The Quiet Man

The Right Moment

There isn’t enough space in here for you, is there.

You look as if you want to smash through the windows, or move the furniture around, or upturn everything. You keep reaching out for something that’s not there; I can’t imagine what it is. Every flat surface is covered over with the tools of this particular trade: the phones, stacks of letters, notebooks full of your scrawled handwriting, computers and screens, keyboards, radios, boxes of devices I don’t even know the names of. There really isn’t enough space for all this, is there. Not for all that and you, pacing, patting at your pockets like you’re looking for your cigarettes, practically clawing at the walls. It’s a cage. You’re no good in a cage.

We can’t leave, not yet. We have to wait, that’s all that’s left to do. Wait, watch, and listen for a bomb to go off outside.

If–

If only it had been more than just one night, you know. I just–

If I knew how, if I could–

If I had any experience at all kissing you with the lights on, or touching you outside of my bedroom, I might stand up and take your hands, or put my arms around you, or put the palm of my hand on your neck; I would comfort you, I would tell you what you already know, that it will be all right. There’s nothing more we can do. He knows. He knows, Sherlock. He’s made his third threat, and you’ve responded. He thinks he has the upper hand now, you’ve done everything just right. Subtle, but not too subtle. He remembers about the failsafe. He’ll try to wound you a third time by killing me, and when he does, all this will be over.

Come with me. That’s what I’d say to you, if I knew I could. Come with me, come upstairs to my bed. Let me unbutton your shirt, let me push it off your shoulders and kiss your skin there. I’ll distract you from this. Come with me.

You lean back in your chair, exposing your long, pale throat. There should be a mark there, somehow. I should be able to see the path of my hands against your skin, maybe the lightest imprint in pink where I touched you, but of course I can’t. It would be easier if I could. It almost feels like a dream now, a fantasy. A memory of a fantasy.

All your phones are eerily quiet now. It’s a bit off-putting; Moran is waiting too. Everyone’s waiting, stuck, poised and ready to pounce. You pick up a couple of phones and cradle them in your hands; you stare at them. I stare at your hands; such long fingers. I want to kiss the tips of them, I want you to dig your nails into my back. You’ve done all you can, Sherlock. Put the phones down. Look at me. Come here: sit down next to me. Put your head in my lap, I’ll stroke your hair. Don’t think about him anymore. When he detonates it, we’ll know.

All right: enough. Watching you isn’t helping, is it. I need to write something; that’s a good way to pass the time. My outline is pretty clear, I just need to get it all down. I have my notes, I have my editor’s comments. The beginning, she said. Start at the beginning. Everyone loves the beginnings of things. She’s kindly avoided asking me to write the ending; I wonder if she understood what you meant to me in a way Mary never did. Maybe.

I outlined a version of A Study in Pink. It starts with a nightmare. I don’t want to write about that; maybe I won’t write that part just now. I could start with my walk in the park, when I ran into Stamford. Coffee and pigeons, who’d want me for a flatmate, all that. Fate meeting me at my lowest, my weakest.

Sherlock? You’re not even sending texts anymore. You’re just staring at screens. You’re just waiting. It’s agonising just to watch, frankly. Come here.

There’s not enough space for your impatience, I know. The flat is too small for that. The world is too small.

I remember the day we first walked in here together. I was leaning on a cane, embarrassed by my inexplicable limp and trying hard not to show it. That will come soon; that’s in chapter two.