Author's Note: Thanks for the feedback! Chapter rating: PG. No sex in this one.

Chapter V

- Watson -

An uneasy cease-fire seemed to settle over 221b after the events of the first morning. Holmes seemingly gave up on his attempts of opening Stark's armour case, even though I saw him cast dark glances at the thing from time to time. As for our guest, he seemed content to go back to the book he had begun to read the day before, smirking at Holmes whenever their eyes met.

The distinct impression that something had happened between the two of them that I was not meant to be privy to increased with each passing hour.

Holmes was between cases, which normally was a cause for worry on my part, for it invariably resulted in a period spent in various states of intoxication for my friend. This time, however, he had something, or rather someone, with whom to occupy his mind, which was one reason at least to be grateful for Stark's presence.

Far from letting himself fall into one of his black moods, Holmes was alert and full of nervous energy, and it was almost amusing to see how wary he was around our guest, constantly watching him, and now and then engaging him in cryptic conversation as if devising verbal experiments.

One such conversation went thus:

"You are not a ventriloquist, Stark."

"Good God, no."

"Then what?"

"Wouldn't you like to know." This was accompanied by a smile I can only call impish, whereupon Stark went back to his book and Holmes went back to scowling.

Another conversation, this one much longer, had the same topic, as it turned out.

Holmes had spent some minutes shifting his attention back and forth between the armour case and the helmet that Stark had, for some reason, taken out of the case and positioned upon our table. After a while, he rose and lifted the helmet, holding it in one hand like Hamlet the skull and peering at its eyeslits with an air of deep suspicion. Then he turned it, peered inside, shook it slightly, and otherwise examined it. I kept expecting him to lick it.

Stark leaned back and crossed his hands behind his head, looking supremely insouciant. "No way, Holmes. No way."

There was a pause. Then Holmes put the helmet back onto the table and said casually, "I wonder what happens if I put a drop of nitrohydrochloric acid on it. Apart from the alloy becoming oxidised, I mean."

Stark straightened. "The alloy would become oxidised, that's what would happen. Depending on the extent of the damage, the helmet might lose its structural integrity. But that would take a lot of acid, more than you have on hand, I'd wager. Apart from that, nothing would happen."

"It wouldn't, say, scream?"

That seemed to surprise Stark. "It's not alive, Holmes."

My friend made an impatient gesture. "I know that. Still, I heard it talk. Why shouldn't it be capable of screaming?"

"It wouldn't scream."

"Why not?"

Stark looked at him, then smiled slowly. "Very clever, but I'm not telling you the basic principles of its functions by answering that question."

"I hope you don't blame me for trying, though." Holmes looked at Stark, then smiled a calculating smile, and I suddenly realised that the two of them were very similar, not only physically - both geniuses, both stubborn, both determined to get to the truth.

And I knew, as Stark no doubt was realising as well, that Holmes would not let this go.

This was borne out a few minutes later. "I think," Holmes said slowly, nodding at the helmet, "that you had best put the thing into the case, where it belongs."

"Why?" Stark demanded, putting his book down once more. "It's not in the way, is it?"

"The matter is very simple." Now Holmes was the one leaning back in his chair, seemingly at ease and giving every impression of holding the upper hand. "You refuse to tell me exactly what this thing is. We both know it is more than just a helmet. As long as I don't know what it is and what it can do, I cannot allow it to be in the room with us. I know that it can talk. I heard it respond to your words. That implies that it can also listen, and possibly repeat what it hears. I have professional secrecy to maintain. So has Watson. Your invention, Stark, is threatening that."

Stark grimaced. "You have a point, I guess."

"Of course I do. Now, you either tell me what I want to know, or the thing goes into the case and stays there."

Stark scowled. "I thought I'd made it clear that I can't tell you anything. You know too much as it is."

"Will learning more make a difference, then?"

There was a pause, during which Stark chewed his lower lip, frowning. "I guess not," he finally said. Then he turned to me. "Don't take notes, Watson. The fate of the world depends on this not leaving this room."

I could not tell whether he was joking or not, but I raised my hands to indicate that my writing implements were nowhere near. "The world is safe from my writerly influence," I declared solemnly.

He winked at me before turning back to Holmes. "Okay. I suppose even if you did know, there's no chance in hell that you could duplicate it. The technology won't be invented for several decades. But I'd just like to mention for the record that you're cute when you're confronted with a problem you can't solve, Holmes, and it's a damned pity to end it."

Holmes snorted, then made an impatient gesture. "Get on with it, Stark."

Our guest grinned suddenly. "You know, I think I'll just let it speak for itself. Jarvis, you have permission to participate in the conversation, seein' as it's about you 'n all."

"Yes, sir," a strange voice replied. It seemed to emanate from the helmet, speaking in a pleasant tenor with an undeniably British accent and was different in every respect from Stark's. "I doubt the wisdom of this decision, however."

Stark nodded. "So noted. I think we left wisdom behind a while ago, along with common sense."

I fear that I was gaping like a fish. Holmes, who had never allowed surprise to immobilise him, was out of his chair in an instant and had seized the helmet to stare at it. "No moving parts," he muttered to himself, "nothing that resembles a voice box. No air ducts. How does it work?"

"Jarvis, tell him."

"My speech capabilities consist of a Stark speech recognition system and a variety of syntax, rhetoric, prosodic, and emotion subroutines working in conjunction with a Stark speech synthesizer," the helmet said to my continued amazement. "That is the short explanation."

Holmes was turning the helmet about while it talked. His expression was one of utter delight. "I don't think we need the long explanation," he said, turning the helmet so it 'looked' at him. "Would you mind if I test you, Jarvis?"

"Not at all, sir."

"I'll give you an equation. The solution is a word. 'A light brown colour' plus 'to leave' equals a dance."

The answer came immediately. "Tango, sir."

Stark grinned. "That particular dance in a certain spatial alignment equals what, Jarvis?"

"Your favorite leisure activity, sir."

"That's fiddling with my armour."

"Your other favorite leisure activity, then, sir. Horizontal tango. Sex."

Stark preened. "Jarvis is fully conversant, and by that I mean he understands all nuances of human speech as well as anybody. Gotta admit I'm particularly proud of the sarcasm subroutines."

"I certainly need those for keeping up with you, sir."

Holmes was as fascinated as I had ever seen him. "This is amazing, Stark. If that is what the future holds, then I can only hope that it will get to us soon."

"Well, I'm afraid that I won't develop this particular system until 2003, and it's the only one of its kind even in my time. So no, you won't get to have one of those in your lifetime."

"There's nothing like it in development," I finally joined the conversation. "I've read about somebody experimenting with bellows and artificial heads, but this is surely something entirely different in principle."

"These primitive efforts are as far beneath me as you are above unicellular creatures, sir," the helmet informed us loftily.

"Yeah, yeah, Jarvis, you're pretty cool," Stark interjected. "Now stop bragging, please."

I could not help it. I laughed. The way Stark talked with his creation as if it were a human being, for some reason, tickled my funny bone. Even Holmes was smiling.

Stark smiled back. "Well, now that the ice is finally broken, how about we re-negotiate the sleeping arrangements?"

Holmes and I looked at each other and groaned.

As the day wore on, it increasingly seemed to me as if Holmes was trying to keep me from being alone with Stark, which reinforced my impression that something had happened between them that I was not meant to know. I resolved to do some sleuthing of my own as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

Unfortunately, Holmes was not to be budged from the sitting room. He had found a new toy in Jarvis, the 'artificial intelligence' as we had learned was the term, and Stark, who had nowhere else to go, stayed close warily. I assume he still suspected that Holmes might subject the helmet to acid treatments after all, and, knowing my friend, I fear that those suspicions were not all that far-fetched.

"What is the meaning of life?" I heard Holmes ask as I was trying to get my notes into some sort of order.

"Finding happiness," I supplied, even though I knew I was not the one he had asked.

Holmes nodded thoughtfully, but I could tell that this answer did not satisfy him.

"To evolve," Jarvis answered.

This garnered the helmet an approving nod from Holmes. "Certainly one way to look at it."

I looked at Stark, fully expecting him to say something involving sex.

But he surprised me. "Doing the right thing. Making a difference."

Holmes looked away briefly in the manner that told me that he, too, was surprised. Obviously, we had both underestimated our guest. "There are unexplored depths about you, Stark," Holmes admitted.

"Told you I can multitask," Stark replied, deadpan. "I can do philosophy while undressing you with my eyes. And you're always welcome to explore my depths."

This time, we merely shook our heads.

The opportunity to talk with Stark alone finally came when Holmes announced that he needed a book from the British Museum, and that he would enjoy a walk instead of sending for it. With hindsight, that should have made me suspicious, but at the time, I attributed this unusual surge of energy on Holmes' part to the grating effect our guest must be having upon him.

The front door had hardly closed when Stark looked at me searchingly. "So, Watson," he said with his usual disregard for my prefix, "what do you make of the curious case of the jealous detective?"

"He's not jealous," I protested. "He's merely -"

"Oh, he is jealous, all right," Stark cut me off. "Trust me, I've caused enough jealousy in my time to know what it looks like. If I did what I feel like doing to you, I'd better be prepared to armour up as soon as he's on the scene, or else lose all my front teeth."

"That is impossible, "I sputtered. "I'm sure that he has no such -, I mean, he would never -" I gathered myself. "He'd defend me, I'll grant you that, but not out of any personal interest in my - in me."

Stark laughed. "Oh, that is too cute. You blush like a virgin. You're not a virgin, are you?"

"Stark..."

"Well, if you are, then you'd better remedy that, you know. One of you at least should know what he's doing. As it happens, I can give you expert advice and hands-on demonstrations."

"Stop it."

"At least admit that you've thought about it. You and him, hot and sweaty. I'll bet he's a revelation in bed, once he lets loose. All that pent up passion. Great body, too." He sighed. "I wouldn't mind sampling that myself."

"You will keep your hands off him," I ground out in a voice I hardly recognized as my own.

He looked at me, smiling widely. "Good, good. You do want him. You can't bear the thought of me poaching on your grounds. Well, tiger, I'll be here for another twenty-six days, and believe me, I won't need half that time to get him into bed with me, so you'd better get proactive."

I threw up my hands, thoroughly out of my depth by now. "And how am I supposed to do that?"

"First, you've got to know the basics."

"I do know the basics," I grated. "I'm an ex-army man."

"That doesn't count. I'm not talkin' about the old insert slot A into tab B here. This is about the serious stuff, not about quick stress relief in the trenches. When was the last time you had sex with a man, in a bed?"

I tried to gather my thoughts, which was becoming harder with each passing second. "I don't know. Years, certainly."

"There you are. A refresher course is definitely indicated. So, you, me, sex?" He rose from his chair as if I had already answered in the affirmative. "Good. Let's get up to your room, then."

"Stark, I don't know if that's -"

"It's an excellent idea," he interrupted me, pulling me to my feet. Then he looked at me from up close. "God, you're hot," he said fervently. "I deserve a medal for the restraint I've shown so far." He moved even closer, and I am certain that he was about to kiss me, when he was interrupted.

"Sir," the helmet said, "proximity alert."

Stark stepped back and looked around, dropping his carefree manner and turning into something resembling a battle-ready soldier in an instant. "Report."

"A single human life sign, behind the door, sir. Sir, it's -"

Stark groaned. "Holmes, why don't you come in?"

To be continued...