I Never…Thought I'd Kiss Prince Philip
If you live your life just right you will do an infeasible number of things you thought you'd never do. You will say things you never meant to say, see things you never dreamt you'd see. If you are very lucky you will love and know and taste and do and be things you never imagined.
Dr. John Hamish Watson learned this recently and firsthand.
"You did not."
John stretched languidly and wiggled unnecessarily. "Oh yes I did."
"You are lying to me, I can smell a lie on you John Watson and the scent of this one is like oversweet tea gone cold."
John smiled, then John giggled, then the good doctor said, "Don't be jealous, Sherlock. I didn't enjoy kissing him, not quite so much as I enjoy kissing you."
Sherlock should not be spoken to in such a way when he has in one hand undiluted hydrochloric acid and in the other a toothbrush. John's toothbrush.
And the thing is, John knows better than to provoke a man who in the best of circumstances is not careful with corrosives. Playfully riling him while he is buck naked, holding a tiny beaker over-full with a skin-burning substance, gesturing emphatically with both hands each time he puts a full stop on a sentence, is really just begging for a bad outcome.
John sobered. Then John told Sherlock to go back into the toilet and finish whatever it was he'd started with the burny stuff—just don't tell him how the toothbrush played a role—and when he was done, the good doctor would tell the detective a story.
With a glare, a grumble, and one more hazardous gesture Sherlock retreated to the loo and spent the next twenty minutes doing something which involved something breaking, a good deal of loo roll unwinding, eight toilet flushes, and an exclamation of positive outcome.
Flushed with success—so to speak—Sherlock yanked open the loo door and stood in its light like a triumphant, naked angel. Drying dripping hands by running fingers through his curls, he flopped onto the bed and said, "So tell me, John Watson, about this thing you thought you would never do but you today did for me. Tell me how you kissed a prince."
John Watson patted Sherlock's high-rising moons so as to watch them jiggle, and then John told Sherlock a tale, the first story in an extensive inventory of things both John and Sherlock never thought they would do, places they have gone and should not have been, and people they have known and of whom they should have steered clear.
Shall we begin?
...
"I will never kiss Prince Philip."
This would seem like a promise one could fairly easily keep, but John Watson is here to tell you that it turned out to be one that, had he made it, he would have emphatically failed at keeping.
Before we continue, perhaps there's a bit of background required...
…no, no there really isn't. Because it's fairly simple. Sherlock had a new case, one he found far more interesting than attending a private ceremony in which he was to collect "a prize or medal or yacht, I have no idea John, ask Mycroft," from his royal highness, Prince Philip Mountbatten-Windsor, nee Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg.
As it turned out the queen's consort was bestowing upon the indifferent, younger Holmes State Laurels, a fairly mid-grade award given, in this case, when the lazy application of Sherlock's gifts—for a case he swore was "barely a two"—prevented a disgruntled taxidermist from blowing up the southern ramp of the Millennium bridge.
And so, because his husband was off unearthing a hidden cache of rare 16th century rapiers in the Greenwich foot tunnel, John was enticed by Mycroft to meet the prince and accept the award in Sherlock's place. The promised lure if John complied? A two week Athenian holiday in a seaside villa owned by the Greek-born British prince.
John said yes so fast he actually almost bit his mobile.
It all nearly went to hell in a hand basket and that hand basket was called a faire la bise, which would just go and figure, wouldn't it?
A faire la bise is that airy double kiss John's pretty sure the French invented. The thing where you go…the thing where you…actually John doesn't know what the thing is or where it's supposed to go. All he knows is it looks like a kiss to each cheek but it is not a kiss, it is a minefield dressed up in social finery and it detonates a faux pas every single time John attempts it.
And a faux pas is exactly what happened when he collected Sherlock's award. A pretty little silver laurel wreath about the size of a bracelet and the weight of a brick. So distracted was John by the object's unexpected density that, when the prince bent down to bestow a faire la bise upon John's cheeks, the good doctor turned left as the prince went right and their actual lips met in an actual kiss.
Mycroft Holmes almost nearly died.
This bit John takes as gospel from Sherlock—who deduced the mild myocardial infarction later—because at the time John was too busy possibly having an out of body experience so confused was he by so many, many things. Not least of these was what do you do after you've snogged a ninety-something Greek-Danish-British monarch?
In some ways John's proud to say he's one of the few on earth who can answer such a question, and if you buy him a beer, promise you'll laugh, and then shut up and let him get on with it, John will tell you the answer.
What you do when you have placed your lips upon the lips of the longest reigning British consort is you apologise three times, clutch the pretty little award he's just given you to your chest, and assure the man that if your husband had collected the award himself he would possibly have burned a hole in your morning suit and touched your bum accidentally besides.
If you are a Greek-Danish-British monarch what you say in reply to this is, "I believe there is cake on the side table. I like the small yellow ones."
If you are Mycroft Holmes you beg a five minute reprieve from the small ceremony, literally break into a run the moment you are unseen, and out in the queen's garden you crouch behind a black poplar and suck down a cigarette so fast you get a little bit drunk and so later proceed to eat eight of the small yellow ones while giggling like a loon.
Yes, this is a new series despite my marking it complete. I did so because each story stands alone, so if you like, do please follow. This was gleefully inspired by Kate Lear's wonderful "There's a First Time for Everything," in which John says he's got a list: "Things I Never Thought I'd Say When I Moved In Here." For me that turned into things the boys thought they'd never think, do, or say. P.S. I made up state laurels, but not any of those facts about Prince Philip. Nor about how much I really, really…uh, how much John Watson really, really dislikes the social awkwardness that is the faire la bise.