http://community.livejournal.com/cox_and_co/166410.html Title: Excerpts from the Diary of a Drowned Man
Author: bluepercy
Word Count: 962
Rating: R. Nothing really explicit, but references to sex.
Warnings: Slightly disjointed narrative!
Summary: Watson mourns, post FINA.
A/N: Okay, so here is the scene: I have finished the first draft of "Not a Rational Organ." My brain is full of the story, but at the same point I'm on a bit of a writing high and I don't want to stop writing and go edit and revise. I instead embark upon an ill-fated sequel until I'm a little calmed down and can deal with revision properly. I do this sometimes. I have piles of unfinished ill-fated sequels on my computer.
I went back and looked at it later and discovered that really, it was excruciatingly boring, but there were some bits I liked so I typed those up, rearranged them, added a bit, and now I have this, which I guess can be considered to be a sequel to "Not a Rational Organ" but can also just as easily stand alone.
Excerpts from the Diary of a Drowned Man
There was that last night in Meiringen. Holmes had laid his head upon my back when I sat on the bed to undress. He reached around me to undo my collar, my shirt buttons from behind.
"Holmes," I said.
"Do you wish me to stop?" he asked.
"Not a bit of it."
He laughed. "I am a poor influence upon you, my boy. Watson--"
"What is it?" I was disturbed by the sudden worry in his voice, and turned to look at him.
Holmes touched my cheek with extraordinary gentleness. "You have never done this, have you? With a man, I mean."
As ever, he saw me plainly. I felt myself flush. "No, I haven't."
"It has been some time for me, I admit, but I expect it will come back to me."
Then, with the greatest delicacy of touch, he pulled me down upon the bed, pausing only to snuff out the candle. Plunged into darkness, I felt as though I would drown in sensation, drown in Sherlock Holmes and all that he was.
That is what I remember, and that is what I clung to through the years that followed.
*
I do recall returning to the Englischer Hof, seized with a terrible lethargy. That Sherlock Holmes, the most vibrantly vital man I had ever had the privilege to know, was dead--I could not make myself believe it. I was an empty man, drained of all emotion, all will, all energy. I laid in the bed and slept for some time before awakening, surrounded by his smell, and sharp memories of the night before. His mouth on mine, moving to parts of my anatomy I blush to name, his guiding hand as we moved through acts I had scarcely allowed myself to imagine.
I burst from that bed with moisture streaming down my face, gasping for air, and I knew one thing then: I had to leave that place, no matter the weight of my grief.
*
"I left him, Mary." It seemed important to tell her this, though I could not say why. "He--" Again, I found I could not speak.
"Hush," Mary said. "You can tell me later."
I reached for her then, despite it being mid-afternoon, despite or perhaps because of my grief. She was alive, and we loved each other, and even if the man who held half my heart was dead under the pounding waters of Reichenbach, I was still not alone.
And Mary, bless her, understood, and helped me undress her with my trembling fingers, let me draw her down to me with all the desperation of the dying.
*
"But John, why not publish it, as you did before?"
I stared down at my manuscript in dismay. "Holmes never liked my stories," I answered doubtfully. "I simply needed to write it, or go mad. Besides, what is his brother to say of it?"
Mary looked at me with those keen eyes of hers. "You're making excuses," she observed.
"I very much fear," I said after a moment's hesitation, "that my affections for him are too obvious in this."
Was this, then, what it was to love a man? Was my fate that of Basil Hallward's, to come so close to the object our devotion, to lose him-he to sin, I to the grave-and go on fearing our art would betray us?
I shook my head, then. Poor Basil was fictional, and I did not have that luxury.
*
It is a shock to discover that your soul is full of perversion. For some time, my self-loathing could not be expressed. I made several ultimately doomed attempts to extricate Holmes from my life. I blamed him. I blamed myself. God help me, I blamed Mary.
And then it was simply a fact of life. I woke in the morning, kissed Mary, trimmed my moustache, breakfasted, attended to my practice, went to call on Holmes, and thought of what it might be like to kiss him. I loved him, and it had become strangely normal.
I count myself lucky that I have known and loved two souls who loved me in return. Perhaps some would find that strange, but that is the truth of it, and I count myself uncommonly blessed to know that they understood my heart and loved me despite it.
*
I could not quite believe that I was here again, sitting in my old familiar chair, facing Holmes again. There was a draught through the broken window, but the whisky in our glasses warmed us.
We had spoken of almost nothing but Moriarty and Moran all evening. It was safer, somehow, to speak of that rather than of anything else. After three years we could not very well pick up where we had left off. He had been looking at me surreptitiously since I had woken from my faint; I think, in retrospect, that he was wondering how to broach the subject.
After a lull in the conversation, Holmes drained his glass and looked at me squarely, at last. "Watson," he said, "I wanted to tell you. I did read the stories you published in the Strand."
"Oh!" My face was quite red, I am certain, and it was not entirely the fault of the alcohol. "I wrote those without ever expecting you to… well. I'm sure you thought they were quite sensationalistic, and romantic, and all that nonsense."
When I managed to look at him, he had a peculiar smile upon his face. "'Romantic' is certainly the word," he murmured, and reached for me.
As he kissed me I thought, madly, that I was drowning, and then it seemed that it was quite the opposite: for the first time in three years, I was not.
Fin. |
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