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holmes_minorTitle: On the Strategy of the Queen
Author: gardnerhill
Form/Wordcount: 483
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Rating: G
Warnings/Content: Postulation in implication.
Summary: There is one queen bee in a hive, and that monarch does not suffer rivals gladly.
Author’s Notes: For the Holmes Minor July prompt: Bees. Any resemblance to characters from an inexplicably popular pastiche series is purely coincidental.
The new voice – young, female, with an undercurrent I understood all too well – carried over the grounds. Gritting my teeth, I viciously lopped a rose before setting down the clippers and pulling myself to my feet. I hobbled out toward the sound of the voices, snatching my own veiled bee-hat from the garden wall where I’d left it.
Celebrity is the unavoidable side-effect of the stories I’d written about my friend gaining an unprecedented popularity. Many people still tried to engage Sherlock Holmes for crime-solving even a full decade after his last case. Others were curiosity-seekers or autograph hounds, seeking out Holmes as if he were a moving-picture actor. Such visitors were irritating but essentially harmless.
But this was something else, this young woman’s voice. I knew what that tone meant when a woman spoke to a man in that fashion, even if my friend did not – unlike Holmes I had known women as well as men in my youth and had been pursued by both.
My friend stood behind one of his hives, clad in his suit and veiled hat. The woman – the girl, she couldn’t be out of her teens – was wearing dungarees and a grimy jumper, addressing him from the other side of the box. Some insincere platitudes about her interest in apiology, flattery, falsely-modest self-boasting. She was trying to make herself attractive to him – and not in a doting-grandfatherly way at all.
As I drew nearer, she turned and looked at me, then sneered and looked back at Holmes, dismissing me completely. I saw red.
If only he – if we – could pull off a glove and coldly display a wedding ring to stay her brazen approach.
I had no gold ring to proclaim my tie to this man. But I had something else that was bright and yellow, that would defend us both.
Just as Holmes turned with a relieved smile and was about to address me, I yanked the top off the nearest hive and smacked the side of the box with the cover, hard, several times.
Ten seconds later the seductive, boastful voice was higher by several octaves and considerably louder, even receding rapidly into the distance as the wailing teen fled her humming, angry assailants.
“Was that quite necessary, my boy?” Holmes stared after both girl and bees. “The ‘exeunt, pursued by a bee’ tactic is normally reserved for reporters.”
“Afraid so, old man.” I recapped the hive and winced at the throbbing pain from the five or six stings that had landed on my bare hands – I’d been veiled but not gloved. No matter; it was hardly the first time I’d been wounded defending my spouse.
And a warm pleasure filled me – made all the more delicious for the schadenfreude of imagining my would-be rival’s current state – as thick-gloved fingers took hold of my own aching ones. “Come, my dear. Let me treat these inside.”
Author: gardnerhill
Form/Wordcount: 483
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Rating: G
Warnings/Content: Postulation in implication.
Summary: There is one queen bee in a hive, and that monarch does not suffer rivals gladly.
Author’s Notes: For the Holmes Minor July prompt: Bees. Any resemblance to characters from an inexplicably popular pastiche series is purely coincidental.
The new voice – young, female, with an undercurrent I understood all too well – carried over the grounds. Gritting my teeth, I viciously lopped a rose before setting down the clippers and pulling myself to my feet. I hobbled out toward the sound of the voices, snatching my own veiled bee-hat from the garden wall where I’d left it.
Celebrity is the unavoidable side-effect of the stories I’d written about my friend gaining an unprecedented popularity. Many people still tried to engage Sherlock Holmes for crime-solving even a full decade after his last case. Others were curiosity-seekers or autograph hounds, seeking out Holmes as if he were a moving-picture actor. Such visitors were irritating but essentially harmless.
But this was something else, this young woman’s voice. I knew what that tone meant when a woman spoke to a man in that fashion, even if my friend did not – unlike Holmes I had known women as well as men in my youth and had been pursued by both.
My friend stood behind one of his hives, clad in his suit and veiled hat. The woman – the girl, she couldn’t be out of her teens – was wearing dungarees and a grimy jumper, addressing him from the other side of the box. Some insincere platitudes about her interest in apiology, flattery, falsely-modest self-boasting. She was trying to make herself attractive to him – and not in a doting-grandfatherly way at all.
As I drew nearer, she turned and looked at me, then sneered and looked back at Holmes, dismissing me completely. I saw red.
If only he – if we – could pull off a glove and coldly display a wedding ring to stay her brazen approach.
I had no gold ring to proclaim my tie to this man. But I had something else that was bright and yellow, that would defend us both.
Just as Holmes turned with a relieved smile and was about to address me, I yanked the top off the nearest hive and smacked the side of the box with the cover, hard, several times.
Ten seconds later the seductive, boastful voice was higher by several octaves and considerably louder, even receding rapidly into the distance as the wailing teen fled her humming, angry assailants.
“Was that quite necessary, my boy?” Holmes stared after both girl and bees. “The ‘exeunt, pursued by a bee’ tactic is normally reserved for reporters.”
“Afraid so, old man.” I recapped the hive and winced at the throbbing pain from the five or six stings that had landed on my bare hands – I’d been veiled but not gloved. No matter; it was hardly the first time I’d been wounded defending my spouse.
And a warm pleasure filled me – made all the more delicious for the schadenfreude of imagining my would-be rival’s current state – as thick-gloved fingers took hold of my own aching ones. “Come, my dear. Let me treat these inside.”
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Date: 2016-08-14 09:22 am (UTC)(And, gosh, yes...completely coincidental ...)
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Date: 2016-08-14 05:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-08-14 06:00 pm (UTC)And I read your other version...:-)
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Date: 2016-08-14 01:42 pm (UTC)And I did enjoy your summary ^^
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Date: 2016-08-14 05:03 pm (UTC)And this story is a lot nicer to the interloper than this one (http://archiveofourown.org/works/800158) was.
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Date: 2016-08-14 05:53 pm (UTC)My knowledge of the Mary Russell books is limited to a couple of episodes of a radio adaptation - and they seemed perfectly fine. But the more I hear about the books, the more I'm guessing they're not for me. I'm not comfortable with Holmes and Watson's relationship being diminished - and I couldn't bear Watson being rubbished.
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Date: 2016-08-14 09:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-08-14 02:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-08-14 05:05 pm (UTC)