, and for once I felt not the slightest bit of guilt over such gestures. Sydney, bless him, had used to like to spend quite elaborate care over my person--my wardrobe proclaims as much--but his appreciation of disrobing me stemmed from his own desires for me. They were kindly, but a river that flowed in one direction. I never felt I deserved them, for I didn't love him and he knew it.

We lay down together, without any clothing separating our bodies, and then he placed his hands on me.

He ran his hands over my face first, a pale feather of a touch, and then over my neck and my shoulders, over my ribs and my stomach. The Doctor drew his fingertips down my sides and over my jutting hipbones and skimmed the depression of lower abdominal muscle of which I had always been rather proud in secret. He stroked across my thighs and my hips and my calves, and when he had caressed every single part of me save that which he'd now awakened, he returned to my face and began again with his lips. My friend tenderly opened his mouth and explored it all anew, my chest and my flanks and my forearms right down to the fingertips, over which he lingered to give himself a small reward, as he is always slightly preoccupied by my hands. He laved his tongue over my fingers each in turn, and then moved with reluctance back up my arms to spend five minutes in the hollow of my neck. And by some miracle, I felt no need to be anything other than what I was--a boneless, breathless creature lying on my back doing nothing save tremble occasionally and feel the warmth of his tongue traveling over my the crook of my elbow and the lobe of my ear. It was the best comfort I could have imagined. Better than I could have imagined, unless I had been the one trying to comfort him.

I was very nearly asleep when he did take me in his mouth. So near to it, in fact, that I never consciously noticed my hand moving to rest against his cheek, feeling the motion and the contrast of soft against hard, skin sheathing firm solidity versus the skin of the pliant lips surrounding it. Then I came back to myself a little. I gently pushed my index finger into his mouth alongside my cock, and winced with the aching pleasure of being pleased for no other reason than that he wanted to. When my finger breached his lips, his tongue twirling slowly around the newcomer, he moved the hand that wasn't cradling the base of my shaft down his own body. I lost sight of it, but he must have gathered the moisture from the tip of his own member, for he shuddered slightly and then his wet fingers were searching under my sac and downward--not entering me, not yet, only slowly caressing the way he had done with the rest of my body, taking his time, and I buried a moan in the back of my throat.

I could feel my spine sparking into a long cord of light when he did press a single finger within, and from the sound I recall making, he knew I wanted more. So he continued, over many long minutes. He continued, with his mouth and his two hands and three fingers, until I gasped for air and stopped him, all my own fingers in that golden hair.

He looked up at me, lips reddened and eyes darkly glittering. I knew I had the strength of will and energy and motion for exactly two things: one movement and one word. For once in my adult life, I was not going to be able to whisper elaborate sweet nothings and throw my knees with abandon around anyone's neck, no matter how badly I might have desired to do so. And in the totality of my exhaustion, I was able to forgive myself for it. So I said, "John," meaning only "please," and then I turned myself onto my stomach and closed my eyes once more.

He entered me at the same unhurried pace. He lowered his chest against my back and his lips against my ear. When he failed to move at first, giving me time, I could feel his heartbeat against my shoulder blades. I was matched, filled, fed, utterly owned, and it was perfect. And what he said, when he began to thrust with easy, firm, loving strokes, was the last thing I would have ever expected.

"This much love," he said. "This amount of infinite care. I wanted to show you what you feel like."

My eyes flew open, and then flinched shut again. I was deeply thankful that he was not in the mood to play games. For there aren't any words for what I felt in that moment, let alone clever synonyms. And what a relief it was to know there were no words for it. I hadn't the mind left to say any aloud. There were other gentle sounds I was making, doubtless. I was expending no effort to silence myself. I trust, looking back on it, that he knew what each and every one of them meant, for they were all about him, and no one has ever listened to me better in my life.

He has stamina, the Doctor I love, and so he gave me what felt like a very long time of the sweetest lovemaking he had to offer. Which is to say, the sweetest in many nations and very likely seven separate continents. It was the oddest sexual experience of my life in that there was nothing of wound-up tension or hunger in it, no mental self-admonitions to hold back or to increase, for the sensation was flowing over me in steady waves and I could not have either enhanced or ruined it even had I been able to try. When he stiffened at last, crying something inarticulate and eternal against the back of my neck as he sped up for a few final strokes of passion, I was in such a state of aching bliss as I have never experienced. As if I were weightless and soaring and burning and falling all at once. The sort of state I always endeavored to produce in others. And just when I began to fear he was what was holding me together and that I had better warn him to stay where he was or I would come unraveled, he gently withdrew, and pulled me back over, and took me deep down in his throat. It was only a moment before I died, grasping softly at his face as I did, catching a glimpse of the hallowed country which some people think lies beyond ours.

As for what that felt like...

There are limits, I have found, to words. But not to love. In any event, not to his.

I was improved the next morning, but by no means well. I no longer felt as if cramping was doubling me over when the cocaine began to wear off, but the nausea had not abated and neither had the worst headache of my existence. So I took another shot of twelve percent solution, wondering whether I had been the most inept man on earth to have started taking such things in the first place. Then I recalled what my mood had been like when I did first try narcotics and decided to be a trifle easier on myself.

Lestrade was good as his word, and so was my brother. That afternoon at around two o'clock, the Inspector arrived to report that one Mr. James Calhoun, according to the police department of Savannah, Georgia, was both an avowed member of the Ku Klux Klan and wanted (not very badly, I gathered) for the suspected murder of three Negro men; he was also wanted (rather more pointedly) for vandalism, arson, and theft. He had thus determined to flee his country for the Motherland, but had been allowed to slip through the authorities' fingers when the ship docked. Setting aside my thoughts on the subject of police departments in Georgia, the three of us moved along to the copied description Mycroft had obtained. James Calhoun was five foot seven, brown haired, with a small cleft in a narrow chin and dark, widely set eyes. His arms were long, and his skin tanned by long years in the southern sun.

"Now we find him," Watson said grimly, tossing the end of a cigar into the fireplace. "How do you propose to go about it, Holmes?"

We were interrupted when Billy rushed through the door without knocking, nearly tumbling over when he reached the rug, brandishing a fresh envelope.

"By Heaven, that will make it easier," Lestrade remarked. "He is in the immediate vicinity, at least."

Billy shook his head, panting, as he handed me the evil missive. "It was half-wedged under the carpet in the front foyer, sir. Must have been shoved under the door early this mornin'."

The sight of the message turned my blood cold, as five dried orange pips spilled onto my carpet. "YOUR COWARDICE AVAILS YOU NOTHING: GOD'S WORK GOES FORTH NONETHELESS."

"What can that mean?" Lestrade wondered, reading over my shoulder.

"Norbury," I breathed. "It means--dear God, don't let it mean--Watson, run for a cab. Now."

His face blanched in comprehension as he rushed to do as I asked. Lestrade said nothing, but strode to wrap his scarf around his neck and checked his pistol for ammunition. And for the second time in as many days, I threw my coat over my shoulders, curious to know just how far I could get before collapsing. All the while devoutly praying that whatever Providence had given me insight also desired me to stop that monster before any more innocent people died before their time.

The clouds above us were uniformly wet and sodden, but declining to rain in actual fact, when we reached the station. I was sick with apprehension, but I can fortunately school my mind when I please, and I think the only evidence of my distress was my complete silence. Watson departed to purchase the three of us tickets, for we'd a harrowing twenty minutes to wait for the train to depart. Lestrade and I took seats on an empty wooden bench. My eyes glided over the tracks, the outbuildings of the station, the brickwork, the pavement at our feet, the grey sky, all the while refusing to think about how ill I felt, both with worry and with drug symptoms. Then suddenly a small wrapped piece of what appeared to be candy entered my peripheral vision. I turned to Lestrade, endeavoring to look as blankly supercilious as ever.

"It's ginger," he explained. "Take it. It'll help."

I was in absolutely no position to scowl at that prim little runt, but scowl I did. "What on earth do you--"

"Mr. Holmes, I am a police inspector. I can see things, both obvious and more subtle things, and I'm not stupid. You don't think me stupid, come to that. When you come to the Yard wanting something, your feet walk toward my office for a reason."

He was right. Lestrade has never been stupid. Only overly pragmatic and repellently average. He lacks not for brains, nor for memory. The other thing Lestrade lacks not is compassion, which is why I rubbed at my eyes in exhausted, vexed, guilty capitulation rather than accepting the peace offering to my errant stomach. "But why should you--"

"Mr. Holmes, I think I should tell you something." He brushed his small fingers over his fastidious lips, and then moved them to his sharp chin briefly. Then he clasped both hands in his lap. I was about to comment on this ridiculous performance when he at last decided to risk speech. "You, Mr. Holmes, are not an easy man to know. Neither, and I beg your pardon, are you an easy man to like. But I will say this also: you are the sort of man one meets only once in a lifetime. And you are not the sort of man I am willing to lose, on behalf of the city of London, Scotland Yard, your flatmate, and yes, even myself. Now, take the damn ginger."

He held it up again. I gaped at him for several seconds. Then I did as he asked, my fingers closing round the tiny token. I placed it in my pocket, but it was a finely wrought compromise.

"Who was it?" I asked when we had spent a few minutes in a stunningly companionable silence.

"My uncle," he shrugged. "Nothing to do with the law, of course, but a crime against Nature nevertheless. He died with a pipe in his hand and a Lascar at his elbow, but whatever you're taking doesn't seem to be brightening your complexion much either."

"Morphine," I admitted, shocking myself. "No, it doesn't. And in any event, I think we all know I was pale enough to begin with."

"Hmm." He crossed his arms, agreeing with me, watching a freight car being unhitched from a line thirty or forty yards away. "Well, I won't ask your reasons for dosing yourself. They're probably good. I just hope you have still better ones for stopping."

As if on cue, the Doctor reappeared, tapping the tickets against his palm. He sat down on my left-hand side.

"You've a medical ally," I said dryly. "The Inspector here was just offering his skills as nursemaid."

"Thank you." The Doctor sounded unsurprised, and continued to address Lestrade without looking at him, perfectly at ease, staring out at the trains. "Although I haven't the means to pay you, my good Inspector. Perhaps a system of barter might be arranged."

"We'll hash out the details later," Lestrade returned complacently.

And I was left wondering when their camaraderie had advanced to the point that they enjoyed talking over me as if I were a coat rack. But I forgave them soon enough. As the subject at hand was me, after all, it was rather endearing in spite of its strangeness.

The journey to Norbury was a blur, save for the fact trains are not pleasant for men in the state I had placed myself. The rushing of the trees past the windows was ungodly enough without the rocking, and the stale tobacco scents, and the fact I had nowhere to hide. It was a positive relief for at least three seconds when we alighted at the now-familiar station and I begun running with all my speed toward Mr. Grant Munro's residence, the Doctor and the Inspector close behind. A relief until I recognized that running, an activity which comes very naturally to me, did not come nearly so naturally to me when thus impaired.

My heart, which was pounding ineffectively and laced with poisonous substances, fell straight through the earth when I saw the Munro residence. All the lights were blazing, in the middle of the day. The front door was gaping open. The maid I recognized from before sat on the front porch bravely trying not to weep into her apron. That beautiful glowing house that Watson and I had for a few moments stood staring at in simple human gratitude for goodness had been turned on its head, and I could only desperately hope its neck was not yet broken. I staggered up to the servant girl with an unspoken question on my face.

"She's gone missing, sir," the maid moaned. "Miss Lucy. Every man we can find has gone to the Openshaw house to arm themselves, and then they're going to search--"

I ran back to the road without a word. My ears, blood, and brain were all buzzing relentlessly, but I am the best tracker I have ever encountered in my life, and I knew what I was looking for, and I had only one conscious thought: God help me to survive long enough to accomplish the thing, because if I fail this time it will finish the job I started four days ago.

Watson and Lestrade said nothing, only wheeled about and followed me. I slowed my pace, but not by much. I headed away from the station, further into the privacy of the woodland. It was not a guess, it was a sound decision based on probabilities, but sodding Christ it felt like a guess nevertheless, because the road gave no trace of footmarks. My eyes scanned the dirt, the bracken, the trees, the mushrooms, the mosses, the clover, the--

There. A minuscule hanging branch, broken. The wood within the bark still wet and yellowed. She'd been kicking up a stir, so much was clear.

Racing through the woods that early evening, my eyes on the ground and the foliage while my friends--I apparently possessed two friends now, double my previous figure--kept close on my heels was one of the hardest things I have ever managed in my life. And I have managed a large number of very difficult, very important things, I now realize. I escaped from home. I attended University. I survived Lord Harry Rogers when I thought my heart quite cracked. I set myself up as an independent consulting detective. But none of my previous successes mattered just then, as I nimbly--how did I manage it?--leapt over tree roots and dead undergrowth. The spring twilight was fast falling, and the wind was in my hair, my hat having been lost many, many yards back. Then I reached a clearing.

There was a man in the broad, grassy, open space of meadow, and a little girl, and a noose hanging over a tree limb.

"If you touch her, I will shoot you where you stand," I managed, my gun already in my hand.

James Calhoun looked precisely as my brother had described him save for one additional remarkable feature: his eyes were wholly, recognizably evil. Or perhaps they were only so soulless in that instant, and to me. Standing straight, his hand darted toward his coat pocket.

Watson's shot hit his arm, I know, because Watson is the best marksman of any of us and that is precisely the sort of thing he would do. It was either Lestrade or I who pierced his heart, and either Lestrade or I who punctured his ribcage. I never bothered with finding the bullets, so we will never know the answer, he and I. I think, now we are friends, we both prefer it that way.

I don't remember a single second of what happened afterward, but John Watson told me, and I have no reason not to trust him. I dropped my gun, and he picked it up for me. I went straight to Lucy Hebron and lifted her in my arms. She was shaking uncontrollably, sliding from terror into shock. And by his account, which must be right, I carried her slowly out of that monstrous clearing, telling her in my most hypnotic tone of voice that she was safe. And when that failed to do as much good as I wished it to, when she kept quaking without tears during that strange steady walk out of the woods, it seems I began singing to her. Very softly, but not at all inaudibly. In French, no less. I don't know any other lullabies, after all, so I suppose that's perfectly logical. The Doctor said he never knew I could sing before. I can, of course, in a smooth ringing tenor, but I never do, and that explains his surprise. Why would I sing when I own a Stradivarius? And it seems when I stepped out of the woods and onto the road again, Lucy was no longer convulsing but only weeping softly, which Watson agreed was both a miracle and a profound improvement. I never did set her down. I passed her straight to her haggard stepfather Mr. Grant Munro, standing in the road near the house with a large group of friends and servants, when he dropped his rifle and ran to me. Lestrade, Watson said, took my boy by the arm and told him to get me home as quick as he could. Lestrade said that he planned to take my statement later, and that he would remain in Norbury, and contact all the proper authorities and see to the body of James Calhoun, and that he would say the fatal bullet was undoubtedly his own. Geoffrey Lestrade did every single one of those things. And the next moment I recall is being on a train bound for London, in a private car, with the Doctor's hand wound tight into mine and resting in my lap.

Hallowed Be Thy Name III

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 20:23:30 GMT

About the characters: they are far too good to be mine.

Rating: NC-17

When we made it back to my bedroom with the intention of burying ourselves in coverlets, my entire body was trembling as I turned on my lamp. Watson was doing little better. But he did find a wet cloth and some iodine tincture and bring both to bed with us, cleaning the cut on my lip and the puncture in my arm with the reverent expression it takes him half an hour to lose after le petit mort. I stole them from him as quickly as humanly possible and held the rag to his bleeding brow. I could tell which blood was his and which was mine. We both looked wretched, I knew, and I was crashing into the free fall of lost hopes that was a side effect of the morphine wearing off. But I was myself again, at least. I was here.

"Are you all right?" I asked.

His lips tensed, but he did not answer. I don't suppose there was any answer to give me.

"Say something," I pleaded. "Say I haven't hurt you too terribly. Or say that I have, and that you can never forgive me for it, and you'll find someone better. You were mad to say you would take morphine if you couldn't have me any longer--there are a thousand men in London who would probably kill me in cold blood for a chance at your regard, though none of them could love you more."

At this, he only smiled very sadly and, his eyes drifting away, he shook his head.

"Say anything at all, John Watson. I can't bear it."

"I wonder if you could help me with a word alternative for svelte," my boy whispered.

God in Heaven, where had this creature come from? The day I begin to understand him, the smallest piece of him, will be the day I merit having him near me. There were millions of possible answers to his request, by the way. Skinny. Bony. Emaciated. But I could not have loved that man more if I'd had two hearts instead of one, and so I tried to please him.

"Slender," I sighed.

"I was beginning to lean towards lissome." His voice was cracked and dry, but steady. "What do you think of it?"

"You forget gaunt," I murmured. Complimenting myself had grown too harrowing. "And I am not a tree limb. Now, give me one for bronzed."

"Good Lord, love," he muttered with a half-smile. "At least svelte is a compliment. Swarthy."

"Try again. And it is a compliment."

"Will tawny do, then?"

No, I decided, tawny would not do. It sounded like the mane of a wild creature. And while he was my own wild creature, his sun-kissed hair was very well tamed habitually. I ran my fingers through it as I wiped the last of the blood away, and his eyes fell shut at the touch. Thank God. It was merely a scratch, nothing more. He'd given me worse, which was a blessing.

"Burnished," I announced. Like an idol resting in a king's alcove.

"You're barking mad," he said with a world of affection in his voice. "I am not an oil lamp."

My throat closed. "John, you know that if I only could treat you better, I would, do you not?"

He thought for a long time about that.

"I cannot be without you," he said finally. "What's done is done. How being with you affects me is your own affair. But in any case, you're quite wrong--you treat me splendidly, better than anyone I've ever been with. You're wonderful. You open cab doors, and caress my aches away, and refill my coffee cup, and buy concert tickets when you cannot afford them, and I never wonder whether or not you love me. It's the way you treat yourself that flays me to the bone."

"I'm sorry," I said, my voice breaking badly.

"For what are you sorry now?"

"For using myself up so freely. For using you at all. I hate myself for what I just did to you, John. I hate it."

"Why? Because it was for yourself, for once in all your days?" he asked softly. "Because it was you scraping your bow across your violin strings when you're in agony, and for once not an entire opus played for my benefit? Do you truly think I require a sonata on every occasion?"

Whether he requires it or not, that is what he deserves, and I make it my habit to use every man according to his deserts. The notion that I could ever use him otherwise was what was wounding me so terribly.

"I don't know."

"Do you suppose I prefer you alive to make use of me, to be near me and to need me, or dead by yourself?" he asked pointedly.

"I only know that was the saddest thing I've ever done."

"I asked you to."

"That doesn't make it right."

"Love and right are different words, Sherlock Holmes," he said. "You've a splendid vocabulary. Puzzle out the difference. I requested you use me for whatever you needed. And you're quite mistaken if you think I didn't want it because I was angry, didn't want you because you were in pain. I wanted it very badly. For Heaven's sake, to hear you talk, anyone would think you forced me."

"That's what it felt like," I confessed as my head fell into my hands. "I've never been forced in my life, much less dreamed of forcing anyone else, but that's what it felt like."

The morphine's loss had pushed me so far from myself I could feel tears flowing into my eyes. Soon enough they were on my hands instead. Then there were arms around me and he was pushing me back, laying me down on the bed, arranging us so my head was on his good shoulder with all his limbs encircling my body.

"Not to me," he said fiercely. "That's not what it felt like to me. I may not know what events marked your life before we met, but I know who and what you are. I know your heart, and you are incapable of such an act. It was still hallowed, whether you believe me or not."

He was wrong about that, but he was correct in a half-sense. The only hallowed thing on our sitting room floor that terrible night had been John Watson himself.

"I wish I could tell you everything about all of it," I said in despair. "I don't mean to keep secrets from you, and you already know I am this way for a reason. But even if you desired to hear it in full detail--and you don't want that, not if you know what's good for you--I could never even bring myself to try."

I thought he might have been angry at me when he failed to respond right away, but then his hand stoked over my back.

"You could tell me in French," he murmured, nearly blinding me with one of his all too frequent moments of shining insight. I could feel the words vibrating below my cheek and within his chest. "I wouldn't understand a word of it."

And that is exactly what I did.

I told him, without his comprehending me in the slightest, that my mother had died during childbirth when I was eight. I told him that my sister Violet, the very idea of whom I had loved from the beginning and whose continuing presence might well have saved us all from hell, had died one year later. They were both buried in the chapel grounds beyond the edge of the estate. And I told him, though it was excruciating, what had happened afterward.

But I also informed John Watson of many other things, told him stories that were both sad and wonderfully happy. For instance, I told him all about Reginald "Reggie" Asquith, a ridiculously rich, pale, slender, rather fragile russet-haired young man with whom I lived for sixteen months. I never fell in love with Reggie, but I think in retrospect he had badly wanted me to. I called him Spots in private, in reference to the outlandish streak of flushed skin that would appear on his chest in our more vigourous moments. Reggie lived his entire erotic life around a single sex fantasy, which hinged upon his being sent to the headmaster's office for having been caught masturbating in the back of the classroom. And apparently--before meeting me--he had never encountered a masterful young buck who was capable of reproducing the crucial Newcastle accent of the Head.

Whether or not this little scene of Reggie's was based partly in fact I never knew, but he brought such a wealth of sublimely filthy detail to the drama that I confess I had grown rather suspicious as time passed. He lived in a beautiful suite in Pall Mall, and without ever blinking he paid for an outrageously expensive round of emergency dentistry when a scoundrel named Matthews knocked out my left canine in Charing Cross station. What was more, he ordered the cook to bring me my favourite soups, and laughed sadly when I swore to repay him, and never once complained while I was busy getting my dashing good looks back. Living free of charge with Reggie never hurt my pride, but a gentleman does like to pay his own medical bills. When he moved to the countryside to manage his family holdings, I was not heartbroken when I refused to leave London, though I believe Reggie may have been. But I did miss him tremendously.

I told him about Lord Harry Rogers, too--rather the antithesis of Reggie, if truth be told. Harry was a stunning tall blond with a smart little moustache who resided in a great house in London with his elderly, infirm uncle. We made an absurdly striking couple. He imagined mistakenly that he loved me (aloud, more's the pity) whenever he approached the verge of completion, and threw me out on my ear after four months. I had made the mild suggestion to him that the other virile young men he kept inviting into my--his, of course--our bed were beginning to impair my sleep a bit, and that most nights of the week I preferred him alone. I also may have mentioned a preference to be allowed more choice in the matter, rather than his presenting these strapping lads to me as if bringing home a procession of generally unwanted if well-wrapped Christmas presents. "Here you are, darling," Harry would say. "I've brought you something choice this evening, you see. What would you like to do with him? Isn't he perfect?" Generally, the man in question was indeed rather perfect, not to mention eager to play. And so I would expend an anxious mixture of deduction and instinct puzzling out just what Harry and the new fellow wanted me to get up to that evening.

When my mild suggestions bore scant fruit, I said flatly one day I was through with such things for the time being. Every single pleasure center in my entire anatomy was weary, including my brain. Harry disagreed with me. Then I recall saying--in my father's voice, no less--that I may not have liked my nose as passionately as everyone else seemed to, but I was yet keen to keep it intact, thank you very much, and preferred not to die a noseless sore-covered lunatic. Harry replied that he had never seen such ingratitude, and suggested I see how long I could stay free from syphilis as a rent boy specializing in multiple partners before tossing me to the kerb.

That abrupt dismissal had pushed me into the seemingly waiting arms of one Sydney Livingstone-Blair, a blueblood and a talented barrister, who positively could not orgasm without my feet being somehow involved in the process, and who decided that while my clothing was all very well for 1875, he was going to add a number of touches more along the lines of the 1880 sensibility, and then paid for an entire new wardrobe. One which, as Sydney put it, made me look more the musician-intellectual I was.

I will always remember Sydney fondly because one day as we were walking together through Covent Garden, my eyes fell upon the sheen of finely polished wood. I had an appalling violin at the time, the worst sort of secondhand fiddle, Harry having thrown my violin after me into the street and dashed it to pieces. When I saw the arc of the wood sitting on that shabby table, I knew it was a Stradivarius, and it was in my hands within seconds.

The kindly old Jew broker asked me to play it. He said he would never sell the instrument to a man who did not deserve it, and thus I must be put to the test. Four other men had tried to buy it that very morning, he assured me, for it was valuable and nominally priced, but he was only selling it because he had developed arthritis in his hands and he felt that an instrument like his should be played brilliantly and often. I played a Christoph Gluck interlude I had significantly altered, and a gypsy waltz, and halfway through the waltz the broker announced he would sell it to me. I paid for the violin, but I saw Sydney leave ten more pounds on the old Jew's table as we walked away. He said to me, when he had caught me up, that he had never seen me look at anyone the way I'd looked at that violin. It was sad, Sydney told me, but he knew I would never look at him that way. He fell madly in love with a Scottish poet some two weeks later and I was left on my own again. But I was tremendously happy for Sydney. He wanted very much to be adored, and he deserved it.

I told Watson about having been sick with worry at the thought I may have had to quit my blood-related researches because I could afford neither my temporary Montague Street digs nor lab fees without a new benefactor or a new case, and then suddenly I had done it: I had invented a reagent precipitated by haemoglobin and nothing else. I thought I could do it, but thinking I can and accomplishing such a feat of chemistry are very different things. I had never been so happy in all my days, I thought in that instant. I had succeeded, at last, and all on my own.

Then Stamford walked through the lab door with a new fellow I had never seen about the campus before. The new chap was thin and looked unwell, for there were dreadful bags beneath the bluest eyes I had ever seen in my life. He held one arm stiffly, in a pained and unnatural manner, but everything else about him was purest grace--the way one foot strode firmly in front of the other, the way his frank, sculpted mouth smiled in genuine interest in his surroundings, the way his hand came up easily and steadily to grip mine, the way his ocean-blue eyes flicked to my own hands and were amused by the fact they were covered in plasters. His face was thinned in the way illness can sometimes wear upon a man's countenance, but he was unquestionably beautiful. Not in the way I am chiseled and wicked-looking, but beautiful like a Caravaggio. And whereas he had probably been merely a staggering work of art before his ordeal, now he was absurdly fine-featured but with a compelling past. The sun had darkened his skin so much that he was unmistakably an Afghan War veteran, but he had been introduced as a doctor. That explained the fact that the lines around his laughing eyes were both kind and very sad. His hair was bleached nearly blond at the tips, and his neatly trimmed moustache accentuated the wonderful expressiveness of his mouth. The oddly perfect man before me smelled of clove-infused aftershave and fine woolen clothing that did not fit him at all, along with goodwill and weariness and a little bit of regret. And when either I or Stamford spoke, he listened: he listened with his ears, his neck, his head, his spine, his blue eyes, and his entire consciousness. John Watson listened with all his heart. I wanted to know that man better more than anything.

"Did you say my name, just now?" he wondered. Still listening even though he could not fathom a word of it save for those belonging uniquely to him--still marking my syllables, his idly caressing hand stopping.

"I said I wanted to know you better when first I saw you. You were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen," I said in English.

"What a very strange coincidence," he murmured.

And then I fell fast into an exhausted slumber.

I have never hated anything in my life as much as the sun that streamed through my window the following afternoon when I awoke. It cut through my head like an axe. I was alone in bed, still unclothed, but the opposite side was yet warm. Anxious, I placed my hand over the pillow. Eight minutes he'd been gone, ten at most. Sitting up, I wondered suddenly if I was going to be ill in my own bed, which would have marked a new low point for a man already well accustomed to striking bedrock. I crossed my legs and hung my head down to see if the room might stop swaying like a ship's deck for a moment.

I heard footsteps. Watson came into my room with a tea tray, having no need to nudge my door with his toe, as it was still off its hinges. Doubtless he had locked the sitting room door instead at some point the night before. Or then again, perhaps not. Perhaps Mrs. Hudson now knew me a depraved sexual freak as well as an utter nuisance. I did not feel like asking. My friend wore a dressing gown over his shirt and trousers, but he had not bothered with collar or cuffs or waistcoat. I could see no sign of the cut on his brow, for his hair was sweeping over it. I think, when all is said and done, that was much for the better. As for the rest of him, he looked very tired, the way he had looked the morning after suffering a brief relapse of fever about six months previous. But his eyes were brightly optimistic, and struck me sharply as the rays from my window.

"Merciful Heavens, you look appalling," he told me affably. He sat down carefully on the bed, setting the tray before my crossed legs. "Part of that seems to be my fault, of course, but perhaps you'll do me the kindness of recalling you were pinning me in a first-rate wrestling hold at the time. Nevertheless, I am deeply sorry. I hope you will forgive me. Though it did seem to rouse your spirits a little, for which I refuse to apologize. If I pour you tea, do you suppose you'll keep it down?"

"No," I muttered. "I suppose nothing. Suppositions are yet beyond my ken."

"Then we'll embrace the element of surprise."

It was a miracle of no small order I managed to grip the teacup without spilling it in my own lap. I count it amongst my greatest victories, next to my chemical process for blood tracing.

"I found the morphine, finally," he said, taking a sip of Darjeeling for himself.

"You what?"

"No, I didn't take it. It has departed with the dustman by this time."

"Then thank Christ for both large and small mercies, respectively."

"That was very clever--gouging holes in subsequent layers of newspaper and then stacking them back together to form a hiding place. After you fell asleep at last, it took me nearly an hour to find. I would never have found it at all if your syringe had not been resting atop the stack."

"I didn't want you to find it, you see."

"I know. Hypocrite."

"That is the least of my sins, John Watson. The very least of them."

He looked at me. Too much blue, too much sunshine, too much honesty. I dropped my head again.

"It was not your fault."

"How on earth can you say that?"

"Very easily, seeing as it's true. He came here looking for help, yes, but you advised him utmost caution and he failed to follow your orders. What could he have been thinking to allow himself to be decoyed down to the Embankment, where he would not at least have the safety of the crowd? They must be cunning devils, whoever they are. And even had you been with him, Holmes, you will never know what might have happened. Perhaps I might have lost you in his defense. Who can say? All I know is that no one save you would ever have given his story near so much credit for betraying genuine danger."

I dared to glance back up again. How such a compassionate spirit ever landed inside the body of a demigod is beyond my ability to grasp, but how he ended up in my bed is a still greater puzzle.

"You have the most peculiar look on your face," he smiled.

"I was just wondering whether it would be worth splitting my lip open again to kiss you until you can feel it down to the tips of your fingers."

The smile broadened, but he shook his head. "I am weary of seeing you bleeding. Do you want your correspondence? I was too ill with worry to open any of it for you."

I sorted through the telegrams and envelopes he handed me. One looked strange--it was not postmarked, and the paper was of an odd grain. I opened it and five orange pips fell out. The words "YOU HAVE BOTH BEEN WARNED BEFORE YOUR GOD" were marked in block capitals on the inner flap.

"That," Watson said slowly, "does not appear to be a prank."

Hastily, I handed him the threat and looked for more. There were two, each stuffed with pips, progressing in an easily deduced chronology despite their lack of postmark. One read, "TO HIDE AWAY FROM A WARNING UNHEEDED TEMPTS THE WRATH OF THE ALMIGHTY," which struck me as terrible syntax but made its point clear, and the next, "YOUR FINAL HOUR IS AT HAND." And when I opened my telegrams they were all from Lestrade, and were all attempts to lure me back into the business of tracking criminals. I knew two things from looking at the envelopes with the pips inside: one, they were stuffed and written on by a man who had completely lost his mind. And two, we were in a terrible fix.

"What are we to do about this?" my friend wondered with serene calm. "Holmes, hand me that teacup before you ruin three days of your own mail."

I was taking very deep breaths. Not because I was frightened of the blackguards or blackguard who had murdered John Openshaw, but because I was livid and severely nauseated and now entertaining the idea of standing up. I did not know how that last item was likely to go. But it was undoubtedly necessary.

"Doctor, I need you to do three things for me. Right now."

"I am here to command," he said gravely.

"Please find my clothes, first of all, any of my clothes you like, and bring them over here. I know you prefer the task of taking them off to putting them on, and I've no intention of rendering you a manservant, but--"

"Do you know, the position of your manservant would be one I would seriously consider taking," he interrupted me. He set both our cups on the tray and rose, heading for my wardrobe with an impish smile on his face. "I would be achingly curious to learn what sort of services you required of me in the guise of a gentleman's personal gentleman. And next?"

"Wire Lestrade and tell him to meet me here as soon as ever he can. I don't know if I can walk very far yet, but he's never minded coming to me."

"Done," he said, pulling from the rack a grey French suit which Sydney had purchased for me (for approximately the same figure which I had thus far spent in rent at Baker Street living with Watson). Draping the jacket and trousers over his arm, he searched for more items on hangers and in drawers.

"You won't like the third," I warned him, looking up at him with what I hoped was all my heart mirrored within my features.

Watson hesitated before pulling down a clean white shirt. Then his eyes flared. "You want your cocaine, don't you?"

"I want to be able to stand up without losing my stomach out my throat," I said, shaking my head as determinedly as I could without its falling off. "I want to find Openshaw's killer without getting myself killed. I want to protect you without fainting away five steps from my bed. I want to set it right, and I--"

"If I find your cocaine and bring it to you, will you vow to me to eat something on the instant it takes effect?"

It was not perfect. But if I lost a meal, it would be a small price to pay for what was really a gesture of good faith.

"I will eat whatever you put in front of me, until such time as it decides to come up again."

"It won't," he sighed. "You're right about the cocaine. If we give you enough of a dose, you ought to be perfectly functional. Here are your clothes. Should I help you into them first, or wire Lestrade?"

"I love you. You are God's most perfect creature. Wire Lestrade, and then come back to laugh at how far I've managed to get. Recall while you are wiring Lestrade I love you. And fetch your revolver on your way back in here."

"Remind me," he said whilst leaning down to kiss the side of my mouth that was not gashed apart, "what I am to recall while wiring Lestrade?"

"I love you."

"It's the most outrageous thing I can conceive," he murmured, laughing to himself. He shook his head ruefully as he made for the door. "The fact that anyone who had you previously let you go is a source of constant confusion for me. Bless them all, anyway, but there shan't be others. I myself am a man of sense."

When Lestrade arrived, I was ready for him. Watson had decided, and I heartily agreed with him, that it had been a mistake to make my clothing the first order of business; a hot bath--after the cocaine but prior to the clothing, with the Doctor's assistance--had much restored me. I am deeply preoccupied with cleanliness, after all, and thus afterward I was nearly myself again. Or perhaps I ought to say that I was as much myself as I could appear given that I looked as if I had gone five rounds and refrained from food for three days. Which was just about right.

No, strike that from the record--I thought I looked myself again, but Lestrade knew otherwise. He came striding through the door wearing a self-righteous, purposeful little frown and then stopped short at the sight of me, sitting at the dining table having just finished the most cold-heartedly wicked bowl of soup ever made. Lestrade took in my face, and then my dismembered doorway, and then he did the most extraordinary thing I have ever seen. It was an act that has caused me substantively to reevaluate his entire character. He did nothing. He folded his hands over each other in front of him and glanced at the Doctor.

"I'd the devil's own time getting a cab or I would have been here sooner," he said after clearing his throat. "Doctor, your note sounded urgent. These scoundrels of the orange pips have struck again, have they?"

"They must have traced Openshaw here," Watson nodded, shaking Lestrade's hand when it was offered him. He exchanged a grateful glance with me that our good inspector seemed so disinterested in unhinged doors. "Perhaps anyone who tried to help him is now fair game."

"So, Mr. Holmes," Lestrade continued, "I take it--"

"That I have returned to active practice, that I have not passed a pleasant interim of time since last I saw you, and that we are to get to the bottom of this posthaste after sharing everything we know of the subject?" I interrupted for efficiency's sake.

"That, yes," he said smoothly. "In addition, I take it there's still tea in that pot, is what I'd been about to say. Left my own hot and steaming on my desk."

That quirked a smile onto my face before I'd the chance to arrest it. Watson stifled a snort of laughter and sat down after pulling a chair adjacent to me out for the Inspector. We all hovered together over the distressingly plain envelope as Lestrade poured more tea and outlined for me what he had learned in my absence.

Predictably, he had learned nearly nothing. No physical evidence of any kind linked a suspect to the bridge on the night in question. No witnesses. Openshaw had been robbed, but only afterward and in a secondary sense--his watch had turned up in the hands of a known scavenger who had foolishly tried to fence it the next day. The scavenger, when brought in for questioning, recalled nothing out of the ordinary. Only a corpse, still warm, looking out over the water. And still less could we fathom a motive. No one had a reason to hate John Openshaw--he lived quietly, as he had said, and his neighbours in the rolling country beyond London liked him heartily.

"I wonder," sighed Lestrade after an hour talking of absent evidence. We three still huddled about the table, but had switched the tea out for warm brandy.

"It's a good start," I could not help but sniff.

"The weather, you see," he continued placidly. "The night in question. It was coming down sheets. You remember it, Dr. Watson? Worst storm I've seen in three years, and I was out in it myself. I couldn't see my hand before my face, let alone ten feet in front of me. Now, you're surmising, Mr. Holmes, that Openshaw was followed here when the killer discovered your home and your involvement. I agree with you. But what I mean to say is, how? How, when cabs were scarcely running and the streets were black as pitch?"

How indeed?

Then the flash happened. It often is so with me, when I see the threads begin to weave themselves into perfect patterns. Orange pips. The storm. The countryside. My pageboy.

I gasped out, "Billy!"

He was not there to hear me, of course, so the Doctor and Inspector watched me as I stumbled to the bell, ringing it violently. They exchanged quizzical glances, but neither spoke. They knew my agitation in earnest. In another two minutes, Billy stood before us, and in my excitement over grasping a discrepancy, I barely noticed I was standing on the carpet to interrogate the lad, no longer crouched like an invalid in a chair.

"Billy, these envelopes," I said to him, holding them up. "They were hand-delivered, yes?"

"That's just so, sir," he nodded. He appeared to think the business of my face a mere matter of course, taking into account my assumed involvement in every worthwhile adventure under the sun. Thankfully he seemed not to have noticed I had not left the house in days. "From a beggar boy first. Like as not someone offered him a few pence, I'm thinkin'. Then a different beggar boy, then a scullery maid."

"When the beggar boy delivered the first of these letters, was it on the night of the storm? Or perhaps the night afterward?"

He frowned, his rosy little lips contracting in a conscious imitation--I realized to my horror--of me. Thank the lord the Doctor is here as well, or we should have a miniature severe Bohemian sleuth on our hands within two years.

"I was through with my work scrubbin' out the pantry floor when I got called to the service entrance and took that first envelope, Mr. Holmes. The night before the storm, it was. Tuesday evening."

Just after we had returned home from Norbury. Just as I thought. For I now recalled, to my deep frustration, I had not checked my correspondence at all since my father had died. But I had seen the first envelope appear. It had sat there, communing with dust. Nevertheless, here was a clue. The pieces were still clattering against one another, but now I knew where to look to find my answers. We had thought the threat recent because it was not postmarked and we associated it so vibrantly with Openshaw, but these were far muddier waters.

Pips. Dried orange pips, my brain insisted. Five of them.

"Hold on just a minute, Mr. Holmes," Lestrade said, joining me before Billy. "How could you have been threatened for your involvement with a man you hadn't yet met?"

"Impossible," Watson said from the table, staring into space as he offered his own version of my speech patterns. "We were threatened, therefore, for another reason."

"Thank you very much, Billy," I said, reaching down to shake his hand whilst palming him a coin. "You have been of invaluable assistance in this particular matter. Rest assured I shall not forget it."

He turned an endearing shade of pink. "No more than my duty, Mr. Holmes. What I'm supposin' is, when a fellow works for an employer what mixes with dangerous elements, a hero to the city as it were, one likes to keep the wits sharp."

"Very wise," said Lestrade. He was not smirking. But he was trying so hard not to smirk that it amounted to exactly the same thing. He knew it, and I knew it, and he knew that I knew it. That was why he was not-smirking.

I endeavored to sink into the floor and then thought better of it. The impossible lad turned to go, sixpence resting in his pocket. I turned back to my associates. There was nothing to be done about Billy for the moment, our lives were in danger, and I wanted to live to hear Lestrade's twitting me on the subject.

"Lestrade, would you be so good as to pull out your notes and describe for me the late Mr. Openshaw's entire household staff? Never mind that they gave you nothing useful. I want you to describe them physically."

He sat down in Watson's chair, pointedly not looking about for his notebook as he linked his fingers. "Certainly, Mr. Holmes. Butler is one Harrington, elderly, Sussex descent, nearsighted, favors the sweets if his girth is any guide."

"Next?"

"The cook--Mrs. Marble, partial to a sherry or three before dinner but otherwise harmless, gaunt woman, fifty-two, Irish by her accent, husband died early and left her without means."

"Go on," I murmured, staring doggedly at the rug. I lit a cigarette, pacing slowly.

"Housekeeper a bit more interesting, I suppose. One Miss Olivia Washington, descendant of Openshaw's uncle's former cook, now deceased, I take it. She was a little girl when her mother decided to accept the job overseas, and when she grew up, she stayed on at the house. Negro descent, hailed from Georgia, I believe. Next is--"

"Miss Washington," I grated out. "She's beautiful, is she not?"

Lestrade coloured a bit, but the look faded rapidly. "Uncommonly so. She also is the only servant living in a room off the main hallway in an upstairs part of the central house, rather than in the servants' wing. There may well have been an understanding between her and Openshaw. But the other servants displayed not the least bit of bad feeling on the subject, so I paid it no mind. As for Miss Washington, no one is more distraught by Openshaw's death. She isn't guilty of a thing, Mr. Holmes, if that's what you're on about. She's nigh inconsolable."

"But Openshaw's neighbours, servants, friends--they know of this closeness which existed between Miss Washington and her employer? Is it gossiped about in public?"

"Of course it is. But very good-naturedly. She has a charming disposition, by all accounts, and the community seems universally fond of her. Tell the truth, I was halfway to fond of her myself by the time I'd finished questioning her. She's a charitable soul, I take it, always baking for celebrations and carrying soup to invalids. Everyone who meets her is quite taken by her. Mr. Holmes, I assure you Miss Washington has nothing whatever to do with Openshaw's death."

"Lestrade, you are both right and utterly wrong."

"Holmes," Watson said urgently, "what are you driving at?"

"Have you never," I answered, "heard of the Ku Klux Klan?"

My brain had at last clicked back to life, you see.

Which made me now the object of some heavy scrutiny. Lestrade and Watson were staring at me not because of the words, which were nonsense to anyone in Britain save a criminologist and I was the only one in the room, but because I was gripping blindly for my scarf and throwing on my coat and tossing the barely smoked cigarette into the grate and generally making ready to fly through the door.

"No," Lestrade confessed as he reached for his own peacoat. "Should I have--"

"Lestrade, you must stay here," I gasped, whirling about. "Watson, you as well. Please. I am going to creep out the back way over the area fence and ask a very important favour of my elder brother. Get your guns out, the two of you, and set them where you can easily reach them. That is, Lestrade, if you are amenable to staying until I return. I can move invisibly out of the house, and a depraved monomaniac has been waiting all this while for us to expose ourselves. Should you attempt to join me, either of you, we would be at deepest risk beyond these walls. It's a blessing I've not set foot outdoors in three days. Allow me to speak with Mycroft, Doctor, and then on my return I shall explain it all to you and to Lestrade."

"I don't like it, Holmes," Watson said sternly.

"There is not one moment to lose, but everything hinges on my going alone on a very brief leg to London Bridge and back again. Trust me, and you shall not have cause to regret it. And Lestrade, I ask only that you remain here."

Every single atom of feeling I could muster was begging Geoffrey Lestrade in that moment. Begging him from his dull brown hair past his dull petite features over his dull tweed waistcoat down to his dull brown boots. That irritating mouse of a man absolutely had to guard my home in my absence or I could never leave it. Please, the particles of my being were chanting. Stay here with him. Keep him safe. He is fearless, but that is no guarantee of his continued good health. And you may be utterly plain-minded, but you are also alert and practical and dogged. Please. At the same time, I could not very well make clear why Watson's safety meant quite so much to me, so the pleading look turned in an instant into the fervor of a request between professionals. Doubtless the effect was bizarre.

Inspector Lestrade considered my face for a brief time. Then he nodded. He crossed his arms in a way that meant "yes," and had served the purpose since the day I met him. "I'll be happy to wait for you, Mr. Holmes. Two are better than one. I wish you'd see the same advice applied to yourself, but--"

"It doesn't in this case," I promised. "Never has a case suited the maxim less. Lestrade, tell me, what was the address John Openshaw gave me for his residence? I fear I never read it."

"He lived in his uncle's fine estate, out in the countryside near Norbury," the Inspector answered in considerable surprise.

"Norbury?" Watson exclaimed.

"Of course he did. Goodbye, gentlemen," I called from the landing. "I shall see you in not more than three hours."

"Holmes," Watson said in a dangerous voice. "Let me--"

"No. I will return, and with all speed."

It was a vow, not a statement. And he knew it as such. What was more, my friend trusts me to command him when the circumstances warrant my unique skills and no other. I love him as heartily for that as I do all the rest of it. I waited for John Watson to nod his agreement, just the fraction of a second necessary for him to know that I desired his accord and would return unharmed, and then I ran down the stairs, through the back area under the plane trees, and out into the night, my face hid under a scarf.

Hallowed Be Thy Name II

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 20:18:51 GMT

About the characters: they are far too good to be mine.

Rating: NC-17

The storm grew far worse the following day, raging and howling. All of London seemed to have suddenly been transported to the middle of an ocean squall. It confined us to our rooms, the wind strengthening all the while as we ate our supper and Mrs Hudson cleared the dishes.

When she picked up the coffee service, an errant spoon slid from one end of the tray to the other. Watson's hand shot out to grip the edge of the table, the knuckles turning white beneath the brown.

"What is it, Doctor?" Mrs. Hudson breathed in some surprise.

"He's likely rather miffed that I've just accidentally kicked him in the shin beneath the table," I said quickly, making an apologetic face. "Very sorry, Doctor. And if I've bruised your leg badly, I shall consider you my concertmaster in the violin realm for the remainder of the evening."

"Do be more careful, Mr. Holmes," Mrs. Hudson clucked. She is a woman possessed of three assets, any one of which would have endeared her to me: a steady nature, a good heart, and a house with extremely reasonable rates. She likes the Doctor immensely, and shows it through undisguised affection. She may possibly like me too, but if so she shows it through near-constant chiding, for which I can hardly blame her. I am responsible for the string of rogues arriving at her doorstep at all hours.

When she had gone, my eyes flicked back to Watson, though I was very careful to keep my usual neutral calm. I had seen this before, and many times. He was breathing more rapidly. His cheeks had lost a bit of their colour. The purely blue eyes were looking at the table, and then again not at the table at all. Watson has a surgeon's hands, far wider than mine and more deliberate, though none the less handsome and capable for that--but they were trembling slightly, and I could read his mind when he looked down at them: Stop your shivering, damn you, or you'll never hold a scalpel again. It's bad enough you aren't symmetrical any longer, and often enough in pain, without this. Stop shivering or you'll always be this way, a useless invalid afraid of spoons. Stop shivering or he'll know you for a coward.

John Watson is the single bravest man I have ever seen, and the nerve it must have taken for him to continue steadily on day after day, watching his friends die purposelessly and helpless to stop it though it was his duty to stop it, steals my breath away. I would deliver him a twenty-one gun salute every morning if I thought we could retain the roof over our heads despite the noise of the exercise. But nothing sets off Watson's bull pup of a temper faster than evidence of his own trauma.

"Do you want to tell me?" I asked softly.

He gritted his teeth. Then he blew his breath out and let go of the table.

"Thank you," he sighed. "For taking the blame."

"No thanks needed."

"I am sorry she thought it your fault, however."

Watson knows I loathe it when he apologizes for a display of his nerves. And I do loathe it, with everything in me--he is a war veteran, and ought to be given his own parade, not be forced to enact a series of shamefaced apologies over trifles. Because he knows I loathe it, he has stopped begging my pardon for the attack itself and has funneled the urge to apologize afterward into new channels. I am sorry if I hurt your arm, gripping it so. I am sorry we missed our train. I am sorry that woman thought you had frightened me. I am sorry I ripped your sleeve edge. I am sorry I spilled your tea. I am sorry she thought it your fault.

I don't loathe it any less, but when I lose my own temper as a consequence, we are hardly better off, are we?

"She'll forgive me," I shrugged. "And she tremendously likes scolding me, after all. You've done her a favour."

"There was a howitzer," he said, pressed his index finger and his thumb into his eyes, "and when they shifted its direction to kill another dozen or so people, it sounded--well. You heard what it sounded like."

I had. I got up and went to his chair. Leaning down, I caught the hand rubbing his eyes with one of my own and kissed his brow.

"I meant what I said about the concert. What shall it be?" I inquired.

If I love Watson for anything other than his own merits, it is for the way he looks at me when I play the violin. He is unmusical himself, but his appreciation of music is profound, and his appreciation of mine heart-stoppingly endearing. The fact that I can lull him to sleep with my tunes brings no shame, only pride I've afforded him some relief, and when I play songs while desirous of his remaining awake, he sits back and watches me as if I am some sort of miracle. Playing the violin felt like a cheap whore's trick with some of my former swains, and admittedly like a happy talent with others, but with Watson it is different. With Watson, everything is different.

"What's the Mendelssohn sonata you play so brilliantly?" he asked, a little shyly.

"All of them," I teased him.

I went for my Strad and pulled it gently from its case. It is my fondest inanimate possession in all the world. My Strad is not the violin my father gave me when I was six and he was still fond of me, nor the cheap interim replacement I bought from a pawnbroker when my first was ruined, but something separate and wonderful and mine.

"You mean the one written for Ferdinand David?" I asked.

"No, much earlier, but just as--"

"Opus four in F minor," I said, lifting my bow.

I played a series of quick scales to warm my fingers, testing and tuning, and within seconds I could see from the corner of my eye Watson's hands had ceased trembling. Marvelous. I had done it again, and in record time. I had hardly begun the piece when I heard through the door our downstairs bell ringing.

"Who would venture out on such a night?" I wondered as steps approached us and I lowered the instrument.

Dr. Watson, entirely himself again, walked across the room and opened the door. When it swung wide, my brother Mycroft Holmes stood within it, taking up nearly the entire space. I set my fiddle on the table.

"Mr. Holmes," Watson said in considerable surprise. And then warmly, "Do come in, sir. I was deeply sorry to hear of your recent loss."

My brother did come in, dripping with moisture. He set his soaking hat on the table and brushed his long hands over his sleeves. What the devil Mycroft could be doing in our rooms I could not guess, but I supposed it to bode ill for me. Not because my brother has ever in his life wished me harm--on the contrary--but considering the recent loss Dr. Watson spoke of, his sudden presence was altogether alarming. Mycroft is a creature whose relations with the world are tenuous, based on a series of severe rules to lessen the approach of any type of chaos. Mycroft detests chaos, having had his fill of it. That is why he rises every morning at precisely half-past six, eats the same breakfast, takes an omnibus to his billet in Whitehall because he was never given an allowance any more than I was, eats at the same pub around the corner, takes the same omnibus home to the London Bridge area, and works until he is ready for bed at midnight. He never varies, never wavers. That would tempt chaos. And chaos, above all other things, is evil to my brother. I felt a pinch of alarm to see him, his heavy jaw drooping and his brilliant eyes lined.

"Brother Mycroft," I said. "What brings you here?"

His grey eyes looked up and down and all around him. He had never set foot in Baker Street before, not even during the business with Mr. Melas. He walked inside, wearing tweeds grown decidedly shabby at the elbows, and sank into an armchair.

"Thank you, Doctor Watson. This is a very nice set of rooms, Sherlock," he added to me. "It suits you. God knows it suits you better than some of the other establishments."

My previous living arrangements had not all met with my brother's approval.

"Mais dis-moi, comment vas -tu?" I asked him, very worried.

"Assez bien, je pense, mais en fait je ne sais pas. Tres mal, peut-etre. Et toi, petit frere?"

He need hardly have asked how I was, I realized when I noticed the bizarre linguistic tic I had fallen into at the merest sight of my elder brother, and hastily switched the conversation back to English.

"Fit as a fiddle. Speaking of fiddles, I was beginning a violin sonata. Would you care to hear it?"

"Sherlock, despite the fact that your entire vast self-regard could easily be based on your violin talents alone and still be legitimate, I am here for a purpose."

"Is anything the matter?"

Idiot, I thought to myself an instant later. You confounded idiot. Why can you not ask the sort of questions and make the sort of remarks that any normal human being would find appropriate?

"One could say that," he replied dryly, one finger over his lips.

My brother owns a much less extreme version of the dramatic widow's peak hairline that I do, but the top of Mycroft's was beginning to thin, and his temples were greying, I recognized in considerable surprise. I uttered a silent prayer that his appearance was not a prophecy of my own in seven years. My friend the Doctor liked to grip my wealth of hair in certain situations, and I hardly enjoyed it any less than he did.

"Then why have you come? I'm delighted to see you, as ever, but unannounced calls do not often fall within your repertoire, brother mine."

Someone who knew me less well might have been confused. Someone who knew me less well might have said, But didn't you get the telegram? Haven't you heard the news? Not my brother. To my brother, I am made of glass when to most other men aside from the Doctor, I readily admit myself a bit of a cipher. He knew exactly what I was doing, and there was a part of me--a very tiny part--that hated the sensation.

"I have sought you out in light of the recent death of our father," he sighed, coming straight to the point. "I needed to speak with you, and I--well, I wanted to see you."

"What's the trouble, then?" I asked. I was aware in the corner of my eye that Watson's concern had snapped back to full attention and was aimed squarely at me as he stood between his armchair and the desk. I would deal with that later.

"Beyond the fact of a lost life, nothing," Mycroft said curtly. "But you have always been a very quick study, Sherlock. It would pain me to think you are losing your remarkable capacity for rational inference. Can you truly not know why I am here?"

He was baiting me, which usually worked. But I stood firm. "I haven't the slightest idea."

Mycroft wrinkled his nose and stared back at me evaluatively, as he has done since I was born. "I will grant you a broad hint, as you seem to have inexplicably grown much stupider than the last occasion when I had the pleasure of your company. The train ride back to our family seat is only two hours, as you know."

"What have I to do with train rides of any length, Mycroft?"

"It would please me very much if you would attend the memorial services with me," he said.

I very nearly laughed, but the spasm caught in my throat. I was attempting to look mildly surprised. As it was, I must have looked as if I had just been requested to fly. Watson, bless him for an utterly good fellow, crossed his arms and fell to waiting, palpably waiting, to see whether I needed his help. A hand on my shoulder, a caress in private, a matter-of-fact word where it was necessary: these things Watson considers it his sworn duty to provide. My own sworn duty, of course, is to disallow him to tax his fragile nerves over so poor a subject as me.

"I fear I am already occupied. When did you say it was?" I inquired.

"I did not, and I must warn you that your attempts at humour are questionable in these circumstances," Mycroft returned in a tone arid as the desert.

"I was not joking. That did not even resemble a joke. Whenever it is, you can rely on me to be elsewhere."

"It's tomorrow afternoon. Sherlock, perhaps you misunderstand me," he insisted. I was grateful he was seated, for he was looking a bit pale about the edges and I didn't know if our floor could absorb the shock should he fall over. "I do not ask you to join me for his sake. Can you suppose I do not hold your best interests at heart?"

"No, but I can suppose you entirely ignorant of what my best interests are."

It was unfair, I know. Watson knew it too and his eyes darkened, but he held his tongue.

Mycroft, sitting back in the armchair, steepled his fingers together. I ought to have known better than to goad him, for a barb is as good as a calming tonic to my supremely detached brother. He might avoid chaos like the plague, but when he once encounters sharp opposition, no one on the planet is better equipped to ignore it. He looked quite sedate and studious again. I moved to correct my error at once.

"Mycroft, I fear I must ask you to pretend you are here in order to hear an altogether charming early opus by Mendolssohn, as interpreted by your beloved musician sibling, sipping passable if inexpensive brandy while the storm rages without. That is why you are here, is it not? Brandy, Mendolssohn, and fraternal company. Tell me that is why you are here," I requested fervently.

"The funeral will be an occasion for you to see your cousins," he observed doggedly.

"Our cousins," I corrected him, walking to the sideboard to pour myself an enormous whiskey. "Whom you despise."

"Some of them are intolerable, but others merely aloof. You would like Remy Verner immensely if you--"

"Remy Verner once untied thirty minutes' worth of wretchedly painful bandaging for the grim pleasure of seeing my arm well and truly fractured, despite my vocal protests."

"At least he had a reason for it. He is studying to be a physician." Mycroft smiled. He was amused at this, but I failed to join him. Remy Verner is at best a philistine and at worst a bully.

"The scent of pine," Watson said softly to himself. He was not addressing anyone, merely looking thoughtfully at the carpet.

It was an abrupt shift, but an understandable one. I comprehended him at once. The Doctor was remembering the occasion when I'd told him I loathed the smell of fresh pine because during the terribly harrowing riding accident which had broken my arm as a child, I had landed in a mass of the low-lying stuff. Mycroft, however, and to my utter dismay, pursed his lips and shot Watson a keen look.

"He told you about that?"

"I'm sorry?" Watson returned to himself. "Do you mean the riding accident? Yes, he mentioned it."

"Well, I never," my brother drawled. He owns a horridly cutting drawl when he wishes. I know where he got it from, too. And I was not attending the culprit's funeral services.

"Leave it alone," I suggested.

"No, I am only pleased--it is high time you learned your life need not be a complete mystery to your friends."

"You yourself would spend all of your days in complete silence if only you could," I said, seething. "I only regret that poverty prevents you, for surely your conversations at Whitehall are merely a calculated effort to retain your billet."

"That may well be true, but I am genuinely glad to see you are growing better able to speak of--"

"Stop it," I demanded, my fingers working.

Watson frowned and pushed himself off the desk where he had been leaning. "I am terribly sorry to have mentioned a personal and painful subject," he said quietly. "I would be happy to leave if you both prefer to talk in private."

"Stay," I said, without thinking very clearly.

Mycroft was growing more bemused by the second. "But...oh, for Heaven's sake, Sherlock, have you told him about your many escape attempts or haven't you?"

I had not.

I had told Watson about the accident, but never that my reason for riding in that direction--towards the woods--in the first place was in order to quit my father's establishment permanently at age twelve. I try to place myself in a good light where the Doctor is concerned. And it was a source of great personal embarrassment to me that I had not succeeded until the age of sixteen, despite numerous trial runs which had ended in my being once again dragged back in disgrace. The initial attempt with broken arm inclusive had been one of the least bearable episodes. Subsequent efforts, however, were tinged with their own scarlet marks of agony, upon reflection.

"We needn't speak of it at all," Watson said quickly, resting his hand upon my shoulder. "Forgive my clumsiness."

Then Mycroft knew. He probably knew beforehand, if I am honest. He must have had an inkling during that business with the Greek interpreter. But he certainly knew then, by God. I read as much on his jowl-laden face, still examining me as if I were a lab specimen. I saw Mycroft's dark brows twitch and his grotesquely clever, faraway, leaden-coloured eyes flash, and the deduction was finished almost before he realized what steps he had taken to arrive at his conclusion. I could have spelled them out for him myself:

1) First premise: my brother Sherlock is and forever has been the queerest youth ever to plague the sodomites of Great Britain with his attentions.
2) Second premise: my brother does not share details of his childhood with his acquaintances, which prompts his peers to find him distant and unapproachable.
3) New evidence: Dr. Watson does not find Sherlock unapproachable. When dismayed at mention of his childhood, Dr. Watson actually moved to comfort my sibling. Thus...
4) Dr. Watson finds Sherlock's happiness directly relevant to his own.
5) Conclusion: the Doctor and my brother are lovers in addition to being flat-mates.

"I didn't mean to upset you," Mycroft said more gently. A smile was haunting his lower face. I didn't know whether to love or hate him for it, so I decided to postpone the decision for later.

"You haven't upset me." I returned to the sideboard for more whiskey in a belated effort to escape poor Watson's hand and regretted its loss at once.

"Of course I haven't. Doctor, if I spoke upon a subject which discomforts you, you likewise have my apologies," Mycroft added with a sigh, drawing a flipper of a hand across his sagging face. He always looks so when I lie to him through my teeth. No one can make my brother appear exhausted more quickly than I can.

Watson nodded once, with the air of benign interest and graciousness so peculiar to him. Then he immediately returned to watching my calm disintegrate with his wonderfully molded mouth tensed in sympathy. For my part, sipping at a fresh drink with longing visions of clarifying needles dancing across my eyes, I was furious. How dare my brother walk into my home--our home, Watson's and mine--and deduce I had taken a lover? My friend was surely only so calm because he had not noticed Mycroft's sudden sordid internal revelation.

"Sherlock, will you not reconsider coming to the services? I ask for the sake of your mental health, my boy. It would add a certain punctuational period to your relations with Father, you know," Mycroft persisted.

"The period at the end of that sentence, and I mean sentence in the sense of a prison term, came when I left home. You are years too late to witness it, brother mine," I said icily.

"I ask you to join me nevertheless."

"And I am answering you clearly. I have no intention of complying."

"Perhaps you would be reminded of good experiences in his company when you speak with our extended--"

"If I want to be reminded of Father, I'll lock myself in the garret without food or ask Dr. Watson here to come after me with one of our sturdier walking sticks," I replied sweetly. "Or would you prefer I kept the latter pastime within the Holmes family, now you are lord of the manor? I can wire you the next time I deserve such a session. Surely one day I will eventually learn the principle that running is a very bad decision in the short term, should you care to carry on our Father's life's work."

My brother paled. With his face so drained of colour, he looked more like me, though my flat refusal to depend upon the all too dangerous concept of frequent, easily come by meals made our body shapes entirely dissimilar. His pallor told me my arrow had flown straight to its mark. I was instantly sorry for it. We were past help, he and I, but I cursed my tongue when I recognized I'd pained him so. I care straight through to my core for my brother, and I am a very great deal like him. But that only means we can hurt one another all the deeper, I am afraid.

"You sounded just like him when you said that, you know," Mycroft answered absently, looking at his watch. "Exactly the tone I recall, down to the last charmingly venomous syllable. You were always a viciously good mimic, my dear boy. Well done."

"Please," I whispered. "I never meant to--"

"On the contrary. You did mean to. I was there too, you know, Sherlock," he added, looking back up at me. He no longer sounded as suave as we always did, only desperately tired. "I cannot argue that my experience was comparable, but being a bystander was its own level of hell. I tried."

"Mycroft, I know you tried." My fists were clenched, and I relaxed them. "And you need never have risked so much for me, I know that as well. But I can fend for myself."

What must the Doctor have thought of me, I wonder now? His tanned, boyishly handsome face was carved of sandstone and the blue eyes were directed very carefully at my waistcoat pocket rather than my face. His perfectly molded ears, the ears that often mistake slight scrapes and clatters for the remembered sounds of horrifying battle plains, were barely flushed along with his cheekbones. I had never in my life held such a wretched conversation with my brother, and there stood the Doctor, watching two grown gentlemen slice each other to ribbons.

"I think, Mr. Holmes, that I'll join your brother in a drink," Watson said at length. "Should you care for one?"

Mycroft looked at Watson as if he had forgotten my friend was in the room. "No, thank you," he replied. "I must be going."

"My dear Mycroft, please tell me you'll forget what I said," I pleaded as my enormous sibling hoisted his form out of our armchair and turned away, walking to the door.

"Will you come to the services with me in the morning?" Mycroft inquired, pausing with his watch in his hand once more. My brother is obsessed with knowing the exact time. Another quirk and no worse than some of mine, I supposed, and the comfort of seeing the gesture made me long for him to forgive me. But not at so high a cost.

"He hated me," I said simply. "I will not go."

Mycroft plucked his hat from the table nearest the door to the hall, shaking his great grizzled head sadly. "He never hated you. He hated anything that reminded him of her, and you are like her portrait. You produced rather the opposite effect in me, you ought to know," he added. "I was grateful to you for it. It was a very great pleasure seeing you again, Dr. Watson. I hope on the next occasion I encounter Sherlock, he shall be in your company."

I did not see my brother put on his hat and leave, his ponderous and melancholy steps proceeding down our seventeen stair treads, because I was looking desperately out the bow window. I am nothing like my mother. She was a graceful creature, incisive and whimsical, fragile and slender with pale ivory skin and a crown of black waves. She inspired affection in everyone around her, was brilliant and charming and honeyed with strangers, fiercely loyal to her friends. A fiercely loyal child would never have abandoned her language simply because his father had decided to knock the habit out of him. As it was, I held out for six months speaking nothing whatsoever but French before I caved in the face of inventive opposition I no longer care to recall. The mirror shows me for who I truly am, a man with an aquiline nose like a carrion bird's and chilling slate eyes. And, as Mycroft reminded me, a cruel turn of phrase. I haven't even inherited her vices, let alone her virtues--should I have been blessed with her shortcomings, I would be assured of never plaguing Watson with troubles beyond being perennially ten minutes late and smudged with oil paints and charcoal. I am punctual to a fault and clean to the point of obsession. My vices are all my father's, and I will never forgive him for that.

John Watson said my surname three times before my eerie silence changed his tactics. "Sherlock," he attempted, though he never calls me that without a feverish constellation of lustful sweat strewn across his brow. He knows I don't like my own name. It quite startled me.

I turned to him. He was holding another whiskey, a modest one this time, and was proffering it to me. My friend's increasingly healthy bronze glow had turned visibly grey, and his lips seemed carved in marble.

"Thank you." I drained it. It was not whiskey I wanted. But syringes are not objects to wave in front of the Doctor, and my poverty compelled me to hide mine rather than simply get a new one at a chemist's on every occasion, dosing myself in a forgiving alleyway.

"Remy Verner sounds a terrible candidate for a physician," he observed with a note of wryness.

"I am far harder on Remy than he deserves, now he is grown," I confessed. "But he was an unbearable youth."

I knew he was not really thinking of Remy. Neither was I. But how could he as a gentleman pose the query, Excuse me--I know we have yet to learn a great many things about one another--but how did your mother die, and what happened to your family as a result? As it happens, Dr. Watson knew of another approach.

"What do you want of me?" he asked calmly. "Anything from drawing a bath for two to challenging Remy Verner to a duel falls within my purview."

"I'm fine."

I could have said literally anything else and gotten a better result. For a moment, he looked very nearly angry, and then he merely brushed his fingertips over the edge of his moustache once and shook his head.

"Holmes, if you wish to be alone, or to go after your brother, I understand completely. But so long as I am here, I would appreciate it if--"

"But I am fine, though of course I regret having spoken in such a ghastly way. Forgive me."

"You need not apologize. Only tell me what it is that you require."

"A few minutes in peace and a good night's sleep, my boy." I smiled at him, honest and open. I can smile like that on command whenever I please, because the mere fact of him makes me so grateful it is nearly painful.

"Stop doing this," he whispered. "For my sake." I could see the expression, plain as day writ between his brows. Listen to yourself.

"It's for your sake I am doing it in the first place."

"No, it isn't," he cried. "I don't want your deference, or your self-abnegation, or your formalities. I want you. How can you pretend you are doing this for me?"

"Do you really want to know all about it, Watson?" It was the sickly courteous voice again, the one I hated hearing again on every occasion it emerged from my turncoat lips, and the one I had already used to shove poor Mycroft out into the tempest. "Do you really want me to describe, in vivid detail, what precisely is involved when grief drives your father into a permanent irrational rage? Because, my dear Doctor, you see before you something of an embodied idee fixe."

It was not so every day, of course. On the contrary. The times after I'd run off were oddly the best periods, following whatever rage he inflicted upon me for the affront of escaping. Then he would be horridly calm, staring at me from the end of the long table while Mycroft held his breath against chaos, talking of my horses and my chemistry studies and my violin. Asking whether the music lessons which were the light of my life ought not to be five times a week instead of four. As if to say he was sorry. As if to convince me to stay. Within three months, I would have ruined it all with a badly timed joke or an overly graceful flick of my hand. He didn't call me an abomination against the laws of Nature until the age of fifteen, but by then I had already stomached more than enough. I had memorized all the newspapers in the garret, after all, and never thought to re-stock it in secret. Stocking the garret would have altogether broken my pride.

Watson was beginning to look ill. "I never asked for a description. But I can't understand you, and I--"

"Press on the crack hard enough, and just what do you think you would get, John? Answer me that," I growled.

He only shook his head. "I love you. I love you, and you needn't shield me. Beyond that, I don't know what to say."

The storm was screaming and beating against the window. If I had wanted to go after my brother, I would have caught my death without spending precious funds on the cab to his lodgings. It was a positively equinoctial gale, the entire spring store of rain flinging itself against the glass while the wind cried and sobbed like a child in the chimney.

Then we both heard the faint chime of the bell.

"Your brother has returned," Watson said softly. "Shall I fetch him?"

"He has not returned," I responded. "He is gone. What I said to him was inexcusable, surely you realize that. I only hope it was not unforgivable as well. Whoever that is, I can promise you it isn't Mycroft Holmes."

"Some friend of yours, perhaps?"

"Do you recall the number of friends I possess save for you, John Watson?"

"The same as for myself," he sighed. "Barring you, I have none."

He would have a hundred friends, if he spent less time with me. Lestrade, for instance, is forever inviting him to pubs for billiards with a hopeful little expression on his rat's face. It almost makes me like Lestrade to see him do it. Anyone who is smitten by the Doctor is bound to be on my good side, up to a point--Lestrade sleeps with women, of course, which neatly illustrates the point to which I refer. But his sleeping with women does not prevent his beady brown eyes lighting up when he sees I am with the Doctor and not alone. He longs almost palpably for my boy to like him. Sometimes he even refrains from making jokes at my expense, now he has noticed Watson does not care for them. He once made the Doctor laugh by remarking that a thief he had recently caught had left a trail so obvious Sherlock Holmes could have followed it blind, drunk, and sound asleep, and when Watson's small bout of merriment had ended, Lestrade did not stop smiling for the next ten minutes. I may begin encouraging aforementioned pub excursions. Watson is the sort of man who ought to have hundreds of friends, and Lestrade is a very good sort even if a talentless bulldog born without an imagination. Only I am the sort who ought to have one.

I see that my pen prefers to ramble on about Geoffrey Lestrade, of all the confounded people in all the world, rather than the man who did in fact walk through our door that night. God help me. God help me and God forgive me, for I know not what else to write.

I cannot forget him. Ever. I will never forget a single word John Openshaw said to me, or a single detail of that desperately young, vaguely handsome face. To begin with, he reminded me vividly of a former lover with whom I had lived for some time after moving to London. Reginald Asquith is his name, but that is of no consequence except to say that they possessed the same slightly built, bookish air and the same precise, gentle, delicate, intelligent turn of phrase. This man was younger than Reggie and myself, only a little past twenty rather than nearing his thirtieth year, meticulous and feminine, and he was bowed down with trouble. I latched onto his woes in the space of a heartbeat, for the most purely selfish of all self-serving reasons. I wanted to forget mine.

John Openshaw had a pair of pince-nez, and he raised them to his eyes. I can hardly bear to recall it. But if that is not my penance, what is? Shall I set down everything he said to me? Beginning with "I apologize," for he could see I was in distress myself, and ending with "I shall take your advice in every particular?"

I cannot. God help me, I can't. They are seared on my brain without my writing them, the lord knows. What was relevant, as it happened, was that he was in a dreadful fix and had come to me to save him. The more fool John Openshaw.

"I cannot begin to grasp it, Mr. Holmes," he said to me as water streamed from his umbrella in the corner, "but I fear I must tell you my life has recently been threatened. I have begun receiving hostile notes. The envelopes all contain the most bizarre token imaginable--a group of five dried orange pips, and in addition threats penned on the inner paper in the most vile terms. Every time the token is the same, and when I shake the paper five withered pips fall out. Have you ever in your studies or career heard of such a thing?"

I was, I admit, only half-listening even though I thought I was giving him my full attention. But at these words my head lifted. I asked him to tell me more, tell me everything about his family, his past, and his friends that could account for such a strange signal.

"I have not the first clue, Mr. Holmes," he protested helplessly, spreading his hands. "At first I thought it a cruel joke. But they have increased in virulence and frequency since, daring to suggest the writer will murder me in cold blood."

"Have you altered your habits recently?" I asked. "Begun a new position? Witnessed a crime? Hired a new servant? Come into an inheritance, perhaps?"

"Nothing like it. My life goes on as it always has: quietly, save for these terrifying interruptions. My family was most respectable, and I cannot account for the sudden appearance of these evil notes in any way. My uncle, granted, spent a good deal of his time in America as a youth and doubtless made enemies during the time he spent there during the reconstruction of the Southern states following his service as a Colonel in the American Civil War. But Mr. Holmes, why now? Why me?"

I listened. I asked further questions. Then I asked still more, attending to Openshaw's answers while I pictured my elder brother lumbering home aboard an omnibus, or perhaps forgoing gaslight for a night to justify having taken a cab.

"I have felt so helpless," he concluded. "I know perhaps this is merely an elaborate prank, but nonetheless I feel like one of those poor rabbits when the snake is writhing towards it."

"Have you seen the police?"

"Yes, of course. But they listened to my story with a smile. I am convinced that the inspector has formed the opinion that the letters are all practical jokes."

"You have no further evidence, I suppose, than that which you have placed before us--no suggestive detail which might help us?"

"Nothing. What shall I do?"

"The first consideration is to remove the pressing danger which threatens you. We would be fools to assume these letters mere pranks before we gain any evidence to support that theory--and if they are pranks, then so much the better, and we'll have lost nothing for our caution. I myself will come down in the morning and search your house. I shall interview the servants, perhaps have a word with one or two of your neighbours, for it would be most unsafe to doubt that you are in real peril. I trust you are armed? Very good. I must emphasize to you that before I have had the chance to look further into these threats you cannot possibly guard yourself too closely. Tomorrow I shall set to work upon your case."

Tomorrow. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. If ever a tale was told by an idiot, it is the one I am recording now.

John Openshaw wrote his address for me, but I did not open the scribbled note. I placed it instead in my waistcoat pocket. Something about orange pips, dried ones, nagged at me. Something I could not recall. He thanked me, and thanked Watson. He shook our hands.

He left.

My friend sat in silence, staring into the fire. One of his masculine surgeon's hands was curled into a gentle fist now, and rested against his mouth. I went for my violin, feeling that if I did not pick up my beautiful Strad right then and there, I truly would find myself ripping at the seams.

"Let us," I whispered to Watson, "forget for half an hour the miserable weather and the still more miserable ways of our fellow-men. Please. You asked what I wanted, and I ask only that of you."

"I'm sorry, my dear fellow," he said quietly.

"Why?" The whiskey was beginning to buzz in my head a little, but I did not think that the reason I failed to follow him. I raised my bow in an arc that felt like home.

"For the day you have passed. It was not my doing, but I regret your suffering it. Tomorrow will be better."

He has never in his life been more wrong.

I have no intention of setting anything down save the barest of facts regarding the following three days. I am not proud of them, of any of my actions, but that is not the reason. I simply would stop writing here and now if I required myself to employ adjectives and adverbs. And so much of it was repeated ad nauseum, horribly the same from moment to moment. So here is what happened.

On the following morning, when I was sitting with the Doctor in the midst of London's residual clouds finishing breakfast, I stood up to find my frock coat and the jotted down address Openshaw had left me and Watson's voice arrested me. "Holmes," he cried out. Then he stopped. "You are too late," he told me. I asked him how it was done. John Openshaw, apparently, had drowned the night before in the river near Waterloo Bridge. Just after I had promised to help him tomorrow.

I told Watson I had no time to lose, in that case, and would he please remain here while I rushed to tell Lestrade all I knew so that the evidence the official police had gathered would be a more complete picture. He didn't want to stay behind, but I spent not an instant listening to him as I pulled on my coat. I asked him please to wire my brother repeated apologies for me while I was gone, even if he would not receive them until he returned from the country, saying it would ease my mind, and that stifled his protests.

At around the same time my father's funeral proceedings were beginning far from London, I stepped into a chemist's and purchased a large amount of morphine. I had not kept that particular drug in the flat since Watson and I fell into each other's arms six months back and he had confessed it tempted his own addictive urges. He had grown to crave morphine after he was injured in battle, but had rid himself of the habit. Nevertheless, I purchased it, along with a new syringe. I...

God in Heaven, even without descriptors this is like slicing off my own fingers one by one.

I put the morphine in my coat and went to the Yard, demanding to see Lestrade. When I was admitted to his office, he told me at once to sit down.

"Mr. Holmes, are you feeling all right?" he inquired. His narrow face was as squeezed as if he had just eaten a lemon. In retrospect, perhaps he was truly concerned. I imagine I looked like a ghoul. "Would you like some coffee?"

I refused the coffee. I told him everything about John Openshaw, repeated everything John Openshaw had said to me verbatim, while he neatly took notes and glanced up at me from time to time with the face of a worried terrier.

"Thank you for having brought this to my attention, Mr. Holmes. I take it you will want to accompany me to this poor fellow's house at once?"

I tossed the paper with the address on his desk. "I have taken myself off the case. Imbeciles ought not to fancy themselves amateur crime-solvers."

That shocked him as much as anything I have ever said. Had I been in the humour for it, it would doubtless have been greatly amusing.

"Why on earth would you say such a thing, Mr. Holmes?"

"Because I am the imbecile and you are the policeman. Now, start policing. Find his killer or killers and bring them to justice."

"But--"

"Do not expect me to make a further hash of this than I have already. He came to me for help, and I sent him away to his death. Those are facts, not theories for you to piss and whinge over. Find the killer, Lestrade. Or killers. Find them right this very moment. Please, just go. I know you can do it. Solve the crime without me."

"You ought to--"

"I ought to have protected John Openshaw instead of acting so negligently I may as well have murdered him myself."

Lestrade turned paler. Then he reached out a slim hand to me. He was either grasping at my hand or was about to grip my shoulder. But I turned around without taking it and walked to the door as I felt his fingers brush my sleeve.

"Find them," I repeated. "Find them before I decide to make a second hole in the river in as many days."

When I reached a dark alley near the most private egress from the Yard, I took off my coat, leaned against the brick, and rolled up my sleeve. It was approximately the right time for my father's descent to the land of worms by then, so I thought of the injection grimly as a toast to his health. Then I went home.

For the first day, I locked myself in my room. After Watson had knocked it down, that seemed melodramatic, so I hid the morphine in the clean part of the plumbing in the water closet. I shall skip the ensuing two days, for they were at best repetitive and at worst Hell on earth. I was no longer a consulting detective and no longer a son. No longer a beloved younger brother, doubtless, for Mycroft had not returned the Doctor's telegrams. No longer a lover, probably, because at literally any moment John Watson would have had enough and would leave never to return.

Or so I supposed. But he did not seem to be going anywhere. In fact, it grew more and more difficult to hide myself away from him, more and more difficult to keep him from finding the morphine, more and more of a challenge to respond effectively that I did not want him to see me like this and he should please go away and return when I was feeling more myself and could speak with him properly, now there's a good fellow. I begged him not to worry and I begged him to leave me alone. I begged him to leave my room, begged for silence and patience and solitude. I told him I would be better soon. Better, more balanced, more grounded. I meant that soon I would be in fit condition for him to set his deep blue eyes on me. Soon I would be worthy of him. I believed it, too, or a part of me did.

Another part knew that as certain as the earth was spinning, Nature abhors a vacuum. If something happened to me, John Watson would find someone capable of understanding him. And while I detested the thought of that eventuality, I admittedly did appear to be hastening it along.

It was on the third day that I began wondering if I was much harming myself. Mortally harming myself, should my course run straight, for it had been days since I'd eaten. I thought about the question for nearly two hours. I couldn't seem to care about the conclusion, however. Night fell, but I failed to notice. My fire went out, and I ignored that too. The room was still warm, after all. At midnight, I fetched the morphine from its new hiding place within the gouged out hole inside a stack of old newspapers and shot myself full of the luxurious poison for the sixth time that day. For some reason, I took off all my clothing like a penitent and lay pale and bare in the cooling atmosphere for nearly an hour. And now I must describe things again. Everything, every tiny detail must be set down.

I was curled up on my bed, staring at the trickle of blood flowing from my arm. When Watson came inside the room, he saw it too, and his face fell into a pained, drooping mask.

I have said elsewhere that John Watson's emotions are written plainly all over his features, but I was being overly simplistic. When he is vexed with the world around him or in physical pain, you would never know it to look at him save for a tiny line of worry which rests almost invisibly between his brows. He can also look at me in public with a blandly fond expression I find as amusing as it is necessary for our continued secrecy. However, when he is very, very worried, and he is worried about me, he cannot begin to hide it.

I supposed he would leave me alone again. Perhaps storm off in disgust. But he kicked his slippers away and stripped until he was as bare as I, coming to kneel behind my curled form. Bending over my body, he lifted my arm and set his lips to the tiny wound, cleaning it with his gentle tongue.

"Why are you here?" I whispered.

"You know why." He returned my arm to its curved resting place on the sheet and lay down behind me, his head resting on his cupped hand above my brow as he drew his legs into my own.

"I don't." I laughed silently. "I honestly don't. And even if I did, I couldn't feel it. Not since I killed him."

"You did not kill Openshaw, Holmes," Watson said sternly. "A vile murderer did. Dear God, love--"

"Do you know what I thought, when it happened?" I asked. "What must he think of me? That's what I thought. Not my God, John Openshaw is dead, I must mourn my client or avenge him. I thought, what will John Watson think of me now? I suppose that might amuse you to know. What do you think, seeing me like this?"

"I think you justly deserving of your clients' trust, as I ever have." He sounded sincere. "I also think you are riding yourself to death, and for a number of reasons."

"Yes, that might have been the point."

He let his upper torso collapse as he drew his arm across my chest and held it there, pulling me to him like some sort of preciously wrapped bundle in a bitter gale. When I felt his face against the back of my neck, it was instantly wet with either his lips or his tears or both.

"What is it?" I mouthed numbly.

It was five minutes at the least of him trembling ever so slightly, clutching me under his arm with his length curled against mine, before he answered.

"Nothing frightens me more than this," he said at last, his lips drifting over the nape of my neck. "Nothing. Please come back to me."

It took me all that time to realize fully, in the stupor of my grief mixed with the blinding piercing all-at-once visibility provided by copious morphine, that I had actually made John Watson far more upset than I had ever before known him. I do not say "ever before seen him," because I still lay with his front curled against my back--but he was cracking, clearly, and I was the one with the hammer in my hand. My thoughts were moving too slowly, and then again they rushed past in blinding washes of speeding colour.

I was still pondering what to say when he left me, heading for his dressing gown and the door.

I staggered to my feet, gripping at my own robe, my head made of nothing but pure spring air and lightning flashes. "John."

He was out the door already. I hurried after him, and caught his upper arm in the half-light of the sitting room fireplace. He twisted away from me angrily and we stood there, both of us nearly naked, and I knowing that I had just done something very stupid.

"John, I'm sorry," I gasped.

I reached for him again, and he caught my wrist in his clenched fingers. He stood there, breathing furiously, holding my limb at arm's length like a spear.

"What are you sorry for?" he snarled. "If you can tell me what you are sorry for, Sherlock Holmes, I will be very surprised. For instance, are you sorry that you have been robbed over and over, of every good thing you always deserved, and that it has happened again? I am sorry for that myself, with everything I am. Or are you sorry for taking the one single thing on earth I need above life itself, the thing I adore, the one good thing I own, and treating it like a refuse heap? Because that is what you are doing. And by God, my love, you should be sorry for it."

He let go of me, but his blue eyes never faltered. "You'll be dead at this rate in a few days, a week perhaps. I was nearly so far gone myself once, but you know all that. Never mind. It doesn't matter now. I'll have some morphine at least, if I can no longer have you," he said flatly. Then he turned to go.

Whatever I did, it was madness, pure and simple. I can recall my mind saying very clearly to me that John Watson could not be allowed any morphine, for it could kill him, and then that I was a blazing hypocrite, and then that I did not care. Conscious thought departed, but I know I clutched at his arm once more before everything fell to ruins. I may have mentioned elsewhere that Watson's prior life experiences left him profoundly skilled at hand to hand combat, and my own instincts are hardly less good. When I came to myself, we were both flat on the carpet locked in violent combat, neither of us winning. There was so much pain everywhere that it was even beginning to break through the morphine, and I couldn't bear to think what I had done to my friend in an effort to save him from what amounted to the threat of self-annihilation. There was blood on my gashed lip, and blood flowing over Watson's eye, and my arm had started trickling again, and my jaw seemed very bruised.

It ended with my pinning him back against the floor with my entire body weight against him, face to face and still grappling viciously. He stopped. On the moment he ceased struggling, I came back to my senses, though far too late.

"You would be right to leave me," I confessed desperately. "But I beg you to stay."

"There you are. God, there you are. That's the first time you've actually looked at me in days," he whispered. "I was beginning to think you'd never see me again."

"I couldn't look at you." My voice sounded strangely hoarse. "I would never drag you down with me, never expose you to anything so ugly. I was using everything I had to stay afloat as it was. I was using the last of my resources."

"But can't you use me?" he pleaded, a catch in his throat. "It would hardly be fair, my using you up so freely every day, if you never used me in return. You're everything I want, but there is almost nothing left of you."

When I kissed him, I could taste my own blood in my mouth. The pain was at last sharp enough to cut through the effects of the injection, and I was deliriously grateful. I had not felt a thing apart from dull worthless nothing for three days, and now I was prone over my friend marking his warm skin with my cooling blood. My groin was alive when it had not been before, pressing along his hip bone, and all I could think was that I didn't want to use him, didn't want him to become like my other vices, there when I needed him and neglected on the instant I was marginally happy.

He was pulling me against him with both hands, one at my backside and the other clutched deep in my hair.

"It isn't that I needed you," he moaned when my split lip moved to redden his throat. "It's that you needed me, and you never came."

Something broke apart then, I know it. Nothing visible, and my entire body was still lit like an electric eel, but suddenly I knew there was nothing in the world that could drag me out of this mire if I did not open him up and take what he was giving me. My right hand was everywhere I could find his warmth as I supported myself on my left elbow, searching his flanks and his chest, needing like a wastrel's fix to find the key to this mysterious stranger who had one day walked into my life and senselessly remained there. The carpet was rough and dug into my shin, his back, as we searched for each other without any guide. His skin was warm to the touch and better than anything I have ever felt in my life.

"Why should you be hurt when I refused to take from you?" I wondered brokenly. "Shouldn't you be grateful I refused?"

"Not when what I was offering you was love."

Love.

Such a delicate concept, and yet resilient as a spider's thread. Had I truly been so mindless as to refuse it when it was in front of me? I had thought he would only consent to stay if I resolved to give myself to him always, never guessing he may have felt rejected by my own self-reliance. That same self-reliance, of course, was digging a hole deep in my left arm and growing more untenable by the instant. But love--of the three elements with claim to some permanence, I had lost my faith long ago and only indulged in hope when I thought I could bear to see it shattered. Of the greatest of these, love, I knew practically nothing.

"Stop thinking," he gasped. "For the love of holiness and all that is pure in the world, stop thinking. I did not give myself to you so that you could set me on a shelf and polish me every morning, damn it. I am here to be used. Now, for mercy's sake use me. Stop thinking."

Things progressed very quickly after that. No so quickly that I did not satisfy myself of his safety, for if I ever hurt him I would probably walk off a bridge. But we both know what we're doing, he and I, and it was not my hands which pulled me into him with all the forcefulness of a suicide's knife blade, nor was I the first to cry out. Something to do with the morphine allowed me to hover above us for one brief moment, watching myself arcing my hips and tasting his breast. But not for long. Before, I had only ever wanted to make him forget his own name so that I could be the one to give it back to him. I had wanted to be the sole keeper of it. Now I was nothing, not even myself anymore.

I wonder sometimes what would have happened to me if he had not come into my room that night. Or if he had not left me soon after, and thereby startled me into sentience. I don't know that I would be dead, but neither do I know the opposite. And I think that part of what we were doing locked together in intercourse was as holy as it ever was, and that part was now horribly human, proving to myself that I was alive at all.

I can honestly state that a habit for good or ill formed by fucking people for your room and board is that the act is no longer about you. Putting a cock in your mouth, however sweet it is, is a task with an ulterior motive, and fingering a lover until he is crying for your length is the same sort of self-satisfying professional skill which a jockey feels riding or a captain feels when his ship safely docks. I can grip a man so he thinks for a moment he loves me and might even say so, beat a man so delicately that he begs for another taste of the crop, taste everything he gives me and then place it in his mouth again so beautifully that he thinks I am blessing him with the elixir of life. I did those things because I liked to do them, but also because I could never go home. It was pleasurable for a certainty to provide such services, but not a gift. Always a payment. Never a gift. With John Watson, sex is never a payment, but even so it had been a gift to him and not to me. That was what made making love to the Doctor that night so alien to me, what made me ache at the thought I was using him and then still more pained at the fact I had no choice.

My strength was so sapped while nevertheless artificially bolstered that I was employing nearly all my energy by the end. It would have been utterly heartbreaking to treat him so, rutting on the floor the way a drowning man swims, but he was rising to meet me every time, and the name I'd forgotten I had was on his lips. The name my father had given me, thinking it distinguished. But somehow, in the Doctor's mouth, it was a sweet word and not a bitter one. He was saying it like an incantation as we both approached the edge, and one meant to keep me here. When I finished at last, shuddering as if the climax had been torn from me, he reached down and gripped himself roughly to bring his own ache to a swift end.

I think I'm right in saying it was the saddest sex in the world.

Hallowed Be Thy Name I

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 20:10:02 GMT

About the characters: they are far too good to be mine.

Rating: NC-17

Warning: If reference to child abuse (nonsexual), explicit sex, explicit drug abuse or violence offends you, not to mention mention of kinky sex, please please do not read this. I would be mortified if anyone was hurt by it.

Sherlock Holmes was a man who seldom took exercise for exercise's sake. Few men were capable of greater muscular effort, and he was undoubtedly one of the finest boxers of his weight that I have ever seen; but he looked upon aimless bodily exertion as a waste of energy, and he seldom bestirred himself save where there was some professional object to be served. Then he was absolutely untiring and indefatigable. That he should have kept himself in training under such circumstances is remarkable, but his diet was usually of the sparest, and his habits were simple to the verge of austerity. Save for the occasional use of cocaine, he had no vices, and he only turned to the drug as a protest against the monotony of existence when cases were scanty and the papers uninteresting.

The above paragraph interests me considerably, and for a number of reasons.

A word must be said upon the subject of witticisms first, within the context of the manuscripts which have begun littering our rooms. My friend the Doctor's sense of humour exists in direct correlation to his state of physical well-being, and the more active a man he becomes--a felicity for which I am grateful as much to his ferocious tenacity as to any higher power--the more wry grow the invariably poetical descriptors applied to my person. I have learned recently, for instance, that I am "ivory-skinned," "feline." But I wish to speak of humour, not of poetry. Take the phrase, "seldom took exercise for exercise's sake." There are some varieties of bodily exertion which might well be called aimless when I take them up (not having been endowed with the appropriate apparatus to produce any children with my choice of bedmate, for example), and yet I do not think he would argue with me if I mentioned that I am generally rather vigourous in that arena. And herein lies my point: he knew, writing this, whither my own thoughts would tend. This is the exact variety of pawky humour that I am slowly growing to recognize as impossible to defend against.

I am never vexed by it--I am an arrogant prat on occasion, and gentle barbs in my direction mean he is well. In some senses, their presence in this tale in particular could be thought encouraging. Which brings me to the second reason these flights of fancy over my corporeal being interest me. Where, oh where, is the Doctor himself in these reams of description?

Every time I lift a page with his handwriting caressing it, I hope as I scan its contents to see him in it. See him visibly, and watch his flow of adjectives shift towards the other half of this partnership. I speak of the one who has blue eyes as vivid as a piece of lapis, and brown hair tending in the direction of autumn hay. See there? It would be that easy. But I am not a poet, and to say that he cups me in the palm of his hand is merely the truth, not a metaphor, and the fact that suspect I already I know why he is not present in his own stories (he insists they will one day be biographies, but they are hardly very factual) pains me more than I can say.

I recall precisely what he looked like on the very first occasion I saw him. His own charming description was "thin as a lath and brown as a nut," which was true enough. He was also inquisitive underneath his exhaustion, deferential in spite of his pain, and one of the most strikingly masculine specimens of understated gentility that I have ever seen. Here is where my own powers of words fall short. He is certainly handsome. He is manifestly intelligent, and courageous, and gentle. When he is on my arm, I feel ten feet tall rather than six foot three. But how is it possible that a man like that should begin his notes of a dark story, a terrible story, one which makes my blood burn to think of and have not even fully recovered from, in such a manner--with an anecdote about my indolence?

And finally, the above paragraph interests me because I take cocaine. I take it, he detests it, and so he writes about it.

At least now he is sleeping. When I look at him, his fingers curled slightly on the empty pillow beside him, I can wish he had never fallen in love with me, so that he might be safe from what lies within syringes and revolvers and myself. God knows I do the best I can. But it was selfish of me, I know it, to try to keep him--no matter how shining my intentions to make him happy, what can happiness matter unless you are alive to enjoy it? He isn't safe in my hands. He may love them, but they could do him a world of harm.

I adjust my sleeve cuff and glance back once more. He is sleeping deeper than usual. Under normal circumstances I would never dream of dosing myself in the room with him, but ever since it all happened I cannot bear to be more than ten feet away.

The needle prick stings more than it did earlier this morning, because I am tired and thin-skinned and out of sorts. I have to swab it with cotton to stop it bleeding, as if my very body is rebelling, in direct communion with my friend. Then some clarity returns to me. Why would Watson write it that way? It's altogether disturbing.

There is only the one solution remaining, of course. I must be the one to write it. As it happens, the beginning was in some ways as dramatic as the end.

It was early spring, and some six months after the business with John Clay revealed to me that the wistful tilt to Watson's eyebrows when he looked in my direction might not be entirely platonic. He had already begun scribbling things. He left them for me to find in increasingly obvious places, in the apparent hope that I might register an opinion with him on the subject of their style. On that particular afternoon, I was rifling through sheet music while he sat at his desk with his pen between his full lips, casting devious little looks in my direction. He is very charming when he is devious, and I believe he is aware of the fact.

"I say, my dear fellow, can you think of another word for 'aquiline?'"

I pursed my lips, pretending to seem both irritable and at a loss for vocabulary at once. "Beaked?" I suggested. "Crook-nosed?"

"No, no, nothing like that--those are pejoratives, and I speak of something quite noble in appearance."

The man is incorrigible. "Perhaps concamerated?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Possessed of a downward arch. Concamerated."

"Concamerated is not quite what I had in mind," he mused, smiling.

"Curvulate? Falcate?"

"For Heaven's sake, Holmes. Apart from the fact I am not entirely convinced those words even exist, they aren't particularly appealing to the ear, are they?"

"Well, I don't see how you expect me to arrive at anything more apt when you have given me no context. Suppose you try to provide me with a synonym for cobalt, and see if you do any better?"

It took him a moment to realize his ploy had backfired, but he linked his fingers together and swung his legs companionably in my direction. His cobalt-blue eyes twinkled wickedly. I affected not to notice, standing by my reference shelves with yellowed sheets in my hands.

"Why should you want a synonym for cobalt?"

"For the same reason you want a synonym for aquiline: because I am looking at it."

His lips shifted subtly. Watson was beginning to appear as if he wanted to laugh but knew he would ruin any of his own chances of winning the match by doing so. He had loosened his cravat when the sun began to cut through the window, the dull gold fabric playing off the highlights remaining in his sun-bleached hair and the three scattered freckles on his bronzed cheekbones. My friend's colouring alone, now he has lost his grey underpainting, sends me into silent raptures. His eyelashes are still whiter than his brows, but his hair, at its roots as I watch it grow, is a full three shades darker than it was when I met him. The waiting to know what exactly it will look like when it is all brown and he has gained back ten more pounds is an agony I will not attempt to express in print.

"Indigo?" he suggested innocently.

"Too dark."

He thought for a moment. "Aqua?"

"The water reference is apt, but the color itself too pale when used in the vernacular."

"Teal, then."

"Too green."

"Chalybeous."

"Too--what the devil did you just say?"

Now he was laughing, for he could no longer help himself. Seeing Watson laugh is an irresistible thing, as forceful and uplifting as hearing a piece of music written by a genius or a child. His entire body shakes with it, and his right hand approximately seven times out of ten comes up to ruffle his own hair. It did on this occasion as well. I dropped my sheet music on the far end of his desk--it was our desk, but he had begun using it much more frequently--and went for the dictionary, apparently affronted beyond words. In all truth, I had never heard the word before in my life, which was a rare occurrence.

"Spell it instantly."

He did. He could hardly contain himself, but he managed it well. I kicked his chair out of its place with the sole of my slipper, scraping its feet along the floor, so that I could take a seat on top of the desk with the reference volume in my lap.

"Ha!" I exclaimed in triumph. "You could not possibly be more mistaken. You will have to own your error on this occasion, my friend. 'Chalybeous: steel blue, possessing the color of tempered steel.' Nothing like what I had in mind. Make a better effort this time, now do go on."

"Did I imply that I was still answering your question? I wasn't." He rose from his chair, stretching a little.

"Come now, prevarication will get you nowhere. If not trying to find a synonym, then what on earth were you doing, apart from displaying your prowess at unrelated obscure vocabulary?"

He put his hands on my knees and leaned over, reading the dictionary definition upside-down. "I was describing what I was looking at."

I confess myself very slow, but it took me a moment to see what he meant. Once I had worked it out, there was nothing to be done other than scoff at him and return my eyes--for we had moved on to my eyes by that time, of course--to the page.

"Hardly," I murmured. "Stone, perhaps, or tin if you like."

"Silvered," he insisted, peering into them as he appraised every heather-toned fleck. I was fast losing my grip on the dictionary.

"Far too romantic, and not even approaching the truth," I retorted, though he was by now practically in my lap and my arguments were losing their cohesion simultaneously. I do not much care for my own eyes. My mother's eyes were a sparkling shade of pale green, but unfortunately we do not select in this life whom we would prefer to resemble. "Ash."

Watson reached one hand up and stroked the skin at the very edge of my eye with his thumb. "Fog."

"My dear chap, think where we reside. My eyes are not brown."

The Doctor's face was tilted up toward mine, with one hand just resting on my upper thigh and the other caressing the corner of my eyelid, sending my vertebrae careening off in separate directions, and I hereby confess I dropped the dictionary. Setting it down carefully would have meant turning away from him, and I was rather far past that point.

When the flesh of our lips met, I passed my arms around his shoulders, my legs around his torso, one hand to the back of his head. His mouth is a silken, glowing thing. My friend kisses the way he does everything else, with his entire being, and sometimes I wonder how there can be anything left of him when he at last breaks away from me. I had never before thought overmuch about kissing anyone. I enjoyed it, but some of my former dalliances were far less artful about it and others did not care a fig whether I kissed them or not. They cared whether I opened my mouth when I was meant to and kept it shut at other times, such as when the venerable uncle of the clan has arrived for dinner and desires to know what exactly is my course of study at University, and what my relation to his dissolute rake of a grandnephew, and how long I plan to be staying at the townhouse. They cared that I dress myself tastefully and know my way around a bedroom. Watson can kiss me as if he wants to be doing nothing more than that for the rest of his days, only our two breaths co-mingling while the rest of the world grows old.

I was the one who pulled away on that occasion, for I wanted every piece of him and planned to escort him somewhere rather more private to show him just how badly. I brushed my fingertips over his cheekbone.

"Sapphire," I decided. My heart was racing.

That earned me a smile, and he pulled my head down to kiss the very top of my admittedly clifflike nose, right between my eyes.

"Roman, I think," he whispered.

There were other words whirring through my mind by now, words like breathless and heartrending, but saying them would have meant another round, knowing Watson's competitiveness as I do, and I wanted to call it a tie and tear his clothing away from his body. The heat emanating from his skin was physically infecting me.

The man is a vortex from which I do not see myself likely to escape.

In one sense, the relations between John Watson and myself are extraordinarily simple, as simple as his generosity or my taste in tobacco products, and can be summed up in a single sentence: I love him desperately, and have foolishly convinced myself he is in a similar fix. In another, however, the affair is as complex as my better violin fancies or the workings of Watson's mind. He tests me in gentle, teasing ways when longing for me to command him, and yet he has little tolerance for unsought authority. He is the most peaceable soul on earth, but once roused I have seen him fight off men double his size. He gives me blank looks when I leap to a conclusion, an impossibly subtle instinct which tells him I am being overhasty, and yet the most outlandish genuine deductions elicit an immediate round of chuckling applause and a demand to know how I've done it. He would give a perfect stranger the coat from his back and yet expects me to believe his kindly treatment of me is exceptional. Six months into a passion which I would long ago have solved if dealing with any other man, and he remains the most enigmatic figure in my life. Thankfully, I am obsessed with mysteries. And even if I comprehend almost nothing about him, at least I am talented enough in the bedroom to know what he wants.

"What sorts of words are you thinking of now?" he teased me, for I was admittedly staring at him like an imbecile.

I never replied, for the sound of footsteps on our stairs prevented me from explaining my fondness for both John Watson and the word conundrum. The Doctor, still amusing himself doubtless, handed me back the dictionary, which I affected to study while he pretended to be searching through the pile of newsprint at the edge of the settee.

The downstairs page-boy appeared in the doorway with a telegram on a salver and the Doctor obligingly went to pick it up, mussing the scamp's hair. Children adore the man, and our Billy was no exception. When I first introduced Watson to the Irregulars, my very own Irregulars, I was forced to reconcile rather conflicting emotions regarding their response to him, that of stark envy and glowing pride.

"It's for you, Holmes."

"Read it out, will you?"

He opened the yellow slip of paper. He began to read it, but after Watson had gotten past my name, he stopped, frozen as if the note had been an enchanted object. Something was very wrong.

"Are you all right, Watson?" I asked at once.

Watson's eyes were still fixed to the paper. When he dragged them up to me, his face shifted into an expression I could never have read if my life had depended upon it. Astonishment mingled with something very like pity. But Watson is too much a gentleman to show such a ghastly feeling as pity, and so I ruled it out.

"My dearest fellow," he said slowly, "you have had some terrible news."

"Have I?"

"Your father, Holmes, he...he is dead."

I set the dictionary down. It seemed the least I could do under the circumstances. Then I searched my pockets for my cigarette case, as it seemed to be the perfect time for one. Watson walked back over to me, very gravely, with the note in his hands. I think now that I must have been considerably shocked at the news, but I do not betray shock easily, and so Watson was forced to watch me perform one of my wind-up toy acts, lighting a cigarette with perfect ease and then reaching for the missive he was reluctantly handing me. I read it myself.

"So he is," I said.

What kind of a human being says such a thing? The Doctor must have thought me deranged. And yet, then again, what else was there to say?

My father had apparently died the day before of a cancerous tumour which had spread beyond the capacity to cut away. They had tried. But by now they had failed, and he was dead.

"I am so very sorry, Holmes," my friend said to me. His blue eyes had turned stormier and drawn in at their corners, a gale force of fellow-feeling propelled in my direction. It was the wrong feeling, however.

"Don't be, my dear fellow," I sighed. "According to this, nothing could have been done. There is no use railing against the inevitable."

Watson blinked at me. And I deserved it. I knew it was the wrong thing to say, that no son in his right mind would ever have passed the event off as if it were only another lost match by a well-beloved yet inept cricket team, but weeping and wailing were not an option. I am not so skilled an actor. Very likely no such actor exists.

"You did not know of his illness, then?" Watson asked.

Here is a fine example of the way John Watson's remarkable brain functions in concert with both his sympathy and his insatiable curiosity. What he wanted to ask me was how I felt about my father, and if I was currently displaying internal symptoms of grief while masking my distress. But what he employed instead was a question of knowledge, that he might draw his own conclusions and learn more without upsetting me. Any response to that query, no matter what it was, would reveal more about my home life. My hat was off to him.

"I knew nothing of it, but we were not close," I replied, giving him more than was asked. "I may well take a moment to reflect philosophically upon this sudden manifestation of the universal inevitable, but I assure you the news doesn't wound me, my dear boy."

Often Watson looks at me with a clear question in his eyes which reads, Can you hear yourself speaking? The answer is yes. I can. The effects are cringe-inducing on occasion, I do not deny it. But my most inane perambulations through the Queen's English are often the ones which seem most necessary for self-defense at the time.

"You'll be wanted for the services, I shouldn't wonder," he mused.

"I sincerely doubt it," I said, hopping off the desk while trailing my fingers over his shoulder blades. The wire in my other hand I clenched into a ball and threw in the grate. "The Holmes clan don't think much of me at social gatherings. You know how useless I am at such functions."

I received The Look again, his eyebrow arching and his beautifully strong chin at an all too specific angle, the one meaning, Listen more carefully to yourself. Can you hear it? You are speaking of your father's funeral as if it were a garden party. Watson's self-imposed rules of polite behavior, however, do not include calling me deaf or insane, thank Heaven.

"Your brother would be an exception, however, am I right?" he reflected. "He seems very fond of you, and terribly proud of you to boot for resolving that dark business for Mr. Melas."

"One man does not a welcome reception make."

Watson had not long known my brother. Only once had we ever stopped by his cramped bachelor's lodgings near London Bridge before Mycroft elicited my help in the matter of the Greek interpreter. I had wanted Watson to meet my only intimate relation at once, so that there would be no surprises in store for him apart from the sort I myself tend to inflict on the unsuspecting. Mycroft had been his usual self--morose, dry, eccentric, terse, affectionate, corpulent, and one step ahead of me. I think they liked each other. But I can never be certain about either one of them, so the point is moot. Mycroft is distant and wry with everyone on earth, and Watson would be courteous to an anarchist with a bomb in his hand.

"Can I get you a drink, Holmes?" he asked next.

"No, it's rather early. I might just organize these--"

Watson was having none of it. "Come for a walk with me."

"A walk?" The weather was admittedly fine, and it was admittedly early spring, and I admittedly relish walking in public with the Doctor. But I knew his motives were more complicated than the desire to view seasonal wildflowers.

"Yes, a walk. You have just had some shocking news, and even if it meant but little to you personally, you require a moment to reflect. Please, if you do not wish for a drink or to sit down and speak with me, then just collect your hat and come along."

"But if I do not properly document these--"

"Holmes," he said firmly, "I wish for your company on a brief walk. I will remain silent, I promise you. You are not tidying your case notes five minutes after--please just come with me. Our affair is yet a young one, and thus I haven't yet seen much of you out of doors and in springtime. Grant me a small pleasure."

The evidence might suggest to some that I am the leader in this love story--and indeed, if one glanced in our bedroom of a weekend evening, or overheard me barking orders with a revolver in my grip, one may well have a point. But when Watson fails to get what he wants from me in one way, he tends to try another, with spectacular results. And in this instance, he knew that once he had couched the question in terms of his own selfish pleasure, I would instantly do as he said.

We headed for the Park, where the first faint shoots of green were breaking out upon the elms. Once my hat was on my head and a Doctor clad in sepia wool that he was just beginning to fill out more healthily on my arm, I realized he had been right. I did need to get out of doors. Filing case notes would have been ludicrous, not nearly distraction enough, and now at least Watson was staring at the sticky spear-heads of the chestnuts instead of at me. Just before we stepped into the Park, a carriage clattered past us making a racket that once would have made Watson flinch like a startled boy, but he ignored it. My muscles began to relax again. He was getting better. Nothing else mattered, and certainly not the death of my father.

Two hours we spent wandering about in silence together (as befits two men who know each other so intimately as to be on the wrong side of the law). The memories of my family home which had been surfacing were banished by five-fold leaves and the Doctor's hand on my elbow. I didn't need to remember the grounds I'd sprinted across, or the garret where I had spent far too many of my hours, reading mouldering newspapers until I had memorized all their subtle differences, always gravitating towards the oldest and grimmest of the crimes. It was nearly five by the time we were back in Baker Street once more.

"Beg pardon, sir," said Billy as he opened the door. "There's been a gentleman here asking for you, sir."

"So much for afternoon walks!" I lamented with a reproachful glance at my companion.

He winced gamely, for he knew it was true. Now I had truly convinced him I was all right, the loss of a case meant a great deal. We were not so destitute, the two of us, that we any longer feared being tossed out on our ears, but Watson's income was small and fixed, and my own sporadic if more generous. We wanted cases, all cases, in particular interesting and difficult cases. Once we had solved enough of them, I was convinced, I could give the Doctor the sort of treatment he deserved. And we could abandon the pitiful habit of pooling our common funds in an empty tobacco tin on the mantelpiece.

"He was a very restless gentleman, sir," Billy added thoughtfully. "A-walkin' and a-stampin' all the time he was here. I was waitin' outside the door, sir, and I could hear him."

"Billy, have you been listening at keyholes?" Watson exclaimed.

"Mr. Holmes told me whatever I could manage ter note and remember about your callers would maybe be useful in the resolvin' of criminal affairs," he protested, his pale little face falling.

"Yes, thank you, Billy," I said hastily. "Do go on."

He looked suspiciously from me to the Doctor, as if his loyalties were divided and my reputation for infallibility on shaky ground.

"Well, at last he outs into the passage, sir, and he cries, 'Is that man never goin' to come?' Those were his very words, sir, 'pon my heart he was that rude. So I says, 'His name is Mr. Sherlock Holmes, sir, and you'll only need to wait a little longer, and you'll be glad till the end of your days you come to this establishment, for what Mr. Holmes can't solve can't be done in the first place, so you'd best be stayin' put and gettin' your story all clear and thorough for him when he comes back.'"

I realized my lips had fallen open when Billy came to a breathless halt.

"Very right of you, too," Watson agreed, all reproach having melted from his deep, assured voice. "Was that all, Billy?"

"Then he ups and he outs," the youth shrugged. "All I could say wouldn't hold him back. Not even that Mr. Holmes had caught murderers and seen 'em hanged, or rescued ladies from ruffians, or that he got me this here position as page-boy."

"Billy, I wonder whether you might want to leave the last part out in future, what do you think?" Watson reflected. The laughter lurking beneath was audible only to me, I am certain. "Perhaps they might suppose your position biases your judgment."

Billy's eyes widened. "Never thought on it in that light. Thanks for the tip, Doctor. Next time I'll be tellin' them about Mr. Holmes and the antiques gang. Or maybe I should have told this here restless gentleman about the time Mr. Holmes--"

"Well, well, you did your best," I complimented him rapidly, diving through the door.

Billy remained below at his post. As we walked up the stairs and out of his earshot, I could hear the Doctor laughing behind me.

"Not a word," I warned him.

"Whyever not?" he replied, still laughing. "I adore you too, you know."

He is so unselfconscious in his passions that a child of four would envy his candour. I am not a man who blushes, but my heart gave a ridiculous little jolt as I reached for the doorknob.

"It's really very annoying, Watson," I said tersely, opening the door for him and stepping aside so that I could shut it again. "We were badly in need of a case."

A case would have taken my mind off that telegram very effectively indeed.

"Perhaps if Billy had told our caller the one about you and the seventy-seven bandits brandishing scimitars and lead piping," Watson said seriously as I closed the door behind us. "I still find it hard to believe that you wrestled them all to the ground armed with only--"

I kissed him. I kissed him until his lips were warm and supple and his steady breathing quickened. I kissed him because I glowed like a witless spinster to hear Billy bragging to him about me and he had the gall to twit me over it. I kissed the rogue until I had pressed the backs of his thighs against our table, and then I noticed something.

"Hullo! That's not your pipe." I reached for its glistening amber stem.

I rattled off a string of deductions, and because they were valid and rather clever, the Doctor was duly impressed. It was all right, I thought. I was all right. I was suave, cool, deftly amusing. We were back to the way we ought to be, without Watson peering at me as if I were a crumbling artifact. When the opportunity arose, I would take some desperately needed cocaine, and forget about it. An instant later our door opened, and a tall young man entered the room, well but quietly dressed.

Mr. Grant Munro was very upset about something. This was terribly gratifying. I do not relish the pain of others, but because my goal is to help them, I do allow myself a slight thrill when I realize the matter is an urgent and not a trivial one. Watson may find it disconcerting when I grow carried away by the thought of a new feast for my mental faculties, but he knows I am enamored of the puzzle and not the suffering. Or at least, I hope he knows it.

With a fierce gesture of his closed hand, this reserved and respectable Mr. Grant Munro commenced his story. His wife, apparently, kept secrets from him.

"Effie loves me," he vowed to me, almost choking. "Don't make any mistakes about that."

He meant well. But it is next to impossible to determine whether someone loves you or is simply claiming to love you, and so I demanded from Mr. Munro that he stick to the facts.

It was a tale which struck me as inevitably leading to a terrible conclusion. There they were, in the countryside. The wife had requested a hundred pounds, free of questions. Then strangers moved into the neighbouring cottage. The wife, Effie Munro, made new ties. Fear followed these meetings on the wife's part, a reckless and paralyzing fear, a near desperation for her husband not to probe into her nocturnal visits. She had given away her photograph, and the hundred pounds was gone. But she had been married beforehand, in Chicago, and new ties are often not new at all, but old entanglements come to drown us. And above all, a fixed yellow face peered out from the upper window. I felt very badly indeed for Mr. Grant Munro.

"Let me advise you," I said slowly, "to return to Norbury and examine the windows of the cottage again. If you have reason to believe it is inhabited, send a wire to my friend and me. We shall be with you within an hour of receiving it, and soon get to the bottom of this business."

"And if it is still empty?" he asked dully, worn out by telling the series of events.

I promised that in such case I would come out the next day and speak with him. When he had shut the door, with his pipe in his pocket this time, I turned to my friend.

"I am afraid that this is a bad business, Watson."

He glanced at me, stroking the edge of his moustache into submission. Volumes of print could be written on the subject of that immaculately trimmed moustache. He tames it with his fingertips on occasion, but never as a tick or a quirk of absent thought; he does, however, brush the edge of it briefly and then drop his hand when he is worried, and that is what he had just done.

"It had an ugly sound," he answered me gravely. "You think there is blackmail in it."

"Yes. This woman's first husband is in that cottage."

I could see it in her frenzied fear. It spoke not only of fright but of guilt--what was so final that her new husband would not forgive her? Had her first spouse been damaged or diseased, and she had heartlessly abandoned him? She had begun, as she thought, afresh, only to find her past was not past at all but a dreadfully lingering present.

"You cannot be sure of any of this," Watson pointed out judiciously as I paced.

"Surely her first husband is somehow involved. Women can be as callous as men when they choose--think how it would affect her if this fellow had been disfigured, perhaps, and she had fled only to find him at her doorstep once more."

"It is all surmise," he said coldly.

"But at least it covers the facts."

"Men do not trail after partners who find them repellent following a disfiguring injury," he snapped at me.

I stopped. I am from time to time inexcusably stupid. "Watson..."

"It would not only be a grossly painful quest, but a wretched waste of the injured chap's valuable time. I suppose next you are going to tell me the first husband lusts after cruel vengeance against the woman he once loved, who longed to lead a normal life again. It is still pure conjecture, however, and not even a very good story."

"My dear boy--"

"Why did you not offer to accompany Munro back to Norbury at once? Why wait for a telegram?"

There was no response possible. The man has a temper, and I had roused it. He knew perfectly well why I had not offered to go at once. He wanted me to say it aloud, so that he had a real reason to be angry at me instead of an artificially charged misunderstanding. He wanted me to tell him I had delayed because I needed time to take myself off to one of three elaborately disguised locations and jab a syringe in my arm before I went mad with conflicting thought trails. Unable to answer his second question, I answered his unspoken first.

"Had I met you long before the war when you were sixteen or the day after tomorrow, I would still be well aware I don't deserve you."

He winced, and then his eyes softened. Leaning forward in his chair, he set his elbows on his knees and studied me with his flawless chin in his hand.

"You would tell me, would you not?"

"Tell you what, dearest?"

"If you were not all right," he murmured.

I did not want to promise him anything of the kind. If my only waking thought is to make him happy, why expose him to the myriad invisible ways in which I am not, nor never will be, all right? But neither will I lie to him. So I said the best thing I could.

"I would never keep from you any information you need to know, of whatever variety," I vowed. "And I am fine."

Rising carefully, ever practicing all his own methods of keeping debilitating pain at bay, he approached me and passed his fingers over my collarbone, just lightly stroking the skeleton beneath my shirt.

"Don't use my blasted temper as a means to tell me you love me," he advised with a small smile. "It's terribly disconcerting. One instant I'm furious, and the next--dash it, give a fellow some sort of signal his head is about to be spun round. And don't harm yourself. Please. Doubtless Munro will wire us both by the time we're through with our tea."

He took himself off to his bedroom, climbing the stairs deliberately. And I took myself off to the larder and the loose brick behind the flour sack where the Doctor could never discover it, and took a thrice-blessed syringeful of cocaine.

I was much more myself again by the time we had reached the Norbury station, the quaint platform revealing Mr. Grant Munro awaiting us in the light of the station lamps. All was darkness around us. Darkness, and absence of people. I knew of situations which made my own childhood seem a perpetual picnic celebration, although it very decidedly was not, and my mind was wandering over all sorts of grim little pathways. I did not like that near-deserted station in the woods, not in the smallest degree.

Mr. Munro gripped my arm convulsively. He was very pale, and trembling slightly. "I saw lights in the cottage as I came down. We shall settle it now once and for all."

He was in just the state of ill-contained excitement that Dr. Watson and I knew to be dangerous, and I saw my friend's eyes narrow at him.

"What is your plan, then?" I asked him soothingly as we started off down the black tree-lined road.

"I am going to force my way," he gasped. "Come what may, I'll have an answer. I wish you both to be there as witnesses."

I could not help but believe Grant Munro's life as he knew it was over. Nevertheless, he was in the right. Any sort of truth is better than indefinite doubt, I thought, as we walked through a sad spring drizzle along the road. For instance, on occasion I had wondered how my father was faring, and now I knew the answer. That answer was sadly deteriorating my concentration, but the mild cocaine dose had helped immensely, and the Doctor had finally ceased looking as if I might suddenly fall to pieces. All that remained to tell was what grotesque secret was lodging in the cottage adjacent to my client's home.

His wife Effie flew upon us in a terror when we walked up the muddy path, but he paid her no mind. We stepped through the golden track of the lamp-light in the heels of our client, my friend predictably muttering soothing words to the frantic Mrs. Munro as we climbed the stairs. We encountered an old woman who also tried to bar our passage, but she could do nothing against three determined men, and soon we found ourselves in the cozy, well-furnished upstairs apartment.

Then I realized just what degree of idiocy I had allowed myself to reach earlier that afternoon.

Why had I asked Mr. Grant Munro so few questions? Had my mind really been so far impaired by that blasted telegram? I didn't care ha'pence my father was dead, after all, as terrible as it is to say such a thing. But had I truly been so set upon the contents of a needle that I had forgotten to pose the most basic queries? Why had I not asked Grant Munro, for example, of scale for Heaven's sake, of whether the creature in the window seemed to be leaning down or standing up, of how high the windows themselves were, whether or not he had ever checked the cottage's grocery order or rubbish bin, whether he had ever so much as glimpsed a grown man entering or leaving? I would never ask a client to do my work for me, but had I asked, Grant Munro might well have been able to remember that the ghostly yellow apparition was but two and a half feet tall.

I could only shake my head at myself silently as I reached down and pulled off the yellow mask.

She was a sweet-faced girl, dark and smooth-skinned as a cup of coffee, and she clearly found my expression of surprise amusing, for she began laughing at me. The Doctor, ever of a sympathy with children, laughed right along with her. I knew he was very grateful not to have found a horribly disfigured former husband in that chamber, but his merriment was not all relief. Her joy was remarkably infectious.

I stood there frozen, smiling at the laughing slip of a girl who was being kept covered feet to hair with a yellow mask and long white gloves, and imprisoned in an upper bedroom. Effie Munro doubtless loved her daughter passionately, and Grant Munro, upon hearing the story, picked little Lucy up in his arms and kissed her warmly. A child being held prisoner, however, for whatever reason, makes my skin crawl. Children are not meant to live under lock and key any more than they are meant to live under bridges. And whenever I find such children, I employ them, or as many of them as I can afford under my straightened circumstances. The thought of Lucy Hebron in my band of urchins was amusing, but as she already had a family, sadly impractical.

Watson and I hung back as the Munro family, with their vibrant new addition, made their way back down the stairs. We quit the cottage and watched as they returned to their home along the wet lane, standing there with the thin raindrops catching in the Doctor's woolen coat.

"We gentlemen of the metropolis ought to be getting out of this cold," I said to him, taking his arm. The wind was picking up, the rain growing heavier. I never spared a thought about the weather before meeting him, and now I dwell on it constantly. "It's only just turned spring, after all."

"Think what could have happened," Watson said softly, watching as the Munros disappeared within their house and the gas lamps glowed all at once from the windows. "And then think what did happen. Don't you love to recall it?"

I recalled it, enjoying it just as much as he did, I think, for a few more seconds more before tugging his forearm. I cherish his frank admiration of goodness in others when he has only to look in the mirror of a morning to see the best of all, but I wanted him indoors in front of a fire. And I also wanted to get away from that cottage, where the girl had sat in a blank mask staring out her window at the wide world below. I wanted to get away from it as if there were wolves inside.

"I have never been more delighted to be utterly wrongheaded. But come along, my dear fellow. Quick march. We two shall be of more use in London than in Norbury."

"What sort of use is that?" he wondered, smiling.

"Here is what I propose," I said, dropping my voice in a manner I have found to be most effective after long practice. "Upon arriving in London, I shall make myself of use to you, and you in turn may feel free to be of use to me."

His long eyelashes dropped almost imperceptibly, a look that on a woman would seem slyly coquettish and on my friend is merely an unequivocal vote of yes, and yes again, a thousand times yes, yes to anything you can think of and several items more besides which may not have occurred to you that I will bring up spontaneously.

Dr. John Watson, whether because his parents were irreligious or his soul is simply too bright to feel love as a form of shame, possesses an utterly unabashed attitude towards sex. I do not exaggerate. In an arena I have studied for many years, he can beg things of me that open my lips in surprise before willingly returning them to feed upon his skin while I do as he pleases. I picture him as he was with men before me, and though I find it a painful if erotic torture, I can easily see how he behaved when he desired an interlude. He opened his ridiculously blue eyes a little wider, allowed his voluptuous mouth to fall open ever so slightly, and--tenderly with a lover, gladly with a friend, and blithely even with an acquaintance or stranger--compelled the encounter as if he had flicked on a gas switch. When he'd loved the man in question, the act would have meant everything to him, and when he hadn't, it would have been as natural and healthy as one of his rugby matches. It is as maddening as it is sublime to know this about him--that the Doctor would have felt only joy at a casual encounter's occurring, and never bitterness at its end. His arms-flung-wide approach to sex for its own sake makes my own memories of barter and yearning and need all the more pitiful. But now he is home from the Afghan War, the Doctor cherishes a single absurd misconception about fornication: he believes I am the only one eager to choose him for the exercise.

This idea is ludicrous. It is beyond ludicrous, it is lunatic, but an aching string tied round my heart tugs at me every time I attempt to convince him so. Once I've succeeded, where would that leave me? Would it leave me...left?

"There is nothing I enjoy more than making myself useful to you, my dear man," he grinned, beginning to walk alongside me. "Whether it's with my wrists tied to the bedpost, with the aid of the footstool, gripping the headboard with both hands, flat on my back with my--"

"Best not overstate the matter prematurely, lest my trouser front prevent my admittance on board the train, there's a good fellow. Oh, and Watson, whilst you are about the business of being useful..."

"Yes?" he said innocently.

"If it should ever in the future strike you that I am getting a little overconfident in my powers, just kindly whisper 'Norbury' in my ear and I shall be infinitely obliged to you."

"It will be my pleasure," he sighed. "But this was not overconfidence, Holmes, merely pessimism. I don't blame you, by the way, under the circumstances."

"You may be right. Whatever it was, it was imbecilic. I've a solution, in any case. I shall place all my optimism in you, my dear fellow."

It had been a very long day. And it was raining, and cold, and I was actively hating the woods with everything in me. But somehow, with the Doctor vaguely smiling at my side, none of it seemed to matter very much. Not even, God forgive me, the telegram.

When we arrived home, I rid the man of his clothing item by item like a valet in front of the blaze in my fireplace. I tasted the dark brown nub of his breast and ran my fingers over the broken explosion of his left collarbone. I mapped every inch of his spine with my tongue and teeth. I moved over him like an artist paints with a brush. I tormented him until he was begging me for more of myself and when it was over at last and we had come as close to death as living men can, I could not bring myself to part from him. So I didn't. I lay there with my arm snaking up across his chest and his heart under my hand, still one person, lying on our right sides perfectly matched with my face buried in his hair. Looking down, I set my lips against the back of his neck and simply breathed him.

"I need a synonym," he said when he had gotten a little of his own breath back. He'd been gripping the bedsheets with one hand, the other arm crooked beneath the pillow, but now he linked his fingers with my longer ones on his chest. There was a tiny track of sweat just below his hairline in the back hollow of his neck and I tasted it. "For rapturous."

"You're mocking me," I sighed into his skin. There are a number of reasons for my having grown adept at sexual relations, some of them sadly pragmatic, but I had never before been graced with a spiritual adjective for my passions.

"I am not mocking you."

"Divine, then. And we had better be speaking of your arse."

"We are not. And you are filthy." He was speaking very slowly, and thinking all the while. "No, I don't like divine."

"If you don't tell me what we are speaking of, I cannot help you, can I?" I pressed my face into his hair again. "Is it your name, perchance? Your name is a rapturous word, even rather a holy one. Both Biblio-historically, as I recall it being one of twelve quite integral ones, and for me in a personal sense."

"I love you too," he smiled. I could hear the expression in his voice. "Holy is too pedestrian, and of course we're not speaking of my name. My name is the dullest thing in England apart from the fog. The very idea."

"Transcendent."

"Not quite."

"Hallowed?"

"Perfect," he whispered. "Oh, my love, that's exquisite. You are crowned the winner. This time. What would you claim as a prize?"

"Don't move," I requested softly. "Only don't move. Stay just as you are, until I let you go."

The Lucky One

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 17:50:57 GMT

For Jane.

About the characters: they are far too good to be mine.

Rating: PG

It has taken me years of study, but I believe I have put my finger on it.

There has always been an adjustment in my friend Sherlock Holmes' behavior when our friend Lestrade of Scotland Yard is present. It took me all this time to pinpoint it properly, for the difference is subtle and multifaceted, but at last, that evening sitting cozily before the fire at Baker Street, I was able to determine what it was. The shift lies in two things: first, everything about my friend is slightly heightened when Lestrade is near, as if he were a character in a stage production unconsciously playing himself, and not simply existing, as he does when the two of us are alone. His hands as we discussed the weather and the newspapers were a bit more flourishing, his sardonic tone a little dryer, his deductions more clipped, and his laughter prolonged. I do not think that this is because Sherlock Holmes does not like the Inspector, but rather because he likes him heartily and thus presents himself as the leading actor in a drama when Lestrade is around. And second, he was watching me watching them. I love to listen to the two friends, whether they are bickering or discussing evidence or merely chuckling over one of their mutual acquaintance's foibles, and it is safe to say that Holmes knows it. Where Sherlock Holmes is concerned, I am as clearly read as a page in this very journal.

When Lestrade fell silent that evening, puffing at his cigar, my friend eyed him keenly. The Inspector scratched at his narrow temple, patently not speaking, the picture of an urge suppressed, winding up Holmes' curiosity as easily as he would wind up a watch. Lestrade has dark brown hair, neatly slicked back, and a slim face with a broad, honest brow and a thin-lipped mouth. He is a short, compact, slender man--not in the lissome sense of Holmes' svelte poise, but his body is a tribute to quiet understatement and the lack of available time to eat hearty meals. His dark eyes are brilliant and tenacious, and though he is unimaginative, he is a decided savant in the realm of practicality. When he is smiling, one forgets entirely that he is rather plain.

"Anything remarkable on hand?" my friend asked when he could stand the suspense no longer, looking sharply at him.

Lestrade's mouth twitched pleasantly. "Oh, no, Mr. Holmes--nothing very particular."

"Then tell me about it."

Lestrade laughed, and I laughed with him. When he heard me, Holmes' quicksilver eyes slid in my direction and then drifted lazily away again. He likes to make Lestrade laugh, for the Inspector is such an utterly honest individual that my friend need never wonder whether his merriment is feigned or flattery. But when he makes me laugh in the Inspector's presence, the triumph is amplified enormously. He loves me, after all.

"And yet it is such an absurd business, that I hesitated to bother you about it."

I smiled inwardly. This was not Lestrade being shy, not a bit of it. This was Lestrade being deliberately coy; he knew himself the source of some of my friend's most memorable cases, and he knew the cases fully as important to my friend as light or air or water. And so he dragged it out, as fond of dramatics in his own humble, plainspoken way as my shimmering genius, and wove himself thoroughly into our tapestry. A solid, dependable brown thread advancing in a perfectly straight line.

"In my opinion," he said, his prim mouth revealing that whatever he had brought us that evening was very choice indeed, "it comes more in Dr. Watson's line than ours."

"Disease?" said I, languidly.

I do not often find myself the center of any focus between the three of us, perhaps because much of Lestrade's performance is for my friend's benefit, and most of Sherlock Holmes' is for mine. When I am cued to speak in our trio, it is as a divertissement, a departure from the main theme so that when the principle duet is returned to, it is of still greater interest. Holmes is the virtuoso, Lestrade the programme, and I the audience. And so I remained silent after placing my single word upon the table.

"But then, when the man commits burglary in order to break images which are not his own, that brings it away from the doctor and on to the policeman."

"Burglary!" my friend exclaimed, sitting up in his chair. "This is more interesting. Let me hear the details."

It is impossible to express how much I adore that look from him. For he was no longer acting, then: he had accidentally slipped into being Sherlock Holmes the man rather than Sherlock Holmes as played by Sherlock Holmes. The expression on his face when he knows something truly unique and puzzling is about to march dogmatically out of Lestrade's mouth is a thing of pure joy. My lover has a high, arching brow with a beautiful sweep of black hair, a nose with a regal hook that might have belonged on a Roman potentate, and a pair of eyes that glisten like icicles in his pale countenance when a case is about to be placed at his feet. This priceless expression--the delight of a schoolboy inside the visage of the most elegant man in London--is why Lestrade drags it out so. When it works, the look is absolutely worth Lestrade's extra effort, and I love him for performing the additional labour.

Lestrade had earned that wonderful expression, and he knew it. So he sat forward self-importantly and made a show of consulting his case notes even though Lestrade never needs his case notes. All the room in Lestrade's brain left empty of imagination is packed full of simple facts.

"It had been carried out and dashed savagely against the garden wall, under which its splintered fragments were discovered," he said at the end of the tale, and I knew from his matter-of-fact tone just how much he was relishing the bizarre account of wrecked statuary.

Holmes rubbed his hands. "This is certainly very novel," said he. He had returned by now to playing himself for Lestrade's benefit, accentuating his long fingers the way a shapely girl would arrange for herself to be backlit, watching me watch them. It was not always this way between them--in the early days there were testy, useless verbal sparring matches, staged half for my benefit and half because they genuinely annoyed one another. And then suddenly one fine afternoon I think they found that the fighting had only made them value each other all the more. Candour is a virtue Lestrade possesses in spades, and while my friend is admittedly approachable on the side of flattery, he knows when admiration is genuine and when it is not.

"I thought it would please you," Lestrade grinned.

These days, so much of what Lestrade does is to please my friend that at times I wonder whether he values Holmes' solutions or Holmes' pleasure more highly. And then I think of the way Lestrade looked when we arrested Colonel Moran together, the line of rage which had appeared on his flat, smooth brow when he turned to the man who had nearly killed Sherlock Holmes for the second time, and I know the answer. The Inspector, neat as a pin and at first glance dull as a field mouse, is a man who loves his work in the exact same obsessive fashion that Sherlock Holmes does. That is the reason, I think, that he has never married--he brings charming, simply spoken young ladies to the annual Christmas ball thrown for the policemen, but they are never the same from year to year. I know, therefore, that part of his reason for offering puzzles to my friend the way a cat offers its owners dead birds is to see them solved. But the rest, I believe in my heart, is the delight in giving Sherlock Holmes a little pleasure.

Sherlock Holmes, I have discovered through many years of loving him, is not a happy man by default. It takes considerable labour. If he were less moved by the plight of strangers, less certain that justice was his sole responsibility, less terribly unbalanced in his soul, less intelligent, less apt to think of death and suffering until his only solution is of seven percent cocaine, things would be different. Easier. Whereas Lestrade offers him cases, I present my entire being to him as a human sacrifice: whatever he needs, whenever he needs it, that is what I will give, for I belong to him. I will place my arms around him, lay the latest newspapers in his path, request the saddest songs on his violin, bare myself for him, take whatever he gives me no matter how painful and then ask him for more of it. But I am not the only one who loathes to see him suffer. Lestrade is living proof of that. There is something so fine and noble within Sherlock Holmes' melancholy once you have seen it that it makes those few he allows in his private circle want to give to him endlessly.

It hurts us both, at times, truth be told. Fights between Holmes and Lestrade are now merely a pleasant verbal way for them to pass the time, but the Inspector knows my friend well enough to see when he is truly in pain, and he dreads it like an echo of my own anguish. It hurts Lestrade when Holmes solves a dark case from his armchair and then adopts an aching, wistful expression. Lestrade's mouth sets into a tense little dash, and he holds his neatly brushed hat in both his hands as he bids me goodbye, and he sets off for the Yard no matter how many hours he has already worked that day to find something to vex Sherlock Holmes' brain, for fear he might one day leave us permanently. It hurts him in a way I would once not have supposed possible. And it hurts me, right to the core, when I am cradling my friend's black head on my bare shoulder, and I know he loves me for an endless fact, and yet I still sense the onset of a misery I cannot always prevent and am afraid of deep down in my bones.

But it is all worth it, every bit of it, to see him when he is genuinely happy.

"Therefore, a local fanatic would begin with them," Lestrade concluded. "What do you think, Dr. Watson?"

After years of acquaintance, one might think that Lestrade would eventually have dropped our prefixes, but he never will. He likes saying them. He likes the fastidious air of courteous professionalism the titles give him, the way they sound in his mouth. He began by calling my friend Mr. Holmes, and he always shall now. Part of that is because they make him feel like an Inspector, a man with his own title, and part is because Lestrade knows.

Oh yes, Lestrade knows. I can tell that he knows. He looks away at precisely the moments when Holmes seems in imminent danger of beaming at me with glowing affection, and doubtless he grants me the same courtesy. And apart from that, we have all seen far too much of one another to keep it a secret. I recall a wretched case at the dockyards when Holmes for several minutes thought he had lost me to the Thames, and the hideous grief on his face would have rivaled a mother's, let alone a friend's. Lestrade knows, and that is the other reason he calls me Doctor and Holmes Mister. No one, in his sweetly simplistic opinion, ought to say "my dear Watson" and "my dear Holmes" apart from Holmes and Watson.

"That won't do, my dear Watson," said Holmes, shaking his head at my ridiculous little speech regarding monomania. The "my dear Watsons" do not diminish in Lestrade's company--on the contrary. I am like a beautiful watch or a handsome new carriage, a lovely possession to be casually shown off to guests at every possible opportunity. I am a highly prized adornment to be placed out in the open and pointed at. It is always my Watson, my boy, my dear fellow, my good Doctor. I am not certain that Sherlock Holmes is aware of this, but he is so obvious in the company of Inspector Geoffrey Lestrade that we may as well both be wearing engraved wedding bands. I would have had a stern word with him on the subject long ago, but it makes my heart glow quite absurdly.

Lestrade left us that night with the pleased expression worn by a hardworking man who has put in a good day's labour. And the next morning, I was standing in my bedroom bare from the waist up, still dressing, when there was a tap at the door and Holmes entered, a telegram in his hand. His sable hair was falling over one grey eye, his dressing gown was open over a clean white shirt, and he walked up behind me where I stood before the mirror. He slid both his arms over and around my bare shoulders with the paper in his fingers and set his lips against my skin as he lifted the wire before my eyes.

"Come instantly," he read. "131 Pitt Street, Kensington. Lestrade."

"Good morning. What is it, then?" I asked, ducking down to kiss his sleeved arm where it lay draped over my shoulder.

"Don't know," he muttered sleepily into my neck. "May be anything. But I suspect it is the sequel of the story of the statues." He invests his words with absurdly lilting and alliterative poetry in the early mornings, stringing them into silly little rhymes or blank verses when he is just awakening, and not yet fully on his guard. This was one of his better efforts, so I smiled at him in the mirror. He nuzzled further into my neck in response, like a great grey and black cat. "There's coffee on the table, darling, and I have a cab at the door."

It was a case of murder to which we had been called, as it happened. I ought to have expected it and so should Holmes, for Lestrade rarely sounds so urgent. Our friend was standing in the front room of the house with a very grave set to his small mouth, his shining brown eyes quite troubled. It is one of the most significant reasons my friend likes him so much. Holmes feels tragedies, they cut into him as if he were the murder victim although he gives away nothing on his countenance, and when Lestrade betrays that they trouble him too, it makes my friend all the stronger. Nothing wounds Sherlock Holmes deeper than violence and evil waste, and my lover--while outwardly stoic--possesses no filter whatsoever to keep such deeds from harming his spirit. That is the reason we worry so about him. But Lestrade's far more visible distress gives him permission to be frigidly above it all, without which charade he would fall to pieces. Their total fellow-feeling in the realm of seeing justice done is an almost uncanny bond at times, as strong as watching Holmes and his brother think in the same room, or viewing Holmes as he listens to Sarasate play the violin.

Once we had interviewed Mr. Horace Harker, the journalist, and studied the photograph found in the dead man's pocket, we all three of us went outside. We were subdued, as befits a murder investigation, but the identical energy was running through all our veins. We each knew our parts and how to play them, and it was as thrilling as the instant before an actor sets foot on the stage with every line memorized and every movement learned.

The bust of the great emperor lay scattered, in splintered shards, upon the grass. Holmes picked up several of them and examined them carefully. Something in his gaunt posture changed that only Lestrade or I could have noticed. A little of his languid fluidity disappeared, as his enormous grace was channeled into purposeful examination. It is like watching a tightrope walker whose every movement is balletic suddenly stride with piercing concentration onto the slender line high above the ground, and Lestrade and I had seen it hundreds of times before. I was convinced that at last he was upon a clue, and so was the Inspector.

"Well?" Lestrade said, not needing to say any more.

Holmes shrugged his shoulders. "We have a long way to go yet. And yet--and yet--well, we have some suggestive facts to act upon. Why did he not break this in the house, or immediately outside the house, if to break it was his sole object?"

"He was rattled and bustled by the other fellow," Lestrade said reasonably. "He hardly knew what he was doing."

"Well, that's likely enough. But I wish to call your attention very particularly to the position of this house."

Lestrade looked around him. Sometimes when Holmes delivers him hints, he can guess at them, and sometimes he falls short. For that reason, my friend peers at the considerably shorter man intently, waiting to see whether or not his seed will bear fruit. And I watch, as I always do, and Holmes watches me watching them.

"It was an empty house," Lestrade decided, "and so he knew he would not be disturbed in the garden."

My friend pursed his shapely lips into an expression he reserves exclusively for Inspector Lestrade. It means that Lestrade is both right and wrong at the same time, and begs him to try just a bit harder. That set of Holmes' lips does make Lestrade try harder, but when Lestrade is trying hardest, he is inevitably least successful.

"I give it up," he said at last, as if Holmes had presented him with an impossible riddle at a dinner party.

Holmes pointed a slender finger above our heads.

Lestrade started laughing appreciatively. "He could see what he was doing here, and he could not there. Now that I come to think of it, Dr. Barnicot's bust was broken not far from his red lamp. Well, Mr. Holmes, what are we to do with that fact?"

My friend smiled silkily. "To remember it--to docket it."

They continued to discuss what were the best approaches to the case while I listened. They have been so long working together that they are effortless in their ease of planning with one another, because they know that their planning is not truly leading where they pretend it is. Lestrade knows that he is only really telling Holmes what he plans to do so that Holmes can warn him off if the approach is harmful to his own thread of inquiry. And Holmes knows that he is only telling Lestrade a fraction of what he has already deduced, because Holmes is as much a magician as a detective. But Lestrade knows he does good police work even if he may well be surprised in the end, and so does my friend. It is a partnership based upon fair trade: Sherlock Holmes gets the brilliant surprise, and Geoffrey Lestrade gets the official credit. And I get the satisfaction of seeing the man I love most in the world happy, even if only for a day.

My friend and I continued the investigation along his line that afternoon, for Holmes seemed bent on tracing the busts. Our efforts quickly brought considerable results: Mr. Morse Hudson supplied us with the name of Beppo, and with his relentless energy Holmes pushed on, taking us through fashionable, theatrical, literary, and maritime London on route to Gelder & Co., of Stepney, where the tenement houses sweltered and reeked with the outcasts of Europe. There we learned that Beppo had knifed another Italian in the street and was sentenced to a year's imprisonment just after the 20th of May.

When I was visibly beginning to flag from hunger in the late afternoon, my friend took my arm and ducked without a word into a restaurant for a hasty luncheon. I finished a dish of curry while Holmes sat tearing a piece of bread to useless bits with his long fingers, reading the account of the murder writ up by Mr. Horace Harker in a freshly printed news-bill propped against the cruet-stand.

"Eat," I said to him, pushing his plate of grilled fish in his direction as I kicked him under the table.

He chuckled, still reading. "This is all right, Watson. Listen to this: 'It is satisfactory to know there can be no difference of opinion upon this case since Mr. Lestrade, one of the most experienced members of the official force, and Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the well-known consulting expert, have each come to the conclusion that the grotesque series of incidents, which have ended in so tragic a fashion, arise from lunacy rather than from deliberate crime.'"

"It generally goes in this fashion: one grips a fork, just so," I explained pleasantly, "and places a small amount of food upon it. Then one has nothing further to do than simply lift it into the mouth."

"The Press, Watson, is a most valuable institution, if you only know how to use it."

"Some even say," I continued, "that the thrice daily practice of eating goes a long way towards sustaining one's health. But I am a licensed physician, and thus give no credence to such wild, unfounded rumours."

"And now, if you are quite finished, dearest boy, we will hark back to Kensington and see what the manager of Harding Brothers has to say on the matter," he said cheerily, pushing to his feet.

"If you collapsed in the middle of the road, I would leave you there and watch the carriages run you over," I muttered darkly. "You and your brain, it having grown too heavy to support any longer."

"No, you would not," he whispered against my ear as he bustled me out the door, ghosting his fingers over my arm. "You would drag me home through the mud and invent exquisite punishments for the crime of total mental engagement mixed with a rigourous work ethic."

"I am inventing the punishments now," I sighed.

"And I look forward to suffering them. After this matter of the busts is settled."

When we had taken detailed notes of the location of all the busts, we returned home to Baker Street to find Inspector Lestrade in a fever of excitement. He was pacing about with quick, dapper little steps, wearing the same flushed glow of triumph my friend adopts when he has seen the light. Apparently, he had identified the dead man as Pietro Venucci, a cutthroat with extensive Mafia connections. Lestrade was fairly giddy with success.

"If you will come with me to Chiswick tonight, Lestrade, I'll promise to go to the Italian Quarter with you tomorrow," my friend suggested with his stunning air of breathless refinement. "You'll dine with us, Lestrade, and then you are welcome to the sofa until it is time for us to start."

That night is the reason I wanted to set it all down. Before I forget any of it, and how utterly perfect it was. What happened the following day was beautiful in its way, but I still believe that it was the evening the three of us spent together that I shall recall to my mind on the next occasion my friend is in agony, staring down at the traffic below us with a freshly made hole in his sinewy forearm, and I can do nothing about it save grieve and wait for him to want me. At first, when Holmes went up to the lumber room to rummage through his newspapers, Lestrade and I were left companionably to our own devices and we played several games of cards. But then he came back down again, and dinner was served, and he spoke. Holmes spoke of everything and nothing, of Medieval painting techniques and Chinese syntax and the weapons of Aboriginal tribesmen, and poured the wine, and distributed cigars, and then portioned out the sherry, and all in all gave the finest performance of Sherlock Holmes as Sherlock Holmes I had ever yet seen.

Lestrade did take the sofa. He is often up at five, poor man, and so was weary after our supper. But he was still fully aware and speaking with us, though he yawned occasionally, as Holmes curled up in his armchair with his cherrywood pipe and sat I in my usual place with a glass of brandy between my fingers.

"And it's a downright miracle she said yes," Lestrade finished emphatically, referring to the recent engagement of young Stanley Hopkins. "I can tell you what constituted the main of her wooing, and it went along the lines of, 'Mr. Holmes, my dearest, seems to see something in me. My darling, I wonder if I have ever mentioned to you that Mr. Holmes believes my rise through the ranks of the Force will be a meteoric one. Mr. Holmes would tell you, my love, that I am a very promising individual. If only Mr. Holmes were here, Miss Patterson, he would certainly endorse your accepting my hand in marriage, and if you like I could easily settle the matter for you by wiring him.'"

By then I was laughing so hard there were tears streaming from my eyes. Holmes was smiling too, but the smile broadened when he looked at me, and then he returned his grey eyes to the Inspector with a soft sheen of simple gratitude. I was not the only one, it seemed, grateful to the Inspector for cheering my partner.

"He convinced her at last by saying, 'If it would make you easier in your mind, my precious lumpkin, I shall fetch Mr. Holmes round in person, and then you would not only have the unparalleled honour of meeting him, perhaps even speaking with him over tea cakes on the subject of violent crime, but he would assure you in no uncertain terms that to wed me would be a highly logical decision for you to make.'"

I was gasping for air, but could nevertheless see out of the corner of my eye that Holmes had begun to laugh along with us in his odd silent fashion, and heartily at that.

"We'll all have to put a brave face on it at the wedding," Lestrade continued dourly. "It will be dreadfully painful, that much I know. Hopkins will doubtless hire an assassin for the occasion, so that he can have the privilege after exchanging vows of throwing himself bodily in the path of a bullet for Mr. Holmes in a public arena, and then dying in his arms."

Holmes snorted. "Lestrade, that is the foulest image you have ever conjured for me. Do please be still."

"You'll be best man, of course, my dear fellow," I grinned, "and can shoulder the task of finding him something borrowed and something blue."

"Don't be hideous, my boy," he advised me.

"And what about you, Lestrade?" I asked him, still smiling. "How fares the lovely Miss Price?"

"I don't rightly know, Doctor," he said evenly, his eyes falling shut as he yawned. "Pretty girl, but she took exception when affairs at the Yard dragged me off time and time again. And the funny thing is, I can't imagine ever giving it up. Gregson was speaking of retirement the other day, a few years from now when the century turns, and I swear to you I caught a cold chill just thinking about it."

"You are irrevocably wed to your vocation, then?" Holmes mused eloquently.

"It isn't my fault, Mr. Holmes. If I found the one right person in all the world, that would change in a minute, I suppose, and I'd get married. But I haven't. That sort of thing isn't guaranteed in this life, the way I see it. You're very lucky, you know."

Inspector Lestrade's bright eyes were closed, and his plain, honest, narrow face expressionless save for being well-fed, contented, and tired. It ought to have been a terrible catastrophe, the sort of instant one dreads for one's entire life--the spoken revelation that a police inspector, of all people, knows that you are daily enacting a sordid and punishable crime. I confess that a brief thrill of fear went through me, even though it made no logical sense to be frightened. I had known that he had known, after all. It was a visceral reaction, uncontrollable, and it cut through me and out again almost before I could register its nonsensical basis. And then it was gone, and there was only the three of us, with the fire crackling in the grate. Holmes contorted into a cozy ball on his armchair, I with my legs crossed, and Lestrade lying on our settee.

I looked over at my friend. The hand still holding his pipe had frozen in place, but his eyes were calm.

"I do know," he said softly, bringing a lump to my throat. "I know every day."

Lestrade was silent for a while, seeming quite peaceful with his slim little hands folded over his neat waistcoat. And then, without opening his eyes, he said, "Let us all pray that Miss Patterson, when she becomes Mrs. Hopkins, will prove as perfectly matched a spouse, so that we can all get a little relief. I swear to you, Mr. Holmes, if I hear your name out of all context on one more occasion, whether it's how you take your tea or how you solved the murder of Black Peter or what your shirt size is likely to be, I am going to put someone's head through a window. You can deduce, I think, to whose head I refer."

The four-wheeler was at the door at eleven, and in it we drove to a spot on the other side of Hammersmith Bridge, in the friendliest silence I have ever experienced. Our vigil crouched against the wooden fence of Laburnum Villa, which might have been a long and difficult one, lasted but half an hour. Then the garden gate swung open, and a lithe, active, ugly figure rushed up the path.

"Let us get to the open window," Lestrade whispered, his tone vibrating with the thrill of the chase. But our quarry was already out of the house again in another instant, looking stealthily around him, carrying something white under his arm.

Silent as jungle predators, the three of us crept across the lawn toward him. We knew our business. We were professionals, ones who knew each other to the core and would have fought for each other tooth and nail, the same feeling I had experienced upon the battle plains of Afghanistan as I tried my utmost to save the lives of my friends. With the bound of an airborne tiger Holmes was on his back, and like a choreographed dance Lestrade and I had him by the arms an instant later and the handcuffs had been fastened. It was beauty in action, poetry in crimesolving. Holmes had directed his attention to the bust of Napoleon an instant later, but that did not diminish our glow of concerted triumph in the slightest.

Later, at the Yard, we learned that a search of our prisoner had revealed very little, but Holmes mysteriously promised Lestrade that more details would be forthcoming the following day if he would come round to see us. Lestrade frankly confessed he did not understand how Holmes had known where to look for our prey, but he vowed to be at Baker Street at six the next evening. Then Holmes offered me his arm. I took it, happily wearied by the night, and we left the Yard to seek out a cab.

"How do you suppose he knew?" Holmes asked me when we were alone again--in bed, with the dawn rising and the curtains pulled shut.

I was running my fingers softly through his hair. "To be honest, my love, it would be difficult for a man in Lestrade's position not to know. You verbally mark me as your own private property twenty or thirty times an hour. He would have to have been very unobservant, for a police inspector, not to have noticed."

"No, not that I love you," he drawled. "That would be patently obvious to a blind, deaf asylum escapee. How did he know that Hopkins used my name when he proposed to Miss Patterson? Did Hopkins tell him about it, or was he there? It seems a strange sort of knowledge to have, as they aren't close."

"You're utterly incorrigible," I whispered to him. "But luckily, I love you too."

"I'm the luckiest man in the world," he murmured. "I know it. Not a day goes by that I don't. When are you going to punish me for not eating, by the way? You can't promise that sort of thing to a fellow and then fail to follow through."

"Later," I replied. "When you've nearly forgotten about it, and it comes as a surprise, and I have had time for extensive planning."

He was cradled on my chest, so I could feel it when he started to laugh. "This is beginning to sound a far severer mortification of the flesh than I had at first anticipated."

"Let me put it to you this way. When once I am through with you, you will be longing for a hearty meal."

So he does think himself lucky, and I have Geoffrey Lestrade to thank for the fact that now I know it too. There have been times in my life, times when I have found him flat on the bed with his sleeve rolled up and his arm bleeding, or silent as the grave for days on end, or simply cowed almost to tears by all the miseries than his own mind inflicts upon him, that I would have been desperately grateful to know he thought himself lucky in any way. People who think themselves lucky need not be warned against killing themselves. And apart from that inevitable, sickening thought, there is no torture that could possibly be worse in this world than seeing him suffer--standing there helpless, simply loving him, while he all but drowns. But now, thanks to Lestrade, I am aware that he considers himself lucky in spite of everything.

That is a remarkably beautiful gift.

The next day, Sherlock Holmes introduced Inspector Lestrade and myself to the black pearl of the Borgias. Sherlock Holmes was playing the starring role of Sherlock Holmes again, and we were his rapt admirers. In an unplanned moment of heartfelt delight, we burst simultaneously into a round of applause. A flush of colour brightened his cheeks, and then he bowed to us as if it was the well-wrought crisis of a play, because it was exactly that to him. He was the master dramatist, being Sherlock Holmes was his life's work, and he needed Lestrade and me to make it all fit together. Without the audience, the actor languishes and fades.

Geoffrey Lestrade when he is watching Sherlock Holmes be amazing is a sight to see. His thin lips open in a gasp, his half-closed fist drifts knuckles-first toward his mouth, and his cheeks brighten until they are nearly as brilliant as his eyes. Then he begins laughing a little, and clapping his petite hands in admiration. He had never done it so well and so heartily, and I loved him for it. Then he went up and caught my friend by the sleeve.

"We're not jealous of you at Scotland Yard," he said urgently, his brown eyes staring like arrows into my friend's grey ones. "No, sir, we are very proud of you, and if you come down tomorrow, there's not a man, from the oldest inspector to the youngest constable, who wouldn't be glad to shake you by the hand. But of all of them, sir, young and old, I am the lucky one to have the honour of working with you. I'm very lucky indeed to call you a friend, Mr. Holmes, and I assure you that I know it every day."

Sherlock Holmes, looking down at our friend the Inspector, stopped playing Sherlock Holmes and commenced being Sherlock Holmes. He had little choice, after all, for he was more moved by the softer emotions in front of anyone save myself than I had ever seen him. For a single moment he was entirely human, a man and not our idol, a member of a family and not the deity to whom Lestrade and I brought our finest offerings, a loved one and not a sad, distant god who performed tricks and bestowed fire. He was my husband, and Lestrade's friend.

"Thank you," he said hoarsely. And then, because it had not sounded right to his ears in the slightest to have spoken as his true self, "Thank you."

Four Minor Interludes for the Solo Violin III

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 20:11:57 GMT

Rating: NC-17

About the characters: they are far too good to be mine.

I recall vaguely Holmes assisting me out of the sitting room at some point, but I confess when I awoke, I had no idea where I was. As I was relaxed and contented, the question was not an urgent one, but in some vague fashion I knew I had been sleeping somewhere I had never been before, for the feeling of my surroundings was utterly foreign. It took me a few warm, airy minutes floating at the cusp of consciousness to determine that the reason I was so disoriented was that I was in my friend's bedroom, and in his bed no less, and alone.

The pillow was harder than my own, almost Spartan, and it smelled faintly of the rosemary in his light pomade. Sitting up slowly, I looked for him in the low-burning gas lamp's glow. The light through his window spoke of a dull mauve dawn, but I would not yet have been able to discern anything save with the help of the wall sconce. My eyes focused, and discovered Sherlock Holmes was standing by his window wearing only a pair of his trousers and his blue dressing gown, open, smoking with his hands in his pockets. He must have heard me, for he looked back the moment I stirred.

"I apologize," he said at once, "but you didn't seem overly fond of your staircase a few hours ago."

I think from the sensation in my cheekbones that I must have blushed, for memory was swiftly returning to me. "Then it is I who ought to apologize to you, for robbing you of your bed."

"Why should you think I object?" he inquired, one brow tilting toward his cigarette.

"Because you are not sleeping," I ventured sadly. "And neither are you attempting to do so."

"Ah." He set the still-smouldering cigarette on a saucer resting on his windowsill. "Perhaps I am not tired. And perhaps I am not in my bed because it impedes my seeing you in it."

There, that was the feeling--and it seemed now that only he could produce it in me--the blissful conviction that all the world would come right in the end so long as I was within the sight of his form and the sound of his voice. It is all well and good to claim that I am not a naive young boy, that I in fact have loved before and have seen too much of life, but the joy he engendered in me was impossible to stifle. When he viewed the smile breaking across my features, I saw him laugh briefly, for I had never once heard it aloud.

"You really are an extraordinary fellow, do you know that?" he murmured. "I don't understand you at all."

"Why do you say such a thing?"

"You are quite simply the hardest knot I have ever attempted to unravel. One moment you are so formal I suppose you desire me to confine our relations to discussing cricket scores over sherry and cucumber sandwiches, and the next moment you are joining me racing down alleyways, or fronting me the price of our digs without any conceivable motivation. It's exhausting," he finished fondly.

"You are a very formal sort yourself, you know, my dear chap."

"Yes, but I mean it. I cannot trust men on first sight, and I am cold and abrasive and deucedly arrogant. You are not. When you do it, you are hiding something." He appeared genuinely puzzled, but no more than I was--for upon considering the remark, it did seem that the majority of the times I had been the most careful in etiquette with Holmes were the times when I was preventing myself crushing his mouth to my own.

"You're right. And that is why you were smiling this afternoon, is it not?" I whispered, recalling it.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Smiling--before the violin concert, and then afterwards all through it. You did not understand me. But when John Clay thought I was a stranger to him and I reacted the way I did, you deduced...well, you understood me rather better. And you determined to do something about it."

"Bravo," he congratulated me. He walked over to my side of the bed. "You scintillate this morning. Because I was the only person so close within your immediate sphere, I had no basis for comparative analysis of your behavior--and believe me, I would not have offended you for the world. I have inferred you treat your friends very affectionately indeed. And I suspect you would treat a stranger as well as you treat me. I was a stranger, after all, when you commenced such ridiculously steadfast acts. It could have been disastrous for me to assume your regard was in any way sexual."

"My regard was not, for that was based on our friendship, but my desires are," I confessed, breathing in the nearness of him. "Are you going to kiss me at all this morning?"

I was sitting cross-legged by this time, still entirely unclothed, with the sheet draped over one thigh. My friend climbed forward on his hand and knees, surrounding me as his mouth sought out mine, forcing me backward while my legs straightened and my heart surged, until I was lying on my back with my lips tangling against his, enfolded in a beautiful crouched prison of Sherlock Holmes' limbs. Reaching up, I pulled his dressing gown down from his shoulders and he shrugged out of it obligingly, afterward leaning down again on his forearms. It was then that I noticed that his left was marred by a tiny pinprick of blood.

Pushing his shoulders up and away from me gently, I looked into his eyes. They were keen but glimmering slightly, an unnatural electricity. When he noticed what was disturbing me he frowned and sat back, landing to my right on his tangled quilt and dressing gown.

"It sickens you, I suppose," he surmised icily, "as a man who has already shaken such habits off."

"No," I protested, reaching for him. "But as one who knows the dangers, I cannot bear to see you this way."

"You will have to get used to it," he said shortly. "It is not a practice I can stop. When I am without it, things are far worse."

I wanted to point out to him that he spoke of a time before he had me, whether I was an effective palliative or not, but the thought was so terribly narcissistic that I remained silent. To my dismay, he laughed morbidly, another soundless chuckle that told me he had once again seen into my mind without my speaking it.

"I did not expect this, I confess, from we two taking digs together...did not expect you to be the man you are. I have had scores of other men, and have been many things to many people, for my own sport or pleasure or even during very bad periods for the keeping of me if I liked them well enough to begin with, but I have never before been this. I have always found equilibrium a far more difficult thing to achieve than many of my fellows, and perhaps that has prevented my forming such attachments in the past."

"My dear fellow," I said, trying not to sound appalled, "you did not think, when I offered to cover our rent money--"

"No," he smiled. "But if you had done, I would have found the gesture more usual."

"And suppose I had. Would you have complied?"

"Of course I would," he shrugged, "if you had asked. However, you did not. Watson, I haven't done such a thing in years, I promise you, and the sort of rakes I am talking of possess so many rooms that having a young fellow ensconced in one means nothing to them one way or the other, so long as they have his attention when they wish for it. Being a kept lover is no worse than some rental agreements, and far better than others. It suited their tastes that I be exactly as I am, and I have never made such an arrangement with a benefactor I didn't find alluring, if that is what troubles you, nor serviced three mandrakes at a go as a rent boy in a rookery. You are turning quite green. If you would sleep with a man for the sensation, why not for the bed itself simultaneously?"

He was correct, and I had no right to judge him, so I steered the conversation back on its rightful tracks. "Did the high-living sort you speak of first introduce you to the morphine?"

"Heavens, no. We need not speak of them further, in fact. But in any case, I wished you to know that you are a singular occurrence for me. The drugs have nothing to do with you, and to take them personally would be very foolish--however, if you wish to have nothing to do with the drugs, or with me because of them, then I cannot answer you the way you wish me to."

"You are unwilling to make an effort?"

"I am unable to succeed. The two notions are quite different."

I stared at him, sprawled on his chaotic bedclothes bare-chested, the man I had wanted so badly my own chest ached at the sight of him. I longed to be angry at his pessimism, but I found I could not. For I knew the feeling myself, and there was nothing worse in the world. Sighing, I asked the most invasive question of my life.

"If not due to your company, why did you commence taking it?"

"Why did you commence taking it yourself?"

"I was in terrible pain," I answered.

"Well. There you are, then," he concluded absently.

In the silence that followed, I longed for him to say something more. I knew that we had not been long acquainted, that we had grown close in such shaky starts and stops that he could not possibly fully trust me as of yet even if he did love me, but that did not stop my yearning to know what had cracked within him, who had fractured it, and where that man lived so I could rip him to pieces. Something told me, and I accepted it even as I thought it, that I would never know the answer. Or if he did tell me, he would tell me in shades of grey metaphor, in the sort of shadowy fables at which he was so adept. Whatever had happened, it had been done long ago. Impulsively, I held out my own arm. It was scarred, as his was, though the marks had accumulated over much less long a period and were therefore fainter.

"Give me a dose of your morphine."

He pulled back from me, aghast. "No."

"Go on. Do it."

"Whatever are you playing at?" he snarled, his metallic eyes flashing.

"It is bound to happen sooner or later," I insisted. "I'll have an attack of pain and grow desperate enough to take the stuff, and it will be at my fingertips, and the fight with be over. I may as well skip the struggle and fall back into the habit now."

"You are out of your mind," he lashed out. "Your health, your recovery--"

"Will be severely compromised. I'll quickly return to high doses and damage my digestive system, my cardiovascular system--I could very likely suffer a stroke or a heart attack. Provided I fail to overdose in the beginning, of course. If I start taking so much it becomes dangerous once more and I fear for my life, I could stop dosing myself and go through withdrawal again--the muscle spasms, cold sweats, the black fits of despair, the blinding pain of it. I could easily kill myself ridding my body of the stuff. Even if I survived the process, my current paranoia and depression would deepen."

"Why are you doing this to me?" he pleaded, crawling forward and taking my face in his hands. "Please stop. You know what I want to be to you--the sort of life I wish you to have. You have grown stronger and stronger here, and I have watched all the while, and I--"

"Get the syringe."

"Doctor--"

"Give me the morphine, and do it now."

"I would as soon give you a syringe full of arsenic!"

Reaching up, I covered the hand cradling my jaw. "Then can you conceive of the way I feel when you take it yourself?"

He flinched, but even as he did so he shook his head, a piece of ebony hair falling over his brow. His grip on me tightened slightly, as if he needed some way to anchor himself and had never yet found an object steady enough to do the job. I suddenly doubted, for the first time, whether I could ever be sufficiently strong to manage it.

"You must break yourself of this habit," I insisted. "You are burning the candle at both ends, and the game itself is hardly worth it."

"You don't understand at all. It isn't a game," he whispered. "And the candle itself is hardly a very valuable one."

"It is to me," I cried.

"I know, though I cannot think why. You don't even know me--I've told you that, countless times. You didn't know that I had sodded men for my upkeep, and see how that affected you."

"That affected me for the identical reason this does--the thought of keeping you safe from harm. Not to mention myself. If you cannot shed the morphine--"

"I can never promise you want you want," he said shakily. His eyes were actually tearing, and he moved in still closer to me, his lips only a breath away from my own. His hands were still at my face, stroking the skin. "You have asked as the first favour from me the only thing I cannot grant. I cannot stop being Sherlock Holmes, my dear fellow. I wish I could, believe me. I can promise you other things. I can try--if having morphine in the flat will harm you, I'll get rid of it this very night. I want nothing but good for you. There have been relatively happy periods of my life when a ten or eleven percent solution of cocaine has been enough. I can try that, and keep it hidden. If I hid it, you would never be able to find it, I promise you. If you only could have viewed the reasons for my vices, you would take pity on me, I know it. You said you loved me. Possibly that was an effect of the moment, the aftermath of passion, an echo of something else--if you need to take it back, I would not be at all offended, under the circumstances. It would not even be the first time such has happened. But if you were telling me the truth--"

"I love you," I repeated, blinking back the moisture in my own eyes. "Whoever claimed he loved you and lied is a worthless blackguard. I love you with everything I am, and ever shall be."

"Then let me try," he whispered. He pressed forward and I fell back to the pillows as he covered my badly used body with his own nearly perfect one, curling against me with his head on my neck. "Only let me try. I shan't succeed, I warn you, but I can destroy the morphine and keep the rest where you shall never lay eyes on it. I'll make every effort and pretend to be besting it, whatever sacrifice is enough for you save what you asked."

"Dearest--"

"Everything I have told you is true, but living with other men and living with you are separate universes. You have been horribly lonely, I have seen it, but never in the same way I have. I know what another loneliness is. Loneliness while within another man, his bed, his life, but never his soul, that is solitude of a different kind. I have never been granted a position where I could truly live to make someone happy. Don't send me away."

I enfolded him in my arms. I had not understood, I realized. He was right. I had supposed that his shining empathy, his ability to comprehend the woes of other men, would lead him to abandon the habit once he knew how precious he was to me. But such was not the case. If I loved all of him--his pride, his scorn, his brilliance, his gentility--I would have to love the addict too. I could help him to fight it in every way I knew, but I could not alter his past any more than I could erase my own. He had already finished constructing the man he was before I came to him, and nothing would ever change that. I nestled him into me, one of my hands round his back and the other resting against his svelte hip bone.

"When have I ever been even remotely tempted to send you away?" I murmured. "Even before I loved you, I couldn't bear to be away from you. And in any case, you are a kept man again: I need half the rent for next month, and you are about to earn us fifty pounds."

When I awoke for the second time four hours later, the cold autumn sun was blazing through the window and my friend was gone again. Rising, I took advantage of his absence to draw a much-needed bath and to shave carefully, my breath catching every time my mind lit on him and my blood humming in my fingertips. I was ravenously hungry and, knowing Holmes to be but a slight eater even on the best of occasions, when I arrived downstairs in our empty sitting room I rang at once for a hearty breakfast.

I had not been long over my plate of eggs and toast when I heard the ringing of the downstairs bell. It could only be a client, I supposed, for Holmes himself had a key and I had commerce with distressingly few human beings. For an instant, I suspected fearfully that it could be John Clay come to thrash me soundly--or attempt it, rather--but when Mrs. Hudson appeared, she looked far more dour than I had ever seen her, and John Clay despite his faults looks and behaves like a gentleman.

"There's a man downstairs who claims he's business with Mr. Holmes and will not be put off," she announced, worriedly smoothing her apron. "I would not trouble you, Doctor, for Mr. Holmes' affairs are none of yours, of course, but he is most insistent, and I--in the absence of Mr. Holmes, I wonder if you would consent to deal with the matter."

"Mrs. Hudson, of course I will," I exclaimed, rising. "And please, in the future, never hesitate to request such a thing."

"Thank you," she said, relieved. "Mr. Holmes seems to me a--well, a capable enough man if you catch my meaning, and a clever one, and a strong one, for all the airs he puts on. But I confess I'm grateful your condition is so much improved that when this sort of thing--"

She was interrupted my the pounding of boots and the half-closed door swinging open behind her. When the intruder stepped into the sitting room, Mrs. Hudson grimaced with a look of outraged decency of which I heartily approved.

"Thank you, Mrs. Hudson," I said quietly. "If you would go downstairs, I shall deal with this fellow."

The fellow was built like a bear, with a shiny bowler hat on his head and a menacing grin on his face, dressed in the shabby attempt at respectability which characterized the more affluent breed of bruisers employed by unscrupulous moneylenders. From brown checked trousers to badly tied cravat, he was the very image of a hired thug.

"Do state your business, sir, for as has already been made clear to you, Sherlock Holmes is not in," I declared.

"Oh, he ain't in," the brute nodded. "I'm coming round to believing it, but that's a right shame, that. I've not traveled clear cross the bridge after the money what he owes my employer just to be told he ain't in, there's the gist of it, sir."

"He'll pay you when it suits him. Whether or not you are inconvenienced is none of our concern."

"But you see," he said, walking on cheap factory boots further into the room, "it is your concern, guv. I takes my responsibilities serious like, you savvy, for we'd none of us working men keep our billets otherwise. If he'd been here, with the notes in his hand, there would be an end to it and all on our merry way. Like as not you wouldn't have been no worser off even if he'd bilked us, for he'd have taken the brunt of my temper, no two ways about that. But seeing as you're here and he ain't, as you say, you're going to have to improve my mood all on your own."

"I don't agree."

"Oh-ho! You don't agree! Well, whether you agree or not, I'll have broken a few of your bones before that scarecrow of a great mincing toff gets back from his tailor."

"Get out," I ordered.

"Get out, he says," sneered the ruffian. "Bugger this idle talk--"

I heartily agreed with his sentiment. We held no further discourse that late morning, for I have no patience with men who barge into private residences and then ignore an order to depart again. And as I have stated before, I may well have fled at the sound of crackling paper, but the lessons of survival have not left my body no matter how badly my mind rebelled against them. I fear that in my displeasure at some of his phrasing, I may have been more harsh than I intended, but the man's character had not seemed to me to be stamped with mercy, and in any event one errs on the side of caution when rendering street roughs unconscious.

Mrs. Hudson, the poor soul, flew through the door with an expression of tearful horror on her face, which froze when she realized who had been punched several times in the jaw and who had delivered the blows. Gasping in disbelief, she smiled at me.

"I heartily apologize, Mrs. Hudson, for any alarm I've caused you, but this cad was growing quite intolerable. Have you any objection to my dragging him downstairs?"

She drew herself upright, settled her limbs into an attitude of demure calm, and cleared her throat. "Shall I ring for the commissionaire to help you, Doctor?"

"Thank you, my dear lady. That would be much appreciated."

I had never previously met Commissionaire Peterson, but he seemed a good sort all round, having gone a bit wide-eyed at the sight of the wretch on our carpet but readily assenting to assist me in getting rid of him. In fact, we were just depositing the rogue in the downstairs area where the vegetables were delivered when Sherlock Holmes strode past us on the pavement. He caught our movements in the corner of his eye and stopped short.

"Watson, what the devil are you doing?" he cried.

"Taking out the rubbish." My shoulder ached a little, and I stretched the arm as far back as I could manage.

"I--you--hullo, Peterson," my friend managed at last, settling on courtesy as an escape from incoherence. "You had a part in this, did you?"

"No, sir." Peterson shook his head. "Carried my fair share of the load, but the making of it was the Doctor's doing."

"Doctor, what on God's earth are you thinking of? Who is this man?"

I shrugged. "I have not the first notion of who he is."

"Well, then what did he want?" my friend demanded in considerable vexation.

"He wanted fifty pounds or a chance at your skin. He was most uncivil, and I fell into an argument with him."

My friend's expression of wonder turned to one of rage when his eyes fell on my unknown victim. "You could have been--"

"No," I interrupted firmly, "I could not have been. Not by the likes of him."

Sherlock Holmes spent several seconds deciding whether he wanted to be furious at me for provoking a professional bruiser, or thankful that said bruiser still slept. Finally, he reached into his waistcoat and tossed a shilling to Commissionaire Peterson.

"My good Peterson, thank you for your willingness to assist us in a spot of manual labour. I suggest for your health that you never fall into the bad graces of the Doctor here, for it seems an unlucky pursuit."

Smiling, Peterson pocketed the coin and bid us farewell. When we were inside once more with the outer door locked and bolted, and had crossed up the stairs and into the empty sitting room, my friend turned back to me with a look of mixed anger, affection and pride.

"Pray confine your gallantries to occasions when I am present to provide assistance if needed, there's a good fellow? You may consider it henceforth, if not a rule, then a heartfelt recommendation."

He leaned down to kiss me and the assured calm I had felt when in physical danger was replaced by a sensation of intoxicated weightlessness. But just as quickly he broke the contact and made as if to examine the scene of the crime, looking ruefully at the scattered spots of blood upon the carpet.

"Considering your profession, it was bound to happen sooner or later," I observed slyly.

"I do not dare to contradict you," he teased me. "I do not dare presume to offend you in any way, now I have seen the swift and inevitable consequences. I dare only to thank you for your pains, and for the other sorts of pains that the unknown ruffian downstairs shall shortly be suffering. And I dare to say that Mrs. Hudson, upon laying eyes on her carpet--"

"She has not yet noticed them. In order to remain in her good graces, I shall see to it myself in a moment."

"Her good graces?" Holmes repeated. "I congratulate you. I fear I am myself yet well out of them. Let me see to it, you've done enough for one day."

So saying, he draped his frock coat over a chair and rolled up his sleeves, disappearing into his bedroom and returning with a rag dampened at his basin. He went to his chemical table and pulled out a drawer of powders, selecting one and sprinkling it over the cloth. I had no reason to suspect otherwise, for he was a brilliant chemist, but it seemed that my friend was a man who knew how to remove bloodstains, not merely identify them. He promptly knelt on the carpet and set to work with a good-natured little frown.

"Watson, I need to exchange a few words with you," he said softly.

Such statements rarely lead to any good, and when he looked up at me he saw what I was thinking. "No, no, dear fellow, nothing like that. But I have been out making all necessary arrangements for our criminal prevention undertaking this evening, and as I want you with me, I must regretfully inform you that your erstwhile beau John Clay--"

"Is a scoundrel and an utter villain," I agreed, so relieved that I sat down on the settee next to my friend's domestic chores. "And it only remains for you to tell me what atrocity he is about on this occasion."

"Ah, good," he smiled, his sinewy forearm flexing at the effort of scrubbing our carpet clean. "I had not known whether you harboured any sympathy for him."

"I am not a bitter man, but I would be mad to spare him any regard whatever," I sighed.

"Tell me about it," he requested, "and you need spare him nothing. It was in Scotland, I suppose?"

"How could you know that?" I murmured in astonishment, drawing my hand over my brow.

"I know something of John Clay, you see--the invert, murderer, thief, smasher and forger. Watson, will you fetch me a bit more water from that pitcher? Thank you. He is, as you said, a young man just as we are, but he's at the head of his profession, and I should rather lay my hand on him than any other criminal in London. He's a remarkable man, is young John Clay," he drawled. "His grandfather was a royal Duke, as you doubtless know, he himself has been to Eton and Oxford, his brain is as cunning as his fingers, and he has cracked several cribs in Scotland, for he knows the country intimately. Of course, he'd a tendency to be off raising money to build an orphanage in Cornwall the following week."

I was not concentrating on John Clay's criminal career by then, however. "When you said," I ventured slowly, "about his brain--"

"No, I have never experienced John Clay's cunning fingers firsthand, but I have heard tell," he smiled. "The world of London inverts is hardly limitless, more's the pity, and some of them talk more than they ought. Now, my dear fellow, I do desire to know what took place for safety's sake, but rest assured I will not force the issue if you say the word."

"It was in 1870," I confessed. "I was eighteen, not yet through with my studies in Edinburgh. I had long before taken an interest in the medical world, for my grandfather was a doctor, but I was also a keen sportsman, and the rugby..." Here I hesitated, for to reflect on the days when I could still consider myself a danger to the opposing team in any sport was painful, but I pressed on. "John Clay played for Eton, you see."

"Of course."

"We never met on the field, but that was the way we were introduced," I recalled. "He was visiting a cousin in our form on a weeklong spring holiday, and he seemed to develop an interest in me. At first, we talked of nothing but sport, but one night when we were chatting alone and altogether too late in one of the abandoned corridors..."

"Go on," he urged. He had largely cleaned the smaller stains and was moving on to the darker, the one which was likely engendered by my crushing the brute's nose.

"I was not inexperienced," I coughed. "I have always been attracted to a certain type--quick-witted, sublimely intelligent in fact, of a refined, imperious mien, and not the sort of man you would term a queer upon sight, for they are far too dominant and sophisticated. Perhaps you have noticed the preference."

"I have," he owned with a wry smile, "but I fear I cannot enjoy the comparison. Pray continue."

"You are nothing like him," I agreed readily, "for his gentility is merely a paper facade, but what I falsely admired in him was an imitation of the qualities you possess in truth." For example, I knew John Clay would prefer to have died rather than to scrub a blood stain out of a carpet, but my seemingly blue-blooded friend made the task look so natural that John Clay appeared a mere fraction of a man. "In any case, that night I was willing to begin something with him, if purely as a lark. I was very careful at school, you must understand, but that does not mean that I did not..."

"Enjoy all aspects of boarding school social life," he suggested.

"Well, yes," I said, blushing. "I have been like this all my life, you see. So that night, when he wanted intimacy of me--and he was very persuasive, Holmes, rather masterful even at that age, and a dashing fellow rugby man at that--I offered him something. I enjoyed it thoroughly, as a matter of fact. But on the following night, we met again, and he wanted more. What I had been willing to give him the previous day, he said, was not enough."

"I see." My friend's voice had taken on a cutting, dangerous edge.

"No, he would not have been able to compel me into anything even had he tried," I said rapidly. "We both returned to our rooms, he very haughtily and I reluctantly a few minutes later. But you see, the next day he privately told his cousin, along with everyone else he had met in my entire form, that if any of them fancied a ride, I had expressed myself more than willing to be sodded by all comers before the holiday was out, not to mention thereafter, and that he had tasted as much the night before, and that I liked to pretend I was being forced."

Holmes paled within half a second, his busy hands freezing, eyes raking over me urgently, his fine lips parting in sympathetic horror. When he did, and I recalled some of the brutes at school in those days, and what the admission sounded like to my friend, I could only thank Heaven once more for how lucky I had been in truth. I dove down to the carpet to kneel before him on the other side of the blood, for to be a foot away on the sofa was considerably too distant--he looked quite ghostly with alarm.

"Nothing came of it, love," I interrupted before he could ask devastating questions.

"That is not possible," he snapped.

"Five rather serious fistfights came of it," I admitted, "but after word spread that a thrashing would follow close upon the heels of hounding me, they left me alone. And I myself departed for the University of London soon after. But that is not the entire story. Shall I go on?" I asked, for my friend's knuckles were beginning to appear very eager to be used upon something other than a slop rag.

He nodded wordlessly.

"When three days had gone by and I remained yet undefiled--or undefiled by the likes of Clay's cousin's friends, in any event, for I was admittedly no virgin, the cousin himself made an effort. He was a chap by the name of Robert Clay, another snobbish, self-important blackguard, and I fractured his jaw. I thought there was an end to it, but one final incident took place thereafter, and the one I think will most interest you. The next day when I was all alone in the library, thinking to avoid everyone if they would not avoid me, Clay came in with a little flask. I stood up on my guard on the instant I saw him coming, and made a lunge for whatever he held in his hand. He hadn't anticipated my reacting so quickly, so the bottle was still stoppered, but between our both grappling at it, the loosely plugged cork fell out, and a bit of the stuff splashed across his brow."

It was not a memory to which I returned often--he had screamed, and dropped the vial, and I had reacted rather predictably by rushing for water and a cloth. We had soon determined that it would not be a serious wound, only a painful and permanent one, and because John Clay could not begin to fathom why my instinct had been to help him despite his despicable intentions when he had entered that room, he never troubled me again in spite of the fact I had forever scarred his countenance. In fact, he left the following afternoon for Eton, and shortly thereafter when the term ended I myself departed for London--still every bit as confused as he had been that I had helped the man who wanted to see me humiliated and abused. But I never forgot that terrible day, and I never shall--the idea that an object of desire scorned would stoop to such base levels of vengeance was horrifying to me in the first place, and the justice in his device's reversal of victims overly perfect to seem quite real.

As for Holmes, he was too shocked by the news that it was I who had forever altered John Clay's face to dwell on his vile behavior. I was glad of it, for I did not relish the picture of Sherlock Holmes ever laying eyes on John Clay again.

"He wanted to destroy your greatest charm, and so he thought to throw oil of vitriol in your face," he remarked in awe.

I confess I wilted at this, for I had expected vituperation heaped on Clay and not whimsical references to my former assets. "I was then, by some accounts, considered to be--"

"What an imbecile," he laughed. "As if everything else about you does not at once declare you a superior creature in every way. The moment you open your lips, everyone around you stops to listen, and when others are speaking, they seek you out to be sure you mark them. Have you noticed Lestrade doing it? His version is simply priceless. I confess from your current dangerously striking appearance, I had assumed before the war you must have been a being seldom seen since the days of ancient Greece, saving the fact you're far too blond for the classical climate, my dear fellow, but only a rank fool could have thought your beauty your foremost attraction. Of course that shallow scrap of a soulless coward failed to recognize you yesterday--he never once saw you in the first place."

There have been times in my life when I have supposed it is not possible for me to love my friend any more ardently, and on all such occasions I have been proven dead wrong. Leaning forward over a dark wet bloodstain, I kissed him with my hand at the back of his head and the scant moisture in my eyes safely retreating back from whence it had come. When I made to pull away I found I could not and so lingered, just brushing my softened lips over his own.

"Doctor?"

"Mmm?"

"My hands are covered in another man's blood at the moment, which I confess dampening to the escalation of ardor."

It was a poor excuse to stop kissing a fellow in spite of his obsession with hygiene, I thought, and thus continued, only resorting to speech when I was out of breath entirely. "You thought to escalate it? In what fashion?"

"The main of it has to do with draping you over that footstool there," he replied, nodding casually at the piece of furniture as he reapplied himself to the rapidly diminishing spot. "But in the meanwhile, I shall tell you of our plans so that none of this night's events can go wrong for lack of preparation."

So he told me everything--about the Coburg branch of the City and Suburban Bank, about the scheduled arrival of our stupid but tenacious acquaintance, Detective Peter Jones, about his earlier meeting with the nervy and straight-laced banking professional Mr. Merryweather, and about the tunnel which had been constructed all the while Mr. Jabez Wilson was copying out the Encyclopedia Britannica. I did my level best to listen to him attentively, for he kept shooting me amused glances from beneath his black brows--but I confess that my focus did not fully return to me until after he had dropped the rag in the pile to be laundered and had thoroughly washed his immaculate hands.

The independent consulting detective, calm and competent through all of the questions put to us by Mr. Merryweather, deftly buttoned his peajacket and selected a heavy riding crop from the hall rack before waving the banker and Peter Jones into a waiting cab that night. We two followed in the second hansom. Holmes hummed snatches of the Carmen Fantasy, leaning back in the cab with his knee resting companionably against my own as we rattled through an endless labyrinth of gas-lit streets.

The huge vault or cellar beneath the bank, lined with crates, was as earth-smelling as the underground. Mr. Merryweather perched on a box, Peter Jones' eyes roving with placid care over the surface of the floor where my friend had examined the stone with his lens. I was hidden behind a crate with Holmes, my revolver cocked upon the top of the wooden case, just before my friend shuttered the dark lantern.

"If they fire, Watson," he said to me, his features grim, "have no compunction about shooting them down."

The words chilled my blood a little, though I could not think him capable of murder. I convinced myself that I knew what he meant to say, calling the admonition mere caution in face of a dangerous foe--but I wondered what Merryweather and Jones must have thought of Holmes as they waited in the darkness, our nostrils full of the smell of hot metal from the lamp. I confess that knowledge of who was coming to us from the other end of that passage was enough to work my nerves up to a very pitch of expectancy, for all the depression of the cold dank air of the vault.

And what a time it seemed! From comparing notes afterwards it was but an hour and a quarter, yet it appeared to me awaiting John Clay's approach that the night must have almost gone. My nerves were worked up to the highest pitch of tension, but when small sounds in the darkness began to disturb me--the shift of a boot sole, the scrape of a trouser leg--I forced them from my mind by listening to Holmes, the gentle and wonderfully familiar breathing of my companion. Then suddenly my eyes caught on a glint of light.

At first it was but a lurid spark upon the stone pavement. Then it lengthened out until it became a yellow line, and then, without any warning or sound, a gash seemed to open and a hand appeared; a white, almost womanly hand, sickeningly familiar to me, which felt about in the center of the little area of light.

When--with a rending, tearing sound--one of the broad white stones turned fully over on its side, the light of a lantern streamed out and a perfectly clean-cut, youthful, altogether amoral face appeared. He drew himself out with a hand on either side of the aperture until one knee rested upon the edge. In another instant he stood at the side of the hole and was assisting his decidedly red-headed companion through it.

"It's all clear," John Clay whispered.

But it was not all clear, for Sherlock Holmes had sprung out and seized Clay by the collar. Clay shouted a violent alarm to his friend, who vanished like a rat back down the hole save for the coat-tails Jones clutched in his hands. Jones, for his part, dropped into the tunnel after his quarry, his gun now in his hand, while Mr. Merryweather cowered behind a wooden box. Clay jerked himself round to grapple with Holmes, their arms straining against one another, and in a moment unequaled for agony I found my own weapon's sights trained on the two of them together.

Then Clay twisted out of Holmes' grasp, thrashing like a trapped snake. And worst of all, mine was not the only weapon. John Clay thrust one of his white hands into his coat and the light flashed upon the barrel of a revolver. In another instant I would have shot him dead with a glad heart, but Holmes' hunting crop came viciously down on Clay's wrist and he dropped the gun with a sharp yell, a line of blood appearing. Relentless in his desperate desire to escape our trap, he dove once more for the underground passage.

My friend caught his wrist, pivoting his weight in a spin to bring Clay to his knees. And then Holmes' crop came down on the man's back.

The first strike would have done it, for the scoundrel gasped in agonized shock and bowed his head. But then my friend raised his arm again, his face grim but tight with precision, and the whip fell soundly across Clay's shoulders for the second time. I saw his coat tear, and that blow produced a cry as loud as he had keened over his bleeding hand.

Prior to that moment I had not had time to be afraid--least of all, afraid of Holmes. But just as my wildly reeling thoughts were growing too much for me, Holmes tucked the weapon under his arm again and looked scornfully down at the shivering coward he had produced with three blows from a riding crop, however meticulously savage they had been.

Peter Jones reappeared, within the hole. He looked pensive. Even if he had not seen what was taking place, surely he had heard it. There is no sound in the world like a whip across a man's shoulders.

"It's no use, John Clay," Holmes said blandly, still peering down his long nose as Mr. Merryweather emerged, shaking.

"So I see, you brute," the villain sneered. Now he was no longer being actively beaten, his head was up and his eyes flashed. They took in both me and my revolver trained on him without a hint of recognition. "Though I fancy my pal is all right."

"He's not," Peter Jones coughed, hopping out of the hole. "There are three men waiting for him at the door."

"Oh, indeed! You seem to have done the thing very completely," Clay commented, flinching. He had raised his torso entirely, though it looked to me to be hardly worth the effort on behalf of his infernal, despicable pride--for few chaps can appear dignified whilst on their knees before the man who has caused them to begin bleeding through their dinner jackets.

Jones looked at Holmes, and Holmes raised an eyebrow in reply. Neither spoke, for I do not believe either wished to do so. Then Peter Jones pulled his handcuffs from his coat and stepped forward.

"You'll see your pal again presently," he said. "Just hold out while I fix the derbies."

"I beg that you will not touch me with your flithy hands," Clay shuddered as the handcuffs clattered upon his wrists. "You may not be aware that I have royal blood in my veins. Have the goodness, also, when you address me always to say 'sir' and 'please.'"

"Allow me to put it another way," Holmes suggested frigidly, lifting Clay's jaw with the tip of the crop. "If you do not get to your miserable feet and accompany my friend Jones here upstairs and into a cab waiting to take you to the police station, you filthy little wretch, I shall consider it a request for six more strokes, and less kindly ones."

Clay staggered to his feet. I had seen him in severe pain before, but never had I seen anyone in such a towering, vicious rage. Stumbling on his first step but turning the error into a hateful bow to Holmes, Clay walked quietly off in the custody of the detective.

Mr. Merryweather approached us, his eyes wide and shining with awe. I noticed that he stood closer to me, and gave my patently dangerous friend a wide berth.

"Really, Mr. Holmes," he simpered, "I do not know how the bank can thank or repay you. There is no doubt but that you have expended every effort possible, physical and mental alike, in the apprehension of this fiend."

"I have had one or two little scores of my own to settle with Mr. John Clay," said Holmes, his eyes glinting icily. "I have been at some small expense over this matter, which I shall expect the bank to refund, but beyond that I am amply repaid."

"What would cover your expenses, Mr. Holmes?" Mr. Merryweather desired to know.

"Fifty pounds," he replied.

Mr. Merryweather's jaw dropped, but then he very furtively glanced at the hunting crop. After that, he peered back at me. My eyes remained neutral--how, I cannot fathom.

"You can take gold for your pains now, Mr. Holmes, although that can be rather heavy," he offered with a smile. "Or a cheque tomorrow, if you should prefer that."

I was, I will admit it freely, in a daze as we quit the doors of the bank. Fifty pounds in French gold now resided in my friend's inner frock coat pocket, which was surprising enough, but that was nothing like the cause of my utter bemusement. There are acts which explain themselves, and other acts which demand speech. Holmes and I had walked together in silence for several blocks away from the Coburg branch of the City and Suburban Bank and Mr. Merryweather when I could stand the suspense no longer. I pulled my friend into an alleyway between a pair of dingy red brick buildings. Once out of the light, he leaned into me, resting his elbows weightlessly over my shoulders with his forearms against the rough wall. His empty hand was soon cradling my face.

"I am sorry. I would stop walking with a crop or cane entirely if you requested it, and carry my revolver for safety instead." The object in question he had rested against the brick. It took me a moment to comprehend him, and then I did know what he thought to be wrong, and I loved him for it.

"It was not the crop. At times you dragged it along surfaces idly before, but not since I asked you to stop. Holmes," I said slowly, "those blows you delivered Clay...after he dropped the gun..."

"You are most welcome," he responded, "although I cannot gauge my contribution to your cause as being sufficient in light of the initial injury."

It was true, then. I could not comprehend it. I had informed a lover of some two days' standing that John Clay had once tried to see me abused and maimed, and that same barely established lover had horsewhipped him for it. My heart was beginning to pound with a sort of animal pride, for men of modern England do not behave in such a fashion. That sort of brutal chivalry hardly seemed possible in the early 1880s, and my face must have reflected as much, for my friend shifted a brow at me. He stood back a little, leaning against the bricks with his palms instead of his arms.

"Do you recall, dear fellow, that business with Mary Sutherland--which, although the law could not touch James Windibank, prompted me to remark that if the lady had a brother, he ought to lay a whip across his shoulders?"

I did remember, for that had been one of the most arousing sights I had ever been privy to in a life of considerable experience, Holmes tense with fury gripping that selfsame crop in his hand, but remained stunned and silent nevertheless.

"Well, you didn't think I was advising a course I was not capable of taking myself, did you?" he demanded, smiling a little. "And if worse had befallen you, Clay would have gotten far worse from me, that I can promise."

"I--but--you are not my brother," I finished lamely.

"No," he said, drawing the word out to lengths which a single syllable had never before dreamed possible, "I am not your brother. And although I confess slight shades of fraternal attachment in your company, I will never be a brother to you. That does not mean your defense is not my sole business."

"I am not--"

"Just as you proved this morning that my defense is yours," he pointed out. He had me there, I realized.

"But Holmes, there was a policeman present--he could easily have brought assault charges against you!"

"I am known to Peter Jones," he shrugged. "We have worked together, and he is familiar with my character. I appreciate your concern, but I do not find the possibility of assault charges weighs very heavily against a question of honour."

"Well," I murmured, still utterly shocked but slowly recovering, "I suppose now that you have defended my honour--after the fact, granted, but with much more the romantic motivation than the fraternal, as you yourself have made clear..."

"Yes?" he queried, again giving the word far greater space than it deserved.

"I suppose that I shall have to reward you."

"I don't think--"

"In the traditional manner, of course. I believe it tends towards the erotic."

It was nigh incomprehensible, but he actually flushed. Then he dropped his head a little with his lips parted, hovering over mine at an angle I was beginning to recognize as the most perfect mathematical coordinate in all the world, and he waited until my mouth raised up to meet his--in the darkness of an alleyway, in the heart of London.

"I use every man according to his deserts," he reminded me, his eyes glowing brighter than the gas lamps when the kiss had ended--over and done for in our time, but glowing in my memory to this day. I would have liked to say Eternity recalls it just as well, but such notions do not exist. "You did tell me that such standards all too often warrant a sound whipping. You need not reward me for being who I am."

"I know. That happens to be precisely the reason I wish to reward you. Apart from your sense of justice, neither are you passion's slave, and so I will wear you in my heart's core--indeed, in my heart of hearts," I answered him. "I am slowly growing to know you, you see. That is why I am going to reward you."

As the hansom pulled up in front of 221 Baker Street that night, I felt such a depth of contentment as I had never experienced in all my days. Holmes looked quite as pleased as I did, the now barely visible flush nevertheless brightening his face in the lamplight. I descended from the cab, and then helped him out of it. While my friend paid the driver I stood on the pavement waiting for him, staring up at the window of our sitting room, the place that now seemed in every way my home.

"Ours," I said when Holmes returned to my elbow.

"Ours," he agreed, smiling, "although Mrs. Hudson does retain some title to it."

We walked up to the front door, my friend's set of keys already in his hand. "Our doorknob," he quipped, gripping it.

The hallway was darkened and unmistakably rather drab, but I did not care in the slightest. I wiped my boots on the little brown carpet in the foyer our landlady had left there for the purpose. The standing clock chimed the quarter hour--soon it would be morning.

"Our clock," said I.

Holmes dropped his crop into the umbrella bin, hanging his scarf and hat on the stand. Glancing into the dim depths of the upright mirror, he meticulously palmed a strand of his hair back into place. "Our mirror," he remarked, adjusting the collar of his peajacket.

"Our carpet," I agreed.

"Our foyer, come to that."

I began climbing the staircase. When I reached the sitting room with him and we had locked the doors, I would kiss him as he had never been kissed in his young life, I thought happily. I would put my soul in my mouth and give him the keeping of it, as we stumbled back to his bedroom shedding our clothing all the while. I would grasp him to me like a lifeline and make him understand that nothing he could do in all our lives could ever cause me to send him away. He would vex me at times, I supposed, but what a small price to pay that would be for being owned by the best man in London--and in any event, no matter how badly we wounded one another, we would never be lonely again save when we were apart. And rewards would follow. Kneeling down, I would peel away the last of his clothing and take him in my mouth. He would make love to me with the slow, inexorable rhythm of a concert violinist, though in my weariness I rather hoped he may have forgotten his oath of the previous evening, for the details of that arrangement were proving deliciously exhausting. And the next day, provided we could keep one another from harm, we would do it all over again, and it would be the best pairing in the history of Great Britain.

"Our steps," I called back. "I wonder how many there are."

"Seventeen," his voice floated up, articulate and silken. "We have seventeen steps, my dear fellow."

Four Minor Interludes for the Solo Violin II

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 20:05:43 GMT

Rating: NC-17

About the characters: they are far too good to be mine.

The next morning, I awoke calm and altogether refreshed. There were traces of my own helpless longing still upon my person, but the fever had quite broken and my upper torso was more free of ache than it had been since the war. Carefully, I rose and further tested the phenomenon by shifting positions. I was not healed--I would never be well and truly healed, I supposed--but I was much improved.

This new and altogether different aspect of my friend's many witch-like talents gave me pause, and a rush of nerves suffused my belly at the mere thought of laying eyes upon Holmes once more. Surely he had noticed something amiss with me apart from my physical distress. I washed very carefully, and dressed with still more attention to detail. Holmes noticed everything, after all, and never failed to comment on the things he noticed. Drawing a breath for courage, I descended my staircase, knowing that pondering what he was thinking was likely far worse than actually discovering it.

To my surprise--for he had not woken me, and in our severe financial distress he had developed a habit of rousing me when clients arrived to seek his services--Sherlock Holmes was not alone. I found my friend deep in conversation with a very stout, florid-faced elderly gentleman with fiery red hair. He had noticed something amiss, then. Not only had he noticed, but he no longer desired my assistance. Shamefaced, with an apology for my intrusion, I was about to withdraw when Holmes leaped from his chair, pulled me abruptly into the room,and closed the door behind me.

"My dear chap, you look splendid," he exclaimed, one of his blinding smiles breaking across his features. "Are you at all certain you ought to be out of bed?"

"I feel quite well enough," I shrugged, smiling bashfully in return.

"Judging by your looks alone, I should deem you correct if I were not aware of your occasionally alarming penchant for unfounded optimism," he returned sternly. "I find it difficult to credit you could have recovered so quickly."

"Relapses go as swiftly as they come, in my experience of injury-induced fevers. And you have more to do with it than anyone, dear fellow."

The stout gentleman behind us half rose from his chair and gave a bob of greeting, with a quick little questioning glance from his small fat-encircled eyes.

Sherlock Holmes waved his fingers dismissively in the direction of his client, who seemed to have noticed that the independent investigator had forgotten him. "Mr. Jabez Wilson, this is my friend Dr. John Watson, whose health has been a little trying of late."

"And who heartily apologizes for disturbing you," I added in haste.

"No, no," my friend disagreed, "you could not possibly have come down at a better time, Watson. Provided you supply me with your solemn oath you feel as hale as you appear."

"I do indeed," I assented, glowing at the compliment as my eyes flicked to the increasingly put out Mr. Jabez Wilson, "but I was afraid you were engaged."

"So I am. Very much so. This gentleman, Mr. Wilson, has been my partner and helper in many of my most successful cases, and I have no doubt but that he will be of the utmost use to me in yours also." My friend failed to so much as even glance at his client during this highly flattering assessment of my qualities. "Try the settee, Watson, and put your feet up. No, I insist. After all, I know that you share my love of all that is bizarre and outside the conventions and humdrum routine of everyday life," he added, winking at me.

Even apart from our fiscal worries, I am sadly incapable of saying no to my flat mate. Obediently, I stretched out upon the settee with my feet up, slightly dizzy but supremely comfortable, and listened to their talk. The discussion was illuminating in more ways than one. I came to a better understanding, while Jabez Wilson expounded upon encyclopedias and absurdly untaxing berths for men who belonged to the ranks of the Red-Headed League, one of the reasons why my friend's assertion that I shared his professional love was so very true. I was, admittedly, adrift in London and friendless but for Holmes. However, the most hardened stranger could not have watched his grey eyes sparkling like lightning-illumined clouds, his fingertips resting together as if reminding their weightless selves to remained steady and at attention, wriggling in his chair like a fourth former at a rugby match, and not have been moved to suppose the deductive arts the highest achievement ever attained by mankind. By the time we read Mr. Wilson's terse missive, "THE RED-HEADED LEAGUE IS DISSOLVED," and burst into simultaneous laughter, I had once again entirely forgotten the ruins of my own career had ever existed in the first place. Then a strange pang of apprehension struck me.

"Small, stout-built," Mr. Wilson was listing, "very quick in his ways, no hair on his face, though he's not short of thirty. Has a white splash of acid upon his forehead."

I knew a man with a splash of acid upon his forehead, who was very quick and lovely in all his ways. I knew such a man all too well, but it could not possibly be the same individual.

Holmes sat up in his chair in considerable excitement. "I thought as much," said he. "Have you ever observed that his ears are pierced for earrings?"

"Yes, sir. He told me that a gypsy had done it for him when he was a lad."

It was not possible even still, I insisted to myself, fighting the second wave of queasiness which flooded me, that he could be speaking of the same man. This man's name was Vincent Spaulding, after all--Vincent Spaulding was unknown to me. I had never heard of a Vincent Spaulding in my life. Surely more than one man who has met with an accident caused by acid in his days might have also had his ears pierced for earrings?

If I was wrong, and it was the same man, what on earth would happen when I came face to face with him? Would there be recriminations, even blows, and in front of Sherlock Holmes, no less? And if such terribly consequential things did take place, how far would my life spiral out of control when I was forced to explain to my friend that I was an avowed--though non-practicing--sodomite? Even then, I knew him well enough not to fear he would hate me for it. I knew that one of his older Irregulars had been rescued from a disgusting situation, for example, but could not fail to notice in the telling of that story that Holmes never vilified queers. He hated predators as I did, but he had never spoken against a queer. In my large experience of ignorance, it was highly promising that he failed to equate the one with the other. But once he realized that I myself was an invert, would he draw inevitable and correct conclusions as to the object of all my fantasies?

I came back to myself when Sherlock Holmes cordially escorted Jabez Wilson out the door with promises to render his opinion in the course of a day or two. After Mr. Wilson was gone, Holmes carried a cup of tea and a small plate of cooled toast and fruit to me from the breakfast table where they lay, passing both to me silently. My friend then found his black clay pipe and stuffed it with shag, holding it between his lips and throwing two or three pillows from his armchair on the rug beneath the settee where I reclined. He settled down on the cushions below me and turned his eyes up in my direction.

"Well, Watson, what do you make of it all?"

It is difficult even for a man who finds writing comes naturally to him to explain just how sensual he looked sprawled on the carpet below the sofa, his elbow resting next to my knee as he looked at me expectantly. I, of course, did not know what to make of any of it.

"We must be prompt over this matter," he mused.

"What are we going to do, then?"

"To smoke," Holmes answered. "It is quite a three pipe problem, and I beg that you won't speak to me for fifty minutes."

This was an easy request, for my mind was clouded with apprehension. The anxiety in combination with just having recovered from a virulent if swift fever severely dampened my appetite, but I ate the entirety of the small portion because Sherlock Holmes, after all, had handed it to me. Then I set the plate on the floor and closed my lids, feeling the vivifying effects of the food and drink suffuse me.

I opened my eyes half an hour later because Holmes had perched next to me, his face alight with determination. "What do you think, Watson? Are you through with being a patient for a few hours?"

"The practice is never very absorbing," I answered dryly.

"Stout fellow," he rejoiced. "You make a very poor invalid, my dear Watson, if you'll forgive me--the pursuit does not come naturally to you. Now up, and come with me."

Any thought of pleading sickness and remaining behind out of the fear Vincent Spaulding might not be Vincent Spaulding was banished from my mind. It was merely my nerves playing tricks on me, and that was that. My hat was in my hand a moment later, and I was about the business of following at the heels of Sherlock Holmes once more.

We traveled by the Underground as far as Aldersgate and walked the remaining distance to Saxe-Coburg Square, a place my feet approached ever more reluctantly. Three gilt balls and a brown board with "JABEZ WILSON" in white letters, upon a corner house, announced the place where our red-headed client carried on his business. Sherlock Holmes stopped in front of it with his head on one side and looked it all over, with his eyes shining brightly between puckered lids. Then he walked slowly up the street, and then down again to the corner, still looking keenly at the shabby-genteel brick houses.

All the while he was dragging his cane absently from time to time upon the ground. The majority of his movements were very precise, but when he was thinking, he rarely drew short lines in the pavement with the end of his stick. It was not a stick for me, however, nor could the sound of any dragging stick ever be again--it was a hacksaw, and I was gripping it while four other men held a foot soldier down who screamed at me for a murderer and pissed himself for the pain of it. That particular soldier had been right in the end, for he had died the following day. Cutting off a gangrenous limb is all well and good, but when there is a severe antiseptic shortage, the charges of murder against my person grew more accurate. The strain of the night previous and the thought of seeing a man-who-was-perhaps-not-Vincent-Spaulding again in front of my friend were excruciating, but for the moment all that was lost in the agony of that slight, hideous sound.

"Stop doing--I can't," I gasped, my own stick clattering to the ground. Then I hid my eyes, detesting myself for the unmanly shame of it.

There were strong hands gripping my arms in seconds, and one of them moved up to light gently on my neck. "I'm sorry," he said. His thumb was resting upon the skin above my collar, the other hand holding me steady as a boulder. "You're here safe in London, and I shan't do it again. Now when you're able, tell me what I am not to do."

I dropped my hand from my face to look at him, sick to death of my womanish, quivering weaknesses.

He was not angry at me, staggeringly--he was nothing but calm and insistent. Granted, he looked alarmed, but he had quickly schooled the expression. "What is it we're avoiding, Doctor?"

"I apolo--"

"Stop it," he growled. Then he winced at himself. "I beg your pardon. I can be a bit of a brute at times."

"No, you cannot," I protested, "and I'm sorry I--"

"Yes, in fact I can, Doctor, and if you continue apologizing to me, I shall question your sanity, for your actions have not merited the gesture in the slightest degree. Now, please, for my sake, tell me what is wrong."

I pulled a deep, steadying breath into my lungs and then blew it out again. If I could not prove myself a man in front of him, I would at least demonstrate to him I could recover quickly. "When you drag your stick on the kerb, it sounds like my surgical saw used to--and I was never using it for a pleasant reason. The majority of them died."

He took a moment to absorb the implications of this statement, and then his face tightened in such a reserved, respectful display of sympathy as I had never seen. Sadly, he let go of me.

"It shan't happen again."

"I would appreciate it," I granted, "as long as this sad deficiency of mine endures."

"For God's sake, Doctor, be a little easier on yourself."

"Easy?" I snapped. "You think if I was easy on myself this would happen less frequently? You think keeping this sort of disgusting cowardice in check requires less vigilance?"

He was gripping my arms again, but now the hands were made of steel, for I had somehow infuriated him.

"I realize you may not wish to hear this from me," he snarled, "but if you utter one more disrespectful remark about a war veteran I know to be of the finest quality, you will deeply offend me."

Just as quickly, he let me go for the second time. He had never once raised his voice to me so violently previously, but in the lives of flat mates there is a first time for everything. And the content of his argument left me speechless. Slightly dazed, I reached down for my stick and stood upright again. Holmes was being careful not to glare at me, but he was still fuming, and stalked away to stand before the pawnbroker's shop. After examining its relation to the adjacent structures and staring at the ground for a moment, he turned back to me, dispassionate and courteous as ever.

"Come here a moment."

I joined him.

"I have no desire to trigger horrors for you again, but I need to know what this pavement sounds like. We are not scraping--we are striking, and perhaps you will feel still more comfortable if you do it yourself. Just tap very hard on the ground in this spot with your stick, Doctor, and I shall have my answer."

It may be difficult to believe, but already this was not the strangest request ever put to me from Sherlock Holmes, and all of the previous ones had led to stunning results. Obligingly, I thumped against the spot he indicated three times. The cane produced an oddly cavernous sound.

"Thank you," he said. When Holmes' eyes met mine again, they were gleaming with silvery fire. I had never seen him look so delighted at nothing in our acquaintance. "My dear fellow lodger, do you know what sound that was?" he asked mischievously.

"It sounded...almost hollow, Holmes."

"That, friend Watson, was the sound of fifty pounds."

He laughed at my incredulous countenance, and then wrung me by the hand.

"Holmes," I exclaimed, "are you certain that's the sound of fifty pounds?"

"I am entirely certain. It is a hobby of mine to have an exact knowledge of London, you see. All will be clear to you in time."

Wheeling theatrically, he went to the door and knocked.

The man who opened it was not named Vincent Spaulding. His name, as a matter of fact, was John Clay. His features were bright with intellect, uplifted with self-regard, and coldly cunning. There was a striking splash of acid across his high brow, interrupting the line of his sandy brown hair. He was clean-shaven like Holmes and likewise charming of feature but far smaller, projecting regality in his mannerisms rather than with his very being like my friend. It made me quite ill to see him again.

Holmes, meanwhile, appeared to be asking directions. John Clay delivered them readily, and then he glanced away to see who stood behind his questioner. His clever green eyes raked over me twice, and then with a nod to my friend, he shut the door. I stared after him in disbelief.

The detective walked back to me, still smiling a little. "Smart fellow, that. He is, in my judgment, the fourth smartest man in Lon--" Holmes drew back in undisguised surprise when he laid eyes on my expression. "Watson?"

I shook my head, leaning on the stick, searching for another explanation than the obvious.

"Doctor, are you all right?" Holmes demanded. Then his gaze narrowed. "Watson, are you--do you know that man?"

"Apparently not," I gasped, laughing unsteadily.

It was the one cruel outcome I could never have expected. That we may have attacked one another was squarely within the realm of possibility, and that a flash of recognition would pass between us before we both ignored one another had been my second guess. The idea that I was destroyed to the point that John Clay would not recognize me at all was too much. I knew I was far too thin and much too brown, and that my coat no longer fit well, and that my muscle mass had receded into a wiry frame and a splintered shoulder. But was not at least my face the same? No, I realized--it was not. It was haunted, corpselike, saddened by bloodshed, and forever after unrecognizable. I would simply have to bear the fact. Thank God my friend at least seemed able to look at me without flinching.

"Do you wish to--"

"No," I countered. "I have no need to speak with him. I must have made some mistake."

My friend stared at me as if he could read my thoughts printed upon my brain. His grey eyes searched every part of my face for an answer, questing tirelessly, until just looking steadily back at him myself began to exhaust me. Finally, he smiled. I could not understand the transformation at all--it was a wonderful smile, open and heartfelt, the sort of smile I laboured for days at a time to produce in him, the smile that sent my unruly heart somewhere up in the vicinity of the nearest clock tower. All trace of the sad and erudite gentleman without the means to pay his rent, who thought the countryside evil and whose skin was thick with syringe scars, had vanished. He looked utterly peaceful and yet bursting with energy, and he offered me his arm.

"We have done our work, Doctor," he said, eyes still sparkling wildly. "Don't you think it's time we had some play?"

The breathy tone was unmistakable, and trapped my tongue to the roof of my mouth. "I--what sort of play do you intend?"

"A sandwich, for I cannot afford to buy you oysters at the moment," he said easily, "although I will buy you oysters when this affair is concluded, I vow. And afterwards a cup of coffee, and then off to violin-land, where all is sweetness and delicacy and harmony, and there are no red-headed clients to vex us with their conundrums."

Sarasate played at the St. James Hall that afternoon and, confident of his mysterious fifty pounds and inexplicably joyful, my friend treated us both to a ticket after previously treating us to a simple lunch. All the afternoon he sat in the stalls wrapped in the most unaccountably perfect happiness, gently waving his long, thin fingers in time to the music, while his smiling face and his languid, dreamy eyes cast surreptitious glances at me. It was one of the strangest sights, and the most sensuous, that I have ever laid eyes on. I knew Sherlock Holmes to possess a dual nature, and an unfairly vast degree of inner complexity, but I could not believe that mere music could produce such an effect in him, although to be sure it was sublimely rendered music. Though it was nearly impossible for me to forget the fact that I was now so ravaged that even John Clay could not identify me, I found myself being swept along with Holmes, as the Spaniard played his violin as though his heart were twined into its strings.

When we emerged, it was already evening, and the October clouds were menacing. I felt Holmes' hand on my back.

"You want to go home, no doubt, Doctor?"

It was the same tone--inviting, no doubt, but also dangerously hypnotic. I nodded, and my friend strode off in search of a cab.

Once back at our digs in Baker Street at last, I collapsed into my armchair. Its mere familiarity, following the many events of the afternoon, was a comfort. Holmes poured us a pair of whiskeys, leaving out the soda, and shot me a look. "This business at Coburg Square is serious," he announced.

"Why serious?" I asked, swallowing.

"A considerable crime is in contemplation, but you and I are going to stop it. I shall want your help tomorrow night."

"My help is always yours for the asking," I replied, forcing my voice to sound jovial and not strained.

He smiled, and then the smile disappeared. "Did you care for the concert?"

"The concert? I loved the concert. In particular that piece based on--"

"The Carmen Fantasy," he commented. "L'oiseau que tu croyais surprendre battit de l'aile et s'envola...l'amour est loin, tu peux l'attendre; tu ne l'attends plus, il est la."

I knew he spoke French, for he often muttered in the language when vexed or tired, but as I never responded to him when he did so, he must have deduced I had never learned the beautiful tongue. Flicking his wrist and finishing his drink, my friend picked up his own violin and bow. "I confess myself very fond of Sarasate's variations," he said.

"I am as well. I've always liked Carmen itself, in fact, though I don't know why."

"Car c'est la fete du courage. C'est la fete des gens de coeur."

"Holmes, if you desire a conversation with me, it's going to have to be in English," I laughed.

"I wasn't conversing--I was quoting Bizet. 'Because it is the celebration of courage; it's the celebration for the men of heart.'" He plucked at the strings of his Stradivarius tentatively with his fingernails. "Although too much heart can grow to be a bad business--I do draw the line at stabbing former lovers when they grow to scorn you. I suppose you're sick of the violin?"

"I am never weary of the violin, particularly your violin, and I never shall be," I corrected him.

Smiling, he lifted his bow and he played. There is a saying that making a difficult task appear effortless is the sign of the true master, and Sherlock Holmes proves the maxim correct in more sense than one. Where the violin is concerned, however, the man has been gifted with magic from the gods. That evening, as the winds picked up and the sky darkened, he played the Carmen Fantasy in his own way--ethereally, urgently, twisting familiar phrases into new conceptions of what is sublime and what is ugly. He could do these things because he knew far too much about the sublime and the ugly, I thought, and the rest of the sweet burden fell to his divine pair of doves'-wing hands.

As the bowing ceased on an impossibly long, quavering note, the perfectly poised spine relaxed, and the hand holding the bow fell gracefully to his side, I realized that I had not taken a breath in approximately twenty seconds. I drew one, making every effort to appear natural and perfectly at ease.

But I was neither one of those things, for Sherlock Holmes was staring at me again. His eyes were aglow like molten lead, and the faintest flush accented his striking cheekbones. I was an insect being held under a magnifying glass, and I suddenly felt as if he were ministering to me in the darkness again, as if I was not wearing any clothing.

"Did I pass muster?" he asked casually.

I swallowed. "You are quite too unfairly talented. Having your own unique profession ought to be enough for you without also being a concert-worthy violinist. My dear fellow, that was unprecedented--even apart from this Red-Headed League business, I am no longer in any way anxious about where we are going to come by the rent next month."

He smiled, but only very slightly. Tapping his bow against his slim calf, he remarked in the tones of a courtier's cat, "You did appear rather profoundly affected by my performance."

"You remind me of the Pied Piper of Hamlin," I laughed. "I think all of London would follow you into the Channel if you played for them liked that. Anyone would."

"But you see," he murmured, his lips lingering over the words, "I don't play for anyone like that."

Just when I thought I had recalled how to breathe, the knowledge was stricken from me again. Holmes, meanwhile, took two small steps toward me. There was something in his eyes which I had seen there before, a truly strange mix of introspection and scrutiny, but this time it was unguarded and as irresistible as the undertow of a tidal wave.

"Would you follow me into the Channel?" he inquired coolly.

It was the end of me, or else the beginning. But there was only one possible response to the question.

"Yes," I breathed.

I have no notion of what I expected to follow, but it most certainly was not what he did. An expression flashed across his face too quickly to identify, as he turned aside and gently set his beloved instrument on the floor beside the hearth. Then he pulled a cigarette from his case and lit it carefully, walking the short distance to the settee. He sat down, his long arms spanning the back of the furniture as he raised his eyes to mine once more.

"I don't suppose you would object," he purred, "to my testing that assertion?"

I would have laughed had he not looked so burningly intent on the question. I did manage to smile before replying, "My dear fellow, I've no real wish to swim the Channel, surely you realize that. It would be quite detrimental to my health."

The smile which flicked across his sculpted lips might have lingered upon the features of a Sphinx in ancient Egypt. "That was not quite the experiment I had in mind. I do wonder, however, whether you would comply with my request to remove your clothing." He paused, the cigarette half an inch from his mouth. "All of it."

My heart stopped, I think, and then soared in its turn. Even had a fog of lust not just then descended to utterly impede my judgment, my mind would yet have been subject to those eyes, those beautiful, wicked eyes, which now studied me with an appearance of perfect calm. How like Sherlock Holmes to take what--I was beginning to comprehend--could have been a conventional declaration and twist it into a test of dominance. And yet somehow I could not even hold it against him. Regarding my apparent loss of free will, is it coercion to order a man to take the step he has been pining for already?

I stood up and went to the curtains, shutting them carefully before I locked the door. I wondered from beyond myself in some remote Neverland whether I was afraid, but could not answer the question. Going back to my armchair, I kicked off my house slippers and reached up for my cravat. The same distant part of me said that my hands ought to have been trembling, but when I glimpsed them as they folded my waistcoat, I saw that miraculously they were not. They steadily worked over buttons of their own accord, as if they'd already touched Sherlock Holmes and had performed the exercise for him a thousand times. My imagination, however, still retained some cause for fear when I recalled the unbearable events of that afternoon. Surely I was altogether ugly, was I not? When I had been thought attractive, when men like John Clay had sought after me, I had weighed at least a stone more and had been unscarred at the very least. When I at last slipped from my underthings and set them atop my trousers, my profound arousal was dampened by apprehension.

When I turned back to look at my friend, he was still smoking quietly, but with his left hand. He had drawn his sublime member from his trousers and was idly running his delicate fingers over it. Smiling at me in open, undisguised admiration, he flicked the cigarette away into the fireplace.

I think I reached him in three strides, and had straddled his thighs in seconds. As first kisses go, it was everything a first kiss ought not to be--insistent, knowing, powerful, needful, entirely lacking the typical chaste restraint of the activity. There was nothing sweetly tentative in that utter submersion, as I had countless times imagined there would be. I can only suppose we had both been practicing it in our dreams for so long that we were already adepts. I was gripping his hair with both hands before I knew my hands had moved, and the sensation of his deft tongue in my mouth only maddened me further when his musician's fingers traced their nails down my exposed back. I slid forward until I could just feel the warmth of his cock nestled against mine, and the lips which burned beneath my own smiled again.

"You pass the first test." Pulling the base of my spine into him with both hands, his black head lowered as he bent to run his lips, very gently, over the mass of scar tissue on my shoulder. No one had ever done so before, and it was not in the least painful and shockingly erotic, perhaps as much from the sight of him doing such a thing as the vague sensation.

"Has anyone ever passed these tests in their entirety?" I murmured.

"I don't administer these tests to anyone."

It might have been merely an interlude, if the most powerfully sexual interlude of my life to date, had he not been so insistent upon my singularity. And I admitted in that moment, if only to myself, that I did love him. I was a lying, prevaricating fool who had loved him for months. And I would one day have to endure the harrowing rite of telling him so.

He brushed his thumbs over my pectorals and shivering, I kissed him again. That he was experienced was beyond doubt, but it was also possible to deduce he retained the soul of a violinist in matters of the flesh, for against my every instinct to hurry, wanting all of him at once, he was taking his time. Something deep in my pelvis hummed with pleasure when he suddenly fastened his lips to my collarbone and sucked the blood to the surface. My long abstinence likely made me more eager than I would have been otherwise, but I can only attribute his own languid restraint to artistry. There was no part of me save the most insistent one that his sensitive fingers did not explore, as he ran his lips and tongue over my chest.

"What's the second test?" I asked, my cheeks flushed and my neglected member throbbing persistently. I had thought to demand he remove at least some of his own clothes out of fair play, but he did not seem in the mood to meet demands.

"Simplicity itself," he said lowly. "I wonder if you might fetch the vaseline residing in the top drawer of my nightstand?"

He could not possibly have asked me anything I would more willingly have done. I was up in an instant and striding towards his bedroom.

When I arrived there, however, his mirror gave me slight pause. I studied myself over candidly for a moment. Sadly thinned, and the less said about my shoulder the better. It was a repulsive thing, the scar something between a crater and a splintering network of cracks. And yet he'd seen it all, and baldly desired it.

I was simply lucky, that was all. And the wise man takes advantage of undeserved luck for as long as is possible.

I found the object in question between an old revolver and a fuel cartridge for his chemical burner. As I arrived back in the sitting room, I tossed it to him and he caught it easily, setting it two feet away further along the sofa. Still seated, he had removed his cravat, collar, cuffs, and waistcoat, though he was nearly fully clothed by comparison to me. The glimpse of white flesh above his breastbone was beyond my capacity to resist, and I resumed my previous position, this time nipping at the pale skin near his shoulders.

"Your tests are not very difficult," I observed wantonly.

"They are tailored to suit the applicant, I grant," he laughed, inhaling sharply when I had pulled apart his finely laundered shirt enough for my tongue to graze his nipple. "Ready for the next item on our agenda?"

"I fear I have been ready for quite some time," I replied, lust making the words all the harsher.

"Capital." Lifting my face away from his breast with the palm of his hand, he slid down against the cushions by perhaps a foot. Then he ran his hands down to my hips suggestively. "I am about to do something I have been longing to do for months now. I don't doubt that you'll like the activity, but I suggest that you simultaneously enjoy yourself with a similar exercise, and one I know you have been contemplating at length. Now, up."

He pulled me to my knees until my palm was leaning against the back of the settee and my cock was at his lips, his left hand cradling it gently while his right traveled up my torso to my mouth.

"I think you know what I mean," he murmured. I am positively certain he only said it so as it run his lips over my already aching member.

I did know what he meant, and I almost climaxed then and there as he swallowed me at the exact moment I drew two slender, perfect fingers into my mouth. I believe to this day that if there is anything in the world better than worshiping other, more central portions of my friend's anatomy, it is savouring the hands which can literally guide me like a marionette tethered heart-and-body to their individual strings. I kissed everything from his forearm to his wrist to his palm and back again, then devoted myself to each separate perfect finger singly while his damnably clever tongue did the same to my cock.

It was not a pastime destined to last forever--indeed, I began to fear it could last no more than about five minutes, and I pulled his hand from my mouth whilst gripping his hair and gasping out his name. The locks twined in my fingers were thick and black as the coal-dusk that fell every night over London.

"Hmm?" He looked up innocently. "Oh, yes. Admirable work, my dear fellow, thank you."

Then the scoundrel merely tasted my length once more as his moistened fingers reached deftly behind me. I let out a moan of desire, falling forward and clutching the back of the sofa with both hands.

"That is not what I meant," I panted. He was cradling my shaft with his lips and his left hand while the other gently drove into me, just as slow as ever he pleased, then deeper and harder, teasing and circling and sending white flashes before my eyes as I struggled desperately not to finish. My brain, I knew, could control my body, but not when such lighting bolts of pleasure were running up and down my spine.

"No?" he inquired, taking the briefest of respites. "What did you mean?"

"I meant I'm close to--God," I gasped. "I had to warn--not yet, wait--"

"I apologize," he said. All his fingers left me, but only for a moment--and because my eyes were closed, trying frantically to bring myself back from the edge, I failed to notice that he only took such an action so as to coat them with the substance I'd procured from his room.

There are limits to every man's stamina, and being surprised once again in that same manner while he redoubled his efforts to swallow me whole happens to have been mine. I made every effort not to cry out as I climaxed, shaking and sweating and shattering to pieces as I gripped the furniture so hard I might have broken it. I was only grateful my hands hadn't been anywhere near my companion, lest I had snapped him in half. When the aftershocks were beginning to subside but I was still dizzy and blinded, I crawled in closer to him as he sat up straighter.

"Please," I whispered. Kissing him, I tasted the headiest mixture of two people ever produced. I ran my tongue over his, wanting only to crawl inside of him and live within his ribcage. "Now."

"Not now," Holmes replied, but I was gratified to hear that at least his breathing had grown ragged.

"Yes, now! Why not now?" I demanded without any regard for pride. Looking down, I saw his own need was surely painful by that time.

"I am waiting until you are ready."

"For God's sake, I have been ready since--"

"No," he said forcefully, his arms encircling my waist.

I doubted myself quite sickeningly all over again. "But don't you want--"

"You were once a complete enigma to me, John Watson, and in almost every sense save for this, you remain one. But now that I have you, I intend to retain possession of you. There are rules about these things, and I am the one who makes them." His tone was desperate with desire, but also hard as iron. "One of the rules states that--because I am bloody well keeping you now I have found you--for the following week, every little death I allow myself shall be accompanied by two of yours. It isn't negotiable, I'm afraid, although I do find your eagerness to proceed very flattering in a personal sense. You'll be ready again in ten minutes."

My lips were already parted, but that statement made me weak in the knees. His eyes were shining at me, full of dark, knavish mischief and yet perfectly serious. I could not have doubted him if I tried, save on one count.

"That was--there is no anatomical way I will be ready again in ten--"

"Trust me. You are a doctor, I know, but trust me. Now I need to speak with you. There are a few things we must settle."

"We'll settle anything you like," I hastened to say. I had never in my entire adult life wanted anything more feverishly than for my friend to take me right then and there, but if there was an agenda to be undertaken first, I wanted it over.

"You've had relations with John Clay, yes?"

"I--yes. Is that a problem?"

"He did not treat you well, did he?"

"No, he treated me vilely, but we were young. We're both of us very young still, for all the trouble we have seen," I added to Holmes. I had no notion what he was driving at, but it was shattering my nerves. "Dearest fellow, it was a very long time ago. Tell me truthfully, is it at issue?"

"No," he replied calmly, "but if he touches you again, he won't live out the night. I'll see to that much. The same is true for any other man in the Empire. You have experienced the fourth smartest man in London, in addition to doubtless several others lower on the scale, and just now you sampled the second smartest man in London. Your collection is over. You are categorically forbidden to explore any other fellows on the continuum, and what I am doing now is proving that it is in your own best interests to obey that mandate. I would never present you with an illogical ultimatum, and thus frame it as a question of value for your time. I intend to treat you very well indeed. As for the others, if they presume to make advances on what is mine, they will reap unfortunate consequences."

It did not seem scientifically feasible, but I felt my cock stir at this devastatingly arousing sentiment. Smiling as widely as I ever had, I think, I kissed his warm lips again.

"I shall never have the first smartest man in London?"

"God, no," he said with a mock shudder. "In any event, if you find me physically attractive in any way, he would not be to your liking, as he is a very, very large man."

"You are the most attractive man I have ever known."

His eyes widened in surprise, for the remark was so candid as to sound almost callow. "That is not the same thing as fidelity," he demurred at length.

"Sherlock Holmes," I said softly, "I don't desire any other man in London."

"Don't you?" he inquired, his voice suddenly very gentle.

"Not a one."

"You're quite sure?"

"Yes, I assure you. I certainly have no intention of begging anyone else to get on with it and take me, for the love of Heaven."

"Not up to your standards of dignity?" he teased me, his eyes glowing at me tenderly.

"It should be clear by now that where you are concerned, I have no standards of dignity whatever."

He caught one of my nipples between his middle and index fingers. "I really cannot tell you how charming it is. I hadn't expected it, I confess. I'd liken it to--"

"For pity's sake, what do I have to do for you to sod me?" I demanded hoarsely. "Must I--"

"Get up for a moment," he requested. I did, staring at him voraciously. He finished opening his fine shirt with agonizing slowness and then shrugged it off his shoulders gracefully, throwing it to the floor. The planes of his slim back were unbelievably taut with muscle. He stepped from his own slippers and then removed his remaining garments, standing svelte and bare before me, carved out of priceless ivory, his member glistening and swollen and his lips flushed with sex. He sat down again, legs slightly apart, looking with amusement at my fresh erection.

"You see?" he questioned. "Chalk it up to experience, but I have rather a sixth sense about these--"

He cut himself off when I unceremoniously impaled myself on him, moaning as my lips fell to his brow and I ground smoothly, achingly, gradually into the solid thighs I had been longing after for far too long. I choked back my own cry with an effort. I wanted to move slowly. Or at least, I thought I did. But instead I found myself rising and falling and rocking ardently while he, to my severe delight, seemed to lose a good many of his powers of restraint as his fingers clutched at my hipbones.

When I knew for a fact neither of us could take much more I stopped, dragging the sweat from his pale brow with the back of my hand. I had never seen so much colour in his aristocratic face, never seen his fingers wander over anything without a specific object in mind, never seen anything as open and human as that wide-eyed look of passion. He gripped the back of my neck with both his hands, breathing heavily and shivering.

"Do you always make the rules?" I whispered.

"Yes," he gasped. Then he tugged at my cock and I lost myself for the second time, dimly aware I had wrenched a cry from him as he shook underneath me, spiraling together into a state as close to madness as it was to bliss, and as close to oblivion as it was to either one.

I do not believe a single one of my muscles was free from tremors. I was utterly unraveled. Next thing I knew, I was lying on my side on the sofa, covered with a light blanket. Panicked that I could no longer feel him, my eyes flew open, but he was before me--sitting on the floor, his face only inches from my own, his fingers twined into my resting hand.

"I thought it would trouble you," I whispered. I do not know why I felt like confession, apart from the fact that his aesthetic features hovered so sympathetically near to mine.

"What would?" he asked, frowning.

"You are so fastidious, and I used to be more...desirable."

This remark drew only a dry laugh and the brush of his other hand over my face. "I cannot fathom how that would have been possible, my dear boy. And I have a very vivid imagination."

"I can promise you--"

"John," he said quietly, "whatever you were before, I doubt your current state of mind enables you to see what you are today. I might have taken an interest in a stunningly beautiful young medico with his arms swinging carelessly at his sides, a lovely boy shining with untested self-confidence. Might. I doubt it. The man upon whom I desire to lavish my time--I only hope you will allow me-- is one who cares about suffering because he suffers, cares about hardship because he has experienced it, detests injustice because he has seen injustice done, listens to the complaints of his peers because he knows how difficult it can be to keep his own complaints as silent as he does every day. And even apart from your soul, dear fellow, your body is a wonder. It speaks your history, and eloquently, though I am sorry you are ever pained by it. I do not enjoy reading blank books any more than I enjoy sleeping with virgins. Not all men are of my taste in these matters, but there you are."

His exquisite words were not even the main blessing as a wave of contentment washed over me--I had never been so grateful for simply being stared at before. I needed to thank him, but could think of nothing valuable enough to give him in return for my self-regard. I would ask him later, perhaps, what he wanted.

"I should remind you that my nerves are not yet fully recovered. I don't think I can survive another week of this treatment," I murmured, smiling as I opened my eyes.

"Of course you will," he returned softly. Leaning down, his lips touched mine. And then he said, "I will take care of you."

He did not mean he would take care of me, for I was a grown man. He meant that he loved me. And so I said, "I love you too," before his face drifted entirely away from my consciousness.

Four Minor Interludes for the Solo Violin I

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 19:44:06 GMT

Rating: NC-17

About the characters: they are far too good to be mine.

I have stated elsewhere in this series of incoherent memoirs that when I first took lodgings with Sherlock Holmes, I was not a well man due to the physical trauma I had sustained in Afghanistan. This was entirely true, and yet not the whole of it. A number of factors led to my weakened condition, the gravest of which were my severe wounding at Maiwand followed by a near-deadly encounter with enteric fever after my rescue had been effected, but these twin blows were not the only assailants upon the state of my health by the time I returned to London. I wished very often that they had been.

For the sad fact was that my nerves were quite shattered. I was able to mask the affliction the majority of the time, or at least I convinced myself that no one around me thought that anything aside from a ruined constitution was amiss. However, it was very difficult for me during that period to discern between what was urgent and what was nonessential. The sound of clattering carriages, a constant din in London, almost undid me in the beginning. The slightest scrape of a cane across pavement recalled the sound of bones being sawed apart, often enough by me, and would send me striding away as if the very hounds of hell pursued me. I was singularly well-equipped to deal with large events, however--a band of three ruffians, thinking me an easy target, set upon me in the dark one night not long after I arrived in the great metropolis friendless and unheralded, and I believe I sent all three of them to hospital.

I was never a vain man before the war--indeed, I hardly ever gave my own looks any consideration whatsoever. After the war, however, I had the most peculiar sensation that I was staring at my own ghost when I saw my reflection. The image was pale, weary, grieved, and quite repulsive to me, and in a very short while I had convinced myself that no man would ever want me in the most intimate fashion again. My visage looked precisely like the ruined veterans I had been tending before my own downfall, and I had certainly not lusted after any of those poor fellows when I had been myself sound. I had heartily pitied them, in fact. I had pitied their fragmented bodies and their haunted eyes, the little sounds of pent-up agony they made when they supposed no one was near them, and now that I had been shattered in my turn, I could not countenance subjecting hale men to the sight of me. My reflection seemed a mere premonition of my own corpse. I had never before been at a loss for physical company, but--expecting rejection at every turn--I shunned other men of my kind like the plague.

When I lived alone, the issues of which I speak were not serious ones. The only damage I did to anyone was to myself. But then I found I was draining my wound pension at an alarming rate, and--fearing the addition of stark poverty would not enhance my already Spartan existence--complained to my acquaintance Stamford about it.

"You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive," the stranger said. Of course I had been in Afghanistan, I thought with a tolerant smile--what other nation could so utterly wreck a fellow?

The man to whom Stamford had introduced me, young and energized and aglow with the light of scientific discovery, was preternaturally stunning. Everything about him was heightened. He was not tall--he was very tall. He was very pale, his hair very dark. There was nothing about him that was not very. He was very masterful, very intelligent, and very, very handsome. His name was Sherlock Holmes, and we were moving into a flat in Baker Street together within the week.

"Shall I carry that for you?" he asked on the staircase, when a massive valise packed with surgical journals seemed to be getting the best of me.

"I can manage it myself," I smiled.

"Doubtless," he agreed, as distantly polite as a Peer. "And yet, then again, you needn't."

"You are not obliged to assist me, I assure you."

"Doctor, I am not so financially solvent at the moment that I can afford to lose half the rent should you tumble down the stairs and perish buried in an avalanche of medical texts. I am not a physician, after all. I should be forced to read through them thoroughly for instructions on how best to patch you back together, and by the time I reached your lifeless form, it would be quite too late."

He sounded satirical, but I had already discerned that a cool courtesy lurked behind his incisive statements. He had a pleasant knack for mocking his own financial difficulties as if daring anyone else to do the same, so I did not feel the need to take his tone personally. And in any event, he had already taken the bag away from me. It was the first occasion when I noticed that Sherlock Holmes is a man who does precisely what he wants.

I have been asked on many occasions how it is that I manage to live with him without being driven to distraction. In those early days, the explanation was quite simple: he was as much an obsessive fascination as he was a flat mate, and in addition my own temper was kept firmly under control because I'd no notion of whether the things which vexed me were rational.

It was all very well that his stepping on the documents he'd strewn underfoot brought flashes to my mind of the crackling of distant, horrible gunfire, but I said nothing because to complain of such a thing would have convinced me I was mad. Indoor target practice itself, on the other hand, I found laughably eccentric. He obligingly cleared my teacup from a side table back to the tray one afternoon and I fought the urge to strike him, for there was yet half an inch of strong brown liquid at the bottom and I could not seem to convince myself that good English tea brewed with clean water was no longer a rare commodity. And yet his filling the sitting room with the toxic fumes of his pipe during all-night meditative sessions was nothing if not profoundly endearing.

So very many of the things he said and did were profoundly endearing. I made extensive lists about the poor fellow, only one of which I have shared with the public. I admired nearly everything about him; I even admired his shatteringly quick temper and his high-born air of total superiority, for I had always been hopelessly attracted to such men. In those broken days following the war, I did not wish to make any decisions or set any rules. The Jefferson Hope case, along with all the other adventures we shared in the beginning, revealed in a profound manner that I did not have to--the simple solution was to follow Sherlock Holmes.

I grew closer to the best and wisest man I have ever known by huge leaps rather than small steps. I soon discerned that he was cold when he wished to be and quite charming on other occasions, and that he was remarkably adept at suiting his biting humour to the circumstances. He seemed, quite frankly, to like me, for he was a man who liked to be followed. I liked him heartily in return and lusted after him from the quiet of my upstairs room, but I could not easliy determine whether he was queer or merely celibate--and the infrequent glimpses I caught of myself from time to time assured me that even if he were aroused by men, he would certainly not be aroused by me.

The leaps of which I speak--the singular events which drew us exponentially closer each time they took place--shared a common theme which I find somewhat whimsical to this very day. They finally culminated during the business over The Red-Headed League, but on each separate occasion, my friend was playing his violin.

The first great shift began in an argument, shortly after we resolved the case I recorded under the title A Study in Scarlet. I had slept very badly the night before--not due to any residual effects of the mystery, which had been altogether sublime in its drama, but because I had been dreaming quite assiduously of Afghanistan. After I had startled myself into wakefulness seven and eight times, my mood began to suffer for it. When I collapsed exhausted into my armchair in the sitting room at eleven the next morning, I was relieved Holmes was present and grateful for the company.

He lifted an eyebrow in greeting. He was half-dressed, playing scales expertly in his dressing gown. My eyes fell shut as I listened, completely spent by what felt like a night of vigourous work. Then he ceased and reached for a cloth. His bow wasn't to his liking, apparently, for he began running the scrap and a piece of rosin over the surface of the strings.

Perhaps it was the bitter night I had spent and perhaps it would have happened inevitably, but the sound was identical to the soft sloughing of a cutlass through flesh I had once heard very frequently. I held out against its effects for thirty or forty seconds.

"Will you stop doing that?" I thundered at him.

I have scarcely ever startled Sherlock Holmes, but that was one of the instances, to be sure. He retained the Stradivarius bow but dropped the cloth, staring at me with his striking grey eyes wide for one or two seconds before they narrowed suddenly.

I was already scarlet with shame. "My dear fellow, I am terribly sorry," I gasped. "I don't know what came over me. Excuse me--I've made quite a fool enough of myself for one morning. Go on with what you were doing and do please forgive me."

The end of the bow hit my shoulder softly as I stood up. "Sit," he commanded.

I did, hiding my face in my hands as I rubbed my heavy eyelids.

"You are lying," he mused thoughtfully.

I looked up at him, shocked. "Of course I am not! I am truly ashamed of myself--"

"No, not that part, Doctor," he said gently. "You said you didn't know what came over you. But you do know what took place, and it pains you more than the outburst itself."

I sighed, adjusting my dressing gown. The fact that he was right did not excuse the remark's invasive overtones--on the contrary.

"I do not wish to pry," he continued, sitting down in his armchair, "but you are welcome to tell me about it."

Holmes crossed his legs in his typically sophisticated manner, looking for all the world like the young heir apparent of the manor recently awakened following a debauched night at the tables. He often looked so, the more pristinely clean and yet disheveled and world-weary the better, and I cannot describe the rousing effect it produced in me. I thought to myself that he was the last person I would wish to confide in on the subject in all the world, and suddenly he laughed.

"Do you mind if I tell you what you were thinking just now, my dear fellow?" he inquired, steepling his fingertips.

"Holmes," I argued tiredly, "you are very clever, and you just solved an incredibly complex affair. I think I have made it clear to you that I remain profoundly impressed by your marvelous faculty. But you cannot read my mind."

Under normal circumstances when I made such statements he smirked, but this time he did not. "You were thinking," he replied with a strangely quiet conviction, "that you know no one in London and that you have lost many of the people in whom you would normally store your confidences--and because I am a civilian and rather an arrogant devil, you concluded that you would prefer to suffer in silence rather than risk losing the regard of the one person who daily might be called your friend. I know what you were thinking because I haven't any friends either, and were our situations reversed, I should hide whatever secret we are speaking of away in the darkest corner of my brain for fear you would find it repellent. But I have the advantage of you in this case, Doctor, because I am aware of what you are thinking as well as what I am thinking--and I shan't find it repellent, whatever it is. I know you well enough to swear that you are perfectly safe."

It was mortifying, but tears had sprung into my eyes during this little speech. Thinking perhaps he would not notice them if I ignored them myself, I made no move to dash them away. "It sounds like a cutlass," I whispered. I could still see the blood pouring from the slashes, see my own hands failing to do any good, recall the almost taste-like smell of raw flesh hanging in the air.

He blinked, cocking his elegant head. "My bow?"

"When you rub the rosin over it. Like a cutlass passing through soft tissue."

My new friend's fine lips parted slowly. "Watson, I am so terribly sorry."

"Please do not be. It's my wretched mind making the connection, after all."

"Your mind is far from wretched. It's first-rate, actually."

"It used to be rather good," I admitted. "Now, however, it has degenerated considerably and plays cruel tricks on me."

My flat mate stared at me for a few moments, hesitating. "I loathe the smell of strong pine resin."

This was confusing. "Really? Why?"

Holmes glanced into the fireplace, placing a finger over his lips introspectively as he drew up one of his knees. "Because when I was a boy, I went out riding one day and was thrown from my favorite mare when it fell into a ditch obscured by dead bracken. My face landed next to the branch which softened my fall. When I awoke, my arm was badly broken and my horse was screaming. I had to walk three miles back to the house listening to the poor creature, for I hadn't any gun."

"That's horrifying," I said hoarsely.

"Hardly worse than cutlasses," he demurred with some care. Then he smiled at me. He did not smile often, and it was a stirring sight to say the least.

"My dear chap," I ventured, "I am truly sorry such a thing ever happened to you, but I confess I am grateful you told me. I was beginning to feel I was going mad. I hereby swear to you we shall forgo any and all Christmas decorations in this flat, forever and ever amen, for as long as we two reside together."

"You're far too kind, but I won't say no." Then my friend's arched brows knitted together. "Doctor, am I correct in surmising that this has happened before, but that on the other occasions you were somehow able to mask your distress?"

I merely sighed again, but he took it as a yes. He rose from his armchair and crossed to me, leaning down with avid intent in his gaze.

"If it happens again, whether it's violin bows or whistles or spoons hitting china, you must tell me," he said. He offered me his hand. "I cannot cease if I am unaware I'm disturbing you."

I shook his hand, marveling at the course my morning had taken. First of all, Sherlock Holmes was apparently as alone in the world as I was. Second, I was touching his hand. His hands are works of art. They are slim, subtle, breathtakingly agile, everything a hand ought to be. I let go of it reluctantly.

"Now," he mused, picking up his bow again along with the violin, "where was I?"

He did not return to the scales but rather played a series of charming pieces, seemingly simple country airs that filled our sitting room with light and comfort. I felt myself growing drowsier as he continued, moving into introspective minor keys as he keened sad, gentle waltzes and ancient gypsy melodies. I could almost have imagined, if such a notion had not been so obviously absurd, that he was playing them for me. But whatever the reason for his playing them, I realized three things before I fell sound asleep in my armchair that morning: one, that Sherlock Holmes was not the distant mechanism I had once considered him. He was far too musical and far too sensitive to believe so any longer. Two, where before I had only found him fascinating and irresistibly attractive, I was beginning to find him necessary for the continuance of my daily life. And three, if I was not very careful, I would find myself falling in love with him--and that, I decided, would be far too painful a precipice to tumble over. I would guard against it accordingly.

Some two weeks later, after a visit to the Park and a stop at a pub for a pint of ale, I returned to our home just as night had fallen to find Sherlock Holmes sitting in the bow window, gazing down at the passersby. I had already noted on several occasions that he may have been a darkly humourous man, but he was also a very sad one at times, for what might begin as abstraction had more than once grown into as black a depression as I had ever seen. For my own--sound, as you will later see--reasons, I suspected drugs to be the cause of the resulting torpor if not the initial melancholy, but I had never before been presented with proof. That night I was given as ironclad a proof as is possible.

The curtains were half-drawn so he could not be seen from below. He had pulled up his left sleeve entirely, and sat staring at a mass of dinted pockmarks, a small hypodermic syringe in his right hand. When I entered, he looked up at me, and then he resumed examining his arm as I approached him.

"Curious, is it not," said he, "that with all the diversions and intrigues of this city, I should find it so unbearable at times?"

"Do you truly suppose it the city itself?" I asked cautiously. Just as tentatively, I sat across from him in the window seat and crossed my legs. He drew one of his own limbs up and perched in the corner languidly to make room for me--possibly because I had determined with all my might neither to look at the syringe, nor to look at him, nor yet his ghastly arm, with any other expression than my neutral usual.

"Perhaps it isn't the city's doing," he agreed slowly. His eyes returned to the dingy horses and nameless pedestrians below us. "Perhaps it is the citizenry."

"The complexity of its masses troubles you?"

"Not the complexity," he smiled. "I think you know I enjoy complexity extremely. The pettiness of them, the greed, the grasping, the mindless mediocrity, the perversion and the evil, the fact that they're all of them separately alone."

This was worse than even his usual briefly poetic rants. "I'd come to imagine that you enjoyed solitude. As for the rest of it, your description seems far too dark a portrait--and in any case I cannot picture you in the countryside at all," I confessed. He was such a metropolitan creature that to think of him in a straw hat and a linen suit was nearly impossible, still less a bowler and country tweeds.

"In the countryside, they are worse, I can promise you," he replied grimly.

"Is that so?"

"Yes. In the countryside, the evils of which I speak go unchecked."

"Holmes, is something the matter?"

"If there were in fact anything amiss beyond this wretched daily farce of a world, what would it be to you?" he replied tonelessly.

"I do not wish to pry," I quoted him, "but you are welcome to tell me about it."

This provoked a small smile, if only because I had recalled the phrase. I had been granted a boon with that smile, and I only hoped that the concession might lead to something more. He bent his bare left arm and began balancing the syringe thoughtfully between the fingertips of both his hands. "I had a client today."

It was not an explanation, for generally clients delighted him like a schoolboy on a holiday and my flat-mate--in spite of his excellent tailoring--was poor as a churchmouse, so I remained silent. I had no intention of falling into the trap of congratulating him over coming by more much-needed recognition and consulting fees. If the client had to do with his current mood, the event could not have been a positive one. He said nothing more for several minutes, but when I had waited patiently through that time in soundless sympathy, he spoke again, his silky voice quite numb.

"The client was a woman, and of very limited means. She desired me to frame her husband for a crime, or several crimes if I preferred. She offered her complete assistance in planting any evidence I might require to convince a British jury, and added that I could certainly enhance my career by helping her, for I could choose any open high-profile case I desired and solve it, naming her husband the culprit. In addition to the fame she wished to bring me by framing her spouse, she promised me five pounds. Five pounds. I cannot bear to speculate over how she came by such a sum. Have you any notion what five pounds means to someone in her straights, Watson?"

"I don't," I admitted, "though it sounds to me a king's ransom. I am sorry a woman of such low char--"

"The reason she desired me to arrest her husband and take him away," my friend whispered, "is for what he was doing to their children."

I stared back at him, unable to form any words. He had not looked at me once during this gruesome story, his noble, spiritual face fixed determinedly on the syringe, or his thin, scarred arm, or the street below us, as his brows contracted further and further all the while and his pale face grew paler. Sherlock Holmes had given me the impression upon first meeting him that nothing could shake his seamless self-confidence, nor his chilly reserve--and yet here he was, looking ill at the thought of innocent strangers suffering, as if it were his responsibility to prevent all such events. I had more than once noted that he seemed to believe the city of London his kingdom, and its citizens--once they had appealed to him for help--his concern alone.

"My dear friend," I murmured when I had the breath to speak, "I am sorrier than I can say that such people exist. If you will permit me, even apart from that inexpressible sorrow, I am sorry you were so affected."

He did look at me then, glancing up with a glint of surprise within the stormy grey orbs.

"I think you should know, having told me what's troubling you, that I do not share in your poor opinion of London's population," I added firmly. He looked fierce of a sudden, but I would not be put off. "You are right to be disturbed by the hellish sickness in some of our neighbours, but such worthless men have their counterparts--their foes, their opposites. You are one of them. I consider myself privileged to have grown to know it, Holmes--to have grown to know you."

I could see his breath stop. He put a hand to his eyes, his loose white sleeve falling, and I turned away for a moment so that whatever he needed to hide, he would have sufficient time to recover himself. I did not fault him for being proud. In fact, I ardently respected him for it and had done from the very first day I met him. When his slippered foot nudged my leg, I returned my attention to him, and to him entirely.

"What will you do?" I inquired.

"Oh, Watson," he said ruefully, staring at me with overbright eyes and a very disconcerting purse to his lips.

"What have you done already?" I demanded to know in a rush of fear.

"I gave her fifty pounds," he said, jaggedly laughing. "It was enough for her to send the three little ones to their aunt in Sussex and feed them for a year or two, perhaps even more. I saw them off on the train an hour ago."

"Holmes," I said, shocked into practicality, "you don't have fifty pounds."

"I know," he exclaimed, and then he laughed again, without any joy in the soundless convulsion. "I would have been better served to have done as she asked and taken her five pounds, for God knows I need it. I borrowed the sum. From a rather unsavoury type, I might add, for I haven't any collat--"

"Holmes, I don't have fifty pounds either!"

"Well, naturally you haven't. When have you ever indicated, by expenditure or spoken word or choice of housing arrangement, that you did?"

"Holmes," I said for the third time, "what are we going to do?"

He seemed to forget about the syringe in his hand for a moment as he leaned toward me and gestured with the thing. His eyes were glinting sharper than the point of the tiny needle. "Why on earth did you just say we? Did you somehow mesmerically plant the idea in my head? Because if you had, I should of course grant you a share of culpability, but as things stand you will not be affected."

"I seem to be out half the rent money, after all."

"I am to blame for this preposterous act! What has half the rent to do with you?" he cried, thrown off his balance and thoroughly exasperated. "I shall find half the rent for next month somewhere, and then promptly leave, so that you can share the flat with someone intelligent enough to be able to pay you. Throw me out on the streets, and your problem is immediately resolved. It isn't as if I don't know how to...manage."

"Quite apart from the fact it is your name on the lease, do not dare suggest to me again that I would agree to such measures," I returned harshly, terrified at the thought of life at Baker Street--life in London--without my new friend Sherlock Holmes in it. I would have preferred any economy to his absence. "This is where you live. We will think of something."

"Doctor--"

"We will think of something together. I cannot yet return to active practice, for I may do someone harm, but in every way I can, I shall help you. I should think very shabbily of myself otherwise, for you helped me to afford this flat every bit as much as the converse is true. Between us, we will manage."

It was as if I were speaking in a foreign tongue, for he could not for the life of him seem to believe me. His black brows were raised, his mouth open as if to ask me what the devil I meant by vowing something so asinine when the blame was his, and in truth I expected him to fire away at me. But in the end, all he did was to close his lips again with a beautiful expression of affection on his regal face. I had never seen such a look from him, and it sent my pulse racing. It was at once innocently heartfelt and the opposite--probing, scrutinizing, even suspicious--as if he wished to know more of why I would act the way I did.

"I have nothing to offer you in recompense," he said, his voice almost shy behind its clipped suavity. "Those such as I do possess--"

"Yes, there is something I want of you," I answered.

He pulled his head back a little, opening his lips in surprise. But then he lost his train of thought, for that was the instant I looked at the syringe.

"You want some of my morphine?"

"I want you to put it away."

I could have supposed his brow would darken, and it did, as he frowned at my clumsy, barging, inept intrusion into his personal affairs. I would be lying to say he did not scowl back at me for a moment. But after a brief period of consideration, he rose to his feet with a shrug and set the needle in a case, returning it to one of the desk drawers.

"You are offering to share new heights of poverty with me, and in return you merely desire me to abstain from a dose of morphine?" he inquired as he turned round to face me again, his countenance warming even as its confusion reappeared.

"Yes," I smiled. "And now, you shall join me in a celebration."

He leaned back against our desk, crossing his arms in severe disapproval. "What could even a man of your imagination consider worth celebrating today? I have bartered my future, and you could well be dragged down with me if you continue this eccentric and frankly unfounded loyalty. What, pray, are we to celebrate?"

"The arrival of three children in Sussex."

I had not meant to cause such a thing, but he turned around once more and hid his face from me, whatever vulnerable expression I had produced lost for all time. Then he justified the gesture by walking casually to the sideboard and pouring us two glasses of claret with perfectly steady, marvelously graceful hands. I drew a deep breath, reminded keenly of the last occasion I was head over heels in love with a man. I insisted to myself that the feeling had been entirely dissimilar. This was admiration, regard, companionship when I'd had none previously.

"To you, John Watson," Holmes said on his return, passing me a glass and lifting his own in my direction. His lips were quirked at one side, a habit I had studied assiduously. "To your talents, in hopes they bring us some badly needed luck."

It was the most peculiar thing. When our glasses touched, they rested against one another for a moment, unlike any toast I had ever seen.

"To you, Sherlock Holmes," I replied, "in hopes your skills on the fiddle are very, very valuable."

He laughed in his charmingly silent way, setting his wine on a table and picking up the instrument and his bow. He picked at the strings in a staccato major scale.

"If you desire me to earn fifty pounds on the violin alone, I had better commence practicing."

Amid talk and wine and silences and a great deal of masked worry, my friend played the violin for me that night. I think it was the only way he could bring himself to consider the situation in any way celebratory. He played sporadically for hours, to an audience of one crippled ex-Army medic. It was the second occasion of importance on which he had done so.

We neither of us knew to whom we could appeal for the money; when I asked whether my flat mate had any kin who might be willing to lend him the sum, he only smiled darkly and replied that any kin of his he was capable of finding were as poor as he was. When it came time for the rent to be paid to Mrs. Hudson a few days later, I sat at our shared desk with my chequebook and inscribed the full amount myself. The action left a distressing paucity of funds in my account.

"You are either a saint or a lunatic," my friend observed, leaning over me.

"You will repay me next month," I demurred, ignoring his expression of incredulity. "I trust you."

"Yes, so much I have gathered, but you have absolutely no reason for doing so," he muttered.

"You are against the practice of trusting your fellow men without pedigreed evidence of their quality?"

"Everyone in their right mind feels the same," he pointed out curtly. "And in particular, everyone in London. I use every man according to his deserts."

"That isn't true. You use them much better. I have seen you. Use every man according to his deserts, and who should 'scape whipping? In any case, I am beginning to grow rather anxious. Do you really mean to say you don't trust me, then?" I teased him.

Blinking, he smiled slightly. He pulled the cheque from my fingers. "Of course I trust you," he murmured lazily, tapping the paper against the desktop with significance. "But you see, I have ample reason for doing so at my fingertips--and you do not."

I may well have trusted him, however senselessly, but I did not have the income to repeat the gesture. Candidly, I told him so. But at the very least Sherlock Holmes was a man with a livelihood, even if it was a fledgling one, and my weakness rendered my own income fixed. Cases, he determined, were what we needed. We needed a great many cases, in fact, or else one very lucrative one from a very wealthy client. And so Sherlock Holmes and I commenced taking whatever cases were presented to us, on occasion two and three at a time.

I had been at an initial loss over the reason Holmes invited me along on his thrilling expeditions at all, until I knew him well enough to sense that he was a born showman who would much prefer to execute a trick before an audience than in a vacuum. And even apart from my sincere admiration, I made myself of practical use to our cause: I took notes, to begin with. I intended to compile them into stories one day, with his permission, but I would never have dreamed of telling him so.

"What are you doing?" he asked me one afternoon, balefully scrutinizing the blank book in my left hand and the pen in my right. We stood on the edge of a village station platform awaiting the train back to King's Cross.

"Memorializing you," I said seriously.

"Memorializing my groundbreaking methods of consulting train timetables?" he scoffed, for he so happened to be very put out that afternoon by the snickering jeers of the official police, and I think he desired someone else to jeer at. "I say, Watson, for a man of your travels, you are easily awed."

"I am actually recording what Mrs. Beardsley said about the servants' usual hours for retiring lest we need them later."

"Oh," he said. Then after a bit more thought, "The more you recover, Doctor, the more visible grows your hidden strain of pawky humour. I see that I must learn to guard myself."

"I apologize."

"No, don't," he smiled. "I shall shoulder the task of growing used to it."

But I was more than his recorder. I was an additional pair of eyes and ears, and a witness of excellent character should any situation ever come down to Holmes' word against his natural prey's. And one cold, wet night that October, I was the man whose revolver prevented his being strangled in an alleyway near Covent Garden.

That case (though of interest to a botanist for the way in which Sherlock Holmes determined one of the flower girls was using her wares to convey coded messages to a sinister figure known only as the Blood Man) is not the subject of this narrative, although I will perhaps one day set it down for its dramatic value alone. Suffice it to say we had been out in the frigid atmosphere for so long already that afterward--when it became as much water as air, with the wind whipping the rain into our faces and down our collars--I was likely already compromised. Thus, by the time we had finished delivering our final report at the Yard, both soaked to the bone while I tried not to shiver visibly, Holmes--the terrifying red mark round his neck now faded nearly back to white--was beginning to regard me worriedly.

"I shall find us a cab," he assured me with his usual air of complete control, leaving me under a sheltered stone outcropping on the threshold of the Yard. "Do not dream of moving, Doctor."

However much I desired to put a brave face on it, I had not actually dreamed of moving at all. He promptly came back with a hansom and leaped out to help me into it, fixing me with an accusatory glare which I recognized all too easily as restrained apprehension.

"You said nothing," he growled. "Nevertheless, I ought to have supposed such weather would--"

"You cannot truly be lamenting my presence here this evening, can you?" I demanded, trying to sit far enough away from him that he would not note my inability to hide my troubles. It was, I admit, the opposite approach to my typical behavior sharing cabs with him.

"Of course not," he retorted, "only that your sole reward for heroics is my gratitude and your discomfort."

"My reward is your continued existence, not your gratitude."

He cast a sharp look in my direction. My own eyes at once shifted away. When he peered at people like that, he seemed dangerous, like a hawk lingering over a rich autumnal field who has spied something small and helpless and is determining what to do with it. I had not grown used to the expression, and it appeared I would continue failing in that mission.

"In any case, it is probably only a slight relapse," I added. I tried to say it comfortingly, but I was fast losing shades of tone. "It was bound to have happened sooner or later--in my experience of treating veterans, sooner. I was lucky to have been recovering so well at all."

"Luck has nothing to do with it," he snapped. "You ought to have been under far better care."

"Really? By whom?" As soon as the words escaped me, I was ashamed of them. "You mean well, Holmes, and I do not wish to sound churlish, but you make too much of a trifle."

"You haven't the slightest notion of my character despite months of regrettable enforced proximity if you suppose that to be true. Perhaps you are even less keenly observant than I had at first calculated. Believe me," my friend replied severely, "I know a trifle when I see it."

I told him I was fine, which he did not believe, for it was a lie. When we arrived back at Baker Street, I quickly drew myself a hot bath and hid from my friend. He was the very image of health, a man who enjoyed strength and knew the glorious subtleties of power, and he simply could not see me this way. In Afghanistan, I had been utterly robbed of any control, chanting my worst secrets to my hazy audience while losing any fluids they gave me within minutes, and I was horrified at the thought such nightmares might happen again.

My shoulder, blasted with a splintering bullet and terribly scarred, ached as I never thought it could. I stepped into the bath. At first, I thought the hot water may have forestalled the fever, but soon enough I knew I was wrong. I dried myself off as best I could, threw on a gown, and equipped myself with a glass of water, calling down to Holmes from the top of my stairs that I was retiring for the night, and that I would see him at breakfast.

Trembling, I donned a nightshirt and collapsed into bed. I tried to stay under the quilt, but the torment soon became impossible. It was at once humid and burning simultaneously in my little attic room, an atmosphere I equated not with Afghanistan but with India. Minute by minute, it seemed, the pain grew worse. And to my dismay, nearly an hour after falling curled on my side upon the linens, my door swung open.

He had not knocked--I could not see him very well, but by his grim looks, he did not seem to care about the breach of courtesy. He was wearing only his trousers and shirtsleeves, his feet quite bare, his hair damp and glistening a little, obviously having just bathed. Apparently he had been readying himself for bed when he hit upon the unfortunate whim of checking on me. He held a glass in one hand, and a thin tallow candle in the other, which he lifted upon entering the room so as to get a better look at me. I knew all too well that his view was not an encouraging one, for even without seeing myself, I felt pale as death.

"This is my fault," he said.

"Of course it isn't."

I tried as hard as I could to control the tremors, the aches, the ghastly feeling that all my bones were about to snap themselves in half. It was to no avail, of course. Sherlock Holmes set his candle and the second water glass on my table. He was sitting on my bed a moment later, a cool hand resting on my shaking back.

"You ought to steer clear of me," I murmured. "It is a fever, after all."

"Nonsense. And I thought you suggested it was a relapse."

"Yes, but--"

"Then it is a variety of fever that a man with a hearty constitution needn't fear, surely." When he saw my grimacing reaction to this remark, he frowned. "I did not mean to imply--"

"No, you're right. I'm in wretched condition. There's no use denying it."

I realized just then that no one had touched me like this in months. The pure humanity of the contact took my breath away. It was ridiculous how comforting one hand on my back felt, at the same time that I hoped fervently he did not find me an emaciated and sniveling nuisance. I would not complain, I determined. Complaints would be the end of me. If it came down to throwing myself out the window or carping on my symptoms for his royal sympathy, I would launch myself through the glass. Sherlock Holmes, of all people, would never see me complain.

"This shivering cannot be good for your shoulder. I can get something from your bag."

"Nothing to be done," I gasped. "I developed a wretched morphine dependency overseas."

"Is that true?"

"Why would I lie about such a terrible thing?"

It was true, and in another moment he knew it. I had not meant to tell him under such circumstances; however, we do not always choose the moments when we must bestow our confidences. His hand on my back stiffened slightly, and then gripped me still more tenderly than before.

"Well, I refuse to believe that means there is nothing to be done," he said stubbornly. "We shall be systematic about this. Tell me, what is the worst of it?"

"The shoulder," I admitted at length. It had been a sincerely put question, and I would have been rude not to answer him. "The rest is bearable because it is temporary. I know the shoulder is not."

"Watson," he said softly, "might I try something?"

I rolled onto my back and the flawless hand that had been gently rubbing my spine somehow unselfconsciously landed on my chest, and the bare part at that, within the open neck of my badly buttoned nightshirt. It could not possibly mean anything, I reasoned--I was in considerable distress, after all. Holmes was only very dimly lit by his single candle but none the less devastating for that, still smelling of lavendar soap, his eyes full of concern as I looked at him quizzically.

"Try what?" I managed.

"You're crooked, you see. No, no," he protested, "let me explain, please. I do not mean to say your body is asymmetrical--"

"Which of course would be perfectly true," I snapped.

"The fever is making you delusional," he said sternly. "What I mean is that your pain is lopsided, and British medicine, to my knowledge, does not account for such problems. Eastern medicine--"

"What can you possibly know about medicine of any sort?"

"Only what I've learned from studying anatomy and systems of energy through the art of self-defense, I grant," he replied patiently. "But I know a great deal about certain Chinese and Japanese practices, and I think one of them could ease your pain. Only half the problem is your wounded shoulder, from what I can tell, and the other half is overcompensation from the undamaged side."

"Is there no part of me functioning properly?" I muttered bitterly.

"Your conversational skills seem scintillating as usual." He smiled, an oddly wistful expression.

"What exactly are you proposing, Holmes?"

"To put you back in balance. I know how it sounds to a medical man, but please let me try. I vow not to hurt you."

I sighed, and then shivered, and then coughed. Nothing could be worse than a sleepless night, the sheer fact of knowing I would watch dawn rise that morning. And if agreeing to Sherlock Holmes' demands meant his hand would stay on my skin a bit longer, then even supposing he worsened my condition it would be worthwhile. "What do you want me to do?"

"Just lie on your stomach with your arms at your sides, my dear chap, and I'll try to work out where the trouble is."

I was too miserable, I freely admit it, to consider the risks involved in such an operation. I obeyed, throwing the coverlet aside entirely and resting my head on the mattress. My friend knelt on the bed beside me, placing his hands on my back--the uninjured side, as he had indicated.

The feeling of nimble, strong fingers exploring the hollows of my musculature was at first only soothing. His very presence was soothing, for I had thought myself through for good and all with lonely nights aching with fever, and it had been devastating to learn I was wrong. When he moved to my other side, where the spreading bullet had wreaked havoc upon my scapula, he was even gentler, testing threads of muscle the way he tested the threads of hypotheses, smoothly and methodically. For ten minutes he mapped the cords of sinew, pressing gently when something intrigued him, until at last he seemed to have found his answer.

"Ha," he said quietly. Then, "Hmm."

"What is it?"

"I believe I've found the crux of the matter."

"I'll be only too glad if you have."

"Dear fellow," he added, "I've no wish to worsen your fever, but may I move this?"

He was tugging subtly at my nightshirt. Of course he was. I reached behind me with my good arm for the linen below the collar and gripped it myself. To hesitate was to admit perversion.

"By all means."

I think my voice sounded as natural as any violently sick man's would as I jerked the fabric upwards, pulling my head free and leaving the garment on my arms as I bared my own back for him, but my heart was pounding furiously as I settled myself again. What had I done? I yearned after him badly enough when he merely looked at my face. How precisely was I to manage the knowledge that I was prone on my own bed with him looking at considerably more?

He made not a sound, but placed those damnable fingers on my skin, pulling and pushing and kneading at the side which had not been ravaged by war. Merely the feeling of air on my feverish back and thighs was pleasurable, as was the pressure of his hands, but none of them were innocent pleasures, for the same accursed mind which told me crackling paper was gunfire had decided to tell me that as pleasant as Holmes' palms were on my back, I preferred them in a lower location entirely.

I would have cut him short before I found myself in serious trouble, but then I realized that something he had done was actually working. He was destroying a knot on my uninjured side I had not been aware of in the slightest, and the relieved strain traveled quickly throughout my upper back. The lessening of pain soon lost its primacy, however, as glorious as it was, in the face of my inevitable arousal.

Some of it was sense memory, I grant, and some of it must have been fever, and still more my own innately lustful urges. But there was never a doubt in my brain that the main of it was who he was, and what he was growing to mean to me.

I could not stop picturing our silhouettes if my life had depended on it, and still less could I stop visualizing what he himself was seeing. It became all I could do not to thrust myself into the mattress. Strangely, as my passion grew, I never thought of the many times I had been in the identical position before the war, sharing mutual lust with an urbane university student or a strapping young soldier--the images were all hypothetical, all him. My mind was absent of dead friends and full of his hands wandering, his long fingers searching, the many filthy uses of tallow candles, the thought of what his wiry torso was like beneath his clothing, the very few trouser buttons that stood between me and his smooth flesh. The fact that I had not been loved since combat likely made it all the worse, but I was not missing the absent. I was missing a warmth I had never possessed.

My breathing had hastened. Panicked, I deliberately slowed it again. God in Heaven, what was I playing at? It was lunacy to yearn after a perfect being, one who could have any man or woman he desired. I prayed he would attribute my heart rate to tension, my flush to fever, my light sheen of sweat to my ruined health. I was in such a state, I never noticed he had stopped until I felt the fabric of the quilt lightly cover me once more and he lay back on the sheets beside me, resting his head on his forearm, his face turned openly toward mine.

"Have I done any good?" he inquired.

He had, indeed. As well as a great deal more harm.

If someone had asked after my dearest desire at that moment, I would have wished that my only friend could have found something alluring in me, some hidden attraction, that he could have felt the slightest trace of longing when looking at a once-virile man lying bare before him. And that on the instant he felt that twinge of lust, he'd have driven the fever out of me by swinging his lean, supple leg round and physically pounding me through the bed, resting his fine brow against the back of my neck as he watched himself doing it. Perhaps there was a glimmer of hope after all, for surely he could have managed nearly as well without exposing my skin?

"I haven't felt this way in months," I said truthfully.

He smiled, an oddly innocent expression. "I'm delighted to hear that. I'd only hoped I could ease your burden a little."

He did not want me, then. Or perhaps he did not want anyone. No, surely the first explanation was simplest, and I could hardly blame him, for I had not wanted the crippled men I failed to heal either. From the battle plains to that very night, nothing had changed my opinion on that count: I wanted a civilian who looked like a lord, after all. Doubtless he wanted a king who looked like a cavalry man. I would put a brave face on it. I am not a coward, and neither do I wallow in self-pity.

"What's wrong?" he asked kindly.

I shook my head against the sheet. "I'm exhausted, that's all," I whispered.

"Of course you are." He propped himself up on his elbow. "Once again, I am sorry for my part in it. I'll leave you. Is there anything else which might help you to rest?"

You, in my bed, with your arms round my waist. Nothing more--unless you'd wish for more. And if you did, everything I am would be yours. You could have any part of me, freely and a thousand times.

"I'm all right," I said. "Thank you a thousand times, my dear fellow."

"That's far too many, is it not?"

"Perhaps. But I meant it sincerely."

"That is what puzzles me. I have already said to you that I use men according to their deserts. By that rubric, you will never have cause to thank me a thousand times, for what you receive will be no better than what you deserve. And you ought not to be suffering like this, my boy." It was a beautiful little speech. He said it softly, fondly--chastely, I thought. He rose from the bed and collected his candle, opening the door.

"Holmes," I called. "Will you do something for me?"

He lingered in the doorway. "Anything you ask, Doctor."

"When you get downstairs," I inquired, "before you retire, will you play your violin?"

There were so many requests I wished to make. But of those many, that was the only true one I could voice. Reaching out, I touched the place on the linens where his hair had left a little damp spot, feeling the moisture with my fingers.

When I took my loneliness in my own hand that night, it was to a beautiful tuneless melody drifting from below stairs. I did not love him, I insisted to myself as I increased my rhythm. I did not love him because I could not. I could see him playing through my floor as if I was in the room with him, could see his polished violin tucked under his masculine chin, imagined going to him naked and giving myself to him--I would take the instrument from his hands, set it on the sofa, and then kneel on the carpet. I would run both my hands over his clean white feet, lifting one of them, feeling the slender bones beneath the arched instep. I would set my hungry lips just against the very top of the curve. There would be faint lines of finely branching blue there and I would taste them, more gently than a whisper. I would have fathomed all the exquisite tendons and sinews of his foot with my mouth before setting it down again. He would run the string side of the bow over my lips, my shoulders, my thighs, playing me like his Stradivarius. Then he would kneel behind me and wrap his arms around my chest, still holding the bow. I imagined him striking me with it, hard and swift, to leave a mark that meant I was his. I imagined belonging to him and him alone.

This is all I'll have, I thought as I stiffened suddenly and buried my face in the pillow, convulsing. And it's enough. Thank God I did not love him, for there are limits to my capacity for pain. I would simply wait until I stopped feeling as if I did.

Full of Grace III

Sat, 09 May 2009 21:21:30 GMT

We passed a beautiful day, rambling in silence over the hillsides and listening to the birds as they flitted from branch to branch. As the evening drew on apace and the warmth of the sun faded, we returned to the hotel for a lingering repast, heightened with good wine and good brandy and my friend's sparkling mood. When he turned the key in the lock of our room at perhaps half past ten that night, I sat down upon the bed to remove my shoes. To my considerable surprise, he reached down and stopped me.

"I fear, my dear Watson, that the agenda for the evening has not quite reached its completion."

"Whatever do you mean?"

"I've one more item on our schedule, you see."

"I congratulate you on a glorious afternoon," I objected doubtfully, "but I cannot imagine anything more pleasant than retiring. With you. Very, very early."

"I thank you," he smiled, "but I hope that your natural curiosity will persuade you to re-tie your left shoe and accompany me on a small mission."

"Is this your way of breaking it to me that we actually remained in Bournemouth because of a case?" I inquired darkly, doing as he had asked.

"Oh, ye of little faith." He glanced at his pocketwatch suavely. "All should be safe by now. He swore to me it would be in readiness by ten. Watson, would you be so kind as to reach behind you into that side table drawer and hand me the burgling kit you will find there?"

My jaw fell slightly. "You are joking."

"Do I appear to be joking?"

"No, but you appear to be visibly suppressing a great deal of unexplainable mirth."

"Your usual blend of keen wit and acute observation have found me out," he said with a laugh, "but no, I am certainly not joking. Do hand me the tools, like a good fellow."

"Holmes, forgive me, but I must insist on knowing what we intend to burgle," I declared, the beautiful visions of Holmes undressing before me fleeing my mind as they were replaced by images of our imminent incarceration.

He reached out a hand for the kit, which I passed to him, and he deposited the jemmy and other small tools in an inner pocket. Then he adjusted his cuffs demurely, straightened his waistcoat, and ran a hand through his dark locks. "You may well insist, but it would be far simpler and quicker for me to reveal my intentions by carrying them out. Come along, Watson. You know that the effects I can occasionally render are far more deserving of praise when you allow me to show first, and tell afterward."

So saying, he lifted a small bag that had been sitting in the corner, threw open the door, and exited the room. He did not glance back at me. I followed him, as beside myself with confusion and curiosity as is possible for a man constantly exposed to the twin sensations.

We did not, as I had thought we would, leave the hotel. Instead Holmes took my arm and we proceeded down a series of corridors and up a staircase until we stood at what I recognized as the back entrance to the ballroom we had spent so many hours in the night before. Sherlock Holmes selected a sinister-looking flat blade from his tool case and knelt before the door.

"Would you mind looking behind us, Watson, so as to ensure that no one is coming?"

I folded my arms dourly as I turned. The long passage was dimly lit and empty, but there was no guarantee it would remain so.

"Should anyone arrive, how shall I signal you? Ought we to establish a secret word?"

"As you like."

"Or perhaps I could pretend to be preventing you, and thus escape sharing your prison term?"

"Never mind," he said cheerily as the heavy door swung open. "After you, my dear fellow."

The ballroom was empty, all evidence of the previous night's revelries having disappeared. I could just see the huge chandelier glimmering eerily in the pale grey light through the window. Holmes thrust a hand into his bag as we entered the darkened room and pulled out a thick candle, lighting it and then setting it on the floor. He at once produced a second candle, repeating the process, and then nodded at the curtained window spilling moonlight onto the highly polished floor.

"I suggest that you close that curtain, my dear chap, for while moonlight is charming, is it also rather too revealing for our purposes. I shall just light the rest of these candles while you do so."

I found myself shaking my head as I crossed the room, carefully drawing the velvet over the cold glass. By the time I returned, Holmes had lit nine candles, placing them at short distances apart from one another and pulling still more from his bag. His features stood out sharply in the scant light, as he made short work of forming a great arc of candlelight near the fireplace.

"Are we conducting a seance?" I queried dryly. "Or still better--a Satanic ritual?"

"You know me rather better than that," he chided me. "I do not believe in spirits contacting the living, and I flirt quite enough with rampant immorality. I shall continue with the vices I have grown fond of without adding egregious new ones--that is to say housebreaking, commuting felonies, and sharing carnal relations with a male doctor."

"The male doctor to whom you refer is curious why we aren't conducting aforementioned carnal relations at this very moment."

"Because I am about to win an argument." He levered to his feet and walked to the corner of the room, where a shadowy object I had not previously noticed rested in a corner. I lost sight of him in the gloom, and started in astonishment when the strains of a waltz suddenly reached my ears, a beautiful recording of strings and wind instruments which quavered ethereally in the air. My friend appeared once more as he strode into the candlelight, an expression on his handsome face of the utmost seriousness.

"May I have this dance?" he asked.

The words quite unmanned me. I could scarcely draw enough breath to reply. When I managed to speak at all, it was not to answer his question.

"You paid that rather simple-minded clerk to put a gramophone in here."

"Yes," he acknowledged, holding out a slender and shapely hand.

"It was safe, because you told him it had something to do with why you are here, I presume. Some terribly complex case or other. And he could not contain his enthusiasm."

"You have grasped it exactly."

"You ascertained that there would be no one occupying the ballroom tonight."

"Correct." He thrust his hand at me, affecting to be miffed by my breathless questioning.

"You arranged to stay the extra night for this." My diaphragm still did not seem to be functioning.

"How else could I be expected to win this particular argument?" The impatience was beginning to sound rather less feigned. "I do not care for losing, as you know, and as you have seen, I am a very stubborn fellow. If I cannot dance with you, I do not intend to dance with anyone."

"You went out and purchased a bag of candles and a jemmy. I know you did not bring your own from home. Incredible."

"John Watson, for a man as taken with the Terpsichorean arts as you appeared to be last night, you seem less pleased than I imagined you might be," he said, his brow quirking slightly.

"I am not pleased at all," I agreed quietly, clearing my throat. "I am very, very moved. And I am heartily, completely, wholly yours."

"Oh, for Heaven's sake, are you going to dance with me or not?" he smiled, closing the gap between us and taking my hand as he rested his other palm on my waist. The pale light had drained the colour in the room to faint yellowed sepia tones, and his eyes when I looked up at him glinted sparks of golden reflected flame.

"I would consider it the highest honour," I said.

"I warn you, I intend to lead," he announced gravely.

"Of course you do."

He laughed, and tightened his grip on my waist, and away we flew.

I do not wish to expend too many words on the three hours we spent in that darkened ballroom, for while Holmes may rightly accuse me of harbouring a sentimental streak, I have never wished to sound maudlin. It was, however, one of the most magical nights of my life. He had managed to scrounge up five different recordings, and while most of them were waltzes, there were occasional minuets, polkas, and gavottes. And of course, as I had theorized and longingly contemplated the night before, the man was a breathtakingly graceful dancer. There is nothing which is not graceful about Sherlock Holmes. I ought to have assumed he'd been justified in his remarks, having watched him fence, but the sight of him fencing was nothing compared to the power in his long, lean legs, the subtle guiding of his hands, the way his slim waist twirled and turned, and above all the look of delight which had entirely filled that beloved face. It took me far, far less time to grow accustomed to following than I imagined it would, because following Holmes is second nature to me and my friend leads on a dance floor as effortlessly as he leads criminal investigations. We danced until would could no longer breathe, and then we sat down on the bare floor for five minutes until we could dance again. We danced the Viennese waltz spinning with furious determination, and we danced tenderly at a third of that tempo when the candles had burned down and the darkness threatened. We danced until weak in the legs. We danced until our hands began to wander of their own accord, and then we blew out the candles, replaced them in the bag, and spent the rest of that sleepless night in Holmes' room. And that is the story of how Sherlock Holmes chose to win the argument that he was a far superior dancer to any of the men we had witnessed the night before, and how I wholeheartedly came to agree with him.

We were exhausted on the train ride home again, but too happy to care. At one point an hour into our trip, after our tickets had been taken and I locked the door and rested my head on my friend's shoulder, I recalled the odd event which I had been forgetting to tell Holmes of for two days.

"I saw Bob Carruthers at the wedding, watching from the grounds," I informed him sleepily.

"Did you indeed?" The angle of his neck changed as he looked down at me.

"He is a broken man--my heart quite went out to him. He claims to have loved Violet Smith at first sight. You'll call that nonsense, of course, and rightly so, but the poor fellow was greatly changed."

Holmes was silent for several minutes, absently playing with my fingers.

"I didn't tell anyone," I continued. "Did I do wrong by it?"

"I don't think so," he responded. "If Carruthers was willing to kill for Violet Smith, I cannot see him harming Violet Morton."

"He was more than willing to kill for her. He was willing to hang for her."

I wondered if Carruthers had yet departed. I wished him well, with his new ventures and his new life, and almost as an afterthought I wished that he could find a new love. But by that time I knew well enough that no wish of mine could provide him that impossible commodity--not with his heart in the condition I'd seen it.

"She is beautiful, and kindhearted, and wise," my friend said at length, wistfully, staring out the window. "Men are often willing to hang for such creatures."

All I wanted when we stepped off the train in London was to walk with my friend in the sunshine back to our rooms and then crawl into bed. I had no conscious thought, of course, of the last thing I wanted, until the last thing I wanted befell me. We had not walked thirty steps away from the station, Holmes' arm linked in mine and our bags gone on ahead with an obliging porter of our acquaintance for delivery at Baker Street, when a newsvendor approached us.

His headline, which he proceeded to shout obligingly, was that Oscar Wilde had been dragged off from Wandsworth prison in London and was now incarcerated at Reading performing hard labour.

My friend stiffened very suddenly and then relaxed just as quickly with an odd little shrug of his shoulders. He quickened his pace. Then he slowed it again. All the while I was looking cautiously up at him, wondering frantically whether it was better to say something or nothing. Half a block later, the set of his lips lost some of it rigour and he began to recover himself.

"He'll be out soon enough and start afresh," I said impulsively. "He must, Holmes, or there is no justice in God's creation."

"What?" Holmes answered, seeming not to have heard me.

"Oscar Wilde will be released in two years. He is strong-willed, my dear fellow, and brilliant, and stubborn. He will emerge and continue on with his life."

"Whyever are you speaking of that wretched man?" he asked with a sigh.

"Wretched?" I repeated, completely perplexed. "But he is--on the contrary--you defended him so eloquently night before last!"

"That is not due to any affection I owe to the blackguard. I was simply defending the principle. They could hang Wilde from the highest tree in England so far as I am concerned, with no one the worse for it."

"But," I stammered, "he is...that is to say, his crimes are crimes in law only, as you must entirely agree!"

"His crimes may well be in law only, but had I the opportunity, I should tie him to the treadmill myself."

I stopped short, my eyes wide and my heart pounding with disbelief at this terrifying assertion. It was in every sense beyond my capacity to comprehend, let alone condone. Holmes, quite naturally, seemed unaware he had just said anything monstrous. In fact, he seemed to believe that I was acting rather oddly, and shifted the angle of his head to indicate as much as we stepped over a kerb.

"But why?" I cried.

"I do not wish to speak of it. Look out," he said suddenly, pulling me from the path of a swiftly moving hansom.

I followed beside him in a daze as we resumed walking. My mind was working frantically. "Do you know Oscar Wilde?" I attempted in desperation. "Of course! Has he wronged you, is that it? Has he done something personally to warrant your ire? Perhaps the two of you were once--"

"I have never seen him before in my life, and neither do I wish to. When we arrive home--"

"Tell me the reason you could possibly wish a good man sentenced to hard labour or I am going not one step further," I demanded angrily, once again coming to a halt. We had arrived at an intersection of tall residences, iron-shuttered, not ten minutes from our own dwelling.

"I hate Oscar Wilde," he said coolly. "Detest him, in fact. Are you satisfied now?"

This time he set off without waiting to see if I would follow. I did, in spite of my growing rage, both at Holmes for his cruel remarks and myself for tagging along after him like a trained dog. We passed our apothecary, our telegraph office, while all the while I made a last-ditch effort to find some sense in the assertion that my lover would gladly see his spiritual kin broken by hard labour out of pure malice. None seemed forthcoming. Catching him hard by the arm I demanded, "How can you hate a man who, by your own admission, you have never met?"

"I have my reasons. Are you hungry at all?"

"No, thank you. I would, however, like to hear an explanation for your disdain for a thoroughly decent man who has fallen upon hard times."

"Let it alone," he suggested, the distance in his voice growing ever more apparent. "I do not intend to conduct an argument with you regarding Oscar Wilde in a public street. Now, do be still."

I was so vexed by this time, I never noticed the crippled lad who habitually huddled under the antiques window several blocks from our home, to whom I usually threw whatever small coin I had with me. Holmes stopped deliberately, shook himself free of me, drew half a crown from his pocket and flipped it to the boy, and continued walking with another ironic glance in my direction.

"I would have supposed you sympathetic to the plight of a man with whom you have so much in common," I said frigidly, in a sufficiently low tone. "I do not expect goodwill toward all men from you, but neither do I expect cold-bloodedness."

"Don't you expect goodwill?" he snapped in return. "How very interesting. The man to whom you refer and I have nothing whatsoever in common. Why the devil you should be angry at me for saying so I cannot understand."

"You may have noticed by now that anger is my natural reaction when you are behaving as if made of clockwork."

"Dear me, that is an old tune," he returned, his eyes flashing behind angry brows. "And one best discussed at home, I might add."

"I've half a mind to allow you the full freedom of our home, for good and all." With a shock of piercing pain, I realized that for the first time I actually meant it.

"Oh, for God's sake," he hissed, grasping me so firmly by the elbow that I nearly stumbled. "If you won't let me be, then come along and at the very least hold your peace until we're off the street."

Fuming but far too cautious to shrug myself out of his grip, I allowed him to lead me through an alley, past several stone courtyards, and finally into what seemed to be the back entrance to a churchyard. Although only a few blocks from our home, I had never seen it before; and while I wasn't the least surprised that Holmes knew of it, I was far too angry to fully appreciate the summer ivy climbing the walls, the angels and demons whose stone faces peered down at us from weather-worn archways, and the idyllic nature of the dome-ceilinged corridor through which he propelled me, finally seating me on an ancient granite bench and standing before me to be cross-examined.

"Thank you for your very prudent, if late in arriving, period of silence," he growled. "You may commence telling me I am heartless and mechanical and cold and inhuman. Leave nothing out--I am so very glad to know such sentiments will forever remain in your repertoire."

"I've no wish to accuse you falsely," I replied, glaring daggers at him, "but I cannot fathom your remarks."

"Very well, then. Shall I tell you why I hate Oscar Wilde? There are three salient points, and I shall enumerate them chronologically, so as not to cause any confusion. Then you may pronounce me soulless and flee Baker Street never to return, with my blessing."

"Do proceed," I snapped, my eyes tearing at the words.

"The first reason I hate Oscar Wilde is that he brought charges of libel against a man for calling him a sodomite."

"He is to be admired for it," I cried, my voice shaking slightly. "It was an act of uncommon bravery!"

"It was a lie!" he raged. "He is a sodomite! Do you really imagine that he is not? Look at me: I am every bit as enthusiastic a sodomite as is Oscar Wilde, and have been since my youth. Call me whatever filthy name you like--call me a buggerer, or an invert, or a queer, or a Uranian, and you would be speaking a simple fact. You of all people ought to have taken this point to heart by now. When has a week gone by since we commenced this affair without my sodding you, or being sodded by you perhaps, and more than once, and to transcendent effect? You'll own that I am a sodomite, I suppose?"

"All the evidence seems to suggest it."

"Well, I am not ashamed of it, and I will be damned if I ever bring charges against someone for calling me what I am. I pray every day never to be put in such a situation, but for all my subterfuges in my professional life, I am not a liar. I did not even lie to that abominable worm in the smoking room, if you noticed. I refuse to lie about what constitutes my very being. The only view of you I love more than the top of your head is that glorious backside of yours, and the only one I love more than that is the one I am looking at right now."

His hand drifted toward my face, but he was far too incensed to complete such a loverlike gesture and the appendage was viciously thrust in his pocket as I gaped at him. He rocked back on his heels in distraction. "Shall I continue?"

"Please," I requested. I had already forgiven him, but I knew better than to stand in his way when I had driven him into such a frenzy. I prayed that it would grow no worse and assumed a look of rapt attention.

"The second reason I hate Oscar Wilde is because he dragged all who know him into litigation out of an affection for his own ego." I began to fear for what I had started; my friend's eyes were glowing quite wildly, and his thin hands were clenched into fists. "I do not know if he loves Lord Alfred Douglas, or if he does not love him. But I would prefer to exchange places with Wilde this very instant than ever to subject you to my sodomy trial. Setting aside the revolting invasion of privacy that such a trial engenders, the crime by its very nature necessitates a partner, and may God strike me dead if I would ever even consider placing you in such a position. Confinement, treadmills, scant food, and beatings I can manage, but alone, for I would never hurt you so. Do you understand me?"

"Of course I understand--I know you would not," I protested, by now thoroughly alarmed.

"And it needn't end at the trial!" he raved at me. "Suppose I were imprisoned, and you allowed to go free, your life unchanged save that your reputation was tarnished. Do you think such people are never the targets of assault? Granted, our fellow citizens are for the most part tolerant of crimes which do not affect them. But suppose you were attacked by one of our more vicious breeds of peasant monomaniac, and I could do nothing to prevent it. Can you imagine a worse punishment for the sin of sodomy than that would be?"

"Nothing of the sort is ever going to happen," I said firmly. I was by now failing mightily to contain my own emotions, but I had gotten us into this mess, and I considered it my duty to get us out of it, whatever the price. "I comprehend you perfectly, and your feelings are more than justified. You need not tell me the third reason you hate--"

"The third reason I hate Oscar Wilde is one of semantics," he snarled.

"Semantics?"

"I do not love you Platonically, or Socratically, or any of his other asinine terms for it," he stated in a tone so scathing that I was suddenly very glad Oscar Wilde was not present. "I do not love you with 'the love that dare not speak its name.' Damn his prevarications, and his pretenses. I love you. That is all. I love you. It makes me positively furious the way he has mystified it, and sanctified it, and called it spiritual in order to serve his tortuous arguments. The manner in which he has couched his innocence makes me ill. My love for you is not divine, it is wholly human, and I suffer for it every day."

"I love you just as badly," I managed to choke out. "Please, let me--"

"And while we are on the subject, which you know perfectly well is a difficult one for me, I should appreciate it if in future you would do me the honour of listening to me a little more carefully," he snarled. "The reason you speak so very ignorantly on the subject of love at first sight is that you have never suffered from the affliction. I'm heartily happy for you, come to that, for it's wretched. I said I wanted very badly to take digs with you the day I met you because I could not think of a way to seduce a complete stranger without a little time and a great deal of proximity, and even still it took me until bloody--do you know what happens to me every time I look at--and for the record, I can paint very well indeed, by the way--damn it, sod Oscar Wilde and his--"

It was a lucky thing for Sherlock Holmes that an ancient pillar supporting the archway stood a few inches behind him, for I am afraid I kissed him so ardently that his back struck against the stones. I was desperate for him. With my friend in such an impassioned state, I considered it even odds that I would be accepted or coldly rebuffed; as it happened, he kissed me every bit as madly and we both clung to one another when it was over, entirely heedless of the birds who witnessed us or the time that passed in that beautifully deserted place.

"I'm sorry," he said at length, my face still in his neck and his hand in my hair. "I lost my head for a moment."

"Think nothing of it." I felt slightly ridiculous addressing his cravat, but continual dignity is not something my partner requires of me, thank Heaven. I gently disengaged myself so that I could look up into his face. "I think you are wrong in one regard, however."

"What regard might that be?" he whispered, tracing my jaw with his thumb.

"You do not hate Oscar Wilde."

"On the contrary."

"Oscar Wilde is a wholly admirable man," I said to the best and wisest man I have ever known. "You hate what this world has done to him. You hate what it has made him do."

He began to deny it, but his parted lips stilled and his eyes slid to the side as he adjusted his grip on my waist. I can count the times I have scored an intellectual point over Holmes on one hand, and I firmly believe he begrudged me none of them. This particular instance, of course, was as much soul-searching as logic, and thus I felt no triumph in it. I knew that he had needed me to clarify his thoughts for him. But oh, how great was the pain which pierced my heart when he realized I was right.

"I do hate it." There was actually moisture in his eyes, though he blinked it back fiercely, and I could have cut off my tongue. "It terrifies me. I'll face up to it like a man, however, that I will swear to you," he said, clearing his throat willfully. "What else do you think?"

I began setting his cravat to rights, for I couldn't bear to look at him. "I think I don't deserve you," I confessed.

"You don't--" He laughed, then scowled, then drew my face back up with an expression of amused disbelief. It was the quickest progression of his reactions when he finds something I say outrageous that I had ever seen. "John Watson, if you truly think that, you are a complete idiot."

"If I am a complete idiot, then I certainly don't deserve you."

"That isn't--oh, bugger all, I never--"

I can still, when I recall it, feel the chill that struck every nerve in my body when we heard the creaking of rusted iron hinges and the heavy oak door behind us swung open. By the time the little priest stepped out of it, smiling absently and blinking behind his spectacles, we were two feet apart with our hands in our pockets; however, we could not allow ourselves the luxury of supposing that our entire criminal conversation had not been overheard through the mullioned window by the brown-cassocked man who stood rubbing his hands in a friendly manner before us. He was entirely bald, bent in the back, and he could not possibly have been younger than eighty years of age.

"I'm terribly sorry," Holmes began tightly, taking a rigid step forward. "I thought this chapel closed for repairs."

"Oh, it is, my son. It is. It has been quite unoccupied for a week now, but I am the organist, you see, and I was making certain that my instrument is well protected against harm. My name is Father Flint, and I have just completed my inspection. The organ is quite secure," he finished, his eyes twinkling at us as he cleaned his spectacles on his sleeve. He had a rasping, birdlike voice and his hands trembled with the palsy of the very old.

"I am very glad to hear it. But there are no footmarks in this corridor," my friend pointed out. At times, Sherlock Holmes is almost too much like himself to be believed.

"How clever of you to notice," the priest said, sounding pleasantly surprised. "Yes, I came through the front, but this is the way to my home," he explained with a brief indication of his arm.

"I see. Please accept my apologies for any disturbance we may have caused."

"Your apology is not accepted, sir," the Father Flint replied calmly, then laughed at the dismay which crossed our faces. "You need not apologize at all, you see--if two of my brothers wish to make use of the chapel's current solitude, who am I to say they should not? But I fear I may have startled you, if you thought yourselves alone. Do forgive me, for you are most welcome here. I cannot think either of you would ever visit harm on our place of worship, you both appear so kind."

"We wouldn't dream of it," Holmes assured him.

"I imagine you live in the neighborhood. What a fine coincidence to have met you. I do so love making new acquaintances. Do you care for baroque music, sir?" he asked of Holmes.

"Very much," my stunned friend replied as readily as he could.

"Oh, how splendid. Really, this is very gratifying, as I have been a pipe organist for nearly all my life. Do you play?"

"No. That is to say, I play the violin," Holmes corrected himself.

"I adore the violin, and should consider it an honour to hear you one day. You have quite a spiritual air about you, if I may make the observation, sir, and it does not surprise me in the least that you play the violin. And you, sir?" he added, turning his clever eyes on me.

"I fear I haven't any talent in that direction," I answered.

"But you've other talents that make up for it, I am sure. I can see you're both artists," he observed, quite unconsciously returning my friend and I to a state nearing panic over what he was implying.

"I do write a little," I admitted hastily.

"How wonderful. I am an avid reader, and I congratulate you, my son. Is he a good writer?" he inquired of Holmes, smoothing his hand over his wrinkled brow.

My friend took far longer in responding than I would have liked. "He is a brilliant physician."

"Well, medicine is an art as well. And what about him, sir? Is he adept at the violin?" Father Flint asked me merrily.

"To tell the truth, he's masterful," I owned with a dark look at Holmes.

"Very fine. Well, gentlemen, I will not keep you any longer; nor will I ask you your names, as I have very rudely interrupted your conversation. My sister expects me for tea, you know, and our home is quite a ten minute walk. I'm terribly pleased to have met two such amiable young men. Should you wish to avail yourself of the chapel's privacy again, I have no intention of returning now my organ is safe, and the workmen do not begin until Monday. Should you tire of privacy and wish to avail yourself of the chapel in public, I would be very glad to see you both again. We resume services in two months, and I should find your opinion of our pipe organ most welcome. It is considered the finest in Westminster by several knowledgeable parties."

"I am sure they are correct," I managed.

"Very good of you to say so, my son, and I will presume to hope we meet again one day. Oh, and might I beg a favour of you? No, you, sir--yes, the taller, and I do beg your pardon. I wonder if you might consider making me a small promise, if you do not mind indulging the whims of a priest who is terribly old, and quite abominably old-fashioned, not to mention set in his ways."

"If it is in my power to do so," Holmes replied, turning a shade paler.

Father Flint laughed once more, shaking his head. "Forgive me once again--you do not know me, and I forgot that you do not know me, and might have imagined I would ask you to perform a task of which you are not capable. I do not believe that God asks such things of us, and if God does not make demands of us beyond our power, that leaves men--generally speaking, and perhaps you agree with me, sirs--who make unreasonable requests of us. No, I assure you I have utter faith in your ability to perform this little favour. I am so very old, you see, and so very set against the use of profanity on hallowed ground."

"It shan't happen again," my friend replied quickly.

"I am grateful for your courtesy, my son," Father Flint said contentedly. He smiled, his face forming a great web of wrinkles. "God bless you, lads, have a pleasant afternoon, and I am very pleased to have met you both. Good day!"

We stared after the departing form of the priest, watching his robes swirl around his ankles as he made surprisingly rapid progress through the courtyard and out of sight. The birds seemed to twitter again, and the sun's warmth slowly returned.

"Did that priest just bless us?" Holmes inquired hesitantly, staring blankly after the prelate.

"I believe he did," I replied, not in fact prepared to believe it at all.

"Do you have your--"

"It's here." I pulled out my notebook.

"Two months from now is the...."

"Seventh of October," I replied, jotting it down in pencil. I then returned the slim volume to my inner pocket.

"Shall we go home?" my friend said softly, offering his arm.

I watched my boots as we crossed the cracked and ancient stones, then raised my eyes to the street beyond. The wind rustled the leaves above us as we stepped onto the pavement. Guilt was burning in my chest like a wound, and I thought if I did not give voice to it straight away, it might do me physical harm. "I beg you to forgive me for calling you cold-blooded. I am heartily ashamed of myself. It is further evidence of my complete idiocy."

"Never mind, darling," he sighed, turning toward Baker Street. "It's my own fault. I don't know why it vexes me so. I am cold-blooded."

"I should never have said such a thing to you."

"Why not? You are the one who most often suffers by it."

His words struck a strange chord in me, and then I knew the truth of the matter. It was a revelation, and one I chastised myself for not having seen before. "Holmes," I said slowly. I pulled back on his arm and stopped our progress toward the road. I was thinking very carefully of what I wished to express to him, and I believed I saw my way clear so long as he was willing to hear me out.

"Whatever is the matter?" he asked me tenderly, grey eyes searching my face.

"Holmes," I continued, "if what you say is at least partially true, and it does not offend you to hear it, then...."

"Tell me," he said softly when I stopped once more.

"Well, I--I only meant to say that if you are a little cold-blooded..." I explained, doing my best not to meander around the point like a shy schoolboy. "I do not mean to repeat a slight--I spoke in anger before. I would not hurt you for worlds, and I know it pains you deeply to be called cold, and distant, and calculating, and mechanical, if it's by me. But if you possess all those traits, in some small measure, then I am very glad of it. Indeed, I am grateful for it. No, don't--you must let me finish. I am trying to say that if all the things in that enormous heart of yours, even a tiny fraction of them, Holmes, were visible on your face, then--then we should be in a very great deal of trouble."

He was silent for a terribly long while and when he finally opened his lips, he hesitated just as I had. By the time he spoke at last, his voice was quite hoarse.

"Do you mean to tell me," he questioned, "that it keeps you safe?"

"Yes," I said, very much relieved, "and it is a necessary defense, in your case."

"Why is that?"

"Because I used to be terribly blind," I confessed, "and I hope you can forgive me for it. You do not feel things less than most men. You feel them more."

"Do you know," he remarked, after some thought upon that subject, "I don't believe I deserve you."

When I scoffed in good-natured indignation at having my words thrown back at me so readily, he smiled and set off down the street humming a lilting tune, his hands deep in his pockets. I followed in his stride, my legs moving slightly faster to keep pace with him. When we had made half a block's progress, he glanced back at me, his eyes lit with the sun and the easy happiness I see only very rarely.

"You and I are going to last," he commented with a boyish grin.

"Whatever are you saying?" I returned, quite thoroughly staggered at the sentiment. "I do not know if I ought to be glad you think so or hurt that you did not before."

"I had not supposed that we would not," he corrected himself with his usual affection for meandering precision. "I am rather monstrous occasionally, which makes matters more difficult. But I have just been granted the overwhelming sensation that, under a merciful Providence, we shall."

"Well, then thank God for that," I said, meaning it with all my heart.

"Thank God, indeed. One of us is quite full of His grace, after all."

I could not see him as he said it, for he had turned his face to the street once more and I could view only the back of that proud head as he stepped down into the road. I like to think, however, that I know what he looked like when he delivered the most memorable and touching tribute I have ever received in my lifetime. He does not often say that he loves me, or state openly that he desires me, or that he missed my companionship after a separation. But when I am low or he is absent and I strive to recall tender words, as a man with a childish and unbecoming affinity for romance will occasionally do, I do not think of him the day he first owned he cared for me, or picture him at the apex of his passions murmuring my name. I think of that afternoon in the sunlight, walking back to our home under the plane trees, wondering that love could transform a man's opinion to the extent that he could think of me as possessing any measure of the Divine--as I am, after all, a very ordinary man.

Full of Grace II

Sat, 09 May 2009 21:18:56 GMT

Our journey to the southernmost edge of England was unremarkable, the hours filled with lazy chatter and views of the countryside streaming past our windows. It was wonderful, for me at any rate, to be out of the great metropolis for an overnight stay, and more than once my friend caught me smiling aimlessly at the verdant trees visible beyond the glass and shook his head with a fondly indulgent expression.

We brought with us relatively little in the way of luggage, being practiced and ready travellers, and carried our bags ourselves from the station through the bustling, quaint little town, breathing in the smell of the ocean and Holmes squinting his unparalled eyes at the shafts of lingering sun. The waves dashed lazily against the shoreline as children and their guardians chased the gulls or searched for bits of shell in the sand. The hotel itself was newly built and very pleasantly appointed, with four stories, the first of which I could see at a distance housed the great ballroom where the night's festivities would take place.

Setting my bag before the counter, I nodded to the clerk. "Mr. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson, arriving," I said cordially.

"Are you really? I mean to say, welcome, gentlemen," the young uniformed man replied, flushing slightly. "The porter will show you up at once. Both of your rooms are on the second floor, at either end of the west hallway."

"Quite a crowd you've garnered," Holmes remarked, looking about him at the idle pleasure-seekers and the white columns as he lit a cigarette.

"We're entirely booked, sir, for the next fortnight at the very least. You wouldn't believe the appeals I've been getting from holidaymakers, for the weather has been so unexpectedly pleasant of late. Of course, most of the people you see before you are attending the ball this evening. It's quite an honour to have you here, sir," the fellow added, his brown eyes glowing. "Might I say that the trick you pulled in that story about the horse, when you left the creature painted and allowed it to run--well, that gave my wife and I quite a merry hour, Mr. Holmes."

"Delighted to hear it," my friend replied, fixing me with a look which quite clearly instructed me to throw away all my pens on the moment we arrived home.

"And that one about the deadly snake, sir!" the clerk exclaimed, growing yet more animated. "When I think back on how you knew, just from the bell-pull, mind, that--"

"My friend Dr. Watson weaves a brisk bedtime story, that I'll grant," he sighed. "My good man, I gather from the fact that you were up very late last night with your newborn child--and I do congratulate you--you are somewhat distracted, but might I suggest you call the porter you mentioned earlier?"

"Certainly, sir," the clerk replied, puffing his chest out and beaming with pride that he'd been the basis of an actual, voiced logical inference. "Might I ask--"

"No, but thank you very much for the thought." The porter hurried up to us and, with a nod to the grinning clerk, we headed for the staircase and climbed the carpeted steps to the upper floors.

"I suppose we had better have a wash and then dress," Holmes said on arriving in our designated hallway, glancing at his pocketwatch. "We've only an hour, after all. I shall see you at the reception."

It was an awkward annoyance that, when traveling, Holmes and I were required to be duly appreciative of separate sleeping arrangements, when at our residence our nights passed either in the comfort of my small bed or the more substantial expanse of my friend's. Resolving to invade his room even if I had to leave it at five in the morning, I nodded. "Might I ask what you intend to wear this evening?"

"No," he said in the same tone of tired patience he had used upon the clerk, as he handed the porter a coin and the lad flew away to tend to the other guests. Then he quirked his lips and winked at me. "That would quite ruin the effect, as you well know."

"Well, I do imagine that whatever it is, I have seen it before," I observed, confused.

"Do you?" he inquired, smiling down at his room key. "I really must be off, my dear chap. Leave some champagne for me, there's a good fellow."

It was, as promised, a splendid affair. The lights glimmered from chandeliers and candelabra, men and women sheathed in silks and satins and velvets of every colour and pattern paraded through the room like a host of merry peacocks, and behind it all was the sure knowledge of the glorious early summer night beyond the walls. But that was not the only boon granted us; I was gratified to note after a half hour's meandering through the lavishly decorated rooms that the majority of the guests, belonging to that emerging group of individuals beginning to be called the middle class, were frank, open people of good nature and good cheer, and neither the simpering aristocrats nor the callous tradesmen that my friend so abhorred entertaining. Indeed, the few times I'd glimpsed a distant quarter profile of Holmes in the last ten minutes--for we had not yet approached one another--he had been either listening with genuine interest or expounding over one the thousand topics upon which he could be considered an expert.

Standing perfectly content with the world with a glass of champagne in one hand, a new and interesting acquaintance having just quit me to seek out a dance partner, I regarded the waltz before me in considerable high spirits. In fact, I had scarcely begun tapping the polished floor absently with my foot when a voice spun from raw silk carried softly over my shoulder.

"Do make an effort to conceal your admiration of the ladies so as to fit within the bounds of propriety, my dear fellow."

I stifled a laugh, refusing to look behind me. "I shall make my best effort."

"It borders on the revolting," the sophisticated tones continued. There was a smile in his voice, I could hear as much. "With your pardon, there are far more interesting things to look at in this wide venue."

"Correct, but if I look at you, I shall very likely get us arrested," I pointed out. It was not a wholly frivolous remark.

The posture of the man behind me altered slightly so that I could feel his elbow barely brush against my ribcage. "But really, must I observe you observing them with this degree of enthusiasm?"

"Well, no, you needn't observe me. But I find them charming and you do not, so one of us must make an altruistic attempt to recognize their graces."

"When set in that light, you appear quite the martyr to a noble cause."

"You'd prefer I scrutinize the men?" I asked calmly. "As you wish."

A sharp scoffing sound sent a tiny gust of disdainful breath past my left ear. "Do as you like as far as they are concerned, for I will readily own that six or seven ladies of the party at least possess some grace in movement. There isn't a man on that vast floor worthy of dancing with them."

I turned around in surprise so as to see him clearly. I should not have been so foolish, for he was quite literally breathtaking. He was wearing a waistcoat shot through with silver and darkest midnight blue, with a sapphire cravat, his raven hair smoothed back impeccably above a pale, aesthetic, maddeningly beautiful face which at that moment appeared highly amused. The cut of his evening dress was rendered with the same absolute attention to detail upon which he built his career, so I could only guess that the tailor who had so perfectly outlined the slender, tapering musculature of my lover was also, in his own way, a single-minded savant. I could see the muscles of his breast moving silently as he laughed. I deliberately turned round once more.

I was not ready to concede his abominably vain point, whether he was the most vibrant, alluring man in the world or no, so I set about the task of contradicting him. I had a subject in view within ten seconds.

"Well, for goodness sake, Holmes, what about that fellow?" I asked triumphantly, trusting he would follow the line of my sight.

"Good lord, my dear boy," came the exasperated reply from behind me. "Am I to commence fretting that you have taken a rapt interest in golden-haired farm hands of sixteen?"

"But--"

"Spare my nerves further damage, I beg you. His resemblance to a young Samson notwithstanding, watch him more closely for a moment or two. He never looks at his partner. He is half listening to her, eyes eagerly searching the room for his next conquest. Really, Watson, with all your affection for simplicity, you can do better."

Lifting my chin in determination, I resolved to do just that. Soon a tall, elegant man something above forty years of age drifted into the open, laughing easily, his movements lovely and economical and his temples shot through with endearing streaks of white.

"There you are," I announced. "You will have to concede he is a fine dancer."

"I concede nothing of the sort. I'll concede he is deuced attractive, but he leads with his head."

And of course, as was to be expected, Sherlock Holmes was correct. The finely built gentleman did indeed lead with his head.

"Why don't you make an effort to relieve one or the other of these hapless young females of the burden of an inferior partner?" he inquired next, nudging me with his forearm.

"I may well do just that," I returned with hearty good cheer. "Let me see whether I can spy one who is unoccupied at present. Why don't you do the same?"

"I think not."

"It would please me greatly."

"I am sorry to disappoint you, then."

"How can you possibly expect me to believe that you are in any position to criticize these poor fellows without demonstrating your prowess to me in turn?" I demanded, exasperated.

"I suppose you shall be forced to take my word for it. Now, return to the task at hand, Watson. Select your conquest."

"There," I said after a brief study of the room. "In the corner near the coffee urn, with the silk turquoise gown and small train."

"Of course you chose that one." He was turning away as he laughed freely, I noted, and had doubtless drawn a cigarette from his case, for I heard a match strike as he lit it. Picturing his lips upon it, I closed my eyes and then opened them again.

"Whatever do you mean?"

"Her decolletage must be impeding her windpipe, and I have observed no fewer than six men approach her--obliquely and directly--since she left the floor. Perhaps that is due to her fortunate combination of good humour, large fortune, chestnut curls, perfect complexion, and even-tempered disposition."

I did not bother to ask that these traits be explained, for they were all apparent to me as well. "You think I'll fail to win a dance?"

"No," he replied, as a slender hand fell to my shoulder and gripped it affectionately. "I think you'll show me you're the only man worthy of dancing with her in the room." As my mouth fell open, he continued, "Do stop short of winning her hand, my boy. I cannot abide crowds." He clapped me lightly upon the back and walked away.

I danced--and very enjoyably, I might add--with Miss Sabrina Hamilton-James four times that evening. I was the envy of fully half the company, it seemed. I learned that her mind was bright and charming, that she'd a secret beau who belonged to an absent regiment, and that I reminded her of him, and that her mother would do her best to break the match off if she knew of it. Within an hour, we were fast friends. During our last dance, however, I realized that however reckless his untamed beauty made me feel, I could not bear to be apart from my friend for that entire glittering evening, and so parted from Miss Hamilton-James on very cordial terms and set off in search of Holmes.

I found him settled comfortably upon a settee in a large, grandly appointed smoking room, chatting with several other men of the party including our newly wed host. An empty glass of champagne rested at his elbow, and he smiled so warmly at me when I appeared before him that my breath caught slightly. Mr. Cyril Morton, a small-statured but very clever and friendly young man with red-hued hair and a ready laugh, nodded enthusiastically to me as I entered.

"We have been learning how one can determine a librarian by his index finger," he declared teasingly. "Your friend Mr. Holmes is the most appallingly intelligent man to whom I have ever been introduced, Dr. Watson. What say you, Colonel?"

My friend, while seemingly distant and thoughtful, was pleased by the compliment, for I could see a finely rendered blush below his eyes which had nothing to do with the fire crackling in the hearth. The man I took to be the Colonel, characterized by neatly cropped grey hair and sloping brows, nodded readily.

"To be sure, you are a credit to your country, sir. I find it surprising that I see your name so seldom in the newspapers, come to that. I am sure your skills are called upon very often, and to great effect, if what Morton here tells me is true."

"I am very grateful to Mr. Holmes," Mr. Morton said with a serious expression on his face. "He saved the thing most precious in all the world to me, so I assure you I would not do him the dishonour of exaggerating his prowess. Why do you not appear more often in print, my dear sir?"

Holmes shrugged amiably and slung his long, elegant arm over the back of the settee. "I require myself to solve crimes, not to take credit for their solutions. Taking credit is a very tedious exercise, and I should much prefer to find a new conundrum than to preen before the popular press."

"Admirable," drawled a man from the corner of the room, a primly rakish fellow with a goatee on his chin and a monocle perched on his cheek. "Being in the papers is not always a position to be envied."

"All too true," I put in, seating myself near Holmes. He passed me a cigarette without looking at me, and for some senseless reason the gesture touched me deeply.

"Take these godless carnation-wearers, for instance," the man continued with a cynical laugh. "They wanted attention, and now they have it. Well, I should think they are very sorry for it, if Wilde's case can be taken as a precedent for how they will be treated in courts. Now these queers have crawled out into the open, they will be made to understand they will not be tolerated in polite society."

"An unfortunate business, to be sure, Mr. Ambrose," the Colonel observed, drawing upon his cigar. "And also a criminal one, come to that."

"Rightfully so," remarked Mr. Ambrose. "The very purpose of the law is to enforce morality upon the weak-willed or the weak-minded. Is that not so, Mr. Morton?"

"I could not say," our host replied with a troubled glance about the room. "I certainly cannot easily agree that Oscar Wilde is weak-minded, of all things."

"Depraved, then," shrugged Mr. Ambrose. "But I cannot claim to be an expert. Only an interested citizen. What say you, Dr. Watson?"

"I am no alienist," I replied dismissively. "Only a general practitioner."

It was not the first such conversation I had ever suffered. However, it was the first such conversation I had ever endured with Sherlock Holmes not a foot away from me, smoking intently and seeming to be very judiciously weighing the points set before him. I wanted to strike the smug, suave Mr. Ambrose, who seemed heartily to enjoy the new topic.

"Even a general practitioner surely keeps abreast of the latest discoveries in the realm of mental illness," he suggested with a sly smile. "I find the whole matter very intriguing--I heard a most compelling argument that this new-found boldness among degenerates is a sign of the virulent progression of the disease. Where once they hid their heads in shame, now they fight back in public courts for God and all the world to see. Surely that could well be an indication of mental disintegration."

"I agree with Mr. Morton," I said, attempting to remain casual while seething inwardly. "It is difficult to credit that Oscar Wilde has lost his considerable faculties."

"Perhaps I am wrong." Mr. Ambrose polished his monocle on his kerchief thoughtfully. "I only wish something could be done to cure these sodomites before their hedonistic and affected posturing becomes the merest commonplace of a modern Babylon. Or Sodom, for that matter." He laughed at his own joke, while the Colonel did the same, although more quietly. "If we commenced burning them again, or breaking them on a wheel, the spread should halt again quickly enough."

"You believe homosexuality a disease, and yet consider that such a serious affliction should be punished further?" I demanded. I do not consider myself diseased in mind or in body, I must vehemently add. I meant only to point out the illogical nature of the argument. However, I could not manage to disguise the fact that the sentiment made me ill.

"Well said, Doctor," announced Cyril Morton.

"He has you there," the Colonel added appreciatively. I dared not so much as glance at Holmes.

"Perhaps I was too impassioned," Mr. Ambrose said with a smirk. "But what says the only real representative of the law in this room? Doubtless you've profound insight into such affairs, Mr. Holmes, knowing the criminal world as you do."

I have never in my life doubted my friend's discretion, nor his ability to be glibly calm when necessary. I confess, however, I was deeply worried. The topic itself had been cause for enough concern without his being singled out for questioning. Holmes only raised one supercilious eyebrow, however, and replied, "Only the same insight of any man who keeps well apprised of criminal news."

"You are too modest."

"On the contrary," he smiled. His eyes were gleaming like twin daggers. "You appear much better informed than I. I feel myself at a disadvantage, in fact. I am a man of logic. I'll own I was at boarding school as you all were, but practices there did not retain my interest as they seem to have done with you."

Mr. Ambrose tossed his head back, as if my friend had directly insulted him instead of merely teasingly questioning his motives. The Colonel laughed heartily, while Cyril Morton peered at Ambrose expectantly.

"In any event," my friend continued, "I take only those cases which challenge me, which serve as a catalyst for the higher faculties. Oscar Wilde, if we look at him plainly, is far more interesting for his admirable artistic muse than he is for his lurid sexual practices. He is a genius who possesses profound vices, but where is the intellectual scope for the detective in that? I solve the unsolvable for a living. Sordid offenses against the person provide no such stimulus."

"I would have thought that, as a champion of right, you would have done better by the law," Ambrose said curtly. "These people are asking for a reckoning. They will be given one, if they do not see reason."

"Did they ask you directly, Mr. Ambrose?" my friend inquired frostily. "In the matter of my own personal life, if I ever met one of these green-carnationed youths, I can promise you most sincerely that I should steer well clear of him. However, you appear so very consumed by the topic that I cannot help but deduce you are acquainted with amoral sybarites personally. Wherever did you come across them, may I ask?"

I think that Mr. Ambrose might well have leapt from his chair and demanded satisfaction following this query; however, at that moment, the beautiful Mrs. Violet Morton, nee Smith, entered the room. She looked quite breathtaking in a gown of delicate silver satin, and my friend had been perfectly correct all those many weeks ago to have said she had a spiritual air about her, for her blonde hair and her pale hazel eyes, in combination with sweetly delicate features, proclaimed her every inch both a philosophical woman and an admirable music teacher. She took her new husband's arm affectionately as Holmes smiled at her in greeting.

"I cannot tell you how glad I am you are here, Mr. Holmes," she announced blithely. "And you as well, of course, Dr. Watson. I should have considered the day, though the best of my life, very incomplete indeed without you."

"You flatter me, Madam," Holmes said courteously.

"I do not," she replied, and there was something shadowed in her lovely eyes, the eyes that had bewitched Carruthers as well as Woodley and Mr. Morton, that made me think she was well aware of just what ghastly violence to her person might have transpired had Holmes and I not arrived when we did. But soon enough she looked up at her bridegroom, and her brow cleared, and she smiled at the room. "What has my cousin been saying to you? He is scowling dreadfully. Have you been pestering my guests with politics, Vincent?"

"Merely providing us with a lively debate, Mrs. Morton," Holmes said smoothly, rising to his feet. "I fear for my ability to continue at such staggering heights of wit, and so must leave you for the time being. My warmest congratulations to you both." He shook hands with Cyril Morton, kissed the bride's hand, and swept from the room without wasting a glance upon the furious Vincent Ambrose.

I knew better than to rush after him, but I confess I feared greatly for the aftereffects of that appalling conversation. I finished my cigarette in a bit of a daze, breathless and anxious and scrutinized by the bride's cousin. As soon as I could manage it without suspicion, I left the room, looking here, there and everywhere for my friend.

I grew still more worried at once. He was not in the ballroom, nor the dining area. He was not in his own room, and neither was he in mine. After fifteen minutes of searching, I found him standing on a small balcony that hovered a few steps below the ground floor terrace window, smoking in silence as he looked up at the stars.

"I am terribly sorry about that," I breathed.

"And what have you done, precisely?" he queried dryly. The almost imperceptible flush had faded from his prominent cheekbones. He had turned quite pale, as a matter of fact.

"Nothing, but--that was not something to which I would have wished to subject you."

"No?" His pale eyes were a perfect blank. "It was nothing more than I should have expected. Most of our fellow Britishers, I will own, are merely dull, but some of them are certainly malicious and others irrevocably stupid. It was no very great surprise to meet an example."

"You fared splendidly against him, in any event."

"Forgive me for not offering my thanks for what you may suppose was a compliment, but having won an argument against that man is hardly a feather in my cap; it is along the lines of crushing an ant, rather, or outsmarting a garden beetle. Had I lost, I would have taken a blind leap off a balcony. An upper storey balcony. Hadn't you better be getting back?" he inquired quietly, lighting another cigarette. I could see three other stubs at his feet.

"I needn't," I replied softly, "if you--"

"Dr. Watson, men unwittingly abused me long before I met you, and they will continue to do so until the day I am dead, and probably beyond. Just what service do you think you are providing me?"

"I'd only wanted to see whether you were--"

"Prostrate with self-loathing? Hysterical over unintentional slights? Dead of shame? If you spare me nothing else tonight, spare me this suffocating concern."

Shaking my head, I stepped back. He was lost to me, and for the remainder of the night if not longer. He stood before me living, breathing, running his eyes over me coldly to gauge my reactions, but his soul was no longer present. It had burrowed into a hidden compartment, perhaps had flown altogether, and I could no more have drawn him out again that evening than I could commune with the contents of a broken grandfather clock.

"I don't wish to see you like this," I said miserably.

"The take your leave of me, and gladly," he returned. There was nothing save ice in his elegantly modulated voice.

"You would do better to save your displays of invulnerability for when they are needed. I am not the antagonist in this situation," I snapped at last, turning to go whilst feeling as if my heart were being wrenched within my ribcage.

"Neither are you the solution."

I stopped on the second step back to the terrace window to look down at him. He betrayed no outward sign of chagrin, but that was not the dilemma I faced with an increasingly discomfiting anxiety. The dilemma was that he betrayed nothing at all, and that it often happened thus, and that I hated nothing more than to see the man I loved above all others turn himself of his own considerable will into a wax figure before my very eyes.

"There are moments when I wish I had the power to hurt you in turn," I confessed before I could catch myself.

It was a horrible admission, and one I was shocked to hear emerging from my own lips. I could not even find it true; I flushed instantly with the shame of it. When had I ever wished to hurt him? For an instant I feared I actually had done so, but then he tossed the lit cigarette into a potted fern, granting me only the lift of one eyebrow.

"That wish shan't be granted this evening, in any event. Good night, old fellow."

He left me, striding easily past me up the steps.

There are not many nights on which I can recall being glad to be rid of Sherlock Holmes, but as I stumbled wearily away from the lights of the hotel, aching at the merest thought of what I had said to him and he to me, I thanked God for the solitude. I had not truly expected the unprecedented excursion to an overwhelming success, for I am not an incurable optimist, but neither had I anticipated wholesale failure. It was my friend who had seen to that, and in spite of his own success in the smoking room.

I had walked half a mile from the hotel and then nearly back to it again, sick at the turn my night had taken and not paying the slightest attention to my poorly lit surroundings, when I encountered a man who stood staring thoughtfully at the lit windows of the ballroom above us. His back was bowed with sorrow and I thought he was shivering. I slowed my pace. There was something familiar about him, and when I had come close enough to see his face, I was very startled indeed to see Bob Carruthers, whose sentence had been a mere month and two weeks' imprisonment, gazing mournfully at the distant festivities.

"Carruthers," I said cautiously. "I am very surprised to see you, sir."

He started and blanched at the sight of me, and then he drew in a shuddering sigh. He had lost nearly ten pounds from what I could see, and his eyes were red and haunted.

"You'll tell them I'm watching, I suppose, and I shall have to flee so as to avoid upsetting them," he growled.

"Perhaps not, if you tell me what you're doing here."

"I only wanted to be where she was," he whispered. "One last time, Dr. Watson."

I looked up at the golden window. It was impossible to see Violet Morton from that distance, or to identify anyone at all, for that matter, but Bob Carruthers did not seem to care.

"I'm going back to South Africa," he said tonelessly. "If I live to see it. I truly do love her, you know. Since the moment I saw her. Have you ever felt as if your heart was physically tied to a person, Dr. Watson, tied so tight and so true that if you went on a voyage long enough, your heart would literally break from the strain?"

"Yes," I said brokenly.

He turned to look at me briefly and then resumed staring upward. "Well, then. You sound as if you have, all right. And do you also feel as if, no matter how ungodly painful it might be for you to endure it, you would ten thousand times rather suffer and love her than never to have met her, and be contented alone? I mean to say, that you would not cure yourself even if you could?"

"I'm also aware of that feeling."

"My life ends here tonight," he said. His face was so bleakly haunted it was almost difficult to recognize him. "Don't worry, Doctor. I'll do nothing foolish. But it is such a weight being forty yards away from her, being across an ocean may well crush me. And yet, I've no choice. You'll be telling me to be off now, I imagine, or you'll report to her husband I'm spying."

I wondered for a moment whether he truly had fallen in love with Miss Smith at first sight--as seemed a rather unlikely condition--or if all his memories of her had merely become entangled irrevocably, as for me were the notions of Holmes and love and bliss and heartache.

"Stay as long as you like, Mr. Carruthers," I replied quietly, setting off for the hotel once more. "They shall none of them hear of it from me."

Returning to my own room seemed far wiser than seeking out Holmes in his tin soldier state. I washed, undressed, and stared into the mirror trying to make some sense of myself. I considered packing early and departing, then realized that such a step might well be an irretrievable one, then wondered with tears in my eyes whether that might not be just what I wanted. When I lay back on the coverlet of my bed, watching the leaves cast their early morning shadows, I could be certain of only two things: I knew that I loved him ravenously, as soul-deep as Bob Carruthers loved Violet Morton, and despite acts which would have forced me to leave any other man. I am not unforgiving, but neither do I enjoy repeated, undeserved punishment. As small as it made me to face it, I felt in my heart I could never depart from his side. And I also knew for a bitter fact that he had no notion at all of how very close I had come to doing just that.

I passed a restless, guilty, angry night. The next morning, I gathered my things together, returning my clothing and toiletries to my traveling bag and sipping at a cup of hot coffee as I did so, for a headache slowed my thoughts and movements and I wished to be certain I left nothing behind. When all was in order, I returned my key to the front desk, and, as the designated time for departure had arrived, I walked up the staircase and down the hall to join Holmes as we took our leave. Knocking reluctantly, I waited with shoulders squared to face my friend's approach.

To my boundless surprise, when Sherlock Holmes opened the door, he stood before me unshaven, drinking a cup of tea, dressed in dark trousers and his shirtsleeves without collar or cuffs, the neck partially unbuttoned and his dressing gown over all. He smiled easily at me.

"Good morning, my dear fellow."

"Good morning," I returned slowly. "Holmes, I realize that you are not particularly enthusiastic about early rising, but if you do not get dressed and ready extremely quickly, the hotel will be very put out."

"And we shall miss our train," he added cheerily. "Come in, come in."

I did so, quite visibly vexed and confused. My friend's belongings were still scattered throughout the pretty chamber, and he appeared to have halfway finished a plate of eggs and buttered toast.

"Holmes, I did mean to apologize for last night."

"Don't waste a thought on the matter. Tea?" he asked cordially, splashing a second cup with milk and then pouring what smelled like Darjeeling without sugar, as he knew I took it.

"Holmes, have you a reason in mind for missing our train?" I asked tiredly, in no mood to play guessing games with the cleverest man of my acquaintance. I did not expect an apology from him in return, but his purposeless high spirits were inexpressibly abrasive.

"Bournemouth suits me in this weather," he replied, returning to his breakfast and applying himself vigourously. "I contemplated leaving it, and returning to the smoke and fog of London, and could not bring myself to do so. I shall return tomorrow instead. The fields are lush, the sparrows gleeful, and I hear tell the fishing in the stream half a mile from here is the stuff of local legend."

I walked to the breakfast table and lifted my tea. Tea is a comforting substance, and my friend was exposing me to serious multiple shocks.

"You are telling me that you have suddenly developed a taste for the out of doors?"

"You have always attempted to cultivate one in me. Perhaps your hard work is paying off," he said innocently.

"You overlook the fact that this establishment is entirely booked."

"Ah, but you see, I don't." Depositing his fork on his empty plate with an air of finality, Holmes lit a cigarette as he stretched his long legs out in front of him. "After some considerable eloquence, and a not inconsiderable bribe, the desk clerk came round to my way of thinking on the subject."

"You truly do desire an extra day of recreation?"

I must have sounded very suspicious indeed, for he laughed at me quite affectionately. "Why should I not?"

I smiled in spite of myself, for the thought of remaining in Bournemouth for another day was far from unpleasant. "I'll just return my bags to my room, then, after I retrieve my key."

"Oh, dear me," he exclaimed, his dark brows lifting.

"What is it now?"

"Well, I trust you'll forgive me, Watson, for my forgetfulness, but I'm afraid when I was bargaining over this room, I failed to mention anything of yours. It's quite too late now, I imagine. Your things are cleared out, and you have already given the clerk your key? I am terribly sorry, my dear fellow, but it seems engaging your old room now is entirely out of the question. I could attempt a word with them, I suppose, but as you've already pointed out, the hotel is quite fully booked."

The rogue's grey eyes were gleaming at me in the pale, buttery light from the window, and one hand was languidly clasped behind his sable head as he pretended to puzzle over this fresh conundrum. He had smoothed back his hair, but quite imperfectly, and a lock of it was falling from his window's peak over the right side of his pale brow. I reflected, not for the first time, that when Sherlock Holmes sets his mind on something, I am utterly incapable of denying him. I was staring back at him evenly, my face as exasperated as I could manage to make it, but the smile playing over the corners of his mouth was devastatingly infectious.

"So you have finally come round to my liking for the countryside, and you are leaving me out of it," I sighed. "I suppose I've no choice but to return to London."

"Wait a moment, though," he said thoughtfully, drawing in draughts of contemplative smoke. "I wonder--and this is pure conjecture, but do please bear with me--whether the proprietor would be very put out if I asked him for an extra cot to be placed in this room. That is, of course, if you also have a mind to stay."

"There's no harm in asking," I smiled.

"Very well put, my dear fellow," he grinned, rising from his chair. "Where is the harm in asking? I shall just cast about for a waistcoat and tie, and then see whether I can persuade him. I apologize again for the mistake, darling."

It was more than an apology, and better than amends--it was an obvious gift. I caught him by one of his perfect wrists and ran my thumb over the pulse point. He stopped in mid-stride and added his left hand to the sensual tangle, softly encasing my palms in both sets of his flawless fingers as he looked at me quizzically.

"There is just one small favour I require before you finish dressing."

"Name it, my boy. I have put you out by forgetting to engage your room, I know, so I am quite willing to extend the olive branch." He looked so coolly pleased with himself, it was all I could do not to laugh out loud.

"Thank you." I kissed the inside of his wrist, lingering over the delicate bones. "I think for this favour, you had better close your curtains."

Full of Grace I

Sat, 09 May 2009 21:16:32 GMT

Rating: PG-13

About the characters: they are far too good to be mine.

Note: the historical-canonical chronology is askew in this story and I'm well aware of it. Dr. Watson himself would be proud.

I stared up at the beautiful brick building considerably longer than was necessary, for all I hadn't seen it in a month. I could not for the life of me help myself. A part of me shivered to dive within, while another part clung to the anticipation I'd inadvertently built to a fever pitch, for a sweet pain had accumulated in my chest that I could almost not bring myself to ease. Thus I stood on the pavement like one of my friend's clients, indeterminate and flushed with nerves, although mine resulted from far different motivations than--I devoutly hoped--the other sidewalk vacillators. Perhaps I cherished the moment so because I am not given to such displays. For all the utterly aloof and self-composed Sherlock Holmes' remarks to the contrary, I do not wear my heart on my sleeve. Perhaps it meant all the more to me that I had never felt so helpless before a building and that building's chief resident after a month away, that for most of my life I have been steady and self-assured.

A pedestrian glanced at me oddly while purchasing a newspaper. I started awake again. Reminding myself that it would never do to draw attention to my entrance, I gave up my fantasies and marched toward the reality, turning my key in the door.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I entered. It was almost enough of a thrill to see the seventeen steps and Mrs. Hudson's fern and the crack in the third banister rail. Then I heard his voice, strident and forceful when necessary but now easy and suave, a mellow, warm, lush, sophisticated tenor that has hypnotized countless strangers who would have otherwise fallen to pieces on our settee.

He was leaning against the frame of the sitting room door with his arms crossed in front of him, wearing shirtsleeves without any waistcoat, his feet tucked into house slippers, his mouse coloured dressing gown over all. Mrs. Hudson stood before him, and they chatted of some domestic matter. When Holmes heard my footsteps on the stair, his eyes flicked over to me as he listened to our landlady, and a surge of pride overwhelmed me when a very brief, affectless smile flooded his wonderfully expressive face.

"Look who's returned," he said casually.

"Doctor!" Mrs Hudson exclaimed, turning on me as I crested the top of the staircase. She pressed my arm affectionately. "It's so lovely to have you back."

"Thank you very much, Mrs. Hudson."

"All went as it ought to have, I hope? And your return journey was a pleasant one?"

Tearing my eyes painfully away from my flat mate, I said warmly, "It was perfectly comfortable. And how have the two of you been faring?"

"No different from the usual. Men and women in and out of here at all hours as if it were an Underground station," she said contentedly.

"That business with Miss Smith and her solitary cycling was the last matter I recall before leaving. You've taken on several cases, then?" I asked Holmes, setting my heavy bag down.

"Oh, hardly that," he replied smoothly. "One or two pending problems may ultimately present features of interest, to be sure. Seven trifling matters wrapped up in your absence, and early this morning one solved from the comfort of the sitting room."

I wondered, as the three of us stood in a familiar domestic triangle, whether Sherlock Holmes was enjoying himself watching me try not to stare at him voraciously, and whether Mrs. Hudson could hear my heart pounding from three feet away. My friend's arms remained crossed over his muscled breast, and the sultry, angular posture he'd adopted was so maddeningly welcome and familiar that I could scarcely breathe.

"Is anything on hand tonight, then? Or are you staying in?" I asked Mrs. Hudson as much as I asked Holmes, having caught snatches of their talk as I ascended and recalling it had something to do with curry.

"Apparently he's staying put for once," Mrs. Hudson replied. "Well, dinner will be at eight, Doctor. We've just decided it. Do please ring if you want a bit of tea, or anything else to rest you after your travels."

"Thank you, Mrs. Hudson."

I knew precisely what I wanted following my travels, and he was standing in front of me with a mischievous smile playing over his lips. Mrs. Hudson turned and walked back to her kitchen, a fond expression lingering on her face.

"How are you?" Holmes inquired. He made no move to enter the sitting room, staying propped against the doorframe with his head at a delectably languid angle. The man's ability to control himself is often altogether inhuman.

"Better now," I replied meaningfully.

"You look well."

"I happen to feel quite energized just at the moment."

"I think you've lost three pounds," he remarked.

"Have I? I hadn't noticed. I've been walking a great deal, of course."

"Your pensive variety, or the more recreational rambles?" he inquired. Without a waistcoat, and yet with his black hair smoothed hastily back for his early morning visitor, he looked the worst sort of affluent hedonist. I do not believe any other man of my acquaintance would have countenanced greeting a client while in such a state of deshabille.

"I should think a good deal of both. And how are you?"

"I'm in fine fettle, thank you. It is impossible not to feel pleased when one manages to solve a crime without so much as leaving the house, as I did this morning."

"I congratulate you." Glancing into the parlour, I remarked, "No one in there with you, is there?"

He peered behind his shoulder, and then his mercury eyes flashed back at me innocently. "I shouldn't think so. Did you encounter much difficulty over your uncle's estate?"

"Less than there could have been, I suppose. His papers were a ghastly mess, but then ghastly messes of paper no longer daunt me as they once did."

"I cannot think what you mean by that remark," he said airily, looking down at his slim fingers, "unless it's to illustrate that you are older and more stoic in the face of tedious tasks than you were as a boy."

"Actually, I'd meant that the not infrequently alarming state of our sitting room had inured me to such petty trials. How bad is it today?"

"The sitting room?" He glanced behind him a second time. "It's perfectly passable."

"I think I will just see for myself."

I picked up my bag again and walked through the door to set it under our hat-stand. Holmes' long, pale hand still lingered sensually on the doorknob when I dropped it with a bang and forced the door shut behind him, turning the key as I covered his body with my own.

His mouth parted and he drew a quick, violent breath when I kissed him, his head pinned against the wood as his hands came up and settled at my waist. He tasted of tea and tobacco and of his own beautiful self, his tongue meeting mine eagerly as I tore at the buttons of his shirt. His body was wiry and aesthetic beneath his tailored clothing, his lungs struggling vainly for the necessary air as he tasted me ardently in return. He was smiling. Then he stopped smiling and one hand came up to the side of my face. I could feel achingly gentle, sensitive fingers at my temple and the edge of my eye.

"God, I've missed you," I gasped, pressing into him hard when his other hand pushed against the base of my spine.

"I could have deduced as much."

"Could you? What were the more obvious indications?" Parting his shirt, I allowed myself a long, hungry look at his chest before burying my face in his neck.

"It does not, as a general thing, take this brief a time for me to lose my shirt when you arrive home." I'd removed his cuffs and shoved the garment back off his sculpted shoulders and he shrugged out of it in one fluid movement, shivering when my hands traced his pectorals and his collarbone.

"Occasionally it does."

"Well, yes, but--"

"Any other clues?"

"You are apparently not satisfied with remaining in our sitting room." I was dragging him to the other set of stairs, and out of the sightline of the bow window. "I assumed you wanted to examine it."

"I longed for you so," I laughed with reckless happiness.

"I'm at your disposal. I ought to--" he hissed sharply when I bit one of his nipples, his head falling forward. My mouth traced low and then lower, stopping just below his navel where the muscles tightened into visible cords. I fell backward when my boot hit the staircase, and I landed in a seated position, undoing the fastenings of his trousers. "You ought to know that--" He stopped again, breathing audibly, when my tongue explored the very base of his stomach. "My dear--"

"Are you trying to tell me something?" I was still laughing, but it emerged low and growling.

"I saw to your pension, and--dear God, man."

"Is that all?"

His hands carded through my hair as he also laughed silently. "You are making it confounded difficult to concentrate."

"Concentrate on me."

Rising to my feet, I gripped his torso and commenced leading him up the stairs once more, his fingers flying over my own buttons. Our progress was slow and stilted, interrupted by intoxicating kisses and the occasional check for balance on my part. They did not embarrass me. I was climbing backwards after all, and Sherlock Holmes walks like a cat even during very distracting circumstances. We left a trail like a hurricane through a laundry room behind us. Pieces of my attire fell from my body to litter the steps.

I had nearly reached the top when he knelt on a step below me, with one knee up and one prone, tugging nimbly at my bootlaces. I took this opportunity to shed my undershirt and unfasten my own trousers.

"I even dreamed about you."

"Dreamed of me?" He looked up quickly, his lips flushed. "Was I performing a surgery, or robbing a bank, or--"

"Oddly enough, we were both on bicycles. It was ten times worse when I awoke." I stepped from the remainder of my clothing, naked at the day I was born. "I wrote you a wire the next morning. I was half mad for you."

"The one about the weather in Scotland?" he asked with a wry smile. "I'm afraid it was not very interest--" The instant he rose, I had him by the arms and pulled him down into the stairwell, making short work of his trousers.

"I had thought we were going to your room," he breathed when he was on his back and I'd dived over him, supporting myself by my elbows as my mouth traced his lips and the spreading colour on his cheekbones. His calf hooked over my back.

"Are you uncomfortable?"

"No, not precisely."

"I've had you in my room. I've never had you in this stairwell."

"You've never had me in the other stairwell either, but that does not make it a good idea," he managed to state through other less coherent breaths.

I smoothed his hair back from his brow as my other hand traced the contours I'd been imagining for many long days. "Tell me you missed me."

"I didn't say that already?" A low moan escaped him and the mere sound pushed me nearly to the edge.

"No. You've said nothing of the kind."

"How inconsiderate of me."

There was a drop of sweat in the hollow of his throat and I licked it clean, thinking how much I would have loved to devour him whole. He was baiting me, for he was never one to endure sentiment untempered with irony. He barely endured sentiment flooded with irony, at that. He was also enjoying himself immensely. I was glad of it. The one thing he loved more than flattery was heartfelt affection. But I was past the point of taking it well.

"Tell me you pined for me, or I am leaving you in this stairwell."

"I don't think you can make good on that threat in your condition." It was my own fault, of course, and what was done could not be undone, I reflected sadly. I had fallen madly in love with the most devious conversationalist in a country full of supremely clever men. "In fact, I'm certain it's an undiluted bluff."

An expression struck him I loved to see, almost a wince, a contraction of his features which had nothing whatever to do with pain. The first time I'd seen it, I had barely survived a flash of panic, thinking I had actually hurt him, before I realized that the look was simply an effort to keep from shouting our walls down. It was rarely in evidence for all his tempestuous passions, and positively breathtaking. If I had been a poet, I would have composed odes over it. As it was, I only kissed him once more, my heart pounding in my ears.

"Suppose I bribe you into expressing your regard?" I gasped, laughing when his teeth caught my lip.

"What's the asking price?"

"I'll spend a week entire in your bed."

"Oh, you are already going to do that," he hissed, his dark lashes fluttering when I amplified my ministrations.

"I'll compose an erotic memoir in your honour."

"That would be very--for God's sake, my dear boy--very unsafe. Wherever did you pick that up?"

"I'll worship this beautiful...." I punctuated my speech with other tasks for my tongue. "...Beautiful...beautiful body of yours, in very imaginative and immoral fashions."

"That's hardly a reward exclusively for me. You would be reaping--Jesus Christ."

I was so pleased and so utterly distracted by the half-muttered profanity that I could not object when he suddenly and deftly rolled me onto my back and sat up, brushing his hair from his eyes. I ran my hands up his spread knees and speech disintegrated into writhing and twisting and shifting of shape, as we half-wrestled and half caressed one another into the floor. For all his pretension, he was mad for me, and that certain knowledge only further deteriorated my own senses. I think the Queen of England could have walked into our parlour that afternoon and we would have finished before giving her a second thought. It was a danger I hadn't anticipated when we began it. I had loved other men before him, but none of them made me question whether or not I could live without them.

When it was finally over, I sat with my back to the wall and my knees drawn in, my friend sitting in my lap with his brilliant head resting against mine, his back against my legs, both his hands still wandering over my form as if they had not yet realized that it was finished for the moment.

"I am not one to advocate that you often spend a month in Scotland, but that was...."

"I know."

He traced a line of sweat which had trickled down the nape of my neck with one impossibly graceful finger. "I didn't know you liked hunting."

"I do," I smiled. My breathing was beginning to settle, my pulse to slow. "Doubtless some element of the clothing littering my stairs indicated as much."

"Doubtless."

"That proves you haven't yet learned quite everything. Perhaps I've a few secrets left, for all that you know me intellectually, and spiritually, and--"

"Biblically," he interrupted me.

"Yes, Biblically. That was precisely the aspect I have been missing these four weeks. I felt half of myself, if you can stomach the endearment."

Smiling until wrinkles formed at the edges of his grey eyes, he replied, "I'll overlook it for your sake."

"In fact, I should like to know you Biblically again," I whispered, trailing my hands over his thighs.

"I can deny you nothing," he murmured, his head falling over mine once more, "and I am happy to indulge in your taste for theological studies. It's an ancient and lofty pursuit, after all. But if you'd like another round of David and Jonathan, you are going to have to give me ten minutes. I'm not sixteen years old."

"Ten minutes sounds reasonable," I conceded, still not having completely caught my breath. "I wonder, which of us is the monarch in these circumstances?"

"That is grossly apparent."

I allowed my thumbs to dip into the hollows of his lean stomach, feeling that if no task were presented to me ever again other than sitting on a landing with the world's only independent consulting detective straddling me with his hands in my hair, I would gladly accept the vocation for the rest of my days. "You are right, of course. You're quite the master of all that you see. Including all that you see in this stairwell." I smiled up at him.

"You could not be further from the truth. I have never fancied myself a warrior of any sort. I have never, in fact, brought back any trophies from any battlefields whatever."

"I didn't carry back hundreds of enemy foreskins in Afghanistan," I retorted evenly. "Neither did I kill any giants with a slung shot. I tended the wounded."

"Well, I don't see the point in arguing the subject. In either case, do you suppose the Spirit of the Lord shall be between us and our descendants, forever?"

"Between us, I cannot guess. I don't believe so. Setting the men we were speaking of aside, I fear His feelings on the subject of inversion are rather...wrathful. But in any case, it doesn't matter--since I met you, I don't plan on ever having any descendants," I murmured.

I truly hadn't meant to catch him off his guard, the remark having been made casually if accompanied by complete sincerity, but his eyes dimmed briefly and his lips parted. He blinked, and drew a breath, and the look was gone. Standing up, he offered me a hand and as I rose he opened my bedroom door.

"As fond as I have grown of your landing in the last half hour, I am going to do a number of things to you shortly that are far more comfortable when enacted on a mattress."

I scarcely heard him. I stood rooted to my floor, staring at my bed in mute disbelief. The blankets were thrown over it, but the object had clearly been slept in.

"Whatever is the matter?"

"You slept in my bed."

"Does that irk you?"

I lay back on it, sighing deeply. I was home. I could see the plane tree in our area, the mirror with the small chip in the corner, the painting of a battlefield from the American Civil War. My sheets were the kind I preferred, and they had recently been used. It was a moment of utter contentedness. My friend crawled onto the coverlet with me and wrapped his whole long frame around my body, his head tucked into my neck.

"You did miss me," I said. I made every effort to say it dryly, without beaming like a child. I very likely failed miserably.

"But we'd exhausted that topic, I thought," he whispered, "and moved on to classical Hebrew texts. How does it go again?" His face adopted the abstracted look he gets when he is calling to mind a fact from his mental encyclopedia of arcane misdeeds. "'I love you as I love my own soul.'"

"First Book of Samuel. Chapter Twenty, Verse Seventeen." I cleared my throat, staving off a swell of emotion, for if I fell too far into sentiment he would snap at once back into sarcasm and I would have wasted a vulnerable mood more precious than all the money in the world. "Of course, it took us rather longer to come round than the man you're quoting. David and Jonathan fell in love at first sight. I don't recall you having stripped all your garments off for me when we were first introduced."

He laughed against my skin. "I hadn't any weapons to give you, and Stamford would have been rather startled. Poor chap. As a matter of fact, you would likely have been startled as well, and I wanted very much to share a flat with you."

"You wanted very much to share a flat with someone, you mean."

"Is that what I mean?" he murmured, stifling a yawn.

Running my hand idly across the muscles of his back, I commented, "Well, I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but if what you say is true, you went the wrong way about it. Seeing you in the flesh would have clinched the business instantly."

My friend Sherlock Holmes possesses an insatiable appetite for newspapers. So far as I know, he always has done. They are secret paths for him through our vast city, byways which lead him to puzzles and conundrums both trivial and extraordinary, and indeed the metaphor is an apt one, for they are his most efficient means of seeking out his natural game. He will sit in his dressing gown, his long legs curled beneath him and his pale face keenly focused, reading voraciously until he is satisfied he knows every recent occurrence throughout all of London. On occasion, when he is impatient or vexed by inactivity, he has been known to hurl newspapers from him in disgust, and at others I have seen him dissect them into fluttering scraps of data, to be pasted carefully in his commonplace book and preserved for future reference. At no time, however, had I ever seen him treat one of the beloved objects as he did nearly a month after the scene I've just--for reasons which will become evident at length--described, on the morning that news of Oscar Wilde's conviction blazed forth from the front page of the Times.

His brow had been furrowed in thought, the lips I knew so well pressed together with the disgust he was making a supreme effort to contain. It was the identical expression he'd adopted when other news of the trial's proceedings had trickled forth, and I had watched him with steadily increasing concern since Wilde had first brought suit against the Marquis of Queensberry in April. Holmes and I were exceedingly busy men in the year 1895, but that did not stop him devouring whatever fresh data he could find on the matter, and consequently scowling for an hour or two until a new topic could be introduced to his overactive mind.

He'd been reacting with such increase of severity, in fact, that without his knowledge I had already taken secret steps to circumvent the impending attack of black humour I knew to be threatening us. But as it happened, before I could venture my distraction, all at once he took the front page in both hands, crushed it into a ball, opened the window of our sitting room, and flung the tidings of Wilde's painful incarceration into the filth of Baker Street below. He then returned to the sofa, sat down, and calmly resumed reading, this time favouring the latest edition of the Echo.

My own heart ached in quiet sympathy. I was every bit as chagrined as he, but--knowing there was nothing to be done about the wretched affair--I was exceedingly loath to speak of what I knew to be on his mind. At last I inquired hesitantly, "Are you all right, my dear fellow?"

He looked up, wintry grey irises contrasting with the mildness of the May day without. "Entirely," he said tersely, and returned his eyes to the page.

"I am inclined to think--"

"How very novel," he snapped. Then, realizing the remark was beyond the pale, he granted me a halfhearted and wistful little smile.

Quelling my anger, I rubbed wearily at my temples. Either it would do immediate good, I reflected as I considered telling him my new plans, or in his current mood it would provoke a rousing argument. I had the advantage of him in that particular instant, however, for Sherlock Holmes does make an effort to avoid committing more than one act of inexcusable rudeness per hour. I pushed to my feet, my hands striking my knees with an air of decision as I quit my armchair.

"Holmes," I said, standing before him, "we require a change of scene. I have written to accept the invitation we received last Tuesday."

My friend and I are both guilty of making unilateral decisions from time to time, but suffice it to say that my own occur with far less frequency, which prevents my partner from growing accustomed to them. Predictably, Holmes scowled at me.

"What invitation can you mean?"

"The invitation to Bournemouth to attend the marriage celebration of Mr. Cyril Morton and Miss Violet Smith."

The newspaper he held was designated to the floor in his supreme distaste at this suggestion. He leaned back against the cushions of the settee, putting his hands behind his head and scrutinizing me as if I were a not particularly savoury criminal relic.

"Why would you do such a thing?"

"I thought it would stretch the bounds of courtesy to attend without forewarning," I replied evenly.

"Darling, bear with me," he said, moving his fingertips to his eyes, "for I confess my intellect may well be dulled in the wake of so much work of late, but what on earth led you to believe I would accompany you on such an absurd outing?"

"Even apart from its taking place in a charming seaside town, it will be a very pleasant affair," I pointed out, determined to hide my annoyance.

"I loathe weddings."

"I love weddings," I countered.

"Yes, you do, don't you?" He sighed tragically, black brows slanting downward. The casual acquaintance may well have been offended by the air of martyred melancholy he had assumed, but I knew enough about the man to recognize that I was the last man in the world at whom he was, in fact, angry in that moment. "My dear boy, it will be an occasion rife with mediocre people who carry on mediocre conversations about topics that do not interest me in the slightest."

"I shouldn't think that conversation is the only activity to be found at a ball," I retorted.

"A ball!" His legs swung off the sofa and landed squarely before him as he glared at me with considerable choler.

"Certainly, a ball," I smiled. "Miss Smith is now tremendously wealthy, thanks in no small part to you. Upon reflection, she and her fiance determined that a joyful celebration to commemorate their vows would not go amiss, and have arranged for a splendid affair by the ocean."

"In an effort to be perfectly clear and at the risk of repeating myself, I shall tell you something of which you are already well aware: I loathe balls."

"I love balls," I observed.

Holmes clutched at his hair momentarily in a dramatic show of frustration, and then slumped back against the cushions. "What is the fool woman doing asking me in the first place?" he demanded, leaving me quite out of the equation.

"She is not a fool woman, and you know it full well."

"Then why would the creature desire two near-strangers to--"

"Holmes," I said, with some asperity at last creeping into my voice, "if you must insist upon going about rescuing women from evil designs, thwarting attempts to force them into abhorrent matches against their wills, and in Miss Smith's case almost certainly preventing her imminent rape by one or more brutes, you are going to have to accept the fact that they may feel inclined to express a degree of gratitude towards you."

He eyed me suspiciously. "Hmmph." His gaze slid into a more reflective strata as he realized I was correct. My friend is not an easy man to live with, but neither is he an unyielding one.

"I see you are not going to argue that," I could not help but note.

"Now you mention it, I confess Mr. Woodley's character leaves me in the gravest possible doubt whether there is any atrocity he would not commit," he replied reluctantly.

"Well, then," I smiled, "we are going to the reception."

"Mr. Woodley's character has no bearing whatever on the topic at hand, to wit: you shall be attending this function alone."

"You are not being given that choice, I'm afraid. We leave at nine twenty-seven tomorrow morning from King's Cross."

"But I've no wish to do anything of the kind."

"Perhaps you could find it in your heart to make a sacrifice." I approached him where he sat and placed my knees on either side of his thighs, perching quite comfortably on his lap.

"Could it not be an easier sacrifice?" he pleaded softly, his sculpted face regaining a trace of good humour as I rested my arms on his wiry shoulders. With an effort, he affected an air of gallantry, a conceit which unfortunately suits him all too well. "Shall I win a boxing tourney for you under an assumed name, with your kerchief in my pocket?"

"Tempting," I owned when his nimble hands slid round my waist. I knew better than to think the offer mere banter, for Holmes' boasts often take on the status of self-dares, and the thought of his spare, flawless body stripped to the waist and grappling in some seedy gin house was a delightfully severe threat to my composure. "I think not, however."

"Fencing, then, and under my own name, with a lock of your hair secretly tied to the hilt of my blade," he begged, eyes glinting roguishly at me. "Be reasonable, man. I will indulge your childish and unbecoming desire for romance, I swear it, only spare me the indignity of making small talk with self-important businessmen. I'll win an archery contest, a jousting match, name your price. Anything is preferable to a ball."

"You will simply have to suffer through it. And in future, calling one of my traits childish and unbecoming is not the best way to insinuate your argument."

"Please?" he essayed again. This time he sat forward and placed his generous lips ever so tenderly against my throat, inhaling as he did so. I was beginning to heartily enjoy tormenting him, and thought distractedly through a sudden fog of desire that it was perhaps only the third or fourth time he'd ever said "please" to me. "I shall compose you a heartbreaking ode upon the violin."

I arched slightly as his lips drifted lazily down the hollows of my neck, sliding forward until I pressed against him without any space between us. "That would take you ten minutes, if so long. I am not so easily satisfied."

His hands were tugging my shirt free of my trousers so that he could trace his musician's fingertips over my lower back. One hand commenced caressing as the other dealt with the restricting fabric. "And here I supposed myself something of a habit where you are concerned," he murmured lowly, "when all the while you were simply awaiting my next token of courtship. How mortifying. What am I to do, then? Shall I paint you recumbent on the bearskin rug in the style of Vernet?"

"Too dangerous, and involving not a whit of self-sacrifice," I refused him, hissing slightly as one of his hands plunged lower and I left off his shirt buttons to bury my hands in his thick black hair. "In any event, you can't paint."

"Can't I?" he asked, laughing mysteriously.

"I'm also growing rather concerned."

"Why is that?"

"Are you so very hesitant to give something up for me?"

I was only teasing him, but his lightning-quick eyes darted up to mine with a pained expression, and in them I once more saw reflected clear as day the abhorrent contents of his morning newspaper.

"That isn't fair," he said sharply.

Sherlock Holmes and I have known one another for years, cherished one another for nearly that span of time, and have loved one another physically for a very long while, culminating in a bond so profoundly instinctual that I shudder to recall how I ever passed a day in his presence without touching him, but that does not mean we never misunderstand one another. On the contrary. We misunderstand one another with vigour and frequency. At times, as this account will make clear, we misunderstand each other to painful and damaging degrees.

"I intended it in sport," I assured him gently. I confess I was surprised, for I had foolishly supposed the contents of the article forgotten. "I flatter myself you would be willing to give up even slightly more for me than attendance at a wedding reception."

"My right arm, my life, a king's ransom," he insisted, eyes glowing strangely.

"Love, I never meant to--"

"I've already sacrificed my immortal soul for you, after all. Need I truly purchase you with better currency than that?"

Leaning forward with my lips parted, I kissed him. When we broke apart, my palms were at the level of his sculpted cheekbones and my friend turned his head to kiss that crevice gypsies call the lifeline. I had not understood the term before. But with his lips against it, it truly deserved the name.

"You may coerce me into a ball," he whispered, "but you will not force me into a wedding ceremony. I can't bear churches. My soul, as I've pointed out already, I have defiled by fornicating with a terribly demanding ex-Army surgeon."

"We aren't attending the ceremony," I said, laughing. "Only the reception. I've as little taste for churches as you have, I think. No man desires to spend time in a place where he is considered an abomination, after all."

"And you are certain you'll not be satiated with a bottle of Imperial Tokay?" he murmured shrewdly, narrowing his eyes. "Nor will you reconsider any of my other suggestions, each of which would be vastly superior to the ungodly tedium of the event you've chosen?"

"No, I don't think think so."

"May I make another, unrelated suggestion, then?" he inquired lazily.

"By all means."

"Might we," he said in a lower tone, "replicate this posture, but in my bedroom, with the door locked, and rather more casually attired than we are now?"

I smiled down at him. One corner of his lips had quirked in a sultry little smirk, and the mental image of him with flesh bared, sweating feverishly, pieces of his fine dark hair lying black against the pillow as we forgot where he ended and I began, was sufficient to send all the blood in my body rushing to one location. It was in just such situations that Sherlock Holmes ceased to be the self-possessed theorist, and I could glimpse the vulnerable man behind the delicate clockwork. It was at other times, as anyone who reads my accounts of his life could probably guess all too easily, that his utterly aloof character nearly threatened to undo us both.

The Greek Lesson

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 20:42:37 GMT

About the characters: they are far too good to be mine.

Rating: NC-17

As I sit here, with the latest edition of the Strand before me, attempting to sift through far more separate and tumultuous feelings than I care to encounter at once, I find I must allow myself to reflect methodically. So I shall do just that. And begin at the beginning, as I steadfastly recommend to others. But where did it begin, and at what precise moment did the match touch the fuse? It is all very well to say "begin at the beginning," but some origins are truer than others, and painful subjects often not broached unless broached obliquely. Ah, yes. The night it truly commenced, I was climbing the stairs.

I cannot recall ever having felt so exhausted.

As my friend the Doctor would point out all too readily, that is precisely the problem--I may well be exhausted, I may even be flirting dangerously with complete loss of consciousness, but when my brain is preoccupied, I do not feel it. I know as well as he does that when my mind is sifting difficult, perplexing, contradictory, obscure data that the rest of me becomes quite as relevant as wings would be to a brook trout. What he does not know, and what I cannot tell him, is that I adore the sensation.

Oh, there are many other sensations I cherish more fondly, to be sure--and all, predictably, centered around the endlessly estimable person of the Doctor himself. But before he was mine, the closest thing to Heaven for me was the moment when my intellect became purely, passionately detached, the moment when I knew that reason, and my reason at that, would once again win out, the split second before all was as clear to me as if I had seen it. In those isolated instants, I could feel that there was no one in the wide world who was more adept at this one skill than I was. I grew glittering and razor-sharp and entirely free of myself. In those instants, I could convince myself I was needed. Not appreciated, perhaps, and certainly not loved, but needed.

I'm afraid the experience did not cease to be intoxicating after Watson and I expanded our relations.

Turning my key in the door lock, I staggered up the stairs to our rooms. It had been an investigation tailored for solo work; Watson could not possibly have helped me, for I had spent more than three quarters of my time masquerading as other people, trailing appalling villains throughout Rotherhithe. I had finally discovered the hidden and alarming connection between the brutal stabbing of a young public house hostess and the depraved gang which until an hour previous had haunted the banks of the Thames, smuggling for profit and killing for pleasure. It seems after reading back over this sentence that I exaggerate, but sadly, I do not. The world is not a kind place, I have found.

The Doctor, bless him, had inquired whether I wouldn't prefer to have him there. Much as I missed his company, I preferred to have him anywhere else. And I told him as much. My argument was couched in terms of efficiency and not peril, a condition Watson is alarmingly willing to stick his neck into. Sharply, I objected to the very real possibility of his ruining my cover. I then pointedly mentioned the all too real demands which hospitals make upon talented doctors in the wintertime. To my relief, he did as I said.

But now I was freezing, and filthy, and I loathe being filthy, and my very bones ached, and the Yarders were scribbling their paperwork and my dark puzzle was solved, and what my friend calls the Reaction--always with an implied capital letter--was causing my eyes to sting and my hands to tremble as I closed the sitting room door and slumped back against it.

I lost no time in getting myself out of those disgusting garments and into a hot bath, which salved my preoccupation with hygiene if not my weariness. There was river mud on my arms and collarbone and shoulders, and rivulets of sweat had carried the muck down to my washboard of a stomach. Thoroughly repulsed, I scrubbed my familiar form with surgical precision. Leaning back with a sigh, my eyes fell shut. I had barely the strength to rise when the water began to cool. Putting on a shirt and trousers, I returned to the blissfully warm sitting room just to ascertain whether my friend had returned from St. Bart's.

The room was quite dark save for the fire, for I'd lit none of the lamps. The windows were frosted over at the edges. They smelled faintly of the winter without. My friend's desk was covered with papers, one of which I lifted blearily. It was a draft of one of my own cases, sadly over-dramatized as was his wont. Also, as was gravely necessary, our relations were reduced to heartily jovial back-clapping and the occasional darting smile. Very much the usual, I mused absently.

When I stumbled upon a description of my own hands, however, and some of their more peculiar characteristics, I found myself blushing furiously. Thank God he is not here, I thought. You look like a half-witted society girl whose figure has just been admired. I'm damnably vain where he is concerned, and I know it. And of all the details he could have fixated upon without any regard for sense, I quite like my hands. Apparently my "long yet supple fingers" had been "cradling" a thick length of rope with my "habitually profound delicacy of touch." A thick length of rope, of all things. I thought it best to return the page to its place.

The Doctor himself was not there. But the fire was blazing, and the rug had absorbed some of its heat. And the door to my room, ten steps behind me, suddenly seemed very, very far away.

I mentioned before that there are a few select sensations which are wholly preferable to that of intellectual triumph. One of them is awakening because John Watson is kissing you.

My eyes remained closed. I'd have been a wasteful fool to open them quickly. I buried myself instead in the scent and the feel of him, slowly moving my hands. He had thrown off his frock coat and draped himself on top of me in his shirtsleeves and a silk waistcoat, resting most of his weight on his good shoulder. I gripped his thick, solid upper arms. Then I balled the cotton of his shirt in my fist at the curve of his lower back. What more could I savour without sight, I wondered as my consciousness slowly returned. The back of his hands and neck told me sleet had begun to fall in the street beyond. But only just, or else he'd taken a cab. No, the slight moisture would have been only on his hands and not his neck had he used his umbrella, so he'd hailed a hansom and been caught in the wet on his way to the door. It was nearing ten o'clock at night, judging by the slight stubble on his face. He had only very recently arrived, I registered as my mouth fell open further, for his fine muscled torso was warm but his lips were still cold--a fact I set about remedying for him as I tilted my head and abandoned myself to the aching feeling that life only gives one a small, finite number of flawless moments, and that I'd just spent yet another. And in my case, that I didn't entirely merit the ones I'd already received.

That forced my bloodshot eyes open as he drew away at last, causing a mirrored look of worry in the Doctor's staggeringly blue ones.

Ah, there he was. Five feet nine inches of brown-haired, solidly-built, Adonis-featured, kindhearted perfection. If Adonis had been unmistakably square-jawed and Scottish in origin and his manners were military, I suppose.

"Are you all right?" he inquired in that calm, sure voice of his.

He was not expecting me to reply that I was terrifyingly lucky and that I had never in the slightest expected to be faring nearly so well as I was, and so I told him I was fine.

"You look ridiculous," he said fondly.

"Why? Because I am splayed on our rug like a piece of driftwood?"

"No." He ran the edge of his hand down the side of my face, and it was all I could do not to follow it with my cheek like a comfort-starved street cat. I managed with an effort to preserve my dignity. "Half your hair has dried, and is falling straight out from your head. The half nearer the fire. The other half is yet damp, and beginning to curl at the ends."

I brushed my hand through what must have been a bad mess. "I thought you liked my hair."

"And why did you suppose that?" he murmured, smiling.

"I deduced it, actually."

"From my touching it whenever I can, I suppose." He nodded gravely. "You were right. It's very striking, black as it is. And in general, very well groomed. I have never seen it quite so chaotic as now, however."

"I'll fix it, if you like."

"I shall only disarrange it again," he said.

Then he was kissing me once more, my fingertips playing scales upon his vertebrae, and suddenly I could no longer breathe. I reflected, and not for the first time either, on what a precarious knife's edge I lived. The edge I balanced to keep the Doctor fascinated by my cases, an audience to my finest assets, and yet not present for the potentially deadly ones. The time I spent maintaining a perfect semblance of control, at least partly so that I could artfully abandon it as a last resort. The care it required for me to remain coolly indifferent enough to Watson's presence that he didn't mistake me for the thousand other grovelling fools who worshiped him. The pains I took to keep his inquisitive mind guessing, without ever toying with him, for the thought of losing him by revealing too much of my dark, sad self made me an abject coward.

The thought of losing him in still worse ways was enough to bring on symptoms that I'd read in one of his medical texts resembled a heart attack.

"I take it you resolved your case?" he asked when I laughingly stopped to gasp for air. I was yet feeling deucedly dizzy.

"Yes. The gang are all in custody."

"Gang?"

The trouble with perfect moments, apart from the fact that they end, is that they all too often end badly. Or perhaps I am just unforgivably stupid.

"The Yard has them all in tow," I assured him. I used my calming voice. It works wonders on occasion.

"Do you mind telling me just what the devil you think you were doing capturing a gang without so much as warning me that I had best be terribly worried if you didn't arrive home this evening?"

He was angry. In fact, he was very angry. Only when he is very angry does he adopt a tone so clipped and cold, for all the world as if he were me.

I knew where every ounce of the blame could be attributed for the wretched situation, too. It all had to do with that damnable business of the Greek Interpreter.

We had only two weeks before crossed a foeman worthy of our steel--a laughing, vile, unbalanced little villain whose machinations had killed the man we intended to save, and would have killed Mr. Melas had I arrived but a few minutes later. That was not the memory which haunted my nightmares, however.

"I shall pick up Mr. Melas on the way," the Doctor had said to me. I recall every last word. "We may need an interpreter."

"Excellent," I had replied. "Send the boy for a four-wheeler, and we shall be off at once."

"Holmes, we may well require the assistance of the official police," he had observed. "Do you drive quick as you can to Scotland Yard and find Lestrade or Gregson, and meet me at The Myrtles. I shan't do anything alone, I promise you--but supposing this unfortunate brother may be close to death, it would be wise for me to keep a guard of sorts until you arrive."

And so Dr. Watson had gone on ahead to do what he could whilst I had waited, chafing and pacing and shouting and nearly coming to blows with Gregson (inept fool that he is), for the arrival of the warrant. Never again. Never again. Never again, I vow by all that I hold dear, I vow by the Doctor himself, will I give tuppence for a warrant.

How many people, I wonder, have ever seen a man who has been poisoned by charcoal?

His face already looked swollen as a drowned corpse. His lips were blue as death, blue nearly as his eyes, which were open and staring and insensible. I had hurled the brazen tripod into the garden without a second thought, gasping for breath though I was, and then vaguely, as I carried him from the poisoned room, I realized that an officer had opened another window at the top of the stairs. I set my beloved burden on the floor and bent over him. I had physically thrown myself into the house, smashing and then diving through a glass pane, and the cut on my palm dripped red blood onto his white face. Mr. Melas was in a similar state, though I did not mark him as Gregson dragged his inert body into the hall. The brother, of course, the emaciated gargoyle with the sticking plaster upon his face, was stone dead.

How to describe it? How to relate what it is like when your world is crumbling round you, and all you can find to piece it back together again are ammonia and a flask of brandy? I was pleading with him to come back to me, though now I think about it once more, I only chanted the word please over and over again. Mingled with his name. How to fathom all I felt when he saw me, truly saw me, and began again to breathe on his own?

The Doctor can recall arriving at Mr. Melas' door at the same time as the smiling little fiend. He recalls perfectly well being herded into a chamber and then, realizing their intended fate, commanding all inside to lie flat before the crack of the door and breathe as shallowly as was possible. The dear heart remembers nothing whatever of being saved, my part in it, and my sad lack of propriety or discretion, before awakening in the carriage once more as we flew back to the train station.

The only reason Gregson lived to tell the tale was that he undoubtedly saved Mr. Melas, for I spared the interpreter not an instant's concern, God forgive me. That reason, and the fact that he could easily have laughed at the white-faced wreck of a consulting detective he helped into the four-wheeler, but instead only pressed my arm in silence and offered me a deeply apologetic little salute before returning to The Myrtles and the Greek who'd been tortured to death. I hadn't even responded. I was too preoccupied with the barely breathing ex-Army medic in my arms.

And now that same man was positively livid that I had gone to Rotherhithe alone.

"Watson, you completely misread the situation," I announced. "There was never any legitimate concern over safety. It was not even a challenging case, come to that."

"And that is why you have now fallen dead from exhaustion and hunger before our sitting room fire, not having had the strength to make it to--was it your desk or your bed?"

I opened my mouth, but to my dismay he pushed himself off me with his hands. I sat up along with him as if a rope tied us together, seeing kaleidoscopic stars at the effort. Beginning to fall back, I caught myself with one palm. I was aghast at such a display of my own weakness, and I vehemently willed the dizzy spell away, forcing myself to be calm. When I could see him again, he was shaking his head at me. The expression most visible was fury. Beneath that ran palpable hurt.

"Did you eat today?"

"Is that truly the most interesting question you can muster at the close of my investigation, Watson?" I snapped wearily.

"So you did not. How many armed thugs did you apprehend singlehandedly, Holmes?"

"Your logic is very seriously flawed. It is a predictably absurd assumption that simply because I failed to invite you to Rotherhithe this evening, I was callow enough to attempt the resolution alone. I was entirely safe. Lestrade and three officers accompanied me."

That had done it. I was trying to reassure him, but he winced as if I'd just uttered the most infamous of slanders. Too late, I realized my mistake, and cursed myself for it. He supposed I was recalling The Myrtles, rightly. He supposed I thought him a weakling and a liability, wrongly. And the man looked as if I'd thrown him out on the streets.

I know that my thoroughly weakened state made my sins feel still worse than they were, but nevertheless in that moment it felt as if I spent my time casually wounding John Watson every day, twice when I'd nothing better to do. To be truthful, I found myself in that guilty position heartbreakingly often, for all that I would gladly have signed up to be tortured upon a rack to prevent him coming to any harm. There was a single human being in the world whose happiness and continued well-being I valued above my life, and no man in that same world could hurt him as cruelly as I could. The irony was not lost upon me.

"I didn't want you there," I said swiftly. It was obvious, yes. But he would next ask me why.

"But why, Holmes?"

"I know you to be exhausted from your work at the hospital as it is, and I could not justify placing yet another burden on your shoulders."

"Your cases are a burden on me?"

In my defense, I fail so miserably only when at the end of my tether. The world was still spinning visibly, though I flat-out refused to show it. "I promise you that it would only have been a tiresome waste of your resources, my dear fellow."

"Then you are lying," he said, his voice dropping to a dull whisper, "as opposed to merely not trusting me enough to disclose the whole truth."

He was moving to get up, but I gripped him by the wrist. There is only one way out of a corner such as the one I had backed myself into, and that is admitting my own folly. "I trust you absolutely."

"You do not show it well. Or often. I am beginning to think that may never change, as sad as that admission makes me. And if it never does change, then I am beginning to wonder what I shall do."

He pulled away from me again and shifted to his knees so that he might rise without the use of his bad arm. His undisguised woundedness made my already pained eyes burn. Clearly, I was in it to the hilt, and the time had come for desperate measures to be taken.

"I trust you more deeply than you'll ever know, my dear fellow."

"That may be true, unfortunately."

"John Watson, I cannot and will not risk you in the pursuit of inconsequential brutes."

"Indeed? And for that reason chased down a Rotherhithe gang in my absence?" he answered frigidly, continuing to rise.

"Well, I also feared you may have been exhausted by the efforts of the night, and thus miss the small excursion I had planned for us tomorrow afternoon."

I allowed my heartfelt inner turmoil to appear on my face, if only a little. That can be very effective. I employ the eyes, primarily, and the set of my lips. It is essentially the opposite of acting, and I am rather adept at the technique. Allowing him glimpses of my mind plays upon his generosity, I know, but I was past caring. I had to be permitted to make it up to him.

The Doctor stopped, but he would not trust himself to reply. I slid forward, still seated, and placed my fingertips very gently at his waist. "That is, if you would do me the distinct honour of accompanying me."

"Accompanying you where?"

"The Diogenes Club."

"What the devil is the Diogenes Club?"

"One of the queerest in London, I assure you. No," I added, laughing, "not that sort of club. It is a club for deeply unclubbable men who nevertheless have no objection to comfortable chairs and the latest periodicals, for which I can hardly blame them. I myself have found its atmosphere very soothing. Please say you'll come, my dear chap. I cannot exaggerate the importance of your joining me."

He took my hands in his and removed them, placing them emphatically on my own lap as he sat down on the floor again. He fixed me with a very suspicious stare. "And why should I wish to follow you to a club for the unclubbable?"

"To meet my brother."

And there it was. Small wonder I had saved that one in reserve for so long, for I had never so completely stunned him.

"Your brother?" he repeated, entirely shocked.

This is very bad, I thought, and only growing worse. Now I would in fact be forced to introduce my lover to my sibling. I do not mean to imply that I lack regard for either one of them. However, the merest thought of them in the same room--

"Is he your junior?" Watson inquired at last, his brows still reflecting his astonishment.

"Seven years my senior."

"What is his name?"

"Mycroft Holmes. My parents had an alarming sense of humour, as you have probably guessed already."

"Your full brother, you say?"

"Born of the selfsame parents as your very humble servant."

"And you never thought to speak of him before now."

"We are not intimate. That is, we are, but the more social manifestations of our regard are lacking." I thought I'd managed that rather nicely.

"Well, now I know you have a brother, I am at least grateful you are not estranged," he said distantly. "I need hardly remind you I was not so lucky."

"That was never your fault," I argued. "It was Fate and bitter circumstance."

"We were strangers. And yet, antagonists. That was not all his doing."

"Correct. It was at least partly your father's," I said dryly. "My brother and I are not strangers, and yet we have come as close to blows in our younger days as anyone. We know one another far too well, you will find, to be entirely peaceable. Mycroft is...disturbingly perceptive. I am little better."

"So," he summed up softly, "you were making an effort to save my strength so that I would have the fortitude to face your brother--whom you have never so much as mentioned to me in passing--on the morrow. As I little know what to expect, I suppose he is nothing at all like you."

"In spirit, he is very like me, actually," I sighed.

"I doubt that. However 'perceptive' he may be, your faculty of observation and your peculiar facility for deduction are surely due to your own systematic training."

"Would that they were."

My head began to spin again. It was not a convenient moment. I tried to blink it away.

"Sherlock Holmes," the Doctor said quietly, his gallant countenance quite breathtaking in the firelight, "I am about to say a number of things to you. Pray wait to respond until I am finished."

I nodded, focusing on my torso remaining vertical. It seemed best.

Watson's eyes were shining like clear lakes. As he spoke, he quite unselfconsciously removed his cravat and began loosening his collar. "I am extremely angry that you would venture upon a perilous case without telling me. You were right to think I would have been present had I known of it, but that is hardly an excuse. I am also appalled that you would lie to me about the all too obvious reasons you wished me away. I may have nearly suffocated, but that does not mean I fail to recollect the event, you know."

"I--"

"Holmes."

Oh, what a dangerous tone.

"I am equally amused and flattered that you should attempt to distract me with so drastic a measure as meeting your brother, and very thankful for it to boot, but please do not think you have fooled me. You wished me at the hospital this evening not in spite of grave danger but because of it, and the event had nothing in the slightest to do with your family, as surprising as their existence may be."

The cravat was gone, the collar thrown out of my field of vision. His eyes were dimming visibly once more as he began on his waistcoat and shirt buttons. And of course, the fault was mine. I thought frantically of a way to light them again, but something in his sweet, injured, terribly determined face stopped me from speaking. That, and the fact I hadn't the least notion what he was doing.

"I am only going to ask you a single question. How would you react if I continued work at the hospital every day in the throes of an outbreak of virulent typhus, disease running wild through the wards, and yet said nothing to you whatever of the potentially deadly risk?"

A cold, nauseating grip seized my heart of hearts. "Is there--"

"There is not." He pulled his muscled arms free, forever slightly browned by the desert sun. "But you are about to be taught a lesson."

I opened my lips to ask what lesson, but found I hadn't the breath for the project.

"How dare you?" he hissed furiously, an inch from my face. "How dare you suppose you are not as precious to me as I am to you?"

I ought to state here that sex had used to be a very simple affair for me. I am not conventionally handsome by any means--I cannot claim to possess any measure of my Watson's glowing good looks, of that I am all too well aware. I rather resemble a very badly fed vampire, and often wonder whether or not the Doctor is actually aware of that fact. But because I have cultivated a cynical, aloof variety of charm, and perhaps because I am at least strikingly tall, I have never wanted for a casual partner. I had used to think that was quite enough, and would be for all time. The libido, after all, is identical to the appetite for sleep or for food: it may be a nuisance, but ignore it for long enough and one can find oneself making very poor decisions. So I treated the desire for carnal intimacy as I did all other desires and subjugated it. When I chose to indulge it, I did so, as with my bread and water and repose, and that was the be-and-end-all.

Simplicity itself, really. Ten minutes sitting in a obscure corner of the Turkish baths with my towel arranged just so, and I would find a head between my lean legs. I never bothered with names, although I know for a fact that once or twice the eager mouth belonged to the same fellow. He would leave, whoever he was, and I would depart soon after, once more in firm control. If I needed more than that, the identical chaps were more than eager to lead me to a private chamber and allow me my way with their flesh. I was never wholly selfish. I would finish them by hand and leave, and I imagine they would depart soon after. Mutual benefit once more--their loss of control, my regaining of it.

Very rarely, I required loss of my own control. That meant slightly more effort, particularly if the morphine was running through my veins and I felt strange and haunted and self-destructive. And it could find me in the pitch dark with my brow and palms pressed flat against an alley's brick wall like a starving rent boy, biting my own lip so hard I could see the bloodied cuts in the morning. He would hand me a handkerchief and restore his opera gloves or his uniform trousers and leave, whoever he was. And I would depart soon after, feeling somehow myself again, and far less alone for having been used. Simple.

With the Doctor, sex is very complicated.

I am watching the smallest expressions that flow past his face, and shifting tactics accordingly. When his brows crease, when his lips part, when his hands clench, I am always watching. I am an instrument for his pleasure. Oh, I am yet commanding and strong-willed, and to be sure I am the one in control. But that is because, oddly, I can get the most striking results from him that way. Though every inch a man, he wants me at the reins. And I do what he wants. I happen to love the fellow quite beyond reason. If he cried my name so when I was mellow and supine, I think I should gladly spend my life bent over the arm of the settee with my own riding crop resting conveniently on my back. As it is, I am the master. At least, until the passion strikes me so deeply that I am breaking into pieces within him and have forgotten who I am entirely, except that I am his. And I'm afraid when things have gone that far, there's not a thing I can do about it save shatter apart.

But in general, I do my best to be fairly domineering. My soul isn't beautiful, as his is. Power at times seems to be all that I possess.

That is why I was startled (do please take note for the future that your reflexes are bloody useless when you feel this way, there's a more cautious fellow, I thought caustically to myself) when he gripped me quite roughly by the shirt and crushed his lips to mine again, taking my mouth like an invading army. I cannot say I disliked the feeling.

I was yet seated, and he had edged back to me on his knees, so it took him but one movement to swing his leg over mine and sit on my thighs. My hands came up to his jawline and he stopped kissing me. When he pulled back, his blue eyes were flaming. He took both my wrists in his hands and twisted them round behind my back. I am very, very strong in the torso, but I found to my shock that in that position, in that moment, he was supporting me. Violently, he kissed me again, his hot mouth moving down to my neck, and when I snaked one of my hands free, he shoved me straight to the floor.

When I grasped him by the arms, rising to meet him, he pushed me easily back down to the rug, and (for Heaven's sake, you've drained yourself entirely too far this time, you pathetic idiot, what if some vengeful lunatic had arrived to murder us in our beds and you--) then his hands tore my shirt away and I was already drowning and it had barely begun, and I suddenly realized with a strong flash of instinctual panic that I truly could not shake his grip from my shoulders.

Then I was fighting back, and in earnest. I hadn't any control over it. I felt everything that was wrong with my own body and cursed myself for the weakening of it, until I heard myself gasp when the Doctor slammed my crossed wrists against the floor once more, very roughly, above my head. "Don't," I begged him, my voice nearly breaking. "Please don't. Let go of me."

"Stop," he ordered.

He didn't sound at all gentle, but then he looked into my face and sat back, very deliberately and pointedly letting go of me. "You're going to stop," he said far more softly. It was still a command, however. "Now, please give me your hands. Or else you can go."

He could have easily captured them a second time himself, but I suppose he wanted my permission so as to know I would not careen into all-out hysteria. I did as he said. He reached behind him and found his own cravat. Bending down, he tied my wrists before my eyes with the strip of cloth as I lay on my back, tight as ever he could, and with another rush of what was almost fear, I realized that he knew what he was doing, and my hands were secure, and there was not one damned thing I could do about it, and he could see as much in my eyes.

I am not afraid of John Watson. I have never been, and I could never be, save for the loss of him. The man is a saint. And he loves me--at least, I thought possibly he had loved me. So I was not afraid of what he might do to my person. But I was screaming bloody terrified that he had seen me, would reduce me, had ever ever ever witnessed me in such a sorry state. I knew well enough what parts of me were admirable: they were calm and intellect and strength and control and self-possession.

And all of them had fled.

Short work he made of the few remaining clothes we wore. Short work of noting where all the scant blood in my body had pooled, no doubt, for it was practically aching by that time. I am not small by any standards, and being ravished by a beautiful Hercules is hardly against my instinctive tastes. Short work leaving me, and returning from my bedroom. Short work slowly preparing, as he kissed my stomach, from the edges of my hips to the shivering muscled knots of my abdomen as I repeated over and over to myself calm, calm, calm, calm, calm.

Then I gasped audibly at the true beginning of it, and he lowered himself on his arms very carefully above me, his shoulder causing him an exhalation of considerable pain, of course, which was one of the reasons we never made love face to face in that particular way, even when he did take me, and I waited for him to move. He did not.

"Open your eyes."

I'll see pity, I thought. And I'll have him for tonight.

And then he'll leave.

Seeing that pity would ruin me, and I knew it, but I did as he asked.

His eyes were still wetly glimmering. Still blue.

Still--beyond the bounds of human comprehension--in love.

"How can you want me this way?"

I didn't say it, so much as gasp it in an inaudible, tiny, whispered breath. It was an inner protest outside the range of human hearing, and thus I know that what he said to me next was not a reply, but a vow.

"I'll make you understand if it's the last thing I do," he said.

Then he did move. And move very well indeed, as he is quite practiced at the art. I prefer never to think of the fellows he'd been practicing on prior to our meeting, but unmistakably they existed, as they had for me. I bit back a cry with my teeth, as I always do. And I was so maddened at being unable to grip something that my head would have thrashed against the floor if he hadn't caught it. I could feel minuscule tears of exhaustion at the edges of my eyes and prayed to the God who'd never once listened to me in all my life that at the very least I could keep them in check. I fought like a maddened tiger on that count. But predictably, He didn't listen to me. And in lieu of gripping something, anything for God's sake, I moved my bound hands up to my friend's face. That was probably the moment I understood that I was far stupider than I'd ever imagined being, and that for some miraculous reason he was willing to forgive me for it.

It is impossible to chart just when it ended. Five minutes later, perhaps? Eight? After I'd failed utterly to remain silent. After he'd buried his face in my neck. After I'd pressed his head where it lay in the crook of my shoulder, awkwardly, with my wrists. I finished first, I believe, dragging him with me.

I cannot think why that would have been, for he was supporting his own weight in what must have been ghastly pain and hadn't touched me. Except perhaps that I finally let myself go.

At some point, he released me, threw my arm over his shoulder, and deposited me clean and safe and warm in my own bed. I was by then far too delirious to recall it. I think it was only twenty or so minutes later when I awoke fully, under the coverlet. He was next to me, watching me with an affectionately quirked expression on his lips. There was a water glass in his hand, which he passed to me.

"Tell me about your brother," he suggested.

Oh, God.

"Hmm. He is...tall," I answered. The water was no longer cold, but none the less refreshing for that. I set the empty glass on the bedside table. It is amazing what twenty minutes of sleep can do for me.

"Does he look like you?"

"No."

"Well, he must look like you in some ways."

"He looks like five of me," I retorted. "The hereditary characteristics you assume to be present are obscured. You'd hardly mark them. Not if you didn't know me rather well."

"In what sense?"

"Well, our eyes are very peculiar, and in the same fashion."

"Your eyes are beautiful."

"My blushes, Watson." They aren't. They are an eerie shade of pale grey, and make me look even more weird and wicked than I already do. But I am heartily grateful he thinks so.

"Does he know--"

"Yes."

I thought back over the experience of having grown up with a sibling who was not only seven years older and wiser, and thus far ahead of me in learning, but who could also determine a fellow's darkest secrets at a single glance. It had not seemed entirely fair. One of the boys who had slept in our stables guarding the horses and sweeping the stalls had been charming at seven, and yet bearable at fourteen, but when sixteen struck him along with an increase in muscle mass and jaw definition, I was entirely besotted. Once I had recognized my dilemma, it was far too late. It was also too late to hide the problem from my brother. A man whose mind is so razor-keen he can solve the most abstruse of riddles can easily spot an untimely adolescent erection, not to mention draw appropriate conclusions as to the source. I was undone before I myself knew I was queer.

"But my dear man," the Doctor persisted, "does he specifically know--"

"He will when he lays eyes on us," I replied gently. "Are you comfortable with that? You could go alone and he may not see it, as he has not when I have visited him solo in the past. But should we appear together--as I plan to do, my dear chap--yes, he will know."

"Then by all means let us go together," he smiled.

Heavens above, it was hideous. As much as I was accustomed to being twitted over the differences between commissioned and non-commissioned officers, theory and speculation, Jack Tars and privateers, being twitted over Watson was a daunting prospect. I wondered for a moment whether I hoped Mycroft would not like him, that I might be defiant, or that he would like him very much, so that I might be even more horrified when he set in to pester me upon the subject.

What a magnificent type! he would say teasingly of the Doctor, not knowing of course that John Watson defies all types. Or in genuine surprise at my audacity at choosing a man several miles out of my league How bold of you, Sherlock. I should have suspected you to be a little out of your depth in such matters. No, the moment my friend was out of sight, he would wink fondly at me and drawl I see you have changed everything, Sherlock, quite rearranged your life--and here I thought you content with your usual petty puzzles of the police-court. Why on earth didn't you tell me you were happy months ago? You needn't have come by--a simple wire would have done it, you know. You are quite altered, my dear boy. And every word would be true.

"As you like," I said. "So long as you know secrets cannot be kept from him."

"Have I been a secret, then?"

"A spell," I murmured slowly. "A bewitchment. A charm that could shatter if spoken aloud."

"Can I be so ethereal by comparison?"

"Everyone is. He weighs over twenty stone."

He thought for a moment, the edges of his moustache hinting at more smiles to come. "Did you truly think I would drop it if you revealed his existence?"

"No," I said readily. "I desired an interlude of transcendent sex, and thought that was the most effective way to bring it about. The results, as you will acknowledge yourself, were admirable. I appreciate your having fallen in so completely with my designs."

"If those were your designs, I will at once own their merits." He was teasing me, but only gently. Then something arrested his attention and a drawn, grave look appeared on his face. Looking down, I saw the back of one of my wrists was beginning to bruise, and rather badly. It was darkening and swelling simultaneously. The binding had not done me any harm, for he'd been very careful, but striking the floorboards beyond the expanse of rug had.

"Oh my--"

"Never mind, my dear, dear fellow," I said quickly, having entirely recovered my calm. "That happened at the docks."

"No, it didn't," he whispered in dismay. "It happened just now. I did it."

"You're being ridiculous. I knocked it against the carriage door during a very minor round of fisticuffs, I promise you," I lied.

He was already out of bed, striding to his medical kit in the sitting room beyond. I watched him go without the slightest tremor of shame striking me--it is not particularly often that the Doctor wanders from place to place sans clothing, for he is rather more modest than I am (without any logical cause whatsoever), and though I regretted his distress, the opportunity was too precious to be dismissed. His lumbar curve brings me nearly to tears. I believe the man insists upon dressing gowns merely to vex me, at times. The return view was equally breathtaking, as he sat down once more in the firelit bedroom with a jar of liniment and a strip of linen.

He took my hand, running exquisitely gentle fingers over it. "I am so truly sorry."

"What on earth for? You are neither a gang member nor a--"

"Thank God," he breathed as he completed his assessment. "At least I did not break anything. You are the dearest, the most--and I adore your hands so. I was angered, very deeply angered, and I wanted you to know it. Some terrible part of me needed to show you. Still, I'm ashamed of myself. This is a wretched thing for a doctor--"

"Carriage door--"

"To have done, no matter how lost I felt."

"It doesn't make any difference how you felt, as it was a carriage door! An even if it had been your doing, I've sustained far worse damage during hedonistic interludes," I said truthfully, then stopped. He does not like to hear such things. Small wonder, too.

"Please forgive me. Can you try, at least? I am every bit as frightened as you are, you know, you must know that," he added soberly, in a rush.

"Of what could you be afraid?" I asked him.

"Of not being enough for you."

I did not quite know what to make of that. It touched me deeply, although the fact he'd read me so well was also rather mortifying. I tried to think of a suitably reassuring sentiment that did not either make him seem foolish or myself seem childishly infatuated. But suddenly I realized I was too exhausted for artifice.

"I cannot conceive of you fearing such a thing," I whispered.

He laughed as he gently wrapped my hand. "My love, you have a profound effect upon those around you, from ticket-takers and scullery maids to the hereditary King of Bohemia. You are a genius in your chosen field, and doubtless would have been equally successful at any other. The merest fact that I receive such a large degree of your focus, of your powerfully intent time and attention, is at times very surprising to me. I am a battle-scarred pensioner, and count myself quite lucky."

The scar is very jagged, and raised in places, and reminds me of a sickening flower, where the all too soft-nosed Jezail bullet pierced his shoulder. He doesn't like it, for he finds it ugly and it reminds him of horrors I only hear about when murmured in his sleep. I have a more complex relationship with it. It is bravery and self-sacrifice and patriotism and unspeakable courage, as well as being a potent reminder of just what the Doctor is willing to endure for the sake of his fellow men. And in no small way, it brought him to me. For those reasons, I love it. And I also hate it as he does, because I can never look at it without being reminded that he is mortal, and was hurt very badly, and remains subject to the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.

"If you only knew how that sounds to me. Or comprehended what I truly think of you." I touched the beautiful marred flesh with my fingertip. It was not an admission, but it was a slip, and a heartfelt one.

"You could tell me," he suggested, tying a loose knot.

"No, I couldn't," I said. It maddened me as much as it did him at times, I am sure, and yet it was true. "I lack all words for it, and yet I do require you to better understand why I lied to you."

"I know why you lied to me," he said, looking straight at me. His eyes are so frank that at times they nearly frighten me. "You lied because of Wilson Kemp and his foul, degenerate ways. You need not tell me, my love, what charcoal poisoning looks like."

Needn't I? I thought. I am no stranger to nightmares. Neither are you. But needn't I tell you of the worst vision I have ever seen?

"No?" I asked. "Well, then I will not explain further why I lied. I shan't do so ever again," I vowed quietly, "for it isn't worth the pain I cause you when I do. There was no carriage door, I kept you away because I wanted you safe, and I deserve more than a bruise on the wrist. I deserve considerably worse from you. I think you know that. But I never want to be without you, my dear fellow. In fact, I don't think I can be without you. If you managed to get yourself killed, I should have to determine how best to follow after you, like some bizarre retelling of Hermes retrieving Persephone, and that would be a very inconvenient exercise for a young man."

It had not been ideal, but his eyes were shining again, and I knew he understood me. "For not telling me what you think of me, and being an astonishingly meandering and altogether too classical declaration, that was shockingly effective," he said hoarsely.

"I sense a certain mockery in your tone," I pointed out, falling back to the pillows with an ironic expression. He blew out the bedside candle and then I had him in my arms, his head on my chest. I placed one arm around his back and rested my other hand softly over his throat, faintly sensing his pulse beat steadily on.

After several minutes, when I thought him asleep, he muttered, "I am going to give you a gift."

"Are you?"

"Yes. A very powerful gift, too. Nearly a magical gift. Fire from Zeus himself. Pardon the poetry, but you did start it, you know."

"What the devil are you talking about?"

"I shall rewrite history," he declared drowsily. "As it ought to have been, and as I wish you to remember it."

"I don't understand, dear heart."

"Then wait and see."

I have just finished "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter." The Strand sits before me on my desk, untouched save for that single soulful offering. Prometheus returned from on high with a priceless fiery torch, and John Watson published another sort of Greek fable that made my life as clear to me as if the gods had equipped me with a diagram of it. I only hope he will not be punished for his generosity as Prometheus was.

I read all his pieces, mind. But very few of them are actually written to me. And I simply had to set this down at once, as it happened in fact, because John Watson has done such an admirable job of mending the shattered pieces that I had felt reality itself altered forever. The story was a mosaic of flawless construction. Part was a sly look at our actual meeting with Mycroft the next day...part defiance that the Wilson Kemps of the world could ever dare to harm us...part a nod to peril in all its devious forms...and part my own actions as I should have taken them all those months ago, fearlessly inclusive, with him at my side, because he wishes me to know that when we are together nothing can go wrong. I don't believe him. And I will never again, never again, wait for a police warrant. But I love him all the better for it, and I long to obey him--to call for him eagerly no matter the circumstance, to keep him from harm through proximity and not distance, to be the man in that story, with whom Watson shares a "long and intimate" acquaintance.

"Why would you rewrite history, and for me?" I asked that night, twined together with him in my bed.

"Because I love you. You do know that, don't you?"

"I am beginning to," I murmured.

For I was.

The Measure of Happiness

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 23:51:12 GMT

Rating: PG-13

About the characters: they are far too good to be mine.

The story of how I had arrived separately from Holmes and Inspector Hopkins was not important at the time--the violently ill patient, the missed summons, having miraculously caught the last train after wiring my friend I likely would fail to manage it, the elderly draper whose cart carried me up to the park before the enormous stone house. What is important is that when I arrived, it was raining in sheets, and when the maid opened the front door to me, she informed me that they'd already gone--first to check the deserted cottage, and then back to the hotel. I had seen no object in returning to town without making certain my friends had also departed, and so, with my collar pulled up around my ears and my hat low over my eyes, I made a dash for the cottage before resigning myself to walk a mile in a downpour after a truly vexing afternoon.

An inch of grainy mud stood before the door, so I looked in the leaded window. There were indeed two figures present, one of athletic, medium build, and the other very tall, very poised, and very thin. I smiled in weary relief. I was raising my hand to rap on the glass when something I could not quite understand stopped me.

I saw through the thin pane that Holmes was holding out a photograph he'd evidently just taken from a drawer, the fondly mocking, teacherly smile on his angular face. Hopkins took the evidence from him, then laughed as he uttered something congratulatory, as always graciously self-deprecating and not in the slightest bit put out that he had been shown up for the third time since my friend had taken a barb-headed spear to a steer's carcass in the matter concerning Black Peter. But they were standing far too close together for what the size of the room and the positioning of the furniture warranted. Then the photograph fell from the inspector's fingers as he reached up and caught my friend's mouth with his own.

I am being as honest with myself as I am capable when I say that--at first--I did not move for the sheer shock of it. My friend's hand snaked around the inspector's waist and pulled him forward with a masterful, practiced motion. Their lips lingered over each other's faces eagerly, but not with the breathless anticipation which accompanies discovery. I read a history in the casual touch. They had done such things before.

After I failed to move due to initial shock, I failed to move for other, far less honourable reasons. First and primary was fascination; everything about Sherlock Holmes fascinated me and here he was doing something that I had never dreamed possible, let alone witnessed. I had seen his body before on numerous occasions and admired the sinewy strength of it. I had loved it as my own, though ever at a distance and with brotherly regard. I had tended it when it was bleeding and pressed it when it sought after the signal of my hand's brief touch in the silent darkness. I had bitterly lamented the scars he'd carried with him from beyond Reichenbach Falls, scars I had not been present to prevent, and for still longer had I rued the scars on his left arm that I tried for years to defray, failing all the while. But as their clothing was quickly discarded and my breath froze in my lungs, I could only think that I had never seen that graceful back arch so, had never thought to wonder what his flesh would look like against someone else's, how his hair would fall if there were alien fingers buried in it.

After the fascination, there followed still worse motives for observing. I was terribly, shamefully angry. My heart seemed to beat with the rhythm they were setting, the speed of their love and the pounding of the rain. You are not enough for him, the rhythm said as we all pulsed in concert. And how foolish of you, how typically foolish, to have thought that you were. What man has ever lived on companionship alone?

When it was nearly too late to reach the village ahead of them and I was wet to the skin, I fled at last. I reached the hotel just in time for the rain to stop, as it happened. A porter offered me a clean cloth, and I was applying it shakily to my face when in strode Sherlock Holmes, elegant and impeccable, having almost certainly arrived in the manor's carriage.

"By Jove!" he exclaimed at the sight of me. "Watson, whatever has befallen you?"

He was smiling as he said it, genuinely concerned, and visibly pleased--as he always was--that I had followed him. I was deeply grateful for his merry humour, for it meant that he would not expect me to reply at any length to his question. And what had befallen me, to my considerable chagrin, I had not the slightest idea.

And then we were alone together, all too soon, returning to our snug home in the looming city. The train rocked back and forth with a relentless clacking of metal. The newspaper in my hands felt like an absurdly cheap piece of stage scenery, designed to fool no one.

"Holmes," I said quietly.

He was peering out at the passing trees, soaked with rainfall and covered in dank, sweet moss.

"Yes, my dear fellow?" He smiled at me once more. The warm smile, from one side of his mouth, the one that had always brought a pleasant little ache to my chest. "I am heartily grateful you went to such trouble, even if your only part in this trifling drama will have been to accompany me back to town and catch a severe chill."

"Where is Inspector Hopkins, then?"

"It is one of those lovely examples of shared effort, you see--I solve the business, and he shoulders the delightful task of tying it all up in a package to present to the Yard. He is gathering statements as we speak."

"You work well together."

"He is very talented."

"Not so talented that he does not require your aid," I pointed out, irritated for no reason whatever.

"He is also young," my friend shrugged. The fading light struck his dark hair, the silver of his cufflinks, his perfectly tailored pinstriped trousers. "Perhaps one day he shan't require quite so many nudgings in the right direction, and so can compose paperwork over crimes he has solved himself."

Stanley Hopkins was indeed young, I thought, startled that I had never once looked at the man objectively before. He was not only young, but he was exceptionally active, strikingly handsome, and altogether pleasing in his hurried, good-natured manners. He was also very kind--to me, to Lady Eva Brackenstall, to his fellow inspectors. I now knew that he had several curls of pale brown hair on his breast, and that his eyes fell closed under certain circumstances like an abject sensationalist. But he was not a sensationalist; he was in love.

"My dear fellow, I've no wish to upset you," I said slowly, "but I fear that confession in this case is far superior to strained secrecy. I would not have our friendship suffer damage for all the world. I have stumbled upon knowledge that I don't believe you wish me to have, regarding your relation to--or relations with, perhaps--the Inspector."

I had not said it well at all. The man sitting before me, he of the steely eye and iron nerve, looked at me sharply and grew white as ghost. Holmes closed his eyes, looking as if he would have given anything in England to reverse what I had just said to him, and then he fixed me with a gaze as keen as razor wire. The thin, beautifully formed lips parted as he leaned incrementally towards me.

"It is entirely your own affair, Holmes," I said, then cursed my choice of words once more. "Do not ask me how I know it, for the clues were quite inconsequential and could have been remarked upon by no one save myself, as we reside together and I am familiar with your habits."

"But I--"

"That is truly all you need know, Holmes," I said tenderly. I had not trusted my ability to prevaricate around him for longer than five minutes, but I would not for a king's ransom have hurt him. "I needn't tell you your secret is safe with me, but I am obliged to tell you I think no less of you for it, nor any other man of the same persuasion."

"Is that so," he whispered.

"Yes, that is so."

My friend sat back again, and several very lengthy minutes passed between us. I gave up the newspaper as a bad job and dropped it to the floor, staring myself out the window as I allowed my stricken, insatiably curious friend to scrutinize me. I owed him that, at the very least.

"Watson," he said at last, in his usual voice.

"Holmes," I replied, smiling.

"I will never be able to explain to you all the ways in which your silence calms my mind."

I laughed at that, as much from relief as from gratitude.

"Do you think," he continued, striking a match and holding it to a cigarette, "that the world is wrong, then, to condemn such acts?"

"It isn't of any consequence to me."

"You hold the world's opinion so lightly?" he insisted, making a valiant effort to sound quite logical and dispassionate. I loved him for it.

"I don't care about the world. I care about you."

I was seeing it all again, then--the sheen of sweat on Hopkins' back, the quickness and the skill of their movements, how gentle my friend's hand had seemed when it touched his lover's lips and how implacably hard it had appeared when he'd gripped him by the thigh. Hopkins' face, reverent, and my friend's only needful and on occasion deeply pained. It was the same expression, although rather better masked, that I was confronted with now.

"You don't wish to speak of this," I surmised.

"Do you wish me to speak of it?" There was his bravery again, massive stores of it, shining forth in steely eyes that narrowed now as they scrutinized my own.

Why should they narrow? I thought petulantly. I am only his Watson, after all.

"I only wish you could trust me," I admitted. "I've always wished for that."

"I do trust you, but that does not mean I am eager to speak of it."

"I wish you to be yourself."

"I am a deeply secretive, terribly abrupt, selfish, impatient, imperious, vice-ridden recluse," he reminded me.

He was, for I knew him through and through. He was six feet three inches tall, and his hands were covered in the faintest of marks, the results of chemistry and misadventure. He had black hair and grey eyes that could spark into humour or dim into melancholy within the space of a breath. And he had lied to me every day, for years, through storm and fire and death itself, for every time he had claimed to have no use for love he had in fact been saying he did not trust me.

I could not think of it that way. I would have to suppose what he had been saying was that he could not bear for me to cast him aside.

"Be as you are, Holmes. I've no use for you any other way, no matter whom you are inclined to seek out for your trysts. I am only sorry that to the other shortcomings you just mentioned, I ever added cold-heartedness."

"You were working with limited data." I could have sworn he'd nearly smiled.

"I shall have to redouble my efforts to absorb your methods, then."

The rocking of the train no longer needled me, but brought instead a sense of calm. We were an hour away from London yet. An hour to spend pondering why my dearest friend's face, always noble and strikingly well-formed, looked so alien to me now, and why I felt the need to map it again from the beginning.

"Watson?" Holmes said a few minutes later.

"What is it?"

"Thank you." He leaned his head against the glass of the window, his shapely neck relaxing as his eyes fell shut once more.

Every time I looked at Stanley Hopkins from that day onward, I felt mingled sensations of rage and of pity. Pity, because it had taken me one glance to discern that he was desperately in love with my friend and that my friend felt no such reciprocal emotion; and rage, because the only man meant to be close to Sherlock Holmes was I myself, and to share that calling infuriated me. However, I could not very well avoid the Inspector's presence without Holmes drawing the obvious conclusion that I harboured an aversion to his habits, and so I remained in the sitting room or followed blindly along on cases with no man the wiser of my dilemma.

We stood watching Holmes one such afternoon in a suburb just outside of Norwood, smoking silently as the detective dashed from window ledge to sculptured shrubbery, his face pale with concentration.

"I don't believe I shall ever muster that sort of energy," Hopkins admitted rather bashfully.

"He is unique," I said.

All of a sudden, Holmes had hoisted himself from the sill of a window to a cluster of gnarled vines surrounding a drainage pipe, and thence to the roof.

"He'll do himself harm one of these days," Hopkins exclaimed, trotting toward the house.

"Not while I am still standing," I vowed quietly. But he had not heard me, and my friend had already leaped back to the ground with the skill of a born acrobat, and I'd no one on whom to blame my frustration save myself.

"Holmes," I asked hesitantly one night in our sitting room at Baker Street, the fire having sunk to a comfortable glow, "have I known other of your companions?"

His head shot up in startled surprise before he buried it once more in his commonplace book. "Do I take it to mean that your term 'companions' connotes other men of whom I've some intimate carnal knowledge?"

"Yes," I replied, annoyed at how easily Holmes could use semantics to deflect me.

"Are you concerned you've inadvertently offended one of my paramours, not having known him as such at the time? I assure you, Watson, your manners are generally impeccable."

"No doubt that is true."

He set the book aside and fixed me with a look so brilliantly sardonic that I knew it was purposefully calculated to intimidate. "Are we to chat about this, Watson?" he drawled. "Am I to explain what went so terribly wrong with my desires when I was young, simply and elegantly, and with depth of feeling? Are you to draw medical conclusions from my account? Shall I explain to you what specifically haunts me about well-formed men? Am I to enumerate for you the charms of one fellow's glorious natural endowments, or the poetry contained in another's merest glance?"

"I hadn't supposed you such a romantic, but yes, if you like."

He laughed out loud, in appreciation of my fortitude if nothing else, and rested his head on his slim fingers.

"I had thought I knew you, you see," I remarked.

"I had thought the same. And don't you?"

"No." My voice was so inadvertently grieved when I said it that I hastened to say more. "I am sorry to badger you. But surely you see that, as your longtime friend--not to mention fellow lodger--the subject interests me."

At this well-intentioned remark, Holmes barked out a derisive little exclamation as his brows shot upwards. "As my fellow lodger? Really, Watson, you have nothing to fear from me. I am an invert, not a nymphomaniac. You need not trouble yourself with the notion that some night I may drink one glass of brandy too many and fall to my knees desperate for your--simply because I desire men does not mean I desire all men, and I seem to have managed to resist your rather pedestrian charms thus far."

I could think of nothing to say to this scattered and abusive assertion for some moments, for I was beginning to think that the sight of Sherlock Holmes on his knees was not necessarily a distasteful one. And apart from being wounded, I could not see how my innocent remark had been so misinterpreted.

"Well, that is a profound relief," I replied coldly. "Thank God my pedestrian characteristics will continue to prevent any awkward moments between us."

Holmes' lips twitched in anger before he rose with deliberate languor, retrieving his book. "It is a blessing for which I have thanked God myself many times. Even supposing I could overlook the fact that the plain, upstanding British Army type holds no interest for me, I am irresistibly drawn to men with exceptional talent, and I always have been. That leaves you quite out of the picture, my dear fellow, invaluable as your assistance has at times proven itself. Now, if you will excuse me, I should prefer to pass the remainder of my evening away from the prurient inquiries of the middle-class medical man."

I stared at his door for several minutes after it slammed shut. The sound of it rang in my ears. Nothing he had said was untrue, I reflected. I am a plain, upstanding British Army type. I am not exceptionally talented, although I am clever enough in my own way and have never longed to be blessed with more than I have been given. Those were not the words which rankled, however.

My assistance. My assistance was invaluable. With a twisting pain, I realized that was all I was to him. Assistance. I was an extra pair of hands and eyes, and at other times I may as well have been a bedpost for all the reciprocity expected of me.

Take away the assistance, and what was left? Would it make any difference to Sherlock Holmes if I moved away to practice medicine in Edinburgh or was killed by a runaway carriage? He would never wish for either event, but would he draw a distinction between the two? Did I so much as exist for him if I was not present? Had he spared a single thought for me during the years of his own heartless absence, after all?

Miserably, I rose to my feet. As I passed his closed door, however, I heard the echo of a sound and saw a passing shadow in the crack beneath. He was pacing.

Holmes paces when he is thinking, when he is restless, and when he is deeply distressed. As I climbed the stairs to my own room, I grimly decided to reserve my final judgment until I knew which of the three it was.

Holmes was not inclined to speak to me the next day, nor I to him, and he quit our rooms as speedily as he could. But he did not need to be present for my thoughts ever to turn to him, for he was everywhere--in the air of Baker Street, in the papers scattered on his desk, in the violin propped in the corner, in the lingering images of spotless frock coats and carefully tamed black hair. It occurred to me that hardly ever was I not thinking of Sherlock Holmes, and that such had been the case for years. And I then began to ask myself some difficult questions.

I came to the realization that to know Holmes as I did, and not to know him, was driving me mad. I had been telling him the truth when I'd disavowed any abhorrence of his sexual proclivities--I have always held the firm opinion that what two adults get up to in their own beds is their own business, and left it at that. However, I had simply never pondered the physical manifestations of inversion previously at any length, very likely because I had not before cared so passionately about a man who indulged in the habit. Setting aside the visions that would not leave me no matter how I tried to banish them--the sight of his shoulder blades flexed with effort, the purity of that pale flesh, the perfect angles of his lower back--through all my fevered dreams of him ran a terrifyingly strong thread of possession. Sherlock Holmes was mine. His very blood beat within my veins. He allowed me every liberty, yet his heart held secrets from me and me alone, it seemed, and however much he valued my assistance--and, if I was fair to him, my company--it was Hopkins' hands caressing his body.

Two nights later, having received the barest terse "good morning" from my friend before he fled our home to conduct inquiries in one of the northern suburbs, I watched from my armchair as Holmes arrived home and strode at once into his bedroom, shutting the door. I allowed myself a moment's crushing despair, but I made no effort to go to him, for such an action would have done me no good whatsoever.

Some five minutes afterward, I felt a warm, firm hand touch my shoulder and I looked up from my medical text in considerable surprise. Holmes had returned to the sitting room silently, in slippers and dressing gown, and stood peering down at me earnestly.

"There are days when, as long-established as your presence is, my dear fellow, I am frankly shocked to find you here. I am the last man on earth to deserve such a forgiving companion."

His hand drifted away from my shoulder, but gently, and for a moment I ached at the loss. "I am sorry to be such a reprehensible friend in return, Watson, but I cannot undo the habit of many years deception all at one go. I hope you can forgive me for it. And if you can forgive my reticence, I dare to hope you can also forgive my unspeakable churlishness in having attacked you so the other day."

His features had softened, though he looked drawn and quite unbearably fatigued. As for his words, they were as heartening as they were unexpected, and I released a breath of relief. "Don't mention it, Holmes."

"Oh, but I must mention it, for I have told you many times I should be lost without my Boswell, and there are limits to even your patience, my dear Watson."

He collapsed into his chair, looking at me with such sincere self-reproach that I hardly knew how to answer him. When I remained silent, his lips quirked in disappointment before he instantly cleared his face of all expression.

"You've every right to be angry. Please believe that my inexcusable reaction was based in fear of your just censure, not of your hasty intolerance. Come, I shall prove it--ask me something. Ask me anything. What did you ask me the other day? I can hardly recall how the argument began, it was such an innocent question."

My heart went out to him, but I was also struck by a pang of worry, for such disorder of thought and memory were very unlike my mechanically precise companion. Speaking quite carefully, I obliged him. "I asked you who else has been keeping you company. It was none of my business, my dear chap. I assure you I was not asking for anything graphic, although you would not have offended me. I was in the army, you know."

He stared back at me boldly, appraisingly, beneath which ran a thread of quite understandable fear. "If you mean liaisons which have lasted longer than a single night, no one for years, Watson," he said at length. "Certainly no one you know. Musicians, actors, a guardsman once. I confess they have not all been gentlemen. I would never have dreamed of introducing them to you, my dear boy. I'd used to keep my indiscretions at rather a further remove."

"Did you honestly suppose I'd shun you if I knew of them?" I asked him, hurt.

"They were not worth the effort, socially or otherwise, of bringing into our world."

Our world. The words gladdened my heart ridiculously. "Do you mean to say you did not love them?"

"I suppose that characterizes it. Did not spare a thought for them after the fact would also be apt enough."

"I should think some of the fellows must have been dismayed you'd no further use for them afterward."

"Hardly," he shrugged. "Queers and buggerers, you will find, possess few such scruples."

"You are trying to offend me," I observed.

"I'm sorry." He cleared his throat, looking down at his slippers. "You are the last man I wish to offend. I place myself in an equally false position pretending to be better than I am, however. You have asked me to be myself--I fear that you would be better off leaving that all too flawed man in peace, for I have willingly participated in numberless meaningless affairs. Oh!" Holmes made a renewed attempt at a smile. "Do you recall the night we attended the symphony and you developed the most ghastly cough afterward, because you insisted on giving your overcoat to the poor woman we found had been robbed in the alley on our way to Marcini's? You were standing for half an hour in the snow in nothing but a silk hat, tails, and a lily-of-the-valley boutonniere, which I need hardly add provided little in the way of warmth."

"Yes? I'd quite forgotten that overcoat," I mused.

"It was charcoal, trimmed in black silk, and probably saved her life. In any event, I knew the first chair flautist rather better than you may have been aware. You see how very little his presence enhances the anecdote?" he asked gently. "Our world was quite big enough without their intrusion on your sensitivities and my nerves."

"The Inspector is in our world," I noted, trying to keep my voice calm. The thought of Hopkins was bad enough. But the thought of hundreds of anonymous beautifully muscled, carnally adept young fellows having their way with my closest friend was positively sickening.

"Yes, and a very assiduous war he waged at luring me into bed, that I promise you," he admitted, blushing slightly. "For all that, however, he is the same as the others."

"Did none of the others love you?"

"Love me!" he exclaimed, chuckling without a trace of warmth. "Do you suppose every woman you've bedded in many nations and three separate continents loved you?"

"Of course not. No one I've bedded since the death of my wife has loved me."

He winced, whether in sympathy or some other emotion I could not immediately tell. When he seemed unwilling to continue, I prodded grudgingly, "Stanley Hopkins loves you."

"Does he?"

The question was delivered without the slightest tinge of interest. "Yes," I said pointedly.

"That was doubtless a very unwise decision. I would certainly have advised against it, had he bothered to ask me."

"That is one of the coldest remarks I have ever heard," I cried, my sympathies broadening suddenly to include the hapless, kindhearted inspector.

"Oh, calm yourself, Doctor," Holmes said contemptuously. "I may be the coldest man you have ever known, but I am not cruel. For as long as I can, I will certainly see that he comes to no harm by way of my clockwork heart. May we leave off speaking of subjects entirely unfit for gentlemen now, before I utter a truth or express a fact that is beyond your considerable capacity to excuse?"

"I wished only to know whether you toy with him."

"Why?" Then he added sharply, "Of course not. I've absolutely no desire to find myself a new dalliance, after all."

"You do love Stanley Hopkins, then." I could barely force the words from my lips.

"I do not love Stanley Hopkins," my brilliant companion scoffed, his tone utterly scathing. "Where on earth would you get such a notion? I sod Stanley Hopkins. Because he desires me to, and because I find him a safe and endearing companion."

"I cannot express any approval for that arrangement," I growled, my facade cracking dramatically.

"So you harbour no reservations whatever regarding my proclivities, only the practice of them!" he cried. His lips lifted briefly into a derisive smile, a smile that meant he knew he was about to be wounded and could think of no better defense than to wound me first. "How altogether illogical of you, not to mention hypocritical. I suppose you are next going to lament I did not take a vow of chastity when I was fifteen instead of what I chose to do in fact."

"You know perfectly well, if you have any logic in you at all, that I meant nothing of the sort. Holmes, only think what you are doing to the man," I snapped, vexation and lust making me sound still angrier. "He is mad for you, and to play with him in such a manner is indeed cruel!"

"He would prefer to have a fraction of me than nothing at all," my friend shot back. "It is a condition with which I have some sympathy."

A breathless silence fell, as his words stood before us in the air and my heart beat furiously in my breast. When he realized what he had said, he granted me a despairing half-smile before drawing a hand over his eyes as if he might give way to sudden tears. The instant he did so, a flood of gratitude caressed my very soul, and Stanley Hopkins ceased to exist altogether.

"Holmes, this is not right," I told him, as kindly as I could. I meant to continue, but anger snapped his impossibly handsome face back up to glare at me in a fury.

"That Stanley loves me is true. What of it? It is none of my doing. I did not make the world as it is. He has loved me for months, and I have loved another for years, and your wife has passed beyond your reach, and to each of us will fall our portion of suffering, and I say again, what of it?"

"This is not you speaking--you ever seek to ease the suffering of others," I reminded him.

"In that case, grant us some relief, Doctor, if we are not to be allowed any measure of happiness," he replied with an air of finality as he rose from his chair.

The dead tone his deftly articulate voice had taken on was nearly more than I could stand. I wanted to take his thick, black, impeccable hair in my fists and bruise his lips with mine, but Sherlock Holmes is a thinking man, and--steadying my nerves--I reminded myself of the fact.

"What if I said," I murmured, my heart in my throat, "that I think you could perhaps have a measure of happiness?"

Holmes peered back at me for a very long moment. The light from the lamps illuminated the silvery gleam of his eyes and made him look an otherworldly thing, a creature out of England's distant past. Then he paled visibly and took a step behind him as if I had just said I thought his habits revolting and I never desired to see him again rather than confessing a measure of my regard. How I had so horrified him I could not fathom.

"Don't," he ordered me. It was his most desperate, imperious tone. "Do not say such things to me."

"But Holmes--"

"Stop!" He walked behind the settee and placed it between us, leaning on the fabric. My friend looked positively terrified; it occurred to me that I had never once seen his hands tremble, but now one of them was, if ever so slightly. "Think what you are saying, and then cease saying it."

"I speak only the truth. You are--"

"I am your friend, and the source of several very melodramatic short stories. Leave it at that."

"I do not wish to leave it."

"John," he whispered violently, "please. You are risking very little, after all, merely an eccentric companion who torments you habitually, but I will lose everything when it fails, as it must. All I have built for myself will be gone. My career, my lodgings, my--I am begging you to leave it. I cannot gamble my very existence upon a mad experiment. This is my home--here, with you. You are my home, and the only one I have known. You would not set a match to Baker Street and then stand back to watch the flames engulf it out of mere curiosity. Why then do the same to my life?"

"You truly prefer a man you do not love to me?" I cried. "I am the one who has been here with you, at your beck and call--I am the one who died staring into Reichenbach Falls, more than you ever did, damn you. Oh, I know well enough I am pedestrian--"

"Please!" he begged hoarsely. "Do not throw my transgressions in my face, for I have spent a great many years cataloguing them myself. You have never once been pedestrian in all your life. You are the model upon which the world of men should be built, and I am an abusive near-lunatic with a few singular qualities. I've asked you to pardon me once already; do not force me to babble senselessly on about Hyperions and satyrs, man, for you've not an inkling just how low it would bring me."

"Then never mind me--what is Stanley Hopkins' claim to you?"

"He is a homosexual," my friend snapped, "and he is incapable of breaking my heart. You are neither one of those things."

"You doubt I love you?" I demanded.

It was in the terribly painful quiet which followed, as my dearest friend visibly considered the question, that I resolved no matter the cost to see it through. I was still capable of failure, or lack of desire, and I knew it full well, but as he studied me debating that simple, self-evident, elementary question, I knew that to see him doubt my boundless regard twice would be the end of me.

"No," he admitted at length, turning his searing eyes away from my face. He seemed to take no joy in the statement. "I do not doubt you love me, after a fashion. I doubt very much you know what you are doing, and I doubt not that I will pay for it."

"You are speaking to a man who would literally stand in the path of a bullet for you, and you suppose I would be careless with your heart?" I crossed behind the sofa whether he wanted me there or no and placed myself before him. His breath was coming in quick, shallow little swells.

"Standing in the path of a bullet and engaging in voluntary sexual congress with a man are two different propositions, you will admit. Don't touch me."

"I love you," I insisted.

"I know. That fact has not made my life any simpler all these long years, I promise you." He laughed, a bitter and brittle sound. "The sun creeps through the galaxy, and the earth goes round the sun, and I go round John Watson in circles, and that is the thrice-cursed natural order of Life. I shall write up a monograph on the subject for you, if you like. Get away from me, for mercy's sake." It was no longer a command, but an entreaty. He took another step backward, his hand resting on the settee's wood trim, and I covered it swiftly with my own. It felt as if his fingers were burning.

"I am not offering you something simple. I loved my wife, and you know it. But I loved you even before I loved her, and for what it is worth, you know me far more intimately already than she ever did."

"That is not the sort of intimacy you are proposing now. Have you any idea the sort of things I get up to?"

"Yes, I do."

"Then how in God's name can you explain--"

"With the basest, most selfish, human explanation," I said, my voice lowering huskily. "I saw you together. You and--I cannot erase it from my memory. He had his hands on you, and his mouth, and--"

"When the devil did--"

"That isn't important. What is important is that you are mine, because I know you--I know you, everything about you, I have studied you and memorized you and made you my own, and the thought of him ever knowing you again in a physical sense makes me ill," I cried.

"You are going to risk my life over an attack of covetousness?" he whispered.

"Do you recall," I asked him, "that once I inquired whether a friend had written you a letter, and you informed me that save myself you had none?"

"That was the truth." His fog-hued eyes had grown dark and liquid as a wolf's, although whether from my words or my proximity I could not tell.

"I should have thought that you could trust your only friend."

"I don't trust you," he owned at last, in a desperate gasp. "Not in the slightest. I don't trust you because you are my only friend. No one else can ruin me. Please, let us be as we were."

"I am finished obeying you," I answered. "You need not trust me, after all, for you cannot say no to me either."

He made me no reply. He would have been lying to deny it, but neither did he make any move toward me. I think he wanted to see just how far I could carry it on my own, that some reckless part of him was willing to sacrifice something pure for something divine. I did what I have always done in such situations when speech fails me. I slowly brought my hands up to either side of a face sculpted like a classical statue of some tragically martyred hero, and I kissed him.

And then I had always been kissing him. I had always longed to feel his breath in my mouth and the aching pressure of his tongue caressing mine. I had always wanted to feel his lean body against me, for a sigh to escape his lips when I pressed eager hands against the small of his back. If it was sinful, then let it be said that I welcomed the fire, begged for it to take me, gladly hungering for more.

It was only later, after pleas and blasphemies and acts that have been criminal since the ancient world, staring a perfectly formed arm nearly as pale as the sheet beneath it, when I realized how much the feeling must have been compounded for him. Had I lived oblivious day to day as anything near the object of worship he was to me now? I hoped against hope that it was not so. For if I had, time had not been kind to him.

He looked at me questioningly and I smoothed a hand over his face. Why I hadn't done so a thousand times before seemed as unbelievable as the glow that lit his eyes when I did.

I recall very well the first morning I awoke beside him. Raising myself to peer out the window, I settled back half-seated on the piled cushions as my eyes adjusted to the wan light. My friend, who has ever held the prize for the world's lightest sleeper, sensed me stirring and curled himself languidly into a ball with his head in my lap.

"You were right," I told him.

"Regarding?"

I passed my fingers through an unruly mass of black waves. "I have now twice stood in the path of a bullet, and also engaged in voluntary sexual congress with a man. The two are nothing alike. In fact, the latter is infinitely preferable."

I felt his silent laugh on my thigh through the sheet. As it faded, he glanced up at me piercingly. "You are not ashamed of it, then?"

"On the contrary. Should I be?"

"I was, the first time," he said softly. "I thought myself quite depraved. Ruined, even--he had already gone in the morning, you know. That was the worst moment. Worse even than when Father found out, which was...painful, in more than one sense of the word. But then, I was fifteen, and very quickly recovered." Pensively, he picked at a stray thread before saying, "I shan't recover from this, however."

I ran my thumb over his lips. They were perfect. I thought of my last encounter with fornication sans love, and of all Holmes' long--for all he knew unending--years of parallel acts, and very nearly brought myself to tears.

"Never mind," I said. "You will never need to."

My friend dropped the telegram on the desk and shrugged sadly, lighting his pipe. I stared for several minutes longer at it before my regrets took the form of words.

"Holmes, I worked to bring about this end, but I am very sorry to have hurt the Inspector by it. I am sorrier still if you are pained at his departure," I said slowly.

"It is of no consequence to me," he replied without inflection. He had crossed to the window, and was staring out into the yellowed fog. Smoothly lowering himself to the cushioned seat before the glass, he tucked his legs beneath him.

"You are not hurt he failed to say goodbye?" I asked. It was doubtless an evil question, but I lusted after the answer so badly I could not restrain myself.

"No, not at all."

"But how is that possible?"

"That is very simple. Stanley would prefer to abandon me without a word than to see my face when he bids me farewell," he replied. He turned eyes on me as deep and haunted as any I had ever seen. "Likely because he fears what he would see there. Or he fears what he would fail to see there, rather. It is another condition with which I have some sympathy."

I saw then a deep chasm, and a cigarette case beside an alpine-stock. I saw his back as I had viewed it for seemingly the last time. I saw these things because he wished me to see them, and he wished me to see them because he could no longer bear to think of them alone.

"Thank you for telling me," I murmured. I felt suddenly very tired. I rested my head in my hand and sat staring down at the surface of the desk, wondering why the admission that my friend had selfishly left me to mourn him simply because it was the only way to ease his own suffering was for me also a relief. Had I hoped it was selfishness that drove him away, I questioned? For if it was self-preservation, would that turn an act of utter callousness into a desperate bid for freedom? What sort of despot does that make you, John Watson, I wondered.

When did he realize he'd never be free of me?

"What's wrong?" a clipped voice ask me at length.

"I feel quite justifiably guilty," I confessed. "Inspector Hopkins is a good man, and I took something that was not mine."

"It was always yours," he replied. "You took it when you desired it. That is all."

My eyes wandered to the clock. Just past four in the afternoon, and the day quite lost within the sulphurous shroud beyond our walls. It was too much at once, and it was also not enough. The instant I quit Holmes' bed I longed to be there again, every second which ebbed away without contact seemed time wasted that we could ill afford, and I feared new horrors every second--that he would tire of me, that a stray bullet would fell him, that I would somehow be robbed of him again. But worst of all, the pained look in his eyes had not been banished forever. It was absent for long periods, when I reached for him or when he said something to elicit a smile. He makes me smile so easily. But it always returned.

"All this and we are not even happy," I said dully.

His pale grey eyes never left the street, but I knew he had heard me. "This is not happiness," he admitted at length.

"What is it, then?"

"Love," he replied.

Watching him gaze at the traffic, I felt the sense of dread return all over again. I had never experienced such a thing with my wife, even when she was dying, for ours had been an easy, gentle union, full of joy and fond reflection before we were at last tragically parted. This was like being drowned.

"Will it get better?" I mused aloud.

"Yes. And worse."

"Come away from the window," I pleaded.

He smiled wistfully, staring down for a few more seconds before he did as I asked.

"What overcoat did I have before the charcoal with the black silk trim?" I teased him when he stood over me.

"It was entirely black. Blue silk lining, horn buttons. You'd used to wear a blue muffler with it, but then you lost the muffler out the window of a carriage and the sleeve was badly torn in a fight. The fight was my fault," he added wryly, "but he got seven years in Reading, for which I thank you."

"And before that?" I prodded, kissing his palm.

"Grey wool, no trim, quite capacious pockets, very medical in effect. Various mufflers were employed, but I was partial to the dark green."

"And prior?"

He pretended to require some thought before answering, a line of tension appearing between his brows, but by then I knew well enough what would follow. "Deep brown, cutaway design, black velvet collar, with a tiny gash in the tail where you caught it on a piece of scrap metal in one of the godforsaken alleys I dragged you into. Staggeringly well tailored. It suited you perfectly, but you gained seven and a half pounds when you--"

"I love you," I told him. "Please believe that. I always have."

"I know," he whispered.

When I put my arms around him, I could almost imagine that our measure of happiness would be enough, that we would slowly cease being ardent and frantic, that we would never take pleasure in power, that somehow we would not ruin each other. If the passion was even slightly unbalanced, we would surely spiral out of control within mere weeks. The smallest discrepancy of affection could spell doom. Placing my lips against his waist, I uttered a silent prayer of abject gratitude to Heaven that we would at least be given the chance to try. At our best, we were transportive, not of this world. And even at our very worst, I could comfort myself we suffered from a mutually sympathetic condition.

The Morning After, Part Two

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 19:09:05 GMT

Rating: NC-17

About the characters: they are far too good to be mine.

Our friend's train was an express, and on time to the very minute. It roared into the tiny station like an emissary from another world. When Lestrade leaped out of a first-class carriage, the scent of the hunt illuminating his bulldog features, I found myself more grateful for the familiar sight of him than I was concerned he'd notice anything amiss.

"Anything good?" he questioned, all three of us shaking hands.

"I can say without fear of contradiction is it the best thing in years," Holmes replied with a sly smile. "We have two hours before we need think of starting, and there's a rather palatable dining room in the inn just this way. Shall we sample their fare?"

"Anything you say, Mr. Holmes. I'm ready for a meal, and I can see you've been hard at it already today."

When my friend tilted his brows in innocent incomprehension, Lestrade looked down at Holmes' trouser legs pointedly.

"I was after a bit of evidence," my companion said with an affable smile. Shrugging, he lit a cigarette and offered his case to the two of us. I declined, and Lestrade accepted.

"Ha," the official detective chuckled. "No doubt. I see you've dragged Dr. Watson into your questionable habits."

"Yes, he was good enough to join me."

"Permit me," Lestrade remarked. Reaching forward, he plucked a wisp of hay from my sleeve.

"Thank you."

"The evidence was a little off the beaten path," Holmes explained.

"Are you feeling any better?" I inquired. Holmes and I shared a great number of secrets, and in fact always had, but they were other people's secrets. I derived a considerable jolt of satisfaction at mentioning one of our own.

My friend raised his brows at me, one side of his mouth curving up. "Yes, thank you."

"Wrist acting up again, is it?" Lestrade nodded, smoking placidly as we set off along the platform and out of the station. "I keep telling you, if you'd crawl about on the ground less, you'd be the haler for it."

"No, it was only a reaction to mown hay. And sometimes crawling about on the ground is the only viable recourse," Holmes replied cheerily, setting off at a brisk pace in the direction of the inn while waving us both forward.

"Acting a bit peculiar, isn't he, Doctor?" the Yarder muttered when my friend was out of earshot.

"How so?" I questioned, alarm striking me without warning. I had reason to hope that Holmes and I would be performing acts outside the law for some time to come, and I could only assume that the novelty of paranoid suspicion would wear off in a matter of days. At least, so I prayed.

"It must be the case he's solved," Lestrade replied sagely. He shifted his rather beady eyes in my direction, and then allowed them to slide back to the ground in thought. "He seems almost...happy."

"Does he?" I breathed. "I hadn't noticed."

"Queerest thing I ever saw. His eyes were shining out of his head," Lestrade reflected, with another very strange glance at me.

"Well, that's a symptom of hay fever, you know."

For an extremely uncomfortable period, the Inspector remained completely silent.

"Hay fever," Lestrade grinned at last. "Well, you are the Doctor. No doubt that is it." The little professional quickened his steps, so that we three walked in a line, each alone with whatever scattered thoughts he possessed, until Holmes threw open the door and we entered the old dark-timbered structure together.

One of Sherlock Holmes' defects--if, indeed, I may call it a defect, and frankly I feel I've every right to do so--was that he was exceedingly loath to communicate his full plans to any other person until the instant of their fulfillment. I had all too often suffered under it, but never more so than during that long drive in the darkness, a rug thrown over our legs and his calf grazing mine, wondering to myself whether anything in my life would ever make sense again. I need not state that our ignorance of what, precisely, we were to do on that cloudy and clearly dangerous night chafed Inspector Lestrade and me almost unbearably; and when I combine that uncertainty with the delectably unholy carnal knowledge I'd just acquired of my friend, who seemed to have lost the ability to sit more than a quarter inch away from me, my thrill of nerves at every stride of the horses will be more easily excused.

Holmes spoke only tersely of guns and of silence as we walked towards Merripit House, stopping some two hundred yards distant behind a screen of rocks. I who knew him--I'd just begun to convince myself once more of the fact--better than anyone could see that his every sense stood at full attention, utterly alert to the dangers which no doubt surrounded us.

"Watson, you've been inside the house, have you not?" he whispered, catching me by the forearm. "What are those latticed windows?"

"I think they are the kitchen."

"And the one beyond, which shines so brightly?"

"That is certainly the dining room."

"You know the lie of the land best. My dear fellow, just creep forward quietly and see what they are doing--but for Heaven's sake be careful, and be sure you are not seen."

When I did so, I was surprised to find that only the two men sat at the table, Stapleton talking while Sir Henry listened distractedly, his lips set in thought. Nowhere could I see the lady, and neither could I imagine where she might be, for all other rooms were dark. As I watched, Stapleton rose and left the room making for a barely discernible outhouse many yards away from the main building. I registered a queer scuffling sound, and then Stapleton rejoined Sir Henry. Crawling back behind the cover of the straggling rock pile, I conveyed as much to Holmes and Lestrade.

My friend seemed much concerned by the absence of the lady, and at the same time to be only half-listening.

"Holmes, what is the matter?"

"That bank of fog," he murmured, his face drawn and grave. "The one thing upon earth which could have disarranged my plans."

Looking behind him, I saw that indeed a dense white mass of moisture crept inexorably toward us, sending wisps and intangible emissaries before it. The expression of frank chagrin on Holmes' face when he glanced at me told me without a single word precisely how perilous the venture had grown.

"We will best it," I told him softly, "whether your plans alter or no. Together."

"My dear fellow," he said, regarding me with a look I could not begin to translate. I waited for more, but he held his peace.

From that moment forward, we willed the fog to stay in place, at times falling back before it and at times holding our ground, Holmes nearly writhing with furious impatience. We crouched shoulder to shoulder, I in the center flanked by Holmes and Lestrade. The vapour swallowed everything in its path--swallowed the building, so that its roof stood out like a flag, swallowed the rock bank behind which we'd sheltered, swallowed us so that only with our heads above the mist could we see anything at all. It dampened sound as well as sight, for none of us registered Sir Henry's exit from Merripit House save Holmes, who had his ear to the ground. He gave a sharp exclamation, and I heard him cock his pistol.

"Look out," he said grimly, standing up to his full and formidable height. "It's coming!"

Never in all my life had I even I imagined such a creature as the beast we pursued that night. Sir Henry walked along edgily, as if alerted to the presence of an unseen foe, but when that hound from Hell at last bounded out of the mist, its jowls glowing and its teeth slavering in anticipation of its prey, at first he could not even run. He merely stood there, frozen with helpless horror, as the frightful apparition bore down upon him. Then at last he took to his heels.

Holmes and I fired together, and the monster let loose a howl of rage. That sound heartened our spirits like nothing else could have done. My friend and I looked at one another, and then Holmes was over the rock wall and running, running with all his speed, running with every ounce of strength in that body of his that was nothing but strength, and I doing my utmost to keep up with him even as I outpaced Inspector Lestrade. The fog grew ever thicker, and my companion's iron will carried him away from me like a creature intended by Nature to do nothing else but fly across stretches of moorland. In a moment of sheer terror I still do not like to recall, I lost sight of him. I could see nothing before me but a vast whiteness, as if I were running through a cloud. I was quite literally blind. And then a man many yards away from me began to scream.

I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt in those few hideous seconds just what my friend was to me. I had always loved him, and in years previous had gradually--and painfully--come to terms with the fact. That had been nothing, and I laughed grimly to think of how it had once occupied my mind. It had been merely a friendship, a fascination tinged liberally with lust, a camaraderie built on his dry irony and my easy laughter, his sense of justice and my love of adventure, his passion for knowledge and mine for what that knowledge could do. Now he was nothing less than lifeblood. He was everything, and he would be until the day one or the other of us was dead, and if my gun had failed me I do not doubt I would have pried that rabid beast off of him with my bare hands.

When my head broke free of the mist, he was firing the last of five shots into the savage animal. As it shuddered and twitched, I pressed my revolver into its head and pulled the trigger. I cannot think why.

"Holmes," I gasped.

He must have read something desperate in my eyes. "I'm all right," he said, breathing heavily.

We tore away Sir Henry's collar. There was no sign of a wound. We had done it, and just in time.

"What was it?" he managed. His face was ghastly pale. "What in Heaven's name was it?"

"It's dead, whatever it is," said Holmes. And then Sir Henry shuddered in relief, and lay quite still.

We rushed from room to room within the house. Holmes looked quite as anxious as I had ever seen him, and it did not take me long to determine why. Stapleton had surely fled, we reasoned, having heard the shots. But if Beryl Stapleton had truly grown fond of our friend Sir Henry, and had objected to her husband's bloody business, I did not like to think of the consequences. At last, my friend put his hand to one of the first-floor doors and found it locked. He lost not a moment in kicking it down, and in another instant the three of us crowded into the room.

It had been fashioned into a museum, filled with cases and cases of specimens under glass. A figure stood--no, it sagged heavily, supported only by the bounds which kept it captive--lashed to a beam in the center of the room. As a shock of disgust struck me, I realized it was Stapleton's wife, that he had tied her to a post and whipped her savagely, and that she was staring at us mutely, her eyes full of grief and shame and a dreadful questioning.

"The brute," I thought I heard Holmes say as he crossed the room with four long strides. He released her head first, moving close enough that it could fall to his shoulder, and then he reached behind her to undo her other bonds. I flew to assist him, and between us it was mere seconds before she collapsed into his arms. He lifted her as if she weighed no more than the sheets which still enveloped her.

"Is he safe?" she whispered desperately.

"He cannot escape me, madam," Holmes replied.

"No, Sir Henry," she clarified, her eyes tearing. "Not my husband. Sir Henry. Is he safe?"

"Yes."

"And the hound?"

"It is dead."

She began weeping, her arms around my friend's neck, he cradling her gently in an effort not to harm the mass of weals caused by her husband. "Thank God," she cried. "Then it is over. I could have endured it all--the ill-usage, solitude, a life of deception, everything, as long as I could cling to the hope I had his love, but now I understand that in this also I have been his dupe and his tool."

"I know," he said gently, gazing down at her. His eyes glittered with a strange and sympathetic light. In fact, he looked just as he had when speaking to Laura Lyons that afternoon. "Be still. I will set it right, I promise you. He deserves no sympathy from you. Tell me where I shall find him, and I will set it right. You will have justice. Please, Mrs. Stapleton. Help me now to find you a little peace."

"The old tin mine in the heart of the mire," she murmured. "But the fog--how could he see the guiding wands tonight?"

"Thank you," my friend said, carrying her out the door and down the stairs. "My friend the Doctor will see to your injuries. Trust me to take care of the rest."

The poor lady was so spent and so mortified by the time I had cleaned and dressed the worst of her cuts that I gave her a mild sedative and left her in peace, lying on her bed with the lamps turned very low. When I emerged into the sitting room, I was struck with a sudden fear that Holmes, who was nowhere in sight, may have rashly gone after Stapleton in the deadly fog. Lestrade sat at a table writing lengthy official notes, a glass of brandy at his elbow. When he saw me, he rose and poured another glass.

"He's upstairs, talking to one of the maids. Never fear. I wouldn't have let him out tonight for any money."

Laughing, I took the drink from him gratefully. "Thank you, Lestrade. I am very glad you were here to assist us. I cannot tell you what comfort it has given me."

"Oh, it was my honour. Three is better than two, in some cases. As a matter of fact, Dr. Watson, I don't believe I need either of you to remain here any longer. I'll just finish these notes for the files and then join you in the morning. Take him home and put him to bed."

It was all I could do not to freeze in guilty apprehension. I looked sharply at the little detective in an effort to learn what he'd meant by the statement, and had just decided it was merely an example of his occasional teasing humour when his face broke into a broad, affectless smile.

"Tell your friend Mr. Holmes I'm grateful he brought me into the case. It was one for the history books, that's for certain. I'll remember it the rest of my life, that I can promise you. And I'm also grateful that Mr. Holmes has finally come to his senses. I tell you, I was that close to breaking down and knocking some sense into him if he couldn't get it any other way, the whole affair irked me so badly. Well, you know how he gets under my skin, and the man is nothing if not god-awful stubborn. Plenty of times I thought it would never happen, and was downright low over it, but there wasn't anything I could say to the purpose, now was there?"

"I beg your pardon?" I questioned, petrified.

"All I'm saying is that if crawling about on the ground after a bit of evidence is what it takes to make him look that way, he'd best keep it up for a good long spell. I won't say another word against it. And if it makes your mind any easier, I also won't bring the subject up again."

"I'll let him know," I whispered, at a complete loss for words.

"In any event, Doctor, congratulations. A very satisfactory conclusion, I think." Lestrade glanced at the clock on the wall and turned away from me, his quick little hand smoothing back a strand of his hair. "And for the future, you may like to know that he also reacts to meadow barley. Even worse than hay, from what I recall. Ends up looking as if he had the pox, and it doesn't do much for his temper either. I shouldn't go after any evidence where that happens to grow."

"Thank you," I managed to say. "How do you--"

"Merely an amusing anecdote from a stakeout in Wiltshire, Dr. Watson, long before your time. My own particular lady friend is the same way with wild strawberries. I picked her a bunch of them once and we ended up in hospital."

"How terrible."

"Go on now," he urged me. "Not much good he'll be to you a spent ball of nerves."

I walked in a daze back to the museum where Beryl Stapleton had been held against her will. My friend had already examined the room, but he was folding up the sheets which had bound the lady while speaking softly with one of the servants about her employer. Having satisfied himself he could learn nothing more from the maid, he placed the cloth on a table, and lit himself a cigarette as the stricken domestic departed.

"Holmes," I said, touching his arm.

"Yes?" he replied, utterly distracted.

"You are coming back to the Hall with me."

"I beg your pardon?" he queried, his usual imperiousness tinged heavily with exhaustion.

"Lestrade has these matters well in hand. You have seen to it Mrs. Stapleton is safe. The Hound is dead, by your hand. There will be no pursuing Stapleton tonight. Sir Henry has already been taken back to the Baskerville Hall, by the Stapletons' manservant. And you, my dear fellow, cannot be anything other than completely spent."

He managed a vague smile. "I've had less taxing twenty-four hour periods."

"As have I," I said when he allowed me to take his arm and lead him downstairs. "You require immediate sleep."

"I do not require immediate sleep," he countered, running a hand through his hair. "I require a bath more urgently than I have ever required one in my life."

"Then you shall have one," I declared. "And after, to rest."

My friend looked half dead by the time we arrived back at the Hall. Leading him upstairs, I set about meeting our needs. The household was far too busy with Sir Henry to take much note of our bedraggled appearance, but hot water was quickly provided for the both of us and before half an hour had passed, I was standing in the doorway of Holmes' bedroom in my dressing gown, watching as he emerged from the chamber opposite with a towel wrapped about his waist and his black hair glistening with water.

"You," I said, shaking my head, "are quite unnaturally beautiful."

He seemed almost startled by the compliment, pulling back the coverlet and draping himself over the sheets wearily as he threw the towel to the floor.

"What is wrong?"

"Nothing. It's a memorable phrase. And not one I can imagine I wear very well, objectively speaking."

"I have always thought you were, and doubly so now." I sat down next to him, smoothing his wet hair from his brow. "How so, memorable?"

"Merely a whimsical coincidence. I've heard it applied to my mother."

"You must greatly resemble her, then," I whispered to him.

"You could ask my brother, if you like. He remembers her better," my friend murmured. His eyelashes were still bright with moisture from his wash, and the circles under his eyes were beginning to appear permanently carved there.

He had never told me his mother was dead, but in a sense I had always known it. Even a man as reserved as Holmes would have made some reference to his mother in the course of our relationship, if she had yet lived.

"Perhaps I shall one day, if I can work up the nerve. Goodnight, my dear fellow."

"Are you staying?" he asked, his eyes opening briefly.

"If you like. If I won't distract you," I smiled.

"You mean if I won't distract you," he yawned. "Please stay. I've slept alone for quite long enough."

"Holmes," I said quietly as I crawled into bed and his head found my shoulder, "you and I are going to have to talk tomorrow. There are one or two things I simply must know. And one or two things I must apologize for."

"I can think of nothing you've done in the past year and more which warrants an apology," he managed. The one or two times I'd seen him the worse for drink he'd sounded so, but I had never pressed speech out of him in such exhausted circumstances before, and so the mystery of his languid lack of diction at once solved itself.

"You can't mean that. Not after yesterday."

"What was yesterday?"

"Yesterday is what I am required to apologize for," I said, and once I had stated the fact, I found I could not stop. "I am not sorry for being angry with you. I am not sorry for demanding you treat me with respect. But am very, very sorry," I continued, making an extreme effort to keep my voice in check, "for having said that you had no more regard for me than a servant or a dog. I am sorry for telling you that if you ever had a heart you would long ago have thrown it away, for it would be of no use to you. I am exceedingly sorry for having said that I would leave Baker Street, no matter how angry I was. And I am most of all sorry," I finished brokenly, "for having said that the years I have spent with you were a ruinous waste of my time. Please say you will forgive me for that. I did not mean it."

"I already have," he muttered. I could feel him drifting off to sleep even as he said it. "The man I am now, I mean. You were talking to another person, after all."

Stapleton, it became clear to us the next day, could never be traced no matter how grim and determined my friend was. There were no prints to be followed in that sea of slime. However, there were no prints beyond the muck either, and I saw Holmes grow greater and greater in his certainty that his foe had never reach the oasis of firm ground, but had perished in the morass he thought his saving refuge. To that extent, at least, we began to consider the case closed.

After a dousing in mud in connection with the discovery of Sir Henry's missing boot, Holmes lost no time in obtaining another bath. Baskerville Hall, however, had become something of a dismal place, for Sir Henry's nerves were quite shattered and the servants very anxious over him. After passing a few bleak hours indoors, for we did not plan to depart until the following day, my friend's remarkable eyes darted in my direction.

"How about a walk?" he asked. His voice was surprisingly tense.

"I'd like nothing better, provided we steer clear of mires," said I.

"Agreed, and entirely. I'll meet you outside in five minutes."

Walking over the tufts of grey weeds and the jagged, sinister hills with my friend was a welcome relief whether he was inclined to speak or not. But after twenty minutes of complete silence, passing by great masses of ferns on the rock walls and staring at the progression of yellow foliage under our feet, I began to wonder whether he was merely melancholy or instead was dwelling upon a topic he did not want to introduce.

"I had something of a fright yesterday," I began hesitantly.

"I think we all did," he replied, sounding a little surprised.

"No, I mean--I lost sight of you. On the moors. When you were pursuing the hound."

"Oh," he said. "Did you?"

"Sir Henry was screaming, and I...I don't want to trouble you. Nothing happened, of course. But I found that now our relations have...changed, I did not like to lose sight of you in pursuit of a deadly beast. Not at all. I was surrounded by the cloud cover and I felt as if I would never see you again."

"Strange. But I suppose it's only natural that, having changed the nature of our association, other things will change as well." I could not begin to read his expression, and in any case he was making sure not to look at me.

"Having changed the nature of our association, yes," I agreed. "I am still not entirely certain how that came to pass."

"I believe it was my fault," he said with the hint of a smile. "I seem to recall kissing you."

"Yes, that had a very great deal to do with it." Breathing in the cold air, I reminded myself to be patient. After all, the sun was setting, the moss dripped with moisture, the air was bracing and fresh, and sooner or later I would get somewhere. I had hoped to avoid direct questioning, but that dream was beginning to seem ever more distant. "I would appreciate knowing a bit more detail regarding how that came about."

"Well, to be entirely honest, I have always had something of a preoccupation with military men. Strapping, heroic, sun-darkened military men. The close-cropped moustache variety is particularly devastating, but not an absolute necessity. Merely a grace note. The soldierly bearing and air of foreign climes are decided musts in this particular field of study, however. I had...let me see...two others before this, but for heartbreakingly brief periods. And you've a number of other very tangible charms," he said lightly. "I don't suppose you imagine you've slept with hundreds of people without possessing a profound visual appeal."

"I don't--I never said--thank you," I stammered. "Holmes, I am beginning to think that your assumptions regarding my past lovers are perhaps a trifle exaggerated."

"You deny it, then?"

"Really, Holmes, I--"

"I didn't think so. But please, don't tell me. Just at the moment, I am horrified of knowing the concrete facts," he quipped.

"I gathered that, although I don't see why. So you pounced on me because of my war record."

He laughed, the silent and self-deprecating one. "I was unspeakably curious just where I would find that scar."

"And now you know the answer to that burning question. Which, for some reason, you could not wait another moment in agony over. At a quarter to eleven, the night before last."

"It took a weight off my mind," he conceded tightly.

"I am very glad. But Holmes, I really do wish to know what you want from me."

As a reward for this directness, he sighed distractedly. "Why would you ask that?" He was beginning to look as skittish as a colt. A slender, absurdly well-formed colt with a black mane and storm-tossed, piercing eyes.

"Because I would like to know whether my life at Baker Street is going to include a great deal more illegal carnality in the coming months," I said, attempting to ease his nerves.

"Ha. I would like it to, yes. That's one of the reasons I kissed you."

"And the other reasons?"

"It was a terribly difficult biological urge to resist, for all its perversion," he deflected, looking very nearly afraid.

"But why, Holmes?" I demanded wearily, desperation beginning to colour my voice. "Why? I am very possibly the happiest man in England, and certainly the happiest on the moors, but what possessed you? I need to know."

All was silence for perhaps a minute, and then Holmes cleared his throat determinedly. "I did it because you were right," he said quietly. He was staring down at his hands. "When you were shouting at me so lividly. You were right."

"I was right about nothing, my dear fellow. About which vicious accusation could I possibly have been right?" I asked helplessly.

"I used you, and yet I did not trust you," he replied, wincing at the words even as he spoke them. He stopped walking abruptly. "I used you as a sounding board, as a trusty comrade, as a conscience. I used you for so many things, Watson. You were the one thing in my life that mattered, my dear fellow, the one irreplaceable thing I had, the one thing that if broken or destroyed could not be mended, and I used you for thousands of purposes. You sat across from me at Baker Street, you helped me with cases, you shared the claret, you tolerated my papers, you stood on the stairs to listen to me play the violin and you imagined I didn't realize you were there. I used you for every moment that invested my days with any meaning, and I did not trust you enough to know it."

He ceased speaking and glanced at my face, seeming very fearful of what he might find there. "It was absurd. Damn it, my dear fellow, it simply could not go on. When you grew so angry at me, I realized I'd no right to expect you to stay when I did not trust you with the most basic tenet of my existence. Which is that the sun rises and sets with you. For God's sake, there is nothing outside of you."

"Holmes," I whispered, but he held up a hand.

"I have seen enough men abuse the trust placed in them, giving none in return, using their betters and then discarding them without a thought of remorse. Stapleton was an all too apt example, I'm afraid. There have been many others in my life. I am not that man. Damn it, I cannot be that man, Watson. Therefore, I will not behave like that man from this time onward. I cannot apologize enough for having acted so in the first place, but I have reminded myself of who I am and now I will do my best to act the part. I will not be your worst mistake."

His head was cocked very slightly to the side, and his body had the look of barely suppressed nervous energy evident only when he was throwing himself on lawns and walkways, crawling about in the twigs in search of a matchstick or spent revolver casing. Of course, I had only seen this posture when he was fully clothed. I wondered if it there was any possibility of my ever seeing what happened to the sinewy ropes of his lower abdomen when such a fit was upon him, and considered what sort of mystery in the privacy of the bedroom could bring on such a mood.

"John Watson, please say something."

"What would you like me to say?" I asked him gently. "'I told you so' seems overly smug, after all."

"I would like you to say that I am the only man in your world, and that your needs will be satisfied hereafter by me and me alone, because the thought of sharing you makes me physically ill, you may have noticed," he confessed in a rather brittle tone, "but that event is appearing increasingly less likely."

"No, I am not going to say that."

"Well, whatever you are going to say, say it now, for God's sake," he snapped. His face was quite unnaturally pale, his sharply angled features sternly schooled.

"When you played the violin," I said slowly, "those beautiful airs with which you would occasionally fill the sitting room, I would creep down from my chamber to listen from the stairs, as you said. I did this for a very simple reason. I could not stay in my room when such haunting melodies were drifting out of the parlour; and I could not look you in the face while you were playing them without your discovering I was in love with you. So I remained out of sight. I would like to see you play them, if you are willing, when we arrive home. I've longed to see you play them," I finished.

"You're in love with me?" he repeated softly.

"Yes, I love you," I said. Then I was suddenly terrified all over again. "Is that more of the softer emotions than you would care to hear about in future? I only thought, because--be assured that I don't have to--"

"No, no, it shouldn't be a problem," he interrupted me hastily. "I suffer from a parallel affliction."

"Oh."

We both of us suddenly grew very intrigued by the landscape. It was as wild and desolate as ever in the sunset, and it was the most beautiful world I had ever laid eyes on.

"I suppose you are wondering how many," Holmes teased me, after a lengthy pause.

"Men you've fallen in love with? I wasn't, actually," I answered, surprised that he had been wrong.

"I'll tell you anyway," he said. "One."

I was speechless for quite a time before I found my voice once more. "Are you telling me this because you think I would be angry had there been others?"

"No. I am telling you because you are my friend, and I trust you. And because it explains a degree of my reluctance to approach you. And because you will forgive me more of my trespasses if you know it. And because of a very endearing quirk you have."

"What is that, I wonder?"

"Yes, you do wonder," he murmured. "That's it exactly. But you don't ask."

"Is that what you were doing in the stable?" I inquired, a realization striking me. "Trusting me?"

"Yes, I could not express it better. It went quite well, I thought. You are exceptionally good at what you do." He shot me a slyly flirtatious look that I have yet to develop any defenses against.

"Apart from the fact I shoved you into a mountain of hay."

"Well, perhaps you'll spare me that detail in the future." He smiled at me and closed the distance between us, taking my face in his hands. "Tell me again."

"I vow not to expose you to any more hay," I said seriously, looking up into eyes like the fogs upon the moor.

"Not that part," he said, kissing either of my eyelids.

"I told you so?"

"No, and if I were you, I would recall that I am not always so sociable as I am at this moment."

"You are not going to remain this way, then?" I asked hesitantly.

"I will remain this way underneath, always, if you can see it under the cynicism, arrogance, melancholy, impatience, and self-importance which will doubtless mask it periodically. I apologize for them all in advance. Please tell me again," he whispered.

"I love you," I told him. "But I think you said it rather better. There is nothing outside of you."

I do not know, to this day, what would have happened if Holmes had not used me rather too egregiously as a pawn in his gambit against the forces threatening Sir Henry Baskerville, or what would have happened if I had not finally lost my temper entirely. I like to think, however, that the cracks would have shown eventually, and that even without Stapleton's schemes, we would have ended as we are now. It is not mere naive optimism on my part to believe so, either. One way or another, one of us must have let something slip. For I know the way I feel about him, and I know that any man who could kiss me the way he did on the moor that night, his heart pounding as if he lived and breathed for me alone, could not have kept such a monumental secret forever. Murder will out, it is said, and I have seen it. And so will love, for I have seen that too.

Epilogue: Baker Street, nine years later.

The door had closed. The sound of his footsteps descending our staircase rang out as a firm, sure tread. For a very long moment, I did not trust myself to look at anything in particular. My eyes wandered across bookshelves and the patterns of our carpet. Finally, helpless to do anything else, I shot a sidelong glance at Holmes. He sat with his lips slightly parted, staring into space, slippered feet tucked somewhere in the folds of his dressing gown. When our mantel clock struck a quarter hour, he came to himself and, clearing his throat, he returned my gaze. We both opened our mouths to speak, and then both thought better of it.

"I'm sorry--what did you intend to say, my dear fellow?"

"No, by all means, go on," he urged, glancing down at his fingernails.

"You were first," I attempted, the weakness of the argument echoing in my ears.

"Not at all. Pray continue."

"A very successful end to the case. I congratulate you."

"Oh, come now, Watson!" he cried, steely eyes shining like rapiers. "That is not what you were going to say!"

We sat in silence, listening to the crackling fire and the little creaks and murmurs of the old brick structure. I wondered if I trusted my nonchalance to stand up and pour us two glasses of port, and decided to wait.

"Well, it is not strictly what I was going to say," I admitted after a long pause. I picked at the arm of my chair absently. "What were you going to say?"

"Nothing."

"You were about to say something."

"As were you," he replied in great exasperation.

"Very well, then," I sighed. "I was merely going to say that...."

"Yes?" he prodded, the edge of his shapely mouth angling itself into a smile.

"That Captain Crocker is," I said hesitantly, "very possibly...hang it, how shall I put this? He is...."

"He is a minor god," my companion finished for me.

My mouth closed abruptly. Then I began to laugh helplessly. Holmes was laughing as well, I thanked Heaven, the silent, private laugh which wrinkled the corners of his eyes and tilted his head back with merriment.

"You do not think he is--"

"No!" Holmes exclaimed.

"What a waste."

At this remark he laughed all the harder, drawing his legs into his chest and wriggling in his chair.

"The face of that man could cause traffic accidents," I said ruefully. "Did you see his hands?"

"I am a master of observation," he replied, "but I confess it was the expanse of chest which struck me first."

"Good Heavens, I know. And that hair. And he had a--"

"Dimple, but only on the left side of his face."

"Pale blue eyes."

"To be honest, I am not entirely certain how he fit through our front door. He appears to defy the laws of physics."

I bent over double, my chest aching and my eyes beginning to tear. I could hear Holmes leaping from his chair and pouring the glasses of port I had longed for only moments before.

When I raised my eyes, he was holding the glass out to me with a stern expression. "You are not allowed to follow him. He loves Mary Fraser. And you are mine."

"You are not allowed to follow him," I retorted as he took up occupancy between my knees. "She returns his affections, and I am extremely jealous."

"It's a very great pity."

"I could not agree more."

"Think of what the rest of him must be like."

"Actually, I am making a sincere effort not to."

We sat like that for a brief time, slowing becoming aware that we were both exhausted. I rubbed his silken head gently, smoothing the thick black waves arcing back from the elegant point in the exact center of his brow.

"His hands were impressive, but yours are exquisite," I pointed out, drawing one of them up for closer inspection.

"Thank you."

He edged his feet closer to the fire and leaned into me.

"Your eyes are far bluer than his, you know," he observed. "His were rather a seafoam. Nothing comparable to yours."

"If you say so," I smiled.

The fire was fading slowly, but I was not concerned much about it. The room was quite warm, and we would light the one in Holmes' bedroom before much time had passed.

"Did you know," he asked suddenly, shifting his head so he could see me better, "that I adore you, completely and comprehensively?"

I cleared my throat and brushed my hand along the side of his sculpted face.

"I seem to recall you having mentioned something of the kind, yes."

"Ah. I apologize."

"You've no need to. I never tire of it."

"Well, in that case," he declared, sitting up straight again, "I wonder if you would mind joining me for a spot of recreation."

"What sort?"

"To be honest, one or two activities suggested themselves to my mind when the Captain was here."

I could not refrain from a moment's teasing. "I don't know if I like the idea. Will you be thinking of Captain...what was--"

"His first name?" My friend's eyes were still shining wickedly. "Jack. Jack Crocker."

"Jack, yes. I would hate to feel that I am standing in for a minor god."

Rising, he put his hands on my knees and cocked his head with a disbelieving expression. "Thank you. I am very flattered, truly, and I shall not forget the compliment you have given me this evening. But can you seriously suggest that I am possessed of such abstract thought, such detached mental capacity, such absolute concentration, that I am capable of thinking about anyone else while you are in my bed?"

I shook my head in weary amazement, setting my glass on the side table next to me. "With your turn of phrase, not to mention the rest of you, you could have had a Crocker of your own. You could have had anyone. A minor god, as you put it. The most exceptional man in England. You know that, don't you?"

"Yes, of course I do. I have you, haven't I?" he replied softly. Taking my port glass, he twined it into the hand which held his own while he retrieved the bottle on the way to his bedroom. He paused in the doorway to smile at me. "The condition cuts both ways, you know. If you lapse into flights of fancy with the Captain, I will know of it. And I am not speaking of errors so palpable as referring to me as Jack. I will know of it through far subtler signs."

Doubtless he was correct, for I regret to say that my friend's trick of seeing into my thoughts had not diminished over time as I'd hoped it would. This occasionally led to awkward moments on my part, no matter what sort of efforts I made to keep my expression unreadable. I am happy to report that in this particular instance it was of no consequence, however. By the time I had crossed his threshold, the very existence of Jack Crocker had disappeared from my mind.

The Morning After, Part One

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 19:06:20 GMT

Rating: NC-17

About the characters: they are far too good to be mine.

I awoke very gradually that morning, my senses asserting themselves singly rather than as a whole. I could tell from the direction of the light falling through the window that dawn was about to blossom into a fully fledged sunrise, and a few minutes later could hear the twittering of birds on the elaborate scrolled stonework. A vague corner of my mind wondered, from the sensation of the bedclothes, whether I was wearing anything, and the answer proved to be negative. When my hand stirred at last, it struck an object which was surprisingly warm and solid, and in another moment, to my initial shock, I could smell the heady tobacco and fresh linen aroma belonging to the world's only unofficial consulting detective.

Then it all came back to me.

Fragments of the previous night flashed before my eyes, and it crossed my mind that I might yet be dreaming. But no--my muscles consented to move only grudgingly, not the effortless motion of dreams. I considered shifting to my other side, and I considered remaining where I was. Should I stir at all, I was certain I would wake him; the man has the reflexes of a feral cat.

For the moment, I calmed myself by examining my surroundings. Thankfully, I already faced him. He was sleeping peacefully on his back, the faintest shadow of growth beginning on his pale face. One long hand was resting on the pillow beside his raven head, as if he had run his fingers through his hair in exhaustion and his arm had fallen dead from fatigue. The early-morning light illuminated every detail of the room. I could see faint dust-motes shimmering in the air against the ancient velvet curtains, and my friend's eyes shifting slightly in his sleep behind dark, sweeping lashes. He was dreaming of something. I could not begin to imagine what.

Finally I raised myself on one elbow, and in response to my movement the lids slowly opened, revealing fog-grey irises. I had seen them countless times before. As a matter of fact, I had studied them. However, when examined at a distance of a mere few inches, I discovered that they were shot through with lighter silver, and rimmed with a fine dark edge of charcoal.

"Good morning," he said softly. A smile lurked about the edges of his mouth.

"Good morning," I replied. It sounded ludicrous to my ears, but it seemed the only option available.

There was a faint birthmark on his shoulder, a tiny smudge of darker flesh near his collarbone. This, too was a discovery. Wondering idly what it tasted like, I bent my head to find out.

"Did you sleep well?" he inquired when I looked up at him again, his voice rough with disuse.

The formality, or perhaps the normalcy, of the question brought a smile to my face which I made some effort to hide. For the first time since I had come to know Sherlock Holmes, I had not an inkling of how he was going to react to me. The supremely self-confident intellectual I had known for years appeared momentarily to have been replaced by a politely inquisitive fellow whose glancing look contained equal measures affection and shyness. This chap I had never encountered before in my life, but I had no desire whatever to offend him.

"Very well, thank you. Although if I am any judge of time, we can't have been asleep for more than three hours."

"Surely you exaggerate. We retired at eleven."

"Yes, but I seem to recall you having distracted me from any attempt at slumber," I reminded him.

"Ah, yes. My apologies. It is all rather a blur."

"That is undoubtedly odd. I can recall it vividly."

"What part?" he asked, allowing himself to smile more fully.

"I speak of the lengthy interim after you kissed me. You do remember that, don't you?"

"Let me see," he sighed luxuriously, stretching his arms like a lithe and graceful cat. "I do recall kissing you. But I do not recall precisely what it was like, so in a moment, with your permission, I may refresh my memory."

"I will consider it," I granted, my heart quickening quite absurdly, "but I should very much like to know how you worked out that if you kissed me, I would not pack my bags or knock you down?"

"Those scenarios seemed unlikely." He rolled onto his side and threw a leg companionably over my body under the coverlet. "So, to further reconstruct the events of last night, I kissed you. And then you claim I distracted you."

"You distracted me three times," I asserted seriously.

"Heavens," he murmured, his eyes closing.

I ran the back of my fingers over one of his cheekbones. Their fineness, had the rest of his face not been so masculine, would have made him appear even thinner than he actually was. Searching for the words to express myself, I considered several options, discarding them each in turn. I had just made myself flush when his eyes opened again and his brow quirked amusedly.

"What on earth are you thinking?"

"You cannot deduce it?" I deflected, stalling for time.

"Not anymore." He captured my hand with one of his far more elegant ones. "I knew very nearly everything about my friend John Watson, but I don't believe you can technically be considered my friend any longer."

"I suppose the reverse is true as well. That is unfortunate, as we were exceptional friends."

My companion's chest, which was not obscured by the rather sumptuous sheets, brought to mind a marble statue I had once seen on the streets of Florence, a classical rendering of Apollo in pale stone that was cool and soothing to the touch. Wondering what the Renaissance worshipers of the masculine form might have made of the divine being in my bed, my gaze wandered back to his face.

His eyes glowed at me coyly. "What were you thinking about?" he repeated.

"Art, actually."

"Really?"

Opening my mouth, I found myself once again at a loss. "I haven't the slightest idea how to have a conversation like this with you."

"Why not?" he asked, looking suddenly very concerned.

"No, no," I laughed. "Don't be alarmed. But it is going to take some time for me to adjust to the death of our friendship. This is all very new and, quite frankly, terribly alarming."

"I don't know why you should suddenly develop a hesitancy in speaking to me now, of all times," he pointed out, still worried. "You did not appear to mince any words yesterday."

"Yes, I am sorry about that. Well, I am not precisely sorry, but--Holmes, I can speak with you about any topic under the sun, have always felt completely free with you, but my dear fellow, as vibrant and sensual as you are, you have not all these years portrayed yourself as a very...sexual creature."

"Oh," he nodded. When his head moved, his jawline arrested my attention. It was square, determined, chiseled, and exceedingly distracting. "I understand. Well, my tastes in such matters would likely not embellish the admittedly bizarre social standing I now posses. But I do see what you mean."

"I am struggling to come to grips with your--I mean to say with this newfound--intimacy."

"Lucky thing you are a doctor, then, and do not subscribe to needless prudery."

"Yes, I suppose it is lucky."

When I said nothing more, he propped himself up on his elbow with an exasperated expression. His hair was standing at attention and at numerous angles. It occurred to me that if I wanted to reach out and touch it, as I had longed to do thousands of times, I could. This development seemed to me scarcely credible. I swept a portion of it back from his temple. It was fine but very dense, with a silken texture. I had often wondered.

Taking a breath, I ventured, "I was just thinking that I have not been distracted by anyone three times in as many hours since St. Bart's."

I was rewarded for this confidence with a dry chuckle. "I confess I have not found myself in circumstances warranting such ardor in quite some time," he owned. "There are very few gentlemen in the world I find inspiring in the first place, and--" Stopping, he grinned, leaning his head on his hand. "Now, what the devil are your eyebrows doing? No, don't tell me. You are wondering how many."

"I would never dream of asking you any such thing," I protested, rather appalled. I would have to be far more careful than I had proven in the past. Apparently the incorrigible fellow could still read minds despite his protestations to the contrary.

"No, you wouldn't. But that does not mean you are not curious about the past conquests of your friend the heartless automaton. Anyone as deficient in human sympathy as I am--"

"My dear fellow," I protested, although I knew perfectly well I had brought this remark on my own head with my violently antagonistic behavior the day before.

He did not seem angered, however, merely amused. "I admit that you may have to adjust one or two of your notions on the subject. Although you were perfectly right in thinking grit in sensitive instruments disturbs me greatly. Sand in particular. I once spent a night on the edge of the ocean with a rather adventurous--whatever is the matter?"

"Nothing. I am simply making an effort to alter my thinking to include Sherlock Holmes as a man of passion," I clarified, feeling as if any dignity I had once possessed was lost somewhere under the bed with my clothing.

"I've no reason not to satisfy your curiosity. The number is very reasonably small, and happens to be twelve. Do not, I beg of you, volunteer any such information yourself, please. You are the scourge of three separate continents and two genders, and I would not survive the revelation. I do not require my confidence to be decimated before breakfast."

"I don't see why it should be," I muttered, recalling the variety of methods employed upon my person the night before. "You are very, very good at what you do. At everything you do."

This time a faint blush spread over his cheeks, and a subtle blue vein in his neck pulsed visibly. "I am delighted to learn I am not hopelessly out of practice."

"So, the last time you...."

"Sodomized someone?"

"For Heaven's sake, Holmes."

"I beg your pardon, Doctor," he said with a very unconvincing show of contrition. He adjusted the sheet demurely. "Distracted someone. Using any of various methods in my repertoire, a few of which I have shown you. Pray continue."

"Never mind," I said quickly. I was, as the saying goes, all at sea, and this condition appeared to be amusing my companion to no end.

"I rather like you like this," he stated happily.

I bashed his head with an ornamental pillow. This action felt exceedingly gratifying.

"Confound it, my dear, dear fellow, yesterday I was livid at you, I almost think we might have finally come to blows, and this morning you are in my bed."

"That is true," he conceded. "I for one consider it a marked improvement."

"The world has gone mad," I groaned. "I have no desire to pry, Holmes, nor the wish for any further information which I have not earned. I only want to understand. To understand, and to be allowed to grow used to...to you, as you are now. Which is to say, very different from the way you were."

"We could make it four, if you like. Since we haven't risen, I believe it would still be counted in the same session. Four, with a brief respite for sleep. As part of an ongoing effort to allow you to grow accustomed to me," he suggested. Although he did not touch me, he may as well have, for I could feel his eyes burning into me like stray ashes from a cigar. "There are one or two trifling things I'm keen to try."

My pulse began thumping quite against my will. I could see slight marks on his lean torso where my own hands had gripped him the night before. He had drawn one knee up, and his shapely fingers dangled over it languidly. How many times had I wanted to put one of those fingers between my teeth and determine if they tasted of porcelain, or only looked it? How many times had I yearned to explore the exquisite texture of them with my lips and tongue? How many times had I burned for the events set in motion by this cold, incisive, aloof companion, and damn him to hell, for how many years had he brushed past me indifferent, the ties of his dressing gown fluttering behind him? And now, here he was. Mine. I had been shouting at him viciously the day before, and now he was mine. It beggared all belief. I reached for the confounded hand, very likely the appendage which had started all the trouble in the first place, and commenced my exploration at the second knuckle of his ring finger.

Sitting at the impossibly long breakfast table two hours later, alone, I consumed a quantity of eggs and kippers, my appetite strangely enhanced. I was sipping my second cup of coffee when Holmes strode in, his face brightened by the wind. After a quick and efficient survey of the tall windows and a glance at the doors, he leaned over me and kissed the back of my neck until my fork fell with a clatter to the stone floor. He then reached down and helped himself to a taste of my coffee.

"You've sent your telegram?" I asked, praying my voice would emerge normally.

"Yes, I sent a report from Grimpen to Princetown as to the death of Selden. And I have relieved the mind of my faithful young Cartwright. He would certainly have pined away at the door of the hut had I not done so. I shall not be returning to that habitation."

"No?" I inquired.

"No. It is quite unbearably damp, and I don't think you would care for the fact that it lacks a door. I have grown increasingly aware of late of the value of privacy in sleeping arrangements."

"Have you?" I coughed, for at that moment in strode Sir Henry, broad-shouldered and affable, his frank face refreshed and awake.

"Ah, here he is!" Holmes exclaimed. He had placed a hand on my shoulder when he had stolen my coffee, and he did not bother to remove it now.

"Good morning, Holmes," said the baronet. "You look like a general who is planning a battle with his chief of the staff."

"That is the exact situation," my friend replied readily, his fingers pressing into me. "Watson was asking for orders."

I felt as if I were in enemy territory, transported somehow to a hostile landscape in which I must at all costs act normally, but had lost any knowledge of what normal behavior resembled. I have no doubt but that Sir Henry suspected nothing, and Holmes had rested a hand on my shoulder countless times, but it was impossible to sit two inches away from him without recalling that a filigree of blue veins fluttered in his neck when I kissed them, and that when he cried out he sounded exactly as he had once during the sweat-soaked throes of delirium in Lyons, and that just where the bones of his pelvis interacted with his external oblique abdominal muscle, there was a deep diagonal depression which could bring one to a belief in a Deity. The merest thought of the those taught twin lines, in fact, stirred longings I'd been busy satiating all night through.

"When do you desire to go?" Sir Henry was inquiring coldly.

I came back to myself in an instant, replacing my cup in its saucer. Where could we possibly go? Had they been speaking of London a moment previous?

"Immediately after breakfast. Watson will leave his things as a pledge he will come back to you. One grows to rely upon him, I know, but I'm afraid I cannot spare him just now. Watson, you will send a note to Stapleton that you regret you cannot come."

"Of course," I said, utterly bemused.

"One more direction," my friend added to Sir Henry. "Let them know that you intend to walk home."

"To walk across the moor? But that is the very thing you have cautioned me not to do!"

To hide my confusion, I took another sip of coffee. The thought struck me square in the head that Holmes' mouth had been in that exact location moments before, and I lost another few seconds of the conversation taking place above me. When I returned to it, I could not help but curse myself for lack of attention, for I had no wish to endanger Sir Henry Baskerville with my ignorance, and even less of a wish to disappoint Holmes at the close of an investigation.

"As you value your life, do not go across the moor in any direction save the path from Merripit House to Grimpen Road, which is your natural way home."

Sir Henry, of whom as an open, good-hearted fellow I had grown rather fond, looked from one to the other of us in dismay, but as little as I understood Holmes' instructions--indeed, as little as I understood any of the events in the past twelve hours--there was nothing for it but implicit obedience. The baronet fell into a brown study at the desertion of his companions, and although I wished to comfort him, I could not begin to think how. My friend assured Sir Henry that he was not being left in the lurch, but if I had been the heir of the Baskervilles, I do not think I would have believed him any more than Sir Henry appeared to do. We left him staring at the flagstone floor with his brows knitted, Holmes in the lead and I making a valiant effort not to picture my friend in any other guise than that of a well-regarded and highly adept consulting detective.

Thus it was in a state of profound bewilderment that I accompanied Sherlock Holmes to Coombe Tracy. The breeze was pleasant enough, and the landscape of the moors striking in its barren beauty, but the hundreds of questions forming in my mind without my consent left me scant energy to enjoy it. As for Holmes, I grudgingly allowed him his habitual silence. I knew better than to question him, after all--and yet I could scarcely be comforted by the fact that I knew any queries would inevitably avail me nothing.

Young Cartwright met us in town, and retrieved a telegram for Holmes from the station office. He was a fresh-faced young fellow, active and eager, with that confident air of delegated responsibility and enterprise that Holmes so often inspires in children. Shaking my hand gravely, he looked up the length of Holmes' impressive height for further instructions.

"Lestrade arrives at five forty," Holmes reported, placing the telegram in his pocket. "He is the best of the professionals, and I believe we shall need his assistance. Now Cartwright, are you ready for a journey this morning?"

"Always ready, sir," the lad grinned.

"It is one of your more salient qualities, I grant. I wish you to return to London, and as soon as you arrive there, send a telegram in my name to Sir Henry. Here is your fare, and something a little extra."

"Thank you, I'm sure. What'll I say?"

"Tell him if he finds the pocketbook I dropped at the Hall, to send it by registered post to Baker Street. Have you got all that?"

"London, telegram, Sir Henry, pocketbook. I'm already gone, sir," he said, and with a salute to the two of us, hurried back to the station.

"That boy will end up Prime Minister if he's not careful," Holmes smiled. He took me by the arm and we left the station, walking down the pebble-strewn road. It was a gesture so habitual for him, and indeed so familiar, as to make me exceedingly uncomfortable. "I think that we must call upon your acquaintance Mrs. Laura Lyons without further delay."

It was an easy distance to Mrs. Lyon's cottage, and I saw at once her lights were visible from the windows. She received us in her office, where she was replying to her correspondence, and her chin lifted defiantly when my friend opened the interview with his customary cold efficiency by accusing her of having hidden information regarding the death of Sir Charles Baskerville. For all my days in service to his cases, on occasion Sherlock Holmes' utter disregard for the social niceties could still make me writhe inwardly.

"You have withheld the connection between your confessed rendezvous with Sir Charles and the fact that it corresponded exactly with the place and hour of his death."

"There is no connection," she insisted, but her face paled as she spoke.

"Mrs. Lyons," he said rather more kindly, "won't you allow me to set this right? We regard this case as one of murder, and it would pain me to implicate not only you, but your friend Mr. Stapleton and his wife as well."

She sprang from her chair with a cry of pain, and at once sat down again, grasping the arms as if they would save her from drowning. "His wife!" she gasped. Tears started into her eyes, and then she angrily blinked them away again. "His wife! He is not a married man!"

I poured her a glass of water and waited for her grip on the chair to relax so that I might place it in her trembling hand. "Dr. Watson, please!" she pleaded. "He hasn't any wife."

"Here is a photograph of the couple taken in York four years ago," Holmes stated clinically, handing it to her. "You will have no difficulty in recognizing either of them, I think. Here also are three written descriptions by trustworthy witnesses."

"Oh, the monster!" she choked, repressing a sob. Setting the glass down, she placed her hands over her face piteously. "His wife! He has lied to me. Lied in every conceivable way. His wife. Not one word of truth has he ever told me," she wept. My eyes darted to Holmes, but his own were riveted on the lady. "I had imagined it was all for my sake. But now--oh, it is too cruel. I see that I was never anything but a tool in his hands." She turned her face up to Holmes in despair. "Why should I preserve faith with him who never kept any with me?"

To my shock, something in what she said struck my friend profoundly. His face grew whiter, and a slight spasm of pain crossed his features, there for a moment and then gone without a trace. Impulsively, he knelt on the floor beside her and pressed a hand against her arm.

"It is the best of all the questions you could ask, though in another sense it is also the worst. That he used you is manifestly true, and I am sorry for it, but you are right to think he deserves neither your forgiveness nor your consideration. I am not glad to be the bearer of ill news. But insomuch as I can set it right, I will," he swore.

My friend has always been sympathetic to those clients of his who had genuinely suffered, but I had never heard such a heartfelt speech from him in my life. I sat down in a cane-backed chair and watched him, turning his words over and over in my mind. Inexplicably, I grew increasingly distressed, but soon enough I'd pinpointed the cause: I had always imagined I knew him better than anyone. Indeed, knowing him inside and out had all too often filled the void left by loving him. And yet here he continued committing act after act as little like himself as I was like Sir Henry.

Questioningly wearily if I had ever really known him at all, any particle of him, I sat in silence as Mrs. Lyons poured her heart out before what had once been the world's most isolated man. The news of the Stapletons' designs struck her hard, but she soon recovered enough to devote herself wholly to Holmes' cause. He, in turn, displayed his usual courtesy, palpably altered before my eyes by an astonishing level of genuine warmth. He no longer touched her, but the sight of his active hand resting pensively against his face brought still more tumultuous memories to my mind as I struggled against increasing fatigue. The afternoon shadows were lengthening into great swaths of grey when I departed with him an hour later, convinced I had somehow fallen down Alice's rabbit hole.

We walked down the street for nearly a minute in silence. When Holmes stretched out a hand absently to take my arm again, I must have flinched at the touch.

"What is it?" he asked immediately.

"You startled me," I sighed. "That is all."

"I've never startled you in that way before," he retorted calmly. We resumed walking. He thrust his hands in his pockets and looked down at the path with a frown settling between his brows.

"Why should it perturb you so? I am anxious, and out of sorts, and quite possibly hallucinating this entire day."

"I have seen you anxious and out of sorts, and forgive my observing this isn't the same." He smiled at me, and I am not doing him an injustice to term it a wicked smile. "It isn't as if I'm going to bite you."

Terribly salacious thoughts flooded my mind, and I only managed to surface with an effort. "Let us just say that you have done a great many things since last night which utterly confound me and leave it at that," I replied testily. "At this point, I should hardly be surprised if you did bite me."

"No, that would not have startled you. In fact, you quite liked that, as I recall."

"Holmes," I warned him.

"Not that the pleasure was one-sided, I assure you. The base of your spine could prove a Holy Land for me."

"For the love of God, Holmes, we are on a public street," I hissed at him. The commingled feelings of vexation and flattery that he would say such things to me were growing intolerable.

"A deserted public street, and in Dartmoor. I am sorry. Truly, I am, and for a number of things, but I cannot pretend to understand."

"Has it never taken you a period of time to grow used to a new subject?" I demanded, my patience beginning to wear thin. "Are you really such a mechanical savant? Were you born able to perform advanced chemistry? Speak French? Accept the fact that--as disconcerting as it might be to face it--you may as well never have met your dearest friend for all you know of the man?"

Far from taking offense, he merely laughed at my distress. "I am a very great deal less intimidating, complex and beautiful than either advanced chemistry or French."

"Not--" I began, and then stopped myself. Not to me, I could have said. Not then, not now, and so far as I could judge, not ever. But saying it was another matter entirely.

"Damn it all to hell," he snapped suddenly, stopping in the middle of the road. "Come with me," he ordered. He seized my arm once more and reversed our direction, now taking us down a side path away from the main portion of Coombe Tracy.

I asked him no questions. Indeed, I felt marginally more comfortable than I had all day, since being ordered about by Sherlock Holmes is a task with which I am well acquainted. We'd walked for three or four minutes when he left the path, strode through a scraggly swath of moor grasses mingling with mud and stones, and threw open the door of a very pleasant if abandoned-looking barn. The door was lost in the shadow of a moss-encrusted oak, but I could see from without it was not in frequent use, although well laid in with hay.

"What can you be thinking?" I questioned coolly.

"I am going in this barn," he said, more calm now than he had been. "You can either accompany me and I will ease some of the tensions so manifestly surging through you, or you can go back to the station if you're careful not to be seen, or stay just there and guard the door against chickens while I indulge in a little sleep. I won't pretend it's all one to me, for I admit I crave your company. You cannot go back to the Hall. But if you wish me to leave you alone, I will."

I considered, mollified somewhat by his sympathetic tone. "I have always, and still do, prefer being with you to being alone."

A tight smile lit one corner of his face at this. He turned around and walked through the gate. When I had followed him, my eyes adjusting to the pale light, he shut the door and barred it from the inside. The air was cool and surprisingly fresh, for there were gaps in the slats forming the walls and the roof. Holmes made his way to one of the unoccupied stables, and seeing no better options, I followed him. It was impeccably clean, its stock of horses having likely been only just traded or sold.

"I've a minor proposition for you," he stated, leaning back against a convenient post and lighting a cigarette.

"Have you indeed?"

"Yes. The point is this, my dear chap. I believe that I am making you uncomfortable, and I should like to make it up to you one way or another."

I made an effort to read his eyes, but he was looking at his cigarette. "I suppose you have already thought of a way," I remarked dryly. Breathing in, I found myself grateful for the distracting clean odours of hay and lumber.

"If you are against it, we shall think of something else," he dismissed me, waving smoke in the air. "However, this is what I propose. We have some time to spare, and I will do whatever you like within these walls. Nothing barred whatsoever, my dear Watson--anything you desire to do, we shall do it, but you are going to have to ask me. Aloud. For everything."

It was not the proposal I had expected--I had hoped deeply for some explanation of the previous night's events--but now it was on the table, it decidedly drove all others from my mind.

"And what do you imagine that might accomplish, apart from the obvious benefit of passing the time?" I inquired, attempting to look as if his idea had not stirred my loins considerably.

"One, you will shed a measure of the caution I've unfortunately engendered in you over the course of our friendship. I take full blame for it, please believe me. And two--well, I also will benefit, I promise you, though in another way."

"How do you know I may not order you to do something you would not enjoy in the least?" I demanded. "After all, as I said, I am beginning to feel as if I've never met you."

I felt not only aroused, but patronized, I grant. I knew myself to be annoyed at Holmes for any number of reasons, including residual rage, and even more incensed at myself for continuing to blush every ten minutes like a child caught with a toy which does not belong to him.

He shrugged languidly. "I don't believe anything in our present environs could inspire you to acts beyond my limits. I've no great affinity for beatings, but that strap on the wall hasn't any metal in it, and thankfully there are no horses within the building."

I did not dignify these twin observations with a reply, preferring suddenly a view of the swept earth floor. Holmes laughed at first and then shook his head as the same odd expression of pain crossed his features.

"Dear Lord, what have I done to you all this time?" he muttered.

"I am not like this with other men," I remarked coldly. "I am not callow, nor am I easily shocked, I assure you. You have asked me not to share any stories, and I am delighted to honour that wish. But you must know that, as questionable a topic as horses and strappings may be, this is a reaction to you, not to deviant sex acts."

"No, I--that is to say, it is unlike you," he agreed, frowning in serious vexation before quickly relaxing his face.

"I've no wish to hurt you, but--"

"Never mind hurting me," he snapped. "You're welcome to hurt me. God knows I've hurt you enough."

"That is not what I meant. Holmes, are you actually asking me to beat--"

"No, I am not," he assured me, "although I am in earnest when I say I'd allow it. You'll learn, if you have the stomach to continue this experiment for any serious length of time, what I am like when left to my own devices. All I am asking is to do what you like. You know me to be a rather domineering sort of fellow, and as you may have noticed, I cannot say I am much different in bed than I am out of it."

"I've no complaints in that regard, but Holmes--"

"I wish to be in your hands, and short of placing this verbal requirement on you, I cannot be sure my actions won't affect your choices. Do not imagine I don't know what I have been to you over this length of time. I am cold, and calculating, and imperious, and for all you know heartless, and my reserve has apparently wrought a rather profound effect on you."

I did not respond immediately, but I could not help but be grateful for his completely unprecedented candour. Then some of my own words from the day before came back to me, and I understood better the strange silvery glow lighting his eyes as he awaited my response.

"You aren't heartless," I said gently. "If you were, you'd have chosen another profession. And I would have chosen another friend."

"Thank you," he said with a disarming depth of sincerity. It so bemused me, I lost my capacity for words once again.

"Well, are you interested?" he murmured at last.

"There are very few things about you which do not interest me," I confessed through my teeth. "I believe that may be a part of the problem."

"Go on, then," he said softly. He crushed the cigarette very carefully against the post before tossing it into the hay. "Explore at your leisure."

He did not look smug, I know now, as he leaned back against the post once more and crossed his arms expectantly. I only half convinced myself he appeared smug at the time. In all honesty, he looked shy, but it is just possible that if I had not still been experiencing waves of anger at him, I should never have embarked on the experiment in the first place. Removing my jacket only, I draped it over the wood.

"Your clothing, everything you're wearing above the waist," I said at last. "Take it off."

His lips curled in a lopsided smile which he quickly suppressed. Then he turned around. And immediately after that, my entire world changed for the rest of my days. I do not know in what way I'd expected him to comply. In addition I had forgotten that the night before, the lights had been dimmed and my senses overpowered by shock. But something about what he did that afternoon took my breath away completely, and I have never once gotten any closer to getting it back.

He undid his cufflinks with two swift, economical motions and placed them carefully in his waistcoat pocket before hanging his frock coat on a nail in the post. His tie, which he also took his time in removing, he folded and deposited in one pocket of his trousers. Then with perfect ease, as if he were about to step into a bath, he removed his cuffs, curving them over the half-wall, and proceeded to unbutton his waistcoat with one hand--his right--while he unhooked his watch chain with the other. After the watch was safe and the waistcoat hung, he addressed both hands to his shirt front. Through it all he was so inexplicably, gloriously himself; he did not glance down at his buttons, for he did not need to do so. He unfastened them from top to bottom without a single motion wasted. He acted as if he did not know I was there, and even still it was a performance, an impeccable performance, and my urgings were all the stronger due to the fact I had never so openly watched him undress before. At last he drew his shirt and undershirt off, the muscles of his back rippling beneath as he hung the fine white fabric over all the black. When he had removed his belt and tossed it to the ground, he turned around to face me.

"I think you had better come here," I breathed.

The moment he was within reaching distance, I pulled him into me, bringing his black head down. His lips parted when I kissed him, and my fingers brushed against every surface, all the contours of his pale flesh, studying the structure beneath the impeccable frock coats and the ancient dressing gowns of the man I had loved for so long I wanted to shake him. I drove my tongue into his mouth, the world dissolving around my ears.

If he had intended I demand he kiss me in return, he had apparently forgotten, for he leaned into me hungrily, his hand coming up to cradle the side of my face as my fingers explored the washboard ridges of his fleshless stomach. At last I broke away with an effort.

"Kneel on the ground."

He did so at once, neither kneeling straight up nor resting back on his heels, but hovering at a slight backwards angle on impossibly strong thighs. The encouraging smile on his reddened lips parted as I opened my trousers.

"Put my cock in your mouth."

The moment I said it, I knew he had been right. And the moment he obeyed, closing his eyes as if I had been the one granting him a favour, I knew what the success of the experiment, as he called it, meant to him. A night of passion can be conducted with relative grace, as ours indeed had been, any small mistakes disappearing in the flood of new sensation. But I was more to him than that, I was beginning to understand. He did not want me if I was afraid of him, and I respected him so ardently we had both mistaken it for the same thing.

I could not restrain a shuddering moan as he swallowed me, my hands in all his ebony hair and his own questing fingers, frustrated by my clothing, sliding under my shirt and up my chest. For a little while, I gave myself over completely to sensation. But I did not want to be alone in my pleasure any more than I wanted to pleasure myself.

"Wait--slower. Open your trousers and touch yourself."

The little gasp which hitched his rhythm when he complied more than a thousand times compensated for what he no doubt perceived as an imperfection. It stirred the ache in my chest as surely as if he had struck me, and I wanted more of him. As much as it was, it was not enough. I caught his face with my hand, my thumb slipping into the edge of his mouth as I pulled away from him.

He looked surprised, but it melted when I knelt before him, pressing my chest against his, snaking my arms around his slim form and kissing him deeply, urgently. Both his hands came up to encircle the back of my head, and minutes passed which seemed like days while we did nothing more than taste each other, his lips as soft and subtle as his body was hard. He is so long in the torso that even kneeling he was two inches taller than I, and when one of my fists closed around both our members, his head fell back with a stifled groan and I buried my lips in his neck.

"Yes," I whispered. "You may feel free to make that sound as often as you like."

I felt him smile when I kissed him again. I had resolved to take my time. My mouth traveled everywhere it could reach, from his birdlike collarbones to his glazed china shoulders to his solid pectorals, one hand gripping us in a slow rhythm while the other clutched at his hips. Just when I had elicited a breathless murmur as my tongue grazed his nipple, I felt if I did not pay some attention to the most perfect back I had even seen, I did not deserve the privilege.

I swung around to his side. His legs were parted by perhaps a foot, and I knelt between them. Holmes was in one sense right about me; I had been with a number of men before him, and women as well, occasionally even during our seven-year period of platonic partnership. Some were friends, and some were strangers, and occasionally I had experienced what could be considered a lover. But I had never been with a man whose every motion put me in mind of a panther, whose straight, flawless spine traversed so many dips and knots of muscle, who gasped softly when my arms were enfolding him and I bit his neck, who had a little triangle of three moles perched above his matchless shoulder blades. Perhaps it was because I loved him that I found these things miraculous, but I do not think so. Objectively speaking, he is breathtaking.

Reaching forward, I took him in my hand once more, producing a very gratifying moan. As I stroked him, I could feel him shuddering, but he held himself under perfect control, neither driving into me nor resisting me, perhaps in a effort to keep himself from the edge. The ache in my own groin wanted nothing more than to see him half-mad with pleasure, and I found myself pushing his trousers down and before wetting my fingers in my mouth.

"Put your hands on the floor," I requested breathlessly.

As he did, he swept all the hay away so that his palms were on the dirt. It was such an endearingly idiosyncratic gesture, I could easily have declared myself his for the rest of my days, but instead I gripped him harder, pressing a finger inside.

He is a vocal creature, and though he tried his best to muffle it, he cried out nonetheless. I do not know how he kept himself in check so long, but when I added a second digit, he at last thrust himself into me, as if his body were finally no longer his to command.

"Tell me what you want," I begged him.

"No," he gasped.

"Do it," I pleaded. "For me."

"Take me, then."

"Are you sure?"

"If you are waiting for me to say please, you have the wrong man," he returned hoarsely.

It was enough. I spread the moisture over my weeping member and drove into him slowly, inexorably, biting my lip until it was nearly bleeding in an effort to keep some control over myself, to think beyond the stars in my vision and the pleasure spreading back to my spine. When I had pressed myself to the limit, he was suddenly up once more, his back to my chest, leaning his head behind him until his smooth-shaven face was pressed against mine.

He cried out softly again when we moved at last, both of us balancing, my two hands on his pelvis to help steady him, as if he needed any such assistance. I could do little but struggle for breath, my lips against his neck. He threw one long arm up to caress my head, his other fingers twining into my hand on his hipbone. Our pace was like a brakeless train on an incline, slow at first but irrevocably gaining in speed. I honestly do not think I could have held out for longer than a few thrusts had we not just relieved the same urges four times in succession, but when the sweat at length trickled between his shoulders, and the sight of his face, eyes closed worshipfully while he murmured things I could not catch but prayed to one day, became too much for me, I moved our woven hands to pull insistently at his flesh.

The effects were instantaneous. As he died, pressing his back into my embrace while waves of release possessed him, I followed. My cry was not entirely stifled by my love's back, but I swore to myself it made a difference. I held him until we both were still, and then for a little longer, and then I reluctantly sat back on my heels.

I quickly located a pocket handkerchief in my sleeve and handed it to Holmes. "Are you all right?" I asked, coming to his side.

He was flushed and heavy-lidded, his mouth quirked into a fond smile. "I'm fine."

"You're certain?"

"My dear chap, I am not made of glass. As you are a physician, you're welcome to check, but I am perfectly all right. Apart from the fact that this isn't the simplest posture to maintain for nearly an hour."

Laughing, I stroked his shoulder. "Then come lie in the hay with me."

"No, I fear I must decline that invitation." He folded the cloth and replaced his undergarments and trousers. The light had changed, and a shaft of sun struck his breast at a dramatic angle. The rosy glow about him, in the light of day, was incredible.

"You really don't wish to be near me?" I am far from the most sentimental man in England, but the overpowering fear that my friend's aloof coldness would be the ruination of me forced the question from my lips.

He glanced at me in surprise. "Of course I do. But I--"

I did not wait for the rest of the sentence. Instead I knocked him over, catching him in a rugby tackle which drove both of us into the nearest pile of hay. When I had rolled him onto his back, I lay my head on his shoulder. He was rigid and tense for a moment, but soon wrapped his arms around me.

"I must be rather fond of you," he remarked when I drew back far enough to look into his face. "I don't allow that to happen very often."

He was not talking about rugby, of that I was certain. Closing my eyes, I hid my countenance in his neck under pretext of kissing him, but perhaps a quarter of a second too late. He was already laughing, laughing silently and heartily, and when he saw that I had noticed it, he covered his face with one hand and laughed all the harder.

"Four of the twelve."

"I didn't ask you anything!" I protested vehemently, feeling myself flush once more.

"Not with your tongue," he agreed, "but if you expect to play your hand rather closer in future, you are going to have to get your eyebrows under tighter control. I must reiterate my desire to avoid any reciprocal information. I know what military men are like."

Glancing up at him with my hand on his abdomen, I said, "I have never in my life been with anyone who compares to you."

He kissed the top of my forehead at that, his eyes closing in his habitual staving off of any profound sentiment. Then he paused to breathe in the scent of my hair. What on God's earth had happened to change him so profoundly I did not know, but from that moment I loved him enough to allow him to take his time in telling me.

"Did you derive the benefit you anticipated from the experience?" I asked.

"I should have thought that was obvious."

"No, I mean--earlier you said it would do you good. But you didn't know what I was going to do. For all you knew, I was about to give you twelve of the best and leave you tied to a post."

"Forgive me for saying that I know my Watson well enough to have assumed no lasting harm would come to me," he smiled, running his thumb over my cheekbone. "And I will tell you all about why it did me good. I promise you. But just now, I am a trifle too exhausted to begin it. And in a moment, I am going to have to beg a favour of you."

"Anything," I told him.

"I require my shirt, please."

"Anything but that," I objected. Lying there with him in a pile of hay, wearing all of my own clothing while he was naked from the waist up, was somehow more intimate than the two of us entirely unclothed in a bed the night before.

"I am afraid I must insist upon it," he requested.

"But why?"

"Because I am going to develop a rather impressive scarlet rash in a moment."

"My dear fellow!"

I strode to his shirt at once and handed it to him. When he leaned forward to pull it on, I could make out what appeared to be tiny red whip marks all over the flawless back I had five minutes previous been adoring.

"Why the devil didn't you tell me you had hay fever?" I asked.

"It's only topical--since I was five or six and fell into a loose bale in the barn. It'll be gone in half an hour."

"I'm so sorry," I apologized, sitting on the ground with him. "I ought to have noticed you were avoiding it. In fact, I did notice, but I never knew you reacted to hay."

"You've never buggered me in a stable before," he grinned, and then glanced up to register my reaction. "That's better," he approved when I only smiled at him.

"I cannot believe it took until 1889 for me to discover how exceedingly filthy you are," I observed, shaking my head.

"I cannot believe it required five instances of near-Bacchanalian sex for you to adjust to the notion," he teased me in return.

"Are you going to continue this running tally for long?"

"Actually, I hope one day to lose track."

When I could not find immediate words to reply to this wonderful remark, he reddened slightly before springing gracefully to his feet. Walking over to the post, he began to reassemble himself into a British gentleman.

"Holmes?"

"Yes?" he replied as he donned his waistcoat, the black and pewter damask making his eyes shine like precious stones.

"I should like one aspect of our relations to return to the way they were."

When he froze, I realized what I had just said and jumped to my feet. "I did not mean it that way--please, let me explain. I have merely come to terms with one of my challenges as regards this...well, you called it an experiment. In any case, I won't stand for it if we can't be friends."

"I see," he said thoughtfully. His hands returned to work on his buttons while he considered my words. "The sort of friends who share detective work and a flat in London and the occasional dinner at Simpson's?"

"And sod one another in stables as often as they can."

He laughed so hard at this that his mirth actually emerged in the form of sound, which was very unusual. "You aren't angry at me any longer," he said softly, when his merriment had ceased.

"Anger has been supplanted by bliss, confusion, mortification, and delirium."

"I do not mind when you are annoyed at me, or when you are cross," he admitted, "but yesterday--oh, confound it all."

"What is it?"

"We are nearly late for Lestrade. Come along, my dear chap, and we'll just meet his train."

"But Holmes, you're a mess," I said, a touch of fear striking me. "I believe I may well be a mess myself. How will we explain it?"

"I shall think of something," he whispered as he leaned down to kiss me.

"You don't seem to me as if you are thinking very hard," I pointed out when his arms slid around my waist once more and his mouth moved to my throat. "I happen to know what you look like when you are thinking, and this is rather far removed."

"I," he said, punctuating his words with soft caresses of his lips, "do not. Care. What. Lestrade. Imagines."

"Ought you not to care, just a trifle?" I asked, my hand at the base of his neck.

"The man is incapable of abstract thought," he smiled, turning away at last. "Come along, dear boy. No harm will come to you. Of that, please believe me, I have always made absolutely sure."

A Man of Questionable Morals II

Sat, 10 May 2008 21:59:35 GMT

In the ensuing mornings, we fell into a pattern which might better be termed a dance, for when one would give ground, the other would take it as if we were partners in a formal waltz. I would inquire of Holmes how he slept, and would receive a caustic or non-committal reply. Or alternately, when I managed to bite my tongue, his head would rest itself upon me at some point in the day, and I would know without asking he was being driven harder in his sleep than most men could stand when awake. Thus the circles beneath his beautiful eyes deepened, and thus I ached with knowing that the only thing in my power to do--that is, to leave, and determine whether he might do better in my absence--would be construed as utter desertion.

There was one morning when, as I turned wearily in my slumber, a queer feeling wakened me, and I opened my eyes to discover him staring at nothing as if the world had dissolved. Terrified of jolting him out of it, I could do nothing more than keep watch until a tiny spasm in his fine features signaled the end of the ordeal for that night, and he simply winced in exhaustion and reached for my hand.

"You belong here, with me," I whispered to him. "You are mine. Stay here."

"I am doing my best," he managed, before he fell back into the half-slumber of the utterly spent.

It was a week or more before the case was finally resolved. In the interim, what with the false arrest, the imprisoned governess, the stirring revelations regarding the Tiger of San Pedro, and our own intense private worries, I myself was assuredly the worse for wear when our stay in Esher came to an end. Baynes acted most inscrutably throughout the entire affair, but had worked out fully as much as Holmes by the time Miss Burnet escaped her captors.

"You've got the very evidence I want," Baynes declared when Holmes sent for him, his tiny eyes gleaming. When we had delivered it, he shook Holmes' hand, turned and shook mine just as graciously, gave orders to see that the poor weakened Miss Burnet should be cared for before delivering a statement, and removed his heavy bulk from our room at the inn.

"There's something in Inspector Baynes I can't quite understand," my friend said the next day, tossing me a hair brush from across the room as we packed our bags.

"I do not particularly care for him, but at least he respects you," I pointed out, making an effort to be fair.

"You don't have to care tuppence for him any longer," my friend replied. "We're going home." Smoking his pipe in his shirtsleeves and dressing gown, he stared out the window with no more life in his face than a statue whose features have weathered away.

When we arrived back in London, after a few days had passed, we were called by telegram to sign statements regarding the murder of Garcia. The weather was improving, and I convinced Holmes to walk most of the way to the Yard, thinking the exercise might brighten his spirits whether he desired it to or no. So it was that we came to be approaching the entrance to the building on foot when my friend suddenly caught my arm in his wiry grip.

"That cannot be--Mr. Eccles!" he called out. "Mr. Eccles, is that you?"

I could scarcely believe my eyes. It was all I could do to prevent myself from crying out in dismay. The man Holmes had hailed was indeed Scott Eccles, but he was a far cry from the dapper, comfortable creature who had spoken so coquettishly at Baker Street. When he heard his name, he cringed visibly and seemed about to flee, but was hampered by a painful-looking limp and instead turned his face toward us. One eye was swollen fully shut, rich with purple bruises, and I could easily tell by the way he moved that his injuries were still more extensive elsewhere.

"Mr. Eccles, what in God's name has happened?" my friend exclaimed.

"I--a mistake, Mr. Holmes. A very great mistake." He seemed for a moment to be nearly in tears, and then recovered himself. "I took a wrong turning. A gang set upon me. Now, as I have given my evidence in the Garcia case, I must be going."

"But are you quite all right?" Holmes insisted. "And did you lose anything by it? Have you any idea who's done this to you?"

These questions, kindly posed, seemed to pelt Eccles like sharp stones. "I lost my dignity by it, that's undisputed," he whispered, "but nothing more. No, I have no idea who--"

"I can help you," the detective offered softly. "Tell me what occurred."

"Oh, no! I could not possibly," he whimpered. "I--I am not a rich man, Mr. Holmes. It would be a wild goose chase, I am sure of it, and I haven't the resources. Three men set upon me in the dark. I know nothing more."

"But it would not cost you a shilling; you are already my client."

"I really cannot be detained, sir."

"My fees are fixed," Holmes protested, but Eccles, seeming nothing less than panicked, commenced waving frantically.

"Very generous, very generous, but nothing you can do. Good day to you both," he nodded, and then hobbled as fast as he could manage in the opposite direction.

Holmes stood chewing his lip for several long moments as we both looked after him. At last he sighed, glanced at his pocket watch, and turned back to take my arm.

"An alarming story, that," he said. "Did you see the mark on his cheek just below his temple?"

"Why, yes," I replied slowly, as I pictured it. "There was a laceration, as if he had been struck with something pliant."

"But that did not cause the bruising."

"No. Dear God, Holmes, these roughs must not have been concerned with how much time they were taking."

"If he does not wish me to help him, there is nothing I can do. To say nothing of the fact he may well have been right--likely enough the search for such scoundrels would have been futile in any case. But I do hate to see any client of mine come to such a bad pass."

"London can be a dangerous place. He mentioned a mistake--perhaps his interests took him to a part of town in which gentlemen are not welcome. Or perhaps his clothing made him a target for robbery and assault."

"Perhaps," Holmes acknowledged. "Perhaps." He cleared his features as if dismissing the topic once and for all, but I could not help but notice he was even more than usually laconic that afternoon, and scanned the newspapers a second time before abandoning them for a glass of port and his beloved violin.

The next day, after the dishes had been cleared from our midday meal and Holmes had finally mustered the energy to exchange his dressing gown for a frock coat and tuck a simply tied black knot under his collar, Mrs. Hudson rapped at the door.

"It's that inspector," she said to us. "The one called Baynes, Mr. Holmes. Shall I send him up?"

"Certainly. Thank you, Mrs. Hudson," my friend replied, frowning a little in confusion.

Mr. Baynes soon appeared in our doorway, as bulky and out of place in London as he had been ponderous and dignified in the village. Our guest breathed heavily from his ascent, but held out a vigorous palm to his fellow detective.

"So glad you're in, Mr. Holmes! And the Doctor too, I see. That's all to the good."

"Do sit down," Holmes offered.

"Thank you, sir. Thank you; I felt the need to speak to you at once, and I heartily apologize for any interruption."

He sat down with all his air of slightly puffy composure and regarded us in undisguised curiosity. I was struck once more that I did not like this shrewd country inspector, not in the slightest degree, not for the way he leaned back against our cushions as a man will do when he has a right to take what liberties he pleases, and not for the way his beady eyes kept darting between my friend and me.

"It was cleverly done," Holmes complimented him after an awkward silence, leaning against the mantel and lighting a cigarette. "Arresting the wrong fellow. It does not show that strict adherence to formalities that so slows your colleagues. I cannot say I thought it strictly moral, but the ends, sir, provided your justification, as it were."

Baynes only stared at Holmes, drawing a copious snuff box out of his pocket and taking a pinch of it. I had already determined not to bandy any words with this peculiar official, but when he remained silent Holmes and I exchanged a tiny glance of bemusement.

"Moral, Mr. Holmes?" he said at last, with a smile. "Moral, sir? No, there I do not disagree with you. It was not strictly moral. But you, sir, and your companion, no doubt, are well versed in many arenas in which morality plays no part."

I had reached for a notebook upon my desk lest there be any talk of the case, but at this incredible statement I turned back to Baynes in astonishment. A queer prickling of apprehension washed over me, and I found myself glancing once more at Holmes. He stood perfectly calm, smoking quietly while the tendrils of smoke wreathed above him.

"Naturally we are," he said with an easy smile. "We are criminal investigators. As are you, I need not remind you."

"Ah, but that is not quite what I meant," Baynes replied. "I had intended to imply your own...flavour, perhaps, of immorality was a particularly grotesque one."

"An admirable word, grotesque," my friend answered with a tight quirk of the lips which did not reach his eyes. "Pray tell us what you mean by it."

"I mean, of a similar ilk to that of Mr. Scott Eccles."

My heart was pounding quite madly by now, beating against my ribs like a hammer, but I sat upon the edge of the settee with a grim determination to remain calm. For Holmes, on the other hand, remaining calm appeared to cost no effort whatever.

"It is an interesting implication, but I cannot grasp its sense," he said. "Mr. Scott Eccles appears to have no outstanding vices other than being unforgivably dull."

"Oh, on the contrary, Mr. Holmes," Baynes argued, "he is a man quite teeming with vice. The things he is willing to do with other members of the same gender, for example, are not ones easily discussed in polite company."

"Scott Eccles? Now you are surely joking," Holmes exclaimed with a light laugh. "And not a very good joke, may I add, if it does not offend you, Inspector."

"It does not, for it is not a joke. You ought to know that I took the liberty of searching your hotel room during your stay, you see," he continued sweetly. "While you were out. There were certain unmistakable...traces."

The rush of fear I had experienced when I understood what Baynes knew turned into a sickening influx of sympathetic pain when I realized, all too vaguely and yet all too clearly, what had happened to Scott Eccles. I nearly choked upon the very thought of it. There are men who would prefer not to think of men of my disposition, certainly. I hold no quarrel with them. And there are also men who are angered by such things, to my regret. But here sat a monster, my instincts screamed at me. Here sat an absolute depravity of a man, and a man who seemed to think us helpless before him. What he intended I knew not, but I did know that our current situation was in many ways worse than any other Holmes and I had ever faced together.

Holmes drew upon his cigarette, pulled out his pocketwatch, looked at it, and snapped it shut again.

"What do you want? You have five minutes," he said quietly, crossing his arms.

"I want what you want, Mr. Holmes," the fiend smiled. "That's the beauty of it, you see. I want nothing out of concordance with your tastes, I assure you. I do not want money if that's what you're thinking. It's services I'm after. I merely want you, and the Doctor here--separately, of course--to give me a small portion of your...time."

"Our time?" Holmes repeated. A flicker of loathing crossed his features, but at once his mask returned. "Separately?"

"Well, let us rather term it your undivided attention, perhaps."

As if my heart were not fluttering rapidly enough, at this remark it skipped a beat entirely. Holmes had turned quite two shades paler than even his usual colour, but his cigarette hand was perfectly steady nonetheless.

"Or what?" he asked, cutting to the point at once.

"Or I will expose you before Queen and country," Baynes stated with evil relish.

To my shock and even greater horror, Holmes merely stood there, continuing to smoke as if the proposal was distasteful yet not out of the question. I, conversely, was picturing myself striking the miserable creature before throwing him bodily down the stairs. I opened my mouth to speak, but at once my companion, who had clearly been watching me in his peripheral vision, gave me such a fiercely forbidding look with eyes sharp as steel that my jaw closed instantly.

"What could be simpler?" Baynes continued, still smiling. He was enjoying himself immensely. "It is not as if deviants of your type harbour any emotional attachments, so this little task I speak of need not seem daunting. I am not asking you to do anything you have not shown a relish for in the past, after all."

"Surely you do not mean here and now."

"No, of course not. But soon, Mr. Holmes," he chuckled. "Very soon."

My friend left the mantelpiece briefly to pace before it. "I am afraid you must indicate to me just how...invasive these sessions are likely to be."

Baynes considered this question, possibly the most sickening question I had ever heard my friend pose in years of murder investigations. "In your case, not particularly," he reflected, gazing over Holmes' sensual mouth and stroking his own lip with one swollen finger. "Please do not feel slighted, but I should not think we require longer than half an hour. But your friend," and here his devil's eyes darted in my direction, "is a fellow rather more after my own heart."

"Is he indeed?" Holmes asked with unearthly ease.

"Let us say, three or four hours with him and we shall call it even," he finished.

I have faced a great many dangers in my life with aplomb, but I am not ashamed to say that what had begun as extreme anxiety was spinning into a vortex of nightmarish horror rivaled only by devil's foot root. There was no room for thought, only animal reaction. I stared at Holmes with every protest I could place in my eyes, but he failed to look at me. He merely nodded slowly.

"Are you certain you wouldn't prefer I deal with the brunt of the exchange?" he inquired. "The Doctor is stunning, I'll own, but I am considered quite an adept in some fields."

"No, Mr. Holmes, although I thank you. We will stick to the original request, or your will both find yourselves in a very tiresome situation indeed. What do you say?"

"I do not see what choice we have in the matter."

Baynes clapped his hands together merrily. "No choice at all, Mr. Holmes! No choice at all, merely a hardship which for the two of you is no hardship at all."

"If I find you have harmed him--" Holmes added warningly, with a measure of pleading in his voice.

"Oh, Mr. Holmes, what do you think me? A monster? He will recover," he finished with a gruesome smile which caused my heart to drop into the region of my kidneys.

I would thrash him senseless, I thought, and I would lose no time about it. Then I hesitated, stomach lurching in protest. How could I even entertain the notion of retaliation when he could so readily expose the one man whose life meant more to me than all of London, and Heaven and Earth besides? Three or four hours. How long had Scott Eccles endured? Had he been bound first, or submitted by force of will? It could not be borne, and I knew it. I tasted my own bile at the back of my throat.

"Give me an address where this transaction is to take place," my friend requested.

"That is easily done, sir. 661 Old Laurel Street is a private establishment which is well known to me."

"It is not unknown to me either," Holmes acknowledged. "I take it you are often in the city if you claim it is a familiar haunt."

"I find that the city does, indeed, have its uses, Mr. Holmes. As it happens, I will be in town until Friday. When you arrive tomorrow night, ask for a Mr. Godwin to admit you. Say that you have an appointment with a Mr. Starr. When your friend comes the next night," he added, flashing me a hellishly cold smile, "he may ask for the same."

"Make a note of it, Watson. And the address."

"Holmes--"

"Do as I tell you!" he snarled, and then threw his cigarette in the grate.

I made the note. My hands were steady, just as Holmes' were. But my hands were not the part of me torn with blinding pain.

"Mr. Baynes," Sherlock Holmes said after I had finished writing all the hateful instructions, "you have been remarkably frank with us. Please permit me to do the same for you, so as to save all parties concerned the maximum of discomfort."

"By all means, Mr. Holmes," our enemy grinned.

"Well, then, Inspector Baynes, I thank you very much for this data you have provided me. And I also thank you for having made a distinction between Dr. Watson and myself. Because you have drawn a line between us, I shall do the same for you."

We both stared at Holmes in puzzlement, for his voice was growing more ringing by the moment. "If you ever in your life make such a proposal to me again, or if I hear tell of your having made such a proposal to another man, you will find very suddenly that you have committed a series of crimes. There will be, I assure you, incontrovertible evidence to this effect. The jury will find you guilty and you will spend 20 years in the dock, unless my mind alters and you are sent to an Australian penal colony."

The demon opened his mouth to protest, but Holmes silenced him with an upraised hand and a voice nearly shaking with rage.

"If, however, you make any such overtures to Dr. Watson again, you will find yourself part of another sort of investigation entirely. I will see to it, sir, I swear to you I shall, that your body will be rendered quite unrecognizable before it is dead, and that after it is dead it will be scattered to the four corners of the earth in such minuscule lumps that the rats of London will not consider a morsel of you worth their time. Do you understand me?"

Our guest rose from the sofa trembling with anger and distress.

"You cannot bluff me, Mr. Holmes!" he cried. His entire being appeared to have deflated somehow.

"You think it a bluff, do, you?" Holmes said icily. "Should you like to find out?"

"What can you be thinking? It is madness! Your career, your work--I will ruin you," the Inspector vowed, but sweat was standing out upon his brow, which had turned ashen as our fireplace.

"Try to ruin me," my beloved friend suggested. His voice was furiously passionate. "I would like nothing better than an excuse to enact my latter proposal."

"You filthy sodomites are all cowards," he sneered at us. "A word from me and your very life is over! Is that truly what you intend to choose?"

"You ask me that as if the proposal is still under discussion. From one filthy sodomite to another, having heard that I purpose to rip you to pieces, have you truly any desire to make yourself so vulnerable before me as you intended to do tomorrow night?" Holmes asked him cuttingly.

Baynes threw open the door and glared at the pair of us.

"You have not heard the last of this, Mr. Holmes," he said more quietly, more hatefully than any statement I have ever heard pronounced. "It was a mistake to threaten me."

"It was not a threat. It was a vow. As God is my witness, I will tear you apart," my friend swore.

In another moment, we were alone once more in the sitting room. Baynes had closed the door behind him with a vengeance. Dead silence prevailed for perhaps five seconds.

"Bravo!" I cried out with all the passion of my roused soul.

"Put your gun in your pocket," Holmes replied frigidly. I approached him with two hesitant steps.

"My dear fellow, I--"

"Don't touch me," he ordered. I stopped in my tracks. He then grasped the nearest object, which just so happened to be the poker which Dr. Grimesby Roylott had once abused, bent it savagely in half almost to the point of snapping it, and then tossed it disgustedly in the fireplace.

"I am sorry," he began again, running his hands over his face. He was quite haggard, I noted with dismay. I have no doubt I looked the same. "I was not myself. I meant to say, please, when you venture to leave our rooms, for God's sake put your gun in your pocket."

"Holmes," I said gently, my eyes misting despite my best efforts to spare him the sight, "may I--"

"I am sorry for the second time. Of course," he said, and a moment later I had him in my arms.

I am afraid we did nothing but hold each other for a solid minute. Finally, I could keep it in no longer.

"I have never in my life admired one of your performances more."

"You were worried," he countered with a tiny smile.

"Of course I was."

"Yes, of course you were." He laughed once, without a trace of humour. "Dear God," he muttered to himself, and then, as if it were the logical next step, lowered himself down to the floor next to the hearth and the twisted metal within. I could think of no better arrangement. I joined him a moment later and we both sat upon the rug attempting to make sense of what had just occurred.

"That was possibly the most revolting conversation of my adult life," he said. He was beginning to regain a trace of colour, but only because he had just bent a poker in half.

"I certainly cannot imagine a worse one."

"Let us refrain from trying."

"My dear fellow, I feel nothing but wholehearted admiration for every word you said, but do you really think you are capable of beating a man to death and then hacking him to pieces?"

"I hope I never find out," he returned bitingly. "In the meanwhile, I cannot be expected to take part in casually scheduling your rape without revealing a measure of distaste at the prospect."

"No," I said, flushing deeply--not at his words, but at those of Baynes, which I recalled all too clearly.

We sat in silence for some moments.

"Thank you for trusting me," he said at last, and with a simple gratitude that quite took my breath away.

"Holmes, you did not think--after what happened in Cornwall--that I would not--"

"Not consciously, no. But what a man intends to do in such a moment and what he does are two different matters."

"I trust you with my life," I told him fervently.

"Yes, I know," he said, his voice breaking, and then I understood what my blindly following his orders once more had meant to him. He was suddenly quite as moved as he had been that terrible day in the country.

"Then surely you know that cannot ever be changed, radix pedis diaboli or no."

He returned with an effort to the glib persona which nearly everyone but me mistakes for the real man. "I do, and you put me in an embarrassing position, squiring around a chap who cannot manage to learn from his worst mistakes. I've bandied your life about so in the past, one would think you'd have gathered enough data to know leaving it in my hands is a bad idea. If you had an iota of sense--"

"Then I'd be married, and have a thriving medical practice. "

At this remark, he laughed freely, a laugh I had not properly heard in some weeks, and I was so grateful for the sight that I felt if I loved him any more my heart would break with it.

"I am very surprised that he was not more interested in you than in me," I confessed.

Holmes shook his head, looking completely mystified. "I never do get your limits, my darling," he quipped.

"What on earth do you mean?"

"If your moustache was not trimmed very neatly indeed, I should think you had never encountered a mirror before in your life," he replied, exasperated.

"That's quite enough of that."

"No, really, there is modesty and then there is deliberate ignorance."

"Well, in any event I am very glad the situation was not reversed. I would not have been able to conduct a conversation bargaining your body for our freedom without bashing his head in with the poker you just finally destroyed."

"Very gallant of you, I'm sure, but then I would expect nothing less from a war hero," he smiled. "My virtue could not be in better hands."

"I believe you are mocking me," I theorized.

"I assure you I am doing nothing of the kind," he retorted. "From the moment I laid eyes on you, I knew you for a war hero. I believe my first remark to you may even have been something to that effect. Yes, come to think of it, it was. I always did long for one of my own, you know," he added, eyes sparkling with mischief.

"If I am a war hero, I am a very poor one. But such as I am, you're welcome to me."

"Thank you. My collection may be small, but I would not trade it for anything," he said softly. "And I can fix the poker, if you like. I've grown rather fond of it."

In the midst of our return to normalcy, the terrible revelation returned to me. "My dear Holmes...."

He searched my face with new concern. "You are still worried."

"I am still dreadfully, exceedingly worried. I am able to face my troubles like a man, but that does not make me any less worried. Holmes," I breathed, as a wave of nausea threatened to unseat me again, "what has happened to Scott Eccles?"

He released a slow breath, reached out, and grasped me by the hand. "I don't know, my dear fellow."

"Do you think--"

"Yes."

"So we are in agreement."

Holmes looked nearly as ill as I felt. "He was violated somehow. And no, there is nothing we can do for him. But stop a moment--forgive me, love, but why the devil am I prating like a fool when I could be putting an end to this?" He jumped up, strode to the desk and retrieved a telegraph form, and then seized my notebook to assure himself of his facts.

"You cannot call down a raid on that house!" I protested angrily, scrambling to my feet. "Think of the harmless--"

"For all your having trusted me five minutes ago," he chided me, scribbling on the telegraph form. When he had finished, he handed it to me for approval. "Read it."

"'There is a Police Inspector in your midst,'" I quoted. "'He goes by the code name of Starr. Have him followed if you desire proof. As you value your freedom, remove him from your house. --A Friend.' Well, yes," I concluded ruefully. "That ought to do the trick."

Holmes had returned to his telegraph form book and was busily scribbling another message.

"What is--"

"My brother. We are going to see what he can do about this monster of an inspector."

"Oh. But you mustn't--" I eyed him curiously. "I mean to say, Holmes, about your brother--does he know about us?"

"I have told you he is my superior in observation and deduction," he said with wry evasion, beginning to recover himself.

"That is not an answer."

"Well, what would I deduce if I watched my own brother keep the same company day in and day out, allowing the same man every privilege of his time and intimacy, only possessing eyes for him over the course of many years?"

"It's possible you would deduce your brother was having a lengthy affair with another man," I granted with a sheepish expression.

"No," he said forcefully. "Given the evidence I just provided, I would deduce he was more dedicated to spending his life with him than are ninety percent of the legitimate marriages in England."

Tears started into my eyes once more, senselessly, but before I could speak Holmes glanced up and said, "Hush," his tone at once firm and fond, and rang for the page.

"Holmes--"

"Not a word. Here are the telegrams. I am going out, and you are staying here, so please give them to Billy when he answers."

"Why am I staying here?" I inquired.

"Because it is just possible that I may alter my appearance at one of my rooms and--"

"You are not pursuing Baynes without me!" I cried.

"I shouldn't dream of it," he replied, seeming to have entirely recovered both his energy and his hauteur. "But I am disguising myself and infiltrating a men's bordello without you. I have the password, after all. Apparently one has only to ask for a Mr. Godwin to be admitted."

I eyed him furiously, shocked as I had been countless times at how quickly Sherlock Holmes could move me from blissful regard to heated animosity and vice versa.

"Did you really just stand there and tell me, having dragged me through the mud and the snow and the rain on countless occasions, that your case leads you to a perfectly comfortable club filled with men who will doubtless throw themselves at your feet, but that I am remaining behind?"

"You will wait up for me, won't you?" he smiled. It was the smile of a cat who knows it is revered as a sacred animal.

"The devil I will."

"Watson," he said firmly. He closed the gap between us and then suddenly passed me by and had encircled me from behind. I could feel one slim limb snake around my waist as another grasped me by the hand and pulled it so that my arm was fully extended. Then, very slowly, my hand was pulled back until his lips met the backs of my fingers.

"I am going to a den of vice as a complete stranger, a stranger justly curious about an old acquaintance of his. I will ask a great many prying questions of many close-mouthed individuals. I will certainly flirt with them, and thus a partner in the enterprise is rather less than desirable. They must think me alone. Some of them will be quite forgettable, not doubt, but then some will surely be exceedingly attractive and some of these, it is true, may take note of my not inconsiderable charms. Hands may wander. Eyes will be lowered, voices hushed. I will resist all, however, for while I am eliciting the information I seek, surrounded by wanton men ripe for the plucking, I shall be thinking of all the ways in which you will be enacting vengeance on me when I arrive home."

Somewhere during this languid speech several slow kisses had been delivered to my hand, and at once point I am sure he bit the back of my neck, but I cannot be expected to recall when. As soon as he had finished, he flicked the wrist which still held my hand and spun me away from him as if we were waltzing, stepping with one lean leg behind him as a punctuation mark.

I have danced with the world's most revered consulting detective twice in my life: the first time he had scoffed after a long-dreaded society function that there had not been a man present who could move with any subtlety and I took the liberty of doubting him; and the second time he had traded the activity for two months of silence on the subject of his at times nonexistent appetite. He dances like he fences, which is to say effortlessly. It grew several degrees less possible to despise him.

"On the next occasion, I infiltrate the brothel and you remain at home," I declared.

"We can discuss the possibility, certainly," he smiled. Then he strode to the door, rummaging his pockets for his keys. "If you go anywhere, put your gun in your pocket, and return here by midnight. I will certainly be back by that hour."

"You realize thinking of you in a den like that makes me--"

"Furious? Aroused? Possessive? Yes, I realize it. I am counting on it," he stated with aplomb, and in another moment the impossible rogue who had just in the space of five minutes both declared us married and announced his intention of seducing a variety of strangers for information had shut the door behind him.

Holmes reported back to me in great detail that night, for he was given no choice but to do so. I made that very clear to him, I am afraid. He strode wearily through the door smelling of more than one variety of French cologne and allowed himself to be mercilessly interrogated rather than find himself alone for a number of hostile days. Baynes was indeed known at that establishment, and my friend surmised that his twisted desires demanded a constantly growing roster of victims, for it did not appear that he ever received the same guest twice. While I was pleased that Holmes evaded no questions about what he had discovered on Old Laurel Street, I ought not to have been surprised that he steadfastly refused to reveal what he intended to do with his new information, and so I remained quite as concerned over Baynes as I had been that afternoon.

As for the techniques Holmes had employed to gather data, he was all too willing to provide salient details of his minor successes. By the time I had allowed him to regale me with stories in which he was the object of all too many strangers' desires for nearly an hour, and he had dropped the casually wicked remark that I was surprisingly angry for a man who clearly did not intend to take any actions to prove his point, I was so maddened by combined feelings of arousal and ownership that I took him to bed in a far more dictatorial manner than was usual for us. This, I realized all too clearly, had been his exact intention all along, but Sherlock Holmes is so very rarely in the mood to be dominated that one must grasp the opportunity when it exists.

The next morning I rose, bathed, and dressed long before he did. Then I paced the carpet trying to work out if what I wanted to do would cause more help or harm. For nearly half an hour I could not decide, but at last I threw the end of my cigar in the fireplace and determined that to try, as difficult as it was, would be better than to remain idle. To remain idle was absolutely impossible.

"I am going out," I called to my friend from the sitting room. "I shall see you this evening."

"Put your gun in your pocket," came the affable reply.

My hand was already upon the doorknob, but I made an abrupt about-face and retrieved the weapon from my desk. I did not think I would need it, but bringing it along served two very important functions: if Holmes was right, it could save my life; and if Holmes was wrong, at least he would not fret himself into a foul humour by the time I'd returned.

When the cabman had taken me to the location I'd specified, I sat in the hansom as the horses stamped in the still-frosty air quite at a loss over how to proceed. My welcome, I knew, would be minimal, not to say non-existent, and I wondered as I sat what the devil I was doing there, on that quiet, respectable, poplar-lined street in Lee, and what is more why I felt secretive and sly in not having confessed my errand to Holmes. At last I shook myself and reflected that Holmes informs me of his intentions two or three times out of ten, and reluctantly descended from the cab.

I knocked at the shining wood door attempting to ignore the discomfort which had seeped into my breast. I might not be wanted, after all. In fact, I would very likely not be wanted. But I had to know for myself that this was true, and so rang the bell and handed my card to the elderly housekeeper, who graciously instructed me to wait in the hall. A few short minutes passed before my host came slinking into the foyer with a haunted terror in his visage. The housekeeper had not returned, and I surmised she had been sent to a distant corner of the house.

"What do you want?" he asked without preamble, licking his lips nervously. "The case is over. My evidence has already been entered. You could not possibly desire more of me, and I tell you without hesitation that I want nothing more to do with the matter. Are you alone?" he added suddenly, panic streaking across the eye which was not swollen shut.

"Holmes is not here," I said gently. "Neither is--that is to say, I am entirely alone. Mr. Eccles, I have come because I thought you might have need of a doctor."

He was silent for some time, schooling his features into a more casual arrangement. "I--I need no doctor. You presume too much, sir. You presume a great deal."

"I am sorry if that is true," I told him. I took in his appearance once more and my heart fairly writhed for the man. He looked as if he had not shaved in days, and eaten in perhaps the same period. He held himself awkwardly in every way, as if battered nearly to pieces, and his eye must have startled his housekeeper out of her wits when she'd first witnessed it.

"Mr. Eccles, I must make a confession to you. I thought it possible that you may want me here, in light of recent events."

"What events?" he demanded, trembling all over.

"Mr. Eccles," I said once more. It is a technique Holmes uses. He states the names of clients as if lowering an anchor, although his voice is far more ethereally charming and soothing than mine could ever be. Picturing his spare form and his brow quirked in sympathy, I made a great effort to sound like him.

"I believe that you have been made the victim of an evil person, and I believe that the nature of the attack made it impossible for you to consult a doctor. I am here because I am a doctor. And I am also here," I finished, trying with all my might to exude an air as calming and clarifying as Holmes, "because, as I think you know, I am like you."

The poor fellow stared at me for some moments, fear and pain fighting for supremacy in his jowled face. "What do you mean by that?" he whispered at last.

"I mean that there is nothing you could tell me that will shock or dismay me, and that I am here to listen. To listen, and to tend to your injuries if I you will allow it. I hope you will allow it, sir," I added. I did not sound like Holmes anymore, for the emotion I could not hide had at last crept into my voice. "I hope it very much."

Perhaps I cannot emulate my lover's hypnotic charms to any great effect. I am a poor actor, and I have no doubt but that I made a bad job of it. I have often wished for a measure of his ease in times of trial, for his air of total assurance that he can make it right in the end. No matter how much I tried to impress Scott Eccles with these qualities, doubtless the result was but a poor shadow of the kind of relief merely talking with Holmes himself can provide. But in the end, it did not make a difference, for I believe it was the fact that Scott Eccles could see my distress writ plain upon my features which at last led him to grasp me by the hand and hold it as if it were the only thing left in the world.

When I arrived home that night, Holmes was lying on the sofa with a monograph in his hand and a glass of spirits at his elbow.

He looked up when I opened the door. "Where have you been?" he asked curiously. Then, when I had entered and he could see my features in the light, he sat up suddenly. "That devil of police inspector has not--"

"No, no," I said wearily. "I have seen nothing of Baynes, if that is what you're thinking."

"Good," he declared dryly. "I can confine my criminal career to housebreaking and reserve murder for another day."

I said nothing, tossing my coat over the back of a chair and pulling at my shoulder, which had begun to nag at me far more than was usual due to the tension running through every muscle in my body.

"My dear boy, come over to this settee, sit upon it like a good fellow, and tell me what errands have so marred your day."

"There it is," I sighed. When I sat next to him and leaned my head on his shoulder, he handed me his glass and I drained it at once.

"There is what?"

"That tone. The one you use when clients are terrified and women are hysterical and I am out of sorts. I tried to borrow it for a brief period this afternoon, but I don't imagine I carried it off very well. I envy you that tone very much sometimes, you know. It would be useful for a doctor."

"Well, we must be grateful each for his own qualities," he said philosophically. With his arm around my shoulders and my head resting on him, I was beginning to feel more myself, and also as if I might break down into a very unwelcome fit of emotion if I was not cautious. "Upon whom did you attempt to employ my dulcet persuasive techniques?"

"Upon Scott Eccles," I said hoarsely. The only sound in the room was the fire crackling for several seconds.

"I see," he said at last. "My poor Doctor. And this is the result."

"You don't approve," I said. I meant the tone to be cold. Instead, I could hear my voice nearly faltering. "You said there was nothing we could do for him, and I thought, perhaps I could--but for you the case is over, the client out of our lives. I should have known you wouldn't approve."

"Of course I approve," he told me, sounding vaguely hurt. "Would you truly be sitting here if you thought me the sort of chap who would not?"

"I am sorry," I said miserably. "That was unfair. I am not angry at you. But I am so very, very angry, Holmes."

He held my head to his shoulder with light, tender fingers. "How is your patient?"

"He is not well," I choked out. It was all I could manage.

"No," Holmes replied softly. It was his mesmeric voice once more, and I could feel it pour over me like soothing oil on my rigid shoulders. "No, I am not surprised to hear that. He could not be otherwise. Did he allow you to tend to him?"

"Yes. His injuries are...grotesque." I laughed bitterly.

"There has always seemed to me to be but one step from the grotesque to the horrible."

"You were right. I patched him up as best I could. Then I left him with instructions."

"Then that is the second most valuable thing you have done today," he murmured into my ear.

"It did not feel very valuable. It felt quite useless," I protested, so enraged at the world that I felt I could not bear it. "Dear God, Holmes, the man cannot even consult a physician other than one who forces his way inside. He cannot speak to the police about having been horribly maltreated. His attacker cannot be convicted of any crime!" I stopped myself, if only to stop my heart from pounding so. "I examined him, and I treated him. Pray, if that is the second most valuable thing I've accomplished, what in hell is the first?"

"Making Scott Eccles aware he is not alone."

I breathed in deeply and tried to relieve what felt like a band of iron around my chest. I turned my face still closer to Holmes' shoulder, and the fabric of his dressing gown, smelling of pipe smoke and vaguely of fine milled soap.

"Do you know," my friend said, still in his most calming manner, "how very valuable that is?"

"I suppose so, abstractly," I sighed. "I cannot seem to feel it, however."

"Extraordinary," he remarked.

"What is extraordinary? That I feel quite dead to the world?"

"No, that is nothing like extraordinary. It is extraordinary that I occasionally assume I could not possibly admire you any more than I already do, and then you go and do something like this."

"You admire me?" I could not stop myself from repeating incredulously. I had admired Sherlock Holmes for so very long that it quite shocked me to learn the feeling could be mutual. That he loved me I never doubted, but admiration is a separate state, and one which did not seem to apply well to myself.

"Yes, I admire you. I have always admired you." His eyes, I saw when I looked up at him, were slightly amused at my shock. "You did not guess as much?"

"No. You have never seen the need to write short tales in which I am the hero, or follow me about learning my trade," I said. "But the sensation is more than mutual, I promise you."

"Shall I tell you what I have been doing, then?" he asked.

"By all means."

"As I told you before, when I went to the private club on Old Laurel, there were a number of fellows who informed me that they'd suspected Baynes of being rather a sinister character. The fact that the men who would meet him there were never the same twice was not surprising to anyone, but I have no doubt but that their fear and desperation were more evident than Baynes should have liked. In any event, one chap informed me that the Inspector had once victimized a young man whose dress and manner led him to believe the fellow was of a higher class than the sort of people Baynes habitually consorted with. Of course, for the aristocracy, keeping such a vice secret is of even more paramount importance than it would be for the likes of you or I, so the lad quite naturally sought no revenge against his abuser."

"I do not consider you a vice," I corrected him. I drew his hand up and kissed the tips of his fingers. "But continue."

"That is very kind of you. Habit. Preference. I beg your pardon. Well, to be brief, I have discovered the identity of the poor chap. It was an easy deduction to make after my source provided me with a few more details and I had scrounged around a little in the records for unresolved assaults on that date. In fact, I had only to trace him through Baynes if I had desired to do so, for his palatial manse was on the list of exceptionally large houses in that part of the country where we just solved the Wisteria Lodge affair. He is from a very prominent family, and one that was appalled when they learned, for so they were told, that their offspring had been set upon by street roughs and barely escaped with his life."

"You have surely not disabused them of that notion?"

"No, indeed. But Baynes made an unforgivable error, my dear fellow. He was in charge of the investigation into this poor lad's thrashing. He must have thought it quite neat, as he naturally failed to solve the case. However, Lord Harringby has just been informed by yours truly that his son's investigation was very poorly and shoddily performed, which is quite easy to prove because it has the virtue of being true. Therefore I am enormously happy to announce that Baynes is quite likely to be an ex-inspector within a matter of some few days, and at least he will no longer wield the additional power which comes of employment by the Yard."

"Well done indeed," I cried with more enthusiasm than I had imagined I possessed a moment before. I leapt to my feet with the joy of the news, and stood there gazing at Holmes' spare, perfect form, astonished by my own display of energy.

"The links were simple enough when one--"

"Of course they were not simple. You are incredible. I can scarcely believe you could have accomplished such a thing so quickly."

There is nothing my friend enjoys more in the world than spontaneous, heartfelt praise. When a stranger or a client sings of his miraculous powers unexpectedly, he smiles without thinking and nods his head in appreciation, though his eyes remain metallic and aloof. When a friend from the Yard is shocked into admiration, a very slight blush creeps across his cheekbones and he looks for all the world as if he had just been given a four thousand pound reward. As for the way he looks when I do it, I would not trade the innocently delighted expression for anything under the sun.

"It was nothing. A crude enough ploy, surely."

"It was inspired!" I crowed. "I can hardly credit it. You knew nothing whatever of this man's previous atrocities other than Scott Eccles, and within two days you have discovered a perfectly legitimate way to ruin his career. The act may not even be tied to you."

"He will guess at something, as it is a profound coincidence," Holmes said wryly.

"You know, my dear chap, it is becoming clear that you are a dangerous man to fall afoul of."

He laughed softly. "There are safer men to bully, it is true. I am only saddened that it appears I am the first to have refused his repugnant orders. His prior victims were chosen with rather more discernment. But now that I have sent him away with a decidedly bruised ego, I swear to you I will not stop persecuting the scum until he has been rendered both miserable and harmless."

"A question."

"By all means."

"This source of yours. Is that the fellow responsible for your hair having been in the condition it was last evening?"

"Yes, the men are one and the same. You see that the results stemming from his information are remarkably valuable," he pointed out in his own defense.

"The end justifies the means?" I asked him ruefully. "Your morals are not improving."

"No," he said contentedly. "They spiral ever downward."

"Oh forgive me," I exclaimed. Sitting down on the carpet, I situated myself between my friend's knees. "I had so very much to occupy my mind this morning that I forgot to inquire how you slept. You were still in bed when I left, I could not help but note."

"Odd that you should mention it," he returned slowly. "Very well indeed."

"No dark visions?" I asked, daring to hope it could be true.

"Not a one, and you will forgive me for re-emphasizing that such things require time, and are likely to dissipate of their own volition. The drug seems to be wearing out its effect. Perhaps the symptoms may recur periodically, but at the very least I can cease dreading their nightly return."

I exhaled a long sigh of relief and ran a hand over the muscle of his calf. "They will never return, Holmes. Thank God. You banished them just as you banished Baynes."

"The toxin ran its course, you profoundly fanciful and endearing idiot," he countered irritably.

"You did it," I repeated, smiling. "You and you alone."

"For a medical man, you are as mad as a March Hare," he declared. Picking up the monograph once more, he returned his attention to arguments logical and concrete in nature.

But for once in our lives, I knew better than Holmes. There is nothing so terrifying as self-doubt, and when conjoined with a malevolent hallucinogenic, nothing so destructive to the mind. I had trusted him. I had trusted him, he had seen me do it, and he was himself again. My friend has occasionally experienced disturbing nightmares since he threw ex-Inspector Baynes our of our flat, but none which lead him to question his reason, now that he no longer so agonizingly questions his ability to defend our little realm of two. For defending us is the one role which flows so deep through him that without it, his entire world is reduced to the senseless grotesque of nightmare.

"Oh," he remarked offhandedly. "I was telling you how I spent my day. I also re-arranged one or two pieces of furniture."

"Did you?" I replied idly, and then slowly allowed my curiosity to pique. "Which ones?" I could see nothing from my angle on the floor.

"Mmm. The bookshelf."

"Why?"

"I exchanged its position with the desk."

"Really?" I queried, savouring the question. "The desk no longer faces the window?"

"No," he replied, utterly absorbed in his slim volume. I allowed him to turn two pages before I spoke once more.

"I've a length of silk cord in a drawer upstairs," I observed innocently.

"If I were you, I would fetch it," he stated calmly, "as well as refilling the glass which I allowed you to drain on your arrival."

I am not a man to follow another man's instructions without weighing their benefits, nor am I a gull to be duped into blindly taking whatever actions are suggested to me by my neighbors. However, there is one man--albeit a man whose morals do not stand up to the most minute scrutiny--whose orders are, the vast majority of the time, both sound and potentially quite beneficial. It did not take me long to do as he asked. It never has, I am afraid; but despite having encountered many monsters in my life, I am still here. I do not delude myself that my friend is infallible, or that one day we might not encounter a foe too difficult to face down. One day, we will quit the city and take our leisure in the countryside, and one day much later each of us will answer what Holmes refers to somewhat ironically as the call to something higher. Until that day occurs, however, I am at his service. It is my greatest joy and privilege, even if he does not appreciate hearing the sentiment stated aloud.