After four more days of endeavouring to frighten the world's only (apparently fearless) private consulting detective, Watson was forced to admit that he was beginning to grow slightly uneasy regarding the outcome of this wager he had entered.
His fourth attempt, Mycroft's suggestion of forcing Sherlock to listen to a violin concert be butchered beyond recognition, had met with mediocre success – an explosive reaction, yes, but not true fear. When questioned about the idea, the older man had merely shrugged, said that Sherlock had become near hysterical as an adolescent when his ears were so desecrated, and then went grumpily back to his (oversized) sandwich and financial paperwork.
The next two endeavors fared no better, though they were highly amusing to the parties Watson had enlisted to aid him in his increasingly frenzied efforts to win this dubious wager.
Mrs. Hudson had been most cooperative in her part, and Sherlock Holmes had returned from a case one afternoon to find the entirety of his belongings stacked neatly on the front stoop and boxed up in the hall downstairs, with a curt notice that he was being evicted for destroying the carpet under the sideboard a week prior (when a forgotten magnifying lens had caught the sunlight and set fire to a spilled glass of brandy).
That time, Watson thought ruefully afterwards, he had really believed Holmes had been taken in, so frantically was he trying to make the good woman relent. Their landlady could bully with the best of them, and the performance was so well-executed that it could be heard down the street, according to the cab-stand at the corner.
However, the dear woman had spoilt the entire charade by bursting into a fit of giggles when the detective finally all but groveled at her feet, begging her to let him repair the damage and for the love of mercy to please change her mind.
Listening in the lady's parlour as she suddenly began to giggle, Watson sighed dismally at Holmes's stunned silence and subsequent explosion of words that he would have knocked another man down for saying in front of a lady. Mrs. Hudson merely laughed and then told them both sternly to "stop that ridiculous pranking and get your things upstairs this instant."
Thoroughly cowed, they both obeyed, and did not dare bring up the subject again.
That evening, after Watson's kindly offer to call off the bet was repelled by an angry outburst (one that ended with a vow that the Doctor would win over Holmes's dead body) dinner became ever-so-slightly strained.
The sixth fear that Mycroft had listed, that of an embarrassing childhood incident being revealed in a public setting, was rather easy to concoct and perform. Half of the force of Scotland Yard were more than keen listeners, and Mycroft Holmes (after being blackmailed by the Doctor into helping him, by way of threatening to bribe his cook to burn breakfast every day for a month) was forced into the position of storyteller. With a rapt audience, the older man detailed with unusually animated relish an occasion when a six-year-old Sherlock Holmes decided he wanted to run away with the golden-curled girl (of the mature age of five-and-a-half) of a neighbouring squire, whereupon they had made it into the next county on one of Mr. Holmes, Sr.'s horses before Mycroft got around to telling his father what his idiot of a brother had done.
Sherlock Holmes's reaction to coming into the Strangers' Room of the Diogenes just upon the tail end of that anecdote got him, Watson, and even the Founding Member suspended for two weeks for inappropriate behaviour and excessive noise. Granted, the Doctor's smirk and query (to the effect of would Holmes like to call the whole thing off and default from the game) merely poured more oil upon the flames.
After that painful (and embarrassing) incident, Watson received no further help from the quite incensed elder of the Holmes siblings. Upon asking for suggestions regarding the next fear, Mycroft merely told the poor physician that the Doctor was simply not ruthless enough to truly frighten his hellion of a younger brother. The older man took great glee in pointing out that there were only four fears left, and that the prize was fast slipping from Watson's grasp.
Part of the older man's opinion of his determination to win at any cost might be true, the Doctor was forced to admit the next day; for he indeed felt a more than slight pang of remorse when Holmes had truly panicked on the seventh fear, after chasing a pickpocket (paid by the Doctor and supplied by an enterprising little Irregular) over the roof-tops of London and, without warning, finding himself at the edge of the highest tenement in the district, a straight four-and-a-half-story drop below him to the cobblestones of a dingy alley and no railing around the roof-top edge
Watson and Mycroft consequently had some words over that incident, because when the elder Holmes had written "fear of heights" the Doctor did not take it as the kind of fear that could turn the unshakable Sherlock Holmes's face a shade that matched his eyes, and that would cause the man to be ill and shaky the rest of the evening – more like sickness than actual fear.
Yes, Holmes had quite breezily told him at least three times to "do his worst," and yes, all was fair in a wager - but even so, Watson vaguely felt that before the bet was over things might get slightly out of hand.
But when he brought the subject up to a much-recovered Holmes that night over sherry and cigars, the detective snorted. "Losing your nerve, are you, Watson?"
"It is not my nerve I am concerned with losing," he retorted, pointedly indicating without a single motion the events of the afternoon.
Holmes waved an impertinent hand, repressing a yawn. "I congratulate you on your mediocre success so far in bruising my pride, Watson, but may I remind you that you have yet to truly instill fear in me." Grey eyes glinted conspiratorially, and Watson well knew that look of defiance and the futility of arguing against it. "The bet is still on, Doctor. Unless you would like to accede?"
Watson matched his defiant glare. "Well, then, if that is the way you want it...then you cannot say I did not warn you, Holmes."
"Your chivalry does you credit, my good fellow, but is entirely unnecessary." Holmes grinned and lifted his glass. "May the better man win, then."
As the glasses clinked, Watson only wondered if winning by such underhanded methods truly made one the better man.
A/N: We apologise for the extremely late update *looks sheepish* Um, this might be finishing in a different way from what KCS and I intended in the beggining but it really isn't that easy to scare Holmes, which we realized too late. Hope you enjoy the story!
