The flat at 221B Baker Street thinks the property damage will end.

Quiet.

Is it too much to ask for?

Maybe it is. She should be used to it by now.

Explosions at four in the morning that make the chipped mugs and plates in the cupboards rattle. The sharp snaps of bullets embedding themselves in her walls when the tall man is bored or being ignored by the shorter man. Acid burns on the carpet. Tea and cough medicine making newspapers stick to the table. The crash of glass when the tall man and the shorter man row, or at least the shorter man shouts, louder and louder, and the taller man's violin screeches out horrid not-notes, and her windows sometimes take the worst of it. Furniture scratching the floor when the shorter man shoves the taller man into a chair and their angry breathing becomes something else.

One day, the tall man leaves. Or, he never comes back.

The shorter man does. He takes the cane out of the closet by the stairs and sits on the sofa and stares at the taller man's chair. He does this for two days and then makes himself coffee and doesn't drink it.

She waits for him to break something.

He laughs, a too-loud sound, and goes to bed.

The explosions stop. The cupboards still rattle but only when the shorter man closes it, twice, because he's taken out two mugs for tea so he puts the second mug back. No one shoots at the wall but no one covers up the bullet holes above the sofa. Sometimes the shorter man spills tea on the carpet and sometimes, he watches the stain for a few minutes before cleaning it up. No one breaks windows or throws plates at closing doors in a huff or makes scratches in the floor. One morning, a woman with hair a shade lighter than the shorter man touches the violin case under a windowsill and the shorter man shouts himself hoarse.

And then, it's quiet again.

And how she hates it.