A/N: We Brits have been experiencing a bit of a heat wave and I simply could not let it lie. Sorry (but not really).
Just a short tale for your enjoyment. Please let me know if it worked! x
"Even at midnight the city groans in the heat. We have had no rain for quite a while. The traffic sounds below ride the night air in waves of trigonometry, the cosine of a siren, the tangent of a sigh, a system, an axis a logic to this chaos, yes."
(Lorrie Moore)
Tabloids clamoured unbecomingly, desperate to impart knowledge already clear and present to anyone unfortunate enough to be living in the capital that week.
"Capital endures hottest night in 10 years!"
"Extreme heat health alert!"
"Can heatwave boost Britain's economy?"
(and, most lamentably)
"Sweats in the City!"
It seemed that heated air from Saharan climes had drifted across vast oceans with nothing but the sole intent to inconvenience the smooth-running of old London town; blistering bodies in our parks and broiling commuters like grilled sardines on the central line. Our grey, surging metropolis had, almost overnight, been transmogrified into some kind of tropical urban island, slowing all its inhabitants to a laboured, slurred, sweat-coated stumble - from home, to transport, to work place - and finding no comfort in any of them.
Fifty two degrees on the top decks of buses, forty seven degrees within the belly of the tube; dead, scorched grass in Parliament Square; pale, virgin limbs exposed and doused in frothing, glittering, cooling water from the fountains at Marble Arch, and a torpid lethargy by townsfolk, bemused by the heat and their own frailty in combatting it.
Nannying whines issued forth unbidden from interfering and misinformed experts doling out laughably manifest advice…
Stay inside between 11am and 3pm (highly impractical in a city largely untroubled by the habit of siesta); carry hand-held fans on the tube (how one then manages a briefcase, morning paper, phone and keeps a hand free to ward off troublesome co-travellers I do not know, since I am no octopus); assume lighter tailoring (perhaps board-shorts and flip flops for your business meeting at Canary Wharf?); avoid coffee (no); turn off appliances such as phone chargers and laptops to prevent overheating (ludicrous) and sleep in lighter bedclothes and nightwear (at this point, John Watson suggested - quite brusquely - that I should calm my opinions, since shouting at an inanimate object - the television - was the very definition of fruitlessness, and I myself was contributing significantly to the hot air in Baker Street at that very moment).
A patina of prickling moisture broke out (annoyingly) across my face, the nape of my neck and between my shoulder blades as I paced (ill-advisedly) about my room, furious - not at John (never John) but at myself. I was caged, confined, burning up in my efforts to master this surge of unwelcome heat which did nothing but dull my mind and boil up my thoughts into an insipid and tasteless broth of ineffectualness. Stopping mid-pace, my blunt instrument eventually ceased its whirrings, settling finally upon a tenable course of action. It was almost eleven at night and the thermometer in the hall showed 31 degrees as I passed through its deadened, leadened air and into the heavy heat of the night. I had to think more clearly, I had to be away from my own four walls and their stifling confinements; I needed a change of scene where I could lie quietly and re-calibrate my thoughts in a cooling calming, florally-papered spare room, and breathe.
I would call upon Molly Hooper.
She wouldn't mind.
~x~
The steady tick of my kitchen clock clicked relentlessly through that endless night, almost as would a rising thermometer, whispering hotter, hotter, hotter. The deadened buzz of the refrigerator welcomed me though; a flatline of white noise issuing sound and blessed coolness into the slab of heat currently calling itself night-time, and I leant forward, eyes closed, hand on the door, letting my face in, to share space with the celery, the butter, the eggs and the milk. I opened my eyes, the light from the open fridge giving my skin a luminous blue tinge to accompany the blissful prickle of goosepimples across the clamminess of my arms and shoulders as its heavenly coolness emanated, as welcome as the night bus on a rainy night in Hackney.
You might want to call it lucky, that in my line of work the place was always kept cool for reasons of practicality, but the hospital in general was a seething mass of overheated co-workers, walking in sweated silences through virtual greenhouses of endless, glazed corridors where windows couldn't be opened beyond a crack for love nor money, and wards where frailty of patients ensured heating was never entirely off and the buzzword was melt. Seeing Sanderson swanning around with his electric mini-fan held permanently next to his smug face brought surges of anger I would have merely laughed off in more bearable temperatures. No doubt he thought it quirky and appealing to wear brightly patterned surf shorts to work, but the sight of his milk bottle, ginger-furred calves sent shivers of revulsion down this pathologist's spine (and a few others I saw faux-retching nearby). God, I missed shivering.
Reluctantly closing the fridge door, I padded through a warmth as black and thick as treacle towards the kitchen sink and let the tap run a little to get the coolest water from the pipes before drinking it slowly, standing naked as I looked into the London skyline, protected by darkness. Pressing the cold, empty glass to my forehead, I delayed returning to a boudoir as humid and airless as a Peruvian rainforest as I walked slowly around each room, checking windows were cracked open wide (third floor has its benefits) in vain attempt to encourage even the slightest breeze to venture through. Frowning, I noticed more cracked tiles along the bathroom window sill; three more cracks had appeared since the last time I'd noticed, and should I ever have decided to leave this little haven for pastures new, chances of a fully returned deposit were looking increasingly unlikely. I am a little more observational than most (I`d like to think) although certainly no detective. How ironic then, that it was, in fact, a detective who had caused such inconvenient damage (good tilers in central London - not the easiest things to find).
Sherlock Holmes.
I whisper his name into the stillness, letting it roll across my tongue and dissipate into the heat. Sherlock. I say it again; a private incantation to offer, a slight (but undeniable) hitch in my heart when I say it, a consummation, devoutly to be wished. I fancied him, of course I did (everyone did, until they got to know him better) but there was more, so much more to it that that. It took quite a while, I think, but after days, months, weeks, years had passed, my feelings for Sherlock softened, melted, melded, yielded and reformed into something else, something new. I helped him when no one else could, I killed him and I saved him and hid him from view in this very flat, where not even the best consulting criminal in the whole world would have thought to look. Sherlock himself, no slouch in the observational skills, saw the change in me; the chemical base shaken up with the acid that is opposite to it in every possible way, but because a hope, a wish, a need is there, every molecule finds its match with the other to form a new compound, and this is what we have now - something new.
So, he comes still.
Long after Reichenbach, long after the hiatus that nearly cost him his life and his most dear friendship with John, he still comes here from time to time, sometimes with (and sometimes without) permission. I am frequently out and know nothing of my own personal cat burglar until I notice a completed cryptic crossword in the newspaper, or a rearrangement of my medical books into a more acceptable index, and on one occasion, a delightful ice cream tub full of writhing maggots surrounding a rotting human ear which he had lost interest in before leaving.
Unfortunately, there were also visitations when I was at home, which were usually no more heinous than a fearful start as a window creaked open, or a click announcing the breech of my front door lock (deadlock my arse), but could occasionally herald an embarrassing and annoying degree of inconvenience. Simon Horcross, a fine flaxen-haired descendent of the Viking race (judging by his broad shoulders and muscled arms) who sold expensive cars, drank real ale and was a fully fledged vegan (almost Viking, then) had gone to the trouble of researching and booking the sweetest little raw food restaurant in Shoreditch, where I realised tofu was not a type of Plasticine and that all the squashed dates in the world would not make up for the lack of eggs in a chocolate cake. Simon Horcross (yes, of course I had noticed the initials…), who came back for coffee (and soya milk) and made the mistake of walking straight to my bathroom as we entered (all that real ale?) before I noticed Sherlock sprawled across my sofa, furiously texting on two different phones and balancing a laptop full of aquarium details across his knees.
"Ummm… Molly your neighbour is stealing your WiFi. On the times he is at work, your speed doubles…"
"Sherlock! (stage whisper) I have a date!"
His pale eyes are all over me in an instant, phones forgotten. I am crimson at the pathway of his thoughts (new dress- taking it back tomorrow, smudged lipstick - clumsy kiss at the car, poor attempt at fake tanning judging by my pale hands and orange wrists… I could go on) but mercifully, he says nothing about my appearance until:
"You are hungry. Your eyes are all over the refrigerator where you have some very nice cheese, yet, you have clearly been out for di- ah - " He quirks an annoying little smile at the corner of his (beautiful) mouth. "Vegan restaurant!" Suddenly, those eyes widen and Sherlock Holmes casts down the laptop, hurriedly heading towards the door. Instinctively following, we only get to the passageway as a (very un-Viking like) shriek rents the air and a tumultuous clatter issues from my bathroom, preceding by seconds the wrenching open of its door and a white faced Simon Horcross, trousers in disarray and soaked from the waist down (oh, God) charging out towards my front door, brushing aside any offers of coffee or a towel and punctuating the whole sorry mess with a very definitive slam as he left.
Looking down at the three live and hearty lobsters swimming around happily in my bath, I could only shake my head in silence at the barely apologetic expression on the face of Sherlock.
"Obviously, a very temporary measure, Molly Hooper."
I shake again.
"Sherlock…"
"For science, Molly." My eyes flash at him and he sees immediately there is nothing else for it.
"I am very sorry to have ruined your evening."
And I accept his apology, because we have a new compound, he and I, and we need it to continue.
~x~
Three hours later…
My thirst wakes me.
Deep within an artisan well, Sherlock, Mike Stamford and John Watson are digging dry sand with me. As swiftly as we dig, it sifts relentlessly back into its original, natural arrangement and we are vexed, sweating, puffing and panting to remove the offending sand, for fear we will never empty the well and never solve the puzzle. The air in the well is dry, so very dry, and my tongue sticks to my teeth, my lips, the roof of my mouth as I search for moisture in the parched, arid confines of the hole we are in.
"You are thirsty," says Dream-Sherlock, looking at my lips, my tongue, my teeth, my sticky skin and he is so right and I am so dry.
John is digging, as diligent as any soldier used to desert climes and feats of endurance. He barely looks up as he carelessly says:
"You should kiss her, Sherlock, it would help. I am a doctor and I know things."
Mike is puce, sweat dripping down the sides of his rounded, scarlet cheeks and staining his collar. He pauses, leaning on his shovel, breathing hard and wiping his face on a handkerchief embroidered with tiny bees.
"Yes Sherlock, you should. She would work much better without such a dry mouth. She's always like this, you know."
Dream-Sherlock lays down his shovel and looks at me, snaking his pale, long fingers behind my sweat-soaked ponytail and I feel (oh god, how?) his breath upon my face as my subconscious turbocharges my unconscious with a flood of sensory overload so suppressed, so contained in the waking melodrama of my everyday life.
Soft, wet, pliant, wanting, exploring. The mouth of Sherlock Holmes is conjured by my own imagination, but no less magnificent for that. His tongue is gentle, searching, knowing, and the heat between us floods from our conjoined lips into our faces, our bodies until the world is hot and thrumming with the heartbeat of us, and I find I am lost in him and I never want to be found.
And I wake up thirsty.
~x~
A skim of moisture coated my skin cooled as I took my body (for the second time that night) through the heat-soaked air of my small London flat, finding my glass and gulping down two delicious glasses of cooled water before even drawing breath. Mercifully, a small breeze had miraculously conjured up a cooling draught of air through the wide open kitchen window and I allowed it to lift the sweat-soaked hair from my forehead and ripple across my nakedness. Closing my eyes, I turned around, still clutching the glass, lifting my arms to catch the bounteous breath of air that wafted around me, bringing flesh to life and dissipating moisture from my skin like thistledown.
Opening my eyes, the deep orange illumination of the London street lights, combined with a full and glowing moon, give my kitchen and living room a degree of visibility never before noted or appreciated. Thus, it is fair to say that I almost dropped my empty glass as I noticed a dark arrangement sprawled (yet again) elegantly across my sofa as the deep breaths and unusual stillness of Sherlock Holmes gave my hammering heart a moment to gather itself. Clearly, my footfalls and the kitchen tap hadn't disturbed him and I adopted an insane aspect of bravery as I stepped across to where he slept, since I so rarely saw him unguarded and open. Naked as I was, I felt my treacherous heart hitch in my chest as I surveyed his paleness; hand tucked between pillow and sofa, curls damp and sticking to his face, features relaxed and stilled, as though time had stood still and was buffering… There was a certain innocence, a perfect arrangement of closed eyes, nose, lips and breath; so private and so unseen to so many. Sherlock Holmes: dressed in faded, ancient tee shirt and pyjama bottoms (had he walked the London streets in them? Most probably); barefooted and exhausted and lying across my sofa (vastly uncomfortable - I actually do have a spare room) and I didn't have any thought in my heart but one…
I`ll leave you to your deductions.
~x~
Do not judge me.
For reasons I cannot quantify, nor certainly elucidate, I entered Molly Hooper`s flat by my favoured method (the bathroom window) and made my way towards her spare room, scene of my exile, my disappearance. For reasons unknown, I rejected such an arrangement (the heat had addled and cogitated my brain in such a way that I could not have deciphered left from right or up from down at that moment) and I, instead, turned towards her sofa, darkened by a London night and sweetened by an unknown… yearning. As much as it had escaped me in Baker Street, sleep swiftly cast its clout across me (why?) at Molly`s and I lost myself in her woollen protection and the tale of Mrs Symond`s stolen emoji`s. Suddenly then, startlingly, I was awake. All was suspended in a carapace of heated protection as I opened an eye and beheld the sight of the moon-bathed effigy of Molly Hooper, gliding through her living room into her kitchen. My heart hammered silently as I noted her moon-gilded beauty. Skin so pale and translucent as to be ethereal and other-worldly; breasts high and fulsome; hips swaying, sashaying across a room I had no business to be in and no understanding of. A tap, gushing forth cooling libations as she drank deep, twice the filling of a glass and eliciting twice the fulfillment.
I was frozen in time.
I cannot possibly indicate what I had seen. Stirrings from places I cannot recollect reduced me to the caste of a teenage boy; an awkward youth with desires, yearnings, wants… Instead, I freeze in situ, hemmed in by the sweat-stained heat of an endless night. Moonlight across her scapulae, dipping past her clavicle and embracing her rib cage (breasts, belly, thighs, shoulders, sculpted, dipped and swollen in equal measures) and I am captured, unable to breathe. She hesitates, and I must be frozen in a state of unconscious, for fear of her humiliation (or, indeed, my own). Moments pass (seeming like seconds) and she passes, walking silently through the sweated corridors of the London night, back to her room, as I gasp, shift, as hard as bone and thirsty beyond words, and I realise what is meant by heat: fervency, ardency, agitation, ardour - a compound of our needs, our desires, ourselves.
I search for a coolness upon a pillow I no longer trust.
I have seen you, Molly Hooper, and I cannot unsee you.
I may have a fever.
THE END