(no subject)
Title: “The Good Place” (2/3)
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock/Lestrade, John
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: c. 4,300 (this part); c. 10,000 (total)
Warnings: Angst; Language; Mentions of suicide; Implied Violence; Implied Alcoholism
Spoilers: through “Reichenbach” and for ACD canon
Betas: canonisrelative and archea2
Summary: It’s not easy, this resurrection business.
Part One
Lestrade blinks, and it is Christmas.
Sherlock has been back for six months - one-sixth of the time that he was away, which is not an insignificant amount. And yet it still surprises Lestrade when he looks up to see the lanky man standing in the doorway to his office or looming over his crime scenes. It is stranger still here at Baker Street, where they’ve gathered for the holiday. Lestrade has long grown used to thinking of it as John’s flat. Seeing Sherlock here is disconcerting. It is as though he is, at best, a guest to this annual affair. At worst, he is an intruder upon their small group, lingering on the fringe, observing a ritual he has no part in. But Lestrade doesn’t like that last thought and does his best to ignore it.
“It was only supposed to be three months,” Sherlock tells him at one point. His voice is hollow when he speaks, and his eyes are watching the remains of the drink in his glass. They’re standing by the mantel, Lestrade facing Sherlock, nursing his own drink despite Sherlock’s faintly-disapproving look. Behind him, he hears John and Molly dancing wildly to the jaunty Christmas music while Mrs. Hudson claps along in delight.
“What happened?”
Sherlock shakes his head, lifting his gaze to look at John over Lestrade’s shoulder. His face is pained, and his next words come from a continent away. “And then it was six months and I was in some... damn hovel in Switzerland and all I could think about was that first Christmas we had here. I hadn’t... I hadn’t counted on being gone for one.”
Lestrade doesn’t ask about the two other Christmases that would pass before Sherlock could come home, in case they’re worse than the images his mind conjures up. He thinks of Sherlock, hair chopped and dyed, nursing a newly-acquired wound and no closer to clearing his name or bringing down Moriarty’s network. He thinks of Sherlock, coated in grime and exhausted, knowing that there was no one to wonder at his absence because they already thought him gone.
He thinks of Sherlock, alone, for three Christmases.
“C’mon,” he says gruffly, taking the glass from Sherlock’s hand. “Let’s get you another drink.”
“Oh, predictable,” Sherlock mutters under his breath, but he follows Lestrade into the kitchen all the same.
-----
Sherlock is sporting a bruise just under his right eye as he strolls into Lestrade’s office one morning, and the sight of it momentarily distracts Lestrade from the task at hand.
“Boxing,” John explains, catching the look on the other man’s face.
“Boxing,” Lestrade repeats in disbelief.
“Really, Lestrade, there’s no need to parrot John. You heard him perfectly well the first time,” Sherlock scolds as he flips through the file Lestrade has handed him. John takes a seat and sighs. He looks worn, each line in his face etched with weariness.
“He goes out at all hours,” John mutters, glaring pointedly at Sherlock, who is ignoring him. “Comes back looking like death. His injuries get worse each time. Thought you were supposed to improve with practice, Sherlock.”
Sherlock spares John half a glance before closing the file and returning it to Lestrade. He says brusquely, “You’ll find that the aunt’s your murderer, but the sister dumped the body.”
He leaves the office with his hands tucked into the pockets of his coat, which he doesn’t use to add a dramatic flair to his exit. John gets to his feet with a groan and offers Lestrade his hand in goodbye.
“Thought for sure that one would get a rise out of him; didn’t even blink,” he mutters as they shake. “Well... see you Friday, yeah?”
-----
John and Lestrade meet for a pint every few weeks, a custom that’s a holdover from Sherlock’s long years of absence. Tonight, they’ve ended up at Angelo’s, and it’s well past closing time. But the conversation has come around, as it always does, to Sherlock, and since they’ve drawn Angelo in as well, Lestrade doesn’t feel too guilty about lingering.
“No, no, no,” Angelo is saying, his accent growing thick as he lowers his voice, though there’s no one else in the restaurant. John and Lestrade instinctively lean closer to him. “Dying was the easy part. Now he must figure out how to live again.”
“I don’t understand,” John says, and neither does Lestrade.
“He was on the run. For three years.” Angelo is emphatic; he begins to gesture. “Imagine what that does to a man, alone in conditions such as that. Not knowing where he will next find shelter, or food. Not knowing if the next breath will be his last. Not knowing if he will ever be able to come home again. Not knowing if his efforts will pay off, or if his friends are safe. Did you know,” and here Angelo speaks softer still, so that Lestrade and John are mere centimeters from one another as they lean in to hear, “that when he threw himself from that roof, there was not even a guarantee that he would live? Their plan was not foolproof. And yet he did it anyway.”
There is a hiss of breath as John and Lestrade process this information. The lighting in the restaurant is dim, but Lestrade can still see that John has gone deathly white; he figures he appears no better.
“He must learn how to live this life again,” Angelo insists. “And he doesn’t know how.”
“He’s not the only one,” John mutters shakily. He reaches for his wallet and says, “‘Bout time to call it a night, I think.”
Lestrade couldn’t agree more.
-----
It has been a year.
One-third the length of Sherlock’s death.
Time has done little to dim in Lestrade’s memory those years of absence. If anything, they are thrown into sharper relief as the days march on - perhaps because the Sherlock who has returned to them is not the one who left.
But then, Lestrade and John are not the same men Sherlock left behind, either.
“Where did you get this one?” Lestrade asks, and reaches out to finger a thin scar that curves around the sharp bone of Sherlock’s wrist. They’re sitting on the roof of his building, watching pink-tinged wisps of cloud skirt across the evening sky. Sherlock has lit a cigarette, as is his habit now when he is idle for more than five minutes at a time.
“Romania.”
Some have faded to white with age and others are raw, as angry as the day they were made. Sixteen scars that cut a swath across Sherlock’s porcelain flesh; plow marks on a smooth field. Lestrade has only ever counted seven or so on his arms. Doubtless the others are concealed beneath Sherlock’s pristine shirt, open tonight down to the fourth button because the air is too still and the earlier sun was blistering.
Sherlock’s rougher around the edges now, Lestrade thinks. Smudged. His clothing is still immaculate but the presentation is careless. He leaves his hair tumbled and his nails dirty and not once has he tugged up the collar of his coat to appear more imposing.
Lestrade doesn’t realize he’s still absent-mindedly rubbing the roughened patch of skin until Sherlock says, “Show me yours.”
“I haven’t any,” Lestrade says, startled, and drops Sherlock’s wrist abruptly. Sherlock doesn’t look at him, but his mouth twists briefly into a smug smile before he turns back to his cigarette. It’s the kind of smile that indicates he’s just made a point, even if his audience hasn’t realized it yet.
“Wrong,” he drawls after a moment. “You just can’t see them.”
----
One day, Lestrade manages to leave the Yard at an hour most people would still consider decent and heads for home. He instead ends up in a pub, a small establishment just down the street from his flat that’s still mostly empty at this time of the evening. He chats with the bartender between pints and tries to forget that today’s crime scene was one of the more gruesome ones he’s worked in a long time.
Lestrade then sets out for home for the second time that night, and finds himself outside 221B.
Several minutes of knocking bring Sherlock to the door, and he scowls heavily at Lestrade.
“Busy, Lestrade. I haven’t got time for your inane chatter.”
“Yeah, well, too damn bad,” Lestrade says, pushing Sherlock out of the way and stepping into the flat. There’s an open book that’s been set face-down on the seat of Sherlock’s customary chair and an ashtray sitting on the arm, the remains of a cigarette smoldering inside. Sherlock shuts the door and comes to stand in front of Lestrade, placing a hand on his chest to prevent him from walking further into the flat. He narrows his eyes.
“Are you drunk?”
“Jus’ a bit,” Lestrade admits. “Took you long enough to notice; thought you were supposed to be good at this stuff.”
Sherlock shifts his weight from one foot to the other, as though he was about to step in one direction and then changed his mind. He settles for turning around and going back over to his chair. He picks up the book and returns to his reading. Lestrade sits on the sofa to take off his shoes and then realizes that he can’t be bothered to get up again.
“How many?” Sherlock asks without looking up.
“You tell me, genius,” Lestrade mutters. Sherlock’s eyes widen for a fraction of a second but his gaze doesn’t leave his page. Lestrade immediately regrets his words and says, quieter, “I’m assumin’ you don’t mean drinks. Three. Children.”
“So I gathered.” Sherlock turns a page. “You do realize there was nothing you could have done. They were dead by the time you arrived; that’s why you were called.”
“Yeah,” Lestrade mutters, thinking that if he were sober he would find this conversation very strange. As it is, it’s only mildly odd.
Sherlock nods to himself. But then he pauses in his reading, eyes flicking to a spot on the far wall as a thought occurs to him.
“I am... sorry,” he says at last, turning to look at Lestrade. “I know that these cases... affect you, even if I can’t quite understand why.”
And then, before Lestrade’s stunned mind can wrap itself around those words, let alone form a reply, the mask has slid back into place and Sherlock’s returned to his reading.
“Neither John nor I will be requiring the sofa tonight,” Sherlock is saying briskly when Lestrade’s brain starts processing information again. “You should make use of it.”
Lestrade waves his concern away. “Nah, I’d pref’r my own place.”
“And I prefer my Detective Inspectors in one piece.” Sherlock’s voice is soft as he says this, and Lestrade isn’t sure if he’s imagining the hint of disappointment that colours his words. “That wasn’t a suggestion, Lestrade.”
Lestrade snorts and shakes his head sadly. “Dunno how I’d be able t’sleep anyway, at this point. Wasn’t pretty, lad.”
“I expect not. You should make the attempt, however.”
Lestrade rubs the back of his neck wearily and mutters, “Didn’t realize you were so invested in my well-being.”
Sherlock closes his book and sets it aside.
“Neither did I,” he says mildly.
When Lestrade wakes the next morning, it doesn’t take long for him to recall the events leading up to his staying at 221B.
What’s less clear is why, exactly, there lingers in his mind the sensation of being pressed against another on the sofa, hips to thighs to knees; of a warm thumb sweeping across the inside of his wrist in gentle, calming strokes; of a voice saying, Sleep, Lestrade. It’ll be better in the morning.
-----
It’s a cold morning in June, and Sherlock is standing on the edge of a building.
Lestrade fights nausea as he watches the scene play out; John, standing next to him, is muttering a string of curses under his breath. Sherlock’s gone after a suspect on his own, again, and the two men are grappling with one another, each only a step away from a nine-story drop. Lestrade has people on their way up to the roof and teams are assembling below should the worst come to pass.
And then there is a crack, a shout, and the two men disappear out of sight, tumbling backwards onto the roof. A moment later, Sherlock stands. The other man does not.
Lestrade remembers to breathe again.
He sends John home as soon as the suspect has been apprehended and brought down from the roof, because the younger man is white as a sheet and his left hand is steady as a rock. Lestrade then orders Sherlock back to the Yard and, once they’re secured inside his office, turns on him.
“That was a bloody stupid thing you did today,” he growls, his voice tremulous with barely-controlled fury.
“It was, wasn’t it?” Sherlock says, flashing a grin that sends Lestrade’s skin crawling.
“What the fuck were you thinking?” Lestrade goes on. He can feel his hands shaking in fury. “After all John - after all we’ve been through, pulling a stunt like that... Did you even once consider what that would do to him? To us? Not to mention what it would do to you!”
“Don’t be absurd, Lestrade, it felt wondrous.”
Lestrade gapes. “You almost got killed!”
“I know,” Sherlock says, his eyes bright with glee.
And that’s when Lestrade comes to the decision he didn’t even know he had been considering. “You’re done.”
“Pardon?”
“You’re done,” Lestrade repeats, and oh, this is a terrible idea. He knows what Sherlock bored is like; he knows what will happen, and he winces at the thought of inflicting that on John. But this cannot go on. “I’m done. I’m taking you off the case, and I’m not going to be calling on you for crimes anymore.”
His voice is surprisingly steady as he says this. Sherlock’s eyes narrow.
“What do you mean,” he says, voice low and dangerous, “done?”
Lestrade relishes being able to throw Sherlock’s oft-repeated lament back in his face. “I’ll not repeat myself; you heard me perfectly well the first time.”
“You’re not making any sense, Lestrade, as usual.”
“We thought you were dead,” Lestrade growls.
“That was rather the point, wasn’t it?” Sherlock snaps.
Lestrade plunges on, heedless of Sherlock’s words. “And then to go and put yourself in that situation again was awful, Sherlock. John watched you jump the first time! He thought he would have to see it again today, only that’s a fall you’d never have come back from.”
“There’s no need to be overly dramatic about it. I was perfectly in control of the situation.”
“No, you weren’t,” Lestrade says softly. “And I think that’s exactly what you wanted.”
Sherlock lifts his chin; locks his jaw defensively. “What are you trying to say?”
“Angelo said something to us once,” Lestrade muses, half to himself. “Said - said that you were alive, yes, but you weren’t sure how to live again. Didn’t make any sense to me at the time, but now... now I see his point. That’s what this has all been about, hasn’t it? These stupid risks. You only feel alive now when you’re just on the brink of death, is that it?”
“And who are you to judge me?” Sherlock hisses. His voice is shot through with steel, and the glare he levels on Lestrade would make lesser men cower. “You, the man trying to drink himself into an early grave because he’s too weak to handle the fact that the world didn’t stop simply because he thought it should have. You’re pathetic.”
Lestrade slams his fist into Sherlock’s face, relishing the sharp crack and the way Sherlock reels. He stumbles, catching himself on the door frame, and when he turns back to Lestrade his eyes are blazing.
“Fuck off,” Lestrade growls before he can say anything. “You don’t know what it was like.”
“Neither do you, you son of a bitch,” Sherlock bellows, and because in ten years Lestrade has never once heard Sherlock curse, this is the first astonishing thing - and then Sherlock grabs Lestrade by the lapels and kisses him, which is the second. How does one measure astonishing things, Lestrade thinks stupidly as his lips part under Sherlock’s and he draws air from the other man’s lungs, warm and coffee-bitter and so alive.
“I didn’t ask for this, Lestrade,” Sherlock whispers furiously, breaking the kiss. He’s barely drawn away, standing so close still that his breath ghosts across Lestrade’s face. “I am so fucking tired of apologizing for having saved your life.”
It is a game, Lestrade, and not one I’m willing to play.
The words come to him from a lifetime ago, the night of Sherlock’s arrest. The night before his fall. His suicide.
Though it wasn’t really a suicide, was it, Lestrade realizes. It might as well have been murder, Moriarty’s ghost all-but pushing Sherlock over the edge as he toyed with the lives of his three closest friends.
“You’d have died otherwise, do you understand that?” Sherlock goes on vehemently, giving him a small shake. “My life for yours. For John’s and Mrs. Hudson’s. I had to leave you behind.”
There’s a tremor in that last word, and Sherlock’s eyes are wide; imploring, though who he’s trying to convince, Lestrade isn’t exactly sure.
Dying is easy. But there’s more to it than that, because what Sherlock won’t say - perhaps what he can’t bring himself to say aloud - is that he went down with his reputation. His work, destroyed while he was forced to watch, powerless to stop Moriarty’s plan once it had been set in motion. He had shouldered the burden of disgrace for three years so that his friends could live. He had been murdered twice over, losing his life and his work in an instant, and it was all for them.
Lestrade closes the distance between them this time, cursing Moriarty with every breath he draws from Sherlock’s lungs. It’s three seconds before they break apart, and when Sherlock pulls back the first thing Lestrade thinks is, How many times could this have happened during those three years?
He knows this one, the number having stuck to the inside of his brain when he read it months ago and refusing to let him go.
Thirty-one million. Thirty-one million seconds in a year. Ninety-three million in three. This calculation is simple; painful.
Thirty-one million kisses. Well, for the ambitious.
Sherlock is nothing if not ambitious.
And then he wonders, Could this have happened during those three years?
Ah, Sherlock’s voice sings in his ear, now you’re asking the right questions.
“Sorry ‘bout your... er, nose,” Lestrade stammers as this realization blooms across his mind. Sherlock is still holding him by the front of his shirt, and his own hands have somehow found their way to Sherlock’s waist.
“Stop talking,” Sherlock orders breathlessly, and kisses him again.
From the front door, it’s eight steps to Lestrade’s bedroom.
It might as well have been a mile.
But once inside, Lestrade strips Sherlock down to his pants and pushes him onto the bed, removing the wandering hands from his chest and pressing them into the mattress until Sherlock lies still beneath him; acquiescing.
He presses his lips first to the scar on Sherlock’s wrist while his fingers trace one that crawls up his forearm, jagged as a shattered piece of glass. He moves down, marking one in the bend of Sherlock’s knee and a fourth on his ankle. There’s another on his hip and Lestrade maps that one, too, pressing searing kisses along the angry line before soothing it with a gentle tongue. Sherlock is silent throughout it all, eyes fixed on the ceiling while his fingers slide through Lestrade’s hair. They tighten and then still, however, when Lestrade reaches scar number six, and at seven he moves his hands to Lestrade’s shoulders, stopping him.
“What are you doing?” Sherlock asks in an undertone, his voice cracking around the final word. “Lestrade -”
Lestrade hushes him, takes the hands from his shoulders and kisses the marble-cold fingers. “Let me. Please.”
Sherlock stares at him for a long moment; in the darkness, his expression is even more of a mystery to Lestrade than it normally is in the daylight. But then he gives a jerky nod, and even sighs quietly as Lestrade brushes his lips along scar number eight.
Lestrade imagines how each wound might have been made. He’s worked the streets long enough to recognize that four are from knives and one was probably due to barbed wire. The marks on Sherlock’s wrists might have been from restraints - had he been captured at one point? - and Lestrade kisses them with that thought in mind, laying a new memory on top of the old, brutal one. Two are bullet wounds. The rest are mysteries but Lestrade assigns them stories anyway, because each one brought Sherlock one step closer to here and now.
And as Lestrade reaches scar sixteen - a patch of knotted flesh just below Sherlock’s clavicle - the numbers he’s been gathering all this time slowly start to click into place. Sherlock lets out a shaky breath, and Lestrade moves his lips to Sherlock’s brow.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, and the rest of it - for everything you had to go through - sticks in his throat. Beneath him, Sherlock shudders with the effort it’s taking him to remain composed.
“Don’t be,” Sherlock manages after a moment, his voice raw, and Lestrade wonders if he realizes just how true those words are - because this could have happened no other way, and at no other time. Because Lestrade had to lose the world - had to lose his world - before he could gain it all back. Because Sherlock needed to be torn apart before he could be made whole.
Because every rise is preceded by a fall, and they have had theirs.
----
One morning, Lestrade rises before Sherlock. The kitchen in 221B is empty as he sets about making coffee, but not for long. John, showered but bleary-eyed, wanders in at half-past six, and it’s a split-second before he realizes that Lestrade is not Sherlock.
“Oh, hello,” he says. “Have a case come in last night?”
“Don’t be daft, John.” Sherlock comes into the kitchen wearing only his nightclothes and the deep blue dressing gown. He sprawls in a chair and says, “He’s taken the time to shower and is wearing fresh clothing. Clearly he isn’t in a rush to get down to the Yard and his visit last night was planned. Coffee, Lestrade. Black, two sugars.”
John rolls his eyes at Lestrade when Sherlock returns to the bedroom in search of his mobile and confides, “He thinks he can shock me. Daft git. As if it wasn’t obvious all along that this would happen.”
“Er -” Lestrade says as he sets about preparing Sherlock’s coffee.
“He seems better,” John goes on, when it’s apparent that Lestrade is at a loss for words. “Is he?”
“Hard to tell,” Lestrade admits with a shrug. “You know him better, anyway.”
“Not really. Just differently.” John takes a sip of tea.
“And what about you?” Lestrade ventures, stirring his own coffee absently. “Better?”
John smiles in response and holds up his mug. Lestrade touches his own to John’s, and they then drink in a companionable silence that is broken only by Sherlock’s return.
“Did you ever doubt me?” Sherlock asks once John has left for work, leaning back in his chair until only two legs hold his weight. They are still in the kitchen, Sherlock seated at the table while Lestrade leans against the counter. Sherlock’s hair has grown out over the past year and is mussed now from sleep. It falls across his forehead in disarray, and he stares at Lestrade intently through the strands that obscure his eyes.
“No.” Lestrade, long-used to Sherlock’s segues, is able to answer immediately. He turns his back on Sherlock and sets about fixing himself another cup of coffee. He stirs the drink, three strokes counter-clockwise, and then asks, “Were you angry with me for arresting you?”
He can feel Sherlock still for a moment, but Lestrade’s not asking about the Hiatus - just the Before. Safe territory. Sherlock relaxes once he realizes this and says, “You chose the work. I would have done the same.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
He can feel Sherlock’s smirk. “Yes. But only for three minutes.”
“Why three?”
The silence that follows is heavy. He’s sorry he asked the question, and is trying to figure out how to change the subject when Sherlock finally answers.
“Because I saw your face,” he says. Lestrade hears the creak of the chair rocking, tipping forward and then back again. “Just before we ran. You looked...”
Lost, Lestrade thinks, remembering the moment when Sherlock pulled the gun; remembering dropping his face into his hands, thinking desperately, No, no, I can’t help you if you run.
Turns out, he couldn’t have helped Sherlock anyway.
“Devastated,” Sherlock finishes finally. He gets up from his chair; comes to stand behind Lestrade. “You looked devastated.”
“And?” Lestrade ventures cautiously as a long arm wraps around his waist and pulls him close.
“And I never wanted - want - to see that look on your face again.”
Strong fingertips press against his jaw, turning his head until Sherlock can capture his lips. Lestrade kisses back with all that he has.
---
Part Three - Epilogue