Work Text:
One afternoon, right before teatime, Florence announced that there was a Mr. Sigerson to see Doctor Watson.
“Mr. Sigerson” when he stepped into the room, was a tall man, the fact apparent even with his bowed back. He had white hair and a browned face, lined and yet almost ageless in the way some men are. His clothing was worn but of good quality, and he leaned on an exotic looking walking stick. In short, he looked like a well-travelled man of respectable character. This was, Doctor Watson thought with some amusement, for most intents and purposes the truth.
The man’s grey eyes flitted about the room, sharp and quick.
Watson had no doubt he and the state of his life were thoroughly surveyed in a second.
Of course, he thought with a twist of irritation, it took no great detective to determine the occupant of this room was an old, dying man, largely confined to his bedroom, at the mercy of a single maid and a nurse that visited every day. One only needed a single look at the medicines neatly ordered on the night table, even if he himself hadn’t been present, the exhibit A.
In return, Watson considered his visitor for a while, before slowly turning to his maid, still hovering at the door. She was curious, and he couldn't rightly blame her. Like most people who have outlived most of their family and acquaintances, Doctor John Watson didn’t receive many visitors.
No close friends living, bar one, unaccounted for. Some family inherited from his second wife, their visits dutiful but sporadic. Not close by any means.
Florence was not naturally a curious girl, but she was peering between the two of them in bemusement.
“I believe you were about to bring in tea?” Watson said calmly, before turning to his visitor. “I presume you’re staying?” he asked politely.
“Indeed, yes. If it’s not too much trouble,” the man answered, after a barely noticeable pause, and Watson nodded.
“No, no trouble at all,” he said softly, and then addressed Florence:
“Tea for two, Florence, if you’d be so kind.”
After the maid had left, there was some subtle shift in the visitor’s countenance. His back seemed to become slightly less bowed, and he leaned forward subtly, sharp eyes peering at Watson like a large bird of prey looking at something small and furry. It was a look the doctor hadn’t been subjected to in many years, and it woke in him a bitter-sweet feeling of nostalgia.
“Holmes,” he said, “you haven’t aged a day.”
Off all the things he could have said, it was such a banal thing. And yet, what else can one say to an old friend, when one is a tired, lonely old man?
A friend, he thought, who had chosen to use their twilight years to go travelling with hardly a goodbye. That still hurt, though it was an old wound by now.
Yet, as he’d noted the sagging, wrinkled reflection in his mirror and born the indignities of his body failing him bit by bit, Watson had wondered if it had been a sort of kindness to not have his dearest friend witnessing this final decline.
He was not afraid of death, having faced down its howling fury in war as well as the slower, more gnawing tooth of illness before. And now in old age. He was a doctor, none of it was new to him. He’d lived a long life and had few regrets for things left undone.
Save a few, but what man didn’t?
“Watson, would you mind sending the maid away for the afternoon? Or however long is convenient,” Holmes said, in his usual blunt tones, with a familiar glint in his grey eyes. If he hadn’t known better, Watson might have thought he’d be invited on some adventure.
But no, he had only one adventure ahead of him, and this time he’d be going on alone.
As such, he raised his eyebrows at the request.
“I could, but I don't see why?” he said.
He knew Holmes' dislike for explaining himself in advance, but perhaps he was feeling some resentment towards him after all. Enough to make a token protest, at the least.
Holmes leaned back in his chair impatiently, and he really hadn't changed, Watson thought with unwilling fondness. If anything he seemed even more as he had been in his youth. Perhaps the travelling had done him good.
“I've been conducting certain studies of my own, for many years past. A side project, if you will,” Holmes said, with a crooked smile. “And I've reached a conclusion. Not a moment too soon, at that.”
He leaned forward, his chin resting on steepled fingers. He was practically aglow with the satisfaction, Watson could tell.
So that was why he was here then, for a dramatic reveal just like in the old days.
“But it is something of a... controversial subject, and it wouldn't do to shock your maid,” Holmes added, his eyes flashing with amusement.
“Oh, very well,” Watson agreed with a sigh.
When Florence returned with the tea, still giving curious looks at “Mr. Sigerson”, Watson politely dismissed her for the afternoon.
“You sure that's a good idea?” she asked dubiously, no doubt remembering the times he'd needed help just to get out of the bed. He'd need a proper live-in nurse soon, and she'd said as much before.
Watson certainly didn't want to get into that in front of Holmes, though.
“It'll be fine,” he replied, sharper than he’d intended, and Florence frowned.
“Very well, sir,” she replied stiffly. “I'll go to the movies and be back before seven, then.”
“Thank you, Florence, that'll be good,” Watson said, trying to make his tone apologetic, and her face softened. She gave one last look at Holmes and smiled.
“See you, then, sir,” Florence said and walked out.
Meanwhile, Holmes was perusing the tea tray with uncommon interest.
“Toast, excellent!” he exclaimed, with more enthusiasm than Watson had ever heard him express towards simple toast, or most food in general.
“You should have said you were hungry, I'd have asked Florence to make extra,” he said.
Holmes waved this away.
“No, no, there is more than enough! You remember my bees, I'm sure.”
“I remember the bees,” Watson replied drily, wondering what this was leading towards.
He'd been surprised, at the time, when Holmes had announced he'd be retiring. For one, he hadn't seemed a man capable of living in idleness. And for another... well, Watson hadn't expected their cohabitation to have such an abrupt end.
“I've found an excellent cottage,” Holmes had explained, “Good lands, with an expanse of flowering meadows, and the house itself will be more than sufficient for one.”
For one.
Well, what was there to say to that?
He'd wondered, afterwards, if he should have said something, regardless. Asked if he wouldn't want company, perhaps. But there had been something in how Holmes explained it, how fast he'd spoken, of plans already finalised. He'd even spoken to Mrs. Hudson.
He'd made visits, of course, but it hadn't been the same. There had been a new distance between them, an ever-widening divide that neither of them wanted to acknowledge.
Watson had accepted it, moved on with his life. Remarried, even, and it'd been good to have a companion in Helen, and for her likewise, he hoped.
But sometimes he'd wondered, picked at uncomfortable thoughts that refused to leave him.
Wondered where the distance began, whether he'd imagined the times before when Holmes had been looking at him and then turned away when their gazes met, as if it'd been nothing.
He'd always had projects and cases he didn't share with Watson, of course, but had he seemed more secretive in the last few years they lived together? Maybe he had only imagined it all, in hindsight.
Or perhaps it had begun when Mycroft Holmes died.
Of all the secrets Watson imagined he’d taken to the grave, how many had been his brother’s? It had been after that that Holmes’ black moods had, oddly enough, receded, after their worsening in the years before.
Watson had noted that and hoped it was a good sign, even as Holmes began to involve him less, seemed ever more dismissive of the cases he took, if he did at all. Watson had concluded he was, despite appearances, occupied by work. A long project.
Watson wasn’t a fool, for all his mind might appear slow when compared to the arcane machinery of Sherlock Holmes’.
He had noticed the sudden interest in botany after the Presbury case, the flowers under the veil in Sussex and that Holmes had requested he obfuscate the references to the drugs that had such an odd and deadly effect on Doctor Presbury, that he make it appear it had something to do with monkeys.
He had, for a while, observed his old friend closely for any symptoms of poisoning, during his visits to Sussex, and worried. It would not have been the first time Holmes tested an unknown substance on himself, and Watson no longer trusted him to speak of it to him first.
But nothing happened, Holmes seemed content and preoccupied with his bees.
Watson might have asked, but by then the divide between them seemed an ocean wide, even as they sat around the old pockmarked kitchen table in Holmes’ Sussex cottage.
He had cursed himself for a coward, later, after Holmes essentially disappeared.
One late night when he couldn’t sleep for the ache in old war wounds, Watson had wondered: Had Holmes noticed something? Something that made him draw back from his old friend, to intentionally create a distance? He hadn’t thought he’d been obvious, but this was Holmes, after all.
In the light of day those thought had seemed ridiculous. Surely Holmes must have known, and simply never spoken of it because Watson’s unrequited feelings were wholly irrelevant to him. A kindness, from his side, to act as if he didn’t.
He only wished knowing that was more of a relief and less bitter.
Well, it hardly mattered now, Watson thought as he returned from his memories and found Holmes observing him with a strange smile.
“It is good to see you again,” he said, warmly, as if Watson hadn't just been wool-gathering for however long.
The silence after stretched too long.
“Likewise, old friend,” Watson muttered eventually.
Holmes looked at him, sharp and scrutinizing enough to make Watson uncomfortable, and then he smiled, another crooked smile.
“You know how I am with a case,” he said after a while, voice soft and, this surprised Watson, nearly contrite. “And with this one, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to solve it.”
“A case?” Watson asked, and Holmes smiled for real, eyes crinkling.
“The biggest case of my career, against the most prolific murderer of all,” he said, and leaned back in the chair. “I worried I might not be in time to tell you of my solution,” he added, and the way he looked at Watson now was... different.
He wasn't sure he'd ever seen Holmes look so pleased.
If anything, it reminded him suddenly and vividly of their first meeting, of the madman jumping up from behind a laboratory table, babbling about blood. Except he was sitting down this time, as calm as you pleased, and smiling at Watson.
He smiled back, despite himself. Just seeing Holmes was making him feel young again, in a way he hadn’t felt since before he’d left.
“I see,” he said, and could hear the warmth in his voice, as well as see the answering spark in Holmes' gaze. “Tell me of it, then. I assume that's what you're here for.”
Holmes laughed, a short bark of a sound, and pulled a small glass jar out of his pocket, containing something that was the colour of dark amber, nearly black.
“I will,” he said, and pulled the tray of toast nearer to where he sat. “But first you really must try this honey.”
*
It was a strange occurrence, the disappearance of Doctor Watson, the erstwhile biographer of Sherlock Holmes. His maid, dismissed for the afternoon, found only a note on her return, saying not to worry, apologies for the sudden loss of position and a generous cheque.
“But he couldn't have left, he could barely walk around the house on his own! And there was that fellow Sigerson, I thought he was bad news right away!” she told the policemen when they asked.
There were some things missing, money and personal effects, though no evidence the safe had been broken into.
A neighbour said she'd heard arguing voices through the window she’d had open but had thought nothing much of it at the time, since they had gone quiet not much later.
Inquiries were made, but no old men had been seen leaving the house. A bored shop clerk recalled two unfamiliar young men who'd left the house in the evening around five, one of them carrying a suitcase and seeming irate at his taller companion. But neither could be found for questioning, and neither matched the maid’s description of the mysterious Mr. Sigerson, in any case.
The press made up fabulous theories about the disappearance, how the old Doctor might have been attacked by some enemies made during his career as the famous detective's assistant. How they might have spirited the body away in some gruesome manner. The police said they'd searched the house thoroughly, but who knew? What a pity the great detective had disappeared as well, the last sighting of him from many years ago.
It remained an unsolved mystery, which soon fell into obscurity.
But on that day, two young men sat on a train headed to Dover, one of them perusing his companion with unstoppable mirth despite the dark bruise on his face, seemingly unconcerned of said companion's dark looks back at him.
“Don't think I've forgiven you,” the other man muttered in a low voice, angry but not wanting to call attention to them.
“Understandable,” came the reply, delivered with a smile.
“What ever shall we do now, anyway?”
“Oh, anything. Everything.”
Watson glared but Holmes just kept beaming at him. He was an absolute, insufferable bastard. Who had, after all, dragged him out on an adventure, and not the one he'd expected. At all.
“You could have at least asked,” Watson said after a moment's sullen silence.
Holmes looked at him, face suddenly blank.
“I suppose,” he said, as if he hadn't even thought of it. “But would you have said no?”
“I might have,” Watson replied poisonously, and observed that Holmes winced just perceptively. Served him right!
“Or perhaps not,” he added after a moment, reluctantly. “We'll never know, now will we?”
Holmes turned to look at the passing scenery, his mirth curbed at last. He looked thoughtful now, almost morose.
For a moment the sound of the moving train filled the cubicle, and then Holmes cleared his throat.
“That's just it,” he said. “Couldn't risk it.”
The words came out awkwardly, in a stiff voice, and he wouldn't look at Watson as he said them.
Watson sighed inwardly.
“Fool,” he replied sharply.
There was still much to discuss, and he wouldn't forgive Holmes quickly. For this, or the rest of it. And yet... they did have time now. For many things.
He thought of the way Holmes had grasped his shoulders, before, had touched his newly smooth face with shaking hands, the undisguised relief of his expression.
When he’d realized what Holmes had done, Watson had been so angry he hadn’t known whether to punch him or kiss him, so he’d done both, in that order.
Holmes’ mouth had tasted of blood from the split lip Watson had just given him, mingling with the taste of the bitter dark honey he’d spread over toast.
Holmes’ utter look of surprise, after, had been equally satisfying and infuriating, because he hadn’t known, after all? Watson hadn’t thought even he could be that obtuse when it came to matters of the heart, but more fool he.
Then he’d began to laugh, giddily like a drunk schoolboy, and Watson had very nearly punched him again, might have if he hadn’t gotten dizzy right then. And then they had had words, but not about the kiss.
Beside him, Holmes stared out the window, one pale hand rising to touch his split lip thoughtfully, before he turned once more to Watson, as if he couldn’t get enough of the sight of him. It was nearly enough to make him blush, as if he wasn’t much older than he looked or felt, now.
As young as when they’d first met, if not younger. Anyone looking at them would surely see two men in the first flush of youth.
Watson, certainly, had felt infinitely older back then, with the shadow of death still at his heels… ironic, in a way. How many times now had Holmes pulled him away from that very shade? A service he himself had returned manifold, at that.
Watson shook his head. When you have eliminated the impossible… his ass, this was so far beyond improbable as to make mockery of Holmes’ own methods. No one would believe it. He himself still waited to awake, back in his sick-room. Except he’d already pinched his arm to bruises.
He’d be damned if he’d keep his silence, now. As soon as they had some privacy, Holmes would be getting another explanation of why his behaviour was absolutely abhorrent. Not just using friends as guinea pigs, or himself, but traipsing off to parts unknown without a word when he wasn’t certain he’d ever be back.
He’d done that twice now, and Watson would not be taking it lying down a third time. No, the third time he’d be going after him, no matter what.
And then, he’d damn well get to hear that he was loved, in ways society would approve of and in ways it wouldn’t.
If he didn’t like that, too bad, it was his fault Watson was with him here, now, in a new chance of life he hadn’t expected or asked for.
But he would take it now that he had it, with both hands.
There were many things they’d be discussing, later, Watson thought and leaned back in his seat as the train sped away towards the future.