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Ratigan was dead.
The reports from Scotland Yard confirmed; every interrogation of the surviving henchman confirmed; all the tests Basil performed himself confirmed.
The most brilliant mind all of rodentkind had ever known, who long wowed and terrified the public with his endless repertoire of transgressions, eluded justice in ways that left even Basil speechless...was dead.
Just as Basil hoped because he rid London of its worst blight and feared because what now? All those evenings spent analyzing the madman’s movements for even the merest chance to see him forever behind bars, nights stripped of sleep via nightmares punctuated by echoes of mocking laughter.
All meaningless now.
The Great Mouse Detective, clothed in naught but his tawny trousers, pondered this question as he lay supine on his bed, legs crossed at the ankles and hands set on his stomach. Bright forest eyes trained on the wooden ceiling as his tail tip swished in time with his tumultuous thoughts.
Waning evening light streamed through the window to paint everything not yet conquered by dark a deep burnt orange.
If he allowed his mind to wander enough, Basil could imagine him stalking the stretching shadows, watching him with those dark sinful eyes. Though Basil knew he would have never dared allow Ratigan any closer than that, he reflected otherwise with a rueful smirk.
He would’ve adored any opportunity to render me his inferior, he mused with a stretch of limbs and satisfied grunt, muscles of his sinewy frame shifting. My younger self would have jumped at the offer no doubt.
And what of his current self? Especially after—
Knock-Knock-Knock!
Not phased at all by the sharp intrusive noise, he perked an ear in silent interest. In the next second, a familiar voice called.
“Basil? May I come in?”
Dawson? At the tenderly asked question, the detective sat up in warm surprise and slid off the bed, thankful for the reprieve from his heavy reverie. When he unlocked and opened the door, he held back a smirk at how the old soldier’s eyes bugged at the flagrant indecency.
Trying in vain to restrain a blush, the shorter chubbier mouse cleared his throat in a moment of awkwardness and entered Basil’s room with a nervous gait, making a point to keep his eyes on the other mouse’s face and nowhere else. “Honestly, Basil, what would’ve happened had Mrs. Judson seen this?”
“Not likely,” Basil coolly returned, shoulders rolling back. “She only enters here for her daily cleaning routine, which I believe occurred in the noon. Besides, I kept the door locked just in case, did I not?”
Flawless logic but not a flawless excuse. The good doctor’s face scrunched; it only invoked an even more amused smile from Basil.
A slim eyebrow arched. “David, if you’d rather I put on a shirt, you need only ask.”
The addressed medic rubbed a hand over his blushing face, moustache twitching. He risked another glance at his friend’s half-bare form before nodding. Holding back a chuckle, Basil retrieved a white dress-shirt from his closet, slipped it on, and buttoned it up.
“Now then,” the taller mouse spoke in briskness more befitting himself as he finished and stuffed his hands into the trouser pockets, “what incited your search for me?”
His easy façade crumbled once he looked up and noticed the doctor’s face had fallen in worry.
“You.” Dawson stepped closer. “You’ve been distant lately.” He took in the other mouse’s halfheartedly puzzled expression and rolled his eyes. “Distant in a way that is out of the norm for you. Periodic moods are one thing, but this one in particular has lasted for two months since we saved the queen.”
Basil shrugged, his face a perfect mask of blasé acknowledgement. “I still carry my role as an independent investigator, do I not?”
“Well, yes but it’s without the same level of dedication and passion as before!” Dawson asserted, “You’re not as...happy as before. While I won’t pretend to emphasize with, never mind understand, your fixation on Ratigan, surely the drive for your work shouldn’t perish with him!”
Those words cut Basil to the quick, inciting a brief flicker of shame. No counterargument could debunk the validity or precision of his friend’s claims, so he turned his eyes to the retreating sunlight. Silence reigned while one mouse pondered his next response and the other waited with bated breath.
A brief of eureka flashed.
“Are you familiar with the painting technique called chiaroscuro?”
How digressive. Classic Basil.
Dawson sighed through his nose and closed his eyes in resignation. Best to go with the flow of his flatmate’s eclectic thoughts. “I believe it is a way of manipulating light and shadow so as to create the illusion of depth in painting.” Sudden understanding sent his eyelids flying open and he cocked his head, half sympathetic and half curious. “Are you saying you feel incomplete without Ratigan?”
Basil hummed in affirmation, impressed and proud of how quick his friend caught on. The detective put a hand to his chest. “Forgive me if I am more transparent than usual. He had a way of honing my sense of mystique.”
Hard to imagine for Dawson. Not because of the influence the former professor possessed over Basil’s imagination even in death but more in how the detective radiated that air of mystery more than ever before, standing between dark and light, unshared questions and answers shimmering in those emerald eyes.
Questions and answers the good doctor knew and (for the most part) accepted he might never come to learn. However, that reality would not stop him from postulating questions of his own, let alone acquiring answers to them.
“Do you intend to retire then?”
Poor choice of words.
Indeed, the sharp twirl and even sharper look of indignation startled Dawson so that he might have backed into and collapsed onto the bed behind him if not for restraint honed from wartime and his work as a practitioner in general. Only then did he realize his mistake: one could slander Basil however they please, but one must never assume the mouse lacked passion for his profession.
Far from done driving the point home, Basil marched right to Dawson’s face until his eyes bored into his like The Lord’s wrath. Now Dawson backed into and collapsed onto the bed – and Basil only loomed closer over him still until their noses touched.
“Not your best joke, old chum.”
Never did a conversational tone sound so intimidating.
A few more moments of tension passed until Basil softened in guilt and backed away. “My apologies. Recent developments have left me...askew, for lack of a better word.”
Recent. Dawson angled himself upright and cleared his throat. “Not just Ratigan’s death?”
“Not any longer.” Basil shook his head and then paused, lips pursing. He turned to the doctor. “Do you remember Olivia?”
Dawson juddered himself in a bemused manner. “Hmph, I’d be remiss to forget such a spirited young lady. Why do you ask?”
For an exceptionally rare moment, he found Basil at a loss for words. The sight invoked a lopsided smile Dawson could not help. “Now Basil! Don’t tell me the young lass has a childhood crush on you.”
Basil scoffed, one half in amusement and the other half in wishful thinking. “It would have required a much simpler solution by comparison. At least I could give her a simple ‘no’ and be done with the ordeal.”
“One of your lady clients then?” Because there’d been more than a few who made their interest in Basil clear in spite of the sleuth’s eccentricities.
A wry smirk. “Just as simple.”
Dawson cocked his head, brows flying high in surprise and interest. “One of your male clients?”
Not that the doctor judged his friend, of course. He knew attraction could extend beyond the typical pairing of man and woman despite their society’s unsavory views on such relationships. Besides, Dawson would make himself a hypocrite otherwise to deny he ever had such moments himself from time to time, particularly of one other mouse.
Still Dawson could not recall any of Basil’s male clientele displaying similar interest, even his later accompaniments to the detective’s adventures notwithstanding. Not like any of those men committed to return visits, except for...wait.
The doctor’s jaw slowly went agape as the dots started to connect: the mention of Olivia, that offhand response, this recent reveal. Epiphany spread across the old soldier’s face like a flood. He craned his head closer Basil’s way.
“Olivia’s father has shown such interest in you?”
The befuddled question earned a dry chuckle. “Your lack of faith in my charm is comforting, chum.”
Dawson resisted the urge to facepalm. That sounded like the Basil he knew. All the more reason why this news took the doctor by surprise since so much time had passed since the good doctor saw the toymaker last.
“And just for the record, the interest has been mutual as of two months ago.”
Two months ago. Two months of utter ignorance of this detail. Dawson let this news sink in for a moment before he narrowed his eyes in suspicion edged with hurt. “And you only just deigned to notify me of this now because...?”
Basil at least had the decency to look ashamed. “Because I feared your reaction. My apologies.”
Mercy and sympathy made way into the doctor’s eyes, hurt still there but fainter; he shook his head. “Oh Basil, dear boy. I couldn’t care less for your preferences so long as your choice ensures you happiness.” Something Hiram Flaversham would be more than willing to provide judging by what little Dawson knew of the man. “That’s why you have yet to make a move, I take it?”
When Basil pinched his eyes together in his classic tell of refusing to admit being in the wrong, Dawson did not hold back a knowing smile. “If the interest is mutual like you said, then I see no reason why either of you should hesitate in making your feelings known to one another. Mr. Flaversham is a good man and so are you.”
A bitter chuckle met these words. “Good is relative in my case, Dawson.”
Dawson scoffed in good nature. “And why is that? Because you had a history with Ratigan? Flaversham saw the lengths you were willing to go to keep Olivia safe from that monster, let alone reunite them!”
“One good deed does not a relationship make. You know as well as Ms. Judson does how difficult I can be.”
“As if that’s stopped any of us, least of all Olivia’s father. Now why don’t you stop with the non sequiturs and admit the real reason you doubt your capacity to be a good partner to Flaversham.”
At first silence. Then to Dawson’s confusion, Basil extended a hand until it stretched just enough to graze the waning shaft of evening light. Alarmingly, Basil’s breathing started to hasten, his face twisting into something akin to a sad snarl.
“B-Basil?” Dawson put a hand to his friend’s shoulder, brow furrowed in worry. “What’s wrong?”
Another bitter chuckle escaped except this one trembled with an undercurrent of light hysteria. At last Basil tilted his head back. “Even in death, he still haunts my thoughts. Sometimes I wonder if my mind is his crypt, that any moment the same frenzy that would possess me at thoughts of him will arise in worse form, rending everything and everyone in sight.”
Perhaps a dark reflection of the same fury that possessed Ratigan up in the clocktower, rending that cultured façade to unveil the madman deep beneath. Enough nightmares and moments of irrational disassociation had confirmed the residence of that fear in his mind.
“Basil,” Dawson sighed in unspeakable sorrow, “you make it sound as though you and Ratigan are one and the same and doomed to be so, which is far from the truth!”
“Would you like to know something hilarious, Dawson? I legitimately believe you – he and I chose such different paths in life after all. But the history between us, the conflicts we’ve shared – it’s like the most morbid case of recovering from a horrid breakup.”
Once again, the big picture started to fill in for Dawson. Further pity scrunched his brows. “You fear that because your lives have been so intertwined, you’re incapable of sharing a bond of similar depth with someone else.”
“Not incapable of similar depth.” Basil knew his own mind well enough to recognize he could instill great devotion into other pursuits. “I could achieve that and perhaps so much more with Hiram. That is what terrifies me.”
When Dawson’s face twisted in confusion, Basil pressed a hand to his own heart.
“Beneath this scholarly veneer, there have always been strong feelings, strong passion, lurking beneath. Oh Dawson – oh David – the Muses could not do justice the bliss and comfort Hiram has shown me. If I were to destroy this newfound sanctum without intention, destroy that brave caring heart with these flames...”
A firm knowing hand on his shoulder quieted the storm.
“You won’t.” In a rare moment, David stripped the question straight from Basil’s thoughts. “Because you know how to put others before yourself, and you know when to restrain yourself for others’ sake.” Those were qualities Ratigan either never understood or allowed himself to forget amidst all the anger and hate.
At the despairing gaze given in return, all the willpower within Dawson proved almost not enough to keep himself from embracing Basil. Rather he set a hand on his dear partner’s back, rubbing circles in between the scapula.
Basil briefly bit his bottom lip. A moment where he reverted to the orphan afraid to wander beyond his book-laden shelter. “And if I should slack in that restraint even once?”
“Oh come off your perfectionism, Basil,” Dawson answered in a voice both loving and exasperated, “Hiram wants love, not an automaton.”
An eye-roll met the assertion. “After that incident with the Queen, I can scarce imagine otherwise.”
Dawson’s surprised snort elicits a smirk that makes Basil feel more like his usual self. Self-consciousness returned but more subdued.
“Please understand, David. This is my first time engaging someone on an emotional level that never required a thought process more complicated than ‘yes or no’.” Let alone forced him to consider such a level long term. “I’m bound to overthink what he does or says, let alone expects of me.”
Dawson shrugged. “Then ask him.”
“But what if—”
Neither stone nor steel could best the strength in the doctor’s eyes and voice. Not even Basil and his stubbornness prove a match. “No buts. No what ifs. Just the truth.”
The truth. Basil let this solution settle into his mind and debate against his doubts. So simple and yet so genius. At last, a chuckle blossomed from his chest. He could handle the truth. Speaking of which...
“Dawson,” he voiced as his grateful smile graced the doctor, “you never do let me down. May I tell you something else in return?”
“Anything, old chum.”
“There’s always room for more in our frivolities if you would like.”
The resultant sputters and half-attempted denials did nothing to deter his fluttering heart, especially as David (his sweet, loyal David) murmured a quip centered on hopes of Hiram being nowhere near as flummoxing.
As Basil’s gaze drew up to the window alongside a hopeful smile, the light lay out of reach. That’s okay.
His heart had plenty to spare.