Chapter Text
Tuesdays
Part 1
Watson kisses Holmes on a Tuesday. It’s raining buckets and they are both soaked to the bone by the time they stumble across the threshold of their Baker Street home, giddy and breathless from their impromptu dash for the safety from the downpour and giggling like a couple of teenagers.
The wet tip of Watson’s cane slips on the polished floor and he wobbles in place, arms windmilling in a quest for purchase. And suddenly Holmes’s arms are around him, a reassuring solid hold. And he finds himself pressed flush against Holmes’s body, the other man’s warmth searing through his soaked fabric. And Holmes’s face is right there before him, flushed with exertion, wet hair plastered across his brow, dark eyes twinkling with open mirth… And Watson suddenly forgets how to breathe.
He isn’t sure how it happens, he suspects the rational part of his brain simply blacks out for a moment. But suddenly his lips are on Holmes’s and it is Holmes who stops breathing, eyes impossibly large and open and… wanting.
And then they are both rushing up the stairs by some mutual silent agreement, barely able to wait long enough for the door to close behind them before they start ripping off each other’s clothes. Reason ceases to exist for them in that moment in time as they move together in feverish, dizzying, thought-eclipsing harmony. It’s blissful, and it’s perfect, and it’s right, it feels so goddamn right!...
***
And then morning comes, lazy and sun-streaked, with Holmes sprawled naked and gorgeous beside him, one arm draped over Watson’s midriff…
And Watson panics.
He loves Holmes, he realizes. Loves him so much that the idea of not being with him hurts worse than the Jezail bullet that tore into his thigh all those years ago. But this can’t go on. Not in this day and age. Not with how the law and the general public view a relationship between two men. Not with what that same law might do to either of them if they were ever found out.
He decides it would be best for both of them if they nip this impossible, unattainable thing between them in the bud.
He begins to pull away. Comes up with hundreds of excuses to be otherwise engaged when Holmes invites him on a case or for a walk. Buries himself in his work, running off to see clients at all odd times. Takes care to avoid Holmes as much as possible.
It’s pure torment in the beginning, with every inch of his body, every bit of his soul yearning and reaching for Holmes. But he soldiers on. Ducks away from the questioning looks in Holmes’s dark, piercing eyes, his heart shattering when he sees the light in those eyes eventually dim in silent resignation, the man’s expression closing off, becoming the cold hard mask he puts up for the rest of the world.
It’s for the best, Watson tells himself, even if his soul cries out at the loss of that other Holmes, the beautiful, brilliant, kindhearted and fragile being that Watson had been privileged enough to know intimately, to call a friend, and, for a few blissful, unforgettable (and, sadly, unrepeatable) moments, also his lover.
He meets Mary about a week later, the daughter of a patient he was called on to treat. And she is pretty and charming and safe. It’s for the best, he thinks again, and lets it happen.
***
They’ve been on five dates, he and Mary, five proper and pleasant (and boringly safe) dates, when Holmes decides to confront him. And Watson had been expecting it, had been rehearsing a hundred scenarios of how it was going to go, of what he would say.
Holmes still manages to catch him unawares.
“She’s pretty,” Holmes remarks hollowly, voice coming from deep within the semi-darkness of Watson’s room, and Watson barely restrains from jumping at the unexpectedness of it, his hand tightening convulsively on the door knob as he fights the sudden, ridiculously childish urge to run back out.
“Holmes?” He tries for nonchalance. Walks over to the fireplace, careful to keep his back turned to the detective as he begins to prod intently at the dying embers. “What are you doing here in the dark?”
“Darkness helps me think,” Holmes replies in the same hollow monotone, “helps me see.”
The chair Holmes is sitting on creaks when he moves, and Watson stiffens involuntarily, expecting Homes to stand up and approach him. There’s no further movement, however, and he doesn’t know whether to feel relieved or disappointed by that. He decides to go with relieved.
The fire crackles to life, bathing the room in its flickering amber warmth, and Watson risks turning to face his companion. And frowns in concern at what he sees.
Holmes looks… awful, for lack of a better word. Gaunt and deathly pale, dark smudges of sleeplessness standing out in stark contrast against the pasty skin. Like he hasn’t eaten, hasn’t rested in weeks. And Watson thinks that maybe that’s not so far from the truth, and his heart clenches in sympathy and guilt when he thinks of the role he played in that.
Holmes shows no outward sign of having noticed his sudden attack of conscience. Remains slouched tiredly in the chair, head propped on his fisted hand, his hooded gaze lost somewhere in the erratic dance of the shadows cast by the fire onto the opposite wall.
“Pretty,” Holmes muses again, bloodless lips twisting into an ugly, rueful smirk, and Watson feels cold tendrils of apprehension coil unpleasantly in his gut. Braces himself, expecting an attack.
He doesn’t have long to wait.
“Bland,” Holmes drones out, hooded eyelids slipping lower. “Unoriginal, submissive, pithless. And, above all, safe.”
He spits the word out like a curse, and Watson flinches from the venom lacing its syllables, at the ever-unerring accuracy of the blow that word (the one word that’s been haunting him all those weeks) delivers. With Holmes he really shouldn’t have been expecting anything less.
“Isn’t that what every respectable gentleman craves these days, my dear Doctor?” Holmes looks toward him finally, eyes dark, unreadable. “A safe, proper marriage, prim, quiet evenings at home with a mousy colorless creature by his side and lace doilies on his furniture?” Holmes’s upper lip curls in a sneer, teeth bared. “Isn’t that right?”
There is no lie in Holmes’s words, no exaggeration. It’s Watson’s own thoughts, his own self-professed need for the life he faintheartedly attempted to convince himself he truly wanted, the tantalizing promise of safety and propriety it offered. It sounded good in his head, that kind of quiet, uneventful life with Mary, where the worst things he’d have to worry about would be choosing the latest opera to attend or arguing over china patterns. It sounded desirable, ideal even.
Hearing it now from Holmes’s lips, dissected and analyzed with cold, merciless precision, it sounds like a travesty, like nothing more than a pathetic, cowardly delusion tainted with a heavy dose of betrayal. It burns. Sears through him in a blazing flash of disenchantment and shame.
He retaliates. Strikes back like a cornered animal, a gambler called on his bluff.
“What gives you the right?” he hisses, taking a sharp, determined step forward. “You sully her name with your baseless observations, when you know nothing of her!”
The skin around Holmes’s eyes tightens slightly as if in pain, his lips thinning. “You are mistaken, my good Doctor,” he says, his voice betraying just the tiniest amount of strain. “I knew everything there is to know about her the moment I saw her in your company.” He pauses, lets his eyelids slip momentarily shut. “Just as I knew your reasons for making that choice.”
Watson grits his teeth against the detached calm of Holmes’s all-too-shrewd accusation. Feels his hands clench into fists at his sides.
“You know nothing of her virtues,” he spits out, latching on to an irrational wave of anger that overcomes him with all the desperation of a man condemned. Words pour out of him, harsh, untrue, undeserving, and he should cease this insanity, should stop himself before this gets too far, before he loses what little connection he has left to the man. But it’s like something has torn loose within him, a door ripped completely off its hinges, and he finds himself helpless to hold back the nasty, hurtful deluge.
“And you know nothing of my choices. My reasons are my own, Holmes, don’t presume to understand them. I am not a cold-blooded machine, I don’t measure others by your passionless yardstick of reason. I’m drawn to people for their emotional merits, and, for your information, Miss Morton fulfills my emotional needs in ways you couldn’t possibly imagine!”
“Whereas I am found wanting.”
There’s no heat behind Holmes’s words, no anger, just a simple observation, a dispassionate (if somewhat strained) statement of fact that crashes over Watson’s defensive anger like a bucket of ice-cold water.
“Can’t you just…” Watson swallows dryly, makes a helpless, almost desperate gesture with his hand. Cringes at the now undeniably desperate note he hears in his own voice as he all but implores, “Can’t you just accept that I’ve moved on and… do the same?”
Holmes doesn’t say anything for the longest time, continues to stare broodingly into the flickering shadows. Then he rises from the chair, slowly, almost reluctantly so.
“I’ve observed it,” he says, taking equally slow, measured steps toward Watson, advancing closer with each softly cast word. And Watson has to fight the urge to back away, to beat a hasty, cowardly retreat before the feverishly bright, piercing stare of Holmes’s eyes.
“I rationalized it,” Holmes continues in the same muted tones. “I resigned myself to it.”
And he is standing right before Watson now. Impossibly, tantalizingly close. And Watson can’t move, finds himself frozen in a helpless stupor like a fly caught in a spider web, pinned hopelessly in place by the dark, knowing gaze. “But I refuse to accept it.”
Watson blinks, forces another swallow past a sandpaper dry throat. “W…why?” he stammers out inanely.
And feels the simple, quietly spoken answer that follows rip straight through his heart, leaving behind a gaping, hemorrhaging hole.
“Because I loved you first.”
Holmes watches him unblinking in the strained, deafening silence that follows his admission, as if awaiting something, a response, a reaction of some kind. But Watson can’t say anything if he tried, his tongue unresponsive, his breath lodged painfully in his lungs.
And gradually the blaze of Holmes’s stare dims, shadowed by disappointment, his face growing paler still. He nods mutely to himself, steps back, lips twisting in a bitter, pained little smile.
“Forgive me, old boy,” he says, voice sounding strained almost to the point of breaking. “I have completely lost track of time, and I have a case to get back to.”
He turns away from Watson, heads toward the door. Pauses there, shoulders hunched. “Goodbye, Watson.”
And then he’s gone.
END Part I