Work Text:
It had been all too frequent lately that we had a quiet night here at 221B. One would not think that a city as dense with the colorful spread of our dear London would have such a stretch of time without anything calling for either my attention or my partner’s, and yet here I sat, slightly slumped in the chair by the fire, trying not to doze despite it only being mid-afternoon. There was a time where I would have given anything for such quiet, but I regret to say those words had been said in moments of pique and fatigue; if I knew then how it would truly feel, I would have been glad instead for the rush of the business.
It’s true a doctor’s trade is often needed even in the best of times. But I did not have much on my plate at the moment, no miasmas nor accidents; the reader must understand, of course, that I am not wishing literal ill on my fellow man. But I believe I would trade a bent penny for something more than the few cases of too-common cold that I had fresh in my patient books. Perhaps if the lull continued, I could investigate into how one man’s own mind could turn so sufficiently to porridge in a fortnight.
I was only awakened from the micro-nap I slipped into by the tumbling off my lap of the medical essay I had been endeavoring to read. I rubbed my eyes and stretched, and in hopes of livening up my senses I rose to walk over to the window. Out there was a world of mystery, of love, of laughter. I sighed.
“If only they would bring a little of it our way,” I muttered.
“I couldn’t agree more, dear Watson.”
I should not have been surprised by the commentary of my roommate, Sherlock Holmes. After all he had been in the room the entire time, and I am as familiar with his habits as I am by now. Nevertheless I jumped, having considered him wholly into the boilings and bubblings of his chemistry set and not at all paying attention to the room at large.
That, I thought to myself with a wry smile, was of course a mistake.
Sherlock put the vial of his current concern off the burner and turned off the flame, coming to join me over at the window. On the way he refreshed the tobacco in his pipe from his favorite slipper, and the bowl was lit and giving off a fragrant smoke by the time he arrived at my side.
“Of course,” he said with a slight quirk to one side of his smile, “it shouldn’t even take a play detective to figure out how I knew what you were talking about.” One of his common tricks of course, answering my questions before I even asked them. He turned to look out the window, puffing slowly at the end of his pipe. “Out there are countless people, and yet none bring their troubles to our door at this time.” A more distinct cloud of smoke, announcing his displeasure. “I am liable to wither away from boredom at this point.”
I watched him walk further back into the room, glad as ever that his off-time pursuits lay more in curios and violin concertos than needles and target practice. I had just opened my mouth to say something, when he beat me to the punch in speaking turns.
“Still, I could not ask for greater company mindlessly whiling away the minutes of our lives.” Sherlock picked up his earlier vial and stirred it a little, holding it into the light to better investigate the solution that swirled inside. He did this as if he had not just shown affection so casually, something I only rarely ever ascribed to him. Therefore, hopefully one could forgive me staring at him for a few seconds before catching up to myself.
“Well- I could not ask for better either, but-”
“Ah!” Sherlock put the vial back down and corked it this time, giving me a smile akin to a schoolboy with a slingshot stowed in his pocket. “I have a wonderful idea. It shall give us some modicum of fresh air and with any luck, a small semblance of our wits back. Grab your coat,” as he did the same, “and I’ll grab the hansom.” He disappeared from the room then, leaving me by the window wondering who had replaced Sherlock Holmes with a duplicate and how I had failed to notice.
---
“There, Watson. What about that one?”
“The flock of pigeons or the woman on the other footpath?”
“Watson…”
I chuckled softly. “Fine, fine. Let me get a good look…”
Sherlock had taken us to Hyde Park, a familiar location to any rather loyal readers, or anyone of London, really. One such reader would also know that in the past the subject of my learning how to do what Sherlock does has come up a few times, and somehow the tedium of the week had pushed it into his head that we would be benefited by practicing it. As such, I observed the indicated woman as she walked, trying to make out what I could from where we were sat.
“Well. Her hat is hanging a bit low on her profile, perhaps it is ill-fitting, or she is trying to shield her eyes. Her dress is silk, so she is on her way to some kind of event, perhaps a performance judging by the paper she wields, clutched in her gloved hands. Her step is quick but her eyes focused, so she is late to where her appointment is.”
Sherlock nodded, watching the woman closely as she paced out of sight. “Very good, Watson.” He settled back, folding one leg over the other and resting clasped hands on his knees. “You at least successfully spotted the big clues, though the finer could use a little work, as always.” He then waved a finger, lightly tapping its side against the tip of his nose in a knowing gesture. “She is indeed on her way to a show, which one could reasonably guess at by the readings of schedules in the papers. Her dress is indeed fine, though there is some haphazard ties and buttons, saying she has dressed herself without the aide of a servant. Together with the state of the trim in some spots, and a stain of her makeup around the collar, tells me that the dress is most likely not hers and came to her secondhand, or from a friend in higher positions. You noted her hat was ill-fitting. This is indeed true, as it lay quite heavily across her brow. I posit it is her only fine hat, as the fabric hardly matches that of the dress and the feathers upon the crown are a little worse for wear. Indeed, it may also be borrowed or secondhand. And the flash of her boots as she walked may have been too quick for your eyes to see but not for mine. These are well-traveled, and the heel of one has been recently replaced, but not so recently that it still has the sharpness of a new piece of cobbling material. She is late,” he checked his pocketwatch, “though she does still have hope of making her seat if traffic is with her. Still she chooses not to run, most definitely not willing to risk destroying her shoes or her clothing, either lacking the funds to properly repair them or not wanting to mess them up for the person she has borrowed them from. This, of course, being an uncommon night on the town for her, with her position as a school marm and all.”
With that pronouncement Sherlock put his hands to his knees and stood up, waiting for me to join him and fall in step at his side before he completely moved on. Normally I admit I would ask how he had arrived at that final conclusion, but I was in a bit of an ill mood and it kept me from doing so. Sherlock, of course, noticed this, and it wasn’t long before he commented on it.
“Now now, Watson,” he started, “such powers of observation are not and should not be mine alone. There is nothing I do, no ‘magic’ I turn, that another human couldn’t also learn.”
Something he has often said. But when one is already a bit down from a slump, something like that knowledge isn’t enough to bring them out of it alone. Perhaps sensing that as well, Sherlock lapsed into a small silence, and so we walked for some ways, until he saw fit to speak again.
“Now, Watson.” The tone brought me up a bit short and had me looking over at him again, to see him fixing me with a stern glare. “You are my most trusted associate and confidant. You and I have been through the thick of it and out again, yes?” Of course, all I could do was nod. “I repeat what I said before: There is no one I would rather be slogging through the doldrums with than you. This is an exercise for our minds, as much as the walking is for our legs and the air our lungs. Now,” he turned and started walking again, myself momentarily flatfooted before catching up, “you have demonstrated the beginnings of observation like my own. And…”
Sherlock paused then, seeming to wrestle with something difficult; I only wondered at what he would say next in this expression of emotion. “Well. I must confess it warms my heart to see that. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and all.”
“Flattery!” I barked, with a small incredulous laugh. “It is more than that, Holmes. You are the most incredible man I’ve had the pleasure to know, aside from perhaps a couple of war buddies, and even then it’s a close race. You have quite literally opened my eyes to the sides of people I never thought they had, to ways of seeing them that hardly seemed to exist at all. It was a professional curiosity at first, and a way to share them with my readers at second. But through it all it has never been anything other than being astounded by you and your prowess, and wanting to share it with you, to have some modicum of the same for us to be able to truly put our heads together.”
The sudden, impassioned speech that tumbled out of me seemed to have him just as struck as I was on realizing it had come out. We walked in silence again; I an ashamed one, Sherlock’s inscrutable. Then, just as before, he broke the quiet between us.
“You do not have to study my trade to have something spectacular to share with me, John,” he said softly, then in a more normal voice, “but I will never turn down the opportunity to sharpen the mind of another human.”
I glanced at him then, and while the smirk was one ever-common to his face, there was a certain softness to his eyes that I had so rarely seen. Normally I would have to have been shot for that to happen, judging by past experience. Its appearance here brought a smile to my face, and at least helped my more shameful feelings take a seat for a while.
“Now!” Sherlock cleared his throat, looking out ahead of us. If he wanted to continue the game, then at this moment I was all for it. “What can you tell me about the pigeons all around us?”
“Surely you can’t be serious.”
“And surely,” Sherlock retorted, his face all over now the teasing grin, “you can’t expect to only find answers paying attention to the human element! Witness how many of our little problems have been solved by the details given by horse or by dog.” He fluttered a hand at a nearby cluster of the birds. “Go on, then. What do you see?”
I studied those birds then with him, and some more people after that, before returning to Baker Street in time for the night’s last meal. Before we each retired for the night, we made plans to continue my ‘training’ the next day, and for an exchange to be made on our respective scientific interests, on the chance that future cases would need them. On the subject of cases, though tomorrow so far promised to be as quiet as its preceding days had all been, something told me now that at least, neither of us would suffer too terribly much from being bored.