Holmes' Mistake
by Pandapony

Chapter Five

The swelling in my throat receded over the week.   However, much to my dismay, I discovered that I still had not regained my ability to speak.   When I attempted to do so, a sound would emerge, but forming actual words was still beyond me. The lurid bruising around my neck and the beginnings of a formidable scar showed that the noose had tightened directly upon my larynx.  

Holmes' patience never wore thin.   He now tended to me regularly, and spoke enough for two.   Even on the nights when I could see the distant haze of his black mood come upon him, and I knew, in normal circumstances, he would not speak a word, even then Holmes made an exception for me.   He rallied a smile and discussed the minutia of his day.  

I wrote constantly, furiously.   I wrote demands and questions to him and Mrs. Hudson and the doctor.   I wrote my innermost thoughts in a diary.   I attempted to write down details of the case for a future story to sell, but found myself unpleasantly reliving our latest exploits, and so abandoned that effort altogether.

By the end of the month, I was able to walk once more, albeit with a cane for support.   I looked around the familiar confines of our sitting room and wondered how I could be back in almost the same physical state as I was when I had first moved in, all those years ago.   Physically exhausted. Always broken, always sore.   And now, to add to my discomfort, an inability to speak.

I moved back into my own room with some relief.   The trek up and down the stairs for the bathroom was difficult, but I looked forward to the challenge it presented, and hoped the exercise would speed my recovery.

And still, every evening, Holmes would come into my room and volunteer to wash me.

I was well beyond the point of needing his assistance, and yet I found myself loathe to give it up.   The brief intimacy of his touches were the only highlight of my otherwise dreary existence indoors.   I could not speak to Holmes now, but I could share this small moment of tenderness with him.

He came up the stairs every night, shortly after I had turned in.   He brought with him the basin of hot water and his sponge.   His shirt sleeves were rolled up, and he came with the same cheery expression.

“Wash up?”   he would say, and I would nod.

And then he would launch into a diatribe about anything.   A clue.   The chemical compounds of clay soils.   The history of Scottish blacksmithing.   It never mattered.   He would begin his lecture and he would help me remove my dressing gown and my nightshirt.   I would lay naked before him on the bed, and he would slowly, lazily, sponge me clean.

I no longer started when he reached between my legs to clean my genitals.   I would just look away, so he wouldn't see the desire glaze my eyes.   His voice would hitch sometimes in his rambling narrative.   Words would stumble out. Neither of us would make eye contact.   And he would slowly, gently, clean me.   My groin received a disproportionate amount of cleaning time, and that's when I began to fantasize that Holmes shared feelings similar to mine.   Perhaps he enjoyed this as much as I did.   He obviously didn't mind it.

And then he would finish, and withdraw, turning from me as I clumsily re-dressed myself.   Always the same, flushed expression on his face.   A slight tremble in his fingers.   We never spoke about this new ritual of ours.   We never addressed the tenderness in his touch.   But something was happening between us.

By the first week of April, I finally determined I had enough strength to venture out after a month indoors.   Holmes was busy for much of the day, narrowing his search for evidence against Cavendish and finding the man's accomplices in his smuggling ring.

It took me almost an hour to dress myself, but once done, I felt proud of my accomplishment.   I looked like my old self again.   I chose a high collar which would hide the scar ringing my neck.   There was still some slight discoloration around my eyes from my broken nose, but otherwise, I looked presentable.  

I prepared several cards in advance, explaining my inability to speak, and pocketed these along with a whistle, in case I needed help.   As I lurched down the stairs, Mrs. Hudson fretted and scolded.   She claimed I was turning her hair prematurely grey.   But I ignored her concern and ventured into the sunlight of the crowded afternoon Baker Street.

My spirits improved immensely after my stroll.   However I could not go far before my stomach wound began to trouble me.   When I passed by the book store, the clerk greeted me as usual and asked about my injuries, but I could not respond, handing him one of my cards in explanation.   But all of these problems aside, I was alive again, and out, and on the mend.   I knew I would rally once more.   I was going to survive.

I returned home around 5 o'clock to a frantic Holmes.  

“Where have you been?” He shouted, hustling me into the living room and sitting me down.   He looked pale with fright.   “For God's sake, Watson, you are not well enough to be trouncing around London on your own!”

I scowled, hoping my message was clear.

“Do not do that again!” he declared.   “I cannot waste precious energy worrying about your whereabouts!”

I wrote him a lengthy complaint.   He was not my doctor.   Nor was he in any way qualified to determine whether or not I was capable of anything.   I added several frustrated expletives, which had the result of making his eyebrows raise high upon his head.   I watched him struggle with the urge to laugh and the urge to defend himself, but instead, he simply let the matter drop.   Our dinner was tense and silent.  

My excursions had left me more exhausted than usual and so I retreated to my bedroom at an early hour.   I had only been in bed for a few minutes, however, when I was disturbed by a knock upon my door.

Holmes called out, “it's me” and entered, carrying with him his obligatory basin of hot water and sponge.

He set these up on my bedside and sat beside me.

“Wash?” he asked.

I stared at him.   He stared back at me.   I could see anxiety flutter in his expression, the longer I stared.   I wanted to talk, damn it.   I wanted to find out what these nightly cleanings were to him.   If I could dress and walk by myself, it was obvious I could bathe as well.   So why did he pursue this form of nursing?   What was in this for him?

“Unless, of course, you are recovered well enough to tend to grooming on your own…”   Holmes suddenly looked away and became very nervous.   He fidgeted with his sleeves, rolling them back down.   He reached towards the basin, making ready to leave.   I grabbed him by the sleeve and pulled him back down beside me on the bed.

I shook my head and smiled.   I nodded towards the water.   Holmes seemed to let out a shaky breath.

“Shall I continue, then?” he asked.

I nodded slowly.

Everything he did that evening was in slow motion.   Now we stared at each other.   He washed me, watching my face.   I watched his.   He didn't bother with a lecture.   He didn't act as though what we were doing was anything else.   When I removed my clothing and lay before him, my desire was already visible, pulsing and engorged.  

Holmes stared at my member, and swallowed.   He then wrung out the sponge and began his gentle ministrations, starting as always with my left leg.  

By the time he moved his sponge to my inner thighs, my cock was twitching before him.   He looked at me shyly.   I looked back, all of my intensity showing.   I wanted to know why.   Why was he doing this?   Was he feeling this?   Did he have any idea how desperately I loved him, how much I wanted him?

He sponged my erection, his eyes focused on mine.   He was shivering, I saw that.   Tremors of desire, or nervousness, I did not know.   A ruddy pink bloomed across his cheeks.  

When he lifted his sponge to put it away, I quickly reached out and held his wrist.   I forced his hand and the sponge back to my prick.

“John…”   Holmes moaned.   He kept rubbing me there.   I knocked the sponge out of his hand.   He started rubbing my cock with his long fingers, his warm palm, slowly up and down my shaft.   He was trembling dramatically now.   His eyes were half-closed, his lips seemed flushed and swollen.   I could just make out the outline of his own arousal in his trousers, and the sight excited me so much that I began to ooze from the tip, lubricating his sliding movements.

I would have whispered “harder” to him.   I would have told him to go faster.   I would have said so much in that moment, had I the power of speech.   But instead, I could say nothing, so I reached for his lapels and pulled him down on top of me.   I kissed him instead.

Holmes fumbled with my lips.   He was shaking so badly that it was hard to hold him in place.   I kissed him deeply, plunging my tongue inside of him, and he moaned and pressed against me on the bed.   I fiercely gripped him by the back of the head and pushed his lips against me harder, forcing him to open his mouth to mine.   His tongue entered me with tentative gentleness, but within moments, he was thrusting inside, hands groping at the side of my face, my hair, pulling me tighter to him.

God, how I wanted him.   My vision was blurred by my desire.   He looked so startled by the kiss when he pulled back.   He looked drugged and wild.  

He put his hand back on my erection, and continued to stroke it as we kissed.   I wanted to touch him as well, see his naked body entwined with mine, I wanted to lick him clean in all the places he had so tenderly cleaned me.  

But I confess that I had over a month's worth of unspent sexual desire coursing through me, and so only base, primal urges dominated.   As Holmes leaned down to kiss my throat, and as he moved lower, I found myself rudely but clearly urging his head down further, pushing him away from my face and towards my throbbing prick.  

Holmes hesitated, as if he didn't know what to do.   I lifted my hips on the bed towards him, trying to close the gap between my crotch and his face.   He kissed my belly then, lingering gently around the red, angry skin of my newest battle-scar, before kissing lower.

I opened my legs wider, welcoming him.   His mouth lowered over my erect member, and he hovered there for an instant.   He looked nervous and excited all the same time.   He gently kissed the tip of my prick.

And I convulsed.   All of me shuddered and writhed in delight.   My greatest fantasy, come true.   Holmes' brilliant, passionate lips against my cock.   It was too much.

Holmes smiled then, just slightly, and I could see the confidence build in him.   He was obviously proud to have elicited such a dramatic reaction from such a small gesture, and he looked at me mischievously, giving me a quick kiss on the lips, before pulling my entire shaft into his mouth.

I wished I could scream.   I opened my mouth and tried to do so, to shout out my pleasure, but air escaped, silently.   I thrashed on the bed, mouth open, clawing at his hair and clothes, as he sucked my cock into his warm mouth and pumped me with his lips.

He was inexpert, and I could easily tell this was his first time.   His teeth scraped several times and at one point I pushed too far down his throat and he gagged.   But we soon developed a rhythm and it did not take much longer for me to explode.

I quickly pressed at his shoulders to push him off of me.   I did not want to come in his throat, I feared startling him, this first time.   So I pushed him away and turned, climaxing over my bed sheets in great spurts.   My whole body trembled with the release.   So long.   It had been so long.

Holmes knelt there, watching me come with a glazed expression in his eyes.   His cheeks burned red.   His lips were flush and swollen.   A small amount of pre-cum glistened on his lips.

I tried to say his name but failed.   I made do with just pulling him towards me by his lapels once more and kissing him.

I pushed him down against the mattress and rolled towards him.   Doing so hurt my stomach with an exquisite shock of pain, and I winced.

Holmes' eyes immediately widened.   “Are you all right?” he whispered.

I smiled at him, and then kissed him more.   He kissed me like I were oxygen, like I was life.   I had to pull hard to break myself from his mouth.   I quickly, breathlessly, unbuttoned his trousers to return the favour.

Holmes turned bright red as I fumbled with his flies.   He looked away, as if ashamed.   But when I pulled his trousers and undergarments from his hips, his need was stunning.  

Holmes was very well-endowed, his flesh straining towards me, seeking my heat.   I momentarily considered giving him an opportunity to feel what it was like to be inside another man, to have that most intimate contact, but I realized he would only last a few more moments, and I was not yet strong enough to hold myself up for extended periods of time.

So I simply covered his hips and thighs in kisses, licking my way towards his desire.   All the moaning I could not do myself he did for me.   He spoke no words, only gasps and cries, and his fingers twined in my hair, holding me close to him.

I licked around the tip of his shaft and he shook violently.

“Oh god, John… John…”   he thrust towards me and I swallowed him down.  

For a moment, he was frantic.   He pounded into my mouth with relentless power, and I had to pull back and try and slow him down, pressing him back against the mattress with my hands on his hips.   He pushed into me so hard I would gag if he wasn't careful.   But his naïve desire showed no restraint.   I was the first man to do this to him, it was obvious.   Perhaps the first person ever.   His eyes were locked on me, his stare intense and still, and he watched me suck his cock with an expression of awe and shock, unable to stop his hips from lifting.

I gave his sac a squeeze and engulfed his cock with my mouth, and Holmes suddenly cried out and gripped me.   He spent himself in my mouth, shivering, stunned.   I swallowed it all and kissed the tip of his erection before slowly sliding myself off of him, to lay beside him on the narrow bed.

“I'm terribly sorry,” he gasped.   He turned to me, eyes wild.   “I'm sorry, I could not help myself, could not withdraw in time…”

It took me a moment to realize he was apologizing for coming in my mouth.   I smiled and kissed him lazily, showing him I didn't care.  

“Jesus.”   He shook his head.   “Jesus Christ!”

His blasphemy made me laugh.   I chuckled silently and pulled him towards me.   We lay there together for a moment, catching our breaths.   His clothes were madly dishevelled, his hair beautifully ruffled.   I was naked beside him.   I threw my leg over him and he responded hungrily, pulling me tighter. Our shrinking erections nestled against each other, giving me another flash of desire.

  “I wish more than anything I could hear your voice right now,” he said softly.   He pulled his head to my neck and nuzzled me with his lips and nose.   “I miss your voice.”

In response, I kissed him.   I too wished more than ever that I could speak, to tell him of my love, of how long I had desired this.  

My frustration must have shown, for Holmes smiled gently and then kissed me with slow, exquisite softness. His hands rested on my hips.   His touch flooded me with warmth and reassurance.

I must have fallen asleep in his arms, for when I awoke, I was covered with the blankets, and alone.   My mind raged all evening – with excitement, that this was the dawn of a new relationship with Holmes – with fear, that he would regret this indiscretion and be cross with me in the morning – and with doubt that we could keep such a relationship secret, especially with so many of our mutual friends being members of the police force.

I slept little for the rest of the night, my hopes and fears trapped in my chest, unable to be spoken, too terrifying and powerful to be written.

 
Chapter Six