Work Text:
we have become each other's
hushed sacrament,—J. Neil Garcia
“You’re staring at me again, Holmes.”
The two of them, prosecutor and detective, were seated in the library in the Van Zieks home, the air faintly smelling of old books and dust. Barok van Zieks had decided to occupy a handsome, stiff-backed armchair, while Sherlock Holmes had taken refuge on an outrageously comfortable divan opposite him. The afternoon light streamed through the tall window, and painted the two of them in delicate squares of gold, Barok reading and Sherlock watching.
“Holmes. I said—you’re staring.”
“Well, my dear, why shouldn’t I?”
Sherlock was gazing at him with those green eyes of his, searching and always inquisitive, and Barok felt as though he was little better than being naked under that telescopic gaze.
“You look beautiful, like this.”
They were both too old to flirt like teenagers the way Sherlock was trying to right now—Barok knew this, and so did Sherlock, but it didn’t prevent the latter from saying things like that every now and then in moments like these. As though he knew that Barok did not get to experience such things back when he was in the right age for them… as though he knew. And he would be right, for he was always right when he wasn’t so disastrously wrong. Barok knew that, and secretly resented the fact that the thought brought him peace.
“Hardly,” he finally said, and the smile that flashed across Sherlock’s face at his snippy reply made his heart leap.
Barok realized that he did not hate feeling like this as he gazed at that happy expression, and Sherlock leaned forward, his hands steepled together, in a way that made Barok think that he must have been itching for a smoke, but he knew that he won’t budge from this place for as long as Barok decided to stay…
Barok suddenly decided that he wasn’t cruel enough to keep him from his little addictions, and stood up and pushed the windows open, and Sherlock looked a little taken aback at this before Barok perched himself on the sill and gestured at him to come closer.
“I’m sure you brought some ‘ship’s,’” he said, and the detective grinned at this.
“Mm… a bit, yes.”
Sherlock sat beside him and took out his pipe and tobacco pouch, and Barok closed his book and watched him as he performed the all-too familiar procedure of stuffing the tobacco into the bowl of the pipe and lighting it up. Once upon a time, Sherlock Holmes had been a man of vice—he still was, but of milder ones. Barok pondered, briefly, if he was one of them. It would have been flattering.
“Do you…?” the detective was inquiring, proffering the pipe, and Barok shook his head.
“No, thank you… your tobacco has always been too strong for my taste.”
“Ah, that won’t do, dear. You have to try out new things once in a while.”
Sherlock chuckled as Barok shook his head decidedly, and puffed away. Barok privately thought that the familiar scent of his tobacco was comforting, even though it wasn’t something he’d smoke himself.
There they were, two men thinking of perhaps vastly different or shockingly similar things, and glancing every now and then at Sherlock’s profile and the dancing sunbeams on his yellow hair, Barok found himself muttering—
“Your name really does suit you.”
“Oh?” Sherlock took out his pipe from his mouth, grinning like the metaphorical devil on Barok’s shoulder, and Barok had the grace to flush faintly.
“Sherlock… ‘bright-haired,’ was it not?”
Sherlock tilted his head, and Barok was again fascinated by the way the sunlight shone golden on his hair.
“Mm. That’s true enough. My parents had always been pretty odd in the matter of names, simple folk that they were, though I am sure, well thought-out.” Sherlock was gazing at him. “They couldn’t have come up with anything half so romantic as your name, for example.”
“Romantic? Mine?”
“Hmm… in the literal sense of the word, yes.”
“Preposterous—”
Sherlock leaned forward, and Barok stiffened and sighed as their lips touched, very lightly—
“Is it? Really? Barok .”
Barok realized that, lost in the sea-green color of Sherlock’s eyes, which were too close, he had forgotten to breathe—
“You…”
“Yes?” Sherlock’s words were breathy, and Barok couldn’t wrap his head around them, all of a sudden—
He was leaning in to steal another kiss, and Barok stilled and let him, one more time.
This time, it was slightly deeper, and Barok could taste the tobacco on his tongue, sharp and acrid and—
Over, much too soon—
“You… are… impossible . Sherlock Holmes.”
“Oh, my dear,” Sherlock smirked, and Barok sighed, exasperated. “My darling. Of course I am.”
“You are quite willing to admit it, aren’t you?”
“How can I be anything else but impossible? Greatness does not exist in the realm of what is possible. Only the men who can make the impossible possible ascend into greatness. Like… for example…” Sherlock affectionately brushed his thumb across Barok’s rosy cheek. “Making Prosecutor van Zieks blush like this… is it not a marvelous feat? How can anyone but the greatest of men do such a thing?”
Barok had to admit, even as the taste of tobacco and Sherlock Holmes melted on his tongue, that when he thought of it a certain way, he had to admit that Sherlock was making a twisted kind of sense.
“Kissing you on this windowsill for all the world to see… in the height of summer…”
“—A shameless act.”
“And something that only the Sherlock Holmes would dare to do.”
“You are always full of bluster, Holmes…”
A chuckle fell from Sherlock’s lips, and Barok was again staring.
Like this, framed perfectly in the light, looking so earnest and mischievous and loving and—
What was the word? Ah, yes—
Perfect—
Sherlock Holmes with his bright hair and face could put even the fair Baldur to shame—
“My dear…”
Not that Barok would ever tell him, of course.
Sherlock Holmes’s head was already far too inflated for him to lavish any kind of praise on his person.
“What is it, Holmes?” he said, and it did not come out as sharply as he had intended.
“You’re smiling. Why are you smiling?”
Barok stared at him, and brought his hand up to his own lips, and was surprised to find that Sherlock wasn’t lying at all.
“I just thought that…” he haltingly began, and then pushed on. “I just thought that I would probably never find someone as— as—”
And then his tongue tripped, and suddenly Barok cannot find the words to express just how much—how—how— everything Sherlock was—how beautiful annoying marvelous irritating understanding callous unbelievable impossible perfect he was—
“I’m sorry,” he finally said, defeated. “I, I cannot…”
“My dear fellow!”
Sherlock held a finger on his lips, and Barok immediately understood that he knew .
“You injure me if you think I cannot deduce what you meant to say.”
Ah, of course.
Sherlock Holmes always knows .
The Sherlock Holmes.