A/N: Wow...it doesn't feel like two years since I updated this story. Sorry everyone :( I don't really write Holmes much anymore but I found this languishing in my files and figured I might as well post it.

It was a rainy, dull morning in the autumn of 1895. I was sitting at my desk, attempting to write out one of Holmes's latest cases, but I could not seem to make it beyond our client's arrival.

Holmes himself was pacing the room, ostensibly sorting through his records of criminal activity for the previous year, but I felt his sharp gaze on me more than once. I resolutely ignored him, knowing that I had to finish writing this case by tonight. No sooner had I resolved to pay him no mind then he appeared at my shoulder, reading over what I had written so far.

"Really, Holmes, you know how I detest when you do that!" I said, sitting back with a sigh. He always sought to determine what I was writing about, and then to give me his unasked-for opinion about it. My writing was becoming more and more important to me, and yet every time Holmes looked at it, he found something to criticize. I was becoming rather tired of it.

True to my suspicions, Holmes ignored me, focusing on the beginning of my story, "I wish you wouldn't make me so disgusted by 'the fairer sex.' It makes me seem positively ungentlemanly."

I read over the scene, where I portrayed Holmes speaking rather crossly to our young client, a governess, I believe. He had been in a particularly tetchy mood that day, as I recalled, although I had exaggerated the extent. "I thought you did not care at all as to how the public viewed you," I said. Certainly he had never given me any indication that he wanted to be portrayed a certain way, or even took any interest in how those who could not bring him cases thought of him.

"Yes, but one does not like to be misrepresented entirely, Watson," Holmes said, settling down in the settee, the criminal records laid aside and forgotten. "I hardly dislike all women. Mrs. Hudson, for example, is an exemplar of her sex."

I stared back at him. "Mrs. Hudson is a veritable saint," I said. "You do realize no other landlady would consent to remain with bullet holes in her walls and the near-constant smell of chemical experiments?"

Holmes looked up at the V.R. that decorated the wall next to the fireplace and smiled before continuing. "Besides, apart from yourself and my brother, you must admit I have no great liking for men either," he said.

That much was true; Holmes had little respect for anyone other than himself. While I had often wondered why I was exempt from his rule, now was not the time to debate it.

"And," Holmes continued, "You must remember my admiration for Miss Irene Adler, now Mrs. Norton." My gaze moved over to the framed photograph of Miss Adler on the table next to the settee.

"Holmes, you do not need to convince me of your innocence of misogyny," I said, to stop him from listing every instance where he had admired a woman and disliked a man. I knew well how little patience he had for either sex. "Don't you remember what happened before I started portraying you this way?"

Holmes leaned back, only to spring up again, his eyes wide with recognition. "Is that why all those…distasteful letters stopped arriving?"

"You mean the ones where the female readers of my stories offered themselves to you in marriage on any date of your choosing?" I asked. "Yes, Holmes, that is why they stopped." I had started out writing Holmes as accurately as I could, as the misanthropist he was, but the continual arrival of letters from women infatuated with him led me to change this true trait to the false one of misogyny. I had never seen Holmes so disturbed as he was each time he saw one of these missals. Each one was a breach of his highly private nature, and now that he had explained to me that the very idea of romantic attachment was one he had never experienced, or even understood, I quietly changed my writing tactic. I may not have understood his position on the matter, but it was clear to me that any perceived romantic interest upset him, and I had no wish to invite that discomfort into our lives.

"Oh," Holmes said. "Well, in that case, I must thank you, Watson. I have never been comfortable as an object of romantic interest or affection, and I am very glad for any means you had to take to remove that threat." He reached for the newspaper and disappeared behind it, a puff of smoke emerging above the pages every so often.

I turned back to my writing, wondering whether I had truly done him a service. Someday, this record would be all that remained of us, and the tale it told was not entirely true, or flattering to my friend. But I had permission to write as long as Holmes's privacy remained intact (what little was left after his numerous high-profile cases and the fact that everyone in the Empire knew his address), and I knew I would stop writing immediately if he became too uncomfortable with the idea. So far he had not, and I was grateful for it. I enjoyed the writing almost as much as I enjoyed the cases, and would not have wanted to stop; it was only a matter of balancing fact with some exaggeration designed to give us a veil behind which to live our lives.

If the lack of infatuated letters and Holmes's current peace of mind were any indication, I believe I had succeeded.