"Tally," September 2024 Holmes Minor Monthly Prompt

[gardnerhill]

Title: Tally
Author: gardnerhill
Fandom: ACD
Pairing: Sherlock Holmes John Watson
Word Count: 250
Rating: G
Warning: None.
Summary: Holmes pays a promised debt.
Author's Notes: Written for the September 2024 Holmes Minor monthly prompt, "Make up."

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Can also be found at:
Story on Dreamwidth
Story on AO3



Box tickets to The Flowers of Progress (the operetta had debuted the year before but I hadn’t the heart to attend anything frivolous); I sat, rapt, quietly humming along with the merry tunes, whilst my friend steepled his fingers and no doubt refamiliarized himself with the layout of London streets in his mind rather than pay a moment’s attention to Gilbert & Sullivan. Well worth at least fifty.

Simpson’s. Four or five, each visit – and I counted it a full ten if the meal included their superb oysters (which happened more often than not, as Holmes seemed to make it his task to make me regain the flesh my recent bereavement had carved from me.)

The Turkish baths, once a semi-annual luxury scrimped and saved for, now a weekly indulgence that steamed and soaked away the sorrow that had dwelt within me for three years. Worth ten per visit.

An elegant new gold fountain pen and inkstand as a Christmas gift, respecting my craft. Twenty.

For my birthday, a first edition of Kipling’s Barrack-Room Ballads I’d coveted from the other side of the bookstore glass. Autographed. A full hundred.

And in and around these extraordinary items, a frequent word of praise for my perception and steadfastness, each worth one, elevated to two when spoken in the presence of the police, and three when Lestrade was present.

The long and the short of it was that it took surprisingly little time for Sherlock Holmes to make good on his thousand apologies.

Comments

[debriswoman]

Oh, nicely done :-)

[gardnerhill]

Thanks!

[smallhobbit]

This is lovely!

[gardnerhill]

Thank you so much.

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Ah, yes, the final line is the clencher! Very well done. I was thinking along these lines for this prompt, too.

[gardnerhill]

Great minds think alike!

[scfrankles]

That is so clever, and well-structured, and poignant too.

[gardnerhill]

Thank you so much. Holmes strikes me as the kind of man who would make his apologies very tangible signs of his appreciation.

[jesse_the_k]

Delightful — the tension enhances the gratitude for the payoff

[gardnerhill]

Thanks. I did want to make it a mystery till the very end what exactly was being counted up!