Fic: Hierophant / Temperance / The Lovers
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holmes_gendersTitle: Hierophant / Temperance / The Lovers
'Verse: ACD
Length: 600
Rating: Gen
Characters/Pairings: Holmes/Watson, Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson
Prompts: the February prompt: embroidery or sewing. Also in January, I got 3 tarot card prompts from Get Your Words Out. Title is those cards. Card interpretation is from Queering the Tarot by Cassandra Snow.
Summary: Three scenes about Holmes and sewing.
“You were fantastic, Holmes!” I exclaimed as we settled in the hansom cab. “How you concluded it was a tailor’s shop which was wanted and not a seamstress shop or any other similar establishment from nothing but a thread, a needle, and a smear of chalk, was nothing short of brilliant!”
“Perhaps,” he replied sulkily.
“We’re on our way to solve the case! What has you so gloomy?”
“My conclusion. They were correct and, as you say, necessary to solve the case, but I can’t help wishing they weren’t.”
“How so?”
He huffed and shifted. “My dear Watson, does the needle care the nature of the hand which holds it so long as that hand gives it its due? Why should there be tailors of one ilk creating garments for that ilk and seamstresses of another ilk doing the same for their own kind and never the twain shall mix? Convention says so, but convention is,” he sighed, “at best ridiculous and at worst criminal.”
“I’m sorry, my dear man.”
I reached for his hand and squeezed it gently.
“So am I. Let me brood for the duration of our journey, and I promise to shake it off when required.”
---
“Shall I pour another?” asked Holmes, reaching for the bottle.
“No,” said Mrs. Hudson, draining her glass. She swished the gin around her mouth to savour it before swallowing. “I only allow myself one glass when I am at work with a needle.”
Mrs. Hudson and Holmes sat together at the table in the kitchen of 221 Baker Street. She had a pile of garments to be mended in her lap. Holmes was attending to the embroidery on the second of three handkerchiefs.
“I only allow myself one glass when I am at work with a needle,” repeated Mrs. Hudson. “Gin and needles don’t mix. It is a lesson I learned as a child from my grandmother.”
“Oh, she was a temperance woman, was she?” asked Holmes.
Mrs. Hudson shook her head. “She was a drunk, through and through. She was darning my grandfather’s socks one night, tight as a snail in its shell, stuck herself in the eye with her needle, fell on the edge of the hearth, struck her head so badly that she took to bed and died three days later.”
“Dear me!”
“Yes.” Mrs. Hudson rose and, with dignity, deposited the bottle on the far shelf.
---
“Now that’s a fine-looking piece cambric, Doctor,” observed Lestrade as I was wiping the rain from my face.
We were keeping out of the storm for the moment, huddled close under a swath of canvas.
I held open the handkerchief, now half sodden, and then folded it again so that the monogram and the caduceus surrounded by forget-me-nots, meaning, of course, ‘true love,’ might be seen to better advantage.
“It is, isn’t it?” I said with no little pride. “One of three. They were a gift from Holmes.” I could have left it like that, but I remembered a conversation with Holmes in a hansom cab about needles and convention, and I decided to add, “He did the embroidery himself.”
There was a slight defiance in my voice, as well as the pride, and I prepared myself to defend Holmes, to counter any jest or any derision at his skill in a so-called womanly art or his choice of gift for me.
But I needn’t have disturbed myself.
Lestrade only chuckled and said, “Well, don’t let my missus see it and know that it’s Mister Holmes’ work. She’ll be dreadfully cross that he’s got a much neater hand that hers.”
'Verse: ACD
Length: 600
Rating: Gen
Characters/Pairings: Holmes/Watson, Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson
Prompts: the February prompt: embroidery or sewing. Also in January, I got 3 tarot card prompts from Get Your Words Out. Title is those cards. Card interpretation is from Queering the Tarot by Cassandra Snow.
Summary: Three scenes about Holmes and sewing.
“You were fantastic, Holmes!” I exclaimed as we settled in the hansom cab. “How you concluded it was a tailor’s shop which was wanted and not a seamstress shop or any other similar establishment from nothing but a thread, a needle, and a smear of chalk, was nothing short of brilliant!”
“Perhaps,” he replied sulkily.
“We’re on our way to solve the case! What has you so gloomy?”
“My conclusion. They were correct and, as you say, necessary to solve the case, but I can’t help wishing they weren’t.”
“How so?”
He huffed and shifted. “My dear Watson, does the needle care the nature of the hand which holds it so long as that hand gives it its due? Why should there be tailors of one ilk creating garments for that ilk and seamstresses of another ilk doing the same for their own kind and never the twain shall mix? Convention says so, but convention is,” he sighed, “at best ridiculous and at worst criminal.”
“I’m sorry, my dear man.”
I reached for his hand and squeezed it gently.
“So am I. Let me brood for the duration of our journey, and I promise to shake it off when required.”
---
“Shall I pour another?” asked Holmes, reaching for the bottle.
“No,” said Mrs. Hudson, draining her glass. She swished the gin around her mouth to savour it before swallowing. “I only allow myself one glass when I am at work with a needle.”
Mrs. Hudson and Holmes sat together at the table in the kitchen of 221 Baker Street. She had a pile of garments to be mended in her lap. Holmes was attending to the embroidery on the second of three handkerchiefs.
“I only allow myself one glass when I am at work with a needle,” repeated Mrs. Hudson. “Gin and needles don’t mix. It is a lesson I learned as a child from my grandmother.”
“Oh, she was a temperance woman, was she?” asked Holmes.
Mrs. Hudson shook her head. “She was a drunk, through and through. She was darning my grandfather’s socks one night, tight as a snail in its shell, stuck herself in the eye with her needle, fell on the edge of the hearth, struck her head so badly that she took to bed and died three days later.”
“Dear me!”
“Yes.” Mrs. Hudson rose and, with dignity, deposited the bottle on the far shelf.
---
“Now that’s a fine-looking piece cambric, Doctor,” observed Lestrade as I was wiping the rain from my face.
We were keeping out of the storm for the moment, huddled close under a swath of canvas.
I held open the handkerchief, now half sodden, and then folded it again so that the monogram and the caduceus surrounded by forget-me-nots, meaning, of course, ‘true love,’ might be seen to better advantage.
“It is, isn’t it?” I said with no little pride. “One of three. They were a gift from Holmes.” I could have left it like that, but I remembered a conversation with Holmes in a hansom cab about needles and convention, and I decided to add, “He did the embroidery himself.”
There was a slight defiance in my voice, as well as the pride, and I prepared myself to defend Holmes, to counter any jest or any derision at his skill in a so-called womanly art or his choice of gift for me.
But I needn’t have disturbed myself.
Lestrade only chuckled and said, “Well, don’t let my missus see it and know that it’s Mister Holmes’ work. She’ll be dreadfully cross that he’s got a much neater hand that hers.”
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Date: 2021-02-15 08:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-15 11:37 am (UTC)