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His tea was cold.
There was something in that, though Watson could not figure out what it was. His tea was cold and there was a pain behind his eyes that was throbbing abominably and his fingers were itching for dice.
He sighed heavily and stood, stretching his stiff leg and starting to pace slowly around the room. He could hear Holmes plucking morosely at his violin, hear him get up and throw something on the floor, hear him collapse down on the bed again.
And Watson waited, waited as he did every night. He knew that Holmes had dosed himself again, was pacing about his room with frantic energy and Watson could not, would not go to him. Not while he was under the influence of such poison.
This was how it went, how it always went when Holmes had finished a case and refused to take another. Watson would watch and worry as Holmes grew increasingly frantic and distracted and lost, and then he would lock himself in his room and Watson would wait. The way he was waiting now.
He pretended not to know why it affected him so. He knew why, but he pretended that he did not.
There was a period, when he came home from the war battered and broken and utterly lost, that he thought it would have been better if he had not come home at all. He knew better now, was less apt to let himself spiral into that sort of melancholy because he was a doctor and an Englishman and a soldier. Less apt, but it was still there below the surface, ready to pull him down again.
When he had lost so much after Peshawar, after his injury and the resultant fever, after he’d lost what he thought was his one great love, he had been sure he was going to die with the ache of it. It was much worse than simply being in fear of his life. And then he had been sent home, back to England and sweet blessed London with its yellow smog and noise and bustle and life. He had not felt as if he would ever be able to return to real life. But he had, somehow, by some miracle whose name was Sherlock Holmes.
He clearly remembered meeting Holmes in the laboratory at St. Bart’s, young and handsome and vibrant and real. Watson had never met anyone like him. The ease with which they had agreed to share rooms seemed to him a wonderful surprise, an eventuality he had not quite expected from the way Stamford hedged and the way Holmes looked at him with strange bright eyes. He knew that he would have to keep away from the seedy boxing rings and the flop houses where men threw dice for coin in order to keep these rooms, to keep this new and fascinating roommate.
He did not stay away, as it turned out. Holmes had his own set of vices, and once Watson was well enough, they went out to those places together, in rough shirts and trousers with caps pulled low over their eyes. Watson knew he should not, but he was not in practice and his money was heavy in his pocket and his mind itched for the thrill of the wager. And Holmes would box, stripped to the waist and covered in sweat and other men’s blood. When Holmes boxed Watson would pretend, for delirious stolen minutes, that Holmes was boxing for more than the wager, more than the thrill of winning, more than a dark twisted desire that Watson could only half understand. He would pretend that Holmes was fighting for him, that they were more than flatmates and sometimes partners, more than a half pay army ex-surgeon and a half mad detective.
It was over to quickly, it always was. Watson would collect his winnings and help Holmes upstairs to the bare spare room that Holmes kept for heaven only knew what reason. Watson would scrounge for clean linens and beg for clean water from the barmaid and set about patching Holmes back up. And he would never admit that he relished it.
Those nights, when they were back at Baker Street and Holmes had gone to what Watson grudgingly admitted was rest, Watson would shut himself up in his room and lay staring at the ceiling for hours, waiting for sleep to come. As a rule it did not unless he took himself in his hand, reliving every movement, every blow and dodge and trickle of sweat that raced its way down Holmes’s chest. When he came, on those nights, hot and shameful and desperate, he willed himself to stillness and let unconsciousness take him like a smothering blanket. In the morning he would wake and wash and dress and pretend that everything was fine, that he was not in love with his flatmate, and that he was a perfectly respectable doctor who happened to share digs with a madman.
It had been nearly a week since the last time Holmes had gone out to box, nearly five days since he last left his rooms, and Watson was growing more than a little concerned. So he did what he always did when he was worried about Holmes, he paced. He paced and watched cups of tea grow cold and smoked his pipe and watched Gladstone sleeping off another drug induced haze.
Some nights, when he was desperate and he felt sick at the thought of his bed and the long night of needy wanting, he would sit outside Holmes’ door and listen. Listen to Holmes pacing and throwing things and muttering to himself about musical theory and Baroque art and obscure 14th century Italian poetry. Watson would lean his head against the door and hold the fabric of his jacket tight in his fist and curse himself for a fool. Gladstone would sit with him sometimes, his head a comfortable weight against Watson’s thigh, and Watson would wish that he could do better, be better.
In the morning, when dawn came pouring into the windows he would rise stiffly and return to his own bed, carrying the poor abused bulldog and curling around him protectively, as if he could shield him from the hurts that plagued his master. When he saw Holmes next he would dissemble as best he could, pretend he had had a restless night or was up reading a medical journal or a yellow backed novel until the small hours to explain his paleness and the dark circles under his eyes. He was sure that Holmes saw through him, sure he knew and thought him a fool. It was what he thought himself, after all.
Watson did not know how long he was going to be able to continue. There were already cracks in his carefully acquired facade, enough that some of his regular patients noticed and commented that he appeared unwell. He was quick to reassure them, always with stories about long nights or embellished tales of Holmes’ adventures or to pass off his utter exhaustion as simple restlessness. He did not know if they ever believed him; but they pretended and he pretended, and they continued to seek him out.
It was not healthy nor right, he knew, but he had come to terms with his own sinful predilections long ago. Before the war, before Murray and the poor rent boys in India and and his dalliances with other dapper young soldiers, he had not thought himself a deviant. When he and Percy Phelps grew close it was no strange thing for school boys to relieve some of the tension with each other, in stolen moments in their studies, behind closed classroom doors, late at night on the grounds, but he never lost the taste for it. When the other boys began to talk about the pretty maids they were courting and passed around battered photographs of pale, soft girls without their clothing or engaged in many and varied acts, Watson did not understand the appeal. He knew that he should, knew that he would some day take a wife and have a family, but there was something garish about the images, something wrong in the way the other boys talked.
Later he would realize with the sort of gut wrenching clarity, that he was not like the other boys. That women, despite their obvious charms and aesthetic beauty, did nothing to stir him, did nothing to inspire passion the way the older boys at school did, or later the way the young soldiers in his regiment did. It was a torment when he finally realized how he was different.
He had come to accept it, after the war took so much from him it seemed wrong to force himself into the life of a normal Englishman, someone who took a young wife and fathered children and had a medical practice. He could not offer enough, could not be enough, to have that life.
Instead he came home and lost his pension gambling and found digs with a madman he was desperately -achingly- in love with, someone who took his elbow and pulled him into alleyways after criminals, someone who played the violin at all hours, someone who poisoned himself with morphine and cocaine and far more shag than a normal man could smoke. But Watson could not help it.
So he waited. He paced, while Gladstone looked over at him with a forlorn expression from the tiger rug, and watched his tea grow cold and stared at the locked bedroom door. He told himself that this time when Holmes opened the door he would confront him, confound the man, and shake him until he saw reason. He would not, of course, but this is what he told himself.
One day, he thought, telling himself would be enough.