I'll admit it: I probably like this icon a bit TOO much
“We?” Watson snorts, because he refuses to prove so easy, or maybe because he’s a masochist, or perhaps because he wants to be convinced, more by the actual effort made in the convincing than any of the arguments which may be presented therein.
“Certainly,” Holmes insists. “You’ve been quite busy with your practice lately, I can tell, and surely you’d welcome a bit of a break.” Holmes levels one of those shrewd looks at him which somehow manages to come off as both negligently casual, yet pregnant with some meaning into which Watson would rather not look too closely, especially now that he’s finally managed to establish a rather quiet life and practice outside of Holmes’s inexorable orbit.
“...Or will Mrs. Watson not let you out to play?” he wants to know, puffing anxiously at his pipe as he cocks his head, and there’s that bit of that latent snideness on which it seemed only Watson ever had the dubious honor of being the receiving end.
Watson finally collapses into the chair across from Holmes and scowls, knowing he’s already given in, though he will refuse to admit it for as long as possible on principle, regardless of the fact that Holmes had surely known it before he himself.
“As you’ve so astutely deduced for yourself, I’m busy, Holmes.”
“A shame!” Holmes insists, burying himself back into the armchair with almost comical disappointment. “The case is rather in your line, too, Watson, doctors involved--one of your neighbours, even!”
Watson retrieves his novel stubbornly, tucking an index finger beneath the edge of the cover under the pretense of interest. “Must be quite a case, if it’s got you so agitated you’ll come knock decent fellows up at half twelve.”
With a start, Holmes puts on his most scandalized face and leans forward quite precariously in his chair. “Dear me, as if I would be so rude as to impose upon any decent man at such an hour...!”
Watson rolls his eyes, flops back in his own chair in disgust, tosses aside his novel. “Well then?”
“Well, what?”
“Are you going to tell me about this case, or have you only emerged from your den of many iniquities for the sole purpose of depriving me of my sleep, smoking my tobacco, and generally antagonizing me to the point of madness?”
“Why my dear Watson, you had only ask.” His smile is all charm, but it does nothing to lessen Watson’s desire to throttle him.
~*~
There is a long, long road ahead of me, yet, but here's hoping I actually manage this one! T‿T
Oh, and as sort of a P.S. for any of you wondering, I am still (by glacial degrees) tinkering with my monster of a Saiyuki vampire AU that is ohgodsoclosetothefinish!, though it's become exponentially more difficult now that my writing mind seems to have switched tracks to a flamboyantly pedantic diction that is all well and good for writing Holmes stuff, but does not fit AT ALL with the narrative style I've set up with the vampire fic. Ohh Sanzo, why can't you be more poetically, unapologetically, romantic? >:I