Chapter 9
Piper leaves. Once they’re gone, pulling the door firmly shut behind them, Charles looks at Julian expectantly. Another Sherlock Holmes reference; Julian wasn’t very pleased about the last one. Charles isn’t exactly pleased either—the implied threat in the five pips is a sobering development—but despite himself a slow churn of excitement has started up in his stomach. For a long moment, the detective remains silent. It’s strange for Charles to see him like this, mute and still while in the midst of an investigation; on Young Sherlock, he was always chattering as he worked. He usually whipped out a magnifying glass, too. It’s now occurring to Charles that probably that was just for show.
“I want to search this room,” Julian says abruptly. “All of it.”
“For…clues?” Charles asks, and then flushes, embarrassed. Clues. He sounds like he’s still eleven.
A frown flickers across Julian’s face, but then he nods. “Yes. Normally, I’d consider that overkill, but…” He sighs. “There’s something odd about all of this. Ashes down the sink, a threatening message, a misleading plane ticket. It’s all so…” He shakes his head.
“Amateur?” Charles ventures. He gestures to the locker. “That wasn’t very, I don’t know, sophisticated. And maybe we shouldn’t have been able to find out that Lu hadn’t gotten on the plane, but you found the ticket on Piper’s computer pretty easily.”
Julian looks at Charles sharply, making sudden and unexpected direct eye contact. “Amateur. Interesting. That isn’t what I was going to say. But you’re right. And yet…” He taps his fingers against the nearby table. “It’s overcomplicated, too. Unnecessary. Why burn some piece of paper and rinse the ashes down the sink? Why not just throw it away or flush it down the toilet? Why buy a plane ticket at all if you’re not going to use it?” A sort of fizzling energy seems to radiate off Julian, and Charles finds himself getting a little transfixed.
Julian sighs, then mutters, “It’s as if someone’s read too many detective stories.”
Charles swallows, feeling a flutter of guilt. It’s not like that doesn’t describe him.
“The point is, I don’t trust whoever is behind this—Lu, someone else, both of them together—not to have hidden things in absurd places. Secret documents under the couch cushions, messages in the coffee grounds. I don’t know.” He sounds annoyed. “Normally, people aren’t that sneaky. But here…”
“So, we search,” Charles says.
Julian nods grimly. “We search.”
For the first thirty or so seconds, Charles feels foolish. He pokes around in the mug on the table, shifting pens and condiments, unsure what he’s looking for. But then Julian gets down on his hands and knees and ducks under the table, and Charles feels a jump of excitement in his chest.
They very politely and methodically ransack the room. Charles pours out the cup of pens and peers inside, then replaces all the pens and returns the cup to its proper place; Julian slides his hands along the underside of the table before turning the chairs upside down and doing the same with them, then pushes them neatly back in. They remove and replace couch cushions, shift a trash can and root through a recycling bin and look inside an old cooler that turns out to contain an unopened jug of apple juice and several cans of beer. They open all the cabinet doors and pull out a peculiar assortment of mismatched dishes and trays and a set of plastic cups printed with Scooby-Do characters, the one with Velma on it missing; they sift through a big cardboard box full of individual sugar packets.
“What the hell is this?” Charles asks, grinning, holding up a giant framed poster of a tree sloth.
Julian looks up, a startled laugh escaping his mouth. “Fine art, presumably. Check to see if there’s anything behind the print.”
A little bit breathless with exertion—Julian looks slightly flushed, too, pink spots delicately stretching over his pale cheeks—Charles undoes the clasps holding in the cheap cardboard backing and slips the poster carefully out of the glass. A piece of paper flutters to the ground.
Charles and Julian look at each other, electrified. Julian reaches for the paper and Charles watches in a kind of trance, holding his breath.
Julian inspects the paper. For a long moment, Charles can’t read his expression at all. He passes the paper to Charles, who stares at it, reading avidly.
“This is a receipt for six packets of gummy octopi.”
Julian nods, face still blank.
Charles watches him, trying hard to figure out what’s going on in his head. “Is that…important?”
“Hard to imagine it could be,” Julian says, then turns away, flipping through a couple pages of abandoned class notes. For a second, Charles doesn’t know what to do. Then he sees, as Julian bends his head, a grin starting at the corners of his mouth.
“Oh, shut up,” Charles says, all at once unable to stop smiling himself. “You’re the detective here. How do I know what’s important?”
“Basic common sense,” Julian answers, still paging through the notepaper in his hand.
His tone is mild, but Charles is sure he’s pulling his leg. He feels unbearably pleased.
“One last thing,” Julian says. “Help me look under the ceiling tiles.”
Charles blinks, then looks up. The ceiling is covered in those terrible grey speckled rectangles that lift right up if you push on them. “Okay,” he says. “Why not?”
They drag chairs across the room, poking up through the ceiling tiles one by one. Charles is perspiring slightly by now; hunting for clues is physically demanding, he thinks. Who knew? Julian is busy popping tiles up and sliding his hand underneath. His fingers are covered in dust. Charles’ are too. Hunting for clues, he thinks, under the ceiling tiles, and as they move the last few tiles, he’s pretty sure they won’t find anything, but it’s fun, god, and Julian has more color in his cheeks than Charles has seen since meeting him in person. He seems eons away from the stiff and silent man he’d been the morning before—his limbs are relaxed and graceful, and he looks confident and energized and like he can take on the world.
“Nothing,” he says, jumping gracefully off the chair. But he doesn’t look disappointed.
“What’s next?” Charles asks, feeling breathless and full of anticipation.
“Back to Long Street,” Julian says. “We’ll get that list from Piper and do some digging.”
Julian leads the way out of the room, and Charles pulls the door firmly shut behind them. Maybe it’s Julian’s words from before still echoing in his head—It’s as if someone has read too many detective stories—but Charles feels as though he’s in a film or something as they walk up the stairs, back into the first-floor entrance hall of the humanities building, and out into the cold. Down the slope, around the sciences building, out past the student center and onto the sidewalk just off campus, they stride almost in sync, legs propelling them forward and energy crackling between them. Each glance Charles takes around him crystallizes into sharp bright images like a camera focusing in: the brown-gray branches of a tree stark against the sky; a red Solo cup crushed in someone’s yard, lying in a patch of dirty snow; a young woman wrapping a black-and-gold scarf tighter around her neck as she laughs at something her friend is saying to her. And Julian, beside him. Julian, long arms dangling at his sides, long legs pacing evenly down the sidewalk, pale nose pink, pale eyes intense and focused somewhere far away. His grey coat doesn’t quite fit him right—too short in the sleeves, too bunched in the shoulders—and Charles notes the smudges on his boots, scuffs and nicks from long wear. He soaks in every detail, absorbing it greedily, needing to note it down, to remember it. Then Julian catches his eye and both of them grin, the spontaneous, delighted grin of children whose schemes are panning out beautifully.
They turn a corner onto the street where Julian’s car is parked and, as one, swing open the doors and slide into the seats, movie-slick, in tandem, the editing perfect and the music building towards exhilaration as they turn to each other—
—and then they are kissing.
It’s a movie kiss in that it happens suddenly, without warning, so improbably it’s as if it’s been scripted; it’s not a movie kiss in that it’s a mess, not camera-ready at all, not soft-edged and golden but full of spit and awkward teeth and colliding noses. It’s easily one of the worst kisses Charles has ever had, and at the same time unquestionably one of the best.
Charles never stops thinking and at the moment the words running through his head are something along the lines of holy fuck Julian Ellsworth oh shit I just bit his lip sorry Julian I wonder if anyone can see us he’s so clean-shaven but I can still feel his stubble I wonder if it will leave a mark mine didn’t when I’d kiss Hailey she always seemed fine but she never mentioned it why are you thinking of her now? think of Julian oh my god Julian but mostly his body is taking over, hands gripping Julian’s shoulders, mouth opening for Julian’s tongue, heart pounding and blood rushing in his ears. Mostly he is just kissing Julian, just kissing and kissing and kissing and it feels so unreal, so impossible, and Charles is grateful when their teeth bump or bite because that means this is happening. That Charles still has a body. Then again he can’t tell if he’s all body or his body is floating away—Julian Ellsworth—
They break apart, gasping. Both of them sit back heavily against their seats, staring straight ahead as they regain their breath. The blood in Charles’ ears sounds like crashing waves. He feels like he’s nearly drowned, like he’s still fighting to kick upwards and out and onto dry land. What the hell, he thinks hazily, was that?
Julian starts the car. Charles’ eyes flick to his face for a split second—flushed cheeks, tousled hair, eyes glassy with shock—and then away, skittering quickly to the view outside the passenger window, a view that doesn’t send his stomach twisting in dizzy somersaults. It seems possible that he might vomit; it also seems possible he might start grinning wildly and never stop. Get a grip, Charles Shelley, he tells himself, as a rush of what might be terror and might be triumph spike through his body.
They drive away from campus, up onto 5th Avenue past the Cathedral of Learning, out of Oakland, and still they say nothing. As Charles’ shock ebbs away, he’s growing more conscious of Julian next to him, of the intensity of his silence, of the myriad thoughts that might be rushing through his brain. Charles has no idea what any of those thoughts might be. He is dimly aware that his ignorance on that front is gradually becoming frightening—he can see the fear coming as if from a long way off.
Then Charles’ phone beeps. Both men jump.
It’s a text message from Piper: Hi, Charles. I’ve just emailed you the list of people I think you and Julian should talk to. And you asked for Lu’s info for her fic account. Her screen name is lufairchild and she posts on Archive of Our Own (https://archiveofourown.org/users/lufairchild). It seems to Charles as if he had asked them for Lu’s screen name ages ago. But he grabs onto it now like a life preserver.
“It’s Piper,” he says, uncomfortably aware of how strange his voice sounds as it breaks the silence. “They sent me Lu’s screen name.”
Julian says nothing. Too late, Charles remembers that Julian wasn’t thrilled by the picture of Holmes and Watson kissing on Lu’s closet door, though possibly that was just an extension of his apparent disdain for excessive admiration of the fictional detective. He’d hoped that eventually he might be brave enough to ask why Julian is so opposed to Sherlock Holmes stories or the people who love them; that seems impossible now. Any thoughts of breaking the tension by narrating his perusal of Lu’s online presence to Julian dissipate, and after a long uncertain pause—Charles hopes Julian won’t be annoyed or think him rude—he clicks on the link in silence.
Lu’s profile appears. Charles casts another glance at Julian, whose eyes are fixed firmly on the road, and scrolls through her information. She’s been a member for three years, and most of her fics have Holmes and Watson listed as the primary relationship, though there are a few based on the NBC television show Hannibal. Charles looks for a shorter one, thinking he might start combing through them as a distraction on their drive back to Long Street.
It’s called “Kissing the Detective.”
Oh, he thinks, realization crashing down upon him. Oh, shit.
This is bad. This is very bad, and he is an idiot.
With a feeling of being unable to look away from a car wreck, he clicks the link. And once he starts reading, he can’t stop.
I must confess that I have not been entirely honest in my accounts of that great man, Sherlock Holmes, whose genius I have nonetheless endeavored with genuine alacrity to lay before the public. Readers in some far-distant and miraculous future will perhaps pardon me for my omissions and prevarications where they have occurred, understanding that in these dark ages at the latter end of the nineteenth century, certain acts and circumstances must be concealed if one is to avoid great peril to one’s reputation, well-being, and, indeed, one’s liberty. All of which is merely to say that when Mr. Holmes had finished examining the infamous murder room at Lauriston Gardens—the very first crime scene where I had the privilege of watching him work, as faithful readers will no doubt remember—and we had gone to Audley Court to hear the constable’s account of the crime, Holmes did not attend a Norman-Neruda concert, as I claim in A Study in Scarlet. He came back to Baker Street with me, and he kissed me for the first time.
It is impossible to describe the sensation of watching the detective at work, that day at Lauriston Gardens. I have written that “I was irresistibly reminded of a pure-blooded, well-trained foxhound as it dashes backwards and forwards through the covert,” and while this is accurate it is hardly comprehensive. He was like an incandescent bulb without the glass on, fiery and dangerous, burning so strong and bright that the rest of us seemed dull and dim, mere shadows gathered to gape at his brilliance. And, I will admit freely here and now, he set my blood on fire. There was something in watching him pull facts mysteriously from the mundane details of the world that made my body turn hot, then cold, then hot again—I wondered with a shiver what it would feel like to be the sole object of the man’s scrutiny. What truths, what hidden secrets and desires would he find in my own depths to lay out, naked and raw, in the light of day?
Holmes was indeed angry as we left the constable’s house at Audley Court, having delivered a scathing pronouncement on the man’s lack of worth as an officer of the force, which I recorded faithfully in my account of the tale. Here, however, is where the truth diverges from the fiction. I have noted many times that Holmes, however cold and calculating he may often seem to be, is susceptible to flattery as regards his own genius, and this susceptibility increases tenfold when the flattery is freely and genuinely given, with no eye to personal gain; and when it is also offered in a voice rough with ill-concealed desire by a man whose talent for self-preservation seems to have deserted him in the mad joy at having stumbled into the sphere of Sherlock Holmes—well. Let us say that his anger vanished as quickly as it had come.
When we left the cab and climbed the steps of 221B, I confess I was frightened—frightened that I had given myself away, frightened that he could indeed see to the depths of my soul and did not like what he saw, frightened that he would throw me onto the street with a contemptuous word or, worse, send an accusatory telegram to his friends on the force—but, oh, I should have been afraid for an entirely different reason. Offering oneself up to Sherlock Holmes should not be undertaken lightly. It is not, strictly speaking, a safe endeavor.
He slammed me against the wall and crushed his mouth against mine. Immediately his tongue was between my lips, exploring my mouth and throat with the same fervor with which he had examined the ash and the footprints at Lauriston Gardens. His hands moved sure and swift against my chest, strong fingertips mapping my body; he was learning, no doubt, a thousand disparate details of my life, while I stood there pressed against the wall and fought simply to breathe.
His lips still moved hungrily against mine as his hand slipped downwards, breaching the waistband of my trousers, sliding un-gently through rough hair to where I was already stone, and I felt his cool skin against my
Charles puts down his phone. His heart is pounding. At some point, he had forgotten to keep breathing, and he tries now to suck in air without calling attention to himself. Julian’s eyes are still on the road, the tricky intersections and sharp turns, but Charles is afraid that he can sense, somehow, that his ears are red and his blood is racing.
Charles’ attraction to Julian ought to be confusing. He has never, in his conscious memory, thought of men in that way before. But after reading Lu’s story Charles is afraid that he understands it all too well. He is attracted to Julian because he is a detective. Because he is the physical embodiment of Charles’ childhood fantasy. Because he is not real.
The worlds you inhabit when you are ten or eleven or twelve are some of the most potent places that exist—or, rather, that don’t exist. The things you want then, when you are on the cusp of adulthood, in that confusing and difficult space between the dream-worlds of childhood and the reality of growing up, are the things you are always going to want, always, the things that lurk beneath whatever disappointment and disillusionment you face as your life steadily narrows and settles. It’s the last time you dare to dream of being a spy, an explorer, a kid wizard, a hobbit adventurer, a Hardy Boy—and the first time such dreams feel daring, rather than simply second nature. And though it’s impossible to realize it then, every once and awhile, for the rest of your life, you will be gripped with the desire to return to those made-up worlds, those places you already almost know you will never go, like an aging Wendy Darling looking out the window of her children’s nursery and being seized with the impossible conviction that once, long ago, she did know the way to that second star on the right.
As Charles knows perfectly well, he tends to be more susceptible than most to the pull of impossible dreams and desires. Like the Watson in Lu’s story, he is attracted by the qualities that made their respective detectives seem like something out of, well, just that: a story. He has gotten caught up in the thrill of the mystery, the feeling of being in an extraordinary world with an extraordinary man—those same emphatically not-real sensations that he only knows to desire because he’s read about them and seen them on TV. And kissing Julian, well, surely that’s merely extending the illusory parallel between himself and those fictional detectives’ sidekicks. That isn’t real. It is a dream, from which he will eventually awaken.
In short, it isn’t, upon reflection, particularly surprising to Charles that his longing for the not-real is strong enough to bend what he had once assumed to be an almost boringly predictable heterosexuality. But it is reprehensible, he thinks, and very bad news, and very, very stupid that he has allowed it.
Because the Julian he just kissed is flesh and blood. He is a real live human being, not a fictional character, and when Charles eventually comes to his senses he is going to realize that. And then Charles will be utterly crushed. He has spent his adult life avoiding being swept away by the not-real, knowing that it will only maroon him on an island of miserable disillusionment, and yet in the space of forty-eight hours he has allowed himself to get so carried away that his entire life seems to have twisted itself irrevocably into the fabric of a fantasy.
How to pull himself loose? he wonders. How to extricate himself without leaving scars, how to untangle a seemingly impossible knot?
And how, he thinks with a sinking stomach, as he glances toward Julian, whose face is set and staring at the headlights of the cars in front of them and the cars that whizz past them in the opposite direction, to do it without hurting him?
It seems impossible. Worse than that, though, is an indisputable fact: Charles doesn’t want to be free. He doesn’t want to wake up.
They speed along the last stretch of road before reaching the detective agency, the only sound the rush of the wheels and the rhythm of their breath, and neither of them say another word.
Notes
In case you didn’t catch it, you can read the entire fic “kissing the detective” on Archive of Our Own, here. (: There are some other of Lu’s fics I’ve posted there, too, and I am planning to post more soon.