"And tell him I need to see him as soon as he gets out of that meeting. I've got a fuckton of paperwork to file today and he's got the last report I need to get it all finished." Greg crossed to his desk and sat, sloshing a bit of coffee onto the keyboard of his computer. "Ah, shit."
"I'll let him know," Donovan replied from the doorway. "Anything else?"
The computer screen flared to life as he wiped at the spilled coffee with his fingers, and he nearly groaned at the sight of his email inbox. How could he have received 341 emails in the space of an hour? "Can you guarantee me two hours with no interruptions?"
"I'll try." She gave him a sympathetic smile and closed the door behind her as she left.
He pressed his hands over his forehead and took a deep breath. If he got out of here by 10:00 tonight, he'd be doing well. He glanced at the clock on the bottom corner of his computer screen. Twelve hours might be enough, if nothing else came up.
The phone rang, and he briefly considered letting it go to voicemail until he looked at the display: The Telegraph. That was almost never a good sign.
He picked up the phone. "Lestrade."
"Lestrade, this is Robert Harkin. How are you?"
Harkin was one of the Telegraph's senior news editors -- Greg had a feeling his day had just got even longer. "Fine, fantastic. Good to hear from you."
"Yes, it's been a while, hasn't it? I hear you've kept yourself busy of late."
Small talk generally meant Harkin had something unpleasant to say. Fantastic. "Busy enough, I suppose. You just got remarried a few months back, didn't you?"
"I did. A lovely wedding in Majorca, very small. And I was sorry to hear you and Jodi divorced."
"It's fine, honestly. How can I help you this morning?"
"Right, to the point. I have a reporter who was assigned to do a follow-up story on the incident with Sherlock Holmes, that amateur detective you lot used to bring in on tough cases. And she's run into some problems that I thought you might be able to help with."
Greg felt his stomach twist. "What sort of problems?"
"She's spent days now trying to locate that Richard Brook chap, the actor who said Sherlock hired him to play a criminal mastermind. And she can't find a trace of him."
"Maybe he's gone off somewhere, on an extended holiday."
"That was the first thing I thought, but the thing is, there was a missing person report filed for him around six weeks ago, by a person named Kitty Riley. And that file was closed a week later, with nothing in it."
That sounded like Mycroft's doing. "That's certainly unusual. I was on leave at the time, but I can check into it and get back to you."
"I'd appreciate that. There's something more, though. My reporter went through all records that came up for Brook and tried to find people who knew him, hoping they'd know where he was. And she couldn't find anyone who claimed to have known him prior to the last year. Not at the schools he went to, not at the university where he read drama, no one. They didn't even recognize him from file photos. The only person she could find who seemed to know him was the woman who filed the missing person report, but she knew nothing more than what came up in the records search."
Greg clenched his jaw. "That's very strange, I have to admit. What do you make of it?"
"I was hoping you could tell me. I know you worked with Sherlock Holmes quite a lot, and that you're close with his… with the Watson fellow. You never went on record about your impressions of that debacle."
"I didn't, and I'm not exactly at liberty to do so now."
"Look, Lestrade, we've known each other for years and you know I have a lot of respect for you. So consider this professional courtesy: the story that's being written on this is going to blow the Holmes thing wide open again. My reporter is convinced that there's some sort of police conspiracy and she's digging up evidence to support her case. I'd hate to see you on the wrong side of it again."
Greg winced. "I appreciate that, Harkin, but you know I'm not allowed to comment on this sort of thing without going through the right channels. What sort of timeline are you looking at?"
"Two days, max."
Greg pinched the bridge of his nose. "Okay, thanks. I'll be in touch." He hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair.
Well, shit. The truth was going to come out soon, one way or another. Greg wasn't sure the public was ready for that. He'd barely been ready for it himself.
And this time around, his job was to be right in the middle of it all.
*****
The thrill of flashing his badge at the entrance of the Vauxhall Cross SIS facility hadn't yet worn off, nor had the even larger thrill of being able to use it to enter the high-security lift and direct it down to level G. He'd watched loads of James Bond films as a kid, after all; being here now was undeniably cool.
Sherlock's office reminded him sharply of the way the sitting room of the Baker Street flat had looked a few months ago: newspaper clippings covered the walls and there were stacks of books and papers everywhere, and at least four visible computers. Assorted unidentifiable objects were strewn on every available surface and boxes of what looked to be chemistry lab equipment covered a camp bed pushed against the far wall. Sherlock was sitting in a chair with his feet on the desk, his fingers steepled before him, and his forehead wrinkled in concentration.
Greg knocked on the open door, but Sherlock only held up a hand in a gesture that clearly meant stay right there. After ten full seconds, Greg cleared his throat, but Sherlock still didn't look up.
He heard footsteps behind him and turned to see Mycroft approaching. "Good morning, Detective Inspector. Well, afternoon, I suppose. This far underground, one does forget which is which."
"I can imagine."
Mycroft smiled. "Sherlock, since you've ignored my messages for the last half hour, I've decided to bring the meeting to you."
Sherlock's eyes focused on the two of them standing in the doorway, but otherwise he didn't move.
"Right," Greg said, and crossed towards a chair piled high with papers. He glanced over at Sherlock, who rolled his eyes and then nodded -- a sequence of expressions Greg interpreted as if you absolutely must sit, then fine -- and Greg carefully moved the stack to the ground and sat.
Mycroft closed the door behind him and sniffed disdainfully at a similarly-appointed chair before moving its contents to a nearby table.
"I got a call from the Telegraph this morning," Greg began, and he told them about the conversation he'd had with Robert Harkin.
"It certainly took them long enough." Sherlock dropped his hands at last. "Richard Brook was a cleverly constructed fabrication, but a fabrication nonetheless. They wouldn't have had to do very much digging before they found some holes in the story."
Greg frowned. "Well, they're definitely digging. If we act now we have a chance to take control of the situation."
"Are you suggesting we bury it?" Sherlock turned to look at him.
"No, I don't think that's a good idea. When the story does finally come out -- and you know it will -- we can't afford to look as if we've tried to deceive the public twice."
Sherlock glanced at Mycroft. "Surely you're not that naïve, Greg. The government does that sort of thing all the time."
Greg clenched his jaw. "I'm talking about the Met, which requires public trust to function. My first loyalty is to the police, and I won't do anything to further damage their reputation."
"Perhaps we should take a different approach," Mycroft said with a thoughtful glance at Sherlock.
Sherlock's eyebrows rose. "Ah yes, of course. Should I?"
"Not yet. But when the time comes, yes."
Greg pressed his lips together. He was getting used to the apparent telepathy between Sherlock and Mycroft, but he certainly didn't like it. His job was to facilitate communication, after all, and he could hardly do that if he wasn't privy to the conversation. "This sounds like something I ought to know about."
Sherlock turned his intense gaze to Greg. "We go public before their investigation can be published."
Greg paused, certain he'd misunderstood. "You're… wait, sorry?"
"The press release has been ready for weeks anyway. It's just a matter of sending it out."
"But after all of the work you've put into this investigation, surely--"
"The entire point of this operation was to get Moriarty. That's been accomplished -- in a far more dramatic and final manner than we'd planned, but nevertheless, the threat he posed is very nearly removed. I'm close to determining if there remains any danger from any of the people he worked with, and when that is finished, the need for secrecy is gone."
"And you'll just… go back to doing what you did before, as if none of it ever happened?"
Sherlock smiled. "That's the idea, yes. Though Mycroft has done everything but offer me a vast fortune to continue working here as an analyst."
Mycroft snorted. "If you were interested in a vast fortune, I'd have offered one."
One corner of Sherlock's mouth turned up. "That argument can wait a bit longer. For the moment, we've more important things to worry about."
"Like your missing Russian?"
"Yes." Sherlock lifted his feet from the desk to the floor and sat forward in his chair. He opened one of the laptops on the desk and powered it on. "I've been going back through all the data we have on him, and I believe he's still in the country."
"Any idea why he didn't show last night?"
"Nothing substantive. This one was never involved in direct communication with the others. We only knew of his presence peripherally, when others mentioned him by one of his code names."
Greg frowned. "What were his code names?"
"'Raptor,' 'Hawk,' and other variations on predators." He paused to tap at the keyboard of the laptop.
"Sounds like a pleasant fellow." Greg turned to look at Mycroft, who was watching Sherlock closely. "Was there any communication out from the ones captured?"
Sherlock shook his head. "None that I could determine. I may learn more when I finish questioning them tonight."
Greg's eyebrows rose. He wasn't sure if he wanted to know what Sherlock was like as an interrogator. "What's the plan?"
"I'm trying to get a message to our missing man through all the available channels. I'd hoped to arrange a meeting before it becomes clear that the others have been taken into custody, but time is running out."
"You're setting a trap, you mean," Greg said. "With Moriarty as bait?"
Sherlock looked up from the laptop. "With me as bait, actually."
Greg frowned. "I figured you'd say that. Do you want me to organize backup?"
"Yes. We don't quite know what sort of entourage he'll bring along and he's bound to be suspicious."
"When?"
"Tomorrow night." Something sparked behind Sherlock's eyes and he paused for a moment. "We should have sex."
Greg nearly bit his tongue: what a fucking non sequitur. "Sorry?"
"Just you and me, without John in the middle this time."
Greg cast a sidelong glance at Mycroft, who was in mid eye-roll. He looked back at Sherlock to see his eyes sparkling with smug mischief. There were at least half a dozen ways Greg could think to respond, but the one that floated to the surface was just go with it.
"Yeah, sure. Tonight good for you?"
"Ah, sorry -- I won't be home tonight, actually. Interrogations, paperwork." Sherlock's put-upon expression was slightly overdone.
"Well, I suppose the world should come first," Greg replied with a smirk. "It can't always be me, can it?"
"I'll make sure you come first, quite soon."
Greg's eyebrows rose on their own volition. "Well, as soon as it's convenient, you know where to find me."
"I do indeed."
"Well, that's enough of that," Mycroft said with a beleaguered sigh. He stood and straightened his jacket, and there were two pink spots on his cheeks. "Do keep me informed of your progress. On the case, that is."
He closed the door behind him as he left, and Greg gave Sherlock the closest thing to a glare he could muster while also trying not to laugh.
"That was for your brother's benefit, was it?"
"I wouldn't say benefit." Sherlock grinned. "But I meant it. We should definitely have sex."
"Is this how you usually proposition people?"
"Yes. How else should I do it?"
Greg folded his arms over his chest. "Most people go for a slightly subtler approach." But then, Sherlock wasn't most people, was he? Greg supposed he couldn't be terribly surprised. "Is that what you said to John, 'we should have sex'?"
Sherlock shrugged. "I knew it was what he wanted. I just stated the obvious."
"And that worked?"
"Obviously."
Greg shook his head. "You're impossible."
"You mean incorrigible. And besides, you want me. You've been thinking about it for years." It was said in a matter-of-fact way, with such complete confidence that Greg couldn't help laughing in response.
"That's true." He stared back at Sherlock for a moment and wondered what would happen if he called his bluff. If it was indeed a bluff; with Sherlock, one never knew. He stood and leaned over the desk. "I've been thinking about it since the moment I walked in this room, actually -- what it would be like to fuck you on this desk."
Sherlock's cheeks flushed slightly, but he didn't look away. "Have you?"
Greg leaned closer and grabbed a handful of Sherlock's shirt, enough to tug him forward. "I know that's not what you do, but I can't help imagining it anyway. You with your trousers around your ankles, bent over this desk, with my cock pounding into you." God, he was getting hard at the very idea. Sherlock's eyes blazed, and it only encouraged Greg to keep going. He brushed his lips against Sherlock's. "I wonder if you'd like it. John does -- but then, you saw that much last night, didn't you?"
Sherlock's eyes flicked up to the ceiling and back down again. "I'm sure Mycroft will be quite happy to know all of that."
Greg's eyes widened and Sherlock nodded his head, his lips pressed together in an attempt not to grin. "Shit. Why didn't you tell me--"
"Shhh," Sherlock said as he stood, and then his mouth pressed against Greg's quickly before he whispered, "Well, he might not have been listening at that moment. Odds are he stopped to piss on his way back to his office."
"But still--"
"He's aware of our situation and he's rather difficult to shock. Not that it prevents me from trying."
Greg winced at the very idea. But then, this was his life now, wasn't it? Mycroft Holmes was part of the package. "Definitely incorrigible, the both of you."
*****
It was dark by the time he made it home. Molly Hooper was on her way down the stairs, with John just behind her.
"Greg, hello!" She leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek and smiled. Her eyes were puffy, as if she'd been crying earlier. "Keeping busy, are you?"
There was no innuendo in her tone, to his relief. "Definitely. You?"
She nodded. "Yes, very much so. Five autopsies this week; it's mad."
"Still seeing Nigel?"
She blushed and smiled even wider. "Yes. Going to meet him for a drink now, actually. Shall I tell him you said hello?"
"Yes, please do."
She passed him on the stairs and John moved to follow her, but Greg blocked his path with an arm. "Price of passage?"
John smiled and kissed him.
"You two are sweet, aren't you?" Molly said.
John crossed to her and gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek. "Let's do this again sometime."
"Maybe without all the blubbering."
"It's all right, really."
She smiled. "It is now." Her gaze moved up to Greg and then back to John. "Good night."
He closed the door behind her and leaned back against it.
"Everything all right?" Greg asked.
"I think so." John sighed. "Sherlock was right to trust her, she's… very good at what she does."
Greg nodded. "But you're still angry with him. I don't blame you."
John looked away for a moment before pushing off the door and starting up the stairs. He took Greg's hand as he passed and gave it a squeeze. "Come on, you. Let's have a drink and a cuddle."
Greg grinned and followed him.
"You know," John said several minutes later when they were intertwined on the sofa with glasses of red wine in hand, "I spent quite a lot of today all alone for a man with two boyfriends."
Greg squeezed his hand. "We should work out a schedule or something."
"It got me thinking, though. I've no idea what Sherlock will do once this investigation is done. I can't imagine him continuing to work for Mycroft, but I'm not sure he'll be able to be a consulting detective again anytime soon. And I've nothing to blog about as long as his work is classified." He shrugged. "I suppose I could find medical work or something. I'll go mad otherwise."
"Don't want to be a kept man?" Greg trailed his fingertips down the back of John's neck and then followed with his lips. "God, you. I could eat you alive."
John laughed. "I'm going to be forty on my next birthday. I'm too old to be kept."
"Not true." Greg pulled him into a kiss, and it was a minute before they surfaced.
"I'm serious," John said against his lips. "If Sherlock isn't coming back -- back here, I mean -- I need to work out what I'm going to do. My money's running out fast and I need to pay my half of the rent."
Greg tightened his arms around John. Wherever Sherlock lived at the moment, it was likely he was going to come back to Baker Street eventually, and what would happen then? There were just the two bedrooms, after all. "We'll work it out."
John snorted. "That's not good enough and you know it." He kissed Greg again and then sat back, smiling. "Though it's nice to know I'm worth that much, I suppose."
"You're worth far more than that," Greg said, his voice little more than a whisper. He combed his fingers through John's hair and stared back at him. God, he felt -- he felt -- so much for this man, and that was something he'd barely had time to come to grips with. And there was yet another man in this relationship.
"Greg," John said, staring back at him. His eyes were wide and dark blue, and he looked as earnest as Greg had ever seen him.
Greg kissed him again before he could say anything Greg wasn't quite ready to hear, kissed the words out of him, pushed them back down until John forgot he was going to say them.
"Come to bed with me," Greg said, and John said, "Yes," and they made their way to Greg's bedroom in a tangle of arms and legs. And then they were naked and between the sheets, and Greg realized it had only been a handful of hours earlier that he'd been snogging Sherlock and thinking about fucking him. "Tell me about how you and Sherlock started--" he began, and found he wasn't sure how to complete the sentence. He worked his way down John's body to take John's cock in his mouth.
"Oh, God," John said, and Greg felt a hand in his hair. "It was… Jesus, fuck, right there… About seven or eight months ago, I guess. A few weeks after the first time we met Moriarty, the case with the bombs and the insane clues."
Greg hummed his acknowledgement. That was the first time Moriarty had appeared on his own radar, and he still remembered the horror of those days, the terrified victims, the way Sherlock had treated it all as a game. And the way it had ended, with Moriarty vanishing again.
"Things changed between us after that that. I had always been a bit worked up after cases, I suppose, and he--" John hissed as Greg took his cock in as deeply as he could and worked his tongue along the underside on the way back up. "Oh fuck, do that again. One night we came back from some case where we'd chased down a couple of drug dealers and he just pushed me up against the wall and said, 'I'm going to kiss you,' or something. And he did and I was instantly hard, and he said, 'we should have sex' and I said 'okay, sure' and he tossed me off right there in the foyer. God, your mouth -- I didn't know you could do that."
Greg came off long enough to say, "Keep talking."
"Okay, right. So then I dragged him upstairs and sucked him off, on my knees, with him standing in the middle of the sitting room. I hadn't been sure before then that he was interested in sex at all, you know? It was a complete surprise. Oh God, stop, wait." He pushed at Greg's forehead.
Greg pulled off and looked up at him. "Something wrong?"
"No, I just don't want it to be over that fast." John smiled and sat up. "And I've got an idea." He turned on the bed, positioning himself on his side, facing the opposite direction.
Greg grinned. "Oh, right. This is good. This is--" John's mouth enveloped the head of his cock then, and Greg caught his breath. "Ah, fuck, that's nice."
The position was actually a bit easier than he remembered from his previous experience with women; they each lay on their sides and had access to the other's prick, and it worked rather well. He couldn't quite get his tongue to the spot he wanted, so he settled for light motion and suction instead, and a few minutes later John's mouth went slack around his cock and his fingers dug almost painfully into Greg's arse and he blurted out what was probably meant to be a warning before he came.
Greg was still getting used to this part, to the mouthful of semen and the weird sensation of it hitting the back of his throat, but it was fine. He swallowed without letting himself think too much about it and continued to suck gently until John batted at his head with one hand.
He was pushed over onto his back then and John worked his cock expertly for another ten minutes, pulling back twice when he was close and finally relenting when Greg grabbed hold of his head and held it in place, pumping his hips up into John's mouth. His eyes were closed but there were still sparks in his field of vision, lights behind his eyes like fireworks, sensation rippling through his body while John hummed around his prick and reduced Greg to whimpers.
I love you, he thought. And God help him, he did. He really did.
"Stay."
John settled his head against Greg's shoulder. "I'm not going anywhere."
*****
He'd managed to get home earlier that night, knowing what was likely coming. Both their phones had pinged at the same time, with the same message: It's a go -- SH.
They were mid-dinner preparation, but it didn't matter; Greg sprinted for his room to put on the shoulder holster and load his gun, and by the time he went back in the sitting room to pull on his coat, John was already there, tucking the Browning into the back of his trousers and reaching for his jacket.
They took a taxi to the cemetery. Greg spent the entire journey on his phone contacting his team, and John spent it staring out the window in silence. They got out of the taxi several streets from the churchyard and walked the remainder of the way.
Once the gateway to the cemetery was in sight, they crouched in the shadows to wait. John texted Sherlock to tell him they were in position, and Greg texted the men he knew were not far away now, giving them positions to assume as soon as they arrived.
Three minutes later, a cloaked figure emerged from the shadows across the street, and the two of them exhaled in relief.
"How long?" Greg asked.
"Nine minutes." Sherlock's smile was tight. "I was beginning to think he was ignoring my messages, and then rather suddenly, he responded."
"Interesting choice of location," John said.
"Yes," Sherlock replied, scanning the churchyard. "I think we can assume he's worked it all out."
"What does that mean?" John asked.
"That we'll have to have a few surprises for him."
They waited until Greg received word that his men were in place, and then crossed the cemetery together. They could see someone in the distance, a man leaning against Sherlock's headstone. He watched them approach with an almost casual air, occasionally lifting a cigarette to his lips and taking long drags. His hair was cropped close to his skull and his eyes were sharp, and he did indeed look rather hawk-like perched on the polished granite.
He dropped the cigarette to the ground and twisted a booted toe against it, and smiled.
"Ah, Mr. Holmes. What a pleasant surprise."
*****
Emma Grant's Fiction
Fiction, Fandom, and Naughty Stuff
