Fic: The Cuckoo's Lullaby, 12/17
Aug. 10th, 2014 02:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
swissmargTitle: The Cuckoo's Lullaby
Author:
swissmarg
Beta readers:ruth0007, 
dioscureantwins
Rating: R
Pairing: Sherlock/John
Other characters: Irene Adler, OCs
Word count: ca. 85K when complete
Summary: Sequel to 'Cracks in the In-Between Places'. A Swiss holiday seems to be the perfect way for the Holmeses and the Watsons to recover from their recent troubles and deepen their attachments to each other, but when Tristram's mother and the bogeyman both turn up, loyalties are put to the ultimate test.
I don't thank my fabulous beta readers nearly enough, but they really have made this better, especially from here to the end where things really start cranking.
See Chapter One for additional notes
Read Chapter Twelve on AO3
John comes back to the bedroom with a towel wrapped around his waist and his clothes clutched to his chest. "Tris's back's looking better, by the w-" he says, only to stop short as he looks up. "Jesus Chr- Sherlock!" he hisses and hastily closes the door behind him.
Sherlock is leaning back against the pillows on the bed wearing only his pants. One leg is stretched out lazily in front of him, the other crooked up but splayed to one side. He has his hand cupped around himself.
"One of the kids could have come in!" John says, scandalised, but his eyes are fixed on the shape outlined beneath Sherlock's hand.
Sherlock frowns. "You think I don't know the difference between your footsteps and theirs? Anyway, they know to knock. Unlike you. God only knows what you might have walked in on." He smirks and squeezes himself.
"Cheeky." John drops his clothes on the floor and pads over to the bed, holding the towel at his hip with one hand. His lips curl into a warm smile. "That's lovely, that is."
Sherlock settles his hips, letting his legs fall even further open as he continues to move his hand between them. "Lovely?" he says dubiously. "I was hoping you'd go deeper."
"Oh yes," John agrees, his voice a low rumble. He puts one knee on the bed and leans over to kiss Sherlock, bracing himself with one hand on the pillow so he can take his time. "I will." He tilts his head down to watch Sherlock caressing himself through his pants.
"Come here," Sherlock says after a while, when John's breaths have become heavy and fast against Sherlock's neck, matching Sherlock's wafting into John's hair.
John lets go of the towel so he can move, and it falls open. Sherlock takes an appreciative look. John lets him.
"It's er... yeah. I clearly think this is a very good idea," John says, a playful glint in his eye.
Sherlock smirks. "Obvious." He reaches out and puts his hand around John so he can stroke him.
John sucks in a breath. "And that..." He groans. "Yeah, that's very, very good..." He half lowers himself and half falls so he's sitting on the mattress beside Sherlock.
Sherlock has to shift his position to keep his hand on John. His eyes flick intently from what he's doing up to John's face and back. John's head is hanging down, his eyes are screwed shut and his breaths are puffing out audibly from his open mouth.
"John..." Sherlock says, more an expression of awe than a bid for attention, but it's enough to make John open his eyes and look at Sherlock.
When he does, Sherlock's hand falters at what he sees reflected back at him. There is an interminable moment of mutual understanding, realisation, revelation.
John's breath catches as he makes to say something, but Sherlock's eyes widen with a flash of recognition and he speaks first.
"Don't," he blurts out. "Don't, please, I can't..."
John searches Sherlock's face, worried, but then his expression softens and he nods slowly. "Okay."
Sherlock closes his eyes as if that will remove him from John's steady gaze. His Adam's apple bobs as he swallows thickly. "I'm sorry. I just... I can't."
"No, Sherlock. It's fine." John reaches over and puts his hand on top of where Sherlock's has fallen still on his pants. "Show me."
Sherlock opens his eyes and lets John see what's there, just for a second, before he looks down at their joined hands on him. He takes a breath that may be just a bit shaky and starts moving his hand the way he was before. After two or three passes, he lets go and lets John continue alone. At the first touch of John's hand - even through his underwear - Sherlock closes his eyes and tilts his head back, letting out a soft sound. John keeps going.
"Like this?" John asks.
"That should be-" Sherlock grunts. "Incredibly obvious."
John follows the pattern Sherlock started, kneading and stroking in an almost hypnotic rhythm while he runs his other hand slowly over Sherlock's chest and arms. Sherlock's hand has slipped down onto John's knee, which he grips tightly. When Sherlock's body starts to tense up and his breaths become more intense, John leans forward and puts his face against Sherlock's, nudging and kissing until Sherlock surfaces from his internal retreat with a sharp intake of breath and responds with kisses that rapidly become passionate. He tilts his hips toward John, trying to get closer, and grasps John's hips, his back, whatever he can blindly reach. Then, as if suddenly remembering that John is sitting next to him completely exposed, he reaches down and takes him in hand again. It's an awkward angle, though, and he doesn't have much range of motion.
"Here, what if I..." John lifts up and shifts himself over so he's straddling Sherlock, resting his buttocks on Sherlock's thighs. He puts his palm over Sherlock's now prominent bulge and rubs. "Easier this way." He leans forward, bracing himself with his unoccupied hand so that they can exchange gentle kisses that soon become more breathless and urgent.
Sherlock has resumed playing with John, teasing and circling, squeezing and pulling. John makes a sound deep in his throat in response and thrusts unconsciously forward. He worms his other hand in between them and pushes his pants down, and at the first brush of John's fingers on Sherlock's bare skin, everything slows, the atmosphere charged with something tenuous yet weighty. There is an almost exquisite care to the way they touch now; even their breaths seem to be constructed so as not to disturb the balance.
"Maybe some lube?" John suggests at length.
"No, like this, it's good, very good... John..." Sherlock clutches at John's arms to pull him closer, making sounds in the back of his throat in response to John's ministrations. They both look down to watch John's hand on him and his on John.
"It's actually faintly ridiculous," Sherlock pants. "All this fuss for a bit of ... vascular dilation."
"Speak for yourself, I'm going to be seeing stars in a ... Oh fuck yeah, just like that, bit faster," John growls.
Sherlock obliges.
"Should probably have put condoms on," John mentions breathlessly, but doesn't let up.
"You want to stop now?"
"Fuck no. Just... don't touch anything else."
"Wasn't planning on it."
"Oh God..."
"Now was that ridiculous?" John speaks the words into Sherlock's bare chest, his lips brushing the damp sheen there. Just centimetres away, on the other side of muscle and bone, Sherlock's heart is slowly returning to its resting state.
"Only slightly less than invading Afghanistan, but yes, utterly." Sherlock's fingertips skim lightly, distractedly, over John's back, tracing his shoulder blade.
John lifts his head. When their eyes meet, they both smirk and start to chuckle. John ducks his head and rests his forehead against Sherlock's shoulder.
"Sherlock..." His smile is still audible. He puts his hands on Sherlock's shoulders and squeezes tightly. "I'm..." He lifts his head again to look Sherlock in the eye, his face full of fondness and affection and something much more profound as well. Catching the skittish look that's already forming on Sherlock's end, though, he immediately assures him, "Don't worry, I won't..." He runs his fingers through Sherlock's slightly sweaty curls and smiles in a way that's faintly wistful. "It's good, though, yeah?"
"Yes," Sherlock says; solemnly, almost reverently. He wraps his arms around John's back and holds him against his chest.
They lie like that for several minutes, just feeling each other's skin and breath and heartbeat, nothing between them but their own thoughts.
Finally, John stirs. "Check-out's ten o'clock," he says. "You want to see about connections to Zurich?"
Sherlock doesn't move or say anything for several more seconds. John finally makes a questioning sound, as if checking whether Sherlock heard him.
Finally, Sherlock reaches over to the small table beside the bed and picks up his phone. He unlocks it, clicks through a few screens, and hands it to John. His other hand drops away from John's back and lands limply on the mattress. He turns his head away.
John lifts himself off Sherlock's chest, supporting himself on one elbow. He frowns as he reads the text message.
"What is this? 'Applause applause, to the victor go the spoils. Come collect your prize. Reichenbach.' What's Reichenbach?" John asks. The 'ch's come out like 'k's.
"Reichenbach," Sherlock corrects his pronunciation of the velar fricatives. "It's a waterfall not far from here. And that," he says, nodding at the screen but not meeting John's eye, "is why we're here."
"It's signed 'M'. Is this from Mycroft?" John asks, his expression quizzical.
"Yes, John," Sherlock says sarcastically, "Mycroft is the mastermind behind the attacks on my street contacts and the murders of your wife and sister-in-law."
John's mouth drops as he turns to Sherlock in horror. "This is that nut job? We came here on a summons from--" He pushes himself up further, completely off Sherlock. "No, we brought our kids here, did we seriously walk right in here with our two children to hand them over to-" John shoves the phone back at Sherlock, throws the covers back and gets out of bed, shaking with rage. He paces back and forth, naked, and scrubs his hands over his face several times, as if trying to wake himself up. He stops and points at Sherlock. "You--" he starts, but can't finish. He walks away again, banging himself on the back of the head with his fist.
Sherlock hauls himself up into a sitting position. "Could you at least put some clothes on, John, that's rather distracting," he drawls.
"I'll give you distracting, I'll--" John takes a step in Sherlock's direction, raising his hand as if to strike, but thinks better of it and shakes his head, laughing in an entirely humourless way. "Oh, my God. I knew, I knew this was a terrible idea."
"He's not interested in the children," Sherlock says, as if this were a point they'd discussed ad nauseum.
"The hell-- He shot - Tristram." John flings his arm in the direction of the door, a parody of a smile distorting his features.
"Technically, he didn't. It wasn't him at all, it was a hired gunman, and he wasn't even aiming for Tristram, we've been over this--"
John points at him again. "Shut up. Shut your gob." He leans over, snatches up his pants from the floor and tugs them on.
"You're not leaving." Sherlock scoots forward and pushes the covers off himself. It's not quite a question, but not quite an order either.
"The hell I'm not." John tosses the bedding aside until he finds his undershirt.
Sherlock gets up on his knees and leans over to grasp John's arm. "John, you can't."
John shakes him off. "Yes, I can. Or what, have you blacklisted my passport or something? You did, didn't you. You and your bloody brother. I will fucking swim back to England if I have to." He haphazardly grabs a shirt and trousers from the closet.
Sherlock clambers off the bed and somehow comes up with a pair of pants, which he stumbles into on his way across the room. He ends up just behind John, although he refrains from touching him. "And Emily?"
"Don't you dare bring her into this. She's--" John stops and sags. "Shit."
Sherlock leans in closer, bracketing John against the closet with his body. The effect is more cocoon than threat. "I need you, John," he says. His voice is pitched low, somewhere between persuasion and supplication. "One more day. He wants me to meet him tomorrow. He was supposed to give us a week, but apparently he doesn't want to wait any longer."
John's head whips around, his eyes flashing. "What does that mean, he was 'supposed' to give us a week? How do you-- Give me that." He steps away and holds one hand out, still clutching his clothes in the other.
Sherlock searches his eyes, but John doesn't relinquish an inch of ground or an iota of his indignation. Sherlock reluctantly gives him the phone. "Mycroft's trying to trace back the sender. I've been stalling for time until we can-"
John scrolls through the conversation on Sherlock's mobile. "These go back to ..." He covers his mouth with one hand. The colour drains from his face and a strangled sound comes out of his throat. "You've been in contact with him this whole time."
"Not the whole time..." Sherlock mutters, but the protest doesn't even make it to half-hearted.
John's eyes snap to Sherlock's, glittering with barely controlled fury. "For the past month," he says, his voice dangerously soft, "you have been flirting by text with the person who killed my wife and her sister, shot your son, and mutilated several innocent people-"
Sherlock's face twists into a moue of disgust. "I wasn't flirting-"
"--and this whole thing between you and me, what has that been?" John flicks a finger between them. His expression is unhappily close to mirroring Sherlock's. "Just a way of passing the time until he was ready for your big date? Need someone to practise on, did you?"
"What was I supposed to do, John?" Sherlock protests loudly. "If I'd told you about this, you never would have come with me, and you and Emily would likely be missing something a good deal more vital than a couple of teeth!"
John gives him a thunderous look. "You..." he starts to say, but instead shakes his head and slants his eyes away from Sherlock as if no words are sufficient to express the depth of his outrage.
"I could no longer protect you," Sherlock spits out. "The bullet that hit Tristram was meant for you. We got lucky then, but that's all it was, and the airport was a closer call than I think you'd like to believe."
"Mycroft--" John begins, but Sherlock shouts over him:
"Mycroft is not a god, no matter how much he'd like to believe it! He's an over-ambitious bureaucrat with some good connections and a flair for the dramatic. His 'magical powers' are limited to wiretapping and accessing classified information. That's it. There is nothing on this 'M'-" Sherlock flings his arm derisively toward the phone in John's hand. "-in any of the files. He's calling himself Jim Moriarty, but we're not even certain that's his real name. He's a blank spot on the map, here be dragons."
"And so this whole..." John breaks off, gesturing around the room.
"I was trying to get something on him, waiting for him to drop some clue. Gathering data for Mycroft to have his experts triangulate back from so they can pinpoint where he is. We don't even know for sure that he's based in England."
"You should have told me. Damnit!" John shouts, but immediately modulates his voice down to a hiss. "Sherlock, we've been through this before. You can't leave me out of the loop like this!" he says fiercely.
Sherlock stares at him for a few seconds, then asks dully, as if he already knows the answer will be negative, "Would you still have come?"
John exhales hard. and presses his lips together "Probably, yes. But I sure as hell wouldn't have brought my daughter along." He jabs a finger in the direction of the room where the children are sleeping.
"So you would have left her back in England, what, with your sister?" Sherlock says, in a way that makes his opinion of that option all too clear. "That would have been an open invitation."
"The safe house," John starts, but Sherlock talks across him: "Some of the security detail have families too. Who do you think is more valuable to them? Their children or ours?"
"But bringing them here--"
"He wants me," Sherlock cuts him off again bluntly. "And you are his means of ensuring that he gets me."
John takes several breaths, trying to regain control over his temper. Finally, he asks carefully, "By 'you', you mean me...?"
"You, Tristram, and Emily. All of you. Any of you," Sherlock tells him stiffly. "If I'd come on my own, he would simply have snatched one or more of you and had no qualms about subjecting you to the same treatment he gave my street informants in order to guarantee my compliance. This way, at least the integrity of your persons was ensured." Sherlock delivers the information without apology.
John huffs out a laugh that's anything but amused. "That's what you meant when you said there was no danger for any of us anymore, as long as we didn't do anything stupid. As long as I didn't do anything stupid. As if coming here in the first place weren't the stupidest thing we could possibly have done."
"Yes," Sherlock agrees with a hint of defiance.
"And that's how you knew Tonga wouldn't shoot you at the airport," John says as if it all makes sense now.
"He was hardly going to harm the raison d'etre of the entire scheme." The 'obviously' remains unspoken but understood.
John barks out a huff of dry laughter. "Oh my God, you self-involved prick! And what was all that with the teeth and the eyes then?"
"Showing off. Letting me know how far his power extended, how precisely he could strike and how unbearably clever he is. Whetting my appetite, I presume," Sherlock says, as if the whole thing bores him.
"All this could be yours..." John mutters darkly.
"Something like that, yes."
"And when you say he wants you, that means exactly..."
"I'm not sure yet," Sherlock admits. "To work for him in some capacity. Planning undetectable crimes together. Possibly carrying them out. I presume he'll lay his entire nefarious plan out for me when we meet."
John looks at him in horror. "You can't seriously still be thinking of going to meet him?"
"Haven't I just made it clear that there is no other choice?" Sherlock snaps.
"You'll be walking directly into a trap," John says, as if he doesn't think Sherlock's aware of the fact.
"He's not going to hurt me!"
"What, you think he's just going to have a nice little chat with you, present his plans for world domination, you'll say thanks but no thanks, and he'll let you walk away?"
"This is the only way to find out what we're up against. He'll brag, want to impress me. He'll let something drop about his background, something he's planning, some little clue that he doesn't think is important. I have to find that chink in his armour."
"I'm going with you," John announces flatly.
Sherlock pauses for a beat then says softly, "I was rather hoping you would, yes."
John holds his eye. His anger and unhappiness is still there, but there's determination and resolve, along with something that not even Sherlock's deception can extinguish. He takes a deep breath and prompts, "Tristram and Emily?"
"They'll be perfectly safe here."
John shakes his head. "No."
"You can't be thinking of taking them with us," Sherlock says.
"Then I'm sure you have a solution that us small-brained plebs would never happen upon."
It's apparent, from the way Sherlock stares hard at nothing in particular for several seconds, that he hasn't. But then his eyes snap back to John's. "Irene." He whirls away, tapping his head with his knuckles.
"You want to leave the kids with Irene?" The question contains both incredulity and a genuine uncertainty whether he heard correctly.
"It's why she's here," Sherlock announces to the ceiling, as if he's just had a revelation.
"What the hell does that mean now?"
"That's what her 'contract' is!" Sherlock crows. "The singing is just a cover. She's here to ensure that the meeting can take place. Moriarty knows we'd never bring Tristram and Emily along to see him, and we wouldn't leave them behind alone, or with someone we didn't know and trust."
"We trust Irene?" John asks, as if that's news to him.
"No, of course not," Sherlock scoffs. "I mean, yes. I don't trust her, but she won't hurt the children. I believe she has some twisted, romantic sense that she's a mother lioness protecting her cub. In fact, I believe she would go to quite some lengths to do so. Which is another reason why I don't trust her. But I don't see any other choice."
Emily's asleep. She drifted off sometime after Father finished his shower and John took his turn in the bathroom. Tristram actually fell asleep, too. At least, he doesn't remember John going back to the bedroom, but at some point he became aware of the shouting.
Tristram's not really sure what it's about - they've only really got loud enough for the words to come through clearly a couple of times, and most of those have been bad words - but he can tell that both of them are upset.
Tristram finds it upsetting as well. He doesn't want Father and John to stop being friends. Especially now that... well, especially now. Today was so good. On the other hand, they've had disagreements before. Lots of them. Although they're not generally so loud. Yet somehow things have always been better the next day. Plus, Father's still in the bedroom. He hasn't stormed out or kicked John out, like he would if it were Uncle Mycroft he were arguing with.
Their voices have returned to a more normal volume now, although Tristram can still hear the two-toned conversation continuing. As the minutes tick by without any further outbursts, Tristram starts to relax. It's nice, knowing that Father will be here when he wakes. That Father will be here all night, in fact, just in the next room with John. And it's also nice, Tristram thinks with his last bit of consciousness, that John is here too.
He must fall asleep again, because he finds himself waking up at some point later during the night. There's no light seeping in around the edges of the curtains, so it must still be well before dawn. He listens for what might have woken him but can't hear anything other than Emily breathing steadily on the other side of the mattress. Tristram turns carefully onto his other side to try and find a more comfortable position. He breathes in sharply and his heart jumps when he sees a faint, dark form in one of the chairs next to the sofa bed.
"It's all right," Father's voice says softly. "It's me." A weak light comes on, illuminating his face. It's the screen light from his phone.
"What's wrong?" Tristram whispers. His heart is still in his throat.
"Nothing," Father says and switches off the light. "Go back to sleep."
Has Father been sitting there every night? Keeping watch? Tristram thought he'd been staying in the bedroom with John, but maybe not. Maybe he hasn't been sleeping as soundly and happily as Tristram thought. He keeps his eyes on his father's outline until his heart slows and his eyes fall shut of their own accord.
Go to chapter thirteen
Author:
swissmargBeta readers:
ruth0007, Rating: R
Pairing: Sherlock/John
Other characters: Irene Adler, OCs
Word count: ca. 85K when complete
Summary: Sequel to 'Cracks in the In-Between Places'. A Swiss holiday seems to be the perfect way for the Holmeses and the Watsons to recover from their recent troubles and deepen their attachments to each other, but when Tristram's mother and the bogeyman both turn up, loyalties are put to the ultimate test.
I don't thank my fabulous beta readers nearly enough, but they really have made this better, especially from here to the end where things really start cranking.
See Chapter One for additional notes
Read Chapter Twelve on AO3
Chapter Twelve
John comes back to the bedroom with a towel wrapped around his waist and his clothes clutched to his chest. "Tris's back's looking better, by the w-" he says, only to stop short as he looks up. "Jesus Chr- Sherlock!" he hisses and hastily closes the door behind him.
Sherlock is leaning back against the pillows on the bed wearing only his pants. One leg is stretched out lazily in front of him, the other crooked up but splayed to one side. He has his hand cupped around himself.
"One of the kids could have come in!" John says, scandalised, but his eyes are fixed on the shape outlined beneath Sherlock's hand.
Sherlock frowns. "You think I don't know the difference between your footsteps and theirs? Anyway, they know to knock. Unlike you. God only knows what you might have walked in on." He smirks and squeezes himself.
"Cheeky." John drops his clothes on the floor and pads over to the bed, holding the towel at his hip with one hand. His lips curl into a warm smile. "That's lovely, that is."
Sherlock settles his hips, letting his legs fall even further open as he continues to move his hand between them. "Lovely?" he says dubiously. "I was hoping you'd go deeper."
"Oh yes," John agrees, his voice a low rumble. He puts one knee on the bed and leans over to kiss Sherlock, bracing himself with one hand on the pillow so he can take his time. "I will." He tilts his head down to watch Sherlock caressing himself through his pants.
"Come here," Sherlock says after a while, when John's breaths have become heavy and fast against Sherlock's neck, matching Sherlock's wafting into John's hair.
John lets go of the towel so he can move, and it falls open. Sherlock takes an appreciative look. John lets him.
"It's er... yeah. I clearly think this is a very good idea," John says, a playful glint in his eye.
Sherlock smirks. "Obvious." He reaches out and puts his hand around John so he can stroke him.
John sucks in a breath. "And that..." He groans. "Yeah, that's very, very good..." He half lowers himself and half falls so he's sitting on the mattress beside Sherlock.
Sherlock has to shift his position to keep his hand on John. His eyes flick intently from what he's doing up to John's face and back. John's head is hanging down, his eyes are screwed shut and his breaths are puffing out audibly from his open mouth.
"John..." Sherlock says, more an expression of awe than a bid for attention, but it's enough to make John open his eyes and look at Sherlock.
When he does, Sherlock's hand falters at what he sees reflected back at him. There is an interminable moment of mutual understanding, realisation, revelation.
John's breath catches as he makes to say something, but Sherlock's eyes widen with a flash of recognition and he speaks first.
"Don't," he blurts out. "Don't, please, I can't..."
John searches Sherlock's face, worried, but then his expression softens and he nods slowly. "Okay."
Sherlock closes his eyes as if that will remove him from John's steady gaze. His Adam's apple bobs as he swallows thickly. "I'm sorry. I just... I can't."
"No, Sherlock. It's fine." John reaches over and puts his hand on top of where Sherlock's has fallen still on his pants. "Show me."
Sherlock opens his eyes and lets John see what's there, just for a second, before he looks down at their joined hands on him. He takes a breath that may be just a bit shaky and starts moving his hand the way he was before. After two or three passes, he lets go and lets John continue alone. At the first touch of John's hand - even through his underwear - Sherlock closes his eyes and tilts his head back, letting out a soft sound. John keeps going.
"Like this?" John asks.
"That should be-" Sherlock grunts. "Incredibly obvious."
John follows the pattern Sherlock started, kneading and stroking in an almost hypnotic rhythm while he runs his other hand slowly over Sherlock's chest and arms. Sherlock's hand has slipped down onto John's knee, which he grips tightly. When Sherlock's body starts to tense up and his breaths become more intense, John leans forward and puts his face against Sherlock's, nudging and kissing until Sherlock surfaces from his internal retreat with a sharp intake of breath and responds with kisses that rapidly become passionate. He tilts his hips toward John, trying to get closer, and grasps John's hips, his back, whatever he can blindly reach. Then, as if suddenly remembering that John is sitting next to him completely exposed, he reaches down and takes him in hand again. It's an awkward angle, though, and he doesn't have much range of motion.
"Here, what if I..." John lifts up and shifts himself over so he's straddling Sherlock, resting his buttocks on Sherlock's thighs. He puts his palm over Sherlock's now prominent bulge and rubs. "Easier this way." He leans forward, bracing himself with his unoccupied hand so that they can exchange gentle kisses that soon become more breathless and urgent.
Sherlock has resumed playing with John, teasing and circling, squeezing and pulling. John makes a sound deep in his throat in response and thrusts unconsciously forward. He worms his other hand in between them and pushes his pants down, and at the first brush of John's fingers on Sherlock's bare skin, everything slows, the atmosphere charged with something tenuous yet weighty. There is an almost exquisite care to the way they touch now; even their breaths seem to be constructed so as not to disturb the balance.
"Maybe some lube?" John suggests at length.
"No, like this, it's good, very good... John..." Sherlock clutches at John's arms to pull him closer, making sounds in the back of his throat in response to John's ministrations. They both look down to watch John's hand on him and his on John.
"It's actually faintly ridiculous," Sherlock pants. "All this fuss for a bit of ... vascular dilation."
"Speak for yourself, I'm going to be seeing stars in a ... Oh fuck yeah, just like that, bit faster," John growls.
Sherlock obliges.
"Should probably have put condoms on," John mentions breathlessly, but doesn't let up.
"You want to stop now?"
"Fuck no. Just... don't touch anything else."
"Wasn't planning on it."
"Oh God..."
&&&&&&
"Now was that ridiculous?" John speaks the words into Sherlock's bare chest, his lips brushing the damp sheen there. Just centimetres away, on the other side of muscle and bone, Sherlock's heart is slowly returning to its resting state.
"Only slightly less than invading Afghanistan, but yes, utterly." Sherlock's fingertips skim lightly, distractedly, over John's back, tracing his shoulder blade.
John lifts his head. When their eyes meet, they both smirk and start to chuckle. John ducks his head and rests his forehead against Sherlock's shoulder.
"Sherlock..." His smile is still audible. He puts his hands on Sherlock's shoulders and squeezes tightly. "I'm..." He lifts his head again to look Sherlock in the eye, his face full of fondness and affection and something much more profound as well. Catching the skittish look that's already forming on Sherlock's end, though, he immediately assures him, "Don't worry, I won't..." He runs his fingers through Sherlock's slightly sweaty curls and smiles in a way that's faintly wistful. "It's good, though, yeah?"
"Yes," Sherlock says; solemnly, almost reverently. He wraps his arms around John's back and holds him against his chest.
They lie like that for several minutes, just feeling each other's skin and breath and heartbeat, nothing between them but their own thoughts.
Finally, John stirs. "Check-out's ten o'clock," he says. "You want to see about connections to Zurich?"
Sherlock doesn't move or say anything for several more seconds. John finally makes a questioning sound, as if checking whether Sherlock heard him.
Finally, Sherlock reaches over to the small table beside the bed and picks up his phone. He unlocks it, clicks through a few screens, and hands it to John. His other hand drops away from John's back and lands limply on the mattress. He turns his head away.
John lifts himself off Sherlock's chest, supporting himself on one elbow. He frowns as he reads the text message.
"What is this? 'Applause applause, to the victor go the spoils. Come collect your prize. Reichenbach.' What's Reichenbach?" John asks. The 'ch's come out like 'k's.
"Reichenbach," Sherlock corrects his pronunciation of the velar fricatives. "It's a waterfall not far from here. And that," he says, nodding at the screen but not meeting John's eye, "is why we're here."
"It's signed 'M'. Is this from Mycroft?" John asks, his expression quizzical.
"Yes, John," Sherlock says sarcastically, "Mycroft is the mastermind behind the attacks on my street contacts and the murders of your wife and sister-in-law."
John's mouth drops as he turns to Sherlock in horror. "This is that nut job? We came here on a summons from--" He pushes himself up further, completely off Sherlock. "No, we brought our kids here, did we seriously walk right in here with our two children to hand them over to-" John shoves the phone back at Sherlock, throws the covers back and gets out of bed, shaking with rage. He paces back and forth, naked, and scrubs his hands over his face several times, as if trying to wake himself up. He stops and points at Sherlock. "You--" he starts, but can't finish. He walks away again, banging himself on the back of the head with his fist.
Sherlock hauls himself up into a sitting position. "Could you at least put some clothes on, John, that's rather distracting," he drawls.
"I'll give you distracting, I'll--" John takes a step in Sherlock's direction, raising his hand as if to strike, but thinks better of it and shakes his head, laughing in an entirely humourless way. "Oh, my God. I knew, I knew this was a terrible idea."
"He's not interested in the children," Sherlock says, as if this were a point they'd discussed ad nauseum.
"The hell-- He shot - Tristram." John flings his arm in the direction of the door, a parody of a smile distorting his features.
"Technically, he didn't. It wasn't him at all, it was a hired gunman, and he wasn't even aiming for Tristram, we've been over this--"
John points at him again. "Shut up. Shut your gob." He leans over, snatches up his pants from the floor and tugs them on.
"You're not leaving." Sherlock scoots forward and pushes the covers off himself. It's not quite a question, but not quite an order either.
"The hell I'm not." John tosses the bedding aside until he finds his undershirt.
Sherlock gets up on his knees and leans over to grasp John's arm. "John, you can't."
John shakes him off. "Yes, I can. Or what, have you blacklisted my passport or something? You did, didn't you. You and your bloody brother. I will fucking swim back to England if I have to." He haphazardly grabs a shirt and trousers from the closet.
Sherlock clambers off the bed and somehow comes up with a pair of pants, which he stumbles into on his way across the room. He ends up just behind John, although he refrains from touching him. "And Emily?"
"Don't you dare bring her into this. She's--" John stops and sags. "Shit."
Sherlock leans in closer, bracketing John against the closet with his body. The effect is more cocoon than threat. "I need you, John," he says. His voice is pitched low, somewhere between persuasion and supplication. "One more day. He wants me to meet him tomorrow. He was supposed to give us a week, but apparently he doesn't want to wait any longer."
John's head whips around, his eyes flashing. "What does that mean, he was 'supposed' to give us a week? How do you-- Give me that." He steps away and holds one hand out, still clutching his clothes in the other.
Sherlock searches his eyes, but John doesn't relinquish an inch of ground or an iota of his indignation. Sherlock reluctantly gives him the phone. "Mycroft's trying to trace back the sender. I've been stalling for time until we can-"
John scrolls through the conversation on Sherlock's mobile. "These go back to ..." He covers his mouth with one hand. The colour drains from his face and a strangled sound comes out of his throat. "You've been in contact with him this whole time."
"Not the whole time..." Sherlock mutters, but the protest doesn't even make it to half-hearted.
John's eyes snap to Sherlock's, glittering with barely controlled fury. "For the past month," he says, his voice dangerously soft, "you have been flirting by text with the person who killed my wife and her sister, shot your son, and mutilated several innocent people-"
Sherlock's face twists into a moue of disgust. "I wasn't flirting-"
"--and this whole thing between you and me, what has that been?" John flicks a finger between them. His expression is unhappily close to mirroring Sherlock's. "Just a way of passing the time until he was ready for your big date? Need someone to practise on, did you?"
"What was I supposed to do, John?" Sherlock protests loudly. "If I'd told you about this, you never would have come with me, and you and Emily would likely be missing something a good deal more vital than a couple of teeth!"
John gives him a thunderous look. "You..." he starts to say, but instead shakes his head and slants his eyes away from Sherlock as if no words are sufficient to express the depth of his outrage.
"I could no longer protect you," Sherlock spits out. "The bullet that hit Tristram was meant for you. We got lucky then, but that's all it was, and the airport was a closer call than I think you'd like to believe."
"Mycroft--" John begins, but Sherlock shouts over him:
"Mycroft is not a god, no matter how much he'd like to believe it! He's an over-ambitious bureaucrat with some good connections and a flair for the dramatic. His 'magical powers' are limited to wiretapping and accessing classified information. That's it. There is nothing on this 'M'-" Sherlock flings his arm derisively toward the phone in John's hand. "-in any of the files. He's calling himself Jim Moriarty, but we're not even certain that's his real name. He's a blank spot on the map, here be dragons."
"And so this whole..." John breaks off, gesturing around the room.
"I was trying to get something on him, waiting for him to drop some clue. Gathering data for Mycroft to have his experts triangulate back from so they can pinpoint where he is. We don't even know for sure that he's based in England."
"You should have told me. Damnit!" John shouts, but immediately modulates his voice down to a hiss. "Sherlock, we've been through this before. You can't leave me out of the loop like this!" he says fiercely.
Sherlock stares at him for a few seconds, then asks dully, as if he already knows the answer will be negative, "Would you still have come?"
John exhales hard. and presses his lips together "Probably, yes. But I sure as hell wouldn't have brought my daughter along." He jabs a finger in the direction of the room where the children are sleeping.
"So you would have left her back in England, what, with your sister?" Sherlock says, in a way that makes his opinion of that option all too clear. "That would have been an open invitation."
"The safe house," John starts, but Sherlock talks across him: "Some of the security detail have families too. Who do you think is more valuable to them? Their children or ours?"
"But bringing them here--"
"He wants me," Sherlock cuts him off again bluntly. "And you are his means of ensuring that he gets me."
John takes several breaths, trying to regain control over his temper. Finally, he asks carefully, "By 'you', you mean me...?"
"You, Tristram, and Emily. All of you. Any of you," Sherlock tells him stiffly. "If I'd come on my own, he would simply have snatched one or more of you and had no qualms about subjecting you to the same treatment he gave my street informants in order to guarantee my compliance. This way, at least the integrity of your persons was ensured." Sherlock delivers the information without apology.
John huffs out a laugh that's anything but amused. "That's what you meant when you said there was no danger for any of us anymore, as long as we didn't do anything stupid. As long as I didn't do anything stupid. As if coming here in the first place weren't the stupidest thing we could possibly have done."
"Yes," Sherlock agrees with a hint of defiance.
"And that's how you knew Tonga wouldn't shoot you at the airport," John says as if it all makes sense now.
"He was hardly going to harm the raison d'etre of the entire scheme." The 'obviously' remains unspoken but understood.
John barks out a huff of dry laughter. "Oh my God, you self-involved prick! And what was all that with the teeth and the eyes then?"
"Showing off. Letting me know how far his power extended, how precisely he could strike and how unbearably clever he is. Whetting my appetite, I presume," Sherlock says, as if the whole thing bores him.
"All this could be yours..." John mutters darkly.
"Something like that, yes."
"And when you say he wants you, that means exactly..."
"I'm not sure yet," Sherlock admits. "To work for him in some capacity. Planning undetectable crimes together. Possibly carrying them out. I presume he'll lay his entire nefarious plan out for me when we meet."
John looks at him in horror. "You can't seriously still be thinking of going to meet him?"
"Haven't I just made it clear that there is no other choice?" Sherlock snaps.
"You'll be walking directly into a trap," John says, as if he doesn't think Sherlock's aware of the fact.
"He's not going to hurt me!"
"What, you think he's just going to have a nice little chat with you, present his plans for world domination, you'll say thanks but no thanks, and he'll let you walk away?"
"This is the only way to find out what we're up against. He'll brag, want to impress me. He'll let something drop about his background, something he's planning, some little clue that he doesn't think is important. I have to find that chink in his armour."
"I'm going with you," John announces flatly.
Sherlock pauses for a beat then says softly, "I was rather hoping you would, yes."
John holds his eye. His anger and unhappiness is still there, but there's determination and resolve, along with something that not even Sherlock's deception can extinguish. He takes a deep breath and prompts, "Tristram and Emily?"
"They'll be perfectly safe here."
John shakes his head. "No."
"You can't be thinking of taking them with us," Sherlock says.
"Then I'm sure you have a solution that us small-brained plebs would never happen upon."
It's apparent, from the way Sherlock stares hard at nothing in particular for several seconds, that he hasn't. But then his eyes snap back to John's. "Irene." He whirls away, tapping his head with his knuckles.
"You want to leave the kids with Irene?" The question contains both incredulity and a genuine uncertainty whether he heard correctly.
"It's why she's here," Sherlock announces to the ceiling, as if he's just had a revelation.
"What the hell does that mean now?"
"That's what her 'contract' is!" Sherlock crows. "The singing is just a cover. She's here to ensure that the meeting can take place. Moriarty knows we'd never bring Tristram and Emily along to see him, and we wouldn't leave them behind alone, or with someone we didn't know and trust."
"We trust Irene?" John asks, as if that's news to him.
"No, of course not," Sherlock scoffs. "I mean, yes. I don't trust her, but she won't hurt the children. I believe she has some twisted, romantic sense that she's a mother lioness protecting her cub. In fact, I believe she would go to quite some lengths to do so. Which is another reason why I don't trust her. But I don't see any other choice."
&&&&&&
Emily's asleep. She drifted off sometime after Father finished his shower and John took his turn in the bathroom. Tristram actually fell asleep, too. At least, he doesn't remember John going back to the bedroom, but at some point he became aware of the shouting.
Tristram's not really sure what it's about - they've only really got loud enough for the words to come through clearly a couple of times, and most of those have been bad words - but he can tell that both of them are upset.
Tristram finds it upsetting as well. He doesn't want Father and John to stop being friends. Especially now that... well, especially now. Today was so good. On the other hand, they've had disagreements before. Lots of them. Although they're not generally so loud. Yet somehow things have always been better the next day. Plus, Father's still in the bedroom. He hasn't stormed out or kicked John out, like he would if it were Uncle Mycroft he were arguing with.
Their voices have returned to a more normal volume now, although Tristram can still hear the two-toned conversation continuing. As the minutes tick by without any further outbursts, Tristram starts to relax. It's nice, knowing that Father will be here when he wakes. That Father will be here all night, in fact, just in the next room with John. And it's also nice, Tristram thinks with his last bit of consciousness, that John is here too.
He must fall asleep again, because he finds himself waking up at some point later during the night. There's no light seeping in around the edges of the curtains, so it must still be well before dawn. He listens for what might have woken him but can't hear anything other than Emily breathing steadily on the other side of the mattress. Tristram turns carefully onto his other side to try and find a more comfortable position. He breathes in sharply and his heart jumps when he sees a faint, dark form in one of the chairs next to the sofa bed.
"It's all right," Father's voice says softly. "It's me." A weak light comes on, illuminating his face. It's the screen light from his phone.
"What's wrong?" Tristram whispers. His heart is still in his throat.
"Nothing," Father says and switches off the light. "Go back to sleep."
Has Father been sitting there every night? Keeping watch? Tristram thought he'd been staying in the bedroom with John, but maybe not. Maybe he hasn't been sleeping as soundly and happily as Tristram thought. He keeps his eyes on his father's outline until his heart slows and his eyes fall shut of their own accord.
&&&&&&
Go to chapter thirteen
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Date: 2014-08-10 04:12 pm (UTC)I feel like I should have guessed. I was thinking they were safe until they returned to England.
Now I'm all worried again.
I don't know if I mentioned but as a child I read The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and fell in love with those two guys and then I cried my stupid eyes out when he died at Reichenbach and spent several depressed months thinking that was all there was. Finally someone said "There's another volume" and I snorted, "What, flashback stories? I hate that because I already know he's dead." and they said "No. He comes back." I tore up the sidewalk running to the library to get the next book. What joy. But since then I've always been anxious at TRF.
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Date: 2014-08-10 04:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-10 04:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-10 04:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-10 04:41 pm (UTC)