Incurable (the inevitability of clockwork, the unpredictability of fire)
It was a June wedding, of course.
Watson was perfectly uniformed, holding himself too tightly. Holmes, sober, laid his hands onto parade ready shoulders, warm and silent, until they lowered the half an inch they were raised. Running a knuckle under a clean shaven jaw, he spoke quietly. “Good show, old boy.” Watson breathed in the absence of the smell of gunpowder.
---
Holmes produced the rings. Not a parlour trick, but the greatest gift he had ever given. The gold reflected in Watson’s eyes, as he gave him away.
---
Breakfast was an entirely too loud and joyous affair, the light flashing threateningly from the blades of butter knives, and the sound of china cups echoing back on itself in a deafening crescendo. Holmes focused on Watson, an anchor in this quotidian strangeness.
---
Speaking low, inaudibly softly, Holmes’ words tangled in the whiskers of the carriage horse. The short, fine hairs painted patterns of saliva across his palms. Only when husband and glowing wife were safely inside did he step back from the horse’s head. Turning his back on the dust and sparks flung up by hooves and wheels, he slid his hand into a hidden pocket in the lining of his morning coat and drew out a small silver flask.
---
The practice grew marvellously at its new premises. The patients loved having a woman’s touch about the place. It was restful, calm. Watson took on new patients, continued to tend the old ones, and Mary, and the house.
Sometimes, as he walked through the socially acceptable parts of town, he’d look into the alleys, looking for something dark, grubby, unspeakable. The alleys looked into him, too.
---
The incomparable incompetence of Scotland Yard never ceased to surprise Holmes. He wondered whether the city would crumble without him, inexorably, like Venice, into the river. In an act of supreme selflessness, he took on cases like a holed ship takes on water, washing over each other, filling his mind with the muddy water of murder.
It was a wet autumn, and his boots accumulated strata of clay, dust, soil, like a personal geology. The boots were a diary, written for eyes that would never read them. Unread, they were nothing but leather locked in mud.
---
Unwrapping his scarf, and taking his gloves off smartly, one sharp tug to each finger, Watson kissed Mary on the forehead, lips bitten by the frost in the air. She closed her book, sliding a scrap of embroidery between the pages, and placed it on the mantel as she stood to greet him.
“Darling, I do believe your moustache is beginning to collect icicles.” Her tone was sparkling, bright as her eyes, full of humour and affection. Watson looked weary, drawing a warm, bare finger over his eyebrows.
“I’m sorry.” He sat down in the chair by the fire, still warm from Mary’s body, and held out a hand to her. She took it, gracefully, warmly.
“I was thinking of a little get together, next Saturday perhaps.” He looked up at the flames casting orange shadows over her face, shining with mischief. “Just a few close friends, nine or ten at the most.” He smiled, nodded, gestured that she should continue. “I thought we might invite Holmes.”
The flinch was instinctive, like the recoil from gunfire. Watson’s face flickered like a Dantean soul in the fire light for the seconds it took him to school it back to calm. His hand fell, empty, over the arm of the chair.
“We haven’t seen him since the wedding, it’s nearly six months now. Wouldn’t you like to see him?”
Her voice was gentle, but strong, and he raised a hand on which to rest his forehead. Mary took a seat in the chair on the opposite side of the fireplace. “I’ve been reading your journals, John, your adventures.”
“I made my choice, Mary.” He looked up, earnest from beneath his skin, willing her to stop.
“You aren’t the man I married without him. I miss your wildness, the feeling you had after seeing him, like you’d been standing too close to the lighting.” She shivered in remembrance of it, watching his eyes flood clear and dark with memories she would never be privy to. “Visit him,” like a fist to a displaced bone, she felt him crack, “please.”
Watson surrendered, like a drowning man, to a fait accompli.
---
It was the street door that woke him, but Holmes recognised the step in the hallway before it reached the stairs. Watson always walked rhythmically, the click of the cane providing a counterpoint for the heartbeat of his foot fall; one light, one heavy. By the time the footsteps had reached the landing, he was sitting in the chair, head tipped back, eyes closed. He was beginning to catch the scents, too; street air, starched linen, a vaguely medicinal syrup with bitter undertones. He heard the door click, and opened his eyes as if from sleep.
“Watson, old man, a pleasure to see you.”
“You have known it was me from the foot of the stairs, Holmes. Let us begin, at least, with honesty.” Watson dropped himself into an empty chair, extracting a small metallic something from the seat, as he settled.
Holmes opened his mouth to protest, to bat the ball back into Watson’s court, but something about the tone drew him up short. “Yes,” it was almost to himself, talking in his sleep, “yes, perhaps we should.”
---
Nothing. If anyone had happened to peer through the window of number 221B Baker Street, nothing would be what they would see, and even through the ill fitting glass of the windows, nothing would be what they would hear.
Watson had his temple rested heavily on his knuckles, and his eyes fixed, blankly staring at a powder burn on the rug at his feet that had not been there six months before. Elbows on knees, Holmes had his fingers steepled, index fingers under his chin, middle fingers resting on the bow of his lips. The intensity of his attention could have melted ice; never wavering, barely blinking. The only sounds in the room were the rhythms, rhymes and half rhymes of two bodies breathing, the inevitability of clockwork and the unpredictability of fire.
---
“You are tired.” Typically Holmes; not a question, not a doubt, just bare fact. Watson raised his eyes a little. “The skin below your eyes is dark, and creased. Your step is heavier, the limp more pronounced. You are cold, beyond that which can be accounted for by the weather.” Setting his jaw, Watson dropped his eyes back to the rug, scuffing the small black smudge with his toe. “Judging by the colour of your irises, and the stress lines behind your jaw, you are also angrier than I have ever seen you.” Watson’s breath tripped, stumbled, before it caught itself and evened again. “Why are you here, dear man?”
“I made my choice, Holmes.” Eyes flickering around the fire place, over six months of mud on Holmes’ boots, refusing to read the signs and symbols in the room.
“So you did. A wise choice. I remember it well.”
Sudden as a thunderclap; eye contact. “So why am I here?”
The air rolled between them, claustrophobic, as though there wasn’t enough oxygen in the room, and each breath was a battle, a body blow, a gasp. The soft, wet sound of Holmes swallowing sounded loud across the gap between the chairs. “You screwed your courage to the sticking place, made a promise, and it didn’t come true.”
He smiled, warily; “How is she?”
“She sent me here,” drowning.
“A wise woman,” Holmes nodded, “I saw that in her, amongst other characteristics. But of that, the less said. Medicine didn’t cure you, with the familiarity with the repulsiveness of flesh. The army didn’t cure you, with the knowledge of the brutality and horror of men. Marriage hasn’t cured you, with the availability of the tender mercies of a good woman. Has it crossed your deep and highly educated mind, that perhaps you can’t be cured?”
“The things we do, Holmes - ” his voice was strangled, thick and full of something that defied language.
“Are a little unorthodox, as Mycroft reminded me the day he met you.” Holmes sounded amused, a small smile threatening to break across his face. “But, you must admit, very effective.” Static raced through Watson’s eyes, and Holmes sobered. “We solved some of the greatest crimes of our day.” The smile fading. “It just isn’t quite right without you. The world has no romance. Elegance has no art.”
Holmes’ movements were slight, quiet, smooth as a buttered snake. He balanced lightly on the arm of Watson’s chair, resting an arm along the back, very carefully not touching him at all. Watson slid, imperceptibly, until his face was pressed to the fabric of Holmes’ shirt, breathing the dangerous scent of him, feeling the beat of his heart. Holmes allowed his arm to fall, impossibly gently, across Watson’s shoulders, fingers tightening in the rough, damp sleeve of his jacket.
---
In the space between a heartbeat and a breath, Watson looked up into Holmes’ face. He looked lost, and found, a soft hard bundle of contradictions.
“I can’t offer you absolution, dear one,” intimate as confession.
Watson reached up, his hand barely shaking, and pulled Holmes into a kiss, gentle as rain. They were resting their lips together, moving minutely, remembering, re-establishing, regrouping.
Holmes stood up, breathing heavily, lips red and wet. Watson couldn’t look away. He held out a hand, inclined his head, “Come.”
Folding his wet jacket over the back of the chair, leaving his boots by the fire, Watson followed. Hypnotised, hand in hand, no longer drowning.
They lay together, facing each other, heads on one pillow. Holmes’ fingers played at the collar of Watson’s shirt, while Watson’s tangled in his hair. Like children learning to kiss, like lovers learning to wait, they held each other against the gathering dawn.