Sherlock fic: The Benefit of Friends, Sherlock/Lestrade

[zauzat]

Title: The Benefits of Friends
Fandom & Pairing: BBC Sherlock, Sherlock/Lestrade
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: none
Genre: drama
Word Count: Around 7250
Beta: many thanks to the ever-helpful imachar

Summary: Post-Reichenbach: on the night of John's wedding, Lestrade has an unexpected visitor.



Greg slid into wakefulness. For a long while he lay still, hoping desperately that it really was nearly time to get up. Finally he cracked one eye enough just enough to focus on the fuzzy numbers of the bedside clock. Hell no. Two fucking thirty am. He thought he'd got over this, waking up in the middle of night, lying tossing and turning for hours trying to chase down utterly elusive sleep and then finally collapsing, only to have the alarm shriek through his exhausted consciousness less than an hour later.

Christ but he hated insomnia. He'd always been able to get a good kip, out like a light when his head hit the pillow, no matter what time he'd stumbled home. But that had all been shot to hell when Sherlock's need to have a bloody nemesis had sucked them all down. With Sherlock dead, John falling apart and Greg's career suffering a slow motion implosion, there'd been reason to lie awake at night.

But why now? Oh he knew why tonight, but couldn't his brain work out that this was supposed to be a happy occasion? It'd been a wedding, for fuck's sake. A new beginning, coming to terms, moving on - all that bleeding psycho-babble. The bride had looked radiant, just as she should, and the groom, well, perhaps only those who knew him best might have thought his smile slightly sad.

Greg sighed, rolled over, punched the pillow, all the while keeping his eyes determinedly shut. He was not going to give in on sleep, dammit. More than any of them, John deserved a measure of happiness. Who was Greg to feel uneasy about the whole affair? To blight John's recovery with the cynicism of twenty years dealing with the underbelly of humanity? He just couldn't help his concern. It was something to do with the very short time that had elapsed from John mentioning over a drink that he'd met this girl and she seemed really nice, to John declaring 'for better and for worse', and 'til death do us part'.

The trouble was that Mary really was nice. Pretty, funny, capable, compassionate. Just the kind of woman any man would be proud to bring home to his parents. And so very normal. "Just what poor John needs," people had been saying at the wedding, "got her feet on the ground, nothing funny about her." Just so bloody ordinary. Ambitious enough to be an accountant but wanting to have her own family, a wide circle of friends holding drinks parties on the weekends, off to the beach for two weeks each year, adventurous enough to go beyond the Spanish Costas but still enjoying ordinary holiday pleasures.

There was just one problem as Greg saw it. John wasn't ordinary. Never had been and that wasn't about to change now. Ordinary men didn't decide that the thing to do with a hard-won medical qualification was to serve on the front-lines in Afghanistan. Ordinary men didn't stagger home years later and decide that Sherlock of all people was brilliant company. Ordinary men didn't kill with the cool of a sniper for a man they'd barely met. John only seemed ordinary because of those bloody jumpers and because he'd generally been standing at the side of the utterly un-ordinary Sherlock.

Greg turned again, restlessly trying to twist the pillow into a shape that would somehow result in sleep. He just knew how it would go. Love, and John trying his very best, would take the two of them through a year or so. By the time one or both finally began to realise how very different they were, they'd have a child already. John's loyalty and sense of duty would demand that he stay, no matter how unhappy he was. Mary would be the one who a decade later would finally declare that she'd had enough, take the kids and walk out.

Greg flopped onto his back and gave in, opening his eyes to stare up at the shadowed ceiling. Christ, why did he have to depress himself like this? His life was fucking pathetic enough as it was, what with the divorce combined with the demotion to sergeant and the widespread covert disdain from his own colleagues.

Low orange light filtered into the room. He'd not bothered to put up any curtains once he'd moved into the scummy flat he currently occupied. The bedroom window looked across an alley to a brick wall, so who the hell cared. He had a bed and a sofa, a telly and a microwave. What more did a middle-aged failure need? He rubbed roughly at his eyes. God, he had to pull himself out of this cycle of thinking.

A flicker of movement caught his attention. Just a shadow from the headlights of a passing car, obviously. And yet it came from the darker corner of the room, from where the door was. Greg felt a prickle of unease across the back of his neck. Muscles tensing, he peered carefully across towards the doorway.

Towards the black shape by the door, even darker in the darkness, the human shape....

"What the hell?" Greg fumbled for the bedside light.

"Don't! Leave the light off. We may be watched."

That voice! Greg slumped back against the pillows. That fucking voice. This was even worse than the insomnia. The vivid dreams that seemed so like life that when he finally woke he battled to distinguish dream from memory. Until he remembered that no, the body hadn't turned into a bat halfway down the building and flapped off across a Gotham city skyline. It had hit the pavement. He'd watched the bloody CCTV footage enough time to know that as a fact.

"Fuck off. Just leave me alone."

"I've come a long way to see you, Detective Inspector." The voice had the temerity to sound slightly hurt.

"Sergeant, no thanks to--" Greg bit off the sentence. He was not going to argue with some disembodied shade risen up from his own agonised subconscious. He closed his eyes, rolled onto his side and thought determinedly about sheep.

"Aren't you even a bit surprised to see me?"

"I can't see you," retorted Greg with all the finesse of a four-year-old. "Go away."

"That never worked in the past," said the voice with wry humour. "No reason for it to work now." The voice came closer as it spoke, the bed shifted as a heavy weight sat down on the edge, pulling the bedclothes tighter across Greg's torso. A shiver of panic began low in his belly. By this point in his life, Greg knew what his stress dreams looked like. Vivid, highly detailed, sometimes distressingly realistic, more often frustratingly bizarre, always visual rather than sensory, always tightly compressed. His dreams didn't waste time with walking across a room. His dreams didn't provide details of weight, of the pull of fabric, of the heat of another body.

Greg slowly opened his eyes to look at the shadowed figure now seated on the edge of his bed. With a sick twisting of bile rising in his throat, he cautiously put out a hand, wrapped it around a wrist. Painfully thin, a framework of bones barely wrapped in skin, but it was warm skin, giving under his hand. He fumbled for the pulse, felt the beat under his fingertips, firm, a bit too quick, achingly alive.

"Sherlock! You bastard, I am going to kill you!"

There was a shaky laugh in the darkness. "I've tried being dead. It didn't take. Better think of something else."

"What are you doing here? Why now?" Why now, after fourteen months of bitter grief, hearts broken, reputations ruined, trust destroyed. And then the shattered lives had been ever so gradually rebuilt, perhaps as shaky pale imitations of their former selves, but it was a start. Why now, when everybody was, maybe, slowly, beginning to recover.

"John. Got married."

Greg began to laugh, painful gasping jerks of his diaphragm. Even he could hear the hysteria that underlay it. "That's what made you break your cover? Jealousy?"

"He got married!" Sherlock's voice was pitched as high as a whining child, shrill in his distress. "What did he do that for? I haven't been gone that long."

Greg's laugher was abruptly extinguished as a cold bucket of fury tipped over him, drenching his flare of relief at Sherlock's ongoing existence in a torrent of icy anger. "Not that long? What the hell? You're dead, Sherlock. Dead! As in passed on, no more, ceased to be! Were you expecting him to wait for you?"

The accusation lay heavily between them, weighed down by an incalculable burden of grief. It was a long time before a very small voice replied. "Yes."

"Dammit, Sherlock. Even bloody marriage only lasts 'til 'death do you part'. How the bleeding fuck was he supposed to know that he should wait?"

The silence deepened. "Well?" demanded Greg, pulling himself upright in the bed, the better to express his absolute rage.

"I thought he'd just know," offered Sherlock at last, with a depth of misery in his voice that broke through Greg's anger.

"Oh sunshine, tell me you haven't done anything stupid today like contact him."

"No." Another long silence. "I was at the church though. I thought about-- But I couldn't. It's not over yet. It's not safe."

Greg wondered where Sherlock had secreted himself, wondered if he'd noticed him but had let his eyes skate past, seeing but not seeing. He'd arrived as late as he'd dared without being obviously rude, so he could find a place right at the back. He'd seen Mycroft enter even later though, and stand in the shadows by the door. He was damn sure John hadn't invited Sherlock's brother, there was no love lost there, although he'd never known quite why. Mycroft never looked happy but he'd looked gloomier than ever this morning.

"Does your brother know?" Greg blurted out.

"Only in that I've had to use him for access to money. He knows nothing more. I won't have him interfering."

Greg snagged the second pillow with his left hand and stuffed it behind his back. His right hand was still wrapped firmly around Sherlock's wrist, like a handcuff. He had no intention of letting go, anything to stop this man vanishing back into the darkness of his dreams.

"You said something... something about being watched? About it not being safe? Sherlock, what kind of mess have you got yourself into?"

"With Moriarty dead, his network's falling apart, squabbling among themselves for control. If anything it's even more dangerous than before, lacking a leader to impose discipline. I'm taking them out one by one. But it's taking so long..." Sherlock's voice trailed off, sounding exhausted and disheartened.

"And having them think you dead makes that easier? You know, I can kind of see that, but Sherlock, why the hell do it like that? Destroying your reputation, killing yourself, forcing John to watch? That's not necessity, that's just callous cruelty."

"It all helps," said Sherlock defensively. "That people think I was a fake, that people can see John is grieving. The end justifies the means."

Greg considered this for a moment. "I call bullshit! Maybe your brother is capable of that degree of dispassionate calculation but you aren't. You feel, Sherlock, you feel too much sometimes and in strange ways. You were bloody high on your game with Moriarty, surfing on the adrenaline of the chase. But you cared about John too, more than I'd ever known you to care. I can't believe you'd have hurt him that badly."

"I didn't expect him to care that much," mumbled Sherlock. "I mean, it was just me, I know I kept him distracted but I didn't.... I didn't realise how he'd take it. I didn't mean it to happen like that. That was my disaster plan, my ultimate contingency. I didn't ever think I'd have to use it!"

"So explain it to me in small words, dumb-fuck copper here, remember? How does a genius like you get cornered into killing yourself?"

"By having snipers target three people who matter to me, make the signal that stops them me being seen to kill myself, and then have the mastermind shoot himself in the head so I can't force him to revoke the order."

"Jesus!" Greg found himself floundering for words. "Yeah, okay, I guess that'd do it. Three people? John of course. Who else? I wouldn't have thought a sniper could get close to Mycroft."

"Not and live, they couldn't. Besides, they can have him for all I care," said Sherlock bitterly. "He had Moriarty in custody for weeks before the crown jewels break-in. Their professional interrogators couldn't get a thing out of him. He'd only speak to Mycroft and he sold each useless secret in exchange for stories from my childhood. My beloved brother handed Moriarty a loaded gun with a bullet in the chamber with my name on it and then let him go free."

"So that's how the tabloids got all that information about you," mused Greg. "He outwitted both Holmes brothers. In a sickeningly frightening way, that's kind of impressive." Greg lay back against the pillows and stared up the ceiling. There was so much information swirling around in his head now it was making him dizzy. Every which way he looked just left him with yet more questions, floundering in disbelieving bewilderment. He tried to think forward to what might come next.

"So you're hunting down the network. Without John? Without Mycroft?" Without me, he didn't say. He didn't need yet another rant from Sherlock about his failings as a detective. He considered Sherlock's bowed head, the thin wrist, the fine tremors he could feel in the other man's hand. He considered Sherlock's presence on the edge of his bed on this particular night. "How's that going for you?"

"It's fine. It's great. It's so much easier not being constantly slowed down by idiots. Not having to wait for John to catch up. Not having to explain utterly obvious clues to you in words of one syllable. Not having to constantly compensate for Mycroft's inept interference. I've always done my best work alone," declared Sherlock loftily.

"Alone? Really? Are you perhaps referring to some long-forgotten work back in the day when you were lounging around in the drug-festooned shit-hole of a flat, killing off your brain cells one hit at a time? Because those last few years where you made your name as a consulting detective, you were trailing an entire sodding entourage behind you."

"I was not," protested Sherlock. He shifted uneasily on the bed. "I don't need anyone."

"Oh no? Let's see. John Watson - personal assistant, muse, bodyguard, keeper of the peace, moral compass, what else have I forgotten? Oh yes, blogger to the detective superstar."

"That's still just one man, hardly an entourage," sniffed Sherlock disdainfully.

"I've only just started. Then we've got Mycroft. No don't you pull away from me." Greg tightened his hand firmly around Sherlock's wrist. "The two of you have the weirdest relationship, but he brought you a number of your most interesting cases and pulled you out of trouble more than once. It must help with the whole brave loner image, when you know you've actually got the entire British intelligence service watching your back."

"Not now I haven't," Sherlock mumbled.

"And then there's the Met, with poor old bloody me as the point man."

"The Met did nothing but obstruct--"

"Shut the fuck up. If you don't want to hear my opinion, you can stay out of my bedroom at three o'clock in the bleeding morning! Fine, we'll stay away from personal feelings, apparently no one's but John's count anyway. But you ruined my career, bumped down to sergeant, doing menial chores with officers half my age, salary slashed, no hope of coming back. They want me to resign of course, and the only reason I don't is what hell else would I do? A detective is what I am, even if you do think I'm a sodding awful one. So, yeah, shut your mouth and listen."

Greg sucked in a deep breath, startled by his sudden rush of anger, scrambling to defend people he had to admit he didn't always much like either. Still, it was bloody well time Sherlock got told a few home truths about the role of the Met in his detective super-stardom. "We brought you cases, sure not all your cases, you had your private practise but even that came off the back of your success with us. But the really good ones, the complicated murders were most likely to come from us. Then we did plenty of your sodding legwork. Oh, you swanned around here and there, doing the bits you fancied, but you were forever sending us off to do boring backup work.

"And then there's that bit you always magnificently forget about, when we arrest the bad guys, get together the evidence, see it through trial and hopefully leave them to rot in jail. Half the time no thanks to you, because you may have told me what to look for but you've also contaminated the evidence or broken the chain or obtained it illegally and we've got to prove it all over again." He paused in his rant as a thought suddenly struck him.

"So how are you managing now, if you don't have the police or the secret service to take people into custody?" A horrible suspicion was crystallising in his belly, an aching knot that wouldn't go away. "Sherlock? You haven't gone vigilante, have you? Turned yourself into a one-man assassination squad?"

"No," protested Sherlock immediately. "Mostly I can scare them off, or break up their networks, or leave hints for local law enforcement. Although it's much more exhausting than before, so much more time-consuming. But there have been... I try not to.... I--"

"Don't tell me," interrupted Greg gently, rubbing his thumb reassuringly across the back of Sherlock's hand. "Some things your friend the police officer shouldn't know. But you must realise that this isn't good for you. There must be ways I could help you." He released his grip on Sherlock's wrist and slid his hand down over the other man's so he could interleave their fingers. That fact that Sherlock let him just increased the ache of worry.

"I'm better alone," mumbled Sherlock miserably, head bent and shoulders hunched forward. "Caring, having people who care, it makes me vulnerable. Moriarty could never have got to me that way if I'd been on my own. John wouldn't have been hurt like that."

"That's true but it's a good thing." Greg's anger was forgotten in the face of Sherlock's confused unhappiness. It felt terribly important that he make Sherlock understand this. "I'm getting this right, yeah? He cornered you on top of Barts and topped himself to force you to jump? That was how he won your weird game? That's not admirable, Sherlock, that's not clever, that's just psychopathically insane. John and I and... uh... and Molly and Mike, we're your friends because you are actually a good man, however hard you try to hide it. Yeah, caring makes you vulnerable, but it also makes you try harder, fight smarter and gets you allies. It's a good thing."

"Mycroft says caring is not an advantage," said Sherlock in an uncertain voice, for all the world like a small boy worried about something told to him by someone he admired, something he wasn't sure he wanted to believe.

"Mycroft is a fucking fool," said Greg robustly. "And if I see him again, I'll be happy to tell him so myself. He's also spectacularly failing to live up to his own advice, given how much he worries over you."

Sherlock kicked off his shoes and pulled his feet up onto the edge of the bed, so that he was perched like a gloomy vulture, hugging his shins tightly against his chest, his head resting on his knees. He seemed to be trying to squeeze himself into the smallest space possible. For safety, for comfort, not to inconvenience Greg? Greg just couldn't tell. But he could recognise loneliness when he saw it. He released Sherlock's hand, shuffled over in the bed and then abruptly caught Sherlock by his far shoulder and toppled him onto his side, spooning up behind him before Sherlock had a chance to protest.

"I don't--" started Sherlock.

"Oh shut up," mumbled Greg, wrapping an arm very firmly around Sherlock's waist. "You're dead and I'm dreaming, so none of it counts anyway."

"Oh." Sherlock lay quiet for a long time, very slowly relaxing against the heat of the body at his back, straightening his legs until they lay alongside Greg's. Greg's mind drifted, sorting through the pile of unbelievable facts that Sherlock had so casually dumped on him. Every so often he found himself rubbing his face against the soft skin at the back of Sherlock's neck, just to breathe in the scent of him, to feel the rough silk of his hair, just to be sure he was really there, really alive.

Sherlock's voice pulled him out of his revery. "You're quite certain? None of this counts?"

"Yeah, quite sure." Greg waited. He had no idea what Sherlock was getting at but was certain that it was something that mattered. Abruptly the other man sat up, pulled off his jacket and dumped it on the floor, and turned round to curl in against Greg's body, tucking his face in under Greg's chin and sliding an arm loosely over his waist. Greg really hadn't thought about his near-nudity before, what with Sherlock rising from the grave like that, but Sherlock's hand pressed against his bare chest and arm looped over his back made it very obvious that he was only wearing boxers.

He cautiously wrapped both arms around Sherlock's back, burying one hand in the mess of curls while rubbing in gentle circles with the other. It couldn't really be said that the night was getting any more bizarre. Finding out that Sherlock was un-dead had set the bar pretty high. But it certainly wasn't getting any less so. Cuddling a despondent Sherlock Holmes wasn't something he'd ever imagined doing.

He drifted, half-awake, letting himself sink into the comfort of another body so close to his own. There'd been no one in his bed since his ex-wife had informed him he was moving out. That wasn't to say that there'd been no one. Following the legal separation, there'd been a set of awkward dates with friends of his sister-in-law, although after the Sherlock debacle he'd become very leery of any situation where he might have to explain what he did for a living. His face had shown up in the tabloids next to Sherlock's rather too often for comfort.

After that he'd mostly gone for quick and dirty encounters out behind gay bars, the kind of arrangement where no names were exchanged. He despised that sort of thing and despised himself for doing it, but he just couldn't imagine managing a romance right now. He'd never brought anyone home to this flat, never curled up with anyone in this bed. He let his cheek rest against the profusion of curls and then turned his face to press his lips against the wild tangle. Alive, he's alive, he's alive. It echoed through his body with each beat of his pulse.

That beat of blood was beginning to warm him in other unexpected ways. Sherlock was lonely, obviously. He needed reassurance, obviously. But Greg's body didn't seem to understand that it's only role was to provide comfort. His dick had done some basic maths and come to an obvious conclusion. They were awake at three o'clock in the morning. They weren't getting out of bed to attend to some emergency. There was another warm and rather shapely body in the bed with them. Therefore sex was the hopeful outcome.

Greg carefully shuffled his groin away from Sherlock's firm thigh, which was sprawled dangerously nearby. His role here was to be a friend. A friend with benefits, his prick suggested helpfully. Not a friend then, a father-figure perhaps. No, definitely not, that just highlighted the fact that he did have rather confused feelings about Sherlock that made a father metaphor feel highly inappropriate.

The fact that Sherlock had begun to trail the back of his hand across Greg's chest wasn't helping him to think clearly. "You're in good shape for your age," Sherlock commented. Greg decided to ignore the age bit and take that as a compliment. You had to take your compliments where you could find them with Sherlock. The hand on his back had migrated downwards and the long fingers were now drumming out an elaborate pattern just above the waistband of his boxers. Greg tried his best to keep his breathing even. With Sherlock there was no way of knowing if he was quite unaware of what he was doing, or was deliberately winding Greg up.

Sherlock shifted, moving closer so his thigh slid between Greg's legs and his mouth was so close to Greg's throat that he could feel the hot puffs of breath. Was he imagining the light scatter of kisses along his collar bone?

"What do you think John's doing right now?"

Greg abruptly pulled away and rolled onto his back. If he'd been looking for an erection killer, he'd found it. "Don't you fucking dare, Sherlock. I will not be some substitute body so you can close your eyes and pretend you're having a wedding night with John."

"I don't want to have sex with John," exclaimed Sherlock, sounding scandalised.

"You don't? Why not?"

"He's straight! Utterly, painfully so."

"So? The issue isn't what he wants, it's what you want. You'll be far from the first bent bloke to pine after some unattainable straight. Although I must admit, I'd pegged you as above something as messily plebeian as sex."

"Sex is a waste of time and energy," said Sherlock loftily. "I prefer to hone my focus through celibacy."

"Uh huh. So what exactly are you after right now?"

Sherlock hesitation was uncharacteristic. Yet again it struck Greg that the long months of his 'death' had changed Sherlock in ways Greg had yet to fully understand. "Why do you care?" challenged Sherlock, in what seemed to Greg to be a deliberate evasion. "Why turn down a free shag? I know you've not been getting much in recent years. And you've always fancied me."

"Wow. Arrogant much? Believe me when I tell you that I've not been carrying a torch for you through all these years. Sure, you're my type. Because when we're talking blokes, my type is posh gits in good suits, with tight arses and legs that go on for miles. Which means I like the look of you. But equally I like the look of your brother."

"You fancy Mycroft?" Sherlock sounded appalled.

"Hell yeah, what's not to like? Just imagine that posh voice wrapping itself around dirty talk." Greg was teasing Sherlock now, glad to move them away from the mess of who, why and whether they wanted to fuck. "I had a great time as a teenager, being a 'bit of rough' for a succession of posh boys from the local public school."

Sherlock shuddered theatrically. "Detective Inspector, I'm horrified by your lack of taste."

"Detective Sergeant," Greg corrected quietly.

"Oh. Yes. About that.... I didn't mean...." Sherlock huffed out a deep sigh before continuing stiffly, "It had not occurred to me how far the consequences would spread, or how severe they would be."

Greg knew it was as close to an apology as he was likely to get, and far more than he'd ever expected. He reached out and tugged Sherlock up against him, until the younger man was lying on his side with his head on Greg's shoulder and his hand once again tapping out idle patterns on his stomach. Greg gave up on trying to work out what they were doing. Sherlock wasn't the only one to want some comfort in the middle of this mess.

"I've never thought you were a.... what did you say? A sodding awful detective. You weren't just the best of a sorry bunch, you were and are in a class apart. The Met doesn't deserve you."

Greg kissed the top of Sherlock's messy curls. It didn't change anything, or solve anything, but it touched him more than he could bring himself to admit.

"So can we go back to having sex now?" Sherlock said abruptly. "I've never thought of John that way, as soon as I realised he was straight, I shut the door on that possibility. But you, I've always known you were possible. I've always thought that if I took a break from celibacy, you'd be my first choice."

"I... er...." Greg stuttered disbelievingly as he tried to work out how he felt about this. So all these years Sherlock had thought him a sure thing that would come to heel the minute the consulting detective snapped his fingers. Then again, all these years Sherlock had secretly fancied him, just a bit, and had thought about him that way.

With a mental shrug, Greg stopped trying to puzzle out if this was a brilliant idea or an awful one. He'd put it all down to shock and worry about it later. "Alright, but if I get even the slightest hint that you're doing this while fantasising about John, I'll... I'll...." Greg cast around trying to think of a sufficiently dire threat. "I'll start moaning Mycroft's name in your ear!"

"Try that and I'll bite," mumbled Sherlock, voice obscured by the shirt he was pulling over his head. It was a matter of moments before he slid back into Greg's arms, twining their legs together, now stark-bollock naked. For a moment Greg regretted the lack of light that hid from him the expanses of warm ivory skin his hands were already running over so greedily. But in fact he suspected it helped. Navigating Sherlock's body by touch rather than sight gave the whole experience a slightly surreal quality, preserving the illusion of a dream for which he need take no responsibility.

He let his fingers explore curiously, feeling the pronounced wings of shoulder blades and the individual knobs of each of the spinal vertebrae. Clearly the lack of John forcing Sherlock to eat was having an effect. He lost himself in the sweep of smooth skin under the palms of his hands, revelling in the warmth that spoke of life, and he let his hands linger over the sides of Sherlock's chest, fitting his fingers between the starkly pronounced ribs, just to feel them lift with each breath the other man took.

Sherlock seemed to be avoiding kissing, rather rubbing his face in the light spread of hair on Greg's chest. Greg, running a hand through Sherlock's rough curls, decided he didn't mind. He suspected Sherlock's mouth might taste as tart as it could sound. He had a sudden irrelevant memory of Sherlock casually shattering his hopes at that Christmas Eve party, words dropping from that shapely mouth with deliberate uncaring cruelty. More memories flooded in on the heels of the first. Telling him to stop thinking because it was distracting, telling him he could see but not observe, cutting him down time and again in front of his team. Once again Sherlock was using him as it suited him, and yet the man couldn't even be bothered to remember his first name, despite their years of acquaintance.

He grabbed at Sherlock's wrists, pulling his arms wide on the bed and rolling over so he lay on top of the other man, pinning him down with his body weight. If they were going to do this, he was going to take what he wanted. He wasn't just going to be manipulated, yet again, by bloody Sherlock Holmes, used and discarded the minute he'd served his purpose.

Sherlock didn't fight him off but he flexed hard, straining against Greg's hold, pushing up against his body, reminding him that he might be lack Greg's weight but he had unexpected reserves of strength. "Do you want a hate fuck, Lestrade?" hissed Sherlock against his ear. "Will that make you feel better about this? I can do that for you."

Greg pulled back, startled. He was surprising himself with how much anger he still had running under his relief at seeing Sherlock, a vicious undertow pulling unexpectedly at his ankles in apparently tranquil waters. He didn't want a hate fuck and he didn't want to let Sherlock retreat into that emotional cul-de-sac either. He rested his forehead against Sherlock's temple, sucking in slow deep breaths. Finally he let Sherlock's wrists go and instead brought his hands in to cradle Sherlock's head, letting his own weight rest on the wiry strength of Sherlock's torso. "Sherlock, what's my name?"

"Oh for god's sake, Les--"

"Sherlock!"

Sherlock stopped abruptly. Greg waited while Sherlock ran a hand slowly up his back. He could almost feel the other man thinking.

"Greg," whispered Sherlock against his ear. "Your name is Greg."

Greg began to sprinkle light kisses across Sherlock's face, tasting the slightly salty skin with just the tip of his tongue. The kisses were a blessing, a prayer, an offering of thanks dragged out of the quiet despair that underlay his sea of anger.

Sherlock hesitated for a long moment before letting his own tension go, arching up under Greg with lazy sensuality, chasing Greg's mouth with his own. When their lips finally met, his mouth was not tinged with acid bitterness but was sweetly warm, opening generously under Greg's own, as if starved for attention and affection. He licked greedily into Greg's mouth, chasing his tongue with his own, tracing the firm teeth and soft cheeks.

Sherlock's long arms and clever fingers seemed to be everywhere, carding through Greg's hair, scratching down his back, stroking over his forearms with the lightest of teasing touches, squeezing down roughly on his buttocks. Greg chased him down, catching Sherlock's hands in his own, trying to pin him with his body weight, but it was like trying to contain an octopus in a shopping bag. Each time he had most of the tentacles tucked away, one popped out in an unexpected place. Sherlock's long and apparently rather flexible toes would be stroking the back of his knee, or a firm thigh would be rubbing sinuously against his groin.

Finally Sherlock rolled them so they lay side by side. With his face tucked in against Greg's neck, he hitched his hips in slow rolling waves, pushing his cock against Greg's boxers in a teasing rhythm. "What do you want to do, Sherlock?" asked Greg, aware that his voice sounded unusually gruff.

"Like this," mumbled Sherlock, face pressed against Greg's skin. "Just like this."

Greg suspected that Sherlock was trying to get as much touching as he could from the encounter, as if he could store it up to take with him and ration it out over the long lonely months that doubtless lay ahead. "Okay, just a mo." Greg pulled away from Sherlock and rolled over onto his stomach to reach into his bedside drawer. Sherlock followed him, half sprawling over Greg's legs as he kissed his way down Greg's spine, pulled his boxers down onto his thighs and then began to squeeze and bite at his buttocks.

"Fuck! Sherlock! It'll be over way too soon if you keep that up." He could feel hot breath against the crack of his arse, a tongue trailing gently over the fine hair. It was many years since someone's face had been that close to his hole, and it was causing an almost forgotten mix of trepidation and aching arousal.

Sherlock crawled back up his body and slid on top of Greg, pinning him face-down on the bed. He wriggled until his cock settled into the crack of Greg's arse and then began to rock gently while licking at the short hair at the back of Greg's neck. "Would you like that?" Sherlock asked, voice low with lust. "Would you like to spread your legs for me and let me drive into your body, fuck you deep and slow until you can't remember your name?"

"Dammit, Sherlock, I wouldn't've thought you'd be that good at dirty talk," gasped Greg.

"I did browse through John's porn collection a few times, just to see what he liked," replied Sherlock, his voice back to its normal pitch. "I borrowed a few lines from there."

Greg started to laugh, dislodging Sherlock in the process and rolling over until they both lay on their sides, facing each other once again. He kicked off his boxers and pulled Sherlock's long lean body tight against his own. Squeezing out a palm-full of lube he pulled their cocks together and began a slow, slippery, cock-screwing twist. Sherlock twisted their legs together and bit his way along Greg's jaw back towards his mouth.

As their arousal flared ever higher their kisses became increasingly sloppy, until they were rubbing tongues like they were rubbing cocks, and then finally just panting into each other's mouths. "You bastard, you utter fucking bastard," muttered Greg as he felt his balls tightening and the shivering flares of orgasm beginning to overwhelm him. "I'm so glad you're home." Sparkling waves of sensation crashed over him as he clung to Sherlock's lean frame.

Sherlock pushed him onto his back almost immediately and climbed on top of him, fucking into the mess of come pooled in the dip of Greg's hip, thrusting hard and fast, face buried against Greg's neck, hands digging into his upper arms. He came hard and suddenly without a word, going rigid above Greg as violent shudders ran through him. Greg held him through it and then pulled him down to lie on his side, tucked in under Greg's arm, his head resting on Greg's chest. They lay in silence, breathing heavily in the darkness, the sweat slowly cooling where their skin touched.

Eventually Sherlock's voice broke the post-orgasmic lassitude, speaking so softly Greg had to strain to hear him. "I'm not coping. I'm supposed to be travelling around the globe, hunting down his network. But I keep coming back to London, going to haunt my own grave and spy on my visitors. Mrs Hudson comes every second Tuesday. You come irregularly, I think when you have problems with cases. Even bloody Mycroft comes sometimes, God knows why. And John, John comes every Friday, comes alone late in the afternoon. Until four weeks ago, when he came with her." Sherlock spat out the pronoun.

"Told her how I'd always be a part of his life, how she needed to be able to accept that. And she was all lovey-dovey and understanding. She's picked him as some kind of fixer-upper project. She's going to be disappointed when he doesn't fix himself to her schedule," said Sherlock bitterly. "I haven't been back since. If I don't succeed, it's all been for nothing. But I can't keep it together. I can feel it all slipping away from me, Moriarty's going to win after all."

So it was still all about John, Greg thought glumly. He wasn't exactly surprised. Still, he wasn't about to abandon Sherlock, not after so unexpectedly getting him back. "No that psychotic tosser bloody well isn't going to win. Not after all we've been through. You need to stop trying to do this alone, Sherlock. You need to let me help you. You need to let Mycroft help you. I'll talk to him about it if you won't."

"Don't you dare," mumbled Sherlock. Greg grinned to himself. As Sherlockian objections went, it was distinctly half-hearted. Greg had always been prepared to bend rules to get the job done, always been prepared to trust his own innate sense of justice over the strict letter of the law. But the one thing he'd prided himself on was not playing politics. He'd known why his promotions had come slowly and he'd not cared, not as long as he was getting his job done. He'd never licked an arse to secure preferment and he wasn't going to start now. But there was very little he could achieve as a sergeant.

He still wasn't sure how this had come to be his life, but the fact was that he had an acquaintance in a dizzyingly high place who owed him a number of favours. It was time to call them in. The first thing to be done in the morning was a phone call to the elder Holmes brother. It wasn't an idea he was about to share with Sherlock. He'd never believed the younger man inevitably knew better than the rest of them what should be done. He needed his friends and his family at his side, and if he wouldn't involve Mycroft, then Greg damned well would.

Thinking about friends and family reminded Greg of something. "Hey, you never did tell me who the other two people were who were targeted by snipers."

"Mrs Hudson, of course. He knew I'd never knowingly let her suffer because of me, she put up with enough as it was."

"And the third one?"

There was a long silence, before there was a very quiet whisper against his ear. "That was you."

"Oh. Oh God." Greg pulled Sherlock tighter against him, finally left at a loss for words.

"I know it's all a mess now, but you're not just a substitute for John. You never were."

"Shh, Sherlock, try to sleep. You don't have to do this on your own. We'll think of something."

Sherlock gave a disbelieving snort and then wriggled down to bury his face against Greg's chest, finally settling into restless slumber. Greg held him tight, staring out into the darkness and planning, the first plans he'd been pro-actively committed to since Dimmock had stuck his head around Greg's office door and told him: You need to get to Barts. He's topped himself.

* * *

Greg was woken by the soft rustle of clothing and a distinct lack of heat in the bed by his side. He made a swift grab for the dark form that had just begun to tiptoe towards the door.

"Oh no, you bloody well don't. I'm not having you just disappear on me again. No, you just shut up and listen--" Greg ploughed straight over Sherlock's attempts to object. "Despite what I said before, what happened tonight does count. I've let you walk back into my life, fuck with my head and other things besides, because I am your friend.

"Now, you are going to keep in touch with me when you can, let me know you're still alive. And you're going to let me help, feed me information that lets me pick off the low-hanging branches. You know as well as I do that it's a good way to unsettle the higher-ups. And when they get nervous, they make mistakes. It'll help you finish this.

"And you are going to do this, Sherlock, because you are my friend. Is that clear?"

Greg wasn't all that convinced that this would work. If Sherlock chose to vanish again, he'd just do it. Still, he waited patiently for a response.

"Oh very well," grumbled Sherlock eventually.

The dark form leaned down over him and for a moment Sherlock pressed his cheek against Greg's temple. Greg wondered if he'd imagined the soft kiss dropped into his hair.

And then Sherlock was gone.

THE END -