Alright, little lovelies, me and my best mate went to go see Game of Shadows on Saturday and it was fan-flipping-tastic. The costumes were lush, the sets pristine, the dialogue sharp as a double-edged knife…and the amount of homoerotic subtext, as usual, enough to choke on. Twas a delightful evening.

There is, however, one scene that stayed with me especially, in which Holmes details his plans to Watson as he prepares to go face Moriarty near a very cold waterfall in Geneva (Yes, that one.) They also happen to be waltzing during this conversation, and when Holmes asks Watson who taught him how to dance so well, he rakishly replies, "You did."

Obviously the fic had to be written. I regret nothing.

And remember, every time you don't review, Gladstone drops dead. Help save the poor dear, will you?

Holmes was laughing. No, not laughing; giggling in a gleeful, shameless way. He sat within the lush surroundings of his Parisian hotel, muddied boots up on a Napoleonic table, wine glass pressed to his forehead as he chortled away. Watson stood leaning up against said table, scowling and wondering how much extra the maids were going to charge for Holmes's carelessness.

"It's not funny, Holmes!"

"Oh, but it is, old boy!" The detective laughed, swallowing the last of his giggled with the remainder of his wine. "I daresay it's downright hilarious."

It was the summer of 1890. Holmes's obsession with the enigma of Moriarty had not yet begun, but he had been led to the French city by a trail that, in retrospect, would stink of the villain. He and his faithful comrade had tailed a gang of Algerian jewel smugglers to the Louvre, spared the life of a visiting English dignitary, and damned near saved all of France. Now they waited patiently from their vantage point on the third story of one of Paris's most high-end hotels for the ringleader of the smugglers to appear from the tavern across the street so they could apprehend him, dodge the press, and get back to 221B before the week was out. It had been a thrilling adventure, but at the moment the only worries in Holmes's eccentric mind were the flaccidity of the wine, if his smuggler was going to cause any more delay in that awful little tavern, and the fact that his comrade, John Watson, could not dance.

"Well you have to admit it's at least ironic," Holmes persisted, running calloused fingers through his wild hair. "A man such as yourself, world-traveled and fully versed in the world, who has never leaned to dance? Whatever did you do at those army balls?"

"Have you ever been to a veteran's ball, Holmes? There's not so much dancing as there is-"

"Witty conversation and well-meant verbal jabs?"

"Getting drunk off your arse and starting fights. Your kind of party, actually."

Holmes grinned demonically at his partner, batting his eyes in a deceptively angelic way. "Plenty of gambling then, I presume? Whatever did you do without me there to hold your purse?"

Watson snapped Holmes briskly in the shoulder with his cane, prompting a curse in God knows what language from the detective and a sudden loss of grip on his wine glass. Watson caught before it hit the floor.

"You know what? Just forget I brought it up. I know better than to-"

Holmes waved his protestation away. "Oh please! We're flat mates man, we knew the worst about each other by the time our first week together had passed."

"The worst?' Watson asked with a smirk, pouring a splash of wine into the glass and inhaling the aroma. "Here I was thinking you were the gift that kept on giving."

Holmes ignoring the thinly veiled allusion to his various self-destructive habits. "I don't judge you. I just find it curious that you plan on attending your own wedding knowing that you won't have the foggiest idea of how to dance with you wife."

"Oh, I've got a…foggy idea. I would ask Mary to teach me, it's just…Well, it's an embarrassing thing to request! People assume you know these things by now! And asking another woman is out of the question, if Mary found out-"

"I can teach you."

"-She'd get the wrong idea entirely-"

"My dear Watson, I just said that I would gladly teach you."

Watson froze, glass half raised to his lips, and stood there for a moment in shock. Holmes watched him with a nonchalant expression, fingers steepled patiently. In the painful silence, Watson threw the entirety of his wine down his throat and delicately set the glass upside-down on the table. Then he leaned heavily on his cane and examined his friend.

"You're joking."

Holmes's eyes widening in mock horror. "Never."

Watson ran his tongue over dry lips, gathering his thoughts. "And by teach you mean draw me an instructional map or-?"

"Of course not, don't be silly. I shall teach you through doing, in the way of the sages. Most effective."

Watson laughed to hide the thing vein of panic worming through his stomach. "And what shall the maid think when she walks in to find two men waltzing together?"

"I'm sure she'll find it tragically bohemian and charming. This is Paris, man, you see worse on the streets of Montmartre."

Watson was about to protest that he wasn't feeling quite that bohemian, but Holmes's had already grabbed his hand and was beginning to lead him into the center of the room. Watson protesting, already flustered.

"Holmes please! This is just your sort of madness!"

The detective ignoring him, snatching away his can and throwing it onto a nearby divan. Then he went to the gilded phonograph by the window, dragging the needle over the record and coaxing out the first strains of a stately waltz. He turned to his companion and smiled.

"Shall we?"

"No, we shan't. Really, it's no trouble for me to ask Mary…"

Holmes looked at him with wide, dark eyes, rimmed with the circles of many a sleepless night but hurt nonetheless. "My poor dingy bird. We have faced crime syndicates, rabid wolf-dogs, thieving statesman and Satanic lords together. We have nearly died in bombings and chemical attacks, seen the worst and best of each other, patched each other up after many a dangerous misadventure…And yet you fear something as simple as dancing?"

"With you, yes."

Holmes advanced on him, voice childish and mocking. "I shall inform your wife-to-be that you are a coward, then."

Watson took immediate and violent offense to this. "I am not a coward!"

"Splendid," Holmes said crisply, and before Watson knew what had happened, the other man had pulled him into his arms. He stood perfectly poised, back straight as a ramrod, one hand locked into Watson's own, the other resting lightly on his waist.

"Dammit, Holmes!"

"Don't think, just do."

"How can I? You're leading!"

"Well, naturally."

Watson immediately switched positions, sliding Holmes's had up to his shoulder. "It's my wedding, and my wife I'll be dancing with. Don't you think you should be teaching me how to lead?"

Holmes snapped back to his to his original position with surprising speed and strength. "Doubtful, dear Watson. I can't very well have the student leading the-"

"Clinically insane?"

"Teacher, old boy. Besides, you're obviously the female in this relationship."

"Strange, misguided plea for help, you mean! And I'm not a woman!"

"Fine, we're both men."

"Stranger still, Holmes."

"Really?" The detective mused, dark brows knitting together. "It seems perfectly reasonable to me." He pulled his companion closer, all but closing the gap of space between then. Watson instinctively began to fidget. Holmes cocked an eyebrow.

"What's wrong?"

"You mean besides the fact that I can hardly breathe? You're too close, old friend."
"Newlyweds should hold each other in such a manner after their nuptials. I'm merely preparing you for impending reality."

"Yes, Holmes, but you're not my wife."

"Correct," The detective said with a perfectly wicked smile. "Right now I'm your husband. Now stop squirming and do try and keep up."

He then began his usual rambling diatribe about the history of the waltz, it's cultural significance, and the intricacies of the dance. But for all his narration, Watson found the dance to be embarrassingly easy. It orbited around a central rhythm, the heartbeat of one-two-three, and Holmes led him about the room with surprising grace and only the infrequent chastisement. Watson found a strange sense of ease dancing with his friend, a comfort that was soon cancelled out at the curious horror of why such ease existed. He had really been around Holmes too long, the doctor reasoned. He wondered what all this meant to his strange friend, as he no sense of social propriety and his moods were unpredictable and erratic. But Holmes didn't seem to care, so the dance continued.

"Where did you learn how to dance?" Watson asked, abruptly interrupting Holmes's speculation on the waltz as a instrument of world peace.

"I beg your pardon?" Holmes asked, never missing a step.

"Where did you learn how to waltz so well?"

"Ah. Well, many a place, just snatches here and there…Society galas, Indonesian bordellos, Siberian work camps-"

"You've never been to Indonesia."

"Blast."

"Well, out with it then. Where?"
Holmes gave a small smile, his voice growing a bit more soft. "My mother. She took it upon herself nearly from birth to turn Mycroft and I into properly groomed society monkeys. Said she wouldn't take us into public unless we could stop, in her own words 'Acting like little heathens and put a necktie on, God save England from us.'"

Watson laughed, allowing Holmes to spin him across the Turkish carpet. "I would have liked to have met your mother."

"It's not funny!"

"Oh, but it is. I can scarcely imagine you as a child, but what I can see involves small kitchen explosions and temper tantrums. You never talk about you family."

"Don't I? I talk about Mycroft."

"You've mentioned Mycroft. I've never heard about you mother."

"Ah. A distantly loving woman, in her own way. Very concerned as to my future. I enjoyed spiting her, in my youth."

"Just your youth?" Watson smirked.

"Well fine then, doctor, what about your family?"

"You know all about my family, Holmes. I have two brothers and one sister, two for which are married, one of which is a member of the clergy. My father was a stock broker and my mother taught music to upper-class children. I grew up in Cardiff and moved to London after my discharge from the army. All in all, a very dull life story."

"No one's life is dull, old friend, Especially anyone who's come in contact with me."

"God save England."

Holmes smiled at his friend as the last noted of the waltz faded out. Suddenly Watson noticed how close the other man still was to him, but Holmes made no move to draw away. Instead he spoke with deliberate nonchalance.

"And this is usually the part in a dance where a man would make an effort to kiss his new wife."

Watson looked at his ever-so-eccentric friend, trying to find the core of meaning in his veiled words. "Is it?"

"Usually. If the woman be willing."

"The woman is usually willing."

"Then all that remains is for a man to find his courage, I suppose."

It was at the precise, electrified moment, that the door swung open to usher in two young maids. The hair of the first was tightly curled and cropped close to her head, almost boyish in it's playfulness, while the other had the tumbling locks of a duchess, braided down her back. They stopped their happy chattering at the threshold, staring at the strange scene laid out before them, and Watson immediately saw that, to the untrained eye, he had just been caught in the arms of another man. He untangled himself from Holmes in an instant, reaching for his cane and clearing his throat. The detective showed no signs of embarrassment, only smiled graciously at the pair of teenage girls.

"Bonjour, mademoiselles."

The girls giggled at his rakish good looks and immediately began straightening the room.

"Sorry to interrupt," Said the short-haired one in broken English, yanking the sheets from the bed and beginning to remake it with speedy efficiency.

"We're only here for the laundry," the other finished, adjusting her half-moon spectacles with a dainty gesture as she dragged the towels in a bundle towards her cleaning trolley.

"Carry on," Holmes replied. They worked quickly, chattering among themselves in hushed French as Holmes turned to Watson, smiling at the other man's distress. When the girls had left and their giggles had faded down the hallway, Holmes spoke.

' "My French isn't exactly worthy of a native, but I caught the words "charming" and "bohemian"."

"Dammit, Holmes!" Watson fumed, not sure what he was so worked up over. The detective's sharp eyes caught the minute movement over his friend's shoulder and snapped to the window. He ran to the sill and pointed out an unsavory character exciting the tavern across the street.

"Viola!" The detective exclaimed, clapping his hands together briskly and startling his companion. He yanked on a waist coat and snatched up his tinted glasses, heading for the door. "Onward into adventure, old friend. Do try and keep up."

Then Holmes was out the door and halfway down the stairs. Watson sighed heavily, stuffing his pistol down the back of his trousers and heading after his friend at a sprint.

Yes, Watson would miss this.

I hope it was thoroughly enjoyed! Now, I must see to Gladstone, He hasn't received enough reviews to keep him conscious today.

PS: If you like Supernatural, look up DjinnAndDragons and read some of her work. Great stuff. She's the aforementioned best mate.