Romantic Holmes

As I had already anticipated, the usually cosy sitting room that I have for these past many years shared with Watson, offers me only the coldest of comforts when I seek refuge there. At this hour the familiar items of our domestic life are still shrouded in various shades of grey, providing me with a decidedly drab view of our existence together - an existence, that I know now will not be altered with the drawing of curtains, or the letting in of sunlight.

I gravitate towards the mantle, seeking warmth against the cold settling into my bones - into my life, I muse miserably. The heath is as still, and as welcoming as a grave however, and it is not very long before I find myself turning away again, searching for a harbourage of sorts from the storm raging within my breast. Drawing my dressing gown around my shivering frame has little effect. Everywhere I look, each nook and corner prompts a memory, an echo of happier times spent in his company. Times that we will never revisit, that he will not even want to recall once he wakes.

The muscles around my heart constrict painfully in my chest as I stare through the gloom at the remnants of my life with Watson. I am not usually a man given to grief. I have lived, since I left my parent's home, dependent on no one, and yet his inclusion in my affairs has changed me.

Oh, but how he has changed me.

Alone in the semi-darkness I close my eyes, savouring, for the last time I tell myself, the lingering memory of his lips and hands on me, recalling his total possession of my person, of my very soul. I shudder at all the previous night held but I know we will never again be as we were and I will not, I fear, ever be the same because of it.

Refusing my self-indulgence to go on longer than is wise I open my eyes. It will do no good to ponder on the past, when it is the future I must now plan for.

Shaking off my growing melancholy I stride towards the settee, taking the afghan that Mrs. Hudson had kindly given to me during my first winter at Baker Street from its high back, I don the gift in the manner in which it was intended - as a cloak against the harshest of elements.

There are faint sounds emanating from the street below now and as I move to the front of the settee I also note movement below me. Another hour will see our land lady in this very room, fussing about as she lays out breakfast for Watson and myself, and I must, if I am to avoid their inevitable questioning, be indisposed before either arrives.

Taking up a familiar pose on the settee I draw the corners of afghan to my chin and close my eyes, welcoming at last, Morpheus' dark embrace and the temporary escape it will provide me from the aching of my heart.