holmes_minor | Fic: Bees & Buttons: Teen (Reply)

Title: Bees & Buttons
Rating: Teen for innuendo & suggestion
Length: 500
Summary: Sherlock Holmes is a pale man.

Sherlock Holmes is a pale man. What little exercise he takes is of the indoor variety, and the preponderance of overcast days in London means that he, along with the rest of the inhabitants of the metropolis, rarely has any natural opportunity to bronze himself.

Yes, Sherlock Holmes is a pale man, and his pallour is as intractable to his skin as his logic is to his mind. He does not blush. Not when strewn with flattery, which he enjoys. Nor when pelted with insults, be they overt or oblique, which he does not enjoy.

And Sherlock Holmes most assuredly does not blush when, for example, he discovers three items of silken ladies’ undergarments purchased by one Mister Cecil Etherege at a shop in Paris, a shop, which, by the way, specialises in fine, bespoke undergarments for all sexes, including the three pieces which relate to a cryptic scrap of paper found by Mrs. Cecil Etherege after the disappearance of her husband.

No, the colour of Holmes’s cheeks does not vary in the least, not even when, say, he discovers the trio of garments, alluring despite their minimalism, in the flesh, so to speak, that is, or rather, around the flesh of a woman who bears absolutely no resemblance to Mrs. Cecil Etherege—except in name.

Yes, the wan face of Sherlock Holmes does not change when Christmas Eve arrives, and an exchange of gifts is expected. My companion expects a tobacco pouch. He has deduced my wanderings to three high-end establishments, and he has narrowed down the possibilities of what might await him to, I suspect, a serviceable two or three.

When his gift, once bestowed, is of less quality than imagined, Holmes betrays himself with a moment’s frown, but not a trace of disappointment’s pink. He smiles and thanks me, and it is then that I give him his second gift.

Grey eyes widen. A mouth opens before closing.

Holmes lifts the lid of the box at once.

“Oh, Watson.”

I smile. “I have it on the authority of one Mister Cecil Etherege that it is a Continental custom to give such clothing to one’s most desired and best beloved.”

Holmes holds up the undershirt. A tiny bee is embroidered on the left side of the chest, above the heart of the wearer.

“Oh, Watson,” he exclaims in breathy echo, then drops the shirt back in the box and glances at the drawers that lie within.

“There are four surplus buttons,” he observes, and, indeed the customary vertical row of fastenings is joined by two pairs in rows on either side.

“They are not surplus. I shall demonstrate, at a more appropriate hour, their utility.”

And at this, Holmes reddens like a ripening tomato and mutters,

“Perhaps we should strike while the iron is…”

And it is a short time later that I find myself reexamining an earlier maxim and finding it wanting in truth.

Sherlock Holmes is a pale man.

Except when he isn’t.