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With my eyes closed and my head resting on the padded back of my armchair I let the haunting, lilting music of Holmes’ violin wash over me. The exquisite sounds he drew from the violin and the warmth of the fire lulled me into a gentle daydream. Even when the music drifted into silence I stayed still and quiet, basking in my cocoon of contentment.
“Well, how did you like my composition, Watson?”
“It’s beautiful, darling.”
The peaceful silence twisted into something darker the instant I realised that I betrayed the secret of my soul with a single word. My eyes flew open, but I didn’t dare look at Holmes. Dear god, whatever must he think of me? His very lack of reaction alarmed me further and I scrambled for a way out of the pit I had cast myself into. I could say that it was a joke, that I was half-asleep and that my thoughts were of someone else, that I was drunk, only he knew that I hadn’t taken a drink all evening, or that I had a fever, that I was delirious.
“You jest,” Holmes said softly.
“Yes, of course…” I still couldn’t look at him, but something compelled me to honesty. “No, it was just a slip of the tongue.” I stood up quickly and my leg which had been still for too long ached and trembled. “It’s late, Holmes, I’ll bid you good-night now.”
He, unencumbered by a wound that would never entirely heal, reached the door before I did and stretched his long arm across it, barring my path.
“Explain yourself, Watson,” he said, impetuous, demanding and without any hint of sympathy for my self-inflicted plight.
Desperation made me face him, to look into eyes that were as grey and fathomless as the winter sea. “There’s nothing to explain. I apologise if I offended you. Now let me pass.”
“No.”
My gaze faltered before his. I kept my back straight as a solider should and stared at the sitting room door. At the place where his cuff had ridden up to reveal a scattering of dark hair on his wrist and a tiny white splash of chemical marred his pale skin. I have seen men stand thus before a firing squad.
“I have nothing to add,” I said and I hated the note of pleading that crept into my voice.
Holmes waited. His long fingers started to drum a tune on the doorframe and that was more than my nerves could stand. “Stop that!” I said. “Please for my sake, for both our sakes if you value our friendship at all, just let me go.”
His fingers stilled. “Perhaps I ought to do so, but I find that I don’t wish too. I am not accustomed to being anyone’s darling.”
He made the endearment sound as if it were an impossible pronunciation in an exotic tongue, one that was totally foreign to him. An unaccountable sorrow washed over me and I found that I regretted my foolishness more for his sake than for my own.
“I’m sorry. I just forgot myself for a moment.”
His arm left the doorframe and encircled my bowed shoulders. “Come and sit down, Watson. I want to talk to you.”
I allowed him to lead me to the sofa, to press a whisky glass into my hand and to sit beside me. The enchantment of his music had been replaced by a hollow silence which seemed to grip us both.
Holmes put his drink down untouched. “The term you used is not usual amongst male friends, what…what did you mean by it?”
“Any bloody fool knows what it means! And that it’s not usual, not normal.” There I had used the word that he had avoided. “If you will grant me a few days to find alternative accommodation I can move out and –“
“Watson, are you so determined to fall upon your sword?” He sounded amused, gently, affectionately amused.
An answer sprung into my mind and thankfully stayed there, although the crudity of it brought the colour flaming into my face. I would rather fall upon yours.
At least he spared my blushes by not enquiring as to their cause. “My observations of you over the years have given me little reason to suspect that you are anything other than normal in your affections,” he said.
I drained my glass at a gulp and half-turned so that we sat facing one another, with his knee a hands brush from mine. In truth I still could not believe that this conversation was actually taking place, but neither could I lie or dissemble. “Little reason you say, but not, I note, no reason at all. Your observations are accurate as ever. If you were to take me to a glittering social event and ask me to select the ten most attractive people in the room I can assure you that nine of them would be of the fair sex, but I cannot vouch for the tenth.”
“And you have made this choice in actuality?” His voice sounded strange, almost as if he dreaded my answer.
“Once in my callow youth and that was no more than boys do at school, a summer passion, fondly remembered but never mourned for.” I went on, flaying bare my soul, gambling everything now in one last desperate throw of the dice. “For years afterwards I was more than content with my ladies and then I came here to Baker Street, to you, my darling.”
“Why me?” He whispered. “Why me when you might choose another, more even-tempered and amenable, one of the young panthers from your glittering ballroom?”
“I would choose you because I love you.”
“You’re a sentimental fool, Watson.”
There was a sheen of brightness in his eyes and his fingers trembled when he interlaced them with mine. Yet he did not hesitate to touch my lips with his and when I wrapped my arms around his back he held me close. He cradled my head in his hands and our kiss became a savage, passionate thing. If I kissed a woman as I kissed him she would have called me a brute for leaving her bruised and breathless. We were strength upon strength he and I, the two halves of an imperfect whole, bound together as surely as if we were wed before the high altar of god. I would never love another. I would never kiss another, only my darling Holmes.