Fic: In These Words, There Is Healing
Title: In These Words, There Is Healing
Characters/Pairing: Sherlock Holmes, DI Lestrade
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Word Count: 3200
Summary: Sometimes, on the very worst of nights, the only thing that can get Sherlock to sleep is the sound - and feel - of Lestrade’s voice.
Notes: Fluff, cuddling, and voice!porn behind the cut. Also, the return of amateur astronomer!Lestrade.
xxxx
Sherlock doesn’t bother to answer the perfunctory knock that sounds against his door in the early hours of that morning. He knows that DI Lestrade is standing on the other side - his tread is heavier than John’s and he never approaches Sherlock’s room with the hesitation that John exhibits, which is usually because the doctor never quite knows what he’ll find on the other side. Lestrade doesn’t know either, for that matter, but Sherlock has discovered that very little shocks the DI. He should know - he’s run the experiments to test it.
“Go away,” he says as the door swings open. Lestrade leans against the door frame, hands stuffed deep in his trouser pockets.
“John tells me you’re being irritating.”
Sherlock huffs. “My very existence is irritating. Surely that isn’t a surprise to either of you.”
Lestrade comes fully into the room and settles against the desk. He folds his arms and adopts a grave look, falling easily back into DI-mode even though he has been off for hours - though one could make the convincing argument that he never truly leaves work at the office. A thought appears to occur to him, and he reaches over to give the open door a light shove. It closes with a soft click. “Cut the act, Sherlock, I’m really not in the mood for it.”
“And neither am I in the mood to entertain. So do us both a favor and leave, Lestrade.”
“No, I don’t think so. Not yet.” Lestrade pushes himself off the desk and crosses the room in two quick strides. He plucks the book from Sherlock’s hands and tosses it aside, eyes grazing over the detective’s face. A moment later he says, “You’ve hardly slept in - what? Forty-eight hours? No - closer to sixty. Two and a half days.”
Sherlock checks to see that the door has been closed - imperceptibly, he thinks, but Lestrade just notices. His face clouds, and Sherlock curses himself for being so obvious.
“How did you know?”
“I observed.” Lestrade gives him a wry smile; Sherlock scowls. “You’ve got bags under your eyes - nothing new, of course, but they only start to go that shade of purple once you’ve been up for more than two days. That, along with the color of your skin - pale to the point of transparency - and the lines around your mouth and eyes that only make an appearance when you’re under a particular strain...well, it wasn’t too difficult a conclusion to draw.”
“You got that all - from my face,” Sherlock says slowly and in slight disbelief. He could not possibly have known all that in a glance. Lestrade is far from a complete imbecile, he grudgingly grants that, but he is also hardly the most observant man on the planet.
Lestrade snorts. “I spend a good deal of time looking at that face - I would hope that I’ve picked up something from it by now. Also - John told me.”
He holds up his phone, and Sherlock rolls his eyes.
“He worries far too much.”
“Well, it’s enough for me.” Lestrade strips off his outer jacket and tosses it over the back of a chair. He begins to roll up his shirt sleeves and nods over his shoulder. “Come on - bed.”
“I don’t have time for this,” Sherlock says in annoyance, getting up from where he has been leaning against the windowsill and making to push past Lestrade. He has an experiment running in the kitchen and one in the bathroom and really, right now, he doesn’t want to deal with Lestrade’s...concern.
But the DI catches his elbow and holds fast, spinning him around so that they’re facing one another and staring him down for several moments. He looks away first, which Sherlock takes as a small victory, but it’s only so he can flick his gaze over his shoulder to indicate the piece of furniture Sherlock has been steadfastly avoiding - not avoiding; he’s been busy working - for two days.
Two days. Two days, twelve hours, six minutes. Six is half of twelve. Twelve divided by two is six - oh, elegant, the symmetry - sixty hours, six minutes. Six and six. Six and twelve, twelve and six - green, twelve is green, but six is red, like Christmas, oh, he hates Christmas. John loves it, though, and so does Lestrade, though he doesn’t usually make such a fuss out of it -
“Bed, Sherlock,” Lestrade interrupts, and it’s said in that voice, the one that makes its appearance only in dire situations - Sherlock having landed himself in A&E, for example, or having blown up something in Lestrade’s kitchen (which, in his defense, has only happened twice). Sherlock grunts as he is broken rudely from his train of thought but complies - a thousand retorts half-form and then die on his tongue and he can’t exactly recall why he would protest in the first place. He sinks onto the soft mattress - never matter that he’s still in his shirt and trousers, dressed as though he’s about to step out - and sits there, stiffly, one leg dangling off the bed and an ankle crossed over his knee.
Lestrade stretches out next to him, steals both the pillows for his head - he hates lying flat on his back, if given the choice - and then holds out an arm. Sherlock rests first on Lestrade’s shoulder, facing the ceiling, Lestrade’s light stubble tickling his forehead. Then he thinks better of it and rolls onto his side, ear positioned carefully over Lestrade’s heart and arm flung out across the man’s stomach. He wants to be furious with the man for intruding on his space and he wants to be furious with John for having called him over in the first place, but if he were honest with himself for a moment he would admit that he is relieved. Several times over the course of the endless evening he had even toyed with the idea of sending a text himself, something innocuous - need beans - and Lestrade would just know. He’d gotten as far as pulling his mobile from his pocket before frustration set in and he damned himself for needing the help in the first place; damned Lestrade for being able to give it.
But Lestrade is here now, no matter how it happened, and the anger has been replaced by anticipation. His own wild heart beats in contrast to Lestrade’s steady one and he awaits the first word; the first whisper of a calm that his mind hasn’t known for days.
“Comfortable?”
He feels the word a beat before he hears it and gives a weak nod as it thunders through his skull, chasing back the unending streams of deduction; of observations. The rumble resounds in the cavity of Lestrade’s chest, dragging his voice down nearly half an octave. Sherlock makes a mental note to bring a tuner to try and measure the difference next time, even though his ear is rarely wrong. It would be good to - and then Lestrade is speaking again, and the only thing that flits across his suddenly blank mind is, oh.
“You’re thinking,” Lestrade admonishes gently, and it’s again a moment before the words register. All Sherlock feels is the vibration that worms its way into his bones; the voice - velvet once, roughened now by years of smoking - that laps at the edges of his mind, slowly, slowly eroding the rough patches like water against stone. A hand curls around the back of his head, fingertips coming to rest lightly on the soft patch of skin behind his ear.
“I can’t help it,” Sherlock says and even to his own ears it sounds terribly weak. Lestrade’s fingers begin to work the skin, massaging away the tension, and he stifles a soft groan.
“Yeah, I know.”
Sherlock tucks himself, if possible, further into the man. He throws his left leg across both of Lestrade’s own and turns his head into Lestrade’s chest - when he next breathes, he is overwhelmed with the scent of tea and tobacco; of musty files and fresh soap.
“You’re running hot tonight,” Lestrade murmurs, and, oh, he has no idea. Observations whirl about Sherlock’s brain whether he wants them there or not, coupling and uncoupling, drawing conclusions and smashing alibis and running so hot. Running hot, like a car. Car. There’d been a car at the crime scene; had to have been a car. How else would the murderer have gotten away so quickly?
Lestrade’s fingers move to the back of Sherlock’s neck and they are cool, gloriously cool - little pinpricks of ice on the surface of the sun.
“The case is bothering you,” he observes mildly.
“Brilliant deduction,” Sherlock mutters into the crisp button-down and it was meant to sound acerbic but it really just sounds flat. Lestrade’s fingers dig briefly into his skin and then relax - his own way of reminding the other of his presence.
“You know, it’s a shame we live in London,” Lestrade says, and the sudden cheerfulness in his voice sends a jolt through Sherlock’s body. Its light tone erases some of the gravel, takes off some of the years, and Sherlock finds himself at once adrift on an ocean, lulled by the warm lapping of waves that are made of that voice. His tone has shifted as well - he no longer expects Sherlock to give answer beyond, perhaps, the occasional mumble. It’s a well-rehearsed ritual, and they slip into it like a familiar pair of gloves. “This time of year, I mean. We’re right at the peak of the Perseids, and I’d love to see them. Especially on a night as clear as this.”
It matters little what is said; only that Lestrade is talking. His voice is a note from Dvorak’s Slavonic Dance No. 6, solemn and bright all at once, and it plays Sherlock like a finely tuned instrument, drifting across him as the bow glides over the Stradivarius. It pulls him taut and releases him, over and over, until he is limp and blank and breathless for more. It strips him bare and tears him down to the most basic of elements and then builds him back up again, slowly and carefully, until his mind is a shade of its former, hectic self.
“We saw them last year,” Sherlock says weakly into his chest. A faint tingling is starting in his fingertips and he flexes them, vibrating in anticipation of the next breath, the next sound, the next word.
“Yes, I suppose we did, though we were on a case out in the country and that doesn’t count quite as much. I used to get up and watch them, you know, when I was a boy. I’d set my alarm for two in the morning - drove my parents absolutely mad, I can tell you - and would hurry out into the field, far as I could, until I couldn’t even see the lights of the house anymore. Oh, they were gorgeous.” The word is drawn out and fades away at the end; it’s a whisper that slips from Lestrade’s throat rather than a sound that sits deep in his chest, and the gentle lilt curls around Sherlock, easing his mind a little more with the hit of the hard g and tapering of the s into a hiss. He sighs and pulls in closer, eyes finally fluttering. Lestrade shifts for the first time in minutes, reaching out for the lamp on the bedside table. A moment later, the room darkens.
“You’re not one to go in for mythology, I know, so the story behind the name will mean little. They’re named such because they appear to come from the constellation Perseus, but they’re actually associated with Swift-Tuttle - a comet.”
Sherlock shivers at the way Lestrade clips off the end of the word; the DI knows that he has a particularly weak spot for words with ts in the middle or at the end, especially when they’re said in his softened-at-the-edges West Country accent.
“It’s a comet that comes around every hundred-and-thirty years; the stream of debris that the comet’s left behind is called the Perseid cloud.” Debris. The word is glorious on Lestrade’s tongue - Sherlock gives half a whimper that he quickly stifles in the rough shirt, which is making his cheek itch but he can’t bring himself to care. Lestrade’s fingers thread through his hair, knowing which word has snagged Sherlock.
“The debris is what creates the annual shower; some of it’s over a thousand years old. The meteors you see now were laid down a millennium ago, Sherlock.”
A light tremor goes through Sherlock’s spine - his name is nothing new to him, but when said in that voice - he is rendered helpless. Names on Lestrade’s tongue are works of art, dazzling and brilliant, and his especially - it’s different during the day, at the crime scene or in the office, when the two syllables are clipped and infused with annoyance. But here, in the bed, wrapped securely in darkness, it’s said with reverence. The k is made soft and brushes lightly against his mind, sweeping away what coherent thoughts dare appear.
“It’s an elegant name, don’t you think? Perseids. Perseids.”
The word rocks Sherlock, curling around him and carrying him away, cresting with ei and then plunging again with ids, only to rise once more on Pers - a constant ebb and flow.
“They’re also known as the ‘Tears of St. Lawrence,’” - and the w snakes through him, deep and full, leaving behind a trail of warmth - “which is also rather beautiful, whether you’re Catholic or not. I remember, a few years ago, I went down...”
Down. Sherlock shudders as the word leaves Lestrade’s lips and settles in his own chest. The drawn out o and the way it, along with the w, is said deep in the back of the throat, almost swallowed before it has the chance to escape - goose bumps erupt along his arms and the back of his neck tingles. He has puzzled over Lestrade’s pronunciation of that word for years, always trying to figure out, phonetically, what the man is saying. And as soon as he thinks he’s pinned it down, Lestrade says it again and he realizes that he’s terribly wrong. And to have been proved wrong so often - it fascinates him.
He begins, finally, to drift as the gentle conversation switches countries. Lestrade is fluent in German, though he rarely lets on about it, and now and again it slips into his daily talk. Sometimes it’s by accident - the other day he’d asked for a Milchkaffee, and Fenster often comes to him more quickly than window - but on these occasions he does it on purpose. It’s a fluid switch tonight - a word here, a phrase there - and subtle enough that Sherlock’s exhausted mind doesn’t fully notice it until Lestrade is halfway through a lengthy rant. Then, a word catches Sherlock’s ear and sends a shudder down his spine, settling deep in his lower back, and he rouses himself enough to speak.
“Say that again,” he interrupts hoarsely. Lestrade grinds to a halt and mentally backtracks.
“What? Ersatz?”
“Yes,” Sherlock breathes in a thick voice. He can feel Lestrade’s grin; hear it in the deep ‘Er’ and full ‘satz.’
“Ersatz, Ersatz, Ersatz. Ersatzspieler, Ersatzteile. Only a noun in German, but it’s also used as an adjective in English. Fascinating language, German. Well, I’m sure you know - that’s one of the ones that you’re fluent in, isn’t it? Let’s see...German, French, English (of course), Russian, Italian - I’m missing one -”
“Portuguese.”
“Yeah, right, Portuguese. Fluent in Italian and Portuguese but not Spanish, oddly enough. Though I’m sure you’d be able to more than get by, if necessary.”
Lestrade continues, fully on another roll, and from German he switches to what little he knows of French - it’s barely passable but the botched words, grating on anyone else’s lips, render Sherlock boneless - and then back to English, where he begins a story involving Donovan, a wild chase through a zoo, and a monkey, which Sherlock only half-registers because he’s caught up on Lestrade’s pronunciation of orangutan - the g once again does him in, and he’s a barely-lucid, drowsy puddle by the time Lestrade gets to the part about the elephants.
Sherlock continues to melt under the monologue, rocked steadily to and fro by the hard consonants and warm vowels. Lestrade speaks of precautions, and the au wraps its tendrils around Sherlock, cradling him. He speaks of Brixton, whose ix is unexpectedly harsh and nearly jolts Sherlock from his calm. It’s quickly remedied with mood and car, whose vowels more than make up for the hard d and rough r and before Sherlock realizes what’s happening, he’s floating away again on a sea of barbs and wires and parks, wrapped in their silky embrace.
And then it comes back, as it always does, to the sky.
“We’re at the peak of the showers tonight,” Lestrade says softly, and his tone has changed. It’s lower and nearer to the ground, but distant as well. Sherlock senses him fading, and that’s all right. He’s all right. His mind has quieted, if only temporarily, and now he’s riding out the final remnants of the monologue. He’s back on the shore, weak with peace, the final waves of the tide lapping at his ankles as it departs for the sea once more. “You can see as many as sixty a minute, if you get far away enough from the city lights.”
“We’ll see your meteors yet,” Sherlock mumbles into his shirt, and they both know that anything Sherlock says in the aftermath of a monologue can’t be taken seriously. His defenses have been worn away by the steady vocal waves and, hopelessly content, he’d agree to anything put to him. But Lestrade seems to appreciate it all the same and touches Sherlock’s ear lightly with the tips of his fingers before finishing him off with a gentle tale involving comets and ts and that splendid down.
The last thing Sherlock hears, before the gentle tide of language carries him out and down into the abyss, is a whispered, “Sleep,” that stamps out the rest of the chaos.
xxxx
The bed still holds his shape when Sherlock wakes in the morning, but his spot is cold and his scent is already fading. And then John is calling and his phone is ringing and the night has given way to the harshness of day, but it’s all fine because only the night belongs to them; they don’t exist during the day.
His mind has quieted to a whisper, and he hopes it will last.
And then, part of him hopes that it won’t.
xxxx
Previous: "They're Gonna Be All Right"
Next Story: "Certainties"
xxxx
Final notes: Many, many thanks must be given to sidneysussex , who gave me a hand with Lestrade’s accent and who also pointed out that Rupert Graves pronounces “down” in a gorgeously unique way in “Maurice,” which I never took note of before and now can’t un-hear. Sherlock’s perception of numbers as colors is known as grapheme-color synesthesia. The Perseids is an annual meteor shower that occurs in late July/early August. The peak of the showers this year occurs tonight (Aug. 12 into Aug. 13). Thank you for reading; feedback is always welcome!
Characters/Pairing: Sherlock Holmes, DI Lestrade
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Word Count: 3200
Summary: Sometimes, on the very worst of nights, the only thing that can get Sherlock to sleep is the sound - and feel - of Lestrade’s voice.
Notes: Fluff, cuddling, and voice!porn behind the cut. Also, the return of amateur astronomer!Lestrade.
xxxx
Sherlock doesn’t bother to answer the perfunctory knock that sounds against his door in the early hours of that morning. He knows that DI Lestrade is standing on the other side - his tread is heavier than John’s and he never approaches Sherlock’s room with the hesitation that John exhibits, which is usually because the doctor never quite knows what he’ll find on the other side. Lestrade doesn’t know either, for that matter, but Sherlock has discovered that very little shocks the DI. He should know - he’s run the experiments to test it.
“Go away,” he says as the door swings open. Lestrade leans against the door frame, hands stuffed deep in his trouser pockets.
“John tells me you’re being irritating.”
Sherlock huffs. “My very existence is irritating. Surely that isn’t a surprise to either of you.”
Lestrade comes fully into the room and settles against the desk. He folds his arms and adopts a grave look, falling easily back into DI-mode even though he has been off for hours - though one could make the convincing argument that he never truly leaves work at the office. A thought appears to occur to him, and he reaches over to give the open door a light shove. It closes with a soft click. “Cut the act, Sherlock, I’m really not in the mood for it.”
“And neither am I in the mood to entertain. So do us both a favor and leave, Lestrade.”
“No, I don’t think so. Not yet.” Lestrade pushes himself off the desk and crosses the room in two quick strides. He plucks the book from Sherlock’s hands and tosses it aside, eyes grazing over the detective’s face. A moment later he says, “You’ve hardly slept in - what? Forty-eight hours? No - closer to sixty. Two and a half days.”
Sherlock checks to see that the door has been closed - imperceptibly, he thinks, but Lestrade just notices. His face clouds, and Sherlock curses himself for being so obvious.
“How did you know?”
“I observed.” Lestrade gives him a wry smile; Sherlock scowls. “You’ve got bags under your eyes - nothing new, of course, but they only start to go that shade of purple once you’ve been up for more than two days. That, along with the color of your skin - pale to the point of transparency - and the lines around your mouth and eyes that only make an appearance when you’re under a particular strain...well, it wasn’t too difficult a conclusion to draw.”
“You got that all - from my face,” Sherlock says slowly and in slight disbelief. He could not possibly have known all that in a glance. Lestrade is far from a complete imbecile, he grudgingly grants that, but he is also hardly the most observant man on the planet.
Lestrade snorts. “I spend a good deal of time looking at that face - I would hope that I’ve picked up something from it by now. Also - John told me.”
He holds up his phone, and Sherlock rolls his eyes.
“He worries far too much.”
“Well, it’s enough for me.” Lestrade strips off his outer jacket and tosses it over the back of a chair. He begins to roll up his shirt sleeves and nods over his shoulder. “Come on - bed.”
“I don’t have time for this,” Sherlock says in annoyance, getting up from where he has been leaning against the windowsill and making to push past Lestrade. He has an experiment running in the kitchen and one in the bathroom and really, right now, he doesn’t want to deal with Lestrade’s...concern.
But the DI catches his elbow and holds fast, spinning him around so that they’re facing one another and staring him down for several moments. He looks away first, which Sherlock takes as a small victory, but it’s only so he can flick his gaze over his shoulder to indicate the piece of furniture Sherlock has been steadfastly avoiding - not avoiding; he’s been busy working - for two days.
Two days. Two days, twelve hours, six minutes. Six is half of twelve. Twelve divided by two is six - oh, elegant, the symmetry - sixty hours, six minutes. Six and six. Six and twelve, twelve and six - green, twelve is green, but six is red, like Christmas, oh, he hates Christmas. John loves it, though, and so does Lestrade, though he doesn’t usually make such a fuss out of it -
“Bed, Sherlock,” Lestrade interrupts, and it’s said in that voice, the one that makes its appearance only in dire situations - Sherlock having landed himself in A&E, for example, or having blown up something in Lestrade’s kitchen (which, in his defense, has only happened twice). Sherlock grunts as he is broken rudely from his train of thought but complies - a thousand retorts half-form and then die on his tongue and he can’t exactly recall why he would protest in the first place. He sinks onto the soft mattress - never matter that he’s still in his shirt and trousers, dressed as though he’s about to step out - and sits there, stiffly, one leg dangling off the bed and an ankle crossed over his knee.
Lestrade stretches out next to him, steals both the pillows for his head - he hates lying flat on his back, if given the choice - and then holds out an arm. Sherlock rests first on Lestrade’s shoulder, facing the ceiling, Lestrade’s light stubble tickling his forehead. Then he thinks better of it and rolls onto his side, ear positioned carefully over Lestrade’s heart and arm flung out across the man’s stomach. He wants to be furious with the man for intruding on his space and he wants to be furious with John for having called him over in the first place, but if he were honest with himself for a moment he would admit that he is relieved. Several times over the course of the endless evening he had even toyed with the idea of sending a text himself, something innocuous - need beans - and Lestrade would just know. He’d gotten as far as pulling his mobile from his pocket before frustration set in and he damned himself for needing the help in the first place; damned Lestrade for being able to give it.
But Lestrade is here now, no matter how it happened, and the anger has been replaced by anticipation. His own wild heart beats in contrast to Lestrade’s steady one and he awaits the first word; the first whisper of a calm that his mind hasn’t known for days.
“Comfortable?”
He feels the word a beat before he hears it and gives a weak nod as it thunders through his skull, chasing back the unending streams of deduction; of observations. The rumble resounds in the cavity of Lestrade’s chest, dragging his voice down nearly half an octave. Sherlock makes a mental note to bring a tuner to try and measure the difference next time, even though his ear is rarely wrong. It would be good to - and then Lestrade is speaking again, and the only thing that flits across his suddenly blank mind is, oh.
“You’re thinking,” Lestrade admonishes gently, and it’s again a moment before the words register. All Sherlock feels is the vibration that worms its way into his bones; the voice - velvet once, roughened now by years of smoking - that laps at the edges of his mind, slowly, slowly eroding the rough patches like water against stone. A hand curls around the back of his head, fingertips coming to rest lightly on the soft patch of skin behind his ear.
“I can’t help it,” Sherlock says and even to his own ears it sounds terribly weak. Lestrade’s fingers begin to work the skin, massaging away the tension, and he stifles a soft groan.
“Yeah, I know.”
Sherlock tucks himself, if possible, further into the man. He throws his left leg across both of Lestrade’s own and turns his head into Lestrade’s chest - when he next breathes, he is overwhelmed with the scent of tea and tobacco; of musty files and fresh soap.
“You’re running hot tonight,” Lestrade murmurs, and, oh, he has no idea. Observations whirl about Sherlock’s brain whether he wants them there or not, coupling and uncoupling, drawing conclusions and smashing alibis and running so hot. Running hot, like a car. Car. There’d been a car at the crime scene; had to have been a car. How else would the murderer have gotten away so quickly?
Lestrade’s fingers move to the back of Sherlock’s neck and they are cool, gloriously cool - little pinpricks of ice on the surface of the sun.
“The case is bothering you,” he observes mildly.
“Brilliant deduction,” Sherlock mutters into the crisp button-down and it was meant to sound acerbic but it really just sounds flat. Lestrade’s fingers dig briefly into his skin and then relax - his own way of reminding the other of his presence.
“You know, it’s a shame we live in London,” Lestrade says, and the sudden cheerfulness in his voice sends a jolt through Sherlock’s body. Its light tone erases some of the gravel, takes off some of the years, and Sherlock finds himself at once adrift on an ocean, lulled by the warm lapping of waves that are made of that voice. His tone has shifted as well - he no longer expects Sherlock to give answer beyond, perhaps, the occasional mumble. It’s a well-rehearsed ritual, and they slip into it like a familiar pair of gloves. “This time of year, I mean. We’re right at the peak of the Perseids, and I’d love to see them. Especially on a night as clear as this.”
It matters little what is said; only that Lestrade is talking. His voice is a note from Dvorak’s Slavonic Dance No. 6, solemn and bright all at once, and it plays Sherlock like a finely tuned instrument, drifting across him as the bow glides over the Stradivarius. It pulls him taut and releases him, over and over, until he is limp and blank and breathless for more. It strips him bare and tears him down to the most basic of elements and then builds him back up again, slowly and carefully, until his mind is a shade of its former, hectic self.
“We saw them last year,” Sherlock says weakly into his chest. A faint tingling is starting in his fingertips and he flexes them, vibrating in anticipation of the next breath, the next sound, the next word.
“Yes, I suppose we did, though we were on a case out in the country and that doesn’t count quite as much. I used to get up and watch them, you know, when I was a boy. I’d set my alarm for two in the morning - drove my parents absolutely mad, I can tell you - and would hurry out into the field, far as I could, until I couldn’t even see the lights of the house anymore. Oh, they were gorgeous.” The word is drawn out and fades away at the end; it’s a whisper that slips from Lestrade’s throat rather than a sound that sits deep in his chest, and the gentle lilt curls around Sherlock, easing his mind a little more with the hit of the hard g and tapering of the s into a hiss. He sighs and pulls in closer, eyes finally fluttering. Lestrade shifts for the first time in minutes, reaching out for the lamp on the bedside table. A moment later, the room darkens.
“You’re not one to go in for mythology, I know, so the story behind the name will mean little. They’re named such because they appear to come from the constellation Perseus, but they’re actually associated with Swift-Tuttle - a comet.”
Sherlock shivers at the way Lestrade clips off the end of the word; the DI knows that he has a particularly weak spot for words with ts in the middle or at the end, especially when they’re said in his softened-at-the-edges West Country accent.
“It’s a comet that comes around every hundred-and-thirty years; the stream of debris that the comet’s left behind is called the Perseid cloud.” Debris. The word is glorious on Lestrade’s tongue - Sherlock gives half a whimper that he quickly stifles in the rough shirt, which is making his cheek itch but he can’t bring himself to care. Lestrade’s fingers thread through his hair, knowing which word has snagged Sherlock.
“The debris is what creates the annual shower; some of it’s over a thousand years old. The meteors you see now were laid down a millennium ago, Sherlock.”
A light tremor goes through Sherlock’s spine - his name is nothing new to him, but when said in that voice - he is rendered helpless. Names on Lestrade’s tongue are works of art, dazzling and brilliant, and his especially - it’s different during the day, at the crime scene or in the office, when the two syllables are clipped and infused with annoyance. But here, in the bed, wrapped securely in darkness, it’s said with reverence. The k is made soft and brushes lightly against his mind, sweeping away what coherent thoughts dare appear.
“It’s an elegant name, don’t you think? Perseids. Perseids.”
The word rocks Sherlock, curling around him and carrying him away, cresting with ei and then plunging again with ids, only to rise once more on Pers - a constant ebb and flow.
“They’re also known as the ‘Tears of St. Lawrence,’” - and the w snakes through him, deep and full, leaving behind a trail of warmth - “which is also rather beautiful, whether you’re Catholic or not. I remember, a few years ago, I went down...”
Down. Sherlock shudders as the word leaves Lestrade’s lips and settles in his own chest. The drawn out o and the way it, along with the w, is said deep in the back of the throat, almost swallowed before it has the chance to escape - goose bumps erupt along his arms and the back of his neck tingles. He has puzzled over Lestrade’s pronunciation of that word for years, always trying to figure out, phonetically, what the man is saying. And as soon as he thinks he’s pinned it down, Lestrade says it again and he realizes that he’s terribly wrong. And to have been proved wrong so often - it fascinates him.
He begins, finally, to drift as the gentle conversation switches countries. Lestrade is fluent in German, though he rarely lets on about it, and now and again it slips into his daily talk. Sometimes it’s by accident - the other day he’d asked for a Milchkaffee, and Fenster often comes to him more quickly than window - but on these occasions he does it on purpose. It’s a fluid switch tonight - a word here, a phrase there - and subtle enough that Sherlock’s exhausted mind doesn’t fully notice it until Lestrade is halfway through a lengthy rant. Then, a word catches Sherlock’s ear and sends a shudder down his spine, settling deep in his lower back, and he rouses himself enough to speak.
“Say that again,” he interrupts hoarsely. Lestrade grinds to a halt and mentally backtracks.
“What? Ersatz?”
“Yes,” Sherlock breathes in a thick voice. He can feel Lestrade’s grin; hear it in the deep ‘Er’ and full ‘satz.’
“Ersatz, Ersatz, Ersatz. Ersatzspieler, Ersatzteile. Only a noun in German, but it’s also used as an adjective in English. Fascinating language, German. Well, I’m sure you know - that’s one of the ones that you’re fluent in, isn’t it? Let’s see...German, French, English (of course), Russian, Italian - I’m missing one -”
“Portuguese.”
“Yeah, right, Portuguese. Fluent in Italian and Portuguese but not Spanish, oddly enough. Though I’m sure you’d be able to more than get by, if necessary.”
Lestrade continues, fully on another roll, and from German he switches to what little he knows of French - it’s barely passable but the botched words, grating on anyone else’s lips, render Sherlock boneless - and then back to English, where he begins a story involving Donovan, a wild chase through a zoo, and a monkey, which Sherlock only half-registers because he’s caught up on Lestrade’s pronunciation of orangutan - the g once again does him in, and he’s a barely-lucid, drowsy puddle by the time Lestrade gets to the part about the elephants.
Sherlock continues to melt under the monologue, rocked steadily to and fro by the hard consonants and warm vowels. Lestrade speaks of precautions, and the au wraps its tendrils around Sherlock, cradling him. He speaks of Brixton, whose ix is unexpectedly harsh and nearly jolts Sherlock from his calm. It’s quickly remedied with mood and car, whose vowels more than make up for the hard d and rough r and before Sherlock realizes what’s happening, he’s floating away again on a sea of barbs and wires and parks, wrapped in their silky embrace.
And then it comes back, as it always does, to the sky.
“We’re at the peak of the showers tonight,” Lestrade says softly, and his tone has changed. It’s lower and nearer to the ground, but distant as well. Sherlock senses him fading, and that’s all right. He’s all right. His mind has quieted, if only temporarily, and now he’s riding out the final remnants of the monologue. He’s back on the shore, weak with peace, the final waves of the tide lapping at his ankles as it departs for the sea once more. “You can see as many as sixty a minute, if you get far away enough from the city lights.”
“We’ll see your meteors yet,” Sherlock mumbles into his shirt, and they both know that anything Sherlock says in the aftermath of a monologue can’t be taken seriously. His defenses have been worn away by the steady vocal waves and, hopelessly content, he’d agree to anything put to him. But Lestrade seems to appreciate it all the same and touches Sherlock’s ear lightly with the tips of his fingers before finishing him off with a gentle tale involving comets and ts and that splendid down.
The last thing Sherlock hears, before the gentle tide of language carries him out and down into the abyss, is a whispered, “Sleep,” that stamps out the rest of the chaos.
xxxx
The bed still holds his shape when Sherlock wakes in the morning, but his spot is cold and his scent is already fading. And then John is calling and his phone is ringing and the night has given way to the harshness of day, but it’s all fine because only the night belongs to them; they don’t exist during the day.
His mind has quieted to a whisper, and he hopes it will last.
And then, part of him hopes that it won’t.
xxxx
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Final notes: Many, many thanks must be given to sidneysussex , who gave me a hand with Lestrade’s accent and who also pointed out that Rupert Graves pronounces “down” in a gorgeously unique way in “Maurice,” which I never took note of before and now can’t un-hear. Sherlock’s perception of numbers as colors is known as grapheme-color synesthesia. The Perseids is an annual meteor shower that occurs in late July/early August. The peak of the showers this year occurs tonight (Aug. 12 into Aug. 13). Thank you for reading; feedback is always welcome!