His hand hovering next to him from where he withdrew it from the couch, he brought his gaze back to her, the warmth still across his cheeks like the aftermath of a strike from a belt or a hand. Looking downwards, he noted their lips were almost touching and he could feel the space between them shifting when she spoke, threatening to close in. He tried desperately to hear what she was saying over the deafening roar in his head, one voice covering another in such a way that he felt it was all the compiled shouts he’d ever heard in his life spoken at once. Who’s voice could he hear? What did they say?
“…yes. I… know that,” slipped out in response to her bit of wisdom, quiet but not altogether small. Just quiet. Low. Looking beyond the ledge where he teetered dangerously and couldn’t even make out the bottom. He breathed those shallow breaths against her lips and watched her with all the helplessness of a man watching an asp coil itself and prepare to strike. There was nothing he could do to get out of range. Nowhere to go.
But where would he want to go? Where else would he want to be? Where would he run?
He was present, fixed here with her, in this spot, in this room and could imagine no other alternative.
When she asked for his hand, he almost drew it back for a moment but resisted the urge, keeping his arm steady, bringing it up to his chest to give to her in a moment of sheer whimsy, curiosity, a bid to speak in his favor and tell her exactly what he meant by that. But didn’t get the chance when her cool lips pressed against his.
His immediate response was to stare, lips slightly parted, unmoving against hers. Sherlock Holmes didn’t know what the hell to do. Sadji had actually done it, done what no woman had before to him, nor a man for that matter. Put her lips to his. His eyelids got heavier until they slipped closed and he leaned into it slightly with his shoulders, making one, chaste movement to close his lips against hers so they fit together and then parted them again breathlessly, pausing for one, quiet beat. Then he pulled back away from her, looking her up and down as if she’d just stabbed him, looking for something to say. Anything. Anything at all.
“I can’t do that,” he said in a quiet, rushed tone. “You can’t do that, I can’t… I really can’t,” he squirmed under her and put his hands on her arms, around them, as if pulling her off and away from him, completely forgetting the part where she had been able to lift him easily from where he stood.
Wires were crossing in his head, carefully wired circuits sparked and exploded like fireworks and his right hand left her arm to card through his lose curls and he muttered, “Oh god.” He fell back against the couch, staring off into a corner as if he was watching the universe unfold before his very eyes there. Someone had kissed him. Had he kissed her? How did it feel? He was grasping. How did it feel, how did it feel, how did he feel?
Something deep in his chest twisted like a corkscrew and he finally looked back at her helplessly, as if she had the answer. As if she would know what to do in this situation, what should be done, laugh at him, tell him he was repulsive, something. He needed her to do something or else he might lose his grip on himself. On reality. It was all crumbling away.
He heard a voice in the back of his head: “The Virgin.” Moriarty’s codename for him. The Woman’s voice. He wish he hadn’t remembered it, especially right now, of all times.