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Tick tock. Tick tock. The plastic needle encroached upon the big 12, once again. Why can’t I sleep? You get out of bed and walk to the bathroom, kicking and scaring the cats out of your bed. You hear them scatter downstairs in an unorderly and angry fashion, but you could care less. You had a huge presentation tomorrow, and the fact that you were going to get less than three hours of sleep that night, excuse me, morning, if you were lucky, wasn’t helping anything.
You glanced in the mirror, becoming aware of how swollen and dark your eyes would look tomorrow. “I don’t think I’ll even be awake enough to properly put makeup on to cover these,” you complain. And you had every right to. You’ve waited years to do this presentation in London, discussing the Sherlock Holmes series. You even moved across seas and got a cheap apartment with a good friend, just to be closer to where the show was filmed. It’d been your dream to present for this conference, and even bigger a dream to meet him, Sherlock Holmes himself, played by no other than Benedict Cumberbatch. After two years of your well written essays and presentations getting declined, finally, you got your big break. And you actually believed that, just once, things would work out for you. Nope.
Flicking the lights off, you feel your way back to your dark room and sink into your sheets. You had to admit, it was nice having the apartment to yourself. No matter how much you loved living with your friend, there was something serene about knowing you were the only one in the house. Well, you and your friend’s two cats.
Almost asleep, you hear glass shatter. “For heaven’s sake” you mutter. Her damn cats. You roll over, knowing you shouldn’t ignore it. Another glass shatters, and you hear someone talking. Someone talking. Oh no.
Heart pounding and palms sweating, you nervously grab your robe and throw it on, playing with your phone, trying to turn the light on to locate the bat you kept hidden in your room, just in case. One foot in front of the other, keep going, you encourage yourself as you feverishly step down the stairs, watching for the creaky step. You hear a chair being kicked, no, tripped over?
Once around the corner, you see a figure obnoxiously bumping around into everything, and you wonder how in the world they thought they’d be able to get away with this. He’s coming closer, just a few more steps and I can hit him, that’s it, come on. You jump out and swing, the reverberation throwing you back a bit. You jump back, screaming and scrambling for the light switch, when, lo and behold, Benedict Cumberbatch lays, shirtless and dazed on your living room floor.
He stands up and begins stammering. “I-I-I accidentally broke into y-your apartment because my friend, he lives r-right next door to you and I was in the area, drunk, and, oh my goodness my head hurts, I thought I was climbing into, uh, the right window and was going to fall asleep on the right couch, and I did wonder when my friend got two cats but I didn’t question it, so now I’m hungover and shirtless in your living room so uh, hi, how ya doin?”
He throws on a flashing smile, and you look down and see that he, indeed, was not wearing a shirt. “So you think that, just because you’re drunk and, shirtless, are you SERIOUS, that you can just pop into my apartment, even though you thought it was your friend’s, and just think I’ll be okay with it?
“Uhm, I was hoping,” Benedict responds, sheepishly.
You walk into the kitchen after leaving another bat mark on his shirtless stomach, in search for some ice. “Here, this should help,” you say, handing him the cold bag.
“Wow, thanks.” He responds coldly.
“Well, what did you expect me to do!?” you retorted. He smiled back, a yeah-I-get-it kind of smile.
“Alright, alright, I get it. Well, I hope I didn’t scare you too bad, I really need to be more careful.” He glanced up at you, his eyes full of wonder. “Say, your accent, it’s not.. local. What are you here for?”