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The day seems like any other day in the soulless hell of New Scotland Yard. Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade’s been on shift for much longer than scheduled, and wants nothing more than to crash into bed and never move again. The bloody terrible coffee that the breakroom produces is still bloody terrible, and does nothing to assist his fatigue.
Incidentally, through all this, Greg would very much like to strangle Sherlock Holmes.
“But it’s obvious!” the consulting detective insists.
Greg resists banging his head repeatedly into his desk. The meager caffeine in the mug Sally had brought him is not enough to mitigate the ache building in the base of his skull.
“Well, it’s not obvious to me, is it,” Greg says, evenly. “Come on, Sherlock, I need documented evidence. The courts don’t just… indict people based on the colour of their tie, alright?”
Sherlock huffs. He’s tucked into the uncomfortable interview chair like an unruly child, at an angle with one leg thrown over the arm. “Fine,” he snaps. “I imagine the intellect of the jury will be even less impressive than yours.”
Greg takes a sip of his coffee in lieu of throwing the mug at the man’s head. He’s gotten, if possible, even more insulting and caustic in the last few weeks. It’s enough to make Greg wish for a simple domestic murder, with an obvious suspect, so he can avoid this hellish encounter.
Oh god, he’s wishing for murders now.
“She was strangled,” Sherlock says slowly, as if explaining to a small child. “She struggled. There were small red fibers caught under her fingernails. Silk, distinctive under a microscope.”
Greg blinks. “You think he strangled her with his tie?”
“Obviously!” Sherlock shouts, throwing his hands towards the ceiling.
“But anyone could own a tie like that,” Greg says. “That’s not evidence, Sher–”
“Combine that with the affair,” Sherlock continues, speaking over him, “and Roger Wheelton has the motive, the murder weapon, and the opportunity.”
“Affair? What affair?”
Sherlock stares at him, and then seems to despair for his general existence. “The affair! Breast augmentation, that late into a marriage? Sudden changes in her work schedule? The new gym membership?”
Greg, for just a moment, thinks Sherlock is talking about Greg’s wife.
“Of course she was having an affair!” Sherlock shouts.
He blathers on about Wheelton, the woman’s boss, and Greg slowly sets his mug back on the desk, not quite listening. Amelia can’t be having an affair, can she? Surely not. He knows he’s been distant, but he didn’t think it had gotten quite that far.
Sherlock cuts off mid-sentence, and gives him a disgruntled look. “You’re not even listening,” he accuses.
A knock interrupts them, and Sally pokes her head in, looking annoyed. “Freak,” she says, and Greg really should nip that in the bud, but it’s not like Sherlock helps, the way he treats her. “There’s someone here for you.”
Sherlock blinks. “Who?”
“How should I know?” Sally snaps.
The man rises out of the chair, unfolding all six ridiculous feet of his frame, and sneers. “Some observation would work wonders, Donovan.” He sweeps past her.
“Oi!” Greg shouts after him, scrambling upwards. “We’re not done!”
“Wheelton’s your man,” Sherlock shouts back. “Search his house. I’m sure you’ll find her DNA all over it.”
“And how am I supposed to get a warrant –” Greg follows after him, Sally trailing in their wake. “Sherlock! Hang on a minute!”
The man bangs through the doors into the lobby, and Greg comes through them just after him, at a near run. Which is unfortunate, because Sherlock has stopped, stock still, just on the other side.
Greg slams into his back, trips, and nearly falls - would have, if Sally hadn’t caught his arm.
The consulting detective, on the other hand, doesn’t even move. He’s like a bloody six-foot-tall stone statue.
“Sherlock?” a voice says, and the tone catches Greg’s attention immediately. He’s never heard anyone say Sherlock’s name in quite that particular way.
He regains his balance, waving Sally off gratefully, and looks up.
There’s a man standing near the front desk. An unassuming man, wearing a beige jumper and sturdy trousers. He’s short and blond, his skin is tanned, and he’s looking at Sherlock like a starving man looks at a seven-layer cake.
Sherlock is still standing as still as a statue. Greg shifts a bit to look at him. He looks like a ghost, lips parted, eyes wide.
“John?” he breathes.
The stranger’s face splits into a brilliant, handsome smile. “Sherlock.” He reaches out the hand that isn’t leaning on a cane, and Sherlock explodes into motion.
For one second, Greg thinks he’s going to have to break up a fight. He’s only seen Sherlock move like that on crime scenes, all vicious, powerful movement.
That, however, is not what happens at all.
Sherlock pushes into the man’s space, drags him in, and snogs him within an inch of his life.
The warning that had been about to pass Greg’s lips dies without making a sound. He stares, jaw dropping.
Sherlock just… absorbs the other man. His arms tighten around the other’s shoulders, he leans in, leans down, and the stranger just takes the weight, cane clattering to the ground uselessly. His arms go around Sherlock’s waist, and they kiss like the world’s ending, like nothing else matters.
Greg blinks, gaping.
They don’t stop kissing. The short one does something with his tongue which Greg can legitimately see happen, and Sherlock makes a noise like he’s dying. One of his hands goes tight in the back of the stranger’s jumper, and his other hand slips dangerously low on the other’s back.
This seems to finally shake Sally out of her stance at his side.
“Oi!” she says, shock imbued in her tone.
The stranger startles, lips detaching from Sherlock’s with a slick sound that Greg is pretty sure he will never, ever be able to scrub out of his brain. He looks up as if suddenly noticing that they exist.
A flush rises on the stranger’s cheeks. “Ah,” he says, “sorry –”
“John,” Sherlock says, voice deep with something that Greg doesn’t know how to interpret, and the shorter man looks back up at him. “John.” He leans back, though not by much, and rakes his eyes over the stranger’s shorter frame.
His eyes glance to the cane on the ground, and his face twists. “You’re hurt!” He moves back into the other man’s space, hands and eyes exploring intently.
“You were shot!” he says, suddenly, and there’s actual emotion in his voice: horror. “John!”
The stranger leans into him, hands steady on Sherlock’s waist, eyes intent. “I’m fine, Sherlock. Or I will be. It’s fine.”
“Nothing is fine!” Sherlock protests.
“It is,” the man says, smiling at him. “I’m home now.”
They stare at each other for a long moment, and then Sherlock makes a pained sound. “John. John, you’re home.”
Greg has never heard the consulting detective ever say something so obvious, but the stranger just reaches up and touches his face, smile fond. “I’m home.”
Greg suddenly feels more like an intruder than he even did when they were kissing. He clears his throat uncomfortably.
The stranger startles again, and looks back at them. There’s a long pause where no one says anything, and then Sherlock rolls his eyes impatiently.
“Lestrade, Donovan. John.”
“Hello,” John greets.
“Who the hell are you?” Sally says, apparently too flabbergasted to be polite. Not that she’s ever polite around Sherlock, really.
John raises an eyebrow at her, and settles back into something like parade rest, though his hands are firmly possessed within Sherlock’s own. “Doctor John Watson-Holmes, Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers.”
“My husband,” Sherlock says, as if it’s the easiest, most obvious thing in the world.
“H-husband?!” Greg chokes out.
“What?!” Sally manages next to him.
Watson’s eyebrow raises a little higher. “Did you not tell them about me?”
Sherlock shrugs, waving a hand dismissively. “It wasn’t relevant. Now it is.”
“How do – you – have a husband?” Sally questions.
Sherlock raises an eyebrow imperiously. “The usual way, I’d imagine. Certain – paper – was involved.”
John snorts a laugh.
Sherlock’s head snaps back down towards him. “What?” he asks, bewilderedly. “What did I say?”
The doctor leans his forehead against Sherlock’s chest. “Paper,” he chortles. “Usual way. Oh my god, Sherlock.”
“There was paper,” Sherlock protests.
John pats him on the chest consolingly, smiling. “Remind me to tell you how normal weddings go sometime, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart. Greg’s brain goes weirdly staticky. There’s someone in the world who calls Sherlock sweetheart.
“Did you order him from somewhere?” Sally bites out. “Is he a psychopath as well?”
Greg frowns. That’s a little far…
Doctor Watson-Holmes seems to think so too. His cheerful expression settles into something much less friendly. “Sorry?” he says, in a way that suggests serious reconsideration.
“Well, you can’t be normal,” Sally accuses. “Not if you’re with the Freak.”
John’s expression goes entirely blank and he lets go of Sherlock’s hands.
“What did you just call him?”
There’s an edge to his voice. Like sharpened steel. He takes a step in Sally’s direction.
Greg moves to intervene. “Hey –”
“Is this how people treat you when I’m not around?” John says, glancing back at Sherlock.
Sherlock doesn’t say anything, but John must see an answer that Greg doesn’t. He turns back towards them, his jaw set in a hard line. Distantly, Greg notices that they’re gathering a bit of a crowd.
“As I understand it,” he says, slowly, “Sherlock comes here to help you solve cases.”
“John,” Sherlock says, quietly.
“Shut up,” John tells him. “Does she treat you like this all the time?”
Sherlock doesn’t say anything, but John’s eyes lock with his, and something passes between them.
John turns back around, gives Sally an entirely derisive look, and then looks Greg directly in the eye. His gaze is just a steely as his voice. “I’m taking my husband home. But I will be making a complaint with the Commissioner.” His tone brooks no flexibility.
Sally makes a sound of protest, and Greg fights a flinch. Fuck.
Then Doctor John Watson-Holmes marches back to his husband, picks up his cane, and leaves the station without using it at all.
Past his worsening headache, Lestrade hears a newly-arrived Anderson splutter out one word: “Husband?!”
Dammit, he really hopes Sherlock’s brother doesn’t get involved in that complaint.
////////////////////////
Sherlock’s brother gets involved.
////////////////////////
Several months later, after Roger Wheelton gets arrested and Greg separates from his cheating wife, Sally and Anderson are both back following a rather long unpaid suspension. And all of them are on the same crime scene as Sherlock. Greg has a general bad feeling about the three of them interacting again after all this time, but he’s desperately hoping that his officers behave in a way that properly represents the force and doesn’t force him to have any more uncomfortable conversations with his superiors.
It’s probably a stupid thing to hope for.
When Sherlock shows up with his hand in John’s, though, his hopes rise a little.
John is an excellent influence. Sherlock relaxes around him like nothing else, happier, even pleasant at times. He still thinks they’re all idiots (obviously), but he’s significantly less caustic and generally more helpful when John is in hand-holding vicinity.
Sherlock catches sight of the body, and is gone in a whirl of black coat and blue scarf.
John comes and stands next to Greg, smiling fondly as Sherlock mutters deductions under his breath.
“How did you even meet him?” Greg asks, the question rising suddenly in his mind.
John glances at him, surprised but unoffended. “Bart’s, while I was studying. He showed up in class and verbally eviscerated one of my professors.”
“And you… dated him. After that.”
John shrugs and grins. “I proposed on the spot.”
Greg blinks. “Sorry?”
“Interrupted the worst exam I’ve ever had. Professor ran out crying – whole thing got rescheduled. I’ve never been so relieved in my life.”
“You – proposed – the day you met him,” Greg says, slowly.
“Best decision I ever made. Didn’t really expect him to take it seriously, but here we are.”
“John!” Sherlock calls from the other side of the crime scene, and with that, they’re gone.
Standing in the crime scene after the fact, Greg stares at the unfortunate corpse. John Watson, he decides, is a very, very strange man.
////////////////////////
Greg honestly starts to treat it a bit like a case. The Case of the Romance of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. He didn’t become a Detective Inspector for nothing.
He gathers small clues over time. John and Sherlock met at Bart’s. The army funded John’s medical school. They married before John went to Afghanistan. Sherlock’s drug phase corresponds to the year John joined the army. Sherlock doesn’t wear a ring, but John does.
Sherlock insults John nearly as much as he does the rest of them, but it has nowhere near the same bite, and John barely notices.
John Watson is madly in love with Sherlock Holmes.
Sherlock Holmes is madly in love with John Watson.
They’re perfectly well-suited and yet make zero sense whatsoever.
He’s on a stakeout with Sherlock when he finally decides to ask. John is at a medical conference, and Sherlock is snappish in his absence, but the stakeout is boring him out of his mind, so Greg figures it’s as good a time as any.
“Why him?”
Sherlock looks at him, and raises an eyebrow derisively. “Why who?”
“John Watson,” Greg tells him, exasperated because he’s sure the man knows what he’s asking. “Why’d you marry John Watson?”
Sherlock gets a strange expression on his face. “Because he asked.”
Greg rolls his eyes. “But why’d you say yes?”
Sherlock smirks. “I didn’t.”
Greg frowns, confused. “What?”
“Once again, Lestrade, you theorize without having all the facts.”
There’s a sudden noise from the house they’re staking out, and then Sherlock is gone, Greg running frantically after him, and Greg forgets to clarify. Jesus, how does John keep up with those legs.
////////////////////////
Greg knows John was a soldier, but he doesn’t really put together that he was a damn good soldier until the day Greg gets shot.
It’s a typical crime scene. Sherlock has already been and gone in a swirl of deductions, John running after him, and it’s the usual aftermath. Anderson is grumbling about contamination as they bag up evidence, and Sally is already taking the witness to the station. It’s about as peaceful as a homicide scene gets.
Then Sherlock whirls back onto the scene, says: “He’s still here,” and someone bursts out of nowhere with a gun.
The peace dies a violent death.
Greg gets shot.
And John Watson tackles a gunman and takes his pistol, just like that.
In the time it takes Greg to hit the floor, the suspect is unconscious (probably?) on the ground, and John is unloading the ammunition in easy movements. Through sickeningly awful pain, Greg thinks: Someone who wears cuddly jumpers should not be that terrifying.
Then: “Fuck,” he says, clutching at the bleeding hole in his leg.
Sherlock kneels down next to him and rips off his scarf, pressing it into the wound. “John,” he barks, and the doctor is there a second later, taking over with deft hands.
“Call 999, Sherlock. Call, not text,” he orders. He loops Sherlock’s scarf around Greg’s thigh, and then pulls it viciously tight. Greg gasps in pain as he ties it there, and by then someone on the scene has gotten the brains to bring a first aid kit. Gauze gets pressed down on the wound itself, and he nearly blacks out from agony.
“Hey,” John says, shifting him into a different position that seems to make blood rush to his head. “Don’t go into shock on me now, Greg, you’re doing great. Ambulance will be here in a moment, alright?”
“’Right,” he says, and somehow manages to stay awake all the way to Emergency.
He doesn’t even need all that many blood infusions. Apparently John is as good a doctor as he is a soldier.
They visit him at the hospital.
And Sherlock even calls him Graham instead of Lestrade. His name still isn’t Graham, but, you know, it’s the thought that counts.
As he limps around the station in the weeks thereafter, he starts wondering if he should start aiming for that desk job. Maybe he’s getting a bit old for this. He can’t imagine he’ll be the one running after Sherlock now, if John ends up at another medical conference.
He limps into his office and settles into the desk chair with a relieved sigh, and then nearly jumps out of his skin when he looks up and Sherlock’s brother is just – there.
“Jesus Christ!”
“Mycroft will do, thank you.” The terrifying bureaucrat shuts the door and seats himself primly, unneeded umbrella (it’s a rare sunny day in London) tilted against his calf and one ankle folded up and crossed elegantly over his knee. He looks like a page out of some business magazine for wealthy politicians. He probably controls the business magazines for wealthy politicians.
“I’m afraid we’ll have to confiscate your recent case file, Detective Inspector Lestrade,” Mycroft says without waiting for him to stop staring. “With the involvement of my brother-in-law…” He shrugs eloquently. “We’ll take it from here.”
“And who’s ‘we’?” Greg asks suspiciously.
“Ah, ah,” Mycroft tuts, “There are some things it is better for you not to know, Inspector.”
Greg frowns. The case is open and shut, suspect already behind bars – he owes John for the save, but he wanted those case statistics, dammit!
“Perhaps we can engineer a trade?” Mycroft suggests. “Information for… information?”
“For the last time,” Greg groans. “I’m not spying on your brother for you, I don’t care what you’ll pay me. It’s not worth it.”
The maddening bastard just flaps a hand dismissively. “Not that. You give me the case file. I answer a question.”
“A question,” Greg states flatly.
Mycroft just looks at him patiently.
Greg glares.
“Alright, fine! How the fuck did Sherlock end up married to John Watson?!”
////////////////////////
Mycroft worries.
It’s in his nature. It’s in his job description. It’s in his best interest.
He worries about the Queen. He worries about London. He worries about the Middle East. He worries about the climate – political, environmental, economic… He worries about crime statistics. He worries about voting trends. He worries about information. He worries about secrets.
And he worries about his little brother.
Mycroft himself is a solitary soul. Always has been. The occasional useful assistant, well-paid, but otherwise, he handles his affairs as an island.
Sherlock, from birth, has never been an island.
A whirlwind, yes.
An island? Hardly.
And yet the boy pretends otherwise.
So when his brother’s ridiculous detective hobby earns him a cheap flat on Baker Street with two bedrooms, Mycroft takes notice. When the first ill-suited roommate flees after three days, he takes notice. When his own carefully chosen placement disappears from the country after six, he takes notice. When the tracked-down chemistry nerd who lasted a remarkable two weeks flies out of the front door swearing, he takes notice.
When John Watson moves in, he more than takes notice.
When John Watson storms out of the flat, and then goes back, he pays attention.
When John Watson gets kidnapped by a black car, refuses a chair, viciously declines to become a well-paid spy, and stays, he drafts paperwork.
////////////////////////
“Marry me,” John Watson says fervently in the pin-drop silence, rising to his feet as Professor Cameron flees in tears, blank exam papers scattering on the floor in her wake.
The gorgeous six-foot stranger with his flashy trench coat and blue scarf and perfectly wind-swept dark hair, who had just verbally dissected the woman, turns to look at John with startlement in his striking light-blue eyes.
The startlement fades as he looks John over shrewdly, a smile curving at the corner of his mouth. “How do you feel about the violin?”
“Sorry?” John asks, confused. The tone is flirting, but it’s the weirdest flirting he’s dealt with in a while.
“I play the violin when I’m thinking – and sometimes I don’t talk for days on end.” The stranger ticks up an eyebrow. “Would that bother you? Potential husbands should know the worst about each other.”
John smiles, playing along. “I think I can handle it.”
“Perhaps – dinner?” the man asks. “7 o’clock?”
“It’s a date,” John agrees, grinning.
The stranger smiles mysteriously and then eyes the door. “Sorry, gotta dash, I think I left my riding crop in the mortuary.” He turns away.
“Is that it?” John calls after him.
“Is that what?” the man asks, turning back gracefully with his coat flaring like a cape.
“I don’t know where we’re meeting. I don’t even know your name,” John laughs.
The stranger’s gaze sweeps flatteringly from his feet to his face.
“The name’s Sherlock Holmes, and the address is 22 Northumberland Street,” he says, eyes hot, and then sweeps out of the classroom like a bloody fashion model.
John collapses back into his chair.
“Did you just –” Mike Stamford asks, awed and a little horrified.
“Yes, I did,” John says, smugly.
////////////////////////
“After they’d been living together a year – the second bedroom not used as such, I might add,” Mycroft says laconically, fingering the handle of his umbrella, “I took the liberty of mailing them the paperwork.”
////////////////////////
“Sherlock,” John says, staring at the certificate that he’d just pulled from a heavy envelope.
“Hmm?” Sherlock asks from where he’s contemplating the ceiling.
“Is there something you wanted to tell me?”
Sherlock doesn’t answer.
John stomps over and flaps the marriage certificate in front of his partner’s face.
The prone man’s eyes refocus from ceiling to paper.
“Ah,” he says, without removing his hands from where they’re steepled under his chin. “Mycroft, I imagine.”
John stares at him.
John stares at the certificate.
“We are – not – married!” John objects loudly.
“You asked me to marry you the day we met,” Sherlock points out, not incorrectly, his eyebrows furrowing.
John splutters. “You never said ‘yes’!”
“But I did,” Sherlock counters, frowning.
There’s a long silence.
John looks at the certificate.
John looks at Sherlock, and then raises his eyes to the ceiling in exasperation.
“Sherlock, did you perhaps check to see if I was out of the flat when you said yes?”
The detective considers this. “I don’t know, how often are you out?”
John drags a hand across his face and sighs.
“Alright, fine, you madman.”
“Fine.”
“Good.”
“Good.”
“I want a ring, though. To take with me. To – ”
Sherlock cuts him off, dragging him down for a hard kiss.
They don’t talk about Afghanistan.
////////////////////////
Greg sputters.
“But – but – ”
“It was an elegant solution,” Mycroft shrugs. “Even as it was, he still went off the rails when John was on tour, but I can’t imagine the disaster it would have been otherwise. Military spouses are provided with certain rights of visitation. The recent honourable discharge is a convenient end to the interlude.”
“Was same-sex marriage even legal then?” Gregs asks, flabbergasted.
Mycroft raises an eyebrow disdainfully.
Right, Greg had forgotten that he was speaking to the literal British Government.
He blinks a few times. “Right.”
Mycroft stands and holds out a hand. “I’ll have that case file now, Detective Inspector Lestrade.”
“Right,” Greg repeats, and starts digging through his desk drawer in resignation.
////////////////////////
Back at 221B Baker Street, John is thumbing through his phone in the kitchen as he waits for the kettle to boil.
It pings.
He opens the text message.
He reads it twice.
“Sherlock?” he calls into the sitting room, where his husband is contemplating the ceiling again, probably digging through some room in his mind palace for an idea that will turn the second-bedroom-lab into a high-risk danger zone three days from now. They’re between cases. It’s a hazard of loving a mad scientist.
“Hmm?” Sherlock answers.
“Why is your mother asking me about colour palettes?”
“Hmm, the wedding,” Sherlock informs him.
There’s a long silence.
John turns off the hob.
He walks into the other room.
“What wedding?”
Sherlock detaches his gaze from the ceiling and settles it on John’s face with a familiar expression that reads something along the lines of isn’t it obvious. “Our wedding,” he states, slowly, with the tone of explaining something to a particularly dull child.
“Our wedding,” John repeats.
Sherlock’s expression tilts towards exasperation.
“Sherlock, we’re already married.”
“Yes,” Sherlock agrees.
There’s a long silence.
John puts his face in his hands, and then raises his eyes to the ceiling.
“Alright, how’d you find it?” he asks, giving up.
“Find what?” Sherlock’s mouth forms a moue of consternation.
“The ring, you bastard. I was so sure I’d hidden it well enough!”
Sherlock’s expression clears immediately. “Oh, I haven’t.”
John’s mouth opens wordlessly and then closes. “You… haven’t.”
He looks at Sherlock.
Sherlock looks back.
“How did you know I wanted to propose again properly, then?” John half-shouts, exasperated.
“What on earth else would you be hiding?” Sherlock says, bewildered, as if it is the most obvious thing in the world.
John considers this.
He sighs.
“Alright, fine.” He fishes out his phone again. “What colour is that shirt of yours – the one I like – you wore it on the first date?”
Sherlock considers. “Ah, plum.”
John sends a text and then tosses the phone onto his armchair.
“Alright, get up.”
Curious, Sherlock gets up, his dressing gown only precariously tied in place, and trails John through to the hallway.
John opens up the broom closet and inexplicably drags out the vacuum.
He presses a button, and the opaque collection cup pops out with a little puff of dust. He rips a paper bag from the inside, where it’s taped in with metallic tape, and then shakes a velvet jewelry box out into his hands before stuffing everything else back into the closet.
He quirks a grin up at Sherlock, whose eyebrow is raised. “Mrs. Hudson’s idea. She figured you’d never picked up a vacuum in your entire life. Come on.”
He herds Sherlock into their bedroom until Sherlock’s shins are touching the bedframe, and then opens up the nightstand to fish something out.
“What are you doing?” Sherlock asks, amused.
John looks up at him with heated eyes and a telling smile.
“If you’re not going to let me have the cute, normal proposal story… then I want the unmentionable one.”
“The unmentionable one,” Sherlock repeats, mystified.
John tosses the ring and the lube onto the mattress.
“I’m going to fuck you,” he says, sliding his hands under the edges of the loose dressing gown, peeling it away from Sherlock’s shoulders. “I’m going to ask you to marry me.” He untwists the barely tied sash. “And I’m not going to let you come until you say yes.” He presses a kiss to Sherlock’s neck, just below his ear.
“You’re going to take a long time to say yes,” he says, in a commanding tone that sends a shiver down Sherlock’s spine.
“Oh,” Sherlock says, breathily.
John leans back, and grins.
“Yes, ‘oh’,” he agrees, and then he slides the loose fabric off his fiancé-husband’s naked body and shoves him flat on the bed.
The End