Chapter Text
Wagahai inched toward her prey slowly but with conviction. She knew she could not sink her teeth into his heel, but that wouldn’t stop her from at least trying. She opened her mouth wide, eyes fixated, claws at the ready, and swiftly bit down at the prosecutor’s ankle.
“Hurgh!” Lord van Zieks almost knocked over his inkwell. Sholmes guffawed at the scene, choking on a puff of smoke he’d taken earlier. Putting his papers down on Iris’ desk, Lord van Zieks picked up the cat, meeting her eye-to-eye.
“What is it you want now, animal?” He gave her a stern look. She meowed. Lord van Zieks sighed and plopped Wagahai on his shoulder before resuming his dreary paperwork—a release order for an embezzlement case. The calico purred against his nape. Sholmes still laughed sporadically.
“Lord Barok van Zieks, The fabled Reaper of the Bailey, bested by a kitten! Had I known about this earlier, I would have nabbed a few strays from the East End years ago.”
“Ha, ha, very funny, Detective,” he did not look up from his files, yet all concentration had already left him. “In any case, did you not have business to attend to today? It’s well past noon.”
“You remember well, my dear fellow. However, you see,” Sholmes took a whiff of his pipe. He let the smoke out slowly, excruciatingly so. Lord van Zieks tightened his grip on his chair, his body tensing up. Smoke was still exiting Sholmes’ nostrils.
“How in God’s name am I supposed to leave the apartment without getting heatstroke?” Sholmes shouted, clearly practising for a role in an ancient Greek tragedy, startling Wagahai off his seat of choice. “There is no respite anywhere!” He stomped to the window, opened wide in hopes of a cool breeze alleviating some of the heat built up within the bricks. “Asphyxiating inside, scorching outside,” he poked his head out, “the sun feels like it will fry me alive! Had I known, I would have saved us the money to run the gas stove and used the roof tiling to make breakfast instead!”
“Stop exaggerating,” Lord van Zieks sighed, conveniently forgetting that he opted to work away from his office that day to be afforded the comfort of lounging in a linen shirt and trousers. The newly appointed Lord Chief Justice saw no issue with lawyers working away from the Prosecutors’ Office as long as it meant productivity remained high. If it meant fewer prosecutors were drenched in their own sweat, he welcomed it.
“Why couldn’t we have been made to aestivate? The cruelty of Nature, a heartless mother!” Sholmes lamented, sitting down on his armchair.
“So that we’d have food for winter, I imagine.” Lord van Zieks responded. Sholmes was somewhat puzzled by his sincerity. “If it weren’t commonplace for you, I’d be concerned over your nonsensical mumbling, attributing it to heatstroke.”
“Hurley! I’m home!” Iris’ little voice prompted both men to look to the front door.
“Iris! How did your delivery go?” Sholmes asked.
“I barely made it in time! The editor of Randst was fuming, Hurley, you should have seen his face!” Iris took off her satchel and hung it on the coat rack. "The Adventures of Herlock Sholmes remain as popular as ever, and at the thought that his most prominent segment would go unprinted this month, he’d turned red as a tomato!”
“Ah, is that where you’d gone?” Lord van Zieks approached her with a glass of water and offered it to her.
“Oh, Mr,” Iris pauses, “Lord van Zieks! Good afternoon. I didn’t know you were here! I wouldn’t have neglected to greet you had I known that was the case…"
“Please, don’t be concerned with it. However,” He handed Iris the water, and she drank it with great joy. “I do recall that I’ve told you that you don’t need to call me that, Dr Wilson,” he shook his head, blissfully unaware of the irony.
“Well, Mr Reaper isn’t very nice of me…” Iris mumbled, her lips still on the glass.
“Call me what you’d like.”
Iris twisted her foot back and forth, her gaze on the floor.
“I like Rocky,” she said, a prominent pout on her lips. Lord van Zieks tripped over nothing, stumbling on the ten-year-old’s words. Sholmes knew better than to laugh, so he held it in. However, if the scene were to get any more bizarre, he likely would have popped a blood vessel.
~ ~
Sholmes slowly opened the bathroom door so as not to get it creaking, but it did so nonetheless—it had been years since he last oiled the ageing hinges. Lord van Zieks lay in the water, his face the only part of his body not submerged. Instead, he’d covered it in a drenched towel, like a compress.
“Are you bathing?” Sholmes asked.
“Yes,” Lord van Zieks replied, drawing out the vowel.
“May I join?”
“No.” But Sholmes had started stripping off his clothes before he’d even asked. The size of the bathtub was one of the few luxuries of 221B Baker Street—indoor plumbing and all—but it was still not built to house two grown men.
“Detective,” Lord van Zieks lifted the towel off his face, water droplets forming on the tips of his hair. “What part of ‘no’ did you fail to comprehend?”
“Oh no, my dear fellow, I understood you perfectly well,” Sholmes grinned, leaning lower down into the water. His body was instantly soothed by the water that had remained cool despite Lord van Zieks lying in it for some time now. “I simply thought it courteous to ask if I may bathe in my bathtub. You could say it was more of a rhetorical question.”
Lord van Zieks could have returned to his manor for the evening but chose not to. And as he was, in fact, a guest, he thought it best that he didn’t pursue Sholmes’ intrusion further. However, he did not need to endure Sholmes’ feet finding their way to places they shouldn’t have, so he threw his towel at the Detective’s face.
“Soothing. Thank you, My Lord. However,” Sholmes slipped the towel over the bath spout, “I do wonder, was it this that prompted your reaction?”
“Don’t you dare,” Sholmes cupped Lord van Zieks’ knee, rubbing it gently.
“Or was it this that did the trick?” Sholmes gave a coy look, prompting Lord van Zieks to rise from the water and topple him, his hands resting on the tub rim.
“I will drown you,” he scowled. Water splashed back and forth.
“No, you wouldn’t,” Sholmes smirked. “You are such a child. It’s unexpectedly endearing," he brushed Lord van Zieks’ hair away from his face, then rested his hands on his cheeks. As Lord van Zieks’ eyes slowly closed shut, Sholmes’ widened.
“What do you want from me, man?”
“I…” Sholmes faltered. He wore a smile, “I just like to tease you, really. It’s a rite of passage if you’re going to live here.”
“Did you invade Mr Naruhodo’s bathing privacy during his stay here, too?” Lord van Zieks sank back down on the steel tub, but this time, closer to Sholmes. He brought his knees closer to his torso, a little bit embarrassed now that it occurred to him that Sholmes could see him, nude as he was, and sat between Sholmes’ legs.
“Well, no… But he did live on the roof! I once blew that clean off, so you could say Mr Naruhodo lived in constant fear of destitution by blast!” Sholmes recalled. Lord van Zieks scoffed. A relaxed look on his face, his furrowed brow softened, his frown now a gentle parting of the lips. Sholmes stared at him for a while.
“Lord van Zieks?” Sholmes muttered; he received a subtle grunt in reply. “I, may I ask you something? Something… rather personal, I should clarify.”
“Is that a rhetorical question too, Detective?”
Sholmes shook his head. “Not in the slightest.”
“Well then, what is it you’d like to know?”
After their unspoken agreement that the pair would effectively co-parent Iris from now on—with both men aware that they could not deny Iris either one, or Iris from either of them—they established a sort of tradition of impromptu questions. A means of getting to know each other. They were usually whimsical and quaint; their favourite flavour of tea, their most hated time of year, jam or cream first in scones (which had turned unexpectedly heated), their favourite composer, their most treasured books… But the gentleness of their queries had to stop eventually. They were bound to stop.
“How,” Sholmes paused, watching the soft ripples form around his twirling fingertips. “How could you not have known? About Iris, I mean. How could you possibly not have known?”
Lord van Zieks’s breathing turned shallow. He opened his eyes ever so slightly, but his gaze remained downturned.
‘You don’t need to answer that if you don’t want to!’ Sholmes thought to say, but that would be a lie. He did need to. Sholmes had the right to know how the man could have been so oblivious to his niece’s existence for a decade.
“I…” Lord van Zieks sighed. “I understand. It appears absurd, I know. But… it simply didn’t cross my mind.” He rested his chin on his knees, his body folded over like a sheet of paper. “I really… I was certain they’d stopped trying, my brother and Nora.” If not for the gravity of the conversation, Sholmes would have likely smirked at the idea of referring to the late Lady Eleanor Baskerville as ‘Nora.’ He thought it sweet to see parallels between Iris and her bloodline.
“But surely,” Sholmes had wanted to be careful not to poke the bear, but he’d already prodded it with a hot rod. “You’d have taken notice of your sister-in-law’s condition, would you not?”
“Nora was sickly. It wasn’t uncommon for her to reside in her coastal estate for an extended period. The atmosphere of the ocean, as opposed to London smog, was kinder on her lungs, you see. Although,” he absentmindedly drew circles with his fingers on Sholmes’ skin. “I certainly wasn’t ignorant. Whenever she’d take leave longer than a month, I’d always inquire with my brother about it, well before the first time Nora was with child.”
‘The first time?’ Sholmes thought to ask, but as he parted his lips to do so, the grim nature of the answer became abundantly clear to him.
“We… we don’t speak of these things,” Lord van Zieks mused. “Mother’s term with me was so uneventful, Klint couldn’t understand why Nora had been so concerned. That there is a long journey between a woman discovering she is with child and her bringing said child into the world. That there are so many things that could go awry."
Sholmes watched as water droplets fell from the tips of Lord van Zieks' hair onto his forearms. Almost entranced.
“Klint was heartbroken when Nora lost their first child. Even so, Nora had wanted it so bad that they kept trying, again and again, despite Klint becoming more dejected with each loss. He couldn’t bear to see Nora cry, how incompetent he felt that there was nothing he could do to alleviate her pain. But he also wanted to bring her the joy she so desperately longed for.”
“I,” Sholmes felt a knot form in his throat. “I'm sorry, I didn't, I… I think I understand now."
"There's no need to apologise. You did nothing wrong." Lord van Zieks hadn't realised Sholmes had grasped his hand, a gentle pressure and a faint caress on his palm. "But, no… no, you don't understand. Not yet," he gave the Detective a grim, but tired look. Now that Sholmes had opened Pandora's Box, he had to live with the knowledge it contained. “After their last attempt, before Iris, I mean, I didn't believe they'd try again. Klint had finally reached his limit. It was… Nora had started showing, very clearly so. There was no way to hide that she was with child anymore.”
Sholmes was enveloped by a cold sweat. His heartbeat rang in his ears, and his head felt like it would crack open.
"Nora had been so far along that they were told the sex of the child. A boy. They…" Lord van Zieks could hear their voices, their shouting playing out in his mind. "When Nora brought up the idea that they’d try again, Klint was livid. They argued, for months entire they argued, it… it was the first and the last time I heard Klint lose his patience with her. She begged him, but he didn’t budge. She wanted to be able to move on, to forget their lost son, but Klint didn't want to forget," Lord van Zieks’ vision got blurrier, but still he could see the Detective’s hands shake.
“Since then, when Nora would set off for her estate, I never questioned my brother again," he looked to Sholmes. Tears ran down his cheeks and into the bathtub. Sholmes opened his mouth as if to speak, but shut it closed, incapable of finding anything to say.
"Thank you, Sholmes," Lord van Zieks interrupted their silence. He wiped Sholmes' eyes with his thumbs. "For allowing me to do this. And for mourning him," he rested his hands on Sholmes' cheeks, just as Sholmes had done earlier. He wrapped his fingers around Lord van Zieks' wrists and with every little plop sound of a teardrop hitting the water, he cursed himself. He cursed himself for his cynicism. For his sarcasm. For doubting Lord van Zieks' affection for his family.
Their foreheads now touching, Sholmes wept.