The Watches of the Night

by Darcy Lindbergh

  Our suspect veered into an alley, and Holmes pulled me against the wall so he could peer around the corner. 'All right, Watson?'

  I meant to say, yes, what's happening? Instead what I said, surprising us both, was, 'I love you.'

  Holmes looked back at me, incredulous. 'Is this really the time?' he asked. 'We're about to catch a murderous sect of monks.'

  'Needs must,' I shrugged, utterly unembarrassed.

  He cast a quick glance around to make sure we were alone, then kissed me, hard, right there in the open street. 'I love you, too,' he said, laughing, though his eyes were serious. 'Now that that's settled – I think it's time to stop this blasphemy.'

  My joys continued to multiply.

  'Here, now,' Holmes said, stopping me right outside the sitting room with a hand on my chest and a smile on his lips. 'Close your eyes.'

  I obliged him, laughing in response to his good mood. He opened the door and left me standing in the hall, and then I could hear the soft strains of music. At first I thought he'd picked up his violin, but then a hand took mine, startling me, and he pulled me toward the centre of the room.

  'All right,' he said, near my ear. A hand settled on my hip; the other shifted in my hand, moving into position for a dance. 'Open your eyes.'

  I did, grinning wide. 'You've acquired a gramophone.'

  'You enjoy my music,' he said, with an almost bashful smile. I was transfixed by it. 'And the concert halls. And I wanted very much to ask you to dance.'

  'Then I shall do my best,' I promised, squeezing his hand, 'though I warn you, I'm not very good.'

  Together we fell into a rhythm, moving around the sitting room step by step. I was clumsy compared to his elegant bearing, but he didn't seem to mind.

  'You'll pick it up in no time,' he assured me, laughing again. 'There, see – you've already found the beat.'

  Chapter Nineteen

  The gentle rhythm of the train was a comforting, soothing movement beneath us as we made our way back toward London. The case had led us out to a farm in Somerset, where, after three grueling days, Holmes had finally discovered the murderer hiding away in the root cellar of his dilapidated family home.

  With the culprit in irons, we'd caught the last train out of Taunton. Holmes had begun the journey with a sly grin and a conspiratorial eye, but I knew he was exhausted beyond his limitations, and in the privacy of our compartment, I had only kissed him briefly, and then held him as he succumbed to the physical demands of his body.

  He did not often push himself like this anymore, and I was grateful there seemed to be some reprieve in sight for his later years. When we first had lived together, I'd often feared that he would sacrifice his health and, ultimately, his life in pursuit of his work. Now, I thought, with a grateful smile, he had other pursuits to occupy his thoughts.

  The sky was beginning to brighten as we approached the bustle of the city. I kissed Sherlock's brow, waking him gently. 'Nearly there,' I murmured, watching him sniff in protest. 'Time to go home and get you to a proper bed.'

  'Hullo! What's this?' Holmes said, picking up a copy of The Strand from our sideboard. '"The Sussex Vampire." Tell me, Watson, did you manage to admit your usefulness in filing Vampirism in Hungary, so long ago?'

  'Mm.' I had been drowsing on the sofa for a few hours, occasionally waking to a kiss or to Holmes' rambling speech. He was especially spirited tonight, but his busyness only served as a comfortable reminder that he was there, and I smiled up at him. 'I don't believe I made mention of myself, no.'

  'You never make mention of yourself if you can help it,' he said, flipping open the magazine. He read the story aloud, his voice brimming with pride and fascination.

  'It was a good case,' I said, on its conclusion. 'You're right to be proud of it.'

  'My dear boy,' he laughed. 'It's not the case I am proud of, but you. The successful writer, who has made so much of me.'

  'I thought you didn't like my stories,' I protested, without heat. 'Over-romantic simplifications, are they not?'

  He leaned over the sofa, kissing me in order to quiet me. 'I'm allowed to change my opinion.'

  The kissing lasted a while longer, but I grumbled obligingly when he pulled away, making sure not to laugh. 'Your opinion, dearest, is awfully biased.'

  Sherlock stretched beneath me, sighing deeply as he shivered through the aftershocks of his orgasm. I am sometimes biased too, for I loved him like this, loose and relaxed, still trembling with the force of my effect on him. I kissed his cheek and jaw until he laughed and pushed me playfully away.

  'Hush now,' he said, closing his eyes with a smile. 'I want to sleep next to you for a while before I have to go back to my own bed.'

  'You can sleep late,' I told him, dodging his hands and sliding in to press a kiss to his ribs and his belly, just barely beginning to go soft with age. He was still sticky with our combined fluids, though I'd cleaned most of it away. 'You do half the time anyway.'

  'Mrs Hudson must think we are the laziest tenants in all London,' he agreed, giggling again as he tried to escape my ticklish kisses. 'Haven't you had enough?'

  'No,' I said, laughing against him. 'I'll never have enough of you.'

  'Yes, well,' he said. I knew without looking that he would be blushing; I looked anyway. 'You're incorrigible.'

  I could not deny it. 'I can hardly be blamed,' I said, sliding up to kiss him properly, smiling against his mouth. 'It's your fault for being beautiful.'

  'Holmes, wait.' I caught at his arm before he could take off, eager to find a hansom before the suspect got away. 'I'll meet you at home when this is done.'

  Holmes met my eyes with surprise and concern. 'You're not coming?'

  I tapped my cane against the pavement. 'I think an able-bodied man would be better suited for the task tonight,' I said. 'Take Hopkins instead, and do try to avoid trouble.'

  If we'd been alone, Holmes would almost certainly have reached to massage my thigh, offering to soothe the old wound with tender hands. Instead he clasped his own hands together as if to stop himself. 'You're very certain?'

  'Entirely. Finish this up and then come tell me the entire story. I'll want to take notes for The Strand, you realise, so be sure to remember the details just right.'

  Holmes grinned. 'So you can disregard them in due time?'

  'I must disregard them upon my own judgement,' I explained, in a haughty tone. 'Which means I must have all of them to begin with, so I can pick them off at my leisure.'

  'I could see you home, at least. The theft has already occurred – it would not prejudice the case if I – '

  'Go,' I laughed, cutting him off. 'Just be sure to catch the damn blackguard.'

  I was already in bed by the time Holmes arrived back to Baker Street. I heard him come in and set a few things on the table, and had barely managed to raise myself to my elbows when the door opened and he came in, illuminated by the dark light of a lamp.

  'Oh,' he whispered, startled. 'You're here.'

  'Hope you don't mind,' I whispered. 'My leg, and the stairs – '

  'Not at all, old boy.' He set down the lamp, stripping off his collar and waistcoat. 'Is it any better? Anything I could do?'

  I eased myself back against the pillow. 'No,' I sighed. 'Just wait for it to pass. Mary used to – ' I cut myself off. I didn't speak of Mary if I could help it, and especially not here, in Sherlock's bed, just as he was about to join me. Every thought of her was a swell of guilt over my heart; every mention of her was a stab of hurt into Sherlock's.

  'It's – ' he hesitated, cleared his throat. He was standing next to the bed in nightshirt and bare feet, as though he couldn't bring himself to get in. 'It's all right. Tell me.'

  'I don't even remember what I was going to say,' I lied, but Holmes shook his head, and called my bluff.

  'You do,' he said. 'But you don't wish to say. I don't mind, John. I know you must think of her sometimes. I know you must miss her as you missed m
e.'

  I wished he would put out the lamp so I would not have to see his face as he said such a thing. 'I don't care to make you uncomfortable,' I said. 'Let's forget it. Come to bed.'

  He did, but after I was sufficiently pillowed against him, his long fingers rubbing into the sore muscles of my leg, he spoke again, very quietly. 'I would not have you pretend that she wasn't a part of your life, you know. It would hardly be fair to you, and hardly fair to her.'

  'But is it fair to you?' I returned. 'To be reminded of such heartache as I caused us?'

  'Isn't it? To know your heart to be capable of such love?' His fingers on my chin tilted my face up. 'I would have her remembered, not forgotten.'

  I had not been aware of the pressure on my chest, but it eased so suddenly I was moved almost to tears; I kissed him, trying to explain what I could not say. 'Thank you.'

  'You're a good man, John Watson,' he said. 'And Mary will live well beyond her burial.'

  It was a quiet evening, and I was making the most of it, writing furiously as Holmes plucked an absent tune on the violin. The story had taken hold of me and I was reaching the climatic deduction, speeding along as fast as the ink would allow, words coming easily, dialogue flowing naturally, and –

  And Holmes made an ugly noise across the violin strings. I startled in my chair. ‘Sherlock Holmes!' I looked back at the page, but the words seemed far away now. 'I've lost my focus.'

  Holmes put the violin aside. 'However can I make it up to you?'

  Clearly, he'd grown jealous of the attention I was placing in his fictitious counterpart. I sniffed, unaffected by the display. 'By leaving me alone and sitting very quietly for the next hour.'

  'Oh, come now,' he said. 'Surely it can't be that difficult to regain your focus?'

  'It is,' I said. 'You know very well you don't like interruptions when you're working.'

  'Yes, but I do finely detailed chemical work.'

  'Finely detailed! You don't know the half of it, my dear fellow. You try writing one down, if you're so sure of yourself.'

  'Fine,' he answered, 'I shall,' and he came to steal away my pen. I let him, sitting back and waiting for his show of confidence to backfire.

  I did not wait long.

  'Here now, Watson,' Holmes said, putting a gleeful full stop on the page he'd just finished. 'Not only have I proven anyone can write a little story, I've thought up a brilliant solution to our little problem, and you're going to be very impressed, I should think.'

  'I usually am,' I agreed. I'd grown lazy in my chair by the fire while he wrote, and felt much more inclined toward him than I had several hours ago.

  We barely ever spoke of our problem: of our relationship and the innumerable consequences if we were ever discovered, but it weighed heavily on us both. My status as a widower would not protect us from suspicion forever, after all, but as Holmes began to read, I was surprised to learn I was a widower no longer – that I'd apparently married again, and gone away.

  When he finished, he set the pages aside. 'I doubt we'll be able to keep up the fiction under scrutiny, though. You shall have to stop publishing, and I shall have to fade into obscurity.'

  'It is a worthy sacrifice for me,' I said.

  'For me as well,' he replied, leaning in, and then our rooms grew hushed for a while – with the occasional gasp – as we appreciated several of his solution's many benefits.

  Chapter Twenty

  He was sitting by the fire when I arrived home from a night out at my club, his hands steepled before his mouth. His right shirtsleeve was still buttoned at his wrist; his left was rolled back to the elbow.

  Neither of us said a word. I sat in the chair across from him and took him by the wrists, feeling absently for his pulse. It beat steadily underneath his skin.

  'I haven't,' he said suddenly, giving voice to my thought. 'I wanted to. I even bought the bottles. But I knew – I didn't want to give you cause to leave.' He gestured over, and sure enough, I saw two glass bottles sitting on the table, gleaming innocently in the lamplight. They still looked full.

  Carefully, not trusting myself yet to speak, I lifted his left hand to my mouth, kissing the pale underside of his wrist before rolling his cuff back down and buttoning it into place. 'I will never leave,' I promised solemnly. 'Whatever you do, I will never leave you, Sherlock.'

  His lips parted on a shaky inhale. 'Get rid of them, John,' he pleaded. 'Please destroy them.'

  I did so, and then I sat with him, holding both his hands in mine until the night was through and the dark sky finally began to turn to bronze.

  Everything was still, but change was coming.

  Sherlock's hand slid through the bedsheets, seeking out mine. Our fingers tangled together in the last shadows of the night, warm and soft; his palm pressed close against mine. 'I think we should leave Baker Street,' he whispered into the hush.

  I inhaled slowly, exhaled slower. 'Where shall we go?' I whispered back.

  There was a shift across the pillows as he looked at me; I looked back. His eyes were soft in the early light. 'You don't protest?'

  'No. You've been taking fewer clients; I've been taking notes to write a book. I think perhaps it's time for us to move on from this life. I assume you know already.'

  'Sussex, I should think.'

  I laughed softly, wondering how long he had been planning our shared retirement. 'All right,' I agreed. 'Sussex.'

  'So it's settled,' he said, raising our hands to examine them, illuminated by the creeping morning. 'It's time for the next adventure. You'll write your book, and I'll study apiculture, and we shall see what good we can do at loving one another.'

  'It sounds perfect,' I said, drawing his hand down to kiss the back of it. 'It will be just us, then. Just you and me.'

  'And the bees.'

  I smiled and closed my eyes. 'Yes. And the bees.'

  It was a strange thing, to say goodbye to London, to Baker Street.

  Of course we would be back – Holmes would not be able to resist an evening in town for the symphony or an especially desperate plea for a private consultation from Scotland Yard, but I suspected we would have our hands quite full out in the countryside, and our best intentions of visiting were likely to be waylaid often.

  Still, London was our city: where we had found each other, where we had followed each other. We had run down these alleys together, sat in these restaurants, listened to these gossips and these newsboys and these society ladies, going about their trades. It was a familiarity that I was increasingly nostalgic over as our days there came to a close.

  ‘We'll see them again,' Holmes said to me, as I watched Lestrade and Gregson depart down Baker Street. Their good-byes had been brief and mannerly, no more than professional courtesy on the surface, but their handshakes had betrayed their true regrets at our leaving.

  ‘It will be different, though,' I said.

  Holmes stepped close behind me, wrapped an arm loosely around my waist: an easy, unexpected comfort. ‘It will,' he said. ‘But different isn't bad, John.'

  ‘No,' I agreed, relaxing into him. ‘I'm sure it'll be for the better.'

  'You're different here,' Holmes said, our second week at the little cottage on the Downs. He was down to his shirtsleeves, smoking a pipe, smiling around the mouthpiece.

  'Different how?' I asked, setting aside my pen. The stories now were no more than journal entries, but the habit was too well established to give it up entirely, even if they did go to a dispatch box rather than a publisher's press.

  'I haven't quite sorted it out yet,' he answered. He rose from his chair quickly and came to bend around me at the desk. 'I think I know you too well to see the change as it's happening, the way a man can't see his own hair growing out until he's in need of the barber. Give me time, though. I'll get to the bottom of it.'

  'I believe it,' I said, reaching up to him before he could spirit himself away. 'I know your methods.'

  I already k
new what he was seeing, though. I felt it every foggy morning, in every cup of tea or violin song drifting into the heathers. It was a warm, soaring feeling, the way a bird might feel in flight; I felt bigger, somehow, more open in my chest, as though for the first time in my life, I could take a full breath.

  Epilogue

  Sunlight creeps across the garden, bright and burnishing as it washes over the flowers. There's something poised about the world in the mornings, something simple and serene and suspended, as though a breath has been taken in, and is waiting to be released.

  It is into this peace that Sherlock Holmes has walked with me.

  The shadows of our life have begun to fade, and I am no longer surprised by the refuge we have found here, with our hands clasped together and our faces turned up to the sun. We have abandoned our hiding places, and it no longer surprises me to look up and find him looking back at me.

  Not observing. Not deducing.

  Just looking. Just knowing that we are together, and we are here.

  There are still adventures. There are still papers towering with things we are not yet ready to forget; there are still books brimming with things we might yet want to know. There are still evenings spent poring over this problem or that, and musings that last long into the watches of the night.

  But there are also kisses that no longer fade away with the darkness, and a promise that no longer goes unspoken after the shadows recede.

  Every night comes to a close, and somewhere over the horizon, a new dawn breaks.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to Leslie, for her work on this project as a beta, a cheerleader, and a shoulder to cry on over the last months of this project as well as the last few years of everything else, and to LeighAnne, for solving all my problems one panic at a time, and to the rest of the pocket gays for being pocket gays. No idea what anyone does without a set.