Title: All That Is Left, All That I hide
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes
NC-17 Word Count: 17,700
Notes: Begun a year ago for a project with
Riassunto: Autunno 1890. Watson ha un matrimonio da gestire e un caso per Holmes. Holmes ha una dipendenza da gestire e un problema con Watson. Nessuno dei due è molto bravo a fare quello che deve fare. Seguono angst, complicazioni, e un giallo.
Parte 2
Holmes non suggerì che tornassi a casa, e neppure lo feci io. In verità, non mi sentivo nello stato d’animo adatto per tornare così presto; se l’avessi fatto, probabilmente avrei ended up shutting my office, not wishing to talk to anyone, and Mary would have questions and concerns to no avail. Instead I wrote a note informing it that the case was resolved and that I would be held with Holmes for a few hours, and begged Mrs. Hudson to ensure it was delivered.
He was silent for a while, then remarked: "Do you think we would find Isa Whitney alive."
"How strange," I said with bitterness. "I do not remember that you've ever turned off a cigarette on his arm."
eyes. "You've never injured under the influence of cocaine. Neither physically nor in any other way. "
Holmes had read the question in the face, because he hastened to add: "Not deliberately. Never deliberately. "
I gave him a quizzical look, but Holmes was kneeling on the carpet in front of me and I was pulling the boots quickly and efficiently. Lifting the legs on the sofa cushions, Holmes answered my unspoken question: "The inference is ridiculously easy, my friend. Over the years I have accumulated enough evidence to your account to be able to say that, in spite of the big differences between us, some things have the same effect on both. The rest you can easily deduce it yourself. " He had me rest my head on the arm with a light but firm pressure on my shoulder.
I could not deny that the position was extremely comfortable, and I was tired, as Holmes had rightly concluded, more tired than I wanted to admit. Quite frankly I was exhausted. "That's better," said Holmes behind my eyelids closed. There was a slight clatter, then the sound of his weight, which was deposited in the chair. I opened my eyes when I heard the click of a lighted match.
"I thought I was terribly angry with me," I confessed, looking at him.
"I am" confirmed Holmes. "I'm sorry. How do I ... "
" You can not. It is not in your power. "
I sought comfort in the uneven color of the ceiling, stained by infiltration of moisture. I knew the layout of the spots in memory. Once Holmes had deduced that I had spent the whole day to just write the bad stiff neck that plagued me: when looking for inspiration for a phrase, I said, I used to look up at the ceiling and remain in that posture for whole minutes. I had not ever know. "I'd rather you did not visit the most?" "impute to your present condition of the bestiality of that question."
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I paused, slightly raised. Lying on the couch, lulled by the breath of Holmes and the strong smell of his pipe tobacco, I dozed off shortly after. When I awoke, the pipe lay abandoned on the armrest of the chair, and Holmes was no longer in sight. With some effort leaned his elbow on the arm and turned to look in the other half of the room. I found him right next to the fireplace is off, his hands resting on the shelf and his head bowed, as engaged in deep meditation. On the shelf was the case of Morocco, open, with the hypodermic syringe poggiatavi over sideways. When Holmes opened the fingers of his right hand, I saw the bottle with cocaine in his fist. "Holmes murmured, thickly. "What are you doing?" Holmes shook the bottle in his hand so hard that whiten the tips of your fingers around the glass. "Is not it obvious?" swallowed. "I'd rather you did not."
"And I would prefer that you have neglected from meddling, Watson. As you can see, none of us is a matter of getting what he wants. "
I sat down, resting his temple against the back of the sofa. At one time I would have delayed the match with relative ease of Holmes with cocaine, making use of a power that I had not even lost, but I no longer had the right to exercise. But in truth it was - had always been - a losing battle, and awareness with a wave of nausea came over me.
"You're punishing. You're punished and you're right to do so, and I beg you not to quit, but please, I implore you to find another way. One that does not provide for your own destruction. Holmes. " He spun around, eyes flashing in spite of the calm tone of voice. "Of course, Watson, the only purpose of my life committed suicide so that you can shed a tear over my grave." I drew back, though only an inch from his cold fury.
"Holmes, is not what ..."
"Do not try. Your dialectic as your prose is weak and not at all persuasive. "
" Holmes, I am concerned for you, dammit! "
My friend just wrinkled his forehead. Not curse often. "I'm afraid you'll have to get used to it, doctor," said dish.
I reached in front of the fireplace, grabbing his right wrist. Holmes stiffened and shook even stronger response in the bottle in his hand. "I will not do anything like that. If you think I can stay here and watch as destroy your body ... "
" Do not look, then! "Said Holmes. 'Go home. Nobody asked you to stay. "
"I love you."
Holmes clenched his jaw, while the statement appeared to have the opposite effect to that hoped for: instead calm him down, it flared up even more.
is a known fact closer to his knowledge that the greater the anger of Sherlock Holmes, the greater his composure. 'Anger' is not even the most appropriate word because it evokes images of rash and voices raised, while Holmes is nothing like that. However, anger is in any case, although its particular type.
"Get out of this house."
'Are you hunting? "
" Yes. Now levami your hands off me. "
Under furious fingers felt the pulse of your veins. The fingers began to ache for the strength of the close, and just as Holmes was to hurt the wrist, but he did not make a move.
"I love you" I said, without looking down.
"There is no such thing. And now go home to your wife, is waiting for you. "
I wiped his mouth. I let him go, feeling only slightly guilty about the signs of reddish fingers that I had stamped on his wrist. Holmes turned his back on me, put down the bottle and stared at the syringe of cocaine to the case with its leather string. Then across the room and deposited the case in the drawer, closing it with a turn of the key. He turned and walked the room with his eyes until he found what he was interested. With two rapid strides retrieved the pipe, flared and flung sprawling on a chair.
Calò silences one of the longest and most embarrassing of my life.
"Holmes" I called him at the end.
not move a muscle, except for his lips which pressed and relaxed around the mouth of the pipe, inhaling the smoke.
"Holmes, look at me."
obeyed, after a full minute. What I saw I did not like, but it gave me determination: he was angry rather than depressed. The irritation was a bad sign, but I knew a deal. I was powerless against depression.
"A few months before the case of the Agra treasure, brought me to know your brother Mycroft to the Diogenes Club At one point scorgesti the window one of the Irregulars, who was waiting at the entrance with a message for you, and you left the room . I kept staring at the eyes of Holmes, I dissect it piece by piece suddenly burning with curiosity. "Mycroft had read my stories, and treatment of deductions. He asked us how long ... how long. I told him. I told him I had always been extremely cautious, and who had no reason to worry about you. "
kept me from blinking.
"He told me he was not worried. For the moment there were only rumors, he said, nothing more than mere gossip inn. He told me that he began to worry in a year or two, and three or four would not have had more reason why he would be resigned to his brother only through the bars at Reading Gaol. He told me in a very calm tone: the tone of a fact. "
The rapid succession of emotions on the face of Holmes, as the most dismal and dangerous, threatened to make me lose the thread, but I held him tightly.
"There had been warning signs, but until then I had chose to ignore them. Mr. Doyle had informed me with growing concern the existence of a group of admirers - mostly young ladies from literary bent - who had given the absurd name of 'Baker Street Irregulars' and had begun to circle secretly works about the scandalous nature of our relationship. Mycroft did not tell me anything new. He just perspective what would happen if I let things take their course. "
I took a quick breath, infinitely tired.
"I told him I would never have allowed such a thing."
Holmes pulled his pipe from his lips, the expression frozen in a grimace of astonishment. "Crazy," he said finally. "What have you done?"
"Sorry" I muttered.
He jumped from his chair as if he were running for his life. She grabbed his forearms on the road and sent me crashing into the wall. I ignored the vibration that reverberated painfully on my injured shoulder.
"Crazy idiot with no brain!" Bellowed, his face inches from mine. "What have you ... How could you believe it ... Why did not you come to ..."
"Sorry" I said, freeing a hand to lay it on her cheek. "Sorry, Holmes. You do not know how sorry I am. "
shut me up against the wall with the weight of his body and kissed me. Received him with joy in despair, without question, a desire heightened rather than dampened by the brief meeting the night before. It was what I had feared, but now it was happening I found myself unable - to forgive me, Mary, wherever he is now - unable to spend a thought for my wife. Later I would be justified in saying that Holmes had loved long before any obligation of contracting marriage, and the excuse I would have looked so grim and pathetic that I would be disgusted with myself. But this later, after having lost both. At that moment I did not think anything like that. At that moment I did not think at all.
Stratton story reached the bedroom door of Holmes, and it was then that he regained self-control and drew back, his hands still firmly sunk in my hair. I combed them out with your fingers and I am sure that comically soar in every direction. "No," he murmured, sounding breathless but determined.
"Holmes, for the love of God ..." I began, in despair at the thought that he had changed his mind.
"In your room, in a minute." And then he added, to clear up my confusion: "It is not the case that we feel the whole house."
I drew her to me for another kiss, which could last a lifetime and strip away what little control I had left.
"I'll be right," Holmes whispered, pushing me in the right direction.
The bed had been remade, but when I bent down to breathe in the faint deposited on the surface of the pillow, I felt distinctly tobacco and grease Holmes, together with the aroma of his special person. Holmes entered a moment later, clutching the door behind him.
had left the robe in the living room, staying in his shirt sleeves. Or perhaps he had left on the stairs (this picture seemed inexpressibly erotic). He stuck a finger in the knot of his tie, loosening it, and kicked off her slippers with the grace of chance. Lock the door, I complained possession of his mouth and scacciai his hand, letting the thick silk of the tie between the fingers, blindly, until it was dissolved. A hand of Holmes was deposited on my side, stepped over his jacket and pulled the hem of his shirt from his trousers looking skin beneath. The thrill that followed took me to hold me closer to him, as if searching for a heat source, although the source of heat and the thrill of were the same.
shook his shoulders in his hands, taking advantage of the tie loose to seek access to her neck, her throat. I kissed the hard line of the jaw and the importance of a vibrant vein, and directly into the ear shell finely chiseled confessed for the third time, looking for a relief, a closure that no one else could give me. "I love you" I whispered, destroyed by the thought that he believed me a liar. "Holmes, I ..."
"Watson, do me the immense favor of silence?"
I pulled back, as if slapped, but Holmes took my face in one hand. "I suffer the same disease, and do not want it remembered. Not now. "As he spoke I drove with gentle insistence to the bed, and I moved back by following his leadership.
is all too easy to forget that Sherlock Holmes is, in fact, a very strong man. Something in the mind refuses to involve a lot of energy to a figure so thin, so thin finger at such a concert movements faster than powerful, more elegant vigorous. My brain does not forget that Holmes is a fighter and a boxer first class, paid equally in fencing and in the melee, but sometimes you can leave out the details, preferring to focus on coordination and harmony and grace and sensuality of gestures. It is a mistake.
Holmes pushed me lying on the bed with what seemed to me the force of his weight, then, kneeling on my thighs, he attacked my clothes as if to ignore the passage required buttons and rip them off. But even if he did, I can not say I'd noticed, as I was taken by the occupation itself, the frantic desire to find every inch of her skin that had been mine, of that body on which no other, once had been able to claim any rights. The folly of my choice, even though the time was thought-up the agony, I appeared in full force, and a part of me warned me that this was, this was what I had feared, and that had kept me away from him since my wedding day, this awareness that the face of Sherlock Holmes, my world stopped and then accelerated frightening, took a turn in opposite direction, and what was sensible and rational I looked foolish, and that was crazy and reckless not to succumb to the only solution.
Self-Holmes was superior to mine, since he managed to discover his torso, leaving my clothes to be free, while I can not say the same of what happened to her. A button of his waistcoat gray dall'asola jumped with a snap and was deposited in the hollow of my throat. Indifferent to the damage, Holmes bent down to pick it up by mouth, taking care to pass on my skin, teeth, and spat it out with the utmost nonchalance. As I tried to undo her shirt at the same speed but less violence, Holmes slipped off the vest from his shoulders and dropped it on the floor, then unbuttoning the cuffs. I could wait to rid himself of the garment, but at that point the desire to kiss him again I was eating and had to pull his face on mine, our chests in contact between the wings of their shirts. I allowed myself to scroll through the disordered hair between his fingers, savoring the soft texture and heavy with that of his tongue in my mouth. I let roam a hand on her neck under the collar of his shirt, and then the sea accartocciai in the palm of cloth to touch the back, hips lean, the importance of the vertebrae at the base of the neck.
In another world, I was sure I was allowed to spend the rest Life of Sherlock Holmes with his tongue in my mouth and my fingers in her hair. In this ideal world, from our entirely dissimilar except in one aspect, I never felt the need to breathe or eat or drink or to meet any emergency, even those pressing the flesh, because the two joint actions have fulfilled my every desire deadly until the end of my days, and in this way would have consumed my life, without ever getting tired or wanting more, in the kiss of Sherlock Holmes and the scent of her hair grease.
lips Holmes refused to leave more than a fraction of an inch from my shirt and got rid of some awkward twist, and I was still wearing As I lifted up on one elbow and then, clinging to him, pulled me down to imitate him. I felt his fingers running through delicate scar naked, shoulder, opened to the scapula in a lump asymmetric. Over the years, Holmes was busy with a great effort to replace my sensory memories related to that scar - ugly, feverish, desperate - with many more happy and private in nature. Would always be a reluctance, but now the effect that a wise touch had on me was more like a thrill of expectation that one of repulsion.
Although the world had changed around us, spend more time just to kissing than we ever did, even more relaxed in meetings. I would not call patience, nestled in the lower abdomen of the urgency was devouring me, stunning deaf with ringing in the blood that runs through my temples, but the desperation to leave Holmes, even for a moment, even to find a greater pleasure, the kept at bay. Like a drowning man who prefers to keep holding on to a miserable wreck, rather than abandon it and swim to the shore, which also is not far away, I kept holding on to Holmes - Holmes and me - but not daring to let my hands wander on his back naked.
I knew that the urgency of Holmes was equal to mine, because I felt it press hard against me, his imperious desire and unequivocal. When I thought that this would be enough to shred my ability to think, his hands, more bold than mine, let me go back and within seconds they were right in my belt and my pants. Then he pulled his knees by the mattress on the sides of my hips and stood up. I realized with a sudden, cold emptiness in front of and around me, which left me an orphan and Holmes in the throes of a painful pang of deprivation.
Holmes finished undressing in silence, staring into his eyes as he did. In a second he was completely naked in front of me, without showing the slightest trace of embarrassment or shame as my eyes slowly climbed his body, and finally rejoins her. "Mark my words, John Watson," he said slowly. "Tonight you will not go on your legs."
It could have been a joke, but it was nothing like that. Holmes said in a fierce tone, threatening, a threat that was not the playful lovers, but the deadly predator. He was aggressive but also exhausted, with a faint note of exasperation. It was as if all the patience and tenderness and compassion of which I knew it could be dried up, leaving a core of love angry and sharp as a bush of thorns. He was one of the strangest moments of my life, see the man who had loved me so much look at me as if meditating to hit - and all without stopping even for a second to love me totally and irrevocably.
was the love that undid me, I think. The hatred I could stand it.
I sat up in the short space between the bed rail and Holmes, indeed already feeling my legs get weak in the knees. I thought I would say many things and not said no. Holmes would not have forgiven him because I asked, as I wanted it desperately.
"I will not go," I muttered at the end, taking his face in his hands. I pressed my lips on her floor, and moved on the corner of his mouth a moment before the dischiudesse. I kissed his cheek, and three points, the strong jaw, then his forehead, chin, nose. I kissed her temple, an eyelid and the other, covering the gray for a few moments of his burning eyes. I kissed her ear, conch, lobe, with all the delicacy of which I was capable. Neck kisses became more intense and longer, and I took the time on the throat, feeling the pulse of increasing blood on my lips, no less salty taste of her skin. The Adam's apple quivered just below my kisses, but did not move.
When I leaned over my shoulder I felt Holmes's hand raised, as to put an end to all that, I stopped her and held her in my tying up in the air. Holmes did drag, but held off for a few seconds - Time to cover it with kisses from her neck to the joint - in a bizarre sort of confrontation. At that point, Holmes gave way. I kissed the biceps, the hollow of the elbow, and a scar from memory (a knife, smear). I kissed the blue veins of the wrist and palm. I kissed each finger from the knuckle to the fingertip, feeling it bluntly take a breath, and repeat the entire operation on the other side.
I kissed your chest, nipples thesis for the cold and excitement, the sternum in which shook the echo of a pulse. I folded the healthy leg on the floor and picked up where I left off: the stomach, abdomen contract in a breath, the navel. Every inch was dear to me, and every new, every corner, every fold of skin brought with them memories. Rediscovered them as proceeding, as if carved in the flesh I expected. Holmes felt as they move to follow the die of my own thoughts, short of breath when I lose myself, stiffen and relax when I did. A whole shared history - not a life, but two - I ran under the eyelids, and could not be clearer if each moment was recreated again in front of my eyes.
When I stopped just above the groin, I had the curious impression that at least an hour had passed since we entered the room. I closed my eyes, leave me with a sigh to the familiarity of the moment, loved the smell of Holmes. I drew the outline of his erection with his lips, pausing on every sensitive spot that I knew by heart, letting your fingers in a socket as firmer around the base. The breath of Holmes, accelerated, was propagated in continuous vibration until his stomach when he felt a jolt in the mouth greeted net. At a time unknown, Holmes I pulled back a lock of hair from his forehead.
I had intimate relations with other men in my life. I learned by some, for others I taught. But there is a huge difference - visceral, I would - including a meeting with a gentleman in a club and a with the person whose every hair and fiber and cartilage are etched forever in your soul, hidden in the depths of your being. I know the body of Holmes as my own - better than mine - because I have spent hours and days of my life to memorize every detail. I know how to please him in the most slow and exhausting, which dry up its forces in a delightful point of exhaustion, or the more rapid and intense, like a blaze of sulfur that is immediately consumed, and every shade in between. I learned that his pleasure was mine, and because the privilege of being the sole owner demanded absolute perfection.
Holmes had been silent until then, on purpose, I suspect, so terribly angry with me. But something had to be loose in its determination to remain angry, and when I got it in the mouth gave way completely. I heard him say my name, one syllable of breath, soft as a caress, and then his fingers were in my hair and my world shrank to a tiny bubble of Sherlock Holmes which occupied every corner.
The time would have the same consistency and smoky distorted dreams of many of last year, it was not for the strength of Holmes in my hands. However, in the months to come the memories I have visited so often in the thousands and thousands of variants, which are no longer convinced of what happened really and what does not. For example, I could swear that I do not at this point Holmes had pushed on the bed and held up to let me cruelly lacking an ounce of energy. Nor do I feel able to ensure that the story thus far proceeded exactly as I have narrated. Maybe the door of my room had a less marginal role, perhaps a tie (my, his) was used to tie my wrists to the headboard, or his. But among the many variations I like to think of choosing one that Holmes would have approved, even though I have no way to ask.
I apologize. Men sometimes have strange ways of honoring the memory of loved ones.
Holmes uttered a guttural sound, very gratifying, and strengthened the grip on my hair. I would not call them yanked, because it would seem a rude gesture and it was not in good conscience, but with all his self-control and the palpable desire not to show any weakness, given the unique atmosphere that was created between us, I shall, without compromising the 'fierce urgency that devoured him. I would have done anyway, but no more waiting, I was ready to obey. I am not exaggerating when I say that I would do anything, any layer of modesty I ever had I had been ripped off like a suit uncomfortable.
His abdomen twitched beneath my fingers and I heard him take a sharp breath and let slip a hand around my member, giving me some brief moment of relief. Holmes stiffened and then sank back into my mouth profusely. The familiar feeling of sudden and total made me doubt for a moment that more than a week had passed since the last time we were together.
The kiss that followed was something strenuous, dirty and delicious. I was raised from the floor, pushed on the mattress and immediately dominated by the weight of Sherlock Holmes on my thighs. I helped him get rid of his trousers at the same time not resist the temptation to take his buttocks in his hands, test its consistency sleek and muscular. Holmes looked at me, perhaps appeased for the moment, but certainly not satisfied. I strive to
be as objective as possible when I say that what followed was a full-fledged rape, and my full cooperation not mitigated ferocity, if anything, helped to raise them. Holmes pushed me into a reclining position, and leaned my head over to retrieve something from the drawer. I took a nipple between his lips, because the movement had offered me in the mouth. Holmes I gaze down, his eyes clouded with desire, and shrank over himself to kiss me again, dropping his conquest on the pillow.
I'd do anything, and so I felt even more helpless when Holmes, opening the jar, picked up part of the substance with the fingers and proceeded alone to prepare before my eyes. I did not expect me asking, implicitly or explicitly, but his eyes when I made a gesture I froze in place, such as certain snakes that have the power to hypnotize the victims. My assistance was not required. I guessed that Holmes thought enough of me left control until then - the extent of irritation that caused him so now I was not yet clear - and that can not be left over. If I still had some doubts, his sharp "No" when I again tried to touch it convinced me completely.
What else do you think you deserve?, I thought I would say that his eyes half-closed. Enabling use as an instrument of pleasure is almost too, after what I've done.
But I had to have entered a kind of delirium, because I doubt that even without speaking Holmes would never expressed in a manner so bleak.
"Holmes, please. Let me ... "
" No. "
I blinked for the first time in whole minutes, to the spectacle of Sherlock Holmes with three fingers deep in her body until his knuckles. Had spent time since the last time: I saw him take out the front in a grimace of annoyance, but not withdraw. Never retire. I raised a hand to stroke his temple and relaxed Holmes Briefly, the eyelids trembled for a second over his gray eyes. I'm fairly certain that at that moment my resolve broke, and I whispered to forgive me, though I knew it useless, so the slightest recognition by Holmes is able to ruin my best intentions.
regretted it. Holmes became the eyes of steel and with a shake of the head broke free of my hand. Then, with determination, he took another piece of cream and applied it to my State. Not only made a movement too, and this made everything much more heartbreaking. Slipped further, and slowly rose up on his knees, but without the slightest hesitation, he fell on me. I am sincere when I say that anything else would have been greeted with the same pleasure, but did not produce the same effect. None of the thousand scenes that my mind has brought me in recent years has the same force.
I would have remembered the last day, I thought making an enormous effort to breathe. His face was unnaturally flushed, her eyes closed, lips parted, her chest with the signs of my passing, lean meat on the ribs, the expanse of her abdomen and pulled compact, my God, I already knew, I would die before the 'I abandoned image. In my darkest moments, fly to want to eradicate it from my mind, this and all the others, and I seem to go crazy. I wonder if this was the intent, if that vision which gave me was not the apotheosis of my punishment, my personal nightmare for the days to come. Or maybe I imagine it too cruel?
could undo the easy thing, honestly, I was adrift for some time of my senses. It was heartbreaking and perfect, infinite and terrible, as the best nightmares. Holmes kissed me, whereas with the hips took away the last glimmer of reason, and so sudden was the pleasure that risked to chop off the tongue with his teeth. He drew back with a sound of surprise, but did not protest, and when I kissed her again I felt the taste of blood. Even today, when I wonder what is true of that terrible afternoon and what is dream, I remember the taste of iron in the blood of Holmes for a moment I was assailed by the mouth.
I went back to the world a minute or an hour later. The sun was down sharply. Under my fingers were straight locks and heavy metal from the glimmer.
I felt exhausted, so completely consumed even turn around to the side and put his arm around the waist of Holmes proved difficult. The movement woke him, if he were sleeping, but it froze as I had feared. I kissed diligently the first vertebra.
"Mrs. Hudson is about to serve dinner, "he said. "Duck, judging by ..." I did not want
to listen to long and no doubt correct sequence of deductions that had led, in my bed, to discover the dinner menu. "Are you hungry?"
"No, not right now."
"Mrs. Hudson if he would not hurt if a late dinner, I'm sure. "
" What for? "
" No goal "I said, brushing the ear with his lips. "I see that you do not hurry, either."
"No?" Said Holmes. "You should."
"Should I?"
"Your wife is waiting for you."
the words I opened a hole in the stomach. I remained silent, deathly ill at ease, without moving a muscle. Holmes put his hand to his mouth to cover a huge yawn and then sat up, stretching his arms and back like a cat.
It was a play, of course, and a rather cruel, but Holmes is the best actor I know, and over time I learned that cruelty is the last resort when nothing else is that has helped.
"I thought I wanted my company tonight," I said finally.
"I say that? If I told you it must be true. However, your wife is still waiting. "
"Mary knows ..." No, I could not finish the sentence. In good conscience, I could not. "I'll stay if you want me."
Holmes glanced at me and smiled, colorless. "My dear, I get along very well during the twenty-nine days a month where you do not see it. A few hours more or less will make little difference to me. One world, I'm sure, for the lady. "
" Do not do that, "I whispered. "Please."
Holmes stood up, hiding a small protrusion of her body in a sudden twist. "Go home, Watson said, taking a gold cufflinks from the table and studying it for a moment with the air of not knowing if it were his or mine. Then he picked up a pair of pants from the floor and if its definitely put them on bare legs.
"Holmes ..."
"I intend to go to my room and stay there until Mrs. Hudson will not rise with dinner. By then I want out of this house. You will be welcome tomorrow, tomorrow, in a week and whenever you want. But now, you'll leave. "
I covered my eyes with one hand, holding one by one all the things I wanted to say and Holmes did not want to hear. I heard footsteps and the rustle of cloth naked as he finished dressing.
"If there was another way, I would."
Holmes I gazed coldly. "I counted no less than five while you were asleep. But you felt that there was one, and have acted accordingly. You are and you have always been master of your choices, Watson. And just as I am master to bestow my forgiveness to those who prefer it. "He gave me my shirt. "Go to your wife. And your son, "he added after a second, with a strange vibration in his voice.
"My ...?"
"Congratulations" Holmes murmured, his hand on the key. He was paler than ever, and suddenly immensely distant, as if waiting for something else for his immediate attention. I thought cocaine and snapped up. My body weighed a thousand tons. "In both," he continued. "I know him to refer."
was already out of the room when I set out to achieve it, and my strength deserted. I dressed slowly, as drunk. The irony of the situation was something I realized only over time, that evening I contented to perceive the tragedy. The guilt would kill me, I was sure, not even suspecting that it was only the beginning.
down the stairs I paused outside the door of Holmes and I found it ajar. I pushed her with his fingertips, holding my breath. Holmes was lying in the middle of the bed, one arm folded over the front of the other stretched over the edge, rolled up his sleeve on his arm and a tiny, terrible drop of blood glistening in the crook of his elbow.
If that day had acted differently, it would be here with me now? Maybe we could get back our old life, perhaps, in time, I could convince him to forgive me. I do not know. Everything now seems preferable to what I did, yet I can not contemplate a different scenario, one in which not closed the door quietly and went, as I had asked my wife and my unborn son.
He must have known when he had left it open because I saw that I had a lifetime to regret it.
Note:
the unlikely event that someone had missed the implication, in April 1891 Holmes will commit suicide (yes, you can not call it otherwise) in Reichenbach.
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