An Incredibly Strange Story

An Incredibly Strange Story - Part Five

After my miserable return from the brothel, I had retired to Holmes' bed and shed quite a number of tears into his pillow, but sleep would not come. The hours were passing by, one by one, and I listened to the church clock striking the quarters, but instead of the welcome heaviness of slumber, all I could feel was a nagging pain in my heart, together with the relentless fear that I might never see my good friend again; alas! even if I did see him again, I dreaded that he would be changed utterly, and never again take any interest in my person.

At last, sleep must have embraced me nonetheless, as I awoke with a start when someone entered the adjacent living room, whistling softly. The first faint beams of sunlight were straying lazily through the blinds, announcing that the sun had already started to rise, and I immediately discerned the sound as that made by my dear friend Holmes. He was whistling a tune from Schumann's Kinderlieder, if I recall correctly, in a rather joyful manner, the way he used to do when he had spent the entire night on a stakeout and finally came home to celebrate his triumph. Before I could even recollect myself, he had already opened the door to his bedroom - and certainly found wretched me sitting in his bed. Only then did I realize that the pillow was pitiably wet.

Holmes hardly missed a beat before looking at me with a mixture of curiosity and concern. "My dear fellow, whatever is the matter?" he said. "Are you ill?"

I felt my face grow hot, and to my utter dismay my eyes, too. "No," I said, realizing that my voice sounded shamefully hoarse, and suppressing a sniffle.

Holmes strode towards the bed - his bed. "What are you doing in here? Something wrong with your room?" His tone of voice got more inquisitive to quite some degree, but all I noticed was the blatant absence of understanding in his words.

"What?" I retorted in disbelief. "Heaven, Holmes." I sank back onto the moist pillow, covering my brow with my hand in order to hide the wetness that once more filled my eyes.

Holmes seemed to be oblivious to this as well as the situation in general. "Well then," he said. "Shall I get you a glass of warm milk?"

"No, Holmes," cried I. "For heaven's sake." I did not dare look at him, partly because I could not bear to see his happy expression, and partly because I feared that my own expression might shock him. He was so unbelievably oblivious, I rather doubted that a face with reddened eyes and a swollen nose might enlighten him.

"Brandy, then?" he asked merrily.

I grew aware that I had a clotted nose. "Yes, a brandy would be fine," I said and once more was unable to suppress a sniffle.

"Very well, my dear fellow, and do stop that infernal sniffling," Holmes said and turned away in order to get the glasses.

When my only witness had thus left the room, I dared get up, tried to plump the pillow a bit, then I remained sitting on the bed, irresolute what to do next. I had to break it to him, did I not, and draw a line under our wretched relationship. Surely could I never explain to him that this infernal bet had broken my heart. "But..." I tried faintly; but Holmes did not even seem to hear me.

Between getting the glasses and filling them with brandy, Holmes stretched and sighed deeply. "What a successful night," he said. I heard him yawn, then put the stopper back into the decanter with a perceivable clink. If he only would stop whistling...This time, all I could do as an answer was to refrain from sobbing, as instructed, and nod like a beaten dog.

"Brandy," Holmes said, re-appearing in the doorframe. He sat down on the bed next to me, handed me one of the well filled tumblers and clinked his glass against mine. "Here's to successfully banished misconceptions," he said merrily and took a good mouthful.

"Holmes!" I ejaculated. Finally, I felt my sadness turn into anger.

"It was not that bad, you know," he said, as if he had not heard my protest. "At least not as bad as I expected. Once I found my groove, so to say, I actually found it rather simple. Trite, even."

Enough was enough. I felt my temper flare wildly, and without warning, I knocked Holmes' glass from his hand. "Will you stop that! I cannot bear it any longer!" Once more, my eyes filled with tears, but this time they were tears of rage, not of melancholy.

Holmes looked at his glass lying on the floor and nodded in agreement. "Ah," he then said, rather more earnestly than I had thought him capable at present. "My sentiment exactly. I am glad that this is over and done with. I hope in future, whenever I say that I am capable of doing something, you shall not doubt me."

These words contributed to the astounding effect that I managed to compose myself unusually quickly. Replaying his last words in my mind, I finally looked at him in surprise. "Why, I... Oh." If truth be told, words then failed me.

"Just as I hope you will not doubt me when I say that I am entirely capable of doing to you what I just did to the delightful Miss Celia," Holmes added nonchalantly. "Only, if you don't mind, after I've had some sleep."

This did not merely border on the audacious: it was profoundly insolent. On the other hand, it was also very typical of my good friend's general habit and demeanour, and I was ill advised to chide him for that. At least, he was being honest, and finally came to the point. Thinking over what his words implied, I for once did not blush, but being in the mood I presently was, I squinted with disapproval. Holmes looked back, his face deadpan. "Two conditions," I said.

"Let's hear them," he replied.

After emptying my glass and putting it away safely, I turned to look at him and took a deep breath. "One: You will never do that to me again," I said. "Never, Holmes. Even if it means to keep me from betting."

Holmes gave a short laugh, but he remained silent.

"Secondly," I continued. "You will make up for that by letting me... play the aforementioned part."

Now it was Holmes whose face tinted with the hint of a blush. "Why, Watson," he said, his voice once more playful. "If I had known that it would take a ploy such as this one to rile you sufficiently to take this sort of initiative, I should have done so years ago." With this, he opened his tie in a dramatic gesture and threw it away, then he threw back his arms and exclaimed, "I am yours."

"Yes," I said, mirroring his actions. This unexpected and lucky turn of the events shoved away my last fears, and I felt my entire body fill with new hope and energy. "And I'll claim what is mine," I exclaimed enthusiastically.

Holmes cocked an eyebrow at me, then snarled. "Do your worst." But before I could even take another breath to reply something witty, he was already by my side, his long sinewy legs crossing the room in two strides and magnificent body almost pouncing onto me. Apparently, Holmes' sleepiness was blown away by our last exchange, and it was being replaced by a ferocious wave of passion. I would have been relieved to have stored at least my tumbler at a safe distance before this friendly attack, had I been able to spare a thought for it. As it was, however, my concentration was entirely focused on our mouths meeting in an eager, almost hungry kiss, and every other notion was blown away like in a thunderstorm.

Once more, Holmes managed to send my buttons flying before I even had the slightest chance to keep him from mutilating my shirt, and he was truly behaving like a wild animal in his eagerness to feel me, and to be as close to me as ever possible. In the wink of a moment we were both as God had made us, with my friend lying on top of me, and all I could do was accept his fervent administrations - and let my body react as it pleased. And then it also appeared to me as if my good friend was longing to clean himself from the previous night, in a way that not only his hands were all over me, but in effect his entire body was plastered against mine, as he was perceivably indulging in the contact and heightening it by, I daresay, rather vulgar movements. Amidst the height of this passionate interaction, he managed to produce a lubricant of some sort, although I merely recall that is was something oily, and only at present do I wonder whether Holmes had all the time secretly been hoping for this precious moment to finally come, and that he had thus kept the appropriate aids in his nightstand.

And the rest was not exactly silence, but a rather noisy congregation of incoherent sounds and uttering of senseless declarations of love, and at last, the joyful unification of our bodies, glorious and unique in its novelty, yet besieging a new chapter of our relationship: that this was what we both wanted, and that we would from now on share it freely, time and again, as long as we would both be capable of exhausting ourselves that strongly. But, if truth be told, I would gladly spend my last breath in a moment like this one, rather than die of old age or, for that matter, in battle. What else could a loyal friend wish for: than to be that close to his beloved, and remain that close forever.

FINIS