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Sherlock Holmes fell into a period of low spirits shortly after the Abbey Grange case which I was initially at a loss to explain. As the night wore on he only spoke to me when I asked him a question, or when something he saw on my face or in the way I sipped my brandy struck him as an unspoken question which he was nevertheless obliged to answer. I may have had my doubts about his handling of the matter- I almost always did when he judged what he knew not to be for the police, though I had never yet absolutely disagreed with his reasoning- but I did not think he had. Thus it did not occur to me, at first, that there could be any specific disturbance on his part at all.
Perhaps my lack of observation was very great, but looking back on that first night what was most odd was Holmes’ listless yet undeniable desire to make things not odd.
In his normal black moods- such as a period, lasting sometimes for days, in which one of the finest minds in existence was utterly at the mercy of some painful paralysis I could not even begin to understand, could ever be called normal- Holmes had not the energy to try to appease me. Indeed I sometimes fancied I might be a piece of furniture for all he considered my opinions at such times. I do not describe it thus out of bitterness- it was difficult for me to see him like that and expect more- but only to make clear how unusual it was to see such a concerted effort on his part to converse naturally. He must have known by then that I would bear silence from him just as well. I had borne it for some time, after all- and the silence of him there but unable to speak to me was still so markedly different from the silence of him not there that I did not have it in me to resent it.
Odder still was his behavior after we had ostensibly parted for the evening. Having risen so early and stayed up with him so late, I was very tired by the time I took myself to bed. I was only beneath the sheets for a few moments when I began to drift, and I only drifted a few moments more before there was a light tapping at my door. “Holmes?” I said, for though he rarely took it upon himself to knock it could only be he.
He opened the door and settled near it wordlessly, with his hands behind him against the wall. I had a vague impression earlier that he did not wish to part, but when I eventually gave in to my exhaustion I assumed he would find himself equally tired once he had time to feel it. The impression came on me a little stronger now that he either did not want to be alone, or did want to discuss something- and that it was surely the result of some specific trouble in his mind, and not simple low spirits at all.
“Have we been called out?” I asked. I did not believe that we had, or he would have said so already. But I would rouse myself and go if I was wrong, and I believed Holmes would see as much. Holmes could not typically be urged into any confidence he did not wish to bestow- but I believe he found comfort in my willingness to go wherever he led me, and if it was enough to prompt him into whatever speech he was considering, so much the better for both of us.
“No, my dear fellow,” he said.
I continued to wait.
Holmes moved again, suddenly, and perched on the foot of my bed. “The more I think on it, the more this matchmaking grates on me, Watson.”
The notion that this was his trouble struck me immediately as both perfectly right and entirely wrong at once. “It did not seem to trouble you earlier.” Certainly Holmes had been alarmed by the lady’s gratitude, but if I were to catalogue all the things Holmes might find alarming from a lady, I would be at it for some time. At any rate, he had defended it- this matchmaking- more than once already.
“But what business is it of mine, if matters are set aright between them? I had it clear in my mind what must have happened. They might never have seen each other again. What business is it of mine, to see it otherwise?”
“What business is any of it of yours?” I replied.
Holmes laughed shortly. “That is true, my dear fellow.” He patted my foot, and shifted so that I thought he might depart and leave it there. But then he did not move. “That is true.”
He had interrogated his own motives to me in this way before. It was rare enough to rouse me from my exhaustion with curiosity, but not so rare that I thought much about it beyond the intellectual problem. “I supposed you moved by Crocker’s story,” I said. It seemed to me that some unusual sympathy between large souls must have occurred.
“Yes,” Holmes said at last. “You do truly have a storyteller’s gift. That is the word, for lack of a better. I was moved.”
This pleasant yet unnerving praise of my work made me suspect that I had not actually helped him very much at all.
But then he patted my foot once more and rose. “I shall be myself again before too long, Watson. Thank you.”
“If you wish to talk more-” I said uncertainly- “now or later-”
“I should not wish to trouble you.” His tone was dismissive now as he made for the door.
“I’m your friend,” I said. “You cannot easily trouble me.” Normally I would not have gone so far, but I was tired, and puzzled enough by his conduct that I could not let him go without in some way reinforcing my regard for him.
Holmes froze and hissed softly. The hiss reminded me strongly of a goose, and it would have been amusing if the line of his back was not so painfully straight. I felt I had unknowingly got to the crux of something, but because it was unknowing I felt no better informed than I had before I reached it at all. “Goodnight, Watson,” he said gently. He opened the door- the light beyond caught briefly on his hair- and then he was gone.
Despite my exhaustion, sleep did not find me quickly that night.
* * *
The following morning, Holmes was so decidedly himself again, as he put it, that I could almost believe I had dreamed him otherwise. But no- my friend was too decidedly himself. He looked now and then as if the effort exhausted him more than any physical expenditure I could name. I was half tempted to tell him that his efforts were in vain, that I saw he was still troubled and that I knew him too well and loved him too well to watch him take such pains projecting a comfort which he did not feel. In the end I did not tell him. I half longed to see his extreme reaction to my assertion of friendship again- for I was half sure that if I did while my brain was not so sleep-clogged and worry-addled I should perhaps understand it- but I dreaded it with equal power.
I behaved instead as if the stability Holmes sought was already attained, and this seemed to soothe him as much as anything did- at least until Inspector Hopkins came to call.
Hopkins still had questions about the silver he had found just where Holmes said it would be. It was Holmes who suggested that it had only ever been stolen as a blind. Though he might take it upon himself to shield those whose guilt he had uncovered, to lie outright to a policeman- especially one so promising as Hopkins- was not something which came easily to him. Together he and Hopkins came around to the idea that the objects might have only been hidden beneath the water temporarily. The gang might have intended to return for the fruits of their labor once all was quiet again. The inspector liked this idea so much that my friend would have had a difficult time working him back around to the concept of a blind- and the robbery as a cover for the death and nothing more- again if he wished to. Since he did not wish to, Hopkins went cheerfully on his way and Holmes returned to his reading of the paper.
I watched him from across the table until finally Holmes said, “You are treading very carefully, Watson.” He sighed. “I am sorry for it.”
“I know,” I replied easily. I took him as he was, and would do for as long as he was available to me. I had resolved that long since. But that did not mean his efforts to mitigate the effect of his actions on me, when he made them, were wasted. “Your interview with Hopkins was only... rather what I feared when we embarked on this course.”
Holmes shrugged, somewhat apologetically.
He was not eating. “It’s not the inspector that troubles you, though, is it?” I said. Holmes had not eaten even before Hopkins arrived. I sat back in my chair, considered him a while, and finally resolved to return to our aborted conversation of last night. “It’s this pair of lovers.”
Holmes set his paper down, slow.
“Do you know what troubles you there yet?” I might have been troubled by the interview with Hopkins, but I still did not believe Holmes was except on my behalf, so it was not the police he worried about. This matchmaking, as he called it. He had sent for the lady, though he did not have to, and been troubled by that, or by Crocker, or by... something else.
“I think... perhaps. Yes.”
He did not say more, and I wondered if it would be wise to press him further. Eventually I could not help myself. “Is it how near two people who loved each other came to a lifetime apart?”
I was not surprised when his mouth twisted, though the expression was rather more pained than his usual sneer. He folded his arms across his chest. “You do not suppose me to be such a romantic, do you? Your writings certainly suggest otherwise.”
I winced a little at that. I did sometimes get carried away with my descriptions of his coldness- but my editors liked them, liked this brain without a heart. Holmes was a cold man, undoubtedly- but just as living things can still dwell beneath a frozen lake in winter, so too was there a greater capacity for sympathy, and more, in Holmes than I was capable of admitting when piqued and with a pen in my hand. Nevertheless, he was right- and I was right- that to fall into a melancholy stupor over the near-tragedy of young love lost was not at all like him. “No,” I said at last. “I do not.”
I watched as he unfolded his arms and lit a cigarette. In his hands and in his eyes I saw a tension different from the night before. Then I had been reminded of his behavior while on a case he thought might be hopeless, all grim energy and sharp determination. Now I was reminded of his behavior on a case that was not hopeless as such, but nevertheless out of his hands. He was waiting, as he always waited when he had done his utmost and knew what happened next would be determined by another. Usually what he awaited was a criminal’s mistake. Today what he awaited seemed to be me, and that sent a thrill through me which might have been pleasure, but if it was, it was the sort of pleasure not readily distinguishable from fear.
I said, “Is it the failure of observation, then?”
Holmes took a pull on his cigarette. I was not immediately sure if I was moving in the right direction or not. But then he leaned forward with some interest on his face, and that was something. “His failure to observe her love for him, you mean? And to make a proposition which might have saved them both some suffering?” Just as suddenly he sat back again and looked tired. “Do you have a theory as to why he did not try?”
“Yes.” I swallowed. I had led him to this very question, and now... well. Now I had to answer it. “Because an advance cannot be rebuffed if it isn’t made.”
This was a problem I had not foreseen but should have. I so rarely discussed the softer emotions with Holmes that I did not take the ground beneath my feet for quicksand until it was too late. I had got too near a subject too close to my heart. I knew all about advances that could not be rebuffed because they had not been made, and to discuss the subject with Holmes- all as if it were a new treatise on botany which was of interest to him- was remarkably dangerous.
I attempted to steer the conversation in a safer direction without appearing to do so. Otherwise I would only sharpen his interest. “I mean that he was sure of her- or thought he was sure of her- and we cannot actually presuppose that she loved him then after all. Perhaps he was right and she saw him only as a friend.”
“Perhaps.” Holmes’ expression was complex. A new light seemed to flare in them while at the same time another went out. “Such things can... grow, I suppose.”
For my part, I did not entirely believe my own argument. If someone enjoyed the company of someone else, and felt a strong affection for that person, it was difficult to imagine that such feelings were easily dissolved- or easily elevated. If she had not loved him on the boat, and only learned to later, it was because her peculiar and tragic circumstances had helped it to ‘grow’ in her, not because it was common to look on a dear friend and realize you had fallen irrevocably in love with them.
This aversion to the softer feelings in him had been my sentence to purgatory ever since that very uncommon occurrence had happened to me, but it had also been my shield. At one time it had been easy- too easy, in hindsight- to convince myself that my fascination with Holmes, my affection for him, my whole-hearted need to watch him, to see all of him, so much so that if he was the last thing I looked upon in this world I would be content, was simply his due as the most extraordinary man of my acquaintance. But it is only possible to follow the line of a man’s wrist so many times with a hungry gaze before it becomes obvious that there is desire in play. And this self-knowledge, once attained, was difficult to ignore; it had become doubly so after I thought him lost to me, and then had him back. If he did not see that I desired him it was because- as he would say, were these feelings of mine some minute trace of a horrible crime- he was not looking for it.
As I watched Holmes, that new flare of light in his eyes sharpened into something bright and reckless, and he leaned closer still- closer and closer until the table between us seemed but empty air, no protection whatever from that keen gaze and the effect it all too often had on me. “Let us ignore what later transpired for a moment. Let us say he was only a friend to her then. Could..." He hesitated, then drew inconceivably closer. "Could such a friend really have been in ignorance?” His tongue flicked out over his lips. “Or are such feelings a declaration in themselves? Surely... surely no one with so devoted a follower can be entirely blind to it.”
His eyes held mine very seriously, and it flooded through me like ice water that Holmes had not failed to observe me after all, and that I might not have heedlessly stumbled out onto dangerous ground but, rather, followed him there as I would follow him anywhere. For a moment, suspicion ran rampant in me. That he was trying to trap me, that I would shortly be ejected from Baker Street with nothing but a bag and a broken heart, that all this pretext was nothing but a cruel trick. It was in this humor that I attempted to debate him as if we were still having an abstract conversation about love, and not my very life. “Such feelings, as you term them, might not be so easily found out as that,” I said. “They are not... the dirt beneath a gravedigger’s fingernails which announce his occupation.”
“No,” Holmes said, still so close, still watching me with hawk eyes shining brightly above his hawk nose. “A gravedigger may change his occupation.”
“A man may fall out of love.” The words fell more passionately from my lips than I should have liked, and I do not know what I thought they might achieve- if it can be said I thought at all. Did I suppose I might dismiss his- frankly justified- concerns about cohabitating with such a man in that way? Do not worry, Holmes, did I mean to say? Perhaps one day I will look at your lips and not want to kiss them, and I will look at your hands and not want them on my skin, and I will look at your body and not want it under me or above me or anywhere so long as it- you- might be mine, and all will again be well between us?
“Not such a man,” Holmes said. He collapsed back into his chair as if his energy had left him again all in a rush. His voice was very tender, suddenly. “Not such a love.”
He was right, of course, and I was wrong. Not just to try promises I could hardly keep, but in my entire reading of the situation- and of my dear friend’s behavior. Holmes could certainly hide things from me, but I did not think he could hide all that- not while also showing such a quantity of emotion as he was just then. None of it was that sharp energy which preceded with him the springing of a trap. And though he had certainly been odd that morning and the night before, he had not once been unkind. It seemed to me then that our interview with Crocker and its aftermath had either made him realize that I loved him or presented to his mind a manner with which to broach the subject without seeming to broach any subject at all. Either way he had wrestled with it, he had considered the matter from all sides, and he had put it forth to me obliquely once he was certain. That was the finest evidence of his mercy, I thought- and he had shown such mercy over the last few days that this was truly saying something. “Perhaps you are right,” I said, and learned close in my turn. I wanted him to know that I appreciated what he was trying to do- and even loved him the more for it. “Perhaps such feelings are always obvious. And... when they are not returned, as we must suppose they were not on the ship-” by this time, I felt it to be understood between us that these references to Crocker and Lady Brackenstall were but a film over the true purpose of our talk- “is it not a... kindness to overlook them? Even when these feelings are known, to acknowledge them out loud would put such a valued friendship under considerable strain. Is it not better to be silent?”
Hesitantly, I reached out and laid a light hand on his knee. It was not true that silence was without its pitfalls. I knew it was distinctly possible that Holmes would throw me off. It hardly requires saying that for a man to know the creature he shares his rooms with loves him utterly is in fact miles different from a lady knowing that a gentleman friend adores her. And so what casual contact there might be between two such close companions could invariably also become a source of strain.
But Holmes did not throw me off. He remained very still beneath my hand, watching me with that same heavy-lidded interest I had found so compelling on countless cases. But, of course, there was no expression his face could take on, no minute corner of his being, that I did concern myself with most highly. Even so I did not flatter myself that I knew everything, but I felt I knew enough to think all might still be well between us.
His mouth twitched very faintly- so faintly that even with my nearly encyclopedic knowledge of his expressions I could not be sure if he was trying to smile or trying not to do something else. “Valued indeed." he swallowed. "So. Friend will do," he added in such a low voice that he seemed to be testing out the idea in his own mind more than putting it to me.
At first I did not quite understand. Then I remembered. Crocker had told us he said those words to the lady when the pain of loving her so without speaking of it became too much for him. Aye. Friend’ll do, Mary. ‘Tis a measure of my love for you; it’s so strong it’ll live on crumbs. Friend’ll do. Perhaps what Crocker said should have made a greater impression on me at the time- as it must have on Holmes- for it was quite a neat encapsulation of my own existence. Perhaps it did not because for all I loved him, for all I wanted things which could never be mine, I often forgot to be discontented for days, even weeks, at a time. Crumbs from Sherlock Holmes were, I felt, a feast from anyone else. But in the moment I was unspeakably grateful to our friend the captain for saying and meaning what I could not. “You... think it possible, yes?”
“I think anything possible,” Holmes replied. Something sardonic in his tone worried me a little, but the worry did not have time to sink in to any real extent before he spoke again. He sounded more hesitant than anything. “For instance, sometime after the boat, she did come to love him.”
I do not exaggerate when I say that for a moment, then, I stopped breathing. The notion that Holmes wished to comfort me by suggesting that he might one day requite me was nearly ridiculous- and yet it was not ridiculous, for nothing ridiculous could have filled me so to the brim with pained tenderness. As gently as I could, for I didn’t wish him to think me ungrateful, I said, “That cannot be considered precedented.”
“No indeed.” His voice cracked down the middle. I would not have thought he could be so moved- I would not have thought any of this possible only a few days ago- and I felt I should say something more. Before I could think of anything, he robbed me of speech altogether. He laid his hand over mine on his knee and then lifted it to his mouth. I had had men kiss my hand in jest once or twice- but none of them were him. None of them had seemed so keen on memorizing every sensation of skin, bone, and muscle beneath their lips.
In that moment, I fancied things which at the time seemed to me beyond the pale. That all this- from the moment Holmes took the burden of Crocker's secret upon himself onward- had been for my benefit. So that I might watch someone I must surely see some kinship with enjoy the ending I myself could not.
“Thank you, Watson,” he said at last, chin resting on my fingers. “I think everything is clear to me now.” His lips moved again, definitely an attempt at a smile. “Would you... say the same?”
I swallowed. I knew we had understood each other, and that if I said so aloud he would as I had suggested never speak of it again. “Yes,” I whispered.
He dropped my hand, and that was all.
* * *
It really was all. I did not see him for most of the day, and many times over the course of it I thought it was absolutely ridiculous- on both our parts- to imagine that silence would do any good whatsoever. Such feelings, even unspoken, could not be unknown. But Holmes returned that night, and he smiled, and he told me what he had been doing- looking into young Hopkins’ progress, which was nonexistent- and I could breathe again.
This is not to say that in the days which followed things did not change between us- there had been an undeniable shift, in point of fact- but though I would never have thought it possible the change, the shift, appeared to have been an improvement. I had long told myself it was not so bad, but there had in fact been some strain between us since I realized the depth of my feelings, and whether or not Holmes had been aware of it all that while he had apparently hit upon the solution. Whenever he put a hand on my arm, or took me to a late dinner at his club, or leaned against me when we left a concert drunk on music... I had cherished all these, but also felt an awkwardness and a paranoia which made them bitter. But now all was changed. These gestures were begun anew tentatively at first, but slowly they came with greater and greater ease. He trusted me. We had agreed, and so there was nothing to fear- not for him when he knew that I would not press for more than he offered, and not for me when the worst had happened and I was still at his side.
It was during this period of domestic joys- for it was joyful; I might have been feeding on crumbs, but they were the finest, I fancied, any man ever knew- that three things further transpired in the case which had so changed things between us.
The first was a visit from Stanley Hopkins.
“You will have heard, of course,” he said, “that the Randall gang have been arrested in New York, and were not even in the country when the crime at the Abbey Grange was committed."
“I had heard something of it,” Holmes said. I was at the table in our rooms, Holmes’ forearm resting at the back of my chair. His voice was perfectly calibrated; it was not too disinterested- as far as Hopkins knew, he had still believed it was the Randalls that night, and he hated to be wrong- but it was not too intense either.
Hopkins’ eyes lit. “But you may not have heard that there was another such robbery- committed by three men, and so on- also in Kent just last night.”
Holmes, I knew, would not take it further. If lying to the police, even by omission, was difficult for him however noble the cause, then to push Hopkins in a direction he knew to be wrong would be much worse. I said, “If it had been some other housebreakers- these new men or others not yet known to the Yard- at the Abbey Grange that night, it would explain why that crime was committed so close to an earlier one.”
Hopkins all but crowed. “Exactly, Doctor Watson!” He leaned in confidentially. “And do you want to hear the neatest touch of all?” he asked.
“I should be gratified,” Holmes said.
“These new men have a habit of hiding their spoils to come back for them later. Half the plate they stole has been found littered about the property they took it from.”
“Ineffectual, aren’t they?” Holmes’ tone was dry.
“And we shall catch them soon enough. To that end,” Hopkins said, “I shall take my leave of you.”
When he was gone, I sat back in my chair. “That was a stroke of luck,” I said. “Though of course, once these men are arrested, they will be eager to disavow the Abbey Grange crime, as that would be a hanging job.” It went unsaid between us that if Hopkins did not believe them, Holmes might have to act.
“Yes.” He sighed. His sleeve tickled the back of my neck. “But they may not be arrested. And, if they are, they may be able to prove that they were not there at the Abbey Grange without interference from me. And either way Hopkins probably has this idea of a second gang firmly enough in his mind that without fresh evidence or pressure from the family nothing will dissuade him. And this death will join the ranks of the unsolved.”
I turned in my seat. “You don’t sound pleased.”
He didn’t look it, either. I was certain that while the inspector was with us Holmes had remained impassive- but now he seemed decidedly pained. He moved his arm enough to lift his hand, touch my collar, and fix a crookedness I was confident did not exist in my tie. “When you said you disliked what I was putting on myself, when I did it in the first place, I did not think that I was also putting it on you.”
“I took it willingly," I said. "There’s very little I would not do for you.”
“Yes.” His smile was such an aching thing. His fingertips brushed my hair, and then he turned away from me.
The second came two days later.
Hopkins’ housebreakers- who, insofar as we could tell, had never yet been able to spend their ill-gotten gains- made an attempt on the house of an old soldier, a man still fierce and very well armed, and did not survive. The question of their involvement in the Abbey Grange killings was never asked- but Hopkins always privately felt he knew the answer, and so his investigation slowly faded away into nothingness.
I could not take pleasure in the death of three men- even three criminals- but I did feel some relief, and some guilt to go along with it. I was sure Holmes did as well. In me, the guilt manifested as more interest in my medical practice, which had never been too robust and had dwindled since Holmes’ return, such that by then I saw only a few personal friends.
But I threw myself into what business I did have with some energy, for all was quiet at Baker Street. Holmes himself had little to challenge him intellectually just then. He was plagued by thoughts of his own- and in him the guilt manifested as cold silence.
Until, one afternoon, he noticed me passing through the parlor and roused himself with a small smile. “You’ve marked this concert, Watson,” he said. He brandished the paper in which I had done so, not sure as I marked it if he would rouse himself in time for us to attend. “Should you like to go?”
“If you would,” I said simply.
His smile sweetened. “I believe so.”
His other hand was in my reach as I stilled, so I pressed it. I was more hesitant of touching him than he was of me because I knew that he would do nothing more or less than he was comfortable with- and that was as much because I knew he did not always care to have his thoughts broken into thusly as because I feared he would be imposed upon by any baser feelings I might have in me. But when I did, he always seemed to welcome it, and me.
It was indeed enough. When I believed him dead, I thought a thousand times over that I would give anything to have him back. A few sleepless nights and restless days were nothing. The dull ache I felt knowing it would bring him no comfort if instead of pressing his hands I pressed his lips instead was less than nothing. The affection, however distant, in his eyes as he pressed my hand in turn was an embarrassment of riches.
The third was merely a postscript to the whole matter, nearly three months after we had Captain Crocker with us at Baker Street.
Holmes read aloud to me from the paper one morning that Captain Crocker’s ship had been involved in the rescue of some civilians at sea. “It seems,” he said, “that our friend will return to his lady with many accolades.”
“I am glad of it,” I replied, though indeed I only spared a few thoughts for either of them. By then the matter- however much it had sculpted relations between my friend and myself- had slipped from my mind almost altogether. It would hardly have captured my memory at all, in fact, had Holmes not mentioned it directly before a much more profound- and violent- reordering of our lives at Baker Street occurred.
For that morning Holmes read to me from the paper; that evening he was almost killed.
* * *
At that time, Holmes was involved in a case he had more than once claimed would be a waste of my talents. I had- also more than once- argued that what would be a waste of my talents would surely also be a waste of his, but it is true that what I knew of the case suggested it to be simple enough while he was still embroiled in it, and looking back it was indeed of little interest beyond what came of it with regards to relations between Holmes and myself. He had taken it on only because of the importance of the client; that rather scandalous detail, and what passed between Holmes and I in the aftermath, would combine to make the story unfit for any but purely private recollections even if it had been more dramatic in other respects, but it was not. It was nothing at all, and it could have cost him dearly.
I had been with a patient who keeled over in his club for most of the afternoon. It was beginning to be dusk when a message arrived summoning me instantly to Baker Street. It had long been Holmes’ habit to call upon me just the same in circumstances both grave and trivial, and I can honestly say that the trivial calls never made me fail to anticipate the grave ones. I did not linger in the club, therefore- and when I saw Mrs. Hudson’s face I was heartily glad of it.
Holmes was standing by the fireplace with a glass of brandy in his hand when I entered the sitting room. His sleeve was torn off above the bicep, and there was blood all down his side. His face was pale and his eyes were wide, but he still smiled as he said my name.
I do not know what, if anything, I said in reply. My God, Holmes, perhaps- though I tried not to say much when I was afraid for him; undoubtedly I would say all the wrong things. Are you mad, don’t you know what it would do to me if I lost you again? I do know that I took hold of him and examined his arm. He appeared to have blocked a saber thrust with it. He had done his best to stop the bleeding, and his best was good enough that though it would need stitching he was not in immediate danger. Thus I took the time to examine him for more insidious injuries. The block had most probably saved his life, but it had been risky. A cut to the arm rarely killed so long as infection and unchecked blood loss were avoided, but that did not mean the affects were never severe or even permanent. If there was nerve damage, he might never play the violin again- a loss that I would feel deeply, and he deeper still. I saw no sign of such damage, however, and the rest of him seemed perfectly hale; Holmes had once again been very lucky.
“Our client should have no more trouble,” Holmes said. I do not know if I had mustered the wherewithal to ask him about the case, or if he had merely elected to tell me in hopes of lightening the atmosphere. He succeeded, a little. Even when he had kept me from much or even most of a case he always said our, always said we, and it filled me with considerable warmth. Yet I wished there had been more our and we involved in the actual business, enough that I might be the one bleeding and he the one whole.
“Let me get my bag,” I said. He nodded and sipped his brandy. To another I would have offered something stronger- but Holmes’ tolerance for pain was high and his tolerance for morphine and laudanum was even higher. The brandy would have to do.
When I returned to his side Holmes was on the sofa, his shirt fully removed. It could not have been easy for him to do that in his condition, but knowing how he loathed being dirty I said nothing. I sat beside him, cleaning the wound and preparing to stitch it shut. “I do wish I could have got to this a bit earlier,” I said. I kept my tone light, for if I was accusing him of something not even I knew what. Not taking me with him, when he went wherever it was? Not coming to me at my patient’s club, dripping blood all over the carpets like a ghoul?
He said, “I assure you, the only time wasted was what I spent arguing with Mrs. Hudson when I arrived.”
“Why did you argue with Mrs. Hudson?” I asked. That lady, who I had sent to bed once I arrived, had seemed unusually unequipped to argue with either of us.
“I thought I might send for another doctor.”
Threatening me with other doctors was sufficiently of a piece with Holmes' usual sourness when he appeared weak that I would normally have been able to ignore him. But he had lost blood, he was tired, and he was in pain. He had also already consumed more brandy than I would have prescribed for purely medicinal reasons. It all conspired to put a dreaminess in his tone, a kind of tender frankness so sweet that I could not ignore even the smallest twitch of his eye, let alone that. “Why?” I whispered.
He was lying back, watching me with softly lidded eyes. “It should be easier if it was not you. With regard to... well. The stipulations of our agreement.”
As I said, it had been some months since it happened, and things had settled between us into such an easy normalcy in that time that it actually took me several moments to realize what 'agreement' he was referring to. The one in which I agreed to enjoy his friendship while he ignored my love. I need hardly add that I was stung by the implication that I could not keep to it under the circumstances. “Do you think so little of my medical skills?” I asked.
“Nonsense,” Holmes said lowly. “I hold your medical skills in the highest respect. However should that help?”
I did not know how to respond, so I did not. I focused on my work. I was as careful as I have ever been in my life. Even annoyed with him I could not be otherwise. I was aware as I worked of his eyes on me. When I finally mustered the courage meet them, I do not know what I thought I would see. Him watching me like a hawk for some sign that I was so intoxicated by his nearness that his pain was not enough to keep me from becoming aroused, possibly. If so I was disappointed, because instead I saw... I didn’t know what I saw. The expression on his face... “It is very difficult to concentrate with you looking at me like that,” I said.
“I cannot help it, my dear fellow. That is what I have been trying to tell you.”
If the way he had been looking at me- the way he looked at me still- made it difficult to concentrate, that made it even worse. It was a good thing long experience had rendered the stitching of a wound relatively second nature to me, for I might have botched things badly otherwise. I loved every scar on his body from the times before me, as I loved every other hint of his work from the old days. Proof both that he needed me and that, technically, he didn’t- but he seemed to want me- in some capacity, at least- all the same. But I would not leave some ugly scar on him myself for anything.
My own thoughts echoed back to me as Holmes regarded me in the easy silence of a man who does not believe he has said anything odd. He looked at me with such undisguised affection. He looked at me with fascination, and with something like surprise too, as if he could hardly believe, at times, how much of interest he still found just watching me. I thought I recognized the expression because I had worn it many times. And then I thought I must have convinced myself that I saw what I would give the world to see. But...
He seemed to want me- in some capacity, at least- all the same.
He seemed to want me all the same.
Despite being an altogether unextraordinary sort of fellow, I had his companionship and his trust. I was, rather remarkably, someone he had never yet tired of dazzling or analyzing. I firmly believed I could be on my death bed, and he could make one of his deductions and I would still be duly impressed- not least because in that case he would have not tired of me by the end of my days. It was enough that he still saw something worthwhile when he looked at me, still heard something worthwhile when he spoke to me. It was enough that this man who frequently and without shame professed to have never had a friend desired one in me, and indeed on more than one occasion had gone through considerable trouble to keep me. It was enough, we had agreed. So why was he talking now as if we had agreed something very different?
“I’m not sure I understand,” I admitted.
“No?” I had known Holmes to look impatient when I told him I did not understand something, and to look amused, and to look tired- as if he was keenly aware that his observations were beyond most men and that, in those moments, he was as weary of being different as anyone. The expression he wore just then was a little of all of them, but mostly it was gentle, if a little melancholy. “Let me see. You must know if not firsthand than certainly second that having stitches put in without anesthetic is a curious sensation.”
“I do.” My hands- hands that had been steady surrounded by gunfire and blood- briefly trembled too much to finish the task he spoke of, so I paused. “May I?” I asked, indicating his half-drained brandy glass.
He looked a little startled, and he surprised me in turn by swallowing heavily before he lifted his glass for me, allowing me to sip without touching it. My lips were over his as I drank. He must have noticed. He was watching me too closely to do otherwise.
His eyes fluttered briefly. “Besides the wound itself, I admit that after it was inflicted I experienced a great burst of energy when I thought I might shortly die. The men in question have all been arrested now, at any rate. Are you sure you would not prefer to hear how I dealt with them? No? Well. Another time. In the aftermath I felt rather as if my body had caught fire. And my arm...” His voice cracked very slightly. “I saw your worry, you know. For a while I too wondered if I might lose the use of it. And...”
“It pains you, I’m sure.”
“Considerably. It is exceedingly difficult to keep still and not attempt to fight you off or to worm away or to cry out or anything similarly unfortunate. Do you follow me so far?”
“I believe so,” I said. And though I did appreciate his efforts not to strike me- I knew well the strength in that lithe frame and did not wish to know any better- I was tempted to tell him that I would not mind if he cried out or wept. But I knew he controlled himself for his benefit as much as mine, so instead I said, “Indeed, though I would hardly have thought it possible, you seem more erudite than ever.”
As I had hoped, he smiled. “I shall take that as a compliment, though I am not sure it entirely is one.” I had returned to my stitches by then and was nearly finished. I caught a wince on that dear face, but it quickly faded into a little smile. “Now, where was I?”
“You were explaining...” I shook my head. “Clear as it has been so far, I am not sure I know what you were explaining.”
“Never mind, I remember.” He sighed. “I feel quite dreadful- and I can hide that, or I can hide... other things.” Sure enough, again he winced, and again he looked at me and smiled with this... elegant sort of hurt- as if to bury the pain he thought of something pleasant, or tried to, and the pleasant thing he thought of was invariably just before him.
I finished my stitches. I cleaned the wound again and covered it. All this I performed with perfectly steady hands, as if the battle calm had come over me at last. I am not sure if the opponent in my mind was Sherlock Holmes or I myself. I think it must have been me, for it was truly a battle to keep back ideas which it would really kill me to entertain and be wrong.
Holmes had huddled into the corner of the sofa- a concession, I suppose, to his altogether natural desire to be as far from me and my needle as possible- but even so there was hardly enough room for both of us there. I tested it, all the same- stretching out along the length of the sofa, my body softly against his, my face so near that I saw every quicksilver flash of his eyes and every quirk of his lip, bitter or sweet. He tolerated this examination for longer than I would have expected, but eventually he said, “What are you looking at?”
I swallowed. “What you are looking at, Holmes, is a much more interesting question.”
“What am I looking at, then?”
“You are looking at a man who is just possibly every bit as foolish and unobservant as you have ever accused him of being in your life.”
“I don’t think that can be true. I am looking a man who has borne such unwarranted insults far more patiently then I deserve. I never mean it, you know.”
“I believe you. Nevertheless, I fear you have been right.” I lifted my hand to trace the line of his cheek. “Holmes.” It was distinctly difficult to breathe as my thumb slid across his firm lip and his eyes drifted closed. “Our agreement-”
“Yes?”
“Forget about it.”
I was close enough to him that it was nothing, nothing in the world even though it was everything in the world, to bring our lips together. He was still for a moment, but then his lips moved against mine, and the whole of him shifted. I let my hand slip from his cheek down his neck to his chest, and there I put pressure. “Do not move,” I told him. “I’ll not have my fine stitching ruined.”
His eyes flashed with something not at all like anger. I wanted him to be well, because I hated to see him suffer and because my tastes did not run to the weak-willed or submissive, but I would not pretend it did not affect me to have him obey. When I caught his lips again he kissed me back with all he could without otherwise moving a muscle. And so I kissed him until he calmed and softened completely against me. And then I kissed him until the shape of his lips and the taste of his mouth and the heat of his tongue were things as familiar to me as every other part of him I made a study of over the years. And then, as he grew drowsier and more pliant still, I kissed him until he slept.
I was glad of it when he was finally still, peaceful, and free of care- for though I would have cheerfully kissed him all night I needed time to think. I had been sure of what Holmes was trying to tell me or I would not have kissed him; I had been right or he would not have kissed me back. But the fact remained that I had misunderstood him badly before. Reflection was required if I was to make sense of when and how- and more importantly make sure it did not happen again.
To ensure that he kept comfortable, I put a blanket over him. He roused a little then, registered me briefly, and slept again, curling in on himself slightly. It was too often like this. He exhausted himself, and when he slept at last it was remarkably heavy. Still, I went about the tasks before me- cleaning up my instruments, finding his blood-soaked shirt, generally tidying the rooms a bit. I washed away as much blood as I could so as not to horrify Mrs. Hudson in the morning- she was a hearty soul, to be sure, but she deserved any consideration there was time to give her. There was plenty of time that night, for between the fear I always felt when I saw him hurt, however mildly, and the shock and then joy I had experienced since, I was restless and did not expect to sleep for some time.
So I cleaned, and I thought about how my friend- and more than friend, soon and for good, I hoped- and I had come to our present state of affairs.
It had been good of Holmes to say- and gratifying, for me, to hear- that I was not so dense as he sometimes claimed. Nevertheless, I had been very stupid about this. I had done precisely what Holmes most often warned against. I had made assumptions, drawn conclusions in advance of facts. I had seen... not what I wanted to see, precisely, but certainly what I anticipated. Everything was twisted to fit the form I had already imagined in my mind. That was, as Holmes always said, the trouble with personal investment in a problem. I would not trade this particular investment for anything, and I hoped Holmes felt same, but nevertheless it was so.
My primary consolation on the subject was that Holmes must have made a similar mistake. And from him, being who he was, the error certainly seemed the greater- but I still felt I bore the lion’s share of the blame. His every move since the Abbey Grange case, when considered through the lens that he was not confronting me about my feelings but attempting to discover what I knew of his own, made as much sense as the opposite- more, in fact. It was not like Holmes to come at an answered question so obliquely. Oh, he kept his plots to himself before a case was resolved, and sometimes kept the full resolution to himself even after, but he hated not to have all laid bare somewhere in the middle. It was difficult, in hindsight, to imagine him dancing so delicately around a question when he was sure of the answer- even if the answer was my entertaining certain softer feelings from which he held himself aloof. If, on the other hand, the softer feelings were his and he thought them as unreciprocated as I had... that was something else.
I had only kept one secret from Holmes, and I had kept it well. I could not now blame him for having insufficient data when that insufficiency was of my own design. And he was aloof by nature- I would not now deceive myself about that. I knew him capable of great affections- for his brother, for his friends and allies, for perfect strangers innocent of the horrors that befell them. Holmes’ problem had never really been a lack of heart, only a lack of expression. He had such great feeling in him for humanity at large, for the good and the suffering which by turns existed for it. It was no small thing to know that he had great feeling for me as well- but I did not deceive myself. Some of his distaste for affairs of the heart could be explained if his heart was... unnaturally inclined- but not all. Holmes was a man somewhat distant in expression, and I would not ask him to be other than he was. Probably there would be times yet to come when that distance made me doubt him again- but nevertheless I would take what he could give gladly, as I always had. That I might have, all accidentally, advised him to hide what he did feel would have been laughable if it wasn’t so sad. I remembered the conversation which began all this. I had asked once, not really believing it, if he was distressed that two people in love had mistakenly hurt themselves and each other. Realizing now that Holmes and I had been such a pair I was terribly distressed- but the remedy was in my hands, right where Holmes had put it when he tried to determine if I knew he loved me, and if so how and why I intended to keep quiet about it forever.
It was all so very clear to me, suddenly- in the same way I fancied it all was to him when he scented some crime or other. The shield of silence must have been as important to Holmes as it had been to me- and yet as I had just considered, he hated to leave a mystery unsolved or a question unanswered. Into that uncertainty came Captain Crocker, who said the words which might well have been written on Holmes’ soul as deeply as they were on mine. That friendship, if it could be nothing else, was enough. So Holmes used it to risk being a little more plain- plain enough that I understood he was not really talking of Crocker at all, though not so plain that I did not still mistake his meaning. And he, seeing that I understood- as I thought I did- had believed he had his answer. God in heaven- I had even thought myself so wise and understanding as I told him he could not hope that I could ever come to love him back. Oh, certainly he too had made assumptions. He too must have twisted the threads furnished him into the most abominable knots thinking he already knew the truth. But while he set himself against all the worst things that beset mankind, I was the one who had made a study of him only. I should have done better. I would do, from now on, and would have before if I had not been so convinced he could not love me.
As he was convinced I could not love him.
That, I thought as I finished clearing up and finally felt myself tired enough to sit down, was what I couldn’t believe. Like Holmes on a case I understood what must have happened well enough now, but a few points of motive still eluded me, and only one person could explain. I sat on the chair opposite the sofa and regarded that person as he slept. It seemed to me impossible that I lived in a world where Sherlock Holmes believed I was not his, body and soul. Certainly I had meant to hide the strength and precise nature of my regard; evidently I had succeeded. But certainly there was also breadth enough of difference between his not seeing- as I had long been afraid he would- in every look that I loved him, and his thinking it was impossible. For how could the most brilliant man I knew believe it? Surely even the most foolish of men, looking at that stunning face, considering that remarkable intellect, and standing in awe of that great soul, would know that Holmes could have anyone he desired in a heartbeat, including me. Especially me.
I spent a while noticing how the light cast a dark shadow of lashes across his cheek, and how his hair fell across his forehead, just slightly damp from the night’s exertions, and eventually I slept, knowing we would have to speak in the morning.
* * *
In the morning, Holmes woke before I did. I still had that soldier’s habit of sleeping lightly, but I also knew and trusted the noises of him moving about our sitting room as well as any other sound in the world, and he was making an effort to keep quiet, so it was some time before his step roused me. I cracked open my eyes and saw him by the mantelpiece, just where he stood the night before. He did not look so pale now, and he had changed into his dressing gown, but he was still shirtless beneath. The night before I had been too worried about him for the angular lines of his bare chest to capture my notice. They did not fail to that morning, though. He was bruised here and there, but he looked well enough, and I wanted to-
“My dear Watson,” he said in a voice a trifle weaker and flatter than usual, but still the voice I loved as well as any in the world. “I can see that you are awake.”
I lifted my head and looked at him openly. “So I am.” I rose, stiff and sore from my night in the chair, and crossed to him with hands out. “Let me see what you’ve done to my stitches.”
He presented his arm for perusal and let me lift his sleeve, but seemed to only just tolerate my examination. I missed the way he had looked at me the night before; I would certainly have drawn much needed strength from the love in his eyes. But I knew he could not look at me like that always; it simply wasn’t possible.
I knew, too, that if I had wished it I might have hashed all of this out with him the night before. I had not thought much about why at the time- but looking at him now I knew it nevertheless. It was too important for Holmes to be in control of himself for me to start something with him out of it. But, more than that, it was not for me to pick and choose which parts of him I addressed. He was Sherlock Holmes, my friend, my partner in the solving of crime as I was his, and a great deal more besides. He was the man who smiled at me over a paper and untouched eggs. He was the man who was extremely rude when he felt threatened and sometimes for no reason at all. He was the man who sometimes could not raise his eyes or voice to me at all. He was the man who had looked at me with such undisguised adoration last night, as he bled from a wound inflicted by some fiend planning to slice him in half, that it had rewritten the world. He was the man who looked at me now, as I examined the dressing I had placed on that same wound, like I was a poisonous snake. He was everything. He was-
“Fine,” I said, releasing him. “They look fine.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” he said, with a touch of sourness that suggested he was marshaling his resources. He drew away from me as quickly as he could and affixed the dressing gown once more.
I was, of course, keenly aware that Holmes and I needed to talk. Likewise, I was aware that I would need to begin. None of my reflections the night before had led me to a good opening in that regard- because, I suspected, there was none. I could see a clearing between us in my mind’s eye, but first there were storms to be got through, and I could see nothing for it but to leap out into the rain. “How do you feel?” I asked.
“Did you not just pronounce me hale and hearty?”
“I am not sure I went so far.”
“Perhaps not,” he agreed. When his talk came easily but with such a prickly light in his eyes, it was always best to anticipate some crisis. “But you will agree to a marked improvement?”
“From last night, certainly.” I watched his hand spasm faintly. “You remember last night?”
“Is there a reason I should not? I drank only a little and the injury, you recall, was to my arm- not my head.”
“You remember the last thing I said to you?”
“I remember...” Holmes appeared to run out of energy very suddenly. He was near the mantle again and he leaned against it. I wished he would lean on me instead and so got a little closer to give him the option. He turned his face away and fixed his gaze to the wall. “You spoke of our agreement. You told me to forget it.”
“Yes. I still hope you will.”
“Why?”
“Because we were neither of us in full possession of the facts when we made it.”
Holmes did not look at me openly, but I knew he caught me with the corner of his eye. “And you have all your facts in order now, Watson?”
I lifted my chin and gave my very best impression of Holmes at his most imperious. “I believe they are falling into line.”
His mouth quirked as if he could not help it, but he turned again, lifting a hand to grip the mantle hard enough to turn his knuckles white. His face was lowered still when he said, “I never resent it, rare though I confess it is, when another goes before me.”
“I know it.”
“Then you would do me a very great favor by not gloating overmuch for doing so now.”
“I won’t, if you wish it. I only thought you might like to reconsider any new data before I put my findings to you.”
“I was not aware I had any new data.”
“No? I should have thought you did. Last night I did not only speak to you.”
What I could see of his face remained blank, but his grip on the mantle tightened further. And then his lips twitched, softened almost, and flattened out again. His other hand, a pale slash hanging freely against his side, fluttered almost imperceptibly and then stilled again. I had a fancy that if he hadn’t been aware of me watching him Holmes would have touched his mouth. But that was a fancy only; all I knew for sure was that it affected him physically. “You did not,” he agreed faintly. I awaited some further break in the silence that was long in coming, but I had the patience to wait him out. “You kissed me.” His brow lifted. “Did you imagine that was somehow illuminating?” His tone utterly failed to be scathing, imperious, or any of the other things I had no doubt he wished it to be.
“I did think it might be, slightly.”
He made a disgusted noise and threw up his hands, dashing over to his chair suddenly and sprawling out upon it. His dressing gown fell apart enough to give me a tempting view of pale skin which I would have dearly liked to touch for no medical reason whatsoever. He must have felt my eyes on him. He must. If he had misread my regard from early on, much as I myself once had, time could certainly have compounded the error. Even he made assumptions sometimes and went astray because they were wrong. But now... He steepled his fingers. “You kissed me,” he said again.
I went to the chair across from him, where his clients- our clients, as he always insisted on calling them, even when I had about as much involvement in the case as the chair itself- often sat. He regarded me with a strange expression, such that I could not tell if he was glad to have me there for his perusal, or if he wished I would take myself off somewhere else- to the other side of the world, perhaps. It was possible that he could not tell either.
“From this... new data, as you call it, I am afraid we may draw two different and sadly opposite conclusions.”
“Two?” I did not feign the mild surprise. I did not, in fact, feign anything. Holmes’ imbalanced state was almost certainly worsened by my apparent equilibrium, but I assure you I did not play at aloofness to pay him back for all the times he was so with me- or indeed for any reason. I was simply in the grip of the kind of calm which- in my experience- comes of knowing one’s future is entirely out of one’s hands. The moment I felt something more definite I would show it to him without hesitation. “I would think there was only one.”
“That you desired it?”
“Yes.”
Holmes hummed. “Mmm, no. Either you desired it or you did not- it is no help.”
“None at all?”
His lips actually achieved a small smile, then. It had helped him to try to face this as an intellectual problem. I had hoped it would. “You know my methods,” he said, as he had said a hundred times in this room.
“I know even you must sometimes make inferences.”
The smile widened but grew more pained. It was an aching thing, and I ached to see it. I let myself. “And then?” he asked.
“The inferences are either reinforced by any new information, or they are not.”
“And this new information?”
“It may lead to a new inference, I suppose.”
“And if the new inference is directly opposed to the old one? What must you suppose then?”
“That only one of them can be true.”
Holmes sat forward in his chair. It brought us very close together. “If you desired it,” he said lowly, “then you must have deceived me- I do not use that word in accusation, Watson, you would surely have had your reasons- for a long time. If you did not, you might have deceived me for an hour at most, and while my faculties were... sadly diminished. If only one of these can be true, you must see which presents itself most readily for consideration.”
I did see, and it took my breath away.
And it was true that, the moment he saw how affected I was, Holmes’ manner grew more even. His look turned very kind. He leaned just a little closer, let his hand come to rest on my knee as mine had on his that night, months ago, when I misunderstood him so completely. His touch burned. How could he not know? The question rang stubbornly in my mind even now that he had been so good as to give me the answer. I laid my hand over his and gripped him tightly.
“Why would I do that?” I asked, when his hand- which gripped me in turn with equal strength- had grounded me enough to manage it.
“Oh, my dear Watson,” Holmes breathed. “Why do you do anything?”
At first, I wondered if it was possible that Holmes found my motives so obscure when he had always insisted I was painfully transparent. And then I realized that that was not what Holmes was saying to me at all. He really had given me the answer. And I had not been listening.
I had spent so much of the night before wondering how it was possible that Holmes did not know I loved him- if not because I was transparent then because he was magnificent. How could he think I did not love him on those grounds alone? How could he think, if I did not love him, that it actually was a permanent state of affairs? It might have been a rare thing between friends- but we were different- at least, I was different. I was, as I had thought last night, his. In all that time I had myself convinced I only admired him, I should still have cheerfully have given him any physical demonstration of that devotion he would care to ask for. My problem, I realized now, was not in thinking these thoughts- it was in not carrying them to their inevitable conclusion. Even with his great powers of observation and his- perhaps even greater- sympathy with me he had missed the truth of my feelings, but he had not missed this. No, he had dreaded it.
After a while, I managed, “Oh.” And then, “My dear Holmes. I do not know if I should be offended or not.”
That made him laugh, though he choked on it when I let my hand move over his, fingertips tracing the fine bones of his hand and threading through his fingers. I did not know what more I could do, just then, to convince him he did not have to worry about something I might well have done under other circumstances.
“I don’t know,” I said at last, “if you are making too much of my regard or too little of your own... attractions.”
“My attractions, eh? I won’t pretend to have never imagined-” his breath stuttered faintly- “seducing you. And I won’t pretend that in those imaginings you were never... shall we say... uncertain but acquiescent in the beginning and not at all uncertain by the end. But I could not bear to be wrong about that. To lose you. At any rate, it was hardly for me to entice you into so dangerous an enterprise if you did not already wish to go.”
“You entice me into dangerous enterprises on a regular basis,” I reminded him warmly. I lifted our joined hands and kissed the back of his, as he had kissed mine that night. Even now that I had had his lips on mine every second of that touch was emblazoned on my brain. “Though I wonder that you risked saying as much as you did, if you could see no good end. If you truly thought I would either refuse you or accept you more out of friendly regard than passion.” The last thing in the world I had ever known Sherlock Holmes to be was afraid of the truth- but understanding why he had been, I did not know why he had put it to me at all. I was glad he had, infinitely glad, since it was distinctly possible things would not be as they were now otherwise. I nuzzled his knuckles to let him know how glad I was he had spoken, even if I had taken the long way around to hearing him. “I am not sure I would have had the courage.”
“You? Lack courage? Never.” I could tell that Holmes was buying himself time with that remark, but that did not undermine the absolute conviction in his voice.
“Your faith in that regard is worth more to me than almost anything,” I replied. “But you may be assured- when I think of you, and I think of you telling me you never wish to see me again, there is very little base in this world of which I do not become immediately capable. No cowardice. No weakness. No duplicity.”
As I talked, I kissed down his fingers, and the shell- no thicker than a hair to begin with, I assure you- of aloofness Holmes had managed to cover himself in began to crack. Soon there were gaping chasms in it, whatever lay beneath pouring out of his eyes.
In answer I turned his hand in my grip and, as his sleeve slipped down, kissed the inside of his wrist, just above the bandage I had wrapped around the injury which gave us this chance. I inhaled the precious smell of his skin- all tobacco smoke, hours-old chemistry experiments, and pine resin- and he made a soft, intensely sweet, sound. It was not just that reserve I had described, by turns, in admiring and frustrated detail over the years, that was disintegrating. It was his belief, I prayed now never too strong, that I did not love him every bit as much as he did me.
Holmes lowered his eyes, silent for a moment more. Then he gave a fitful little shake of his head. “That night," Holmes began at long last. He gave a fitful little shake of his head and lowered his eyes. "The night we met with Crocker... I really did wonder if I went a step too far, letting him go. In truth I only half knew why I had done it. Why giving him a chance was so important to me. I was disturbed by that. It was not until you said it that I fully understood that I saw a bit of myself in him.”
“When I said what, Holmes?”
“When you said that you were my friend.” It was then that the true scope of what I had missed occurred to me. Holmes laughed softly, his head tilting back. “As if I didn’t know. As if it didn’t terrify me and sustain me in equal measure. I was not altogether sure if you remembered precisely what he said, but I could not let go of the idea that it all meant something. That perhaps you knew what I felt after all, and that I... that I either had hope, and might if I said what he did get the same reply, or... the opposite. So yes, later, when you seemed to lead me there I risked... feeling you out. I suppose I had not accounted for your assumptions any more than you accounted for mine. I thought you did know, and did not want me after all. I thought you proposed we ignore it, and indeed that seemed to work. Everything was easy enough between us after that. I was happy then. I was almost relieved when it seemed you could never love me, so long as it also seemed you believed friendship would be enough for me, for it meant I would not have to worry about you giving yourself to me for the wrong reasons. Or so I thought until you kissed me.”
"And when you spoke as you did, I thought you meant me. I thought you meant my feelings, thought I was... giving you a-” I inhaled against his pulse-point- “benediction, I suppose. To ignore that I loved you so long as I could stay with you. I thought I was telling you that you did not have to worry about me thinking that a man like you could ever come to feel that way for a man like me.”
“That is the most foolish thing you have ever thought, then,” he said, with a whisper of his old superiority, but only a whisper. His hand moved beneath mine at last, twisting to press against my cheek. “I love you to distraction. I am sorry I don’t show my regard better, Watson. It was an effort at concealment, but that is not all it was.”
“I know,” I replied, holding him more tightly to me. “That is... I have not expected you to turn out to be a different person all this time, Holmes. This is shock enough. In a way, I suppose I shall have to learn you all over again."
He smiled then, sharply, as if I had spoken his very thoughts aloud for him. It slashed like lightening across his face. I think I could see it a thousand times and never grow tired of that look.
And as I looked at him, the future seemed to roll itself out before me like a fine carpet. The changing seasons, the months collecting together into a year, a year in which little would probably change and yet everything would be different. And then, God willing, we would hear again from our friend Crocker. Of his great triumphs at sea, of his engagement, of his marriage and fine prospects. We would not be able to tell him of the changes wrought between us, even though they were thanks in part to him and even though we kept a much darker secret for him- but I would know, and I would think it worth every minute and every doubt.
I don’t know if even Holmes could read all of that from my expression, but he certainly read something that softened his smile, melted it into something liquid and warm. I could see that look a thousand times and one, and never grow tired of it. "I shall have to learn you too," he said, hand sliding backward into my hair.
"Yes," I agreed, a little breathlessly.
He smiled again, and kissed me.