Work Text:
Excerpts from New York, circa 1891–1894
Sometime 1891–1894
Mornings in New York started like this: William would walk into the kitchen, not quite awake and rubbing sleep from his eyes. Sherlock would already be in the kitchen, sleeves rolled up as he clattered away at something or the other. William would take a seat at their table beside the windows, where sunlight crept in and along the old wooden floors, softening Sherlock’s jagged outline with ochre. Sherlock would hear the scrape of the chair as it was dragged against the floor and he would turn to William and smile as though the sun hadn’t already risen and say ‘Good morning—Liam,’ with a pause between ‘morning’ and ‘Liam,’ as though he meant to say something else, and William would wonder what.
Then he would go right back to his work, and there was never any chatter—no ‘how did you sleep?’s or ‘how would you like your coffee?’s, because there was nothing to be said that they did not already know. But there was noise, of the coffee gurgling in the pot and the eggs crackling in the pan, and with the bustle of a Manhattan that was just waking up, it made for a rather peculiar, but not an unpleasant sort of music. William would watch Sherlock through half-lidded eyes, and wonder how Sherlock, all bruised knuckles and bared teeth, could peel an apple as easily as he could throw a punch.
‘Billy will be by in a few,’ Sherlock would say as he put down two teacups and a pot of coffee in front of William before returning to the stove to bring whatever else he had made. William would pour the coffee into both of their teacups, chipped, and take one for himself. The warmth would seep into his hands, and when he sipped the coffee, it would always taste a little too bitter, just the way he liked it and the way Sherlock pretended he did, too.
Then they would have their breakfast, talking idly of this and that and Sherlock’s feet would brush William’s under the table too many times for it to be accidental, and William would ask Sherlock to pass the salt, even though it was only so far away that he could reach it himself, just so he could feel the fleeting warmth of Sherlock’s hands on his. It would fill him with a childish giddiness, to know that every morning he would find out that love was not blood on Tower Bridge but a prayer written into the bitterness of his morning coffee, over and over again.
One of those dog days, 1892
Summers in New York were unlike the ones in England. Summers in New York were sticky and warm and uncomfortable, but made all the more intimate by the way everything clung. The shirt to your sweaty skin, sunburned, the hair to your wet cheeks, flushed, the orange juice to your chin, sweet.
And it was one of these summers, a heady night drunk on the light of dawn and the secrets of dusk, that found two men wandering an empty street with all the aim of children in a sweet shop. Everything was suffused with a magic that you could find only in the discarded wrapper of a pear drop and in the stickiness that never left your hands after you ate a fruit pastille.
‘You shouldn’t have drank so much,’ William scolded, as his friend leaned heavily on him. Sherlock’s arm was slung around William’s narrow shoulders with a carelessness that could culminate only from a great familiarity and one too many beers, and it fit into the crook of his neck just so.
‘—s a celebration!’ Sherlock mumbled. Suddenly he extricated himself from William, and walked (stumbled) determinedly to the nearest lamppost that cast the street in a warm glow. The light of it was only slightly diminished by the grime on the panels.
‘Sherlock,’ William sighed, and the name fit perfectly in his mouth. He said it like ‘Sher—lock,’ as if he meant to say ‘Darling,’ and his tongue curled around the syllables easily, like teeth biting a cigarette, familiar, and maybe just a little wanting. He followed Sherlock to the lamppost, where the latter slumped down and fell into a pile of long limbs and worn cotton on the dirty pavement. He swept his hands over his jacket, long fingers grappling familiarly against wrinkled collars and shabby pockets, until a battered Capstan and a lighter fell into them. With an alarming speed for a drunk man, Sherlock brought a cigarette to his lips and lit it. An orange light kissed his face, playing up the ruddiness of his cheeks.
William sat down next to Sherlock, taking care not to dirty his suit too much. He watched Sherlock smoke, another scolding on his tongue, because smoking was a filthy habit and he had told Sherlock that, until the man removed the cigarette from his lips with a scrunched face.
‘Eugh. I’ll never get used to these.’ And as though he had not just said what he had, he put the cigarette right back into his mouth. William smiled, and decided that he would not reprimand the man for smoking just then—the next morning would be soon enough. And as though to strengthen his resolve, he, too, swiped a cigarette.
But he did not light it. He simply stared at Sherlock expectantly, and Sherlock, in turn, held out his matchbox for William to take. He did not take it. He simply leaned forward, and pressed his cigarette to Sherlock’s. It was a move of daring, and William did not know that he would do it until he did it—and now that he was doing it, he felt so acutely aware of Sherlock, that he wanted to pull away and pull him in all at once. Sherlock was looking at him—he was alway looking at him—and William wanted to kiss him. So he pulled away.
As he puffed on his cigarette with a nonchalance he did not feel, William hoped desperately that Sherlock wouldn’t remember this when he woke up. It was only in these times—the last hours of dusk and the firsts of dawn, where secrets remained secrets, and crime lords became boys, that William could afford to be selfish. And he would, because William James Moriarty was a greedy man—especially when it came to one Sherlock Holmes.
A morning, 1893
William stared up at the ceiling, sheets tangled around his legs. Light caught everywhere.
‘But why?’ Sherlock asked from next to him. Although they took great care not to touch each other, William could still feel Sherlock’s breath on his neck and his hair on his arms because the bed was only so large. The frame creaked and the sheets pulled a little as Sherlock inched closer to him. William could see a hazy outline of him now, from beneath lowered eyelashes.
‘Because… everything.’ He sighed.
Sherlock giggled. ‘That the best you can do, Professor?’
William shoved Sherlock’s face away, which went back down with a muffled ‘oomph!’
‘I can’t explain Euler to someone who couldn’t bother learning basic algebra.’
Sherlock laughed again, all crooked teeth, and William fell in love for the umpteenth time that morning. He basked in the sound, and thought that if the world ended tomorrow, he wouldn’t mind. He could die a happy man, now that he had heard Sherlock laugh, like that.
He turned to Sherlock, who was smiling at him, pieces of his laugh still stuck in-between his teeth. The morning after he had first crept into Sherlock’s bed, riddled with nightmares, he had apologised: ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t think,’ and Sherlock had replied, ‘Don’t be sorry—Liam.’
So he bit down an apology, and wondered that he was allowed to love without one.
‘What do you want for breakfast?’ he asked instead.