charlotteyonge

It took me several days to recover myself before I could speak to Mary about what had happened during our last moments of intimacy. I was shocked when she calmly suggested we invite Mr. Holmes into the bedroom with us, not merely for the fact that she was willing to accommodate my proclivities but because the thought of presenting this to Holmes was so laughably absurd. I had never, in fact, committed any such acts with him, and my unwitting revelation was a result of months of elaborate fantasies conjured in the privacy of my study.

 Holmes himself had so often accused me of being overly fanciful in my retelling of his cases, and I daresay the habit was fast becoming my undoing, for the assistance of a tallow candle and the advanced technical use of my hand I could nearly imagine he was really there and loving me in the rigorous manner I had described for Mary.

 I felt terrible, of course, mortified and guilty, even when I assured my wife that I had been unfaithful only in heart and not in deed. But Mary is no fool, nor is she given to hysterics, and when she told me that she’d rather we both be happy, I was so singularly grateful I almost forgot the hurdle that lay ahead. She was never coarse or angry about my gross indiscretion; in fact, during the past four weeks she had been spending so much time with her friend Mrs. Norton that she, too, seemed to undergo a kind of transformation. The two of them had become inseparable, having tea every day, performing charity work around the city, attending parlor concerts together, and she was emerging as a stronger, prouder version of herself.

 I hoped I would fare half as well, for when I contacted Holmes and offered my assistance to him again, he was ever his brisk and business-like self. He did seem genuinely pleased to hear from me, and my return to the familiar comforts of our sitting room was met with a warm handshake and heartfelt smile. So happy was I to be in his company again that I decided to let him broach the subject of my sudden reappearance in order that I might enjoy the assurance of his friendship just a while longer. In the meantime, I continued to imagine how he would look sodding me blind. For better or worse, this lasted precisely one week.

 “Watson,” he said, “your hat has not been brushed for five days, you have taken seventeen of Mrs. Hudson’s last twenty-one meals and the suitcase that sits in your old bedroom has a curious air of permanence about it. While it pains to pry into your domestic affairs, I do feel entitled to ask what has caused you to reclaim a bachelor’s habits.”

 Slowly, and with a few stops and starts, I told him I was in love with someone else.

 “Ah,” he said, raising an eyebrow, “and the name of this very fortunate lady is…?”

 I looked him straight in the eye. “His name is Sherlock Holmes.”

I pulled back and looked into her face, which I was surprised to see had not yet cast off the throes of passionate love.

 “Tell me, John,” she breathed, “tell me about it.” She continued to knead my backside with her legs.

 “I…we…” I started, unsure as to what she wanted to hear, but maintaining a steady, somewhat subdued rhythm.

 “Does he suck you off?” she purred.

 My cock stiffened anew within her.

 “Yes,” I panted.

 “Tell me how you like it,” she pressed, her pupils growing larger and her cheeks flushing brighter.

 “I like him to…” I began to pump harder, “to fondle my sac while he…”

 “Yes…” she urged, and arched her back till her breasts flattened against my chest.

 “…while takes me into his mouth and…teases the slit with his tongue,” I groaned.

 “More,” she whispered as she pushed her hand between us and began to massage her clitoris.

 “And then he pumps me with his lips…” I managed to squeeze out, though the challenge of coherent speech was fast becoming insurmountable.

 She rubbed herself harder.

 “Until I come down his throat,” I finished, nearly mad with desire for precisely this.

 “And tell me, John, how it is you pleasure him,” she moaned.

 “I beg him to take me,” I called, desperately close to my climax, “as only a man can take another.”

 “Oh God…” she cried, hammering her body into mine, her busy hand almost a blur.

 “He’s so strong and hard when he pounds into me that I…” I panted, “I sometimes come off all over again.”

 And the thought of this final act sent me over the edge and beyond; I spent myself entirely and collapsed on top of her, calling his name over and over as a wild incantation.

 Mary screamed, and her own orgasm nearly tore her apart. She thrashed beneath me in an incoherent frenzy, her head thrown back, her hands clawing at my back, her whole body shaking in unrestrained ecstasy as a great tide of all-consuming rapture came crashing down upon us.

Mary’s body was soft and yielding as I slid gently but purposefully in and out of her wet heat. She pulled me closer to her breast and wrapped her legs around my body, squeezing me tighter, urging me deeper, her breaths coming in quick bursts, perspiration casting shimmering beads across her forehead.

 “John, John…” she mewled, and reached down to clutch at my backside.

 “Yes... just like that…” she murmured. She lazily swirled two fingers around my anus and then suddenly inserted them, bringing a resounding jolt to my core as bright sparks of pleasure crackled near the base of my spine. It was a part of my body into which she had not heretofore ventured, but the sensation was not unfamiliar to me.

 “Holmes…” I cried, and pitched forward with the force of my ejaculation.

It was over.

The vicar smiled benevolently when he bowed towards me and said, “John Watson, repeat these words as I recite them.”

 “I choose you, Mary, on this day to be my wife…”

 I felt the warm lips of Sherlock Holmes yield to mine as I pushed his dressing gown from his shoulders.

 “I promise to love you and care for you with joy…”

 I smelled his sweet, powerful musk when I pressed my face into his neck.

 “I shall never neglect you, but always nourish you with my love…”

 I heard his gasp when I lifted his hips and took him into my mouth.

 “…encouraging you to bloom evermore…”

 I tasted the bittersweet essence that had flooded my tongue.

 “…with blooms lovelier every year …”

 I saw the tenderness in his eyes when he pulled me to him.

 “I vow to be true to you and to cherish you…”

 He had gazed at my face for a long moment before joining our lips again.

 "Every day of my life…”

 I pushed the ring onto her small finger, and thought of the delicate way in which his long, sensitive ones had traversed my back.

 The vicar turned to Mary.

 “Miss Morstan, repeat these words as I recite them.”

 “I choose you this day to be my husband...”

 He had called me John.

 “I promise to be your dependable helpmate…”

 I had climaxed quickly.

 “…and to love you and care for you each day the Lord gives us…”

 He had wrapped his arms tightly about my torso.

 “I shall be your shade, your sanctuary…”

 I had felt my blood begin to rise yet again.

 “Shall always nourish you with my love, encouraging you, John.”

 I had called his name when he brought me one final time.

 “I vow to be true to you…”

 He had asked me not to leave.

 “And to cherish you every day of my life.”

 Mary smiled a warm, loving smile, and slid the ring upon my finger.

 We embraced and silently wept, she for what she had gained, and I for what I had lost.

From the unpublished papers of the Dr. John Watson Collection in the Sherlock Holmes Archive.

The faithful readers of the Strand are no doubt aware that my adventures with Mr. Sherlock Holmes frequently appeared outside of the proper chronological order in which they actually occurred. The reasons for this are numerous. It was sometimes necessary to allow the legal proceedings of a case run their course before bringing the facts to the public’s attention. It was neither unusual for me to find myself rather overwhelmed with a handful of cases that required patient transcription before preparing them for my editor, who ultimately decided which stories were suitable for print regardless of their respective dates. The one outstanding circumstance that brought the greatest number of exceptions to all my subsequent writings, however, was the fact that in the late 1880s the relationship between the detective and myself underwent an extraordinary change. For it was then that I discovered I was so dearly in love with the man that it became necessary for me to deliberately alter facts of time and place, and to omit large portions of conversations, so the public would not think anything unnatural was taking place behind the closed doors of 221B Baker Street. But it has remained important to me to bear honest witness to the facts of the actual cases, and in doing so to privately account for the fictionalization of a significant portion of their contexts.

It is hard to pinpoint exactly when the tides began to turn, for one does not fall in love so deeply in one singular moment. But looking back, there were instances in which I noted some peculiar changes in my regard towards Holmes. I recall how the shock of Hilton Cubbitt’s death just before the resolution of the dancing men affair brought a stunning change to his usually stoic demeanour. He was seized with such melancholy on our ride to Ridling Thorpe Manor as I found myself longing to embrace him, to tell him I was sorry and assure him he was not at fault.

There was the time I watched the joy spread across his handsome features when he served Percy Phelps his missing treaty at our breakfast table. We listened in awe to his ensuing narration of the solution to this mystery that had plagued my friend for nearly ten weeks. Holmes was especially animated as he described how he confronted the thief, his grey eyes shining with keen delight, his cream-colored linen suit making him appear almost angelic in the morning light. Again, I was bewildered by the urge to take him into my arms, to kiss him and tell him how proud and grateful I was that he helped an old friend.

The realization that my feelings had settled with troubling permanence came during the case of Miss Helen Stoner. Holmes displayed impressive strength that day, first in his unwavering refusal to be intimidated by the dangerous and towering figure of Grimesby Roylott, then in his physical prowess when he unbent the steel poker our guest had so unceremoniously twisted in his fit of rage before storming from our rooms. As we crouched in the darkness of the shell house at Stoke Moran that night, his face half-illuminated by the moonlight, Holmes told me gently that he had had some scruples about bringing me along on such a risky mission. Touched to the core by his concern for my well-being, I could only give fragmented and somewhat breathless responses as he went on to explain his deductions. It was then that I knew I was in very deep waters indeed.

The next morning, as we escorted our nerve-wracked client to Scotland Yard to corroborate her statement on the death of her stepfather, I began to consider informing Holmes of my feelings. How to tell them to a man who consistently showed disdain for the “softer emotions,” however, was such a daunting prospect that I dismissed the idea as both irrational and ill-advised. He would be disgusted, angry, upset, any number of things, and not only because he scoffed at love, but because the law forbade it.

Of course I wanted him all the more.

My heart fully stopped later that week when he reached across my writing desk to retrieve his cigarettes and mumbled in a low, rich voice, “I do think ‘The Speckled Band’ makes a better title than ‘The Mystery of Stoke Moran,’ but do not let me influence you.”

My breathing quickened at the sight of him playing airs on his violin with closed eyes, and I wondered if a man so moved by the strains of Paganini could be entirely immune to the pleasures of love.

My knees turned to jelly at his closeness when he helped me fasten a stubborn cufflink the following Friday before we departed for the theatre. I made every attempt to retain my normal demeanour as we set out for the evening, though I now knew if I did not take him into my confidence soon, it would consume me entirely.

I neither heard nor saw the play that night. For two hours I sat in the darkness and put my best writing skills to use as I mentally composed a speech to deliver to him upon our return to Baker Street.

“Good heavens, Watson, are you ill?” he asked me with no little concern as we exited the theatre.

“Actually, Holmes, I’ve not been feeling quite myself of late. There is something about which I need to speak with you when we return home,” I returned evenly as we scanned the street traffic. Whether it was my pale face, my trembling hands or the urgency underneath my tone, Holmes was clearly taken aback. He nodded at me with wide eyes and quickly hailed us a cab. We rode home in tense silence, though I was certain the pounding in my chest was audible to us both.

I retreated to my bedroom to change from my theatre clothes and make one last attempt to compose my manner. I reminded myself I was confiding in my best friend, not a stranger, and tried to imagine I would be simply discussing a case with him rather than confessing a secret so painful I could no longer sleep at night.

Holmes had changed into his dressing gown as well, and I found him lighting a fire in our sitting room when I finally descended the stairs. I sat at the table and focused very deliberately on Mrs. Hudson’s silver teapot until Holmes pulled up the other chair, sat down and waited for me to speak.

It pains me to say that my previously rehearsed speech deserted my mind entirely and I was reduced to a sweating and shaking mess barely able to put two words together.

“For a while now, Holmes, I’ve been struggling with some…with…I’ve had...feelings.. of a certain nature…but to talk of…such things…to you, of all people, Holmes, you…I cannot…were I to tell you, I’m afraid…,” I stammered like a terrified child.

I knew I was risking everything I had by telling him how I really felt, that in mere moments I could find myself homeless and bereft of the single most important friend and companion of my life.

I did not notice Holmes rise and cross the room. I was too busy fumbling in my pocket for a handkerchief, which I passed over my brow as I momentarily considered aborting the whole thing.

A warm and comforting hand pressed into my shoulder as the other placed a glass of brandy before me.

“Calm yourself, my dear fellow,” he said in a placating voice that soothed his most overwrought female clients.

He seated himself again in the chair opposite me, leaned forwards and rested his right arm on the table. I took a deep quaff of the brandy, drew a breath and resolved to maintain some semblance of poise, for my friend had never seen me in such a state as this, and I did not wish to cause him further alarm.

“Now,” he said, lowering his chin and giving me a reassuring smile, “What is it you wish to tell me?”

The only way to go was straight through.

“Sherlock Holmes,” I said in a quiet but steady voice, “I have fallen utterly and irrevocably in love with you.”

Whatever he thought he was ready for, it was most certainly not this. His brow shifted as it does when he has been taken off his guard, his lips parted in quiet shock and he sat back in his chair utterly dumbfounded. He exhaled sharply twice as he stared for a moment at me, then cast his eyes towards the carpet in disbelief.

My lungs finally released the breath I’d been holding all evening as I fumbled for my glass and downed the remainder of its contents in one determined gulp. When I looked up Holmes was still staring at the floor, blinking under a furrowed brow as the full weight of my declaration descended upon him. In this torturous silence I realized my challenge had only begun, though I was much relieved to have unburdened myself at last.

When Holmes rose suddenly from his chair, I feared for a moment that had decided the only advisable course was to simply abandon the conversation. To my relief, however, he approached the decanter and poured a brandy for himself, which he brought back to the table with him and sat down to face me for a third time.

I steeled myself for his response, but none came. I wryly noted to myself that I had finally rendered the man speechless.

“I realize this comes as a shock, Holmes, but I couldn’t go on living as I was with you in ignorance of what I struggled to hide. Now that you’re in full possession of the facts, would you have me pack my things and leave Baker Street?”

It may have been overly blatant, but I preferred to know the answer as soon as possible.

He glanced up at me in surprise before returning his troubled gaze to the table. “No, of course not,” he said softly.

“Then please, tell me what it is you want me to do, for I cannot stand another moment of uncertainty,” I pled.

 “Perhaps you’d best tell me what you’d like me to do, Watson, for I’ve never been addressed in such a manner before and haven’t the slightest idea what to say,” he said in a strained voice before finally bringing his gaze to mine.

Take me into your arms, kiss me and tell me you love me back..

“I’m afraid I find myself quite out of my province, too,” I confessed. “And I am quite aware that what I’ve just told you has complicated legal implications.”

Of course, I’d never made such a declaration to another man, and certainly not to someone as unsentimental as Holmes. I was beginning to see that by informing him of my feelings, I had merely cast the crushing weight of my onus over us both.

“When the law succeeds in dictating the paths of the human heart we shall all of us be compromised,” he mused.

I was somewhat relieved. That would not be an issue at least.

“Listen, Holmes,” I said, finding my natural voice again. “The last thing I want to do is to alienate you as my friend, and now that I’ve honestly accounted for my troubles I feel my next aim should be to assure you that I expect nothing from you which you cannot give.”

He glanced up at me again, creased his brow and sipped from his glass.

I sighed, wondering how much damage I had wrought and whether it would have been better to simply go on suppressing my emotions, however painful they may have been to endure alone.

“Do I stand to lose you?” I whispered.

It is my perception that was Holmes did next was entirely instinctive. He placed his hand over the tightly clasped knot into which mine sat twisted upon the table between us, and soothed me yet again.

“Watson, you are my best friend. I have always been immeasurably grateful for your support and companionship over the years.”

As soon as he said this, both pairs of our eyes fell the pile of hands before us, and he suddenly pulled his hand from mine. When he realized what he’d done, he froze, then smiled in spite of himself and relaxed, giving me a final pat in a show of sympathy.

“How long have you been living with his?” he asked me after a few moments.

“Hard to say. Such things don’t occur overnight. Months, I think. Maybe longer. I don’t really know.” I suddenly felt very tired.

Holmes took several deep breaths before he spoke. “You have the greatest heart of anyone I’ve ever known, Watson. Man or woman. I mean that. To hear you say such a thing about me is not a little flattering,” he paused to grant me a sincere smile.

I waited.

His expression turned sad. “But I cannot…you know I’m not…” he started to say the words I had expected but could not bear to hear.

“I know, Holmes. I know. It’s all right. I’m sure I shall be feeling more myself soon enough,” I interrupted hastily in effort to spare us both the embarrassment of his rejection.

This was not the truth. I would never be the same and I knew it. But for him and for our friendship, I gathered the fullness of my strength and smiled reassuringly at him.

He looked relieved. “Certainly that is true. Now let us see what we can do to take your mind off things,” he said, patting my hand once more and rising from the table. He told me he was expecting a visit in the morning from a Mr. James Norton, whose sixteen-year-old son had gone missing the week previous. After an exhaustive search, the police had turned up nothing.

I nodded casually as he paced the room and spoke, gesturing now and again towards the letter he had received from Norton. But I barely heard him. I was still trying to fathom what to make of our conversation. In some ways, I was desperate to bury the whole business, as I know my friend had no patience for the subject of human sentiment. And yet, I had only scratched the surface of the depths of my feelings. I longed to tell him all, regardless of his ultimate reaction.

But Sherlock Holmes knew nothing of love and its trials, had never felt a flash of desire, the warmth of a passionate embrace or the sting of a rebuke. When he paused once or twice to cast a questioning glance at me, I realized that he was doing his level best to recover familiar ground between us. It was a change perceptible only to me, for I knew him well enough to note that in spite of the fact that he had resumed his professional mien, he had been unnerved by my disclosure.

I rose from my seat, plucked my notebook from my writing desk and dutifully began to record the initial facts of a new case.

And so we left it unresolved because neither of us was prepared to confront the enormity of what had just happened, and the exercise of our customary roles served to temporarily distract us both from this seismic and troubling shift in our relations.

*          *          *          *

 “If he was abducted,” Holmes said around the stem of his pipe, “there would surely have been a ransom note by now.” He waved the flame from his match and puffed away thoughtfully.

For the last two days I had been following Holmes through the darkest streets of London in search of Aldous Norton. It was a frustrating case, for the people we questioned either supplied us with misinformation or none at all, and it proved to be a much longer conundrum than either of us had expected.

We both struggled to ignore the strain between us, and in doing so it was all the more apparent to me that I should have kept silent on the subject. Keeping focus on the case meant we were protected by the habits of work, but those idle hours we used to pass so easily in warm and amiable company were now fraught with unease. Neither of us had any idea what to say and so began to avoid each other, he from guilt and me from shame.

“But James Norton is not a rich man,” I reminded him. “What could a kidnapper expect to gain from him?”

Holmes frowned and took the pipe from his mouth. “I have been asking myself what reason the boy would have for leaving under his own power. I fear he may be mired in a situation for which his youth has not prepared him. But where? And with whom?”

I sighed. We had been going back and forth like this for some hours and to no avail. It did not help matters that I could not recall the last time I had slept through the night. I’m afraid my melancholy discomfort had mounted a full attack on my nerves, and I was losing the battle. If I was under torment in the weeks leading up to my confession, I was in outright agony in the aftermath of our conversation. My heart and hopes were shattered and I feared I had unwittingly sacrificed the great friendship I treasured above all else.

“We shall do nothing more today, Watson,” Holmes said, misreading my frustration. He checked his watch. “We ought to get ready for dinner. Lady Constance expects us on the hour.”

Holmes had recovered a document of immense importance last month in a bizarre case of fraud that I shall one day recount. Lady Constance was the wife of one of the grateful government officials upon whose careers the recovery of the document depended. She had insisted on hosting us for dinner in an official, if ostentatious, show of gratitude. Normally, I would have enjoyed attending such a thing for the sheer spectacle of it, but I knew Holmes generally abhorred such gatherings and I was hardly feeling social myself.

I reluctantly washed, donned my best dinner clothes and waited for Holmes on the settee at a quarter past seven. I was sipping a whisky and reading the Times when he emerged similarly attired from his bedroom. I turned to greet him and caught my breath.

Holmes was nearly sparkling from head to toe. He wore a black tuxedo of a particularly elegant and dramatic V-cut that flattered his tall frame. His vest was tastefully ornamented with flecks of maroon and gold thread that gave him an air of understated royalty, which was further highlighted by his gold cufflinks and newly polished shoes. With his slick black hair under his finest silk hat, he looked as if he were about to enter a grand ballroom full of London’s most polished elite.

He smiled as he breezed past me. “Ah, Watson, you clean up nicely, as they say. Mrs. Hudson!” he sang as he pulled on his gloves. “Mrs. Hudsoooooon!”

“Yes, Mr. Holmes,” she answered with some consternation. She had been standing near the landing when he called her, but he was too impatient to wait her response.

“Ah,” he said, turning on a charming smile and bowing towards our landlady. She could not help herself smiling back. If he had looked at me like that I would have melted into the floor.

“Dr. Watson and I shan’t require dinner this evening, but I would appreciate it if you could light a fire in this sitting room before you retire this evening. It promises to be dreadfully cold outside.”

“As you wish, Mr. Holmes,” she curtsied. “Such a pair of gentlemen need looking after!”

I could not help but laugh at her kind words.

“Ready, Watson?” Holmes asked me amicably.

“And waiting, Holmes,” I returned, suppressing another sigh.

“Then let us be on our way,” he called out as he glided from the sitting room.

A short cab ride later, we alit at Ridgley Hall, and found ourselves in the company of eight well-dressed gentlemen who greeted Holmes as if he were the highest dignitary in Europe. Our hostess made the usual exercise of introductions, and I smiled and nodded obediently at the familiar phrase “friend and colleague, Dr. Watson.” When drinks were served, I made short work of my gin, then started on another, hoping that I would soon reach a point of comfort. I have never been much of a drinker, but I found this stiff and formal atmosphere was no help to my nerves.

It wasn’t long before I was forgotten entirely, and the party fawned all their sycophantic attentions upon the detective. He appeared as ill at ease as I, but there was little I could do to divert them, thus I took the opportunity to slip away and wander about the drawing room. Lord Adderly had been a game hunter, and the walls were adorned with rifles, trophies and the stuffed, mounted heads of several large animals. Had it been more carefully done, it may have appeared a dignified salute to his achievements, but as it was the whole room looked rather grisly.

“Dinner is served, Madam,” announced the parlor maid, and we were promptly ushered into the dining room. It was a chilly evening as Holmes had predicted, but the huge fireplace near the table blanketed the room in a stifling heat. I caught Holmes roll his eyes more than once as the evening proceeded, and I missed the connection we shared in such instances when we were both uncomfortable in the presence of certain company. He used to make me laugh when he uttered offhand remarks under his breath, and this always did much to ease my tension by pulling me into the warmth of our little private world. Tonight, I merely felt like an appendage.

Dinner began with the usual ceremonies. Wine bottles were uncorked. Plates were presented. Stories were shared. I interjected once or twice when prompted, but when I spoke, my voice sounded rather like it was coming from somewhere else in the room.

I am afraid I drank more than I ate that night. My appetite had deserted me, and I found it easier to raise a glass to my lips than to grapple with the dizzying assortment of silverware that splayed out from either side of my plate. I barely looked at Holmes, but when his gaze found me I felt it burn through my skin when he observed my uncharacteristic preference for drink over food.

When dessert was served, the sounds of conversation echoed so wide and hollow in my ears I was briefly disoriented when my focus narrowed back to the small slice of torte on my plate. Where there had been one there were suddenly three. I blinked. There was one again.

“So, Dr. Watson, tell us,” said Mr. Cadwell-Harwood as he lit a cigar, “what is it like living with a genius?”

“It’s a laugh a minute,” I said drily as I poked at my uneaten cake.

Holmes cleared his throat. “The doctor and I do enjoy a similar humour, but I am afraid I am often not so agreeable in my habits as he.”

“Oh, come along, Holmes,” I said thickly, “living with you is the very pinnacle of my existence. I thank God every day for the constant joy of it.”

A tense silence fell over the table.

“I imagine you must have shared a great many adventures over the years,” said Lady Constance rather stiffly.

“You imagine correctly, Madam,” I scanned the blurry faces to find our hostess. “It’s a real boon living with a detective. Missing a cufflink? Holmes can find it. Misplace your reading glasses? Why, simply ask Holmes to get out his magnifying glass and he’ll unearth them in no time.”

The few laughs that this generated emboldened me to continue.

“That’s Sherlock Holmes, world’s greatest consulting detective, always scouring the corners to lend his services to humanity.” This is not precisely what I meant to say, but it didn’t matter.

Holmes rose abruptly from the table and bowed to our hostess. “Lady Constance, your impeccable hospitality has been unsurpassed this fine evening, and please do give my compliments to your very excellent cook.”

He smiled politely at the table of guests. “I regret that we must take our leave. My friend is not well,” he said, turning sharp eyes upon me, “and is in dire need of respite. Our latest case has been a trying one.”

What transpired next has all but evaporated from my memory, and the next thing I knew I was jostling next to Holmes in a cab as we rolled along the cobblestone drive of the Manor. He said not a word to me on the ride home, which suited me just fine. I had suddenly acquired a throbbing headache.

I barely registered Mrs. Hudson’s exclamations as Holmes led me inside. He raised his hand in protest when she attempted to rid me of my overcoat, and he led me gingerly up the two flights of stairs to my bedroom. He sat me down and my bed and disappeared, returning momentarily with a glass of water. He removed my shoes while I drank it.

“How very kind of you, Mr. Holmes,” I slurred as he loosened my cravat and released my collar. “Always looking after the needs of others before his own…”

The room was spinning. I looked up at Holmes in confusion and tried to blink the room back into stillness. I was overcome with the sudden urge to be completely honest with him. I grabbed his lapels and looked him straight in the eye.

“I don’t blame you, you know. Love is indeed a horrible thing and if I were you I should avoid it altogether. I wish I had.”

“Not your fault, o’course,” I added, and began to falter. Darkness was closing in.

Holmes smiled grimly and gently removed my hands from his coat. He eased me back on the bed and covered me with a blanket.

“Good night, Watson,” he said softly before turning out the light and shutting the door.

I awoke the next morning with a heavy nausea in my stomach, a searing pain in my head and a stale dryness of mouth that precluded any notions of remaining in bed. I found I was still wearing my evening clothes, though someone had taken the trouble to remove my shoes and collar and place them neatly on the chair in the far corner of my room. I gingerly rose, put on a dressing gown and went downstairs to the sitting room.

Holmes was seated at the table in his night shirt and dressing gown, sipping tea and reading the newspaper. He regarded me with kind eyes.

“Morning, Watson,” he said cheerily. “How are you faring today?”

“None too well, thank you. And I have a feeling the more I recall of last night the less well I shall soon be. Holmes, what happened?” I sat down rather heavily and placed my head in my hands.

“You were overgenerous with the wine,” he told me. “And your conversation.”

I glanced up at him sharply. “What do you mean? What did I say?”

“Nothing incriminating, I promise. And I assure you your interjections, acerbic and ill-advised as they were, did no disservice to the conversation. Those were the dullest people I’ve ever dined with. Wealth is a most unattractive trait in the unimaginative.”

“Oh God,” I moaned as I dropped my head to the table. “I wish I’d never gone.”

Holmes reached over and patted me on the head. “Do not be so hard on yourself, my dear friend. However much you suffer today shall more than atone for your social missteps.”

He poured me a cup of tea and shoved it towards me. “Drink this. I shall ring Mrs. Hudson to bring you some breakfast.”

Nothing sounded worse to me than food at that moment, though I did manage half a cup of the lukewarm tea.

“If it’s all right with you, Holmes, I think I’ll lie down a while on the settee.” I hobbled over to it and laid my head upon the pillow.

“Suit yourself,” Holmes said with a shrug. He retrieved a blanket from his bedroom, then covered me for what I later learned was the second time in twelve hours. He cast a concerned expression down at me.

“Get some rest. We can talk this evening,” he said, and then left me there to wonder what I may have said to him the night before.

I drifted into a deep slumber, and awoke some time later to find Mrs. Hudson quietly tidying the room around me.

“Feeling better, Doctor?” she asked me pleasantly as she retied the curtains.

“A bit. I wonder if you could bring me some fresh tea and a few morsels of bread.” I sat up cautiously and gauged my condition.

“I’ve a fresh chicken soup on the stove that ought to restore you in no time,” she said.

After the previous night’s sickening overabundance, the idea of taking a quiet meal in the comfort of our clean sitting room cheered me considerably.

“Thank you, Mrs. Hudson. Have you seen Mr. Holmes?”

“He posted a telegram about an hour ago, and promptly left. I tried to serve him lunch but you know how he gets when he’s hot on the trail,” she said with tired maternal patience. “I suppose he cannot be blamed for serving his clients.”

Something about her last phrase resonated as familiar, but I could not place it.

Ten minutes later she served me a large bowl of steaming broth, the first sip of which was immediately rejuvenating. I felt my blood warm again and the rolling sensation in my stomach begin to disappear.

Such a horrible mistake I will not soon make again, I thought to myself.

And then the memories of last night began to surface.

I remembered how unhappy I was the moment we set foot inside Ridgley Hall, how I felt artificially and temporarily comforted when the first cold sting of gin touched my lips. I saw the plates of food that passed before me, the smiling, intrusive faces that stared back at me as though I were a curious pet who mindlessly followed its master in hopes of lapping up any morsels of praise he saw fit to throw my way. I heard my voice dripping with sarcasm in response to their inane questions, telling them in so many words that I held the lot of them in contempt. I was painfully aware that at least one of these comments had been directed at Holmes himself.

How we made our exit I shall never know, and prefer to remain ignorant of what was likely a very uncomfortable farewell. But I remember alighting at Baker Street. There was Mrs. Hudson’s horror at my state, so unlike the neat, well-mannered gentleman who had departed her company just hours before. There was the unsteady climb up the two flights to my bedroom, with Holmes bracing me from behind.

I remembered it was Holmes who put me to bed. I recalled how he had undressed me while I considered whether or not I would be sick. I remembered how the cool water he brought to me felt in my dry, wine-coated mouth. And I had said something to him. Yes, I had clung to him for support and said…something. I closed my eyes and concentrated.

Blame you…love horrible… should avoid …not fault…

Whatever had occurred at dinner paled in comparison to that. For the second time I had fallen bumbling and vulnerable before Holmes, who was very likely growing weary of my emotional distress.

This would not do.

I bathed myself, changed clothes and left Baker Street. The cool air held the final curative, and each step I took as I walked through Regent’s Park restored my mental and physical resolve.

Why Holmes had not been angrier rather confounded me, though I supposed his own disdain for the absurdities of the aristocratic social sphere prevented him from any feelings of regret on my behalf. I had in actuality been quite lucky, for my lovesick and frustrated heart may very well have led me to betray far more than mere irritation with last night’s company. What Holmes thought privately about the whole incident was unknown to me; perhaps he felt I had suffered enough, perhaps he did not wish to pursue the topic for discussion, perhaps worst of all he pitied me. But this much was clear: Sherlock Holmes was not going to change in his attitude towards love. I could not allow my emotions, however overwhelming they were, to be the undoing of us both. I could take comfort in the fact that it was nigh impossible Holmes would ever take up with someone else. He was mine enough as a friend and colleague, and that would have to suffice.

The afternoon sky was beginning to darken when I returned home. I entered the sitting room to find Holmes pacing the floor.

“Watson, there you are! Come, we’ve not a moment to lose,” he said excitedly. He waved a telegram as he swept into the hallway. “I shall explain on the way. Bring your revolver!”

“Way to where?” I rushed to my desk to retrieve my gun.

“I know where Aldous Norton is!” he called as he bolted down the stairs and onto the street. “Cab!”

I sprinted down the stairs and caught up with him just as a cab pulled up to the curb.

“East end docks, and hurry,” he ordered the driver.

“Ah Watson, I have been a fool,” he said as we sped down the street.

So have I, I thought, but remained silent.

Deep in the squalor of the seedy underside of the city we found Aldous Norton working as a page in an undesirable and unhealthy establishment that no young boy should enter, much less inhabit on a regular basis. He had not been abducted at all, but had run away in an attempt to escape punishment for his misdeeds at school. He made a foolish attempt to flee when Holmes cornered him and sternly asked him to accompany us to the loving arms of Scotland Yard. The ensuing commotion so startled the patrons that tables were overturned and a young man slightly older than Norton had panicked and fired two shots in our direction. I regretted not treating myself well enough to maintain a clear focus of mind, for my reaction to these events felt painfully slow. By the time I had my own firearm drawn, the gun-wielding man had disappeared into the crowd, and poor Norton lay slumped against the front door with blood streaming from his leg.

Holmes sprinted after the man who had shot him, while I recovered my medical instincts and rushed to young Norton’s side. I shed my coat and rolled up my sleeves before assessing the extent of his wound. I was relieved to see the bullet had not penetrated as far as the bone; it had been issued from a small pistol and fired from enough distance to prevent graver injury. But the poor youth was terrified and my sympathies went out to him. I called for a basin of water and a clean towel, and tried to calm him as I soaked up the blood that was pouring from the ugly gash in his leg.

“He’ll be all right,” I said to the frightened crowd. “Please do give us some space.” I looked at Norton’s face and was alarmed to see that it had turned ashen, and his breathing had become quite shallow. I tucked my coat behind his head and told him to take deep breaths. As I ministered his leg, I began to tell him a story. It was a tale from my boyhood, one of those singular instances in which an unbelievable series of events results in a surprising and humorous conclusion. Such was a method I would employ when my fellow soldiers were injured beyond repair in Afghanistan. I learned it helps a man immeasurably to be temporarily transported from his present reality in the face of death, and while this boy would certainly not perish from his wound, the onset of shock could do him far greater harm than the bullet.

I did not notice Holmes return after he apprehended the perpetrator and turned him over to the police. I was so focused on my patient that I thought of nothing except making sure he remained engaged with the story until the color returned to his face. When at last I looked up, Holmes was staring at me with an expression I’d never seen before. It carried shades of tenderness and affection, as well as a curious element of incredulity. Our gazes locked meaningfully before I turned back to Norton.

“And so,” I concluded, finishing the dressing on his wound, “there was the horse, back in his stall, as though nothing had ever happened. And not a mark on him.” I was gratified to see the terror in his eyes had been replaced by amused interest.

“Do you think it was aliens from another planet?” he asked me eagerly as I fastened the makeshift bandage

I chuckled. “Perhaps. Some members of my family had some rather lofty theories of their own.”

I helped him to his feet, took out my notebook and wrote down a name and address. I tore out the page and handed it to Norton.

“This is a friend of mine who will fix that hole in your leg with the proper instruments. In the meantime, I’m afraid you must accompany my friend and me to Scotland Yard. You’ll not be detained long, but young boys cannot work in places such as these, and your father is very worried about you.”

The lad winced before nodding sadly in quiet defeat. We led him to a cab and escorted him to the Yard where he cooperated with the inspector and met his overjoyed and relieved father.

Holmes and I rode silently back to Baker Street. I twice caught him regarding me with the same odd expression as before, though he quickly looked away from me when I glanced towards him. It wasn’t until we alit the cab that he finally spoke again.

“You’ve blood on your shirt, Watson,” he observed.

I looked down and saw where the boy’s blood had splashed just above my waistline. “So I see.”

“Give it to me when we get upstairs and I’ll see to it that Mrs. Hudson washes it for you straight away,” he said kindly.

“All right. Thank you, Holmes.”

I was in better spirits than I’d been for weeks, for not only was I pleased by the completion of a case, but I was grateful for the opportunity to apply my best skills to its satisfying conclusion. I changed my shirt, splashed some water on my face, and returned to the sitting room. Holmes was at the table sorting idly through the daily posts. I seated myself at my writing desk to begin a formal account of the Norton case.

“Thank you for your help today, Watson,” Holmes called out unexpectedly behind me.

“You’re welcome, Holmes,” I returned with my back still to him.

“You were quite good with the boy,” he continued, rising from the table.

I turned to face him. “Was I?”

I was surprised to see him blush ever so slightly.

“Your presence of mind in that chaos is commendable. You tended to him with a great deal of kindness and patience that I imagine will go far towards his eventual recovery,” he said, and offered me a shy smile.

I waved away his compliment, “Ah, just a few tricks I learned in the army. But thank you for saying so.” I turned back to my task.

“Watson…” Holmes began again.

“Yes?”

“Are you all right?” he asked me in a tentative voice.

“No worse for the wear, Holmes.”

“You are not angry with me?”

I don’t think he’d ever asked me such a thing before.

“Why should I be angry with you?”

 “I fear I have not been very fair to you,” he said.

“Oh?”

“I perceive that you have been suffering, Watson, and I know it has been on my account. You took a great risk when laid your heart before me, likely hoping for some reciprocation, and I left it there with a thoughtless and negative response that you probably wished I wouldn’t have. I’m sorry. You deserve better than that.” He spoke these words with great sincerity.

“Well,” I replied, “is there something you wish to say to me now?”

I saw the fear return to his eyes, the same look he had bestowed upon me when I first revealed my secret. But this time it passed after a moment. He appeared to be gathering strength.

“This…love, “ he said sternly, “that you spoke of. What does it entail?”

“Well, there’s…” I hesitated, realizing it was an excellent question not easily answered. “There’s a strong sense of devotion, of course. I suppose I mean that in loving you I put your happiness and well-being ahead of mine. And there’s a desire to be with you in…in every sense.” I swallowed. I had not wanted to offend his gentlemanly sensibilities with specifics on this last point.

“In every sense,” he repeated. He thrust his hands into his pockets and regarded me steadily. “You mean physical love.”

“Yes, well,” I fumbled for a suitable answer. “you’re no doubt aware of the kind of activities in which a man and woman engage, though I’m not sure if you know exactly how two men…”

“I have some ideas about that, yes,” he said with a slight nod and a brief smile. He walked slowly to the window at the far end of the room.

“It may surprise you to hear, Watson, that yours is not the first such invitation I ever received,” he said as he gazed towards the horizon.

It did not surprise me.

“But it is the first I ever considered,” he said in a softer tone, turning his a little head in my direction.

My heart fairly leapt from my chest, but I was loathe to entertain new hopes after having so recently recovered myself.

“Well then, Holmes,” I said evenly, “I will be glad to hear of your decision when you make one.” I picked up my writing materials and made to leave the sitting room.

“Watson,” he called out just before I reached the stair landing. I stopped, turned and stood in the doorway.

Holmes turned to face me. “Why me?”

“What?” I said, returning to the room.

“I have been trying to understand what it is you’ve seen that causes you to desire me in such a way,” he said with traces of sadness in his voice.

He gripped the back of the chair behind the table.

“It is difficult for me to fathom how someone so kind-hearted as yourself would not prefer a…a better person.”

“You are the best and wisest man I’ve ever known,” I told him honestly. “You’re not perfect, certainly, but no one is.”

He smiled and looked down. “That’s very kind of you, my friend. I suppose if I had thought myself worthy of your affections I might have reacted very differently to your pronouncement, aside from the obvious fact that I’ve no experience in such matters.”

My heart swelled. He had so often been the first to laud his extraordinary mental prowess that I had never imagined he considered his own deficiencies. I went to him and took his hands in my own.

“Who else but you, Holmes? These past years I’ve spent being at your side have been the best of my life. Believe me, I’ve never had a thought for another man before, but then I’ve never known anyone like you. You take my breath away. I’ve wondered for months now what it be like to kiss you.”

He looked at me in genuine surprise.

“I am afraid I don’t know how,” he confessed.

I moved closer to him until I was inches from his face.

“Part your lips,” I murmured. He did so.

“Close your eyes.” He did, and my every nerve came alive.

“Now,” I whispered, “taste my bottom lip as though you’re trying a spoonful of something sweet.”

I brought my mouth to his, and he tentatively and delicately pulled at my lip. After a moment, he released me again. Before either one of us opened our eyes I locked my lips onto his with measured confidence, and allowed my fingers to graze the side of his face. I felt the corners of his mouth turn up in a smile just before I broke the kiss and took a small step back.

A flush splashed across his cheekbones and a soft light shone behind his unusually round eyes.

“Now was that the worst thing you’ve ever experienced?” I asked him half-jokingly.

 “No,” he smiled, then glanced up at me shyly. “That was very nice.”

“I’m glad,” I whispered, still holding his face close to mine. “We can take it as slow as you like, you know.”

He brought his hand up to my wrist and laced his fingers in my own. He spoke again in a velveteen murmur so soft it tickled my ears.

“You must continue to write of me as a brain without a heart, and yourself as no less an authority on the subject of the fair sex. The sitting room must remain locked at all times when you and I are the only ones occupying it. You must never address me in any other way than your friend and colleague when in the company of others, and most importantly, Watson,” he looked into my eyes with grave concern, “if this arrangement does not come to suit either or both of our best interests, I want you to promise me it would not cost me your companionship. I would regret that exceedingly.”

 “Done,” I said firmly. “I promise.” I gently kissed his forehead and thus sealed our pact.

“Holmes?”

“Hmm?”

“Why me?”

“Pardon?”

“You said mine was the only such offer you’ve considered. Why?”

He searched my face for a moment. A beautiful smile then spread across his features.

“Who else but you, Watson? You take my breath away.”

An ocean of joy swelled so large in my heart I felt its moisture overflowing in the rims of my eyes, but all I could do was smile with gratitude as I pulled him to me for another embrace.

“Holmes, please.”

“Hum?”

“Holmes, you must stop this. If I spend myself one more time today I shan’t have the strength to meet our client in Devon tomorrow.”

“Well, now, that really is too bad of you, Watson,” my lover said. He made no attempts to stop what he was doing. “Supposing the case is so deep that a week passes before our next congress?”

“Supposing your ministrations are so deep I find myself unable to sit down for the next  week,” I countered, struggling to concentrate on words.

“Doctor, how you talk,” he said with mock scorn. “Now, be a good fellow and move your—that’s it.”

“Holmes,” I groaned into the pillow, but it was a lost cause. He was nimbly working his way towards my most sensitive area.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered with his lips against my ear. “Do you want me to stop?”

He knew I wanted no such thing, and his ensuing gasp was nearly enough to send me over the edge then and there. I grasped his thigh behind me and pressed into him.

“Whatever you do….please…don’t….stop,” I exhaled.

It has not always been this way.

In the first weeks of our intimacy, we did little but perfect the art of kissing, a skill which Holmes developed quickly and with the most gratifying interest. I thought I should never cease to gain a thrill from the simple way in which his hand would gently cradle my back when I leaned into him, or how delighted I was to learn that his tongue was as nimble and sensitive as his fingers. He seemed to me designed to be a great lover, for when his shy glances soon turned seductive I imagined that few citizens of the world would be able to resist the allure of his deep dark eyes.

Ah, those eyes. When they looked into mine with unguarded sincerity all that surrounded us seemed to fall away. Ours was a connection borne of the very closest friendship and the wonderment and awe which this inspired in us both was often communicated in the looks that passed between us. I would not trade those moments for anything, for even now his loving gazes are capable of bringing my world to a standstill.

When we first entered his bedroom, I knew what a rare privilege it was to be admitted to what had heretofore been his sole sanctuary. We slept together that night, side by side, half-undressed and having done no more than gently touch one another until the lull of mildly questing lips and hands brought us both to slumber. I watched him sleep before my own lids grew heavy, charmed and aroused by the look of innocent serenity on his face. It would not have taken but a few minutes to bring myself off as I gazed at him, but to do so would have risked awakening him and violating the chaste closeness that was enchanting in itself. I had told him I could wait, and I remained steadfast in my promise.

My patience was rewarded a week later when I asked Holmes if he was ready to engage in a more intimate fashion. He was willing but rather unsure of himself, and it would be a little longer before he granted me full access to his person. In the meantime, I wasted no time in instructing him on how to please a man. After an evening of heady and heated kissing, and after we had shed a fair amount of clothing, I gently guided his hand to my arousal and showed him what to do. The feel of his deft and sensitive fingers on my throbbing flesh was enough to send euphoric stings up my spine, and I shall never forget how intensely he watched my face during that first encounter. If he was taken somewhat aback by my ragged breathing and moans of pleasure, he was no less intrigued by the power he wielded over me in such a state.

“How remarkable,” he noted after I climaxed in a shuddering groan.

My initial attempts to pleasure him were less successful as his own flesh remained stubbornly unresponsive. He stopped me, apologized, and suggested he was simply not equipped for such attentions.

“Nonsense,” I scoffed. “You may be a genius, but you’re still a man.”

I found the solution a few days later in the form of a pigeon’s feather I had found on the windowsill of the sitting room. I laid along the length of him and we both watched as I lightly traced his graceful phallus with the very tip of it.

“There, you see,” I said with triumph as it twitched and danced and rose underneath the feather. He was soon fully erect, though it took several more sessions before he achieved his first orgasm.

It took him quite by surprise.

One lazy afternoon we had retreated into Holmes’s bedroom, with no particular mind to do anything but simply relax. What began as pleasant conversation became the slow erotic exercise of divesting each other various articles of clothing until we were both clad only in our trousers. We tousled playfully, half-caressing and half-wrestling one another until he bested me by rolling atop me and undulating his hips in a flirtatious challenge to see how long I could withstand the friction. However, the sudden growing insistence of his rhythm alerted my every sense to the fact that his own release was imminent.

“Watson,” he hissed urgently. “Watson...”

We both reached down between us and quickly unfastened our trousers. I shifted slightly underneath him in order to increase the contact between our hardened pricks. He cradled my neck and sped his thrusts while I pressed my hands into his buttocks.

And then it happened. Holmes squeezed his eyes closed and gasped, a small cry escaping his throat several seconds after he opened his mouth, as he finally surrendered himself to the little death. It overtook his body in a series of involuntary convulsions that caused his back to curl into an arc and his breath to quicken into little bursts. I held him close while he quaked and rocked on top of me.

“That was very singular indeed,” were his first words to me after he rolled to my side.

Needless to say, his first taste of the ultimate reward of sexual activity opened a vast realm of further possibilities. How he managed to remain so unrelentingly innocent mystified me, but it was all the more endearing, particularly the first time I lowered my mouth on him. We happened to be on a train at the time, but this is of little matter.

“Really, Watson, does that not seem a little extreme? I cannot see how…ah…why you should…oh…,” and we added one more avocation to our repertoire.

I must admit I delighted in shocking him the first time I bade him to take me.

“Come into me tonight,” I breathed into his ear one late night on the settee. We had been pleasantly tangling for some time.

“You want me to—?“ he asked in wide-eyed disbelief.

“I want to feel you inside me,” I whispered, relishing in his blush. I took his hand and led us into his bedroom where I had surreptitiously left a container of lime cream on the nightstand.

I showed him how to prepare us both and braced myself for the feeling of his length sliding into my tight heat. He grasped my right shoulder and entered me with painstaking and delicious slowness. It took some patience for us to achieve a position that was mutually comfortable, but it was well worth it. I’d never experienced such intense gratification with anyone, for this was the first time we had truly made love. The feel of his entire body pressed into me while he penetrated my very essence was exquisite. We did not climax together that first time, but the idea of being conjoined in the most intimate possible way helped us bring one another to an especially thunderous finish by other means.

“I suppose I ought to ask you where you learned to do that, Watson,” he said wearily as we lay side by side in sweat-soaked sheets.

“Well, one sees quite a bit in the army,” I answered. “Though I never experienced it firsthand, I bore witness to many a lonely coupling in Afghanistan. Incidentally, I do wish you’d temper your ah…enthusiasm just a little. While it adds immeasurably to my own pleasure, I am wary of rousing Mrs. Hudson’s suspicions.”

I actually supposed that half of London had been awakened by his belaboured cries.

“Oh Watson, you are so long-suffering,” he said as he rolled his eyes and reached for a cigarette from the nightstand. “Mrs. Hudson has known for weeks.”

“Really?” I drawled, staring at the ceiling.

“You take her for a blind fool?”

“Certainly not, but how…I mean, I’ve never said a word to her about us.”

“Our good landlady possesses eyes and ears, my dear fellow. I daresay my constant exposition on the benefits of observation have rubbed off on her.” He thoughtfully brought his cigarette to his lips.

“Are you sure?” I asked. I plucked the cigarette from his hand and stole a puff.

He rolled onto his side and propped himself on his forearm. “Do you know what she said to me last Friday, Watson? As I was preparing to go out and meet you at Marcini’s she brought me my hat and my stick and said, ‘Mustn’t keep the good doctor waiting, Mr. Holmes. He has been buzzing around like a happy butterfly all week and will surely burst with pride at how handsome you look tonight.’”

 “What did you say?” I asked him in astonishment.

“What could I say? I thanked the lady and went on my way.”

I grinned, and hoped Mrs. Hudson had enjoyed a rare moment in finding herself one step ahead of the great detective.

“You did look positively resplendent that night, Holmes,” I murmured, as I closed my eyes and fondly recalled the moment he entered the restaurant. Half the women and more than a few men turned and cast approving glances in his direction.

“Ah well, I suppose it would behoove us to have an ally. It will be all the more pleasant not to have to be on constant guard around here,” I said when I returned from my reverie.

He gave a throaty chuckle. “Well, I’m sure if she opened the door to the sitting room and found you bent over the settee and me thrusting vigourously into your backside, she may be more inclined towards a distasteful attitude.”

I blushed. “Mr. Holmes, how you talk.”

And now we lay, our bodies writhing together in that perfect and ancient rhythm, his soft cries reverberating against my neck and every space between us filled. To be with him like this far surpassed my every fantasy of a perfect first-time encounter; we had worked for it and earned it and never a day passed that I did not feel closer to him because of it.

In every new moment of intimacy we grew bolder and more spirited, and this time was no exception. I pushed myself onto my knees in order to feel him as deeply as I could, and he reciprocated with equal pressure, expertly plunging the well of bliss inside of me that wrenched uncontrollable shouts of ecstasy from my throat. We reached for my cock at the same time, and with his hand covering mine, together brought my release to an earth-shattering finish. As I spent myself raggedly onto the bed beneath us, Holmes redoubled his efforts in a fervid attempt to meet me at the height of my euphoria. Seconds later, I felt his body tense and immediately relax. He melted into my flesh, gyrating his hips in tiny circles with his groin pressed tightly against me to draw out his climax. He wrapped his arms around my torso and rocked us together until we collapsed in an exhausted heap.

We were quite some time in speaking again after that.

“You never cease to amaze me, John,” he murmured. My head was pillowed on his chest and he was tracing lazy circles on my arm.

I sat up and looked at him. “You’ve never called me John before.”

He frowned thoughtfully. “No, and I don’t believe I shall.”

“And I shan’t call you Sherlock, either. That is Mycroft’s domain.”

He smiled. “It is as well. No one calls me Holmes but you, nor to my knowledge do any of your friends or acquaintances call you Watson. I prefer to remain your Holmes and you my Watson. Is that all right?” He brushed his hand across my forehead and down my cheek.

I took his hand and kissed his palm. “I wouldn’t have it any other way, Holmes.”

“Thank you,” he whispered.

I settled against him and sighed contentedly. “And I thank you, my love, for your many considerations.”

I heard him laugh softly before he fell asleep.

I sat in Sherlock Holmes’s bed staring dumbly at the wall in front of me, my conscience laden with sorrow and regret in equal measure. With a heavy sigh, I threw the sheet back, rose to my feet and slowly began to dress. I dreaded facing Holmes again, wary of the damage wrought by this brief and bizarre encounter and terrified at the implications for our future relations. I considered exiting through the door that led to the second-floor landing and going directly to my own room, but thought better of it. To avoid him entirely would be a far greater and more awkward mistake than whatever conversation we were about to have.

When I was fully dressed, I drew a large breath and braced myself. As boldly as I could, I opened the door to the sitting room and entered it.

Holmes was sitting at his chemistry set, peering through a microscope and jotting notes in the little book he kept beside the table. I walked past him to the front window, and stared into the street. Mentally, I cast about for something, anything to say to him that would sound halfway close to normal, desperate to hear him address me in his old familiar tone.

“I say, there’s quite a lot of traffic for this time of night. Wonder what has so many people milling about in the middle of the week?” I glanced over my shoulder in hopes of garnering a response. Holmes ignored me, picked up a large beaker full of red fluid and poured it into an empty glass.

I tried again. “Holmes, please. You must forgive me for—“

He abruptly raised a hand, and cut me off. “There is nothing to forgive. Please do not trouble yourself over such a trifle incident. Now let us put the whole matter behind us.” He returned to his solutions, indicating the conversation was to go no further.

“I should be very glad to do so,” I returned gratefully. I stretched my arms over my head, and indulged in a slow yawn.

“I think I shall retire, then. It has been an exceedingly long day.” I turned and made my way for the door.

“Good night, Watson,” Holmes said tersely without looking up from his work.

An icy blow struck my chest at the way this was delivered, but I could see no use in making a labor of an already painful exchange.

“Good night, dear fellow,” I whispered back, hoping he would recognize the affection in my voice. Whether he did or not, I’ll never know.

When I at last reached my room, I collapsed onto my narrow bed and buried my face in the pillow. My mind revisited the events of the preceding day, scanning every moment for the opportunity to admit a mistake on my part alone. But I could not. It was difficult enough to make sense of it all.

*          *          *          *

The previous afternoon, Holmes had concluded a case that had long confounded Scotland Yard when he discovered that a wealthy stock broker’s death had been brought about by a chemical reaction that resulted when the victim added his sleeping draught to his heart medication. The effect had been almost instantaneous suffocation.

Few things delighted Holmes more than outshining Inspector Lestrade, and the added element of chemical analysis had my friend feeling unusually exuberant after the murderer had been identified and arrested. The grateful family showered Holmes with heartfelt praises and a small sachet of gold coins, which Holmes promptly took to Romano’s to treat me to an early dinner. He was especially indebted to my assistance, for my examination of the body left me entirely unsatisfied as to the cause of death, and I voiced my reservations over and above the medical examiner assigned to the case. I was certain there had been foul play where he was not, and Holmes congratulated me on my instincts.

Over our meal, Holmes filled in the details that had escaped me, explaining how the heart medication had been tampered with, and how only someone with an expert knowledge of chemistry would have known how to generate a combination of toxins that would strike a fatal blow and then vanish without a trace. I took his affectionate glances at me for gratitude, and I returned them with equal sincerity, for Holmes knew how much I appreciated a stimulating adventure and a fine meal.

We returned to Baker Street arm in arm, laughing heartily as we recounted the Yard’s numerous missteps, how certain the officers had been that death had been accidental, how smugly Lestrade announced that the investigation was closed, how surprised they all were when Holmes demonstrated the chemical reaction that had actually taken place. True to form, Holmes shunned all offers to be credited with solving the case, preferring instead to spend the evening with me rather than talk to the scads of reporters that surfaced in the aftermath of the arrest. His work is its own reward, and I admire him all the more for it.

It was later that evening when Holmes revealed that he desired me. I was trying not to look as shocked as I was, for I had never dreamed that my unsentimental and logic-oriented friend was capable of such feelings. That they were for me alone was positively dumbfounding, but it made sense in its way. He had never shown the slightest sign of interest in the many alluring and desirable women who commissioned his services, no matter how overtly some of them tried to win his affections. They were only clients to him, and when the case was solved, he immediately ceased his professional attentions and took up with whatever he had been doing before they rang. It was always up to me to usher them to the door and offer a polite but hasty goodbye, if only to cover the fact that Holmes cared nothing for such social graces.

When he told me of his feelings that night, he did not do so in a particularly remarkable way; there was no long speech leading up to a declaration, no emotional confession. He simply told me he had recognized deeper stirrings underneath his regard for me, and thought I should know of it.

“Holmes, I hardly know what to say,” I said in astonishment.

“What can you say, Watson? I have blindsided you entirely,” was his swift and sensible reply. He proceeded to flutter about the sitting room, stoking the fire and packing his pipe, glaring into the bowl as he lit it with a smoldering ember.

I stood motionless in the middle of the room feeling rather like a guest in my own home.

“I’m flattered by your statement,” I offered as I watched him spin about the room.

“No doubt,” he said breezily. I had to laugh. Of anything he could have said in response, this was the most like him.

He chuckled in spite of himself, and finally approached where I stood. He shyly reached one hand out, seemingly uncertain as to whether he should take mine.

“What is it you propose to do now?” I asked him kindly.

“I should like to kiss you,” he returned, a stilted smile still playing at his lips.

“Would you?” I replied playfully. I must admit the curiosity was powerful, and my heart began to pound. “You may proceed.”

He took a step forward, and placed one hand behind my neck. He pulled my face to his, stopping only once to offer me a brief smile, closed his eyes and placed his lips over mine.

It was a light kiss, which surprised me. For a man so bold in his actions, I expected something far more aggressive. But he simply let his soft lips hover just on top of mine for a few moments, then let me go. It was very sweet.

When he stepped back, I opened my eyes and saw again his shy smile.

“You do not recoil in horror. You do not push me away in disgust,” he observed.

“Hardly,” said I. “In fact, if I may be so bold…”

This time I stepped forward and placed my lips on his. This singular feeling, the headiness of finding out that one’s dearest friend harbours such regard compelled me to seek the taste of him again and linger upon it. I had ample experience with such actions, but none with a member of my own sex. While the particular experience had not occurred to me, nor had it struck me as the act of gross indecency defined by law. I had always believed that what transpired between consenting adults should be no one else’s concern.

Holmes responded warmly to my embrace, allowing his hands to rest at my waist and his mouth to open just slightly. I dared to let my tongue dart past his teeth just once which delighted him, for he opened further and tilted his head at a greater angle to deepen the kiss. It was utterly delicious.

It was he who broke the kiss, and when I again looked into his face I saw it had coloured with a considerable flush, and there was eager excitement dancing behind his keen grey eyes.

“Tell me, Holmes,” I started to say, but he knew what I was about to ask.

“For a brief period,” he said, “when I was sixteen. I’d a friend at boarding school with whom I shared private quarters. For three months we experimented in all matters physical until the headmaster responded to the rumours that we had grown suspiciously close.”

Holmes did not appear particularly troubled by this memory, so I pressed him.

“What became of your friend?” I asked him.

“Transferred to another school. I was as bored as I was lonely when he left, so I took up boxing and soon thought of him less and less. I could not call it love because I never thought of him beyond the skills we honed together in the bedroom. I considered it a rite of passage of a kind, though admittedly unlike those the boys around me were experiencing with members of the opposite sex. Once he left my company, I moved on to other matters of young manhood.” Holmes looked at me expectantly.

“So for the next thirty-some years you’ve felt no similar inclinations?” I asked.

“I suppose not. Not enough to pursue in any case. But lately, with you, it has become rather…singular…” he trailed off here and gazed at me intensely but with an unreadable expression. 

Unsure what to say next, I took up his hand in mine, and we both looked down at the floor. He looked up a moment later. “And what about you, Watson? Are you in unfamiliar territory?”

“Yes,” I admitted, “though I cannot say it’s entirely unpleasant.”

A smile lit up his face. “Ah!” he said, “Then you have no objections if I do this?”

Without waiting for a response, he pulled me to him, wrapping his lean, muscular arms entirely around my form and kissing me again with renewed vigour.

How easy it was to become lost in this! A certain kind of magnetic energy envelopes Holmes wherever he goes, and he is capable of drawing the eyes of a roomful of people to himself without uttering a single word. I often did marvel at his incredibly lithe physique and the subtle grace that accompanied his every movement, to say nothing of the dark, angular features that turned many a head in his direction. I have written extensively on his eyes and the enigmatic flame that flickers behind them on a constant basis, flaring with the advent of a case, waning when exhausted or gripped by a dark mood. It is here that the whole of his stunning persona seems to be the most concentrated. And the way they looked at me tonight would remain fixed in my memory for a very long time.

Finding myself pulled into such a charismatic sphere, I was hardly apprehensive about letting our activities escalate, and rarely did I turn down an opportunity for adventure, especially with Sherlock Holmes.

I barely noticed that he had pushed my jacket from my shoulders and commenced unbuttoning my waistcoat. I found that my own hands followed suit almost of their own volition, divesting him of his cravat and collar before cradling his face.

With little inhibition remaining, I let my tongue play over his, sucking it alternately into my mouth and starting over again and again with my lips trying every angle. We were soon both out of breath, and stopped momentarily to take in some air.

“Will you join me in the bedroom?” he asked me in a low, velvety murmur. As if to prove the necessity of his question, he took my hand and placed it over his groin to feel his arousal. I swallowed. Surely this was the next step?

“As you wish,” I murmured back, tasting him once more.

He broke off, turned and led me into his room. After locking the door, we resumed undressing one another and were soon entirely nude, nestled together in his bed. I realized his brilliant hands were capable of so much more than rifling through evidence as one pressed gently into my lower back while the other traced over the contours of my body. I simply held him as his breathing quickened and he began to nudge my growing arousal.

He rolled on top of me, straddling my waist and pressing his swollen member into mine. I felt his back muscles flexing as his movements intensified, and it was here that I felt the first grips of panic.

I had never done this before, and it flashed into my mind the absurd question of which one of us was supposed to be the man. Surely it was him, writhing ecstatically on top of me. What did that make me?

I suddenly wanted to stop, but did not dare interrupt him in such a remarkably urgent state—I know well the painful effect a half-consummated encounter can have on a man. I willed my mind to remain calm and remember how thrilling it had all been up to this point. I placed both hands on his back and allowed him to continue, hoping my physical response would again take over and blot out the disturbing thoughts that had broken into my conscience.

Holmes groaned aloud as he ground into me, thrusting his hips into mine so forcefully that I could feel our hipbones chafe. His cries grew more frequent as he buried his head in my shoulder, and I realized there was nothing I could do to reignite either enthusiasm or desire. My only wish now was for a swift ending. I squeezed my eyes closed and held him against me until he stiffened and then shuddered to his death. I held my breath as his semen spread across my stomach and seeped onto the bed, waiting for the aftershocks to subside.

When stillness came, he lifted himself up and brought his swollen lips again to mine. I kissed him back hesitantly, and attempted to return his sated smile. He reached down for my cock, but I pushed him away before he could see that it had softened entirely.

“It’s all right, Holmes, really,” I said lightly, trying to sound as if I had been completely satisfied by his release. He attempted again to kiss me, but I pursed my lips and turned my head away. As soon as I did so, I knew there was no way such an observant man could mistake my demeanour.  I was not wrong.

I glanced over at him just long enough to see his eyes widen and his lips part as he slowly drew back in a state of shocked disbelief.

“It really was lovely…I mean, I’m just not used to…I’m not sure I….” I tried to explain, but the damage was done.

“I see,” Holmes said quietly, and shrank to the other side of the bed with such an expression of sadness and disappointment that I could not bear to look at him.  I taxed my brain to come up with the right words to say to him, to at least make the tension bearable, but it was no use. After a long silence, he noiselessly sat up, reached for the dressing gown he kept draped over his bedstand and put it on with his back to me.

“I’ll leave you some privacy to dress,” he said quietly, wrapping his arms tightly around himself. He left the bedroom, closing the door behind him.

Oh, how many times I played and re-played those events in my head, hoping to uncover a sure sign of my wrongdoing so I could take it to him and tell him how sorry I was. All I wanted to do was assuage the rejection and humiliation that had left him sad and speechless in an effort to quickly repair the erosion of our friendship. But a thousand apologies would never have been enough, and short of attempting even that, there was nothing left to be said.

I was not surprised to find that he had risen early and left Baker Street by the time I arrived in the sitting room the following morning, nor was I surprised when he did not return until very late that night, long after he knew I would have retired. I had no choice but to afford him his space, and hope that in due time he would somehow forgive me.

For my part, I busied myself at St. Bart’s during the days and whiled away more hours than usual at my club in the evenings.

“We’ve been seeing an awful lot of you these days, Dr. Watson,” my friend Thurston said warmly on my fifth consecutive night at the billiard tables. “To what do we owe this privilege?”

“Oh, I suppose cabin fever has been pressing upon me,” I responded lightly. I was having difficultly making casual conversation, and truthfully I only remained at the club to stave off the crushing loneliness of an empty Baker Street and an uncertain future with my best friend.

“No interesting cases with Mr. Holmes?” Thurston asked innocently, though I could have throttled him for it.

“They don’t always concern me,” I replied, trying to keep my tone even and non-vexed.

“Well, I just read in the Times that he captured a band of thieves who had been posing as kitchen staff and robbing an invalid woman of her inheritance over a period of months,” Thurston continued. “Sounded like a most damnable business and how he learnt of their identities is anyone’s guess. I would have thought you’d have been at his side for that one.”

“Sometimes the man prefers to work alone,” I snapped as I thrust my cue towards the corner pocket. “Besides, I have work of my own to attend to at St. Bart’s. I’m still a doctor you know.”

Thurston backed away and shook his head in protest. “No harm was meant by it, Dr. Watson. Please forgive my invasive questions.”

I sighed and leaned against the table. “I’m sorry, Thurston,” I said wearily. “It’s been a long week for us both and I suppose I’d rather not speak about it.”

We finished our game in strained silence. I returned my cue to its stand, bid good-night to Thurston and left the club. My time of asylum had run out. If one more person asked me about Holmes I feared I would break him in half.

I slowly made my way back to Baker Street that night, expecting again to find the sitting room bereft of my flat-mate and a cold supper long ago left by Mrs. Hudson. But when I turned onto our street, I saw a light in the window. My heart rate sped and I dared to hope that Holmes was up there and willing to finally speak to me. I hurried my pace and went inside. When I opened the door to the sitting room, there sat Holmes, finishing a cup of tea and idly sorting through the day’s mail. He looked up when he saw me, and I was momentarily stunned by the parade of expressions that instantly crossed his face; it had first brightened at my presence, immediately darkened and just as quickly shifted to indifference, where it remained when he uttered a noncommittal greeting.

“Evening, Holmes,” I responded in the same even tone. “Has Mrs. Hudson brought supper?”

“She has, but I sent her away,” he replied. “There may still be a warm plate if you should like to ring her.”

I was not actually hungry, and I waved away his suggestion. I crossed the room and poured a glass of brandy for myself, then settled in the chair opposite Holmes at the table.

“How have you been?” I asked him cautiously.

“Busy,” he sighed, “I have been busy, Watson. I suppose you heard that the entire staff of Whidby Manor has been placed under arrest?”

“I had heard that somewhere, yes,” I said as I took a sip of my drink.  

“It is unfortunate that the majority of the stolen jewelry has long since been sold for cash, but I was able to recover a goodly portion of the lady’s sword collection. Such items rarely get far for their singular military features,” he said.

I was crestfallen. Glad as I was that Holmes was speaking to me again, I would have loved to accompany him on such a case. But I could hardly blame him for shunning my company after what had happened.

“I’ve no doubt you left another grateful family in your wake,” I said encouragingly.

Holmes offered one of his brief half-smiles right before he frowned at a letter that lay across his lap.

I patiently sipped my brandy while he read in silence.

“Hum,” he said when he finished, folding the document and returning it to its envelope.

“Something of interest?” I asked hopefully.

“Perhaps,” he said. “Then again, perhaps not.” He looked down again.

“Holmes,” I said, leaning forward. “I wish you’d let me explain.”

He looked up in surprise. “What is there to explain, friend Watson? I nearly forced you into a situation which undoubtedly made you uncomfortable, and which you politely endured as long as you could, and now we both know such a boundary should never be crossed again.”

“Force is hardly the word, Holmes,” I said in equal surprise. “I was a willing participant until—“ I stopped.

“Until what?” he asked me sharply.

“Until I…wasn’t sure who I was supposed to be,” I said, and as soon as the words escaped my lips I realized how strange and senseless they sounded.

“You are John H. Watson, M.D. My friend and colleague. Nothing more,” he said, then added with a sincere smile, “and nothing less.”

I smiled back. “I must admit I’ve missed being in on your cases. It’s a slack time of year at the hospital.”

“Then I shall keep you apprised of anything that comes our way,” he promised. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I shall retire for the night. I have been keeping rather late hours this week.”

“’Night, Holmes,” I said with no small trace of relief in my tone.

He nodded once as he walked towards his bedroom and closed the door.

For the first time in over a week, I slept that night. I slept so soundly that I had an uncharacteristically vivid series of dreams, all of which concerned Holmes. The first few were not so noteworthy; we were mired in our usual line of pursuit, though the criminals always remained unseen and their motives never clear. These mostly came down to odd, linear conversations between myself and the detective in which I was coaxing him to divulge more details than he was offering. In one particular dream he was showing me a knife that had been twisted beyond all recognition. Yes, but what does that make me, Holmes? I continued to ask him. He refused to answer. He just kept urging me to examine it, to look closer, to observe. But the closer I looked at the object before me, the more blurred it became.

I woke briefly to the sound of rain coming down against the window. I fell asleep again and dreamt anew.

This time, Holmes was lying on the settee, clothed only in a shirt and trousers. He was holding up a blue and green painting and trying to see the light through it. It’s okay if you hold it upside down, I said to him. He merely frowned and shook his head. I walked over to him, took the painting in from his hands and tossed it away. I grabbed his collar and attacked his mouth with my own. The taste of him immediately sent the blood to my groin, and I climbed atop him and feverishly began to unfasten his trousers. Let’s hold this up to the light, I said, taking out his smooth cock and holding it delicately in my hand. Or shall I…? He shook his head. Put it back, he said, it’s not yours. I felt urgent. Please, I begged him. He shook his head again. So I laid on top of him, pressing his cock to my stomach and telling him to be quiet, though he wasn’t saying a word. The lightning bolts that traveled between his body and mine were incredible, and after only a few quick thrusts, I reached a profound climax.

I awoke suddenly in a full-body sweat, face down on my pillow, and aware of a cooling wetness underneath my hips. Thoroughly confused and not fully conscious, I rolled over and covered my face with my arm. What did it mean?

*          *          *          *

I slept late the next morning, still troubled by the inscrutable scenarios with which my conscience challenged me throughout the night. I washed and came downstairs to an empty sitting room, though Mrs. Hudson had left a fresh pot of coffee and some toast on the table. I assumed Holmes had risen and left early again until I heard shuffling noises coming from his bedroom. He emerged in his dressing gown, beautiful grey eyes aglow, bearing a foolscap document in his hand.

“There’s money in this case, Watson,” he said excitedly. “Have you ever heard of the name Garrideb?”

“No. I’m sure I would remember a name so strange as that,” I replied, heartened by the return to a familiar routine.

“Well, if you can locate this fellow, a princely sum shall be yours,” he gazed eagerly at the document in his hand. “Rather a whimsical little scheme,” he added under his breath.

“I’m all ears,” I said enthusiastically, but he waved his hand in front of me.

“I believe I will let the man explain it to you himself when he visits us later this morning. But mark that name, Watson,” said he, and he glided to the table and poured himself a cup of coffee.

 A short time later, we heard a knock at the door and presently Mrs. Hudson arrived with a calling card bearing the name John Garrideb, Counsellor at Law.

“Are we rich already, Holmes?” I asked him jokingly.

He snorted. “Hardly that, Watson. Show him in, Mrs. Hudson.”

A few moments later, John Garrideb was standing in the sitting room. He was an American, but Holmes instantly observed he had been in England for some time, a revelation that seemed to take the short but powerful man a little off his guard.

“Your clothes, sir,” Holmes said, “are entirely English. It is very simple. Pray, take a seat.” He motioned towards an empty chair.

I remained a little distance from Holmes and our guest, as the two discussed details of the letter which were not yet known to me. From their conversation, I learnt that it had been sent by a Mr. Nathan Garrideb of Kansas, who was a direct relation of the man who had just entered our sitting room. The present Mr. Garrideb struck me as very suspicious in his nature, and for a time, Holmes had to employ his most soothing voice in order to placate his growing vexation. Finally, Holmes gestured towards me and invited Mr. Garrideb to tell his story, partly for the benefit of my ignorance.

Mr. Garrideb’s eyes narrowed at me. “Must he be involved?” he demanded.

Holmes was unfazed. “We usually work together,” he replied evenly.

“Very well,” said Garrideb, “I suppose there’s no secret in this.” And he proceeded to tell a most singular story about a man also named Garrideb who made his fortune in real estate in the United States. When he chanced to meet the man before us, he confessed his strange interest in collecting a roster of men who shared their odd name. John Garrideb had initially dismissed him, only to learn a year later that his namesake acquaintance had passed away and left a bizarre will. The elder Garrideb’s sizeable estate was his on the condition that he uncover two other Garrideb men and split the fortune among them. He had one stroke of luck upon finding a Mr. Nathan Garrideb in London, but the possibility of another in connection with him seemed to stop there.

I glanced over at Holmes as he listened to this tale, and interjected now and again with pointed questions. He sat in his chair with one leg drawn up at the knee and an expression of patient amusement surfacing ever so slightly under his professional mien. I let my gaze linger on him for how handsome and confident he looked, so apparently relaxed, though I knew he could burst into flight in an instant and disappear from the room in a whirl of sudden energy. For some reason, my heart beat faster at the thought. When Holmes chanced to look over in my direction, I quickly lowered my eyes to my notebook and hastily scribbled some notes.

The interview concluded with Holmes agreeing to help Garrideb and his lawyer locate another heir to the American fortune. As the man prepared to leave 221B, Holmes casually asked him if he knew an old acquaintance of his in Topeka, to which Garrideb enthusiastically replied in the affirmative. Holmes offered a peculiar smile in return, we shook hands all around, and Garrideb exited onto Baker Street.

“What do you make of it, Watson?” Holmes asked me, his eyes shining as he leaned against the fireplace and lit his pipe.

“A most extraordinary set of circumstances, I should say,” I replied, “but I am a mite baffled by it. What do you make of it?”

Holmes smiled as he waved out the flame of his matchstick. “Extraordinary is correct. Never have I heard such a pack of lies heaped upon me in a single interview. Everything about him rang false. I knew no such person in Topeka, and neither did the man who just left us.” He sucked thoughtfully on the stem of his pipe. “This case is most interesting,” he said, rather to himself.

That evening, Holmes and I paid a call to Mr. Nathan Garrideb, a strange elderly man who clearly seldom left the comforts of his strange home. He ushered us into a large round room, which resembled a small museum for the collections of all manner of scientific subjects. Holmes’s eyes shone with curious interest as he made his way about the place, stopping momentarily to let his hand wander idly over a plaster skull or microscope. I was momentarily startled by the unbidden memory of those same hands caressing my body, pressing into my back and holding my face. I gasped inaudibly at the curious twitching in my nether regions, but the physical sensation was halted when we heard a sharp rapping upon the door.

Nathan Garrideb promptly opened the door, and greeted an American lawyer. The latter was quite excited, for he announced he had found a third Garrideb, and heartily congratulated his host on becoming a very rich man. As the two arranged for N. Garrideb to collect his newfound wealth in Birmingham the following afternoon, I was struck by a queer sense of déjà vu, though I could not place the source of it. It pressed upon my mind from that point forward, however, even more so when Holmes suddenly inquired after Garrideb’s house agent. When we finally left the man’s house, Holmes and I parted ways. I went back to Baker Street, he sped off to Scotland Yard. I remained preoccupied on my solo journey as I turned the case over in my mind and tried to find a connection. I was vexed as ever when I returned home and spent some hours at my writing desk puzzling over the odd facts that I had recorded in my notebook.

Holmes arrived home soon after, and he greeted me warmly before stepping into his bedroom to change into his dressing gown. When he re-emerged, he took a cigarette from his case and perched on the edge of the settee.

“We’ve seen it before, Watson,” he said thoughtfully.

“I thought so,” I said wearily, “but I cannot quite—“

He leaned forward, and spoke in a low, excited tone, “A bizarre will based on a singular characteristic, a lone man promised a fortune, an elaborate plan to get him out of the house…”

And suddenly it came clear.

I snapped my fingers. “The Red-Headed League!”

Holmes smiled, “Excellent, Watson!”

I joined Holmes on the settee, and asked eagerly, “I presume you asked after the house agent to find out what secret lies within that particular home?”

“Exactly,” he said, still smiling.

“And what of your inquiries at Scotland Yard?” I continued eagerly.

Holmes’s joyful expression turned dark as he sighed and rose from the settee. He placed his hands in his pockets and spoke again with his back to me. “I have identified our client as a man with a sinister and murderous reputation. I fear I am putting you in some danger with the resolution of this case.” He turned and looked gravely down at me.

“It is not our first foray into such conditions,” I said, as I looked up at him.

He started to say something else, but furrowed his brow and stopped himself. Then he offered me one of his half-smiles and replied, “Very well. We shall call upon the empty home of Nathan Garrideb tomorrow at four o’ clock. Bring your revolver.”

That night, I dreamt again of Holmes, but my blurred morning memory of it amounted to no more than passing images of Holmes and myself running after carriages, bolting in and out of buildings, and I was never certain if we were chasing or being chased. Holmes always remained several steps ahead of me and I could not see past him to the object of our pursuit. Nor could I see behind me, for every time I turned my head all I saw was white light. I called out to him repeatedly, but he never turned to answer me.

The following day, we returned to Nathan Garrideb’s strange home, only this time we were quite alone on the premises. His housekeeper had let us in, then promptly left, and so we crouched in a corner shadow and waited for our client. Anticipation passed like electricity between us, and I felt my breath quicken when we heard a key turn in the lock and the cautious footsteps of the man who had called himself John Garrideb, Counsellor at Law. He had his purpose clear in mind, for we watched him move a table, pull up the rug and open a trap door with all the confidence of a seasoned criminal.

Holmes squeezed my wrist and nodded towards the hole in the floor. We crept over to it and I extracted my gun. At the sound of the creaking floorboards, the criminal’s head popped up and he saw in an instant that his game was up. In a final and desperate feat, he pulled a gun from his breastpocket and fired two shots. I cried out from the hot pain that struck my thigh. In the blink of an eye, Holmes was on his feet and he struck the man a mighty blow to the back of his head, sending him bloodied and sprawling to the floor. After he searched him for weapons and found no more, Holmes put his arms around me and dragged me to a chair. He looked at me with wide, terrified eyes.

“You’re not hurt, Watson? For God’s sake, say that you are not hurt!”

I looked at my friend in astonishment, for his usual expression of trenchant focus had been replaced by soft, rimmed eyes and shaking lips. To look at him was to experience the greatest epiphany of my life.

“It’s…it’s all right, Holmes. Just a scratch,” I answered when I found my voice.

He tore open my trousers before I could protest and exhaled a sigh of relief when he saw the wound was entirely superficial. Then he turned towards the criminal, shooting daggers from his eyes as he snarled, “It is as well for you. If you had killed Watson, you would not have got out of here alive.” He righted my clothing and helped me to my feet. The case had reached its denouement.

Killer Evans, as he was called, was promptly rounded up by the officers of Scotland Yard. It had been a counterfeit printing press he was after, which had resided underneath Nathan Garrideb’s feet for the five years he had lived there, entirely unbeknownst to him. As with the flaming red hair of Mr. Jabez Wilson, Garrideb’s odd name had given Evans the opportunity to craft a cunning and elaborate scheme to make sure he was absent during the break-in.

Holmes led me, limping and shaky, to a cab that carried us back to Baker Street. My nerves were frazzled, but it was not due to my brush with death, for I’ve had more of those than I should ever recount, nor could I attribute it to the physical strain caused by the searing scratch that pained my leg. It was the look on Holmes’s face and the urgency in his voice that echoed again and again in my head. In that moment I knew that his desire for me was not borne of idle curiosity, boredom, or simply an urge to satisfy baser instincts. Sherlock Holmes had loved me.

In the days that passed, I grew more troubled. Relations between Holmes and myself were nearly back to normal as our embarrassingly aborted sexual encounter receded further into the past. We might have gone on as though nothing had happened were it not for the increasingly frequent dreams I was having in which he seduced me all over again, but with much more favorable results. In this way I was growing used to the idea of a physical relationship with him, despite my strong notions that this ran contrary to my own nature.

One night, I lay awake in bed, trying to will my mind to dream of something other than the endearing ways in which Holmes tilted his head, raised an eyebrow, or passed a supportive hand over my arm. But thoughts of him were now accompanied by needle-sharp stings in my groin and stomach, and it did me little good to turn my thoughts elsewhere, for they always found their way back to him, and my body now sought the thrilling sensation as much as it wanted for air. I decided relief was my only course of action, and took myself determinedly in my hand. It was only a passing fancy, I thought as I tugged at my prick. I am not an invert. I closed my eyes and sped my pace.

 For God’s sake, say that you are not hurt!

I stiffened and swallowed a groan as I rolled to my side and spent myself, yet another spare moment in which I permitted myself the ecstatic luxury of sexual release. Physically satisfying, yet emotionally empty, this activity did nothing to quell my concerns. My problem demanded a more permanent solution.

The idea occurred to me the following day as I completed my final rounds at St. Bart’s. Holmes had business in south London that night, and I did not expect to see him back before late. When I left the hospital, I took a cab not to Baker Street but to the east end, and looked cautiously about as I alit just near the edge of a lesser questionable neighborhood. I remembered the address from a case we had taken years ago, in which Holmes and I sought information from the madam of a relatively upstanding brothel tucked into a narrow side street. I rapped on the door and was led inside by the same heavily made-up woman we had interviewed before, though she did not recognize me. She brought me into a dim room draped in bright pink and red throw blankets, with black lace curtains framing two windows that faced a brick wall.

“An hour at the least, three at the most. Is there something in particular you’re after then?” she recited her lines without looking up from her little desk, and gestured towards an album of glossy photos of the women for hire.

“She’ll do,” I said, pointing to a voluptuous dark-haired woman, and trying to sound as casual as if I had done this many times before. “An hour shall suffice.”

“A fine choice, sir. Miss Rose is one of our most popular girls. Wait one moment, please.” She left the room and returned a minute later with a woman dressed in a flimsy blue dress who only vaguely resembled her picture. Clearly, some years had passed since it had been taken. Miss Rose nodded courteously at me, and I followed her up a winding staircase to short hallway. She unlocked a door and led me into a small room with a bed, wash basin and fireplace. Décor was spare, although she had troubled to add a vase of flowers and a few lacey pillows, which provided a small measure of character to the premises. I took off my hat and sat awkwardly on the edge of the bed.

With a distinctive American accent, Miss Rose recited her list of specialties, including an addendum of what she would not do, and turned to light the fire while I made up my mind.

I closed my eyes as she ran her hands over my chest and began to unbutton my shirt. Her hands, so unlike Holmes, were cold and crisp and businesslike. She dutifully kissed my neck and helped me out of my shirt. For a single moment, I felt something tighten in my chest, and realized I was putting all my faculties to work in an attempt to forget my friend.

A few minutes later, I was on top of her, awkwardly trying to find a suitable rhythm in which I could abandon my body to its instincts. When it was clear that this was not going to be a viable position, she helpfully offered to roll me onto my back, and minister me from above. I watched her with furrowed brow as she executed her repertoire of customary noises and expressions, her great breasts swinging pendulously from side to side, and feeling all but numb from below my waist. She stopped and looked directly into my eyes.

“If you don’t mind my sayin’ so, sir, this don’t seem like your cup of tea,” she said.

“What makes you say that?” I asked her suspiciously.

“You just don’t seem like the type I usually see in here,” she replied, pushing herself off of me.

“What type?” I pressed.

“Desperate for female company. Driven by lust. Unsatisfied at home. That’s not you, is it?” She put on a red silk robe, and went over to her bureau to find a cigarette.

“And how do I seem to you?” I asked her as I sat up.

She lit her cigarette and peered curiously into my visage. “You look more thoughtful than the rest of ‘em. I’d say there’s sort of a sensitive nobility about you. And you’re certainly out of your element here.” She turned her head to the side and blew a line of smoke before continuing, “Someone else on your mind?”

I sighed, and nodded.

She shrugged. “Makes no difference to me, sir, though most men in your situation figure out how to get the release they’re lookin’ for. It’s not just anyone, though, is it?”

“No,” I confessed, surprised at how relieved I was to be talking to someone about it. “It isn’t.”

“Whattsa matter, honey? Your girlfriend leave you in the lurch?” she asked soothingly as she pulled up a chair.

“I’m afraid it’s rather more complicated than that,” said I, offering a weary smile.

“I’ve heard it all, baby,” she said cheerfully.

I took a deep breath. “It’s not my girlfriend. It’s…a man. My best friend.” I braced myself for her response.

She simply nodded and tapped the end of her cigarette in her ashtray. “Right. Does he know how you feel?”

“No. That is, I don’t know. I don’t think so,” I stammered, searching for a way to articulate the strange situation I had been living with. “It was he who approached me, and at first I reciprocated. Rather enthusiastically, I might add.” I looked up and saw she was listening with some interest.

“So what happened?” she asked as she brought the cigarette to her mouth.

“I froze,” I said. “Halfway through. He finished, but I…froze. It had suddenly occurred to me that I didn’t know who I was. I mean, I’m not an invert, never have been. So how could I allow myself to carry on with another man?”

She gazed for a minute at my face, then smiled. “I know what you are,” she said soothingly. “You’re in love.”

“Well, I do love him. As—as a friend, I mean,” I was careful to add.

“Rubbish,” she said with a snort. “You’re in it deep. I can tell. But you’re too afraid of yourself to admit it.” She spoke with some conviction.

“But I’m not—“ I started to remind her, but she cut me off.

“Listen, honey, it don’t matter. Love is love. Trust me, I’ve seen all manner of types. You don’t strike me as an invert, but neither does the man who comes here once a week just to prove he’s not. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

I looked at her in surprise.

“It don’t make sense,” she continued, “to say you’re either this or you’re that. People got all kinds of inclinations, and many satisfy them accordingly. Others try to hide it, and for what? There’s always someone else out there whose interests match your own, so why not do what’s human? Now, if you’ve found love, well, that’s luckier than anything.”

We sat in silence while I allowed her words to sink in. “He loves you, too, don’t he?” she asked gently.

I blinked back tears as I nodded.

“And he’s a special one. Don’t let just anyone see who he is,” she puffed on the end of her cigarette.

“Now, how would you know that?” I asked her incredulously.

She smiled. “I used to read palms at a circus in New York. I learned that people aren’t so complicated when you really look at them. It’s easy to tell what kinds of people are drawn to others. Most just want to love, and be loved in return.”

I could have hugged her, though I could also finally admit the possibility held no allure for me whatsoever. But I had an idea.

“Miss Rose, would you do me a favor?” I asked her.

“Name it, honey. You still got a half an hour,” she said kindly.

“Could you…show me something?”

She smiled again, and chuckled. “You want to know how to please a man? You’re in the right place. Lie down.”

I lied down as she rose and came over to the bed. She straddled me just above my knees, grasping my cock with some authority, and commenced a very illuminating tutorial on the art of oral pleasure. I asked her many questions, which she answered with the expertise of someone long in practice, then proceeded to put her advice to the test. She even talked around me as she placed her lips around my tip, explaining which action garnered the best response. I was stirring again at the thought of visiting such skills upon Holmes, and when she finally stopped talking, I closed my eyes and saw his face.

Watson, are you hurt?? For God’s sake…

I gripped the blankets, shuddered and released. She took every last drop. “Do you always swallow like that?” I asked her breathlessly when the convulsing stopped.

She winked and dismounted from her perch, “Not for just anyone, honey. But if I were you I’d show him that you love his whole person, inside and out.”

Relieved, satisfied and immensely grateful, I rose and dressed. When I was ready to leave, I took out my billfold and extracted her fee, plus a generous tip.

“Miss Rose,” I said, taking her hand, “I don’t know how to thank you.”

“It’s nothin’, sweetheart. I wish you and your man all the happiness in the world.” She gave me a sweet smile, and I reflected for a moment that she must have once been a beautiful woman. She still might have been under different circumstances, but I daresay she seemed well-suited to her job

I left the brothel with a light heart, though I was still careful to remain discreet as I hailed a cab and returned again to Baker Street.

*          *          *          * 

Holmes was not yet home when I arrived, and I paced the sitting room in a state of nervous excitement. I had not decided on how best to proceed when he returned, and I turned several possibilities over in my head. In the meantime, I calmed myself with a glass of brandy, and stoked and restoked the fire.

When he finally entered the sitting room, I turned and offered him a bright smile. “You’re home!” I said warmly.

“Hullo, Watson,” he returned, his eyebrows twitching curiously at my state. He commenced his usual routine of changing into more comfortable lounging attire in his bedroom, gliding to the fireplace to find his favourite pipe and lighting it with a smoldering coal extracted from the fire.

When at last he took the pipe from his mouth, I strode over to him and planted a firm kiss on his lips. He stiffened in surprised, then backed away.

“Watson, please,” he said in a strained voice, “We agreed there would be no more of this.”

“I’d like to give it another try, Holmes. I think the results will be much different this time,” I said, approaching him again. I reached my hands out to grasp his lapels, but he grabbed them before I could do so.

“What makes you think so?” he demanded, a pained expression coming over his face. “I should not like to relive one of the most disagreeable moments of my life.”

The bitter truth of his remark stung me, and I stopped in my tracks.

“I’ve been thinking. And reflecting. And I believe I’ve worked some things out,” I told him.

“Have you?” he asked distantly as he settled himself into his chair and crossed his legs.

“Yes, and it’s clear to me now,” I said, sitting opposite him. I frowned. This wasn’t unfolding the way I planned. But I should have counted on his reticence to revisit the subject. I could not and did not want to consider how deeply my initial rejection had hurt him.

“What is?” he asked with a sigh.

“Who I am, who we are, what I feel,” I put rather simply.

Holmes rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Capital,” he answered sarcastically. “Who are you, who are we, and what do you feel?”

“I’d prefer to show you, if you’ll let me,” I said quietly and seductively.

He stared back at me.

I rose from my chair and walked over to him, then made to pull him to his feet. He reluctantly allowed it.

“Please, Holmes,” I whispered as I placed my hands on his neck and pressed my forehead to his. His eyes were tightly closed as though he were concentrating on preventing the memory of how it had all ended before from rising to the surface. I leaned into his face for a moment to taste him just once, then twice. He finally allowed himself to respond, lifting his lips to mine and gently grasping my forearms. He stopped again, frowned towards the carpet and tried to pull back. But I would not be deterred. I steered him towards his bedroom, backing him against the wall next to the door.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” he whispered into my mouth.

I did not reply, but continued to kiss him with growing passion, emboldened when he responded more earnestly. I pushed his dressing gown from his shoulders and started immediately on his cravat and tie. I then led him into his bedroom and sat him down on his bed where I finished undressing him. My heart ached when I noted that he kept his gaze cast downward in effort to mask his sadness. I would never be able to erase the memory of our very first encounter, and it would take months before he fully trusted me again. I only wanted to please him more because of it.

To see Holmes naked again before me was somehow as relieving as it was arousing. I always knew he possessed a beautiful body, and I was finally getting the second chance I had been craving. He watched me with hooded eyes as I shed my own clothes, and when I finally lowered myself upon him, I found that he was trembling slightly.

I prevented myself from attacking him with all the vigour and energy I had been dreaming of, and instead took my time about exploring his face and chest with my lips and tongue. I still sensed he was holding himself back out of fear that I would reject him a second time, but this only fed my own desire and urged me to make certain I convinced him that would never happen again. He warmed to me as our activities escalated, unable to stop his body from engaging with mine. I kissed my way down his stomach and to his groin, then traced my tongue to his inner thighs. He drew a sharp breath as I came closer to his manhood.

“You don’t have to do this, Watson,” he protested when I reached his long and graceful cock.

I looked up, and waited until our gazes locked before I said firmly, “I want to. More than anything, I want to.”

He exhaled slowly and closed his eyes while I proceeded to employ every skill Miss Rose had imparted to me. The effects were delightful and extremely erotic; Holmes placed one hand gently on the back of my head while I curled my tongue around his crown and traced my lips along his shaft. He gasped when I licked at his sac, and moaned when I prolonged the sensation by pulling it into my mouth.

Gradually, I worked my way back up to the tip of him, and finally swallowed him whole. He laced his fingers in my hair as I increased the suction and pumped him in a steady rhythm. When at last he started thrusting with wild abandon, I grasped his buttocks with both hands and pushed him deeper into my mouth. His grunts turned to cries when I raked my fingers across his perineum and I readied myself for his finish. He stopped his hips in mid-air when he shouted out in release, clutching my hair in both hands and throwing his head back upon the pillow. Short, uneven breaths escaped his lungs as he shuddered to stillness and, following Miss Rose’s advice to the very end, I took every last drop and licked him clean.

Before he had a chance to catch his breath, I threw myself on top of him and began to ground my throbbing arousal into his pelvis. Still very much in the heat of passion, he let his hands traverse my body while my own breathing sped to a series of ragged bursts.

“My dear Watson,” he panted as he felt for my face. The echo of my fantasies was all I needed to finish, and I buried my head in his shoulder and died, crying out from the currents of ecstasy that ran through my spine as my body violently convulsed against him.

When the aftershocks passed, I pried my sweating body from his and rolled to his side with a deep and satisfying exhale. I looked over at Holmes and saw perspiration on his furrowed brow and a look of utter disbelief on his face.

“Wherever did you learn to do that?” he asked me when his breathing slowed.

 “You liked that then,” I smiled, closing my eyes and reclining contentedly on my back

“Watson,” he said sternly. He rolled towards me and propped himself on his forearm. “You told me you had never been with a man. You were either not speaking the truth or—“

“Or?”

“Or you’ve been with one since,” he finished.

“I have seen someone,” I told him truthfully, looking over to see his expression fall to troubled perplexity. “But it’s not what you think,” I added quickly.

He waited for me to go on.

“I went to see a very nice woman in the east end,” I started to say before I realized how ridiculous it sounded. “She was most helpful.”

Holmes chuckled once, then he threw his head back and laughed heartily.

“Holmes, I’m being serious!” I scolded him.

“Yes you are, very serious indeed,” he chided me. “Watson, only you could make visiting a prostitute sound so wonderfully innocent. Where did you go?”

“Althea Mae’s Boarding House,” I told him. “I remembered it as a relatively respectable place from our investigation of the wharf murders some years back.”

“Ah yes,” he nodded at the memory.

“I must admit that my reason for going was to test my response to the, ah, usual proceedings in such places. But after a very awkward start, Miss Rose was well aware that I was going about it the wrong way,” I confessed, hoping I didn’t sound too callous.

Holmes’s eyes lit up. “Miss Rose? Brunette hair? American accent?”

“The very same,” I answered in surprise. “Do you know the lady?”

“Quite,” he answered, taking a cigarette from his bedside table and lighting the end of it. “And if Scotland Yard ever finds out about her they’ll rid themselves of half the force and make her chief commissioner.”

“How on earth do you know her?” I asked.

Holmes gave me a wry look. “Purely for business reasons I assure you, Watson,” he said drily. He waved his hand as I started to apologize for the way I phrased my question, then continued. “She has assisted me in a number of cases, for her knowledge of human nature and individual character is unsurpassed even by the most thoroughly trained doctors of psychology. She could certainly have a career as a consulting detective, though I shouldn’t care to be so challenged by the competition.” He inhaled deeply from his cigarette. “Pray continue.”

“Well, it’s just as you say, Holmes. She was immediately attuned to the fact that I was about something else, and she urged me to tell her about it. Honestly, I wasn’t sure just where to turn, so I told her about my—about our situation. She was most sympathetic,” I said, hoping Holmes understood what I meant. “She helped me realize what I was too blind to see on my own, then she gave me a very informative, ah, lesson on the art of oral pleasure.”

“Ah,” Holmes said thoughtfully. “So she solved your case of identity.”

“I suppose she did, yes,” I returned with a smile. “And, indirectly, so did ‘John Garrideb, Counsellor at Law.’”

“How?” he asked.

“When you thought I had been hurt you…it was…I didn’t know you felt that way, Holmes,” I said quietly.

“Was that not already obvious? I love you very much,” he said nonchalantly before he brought the cigarette to his lips.

I closed my eyes for a moment, uncertain as to what I had just heard. “What?” I asked in a small voice.

Holmes glanced at me and repeated himself in the same casual tone, “I said I love you. I thought that was clear.”

Only he could make such a meaningful declaration sound so wonderfully…Holmes.

“And I you,” I returned softly before kissing him gently on the mouth.

“Splendid,” he responded as only he could, and resettled himself against his pillow. We held each other in happy silence for a few moments before he suddenly spoke again.

“I’m going to send her a note of thanks,” he announced.

I was horrified. “You’ll do no such thing!” I sat up and glared at him.

“’Dear Miss Rose,’” he began, rolling his “r” majestically, “’I am greatly indebted to you, dear lady, for my friend’s newfound skills under your very excellent tutorial brought upon the most powerful sexual release of my life,” his eyes darted slyly in my direction, “that utterly took my breath away.”

“Holmes!” I scolded him, but could not prevent myself from laughing as he continued to compose an absurdly florid letter praising the effects of our mutual friend’s advice. I blushed furiously, playfully wrestled with him, and finally clamped my mouth over his to quiet him once and for all. For several long minutes, we remained locked in a passionate embrace. When we finally broke off, he addressed me in a more subdued tone.

 “I should not like you to consult with Miss Rose again, Watson, however well she educated you for both our benefits,” he said.

“Certainly not, Holmes,” I assured him. “I am entirely in your hands now.

There was relief in his smile when he took my hand in his and said softly, “Oh, the things I’m going to show you.”

And so he proceeded with my second lesson in loving another man, a thrilling exercise that left us both speechless and for all the right reasons.

*              *             *          *

In the weeks that followed, Holmes left it to me to initiate intimacy, though that would change in time. I think he wanted to be certain that I was sincere and secure in our newly expanded relations, and I gladly took on the task of signaling when I was feeling amorous. In fact, it was only a few nights after our first successful lovemaking that I found myself pleasantly distracted by the exquisite way in which his trapezius muscles curved gracefully into his long neck. He was bent over his chemistry set, wholly ensconced in the specimen that lay at the other end of his microscope. It had been too hot to wear a collar in the house, and his exposed nape started showing small beads of perspiration. I silently closed my journal, rose from my chair and walked to his bedroom, dragging my index finger along the top of his shoulders as I passed him. He raised his head, then turned to look at me as I offered a sly smile just before I crossed the threshold. I laughed joyfully when, seconds later, he attacked me in a brilliant flash and sent us both sprawling on the bed.

Keeping our love a secret was not difficult, though one morning Mrs. Hudson inquired innocently which one of us had been up late praying the night before, only to grant us a knowing wink when we looked back at her in stunned silence. Our working relationship changed little, though it did take more convincing now for Holmes to allow me into perilous situations, and I just as stubbornly refused to allow him proceed alone in such cases. But our domestic life blossomed considerably, in ways more rewarding than I can articulate. I had become his partner in every sense, a role that suited me perfectly and which I would never take for granted, for my spirit had shown me how beautiful it could be, how much I had loved him all along, and what treasures awaited me if I were observant enough to see them.

The bouquet of flowers I sent Miss Rose required no note. I have a feeling she knew exactly whence they came.

Those first few months during which Sherlock Holmes and I explored the newfound territory of our expanded relations were some of the happiest of my life, and I flatter myself that the same was true for my friend. The closeness I had always relished between us blossomed so naturally into physical love that  I often wondered why we had not taken up together in this way so much sooner.

And yet despite our intimacy, there were parts of Holmes that remained just beyond my reach. He communicated with action far better than with spoken words, and he usually responded to my sincere declarations of love and affection with varying expressions of amusement. I often did not know what passed through his mind, though he was ever in tune with mine, so much so that I was certain my thoughts somehow echoed in his alone. But I did not doubt that in his fashion he loved me in return.

In his work, Holmes remained as he was—particularly trying cases still had him irascibly pacing the floor of our sitting room, he was still wont to speak sharply to me when he lost his patience or felt insecure in his work, and he sometimes left me in a state of complete bewilderment to pursue a lead on his own, only to offer the full explanation days later when the situation required it of him.

It goes without saying that we conducted ourselves with the utmost care when in the company of others. Even when it was just the two of us searching out clues in dark rooms or backstreets, more often than not we kept our regard towards one another on the level of friends and colleagues. This is not to say we did not enjoy tempting one another’s affections outside the bounds of Baker Street—for I could fill pages with torrid details of our secret trysts—but rather that Holmes never wavered in his commitment to his profession. While he might on occasion allow his hand to steal suggestively to my leg or lean appreciably close to me as we examined some piece of evidence, he was determined that the “softer passions” over which he used to scoff would not interfere with his adherence to logic where crime was concerned.

During the quieter times, when the caseload was light and required little effort from Holmes and myself, we delighted in exploring our nascent passion. I was not long in realizing the exquisite advantages of having the world’s most observant man as my lover. It seemed to me that we had only lain together but a few times before Holmes was keenly aware of how to incite my strongest reactions.

One night, I lay next to Holmes in his bed, gasping for breath and thanking every god under the sun that I’d still had the fortitude to enjoy such strenuous activities.

“Good heavens,” I exclaimed as my mind began to clear again.

Holmes chuckled, “All right then, Watson?”

Without thinking, I replied, “That was more delectable than the Friday night special at Romano’s.”

Holmes laughed his gentle but hearty laugh, the one he reserved for my ears alone. “So that is what goes through your mind when I’m concentrating so earnestly on making you come?” he joked as he rolled towards me.

For weeks after that, we made a game of it, half-mockingly and half-seriously drawing elaborate comparisons to our respective levels of satisfaction.

“More exquisite than Sarasate’s rendering of the ‘Devil’s Trill’,” Holmes once breathed into my ear after I had worked us both into a mutual frenzy with my hand.

“More rewarding than curing an epidemic of influenza,” I murmured contentedly one late evening as I traced idle patterns on Holmes’s smooth back while he puffed on a cigarette.

And then the words I had longed to hear but dared not ask for were finally uttered.

It had been a quiet afternoon during which we both set about our respective tasks, yet remained attuned to an atmosphere of growing friction between us. When Holmes chanced to look up from his book and found me grinning at him with the full measure of my desire, he raised his eyebrow and a rapid smile spread across his face. Seconds later his book was on the floor and my eager mouth between his legs. He gasped and clutched my head when I brought him to his glory, spending himself in great surges until his body relaxed and he slumped back into his chair.

“Finer than any solution in the needle,” he exhaled above me.

I laughed joyously at this revelation, finally convinced that our passions had replaced the infernal lethargy of his cocaine needle, and certain that my love alone was strong enough to banish the dark forces that threatened him. 

But I was wrong.

I did not know then that a long and arduous journey awaited my friend, nor did I realize how thoroughly our love would be tested when he took me to hell and back with him.

*          *          *          *

We had just completed a case in Bristol that had us running around the countryside at all hours of the day and night. It was an especially cunning band of criminals who had masterminded the abduction of not one, but three young children with claims to the English aristocracy. The case was further complicated by the troubling fact that the children’s families were mired in a bizarre and ongoing feud, and Holmes was under unusual strain to bring the case to completion without rousing the ire of either its victims or its perpetrators, both of which would have had disastrous consequences. He exhausted his nerves and his faculties working around the clock, and with no small amount of pride I can say that his efforts were entirely successful.

When it was time to return to Baker Street, I was anticipating a period of relative inactivity wherein Holmes and I could once again avail ourselves to one another’s physical needs. I thought as much to be true with him, even though he spoke little on the train back to London, choosing instead to gaze distantly out the window. Neither of us had slept much or particularly well in Bristol, so I put this down to general fatigue and took up my book as we made our way back to the city.

Once we reached home that evening, I went to my room for a change of clothes and Holmes disappeared into his. I greeted Mrs. Hudson warmly, and accepted her offer for some tea and a small bit of food. I expected Holmes would emerge as I had, more comfortably attired and ready to finally grant himself some sustenance.

Mrs. Hudson brought a tray into the sitting room, and I helped myself while I absently sorted through the mail. I placed the letters of greater import in a pile, and tossed the others into the fire. There was still no sign of Holmes.

I finished the last of my tea, wrote a reply to a former colleague on a medical question concerning a family member, and laid it on the end table to be posted. When at last the hour struck eight and day had long faded into night, I rapped lightly on Holmes’s bedroom door. There was no answer. I turned the knob and peered inside. “Holmes?” I called softly.

He was lying prostrate in bed, still wearing his traveling clothes, with one arm cast across his face.

“Holmes?” I said again.

“What is it, Watson?” came a muffled reply.

“Do you want some tea?” I asked, not a little concerned.

“I do not,” he said, without removing his arm from his face.

“Are you ill?” I was growing alarmed at this display of idleness.

He sighed and removed his arm. “No, I’m not ill, Watson. I regret I may have used myself a little too carelessly on this case.”

I was somewhat placated. I told him a full night’s sleep would surely have him feeling better tomorrow. I bided my time that evening, and when my eyelids began to drop over my journal, I brought my candle into Holmes’s bedroom and changed into my nightshirt. We had not spent many nights apart in the past few months, and it had become our new habit to share his bed, which was larger than my own. I carefully slipped in beside him so as not to disturb, though he had fallen asleep in his clothes.

The next morning I awoke to an empty bed. I took Holmes’s absence as a sign that a night’s sleep had indeed invigorated him and that he had met the day early. I rose, put on my dressing gown and entered the sitting room.

There was Holmes, stretched on the settee in much the same way I had found him the previous evening, looking ever more weary a sight in his now sleep-wrinkled clothes.

“Holmes,” I said in surprise as I walked over to him. “What’s going on?”

“Just leave me, please, Watson,” he said without looking at me.

I stood for a moment at a complete loss. It had been months since Holmes had fallen prey to a black mood, and such a fit had not visited him since we had become lovers. I was anxious as ever to revive him, and I urged him to take some food or at least some tea, to change his clothes, to wash, or to take to his bed if he wasn’t well. All of this went unheeded.

I busied myself that day with matters of task, running errands around London, catching up on correspondences, writing of our latest adventures, all the while with Holmes lying mute and unmoving on the settee. I again encouraged him to eat that evening, to which he uttered a noncommittal reply that I could not quite discern. But I did not need to hear it to know that he was refusing.

That night I slept alone in Holmes’s bed. I had lain awake, waiting for him until well after midnight, but he did not come.

When the sun rose the following day and Holmes again failed to rise with it, I realized I would have to occupy myself with more concrete tasks if I wanted to prevent myself from going mad in my efforts to coax him away from the settee. I visited some patients at St.Bart’s, and spent the day tending some rather interesting medical ailments with a colleague of mine. With great effort, I pushed my worries about Holmes into the recesses of my mind. I resolved not to return home until well after supper, giving him the full day to recover himself.

When I left the hospital, it was raining. I had not brought an umbrella, and was forced to make my way to a cab by ducking underneath storefront awnings. This did me little good and I arrived home soaking wet, and filled with apprehension as to Holmes’s mood.

When I entered the sitting room, I found Holmes had lit a lamp and was sitting upright in his chair near the fireplace. His back was to me, but I could see that he had troubled to put on his dressing gown. This cozy and comfortable domestic scene, which heartened me a good deal, was nearly complete save for the open window at the far end of the room. I went over and closed it, sealing the damp chill outside.

“Never saw the rain coming, but I fancy a spell is just what we need this late in the season,” I offered cheerfully. I was just about to approach Holmes and favor him with a tender kiss when something in his desk caught my eye.

I paused to examine it and my heart plummeted into my stomach. Lurking just inside the drawer was his open Moroccan case and freshly used needle.

I was instantly seized by both disappointment and anger.

“What is it tonight, Holmes?” I demanded tersely. “Morphine? Or cocaine?”

“Well,” he drawled, his back still to me, “I can strongly recommend a seven percent solution of cocaine.” He turned around to regard me with a strangely clouded and mocking gaze. “Would you like to try it?”

I unleashed a torrent of rage unlike any I’d ever had before. So deep was my hurt that I scarcely checked myself as my tirade grew more vehement. I admonished him first for the damage he was doing to the great powers with which he has been endowed, then for his foolishness in thinking that the answer to his melancholy lay in the abuse of narcotics. And finally, I told him that his efforts would be better placed in recovering his strength from the unusually taxing case he just completed. I stopped short of confessing that I had presumed our intimacy had replaced his habit, and that all this time my body had been aching for him to return to me.

Holmes stared at the wall ahead of him with an expressionless face. His eyebrow twitched once or twice, indicating that my words may have registered, but he offered no reply.

I had run out of ways to communicate with him, and I was beyond frustrated. I stormed out of the sitting room, slamming the door after me.

I went upstairs to my bedroom, which had grown dark and musty from disuse, and sat down on the bed with my head in my hands. Holmes was slipping away from me. Those joyous days of lovemaking and discovery seemed all too distant, further even from the days when we kept each other’s quiet and amiable company in front of the fire, the times when I chanced upon his needle and he turned away from me, but I did not take his action as a personal reflection of my own failure.

I opened the window to air my room, but thought better of it when the rain came down in great sheets and splashed onto the floor. I tried reading by candlelight, but could not stop my mind from continuing to launch coarse words at my friend who sat downstairs in his drug-induced haze. I finally blew out the candle and lay down.

Outside, rumbles of thunder began to erupt in the night sky and the corresponding lightning flashed with growing frequency. I could have used some brandy, but I did not dare venture back downstairs. Somehow, sleep overtook my anxious mind.

I do not know how many hours later it was when I awoke to find Holmes peering into my face with grave concern. The candle he held illuminated his smooth muscular form bending over me, naked from above the waist. I woke with a start and stared at him.

“Oh my dear Watson,” he said, his eyes as large as saucers. “I am so sorry. So very sorry.”

“Holmes, wha—“ I started to say, but he did not wait to hear my reply before he grabbed my neck and pulled my lips to his. They were hot and swollen and despite my confusion and lingering anger, it had been far too long for me to push him away.

Without letting me go, Holmes placed the candle on my bedside table. He took my face in his hands and deepened the embrace as he gently climbed on top of me. When at last we broke off, he began to ravish my neck, breathlessly repeating his apology. His hands—God, those hands—were everywhere, cradling my face, cupping my neck, squeezing my arms, caressing my back, grasping my hips, massaging my legs. In one dramatic sweep, he pushed my nightshirt up my chest and over my head, barely pausing in his ministrations to do so.

Never before had Holmes attacked me with such tenacity. I felt my anger twisting into lust as my body began to respond.

“Just take me,” I choked. “Please.”

Holmes flipped me onto my stomach, and I instantly pushed myself onto my knees to ready myself for him. He worked a wet digit into me and soon found that my body hungered too deeply for his to require the usual lengths of preparation. I felt him hastily unfasten his trousers to release himself, and when he entered me we both groaned at the overpowering sensation of conjoining our bodies in such heightened states. I sat upright so that my back pressed against his chest, his breath was hot and ragged in my ear and his hands tightly gripped my hips while he worked himself into my deepest essence.

When I felt his firm hand encircle my cock, I placed my own over it, and our bodies became synched in a steadily increasing rhythm. The powerful stimulation of both my groin and my backside was so overwhelming that I feared I would break in two, but the sounds of grunting and gasping and flesh lapping at flesh fed my desire until there was nothing left. My only awareness was that of want; I desperately, acutely wanted more of him, harder, faster, deeper. I could not stop my body from thrusting back as insistently as he thrust into me.

I felt the flame ignite in my stomach, and it spread like wildfire down my spine. All my tension, fear, anger and love manifested into an explosion that wracked my body in great convulsions. I called his name in a plea for mercy when I pitched forward and grabbed the sheets below me in a tight-fisted death grip. Almost instantly, I felt Holmes arch and push into me twice more, throwing his head back and uttering two sharp, wistful cries before crashing onto my back and cradling my torso. The feel of his warm seed seeping into me was as intensely, erotically satisfying as the sense of my own issue dripping from his fingers when he splayed them underneath my ribcage.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he panted, pulling my body into his as though he were attempting to fuse us into a single vibrating body. In the sea of sweat and sex and chemicals and cocaine that enveloped us as we shuddered together in completion, I knew I was as fatally bound to Holmes’s dark side as I was to the rest of him, a fearful realization to which my lust responded by quickening the pulse of my release.

He clung fast to me, his apologies dissipating as his breathing slowed. When he finally withdrew, I moaned from the loss that left me feeling like an empty shell. We collapsed in an exhausted heap upon my narrow bed, the soaked sheets crumpled and cooling beneath us.

Only his hands did not cease. They continued to run over the contours of my body as we found a mutually comfortable position in which to lay side by side. Right before I fell asleep I heard him whisper again, almost inaudibly, “I’m sorry.”

“I know you are,” I whispered back.

We did not speak again that night, but fell asleep with our limbs entangled and the sound of the rain beating ceaselessly against the windows.

In the days following our intense encounter, Holmes’s mood slowly improved. A few cases of interest presented themselves, small questions of missing brooches and disappearing grooms, and he whiled away many hours with his volumes and chemistry set. The dark circles underneath his eyes began to disappear and I was hopeful that he was on his way to a full recovery.

We did not exchange any further words on the subject of his return to the needle, and I was heartened to see the Moroccan case shoved into the recesses of his desk drawer. He kept himself at a little distance from me, save for the occasionally shy glances he offered in my direction. I do not know what he thought about our explicit and unprecedented act of sexual congress, but I hoped that he experienced the same stings of pleasure as I did when it crossed my mind.

By the end of that week, the familiar sparkle behind his eyes and warmth between us increased considerably. We took in a concert at St. James’ Hall and dined afterwards at Marcini’s, then returned home for brandy and pipes late that night. We loosened our cravats and relaxed on either end of the settee. We chatted in low, soft voices about the days just passed, the cases Holmes had worked on, the journals I had been reading. Our conversation was as companionable as any from our strictly friendship years, save for the fact that when we drew closer to one another Holmes began to gently stroke me until the sensations he invoked demanded more serious attention. We made slow love until just before dawn, when we finally retired to bed, sore and sated.

Though he had lost nearly a half stone in weight from his already spare frame, Holmes seemed ever himself as he resumed his usual habits. I cannot overstate how grateful I was for this return to normalcy. It was not always easy living with the world’s greatest consulting detective, but even the bursts of temper and occasional sharp words were wholly preferable to the terrifyingly lifeless state to which his fits of ill humour reduced him.

The next morning, I received a telegram from an attorney in Staffordshire. A distant relative had passed and I was commissioned to see to his modest estate. I breakfasted with Holmes, then went upstairs and to pack my bags for a week’s stay in the country. I soon heard the strains of Tchaikovsky coming from his Strad, and when I re-entered the sitting room to bid him goodbye, I found him clad in his grey dressing gown, eyes closed, attempting to recreate the romantic piece we had heard the night before.

“I’m off, old fellow,” I said cheerfully.

Holmes nodded but did not interrupt his playing. I waited patiently as I, too, fondly recalled our lovely evening together. He executed the final cadence with a dramatic flourish, opened his eyes and regarded me with a kind smile. I crossed the room and stood in front of him.

“Thank you for last night,” I said huskily as our lips met. “I hope to find you exactly as you are in six short days.”

I made to leave but he grabbed my waist and pulled me to him again, bestowing me with such a passionate kiss as to leave me breathless.

“I shall be glad when you can dispense with this business and return to me in the quickest possible fashion,” he said in his velveteen tone. I felt my face flush, for such overtly affectionate words rarely left his lips, and when they did they had the most singular effect on me.

“I shall do everything within my powers to expedite matters,” I replied, brushing his lips once more.

I left him in our sitting room, lovingly playing his violin, his dressing gown sweeping from side to side as his body swayed to the rhythm of his bow. My heart flamed at the sight, and I kept that perfect vision with me throughout my travels.

*          *          *          *

The business in Steffordshire was a rather tedious affair, but not entirely unpleasant. During the days, I met with a lawyer and tended to questions of my uncle’s estate, which amounted to modest assets mostly tied up in various stocks. The cousin with whom I lodged kept quiet company, and his wife was an excellent cook, thereby making the evenings rather enjoyable. Lucas and I had not seen one another in some years, and so we spent a good many hours after suppers reacquainting ourselves with the details of each other’s lives. Of course, he and his wife had read of my adventures with Sherlock Holmes, and they continually steered the conversation towards him. Though I am not often eager to expound on details which I have not given in the Strand, I surmised that this quiet country lifestyle whetted their appetite for tales of urban excitement, and I was happy to indulge them.

In the moments I spared for myself, I took advantage of the unusually agreeable weather, and walked through the network of paths that traversed the property. My thoughts turned constantly back to Holmes and Baker Street, and I found myself wishing I had convinced him to join me here. Besides the fact that his presence would have thrilled my hosts, I knew that the natural beauty that surrounded me would have been magnified many times over if Holmes were there to share it with me.

On the fifth day of my stay, my visit came to an abrupt end. When I arrived at breakfast, Lucas informed me that a telegram had arrived very early, and he nodded towards the end table where it lay. I opened it with a growing sense of dread. It was from Mrs. Hudson:

“COME AT ONCE. MR. HOLMES VERY ILL. REFUSES TO LEAVE HIS ROOM.”

My heart plunged into my stomach. I packed my bags in a heated rush, bid Lucas a hasty goodbye, and hurried to the train station. I made every attempt to keep my imagination from conjuring Holmes in any number of unfortunate states as my anguish increased with every hour of my journey. It was nighttime before I finally reached Baker Street again. I alit the seventeen steps with Mrs. Hudson on my heels, who was breathlessly telling me that Holmes was fine for a full day after my departure, but had taken a turn when he failed to rouse himself the following day. Her offers to summon me were met with vehement protests as he seemed anxious that I should not see him in such a state. When I entered Holmes’s bedroom my heart was beating like a hammer.

My worst fears were confirmed.

If he had eaten at all since my departure, it was not in the least bit evident, for he was now easily a full stone lighter, and he appeared to be drowning in his shirtsleeves and dressing gown. His pallid face was whiter than the pillowcase upon which he lay, and his chest rose and fell with alarmingly irregularity. When I knelt by his side, he slowly opened his eyes. They were slate grey and spiritless as his form.

“I hope you enjoyed your week in the country,” he slurred, and closed his eyes once more.

I pushed the sleeve of his dressing gown up his left arm. It was pocked with fresh needle marks. I let out a slow sigh and dropped my head onto his chest.

A limp hand touched my hair.

“You mustn’t concern yourself with…mere trifles, Watson,” Holmes murmured thickly before slipping into unconsciousness.

Tears sprang to my eyes as I gently rocked myself against him.

Several long minutes passed before I collected myself enough to engage my professional skills. I reached for his neck to feel his pulse, and found it weak but steady. I then rose to my feet and left his room, leaving the door open behind me. I lit a lamp and sat down at my writing desk. I pulled out a fresh piece of paper and began to write. When I finished, I summoned Mrs. Hudson and told her to post the letter first thing in the morning. I then returned to Holmes’s bedroom, pulled a chair up to his bed and spent the night in watchful vigil over him.

Dr. Moore Agar, an excellent physician with whom I once attended surgery, promptly agreed to call at Baker Street the following afternoon. If Holmes paid little attention to my urges for him to meet his own basic needs, I was hopeful he might at least consider the advice of another professional with whom he did not share a bed. Dr. Agar was quite alarmed at my friend’s condition, and implored Holmes to dispense with the morphine and leave the confines of Baker Street at once if he wanted to avoid a complete and career-threatening breakdown. To my great relief, it took only minimal coaxing to incite Holmes to agree, and the two of us departed for the Cornish peninsula the following day.

I engaged a charming whitewashed cottage on the edge of Poldhu Bay, a place of sombre and dramatic beauty that suggested centuries of human struggle, of shipwrecks, violent storms and lost mariners. But it was only serenity that prevailed upon our arrival. High cliffs plunged away from grassy headlands, the bright blue sea gently swept upon the shore below and an ever-present breeze kept a freshness about the cool, salty air.

I was heartened by the fact that the journey alone seemed to have benefited my companion, for Holmes’s pallor was much less pronounced than when we left Baker Street that morning. In fact, he was well enough to argue with me over the subject of his health, the poor state of which was the only blazingly obvious fact ever to escape the man. But his acerbic challenges vexed me little, for I was too glad to be away from the stifling air of Holmes’s sickroom where he had languished uncommunicative and dispirited.

I felt light and hopeful as I unloaded our carriage and set our bags in the small vestibule near the front of the cottage. I inspected each of the rooms and was pleased to find them neat and accommodating. Holmes had wrapped himself in a blanket, settled at the table in the front room and commenced paging through the local parish magazine. I left him there to take a short stroll down to the cliff nearest the cottage.

When I returned, I started to chatter excitedly of the exquisite beauty that surrounded us when the scene before me stopped me dead in my tracks.

He was hastily throwing his blanket over his arm too late, for I had already seen the tourniquet. In front of him lay the Moroccan case and needle, which he made a weak attempt to cover with his foot. This was the first time that I confronted him face to face in the act of preparing to inject himself.

Devastated, I reached down and picked up the solution-filled needle. I heard him draw a sharp breath.

“Is it worth it, Holmes,?” I asked him in a small voice. I could not meet his gaze.

“Yes,” he whispered after a painful moment of silence.

“As you wish,” I replied evenly, and carefully set the needle back down on the table where I found it.

I grimly resumed unpacking, willing myself to remain calm despite the familiar knots of dread that tightened my stomach and shattered my hopes for a smooth convalescence. I would remind him of Dr. Agar’s strict orders to keep himself clean in the days to come. For now, I simply wanted to believe that Holmes’s desire to recuperate outweighed his appetite for cocaine, and that he would be at least be wise enough to use a minimal solution.

I rather started when I heard a sharp knock at the side door of the cottage. I opened it to reveal our neighbor, the town vicar by the name of Mr. Roundhay, who had come to welcome us to Cornwall. His stout face was flush with excitement when he confessed that he was quite eager to meet the great detective. I could not turn this kind man away, so I led him into the front room and introduced him to Holmes. So enchanted was Roundhay with the great man before him that Holmes’s cocaine-fueled eccentricities affected him not at all, and the two laughed heartily together as they conversed. He left us with a generous invitation to have dinner at his vicarage during our stay.

Over the next few days, Holmes spent long hours walking around the moors, gazing at the sea and immersing himself in solitary meditations. He seemed rather enchanted with the foreboding atmosphere of Cornwall, and I kept my distance as he set himself adrift in our mysterious surroundings. I was still struggling with the renewed sense of betrayal over my discovery that he had continued his deplorable habit on a journey that was designed to improve his health. For the first time in my life, I wished I’d been endowed with Holmes’s singular ability to compartmentalize his thoughts and feelings; I was starting to believe that if our positions were reversed, he would simply detach from concern after so many stubborn refusals to cease treating myself like a human pincushion.

Most nights, I fell asleep alone in the large bed, over a book or a journal that I would read until my eyelids dropped of their own volition. I know not where Holmes slept, or if he slept at all, save for the one curious instance in which I felt him slip into bed next to me. It was well after midnight and I was nearly asleep, but I was aware of his arm encircling my waist and pulling me gently to him. The gesture touched me deeply, but I did not press him about it in the morning.

Then, on the following Tuesday, an extraordinary chain of events led us into the strangest case Holmes has ever taken. I had just returned to the cottage from a stroll to town when I found Holmes deep in conversation with Mr. Roundhay and a dark-haired, frightened-looking man named Mortimer Tregennis.

“Tell me all the facts, Mr. Tregennis. Leave nothing out,” Holmes was saying firmly to the little man.

I opened my mouth to protest, for Dr. Agar had admonished Holmes of engaging in any affairs that would threaten his health. But something in my friend’s face stopped me. It was his eyes. The fire had again lit behind them, and they were shining with a trenchant interest I had not seen in weeks. Though he still appeared thin and frail underneath his large blanket, his gaze bore unmistakable signs of his characteristic spirit. I was so astonished by the transformation that I remained silent, and turned my attention to considering the extraordinary set of events that Tregennis recited.

In short, the facts are these: After an evening of playing cards with his siblings, Tregennis departed the family’s estate and went to his own home. The very next morning, an urgent call summoned him to return to Tregannick Wartha where, to his great horror, he found his sister dead, and his two brothers foaming at the mouth and babbling incoherently. Their faces were twisted into the most terrible expressions, and no one in the house seemed to know what had transpired in that room between the time Tregennis left and when he returned.

And so it began. Holmes and I commenced with a full investigation in our usual manner. We visited Tregannick Wartha, interviewed the staff, examined the premises and spent long hours in conversation over every facet of the crime. I must admit it was wonderful to be with him again in this way. Not only was this case remarkably compelling, but seeing Holmes return to his element boosted my own spirits and calmed my nerves considerably.

All that remained to rob me of sleep at night was the question of the inexplicable force that had been strong enough to kill one woman and drive her brothers insane. If Holmes knew what it was, he kept it to himself. Yet he was surprised as I was when Roundhay found Mortimer Tregennis dead a day later, and apparently through the same means as his siblings. We hurried to the vicarage where I tended the overwrought vicar with brandy and Holmes closely examined the lamp in the drawing room. I had not the faintest idea what he was looking for until the next day when he returned from town having purchased an identical lamp. He determinedly set it down on the table before us.

A combustion, Holmes explained, had occurred in both murders, and it precipitated the release of toxic vapours that exerted a profound effect on its victims. He showed me some remnants from the smoke guard of the lamp in question. He informed me rather gravely that he intended to test its effects and make certain that he had found the murder weapon. Would I stay with him?

What could I say? I was too weary from our ongoing battle over the needle to chide him for taking such a risk. I agreed to stay, simply because I had grown so desperately afraid I would lose him that if this activity did prove to be his ultimate undoing, I was certain that my very next act would be to figure out a way to follow him. If my love wasn’t enough to save him from himself, then at least my loyalty could lend strength to us both.

He upended the powder onto the lamp. When the circle of smoke started to rise, a caustic odor filled the room. My mind clouded and everything around me began to slip away.

Something horrible overtook me, and I was consumed by an overwhelming sense of dread. Emerging from the darkness were vague figures representing such menace that I heard myself scream in terror at the certainty that they would suffocate me to death. I closed my eyes and tried to shut out the vision, but it penetrated all my senses and I fell to the floor. I could not stop the parade of disturbing thoughts and images that incessantly repeated themselves in my mind where rational thought used to be. I felt my own features begin to morph into something other than myself, my extremities growing absurdly large but entirely useless, my eyes growing out of my head so they saw a reflection of myself staring helplessly back. I clawed desperately at nothing, so sure that I was being swallowed into the very depths of Hell that if ever I should see light again I would vow never to take leave of it.

There was another scream. It did not come from me, but from Holmes, whose face bore such unimaginable fear that I recovered myself enough to drag us both into the outside world and away from the poisonous atmosphere in which we flailed. All my fears and anxieties returned as I shook him and frantically called his name. He had been closer to the lamp than I, and feared he suffered more adverse effects.

Gradually, the madness in his eyes began to clear and with a great sigh of relief I saw that he recognized me. He reached up and clung to my neck.

“Upon my word, Watson,” he gasped, “It was an unjustifiable experiment for myself, doubly so for a—“, he stopped and stared at me. “My  God, what have I done to you?”

*          *          *          *

We recovered ourselves in due time. I shall not recount the hours following that horrible encounter with the drug, but suffice it to say the name “Devil’s Foot” does not begin to describe its potential.

I watched Holmes dash into the cottage to retrieve the lamp, which he promptly carried out to the cliff and hurled into the sea. He then summoned Dr. Sterndale, an ex-pat recently back from Africa who had hovered on the periphery of our investigation, and in a few hours’ time we were ushering the large man into the front room. From him, we learned of the origins of the drug and how it came to be used in this particular instance. Mortimer Tregennis had stolen it from Sterndale’s collection of African roots, and employed it to murder his sister in hopes of gaining her share of the family’s fortune; Dr. Sterndale used it to exact his revenge on Tregennis, for he had dearly loved Brenda Tregennis and could not abide the savage manner in which she was killed.

Holmes once told me he’d rather play tricks with the law than with his own conscience, so it came as little surprise when he informed Sterndale that he would not prevent him from returning to Africa to finish his work. The two men shook hands and Sterndale departed a free man. As we watched him disappear over the moor, I could not help chiding Holmes for being more comfortable bypassing the law than ever before in his long career. He turned to me with clear, grey eyes that glinted in the sunlight. 

“Now that I know something of love, I cannot deny that my sympathies lie rather with our lawless lion-hunter. Were anything so terrible to befall you, Watson, I would stop at absolutely nothing to bring the perpetrator to full justice, even if it meant the guarantee of my own destruction.”

“And I would do the same for you,” I told him, my voice full of emotion.

He smiled, kissed me gently and turned back to the cottage.

I remained where I was to contemplate the bitter irony that my life had become a struggle to do just that. That the “perpetrator” I continuously fought against was Holmes’s own conscience complicated matters infinitely. By all accounts, our stay in Cornwall had been a success, both in the solution of a case and the marked improvements in his health. But what was to happen when we returned home to Baker Street and no cases arrived on our doorstep? What words remained for me to try and convince him of the harm he visited upon himself every time he took up the needle?

My heart grew heavier on our return trip to London as I realized the near-impossibility of my position. I loved this man more than anything in the world, more than myself, more than anyone in my past or present, and yet I was forced to helplessly watch him nurture his penchant for self-destruction. My only recourse was either to remove myself entirely from his presence, or learn to steel myself against the habits to which he so stubbornly attached himself. One was unthinkable, the other inconceivable.

Such was my deeply troubled state of mind when I entered our sitting room the next day and saw the remains of Holmes’s makeup kit on the table. Among them was the dreaded Moroccan case, which lay open and empty.

Its owner was lounging in a chair in his dressing gown, wholly absorbed in the volume that lay in his lap.

“Where’s your needle, Holmes?” I asked him lightly. It would be unsanitary to misplace such an article, I told myself.

“Underneath the sand at Poldhu Bay,” he replied, without looking up.

“And the vial of solution…?” I asked him incredulously.

“Lies next to it,” he said, as he turned a page.

“What?” I dared not hope.

“I think I shall dispense with the habit.” He looked up and smiled briefly. “It has the most unpleasant after-effects.”

“You told me they were worth it,” I retorted.

“They were,” he answered. He looked up and regarded me with a steady gaze.

“The look on your face was not.”

I was so taken aback that when I opened my mouth to speak no sound came out. I stared at Holmes in disbelief. He rose from his chair and approached me where I stood, gazing downward as he spoke with a sadness I’d never heard before.

“I fear I cannot…love you so well as you deserve, Watson. I am rather too hopelessly flawed to bestow upon you the pure, kind-hearted love which you continue to give so selflessly to me. The methods I have sought to relieve my fits have admittedly exacted a price on my physical well-being, though the pain I bring upon myself is less oppressive than the agonizing mental stagnation it replaces.”

His eyes were large and sincere when they looked again at mine. “But the pain it brings upon you is unbearable.”

I felt little more than a sense of relief that was so profound I sank to my knees. Holmes gently brought himself level with me, and took my face in his hands. He was murmuring words I did not hear, and kissing my lips while his thumbs pushed away the tears that flowed freely down my face. All I knew and wanted to know then was the overwhelming love and gratitude that washed away the weeks, months and years of untold strain upon my heart.

It was the one thing I had never asked him to do, for I only ever wanted him to see the worth of his own well-being and cherish it as much as I. But if giving it up for me was the only way to vanquish his habit, I would gladly be his reason for doing so.

There would be days in the future when his black mood got the better of him and challenged his resolve, and it was no less a challenge for me to make certain he was looking after his physical health. But a chance revisiting of his past cases on my part soon had him recounting once-forgotten details of adventures that occurred well before my time, distracting him from his melancholy and providing me with fodder for dozens of new stories. In this way, we would learn to work together to contend with the shadows that periodically crossed his mind.

For now, for us, here at Baker Street, newly committed to one another’s happiness, Holmes set about expressing his love the only way he knew how.

He showed me.

After a lengthy embrace, cravats were tossed away and articles of clothing shed until his naked body was writhing on top of mine. The weight and feel of him felt like a human salve upon my body and soul. I cradled his head in my palm as he slowly and sensually gyrated against me, his face buried in my neck, until his soft cries and intense shudder signaled his release. I smiled when I felt warm fluid spread across my stomach, and he whispered my name as I like to hear it in my ear.

Ever the skillful lover, Holmes shifted his weight just slightly so that my own member nestled into a narrow crevice between us, and I gasped as the friction brought sweet surges of pleasure to my groin as I undulated underneath him. When I reached my own completion, I uttered an ecstatic, shuddering sigh as my every nerve hummed in rapturous climax. Holmes pulled me closer to him as he often did when I came, a gesture that never failed to enhance my pleasure for knowing that he wanted to share my sensation.

No sooner had Holmes settled lazily against my chest in the heady aftermath of our lovemaking when Mrs. Hudson rang with afternoon tea. We hastily donned our dressing gowns, ushered her into the sitting room, and seated ourselves comfortably at the table, he with the Times and me with the day’s mail. All was well and calm again at Baker Street.

That is, until the following evening when the headmaster of a prominent boarding school staggered into our sitting room and collapsed onto the hearthrug. But that is a story I shall recount another time.