Chapter Text
* * *
New Blank Document.
The cursor blinks a steady, maddening rhythm not unlike the dripping of water. Soldiers have withered under lesser conditions. Solitary confinement, that's what this is. Alone on this empty, vacuous page with no company but the fidgeting whine inside his brain. An idea. Just one fucking idea. Something. Anything. No means of escape or company other than his own uncooperative failure of a mind.
I hate this, John types, and deletes it.
Fuck you. Backspace, backspace, backspace. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.
The cursor blinks mockingly. Additional words refuse to push it along the empty line.
Tea, John thinks. I need tea. Are there biscuits? Probably not. Biscuits, he types. The word looks ridiculous. Whoever coined the spelling of the word 'biscuit' was clearly an utter troll. Right, let's just take some vowels and toss them at the end of the second syllable and pretend they make the right fucking noise, because the English language makes so much fucking sense and for some reason it's John's job to wrangle it into submission.
He deletes “biscuits.”
The screen glares at him. Fuck, he types again, and the word echoes into an unyielding vault of white.
* * *
“How’s your book going?”
“Yeah. Um, good. Very good.”
“You haven’t written a word, have you?”
John clears his throat. “Um,” he says.
“You don’t have to do this to yourself, John.”
John stares fixedly at the notebook in his therapist’s hands. He imagines she’s writing something like Generalised Anxiety. No, Chronic Depression. Hmm, no, that letter looks like a T.
“Why not find locum work? You’re a qualified doctor, you’d have the stability of a workplace, a regular schedule. It might be good for you.”
He doesn’t say that locum work would feel like shovelling soil into the open grave of his career.
“I should be writing,” he says, instead.
“There’s that word ‘should’ again,” says Ella, crossing her legs and continuing to scribble. “We keep returning to the word ‘should.’”
It’s not the only word John keeps returning to. “Pointless” seems to sum up the past thirty-seven minutes quite nicely. “Yes, well. It’d be great if I didn’t feel obligated, wouldn’t it? But then I suppose I wouldn’t be in here.”
“That’s very much the point.”
John sits up and rolls his shoulder. It gets quite stiff in the rain these days. “Right,” he says, to the sound of the pencil scratching on paper. Ella’s notebook slips on her knee, the surface tipping toward him. Trust issues, he reads.
True enough. But then, he has no reason to trust anyone who doesn’t understand what it’s like.
* * *
Jefferson Hope saluted his commanding officer. The helicopter
No.
The morning of the final airstrike
Delete.
Private Hope gripped the barrel of his assault rifle. The desert sun
John’s laptop wants to know if he’d like to close the document without saving. John wonders if his laptop has any memory of the last three hundred times he’s said no to that question.
He shuts it with a noise that pushes breath from his lungs. His neck aches. He can hear the woman in the flat below slamming her door and shouting something. A lorry rumbles past. The walls in this building are too thin, stretched over noises they can’t hope to contain. He can’t afford better, but then, it won’t be long before he can’t even afford this.
The laptop makes a resigned whirr as the fan slows and shuts off. The panic quietly settling in John’s chest is the loudest sound of all.
* * *
“Five years,” Mike Stamford says. Raindrops slide down the window of the Criterion coffee shop.
“How are the kids?” John says, smiling grimly over his half-full espresso.
Mike gives John a sad grin and a flash of familiar dimples. “Five years since you’ve finished a manuscript, John. Don’t change the subject.”
“I’m well aware,” John says, taking a sip. “The kids, though?”
“Fine.” Mike sips his own coffee. “Thanks. They’re fine.” He sighs. “And the last time you wrote anything, my oldest was in nappies, and now she’s half done with primary school. I want to help, John.”
Mike’s expression is so kind that John feels his face heat. Mike should yell at him, should have it out with John right here in the coffee shop for his utter failure to produce a book. He should be ordering John to get a bloody job, and then he should delete John from his contacts file and fill the slot with a client who actually writes for a living. John deserves it. But Mike, damn his loyalty and his stupidly good heart, continues to take John to coffee every month or two, and prods at him with genuine sympathy. It’s maddening.
John clears his throat awkwardly. “I appreciate it, Mike, really. But I’ve said before. I think you’re wasting your time.”
Mike studies John from his usual chair, at their usual table. “This is it, then, at long last? Are you looking for another job?”
“I’m -- thinking about it, actually.”
It’s not so much a lie as it is a half-truth. Yes, John is thinking about it, but only in the way that a man headed for the gallows might ponder a loop of rope.
Mike raises his eyebrows, sits back in his chair. "John," he says quietly, "I've been your agent for eight years. You need to write."
“I don’t need anything, Mike. I can get by on residuals from the Afghanistan series.”
“Residuals,” Mike chuckles in disbelief. “Are you some sort of monk? No offence, but there can’t be much coming in these days.”
John looks out the window at a particularly fat drop sliding over the “O” in Criterion. “I get by.”
“You’re the stubbornest bastard I’ve ever met, John Watson.”
John snorts. “And you’re the most persistent.”
The ensuing pause only serves to amplify the patter of raindrops and hiss of tires on the wet street outside.
“Look,” Mike says. “I’ve been waiting for the right time for this, and I think I’ve waited long enough. I’m going to call in a favour on your behalf.”
“What are you on about?”
“I can help you,” Mike says, and his voice drops into a surprisingly serious register. “Or at least, I believe I can put you in touch with someone who can.”
“Mike --”
“Nope,” Mike says. “I don’t want to hear that you don’t need it.”
John sets down his cup. “If you’re going to give me the name of a therapist, I’m way ahead of you. I see her on Thursday mornings.”
Another sad, dimpled grin. “No.”
John’s tone is harsher than he intends, but he can’t seem to soften it. “I don’t see why you won’t take my word for it. I’m fine, Mike. Really. You don’t have to keep buying me lunch in hopes of shaking a book out of me. I’ve told my story. I haven’t got another.”
Mike takes a long sip of his coffee.
"When we met," he says at last, "you had a bit of a limp. Only sometimes. Mostly when you were between books. It nearly went away entirely when you were finishing Three Continents."
John swallows.
Mike nods in the direction of an object resting against the sill of the coffee shop window. "That's your cane, isn't it? You came early so I wouldn't see you use it."
"Army injury," John says curtly. "You know that. Much worse when it rains --"
"Bollocks," Mike interrupts. “You know damn well why you’re limping.”
The sip of espresso in John’s mouth turns bitter. Or perhaps this is what pity tastes like.
“A while back I did a favour for someone very high up in the British Government,” Mike says. “He owes me one, and he’s got a connection I think you could use.”
John blinks. “You realise I’m a writer, not James Bond.”
Mike chuckles. “It’s not what it sounds like.”
John’s mouth lifts wryly. “What’d you do, Mike, ensure that some earl’s daughter got her children’s book published?”
“No, actually.” Mike straightens his tie. “I ensured that a particularly... sensitive memoir didn’t get published at all.”
John absorbs this. “That’s far more exciting than I’d imagined your job to be.”
Mike laughs. “Trust me, it wasn’t that exciting. It was just a matter of a few well-placed calls. End result, I’m on the good books of a man named Holmes. His younger brother is the one I’d like to put you in touch with.”
“Holmes.” John’s brow furrows. “Not Sherlock Holmes.”
“Ah, heard of him, have you?”
“Some sort of specialist in the publishing world? I’ve just heard the name.”
“Consulting editor,” Mike corrects.
“Consulting editor?”
“Sherlock Holmes is the man behind many great novels, only you’d never know it. When a gifted writer is out of their depth, they call Sherlock. His services don’t come cheap, I can tell you that.”
“What does he do, exactly?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” Mike admits. “He’s known for being something of a genius. And you didn’t hear it from me, but his track record for assisting on Booker Prize winners is frighteningly good.”
“Jesus.” John rubs his forehead. “You can’t seriously think that a guy like that would work with me.”
“He’ll have to, at least for a session or two,” Mike says. “His brother offered to foot the bill for a few of Sherlock’s consulting sessions, if I picked the writer.”
“Mike.” John leans forward. “Honestly, it’s a lovely thought, but you’re missing a critical part of the equation. To employ an editor I need a book. I don’t have a fucking book right now.”
“You’re a brilliant writer, John,” Mike says bluntly. “Maybe the best I’ve ever worked with. You have another book. You just don’t know you do.”
John can’t meet Mike’s gaze. He feels the muscles in his jaw clench as he stares out the window. The rain has stopped, but drops still cling to the glass.
“What do you want me to do?” he says quietly.
“How much can you manage?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“A chapter?” Mike’s voice is hesitant. “A chapter of something. Anything. He’ll take a first draft in any form.” A pause. “Surely you have something.”
John chuckles bitterly. “If ‘nothing’ counts as something, that’s what I’ve got. Occasionally I delete things, and then I’ve got less than nothing.”
He feels, rather than sees, the weight of Mike’s look. There’s no getting around this. Mike, despite his affable demeanor, is about as easy to argue with as a cast iron pillar box.
“Just one chapter,” Mike says. “Anything you want. Pick an idea.”
If I had an idea, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, John thinks, and drains his espresso with a resigned nod.
* * *
New Blank Document.
This shouldn’t be hard. One chapter. One bloody chapter. How many words is that? Five thousand. Less, maybe. Faulkner wrote a one-line chapter.
The git.
Construction noise outside the window. Midday on this endless grey London street lined with parked cars. It was so much easier to write when he could still breathe smoke-tinged air in his sleep, when he flinched at the noise of lorries and heard helicopters circling in their wake, kicking up clouds of dust and blood and memory.
He wrote all of it, even as the dust and smoke faded into London fog. Black lines filled the screen as the wound in his shoulder faded from raised pink shards to flat white seams. Black lines for white ones: words traded for scars. Each memory dissolved in print, caged and subdued, packaged and boxed for easy digestion by the masses.
There are no memories fighting to be caged, now. Only the slow rumble of cars and the grey street.
Perhaps this is all he has to give, this safely preserved trauma in a neat trilogy on a bookshelf. He’s gone to Afghanistan, taken a bullet so that thousands of readers don’t have to. All those injuries, all the violent deaths. It was enough for a lifetime, far too much.
It doesn’t explain why John still keeps opening his laptop as if expecting to find something on that blank screen, something to drive away the empty cars and fog and trips to Tesco. He’d once flooded that same screen with words, words that made his heart pound, words that made his eyes sting with the fresh wound of gunfire. He didn’t need to coax or cajole: the words came. They fought their way out like the pounding of artillery, loud and painful and unyielding.
That chapter is over.
He could write another man’s story, imagine the gunfire again. Try to call forth the noise and smoke. One word in front of the other. He has his marching orders, after all.
Private Hope shouldered his assault rifle and peered from the bunker.
His leg hurts like hell.
* * *
The woman who answers the door at 221B Baker Street does not look at all like she works for an editor of Booker Prize-winning novels. She’s a bit older than John’s mum, with a smile twice as kind. She wipes flour-dusted hands on a purple polka-dotted apron and looks him up and down with a polite sort of confusion.
“Excuse me,” John says, hoping it’s the right address, although it would be highly unlikely he’s wrong, as he’s checked Mike’s confirmation email at least forty-five times since last night: Chapter received. Client to meet at 221B Baker Street, 10:30 a.m. “I’m here to see a Mr Sherlock Holmes.”
The woman’s brow furrows. “He didn’t say he was expecting anyone else this morning.”
John is nearly impaled on a spike of doubt. “I, uh -- Watson. My name’s John Watson. I’m supposed to meet him here -- er, half past ten, I think.”
John’s obvious nerves only cause the woman’s smile to brighten in kindness, if such a thing were possible. “Why don’t you come in,” she says quickly, opening the door and beckoning him into the hallway. “He forgets sometimes. In his own world, really. Half the time I think he’d forget to eat if I didn’t remind him. It’s a good thing most of his clients are so punctual, he’d never make his appointments otherwise. I’m his landlady, not his secretary, dear.”
“Not his secretary?” John echoes, limping heavily up the stairs after the terribly kind woman.
“I wouldn’t have started in with the baking if I’d known he had another appointment,” the woman says over her shoulder, as if this is a reasonable answer. “He’s in with a client now, I’ll make sure he hasn’t forgotten about you.” At the first floor landing, she pauses at a pair of closed doors. Light filters through the opaque glass of an interior window, and through it John can make out terse, low voices. Before he can protest, the woman raps firmly on one of the doors.
“Yoo-hoo! Sherlock? You’ve got another one, love, did you know?”
The terse voices fall silent, and then, a resonant, startling baritone: “Thank you, Mrs Hudson.”
“Not your secretary,” she calls back, and pats John companionably on the arm. “There you are, dear. Just wait here. I’ll bring up a cuppa, you look like you might need it.”
“Thanks,” John says, glancing around and trying to look as if this is a perfectly normal way to meet a nearly famous editor. “But you don’t need --”
Mrs Hudson is already disappearing down the stairs. “I’ll just pop in the scones, won’t be a minute!”
John watches her bustle downstairs and shut the door to what he imagines must be her own flat. Holmes’ office is in a private residence, then? Certainly not what he’d imagined for an editor of his supposed calibre. As John sat awake nights typing the dry bones of what he prayed would be a serviceable first chapter, he’d imagined Mr Sherlock Holmes in a penthouse office, floor-to-ceiling glass windows, with a breathtaking view of the Thames. Or perhaps an office with leather chairs and bookshelves and a polished antique desk, and an assistant who offers a neat glass of Scotch to each client. With a name like Sherlock Holmes, that seemed an even more likely scenario.
Here at 221B, dust filters through the patches of light thrown on the scuffed wooden floor of the hallway. The panelled doors and trim need painting, and the elderly wallpaper skirts the borderline between quirky and garish. John shifts his weight and tries not to listen to the low voices behind the door. Perhaps the next great work of Western literature is in development not ten feet from John’s hateful cane. John allows himself the tiny glimmer of hope that’s been beating against his chest like a caged butterfly: perhaps Holmes is such a genius that he doesn’t care to impress clients with a posh office. Bless Mike Stamford. Perhaps this Sherlock Holmes might, against all odds, be able to help him.
A sudden flurry of movement behind the door, voices escalating in volume. John can’t make out the first voice, but the second, a rumble nearly deep enough to shake the floorboards, is perfectly clear. “Thank you for your input,” intones the man who replied to Mrs Hudson.
“Well, that’s why it’s based in Germany,” the second man says. He has a higher voice, but compared to Holmes, that’s not saying much. “It’s an allegorical retelling --”
“Ah, an allegory, is it? Brilliant, Anderson.”
Anderson sounds mollified.“Well, thank you --”
Holmes’ voice rises. “Brilliant impression of an idiot. Your attempts at allegory are about as subtle as a flashing billboard. This is a ham-handed rewrite that lacks only vampires to make it worthy of the paperbacks sold at airport kiosks.”
Quick, hard footsteps approach the door. John takes a step back, hoping to blend into the garish wallpaper. The door flies open, and a tall man with a hawk-like nose glares at John before storming noisily down the stairs and slamming the front door of the building behind him.
John’s heart hammers against the barrier of his chest, crushing the feeble butterfly of hope and leaving only a dead smudge of colour in its wake. Silence settles into the stairwell for several eternal minutes.
“Doctor Watson,” the deep voice says.
John swallows and limps forward through the door.
The room is cluttered, cozy, cave-like in its intimacy. Books line the walls, to be sure, but they fight for space with esoteric objects that would look equally at home in a museum or a flea market. John’s gaze lingers nervously on the human skull perched on the mantelpiece before he meets the stare of the man seated in a square leather chair across the room.
The man’s eyes are as pale as his voice is deep, and equally startling. He presses long fingertips together under the refined arch of his lips and lifts an eyebrow.
John clears his throat. “John Watson,” he says. “It’s nice to meet --”
“Boring,” Sherlock Holmes says.
John stares. Holmes tilts his head, crowned in dark curls, and lowers his hands to his lap. He’s easily ten years younger than John had thought possible, thin and angular in an elegant dark suit. “Excuse me?”
“Boring,” Holmes repeats, straightening in his chair. He waves a hand in the direction of the door. “You may leave.”
John draws himself up with the reflexive stance of a veteran and lifts his chin, then nods curtly. “Right,” he says, and turns to find Mrs Hudson framed in the doorway, holding a tray of scones and tea. The smell gnaws at his stomach, something sweet and promised, denied just as expected. He can almost taste it.
“Lovely to meet you,” he says to her, and means it. “Sorry I can’t stay.”
The only thing preventing John from working himself up into a truly righteous fury on the ride home is a vague feeling shaped almost like joy. But that can’t be right. Most likely, it’s just fading adrenaline, anger scrambling his nerves. It’s been so long since John has felt anything similar, it’s impossible to tell.
* * *
Halfway through the bottle of gin that is his evening’s entertainment, John’s phone beeps.
It takes a moment before he realises it’s his phone. At first he thinks it must be the telly downstairs, which his elderly neighbor leaves on at deafening levels from the hours of six to eleven every evening. Because no one actually texts him, or at least no one other than the automated message system from his mobile service provider, reminding him about unpaid bills. It’s a rather one-sided relationship.
John sets down his drink clumsily and blinks at the screen as the phone beeps a second time.
Submit edits or new material by Tues next. Meet 221B Baker St, 1030 Wed. SH
It takes John a full minute to decipher this as anything other than random nonsense. When the meaning hits him, he nearly drops the phone. His fingers are far too large to operate such delicate machinery, and it takes him a solid five minutes to formulate a response. The phone’s keypad must be made for very tiny geniuses.
What makes you think I’d come back to meet
You haven’t given me the first clue
Are you actually insane, or just pretending to
John finally settles on the disappointingly less inflammatory: Do you have any suggestions for the chapter? 1030 Wed works for me. JW
His phone promptly beeps again before John remembers that he’s never given Sherlock Holmes his personal mobile number. Mike hasn’t, either, as far as John knows: John’s been copied on all of Mike’s relevant correspondence.
Don’t be boring. SH
John decides that the fussy tedium of using the overly miniscule keyboard is a good enough reason not to answer.
* * *
In the grey sameness of his unremarkable days, John can summon one intense emotion with absolute reliability. It usually hits him squarely in the gut, where it spreads with oozing certainty into the depths of his digestive tract. All he needs to do is re-read his own writing, and there it is: revulsion.
This morning is no different. He squints at the screen through a raging headache and studies the twenty-odd pages of tripe he’s managed to churn out, as his stomach churns right along with it. If the writing gig doesn’t pan out, he could always pursue a career in bile production.
Private Jefferson Hope, stationed in Afghanistan. Young, naive British soldier who witnesses a good friend’s death by friendly fire. Hope hides the fact that he was a witness, but the explosion that killed his friend has made him deaf in one ear: not easy to conceal. Character arc is simple enough -- Hope will become disillusioned with Queen and Country as he’s drawn into in the intricate cover-up of his friend’s death. Curtain up, scene one, escalation of tension building to the expected action sequence.
John rubs his forehead. The initial desperate thrill of producing words carried him through almost twenty pages, but in the dreary hangover of editing -- both literal and figurative -- he knows they’re pages he’s read a thousand times before. They may even be pages he’s written before. The sameness of it settles around him like the dull squeeze of claustrophobia. He’s supposed to edit this mess, this creaky cardboard cutout of an introduction, and he doesn’t have the faintest clue how to turn cardboard to breathing flesh. At the moment, he’d rather chuck his laptop out the open window. And hopefully knock out one of the construction workers in the process.
His mobile rings: Mike. Not good.
“Hey,” John says, his voice an embarrassing croak.
“John,” Mike says. “Did I wake you?”
“No, er -- nope,” John says, sitting up straighter. “Just, you know... working.”
“Right. Good.” Mike sounds both surprised and pleased. John’s stomach clenches. “Just wanted to see how the meeting went yesterday with Sherlock Holmes. I hadn’t heard anything.”
“Ah. Yeah. It was, you know -- it was brief,” John says, wondering if “brief” is an adequate euphemism for “hellish and humiliating.” “I think he’s quite busy.”
“Mm. I expect he would be.”
“Yes. Yes, he is. I, er, he’s asked me to edit, and... and come back next week,” John finishes cheerfully, and if he doesn’t get a book deal out of this situation, perhaps he’ll get an Academy Award.
“Oh,” Mike says. “Well -- that’s good, then? At least he didn’t send you packing?”
John turns his choked noise into a fairly convincing cough. “True,” he manages.
“Nice office?” Mike prods, failing to conceal his thirst for details.
The dusty, sunlit memory of 221B drifts into focus, the smell of books and Mrs Hudson’s scones, the dark notes of Sherlock Holmes’ voice filling the stairwell.
“Lovely,” John says truthfully, and feels a bit sick.
* * *
John tosses out half of the chapter and rewrites it. He tosses out half of what he’s rewritten, and rewrites again. His progress, if charted on a graph, would result in a perfect asymptote approaching zero content. Private Jefferson Hope’s nascent existence stops and starts, stuttering like the noisy jackhammers outside John’s window. Eventually, John rereads the chapter so many times that the words on the page move beyond English into something like a Lewis Carroll poem fed through Google Translate. John forwards the new chapter to Holmes, then grabs his coat and leaves his flat as quickly as possible without any destination whatsoever.
After two hours of walking, his cane catches on a rough patch of sidewalk near Grosvenor Square and he nearly pitches forward out of exhaustion. He steadies himself against the cool glass of a storefront window, and as he straightens, wincing, he finds himself staring at a stack of new hardcovers. Empirical evidence that it’s possible to arrange words in such a way that someone will buy them and print them and sell them. Apparently someone named John Watson managed to accomplish this years ago. Another man entirely.
Holmes hasn’t responded to his email, but John doesn’t expect him to.
At ten-thirty on Wednesday morning, John raps on the door of 221B Baker Street and hears only silence.
This is also, somehow, not unexpected.
He raps again. The large brass knocker makes a satisfying noise but fails to produce any movement from within the building. When he tries the doorknob, the front door swings open easily and he steps inside the dark hallway. Mrs Hudson’s door is closed, and the hall is quiet.
“Mrs Hudson?” John calls.
No sound. He limps slowly up the stairs, listening for any indication that he might be disturbing a crucially important meeting, but when he reaches the first floor landing, Holmes’ door is open and his sitting room is vacant.
“Mr Holmes?”
John checks his watch and glances around. The flat is much as it was last week, in a state of strangely pleasant disarray. He shifts a massive pile of books from the seat of a comfortable-looking armchair and settles into it, balancing the books in a careful stack on the floor. No texts on his mobile. He pops open the most recent text from Holmes and types a response.
At Baker Street for 1030 meeting. JW
His phone remains quiet.
The next twenty minutes pass in a steady buzz of rattling nerves and odd tranquility. Yellow light sifts through long curtains that occasionally billow over a window left fractionally ajar. A jackknife murderously secures a pile of mail to the mantlepiece. The knot of tension between John’s shoulders tightens until it feels as if his tendons are made of barbed wire.
He should have known better than to subject himself to this sort of humiliation. Clearly Holmes never intended to work with him, and this is all some sort of trick to prove the point that John isn’t a worthy client. Mike wouldn’t have done something like this on purpose, but perhaps Holmes himself is unwilling to have his services bartered out via his brother, and prefers to select his own clients? It’s not an unlikely possibility.
Nearly eleven, now. John pulls out his phone again and begins to type.
It was nice meeting you. Have a good aftern
A hailstorm of noise in the stairwell, and before John can pocket his phone, a tall form in a long dark coat sweeps into the room with the speed of a missile and all the gravity of a small planet.
“You’re still here,” Sherlock Holmes says curtly, whirling in place to take stock of the room. His coat flares behind him like a cape.
This greeting raises more questions than it answers. “Yes, but I was just --”
“Your chapter,” Holmes says. The deep timbre of his voice manages to surprise John a second time. Holmes pulls off his scarf and tosses it onto the couch, then begins unbuttoning his coat.
John sits up a bit straighter. His heart patters uncomfortably. “Yes. I... reworked it a bit.”
“I know.” Holmes hangs his coat on the back of the door and straightens his jacket.
John waits for a judgement that never comes. He takes an excruciating breath. “Look, Mr Holmes --”
“Sherlock, please.”
John’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline. “Sherlock,” he manages, both fascinated and desperately wishing to sink through the floor.
Holmes -- Sherlock -- seats himself in the leather armchair opposite John and leans back, watching John as if he were molten glass held over an open flame. “You have questions,” he says.
Fucking right John has questions. All of them fight for right of way through John’s synapses, battling noisily until an unlikely candidate blurts its way out. “The man who was here before,” he says bluntly. It’s not actually a question, but Sherlock follows his thought regardless.
“Anderson?” He waves a hand dismissively. “Anderson won’t work with me.”
“Okay,” John says. He waits, and Sherlock watches him. When it seems apparent that Sherlock intends to watch him indefinitely, John clears his throat and tries again. “My chapter, then?”
“Dull,” Sherlock says.
John’s eyebrows inch higher. “Dull.”
“I think you heard me, yes.”
Something explodes behind John’s right temple. He feels a vein there start to throb. “Is this some sort of joke?”
Sherlock’s brow creases. “Are you finding it funny?”
John huffs a laugh in disbelief. “Not in the least, no.”
Sherlock’s pale eyes narrow. “Your chapter was dull at the outset. Your revisions only served to highlight the underlying boredom from a variety of different angles.”
“Mmm,” John says, smiling tightly. “Is this what a consulting editor does, then? Just dole out insults?”
“I prefer to eliminate pleasantries,” Sherlock says evenly. “Whatever remains is usually the truth.”
They stare at each other. The vein in John’s forehead throbs.
When the silence grows too loud to bear, John clears his throat. “Why am I here, then?”
“Obvious.” Sherlock arches an eyebrow. “Desperation.”
“Desperation,” John echoes.
Sherlock sits up. “You receive residual profits from the trilogy you published over five years ago, which is your primary source of income. You’re a doctor, but you’ve allowed your medical licence to lapse. You hate your current flat, detest it actually, but remain there because you can’t afford better. It would be simple enough to renew your licence and find locum work, but you haven’t done that -- haven’t sought out any medical work at all in the past five years. So, unemployed, seemingly by choice, despite an unpleasant living situation.
“Mike Stamford’s waited nearly a year to send me a client, but your chapter was written only two weeks ago: the day after he sent me your name, in fact. Why would an agent refer a writer to an editor without a book in hand? Furthermore, why would a writer seek out my services and then start a book? Could be overconfidence, or a gamble, but no, everything from your texting to your body language says that’s not the case -- and then there’s the name of your main character, quite transparent: Private Hope. No, you’re here because on some deeper level you believe that this might be your last chance at ever writing again, because for the past few years you’ve been suffering from a crippling case of writer’s block.” Sherlock looks at John’s leg pointedly. “In your case, quite literally.”
“I was shot,” John says, after a moment.
“Not in your leg,” Sherlock replies.
John swallows. “Is that all?”
“Yes,” Sherlock says. “How much did I get right?”
“Most of it,” John says. “You missed the nights spent drinking alone.”
“I didn’t,” Sherlock counters. “I just chose to omit that detail.”
John absorbs this, then stands, stiffly, and leans on his cane. “Just curious,” he says lightly. “Is this the typical treatment you extend to your new writers? A few weeks’ worth of stalking, so you have sufficient ammunition when they finally arrive in your office? Have special connections with the government, do you? Your brother’s very friendly with the Secret Service?”
Sherlock’s mouth twitches. “No.”
“Then how the hell,” John says, voice wavering, “do you know all that?”
“Observed it.”
“You observed it. By watching me.”
“Yes.”
John hums in acknowledgement. “Do you do this to everyone?”
“Yes.”
“Huh.” John shifts his weight, shakes his head slowly. “Amazing. That was extraordinary... quite extraordinary.”
Sherlock’s brow furrows. “Do you think so?”
“Of course,” John says. “What do people usually say when you do that?”
“Piss off.”
“Ah.”
They look at each other again, and John breaks the stare with a nod. “Okay,” he says. “You know I need help, but you do nothing except inform me that my chapter is boring.”
“Lying isn’t going to help you.”
“I didn’t ask you to lie. I asked for suggestions.”
“I believe I suggested that you should either revise, or write something else.”
“Mmm. I was hoping for something, I don’t know, a bit more... specific.”
“All right,” Sherlock says. “More specifically, you presented me with a chapter that nearly put me to sleep on first read-through. All the explosions in the world don’t make a predictable plot thrilling, and when a writer sleepwalks through a battle scene, the reader’s going to do the same. Little Red Riding Hood has far more tension and excitement than what you’ve written.”
“Okay,” John says, after a beat. He steps back, his hand in a white-knuckled grip on his cane. “Okay. Thanks for your time.”
He doesn’t stop walking until he’s three miles from Baker Street and can no longer catch his breath.
* * *
One glass of whiskey burns John’s throat pleasantly and starts to scorch the edges of his memories. Two glasses convince him that Sherlock Holmes is an ass.
Mike had the best intentions, but the last thing John needs is some prima donna editor who can’t be bothered to engage on a level above childish insults. Clearly, Sherlock wanted to get rid of John -- thought himself above a mere army doctor who wrote a few mass-market paperbacks. Probably hasn’t even read Three Continents, John thinks -- it’s not Proust, but he’s moderately proud of it. But it’s likely Sherlock assumes anyone who didn’t go to public school can’t write for crap.
John takes another swig of whiskey. Sherlock is wrong. He’s too arrogant to know it, but he’s really fucking wrong. He doesn’t deserve John’s business, and he doesn’t deserve Mike’s, either, for that matter. What he does deserve --
What he deserves, John thinks, is a chapter. John’s fairly sure this one won’t be boring at all.
* * *