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I was trying and trying to wrap bandages around Lesley's face, but my hands kept slipping and every time I got the fabric around her cheeks, Punch's jutting nose ripped through again with a cackle of high-pitched laughter, but it was Lesley's voice I could hear. "What are you doing, you pillock? Are you waiting for my face to fall all the way off? What's this magic shit good for if you can't even tie a knot?"
I dropped the bandages, and Lesley's face fell off. She crumpled to the pavement and blood was beginning to pool underneath her and the ambulance wasn't here yet and it wasn't Lesley, it was Nightingale lying there looking at me reproachfully.
"You were so busy chatting you didn't even see the gunman, did you?" Lesley said in Punch's voice from somewhere behind me. "Shot your guv right in front of you and what did you do to stop it?"
I didn't know which one I needed to help first. I fumbled for the bandages and they fell away from my hands again.
"Peter!" Nightingale shouted, and the sirens were fading away, they weren't coming and he was going to bleed out in front of me. Lesley reached out and grabbed me by the arm. I seized her hand and pulled, and she made a half-choked gasping noise, and a bright light shone in my eyes.
I opened my eyes and blinked frantically. Sweat was dripping down my neck and all the hairs on my arms were standing up. And there was a light hovering above my head, and I had a death-grip on someone's arm.
"Peter. It's a dream, Peter."
I blinked again. Tried to focus. Let go of Nightingale's arm in a hurry. He was stooping over my bed, and I could feel the soft hum of his werelight floating above us.
"Inspector," I mumbled. "Sorry. Sorry."
"It's all right. It was a dream, that's all."
A nightmare. The images still were flickering in my mind, Lesley's voice in my ears. I stared up at the werelight, trying to catch my breath, trying to sort out dream from reality, past from present. Lesley was still alive. Home from hospital, in fact. Just like Nightingale. They were both still alive.
"Yeah," I said. "Yeah. I'm fine. Sorry to bother you." My throat hurt. Had I been screaming enough to bring Nightingale up here? I considered pulling the blankets over my head and pretending I'd gone straight back to sleep again.
"I wasn't asleep. It's all right." Nightingale sounded short of breath too. I propped myself up on one elbow, and as I did, Nightingale abruptly sat down on the side of the bed, and my brain began to turn on. Nightingale was home from hospital, yes, but still very much on sick leave. He was not supposed to be wandering around the Folly in the middle of the night. Molly was going to kill me. Dr Walid was going to kill me. First Molly was going to kill me and then Dr Walid would dissect the remains just in case she'd missed anything.
"You didn't need--you shouldn't have come up here," I said.
"I was up anyway. I thought you wouldn't mind being woken up."
English understatement is a wonderful thing. No, I didn't mind being woken up from that dream. "Yeah. No. It's fine," I said, which Nightingale seemed to understand. "Thanks."
Nightingale nodded. Now I'm not sure whether it was his time in the army, or just the result of a classic Edwardian upbringing, but Nightingale does not slouch. You could use him for a plumbline in a pinch. But he was definitely slumping now, head bowed. He ran a hand over his face and tried to stand up, but gave up halfway through and sat back down again.
"Sorry," he muttered. "Just give me a minute." He slumped a little more, then said, "Sorry," again and lay down suddenly on the other side of my bed. "Dammit," he muttered between rasping breaths, "shouldn't be this hard to go upstairs."
Telling him that I was fine and he could go back to bed was obviously not going to work right now. "Pretty sure I heard Dr Walid tell you not to," I said instead.
He turned his head to look at me. "You were shouting for me," he said quietly.
Great. This was all my fault. But then, if I'd heard him shouting for me in the middle of the night, I'd have gone up two flights of stairs with a half-healed bullet hole in my chest too. "It was just a dream."
"I know," he said, and there was a weight to his words that told me that he had a close personal understanding of these kinds of dreams. "It's just--I didn't want you to..." He trailed off. "I'll be better in a minute," he said. "Just... tired."
"No problem," I said randomly. Desperate for a distraction, I turned on my phone and pretended to be looking through texts and social media while he lay there. Really I was listening to the sound of him breathing, still laboured, and wishing I couldn't remember the whistling and bubbling sounds as he'd lain shot on the ground in front of me.
His breathing steadied, and I looked up from my phone, ready to offer him a hand up and a shoulder back down the stairs to his own rooms. He was asleep.
"Damn," I muttered, not loud enough to wake him. I should wake him up and get him back down to his own room. Anything else would be awkward. Waking him up was going to be awkward. And he probably needed a longer rest after climbing the stairs up here. I sat down properly on the other half of the bed, back to the headboard, legs out along the length of the bed, and played with my phone a bit more. Nightingale began to snore, softly. I scrolled through a screen without seeing it, my eyes half closed, then tried to force myself awake again. Nightingale coughed and I thought he was going to wake up, but he went still again. My eyes began to close.
This was ridiculous. It was my bed and I was three-quarters asleep anyway. I put my phone down, lay down and pulled the sheet and blankets--I'm not sure whether Molly hasn't heard of duvets or she considers them unhygienic--over us both.
As soon as I was lying down, I was wide awake. I considered picking up my phone again, but I really wasn't that interested in anything on it and the data is expensive. I switched it off and took the battery out again and put it down on the bedside table with a little clatter. It didn't wake Nightingale. He was well and truly out. I turned on my side away from him, but it wasn't comfortable and I turned over again. Facing him was uncomfortable in a whole different way. The yellow London glow was filtering through the curtains, too dim to see colours but enough to throw shadows. I could see where the lines on his face had been, before he'd started aging backwards, and the deep hollows under his eyes which had been there since he'd been shot. It would be unkind to wake him up. I watched his chest rise and fall, the strained sound in his breathing more apparent now, when he couldn't hide it, and I wondered what his nightmares were like. And whether I'd have another one as soon as I went back to sleep and we'd go round this whole mess again.
I could see Nightingale's eyes moving behind his eyelids. Rapid eye movement, it's called, and it means you're dreaming. He turned half on his side and reached out one arm. His hand brushed my shoulder and for a second his eyes opened.
"Peter," he mumbled, his hand rested on my shoulder, and he went straight back into his dream, lips curving in a faint smile.
"Yeah," I said in a whisper, "that's not weird at all." But I didn't try to move away. His hand was surprisingly heavy. I let it push me a little more flat to the bed, and closed my eyes. Nightingale's breathing was steady in my ear.
I must have fallen asleep like that, because the next thing I knew it was light outside and Nightingale was curled against me and I had my arm around him. I didn't move. I could feel his ribs and his spine against me. The sleeve of his pyjamas had ridden up and my hand was on his bare arm. It was warm and shockingly comfortable and as I lay there drowsing I felt an odd sense of revelation at the back of my mind, half-understood, half-suppressed.
I was going to slip quietly out of the bed and leave Nightingale to catch up on his sleep, but when I moved my arm he stirred and mumbled something. He reached for me, and then I saw him wake up all at once and realise where he was.
"Oh," he said, and his hand fell back. "I--Peter. I'm sorry, I--"
There was a faint panic in his eyes. I was still feeling sleepy and comfortable and I'd liked it a lot better when Nightingale was comfortable too. So I interrupted his apology before he could get too tangled up in it. "Did you sleep well?"
His well-drilled manners kicked in automatically. "Yes, thank you," he said in a tone of surprise.
"Good." I swung out of bed then and stretched. "You fell asleep, and then I fell asleep too," I said, which seemed to cover everything that needed to be said.
"Yes." He looked up at me, then began to sit up, laboriously. I extended a hand to him. He doesn't usually let me help him, but I wasn't entirely surprised when he took it this time. "Molly will have breakfast ready by now," he said. "We've overslept."
"Then we'd better get down there."
Nightingale stayed sitting on the side of my bed a minute longer, apparently lost in thought. Pleasant thoughts. Then he glanced up and caught me watching him, and he gave a snort and pushed himself upright. "To think it used to be quiet in here," he said. But he was smiling as he said it.