Fifth Dance: Argentine Tango
Originating in Argentina, the tango was a dance of immigrants and lower classes, often danced between two men, due to the shortage of available women. A good tango dancer is one who transmits a feeling of the music to the partner, leading them effectively throughout the dance, which relies heavily on improvisation. Tango is often called the vertical expression of a horizontal desire, in other words, a substitute or foreplay for sex.
"Tomorrow. Eleven o'clock London time, here at the office?"
"That will do. Thank you, Miss Hawkins. You have been most accommodating." There is a sound of chuckling over the phone, which Janine is able to translate as amusement, for once not at her expense. Her boss adds "Most amusing that he wants to talk about the Oversight Committee Report. What the British would call a 'fortuitous coincidence'. How clever of you to engineer that. Hold the line a moment; I need to tell the driver something."
Magnussen dispenses praise only once in a blue moon, so Janine soaks it up while she can. It's well-deserved; she's done everything he asked her to do. Not that it's been any hardship: Sherlock's surprisingly good company; the kissing and cuddling are fun. For such a hot-looking guy, Sherlock is gentle, courteous and rather refreshing after her husband-hunting days.
A waste of time from that point of view, though; Sherlock is clearly not husband material. His odd lifestyle and habits around the flat are not to her taste. The place is a rubbish tip, his domestic habits are annoying for someone sharing, and he is sadly reticent about sex, despite trying hard to demonstrate he isn't asexual. He's not shy about his body; he parades about the flat in a dressing gown after hogging the bathtub just as she needs it in the morning to get ready for work.
She twists the phone cord around her finger. Hurry up and wait is the rule of working with Magnussen. He keeps her on hold more as a power game than anything else, reinforcing his dominance.
Quick, quick, slow. It reminds her of the dancing. Sherlock's hold on her is different. His hand on her back communicates an intention, not an order. His hand holding hers keeps her in balance as they move across the floor. Sherlock is a fine dancer, and he's an even better kisser, but she's given up hope of wrestling him into the bedroom to see if all that smouldering hotness can translate into something meaningful. Even if she did, Janine knows he isn't the husband for her. She has to earn or marry enough money to buy her father's safety, as well as a stable income to fund the home in the country and the creature comforts of being a wife and mother. Sherlock doesn't need of someone like that.
In the month they've been seeing each other, Janine knows that what Sherlock really wants is for John Watson to come back to Baker Street, so the two of them can recapture what they had before his faked death. Magnussen had been very clear; John Watson is the only person that Sherlock Holmes has ever cared for, and Janine's role had been to try to make him jealous. It hadn't worked, because John has been absent from Sherlock's life ever since the wedding. Her gentle hints that he should call the Watsons have been ignored or dismissed. "We don't need them," he says. "I want you all to myself," he adds gallantly. Janine has come to recognise when he is using stock phrases out of some romance book or other.
Need and want are two different things in Janine's book. Sherlock may not want to admit his feelings, but his need for John Watson is detectable, even to her eyes. Sherlock looks sad when he thinks she can't see him. She'd done her best, but knows it's not enough; in Sherlock's case, no woman could ever compete with John Watson.
When it comes to keeping Magnussen happy, though, her work with Sherlock has hit the spot. Her boss had told her to get close, to move in, to find out what Sherlock was doing in the post-John Watson phase of his life, and Janine has managed to deliver. He'd told her about the drug habit, and she'd seen enough evidence of it to corroborate the fact that he's using again. She'd found his gear and some supplies in the pocket of his jogging trousers left in a heap of dirty clothes he'd ditched this morning before heading into the bath.
The line reconnects and the Dane's cold voice interrupts her thoughts. "Agenda for the rest of the day," he commands.
"Your flight this evening is from Orly; the CAM jet will be ready and waiting in hanger nine from seven thirty, in case your meeting finishes early. Do you need me to do anything else?
"Actually, Miss Hawkins, I do. You need to meet tonight with Mary Watson. Remind her of the message I sent in the wedding telegram. Tell her I need to see her tomorrow evening."
"You have a marketing dinner tomorrow night, at the Guildhall, from seven thirty until after eleven."
"I can arrive late for that."
"She may have something else on tonight. It's not like I can snap my fingers and she'll come running. We haven't spoken since the wedding."
"You were her Maid of Honour."
"Only because you wanted me to become friends with her. If you hadn't pointed me in her direction, made me join her gym and get friendly with her… Well, she's not really my type. A bit cold and superior, always makes me think she knows something I don't."
"You are too modest, my dear. I suppose a lifetime of pretending to be the daughter of a loyal Provo honed your acting skills. Shame if it's all for naught. Do what you women do so well. Invent a dramatic reason why you have to see her tonight. Deliver that message in person tonight, or you might make me send a message to certain people I know in Ireland."
There it is. The threat. God, how she hates this trap she is caught in. "Very well. I'll do it. I'll see you tomorrow morning, here at the office."
As soon as she puts the phone down, Janine starts to worry. What is Magnussen's agenda? Why does he want her to mess up Sherlock's life like this? Janine is surprised at the fact that she is feeling protective towards Sherlock, but it is true. Ever since this whole damned game of CAM, making her befriend Mary, pushing her into this strange relationship with Sherlock…what is he after? It all makes her feel so used. A pawn in someone else's game, and it is frustrating as hell.
oOoOoOoOo
At ten minutes past five, Mary arrives at the dance studio looking a bit harried and flushed. She's late, enough to make Janine fidget and curse under her breath, then pray that she isn't going to be stood up. When she sees the familiar short blonde woman across the reception area, she heaves a sign of relief.
"What's the drama?" Mary demands.
Always to the point, Mary's just that little bit too brusque in her manner to make Janine warm to her. Tonight, however, it suits her purpose to let her emotions show. She shakes her head. "Not here, in private. There's something I need to show you and then to ask."
There's a flicker of annoyance across Mary's eyes, but she follows Janine through the turnstyle and into the corridor. It's still crowded with dancers; the changeover at five o'clock is one of the busiest. Janine heads for the far end, passing the door to the studio where the sign signals In Use. A slow beat of some sort of Latin dance can be heard.
Opening a door marked Staff Only, she leads Mary down a poorly lit hall. The soundproofing is less evident here, and the music from the studio bleeds through the wall. She and then turns left, stopping in front of a wooden shutter on the left wall. "This is far enough."
Mary's not hiding her impatience. "I had to leave an important appointment early to get here, Janine, so this better be good."
"Sorry to interrupt, but you're the one who got me into this mess."
A raised eyebrow is Mary's only answer, so Janine asks her question. "Remember that telegram, the one Sherlock read out at the wedding?"
"From CAM," Mary's expression shifts into something that can only be described as predatory. "Of course I remember. I never did get the chance to ask you why you told your employer about being my maid of honour. Why would he give a damn about my being an orphan?"
"I didn't tell him. He knew, because he's been interested in Sherlock Holmes, and John Watson and therefore you for months. Magnussen wants a word with you, in person, in private. At his flat at the London HQ. Tomorrow night."
After a moment's silence, Mary erupts into laughter. "Fucking hell, why does everyone assume that I will jump when they click their fingers?"
"Shhhh. Not so loud."
Mary shakes her head. "The tango music drowns us out. What's CAM's angle? Is he fishing for a story?"
"I don't know. Don't shoot the messenger; I'm just telling you what he said. And it's important that you go."
"Important for you? Why?"
"Because if you don't, he'll do something really nasty to my family, something that could end up with my father being killed."
"He's blackmailing you?"
Janine nods.
"He could have phoned me. Why is he blackmailing you into carrying a message that he could have delivered in any of a dozen different ways?"
"Because he knows you'll listen to me."
"Why should I?"
Well, so much for our 'friendship'. Mary's icy response gives Janine the courage to deliver the next part.
"Because you owe me. You should have told me the truth. Sherlock isn't asexual, he's gay and he's pining for your husband."
Mary's eyebrow rises again, scepticism personified.
"I can prove it. Watch." Janine turns to the shutter and slides it slowly open, revealing the dance studio. As their eyes adjust to the brightness of the room, she explains. "Two-way mirror. The dancers can't see us. Apparently, it was used on a film, and they never took it away."
Janine had found the corridor and the window two days ago, when she'd left the studio looking for a loo. A wrong turn and curiosity had revealed a secret viewing spot, which she'd reported to the front desk, incensed that someone might be watching her when she was doing her lesson with Sherlock. She'd been assured that no one but the staff even knew it was there, and the corridor was just used for storage.
She'd returned yesterday early, to find out what Sherlock and Masha have been getting up to in the hour before her lesson.
The third man in the room is smaller, about the height of John Watson. Last night, she'd take a photo with her camera and identified him when Sherlock had left her at Baker Street.
"The tall guy is the Russian choreographer, he's also teaching me and Sherlock an hour from now. The short one is Kit Defratis, the latest West End heartthrob, rumoured to be working on a new musical. They're teaching him a tango routine."
The music is modern, a persistent synthesised rhythm that sounds vaguely like an accordion overlaid with syncopated tympani beat. Sherlock is standing alone, loose-limbed, arms at his side. As a piano comes in on the recording, it's his cue to bend his knees and shift his weight sinuously on his hips, sliding first his left foot in three circles timed to the music, and then his left does the same, before an exaggerated high flick behind. The momentum carries him through a smooth 360-degree spin on his right leg, left leg outstretched so his toe glides across the floor. He ends the manoeuvre by bringing his feet together with a stamp on the wooden floor, adding a third percussive element in time to the music.
A slow, sexy side step to the left with a tiny flick of his left foot, and then Sherlock walks away, looking over his shoulder at Defratis.
Janine's seen the routine twice before now, and both times it had taken her breath away. It's clearly a challenge. Masculine, charged with energy, but nevertheless an invitation.
Defratis responds, sauntering over to Sherlock and then stamping his own foot. Sherlock moves forward in a slightly domineering way, and the shorter man backs up in perfect step. The two men are still apart, until Defratis strides forward and flicks his knee up, kicking alongside Sherlock, then spinning away in a series of turns and high kicks. It's his response to the challenge, as if daring Sherlock to duplicate or better the moves.
The two men keep circling each other, eyes firmly on each other. It's not a fight, not a seduction but somewhere in-between; the atmosphere is charged. The piano gives way to a more orchestral treatment as Sherlock breaks the circle, stepping in and then executing exactly the same routine that Defratis had just done, but adding a couple more very fast foot movements, as if taunting his opponent that anything he can do, Sherlock can do better.
A hand is grabbed, weight used to move the pair in a sequence of leaps, spinning off into legs flashing, interlocking, kicks synchronised to a step, between each other's legs. At one point, legs interlock and the momentum spins the pair, which they break by moving to a simultaneous side-by-side leap that is almost balletic in its form.
As the tempo slows, Sherlock pulls the shorter man into a close hold.
A very close hold. Bodies touching their full length—knees, thighs, groins. Chest to chest, Defratis' head turned so he can tuck it in beneath Sherlock's chin. The pair now move as one, a series of quick foot movements, Sherlock trapping the other man's right foot between his own, forcing the man to come to a halt. Now the pair is avoiding eye-contact, letting their bodies do the talking.
Trapped by a motionless Sherlock, Defratis takes his free leg and rubs his foot up Sherlock's leg. It's a highly suggestive, erotic gesture that leaves little to the imagination.
Mary shifts her stance. "The vertical expression of a horizontal desire."
"What?"
Mary points. "The tango. Used to be danced between two men, because there was a shortage of women willing to do it. You're reading too much into it."
"Wait." Janine hopes that Masha will repeat the sort of instructions she'd overheard last night.
The music comes to an abrupt end as the Russian switches the music system off. "Need to work on close hold, guys. Sherlock, move your hand further across his back. This isn't ballroom."
Sherlock obliges, and the effect is to bring DeAngelo even tighter into his chest.
"Cheek to cheek," Masha commands. Sherlock dips his head, and the shorter man tilts his, to comply.
"Now pretend it's John Watson and let's get some hip action in there."
Masha taps the remote and the music resumes. What follows leaves little to the imagination, as Sherlock and Defratis continue to dance in close hold.
Mary turns away from the window. "What is your point?"
"That Sherlock Holmes is not what you said he is."
Mary laughs, much to Janine's surprise. "I was trying to protect you; I know you are on the hunt for a husband. It seemed wise to try to put you off him. He's broken enough hearts; people who think he is something he isn't."
"Including your husband?"
"Don't go there. They were never a couple."
"I'm your friend, Mary. I don't want you to get hurt." Janine can only hope that Mary accepts the lie.
Mary's answering smile doesn't quite reach her eyes. "John chose me. He's not gay. I'm pregnant which means we're a family now. I have no problem with John staying friends with Sherlock."
"Congratulations!" On autopilot, Janine says it, while dampening down her own maternal hunger. There is something in Mary's manner that unsettles Janine but she can't put her finger on it. Maybe it's not about Sherlock, and she's wrong about why her boss is interested in Mary. "Why does Magnussen want to talk to you? Why did he send that message to you at the wedding?"
A wry smile, then "Don't know. Haven't a clue, really. If you promise me you won't tell Sherlock or John, I'll go see your boss, tomorrow night, around eight. That okay?"
Janine hopes that If Sherlock gets to see Magnussen first, then perhaps whatever Mary has to say won't hurt him. It's the best a pawn can do when she hasn't a clue what the game's rules are. She nods, "I'll put it in the diary."
oOoOoOoOo
As he makes his way into his chosen spot in the doss house, Sherlock has to step around a couple sprawled on a tatty sofa. The male is smoking, the scent of weed is hanging about him in a cloud. Second generation Jamaican, living at home with a mother and two sisters, a bookkeeper for a respectable business, studying at night school for an accountancy qualification. Sherlock deduces the young man's staying off the hard stuff, smoking a spliff now and then to prove to his girl that he's still in the groove. He's here tonight to keep an eye on her, make sure she doesn't overdo things. In five years, they will be married, living out in the suburbs, with two kids and a painful mortgage, so they feel the need to do drugs to prove they aren't growing old too quickly. The thought gives him an unwelcome pang of loss that he has to stamp on quickly.
"Hey, don't I know you from somewhere?"
The question from the man's companion is slurred, and Sherlock ignores it. She's under the influence of something more substantial, a designer stimulant most likely, easily purchased by someone who is a well-paid croupier at a West End casino. She peers at Sherlock as he walks by, pronouncing rather loudly, "That's the bloke on the telly; you know…"
"Who?"
"That detective fellow. Don't cha remember 'im? 'E's the one that stopped that bomb under Parliament."
The revelation is greeted by a guffaw of laughter from her man. "Should'a let it go off; save us all from the bloody politicians." The pair is still giggling as Sherlock gets to his corner, the mattress which he's been claiming for the past three nights. He wonders how many of the other occupants of the room will have registered the conversation and still be able to remember it tomorrow.
Being noticed is important. He didn't pay for this slot in the former Turkish Baths to be private. If he'd wanted to keep his habit from attracting attention, he would have been in one of his bolt holes. He wants—no, needs— there to be rumours circulating about his drug habit. It will make it more likely that Magnussen will see him, and agree to Sherlock being Lady Smallwood's proxy in the negotiations. The man is a bloodhound after the scent of celebrities gone bad. For once, Sherlock is willing to trade on that fact, because it will help him solve the case. Face-to-face, he intends getting to the bottom of what Magnussen has on Mycroft.
As he settles down on the mattress, Sherlock reaches in his pocket for the speedball bag: a carefully mixed dose of heroin and cocaine, the brown and white powders purged of their fillers and in an exact dose blend that he can trust. One advantage of being a chemist is that he can ensure his drugs will carry no surprises. He needs euphoria and then oblivion, and he needs both fast. A speedball is the best of both worlds. Heroin slows dopamine reabsorption, doubling its effect. Cocaine boosts that to four times the normal amount. Together, there is interaction and the dopamine exciting his brain will be ten times the normal levels.
He opens his box, takes out the tools of his addiction, enjoying the surge of adrenaline and endorphins. Anticipation is part of the pleasure. He measures the powder into the test tube's water and citric acid mix, shakes vigorously and pours it into the bowl of the spoon, hooking the short handle onto his thumb. The hand that is holding the spoon has a noticeable shake, mirrored by the quiver of the flame when Sherlock brings the lighter to the bottom of the utensil.
Too much stimulation. It's the story of his life; too much of everything—thinking, sensation, emotion—going in and not enough coming out.
A tiny bubble on the edge of the liquid emerges and as the bubbles continue, he counts to twenty, knowing it will be properly dissolved by then.
Practice makes perfect. He uses the syringe needle to drop the cotton filter at the very edge of the spoon. It's a medical grade IDUSF; too many addicts use cigarette filters, which eliminate less than half of all particles above 10 micron. He draws the drug into his sterile syringe slowly, making sure that he compensates for the amount that will be absorbed by the filter. A quick tap to release bubbles, a flick to cast off the tiny drip of fluid at the tip of the needle and he's ready.
Now he draws a breath and waits, savouring the moment. Tonight has been a difficult one. Rehearsing it in his memory is a technique he'd learned long ago. Remember the pain, so the obliteration of it is even more glorious. When he wakes up tomorrow, the memories will still be there, the curse of an eidetic memory, but the painful edges will be blunted, softened by the drug use, and it will last to deaden that pain forever.
He needs to rob these memories of their pain. When he and Defratis had danced the tango tonight, Sherlock had closed his eyes at one point and wished that it was John who was his partner. Unlike John, Kit Defratis is gay and he's been throwing all his effort into making every move with Sherlock blatantly erotic to anyone watching. After tonight's session finished, he'd grabbed Sherlock's arm, pulled him close in to whisper, "I wish you were my co-star. You and I connect in a way I can't with him."
He'd extricated himself from the man's grip. "Sorry. I'm not in the market for a career change."
"Then what about after the show? It's not all work; I like to play, too, and you'd be one helleva playmate."
Sherlock had shaken his head. "I'm married to my work. Sorry," and left to get a bottle of water before Janine arrived.
Janine. That's another source of pain. He feels the odd pang of regret that his plan means he has to lie to her to such a degree. Lying is easy when it's useful to trap a suspect, break a crime network, dodge a difficult question from an outsider. He finds it harder with people he knows well. The session tonight with her at the dance studio had been tedious, and he'd struggled to keep up the smile as Irina and her partner did a "catch-up" session, running though the four dances that Janine has learned since she started. The salsa still troubles her, the quickstep still amuses her. She can manage a foxtrot and a waltz, so long as the man she is dancing with keeps to basic steps and gives her a firm lead.
Janine and Defratis are similar in that both want from him something he cannot give. As soon as his show opens, Kit will forget him. Janine may take longer. Whatever happens over the next two days, Sherlock has made sure that she should be able to join a beginner's class without fear, in her hunt for a husband, so her time has not been wasted. He makes a mental note to send her an email with a number of central London venues that have after work classes. It's the least he can do, given he's using her to get to Magnussen.
Sherlock knows that Janine is aware that he is using drugs when he is out all night. He's not made any real effort to hide it. He knows that she went through the pockets of his jogging trousers this morning when he left them on the floor of the bathroom, so she will know about the powder in the bag and his rig. If he's lucky, she will have passed the fact onto Magnussen, because the more times he hears about Sherlock's drug use, the more likely it is that the media mogul will agree to meet with him, to see for himself the decline and fall of the hero who saved London last November. Sherlock has worked hard at making himself into bait; he'll need it to crack this case, and to get Magnussen to underestimate him.
If Janine tells Mary, then that too is a positive outcome because it will mean John will distance himself yet further from Sherlock. As painful as that is, it is necessary. Whoever put him in the bonfire is still out there. If his drug use gets into the media, then a public repudiation should help protect John. Sherlock can imagine the news team door-stepping John and Mary, thrusting their microphones forward and shouting, "Sherlock Holmes has been arrested for drug abuse. Have you anything to say?" He can script John's reply in his mind. "My wife and I haven't seen him since the wedding, a month ago. I have no other comment to make." Mary will use "No comment" as her shield, but she will know how important it is to keep John away from him. For once, her interests and Sherlock's will coincide.
I am alone. When he opens his eyes to see the squalor and decay around him —both building and its inhabitants — Sherlock lets that fact of his solitude sink in, wrap its tentacles around his heart and squeeze.
It's time. He goes for the obvious vein on the back of his left hand. A small flush to see that the blood is dark shows him he's in the vein rather than the artery and then the slow push on the plunger; halfway, leave enough for the second bump.
As he feels the hot argent move up his arm, the memory creeps in of a line from some pop song that Steve Mason had sung when he first injected Sherlock, a seventeen-year-old who'd never experimented with drugs. Sail on silver girl.*
A gasp escapes as everything goes white, sharpening his mind into a blinding flash of energy, along with an orgasmic surge of pleasure that goes right to his groin. Cocaine is better than sex. Well, better than most sex he's had, that's for sure. His cock agrees, springing to attention.
The explosion obliterates all the emotional pain. Gone in a flash of ecstasy that sweeps aside everything else—the loss of John, the depression of being alone again, the irritation with his brother and his decades-long case that has been torturing Sherlock for months. The Smallwoods' embarrassment, the indignities of his disguise with Janine —all disappear in the shockwave that makes his heart rate leap into the stratosphere.
Then within half a minute, the heroin kicks in, softening the razor edges of the cocaine, and soothing his overcharging brain. His body stops aching, his mind stops hurting, and for a few brief heavenly minutes, things are more than bearable. The two drugs go together like yin and yang.
Oblivion.
He's walking down the corridor of his Mind Palace to the set of double doors at the end. As he pushes them open into the ballroom, an all-wooden structure that imitates in a grand scale the inside of a violin, complete with skylights in the shape of f-holes on his Guarneri violin.
The band is playing one of the all-time great pieces of tango music: Oblivion by Astor Piazzolla.
From the shadows, a tall man with blond hair and a cleft chin emerges.
Victor.
The first time he and Victor had gone to the dance club Heaven in London had been a revelation. The music possessed him and having Victor there to share it stripped them of their inhibitions. If they had not danced first, Sherlock would never have had the courage to make love to him. Their love had been one long dance, until the music stopped and Sherlock fell apart.
Here in his Mind Palace, Victor draws Sherlock into a close hold, so much more intimate and erotic than the trance music they'd danced to all those years ago. The tango speaks to him on so many levels. The swirling circles of movement, the give-and-take between the leader and the led, the flicks and kicks, the lifts—above all, the body contact of this dance is the closest Sherlock's going to get to live the fantasies that haunt his nights. Victor isn't John, and the effect is not the same, his former lover cannot spark the desire that had pooled in Sherlock's groin at the thought of teaching John this particular dance. How many times has he retreated to the Mind Palace ballroom so he and John could move in perfect harmony, expressing with their bodies the passion that ignited their life together?
There is both a sweetness and a melancholy to the music that suits Sherlock. Victor's arms are strong, the love in his eyes undiminished despite the years, but the sight is an excruciating reminder that Sherlock will never hold John in his arms like this. Tonight, Victor is trying to distract him, but it isn't working.
Drugs make him randy, an unfortunate consequence of stimulation, and yet another reason to avoid being anywhere near John. The light in Victor's eyes is going out, replaced by the sad expression that had been on his face when Sherlock had told him the lies that he didn't love him and that he never had loved him*.
He'd said that to protect everyone: Victor from being targeted by Moriarty, John from being confronted with the uncomfortable truth that Sherlock was attracted to men, and most of all, to protect himself, from having to admit that he while he had loved Victor once, he now loved a man who would never love him back.
As the last strains of the bandoneon echo away, the music shifts into a waltz, and from the shadows another couple appear on the ballroom floor. John and Mary, only something's odd about both the music and their dancing. When he turns to see if Victor sees it, too, Sherlock realises that he's gone.
I am alone.
Mary is leading John, and she is dancing with the confidence of someone who is quite good at the waltz. She has John in a proper hold, thighs touching, steering him backwards across the floor in perfect time to the fast waltz being played. She is no beginner and is leading John as if she were a professional dancer.
That fact worries him, to the point where he decides to do here what he never did before the wedding. Sherlock strides across the wooden floor and taps Mary on the shoulder. "I'm cutting in."
Both she and John are startled enough that they stop dancing, and Sherlock steps between them, taking John's hand in his own. "You lead," he whispers to John, and the pair of them whirl away, straight into a complex waltz routine. Mary is left scowling, arms crossed and clearly unamused.
Sherlock concentrates on responding to John's firm lead, as they glide into a reverse turn to avoid a corner, he glances back to see that Mary is gone.
That fact seems to lift an enormous weight off Sherlock's shoulders, just as the waltz ends. He doesn't release John, however. "Another?"
"God, yes," is the reply, without hesitation.
The music returns to a tango and now, at last, Sherlock is dancing with the man he really wants to be with, body and soul. He takes the lead now, and John moves with him, instinctively knowing exactly where the pair is going. The give-and-take of their movements, the erotic suggestion in every step, is clear to both partners.
Sherlock lets his body tell John what he has never been able to find words to say. Arms together, hips into contact, the movement of legs in and out of each other's space. Body-to body, communication is physical, almost visceral. The years of attraction being denied, of sentiment never expressed, of desire stifled… all of that is dropping away.
He leads John into a series of ochos, sinuous figures of eight that allow his partner to show off just to please him. Their connection is exhilaratingly better than anything Sherlock has experienced before on a dance floor, simply because this is John doing it.
His tight compact musculature is giving such an edge to John's every movement. Under a misleadingly normal exterior, John has a kind of electric energy, fuelled by a tinge of violence and a hint of anger barely controlled. The contradiction had been what caught Sherlock's eye at their very first meeting. When dancing, the boundaries between them are only skin-deep; John's exterior camouflage falls away; Sherlock can feel all that emotion barely held in check—and his own rising to meet it. He makes no effort to hide his desire that is taking shape in his trousers.
In the tango, eye contact is part of the drama. Up close like this, Sherlock falls into a pair of eyes he knows better than his own. From a distance people might mistake John Watson's eyes as being a bluish grey. Idiots. Who needs a solar system when there is a whole galaxy of colour in John's eyes? Patches of dark blue stand out against a cloud of lighter blue, and a starburst of hazel turns darker brown as it nears the pupil, a black hole that is growing larger, dilating with desire.
An announcement from the band's microphone cuts into the music. Bizarrely, it's in John's voice, calling out, "Isaac? Isaac Whitney?" Sherlock looks at the band, and then back at John, who fades into nothingness. Where he'd held the warm living body close to his, there is now only cold air. Shocked and bereft, Sherlock staggers to a halt, crumples and falls to the floor, closing his eyes in shock and despair.
Behind him, Sherlock hears John ask again, more quietly, "Isaac?" followed a moment later by "Hello, mate. Sit up for me? Sit up."
A voice Sherlock doesn't recognise answers, "Doctor Watson?"
"Yep."
There is a familiar tetchiness in that reply which drags Sherlock's brain out of the drug miasma and into a more crystalline focus that is almost too bright, too sharp to endure. Although his eyes are still closed, he feels the lumpy mattress under him, the stench of sweat and bodily fluids, the burned rope aroma of someone smoking skunk, the acidic almost vinegary scent of heroin cooking. The voices over his shoulder… are they part of a hallucination? Is this his need for John creating an audio ghost, a wish fulfilment? He tries to get his breathing under control, using oxygen to push away the last of the dream of dancing away.
"Where am I?" It's a young voice, a south London accent, badly slurred, which Sherlock's brain is sufficiently online enough to be able to know that his neighbour is somewhere in the middle of a heroin high.
"The arse-end of the universe with the scum of the Earth. Look at me."
Sherlock can't resist smirking into the corner. John's never been one to tolerate drug use or users. That attitude had kept him clean for the entire time they'd shared 221b. Shame that once he was gone, once he'd married Mary, once he had to be pushed away even further to protect him from whoever put him into the bonfire—well, there wasn't a reason to stay clean, was there?
"Have you come for me?" the boy asks.
"D'you think I know a lot of people here?!"
The sarcasm is sharp enough to cut, and totally wasted on the wasted youth. Sherlock draws a breath and opens his eyes. No dance hall; this is the corner of the room, chipped paint on the wall, the mouldy mattress beneath him and the thumping headache of a come-down. And that's no hallucination behind him, asking "Hey, all right?"
It's John asking it not of him, but of someone else. Why does that rankle so? Shouldn't John be asking whether he's alright, too? Isn't that what friends do? He can hear the doctor's solicitude in his voice. Perhaps the boy is one of John's patients, someone who has taken over in the doctor's attention span, a place Sherlock had once found himself, and wished he still was.
John's forever dancing with other people; if it's not Mary, it's this Isaac fellow.
Sherlock decides to cut in. Raising himself on an elbow, he turns to look over his shoulder. "Ah, hello, John. Didn't expect to see you here. Did you come for me, too?"
oOoOoOo to be continued oOoOoOo
in Magpies: Five For Silver
End Notes:
This takes my stories up to the brink of Magpies: Five For Silver.
"Sail on silver girl…. " The reference to Steven Mason is from the story "Holmium" in my Periodic Tales series. Some fans and critics of the Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel song Bridge over Troubled Water speculated that "silver girl" might be a reference to a needle and that the song was really about heroin use. In fact, in a later interview Simon explained that it was a reference to his first wife, Peggy Harper. Simon started calling her "Silver Girl" after she noticed her first silver-grey hairs. She was barely 30 at the time and the grey hairs made her very upset.
For whatever reason Silvergirl chose her name, I thank her for the inspiration she has provided to me in this story.
If this version of Victor is a surprise to you and you want to know more, then go explore the "Nothing Made Me" series, with the stories, Extricate, The Ex, Exit. If you like those, subscribe to get a future story, Extant.