Work Text:
Title: Her Walking Clothes
Author: x_los
Beta: aralias
Word Count: 9650
Rating: PG
Pairings: Basil/Ratigan
Summary: Set before the film. Ratigan has always considered Basil’s disguises to be little more than a light amusement. That’s about to change.
“But, you know, I have been trained as an actress myself. Male costume is nothing new to me. I often take advantage of the freedom which it gives. I sent John, the coachman, to watch you, ran upstairs, got into my walking clothes, as I call them, and came down just as you departed.”
Irene Adler
“Scandal in Bohemia”, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Breaking into Windsor while the Queen was at Balmoral (and the palace’s compliment of guards was thus at a low ebb) had been an ingenious plan. First, Ratigan had monitored the garrison’s movements for some weeks, having snuck in one of his own men in place of an expected new addition to their ranks. Then, he’d had his agent dose the curried mutton served in both the guard’s mess and the kitchen where the palace staff dined with a strong opiate. The curry’s spices disguised the pungent taste of the relaxant, and the drug had seen her Majesty’s men slumping into a stupor before they could raise the alarm. Ratigan’s agent had thrown a rope ladder over the steep side of the north terrace, and despite his bulk, Ratigan had nimbly, energetically clambered up and over the top, trailed by his slower confederates.
Just as Ratigan had planned, they ascended to the mouse-fortress within the human one. A few of the guards and staff members hadn’t partaken of the meal, for various reasons. Ratigan’s agent, Ratigan himself and a few other chosen associates had efficiently chloroformed these abstainers.
Once every member of the staff was drugged (their ground-sprawled, slumbering bodies gave the castle the enchanted stillness of a fairy tale), Ratigan had proceeded, with confidence and no great stealth, to the inner keep.
There, he discovered both the priceless treasures he’d come for and a whole, infuriating pack of inspectors. These were headed up by a Basil of Baker Street--wearing an inverness, that idiotic deerstalker, and an insufferable grin on his smug face--who (Ratigan felt) fell uncomfortably into both of the aforementioned categories.
Ratigan’s broad, triumphant grin slumped into a sneer.
A moment of silence elapsed, and then Ratigan simply shut the door on the lot of them.
“You might find it convenient to RUN,” he suggested to his stunned associates, his voice starting in the key of kindly advice and ending in an exasperated roar.
This broke the spell, and, jibbering with fear and confusion, the whole lot of them scattered, heading back for the ladder.
Ratigan rolled his eyes, bracing the now-shuddering door with his body. He might have told the panicking fools that a great many of them would be caught out on the open field if they attempted to run across it, but they were clearly not in a mood either to think or to listen. Ah well - assistants were easily acquired and easily disposed of. This lot didn’t even know the location of his current headquarters. Ratigan’s more competent lieutenant (the one who had managed the infiltration proper) would undoubtedly head into the town and try and escape through some less-monitored avenue. The man was known to the populace as a member of the palace guard, not a criminal--he could probably obtain shelter or transport from some unsuspecting citizen.
Ratigan himself thought to head for the Thames and swim up it for some ways, back towards London, relying on the dark night and his own brute strength against the current. Uncomfortable and hardly transport befitting a gentleman, but, as Basil would have been so quick to point out, Ratigan was a sewer rat, after all. Such feats of endurance came naturally to him.
Which meant Basil would have thought of it too, damn and blast. Ratigan’s face twisted further as he thought of it. There would undoubtedly be boats out, lying in wait. Damn. Damn. No, he’d have to come up with something else.
These considerations were the work of an instant, and he made them even as he jammed the tower’s door with his crowbar and ran down hill of the keep, staying low and strafing to make himself a difficult target to hit. Despite his quick-thinking and precautions, he was still only a minute or so ahead of Basil, who’d understood what Ratigan had done even as he’d done it, who’d had the burliest policemen present lifting the door off its loosed hinges as quickly as possible, and who’d shot through the door first, leading the charge. It was Basil, then, who raced into the armory, ducking the expected pistol shot--because Ratigan had had the crucial moments in which to assess and make use of his environment (an environment consisting mostly of various weapons)--and grabbing from the wall a sword of his own with which to parry the inevitable sword-blow that followed.
Ratigan should have been surrounded at this point, but only Basil had had the instant’s inspiration to dash this way. Apparently no one had started as eagerly as Basil or run as fast, or with such a good notion as to where a pursued man might head. Apparently no one else giving chase had observed Basil’s direction and followed him--the utter incompetents. Poor Basil should have chosen his friends more carefully.
Ratigan used his great weight to crash the heavy armory door shut behind Basil, muffling the sounds of their engagement. Now that the men of the Yard were farther advanced and stood a better chance of hearing, Ratigan didn’t risk another gunshot. A defeated opponent was no good if one was subsequently captured oneself. But scraping metal could easily be dismissed amid the shrill police whistles and the clatter of pursuit--especially if those who heard the sounds were as stubbornly reluctant to observe and conjecture as the members of the Metropolitan Police. They would also overlook a heavy shut door, eyes searching for more obvious escape routes, forgetting, in the excitement of pursuit, to allow for Ratigan’s peculiar strength and cunning.
Ratigan, discarding the gun, now wielded a frighteningly large presentation claymore, and Basil a less ostentatious sword. In a fit of temper, Ratigan growled and brought the blade down on Basil, hammering and hacking at the mouse’s defense. Basil had no time or opportunity to pick up a gun of his own.
“Why--must--you--foul--up--my--best--plans?” he hissed, punctuating words with blows, furious but conscious of the threat of calling the searchers down on them.
“If you didn’t want your sordid schemes exposed, then perhaps you shouldn’t have purchased enough opium to dose a county, Professor!” Basil writhed out from under him and parried verbally and physically, speaking in a slightly-louder-than-conversational tone. Basil, after all, had no fear of detection. It was both his raison d’etre and his particular goal at the moment. “Rather suspicious, don’t you think, old fellow?”
“I purchased it discreetly, in small quantities, over some weeks you wretch!” Ratigan swung and missed.
“Temper, temper!” Basil clucked, infuriatingly. “Indeed you did. And all through the same agent in the same shop,” Basil cooed, smacking Ratigan’s broad back with the flat of his blade as he jumped onto a cabinet. Throwing up his sword, Basil nimbly followed it, twisting up his own lithe body to half-leap, half-clamber onto the room’s dainty gallery. He scrambled around to face Ratigan on said gallery, so he could at least have the advantage of height against his larger, stronger opponent.
“I must thank you,” Basil taunted, making a gracious gesture with his sword, “for being so obliging in that regard. You might as well have given me your address.”
“How very interesting. I can only conclude that you loiter about in that particularly insalubrious den, disguised as an addict, awaiting information,” Ratigan shot back, taking a swipe at Basil’s ankles that made him jump. “I’ll be sure not to involve it in my schemes in future. I do appreciate the tip, Basil.”
Basil snorted, settling into a fencing stance, bounding on his heels and searching for an opening. “If you think to goad me with such a triviality, after I’ve upset such an enterprise of pitch and moment as this--”
“Oh on the contrary, my dear Basil.” Ratigan’s clipped remark dealt essentially the same flat smack as Basil’s stinging blade had made on his own back a moment before. “Now, isn’t it a maxim of yours--that trivialities are always important? I do so enjoy your little sayings.”
He scrambled onto the cabinet Basil had used as a stepping-stool a moment ago and lunged at Basil with his sword. As he’d calculated, Basil nimbly lept back, blocking--but the gallery wasn’t wide enough that Basil could avoid the blow completely. Basil’s own sword edge, pressed by the clattering, insistent weight of Ratigan’s claymore, slit into Basil’s jacket and shirt and drew a thin trickle of blood. Basil’s matchbook, which Ratigan had sometimes observed him slip into a breast pocket, tipped out of the ruined pocket and slid into Ratigan’s waiting left palm. He’d left a his own smoking paraphernalia at home, since even the small flame from his cigarette might have given him away at some inopportune moment on the dark, moonless night, but Basil’s would do just as well. Calmly, as though he were preparing to light himself and Basil twin cigarettes, Ratigan flicked the matchbook open, struck a light or three, and clucked the lit matches at the oiled wooden gallery.
A few meters to Basil’s left, both the wood and the edge of a dry old tapestry caught with surprising speed.
“I don’t believe I require any pitch, do you?” Ratigan asked, echoing Basil’s earlier remark, as a dangerous little fire energetically set-to. “This place is, after all, perfectly suited to burning up and smoking like a chimney. And just think of all those power kegs in the garrison--” Ratigan clucked. “Oh I do hope the whole castle doesn’t suffer a most unfortunate accident. And on your watch, too, Basil! Why, whatever I might have managed to make away with would be absolutely trivial in comparison with a catastrophe of such delicious proportions.”
Basil’s eyes were wide, fixed straight on his enemy. They were somehow especially electric green, especially demanding in their hold on Ratigan’s own gaze. Basil had blanched so white that his pallor was visible, even through his wheat-colored fur. His ears had gone completely flat. For an instant, Ratigan took all this as due tribute to his resourcefulness, but then an inkling-cum-conviction crept upon him that there was something more behind Basil’s determined stare. It was as though Basil, who was uncharacteristically silent, was worried about something as immediate as the fire but more personally dire--as if Basil was, with all his strength, willing Ratigan not to notice something. Ratigan was terribly interested in anything anyone, especially dear Basil, was so anxious to prevent him from knowing.
Now let me see, he thought, I cut Basil, and-- Ratigan’s eyes strayed to the minor wound. Jacket, waistcoat, shirt: all sliced through--and something else, something like bandages. Was Basil wounded? Had Ratigan hit on some pre-existing, still-healing sore point? Ratigan did so loathe it when Basil was so careless as to let himself be injured by other people. For one thing, it meant he himself had to make decisions without having all the facts, which was sloppy and enormously irritating. He might seriously injure Basil when he meant only to inconvenience him. For another thing, such laxity on Basil’s part didn’t do justice to the exclusivity and quality of their rivalry. Ratigan, in contrast, only let Basil get close enough to endanger him. Surely Basil could respect that, and could try and reciprocate the mark of esteem? Ratigan really despaired of Basil’s sense of propriety on occasion.
Exertion from the fight had Basil breathing heavily. There was something about the rise and fall of Basil’s chest, the shape of Basil’s torso--
Ratigan squinted. Ratigan blinked. Ratigan opened his mouth to say something.
A loud clatter at the door. Basil tucked... his coat further around his torso, hiding the cut, and whirled to put out the fire before it spread and endangered priceless artifacts and many lives.
Ratigan waited just behind the door, casting an instant’s glance back at Basil, who was stamping out the fire energetically. Basil’s inscrutable back was to Ratigan. When two constables burst through, Ratigan clubbed them over the back of the head with his claymore and made good his escape, keeping the sword with him as a souvenir (at least something had been successfully stolen this wasted evening).
Concealed in the dark shadows of a laden, human baggage-cart, he made his way back to London. Only back in his own lair, sure he was safe, sure he could afford distraction, did Ratigan allow himself to consider the night’s startling revelation. He paced, hands crossed behind his back, smoking as though his cigarettes held the answer to everything. After the night’s abstention, and then its surprises, Ratigan felt as though he’d never needed them so much in his life.
Bindings. He’d sliced through bindings, he knew that now. The odd rise of Basil’s panting chest had been--well, something that he ought to have averted his eyes from, for the sake of Basil’s modesty. Basil’s womanly modesty. He laughed hysterically, clutching at his sides.
What startled Ratigan were the sentiments he did not feel. Ratigan knew he should rightfully have been crushed in the twin vices of betrayal and disappointment. After all Ratigan had been, for some years now (indeed almost for the duration of their acquaintance), utterly and irrevocably in love with Basil--and, as Ratigan had known for even longer than that, he himself was a sodomite.
Perhaps, Ratigan mused, he was still in shock.
Looking back, understanding what had happened, Ratigan was disconcerted to find the newly-comprehensible memory of their encounter earlier that night… rather erotic. Basil, sword-play, heaving chest, certainly--he’d known as it was happening that this was the stuff pleasingly explicit dreams were made of. But the soft breast, sliced free, ever-so-slightly exposed, probably still tender from its bindings--Ratigan shuddered with queer, unprecedented want.
A dainty thing. He might have lunged forward and licked it, before Basil sliced him to ribbons. He might have gotten the whole of it into his mouth. Ratigan flopped down on a divan. With one hand he plucked his cigarette holder out of his mouth and blew a thoughtful ring, and with the other he adjusted his confusing, inconvenient erection.
Perhaps, some time in the years that he’d been erotically focused on Basil specifically, his tastes more generally had expanded. He’d never been repulsed by the female form, but he’d also never been particularly interested in it--while the male form could, under the right circumstances, spark in him all the greed and hunger and physical charge he felt in the midst of his most exquisite illicit enterprises. But perhaps all that had altered, while his attention had been elsewhere. He sneered at himself. And to think there had been a time when, as a good Catholic child, he’d have given anything for such a revolt in his preferences.
Ratigan tested the notion, and came up blank. Beautiful society ladies and crude whores alike interested him or did not, as their situations, conversation and extra-sexual abilities were intriguing or lacking. But for their bodies as sensual objects, he could summon no particular feeling.
Basil though--Basil, whose sharp, contradictory mind, whose tall, trim frame and whose fussy, imperious, maddening, quicksilver, capable, expansive spirit Ratigan had loathed and then come to simultaneously idolize--Basil’s body seemingly refused, with Basil’s own maddening stubbornness, to be consigned to the realms of Ratigan’s disinterest, even after such an upheaval. Nor, Ratigan felt, was his interest the equally stubborn detritus of a passionate devotion wrecked.
Certainly Basil hadn’t lied to him, except by omission. And Ratigan could understand instantly why Basil would play such a deceitful long-game. Her reasons were painfully obvious. Basil could not have betrayed him, for Basil had promised him nothing, and even if Basil had done, Ratigan was not sure he felt this to be a breach of faith. Was he, then, disappointed? He certainly should be. He was exclusively interested in men, and Basil, though she’d in all probability had no notion of it, had been the apotheosis of Ratigan’s desire--not as a man per se, but in ‘his’ handsome, active person. There had been, Ratigan knew well, not the slightest possibility of reciprocation. But even so, this disclosure ought to have robbed Ratigan of a cherished, idiotic hope.
It did not. Ratigan might have been relieved to be free of his irritating, consuming, hopeless passion, but it lingered, it insisted. Everything that had led him down this fool’s course remained, unaltered. Basil’s ready wit, perfectly nasty smirk and incredible coiled energy. Basil’s absolute focus and Basil’s devoted attentions to Ratigan and his enterprises. The trim triangle of Basil’s back in shirtsleeves and a waistcoat. Not a particular was missing. The thought of what he might do with Basil’s female body, in the highly unlikely event that he would ever be permitted to get close enough to do anything with it, served as a cracked whip to his blood, made it pound and course in his veins. He loved--her. And there it was. Only an imbecile refused to recognize things as they were, because the situation did not agree with his own theories as to how the world ought to be arranged.
Ratigan sat up and, referencing his library briefly, scrawled out a note. He sent it with a match girl who was also instructed to present Basil with a new book of matches, with his compliments.
In her Baker Street apartments, Basil would receive his note. She’d be worried, pacing and smoking, probably wearing the comfortable old dressing down he had occasionally seen her in, as he’d glanced up at her window while taking a respectable stroll through the district. She would rip his note open with elegant fingers while she bade the match girl wait. She’d hurriedly fetch down her Complete Works of William Shakespeare and her King James Bible. Tracking scenes and verses, her shoulders would sag with a relief she didn’t trust but could not help but welcome when the specific lines her correspondent had indicated pieced themselves into a comforting, unexpected totality.
In so many words, Ratigan vowed not to reveal her secret, or to use it against her--to set their gentlemanly game, their respect for one another’s intellects, at a higher value than that. He requested, in return for his promise of good conduct, a meeting in a public place to discuss the matter, and to clear up a few points. Could she oblige him at the Criterion, at one o’clock the next day? ( He’d not quite managed to shoehorn ‘Criterion’ into a clue on such short notice, but he trusted that Basil would, in her agitation, overlook the slight.) He could, after all, still dine in public--Basil had never actually successfully seen him tried for any wrongdoing. Though not for lack of effort.
What use, after all, would it be, trying to blackmail Basil into ignoring his crimes or even into giving him her more personal attentions on such grounds as these? Pride was Basil’s governing sin (and he adored it in her). Basil would burn her professional and public reputation to ashes and start afresh before she allowed herself to be manipulated on this point.
He was unsurprised when the match girl, who knew better than to reveal where a man as formidable as Ratigan lived at any price, even to a man as famous and respected as Basil of Baker Street, slipped his own note back under his door. Basil had made a firm check-mark next to the restaurant and time.
***
Dressed in his best true-black velvet suit, Ratigan glanced at the menu. He blinked and raised one eyebrow as a comely woman slipped neatly into the chair opposite him, picking up and perusing a menu herself.
“I presume you’ve decided, and are simply studying that riveting document to occupy yourself?” she asked.
She motioned the waiter over. Still looking at her, Ratigan set out his courses. The waiter looked at him askance for not then ordering for his lady friend, in accordance with polite custom.
“Just a plate, thank you, nothing on it,” Basil smiled brightly at the waiter, melting his confusion into acceptance. “And water, if I may?”
When the waiter was out of earshot, Basil snapped down the menu and turned to Ratigan, arching an eyebrow. “Well?”
“Not hungry, my dear?” he asked, all politeness, setting aside his own menu with a more graceful, idle flick of the wrist. He suppressed his urge to blatantly leer at her. Basil, in a golden-yellow dress with cream trim, was evidently as handsome a woman as she was a man. Ratigan was evidently not at all immune to the charm of Basil in novel, picturesque costumes, plying calculated feminine smiles as easily she she practiced masculine chumminess to achieve her ends.
Basil snorted, busying her hands with the largest fork, gesturing with it and simultaneously keeping it extended towards him like an ineffectual miniature pitchfork. “Generous as your offer to forgive and forget seemed, I do not for an instant put it past you to bribe a sous chef to drug my soup. I’ll eat with you in a spirit of trust when hell itself freezes over, old boy.”
Ratigan wondered if she’d feel bound to do so, if he could find some way to arrange that admittedly unlikely event.
“Basil,” he laid a mock-concerned hand to his chest, “you needn’t curse and bluster in that unladylike fashion to assert yourself. It’s not your style, is it?” He tsked. “My opinion of you remains entirely unchanged.” His smile grew more rigid, and his tone descended into a snarl. “You’re still an insufferably smug nuisance, my dear.” Adore and respect Basil he might, but that had never prevented him from finding Basil the most wretched, infuriating opponent, and he had neither forgotten nor forgiven the previous night’s little misadventure.
Basil gave him a particularly sour look that told Ratigan that, without consciously meaning to, she had been performing just that defensively bluff role.
“I presume this costume is likewise a gesture of distrust?” He looked her over, glad the conversation had afforded him an excuse to do so blatantly. “Dressed as a man, you might be ‘unmasked’. But a well-turned-out woman can hardly be publicly accused of cross-dressing, in the absence of any evidence, on the basis of some slight facial resemblance between herself and ‘the greatest detective in all Mousedom.’” Ratigan laced Basil’s faux-title with heavy sarcasm. It annoyed Basil, and Basil was always especially rousing when provoked.
“What did you--” Basil snapped, stopping herself short when she saw the waiter headed in their direction.
The waiter arrived with Basil’s empty plate. As soon as he’d gone, Basil scraped the plate lightly with a fork. Then, with a wet finger and a chemist’s look of analytic concentration, she discreetly lick-tested both the plate and the utensils, coming up dry.
Ratigan heaved a profound sigh, resting an uncouth elbow on the table and propping his head in his hand. “It’s almost as though you’ve no faith in my word as a gentleman, my dear.”
“None whatever,” Basil returned firmly.
“Besides, I thought you weren’t lunching?”
“You are free to draw any number of erroneous conclusions. I cannot stop you. Now, your letter expressed your wish to clarify some points - which points exactly?”
Basil had nothing like patience. Ratigan sighed, and steepled his hands before him. “First, in the interest of courtesy--do you think of yourself as a woman? Might I think of you as such without inaccuracy, or giving offense? Obviously I should never refer to you as anything other than a man in our professional dealings.” Though there was something a little delicious in being a co-conspirator, in sharing this great secret of hers, even if he never intended to use that power.
Basil looked suspicious. She put down the fork, and her dominant hand drummed a tattoo on the table--an expression of high-strung nervous tension. “Indeed you may,” she replied. “Thank you,” she added with some reluctance, after an awkward moment’s pause he’d let linger to force the issue. “Do you not intend to pry into what drove me to such an ‘unnatural’ concealment?”
Ratigan waved his hand airily. “Not unless you especially desire to tell me of it. If it was not to answer some call of a Uranian soul, then I imagine it was the more obvious explanation--you sought to defy the great limitations placed on your sex. You value persons in the world, but you care nothing for what we might call the world’s opinion on breaches of propriety such as this. Your intellect and your ambition made it impossible for you to live peaceably in your station, and with the complicity and support of that brother of yours,” Ratigan didn’t think much of the man he privately called Dull Basil, “you attended university and afterwards pursued your researches in London, not so much having denied your gender as having obscured and subsequently failed to mention it. You craved the opportunity to practice your craft, and you were willing to exert yourself extraordinarily, to take great risks in order to do so. It’s all quite simple. I must admit to,” he paused for an instant to choose a word, or to supplant one, “respecting you all the more for it.”
Basil flushed slightly under her fur, simultaneously flattered and disconcerted. “Excessively presumptuous, even for you.” Ratigan tilted his head in a question, and she followed his unvoiced thought and elaborated. “I mean the way you speak as if you would know anything about it.”
He gave her a look that managed to convey he was an Irish rat, and that she was an idiot.
She took the point in silence, her hand stilling.
The waiter brought Basil her water and Ratigan his wine. The waiter was somewhat disconcerted when Basil clamped her hand over her own wine glass to prevent him from pouring into it and gritted out “No, thank you.”
“What’s your proper name?” Ratigan mused, swirling his wine in the waiter’s absence. “I supposed I can just look it up in the registry, if you insist on being unnecessarily difficult.”
“Basil will do quite well enough, thank you,” she said in a clipped tone, taking a sip of her water.
Ratigan sighed dramatically. “I suppose the registry it will have to be, then.”
“It’s Basilinna,” she snapped, “not that it can be of any importance.” Clearly she preferred telling him to the prospect of Ratigan descending on her home town, terrifying the residents and learning humiliating information about her dark past as an embarrassing adolescent. “It’s classical. And cumbersome. I’ve never used it. Basil is my name, for all intents and purposes. I’ll thank you to call me by it.”
Ratigan’s first course arrived. He hesitated for a moment, because the civilized veneer he invested so much energy in maintaining forbade him to eat when a companion was unable to do the same, but Basil commanded him to “Go on then”. Deferring to her, Ratigan spread a bit of his potted mushrooms on a slice of melba toast. Basil watched Ratigan intently while he ate, and Ratigan felt, as he always did, pleased at the weight and heat of Basil’s bottle-green gaze--flattered by such rarified attention. Basil’s lips were slightly parted--perhaps because she was hungry. Lust struck up his spine like a match, as though his great back were just a long flint.
Unexpectedly, Basil slid his plate over to her side. Using the utensils she’d earlier made sure were safe, she put a portion of the potted mushrooms on her own plate and stole two pieces of toast. Basil then slid the plate back across the table to Ratigan. Basil ate delicately, with scientific precision, making sure that the ingredients disguised no hidden poisonous agent to which Ratigan himself might have developed an immunity.
Ratigan watched her, charmed and delighted. Admittedly the reason she took up this queer practice was because she thought he might be attempting to kill her (and to be fair, he certainly had tried to eliminate her in the past--though he always hobbled himself by bungling the trap, where Basil was concerned, and he knew it well). But the fact remained that here was Basil, impudently helping herself to his food, sharing his plate. It was startlingly presumptuous. Intimate. Attractive.
“What?” Basil asked, taking in his queer expression. “Are you ill?”
“No,” Ratigan coughed, recovering. “No--I--Basil, you’re an intelligent woman. Tell me, what do you think of the programme this year, at the Royal Opera House?”
“The programme at the Royal Opera?”
“Yes.” Ratigan delicately cleaned his fingertips with his napkin, then adjusted his tie with smooth confidence, rolling with his sudden thought with perhaps undue sangfroid. He slathered another slice of toast, as though the turn of the conversation were the most natural thing in the world. “You will, of course, have noted that unfortunate German turn--though I find the French additions entirely welcome.”
“Oh you would--” Basil snapped, pitching into the debate before she could stop herself. She then backpedaled mightily. “See here, if you’ve really nothing further to ask me--”
“Not at the moment.” He put the piece of toast on her plate, then proceeded to prepare another for himself. “You’ve really no opinion on the subject, Basil? You do surprise me.”
“Then our business is concluded,” she huffed, as though he hadn’t spoken. She stood and dramatically threw her napkin onto the chair. “I bid you good day, and live in undoubtedly vain hope that we do not meet again.”
She marched out of the Criterion, heels ringing on the tile floor. Ratigan rolled his eyes heavenwards at the display, watching her go in the reflective, gilded ceiling. When his gaze meandered back to Earth, he was amused to find several patrons and waiters, who undoubtedly thought he’d scandalized his female companion in some infamous manner, trying not to look at him.
He sighed theatrically to Basil’s empty chair. “Unkind and untrue. How bored you’d grow!”
He polished off his toast, leaving her lonely article untouched.
He waited, counting the minutes.
“You’re a contemptible philistine!” Basil said, having charged back in and returned to the corner of the table. She’d undoubtedly made it to Shaftesbury Avenue, before she’d turned around. As he’d predicted. “Their German selection is introspective--”
“And, on occasion, you want to introspect?” he inquired civilly, smirking.
Even more annoyed at having been thoroughly anticipated, she shoved the toast on her plate into her mouth and ate it viciously, then turned on her heel again.
She got five paces before he called out, “I might have poisoned it while you were gone, you know.”
Her back seized up with incredible rigidity, and she walked out as though her spine might snap if anyone jostled her. He craned his neck, but, unfortunately, missed the undoubtedly entertaining look on her face. Ah, well. Another time.
He chucked, enjoying the rest of his lunch with his sense of minor triumph and her abandoned chair, which retained in his mind some immaterial connection with its former occupant--perhaps there was something of Basil in the pert peak of the thrown-down napkin. He toasted Basil’s ghost wryly at the meal’s conclusion.
Not even the dream-image of Basil as the man Ratigan had thought her, adored that image as Ratigan had, could stand in the face of Basil as she was. She needed no compliment, she lacked nothing to make her absolutely sublime. Basil broke the systems by which Ratigan had long understood himself across her knee, even as she snapped his plans in pieces. Of course Basil did.
***
Some months later, Ratigan was, with delicacy and restraint, tying Basil to the leg of a table. He was trying to avoid improperly touching Basil, but Basil was making it difficult, writhing like a madwoman and trying to bite his hands: fur disheveled and eyes wild. His hand had brushed against her lips and chest already. Her tail, thrashing, licked down his arm. Ratigan’s arm was covered by his coat sleeve, but for an instant her soft fur touched the underside of his exposed wrist.
He stiffened, and gritted his teeth. “Basil,” he cooed sweetly through them, “I would appreciate your cooperation.”
Ratigan was fairly sure that Basil would consider him to be taking a very great liberty if he… developed unmistakable physical signs of interest in the situation. It wasn’t his fault he had a favorite fantasy startlingly similar to this, or that he’d spent the past months getting, in his mind’s eye, erotically reacquainted with this new, female edition of Basil. He’d taken to altering his ideas and concocting new ones like a pleasant duty.
Basil opened her mouth to spit some retort, and in an instant he whipped off his tie and gagged her with it. “There now. Isn’t that more congenial?”
Basil glared eloquently.
Ratigan patted her cheek condescendingly. “I quite agree.” The part of his mind that worked in pure mathematical formulae noted that he should simply shoot her in order to further his goals. “I should be so lucky,” he murmured with a snort. The vast bulk of him was infinitely more interested in weighing competing imperatives to:
1. get on with stealing the Bank of England’s gold bullion,
2. conceal all traces of inappropriate interest in Basil from Basil,
3. have riotous ‘I-win’ intercourse with Basil on top of undoubtedly uncomfortable, but certainly inspiring, bars of gold, and
4. moronically fawn over Basil’s perfect, adorable bank guard costume. The little goatee! So masculine. Basil could be such a charming hoyden.
Fairly sure that his men were getting along fine without him, or rather that they were utterly incompetent but that his scheme was too perfect for even them to ruin, and that, if left alone for an instant, Basil would somehow worm out of confinement and spoil everything, Ratigan concentrated on loading up his sack with the gold bars in this vault. He’d rather hoped for bonds--lighter, and generally more valuable--but it seemed they’d been moved after all. He’d known there was some danger of that. Still, this was far from a bad night’s work. He said as much to Basil.
“Wouldn’t you say?” he added, stepping lightly around the room to inspect its contents, knowing she couldn’t.
“Indeed I wouldn’t,” she shot back.
He glanced back at her in some surprise, rolling his eyes pointedly when he saw she’d managed to use her tongue to work the gag out of her mouth. All that energy, expended just so she could answer back. Typical. (He did not think about Basil’s apparently very muscular, dexterous tongue-- he would think of it later.)
“Incidentally, as a friend,” she said with sarcastic politeness, “you should go back to the last cologne. Whatever’s come in contact with this tie is vile.”
He chuckled, starting to load his sack. “How kind of you to take an interest. I think you mean the last cologne was more distinctive, and thus more easily traceable--on three occasions you used it to determine that I, specifically, had been in a room not long before, and to come after me on the basis of that knowledge. It’s the same with the cigar ash, dear Basil. I have to stick to quite plebian brands while on a job now, and you know it.” He sighed, then brightened. “Oh by the way, you took your time this evening--I thought, if you had been onto this affair, to have seen you significantly earlier. Indeed I quite rejoiced when midnight struck and there you weren’t. Did you get lost?”
“I had to stop back at my appartments for the costume, and there was some wedding,” Basil sneered, and he noted with a touch of fondness that she was trying to distract him with chat while testing his bindings. “A society affair at St. George’s, which I have the misfortune of living hard upon. The throng that follows Caesar at his heels does take some getting through.”
“That is what you reap from not attending to the society columns,” Ratigan chided. “All of Mousedom knows about Mirabelle, Countess of Severn and Thames, making an honest man out of a lizard for her own amusement, except you, who pride yourself on your knowledge of goings-on in the city!”
She glowered, and he glowed with satisfaction and pressed his advantage, still busily loading bars. Ratigan knew himself capable of carrying a great many--the difficulty was securing a mathematically perfect weight distribution which would make the best use of his capabilities and grudgingly impress the watching Basil.
Without thinking, Ratigan continued. “Your own wedding will undoubtedly be covered therein, and I suppose you’ll avoid seeing those reports in due course.”
Ratigan’s back, turned to Basil, stiffened as many and diverse thoughts suddenly occurred to him.
The first of these was that Basil was a goddess among women, and that, although she might be most akin to Diana the huntress, in the extra-Arcadian world, a woman like her was unlikely to remain eternally chaste. When did fetching, celebrated, well-provided daughters of good lines of country squires go begging? Basil might like to think herself a machine, to imagine she had total governance over herself and an absolute devotion to her work. Ratigan, however, knew from long experience that he and Basil shared a quality of emotional excess. Basil did not much go in for the staged extremes of sentimentality so characteristic of modern sociability--perhaps due to a distaste for the characteristically feminine associations of such displays. Yet she had an unpredictable, passionate streak that she had trouble admitting to or reconciling with her analytic mind, and thus had particular trouble controlling. She was at turns excitable, violently temperamental, deeply melancholy and full of ready sympathy. Basil was prone to deep feeling for the people she assisted, in particular. On one of his walks through the environs of Baker Street, he’d seen her seriously threaten, in the very street, to horsewhip a man for gross unkindness to his step-daughter.
A person like that would fall in love eventually. Some clever, lonely, good man she could respect--‘Oh don’t weep for your lost family, dear Sir Something-or-other, celebrated whatever-you-like, I’m here.’ Maybe she’d retire (and leave him). Or very probably she’d be able to practice as a woman, if she were safely married to a man of good standing. The crossdressing affair could be a matter of public curiosity rather than a source of infamy, if it were revealed when Basil was safely wed. That alone might tempt her to matrimony, given that ruin threatened if she were exposed while a woman alone. Pushed and manipulated she would not be, but if it were her own decision…? The social pressure on her, even in disguise as she was, was not inconsiderable. Basil, who might have been a bachelor all his life, would very likely not be a spinster all her life. She was of the parish of St. George’s--the very church she cursed as a traffic obstruction was the one she would in all likelihood be married out of. Basil, his Basil, might marry. Might marry someone else.
The overwhelming, initially hideous idea that Basil could marry almost simultaneously presented Ratigan with a singular opportunity. Since realizing the direction of his own preferences as a boy, he’d ruled out certain avenues of life that many a man walked down with thoughtless ingratitude. Now, however, he was a man. And Basil was a woman. He could marry. He could marry Basil. He could stake a legal claim on Basil, could make Basil his wife. He could get Basil in a delicate condition. He could father a child on Basil, and, screaming and breaking his fingers with her grip and calling him a filthy depraved immoral contemptible sewer rat bastard, Basil could bring that child shrieking and vital into the world. He could make that happen, they could do that, they could have a child, and he had never even thought of it before but now he wanted it like he wanted the security wealth brought, and the world’s admiration, and not to be dismissed as just a rat, and Basil’s respect. He wanted it that much, and with a dizzying suddenness, and with an immediacy that ripped through him. He wanted Basil in a ludicrous gown she’d wear like a disguise, wanted to give himself to her because Basil was the only person he could ever belong to. And every day, to have her and to be in like manner possessed. Now, right now he wanted her heavy-swollen with his child, thoroughly and completely his, wanted to fuck her in that glorious state with a care that strained his nerves to breaking point and an intensity that frightened even him.
For ages he had been circumspect, never able to push his desire for Basil into a form Basil might understand, to make use of any easy, well-worn language of allowable affection. His desire spilled over a marriage’s allotted shape, but it filled it like water before splashing over. Here was a speakable thing, a theme on which to elaborate--a theme worthy of a lifetime’s elaboration.
“Have you developed narcolepsy or something? You’ve not heard me, I think.”
Though Basil could only see his back, Ratigan’s posture must have assumed enough of a rictus to baffle her.
Ratigan paused to avoid giving voice to the litany of MINE that crowded out all other thoughts. “Forgive me, I was preoccupied. What did you say, my dear?”
“Merely that your suggestion regarding my turn in the society papers was hardly likely to come to fruition.”
Ratigan cleared his throat, and schooled his hands, which were slightly fumbling the bars, mindlessly rearranging them, to stillness. “What’s your opinion of marriage generally, Basil?” He looked over his shoulder at her.
She goggled at him, surprised out of trying to pick at her bindings. “Excuse me?”
Ratigan made an airy gesture with his hand, as though he didn’t care one way or another. “Oh, indulge me.”
Basil scoffed. “I suppose you expect me to express some posing masculine disdain for the whole affair, which you, of course, can ascribe bitterness to and chuckle over--though if you still thought me a man, you’d call it a bachelor’s frame of mind, without assuming I had any rancor for the state.”
“Do try and keep a firm separation between what the world might think of you if they knew your position,” Ratigan said, “and what I think of you. I find your failure of specificity insulting to us both.” He let the words sit sharply--they needed this plainly established between them, and it wouldn’t do to leave its contours unfelt. “Pray continue, I am interested.” He turned and leaned back against the table, hand on his chin, properly giving her his attention.
“Well, perhaps I would have a callous disregard for and disinclination towards it, if I were a man. I’d have known most of my examples of marriage from my cases--and there are few happy, sensible marriages that coincide with situations in which a detective must be summoned to unravel affairs. I don’t think I’d have had a great many childhood friends, if I had been a boy. Men are allowed not to form acquaintances, whereas in women an insular nature is unforgivably queer.
“Pushed into connections I should not have sought of my own accord, I formed friendships I’m now grateful for with many estimable women, the greater part of whom are now wives and mothers. These friends are either happy or unhappy in their unions based on the personalities and particulars involved. I have seen many women find great satisfaction in its opportunities and responsibilities, and many women made wretched. I have made some observations, know of some precedents, but I have no general, total opinion of the state--it is a grave error to theorize about generalities in advance of specific evidence.”
Ratigan was surprised at how forthright and open Basil was this evening. He thought he should tie her up more often--it seemed to precipitate good conversation.
“And should you like to be married yourself?” His tone was careful, his head tilted to the side. He steepled his fingers before him.
“As I said, it should depend on the particularities of the case. But really, it’s immaterial. As I am,” Basil nodded, seeming to indicate her assumed uniform coat and her false beard and mud-spattered boots, “who would think to ask for my hand?”
“I would,” he answered without thinking.
She blinked suddenly very round eyes. “...what?”
A police whistle sounded, and Basil smirked. Ratigan realized she’d been stalling, awaiting reinforcements. Clever. A point to Basil. His polite expression drooped into dismay, then into extreme distaste, and then smoothed into something sweeter.
“Perhaps I haven’t made myself clear.” He tapped his fingers together in front of his lips. “Allow me to explain. I would marry you. How, specifically, do you feel about marriage to me? The question is not hypothetical.”
“What?”
“As scintillating an example of repartee as that is, Basil dearest, I’m afraid that the arrival of your friends means we must postpone the conclusion of our little discussion. Permit me to point out that whilst your collusion with the authorities has prevented my men from clearing out the entirety of the vault, it won’t prevent them from escaping with the considerable amount they can carry. Au revoir!” He gave Basil a cheery wave and headed towards the door.
“No!” Basil got out, through the fog of amazement. “No, no, absolutely not, no! Are you actually mad?”
Ratigan’s grin grew tight, and he spoke through his teeth. “We haven’t had time to properly discuss it. Perhaps you can explain your reasons at another opportunity? Until then.”
He came back and dared to cup her jaw for an instant, and to drop a light kiss on her head. Then he shot out the side door in the wake of his men and legged it for all he was worth.
Ratigan was unsurprised when, far too early the next morning, the very match girl he’d sent to Basil months ago turned up at his door. The child was sullen, in an ill-temper. “That madman you sent me to ages ago was out all night looking for me. Said he didn’t need sleep when he was attending to something--well, some of us do. Said to give you this. Any reply?”
Ratigan, leaning insouciantly against the jamb, perused the curt letter and snickered. He told the girl no reply was necessary, and gave her a good tip for bringing such an entertaining summons.
He arrived at the Criterion for lunch in a gray morning suit better suited to a proposal than his garb of the previous evening. He’d gone full dandy with it, and it was certainly worth alternately terrorizing and over-paying his tailor if he could obtain results like this. Besides, he knew for a fact he wasn’t the man’s worst customer--not while Baron Elmsworth lived and breathed, at any rate. He looked a picture, while Basil looked a mess who’d not slept or properly combed her fur when she stormed in in high dudgeon.
“What the hell was the meaning of that?” she roared sotto voce, tail poking up behind her in her chair, straight with indignation. “Entirely unacceptable! Beyond the pale, even for you! And you like to think yourself a gentleman!”
“And so I am, Basil!”
“What you are is a depraved, contemptible villain. Further, though it is in itself unobjectionable, you are certainly a most confirmed invert!”
“I prefer sodomite. Wine?”
She ignored that. “I don’t care if you think yourself a bloody Two-Spirit. The point is that you are not interested in the fairer sex.” Basil looked ready to tear her fur out in frustration.
“You’re an exceptional woman. Indeed you are literally my exceptional woman.”
“I am not your anything.” Basil balked and drew herself up, somehow seeming queenly despite her wrongly-buttoned jacket and crumpled hat. “I realized you were somewhat attracted to me when you thought me a man--”
“Oh did you?” His smile went stiff. Did you think it was funny? he wanted to ask and didn’t.
Basil simply waved it off.“Oh that was fairly obvious, and of course you might have been somewhat--dismayed to discover your error, but that does not account for the persistency or--for such a degree of-- Look, what are you playing at?”
“You were wrong,” he said simply. He raised his hand to gesture the waiter over. “You are, sometimes, very occasionally, in error. You deduced that I was somewhat attracted to you. You weren’t far off--it was simply a miscalculation. An error of degree, not kind. Affaires de coeur have never been your strongest point.”
The waiter advanced and poured her some water, topping up Ratigan’s wine. “Will your fiancée be dining, sir?
Ratigan raised an eyebrow and grinned. Basil turned puce and fumed.
“You could simply ask me, and why in God’s name do you think this--” Basil struggled not to say ‘rat’ in polite company, “person and I are in any way romantically connected?”
The waiter shrugged. Ratigan observed that he was clearly of French extraction, but had quite good English. Basil could of course have told him far more.
“Some months ago I served you both,” the waiter explained. “I remember the peculiar, intimate way you ate from his plate, and the way you stormed out, returned, and left once more. Now you are back, and comfortable enough to shout at this man--yet you sit at table with him, and speak in a low volume, as though you discuss confidential matters. You are, forgive me madam, in distress--you have dressed as though you fumbled in the dark, and you have no fear of your companion’s opinion of you in that regard--a mere lover is not so secure in her partner’s esteem. You do not either of you wear wedding rings, and you cannot possibly be blood relations. Ergo, I conclude you are affianced. Forgive me madam, I meant no offense. I am a devotee of the methods of your great English detective Basil of Baker Street, as related by the papers.”
“Thank you,” Basil gritted, looking as though she wanted to kill the waiter, Ratigan, and herself in no particular order. “You can go. I don’t want anything.”
Ratigan cackled as though he’d choke. It took him some time to recover. Basil seethed, her chest rising and falling in her anger in a way that helped distract Ratigan from his mirth. It occurred to him that sharing food from the same plate, as they had, had been a significant element of medieval wedding banquets. That made the gesture, in retrospect, even more delightful.
“You are a homosexual, sir,” she hissed when he was back with her. “I’d stake my life on it.”
“Oh believe me, Basil, I know my own mind. And body. Your life would be safe, and yet nevertheless--” He tipped his wineglass towards her in salute.
“And you’re Catholic!”
“Oh, lapsed. Why Basil, would you like me to convert?” He caught her hand, stroked it, enjoyed the touch, her thunderous expression, and the lightening-quick, surprisingly strong slap that landed on his hand immediately after he’d tried it. “I’m quite happy to, if necessary. Though Anglicanism is hardly an inspiring prospect. Still, for you, dearest.”
Spurred by the waiter’s earlier words, Basil was hastily arranging herself--smoothing her fur, uncrumpling her hat, and discreetly, unless you happened to be sitting directly opposite her, correctly re-buttoning her jacket, one button at a time. She seemed not to be paying him any heed, but Ratigan knew better.
“I suppose it could be worse,” Ratigan mused. “You could be chapel.” He shuddered.
“While we’re on the subject,” Ratigan continued, “perhaps the Church’s, shall we say, strict views on certain matters have made you feel as though you could not commit to a union with one of her sons? Allow me to assure you, I am aware that your history may well have been colorful and unusual. I should never hold that against you, my sweet. Indeed it would be the height of hypocrisy.”
Basil stopped, leaving a middle button gaping. “I cannot believe I have allowed myself to be drawn into this ludicrous conversation! With you! I would have you know that, my profession aside, I have lived respectably, in accordance with good standards of Christian conduct, and that I am most certainly a--a maiden, thank you!”
Ratigan coughed. “Really?” Oh God, there was a whole new, totally unanticipated delectation--he felt rather dizzy.
“What are you--?” Basil frowned. “That peculiar sea-sick look--are you honestly imagining deflowering me? In a restaurant?”
“I wasn’t imagining deflowering you in a restaurant,” he said quite honestly. “Pray don’t make suggestions along those lines in public, as a favor to me. Incidentally, one of your buttons is gaping quite suggestively as well.” He would have to think soothing thoughts if he planned to ascend from the table with his dignity intact. He clutched a hand to his poor heart.
Basil rapidly fixed said button and the rest, and made a request of him that did not befit her status as a lady.
He grinned. “Is that an invitation?”
“Consider it one, though I shouldn’t like to be there to see it. Furthermore, I cordially invite you to go to hell, Ratigan.”
“Mm. I love the way you say my name, you know. Like you’re eating a cherry cordial. If the world were just, you’d speak in nothing but words beginning with R, rolling each one perfectly and serving as a living example to the race. Basil, do me the courtesy of being honest. Are you attracted to me? Perhaps until last night you didn’t consider it a remote possibility, but you’ve had hours to think on it since then, and I have no doubt that you have, at least for a moment, entertained my suggestion. Your mind is admirably ready to consider every contingency.”
Basil--showed distinct signs of discomfort. “That hardly bears on the matter.”
“So you are!” He clapped his hands. “The idea is not repulsive to you.” Basil opened her mouth to correct him, and Ratigan waved a hand and amended himself. “Not all aspects of it are wholly repulsive to you. There’s a beginning.”
“There’s an end.” Basil had finished tidying herself. Now looking quite smart, she glared at him in state. “If circumstances were wildly different than what they are, I might be the Empress of Japan--it doesn’t mean anything. We deal in ready, present contingencies, not wild conjectures.”
“Now don’t be limited,” Ratigan chided. “I’m an excellent organizer my dear, as well you know. When I’m sufficiently determined, I have an excellent record of being able to arrange things. Trying to decide on the most appropriate method for wooing you will prove a perfectly delightful dilemma. Let’s see--what forms of criminality do you find least objectionable? How do you feel about the harp? Attending a concert I am also present at? As you yourself might say, I must have data before I can theorize.”
Basil gave him a contemptuous look. “After years of--knowing me, you realize I’m a woman, and now you act? Do you think your discovery has somehow shown me to be soft-headed, or rendered me a reasonless beast hungry for marriage, despite our conversation on the subject? Do you think so little of me?”
“I should have made myself clear earlier,” he admitted. “I apologize. But I never imagined you might share my inclinations. I heard no whisper of it. There was not even the slightest old rumor to give me succor. My profession--or at least one aspect of it--was abhorrent to you. And I had nothing concrete to offer you--this, though, is possible. This is a negotiating position. I see a way through, and the opportunity has inspired me. Weren’t you yourself surprised last night, provoked by the glimmer of change to see a wider array of possibilities beyond?”
Basil regarded him uncertainly. Paused. “I do not for a moment trust you.” Made a tactical retreat and retrenchment. “My being a woman changes nothing between us.”
“Excellent,” he smiled, “I’m so glad you think so. Now, on that assumption, Basil, Basilinna, precious, will you--”
“If you get on one knee here, in front of that damn waiter, I shall shoot you without compunction,” she prempted him. “I have a revolver in my pocket.”
Ratigan gave a wounded sigh. “The offer stands, since it apparently isn’t permitted to kneel.”
Basil threw up her hands and, echoing her last departure from the Criterion, stormed out. This time she did not return. Still, Ratigan thought it had been quite a successful interview.
“By the way,” he informed the waiter, “she is not my fiancée. We’re still arranging all that.”
The waiter snorted. “If sir will permit me to say, though the lady is evidently of a tempestuous temperament, I should not worry about the outcome of these negotiations. A woman who storms out of a restaurant on a gentleman three times surely intends to marry him.” The waiter shrugged. “Why else should she come back?”