Flux
By Taleya

Watson tries. He really does.   When Holmes and Clarke go after Moriarty he stays at home. With his wife.  A married man with greater concerns.  And when the case comes up dry and Holmes spends hours puffing on his pipe and espousing on theories, resting his boots on their decided doily-free footstool Watson congratulates himself on making the right choice.  He is a married man. His life is different now.  It has to be.   

He turns down the next invitation to join Holmes on a case as well.   He cannot be doing these sorts of things now.  He's a married man. Married. To Mary.  There are doors he must close, including the one in Holmes' face when he becomes a bit too insistent and won't leave and he turns and gives his wife a small smile, proud of himself for resisting temptation.    Except there's something behind Mary's eyes he can't quite pin down, a peculiar line to her mouth.

A week passes, and something starts to itch in the small of his back as he makes his rounds, and sometimes he grips his cane a little too tightly as he limps his way about the city.  When Holmes next calls on his professional opinion on a case he's perhaps a little too eager to join him.  He is a doctor, after all, and if a doctor is required, then that is something he is admirably suited to fill.  He promises to be back early, and promises himself he will not become involved.

The professional opinion promptly turns into a professional brawl, and he is swept up on a case and comes home far too late with his clothing muddied and torn, nursing a black eye and the itch is gone, replaced with the feeling that he has failed his marriage by falling into the same behaviour he swore to abandon.

The worst part is when he walks through the door and Mary isn't angry with him.  She greets him with a loving kiss and takes his coat, and fusses over the bruise on his cheek and offers him a dinner that's hours late and he sits there while she makes small talk about her day and about society and about their books, knife and fork frozen in his hands, the food tasteless in his mouth as he realises his marriage to her has become a bigamy; that he was already wed to his life with Holmes.

And he cannot be that kind of man.

The next time Holmes shows up, Watson is cool and polite and somewhat distant, and when Holmes leaves, he leaves alone.  Which, of course, only encourages him further.   The next time it's with a bruise fanning his cheek like a raven's wing, and a claim for a desperate need for medical attention that is entirely superfluous.  Holmes eats a biscuit and drinks the tea Mary brings them, his long, slender fingers nervous and quick and far too thin, waving through the air as he talks and talks and Watson listens and tries *not* to listen, tries not get involved, his own fingers tightening on the arm of the chair as the itch between his shoulders grows. 

Holmes leaves alone again.  And that line to Mary's mouth becomes a little bit deeper, and Watson realises that she's not happy, and resolves to work harder to be the husband she deserves.

Holmes comes again with a case, and then with a phantom fever, and then yet another case and Watson smiles and feeds him tea and treats him and turns him away time and again.  But that line on Mary's face won't go away; if anything it deepens further and further and later that night she puts down her book and quietly suggests that perhaps Holmes misses him. 

Which is of course the truth, Watson knows, but Holmes needs to realise that he is no longer the centre of his life.  He takes in his wife's gentle words and divines the meaning behind them and resolves to do better.  He does his rounds, and they attend dinners in restaurants and lazy walks on summer afternoons and if that place between his shoulders itches or his knuckles are a little too white or he's out of sorts it's simply his old wound acting up.

Holmes doesn't come for another three weeks.

Holmes isn't dead. Watson's quite sure of that. His friend is peculiar in his habits - even when they had roomed together days could pass without a word being spoken, promptly followed by long nights where the other man simply wouldn't shut up. He's pointedly absent the one time Watson visits and Watson does not go again. He surfaces occasionally in the papers, and Mary carefully reads them out to him in the gaslight, the way he used to read Holmes his cases, a peculiar tone to her voice that sounds oddly discordant.

He tries to look pleased and keeps his tone casual, dismissing her fears and reassuring her.  She is his wife. That is not his life any more.  He will not spend long nights in peril, he will not be dragged into madcap adventures like some penny-dreadful caricature.   He is a married man, and he has far better things to do.  When she raises a brow and asks after them, he quite gladly pounces in a quite improper manner, hauling her over a shoulder and up to their bedroom.

But the itch never quite goes away. 

 It is late at night when Holmes arrives again.  Watson limps down the stairs, the banister gripped tightly under a clenched fist.  A knock on the door in the night is never a good sign.  There is a patient, or there are police, or perhaps both and it's almost a relief when he opens the door and Holmes is standing there.

Holmes reeks of alcohol, a livid bruise across his face, dried blood under his nose. The coat he is hunched in is torn and muddy.  His hands are lost in his sleeves, jammed in his pockets, his hat is gone, his eyes wide and open as he stares up at Watson.

"I need your help."

A carriage passes by in the street, empty at this hour.  The neighbours are staring. Watson can feel them.  He opens the door a little wider and Holmes shuffles forward and stops on the threshold, the motion oddly stilted and a peculiar look crossing his face. 

"There is a case."  Holmes' voice is low, rough. His eyes this close are too wide, dilated and with a quiet fury Watson attributes this to cocaine in addition to the almost visible miasma of alcohol permeating the air. "There was a fight..."

"Would you like another one?"  The words are out before he can stop them, and he never does quite work out where they came from.  Holmes blinks at him, face pulling back a little, head tilting to one side and there's something that's not quite right about the gesture, the way he is standing carefully held and carefully poised and Watson's fury is no longer quite so quiet when he realises this is another act.

That Holmes would go to these extents is symptomatic in and of itself.  He realises that.  But it's three in the morning and he is tired and he has his rounds and his thrice-damned lazy walks in the park and the itch between his shoulders and there is Holmes and he reeks and Watson can hear Mary's tread on the stairs leading to their bedroom.  So he takes Holmes' arm in his hand and he tries to ignore the way the smaller man sags needily into his grip and he turns and he shoves him back out into the street.

Holmes totters on the stoop, hands still in his pockets, leaning against the railing and stares up at him with too-wide eyes.  "Watson - "

"Go home."

He shuts the door. 

Mary is waiting on the stairs.  There is a look on her face, heartbroken and shocked and her lips are forming about words he can't bear to hear so he presses his lips to hers and sweeps her into his arms, taking her back upstairs and he makes love to her. His wife. His Mary, letting the shape of her breasts, the warmth of her sex wash those too-wide eyes away from his mind.  This is his life now.  This is his world.

The next morning, there is some small guilt.  His temper of late has been too sharp. Too cutting.  Whatever else Holmes is to him, he is a friend, a dear friend, and the very least Watson could have offered him was a bed and a chamber-pot to vomit in.  He tells himself that he must be cruel to be kind, that Holmes is notoriously ignorant of smaller social cues, and larger ones are often required.  Watson is not at his beck and call.

Mary is oddly quiet, her eyes gliding to him and then cutting away, her lips forming around hesitant words she can't quite say.   He reaches out and gently closes his fingers over hers, forcing gaiety into his voice as he turns to the papers, picking out choice passages to read to her.   But the mood is still stilted and uneasy and he ends up cursing Holmes for breaking their happiness once again.

It's mid-morning and he's trying to read his papers, the words flickering past his vision rather uselessly when there's another knock on the door.

This time it's Mrs. Hudson, and he listens carefully as she tells tales of thudding feet and drunken stumbling and a coat thrown on the floor and the fact that Holmes has locked the door against her, and won't answer to her calls, not at all and all he can do is stare at her in disbelief, as if she were speaking a foreign language.

Holmes never locks his door. Not even in his blackest moods.

It is finally Mary who breaks the stalemate, reaching for his hat and his coat, pushing them into his hands.  That line is back again, etched so deeply into her face it looks almost like a scar and Watson realises that this is it. He has to make a choice, and has to make it clear.

His kiss to her is harsh, almost bruising with desperation.  He will be a better husband to her. He swears it. He will make it clear to Holmes. He will go there, and he will put an end to the foolishness and the attention-seeking and the constant demands on his time.  On their time.

Mrs Hudson takes the cab with him, fingers twining about a small handkerchief.  He offers her a comforting smile, but it's rather absent.  He's too busy composing his rant.  The itch between his shoulders is maddening now, like a physical presence cleaving past his shirt and coat to eat into his flesh like acid.  His hand convulsively opens and closes over the handle of his Gladstone bag - brought just in case, the stupid bastard has probably poisoned himself - and he tries to ignore the thrill that flickers somewhere deep inside him.  It doesn't belong. Not to him. Not any more. 

And Holmes...Holmes is probably passed out on the settee, wallowing in his own self-pity at his failed dramatics, heedless and careless.  Watson lets the proper anger swallow that flicker whole and plans to thrash the man senseless if that's what it takes.

But then they arrive and Mrs. Hudson shows him the coat she found puddled carelessly on the stairs, and in the cold daylight filtering through the windows he realises the mud from the night before is too dark and too red and his heart is seizing in his chest and the stairs are flying past under his feet, a single name breaking from his lips.

The door to their - Holmes' parlour and the room beyond is locked.  Mrs Hudson did have a spare key, but it was long lost.  He still has his own set, but he's left it at home - his real home, and there's no time and it's far more expedient to put a sharp boot to the lock.   The rooms beyond are still and silent and he feels relief, and then anger at the thought of being fooled again.

Except the rooms are too quiet, not the quiet of mere absence, but something else.  And the lamps are still lit, and the room is too quiet and there is a huddled pile of torn clothing on the floor in the shape of a man.

"Holmes..."

He should take Holmes to the hospital, where there are other doctors and nurses and clean sheets and soft voices, not half-drunk cups of tea and scattered experiments and bullet holes and the stale reek of shag winding around the noise of the carriages in the streets.  But Holmes hates hospitals and these same things smell and taste and feel like home and if he took him away and surrounded him with strangers it would be another well-intentioned betrayal and there have been far too many of those already.   

Watson tells himself this as he assess the damage, as he pulls away bloodied and torn cloth, as he gathers Holmes in his arms, matted hair resting against his collarbone, too warm and too still as Watson carries him carefully to his bedroom, as Mrs. Hudson hurries to stoke the fire and pulls back the sheets; he tells himself this and a thousand other reasons that the man behind the doctor desperately tries to convince himself are the truth and not the knowledge, not the fear that Holmes won't survive the carriage ride that he was too late, too late...

So he stays and Holmes stays and they stay together,  and his hands are steady and his eyes are sharp and his breath is calm and controlled as he works, as he reaches into his bag again and again and the blood wells and wells and slicks his hands and spills over the bedsheets and he calls to Mrs. Hudson for more water and more light dammit, the sound of her feet fast and frightened across the steps and the carpet and the rugs and the mess throughout.

And dear god they stomped his hands,  and the fury rises until it's swallowed by the shame and buried by the guilt and he shoves all of them deep down inside, feeling them burn all the way down to form a sickening leaden ball in his stomach as his hands keep working, keep working as the seconds bleed into minutes and then melt into hours and finally he has done all he can and sits carelessly on the floor beside the bed, legs weak and shaking, surrounded by scraps of cotton and bloodied instruments, shoving the heels of his hands savagely into his eyes.

Holmes is wrapped in bandages and sheets, too stiff and too pale on the bed, and Watson can't look at him, eyes bright and wet as he rakes bloodied fingers through his hair, looking away, hearing the breath harsh and dragging in the other man's lungs and Watson doesn't care he doesn't care just as long as Holmes keeps breathing, keeps breathing past the bandages and the blood and the betrayal and the guilt, as long as it drowns out the sound of the door Watson closed.

The light outside bleeds away into darkness.  Another needle mark joins the others. There is sulphanilamide powder scattered across the sheets.  Holmes hand is cold beneath the bandages and splits, his face unnaturally warm under Watson's gentle fingers as he gently strokes back the matted hair, sweat sleeking his fingers and mixing with the blood.

Watson is speaking now, stumbling over words.  Apologies, reassurances, they twine together and spill from his lips without form or structure, broken and twisting as the fever comes.  He sends Mrs Hudson for cool water, then ice, wrapping it and packing it carefully around Holmes' armpits and his collar and in the water he uses to wash the blood and the sweat from Holmes' skin.   The pleas become demands, and he is cursing, pressing the cloth to Holmes' face and chest again and again, skirting stitches and bruises and clenching his free hand into a fist until the nails bite through the skin in bloody crescents.

This can't be how it ends.  It can't be.

The day is gone, and night has fallen, dragging its clawed hand across the city like a shroud.    Mary comes to him, gliding almost ghost-like through the gaslight, her face white and concerned, and Watson realises he had forgotten her entirely, forgotten he was married and he can't even feel a guilt over that because Holmes is pale and shivering, half-conscious and twisting despite the morphine and the fever.   Her fingers twine gently with his, the blood on his hands seeping out to stain her fine, pale skin in whorls and lines like Afghani calligraphy.

There is a look on her face, grave, awful and she sits on the side of the bed, her hand stroking tenderly through Holmes' hair, words of her own whispering through the still of the room.  Promises.  Pleas.  She tells Holmes about soft things, gentle things, about silly things, her voice rising and falling through the night as they work together against the fever.

She never falters, never stops, pulling the cloth from Watson's trembling fingers as he sinks to the floor again in exhaustion, wiping the sweat from Holmes' face and chest with a tender benediction, and some time late into the night Holmes lets out a shuddering sigh and relaxes at last, eyes half-lidded and confused, and his lips part around something that could have been a name.

Watson closes his own eyes and presses his face to his wife's thigh in sheer relief.  He feels her fingers through his hair, her palm cupping his cheek, and looks up to see her face wet with tears.

"Oh, John... "

And Watson realises at last what that line on Mary's face meant all along; he realises that Mary isn't jealous, and she isn't angry, and she doesn’t hate Holmes, or his life, or the things that he used to do, that she loves all of him, and knows that he put himself in danger and will do it again and loves him anyway and she loves Holmes and the dam finally breaks with the awful realisation that none of it was necessary and he's left sobbing in her arms.

All Content Copyright © 2001 Taleya Joinson
Last modified: November 12, 2010