Smoke Hearts with Mechanical Parts (15) Part TWO

Smoke Hearts with Mechanical Parts

Skip to chapter six

The story so far…

A retired army surgeon, Dr. Watson was down on his luck, and living above a whorehouse, making his daily bread by running errands for a crooked former colleague. He had the good fortune to meet a man who was prepared to go halves with him on better accommodation – his circumstances were improved, but he found himself a slave to an obsession with his mysterious new flatmate. He got the chance to discover exactly Holmes’s profession when they were called out to a scene of a crime by Inspector Hopkins. It appeared that a person or persons unknown had a grudge against the underground rave scene. Holmes took samples, and revealed his stunning new method of crime detection… forensic science. When we left our heros, Holmes had offered Watson a share in his work, in return for a much-needed resource… affection.

Chapter the Fifth

“For pity’s sake, Watson.” Holmes hissed in my ear, “At lease try to act like a dangerous man, would you? You look like more like a sulking schoolgirl who has been caught going out after dark.”

I shot the uniformed officer I was handcuffed to the dirtiest look I could muster. I tried to pour all of my anger, all of my hate, and all of my outrage at my humiliating situation into that one look. If I had hoped Holmes would be offended, I was to be gravely disappointed. To my chagrin, he gave me a wink.

“That’s more like it!”

He was enjoying this, the sadistic bastard. Bastardly bastard, I couldn’t say it enough. Git, whoreson, blackguard, knave. Bastard.

~

After declaring that we would need to take a trip to Scotland Yard to consult Inspector Hopkin’s mysterious library, Holmes stood thinking for a second, before developing something I was starting to think of as his ‘dangerous smile’. It was a smug and self-satisfied sort of smile, the kind of smile one gives one’s humble servant when one has just thought a delightful new method of torturing him. Bastard.

With a snap of his fingers, he had leapt into his bedroom, and slammed the door behind him. Knowing better than to dare to follow him, I sank down into my chair, and lit a cigarette. There were a series of bumps, a few muttered swear words, and the sound what sounded very much like a couple of shoes being thrown about. Then Holmes banged out his second doorway onto the stairs, and all went silent.

There was a knock at the door. I narrowed my eyes, sighed, and got up to answer it. To my surprise, it was not Holmes who stood behind the door, but a policeman, resplendent in his smart blue uniform, white gloves, and shiny silver buttons. A silver glinting ‘VR’ badge was on his hat, and he sported a smart set of whiskers, of the like officers up and down the country had commenced growing the instant they were permitted to forgo the razor.

“Err… may I help you?”

The policeman grinned wolfishly, and in that moment I knew. After all, no-one had come up the stairs, and I had specifically heard Holmes come out of his bedroom. I tried to look stern, but ended up returning his grin. He looked magnificent and truly not himself, and I told him so on both counts. He seemed genuinely pleased at my flattery.

“Unfortunately,” he went on “I only have one peeler. So I’m afraid you will just have to come along in my custody.” And at that he whipped out a pair of handcuffs and dangled them in front of me. My jaw dropped in shock.

“I – you… you wouldn’t!”

The mutton-chopped policeman who was really Holmes waggled a finger at me.

“Come now, doctor. You heard perfectly well for yourself what friend Lestrade thinks of me. He will kick up blue bloody murder if he catches a whiff of me at the station. Now remove your jacket.”

I gave him a look that I hope told him exactly what I thought of this proposition. He folded his arms, and gave me an even gaze back that seemed to say ‘tough luck, you signed up for this love’. Except maybe without the ‘love’ part.

I sighed, got up, put my fag in my mouth, and shrugged my way out of my jacket. I tossed it onto the chair, put my hands on my hips, and stared Holmes down, daring him to order me to undress further. He looked at me critically.

“Take those armbands off, and unbutton your collar. You want to look like you’ve recently been in a skirmish.”

“I’m game if you are.” I replied under my breath, but did as I was bid. Holmes clearly heard me, but chose to ignore it. He leaned over, and succeeded in completely destroying my vain attempt this morning to put my hair into some kind of order.

“It’s not much of a disguise, but then Lestrade I’m afraid, isn’t much of a detective.” He eyed me again. “Change into the trousers you wore last night, and you may pass. Thankfully the influence of your previous circumstance hasn’t quite worn off yet. You still carry yourself as a man who knows he belongs in the gutter.”

Holding my head high, and with as much dignity as I could muster, I strode out of our sitting room, and up the stairs to my bedroom. There was no way in hell that I was going to remove my trousers whilst he watched.

After another quick study of my appearance, Holmes announced that I would do. He took up a pinch of soot from the fireplace, and smeared it along my cheekbone where I had supposedly fallen and smudged it in hard with the heel of his palm, causing the skin to redden. I trembled slightly under his touch, and he noticed, and shook his head at me. I tried to remind myself that he was not deliberately trying to torture me, – this was a disguise. I counted myself lucky that my time of service with the army had rendered me completely immune to the ‘man in uniform’ effect.

Then with a cheery wave to Mrs. Hudson who simply stared at me in horror as he led me down the stairs, Holmes clapped the handcuffs onto my wrists. No doubt the poor old landlady didn’t see that it was really her tenant standing there in the police uniform, but thought I was truly being arrested. One could hardly blame her, I suppose. I didn’t exactly come with the most glowing of references.

Holmes propelled me out of the front door, and into the street. Almost at once I felt a flush of shame as tens of pairs of eyes turned our way, and it was at this point Holmes uttered his angry point about the schoolgirl. Dusk was slowly falling however, and the throngs of people hurrying through Baker Street soon lost interest in my companion and I. This was London, of course, and this was the 19th century. The Londoner has long since been hardened to the unsavoury characters that came out after dark.

Holmes the policeman hailed a cab, and succeeded in bustling me into it so efficiently that I had to wonder if he hadn’t done it before. Yes, I was a weak man recovering from a near-fatal wound, but there is much a fellow can do to make controlling him very difficult for whomever has a hold of him. I had planned to dig my heels in and come kicking and screaming all the way, but with one little twist of my arm, and a bit of pressure on an extremely painful point just above my left clavicle, and I found myself twisting into the cab headfirst, and onto the seat.

“Dreadfully sorry,” said Holmes, after knocking on the roof of the cab with his bully club “But you had the stance of a man who is planning to put up a fight.”

I heard the amusement in his voice, and tried my hardest not to wince.

“It could have pleased you to recall,” I said in a low growl “That it is my left shoulder which is wounded.”

“Dear me,” Holmes replied placidly, closing his eyes, and leaning back against the carriage wall. “I’m afraid it must slipped my mind.”

I looked at him, and could not help hate bubbling up inside me. It clashed dreadfully with the delight of finally being allowed into his life, and getting a first class seat in this burgeoning adventure. I was a veritable cocktail of emotions.

He looked the very picture of innocence and virtue as we sat together in that cab – an upright and well-serving man, and a shining example of the metropolitan police force. I felt an overwhelming desire to pervert this image of decency, and decided that given his rough handling of me, I was going to give into it.

With the quickest of glances out the cab window to ensure that nobody out there in the dark had the remotest chance of looking in, I learnt forward, and planted an uncertain kiss on those fake whiskers of his.

Nothing surprises Sherlock Holmes – but I’m afraid the same isn’t true of me. He did not jump when I kissed him, but instead turned languidly towards me, and let our lips meet. For a moment I was too shocked to react. It was the most innocent of chaste kisses, an almost bare brushing of skin. I bizarrely found myself thinking that had Holmes been a young lady, even had we been chaperoned, I probably would still have got away with so much. The peace I felt was odd – as though I had attempted to subvert him with kiss, but instead had received my own absolution.

I tried to move up my arms to hold him, but of course, my hands were still chained. The sound of the metal cuffs clinking together brought us both away from each other. I felt myself smiling shyly, and repressed the urge to laugh, for surely a less appropriate expression in my rôle as a hardened criminal I could not have come up with.

Holmes however, did not smile. He stared back at me with something akin to annoyance.

“I thought I made it clear.” he said with a frown. “You will be repaid after you have completed a job for me.”

I felt as though a bucket of water had instantly been thrown over me. I had, for a few precious seconds, felt wanted, felt loved. Surely I could not imagine why another man would ever kiss me so gently and sweetly as that without even the shadow of affection for me. With a few cruel words, Holmes tore all that away from me. I recoiled away from him with horror, and sank back into my seat in disgust. I felt sick, truly ill, all the way to the pit of my stomach.

“You didn’t have to kiss me back.”

I hadn’t meant to say the words out loud, but now that I had, I didn’t regret them. An uneasy silence settled over the cab, as thick as one of Holmes’s most foul tobaccos. I chanced a glance over to him, but he was turned away from me, staring out of the window, deep in thought. I wanted to think that maybe he had confused even himself with his behaviour, but no doubt he had just kissed me on a mere whim, and his thoughts lay instead with the case at hand, not my bruised and battered feelings.

I too turned away from him, and made a study of the grimy streets beyond the even grimier window. I had been right this morning when I had suspected I was setting myself up for even more hurt, but I had not expected it to come so soon. I thought it would merely be the matter of having to turn down his advances after a case, despite wanting to say ‘yes’ more than anything else. This was far worse, and I hated myself for even entertaining the idea that Holmes might have anything approaching warmth towards me.

~

It was not much of a journey from Baker Street to Scotland Yard, but the uncomfortable silence in the cab made it seem much longer than it truly was. When finally we arrived I didn’t find it hard to put up much of pretence concerning the dangerous man act. I pushed away my sadness at rejection, and let anger at being led on take its place. I scowled, I leered, I threatened. Holmes didn’t seem in the least bit upset by it, but briskly marched me into the Yard through some side door. No one even gave us a second glance.

It was instantly clear that Holmes had been here before, and often. Quite probably in the very disguise he wore now. It demonstrates just quite how pathetic my ‘observation’ of him had been, that I had never seen him leaving the house in it before.

He turned us quickly and easily down several corridors, before turning abruptly through a door to the right. To my surprise, we found ourselves in what appeared to be a small storeroom. I turned to question him, but silencing me with a look he quickly unlocked my shackles, and set about buttoning a new collar about my neck. Roughly, I pushed his hands away, and fixed the collar myself, smoothed my hair, and wiped the worst of the soot from my face. He stared at me evenly, neither concerned that I had pushed him, nor caring for my privacy whilst I tried to make myself presentable. I felt my anger anew, that such a man should exist – that such a man could inspire such intrigue and fascination on my part, and yet feel nothing for me in return.

Within my chest my treacherous heart set about an arrhythmia, making me cough and catch my breath. Both my anger and hurt mingled with the closeness of Holmes to set the adrenaline running through my veins, and the excitable tissue in my left atrium that remained tried to respond. I put a hand to my chest, and tried to massage the extra beat away. For a moment concern flashed through Holmes’s grey eyes, and I felt a flush of delight flow through me in reciprocal, which was instantly followed by an equal flush of shame. I had to build my walls up high, and not allow this… machine of a man past them.

With an audible click, the cogs in my back disengaged. I gave a horrified gasp, and reached for my key, but of course it was far beyond the reach of my stiff and inflexible limbs. I felt myself start to hyperventilate in panic, and then panicked myself even further with the thought that my poor heart would not be able to respond in turn. I felt myself grasping the lapels of Holmes’s jacket. He looked at me angrily, and hissed;

“For heaven’s sake – don’t over do it!”

“What-?! Holmes! I’m going to die!”

“Keep your voice down, you foolish man. Or do you think it is seemly for two men to be discovered in a cupboard together?”

The butterflies in my stomach instantly reacted to this insinuation, which along served to increase my distress. I looked up at Holmes to plead with him for help, but to my surprise, I found him staring at me curiously.

“Doctor, stop this. You are fine. Your heart is still beating. See?” he picked up my hand, and placed it over my chest.

By God, he was right. I gaped at him, and he tutted back at me.

“They didn’t tell you anything after your operation? The clockwork mechanism is fitted with a homeostatic device that will shut off if the heart receives enough endogenous stimulation to maintain a rate of above eighty-five beats per minute. I’ve no doubt the switch-over to sympathetic enervation must be quite uncomfortable for you, but you really ought to be grateful that you retain some degree of ‘normal’ function.”

“My… heart is beating…” I said in wonder, and it was true.

“Albeit with synthetic valves and a copper bundle of His, but yes it is.”

“But… How the hell do you know about…?”

“Now, Watson.” Holmes broke in briskly “As much as I would love to discuss trauma and scar tissue and heart block with you, you may have noticed that we are on something of a mission here. So if you are quite adjusted to flight or fight mode, I would like to make a move.”

There was something strange in the way he spoke, something that worried me. Holmes could smooth talk his way into and out of any situation you could care to name, but somehow I could tell he was attempting to dissemble. Still, he was right, and a cupboard was no place for this discussion. I gave him a curt nod. Holmes returned it, and went to open the door. He listened carefully for a moment, before taking a furtive glance into the corridor. Luckily it was empty, so he hurried me out, and led me directly to Hopkins’s office, mercifully sans handcuffs.

~

“Gentlemen!”

Surprised is not the word for what Inspector Hopkins was when he saw us. He leapt to his feet, and cast a look of panic around the busy office. Holmes gave him the wink of a co-conspirator, and put his helmet down on Hopkins’s desk.

“I see our mutual friend is away.” Holmes remarked, with a nod towards an unoccupied desk opposite, which was littered with papers.

“Inspector Lestrade is interviewing the railway staff.” The young police officer replied, attempting to regain some of his cool. “But he will doubtless be back soon enough, and he won’t be please to see you here, sir.”

“Well. That cannot be helped. We shall just have to see how well my disguise holds up. But – interviewing the railway staff you say? Is he not treading on your patch?”

Hopkins made a face.

“Apparently this murder is too much for my inexperienced hands.” He explained “I haven’t been taken off the case, but I might as well have been. He doesn’t seem to appreciate that these are relationships I have been cultivating for some time now, and if anyone has the right to…” Hopkins caught himself, and broke off with a smile. “But there’s not use my harping on about it. We have our own leads anyway. I take that’s why you are here, Mr. Holmes. Did you run your assay?”

“Indeed I did.” Holmes replied, and quickly filled the Inspector in, passing him a photograph of the strange patterns of stripes to look at.

“Hmm.” Hopkins replied “Well, if it’s as you say, it should be easy enough.” He turned away, and started rummaging in a filing cabinet behind him. “I had thought of keeping the library in the evidence room, but then decided against it. I’m not saying that Inspector Lestrade would throw it out of course, but things do seem to go missing from down there on a regular basis… ah, here we are!”

Hopkins pulled out a large binder folder from the cabinet, and put it down heavily on his desk.

“That’s a library?” I asked, bemused.

Holmes flashed me an irritated look, but Hopkins was happy to explain.

“It’s a fingerprint library. These are all the records I have of people involved in the rave scene who have been brought in for other convictions. We take a regular fingerprint of course, but I also make them spit in a bottle for Mr. Holmes. They don’t like that, I can tell you! So I get their prints and their description and their picture, and Mr. Holmes gives me their… what did you call it sir?”

“Their ‘molecule of life’.” Holmes replied softly.

“Right.” Said Hopkins, with a grin, and he opened the heavy folder up, and started to leaf through the thick pages. Not all the entries had photographs, or Holmes’s molecules of life, but most did. I began to realise two things – firstly that this was a huge volume of work, and quite possibly the most complete file that had ever been kept on a set of people, and secondly, that this could only be a trial run of whatever Holmes was planning for his strange new branch of chemistry. I found it difficult to believe that he could possibly be this interested in some underground rave movement.

“I’m surprised that you don’t have a similar library in your files at home, Holmes.”

Holmes gave me a sharp look.

“Keep a list of biometric data at an address that I publicise as my own? I think that would be a grave error.” Holmes frowned, and buried his hands in his trouser pockets. “This little project of mine worries me as it is. No doubt it is a great tool for fighting crime, but I wonder what kind of country this could become if the state were to have access to such a list coupled with a census.”

“But surely,” I protested, “Only wrong-doers would have anything to fear.”

“Hah! You clearly have greater faith in the government than I.”

“Ah!” interrupted Hopkins. “Here we are, this fellow looks a likely candidate. 5’ 8”, pale skin, long red hair, William Thorpe, alias ‘Blaze’. Spent three years inside in connection with the theft of some painting or other. Got out early… but, hmm. That’s odd. The file isn’t exactly clear as to why.”

“A jailbird? Dear me, that does make things more interesting. Let’s see how our prints match up.”

Holmes passed the Inspector the photo, and together they squinted at the to pictures, comparing them. I have to admit, they looked completely different to me.

“I do believe they are the same.” Holmes went on contrary to my opinion. There was a note of victory in his voice. “See how this band in the ladder matches up with these two on both samples?”

“Yes, you’re right!” Hopkins exclaimed excitedly. “And if I just fetch my coat and hat, we can see how accurate this last known address is.”

~

Holmes and I fortunately managed to leave Scotland Yard without drawing any attention to ourselves. Inspector Hopkins was well-known enough within the station to ensure that any company with him didn’t drawn so much as a second glance. I was somewhat glad for this, as I had no particular desire to be handcuffed to Holmes a second time.

We got in a cab, and Hopkins gave the driver the address he had copied out from his library. It wasn’t a particularly pleasant district, east towards cheapside way, and near the docks. The place was familiar to me from my days running Stamford’s ‘errands’. There would have been a time, I reflected, when I would have been too afraid, or too genteel to venture down towards these parts. Oddly it wasn’t my time in Afghanistan that had hardened me against the dreariness of the slums – a chap can endure much on campaign, and tents and dried food and other such so-called hardships are so common that one barely even thinks of them. Coming home was a shock, however. Abroad, we tended to think of Old Blighty more fondly than we perhaps should. Slums and squalour belonged to Kabul, not London. Arriving back in England, and taking up work with Stamford had been a rude awakening to the realities of a city I had never really properly examined. It had been during my time of convalescence that I had learned that indeed any place where enough humankind gathered was a cesspit.

Both the Inspector and Holmes seemed equally at ease in the squalid surroundings we found ourselves. I suppose their line of work called them to visit any and all parts of the city without discrimination. I got out the cab, whilst Inspector Hopkins exchanged a few quick words with the driver. He came back towards us shaking his head, and the cab pulled off.

“I tried to give him a half sovereign to stay, but he would have none of it.”

“How then, are we to get home?” I exclaimed.

“We shall just have to cross that bridge when we come to it.” Holmes replied. He pointed towards a tall dark house set into a line of identical tall dark houses, their very windows burnished with soot. “This is the address. Stay here would you, Watson?”

It didn’t exactly fill me with delight to have to stay on the pavement, whilst Holmes and Inspector Hopkins went forward to interview the occupier, but I tried to bear it as best I could. Holmes had said he was reticent about telling me details, but I had imagined that he would at want me by his side in a pinch.

The house was not far from the road, and I didn’t have much trouble seeing what was going on. The door hung awkwardly off its hinges, but the rough-faced woman who answered the door was able to creek it open somehow. Some words were exchanged – Hopkin’s and Holmes’s were too soft to be heard – but I am sure I heard the word ‘warrant’ mentioned a couple of times. At being refused entry, Inspector Hopkins shrugged, and turned away from the door, but Holmes put his foot upon the step. He is not a large man, and certainly doesn’t look capable of the strength I know he possesses, but the woman eyed him cautiously, and I think eventually his superior height made her turn and bawl up the stairs;

“Blazer! Get yerself down here!”

Holmes bowed his head slightly, and backed out of the doorway a little. It wasn’t long before a long greasy haired young gentleman came down the stairs. Well, one says ‘gentleman’, but his attire wasn’t exactly of that class. He wore a large baggy and frilly white shirt, held in at the waist by some kind of queer leather waistcoat. His trousers were black, and an incredibly snug fit, and on his face was some kind of peculiar facepaint. He looked like a raver-pirate. He didn’t seem to notice Holmes, but with one look at Inspector Hopkins, he cannonballed down the stairs, and flew out past Holmes and the Inspector, knocking both aside. Holmes gave a rough grasp at the man’s shirt, but it wrenched out of his grasp, and nearly pulled him to the floor.

“Watson! Catch him!”

I had anticipated Holmes’s call for assistance, and flew into action. I launched myself at Thorpe as he passed, but he proved to be pretty strong himself, and all I got for my troubles was a stout punch to the gut. However, I hadn’t been in the army (not to mention a public school) for nothing, and I twisted out of the way, leaving the blow only a glancing one.

I heard Holmes curse behind me, and I swear that sound was like a starting gun for me. I could have been a greyhound when the gates are raised, and Thorpe was the rabbit. He streaked down the street, heading towards the docks, and I staggered after him. My gait was lop-sided due to my gammy leg, but I struggled onward, absolutely desperate to do something – anything – to impress Holmes.

Despite my motivation, it wasn’t long before it became obvious that Thorpe was going to get clean away. My lungs burned as I dragged in cold air, and my heart screamed at me as it joltingly tried to keep pace of its own accord. I pressed forward, determined at least to keep Thorpe in sight, but my I felt my legs slowing unwillingly. I had little left to push with, and then, with Thorpe disappearing around a corner ahead, I saw it. Salvation in the form of the gasman on his rounds.

Hope renewed my efforts. The man had left his tall-bike in surprise to watch the chase, and no doubt the last thing he expected was for a broken and unfit man to lurch around, and make a grab for his bicycle.

“Ere! What the fuck do you think you’re doing!?”

Which is of course exactly what happened. I ran with the strange machine a few moments, and then attempted to mount. I’ve never been a particularly ardent cyclist, and attempting to mount a tall-bike at a run isn’t exactly the easiest of tasks in the first place. However, the overwhelming desire to capture Thorpe and bring award me kudos in Holmes’s eyes leant me strength. I got atop the thing, and then feeling incredibly shaky, and likely to fall at any moment, I resumed the chase.

I rounded the corner, to find Thorpe jogging easily along the waterfront, no doubt imagining that he had already dropped me. I would like to say I approached him silently, like an owl in the night, but I’m afraid it simply would not be true. I rode the bicycle like a toddler on cocaine, and I was panting and shuddering as though I was fit to burst. I came upon him quickly, but he turned back and spotted me easily. I was just wondering what, now I had caught him, I was supposed to do, when the pavement underfoot (or should that be underwheel?) suddenly became cobblestone. Roubaix rider I am not. As the bike lurched out from underneath me, I had the presence of mind to attempt to topple the machine and myself ontop of Thorpe instead of at his feet. I was for the most part successful, but after only a second’s recovery, he pushed me away. The last thing I recall before my vision sparked and doubled, was his face sneering into mine, and then all faded away.

@~~}~ ~{~~@

Chapter the Sixth

I want to begin this sentence ‘the next morning’, but truth I have very little idea which hour of the clock I started to come round. Dreams and visions swirled about me, but eventually I was aware of something cool on my forehead dragging me back into consciousness, and struggle as I might, I could not resist its pull. My head pounded in a most insistent manner, in a way that spoke more of concussion than hangover, and this once realised, I put the lure of sleep behind me, and struggled to pull myself together.

As I pulled away from the last remaining tendrils of dream, my body and its sensations began to return. That my head ached was not odd, but I found my chest oddly tight, as though I had winded myself. The cool sensation on my forehead resolved into a wet flannel that dabbed and comforted my fevered brow, and a strange feeling in my right hand became the obvious grip of a fellow human being, as they tried to chafe me into wakefulness. I squeezed those fingers, and a cup of hot sweet tea was pressed to my lips, and I took a small sip.

“Mrs Hudson?” I croaked.

“Hardly.”

“Holmes!” I exclaimed, shocked to think of him caring for me. I must confess my skin leapt to hear the sardonic tone of my fellow-lodger’s voice. “And the Inspector, too?” I was unable to see him for the flannel that covered my eyes.

“Hopkins went back to his desk hours ago.”

“Oh.” I lay for a moment in confused silence, having felt for some reason as though there were more than one person attending me. Through the fog of my headache I was unable to put my finger on why I felt this way, and I reached up to remove the flannel from my face.

“Wait!” I was surprised by the sudden urgency of Holmes’s voice, and it quickly arrested my movement. “Let me just put out the light,” he continued “it would dazzle you in your current condition.” There was a shuffle, and then I heard him turn down the gas, and the damp cloth was removed from my eyes.

The scene around me was unfamiliar, and I stared at it in confusion. I had expected to find myself in my bedroom, and for a moment I could not shake the notion. Holmes calmly sat by the bed in his shirt-sleeves, hands neatly folded in his lap. No trace of worry or agitation was on his features, and I felt a little annoyed that he didn’t seem bothered by my condition. The room about him looked strange, and I could barely see it in the half-light. Behind him were dark shapes on the wall, pictures maybe, and newspaper cuttings, which I had certainly never tacked to my walls. At that moment, the scales suddenly fell from my eyes, and I realised I was not in my bedroom, but somewhere else. As soon as it became obvious, I had to wonder how I had ever thought it so. I frowned about me.

“Is this your room?”

“After carrying you up one flight of stairs, the Inspector and I had no particular desire to carry you up another.”

“This is your room!”

I could not hide the fascination in my voice. Holmes had been a closed book to me for so long that to lie in such a personal setting caused me to quite forget my previous anger with him. I had only managed peeks through his door into this inner sanctum before, and I looked about me with fresh interest. My glance fell on a table beside the bed, and there I saw the little morocco case, and its bottle of 7 % solution. Holmes followed my gaze, and quickly moved to snatch up a second bottle beside it. He turned and hid this other bottle behind his back, as guiltily as a schoolboy. If he had made no move, I doubt I would have noticed it, and so it was that we stared uncomfortably at each other, both conscious of this glaringly uncharacteristic error Holmes had just made. The tension was stiflingly, and I could not stand it for more than a couple of seconds.

“Holmes,” I stammered “Thank you for helping me, but this is your room, and I shouldn’t be here. I am sure I could make it up to my own bedroom, if you could just…”

Holmes held up a hand, and stopped me there. His face a mask of calm, be put the bottle back down on the table where I could plainly see it. I expected some exotic new narcotic, for as fond as I knew he was for cocaine, I had long suspected that he had a not unintimate relationship with Lord Morpheus. What I read there on the bottle then, quite frankly, surprised me.

“Cyclosporin?”

Holmes looked away from me, but his voice came across clearly.

“I am currently in my brother’s debt to the order of one kidney.”

I gaped at him. Ordinarily I would have leapt upon such precious information such as the admission of illness or family, but I was simply too shocked by what he said. Had I been a layperson his manner would have convinced me entirely, and the realisation that he could lie so coolly felt like a dousing with a bucket of icy water. But Holmes was strong and lithe, not weak, and I certainly had never noticed anything amiss with how much he drank – indeed he would lie still for hours on the sofa without needing to get up. Holmes wasn’t fool enough to think I could not have told the perfect function of the organs in question by a mere glance at his physiognomy. I opened my mouth to protest the lack of oedema, but caught his gaze, and I fell into silence.

“I beg you to say no more of it, Doctor.”

It was hearing the earnest plea in his voice that convinced me to drop the subject – I do not think I could have done so otherwise. I could not for the life of me imagine why he should be taking an immunosuppressant drug, but once begged, I had to push the question out of my mind. How easily I submitted to the yoke he put about my neck! I should have at least protested to know more on the grounds of his health, for transplantation was an infant science in those days, and so little was known of why some organs withered without the nourishment of their former masters.

Filled with a sudden loathing of my own self-pity, I struggled up upright, and painfully swung my legs round to sit on the edge of the bed, intending to retire to my own bedroom, to leave Holmes alone with his strange dark secrets that he would never share with me. I grumbled my intention out loud, but a hand on my shoulder prevented me from getting up.

“Now, Watson. I am sure you do not wish to be a difficult patient.”

“I’m not a patient! I just fell from a bike. I’m fine.” That my breath came in difficult gasps undermined my words.

“A healthy man could shrug off such an injury, but you? I must confess, I found myself most-vexed when you have repeatedly refused to wake up these past few hours.”

“Sorry.” I replied sullenly, and attempted to stand again. A twinge in my shoulder stopped me.

“I am sorry Watson, but you already know I am not above using your old wound against you.”

Ah. If he were going to play it like that, it meant instant defeat. I ceased my efforts to stand up with a snarl.

“You just fucking love to have me in your power, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

The frankness in his voice made me look straight up into his eyes. I would love to say that the air crackled with tension, that a battle of wills was fought between us in our very gaze, but it was nothing of the sort. With a word he claimed me as his own, and with a glance I submitted. How can I describe the relief I found in that submission? It may seem wrong to a civilian for another human being to order another about, but my poor broken heart longed for someone to do just that. At any rate, my right to call myself ‘human’ had already been cut away with the surgeon’s knife.

I shuddered, but it was not just at the thought of my mechanical heart. At the idea of ownership and submission, the perverse bargain we had made came back to me. Vaguely I wondered why I found it so distasteful, and I found myself realising that it was nothing carnal that I sought from Holmes, but something more deep and intimate. I wanted safety, and security, and order. I did not expect love, but I did hope for a companionship that might push Murray from my mind. I did not think that emotionless eyes and a sarcastic drawl could replace the passion and expression of the musical tones of my former lover, but they had an appeal of their own, and I could not deny that Holmes intoxicated me.

All this Holmes seemed to read through my expression as clearly I felt it. Something in his face softened, and he knelt down beside the bed in front of me, the hand on my shoulder coming up to press against the back of my neck. He was close enough for me to feel his breath, and I cowered back under his gaze. He looked at me closely, and his he leant in intention was plain.

“What are you doing?” I whispered hoarsely. “I have hardly served you by letting a criminal get away… and I have already said that I do not want you to repay me in this manner…”

“Indeed?” Holmes interrupted me as though he hadn’t even given conscious thought to the matter.

And then he kissed me.

For the second time in the space of a few hours I felt the world sliding away from me. Did I swoon? No, men do not swoon from a mere kiss. It was likely the blow to my head confusing me, combining with the emotional turmoil that was simply being near Holmes. My body, knowing full well what it wanted, responded to the kiss, but my mind was elsewhere, worrying about our strange interaction, scared that the next minute Holmes might push me away, or try to hurt me. I did not swoon, but my mind did flinch away from the reality of his kiss. My heart clicked on another beat, but failed to feel the warmth in his embrace.

He drew away, and looked at me oddly.

“You are distracted.”

“I… I don’t know why you are doing this. It’s not a game.”

He smirked, and gave a short mirthless chuckle.

“Is that what you think you are to me? A game?”

“You’re using me!”

The moment the words had passed my lips, I regretted them. Holmes pulled back, stood up, and looked away. Instantly I felt colder, and as much as my mind said that it did not want his intimacy, a part of me missed his embrace keenly. I found myself leaning towards him, clutching at his trouser like a child.

“I have offended you.” His voice was distant. “It is very rare for me to misread a character, but I am not entirely infallible. I had thought that you wanted my companionship, but as this not the case, I am quite willing to take up lodgings elsewhere.”

“Holmes, please! I’m sorry!”

“Never fear, I shall pay the rent until you find a replacement, I shall not drive you to bankruptcy as well as perversity.”

He turned to leave, but I staggered to my feet, clutching at his elbow. He looked over his shoulder to regard me coldly, the softness of his expression all faded now. I had not wanted him to kiss me, but now the tender side of him was hidden away from me, I found I desired to see it again. He had extended the hand of friendship to me, and I had bitten it in return. Any disgust I had felt at him was now entirely turned within.

“Holmes, please don’t leave me.”

“I see no reason why I should not, if you persist painting me as a villain.”

“I don’t think you a villain!”

“What, then, am I? No, do not answer, for I do not care to hear it. I offer to make you my partner – your aid in return for my affection – but you spurn my proposal, and make a mockery of it by claiming I abuse you. I am afraid I do not have time for such emotional trials.”

There was genuine hurt in his voice, and I was shocked.

“But Holmes,” I protested. “That’s not how relationships work. You can’t say you’ll feel ‘x’ for me, if only I will do ‘y’.”

“Really?” he snapped back. “How odd, for that is exactly what I have observed the rest of humanity doing.”

“What?” I found myself gasping, exasperated.

“Must I point out everything to you?” he shook off my weak grip, and laid a hand upon the door handle. “People do not form relationships sporadically, they choose a partner upon the careful weighing vice and virtue. Perhaps in general the human race is more sentimental than I am when it comes to matters of the heart – do not sneer Watson– but I find I must rationalise everything.”

“I first gave serious thought to the matter after you so willingly followed me beneath the underground. I had plenty of time to think over the idea while my samples were amplifying. I had thought you would make a perfect choice. You have no other attachments, are entirely at my disposal, and are interested in my line of work. You are injured now, but you will heal. I am prone to thinking out each situation to every possible conclusion, and I saw that the relationship would be a mutual beneficial one. You may think it a hasty decision to come to in five hours, but I assure you that I have thought it over in far more detail than many a bridegroom standing at the alter.”

The full-import of what Holmes was telling me began to wash over me. The simple idea that such a fascinating and wonderful (albeit infuriating) man could seriously consider me as a partner let alone a lover completely bowled me for six. I felt my skin flush in an oddly cool way, and I gripped the bedstead for support. For some reason I actually felt as though this was in a way, worse.

“I thought you were just offering me sex.” I said, my voice sounding hollow and far away.

“Oh good grief, doctor, that’s simply grotesque… Watson! Steady now!”

I felt myself falling backwards, and Holmes caught me, and helped me to sit back on the bed, and I sank my head down between my legs. I took a few slow steady breaths.

“But what of love?” I said stupidly, feeling the blood begin to pool in my head. “You can’t make such a offer based on logic alone.”

“Love?” there was a sneer in Holmes’s voice, for all that he put a supporting arm around me. “Love is the fallible name we give to a natural urge. It is merely one of the driving forces of Darwinian evolution – a perfectly logical theory. Love is what one feels when two souls are appropriately matched as to allow them to work together. I thought that you and I could be one such match. Our natures compliment each other in every degree. I need absolute control, and the strict adherence of rules, and you require authority in order avoid stagnation. You are the kind of man who gladly offers up his service, and I have the requirement of said service.”

Here he paused, and looked away uncomfortably, as though he could not continue. It was an uneasy moment, the like of which I have not felt since I was a boy of fifteen. I dared not voice what I truly believed… That love must and should be something higher than an evolutionary pressure, and that a broken man like I, with an automated heart, could not possibly hope to scale the heights of such divinity. I found that I could not breathe comfortably as the silence stretched away, and his arm was heavy and awkward around my shoulders.

“Go on.” I eventually said quietly.

“I deduced,” he said slowly, and after a short pause “That you had your heart broken when you were shot, in more ways than one. Whoever broke it and why is your own business… but I am not so blind as to not realise that it was a man who brought about this wreckage. As such, I did not think you would take offence to my advances.”

I did not know what to reply to this. That Holmes had deduced my own inverted nature was not a surprise to me. I was a little embarrassed that he felt he needed to speak such things out-loud, but let him continue, if only to help him justify his strange offer to himself.

“Watson, I do not like to see my tools broken. It pains me to see you idling your life away. When it was not my business I could ignore it, but now I have seen such a team as we could make, watching you destroy yourself is as hurtful to me as no doubt my taking of certain alkaloids is to you. I am not a very soft or gentle creature; you have seen so much for yourself. But if you were to work with me, I could promise to do my best to help heal that rift within yourself.”

I said nothing.

“Watson?”

I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to say. I opened my mouth, thought for a moment, and then closed it again. For far too long Holmes had been the unobtainable subject of my obsession. I simply did not know how to react now he had turned the tables on their head, and become rather more obtainable indeed. I honestly couldn’t say if I was pleased at this strange outburst of his, or unnerved – and yes I admit it – afraid.

“Are you saying you love me?”

Holmes made a face, and shuddered slightly, as though the word offended him.

“I am saying I think there is the capacity for a partnership between us.”

“You think we could grow to love each other?”

“If you must put it that way, yes.”

I still didn’t know what to say. I told him so. Holmes caught my eye, and gave me a small tight smile.

“Say yes?”

“… I”

“Look, Watson. The deal still stands, if you wish to make it. I require someone who is willing to muscle in when needs be, but is patient enough to let alone when I say. I need someone who will withstand my moods – to leave me be when I am down and be my friend when I am well. If you can do this, you shall have my ‘love’. Be assured of that.”

I sighed deeply, as though the air around us was stagnant.

“Holmes, I am not a rational man like you. I can’t possibly say if I can ‘withstand your moods’. Alright, I admit it, you fascinate me, and yes I do crave your attention… but you must understand, I have nothing, I am nothing. Of course I have latched onto the first person I have found.” I shook my head, my words getting away from me. “You over-estimate me. I am broken. I am more machine than man. My last lover could not stand by me after my abominable surgery. Why should you?”

Holmes unwound himself, and got up and crossed the room to light a cigarette.

“My dear Watson, one of us in this room is an exceptional judge of character, and forgive me, but it is not you. I know your weaknesses and your faults, and I have calculated for them all. As I said, you may not think I have considered this long, but I assure you, I have come to conclusions about the most difficult of cases in shorter periods of time.” He took drag of his cigarette, before returning to sit beside me. “Moreover, I know my own nature far better than you do, and I can say with some consequence that any ‘abomination’ you possess is simple not a patch on my own.”

I laughed bitterly.

“Then I dread to think what horrendous procedures you have endured. I don’t even have a heart, Holmes.”

I looked up, to find him regarding me coolly. The sincerity that I found in his features deeply unnerved me. He truly believed there was something perverse about him that could rival the key in my back. My eyes flicked to the bottle of cyclosporine on the side, and felt something akin to fear stirring in my guts.

“There are many particulars about me, Watson.” he replied slowly. “That you have never had the opportunity to enumerate. Forgive me, but given your concussion I do not think you are in any condition to hear them now.” He reached over and took my hand in his. “This, then, must be one of the many occasions I will demand blind faith of you. Are you still willing?”

I looked down at our conjoined hands. The gesture was so simple, but it moved me greatly. Unexpected embraces in tunnels and stolen kisses had failed to convince me, but with a few words, and a simple clasp, Holmes had thrown away the part of me that despised myself for submitting to him. I found I longed to reply ‘yes’, despite how foolish it seemed. But yet, foolish it was. And I still I couldn’t shake the notion that he was trying to manipulate me, whether for good or for ill.

“I don’t think I have enough faith left to be so careless as to give it away blindly.”

“You want and need me.”

The words were like a physical blow.

“Of course I fucking want you.” I snapped back with a snarl, snatching my hand away. “You have done nothing but play upon that want since you have met me. But need?” I found myself leaping to my feet, despite Holmes’s protests. “Refusing to tell your fellow-lodger your profession is one thing, but refusing to tell your partner what sickening procedures you have been subjected to is entirely an another. What is it? A xenograft? I’m not sure I need that!”

I attempted to stand defiantly, but found I swayed where I stood, not quite able to keep my balance. I was giddy, and the odd pain in my chest seemed to be spreading into my arm as well.

“Doctor you are not well. The shock would be too much.” There was no disguising the worry in Holmes’s voice. “Please sit back down.”

I could not. A red veil had passed over my eyes. I felt the room closing in on me, and I could not suppress the anger I felt.

“Mr. Holmes,” I growled, my voice sounding like another person’s. “I might be entirely desperate enough to… but I won’t…” I could not finish, so started again. “I can’t possibly. When my head is spinning…”

And I trailed off. I was still insensibly angry, but I could not piece the sentence together. A fog was creeping into my mind, and I did not have the words. My breath came long and deep, and I suddenly felt as though there a vice gripping my chest. I put a hand to the automated organ that lay therein. I worried in a vague and absent way how I could feel so ill from a mere knock to the head, before a sudden panic gripped me as I recalled the key in my back. The key that had not been wound.

I opened my mouth to speak, to scream, to beg, but found I could not. The crushing pain in my chest was simply too much. I felt my legs crumple beneath me, and started to go down, arms outstretched to the pale figure before me.

Then I was in his arms. He hugged me to his chest, he swore into my hair. I did not have to tell him what was wrong, for he saw it all in an instant.

And so did I.

For there, creeping, crawling, and slithering around my waist and up under my shirt, groping to wind my key, was the most hideous appendage I had ever beheld. Holmes’s arms were fully occupied with holding me, but from beneath his shirt emerged that… thing which was winding me. I looked down, and I realised with horror that this extra limb could only be described as a tentacle. Even as my heart began to respond to the extra energy in its spring, my mind began to lose its grip on reality. Another process began to wrap its way around my legs, and I felt the gorge in my throat rise. How in the Devil’s own name could such a thing be humanely possible?

I tried to protest, I tried to squirm, but Holmes held me in a preternaturally strong grasp, and I could not escape. The tentacle against my back was clammy, and something wet began to seep through the fabric of my trousers. Holmes was speaking to me as he wound my key, murmuring into my ears, but I was far too gone to understand the English language. It was simply too hideous for words, too fundamentally wrong, that a human should sport the arms of a cephalopod. I found that I could not cope with the concept. I plead my previous wound to my head, and the condition of my heart, knowing it cannot excuse.

I swooned with horror.

(Many thanks to both Not You and rabidsamfan for their help with this chapter).