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James doesn’t often waste time with pointless conjecture, wondering what his life would’ve been if only, if only, if only—that kind of thinking serves no purpose save to make a person come over tragic, and James Moriarty has no intention of being tragic. Still, sitting in the front hall of Appleton Manor, his belly full of good food and better claret, watching the Holmeses whirl about the room to Mrs. Crowle’s very fine piano-playing, it’s hard to avoid wondering what it must be like, to belong to a family like this one. Broken, to be sure, fractured in so many places that can’t be repaired—and yet they dance. They laugh. It’s a philosophy James can get behind.
If pressed, James isn’t sure he could say exactly what he’d expected Sherlock’s parents might be like, but whatever he’d been thinking hadn’t remotely prepared him for the reality. Perhaps meeting Mycroft first threw him off. Perhaps he simply doesn’t have enough experience imagining a happy family. Even knowing he’s caught the whole family at an unusual time in their lives, even if he’d had time to prepare an expectation, he thinks he would have guessed wrong every time. Would’ve pictured Cordelia Holmes solemn and wasted, pining away in her tower—not the wilful, effervescent woman who’d laughed as James twirled her about the stone floor, who is now embracing her son as they sway to the music. Watching the two of them, James can easily see where Sherlock got his habit of eclipsing his surroundings, of making the whole world pale in comparison to him, yet also seem finer for his presence. He’s got her nose, too.
Glancing over at Sherlock’s father, James wonders if he’s thinking along similar lines as he watches his wife and youngest son hold each other so tightly. Wonders if he feels guilty, denying them this for so long. James can’t tell whether Silas Holmes is the kind of man who feels guilt or not, yet. This may be because he, too, is a surprise: Sherlock’s father, James had vaguely imagined, being absent, would also be distant. Unyielding. A disciplinarian, possibly. James isn’t quite sure what to make of this warmth, this affection, coming from the man who sent his wife to a madhouse and left two grieving boys behind as he traipsed off to Vienna. But James also knows his own mind, knows that his instinct is to mistrust, and that instinct isn’t always rational. Moreover, Silas Holmes is not his to resent: he saw the way the weight lifted from Sherlock’s shoulders the moment his father arrived, saw the way Cordelia’s radiant face grew even brighter as she beheld her husband.
Then Silas Holmes takes his wife’s hand once again, leading her into a playful waltz, and Sherlock, smiling widely, sinks back down onto the sofa. In all the comparatively short time he’s known Sherlock Holmes (Christ alive, has it really only been a matter of days?), James has never seen him this happy. Lord knows they’ve been having their fun in the midst of all the chaos, but laughing isn’t the same thing as this. As the full-bodied sincerity of Sherlock’s joy and relief, watching his parents dance together for what could very well be the first time in twelve years. It shines out through his whole face, pale eyes huge and luminous in the gaslight, hazy with drink and still the brightest thing in the room.
James has never been good at resisting temptation.
Swinging himself out of his chair, catching himself unnecessarily against its arm as though he’s less steady than he feels, he strides over to where Sherlock is contemplating his empty wine-glass and holds out a hand. “C’mon,” he urges, “Up you get!”
Sherlock looks up at him for a moment, dark brows knitted into a frown that’s less displeasure than stubbornness. “I just sat down,” he points out, but even as he says it he’s setting his glass aside.
“Right you are,” James agrees, cheerfully. “And now you’re getting up again.”
“Am I, now?” Ordinarily, Sherlock’s control over his facial expressions would see him aright at any poker-table, but just now he’s too happy to hide his grin.
James grins back. He couldn’t do otherwise if he wanted to. “Well, I want to dance, and your mother’s otherwise engaged, so it looks like you’ll have to do.”
“Two left feet and all?” Sherlock is already taking James’ hand, letting him haul him out of his seat.
James pulls him a little closer than is probably advisable, but there’s plenty can be excused on the basis of a half-drunken lark. “Lucky you, you’ll have a good teacher.”
Sherlock rolls his eyes. “Another of your many talents, James?”
“As it happens. Right—hand on my shoulder, like this—”
“Oh, I’m taking the lady’s place, am I?”
“Any objections?”
Sherlock pauses, seriously contemplating the question. “I’m taller than you.”
James scoffs, enjoying himself immensely. “That’s mainly your hat. And, as you’ve just kindly reminded me, you’ve got two left feet—so I will be leading, thanks ever so.” He can’t help it; he lets his hand alight on Sherlock’s waist, managing with great restraint to ignore the urge to slip his fingers up under the well-fitted waistcoat, to feel the heat of him through his shirt. “Ah, not quite—” Is it his own fool wishful thinking, or does Sherlock’s breath quiver a little, when James makes a show of adjusting his grip, settling his hand flat against Sherlock’s back, snugly fitted just under the scapula? “There we go.”
Sherlock shrugs. “Lead on, Macduff.”
James raises his eyebrows. “You know that’s not the line, don’t you?”
His facetiousness is rewarded with a cheeky grin. “Of course.”
Sherlock really is quite bad at dancing, though not as bad as he is in a fight. He’s coltish and uncoordinated, and he keeps looking down, watching their steps with a furrow in his brow that makes James want to bite it. It’s funny, James thinks, that the man can be so clumsy on his feet when he’s so clever with his hands. James had watched those hands earlier, in the kitchen, as they peeled the vegetables (another surprise, as it happens: he wouldn’t have thought a family who lived in a house like this one would be so comfortable doing their own cooking; then again, James has precious little experience with families who live in houses like this one), and the sight of Sherlock’s pale, slender fingers expertly handling the sharp little paring-knife had stirred something in James that he’s going to have to investigate at length, just as soon as he’s the privacy to do it.
Once they’ve got going, it’s easier. Not more harmonious, mind, but as far as James is concerned, having his feet trodden on every so often is a perfectly acceptable price to pay for this: Sherlock Holmes, in his arms, smiling in tipsy contentment. Sherlock’s left hand on his shoulder, searing even through waistcoat, shirt, and undershirt, his right hand bare in James’ own. In defence of his friend’s poor footwork, James is less focused on teaching him anything than on making the whole endeavour appear appropriately innocent—to be merely two friends who’ve taken on a drink or two too many, larking about as young men are wont to do, a certain amount of ungainliness sells the act. It helps that the larking about is part of it; James may never be entirely unguarded, but with Sherlock, he comes as close as he’s capable. He thinks the same holds true both ways. Hopes it does.
In between making sure they don’t collide with Silas and Cordelia, or indeed with any of the furniture, James turns his focus to Sherlock. Catalogues him, like a naturalist’s specimen or a crime scene: dark hair, neatly parted, starting to wave ever so slightly as his Macassar oil loses its grip; finely-carved features, the cheekbones you could split your knuckles on (and James would know) increasingly stained a hectic pink with wine and exertion and good company; his mouth is just a touch wine-stained, too, more literally, claret red rendering the full lips nearly bruised in appearance, in a manner that makes James’ own mouth go dry. Without warning he sets Sherlock into a spin, needing the nominal distance to prevent himself from doing something inadvisable, like licking the sweat from just above that shapely upper lip, caught there in the shadows that always linger about Sherlock’s jaw no matter how meticulously he shaves.
Sherlock, not expecting the sudden change in the direction of motion, loses his footing and stumbles against him, making a noise at the back of his throat that’s caught between amusement and indignation.
James catches him, steadies him with both hands. “Easy does it—those who rush stumble and fall,” he teases, because otherwise he might say something else. Christ, do you have the slightest idea how lovely you are?
“You—” Sherlock begins, righting himself, deliciously ruffled—“I shan’t say what you are, in fact, because there are ladies present.”
Isn’t James lucky that Sherlock, for all his savant’s skill for observation, is singularly blind to flirtation when it’s directed at himself? “Well, I can’t fault your manners, though I can certainly fault your sense of balance.”
Sherlock’s eyes narrow at that, and before James knows it he’s stumbling himself, as Sherlock falls back down onto the sofa, dragging James bodily with him.
“What was that about a sense of balance?” Sherlock asks, mock-innocently, eyes dancing.
James elbows him for his troubles, which does nothing to stop the pair of them descending into fits.
“What are you boys laughing about?” Cordelia Holmes has a smile in her voice, all bright eyes and high spirits.
“Newton’s Second, Mrs. Holmes,” James calls back. If he still had a glass, he’d lift it. “What goes up,”
“Must come down,” Sherlock finishes, with great pomp. Then, quite seriously, “Though, of course, the attribution of that particular quotation to Newton is apocryphal.”
Which only sets them off again.
But all good things must come to an end. Cordelia tires first, reluctant to admit to her own fatigue, but unable to disguise it once it begins to catch up with her—personally, James thinks she’s held out remarkably well, for a woman who escaped an asylum, struck its keeper across the face, and reunited with her long-absent husband all in the space of just over a day. Not to speak of the cocktail of drugs still making their way out of her system. Silas goes to see her to bed, while Sherlock volunteers himself and James for tidying-up duties, so that Mrs. Crowle might herself retire.
They’re just making their way back out of the kitchen, having put the place into something that more closely resembles order than it did half an hour ago, when Silas returns, his face serious.
“Your mother’s sound asleep,” he tells his son, with a sigh. “Now, as much of a balm as this evening has been, I think you had better fill me in on what’s been happening here.”
Sherlock nods tightly, the merriment draining from his face. “Yes, I think I better had.”
James knows when he’s being dismissed. “Well, you’ve got plenty to discuss. I’ll say goodnight, Mr. Holmes. Sherlock.”
The arrangements for the night were made earlier: James will be staying in the spare bed in Sherlock’s childhood bedroom, a holdover from its days as the children’s nursery. He’s not ashamed to know that the thought bolsters him a little; he and Sherlock have been sleeping at close quarters since the costume-cellar, and he isn’t all that keen to go back to solitude.
“Goodnight, James.” Sherlock gives him one last, tired smile, and James thinks that he has never wanted anything as much as he wants to kiss that smile until it brightens again.
As that’s naturally out of the question, he settles for grasping Sherlock’s hand to take his leave in friendly fashion. Then—because Silas Holmes has already turned to go to his study, because Sherlock’s attention is already elsewhere, because James is greedy and he can’t, can’t help himself—he indulges a little, lets his thumb slip briefly under the cuff of his friend’s sleeve to caress the fluttering pulse in his wrist.
“I’ll wait up,” he promises.
He can think of worse ways to spend a spare hour or two—a precious commodity, in these interesting times—than snooping around Sherlock Holmes’ private quarters.