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holmes_minorTitle: Of Infinite Importance
Author: gardnerhill
Form/Wordcount: 400
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Rating: G
Warnings/Content: Period descriptions of homosexuality. Elderly gentlemanly canoodling.
Summary: Holmes' quote turns out to be right about more than crime details.
Author’s Notes: For the Holmes Minor August 2018 prompt: Small Moments of Happiness
Sussex was a revelation.
I'd told Holmes that transplanting a pair of cosmopolitan queers to the countryside gave us stretches of empty space in which we could be as Sodomitic as we pleased without alarming neighbours or frightening the horses; he'd laughed and agreed.
I will not deny that both of us did indeed learn what making love outdoors on a balmy Sussex summer night is like (alas, hay fever and midges figure more heavily into the situation than clandestine literature would lead one to believe). But it was not the great passion of the little death that proved the most glorious expression of happiness for both of us in this new milieu.
More precious was the ability to walk out to the hives and be greeted with a kiss in broad daylight; to stroll along the cliffs at sunset hand in hand with my spouse; the way he seized me and waltzed us around the yard laughing, the day his isolated queen began a new brood in her own hive-box.
It was no longer needing to call each other "Holmes" and "Watson" as we'd done even in private at 221b lest we reveal too much in a panicked moment in public; learning how to say "my dear" without immediately appending a surname or "fellow" or "chap" was quite a lovely form of retraining. We also began to indulge in a plethora of pet names that would nauseate the most dewy-eyed writer of romantic fiction.
And mortal words cannot express the profound change of awakening in the morning secure in my lover's arms, arising to use the water closet – and then returning to that same warm bed and convivial companion to go back to sleep instead of heading upstairs to my own bedroom lest a new maid enter too early and find us together. That first morning here, when I realised this, was the moment when I knew that retirement while both of us were hale and well was the best and wisest thing we two had ever done.
"And now you see the wisdom of my old adage, Johnny-lad," Sherlock had murmured as I'd nestled back into his arms. "It is the little things that are infinitely the most important."
As usual, my brilliant love was right.
"If you ever take us back to detective work in London, my plum," I'd replied sleepily, "I shall break both your legs."
Author: gardnerhill
Form/Wordcount: 400
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Rating: G
Warnings/Content: Period descriptions of homosexuality. Elderly gentlemanly canoodling.
Summary: Holmes' quote turns out to be right about more than crime details.
Author’s Notes: For the Holmes Minor August 2018 prompt: Small Moments of Happiness
Sussex was a revelation.
I'd told Holmes that transplanting a pair of cosmopolitan queers to the countryside gave us stretches of empty space in which we could be as Sodomitic as we pleased without alarming neighbours or frightening the horses; he'd laughed and agreed.
I will not deny that both of us did indeed learn what making love outdoors on a balmy Sussex summer night is like (alas, hay fever and midges figure more heavily into the situation than clandestine literature would lead one to believe). But it was not the great passion of the little death that proved the most glorious expression of happiness for both of us in this new milieu.
More precious was the ability to walk out to the hives and be greeted with a kiss in broad daylight; to stroll along the cliffs at sunset hand in hand with my spouse; the way he seized me and waltzed us around the yard laughing, the day his isolated queen began a new brood in her own hive-box.
It was no longer needing to call each other "Holmes" and "Watson" as we'd done even in private at 221b lest we reveal too much in a panicked moment in public; learning how to say "my dear" without immediately appending a surname or "fellow" or "chap" was quite a lovely form of retraining. We also began to indulge in a plethora of pet names that would nauseate the most dewy-eyed writer of romantic fiction.
And mortal words cannot express the profound change of awakening in the morning secure in my lover's arms, arising to use the water closet – and then returning to that same warm bed and convivial companion to go back to sleep instead of heading upstairs to my own bedroom lest a new maid enter too early and find us together. That first morning here, when I realised this, was the moment when I knew that retirement while both of us were hale and well was the best and wisest thing we two had ever done.
"And now you see the wisdom of my old adage, Johnny-lad," Sherlock had murmured as I'd nestled back into his arms. "It is the little things that are infinitely the most important."
As usual, my brilliant love was right.
"If you ever take us back to detective work in London, my plum," I'd replied sleepily, "I shall break both your legs."
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