Fic: The Gift of Tea: G

[okapi1895.livejournal.com]

Title: The Gift of Tea
Rating: Gen
Length: 500
Content Notes: Holmes/Watson, h/c, implied bed sharing at the end, not technically tea, actually herbal infusion, or tisane for the Poirot fans.
Summary: A bone-coldness grips Watson on Christmas Eve.
Author's Note: For the monthly prompt: gift


I wiped the sweat from my brow on the sleeve of my dressing gown.

“No more blankets, Holmes. I’m going to retire for the night.”

“Very well. Good night, Watson.”

He kept his face turned towards the fire, which he’d been disciplining like a strict governess since dinner.

I rose, cast off my layers, and grimaced at the glass on the table beside my armchair. It had been twice filled and twice drained of brandy, to no effect.

Ignoring the familiar tickling of Holmes’s gaze as it danced across my features and form, I approached the stairs and stifled a groan at the effort required to raise a leaden foot.

A stubborn bone-coldness had ambushed me soon after Holmes and I had finished our yuletide feast. Was it a ghost of ailment past? A spectre-child of the present icy weather? Or, I shivered, a portent of things to come?

As a doctor, I might have hazarded a diagnosis. As a sufferer, I merely suffered.

I was cold.

No, cold was me. It had somehow traded places with my marrow and now filled the hollows of my skeleton.

Cold, cold, cold.

I lay beneath blankets, still wrapped in the woolen dressing gown, chanting my body’s mantra. I soon realised, however, that the noise of chattering teeth was, in fact, footfall.

At last, a spark! But like most, fleeting and insubstantial, as it was composed of pique.

“Holmes!” I roared at a volume that neared that of the howling winds rattling the pane. “No cases! You and the bloody King of Proosia can hang!”

“I come bearing gifts, Watson.”

“Holmes.”

He stood in the doorway.

“Try this.”

This, I saw by the light of his single taper, was tea.

“I don’t know what surprises me more,” I leaned forward and inclined my head toward the steaming cup, “that you know how to make tea or that Mrs. Hudson allowed you in her kitchen at this hour.”

“I have an infusing apparatus of my own, Watson, in perfect working order.”

I mumbled something laudatory about chemistry, then sipped, then sighed.

“Oh, that’s good.”  

I sat up, took the cup and gestured for him to sit on the edge of the bed.

“Matricaria chamomilla,” he said.

To my ears, the words were both prayer and answer to.

I was warm.

Warmth was seeping, indeed, infusing through every channel of me. I paused, checking with a convalescent’s uncertainty, but no, it was working.

“Christmas miracle.”

“Perhaps.”

I drank more, drank all, and moment by moment, my corpus thawed.

But as welcome as the elixir was into me, it was soon pressing for exit.

I excused myself, taking Holmes’s candle and bidding him stay, but upon return found him mid-snore, slumped, eyes closed, lips parted.

I crawled into bed on the far side and whispered,

“I’m restored, Holmes. You’re a marvel.”

“Cold marvel,” he muttered.

“Shall I make some for you?”

He grunted. “Lend me yours.”

And at that, I drew him into a warm embrace.

Comments

[okapi1895.livejournal.com]

[Yeah, especially if you worked today! Get some zzz!]

Thank you! Based on a true story. It's happened to me 3 or 4 times, this sort of stubborn bone-cold that is resistant to external measures like blankets and other heating devices. I end up sweating and still, for some reason, feel this deep-seated cold. And after much trial and error and shivering I discovered that tea is truly, truly the only thing that helps.

Yeah, you can imagine him reaching for the Gladstone and his 'medicine' and swearing and saying 'Why in the $*&@ isn't it working?!'

Yeah, it's out of timeline to be directly after BLUE, but still a shout-out.

And there is never much mention of peeing in stories, but tea makes you pee a lot and herbal tea makes me pee A LOT! And I needed a 'catch him asleep' moment with Holmes, so I tried to make it as discretely Victorian as possible.

Yeah, it's essentially a bed-sharing h/c fic. Tropey McTropesAlot, but hey, it's Christmas!

Thank you very much and go to bed!