Work Text:
Sherlock Holmes was of two minds about 221B Baker Street. Until recently the Sherlock Holmes Museum, before that just another flat let out to Londoners of modest means, and before that Holmes’s home, he returned two hundred years later to find everything just about where he’d left it. He’d moved back in, because he appreciated the familiarity after having been so unceremoniously revived in another era, and because New Scotland Yard had cleaned it out and prepared it especially for him.
And it was a kind gesture, and he did enjoy being back again in the place that held so many fond memories. But against the cacophony of twenty-second century life outside— the thrumming of machinery that rattled the old floorboards, the searing LED lights that always managed to spill from between the drawn curtains and bathe the room in slices of mock-daylight, the inescapable chemical tang of the smog-infused air— it felt fragile, not so much a time capsule as a mistake that could be brushed away as easily as a cobweb.
And the outside, the overstimulation of twenty-second century life, sat oddly well with Holmes, chronically understimulated as he had always been in the Victorian era. But at times, even he needed a quiet refuge. Watson’s companionship made it feel a little less like that refuge could crumble beneath his feet at any moment. Watson’s ability to distract Holmes with affection, even more so.
He didn’t know exactly how much Inspector Lestrade had induced Watson to read, to form the persona of his old partner. But whether informed directly or indirectly, he was as eager to please as he ever was. Aside from a mouth, though, he didn’t exactly have the obvious equipment one would expect for such a task. It had never entirely sat right with Holmes to receive pleasure without giving anything in return, and it sat even less so under the present circumstances. This Watson didn’t have a wife, or a medical practice, or really very much at all outside of 221B, except for his duties to Inspector Lestrade. So while there may not have been the obvious routes of giving him reciprocation, Holmes was unbothered by having to seek out some less-than-obvious ones.
Kneeling in front of Watson’s chair, he was able to open a panel, and through trial and error had found some switches to tamper with that had some very entertaining effects. It seemed unwise to design a law enforcement robot that be so easily exploited, but Holmes was in no position to complain.
“Holmes- I- Ah!”
He would have happily drawn Watson’s pleasure out as long as he physically could, for his companion had no limit of stamina to reach himself, but they were at that moment interrupted by a chime going off within Watson’s chest that heralded a call from the Yard.
“Watson. We’re wanted in Chief Gregson’s office, stat.” Lestrade’s voice came through the speaker, making Watson’s chest buzz slightly in resonance with it. There was a beat, as Holmes slid off Watson, and Lestrade seemed to hear it.
“Wait, are you two— ugh, again?!”
“Indeed, Lestrade. On a regular basis,” Holmes quipped. No point in being coy about it, when the Inspector’s constant line of communication with Watson had clued her in on their little trysts almost immediately after they’d started.
“Should I tag along?” Holmes directed the question at the speaker.
“No, it’s not a case. Just the Yard still on mine about ‘illegally modifying a Compudroid.’ Not that they’re going to reset him or anything,” she hastened to add. “They just need to make sure he’s still performing up to standards, even if he acts like a nineteenth-century doctor.”
“The brutes! As I’ve explained many times, there’s nothing faulty in my programming.”
“Yeah, it’s a whole procedure,” Lestrade said, more explaining to Holmes than addressing Watson. “Shouldn’t be too much longer until they get off our backs, through. Just one or two more follow-ups and a lot of paperwork.”
Holmes slid off Watson fully, standing and giving him a nod. “Well then, you’d best be on your way, my dear Watson. Wouldn’t want to give the Yard reason to think you’re anything less than a faithful steward of the law.”
Watson put his coat and hat back on, Holmes offered him a kiss on the cheek for his trouble, and he left, granting a few moments of silence to the flat. It was much rarer now than it had been in what Holmes still thought of as ‘his own time’, to have a stretch of time to himself.
For a few minutes, he puttered around the living room, picked up a book and threw it down again moments later, played a bit on his “violin”— ragtime, as he was making his way through musical history as it had elapsed since his death. It wasn’t holding his interest at the moment. He was restless, fitful.
He stood, tossed his instrument onto his seat, and made his way to the bedroom. A chain hanging form the ceiling pulled down the stairs to the attic, releasing a puff of warm, dusty air into the space below. And Holmes ascended, hungrily.
The attic was filled to bursting; it was a wonder the ceiling below didn’t sag under its weight. Some of the clutter was display cases and digital monitors from 221B's long intermission as a museum (a museum to Sherlock Holmes— the thought still sat uncomfortably in his chest. It brought him some consolation that the place had been financially struggling for decades, and it eased his conscience to know New Scotland Yard was paying the kindly old curator a hefty sum for Holmes's lodgings.) The rest, farther back and coated in thicker layers of dust, belonged to him— no, to the two of them. Old private possessions, years worth of journals and correspondences, paper carefully protected but still yellowing with age. The trunk where Holmes had stuffed his messy records of the very first cases he ever took, now coming apart at the edges where wood met metal.
Then there was the filing cabinet, recognizably an object of neither his time nor the present. Even half-buried under a set of tattered table linens and boxes of china, it stood out from the rest. It must have been brought in for the specific purpose of holding the many letters that had no other home. The intimate correspondences, the ones Holmes had secreted away in false drawers and seams in the floor in his post-retirement cottage, knowing their contents, if discovered by a third set of eyes, would bring both men to ruin.
When first he'd found those letters again, unceremoniously unfolded, shoved into plastic sleeves, pored over and then forgotten again— he'd damn near cried. It was a senseless thing to cry over. But it was a senseless thing to find. This whole thing, this archive, was senseless.
He'd quarreled with Watson about the little adventure books he wrote. It really only came to verbal blows when Holmes was on edge for other reasons, a paucity of intellectual stimulation or psychoactive substances. But it always stuck in his craw. Watson taking what Holmes had always imagined as the subject of lecture, example cases he would use to teach the art of deduction, and turning them into novels.
The kernel of bitter resentment at his heart hadn't abated when he'd awoken in the twenty-second century. Suddenly he had a legacy, and it was all Watson's doing. Who did he have to blame but himself, really? He'd never taught those lectures he was always talking about. He'd had every opportunity to tell Watson he couldn't publish his stories anymore. He would have respected such a request, Holmes knew he would have. But it made him so damned happy.
And now here he was. Resurrected from the dead because people knew his name two hundred years later. The only reason people knew his name two hundred years later was Dr. John Watson, and yet he remained stubbornly dead.
He opened a drawer, and pulled out the first of the letter, preserved in its plastic sleeve. And he spent the afternoon reading them over again, letter by letter and year by year, as their handwriting grew shakier with each year that passed.
It must have been hours later when he heard the door opening downstairs. The light outside had turned to a hazy orange; somewhere behind the smog, the sun was sinking toward the horizon. Watson's footsteps were distinctive; he weighed much more than a human being of the same size, and the old floorboards made their complaints known.
"Holmes?"
He was calling from the bottom of the steps, unable to ascend them himself. That was just as well; as fond as Holmes was of him, he liked to have a bit of privacy from time to time.
"Yes, yes, I'll be right down," he replied. "I got absorbed in some reading, that's all.
"Your meeting went well enough, I trust?" Holmes said, descending the steps.
"Yes, well enough," Watson said with a bit of a mope. "But they’re always exhausting."
"Then I suppose a quiet night in is just what the doctor ordered."
Nestled against Watson in front of the crackling fire, he thought of the day he'd moved back in to 221B, and Watson had come with him. Lestrade had given him a sidelong glance, something apprehensive, unsure for the first time if her pet project of reanimating Sherlock Holmes actually had brought him back with all his faculties intact.
She'd pulled him aside, and, one hand to her face to shield her question from eavesdroppers, said "You know he's not the real Watson, right?"
What a thing to ask. Of course his robotic companion wasn't the “real Watson.” What difference did it make? Holmes didn't much feel like the “real Holmes.” Whoever that was.
“Nonetheless,” he’d simply said, “he is my partner.”