JWP #21
Coat Porn: Whether it's BBC Sherlock's amazing Belstaff, Joan Watson's slickers, or classic Victorian overcoats, let outerwear be your inspiration for today's entry.
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Indirect sequel to chapter 16: Sleep
"You are not leaving me behind!"
I stood, my hands clenched at my sides, blocking the sitting room door.
"There is a storm building," he replied, trying to make it past me to reach the landing.
I snorted, how little I cared about such a thing evident in that one small sound as I again prevented him from leaving.
He stepped back, staring at me, and I took the opportunity to grab my overcoat as well as my hat and gloves from where I had left them the night before.
"Watson, you need to stay here. There is a snowstorm blowing in." The wind grew louder, whistling over the roof to prove his point.
I scowled at him. "You grabbed your revolver, so you are going on a stakeout where you expect danger, and you despise telling Lestrade the entire plan, which means he will not be there to watch your back. I do not care how cold it is; you are not leaving me behind!"
Mary was out of town yet again, and I had been planning on a quiet evening in Baker Street until he had tried to leave, claiming research for a case even as I saw him slip the gun into his pocket. I had lunged to my feet, quickly stationing myself between him and the door.
"I will not be long, Watson, and it is too cold."
He dodged my grasp and managed to get by me, and I followed, grabbing a scarf and my cane as I stepped into the biting wind.
"Stay here, Watson!"
"No." The last time I had let him sit a cold stakeout without me, Lestrade had brought him back after midnight, delirious with fever. I would not let that happen again, no matter how sensitive I currently was to the cold. Better a cold vigil than a worried one.
"Watson!"
"I am glad you know my name, Holmes. You are still not leaving me behind."
He harrumphed and waved down a cab, still trying to argue with me.
"It is too cold, Watson. Go back inside. I will not be more than a few hours."
I buttoned my overcoat over my scarf to block the wind as I scowled at him again, climbing into the cab even as he tried to wave me away. "That is what you said last time. You are not leaving me behind, Holmes. Ever. You ought to know that by now, so tell me who we are tracking."
He frowned at me, silent as I wrapped my overcoat tighter around my scarf and settled my hat low on my head. It was cold out here, but I would not let him go alone any more than I would refuse a patient due to the weather.
"Holmes?" I prodded when he didn't answer. "Who are we catching tonight?"
He sighed. "I would rather you stay home."
"Well, I would rather it was still summer. We don't always get what we wish. Why are we headed to the docks?"
We pulled in front of a warehouse on the heels of my question, and he got out, finally answering quietly.
"David 'Davey' Hill is a spice smuggler unafraid to add humans to his cargo. He prefers children, but he will kidnap anyone who comes down here alone at the wrong time."
I stared at him, my anger growing as the cab drove away to leave us on an empty street. "Yet you were trying to come here alone!" He gestured for quiet, and I stepped closer, nearly hissing my words. "You tried to come here alone as bait! And, what? You think I would have just sat at Baker Street, forever waiting when you never came home from your research? Holmes!"
He gestured for quiet again, and I nearly lit into him before he hissed a command to open my eyes and look around.
I scowled at him but glanced quickly down the dark, empty street. I looked again. The street was not so empty, after all. Shadows shifted in and out of doorways, slowly but steadily working their way closer, and I caught the faint gleam of a police hat as one moved too close to a streetlamp.
"Lestrade is in the closest doorway behind you," he said just barely loud enough to hear, his angry posture completely opposite his quiet words as he pretended an argument for anyone who might be watching. "Hill is supposed to pass through in exactly ten minutes, and I need to appear alone. Find a place out of the cold, and do not follow me."
He turned sharply away and strode up the street, leaving me staring after him, furious at him not only for setting himself as bait, but also for trying to leave me out of his plans.
Do not follow me. As if that would ever happen.
The wind kicked up, whipping through my coat and sending a shiver down my back, and I tore my gaze from Holmes. Lestrade and several other officers were following my irritating friend at a distance, but I did not join them. A line of bushes along the street provided an idea, and I was not acting when my angry stride carried me off the street Holmes currently walked.
Once out of sight of the docks, I ducked to the left, using the bushes as cover as I followed Holmes much closer than the police dared. The plants were tall, ragged, and nearly overgrown, and I used my cane to hold branches out of my way nearly as much as I used it for balance. Within minutes, I had loosened my overcoat despite the wind as I worked up a sweat keeping up with Holmes' angry stride, and I glanced back to see that the police were further away than they had been. The idiot was going to get himself hurt if he did not slow down.
Leaning over to scoop up a rock, I tossed it back through bushes I had already passed, making a stick crack in a sound very much like a footstep, and he paused, glancing back. I breathed a sigh of relief as the Yarders took the opportunity to move closer.
Seeing nothing, Holmes turned to continue walking as I glimpsed a shadow up ahead on the other side of the street, and I tensed, ready to jump in once Hill committed himself.
The shadow moved forward, multiplying into two, then three, then four, and I cursed under my breath as the fifth one appeared. The police had not closed enough of the gap to be sure of catching all five if they did not go after Holmes first, so unless I wanted to let one or more of them escape, I would not be able to help until Holmes was surrounded. He would be able to hold them off for a few minutes, I knew, but that did not mean I had to like it.
One man lunged with a roar while the others stayed in the shadows, clearly intending to startle Holmes into ducking so the tackle would throw him off balance. He did not expected Holmes to turn, taking the hit while keeping his feet, and his mulish face showed surprise in the faint lamplight when Holmes returned the favor, drilling the man in the stomach hard enough to make him bend double. The fight would have been over right then, if the other four had not rushed from the shadows when their leader went down. Before I could do more than stand upright, Holmes was surrounded, and the darkness combined with the open street to put him at a disadvantage.
Two faced him directly, preventing Holmes from reaching the leader, who was still bent double from the hit in the lower stomach, while a third circled around behind. Running footsteps sounded behind me as I lunged, but I ignored the Yard, focused more on tackling the fourth man, the one aiming a glistening knife directly at Holmes' unprotected back.
The man never saw me coming, and I plowed into him, leveling him and sending his knife skittering over the cobblestones as I quickly regained my feet. A shoe scuffed behind me, and I turned, ducking beneath a punch aimed at my head while using my cane to trip the third man when he overextended.
The police finally reach us, Lestrade in the lead, and the fight disappeared beneath the crowd of officers as I made my way over to Holmes, my grip on my cane turning my knuckles white.
He looked up at my steps. "See, Watson—"
I cut him off. "You blooming idiot!" Wariness appeared in his gaze, and he barely prevented himself from stepping back as I stepped closer to prevent my words carrying to the Yarders not ten feet behind me. "The presence of the police makes no difference if you leave them behind before you spring the trap! And since when are you a match for five alone?! That was a royally stupid thing to do!"
"I am fine, Watson," he told me instead of returning my anger as I had half-expected him to do. "Calm down. All went according to plan."
"So you planned for five men to jump you with your backup too far away to help? You planned for them to kidnap you? Or did you plan for them to kill you?!"
Surprise flickered in his gaze, and I released a laugh more angry than amused. "You never even saw the knife, did you? If Mary had not been out of town tonight, I would have read your name in the paper in the morning."
I gestured to where one of the constables was in the process of wrapping the long knife from where it rested on the cobblestones, and Holmes glanced at it, then back up at me. Some of my anger faded at the uncertainty in his gaze. If nothing else, this would at least make him reconsider leaving his backup behind, though I hoped it would stop him from leaving me behind. Mary never minded when I went off to help Holmes, and I did not have to limit our visits to when my wife was visiting relatives outside of London. Depending on the case, there were times Mary had even helped in my stead, as she had when Holmes had needed her to act the part of an engaged servant so he could gain access to a blackmailer's safe.
We had been telling him for years that my marriage need not interfere with my ability to assist in his cases, yet he continued refusing to let me help. This was not the first time he had tried to keep me out of a dangerous case in recent months.
"Why is it," I asked him quietly, my anger draining, "that you can remember all the symptoms and possible effects of exposure well enough to try to keep me inside, but you cannot remember the reason I was on the pier with you in the first place?"
He glanced back at where the knife had been, and I turned away, walking towards the group of Yarders at a pace slow enough not only to allow Holmes to easily catch up to me when he stopped staring at the cobblestones, but also to hide the price I was paying for that tackle. In my urgency to reach Holmes before the knife, I had fallen into the tackle I had used in my school days—one which had my left shoulder hit first, and the ache radiating through that old injury throbbed a harmony with my leg, increasing in tempo as the temperature decreased with the building storm.
Footsteps sounded behind me, and Holmes slowed his pace to match my own. I pretended to ignore him, stifling a shiver as I fought to wrap my overcoat around me now that I was no longer moving so quickly.
"Stubborn," he muttered, trying to take my left arm in his as I settled my coat.
I barely managed to turn my gasp at the pain in my shoulder into a chuckle at his comment. "Pot. Kettle," I replied, only slightly breathless from the spasm shooting through my shoulder.
He smirked, but we reached Lestrade before he could form the question I knew was coming.
"Doctor Watson!" Lestrade greeted me when we joined him next to the police wagon. "I did not expect you to be here tonight."
"Someone has to keep him out of trouble," I replied with a faint smirk, letting my arm fall from Holmes' grip to stop my shoulder's protesting, "and I happened to be available. I am guessing the man that attacked first is David Hill?"
"The human trafficker," Lestrade confirmed with a faint shiver, glancing over as one of the sergeants closed the wagon door and locked it. "The others were somewhat unexpected, but all's well that ends well. We have enough evidence on Hill for him to be a long walk from a short rope, though we might not have enough on the others for them to get more than a handful of years. Appreciated your help, gentlemen."
He nodded and quickly walked away, and I smothered a grin despite my confusion as I glanced at Holmes. It was strange for Lestrade to leave so quickly, but I wrote it off to the late hour. "I did not know Lestrade enjoyed Shakespeare."
Holmes was frantically glancing around, and my grin faded as he waved his hand in a gesture to keep talking. Frowning in confusion, I complied, "Though I guess it is not surprising, as he caught that 'As You Like It' quote I used a few weeks ago. We were talking about acting, and he mentioned that you would have done well as an actor. He seemed highly amused when I pointed out that the entire world was your stage."
He scowled at me as his gaze locked on a point over my left shoulder, and I caught him surreptitiously point towards it as he took my arm in his again, leading me down the street as if we were headed home.
"'All that world's a stage,' is it?" he replied, pretending irritation.
"Of course," I said quickly when he paused for too long in his search up and down the street. "How many nights this week have you roamed the streets in some strange costume? Don't think I failed to notice that new feather hat in your room."
He smirked, most of his focus on our surroundings even as he donned the voice and some of the mannerisms of one of his wealthy landowner personas. "Feather hats are the current fashion, you know. My wife simply loves them."
I laughed, unable to smother my surprise at such a comment coming from the man next to me. How he was able to slip in and out of his characters I had never understood, but most of his aliases provided an endless amount of entertainment for me as I watched him behave and speak in a manner completely foreign to the friend I had known for nearly ten years.
His grip on my arm tensed before I could reply, and I heard the scuff of a shoe behind us. Before I could turn, pain shot through my shoulder as Holmes shoved me forward.
A man lunged out of the alley, landing where I had been standing, and I quickly staggered to my feet, ignoring how my leg protested the sudden movement. Holmes traded blows with the man that had tried to ambush us, and my cane came down hard on the other man's shoulder. Holmes used the opportunity to pin the man to the ground as Lestrade hurried up behind us.
"Late as usual, Lestrade," Holmes said with a smirk.
The inspector rolled his eyes. "Says the one whose cab arrived nearly twenty minutes after he said it would."
"Ask Watson why that was," Holmes grunted, wrestling a pair of cuffs onto the man fighting to get off the ground.
Three constables took over from Holmes as Lestrade glanced at me, and I chuckled. "He tried to come without me. I blocked the door until I had a chance to grab my coat." Lestrade's smirk turned into a laugh as I continued, "Is that all of them, now?"
Lestrade nodded. "We thought they might keep one back, to bail the others out, but I had to think of something quickly when I noticed him following you."
"That was not a pre-arranged signal?"
"It was not," Holmes confirmed, nodding a well done at Lestrade that he would never say.
I said it for him before exchanging pleasantries. I would have liked to catch up with Lestrade—I had not seen him in several weeks—but Holmes had already turned away, and I hurried to catch up as Lestrade climbed to the bench on the front of the wagon.
"Would it kill you to admit it for once?" I asked when he stopped for a moment to let me draw even with him.
The clip clop of the horse-drawn police wagon faded behind us as he matched my pace, but he ignored my question with one of his own. "Are you limping due to injury?"
"Yes," I said facetiously. "A bullet found my leg years ago, and it dislikes dropping temperatures. I thought I told you that already."
He rolled his eyes at my tone, again taking my left arm in his—probably to let me lean on him—and pain shot through the scar.
He froze as he felt me tense, my arm half in his. "What is it?"
"Nothing," I answered, deciding I must have bruised it.
I was finding it difficult to differentiate between the effects of the cold and the results of the tackle, but nothing felt broken. There was nothing seriously wrong, and I hated acknowledging my old injuries, acknowledging that it took only a drop of a few degrees to nearly cripple me. It was worse this year than I remembered it being last winter, and I wondered if that had anything to do with the heightened sensitivity to cold that I had displayed a month before.
Releasing my arm, he waved down a cab as he scowled at me again.
"You know," I mused as we climbed into the cab, "I heard someone warn their child the other day that he should stop making such expressions, otherwise his face might get stuck like that." I glanced up at him, smirking when he rolled his eyes at me as he signaled the cabbie to drive. "Yes, that one, too."
"I would not make them if you would answer the question."
"I did answer the question. You simply did not appreciate the answer."
"Watson."
"Holmes."
He stared at me, and I smirked. "We have established we know the other's name, though I thought we did that over an hour ago. Are we going to go any further?"
"Yes," he answered. "You are going to tell me why you are limping so badly as well as why I should not have tried to take your left arm."
"How about because it is a windy twenty degrees and dropping outside, and there is a snowstorm blowing in?"
"You were not limping that badly when we left the flat, nor were you limping when you followed me up the street. I would have heard you."
My smirk widened. "By which you mean that you did not hear me following you at all."
He did not have to speak for me to know I was right, and I laughed. "You cannot really think I would have followed that order?"
"No, I suppose not."
I answered the question he refused to ask, unable to kill my grin. "I was in the bushes, teaching the plants new words when I saw you leaving Lestrade behind."
Apology appeared in his gaze, and I let it go as the cab drew to a halt, knowing he had not realized he was walking too quickly.
I dug for my key as he paid the driver, grateful that Mrs. Hudson had refused to take it back when I had married. The wind was only getting stronger, and I was beginning to shiver despite the many layers I wore. A seat before the fire sounded wonderful, as did the possibility of a hot drink. I felt his gaze on me as I limped up the stairs, but he did not speak until we reached the sitting room.
"Are you going to answer my question?" he asked.
"Only if you answer mine."
Confusion crossed his face for only a moment before he remembered the questions I had asked, and he busied himself with his pipe. I smirked and settled in my chair. Eventually, we resumed the conversation that had halted when he tried to leave without me.