Holmes fic: Baker Street, 3:25 a.m.
Mar. 8th, 2009 10:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elabyYou know how sometimes you write things, and you have them mouldering on your hard drive for months and you just poke at them occasionally, and they might need just a paragraph or something to end them but other things come along to take your attention and you just never end up finishing them? Well, this is one of those, and I finally made myself pay attention to it long enough to finish the darn thing.
Oy, it gave me trouble, it did.It still does, but I had to either post it or throw it out a window, so I'm posting it. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
cox_and_co implemented a pretty straightforward fic header system recently, and I'm just going to reproduce most of that here.
Title: Baker Street, 3:25 a.m.
Rating: G
Pairing(s): Holmes/Watson (as usual it can be interpreted as slashy or not, but there is sightly more physical contact in this one.)
Disclaimer: All characters created by ACD belong to their copyright holder(s), not me.
Summary: Watson is not alone in being awake at ungodly hours, and this is something he appreciates more than he thought he would.
Word Count: 2,835
Author's Notes: Watson POV. The timeline confuses me when it comes to placing "Hound of the Baskervilles" and "The Copper Beeches," but this story is set after them and assumes that they both take place before "Sign of the Four."
I woke up in a cold sweat with the suffocating darkness of my room pressing around me like a shroud. For a blind terrifying second, I thought that I truly could not breathe, but then I realized that I had merely drawn in so much air that I must exhale in order to resume breathing. I did so, tremulously, grasping at the reality of my sheets twisted around me in an effort to drive away the unreality of the dream.
I had not been shaken like this by a dream since I first returned to England from Afghanistan, and I thanked the Heavenly powers that these did not by far approach my dreams of that time in their vivid severity.
But it was the third time in a week that I had been driven from sleep by dreams of vicious hounds burying their teeth in my neck, and I was forced to admit that it had progressed from a coincidence to something more serious.
I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and lit a candle, feeling a foolish sense of relief at the flickering light it cast into the corners of my room. My watch sat coiled on the chair beside the bed, and I took it in my hand and opened it. Three twenty-five.
I sighed. My heartbeat was returning to a reasonable level at last, but I could not hope for more sleep, at least not soon. As I sat listening to the gentle night sounds of the house, I wondered whether Holmes was still awake in our sitting room downstairs. When I left him some time before midnight, he had seemed set up for one of his all-night chemistry experiments. I could hardly hope for sympathy at being so bedeviled by nightmares, especially considering I didn't plan to tell him, but I decided it would do me good to have some company. Even if he had gone to bed, I could read in front of the fire until I felt sleepy again.
The stairs creaked beneath my slippers in the silence of the hall as I descended. I opened the door to the sitting room to find the gaslights blazing as if it were eight o'clock at night and not half-past three in the morning. Holmes was sitting where I left him, bent over a gently smoking beaker of some chemical or other. When he heard the door shut behind me he looked up. There was no surprise on his face, and if he were curious as to why I was up at this ungodly hour, he gave no indication. I did note something in his expression, a small degree of scrutiny, perhaps, but my nerves were jangling too much to give it any serious contemplation. I stood in the doorway in bit of a daze for a few moments, then made for the sofa. I was about to sit down when Holmes, his attention back on the beaker, said with a certain measure of indifference:--
"Was it dogs again?"
I started, absolutely taken aback. "How on earth did you – oh, why do I even bother asking anymore?" I sunk down onto the sofa, feeling more tired than ever. Holmes stoppered the beaker and gave it several vigorous shakes.
"I assume it is because you're generous enough to humor my whims."
That answer surprised me. It was not his wont to put things in such a self-deprecatory manner. I leaned back into the cushions. "Go ahead, then."
Holmes set the beaker into a rack and turned to face me, resting his elbows on his knees and lacing his fingers together. It was clear to me how much he enjoyed opportunities such as this, as well as he hid any expression of excitement, and had I been in a less foul mood I probably would have been happy to give him the chance. "First of all," he said, "you would never come downstairs at this late hour unless you had either been disturbed from your sleep or you had never been to sleep at all. I eliminated the latter possibility by a quick examination of your nightshirt hem – it is wrinkled. Since I met Mrs. Hudson bringing up the laundry yesterday afternoon, I knew you had fresh linens, and your nightshirt would not be wrinkled if you had not been in bed for some time. Besides that, it is easy to tell, particularly around the eyes, the difference between fatigue due to a lack of sleep and fatigue due to an abrupt awakening. You will excuse me, my dear fellow, if I say your eyes display the latter." He paused, and his gaze dropped down to mine from where it had been resting on the corner of the ceiling. I nodded dutifully to show that I was following him. "Next, because I have been sitting up, I know that we have enjoyed perfect silence all night. You could not have been awoken by any sudden noise or I would have heard it as well – and you know how acute my hearing is. Therefore, something must have woken you that caused you to abandon your warm bed for our sitting room, which while less comfortable, has the advantage of being well lit, and-" here he hesitated, "-populated." I let out a breath, feeling like a child who had been accused of being afraid of the dark. If Holmes noticed my discomfort, he did not let on. "A dream was the most logical conclusion."
"And the dogs?" I asked wearily.
"When you came into the room, you looked first to the corner of the rug by the fire where that bull pup of yours always slept for the few weeks you kept him here at the beginning of our acquaintance. I saw you shudder. Then, when you realized you had done so, you looked sad, as if regretting that the memory of such a charming animal could cause you pain. From that, I deduced that you had dreamt something unpleasant about dogs."
"You said, 'again'." I wasn't going to let him have his victory easily. After all, I had not failed to hear the sarcasm in his choice of the word charming.
"Ah. I noted that you rolled your eyes the slightest bit after your first reaction. I took that to mean that you were tiring of such things, by which I concluded that you had had similar dreams before. I will admit that the 'again' was a bit of a gamble on my part."
"Well," I said, "you're right in every particular. You know, it's disconcerting that you would know my thoughts when I haven't even registered that I've had them myself."
"That's hardly my fault," Holmes said, in a reasonable tone. "Although, allow me to point out in your defense that I have been up exercising my brain all night, whereas you have not."
I shrugged my eyebrows and stared into the dying embers in the hearth, and a silence fell between us, punctuated only by clinking glass from Holmes's chemical table. "The worst part of it is," I said at length, "I'm really quite fond of dogs."
"I must say I'm impressed you still can be, after some of our recent experiences."
He had a point: the scene at the Copper Beeches had been gruesome enough to chill a man's blood all on its own, but our encounter with the "spectral" hound at Dartmoor was even more harrowing. Let folklore say what it will; the threat of those sharp, crushing, undeniably real jaws was far more disturbing to me than any supposed beast out of Hell. The prospect of my dark, lonely room was now more than I cared to contemplate. I crossed to the bookshelf and pulled out a novel, then reseated myself on the sofa.
"I won't disturb you if I stay up?" I ventured.
"Mm-m," Holmes replied, clearly in the negative, but his attention was already back on his experiment and no longer on me. I tried to read, but the book could not hold my attention; my thoughts instead kept turning toward the ridiculous worry that if these dreams continued, my nervousness might transfer from imaginary dogs to everyday ones. I was contemplating how embarrassing, not to mention how inconvenient, it would be to jump at the sight of any dog on the street when I heard Holmes give a frustrated snarl behind me. I turned in my seat to see him sucking on his fingers and glaring poisonously at the lit Bunsen burner before him.
"Are you all right?"
He growled something incomprehensible and thrust the test-tube he held in his other hand none too gently into its rack. "I would be a damn sight better if nature had thought fit to bless me with three arms," he said. I raised my eyebrows and he sighed in the manner of a man resigned to defeat. "I see that you're reading, Watson, but would you be good enough to assist me for just a moment?"
"Certainly," I said. I pulled a chair out from our breakfast table and set it down across from him at his workbench.
"No, no, this side," said he, waving his hand at me impatiently. I moved the chair around to where he was sitting amongst a veritable forest of glass equipment and rubber tubing. Before him on the workbench stood the offending Bunsen burner and three glass dishes with small portions of crystalline substances. Holmes plucked another test-tube out of the rack and filled it with some liquid from the beaker he had been giving his attention to when I came down. With his other hand, he picked up a thin pair of tongs and lifted a chunk of substance from one of the dishes. Holmes held out the tongs to me.
"The purpose of this experiment," he said, "is to observe and document the reaction that occurs when this-" here he waved the chunk held in the tongs, "is soaked with this-" and here he motioned with his elbow to the beaker, "and then immediately dropped into the liquid in the test-tube and heated. This must all happen as close to simultaneously as possible. You can see why I had some small difficulty producing this effect with only one pair of hands."
"Indeed," I said, grateful for his uncharacteristically brief explanation. I took the tongs from him.
"Now, wait until I say to drop it in; not before." Then suddenly he grasped my hand with his and guided it toward the burner. My strongest feeling, I confess, was one of surprise at his gentleness - the moment I felt his grip I expected him to firmly direct me as if he were doubtful I was up to the task. My hand is broader than his but he has the longer fingers, and they wrapped around mine completely. I have always marveled at the graceful deliberateness of Holmes's hands. They are never clumsy; whether he is trying to pry beryls from a priceless coronet or feeling the subtle click of the most delicate safe lock, they are his faithful servants. As a surgeon, I consider myself to be more dextrous than most. I do not come close to Holmes.
"Watson," he said, jerking my attention back to the present.
"Yes?"
"Your hands are cold. That is unusual for you."
It was true, but for the life of me I could not figure out how he knew it. "Bad circulation, perhaps," I said, somewhat lamely.
"I think not. You have excellent circulation." Yet another fact I could not explain how he knew, though I hardly should have been surprised. Holmes gazed at my hand with a small thoughtful frown on his face, as if he were diagnosing me, the doctor. Then he carefully drew the tongs out of my hand. "A cold hand may be an unsteady one," he said, and he slid his other hand into mine so that our palms met. He enfolded my fingers and I sat, hardly daring to breathe, with my hand pressed between both of his.
One of the most difficult things about living with Sherlock Holmes is that nine times out of ten, I am at a loss to explain the motivation behind any one thing he does. For years he has been my closest friend, and I have accepted that most common human expressions of comfort are not in his nature. If I did not know this, and if I did not firmly believe that he saw my current wakefulness as merely an opportunity to exercise his powers of deduction, I might think that he had some other reason for his action besides ensuring my hand's steadiness. This was a dangerous line to pursue - dangerous only because I would not willingly do him the injustice of expecting something from him that he cannot give.
But then again, he could have just as easily told me to go warm my hands in front of the fire.
He was still gazing down at my hand clasped between his, and in his eyes there was no sign of the sharpness that usually accompanies his scientific focus. Instead it brought to mind violin concerts.
"Inscrutable as always," I said softly.
Holmes looked up at that, and the expression I had noticed retreated but did not vanish completely. "My methods?"
"Your motives."
There was silence for several heartbeats. "I fear they are sometimes quite as inscrutable to me as they are to you," he said finally, and his fingers loosened. I cannot deny the sudden and surprising alarm I felt at that simple motion. So loath was I to relinquish contact that in a reaction I can hardly explain, I gripped his hand, and he pressed both of his around mine in what I could not help but feel was reassurance. I could think of nothing to say, but I did not break our gaze, and after some seconds, he asked, "Warm yet?"
I started to answer, but was obliged to clear my throat first. "Yes." It was another short while still before he let go.
He gently replaced the tongs in my hand and we proceeded with the experiment. Holmes was exuberant in the extreme when the combined chemicals reacted in the way he had hoped they would, and he expounded to me on the mechanics of it in a manner more relaxed than I had seen him in ages. I admit that this shift in his mood interested me far more than the chemistry did, but I am fairly sure he did not notice that my bemused smile and occasional nods betrayed more fondness than studious attention.
Time passed as Holmes chattered away about reagents and arsenic mirrors and possible modern improvements to the Marsh test, and I leaned my chin in my hand and listened with a fascination that was, as always, divided between Holmes's conversation and Holmes himself. Natural light began to creep into the room through the early morning fog and eventually, somewhat to my surprise, Holmes noticed it.
"Ah," he said, turning his face toward the window. "Sunrise already, is it? I'm afraid I've kept you from sleep, Watson."
"I might well apologize for the same," said I, "if I didn't think you would have spent the night at your worktable regardless."
Holmes smiled and gave a brief tilt of his head. "I can be a trifle single-minded at times when something catches my interest, as I'm sure you have noticed. But must confess to you, my dear Watson, I may have monopolized your attention for selfish reasons this morning. As satisfying as it may be to perform these experiments for science's sake, I find I can only appreciate them to a certain extent on my own. Even the most spectacular chemical reaction grows tiresome to the scientist who has seen similar results dozens of times before. Your fresh perspective, Watson, allows me to take new pleasure in an old hobby. I truly am indebted to you."
"You don't know how happy I am to hear it," I said. I normally have to dig deep to unearth any comfort in my friend's statements - I have come to accept that - and it is always worthwhile when I do. Holmes seemed to sense that he had betrayed something beyond his usual detachment, and he busied himself rearranging his workbench.
"I would be willing to relinquish you now," he said with a touch of diffidence. "If you're tired."
"I'm not," I replied.
"It would not be imposing on your patience to ask for your assistance with another?"
There are few things in this world that grant me more reassurance than the idea that I can be of use to my friend. "Not in the slightest," I said. It was the least I could do, after all, for in his own way that night he had given me precisely what I needed.
Oy, it gave me trouble, it did.
cox_and_co implemented a pretty straightforward fic header system recently, and I'm just going to reproduce most of that here.Title: Baker Street, 3:25 a.m.
Rating: G
Pairing(s): Holmes/Watson (as usual it can be interpreted as slashy or not, but there is sightly more physical contact in this one.)
Disclaimer: All characters created by ACD belong to their copyright holder(s), not me.
Summary: Watson is not alone in being awake at ungodly hours, and this is something he appreciates more than he thought he would.
Word Count: 2,835
Author's Notes: Watson POV. The timeline confuses me when it comes to placing "Hound of the Baskervilles" and "The Copper Beeches," but this story is set after them and assumes that they both take place before "Sign of the Four."
I woke up in a cold sweat with the suffocating darkness of my room pressing around me like a shroud. For a blind terrifying second, I thought that I truly could not breathe, but then I realized that I had merely drawn in so much air that I must exhale in order to resume breathing. I did so, tremulously, grasping at the reality of my sheets twisted around me in an effort to drive away the unreality of the dream.
I had not been shaken like this by a dream since I first returned to England from Afghanistan, and I thanked the Heavenly powers that these did not by far approach my dreams of that time in their vivid severity.
But it was the third time in a week that I had been driven from sleep by dreams of vicious hounds burying their teeth in my neck, and I was forced to admit that it had progressed from a coincidence to something more serious.
I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and lit a candle, feeling a foolish sense of relief at the flickering light it cast into the corners of my room. My watch sat coiled on the chair beside the bed, and I took it in my hand and opened it. Three twenty-five.
I sighed. My heartbeat was returning to a reasonable level at last, but I could not hope for more sleep, at least not soon. As I sat listening to the gentle night sounds of the house, I wondered whether Holmes was still awake in our sitting room downstairs. When I left him some time before midnight, he had seemed set up for one of his all-night chemistry experiments. I could hardly hope for sympathy at being so bedeviled by nightmares, especially considering I didn't plan to tell him, but I decided it would do me good to have some company. Even if he had gone to bed, I could read in front of the fire until I felt sleepy again.
The stairs creaked beneath my slippers in the silence of the hall as I descended. I opened the door to the sitting room to find the gaslights blazing as if it were eight o'clock at night and not half-past three in the morning. Holmes was sitting where I left him, bent over a gently smoking beaker of some chemical or other. When he heard the door shut behind me he looked up. There was no surprise on his face, and if he were curious as to why I was up at this ungodly hour, he gave no indication. I did note something in his expression, a small degree of scrutiny, perhaps, but my nerves were jangling too much to give it any serious contemplation. I stood in the doorway in bit of a daze for a few moments, then made for the sofa. I was about to sit down when Holmes, his attention back on the beaker, said with a certain measure of indifference:--
"Was it dogs again?"
I started, absolutely taken aback. "How on earth did you – oh, why do I even bother asking anymore?" I sunk down onto the sofa, feeling more tired than ever. Holmes stoppered the beaker and gave it several vigorous shakes.
"I assume it is because you're generous enough to humor my whims."
That answer surprised me. It was not his wont to put things in such a self-deprecatory manner. I leaned back into the cushions. "Go ahead, then."
Holmes set the beaker into a rack and turned to face me, resting his elbows on his knees and lacing his fingers together. It was clear to me how much he enjoyed opportunities such as this, as well as he hid any expression of excitement, and had I been in a less foul mood I probably would have been happy to give him the chance. "First of all," he said, "you would never come downstairs at this late hour unless you had either been disturbed from your sleep or you had never been to sleep at all. I eliminated the latter possibility by a quick examination of your nightshirt hem – it is wrinkled. Since I met Mrs. Hudson bringing up the laundry yesterday afternoon, I knew you had fresh linens, and your nightshirt would not be wrinkled if you had not been in bed for some time. Besides that, it is easy to tell, particularly around the eyes, the difference between fatigue due to a lack of sleep and fatigue due to an abrupt awakening. You will excuse me, my dear fellow, if I say your eyes display the latter." He paused, and his gaze dropped down to mine from where it had been resting on the corner of the ceiling. I nodded dutifully to show that I was following him. "Next, because I have been sitting up, I know that we have enjoyed perfect silence all night. You could not have been awoken by any sudden noise or I would have heard it as well – and you know how acute my hearing is. Therefore, something must have woken you that caused you to abandon your warm bed for our sitting room, which while less comfortable, has the advantage of being well lit, and-" here he hesitated, "-populated." I let out a breath, feeling like a child who had been accused of being afraid of the dark. If Holmes noticed my discomfort, he did not let on. "A dream was the most logical conclusion."
"And the dogs?" I asked wearily.
"When you came into the room, you looked first to the corner of the rug by the fire where that bull pup of yours always slept for the few weeks you kept him here at the beginning of our acquaintance. I saw you shudder. Then, when you realized you had done so, you looked sad, as if regretting that the memory of such a charming animal could cause you pain. From that, I deduced that you had dreamt something unpleasant about dogs."
"You said, 'again'." I wasn't going to let him have his victory easily. After all, I had not failed to hear the sarcasm in his choice of the word charming.
"Ah. I noted that you rolled your eyes the slightest bit after your first reaction. I took that to mean that you were tiring of such things, by which I concluded that you had had similar dreams before. I will admit that the 'again' was a bit of a gamble on my part."
"Well," I said, "you're right in every particular. You know, it's disconcerting that you would know my thoughts when I haven't even registered that I've had them myself."
"That's hardly my fault," Holmes said, in a reasonable tone. "Although, allow me to point out in your defense that I have been up exercising my brain all night, whereas you have not."
I shrugged my eyebrows and stared into the dying embers in the hearth, and a silence fell between us, punctuated only by clinking glass from Holmes's chemical table. "The worst part of it is," I said at length, "I'm really quite fond of dogs."
"I must say I'm impressed you still can be, after some of our recent experiences."
He had a point: the scene at the Copper Beeches had been gruesome enough to chill a man's blood all on its own, but our encounter with the "spectral" hound at Dartmoor was even more harrowing. Let folklore say what it will; the threat of those sharp, crushing, undeniably real jaws was far more disturbing to me than any supposed beast out of Hell. The prospect of my dark, lonely room was now more than I cared to contemplate. I crossed to the bookshelf and pulled out a novel, then reseated myself on the sofa.
"I won't disturb you if I stay up?" I ventured.
"Mm-m," Holmes replied, clearly in the negative, but his attention was already back on his experiment and no longer on me. I tried to read, but the book could not hold my attention; my thoughts instead kept turning toward the ridiculous worry that if these dreams continued, my nervousness might transfer from imaginary dogs to everyday ones. I was contemplating how embarrassing, not to mention how inconvenient, it would be to jump at the sight of any dog on the street when I heard Holmes give a frustrated snarl behind me. I turned in my seat to see him sucking on his fingers and glaring poisonously at the lit Bunsen burner before him.
"Are you all right?"
He growled something incomprehensible and thrust the test-tube he held in his other hand none too gently into its rack. "I would be a damn sight better if nature had thought fit to bless me with three arms," he said. I raised my eyebrows and he sighed in the manner of a man resigned to defeat. "I see that you're reading, Watson, but would you be good enough to assist me for just a moment?"
"Certainly," I said. I pulled a chair out from our breakfast table and set it down across from him at his workbench.
"No, no, this side," said he, waving his hand at me impatiently. I moved the chair around to where he was sitting amongst a veritable forest of glass equipment and rubber tubing. Before him on the workbench stood the offending Bunsen burner and three glass dishes with small portions of crystalline substances. Holmes plucked another test-tube out of the rack and filled it with some liquid from the beaker he had been giving his attention to when I came down. With his other hand, he picked up a thin pair of tongs and lifted a chunk of substance from one of the dishes. Holmes held out the tongs to me.
"The purpose of this experiment," he said, "is to observe and document the reaction that occurs when this-" here he waved the chunk held in the tongs, "is soaked with this-" and here he motioned with his elbow to the beaker, "and then immediately dropped into the liquid in the test-tube and heated. This must all happen as close to simultaneously as possible. You can see why I had some small difficulty producing this effect with only one pair of hands."
"Indeed," I said, grateful for his uncharacteristically brief explanation. I took the tongs from him.
"Now, wait until I say to drop it in; not before." Then suddenly he grasped my hand with his and guided it toward the burner. My strongest feeling, I confess, was one of surprise at his gentleness - the moment I felt his grip I expected him to firmly direct me as if he were doubtful I was up to the task. My hand is broader than his but he has the longer fingers, and they wrapped around mine completely. I have always marveled at the graceful deliberateness of Holmes's hands. They are never clumsy; whether he is trying to pry beryls from a priceless coronet or feeling the subtle click of the most delicate safe lock, they are his faithful servants. As a surgeon, I consider myself to be more dextrous than most. I do not come close to Holmes.
"Watson," he said, jerking my attention back to the present.
"Yes?"
"Your hands are cold. That is unusual for you."
It was true, but for the life of me I could not figure out how he knew it. "Bad circulation, perhaps," I said, somewhat lamely.
"I think not. You have excellent circulation." Yet another fact I could not explain how he knew, though I hardly should have been surprised. Holmes gazed at my hand with a small thoughtful frown on his face, as if he were diagnosing me, the doctor. Then he carefully drew the tongs out of my hand. "A cold hand may be an unsteady one," he said, and he slid his other hand into mine so that our palms met. He enfolded my fingers and I sat, hardly daring to breathe, with my hand pressed between both of his.
One of the most difficult things about living with Sherlock Holmes is that nine times out of ten, I am at a loss to explain the motivation behind any one thing he does. For years he has been my closest friend, and I have accepted that most common human expressions of comfort are not in his nature. If I did not know this, and if I did not firmly believe that he saw my current wakefulness as merely an opportunity to exercise his powers of deduction, I might think that he had some other reason for his action besides ensuring my hand's steadiness. This was a dangerous line to pursue - dangerous only because I would not willingly do him the injustice of expecting something from him that he cannot give.
But then again, he could have just as easily told me to go warm my hands in front of the fire.
He was still gazing down at my hand clasped between his, and in his eyes there was no sign of the sharpness that usually accompanies his scientific focus. Instead it brought to mind violin concerts.
"Inscrutable as always," I said softly.
Holmes looked up at that, and the expression I had noticed retreated but did not vanish completely. "My methods?"
"Your motives."
There was silence for several heartbeats. "I fear they are sometimes quite as inscrutable to me as they are to you," he said finally, and his fingers loosened. I cannot deny the sudden and surprising alarm I felt at that simple motion. So loath was I to relinquish contact that in a reaction I can hardly explain, I gripped his hand, and he pressed both of his around mine in what I could not help but feel was reassurance. I could think of nothing to say, but I did not break our gaze, and after some seconds, he asked, "Warm yet?"
I started to answer, but was obliged to clear my throat first. "Yes." It was another short while still before he let go.
He gently replaced the tongs in my hand and we proceeded with the experiment. Holmes was exuberant in the extreme when the combined chemicals reacted in the way he had hoped they would, and he expounded to me on the mechanics of it in a manner more relaxed than I had seen him in ages. I admit that this shift in his mood interested me far more than the chemistry did, but I am fairly sure he did not notice that my bemused smile and occasional nods betrayed more fondness than studious attention.
Time passed as Holmes chattered away about reagents and arsenic mirrors and possible modern improvements to the Marsh test, and I leaned my chin in my hand and listened with a fascination that was, as always, divided between Holmes's conversation and Holmes himself. Natural light began to creep into the room through the early morning fog and eventually, somewhat to my surprise, Holmes noticed it.
"Ah," he said, turning his face toward the window. "Sunrise already, is it? I'm afraid I've kept you from sleep, Watson."
"I might well apologize for the same," said I, "if I didn't think you would have spent the night at your worktable regardless."
Holmes smiled and gave a brief tilt of his head. "I can be a trifle single-minded at times when something catches my interest, as I'm sure you have noticed. But must confess to you, my dear Watson, I may have monopolized your attention for selfish reasons this morning. As satisfying as it may be to perform these experiments for science's sake, I find I can only appreciate them to a certain extent on my own. Even the most spectacular chemical reaction grows tiresome to the scientist who has seen similar results dozens of times before. Your fresh perspective, Watson, allows me to take new pleasure in an old hobby. I truly am indebted to you."
"You don't know how happy I am to hear it," I said. I normally have to dig deep to unearth any comfort in my friend's statements - I have come to accept that - and it is always worthwhile when I do. Holmes seemed to sense that he had betrayed something beyond his usual detachment, and he busied himself rearranging his workbench.
"I would be willing to relinquish you now," he said with a touch of diffidence. "If you're tired."
"I'm not," I replied.
"It would not be imposing on your patience to ask for your assistance with another?"
There are few things in this world that grant me more reassurance than the idea that I can be of use to my friend. "Not in the slightest," I said. It was the least I could do, after all, for in his own way that night he had given me precisely what I needed.
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no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 02:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 09:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 04:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 09:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 08:05 am (UTC)I could really picture them both sitting there doing chemical experiments, being BFF but ever so much more as well.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 09:54 pm (UTC)being BFF but ever so much more as well.
Yeah, exactly! :D
no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 08:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 09:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-10 12:34 am (UTC)I loved this, it was so sweet, and yet so Holmes.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-10 01:15 am (UTC)I'm going to bring back your Horatio Hornblower DVDs tomorrow :3 I took some screencaps!
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Date: 2009-03-10 01:51 am (UTC)I wants your screencapping capabilites!
Oh, and I'll try to remember to bring back your Sherlock Holmes DVDs tomorrow. Shall do my best, but sometimes I just don't know what my brain is doing.
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Date: 2009-03-12 06:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-12 10:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-12 10:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-14 02:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-18 02:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-18 09:21 pm (UTC)