Chapter 22

Charles goes to Piper’s apartment that afternoon to talk to Piper about Lu’s book offer. He rings the buzzer and waits.

“Hello?” a voice crackles over the intercom.

“Hi, Piper. It’s Charles. Can I come up?”

“Oh. Yeah. Sure.”

Charles goes upstairs. It’s the first time he’s been in the apartment since just after Piper hired Julian. The 221B Baker Street decor is still present, but the living room is littered with anachronistic intrusions from the present day that hadn’t been there before: a pile of student papers, a program from Schenley’s production of Romeo and Juliet, an empty Cheetos bag. A pair of purple socks is crumpled pitifully in front of the false fireplace.

“It’s a bit messy,” Piper says, flapping an arm at the kitchen, in which Charles glimpses a stack of unwashed bowls and an overflowing recycling bin. “Sorry.”

“Is Lu the tidy one?”

“God, no.” Piper laughs. “I’m just better at cleaning up when there’s someone to see it.”

They sit down in an armchair and fall silent. Charles notices that the slipper full of tobacco has tipped over, scattering dark bits onto the mantle. Piper bites a fingernail.

“You didn’t tell us about the book deal,” Charles says finally. He keeps his voice mild, even gentle.

Piper looks down. “Oh, shit. Yeah. I—sorry about that.”

Charles waits.

“I really didn’t think it was relevant. Only Isabel and I knew.”

“You couldn’t have known that for sure.”

“No.” Piper bites another fingernail.

“Well,” Charles says, sensing that it’ll be kindest to take the circular route, “what was it, exactly? Isabel said something about it not being an academic press?”

“Right. It’s this commercial press that does sort of pop scholarly stuff, Marxism in the movies, essays about Buffy and monster theory, stuff like that. They want to add a book on fic to their list—who writes it, why, what it has to do with sex and gender and things. Lu’s angle in the diss has to do with contemporary sexual politics, like around consent and violence, so that would be in there too.”

“That sounds pretty intense for commercial publishing.”

“Well, it would be much more basic than her dissertation. That’s part of why Isabel doesn’t want her to do it.”

“Because it’ll be, what, dumbed down?”

Piper winces a little. “Lu doesn’t like that term. It’s not dumbed down, just accessible to a different audience. That’s what she says.”

“But not Isabel.”

“No.” Piper fidgets. “Isabel wants her to save the stuff from the diss for a scholarly book. She thinks if Lu uses too much of it for this book she won’t be able to publish it again, and that means she won’t be as competitive for jobs because she won’t be able to use that writing to get tenure later on.”

“Is that true?”

“Probably.” Piper shrugs. “It’s a little hard to know how academics will react to ‘public-facing work.’ That’s what we call things like this. If the fic book is a bestseller, it might help Lu. But she does need published journal articles and stuff too.”

Charles nods slowly. “Was Lu leaning towards saying no, then?”

Piper shifts a little uncomfortably. “She really wanted to say yes, actually. It’s just that Isabel was really pushing her on it.” They pause. “It was…hard for Lu. She and Isabel are close. It’s sort of the first disagreement they’ve had since she became Lu’s dissertation chair.”

“It’s hard to disappoint Isabel, isn’t it? For all of you.”

“Well.” Piper goes quiet. “I suppose so.”

There’s something in Piper’s voice when they talk about Isabel, some note that Charles can’t quite place. A kind of wanting, he thinks, but what kind? It might be envy, but envy of what exactly? Desire? Desire for what?

“Lu and Isabel,” he says, putting just the hint of a question mark into the words.

Piper rubs their face. “Yes?”

Charles thinks for a second. “What did you think about their disagreement about the book?”

For a long moment Piper picks at a loose thread on the arm of the chair, a dark maroon thread that seems like it might unravel the whole padded seat if Piper pulls too hard.

“I felt less sympathetic than I should have. Lu was pretty broken up about having to choose between the book and Isabel. I…took her side. Told her Isabel was wrong.”

It sounds like an admission of guilt. Charles presses. “How was that?”

“Good,” Piper says. The word sounds hard to say. They’re not meeting his eyes anymore. “It felt good. She and Isabel are just—they have this—this thing, this…” Piper sighs. “Lu always hears everything first, always knows everything first. She’s Isabel’s favorite. And I just…” They sound bitter when they say, “I just get jealous.”

That’s the wanting in their voice, then: jealousy. Wanting to be that person, the one Isabel confides in.

“I’m glad that she and Lu are close,” Piper adds quickly. “I mean, it’s great for Lu and it totally makes sense, their interests are much more similar, and Lu is—she’s—really good at that stuff.”

“What stuff?”

“People.” Piper shakes their head. “She’s charming. And, like, she has the talent to back it up! She’s really smart and creative and it is true that what she’s doing is amazing, it’s just—I can’t—she’s able to show that to people. Better than I am.”

Charles nods. He remembers feeling something similar, when he was younger, before the newspaper job and before his anti-anxiety medication. I’m great too! he used to protest in his head. You just can’t see it!

“Is that how she got the book deal?” Charles asks, on a hunch. “By being charming?”

Piper nods. “I mean. It’ll be a great book. If she does it. But yeah, she just—she was at a fan studies conference and went for drinks with some people and one of them turned out to work for this publishing company and they got drunk on jalapeño margaritas and spent half the night coming up with silly ideas about books Lu could write if she had the time. The Aesthetics of Anal Fingering, stuff like that. And then in the morning, when both of them were super hungover, the person asked her at breakfast if she’d actually want to write a book for the press.”

“Ah,” says Charles.

There’s an unhappy silence.

“Isabel,” Piper says suddenly. “It—look, I know I should have told you about the book. I just…” They rub their face. “It’s hard to explain.”

“That’s okay,” says Charles. “I don’t mind.”

Piper sighs. “I do this thing,” they say quietly. They look down at their hands. “It probably sounds weirder than it is.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s not—I mean, I don’t actually do anything. I just. People are…sometimes I feel like people are…sort of…characters? Like I just—I imagine them, usually when I first meet them, almost as if they’re from a book. That’s not—that’s not exactly what it is, but. They take on this sort of quality—this sort of—” They bite at their lip. “Almost a sort of mythical quality.”

“Ah,” says Charles softly.

“And I get sort of…caught up in them. Not them—the version of them in my head.”

“Yes.”

“And I just think about them a lot. All the time, really. I imagine they’re—I imagine they’re looking through my eyes and seeing what I see. Seeing my life. And I…they just feel—god. I don’t know, just—there’s this pull, this affective pull I feel towards them…” Piper looks embarrassed. “I can’t—look, it’s not everyone. Just. Sometimes. Especially if that person is, well. Queer. Somehow.” Piper worries at a hangnail. They’re not meeting Charles’ eyes. “Isabel,” they say, and then stop. “Isabel’s like that.”

There’s a long silence. Piper looks unhappy. But Charles’ stomach is twisting and turning, doing leaps as if it’s on a roller coaster. His heartbeat has sped up. He swallows, hard.

“I might, uh. Get what you mean.”

Piper’s gaze flicks to his and then away. “Yeah?” They sound wary.

“Yeah, I—” Charles takes a deep breath. Julian, Julian, Julian, he thinks, again and again, THAT’S HOW I FEEL ABOUT JULIAN, and he wants to shout it, to confess, but—but he’s thinking about Julian and he’s here for Julian and what Julian wants is for him to find out more about Piper and the book and he needs to stay on track, so: “Tell me about Isabel?”

“Well.” Piper hesitates. “She’s sort of—she’s got this sort of—aura about her. I don’t know, you might have felt it, you might not, she’s been so prickly about you and Julian so I don’t know if you’d have gotten a real sense of what she’s like—but—she just…she’s brilliant, you know? And totally scattered, sort of chaotic all the time, like—her hair, you know? There’s so much of it. It’s always just on the edge of being a total mess. And you have to text her when she’s late for meetings because she probably got caught up in something else and forgot. But! But then, all the stuff with the department, with Pace, and she’s—she’s, like, razor-sharp. She just goes into this mode and everyone shuts the fuck up and listens. And there’s this sense…you just want to impress her. Want her to confide in you. Because she’s leading this thing, this effort to make academia more open and exciting and creative and queer and you just—want to be part of that. But also you want to be part of it because of her. Want her to trust you, to—to text you when something happens, want her to shoot a meaningful glance at you across the room when you hear important news. You just want her to see you. Because she’s this—she’s like Gandalf, she’s like a fucking mythical figure, you know?”

Charles listens with absolute attention, making sure he doesn’t miss a word over the ringing in his head. Alarms are going off in his brain: JULIAN JULIAN JULIAN.

“It’s…” Piper swallows. “It’s a lot. I know it’s a lot. And I just can’t help but feel like my feeling this way is not exactly…” They flush. “Appropriate.”

“I.” Charles clears his throat. He tries to marshal his expression. He has no idea if he looks as crazed as he feels. Steady, he tells himself. “I think, uh. It actually makes a lot of sense.”

The wariness returns to Piper’s face. “Really?”

Charles clears his throat again. His throat feels too tight to speak. He opens his mouth and what comes out is entirely beyond his control. “I kissed Julian.”

For a second Piper doesn’t speak. Then: “What?”

“I kissed him,” Charles says in a rush. “We kissed each other. More than once.”

Piper blinks. Their eyebrows have shot way up. “When?”

“Recently. Uh. the first time was about a week ago.”

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah. Uh.”

“Oh my god. How long have you been working for him?”

Charles smiles shakily. “Since a few days before you showed up at his office.”

Piper’s eyes widen. “Seriously? I thought you’d known each other for a lot longer than that.”

“Well.” It’s Charles’ turn to look down at his lap. “I sort of have. He…he was in this TV show. Young Sherlock. When I was a kid. I was pretty much obsessed with it.”

Piper shakes their head. “Shit. Uh…does he know about that?”

“No.”

A pause. “Wow.”

“Yeah. He seems to not like people talking about it. So I never mentioned it. But like…I had his poster on my wall.”

“Fuck,” Piper breathes.

“Yes. So. I—the kissing.” Charles’ face is very hot. “I can’t tell if it’s—if it’s because—”

“Because you loved the TV version of him as a kid.”

“Right!” Charles hesitates, then adds in a rush: “Plus it’s the first time I’ve ever kissed a man. Maybe the first time I’ve ever wanted to? I don’t know. I don’t know! But. Now I’m thinking, like—could that be enough—the childhood detective stuff, is that enough to—to make me think that I—actually want to kiss him? But maybe I don’t? And it’ll just…wear off eventually?”

Piper stands up, rubbing their face distractedly as they pace to the window. “Holy shit.” They stare out at the brick wall opposite and say, “You’re in a fic. You’re in a Sherlock Holmes fic.”

Charles laughs a little. “I know.”

Piper whirls back around to face him. “This is absurd.”

“I know. I’ve read Lu’s stuff.”

“On Archive of Our Own?”

“Yeah.”

“Holy shit.” Piper sinks back down into the armchair.

“It’s just…” Charles hesitates. “What you were saying. About the way you make people into sort of mythical characters. How do you know…how do you know what’s real?”

“Oh.” Piper pauses, thinking. “I guess…I guess I don’t really care. I don’t really believe in ‘authenticity’ anyway.”

Charles lets this sink in. “But what if—if you get to know that person, say, and they’re not the way you imagined. Isn’t it, like…crushingly disappointing?”

Piper lets out a startled burst of a laugh. “Pretty much.” They shrug. “It’s worth it.”

“Yeah?”

They nod. “Although…I mean…it does hurt. Not even just the disappointment. Before that. The…wanting. If that makes sense.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it does.” Charles is quiet for a moment. “Do you think I could do that? Sort of—subconsciously manufacture an attraction to men because of some made-up idea of a detective I was obsessed with as a kid?”

Piper doesn’t answer right away. Eventually, they say, slowly, “I think most people would say no. That’s not how we like to think about queerness, or being bi—like, I’m supposed to tell you that you can be bi for a long time without realizing it, but now you are realizing it and you’ve always been bi and…and that could totally be true! Totally. But the possibility that you might sort of…temporarily feel this attraction that’s a kind of overflow of that intense fannish devotion to the Julian you remember as a kid…” They shrug. “It actually sounds possible to me.”

Charles’ stomach plummets. “Oh.”

“But,” Piper adds, “but that doesn’t mean—that doesn’t mean it’s, like, fake? Or dumb, or…like, if you feel attracted to him, that’s not—that’s real, even if it’s not…even if it’s because of some complicated thing happening in your head. Even if you’re not sure why you’re attracted to him, or how serious it is, it’s still real. I mean, if you like kissing him, you like kissing him.” Piper tilts their head. “Do you like kissing him?”

Charles nods.

“It seems to me that the question is, will this last. And also, maybe…how would it affect him if it didn’t?”

“Yeah,” Charles whispers. “Yes. What if I’m really fucking this up—what if I, I get to know him, the real him, and stop thinking of him as this mostly made-up persona, and I just…stop wanting him like that? And he feels like I’ve been lying, like I’ve been stringing him along—like I don’t really like him, just that made-up persona?”

Piper blows out a breath. “Yeah. I don’t know. I’m sorry, I…I’m either a really good person to ask or a really bad person to ask, I’m not sure which. I wish I could just be like, you’ve just realized you’re bi, congratulations! But…desire is so so complicated.”

“Right.” Charles swallows. He feels small. He looks down, trying not to show Piper the miserable expression he knows has just stolen across his face.

“Here’s a thing, though,” Piper says suddenly. “What do you want it to be?”

“What do you mean?”

“If you got to choose. Whether your attraction to Julian was some sort of fluke that will go away, or if you really do want him in a more serious and long-term kind of way?”

“I want to really want him,” Charles says immediately, and then his mouth falls open. He feels dumbstruck. “I…I didn’t know that.”

“It’s probably a good thing to know.”

Piper smiles at him. Their eyes meet, finally, and stay on each other.

“I get it about Isabel,” Charles says softly. “And about Lu, I think. You want to be the one Isabel admires most.”

Piper nods. “It’s really stupid.”

“Maybe. But I get it.”

Piper reaches out, across the gap between their Victorian armchairs, and rests a hand on Charles’ hand. “You’re a Watson,” they say. “That’s why you get it.”

Charles nods.

“So am I. I’m Lu’s Watson. I want to be her Watson, you know. But it’s hard to be the sidekick sometimes.”

Charles nods again.

“Do you want—” Piper bites their lip, then continues: “Do you want to try on the clothes?” Seeing Charles’ confusion, they add, “My Watson clothes. For when Lu and I dress up.”

“Oh,” Charles says. “Oh, I—that’s okay, I—”

There’s a pause.

“Yeah,” Charles says. “Yeah, I do.”

The clothes don’t really fit. Not physically, that is. Charles is too tall. He abandons the trousers because they won’t close around his waist and rise inches above his ankles. He slides into one of the bigger jackets, though, and it doesn’t really matter that it shows his wrists, just as it doesn’t matter that he doesn’t know what to do with the collar and cravat and Piper has to fix them for him. They stand close to him and their fingers adjust the fabric, brushing against Charles’ neck in the process. Charles swallows. One Watson dressing another. The intimacy is peculiar, and palpable.

Piper steps back. “Well,” they say quietly. “Shall we?”

Charles nods. He feels unaccountably nervous, like he is about to step onstage.

The sitting room seems oddly hushed when they return to it. Piper quickly clears the out-of-place papers and socks and theatre program, hiding them away in the kitchen. They set the slipper upright again, brushing the tobacco back inside. Charles stands on the carpet, watching them.

“Sit,” Piper says. They gesture to their usual armchair.

Charles hesitates. “Are you sure?”

“Sit.”

Charles does. Piper goes to the mantle and picks up a dark wooden pipe. They hold it out. Charles takes it carefully, as if it’s very fragile, and holds it in his hand.

“Dr. Watson,” Piper says quietly.

Charles looks at the pipe in his hand. He looks at the Persian slipper full of tobacco, and the letters speared by a pen-knife, and the stack of Victorian medical journals. He looks at the empty armchair to his left, and without conscious intent imagines it occupied by a Sherlock Holmes with pale hair and long thin fingers and a tiny crooked smile as familiar as Charles’ own.

He looks at Piper. Piper is looking at the empty armchair, too. The Sherlock Holmes they are picturing, Charles thinks, is shorter and smaller, with sparkling hazel eyes.

“You must miss her so much,” he says suddenly.

Piper’s eyes fill immediately. “Yes,” they say. The tears brim, just on the edge of overflowing, making Piper’s dark eyes shine. “More than I can say.”