Notes: Fanfiction, darling, I'm home! What? No, I don't smell like deviantART's cologne. No, that's not a handkerchief with the monogram dA in my pocket. I just…stepped out for a while. But look what I brought home: a lovely little Holmes/Watson oneshot!
Disclaimer: I don't own them; I'm just a naughty child who plays with the toys before putting them back on the shelf.
Civilized
'Quite the story, that Oscar Wilde case.' Watson's voice was gruff, and shattered the quite serenity of the rooms at 221B Baker Street. He had just looked up from his newspaper at Holmes, who was curled up cat-like in his armchair, smoking his pipe and wearing his faded purple dressing-gown. The agony column of the paper lay crumpled on the floor near him.
Holmes was silent for a minute, looking thoughtful, and then replied in an absent tone, 'Yes, I suppose.'
'He'll be spending two years in the Reading Gaol, it says,' continued Watson, taking a sip from the cup of aromatic tea that he had placed on the side-table. 'And all because he had the nerve to love one of his own sex.'
Holmes paused a moment, mercury-coloured eyes focused sharply on the good doctor. 'I would have thought that you, my dear Watson, with your fine, upstanding morals and principles, would have been one of the staunchest supporters of the Marquess,' said the detective quietly.
'You know that am not going to judge a human being based merely on something as trivial as who he or she is attracted to," returned Watson, after a moment. 'It is not something one can help.'
Holmes removed his pipe from his mouth suddenly, saying, "And yet it is not something done in polite, civilized society.'
There was a pause.
'Wilde is lucky,' exclaimed Holmes suddenly.
"Lucky?" The doctor's tone was incredulous, his eyes wide. "The man is going to prison, he'll be forever cut off from his loves ones, he'll have no income once he's out of prison, and you call him lucky?"
Holmes regarded him coolly. "I do not mean that he was lucky in his sentencing, although he was, for years ago the penalty was death. I mean that he was lucky to have his love returned, however briefly it may have been and however disastrously it may have ended. He was lucky." The last word had an odd, wistful inflection.
Suddenly, the detective stood, crossed the room, and picked up his Stradivarius, turning his back on Watson.