Work Text:
I came across the book entirely by accident. Our Billy had cut his hand on his knife, belowstairs, whittling at a bit of wood he'd wanted to make into a whistle. Bleeding, he'd gone to Mrs. Hudson for aid, and a look at the damage was sufficient to prompt her to call out for me. I went down to the kitchen at a run, to find him sitting upon the worktable with Mrs. Hudson's handkerchief wrapped around his maltreated palm. He thrust it out quite cheerfully for me to look at. It was clear that the hand ought to be stitched up and properly bound, so I went up to fetch my kit, only to find the bandages missing from the bag; undoubtedly forgotten in Holmes' bedchamber that past week, when a run-in with an irascible counterfeiter had left Holmes with a mildly significant wound to his shoulder, inflicted by a hastily wielded letter opener. I had treated him in bed, and had spent some hours reading to him before I had gathered my things and gone to my rest. I supposed I had simply overlooked the roll of bandage linen amidst the piles of books and notes and curios he kept about his chamber--a fascinating collection, which made the room quite charming, but notably difficult to navigate.
He was out, so I went in myself; opened wide the drapes to let in the light. The space thus exposed to my view was in its ordinary state of organized chaos. I searched the tops of his bureau and washstand without success, and then looked to the bed. I'd set out my kit there. He had lain contented under my attention, retelling with enthusiasm the conclusion of the confrontation, as though I had not been present for it all. I'd observed the joyous shine of his gaze, the flush of satisfaction over his features. He must have been in pain, but had seemed to feel only his triumph. I smiled, now, at the memory; lifted the coverlet and found nothing; under one pillow, nothing; but under the second lay the roll of linen, and beside it, a slender book.
Holmes reads often for study, but never for pleasure; for that he has his music, and our trips to the Turkish baths and the occasional concert. I'd never seen him with a book in bed. I took up the volume with some curiosity, and was startled to see that it was Oscar Wilde's just-printed, much-maligned tale of the hapless Dorian Gray. This was very interesting. What about such a story had attracted the attention of Holmes? It had raised a great stir in London; the implications of the work were significant. Wilde, I had been told, had hardly been discreet regarding the inclinations of the fictional Gray and his friends; but given the increasing brazenness of Wilde himself regarding his real amours, that was unsurprising. Was Holmes merely curious about a text that had provoked such public censure, or did he anticipate a need for the knowledge of its content in future? He had made use of far stranger material during our cases.
I may state here that I am not among those who are scandalised by the private affairs of the men whom the doctors term inverts, and society refers to politely as confirmed bachelors. It has long been accepted in England that intimate connections are common between boys at school, in the absence of female company, but while most of my friends left their fascinations of that kind behind with their boyhood, I never fully made the change. In Afghanistan, stationed with the Berkshires, I had found a companion, the first of my maturity, and no small part of my sorrow upon my discharge was due to the loss of one who had become very dear to me.
In that mood of sustained grief, along with the persistent weakness my injury and subsequent illness had brought upon me, I had been introduced to Holmes. He made an extraordinary impression on me. He is, of course, exceptionally intelligent, and he behaved kindly toward me from the start. His figure is elegant and slender, his manners somewhat delicate, belying his physical strength; his voice high and expressive, his behavior bohemian, his pleasure in beautiful things exquisite, though quiet; and I at first received the impression that he was one of my own kind. Soon enough, I learned that he was rather an emotional ascetic, and a man of logic above all; that he eschewed anything approaching the tenderer feelings.
By the time I understood that, the effect of his friendship on me had already become significant. I had regained a good deal of my strength in his company, as well as my confidence, and been stirred into a new interest in the affairs of the world. I found I was eager to play my small part in it all again, if I could do so with him. To my joy, he seemed to return my regard. He requested my presence at his private consultations with increasing frequency, and surprised me by blushing when I praised his brilliance, and often played my favorite airs for me in the evenings. He called me his dear Watson; and I thought of him as my own Holmes, if I never said so.
So I was, if not held and beheld with the love I had been used to before, still very well-satisfied with life as I found it; and if I thought him beautiful, I was content to enjoy the consciousness of it quietly as we read to one another beside our fire, or wandered through the open parks, speechless together for a little while at the loveliness of the world, before we returned to grapple with the devilry in it.
Holmes, as may be evident by this point in my narrative, is a contradictory man, both poetical and practical, tender and cold, learned and astonishingly innocent of certain things; his knowledge of philosophy, of astronomy, of politics and literature, to take a few examples, was nil. To find him reading the tale of Dorian Gray was startling to me; not only because the character of the author was in every respect opposite to that of my friend, but because it was a work of fiction, a moral tragedy under the guise of cynicism. My curiosity was piqued. I exited his room with the volume in one hand and the bandages in the other; left the book lying on the settee while I went downstairs to wrap Billy's hand. Entrusting him to Mrs. Hudson's care, I returned to our rooms intent upon searching out what there was in Wilde's writings that had merited Holmes' attention.
I lit a pipe, poked up the fire, and settled into my chair to study the thing. I made no attempt to read it from the beginning. Here and there a corner was turned down; and I sought these pages, finding a paragraph or a phrase underlined with Holmes' pencil. It became evident rather quickly that he was marking the passages which must have stirred the indignation of the self-styled guardians of societal order. His private notes adorned the margins. I soon pieced together as much of the story as I cared to. The fictitious painter Basil Hallward, it appeared, was hopelessly and rather pointlessly in love with his artistic muse, Dorian Gray, who seemed to be a very irritating young man. I found underlined in Holmes' pencil Hallward's description of Gray as made of ivory and rose-leaves, with an emphatic Absurdly romanticized, pointless, inexact! dashed off in the margin in Holmes' fine hand. I smiled. Such a description would be of little use to him in his work, certainly.
The curves of your lips rewrite history, was another phrase I found selected for his criticism. Beside this, Holmes had noted, The emotions of the writer have rendered him irrationally grandiose; the metaphor is meaningless. The personal history of the lover may have been rewritten, but never the world's.
In another place, I found underlined, We live in an age that reads too much to be wise, and thinks too much to be beautiful. I snorted, imagining Holmes' indignation at the idea, and found in the margin only a strongly written, Puerile nonsense!
But other points of the work seemed to have met with his approval. I found he had marked out certain phrases without any corrective notes:
When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self.
Your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself.
I am tired of myself tonight. I should like to be somebody else .
And, People are afraid of themselves . And beside that, in his hand, But this is necessary, given what we are.
I was beginning to feel strange. I had not expected the melancholy nature of the thoughts that had drawn his eye. I might have thought to stop, then, but for the fact that he'd also marked out parts of the romance, and I was drawn on in search of those points he'd found worthy of attention. I had never seen recorded on a page meant for the public words for the things which men like me could feel.
The love that he bore him--for it was really love--had nothing in it that was not noble.
It is quite true I have worshiped you with far more romance of feeling than a man should ever give to a friend.
From the moment I met you, your personality had the most extraordinary influence over me.
I adored you....I wanted to have you all to myself.
Of course, I never let you know anything about this. It would have been impossible. You would not have understood it. I hardly understood it.
I was overwhelmed. I suspected, were I to absorb the work as a whole, it would appear differently; but reading only those phrases which Holmes had chosen, I felt as though my heart were laid bare before me on the page; as though I saw recorded there my own most private thoughts. I could scarcely understand that Holmes had read this. It frightened me unreasonably.
Of course, I assured myself, he did not know what I was. He could not have recognized me within these pages. If he had, he would not so eagerly seek my society, nor accept my help; I had learned long before that no man trusts a man like me to leave him in peace--as though we were not capable of self-command, when in fact I had so long restrained my feelings that to see them set down in plain words felt almost wanton, an astonishing extravagance.
Yet Holmes had not thrown down the book in disgust. It had remained under his pillow while he slept.
I turned another page, and a paper fell out. Taking it up, I recognized my own handwriting. Holmes had a habit of catching up things at random from our rooms to mark the progress of his reading; evidently he had stolen this from my personal effects. I looked closer. It had been torn from the notepad in which I write my impressions of our days. This appeared to be a little character-study of Holmes. He had been reclining on the sofa while I wrote it, and I had described the dreamy expression of his eyes, the calm which had settled upon him in my company, his slender, sensitive fingers playing with the unlit pipe in his hands; the deep admiration with which I'd listened to him speak. Reading all this over, I felt myself exposed. Perhaps this particular note had not been chosen at random. Had Holmes searched my writing for sentiments like Wilde's? And what would he do, how might he feel betrayed by me, if he knew he had found them?
Borne down by dread, I looked down again at the place from which my notes had fallen, and saw marked out one sentence: Don't take from me the one person that makes my life absolutely lovely to me.
My gaze turned automatically to the margin, to find Holmes' response, but tears had risen in my eyes; I had to blink them back before I was able to read what he had written there. He had noted, in fine, even letters, How has this happened? I find I could not bear to lose him now.
I was still staring at this when I heard his step on the landing. I looked up at the creak of the door, a little wildly, and met Holmes' glance as he came in, bright-eyed and flushed from the cold outside. "Watson, my boy," he began, with enthusiasm, and stopped, taking in my expression. His gaze dropped down to the book in my hands. Such a look came over his features then as I had never seen; he paled, and stared; said breathlessly, "Pardon me," turned about and left. I heard him rush down the stairs. There was no time to think. I threw down the book, and ran after him.
He had reached the front door when I caught up to him. "Please," I said. He turned. I moved to grasp his shoulder in entreaty, and he startled and threw up his arm as if to ward off a blow, knocking my hand away. Had the world not been turned upside down scarce two minutes before, it would have been upended then.
"Holmes," I breathed, "what on earth?" He appeared still braced for a fight. I could scarcely find words. "You thought I would harm you? Because of a book?"
His eyes slid closed, and a shudder passed over him. When he looked at me again, there was something at once defiant and defeated in his gaze.
"Watson. Has it never occurred to you to wonder why a chemist such as myself should be so well versed in the defensive arts?"
My thoughts grew more confused. "Why, Holmes, it hadn't, I only thought--you know how to do everything."
He smiled at that, and a bit of the wariness faded from his features, exposing grief beneath. He looked at me as though he had already lost me. I reached again to clasp his arm, but stopped myself.
"Please," I said, "just come back upstairs with me."
Once safely inside our rooms, I sat down in my chair again, not knowing what else to do. He went to the mantle and leaned there; took his pipe in his hands, but did not light it. He looked uneasy in our own home, alone with me. It was breaking my heart. "My dear Holmes, I am so sorry," I told him. "I ought not to have looked at your book without asking you. I assumed you had purchased it for curiosity's sake. I read it in that spirit."
He said, low, "And now that you have read it?"
"I hardly know what to think," I admitted, but the last thing I had seen stuck in my mind. I could not bear to lose him. "You must realize that you will never lose my friendship. Not by my choice."
"You cannot promise me that." He would not look at me. "You speak as though you understand what you've read, but I don't think you do."
Of course he would find it necessary to insult my intelligence, even in the midst of crisis. I very nearly laughed; he was still himself, after all. Surely I could help him understand. "Please," I said, "allow me to promise you again, then, in terms so clear as to put your fears to rest if I can. Holmes, you could not shock me past acceptance. You could not lose my respect over a thing like this. I would sooner cut off my own hand than raise it against you, whatever secrets you may hold. If you tell me now that you wrote that absurd book yourself, from the events of your own life, I will remain your friend."
At that, he laughed aloud, incredulous, but a little of the fearful tension left his form. I met his gaze squarely, that he might see my sincerity. "I have violated your privacy," I said. "I will make my amends in any way you wish. I will close the subject now, if that is what you prefer; we need never speak of this again." I waited, but he was silent. He appeared to be struggling with himself. I rose to face him. "Otherwise, you may ask me any question you like. I have alarmed you, dear fellow; I would like to assuage your fears if I can."
His looked at me, the shadow of anxiety still darkening his features. "How much did you read?"
"Your notes, and every part of the text you marked for further study, I think," I said. "Some parts were rather beautiful; and some of it was sad."
He frowned. "What was sad about it?"
"When he speaks of being afraid of himself, of his own heart. Of wishing to be someone else for a while." I hesitated. "I cannot believe that you would wish for that, Holmes, being who you are."
He shook his head, but did not smile. "You have ever been the soul of kindness, Watson." He paused. His voice when he spoke again was softened, hesitant. "What about it was beautiful to you?"
This was our chance, then. Something in that book had stirred his heart and frightened him in equal measure. If he was to find his courage, and speak, I must speak first, as plainly as I could. "It was beautiful, Holmes, when he spoke of the love one man feels for another. I've never read such things described by a poet; only in clinical terms, by alienists, or with disgust, by the popular press. To see the tenderness, the affection one may hold for one's companion drawn so reverently--it captivated me."
It appeared I'd struck him speechless. I began to comprehend the melancholy tone of his notations. "Holmes," I cried, "my dear Holmes, who silenced you? Who taught you that such things were unspeakable? Is this why you make all sentiment anathema to you? You are a man, not a machine--whatever it is you hide, my dear friend, concealment is not necessary now; I will not abandon you! Believe me in this, if in anything." He remained silent, but he did not appear offended. The astonishment in his eyes made me bold. "Let me ask you this, and I will have done. Did you recognize yourself within these pages?"
"Yes." His voice was steady, but almost inaudible.
"Good. So did I."
"What?"
At last I had shocked him out of stillness; his tone was raised; he took a step in my direction. I stepped forward, too; laid a hand upon his arm. "I am telling you that I saw myself in it too. Had you never realized that men as well as women draw my eye?"
"No, never. You don't mind me knowing?"
"No. I'm not ashamed of it. And I trust you." I tightened my hand on his slender arm, studied his face. A faint color had risen in his cheeks. I stepped nearer. "I would tell you anything, admit anything you asked, my dear boy, if it meant you would believe that you are safe with me."
Holmes, my rational Holmes, placed an unsteady hand on mine, and gave me such a look that at last I understood the rest. "Oh," I whispered, seeing the expression in his eyes. "Oh, my dear."
"Am I?" he said, very quietly, and I laughed, because how could he, of all men, not know it?
"Observe," I said, "and learn," and then I kissed him.
What followed then will never be written, nor ever forgotten. Suffice it to say that Holmes has depths of feeling in him which I had never guessed at--which I suspect even he had not quite realised; and even I managed to be embarrassed by the full strength of his remarkable attention, turned toward me.
Some time later we sat together on the settee, slowly becoming capable again of unemotional speech; he had a hand in my hair, and I had laid my head upon his breast, to feel his heartbeat calming.
"Who taught you to fight?" I asked him.
"Mycroft," he said. "Long ago."
"Your brother?" I turned up my face to look at him. "He hates all forms of physical exertion."
"We were boys then. He's rather older than I, and had gone away to school some years sooner; and he recognized that I would meet with trouble when I was old enough to go too. I was too talkative for my peers' taste, John, and strange, and sure of my opinions; and I felt too much about everything."
I was not yet used to the sound of my given name in his mouth. I closed my eyes, the better to hear his voice.
"Mycroft helped me. He taught me to care less, and to reason more, and to conceal what could not be controlled; and he showed me how to box before my first term, the first of the defensive disciplines I'd master over the years. At first it did little more than give me some outlet for my frustration, but later I grew quick and strong enough for my skill to be of some use in defending myself against my peers. It's owing to Mycroft that I reached adulthood with my self-respect intact."
"You are remarkable," I said. He smiled a little, but said nothing.
Some time later, "Did you ever love anyone?" I asked. He sighed.
"My affections were not returned," he said. "My skills of self-defense were barely enough against his reaction. I had tried to conceal how I was drawn to him, but he had guessed it, and demanded that I confess it to his face. When I did, he was insulted and enraged. It did not surprise me."
"I am sorry," I said. He shrugged a little.
"He was not worth the feeling I had wasted on him. After I had recovered my sense, I believed the folly of sentiment had been thoroughly proven. I chose not to think of anyone again, until that absurd story forced upon my attention how very much I felt for you." There was a short silence. I stroked his arm; he shivered slightly. "I suppose I put somewhat too much faith in Mycroft's ideas."
"How's that?"
"It appears to me that sentiment is not entirely a weakness. You--" He caught his breath. I took his hand and brought it to my lips; felt him exhale slowly. "You, John Watson, appear to only be made stronger by it."
"That's because it's you I care for," I told him. "Loving you could only ever bring me good."
His lips trembled suddenly. He looked away, blinking; caressed my hair again and again, and I lost myself in the sensation. We were silent for a while, and then, "I found a page of my notes tucked up inside the book," I told him.
He looked a little abashed. "I--well. The way you wrote of me was--very kind. You see me quite differently from everyone else, you know." His color rose. "I suppose I saw in it some proof that I was not entirely alone in my regard for you."
"When I saw the line you'd marked with it," I answered, "that's when I knew I could tell you anything."
"Which do you mean?" He inclined his head to look at me curiously.
"The line about 'the one person that makes'--"
"'That makes my life lovely to me.' Yes, that's you." He bent down quickly to press a kiss into my hair, and I could see in his eyes the familiar expression of delight he turns toward any beautiful thing; an experiment resolving, a case neatly proved and closed, Tchaikovsky played upon the London stage, and, somehow, it appeared now, me.