Work Text:
"Well, Watson, how have you enjoyed your holiday?" asked Holmes as we finished installing ourselves into our compartment.
I was stopped short from answering by the bellow of the train whistle and the sudden lurch of the carriage, which signaled our departure. The tracks were slick with frost, and the train car gave a bit of uneasy stopping and starting before we were solidly underway. Outside the window, we cast our final glances at the quiet little village with its snow-covered hills and medieval church, which we had called our own for the last week. Soon, it would be easing out of view as we were whisked back to the interminable grey of the city.
I turned to Holmes and found him in one of his favorite, imperious positions: his legs crossed at the knee, his chin resting in his hand, his elbow on the window's ledge, his eyes fixed not upon the landscape, but upon me. He seemed composed entirely of long lines and sharp gazes, all of which were angled in my direction. I had not evaded the question.
"Well," I began, my voice uncertain as a boy reciting his exams before a particularly shrewd master. "I..."
What could I say? In truth, I felt the whole excursion had been a disappointment. Seven, long-seeming days filled with nothing but idleness and poor food. Not exactly my ideal escape, and possibly Holmes’s own personal Inferno. The holiday had been my idea, of course, and Holmes had needed more than a bit of goading to accept it. Far more—it should be more accurate to say I did all but flat-out beg the man to come along. Though he had been uncomplaining, I could feel his displeasure; it radiated from him as a cold fire.
There was no denying who was to blame. I had drug us out of London, set us up in what turned out to be a fairly dismal little cottage. Everything was arranged too hastily—timing, location, accommodations—all with the express hope of darting off before Christmas and finally penning another story in time for the New Year. My editor had been hounding me for a good-sized tidbit to serialize since the first of November. When December came and my pages were still blank, I began to get desperate. I hoped country air would stimulate my muse. I could not have been more wrong.
We arrived Sunday morning, and being thoroughgoing, city-dwelling heathens, we failed to anticipate the closing of the shops. Store windows stood darkened, the walks, the market, and our stomaches, empty. I had rather hoped our host should provide a morsel for us, but he seemed not to have considered it; the cupboards were too bare even for a spider to have found a meal. A note informed us the household had been given the day off, being Advent Sunday, and was ended with a faint apology for leaving us to ‘fend for ourselves.’ We puttered about the placid streets, Holmes with his hands shoved resolutely into his pockets. He was taciturn, but his silence told me that he did not find this an auspicious beginning.
At last, we found ourselves before the village church, where the wheeze of the harmonium beckoned us to the late morning service. Neither Holmes nor I are regular churchgoers, nevertheless, I found myself drawn inexorably up the stone stairs and Holmes trailed dutifully behind me. There seemed little else to do. The church turned out to be rather more High than excepted, and I spent the service trying to suppress a cough from the acrid smoke of incense. Holmes, whose love of his shag tobacco has made him rather impervious to the worst of pollutants, fared better, though his eyes watered miserably.
Our Sunday stroll set the tone of our holiday. The days slid by, one into the other, and we spent them walking through the village or over the hills. There was no shop, no woodland, no cornerstone we did not explore. I told myself it was more profitable to let my feet and my mind wander, to gather ideas, as it were, than it was to shut myself up inside and gaze uselessly at a blank sheet of foolscap. A man thinks best on his feet, I would whisper sagely to no one in particular, and take off after Holmes across the Cotswolds. There would be plenty of time for writing, later.
At night, I faired no better. The cottage was full of droughts and unnerving sounds. A loose tap somewhere, its noise indistinguishable during the day, echoed hauntingly throughout the plaster walls. Our rooms did not adjoin, and while it should not have been the first time we had spent a week apart, every night found me creeping deftly down the hall towards Holmes. There was a bed large enough to accommodate us both, but it creaked horribly, and had quite the sag towards the middle, which led to Holmes and I waking up throughout the night, unpleasantly tangled in one another’s limbs. On the best of nights, I managed only a few hours of dreamless sleep.
Thursday brought us nothing but snow. It came down in a fierce white mass, the wind howling through the eaves in a ghostly refrain. I worried for Holmes, who abhors to be dictated to by the weather, and spent much of the day trying to keep him entertained. I recounted to him some of my more exciting adventures from my army days, indulged his recitations on the criminal history of the surrounding countryside, lost several games of chess, and, failing all else, drug him to bed with amorous eyes. The sagging mattress screeched, no doubt aghast at our illicit embraces. The embraces, at least, did not disappoint.
The day of our departure came as a rude awakening. The ceaseless hours of idleness, against which I had been fighting with every fibre of my being, vanished instantly that morning. I was faced with a grim reality: our holiday had ended and I had nothing to show for it. I had not written a word. Not a single, solitary paragraph, not even so much as a note. I had foisted this voyage onto Holmes with the purpose of producing something, of working, and I had not so much as decided on which of his cases I would write.
It was with no small amount of shame, then, when Holmes asked me whether or not I had enjoyed our trip, that I found myself unable to say I had. Yet, there he sat, watching me still with the ghost of a smirk lingering on his lips. His eyebrow arched; he was expecting an answer.
I cleared my throat and began again.
“Well, it did not go entirely as planned, but I suppose I liked it well enough. And you?” questioned I, dreading his response even as I asked.
Holmes drew a cigarette from his case, taking his time in lighting it, with a contemplative expression etched on his features. When he spoke, his words billowed out in ashen plumes.
“You know, I rather enjoyed myself.”
“Holmes, please, I know you’ve been miserable all week. I—thank you for coming along all the same.”
“I’m being quite serious. Don’t mistake me—I will be only too glad to return to Baker Street—but there is something to be said for your choice of location. The snow-packed hills, High church, the parochial little village… rather puts one in the spirit of the season.”
I blinked at him, dumbfounded. Holmes merely smiled at me from around his cigarette, letting the rhythm of the train knock his foot idly against my own. I was still wading through my surprise when the conductor appeared in the compartment doorway.
“Tickets, please, gentlemen—I’m sorry, sir, there’s no smoking here.”
Holmes extinguished his cigarette against the compartment window and waved a hand. When the conductor had disappeared, Holmes pulled the curtains and settled next to me. I must have looked rather pale with shock, as he touched his palm to my cheek.
“I thought you’d had a miserable time…” I managed at last.
“Not half so miserable as you seem to have made yourself. You look as though you need a holiday to recover from your holiday.”
“It does rather feel that way,” I confessed and leaned my head against his shoulder. “It did have its bright spots, though. Moonrise through the beeches.”
“That curious little music shop.”
“Spotting that badger in the heath.”
“And of course…”
When Holmes did not finish his sentence, I raised my head. A playful smile was dancing on his lips. He made a horrid, staccato creaking sound, which was all too reminiscent of that awful bed, with its drooping middle and noisome springs. I guffawed at that and soon the two of us were set to laughing until our sides hurt.
“At least, we shall have no more creaking beds,” I announced, pulling Holmes against me in the privacy of the train car.
Holmes nodded. “And a quiet Christmas at home.”
“A quiet Christmas at home,” I repeated like a prayer, “Now that I know we will both enjoy.”