Fic: Bel Canto - 10/16 (BBC Sherlock)
Title: Bel Canto
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 8.8k out of 125ishk
Betas: vyctori, seijichan, lifeonmars
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: After years of waiting for wealthy patrons to faint, Dr John Watson discovers a far more interesting patient in the opera house basement. (AU through a Phantom of the Opera lens.)
Warnings: Violence, internalized homophobia, eventual character death
Op. 20, No. 1
Op. 20, No. 2
Op. 20, No. 3
Op. 20, No. 4
Op. 20, No. 5
Op. 20, No. 6
Op. 20, No. 7
Op. 20, No. 8
Op. 20, No. 9
Op. 20, No. 10
Op. 20, No. 11
Op. 20, No. 12
Op. 20, No. 13
Op. 20, No. 14
Op. 20, No. 15
Op. 20, No. 16
“The problem lies with the pulley, not the rope,” Holmes says to Green. He does not gesture, yet his body remains open toward the house in the semblance of stage blocking. John hears his voice, sees his restrained movements, and still the impression of Vernet persists. It pervades his senses, filling his eyes and confusing his ears.
Cousins, whispers some desperate corner of John’s mind. Vernet the painter, the great-uncle. Vernet the composer, a cousin. Cousins, must be cousins, must be.
A flimsy hope, a paper-thin explanation, and John piles his entire weight atop it in the vain attempt to keep from falling. The men are related or John is entirely delusional. Must be. He had been mistaken. He had seen what he wished to see. He needs more rest.
“Dr Watson!” calls out a familiar voice, a female voice, and John nearly topples over at the distraction. Involuntary, his face twitches into a smile, the automatic reaction of anyone being so happily greeted. Miss Hooper emerges from the wings, a large pair of scissors in one hand. “I thought you quit!”
“And then I got bored,” John answers. He winks at her, abruptly desperate to enrage Holmes.
Both Miss Hooper and Green laugh. There is no sound from Holmes. Instead, the weight of Holmes’ gaze strikes against the side of John’s face, and John does not look. He does not look, he will not look, there is absolutely no reason to look. In going around the pit and climbing up the stairs, John has to keep his attention on the stairs. He does so.
“Good afternoon,” says Holmes. The voice is Holmes’, certainly Holmes’. There is no mistaking it for anything else. No other man can sound so polished and dismissive at once.
“Afternoon,” John replies, addressing his words to Holmes’ forehead. Holmes’ forehead is entirely devoid of curls, his dark hair sleekly restrained by pomade. Is his hair darker than Vernet’s? With shadow on one man and pomade on the other, it’s impossible to tell. “Mr Havill has a note for you.”
“More of that death threat nonsense, no doubt,” Green says.
“I wouldn’t worry,” John says, gesturing to Miss Hooper’s scissors. “Miss Hooper is well-armed.”
Miss Hooper giggles, a higher pitch than her usual. She quickly holds the scissors behind her back, one hand on the handle, the other wrapped around the blades.
Holmes turns to Green. He holds his left hand at his side, palm toward his leg. “Is that the last of the pranks?”
“That we know of yet, sir. It’s already a sizable list.”
“That doesn’t mean it can’t grow.”
“Oh, trust me, sir, I am well aware.”
With a curt nod to them all, Holmes makes his exit out through the opposite wing. His pace, his gait as he enters the shadows, these are his own. His outline, however, is not. John stares until Holmes is out of sight.
“Doc,” Green begins.
“I’m fine.” Only his mind breaking in two, just that. He’s fine.
“I’m glad to hear it. I--”
“What’s this about death threats?” John interrupts.
Green looks at him with tired brown eyes and John abruptly remembers the days when the man’s hair and eye colours were nearly the same. Good, yes, focus on that, keep focusing. Keep going. For the love of God, don’t think of anything else. He can look at Green’s grey hairs while growing some of his own.
“Against Lord Holmes, against Mr Holmes, against the singers...” Green lists. “Against anyone the audience might come to see, in other words. Makes me glad to be backstage, frankly. Though Mr Havill’s had some of it directed towards him, too. And you, but we’d hoped that might clear up with you gone.”
“I can’t let you louts have all the fun without me, can I?”
“With all due respect, Doc, you might want to give it a try.”
“Already did,” John says. He knows better now. He won’t be chased out, not by ghost nor phantom and not by anyone else, no matter whom. He turns to Miss Hooper. “And I wasn’t joking, Miss Hooper. Quite frankly, I think it’s time the ladies up in costuming learned how to stab ghosts. Before we have another Joe Harrison on our hands.”
“If we can find a minute between replacing the destroyed costumes,” Miss Hooper replies without hesitation. “Most of the younger girls have quit, any of them that could afford to. The older women are having enough trouble sewing in the cold without adding ghost fights into the mix.”
“What’s happened to the heating?” John directs the question more towards Green.
“Nearly exploded,” Green answers with a bit of a shrug. “It’s been that kind of week.”
“That sounds about right,” John says faintly.
“Do you need to sit down?” Miss Hooper asks.
“No. Yes. Actually, yes.”
Miss Hooper darts away and returns with a stool. John half sits, half leans.
“Thank you.”
“Are you sure you want to be here?” Green asks.
John nods. “I’ll buck up in a moment.”
Green raises his palms. “No rush.”
John nods a bit more. “Death threats? You said something about that.”
Green lowers his voice and steps closer. He looks unduly concerned until John recalls he’s already asked. “Against management and the talent,” Green repeats anyway.
“Lots of nasty surprises, too,” Miss Hooper adds, sounding increasingly concerned over John. “Dead rats in the bouquets last night.”
“Christ.”
Green laughs a little. “Said much worse than that last night.”
“I can imagine,” John agrees dryly.
The conversation-turned-report continues on in this vein for a short while, but with John’s attention obviously frayed, Green leaves off, citing more work than he has time for. For Miss Hooper’s part, she takes him by the elbow and he follows somewhat blankly.
“How about an actual chair?” she asks.
“That would be nice,” John says. They head backstage, upstairs, back to the workshop areas. When John enters, a flurry of greetings and exclamations of relief pour out. He responds distractedly until Miss Hooper sits him down.
“Everyone back to work!” Miss Hooper calls out, polite but firm.
“Just need a moment,” he says weakly.
He gets one. A long one. He spends it trying not to think. The thought he has to think is much too large, one formidable block of a concept that cracks the doorframe of his mind and strains at the walls.
Vernet.
Vernet... wasn’t.
He sees Holmes upon the stage and he sees Vernet, sees the two of them impossibly overlaid. Except he can’t have. Because... because Vernet is taller, isn’t he? Or is that the hair, untamed curls resulting in the illusion of increased height?
Skin tone, then. But no, both men are pale and John has never seen both in the same lighting. Box Five is the only space John has ever known the two to overlap and the box is quite different with the curtains closed and the gaslight extinguished.
Clothing, surely a difference there. Holmes has access to clean clothes and a fine wardrobe. Plain and somewhat rumpled, Vernet lives out of a Saratoga trunk. Except any man would be plain and rumpled, living out of a Saratoga trunk.
The voice, then, obviously the voice. The voice decides it completely. John has observed a moment of freakish similarity, but nothing more. He mistook one tall, thin man for another. He saw who he hoped to see.
And yet he’d expected Holmes. He’d expected to see Holmes, and yet he’d seen Vernet in him instead. Perhaps that’s simply a sign of desperation and longing. Or lack of sleep. Lack of sleep is a valid option.
All right. Good. Very good, a solid reason, the voice. Except for Vernet’s vocal range. Like a piano, that one. Not that this means anything. Of course it doesn’t mean anything.
Is that why Vernet resisted singing?
No, no, stop this. Stop thinking. Stop it, it’s fine. After all, what kind of absurd, overdramatic lunatic would...
No.
No.
Abruptly choking, John coughs in the lint-filled air. He makes his apologies to Miss Hooper and thanks her for the moment of calm. He’s not actually sure what her reply is. He exits. He finds a spot to stand by a railing and breathes a bit easier. He loosens his collar.
He can’t actually be considering this. He can’t actually.
Leaning on railing and cane in equal measure, John stands there as long as he can, not considering.
The day drags on. John begins to consider it.
By evening, it’s bizarrely inevitable. It shouldn’t be, really. There should never be a moment when inspection of two messy, utterly distinct friendships results in the conclusion that this is a single relationship, disastrously muddled. And yet, well. And yet, there he is. Disastrously muddled.
He thinks, almost happily, that perhaps he’s going mad. It’s a very manageable sort of madness, an understandable sort. In the past month, he’s been set on fire, forced to jump out of his burning house, lost nearly everything he’s ever owned, received threats from a deranged ghost, and had his world entirely upset by two men. It’s almost an act of simplification, combining the two. John no longer has to wonder where Vernet’s gone. The agonised wait lasted barely a week. That’s some sort of a relief.
Relief, but then complication. Because that is an absurd deception. Absurd and lengthy, and forcing Mrs Hudson into the role of co-conspirator. Neither Holmes nor Vernet could be so cruel as to do that to her. It would explain the sense of guilt about her, of course, but it... ah. It would, wouldn’t it? Mrs Hudson keeps her promises, even the absurd ones.
Sitting on call with a borrowed yellowback novel, John keeps running his eyes over the page. A temporary distraction, it only lasts a minute before he surrenders to the demands of his own mind. He thinks:
Vernet is a gentleman with immense musical passion and distaste for conventional romance. Holmes is a gentleman with musical interest and immense loathing for conventional romance.
Vernet writes operas in Italian with starring roles for contraltos. Holmes learned Italian as a boy and has marked interest in a specific contralto.
Vernet lived in the opera house tunnels with constricting permission from the Earl. Holmes confessed his intentions with the same constricting permission.
Two matters, John remembers. Two matters, Holmes had said.
It is, he reflects, a very good thing he’s already sitting down.
During the night’s performance, one of the trap doors snaps open in the middle of a ballet. No fewer than three of the dancers take a tumble, one down the chute and two over each other in the attempt to keep from falling in. The injury count comes in at one ankle sprained, one broken, various scrapes on all, and three torn dresses.
One of the stagehands carries the fallen ballerina out from beneath the stage, the poor girl weeping over her ruined career. John does what he can, nearly grateful she’s more distraught over her future than her current pain. She’s extremely cooperative and never cries out.
Mrs Hudson comes to hold her dancer’s hand. “This doesn’t have to be the end, dear. It’s going to be all right.” She passes the girl a handkerchief.
“Are you sure?” She looks between Mrs Hudson and John.
“If we can keep the swelling down and make certain it stays realigned properly,” John says. “There’s a chance.” They’ve been keeping bits of metal on the roof to carry the chill inside, wrapped in scraps of cloth. It’s hardly the most efficient method of keeping an injury cool, but it’s the most inexpensive anyone could think of.
The rest of the night is spent expecting worse, but worse never comes. “Waiting for the other shoe to drop,” John mutters to Green, standing backstage to be close to the next disaster.
“Waiting for the cobbler to fling it, you mean.”
“That, too. How the hell is he setting this all up?” There’s never anyone about, never anyone running away, never the same stagehands present for the disasters. Everything is set up to fail well in advance.
“Don’t know about you, mate,” Green says, “but I’m spending the night in the wings. Told the wife this morning and she packed me off with everything except a tent. Until this is over, I’m living here.”
“What about the carpenters? They live up back, don’t they?”
“Got a number of us staying now. All men I can trust.”
“You might as well bring the dancers into it, too,” John says. “We’ve two who won’t be good for anything except sitting guard. We might as well use them.” It’s continued employment for the girls, at any rate. As much as John hates telling Mr Havill who needs to be sacked, he hates it all the worse when it’s the girls. Especially in winter.
“Doesn’t seem right, bringing the women into it.”
“As far as I can tell, they’ve already been thoroughly brought.”
Green tilts his head at that before nodding. “Fair enough. Suppose they could get out a good loud scream if they saw anything.”
John tightens his grip on his cane. “Or bludgeon the ghost with crutches, either one. Do you want me with you?”
“We should be all right for tonight,” Green says.
“Look, this morning was just--”
Green holds up a hand. “If we’re to keep the ghost off the stage, we’ll need a rotation to guard it. Another night, Doc.”
John nods. “I’ll be ready.”
Green claps him on the shoulder, the good shoulder, and John sorely misses the days when all men were so straightforward.
“Are you all right, dear?”
“Hm? Yes, fine.” John looks out the growler window at the streetlamps. The ride home passes in silence.
When they say goodnight, the guilt clings to her. It’s an odd sort of confirmation, or perhaps it isn’t. John’s not sure what to do about it.
He sleeps through strange dreams. In the morning, he orders his thoughts. Over breakfast, he says, “It’s all right.”
Mrs Hudson looks up from the tablecloth where she’s been smoothing it down again. “Sorry?”
“Not, um.” John lowers his gaze. “Not telling me Vernet’s real name. It’s him I want to hear it from, so. Not your fault. It’s all right.”
“Oh, John.”
“It’s all right,” he repeats. “Really, it is.”
“What if--”
“Even if anything.” He looks her in the eyes for that, needs to. “I know you promised not to tell, and that’s fine.”
She visibly wavers on the edge of telling him, but if she confesses it, she’ll certainly tell Holmes. John can’t, won’t speak to Holmes. Not yet. He doesn’t know what he could say. He has far too many wounds to lick first.
“I’m not sure I even want to hear it,” John says. Mrs Hudson nods and that settles the issue.
“Nothing last night, as far as I could tell,” Green announces later that morning. It’s a small gathering, only the senior staff, but the group seems a crowd inside Mr Havill’s office. “The stage hasn’t been tampered with, sir.”
“And the house?” Mr Havill prompts.
“None of the boys saw anyone, for what it’s worth. If there’s anything wrong with the seats, I’d expect it to be in the boxes, not in the stalls.”
Mr Havill nods. “And backstage?”
“Not enough eyes for that, sir. We can watch the stage and the house, but the hallways, the workshops, the dressing rooms... It’s too large a space, sir. We already know watching the entrances doesn’t work. He’s sneaking in some other way.”
“We could find other willing eyes,” John suggests.
“Eyes we can trust?” Mr Havill asks. “We’re running low on those as it is.”
“I could take watch, sir,” Miss Hooper volunteers. Next to her, Hopkins nods. “Some of the women are willing to stay, too. We could recruit the husbands?”
“Men we don’t know,” Mr Havill says.
“With all due respect, sir,” says Green, “we ‘barely know’ any of the stagehands before they’re hired and even a loyal man can be bought in a pinch. Unless the police are about to step up, we need more men.”
“The police are already doing all they can,” Mrs Hudson reminds him. “There’s more in this city than just us.”
“Dr Watson, how many army contacts do you still have?” Mr Havill asks.
“My address book went with the house, sir,” John says. “I could try to track down a few, but we’re well out of touch.”
“The musicians might bring in family members,” Mr Johnson suggests. “Just a start is better than nothing.”
“I’m sure the other ushers wouldn’t mind being called in for a late shift, sir,” Hopkins adds. “Offer a promotion to anyone who catches the ghost and we’ll have the problem solved overnight.”
“As long as nothing goes wrong with the stage or house tonight, I’ll consider extending the venture,” Mr Havill replies.
“And backstage, sir?” Green asks.
“There, we take our chances.”
They scour the boxes. They inspect every seat in the house. They check the pit, the trapdoors, the flies, the stage lights. They secure the doors, the windows, every entrance to the roof. John sneaks down to the secret door beneath the staircase only to find this entryway to the tunnels boarded up.
That night, ushers stand guard against patrons straying from the house. The doormen keep careful watch. The staff in the cloakroom pats down the collected coats and cloaks in case of further smoke bombs.
They wait and they wait, and nothing goes awry. At the end of the performance, the opera house tenses as a united whole, straining to hear the approach of disaster beneath the roar of applause.
And yet, nothing.
The audience departs. Slowly, the staff exhales. Some with nervous laughter, some with fear straining the shapes of their eyes, they gather together before keeping guard anew. Green bunks down in Mr Havill’s office for the night and locks himself in. John and Hopkins sit upon the stage with the ghost light at their backs. More watchful eyes wait in the wings.
The heat from the night’s performance dissipates all too soon. As John’s shoulder begins to ache with the cold, he stands and moves closer to the ghost light, certain to keep his gaze directed outward.
“Sorry, sir, but I don’t like having your shadow over it all,” Hopkins says.
“Fair enough,” John says and sits back down on the edge of the stage. He still has the scarf in his medical bag, he realises. Pushed down to the bottom by now, but he does have it. After a moment of indecision, he shifts forward and drops down into the pit. He stumbles through the landing but refuses to return for his cane.
“Dr Watson?”
“I’m getting my coat from the cloakroom. Won’t be a minute.”
“No, sir,” Hopkins says immediately. He hops down beside John, landing much more limberly. The dexterity doesn’t seem fair: Hopkins can’t be any more than six or so years younger than him. “I’ll fetch it. I can’t let you go in good conscience.”
John sighs. “Same to you. We’re in pairs tonight.” He turns and calls back into the wings, closing his eyes against the ghost light, “One of you mind the house for a minute! We’re getting coats.” He doesn’t much need to lift his voice: the house is fiendishly silent.
“Could you bring mine, sir?” one man responds. He emerges onto the stage, shielding his eyes with one hand. Jamison? Yes, that’s Jamison. “Blue scarf in the left pocket.”
“Mine ought to be next to it!” adds the second of the pair, Beaumont.
“Right!” Hopkins says. “If we don’t come back, you send someone after us.” The joke falls terribly flat.
John and Hopkins exit the pit, easing their way around chairs and music stands. Their shadows stretching far into the aisle before them, they walk toward the doors to the lobby on quiet feet, shoes muffled on the carpet.
Hopkins opens the door and slips protectively in front of John. Excessive, certainly, but warming. They listen carefully before walking out as quietly as they can. Hopkins lights a match in the dark, the light small and faint in the marble lobby. Flickers of orange against white stone guide their way to the cloakroom. His imagination overactive, John looks up at the high expanse of ceiling, seeking a face amid the balcony banisters. Nothing there, of course nothing, and yet the futile urge to look remains. Even a mouse can sound like a madman in the dark.
They enter the cloakroom. Hopkins lights another match, checks a drawer beneath the closed window and empty counter, and procures a candle. A steadier light, the candle flame dances less but hardly stands still. Quick about it, John pulls on his coat and shifts his revolver from the small of his back to his coat pocket. As he does so, Hopkins finds his coat and those of Jamison and Beaumont. John takes the candle to let Hopkins put on his coat. The rustling of cloth slithers through the night’s silence, jarringly loud.
By mutual, unspoken accord, they freeze. They listen. They nod at each other in the fragile light. Hopkins opens the door gently, gently. Candle in one hand, revolver in the other, John steps outside.
Nothing. Of course nothing.
They stand still and silent all the same, the candlelight licking up the walls. Holding the pair of extra coats, Hopkins nods toward the way they’d come.
John shakes his head. He nods toward the other side of the lobby and mouths a single word: Painting.
Hopkins’ eyes widen. He nods.
John walks without bothering for stealth. There’s no chance of it. He holds a candle in a nearly pitch room, the windows high above providing little starlight beneath the London smog. His footsteps aren’t terribly loud, only in comparison to the silence, and then John stops abruptly. His footsteps echo. The echo stops. The hesitation of John’s fading limp remains constant in footsteps and echoes both.
Following at a much more careful pace, Hopkins draws near. John raises an eyebrow at him. More than an echo? Hopkins shakes his head. Just an echo.
Even so, John checks on the remaining Vernet painting. He sees the outline of the frame first, merely the outline, a faded spot on the wall.
“It’s there!” Hopkins points to a shape on the floor.
“Oh, thank God.” It’s facedown. Stolen from the frame or merely in the process? “Check on it,” John instructs, turning around, aiming his firearm in a slow circle.
Hopkins approaches the painting quickly and John trains his revolver on the shadows closest to him. When nothing jumps out at Hopkins, John approaches as well. He stands over Hopkins as the man kneels down to inspect the damage.
“Still here, sir,” Hopkins reports with a sigh. “It’s still nailed to the stretch bar, but it’s barely attached to the frame.”
“Can we carry it back to the stage like that?” John asks. With four of them to guard it, that will be the safest place. Locking it into Mr Havill’s office with Green would simply put Green in danger on his own.
“If we wrap the coats around it, I think so. We’ll have to carry it upright.”
“Can you do it on your own? Without damaging it?”
“I think so.”
“In your own time,” John assures him, voice and hands steady.
Hopkins bundles up the Vernet with care. He cradles it to his chest, securing it with his chin. Though he vibrates with energy, defenceless in the dark, his breathing remains a calm, controlled rhythm.
“Keep close,” John instructs. A statement rather than a whisper, his words beat back the oppressive stillness from above.
Hopkins does as told, nearly bumping against him as they move. John puts himself between Hopkins and the majority of the room, keeps Hopkins between himself and the wall. Nearly holding their breaths, they leave the shelter of the wall and cross beneath the grand staircase to the house door.
With Hopkins hugging the swaddled painting, opening the door falls to John. Refusing to pocket his gun, John bites the end of the candle and keeps staring out into the lobby. Melted wax drips onto the marble as he opens the door behind him. Once Hopkins slips inside, John quickly follows. He shuts the door. His mouth tastes of wax and he nearly burns his fingers removing the candle from between his teeth.
Long, nervous strides carry Hopkins down the aisle, well ahead of John. John hurries after, each row of seats another row of shadows he must pass. After their venture into the lobby, the ghost light nearly blinds him.
“What’s that, then?” Beaumont asks.
“Bad news,” Hopkins answers.
“Ghost in the lobby,” John explains, following Hopkins around the pit and mounting the stairs. His leg doesn’t like the stairs at all. He needs to sit again soon, very soon. He blows out the candle, but not before he’s dripped wax on the stage. Green will be annoyed. “No one leaves the stage again, all right? We watch the doors, we watch the catwalks, and we have one person keeping a hand on that at all times.”
“That?” Beaumont asks.
Hopkins carefully removes the coats. John nearly helps him, but that would mean relinquishing his revolver.
“If he’s in the lobby,” Jamison begins from somewhere in the wings.
“Then we’ll know where to search in the morning,” John interrupts. “We do not chase this man, not if it means leaving the stage abandoned. We don’t know what kind of traps he’s laid out there.”
“What about the other paintings in the lobby?” Beaumont asks.
“None of the others were painted by the Earl’s uncle.”
“Oh.”
“Yes, oh. They might be vandalised or stolen, but this one, we save. We know we’re not alone. It’s too vulnerable a position, carrying paintings in the dark.”
“It really is,” Hopkins confirms.
“Begging pardon, sir, but we could sit out in the lobby just as easily as in here,” Beaumont insists.
John shakes his head. “There are paintings upstairs as well as down. Impossible to keep an eye on all of them. It’s enough of a challenge watching this place with four men, and this is the priority. Back to your position, Beaumont.”
With some grudging hesitation, Beaumont complies, bringing Jamison his coat. Hopkins returns to his spot at the edge of the stage, his back to the ghost light. For his own part, John sits on the stage, eyes on his surroundings, a hand on the painting’s frame.
Every creak of the building and scurry of a rat sets their nerves jumping. Once, near four in the morning, a creaking beneath the stage has John pointing his revolver at the trap door for long minutes, Hopkins checking nervously over his shoulder.
At long last, dawn arrives. Mr Havill follows on its heels, bids them all a good morning, and sends them home to sleep. Stubborn to the last, John remains on the stage with the painting until Mr Havill escorts him and it to his office. John explains the evidence of their intruder last night as Mr Havill unlocks the door.
Inside, a bleary-eyed Green reports the office undisturbed. They stow away the painting with care and Mr Havill promises to wire the Earl immediately. Only with that promise does John consent to return home.
He sleeps through the morning and most of the afternoon before Eliza knocks at his bedroom door. “Dr Watson, you said to wake you,” she reminds him from the hallway.
“Right, yes, thank you,” he calls back. He sits up feeling groggy and a bit ill, his stomach empty and acidic. Supper first, opera house after. He doesn’t lose much time in dressing and eating, all told. After a cold night of insufficient movement, his leg aches terribly. He’s forced to take up his cane once more.
Even in his compromised condition, he arrives at the opera house well before the house opens for the night’s performance. The Vernet painting has been reinstalled to its proper location. They’ll be moving it each night, John imagines, but he sees the sense in it. Keeping it on the wall is a much needed symbol of defiance.
“He was in here last night,” a smooth voice says from behind him.
John doesn’t startle, but he turns around more quickly than is perhaps best for his leg. “Good evening, my lord.”
“Quite.” His own cane clearly for show, the Earl regards his painting. “Tell me, what did you see?”
John provides a full report, detailing his progress with Hopkins from the second house door toward the cloakroom and over to the painting. “It was the second night we were covering the stage. It wasn’t difficult to imagine he’d change targets.”
“Then where tonight?” the Earl muses. Though he likely means to wonder where the ghost will strike overnight, John’s mind leaps to another track.
“I’ll have Hopkins inspect Box Five before the performance.”
The Earl shows his teeth. To be called a smile, it would have to reach his eyes. This motion barely touches his nose. “Your concern is noted, Doctor, but measures have already been put into place.”
“I’m glad to hear it, my lord.” John fixes his mouth in a polite shape. “If you’ll excuse me, I ought to see how everyone is faring after the matinee.”
“Tell me, Dr Watson,” the Earl says before John can so much as turn to go. “Are you armed?”
“I am, my lord.”
“But you are not standing guard over us tonight?”
“No, my lord.”
That seems to please him. “Will you be keeping watch frequently?”
“I’d planned to alternate nights, my lord. Perhaps every third night.”
“I see. That will be all.” His bored expression is the mirror of his brother’s.
John very nearly hesitates. He almost considers saying something more, words pertaining to Mr Holmes or the masked man formerly in the basement. He comes close to asking where Mr Holmes currently is, for the sake of better avoiding him and not throwing blunt objects at each other’s heads.
Instead, John departs as steadily as he can. Having had time to consider it, he’d prefer to keep this job.
For the second night in a row, the performance passes without incident or injury. Beyond the three smoke bombs discovered before the matinee, there’s exceptionally little sign of tampering. The ghost’s goals last night clearly centred about the painting.
Even with the ghost’s last attack rendered ineffectual, John has two patients that night. Two patrons, both suffering from nerves and the heat. Mr Havill berates the ushers after the performance, charging them to keep a lighter, less paranoid atmosphere. “How are we to keep the seats filled with the audience terrified?” he demands.
John stands at Mr Havill’s side in his office, looking straight ahead and keeping all feelings of awkwardness to himself. Being held up as an example of good conduct now is hardly the pleasure it might be in any other scenario. Hopkins looks as if he’d rather be dead than face Mr Havill.
“A game.”
As one man, Mr Havill, John and the ushers turn towards the office door, now open. John shifts his weight, ostensibly for better use of his cane, more practically to have Hopkins’ head block his sightline.
Mr Havill asks, “Would you care to repeat that, Mr Holmes?”
“Turn it into a game,” Holmes answers. The light quality to his voice grates at John’s ears, upon his nerves. “Make a farce of it. All of London knows how ‘haunted’ we are by now. There lies our advantage. We incorporate him into the performances. Any dancer in a skull mask will do. If the audience laughs, it destroys their fear as well as his pride.”
Mr Havill nods along. “It might even be a draw. ‘Now featuring: the Opera Ghost.’”
Holmes shifts in the doorway and John lowers his gaze to Hopkins’ shoulder. “We can start with a quick ballet at the end of intermission.”
“An excellent thought. Thank you, Mr Holmes. I’ll speak with Mrs Hudson shortly. Is your lord brother still present?”
“Departed for the night, I’m afraid,” Holmes replies, his tone conveying nothing akin to fear.
The Earl gone without Holmes? John frowns. He makes unwitting eye contact.
“Until morning, I’m at your disposal,” Holmes continues, looking to Mr Havill once more.
“Thank you, Mr Holmes.” Mr Havill proceeds to list those of the ushers who will be staying the night with Mr Holmes. “I’m certain that none of you will disappoint me,” he adds. With that, they are dismissed. John lingers in the office before Mr Havill directs a very pointed glance at him. Forced into the hall, John encounters Holmes.
“Heading home?” Holmes asks, falling into step with him. Trying to, certainly. John’s limp prevents their strides from syncing. It also prevents John from outdistancing him. Holmes walks on John’s left. Unfortunately, the medical bag is a flimsier barrier between them than the cane would be.
“Yes,” John answers, intentionally wheezing. His throat has recovered from the fire by now, but any escape from conversation will do.
“I’ll fetch Mrs Hudson. You should wait in the lobby.”
John shakes his head.
Holmes grips his arm.
John flinches.
It isn’t a small flinch. It isn’t subtle. It’s a full-body motion of tension and rage. It is absolute silence in the mouth and shouting in the throat.
Holmes releases him.
Neither moves.
“Your shoulder is paining you,” Holmes states, more compromise than observation. His voice is soft, controlled. His expression is doubtlessly neutral, his hurt only visible in the reproof of his eyes. John does not need to look at him to see this.
“It is,” John allows. He fixes his gaze down the hall. “If you’ll excuse me, sir.”
John limps away.
Holmes doesn’t follow.
He let that man touch him. He let that man touch him. John hasn’t simply been played for a fool, flinging himself at a man who doesn’t exist. He’s been mislead and spun about and used.
He’d already rejected Holmes. He’d shied away from his advances and made more than suitable apologies. He’d refused every last chance Holmes had offered him, chance after chance and none of them wanted.
And then, oh no, that wasn’t the end of it. Holmes knew exactly what he was doing, blindfolding John in the dark. Catching John’s hands and dragging them down before John could feel the shape of his face or touch those damnable cheekbones. Wrapping the semblance of intimacy about him like so much black cashmere.
There it is, isn’t it? That inexplicable I feel like I know you, that sense of haven’t we met before? They bloody well had, hadn’t they? That’s as explicable as it gets. The obsession, the fantasies, the compulsive picking at man and mystery both; it’s all rubbish. Every last piece of it, complete and utter nonsense. Vernet is nothing more than a lie circling round inside John’s mind. Never existed. Never happened.
Except for the snogging, of course. Two hours in the dark, sucking on the wrong man’s tongue. Squeezing a man’s bum and feeling the heat of his lust rub against his stomach, like some kind of shirtlifter.
Christ, John needs a bath. He needs to be scrubbed down to his bones, if possible. He’ll tell Eliza the hot water is for his old war wound. For last night out in the cold, for that matter. He’ll sit in the tub until the ache eases and he won’t think at all. He’ll sit and not think and he’ll stop mourning this ridiculous vision of a man who isn’t and was never real.
In the morning, he drags himself awake from a fitful, dreaming sleep. His body aches with tension and longs to fuck, angry and vicious. He fails to take care of it, his mind shifting in directions too volatile to explore.
Breakfast is a bleary, agitated affair. Mrs Hudson makes the mistake of asking after him and he nearly bites her head off. Immediately, profusely, he apologises. She doesn’t pat his hand and she doesn’t tell him it’s all right.
“We’re all nervous,” she says instead, and she doesn’t call him dear.
John apologises a second time before keeping his mouth shut.
They spend the rest of breakfast in silence and pass the cab ride to the opera house in much the same way. There’s no sign of Holmes, a small blessing. A better blessing still, John’s limp abates as motion and the heat of the opera house warm it. Tentatively, he returns the cane to Miss Hooper.
“More use than I meant to have from it,” he admits.
“Are you sure you’re ready?” she asks. When he frowns, possibly glares, she simply says, “If the ghost steals it, you’re on your own.”
The sound strange in his throat, John laughs. Not quite a twinge or the beginnings of a cough, but perhaps a small sign of continuing damage. Another reason to avoid Holmes, should he be smoking.
“Is sewing up people very different than cloth?” Miss Hooper asks without prompting.
John attempts to pull his eyebrows down from the ceiling. “There’s a bit more thrashing and flinching. Blood flow can be an issue. And sterilizing. You have to sterilize first. Leave a bit of a spot for the pus to drain out, too.”
She nods a bit. “Do you think I’d be any good at it?”
“We’re not closing down.” She’d make a fine nurse, but they can’t afford to lose her now.
“I know,” she says. “But if people get hurt again like the last time, I want to do more than tie bandages.”
For one mad moment, John considers proposing. It would solve so many problems, except for the fact that it wouldn’t at all. Instead, he starts to explain to a very attentive audience, Miss Hooper nodding and clearly doing her best to memorise everything he says.
“And that’s it, more or less,” John concludes.
Miss Hooper thanks him and returns nearly immediately to her work and the intricacies of her workshop, off to check up on those within. This quickly, he is no longer needed. As carefully as he can, John manages to walk away unaided.
“Are you staying on tonight?” Green asks during intermission.
“I suppose so.” Holmes stayed last night, so tonight ought to be clear. “Yes, I’ll be here.” John only wishes he’d thought to take a nap at some point.
“How’s your head for heights? Hopkins is rubbish.”
“If you want me on the catwalk in the dark, my head is absolutely terrible.”
“We’re trying to cover more of the back hallways,” Green explains. “If you can handle the stairs, that’s where I want you.”
“That’ll be fine.”
Green nods and they fall silent, waiting for the first of the ghost-mocking ballets to take the stage. A dancer in black cloak, trousers, and skull mask menaces through the number before becoming distracted by the other dancers’ skirts. So enamoured, their false phantom falls through the open trap door. The audience greets the number with gasps and subsequent laughter, but though the mood in the house lifts, the consequences loom.
“We’re in for it tonight,” Green mutters. John couldn’t agree more.
John takes up his position that night with steady nerves, a lamp, and his revolver comfortably in hand. He has a chair at the corner of the hall, his back and left side to the walls. Ahead and to the right is the railing around this level. It’s practically scaffolding, much of the floor space used for prop storage. Walking, not running, will be called for. Easy enough to take a tumble or to send someone flying.
This high up, the building creaks. It shifts and groans, old joints cracking. Difficult not to grow a bit jumpy. Very good that they’re taking shifts tonight. His partner for the next few hours is a stage technician by the name of West. New fellow but quiet and careful, the sort of fellow who knows he doesn’t look like a born Englishman and is cautious about it. He and John take turns standing. Westy proves himself a fine chap, and John sits for longer than is properly his due. Hours later, their relief arrives.
“Thank you, Mr West. That will be all.”
John’s mind refuses. It refutes the evidence of eyes and ears, because Holmes must have gone home, Holmes must have left, Holmes cannot possibly be cornering him in a shadowy hall in the middle of a stakeout. Holmes absolutely cannot be doing this, except for the obvious fact that he can and is.
Westy leaves with the old lamp, its oil running low. Keeping an eye on the shadows as they bend in the light, John watches him go. Surely the ghost will jump out at Westy and everyone will give chase instead of simply standing here for hours on end in the dark. Instead, Westy reaches the stairs without molestation.
“We’re meant to go in pairs.” Far from the rebuke John would prefer to give, this whisper will have to do.
Holmes shrugs, arms wrapped around himself despite his thick coat. Instead of a scarf, he wears his collar turned high. “We’ve an uneven number tonight.” His voice remains terribly light, nearly a mocking pitch, absolutely grating in comparison to Vernet’s false thrum. Remarkable range, but then, John already knew that.
“Very strange. It was even when I last checked. If it’s from loss of numbers, someone should have fetched me.”
“Addition, Doctor.”
The wood creaks above them. John looks up. They wait a silent moment. No further creaking comes.
“If he tries to leave through the roof, he’ll have to pass by us or Jamison and McConnell,” Holmes reminds him.
“I know that, thanks.” He’s only been standing here thinking that for hours. He tucks his gloveless right hand into his coat pocket alongside his revolver. After a short pause, he tucks his gloved left away as well, his tight fist too obvious.
“Now you’re angry with me.” An unspoken tutting accompanies his words. Thirty-five and yet to have his nose broken for him: only a lord’s brother could get away with that.
Wanting to shout and rage, John keeps his voice lowered. “He wants both of us dead. Putting a pair of targets out here wasn’t exactly good thinking.”
“We’d be bait anywhere, separately or together.”
“With all due respect, I’d prefer to be bait with reinforcements somewhat closer.” John turns away. “Put the lamp under the chair. Can’t adjust to the dark with that shining in your eyes.”
Holmes complies. The floorboards announce the shifting of his weight. The air stirs.
The sensation of breath on the back of John’s head must be imaginary, but John tenses from it all the same. “Your line of sight is that way,” John instructs. He points without looking.
“I know.”
John returns his hand to his pocket. He stares into the dark. They mute themselves, their silence far from quiet.
“You’re angry with me,” Holmes murmurs. His words stroke up John’s neck towards his ear, as delicate as the tendrils of a climbing vine upon worn stone. Assisted by a gentle breath, they brush against him, seeking cracks John once would have widened willingly.
John steels himself with no small sense of self-disgust. “Says the man who threw a helmet at my head.”
“You’re more concerned with being cornered.”
Christ. He nearly turns around at that. “If you know you’re doing it, why are you doing it?”
Holmes presses forward. The floorboards creak. “I need to speak with you.”
“‘Need’ is a strong word.”
“It is,” Holmes agrees.
Oh, good God. Not now. “Can this wait? At all? Until the sun is up or there are slightly fewer murderers in the opera house?”
“I’ll speak quietly.”
“Mr Holmes--”
“Don’t.” The floorboards groan. The back of John’s neck prickles.
John turns around instinctually, Holmes much too close to his back. John takes a step away, pressing his shoulder against the wall so the lamplight doesn’t shine directly behind Holmes. He still can’t make out Holmes’ expression and he doesn’t much care to. “I know what you’re going to say and this isn’t the time for it,” John whispers. “So lay off.”
Holmes crowds closer, the exact way one shouldn’t toward a cornered man with a gun. “You really don’t.”
There’s no stopping him, is there? “Go on, then,” John challenges, practically hissing to keep from shouting. “Surprise me.”
“Gladly.” With an irritable flair, Holmes tugs off his left glove finger by finger before thrusting his palm out for inspection.
“Yes, and?”
Holmes stares at him.
John lifts his chin and waits, arms crossed.
“You didn’t look,” Holmes prompts.
John looks. In the faint lamplight, the scar is visible, stretching up onto Holmes’ palm from under his cuff. It’s healed well, very well. John repeats, “Yes, and?”
“...I’m not sure you understand--”
“No, you might consider doing the voice as well, just in case I actually am that stupid!” His whisper rises before he cuts it off. “I am meant to be stupid, aren’t I? Some bumbling idiot who can’t tell when one man is two!”
“When it takes you half a year to catch on, yes!” Holmes’ voice drops as his volume rises.
“Would you keep it down?”
“I’m not shouting. You’re shouting.” Still lowering in pitch, a descent as controlled as any stroll down the grand staircase.
“This is my whispering voice!” John protests.
Holmes scoffs. “A stage whisper, maybe.”
John clamps his mouth shut and glares instead of yelling.
“What now, hm?” Vernet’s voice, entirely Vernet’s. His face a smudge against the dark, the lines blur. “You’re angry, so you won’t listen?”
“To what?”
“An explanation, obviously.”
“You mean,” John whispers, “how your lord brother is so concerned you’ll cause the family embarrassment that he completely contains you? And in exchange he lets you do absurd things like live in the basement on the condition that no one knows it’s you. Is that what you mean?
“Or do you mean your lord brother is afraid I’ll confirm you were the ghost in Box Five the night the chandelier dropped? Because it would be very easy to cast suspicion on you, wouldn’t it? After all, the police are looking for an overdramatic puppet master with a vendetta against your brother. Throw a mask on you and put you in the tunnels for a few months and it’s a perfect match.
“So, no, obviously your lord brother wouldn’t let you tell me unless he was certain of my loyalty. Or my assured mutual destruction, rather. Sodomy does tend to have that effect.” John twitches his mouth into a polite shape, his hands folded behind his back. “Is that the explanation you want me to hear?”
Holmes shifts closer only to retreat, a small, swaying motion that sets the floorboards creaking. “If you understand,” he asks in his false, low voice, “why are you still angry?”
“You... What the hell is wrong with you?”
Holmes sighs. “I’d give you the list, but I’d much rather yours. Your complaints are...?”
“My complaints.”
“Grievances.”
John closes his eyes. He exhales. “No. No, sod this. I’ve had enough.”
Holmes crowds closer. He speaks in the barest whisper. “You said you loved me for my character.”
A nervous giggle wells up in John’s throat. He has to turn away to laugh into his sleeve. “Christ, did I say that? Jesus.” He steps away and stands with his hands upon the railing, the wood cold and solid against his palms regardless of his glove. He ought to put the other back on. No need to shoot anyone just yet. For a moment, he simply drops his head and giggles as quietly as he can. “I already feel like an idiot: you can stop now, really.”
“You said--”
“I said?” God, John can’t even look at him. He turns his face away at the creak of Holmes’ motion. Christ, can’t the man hold still for one moment? “What I said? You said we’d discuss the logistics, that’s what you said.”
“John-!”
John has time enough to snap, “Don’t start,” before he realises what’s wrong.
He turns with a curse, grabbing his revolver out of his coat pocket, but it’s already too late. He’s never done a poorer job of keeping his guard up in his life.
“Let him go,” John orders, “or I will kill you.”
Hands tugging at the scarlet loop about his neck, Holmes gasps rattling breaths through a mouth as wide open as his terrified eyes. The man behind him is smaller, much, and uses Holmes as a shield against John’s revolver. The man is strong. When Holmes falls to his knees, the man drops with him to keep Holmes as a barrier. Between Holmes and the wooden corner beam, John can’t get a clear shot.
“I said, let him go.”
“Drop the gun,” the strangler replies.
“You’ll still kill him if I do.” Holmes has already begun to sag.
“Drop the gun. Over the rail.”
John nearly hesitates. He holds his revolver over the railing.
The strangler permits Holmes one gasping breath before tightening his grasp anew. “Drop the gun.”
John leans over the railing, straightens his arm, and fires twice around the corner beam, aiming low.
The strangler shouts, struck or grazed, and the instinct to hold his wound overpowers his grip on Holmes. Holmes crumples forward in an unbroken fall, nearly striking his head on the wall. He blocks out most of the lamp light, but it still shines where John needs it.
More startled than hurt, the strangler leaps to his feet and John fires a third time, a fourth. The strangler drops, a puppet with his strings cut. John steps over Holmes, floor space limited in the tight corner, and aims his revolver down at the strangler’s back. Behind him, he can hear the reassuring sound of Holmes’s desperate breaths.
“Tell me who sent you and I won’t kill you,” John promises. “I’m a doctor. It might not be too late. Tell me who sent you.”
Beneath Holmes’ loud breaths and the distant shouting growing nearer, John hears a dripping noise. John touches the man’s back, his damp coat. A slow rise and fall, but little more. John finds the point of entry. He summons a mental diagram.
“Oh,” John says.
The dying man says nothing.
“I could make it quick. Tell who sent you, and I’ll stop the pain.”
No response.
John retreats to where Holmes is attempting to breathe on all fours and picks up the strange lasso from the floor. He takes it to the strangler and secures the man’s hands behind his back. He returns to Holmes a second time and sits down in the chair, revolver still pointed on the strangler. He looks down at Holmes as if at a man very far away.
“Lie down on your back. You’ll breathe easier. Lie down or stand, really. No sense being hunched over.”
Holmes flops onto his back. He stares up at John as if through a haze. John really ought to inspect Holmes’ neck. Instead John sits with his palm cupped, trying not to drip another man’s blood anywhere.
Mere moments later, Green arrives with Jamison and Beaumont in tow. “What the hell happened?” Green demands. He catches sight of Holmes on the floorboards. “Mr Holmes!”
Holmes waves a hand almost lazily. “Fine,” he rasps, his voice trapped in its lower register.
“He was trying to leave this way,” John reports, explaining the obvious. He means to stand up, but he can’t seem to make his legs obey. “Could I have a handkerchief? Sorry, it’s just... well.” He shows Green his bloody palm. Green wrinkles his nose and hands his handkerchief over.
Jamison inspects the body. Beaumont holds a lantern over him. Jamison holds something up, a bunched bit of fabric that proves to be an empty cloth sack.
Green swears. “Whatever he brought in, it’s already in place.”
Holmes sits up with a sagging head, constricting his airway in a manner that makes John uncomfortable. A short struggle more and Holmes stands, tall and swaying. He touches the corner beam for support. “We search with first light. Everywhere.”
John nods and, in the company of so many observers, has no choice but to stand alongside Holmes once more. “In the morning,” John promises.
A general murmur of agreement rises from the stagehands and Green. Behind them, through the floorboards, the corpse continues to drip into the darkness below.
previous | next
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 8.8k out of 125ishk
Betas: vyctori, seijichan, lifeonmars
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: After years of waiting for wealthy patrons to faint, Dr John Watson discovers a far more interesting patient in the opera house basement. (AU through a Phantom of the Opera lens.)
Warnings: Violence, internalized homophobia, eventual character death
Op. 20, No. 1
Op. 20, No. 2
Op. 20, No. 3
Op. 20, No. 4
Op. 20, No. 5
Op. 20, No. 6
Op. 20, No. 7
Op. 20, No. 8
Op. 20, No. 9
Op. 20, No. 10
Op. 20, No. 11
Op. 20, No. 12
Op. 20, No. 13
Op. 20, No. 14
Op. 20, No. 15
Op. 20, No. 16
“The problem lies with the pulley, not the rope,” Holmes says to Green. He does not gesture, yet his body remains open toward the house in the semblance of stage blocking. John hears his voice, sees his restrained movements, and still the impression of Vernet persists. It pervades his senses, filling his eyes and confusing his ears.
Cousins, whispers some desperate corner of John’s mind. Vernet the painter, the great-uncle. Vernet the composer, a cousin. Cousins, must be cousins, must be.
A flimsy hope, a paper-thin explanation, and John piles his entire weight atop it in the vain attempt to keep from falling. The men are related or John is entirely delusional. Must be. He had been mistaken. He had seen what he wished to see. He needs more rest.
“Dr Watson!” calls out a familiar voice, a female voice, and John nearly topples over at the distraction. Involuntary, his face twitches into a smile, the automatic reaction of anyone being so happily greeted. Miss Hooper emerges from the wings, a large pair of scissors in one hand. “I thought you quit!”
“And then I got bored,” John answers. He winks at her, abruptly desperate to enrage Holmes.
Both Miss Hooper and Green laugh. There is no sound from Holmes. Instead, the weight of Holmes’ gaze strikes against the side of John’s face, and John does not look. He does not look, he will not look, there is absolutely no reason to look. In going around the pit and climbing up the stairs, John has to keep his attention on the stairs. He does so.
“Good afternoon,” says Holmes. The voice is Holmes’, certainly Holmes’. There is no mistaking it for anything else. No other man can sound so polished and dismissive at once.
“Afternoon,” John replies, addressing his words to Holmes’ forehead. Holmes’ forehead is entirely devoid of curls, his dark hair sleekly restrained by pomade. Is his hair darker than Vernet’s? With shadow on one man and pomade on the other, it’s impossible to tell. “Mr Havill has a note for you.”
“More of that death threat nonsense, no doubt,” Green says.
“I wouldn’t worry,” John says, gesturing to Miss Hooper’s scissors. “Miss Hooper is well-armed.”
Miss Hooper giggles, a higher pitch than her usual. She quickly holds the scissors behind her back, one hand on the handle, the other wrapped around the blades.
Holmes turns to Green. He holds his left hand at his side, palm toward his leg. “Is that the last of the pranks?”
“That we know of yet, sir. It’s already a sizable list.”
“That doesn’t mean it can’t grow.”
“Oh, trust me, sir, I am well aware.”
With a curt nod to them all, Holmes makes his exit out through the opposite wing. His pace, his gait as he enters the shadows, these are his own. His outline, however, is not. John stares until Holmes is out of sight.
“Doc,” Green begins.
“I’m fine.” Only his mind breaking in two, just that. He’s fine.
“I’m glad to hear it. I--”
“What’s this about death threats?” John interrupts.
Green looks at him with tired brown eyes and John abruptly remembers the days when the man’s hair and eye colours were nearly the same. Good, yes, focus on that, keep focusing. Keep going. For the love of God, don’t think of anything else. He can look at Green’s grey hairs while growing some of his own.
“Against Lord Holmes, against Mr Holmes, against the singers...” Green lists. “Against anyone the audience might come to see, in other words. Makes me glad to be backstage, frankly. Though Mr Havill’s had some of it directed towards him, too. And you, but we’d hoped that might clear up with you gone.”
“I can’t let you louts have all the fun without me, can I?”
“With all due respect, Doc, you might want to give it a try.”
“Already did,” John says. He knows better now. He won’t be chased out, not by ghost nor phantom and not by anyone else, no matter whom. He turns to Miss Hooper. “And I wasn’t joking, Miss Hooper. Quite frankly, I think it’s time the ladies up in costuming learned how to stab ghosts. Before we have another Joe Harrison on our hands.”
“If we can find a minute between replacing the destroyed costumes,” Miss Hooper replies without hesitation. “Most of the younger girls have quit, any of them that could afford to. The older women are having enough trouble sewing in the cold without adding ghost fights into the mix.”
“What’s happened to the heating?” John directs the question more towards Green.
“Nearly exploded,” Green answers with a bit of a shrug. “It’s been that kind of week.”
“That sounds about right,” John says faintly.
“Do you need to sit down?” Miss Hooper asks.
“No. Yes. Actually, yes.”
Miss Hooper darts away and returns with a stool. John half sits, half leans.
“Thank you.”
“Are you sure you want to be here?” Green asks.
John nods. “I’ll buck up in a moment.”
Green raises his palms. “No rush.”
John nods a bit more. “Death threats? You said something about that.”
Green lowers his voice and steps closer. He looks unduly concerned until John recalls he’s already asked. “Against management and the talent,” Green repeats anyway.
“Lots of nasty surprises, too,” Miss Hooper adds, sounding increasingly concerned over John. “Dead rats in the bouquets last night.”
“Christ.”
Green laughs a little. “Said much worse than that last night.”
“I can imagine,” John agrees dryly.
The conversation-turned-report continues on in this vein for a short while, but with John’s attention obviously frayed, Green leaves off, citing more work than he has time for. For Miss Hooper’s part, she takes him by the elbow and he follows somewhat blankly.
“How about an actual chair?” she asks.
“That would be nice,” John says. They head backstage, upstairs, back to the workshop areas. When John enters, a flurry of greetings and exclamations of relief pour out. He responds distractedly until Miss Hooper sits him down.
“Everyone back to work!” Miss Hooper calls out, polite but firm.
“Just need a moment,” he says weakly.
He gets one. A long one. He spends it trying not to think. The thought he has to think is much too large, one formidable block of a concept that cracks the doorframe of his mind and strains at the walls.
Vernet.
Vernet... wasn’t.
He sees Holmes upon the stage and he sees Vernet, sees the two of them impossibly overlaid. Except he can’t have. Because... because Vernet is taller, isn’t he? Or is that the hair, untamed curls resulting in the illusion of increased height?
Skin tone, then. But no, both men are pale and John has never seen both in the same lighting. Box Five is the only space John has ever known the two to overlap and the box is quite different with the curtains closed and the gaslight extinguished.
Clothing, surely a difference there. Holmes has access to clean clothes and a fine wardrobe. Plain and somewhat rumpled, Vernet lives out of a Saratoga trunk. Except any man would be plain and rumpled, living out of a Saratoga trunk.
The voice, then, obviously the voice. The voice decides it completely. John has observed a moment of freakish similarity, but nothing more. He mistook one tall, thin man for another. He saw who he hoped to see.
And yet he’d expected Holmes. He’d expected to see Holmes, and yet he’d seen Vernet in him instead. Perhaps that’s simply a sign of desperation and longing. Or lack of sleep. Lack of sleep is a valid option.
All right. Good. Very good, a solid reason, the voice. Except for Vernet’s vocal range. Like a piano, that one. Not that this means anything. Of course it doesn’t mean anything.
Is that why Vernet resisted singing?
No, no, stop this. Stop thinking. Stop it, it’s fine. After all, what kind of absurd, overdramatic lunatic would...
No.
No.
Abruptly choking, John coughs in the lint-filled air. He makes his apologies to Miss Hooper and thanks her for the moment of calm. He’s not actually sure what her reply is. He exits. He finds a spot to stand by a railing and breathes a bit easier. He loosens his collar.
He can’t actually be considering this. He can’t actually.
Leaning on railing and cane in equal measure, John stands there as long as he can, not considering.
The day drags on. John begins to consider it.
By evening, it’s bizarrely inevitable. It shouldn’t be, really. There should never be a moment when inspection of two messy, utterly distinct friendships results in the conclusion that this is a single relationship, disastrously muddled. And yet, well. And yet, there he is. Disastrously muddled.
He thinks, almost happily, that perhaps he’s going mad. It’s a very manageable sort of madness, an understandable sort. In the past month, he’s been set on fire, forced to jump out of his burning house, lost nearly everything he’s ever owned, received threats from a deranged ghost, and had his world entirely upset by two men. It’s almost an act of simplification, combining the two. John no longer has to wonder where Vernet’s gone. The agonised wait lasted barely a week. That’s some sort of a relief.
Relief, but then complication. Because that is an absurd deception. Absurd and lengthy, and forcing Mrs Hudson into the role of co-conspirator. Neither Holmes nor Vernet could be so cruel as to do that to her. It would explain the sense of guilt about her, of course, but it... ah. It would, wouldn’t it? Mrs Hudson keeps her promises, even the absurd ones.
Sitting on call with a borrowed yellowback novel, John keeps running his eyes over the page. A temporary distraction, it only lasts a minute before he surrenders to the demands of his own mind. He thinks:
Vernet is a gentleman with immense musical passion and distaste for conventional romance. Holmes is a gentleman with musical interest and immense loathing for conventional romance.
Vernet writes operas in Italian with starring roles for contraltos. Holmes learned Italian as a boy and has marked interest in a specific contralto.
Vernet lived in the opera house tunnels with constricting permission from the Earl. Holmes confessed his intentions with the same constricting permission.
Two matters, John remembers. Two matters, Holmes had said.
It is, he reflects, a very good thing he’s already sitting down.
During the night’s performance, one of the trap doors snaps open in the middle of a ballet. No fewer than three of the dancers take a tumble, one down the chute and two over each other in the attempt to keep from falling in. The injury count comes in at one ankle sprained, one broken, various scrapes on all, and three torn dresses.
One of the stagehands carries the fallen ballerina out from beneath the stage, the poor girl weeping over her ruined career. John does what he can, nearly grateful she’s more distraught over her future than her current pain. She’s extremely cooperative and never cries out.
Mrs Hudson comes to hold her dancer’s hand. “This doesn’t have to be the end, dear. It’s going to be all right.” She passes the girl a handkerchief.
“Are you sure?” She looks between Mrs Hudson and John.
“If we can keep the swelling down and make certain it stays realigned properly,” John says. “There’s a chance.” They’ve been keeping bits of metal on the roof to carry the chill inside, wrapped in scraps of cloth. It’s hardly the most efficient method of keeping an injury cool, but it’s the most inexpensive anyone could think of.
The rest of the night is spent expecting worse, but worse never comes. “Waiting for the other shoe to drop,” John mutters to Green, standing backstage to be close to the next disaster.
“Waiting for the cobbler to fling it, you mean.”
“That, too. How the hell is he setting this all up?” There’s never anyone about, never anyone running away, never the same stagehands present for the disasters. Everything is set up to fail well in advance.
“Don’t know about you, mate,” Green says, “but I’m spending the night in the wings. Told the wife this morning and she packed me off with everything except a tent. Until this is over, I’m living here.”
“What about the carpenters? They live up back, don’t they?”
“Got a number of us staying now. All men I can trust.”
“You might as well bring the dancers into it, too,” John says. “We’ve two who won’t be good for anything except sitting guard. We might as well use them.” It’s continued employment for the girls, at any rate. As much as John hates telling Mr Havill who needs to be sacked, he hates it all the worse when it’s the girls. Especially in winter.
“Doesn’t seem right, bringing the women into it.”
“As far as I can tell, they’ve already been thoroughly brought.”
Green tilts his head at that before nodding. “Fair enough. Suppose they could get out a good loud scream if they saw anything.”
John tightens his grip on his cane. “Or bludgeon the ghost with crutches, either one. Do you want me with you?”
“We should be all right for tonight,” Green says.
“Look, this morning was just--”
Green holds up a hand. “If we’re to keep the ghost off the stage, we’ll need a rotation to guard it. Another night, Doc.”
John nods. “I’ll be ready.”
Green claps him on the shoulder, the good shoulder, and John sorely misses the days when all men were so straightforward.
“Are you all right, dear?”
“Hm? Yes, fine.” John looks out the growler window at the streetlamps. The ride home passes in silence.
When they say goodnight, the guilt clings to her. It’s an odd sort of confirmation, or perhaps it isn’t. John’s not sure what to do about it.
He sleeps through strange dreams. In the morning, he orders his thoughts. Over breakfast, he says, “It’s all right.”
Mrs Hudson looks up from the tablecloth where she’s been smoothing it down again. “Sorry?”
“Not, um.” John lowers his gaze. “Not telling me Vernet’s real name. It’s him I want to hear it from, so. Not your fault. It’s all right.”
“Oh, John.”
“It’s all right,” he repeats. “Really, it is.”
“What if--”
“Even if anything.” He looks her in the eyes for that, needs to. “I know you promised not to tell, and that’s fine.”
She visibly wavers on the edge of telling him, but if she confesses it, she’ll certainly tell Holmes. John can’t, won’t speak to Holmes. Not yet. He doesn’t know what he could say. He has far too many wounds to lick first.
“I’m not sure I even want to hear it,” John says. Mrs Hudson nods and that settles the issue.
“Nothing last night, as far as I could tell,” Green announces later that morning. It’s a small gathering, only the senior staff, but the group seems a crowd inside Mr Havill’s office. “The stage hasn’t been tampered with, sir.”
“And the house?” Mr Havill prompts.
“None of the boys saw anyone, for what it’s worth. If there’s anything wrong with the seats, I’d expect it to be in the boxes, not in the stalls.”
Mr Havill nods. “And backstage?”
“Not enough eyes for that, sir. We can watch the stage and the house, but the hallways, the workshops, the dressing rooms... It’s too large a space, sir. We already know watching the entrances doesn’t work. He’s sneaking in some other way.”
“We could find other willing eyes,” John suggests.
“Eyes we can trust?” Mr Havill asks. “We’re running low on those as it is.”
“I could take watch, sir,” Miss Hooper volunteers. Next to her, Hopkins nods. “Some of the women are willing to stay, too. We could recruit the husbands?”
“Men we don’t know,” Mr Havill says.
“With all due respect, sir,” says Green, “we ‘barely know’ any of the stagehands before they’re hired and even a loyal man can be bought in a pinch. Unless the police are about to step up, we need more men.”
“The police are already doing all they can,” Mrs Hudson reminds him. “There’s more in this city than just us.”
“Dr Watson, how many army contacts do you still have?” Mr Havill asks.
“My address book went with the house, sir,” John says. “I could try to track down a few, but we’re well out of touch.”
“The musicians might bring in family members,” Mr Johnson suggests. “Just a start is better than nothing.”
“I’m sure the other ushers wouldn’t mind being called in for a late shift, sir,” Hopkins adds. “Offer a promotion to anyone who catches the ghost and we’ll have the problem solved overnight.”
“As long as nothing goes wrong with the stage or house tonight, I’ll consider extending the venture,” Mr Havill replies.
“And backstage, sir?” Green asks.
“There, we take our chances.”
They scour the boxes. They inspect every seat in the house. They check the pit, the trapdoors, the flies, the stage lights. They secure the doors, the windows, every entrance to the roof. John sneaks down to the secret door beneath the staircase only to find this entryway to the tunnels boarded up.
That night, ushers stand guard against patrons straying from the house. The doormen keep careful watch. The staff in the cloakroom pats down the collected coats and cloaks in case of further smoke bombs.
They wait and they wait, and nothing goes awry. At the end of the performance, the opera house tenses as a united whole, straining to hear the approach of disaster beneath the roar of applause.
And yet, nothing.
The audience departs. Slowly, the staff exhales. Some with nervous laughter, some with fear straining the shapes of their eyes, they gather together before keeping guard anew. Green bunks down in Mr Havill’s office for the night and locks himself in. John and Hopkins sit upon the stage with the ghost light at their backs. More watchful eyes wait in the wings.
The heat from the night’s performance dissipates all too soon. As John’s shoulder begins to ache with the cold, he stands and moves closer to the ghost light, certain to keep his gaze directed outward.
“Sorry, sir, but I don’t like having your shadow over it all,” Hopkins says.
“Fair enough,” John says and sits back down on the edge of the stage. He still has the scarf in his medical bag, he realises. Pushed down to the bottom by now, but he does have it. After a moment of indecision, he shifts forward and drops down into the pit. He stumbles through the landing but refuses to return for his cane.
“Dr Watson?”
“I’m getting my coat from the cloakroom. Won’t be a minute.”
“No, sir,” Hopkins says immediately. He hops down beside John, landing much more limberly. The dexterity doesn’t seem fair: Hopkins can’t be any more than six or so years younger than him. “I’ll fetch it. I can’t let you go in good conscience.”
John sighs. “Same to you. We’re in pairs tonight.” He turns and calls back into the wings, closing his eyes against the ghost light, “One of you mind the house for a minute! We’re getting coats.” He doesn’t much need to lift his voice: the house is fiendishly silent.
“Could you bring mine, sir?” one man responds. He emerges onto the stage, shielding his eyes with one hand. Jamison? Yes, that’s Jamison. “Blue scarf in the left pocket.”
“Mine ought to be next to it!” adds the second of the pair, Beaumont.
“Right!” Hopkins says. “If we don’t come back, you send someone after us.” The joke falls terribly flat.
John and Hopkins exit the pit, easing their way around chairs and music stands. Their shadows stretching far into the aisle before them, they walk toward the doors to the lobby on quiet feet, shoes muffled on the carpet.
Hopkins opens the door and slips protectively in front of John. Excessive, certainly, but warming. They listen carefully before walking out as quietly as they can. Hopkins lights a match in the dark, the light small and faint in the marble lobby. Flickers of orange against white stone guide their way to the cloakroom. His imagination overactive, John looks up at the high expanse of ceiling, seeking a face amid the balcony banisters. Nothing there, of course nothing, and yet the futile urge to look remains. Even a mouse can sound like a madman in the dark.
They enter the cloakroom. Hopkins lights another match, checks a drawer beneath the closed window and empty counter, and procures a candle. A steadier light, the candle flame dances less but hardly stands still. Quick about it, John pulls on his coat and shifts his revolver from the small of his back to his coat pocket. As he does so, Hopkins finds his coat and those of Jamison and Beaumont. John takes the candle to let Hopkins put on his coat. The rustling of cloth slithers through the night’s silence, jarringly loud.
By mutual, unspoken accord, they freeze. They listen. They nod at each other in the fragile light. Hopkins opens the door gently, gently. Candle in one hand, revolver in the other, John steps outside.
Nothing. Of course nothing.
They stand still and silent all the same, the candlelight licking up the walls. Holding the pair of extra coats, Hopkins nods toward the way they’d come.
John shakes his head. He nods toward the other side of the lobby and mouths a single word: Painting.
Hopkins’ eyes widen. He nods.
John walks without bothering for stealth. There’s no chance of it. He holds a candle in a nearly pitch room, the windows high above providing little starlight beneath the London smog. His footsteps aren’t terribly loud, only in comparison to the silence, and then John stops abruptly. His footsteps echo. The echo stops. The hesitation of John’s fading limp remains constant in footsteps and echoes both.
Following at a much more careful pace, Hopkins draws near. John raises an eyebrow at him. More than an echo? Hopkins shakes his head. Just an echo.
Even so, John checks on the remaining Vernet painting. He sees the outline of the frame first, merely the outline, a faded spot on the wall.
“It’s there!” Hopkins points to a shape on the floor.
“Oh, thank God.” It’s facedown. Stolen from the frame or merely in the process? “Check on it,” John instructs, turning around, aiming his firearm in a slow circle.
Hopkins approaches the painting quickly and John trains his revolver on the shadows closest to him. When nothing jumps out at Hopkins, John approaches as well. He stands over Hopkins as the man kneels down to inspect the damage.
“Still here, sir,” Hopkins reports with a sigh. “It’s still nailed to the stretch bar, but it’s barely attached to the frame.”
“Can we carry it back to the stage like that?” John asks. With four of them to guard it, that will be the safest place. Locking it into Mr Havill’s office with Green would simply put Green in danger on his own.
“If we wrap the coats around it, I think so. We’ll have to carry it upright.”
“Can you do it on your own? Without damaging it?”
“I think so.”
“In your own time,” John assures him, voice and hands steady.
Hopkins bundles up the Vernet with care. He cradles it to his chest, securing it with his chin. Though he vibrates with energy, defenceless in the dark, his breathing remains a calm, controlled rhythm.
“Keep close,” John instructs. A statement rather than a whisper, his words beat back the oppressive stillness from above.
Hopkins does as told, nearly bumping against him as they move. John puts himself between Hopkins and the majority of the room, keeps Hopkins between himself and the wall. Nearly holding their breaths, they leave the shelter of the wall and cross beneath the grand staircase to the house door.
With Hopkins hugging the swaddled painting, opening the door falls to John. Refusing to pocket his gun, John bites the end of the candle and keeps staring out into the lobby. Melted wax drips onto the marble as he opens the door behind him. Once Hopkins slips inside, John quickly follows. He shuts the door. His mouth tastes of wax and he nearly burns his fingers removing the candle from between his teeth.
Long, nervous strides carry Hopkins down the aisle, well ahead of John. John hurries after, each row of seats another row of shadows he must pass. After their venture into the lobby, the ghost light nearly blinds him.
“What’s that, then?” Beaumont asks.
“Bad news,” Hopkins answers.
“Ghost in the lobby,” John explains, following Hopkins around the pit and mounting the stairs. His leg doesn’t like the stairs at all. He needs to sit again soon, very soon. He blows out the candle, but not before he’s dripped wax on the stage. Green will be annoyed. “No one leaves the stage again, all right? We watch the doors, we watch the catwalks, and we have one person keeping a hand on that at all times.”
“That?” Beaumont asks.
Hopkins carefully removes the coats. John nearly helps him, but that would mean relinquishing his revolver.
“If he’s in the lobby,” Jamison begins from somewhere in the wings.
“Then we’ll know where to search in the morning,” John interrupts. “We do not chase this man, not if it means leaving the stage abandoned. We don’t know what kind of traps he’s laid out there.”
“What about the other paintings in the lobby?” Beaumont asks.
“None of the others were painted by the Earl’s uncle.”
“Oh.”
“Yes, oh. They might be vandalised or stolen, but this one, we save. We know we’re not alone. It’s too vulnerable a position, carrying paintings in the dark.”
“It really is,” Hopkins confirms.
“Begging pardon, sir, but we could sit out in the lobby just as easily as in here,” Beaumont insists.
John shakes his head. “There are paintings upstairs as well as down. Impossible to keep an eye on all of them. It’s enough of a challenge watching this place with four men, and this is the priority. Back to your position, Beaumont.”
With some grudging hesitation, Beaumont complies, bringing Jamison his coat. Hopkins returns to his spot at the edge of the stage, his back to the ghost light. For his own part, John sits on the stage, eyes on his surroundings, a hand on the painting’s frame.
Every creak of the building and scurry of a rat sets their nerves jumping. Once, near four in the morning, a creaking beneath the stage has John pointing his revolver at the trap door for long minutes, Hopkins checking nervously over his shoulder.
At long last, dawn arrives. Mr Havill follows on its heels, bids them all a good morning, and sends them home to sleep. Stubborn to the last, John remains on the stage with the painting until Mr Havill escorts him and it to his office. John explains the evidence of their intruder last night as Mr Havill unlocks the door.
Inside, a bleary-eyed Green reports the office undisturbed. They stow away the painting with care and Mr Havill promises to wire the Earl immediately. Only with that promise does John consent to return home.
He sleeps through the morning and most of the afternoon before Eliza knocks at his bedroom door. “Dr Watson, you said to wake you,” she reminds him from the hallway.
“Right, yes, thank you,” he calls back. He sits up feeling groggy and a bit ill, his stomach empty and acidic. Supper first, opera house after. He doesn’t lose much time in dressing and eating, all told. After a cold night of insufficient movement, his leg aches terribly. He’s forced to take up his cane once more.
Even in his compromised condition, he arrives at the opera house well before the house opens for the night’s performance. The Vernet painting has been reinstalled to its proper location. They’ll be moving it each night, John imagines, but he sees the sense in it. Keeping it on the wall is a much needed symbol of defiance.
“He was in here last night,” a smooth voice says from behind him.
John doesn’t startle, but he turns around more quickly than is perhaps best for his leg. “Good evening, my lord.”
“Quite.” His own cane clearly for show, the Earl regards his painting. “Tell me, what did you see?”
John provides a full report, detailing his progress with Hopkins from the second house door toward the cloakroom and over to the painting. “It was the second night we were covering the stage. It wasn’t difficult to imagine he’d change targets.”
“Then where tonight?” the Earl muses. Though he likely means to wonder where the ghost will strike overnight, John’s mind leaps to another track.
“I’ll have Hopkins inspect Box Five before the performance.”
The Earl shows his teeth. To be called a smile, it would have to reach his eyes. This motion barely touches his nose. “Your concern is noted, Doctor, but measures have already been put into place.”
“I’m glad to hear it, my lord.” John fixes his mouth in a polite shape. “If you’ll excuse me, I ought to see how everyone is faring after the matinee.”
“Tell me, Dr Watson,” the Earl says before John can so much as turn to go. “Are you armed?”
“I am, my lord.”
“But you are not standing guard over us tonight?”
“No, my lord.”
That seems to please him. “Will you be keeping watch frequently?”
“I’d planned to alternate nights, my lord. Perhaps every third night.”
“I see. That will be all.” His bored expression is the mirror of his brother’s.
John very nearly hesitates. He almost considers saying something more, words pertaining to Mr Holmes or the masked man formerly in the basement. He comes close to asking where Mr Holmes currently is, for the sake of better avoiding him and not throwing blunt objects at each other’s heads.
Instead, John departs as steadily as he can. Having had time to consider it, he’d prefer to keep this job.
For the second night in a row, the performance passes without incident or injury. Beyond the three smoke bombs discovered before the matinee, there’s exceptionally little sign of tampering. The ghost’s goals last night clearly centred about the painting.
Even with the ghost’s last attack rendered ineffectual, John has two patients that night. Two patrons, both suffering from nerves and the heat. Mr Havill berates the ushers after the performance, charging them to keep a lighter, less paranoid atmosphere. “How are we to keep the seats filled with the audience terrified?” he demands.
John stands at Mr Havill’s side in his office, looking straight ahead and keeping all feelings of awkwardness to himself. Being held up as an example of good conduct now is hardly the pleasure it might be in any other scenario. Hopkins looks as if he’d rather be dead than face Mr Havill.
“A game.”
As one man, Mr Havill, John and the ushers turn towards the office door, now open. John shifts his weight, ostensibly for better use of his cane, more practically to have Hopkins’ head block his sightline.
Mr Havill asks, “Would you care to repeat that, Mr Holmes?”
“Turn it into a game,” Holmes answers. The light quality to his voice grates at John’s ears, upon his nerves. “Make a farce of it. All of London knows how ‘haunted’ we are by now. There lies our advantage. We incorporate him into the performances. Any dancer in a skull mask will do. If the audience laughs, it destroys their fear as well as his pride.”
Mr Havill nods along. “It might even be a draw. ‘Now featuring: the Opera Ghost.’”
Holmes shifts in the doorway and John lowers his gaze to Hopkins’ shoulder. “We can start with a quick ballet at the end of intermission.”
“An excellent thought. Thank you, Mr Holmes. I’ll speak with Mrs Hudson shortly. Is your lord brother still present?”
“Departed for the night, I’m afraid,” Holmes replies, his tone conveying nothing akin to fear.
The Earl gone without Holmes? John frowns. He makes unwitting eye contact.
“Until morning, I’m at your disposal,” Holmes continues, looking to Mr Havill once more.
“Thank you, Mr Holmes.” Mr Havill proceeds to list those of the ushers who will be staying the night with Mr Holmes. “I’m certain that none of you will disappoint me,” he adds. With that, they are dismissed. John lingers in the office before Mr Havill directs a very pointed glance at him. Forced into the hall, John encounters Holmes.
“Heading home?” Holmes asks, falling into step with him. Trying to, certainly. John’s limp prevents their strides from syncing. It also prevents John from outdistancing him. Holmes walks on John’s left. Unfortunately, the medical bag is a flimsier barrier between them than the cane would be.
“Yes,” John answers, intentionally wheezing. His throat has recovered from the fire by now, but any escape from conversation will do.
“I’ll fetch Mrs Hudson. You should wait in the lobby.”
John shakes his head.
Holmes grips his arm.
John flinches.
It isn’t a small flinch. It isn’t subtle. It’s a full-body motion of tension and rage. It is absolute silence in the mouth and shouting in the throat.
Holmes releases him.
Neither moves.
“Your shoulder is paining you,” Holmes states, more compromise than observation. His voice is soft, controlled. His expression is doubtlessly neutral, his hurt only visible in the reproof of his eyes. John does not need to look at him to see this.
“It is,” John allows. He fixes his gaze down the hall. “If you’ll excuse me, sir.”
John limps away.
Holmes doesn’t follow.
He let that man touch him. He let that man touch him. John hasn’t simply been played for a fool, flinging himself at a man who doesn’t exist. He’s been mislead and spun about and used.
He’d already rejected Holmes. He’d shied away from his advances and made more than suitable apologies. He’d refused every last chance Holmes had offered him, chance after chance and none of them wanted.
And then, oh no, that wasn’t the end of it. Holmes knew exactly what he was doing, blindfolding John in the dark. Catching John’s hands and dragging them down before John could feel the shape of his face or touch those damnable cheekbones. Wrapping the semblance of intimacy about him like so much black cashmere.
There it is, isn’t it? That inexplicable I feel like I know you, that sense of haven’t we met before? They bloody well had, hadn’t they? That’s as explicable as it gets. The obsession, the fantasies, the compulsive picking at man and mystery both; it’s all rubbish. Every last piece of it, complete and utter nonsense. Vernet is nothing more than a lie circling round inside John’s mind. Never existed. Never happened.
Except for the snogging, of course. Two hours in the dark, sucking on the wrong man’s tongue. Squeezing a man’s bum and feeling the heat of his lust rub against his stomach, like some kind of shirtlifter.
Christ, John needs a bath. He needs to be scrubbed down to his bones, if possible. He’ll tell Eliza the hot water is for his old war wound. For last night out in the cold, for that matter. He’ll sit in the tub until the ache eases and he won’t think at all. He’ll sit and not think and he’ll stop mourning this ridiculous vision of a man who isn’t and was never real.
In the morning, he drags himself awake from a fitful, dreaming sleep. His body aches with tension and longs to fuck, angry and vicious. He fails to take care of it, his mind shifting in directions too volatile to explore.
Breakfast is a bleary, agitated affair. Mrs Hudson makes the mistake of asking after him and he nearly bites her head off. Immediately, profusely, he apologises. She doesn’t pat his hand and she doesn’t tell him it’s all right.
“We’re all nervous,” she says instead, and she doesn’t call him dear.
John apologises a second time before keeping his mouth shut.
They spend the rest of breakfast in silence and pass the cab ride to the opera house in much the same way. There’s no sign of Holmes, a small blessing. A better blessing still, John’s limp abates as motion and the heat of the opera house warm it. Tentatively, he returns the cane to Miss Hooper.
“More use than I meant to have from it,” he admits.
“Are you sure you’re ready?” she asks. When he frowns, possibly glares, she simply says, “If the ghost steals it, you’re on your own.”
The sound strange in his throat, John laughs. Not quite a twinge or the beginnings of a cough, but perhaps a small sign of continuing damage. Another reason to avoid Holmes, should he be smoking.
“Is sewing up people very different than cloth?” Miss Hooper asks without prompting.
John attempts to pull his eyebrows down from the ceiling. “There’s a bit more thrashing and flinching. Blood flow can be an issue. And sterilizing. You have to sterilize first. Leave a bit of a spot for the pus to drain out, too.”
She nods a bit. “Do you think I’d be any good at it?”
“We’re not closing down.” She’d make a fine nurse, but they can’t afford to lose her now.
“I know,” she says. “But if people get hurt again like the last time, I want to do more than tie bandages.”
For one mad moment, John considers proposing. It would solve so many problems, except for the fact that it wouldn’t at all. Instead, he starts to explain to a very attentive audience, Miss Hooper nodding and clearly doing her best to memorise everything he says.
“And that’s it, more or less,” John concludes.
Miss Hooper thanks him and returns nearly immediately to her work and the intricacies of her workshop, off to check up on those within. This quickly, he is no longer needed. As carefully as he can, John manages to walk away unaided.
“Are you staying on tonight?” Green asks during intermission.
“I suppose so.” Holmes stayed last night, so tonight ought to be clear. “Yes, I’ll be here.” John only wishes he’d thought to take a nap at some point.
“How’s your head for heights? Hopkins is rubbish.”
“If you want me on the catwalk in the dark, my head is absolutely terrible.”
“We’re trying to cover more of the back hallways,” Green explains. “If you can handle the stairs, that’s where I want you.”
“That’ll be fine.”
Green nods and they fall silent, waiting for the first of the ghost-mocking ballets to take the stage. A dancer in black cloak, trousers, and skull mask menaces through the number before becoming distracted by the other dancers’ skirts. So enamoured, their false phantom falls through the open trap door. The audience greets the number with gasps and subsequent laughter, but though the mood in the house lifts, the consequences loom.
“We’re in for it tonight,” Green mutters. John couldn’t agree more.
John takes up his position that night with steady nerves, a lamp, and his revolver comfortably in hand. He has a chair at the corner of the hall, his back and left side to the walls. Ahead and to the right is the railing around this level. It’s practically scaffolding, much of the floor space used for prop storage. Walking, not running, will be called for. Easy enough to take a tumble or to send someone flying.
This high up, the building creaks. It shifts and groans, old joints cracking. Difficult not to grow a bit jumpy. Very good that they’re taking shifts tonight. His partner for the next few hours is a stage technician by the name of West. New fellow but quiet and careful, the sort of fellow who knows he doesn’t look like a born Englishman and is cautious about it. He and John take turns standing. Westy proves himself a fine chap, and John sits for longer than is properly his due. Hours later, their relief arrives.
“Thank you, Mr West. That will be all.”
John’s mind refuses. It refutes the evidence of eyes and ears, because Holmes must have gone home, Holmes must have left, Holmes cannot possibly be cornering him in a shadowy hall in the middle of a stakeout. Holmes absolutely cannot be doing this, except for the obvious fact that he can and is.
Westy leaves with the old lamp, its oil running low. Keeping an eye on the shadows as they bend in the light, John watches him go. Surely the ghost will jump out at Westy and everyone will give chase instead of simply standing here for hours on end in the dark. Instead, Westy reaches the stairs without molestation.
“We’re meant to go in pairs.” Far from the rebuke John would prefer to give, this whisper will have to do.
Holmes shrugs, arms wrapped around himself despite his thick coat. Instead of a scarf, he wears his collar turned high. “We’ve an uneven number tonight.” His voice remains terribly light, nearly a mocking pitch, absolutely grating in comparison to Vernet’s false thrum. Remarkable range, but then, John already knew that.
“Very strange. It was even when I last checked. If it’s from loss of numbers, someone should have fetched me.”
“Addition, Doctor.”
The wood creaks above them. John looks up. They wait a silent moment. No further creaking comes.
“If he tries to leave through the roof, he’ll have to pass by us or Jamison and McConnell,” Holmes reminds him.
“I know that, thanks.” He’s only been standing here thinking that for hours. He tucks his gloveless right hand into his coat pocket alongside his revolver. After a short pause, he tucks his gloved left away as well, his tight fist too obvious.
“Now you’re angry with me.” An unspoken tutting accompanies his words. Thirty-five and yet to have his nose broken for him: only a lord’s brother could get away with that.
Wanting to shout and rage, John keeps his voice lowered. “He wants both of us dead. Putting a pair of targets out here wasn’t exactly good thinking.”
“We’d be bait anywhere, separately or together.”
“With all due respect, I’d prefer to be bait with reinforcements somewhat closer.” John turns away. “Put the lamp under the chair. Can’t adjust to the dark with that shining in your eyes.”
Holmes complies. The floorboards announce the shifting of his weight. The air stirs.
The sensation of breath on the back of John’s head must be imaginary, but John tenses from it all the same. “Your line of sight is that way,” John instructs. He points without looking.
“I know.”
John returns his hand to his pocket. He stares into the dark. They mute themselves, their silence far from quiet.
“You’re angry with me,” Holmes murmurs. His words stroke up John’s neck towards his ear, as delicate as the tendrils of a climbing vine upon worn stone. Assisted by a gentle breath, they brush against him, seeking cracks John once would have widened willingly.
John steels himself with no small sense of self-disgust. “Says the man who threw a helmet at my head.”
“You’re more concerned with being cornered.”
Christ. He nearly turns around at that. “If you know you’re doing it, why are you doing it?”
Holmes presses forward. The floorboards creak. “I need to speak with you.”
“‘Need’ is a strong word.”
“It is,” Holmes agrees.
Oh, good God. Not now. “Can this wait? At all? Until the sun is up or there are slightly fewer murderers in the opera house?”
“I’ll speak quietly.”
“Mr Holmes--”
“Don’t.” The floorboards groan. The back of John’s neck prickles.
John turns around instinctually, Holmes much too close to his back. John takes a step away, pressing his shoulder against the wall so the lamplight doesn’t shine directly behind Holmes. He still can’t make out Holmes’ expression and he doesn’t much care to. “I know what you’re going to say and this isn’t the time for it,” John whispers. “So lay off.”
Holmes crowds closer, the exact way one shouldn’t toward a cornered man with a gun. “You really don’t.”
There’s no stopping him, is there? “Go on, then,” John challenges, practically hissing to keep from shouting. “Surprise me.”
“Gladly.” With an irritable flair, Holmes tugs off his left glove finger by finger before thrusting his palm out for inspection.
“Yes, and?”
Holmes stares at him.
John lifts his chin and waits, arms crossed.
“You didn’t look,” Holmes prompts.
John looks. In the faint lamplight, the scar is visible, stretching up onto Holmes’ palm from under his cuff. It’s healed well, very well. John repeats, “Yes, and?”
“...I’m not sure you understand--”
“No, you might consider doing the voice as well, just in case I actually am that stupid!” His whisper rises before he cuts it off. “I am meant to be stupid, aren’t I? Some bumbling idiot who can’t tell when one man is two!”
“When it takes you half a year to catch on, yes!” Holmes’ voice drops as his volume rises.
“Would you keep it down?”
“I’m not shouting. You’re shouting.” Still lowering in pitch, a descent as controlled as any stroll down the grand staircase.
“This is my whispering voice!” John protests.
Holmes scoffs. “A stage whisper, maybe.”
John clamps his mouth shut and glares instead of yelling.
“What now, hm?” Vernet’s voice, entirely Vernet’s. His face a smudge against the dark, the lines blur. “You’re angry, so you won’t listen?”
“To what?”
“An explanation, obviously.”
“You mean,” John whispers, “how your lord brother is so concerned you’ll cause the family embarrassment that he completely contains you? And in exchange he lets you do absurd things like live in the basement on the condition that no one knows it’s you. Is that what you mean?
“Or do you mean your lord brother is afraid I’ll confirm you were the ghost in Box Five the night the chandelier dropped? Because it would be very easy to cast suspicion on you, wouldn’t it? After all, the police are looking for an overdramatic puppet master with a vendetta against your brother. Throw a mask on you and put you in the tunnels for a few months and it’s a perfect match.
“So, no, obviously your lord brother wouldn’t let you tell me unless he was certain of my loyalty. Or my assured mutual destruction, rather. Sodomy does tend to have that effect.” John twitches his mouth into a polite shape, his hands folded behind his back. “Is that the explanation you want me to hear?”
Holmes shifts closer only to retreat, a small, swaying motion that sets the floorboards creaking. “If you understand,” he asks in his false, low voice, “why are you still angry?”
“You... What the hell is wrong with you?”
Holmes sighs. “I’d give you the list, but I’d much rather yours. Your complaints are...?”
“My complaints.”
“Grievances.”
John closes his eyes. He exhales. “No. No, sod this. I’ve had enough.”
Holmes crowds closer. He speaks in the barest whisper. “You said you loved me for my character.”
A nervous giggle wells up in John’s throat. He has to turn away to laugh into his sleeve. “Christ, did I say that? Jesus.” He steps away and stands with his hands upon the railing, the wood cold and solid against his palms regardless of his glove. He ought to put the other back on. No need to shoot anyone just yet. For a moment, he simply drops his head and giggles as quietly as he can. “I already feel like an idiot: you can stop now, really.”
“You said--”
“I said?” God, John can’t even look at him. He turns his face away at the creak of Holmes’ motion. Christ, can’t the man hold still for one moment? “What I said? You said we’d discuss the logistics, that’s what you said.”
“John-!”
John has time enough to snap, “Don’t start,” before he realises what’s wrong.
He turns with a curse, grabbing his revolver out of his coat pocket, but it’s already too late. He’s never done a poorer job of keeping his guard up in his life.
“Let him go,” John orders, “or I will kill you.”
Hands tugging at the scarlet loop about his neck, Holmes gasps rattling breaths through a mouth as wide open as his terrified eyes. The man behind him is smaller, much, and uses Holmes as a shield against John’s revolver. The man is strong. When Holmes falls to his knees, the man drops with him to keep Holmes as a barrier. Between Holmes and the wooden corner beam, John can’t get a clear shot.
“I said, let him go.”
“Drop the gun,” the strangler replies.
“You’ll still kill him if I do.” Holmes has already begun to sag.
“Drop the gun. Over the rail.”
John nearly hesitates. He holds his revolver over the railing.
The strangler permits Holmes one gasping breath before tightening his grasp anew. “Drop the gun.”
John leans over the railing, straightens his arm, and fires twice around the corner beam, aiming low.
The strangler shouts, struck or grazed, and the instinct to hold his wound overpowers his grip on Holmes. Holmes crumples forward in an unbroken fall, nearly striking his head on the wall. He blocks out most of the lamp light, but it still shines where John needs it.
More startled than hurt, the strangler leaps to his feet and John fires a third time, a fourth. The strangler drops, a puppet with his strings cut. John steps over Holmes, floor space limited in the tight corner, and aims his revolver down at the strangler’s back. Behind him, he can hear the reassuring sound of Holmes’s desperate breaths.
“Tell me who sent you and I won’t kill you,” John promises. “I’m a doctor. It might not be too late. Tell me who sent you.”
Beneath Holmes’ loud breaths and the distant shouting growing nearer, John hears a dripping noise. John touches the man’s back, his damp coat. A slow rise and fall, but little more. John finds the point of entry. He summons a mental diagram.
“Oh,” John says.
The dying man says nothing.
“I could make it quick. Tell who sent you, and I’ll stop the pain.”
No response.
John retreats to where Holmes is attempting to breathe on all fours and picks up the strange lasso from the floor. He takes it to the strangler and secures the man’s hands behind his back. He returns to Holmes a second time and sits down in the chair, revolver still pointed on the strangler. He looks down at Holmes as if at a man very far away.
“Lie down on your back. You’ll breathe easier. Lie down or stand, really. No sense being hunched over.”
Holmes flops onto his back. He stares up at John as if through a haze. John really ought to inspect Holmes’ neck. Instead John sits with his palm cupped, trying not to drip another man’s blood anywhere.
Mere moments later, Green arrives with Jamison and Beaumont in tow. “What the hell happened?” Green demands. He catches sight of Holmes on the floorboards. “Mr Holmes!”
Holmes waves a hand almost lazily. “Fine,” he rasps, his voice trapped in its lower register.
“He was trying to leave this way,” John reports, explaining the obvious. He means to stand up, but he can’t seem to make his legs obey. “Could I have a handkerchief? Sorry, it’s just... well.” He shows Green his bloody palm. Green wrinkles his nose and hands his handkerchief over.
Jamison inspects the body. Beaumont holds a lantern over him. Jamison holds something up, a bunched bit of fabric that proves to be an empty cloth sack.
Green swears. “Whatever he brought in, it’s already in place.”
Holmes sits up with a sagging head, constricting his airway in a manner that makes John uncomfortable. A short struggle more and Holmes stands, tall and swaying. He touches the corner beam for support. “We search with first light. Everywhere.”
John nods and, in the company of so many observers, has no choice but to stand alongside Holmes once more. “In the morning,” John promises.
A general murmur of agreement rises from the stagehands and Green. Behind them, through the floorboards, the corpse continues to drip into the darkness below.
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