"What was the number again, mate?"

"Two-two-one. Just there, on the left. Cheers." Greg Lestrade exhaled, already feeling the pinch of a headache behind his eyes. What a fucking day. What a fucking week.

He gave the cabbie a tenner, hefted his rucksack on his shoulder, and stepped onto the kerb. He looked up at that familiar door and his stomach lurched a bit. He stepped up and rang the buzzer for 221B.

A good fifteen seconds passed before the door opened. A haggard face peered at him from the darkness of the foyer.

"Hey." God, John looked like he hadn't slept in a week. Maybe he hadn't.

Guilt coiled in Greg's belly, hot and tight. He forced a smile that probably looked as fake as hell, but really, it was the best he could manage. "You've looked better, mate."

A small smile at that. "Come in."

John pushed the door open wider and stepped back. Greg followed him up the stairs in silence, up to a flat he'd been in four dozen times, had taken apart to look for illegal substances on two memorable occasions. But never like this.

"I'll put the kettle on. We'll get you sorted in a bit." John turned to the kitchen.

Greg dropped his rucksack on the sofa and looked around, not quite ready to sit yet. The flat looked different than it had done the last time he was here. It seemed to have been scrubbed of everything Sherlock, shelves and walls almost bare, the once-ever-present scientific equipment nowhere to be seen, the stacks of papers and journals and pictures and clippings apparently all packed away, hidden from view. The silence was oppressive. Greg wondered why John didn't just put on the telly for background noise.

"Um," John said, peeking out of the kitchen. He looked a bit lost. "It's one sugar and a splash of milk, right?"

Greg smiled. "Yeah, cheers."John disappeared into the kitchen again and Greg sat uncomfortably on the sofa. God, this silence only made it worse. "Thanks again for putting me up on such short notice."

John appeared around the corner again, two cups in hand. "It's no trouble. I could do with a spot of company anyway. Was she horribly pissed off at you?" He sat in a chair opposite and held out a cup.

Greg took it and shrugged. "After all the shit she's pulled, you'd think she'd be a bit more understanding." He paused to sip his tea. "But honestly, I think she was looking for an excuse. Me being disgraced in the papers was a fucking gift."

John wrapped his fingers around his cup and looked up at him. "Is it over, then?"

Greg sighed and sank back into the sofa. "Yeah." It was true, this time, he was sure of it. He was done, at any rate.

John stared into his cup. "Do you love her?"

"I did. God, I did." It was hard to process it now, how much they'd shared and lost. And for what?

"Yeah." John shifted in his chair a bit.

Greg tore his thoughts back to the present, to John's far more jagged pain. "Anyway, it's just for a few days, until I work out what to do."

"Stay as long as you like. I mean it." John looked up at him again.

Greg smiled. There were a hundred questions he wanted to ask, but now didn't seem the time. It wasn't any of his business anyway; if John wanted to tell him, he would.

"I don't want to be any trouble. God knows you've--."

"It's no trouble." John cleared his throat and returned the smile. "Enjoying your holiday from the Yard?"

Greg snorted. "More than you can imagine. That place was a nightmare after… everything, the last week. When they offered me administrative leave, I didn't even stop to think. Just said fuck yeah."

"Must be nice."

"Especially since they're still paying me, much to the chagrin of the readers of the Daily Mail." He grinned, and then caught sight of John's face and tamped it back down to a small smile. "How about you?"

John shrugged. "God, I haven't even thought that far ahead. I'm good for a couple of months, I think. We'd made a bit of money, you know, from all the cases. I suppose I'll have to get a job again." He frowned, as if he hadn't thought of it until now.

"I imagine you'd go mad otherwise."

"I went mad a long time ago. Didn't you notice?"

Greg opened his mouth, about to make a joke about the madness of living with Sherlock, but stopped himself and stared into his tea cup instead. "Yeah," he said at last. "I suppose so." He looked up again. John was watching him with clear blue eyes, and something about the expression on his face reminded Greg sharply of Sherlock. "What?"

"You've got questions. Go on, then."

Greg pursed his lips. "Why did you stay here, in this flat? I've been here all of ten minutes and it's… fucking weird, to be honest."

John didn't look away. "I'm not quite sure myself. I didn't think I could at first. I stayed with Harry for a couple of nights and…" He shrugged. "This is home, you know? Even with a huge gaping fucking hole in it, I couldn't just… I don't know."

Greg set his cup on the sofa table; the tea had gone cold. "When my dad died, I thought Mum would sell the house, find something smaller. I didn't think she could bear to live there without him. But in the end she decided to stay. Said it was her home, their home, and…" He paused and felt his cheeks warm: he'd just compared John and Sherlock's relationship to that of a long-married couple. Jesus.

John smiled and stared at his own hands. "Yeah, I suppose there's something to that."

Greg swallowed. Maybe it wasn't too far from the truth, then. He hadn't known, had never asked. It wasn't as if it was his business; John would have said if he'd wanted anyone to know. "I'm sorry."

John's smile was tight. "I know."

"I just can't stop thinking about what I could've done differently, you know? I should've--"

"No, please don't. I've had enough should've moments in the last week for a lifetime. I honestly can't bear any more of it." He swallowed and clenched his jaw, and Greg looked away.

"Of course." Greg exhaled. "Erm, the loo's through there, right?"

"Yeah. And you can… well, you can sleep wherever you like, but Sherlock's bedroom has been cleared out and the sheets are clean and… if you want, it's yours."

Greg nodded. "All right."

He pissed and washed his hands and stared at himself in the mirror for a long time. He could've taken a bedsit, or gone to stay with his sister in the country, or any number of other things, but this was where he felt he needed to be. John needed a friend right now, and Greg needed to be useful to someone. He wasn't quite sure how he was going to do that, but he was damned good at improvising.

And for now, being useful apparently meant sleeping in Sherlock's bed. It was a nice bed, truth be told, with ridiculously high thread-count sheets. He lay awake for hours, staring at the ceiling and listening to the unfamiliar sounds of Baker Street at night. The floor creaked above him and then there were footsteps on the stairs, a light on under the door. He thought about getting up, going to see if John wanted company. Not yet, though. He was an intruder. He hadn't yet earned the right to be anything more.

The light finally went off and John's footsteps receded up the stairs again. Greg closed his eyes and wondered if John had slept in this bed as well, had spent nights here, tangled in the sheets. It wasn't any of his business, but it didn't mean he wasn't curious. He turned onto his side and snuggled into the duvet. It smelled like laundry detergent; there was no hint of anything else that may have happened. It had all been wiped clean.

*****

Greg turned the key in the door of 221B and stepped right onto a large pile of post. He frowned at it. "John?"

There was no response; anxiety began to creep up his spine as he gathered up the post and ascended the stairs. He pushed open the door to the main living area of the flat, senses on alert out of force of habit more than anything else. It took him a moment to notice John, wrapped in a blanket and asleep on the sofa. The television was tuned to BBC Four with the volume muted, and sunlight streaming in through the window painted a series of geometric figures on the wooden floor.

Greg set the post on the kitchen table and put the kettle on. He waited until he had a cup of tea in his hand before picking up the large flat envelope addressed to him. He'd been expecting it, but somehow holding it in his hands made it undeniably real. He took a deep breath and opened it.

"How was the country?" He turned to see John yawning in the kitchen entryway. His hair stuck up in multiple directions and his trousers were rumpled. Greg's gaze lingered on a days-old coffee stain on John's thigh before sliding up again. He looked well-rested, at least.

"Rainy. And my nieces have somehow become surly teenagers since the last time I visited, which is a shame. My sister has her hands full. How was your week?"

John shrugged, which Greg took to mean he hadn't left the flat at all. In the three weeks Greg had been here, John had only gone out when Greg forced him to do. Greg turned back to the contents of his envelope: a stack of pages marked with post-it arrows where he needed to sign his name.

"That's the papers, then?" John gave him a sympathetic look.

"Yeah. She must've wanted out badly; she didn't even try to negotiate about selling the flat. I think she's already moved in with what's-his-name anyway."

"I'm sorry."

Greg forced a smile. "I'm not. It's done. I'm a free man again. Whatever that means."

John smiled. "It means you can go to pubs and pull women, and you don't have to feel guilty about it."

"I think I might lay off women for a while, actually. I've got a rather fantastic relationship going with my right hand."

"You and me both." John raised his eyebrows and Greg grinned. "Lots of bills, I see." John rifled through the pile on the table. "Oh, what's this? Someone's sent me a package." He frowned at the scrawled handwriting and squeezed it suspiciously.

The door buzzer sounded and they both started.

"More reporters?" Greg asked.

"Doubt it. They haven't come round for weeks. The story's old news."

Greg felt a pulse of sadness for him. Sherlock had been dead less than a month and the media had moved on, no longer interested.

The buzzer rang again and they heard the door open below. After a moment, Mrs. Hudson's voice called up from downstairs, "You've a visitor, boys."

"A visitor? Shit. I look a mess, don't I?" John ran a hand through his hair, which only made it look worse.

Greg bit his lip to stop himself from laughing. "You need a mirror. Go, I'll put the kettle back on."

The visitor turned out to be an elderly woman who peered at them over the sort of horn-rimmed glasses that were stylish once again, though it seemed likely she'd just kept them since the sixties.

"This is the Sherlock Holmes detective agency?" she said, looking around the flat suspiciously. "It doesn't look like one."

Greg and John exchanged a look.

"Yes," John said. "I mean, it was. Haven't you… Well, I suppose you heard that Sherlock Holmes is… no longer with us."

"Oh, yes. Nasty business, that. Read all about it. Still, I presume the agency had more than just the one detective?" She looked back and forth between them.

Greg nudged John with an elbow. "Can I get you some tea, Mrs…?

"Shepperd," she replied. "Brevity Shepperd. And yes, thank you. Two sugars, if you please."

Greg gave John a look and John finally bolted into action, stepping forward and gesturing to a chair.

"Won't you have a seat, Mrs. Shepperd? What can we do for you?"

Greg returned with a cup of tea in time to hear the end of a story about her beloved dog, which had apparently been stolen the day before.

"You're certain the dog didn't wander off?" John asked, looking over several sheets of paper on which photos were printed. The dog was a dour-looking West Highland terrier with dull white fur, watery eyes, and a vacant expression.

"Princess never wandered far from my side," Mrs. Shepperd said, raising the cup to her lips. "She was quite a valuable dog, purebred, you know. I'm certain someone stole her. Your agency comes very highly recommended, Mr…"

"Watson."

"Yes, of course. And I am prepared to pay you handsomely for the safe return of Princess."

"Yes, right," John replied. "Just give us a moment to confer, please. Stay comfortable; we'll just step into the office over here." He nodded his head toward Sherlock's bedroom and Greg followed. Once inside John closed the door and looked up at him. "What do you think?"

"I think her dog is probably in the nearest pound. I doubt she's bothered to ring them up and ask."

"No, what do you think about taking this case?"

Greg started to laugh, but then stopped at the look on John's face. There was a spark in his eyes Greg hadn't seen in a month. John desperately needed something to do, something to focus on. "I'm sure you're up for it, yeah."

"No, I mean…" John's eyes flicked back to the closed door. "Look, I've never done this sort of thing alone before. I suppose I was hoping you'd… come along."

Greg blinked, startled. "Are you asking me to help you?"

"Yes. I mean, I'm no Sherlock by any stretch, but Jesus, I lived with the man enough to absorb some of his methods and you, well, you're the bloody best detective Scotland Yard's got. The two of us can find a fucking dog, Greg, and collect a lovely cheque for our minimal efforts." He paused and looked up at Greg. "Besides, moping around the flat is getting a bit boring."

John needed this, that much was clear, and though Greg had no doubt he could do it on his own, John could probably at least use some moral support. Greg exhaled through pursed lips. He was technically on leave, so it wasn't like he was really engaging in any under-the-radar shenanigans off-duty, was it? After the very public spanking he'd received, he was reluctant to do anything that might jeopardize his career. But there was John was watching him with wide dark blue eyes, and Greg found he didn't want to tell him no.

He sighed. "All right. I suppose it can't be too hard to find a bloody dog, can it?"

John grinned at him, and it was the most genuine expression Greg could remember seeing on his face in a long time. "Fantastic."

*****

Mrs. Shepperd lived on a quiet street in Notting Hill, not far from the famous market. Her house was astonishingly large and very well-decorated, and the thought of what it must be worth made Greg's head spin. They were served tea by a young woman in a dark suit who smiled warmly at them.

"Can I bring anything else, ma'am?"

Mrs. Shepperd examined the tray and frowned. "You've forgotten the milk, Patsy."

"So I have. So sorry, ma'am. I'll bring it straight away."

"This arrived in the post this morning." Mrs. Shepperd handed John a folded sheet of paper. "It's a ransom note."

"Ah, is it?" John dropped it onto the table and dug into his coat pocket for his gloves. "Fingerprints," he said when she gave him an odd look.

"Oh, dear. I'm afraid half the staff have handled it already this morning."

John pursed his lips and picked up the note. "Well then, never mind."

Greg leaned over his shoulder to read.

We have taken your precious Petite Princess Poppy and are holding her in a secure location. If you wish to see your dog again, come to the café in Holland Park alone at 11:00 on the morning of the 21st. Bring a shopping bag with £ 50.000 in small denominations.

If you fail to meet us, rest assured that Petite Princess Poppy will be returned to you one petite piece at a time.

Greg looked at John, who had an intense expression on his face. He was studying the note very closely, clearly having seen something there that made sense to him. Greg had just watched so far, just observed, let John do all the talking, and though he had some theories about where to start, he still had no idea who might have taken the dog. John's face was controlled, serious, guarded even, but Greg knew him well enough to know there was a quiet excitement bubbling just under the surface. He'd worked out something important.

"Yesterday you called your dog Princess," John said after a moment.

"Yes. Her full registered name is Petite Princess Poppy, of course."

"Do you show her at all?"

"Heavens, no. She's a pet, my constant companion. And between you and me, her eyes are a bit too close together to be a perfect example of the breed. She is being held for ransom because of her value to me personally." Mrs. Shepperd dabbed at her eyes with a lace-trimmed handkerchief.

Patsy reappeared with a pitcher of milk, and John smiled at her when she leaned over him to set it on the sofa table. He waited until she'd left before continuing.

"You only have the one dog, Mrs. Shepperd? No other pets?"

"None. I do hope you can find her. It's simply unbearable without her."

John nodded. "Would you say many people know her full name?"

Mrs. Shepperd set her tea cup on the sofa table. "I suppose my closest friends know, and the veterinarian."

"And the--" John broke off as Patsy entered the room yet again with a tray of biscuits. She gave them a tight smile as she set them on the table. John's gaze followed her as she left the room and Greg only barely resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "And the servants?" he continued once they were alone again. "Would they know?"

"I doubt it. It's not as if we discuss these things, you know."

John nodded. "Do you take her to the vet and all of her appointments yourself?"

"Heavens, no. I've a busy social schedule to keep. Patsy does that, or Ellen, whoever is available."

"Thank you for the tea, Mrs. Shepperd." John stood and extended his hand. Mrs. Shepperd took it with an expression of confusion on her face. "We'll let you know as soon as Princess has been located."

"Right, yes." Greg stood and shook her hand as well, just as confused. "We'll be in touch." It wasn't until they were outside and ten paces down the street that he gave in to his curiosity. "So either you've completely lost it or Sherlock rubbed off on you far more than I thought." He winced at the unintentional innuendo, though John didn't seem to notice.

John grinned. "Probably the latter. I've got a theory about the dog. We'll need to kill some time. Coffee?"

There was a café nearby, and they settled at a window table with cappuccinos and biscuits. John's gaze was fixed on Mrs. Shepperd's house across the street.

"So what's your theory?"

"Did you notice the woman who served us tea?"

"I know you did. You weren't even subtle about it."

John looked up at him, a wry expression on his face. "No, not like that. Her trousers, did you see?" He raised his cup to his lips and when he lowered it again there was a little dollop of milk foam on his upper lip. Greg shook his head. "Her trousers were black, but there were a few white dog hairs around the ankles."

Greg frowned. "You think she took the dog?"

John nodded. "The dog was taken more than two days ago, long enough that those hairs wouldn't still be on her trousers if they were from before."

"Maybe she has a small white dog herself."

"Perhaps, but then there's the note. It was printed on the exact same kind of paper as the photos of the dog Mrs. Shepperd showed us the other day. On the same printer, if I'm not mistaken."

"The same printer?" How could he possibly know that?

"The thief knew the dog's full name and exactly how to get the dog out of the house without being caught, so it makes sense that it was one of the servants. And that particular servant was keenly interested in our conversation today, did you notice? She lingered more than necessary and came back twice to bring us milk and biscuits. She wouldn't have forgotten those the first time; even Mrs. Shepperd was surprised by that. She needed an excuse to come back, to listen to our conversation. And Mrs. Shepperd said Patsy is one of the staff who handles Princess, takes her to her appointments and such. Patsy would have had access to her records, would know her real name. She probably even printed the fucking ransom note on Mrs. Shepperd's printer and then dropped it in the post."

Greg shook his head. "Are you listening to yourself?"

"What?" John lifted his cup again.

"You sound exactly like Sherlock."

John froze with the cup halfway to his lips and stared at Greg. "I do?"

"Yes, it's… it's weird, actually." It was more than weird: it was uncanny. Greg was completely fascinated and more than a little turned on. Shit.

John blinked and set the cup down again. "It's just a theory. It could be completely wrong, you know."

Except that it turned out to be completely correct. When Patsy left Mrs. Shepperd's house an hour and a half later, they followed her all the way to a flat in the East End. A small dog barked from behind the door as she fumbled with the key, and she looked up the hall nervously before she entered.

"It's definitely not her dog," John whispered in Greg's ear. "She wouldn't be worried about someone hearing it otherwise."

His hand tightened on Greg's shoulder and Greg turned to look at him. "What now? I wasn't planning on storming in there, you know. And legally I can't, not while on leave."

"We're just concerned citizens, aren't we? We can call the police ourselves, tell them what's up." He raised an eyebrow.

Greg winced. "Oh, God. You want me to make the call, don't you?"

"Well, I'd do it, except the person I would normally call under these circumstances is you." His hand slid down to the small of Greg's back and lingered for a moment before he pulled it away. "And I'm a bit persona non grata to the Yard these days."

"All right." Greg pulled his phone from his pocket and thought about who he should call. He finally settled on Mike Patterson, who'd been the most sympathetic to his situation before he'd left. He dialed the number and listened to it ring three times before a familiar voice answered.

"Patterson, this is Lestrade. Yeah… I'm fine, listen, I need a favor."

The police arrived ten minutes later. Patsy burst into tears when she opened the door, and didn't cause any trouble. John and Greg hung back, though both received quite a few strange looks from the officers on scene. It was clear that everyone knew who they were.

Patterson arrived at last and gave them both a grim smile. "I suppose you'll want to see after the dog, then?"

"Yeah, cheers," John replied, and Patterson gestured over the animal control officer who had caged the small dog. After a terse conversation, the officer rolled her eyes and opened the cage, and John took the dog from her.

Patterson pulled Greg aside, well out of earshot of John. "What the fuck are you doing, Lestrade?"

Greg forced a smile. "Helping a friend. I'm fairly certain there aren't any regulations prohibiting that."

"That's not what I mean and you know it." Patterson sighed and straightened his glasses. "Look, I'm not going to tell you what to do on leave, but I have to say that tramping about on private detective cases with the boyfriend of the crazy fake genius who nearly ruined your career is probably not the way you want to go."

"Sherlock was for real, Patterson. I thought you knew that."

"I thought I did too, but I changed my mind when he offed himself. And so did the rest of the world. You aren't doing yourself any favors here, is all I'm sayin'."

"All we've done is help a little old lady get her damn dog back."

"Yeah, right. It's a dog today, but what'll it be tomorrow?" Patterson shook his head. "You know how much respect I have for you, Lestrade. But you know what's going to happen: these blokes here'll go back and talk, and the next time, there'll be even more talk, and people will start to wonder if you're crazy as well."

"It's not like it's going to be a regular thing. John needs me. He needs this, anyway, and…" And I need him whole again.

Patterson raised his eyebrows. "Jumping the fence, are you?"

Greg snorted and looked away. "It's not like that." His eyes settled on John, who was crouched on the floor petting the dog. He seemed content to let Greg handle this part, which was interesting considering that he'd always been the one to interface with others for Sherlock. John looked up and gave him a small smile and Greg's stomach did an odd little flip.

"Right." Patterson smirked at him. "Stay out of trouble, Lestrade. We need you as well."

John was silent during the taxi ride to Mrs. Shepperd's house, and Greg endured a tremendous amount of licking from Princess. He disliked tiny yappy dogs as a general rule, but for some reason they were always mad about him. Mrs. Shepperd squealed with delight when she met them at the door, and invited them in for a drink. She had ridiculously good brandy, it turned out, and they had a bit more of it than they probably should have done. But hell, Greg reminded himself -- it wasn't as if he was on duty. This wasn't his world anyway -- there were few rules and no paperwork and unusual rewards and a friend by his side, warm thigh pressed against his on a squashy sofa.

Oh, the brandy was definitely going to his head.

When they finally made their excuses Mrs. Shepperd handed them a surprisingly large cheque, which John insisted on splitting with him after several rounds of protesting. It was the easiest money Greg had ever made.

"I just can't imagine anyone would pay that much for the return of their dog," Greg said hours later, mind dampened by some very lovely whiskey they'd splurged on to celebrate. "I mean, it's a dog."

John grinned up at him from his position deep in the cushions of the sofa. "You'd be surprised what people will pay for you to set things right for them. Or at least to their own personal definition of right."

"I always wondered how you and Sherlock made a living at this."

"We could have made a lot more if Sherlock wasn't so picky about the cases he took. Half the people who came to the door were turned away with a very bluntly worded answer to the question they'd come to ask. Free of charge."

"Well, we can't afford to be picky."

John poked his thigh with one bare foot. "We, is it?"

Greg turned to face him. "Maybe. I can't stick my neck out too much, mind, but I'll help where I can."

"Patterson gave you a talking-to, didn't he? I can imagine what he said."

Greg sighed and looked into his glass. The ice had nearly melted now. "I don't care what they think. I know Sherlock was for real, and so would they if they just opened their bloody eyes and looked at what really happened in the last two years." Frustration coiled in his chest, almost like something physical, and he took a large drink of whiskey to tamp it down again. "I'm not going to stand there and keep my mouth shut anymore when they spew shit that's so clearly not true."

"Neither will I, but my career isn't on the line when I do."

Greg looked up again. John's eyes were warm, and bluer than they usually appeared. "This is important to you. I want to help you as much as I can. That way, when I go back to the Yard, maybe you'll be able to…" He dropped off, uncertain what he was trying to say.

"I appreciate that, Greg. You know I do."

"Well, it's not entirely unselfish, you know." He stopped himself, realizing he'd been about to show more of his hand than he'd intended. "Besides, you and I, we work well together. We always have."

John's eyes softened at that, and Greg felt an odd twist in his belly. "We have, haven't we? Even when Sherlock was doing his best to be a prick."

Greg wasn't sure how to respond to that -- you weren't supposed to speak ill of the dead, were you? But if anyone had the right to do it, John did. He smiled and shook his head.

John pushed himself to sitting, suddenly very close to Greg. "You're on leave what, another month?"

"Yeah."

"I suppose you've got plans. Travel or something."

"I don't."

John looked into his own glass as if it was completely fascinating.

Greg felt his uncertainty begin to melt away. "You need a new flatmate, don't you? If I'm going to stay here, I could at least pay my half of the rent."

John looked up again and stared at him for a long moment. "If you want. Sure."

"I do. Want." Greg held up his glass, and John brought his up to meet it with a gentle clink.

"Cheers, mate."

"Cheers." Greg felt a tug in his belly, something far too familiar. He took a swig of whiskey and swallowed it down.

"I miss him," John said after a long pause. "Horribly. I can't pretend otherwise."

"I'm not asking you to--"

"I know. I just… I thought I'd do something different with my life now, you know? That I'd go in another direction, back into medicine. Hell, maybe even back into the army, a desk job or something." He paused, shrugged. "But today was… today was amazing. And I think I want to keep doing it and maybe start the blog up again. I mean, I do get online, and I know there are people who believe the truth, who believe in him. I want them to see how he changed me, I suppose. He taught me so much."

Greg knew he should look away, give John his space, but he couldn't do it. He wanted to see, wanted to know what John was feeling, to see the pain and grief that were still very much there. John had shielded him from so much of that, but it didn't mean Greg hadn't seen it anyway. He found himself staring at John's mouth and he closed his eyes. Oh God. The alcohol definitely wasn't helping with that.

He looked away, down at his lap to where one of John's bare feet was still pressed against his thigh. He trailed his fingers over the top of that foot and slid them around the arch to lift it up into his lap and squeeze it. John leaned back against the sofa cushions again with a long sigh and the squeeze turned into an outright footrub.

"You might even be better at that than Sherlock was," John said after a long silence.

Greg swallowed, let his fingers trail across the arch of John's foot. John twitched a bit, mildly ticklish. "He was an amazing man. I should have told him that."

He should have done a lot of things, but he wasn't going to think about that now, not when this delicate balance between him and John seemed on the verge of shifting.

"I know." John's eyes were closed and Greg couldn't read his face. He inhaled, exhaled again smoothly, and worked up his courage.

"Did he ever tell you about the time he kissed me?"

John went completely still beneath him. His eyes were already narrowed when they finally opened. "No. He didn't."

"Ah."

John wiggled his toes. "Come on, you can't leave it there."

"No, I suppose I can't." He didn't sound angry, but Greg pulled John's other foot into his lap anyway. He couldn't well go storming off if Greg was holding his feet, could he? "It was years ago, long before you met him. It was his third arrest for drugs -- possession only, though he was definitely high at the time -- and he was facing a serious sentence. Mycroft intervened on his behalf and I… well, I felt sorry for him, I suppose. All that potential, and he was just fucking throwing it away."

"You saw him like that?" John's eyes were soft now, and Greg realized that though John had known Sherlock as well as anyone, he'd never seen him strung out.

Greg nodded. "I had him brought to my office, with the idea of talking some sense into him, convincing him to go to rehab, that sort of thing. But he thought I'd brought him there for another reason altogether and when we were alone, he kissed me. Threw himself at me, really. And you know how he is, how he can be…" Greg paused and cleared his throat. "He caught me at a low moment, I think. Jodi had just left, for the first time, actually, and I was angry and a bit desperate to feel wanted and connected to something, anything." He paused and stared at John's feet. Was that so different from how he felt now? It was different, now that he thought about it. He wasn't the same man he was then. He inhaled, exhaled again. "And so I let him kiss me. But then it was threatening to become more than just a snog and I came back to my senses, pushed him off. I told him not like that, not while he wasn't in his right mind. That he needed to go to rehab, get his shit together. And so he did."

"Oh, God." John withdrew his feet and sat up.

"And the thing is, I think I meant it. I did at that moment, anyway. There was something about him, even then, that I…" He swallowed and stopped himself from continuing. "Of course, he never offered again and I never reminded him about it. I'm not even sure if he remembered it." He looked up at John's face, but it remained clouded.

"I always wondered what it was that happened between the two of you," John said at last. "I thought it was more along the lines of a fistfight, though. He kissed you, really?"

"Yeah."

"And you… I mean, I didn't think you were…"

"I've been married to a woman since you've known me. Why would you think otherwise?"

John made a sound almost like a laugh and scrubbed a hand over his face. "I should know better than to make assumptions about people, shouldn't I?"

"You think I haven't made assumptions about you?"

John snorted and raised his glass. "I'd be surprised if you hadn't."

They were far too drunk to have this conversation. "Everyone thought you two were a couple, you know."

"Does everyone include you?"

Greg hesitated long enough to fortify himself with another sip of whiskey. "I know you cared about him, that he cared about you. That much was bloody obvious. Everyone saw that, the way you looked at each other. Some of the blokes at the Yard made jokes, but… It was never my business."

"But you want to know, don't you?"

"You're teasing me now."

"Yeah, I am."

Greg slung back the rest of his whiskey and set his glass on the table. He turned toward John and picked up one of his feet again. "I think I know the answer."

"Do you? Ah, that's…" His cheeks flushed a bit as Greg pressed hard into a pressure point on the bottom of his foot. His head fell back on the sofa cushions. "God, keep doing that."

"Tell me, or I'll stop."

John's eyes were dark when he opened them again. "It was casual, always. Only when he wanted it, usually after a case. He did nothing during cases, didn't eat or sleep, but afterwards he'd stuff himself with take-away, fuck me, and then sleep for twelve hours." He paused, as if waiting to see if that bit of information was shocking.

"Was it always about him, or did you get what you wanted as well?" Greg's fingers moved up to John's toes now, massaging each in turn.

"He wasn't nearly as selfish in bed as you might imagine." He raised his eyebrows, as if recognizing that Greg had indeed imagined it quite a lot. "He gave amazing head."

"With that mouth, I'm not surprised." That mouth, Jesus. It'd been years, but he hadn't forgotten. Greg lifted John's foot to his lips and kissed the arch gently. John watched him, lower lip caught between his teeth.

"Greg--"

"I'm not trying to replace him," Greg said, his voice barely more than a whisper. "I can't."

"I know." John swallowed and closed his eyes briefly, then pushed himself to sitting again. He was very close now and his lips were parted, and the expression on his face was as close to an invitation as Greg thought he'd likely get.

Greg leaned in before he could lose his courage. John's lips were softer than he'd expected and his mouth was warm and wet and Jesus, how long had it been since he'd kissed anyone like this? His hand slid around to the back of John's head and John pressed against him, almost climbing into his lap, his tongue slick against Greg's and oh -- the roughness of stubble -- God, Greg had forgotten about that. His cock was stirring to life and everything was pure liquid want now, this warm body against him and with him. His other hand worked itself between John's thighs to find him in a similar state and he stroked through layers of cloth, his mind already spinning out fantasies of what might happen next.

"Oh God," John said and he pulled away, pressing his forehead against Greg's shoulder, his body curving away from Greg's. "I'm so sorry… I can't."

Shit. Greg opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have--"

"No, no, don't." John sat up on his knees and looked at him. His face was flushed and his lips were wet and Greg was stunned by how much he wanted him at that moment. "It's not that, it's-- We're both fairly pissed right now, and I don't think we should do this unless we're certain."

"I'm certain." He reached out to touch John's cheek. "I've been certain for a while now."

John swallowed. "I'm just… fairly fucked up lately, you know? I don't have much to offer anyone."

"I got my fucking divorce papers yesterday. If anyone's on the rebound from a bad relationship, it's me."

John shook his head. "I mean it, Greg. The last thing I need is to fuck up the only friendship I've got. In my experience, a drunken shag will do just that."

Greg sighed. "I'm not that drunk, honestly. Neither are you."

"Stop sounding so fucking reasonable, will you?"

"I know it's complicated. And fucking scary. But I'm not asking for anything more than…" He shrugged, not certain how to explain himself.

"A port in a storm?"

Greg tried not to laugh, but couldn't help himself. "Which of us is the port in this scenario?"

"Oh, fuck you." John gave him a teasing little shove. "I have a fantastic port, I'll have you know."

Greg grabbed his hand and tugged him closer again. "I imagine you do."

"God, you." John leaned in and kissed him again, a soft, slow slide of lips and tongue. He leaned his forehead against Greg's and sighed. "I have so many regrets. I don't want to add any more."

"Then I'd better make it something you won't regret, hadn't I?" Greg pulled John down with him as he stretched out on the sofa. John kissed him again, more heated now, and Greg groaned beneath him. God, how long had it been since he'd done this, since anyone had kissed him like this?

John shifted a knee between Greg's thighs and ground against him, and they both groaned. "So what do you want? I don't have any condoms right now."

"Hmmm… I'm a bit rusty at this sort of thing, but I believe I mentioned that my right hand comes highly recommended."

John grinned against his lips. "You did."

"Here, let me--" Greg wriggled a hand between them and unfastened John's trousers. "--just give you a hand with this." John laughed against his shoulder and shifted his hips to the side to allow him better access. After a moment of awkward fumbling highly reminiscent of his school days, Greg's fingers finally wrapped around John's cock, already hard and larger than Greg would have expected. "Oh, there we are… God, John, where've you been hiding this thing?"

"In the usual spot, clearly." John was still chuckling.

"Shame I never thought to frisk you. I could've kept you occupied when Sherlock was busy, you know."

John's forehead pressed into his shoulder even harder. "Do you always talk this much during sex?"

"Yes. But I give a fucking good hand job, so you're going to have to deal with it." He slid his hand up the shaft of John's cock and lingered there, his fingers massaging the foreskin against the head.

"I might be too drunk for this," John said, snuggling his face against Greg's shoulder. "But that feels fantastic."

"Don't you dare fall asleep on me while I'm tossing you off."

"Mmmm. I'll make it up to you if I do." John yawned. "Sorry, I just…"

"Oi, a bit of enthusiasm would be nice."

"First shag in more than a month and I'm going to miss it. Oh, but don't stop, that's brilliant."

Greg kept his strokes light and teasing, mostly exploring John's prick, enjoying the feeling of it in his hand. It had been a long time since he'd done this with a man, long enough that he couldn't quite remember who and when. He'd had sex only with Jodi for more than a decade and her body was so familiar that he hadn't had to think much about it -- back when they used to have sex, anyway. But here was someone new with a body that was different in so many ways that the possibilities for exploring it seemed endless. The heat was different and the feeling of skin was different and the smell was different and the wonderful way John's hips rocked against him and the soft sighs against Greg's neck, little hums of pleasure even while he was sleepily nestled against Greg's chest -- all of it was startlingly different, and he loved it.

After a few more minutes, John's breathing evened out. Greg grinned at the ceiling, almost laughed. Under other circumstances he might have been disappointed, even offended, but somehow it was fine. He wrapped his arms around John's torso, felt his chest expand and contract, over and over. He hadn't held anyone like this in a while either, and it felt surprisingly good.

His life had reached some sort of tipping point tonight, away from the last five years and toward something different, something better. He remembered being twenty-five and feeling like the entire world was open to him, like anything could happen. Jodi had been part of that, both of them so young, so excited for the future they were going to build together. And then life happened and somehow he'd found himself dug in too deep to see anything but a narrow bleak path before him. But now it was suddenly different again, somehow. He felt freer than he had done in a long, long time.

He drifted off for a few minutes before startling awake again. As lovely as it was to lie here with a warm body pressed against him, the ache in his back in the morning wouldn't be worth it. He managed to slide out from under John without waking him, and tucked a blanket around him before heading back to his own bed to sleep.

He already knew it would all be all right in the morning.

*****

The first thing Greg was aware of when he awoke was the smell of coffee. He rolled over onto his back and stretched. John didn't often wake up earlier than he did, and--

The events of the previous night flooded his mind and his eyes flew open: everything had changed overnight, hadn't it?

John was sitting in a chair wearing a fairly dazed expression and staring at the screen of his laptop. He didn't look up when Greg walked through to the bathroom and he was in the exact same position when Greg exited a few minutes later. The small padded envelope that had come in the post several days prior was on the floor, torn open and empty, and John was clutching something tightly in one hand. His forehead was furrowed now, as if he was lost in thought.

"Good morning," Greg said at last.

John looked up at him and blinked, clearly startled to see him standing there. "Morning."

"Sorry about leaving you on the sofa like that. You were out cold and I reckoned you could use the sleep."

John exhaled slowly through pursed lips and closed the computer. "No, it's fine. Sorry I fell asleep on you."

"Well, it was a bit awkward, considering I was saving my best moves for round two."

"God, how embarrassing." John finally smiled, just a bit. "It didn't mean I didn't want to, you know… or that I don't now."

Greg feigned looking at a watch. "Right now? I'm a much better shag after a cup of coffee, to be honest."

John laughed and Greg crossed to the kitchen. He'd just finished stirring sugar into the cup when arms encircled him from behind.

He closed his eyes and leaned back into the embrace, astonished by how good such a small gesture felt. It had been a long time since he'd been touched like that, he realized. Far too long.

He set the coffee down and turned in John's arms, and he didn't even have a chance to speak before John pulled him into a kiss. It was gentle at first, even playful, but within a minute it had become heated. John pushed him back against the hard edge of the counter and Greg's hands slid across John's back, pulling him closer.

"I think I could get used to this," Greg said against his lips. John pushed his tee shirt up with one warm hand, lips trailing down his neck, and Greg closed his eyes. "Mmmm, that's--"

In one smooth movement, John tugged Greg's pyjama bottoms down and dropped to his knees, right there on the kitchen floor. He looked up at Greg with an intense expression on his face, something Greg couldn't remember seeing directed at himself in a long time.

"Oh God," Greg said, staring down at him. This was the sort of thing he fantasized about, that made him wake up with a raging erection in the middle of the night, or that helped him finish himself off in the shower -- not something that really happened to him. Perhaps he was still asleep. God, wouldn't that be a tragedy?

John closed one hand around his cock and tugged the foreskin all the way back before swiping his tongue slowly across the head, never dropping eye contact. No, Greg was definitely not asleep. Fucking hell.

"Is this all right?"

Greg whimpered. "I can't believe you're even asking that question."

John smiled again before closing his lips around the glans and sucking lightly, his tongue flicking against the underside with maddening precision. Greg clung to the countertop behind him for support, certain his knees were going to give out before this was over. John's mouth slid down the shaft and back up again, his tongue wriggling against sensitive skin. There was a bit more suction now, and Jesus it had been a long time since anyone had done this for him. He'd almost forgotten how good it could feel. Jodi hadn't sucked him off in years -- and never with this level of enthusiasm.

He wanted to last, to hang on for a while, but it was too good. John tugged gently on his balls and nudged his thighs apart enough to massage the skin just behind with two fingers, and his tongue; God, it felt like it was everywhere at once, with the perfect amount of pressure and suction and--

"John--" was all he managed before he came, his eyes squeezed tight against the bright sparks in his vision, the rush of pleasure nearly knocking him off his feet. John kept sucking gently when it was over, like he didn't want to let go, finally just holding Greg's cock in his mouth without moving until it had softened enough that he could just work the foreskin with his tongue a bit, not putting any pressure on the over-sensitive glans.

"Oh God, that's amazing," Greg said after a moment. He might actually get hard again at this rate, which was something that hadn't happened to him in quite a while.

"So that's how to shut you up," John said at last, and Greg laughed.

"What brought that on? Not that I'm complaining."

"I don't know, I…" John pressed his face into Greg's hip and made a sound almost like a laugh. "I just wanted to give you a proper good morning, I suppose."

"Good morning to you too. My turn." Greg pulled him to his feet and kissed him. "God, you… Jodi never swallowed, you know."

"Are you seriously comparing my oral sex skills to your ex-wife's?"

"There's no comparison, trust me. Here, I want to finish what I started last night."

He unfastened John's trousers and slid a hand inside to find his prick hard and leaking. He did his best to make it last, but John was apparently so close he only needed a bit of friction, and it was over within a minute. Still, there was that rush of knowing he'd done that, had made John's eyes roll back in his head and made him groan out something unintelligible and come all over Greg's hand.

John pressed his face against Greg's shoulder and laughed. "I've wanted to do that for a long time, you know. I didn't think you'd ever let me."

"Between my wife and your boyfriend, I'm not sure it would have worked out very well."

John leaned back and looked up at him. "Oh, I don't know about that. Sherlock never thought about relationships in conventional ways." He paused and pressed his lips together. "And he had a bit of a thing for you."

Greg almost laughed before he realized John was serious. "He did?"

"I'm not certain he recognized it for what it was, but yeah. It was because of the way he looked at you that I started looking at you as well." John raised an eyebrow and Greg smiled. "You were the only person at Scotland Yard he thought was worth his attention, and he had a great deal of respect for you. In the end he considered you one of his closest friends."

"He had an odd way of showing it. But I'm glad to know." He didn't exactly feel glad, though. He felt the weight of something heavy settle on his chest; he blinked and looked away, and pressed one hand against his forehead.

"Hey, none of that." John kissed him again and tugged his pyjama bottoms back up. "You still haven't had your coffee. I'm going to take a shower, and then we'll talk."

"That sounds ominous."

"Just the usual sexual history stuff, you know. It's a bit late for it considering--" John waved a hand between them. "-- but still, now that we're officially having sex, we need to get it out of the way."

"Oh. Right." Greg watched him walk around the corner before turning back to his now-cold coffee. He hadn't had that kind of discussion with anyone in years, a decade, even. Well, not a pleasant one, anyway -- those sorts of talks with Jodi had been fairly humiliating, as had the trips to his GP to get tested afterwards, just in case she'd passed anything along. She'd always taken precautions in her dalliances, at the very least. Or she'd been damn lucky.

He dumped his cold coffee into the sink, poured a fresh cup, and crossed to the sitting room. John's laptop was closed now, and sitting on top of it was a small round, dark object. Greg frowned and picked it up, turned it over in his fingers. It was just an ordinary rubber ball, a child's toy, nothing special. The padded envelope was still lying on the floor by the chair and Greg leaned over to retrieve it. The return address noted the package had come from Molly Hooper, and there was nothing else inside it. Had she actually sent John a ball with no explanation? It clearly meant something, from the way John was clinging to it, but he hadn't a clue what that could be.

He placed the ball back on John's laptop and sat, already anticipating the blessed rush of caffeine. Not quite as good as nicotine, but far less addictive and significantly more socially acceptable. The shower started and an image of John standing naked under the spray flitted across his mind. He smiled.

*****

John was hunched over his laptop at the desk in the sitting room when Greg returned with the shopping that afternoon. He couldn't help peeking over John's shoulder as he passed.

"Updating the blog?"

"Yeah," John replied. "Almost done."

Greg set the sacks on the kitchen table. "So what are you planning to say about--"

"I'm not mentioning you by name, so don't worry." John turned towards him. "Unless you'd like me to do?"

"Ah, no. Probably not." Half the Met read John's blog as it was; a direct mention of Greg in there would probably make his return to work more difficult than necessary.

John sat back and regarded the screen through narrow eyes for a moment, then tossed something up in the air. Greg paused in his unpacking and watched John toss and catch the mysterious ball he'd received in the post, over and over.

"So that's what was in your package, then?"

John caught the ball and set it aside, turning his attention back to the computer. "Yeah."

"From Molly, was it?"

"Apparently, yes."

Greg set a bunch of bananas on the table and turned to face John, arms folded over his chest. "It didn't look much like her handwriting on the package though. Did you notice?"

John didn't look away from the screen. "Didn't it? That's odd."

Greg pursed his lips. John was clearly evading, but he had no idea why. "That's a strange thing to send you, isn't it?"

"Probably her idea of a joke."

John began tapping at the keyboard with great focus and Greg watched him another few seconds before turning back to the groceries. Something was going on here, something John wasn't ready to talk about. Even after what had happened between them that morning, Greg wasn't sure it was his place to push him on it.

"I think that's got it," John said a few minutes later. He pushed away from the desk and smiled at the screen. "Posted."

Greg crossed to stand behind him and squeezed his shoulders. "The Yapping Yorkie?"

"Shut up. I'm out of practice."

Greg grinned and planted a kiss on his temple before leaning over him to read.

The Yapping Yorkie

First, I want to say thank you to everyone who has expressed condolences over the last month. It's meant more to me than you can imagine. I'm also grateful to those of you who've defended Sherlock's memory on the internet and in the papers. I knew him better than anyone and I KNOW he was for real. Anyone who spent even an hour with him saw what he can do and knows that he was a true genius.

Second, I've decided to try my hand at solving cases on my own, with the assistance of a friend who also knew Sherlock well. I appreciate the opportunity to apply the methods of deduction Sherlock taught me. I suppose it's my way of keeping some small part of him with me.

The post went on to detail the case and describe how they had worked out that one of the servants had abducted the dog. John hadn't even taken sole credit for that bit of deduction. Greg shook his head.

"You could give me a pseudonym, you know. The whole 'a friend' thing is just going to make it look like you're hiding something."

"Well, I thought 'the on-leave DI I'm having sex with' was probably a bit much for the blog."

"It's a fair point. Speaking of sex…" Greg crossed back to the kitchen table and returned with the box of condoms he'd bought at Tesco. "I got us a little something."

John raised his eyebrows. "I hope you picked up some lube as well."

"Shit." Greg frowned. He hadn't thought about that, oddly. It wasn't as if he was used to buying supplies for sex in recent years. "Don't you have any from when you and Sherlock..." Oh, not good. He winced.

John only looked thoughtful, to his relief. "I may have some stashed somewhere. It's been a while since I've needed it, to be honest."

Greg's eyebrows rose. "Oh. So you… wait, how did you… or did you just…?"

John's eyes widened. "Oh, no, nothing like that. We didn't… Well, Sherlock wasn't fond of anal sex, so it wasn't something we did very often."

"Oh." Greg frowned.

"What?"

"Nothing, I just… I thought you said he liked to fuck you after cases."

"It's a figure of speech." John smiled at him a bit mischievously. "What, were you imagining him pounding me into the mattress after every case?"

Greg bit his lip. "I was imagining me pounding you into the mattress, to be honest."

John appeared to have been rendered speechless for a moment. "Well then," he said at last. "Let's add lube to the shopping list. In the meantime--" He hooked his fingers in the waist of Greg's jeans and pulled him close. "--there are other things we can do."

"You'll have to show me." Greg pulled him to his feet and leaned in to kiss him.

John's hands were already unfastening Greg's jeans; a moment later Greg stepped out of them awkwardly while trying to keep his mouth pressed against John's.

"Wait, let me," John said, and a minute later Greg felt John's cock press against his, John's fingers wrapped around them both.

"Oh, God, that's…" That felt far better than he would have expected. "Are we going to do this standing up again?"

"The sofa's right over there, you know."

They stumbled to it as best they could and ended up standing next to it, both of them reluctant to break contact long enough to lie down. Greg was reeling at the feeling of John's prick pressed against his own. Soft skin over hard heat -- he'd had no idea something so simple could feel so good. He broke the kiss long enough to look down between them to where one of John's hands held their pricks together while the other worked the heads with short strokes.

"God, look at your foreskin," John said as he tugged up and over the glans. He paused and grinned. "There's something I've always wanted to try. Do you mind?"

"As far as I'm concerned, it's all yours."

Greg watched as John took a step back and held just the tips of their dicks together with one hand. With the other he stroked along the shaft of Greg's cock and pulled the foreskin down over the head and then over his own as well. He held it there with a tight grip and stroked back and forth, and oh God that was amazing. Greg was used to the feeling of all that sensitive skin sliding over his own glans, but the feeling of it sliding over someone else's was fascinating. John's strokes were perfect, just enough pressure, and after two minutes the combination of sensations brought Greg to the edge of coming much faster than he would have anticipated.

"I could come like this," he said, unable to keep the note of surprise from his tone. He hissed as John tugged his foreskin down a bit more and adjusted his grip. "Jesus… It's like you're fucking my dick."

"Yeah, that's it, I am." John's voice sounded strained; his tongue darted out to wet his lips. "And I want to feel you come this way." He stroked faster and twisted his hand just slightly, and it was glorious.

"Keep doing that, just like that, oh fuck…" He put his hands on John's shoulders and pressed his forehead against John's and held on tight as he came. His semen leaked out from under his foreskin to coat John's shaft and fingers, and a moment later they were both a sticky mess.

Greg felt a strange compulsion to laugh. "That was incredible. And bizarre, incredibly fucking bizarre."

"I think that's a keeper." John grinned at him. "So do you want to take care of this or should I?" He stroked his own prick slowly and Greg tugged his hand away.

"Sit. There's something I've been wanting to do." He pushed at John's shoulder and laughed as John sprawled backwards into an armchair. Greg settled on his knees and pushed John's thighs apart, and looked up at him with a sly grin.

"Oh, I was hoping you were going do that. Still a bit messy, though, so if you want to clean it up a bit--"

"You think I haven't tasted it before?" Greg smirked at him and then leaned forward to take the head of John's cock in his mouth. It had been so long since he'd done this that it was a bit of a blur, but he was certain he'd never really wanted to do it more than he did right now. That was the frightening thing about all of this: it had only been a day and yet he already knew he wanted to spend months, years even, in bed with John and never come out again. He wanted to do everything, try everything, even the things he'd previously been squeamish about -- it all sounded brilliant right now, anything to hear that moan of pleasure, to see John's mouth fall open, overwhelmed by sheer sensation.

John sighed and arched his hips up just a bit. "Oh that's… God, that feels good."

He slid his mouth down as far as he could manage and tried valiantly to ignore the urge to gag. He pulled back up again and sucked, one hand stroking the shaft while he wriggled his tongue, and tried to replicate what he loved in a blow job. John was beautifully responsive, something Jodi hadn't been for a long time. He'd forgotten how erotic it was to hear a stream of moans and intakes of breath and softly muttered curse words while he licked and sucked, direct feedback about what was working and what wasn't.

"Oh, fuck, I… Can you finger me?"

"Oh, God. Yeah, here." He tugged John's hips toward him to the edge of the chair and paused for a moment at the sight of him, naked from the waist down, cock slick with spit and jutting up from his body, his legs nearly around Greg's waist.

John grinned up at him. "You're wishing we had some lube, aren't you?"

Greg pushed one of John's knees back and spat on his finger, then reached down and circled it against John's arsehole. "I'd need an hour before I could be hard enough for that." He pressed the finger in slowly and groaned at the sensation of tight heat, at the way John's body almost seemed to draw him in. He pushed in as far as he could and drew his finger out again slowly. Jesus. He pressed in and out again, fascinated by the sight. "On second thought, this might get me there."

"I'm still here, you know."

Greg forced his gaze back up to John's face again: he wore a smirk worthy of Sherlock at a crime scene. "Sorry, you've been reduced to a hole in my mind."

"As long as you don't forget about my dick, I don't care."

"Right, of course. But first…" He leaned down and kissed John again, and John hummed against his mouth, pressed his tongue against Greg's and drew the tip into his mouth before sucking on it lightly. God. Greg pressed his finger into him again and again, fucking him slowly, and John wrapped his arms around Greg's shoulders.

"Two fingers, and angle up a bit if you… ah!"

"Oh, like that?" Greg hadn't even had a chance to add another finger, but it didn't seem to matter now: John's eyes rolled back in his head every time Greg brushed his fingers against what was undoubtedly his prostate.

"Like that, keep doing that… gently! Yes, there… and suck me, God, please."

Greg ducked back down to take John's cock in his mouth again. John's thighs were on his shoulders now and Greg sucked his cock with long steady strokes while he kept one finger moving inside him. He managed to get his other hand between them to fondle John's balls.

"Oh God, I… I'm…" John's fingers dug into the arms of the chair and Greg felt his body clench around his finger. He pushed forward, taking John's cock in farther, and sucked hard. John's thighs clenched around his head, holding him still, and he felt the very odd sensation of his mouth being filled. He'd forgotten how much semen was involved in this end of the process -- and how it took two good swallows to get it all down.

After a moment, John's body relaxed and his thighs fell open again. He reached down to ruffle Greg's hair and only then did Greg release his cock.

"Jesus, Greg. How long has it been since you've done that?" John pressed his hands over his face.

Greg kissed the inside of his thigh. "Longer than I care to admit. Was it that bad?"

"Are you kidding? I can't feel my fucking toes."

Greg laughed. "Let me get a bit of practice and I'll make sure you can't feel your legs."

"Do that and you can have me any way you want."

Greg exhaled and pressed his face against John's thigh. "That's a dangerous thing to say. You have no idea what I want."

"I can't wait to find out." John's fingers ruffled his hair again and Greg smiled.

*****

Thanks to John's blog post there was another case the next week, this one involving confirming the identity of a family's long-lost relative -- who turned out, as they'd expected, not be to a relative at all. John had rather cleverly tricked the young woman into exposing her identity in front of the family she claimed to be part of (and had hoped would make a sizeable adjustment to her bank balance), and Greg did little more than look sternly at everyone.

The moment they got back to the flat, John pressed him back against the door and dropped to his knees. He had Greg's cock out before Greg had quite registered what was happening, and after that it was a blur of tongue and lips and suction. Surprise blow jobs in the middle of the afternoon --how was this now his life?

"Oh, God, you're good at that." He stroked the top of John's head and closed his eyes. It was too good, though, and it was going to be over very soon if he didn't do something to slow things down. He reluctantly tugged at John's hair. "I'm not going to last."

John came off long enough to say, "S'fine, I don't mind," and Greg took the opportunity to push him away a bit.

"C'mere." Greg pulled him up into a kiss and John's arms wound around his shoulders.

"Want something different?"

"A change of location, actually. We've been having sex for almost a week and we've yet to do it in a bed." Greg tugged him in the direction of the bedroom, but John didn't move. He turned back to see him staring at the door to Greg's bedroom with his forehead furrowed.

"Is it… Could we go upstairs instead?"

Greg felt a twist in his gut. Of course John didn't think of it as Greg's bedroom: he thought of it as Sherlock's. He kissed John again. "Wherever you want."

"Thanks," John said against his lips. He took Greg by the hand and led him toward the door, pausing to pick up the box of condoms and tube of lube from the desk. He gave Greg a sly smile and started up the stairs.

They stripped off their clothes fairly quickly and tumbled onto John's bed. Greg kissed his way down John's chest and worked his cock with his mouth for a few minutes before John thrust the lube at him with a breathy, "Fuck me."

"Oh God. Yeah, just let me… Where are the… aha." He was incredibly hard by the time he got the condom on, and after he smeared lube on both of them he had to sit back on his heels for a moment collect himself. "So… how do you want to do this?"

John pushed himself up on his elbows and looked thoughtful. "It's been a while since I've done this, so I think I want to be on top."

Greg stretched out on his back and John straddled him, and there was a moment of hesitation, of John lining Greg's cock up behind him with just the head pressed against him, an expression of uncertainty on his face.

"If you don't want to--" Greg began, but then John pushed down and Greg's mouth fell open at the long slow slide of heat down his cock. John's expression was strained and his erection had wilted, and Greg found he didn't know what to say.

"Okay," John said at last and shifted up, just a few inches, but it was enough to make Greg see stars.

"Oh fuck, that's… Can I touch you?"

"Yeah."

Greg stroked John's dick while he moved, and concentrating even on that was a challenge. John leaned forward and braced his arms on the headboard, and finally smiled. "Oh there, that's… yeah. How is it for you?"

Greg grinned at him. "You're fucking yourself on my cock. I have no complaints."

John laughed and sank all the way down, stilling himself for a moment. "Liar. You want to flip me over and pound me."

He squeezed then, or something that made Greg's eyes roll back in his head. "Oh, God. I really do."

John leaned over and kissed him -- licked into Greg's mouth was perhaps a more accurate description -- and whispered, "Then do it."

Greg paused for a full second before rolling them over and pressing himself down on top of John. His cock slipped out, but it didn't matter for the moment; he kissed John and pinned his hands above his head. John arched up under him and their cocks rubbed together. They both groaned and Greg couldn't help staying there for a moment just to feel the slide of John's body against his, the feeling of being skin-to-skin with someone else.

"Jesus, do I need to say pretty please? Simon says?"

Greg pulled up enough to look down at him and grin. "I had no idea you were this pushy in bed. I think I like it."

John shook his head in mock exasperation. "Just fuck me already."

"Roll over."

John leaned up to kiss him once more before twisting beneath him. Greg leaned over to pick up the lube again and turned back to see John had pressed his face down into the mattress beneath him, his arse in the air. Greg had to pause at the sight. He wondered if Sherlock had ever seen John like this: wanton, desperate to be fucked. He should probably feel guilty for thinking of Sherlock at that moment, but he didn't.

He slicked two fingers and pressed them into John slowly. He had always been amazed by this particular sex act, by the level of trust and intimacy involved. The concept of someone else wanting him to put his dick into their body for mutual pleasure was crazy enough, but doing it like this, where there were mental and physical barriers to overcome before pleasure was even possible, was nothing short of stunning. Greg had never bottomed and wasn't certain he ever wanted to, and the fact that John was here, now, and so willing was incredible.

"Are you always this easily distracted?" John asked after a moment, and Greg laughed.

"Sorry."

"Just a hole, I know."

"Not forgetting about the dick, I promise." He lubed his cock again and pressed forward, sliding into John surprisingly easily. "Oh, God. Is this okay?"

"Yes yes yes. Do it."

"You might want to grab onto something."

John pressed his hands against the headboard and Greg clenched his hips and fucked him hard, harder than he'd ever fucked Jodi or any of the other people he'd been with, male or female.

"God, yes, like that," John said and pushed back against him, so fucking tight and hot and fuck, Greg couldn't even speak anymore. Only a minute in and he was too far gone, and when he came it was with what he was certain was an embarrassing sort of howl.

He trembled as he collapsed onto John. "Not forgetting. Just gimme a minute. Oh my God."

John laughed softly under him. "It's all right, take your time."

His breathing finally began to even out and he pressed a kiss between John's shoulder blades before rolling to the side. "That was incredible. I can't believe Sherlock didn't like to--" He closed his eyes. Shit. "I'm sorry; I can't believe I said that."

"It's okay, really." Greg opened his eyes: John had rolled onto his side and was watching Greg with an expression almost like amusement on his face. "You can talk about him, you know. Even like this." He shrugged. "I loved him. I still do, and I always will. That doesn't mean I can't enjoy this."

Greg's eyes drifted down John's body to his very not-erect penis. "I want you to enjoy it. I want…" He slid down the bed and kissed John's belly, let his lips mark a path down to John's hip. "I want to make you forget everyone else you've ever been with. Is that horrible?"

"No. I think it's very human, actually."

Greg flicked his tongue against the folds of foreskin that extended past the head of John's cock. "I don't get to see someone else's dick in this state very often."

"Don't take it personally. I liked it, rather a lot. I've never come that way, though." John stroked his head and Greg couldn't help feeling like he'd been issued a challenge. "Keep doing that and… oh yeah."

Greg had a mouthful of erection before he'd had time to take a good breath. He pulled off and sucked lightly at the head before deciding to try a different approach: excruciatingly slow. He licked, nuzzled, kissed and didn't take even the head into his mouth again until John begged him to do. He brought John to the edge of orgasm twice and backed off, and grinned when John called him every name he could think of. He finally let John come after nearly twenty minutes, with two fingers in his arse and as much suction as he could manage.

John was incoherent when he came and then shivered so much Greg pulled the covers up around them both. When he finally opened his eyes, he took one look at Greg and laughed.

"I've never seen you look so fucking smug in the entire time I've known you."

Greg grinned. "I think I deserve it."

"You do. God, you do. That was incredible. I don't remember the last time I came that hard." He kissed Greg then, and Greg felt something melt inside his chest.

He pushed it aside -- no need to worry about that now. They'd just had insanely good sex in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon, and that was enough.

He rubbed at his jaw. "I think I pulled a muscle, though."

John laughed. "Please. I'm not going to be able to sit anytime soon."

"You're right; you win." Greg yawned and snuggled against John's shoulder.

He'd almost drifted off to sleep when his phone rang.

"Ignore it," John mumbled, but he couldn't. It hardly ever rang these days, and so it was bound to be something important.

"Let me just see who it is." He pushed himself to standing and fumbled in a pocket of his discarded jeans for the phone.

M. Patterson

Greg winced and raised the phone to his ear. "Lestrade."

"Lestrade, this is Mike Patterson. I need to call in that favor you owe me."

"Yeah, sure. What can I do for you?"

"Can you come out to Ealing right now? I'm at a crime scene and I could really use your eye."

Greg sighed. "Are you asking me to come in as a consultant? I had the impression that sort of thing was going to be frowned on from here on out."

"Sod the new regs. I've got a dead man and no evidence other than a bullet in his brain. This is the sort of case you're good at, isn't it?"

Greg looked over at John dozing in the bed, covers tangled around him. He'd planned to spend the rest of the afternoon right there, warm and satiated, and maybe be ready for another round in a couple of hours. Going to a crime scene when he really technically wasn't supposed to be anywhere near official business sounded like the last thing he wanted to do.

But Patterson was right: this was exactly the sort of case he was good at. Patterson was one of the best detectives on the force, and he wouldn't have called Greg during his leave if he didn't truly need the help. And Patterson had helped him out with the dog case when he didn't have to, so Greg owed him that much at least. With any luck, he'd be back before dinner. He and John could pick up where they left off.

He sighed. "All right, fine. Text me the address."

"Thanks. And Lestrade? Come alone."

He cut the call and scrubbed a hand over his face. In some ways, his life was getting simpler, and in other ways, it was more profoundly fucked up than ever.

*****

The crime scene was on the second floor of a vacant house on a quiet street. Greg walked through the crime scene tape and past a dozen officers he'd worked with for nearly a decade. A few smiled warmly at him, others looked surprised to see him, and still others almost looked relieved at his presence.

God, he actually missed this, didn't he? That was a surprise.

He didn't linger to talk to anyone; no need to be any more of a disruption than he already was. He did, however, need to find someone who could point him in the direction he needed to go. He spotted Donovan standing off to the side, simultaneously tapping out something on her tablet with a finger and speaking into a mobile awkwardly balanced on her shoulder.

She didn't see him until he was right next to her, and her eyes widened almost comically. "Hang on, I'll phone you back in a minute." She tried to cut the call and dropped the phone, and fumbled for a moment before collecting herself again. She stared at him, clearly baffled by his presence. "Sir, you're… here. How--"

"Where's Patterson?" He didn't want to give her a chance to ask questions, though there were clearly several dozen flitting across her face.

"He's through there, up the stairs." She indicated the direction with a nod of her head and then said, "So you're--" at the same moment he said, "Cheers," and walked away. Later, he'd let her ask. Not yet.

He headed up the stairs, nodding in greeting at several surprised faces along the way. Through an open doorway at the top he saw three people standing around a body laid out on the floor.

"Lestrade," Patterson said in greeting as he walked in.

A young woman handed him a pair of nitrile gloves and he pulled them on. "What've you got?"

"Victim was shot in the head, very clean job. Mid-forties, dressed professionally, no ID on him."

"Time of death?"

"Within the last hour. The body was discovered by the landlord. A neighbor complained about hearing a fight of some sort. Since the property was vacant, he called 999 and then came over to have a look for himself."

"Anything else taken from him?"

"He had nothing on him, not even a bloody biro. Whoever shot him cleaned him out good."

"It doesn't look like a robbery, though."

Patterson sighed. "No."

Greg looked around the room. "Tidy for a vacant property, isn't it?"

Patterson nodded. "Extremely."

Greg leaned over the body to examine the neat hole in the victim's temple. "A .22 caliber?"

"That's my guess, but forensics will have to dig it out to confirm."

Greg took three steps back and tried to estimate the distance from which the victim could have been shot. From the blood spatter on the floor and wall, it had definitely happened here. "No signs of a struggle."

"See why I called you?" Patterson shook his head and sighed. "I hope you've got an idea where to start, because I've got nothing."

Greg looked around the room again, back to the body, to the wounds, to the way the man was dressed, the missing wallet, the--

It came to him so quickly that he had to take a step backwards, and he put a hand over his mouth to cover the ridiculous grin that threatened to spread over his face.

"What?" Patterson was watching him through narrowed eyes.

Greg collected himself and pressed his lips together for a moment before he took his hand away. He pulled off the gloves. "My advice is to go out and have a smoke."

Patterson gaped at him for a moment. "A what?"

"Oh, you quit, didn't you? Sorry. Anyway, this is a professional job. Too professional, actually. This wasn't a murder. It was an assassination."

"Assassination?" Patterson looked back down at the body.

"This bloke, look at him. No ID, nothing but the clothes on his back, and those are meant to look very sharp. But the fabric is all wrong; it's not what's in style here. It's light, something you'd see men wearing in a warmer climate at this time of year. Even his shoes are wrong. He's not from London, probably not British. So maybe a foreign agent, or someone our government wanted dead."

"The government? Have you gone round the bend, Lestrade?"

Greg waved him off with a hand. "Probably MI6, but maybe a foreign government agency. No, my money's on MI6; the weapon is a fairly common one for their special ops people. They tend to choose locations like this, quiet, do a quick clean-up. The killer didn't have a chance to finish, though, you lot interrupted that and he had to retreat to contact his superiors. Or maybe he wasn't supposed to kill him, maybe it all went wrong and he tried to cover his tracks, make it look like a robbery and murder." He pulled his phone from his pocket and glanced at the time. "Either way, the suits will likely show up any minute now and relieve you. So yeah, I wouldn't worry too much about this one if I were you."

He looked up again to see Patterson staring at him as if he'd grown another head.

Greg shrugged. "What?"

"Patterson, there's some suits downstairs." They both looked over to where Donovan was standing in the doorway. "They want to see the officer in charge."

"Who are they?" Patterson asked.

"ID says MI5." She raised her eyebrows at him.

Patterson shot a glance at Greg. "Un-fucking-believable. I'll be right down." Donovan nodded and headed down the stairs. Patterson turned back to Greg with a significantly paler face than he'd had before. "How did you do that? Do you know something I don't?

Greg shrugged. "I've seen it before, that's all."

"For a minute there you…" Patterson stopped and shook his head. "Well, thanks anyway. Sorry to haul you out here for nothing."

Greg followed him down the stairs and hung off to the side for a moment, oddly reluctant to leave. It was something he'd seen before, it was true, but that wasn't why he'd worked it out. He'd just looked around and it had all come together at once in his head. It was exhilarating, something that happened to him so rarely, he'd forgotten what it felt like.

Was this what Sherlock had felt all the time?

"Enjoying your leave, sir?" Donovan stood next to him, her gaze focused on Patterson, who was deep in conversation with the suits.

"I am, actually. I needed a break."

"We all read the blog, you know."

She didn't need to specify which blog she meant. They'd all read it the last year, though that seemed like ages ago now, rather than weeks. "What about it?"

"The case with the old lady's dog, that must have been fun."

Greg shrugged in response. John had left his name out of it, but of course, word must have spread that he was there. Patterson had been right -- people talked.

"And I stood outside that door and listened to you just now, going off just like he used to do. Gave me chills." She paused and bit her lip. "Can I ask a personal question?"

He nodded. "Okay."

She looked away for a moment as if reconsidering, and then turned to face him straight on. "What are you doing?"

He stared back at her. "What are you on about?"

She looked around and then stepped closer to him, lowering her voice. "You've got to know what this looks like, what people are saying. You moved into his flat, you're shagging his boyfriend, and now you're consulting on police cases. It's like you're trying to become Sherlock Holmes."

Greg snorted. "I'm not trying to-- oh, for fuck's sake."

"Then why are you here? Don't tell me you miss it that badly."

"Patterson called me, said I owed him a favor. That's it." He shook his head and swallowed down his annoyance at the situation. Playing politics was part of the job, but it didn't mean he had to like it. "People are going to talk; they always do. I'll deal with it."

"I'm just trying to help."

"I know."

She gave him a sly smile. "But you are shagging John Watson?"

He stuffed his hands into his jeans pockets. "I didn't say that."

"That's not a denial." She grinned and folded her arms over her chest. "I've always liked him, you know. I never understood what he saw in Sherlock. It'd be good to see him with someone who'll care about him for a change."

He clenched his jaw against all the things he wanted to say, finally settling on, "Well, none of us know what happened between those two behind closed doors, do we?"

She was silent for a moment. "You still believe he was for real, don't you? Even after everything that came out in the papers."

"Most of what they printed about me was utter shit, so yeah, I'm disinclined to believe what they said about Sherlock as well." He turned to look at her again. "I worked with him for years. I saw him at crime scenes. I was there. He couldn't have faked all of it, and anyone who saw what I did would know it was the truth."

She stared at him for a long moment. He had no idea how she felt about it all now, not even after the day she'd nearly broken down in his office, the day before his leave began. She'd said nothing then either, just came in, sat down, took one look at him and buried her face in her hands for a moment. Then she'd stood, wiped her eyes, nodded her head, and walked away. There were conflicting emotions on her face even now: guilt, sorrow, pride, uncertainty, doubt, fear. She seemed to realize she was staring and pressed her lips into a thin line before looking away again.

He sighed. "I should go. See you in a few weeks, yeah?"

She nodded, but still didn't meet his gaze. "It'll be good to have you back, sir."

He'd walked three streets up before he noticed the car. He stopped and for a moment considered walking the opposite direction -- this was seriously the last thing he wanted to deal with right now. But no, he knew from experience that it was best to get it over with.

A door opened when he drew close and he climbed inside, sliding across a smooth leather seat. He'd expected to see Anthea, but instead, seated next to him was Mycroft Holmes.

"Detective Inspector Lestrade. How lovely to see you again." The car pulled away from the kerb.

"Mr. Holmes. To what do I owe the pleasure?" He injected it with enough sarcasm to be seen from space, but Mycroft didn't even flinch.

"Oh, I was in the area and thought you could use a ride home. Aren't you technically still on leave from the Metropolitan Police?"

"For another few weeks, yeah." He didn't bother asking if Mycroft knew where he lived. "That was one of yours, was it?"

Mycroft gave him that tight-lipped smile that generally meant he didn't want to talk about it.

Greg smirked. "I didn't realize MI6 performed assassinations on British soil. That's a bit messy, don't you think?"

"I'm afraid that situation got slightly out of hand." He sighed and straightened the lapels of his jacket. "The agent was supposed to bring him in, not kill him. My analyst is going to be unhappy; he'd hoped to interrogate the man himself."

"What sort of analyst also does interrogations?"

Mycroft looked away, out of the window of the car. "The sort I have to keep on a tight leash. How is Dr. Watson?"

Greg snorted. "Why don't you come in and ask him yourself?"

"I don't wish to intrude. I'm happy to see him moving on, though. It's for the best."

Greg swallowed and looked out his own window. John was indeed moving on, far more quickly than Greg would have expected. Ever since the first case with the dog a week ago, something had changed in him. He'd stopped grieving almost overnight. Greg had thought it was down to him at first, but now he wasn't so sure. He looked back to see Mycroft watching him closely, and he smiled. "Yes. I suppose it is."

"I know he cared about Sherlock very much."

"He wasn't the only one."

Mycroft nodded. "Of course. But I think that you, Mr. Lestrade, are better for him than my brother ever could be."

"I don't know about that. Different, perhaps." Apparently the entire world knew he was shagging John Watson. "I didn't get a chance to speak to you at the funeral. I looked for you afterwards, but--"

"I had business to attend to that day, as it happens. But I do appreciate the sentiment." The last word was spoken as if it tasted slightly sour.

"Right." Greg pursed his lips. "So did you pick me up merely to ask after my personal life, or was there something else you wanted to discuss?"

"Yes, of course. I have a proposition for you. I'm currently working on a project, something, shall we say, to honor my brother's efforts with Mr. Moriarty. I would appreciate your assistance."

"So the government still believes Moriarty was real, do they?"

"Of course."

"And you're perfectly content to do nothing about the way your brother is being written about in the papers?"

Mycroft's eyes narrowed. "My brother is dead, Mr. Lestrade. His reputation is hardly relevant. Besides, if the public believe Moriarty was a fabrication, it gives us an advantage. The network of criminals he was at the center of remains confused and scattered."

Greg felt the corners of his mouth turn up almost against his will. "I see. What did you have in mind?"

"Quite a bit of intelligence has been gathered on Moriarty's activities these last few years. Recent events have pushed us to take action."

"You mean the fact that Moriarty disappeared after Sherlock died?"

Mycroft's tight smile returned. "There will be more operations like the one you saw this afternoon, and as you noted, there is quite a lot of potential for difficulty with the Met."

"Probably more with the media, but yeah."

"I've already had some discussions with your superiors about ways to handle cases just such as this one when they occur."

Greg pressed his hands together. "I'm sure that went over well."

"You might be surprised."

"So what does this have to do with me?"

"I want you to be the liaison between the security services and Scotland Yard."

Greg looked up at him with narrowed eyes. "Are you offering me a job?"

"Nothing that would take you away from Scotland Yard. You would simply be a consultant for the security services, help ease the tension between the two organizations, something you are rather uniquely qualified to do."

Greg stared at him for a moment. "Essentially, you want me to cover your arse."

Mycroft smirked. "It's far more complicated than that, Mr. Lestrade. Surely you can appreciate the delicacy of this operation."

"And surely you can appreciate that my job is difficult enough without MI5 throwing a spanner in the works."

"Your salary would be generously supplemented, of course."

Greg rolled his eyes. "Of course." He despised politics, and Mycroft was asking him to wade into the middle of it, to pave the way for the security services to tread all over the Metropolitan Police more than they already did. "Look--" he began, and Mycroft sighed and rubbed at the back of his neck with one hand.

"I would like to finish what my brother started. The Met's cooperation is vital, and it won't happen without you. Of that I am certain." He looked back at Greg, his expression tense.

Finish what Sherlock started. Greg couldn't well say no to that. Perhaps others already had. Or perhaps Mycroft knew they would. He sighed.

For all he hadn't been able to help Sherlock in those last few days, for all the moments he'd not reacted or hadn't stepped in to shut down the fucking circus that had swelled around them all -- maybe this would make up for it in some small way.

"All right. I'm in." God help him.

Mycroft visibly relaxed. "Very good. I'll be in touch."

The car pulled up outside the flat on Baker Street. Before Greg could reach to open the door, the driver had opened it for him.

"Do give my regards to Dr. Watson."

Greg did his best to smile, but he was sure it came across as more of a grimace. "Good night, Mr. Holmes."

*****

Greg's mind was still spinning as he climbed the stairs to the flat. He opened the door to see John ensconced in a chair with a large stack of books on the floor beside him. He had a notepad in his lap and he was flipping through a copy of one of the Harry Potter books with a look of intense concentration. He rolled the ball Molly sent him between the fingers of his left hand almost absentmindedly.

"Surely you're not reading that quickly," Greg said, watching him flip through the pages.

"No, just looking for something." John didn't look up. "How'd it go?"

"Fine." He sat on the sofa and clasped his hands together. "I just saw Mycroft Holmes."

John stilled, but his gaze remained fixed on the page before him. "What did he want?"

"To make me an offer." He waited a moment and John finally looked up. "Apparently he's trying to take advantage of the whole Richard Brook debacle and flush out some of the criminals Moriarty was associated with."

"And he wants you to help?"

"He wants me to run interference with the Met."

John nodded. "Yeah, that'd be right up your street."

Greg raised his eyebrows. "You think so?"

"Of course." There was a pause and then John looked at him with narrowed eyes. "Don't tell me you don't know."

"Know what?"

"How bloody brilliant you are at that sort of thing."

Greg felt his cheeks heat. "Oh, come off it."

"You don't know, do you?" John grinned and set the book and notepad aside. "I'll bet you don't know how hot you are either."

Greg leaned back against the sofa cushions. "You going to come over here and convince me?"

John crossed to the sofa and straddled Greg's lap, then leaned down to kiss him. Greg wound his arms around John's waist and let himself sink for a moment, feeling nothing but the slide of lips and tongue and the heat and comfort of John above him.

John sat back and smiled at him. "Hungry?"

"Yeah. Want to do a takeaway?"

John made the call while Greg checked his email on John's laptop. His computer belonged to Scotland Yard and he hadn't been permitted to bring anything with him on leave. He probably ought to buy one of his own; he hadn't realized how much of his life was electronic these days. Most of it was work-related, items he technically wasn't required to respond to while on leave. There were a few emails from family members and one from his solicitor, whose bill he'd yet to pay. He winced and closed the email tab. John's blog appeared on top; he'd updated it with the case they'd wrapped up that morning.

"They said it'll be ready in 15 minutes. I'll go this time." John sat on the chair across from him and put on his shoes.

Greg looked up from the screen. "So I should tell you that apparently everyone knows we're shagging. I don't know how, but I got it from all sides tonight."

John's jaw clenched. "Ah."

"Yeah."

"And you… well, I suppose you're not thrilled about that."

"I don't know how I feel about it, honestly." Greg grimaced: he hadn't meant to start this conversation just as John was running out the door, but there was nothing for it now. He exhaled. "I'm not entirely certain what it is we're doing."

John looked up at him. "I was under the impression it was a sort of friends with benefits thing."

"Right." Greg swallowed and looked down at his hands. Why was this so fucking awkward? "Only… I don't have any other friends. Like that. Like you. Since uni I've only had sex with people I was dating. I don't know how this is supposed to go outside of a... relationship."

John was silent for a long moment. "And… do you want that? With me?"

"I don't know. Maybe. I'd like it to be on the table, I suppose." He forced himself to look up. John's face had gone a little pale, but his eyes were wide and blue. "Unless--"

"No, that's fine. I'm just surprised, is all. I suppose I thought you were just letting off steam with me. Or something."

"That was definitely part of it, yeah." He pressed his lips together for a moment. "Anyway, I wasn't sure you'd be happy with everyone knowing. You and Sherlock kept it very quiet."

John raised an eyebrow. "That was more a self-preservation thing, to be honest. I had to run interference for him enough as it was. If I'd officially been his boyfriend, it would have been so much worse."

"So it was a friends with benefits thing?"

"It was… complicated." He looked down at his clasped hands. "But I should probably tell you that Mrs. Hudson named you in a comment on the blog post about the dog case. I didn't catch it until the next day, but by then enough people had seen it to work out that my friend was you."

"Ah." Greg looked down at the screen of the laptop again. "But how did they know we're sleeping together as well?"

"Read the comments and you'll see. It probably wasn't that difficult to put two and two together. I probably should have deleted some of it, but… well, sometimes that makes it worse."

Greg snorted. "I can imagine."

John stood and headed for the door. "Back in a few."

He clicked over to the comments of the first blog post after John left.


31 comments

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Fantastic to see you up and blogging again! So you've got a new "friend", eh?


Harry Watson 18 July 19:34

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Oh, is Mr Lestrade helping you with cases now? It's been so nice to have him around these last few weeks. He's really cheered you up, hasn't he?


Mrs Hudson 18 July 19:58

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Good to see you posting again, mate. Tell Greg I said hi.


Mike Stamford 18 July 20:17

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It's crazy what people will do for a damn dog! Good to see you back out there, John. I think you needed a good "cheering". ;)


Bill Murray 18 July 20:41

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Good to see you blogging again. You might be interested in this.


Anonymous 18 July 21:02

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OMG, you're back!!


Jacob Sowersby 18 July 22:19

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this is stupid. why are you even trying to solve cases? you dishonor the memory of sherlock holmes.


theimprobableone 19 July 01:42

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How sweet! I love West Highland terriers! Email me when you have a chance. We should catch up. :)


Molly Hooper 19 July 07:14

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The comments went on and on, the most Greg had ever seen on a single post. John hadn't responded to any of them yet, and Greg wondered if he intended to. They were mostly providing congratulations and encouragement, and didn't necessarily require a response. He scrolled back up and read them again, wincing at the innuendo. No wonder Donovan was giving him the side-eye.

He read the comment from "Anonymous" again and clicked the link. It led to a discussion thread on a web forum, the header of which made him sit straight up on the sofa.

FAKED DEATH EVIDENCE THREAD CFN_mod
Posts: 3471
25 July 13:41 I've moved this discussion to its own thread to keep things civil around here. PLEASE no arguing or wank on this thread. Take that over here. This is the place to post and discuss pictures and other evidence for those of you who believe Sherlock faked his death. PatriceHeart
Posts: 1252
25 July 13:56 THANK YOU!!! I can't wait to see what gets posted here. JeremyGlass93
Posts: 834
25 July 14:15 I'm reposting my picture here. Yes, it's grainy (it was taken with my MOBILE, all right? NOT PS'd!) but it's the best I could do in a hurry. This is near the Vauxhall Bridge.

The post was accompanied by a very grainy and dark photo of a man leaning against a wall, clearly smoking a cigarette. His back was to the camera, but Greg had to admit the figure looked quite a lot like Sherlock. He felt a wave of anger that someone would send John a link to this page. It was incredibly cruel.

YeomanSam
Posts: 467
25 July 15:03 I got chills. Seriously, this is the pic that changed my mind. I thought you lot were nutters until I saw this one. RandomStupidAnon
Posts: 372
25 July 16:27 Please. If he were in hiding, why would he go about in the same coat? It doesn't make sense. JeremyGlass93
Posts: 835
25 July 16:50 RandomStupidAnon, the mod said to keep the arguing off this thread. We all know how you feel about it already. RandomStupidAnon
Posts: 373
25 July 17:08 It's not about feelings; it's about evaluating the evidence. If he actually faked his death (and I remain skeptical), then he did it for an important reason. He wouldn't go out in public like that undisguised. It would be idiotic. BethannyB
Posts: 974
25 July 17:19 Reposting my picture from the same area (!). I think JeremyGlass93's is better, though. There's too many people in the way here. RandomStupidAnon
Posts: 374
25 July 17:29 Have any of you considered the possibility that you're all taking pictures of someone who happens to look quite a lot like Sherlock Holmes, but who isn't, in fact, him? This is most likely some poor sod who works at the SIS at Vauxhall Cross, and not a walking conspiracy theory. CFN_mod
Posts: 3491
25 July 17:42 RandomStupidAnon, this is your warning. Take it to the argument post. Or better yet, go back to the codebreaking forum, where everyone actually likes what you have to say. :-)

Greg smirked. Whoever this RandomStupidAnon person was, Greg kind of liked him. Or her. He scrolled up to the top of the page to see where the hell he was: The Consulting Fan Network. He'd heard before that there was a Sherlock Holmes fan website, but he'd never thought to go looking for it.

He clicked a few links and poked around the page a bit. It seemed to have been around for at least a year. There were forums about individual cases Sherlock had solved, galleries of pictures and scans of newspaper articles, and one clearly popular forum titled WE BELIEVE. Another of the most popular forums seemed to be the codebreaking forum. He clicked on it and scanned the page. Quite a few of the threads had been started by RandomStupidAnon, and he clicked on one halfway down the page. In the top post of the thread, RandomStupidAnon had posted a string of letters followed by what seemed to be a clue as to how to decode the message. There were dozens of comments below asking questions about the code and making guesses about the true text of the message.

Greg closed the tab, intending to go back to John's blog, but the next tab was also opened to one of the codebreaking threads. It was another one posted by RandomStupidAnon, and it had apparently been posted only the day before.

RandomStupidAnon
Posts: 357
27 July 09:34 Here's a new one.
Message: ghhldsjftPK188417fnnd0801subl
Hint: dhkxp23753g53
Good luck! Ellisout95
Posts: 571
27 July 10:02 WTF kind of hint is that? Sparkledog
Posts: 378
27 July 10:21 OMG this is insane. I have no idea what the hint means. LOLdor01
Posts: 1098
27 July 10:29 You're taking the piss, right? You just made this one up. RandomStupidAnon
Posts: 359
27 July 10:41 This is indeed a real coded message. I only expect one or two of you to be able to work it out.

John had been looking at this page, Greg realized. He glanced over to the chair where John had been sitting when he'd first come home. He'd been rather preoccupied, in fact.

Greg set the computer aside and crossed to the chair. A dozen books were stacked around it and the notepad was still sitting where John had left it. Greg picked it up; it was covered with strings of letters and marks. He set the notepad back down.

Why was John working on decoding a message from this website? Sure, there wasn't much on telly this time of year, but did he really have nothing better to do than work out puzzles on a fan website dedicated to Sherlock?

He settled back on the sofa and picked up John's laptop again. Maybe there was more to this than he realized.

Ten minutes later, he heard footsteps on the stairs; John nearly burst through the door with two paper bags of take-away. He was soaked through.

"It's pissing down outside. Started while I was in the restaurant." He set the bags down on the table and stripped off his wet shirt.

It was a moment before Greg registered the words; his brain had got stuck on bare chest. "Is it? I didn't even notice."

John searched for a dry corner on his shirt and rubbed it against his hair, then tossed it to the floor and took off his jeans. Greg was still getting used to seeing John's body like this, and being free to look at him. He was thinner than he should be -- the stress of the last month had taken its toll -- but somehow that only accentuated the compact lines of his body. Greg set the computer aside and crossed to him.

"Do you need warming up?" He grinned and pulled John against him.

John planted a quick kiss on his lips and stepped away. "Later. I'm starving."

"You can't possibly expect me to be able to eat while you're wearing nothing but pants."

John grinned. "I do in fact expect it. Hey, none of that!" He wriggled away from Greg's wandering hands. "Food first, then sex. I promise."

Greg set out plates for them and they sat across from each other at the table. John handed him a pair of chopsticks and a bottle of beer.

"So, you saw the comments on the blog?"

"I also saw the website." Greg spooned a little of the food from each container onto his plate and then looked up at John.

"Oh, that website. Yeah." John poked at some noodles with his chopsticks.

Greg took a bite of chicken. There were a dozen questions he wanted to ask, but he wasn't sure where to start. "Do you look at it a lot?"

"Not really. We used to do. Well, Sherlock did, anyway. He loved to antagonize the people there." He paused and smiled. "He got banned from the forums half a dozen times. Of course, every time he'd just make up a new name and do it again. I don't think they ever realized it was actually him, though."

"I saw that you were working on some sort of secret code thing." He stuffed another bite of food into his mouth, feeling strangely embarrassed. It wasn't prying, was it? John hadn't hidden it.

"Yeah." John shrugged and looked down at his plate. "I don't know why. It just sounded… fun."

He wanted to say something about all the talk of Sherlock having faked his death, but he had no idea how to bring it up. He couldn't think of a way to do it that wouldn't sound patronizing -- or worse.

"I suppose you know they write stories about you and Sherlock."

John winced and reached for his beer. "Oh God. Don't tell me you read any of them."

"No. I started to, but… I got a sense of what they were about and…" He grinned, tried not to laugh.

"Sherlock loved reading particular bits aloud. Whilst holding me down, so I couldn't escape."

Greg laughed at that, then covered his mouth with one hand. "I'm sorry that's just… oh God, that's funny."

John rolled his eyes. "He certainly thought it was. And then he'd post comments." He lowered his voice and did a surprisingly good impersonation of Sherlock. "You do realize this isn't physically possible, don't you?"

Greg laughed so hard he had to set his chopsticks down on the table.

"Yeah, keep laughing. Just wait until they start writing stories about you."

Greg gaped at him. "What?"

John gave him a wry look. "You've seen the comments on the blog. They all read it. They post screencaps and discuss it all to death. It's only a matter of time."

Greg shook his head and fished some more lo mein out of the container and onto his plate. "Why anyone could possibly want to write about me is a mystery."

"Don't start that again, that whole humble act. You know exactly what people see in you."

"I suppose they do make quite a few films about middle-aged blokes in the midst of divorces and career crises, don't they?"

"Actually, they do. But that's not the point."

"What is the point then?"

John took a swig of beer and grinned. "Finish your dinner and I'll show you."

*****

"Greg?"

Greg turned to see Molly Hooper standing two places behind him in the queue for coffee at Costa. "Oh, hi." He gestured the people between them to step in front of him in the queue and leaned over to kiss her on the cheek. "God, I haven't seen you in weeks. Not since…"

"The funeral," she said with a sad half-smile. Her gaze darted down to his hands and back up again. "How are you?"

"Good, I'm good. On leave from the Met for a few more weeks."

"I heard. That must be nice."

"It is. I can't deny that."

"And how is John?" There were clearly layers to the question, though she'd done her best to keep it light.

"He's great, good. I mean, under the circumstances. You know." It was nearly his turn to order now. "Can I get you a coffee? If you've got a few minutes, we could chat a bit."

She smiled. "I'd like that."

Five minutes later they sat across from each other at a table tucked around the corner from the counter.

"I don't usually check the blog, you know. I wanted to go back and read some… well, some of Sherlock's comments, really. It helps me remember his voice, you know?" She lifted her cup and took a sip, and then stared into her cup, her cheeks tinting a bit. "And you can imagine my surprise when I saw it had been updated."

"I think John was surprised at how many people noticed. He didn't mean for my name to get involved, but once it was done, it was too late to do anything about it."

"I was glad to know he's not alone. Well, I mean… he's not alone, is he?" Her eyebrows lifted slightly in question. He might as well tell her; she was one of the few people left who knew them both anyway.

"He's not alone at the moment, no." He smiled at her over his coffee cup. "It happened a bit fast, but it's good."

"So your wife--" Molly began, and then blushed furiously. "Oh God, I'm sorry. That's none of my business, is it?"

"No, it's fine. We're divorced now. Papers signed and all. It was a long time coming. I think everyone knew that. Everyone but me, anyway."

"I'm sorry."

"I'm not."

"You seem happy."

"Do I?"

"Very happy. Completely smitten, if you don't mind me saying so."

He laughed and felt his cheeks warm. "I suppose I am, a bit. John is… well, you know."

She giggled. "I can't say I do. I never really had the chance, with Sherlock always hovering about. Is it… serious?"

He paused for a moment, not sure how to answer the question. "I think it could be. It's early yet. We're both just off of relationships that ended rather dramatically."

She stared into her coffee again and he wondered if she'd known about John and Sherlock. It wasn't his place to tell, but he'd have thought she would have known, if anyone had. But then, he hadn't known either, had he?

"So what about you? How are you, really?" He knew she'd performed Sherlock's autopsy, and he'd meant to phone her after that, to see how she was doing. But then all hell had broken loose and it wasn't at the top of his priority list.

She wrapped her fingers around her coffee cup. "I'm good, I am. I'm seeing someone."

"Oh, fantastic. Is he… he?"

She smiled at that. "He's lovely, yes. You know him, actually; he works at Scotland Yard. Nigel Marks?"

"Oh, yes, from the forensics lab, right?" Greg grinned at her. "He is lovely, God. Good for you."

She giggled. "It's only been two weeks, but… God, he's so sweet and nice and he calls me every morning when he's on his way to work and he's cooked dinner for me twice and he's got cats and… It's nice, it really is."

He smiled at her. "I'm glad, Molly. You deserve it."

She shrugged, apparently embarrassed. "I don't know. But it makes for a nice change from the other blokes I've gone out with. Or haven't gone out with, for that matter."

They sipped their coffee in silence for a moment. It was good to see her again, to know she was doing well and happy. She gave the impression of being fragile, though he knew she wasn't, not really. She was one of the strongest people he knew. And her sense of humor was apparently intact. He grinned and looked up at her.

"I have to ask about the ball."

She blinked at him. "Sorry?"

"The ball, the one you sent John. He's always got it in his hand and he won't tell me what it means. I assume it's a joke of some kind."

Her expression was utterly blank. "I… I don't know what you're talking about."

"The package you sent him last week, with the little rubber ball in it. It was from you, I saw the return address."

She stared at him another few seconds and then her eyes widened. "Oh! Oh, right. I sent a… yes, that. It's… oh, God, how do I explain?" She looked around the table frantically, as if searching for an explanation amongst the packets of sugar and useless transparent serviettes. He'd seen her flustered before, but this verged on panicked. "You know, I don't… I mean--"

"It's not a big deal, really." Something odd buzzed at the back of his head now and his stomach twisted into a knot. What was going on?

"God, is that the time?" She stared at her phone. "I've really got to go. I have a, um… a thing, a…" She waved her hand almost frantically, trying to pluck the word from midair.

"A meeting?"

"Yes! A meeting. Right. So sorry to rush off. It was so good to see you! Please give John my love and tell him to ring me up when he has a chance." She stood so quickly that she bumped the table; Greg's coffee tipped over and he had to slide his chair back to avoid getting a lapful. Molly closed her eyes tightly and winced. "Sorry! Sorry, I'll just--"

He stood and leaned over the table to take her hand. "It's fine, really. Don't worry. See you around."

"Yes, thanks. Bye." She barely gave him another glance before turning and leaving. She hadn't even drunk half of her coffee.

Greg watched her leave with an odd sense of dread. What the fuck had just happened?

*****

"That," John said, already pushing Greg up against the closed door to the main living area of the flat, "was bloody brilliant."

"It wasn't that hard to work out that the landlord was taking a cut."

John's hands made quick work of the fly of Greg's trousers. "Well, I didn't work it out. Wouldn't have done for ages. Oh, God, I want you."

Greg laughed and caught his hands, pulled them back so that they went around his waist. "Take it easy. It's been a couple of days, and I don't want it to be over in two minutes."

"We can do it again later," John said against his lips.

But they wouldn't, not if the last two days had been anything to go by. Greg sighed into the kiss and smoothed his hands down John's back, down to his arse and squeezed, and pulled John firmly against him. "Bed. Please."

John sighed and pulled away. "All right."

Greg had been grateful this case had fallen into their laps that morning. John desperately needed a distraction from obsessing over the comments on his blog and the secret codes on the fan website. Greg hadn't mentioned it, and he wasn't certain that John was aware Greg knew what he'd been up to, but it was unnerving. John wasn't obsessive by nature, but something had caught his attention and Greg had found it difficult to distract him from it.

He followed John up the stairs and closed the door behind them. John was already undoing the buttons on his shirt, and Greg crossed to him and pulled his hands away.

"Let me."

He kissed John and finished the buttons, then pushed the shirt back off his shoulders. He tugged John's t-shirt over his head and pushed him back against the bed. John fell back against the mattress with the t-shirt still tangled around his arms, and Greg pushed them over his head and held them there.

"I think I like you like this."

John stared back up at him, lips parted slightly. His chest rose and fell, and Greg hesitated a moment before lowering his lips to John's chest.

"Is this all right?"

"Yeah." John's voice was barely more than a whisper.

Greg unfastened John's jeans and eased them down over his hips, taking his pants with them. Greg stepped back enough to undress himself and looked down at the naked man stretched out before him. John's cock was already hard and bobbed up from his groin, and his hands, still tangled in the shirt, were clenched into fists over his head. He was looking at the ceiling, though his eyes were unfocused, and his breathing had begun to even out.

Greg had felt the tension rising between them in the taxi on the way home and hadn't been at all surprised when John had jumped him just inside the door. The irony of it all hadn't escaped him either: Donovan had suggested he was trying to become Sherlock for John, but in a strange way, it was the other way round: John was becoming Sherlock for him. He wasn't sure how he felt about that.

He stepped out of his trousers and kicked his clothes to the side before sitting next to John on the bed. He slid one hand across John's chest, fingers trailing through the sparse hair there.

"What do you want?"

John closed his eyes and exhaled, and then untangled his hands from the shirt. He tossed it aside and looked up at Greg. "You said you wanted to make me forget anyone else I've ever been with. Could you? I mean…" He swallowed and looked away.

Greg stretched out beside him on the bed, propped up on one elbow. "How did--" He broke off for a moment and pursed his lips, considering his next words carefully. "Tell me what to do."

"Go slow." John reached up and touched Greg's cheek, then slid that hand around to the back of his neck to pull him into a kiss. "And then fuck me."

Greg nodded and closed his lips over John's again. He couldn't erase the memory of Sherlock from John's lips and mind and body, but he could at least give him something different, something Sherlock couldn't -- or wouldn't -- do. He wasn't naïve enough to think it would be better, but that didn't matter. Not anymore.

He used his hands and his mouth and then slick fingers until John was writhing beneath him, begging him, and only then did he press into John's body. He kept his movements slow, one hand on John's cock, John's body nearly folded in half beneath him, steady strokes timed with the movement of his fingers.

John's eyes were closed and his mouth open, and Greg watched his face, watched the way his forehead wrinkled when something felt particularly good and then the way his face relaxed again when Greg pulled him back from the edge. He wanted to be as not like Sherlock as possible, but he had little more than his imagination to know what that meant.

That obsessiveness, the cleverness, the quickness with which he made decisions, the grace of his hands and the sharpness of his tongue -- all of it would have made for an interesting combination in a lover. He was sorry that he hadn't known what that was like, what it would be like to see Sherlock come undone beneath him like this, like John was doing now.

John, who was trying to solve cases on his own and clinging to that fucking rubber ball and obsessing over mysterious comments on his blog and coded messages that seemed more important to him than eating or sleeping, or even fucking Greg, and--

Oh, God.

"God, that's," John said, and Greg shook off the thought. They hadn't spoken for twenty minutes, had barely made sounds other than groans and gasps. "It's… Jesus, I'm--" The words after that melted into groans; John's body clenched around his cock and there was sticky warmth between them and on Greg's hand and Greg kissed him, swallowing the last of his cries, and oh God that was perfect, and he'd done that.

"Okay?" he whispered, and John laughed and pressed his hands over his face.

"I can't remember the last time I came while being fucked. God, Greg."

Greg grinned and pushed away enough to look at him. "That's a yes, right?"

John shifted beneath him and Greg gasped at the sensation of John's body clenching his cock. "Your turn. How do you want me?"

"Just stay right there." He pushed in again and John winced.

"Maybe more lube first."

"Ah, right." Greg fumbled for the tube on the bedside table and worked a hand between them. "Better? You know, we don't have to--"

"No, I want you to fuck me." John pushed up on his elbows and kissed him. "It's the way you like to come, isn't it? You like that better than anything else."

"I do, God." Greg pressed him back down against the mattress, his eyes squeezed shut. God, he needed. "I want to fuck you hard. Is that--"

"Yes, do it." There was just enough desperation in his tone to make Greg believe he meant it.

"Tell me if--"

"Just fuck me, come on."

He hadn't been close before, but it didn't take long to bring himself back to the edge. It was so good, so tight, so perfect, and he didn't know why Sherlock hadn't wanted this.

And there it was again, that thought that was so fucking insane it nearly derailed him. All of those people on the website who thought Sherlock had faked his death -- did John believe them? The ball had meant something, something Greg had looked up but hadn't let himself think about, and Molly's blank face -- the handwriting on the package -- Mycroft's offer -- the fucking tone of the comments from that one commenter, whose messages John was --

No, no, no. Crazy. Fucking crazy, and this, this was real: John, here, now, beneath him, hot and warm and wanting him and God, he was so close, right there, just again, like that--

He pushed in as far as he could when he came, vaguely aware that John was whispering words of encouragement, that John's arms were around him, pulling him down, soothing him. He slumped against John's body and shivered despite the fact that he was still sweating. His cock throbbed and he stayed still, wanting to be inside John for as long as possible. He wasn't sure what would happen when he let go.

John sighed against his hair, pressed a kiss to his temple.

"John?"

"Yeah?"

He swallowed, pressed his face against John's shoulder, and kept his eyes very tightly closed. He wanted to stay here forever and not know, just have this moment a bit longer.

But he couldn't.

He took a deep breath and released it, then wet his lips.

"Sherlock's alive, isn't he?"

John went very still.

*****

There was a long moment of silence. Greg could feel his heart pounding in his throat; he was certain John could feel it as well. John exhaled slowly and dropped his arms away from Greg's body, and Greg pushed back enough to pull his dick out and move to the side. John's hands covered his face; it was completely unclear what his reaction was.

"John?"

John made a strange sound, something between a laugh and a sob. "I'm not going mad, am I? If you've thought it as well, then it can't be that I'm fucking losing it. Because really, Greg, I've spent the last few weeks convincing myself that Sherlock is actually alive."

Greg exhaled. "You've thought about this for weeks?" He felt a pang that John hadn't said anything about it -- but then, why should he have? It was mad even to think it, and until two minutes ago, Greg would have thought John had gone round the bend.

John reached over to the night stand for the towel he'd taken to keeping there and cleaned himself off. "If I'm to be completely honest, I've suspected it all along, but it wasn't until a few days ago that I was… well, certain isn't quite the right word. It's still possible that someone very clever is fucking with me."

"Like Moriarty?"

"Perhaps." John dropped the towel to the floor and stared up at the ceiling. "So tell me what you know."

Greg took a moment to dispose of the condom and then stretched out next to John on the bed. "The package you got, with the ball -- the handwriting wasn't Molly's. She's sent me thank you notes a few times, and she has this loopy girly writing. So I wondered if it was actually from her."

John nodded. "Go on."

"And then I saw her a few days ago and I asked her about it. She had no idea what I was talking about." Greg paused to look at him, but John kept his gaze on the ceiling, stonefaced. "So… God, this is going to make me sound like a fucking creeper, but bear with me. I googled 'rubber ball' to see if there was some hidden meaning, one of those jokes everyone knows about that I'd missed. And you know how Google does that thing where it finishes your search terms for you? One of the suggestions was 'trick pulse'."

John nodded. "Right."

"But I suppose someone could have been fucking with you by sending it to you. I mean, how likely is it, really?"

"I saw Sherlock with a ball exactly like that one in his hand the day he jumped."

Greg closed his eyes for a moment. "Okay. Okay, that's-- Wow, shit. So you think he used it for that?"

"Maybe. I honestly don't remember if I felt a pulse that day. It's all a blur now." It seemed as if John was about to say something more, but stopped himself. "What else?"

"You know what else. The web site. The faked death thread. The codes. That one commenter who sounds so fucking familiar."

John pressed his hands against his forehead. "You're forgetting about Mycroft."

"Right. He mentioned an analyst he was keeping a tight leash on, one who was angry that the security agent had killed the man he wanted to interrogate."

"An analyst who does interrogations?"

"That's what I said. Mycroft changed the subject. And he's terribly keen on moving forward with taking down Moriarty's criminal network."

"Which he wasn't in a hurry to act on before. But that's not actually what I meant." John dropped his hands and turned to look at Greg.

"Oh?"

John paused for a moment before continuing. "I saw Mycroft before it all happened. I went to yell at him for his carelessness, and he confessed that he'd essentially handed Moriarty everything he needed to ruin Sherlock. He barely seemed sorry about it at the time. I was… God, furious isn't even the word. I couldn't believe that Sherlock's own brother could be that stupid."

Greg nearly gasped as understanding dawned. "But he isn't that stupid, is he?"

"He's not stupid at all. He's perhaps even cleverer than Sherlock."

Greg stared back at John. "You think it was a set-up."

John nodded. "I think they planned it together, that they thought making it look like Sherlock was gone would provide their best chance to get Moriarty." He exhaled at that, apparently relieved finally to have said the words aloud. "So am I crazy?"

"I don't know. But if you are, then so am I." Greg stared up at the ceiling, his mind whirling as all the pieces fell into place. He could see it all now -- he just hoped it wasn't simply what he wanted to see.

John stared at him for a long moment. "What do we do now?"

"You seem to think there's something in the messages on the website. Do you think they're for you?"

"The newest one is different from the others, and it was posted right after I started the blog again. I can't help but think it's meant for me."

Greg pushed himself to sitting. "Well, let's take a look."

"Now?"

"Can you honestly tell me there's anything else you'd rather do?"

John exhaled. "No."

Five minutes later they had both cleaned up and dressed, and were huddled over the screen of the laptop.

"Most of these," John said, pointing at the coded messages on the screen as he scrolled down, "are coded in one of two ways. Many are simple substitutions of one letter for another. In order to decode, you have to figure out which letter stands for what. Sometimes they use numbers as well, but it works the same."

Greg nodded. "Classic spy novel stuff."

"The other way is based on a code system we learned about in a case we solved a year ago. I wrote about it on the blog."

"The one with the London A to Z book?" John looked up sharply and Greg shrugged. "I told you, we all read it." That and keeping up with the blog had been a prerequisite for being Sherlock's unofficial "handler" at Scotland Yard.

"Right, that one. Anyway, I reckoned that if it were really from Sherlock, he would have used a book he knew I owned, something I wouldn't have got rid of after he died. Or disappeared, whatever." He casually waved a hand in the air and Greg was struck by the fact that Sherlock being dead was no longer part of John's reality.

Greg swallowed. He had only just grown used to the idea of Sherlock being gone and all of this was making his head spin with questions and possibilities. Unlike John, he hadn't had weeks to adjust to the idea. He pushed all of it aside for the moment and forced himself to focus on the task at hand.

"So you tried all the books you have?"

John nodded. "I got nowhere. So then I figured it must be a substitution cipher, and spent the last two days trying to work it out." He pressed a hand over his forehead. "I must be missing something. Or I'm being fucked with, I don't know."

Greg frowned at the screen. "If it were really from him, he'd want you to work it out. He wouldn't have made it hard for you."

John snorted. "This is Sherlock we're talking about. He'd enjoy watching me struggle with it."

"No, I don't think so. He would have wanted only you to work it out. He even said so, didn't he? I only expect one or two of you to be able to work it out. He would have made it something easy for you but hard for everyone else." He looked away from the screen for a moment -- he was likely in the latter category.

"So what, he would have used some really rare book, something he knows only I would have?" John held his hands out to the side and then dropped them again, clearly frustrated. "I've gone through everything I've got, even books I wasn't sure he knew I had, like weird porn under my bed. Nothing worked."

"You keep weird porn under your bed?"

"Where else do you keep weird porn?" John pointed to the screen. "But this doesn't match up with anything, and I don't know what else to do."

They sat in silence for along moment, both of them staring at the laptop screen.

"I'm hungry," Greg said at last. "Why don't we go get something to eat, get our minds off it a bit, and then come back and work on it all night."

"What, beer and pizza?" John half-smiled. "Okay, yeah. Why not?"

There was a pizza restaurant a ten-minute walk away, a hole-in-the-wall spot with half a dozen red-checkered tables and a large selection of draught beer. John had never been there, to Greg's surprise, and was happy to let Greg order for them both. John didn't talk much while they waited for their food; he listened to Greg rant about how hard it was to find authentic Italian food in London and nodded every so often, but it was clear he wasn't really listening.

The pizza arrived at last and they both dug in. Silence stretched between them for a solid minute, and Greg finally couldn't bear it any longer.

"So if he is alive, why'd he do it? Why did he have to fake his own death like that?"

John traced a fingertip around the rim of his own glass and looked up. "You mean without telling anyone?" The not even me was implied, but Greg heard it all the same.

"We're assuming Mycroft is in on it, right?" Greg clenched his jaw. "It would at least explain why he left the funeral so early, as if it was such a horrible inconvenience for him."

John pressed his lips together and looked thoughtful for a moment. "I've thought about it a lot the last couple of weeks, and I've no idea why he didn't think he could tell me. Perhaps he thought he was protecting me somehow, that he needed to do this alone."

"Do what alone?"

John glanced around the small restaurant and dropped his voice. "Finish off Moriarty. I suppose he thought I wouldn't be able to help, that I'd just get in the way." He tried to smile, but the tension underneath it was clear.

"You're angry at him. I don't blame you."

John's face fell and he looked down at the half-eaten slice of pizza on his plate. "I'm not angry; I'm fucking furious. Why would he put me through all of that? He knows what I… how I…"

"This is Sherlock we're talking about, remember? He has fucked up ways of showing he cares."

"Don't I know it."

Greg watched him for a moment, tracing the paths John's whirling emotions were leaving on his face. "Maybe it wasn't meant to happen the way it did. Maybe it was a back-up plan, or something, and he didn't have time to tell you."

"He could have left a fucking note explaining it all." John's gaze was firmly fixed on the table.

"He did, didn't he? He sent you the ball. He knew you'd work it out."

John looked up at that and his expression softened a bit. "He could disguise his handwriting, did you know? He had studied all these different types of writing and how to analyze them and he could write like a child or a teenage girl or a pensioner, or whatever. But he always did a few letters the same no matter what, and it drove him mad. He once practiced for days on end, but when he wrote quickly, he couldn't get it right."

"So the writing on the package was his, then?"

"Everything but the k and t was off. And he'd have known I would notice. Well, he'd have hoped, anyway."

"You see? He wanted you to work it out."

"So why can't I work this fucking code out, then?" John pressed his fingers against his temples as if his head hurt. "There must be something completely obvious that I'm missing."

Greg took another sip of his beer and sighed. "Maybe it's not meant to be decoded. Maybe the message is in plain sight."

John laughed and shook his head. "That's nearly fucked up enough to--" He paused and looked up at Greg. "Say that again."

Greg blinked at him. "Erm… maybe the message is hiding in plain sight."

John's face grew oddly pale. "Oh, God… That's got to be it. That's exactly like--" He stood, pushing his chair back so quickly it made a loud scraping sound on the floor. "I've got to go, I--"

"Go, I'll get the bill."

John nodded and nearly sprinted out the door. Greg turned back to the half-eaten pizza, his appetite long gone. He signaled the server, who nodded in immediate understanding -- it wasn't the first time he'd had to leave this place halfway through a meal, after all. He finished the beer while he waited (no need to let a perfectly good pint go to waste) and let the events of the last hour replay in his mind. He'd done his best to remain skeptical, to be neutral and objective about the evidence they'd discussed, but John's growing excitement was contagious. If Sherlock were actually alive, if this entire thing had been a secret plot to finish Moriarty once and for all, then the fact that Sherlock had willingly sacrificed his reputation and his livelihood to do it was nothing short of stunning for a man who claimed to be a sociopath. Greg wasn't sure John would see it that way, but if it were true, it would change everything. He had to be ready, to make sure the Metropolitan Police were ready.

Whether he was ready was another question altogether.

Fifteen minutes later he returned to the flat, pizza box in hand, to find John sitting on the sofa, staring frantically at the computer screen.

"Any luck?"

John shook his head. "Here, take another look. Do you see anything in there that makes sense?"

Greg sat next to him and took the laptop.

Message: ghhldsjftPK188417fnnd0801subl
Hint: dhkxp23753g53

"There's a backwards 'bus'."

"Yes, I thought of that, followed by some numbers and nonsense letters, perhaps a bus number or route or time. I searched but couldn't find anything that matched. Not in London, anyway."

Greg stared at the screen for a full minute, but there was nothing else that really stood out. He frowned and sat back against the cushions of the sofa. "Whoever this RandomCrazyAnon guy is, he's got Sherlock's number, that's for certain."

"RandomStupidAnon," John corrected.

"And what's up with the name anyway? Sherlock would never call himself stupid, not even ironically. He'd call everyone else stupid, but--"

"Shit!" John hissed and yanked the laptop away from him. "Fucking buggering hell, I… Oh my God, that's it." An expression somewhere between glee and astonishment spread over his face and he waved a hand at Greg. "Quick, paper, pencil!"

Greg scrambled for the pad and pencil and handed them to him. "What?"

"Oh my God, there it is. It's… Oh, God, how did I not see this before?"

"See what?"

"RandomStupidAnon -- RSA." He scribbled something Greg couldn't quite make out on the pad of paper. "We had this case about seven or eight months ago, and it all ended up being classified, so I never blogged about it. One of the things that came up during the case was a coding system called RSA. It's only been declassified in the last decade or so, but… well, that part's not important." He paused to stare at the paper.

"Okay, secret code system," Greg prompted after a moment.

"Right. It's a public key system, meaning that there are two different codes, one that's given out publicly and one that's kept private. The public key is used to encode messages and anyone can do that, but you need the private key to decode, and that's nearly impossible to break in practice."

"Wait, so… so he's using a code that's impossible to break to send you a message?" He had to admit it sounded like something Sherlock would do.

"Impossible to break, but completely easy to use if you have the private key. And here--" He circled at a string of letters in the hint. "--he's told us exactly how to get the private key."

Greg stared at the paper; John had circled dhkx. He shrugged and looked up at John, whose eyes were ablaze with excitement now.

"Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange. He made me learn how to do it during that case, and I was annoyed as fuck because it involved some fairly complicated maths. And of course he never said, 'Hey, we might need this to communicate in secret one day' or I might've paid closer attention. But I'm sure I can look it up." He opened another tab and googled, then spent a few minutes staring at a Wikipedia page with more mathematical symbols on it than Greg felt comfortable with. He sat for a moment and felt utterly useless.

"I'll put the kettle on," he said at last, and stood and crossed to the kitchen. His mind was whirling now, and not just from the fact that all of this made far more sense to John than it did to him. If John was right, it probably meant Sherlock was really out there, trying to contact him. But why did he have to do it in secret? Why go to such lengths when he could send an email or pick up a fucking phone?

The kettle whistled and he poured two cups. If Sherlock were truly alive, Greg wasn't sure whether he'd first want to hug him or punch him.

He returned to the sofa with two cups of tea, both of which he ended up holding because John was typing numbers into some sort of online calculator. "Do I even want to know what you're doing?"

"The key exchange works like this," John said, picking up the pad of paper. "Two people want to exchange a secret, but they have to do it in a public place, like a web forum, where everyone watching will be able to eavesdrop. So they publicly agree on two numbers that they'll use, which he's already done here, see?" He circled two sets of characters in the message hint: p23753 and g53 and paused to grin at the page. "He's even using the same variables as the ones on the Wiki page. He knew I'd have to look it up."

Greg decided it would be best if he pretended he was following all of this. "Okay."

"So those are publicly known. What happens next is that he and I each choose a number that we'll keep secret. He's chosen one already, and I'll choose…" He paused and looked thoughtful for a moment. "I think it has to be a prime number."

"Like seven?

"Larger than that. Is 61 prime?"

"Ermm..." Greg frowned. Not divisible by three or five or--

"Wait, I can google that." John typed Is 61 prime? into the search bar and a split second later got half a dozen results confirming it was. "Okay, so now--" He flipped back over to the Wikipedia page. "Right, now we each have a number, and we do this computation." He wrote on the notepad.

5361 (mod 23753)

"Do you actually know what all of that means?"

"Sort of. Happily, there are online calculators that can do the arithmetic for us. Let's see…" He clicked on another tab and typed numbers into a web form. "I get 9550, and we'll send that back to him."

John tabbed back over to the discussion forum and clicked the Leave comment button. "Oh God, look, Temlar113. Sherlock's last login and password are still here. He must have saved it on my machine before he…" John trailed off and pressed enter.

Greg turned to look at him. "If it's really him, he'll know this is you. No one else would have that login information. You said no one on the site ever suspected it was him."

John nodded, his jaw clenched. Greg watched as he typed 9550 into the comment form and pressed submit.

"What now?"

"Now we wait for him to send us his result." John frowned and looked at the message again. After a moment he grinned at the paper and circled some characters in the message. "Look, he's already told us what the public key is. PK is 188417."

"So when he sends his result, you'll have the private key?"

"Not quite, but I'll just have to do another computation to get it." He set the laptop on the sofa table and leaned back against the sofa cushions. He took a deep breath, his brow furrowed, and released it slowly, as if trying to calm himself. John was always so steady, so sure, and this was the closest to the surface Greg had ever seen his emotions rising.

"Are you all right?" Greg asked after a moment.

John turned to look at him. "Yes. Maybe. I'm not sure, honestly. Am I just seeing what I want to see? And if it's really him…" He paused for a moment and looked up at the ceiling.

"It raises a lot of questions, I know."

"I get Mycroft, but… why did he trust Molly and not me?"

"Shit, I hadn't even thought of that." Greg closed his eyes. He'd just seen her, and all that time she'd known, had been in on the secret.

"Goddammit. Why did I fall in love with such an immense prick?"

Greg looked over at him: John's earlier excitement had abated and morphed into something else altogether, something complex and tense. He felt a sudden compulsion to distract him from it, to pull him back from the edge, to keep him grounded in the reality of here and now. He bumped his knee against John's. "It's really that big, is it?"

John's brow furrowed for a full second before he turned to look at Greg. He finally shook his head and laughed, and pressed back with his own knee. "Well, no, not really. Average, I suppose?"

John smiled and there it was again, that rush of emotion that Greg had been so carefully avoiding dwelling on -- something that went well beyond attraction, something that was now mingled with hope and fear about what might be coming next and what it would mean for the two of them. John's expression was one of such fondness, though, that Greg couldn't help leaning forward and pressing a kiss against his lips. John kissed him back without hesitation. He slid one hand around Greg's shoulders and moved closer to him as he deepened the kiss, and Greg tried very hard not to think about the fact that John could kiss him like this seconds after saying he was in love with someone else.

John pulled back and pressed his forehead against Greg's. "I'm sorry I've been such an arse these last few days."

Greg smiled. "I wasn't all that cross, but if this is how you plan to apologize, I'll have to find more shit to get pissed off about."

John laughed. "Don't expect me to make it easy for you."

Greg stroked John's cheek with his fingertips. "You're amazing."

They stared at each other for a long moment. Greg felt his cheeks warm and he looked away. He hadn't meant to say it out loud.

A pinging sound came from the computer and they both turned to look. John picked up the laptop and stared at the screen. RandomStupidAnon had replied to his comment with the number 15740.

"Oh, God." John looked back up at Greg, and he felt an odd sort of anxiety shoot through him. They were going to know one way or the other very soon.

John plucked the notepad from where it had fallen on the floor and wrote the new result under the old one. "So now we take this number and do the same thing, raise it to the sixty-first power mod that other big number, what was it? Ah, yes." He clicked over to the tab with the online calculator and typed the numbers in, then pressed submit.

Greg leaned forward to see the result: 20333. "Okay, what now?"

"That's it," John said. "That's the private key."

"So we can send a message now?"

"Yes, I think so. We can send him a message by using the public key to encode and the private key to decode, and he can do the same. It should be completely confidential." John tabbed back over to the RSA Wiki page and then frowned. "Shit, no. There's one more piece of information we need." He clicked on the discussion forum tab again and scrolled up the thread to look at the original message. "I don't think we have it yet. We have to wait for him to give it to us."

As if in response, the computer pinged again and a new message from RandomStupidAnon appeared at the bottom of the thread.

Very good, Temlar113. If you want to try another, check the forum.

"Of course," John said as he scrolled to the top and clicked the link for the main forum. "He can't put everything in one thread or someone else might be able to work out what we're doing. The numbers aren't actually large enough for it to be terribly secure, I think."

Sure enough, RandomStupidAnon had made a new post to the main codebreaking forum.

RandomStupidAnon
Posts: 386
30 July 23:34 Since most of you had no luck with the last coded message, here's another:
Message: 21398, 372271, 38466, 209127, 159172, 355235, 39971, 98989
Hint: ghjstn410549dhl
Good luck!

"And he's given us the n value we needed, look." John pointed at the hint on the screen and then reached for the notepad again. He wrote down the message and then n = 410549. He took a deep breath and clicked over to the online calculator tab he'd just used. "Here we go, then."

Greg sat back and watched him enter numbers in the app and get new numbers, which he wrote down on the notepad and then stared at with a frown. Greg leaned over his shoulder to take a look.

214, 2011, 301, 403, 13, 604, 1714, 2018

John pursed his lips. "So now the question is, did he just do a simple alpha-numeric substitution?"

"Like A is one, B is two, that sort of thing?"

"Yeah, except some of these numbers have two digits and some have four. I'm thinking each of the numbers represents two letters in the message, which means this one--" He pointed at the number 13. "--should actually be zero-zero-one-three. So that probably means he's using A is zero, B is one, and so on. Let me try it." John quickly wrote down the alphabet and then numbered each letter starting from zero. "So two is C, fourteen is O, twenty is U, yeah, I think this is correct."

Greg sat back against the sofa and waited, a knot of anxiety forming in his stomach. This was it, after all. If RandomStupidAnon was really Sherlock, he would have chosen his first message carefully. It should be obvious it was really him. At least, Greg hoped it would be.

After half a minute more, John dropped the pencil and the notepad and put his hands over his face. Greg sat forward again.

"John?"

John dropped his hands and stared straight ahead. His face was pale and his forehead furrowed, and his eyes were bright.

Greg picked up the notepad from the floor. "Could be dangerous."

John exhaled, a long slow breath blown steadily through his lips before rummaging through his pocket for his phone and tapping at the screen. He scrolled for several long seconds and then handed the phone to Greg.

Text from: Sherlock Holmes
30 January 2010 20:43
Could be dangerous. SH.

"That was one of the first texts he ever sent me, right after we met. He'd already worked out who I was and what I needed, well before I ever did."

Greg swallowed, hard. Jesus. "And you've never mentioned that to anyone?"

"It's something only he would know." John shook his head. "Unless, of course, someone found his phone and went back through his texts to find something specifically to trick me into thinking…" He winced and looked away.

Greg gritted his teeth. John had a point. They needed something more to be certain. "All right, so you should ask him a question. Something only he would know the answer to."

"Right." John pressed his fingertips into his temples. He picked up the pad and started writing.

Greg left him to it and went to take a shower. His mind wandered in the steam, from a jolt of excitement at the idea of seeing Sherlock again to a stab of fear of what it would mean if this wasn't real, the cruelty of John being given this sort of hope and then having it taken away all over again. People didn't get second chances like this very often. What would John do with his? And hell, what would Greg himself do?

He changed into pyjamas and settled next to John on the sofa to see him still writing on the notepad.

"Still working on the message?"

John shook his head. "Already sent it and got a response. Decoding now."

"Bloody hell," Greg muttered. He hated this sort of suspense.

John sat back after a moment and nodded.

"What?" Greg looked at the notepad, where John had just written friends protect people.

"I asked him what was the last thing I said to him in person." John looked up at him with an oddly tense smile. "It's him, Greg. I know it's him."

Greg sank back into the sofa, his mind reeling. "Fuck me."

John scrubbed a hand over his face. "Yeah. So what the hell do we do now?"

Greg shook his head. "I've no idea."

*****

Greg had no idea what time it was when he opened his eyes. Sunlight peeked through the blinds covering the windows in his bedroom, but his mind was foggy with the disorientation that comes the morning after one stays up half the night.

He yawned and reached for his phone on the bedside table. Nearly eleven. Jesus, getting back on a work schedule was going to be hell. He hadn't had to be awake, dressed, and functioning at half-eight in the morning in quite a while.

John was curled up on the sofa under a blanket, sound asleep. They had still been exchanging messages with Sherlock when Greg had dozed off for the third time and decided he'd prefer to sleep in a horizontal position. By the look of the notepad on the floor by John's head, quite a lot of communication had happened before John had finally fallen asleep.

Greg picked it up from the floor and turned a few pages. There were rows of numbers and letters on each page, interspersed with the occasional phrase of recognizable English.

are you all right

I am perfectly fine

Greg felt a twinge of relief yet again: they'd considered the possibility that Sherlock's survival had been by chance and that perhaps he was seriously injured and recovering in some secret location. A few more exchanged messages had focused on that subject until they'd been satisfied he was physically fine. Then the real fun had started.

did you really intend to die

no remember I told you it was a magic trick

you told me you were a fake

they were watching so I had to make them believe it

who was watching

That was the point at which they'd heard nothing for an hour and had ended up speculating what Sherlock could possibly have meant: MI5, Moriarty's people, or some as-yet-unidentified element. Greg had decided to call it a night at that point, and John had promised to wake him if anything important came through. Greg flipped through the next few pages to see what he'd missed.

I will explain but not now not here

we can help you

I am counting on it

where are you

London

are you safe

extremely

I want to help you

go to sleep

That was the end of the conversation, apparently. Greg set the notepad down and picked up John's laptop from the sofa table, and settled in a chair to check his email. There was nothing urgent, though he was starting to get "bringing you up to speed"-type emails from colleagues who were clearly anxious for him to return. He clicked on the tab where they'd exchanged messages with Sherlock the night before. The thread consisted of alternating posts between the two user names, each a string of seemingly random numbers. It was strange to think that something so ordinary in appearance could have shifted the gravity of their entire universe.

Further down the thread were a handful of comments from others, apparently added after the coded conversation had stopped:

FFS, get a room, you two.

Hey, RandomStupidAnon, I think you've finally met your match.

^^THIS. ;-) I haven't seen Temlar113 around much lately, but s/he is almost as fucking annoying as RandomStupidAnon.

Greg snorted at the irony: who would be a better match for Sherlock than Sherlock himself? It probably wasn't a good idea for the two of them to draw any more attention to themselves, though. In fact, they should probably keep an eye on the discussion forums just to be sure no one was getting suspicious. He clicked the link for the main page and scanned the titles of the newest threads. His own name caught his eye and he scrolled back up to read more carefully.

Greg Lestrade: Just John's flatmate or something more?

The post already had more than 100 comments. With more than a touch of trepidation, he clicked the link.

"Morning." He glanced up to see John pushing himself to sitting on the sofa. His hair stuck out comically and his shirt was wrinkled beyond belief.

Greg's gaze flicked back to the laptop screen. "Get any sleep?"

"Some. Tortured dreams, though." He paused and yawned. "Any more messages?"

"It looked like the last one from him was around four o'clock."

"Yeah. That one was Go to sleep."

"You two might want to be careful. Your conversation attracted some attention."

"Is anyone suspicious?"

"Not that I can tell. They're far more interested in arguing about whether you and I are shagging, and if we are, what that says about whether or not you and Sherlock were shagging."

John groaned and flopped back down on the sofa. "At least they're predictable."

Greg frowned at the screen. "What's a ship war?"

"I don't think I want to know." The reply was muffled by the blanket John had just pulled over his head.

Greg scrolled down the screen, skimming past most of the comments, but paused when he recognized one particular user name near the end of the thread. "Oh, God. Sherlock really can't leave well enough alone, can he?"

"No, he -- wait, what?"

Greg's eyes narrowed at the screen as he read.

DCqueen
Posts: 734
1 August 08:27 I want to know what the Fakers think: John/Sherlock AND John/Greg? Possible? Harrysgirl547
Posts: 602
1 August 08:34 I'm sorry, but NO. I'm not convinced Sherlock is alive, but if he is, I think he and John would get back together. No question. Jamie89
Posts: 591
1 August 08:37 I'm a Faker and ITA with Harrysgirl547. Obvsly John doesn't know the truth and when he finds out? Sucks for Greg Lestrade, but hey, that's what you get on the rebound. WorkaholicJane
Posts: 298
1 August 08:38 Did a fucking tin hat truck dump its load on this thread? JFC. RandomStupidAnon
Posts: 437
1 August 08:41 The futility of speculating about others' personal lives aside, your collective determination to cling to an outdated notion of monogamy is quite bizarre. Jamie89
Posts: 592
1 August 08:44 *eye roll* And here I was just thinking how lovely it was to have an entire thread without you butting in to be a troll. FTR, monogamy is NOT outdated. Some of us like it quite a lot. RandomStupidAnon
Posts: 445
1 August 08:46 Despite what cultural tyrants and religious leaders would have you believe, monogamy isn't necessarily a natural state for human beings. We vary from serial monogamists to pathologically promiscuous, and polyamorous relationships are far more common than you might think. Anjela8
Posts: 830
1 August 08:47 0_0 Hang on, RandomStupidAnon, are you actually wading into a ship war and taking a position on the fence? Who's speculating about people's personal lives now? RandomStupidAnon
Posts: 447
1 August 08:48 I fail to see how anything I've written above could be construed as speculation about who may or may not be shagging whom. There are several anthropological studies on the matter. I'd give references, but we both know I'd be wasting my time.



"Well, what did he say?"

Greg looked up to see John peering at him from under the blanket. "Nothing really. The usual bit of snark, you know. Want some toast? I'm hungry." He closed the laptop and set it aside, and forced himself to meet John's eyes.

"Sure." John studied his face for a moment, but he didn't say anything more.

Greg crossed to the kitchen and immediately chastised himself for not closing the tab on that discussion thread before closing the computer. All John had to do was open it again and he'd see exactly the snippet of conversation that Greg had just read.

It wasn't something he was ready to face yet: his feelings for John (and for Sherlock, for that matter) were complicated, and until last night, the possibility that Sherlock was still alive was little more than a fancy. A fancy that had sparked some intriguing dreams the last few nights, sure, but not a reality he'd truly expected to face.

He started the coffee and put slices of bread in the toaster, and then leaned back against the counter. He hadn't had time to think about the future, hadn't let himself just yet. In a couple of weeks he'd go back to work at Scotland Yard, and then he'd see far less of John, even though they were sharing a flat. His job required long, unpredictable hours; it was part of the reason he and Jodi hadn't been able to work it out. It was a lot to ask of a partner, he knew, but his job was important to him -- this time away from it had only reinforced that in his mind. He liked the idea of friends with benefits, but deep down he knew he wasn't wired to live that way for any length of time. Twenty years ago it may have been fine, but now he needed more than that, more than convenient sex with no commitment. It seemed unlikely at this point that he could ask John for a commitment of any sort.

Sherlock was going to come back into John's life -- there was no doubt about that -- and it was clearer than ever that John was desperately in love with him. Greg cared enough for John that he didn't want to get in the way, but the thought of stepping aside after these last few weeks that had been almost perfect in so many ways--

The toast popped up then; he pushed the thought away as he rummaged in the refrigerator for butter and jam. He took the lot to the table and peered around the doorway into the sitting room. To his relief, John was still on the sofa and the laptop was where Greg had left it. They could delay the awkward breaking-it-off conversation a bit longer, at least.

He poured two cups of coffee and splashed some on his thumb in the process. He hissed and raised his thumb to his mouth to suck lightly on the burnt spot.

"You all right?" John stood in the doorway, arms folded across his chest. Greg swallowed at the sight of him, rumpled and scruffy and tired, and somehow still completely adorable.

Shit, it was too late, wasn't it? Greg felt his heart sink. He was completely, utterly fucked.

"My thumb… coffee..." He shrugged.

John crossed to him and pulled the injured hand toward him. Greg tensed immediately and John raised his eyebrows. "I'm a doctor, remember? Eh, it's not bad at all. Run some cold water over it." He looked up and didn't let go of Greg's hand.

Greg took a step back and hit the counter, and John stepped forward again. "You're not all right, are you? This whole thing has you completely freaked out."

Greg laughed, inexplicably. "I don't understand how you can be so calm, to be honest."

John's arms wound around Greg's shoulders. "I've had a lot of time to get used to the idea. Kiss me."

Greg's jaw clenched and he looked away. "John--"

"What, you're a better kisser after a cup of coffee?"

Greg couldn't help but smile at that, and John took advantage of the moment to lean in and kiss him. Greg yielded to it, let himself melt against John, pull him close and feel wanted, just for a bit longer.
After a glorious minute, John pulled out of the kiss and nodded his head in the direction of the table. "We'd better get to that before it gets cold."

Greg watched as he plucked a mug of coffee from the counter and settled at the table. That kiss hadn't felt like a goodbye. In fact, it had felt quite the opposite.

He stirred sugar into his coffee and sat across from John. He had no idea what John wanted. It didn't quite feel like it was time to ask, either -- Sherlock wasn't actually here at the table, after all, and there was no way of knowing when that would happen.

Sherlock would have known they'd see his comments on that thread, which implied that he was telling them that it was fine, that he knew they were together, and he didn't mind -- at least, as long as there was still room for him, perhaps? The thought made Greg's head spin.

*****

The car rocked slightly on the tracks as the train began to slow. Greg's gaze dropped from an advert for an evening training course back down to John, who was staring resolutely ahead.

"Now approaching Paddington Station. Change here for District and Circle lines and National Rail service."

Greg put a hand on John's shoulder and squeezed it. John nodded.

They walked in silence for several minutes and finally ascended the escalators into Paddington Station. People bustled past on their way home from work or out for the evening. John turned in a circle, looking around the station.

"This way," he said after a moment. Neither of them had spoken since they'd left the flat.

Greg followed him to another set of escalators that led up to the second level. His heart was in his throat now. "I still don’t understand why he picked such a public place. If he's supposed to be dead, after all--"

"No one will be looking for him, will they? Or maybe he'll be in disguise."

Greg tried to swallow down his apprehension. His senses were on high alert now; he was prepared for this to be a trap of some sort, though he'd never say as much to John.

It had been two days since they'd started decoding Sherlock's messages. All of John's waking hours had been spent sitting by the computer, waiting for the next one to arrive. They were always terse and didn't say much more than they already knew, and as time wore on, John had grown more and more frustrated.

And then, three hours earlier, John had tossed the now-weathered notepad onto the sofa table and looked over at Greg.

"He wants us to meet him," he'd said. "Tonight."

"Shit," was all Greg had managed to say in response.

"He says he doesn't want to answer questions on the forum, that we need to talk about it in person."

Questions meant the information John and Greg were both dying to know: how and why Sherlock had faked his death, and what exactly he'd been doing since.

"Where are we going?" Greg had asked, and that was how he found himself here now, passing a Starbucks and walking through the doors of the Hilton into the warmly decorated lobby lounge.

John paused just inside the door and Greg only barely avoided walking right into him. They both scanned the low tables and burgundy leather chairs for a familiar silhouette.

"Fucking hell," John said at last, and Greg followed his gaze to a table tucked near the base of an ornate staircase. Sitting with legs crossed, a glass of brandy in his hand, and looking at the screen of his phone was Mycroft Holmes.

John crossed the lounge and stopped before the table. Mycroft looked up; his eyes widened in shock for a fraction of a second before his expression settled into something between annoyance and resignation. He set the glass of brandy on the table and sighed. He seemed to be steeling himself for something rather unpleasant.

"Mycroft--"

"Not here." Mycroft stood and straightened his jacket, and a man in a smart suit seated two tables away nodded before standing and walking towards the front doors of the hotel. "After you," Mycroft said and gestured in the direction the man had gone.

There was a sleek black car waiting at the kerb; the man who'd dashed out of the hotel ahead of them stepped forward to open the door and the three of them climbed inside.

Mycroft's phone was still raised to his ear as the car pulled away. "Yes, both of them. As soon as possible." He cut the call and pressed one hand over his mouth.

"Where is he?" John asked after a long moment.

Mycroft made a small sound and shook his head, still not quite looking at either of them. "I'm not at liberty to say."

"Don't fuck with me, Mycroft. Not now. I can find out in other, far more public ways."

"He's in an undisclosed location." Mycroft's eyes closed briefly; when he opened them again they were unusually cloudy. "That's the best I can do for the moment."

John stared back at him, unyielding. "Forgive me if I don't believe you. I've only been deceived and lied to for six fucking weeks."

It took all of Greg's training to remain silent and let the scene unfold. He'd learn more by observing than by getting in the middle, but he was desperate to learn what the hell was going on.

As if he'd read Greg's mind, Mycroft turned to look at him. "I've activated top-level security clearances for you both."

"Just like that?" Greg asked, eyebrows raised.

"The paperwork was put through months ago, just in case it was necessary." Mycroft paused and looked at John again. "How did you find out?"

"There were clues. Enough for me to piece it together, though I wasn't completely certain until a few days ago."

"And you've been communicating with him?"

John's expression bordered on smug. "Yes. He didn't tell you about that part, did he?"

Mycroft's eyes narrowed. "He's always had a certain amount of disdain for proper procedures. I do hope you were cautious. All the standard communication channels were being watched."

"So not everyone is convinced Sherlock is actually dead?" Greg asked. It felt strange to say his name in the present tense to someone other than John.

Mycroft turned to look at him. "A healthy amount of skepticism is always recommended in this sort of business, isn't it?"

John's knee pressed into Greg's. "Since we've got the right clearances now, I suppose you can tell us what sort of business we're getting ourselves involved in."

"In good time," Mycroft replied. "First there is some work to be done. It's unclear to me what role you ought to play in what's to come, John."

"Oh, of course. I'm just the blogger, aren't I? Not clever enough to keep up with the two of you."

Mycroft looked intensely tired for a moment, an expression Greg had only seen before in the presence of Sherlock. "Don't be melodramatic, John. You've already managed to surprise me tonight. This wasn't supposed to happen for several more months."

John pursed his lips and turned his gaze to his hands for a moment. "Can I see him?"

Mycroft paused and swallowed audibly. "That would not be wise."

"That's not what I asked."

"Nearly six months of work went into this operation. We can't have it all ruined now, just when we're getting close."

Greg winced. Mycroft clenched his hand into a fist and looked away, apparently having realized his mistake.

"Six months?" John repeated. He looked stunned.

"Everything changed after the Bond Air incident, you must know." Mycroft's tone was one of utter resignation, and Greg realized he'd been given this onerous task intentionally. Sherlock hadn't been able to face John himself, so he'd sent Mycroft in his place. "He made a very big mistake, one with consequences beyond even what he could imagine. And I'd made a mistake as well, in underestimating his--" He seemed to search for the right words for a moment. "--particular vulnerability. We came to an understanding, you might say." Mycroft paused and glanced at John, whose face was very pale. "Moriarty was at the top of both our lists, and we decided that the only way we would be able to get him was if we worked together. Sherlock was prepared to do whatever it took, and so was I."

John was staring straight ahead now, his eyes unfocused and his lips pressed into a thin line.

Mycroft ran a hand over his face before continuing. "We realized early on that there was only one way to achieve our goal. We had to let him beat us, or at least to think he had done. Moriarty wanted to ruin Sherlock to the point that he would lose everything and everyone that mattered to him."

"And so you let him," Greg said. "All of it was intentional, then?"

Mycroft nodded. "I had Moriarty arrested and interrogated, and then I gave him precisely the information he needed to set up Sherlock for a fall from grace, as it were. And then we set him loose to do his worst. His worst, of course, turned out rather like we'd expected. There were a few surprises, moments when I feared the situation would spin out of our control, but Moriarty was, in the end, a rather predictable villain."

Greg turned to look at Mycroft at that, his eyes narrowed. What did he mean by in the end?

John made a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh, drawing Greg's attention back to him. He turned toward the window and Greg couldn't see his face at all.

Mycroft inhaled slowly and exhaled again, and Greg was struck by just how difficult this conversation seemed to be for him. "The suicide option was set up early on, but we didn't realize he'd have to follow through on it until fairly late in the game. Fortunately, we were prepared."

"Six months," John repeated, his voice tense. "And did no one think to tell me what was going on?"

"You know it isn't that simple, John."

Greg felt a twist of sympathy for John. He'd known MI6 operatives who'd had to keep horrible secrets from their families, secrets that would have torn their marriages apart, but they did it for Queen and Country. It wasn't fair and it wasn't much consolation for being lied to by the one person John cared about most -- the one person John had thought he could trust.

"It is that fucking simple. I was there, all that time that you were planning this behind my back. I can't believe the two of you would--" John broke off and stared at Mycroft for a long moment, something building behind his eyes.

"John--"

"I see. No, I get it. I had to play the grief-stricken friend left behind, because then the world would really believe it, wouldn't they? And I couldn't be trusted to pretend; no, I actually had to believe it as well. And that wasn't a problem because I'm just that fucking useless to you, to both of you. My feelings aren't important enough to consider, even after everything that's--"

He whirled and tugged at the handle of the car door; it swung open and nearly hit a parked car as they sped by it.

"John!" Greg grabbed his wrist and tugged him back from the doorway.

"Stop this fucking car, Mycroft. Stop it!"

Mycroft pounded on the barrier between the driver and the passenger area, and the car pulled to the kerb and stopped with a jolt, knocking Greg off the seat and John loose from his grasp. John bolted from the car and stalked down the pavement.

Greg turned back to Mycroft, torn between going after John and staying to clean up this mess.

Mycroft shook his head and waved a hand in a clear gesture of Go, we'll talk later. Greg nodded and climbed out of the car. He looked up and down the pavement, but John was nowhere in sight. Greg pulled his phone from his pocket and texted him, then started to walk in the direction of home.

The flat was dark and empty when he arrived, and he settled on the sofa with a cup of tea to wait. He sent three more texts, but John didn't answer any of them. Just as he was about to call in a few of his remaining favors with the Met, he heard heavy footsteps on the stairs.

John stopped in the doorway and seemed to collect himself for a moment before crossing to the desk and opening his laptop. He said nothing to Greg, didn't even acknowledge his presence as he searched for something on the screen and then typed furiously for a moment.

Greg crossed to stand behind him: he was posting something to the forum where he and Sherlock had been exchanging messages. "What are you--"

John closed the laptop and turned to face Greg. His expression was intense, almost dark. "I told him to fuck off and leave me alone."

"In plain English?"

"It was quicker." John exhaled and pressed his hands over his face.

Greg stepped closer and pulled him into an embrace. "I'm sorry, for what it's worth. I don't blame you for being angry with him."

"Please don't talk right now." John dropped his hands and pressed his forehead into Greg's shoulder. "I don't want to talk about it."

Greg pulled John more tightly against him and nodded into his hair. "Want some tea?"

"No." John looked up at him for a moment before stepping back to take Greg's hand. Without saying another word, he tugged Greg toward the bedroom. John didn't drop his hand until they were standing next to the bed. He stood there for a moment more, as if considering, and then began to strip off his clothes. He turned back to Greg when he was completely naked: twilight blazed a path across his chest, leaving his face in shadow, and Greg swallowed, understanding.

Greg pulled his own shirt over his head and stripped off his trousers and pants, all the while feeling John's gaze on his bare skin, sharp and heavy. He'd barely finished undressing before John pulled him to the bed and pushed him backwards onto it, pressing him into his own sheets.

But they weren't his sheets -- and that was the whole point, wasn't it? He winced at the thought, that this wasn't really about him and John at all. John was going to fuck Greg Lestrade in Sherlock's bed, just to get back at him. John's body moved against his and John's mouth was on his skin, but Greg found he could do little more than stare up at the ceiling.

"What?" John asked after nearly a minute of silence had passed between them. Greg wasn't anywhere near hard, and it must now be painfully clear that he wasn't interested.

There was no point prolonging the inevitable. "If Sherlock is coming back, where does that leave me?"

John sighed and tucked his body against Greg's side, his head on Greg's shoulder. "It leaves you here, Greg. Right here."

"I don't know what that means." He realized his fingers were in John's hair, as if they thought nothing was wrong. He dropped his hand to the bed. "You love him."

"Yes."

"So…"

"So do you."

"Not like that."

"Are you sure?"

Greg frowned at the ceiling. He was fond of Sherlock, more than fond, really. He couldn’t deny that he found the man attractive. He'd been as excited as John about the prospect of having Sherlock back in the world, back in his life. But.

He sighed. "I'm sure that I'm falling in love with you."

John pushed himself up on one elbow and smiled down at Greg. "Are you really?"

"Don't--"

"No, I didn't mean it like that, shhh." John leaned down to kiss him. "I feel the same, Greg. I do."

Greg stared back up at him. "I'm incredibly confused right now."

John looked thoughtful for a moment. "I love Sherlock, yes. But I'd be lying if I said he was a fantastic boyfriend. Great in bed, yes, and occasionally -- when it's convenient for him, mind -- very sweet and loving, but mostly he's an annoying twat."

Greg snickered at that and immediately felt guilty. He put a hand over his mouth.

John smiled at him. "With you, it's completely different. The sex is different, the way we are together is different. Better in some ways, but at the very least, different. Do you understand?"

Greg let his hand fall away. "Yes. Well, no, not really. Unless you're suggesting you want to have your cake and eat it as well?"

John shrugged. "We're all adults here. And it doesn't have to just be me. You can't tell me you've never thought about it. Sherlock's as good as said he's fine with it, hasn't he?"

Greg closed his eyes. So John had seen that discussion thread after all. "I'm used to relationships being about two people. Two normal people, at that." He opened his eyes and looked up at John. "I feel like we're just finding our way. Throwing Sherlock into the mix won't make things easier."

"No. More exciting, perhaps." John grinned, but Greg found he couldn't return it. "Look, I don't know what's going to happen. There aren't any rules about this sort of thing, but if we're all honest with each other… why not?"

Greg could think of a hundred reasons why not. On the other hand, John had a point. The fact that there were certain societal norms about how relationships were supposed to be didn't preclude other possibilities, other ways of loving and living and being happy. He'd always been fairly open-minded about that sort of thing, hadn't he? He'd accepted his own bisexuality decades ago and hadn’t really looked back. He'd been in a few free-flowing sexual relationships in his early twenties, ones that -- if he were honest as he peered back through the haze of time -- were probably not so far removed from what John was suggesting.

Through all of the drama of the last few weeks, though John had been moody and occasionally annoying, he'd never pushed Greg away. He'd opened his arms and his heart again and again.

John wasn't Jodi. That's what Greg was afraid of, really, wasn't it?

He pulled John down into a kiss. John's lips were tentative against his, as if John wasn't sure what Greg wanted. Hell, Greg wasn't entirely sure himself. But he was willing to consider the idea. That was something.

John moaned when Greg's tongue swept against his lips, and just like that Greg's cock was hard between their bodies. John slid against him, his fingers intertwined with Greg's and his cock sliding against Greg's belly, and it was intimate and hot and oddly perfect.

A few minutes later John came, his orgasm spilling out between them, and Greg marveled at how sex could be so simple as this. In the end, it was about making the other person feel good, and it hardly mattered which body part went where. John had said he and Sherlock didn't have penetrative sex -- was this what they did instead? He grinned at the thought that he might find out.

John slid down Greg's body and swallowed his cock, and Greg's hips arched up off the bed. A wet finger pressed into his arse and then another, with nothing but saliva for lubrication. It was an odd sensation, but not an unpleasant one. He forced himself to relax and pressed his hands against the headboard, and John's mouth was hot and wet and his fingers arched up slightly as they moved, and Jesus, were there three fingers now? He had no idea; he couldn't tell, but the sensation was a fascinating mix of pleasure and pain. It was the closest he'd ever come to being fucked, he realized.

John's tongue was amazing, applying pressure in all the right places and those fingers were pressing into him and Jesus fucking hell, this was why people did this, wasn't it? This was why they let others into their bodies to wring out cries and gasps and oh God, he was on the verge of coming already. John's nose pressed into his groin and he swallowed around Greg's cock in a way Greg hadn't known people who weren't in porn could actually do, and fuck there right there God yes.

John disappeared for a few moments after Greg came down again, still trembling from the aftershocks. He wasn't sure he'd ever felt so intense an orgasm as that. His ears buzzed a bit, but he thought he could hear the sound of water running. When John returned it was with a flannel in hand, which Greg accepted with more than a touch of embarrassment.

John snuggled against him and hummed into his shoulder.

"I can still feel your fingers in my arse," Greg said after a moment. "Is that normal?"

He felt John's grin against his skin. "Yes. You might feel it for a while, actually. Sorry about that. I should have gone to get the lube."

"I should start keeping some in here."

"We should stash it all over the flat, in every possible location."

"Mmm, good thinking." Greg pressed a kiss against John's forehead. "Will you stay?"

"There's nowhere else I want to be right now, trust me."

"Are you sure you don't want to go delete that post?"

John sighed. "I'm sure. And I don't want to know his response until I've had a decent night's sleep. I feel really fucking good right now and I don't want to do anything to ruin it."

Greg pulled the tangled covers up over them both. "We'll deal with it in the morning, then."

"In the morning." John yawned. "Greg?"

"Hmmm?"

"I meant it when I said I feel it as well. I do, you know."

Greg smiled. It was as close to a promise as he would get, and he found that it was fine. "I know."

*****

Sunlight striped the bed when he awoke the next morning. He reached out to brush a hand against the spot where John had been, but the sheets were cool. He'd been up for a while. Greg sat up and winced at the twinge in his arse -- John hadn't been kidding. He reached for his phone. It was half eight, early yet.

Coffee was definitely in order. Coffee, and then they'd talk, make a plan for what to do next. Maybe Sherlock had replied to John's fuck off message already.

Greg stood and stretched, and then crossed to the door. He opened it and smiled at the thought of surprising John naked first thing in the morning.

John was sitting in a chair, arms folded across his chest, and glaring. Sitting across from him, his posture equally tense, was Sherlock Holmes.

*****

Greg held the walkie-talkie to his mouth and spoke softly. "I'm clearing out. Signal if you need back-up. The boys on the perimeter are ready."

"Will do. Moving in on my mark."

Greg crossed the darkened street and fell back to the agreed-upon observation position. He couldn't see anything going on near the abandoned building that was currently the center of everyone's attention, but for the moment it didn't matter. All was quiet; even the CO19 boys were working on visual signals now.

He pulled out his phone and tapped out a text.

No idea how long it will be. I'll text when I know something.

He hit send and slipped the phone back into his pocket. A moment later, he heard a familiar ping.

Oh, fuck, no. He clenched his jaw and headed toward the source of the sound. John was standing just around the corner in the shadows, tucked into an alcove that was by day an entrance to a laundromat.

Greg gave him his best glare, the one that typically sent Anderson scrambling for cover. "What are you doing here?"

John didn't look remotely intimidated. "I got a tip that this was happening tonight. Someone thought I might be interested in watching Moriarty's Russian connections get arrested."

Greg barely suppressed a groan. Two teenagers walked past the alcove and shot them a curious look, and Greg held the walkie-talkie up to his mouth again. "I've got civilians on this side. Who's supposed to be redirecting traffic over here?"

"Sorry, Lestrade. I'll get Jones on it."

Greg turned back to John. "Does either of you understand the level of shit I will be in if anyone sees you here?"

"Mycroft won't mind. Much."

"It's not Mycroft's end I'm worried about."

John frowned. "I thought you were just here as an observer for the security service."

"That too. It's complicated." Greg scanned the street again, but it was empty. "This whole liaison thing is still new. It was all I could do to convince Mycroft that the weapons stash made it CO19 business. The Met's still not happy about having SIS looking over their collective shoulders, even though it was their intel in the first place." Sherlock's intel, really. God, he hated politics. And yet here he was, right in the middle of it. "Look, just stay here, all right? Don't move from this spot."

"I won't."

"Unless it looks like things might be heading this way, in which case get the hell out of here."

"I will."

"And whatever you do, don't engage."

"I won't."

"I mean it, John."

"I know." John was smiling far too much for Greg's liking.

Greg tried and failed to give him a stern look. The truth was that John was good to have in a fight. And since he was here anyway, he might be of use -- unofficially, of course, and strictly as a last resort.

Greg clenched his jaw. "Are you armed?"

John looked away, across the street. "Yes."

"Good." They'd never talked about the illegal Browning John kept in a locked box in his wardrobe. Greg was perfectly content to look the other way, especially since he knew John only used it when he had damn good reason. "Whatever happens, just stay out of sight, okay?"

John smirked. "Understood."

Greg rounded the corner again and turned his attention back to the warehouse. All was quiet still; he could see a few shadowy figures moving on the roof. Any minute now.

This was a big moment, one they had to get right. The information Sherlock had intercepted made it clear that none of Moriarty's primary contacts were aware that Moriarty was dead. If this ambush happened as quickly and quietly as planned, they might be able to maintain the element of surprise for a bit longer. If one of the suspects got out so much as a text, everyone else would go underground and the entire operation -- the one Sherlock and Mycroft had spent months planning -- would be over.

The figures on the roof settled into position, sniper rifles at the ready.

"Winston to Lestrade. It's clear on this side."

"Good. Radio silence now."

He took a deep breath and slid a hand inside his coat to pull his gun from the shoulder holster. He felt better with the cool weight of it in his palm. Just in case.

He'd forgotten how much he hated the waiting. He was a detective now, after all, and hadn't been involved in an operation like this in the better part of a decade. The closest he'd got was that weird incident up at Baskerville, and that was when he was off-duty.

Now that he thought about it, this was much more John's area. Maybe he should--

There was a sound then: voices, the distinct popping of gunshots, and his radio crackled.

"Go! Go!"

"Cover that door, don't--"

"To the right, to the right!"

"Got a runner on the east side, backup."

"Got it," Greg replied. "Jones, where are you?"

"I don't see any-- wait, yes, there-- shit, coming right at you."

"Shit," Greg hissed, and scanned the street. He could hear voices, footsteps, but it was all echoing about now, and he couldn't tell exactly where to look. Staying put was his best option, but his body seemed to want to run, to head in the direction of the action.

He counted to three to force himself to wait just a bit longer before letting instinct take over. There was a sound to his right, behind him, around the corner -- a shout of surprise and a thunk and a moan, and his feet had carried him there before he'd even started to process the sounds and what they might mean.

John was crouching over a crumpled figure on the ground, two fingers pressed against the man's throat. He shot a quick glance at Greg. "I may have hit him a bit harder than I intended. He surprised me." The gun was still clenched in his other hand.

Greg scanned the scene, his gaze darting up and down the length of the street and then back down at the unconscious man before he held up the walkie-talkie again. "Got him. Two streets east of the target, under the Laundromat awning."

"On my way."

John stood. "Right. I probably shouldn't be here when they arrive."

Greg felt a sudden impulse to kiss him. "Yeah, get out of here. I'll see you at home."

John nodded and dashed down the street and around the corner, disappearing just as three officers came jogging into view.

"Jesus, Lestrade, how hard did you hit him?" one of them asked, cocking his head almost comically.

Greg reholstered the gun. "He's lucky he didn't get shot. Bind him up. I'll call for an EMT." He stepped out of the alcove and listened for a moment, but the street was silent again.

"We need an EMT over here. Suspect down, strike to the back of the head with a blunt object. Unconscious, but breathing and pulse are fine."

"On our way."

He wanted to call for a status report on the operation, but he forced himself to wait. If they needed anything, they'd say; it wasn't his place to interfere.

The EMTs arrived and carried the suspect away on a gurney, which left him standing with the other three officers, none of whom were sure what was going on.

"Some sort of weapons bust, was it?" Chandran asked with a careful glance at Greg. He was young, in his mid-twenties, though he had a wife and two kids already.

"That's what I was told," Greg replied.

Chandran frowned. "Must've been a lot of weapons, considering the size of the CO19 squad. Serious stuff, yeah?"

"Stuff they don't want on the black market," added one of the other men, whose name Greg had to struggle to recall. (Peterson, that was it.) "You don't think it was anything chemical, do you?"


Greg shook his head. "They'd have chaps in haz-mat suits at the ready, if that were the case. Probably just the usual automatic weapons, assault rifles, that sort of thing."

Peterson snorted. "Then they must have expected to find the fucking motherlode, going in with that sort of firepower."

Greg nodded as if in agreement. None of the three seemed to know what was actually going on, but they knew enough to recognize it was an unusual operation. And they likely weren't the only ones speculating. Secrecy would have to be a far more serious consideration from here on out.

"Lestrade, do you copy?"

Greg recognized the voice of the commanding officer immediately, and from the looks on the faces of the men standing next to him, they did as well. "Lestrade here." He nodded at the three men and walked pointedly away from them, up halfway to the next street. "Report?"

"The target facility is locked down and all suspects are in custody."

"Any leaks?"

"Not that I'm aware of. It went off without a hitch."

"Thanks, Warren. Good work, as always. I'll try to keep the extra paperwork to a minimum."

"Right," was the sardonic reply.

Greg grinned as he pulled out his phone and dialed Mycroft's private line. At least the preliminary news was good.

Half an hour later he sent his men home; CO19 had it all under wraps with shocking efficiency. They had shuttled all the suspects off to lock-up and packed out the weapons, and there was little else for Greg to do. He'd kept his distance from the action, but it was becoming clear that his presence was no longer necessary. He pulled out his phone and glanced at the screen to check the time: not yet midnight. He'd received a text from John at some point in the last half-hour, but he hadn't heard it.

No taxis around, but I found a pub. Let me know if you'd care to join me when you're done.

There was movement in front of him and he looked up to see Commander Warren crossing the street towards him.

"Moving up in the world, eh, Lestrade?"

Greg pocketed the phone and shrugged. "Not sure if that's the direction, to be honest."

Warren snorted. "Tell me about it. Still, I appreciate the support. God knows how MI5 would've bollixed this up."

Greg's return smile was diplomatic. "I'm told you're the experts at this sort of thing."

"That's the idea, isn't it? We're almost done here."

"As soon as you can get me the full report, I'll take care of the rest."

Warren nodded. "Cheers."

Greg exhaled as he walked away. It was done, and only time would tell if they'd pulled it off as quietly as they'd hoped. He pulled his phone out and thumbed it on.

I'd love to. Where are you?

He only had to wait a minute for the return text: the address of a pub a handful of streets away. He smiled and pocketed the phone, already heading in that direction. A celebratory pint sounded good about now. One with John, even better.

*****

Greg barely had the entry door of 221B closed behind him before John pushed him back against it and kissed him. He slipped his hands inside John's jacket and pulled him closer. The tension between them in the taxi had been incredible, and Greg supposed he was lucky John had at least waited until they were in a private spot.

"Jesus, this really does turn you on, doesn't it?"

"Mmmmph," was the reply, and Greg would have grinned if his mouth hadn't been fully occupied again. His hands slid around John's waist to the small of his back and brushed against cool metal. Both of them froze. John pulled back and looked up at him. "Upstairs."

"Right."

John stopped him at the door of the flat with one hand on his chest. "Wait here a sec, will you?"

He disappeared into the flat before Greg had a chance to respond, apparently to stash the Browning somewhere. Greg slid a hand through his hair. They should probably have a talk about that. Of course, he was still armed as well. He shrugged off his jacket and removed the shoulder holster just as John opened the door again. John glanced down at the holstered gun in Greg's hand and then back up. His lips turned up in the beginning of a smile, and something about the look in his eyes made heat pool in Greg's belly. He grasped a handful of John's shirt and pulled him into a kiss. John's hands went to Greg's hips and he allowed himself to be kissed roughly for a moment before tugging Greg through the doorway.

Greg pulled away long enough to set the gun and his jacket on the floor just inside, then let John push him back against the closed door hard enough to knock his skull against it. It had been three long days since they'd last had sex -- Greg had barely been home since starting back at the Yard -- and fucking hell the way John had looked at him in the taxi had nearly done him in. Just as they'd reached Baker Street, John had leaned against him and whispered, "I want you to fuck me so hard I forget my own name," and Greg had begun to spin fantasies of positions they hadn't yet tried.

John's erection pressed against his own through several layers of clothing, and Greg groaned. Maybe against the door would work. He hadn't fucked someone while standing up since--

"I have some questions for you both when you have a moment."

Greg wrenched his mouth away from John's and stared across the room. Sherlock was seated at the desk in the sitting room, his face lit by the screens of two laptops.

"What the--"

"Ignore him," John said, and began sucking on Greg's neck in a way that would have driven him mad under other circumstances.

"You knew he'd be here?"

"He's been here all day," John replied, apparently undeterred by the fact that they had an audience. "Since about four in the morning, actually."

Greg's head fell back against the door. "Right. So when you said he tipped you off about tonight--"

"He did it in person." John lowered his voice to a whisper. "Want to see if we can distract him?"

Greg's eyes narrowed. "What?"

John grinned and pulled him by the hand across the room. Sherlock didn't even look up at them; his fingers were flying over the keyboard of one of the laptops, his brow furrowed in concentration. John pushed Greg backwards into a nearby armchair and then settled on his knees on the floor and pressed Greg's thighs apart. He looked up at Greg with a smirk.

The only coherent thought Greg could form was fuck. He glanced over at Sherlock, who was now typing one-handed on each laptop, simultaneously. Greg doubted that even the knowledge that his boyfriend was giving someone else a blow job a few feet away would distract someone with that degree of focus.

Not that Greg was opposed to giving it a shot. He'd never done anything quite like this, but their situation was unique, certainly. He looked down at John, whose gaze was already fixed on the bulge in Greg's trousers. John drew down the zip and tugged them down over Greg's hips, and Greg felt heat rise to his face. They were actually going to do this. With another person in the room. With Sherlock in the room. Bloody hell.

John flashed him a cheeky grin before descending on his cock with a wide swipe of his tongue, teasing a bit before finally taking the head in his mouth. And oh that mouth -- it was warm and wet and perfect, and every time John did this Greg felt absurdly grateful. He bit back a moan and sank into the chair, watching John's cheeks hollow on the upstroke, his tongue everywhere at once and then right where Greg needed it, sucking just hard enough to make his toes curl pleasantly. The pace John seemed to be setting was slow and that was fine; Greg could relax and enjoy it without any fear of losing control too quickly.

He wondered if this was how Sherlock liked it. He looked up at that thought, and Sherlock was looking right back at him. He'd shifted his body in the chair so that he was angled toward them, one hand idly stroking the keyboard of one of the laptops. The light in the room was dim and his face was side-lit by the blueish glow of the computer. He stared back at Greg for several seconds before letting his gaze drift down to the movement of John's head in Greg's lap. Greg wondered what exactly he could see from that angle -- or what he was thinking about all of this. They hadn't had a chance to talk about it, not really.

There was only one way to find out at this point. Greg slid a hand around the back of John's head, his fingers tangling in the hair there, and John looked up at him. Greg shifted his gaze up to Sherlock and then back down to John and raised his eyebrows. "He likes watching, doesn't he?"

John pulled off and sat back on his heels. He threw a quick glance over his shoulder and then turned back to Greg with a smirk on his face. "I thought he might."

He put his hands behind Greg's knees and pulled his hips forward a bit, then shifted to the side before wrapping a hand around the base of Greg's cock. He pulled up, tugging the foreskin over the glans, and then back down again, and leaned over Greg's thighs to plant a kiss on the tip. His tongue swirled around the head once, twice, and God, that was incredible. Greg couldn't stop the moan that escaped him when John finally took the head in again, far enough that Greg could feel him swallowing, Jesus fuck -- even at that odd angle, it felt amazing.

"My God, your mouth," he managed after a moment. "I'm spoiled for head, forever." He looked up to see Sherlock watching intently. Ah, of course -- John had moved to the side in order to give Sherlock a better view. Sherlock's gaze slid up to Greg's face and his eyebrows rose in an expression not unlike a challenge. Greg tried for a grin, though the wriggling of John's tongue made it hard to control his facial muscles at the moment. "What, you think you can do better?"

"I can." The tone was the same one Sherlock used at crime scenes. Greg wondered why he should find that so incredibly hot.

"He can, actually," John said as he came off, his voice a bit hoarse now. "I can't wait to see what he's going to do with this." He tugged up again, enough to bunch Greg's foreskin over the head and hold it there while he worked his tongue inside.

Greg's fingers drew circles on John's scalp as he watched; the combination of sensations was gorgeous. His brain hadn't quite caught up with reality -- Sherlock had basically just said he wanted to suck Greg's cock, hadn't he? He looked up again: Sherlock's eyes were dark now, the computers long forgotten.

"Me either," Greg whispered. John swallowed around his prick again and Greg closed his eyes. He felt dizzy -- he'd only had the one pint, but then, he hadn't eaten much today, had he? Or maybe it was this, the onslaught of sensation and the knowledge that Sherlock was watching so very closely. John's mouth pulled away and he blew across the wet skin of Greg's cock, making him shiver. There was a hand on his thigh and then another on his forehead, soothing him. Greg opened his eyes.

"I'll be right back. Don't move." John disappeared from view, apparently into Greg's bedroom.

Greg looked up at Sherlock again, but Sherlock was staring unabashedly at the erection jutting up from Greg's trousers. It was all Greg could do to remain still and let him just look. He felt exposed in a way he hadn't experienced before, but it wasn't exactly uncomfortable. It was a different feeling altogether.

How many times had he thought of this: fleeting images in the back of his mind, stolen moments when he ought to have been thinking of Jodi, so often wondering what might have happened if he hadn't pushed Sherlock away that night years ago? He knew, though, that Sherlock wasn't the same person he was then, not at all, that he'd become the man he was now almost entirely because of John. John was Sherlock's soulmate in a way Greg never could be, and no matter how desperately Greg was in love with John, he'd never be what Sherlock was to him. But yet, here he was, and he knew his presence here meant something to both of them, something more than just another warm body in John's bed, someone to occupy him when Sherlock was too busy, someone to satisfy Sherlock's curiosity.

Sherlock's eyes moved upward again, and when they met Greg's, the corners of Sherlock's mouth turned up very slightly. Greg wondered what would happen next -- was Sherlock going to come over here and finish the job? Was that why John had left the room, to give them a chance to leer at each other and decide if this was what they wanted? Greg smiled, almost laughed. He wanted it. God, he wanted it. At the moment, he couldn't imagine it being any other way between the three of them.

As if out of thin air, John reappeared at Greg's side and handed him a condom packet and a half-used tube of their favorite lubricant. He snatched a pillow from the sofa and tossed it on the floor halfway between Greg's and Sherlock's feet, and then began unfastening his own trousers. He'd shucked them and straddled Greg's lap before Greg had processed what was happening.

John took both their cocks in hand and pressed them together, his lips a scant inch from Greg's. "Remember what I said in the taxi?"

Greg blinked at him. His mind was oddly blank. "I…"

John's lips brushed against Greg's. "I want you to fuck me now. Hard."

"Oh God, that's… yes." Greg pulled him into an open-mouthed kiss and slid his hands around John's waist, down over his arse. John's thighs were spread wide over Greg's lap, and it was easy for him to trail a teasing fingertip across John's arsehole.

"Finger me," John whispered into his mouth, and Greg scrambled to open the tube of lube. He pressed a slick finger into John and fucked him with it slowly, and John hissed and pressed his forehead against the chair just above Greg's shoulder.

Greg's eyes found Sherlock's again, without even thinking about it. Sherlock had turned completely toward them, thighs spread in the chair, the fingers of one hand lazily stroking the obvious bulge in his trousers. He stared at them as if this was the most fascinating thing he'd ever seen, and Greg wondered if he'd ever done this to John. Did no anal sex imply no fingers as well? Or was he that turned on by the sight of John and Greg together, something Sherlock knew had happened but had only been able to imagine before? Greg added another finger, slowly pressing into John's arse, and watched Sherlock's eyes darken even more, saw him bite his lower lip as he watched. John pressed back against his hand, practically fucking himself on Greg's fingers, and Jesus, that was hot. Greg liked this part, the feel of silky-hot skin just inside John's arse, the way his body clamped tightly down on the intrusion, and when he pushed past that second sphincter, he could curl his fingers just so and--

"Ah, fuck," John hissed, his hand squeezing their pricks together almost uncomfortably. "Yes, there, that's where I want your cock," and smashed his mouth against Greg's for a moment before pulling away again. "Oh God, I can't wait. I want it now."

John slid off his lap and knelt on the pillow he'd tossed on the floor, facing Sherlock, and went down on all fours. Greg's heart pounded in his chest as he pushed his trousers down and off and ripped open the condom packet. He accidentally squirted far too much lube into his palm, but he didn't care, slick would be good. He could go fast that way. And hard. Yes. Fuck.

He exhaled -- he had to get a grip on himself; the last thing he wanted to was for this to be over before it had barely had a chance to begin.

There was enough room on the cushion for him to kneel between John's calves, happily -- there was no sex in the world worth the knee pain of a hard fuck on this sort of floor -- and within thirty seconds he was pressing his cock slowly into John, gritting his teeth against the urge to bury himself completely.

"All right there?" he asked, and John whimpered in response. They'd done this enough now that he knew what John could take, but this position was new.

"Yes, it's… good." A hint of a lie there, but John could take it, he knew.

He traced the length of John's spine with his fingers, pushing his shirt up to his shoulders, and then stroked back downwards again, relishing the feeling of warm skin beneath his fingers. He'd grown so used to the compact lines of John's body that it was hard to remember what it was like to have Jodi in this position. This was the longest sexual relationship he'd ever had with a man, he realized. It went far beyond the alcohol-fueled flings of his youth. It was something else altogether, something he'd never expected to find.

"Sherlock," John said, and Greg's hands stilled on his back. He looked up, but Sherlock's eyes were focused on John now.

It was indeed something else altogether -- in more ways than one.

"You know what I want," John said, and Sherlock shifted in the chair. They were close enough that John could reach forward and brace his hands on Sherlock's knees and press them apart. Sherlock stared at him for a long moment, as if trying to decide whether he wanted to be a part of this or continue watching. Greg stayed still, his cock buried in John's arse, and waited. Sherlock looked at Greg then and Greg smiled, hoping Sherlock would see it as the yes, it's fine, come with us he intended.

At last Sherlock slid his hips forward in the chair and unzipped his trousers. He stood and leaned over the other armchair to pluck a pillow from it and toss it on the floor in front of John, then tugged his trousers and pants down enough to free his erection. Greg found himself biting his lip at the sight of his cock -- perfectly ordinary in every respect, average in size, and fully erect. His mind wandered in a dozen directions at once: what would it feel like in his hand, in his mouth, against his skin? How did he prefer to be touched -- slow with long teasing strokes or fast, hard, and tight? What did his skin taste like, smell like?

Sherlock knelt in front of John and slid a hand under his jaw, and forced him to look up. A small smile appeared on his face and he looked up at Greg one more time.

Bloody hell, they were actually going to do this, weren't they?

"I do know what you want," Sherlock said as he shifted his hips forward, pushing his prick into John's mouth.

John pushed back against Greg, drawing his cock in as deep as it could go, and Greg groaned and clenched his hips.

So apparently John wanted to be fucked at both ends. Greg could get on board with that.

He forced himself to move slowly, pulling almost all the way out before pressing in again. He didn't get to see it from this angle often, and the sight of his cock disappearing into John's body was fascinating. But even more fascinating was the way Sherlock pumped his hips slowly, one hand clenched tightly in John's hair to hold him still, fucking his mouth with shallow thrusts. It was clear he knew what he was doing, knew how much John could take without gagging. He kept John's head at what looked to be an uncomfortable angle, but Greg realized it was intentional -- he could press his cock right down John's throat that way. Sherlock's jaw had gone slack and he was breathing harder now, and Greg wanted desperately to see him come.

Sherlock gasped, and Greg wondered if he'd accidentally said that last bit aloud.

"Can he come like this?" Sherlock's eyes were focused on John's arse, on the slide of Greg's cock into him over and over.

"Yeah. Want to see?"

Sherlock pushed into John's mouth one more time, far enough that Greg heard John make a small sound of protest, and then pulled out completely. He pushed John's shoulders up and Greg sat back on his heels, suddenly with a lapful of John. Sherlock raised his eyebrows. "Show me."

Greg took John's half-hard prick in hand and stroked, and kissed the sensitive skin just behind his ear. "Do you have any idea how hot you were like that?" he whispered, letting his lips graze the shell of John's ear. "Just taking it, getting fucked by both of us. It was all I could do not to pound into you." He accentuated the last with a shift of his hips, and John whimpered. Greg's hand slid up and twisted, and John was fully hard now.

"Oh God," John whispered.

"What do you want?" Greg asked. "How do you want to come?"

"Touch me, and keep… yeah, fuck me like that."

It was a challenging position, but Greg was able to push his hips upward enough to move in and out by an inch or so. He was sure the angle wasn't quite right, but it didn't seem to matter; John's head fell back on Greg's shoulder and he moaned as Greg's hand moved on his cock.

Greg looked back at Sherlock to see he was watching with narrowed eyes. His own erection had been momentarily abandoned, but it hadn't flagged at all.

"He's watching," Greg whispered into John's ear. "What do you want him to see?"

John didn't say anything in reply, but he must have communicated something to Sherlock, because Sherlock smiled and crawled forward a moment later. He leaned in to kiss John and his hand joined Greg's on John's cock. After a moment of awkward miscoordination, Greg let him have it -- he could better use that hand to brace himself anyway -- and focused on fucking John with small movements. His thighs were burning and he was sure he'd be sore in the morning, but it was worth it for the way John went limp against him, whimpering into Sherlock's mouth.

"Oh God, like that, right there," John said, panting as he tucked his forehead into Sherlock's shoulder.

Greg looked at Sherlock, uncertain who that comment had been for. It didn't seem to matter, though: John was close; Greg could feel the tension in his body that always preceded an orgasm.

"Right, yes, God, I'm--"

Greg's mouth fell open at the sensation of John's arse tightening around his dick as he came, but he couldn't tear his eyes away from Sherlock's face. John cried out, the sound slightly muffled against Sherlock's skin, but Sherlock kept his eyes on Greg through it all, watching, perhaps wondering if Greg was going to come as well. On impulse, Greg reached for him and grabbed a handful of hair at the back of his head and pulled him into a bruising kiss. John was pressed tightly between them, still shuddering though his orgasm, and Greg's cock was lodged firmly inside him, and Sherlock's tongue was hot against his own and fuck -- when had this become his life?

After a long moment, John gave Sherlock a shove that broke their kiss and pushed Sherlock over onto his arse. "I think you're next," he said, and leaned forward to take Sherlock's cock in his mouth. Greg managed to move forward quickly enough not to be dislodged completely, and John reached back with one hand and squeezed Greg's thigh. He took it as a signal to keep going as John pushed Sherlock back against the floor and sucked him. The angle of entry was different now and Greg shifted his position, trying to find a way to press in deep.

"Spread your legs a bit more like… yeah, like that and--" He had to close his eyes and pause for a moment at the shift in pressure against his prick. "Oh God. I really want to… can I--"

"Fuck me," John said, and then buried his face in Sherlock's groin once again.

Greg didn't wait for further instructions; he clenched John's hips and pumped into him hard. Sherlock was on his back on the floor, his knees in the air and his trousers around his ankles. He had one hand buried in John's hair and the other pressed over his mouth, and it occurred to Greg that he'd never seen Sherlock quite like this. He could feel his own orgasm pressing in at the edges, but he didn't want it to interfere with what was happening in front of him. He slowed the pace enough to allow John to focus, and a minute later Sherlock came, groaning through clenched teeth and pressing John's head down against him so hard he must have come down his throat.

Greg waited until John was panting against Sherlock's thigh before taking what he needed, quick shallow strokes, and he was so close now, just there, just…

He collapsed forward onto John's back as he came, his thighs finally done with the business of keeping him up. John's legs went out from under him as well and when Greg came to his senses again they were both piled on top of Sherlock.

Greg shifted his weight up and tried to pull out as gently as he could. John winced slightly and Sherlock stroked his cheek and smiled at him in a way that could only be described as incredibly fond. There had only been a handful of moments when he'd seen a smile like that on Sherlock's face. Greg stared at them both, realizing that he was seeing something very private -- that he'd been invited into this relationship without quite having realized it was happening.

And it was all right. They'd had sex, the three of them together, and it had been fine. More than fine, obviously, but not at all awkward, nothing like Greg would have expected if John had given him any warning this might happen tonight.

He laughed before he could stop himself and Sherlock turned to look at him with a quizzical expression. Greg could only grin in response, and after a moment Sherlock smiled. He held out a hand and Greg took it, let himself be pulled down against Sherlock's other side. He closed his eyes and exhaled, then opened them to see John blinking sleepily at him. He could hear Sherlock's heart beating. He could almost sleep here, like this.

A wave of exhaustion smoothed over him, a combination of post-orgasm sleepiness and genuine tiredness from the last few days. No, he couldn't sleep here; he had shit to do in the morning. He sighed and planted a kiss on John's forehead and then another on Sherlock's cheek before sitting back and putting some distance between them. "That was brilliant, boys, but I've got to get up in a few hours."

John continued to snuggle against Sherlock on the floor, apparently happy to stay there for a bit. Greg pulled the condom off and stood. Ow. His knees were protesting already. "Next time, can we do this on a bed, please?"

Sherlock laughed and wrapped his arms around John and pulled him even closer. Greg watched them for a moment, stifling a yawn. He ought to feel jealous, but somehow he didn't. "You're welcome to join me, if you like."

"Maybe in a bit," John said. He shifted in Sherlock's arms. "What time is it?"

Greg yawned again and twisted around to look at the clock. "Half one." He winced: morning was going to come awfully soon.

"I should get some sleep too," John said, mirroring Greg's yawn.

"You were asleep when I got here this morning," Sherlock said with a frown. "And then you went back to sleep for hours."

John rolled his eyes. "Normal humans do need a certain amount of sleep to keep functioning, you know."

Greg grinned at the thought of Sherlock sneaking into John's bed in the middle of the night. They must have been very quiet -- either that or he'd been sleeping harder than he thought.

Best to leave them to this particular argument, though. Greg tugged his trousers back up enough to facilitate walking to his bed. "Good night, then."

"Good night," John said as Sherlock pushed to his feet, already re-dressing himself.

Greg left the door to the bedroom open just in case, but all he heard was the sound of rapid clicks against the keyboard as the world grew hazy. He tucked the blanket tightly around himself and drifted to sleep. For once, he didn't dream at all.

*****

The alarm went off what seemed like just an hour later, but the time on his phone did indeed indicate it was 6:30. Greg scrubbed at his face with one hand. He really needed an uneventful weekend about now.

He shaved and showered and then headed back to his room, still toweling his wet hair. Sherlock was sitting cross-legged on the rumpled sheets, completely dressed and tapping away at the screen of his phone.

"I have a few questions for you before you go."

Greg leaned against the doorway. "Why am I always the naked one when we have these talks?"

Sherlock didn't bother to hide the way his gaze raked over Greg's body. "I don't mind."

Greg dropped the towel and crossed to the bed. "You don't find it distracting?"

Sherlock swallowed. "No."

"You're usually a better liar than that."

"I've no intention of hiding my attraction to you. After last night it would be fairly pointless, don't you think?"

Greg smiled at him. "I suppose so. What were your questions?"

"How many were arrested last night?"

Greg pulled pants out of a drawer and stepped into them. "Nine. They'll have been processed by CO19 overnight."

Sherlock frowned. "Nine. You're sure?"

"Yes. Why?"

"There were supposed to be ten. I monitored communications for days."

Greg pulled a shirt on and started buttoning it. "So we're missing one of Moriarty's Russians?"

"Perhaps."

"Did anything happen overnight?"

"I didn't see anything unusual, which is rather concerning."

Greg fished in the wardrobe for a pair of clean trousers. "Concerning how?"

"Because that would imply that whoever didn't make that meeting is now aware that it was a trap."

"They won't suspect you're involved, will they?"

"Mycroft's promised to let me interrogate the ones being held. I'll learn more about what they know then. But at the very least, those remaining will know the government is after them and that something has happened to Moriarty. Whether they'll think he's betrayed them or is no longer in the picture is another question altogether."

"Would any of them have bought the Richard Brook story?"

Sherlock snorted. "Of course not."

"So if anyone learns that Moriarty is dead and you are not, what will that mean?"

Sherlock looked up at him again. "That this part of the operation is over. My hiding will no longer be an advantage if all the people I want to believe it know the truth."

"And the public? What do you want them to believe?"

"I don't particularly care what they believe. I imagine that the news of my unlikely survival will make things easier for the operation in some ways and more difficult in others."

Greg tucked in his shirt and checked his reflection in the mirror. "I'll start working on a plan for the Met in case we need to acknowledge your existence rather quickly. People aren't going to be happy about having been lied to." He turned to look at Sherlock. "Think John's reaction, en masse."

"John came around."

"John is in love with you. Most people aren't."

Sherlock looked as if he was about to say something more, but a ping from his phone drew his attention. "My ride," he said, standing.

"Hey--" Greg held out a hand. Sherlock took it and Greg pulled him close. He brushed an unruly curl of dark hair from Sherlock's forehead and smiled. "I've always wanted to do that."

Sherlock stared back at him. "Do what?"

"Be able to touch you, whenever I want." Greg traced Sherlock's lips with one finger. "I can, can't I? Touch you whenever I want?"

"Yes."

Sherlock sounded a bit breathless, which made Greg smile even wider. He cupped his palm against Sherlock's jaw and pressed a soft kiss against his lips.

"And kiss you, whenever I want."

"Yes, that--" Sherlock began, but his next words were cut off by the crush of Greg's lips against his. Greg pulled back after a moment, and it was another half second before Sherlock opened his eyes. He looked a bit dazed, which Greg found incredibly endearing.

The phone pinged again.

"You'd better go."

"Yeah." Sherlock nodded and stepped back. "I'll see you soon. Tell John I said goodbye, will you?"

"I will."

Greg waited for the sound of the street door closing below before he moved from the spot. He pressed his fingers against his lips and smiled.

*****

"And tell him I need to see him as soon as he gets out of that meeting. I've got a fuckton of paperwork to file today and he's got the last report I need to get it all finished." Greg crossed to his desk and sat, sloshing a bit of coffee onto the keyboard of his computer. "Ah, shit."

"I'll let him know," Donovan replied from the doorway. "Anything else?"

The computer screen flared to life as he wiped at the spilled coffee with his fingers, and he nearly groaned at the sight of his email inbox. How could he have received 341 emails in the space of an hour? "Can you guarantee me two hours with no interruptions?"

"I'll try." She gave him a sympathetic smile and closed the door behind her as she left.

He pressed his hands over his forehead and took a deep breath. If he got out of here by 10:00 tonight, he'd be doing well. He glanced at the clock on the bottom corner of his computer screen. Twelve hours might be enough, if nothing else came up.

The phone rang, and he briefly considered letting it go to voicemail until he looked at the display: The Telegraph. That was almost never a good sign.

He picked up the phone. "Lestrade."

"Lestrade, this is Robert Harkin. How are you?"

Harkin was one of the Telegraph's senior news editors -- Greg had a feeling his day had just got even longer. "Fine, fantastic. Good to hear from you."

"Yes, it's been a while, hasn't it? I hear you've kept yourself busy of late."

Small talk generally meant Harkin had something unpleasant to say. Fantastic. "Busy enough, I suppose. You just got remarried a few months back, didn't you?"

"I did. A lovely wedding in Majorca, very small. And I was sorry to hear you and Jodi divorced."

"It's fine, honestly. How can I help you this morning?"

"Right, to the point. I have a reporter who was assigned to do a follow-up story on the incident with Sherlock Holmes, that amateur detective you lot used to bring in on tough cases. And she's run into some problems that I thought you might be able to help with."

Greg felt his stomach twist. "What sort of problems?"

"She's spent days now trying to locate that Richard Brook chap, the actor who said Sherlock hired him to play a criminal mastermind. And she can't find a trace of him."

"Maybe he's gone off somewhere, on an extended holiday."

"That was the first thing I thought, but the thing is, there was a missing person report filed for him around six weeks ago, by a person named Kitty Riley. And that file was closed a week later, with nothing in it."

That sounded like Mycroft's doing. "That's certainly unusual. I was on leave at the time, but I can check into it and get back to you."

"I'd appreciate that. There's something more, though. My reporter went through all records that came up for Brook and tried to find people who knew him, hoping they'd know where he was. And she couldn't find anyone who claimed to have known him prior to the last year. Not at the schools he went to, not at the university where he read drama, no one. They didn't even recognize him from file photos. The only person she could find who seemed to know him was the woman who filed the missing person report, but she knew nothing more than what came up in the records search."

Greg clenched his jaw. "That's very strange, I have to admit. What do you make of it?"

"I was hoping you could tell me. I know you worked with Sherlock Holmes quite a lot, and that you're close with his… with the Watson fellow. You never went on record about your impressions of that debacle."

"I didn't, and I'm not exactly at liberty to do so now."

"Look, Lestrade, we've known each other for years and you know I have a lot of respect for you. So consider this professional courtesy: the story that's being written on this is going to blow the Holmes thing wide open again. My reporter is convinced that there's some sort of police conspiracy and she's digging up evidence to support her case. I'd hate to see you on the wrong side of it again."

Greg winced. "I appreciate that, Harkin, but you know I'm not allowed to comment on this sort of thing without going through the right channels. What sort of timeline are you looking at?"

"Two days, max."

Greg pinched the bridge of his nose. "Okay, thanks. I'll be in touch." He hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair.

Well, shit. The truth was going to come out soon, one way or another. Greg wasn't sure the public was ready for that. He'd barely been ready for it himself.

And this time around, his job was to be right in the middle of it all.

*****

The thrill of flashing his badge at the entrance of the Vauxhall Cross SIS facility hadn't yet worn off, nor had the even larger thrill of being able to use it to enter the high-security lift and direct it down to level G. He'd watched loads of James Bond films as a kid, after all; being here now was undeniably cool.

Sherlock's office reminded him sharply of the way the sitting room of the Baker Street flat had looked a few months ago: newspaper clippings covered the walls and there were stacks of books and papers everywhere, and at least four visible computers. Assorted unidentifiable objects were strewn on every available surface and boxes of what looked to be chemistry lab equipment covered a camp bed pushed against the far wall. Sherlock was sitting in a chair with his feet on the desk, his fingers steepled before him, and his forehead wrinkled in concentration.

Greg knocked on the open door, but Sherlock only held up a hand in a gesture that clearly meant stay right there. After ten full seconds, Greg cleared his throat, but Sherlock still didn't look up.

He heard footsteps behind him and turned to see Mycroft approaching. "Good morning, Detective Inspector. Well, afternoon, I suppose. This far underground, one does forget which is which."

"I can imagine."

Mycroft smiled. "Sherlock, since you've ignored my messages for the last half hour, I've decided to bring the meeting to you."

Sherlock's eyes focused on the two of them standing in the doorway, but otherwise he didn't move.

"Right," Greg said, and crossed towards a chair piled high with papers. He glanced over at Sherlock, who rolled his eyes and then nodded -- a sequence of expressions Greg interpreted as if you absolutely must sit, then fine -- and Greg carefully moved the stack to the ground and sat.

Mycroft closed the door behind him and sniffed disdainfully at a similarly-appointed chair before moving its contents to a nearby table.

"I got a call from the Telegraph this morning," Greg began, and he told them about the conversation he'd had with Robert Harkin.

"It certainly took them long enough." Sherlock dropped his hands at last. "Richard Brook was a cleverly constructed fabrication, but a fabrication nonetheless. They wouldn't have had to do very much digging before they found some holes in the story."

Greg frowned. "Well, they're definitely digging. If we act now we have a chance to take control of the situation."

"Are you suggesting we bury it?" Sherlock turned to look at him.

"No, I don't think that's a good idea. When the story does finally come out -- and you know it will -- we can't afford to look as if we've tried to deceive the public twice."

Sherlock glanced at Mycroft. "Surely you're not that naïve, Greg. The government does that sort of thing all the time."

Greg clenched his jaw. "I'm talking about the Met, which requires public trust to function. My first loyalty is to the police, and I won't do anything to further damage their reputation."

"Perhaps we should take a different approach," Mycroft said with a thoughtful glance at Sherlock.

Sherlock's eyebrows rose. "Ah yes, of course. Should I?"

"Not yet. But when the time comes, yes."

Greg pressed his lips together. He was getting used to the apparent telepathy between Sherlock and Mycroft, but he certainly didn't like it. His job was to facilitate communication, after all, and he could hardly do that if he wasn't privy to the conversation. "This sounds like something I ought to know about."

Sherlock turned his intense gaze to Greg. "We go public before their investigation can be published."

Greg paused, certain he'd misunderstood. "You're… wait, sorry?"

"The press release has been ready for weeks anyway. It's just a matter of sending it out."

"But after all of the work you've put into this investigation, surely--"

"The entire point of this operation was to get Moriarty. That's been accomplished -- in a far more dramatic and final manner than we'd planned, but nevertheless, the threat he posed is very nearly removed. I'm close to determining if there remains any danger from any of the people he worked with, and when that is finished, the need for secrecy is gone."

"And you'll just… go back to doing what you did before, as if none of it ever happened?"

Sherlock smiled. "That's the idea, yes. Though Mycroft has done everything but offer me a vast fortune to continue working here as an analyst."

Mycroft snorted. "If you were interested in a vast fortune, I'd have offered one."

One corner of Sherlock's mouth turned up. "That argument can wait a bit longer. For the moment, we've more important things to worry about."

"Like your missing Russian?"

"Yes." Sherlock lifted his feet from the desk to the floor and sat forward in his chair. He opened one of the laptops on the desk and powered it on. "I've been going back through all the data we have on him, and I believe he's still in the country."

"Any idea why he didn't show last night?"

"Nothing substantive. This one was never involved in direct communication with the others. We only knew of his presence peripherally, when others mentioned him by one of his code names."

Greg frowned. "What were his code names?"

"'Raptor,' 'Hawk,' and other variations on predators." He paused to tap at the keyboard of the laptop.

"Sounds like a pleasant fellow." Greg turned to look at Mycroft, who was watching Sherlock closely. "Was there any communication out from the ones captured?"

Sherlock shook his head. "None that I could determine. I may learn more when I finish questioning them tonight."

Greg's eyebrows rose. He wasn't sure if he wanted to know what Sherlock was like as an interrogator. "What's the plan?"

"I'm trying to get a message to our missing man through all the available channels. I'd hoped to arrange a meeting before it becomes clear that the others have been taken into custody, but time is running out."

"You're setting a trap, you mean," Greg said. "With Moriarty as bait?"

Sherlock looked up from the laptop. "With me as bait, actually."

Greg frowned. "I figured you'd say that. Do you want me to organize backup?"

"Yes. We don't quite know what sort of entourage he'll bring along and he's bound to be suspicious."

"When?"

"Tomorrow night." Something sparked behind Sherlock's eyes and he paused for a moment. "We should have sex."

Greg nearly bit his tongue: what a fucking non sequitur. "Sorry?"

"Just you and me, without John in the middle this time."

Greg cast a sidelong glance at Mycroft, who was in mid eye-roll. He looked back at Sherlock to see his eyes sparkling with smug mischief. There were at least half a dozen ways Greg could think to respond, but the one that floated to the surface was just go with it.

"Yeah, sure. Tonight good for you?"

"Ah, sorry -- I won't be home tonight, actually. Interrogations, paperwork." Sherlock's put-upon expression was slightly overdone.

"Well, I suppose the world should come first," Greg replied with a smirk. "It can't always be me, can it?"

"I'll make sure you come first, quite soon."

Greg's eyebrows rose on their own volition. "Well, as soon as it's convenient, you know where to find me."

"I do indeed."

"Well, that's enough of that," Mycroft said with a beleaguered sigh. He stood and straightened his jacket, and there were two pink spots on his cheeks. "Do keep me informed of your progress. On the case, that is."

He closed the door behind him as he left, and Greg gave Sherlock the closest thing to a glare he could muster while also trying not to laugh.

"That was for your brother's benefit, was it?"

"I wouldn't say benefit." Sherlock grinned. "But I meant it. We should definitely have sex."

"Is this how you usually proposition people?"

"Yes. How else should I do it?"

Greg folded his arms over his chest. "Most people go for a slightly subtler approach." But then, Sherlock wasn't most people, was he? Greg supposed he couldn't be terribly surprised. "Is that what you said to John, 'we should have sex'?"

Sherlock shrugged. "I knew it was what he wanted. I just stated the obvious."

"And that worked?"

"Obviously."

Greg shook his head. "You're impossible."

"You mean incorrigible. And besides, you want me. You've been thinking about it for years." It was said in a matter-of-fact way, with such complete confidence that Greg couldn't help laughing in response.

"That's true." He stared back at Sherlock for a moment and wondered what would happen if he called his bluff. If it was indeed a bluff; with Sherlock, one never knew. He stood and leaned over the desk. "I've been thinking about it since the moment I walked in this room, actually -- what it would be like to fuck you on this desk."

Sherlock's cheeks flushed slightly, but he didn't look away. "Have you?"

Greg leaned closer and grabbed a handful of Sherlock's shirt, enough to tug him forward. "I know that's not what you do, but I can't help imagining it anyway. You with your trousers around your ankles, bent over this desk, with my cock pounding into you." God, he was getting hard at the very idea. Sherlock's eyes blazed, and it only encouraged Greg to keep going. He brushed his lips against Sherlock's. "I wonder if you'd like it. John does -- but then, you saw that much last night, didn't you?"

Sherlock's eyes flicked up to the ceiling and back down again. "I'm sure Mycroft will be quite happy to know all of that."

Greg's eyes widened and Sherlock nodded his head, his lips pressed together in an attempt not to grin. "Shit. Why didn't you tell me--"

"Shhh," Sherlock said as he stood, and then his mouth pressed against Greg's quickly before he whispered, "Well, he might not have been listening at that moment. Odds are he stopped to piss on his way back to his office."

"But still--"

"He's aware of our situation and he's rather difficult to shock. Not that it prevents me from trying."

Greg winced at the very idea. But then, this was his life now, wasn't it? Mycroft Holmes was part of the package. "Definitely incorrigible, the both of you."

*****

It was dark by the time he made it home. Molly Hooper was on her way down the stairs, with John just behind her.

"Greg, hello!" She leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek and smiled. Her eyes were puffy, as if she'd been crying earlier. "Keeping busy, are you?"

There was no innuendo in her tone, to his relief. "Definitely. You?"

She nodded. "Yes, very much so. Five autopsies this week; it's mad."

"Still seeing Nigel?"

She blushed and smiled even wider. "Yes. Going to meet him for a drink now, actually. Shall I tell him you said hello?"

"Yes, please do."

She passed him on the stairs and John moved to follow her, but Greg blocked his path with an arm. "Price of passage?"

John smiled and kissed him.

"You two are sweet, aren't you?" Molly said.

John crossed to her and gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek. "Let's do this again sometime."

"Maybe without all the blubbering."

"It's all right, really."

She smiled. "It is now." Her gaze moved up to Greg and then back to John. "Good night."

He closed the door behind her and leaned back against it.

"Everything all right?" Greg asked.

"I think so." John sighed. "Sherlock was right to trust her, she's… very good at what she does."

Greg nodded. "But you're still angry with him. I don't blame you."

John looked away for a moment before pushing off the door and starting up the stairs. He took Greg's hand as he passed and gave it a squeeze. "Come on, you. Let's have a drink and a cuddle."

Greg grinned and followed him.

"You know," John said several minutes later when they were intertwined on the sofa with glasses of red wine in hand, "I spent quite a lot of today all alone for a man with two boyfriends."

Greg squeezed his hand. "We should work out a schedule or something."

"It got me thinking, though. I've no idea what Sherlock will do once this investigation is done. I can't imagine him continuing to work for Mycroft, but I'm not sure he'll be able to be a consulting detective again anytime soon. And I've nothing to blog about as long as his work is classified." He shrugged. "I suppose I could find medical work or something. I'll go mad otherwise."

"Don't want to be a kept man?" Greg trailed his fingertips down the back of John's neck and then followed with his lips. "God, you. I could eat you alive."

John laughed. "I'm going to be forty on my next birthday. I'm too old to be kept."

"Not true." Greg pulled him into a kiss, and it was a minute before they surfaced.

"I'm serious," John said against his lips. "If Sherlock isn't coming back -- back here, I mean -- I need to work out what I'm going to do. My money's running out fast and I need to pay my half of the rent."

Greg tightened his arms around John. Wherever Sherlock lived at the moment, it was likely he was going to come back to Baker Street eventually, and what would happen then? There were just the two bedrooms, after all. "We'll work it out."

John snorted. "That's not good enough and you know it." He kissed Greg again and then sat back, smiling. "Though it's nice to know I'm worth that much, I suppose."

"You're worth far more than that," Greg said, his voice little more than a whisper. He combed his fingers through John's hair and stared back at him. God, he felt -- he felt -- so much for this man, and that was something he'd barely had time to come to grips with. And there was yet another man in this relationship.

"Greg," John said, staring back at him. His eyes were wide and dark blue, and he looked as earnest as Greg had ever seen him.

Greg kissed him again before he could say anything Greg wasn't quite ready to hear, kissed the words out of him, pushed them back down until John forgot he was going to say them.

"Come to bed with me," Greg said, and John said, "Yes," and they made their way to Greg's bedroom in a tangle of arms and legs. And then they were naked and between the sheets, and Greg realized it had only been a handful of hours earlier that he'd been snogging Sherlock and thinking about fucking him. "Tell me about how you and Sherlock started--" he began, and found he wasn't sure how to complete the sentence. He worked his way down John's body to take John's cock in his mouth.

"Oh, God," John said, and Greg felt a hand in his hair. "It was… Jesus, fuck, right there… About seven or eight months ago, I guess. A few weeks after the first time we met Moriarty, the case with the bombs and the insane clues."

Greg hummed his acknowledgement. That was the first time Moriarty had appeared on his own radar, and he still remembered the horror of those days, the terrified victims, the way Sherlock had treated it all as a game. And the way it had ended, with Moriarty vanishing again.

"Things changed between us after that that. I had always been a bit worked up after cases, I suppose, and he--" John hissed as Greg took his cock in as deeply as he could and worked his tongue along the underside on the way back up. "Oh fuck, do that again. One night we came back from some case where we'd chased down a couple of drug dealers and he just pushed me up against the wall and said, 'I'm going to kiss you,' or something. And he did and I was instantly hard, and he said, 'we should have sex' and I said 'okay, sure' and he tossed me off right there in the foyer. God, your mouth -- I didn't know you could do that."

Greg came off long enough to say, "Keep talking."

"Okay, right. So then I dragged him upstairs and sucked him off, on my knees, with him standing in the middle of the sitting room. I hadn't been sure before then that he was interested in sex at all, you know? It was a complete surprise. Oh God, stop, wait." He pushed at Greg's forehead.

Greg pulled off and looked up at him. "Something wrong?"

"No, I just don't want it to be over that fast." John smiled and sat up. "And I've got an idea." He turned on the bed, positioning himself on his side, facing the opposite direction.

Greg grinned. "Oh, right. This is good. This is--" John's mouth enveloped the head of his cock then, and Greg caught his breath. "Ah, fuck, that's nice."

The position was actually a bit easier than he remembered from his previous experience with women; they each lay on their sides and had access to the other's prick, and it worked rather well. He couldn't quite get his tongue to the spot he wanted, so he settled for light motion and suction instead, and a few minutes later John's mouth went slack around his cock and his fingers dug almost painfully into Greg's arse and he blurted out what was probably meant to be a warning before he came.

Greg was still getting used to this part, to the mouthful of semen and the weird sensation of it hitting the back of his throat, but it was fine. He swallowed without letting himself think too much about it and continued to suck gently until John batted at his head with one hand.

He was pushed over onto his back then and John worked his cock expertly for another ten minutes, pulling back twice when he was close and finally relenting when Greg grabbed hold of his head and held it in place, pumping his hips up into John's mouth. His eyes were closed but there were still sparks in his field of vision, lights behind his eyes like fireworks, sensation rippling through his body while John hummed around his prick and reduced Greg to whimpers.

I love you, he thought. And God help him, he did. He really did.

"Stay."

John settled his head against Greg's shoulder. "I'm not going anywhere."

*****

He'd managed to get home earlier that night, knowing what was likely coming. Both their phones had pinged at the same time, with the same message: It's a go -- SH.

They were mid-dinner preparation, but it didn't matter; Greg sprinted for his room to put on the shoulder holster and load his gun, and by the time he went back in the sitting room to pull on his coat, John was already there, tucking the Browning into the back of his trousers and reaching for his jacket.

They took a taxi to the cemetery. Greg spent the entire journey on his phone contacting his team, and John spent it staring out the window in silence. They got out of the taxi several streets from the churchyard and walked the remainder of the way.

Once the gateway to the cemetery was in sight, they crouched in the shadows to wait. John texted Sherlock to tell him they were in position, and Greg texted the men he knew were not far away now, giving them positions to assume as soon as they arrived.

Three minutes later, a cloaked figure emerged from the shadows across the street, and the two of them exhaled in relief.

"How long?" Greg asked.

"Nine minutes." Sherlock's smile was tight. "I was beginning to think he was ignoring my messages, and then rather suddenly, he responded."

"Interesting choice of location," John said.

"Yes," Sherlock replied, scanning the churchyard. "I think we can assume he's worked it all out."

"What does that mean?" John asked.

"That we'll have to have a few surprises for him."

They waited until Greg received word that his men were in place, and then crossed the cemetery together. They could see someone in the distance, a man leaning against Sherlock's headstone. He watched them approach with an almost casual air, occasionally lifting a cigarette to his lips and taking long drags. His hair was cropped close to his skull and his eyes were sharp, and he did indeed look rather hawk-like perched on the polished granite.

He dropped the cigarette to the ground and twisted a booted toe against it, and smiled.

"Ah, Mr. Holmes. What a pleasant surprise."

*****

"You're British," Sherlock said, and a strange smile crept over his face. Greg wondered if he'd expected this. "Ex-military, long career, and dishonourably discharged in the last four -- no, three years."

The man clapped his gloved hands slowly. "Well done, Mr. Holmes. But why am I working with the Russians?"

"Money, I expect." Sherlock tilted his head. "Yes, you're in it purely for the money, aren't you?"

"Got it in one. Unlike our dearly departed friend Jim -- it is Jim down there, isn't it?" The man glanced down at the grave below his feet. "I have no agenda. I don't play games. I'm just trying to make a living."

"As an assassin for hire?"

The man shrugged. "Everyone's got to be good at something."

Greg frowned at this casual attitude towards brutal violence, but Sherlock seemed amused. "I suppose so. Are you here to offer me something?"

"Are you looking for something? Ah yes, of course. You want to eradicate every trace of Jim Moriarty's existence from the planet. Smoke out all of his lackeys, that sort of thing." He paused and chuckled. "Well, there's no need to worry about that. People were only interested in him insofar as he could get things done. And he was good at what he did, but he was also a fucking lunatic. In the real world, we criminal types prefer our allies a bit more stable. If you're the one who pulled the trigger, there are a hundred men out there who'd like to shake your hand."

Sherlock smirked. "Sadly, he did that bit all by himself."

"I'm not surprised. Still, a tip of the hat to you for being the one who got him to off himself."

Greg glanced over at John, who looked just as confused as Greg felt.

Sherlock's gaze hadn't wavered. "Is that why you came here tonight, to shake my hand?"

The man smiled and fished in the pocket of his coat. Greg and John had their guns in hand instantly, and the cemetery around them was suddenly filled with the sound of weapons being activated -- and not just from the men Greg had positioned in the darkness behind them, but from the other side of the cemetery as well. Sherlock had been correct about the entourage.

"Jumpy, aren't we?" The man waved the pack of cigarettes and lighter he'd pulled from his pocket. He held the pack out to Sherlock, who shook his head. "Finally quit, have you? How about you, Detective Inspector Lestrade? Or have you quit for good?"

Greg's grip tightened on his gun as the man turned to regard him for a moment.

"You were my target, you know. Jim thought you'd be the most difficult to get to, so he gave that job to me. And it was a challenge, indeed. You moved around quite a lot that day."

Greg stared back at him.

"I was glad Mr. Holmes jumped, to be honest. Getting out of Scotland Yard after putting a bullet in your brain was something I wasn't particularly sure I could pull off." He lit the cigarette and took a long drag.

Greg's mind whirled for a moment: connections were made, ideas sparked, possibilities he hadn't considered. He forced it all away, though, pushed it down and cleared his mind. He couldn't afford to be distracted.

"Ah yes, I see," Sherlock said, drawing the man's attention back to him. "You were a military sniper. You must've done something terribly naughty for the Army to discharge someone with such a valuable skill."

The man shrugged and took another drag on the cigarette.

"And you could've gone to the police for a job or even to the security services, but you didn't -- which means the money was better elsewhere. You must be very good."

"As I said before, I'm in this for the money. And since you've just arrested my current employers, I'm afraid I'm a bit cross with you."

"You were supposed to be among them."

The man smirked. "My presence was unnecessary that night. Besides, I've known for a while that Moriarty is dead. I assumed it was a trap of some sort."

"If you knew, why didn't you warn them?"

"Because I wanted to see if my suspicion was correct, that you were indeed still alive and working for the British government. That information is worth quite a bit, you know."

"Is it?" Sherlock's tone was casual, almost disinterested.

The man nearly leered now. "It'll be a huge scandal. The British government participating in such an act of subterfuge, my, my."

Sherlock laughed, and it was an oddly empty sound. "And of course, you're in it for the money, aren't you?"

"They told me you were clever. I wonder what it would be worth for this secret to remain kept?" The man smiled and raised the cigarette to his lips.

"Not very much, I'm afraid." Sherlock pulled his phone from his pocket and tapped out a quick text before putting it away again. "I'm afraid we've been brought here tonight under false pretenses, gentlemen. Sorry to have interrupted everyone's dinner." He turned to look at John and Greg. "Thai? I'm in the mood for Thai."

John shrugged and slipped smoothly into character, his gun held loosely by his side now. "We haven't gone out for sushi in a while."

"No, we haven't. Greg, what do you think?"

Greg shrugged and lowered his weapon, though he kept his attention on the man standing on Sherlock's -- or rather, Moriarty's -- grave. "I'm game for anything."

"Sushi then," John said. "I wonder if we can get a cab around here?"

"What the fuck are you playing at?" the man said from behind them, his anger very clear. "Do you think I'm joking?"

"Oh, no," Sherlock replied. "I'm sure you're quite serious. But you see, the story you're so keen to have me pay to keep secret is at this very moment being sent out in a press release to every major news organization in the country. It will be in all the papers in the morning, on all the morning talk shows, and may already be on the web. What you do or do not know about it at this point is irrelevant. Tomorrow, everyone will know, making that bit of information essentially worthless."

The man glared at them, his jaw clenched.

"So if there's nothing else, I think we're going for sushi. You're welcome to join us, of course." Sherlock wound his scarf around his neck. "No?"

The man dropped his cigarette to the ground and stomped on it. "Shit."

"Well, if you can think of anything else to blackmail me with, do let me know. I'm sure you know how to contact me, Mr….?"

"Moran," the man said, his glare tempered by a touch of resignation. "Sebastian Moran."

"Bloody hell," John said, turning to stare at him. "I know you. We met once, at Shawqat."

"Four years ago, yes." Moran paused for a moment, as if considering. "You saved the life of a good friend of mine that night."

"Oh," Sherlock said. "That's why John wasn't your target. I'd wondered why Moriarty wouldn't put his best sniper on the most obvious target. But you refused, didn't you? Told him Lestrade was far more of a challenge, much more your area."

Greg tensed at the reminder, but pushed it aside again. Not now. Not yet.

Moran made a derisive sound. "Don't go thinking I've got a heart or any such rubbish. If he'd paid me more I'd have had no trouble aiming at your boyfriend."

"Right," Sherlock said with an amused smile. "Well, I think we're done here. Mr. Moran, it's been a pleasure. Greg, if you will?"

"Stand down," Greg called to the shadows around them. There was sound of movement around them, a series of clicks and shutters.

"You heard the man," Moran said, and there was a similar series of sounds coming from the darkness on the other side.

Moran nodded once more and then turned and walked away. They waited until he'd disappeared into the shadows before any of them moved.

"Well," John said. "That was anticlimactic."

"Yes," Sherlock said. "But that's not a bad thing, is it?"

John grinned. "Not at all."

Sherlock turned to Greg. "Sushi, then?"

Greg exhaled, unable to let go the tension in his body quite so quickly. "You two go on. I've got to debrief the boys and file a report. I'll see you at home."

John smiled warmly at him and Sherlock nodded, and they turned and walked away together, disappearing into the darkness. Greg watched them go as he'd done a hundred times before, and smiled.

*****

The flat was dark and quiet when he got home. John's and Sherlock's coats were hanging side by side on the coat rack, and Greg paused and glanced up at the ceiling. He couldn't hear anything. His own bedroom was empty, so he assumed they were upstairs. He briefly considered going up and looking in on them, but no: he was tired and he needed a good night's sleep, and John's bed was ridiculously small besides. They really needed to do something about that.

He took a shower and kept his mind resolutely blank, and then slid under the sheets, his eyes falling shut the moment his head touched the pillow.

It was light when he awoke, though just barely. The tapping sound next to his head had awakened him, a rhythmic beat that had worked itself into a dream before finally stirring him to life.

"Morning," he said to the form sitting in the bed next to him. The light coming from the computer screen was a bit much for this hour and Greg pulled the pillow over his head.

"Good morning. Is this a convenient time?"

Greg yawned. "Convenient for what?"

"Sex," Sherlock replied.

Greg suddenly found himself very much awake. "Right. Sex." He pulled the pillow away from his face. "Give me a couple of minutes, will you?"

He headed to the bathroom to piss and brush his teeth and do a cursory wipedown, even though he'd had a shower just the night before. He stared at himself in the mirror for a long moment.

Shit. This was going to happen, wasn't it? He was going to have sex with Sherlock. Whatever that meant.

He tried not to be self-conscious as he walked back to bed -- completely naked -- and slid under the covers once again. He tried to find a fairly casual way to lie there, propped up on one elbow, but it didn't seem to matter: Sherlock's attention was still focused on his laptop. After a minute, Greg rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling.

"You didn't know, did you?" Sherlock asked.

Greg turned to look at him. "Didn't know what?"

"That you had a sniper on you that day."

"Ah. No, I didn't." He inhaled, exhaled again. He hadn't let himself think about it last night, but it all came back now, random thoughts flying about and sorting themselves even as he asked, "So, what does that mean, exactly?"

Sherlock set the laptop on the bedside table and turned to face him, sitting cross-legged on the bed. He was dressed in a loose-fitting t-shirt and y-fronts, a state of undress Greg had never seen him in before. He looked oddly normal.

"Moriarty had snipers trained on the three people I care about most: John, and Mrs. Hudson, and… you. If I didn't jump, the three of you would be killed."

Greg swallowed. "I get John and Mrs. Hudson, but why me?"

Sherlock's eyes locked with his. "Isn't it obvious?"

Greg stared at him for a moment. Had he misjudged Sherlock so badly all this time, or had Sherlock simply changed that much in the year or so he'd known John? He wasn't certain, but it seemed clear that the man sitting before him now bore not a trace of the one he'd found in the gutter all those years ago. How had Greg Lestrade moved to the top of Sherlock's list without even knowing it?

But of course, he did know there was something there, a connection Sherlock didn't have with anyone else at Scotland Yard. Greg had recognized his brilliance early on, had taken a chance on bringing him in, and it had paid off, again and again. They'd connected so many times over cases and at crime scenes, long before John came along, and even when the others had rolled their eyes and complained and even whispered behind Greg's back, he'd ignored it, because he knew Sherlock was one of the best resources he had.

And so now here was this man, whom Greg could not deny he'd grown to care deeply about, sitting before him and saying that everything he'd done, the hell he'd put himself through in the last months -- that it had been for Greg too.

He swallowed. "How did Moriarty know if I didn't?"

Sherlock's smile was small, almost tentative. "He was brilliant, remember? He made it his business to know my weak spots. I spent far too much of my life denying I had them. Sentiment, emotion, love -- those were to be avoided, to be discarded when they arose. Connections to people would only weaken me, so I didn't have them. Or so I thought."

Greg sat up. "How long have you felt that way?"

"You know how long."

His mind was flooded with the memory of Sherlock in his office that night, strung out and lost and nearly predatory in his focus on Greg. He exhaled. "I wasn't sure you remembered that."

"I do." Sherlock looked away. "Not my finest hour, to be sure. I suppose I never thanked you. Very few people had any faith in me then. Other than Mycroft, and he was obligated."

"I knew you were going to be someone amazing, even then." Greg reached out and touched Sherlock's face.

Sherlock leaned in and kissed him, and Greg let himself be pressed back down into the mattress. Sherlock's tongue felt so different from John's against his own, rougher somehow, cooler, curling into his mouth differently. It felt decadent to do this now, to make love to someone who wasn't John. Jesus, John.

"Wait, wait," Greg said, breaking the kiss and holding Sherlock's face in his hands. He knew this was what he wanted, what John wanted, what Sherlock wanted, but it felt too much like cheating, somehow. He wasn't like Jodi and this wasn't the same at all, he knew -- but he needed to find a way to let that go before he could do anything else. "I'm in love with John. I haven't told him yet."

Sherlock's brow furrowed slightly, an expression Greg had often seen when Sherlock thought someone was stating the obvious. "I know. He feels the same about you, but he's afraid to tell you."

"Why is he afraid?"

"The same reason you are, I expect."

Greg started to protest, but stopped himself. He nodded. "And you? Do you love him?"

"Yes." Sherlock leaned in again and his lips brushed Greg's neck. "And he knows. The first morning, after you sent me upstairs. I told him then."

Greg's head fell back and he sighed. "He loves you. He has for a long time."

"I know." Sherlock's voice was muffled against Greg's skin.

The sensation of those lips against his throat was heady. One of Sherlock's hands smoothed down Greg's chest, past his navel, and then fingertips trailed lightly down the length of his cock.

"Is it just a bit weird that we're talking about how much we both love John while you're doing… that?"

"No," Sherlock replied, his voice rough.

And he was right, for reasons Greg couldn't have explained under threat of torture. There was Greg and John and there was Sherlock and John, and that still left room for Sherlock and Greg.

"Three points determine a plane," he whispered, and Sherlock pulled back to look at him, one eyebrow quirked up.

"Was that intended to be a metaphor for stability?"

Greg shrugged. "No idea. I had a massive crush on my maths teacher at school, though. First man I ever had an orgasm over." Sherlock's expression was one of utter confusion, and Greg grinned. He slid a hand between Sherlock's thighs. "You should get those off, now."

Sherlock reached down to tug his pants off and tossed them out of the way, and Greg kissed him again.

"God, I want you," Greg whispered against his lips. He reached down between them and pressed their cocks together. "I've wanted to get my hands on this for quite a while."

Sherlock laughed. "You needed only to ask."

"Well, I was married for a while there."

"True."

"And then you were dead, which was a bit inconvenient."

"A bit." Sherlock's hand joined his and stroked.

"And I… oh, fuck, that's it, right there."

"Is that really how you want me?" Sherlock whispered, and Greg whimpered.

"How I really want you is on your hands and knees." And oh, that image -- it went straight to his groin and Greg had to close his eyes.



"I had something different in mind." There was a smile in his voice and a hint of something mischievous, and Greg opened his eyes again. Sherlock pushed him onto his back and kissed him once more before sliding down his body and pressing his thighs apart.

Greg grinned at the ceiling. "Oh, yeah. This is good."

"It's about to get better," Sherlock said, and then pushed his thighs up. Greg felt hot breath against his balls and then lower, and then he realized what was about to happen.

"Oh God," he said, just as he felt the tip of a tongue brush against his arsehole.

He'd done this to others, but no one had done it to him, and he'd always been embarrassed to ask. And oh God, Sherlock's tongue was soft and slick and hot and lapping against his arsehole and Jesus it felt amazing. He tucked his hands under his knees to pull his thighs back, not caring how wanton the position was, just wanting more of that, more of that tongue, that heat, and fucking hell that tongue was pressing into him now, just slightly, just enough that it made him want more.

"Oh God, that's amazing," he said, not even caring how pathetic he sounded, anything to get more. Sherlock's tongue pressed in over and over, working its way slightly deeper each time and Greg writhed beneath him. "Please touch me, please."

Sherlock's mouth moved up and sucked on one of Greg's balls, and he stroked Greg's cock with one hand, and Greg moaned embarrassingly loudly.

"Your mouth is amazing, do you know that?" He'd spent far too much time thinking about that mouth and what it might be capable of.

Sherlock's tongue circled the other ball and then he shifted up, his breath brushing against the head of Greg's cock. "Did John tell you that this is what I do best?"

"He might have mentioned it, yeah." And Greg might have wanked to that thought on a few occasions. Maybe more than a few.

Sherlock's tongue worked the sensitive spot at the frenulum, and Greg hissed. "I'm going to enjoy working out what turns you on the most."

"Yet another mystery to be solved. I just hope you won't find me boring afterwards."

Sherlock pressed a kiss to the tip of his prick. "It's always a moving target -- that's what makes it so fascinating. So do you like it excruciatingly slow--" He paused to tease Greg's cock with the tip of his tongue for a full minute. "--or fast and hard?" He swallowed Greg's cock to the root, taking him in deeper than anyone had ever done before, so deeply that Greg could feel himself down Sherlock's throat, and then Sherlock actually swallowed, and Greg reeled. No one had ever done that for him before; it was something he'd only seen done in porn and hadn't quite been certain was possible. It felt amazing: the muscles of Sherlock's throat clenched around the head of his cock and then there was the gorgeous suction of his mouth as he came off enough to breathe and then moved back down again. It was like Sherlock was fucking him with his mouth and his throat just as surely as anyone had ever fucked him with other parts of their bodies, and it was incredible.

Just when he thought he was on the verge of coming, Sherlock pulled off and said, "Well?"

"Oh, fuck you, don't stop!"

Sherlock chuckled against his skin. "Do you like to be fingered?"

Did he? He opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling. "Yeah. Yes."

"Have you got--"

"Bedside table, drawer."

After a moment's fumbling, Sherlock settled between his thighs again. He teased now, soft flicks of his tongue along the shaft of Greg's cock, brushes of lips, the occasional swipe of wet warmth, never quite exactly where Greg needed it, but close enough that he shuddered and strained.

"You're experimenting on me."

"Of course I am. It's the most efficient way to work out what gets the strongest reaction."

Greg laughed. "Or you could, you know, ask me what I like."

"Not as much fun."

The tip of his tongue swirled around the head of Greg's cock just as a slick fingertip circled his arsehole. The sound Greg made was so wanton it was shocking even to him. His sexual experiences with men prior to the last month had been limited to quick blow jobs and hard fucks, fast and efficient, and almost always with far too much alcohol involved. He'd never expected anything quite like this -- this flood of sensation, the feeling of being worshipped, made love to, even -- that he'd experienced with John and now with Sherlock. It was sex unlike any he'd ever had.

His hands clenched the rumpled sheet beneath him as the circling tongue slowly gave way to Sherlock's mouth: a kiss at first, then his lips parted and the head was slowly drawn in, that tongue swirling and moving, and all the while there was a slick fingertip pressing into him slowly, so slowly he wasn't quite sure how far in it was until he felt it start to slide back out again. And oh that, that bizarre sensation of movement and pressure that somehow intensified everything Sherlock was doing with his mouth, so much so that when that finger slipped out completely he could feel himself come back down a bit.

"God, you're…" he began, but then the finger pressed in again and Sherlock took in more of his cock, and the rest of the words morphed into a moan.

If being fucked was anything like this, perhaps he should reconsider.

The build was slow, torturous even, perfect, and then there were two fingers inside him, pressing straight in and twisting on the way out again, and that mouth was hot and wet and that tongue and fuck. Suddenly Sherlock's mouth was everywhere, and it was a moment before he realized his prick was halfway down Sherlock's throat again. Sherlock swallowed around him and at the same moment hooked the fingers inside Greg up, and there, that, that, yes was all he managed, not sure if the words were in his head or coming out of his mouth. His hands tightened into fists and the movement was repeated, a long stroke up, warm mouth, fingers twisting out, then down, swallowed down, fingers thrusting into him, perfect --

He thought he'd had his share of fantastic orgasms in the last month, but this, now -- it left him shaking, floating, with his fingers and toes tingling and his brain fuzzy, and fucking hell, that had actually managed to blow his expectations away completely.

Sherlock's face pressed against his stomach, wiping his mouth off on Greg's skin, but that was fine, that was lovely.

"Oh God," Greg said after what seemed to be minutes, and the sound of his voice rang in his ears. "Give me a minute. Though I don't think I can top that."

"It's fine." Sherlock slid up Greg's body and Greg felt the hard length of his cock press against Greg's thigh. Sherlock's body slid against him and his voice was tight. "Just stay right there, and... oh, God."

Greg's eyes flew open at that. "No, no, no." He pulled himself together enough to roll them both over and pressed Sherlock down into the mattress beneath him. "I've thought about this for far too long to lie back and let you rub yourself off on my fucking leg." He kissed Sherlock roughly and pressed his arms up over his head, then pulled back just enough to whisper, "You are not denying me this."

Sherlock stared back up at him, clearly startled. His eyes were dark and clear, and then a trace of a smile appeared at the corners of his lips. He almost seemed to melt into the mattress then, and Greg couldn't help smirking in response.

Oh.

"Hands on the rails, and keep them there." Sherlock stretched his arms out over his head and found the rails of the headboard. He wrapped his fingers around two of the slats, never breaking eye contact. "And now close your eyes. Don't open them until we're done. Can you do that?"

Sherlock closed his eyes and nodded, and Greg kissed him.

He moved as slowly as he could manage after that: soft kisses and brushes of lips and flicks of his tongue, mapping the contours of Sherlock's body line by line, inch by inch. He tried to commit the most sensitive spots to memory, and when he found one that seemed especially responsive -- the soft skin on the inside of his forearms, his nipples, and the backs of his knees -- he paused and experimented with pressure and speed, alternating between licks and bites.

When the tip of Greg's tongue trailed a wet path up the inside of his thigh, Sherlock arched his back and moaned, and Greg grinned triumphantly. Sherlock clenched the railing hard and squirmed beneath Greg, but he kept his eyes closed.

"What do you want?"

Sherlock made a startled sound, as if he'd just been given permission to make noise. "I don't know, I… Touch me."

"Like this?" Greg wrapped his fingers around Sherlock's prick and stroked up, giving a slight squeeze at the top before twisting and sliding back down again.

"Yes, and--" Sherlock's next words faded into a strangled moan as Greg sucked one of his balls into his mouth. He rolled his tongue around it slowly, then wriggled the tip against spots that seemed to be especially sensitive. He kept his hand moving slowly as he turned his attention to the other one. He tugged gently with his mouth and listened, trying to work out if it was too much.

It wasn't, if the trembling in Sherlock's thighs was anything to go by. It was a far more beautiful sight than he'd even imagined: Sherlock trembling beneath him, being taken apart slowly by Greg's hands and mouth, and still hanging onto the bedrail exactly as he'd been told. God, that was… Greg had to close his eyes for a moment and collect himself. He could do anything to Sherlock right now -- well, almost anything -- and the idea of it was heady.

Greg licked his way up the shaft and teased the head of Sherlock's cock for more than a minute, pulling back when Sherlock shifted his hips up in an attempt to push into his mouth.

"Tell me what you want."

Sherlock lifted his head to look down at him; his eyes were startlingly dark.

"Keep your eyes closed. Just feel."

Sherlock's head fell back against the pillow. "Your mouth."

"I was hoping you'd say that." Greg took the head into his mouth and sucked lightly, keeping the touch of his tongue slow and gentle, and Sherlock gasped. His hips shifted up again and Greg allowed it, letting Sherlock's cock push into his mouth just to the point of discomfort. He grasped Sherlock's hips and pushed him down against the mattress again, and gave him a half-dozen long strokes with his mouth. Sherlock groaned as Greg pulled off to tease with just his tongue again.

"Not yet," he said, unable to stop himself from smiling. "I haven't decided how I want to see you come."

"You're enjoying this." The tension in Sherlock's voice was clear.

"Isn't that the point?" Greg planted a string of gentle kisses down the shaft of Sherlock's cock and then licked back up the underside again. "I've fantasized about this, you know. What it would be like to have you like this."

"This?" Sherlock shifted his hips up again. "This is maddening."

"Good."

"How is it good? Isn't the point of sex to get off?" A touch of frustration there, which was interesting.

"It can be." Greg took the head into his mouth again.

"And to do so -- oh, fuck -- with some manner of efficiency?"

Greg chuckled around Sherlock's prick and started moving again, slowly, and held his hips still. He'd learned a lot about this particular act during the last month. His prior experiences of oral sex with men had been quick and alcohol-induced and not something he'd reflected upon afterwards or even attempted to refine. But with John it had become something else entirely -- sex had become something else. With Jodi it had stopped being about connection and pleasure and joy so long ago that he'd forgotten it could be anything other than a quick shag to press reset on their sex life, tick that box next to had sex this week on the list of Things You Do When You're Married and Pretending to be Happy.

That first time with John had been about needing human connection and getting off with a friend, and he hadn't expected it to become something more, something that could become permanent. And Sherlock had come back at exactly the moment Greg had realized he wanted something more, and then it had become incredibly complicated.

"Less thinking, more sucking," Sherlock said, and Greg pulled off and laughed.

"I thought I was the one telling you what to do in this scenario."

"Then tell me."

Greg crawled up the length of the bed and stretched out beside him, and took Sherlock's cock in hand. "Look at me." Sherlock turned his head and Greg stroked, and Sherlock's eyelids fluttered closed. "No, look at me. I want to see you come like this."

Sherlock opened his eyes again and Greg was startled by how dark they looked in the dim morning light. He leaned down to kiss Sherlock and teased his lips apart with the tip of his tongue. Their lips moved together, soft and warm and slick, and Greg was struck again by how different Sherlock's mouth was from John's.

His hand moved faster, twisting the sensitive foreskin against the head on each short stroke, and Sherlock whimpered into his mouth. Greg pressed one more kiss against his lips before leaning back to watch, to see the jaw slacken and his eyes close, and his fingers clench the headboard so tightly there would be marks later. Sherlock's hips rocked up against Greg's hand and his mouth fell open and Greg was sure he'd have preferred to stifle the cry he made as he came. It was beautiful, even better than Greg had imagined, to see him lose control for just that moment, to give himself over to something purely physical.

Sherlock's hands went to cover his face, and Greg didn't try to pry them away. He traced a finger through the string of semen on Sherlock's belly, spreading it on the skin around his navel.

"Now I'll certainly need a shower," Sherlock said, and then groaned when Greg leaned over him to lick the mess off. "Or yes, you could do that."

Greg grinned and settled his torso on Sherlock's chest. "So, was that a horrible waste of your time, then?"

Sherlock dropped his hands away from his face. "I said it was inefficient, not pointless."

"Some things are meant to be inefficient, you know."

Sherlock smiled and reached up to ruffle Greg's hair. "I suppose so."

Greg pressed his lips together. "You liked it like that, me telling you what to do. You got off on it a bit."

Sherlock looked thoughtful. "More than a bit."

Greg regarded him for a moment. "Is that what you want?"

"Maybe. Yes. It's not something John has ever expressed interest in, so I hadn't given it much consideration, but it's definitely… intriguing."

Greg smiled. "All right. We'll talk about it. But not now." His senses were starting to come back online and he was aware of a scent in the air that hadn't been there before. "Is that… bacon?"

"Mmm, yes. John did say something about a fry-up."

Greg lay his cheek on Sherlock's chest and listened to the sound of his heart beating, still heading back down to normal after his orgasm. "So did he send you down here this morning?"

"He was still asleep when I got out of bed this morning." Sherlock shifted and Greg looked back up at him. "I came down because I wanted you." He said it simply, and it was clear that he meant it.

It really was that simple, wasn't it? Greg smiled and sat up. "Let's get dressed then. I'm starving. Never did have a proper supper last night."

John was in the kitchen when they emerged at last, dressed and cleaned up. John was wearing an old t-shirt and loose jeans, and his feet were bare. He looked up when they walked in and he grinned at them, and Greg wondered how much of the activity he'd overheard. "Good morning, was it?"

Greg crossed to wrap his arms around John from behind and plant a kiss on the back of his neck. "Definitely. This is rather homey of you."

"It's just bacon and eggs."

"It's like having a wife again."

"If this is a crack about me taking it up the arse, you can kindly fuck off." John's tone was good-natured, though, and Greg grinned against his skin.

"My wife never took it up the arse -- at least she didn't take mine. Come to think of it, she didn't fix me breakfast very often either."

"She didn't know what she was missing." John leaned back against him slightly, and Greg felt a pulse of pleasure at the way their bodies fit together.

"Neither did I," he said into John's hair, and John gave his hand a squeeze.

Greg turned to see Sherlock leaning against the counter and watching the two of them with an expression of amusement.

He stepped away from John and turned toward the sink. "Coffee, right. How do you take yours, Sherlock?"

Ten minutes later they were seated at the table and tucking into breakfast when there was a knock on the door.

"Come in," John called, and Greg looked up to see Mrs. Hudson cross to the kitchen with what appeared to be a coffee cake on a tray.

"Good morning, boys. Mrs. Dowley gave me this cake yesterday, but it's not my favorite. I thought you might like it." She set it on the table and gave Sherlock a pat on the shoulder. "And since you've been ignoring the buzzer anyway I took the liberty of disconnecting it an hour ago. There are reporters and all sorts of nosy people down there waiting for one of you to make an appearance."

Greg was still staring at Mrs. Hudson, his coffee cup frozen halfway to his mouth. "How long have you known, then?"

"Known what, dear? Oh, about Sherlock." She gave Sherlock a mock stern look. "About a week, I suppose? He gave me quite a fright. I nearly fainted dead away."

"And then she slapped me," Sherlock added with a fond smile.

"And I'll do it again if you ever try something so daft." She shook her head. "Though I must admit that I had my doubts all along. Suicide, really? That's not like you, is it? Anyone who knows you at all would see right through that."

Greg and John exchanged a wry look.

"So I suppose you'll be moving back in, then? Goodness, where will all of you boys sleep?"

"Oh, I think we'll manage," John said with a grin.

Mrs. Hudson affected a shocked expression, though there was a twinkle in her eyes. "Oh goodness, you three. Don't go teasing an old woman with such things." She beamed fondly at all of them before turning to leave again.

Greg crossed to the front window and peeked outside. Sure enough, there were at least two dozen people standing about, along with several television news vans.

"There goes my Saturday," he said with a sigh. "I'd better call in and see what everyone wants me to do about this."

"Finish your coffee first," John said. "And you might not want to look quite so well-fucked when you go out to face that bunch."

Greg turned back to look at both of them and grinned. "If that's the standard, none of us will be going out much anytime soon."

John and Sherlock smiled at each other, and Greg crossed back to the table to sit with them, to have coffee and bacon and eggs with both of his boyfriends. It was the first morning, in a way. The first of many. He raised his cup to his lips and smiled.

*****

THE CONSULTING FAN NETWORK


PARTY THREAD CFN_mod
Posts: 5620
19 August 23:41 I think most of you have heard the news by now that SHERLOCK IS ALIVE!! For details, go here or here, or just Google it. We're all reeling here at the site and are making plans to completely revamp the place. In the meantime, celebrate here! Sherlock is BACK and so are WE!! 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 -11- 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 PatriceHeart
Posts: 1478
20 August 06:42 I LOVE EVERYONE IN THIS BAR. MelinaP
Posts: 1274
20 August 06:43 Harkin04
Posts: 3502
20 August 06:43 Moon76
Posts: 489
20 August 06:44 I am FREAKING OUT and CRYING and my mum thinks something is seriously wrong with me, but I DON'T CARE!!! JeremyGlass93
Posts: 1198
20 August 06:45 HOLD ME.
SassyG14
Posts: 602
20 August 06:45 I CAN'T. I HAVE LOST THE ABILITY TO CAN. Jessisbest
Posts: 547
20 August 06:46 MaryM
Posts: 836
20 August 06:46 STILL SCREAMING.
Chill1987
Posts: 1282
20 August 06:47 I knew we were right. I KNEW IT.
JustTimB
Posts: 814
20 August 06:48 Everyone in my flat, right now:

Harrysgirl547
Posts: 938
20 August 06:49 Okay, I admit it: the Fakers were RIGHT. :-) RandomStupidAnon
Posts: 591
20 August 06:50The exuberance is quite charming, but why so much surprise? A good number of the people commenting here were already convinced Sherlock's death was a hoax.YeomanSam
Posts: 835
20 August 06:51Ah, RandomStupidAnon: I wondered if you'd show up in this thread. Here to eat your words?RandomStupidAnon
Posts: 592
20 August 06:52I never said I believed the theory was wrong. I was skeptical of the evidence presented, but I always thought the idea itself held merit and was worth consideration.YeomanSam
Posts: 836
20 August 06:53You are such a dick.RandomStupidAnon
Posts: 593
20 August 06:54So I've been told. ;-)

*****

TRANSCRIPT OF PRESS CONFERENCE
Scotland Yard, 26 August, 09:12

D. I. LESTRADE: Thank you all for coming. As everyone is now aware, the amateur detective known as Sherlock Holmes, who was reported to have committed suicide by jumping from the roof of St. Bartholomew's Hospital back in June of this year, is in fact alive. As the press release from the Security Services made clear, this incident was staged in order to apprehend James Moriarty, best known for his attempt to steal the Crown Jewels last spring. Mr. Holmes was working with the Security Service during the months prior to the operation, the details of which remain classified. I have, however, been authorized to inform you that James Moriarty was killed during the operation and is no longer a threat to society. Scotland Yard were brought into the operation just in the last few weeks, and no one here knew the details of Mr. Holmes' whereabouts until that time. I'll take a few questions.

Q: How was Moriarty killed?

D. I. LESTRADE: Mr. Moriarty shot himself in the head on the roof of St. Bartholomew's around the time that Mr. Holmes jumped.

Q: So Moriarty was on the roof of Bart's with Sherlock Holmes?

D. I. LESTRADE: Yes.

Q: Why?

D. I. LESTRADE: I don't have that information, but it would seem to have been part of the operation.

Q: Was Moriarty's presence a factor in the staged suicide?

D. I. LESTRADE: I'm not certain I understand the question.

Q: Did Mr. Holmes jump from the roof as part of the plan to apprehend Moriarty?

D. I. LESTRADE: Yes, as far as I know, the staged suicide was part of the plan to apprehend him.

Q: Moriarty claimed to be an actor called Richard Brook who was hired by Sherlock Holmes. Is the official position of the police that those claims were false?

D. I. LESTRADE: Yes, that is our position. I have no further information, but I've been informed that there will be an article in the Guardian tomorrow that details this fabrication by Mr. Moriarty and who else was involved.

Q: Have the police ruled out the possibility that Mr. Holmes murdered Moriarty?

D. I. LESTRADE: Yes. Completely.

Q: According to the press release, Mr. Holmes sustained no serious injuries, despite leaping from a four-storey building. How was that accomplished?

D. I. LESTRADE: I'm afraid that information is classified.

Q: At what point did you personally become aware that Mr. Holmes was still alive?

D. I. LESTRADE: In the last few weeks. When Scotland Yard was brought into the operation, I was informed of his continued survival.

Q: He was a friend of yours before. What was your reaction to learning he was alive?

D. I. LESTRADE: He remains a good friend, so obviously I was thrilled to see him again and to know he is safe.

Q: You went on record at the time as stating that you didn't believe any of the articles claiming he was a fraud. Did you know something about the operation then?

D. I. LESTRADE: No, I didn't know anything. That information was highly classified, so if I had, I certainly wouldn't have said anything publicly about it.

Q: What is your response to the claims that the Security Services and Scotland Yard violated the public trust by keeping Mr. Holmes' survival a secret?

D. I. LESTRADE: I'd say those people haven't watched many James Bond films.

[LAUGHTER]

D. I. LESTRADE: That's the nature of the work done by the Security Services. Some information is classified for the public good. It's hardly the first time information has been withheld from the public, and it's certainly not the most scandalous of such incidents, as we all well know.

Q: What is your response to the rumors that you are romantically involved with John Watson?

D. I. LESTRADE: I'm not going to comment on those rumors.

END OF TRANSCRIPT

*****

THE PERSONAL BLOG OF
Dr. John. H. Watson

26 August

A Quick Note

As everyone has heard by now, Sherlock is alive and well. I can't say that the news was a complete surprise to me. After all, I knew the man for more than a year. He was my best friend, and none of the things that were said about him in the papers, or the idea that he would kill himself out of humiliation, made a shred of sense to me. So I hoped, but I didn't know for certain until a few weeks ago.

People want to know how he survived the fall from the roof of Bart's, and I'm afraid that information is classified. Don't bother asking, because you won't learn anything about it from me.

I don't know what the future holds for Sherlock, but I can tell you that he has moved back into the flat and we're resuming life as normally as we can manage with paparazzi camped out on the front steps. He may begin taking cases again once the excitement dies down. For now his work remains classified, so I can't say much more. :-)

Most people who lose someone don't get to rewind the clock and say all the things they'd meant to say, so I'm incredibly grateful to have another chance. People have asked if I was angry at him for making me go through all of it. I was for a while, and sometimes I still am, but I now understood why he did it. His reasons were completely justified, and that's my last word on that topic.

Thank you all for your kind emails and for your support during the last few months. It's been quite a ride, and I'm looking forward to the future.

---

214 comments



*****

Epilogue: Two months later

Greg's phone pinged the moment he emerged from the Baker Street tube station.

You know that thing Sherlock's been threatening to do? He's done it.

Greg stopped in his tracks and stared at the phone for a moment. "Shit."

Before he turned the corner, he wound his scarf up over his mouth and nose out of habit, but the few paps hanging around outside the front door of 221B didn't pay him much notice. He passed them on the opposite side of the street and then crossed to unlock the door of 227. He pulled the scarf away as he climbed the stairs, dread pooling in his stomach.

He expected the worst when he opened the door of the flat. It wasn't as bad as he'd feared, though: some of the furniture had been moved around to accommodate a large hole blown in one wall, tall enough to walk through. Through the hole he could see the sitting room of 221B.

He sighed and flicked on the lights. "Motherfucker."

John appeared in the gaping hole. "What do you think?"

Greg stripped off his coat and crossed to inspect the damage. "My landlord is going to kill me."

"Yeah, well, Mrs . Hudson hasn't seen it yet either. I hope not to be around when that happens."

Greg reached out to touch the thick layer of exposed brick between the two flats. "How did he do it?"

"I've no idea. I was at the surgery at the time. And he was conspicuously absent when I got home."

Greg shook his head. "This can't be legal. There are permits and inspections."

John snorted. "As if that would stop him. At least he cleaned up the mess."

Indeed, the floor was clean on both sides of the new doorway. The floor wasn't quite level between; there was a good four-inch step up into Greg's main room. It would need a bit of work before it looked presentable, of course. Greg scrubbed at his chin with one hand. "Oh, God. I can't believe he did it."

John stepped through the doorway and slid his arms around Greg's waist. "You have to admit, though, that it's terribly convenient. It'll be like having one huge flat."

"True." Greg leaned down to kiss him. "I suppose it will be nice not to have to do the walk of shame in the mornings when one or the other of us stays over."

John's hands slid down over Greg's arse. "Exactly. And your man-cave set-up will be much more readily accessible." John nodded over at the large flat-screen television on the far wall surrounded by various pieces of entertainment-related technology. "I can pop over to watch a match without even having to get dressed."

"Speaking of--" Greg paused to kiss him once more before he crossed over to pluck a remote from the set of five lined up on the sofa table. "I DVR'd the ITM Cup. Want to watch, maybe order some takeaway later?"

"Sounds fantastic. Have you got any beer?"

"Of course. My refrigerator is being used for its intended purpose." He turned on the television and the sound system and scrolled through the DVR menu.

"Must be nice. Oi, what's this?"

He turned to see John in the kitchen, staring at a collection of beakers that covered an entire countertop. Most were filled with a greenish-brown liquid. "An experiment, apparently. He said it would only take a couple of days."

John's eyes narrowed. "You said no experiments in this flat. That was the whole point."

Greg sighed. "It was a lot more complicated than that, and you know it."

It wasn't just the experiments covering every available surface, or the body parts of dubiously legal original that kept showing up in the fridge that had finally driven Greg over the edge. Two weeks after the Moriarty case was closed, Greg had come home from a ridiculously long day to find that his bedroom had been re-appropriated by Sherlock. The sleeping arrangements had been ad hoc anyway, with Greg and John each having their own room and Sherlock sleeping wherever he liked, on the infrequent occasions he slept. But on that particular day, the entire contents of Sherlock's SIS office had been boxed up and transported to the flat, and the bedroom had converted into a home office of sorts.

Greg found it impossible to sleep there while Sherlock worked at all hours of the night. He'd ended up sleeping in John's room, which was fine, but after a particularly memorable incident in which Greg had opened the refrigerator to find a severed penis lying on the shelf -- a human penis, for God's sake -- he was done. No matter how much Greg cared about John and Sherlock, he was a grown fucking man and he was paying half the rent: he needed a space of his own.

And so when they learned the next day that a flat in the adjacent building was available, it seemed a fantastic solution. The three of them had keys to both flats and they each came and went as they pleased. The flat was smaller than 221B, with a single bedroom, but it was exactly what Greg needed. He'd purchased the largest bed he could find, large enough for the three of them -- which meant his bedroom tended to be the place where all the sex happened. He didn't mind.

And of course, as soon as they'd realized the two flats shared a wall, Sherlock had decided they should tear it down. Which he'd done today.

"It hardly matters now. It's one big flat." Greg gestured at their impromptu doorway. "You won't even have to go outside if you decide to surprise me in the middle of the night."

John gave him a long look. "You said no experiments. You threatened him with bodily harm."

Greg clenched his jaw. "I may have changed my mind."

John's eyes widened. "Oh God, don't tell me. What, did he bribe you with sexual favors?"

Greg felt heat rise to his cheeks. "It wasn't just that."

John rolled his eyes. "You are so whipped."

"He sucked my cock for an hour. What was I supposed to do?"

"Reattach your bollocks, apparently."

"Get the fucking beer, John, and let it go."

John settled next to him on the sofa a minute later, still visibly tense, and Greg sighed. He paused the playback and tugged at John's hand.

"Come here."

John sighed, but let himself be pulled into Greg's arms.

"I'm glad he blew a giant hole in the wall, to be honest. If the price of living with the two of you again includes his experiments spilling over every now and then, it's worth it."

"I know you've just been on the other side of a wall, but…" John tilted his head up and kissed the underside of Greg's chin. "I've missed you. It felt like you moved out."

Greg sighed and kissed his temple. He knew John had felt that way, but neither of them had said anything until now. "I didn't, you know. I just moved… over."

"I know. And now it's kind of moot, I suppose."

"It is." Greg sought out John's mouth and kissed him, gently at first, and then felt heat spiral through him when John's tongue slid against his own. "So, rugby or sex?"

"There's a reason DVRs were invented." John climbed up to straddle Greg's lap, and they both hummed at the contact.

Greg's hands slid into John's trousers and over his arse. "I haven't fucked you on this sofa yet."

"Not tonight." John's mouth found his neck.

"Don't tell me you have a headache."

"Ah, no." John sat back with a wry smile. "I'll just say there's a biological reason and leave it at that."

Greg grinned. "Right. I might be out of condoms anyway."

John pressed him against the sofa. "Well, now that there's a brand-new door, supply runs to my room might not be as much of an issue."

There was a distinct sound of a door opening and closing in 221B, and they both froze.

John looked up, and the expression on his face changed to the one he typically wore around Sherlock: a blend of affection and annoyance. "I hope you're planning on putting in an actual door. Otherwise I think we're in serious violation of the fire code."

A series of footsteps could be heard crossing the room and finally Sherlock came into Greg's field of vision. "I'll take care of it tomorrow."

"Don't tell me you know how to set a door," Greg said, unable to keep the incredulity from his tone.

"All right, I won't tell you," Sherlock replied. "Brought you something." He reached into his pocket and dangled a set of handcuffs over Greg's face.

Greg grinned and reached for them, but before he could, John snatched them away. "Is this what the two of you are getting up to, then?"

"You're always welcome to join us." Greg slid a hand up John's thigh. "In fact--" He tugged John's shirt and pulled him down close enough to whisper, "Considering the events of today, you might find the sight of Sherlock handcuffed to the bed rather interesting."

He felt John shiver against him. "You have a point. We could make him watch us suck each other off."

"While he can't touch himself." Greg grinned and kissed John's ear. "I like it."

They both sat up and smiled at Sherlock, whose expression changed to one of suspicion immediately. "What?"

Greg took the handcuffs back from John and held them out to Sherlock. "You know what to do. We'll join you shortly."

Sherlock's eyes narrowed, but the heat in them was clear. He nodded and took the handcuffs, and disappeared in the direction of Greg's bedroom.

"Well, this is new," John said.

"Are you okay with it?"

"As long as I'm not the one being tied up or handcuffed, I suppose so. Does he actually like it?"

"He hates it when he's bound and I go slowly. And by hate, I mean love, obviously. He whinges the entire time, but it turns him on like mad."

John looked undeniably intrigued. "And so if two of us are doing it, teasing him like that--"

"Yeah."

They stared at each other for a moment.

"Right," John at last. "Are you sure you want me there? I mean, this is usually something that's between the two of you, and I don't want to intrude."

"Trust me, it's not intruding. In fact, I think he may have been planning this all along."

John's eyebrows rose. "The wall, the disappearing act, the handcuffs -- yeah, you may be right. So, should we go and look in on him, then?"

Greg pulled him in for a kiss. "Not yet. After what he did today, he deserves to be made uncomfortable for a bit."

"Jesus. Remind me never to piss you off."

From the bedroom, there was a distinct clink of the handcuffs snapping shut.

Greg grinned up at John. "I love you."

A strange expression flitted over John's face, and he smiled. "I love you too."

They snogged for several minutes, until Greg's trousers were uncomfortably tight and John was nearly rutting against him. He pressed his forehead against John's. "Shall we take this into the bedroom then?"

John stood and held out his hand, and Greg took it.

~ fin~