Fic for unovis: The Midnight Caller

[holmesticemods]

Title: The Midnight Caller
Recipient: unovis
Author: miss_violet_hunter
Verse: ACD canon / Granada
Characters/Pairings: Holmes/Watson, Mrs. Hudson & Sherlock Holmes
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Summary: A midnight caller wants to see Mr. Holmes. Mrs. Hudson has not had to wake him recently.



Mrs. Hudson jars awake at the first ring of the bell. She lies in the darkness with the bedclothes clutched around her, heart beating faster. The high small window is open. Even so the atmosphere is close, warm as breath.

She is groping for her dressing gown when there is a sharp rap at her bedroom door.

“Just a moment,” she says, tying the belt and fumbling for the doorknob. She can barely make out Billy’s silhouette, shifting from foot to foot.

“Man to see Mr. Holmes,” he says, voice hushed. “Says they’ve got a chance to nab the man before he kills again, but it’ll have to be quick.”

“Let him in,” Mrs. Hudson says wearily. “Don’t show him up. I’ll wake Mr. Holmes.”

“What, leave him in the hall?”

“Yes, leave him in the hall—he’s knocking us all up out of bed at who-knows-when at night, he can wait a minute downstairs. Tell him,” she says firmly as Billy begins to protest, “that I am asking Mr. Holmes if he will oblige.” As if there is a chance that Mr. Holmes will not oblige.

“All right,” Billy says guardedly. Mrs. Hudson hitches up the hem of her dressing gown and starts upstairs.

----------

When Mr. Holmes came back from the dead—almost a year ago, now—Billy’s shout was her only warning. Then the man stepped into her kitchen.

Her spatula dropped from her hand to the stovetop. The next minutes were a blur of crying and clinging to Mr. Holmes in stupefaction, his hand resting light on her back. Then the acrid smell of burnt eggs reached them, and Mr. Holmes coughed, and she let him go.

They abandoned the smoky kitchen for tea in the stale sitting room upstairs.

“You’ll have the doctor back, of course,” she said. Mr. Holmes sipped his tea and raised his eyebrows a fraction. “Oh, Mr. Holmes, really.”

“I wouldn’t presume. He is quite occupied with his practice.”

“You haven’t asked him?” His face was studiously neutral as he swirled the remnants in his teacup. “You never came here first!”

“I must—”

“Shame on you, not telling him at once! I hope you’ve told your brother?”

He frowned. “I have.”

“Then go to Dr. Watson.”

“I—” he hesitated. Mrs. Hudson had not often seen him at a loss. Studying him, she registered how awful he looked, really—hair cropped unflatteringly short, purple shadows under his eyes. New lines carving his face. He met her gaze and grimaced.

“You can’t be avoiding him,” she said gently.

He looked back down at his teacup. “I am not.”

“My dear—” Mr. Holmes tilted the cup so that the dregs of his tea nearly reached the brim and righted it again.

Steeling herself, Mrs. Hudson stretched to touch his wrist. He looked up at her.

“I know,” she said. “But he’ll be so overjoyed to see you. So overjoyed.”

He swallowed and set down his cup. Her hand slipped away.

“I mean it,” she said.

Mr. Holmes stared at the table.

“You go and tell him right now, and you’ll feel worlds better.”

He glanced at the window facing Baker Street and gave her a strained smile. “I truly do have something I must tend to here. First.”

----------

The ludicrous wax bust, an incomprehensible plot on a dead man’s life. Mr. Holmes regained his characteristic vigor as he flung himself to the carpet and crawled on hands and knees to the armchair in demonstration.

“With these joints?” she protested. He sat back on his heels and looked uncertain for a moment. “Oh, don’t. I’ll do it, ridiculous man.”

Billy disappeared. She and Sally gave up looking for him and passed the afternoon dusting and airing the old rooms. At half-three Billy reappeared grinning, flush with the thrill of breaking the year’s choicest news to everyone he knew. Mrs. Hudson could not muster the indignation for a proper scolding before sending him back out to the tobacconist.

The window shattered. She retrieved a dustpan and threatened grievous consequences for any boy who would even think about coming up to a carpet studded with broken glass. She pocketed the bullet on the carpet and picked her way over to the bust. The hole was neatly defined in the wax forehead. She peered through the little tunnel that the bullet had cut into the wax, and shook her head.

Just as Mrs. Hudson had cleared away the last of the glass, an excited voice and two quick treads carried up the stairs. Mrs. Hudson had last seen Dr. Watson at the funeral of his wife, where his every step looked weighted. Now he nearly shone as he followed Mr. Holmes into the sitting room.

“It is exactly the same,” he said, marveling. His smile widened at the sight of her—“Oh, Mrs. Hudson!”

“Doctor,” she said, moving toward him. He had gained some weight and lost some color, and a little hair, but he grinned and nearly swept her off her feet with an embrace when she reached him.

“Can you believe it?” he asked, breathless.

“You know, I hardly can.” She aimed a pointed look at Mr. Holmes. He could not suppress his own thin, rare smile, and inclined his head in concession.

“I do believe it’s the most wonderful day of my life,” Dr. Watson said, and laughed.

Mrs. Hudson watched Mr. Holmes swallow and look away, toward the shot bust.

“Well, it is certainly extraordinary,” she said. Watson is running a hand along the edge a table with an expression of rapture as Mr. Holmes watches. “Who could have guessed.”

----------

Often a single ring of the bell rouses Mr. Holmes. Tonight the first floor is silent. Mrs. Hudson finds the sitting room unlocked, and when she lifts her candle, she can make out two empty bottles of wine amid the clutter on the dining table. She raises her eyebrows.

It’s not the first time she has come up herself to get Mr. Holmes. She used to send Billy up, but once, years ago, he tripped over the strap of a sailor’s bag in the dark bedroom and knocked his chin so hard he couldn’t eat the next morning, and Mr. Holmes would have none of it.

And—well. Things have changed this year.

Mrs. Hudson is no detective. Still, she tends to Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson’s every need, and she is no fool. She knows how much her tenants are eating, when they are poorly, when Mr. Holmes plays the same movement eight times on the violin. When he and the doctor are upset with one another.

How seldom they drink to excess. How often they lock the sitting room door.

She raps at Mr. Holmes’s bedroom door and waits, holding her breath. She listens to the same faint snoring. She hopes for 20 seconds.

Then she sighs, and opens the door halfway.

Despite the heat, the window is shut and the curtain drawn. Every shape in Mr. Holmes’s untidy bedroom throws shadows in the candlelight—his nightstand, desk, and chair are heaped with books and clothes, and a silk sleeve dangles from the armoire so full that the door won’t shut.

Two people are tangled in the bedsheets.

The back turned toward her is covered with a sheet, thank god, but the thick bare leg sticking out of the covers is certainly not Mr. Holmes’s, and that slack sleeping profile—

Mrs. Hudson sets a hand on the doorframe to steady herself. The candle gutters in her breath. She is wondering whether to close the door, to tell the frantic supplicant downstairs that it is no use, when Mr. Holmes stirs. He rolls his head, shifts a shoulder, freezes. He pushes up on an elbow.

Mr. Holmes’s face is more lined than before his three-year absence. His features sit deeper, his eyes in sharper relief. But as Mr. Holmes stares at her now in the candlelight, he strikes Mrs. Hudson as very young. His eyes are wide, and his jaw is slack. His chest rises and falls beneath his nightshirt.

Mrs. Hudson’s attempt at an even tone comes out a little breathless.

“There’s a client.” To look at Mr. Holmes she has to look over the doctor, snoring at his side. She fixes her gaze on Mr. Holmes’s shadowed face. “Says it’s terribly urgent, lives hang in the balance, and so on.” She swallows. “Will you see him?”

Motionless, Sherlock Holmes stares at her. Then his lips press into a line. His throat moves as he swallows.

“Mr. Holmes,” she hisses. “Do you—should I send him away?”

The man turns his head just a fraction. “No.”

She waits. She is hyperaware of the drape of the sheets, an edge tucked under the doctor’s hip, the hem caught on his knee. Their bodies turned toward each other.

“I’ll see him,” Mr. Holmes says finally, with a normality of tone that Mrs. Hudson clings to.

“Call down when you’re ready to see him, then,” she says briskly. “I mean, come to see him.” She turns and ducks back out before anything else can happen. The soft snap of the closing door takes her out of the terrible scene, and she leans against the frame a moment to take a shuddering breath and let it out.

That’s that, then.

Now she has to—well.

That’s that.

----------

Watson stirs as Holmes sits up and pushes away the sheet.

“There’s a client, old boy,” Holmes says.

“I didn’t hear the bell,” Watson says blearily. He pulls an arm over his eyes as Holmes lights a candle. Holmes throws a dressing gown at him. “For…. What time is it?”

“If you want to come along, go upstairs.” Watson groans. “For heaven’s sake, John.”

“Can I just stay here?” Watson says, but he is already sitting up. As Holmes ties his own dressing gown he watches the sheets trail off to expose Watson’s bare chest.

“I have no objection.”

Watson sighs and shifts his legs over the bed. “Well. Mrs. Hudson might.”

Holmes precedes Watson into the sitting room and makes for the door. Watson, more alert now, takes the stairs almost silently

Holmes waits with a hand on the doorknob until he hears the soft snap of Watson’s door.

“Send him up, if you would, Mrs. Hudson,” he calls. “If you would be so kind. Thank you.”