A/N: I've had this story sitting on my laptop for over three years, and decided it was high time I finally share it. Hope you enjoy!
Had I awoken that blustery October morning knowing I'd spark a heated argument with my husband over a misplaced Quran, I surely would have stayed in bed, hiding beneath the covers.
A few years before the incident in question, Sherlock Holmes, the man who had played the roles of mentor, friend, and colleague in my life, told me that I would receive little affection and much irritation from a marriage to him that I – somehow unknowingly – desired very much. Having known him for five years prior, my naïve mind had been sure I could handle his pointed stubbornness and unchanging emotional demeanor as they presented themselves. I had no idea what was in store for me that particular morning.
For the purpose of full comprehension, I shall begin from the beginning – the night before. It was a rare moment indeed when Holmes and I had time to ourselves amidst a flood of minor cases in and around the Sussex Downs, and I'd been using my time writing a dissertation on the impact of Islamic traditions on Christianity. As a gift and further means of research, a former professor of mine at Oxford had sent me a centuries-old Quran he'd acquired during his sojourn through Afghanistan.
Using my not-inconsiderable Arabic skills, I dove headlong into the text, translating various verses until I reached a word that was unfamiliar to me. Tucking the book carefully under my arm, I journeyed into the library in search of Holmes's English-Arabic dictionary. The trip led me past the laboratory, home to a number of outrageous in-progress concoctions, and a pungent odor wafted tin my direction. Driven by curiosity and the fact that Holmes would not return to the cottage until the wee hours of morning, I wandered into the lab and examined his latest project.
A mess of beakers and test tubes covered the center table (or "pagan altar" as I jokingly dubbed it), forming a semi-circle around an open botany textbook and a newly-penned monograph. I recognized it as the very monograph on the viscosity of common metals on which Holmes had been working tirelessly. I sat and began to read, placing the aged Quran on the table next to me. The longer I stayed, however, the harder my eyes fought to stay open. Every muscle in my body sunk into a profound state of relaxation. My head found an impromptu pillow in the pages of the botany text, and I feel asleep.
I awoke with a start a few hours later. Still no Holmes. Forgetting entirely why I had ventured into the lab, I rose and left to prepare for bed, not noticing that I'd left my Quran on the table.
The next morning, whilst taking my usual cup of tea and blueberry scone for breakfast, Holmes entered the kitchen (the man does not walk so much as glide, a side-effect of contact with countless flavors of aristocracy over the years). My Quran was tightly clasped in his hand, and the tic that often appeared at his right temple when he was angry was throbbing away vigorously. He marched up to the table and dropped the precious item unceremoniously onto it.
"Holmes!" I exclaimed. "I thank you for reminding me where I left it, but please, do be careful! That Quran is nearly five hundred years old!"
Ignoring my outburst, Holmes spoke, his voice bitingly cold. "I have asked you on several occasions to kindly leave your theological exploits out of harm's way of my experiments."
Alarmed at the terseness of his tone, I did something most uncharacteristic: I relented. "I am sorry, Holmes. I was studying your newest monograph and became immensely sleepy." Realizing how the explanation sounded, I quickly added, "The two are unrelated, I assure you."
"Several occasions, Russell." He took a step closer, staring me down.
My protective walls went up. "I am truly sorry," I managed through gritted teeth, "but do not deign to think that you have not irritated me greatly by using my driving gloves in your acidity experiments." It was undeniable; since our marriage, I'd had to buy four new pairs of the expensive leather gloves after finding enough holes in them to rival Mrs. Hudson's homemade Swiss cheese.
Holmes puckered his lips and propped his arm against the nearest cabinet. A lecture was imminent. "This is not a matter of petty accessories. It is the singular matter of an agreement to keep our various interests separate."
I daresay this was the trigger. "Forgive me, Holmes, but I don't believe I signed a contract on the matter. Would you like me to write one up now and sign it in my own blood?" I attempted to calm myself by stirring the lukewarm tea in front of me.
Holmes's reply was a sneer. "Russell, I am most disappointed in your sarcastic approach to this problem."
I was fuming before the teaspoon hit the floor. How dare he treat me like some kind of blundering novice! I stood in a whirlwind of anger, my chair screeching out behind me and into the wall. "I'm beginning to think sarcasm is the only way to get through to – don't you walk away from me while I'm arguing with you!"
Indeed, Holmes was meandering into the sitting room, where I heard him say, "Shall I leave a few beakers in the study, Russell, and prove my point when you accidentally knock one over and destroy a priceless document or two?"
I followed Holmes into the other room, spouting a batch of the angriest words I could muster.
"In all of your adventures, Watson extolled your triumphs, your tenacity, your iron will and your unwavering intellect, but the one thing neither Watson nor Doyle succeeded in chronicling is your cruelty. You are a cruel man, Holmes, and you justify your cruelty by viewing yourself as a well-oiled detecting machine for society's profit!"
Holmes whirled around at that moment, as I stood before him at my fullest height. He towered over me, gray eyes piercing into blue, but I refused to back down.
"I suggest you admit defeat, Russell. There is no foreseeable point to this quarrel."
"The point, my dear Holmes, is that during your Baker Street days, you resided with a man who put up with your general lack of tidiness for years, and when I misplace one tiny artifact, you jump down my throat! You are a Victorian man through and through, dearest husband," I uttered the words as if they were profanity, "and set in your ways to the point where you will stop at nothing to prove yourself right, however misguided you may be."
The urge to grab a thick textbook and hurl it at him was tremendous. As if reading my thoughts (which I would not put past him), he moved away from the bookshelf to the settee. He sat, stretched out his thin legs, and with accuracy and precision, dealt a heavy-handed blow.
"Then perhaps you should not have married me."
Something in me finally snapped, and I made for the front door without another word uttered. I didn't wish for Holmes to see the tears welling in my eyes, or the instant fogging of my spectacles. He continued to circle his prey as I donned my coat.
"You have not learned that the art of detection requires a balanced mind. Russell, in all the years I have known you, you have changed, evolved from a headstrong teen to an independent young woman, but one less than desirable quality you have managed to retain is the need to run. You run from your problems, hoping they will somehow inexplicably be resolved whilst you hide in the comfort of your solitude. I daresay that on the rarest of occasions, you are a coward."
That last word was the twist of the knife in my already deep wound. Coward. Cowards were despicable people, governed by fear and self-preservation. It was certainly not like my husband to deal such unwarranted insults at me, not while I still bore a scar where the bullet from Patricia Donleavy's gun had struck me. I gave him one last look and muttered, "Goodbye, Holmes." With that, I threw the front door open dramatically and marched out onto the murky Downs. As I trudged through the post-rain mud and mist, I heard Mrs. Hudson's voice at the door, no doubt back from her bi-weekly trip to the local farmers' market.
"My dear Mr. Holmes, whatever is the matter?" I could feel her staring at my rapidly dissolving figure with that pained, motherly look on her face.
With frustratingly casual eloquence, Holmes replied, "Why, nothing is the matter, Mrs. Hudson. Russell will return in a few hours' time with a clear head and absolved conscience. Now, what have you decided on for dinner?"
The storm was slowly passing, but the Channel's white-capped waves continued to crash against the shoreline. My usual cliff spot would offer no peace today.
Doubt slowly crept into my thoughts – doubt, of course, being one of the more useless emotions I've encountered, but a truly all-consuming one at that. Why had I married that man? I'd heard the whispers during my apprenticeship: how it was unnatural for a girl my age to be spending most of her time with a man his age; how, famous detective or not, he'd surely taken advantage of me; how I just as easily could have found a nice farmer's son and settled in the countryside for the remainder of my life.
And what if I had? Condemned to that life of monotony, my mind would have dulled, and it wasn't as if any young men had strived for my attention at Oxford. I was both intimidating and emotionally unavailable, the woman who shoved her nose in theology books by day and cavorted with the Great Detective by night. I had become just as much a fable as Holmes had, which was perhaps why we'd latched onto each other. There had been no one else but him.
My thoughts travelled back to Holmes's kidnapping in Palestine, to the swell of confusion I'd felt after the Hazr brothers and I had retrieved him, severely weakened but very much alive. I had supported him on my back as we fled, a skinny nineteen-year-old girl struggling to keep a fifty-eight-year-old man from slumping off the horse like a worn ragdoll. Opium ensured that Holmes stayed asleep long enough to recover, and I had sat by his side as the reality of our situation had finally settled . . .
Touch him.
He's there. He's sleeping. He never needs to know.
I wanted to touch Holmes, a desire free of the immoral influences one often associates with the sense of touch. I merely wanted to touch him to confirm that he was there, lying on the bed in front of me, and that he was not on death's doorstep
Holmes had no idea how devastatingly imbalanced our relationship was, even now. He could go to his grave at this very moment (God forbid) knowing that a well-trained, independent, female version of himself was patrolling the earth. But if I lost him, I lost everything. He was my teacher, my friend, my business partner, and the object of some burdensome deeper feelings that I dared not utter unto Palestine's sparse, open countryside.
I turned around, checking to make sure I was unobserved. Then, hesitantly, as if I were in close proximity to a sleeping dragon, I touched Holmes's cheek with nothing more than my fingertips. I checked his eyelids (fluttering with what I hoped were dreams of cherry tobacco and honey wine) and his breathing (erratic but ultimately fine) and confirmed my touch had not awakened him. His cheek was rough, beaten upon by the desert sun and wind, but the beard he'd been growing remained remarkably neat and trimmed. Daringly, I moved my knuckles down his cheek, but he was quite motionless. Mahmoud had been liberal with the opium.
I removed my hand and sighed. If Holmes were awake, he'd chide me on the immediate disadvantages of a schoolgirl crush – though I was hardly a schoolgirl and he hardly a crush. My eyes flitted unconsciously to his lips, partly open from drug-induced sleep. Lips that had uttered a plethora of logical propositions and philosophical observances. The need to kiss those lips nagged at my baser instincts, the promise of human connection too great to ignore. I checked behind me once more. I leaned.
At the last second, I shied away and chastely kissed his cheek. A kiss on the lips, I realized, would have been a subtle form of betrayal. My rational side told me I was simply distraught over his near-miss with death, that my renegade hormones would be in check shortly. I was embarrassed to admit that my emotions had taken hold over my perception of the case. He'd trained me better than that.
Laying my head on the empty space above Holmes's head, I drifted into much-needed sleep. His mere presence would cause me to have one of the better nights of sleep in that long string of events.
Like Holmes, I was prone to musings which would distract me from my immediate environment, and so I was well and truly startled when a distant clap of thunder shook me from my revelry.
What did not startle me was the movement out of the corner of my left eye. I turned to see Holmes perched on the cliffside a few feet from me, one hand resting neatly on his lap, the other on a covered basket. His nimble fingers playing idly with the wicker handle.
"It thought it best not to disturb you," he murmured, and uncovered the contents of the basket to reveal freshly-baked cranberry walnut bread.
"Mrs. Hudson became quite distressed when you did not return, and all but commanded me to bring this to you. I suspect filing your empty stomach was not quite her goal."
I picked up on his meaning and smiled, despite myself. "You don't give her enough credit."
"Indeed, I do not."
We sat in silence for several minutes. The wind howled in my ears and the sea spray clouded my spectacles. The tension was impossible to ignore. When I could not bear it any longer, I mustered my last shred of dignity and said, "Holmes, I – "
"Russell." His tone was neither condescending nor cruel as it had been in the cottage. I glanced at him as he put a serene index finger to his lips. I conceded. Silence did not always have a negative connotation in our relationship.
About a minute later, Holmes said, "The 'weepy housewife' façade does not suit you, wife-of-mine."
I scoffed. "Forgive the shortcomings of what you allegedly called 'the fairer sex' . . . "
"It is not a shortcoming so much as a moment of weakness, which both sexes cannot deny experiencing."
I nodded. "About the Quran – "
He waved his hand dismissively. "A trivial affair. As I've told you, I am old and set in my ways. Any change to my physical environment, however slight it may be, sends me reeling. It is not a trait of which I am proud, but it is something I shall attempt to control."
"Admittedly, my temper does not always do us service."
For the first time since he'd arrived, Holmes smiled and glanced at me. "You possess the fire of youth, Russell, and you've married a man with ice in his very veins." He looked down at his lap. Was he ashamed?
"For once, you do not do yourself justice," I replied, but Holmes was too consumed in his own thoughts to acknowledge the backhanded compliment.
"I suppose – what I mean to say is – " he began.
I decided to spare him the embarrassment. "You are forgiven," I said, knowing that an apology from Sherlock Holmes came about as often as a clear day on the Thames. I leaned over to kiss my husband's cheek, reflecting on its smoothness and momentarily drifting back to that night in Palestine. I plucked the basket up and stood.
"Why, Holmes," I said as I began walking away, "they've gotten cold."
He was up and by my side within seconds. Ice, I mused, never moved that quickly. "It would seem that all the powers of reasoning I've instilled in you could not have prepared you for the simple conclusion that it is cold out today."
"I would toss this basket at you if Mrs. Hudson hadn't gone through the pains of baking it!"
Holmes cleared his throat. "Erm, Russ . . ." He gestured to my backside.
I looked over my shoulder to find that I'd sat in a puddle of mud.
Holmes chuckled, a low, throaty sound that caused my stomach to somersault. "Are we, as your generation says, 'even'?"
I pursed my lips, slowly removing my right glove finger by finger. Holmes raised his eyebrows expectantly. I bent down, scooped up a handful of mud, and with calculating precision, smeared the mud down Holmes's newly-tailored greatcoat.
The shock on his face was worth it.
"Now we're even," I smirked.
His expression softened. "I suppose I deserved that." Holmes linked his arm with mine and we began to walk. "But it would be wise of you to sleep with one eye open tonight."