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nickelsandcoatsTitle: I'll Give You Everything You Need (You've Given Me Everything I Want) 22/? || at Ao3
Author: Sarah/![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nickelsandcoats
Rating: NC17
Spoilers: Spoilers (eventually) for all of season 2!
Word Count: ~3,000 for this part
Pairings: Sherlock/John, Mycroft/Lestrade
Warnings: AU.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Summary: Mycroft's never given his feathers to anyone before, but one person wins him over without even trying.
Notes: Forflying_dreamz's prompt here at my shuffle meme post. She asked for #103, which were "The Resurrection Stone" from the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II soundtrack and "Amy in the Tardis" from the Doctor Who: Season 5 soundtrack.
This is a sequel to Here Is What My Heart Will Give You (and Here Are the Things I Will Give Up for You). You really should read that one first before you read this story or this story will not make any sense. One last note: this story is set pre-Here Is What My Heart Will Give You (and Here Are the Things I Will Give Up for You) and will eventually end up post-Reichenbach. Expect lots of angst.
part i || part ii || part iii || part iv || part v || part vi || part vii || part viii || part ix || part x || part xi || part xii || part xiii || part xiv || part xv || part xvi || part xvii || part xviii || part xix || part xx || part xxi
Some of the dialogue in this part came fromarianedevere's wonderful transcript of TRF.
In all of the fuss of finding Greg and Sally in their flat, John had dropped the envelope with the dried…stuff in it and the odd, old wax seal (almost the colour of blood) on one of Sherlock’s many stacks of papers and ran out the door after his husband, Sally and Greg to head to St Aldate’s school in search of the U.S. ambassador’s children.
He followed Sherlock around the school with the rest of the Yard’s team, his shoulders tense as he looked around every corner and into every shadow, looking for any sign of the missing children. When Sherlock looked around the boys’ room, John stood off to one side, shifting his weight uneasily. Every sense he had was shouting at him that they had to hurry, hurry, hurry, and it took all he had not to shout at his husband to work faster, be even more brilliant than normal as these children were in danger.
Sherlock, meanwhile, had crouched down in front of the boy’s trunk and pulled out a package, noting the broken red wax seal before he opened the package and pulled out an edition of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. His stomach dropped as he looked at the brightly coloured cover. These stories were not the sanitised ones that were in most editions⎯they were the original gory, scary ones⎯the ones that hinted at the truths of the stories humanity didn’t want to think about. These were the stories that everyone thought were just a myth, stories told to teach children life lessons and scare them into conforming.
They were the truth.
And in that truth, Sherlock saw the story of Hansel and Gretel and all of the pieces began to fall into place.
As he stood and handed the book to John, he noted the wax seal again and peered at it more closely before surrendering it to John’s grip⎯it was a magpie.
Why a magpie? Sherlock thought as he found the empty bottle of linseed oil and called for a blacklight. Following the illuminated footsteps of the children and their kidnapper, he found more of his brain spinning around the stories he knew were in the volume currently in John’s coat pocket and the connexion Moriarty (who else could it be?) wanted him to make between the truth and a magpie.
A magpie, and the rest of his life.
He was still thinking about the magpie when they arrived at Bart’s, the little vials with the samples of the kidnapper’s shoeprints tucked in his pocket. He and Molly got to work on the samples, while John flipped through the books and files Molly had brought in with her. Sherlock was having trouble concentrating on the microscope in front of him as everything he could dredge up about magpies was flittering through his brain.
“You’re a bit like my dad. He’s dead,” Molly blurted after a moment of silence.
Sherlock blinked, drew back from the eyepiece. “Molly⎯”
“When he was dying, he was always cheerful; he was lovely, except when he thought no one could see. But I saw him, once. He looked sad.”
“Molly⎯”
But Molly ploughed ahead, undeterred. “You look sad when you think he can’t see you.” She glanced over at John, back to Sherlock, her eyes wide and sad, too.
“Are you okay?” Sherlock blinked at her again, and she added, “And don’t just say you are, because I know what that means, looking sad when you think no one can see you.”
Sherlock turned slightly so that he was facing her more fully and said, quietly, “You can see me.” And John could, too, if I wasn’t trying so hard to hide so much from him.
“I don’t count.” She cringed a bit and added, “What I’m trying to say is that, if there’s anything I can do, anything you need, anything at all, you can have me.”
Now Sherlock was truly speechless. Mycroft had said, not so long ago, those exact same words to him, and just as he was then, he couldn’t force the words to come out in time to keep Molly’s expression from cracking. He opened his mouth, and what came out was a question of what he could possibly need from her, to which she simply shrugged and then asked, a bit too brightly, if he wanted crisps before striding to the door and closing it gently behind her.
John frowned a bit at the door and then down at the photo in his hand. He gave a little “ha!” of triumph, brandishing the photo at Sherlock. “I nearly forgot about this in all the rush⎯we got an envelope, filled with some dusty, crumbly stuff when I came in this afternoon⎯it had the same seal on it.”
Sherlock crossed the lab to lean down and look at the picture more closely, and then the open book of the fairy tales, open to the story of Hansel and Gretel, caught his eye.
“Got you,” he whispered, pulling out his mobile and texting furiously.
“What? What is it?”
“That dust was likely breadcrumbs. And this,” he stabbed a finger at the open book, “is the story of what’s happening to those kids.”
John looked confused. “It’s just a story, Sherlock.”
“And these stories are true,” Sherlock retorted, sweeping out of the room. John shook his head and gathered up the photos before running out after his husband.
They were home, again, after finding the kids, after the little girl screamed bloody murder at Sherlock when they were at the Yard, after one of their friendly assassin-neighbours had just died in the street after shaking Sherlock’s hand. John leaned against the window, staring out into nothing, humming absently.
Sherlock was sat in front of his laptop, staring fixedly at the screen, fingers tapping out a rhythm on the table as he thought. “There’s a surveillance web closing in on us, right now, and they’re coming for⎯what? Me?”
John turned back from the window to look at him, still humming a bit in thought.
Sherlock’s eyes narrowed at him. “What’s that you’re humming?”
John stopped, startled. “Humming? Was I? I dunno, just an old tune.”
“Yes, but what is it?” Sherlock stood up, coming around the table to close the distance between them. The little video Moriarty had played in his lonely cab ride back from the Yard had had that tune just at the end, before the screen turned back to black and he’d had the driver (Moriarty) pull over.
John pursed his lips in thought. “I don’t think it has a proper name, but it’s the song you sing when you see a magpie. Must’ve made the connexion with the seal and all.”
“Are there lyrics?” Sherlock demanded.
“What, you mean you don’t know it?”
Sherlock shook his head, impatient.
“One for sorrow, two for joy, it’s an old tradition, Sherlock, that you should always be respectful to magpies because they bring bad luck. The song’s for predicting the future⎯you see one magpie, something bad will happen; you see two, something good will happen, and so on. How haven’t you heard of this?”
“It’s not one I’m familiar with,” Sherlock said. “I deleted Mother’s stories if they seemed based only on coincidence, like the human obsession with assigning the future to a random number of birds.”
“But what does that tell us? Is Moriarty a magpie?”
“I doubt that,” Sherlock answered. “The son of Euryale, a Gorgon, who’s a bird? No, I don’t think he is one, but I do believe he likes the symbolism.”
“And the assassins living here? The ones who are sent to keep you safe? The surveillance?”
“Get Mrs Hudson,” Sherlock said in response, spinning away from him to inspect their bookshelves. “I need to know about the dusting.”
And sure enough, with Mrs Hudson and John looking on, he found the small camera, hidden up on the top shelf of the bookcase nearest the window.
Just as he turned around with the camera in his hand, Lestrade came running up the stairs. Sherlock’s gaze flicked over him and he said, bluntly, “No, Inspector.”
Lestrade glanced at John, then said, “What? You haven’t heard the question!”
“You want to take me to the station. Just saving you the trouble of asking.” Sherlock sat at the laptop again, plugging in the little camera. “It was the scream, wasn’t it? The scream, and I’d imagine Donovan and possibly Anderson, if he’d grown a backbone, putting that little bit of doubt into your head. You see?” he said, only glancing at Lestrade’s guilty expression, “He’s got to you, too. Moriarty’s good. All he wants is to destroy me⎯with one photograph of you bringing me in, my reputation starts to shatter, and he wins. So, no, Inspector,” he said, pulling up the camera’s footage, “I shall not be going in to the station with you.”
Lestrade looked at John again, but there was no help there in the icy glare that John was sending him. With a soft sigh, Lestrade left again, his steps heavy as he went down the stairs.
John crossed over to the window and watched them pull away, face drawn with tension. The way Sally had looked at them, after, when they were leaving the Yard was niggling at him. He knew what she was thinking, and the worst, the fucking worst, thing was that a very, very small part of him was thinking it too.
I know him. I know he would never do something like this; he’d not even think of doing it. This has Moriarty written all over it⎯I know it, but then why do I feel like this?
“He’s got to you, too.” Sherlock didn’t even look up from the screen. “He’s like a virus, or a snake, crawling in and spreading doubt, even in you.”
“No, I know you for real.”
“Do you?”
“Of course I do.” And just like that, the doubt disappeared like so much black smoke. “I’ve known you all our lives.”
Sherlock smiled at him then, just a little. “Maybe that will be enough to get us through this,” he said, but he didn’t acknowledge John’s puzzled look.
Back at the Yard, Greg sat down heavily behind his desk for only five minutes before Sally leaned her head around the doorjamb and announced that the Super wanted to see them. Greg nodded and waited until she left before he dropped his head into his hands and rubbed his temples, gathering his strength.
The meeting went just as Greg thought it would, dread sitting in his stomach like lead. He’d been raked over for allowing a private citizen in on cases, and nothing he could say would keep the Super from ordering a warrant for Sherlock’s arrest, one that was to be carried out immediately.
Upon his dismissal from the meeting (Greg didn’t look at either Sally or Anderson for fear of doing something that would get him fired on the spot), he hurried to his office to gather his things and called John with a warning. John hung up with a curt “Thanks,” and Greg felt his shoulders tense even more. He hesitated for a moment, twirling his mobile in his fingers before he finally unlocked it and opened a text to Mycroft. He paused to consider how he would word this question before he finally thought fuck it and typed and hit send before he could think too much more about it.
Do you have an alibi for Sherlock for two days ago, sometime during the afternoon?
G
Mycroft’s answer was immediate. Why?
Greg’s mouth tightened as he stood up and pulled on his coat, tugging the collar in close. His mobile buzzed again.
What do you think has happened?
Nothing, I hope
G
What do you need?
Greg stopped in his tracks, ignoring Sally’s impatient huff as he typed, A bloody fucking miracle and resolutely shut the little phone off after the message sent.
Less than two hours after he’d left the first time, Greg found himself mounting the stairs to 221b, another officer behind him. He found himself reciting Sherlock’s rights in a near monotone as the handcuffs were put on and Sherlock was marched back downstairs. John was glaring at him, looking at him as if he’d never seen Greg before.
To be honest, Greg wasn’t sure he knew himself anymore. Not after tonight.
When John voiced his protest, Greg leaned in (oh, please, John, catch my hint) and snapped, “Don’t try to interfere, or I shall arrest you, too.” He turned and left with a curt nod to Mrs Hudson, who was in tears, and waited outside, hoping that John would catch on.
Sure enough, not two minutes later, the Super came down, clutching his bleeding nose (Greg had to fight to keep the grin off his face), closely followed by John, who was unceremoniously slammed against the car next to Sherlock.
And trust Sherlock to make the most dramatic escape possible as he brandished the gun and shouted at all of them to get on their knees. Moments later, he and John were running off, and all Greg could think was, Run, and be safe.
Running while handcuffed together was not the easiest of tasks, John thought as he got slammed into a fence that Sherlock cleared without a second thought for his much shorter husband. But the running was nothing compared to the racing, sickening thought that sprang, unbidden, into his mind as they stared down at yet another dead assassin (this one, at least, told them what it was they wanted⎯the computer code Moriarty left during his visit to their flat). And that thought was: it’s all ending soon. Soon. Soon. Soon.
Sherlock pulled them to a stop a short distance away from the body, explaining as they caught their breath that the code was just another way to smear his name⎯make it look like he was selling something invaluable to the criminals, and the great detective seems to be nothing more than a criminal himself. John glanced down at the newspapers stacked next to the doorway and snatched the top one off. The headline screamed about a new expose on Sherlock Holmes, written by one Kitty Reilly⎯it was the same newspaper Mycroft had shown him at the club that morning.
Sherlock’s lip curled when John showed it to him and asked about Rich Brook.
“Who is he?” John asked.
“Only one way to find out,” Sherlock said, pulling him towards the street.
They sat in the dark, pressed close together on Kitty’s couch, waiting for her to come home. Sherlock’s fingers were clenched tightly around John’s, and the dread that had been simmering behind John’s heart all night finally burst.
“Do you know what ya’aburnee means, Sherlock?”
“No.”
John swallowed hard. “It’s Arabic, I heard it in Afghanistan, from one of the translators who was explaining some customs to us. It means…” John broke off and rubbed at his eyes, which were suddenly wet. He gathered up his courage and blurted, “It means ‘you bury me’ as a way to say that you hope you die before the person you love so that you don’t have to live through the agony of being without them. And I know it’s selfish, I do, but I have to say it’s true. It’s true for me, Sherlock, and I know I’m rambling, but I can’t help but feel the inevitability of something horrible waiting for us, and I just, I just have to say it. There is no me without you. I don’t know how I would survive without you. I can’t fathom how you lived without me, just from what you told me it was like.”
“It was a near thing,” Sherlock confessed in a whisper.
“I know, I know,” John whispered into his neck. “I know and I’m sorry but I can’t. I just can’t.” John’s tears were dampening his collar and Sherlock closed his eyes. “Just promise me Sherlock, promise me that everything will be all right.”
“I promise,” Sherlock said, heart breaking in two as he lied and lied and held John, whom he did not deserve, even closer and whispered over and over again, hoping that some part of this would lodge itself in John’s consciousness and remain there, comforting him in the lonely days and months (and oh, Gods, please not years, not years, never that, please) that lay ahead of them.
He kissed John’s forehead, his temple, his cheeks. He kissed away the tears that were falling more slowly now as John rose up and captured his lips in a searing kiss that left both of them breathless. When they pulled apart, it was only just far enough to fumble their trousers open.
When John’s hand closed around him, Sherlock’s breath stuttered and then stopped before he finally opened his eyes in the darkness, straining to see some glimpse of John as his hand slid slowly up and down. Sherlock reached out to John and gently brushed one long finger from root to tip, making his husband gasp a quiet curse and press up in search of more contact. Sherlock obliged by tugging on John’s free hand, the one cuffed to his own, pulling John onto his lap and pressing up, up until their cocks lined up. He closed his hand around them both and encouraged John into a gentle rocking that pushed them both together. John moaned and dug his free hand into Sherlock’s hair, pulling him down into a heated kiss as he rocked faster until he let go with a harsh sob of Sherlock’s name.
Sherlock’s own orgasm was an afterthought, lost in the midst of cataloguing everything about John in the throes of orgasm that he could. He knew, deep in his gut, behind his heart, that this was the last time he would experience this for a long while, and he wanted to ensure that he could recall this moment, this John who was his, in perfect detail whenever he wanted. When John had calmed and cleaned them both up a little, he carefully tucked them both away and John, reluctantly, settled back down next to him, pressed as close as he could, thigh to shoulder, to wait for Kitty to return.
part xxiii
Author: Sarah/
nickelsandcoatsRating: NC17
Spoilers: Spoilers (eventually) for all of season 2!
Word Count: ~3,000 for this part
Pairings: Sherlock/John, Mycroft/Lestrade
Warnings: AU.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Summary: Mycroft's never given his feathers to anyone before, but one person wins him over without even trying.
Notes: For
flying_dreamz's prompt here at my shuffle meme post. She asked for #103, which were "The Resurrection Stone" from the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II soundtrack and "Amy in the Tardis" from the Doctor Who: Season 5 soundtrack.This is a sequel to Here Is What My Heart Will Give You (and Here Are the Things I Will Give Up for You). You really should read that one first before you read this story or this story will not make any sense. One last note: this story is set pre-Here Is What My Heart Will Give You (and Here Are the Things I Will Give Up for You) and will eventually end up post-Reichenbach. Expect lots of angst.
part i || part ii || part iii || part iv || part v || part vi || part vii || part viii || part ix || part x || part xi || part xii || part xiii || part xiv || part xv || part xvi || part xvii || part xviii || part xix || part xx || part xxi
Some of the dialogue in this part came from
arianedevere's wonderful transcript of TRF.In all of the fuss of finding Greg and Sally in their flat, John had dropped the envelope with the dried…stuff in it and the odd, old wax seal (almost the colour of blood) on one of Sherlock’s many stacks of papers and ran out the door after his husband, Sally and Greg to head to St Aldate’s school in search of the U.S. ambassador’s children.
He followed Sherlock around the school with the rest of the Yard’s team, his shoulders tense as he looked around every corner and into every shadow, looking for any sign of the missing children. When Sherlock looked around the boys’ room, John stood off to one side, shifting his weight uneasily. Every sense he had was shouting at him that they had to hurry, hurry, hurry, and it took all he had not to shout at his husband to work faster, be even more brilliant than normal as these children were in danger.
Sherlock, meanwhile, had crouched down in front of the boy’s trunk and pulled out a package, noting the broken red wax seal before he opened the package and pulled out an edition of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. His stomach dropped as he looked at the brightly coloured cover. These stories were not the sanitised ones that were in most editions⎯they were the original gory, scary ones⎯the ones that hinted at the truths of the stories humanity didn’t want to think about. These were the stories that everyone thought were just a myth, stories told to teach children life lessons and scare them into conforming.
They were the truth.
And in that truth, Sherlock saw the story of Hansel and Gretel and all of the pieces began to fall into place.
As he stood and handed the book to John, he noted the wax seal again and peered at it more closely before surrendering it to John’s grip⎯it was a magpie.
Why a magpie? Sherlock thought as he found the empty bottle of linseed oil and called for a blacklight. Following the illuminated footsteps of the children and their kidnapper, he found more of his brain spinning around the stories he knew were in the volume currently in John’s coat pocket and the connexion Moriarty (who else could it be?) wanted him to make between the truth and a magpie.
A magpie, and the rest of his life.
He was still thinking about the magpie when they arrived at Bart’s, the little vials with the samples of the kidnapper’s shoeprints tucked in his pocket. He and Molly got to work on the samples, while John flipped through the books and files Molly had brought in with her. Sherlock was having trouble concentrating on the microscope in front of him as everything he could dredge up about magpies was flittering through his brain.
“You’re a bit like my dad. He’s dead,” Molly blurted after a moment of silence.
Sherlock blinked, drew back from the eyepiece. “Molly⎯”
“When he was dying, he was always cheerful; he was lovely, except when he thought no one could see. But I saw him, once. He looked sad.”
“Molly⎯”
But Molly ploughed ahead, undeterred. “You look sad when you think he can’t see you.” She glanced over at John, back to Sherlock, her eyes wide and sad, too.
“Are you okay?” Sherlock blinked at her again, and she added, “And don’t just say you are, because I know what that means, looking sad when you think no one can see you.”
Sherlock turned slightly so that he was facing her more fully and said, quietly, “You can see me.” And John could, too, if I wasn’t trying so hard to hide so much from him.
“I don’t count.” She cringed a bit and added, “What I’m trying to say is that, if there’s anything I can do, anything you need, anything at all, you can have me.”
Now Sherlock was truly speechless. Mycroft had said, not so long ago, those exact same words to him, and just as he was then, he couldn’t force the words to come out in time to keep Molly’s expression from cracking. He opened his mouth, and what came out was a question of what he could possibly need from her, to which she simply shrugged and then asked, a bit too brightly, if he wanted crisps before striding to the door and closing it gently behind her.
John frowned a bit at the door and then down at the photo in his hand. He gave a little “ha!” of triumph, brandishing the photo at Sherlock. “I nearly forgot about this in all the rush⎯we got an envelope, filled with some dusty, crumbly stuff when I came in this afternoon⎯it had the same seal on it.”
Sherlock crossed the lab to lean down and look at the picture more closely, and then the open book of the fairy tales, open to the story of Hansel and Gretel, caught his eye.
“Got you,” he whispered, pulling out his mobile and texting furiously.
“What? What is it?”
“That dust was likely breadcrumbs. And this,” he stabbed a finger at the open book, “is the story of what’s happening to those kids.”
John looked confused. “It’s just a story, Sherlock.”
“And these stories are true,” Sherlock retorted, sweeping out of the room. John shook his head and gathered up the photos before running out after his husband.
They were home, again, after finding the kids, after the little girl screamed bloody murder at Sherlock when they were at the Yard, after one of their friendly assassin-neighbours had just died in the street after shaking Sherlock’s hand. John leaned against the window, staring out into nothing, humming absently.
Sherlock was sat in front of his laptop, staring fixedly at the screen, fingers tapping out a rhythm on the table as he thought. “There’s a surveillance web closing in on us, right now, and they’re coming for⎯what? Me?”
John turned back from the window to look at him, still humming a bit in thought.
Sherlock’s eyes narrowed at him. “What’s that you’re humming?”
John stopped, startled. “Humming? Was I? I dunno, just an old tune.”
“Yes, but what is it?” Sherlock stood up, coming around the table to close the distance between them. The little video Moriarty had played in his lonely cab ride back from the Yard had had that tune just at the end, before the screen turned back to black and he’d had the driver (Moriarty) pull over.
John pursed his lips in thought. “I don’t think it has a proper name, but it’s the song you sing when you see a magpie. Must’ve made the connexion with the seal and all.”
“Are there lyrics?” Sherlock demanded.
“What, you mean you don’t know it?”
Sherlock shook his head, impatient.
“One for sorrow, two for joy, it’s an old tradition, Sherlock, that you should always be respectful to magpies because they bring bad luck. The song’s for predicting the future⎯you see one magpie, something bad will happen; you see two, something good will happen, and so on. How haven’t you heard of this?”
“It’s not one I’m familiar with,” Sherlock said. “I deleted Mother’s stories if they seemed based only on coincidence, like the human obsession with assigning the future to a random number of birds.”
“But what does that tell us? Is Moriarty a magpie?”
“I doubt that,” Sherlock answered. “The son of Euryale, a Gorgon, who’s a bird? No, I don’t think he is one, but I do believe he likes the symbolism.”
“And the assassins living here? The ones who are sent to keep you safe? The surveillance?”
“Get Mrs Hudson,” Sherlock said in response, spinning away from him to inspect their bookshelves. “I need to know about the dusting.”
And sure enough, with Mrs Hudson and John looking on, he found the small camera, hidden up on the top shelf of the bookcase nearest the window.
Just as he turned around with the camera in his hand, Lestrade came running up the stairs. Sherlock’s gaze flicked over him and he said, bluntly, “No, Inspector.”
Lestrade glanced at John, then said, “What? You haven’t heard the question!”
“You want to take me to the station. Just saving you the trouble of asking.” Sherlock sat at the laptop again, plugging in the little camera. “It was the scream, wasn’t it? The scream, and I’d imagine Donovan and possibly Anderson, if he’d grown a backbone, putting that little bit of doubt into your head. You see?” he said, only glancing at Lestrade’s guilty expression, “He’s got to you, too. Moriarty’s good. All he wants is to destroy me⎯with one photograph of you bringing me in, my reputation starts to shatter, and he wins. So, no, Inspector,” he said, pulling up the camera’s footage, “I shall not be going in to the station with you.”
Lestrade looked at John again, but there was no help there in the icy glare that John was sending him. With a soft sigh, Lestrade left again, his steps heavy as he went down the stairs.
John crossed over to the window and watched them pull away, face drawn with tension. The way Sally had looked at them, after, when they were leaving the Yard was niggling at him. He knew what she was thinking, and the worst, the fucking worst, thing was that a very, very small part of him was thinking it too.
I know him. I know he would never do something like this; he’d not even think of doing it. This has Moriarty written all over it⎯I know it, but then why do I feel like this?
“He’s got to you, too.” Sherlock didn’t even look up from the screen. “He’s like a virus, or a snake, crawling in and spreading doubt, even in you.”
“No, I know you for real.”
“Do you?”
“Of course I do.” And just like that, the doubt disappeared like so much black smoke. “I’ve known you all our lives.”
Sherlock smiled at him then, just a little. “Maybe that will be enough to get us through this,” he said, but he didn’t acknowledge John’s puzzled look.
Back at the Yard, Greg sat down heavily behind his desk for only five minutes before Sally leaned her head around the doorjamb and announced that the Super wanted to see them. Greg nodded and waited until she left before he dropped his head into his hands and rubbed his temples, gathering his strength.
The meeting went just as Greg thought it would, dread sitting in his stomach like lead. He’d been raked over for allowing a private citizen in on cases, and nothing he could say would keep the Super from ordering a warrant for Sherlock’s arrest, one that was to be carried out immediately.
Upon his dismissal from the meeting (Greg didn’t look at either Sally or Anderson for fear of doing something that would get him fired on the spot), he hurried to his office to gather his things and called John with a warning. John hung up with a curt “Thanks,” and Greg felt his shoulders tense even more. He hesitated for a moment, twirling his mobile in his fingers before he finally unlocked it and opened a text to Mycroft. He paused to consider how he would word this question before he finally thought fuck it and typed and hit send before he could think too much more about it.
Do you have an alibi for Sherlock for two days ago, sometime during the afternoon?
G
Mycroft’s answer was immediate. Why?
Greg’s mouth tightened as he stood up and pulled on his coat, tugging the collar in close. His mobile buzzed again.
What do you think has happened?
Nothing, I hope
G
What do you need?
Greg stopped in his tracks, ignoring Sally’s impatient huff as he typed, A bloody fucking miracle and resolutely shut the little phone off after the message sent.
Less than two hours after he’d left the first time, Greg found himself mounting the stairs to 221b, another officer behind him. He found himself reciting Sherlock’s rights in a near monotone as the handcuffs were put on and Sherlock was marched back downstairs. John was glaring at him, looking at him as if he’d never seen Greg before.
To be honest, Greg wasn’t sure he knew himself anymore. Not after tonight.
When John voiced his protest, Greg leaned in (oh, please, John, catch my hint) and snapped, “Don’t try to interfere, or I shall arrest you, too.” He turned and left with a curt nod to Mrs Hudson, who was in tears, and waited outside, hoping that John would catch on.
Sure enough, not two minutes later, the Super came down, clutching his bleeding nose (Greg had to fight to keep the grin off his face), closely followed by John, who was unceremoniously slammed against the car next to Sherlock.
And trust Sherlock to make the most dramatic escape possible as he brandished the gun and shouted at all of them to get on their knees. Moments later, he and John were running off, and all Greg could think was, Run, and be safe.
Running while handcuffed together was not the easiest of tasks, John thought as he got slammed into a fence that Sherlock cleared without a second thought for his much shorter husband. But the running was nothing compared to the racing, sickening thought that sprang, unbidden, into his mind as they stared down at yet another dead assassin (this one, at least, told them what it was they wanted⎯the computer code Moriarty left during his visit to their flat). And that thought was: it’s all ending soon. Soon. Soon. Soon.
Sherlock pulled them to a stop a short distance away from the body, explaining as they caught their breath that the code was just another way to smear his name⎯make it look like he was selling something invaluable to the criminals, and the great detective seems to be nothing more than a criminal himself. John glanced down at the newspapers stacked next to the doorway and snatched the top one off. The headline screamed about a new expose on Sherlock Holmes, written by one Kitty Reilly⎯it was the same newspaper Mycroft had shown him at the club that morning.
Sherlock’s lip curled when John showed it to him and asked about Rich Brook.
“Who is he?” John asked.
“Only one way to find out,” Sherlock said, pulling him towards the street.
They sat in the dark, pressed close together on Kitty’s couch, waiting for her to come home. Sherlock’s fingers were clenched tightly around John’s, and the dread that had been simmering behind John’s heart all night finally burst.
“Do you know what ya’aburnee means, Sherlock?”
“No.”
John swallowed hard. “It’s Arabic, I heard it in Afghanistan, from one of the translators who was explaining some customs to us. It means…” John broke off and rubbed at his eyes, which were suddenly wet. He gathered up his courage and blurted, “It means ‘you bury me’ as a way to say that you hope you die before the person you love so that you don’t have to live through the agony of being without them. And I know it’s selfish, I do, but I have to say it’s true. It’s true for me, Sherlock, and I know I’m rambling, but I can’t help but feel the inevitability of something horrible waiting for us, and I just, I just have to say it. There is no me without you. I don’t know how I would survive without you. I can’t fathom how you lived without me, just from what you told me it was like.”
“It was a near thing,” Sherlock confessed in a whisper.
“I know, I know,” John whispered into his neck. “I know and I’m sorry but I can’t. I just can’t.” John’s tears were dampening his collar and Sherlock closed his eyes. “Just promise me Sherlock, promise me that everything will be all right.”
“I promise,” Sherlock said, heart breaking in two as he lied and lied and held John, whom he did not deserve, even closer and whispered over and over again, hoping that some part of this would lodge itself in John’s consciousness and remain there, comforting him in the lonely days and months (and oh, Gods, please not years, not years, never that, please) that lay ahead of them.
He kissed John’s forehead, his temple, his cheeks. He kissed away the tears that were falling more slowly now as John rose up and captured his lips in a searing kiss that left both of them breathless. When they pulled apart, it was only just far enough to fumble their trousers open.
When John’s hand closed around him, Sherlock’s breath stuttered and then stopped before he finally opened his eyes in the darkness, straining to see some glimpse of John as his hand slid slowly up and down. Sherlock reached out to John and gently brushed one long finger from root to tip, making his husband gasp a quiet curse and press up in search of more contact. Sherlock obliged by tugging on John’s free hand, the one cuffed to his own, pulling John onto his lap and pressing up, up until their cocks lined up. He closed his hand around them both and encouraged John into a gentle rocking that pushed them both together. John moaned and dug his free hand into Sherlock’s hair, pulling him down into a heated kiss as he rocked faster until he let go with a harsh sob of Sherlock’s name.
Sherlock’s own orgasm was an afterthought, lost in the midst of cataloguing everything about John in the throes of orgasm that he could. He knew, deep in his gut, behind his heart, that this was the last time he would experience this for a long while, and he wanted to ensure that he could recall this moment, this John who was his, in perfect detail whenever he wanted. When John had calmed and cleaned them both up a little, he carefully tucked them both away and John, reluctantly, settled back down next to him, pressed as close as he could, thigh to shoulder, to wait for Kitty to return.
part xxiii
