Holmesian Fic: The Case Of The Monster Under The Bed Pt. 1/2

[random_nexus]

Title: The Case Of The Monster Under The Bed Pt. 1/2
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes - Canon AU
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Allora Holmes, Myron Holmes, Misc. OCs; Mentions of Mycroft Holmes/Lora Elwes-Holmes
Word Count: 4,585
Disclaimer: ACD's Sherlock Holmes stories are public domain, but I mean no disrespect or illegality in my use of them as source material.
Spoilers: Nope
Warnings: Men who love men, Inter-species relationships, Implied manly smooches, Implied manly scrumping, Magical creatures and people, Fluff, Making shite up as usual.
Original Prompt: Originally meant to be a part of the Watson's Woes Community WAdvent 2018 Event
Summary: Watson is awakened in the middle of the night by a frightened Allora Holmes. Of course, Uncle John investigates.
Author's Notes: I started this with the intention of posting it on December 28th, but due to some RL nonsensery I didn't get it done in time, instead doing a short, silly fic to make the due date and then continuing work on this one. This is part one of two, and I'm hoping to finish the second part this coming week and will post ASAP.

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The Case Of The Monster Under The Bed
Pt. 1

Watson woke to a faint scratching, which he would’ve put down to mice scurrying along the wainscoting or possibly birds in the eaves, except Mycroft Holmes’ household ran far too efficiently for that—his housekeeper, Mrs. Pertwee, might as well have been a field commander. Given that he had excellent hearing, certainly better than any human, it only took a moment for Watson to realise that the scratching was not in the room with him, but at the door of the bedroom he had been officially assigned; which was through a connecting door just on the other side of the en suite bathroom.

Regretfully slipping out of his warm bed, having a care not to wake his bed partner, Sherlock Holmes, Watson took only long enough to snatch up his dressing gown and slide his feet into the warm slippers he’d wisely placed at the side of the bed. Silently going through the bathroom and into that other bedroom, he heard another scratching/tapping on the bedroom door even as he was reaching for the knob. Opening the door only a little, he found Mycroft’s daughter and Sherlock Holmes’ niece, Allora Holmes, with one hand still poised as if to tap again and the other clutching a blanket around her. Watson was alarmed to see her little bare toes peeking out from under the edge of the blanket.

“What are you doing out of bed, little one?” He whispered, crouching down. “And where are your slippers?” It was late December and she had no business scampering about barefoot on the hardwood floors.

Allora whispered in reply, “They’re under the bed, I think, but I was afraid to reach under and find out.”

Watson caught up her free hand in his, finding it icy cold. He gently chafed her little fingers between his own, asking softly, “Why were you afraid, Allora?”

Pressed her lips tightly together, Allora looked up at Watson with a mix of fear and apprehension, and then turned her gaze downward, saying nothing.

Going down on one knee, Watson gently put his arm around the little girl and scooped her up onto his upraised thigh. Reaching down to cup her feet in one hand, finding them as cold as he expected, Watson urged gently, “Come now, sweetling, you came to fetch me for a reason. I shall help you in any way I may, but I must know what needs doing.”

With a deep breath, Allora nodded and said in a voice nearly too quiet to hear, “There’s something in the nursery, and it’s been crawling about under Myron’s bed, but he didn’t want to risk waking Mummy and Papa again. Papa says we’re getting too old for make-believe monsters…” She trailed off, slowly lifting her imploring gaze to meet Watson’s.

“But… it’s not make-believe, is it?” Watson said in an equally soft voice, a little thrill of awareness running along his nerves as both his instincts and his protective urges told him something was wrong—something real. Her expression still concerned and afraid, Allora nodded. Giving a nod of his own, Watson released her slightly warmer feet and rose, bringing her up to rest upon his hip, blanket and all. “Let us go and see what’s what.”

Watson and Holmes had been guests of Holmes’ elder brother and his family since the day before Christmas Eve, and they’d both overheard at least two distant nighttime kerfuffles, long after bedtime stories had been read and the children had said their goodnights to their Uncle Sherlock and Uncle John. When Watson had asked if all was well the morning after the first time, the children’s mother, Lora Elwes-Holmes, had sighed and glanced at her husband as she’d murmured that there was nothing to worry about. Mycroft, himself had huffed in remembered irritation and grumbled something about the children still being over-excited after Christmas and their excursion into the village with their mother on Boxing Day. Neither Watson nor Holmes had pursued it, seeing that it was a family matter and a source of some discord between the children and their parents, as well as between both parents.

Now, with a chilled and obviously frightened child in his arms, Watson paused outside the bedroom door of the room in which Holmes still slept, considering whether or not to wake him. Reasonably certain he was going to find a wayward squirrel, or perhaps some other small creature that had snuck in out of the late December cold, Watson decided to let his friend and lover sleep on. They would be leaving late the next day, which was still cutting it a bit fine for Watson’s preference, given that the moon was nearly full. It had been difficult to come up with a reasonable excuse to give Holmes’ elder brother as to why they could not stay through the New Year, though the easiest and most familiar excuse was that it was for one of Holmes’ cases. Watson had his own opinions on the topic, but it was ultimately Holmes’ decision whether or not to share the truth of his lycanthropy with his elder brother. Regardless, this near to the full moon it was difficult for Holmes to sleep and Watson was loath to wake him unless absolutely necessary.

Though the hallway was very dimly lit, one of the gas lamps on the wall having been turned down to a barely-there glow, upon opening the door to the nursery, Watson found it almost completely dark. The blue-white glow from the gibbous moon was plenty bright enough for Watson’s eyes, even starlight would have been sufficient to show him the basics of the room—it wasn’t just his being a phouka, it was common for most of those born of faerie. And, being one of the fae, Watson’s wary senses not only told him where everything in the room was located, they also told him that something far less ordinary than a mere squirrel had invaded the nursery.

From a smallish shape huddled on the farther of the two beds in the room came a hopeful whisper: “Allora? Uncle John!”

“Yes, Myron, it is us. Stay there, lad,” Watson said in a low voice as he eased the door shut behind him, cutting off what little light had been coming from the hallway. Allora made a soft sound of distress in the back of her throat and clutched a small handful of the lapel of Watson’s dressing gown. “It will be all right, my dear,” he murmured as he carried her over to Myron’s bed and set her down upon it. Her brother immediately lifted the covers so Allora could scramble under to join him, blanket and all. “Let me have a look about, then. Both of you stay put,” Watson said with quiet firmness, pointing at them to underscore his instruction.

Allora and Myron both nodded, only Allora managing to whisper, “Yes, Uncle John.”

Going from pointing his index finger to a brief spreading of all the fingers on that hand, Watson quickly mouthed the words to a basic protection spell, willing it to encompass both children. It took but a moment, but he had no doubt it would keep them safe—he was very, very good at such things. Even as a gentle golden glow only he could see flowed over the two children, he heard a sudden scrabbling under Myron’s bed, as of several sets of small claws against the floorboards. Obviously hearing the same sounds, Allora and Myron gave an involuntary gasp and a strangled squeak of frightened surprise, respectively.

Crouching down cautiously a few feet from the foot of Myron’s bed, Watson peered underneath. Far back, against the wainscoting at the head of the bed, a dark shape huddled. It was about the size of a small cat, but most certainly not the shape of a cat. Watson should have been able to see it more clearly, despite the darkness, but it somehow remained a muddled black shape. And upon that impression, Watson realised his initial intuition had been correct: this was no ordinary creature; this was something other, most likely something out of Faerie.

Watson let out a soft breath shaped into, “Oho,” and, like a shot, the dark shape was scurrying out from under the bed and along the edge of the wall toward the half-open door to the other room of the nursery—the playroom—where the children’s toys and books were kept.

The sound of its claws seemed even louder this time, and Watson peripherally heard Myron whimper his sister’s name, while Allora let out a muffled cry of, “Mummy!”, but he was focussed on his prey and never let his gaze waver.

Just as the little creature passed into the open space between the bedside chest of drawers and the corner behind a rocking chair, just over a yard from the other door, Watson spoke a single word, his voice nearly a growl: “Vrraika!” It was both a command and the most basic of spells; something along the lines of ‘halt at once!’

The black shape went absolutely still. A deep blue radiance surrounded it; although, just like the protection spell he’d cast upon the children, only Watson could see the effect. In fact, aware of the little sounds the children had made thus far, as well as when he had just now stopped the uncanny little intruder in its tracks—his snarled command had garnered dual gasps from the bed—Watson turned and went to the bed side.

“Everything is all right, little ones,” he said in a soothing voice. Bending down to put a gentle hand on each of their heads, he added a layer of glamour to his tone, infusing his words with a much more delicate version of the harsh order he’d given moments ago to the dark creature. “You are perfectly safe. There is nothing to be afraid of. Sleep now, my dears, and dream happy dreams until I wake you.”

Myron and Allora gave twin sighs of relief, their eyes closing as they relaxed into sleep, and Watson eased them further down into the bed with careful hands. Once he had them settled and the covers tucked close, he turned to cross the room and open the door into the playroom all the way. With a scooping gesture of one hand, Watson drew the creature he had magically captured into the middle of the next room. Pushing the door nearly closed, Watson casually flicked his fingers at the lamp by the doorway and it lit with a soft hiss. Generally, he refrained from using any unnecessary magic when in public or in an ordinary mortal’s home, but he felt this was, in fact, quite necessary. He also felt it necessary to show the creature what it was dealing with, so he twisted the gold and moonsilver ring on the smallest finger of his left hand.

With the glamour spell controlled by the ring gone, Watson no longer seemed to be an amiable middle-aged human male, but rather a Fae male at the beginning of his prime, closer to early twenties than mid-fifties. Crouching down before his prisoner, Watson murmured in a dialect of the language used amongst the common Fae of the Unseelie Court, “How came you here in this house and what is your purpose?” Extending his hand, thumb and forefinger touching, he then parted them to symbolically open or release a specific portion of his control over the creature. “You may speak.”

The answer, spoken in the same language he had used, and in a voice that seemed more growls and hisses than anything else, was accompanied by a baleful red glow in the four slit–pupiled eyes glaring up at him. “Brought here to make mischief and sow unrest in the household.”

“Who set you this purpose?” Watson asked, finding the low, snarling language a bit easier to speak when he was angry.

The creature, which he now recognised as a squrig—one of the least of the Unseelie Court, and considered to be the next thing to scum by even the worst of that unsavoury lot—curled in on itself, growling, and did not answer, though it was apparent that resisting Watson’s spell caused it great discomfort. It twitched a few times and gave a faint whine.

Watson leaned closer, making a grasping gesture with curved fingers, and then slowly beginning to close those fingers as if squeezing something in his hand. Watson rumbled harshly, “Do not think to play upon my sympathies.”

A slight sound alerted Watson to the fact that he was not alone. Even as he was rising from his crouch, turning with one hand outstretched and the other at his side, but a step away from summoning a weapon, Watson recognised a familiar scent. An equally familiar shape stood just inside the door between the playroom and the children’s bedroom: Sherlock Holmes. The man remained perfectly still, open hands raised in a show of peace, dark brows high and head slightly tilted in inquiry.

Letting out a sigh as he relaxed his own posture, shaking his head, Watson said, “Gods below but you’re too bloody quiet, even for a—” Breaking off before saying anything unwise, Watson made a little flip of his hand, as if to say, ‘you know what the rest would be’.

“Yes, well, your instincts recognise me as safe and… you were rather focussed upon making some extraordinary noises,” Holmes said, voice barely above a whisper in obvious deference to the sleeping children in the next room. He came slowly forward, eyes on the spot where Watson’s captive remained, still bound to Watson’s will. “I presume you were speaking to… someone or something?”

“You cannot see it?” Watson asked, surprised. At Holmes’ dry look, Watson rolled his eyes at himself and snorted softly. He then returned his attention to the dark creature that had been sent to trouble Mycroft Holmes’ household. Watson shifted to its own language again. “Reveal yourself.”

With a shudder and a whine, the ugly little fae cringed before grunting handful of words. Almost at once, it appeared to Watson as if shadows rippled across the squrig’s form and then disappeared, leaving it slightly less difficult to see—for him. Holmes made a soft sound of discovery and moved closer, stopping just behind Watson’s left shoulder. Apparently Watson had been obeyed.

“Unseelie Court?” He murmured to Watson. Watson merely nodded, holding up a hand and touching a finger to his lips to silently request that Holmes refrain from speaking further.

Addressing his prisoner again in its own language, Watson demanded, “Who sent you?” He gathered his power around the creature with a gesture and, once again, made as if he were tightening his grip on something—effectively increasing the pressure of his spell’s effect on this repugnant specimen of the lowest denizens of Faerie.

A long, drawn out, guttural moan escaped the creature before it spat out an answer, “One of the local mortals; a neighbour of yon cur’s brother.”

Behind them, Holmes let out a soft snort, asking in an undertone, “Did I hear the word for dog?”

Unexpectedly fighting a smirk, Watson nodded. “Essentially, yes; the word is nearly the same in most of the dialects of Faerie.” He glanced over his shoulder to see Holmes give the squrig a low growl that didn’t belong in a human throat, baring his teeth in a not–smile that bore longer than normal canines. Switching back to the low dialect preferred by the commoners of the Unseelie Court, Watson returned his attention to the questioning of the intruder. “Were you summoned, bound, or trading favour for favour?”

After a breathy snarl in Holmes’ direction, the creature returned its angry gaze to Watson and replied, “Summoned. The half-breed whelp spoke one of the old cantrips, offered blood and bread, and I answered.”

“Half-breed, you say?” Watson made a soft musing sound. “Fae and human or something else?”

“Aye, that,” it replied, letting out a sharp snort. “Blood of Faerie’s the only reason the summoning worked, methinks.”

“Tell me your summoner’s name.” When the squrig writhed and whined, either unwilling or unable to answer, Watson changed direction. “Then, have you discharged your duty here or do you owe further fealty to… him?” Watson asked, tilting his head and watching closely.

With a little indistinct grumbling, the squrig huffed out a sharp breath and lifted its head as if to nod, but then shook its rat-like head vigorously. “No more tasks owed… and yet… still took the offering. Made a pact!.” The venom in its rough words was palpable, but it glared up into Watson’s eyes as it added very succinctly, “Can tell no one.”

“So, you cannot betray him by word… not directly… very well, then, I offer you a trade,” Watson said slowly, thinking as he spoke. “You lead me to his location—not just where he is at this moment, but his home—and once I have him, I will let you go, free and unharmed; with the condition that you never return to this property, nor under any circumstances. Yes or no?”

Burbling out a rather horrid laugh, wicked and drawn out, the creature nodded its head once. “Done!” A moment later, it extended a tiny, clawed hand that more resembled a rat’s paw than a human hand. In that small palm lay what looked like a slightly translucent glass sphere; it could have been taken for a child’s marble, save for the dull red glow in its shadowy centre. ”This I give for safe passage. It can lead you in my place… take you to… the one you seek.”

Watson nodded, plucking the sphere from that gnarled palm and feeling the slight tingle of dark magic in it. It was as his captive said, he could tell at once, and knew the spell with which it was imbued would allow him to find the one who had summoned this nasty little bottom-feeder of the Unseelie Court and somehow got it into Mycroft Holmes’ home. Which Watson had warded, himself, some years back, and refreshed every time he visited with his own Holmes brother.

“One more thing,” Watson snapped out as the squrig turned its attention toward the nearest shadowy corner. It paused, even then on the act of trying to move out of Watson’s magical grasp, and tilted its odd little head to listen. “You said you were ‘brought here’. How, exactly, did you breach the wards on this house?”

Giving a hissing kind of snort, it gestured downward and at an angle with one limb, in the direction of the front door downstairs. “By stealth, and yet I was welcomed in,” it rasped, sounding slyly proud—no doubt at what it perceived as a clever work-around to passing Watson’s house-wards, perhaps even it had suggested it to its ‘master’. “I hid in the basket offered… which was lauded and carried inside by the master of the house!” It let out a growling snigger. Whatever pacts or deals it might agree to, the squrig, like all of its kind, delighted in witnessing as well as causing mischief.

Growing a little more annoyed atop his existing angry frustration, Watson bit back a curse. Even so, a bargain was a bargain; he waved his hand in the direction of the only window in the room, and the latch slipped open with a quiet snap a moment before the window slid open a handspan. Then he turned his attention back to his captive, spreading his fingers and thumb wide and speaking a single word to end the spell, releasing the squrig. “Go now, and mind our bargain. If your spellstone does not guide me as promised, if I find you on this property again, or if you make mischief for any member of this family, I will show you no mercy.”

“Understood!” it hissed and scampered with the soft scrabbling of tiny claws across the floor to the wall, where it then went up the wall just as easily as it had gone along the floor. With a flick of a crooked, rat -like tail, it disappeared into the night.

Instead of using his magic to close the window, Watson rose and went to it in but a few steps, first opening it a little wider to get a good look outside. This time he was aware of Holmes coming closer behind him, as he watched the tiny dark shape disappear into the shrubs below, its trajectory that of the nearest property border.

Putting both hands on the windowsill, only feeling the bite of the cold coming in as a distant sensation, Watson closed his eyes and felt for the wards he had set years back; they were still in place, as he’d hoped.

Holmes’ voice, quite near his ear, was soft and held a lilt that told Watson he was likely wearing a wry combination of a hint of a smirk and the bare beginnings of a frown. “I believe I have been more than patient, my dear Watson.”

A smile curving his lips, Watson stood upright and closed the window before turning to look up at Holmes, nodding. “You have, and then some.” He reached up to put a gentle hand to his beloved’s jaw. “And I am grateful. We ought to go back to our rooms to speak further, though,” he added.

“It would be wiser,” Holmes allowed, reaching out his own hand to lightly trace the pointed upper curve of one of Watson’s ears, his gaze then moving up to Watson’s hair and then back to his face. “Much as I hate to say it, replacing your glamour would also be wise.” It was not at all exaggerating to say his expression was markedly in the ‘smouldering’ category.

“Damn and blast it,” muttered Watson on a self-directed sigh of frustration. Holmes didn’t have to explain further. Watson had dispelled his glamour to reveal his own, Fae appearance—pointed ears and all—for anyone to see and it should have been his first thought to reactivate it upon concluding his business with the odious little squrig.

“Try not to be too hard on yourself, John. You were concentrating on the more important things,” Holmes pointed out, no doubt aware of Watson’s general trend of thought from his expressions and tone. He glanced toward the still partially open door to the children’s bedroom before leaning in and giving Watson a tender kiss, then nuzzling into the curve of his neck and inhaling. His exhalation held the slightest hint of a growl underneath. “You know how fond I am of your true appearance, regardless of how well your glamour is constructed.”

Not trying to resist the honeyed warmth that arose in him at Holmes’ kiss, nor the other sort of heat that welled up below it at the sign of the wolf that was influencing Holmes with growing strength as they neared the days of the full moon. Watson smiled into another kiss, and yet another, before letting a little space fall between them without quite letting go. “And you know I feel the same about yours, as well,” he murmured, blinking slowly up at his lover with lazy desire.

“Stop that,” breathed Holmes, leaning in for one more touch of his lips to Watson’s, “you distractingly winsome phouka.”

Watson chuckled wickedly, though it was scarcely louder than a sigh, and his lips twisted into a smirk; albeit a seductive one. “As you wish, dear wolf,” he whispered, turning the ring on his finger—a twin to one on Holmes’ same finger—which reactivated the glamour spell that made him appear to be an ordinary human once again, rounded ears, moustache, and brown eyes that held no inner glow of eldritch magic.

Once Watson had removed the spell on Allora and Myron, he whispered a gently glamoured tale of a large rat snuck in from the cold and sent packing right back out again by their Uncle John. Then, after lingering until the two children had slipped back down into sleep feeling safe and well-guarded, Watson and Holmes returned to Holmes’ bedroom, where Watson filled him in on exactly what had been said between Watson and the unexpected squrig.

“I must say,” Holmes said thoughtfully some while later; chin resting upon his hands, and those hands lain one atop the other upon Watson’s chest, “that squrig may well be one of the most loathsome little beasts I’ve yet seen from your… homeland.”

Idly toying with the hair at the nape of Holmes’ neck, Watson looked in the direction of the faintest glow of coals in the grate, focusing more on his thoughts than anything in the room. “They are a hybrid of rat and goblin, barely more intelligent than a clever dog, and enjoy trouble and mischief the way a pig enjoys slops and its mud wallow.”

A breath of a chuckle escaped Holmes, possibly at Watson’s pithily disgusted description. “Can you trust that little bauble it gave you to guide us to our culprit?”

Watson nodded confidently. “It had the proper feel to it, but we shall see.” He sighed, adding, “Even so, I do wish we could alert your brother to the possibility of more of this sort of thing occurring if we don’t find this mysterious neighbour.”

“You know there’s no way to even come near the subject,” Holmes reminded him firmly. “He has done me – done us — the kindness of accepting the truth of what we are to each other; I hardly think he would be so accepting of our… deeper truth.”

Shaking his head, Watson sighed again, feeling no need to go through the entire discussion they had already beaten to death over the years; Holmes did not feel confident that his elder brother, whose grasp and use of logic and reason was easily equal to Holmes’ own, would extend that understanding to the knowledge his younger brother was a werewolf and his illegal lover was yet another creature out of myth and legend.

“Shall I stay and look into it while you continue on with our things?” Watson asked after a long pause, wherein he imagined they were both thinking of those previous discussions. “We’ve already lingered longer than we should have done.”

Holmes made a disgusted noise, shifting his position to loom a bit over Watson, putting them nearly nose to nose, and rumbled in a voice as quiet as a whisper, but deeper and rougher, “Iain Mac Bhaltair, you stubborn phouka, when will you learn—”

Half laughing, Watson interrupted, “That you will not be coddled?” He lifted his head enough to see their lips met for just a moment before he added, “Or is it that you will not be left out of the mystery, full moon bedamned?”

With a mildly outraged expression, Holmes muttered, “Coddled!” scathingly. “We shall head out as planned tomorrow and circle back.”

“And then we will both ‘look into it’.”

Watson couldn’t help his grin, nor that it went a bit smirky as he murmured in an utterly false docile tone, “Yes, Mr. Holmes.”

“As if I would believe such—” Holmes muffled his own lost words in Watson’s neck, making him struggle not to laugh loudly enough to possibly be overheard. After a bit of subdued roughhousing, they settled in to sleep a bit more before morning arrived, the better to prepare for wherever it might lead them.

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To Pt. 2

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