(no subject)
Title: “Beyond the Stars” (1/5)
Characters/Pairings: Lestrade/Sherlock, John, Mycroft, Ensemble
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Word Count: c. 4,000 this part
Warnings: Language, angst, implied sexual content, violence, implied past alcoholism and drug use, AU
Spoilers: None
Summary: “You have a choice to make, Sherlock Holmes. Your friend... or your lover?”
Forty years ago, humanity left behind a dying Earth and fled to the stars. But life in space is fraught with danger, and some of it is found inside the very walls that are supposed to keep them safe.
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“Vast migrations of people--some voluntary, most not--have shaped the human condition. More of us flee from war, oppression, and famine today than at any other time in human history. As the Earth’s climate changes in the coming decades, there are likely to be far greater numbers of environmental refugees. Better places will always call to us.”
-Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot
------------------
Things rarely ever go just a little bit wrong in space.
Greg Lestrade tries very hard not to dwell on this fact, because even though he’s spent nearly his entire life in space, the idea that a thin wall is the only thing separating him from the vacuum outside still keeps him up at night.
Though thin is a relative term, he supposes. The outer wall of his cabin is at least two meters thick, but that’s paper-thin compared to the one hundred kilometers of atmosphere that once surrounded the long-since-abandoned Earth.
He doesn’t remember much of that life, of course, having been a child when his parents fled the planet. He does remember days of sunshine and weather patterns; remembers looking out of a window and seeing blue sky rather than endless night. He never gave space a second thought back then. It was always out there, elsewhere. Not anything that could touch him, or affect his life in any way.
Back on Earth, particles of dust had been harmless and gravity was a constant. Here, passing through a cloud of dust could spell disaster for them. It could tear tiny holes in their ship that might be too minute to notice at first, or too numerous to repair in time. And gravity itself is a finicky luxury. More than once, a failure in the gravity field has led to horrendous and gruesome accidents. He’s seen some of them first-hand; John Watson has had to deal with more, and Lestrade doesn’t envy him one bit.
“If you don’t stop thinking right this moment,” a voice mutters from somewhere beneath a mound of blankets on his bed, tearing Lestrade from his restless thoughts, “I will come over there and give the Met a brand-new case to deal with.”
The mound shifts, sniffs, and adds, “And I’ll make sure they never solve it.”
Lestrade, who has been sitting at his desk in order to catch up on some reading, takes off his reading glasses and rubs his face wearily. He has to be on duty in less than two hours, and he hasn’t slept in more than twenty-eight. It’s not a case that keeps him up this night; just another bout of insomnia. It is profoundly unfair, he thinks, that sleep should elude someone who wants it so badly and yet come easily to men like Sherlock Holmes, who couldn’t care less whether they slept or not.
“Ship rat,” he mutters in retaliation at Sherlock’s stirring form across the room. It’s an ancient taunt that came into being more than a generation ago, when the first children born after the refugee ships took to space started to come of age. Their older schoolmates, seeking solidarity with others who remembered both earth and sky, invented the term. It has long since vanished from the playgrounds and schools; now, it only exists in the offices of the middle-aged and aging workforce. It will die out in another generation or two, when the last of the refugees passes on. In less than a century, there will be no human left alive who remembers what it was like to live on a planet.
Sherlock, who has never felt the dirt between his toes nor lived without the constant threat of decompression just meters away, snorts and finally surfaces.
“God, Lestrade, you must be tired, if that’s the best you can come up with,” he says as he emerges from Lestrade’s bedding. He narrows his eyes in a squint at the sudden assault of light, and rakes a hand through his wild mop of hair. His eyes flick over Lestrade for a moment, and then his gaze turns accusing. “You didn’t come to bed last night.”
“As though you knew the difference at the time,” Lestrade tells him with an exasperated snort. Sherlock had been fast asleep when he arrived home five hours ago and had barely even stirred when Lestrade bent to kiss him on the forehead. Sherlock rarely sleeps, but when he does permit his body the luxury of some rest, it can sometimes take all of Lestrade’s energy to wake him again.
Before Sherlock can formulate a cutting reply, Lestrade’s mobile goes off.
“Yeah?” he answers briskly. Sherlock sits up in bed, fully alert now. Lestrade waves him away and then plugs his other ear to better hear the caller. “Sal, you’re breaking up, I - Right. Yeah, I’ll be there right away. Ten minutes.”
“What is it?” Sherlock demands, already halfway out of bed. Lestrade gets up from his desk and reaches for a relatively clean shirt--he’s only worn it once this week.
“Nothing interesting,” he says at once, and Sherlock purses his lips. “Domestic that ended badly, looks like. You’d find it boring.”
“No more boring than this damned cabin,” Sherlock mutters. Lestrade presses a kiss to his lover’s lightly-stubbled cheek before pulling on his suit jacket and picking up his mobile again.
“Then go to the Infirmary and bother John.” Lestrade scrubs a hand through his hair. “I’ll see you later, yeah?”
He leaves before Sherlock can reply, and hopes he won’t have to throw the younger man out of his crime scene later on.
-----
Spaceships were giant sterile things, even when crammed stem to stern with refugees. Living in a vacuum solves a number of problems, it would seem, most illnesses among them.
But the medical profession boomed after the escape from Earth, even under these conditions. Injuries started to outnumber illnesses once humanity took to the skies, and someone needed to treat them. They were rarely ever minor injuries, too, and trauma surgeons were always in high-demand.
Because if something goes wrong on this blasted ship, John Watson thinks wearily, it never goes only a little wrong.
Today already he’s had to treat two victims of a gravity field failure in Section 22, both of them children who came in with several broken bones and internal injuries. He’s also had a few instances of the cold--never could get rid of that one--and a case of hypothermia in one man who had gone outside to repair a section of the ship and got struck by a passing micrometeoroid for his efforts.
In the time he has between patients, John pauses to wonder--as he does nearly every day--how the other ships are faring. Twenty of them had launched from the dying Earth’s surface a little over forty years ago, filled to bursting with refugees and supplies. One of them had tried to make a go of it on Mars, but the colony had failed in less than a decade. The other nineteen pointed toward the stars and never looked back. They traveled in solitude, figuring that humanity’s chances of survival were greater apart rather than together. Perhaps one of the ships would find a moon in the outer solar system capable of sustaining a colony. Perhaps another would develop the technology to travel faster than light and would actually be able to travel from star to star in search of habitable exoplanets.
But for now, these ships are where humanity makes its stand, for the stars are just out of reach and they have more immediate concerns. From the radio contact London City has with the other ships, it seems that everyone’s situation is similar. The ships are too far apart now, decades after their launch, to be able to reach one another. In less than fifty years, even radio contact will be gone, and then London City will truly be on its own.
It is comforting, then, to know that no one ship is better off than the others. They have the same illnesses, the same governments, and the same citizens. They have mouths to feed, injuries to treat, dead to bury, and children to birth.
They are still humanity, even without an Earth.
-----
The woman on Level 24 died quickly, and though that’s not much of a comfort, Lestrade clings to it anyway. She was shot in the back of the head and died in a pool of her own blood, sprawled face down on the floor of her cabin. It’s likely she didn’t even feel it, it happened so fast.
“Fucking idiot, whoever did this,” Donovan spits, and as Lestrade kneels over the body, he is inclined to agree.
Gunshot wounds are an infrequent occurrence on London City, as rare as guns themselves. It isn’t wise keeping weapons like that on this vessel, not when one ricochet could rip through a bulkhead and decompress an entire section of the ship before the hull repair bots could get to it. It’s too risky, and as a result weapons are highly regulated.
On the bright side, it makes perpetrators easy to track down, with every gun out there being tightly tracked and monitored.
But the bullet could just as easily have gone through the wall as it did this woman’s head, and no amount of gun control will have prevented that. Lestrade would sleep easier at night if every last bit of this ship’s arsenal was destroyed, but he knows that will never happen in his lifetime.
“Her husband’s on the weapons registry, according to the database,” he says finally, pushing himself to his feet. “See if the bullet Molly digs out of her skull matches his gun. I’ll be at the Yard, working on the Dawson case. Let me know once you have something.”
It amazes Lestrade that murders even occur on this ship, and with nearly as much frequency as they did back when London was an actual city on Earth. They almost never get away with it, murderers, and Lestrade enjoys a high level of success that he knows would have been impossible to maintain had he been on Earth, simply because he is operating in such a confined area here on London City. There is nowhere, literally, for suspects and perpetrators to run. On Earth, they had six billion entities to hide among, and an entire planet over which to flee.
Here on their floating city, the population totals a little less than ten million, which is not nearly as immense as it sounds. There are thirty-five levels on their ship, from the engines all the way up to the main control room, and at any one time you were never more than a few hours from any other point on the ship. In his entire career, it’s never taken Lestrade and his team more than a week to track down a hiding suspect.
He likes to think it’s because his team is brilliant and highly skilled. And the truth is, they are.
“Detective Inspector.”
They just have a little help sometimes, whether they ask for it or not.
Lestrade pauses in the corridor he’s currently walking down, suppresses a sigh at the unwelcome voice, and says, “Yes?”
The intercom on the wall crackles to life again.
“I believe the man you’re looking for -”
“It’s her husband,” Lestrade says briskly, cutting Mycroft Holmes off. “We know. We’re looking for him right now, and his gun. Shouldn’t take more -”
“He’s on Level 8, Section 36. His gun appears to be on Level 10, Section 98.”
“Yes, thank you, Mr Holmes,” Lestrade says tightly. “We are capable, you know, of -”
“Oh, I’m certain you are,” Mycroft says smoothly. “But why waste time when you can rely on your numerous resources?”
“Because the only reason you have any interest in me and my team is because I’m shagging your brother,” Lestrade snaps at the wall, causing two passersby to look at him oddly before continuing on, “and you know how much it annoys him when you interfere with my cases. Which I like to think is annoyance on my account, but we both know he’s just irritated you snatched the fun of solving a case from him. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m really not in the mood to get drawn into another one of your stupid head games today.
“And stop fucking following me.”
-----
John comes off duty at 1400 hours and heads straight to Angelo’s on Level 15. He’s supposed to meet Sherlock there, as is their Thursday custom, and when he arrives he is surprised to find their usual table empty.
“You’re late,” he says when Sherlock arrives at 1415, knowing that he’ll never get another chance to say that again in his lifetime. Sherlock rolls his eyes as Angelo brings over their usual orders.
“I couldn’t find my phone.”
“Sorry, what?”
Sherlock glares. John shakes his head in bemusement, because Sherlock never misplaces anything.
“Next thing you’ll be telling me is that Mycroft relinquished control of this ship and fucked off to Bermuda.”
That earns him a snort.
“How’s Greg?”
Sherlock scowls as he stabs at a piece of meat with his fork.
“Why must you insist on asking that every time? Honestly. It’s hardly as though his condition changes drastically enough for you to constantly need to be checking in on it.”
“I just - that’s what friends - you know, never mind. I’m sure I’ll hear about it at the pub on Friday. You’re all he talks about after the fourth pint. Is it true that you like it when he does that thing with his tongue and -”
Sherlock’s eyes snap to his, blazing, and a slow flush starts to bloom at the base of his neck. John holds up a hand, struggling valiantly to hold back his laughter.
“Sorry, sorry, that was cruel of me.” He turns his attention to his pasta. “I’m just joking. You know as well as I that the man’s tight-lipped to a fault, no matter how much liquor he’s had. Did you find it?”
“What? Oh, the phone. Yes, it was in the kitchen. Did you fix your blog?’
“Did I what? Why?”
Sherlock sighs impatiently.
“The details of our last case are blown tremendously out of proportion. Take, for example, the chase down on Level 12. Now, I know you want to impress your readers, but really, John, did you have to -”
“Yes, yes, all right,” John hisses, glancing furtively around the room. “So I... embellish a bit, here and there. It’s completely harmless. The readers love it, and it makes you look good.”
Sherlock smirks suddenly.
“I suppose those are perks, yes, but not exactly the kind you’re after. Tell me, John, how often has your popularity as the writer of a well-known blog allowed you to get a leg over?”
John feels himself flush.
“Wanker,” he mutters, turning back to his food.
“I suppose you would have to be, yes, in a situation of forced celibacy -”
“Oh, shut up.”
---------------------
The computer database calls them environmental refugees.
It’s not a phrase that brings particularly haunting images to mind. In fact, it sounds positively tame when compared to other phrases that describe the causes of abrupt migrations, like war-torn country or natural disaster. It’s almost deliberately vague and evasive, even, and the accompanying articles are clinical. Of all the mass extinction events in Earth’s history, only one of them was caused by an outside force. The others were a result of the planet itself trying to shake the thin film of life off its back--nothing at all like the depictions of friendly Mother Earth humans so liked to cling to prior to the disaster.
It was humanity’s collective stupidity, however, that brought about the planet’s most recent extinction event, and its collective innovation that saved them from falling victim to it. They were the reason that global temperatures rose, and why the ocean currents shut down. They were responsible for Europe’s mild climate disappearing in a perpetual flurry of snow and ice, for marine life vanishing amid a cloud of anaerobic bacteria, and for brutal summers that suffocated crops in the few areas left on Earth that could sustain them.
They were also responsible for having the means to escape the planet, and in under a decade had managed to build, stock, and launch twenty massive ships from the Earth’s surface, saving a good majority of the dwindling population. Most of those left behind had elected to stay voluntarily, and had not been heard from in thirty years.
The computer database provides graphs and numbers to supplement these articles and the decades-old news reports, but Sherlock is so far removed from the event--both in time and space--that the images stir little emotion in him, except for contempt at the fact that he is the member of such an abysmally stupid species.
Once, and only once, Lestrade spoke of Earth. It had been a bad night, that one, and made all the worse in retrospect because Sherlock didn’t have John at the time. If Lestrade is his anchor, then John is his compass, providing insight into emotions and reactions that Sherlock cannot fully grasp.
But he had been alone on that night three years ago, alternating between confused and furious at the state Lestrade had managed to drink himself into, because he had promised--he had promised--three months before that it wouldn’t happen again. Why would he promise that, if only it was going to be broken?
It wasn’t an issue that Lestrade alone battled, though somehow that knowledge made it worse at the time. Alcoholism was more prevalent among the refugees than it was among the younger children-of-space, and Sherlock hated Lestrade at the time for being so ordinary; for submitting to such a common coping mechanism.
It’s an addiction, Sherlock, John would tell him now. He fights it, all the time. Just like you do with the drugs. He will always fight it. And it must be hard, you know, realising that once your generation is gone, no one will be left to remember Earth.
Sherlock hadn’t had those words that night, though, and so he just sat stiffly on the sofa while Lestrade, in the chair across from him, nursed the evening’s fifth--sixth?--drink and finally uttered his first sentence of the day.
“You’ve never felt rain, have you?”
The floodgates opened after that first sentence. He spoke for nearly an hour, talked about rising seas and food shortages; of strange sunsets and precious, scarce water. He spoke of families who couldn’t feed their children and harsh winters that left scores dead. Felt like the planet was trying to shake them off her back, he said.
And so they went.
Sherlock had learned nothing new that night, nothing he hadn’t already discovered from the computer, but it had been frightening all the same to see his lover in such a state. And even then--hell, even to this day--Lestrade was careful with his food; conservative in his water usage. It was a habit formed in early childhood, and one he has been unable to break free from.
Lestrade hasn’t touched a drink since that night.
And he hasn’t spoken of Earth again.
Sherlock shuts down his computer abruptly, having lost more time to the blasted thing today than he would care to admit. The cabin is too still without John, and too often Sherlock finds himself lost in the database instead of in his experiments, skimming articles as a means of distraction. He checks his watch restlessly, and realises that Lestrade will be coming off his shift soon.
The melancholy lifts slightly, and Sherlock abruptly leaves the too-quiet cabin.
-----
Lestrade wraps the Dawson case a little after 1100 hours and then spends the remainder of his duty shift with the murder victim found on Level 24. Jennifer Wilson’s her name, and they find a motive before they find her husband--it turns out she was a serial adulterer, and that their marriage was rocky to begin with. The case is textbook.
That doesn’t make it any easier to wrap, however. It still isn’t finished by the time Lestrade goes off duty, leaving Jennifer Wilson’s husband--widower--sweating it out in a room with Sally Donovan and steadfastly denying everything. The test results from his gun will be back by tomorrow morning, and after that they won’t really need his full cooperation.
It’d have been nice to get a confession before that, though, but the man has been pleading innocence from the start. It’s going to be a long night for Sally, Lestrade feels.
He heads back to his own cabin, and is surprised to find Sherlock there.
“John’s back on duty,” he says immediately when Lestrade enters. Lestrade suppresses a sigh. He’d been hoping for a bit of peace, something he’s not had in nearly a week and had been expecting to have tonight. Thursday nights are for John and Sherlock alone, for which he is--usually--distinctly grateful.
“Oh?” he says, not particularly caring, and sheds his jacket.
“Yes, something about a grav field failure on Level 12 again. He’s the only one equipped to handle such injuries.”
“How inconvenient for you.”
“Yes,” Sherlock says, sounding put out. “You’ll do in the meantime, though.”
“Got a call from your brother today,” Lestrade says testily, ignoring the last comment--or perhaps spurred on by it. “He solved my case.”
“Good,” Sherlock says absently, tending to something questionable that he’s cooking in Lestrade’s small kitchen.
“No, not good,” Lestrade snaps. “Irritating. Annoying. Meddling. A fucking pain in the arse.”
“Don’t you want it solved?” Sherlock sounds honestly perplexed, which angers Lestrade all the more.
“Yes,” he hisses, “and it would have been, too! I do have a team, you know. A whole bloody team, and they’re goddamn useless because Mycroft enjoys having a bloody power trip at their expense. But you know, Sherlock, my life is not for Mycroft’s amusement. I am not here to be used against you, nor against Mycroft. I am tired of being a pawn in your fucking head games.”
Sherlock stares at him, blankly, and Lestrade goes on.
“I’m tired of being caught between you and Mycroft. You two are so fucking eager to one-up each other that you drag everyone else in your lives along for the ride. And I can tell you right now, it is not enjoyable.”
There is a pause. Sherlock’s lips thin in anger, and he draws himself up stiffly.
“If you are so tired,” Sherlock says tightly, his words dripping with acid, “then why don’t you leave? I would hardly want to impose my life on someone who despises it so much.”
Lestrade deflates suddenly, growing bone-weary in a matter of seconds. He knows how their relationship looks to the outside world--to those who know about it, at least. More than once he’s received pitying glances and murmured consolations on pub nights when Sherlock shows up, only to steal John away on important business.
The others don’t trust Sherlock. But they don’t really know him, and Lestrade’s never, not for a moment, doubted Sherlock’s sincerity.
And, up until now, he never had realised that perhaps Sherlock doubted his.
“Lad, if leaving was an option,” Lestrade says quietly, “don’t you think I’d have done that already? Look, don’t be daft. I’m not going anywhere.”
He sighs and sits heavily on the sofa.
“Anyway, it’s not you I want gone, believe me. I just wish there was a way to make your brother back the hell off. But how do you tell a ship to go fuck itself?”
The corner of Sherlock’s mouth twitches in repressed amusement.
“I’m sure he heard,” he points out.
Given Mycroft’s irritating omnipresence, he’s probably right. Lestrade snorts.
“Then he’d better listen to this as well,” Lestrade says. He makes a rude gesture at the ceiling with his hand, and then accidentally meets Sherlock’s gaze.
Two days of sleeplessness crash over Lestrade. He dissolves into uncontrollable laughter. He even gets a few chuckles out of his normally reserved lover, and reaches out for Sherlock’s hand. He tugs until Sherlock is sprawled on the sofa with him, and pulls Sherlock’s legs up until they are resting across his lap.
“Working on experiments today?” he remarks, giving Sherlock’s earlobe a tug. Sherlock winces and glares half-heartedly at him. “You’ve some ink there. Writing some notes down, I take it. Still don’t know why you bother when you have the entire computer system at your disposal.”
“I hardly need a technology lesson from the man who can’t figure how half the time how to make calls to other cabins,” Sherlock shoots back, but it lacks true heat. “And you know I prefer not to leave sensitive information floating around in what amounts to my brother’s brain.”
Sherlock reclines suddenly, and takes Lestrade with him. He sprawls on top of Sherlock, burying one hand in his hair and bracing the other on the sofa for support. Sherlock smirks and gives a slow twist of his hips; Lestrade groans.
“Look, kid,” he mutters, lowering his head to trail delicate kisses along Sherlock’s jaw, “whatever you have in mind, stop it. I’m too damn old for the sofa and you know it.”
Sherlock pushes himself up on his elbows and captures Lestrade’s lips in a hungry kiss.
“Prove it.”
------
Lestrade is a silhouette by the porthole--barely that, even. His presence by the window is noticeable only because of the lit cigarette that he holds between his fingers. Its acrid smell has not reached Sherlock thanks to the ship’s ventilation system, but its faint glow is the equivalent of a bright beacon in the complete darkness of the room.
Sherlock searches among the blankets for his mobile, discarded in their earlier haste. His squints at the readout, eyes watering, and then tosses the device in the direction of the bedside table with a frustrated groan. It is far too early.
“What is it you see out there?”
It’s not an uncommon occurrence, this--waking to find Lestrade staring out the porthole in the middle of the night, almost longingly.
Lestrade snorts.
“Nothing that would interest you.”
Sherlock slides from the bed, suppressing a hiss as his bare feet come into contact with the cold floor, and steals across the room until he is standing behind Lestrade, back-to-chest, savouring the warmth of his lover’s body.
“Try me,” he murmurs against the shell of Lestrade’s ear.
Lestrade gestures vaguely at the porthole and the stars beyond.
“It all looks so calm,” he says, “doesn’t it? A million points of light, shining in the dark. Almost makes you forget that each one is a star, and we can see it only because it’s burning up from the inside out. That is, if it’s even still alive anymore. It could have blown itself to pieces centuries ago, and we wouldn’t know for a thousand more years. Ten thousand.”
He takes another draw on his cigarette before Sherlock steals it from him. Lestrade doesn’t even protest as Sherlock smokes what is left and then disposes of it with a flick of his fingers. He goes on, absently.
“And the dark that seems so peaceful is really a vacuum, and we’d die in it in under a minute.” Lestrade sighs heavily through his nose. “It’s hard to remember all that when it looks like this, though. Y’almost don’t want to think about the fact that something so beautiful--and so close--could be so deadly.”
“You make it sound like the universe is out to get us,” Sherlock says in some amusement. Lestrade shakes his head slowly.
“No. It just doesn’t care whether we survive or not.”
Sherlock lowers his hands to Lestrade’s hips; presses lips to the back of his neck.
“You think too much,” he says in a low voice, bringing a decisive end to the conversation. “Come on. Back to bed.”
Lestrade has a mid-afternoon shift the following day and sleeps almost until noon. Sherlock leaves his bed around mid-morning, gathering clothes that had been hastily discarded the night before and putting them back on. He departs for his own cabin just as Lestrade is rousing--left some eyes in the microwave; best not to let John discover them--and is halfway through an experiment when his cabin lights go out.
Suppressing an irritated sigh, Sherlock reaches for a torch that he keeps in his desk drawer.
Before he can grab it, however, the deck disappears out from under his feet, and he goes sprawling.
A moment later, alarms start going off.
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Part Two
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Author's Notes: Some months back, geniusbee shared with me some ideas she had for a Sherlock-in-space AU, and then requested fic set in that ‘verse. I’m not generally one for AUs, but given how often I write amateur-astronomer!Lestrade, I suppose something like this was bound to happen eventually.
Credit goes to Bee for giving me the general setting. Many thanks to her for allowing me to then take monstrous liberties with the original request and build this universe from there.
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