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Atmospheric refraction has scattered the shorter green and blue wavelengths from the remaining light of the sun, leaving only red and orange across the London skyline.
Sky. To date I have spent brain power only on considering what descends from it and alters the conditions of human criminal activity, not the sky itself. Peer up at it now: a great empty space. Initial observations suggest that it is largely pointless. Merely absence of a ceiling or upper floor. Functionally, the origin location of weather patterns. Rain, snow, fog, sleet; these things can be evidence, important to note. Otherwise, it is merely the Cartesian coordinate Z (up). How tedious. The cosmos, largely, is boring: there are no motives in space. So far, no murders, no crimes. Dull. Large balls of gas on fire and moving around in aimless circles. Tiny points of light. Bright red glow, pushed out from the edge of the world, slowly dimming. (Dimming light can shift the view of a crime scene; things can be hidden in different varieties of light. Worthy of notice, at least.) Bright point of orange behind the skyline; fingers of red that fade into blue-blackness.
People appear to find this process romantic, the sun moving behind the horizon. Why? (Does John find it romantic? Probably. Thought stings. He does not sit and moon over sunsets with me. Would I want him to?)
(Could I find this process interesting, if John were sitting here next to me, mooning at the setting sun?)
(Possibly.)
(Probably.)
Is it the colour? Do reddish hues bear some particular significance that prompts an emotion or amorous action? Would staring at a wall painted red incite the same reaction? Could I paint the entire flat red as a means of provoking John in an amorous direction?
Pathetic. It would only make him think of someone else.
Phone buzzes. Pull it out, look at the screen. It’s a text from John. Can’t help but look. It’s the latest of fifteen such texts, each more anxious than the next.
Where are you?
Can’t hear tone of voice through a text, but I can sense it anyway. He is still angry with me.
It’s not my fault his date’s hair caught on fire. She was dangling it into the candle on the table, I didn’t drag her head over it. I didn’t even ask her to turn her head away from me like that. Her decision. I just wanted to ask John a simple question or two about liver decomposition, I couldn’t very well get his opinion without the liver in question present, could I?
Another buzz. Check screen. Two messages. Stomach does another little turn.
Sherlock, please answer me. Where are you?
Mrs. Hudson is starting to get worried, it’s not just me.
Red is also the colour of warning; signs, portside lights on ships, traffic signals. Red is the colour of blood, which is, in a way, another kind of warning: stop, you’ve gone too far, broken the skin, broken a body. Hearts look reddish when you first see them inside a body, but once cleaned of blood, they’re predominantly yellowish, like chicken skin. Children draw them and colour them in red, presumably because they have failed to learn this simple fact. Perhaps they have seen only living, beating hearts, seen open-heart surgeries on their relentless tellies (do parents let their children watch open heart surgeries on telly?) and failed to understand that the red around a heart is only the blood. Do parents want their children to imagine only bloodied hearts? Presumably so; live things are (apparently) more pleasing to people than dead things are. (Regardless of its colour, the heart is certainly not heart-shaped, which is an odd failure of the English language, and a bizarre and erroneous anatomy lesson for children. I suppose it’s like Santa Claus: one of the things adults lie to children about by default, with no shame or remorse.)
If I don’t hear from you in the next 5 minutes I’m going to assume foul play. If you left your phone somewhere I may have to kill you.
Red is the colour of ripeness, of sexual readiness. Is that why the red sky is considered romantic? Does it remind (potential?) lovers of exposed and engorged genitalia? Staring at sunset light isn’t one of the things the very religious list as dangerous (such as dancing), so perhaps not.
Another buzz. Check. Not John, Lestrade.
Have you got lost? Why are you ignoring John? Do I need to send a patrol car?
Hmph. Clearly John has moved up a link in the chain of command. Well, fine. Send a text to John, ignore Lestrade.
I’m here. SH
Here? Where’s here?
I’m at 221b, of course. SH
You are not. I’m in the flat, and I can tell you’re not here. You’re pretty hard to miss.
Look up. SH
I glance at my watch; it will be interesting to see how long it takes John to figure it out. I can almost feel the neurons in his brain reaching out and trying to form new connections. Up up up what’s up? Sky. What separates us from the sky? Ceilings, upper floors. He already knows I’m not on the third floor; he would have checked. Mrs. Hudson checked the other units, even. So what’s left? What protects us from the rain, the snow, the sleet?
“Sherlock!” John, shouting from the street. Lean forward, peer down. Glance at watch. Two minutes, forty seconds. Feel a stab of pride; general population would have taken at least two minutes longer. Shift a bit; roof tiles digging into thighs slightly. “Jesus Christ, Sherlock, don’t move!” Mrs. Hudson clatters out onto the street, her kitten heels tapping against the pavement. She bursts into tears.
In a matter of seconds John is launching himself through the small attic window and onto the roof, panting. “Sherlock,” he says. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
He’s treading gently on the slopped roof, moving carefully but determinedly. Soldiers fear no shifting roof tile under their feet.
“I’m not going to jump.”
“No?” He grabs me by the collar. “Move back from the edge, please.” He doesn’t like my legs dangling over the eaves, apparently. His hand is hot and insistent against the back of my neck. He tugs. Plant my palms against the rough roof, shift backward and upward, and again, up the slope of the roof until my back is pressed against the chimney and John has me pinned by the shoulders with both hands. He’s bracing himself against the roof tiles, pitched to the side, panting hard; his precarious position puts him in more danger then I was. His face is so close, his breath against my cheek. I put a hand on his chest, push him back, force him to sit, steady and secure like I am. His arm slips against the chimney in the curve of my back, his hand on my hip. Safe.
“Really,” I say. “There was no danger until you arrived.”
John sighs. “What are you doing up here? And why have you been ignoring my texts?”
“Red,” I say. I move to point at the dregs of the sunset, but on impulse he catches my arm and holds on to it, pressed it into his stomach. I let him have it, let my hand grow limp against his thigh. Denim under my fingers. Heat. I can feel his breathing, my arm pressed against him, his heart beating so fast. He really thought I meant to jump. Odd; have I ever seemed like the kind to commit such a pointless act? Extremely short term flight isn’t something that particularly interests me.
John stares out at the London skyline, watching the sunset. “Did you,” he starts. “You didn’t crawl up into the attic and through that little window to sit here and watch the sunset, did you?”
“It appears so.” That’s neither a yes nor a no. I feel his fingers shift on my hip, tentative, cautious.
“You were hiding from me.” He sounds hurt, oddly, not angry. His deduction, of course, is correct.
“Not hiding,” I say. “Of course I’m not. I’m examining a natural phenomenon people tend to find romantic. I thought I’d see if there’s anything in it. I presumed you’d be enjoying it with Katy.”
“Cathy,” John says. “Her name is Cathy. And no, after I put her hair out, she wanted to go straight home. Alone.”
I have no answer to that. I’m certainly not going to apologize. Not my fault. So instead I drag my fingers along the seam of his jeans, watch his face out of the corner of my eye. He’s watching the sunset. It bathes his face in red. Red for warning (stop, danger, blood and pain and damage) and for invitation, sexual readiness (go go go go). I am paralysed between the two.
I rest my cheek against his shoulder.
After a moment he leans his face into my hair. I feel him sigh, his whole body trembles slightly. He puts his hand on my shoulder and squeezes. This means something. (What?)
Acknowledgment of physical closeness, beyond friendship? Acknowledgement that we have been this close before, huddled together in communicative intimacy? I am consumed with want, though I’m uncertain about exactly what it is I long for. Closeness, surely. Skin. Contact. Friction. John. Fumblings in dormitories have not prepared me for this. I am caught off-guard, no matter how much I have stared at him. No matter how much I have watched him, studied him. I am out of my depth. I do not know how to live with the want, or the having. He leans down slightly and kisses my forehead.
“You know I...” he starts. I don’t interrupt, I want to know what he’s going to say. I don’t move. He pauses. His heart is beating very fast. I press my fingers against his wrist, I want to count, to feel it. “I don’t...” another start. No conclusion. He sighs. I count the beats of his heart. I feel an odd sense of fear that I can’t make sense of. (Danger? Where? Inside him; coming out.)
“We could do this,” he says finally. His voice is very, very quiet, as if he wants plausible deniability. Up here on the roof, no one to witness it; his voice so quiet he could pretend the words had never been spoken. “We could. I don’t usually...” he sighs again, presses his face into my hair. He can feel him breathing me in. “I’m straight, you know. And we’re mates. You’re my best mate, you’re more than that, you know that.” I don’t move. I feel numb, blank. I can imagine seventeen different ways this speech of John’s can end, and I’m terrified of all of them. “I wouldn’t have thought...” most of these sentences seem to trail off. I shift slightly, brush my eyelashes against his neck. He shivers. “There are things...you wouldn’t like, Sherlock. Relationships, they take a lot of work, you know. They’re...messy and there are needs and compromises, and...”
He’s right, of course. There’s a reason I have avoided relationships. Tedious. Boring. Monotonous. I have no real interest in spending time worrying about someone else’s needs. Hurt feelings. Demands. Being expected to lie about some things and pet someone’s ego. Make someone a priority, over the work, over me. No.
“We could...” he starts again. “I understand, I mean, I feel it, there’s a pull there, I know. I think...” his hand has shifted from my shoulder to my neck, gently, softly, like his voice. Into my hair, onto my cheek. “Well, I never thought I’d feel that for a bloke, so you’re the exception. So we could, just for fun. To get it out of our systems. You’re not used to having people this close, I understand that. We could, but I think you’d regret it.”
Blink. What?
“I’m not...” he sighs. He leans forward and kisses me on the forehead again. It’s a safe spot in John’s mind. Safe, not sexual, not crossing the line. Affectionate. He wants. He wants to kiss me on the mouth, but he’s afraid. His jagged pulse. His fear makes me afraid. John fears nothing except this? Me? Kissing me? Being close to me? (Being cast off by me?) “I know what would happen, Sherlock. I’ve been trying to avoid it, getting too close to this line. If I step over it...” His fingers are carding through my hair. It feels like goodbye. Something inside of me is being torn into pieces. “I don’t think I could shut it off. You wouldn’t like it. You would loathe it. I would get hurt and grumpy and you would hate me. It would ruin everything.”
A revelation. I have been so stuck in the wanting, I can’t even imagine all the pieces that come next. From here, wrapped up in John, smelling him, feeling his lips on me, his fingers in my hair, clinging to him like a terrified child, I can’t imagine it. I can’t even imagine the having. (How would it be? Knees and elbows and teeth and tongues and logistics I can’t entirely fathom. I don’t know.) John is three steps ahead of me, he’s moved past wanting and having into my inevitable boredom, rejection. I do get bored. Tired. Frustrated. I have got bored of every person I’ve ever met. Why would he be different? (But he is different. I have no proof, no proof. There can be no conclusions, no assertions, without proof.) If a case goes on more than a week I get tired of it, too. He’s right to think ahead. My brilliant John; he is the consulting detective of amorous relationships. He’s right.
I let go.
He lets go too. Plausible deniability. I feel loose, my cables cut, like I’m drifting. I lean against the chimney for a second before I stand, my legs wobbly and weak. I walk down the roof to the eaves. I feel crumpled, defeated. For the first time since I was thirteen (ridiculed, beaten by classmates, called so many names, rejected, shamed, laughed at) I feel a deep-seated hatred of myself, and wish I could be just a little more normal, a little more like an ordinary person, with ordinary wants and an ordinary brain. Less destructive. Someone who wouldn’t come to hate John, the least hateable person there is. Someone who could just love him without getting bored of it. (How can I become that person? What do I need to do?)
“Sherlock,” John says, louder this time. “Don’t. You’re scaring me.”
I know. I know, John. I scare you. I know.
The sun is gone. No more red in the sky. The sky: a big gaping maw of emptiness, of nothing, filled with tiny points of meaningless light.