Work Text:
After I'd worked myself into a state of exhaustion during an influenza outbreak in London, Sherlock Holmes sent me to Brighton to convalesce.
I did little but sleep and eat invalid's meals the first two weeks; I might as well have been in a hut deep in the Flisk Wood as at one of our best and costliest seaside resorts.
As I regained my health and vitality, I exchanged letters with my absent apposite, pouring into them as much passion and yearning as a wise and clever detective could deduce from my dry comments about our shared chess games.
Weeks passed; my dreams took erotic flight – making every morning when I awoke with a lacuna in my arms ever more painful. He has an important case right now. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. But the sophism failed to ease my aching spirit and flesh.
One May morning in the fifth week of my stay, I went for a stroll along the boardwalk, and when I returned to my hotel room I found an unexpected visitor.
Summertime and the living is easy. We have not ceased playing chess in the fortnight since his arrival – breakfasting, morning walk, Turkish baths, sunset walk (red sky at night shepherds delight), retire, amalgamate, paroxysm – and I have finally grown to love my stay in Brighton.