Fic for garonne: All Night Long, NC-17
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acdholmesfestTitle: All Night Long
Recipient:garonne
Author:gardnerhill
Rating: NC-17 (explicitly M/M)
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Warnings: Brief description of torture. Explicit sexual content (NOT at the same time)
Word Count: 4444
Summary: An ordeal at the hands of an enemy; a celebration in the hands of a lover. Some things are worth surviving, and worth surviving for.
Disclaimer: Fun fact: This year "The Adventure of the Three Garridebs" entered public domain. Release the hounds.
It is half-two, deep into the night, and John is awake and more than awake.
Light flares into existence as his lover sets the match down in the tallow-candle holder and looks him in the face. "Let us greet the sunrise together, my dear Beatrice."
There is nothing more to add than a return of that embrace and kiss.
"Lead on, my dear Benedick."
###
The feeble light thrown by flickering tallow candles reveals that the icy room is a farm's kill floor; judging by the level of rust on the equipment and the mould smell coming from between the slats, the farm family is long gone. Here he too may be turned into cold meat. It won't be long before he'll be silently praying for that ending.
His arms are stretched over his head, bearing his entire weight where they are bound and secured to an overhead hook.
Another blow lands in his ribs from a fist sent with the force of the former boxer that bears it; he gasps in pain, unable to protect his ribcage.
"Mr. Sigerson." The other man's voice is heavily accented but speaks perfect English. "I think you are lying to us. I think you are Sherlock Holmes, whom my employer has been hunting for many months. Ja, ja, we have heard of Sherlock Holmes' death in Switzerland. But Herr Nilsson prefers to remain suspicious. You are Holmes. Admit it."
You're a terrified explorer who normally deals with impersonal dangers like avalanches. Your English is not good. "Hvem…hvem er du? Hvorfor har du meg?" (Who are you? Why do you have me?)
Another blow. Another explosion of pain wrenching a cry from him. The one red thread he clings to is that these brutes will not kill him; Nilsson wants to kill Sherlock Holmes himself. He must remain in character throughout this ordeal or he is most certainly a dead man.
You must survive this. You must live, no matter what they do. You must return and make his grief a lie.
"Tell the truth!"
Pain explodes like a firework in his mind as the next rib gives under the boxer's fist. He sobs, babbling.
Dawn is hours away, a hundred years from now.
~~~~~
His arms are stretched over his head, pinned. The flickering tallow candle poorly illuminates the room. He sobs, babbling.
"Plus…plus – en-encore!" (More. More. Again!)
Laughter – muffled by lips tenderly tracing every line and scar around those ribs, making him shiver at the delicious brush of a moustache. Both hands are occupied with keeping his own hands pinned. "Oui, mon cher epoux." (Yes, my dear husband.) The beloved voice is steady, with no pain-hitch nor coughing spell.
Dawn is hours away, hours that will fly.
###
Another cough, and knives stabbing into his side. He groans, wracked, holding himself so as not to twist in his friend's bed, not to arch back and cry out, for that movement will kill him. There will be no sleep tonight.
. . .
He counts every shuddering breath, measures the time between coughs, assesses the volume level of the groans. If John coughs too harshly those mending ribs will crack free and drive into his lungs, and the River Street gang chief Jake Willerton will hang for murder; the sick man must take shallow breaths, suppressing his pain with a soldier's valour, so that Jake Willerton will merely live the rest of his misbegotten life in a prison cell.
~~~~~
He is pierced to his very core. He arches back and cries out. Surely this ecstasy will kill him. There will be no sleep tonight.
. . .
He has stopped counting every gasping breath, can no longer measure the time between thrusts or control the volume of his own response. If he shouts any louder Mrs. Hudson will come upstairs in a fright, and they will be on the streets five minutes after that if she is to save face. He must keep his voice low, his breaths quiet, so that Mrs. Hudson may continue pretending she does not know about them.
###
No sleep tonight. He'd hoped the long rounds would have blanked his mind and worn his body enough to permit a few hours of unconsciousness on the sofa. But the black leaden cloak still enwraps him, makes every upright step a struggle, every day a battle to rise from bed, every attempt at living made a chore. He has walked back across the bridge, and once again had to make himself finish crossing instead of slipping over the side and into the icy Thames. Out again then, for some liquid amnesia, to a hot noisy tavern that gives the illusion of life.
He raises the glass. The whisky burns its way to his core, the only warmth he has felt since burying Mary three weeks ago. He feels made of lead, cold and dull grey through and through. He'd been warm once, had remembered being alive, smiling and laughing; that had been before Switzerland, nearly three years ago now. He had once felt sorrow and pity; that had been before this January.
His usual routine is to stay till closing time, then wander the streets and alleys till he stumbles toward a cab at sunrise to head back to Kensington and oblivion on the sofa. But this night a wizened fellow, some little pickpocket or gang informant, recognises him and laughs that his own profession is a good deal easier now that Sherlock Holmes is dead, and a fire goes up in his bones.
He ends up in a cell at Scotland Yard, knuckles throbbing, with Lestrade snapping at him through the bars like a shamed father dressing down his sullen son (to the amusement of the other drunks in the cell who'd been nicked in the brawl). He had no regrets about feeling alive for a few minutes but now he is sorry he made Lestrade so cross with him. He will do better. He will drink at home by himself from now on and not throw pickpockets out of tavern windows. He will do that so he will not come in close contact with Lestrade any more, because Lestrade is a friend and that means Lestrade will die too if he stays near him. He paces in the little cell and watches the sky lighten from a barred window.
~~~~~
He rouses from a satiated doze; stretching in delicious bliss, he reaches for the item on the stand by the bed. He raises the glass; the wine glides down and glows inside like the hearth. He cannot find the other wineglass at the moment; laughing, he hands his own to the other man whose lower body is still braided with his. He leans forward to kiss a stray wine-drop off the man's lower lip and feels his husband's laugh. Sherlock Holmes is alive, and a fire goes up in his bones.
###
Pain strikes his thigh like lightning even as he whirls around on the wind-whipped mountain path. He grapples with the man – a tuppenny-ha'penny killer, no doubt some of the local talent sent on his trail from the remnants of the Professor's network. His blood spatters the stones; the wound is deep and he will bleed to death if he does not win this fight immediately. No time for niceties like a stunning blow; he slits the man's throat and leaves him to flop, gurgling and gagging as he dies, to stop his own blood. Slow, stupid – his days of ascending into the thin air and bitter cold, the last two without food, have slowed his mind and reflexes or he would not have taken injury from such as this.
And for a long moment he is paralysed. He stares at the blood fleeing the gaping wound in his thigh, soaking his trousers red. The wind feels like knives of ice, whipping round him.
He is so tired of this exile, so tired and worn. He has been running for two years now, with no sign that he will ever go home. If he does nothing the decision is out of his hands.
It is only a chimaera of his exhausted, homesick mind, but at that very moment the wind sounds like roaring water and John Watson screaming into the abyss.
He drops amid the splashed, lost blood to clamp the wound shut, shuddering against the bitter cold soaking in to his core. Another lightning-bolt of pain. What he wants is irrelevant. He has a duty to remain alive.
~~~~~
Red spatters the sheets as it spills across his chest. Before he can mourn the loss John's mouth is there, tongue sweeping to catch the spilled Bordeaux that has anointed his lover. He is breathless for a long moment, laughter paralysing him. He is warm, very warm, the hearth burning steadily in this room that is now as redolent with obscenity as a brothel chamber. They will have to open the windows well before the housekeeping is due in the morning, and as for the rest… His cry blanks out the rest of that thought when his husband's mouth descends and swallows him whole.
###
Buried alive. Oh God if he spends the night here he will die.
In Afghanistan it had been heat and pain, bone-desert dryness, endless blazing cruel sun; here it is icy Thames-water cold and pain, blackness beyond night. Then, he'd tossed and moaned in the throes of his typhus; here he cannot even draw a deep breath nor see the stone wall inches before his nose. His knees are drawn up to his bare chest, where at least two ribs are broken. Stone rings him round in this little pit, a dungeon within a dungeon; an oubliette, that most terrifying of medieval torture devices, the grated hole in the stone floor where select prisoners were interred and "forgotten" till madness or death took them.
A pale thin thread of humour makes him consider that this is an entirely unjust punishment for treating Bobbie Tuppin's mum till past sundown.
The streets and alleys where many of Sherlock Holmes' Irregulars dwelt (he couldn't call those filthy shacks homes by any stretch) have been his unofficial medical practise since the days when he returned from Switzerland alone, dry-eyed and hollow inside. In the elementary diagnoses and treatments among the poor he found a way to coax life from death (and in the decided risk of travelling among such vile alleys he found a soldier's thrill). He sees his work's worth in the brighter eyes and stronger bodies of the street-children, their weary mothers' living past birthing their fifth child. When Thurston rhapsodises about the revered names and vast holdings of his own aristocratic patients during their billiards games at the club, he must hide his smile at the memory of the robust bellows from the factory-men greeting "our doctor!" and the beer they give him that is often his only payment for a pulled tooth or set bone.
He did not stop the work even when his heart failed altogether the January that Mary died. Nor did he cease it during the long leaden days and weeks that followed. He did not even stop when his heart returned to his breast in one violent shock that April 1, enough to make him faint in his study. The work has been good for both sides; Holmes has seen the weight-gain and liveliness in his lads, and he himself has emerged from his walk through Hell still alive. It has been a through-line, this other practise of his.
But the gangs that roam these streets like wolf-packs are clearly no respecter of that work. One such group has waylaid him on his way home, his attendance to Mrs. Tuppin distracting him from the lateness of the hour when he'd left the hovel. He'd acquitted himself well but even a tiger will be pulled down at the last by a pack of dogs; he did not make it easy for them. In his favour they are ransomers, not cutthroats, specializing in wealthier-looking "pidgeons" to keep until family or friends pay up. After tumbling over names to give Big Jake (most of his close friends and acquaintances are either police or detectives) he chose Isa Whitney; Isa may be a useless addict at times but his wife will know where to go for help.
If Kate Whitney does not get to Holmes in time he will die of suffocation in here, in this pit smaller than Mary's grave. He may yet catch pneumonia, and cough a rib straight into his lungs for a fatal strike. His world is icy cold, the stink of the Thames, blackness, isolation. Light, warmth, love; things from another time. This is his world now: a world of perpetual night and never sleep.
But he will not die, not tonight, not from the likes of these. His life is not his own any more. he must live, must see the very end of this night. He will not sleep until he stands in light once more, and has looked into the grey eyes of the man he loves.
. . .
Oh god those brutes have him, those murderous creatures have taken his man prisoner. He will descend on that vile house and lay waste to –
No. He must not. He must not leave these rooms. Not though his entire being, heart and spirit and flesh, cries out against this theft, can he be seen as part of the rescue party.
Frankie the Fence sent the news, in a way that would only be readable to a man well-versed in secret codes. Watson's scratched surgical scissors, bearing the wayfarers'-code marks for "river" and "street," to let him know that the River Street ransom gang has struck a blow to pierce Sherlock Holmes to the heart.
If he is seen amid the police at the gang's headquarters during what should be a routine bust, they will know that somebody peached; the only outsider who could know anything is the pawnbroker who just bought the stolen surgical tools, and Frankie will be face-down in the Thames before sunrise as surely as if he slit the man's throat himself. Watson would never bear that price paid for his life; he'd seen too many good men destroyed for the sake of worthless brutes in Afghanistan.
So Sherlock Holmes must honour that risk with one of his own – he must trust that the police will do their work on their own, without alerting the gang and panicking them into killing their prisoner.
This begins the longest night of his life; longer than the kill floor and Nilsson's men, longer than the pitch-black icy mountainside and the bleeding knife wound he stitched himself. A dozen scenarios of failure and grief are summoned and discarded in five minutes. Every avoidable error Lestrade, the best of that lot, has made; every disregarding of procedure, every blundering charge into a tense situation by younger constables; every man who considered the Doctor a friend and wanted to personally rescue or avenge him letting that cloud his ability to follow a plan – each possibility now takes form as inevitability. An invisible fist seems to twist and pull at his insides, hollowing him the way a factory-man scoops out a hog's viscera in a slaughterhouse.
At one point the pain is so bad that he even wishes they had never become lovers – and he immediately chastises himself for the foolish thought. Had that been the case, this terror would be the same, but sodden with regret as well.
The jangle of the telephone nearly stops his heart. But it's Lestrade giving it back to him instead: they have nabbed the gang leader and a good part of its members – and have freed Dr. Watson from their clutches, damaged but alive.
Before the call is over he is collecting clean clothing, shoes and a blanket for his trip to Scotland Yard; he will not have a moment's peace until he has looked into the blue eyes of the man he loves.
~~~~~
Eyes blue and grey see only each other. The hour's lateness weighs down their bones even as their flesh couples once more; mouths merge, groaning a little for soreness as swollen arse engulfs swollen prick, emptied ballocks aching with the strain to produce. They fucked all their urgency away hours ago in the white heat of passion; now the embers remain, emitting a slow steady pulsing glow. The hearthfire agrees, its steady low coals bathing both in warmth.
One raises his legs and folds them into a secure nest to hold the two of them in a Tantric embrace; the other mouths poetry into his other self's mouth, breathing deeply through his nose so as not to end the contact.
There will be no seed-spill for a very long time, if at all. It does not matter. The one man they have become is content to exist as is.
###
He gasps awake, staring into the dark of his guest room. This is not a dream; he is in France, and Sherlock Holmes has returned from exile and is not dead. They have spent a sun-drenched fortnight on this Aquitaine winery, ostensibly aiding the vintner while healing the open wound of their parting. This afternoon they have become lovers.
Now Sherlock Holmes sleeps beside him, very much alive; that part of his dream was lying. But Mary is dead in truth, killed by the growth inside her that proved to be a tumour instead of the child they'd both anticipated. He himself is alive again as he has not been since May 1891 – and with the leaden cloak gone he now feels Mary's loss to his bones as he had not when she'd died in January.
He holds himself still, lips pressed closed, trying not to move or make a sound to disturb the sleeping man.
But the other man awakens nevertheless, and as silently pulls him close. He grips his miraculously-returned friend and lets his griefstorm sweep through his voice and out of his eyes. He does not know how long he clings to his new lover weeping uncontrollably for his lost wife; he does not remember the moment when exhaustion finally outweighs the pain and sinks him into unconsciousness.
~~~~~
He is curled in those same arms, laughing uncontrollably. "Poor Bridgid."
A bark of weary laughter. "Mon cher, even now you think of others. Yes, these are rather beyond the usage she will have handled."
This bedroom was his sickroom for nearly a month, after his beating and capture by a ransom gang near the docks whilst on his medical rounds. He'd been freed from his captivity in the basement of the gang's headquarters, with broken ribs and a bad chest-cold; the combination had left him ill and in near-sleepless pain for weeks. But now his ribs are well-knitted and pose no more deadly threat to his lungs, and his cold has subsided. He has slept long, in painless bliss, and when he awoke deep into the night was finally able to express his gratitude to his nurse.
The man who deduced his missing companion's whereabouts and sent the police to retrieve him, and who rarely left his side in that month of tending him, is relieved of his own burden. He need no longer fear a coughing fit from his charge nor a relapse back into his cold; he also has finally slept long and deeply after reclaiming his rightful bed and companion in same.
Night still holds the room, its one candle a witness to the lawbreaking of both the city's foremost champion of justice and the slum physician. The celebration has already lasted for half the length of the candle; celebratory relief has supplied the stamina for both men in place of youth neither possesses any more. They have united and dozed and awakened to unite again all this long night. At some point exhaustion will finally outweigh their love and passion and both men will melt into unconsciousness; but they are not yet at that point.
Half the night is gone, but their bedding is already beyond salvaging. Ruefully, the former patient surveys the wreck he has made once again of the sheets – this time by spilt Bordeaux and baser stains than an invalid's vomit and sweat. Both men are also a glorious mess. "We shall tell her that a mishap with your chemistry equipment quite ruined these, and we were forced to burn them in the hearth."
His co-conspirator nods. "Mrs. Hudson will give us a look, but she will purchase fresh linens. It is rather fortunate we can afford to keep her so well-supplied with princely payments."
"It's more than that, mon garçon brillant. That child said a rosary for me every night that I was ill. I can't ask her to wash this much sin."
###
He utters a cracked cry as the dark-lantern's light shines down into his oubliette. The pain is nothing as two constables hoist him out of the pit. He is alive, and light exists in the world again, and people he loves. "Inspector. Good evening." His voice is a croak.
Lestrade smiles and shakes his head at his half-naked and battered appearance; the inspector's dark eyes still glitter with the hunting fury of a stoat. "We've caught Jake Willerton red-handed at last, Doctor. Much obliged to you for that. Though Mr. Holmes will have a word with you about this, I shouldn't wonder."
~~~~~
Sprawled half across his equally-debauched spouse, John Watson gives a groan as the first pale sunlight peeps at the window, supplanting the guttering puddle of tallow in the candle-holder. "Busy old fool."
This, from a barely-recovered man no longer in his youth nor even in his prime. The unrepentant invert in Sherlock Holmes silently congratulates himself on his choice of lover.
###
Now that he is safe at the police station his physical misery crowds back in on him. The station's doctor has bound his ribs too tightly for comfort, and the tea burns his raw throat; he is starting to come down with a cold. He is still chilled despite the blanket draped over him, and he stinks of Thames sludge from his captors throwing a bucket of river water on him. He is exhausted but will be in too much pain to sleep; he longs for a hot bath but his injuries will not permit it. He wants to go home but cannot bear the thought of moving right now.
"Against my will, I am sent to bid you come in to dinner."
Warmth floods his body at that haughty tone in a beloved voice.
Heedless of the pain in his side, he looks up into eyes grey as the hearth's ashes, and as hot. He gives not one thought for the police laughing at Sherlock Holmes scolding John Watson for delaying their supper, because he recognises the words from Much Ado About Nothing; Beatrice is speaking to Benedick. Before all of Scotland Yard, the man has made it clear that it is not Sherlock Holmes the detective nor Sherlock Holmes the friend who greets him, but Sherlock Holmes his lover.
His home has come to him.
~~~~~
Sherlock Holmes groans in bliss as the sponge moves down his back, quelling an itch as well as transforming a libertine back into an English gentleman. The windows are wide open and the eloquent bedsheets have been consigned to the morning blaze, and it only remains for them to remove the criminal evidence from their persons. They are sharing the tub, standing back to chest, in the name of efficiency (sitting will be impossible for at least a day). Kisses like cherry blossoms speckle across his shoulderblades, pinpointing the sites where a little track of freckles appeared once, after that bare skin was exposed to Aquitaine sun two years before. Of course John remembers where they were.
Weariness from this night's splendid work keeps both silent. Yet apprehension curls in the belly of the erstwhile nurse. All he could say has doubtless passed through John Watson's mind, and John Watson's certain response is easily deducible to the man who knows him best. So he says it outright. "You will return to your medical practise among the Irregulars and their families."
"I will." Spoken in the tone of a doctor accustomed to having his orders followed. "I can pick and choose whether or not to risk myself in those streets, Sherlock. Those children have no such ability to choose. Every day is a struggle to survive for so many. I can at least be their medic on that battlefield."
Holmes is reminded that this is hardly the first time John Watson has been badly wounded by the enemy while ministering to others in a dangerous place. If such peril taught Watson to be cautious, the man never would have accompanied him to Lauriston Garden all those years ago.
He winces as the sponge passes a tender spot just above his left hip, a bite-mark. There are few places upon his person that are not sore right now, and Watson is the same judging from the small grunts and groans.
Madness. Neither man is young, and while John might have been a roue in his Army days he himself had lived like a monk in his twenties. This sort of sport should have been impossible for both.
He smiles. Yet this night was an act not only of passion but of love and gratitude, that also laid to rest many painful memories of the recent past.
And to a man of Sherlock Holmes' intellect… He laughs once. Ill men cannot make love for the better part of a night. The inescapable conclusion?
"Your cunning demonstration worked, John. I agree that you are indeed recovered."
"Nearly so." A prodigious yawn. "I need a proper sleep, of course. And a basket of Mrs. Hudson's oat scones with bacon and eggs. After that, once I've completed my errand all will be well."
"Errand?"
"I'm afraid that bottle was the last of our Bordeaux. I shall have to travel to Les Trois Pierres to acquire a new supply."
Les Trois Pierres. The Aquitaine winery in the south of France, the place where everything had changed. The perfect time of year to go. The perfect place to recuperate. But John had only referred to himself –
"Pack your bag." John adds it almost as if an afterthought.
His joy comes out in humour. "You wish me to come?"
Again, John recognizes a quote when he hears it, and provides the correct response, his voice also light with amusement and no longer hindered by coughing or pain.
"Yes, if you have nothing better to do."
Recipient:
garonneAuthor:
gardnerhill Rating: NC-17 (explicitly M/M)
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Warnings: Brief description of torture. Explicit sexual content (NOT at the same time)
Word Count: 4444
Summary: An ordeal at the hands of an enemy; a celebration in the hands of a lover. Some things are worth surviving, and worth surviving for.
Disclaimer: Fun fact: This year "The Adventure of the Three Garridebs" entered public domain. Release the hounds.
It is half-two, deep into the night, and John is awake and more than awake.
Light flares into existence as his lover sets the match down in the tallow-candle holder and looks him in the face. "Let us greet the sunrise together, my dear Beatrice."
There is nothing more to add than a return of that embrace and kiss.
"Lead on, my dear Benedick."
###
The feeble light thrown by flickering tallow candles reveals that the icy room is a farm's kill floor; judging by the level of rust on the equipment and the mould smell coming from between the slats, the farm family is long gone. Here he too may be turned into cold meat. It won't be long before he'll be silently praying for that ending.
His arms are stretched over his head, bearing his entire weight where they are bound and secured to an overhead hook.
Another blow lands in his ribs from a fist sent with the force of the former boxer that bears it; he gasps in pain, unable to protect his ribcage.
"Mr. Sigerson." The other man's voice is heavily accented but speaks perfect English. "I think you are lying to us. I think you are Sherlock Holmes, whom my employer has been hunting for many months. Ja, ja, we have heard of Sherlock Holmes' death in Switzerland. But Herr Nilsson prefers to remain suspicious. You are Holmes. Admit it."
You're a terrified explorer who normally deals with impersonal dangers like avalanches. Your English is not good. "Hvem…hvem er du? Hvorfor har du meg?" (Who are you? Why do you have me?)
Another blow. Another explosion of pain wrenching a cry from him. The one red thread he clings to is that these brutes will not kill him; Nilsson wants to kill Sherlock Holmes himself. He must remain in character throughout this ordeal or he is most certainly a dead man.
You must survive this. You must live, no matter what they do. You must return and make his grief a lie.
"Tell the truth!"
Pain explodes like a firework in his mind as the next rib gives under the boxer's fist. He sobs, babbling.
Dawn is hours away, a hundred years from now.
~~~~~
His arms are stretched over his head, pinned. The flickering tallow candle poorly illuminates the room. He sobs, babbling.
"Plus…plus – en-encore!" (More. More. Again!)
Laughter – muffled by lips tenderly tracing every line and scar around those ribs, making him shiver at the delicious brush of a moustache. Both hands are occupied with keeping his own hands pinned. "Oui, mon cher epoux." (Yes, my dear husband.) The beloved voice is steady, with no pain-hitch nor coughing spell.
Dawn is hours away, hours that will fly.
###
Another cough, and knives stabbing into his side. He groans, wracked, holding himself so as not to twist in his friend's bed, not to arch back and cry out, for that movement will kill him. There will be no sleep tonight.
. . .
He counts every shuddering breath, measures the time between coughs, assesses the volume level of the groans. If John coughs too harshly those mending ribs will crack free and drive into his lungs, and the River Street gang chief Jake Willerton will hang for murder; the sick man must take shallow breaths, suppressing his pain with a soldier's valour, so that Jake Willerton will merely live the rest of his misbegotten life in a prison cell.
~~~~~
He is pierced to his very core. He arches back and cries out. Surely this ecstasy will kill him. There will be no sleep tonight.
. . .
He has stopped counting every gasping breath, can no longer measure the time between thrusts or control the volume of his own response. If he shouts any louder Mrs. Hudson will come upstairs in a fright, and they will be on the streets five minutes after that if she is to save face. He must keep his voice low, his breaths quiet, so that Mrs. Hudson may continue pretending she does not know about them.
###
No sleep tonight. He'd hoped the long rounds would have blanked his mind and worn his body enough to permit a few hours of unconsciousness on the sofa. But the black leaden cloak still enwraps him, makes every upright step a struggle, every day a battle to rise from bed, every attempt at living made a chore. He has walked back across the bridge, and once again had to make himself finish crossing instead of slipping over the side and into the icy Thames. Out again then, for some liquid amnesia, to a hot noisy tavern that gives the illusion of life.
He raises the glass. The whisky burns its way to his core, the only warmth he has felt since burying Mary three weeks ago. He feels made of lead, cold and dull grey through and through. He'd been warm once, had remembered being alive, smiling and laughing; that had been before Switzerland, nearly three years ago now. He had once felt sorrow and pity; that had been before this January.
His usual routine is to stay till closing time, then wander the streets and alleys till he stumbles toward a cab at sunrise to head back to Kensington and oblivion on the sofa. But this night a wizened fellow, some little pickpocket or gang informant, recognises him and laughs that his own profession is a good deal easier now that Sherlock Holmes is dead, and a fire goes up in his bones.
He ends up in a cell at Scotland Yard, knuckles throbbing, with Lestrade snapping at him through the bars like a shamed father dressing down his sullen son (to the amusement of the other drunks in the cell who'd been nicked in the brawl). He had no regrets about feeling alive for a few minutes but now he is sorry he made Lestrade so cross with him. He will do better. He will drink at home by himself from now on and not throw pickpockets out of tavern windows. He will do that so he will not come in close contact with Lestrade any more, because Lestrade is a friend and that means Lestrade will die too if he stays near him. He paces in the little cell and watches the sky lighten from a barred window.
~~~~~
He rouses from a satiated doze; stretching in delicious bliss, he reaches for the item on the stand by the bed. He raises the glass; the wine glides down and glows inside like the hearth. He cannot find the other wineglass at the moment; laughing, he hands his own to the other man whose lower body is still braided with his. He leans forward to kiss a stray wine-drop off the man's lower lip and feels his husband's laugh. Sherlock Holmes is alive, and a fire goes up in his bones.
###
Pain strikes his thigh like lightning even as he whirls around on the wind-whipped mountain path. He grapples with the man – a tuppenny-ha'penny killer, no doubt some of the local talent sent on his trail from the remnants of the Professor's network. His blood spatters the stones; the wound is deep and he will bleed to death if he does not win this fight immediately. No time for niceties like a stunning blow; he slits the man's throat and leaves him to flop, gurgling and gagging as he dies, to stop his own blood. Slow, stupid – his days of ascending into the thin air and bitter cold, the last two without food, have slowed his mind and reflexes or he would not have taken injury from such as this.
And for a long moment he is paralysed. He stares at the blood fleeing the gaping wound in his thigh, soaking his trousers red. The wind feels like knives of ice, whipping round him.
He is so tired of this exile, so tired and worn. He has been running for two years now, with no sign that he will ever go home. If he does nothing the decision is out of his hands.
It is only a chimaera of his exhausted, homesick mind, but at that very moment the wind sounds like roaring water and John Watson screaming into the abyss.
He drops amid the splashed, lost blood to clamp the wound shut, shuddering against the bitter cold soaking in to his core. Another lightning-bolt of pain. What he wants is irrelevant. He has a duty to remain alive.
~~~~~
Red spatters the sheets as it spills across his chest. Before he can mourn the loss John's mouth is there, tongue sweeping to catch the spilled Bordeaux that has anointed his lover. He is breathless for a long moment, laughter paralysing him. He is warm, very warm, the hearth burning steadily in this room that is now as redolent with obscenity as a brothel chamber. They will have to open the windows well before the housekeeping is due in the morning, and as for the rest… His cry blanks out the rest of that thought when his husband's mouth descends and swallows him whole.
###
Buried alive. Oh God if he spends the night here he will die.
In Afghanistan it had been heat and pain, bone-desert dryness, endless blazing cruel sun; here it is icy Thames-water cold and pain, blackness beyond night. Then, he'd tossed and moaned in the throes of his typhus; here he cannot even draw a deep breath nor see the stone wall inches before his nose. His knees are drawn up to his bare chest, where at least two ribs are broken. Stone rings him round in this little pit, a dungeon within a dungeon; an oubliette, that most terrifying of medieval torture devices, the grated hole in the stone floor where select prisoners were interred and "forgotten" till madness or death took them.
A pale thin thread of humour makes him consider that this is an entirely unjust punishment for treating Bobbie Tuppin's mum till past sundown.
The streets and alleys where many of Sherlock Holmes' Irregulars dwelt (he couldn't call those filthy shacks homes by any stretch) have been his unofficial medical practise since the days when he returned from Switzerland alone, dry-eyed and hollow inside. In the elementary diagnoses and treatments among the poor he found a way to coax life from death (and in the decided risk of travelling among such vile alleys he found a soldier's thrill). He sees his work's worth in the brighter eyes and stronger bodies of the street-children, their weary mothers' living past birthing their fifth child. When Thurston rhapsodises about the revered names and vast holdings of his own aristocratic patients during their billiards games at the club, he must hide his smile at the memory of the robust bellows from the factory-men greeting "our doctor!" and the beer they give him that is often his only payment for a pulled tooth or set bone.
He did not stop the work even when his heart failed altogether the January that Mary died. Nor did he cease it during the long leaden days and weeks that followed. He did not even stop when his heart returned to his breast in one violent shock that April 1, enough to make him faint in his study. The work has been good for both sides; Holmes has seen the weight-gain and liveliness in his lads, and he himself has emerged from his walk through Hell still alive. It has been a through-line, this other practise of his.
But the gangs that roam these streets like wolf-packs are clearly no respecter of that work. One such group has waylaid him on his way home, his attendance to Mrs. Tuppin distracting him from the lateness of the hour when he'd left the hovel. He'd acquitted himself well but even a tiger will be pulled down at the last by a pack of dogs; he did not make it easy for them. In his favour they are ransomers, not cutthroats, specializing in wealthier-looking "pidgeons" to keep until family or friends pay up. After tumbling over names to give Big Jake (most of his close friends and acquaintances are either police or detectives) he chose Isa Whitney; Isa may be a useless addict at times but his wife will know where to go for help.
If Kate Whitney does not get to Holmes in time he will die of suffocation in here, in this pit smaller than Mary's grave. He may yet catch pneumonia, and cough a rib straight into his lungs for a fatal strike. His world is icy cold, the stink of the Thames, blackness, isolation. Light, warmth, love; things from another time. This is his world now: a world of perpetual night and never sleep.
But he will not die, not tonight, not from the likes of these. His life is not his own any more. he must live, must see the very end of this night. He will not sleep until he stands in light once more, and has looked into the grey eyes of the man he loves.
. . .
Oh god those brutes have him, those murderous creatures have taken his man prisoner. He will descend on that vile house and lay waste to –
No. He must not. He must not leave these rooms. Not though his entire being, heart and spirit and flesh, cries out against this theft, can he be seen as part of the rescue party.
Frankie the Fence sent the news, in a way that would only be readable to a man well-versed in secret codes. Watson's scratched surgical scissors, bearing the wayfarers'-code marks for "river" and "street," to let him know that the River Street ransom gang has struck a blow to pierce Sherlock Holmes to the heart.
If he is seen amid the police at the gang's headquarters during what should be a routine bust, they will know that somebody peached; the only outsider who could know anything is the pawnbroker who just bought the stolen surgical tools, and Frankie will be face-down in the Thames before sunrise as surely as if he slit the man's throat himself. Watson would never bear that price paid for his life; he'd seen too many good men destroyed for the sake of worthless brutes in Afghanistan.
So Sherlock Holmes must honour that risk with one of his own – he must trust that the police will do their work on their own, without alerting the gang and panicking them into killing their prisoner.
This begins the longest night of his life; longer than the kill floor and Nilsson's men, longer than the pitch-black icy mountainside and the bleeding knife wound he stitched himself. A dozen scenarios of failure and grief are summoned and discarded in five minutes. Every avoidable error Lestrade, the best of that lot, has made; every disregarding of procedure, every blundering charge into a tense situation by younger constables; every man who considered the Doctor a friend and wanted to personally rescue or avenge him letting that cloud his ability to follow a plan – each possibility now takes form as inevitability. An invisible fist seems to twist and pull at his insides, hollowing him the way a factory-man scoops out a hog's viscera in a slaughterhouse.
At one point the pain is so bad that he even wishes they had never become lovers – and he immediately chastises himself for the foolish thought. Had that been the case, this terror would be the same, but sodden with regret as well.
The jangle of the telephone nearly stops his heart. But it's Lestrade giving it back to him instead: they have nabbed the gang leader and a good part of its members – and have freed Dr. Watson from their clutches, damaged but alive.
Before the call is over he is collecting clean clothing, shoes and a blanket for his trip to Scotland Yard; he will not have a moment's peace until he has looked into the blue eyes of the man he loves.
~~~~~
Eyes blue and grey see only each other. The hour's lateness weighs down their bones even as their flesh couples once more; mouths merge, groaning a little for soreness as swollen arse engulfs swollen prick, emptied ballocks aching with the strain to produce. They fucked all their urgency away hours ago in the white heat of passion; now the embers remain, emitting a slow steady pulsing glow. The hearthfire agrees, its steady low coals bathing both in warmth.
One raises his legs and folds them into a secure nest to hold the two of them in a Tantric embrace; the other mouths poetry into his other self's mouth, breathing deeply through his nose so as not to end the contact.
There will be no seed-spill for a very long time, if at all. It does not matter. The one man they have become is content to exist as is.
###
He gasps awake, staring into the dark of his guest room. This is not a dream; he is in France, and Sherlock Holmes has returned from exile and is not dead. They have spent a sun-drenched fortnight on this Aquitaine winery, ostensibly aiding the vintner while healing the open wound of their parting. This afternoon they have become lovers.
Now Sherlock Holmes sleeps beside him, very much alive; that part of his dream was lying. But Mary is dead in truth, killed by the growth inside her that proved to be a tumour instead of the child they'd both anticipated. He himself is alive again as he has not been since May 1891 – and with the leaden cloak gone he now feels Mary's loss to his bones as he had not when she'd died in January.
He holds himself still, lips pressed closed, trying not to move or make a sound to disturb the sleeping man.
But the other man awakens nevertheless, and as silently pulls him close. He grips his miraculously-returned friend and lets his griefstorm sweep through his voice and out of his eyes. He does not know how long he clings to his new lover weeping uncontrollably for his lost wife; he does not remember the moment when exhaustion finally outweighs the pain and sinks him into unconsciousness.
~~~~~
He is curled in those same arms, laughing uncontrollably. "Poor Bridgid."
A bark of weary laughter. "Mon cher, even now you think of others. Yes, these are rather beyond the usage she will have handled."
This bedroom was his sickroom for nearly a month, after his beating and capture by a ransom gang near the docks whilst on his medical rounds. He'd been freed from his captivity in the basement of the gang's headquarters, with broken ribs and a bad chest-cold; the combination had left him ill and in near-sleepless pain for weeks. But now his ribs are well-knitted and pose no more deadly threat to his lungs, and his cold has subsided. He has slept long, in painless bliss, and when he awoke deep into the night was finally able to express his gratitude to his nurse.
The man who deduced his missing companion's whereabouts and sent the police to retrieve him, and who rarely left his side in that month of tending him, is relieved of his own burden. He need no longer fear a coughing fit from his charge nor a relapse back into his cold; he also has finally slept long and deeply after reclaiming his rightful bed and companion in same.
Night still holds the room, its one candle a witness to the lawbreaking of both the city's foremost champion of justice and the slum physician. The celebration has already lasted for half the length of the candle; celebratory relief has supplied the stamina for both men in place of youth neither possesses any more. They have united and dozed and awakened to unite again all this long night. At some point exhaustion will finally outweigh their love and passion and both men will melt into unconsciousness; but they are not yet at that point.
Half the night is gone, but their bedding is already beyond salvaging. Ruefully, the former patient surveys the wreck he has made once again of the sheets – this time by spilt Bordeaux and baser stains than an invalid's vomit and sweat. Both men are also a glorious mess. "We shall tell her that a mishap with your chemistry equipment quite ruined these, and we were forced to burn them in the hearth."
His co-conspirator nods. "Mrs. Hudson will give us a look, but she will purchase fresh linens. It is rather fortunate we can afford to keep her so well-supplied with princely payments."
"It's more than that, mon garçon brillant. That child said a rosary for me every night that I was ill. I can't ask her to wash this much sin."
###
He utters a cracked cry as the dark-lantern's light shines down into his oubliette. The pain is nothing as two constables hoist him out of the pit. He is alive, and light exists in the world again, and people he loves. "Inspector. Good evening." His voice is a croak.
Lestrade smiles and shakes his head at his half-naked and battered appearance; the inspector's dark eyes still glitter with the hunting fury of a stoat. "We've caught Jake Willerton red-handed at last, Doctor. Much obliged to you for that. Though Mr. Holmes will have a word with you about this, I shouldn't wonder."
~~~~~
Sprawled half across his equally-debauched spouse, John Watson gives a groan as the first pale sunlight peeps at the window, supplanting the guttering puddle of tallow in the candle-holder. "Busy old fool."
This, from a barely-recovered man no longer in his youth nor even in his prime. The unrepentant invert in Sherlock Holmes silently congratulates himself on his choice of lover.
###
Now that he is safe at the police station his physical misery crowds back in on him. The station's doctor has bound his ribs too tightly for comfort, and the tea burns his raw throat; he is starting to come down with a cold. He is still chilled despite the blanket draped over him, and he stinks of Thames sludge from his captors throwing a bucket of river water on him. He is exhausted but will be in too much pain to sleep; he longs for a hot bath but his injuries will not permit it. He wants to go home but cannot bear the thought of moving right now.
"Against my will, I am sent to bid you come in to dinner."
Warmth floods his body at that haughty tone in a beloved voice.
Heedless of the pain in his side, he looks up into eyes grey as the hearth's ashes, and as hot. He gives not one thought for the police laughing at Sherlock Holmes scolding John Watson for delaying their supper, because he recognises the words from Much Ado About Nothing; Beatrice is speaking to Benedick. Before all of Scotland Yard, the man has made it clear that it is not Sherlock Holmes the detective nor Sherlock Holmes the friend who greets him, but Sherlock Holmes his lover.
His home has come to him.
~~~~~
Sherlock Holmes groans in bliss as the sponge moves down his back, quelling an itch as well as transforming a libertine back into an English gentleman. The windows are wide open and the eloquent bedsheets have been consigned to the morning blaze, and it only remains for them to remove the criminal evidence from their persons. They are sharing the tub, standing back to chest, in the name of efficiency (sitting will be impossible for at least a day). Kisses like cherry blossoms speckle across his shoulderblades, pinpointing the sites where a little track of freckles appeared once, after that bare skin was exposed to Aquitaine sun two years before. Of course John remembers where they were.
Weariness from this night's splendid work keeps both silent. Yet apprehension curls in the belly of the erstwhile nurse. All he could say has doubtless passed through John Watson's mind, and John Watson's certain response is easily deducible to the man who knows him best. So he says it outright. "You will return to your medical practise among the Irregulars and their families."
"I will." Spoken in the tone of a doctor accustomed to having his orders followed. "I can pick and choose whether or not to risk myself in those streets, Sherlock. Those children have no such ability to choose. Every day is a struggle to survive for so many. I can at least be their medic on that battlefield."
Holmes is reminded that this is hardly the first time John Watson has been badly wounded by the enemy while ministering to others in a dangerous place. If such peril taught Watson to be cautious, the man never would have accompanied him to Lauriston Garden all those years ago.
He winces as the sponge passes a tender spot just above his left hip, a bite-mark. There are few places upon his person that are not sore right now, and Watson is the same judging from the small grunts and groans.
Madness. Neither man is young, and while John might have been a roue in his Army days he himself had lived like a monk in his twenties. This sort of sport should have been impossible for both.
He smiles. Yet this night was an act not only of passion but of love and gratitude, that also laid to rest many painful memories of the recent past.
And to a man of Sherlock Holmes' intellect… He laughs once. Ill men cannot make love for the better part of a night. The inescapable conclusion?
"Your cunning demonstration worked, John. I agree that you are indeed recovered."
"Nearly so." A prodigious yawn. "I need a proper sleep, of course. And a basket of Mrs. Hudson's oat scones with bacon and eggs. After that, once I've completed my errand all will be well."
"Errand?"
"I'm afraid that bottle was the last of our Bordeaux. I shall have to travel to Les Trois Pierres to acquire a new supply."
Les Trois Pierres. The Aquitaine winery in the south of France, the place where everything had changed. The perfect time of year to go. The perfect place to recuperate. But John had only referred to himself –
"Pack your bag." John adds it almost as if an afterthought.
His joy comes out in humour. "You wish me to come?"
Again, John recognizes a quote when he hears it, and provides the correct response, his voice also light with amusement and no longer hindered by coughing or pain.
"Yes, if you have nothing better to do."
no subject
Date: 2020-03-20 07:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-02 04:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-03-21 08:19 pm (UTC)I've always loved stories that jump back in forth in time, and this is a wonderful example of that. You draw such clever and evocative parallels between the different strands of the story.
And your language throughout the story is a pleasure to read. If I had to pick out my favorite passage, I think it would be this one:
Kisses like cherry blossoms speckle across his shoulderblades, pinpointing the sites where a little track of freckles appeared once, after that bare skin was exposed to Aquitaine sun two years before. Of course John remembers where they were.
I have a particular fondness for Watson tending to the Irregulars and practicing medicine in the East End. And there are so many little details I loved, especially the trick with the surgical scissors. Bravo Watson! And bravo, dear anon!
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Date: 2020-04-02 05:35 am (UTC)I love parallels and it was fun to see just how many I could stuff into this one. (One of my personal favorites, Holmes taking turns spilling blood and red wine, was a hat-tip to Aristophanes' Lysistrata, where a red-wine sacrifice is explicitly substituted for a blood sacrifice for the women's anti-war oath.) This story also takes place in a timeline of the series that's had some major-league hurt and it was way past time for a good dose of comfort for both parties.
The cherry-blossom reference was a nod to one of my favorite new adaptations, Japan's "Miss Sherlock."
Other stories in the Oubliette series deal in more detail with Watson's slum practise, and one story is from Frankie the Fence's POV, regarding the scissors trick.
no subject
Date: 2020-03-21 11:49 pm (UTC)Their moments of introspection were painful and beautiful, too. I particularly loved this passage:
At one point the pain is so bad that he even wishes they had never become lovers – and he immediately chastises himself for the foolish thought. Had that been the case, this terror would be the same, but sodden with regret as well.
Your Holmes is wise.
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Date: 2020-04-02 05:58 am (UTC)And after all that angst, the least they deserve is an all-night lovemaking session.
no subject
Date: 2020-03-22 07:16 pm (UTC)(I'm also delighted to have such a lovely sequel to two of my favorite of your stories!)
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Date: 2020-04-02 06:11 am (UTC)I like parallels and it was fun to come up with as many as possible between moments of past pain and the current joyful mood.
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Date: 2020-03-29 12:31 am (UTC)It is only a chimaera of his exhausted, homesick mind, but at that very moment the wind sounds like roaring water and John Watson screaming into the abyss.
God, that is stunningly evocative and agonizing. I loved this story.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-03 05:34 am (UTC)After putting those poor guys through all that hurt in the "Oubliette" series, they definitely needed a whole lot of comfort that would also serve to put those old hurts in perspective. This is what both of them survived for.
In one of the other Oubliette stories Holmes remembers that his determination to come home and end Watson's grief saved his life three times during the Hiatus. The Himalayan scene also gave the origin of a scar mentioned in a couple of the other stories - and gave me the excuse to parallel a joyful spill of red wine in a celebration of life.
no subject
Date: 2020-03-29 11:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-03 06:06 am (UTC)I love parallels and liked trying to see just how many I could get into the story - matching every moment of pain with one of pleasure.
no subject
Date: 2020-03-30 09:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-03 06:12 am (UTC)