Of course, this is non-slash, and I desperately hope it does not have that tone; I worked long and hard to make certain it would not be construed as such.

And in case anyone was wondering, the holdup in PGF's and my new collab is due to a stint of writer's block; this is the first thing I've written of any substance in over two weeks. Hopefully we will have a new chapter up before the weekend is over.

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!

Whether it was the dual fit of boredom, or the nearly-emptied bottle of after-dinner sherry, or the successful (if dangerous) conclusion of the dreadful affair of Lady Ambridge's multiple poisonings, neither knew; only that somehow the conversation had finally come round to marriage, of all things.

"Have you truly never considered marrying, Holmes?" the Doctor wondered. "I could count at least a dozen of our female clients who made rather pointed attempts to accomplish that end with you in the last few years."

Holmes waved a languid hand (the one he had not taken a slice across the palm to in the scuffle for the murderess's dagger) haphazardly in a gesture of extreme boredom. "It is bad for business to marry one's client."

Watson raised a pointed eyebrow and glanced down at the wedding-ring adorning his right hand, though without any traces of bitterness, only that of sweet memory. The detective saw this and knew it was safe to grin good-naturedly. "Case in point, Watson."

"Touché. But seriously, Holmes," the Doctor pressed eagerly, taking advantage of a talkative mood (a rare occurrence, with this particular bored and self-destructive consulting detective).

Holmes pulled his legs up under him, steepling his fingers in deep concentration as he wrapped a bored mind around the new conundrum. "No, I don't believe I ever have seriously considered it," said he pensively.

"Seriously?" Watson pounced eagerly upon the word choice. "You have, then!"

Holmes rolled his eyes tolerantly. "Pray curb your romantic streak, Doctor. I shall never marry."

"Why?"

"For one thing, a wife would be a distraction."

"I believe that is the general idea, is it not?" the Doctor returned slyly.

Holmes snorted, not rising to the bait. "Not to mention that any woman would be horribly in the way of my work, would be far too much of a responsibility, would be a liability for criminals to exploit in pursuit of me, and that I have yet to find one that would be anywhere close to my intellectual equal…that was not already married, that is," he added as an afterthought, idly inspecting the scratchy bandaging round his hand.

Watson shook his head sadly. "And, of course, the fact that you could not love her has never entered your mind," he muttered.

"Mm…could is a poor choice of wording," Holmes opined, tapping a unbandaged index finger thoughtfully against his lips. "The fact is that it has nothing to do with capability, Watson, but merely that it would be foolish for an orderly, controlled mind such as mine to venture into the realm of the unknown – especially such a volatile realm as that of love. It is merely a sensible matter of staying far from the precipice, rather than walking the edge and peering over it."

Watson sighed, looking at the entirely serious countenance of the detective, and shook his head once more. "Holmes, you make it sound as if it were an abyss filled with explosives, waiting to be touched off by a stray lit match!"

"Quite an apt description, my dear fellow – once the fuse is lit, the results are uncontrollable," Holmes replied simply, striding to the table to refill his glass. "It is stupidity rather than adventurousness to leap headlong into a situation one knows one cannot keep under control. It is a much stronger man than I that could prevent disaster in that case."

Watson stared after him in amazement, processing this and wondering if the man had intended that as a veiled compliment or merely cold, hard, logical fact.

"Besides, my dear Watson," the detective went on complacently, "someone in this chaotic disorder of a society must remain flat-footed on the ground, you know – where would the world be otherwise?"

"Perhaps it would be a bit happier," the Doctor whispered, staring moodily down into his glass, the events of the evening and its sordid case conclusion finally drawing level with the euphoria of triumph and swamping him in their wake.

A small clink sounded as Holmes hastily set the decanter back upon the table, turning to look quizzically at his friend.

"Why the sudden interest in my happiness, Doctor?" he asked kindly. "Has my mood really been so dreadful of late?"

"No, not at all," Watson hastily answered reassuringly. "Just…would it really do so much harm to take the gamble of allowing yourself to feel some kind of love at least, once in a while, in the interests of your happiness? You do seem so…empty, sometimes."

Holmes perceived the deep worry hidden behind the placid expression, and smiled, planting himself back down in his chair and stretching comfortably toward the fire.

"You say sometimes, Doctor," he mused thoughtfully, watching the flames flicker and dance. "And perhaps there is an element of truth in what you say. Tell me, what exactly…" he trailed off, the first signs of uncertainty showing in his aquiline features, a faint twitching of the jaw, a slight sharpening of the eyes, a clenching of the bandaged hand on the armrest. "Tell me, how exactly would you describe the feeling?"

Watson blinked, hastily setting down his glass on the nearby table; if the conversation had gotten this far without a verbal explosion, then they had both had more than enough to drink for one night. "Love, you mean?" he queried uncertainly.

"Yes, quite. I am not certain I should know it if I felt it, you know," Holmes pondered candidly, eagerly wrapping his entire concentration around the new inscrutable mystery at hand in lieu of a night spent in depression and other, more harmful, vices.

"Well…it's…rather hard to explain as an actual feeling," the Doctor admitted somewhat sadly, fidgeting with a loose thread on the chair and looking into the fire, seeing ghosts of recent years dance kindly in the flames. "It's…a warmth that comes of mutual understanding and sympathy, for one thing…an enjoyment of companionship…but that's just a manifestation of it. You can't define it by some logical explanation, Holmes."

"No, I suppose not," the detective murmured.

"Because it isn't part of logic," Watson added, plucking absently on the loose string until it unraveled another inch or two in a reddish fuzz. "Things like love are not bound by rules of society or science or anything else – which is half their allure, in my opinion. Mankind is fascinated by that which we cannot fully explain or comprehend, and have been so for bygone ages."

Holmes glanced up, a smile lurking at the corners of his mouth, threatening to show despite his efforts to remain aloof and distant from this increasingly interesting discussion. "I believe you see the entire world through rose-coloured glasses, Doctor," he teased gently.

Watson flicked a slightly melancholy, slightly embarrassed glance up at his friend and then just as quickly back down to the fire. "I try," he whispered sadly, "as a human being, not just as a healer. Love is what keeps us from being bitter even when we by all accounts have a right to be."

And heaven knows if a man ever had a right to be so, you have, Doctor. Holmes bit the statement back before it could leave his lips, skipping to the question in his mind instead. "Love does that, you say...the giving of it, or the receiving?"

The quiet question startled the Doctor from his half-painful, half sweet memory of a beautiful, gentle young woman with blonde hair and blue eyes and a heart large enough to share her husband with a dear friend and, by extension, the world.

Sherlock Holmes was standing now, chewing furiously upon his oldest, and unlit, pipe, and watching his friend's expressions in a legitimate and shockingly open expression of a desire to understand.

"The giving of it, of course," Watson replied instantly. "Real love, Holmes, does not require a reciprocation; if so, it would cease to be a selfless emotion and become selfish, crude, and desecrated from its true meaning."

"Its true meaning? Which is?" the detective inquired, his grey eyes serious and melancholic, the bantering tone gone from his voice now in a desperate attempt to wrap his mind around a problem that could not be explained away by facts and science.

"Well…" Watson stood stiffly to his feet, ambling absently around the room in thought and finally coming to the window, looking down upon the busy wintry street below. "The deepest and purest definition, I suppose, is a self-sacrificing regard for someone, a desire to see her...or him...happy above all other things in life including one's own happiness. I vaguely remember the Bible saying something about there being no greater love than to lay down one's life for a friend, and I've never heard a better definition in any other literature."

Behind him, unseen by the Doctor as he stared down at the couples walking past on the pavement below, Holmes suddenly fumbled to catch the unlit pipe as it accidentally fell from his clenched teeth. He shoved the item into his pocket and stared in some small confusion at his friend's back in the warmth of an abrupt realisation, a little-used portion of his well-ordered brain-attic suddenly being illuminated by the warm brilliance of a completely illogical, but highly effective all the same, flood-light.

"Watson, I…"

"Did I answer your question? Your original question?" his friend asked quietly without turning round from the glass, framed in the brilliant yellows and golds of a setting winter sun.

The original question. "Why the sudden interest in my happiness, Doctor?"

"Quite," Holmes whispered softly. "And I yours?"

The Doctor cast his mind back, fumbling for a moment to remember what had instigated the conversation. "Would it really do so much harm to take the gamble of allowing yourself to feel some kind of love at least, once in a while, in the interests of your happiness?"

Watson turned from the window to see the detective leaning with one elbow upon the mantel and his head tilted into the palm of his hand, staring moodily at the now-sheathed and cleaned dagger that they had taken from their murderess.

The one responsible for causing the deep, stitched wound along Holmes's left palm, when he had made a frantic grab tonight to prevent the knife from reaching his friend and chronicler's unprotected back.

"I am not quite certain now why I even asked," Watson replied softly, and despite the dim evening light Holmes could tell even his eyes were smiling.