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ariadnes_stringTitle: Nothing Between Us and the New World, 3/3 (COMPLETE)
Rating: R, slash
Warnings: None
Genre: casefic, romance
Word count: ~3.3K, this part; ~9.8 for the whole fic.
Disclaimer: not mine, no profit.
Summary: An old army buddy convinces Holmes and Watson to investigate a series of robberies at his inn on the Cornish coast. Watson is sure Holmes has only agreed to cheer him up after Mary’s death, but there may be more going on under the surface.
Notes: same as before
a/n: most excellent beta’ing and some help with the basics courtesy of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
calamitycrow.
Nothing Between Us and the New World
V
“Good morning,” Holmes said cheerily, turning from his study of the rock face when he noticed Watson stirring, “it’s promising to be a fine day. How’s the leg?”
“Better, I think,” Watson replied. He pulled himself up gingerly and tested the offending limb, keeping one hand on the wall for support. The short rest had done some good, and it would bear his weight, if only just—the muscles from hip to knee still felt like the local hunt had run them to ground during the night.
“Glad to hear it,” Holmes said, resuming his inspection. He sounded—chipper. As if he were passing the tea and toast in their London digs, instead of sharing out cold comfort in a dank abandoned mine shaft in Cornwall. Watson peered at him The detective seemed his usual self—thrumming with energy and confidence--last night’s diffidence and earnest solicitude dispersed like the fragments of a dream.
Watson himself felt farther from dreaming than he had for a long time. He could still sense the lingering warmth where Holmes’s body had pressed against his in the dark, still hear the undercurrent of emotion in Holmes’s voice as he’d asked his tentative questions—still trace the paths scored by those jagged, unexpected bolts of desire.
Steady on, old boy, he told himself firmly, tamping down his unruly thoughts. Now was not the time to continue that conversation—if indeed there had been any conversation worth continuing.
“Do you think you can make your way out of here?” he asked, pleased to find his voice so steady.
“Yes, I believe so” Holmes replied, “the route is clear, if somewhat—precarious.” He sketched a zigzagging line up the shaft wall, taking in a few tiny outcropping and one broad fissure. The ascent looked next to impossible to Watson, but he didn’t say anything—he knew better than to try to dissuade Holmes once he’d made up his mind, and he couldn’t offer a better plan for escape in any case.
Holmes had already divested himself of his waistcoat, and was now removing his boots and socks. Barefoot, he stood and turned to Watson,
“Is your leg up to giving me a leg up?” he quipped, mouth crooking slightly at the frail jest, “the first handhold’s a bit beyond my reach.” Watson frowned at him: the word-play fell far short of Holmes’s usual standard. For the first time, he wondered if Holmes, too, weren’t still a little shaken by the oblique confessions of the night before.
“Yes, of course,” Watson said, smoothing out his face and deliberately pushing such thoughts aside. He knelt stiffly in the spot Holmes indicated, offering his good knee as a step-ladder. Think of the task at hand, his stern inner counsel reminded him, and he obeyed, even when Holmes’s bare toes dug into his thigh, seeking leverage. The contact was necessary for their escape, nothing more than what they had done a thousand times before—if it provoked any untoward response in him, it was hidden easily enough.
The detective, uncharacteristically, wavered a bit as he pushed himself up, and, without thinking, Watson put a hand around his ankle to steady him. As their flesh met, he heard a muted hiss above him, as if Holmes had let out a sharp breath. Surprised, Watson looked up, and found his companion staring down at him, eyes wide and a little startled. Watson blinked, unsure at what he was seeing—could it be that Holmes, too, was struggling to keep certain things at bay?
And then the detective abruptly turned his attention back to the wall, pushing off from Watson’s knee to grip nearly invisible knobs of rock, digging his bare toes into tiny cracks for support.
Watson gathered his wits and struggled back to standing, watching as Holmes painstakingly made his way up the stony surface. There was great skill in his actions—he could see the care with which Holmes evenly distributed his weight between legs and arms, kept his center of gravity low, even with his legs canted out at impossible angles. And if some new, ungovernable part of Watson was strangely mesmerized by the play of muscle across Holmes’s back and arms, by the lithe strength of his legs and feet, no one need be the wiser.
Holmes was almost to the top now, a good twenty feet above the ground. He’d gotten himself to that larger fissure in the rock, and tucked both feet and his right hand inside it. His left hand was straining towards the mouth of the shaft, at least six inches beyond his grasp. The position looked, to use his own word, precarious. Watson did not want to contemplate how Holmes would fare if he fell from such a height.
“Hold on,” Watson wanted to shout up at him, “hold on.” But the injunction was so blindingly obvious that he forced himself to hold his tongue.
Finally, after a pause that seemed to go on for minutes but probably lasted less than thirty seconds, Holmes drew a breath even Watson could hear, pulled his right leg more firmly beneath him, and used it to launch himself across the narrow distance towards the patch of sky.
He hung, impossibly, in space for a moment, but before Watson could fully register his horror at the risk his friend had just taken, Holmes had gotten both hands over the lip of the opening. His feet scrabbled for a moment on the rock, and then he pulled himself up and out, disappearing from Watson’s view.
The doctor released a long breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. Then he shouted his friend’s name as loudly as he could.
For a long moment, he heard nothing, then, Holmes’s voice saying, oddly, “Well, I’ll be damned.” There was something unfamiliar in his tone. If Watson hadn’t known better, he would have called it wonder.
“What is it, Holmes?” he called up, alarmed, “Where are we? What have you found?”
Holmes’s face appeared again at the opening, backlit by the brighter sky behind it, so that his expression was unreadable.
“Nothing of note, old chap,” he said, voice perfectly calm again, “it’s just that we seem to have ended up in one of Mallick’s local beauty spots.” He gave a short, dry laugh, but did not explain further. “I must make haste. I’ll send back help as quickly as I can, but I should go on myself, alert the local law to Pascoe and his troop—if they haven’t escaped already. You’ll be alright here for a bit, won’t you?”
“Yes, yes of course,” Watson hastily assured him. But he felt, obscurely, that there should be more to say—that some profound change had occurred last night—something that should be acknowledged. But he remained unsure as to exactly what that change was, and whether it had affected both of them. And so he held his peace.
Holmes nodded once, and disappeared.
::::::
Left alone, Watson finally allowed his unsettled thoughts free rein.
If someone had asked him yesterday morning what he wanted most from his present life, he would have replied, without hesitation, that he wanted to ease himself back into the supportive confines of his old relationship with Mr. Sherlock Holmes: equal parts exhilaration and exasperation, to be sure, but comfortable and thoroughly chaste. He had had enough of romance, its mysteries and frustrations, its pleasures and its pains.
He wasn’t sure how he would answer that question now.
The idea of acting on the desires the night had revealed felt a little like the lunge Holmes had made across the top of the mine shaft: leaping over the abyss towards the impossible hope of light and freedom, with every possibility of plummeting to the rocky ground below. With something very like sorrow, Watson acknowledged that he didn’t know whether he could sustain the kind of injuries such a fall would inflict.
Shakily, he set about stretching out the still-aching muscles in his leg, putting them through the series of simple exercises he had developed over the years. The routine soothed his mind even as it undid the corporeal kinks and knots, and by the time he’d finished, he felt prepared to face whatever the day might bring.
Sooner than he’d dared hope he heard a young, masculine voice, and looked up to see a friendly, wind-roughened face.
“You alright down there?” the youth shouted, louder than necessary, “We met a gentleman told us you was hurt, wanted us to hurry.”
“My friend exaggerates,” Watson called up, strangely touched by Holmes’s protectiveness, “but I’m glad to see you nonetheless.”
The boy and his two compatriots—none of them much older than sixteen—had come prepared. They let down a length of knotted rope, and the first one, who introduced himself as Tim, shimmied nimbly down it. He seemed impressed by Watson’s predicament.
“Reckon everyone’s forgotten this old shaft was here,” he said, peering around, “got half a mind to come back and explore once we’ve brought you out. Might be hidden treasure or summat lying about.”
“You never know,” Watson agreed.
Tim looked as if he were already spending the loot in imagination, but he brought himself back to reality. “If I hold the rope steady, can you climb out on your own?” he asked, “or would you rather the boys pulled you up?”
Watson assured him he could ascend under his own power, and, though it cost him more effort than he would have liked, he reached the top without incident.
Strong arms pulled him over the edge, and as he found his feet again he saw what had made Holmes’s voice go queer.
He stood on a high bluff, overlooking a small curved bay. The green sweep of scrubby grass ended abruptly at the edge of sheer cliffs, guarding a pristine beach below. It had turned into a glorious morning, and the sun glinted off the breakers as they crashed against a weird array of rock formations jutting out of the water. Beyond them, the sea seemed to go on forever, the horizon a thin line of misty green.
“Where are we?” he breathed.
“Where are we?” Tim laughed, coming up behind him, “Only on the most beautiful beach in North Cornwall, that’s where!”
VI
Late in the afternoon, Holmes and Watson picked their way down the narrow path that led to what Watson thought of as “Tim’s beach.” A long nap and a lunch heavily lubricated with Mallick’s best sherry had gotten Watson’s leg more or less in working order again, and it only took him slightly longer to get down the steep path than it would have ordinarily. He had his cane back, which helped. Occasionally, Holmes would put out a hand to steady him, and Watson found that, for once, he didn’t mind.
Tim and his friends had been as eager to see the hullabaloo at the Island Prince as Watson himself, and they’d hoisted him aboard their farm wagon, left their work behind, and driven into Boscastle as fast as their old dray horse would allow.
Unfortunately, by the time they’d arrived, the fuss was already dying down. The local constable was standing outside the inn shaking Holmes’s hand while Mallick beamed mightily in the background. Pascoe and his friends—happily apprehended while still unconscious—had already been led away to justice. Molly Pascoe, for better or worse, had departed for points unknown.
Holmes had given Watson a brilliant smile when he saw him alight from the wagon, clapped him on the back, and said “Glad you could join us, m’dear, sorry you’ve missed all the excitement.”
The beach was deserted, this early in the season, although the day had grown hot, and the water stretched out in front of them, blue-green and endless. Looking at it, Watson remembered something he’d heard people say about the west coast of Ireland: the next county is America. He supposed that the same thing must be true here, here at the utmost edge of England.
Nothing between us and the new world, he thought, rolling the idea over his mind.
The late afternoon sun was warm on his back, recalling childhood seaside holidays, if not at this beach, then at others like it. He remembered chasing through the waves with his brother, running for the sheer joy of running, kicking up water with their heels. It had always ended with them deliberately crashing into each other—falling down was half the fun—and wrestling like puppies in the sand.
An echo of that giddy joy pulsed through him, and he found himself kneeling to take off his boots and socks, ignoring Holmes’s quizzical eye. Footgear removed, he dug his feet into the sand, felt it slide cool and rough between his toes. He rolled up his trousers, and headed towards the water.
“Taking the salt water cure, old chap?” Holmes called after him, gently mocking. But Watson only shrugged, already at the line where dry land met the slick wet left by the tide.
The sea was shockingly cold, even against the unseasonable heat of the afternoon, and he shivered a little as he entered it. But after a moment it felt good—felt as if it were going to burn the doubt and equivocation out of him, excise all the leftover mourning and new longing, scour him as clean as the tiny pebbles shifting in the waves.
“Hmm,” someone said, and Watson found that Holmes had joined him, feet and calves as bare as his own. “You might be onto something here.”
Watson smiled.
They stood there for a long time in companionable silence, letting the fresh ocean breeze wash over them, feeling the gentle waves eddy in and out, pulling the sand around their ankles, then washing it away again.
After a bit, something nudged Watson’s toe. He thought for a moment that it was a fish, but when he looked down, he saw that Holmes had edged nearer, near enough that their hips and shoulders brushed against each other and their feet touched. Transfixed, he watched through the crystalline water as Holmes slowly moved his foot closer still, until it covered Watson’s completely. Deliberately, Holmes tangled their toes together, gently driving them deeper into the yielding sand. Watson’s breath caught in his throat, but he made no move to get away, the subtle contact generating a heat within him that the water’s chill did nothing to abate.
He breathed into that heat for a moment, letting it course through his body, before he lifted his eyes to Holmes’s face. The detective was gazing at him intently, dark eyes lambent and filled with open invitation.
All doubts forgotten, Watson answered the unspoken question with a smile, turned and moved back up the beach. A muted splashing told him Holmes was following. Excitement coiling low in his stomach, Watson passed their abandoned shoes and socks, not stopping until he entered the sheltering shadow of the cliff.
By the time he’d reached the rock face, Holmes had caught up with him. He felt a hand tugging at his shoulder, turning him around and pushing him against the stony surface with almost violent urgency. The rock was icy against Watson’s skin, but he didn’t mind, relished the clash of sensations. So awash in desire he could barely tell up from down, he surrendered to the string of bruising kisses Holmes laid along his collarbone, the hard grip on his waist.
He slipped his own hands under Holmes’s shirt, glorying in the warm skin, tracing the tensile muscles he had been yearning to touch for longer than he dared admit. His fingers tangled a little in the dark hair in Holmes’s chest, and, without thinking, he followed the line of it down his torso, to the waistband of his trousers, until he could feel the hard jut of Holmes’s prick rising under his hand
So different, he thought unbidden, so different from the soft curve of Mary’s belly, the way her beautiful, pliant flesh had cushioned every bone, enclosed the hidden sources of her pleasure.
For a moment the contrast jolted him, pulled him out of the tumult of desire with a stab of guilt. How could he have forgotten? How could he ever hope to replicate their private joys with someone else? He pulled his hand back, put some distance between his body and his friend’s, drew in a ragged gasp of air.
Holmes looked at him, breathing a little heavily, concern and sympathy momentarily replacing passion in his eyes.
“John,” he said, suddenly sober, “I know you loved her. I—“ He seemed prepared to say more, to offer further reassurance, or even to end the moment, if Watson truly desired it.
But for Watson, the simple acknowledgement of the past was enough, somehow, to allow him, finally, to move beyond the pain and loss. He closed the distance between them again, until their lips met for the first time. He was able to welcome the difference now, even to revel in it. Holmes’s lips weren’t soft—they were rough, and little chapped. He could feel the strong muscles under them, the faint rasp of stubble. When he licked inside Holmes’s mouth, he could taste tobacco, and the sour remains of their lunchtime sherry. But when Holmes deftly undid the fastenings of his trousers, and laced those strong, clever fingers around Watson’s aching cock, he was sure he had never been as hard.
It didn’t take much after that. Watson fumbled with Holmes’s trousers, his clumsy fingers infinitely slower than his hunger, until he held Holmes’s cock, the unfamiliarity of its hard, heavy weight almost stopping him again. He felt as if he had taken that step off the cliff after all—walked right out into empty space. But instead of falling, he was buffeted by a storm of sensations, tossed hither and yon, but still buoyed far, far above the ground.
Losing whatever scraps of self-control he had left, Watson groaned with pleasure as Holmes brought their pricks together, hand moving confidently along their joined lengths. Watson felt as if each stroke were stripping away another layer of his defenses, another set of his old ideas about the way the world should be, until he lay bare and new-born under Holmes’s touch. Desperately trying to not to give way completely, he dug his hands into Holmes’s hips hard to enough to leave marks. But then Holmes twisted, dragging his thumb over the head of Watson’s prick, and Watson was finished, the white heat of his climax momentarily blocking out the sun. He was dimly aware of Holmes following him, of the detective leaning more heavily against him, so that it was only mutual support that kept them upright.
Afterwards, they sank down against the rock face, limbs tangled together in sated lassitude. They couldn’t stay there for long, Watson knew, couldn’t risk anyone seeing them thus compromised; but he was reluctant to move. It seemed miraculous that the all the confusion, all the longing and trepidation, of the past two days should have led to this—this perfect peace. He did not dare to break the moment, lest he should find it fleeting. He let the gale from the sea push against them, molding them into the cliff, molding them into each other.
“Why is the wind so fierce here?” Holmes murmured, his head pillowed on Watson’s shoulder. His eyes were almost closed, the contours of his face relaxed in pleasure. For the second time that day Watson heard a rare note of wonder in his friend’s voice.
He brushed a gentle finger across the fragile skin of Holmes’s eyelids, the tiny creases at the corners of his eyes. “Because, dear heart,” he answered, the unguarded happiness in Holmes’s voice freeing springs of tenderness he thought had long since run dry, “because it comes straight from Newfoundland. And there is nothing to stand in its way.”
fin
Forgabsy’s winning bid at the ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
help_haiti auction. She told me she liked we-suddenly-discover-we-are-in-love stories. Or UST where each of them are obviously into each other but since this is 19th century London, they don't say it until the end. Maybe there was a misunderstanding at first and they both think the other isn't interested, and OHH how wrong are they. So I tried to get a little bit of all of those in there. With much appreciation for her patience, and apologies for the lack of porn.
Rating: R, slash
Warnings: None
Genre: casefic, romance
Word count: ~3.3K, this part; ~9.8 for the whole fic.
Disclaimer: not mine, no profit.
Summary: An old army buddy convinces Holmes and Watson to investigate a series of robberies at his inn on the Cornish coast. Watson is sure Holmes has only agreed to cheer him up after Mary’s death, but there may be more going on under the surface.
Notes: same as before
a/n: most excellent beta’ing and some help with the basics courtesy of
calamitycrow.Nothing Between Us and the New World
V
“Good morning,” Holmes said cheerily, turning from his study of the rock face when he noticed Watson stirring, “it’s promising to be a fine day. How’s the leg?”
“Better, I think,” Watson replied. He pulled himself up gingerly and tested the offending limb, keeping one hand on the wall for support. The short rest had done some good, and it would bear his weight, if only just—the muscles from hip to knee still felt like the local hunt had run them to ground during the night.
“Glad to hear it,” Holmes said, resuming his inspection. He sounded—chipper. As if he were passing the tea and toast in their London digs, instead of sharing out cold comfort in a dank abandoned mine shaft in Cornwall. Watson peered at him The detective seemed his usual self—thrumming with energy and confidence--last night’s diffidence and earnest solicitude dispersed like the fragments of a dream.
Watson himself felt farther from dreaming than he had for a long time. He could still sense the lingering warmth where Holmes’s body had pressed against his in the dark, still hear the undercurrent of emotion in Holmes’s voice as he’d asked his tentative questions—still trace the paths scored by those jagged, unexpected bolts of desire.
Steady on, old boy, he told himself firmly, tamping down his unruly thoughts. Now was not the time to continue that conversation—if indeed there had been any conversation worth continuing.
“Do you think you can make your way out of here?” he asked, pleased to find his voice so steady.
“Yes, I believe so” Holmes replied, “the route is clear, if somewhat—precarious.” He sketched a zigzagging line up the shaft wall, taking in a few tiny outcropping and one broad fissure. The ascent looked next to impossible to Watson, but he didn’t say anything—he knew better than to try to dissuade Holmes once he’d made up his mind, and he couldn’t offer a better plan for escape in any case.
Holmes had already divested himself of his waistcoat, and was now removing his boots and socks. Barefoot, he stood and turned to Watson,
“Is your leg up to giving me a leg up?” he quipped, mouth crooking slightly at the frail jest, “the first handhold’s a bit beyond my reach.” Watson frowned at him: the word-play fell far short of Holmes’s usual standard. For the first time, he wondered if Holmes, too, weren’t still a little shaken by the oblique confessions of the night before.
“Yes, of course,” Watson said, smoothing out his face and deliberately pushing such thoughts aside. He knelt stiffly in the spot Holmes indicated, offering his good knee as a step-ladder. Think of the task at hand, his stern inner counsel reminded him, and he obeyed, even when Holmes’s bare toes dug into his thigh, seeking leverage. The contact was necessary for their escape, nothing more than what they had done a thousand times before—if it provoked any untoward response in him, it was hidden easily enough.
The detective, uncharacteristically, wavered a bit as he pushed himself up, and, without thinking, Watson put a hand around his ankle to steady him. As their flesh met, he heard a muted hiss above him, as if Holmes had let out a sharp breath. Surprised, Watson looked up, and found his companion staring down at him, eyes wide and a little startled. Watson blinked, unsure at what he was seeing—could it be that Holmes, too, was struggling to keep certain things at bay?
And then the detective abruptly turned his attention back to the wall, pushing off from Watson’s knee to grip nearly invisible knobs of rock, digging his bare toes into tiny cracks for support.
Watson gathered his wits and struggled back to standing, watching as Holmes painstakingly made his way up the stony surface. There was great skill in his actions—he could see the care with which Holmes evenly distributed his weight between legs and arms, kept his center of gravity low, even with his legs canted out at impossible angles. And if some new, ungovernable part of Watson was strangely mesmerized by the play of muscle across Holmes’s back and arms, by the lithe strength of his legs and feet, no one need be the wiser.
Holmes was almost to the top now, a good twenty feet above the ground. He’d gotten himself to that larger fissure in the rock, and tucked both feet and his right hand inside it. His left hand was straining towards the mouth of the shaft, at least six inches beyond his grasp. The position looked, to use his own word, precarious. Watson did not want to contemplate how Holmes would fare if he fell from such a height.
“Hold on,” Watson wanted to shout up at him, “hold on.” But the injunction was so blindingly obvious that he forced himself to hold his tongue.
Finally, after a pause that seemed to go on for minutes but probably lasted less than thirty seconds, Holmes drew a breath even Watson could hear, pulled his right leg more firmly beneath him, and used it to launch himself across the narrow distance towards the patch of sky.
He hung, impossibly, in space for a moment, but before Watson could fully register his horror at the risk his friend had just taken, Holmes had gotten both hands over the lip of the opening. His feet scrabbled for a moment on the rock, and then he pulled himself up and out, disappearing from Watson’s view.
The doctor released a long breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. Then he shouted his friend’s name as loudly as he could.
For a long moment, he heard nothing, then, Holmes’s voice saying, oddly, “Well, I’ll be damned.” There was something unfamiliar in his tone. If Watson hadn’t known better, he would have called it wonder.
“What is it, Holmes?” he called up, alarmed, “Where are we? What have you found?”
Holmes’s face appeared again at the opening, backlit by the brighter sky behind it, so that his expression was unreadable.
“Nothing of note, old chap,” he said, voice perfectly calm again, “it’s just that we seem to have ended up in one of Mallick’s local beauty spots.” He gave a short, dry laugh, but did not explain further. “I must make haste. I’ll send back help as quickly as I can, but I should go on myself, alert the local law to Pascoe and his troop—if they haven’t escaped already. You’ll be alright here for a bit, won’t you?”
“Yes, yes of course,” Watson hastily assured him. But he felt, obscurely, that there should be more to say—that some profound change had occurred last night—something that should be acknowledged. But he remained unsure as to exactly what that change was, and whether it had affected both of them. And so he held his peace.
Holmes nodded once, and disappeared.
::::::
Left alone, Watson finally allowed his unsettled thoughts free rein.
If someone had asked him yesterday morning what he wanted most from his present life, he would have replied, without hesitation, that he wanted to ease himself back into the supportive confines of his old relationship with Mr. Sherlock Holmes: equal parts exhilaration and exasperation, to be sure, but comfortable and thoroughly chaste. He had had enough of romance, its mysteries and frustrations, its pleasures and its pains.
He wasn’t sure how he would answer that question now.
The idea of acting on the desires the night had revealed felt a little like the lunge Holmes had made across the top of the mine shaft: leaping over the abyss towards the impossible hope of light and freedom, with every possibility of plummeting to the rocky ground below. With something very like sorrow, Watson acknowledged that he didn’t know whether he could sustain the kind of injuries such a fall would inflict.
Shakily, he set about stretching out the still-aching muscles in his leg, putting them through the series of simple exercises he had developed over the years. The routine soothed his mind even as it undid the corporeal kinks and knots, and by the time he’d finished, he felt prepared to face whatever the day might bring.
Sooner than he’d dared hope he heard a young, masculine voice, and looked up to see a friendly, wind-roughened face.
“You alright down there?” the youth shouted, louder than necessary, “We met a gentleman told us you was hurt, wanted us to hurry.”
“My friend exaggerates,” Watson called up, strangely touched by Holmes’s protectiveness, “but I’m glad to see you nonetheless.”
The boy and his two compatriots—none of them much older than sixteen—had come prepared. They let down a length of knotted rope, and the first one, who introduced himself as Tim, shimmied nimbly down it. He seemed impressed by Watson’s predicament.
“Reckon everyone’s forgotten this old shaft was here,” he said, peering around, “got half a mind to come back and explore once we’ve brought you out. Might be hidden treasure or summat lying about.”
“You never know,” Watson agreed.
Tim looked as if he were already spending the loot in imagination, but he brought himself back to reality. “If I hold the rope steady, can you climb out on your own?” he asked, “or would you rather the boys pulled you up?”
Watson assured him he could ascend under his own power, and, though it cost him more effort than he would have liked, he reached the top without incident.
Strong arms pulled him over the edge, and as he found his feet again he saw what had made Holmes’s voice go queer.
He stood on a high bluff, overlooking a small curved bay. The green sweep of scrubby grass ended abruptly at the edge of sheer cliffs, guarding a pristine beach below. It had turned into a glorious morning, and the sun glinted off the breakers as they crashed against a weird array of rock formations jutting out of the water. Beyond them, the sea seemed to go on forever, the horizon a thin line of misty green.
“Where are we?” he breathed.
“Where are we?” Tim laughed, coming up behind him, “Only on the most beautiful beach in North Cornwall, that’s where!”
VI
Late in the afternoon, Holmes and Watson picked their way down the narrow path that led to what Watson thought of as “Tim’s beach.” A long nap and a lunch heavily lubricated with Mallick’s best sherry had gotten Watson’s leg more or less in working order again, and it only took him slightly longer to get down the steep path than it would have ordinarily. He had his cane back, which helped. Occasionally, Holmes would put out a hand to steady him, and Watson found that, for once, he didn’t mind.
Tim and his friends had been as eager to see the hullabaloo at the Island Prince as Watson himself, and they’d hoisted him aboard their farm wagon, left their work behind, and driven into Boscastle as fast as their old dray horse would allow.
Unfortunately, by the time they’d arrived, the fuss was already dying down. The local constable was standing outside the inn shaking Holmes’s hand while Mallick beamed mightily in the background. Pascoe and his friends—happily apprehended while still unconscious—had already been led away to justice. Molly Pascoe, for better or worse, had departed for points unknown.
Holmes had given Watson a brilliant smile when he saw him alight from the wagon, clapped him on the back, and said “Glad you could join us, m’dear, sorry you’ve missed all the excitement.”
The beach was deserted, this early in the season, although the day had grown hot, and the water stretched out in front of them, blue-green and endless. Looking at it, Watson remembered something he’d heard people say about the west coast of Ireland: the next county is America. He supposed that the same thing must be true here, here at the utmost edge of England.
Nothing between us and the new world, he thought, rolling the idea over his mind.
The late afternoon sun was warm on his back, recalling childhood seaside holidays, if not at this beach, then at others like it. He remembered chasing through the waves with his brother, running for the sheer joy of running, kicking up water with their heels. It had always ended with them deliberately crashing into each other—falling down was half the fun—and wrestling like puppies in the sand.
An echo of that giddy joy pulsed through him, and he found himself kneeling to take off his boots and socks, ignoring Holmes’s quizzical eye. Footgear removed, he dug his feet into the sand, felt it slide cool and rough between his toes. He rolled up his trousers, and headed towards the water.
“Taking the salt water cure, old chap?” Holmes called after him, gently mocking. But Watson only shrugged, already at the line where dry land met the slick wet left by the tide.
The sea was shockingly cold, even against the unseasonable heat of the afternoon, and he shivered a little as he entered it. But after a moment it felt good—felt as if it were going to burn the doubt and equivocation out of him, excise all the leftover mourning and new longing, scour him as clean as the tiny pebbles shifting in the waves.
“Hmm,” someone said, and Watson found that Holmes had joined him, feet and calves as bare as his own. “You might be onto something here.”
Watson smiled.
They stood there for a long time in companionable silence, letting the fresh ocean breeze wash over them, feeling the gentle waves eddy in and out, pulling the sand around their ankles, then washing it away again.
After a bit, something nudged Watson’s toe. He thought for a moment that it was a fish, but when he looked down, he saw that Holmes had edged nearer, near enough that their hips and shoulders brushed against each other and their feet touched. Transfixed, he watched through the crystalline water as Holmes slowly moved his foot closer still, until it covered Watson’s completely. Deliberately, Holmes tangled their toes together, gently driving them deeper into the yielding sand. Watson’s breath caught in his throat, but he made no move to get away, the subtle contact generating a heat within him that the water’s chill did nothing to abate.
He breathed into that heat for a moment, letting it course through his body, before he lifted his eyes to Holmes’s face. The detective was gazing at him intently, dark eyes lambent and filled with open invitation.
All doubts forgotten, Watson answered the unspoken question with a smile, turned and moved back up the beach. A muted splashing told him Holmes was following. Excitement coiling low in his stomach, Watson passed their abandoned shoes and socks, not stopping until he entered the sheltering shadow of the cliff.
By the time he’d reached the rock face, Holmes had caught up with him. He felt a hand tugging at his shoulder, turning him around and pushing him against the stony surface with almost violent urgency. The rock was icy against Watson’s skin, but he didn’t mind, relished the clash of sensations. So awash in desire he could barely tell up from down, he surrendered to the string of bruising kisses Holmes laid along his collarbone, the hard grip on his waist.
He slipped his own hands under Holmes’s shirt, glorying in the warm skin, tracing the tensile muscles he had been yearning to touch for longer than he dared admit. His fingers tangled a little in the dark hair in Holmes’s chest, and, without thinking, he followed the line of it down his torso, to the waistband of his trousers, until he could feel the hard jut of Holmes’s prick rising under his hand
So different, he thought unbidden, so different from the soft curve of Mary’s belly, the way her beautiful, pliant flesh had cushioned every bone, enclosed the hidden sources of her pleasure.
For a moment the contrast jolted him, pulled him out of the tumult of desire with a stab of guilt. How could he have forgotten? How could he ever hope to replicate their private joys with someone else? He pulled his hand back, put some distance between his body and his friend’s, drew in a ragged gasp of air.
Holmes looked at him, breathing a little heavily, concern and sympathy momentarily replacing passion in his eyes.
“John,” he said, suddenly sober, “I know you loved her. I—“ He seemed prepared to say more, to offer further reassurance, or even to end the moment, if Watson truly desired it.
But for Watson, the simple acknowledgement of the past was enough, somehow, to allow him, finally, to move beyond the pain and loss. He closed the distance between them again, until their lips met for the first time. He was able to welcome the difference now, even to revel in it. Holmes’s lips weren’t soft—they were rough, and little chapped. He could feel the strong muscles under them, the faint rasp of stubble. When he licked inside Holmes’s mouth, he could taste tobacco, and the sour remains of their lunchtime sherry. But when Holmes deftly undid the fastenings of his trousers, and laced those strong, clever fingers around Watson’s aching cock, he was sure he had never been as hard.
It didn’t take much after that. Watson fumbled with Holmes’s trousers, his clumsy fingers infinitely slower than his hunger, until he held Holmes’s cock, the unfamiliarity of its hard, heavy weight almost stopping him again. He felt as if he had taken that step off the cliff after all—walked right out into empty space. But instead of falling, he was buffeted by a storm of sensations, tossed hither and yon, but still buoyed far, far above the ground.
Losing whatever scraps of self-control he had left, Watson groaned with pleasure as Holmes brought their pricks together, hand moving confidently along their joined lengths. Watson felt as if each stroke were stripping away another layer of his defenses, another set of his old ideas about the way the world should be, until he lay bare and new-born under Holmes’s touch. Desperately trying to not to give way completely, he dug his hands into Holmes’s hips hard to enough to leave marks. But then Holmes twisted, dragging his thumb over the head of Watson’s prick, and Watson was finished, the white heat of his climax momentarily blocking out the sun. He was dimly aware of Holmes following him, of the detective leaning more heavily against him, so that it was only mutual support that kept them upright.
Afterwards, they sank down against the rock face, limbs tangled together in sated lassitude. They couldn’t stay there for long, Watson knew, couldn’t risk anyone seeing them thus compromised; but he was reluctant to move. It seemed miraculous that the all the confusion, all the longing and trepidation, of the past two days should have led to this—this perfect peace. He did not dare to break the moment, lest he should find it fleeting. He let the gale from the sea push against them, molding them into the cliff, molding them into each other.
“Why is the wind so fierce here?” Holmes murmured, his head pillowed on Watson’s shoulder. His eyes were almost closed, the contours of his face relaxed in pleasure. For the second time that day Watson heard a rare note of wonder in his friend’s voice.
He brushed a gentle finger across the fragile skin of Holmes’s eyelids, the tiny creases at the corners of his eyes. “Because, dear heart,” he answered, the unguarded happiness in Holmes’s voice freeing springs of tenderness he thought had long since run dry, “because it comes straight from Newfoundland. And there is nothing to stand in its way.”
fin
For
gabsy’s winning bid at the help_haiti auction. She told me she liked we-suddenly-discover-we-are-in-love stories. Or UST where each of them are obviously into each other but since this is 19th century London, they don't say it until the end. Maybe there was a misunderstanding at first and they both think the other isn't interested, and OHH how wrong are they. So I tried to get a little bit of all of those in there. With much appreciation for her patience, and apologies for the lack of porn.
