ariadnes_string (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ariadnes_string) wrote2010-06-19 09:20 pm
ariadnes_string) wrote2010-06-19 09:20 pm
Entry tags:
The Silver Answer (Holmes/Watson fic)
Author: ariadnes_string
Title: The Silver Answer
Rating: Light R
Warnings/additional pairings: n/a
Summary: A chance encounter with a mesmerist has unexpected consequences for Holmes and Watson.
Word Count: 11,381
Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit.
a/n: This fic is a version of ACD’s own story, The Parasite, remixed for Holmes/Watson.
a/n: Title and epigraph from EBB
a/n: Written for the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
hw09_exchange.
a/n: A huge thank you to my inestimable beta,calamitycrow, not just for all the usual beta things, but for all the extra handholding that is for some reason attendant on me writing Holmes/Watson fic.
…a mystic shape did move
Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair
And a voice said in mastery, while I strove…
Guess now who holds thee?...Death, I said, but there
The silver answer rang…not Death but Love.
The Silver Answer
1.
For once, it was Watson in disguise. He tugged surreptitiously at the tight, scratchy collar of his shirt, and cursed Mr. Sherlock Holmes.
Holmes, of course, had been invited to Richardson Smythe’s party in his own identity and under his own name. He’d accepted with alacrity: the party offered the perfect opportunity to gather information on Loudon Smythe, the wealthy banker’s impecunious nephew, and the chief suspect in the blackmail case they were investigating.
But when Holmes had learned that additional serving men were being hired on for the night, he’d decided that hearing the talk below stairs would also be invaluable. And that Watson was just the man for the job. The doctor was sure Holmes had made the decision as much to irk him as to further the case.
“Don’t be absurd,” the detective had said when Watson aired his suspicions, nimble fingers securing the fake nose to Watson’s face, “I would never ask you do something so against your natural inclinations unless it were absolutely vital to our inquiries.” Holmes’s face had been utterly serious, but Watson could have sworn that laughter lurked behind his eyes.
And so here he was, a bottle of expensive champagne in his hand, a fine cloth napkin folded over his arm, hovering with affected subservience at the edges of a room filled with financial elite of London and their wives. He scanned the crowd for Holmes, located him in the middle of a circle of richly clothed society matrons, heads all inclined towards him like a bunch of gaudy day lilies, hanging on his every word. Mrs. Smythe herself, beautiful, and much younger than the middle-aged banker, stood closest to the detective, laughing in a way that showed off the graceful line of her alabaster throat. Holmes was laughing along with her, although Watson could read the tell-tale signs of tension in his body, signs probably invisible to anyone else. The doctor's lips quirked in a tiny smile; there was some satisfaction in knowing that he was not the only one discomfited by the ostentatious display of bourgeois wealth.
Watson shifted from foot to foot wearily, his bad leg starting to ache. His upper lip tickled, and he had to resist the sudden urge to sneeze. It was as if he could still feel Holmes’s fingers on his face, combing dark dye into his hair and mustache, deftly rearranging things so that Watson no longer looked anything like himself. Holmes enjoyed nothing better than putting together a disguise, even for someone else; he'd leaned so close to Watson in his ministrations, fussing with his hair and face, that the doctor had been able to smell the trace of chemicals and sweat on his skin, faint under the overpowering scent of tobacco, been able to feel Holmes’s breath on his cheek. The memory made him flush, and he was relieved to spy an empty glass. He moved to fill it.
"My friends," Richardson Smythe called out, tapping his glass for quiet, "thank you all for coming tonight." The host was a tall man, with a magnificent belly, a little red in the face from drink at this point in the evening. "As you know," he continued, looking pleased with himself, "this party is in honor of our recently arrived cousin from the West Indies, Mr. Penclosa." Watson had not, in fact, known this, and he hated to think what Holmes’s failure to tell him about this Mr. Penclosa meant. Something annoying, no doubt.
Smythe beckoned the guest of honor into the center of the room. He was not what Watson expected: in his imagination, residents of the West Indies were always strong-looking men, bronzed by the sun. Mr. Penclosa was neither: he was middle-aged and pale, frail even, his reliance on a sturdy crutch making him list a little to the left. He was altogether unprepossessing, until he looked up. Watson caught a glimpse of extraordinary green-gold eyes—fierce as a wildcat’s, almost predatory.
"Among his many virtues,” Smythe intoned, “Our dear cousin is a renowned hypnotist, supremely gifted with mesmeric powers." The room collectively drew its breath, rustled with anticipation. Mr. Penclosa stood impassively through the introduction, though his hands twisted a little on his crutch. "What’s more," Smyth announced, “he has agreed to provide a small demonstration of his talents for us tonight. He only needs a volunteer, and he will show us marvelous things.”
The buzz in the room grew louder, as the guests whispered excitedly, urging each other to step forward.
"I would prefer the volunteer be a skeptic," Penclosa added, his voice soft, almost diffident. "Believers can be so susceptible. It does not make for a good test of my abilities."
One of the women near Holmes, tall and thin in a green dress that did little to accentuate her charms, suddenly called out, "Why, then Mr. Holmes should be your volunteer. Surely he’s the most skeptical and disbelieving of us all." Her voice was slightly shrill, as if she could not quite believe her own boldness.
Watson saw Holmes start to demur, raise his hands and back away. But then the mesmerist swung towards him, fixing him with the feline gaze that belied his mild exterior, and said, "Oh yes, Mr. Holmes—if you would consent to be my test subject, it would be a worthy challenge, something that would convince so many if I succeeded."
His voice was mild, deferent, but there was something disconcerting about it, some slight strangeness of tone or emphasis. Nothing Watson could put his finger on, but that raised his hackles, set his alarms bells ringing.
Holmes, to his dismay, now had a familiar look on his face, the one he wore before going up against a much larger opponent at the Punchbowl, before injecting another dose of his 7% solution. The one he wore when he couldn’t stop himself from seeking the thrill, the danger. Watson wanted very badly to intercede, to physically pull Holmes away from this seemingly harmless man whose very presence somehow aroused all the doctor's deepest suspicions.
But he had promised Holmes he would not break character, would not reveal their connection. The whole investigation would be jeopardized if he did—weeks of work and Holmes’s reputation thrown to the wind. So he steeled himself to remain silent, trying to convince himself that Holmes would have some instinct for self-preservation.
"I’d be delighted to volunteer," Holmes was saying, with his patented smugness and aplomb. "How would you like me to arrange myself?"
Another round of excited murmurs and a scattering of applause rose from the assembled onlookers. Smythe looked like the cat who had eaten the canary—thrilled to have such a meeting of superstition and reason in his house.
Penclosa led the way to a chaise lounge that had obviously been placed especially for that purpose. Holmes lay down upon it.
"Are you quite comfortable, sir?" Penclosa asked, with exaggerated humility.
Watson forced his hands to unclench around the neck of the champagne bottle—he was close to breaking it.
"Quite comfortable," Holmes replied calmly, "pray begin. What would you have me do?"
"Nothing at all," the mesmerist said, "simply put yourself at ease and watch me carefully."
The excited murmurs of the onlookers gradually died down. Penclosa perched beside Holmes on the settee and passed his hands through the air in front of the detective’s face—once, twice, three times. He did not touch him, and there was nothing threatening in the gesture, and yet with each pass the little man seemed to expand, to take on an added weight and heft, until his presence dominated the room. It must have been a trick of the light, but his eyes also began to take on an unnatural glow, to shine more preternaturally green.
The first three times the mesmerist waved his hands in front of Holmes’s face, the detective remained unmoved—regarding the older man with his habitual amusement at the follies of the credulous. At the fourth pass, however, his eyes fluttered shut, and at the fifth, his whole face went slack, awareness leaving it altogether.
Watson tensed, the hand not holding the bottle involuntarily curling into a fist, every muscle ready to intervene against an as-yet-unknown threat. But he did not abandon his role, did not make a sound, he was sure of it.
Nevertheless, in some eldritch way, the mesmerist seemed to sense his reaction. Those awful, uncanny eyes swept across the crowd, seeking something, and then honed in on him, hidden as he was on the edge of the room, behind his serving man’s get-up. The gaze was uncanny in its fierce, knowing, directness; Watson was sure it pierced right through his flimsy disguise, knew all about his connection to the man on the settee.
He thought he knew now how the butterfly felt, its wings stretched wide and pinned on the specimen table.
After an endless moment in which Watson had to use all his willpower not to turn around and simply bolt, Penclosa gave the slightest of smiles, as if he’d gathered all the information he needed, and turned back to the somnolent Holmes, gazing just as intensely at him for a moment.
Rather than continuing his experiment, however, Penclosa simply snapped his fingers. "Wake," he said, in a quiet, firm voice, and Holmes did, his eyes snapping open immediately. The detective shook his head slightly, as if rousing from an unplanned nap, and tilted his head quizzically as the mesmerist. A buzz of disappointment started to rise from the assembled guests.
"My apologies," Mr. Penclosa said, "I cannot continue. The force of will, of personality, is too strong here; my powers cannot prevail against it." Holmes made a droll face, shrugged charmingly, obviously enjoying the backhanded compliment. The mesmerist drew a trembling hand across his brow. "I fear I have exhausted my strength for the evening," he said, "if you’ll forgive me, I’ll retire now. Perhaps in a day or two, we can try again…" He shuffled out of the room, Mr. Smythe dancing anxious attendance behind him. Holmes stood, straightened his waistcoat, and, very faintly, smirked.
The crowd sighed its collective disappointment, shrugged its collective shoulders and returned to the serious business of gossiping and flirting, eating and drinking. Watson was kept busy refilling glasses, and then ferrying used glasses to the kitchens below stairs.
As he worked, however, he tried to glean what information he could about the mesmerist from the guests' whispered remarks.
"What balderdash," scoffed one elderly gentleman under his breath.
"….yes, very ill," a dowager murmured, "he's not expected to make the return journey…such a shame…."
"…unnatural…," said a young man, "not that I'd believe of word of it…but still…."
But he could pick up nothing substantial, nothing concrete,
He hoped Holmes was making some headway with their actual case, the one that had brought them here in the first place. He was beginning to believe that his own role really had been designed primarily for Holmes’s amusement—he'd certainly been no use on that end—when, on his last trip down to the kitchen, laden with a heavy tray of glassware, he heard raised voices through the door to the alley behind the house.
Carefully, he put down his burden, silently eased his way over to the door. He could make out just a sliver of the scene outside, but it was enough to confirm their suspicions. Louden Smythe was engaged in a raucous argument with a burly man even Watson could identify as a leading member of London’s criminal underworld. He grinned in satisfaction, the more disturbing events of the night momentarily forgotten.
++++++
When he finally returned to Baker Street, weary from a long night of menial labor broken only by his unaccountable anxiety over Holmes’s encounter with the mesmerist, he found the detective there before him. He was happily ensconced in his favorite chair, wearing his dressing gown, and just filling a pipe.
Quickly, he told Holmes what he had seen.
Holmes let out a delighted bark of laughter. "We have him now," he said, "fine work, old boy."
Watson ducked his head, unwilling to show how much the compliment pleased him. Holmes seemed his usual self: confident, alert, satisfied that an investigation was finally starting to come together.
"And you?" Watson asked, curious, "Are you quite well?"
Holmes gave him a quizzical look. "Yes, of course, Watson," he said, "never better."
"The mesmerist, Mr.Penclosa," Watson pressed, "did his, er, games—they didn’t affect you, did they?"
"Don’t be foolish," Holmes said, regarding him with amusement, "did you not hear him? He could make no headway against my magnificent will. And of course he couldn’t—such powers of the mind don’t exist. Don’t tell me you believe in that tripe."
"No, no, of course not," Watson assured him hastily, "I just—" He wanted to say something about the man’s eyes, how they had seem to look right through him, but he didn’t know how to begin.
"Glad to hear it," Holmes said, "now go and take off that ridiculous nose."
2
With the information they had gathered, Loudon Smythe and the blackmail case were dispatched with ease. There then followed a period of relative calm while they waited for a new investigation to present itself. Watson saw to his patients; Holmes revised his second monograph on the tattoo arts of the South Sea Islanders.
One morning, a little over a week after the event, Watson was hastily finishing a cup of tea before his first appointment of the day, when Holmes appeared in the sitting room. This was unusual enough: when they weren’t working together, they tended to keep quite different hours—Watson rising early for his professional duties, Holmes burning the midnight oil in his arcane studies, sleeping through the morning. Watson’s first thought was that Holmes had not gone to bed at all; his hair was unkempt, there were dark smudges under his eyes, and his hand, when he sat heavily across from Watson at the small breakfast table and reached for the teapot, visibly shook.
This in itself as not surprising—Holmes at loose ends between cases was rarely a pretty sight, his health wrecked between the Scylla of the boxing ring, and the Charybdis of the cocaine bottle. No—what was unusual was what happened next.
"Rough night?" Watson asked, expecting a lengthy account of either pugilistic encounters or philosophical musings.
"Wouldn’t know," Holmes shrugged, "Slept through it." He reached for a piece of toast, started to butter it, and then lost interest.
Watson stared. Granted, many of Holmes’s pursuits were things that most men would keep secret. The detective, however, had never been ashamed of what were commonly called vices, and usually liked to regale Watson with his adventures in exquisite (or excruciating) detail.
"My dear fellow," the doctor said, annoyed, "you don’t look as if you’ve slept a wink."
Holmes shrugged again, gave the toast one last disdainful look, pulled his dressing gown around him, and retreated into his own room.
Watson looked after him, strangely discomfited by the exchange. He shook his head at the closed door, refusing to give in to anxiety. Holmes was a grown man. He might have partaken in any number of activities he simply did not choose to share with his fellow-lodger. Indeed, it occurred to him, it was quite possible that Watson had overestimated the depth of their friendship—had mistaken cohabitation and frequent collaboration for a deeper intimacy.
He shook his head again to clear it, and went to meet his patient.
++++++
On the second day, Watson gave up any pretense of not being concerned.
Holmes appeared at the same early hour, looking, if anything, worse than before. There was a grey tinge to his pallor, his movements sluggish, as if he were underwater. He stared down at the breakfast things as if he had forgotten what food was for, and Watson tried to remember the last time he’d actually seen him eat.
"Holmes," he said cautiously, not wanting to drive him away again, "are you unwell?"
"Hmmn?" Holmes said, peering at him as if from a great distance.
"Are you ill?" Watson pressed.
At that, the detective mustered a ghost of a smile, "No, no," he said, "perhaps a trifle fatigued. Although I can’t think why—I slept soundly all night." He frowned at a spot behind Watson’s right shoulder, as if genuinely confused by the contradiction.
++++++
On the third day, rather than pursue the same unilluminating conversation, Watson took refuge in professionalism. When a decidedly worse-for-wear Holmes appeared, he rose silently, gathered his medical bag from the hall table, slung his stethoscope around his neck, and glowered at the detective until he looked up blearily from his tea.
"Watson?" Holmes said, puzzled.
"Holmes," he replied, tucking his concern away behind his sternest bedside manner. "I am not merely your investigational dogsbody; I am also your doctor. And if you are not over-indulging in your usual pursuits, or visiting your regular unsavory haunts, then you are most certainly sickening for something. I suggest we arrest its progress before it becomes too entrenched."
Holmes’s tired face assumed a trace of its characteristic smirk. "Why, Dr. Watson," he said, "you can be quite commanding when you choose. I cannot withstand you." He leaned back in his chair, mockingly offering himself for examination.
Watson refused to be goaded. He merely harrumpfed and laid his palm on Holmes’s forehead--slightly clammy, but cool enough. He slid two fingers across Holmes’s wrist, keeping his gaze determinedly on his watch. The skin under his hands felt thin and fragile, but the pulse was strong and regular, only slightly quicker than normal.
"Breathe," he ordered, lowering Holmes's dressing gown from his shoulders, pressing his stethoscope against his chest and back. His lungs, too, were clear.
"Well, what say you, doctor?' Holmes asked when he was done. "Will you give me a clean bill of health?"
Watson frowned at him. "The fact that I can find no obvious symptom does not mean that contagion is not still lurking somewhere." He sounded officious even to his own ears, but he had a point to make. "I would advise you to be particularly careful of your health for the next few days: get plentiful rest—"
"But I have been resting!" Holmes interrupted, striking an uncharacteristically plaintive note.
Watson ignored his words. "—and nourishment," he concluded, and glared at Holmes until the detective picked up the piece of toast in front of him and bit into it. He ate the whole thing with a great show of faux relish and enjoyment, but Watson took the return of his usual stroppiness to be good sign, and tried to convince himself that all would be well.
++++++
It was late when Watson returned to Baker Street that night—well after midnight. One of his patients had undergone emergency surgery, and he had remained at the hospital until he was sure she was out of danger. He dragged himself up the stairs, limping more heavily than usual, and divested himself of his coat in the hall, thinking only of getting into bed.
As he passed the doorway to Holmes’s room, however, he paused. Here was an opportunity to ascertain whether Holmes really was sleeping through the nights as he claimed, of judging the quality of his sleep. And yet entering each others’ rooms uninvited was not something they habitually did, no matter what the time of day: it was a breach of etiquette at best, an invasion of privacy at worst. Thinking better of the act, Watson started towards his own rooms. But the image of Holmes’s wan face refused to leave him. He turned, threw decorum to the winds, and eased open the blessedly unlocked door of Holmes room.
The detective was not there.
Shaken, Watson stopped in the doorway. This was worse than he’d feared. The bed had not been slept in; Holmes’s hat and coat were gone from their customary hook. He took a deep breath, the knowledge that Holmes really had been lying to him, really had been keeping secrets, striking him with unexpected force. It was a relief when the hurt was buried under a wave of anger: anger at his friend for jeopardizing his health doing—doing whatever it was he was doing. Anger at himself for caring about what Holmes was getting up to at night without him
He stalked out, barely managing to restrain himself from slamming the door behind him. If Holmes were going to behave this way, Watson would jolly well leave him to his fate.
Once in his own room, however, sleep would not come. He undressed, lay down, but could not force his eyes to close until he heard the well-known footfalls of the stairs signally that Holmes had returned from his nocturnal wanderings.
+++++
Watson managed to maintain his disinterested façade the next morning, albeit with some difficulty. An ill-looking Holmes plowed his way through breakfast, determinedly giving a show of good health. The clear effort it cost him to chew and swallow every mouthful tugged at the doctor’s sympathies, but Watson kept his face impassive, reminding himself not to overstep the newly revealed limits of their friendship.
He was still reminding himself of those limits as he readied himself for bed that night. He would not stay up listening for the detective’s departure, he told himself sternly, one shoe off, the other in his hand. Holmes was responsible for his own actions—deleterious to his health as they might be. If he did not choose to bring Watson into his confidence, well then Watson would have to abide by that choice.
And yet he found himself sitting on his bed in his stocking feet, wide awake, waiting for the telltale creak of the door.
When he heard it, he was on his feet in a flash, all his good intentions forgotten. It did not matter what Holmes thought, he decided swiftly, he was involved in something that was causing him harm, whether he realized it or not. It was Watson’s bounden duty to intervene. He would do the same for any colleague, any associate, no matter how casual, he assured himself.
Watson grabbed his coat on his way out the door, but left his cane behind—too cumbersome. The October night was chill, murky, a yellow tinge to the dark presaging a real London fog. Despite the gloom, however, Watson caught sight of Holmes almost immediately—his dark figure passing in and out of the dim glow of the gas lamps. The detective was moving steadily—not fast, not slow—but unerringly, with a kind of single-minded purpose, ignoring the solicitations of streetwalkers and the other denizens of the night as though he followed some pre-determined path.
Watson tried to stick to the shadows, but the fact that the detective did not notice him only confirmed just how off his game Holmes was. Stealth was not Watson’s forte. His old war injury gave him a distinctive gait he could not hide, and he had never been able to learn the knack of melting into his surroundings. On any ordinary day—or night—Holmes would have been instantly aware that Watson was behind him. Not tonight. Tonight, he was oblivious.
Spurred on by this new evidence of his friend’s debilitated state, Watson followed. He was surprised to find that Holmes’s route led them not into the less-salubrious areas of London, as he had half-expected, but towards the city’s more well-to-do districts. So it wasn’t fighting, or drugs, or even gambling that Holmes was after. What could it be? A tryst with some society beauty? It seemed unlikely, and yet Holmes was acting so far out of character that anything was possible.
The streets widened; the buildings grew more grand, marble porticos and wide bow windows flauntingly proclaiming their occupants' wealth. Finally, Holmes paused in front of a particularly imposing edifice and let himself in through a door that had obviously been left unlocked and unattended for just this purpose. Watson took refuge in the recessed entryway of a house across the way, and sagged against the wall in astonishment. He knew this place. No. 4 Cadogan Place: the home of Richardson Smythe.
So it was a tryst. But with whom? With the young wife who had been so attentive at the party? She seemed the only likely possibility—and adultery would certainly explain Holmes’s secretiveness. The knowledge, for some reason, hit Watson like a blow; he had to breathe very carefully for a moment until he could think again. He should turn around now and go home, he knew he should: if Holmes chose to fritter away his health on secret, romantic dalliances it was truly none of Watson’s concern.
And yet he stayed.
After a few minutes, a light came on in one of the upstairs rooms facing the street. A figure appeared at the window to draw the curtain, and in the instant before it did so, Watson recognized the slight, hunched, unmistakable silhouette, not of Mrs. Smythe, but of Mr. Penclosa.
He nearly gasped. What possible business could Holmes, who had so scathingly dismissed his claim to mental powers, have with the mesmerist? Unless-- An altogether darker possibility presented itself to Watson. Unless their brief encounter had not been as inconsequential as it seemed. Unless, despite his denials, the mesmerist had managed to implant some suggestion, some compulsion, in Holmes during the short time he had been insensible. A compulsion that had drawn the detective to him even all these days later.
The very thought made Watson a little sick, but he refused to allow himself to contemplate what purpose Penclosa might have had for such a summoning. After a brief internal debate, he decided against simply storming the quiet house and dragging Holmes away. It was possible—just barely possible—that he was there of his own accord. Instead, the doctor squared his shoulders, planted his feet, and resolved to wait.
++++++
And wait he did. For hours. Until the dank, foggy night seemed to penetrate his very bones and the old wound in his leg started to protest with fiery spasms of pain. But he couldn’t leave: he was rooted to the spot—paralyzed perhaps—committed to seeing the potentially sordid events of the night through to the end.
A bare hour or so before dawn, Holmes emerged, as calmly and unhurriedly as he had entered. He appeared composed, his face serene, as if nothing untoward had occurred. And yet, Watson thought, peering at him more closely, that wasn’t quite true: Holmes looked too composed, too unruffled. In his normal state, the detective was always just a tiny bit disheveled, a tuft of hair awry, a button undone, a wrinkle unsmoothed. This Holmes was pressed and polished, almost as if—Watson shuddered at the thought—almost as if someone had tidied him up before sending him out the door.
He had half-decided to simply trail Holmes back to Baker Street, to leave matters to the morning. But now Watson changed his mind. As soon as they had gotten three or four blocks from the Smythe residence, he quickened his pace, caught up with the detective.
"Holmes," he said urgently, laying a hand on his arm, "Holmes—" Watson paused, unsure of what to say, how to explain why he was abruptly hailing his friend in the nearly deserted, pre-dawn streets.
Holmes swung around to face him, but slowly, as if he were still moving through a dream. For one long, terrible, moment, he stared at Watson blankly, as if he’d never seen him before in his life.
Then, all at once, his calm fell away. He sucked in a long, ragged gulp of air as every muscle in his body tensed, and his eyes came suddenly, feverishly, alive.
"Watson—" he said, and the doctor felt a wave of relief at the recognition in his voice, "I—Are we? How—?" Holmes scanned Watson and their surrounding, clearly frantically trying to figure where he was and how he had gotten there. Watson caught his shoulders between his hands.
"Steady on, old boy," he said, "you’ve spent half the night at the home of Richardson Smythe," he said, trying to hold Holmes’s wandering gaze with his own, pitching his voice to pierce his confusion, “closeted, I believe, with his visiting cousin, Mr. Penclosa."
"What?” Holmes exclaimed, looking genuinely aghast at this information, "You must be mistaken. I have no connection to that horrid man." The name itself seemed to send a shudder through him.
"I assure you," Watson said, "I have followed you all night," –things had gone too far for him to be ashamed of his actions now—"and you have just come from there. I believe you have visited there every night this week. Have you no memory of it?"
"None at all," Holmes sounded shaken, "If you say I was there, I believe you, but I have no recollection of it myself."
"But surely you must have some idea," Watson insisted, "What does he want with you, night after night?" The doctor struggled with an irrational urge to shake his friend until the truth spilled out.
Holmes looked at him, and there was something so lost, so confused, so far from his usual razor-sharp acuity in his face, that all the irritation drained out of Watson, leaving only sympathy behind.
"I--," Holmes said haltingly, "I—I don’t know—I—" His face lost what little color it had, and he sagged in Watson’s grip, his knees buckling beneath him.
Watson held on tighter, put a supporting hand on Holmes’s chest, carrying most of his weight for a moment, even though his bad leg screamed at the added burden. A few shaky breaths, however, and Holmes was able to get his feet under him again.
"I’m sorry," the detective whispered, eyes cast down, "I don’t know what’s come over me. I don’t seem to be able to think." It might have been the saddest thing Watson had ever heard him say.
"Don’t worry," Watson said gently, convinced that Holmes would crumple to the ground if he let go of his arm, "I know it won’t be up to your usual standard, but I expect I can do the thinking for both of us for a little while. Let’s get you home and into bed. "
++++++
Miraculously, despite the late—or rather, early—hour, Watson was able to find a hansom. Holmes fell asleep within thirty seconds of climbing inside it, and hardly woke when they arrived at Baker Street. It took a good deal of pushing and prodding, but Watson was able to shepherd him up the stairs and into bed, where he lay in a deep, unmoving slumber.
Watson quelled the ridiculous impulse to stand vigil at Holmes's bedside—surely he would not try to leave again that night. And yet he could not make himself go upstairs to his own room. He compromised by stretching out on the sofa in the sitting room, his jacket over his chest, his aching leg propped up on cushions. And if he pushed a chair in front of the door, and made sure his service revolver was ready to hand, who could blame him? It had been a long night.
3
Watson awoke with a crick in his neck. He’d slept longer on the sofa than he’d meant too, and more deeply. It was Mrs. Hudson bringing in the morning tea that had disturbed him. She cast a deeply disparaging look in his direction as she left again, but held her tongue.
Holmes was already up, hunched over the breakfast table, a stack of books at his elbow. He raised his head as Watson stood and stretched, the lines on his face even deeper than they’d been the night before, his dressing gown hanging in loose folds from his shoulders.
"How are you feeling?" Watson asked, concerned.
"Wretched," Holmes replied, grimacing, "as if I’d been dragged through the streets from the back of a Black Maria."
"At least you’re admitting it now," Watson said, oddly cheered by the return of Holmes’s tetchiness, so different than the absent-minded vagueness of the past few days.
"I fail to see how that makes it any better," Holmes said, with asperity, "believe me, doctor, if I didn’t need every one of my feeble wits about me today, I would have stolen the laudanum out of your little black bag hours ago."
"A small dose would do no harm," Watson offered.
"No, no," Holmes waved him away, "we have work to do."
Watson came to sit at the table, poured himself a cup of tea. He peered at the pile of books.
"You are—?" he ventured.
"Trying to find out what I can about mesmerism. The topic is woefully under-researched,” Holmes said in tones of scholarly disapproval.
"Have you revised your opinion of its validity, then?" Watson queried.
"No," Holmes replied firmly, "and yet—"
"And yet." Watson agreed.
Holmes nodded, as if relieved that the doctor was not going to press the issue further. "There is a good deal on the origins of the, ah, art, to be sure," he continued, "and on its more spectacular manifestations—but I can find nary a word on how to break a—a—compulsion,” he ground the word out between clenched teeth.
Watson felt something go cold within him at the term. He looked at Holmes, alarmed. "You find it is still with you, then?" he asked.
"Yes." Holmes, to his credit, met Watson’s gaze without flinching. "Now that I am aware of it, I can feel it, like a splinter under the skin. I fear there will be hell to pay tonight."
+++++
The day passed quietly. Watson was all for going straight to Smythe, confronting him with the villainy of his cousin, demanding his arrest, or at least his ousting from the premises. But Holmes seemed oddly reluctant to return to the scene of the previous night’s adventures—and his friend’s state still seemed so fragile that Watson did not like to insist.
Instead, they stayed in. Watson made a swift decision to cancel his appointments; it did not seem right to leave Holmes alone under the circumstances. Several times during the day, he tried to question the detective, as gently as he could, about his time with Mr. Penclosa. Each time, Holmes just tugged fretfully at his collar and claimed to remember nothing. Ignoring Watson's suggestion that he’d think better if he got some rest, Holmes smoked bowl after bowl of tobacco. But in the late afternoon he dozed off in his chair, pipe between his lips, an arcane volume slipping from his hands. Sighing, Watson carefully removed pipe and book, settled a blanket over his shoulders.
++++++
The early autumn dark was already closing in when Holmes suddenly bolted upright, blanket pooling around his knees. Looked up from the medical journal he'd been distractedly perusing, Watson thought he caught a fleeting glimpse of panic in his friend’s eyes. But if he did, it was swiftly gone. Holmes straightened his waistcoat, looking around for his pipe.
"Do you have any pressing engagements for the evening, doctor?" he asked, his voice cool and controlled.
"No," Watson replied, startled that Holmes would think he would even consider going out. "I am quite free."
"Good," Holmes said tersely, and picked up his book again. Watson stared at him for a moment; then he realized that this was as close as Holmes would come to asking his help in withstanding whatever unseen forces might assail him.
"I’ll ask Mrs. Hudson to bring up some supper," Watson said.
++++++
For a while, things were peaceful enough. Holmes kept his eyes glued to his book, as if his life depended on absorbing its contents, and puffed relentlessly at his pipe. Watson made his way through several months of patient reports, organizing and making notes.
All too soon, however, Holmes began to grow restless. He rose and paced. He took his violin from its case, played a few bars, hit a discordant note, and quickly replaced it. He stood at the window, absently tapping a rhythm on the glass. Watson, watching him helplessly, saw a muscle under his eye twitch once, twice, three times.
Finally, Holmes blew out an explosive sigh, stalked over to the closed door of the sitting room, threw the seldom-used bolt, and turned to Watson.
"It’s no use," he said, "I can feel myself succumbing. I must ask you, doctor, nay, beg you—" his voice broke a little on the word, "not to let me leave this room tonight."
"Of course," Watson replied instantly, "I will do everything in my power—"
"You must do better than that," Holmes said, voice harsh, eyes truly a little wild now, "You must promise that whatever I do or say—"
"Whatever you do or say—" Watson echoed.
"You will not suffer me to leave."
"I will not suffer you to leave. I swear it." Watson hoped his determination would show in his face.
Holmes stared at him, desperation again flickering briefly in his eyes, and then nodded once, apparently satisfied. He resumed his restless circuit of the room, picking up an object every now and then, turning it absently in his hands before setting it back down.
Watson, feeling a little foolish, moved to a chair a closer to the door, and waited, though he had no idea for what.
He soon found out.
Gradually, Holmes’s movements slowed, and Watson saw the tension melt out of his shoulders. His face, when he turned towards the doctor, was as smooth and relaxed as he had ever seen it; his voice, when he spoke, carried all the authority and charm to which Watson had become accustomed.
"Thank you for your concern, dear boy," the detective said, "but it is no longer necessary. I have thrown off the compulsion, and I am quite myself again." He smiled, easy, brilliant, "Though I do fancy a bit of fresh air; being cooped up in these rooms all day has left me with a dreadful headache."
Watson scrutinized him. Holmes did look as if he had returned to normalcy. And yet, he had promised. "I—" he started. And then, as he watched, the muscle under Holmes’s eye twitched again.
"No can do, old chap," Watson said, moving to stand directly in front of the door. "Foolhardy as it may have been, I do not make such promises lightly, and I am duty bound to keep you here. I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with these rooms until sunrise. There’s still the laudanum, if your head is really bothering you," he added.
In an instant, Holmes’s entire demeanor changed. His face pinched and twisted in the grip of some mean emotion. "Duty bound," he said, almost spitting out the words. "You and your punctilious, overbearing, duty and honor. Will I never be free of them? Will I never be free of you?" He sneered, his expression ugly, "Always thinking you know best. Always thinking you know me." He fixed a cold, disdainful gaze on the doctor. "Let me pass, Watson,” he said, “you do not know me at all."
Watson reeled under the words—almost the worst Holmes could have thrown at him, as he was sure Holmes knew. But he forced himself past the hurt. This was not his friend speaking, he told himself; this was merely the foul workings of that devil, Penclosa. He rallied his mental fortitude, his voice shaking only a little, "Be that as it may," he said, "I cannot let you leave."
As soon as the words left his mouth, Holmes, in another mercurial transition, sagged dejectedly to the floor, like a marionette whose strings had been cut. He crouched there, hunched in on himself, utterly abject.
Watson hesitated, not sure if this was another trick, another ploy to make him drop his guard. But the tiny, whimpering sounds Holmes was making sounded horribly real. Unable to stop himself, he threw caution to the winds, left the doorway, and knelt in front of his friend, reached out a tentative hand to touch his knee.
To his surprise, rather than shaking him away, Holmes covered the hand with his own, slid closer until his legs tangled with Watson’s and his forehead rested on Watson’s shoulder. It was odd, almost unprecedented, for Holmes to seek comfort in this way, but Watson was powerless against the wordless plea. He encircled Holmes with his arms, and, for a moment, the detective clung to him, childlike.
Then, subtly, the embrace began to change.
Holmes’s hands drew up Watson’s back, slowly, like a caress; they knotted themselves in Watson’s hair, twisting, digging, with sensual intensity. Catlike, the detective nuzzled at Watson’s neck, and Watson shivered, unable to prevent himself from leaning into the touch, his body seeking more pressure, more friction. As if sensing his hunger, Holmes writhed subtly against him, their knees, thighs, hips, rubbing against each other. Watson realized vaguely that he should be suspicious, should be watchful, but every new point of contact only stoked the flames of his desire, made it harder to think.
Then, Holmes lifted his head and kissed him. Watson was instantly, achingly, hard, the speed, the force of his response overwhelming him. It was embarrassing, but not--if he were entirely honest with himself--surprising. Perhaps he had always known it would come to this.
After a moment, Holmes drew back and looked at him. The horrid, calculating look was back in his eyes. "This is what you want, my friend," Holmes said, soft and guileful, "this is what you’ve always wanted. You’d give me anything I asked for in exchange for this," and he moved his hand lower, cupped Watson’s rock-hard prick through the fabric of his trousers.
And he would, Watson acknowledged, as his hips bucked under Holmes’s hand, as his mouth greedily sought Holmes’s lips, he would.
It would be so easy, so sweet, to lose whatever inhibitions he had left, surrender to those fighter’s arms, those clever fingers. To give Holmes whatever he wanted and the devil take the consequences. Holmes’s tongue ghosted along the shell of his ear, and an involuntary moan escaped his lips.
He was almost lost. And yet, for better or worse, some stony nugget of selfhood refused to be seduced. "If you do this while he is under the influence of another's will," a stern internal voice chastised, "it is you who will be taking advantage."
The thought doused his lust like a pail of cold water. It took every ounce of willpower Watson possessed, but he pulled away, pushed his friend’s hands off his body.
"Holmes—" he began. But before he could continue, the detective had bolted for the door.
Watson lunged after him, and managed, with a lucky grab, to bring the detective to the floor. They grappled there, rolling over and over, as fiercely entwined as they had been in the throes of passion. All traces of civility had deserted Holmes, and he fought against Watson’s grip with an animal fury, like a fox with its leg caught in a trap. He ground his elbow into Watson’s side, drove a bruising blow into his right eye.
On an ordinary day, Watson would not have thought much of his chances against his fellow-lodger. The doctor was a decent brawler, by dint of some natural gifts and years of training; but for Holmes, it was nearly a vocation. Today, however, the compulsion under which he was laboring seemed to have slowed the detective’s reflexes slightly—just a fraction, perhaps. But it was enough.
Grunting with the effort, Watson managed to pin Holmes to the carpet. He murmured an apology, and put all his strength behind a roundhouse blow to Holmes’s right cheekbone. With a startled gasp of pain, the detective abruptly lost consciousness.
Panting slightly, Watson leaned back on his heels. Between the protean shifts of feeling and the physical exertion of the night, his head was literally spinning. He quickly checked Holmes’s pulse and respiration, ascertaining that he was in no immediate danger. He contemplated moving the detective from the floor to the sofa, but felt too exhausted to even attempt the transfer.
In a minute, Watson told himself, stretching out full length next to his friend, two sleepless nights and a week of worry catching up to him, he’d get things sorted in a minute.
++++++
The doctor awoke to the soft gray light of morning. He was still on the floor, but someone had put something under his head—a pillow, perhaps, or a folded coat. Holmes sat propped against the sofa, arms wrapped around his knees, watching him. The detective looked drained but calm, his eyes clearer than they’d been for days. His expression was unreadable.
Watson was too weary to move; his very bones ached, and his head felt filled with cotton wool. "You’re going to have quite the shiner by midday," he told Holmes, voice rough with exhaustion.
Holmes managed a tiny, rueful smile, touched the already-darkening skin under his right eye. He shifted nearer, brushed the same fingers across Watson’s cheekbone. "Then we’ll match," he said, very quietly.
"I’m sorry—" Watson began, though he wasn't sure if he was apologizing for hitting Holmes, or for something else entirely.
Holmes didn’t let him finish. He slid his hand down Watson’s face, ran his thumb across Watson's lower lip, stopping his words. In a way, the delicacy of the touch was more unnerving, more arousing, than anything that had happened the night before. Tired as he was, Watson felt his body responding, a warmth building low in his belly.
"No," Holmes said, "It is I who should apologize." He moved his hand from Watson’s mouth to his chest, laid it palm down over his heart. "I’ve caused you a great deal of trouble this past week."
"You’ve caused me a great deal of trouble ever since I moved to Baker Street," Watson replied, "I’ve grown used to it." He placed his hand over Holmes’s, squeezed gently. "The, er, compulsion—" Watson could think of no word better than Holmes’s own, "is it gone?"
Holmes nodded. "Quite gone. I feel as if something has lifted. No—like something binding my brain has been untied." He looked down at Watson, his face pale and beautiful in the morning light. "And yet," he said thoughtfully, "I find myself still wanting to do this—" He bent down and pressed his lips against Watson’s own.
He drew back almost immediately and met Watson’s eyes, his own calm and patient. And Watson could have wept with joy to see the return of the cool, well-loved, intelligence in his face. Holmes was himself again. Though not quite the same, Watson realized. There was something new in his face, something beyond the familiar rationality, something Watson recognized because it had taken up residence in his own heart as well. He raised himself onto one elbow, hooked a hand around the nape of Holmes’s neck, and drew him down into a deeper, more thorough kiss.
4
The next few moments passed in a blur of pleasant sensation, a lazy exploration of mouths, skin, bodies. Then china rattled in the hallway, and they sprung away from each other like characters in a bad Drury Lane farce.
Watson tugged at his rumpled clothing, dragging a hand through his hair, while Holmes smirked at him, greeting Mrs. Hudson with his customary, half-mocking grace.
She surveyed their battered faces, and the general disarray of the room with a cold eye, tssking disapprovingly.
"A—a case," Watson stammered, "merely a difficult case. All’s well now." He smiled in what he hoped was an ingratiating manner. The housekeeper looked unconvinced, but refrained from commenting.
Breakfast, punctuated by affectionate looks and touches, was markedly different than the miserable mornings they’d endured all week. Despite his weariness, Watson felt content, smiling with satisfaction as Holmes heaped marmalade on his third slice of toast.
All too soon, however, he was forced to drag himself away. He could not justify neglecting his patients for a second day—especially if all was well at Baker Street. And so, with an injunction to rest, and a promise to be back as soon as he could, he went out into the full sunshine of the October day.
++++++++
He was almost vibrating with anticipation when he returned home for tea. He had missed Holmes to an inordinate degree during the short time he had been a way, and hated to calculate how many minutes he spent imagining different conclusions to that morning’s beginnings.
His hopes, however, were dashed. Mrs. Hudson was descending the stairs just as he came in; she put a finger to her lips and jerked her head in the general direction of Holmes’s room. If Watson hadn’t known better, he would have sworn he could see a hint of indulgent fondness on her face.
Cautiously, he poked his head into the bedroom, and, indeed, there was Holmes, sprawled in unconscious abandon on top of the duvet, fast asleep. Watson briefly considered waking him, but then Holmes made a small noise of discomfort, and Watson noticed the dark rings still circling his eyes, the sallow tone to his skin. Better to let him rest, he decided, to recover his strength.
Just as he was closing the door, the doorbell sounded. Mrs. Hudson had disappeared into the kitchen, so he hurried down the stairs again to answer it himself.
There, on the doorstep, stood Mr. Penclosa.
At the sight of him, a burst of pure fury coursed through Watson and he almost slammed the door shut in the little man’s face. But curiosity prevailed, and he opened the door a little wider, allowing the mesmerist into the entryway.
A great change had come over Penclosa since the last time Watson had seen him. He had not seemed strong even then, but now he looked positively frail, leaning heavily on his crutch, papery skin stretched so tightly over the bones of his face Watson fancied he could see the outline of his skull. His diminished physical vigor, however, only accentuated the power of his eyes. They seemed to have grown larger, to shine with an uncanny, febrile glow.
It took all of Watson’s not inconsiderable courage to meet them. "What do you want here?" he asked, not sorry to sound uncivil.
"I have business with Mr. Sherlock Holmes," Penclosa replied, his voice soft and phlegmy. He drew a handkerchief out of his pocket, dabbed at his wet mouth.
"He is indisposed at the moment," Watson stated firmly, "but you can relay any business you have with him to me."
Those feline eyes bore into him, seemed to recognize him, although Watson had only encountered the mesmerist whilst in disguise.
"You are his close associate, then?" Penclosa asked, investing the words with some distasteful significance. Watson was certain the mesmerist was connecting the dark-haired serving-man with the half-pay army doctor who was Holmes’s fellow-lodger. The idea only stoked his fury.
"Yes," he said, anger making him brave, "and, again, I ask you to tell me what business you have with Sherlock Holmes."
"No matter," Penclosa said mildly, shaking his head, "it can wait until he is well enough to see me." He turned back towards the door, his movements halting, feeble.
Watson’s composure cracked. "What do you want with him?" he pressed, his voice low, intense. He was not speaking simply of this visit, and he was sure the mesmerist was aware of that fact.
Penclosa turned back to face him. "What do I want with him, Dr. Watson?" he asked, and Watson started at the use of his name—as far as he knew, they had never been introduced. "I imagine that what I want with him does not differ significantly from what you want from him yourself." A ghastly leer played across Penclosa's wasted face.
Watson’s skin felt too hot, too tight, and he started, very subtly, to shake, though whether from fury or embarrassment he could not tell.
"Well, he’s free of you now," he said harshly, all pretense to ignorance of the vile doings of the week abandoned. "You, like so many others before you, have made the great mistake of underestimating Mr. Sherlock Holmes."
Penclosa observed him coolly, seeming to enjoy the passionate response he’d provoked. "Oh no," he said, as if he had just solved some particularly irksome riddle, "I have not underestimated him. I find, however, that I have underestimated you, Dr. Watson."
The words were soft, voiced in his usual sibilant tones, but, to Watson’s ears, they sounded more like a threat than a concession.
"Get out," the doctor said, clenching his shaking hands into fists, "Get out now, before I decide to pistol whip you all the way back to Cadogan Place."
With one last mocking gaze, and an exaggerated dip of his head, Penclosa left, shutting the door carefully behind him.
Watson sagged against it, fighting to regain his composure. He almost jumped when he heard stirring at the top of the stairs.
"Watson?" Holmes called, a little groggy, "Who was that?"
"The man about the coal delivery," Watson improvised, with a pang of guilt for deceiving his friend. "They’ll be by next Monday."
++++++
Fate granted Watson a reprieve from the pricking of his conscience, however, in the form of another pull on the bell. Fearing that Penclosa had returned for some reason, he cracked the door, peered out onto the stoop. But it was only a messenger from the hospital come to tell him his presence was urgently required: the patient who had undergone surgery earlier in the week had developed serious complications.
Watson was torn. After his unsettling encounter with the mesmerist, he hated to leave Holmes alone. And yet professional duty—not to mention his very real sympathy for the patient—demanded that he attend her.
"Come in," he said to the messenger, "I’ll just get my things." Hurriedly, he ascended the stairs, collected his medical bag, his coat, his cane. Holmes, at least, looked well, better-rested and alert. Perhaps Penclosa’s veiled threat had been only that—a threat. He did not dare kiss Holmes, as he so desperately wanted to—the messenger’s eyes were too sharp, too frankly curious. He settled for a brief squeeze of the detective’s shoulder instead, leaning close and murmuring "Promise me you’ll be careful, old boy, that you’ll keep your guard up?"
Holmes all but rolled his eyes. "Yes," he said wryly, "I know that I have not demonstrated it lately, but in ordinary circumstances I am remarkably adept at taking care of myself. It is you who keeps rushing away," he said, for Watson’s ears only, feigning a pout, "If I weren’t quite so confident of my own charms, I would think you were avoiding me."
Watson had to grin. "I hope to persuade you otherwise when I return," he said, with equally mocking formality.
++++++
And yet he did not return until the wee hours of the morning. The patient’s situation had been desperate, her survival a very near thing. For most of the night, the strenuous efforts necessary to save her had driven all other thoughts from his mind. As he approached the flat, however, his anxiety returned, and he found his steps quickening as he mounted the steps.
He need not have worried. All was dark and quiet at 221b Baker Street. He eased open the door of Holmes’s room, daring to hope that he might still be awake; but, despite what looked like a valiant effort, Holmes was fast asleep, snoring lightly, a book still open in his hands. For the second time that day, Watson decided against interrupting his friend's slumber, and cursed his own over-considerate nature.
He made his way to his own room, had barely time to undress before the week’s events crashed down upon him, and he slipped gratefully into unconsciousness.
++++++
It felt like he had barely closed his eyes when the creak of his door awakened him again.
Instantly alert, he sat up, wishing he had thought to put his revolver, or at least the sword cane, by the bed. Before he could grow too alarmed, however, he recognized Holmes’s well-known shape in the darkness. He smiled, little shivers of arousal starting to run along his limbs. Perhaps the night would end happily after all.
Holmes approached the bed silently, and Watson shifted to make room for him, fumbling to light the lamp on the bedside table. In its dim light, he could see Holmes was wearing nothing but his nightshirt; he looked odd—well, sleepy, though that only stood to reason, considering the lateness of the hour. His face was slack, his eyes slightly unfocused. The unpleasant, fantastical thought that he was about to consummate his passion with a sleepwalker flitted across Watson’s mind.
He pushed it aside, though, as Holmes lowered himself, somewhat gracelessly, onto the bed. Watson put one hand on his knee, the other on his face, leaned forward into a kiss driven by a day’s worth of repressed desire. The merest touch of Holmes’s lips against his own fired his blood, and if Holmes’s response seemed a trifle sluggish, Watson could not bring himself to care.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of something clutched in Holmes’s right hand. It was small and unidentifiable, but incongruous enough that Watson drew back.
“What do you have there, old boy?” he asked, trying to get a better look at the object. It appeared to be a glass vial. “Do you really think we need something to enhance our pleasure?” he quipped, awkwardly striving for levity.
Still, Holmes said nothing, and, with a stab of uneasiness, Watson saw him begin to raise his arm.
Instinctively, he reached out and grabbed the detective’s wrist, was surprised to feel Holmes resist him, try to force the vial closer to Watson’s face. Truly apprehensive now, Watson pushed back, and they stayed like that, caught in a mute, tense, stalemate, until Watson thought to bring Holmes’s hand down, hard, against the edge of the bedside table.
The vial flew free, crashing to the floor. The fragile glass shattered with a crackling sound, and, then surprisingly, a strong, acrid smell filled the room. Startled, Watson, keeping his hold on Holmes's hand, looked over the edge of the bed, and saw a horrible, smoking burn spreading across the carpet and onto the floor.
Acid. There had been acid in the vial.
Next to him, Holmes screamed.
The sound was like nothing Watson had ever heard him make—it was an animal’s shriek of agony, of frustration, of defeat. It went on and on, like a death cry, until Watson, hardly knowing what he was doing, took Holmes’s face in his hands, laid a firm palm over his mouth.
"Hush," he said, reeling himself with the shock of it all, "it’s over now. Come back to yourself," he pleaded, "come back to me."
And slowly, so slowly, Holmes did. Sentience returned to his eyes, his breathing slowed, and Watson dared to lift his hands.
They sat side by side on the bed for a long time, stunned into silence, contemplating the scarred floor, the jagged hole in the rug.
"What happened?" Watson finally said hollowly, "I thought the compulsion had lifted, that you were free."
"So did I," Holmes said, voice soaked in remorse, "there must have been some remnant left, like a parasite one does not know one carries, some shard of Penclosa’s will; something specifically meant to hurt you."
He faced Watson, his eyes clear again, but haunted. He did not say anything more, but Watson sensed it was causing Holmes something like physical pain, to know that his reason had been stolen, his body used as an instrument to harm others.
"Me?" Watson asked, still unable to see how all the pieces fit together, “I thought it was you he was after.”
"The fiend knows that I—I treasure your companionship," Holmes said, looking away. Watson, touched to the quick by the admission, laid a hand on his arm. Holmes shook his head, though, still caught up in his guilt. "To think how nearly—" he said, "I am so terribly sorry, my dear."
But Watson wasn’t interested in apologies. He was already standing, dragging on his trousers, holstering his revolver.
"Where are you going?" Holmes asked, perplexed now in his turn.
"Cadogan Place," Watson said, "This has gone on long enough—he must be stopped for good."
"At 3am?" Holmes asked.
"The hour is inconsequential," Watson said, his words curt. “Will you accompany me, or shall I call Lestrade?”
++++++
The London streets were even darker and more deserted than they had been the last time Watson had made the journey from Baker Street to Cadogan Place, a scant forty-eight hours earlier. And yet, when they arrived at the Smythe residence, all the windows were ablaze with light.
Holmes and Watson exchanged puzzled glances, and then Holmes stepped forward to pull the bell. The door swung wide almost immediately, opened not by a mere footman, but by the housekeeper herself—Watson recognized her imposing presence from the night of the party.
She, however, did not recognize him. "Mr. Holmes?" she said, puzzled, "I was expecting the doctor."
Thoroughly perplexed now, Watson was grateful for the return of his friend’s quick wits. "Of course," Holmes lied smoothly, "I came as soon as I heard. And I have brought a doctor with me," he gestured towards Watson, "my associate, John Watson, MD."
Pure relief washed over the housekeeper’s face. "Well, thank goodness you’re here," she said, "come with me." She ushered them upstairs.
It seemed as if half the house’s staff was milling about in the upstairs hallway, some still in their nightclothes. At the sound of their approach, Smythe himself emerged from a room at the end of the hall, shirtsleeves pushed up to his elbows, hair mussed and face distraught.
"Holmes?" he said, echoing the housekeeper’s surprise.
"Yes," Holmes replied, as if the reason for his presence should be obvious, and then, before the banker’s confusion could gather momentum, "I have brought my associate, Dr. Watson."
But Smythe only shook his head sadly at the news. "I'm afraid you've arrived too late," he said, gesturing towards the room he had just left, "see for yourselves."
It was a bedroom, luxuriously appointed, as were all the rooms at no. 4 Cadogan Place. Smythe's young wife perched on the side of the bed, her bowed back obscuring whoever lay upon it. Then she turned, her face ashen, and Watson saw the body of Penclosa.
Aside from the fact that he was very clearly dead, the mesmerist looked much as he had earlier that day. Except for his face. Although it was too soon for rigor mortis to have set in, his features were contorted in some horrible combination of fear and fury, seemingly frozen that way. No one had yet closed his eyes, and they bulged dreadfully, as if straining to leave their sockets—their terrible, feline gleam at last extinguished.
Watson glanced at Holmes and saw that he had gone white, his own eyes wide and staring. With a pang, he remembered that this was the first time the detective had seen Penclosa since the night Watson had awakened him in the street.
Steeling himself against his own shock, he said, in the heartiest professional tone he could manage, "I am a doctor; tell me what has happened here."
It was Mrs. Smythe who answered. "We don't know," she said shakily, "he was ill, of course, in a clear decline, but we were unprepared for anything as sudden as this," she took a deep breath, continued, "Several hours ago, we were awakened by the most horrible scream--I've never heard anything like it—like an animal, really, more than a human being," Watson sensed Holmes tense beside him. "My husband rushed into the hall, and there he found our poor cousin, in a state of collapse, beyond speech. We brought him back to bed, but he just slipped away—he never recovered enough to tell us what had occurred." She looked beseechingly at Watson, "His heart, do you think? Was it the pain that made him scream like that?"
He hastened to reassure her, to tell her yes, heart attacks could be agonizing, although he had a sinking feeling that pain had had nothing to do with Penclosa's last cry.
"Tell me," said Holmes, finally regaining the power of speech, "what time did this occur?"
"Just now," Richardson Smythe answered gravely, as if he were sure Holmes was collecting the information for some important scientific inquiry, "between 2:30 and 3:00 in the morning.
++++++
The sun was rising.
Somehow, Watson could sense the change in light, even though he was stretched on his belly in Holmes's bed, his face half-hidden in the pillow.
Beside him, Holmes was tracing some design on his bare back—counting moles or scars—perhaps sketching out some mathematical equation—Watson couldn’t tell; all he knew was that it felt good, and he never wanted it to stop.
“Are you frustrated, my dear?” Holmes's musing voice drew him back from the brink of sleep.
“Anything but,” Watson laughed, "you've seen to that.'
Holmes laughed too, then sobered. “I mean, to have had your revenge thwarted by Penclosa's untimely death. I shudder to think what you would have done to him if nature had not intervened.” Holmes's tone was gently sardonic, but there was something else there too—a hint of pride, perhaps, as if Watson's ire on his behalf was not entirely displeasing.
Watson could imagine what he would have done all too clearly; he was sure his unrealized plans for vengeance would haunt him for years to come. "A little," he admitted.
But he forced himself to put such thoughts away: to hide them in a dark corner of his soul along with his suspicions--his rage--about what might have happened on the nights Holmes had been drawn to the mesmerist, been alone with him for hours. He would never know. It would have to be enough that they were both alive, naked here together, greeting a new day.
As if reading his mind, Holmes curled his fingers in the short hair at the nape of Watson’s neck, tugged gently until Watson turned over to face him. The detective was wearing an unfamiliar expression, one Watson was not sure he had ever seen before. On any other man, he might have called it wistful.
"To think we might never have known," Holmes said, "All those years, missing this," he passed his hand over their entwined bodies, "all the sweet, sad years."
"Bloody hell," Watson growled, "who’d have thought you'd be the type to start quoting love poems as soon as you’d got your kit off?" And he reached over to put a stop to Holmes’s musings with a kiss.
fin
ariadnes_stringTitle: The Silver Answer
Rating: Light R
Warnings/additional pairings: n/a
Summary: A chance encounter with a mesmerist has unexpected consequences for Holmes and Watson.
Word Count: 11,381
Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit.
a/n: This fic is a version of ACD’s own story, The Parasite, remixed for Holmes/Watson.
a/n: Title and epigraph from EBB
a/n: Written for the
hw09_exchange.a/n: A huge thank you to my inestimable beta,
calamitycrow, not just for all the usual beta things, but for all the extra handholding that is for some reason attendant on me writing Holmes/Watson fic.…a mystic shape did move
Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair
And a voice said in mastery, while I strove…
Guess now who holds thee?...Death, I said, but there
The silver answer rang…not Death but Love.
The Silver Answer
1.
For once, it was Watson in disguise. He tugged surreptitiously at the tight, scratchy collar of his shirt, and cursed Mr. Sherlock Holmes.
Holmes, of course, had been invited to Richardson Smythe’s party in his own identity and under his own name. He’d accepted with alacrity: the party offered the perfect opportunity to gather information on Loudon Smythe, the wealthy banker’s impecunious nephew, and the chief suspect in the blackmail case they were investigating.
But when Holmes had learned that additional serving men were being hired on for the night, he’d decided that hearing the talk below stairs would also be invaluable. And that Watson was just the man for the job. The doctor was sure Holmes had made the decision as much to irk him as to further the case.
“Don’t be absurd,” the detective had said when Watson aired his suspicions, nimble fingers securing the fake nose to Watson’s face, “I would never ask you do something so against your natural inclinations unless it were absolutely vital to our inquiries.” Holmes’s face had been utterly serious, but Watson could have sworn that laughter lurked behind his eyes.
And so here he was, a bottle of expensive champagne in his hand, a fine cloth napkin folded over his arm, hovering with affected subservience at the edges of a room filled with financial elite of London and their wives. He scanned the crowd for Holmes, located him in the middle of a circle of richly clothed society matrons, heads all inclined towards him like a bunch of gaudy day lilies, hanging on his every word. Mrs. Smythe herself, beautiful, and much younger than the middle-aged banker, stood closest to the detective, laughing in a way that showed off the graceful line of her alabaster throat. Holmes was laughing along with her, although Watson could read the tell-tale signs of tension in his body, signs probably invisible to anyone else. The doctor's lips quirked in a tiny smile; there was some satisfaction in knowing that he was not the only one discomfited by the ostentatious display of bourgeois wealth.
Watson shifted from foot to foot wearily, his bad leg starting to ache. His upper lip tickled, and he had to resist the sudden urge to sneeze. It was as if he could still feel Holmes’s fingers on his face, combing dark dye into his hair and mustache, deftly rearranging things so that Watson no longer looked anything like himself. Holmes enjoyed nothing better than putting together a disguise, even for someone else; he'd leaned so close to Watson in his ministrations, fussing with his hair and face, that the doctor had been able to smell the trace of chemicals and sweat on his skin, faint under the overpowering scent of tobacco, been able to feel Holmes’s breath on his cheek. The memory made him flush, and he was relieved to spy an empty glass. He moved to fill it.
"My friends," Richardson Smythe called out, tapping his glass for quiet, "thank you all for coming tonight." The host was a tall man, with a magnificent belly, a little red in the face from drink at this point in the evening. "As you know," he continued, looking pleased with himself, "this party is in honor of our recently arrived cousin from the West Indies, Mr. Penclosa." Watson had not, in fact, known this, and he hated to think what Holmes’s failure to tell him about this Mr. Penclosa meant. Something annoying, no doubt.
Smythe beckoned the guest of honor into the center of the room. He was not what Watson expected: in his imagination, residents of the West Indies were always strong-looking men, bronzed by the sun. Mr. Penclosa was neither: he was middle-aged and pale, frail even, his reliance on a sturdy crutch making him list a little to the left. He was altogether unprepossessing, until he looked up. Watson caught a glimpse of extraordinary green-gold eyes—fierce as a wildcat’s, almost predatory.
"Among his many virtues,” Smythe intoned, “Our dear cousin is a renowned hypnotist, supremely gifted with mesmeric powers." The room collectively drew its breath, rustled with anticipation. Mr. Penclosa stood impassively through the introduction, though his hands twisted a little on his crutch. "What’s more," Smyth announced, “he has agreed to provide a small demonstration of his talents for us tonight. He only needs a volunteer, and he will show us marvelous things.”
The buzz in the room grew louder, as the guests whispered excitedly, urging each other to step forward.
"I would prefer the volunteer be a skeptic," Penclosa added, his voice soft, almost diffident. "Believers can be so susceptible. It does not make for a good test of my abilities."
One of the women near Holmes, tall and thin in a green dress that did little to accentuate her charms, suddenly called out, "Why, then Mr. Holmes should be your volunteer. Surely he’s the most skeptical and disbelieving of us all." Her voice was slightly shrill, as if she could not quite believe her own boldness.
Watson saw Holmes start to demur, raise his hands and back away. But then the mesmerist swung towards him, fixing him with the feline gaze that belied his mild exterior, and said, "Oh yes, Mr. Holmes—if you would consent to be my test subject, it would be a worthy challenge, something that would convince so many if I succeeded."
His voice was mild, deferent, but there was something disconcerting about it, some slight strangeness of tone or emphasis. Nothing Watson could put his finger on, but that raised his hackles, set his alarms bells ringing.
Holmes, to his dismay, now had a familiar look on his face, the one he wore before going up against a much larger opponent at the Punchbowl, before injecting another dose of his 7% solution. The one he wore when he couldn’t stop himself from seeking the thrill, the danger. Watson wanted very badly to intercede, to physically pull Holmes away from this seemingly harmless man whose very presence somehow aroused all the doctor's deepest suspicions.
But he had promised Holmes he would not break character, would not reveal their connection. The whole investigation would be jeopardized if he did—weeks of work and Holmes’s reputation thrown to the wind. So he steeled himself to remain silent, trying to convince himself that Holmes would have some instinct for self-preservation.
"I’d be delighted to volunteer," Holmes was saying, with his patented smugness and aplomb. "How would you like me to arrange myself?"
Another round of excited murmurs and a scattering of applause rose from the assembled onlookers. Smythe looked like the cat who had eaten the canary—thrilled to have such a meeting of superstition and reason in his house.
Penclosa led the way to a chaise lounge that had obviously been placed especially for that purpose. Holmes lay down upon it.
"Are you quite comfortable, sir?" Penclosa asked, with exaggerated humility.
Watson forced his hands to unclench around the neck of the champagne bottle—he was close to breaking it.
"Quite comfortable," Holmes replied calmly, "pray begin. What would you have me do?"
"Nothing at all," the mesmerist said, "simply put yourself at ease and watch me carefully."
The excited murmurs of the onlookers gradually died down. Penclosa perched beside Holmes on the settee and passed his hands through the air in front of the detective’s face—once, twice, three times. He did not touch him, and there was nothing threatening in the gesture, and yet with each pass the little man seemed to expand, to take on an added weight and heft, until his presence dominated the room. It must have been a trick of the light, but his eyes also began to take on an unnatural glow, to shine more preternaturally green.
The first three times the mesmerist waved his hands in front of Holmes’s face, the detective remained unmoved—regarding the older man with his habitual amusement at the follies of the credulous. At the fourth pass, however, his eyes fluttered shut, and at the fifth, his whole face went slack, awareness leaving it altogether.
Watson tensed, the hand not holding the bottle involuntarily curling into a fist, every muscle ready to intervene against an as-yet-unknown threat. But he did not abandon his role, did not make a sound, he was sure of it.
Nevertheless, in some eldritch way, the mesmerist seemed to sense his reaction. Those awful, uncanny eyes swept across the crowd, seeking something, and then honed in on him, hidden as he was on the edge of the room, behind his serving man’s get-up. The gaze was uncanny in its fierce, knowing, directness; Watson was sure it pierced right through his flimsy disguise, knew all about his connection to the man on the settee.
He thought he knew now how the butterfly felt, its wings stretched wide and pinned on the specimen table.
After an endless moment in which Watson had to use all his willpower not to turn around and simply bolt, Penclosa gave the slightest of smiles, as if he’d gathered all the information he needed, and turned back to the somnolent Holmes, gazing just as intensely at him for a moment.
Rather than continuing his experiment, however, Penclosa simply snapped his fingers. "Wake," he said, in a quiet, firm voice, and Holmes did, his eyes snapping open immediately. The detective shook his head slightly, as if rousing from an unplanned nap, and tilted his head quizzically as the mesmerist. A buzz of disappointment started to rise from the assembled guests.
"My apologies," Mr. Penclosa said, "I cannot continue. The force of will, of personality, is too strong here; my powers cannot prevail against it." Holmes made a droll face, shrugged charmingly, obviously enjoying the backhanded compliment. The mesmerist drew a trembling hand across his brow. "I fear I have exhausted my strength for the evening," he said, "if you’ll forgive me, I’ll retire now. Perhaps in a day or two, we can try again…" He shuffled out of the room, Mr. Smythe dancing anxious attendance behind him. Holmes stood, straightened his waistcoat, and, very faintly, smirked.
The crowd sighed its collective disappointment, shrugged its collective shoulders and returned to the serious business of gossiping and flirting, eating and drinking. Watson was kept busy refilling glasses, and then ferrying used glasses to the kitchens below stairs.
As he worked, however, he tried to glean what information he could about the mesmerist from the guests' whispered remarks.
"What balderdash," scoffed one elderly gentleman under his breath.
"….yes, very ill," a dowager murmured, "he's not expected to make the return journey…such a shame…."
"…unnatural…," said a young man, "not that I'd believe of word of it…but still…."
But he could pick up nothing substantial, nothing concrete,
He hoped Holmes was making some headway with their actual case, the one that had brought them here in the first place. He was beginning to believe that his own role really had been designed primarily for Holmes’s amusement—he'd certainly been no use on that end—when, on his last trip down to the kitchen, laden with a heavy tray of glassware, he heard raised voices through the door to the alley behind the house.
Carefully, he put down his burden, silently eased his way over to the door. He could make out just a sliver of the scene outside, but it was enough to confirm their suspicions. Louden Smythe was engaged in a raucous argument with a burly man even Watson could identify as a leading member of London’s criminal underworld. He grinned in satisfaction, the more disturbing events of the night momentarily forgotten.
++++++
When he finally returned to Baker Street, weary from a long night of menial labor broken only by his unaccountable anxiety over Holmes’s encounter with the mesmerist, he found the detective there before him. He was happily ensconced in his favorite chair, wearing his dressing gown, and just filling a pipe.
Quickly, he told Holmes what he had seen.
Holmes let out a delighted bark of laughter. "We have him now," he said, "fine work, old boy."
Watson ducked his head, unwilling to show how much the compliment pleased him. Holmes seemed his usual self: confident, alert, satisfied that an investigation was finally starting to come together.
"And you?" Watson asked, curious, "Are you quite well?"
Holmes gave him a quizzical look. "Yes, of course, Watson," he said, "never better."
"The mesmerist, Mr.Penclosa," Watson pressed, "did his, er, games—they didn’t affect you, did they?"
"Don’t be foolish," Holmes said, regarding him with amusement, "did you not hear him? He could make no headway against my magnificent will. And of course he couldn’t—such powers of the mind don’t exist. Don’t tell me you believe in that tripe."
"No, no, of course not," Watson assured him hastily, "I just—" He wanted to say something about the man’s eyes, how they had seem to look right through him, but he didn’t know how to begin.
"Glad to hear it," Holmes said, "now go and take off that ridiculous nose."
2
With the information they had gathered, Loudon Smythe and the blackmail case were dispatched with ease. There then followed a period of relative calm while they waited for a new investigation to present itself. Watson saw to his patients; Holmes revised his second monograph on the tattoo arts of the South Sea Islanders.
One morning, a little over a week after the event, Watson was hastily finishing a cup of tea before his first appointment of the day, when Holmes appeared in the sitting room. This was unusual enough: when they weren’t working together, they tended to keep quite different hours—Watson rising early for his professional duties, Holmes burning the midnight oil in his arcane studies, sleeping through the morning. Watson’s first thought was that Holmes had not gone to bed at all; his hair was unkempt, there were dark smudges under his eyes, and his hand, when he sat heavily across from Watson at the small breakfast table and reached for the teapot, visibly shook.
This in itself as not surprising—Holmes at loose ends between cases was rarely a pretty sight, his health wrecked between the Scylla of the boxing ring, and the Charybdis of the cocaine bottle. No—what was unusual was what happened next.
"Rough night?" Watson asked, expecting a lengthy account of either pugilistic encounters or philosophical musings.
"Wouldn’t know," Holmes shrugged, "Slept through it." He reached for a piece of toast, started to butter it, and then lost interest.
Watson stared. Granted, many of Holmes’s pursuits were things that most men would keep secret. The detective, however, had never been ashamed of what were commonly called vices, and usually liked to regale Watson with his adventures in exquisite (or excruciating) detail.
"My dear fellow," the doctor said, annoyed, "you don’t look as if you’ve slept a wink."
Holmes shrugged again, gave the toast one last disdainful look, pulled his dressing gown around him, and retreated into his own room.
Watson looked after him, strangely discomfited by the exchange. He shook his head at the closed door, refusing to give in to anxiety. Holmes was a grown man. He might have partaken in any number of activities he simply did not choose to share with his fellow-lodger. Indeed, it occurred to him, it was quite possible that Watson had overestimated the depth of their friendship—had mistaken cohabitation and frequent collaboration for a deeper intimacy.
He shook his head again to clear it, and went to meet his patient.
++++++
On the second day, Watson gave up any pretense of not being concerned.
Holmes appeared at the same early hour, looking, if anything, worse than before. There was a grey tinge to his pallor, his movements sluggish, as if he were underwater. He stared down at the breakfast things as if he had forgotten what food was for, and Watson tried to remember the last time he’d actually seen him eat.
"Holmes," he said cautiously, not wanting to drive him away again, "are you unwell?"
"Hmmn?" Holmes said, peering at him as if from a great distance.
"Are you ill?" Watson pressed.
At that, the detective mustered a ghost of a smile, "No, no," he said, "perhaps a trifle fatigued. Although I can’t think why—I slept soundly all night." He frowned at a spot behind Watson’s right shoulder, as if genuinely confused by the contradiction.
++++++
On the third day, rather than pursue the same unilluminating conversation, Watson took refuge in professionalism. When a decidedly worse-for-wear Holmes appeared, he rose silently, gathered his medical bag from the hall table, slung his stethoscope around his neck, and glowered at the detective until he looked up blearily from his tea.
"Watson?" Holmes said, puzzled.
"Holmes," he replied, tucking his concern away behind his sternest bedside manner. "I am not merely your investigational dogsbody; I am also your doctor. And if you are not over-indulging in your usual pursuits, or visiting your regular unsavory haunts, then you are most certainly sickening for something. I suggest we arrest its progress before it becomes too entrenched."
Holmes’s tired face assumed a trace of its characteristic smirk. "Why, Dr. Watson," he said, "you can be quite commanding when you choose. I cannot withstand you." He leaned back in his chair, mockingly offering himself for examination.
Watson refused to be goaded. He merely harrumpfed and laid his palm on Holmes’s forehead--slightly clammy, but cool enough. He slid two fingers across Holmes’s wrist, keeping his gaze determinedly on his watch. The skin under his hands felt thin and fragile, but the pulse was strong and regular, only slightly quicker than normal.
"Breathe," he ordered, lowering Holmes's dressing gown from his shoulders, pressing his stethoscope against his chest and back. His lungs, too, were clear.
"Well, what say you, doctor?' Holmes asked when he was done. "Will you give me a clean bill of health?"
Watson frowned at him. "The fact that I can find no obvious symptom does not mean that contagion is not still lurking somewhere." He sounded officious even to his own ears, but he had a point to make. "I would advise you to be particularly careful of your health for the next few days: get plentiful rest—"
"But I have been resting!" Holmes interrupted, striking an uncharacteristically plaintive note.
Watson ignored his words. "—and nourishment," he concluded, and glared at Holmes until the detective picked up the piece of toast in front of him and bit into it. He ate the whole thing with a great show of faux relish and enjoyment, but Watson took the return of his usual stroppiness to be good sign, and tried to convince himself that all would be well.
++++++
It was late when Watson returned to Baker Street that night—well after midnight. One of his patients had undergone emergency surgery, and he had remained at the hospital until he was sure she was out of danger. He dragged himself up the stairs, limping more heavily than usual, and divested himself of his coat in the hall, thinking only of getting into bed.
As he passed the doorway to Holmes’s room, however, he paused. Here was an opportunity to ascertain whether Holmes really was sleeping through the nights as he claimed, of judging the quality of his sleep. And yet entering each others’ rooms uninvited was not something they habitually did, no matter what the time of day: it was a breach of etiquette at best, an invasion of privacy at worst. Thinking better of the act, Watson started towards his own rooms. But the image of Holmes’s wan face refused to leave him. He turned, threw decorum to the winds, and eased open the blessedly unlocked door of Holmes room.
The detective was not there.
Shaken, Watson stopped in the doorway. This was worse than he’d feared. The bed had not been slept in; Holmes’s hat and coat were gone from their customary hook. He took a deep breath, the knowledge that Holmes really had been lying to him, really had been keeping secrets, striking him with unexpected force. It was a relief when the hurt was buried under a wave of anger: anger at his friend for jeopardizing his health doing—doing whatever it was he was doing. Anger at himself for caring about what Holmes was getting up to at night without him
He stalked out, barely managing to restrain himself from slamming the door behind him. If Holmes were going to behave this way, Watson would jolly well leave him to his fate.
Once in his own room, however, sleep would not come. He undressed, lay down, but could not force his eyes to close until he heard the well-known footfalls of the stairs signally that Holmes had returned from his nocturnal wanderings.
+++++
Watson managed to maintain his disinterested façade the next morning, albeit with some difficulty. An ill-looking Holmes plowed his way through breakfast, determinedly giving a show of good health. The clear effort it cost him to chew and swallow every mouthful tugged at the doctor’s sympathies, but Watson kept his face impassive, reminding himself not to overstep the newly revealed limits of their friendship.
He was still reminding himself of those limits as he readied himself for bed that night. He would not stay up listening for the detective’s departure, he told himself sternly, one shoe off, the other in his hand. Holmes was responsible for his own actions—deleterious to his health as they might be. If he did not choose to bring Watson into his confidence, well then Watson would have to abide by that choice.
And yet he found himself sitting on his bed in his stocking feet, wide awake, waiting for the telltale creak of the door.
When he heard it, he was on his feet in a flash, all his good intentions forgotten. It did not matter what Holmes thought, he decided swiftly, he was involved in something that was causing him harm, whether he realized it or not. It was Watson’s bounden duty to intervene. He would do the same for any colleague, any associate, no matter how casual, he assured himself.
Watson grabbed his coat on his way out the door, but left his cane behind—too cumbersome. The October night was chill, murky, a yellow tinge to the dark presaging a real London fog. Despite the gloom, however, Watson caught sight of Holmes almost immediately—his dark figure passing in and out of the dim glow of the gas lamps. The detective was moving steadily—not fast, not slow—but unerringly, with a kind of single-minded purpose, ignoring the solicitations of streetwalkers and the other denizens of the night as though he followed some pre-determined path.
Watson tried to stick to the shadows, but the fact that the detective did not notice him only confirmed just how off his game Holmes was. Stealth was not Watson’s forte. His old war injury gave him a distinctive gait he could not hide, and he had never been able to learn the knack of melting into his surroundings. On any ordinary day—or night—Holmes would have been instantly aware that Watson was behind him. Not tonight. Tonight, he was oblivious.
Spurred on by this new evidence of his friend’s debilitated state, Watson followed. He was surprised to find that Holmes’s route led them not into the less-salubrious areas of London, as he had half-expected, but towards the city’s more well-to-do districts. So it wasn’t fighting, or drugs, or even gambling that Holmes was after. What could it be? A tryst with some society beauty? It seemed unlikely, and yet Holmes was acting so far out of character that anything was possible.
The streets widened; the buildings grew more grand, marble porticos and wide bow windows flauntingly proclaiming their occupants' wealth. Finally, Holmes paused in front of a particularly imposing edifice and let himself in through a door that had obviously been left unlocked and unattended for just this purpose. Watson took refuge in the recessed entryway of a house across the way, and sagged against the wall in astonishment. He knew this place. No. 4 Cadogan Place: the home of Richardson Smythe.
So it was a tryst. But with whom? With the young wife who had been so attentive at the party? She seemed the only likely possibility—and adultery would certainly explain Holmes’s secretiveness. The knowledge, for some reason, hit Watson like a blow; he had to breathe very carefully for a moment until he could think again. He should turn around now and go home, he knew he should: if Holmes chose to fritter away his health on secret, romantic dalliances it was truly none of Watson’s concern.
And yet he stayed.
After a few minutes, a light came on in one of the upstairs rooms facing the street. A figure appeared at the window to draw the curtain, and in the instant before it did so, Watson recognized the slight, hunched, unmistakable silhouette, not of Mrs. Smythe, but of Mr. Penclosa.
He nearly gasped. What possible business could Holmes, who had so scathingly dismissed his claim to mental powers, have with the mesmerist? Unless-- An altogether darker possibility presented itself to Watson. Unless their brief encounter had not been as inconsequential as it seemed. Unless, despite his denials, the mesmerist had managed to implant some suggestion, some compulsion, in Holmes during the short time he had been insensible. A compulsion that had drawn the detective to him even all these days later.
The very thought made Watson a little sick, but he refused to allow himself to contemplate what purpose Penclosa might have had for such a summoning. After a brief internal debate, he decided against simply storming the quiet house and dragging Holmes away. It was possible—just barely possible—that he was there of his own accord. Instead, the doctor squared his shoulders, planted his feet, and resolved to wait.
++++++
And wait he did. For hours. Until the dank, foggy night seemed to penetrate his very bones and the old wound in his leg started to protest with fiery spasms of pain. But he couldn’t leave: he was rooted to the spot—paralyzed perhaps—committed to seeing the potentially sordid events of the night through to the end.
A bare hour or so before dawn, Holmes emerged, as calmly and unhurriedly as he had entered. He appeared composed, his face serene, as if nothing untoward had occurred. And yet, Watson thought, peering at him more closely, that wasn’t quite true: Holmes looked too composed, too unruffled. In his normal state, the detective was always just a tiny bit disheveled, a tuft of hair awry, a button undone, a wrinkle unsmoothed. This Holmes was pressed and polished, almost as if—Watson shuddered at the thought—almost as if someone had tidied him up before sending him out the door.
He had half-decided to simply trail Holmes back to Baker Street, to leave matters to the morning. But now Watson changed his mind. As soon as they had gotten three or four blocks from the Smythe residence, he quickened his pace, caught up with the detective.
"Holmes," he said urgently, laying a hand on his arm, "Holmes—" Watson paused, unsure of what to say, how to explain why he was abruptly hailing his friend in the nearly deserted, pre-dawn streets.
Holmes swung around to face him, but slowly, as if he were still moving through a dream. For one long, terrible, moment, he stared at Watson blankly, as if he’d never seen him before in his life.
Then, all at once, his calm fell away. He sucked in a long, ragged gulp of air as every muscle in his body tensed, and his eyes came suddenly, feverishly, alive.
"Watson—" he said, and the doctor felt a wave of relief at the recognition in his voice, "I—Are we? How—?" Holmes scanned Watson and their surrounding, clearly frantically trying to figure where he was and how he had gotten there. Watson caught his shoulders between his hands.
"Steady on, old boy," he said, "you’ve spent half the night at the home of Richardson Smythe," he said, trying to hold Holmes’s wandering gaze with his own, pitching his voice to pierce his confusion, “closeted, I believe, with his visiting cousin, Mr. Penclosa."
"What?” Holmes exclaimed, looking genuinely aghast at this information, "You must be mistaken. I have no connection to that horrid man." The name itself seemed to send a shudder through him.
"I assure you," Watson said, "I have followed you all night," –things had gone too far for him to be ashamed of his actions now—"and you have just come from there. I believe you have visited there every night this week. Have you no memory of it?"
"None at all," Holmes sounded shaken, "If you say I was there, I believe you, but I have no recollection of it myself."
"But surely you must have some idea," Watson insisted, "What does he want with you, night after night?" The doctor struggled with an irrational urge to shake his friend until the truth spilled out.
Holmes looked at him, and there was something so lost, so confused, so far from his usual razor-sharp acuity in his face, that all the irritation drained out of Watson, leaving only sympathy behind.
"I--," Holmes said haltingly, "I—I don’t know—I—" His face lost what little color it had, and he sagged in Watson’s grip, his knees buckling beneath him.
Watson held on tighter, put a supporting hand on Holmes’s chest, carrying most of his weight for a moment, even though his bad leg screamed at the added burden. A few shaky breaths, however, and Holmes was able to get his feet under him again.
"I’m sorry," the detective whispered, eyes cast down, "I don’t know what’s come over me. I don’t seem to be able to think." It might have been the saddest thing Watson had ever heard him say.
"Don’t worry," Watson said gently, convinced that Holmes would crumple to the ground if he let go of his arm, "I know it won’t be up to your usual standard, but I expect I can do the thinking for both of us for a little while. Let’s get you home and into bed. "
++++++
Miraculously, despite the late—or rather, early—hour, Watson was able to find a hansom. Holmes fell asleep within thirty seconds of climbing inside it, and hardly woke when they arrived at Baker Street. It took a good deal of pushing and prodding, but Watson was able to shepherd him up the stairs and into bed, where he lay in a deep, unmoving slumber.
Watson quelled the ridiculous impulse to stand vigil at Holmes's bedside—surely he would not try to leave again that night. And yet he could not make himself go upstairs to his own room. He compromised by stretching out on the sofa in the sitting room, his jacket over his chest, his aching leg propped up on cushions. And if he pushed a chair in front of the door, and made sure his service revolver was ready to hand, who could blame him? It had been a long night.
3
Watson awoke with a crick in his neck. He’d slept longer on the sofa than he’d meant too, and more deeply. It was Mrs. Hudson bringing in the morning tea that had disturbed him. She cast a deeply disparaging look in his direction as she left again, but held her tongue.
Holmes was already up, hunched over the breakfast table, a stack of books at his elbow. He raised his head as Watson stood and stretched, the lines on his face even deeper than they’d been the night before, his dressing gown hanging in loose folds from his shoulders.
"How are you feeling?" Watson asked, concerned.
"Wretched," Holmes replied, grimacing, "as if I’d been dragged through the streets from the back of a Black Maria."
"At least you’re admitting it now," Watson said, oddly cheered by the return of Holmes’s tetchiness, so different than the absent-minded vagueness of the past few days.
"I fail to see how that makes it any better," Holmes said, with asperity, "believe me, doctor, if I didn’t need every one of my feeble wits about me today, I would have stolen the laudanum out of your little black bag hours ago."
"A small dose would do no harm," Watson offered.
"No, no," Holmes waved him away, "we have work to do."
Watson came to sit at the table, poured himself a cup of tea. He peered at the pile of books.
"You are—?" he ventured.
"Trying to find out what I can about mesmerism. The topic is woefully under-researched,” Holmes said in tones of scholarly disapproval.
"Have you revised your opinion of its validity, then?" Watson queried.
"No," Holmes replied firmly, "and yet—"
"And yet." Watson agreed.
Holmes nodded, as if relieved that the doctor was not going to press the issue further. "There is a good deal on the origins of the, ah, art, to be sure," he continued, "and on its more spectacular manifestations—but I can find nary a word on how to break a—a—compulsion,” he ground the word out between clenched teeth.
Watson felt something go cold within him at the term. He looked at Holmes, alarmed. "You find it is still with you, then?" he asked.
"Yes." Holmes, to his credit, met Watson’s gaze without flinching. "Now that I am aware of it, I can feel it, like a splinter under the skin. I fear there will be hell to pay tonight."
+++++
The day passed quietly. Watson was all for going straight to Smythe, confronting him with the villainy of his cousin, demanding his arrest, or at least his ousting from the premises. But Holmes seemed oddly reluctant to return to the scene of the previous night’s adventures—and his friend’s state still seemed so fragile that Watson did not like to insist.
Instead, they stayed in. Watson made a swift decision to cancel his appointments; it did not seem right to leave Holmes alone under the circumstances. Several times during the day, he tried to question the detective, as gently as he could, about his time with Mr. Penclosa. Each time, Holmes just tugged fretfully at his collar and claimed to remember nothing. Ignoring Watson's suggestion that he’d think better if he got some rest, Holmes smoked bowl after bowl of tobacco. But in the late afternoon he dozed off in his chair, pipe between his lips, an arcane volume slipping from his hands. Sighing, Watson carefully removed pipe and book, settled a blanket over his shoulders.
++++++
The early autumn dark was already closing in when Holmes suddenly bolted upright, blanket pooling around his knees. Looked up from the medical journal he'd been distractedly perusing, Watson thought he caught a fleeting glimpse of panic in his friend’s eyes. But if he did, it was swiftly gone. Holmes straightened his waistcoat, looking around for his pipe.
"Do you have any pressing engagements for the evening, doctor?" he asked, his voice cool and controlled.
"No," Watson replied, startled that Holmes would think he would even consider going out. "I am quite free."
"Good," Holmes said tersely, and picked up his book again. Watson stared at him for a moment; then he realized that this was as close as Holmes would come to asking his help in withstanding whatever unseen forces might assail him.
"I’ll ask Mrs. Hudson to bring up some supper," Watson said.
++++++
For a while, things were peaceful enough. Holmes kept his eyes glued to his book, as if his life depended on absorbing its contents, and puffed relentlessly at his pipe. Watson made his way through several months of patient reports, organizing and making notes.
All too soon, however, Holmes began to grow restless. He rose and paced. He took his violin from its case, played a few bars, hit a discordant note, and quickly replaced it. He stood at the window, absently tapping a rhythm on the glass. Watson, watching him helplessly, saw a muscle under his eye twitch once, twice, three times.
Finally, Holmes blew out an explosive sigh, stalked over to the closed door of the sitting room, threw the seldom-used bolt, and turned to Watson.
"It’s no use," he said, "I can feel myself succumbing. I must ask you, doctor, nay, beg you—" his voice broke a little on the word, "not to let me leave this room tonight."
"Of course," Watson replied instantly, "I will do everything in my power—"
"You must do better than that," Holmes said, voice harsh, eyes truly a little wild now, "You must promise that whatever I do or say—"
"Whatever you do or say—" Watson echoed.
"You will not suffer me to leave."
"I will not suffer you to leave. I swear it." Watson hoped his determination would show in his face.
Holmes stared at him, desperation again flickering briefly in his eyes, and then nodded once, apparently satisfied. He resumed his restless circuit of the room, picking up an object every now and then, turning it absently in his hands before setting it back down.
Watson, feeling a little foolish, moved to a chair a closer to the door, and waited, though he had no idea for what.
He soon found out.
Gradually, Holmes’s movements slowed, and Watson saw the tension melt out of his shoulders. His face, when he turned towards the doctor, was as smooth and relaxed as he had ever seen it; his voice, when he spoke, carried all the authority and charm to which Watson had become accustomed.
"Thank you for your concern, dear boy," the detective said, "but it is no longer necessary. I have thrown off the compulsion, and I am quite myself again." He smiled, easy, brilliant, "Though I do fancy a bit of fresh air; being cooped up in these rooms all day has left me with a dreadful headache."
Watson scrutinized him. Holmes did look as if he had returned to normalcy. And yet, he had promised. "I—" he started. And then, as he watched, the muscle under Holmes’s eye twitched again.
"No can do, old chap," Watson said, moving to stand directly in front of the door. "Foolhardy as it may have been, I do not make such promises lightly, and I am duty bound to keep you here. I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with these rooms until sunrise. There’s still the laudanum, if your head is really bothering you," he added.
In an instant, Holmes’s entire demeanor changed. His face pinched and twisted in the grip of some mean emotion. "Duty bound," he said, almost spitting out the words. "You and your punctilious, overbearing, duty and honor. Will I never be free of them? Will I never be free of you?" He sneered, his expression ugly, "Always thinking you know best. Always thinking you know me." He fixed a cold, disdainful gaze on the doctor. "Let me pass, Watson,” he said, “you do not know me at all."
Watson reeled under the words—almost the worst Holmes could have thrown at him, as he was sure Holmes knew. But he forced himself past the hurt. This was not his friend speaking, he told himself; this was merely the foul workings of that devil, Penclosa. He rallied his mental fortitude, his voice shaking only a little, "Be that as it may," he said, "I cannot let you leave."
As soon as the words left his mouth, Holmes, in another mercurial transition, sagged dejectedly to the floor, like a marionette whose strings had been cut. He crouched there, hunched in on himself, utterly abject.
Watson hesitated, not sure if this was another trick, another ploy to make him drop his guard. But the tiny, whimpering sounds Holmes was making sounded horribly real. Unable to stop himself, he threw caution to the winds, left the doorway, and knelt in front of his friend, reached out a tentative hand to touch his knee.
To his surprise, rather than shaking him away, Holmes covered the hand with his own, slid closer until his legs tangled with Watson’s and his forehead rested on Watson’s shoulder. It was odd, almost unprecedented, for Holmes to seek comfort in this way, but Watson was powerless against the wordless plea. He encircled Holmes with his arms, and, for a moment, the detective clung to him, childlike.
Then, subtly, the embrace began to change.
Holmes’s hands drew up Watson’s back, slowly, like a caress; they knotted themselves in Watson’s hair, twisting, digging, with sensual intensity. Catlike, the detective nuzzled at Watson’s neck, and Watson shivered, unable to prevent himself from leaning into the touch, his body seeking more pressure, more friction. As if sensing his hunger, Holmes writhed subtly against him, their knees, thighs, hips, rubbing against each other. Watson realized vaguely that he should be suspicious, should be watchful, but every new point of contact only stoked the flames of his desire, made it harder to think.
Then, Holmes lifted his head and kissed him. Watson was instantly, achingly, hard, the speed, the force of his response overwhelming him. It was embarrassing, but not--if he were entirely honest with himself--surprising. Perhaps he had always known it would come to this.
After a moment, Holmes drew back and looked at him. The horrid, calculating look was back in his eyes. "This is what you want, my friend," Holmes said, soft and guileful, "this is what you’ve always wanted. You’d give me anything I asked for in exchange for this," and he moved his hand lower, cupped Watson’s rock-hard prick through the fabric of his trousers.
And he would, Watson acknowledged, as his hips bucked under Holmes’s hand, as his mouth greedily sought Holmes’s lips, he would.
It would be so easy, so sweet, to lose whatever inhibitions he had left, surrender to those fighter’s arms, those clever fingers. To give Holmes whatever he wanted and the devil take the consequences. Holmes’s tongue ghosted along the shell of his ear, and an involuntary moan escaped his lips.
He was almost lost. And yet, for better or worse, some stony nugget of selfhood refused to be seduced. "If you do this while he is under the influence of another's will," a stern internal voice chastised, "it is you who will be taking advantage."
The thought doused his lust like a pail of cold water. It took every ounce of willpower Watson possessed, but he pulled away, pushed his friend’s hands off his body.
"Holmes—" he began. But before he could continue, the detective had bolted for the door.
Watson lunged after him, and managed, with a lucky grab, to bring the detective to the floor. They grappled there, rolling over and over, as fiercely entwined as they had been in the throes of passion. All traces of civility had deserted Holmes, and he fought against Watson’s grip with an animal fury, like a fox with its leg caught in a trap. He ground his elbow into Watson’s side, drove a bruising blow into his right eye.
On an ordinary day, Watson would not have thought much of his chances against his fellow-lodger. The doctor was a decent brawler, by dint of some natural gifts and years of training; but for Holmes, it was nearly a vocation. Today, however, the compulsion under which he was laboring seemed to have slowed the detective’s reflexes slightly—just a fraction, perhaps. But it was enough.
Grunting with the effort, Watson managed to pin Holmes to the carpet. He murmured an apology, and put all his strength behind a roundhouse blow to Holmes’s right cheekbone. With a startled gasp of pain, the detective abruptly lost consciousness.
Panting slightly, Watson leaned back on his heels. Between the protean shifts of feeling and the physical exertion of the night, his head was literally spinning. He quickly checked Holmes’s pulse and respiration, ascertaining that he was in no immediate danger. He contemplated moving the detective from the floor to the sofa, but felt too exhausted to even attempt the transfer.
In a minute, Watson told himself, stretching out full length next to his friend, two sleepless nights and a week of worry catching up to him, he’d get things sorted in a minute.
++++++
The doctor awoke to the soft gray light of morning. He was still on the floor, but someone had put something under his head—a pillow, perhaps, or a folded coat. Holmes sat propped against the sofa, arms wrapped around his knees, watching him. The detective looked drained but calm, his eyes clearer than they’d been for days. His expression was unreadable.
Watson was too weary to move; his very bones ached, and his head felt filled with cotton wool. "You’re going to have quite the shiner by midday," he told Holmes, voice rough with exhaustion.
Holmes managed a tiny, rueful smile, touched the already-darkening skin under his right eye. He shifted nearer, brushed the same fingers across Watson’s cheekbone. "Then we’ll match," he said, very quietly.
"I’m sorry—" Watson began, though he wasn't sure if he was apologizing for hitting Holmes, or for something else entirely.
Holmes didn’t let him finish. He slid his hand down Watson’s face, ran his thumb across Watson's lower lip, stopping his words. In a way, the delicacy of the touch was more unnerving, more arousing, than anything that had happened the night before. Tired as he was, Watson felt his body responding, a warmth building low in his belly.
"No," Holmes said, "It is I who should apologize." He moved his hand from Watson’s mouth to his chest, laid it palm down over his heart. "I’ve caused you a great deal of trouble this past week."
"You’ve caused me a great deal of trouble ever since I moved to Baker Street," Watson replied, "I’ve grown used to it." He placed his hand over Holmes’s, squeezed gently. "The, er, compulsion—" Watson could think of no word better than Holmes’s own, "is it gone?"
Holmes nodded. "Quite gone. I feel as if something has lifted. No—like something binding my brain has been untied." He looked down at Watson, his face pale and beautiful in the morning light. "And yet," he said thoughtfully, "I find myself still wanting to do this—" He bent down and pressed his lips against Watson’s own.
He drew back almost immediately and met Watson’s eyes, his own calm and patient. And Watson could have wept with joy to see the return of the cool, well-loved, intelligence in his face. Holmes was himself again. Though not quite the same, Watson realized. There was something new in his face, something beyond the familiar rationality, something Watson recognized because it had taken up residence in his own heart as well. He raised himself onto one elbow, hooked a hand around the nape of Holmes’s neck, and drew him down into a deeper, more thorough kiss.
4
The next few moments passed in a blur of pleasant sensation, a lazy exploration of mouths, skin, bodies. Then china rattled in the hallway, and they sprung away from each other like characters in a bad Drury Lane farce.
Watson tugged at his rumpled clothing, dragging a hand through his hair, while Holmes smirked at him, greeting Mrs. Hudson with his customary, half-mocking grace.
She surveyed their battered faces, and the general disarray of the room with a cold eye, tssking disapprovingly.
"A—a case," Watson stammered, "merely a difficult case. All’s well now." He smiled in what he hoped was an ingratiating manner. The housekeeper looked unconvinced, but refrained from commenting.
Breakfast, punctuated by affectionate looks and touches, was markedly different than the miserable mornings they’d endured all week. Despite his weariness, Watson felt content, smiling with satisfaction as Holmes heaped marmalade on his third slice of toast.
All too soon, however, he was forced to drag himself away. He could not justify neglecting his patients for a second day—especially if all was well at Baker Street. And so, with an injunction to rest, and a promise to be back as soon as he could, he went out into the full sunshine of the October day.
++++++++
He was almost vibrating with anticipation when he returned home for tea. He had missed Holmes to an inordinate degree during the short time he had been a way, and hated to calculate how many minutes he spent imagining different conclusions to that morning’s beginnings.
His hopes, however, were dashed. Mrs. Hudson was descending the stairs just as he came in; she put a finger to her lips and jerked her head in the general direction of Holmes’s room. If Watson hadn’t known better, he would have sworn he could see a hint of indulgent fondness on her face.
Cautiously, he poked his head into the bedroom, and, indeed, there was Holmes, sprawled in unconscious abandon on top of the duvet, fast asleep. Watson briefly considered waking him, but then Holmes made a small noise of discomfort, and Watson noticed the dark rings still circling his eyes, the sallow tone to his skin. Better to let him rest, he decided, to recover his strength.
Just as he was closing the door, the doorbell sounded. Mrs. Hudson had disappeared into the kitchen, so he hurried down the stairs again to answer it himself.
There, on the doorstep, stood Mr. Penclosa.
At the sight of him, a burst of pure fury coursed through Watson and he almost slammed the door shut in the little man’s face. But curiosity prevailed, and he opened the door a little wider, allowing the mesmerist into the entryway.
A great change had come over Penclosa since the last time Watson had seen him. He had not seemed strong even then, but now he looked positively frail, leaning heavily on his crutch, papery skin stretched so tightly over the bones of his face Watson fancied he could see the outline of his skull. His diminished physical vigor, however, only accentuated the power of his eyes. They seemed to have grown larger, to shine with an uncanny, febrile glow.
It took all of Watson’s not inconsiderable courage to meet them. "What do you want here?" he asked, not sorry to sound uncivil.
"I have business with Mr. Sherlock Holmes," Penclosa replied, his voice soft and phlegmy. He drew a handkerchief out of his pocket, dabbed at his wet mouth.
"He is indisposed at the moment," Watson stated firmly, "but you can relay any business you have with him to me."
Those feline eyes bore into him, seemed to recognize him, although Watson had only encountered the mesmerist whilst in disguise.
"You are his close associate, then?" Penclosa asked, investing the words with some distasteful significance. Watson was certain the mesmerist was connecting the dark-haired serving-man with the half-pay army doctor who was Holmes’s fellow-lodger. The idea only stoked his fury.
"Yes," he said, anger making him brave, "and, again, I ask you to tell me what business you have with Sherlock Holmes."
"No matter," Penclosa said mildly, shaking his head, "it can wait until he is well enough to see me." He turned back towards the door, his movements halting, feeble.
Watson’s composure cracked. "What do you want with him?" he pressed, his voice low, intense. He was not speaking simply of this visit, and he was sure the mesmerist was aware of that fact.
Penclosa turned back to face him. "What do I want with him, Dr. Watson?" he asked, and Watson started at the use of his name—as far as he knew, they had never been introduced. "I imagine that what I want with him does not differ significantly from what you want from him yourself." A ghastly leer played across Penclosa's wasted face.
Watson’s skin felt too hot, too tight, and he started, very subtly, to shake, though whether from fury or embarrassment he could not tell.
"Well, he’s free of you now," he said harshly, all pretense to ignorance of the vile doings of the week abandoned. "You, like so many others before you, have made the great mistake of underestimating Mr. Sherlock Holmes."
Penclosa observed him coolly, seeming to enjoy the passionate response he’d provoked. "Oh no," he said, as if he had just solved some particularly irksome riddle, "I have not underestimated him. I find, however, that I have underestimated you, Dr. Watson."
The words were soft, voiced in his usual sibilant tones, but, to Watson’s ears, they sounded more like a threat than a concession.
"Get out," the doctor said, clenching his shaking hands into fists, "Get out now, before I decide to pistol whip you all the way back to Cadogan Place."
With one last mocking gaze, and an exaggerated dip of his head, Penclosa left, shutting the door carefully behind him.
Watson sagged against it, fighting to regain his composure. He almost jumped when he heard stirring at the top of the stairs.
"Watson?" Holmes called, a little groggy, "Who was that?"
"The man about the coal delivery," Watson improvised, with a pang of guilt for deceiving his friend. "They’ll be by next Monday."
++++++
Fate granted Watson a reprieve from the pricking of his conscience, however, in the form of another pull on the bell. Fearing that Penclosa had returned for some reason, he cracked the door, peered out onto the stoop. But it was only a messenger from the hospital come to tell him his presence was urgently required: the patient who had undergone surgery earlier in the week had developed serious complications.
Watson was torn. After his unsettling encounter with the mesmerist, he hated to leave Holmes alone. And yet professional duty—not to mention his very real sympathy for the patient—demanded that he attend her.
"Come in," he said to the messenger, "I’ll just get my things." Hurriedly, he ascended the stairs, collected his medical bag, his coat, his cane. Holmes, at least, looked well, better-rested and alert. Perhaps Penclosa’s veiled threat had been only that—a threat. He did not dare kiss Holmes, as he so desperately wanted to—the messenger’s eyes were too sharp, too frankly curious. He settled for a brief squeeze of the detective’s shoulder instead, leaning close and murmuring "Promise me you’ll be careful, old boy, that you’ll keep your guard up?"
Holmes all but rolled his eyes. "Yes," he said wryly, "I know that I have not demonstrated it lately, but in ordinary circumstances I am remarkably adept at taking care of myself. It is you who keeps rushing away," he said, for Watson’s ears only, feigning a pout, "If I weren’t quite so confident of my own charms, I would think you were avoiding me."
Watson had to grin. "I hope to persuade you otherwise when I return," he said, with equally mocking formality.
++++++
And yet he did not return until the wee hours of the morning. The patient’s situation had been desperate, her survival a very near thing. For most of the night, the strenuous efforts necessary to save her had driven all other thoughts from his mind. As he approached the flat, however, his anxiety returned, and he found his steps quickening as he mounted the steps.
He need not have worried. All was dark and quiet at 221b Baker Street. He eased open the door of Holmes’s room, daring to hope that he might still be awake; but, despite what looked like a valiant effort, Holmes was fast asleep, snoring lightly, a book still open in his hands. For the second time that day, Watson decided against interrupting his friend's slumber, and cursed his own over-considerate nature.
He made his way to his own room, had barely time to undress before the week’s events crashed down upon him, and he slipped gratefully into unconsciousness.
++++++
It felt like he had barely closed his eyes when the creak of his door awakened him again.
Instantly alert, he sat up, wishing he had thought to put his revolver, or at least the sword cane, by the bed. Before he could grow too alarmed, however, he recognized Holmes’s well-known shape in the darkness. He smiled, little shivers of arousal starting to run along his limbs. Perhaps the night would end happily after all.
Holmes approached the bed silently, and Watson shifted to make room for him, fumbling to light the lamp on the bedside table. In its dim light, he could see Holmes was wearing nothing but his nightshirt; he looked odd—well, sleepy, though that only stood to reason, considering the lateness of the hour. His face was slack, his eyes slightly unfocused. The unpleasant, fantastical thought that he was about to consummate his passion with a sleepwalker flitted across Watson’s mind.
He pushed it aside, though, as Holmes lowered himself, somewhat gracelessly, onto the bed. Watson put one hand on his knee, the other on his face, leaned forward into a kiss driven by a day’s worth of repressed desire. The merest touch of Holmes’s lips against his own fired his blood, and if Holmes’s response seemed a trifle sluggish, Watson could not bring himself to care.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of something clutched in Holmes’s right hand. It was small and unidentifiable, but incongruous enough that Watson drew back.
“What do you have there, old boy?” he asked, trying to get a better look at the object. It appeared to be a glass vial. “Do you really think we need something to enhance our pleasure?” he quipped, awkwardly striving for levity.
Still, Holmes said nothing, and, with a stab of uneasiness, Watson saw him begin to raise his arm.
Instinctively, he reached out and grabbed the detective’s wrist, was surprised to feel Holmes resist him, try to force the vial closer to Watson’s face. Truly apprehensive now, Watson pushed back, and they stayed like that, caught in a mute, tense, stalemate, until Watson thought to bring Holmes’s hand down, hard, against the edge of the bedside table.
The vial flew free, crashing to the floor. The fragile glass shattered with a crackling sound, and, then surprisingly, a strong, acrid smell filled the room. Startled, Watson, keeping his hold on Holmes's hand, looked over the edge of the bed, and saw a horrible, smoking burn spreading across the carpet and onto the floor.
Acid. There had been acid in the vial.
Next to him, Holmes screamed.
The sound was like nothing Watson had ever heard him make—it was an animal’s shriek of agony, of frustration, of defeat. It went on and on, like a death cry, until Watson, hardly knowing what he was doing, took Holmes’s face in his hands, laid a firm palm over his mouth.
"Hush," he said, reeling himself with the shock of it all, "it’s over now. Come back to yourself," he pleaded, "come back to me."
And slowly, so slowly, Holmes did. Sentience returned to his eyes, his breathing slowed, and Watson dared to lift his hands.
They sat side by side on the bed for a long time, stunned into silence, contemplating the scarred floor, the jagged hole in the rug.
"What happened?" Watson finally said hollowly, "I thought the compulsion had lifted, that you were free."
"So did I," Holmes said, voice soaked in remorse, "there must have been some remnant left, like a parasite one does not know one carries, some shard of Penclosa’s will; something specifically meant to hurt you."
He faced Watson, his eyes clear again, but haunted. He did not say anything more, but Watson sensed it was causing Holmes something like physical pain, to know that his reason had been stolen, his body used as an instrument to harm others.
"Me?" Watson asked, still unable to see how all the pieces fit together, “I thought it was you he was after.”
"The fiend knows that I—I treasure your companionship," Holmes said, looking away. Watson, touched to the quick by the admission, laid a hand on his arm. Holmes shook his head, though, still caught up in his guilt. "To think how nearly—" he said, "I am so terribly sorry, my dear."
But Watson wasn’t interested in apologies. He was already standing, dragging on his trousers, holstering his revolver.
"Where are you going?" Holmes asked, perplexed now in his turn.
"Cadogan Place," Watson said, "This has gone on long enough—he must be stopped for good."
"At 3am?" Holmes asked.
"The hour is inconsequential," Watson said, his words curt. “Will you accompany me, or shall I call Lestrade?”
++++++
The London streets were even darker and more deserted than they had been the last time Watson had made the journey from Baker Street to Cadogan Place, a scant forty-eight hours earlier. And yet, when they arrived at the Smythe residence, all the windows were ablaze with light.
Holmes and Watson exchanged puzzled glances, and then Holmes stepped forward to pull the bell. The door swung wide almost immediately, opened not by a mere footman, but by the housekeeper herself—Watson recognized her imposing presence from the night of the party.
She, however, did not recognize him. "Mr. Holmes?" she said, puzzled, "I was expecting the doctor."
Thoroughly perplexed now, Watson was grateful for the return of his friend’s quick wits. "Of course," Holmes lied smoothly, "I came as soon as I heard. And I have brought a doctor with me," he gestured towards Watson, "my associate, John Watson, MD."
Pure relief washed over the housekeeper’s face. "Well, thank goodness you’re here," she said, "come with me." She ushered them upstairs.
It seemed as if half the house’s staff was milling about in the upstairs hallway, some still in their nightclothes. At the sound of their approach, Smythe himself emerged from a room at the end of the hall, shirtsleeves pushed up to his elbows, hair mussed and face distraught.
"Holmes?" he said, echoing the housekeeper’s surprise.
"Yes," Holmes replied, as if the reason for his presence should be obvious, and then, before the banker’s confusion could gather momentum, "I have brought my associate, Dr. Watson."
But Smythe only shook his head sadly at the news. "I'm afraid you've arrived too late," he said, gesturing towards the room he had just left, "see for yourselves."
It was a bedroom, luxuriously appointed, as were all the rooms at no. 4 Cadogan Place. Smythe's young wife perched on the side of the bed, her bowed back obscuring whoever lay upon it. Then she turned, her face ashen, and Watson saw the body of Penclosa.
Aside from the fact that he was very clearly dead, the mesmerist looked much as he had earlier that day. Except for his face. Although it was too soon for rigor mortis to have set in, his features were contorted in some horrible combination of fear and fury, seemingly frozen that way. No one had yet closed his eyes, and they bulged dreadfully, as if straining to leave their sockets—their terrible, feline gleam at last extinguished.
Watson glanced at Holmes and saw that he had gone white, his own eyes wide and staring. With a pang, he remembered that this was the first time the detective had seen Penclosa since the night Watson had awakened him in the street.
Steeling himself against his own shock, he said, in the heartiest professional tone he could manage, "I am a doctor; tell me what has happened here."
It was Mrs. Smythe who answered. "We don't know," she said shakily, "he was ill, of course, in a clear decline, but we were unprepared for anything as sudden as this," she took a deep breath, continued, "Several hours ago, we were awakened by the most horrible scream--I've never heard anything like it—like an animal, really, more than a human being," Watson sensed Holmes tense beside him. "My husband rushed into the hall, and there he found our poor cousin, in a state of collapse, beyond speech. We brought him back to bed, but he just slipped away—he never recovered enough to tell us what had occurred." She looked beseechingly at Watson, "His heart, do you think? Was it the pain that made him scream like that?"
He hastened to reassure her, to tell her yes, heart attacks could be agonizing, although he had a sinking feeling that pain had had nothing to do with Penclosa's last cry.
"Tell me," said Holmes, finally regaining the power of speech, "what time did this occur?"
"Just now," Richardson Smythe answered gravely, as if he were sure Holmes was collecting the information for some important scientific inquiry, "between 2:30 and 3:00 in the morning.
++++++
The sun was rising.
Somehow, Watson could sense the change in light, even though he was stretched on his belly in Holmes's bed, his face half-hidden in the pillow.
Beside him, Holmes was tracing some design on his bare back—counting moles or scars—perhaps sketching out some mathematical equation—Watson couldn’t tell; all he knew was that it felt good, and he never wanted it to stop.
“Are you frustrated, my dear?” Holmes's musing voice drew him back from the brink of sleep.
“Anything but,” Watson laughed, "you've seen to that.'
Holmes laughed too, then sobered. “I mean, to have had your revenge thwarted by Penclosa's untimely death. I shudder to think what you would have done to him if nature had not intervened.” Holmes's tone was gently sardonic, but there was something else there too—a hint of pride, perhaps, as if Watson's ire on his behalf was not entirely displeasing.
Watson could imagine what he would have done all too clearly; he was sure his unrealized plans for vengeance would haunt him for years to come. "A little," he admitted.
But he forced himself to put such thoughts away: to hide them in a dark corner of his soul along with his suspicions--his rage--about what might have happened on the nights Holmes had been drawn to the mesmerist, been alone with him for hours. He would never know. It would have to be enough that they were both alive, naked here together, greeting a new day.
As if reading his mind, Holmes curled his fingers in the short hair at the nape of Watson’s neck, tugged gently until Watson turned over to face him. The detective was wearing an unfamiliar expression, one Watson was not sure he had ever seen before. On any other man, he might have called it wistful.
"To think we might never have known," Holmes said, "All those years, missing this," he passed his hand over their entwined bodies, "all the sweet, sad years."
"Bloody hell," Watson growled, "who’d have thought you'd be the type to start quoting love poems as soon as you’d got your kit off?" And he reached over to put a stop to Holmes’s musings with a kiss.
fin
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This is just marvellous: "I don’t know what’s come over me. I don’t seem to be able to think." It might have been the saddest thing Watson had ever heard him say. And Watson's response: I expect I can do the thinking for both of us for a little while. Just perfect. Thanks for a lovely read!
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Thanks so much for reading and commenting!
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no subject
But, yeah, vengeful!Watson was my own addition--glad you enjoyed!
Thanks for reading and commenting!
The Silver Answer
Re: The Silver Answer
I totally agree with you about the film. Even aside from the joys of Jude Law with a mustache and a sword cane, equalizing the relationship a bit really gave the film its charge. (interestingly, it's the same move that's made the BBC Merlin such a success. The triumph of buddy slash? It's a kind of parlor game to think of other famous duos that would benefit from that kind of makeover)
Re: The Silver Answer
I think that worked really nicely, because I think most of us are much more in Watson's frame of mind that Holmes' to start with!
I am rarely going to feel that buddy slash doesn't improve most duos :D And I certainly did appreciate that in the film, particularly because that canon is one where women have pretty thankless roles to start with. I thought both actresses did well with what little they had to do -- I thought Mary managed to come off as a formidable opponent even though she hardly got to say anything. I'd love to see more of her in a sequel. Mrs. Hudson was also little more than a prop and I doubt that will change in the films although I read at least one book where she was definitely an important member of the team.
What I liked about the film was that the change in the balance of power suited the change in Holmes' character. I think that regardless of what they did with Watson, they wanted to make Holmes a looser, jokier character. I don't have a problem with that because I've never been so married to that canon that I'd object to a modernization. Also, I think it's not OOC because for his time Holmes was most definitely a wild eccentric and we are, if anything, much more accustomed to strange behavior today. The flaw there, to me, is that RDJ plays him more as clever than brilliant. Holmes was anything but modest, but I always got the sense it was because he was in love with brilliance, even if it was in himself. That makes him passionate more than smug. I think the fact that Watson is portrayed as intelligent, capable, and quite able to stand up to Holmes deflects attention from the fact that Holmes is less of a genius and more your standard clever hero.
Re: The Silver Answer
indeed--I've been trying to write something with a Holmes POV--because for the plot it just has to be that way, and, well, eek--it seems doomed to failure.
yeah--me too!
I agree with you about the film, and RDJ--more clever, and more physically warm/cuddly--which sure makes it easier to read/write the pairing--though there's some awesome asexual!Holmes kink out there ;)