Love Hurts, Page 7

  we love stories because they let us try on being helpless/frightened/beloved

  we love fandom because it tells us we are not alone

  fandom = training wheels for our personal lifebicycle

  vaticancameltoes – So glad I’m prepped for all the gigantic hounds and ‘Oriental’ acrobat killers my lifebicycle is going to run over.

  eye_brows – are you mocking my lifebicycle my profound lifebicycle

  vaticancameltoes – little bit

  eye_brows – YOU WERE THE BEST AND MOST HUMAN HUMAN BEING I HAVE EVER KNOWN

  vaticancameltoes – Oh jesus

  eye_brows – YOU WANT SINCERITY I GIVE YOU JOHN HAMISH WATSON

  vaticancameltoes – shut up john

  eye_brows – STOP BEING DEAD

  vaticancameltoes – I will. Read a book, you idiot. Did I teach you nothing about research?!

  eye_brows – MYCROFT STOLE MY LIBRARY CARD

  vaticancameltoes – that little bitch

  I scroll back back back through old favourites and messages, our fannish family album, until the fear rolls back and I remember: this is us.

  Yasmin is currently dating a guy because she likes the shape of his skull. (She sits behind him in lectures. He has ‘a hot neck’, apparently. She spent a whole term posting sexy notes down his collar and blowing on his ears.)

  Six episodes of a TV show is entirely reasonable. It’s plenty.

  I mean, they’re long episodes.

  You can rewatch them. A lot.

  It’s practically the same as being in the same room ever.

  She’s not a stranger.

  I’m just wondering what the back of VC’s head looks like when my phone hums with a new message, and suddenly I’m looking at the front of it.

  I know we said we wouldn’t but Selfie

  This is VC.

  Not 8pt Helvetica font and a ridiculously flouncy Cumberbatch scarf-removal gif.

  White girl, face shaped like a strawberry, pretty, straight blonde hair with a fringe. Eyeliner wings, pierced eyebrow. A green T-shirt with some anime giant cat thing on it I am not cool enough to know. Skinny. Huge close-lipped smile.

  I freeze.

  She’s not my type.

  My type is:

  – Kristen Stewart: in The Runaways NOT Twilight

  – Alexis Bledel: Gilmore Girls Season Four the haircut years

  – Michelle Rodriguez: in a vest

  – no one because I have only ever been on one date and that was two years ago and not even a date.

  She looks like Taylor Swift-Malfoy. She’s going to expelliarmus me then write a song about how much I suck.

  Which I do.

  This is never going to work.

  I should’ve told her. I should’ve warned her. She’s turned up all human-like and pristine, expecting someone human-like and pristine, and I’m . . . not. My body is all sand dunes, dimples and hills, and it is fundamentally broken. We are not going to hold hands and run across London. I will not be magically cured by the presence of adventure and the thrill of the chase.

  Oh god oh god why isn’t she still a gif of a man-face pulling off a scarf? Why can’t I have a date with one of those? Why did I think I could go on a date at all?

  I grab my phone to text VC and cancel – and it rings.

  (Season Two soundtrack, track 1: Irene’s Theme. Shut up.)

  Not her, demanding a return selfie of my stupid giant hairy head.

  Aish: my official I Am Meeting A Friend From The Internet guardian, checking I’m not being murdered.

  ‘Are you being murdered?’ she says.

  ‘Yes. Right this second. Ow, the murdering.’

  The Russian-looking hat man gives me another stare. If this was Sherlock, that would be him, in disguise.

  I’m warming to reality.

  ‘You promised!’

  ‘OK. Sincere mode: locked. I’m fine. Apart from, you know, the terror. Is terror a necessary part of dating?’

  ‘You’re asking me?’

  Aish isn’t meant to even speak to a boy till he’s met her parents and they’ve met his. In her universe, I am worldly and maybe a bit of a slut. I’m not quite noble enough not to like that. Except now she’s meant to be my wingwoman and I need honest advice, from someone more experienced than me, i.e. beyond handholding/one date that was not actually a date.

  (Handholding: Samira, age 12, Brixton ice rink. Technically she was helping me not fall over but I came home and wrote a poem about her hair and then burned it. Formative, no?)

  ‘Sorry.’ I explain about Venn diagrams and how love is two circles becoming one, but less mathsy than that sounds.

  Aish isn’t convinced. ‘The only thing my parents have in common is they’re my parents. Opposites attract though, yes? So perhaps it’s better if you hate all the things she likes, and yell about that before sitting in separate rooms, angrily.’

  ‘That sounds very advanced for a first date.’

  ‘Hm. True. So maybe all you need is chemistry? Do you have chemistry?’

  ‘How the hell do I know? How do you tell?’

  ‘Kissing, I think. Kamila snogged Shahan on Friday night even though he’s going out with Priya, because she found him irresistible.’

  I have no idea who any of these people are.

  ‘Your advice is that I should snog VC to see if we have chemistry?’

  There’s a pause down the line. ‘Given the challenging time and distance constraints you face, I think it may be the most practical move. If you have nerves, I suggest writing her a note asking permission. No one dislikes politeness.’

  Sexy politeness. Well-known aphrodisiac. It’s what the ladies love.

  vaticancameltoes – Season 3 wishlist:

  – hugs

  – someone gets punched in the face

  – homoerotic crying

  – sex

  Truthfully, I like Unresolved Sexual Tension as much as the next human – but I like Resolved Sexual Tension more. Because reasons.

  eye_brows – BUT BUT BUT

  I mean, yes. Obviously.

  BUT

  The Chase Is Always Better Than The Kill.

  vaticancameltoes – bzuh?

  eye_brows – what if this is it

  what if this is as good as it gets

  what if everything up until What Happens When

  He Comes Back is the very pinnacle of our

  fannish existence and engagement and love

  and from the moment the theme plays at the

  start of the next episode begins the slow

  crushing of our souls with disappointment

  hammers

  what if we have reached Peak Sherlock

  what if

  what if

  halp

  vaticancameltoes – ATTENTION WORLD

  eye_brows just broke Sherlock

  I’ve thought about this a lot. (365 days.)

  Sherlock comes back to solve the case of the Empty House, wearing a false moustache, and since this is TV everyone pretends it was, like, no big thing.

  Sherlock comes back for his Watson, who is traumatized by the deceit and their friendship is eternally now odd and cold and unrescuable. John gets married. Sherlock grows a beard (not a disguise beard, a Season Three Stop-Objectifying-Me-Fangirls beard). Viewing figures drop. The fandom moves on. My dash fills with gifsets of some other curly-haired white boy with an Eton accent.

  He comes back for his Watson, and they kiss with tongues.

  These are all on the table.

  No, but really.

  Maybe not really?

  But maybe?

  ‘Why do you care so much?’ Yasmin asks, all the time, eating biscuits over my shoulder as I replay and cry; read fic and cry; stare at pictures of two old dudes running through London holding hands and smile.

  Yasmin does not have the fannish gene. You do or you don’t.

  ‘Why don’t you obsess over the girl ones? Like – the doctor with
the ponytail, and . . . oh.’

  (Sherlock’s ladies are splendid but they are few.)

  ‘Is it – you like them being gay? Because I see they’re a little gay. That bony one is, anyway. Public schoolboy thing, yeah? But – are you queer ladies that hard up that you compulsively string together every conceivable man plus man just to feel like you’re, you know, kind of represented?’

  Yes.

  No.

  ‘You can be bi, babygirl,’ she says too, because Mum hasn’t, and she doesn’t want me to feel all psychologically damaged by rejection either. ‘You can come out all over again, we won’t mind.’

  ‘Um. Thanks? But – I’m not bi.’

  VC is. She has two first-date stories, and they both have kissing (but no free chicken, she was kind enough to point out). She has two worst-date stories too. I thought that was handy – like, someone else is driving this thing thank god.

  Maybe?

  ‘So – babygirl, how come you like staring at pretty white boys so much?’

  ‘It’s complicated.’

  I think I understand it. Kind of. Like, number one: it’s kind of hard to like popular culture if you don’t like staring at pretty white boys. All the girls I get to stare at look straight back at me, so done with this shit. And yeah, for whatever reason I get butterfly flappings in my heart at the way that one particular dark brown curl sits when he sips tea, and the way that blue silk dressing gown fits just so, and his skin, his Buckingham Palace skin. But it’s not legrub-sexytimes-may I climb you like a tree-type liking. Urgh. I am equally invested in his Secret Childhood Manpain, his taste in wall paper and his mind palace (although if I was John we’d have words about that, because palaces are terrible).

  I like the idea of him. I like the idea of them.

  Sherlock and John. John and Sherlock.

  Them.

  They are fun and joy and glee and agony and I want to be them and watch them both at once. They fight crime! and face peril and giggle inappropriately at crime scenes – but above all this they like each other. They really very much like each other. Chalk and chalk. Cheese and crackers.

  I’m not his date.

  Who even says that?

  Who even runs across London holding hands?

  Only – now I like the idea of them. What happens if I like the idea of them more than I like them?

  I slide my phone onto the table – nine minutes, nine, is that too near or too far away? – and bring up her profile. vaticancameltoes, carried in my pocket. 8pt Helvetica and a flouncy scarf.

  I spin back to her selfie.

  In nine minutes that strawberry-faced girl’ll be a breathing alive human sitting in that crap plastic chair, there, here, in a café that smells of old fried egg.

  The Chase Is Always Better Than The Kill.

  444 miles. Plane tickets, hostel, fabricated open day. Some Mycroft shit right there.

  Only it isn’t, because Mycroft is made up and this is not a set and

  breathing

  alive

  (blonde, pretty, gosh she is pretty)

  human

  in nine minutes.

  Eight.

  The flouncy scarf-removal repeats on a loop: cheekbones, errant curl.

  What if I like the idea of her more than I like her?

  It’s OK for me. I know I’m a disappointment.

  And suddenly, it hits: I only have to be John. I’m the short friend. The other one. A custard cream in human form, politely apologizing for the human whirlwind.

  I’m asking her to be him.

  I’ve made a terrible mistake.

  It’s a bit not good.

  Only there’s a black cab outside and a girl is climbing out, shivering on the pavement, staring up at the oh-so-familiar red Speedy’s canopy with that glowing look, clutching a backpack and her phone and mine buzzes on the table and it’s too late.

  I’m early. Meet you outside?

  i’m early too. inside, right window, person waving at you like a dork

  Oh! Hey you

  hey yourself

  I like your hair

  thank you. i like your hat

  Thank you.

  and your capacity to stand outside typing

  Perfect: I can do this all day. Onscreen, where I resemble sense and can delete my stupid. It’s cute. It’s our adorable knitwear. Hey kids, when we met we spent the first six months of our relationship without actually using human speech, because we are like so twenty-first century.

  Then she strides in, slipping off a glove, and reaches out a hand, bold, easy, to shake, like shaking hands is a mature adult sensible thing she does all the time, and she says, ‘I’m Candy and I so can’t believe I’m actually here, oh my god,’ in a thick Scottish accent and I see the braces on her teeth and hear the hitch in her voice and, OK.

  I’ve seen films. People with braces are statistically unlikely to be evil.

  ‘I’m Shirin,’ I tell her, and my face smiles without me. ‘I can’t believe you’re actually here either.’

  When she sits down we’re still holding hands.

  We do small talk like grown-ups: travel, weather, hostel bed linen and strangers who snore.

  When she talks, her forehead moves constantly, the silver bar in her right eyebrow – her left, my right – lifting with amusement. Three creases line up above it and I want to smooth them out with a thumb. I want to touch her. She lets go of my hand to slide off her thick padded winter coat, the kind that looks like a human-shaped sleeping bag, and I leave my empty one on the table for her to grasp again but then she’s up, reading menus, taking photos of the photos on the walls.

  ‘God, I need coffee. And I’m starving. Share a bowl of chips?’

  I can’t drink coffee. Chips do unspeakable things to my intestines.

  But I nod anyway. I want to say yes to all the things.

  She stands at the counter to order and I watch the cling of her green T-shirt travelling her spine, rising in folds at the waistband of her jeans.

  Apparently I stare at pretty white girls too. Yasmin will be thrilled.

  She laughs with the guy behind the counter, pays, slides into the chair and gazes at me.

  What are we going to talk about now? Sherlock and John talk about crime. Should I have laid on some crime, some minor not-that-illegal crime, for ice-breaking purposes?

  ‘I found a map,’ she says, excitedly spinning it up on her phone. ‘Locations. The full tour. Plus the real Baker Street, and there’s a museum, and this well cheesy pub if they’ll let us in . . .’

  I take a breath; hold it; breathe out slow, riding it out. ‘Sorry. We can – I can do—’

  The three creases reappear on her forehead, worried now.

  Here goes.

  I guess this is me, then, on the roof of St Bart’s, arms out. This is me, giving up everything.

  There is not really a short version of my medical history but I do my best: juvenile secondary fibromyalgia, which means both chronic and acute musculoskeletal pain, which means I don’t sleep, which means fatigue, which means more pain, and brainfog, round and round. (I don’t mention antidepressants, arthritis, the day in Year 11 I got so tired in school that Mr Grayson had to carry me down the stairs to French like a swooning damsel and how I never went back, or the word bowel, because one disease at a time. We have chemistry. Biology is extra.)

  Air keeps getting stuck between my top lip and my teeth as I speak, like a robot with faulty pneumatics.

  She squinches her lips into an unhappy rose.

  ‘Wow. You never said.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No! You didn’t have to – I mean – I just, I don’t know. If I was always hurting I’d be screaming about it all the time.’

  I shake my head slowly. ‘You wouldn’t. You’d want to forget about it and post cat pictures and porn like everyone else.’

  Tumblr is the happy place. Tumblr is where I am not tramadol and fluoxetine, CBT statements that don’t work, my hips on
cushions at 3 a.m. Autumn isn’t the arrival of cold that makes every muscle burn brighter; it’s gifsets of treelined Parisian avenues, new episodes, a million odes to pumpkin spice. I am eye_brows: the best me, ordinary, pain-free. And no one looks at me like she is looking at me now.

  Sadface.

  Poor you.

  I wish I’d known not to bother.

  That’s what I’m giving up.

  My safety net.

  The training wheels for my pretentious lifebicycle.

  A girl who’s a gif and thinks I’m funny and an angry hairy painting and just like her.

  Then my Sherlock – VC – Candy – her – she smiles like a Saturday morning and slides her palms across the table, bumping fingertips.

  ‘This is amazing.’

  ‘It’s not.’

  Please no. I’m not a project, you can’t fix me, I am not your inspirational poster, I am not—

  ‘No – Shirin’ – she lifts her fingertips and presses the pads of each finger on top of each of my fingernails: gossamer touch, barely there, so intimate I lose my breath – ‘I thought – it could be awkward? I thought we might run out of things to say. But’ – she looks into my eyes – ‘I know eye_brows. I like eye_brows. Now I get to like Shirin things.’

  I’m glad her fingers are there, holding me, so I don’t float up to the ceiling.

  ‘Tell me everything,’ she says.

  I tilt my head, then pull my hands away and place them over the backs of hers, flat on the table, feeling her skin, her warmth, her.

  I smile like my face is broken, good-broken, and it doesn’t know how to stop.

  ‘You first.’

  She still lives 444 miles away. I still need a sit down and three prescription meds before elevenses.

  But we hold hands. We learn. We laugh.

  Chalk and chalk. Cheese and crackers.

  That’s it.

  That’s our first date.

  And then?

  BBC Sherlock Season Three, episode one, The Empty Hearse, airs on New Year’s Day, 1 January, 2014.

  Inside Schrödinger’s box –

  We are all, still, always John Watson, waiting to find out.

  We are all, still, always Sherlock Holmes, tumbling off rooftops.

  falling/not falling

  kissing/not kissing

  together/together

  FROM

  TROUBLE

  BY

  NON PRATT