Day 13: WANTED: A Friend

WANTED:

Lodger to split rent for comfortable, middle-class flat. Male, please, preferably twenties or thirties. Must be of quiet habits and sturdy, reliable disposition, not easily alarmed by potentially disastrous happenings. Apply to Mr. S. Holmes at 58 Montague St.

He put down the old newspaper with a grin. “Potentially disastrous happenings,” indeed - they’d had no end of those ever since that first case a year ago. Good lord, had it been only a year?

It felt as if they’d been sharing rooms together forever, and that was by no means an unpleasant sensation. He could not imagine his life without the remarkable man he felt privileged to call “friend.” His grin faded as he wondered if he truly met the criteria Holmes had in mind when they’d met.

“Watson, why are you standing around?” Holmes cried sing-song as he whirled into the sitting room just then. “There is a performance of Tchaikovsky at the Royal Albert Hall tonight, and, by George, we shall not miss it!”

Watson set the paper down on the desk and smiled at his friend’s infectious enthusiasm. “Very well, then, Holmes.”

“By the pensive expression I observed upon your face as I entered, I deduce that whatever has you down is in the text of that yellowed specimen of the press, my boy,” Holmes said cheerily. “Come now, what is it?”

Caught now, Watson handed the paper with its circled content over to the younger man. “I found it when I was organising the papers you so kindly left strewn about the sitting room,” he said pointedly. As usual, all arrows bounced off the armour that was Sherlock Holmes’s indifference to anything and everything that did not fall under the category of “current most important priority.”

Holmes’s grin widened, and he laughed. “So much for that, eh?” he said, referencing the advertisement rather than his earlier mess. “I did not receive a single application until Stamford introduced us.”

“Fortunately for me.” Watson could not fathom the tinge of bitterness his voice held.

Holmes’s eyebrows drew together. “Fortunately for us both,” he corrected. “Watson, do you... do you think me not fully satisfied with you as a fellow lodger?”

There was nothing for it now: he had to reveal his insecurities whether he liked it or not. “Well, I would not quite say that I have ‘quiet habits’... or a quiet temper, for that matter.”

Holmes threw down the paper with an exasperated huff. “My dear fellow, I do not make such decisions as a choice in flat mates lightly. I was perfectly satisfied to go halves with you, and I remain satisfied. You must think very little of me, indeed, to think for one moment that a slight upon your character would not reflect upon me.”

Watson watched him in astonishment. Sherlock Holmes was not an easy man to befriend, by all accounts, and yet Watson had never had much difficulty in getting past the barriers Holmes had erected - to the shock of many good men down at Scotland Yard. But to hear from Holmes’s own lips that he not only enjoyed but valued their friendship... was nothing short of a revelation.

“I... I don’t know what to say,” Watson admitted.

Holmes gave him a look one might give to a particularly dense brother. Watson did not know why that term entered his mind, but it did.

“Say that you’ll come with me tonight and leave behind forever this nonsense of being anything less than the perfect companion. Really, Watson, you do underrate yourself deplorably sometimes!”