LITMIR.BIZ

      1917

      ‘You’ll not go back, Watson. do you hear?’ Sherlock draped himself blanket-like over John, head resting on his chest.

      ‘The army doesn’t need broken soldiers, dear boy.’ John brushed the hair from Sherlock’s face while slender fingers played with the bandages across John’s shoulder.

      Sherlock scrambled to his elbows, a scowl storming across his sharp features, the bedframe complaining.

      ‘They’re desperate now. They’ll take anyone. They’ll take you, too, the moment your bandages are off.’

      John burst into a hearty laugh.

      ‘Shall we run away then, my love? Hmm?’ He ran a hand down Sherlock’s neck.

      ‘Where to?’ Sherlock pouted like a child.

      ‘Norway. Let’s secrete ourselves in a fjord and solve cases of stolen sheep and burgled brunost.’

      Sherlock tapped along John’s ribs and with a grin of dark mischief wriggled down between his legs. His fingers followed after him, along chest, belly, twisting in fine hair, circling, fluttering, teasing fattening flesh.

      ‘Capital idea, Watson, but I’ve a fjord right here I’m aching to explore.’

      His fingers delved between John’s legs, stroking, pushing, begging admittance.

      With one hand still pressing and circling, Sherlock took John’s cock in the other, leant in to kiss the member’s leaking head and slid his grip along warm silky skin.

      John tipped his head back with a peaceful sigh. ‘You are truly brilliant, my boy.’

      1567

      I wrote a sonnet for my sweetheart. Such slender consideration he gives to my dabbles in the arts, but can conceive of none better in the art of love. Look here:

      Upon a dreary night of mud and rain

      My love and I by a hedgerow crouch down

      By foot and by steed our prey didst we gain

      In the cold mud there did our bodies drown

      Hark there, do you see?’ My love did proclaim

      ‘The footprints, look there, the blaze on his horse

      For theft of the jewels that man is to blame’

      ‘Then why,’ said I, ‘do we dwell in this gorse?’

      The inn door we did not hear clang shut

      ‘Fore the woman’s voice rung clear and said

      ‘Come out now, Sherlock Holmes, ’ere you I cut’

      ‘Dear John,’ my love said, ‘I fear I’m misled’

      I did not, could not, think of my love less

      When he bowed low and said, ‘Long live Queen Bess’

      He tells me I should not bestrew his errors about the city, but Her Majesty – desiring it to be known she outwitted Sir Sherlock Holmes – insists.

      Deny it he will but he preens like a proud cock to see his name in print. I am determined to publish with all speed in The Foreshore Pamphlet and sign it: To My Beau.

      1895

      A slow drip of heavy drops fell from the hothouse ceiling onto the two men below.

      ‘I hardly expected it to happen like this,’ Watson whispered, a hair’s breadth from Holmes’s mouth.

      ‘You’ve been imagining it?’

      ‘Oh, yes. On the rooftops of the city, breathless after a chase. At the foot of our own stairs at Baker Street, breathless after a chase. In the back of a cab–’

      ‘Breathless after a chase? I detect a pattern to these whimsies of yours, John.’

      ‘Hardly fanciful. We spend half our days out of breath at the heels of some nefarious criminal.’

      ‘True. Oh!’ Holmes beamed as a giant swallowtail fluttered by.

      ‘You shine, you know, when you’re on a case. You’re like a beacon.’

      ‘So I recall from your sensational accounts of our adventures. I didn’t imagine us to be breathless.’

      ‘Ho ho! You’ve been imagining too?’

      Holmes leaned in and brushed his lips against John’s.

      ‘Of course, though not so adventurous as you. At home, in our own rooms. A fire lit, a pot of tea. A pipe for me, a brandy for you. Comfortable, warm.’

      ‘You old sop. And you accuse me of being a romantic.’

      ‘Hardly, my dear. If I were I’d have thought of this sooner.’

      And they kissed for the very seventh time surrounded by orchids and butterflies.

      47 BCE

      ‘Gaius Arturus, welcome.’

      The man hesitated in the darkened doorway.

      ‘Enter. Despite rumours there are no vengeful spirits here, I’ve not angered the gods. It is impossible to anger something that doesn’t exist.’

      Gaius gasped, horrified. He staggered out and ran back down the road.

      Soft footsteps entered the dark room, a bowl of fresh berries was clunked onto the table.

      ‘Who was that?’

      A languid hand flapped, barely illuminated by the light from the doorway.

      ‘Pah, no one. A ghost, Johannes.’

      Johannes tutted and fussed, opening up the shuttered window. ‘That better not have been a client. We’re down to our last five sestertii.’

      He turned around. ‘Oh for– It’s high noon, put some clothes on. You’re indecent,’ he said, with absolutely no conviction.

      An utterly bare Sherlock rolled over on his couch. One bent leg slowly followed the other to expose everything to Johannes.

      ‘First, that man has lost his prized fighting dog – I’d rather help a murderer.

      ‘Second, I have a denarius or two squirrelled away, and third,’ Sherlock ran his fingers in an airy light pitter patter from hips to collarbones, ‘my clothes are itchy.’

      Johannes drew closer, pulled by an invisible thread.

      ‘And to think you Romans call us uncivilised.’

      Sherlock’s face split into an enormous grin. ‘Then what are you waiting for? Invade me, you barbarian.’

      2017

      ‘We can’t loiter inside a sculpture all day, Sherlock.’

      ‘…and

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