Chapter Text
Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled--
to cast aside the weight of facts
and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
-"The Ponds,” Mary Oliver
Whipping, frosty winds. Numb noses and cheeks and toes. A December funeral isn’t ideal.
Though...neither is a funeral, generally.
“...When it’s over,” the officiant is reciting over Mummy’s hysterical sobs, Dad’s calming murmurs of placation, “I want to say all my life….”
Flora’s great-nieces huddle closer together, taking refuge against the howling wind.
“...I was a bride married to amazement....”
Mycroft stands tall and austere, expression vacant, eyes bone-dry.
“...I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.”
And John--he is a silent but sure presence at Sherlock’s side.
When the ceremony ends, Mummy turns on her heel and stalks away, as if she couldn’t possibly endure a moment more of the ritual, her ululations ringing throughout the cavernous cemetery.
“Vi,” Dad says helplessly, hurrying after her.
Mycroft and Sherlock find each other’s eyes at the same moment.
In a rare display of emotion, Mycroft gives Sherlock a solemn, meaningful nod. It might as well have been an embrace. But the moment is gone as quickly as it had come, Mycroft pulling the officiant aside to tie up loose ends, finalise some business or other.
Sherlock remains anchored in place, eyes tracing over the blocky engraving of his grandmother’s headstone--
CAMILLE FRANCOISE JOSEPHINE LECOMTE-VERNET
16 January 1914 - 26 December 2018
Beloved life partner,
sister, grandmother,
and mother
--and the matching, but less wordy, headstone at the adjoining plot--
FLORA ELISABETH WHITTEMORE
10 April 1919 - 13 September 2001
Beloved friend
and sister
The great-nieces thread their arms together and walk to the edge of the grave, peering meditatively into its depths. One of them takes a handful of earth and unfurls it over the casket.
A hand is placed on Sherlock's shoulder, and he stiffens, startled out of his mournful quietude.
It is, of course, John, so Sherlock eases into the touch: sturdy and comforting. Eloquent.
John needn’t say a word. Words aren’t necessary.
The officiant, Mycroft, and finally the great-nieces disperse, but Sherlock and John remain, hand-on-shoulder, twin sentinels at the grave.
Memories surface, fuzzy and lulling.
A violinist's hand, delicate, masterful, coaxing out a tricky Paganini, a honeyed Sarasate, a thunderous Wagner; vibrant Norfolk vistas rendered in impressionistic beauty; sketches of the French Riviera, of rough-hewn women at work in the ‘40s, of London in ruin after the War; bawdy tales of life in Paris, inappropriate for a young boy’s ears, but told in a captivating, mellifluous French.
Most people had not liked Sherlock’s grandmother.
Her abrasive personality and cold demeanour had left much to be desired. But Sherlock had loved her, and she had loved him, in her own way. Or, at the very least, she’d been tickled by him: constantly amused, always encouraging of his scientific (and morbid) pursuits. She had understood him, and he had understood her. And while she’d been an artist, and he a scientist, there had been a symbiosis of minds.
Once, in a rare moment of candour during a rather dull stake-out, John had asked Sherlock something he’d never been asked before:
“What made you like this?”
It hadn’t been asked with a tone of judgment; it’d been one of sincere curiosity. The question had surprised Sherlock, but perhaps that’s because no one had ever got close enough to ask it, and he’d been even more surprised by how naturally he’d come to an answer. Systematic study was absolutely crucial, he’d told John, but it wasn’t only what madeth the man; genetics came into play, particularly from his matrilineal line. There is no question that the art that runs through Sherlock’s veins has contributed to his creativity of reasoning and thought.
It’d been fifteen years since Sherlock had last seen Mémé in person, and they’d spoken on the phone just eight times since, which is a shameful reality. If he’d really loved her, he would have made the effort to see her, to speak to her more often. But as he’d grown older, he’d convinced himself that the best way not to get hurt--the best way to funnel the most energy into what he'd thought really mattered, the Work--was to move through life alone.
It’d been a grave miscalculation.
That self-imposed, self-involved isolation had made him forget about the very few people who’d actually counted.
Tears slide effortlessly down Sherlock’s cheek, the wet streaks freezing in the frigid air.
Annoyed, he swipes at his cheek with the heel of his palm, and when he drops his arm, John’s hand slides from Sherlock’s shoulder down to his forearm, hesitates, then slides down further to interlace their gloved fingers.
Sherlock falls perfectly still.
And when he musters the courage to turn his head, John isn’t even looking at him, is boring a stare into Mémé’s headstone with his jaw set tight. It strikes a perplexing note of discord, John’s tense comportment against their gently clasped hands but, then again, John is naturally, exceptionally perplexing.
“Sherlock, darling?”
John’s hand rips out of Sherlock’s, and the two of them whirl around toward the wibbly voice.
Sherlock had not heard Mummy’s approach, but she has perfected the art of creeping up on him unawares; one of the very few people to succeed in such an endeavour. Her face and eyes are swollen pink, but she is, quite paradoxically, smiling, and dare Sherlock think it, but there’s simply no more picturesque way to describe it--she has a twinkle in her eye.
“Wanted to catch you before you swanned off,” Mummy says. “Your father and I thought we’d have you, your brother, and John over for food and drink. It’s just a couple hours' drive, you know, but you’re more than welcome to stay the night, though I know it’s last minute. I suppose we should have thought all this through before….”
Sherlock is beyond relieved to have a proper excuse. “Regrettably, John and I have already purchased tickets for the return train.”
She looks between the two of them and her smile grows unfathomably wider. “But you will still be coming up next weekend for your birthday, won’t you.”
The lack of a rising intonation is a veiled threat.
“Yes, Mummy,” Sherlock murmurs in the manner of a man sentenced to the gallows.
“Looking forward to it,” John adds stiffly, pasting on his I’m trying very hard to be gracious and normal smile.
Much to Sherlock’s horror, the twinkle in Mummy’s eye has become a constellation of stars.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’ve gone and spoilt everything, haven't I?”
John shakes his head, uncomprehending. “Spoilt…?”
“You must have meant to tell me more formally, but, oh, I’m about to burst! I’m so tremendously happy to see that you boys have decided to take the leap.”
John leans over, ear out-turned. “I’m sorry, what?”
Sherlock has the crazed thought to jump into the hole with his grandmother.
“Do you hear that, mother?” Mummy calls out to her very dead mother, casting a deeply fond look at John. “I may soon very well have three sons!”
John blanches.
“Mummy,” Sherlock says between his teeth, his cheeks hot, “You of all people--”
“Sherlock,” Mummy says with authoritative finality, though her actions betray her tone as she cups Sherlock’s cheek with a soft mitten. “My baby boy. Look at you. Your grandmother would be so pleased to see you like this--settling down with someone. Living your truth. Just like she did.” Then, with clear spite, “Though it took her rather a bit longer to do it all.”
“For god’s sake,” Sherlock blusters, “John and I are--”
“Happy. So very happy,” John cuts in loudly. He gives Sherlock a resounding slap on the back, jerking Sherlock forward. “In fact, we couldn’t be happier, did I already say that? The two of us. Sherlock and I, that is. Because we’re together--in a relationship--as you so astutely noticed before we could break the news. So. Yes. Thank you, Mrs Holmes.”
Even though it’d been an entirely unconvincing performance, Mummy eats it up and gathers John into her arms. John becomes a ragdoll, lets himself be hugged mercilessly, blinking SOS in Morse code at Sherlock, but Sherlock can only look on at the assault as a slack-jawed bystander.
“No, thank you, John,” Mummy is saying, her voice thick with emotion, rubbing circles into John’s back. “Thank you so very much.”
On the train ride home, Sherlock sits slumped against the window, frowning aggressively at sprawling fields of nothingness and uninspired suburban dwellings.
John sits beside him, as silent as a stone, but when Sherlock finally sips in a breath to speak, John preempts him: “Just leave it. Let your mum have this.”
“I can’t imagine her constitution being so fragile that she would not be able to handle the news that we are not, in fact, lovers.”
“You saw how happy it made her. It turned her around. She was completely devastated about her mother.”
Sherlock sighs, pressing his forehead to the ice-cold glass of the window. “It was performative. There was no love lost between Mummy and Mémé.”
“Doesn’t mean your Mum isn’t genuinely grieving. I was devastated when Mary was--,” Sherlock flinches, “when she died.” Mary is always an awkward topic of conversation, so they don’t often invoke her name. Nor do they speak of everything that came shortly After. “But my feelings for her in life were complicated, to say the least.”
Complicated did indeed also define Mémé and Mummy’s relationship.
Mémé was quite aloof in her parenting, for one, but it was Mémé’s affair with Flora whilst married to Sherlock’s grandfather that caused the greatest rift in mother-daughter relations, though Sherlock had always thought it a forgivable indiscretion. To be a lesbian trapped in a marriage with a man for three decades--he could do nothing but sympathise with her plight. And yet Mummy’s held a grudge for all these years.
“John.”
“Hm?”
“I will need you to tell my parents that I died. Or that I was murdered, if you'd prefer to add a bit of spice.”
John snorts rudely. “You are going to see them next week, Sherlock. No bloody excuses.”
“It will be exponentially more insufferable with Mummy acting like a mourner from Greek myth,” Sherlock says in an undignified tone of desperation, hoping for John to take pity on him. “Also, Mycroft will be there.”
“She’s grieving, you berk. That’s what people do.”
“And what are we meant to do?”
“What d’you mean?”
“Surely, you don’t intend to maintain that--that ruse?”
“Do you really want to disappoint your mother at a time like this?”
Sherlock does not like disappointing his mother, it’s true. That’s Mycroft’s lot in life.
However.
While Sherlock is a master actor, falsifying a relationship with John could be the most difficult disguise he would ever have to assume.
He had never had to sham something so very close to his heart.
“As always, John, you aren’t thinking ahead. Do you expect us to pretend to be,” he nearly chokes on the word, “boyfriends or what have you for the rest of my mother’s life? That could be one year or fifteen.”
“Don’t...ever say that word again,” John says darkly.
“What, ‘boyfriends?’” John’s eye twitches and he jerks a nod in confirmation. “I was being facetious, obviously.”
They fall back into silence. A distinctly uncomfortable one, this time.
Sulkily, Sherlock curls up into a ball and turns his attention back to the great open pastures of--wherever they are. Somewhere unimportant.
His thoughts once again gravitate to his grandmother.
She’d been shunned by family, especially after she’d come out, but that hadn’t mattered. She had found her bliss with Flora and hadn’t needed anyone else; it’d been just her and Flora against the rest of the world. Sherlock had known his grandmother’s story well, and when he was a boy, he had wished (privately, very privately, never to be uttered to a soul) to have such a life for himself.
But these were lofty, childish romantic ideals that had been anything but ideal when expended on Victor Trevor.
Sherlock hugs himself tightly.
He’s not thought of Victor in ages. And for good reason.
It was Victor who had taught him the destructive nature of sentiment, though it had been a lesson well-learned: that’s when he’d stepped into his own as Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective, nourished by nothing but data and puzzles.
And he’d thrived as that Sherlock Holmes. He’d scintillated.
But then he’d met John, and John had challenged that man Sherlock had known so well, because there Sherlock was, affixed to someone again, and it wasn’t a detriment. It was distracting, at times, but it wasn’t destructive.
It was beautiful, and he’d felt invincible.
John had rattled his painstakingly-built foundations, and he's not been able to revert back to that hardened version of himself he’d once been. And even when John had left him, had gone off and married Mary, he’d vowed to try and keep as much of John as he could.
Because Sherlock can no longer be without him.
With his arms wound protectively around himself, Sherlock digs fingernails into his back, applying pressure. Presses hard enough for the half-moons of his nails to indent flesh through his shirt.
John cannot leave him.
“Hey.”
Sherlock relaxes, uncoils himself, raises his head toward John.
John’s eyes are fixed on the back of the seat in front of him, his chin raised almost in defiance, and on the seat in the space between them lies John’s upturned palm, an unwavering invitation.
Sherlock realises it for what it is.
This is John’s particular way of offering comfort in grief.
When John had been grieving Mary, Sherlock had hugged him—just the once. It’d be a rare moment of physical connection for them, and Sherlock had felt guilty for finding comfort in it himself. For finding security and warmth, and for wanting to keep John in his arms.
This, the joining of their hands, is far less invasive than a hug. Sherlock is surprised by how much it’d affected him earlier, graveside. He’s never given the act much thought before, except for thinking it a bit twee, but perhaps that’d been reductive. It can both stake a claim and/or offer quiet support. And John offers him so little in the way of physical affection, so it is a gift.
Sherlock will not look a gift horse in the mouth.
He interlaces their fingers.
These days, he and John are closer than they have ever been, their friendship fortified by years of tragedy and strife. Bloodied, but unbowed. Sherlock will take what they have, cherish it, and never let it go, no matter if it never becomes more. He has it, has something, and it will have to be enough. Because who else, really, in this dreadful world would make so many allowances for Sherlock? Sherlock is ceaselessly rude, inconsiderate, and mercurial by nature. And John accepts him; likes him, even.
This is someone, and something, Sherlock cannot afford to lose.
Sherlock pulls his and John’s hands into his lap, and they spend the rest of the ride in silence.
Days later, back at 221b, Sherlock noisily throws himself into his armchair and sinks low, legs inelegantly splayed. He waits, but his theatrics do nothing to garner John’s attention, so he tries on a drawn-out sigh.
That does the trick.
“What it is, Sherlock," John intones without looking away from the telly.
They’ve been avoiding the subject quite assiduously, which is something they are both very skilled at--avoiding talking about things they do not want to talk about--but Sherlock has been able to do nothing else but think about it since Mémé’s funeral. There are experiments that need doing, a monograph that needs writing, so he must clear the air (and his mind).
“We haven’t discussed our plans for the charade this weekend. And we all know you can’t act to save your life.”
“Yeah, all right, sorry I haven’t the particular sort of skill to shanghai some poor sod into nearly marrying me,” John says pointedly, and Sherlock deflates a little. “And we don’t need a plan. Just go on as you are. Your parents won’t expect us to do anything to prove ourselves. That’d be...weird.”
Sherlock slumps deeper into the armchair, chin to chest. “My mother is a loose cannon. Who’s to know what she’ll do? I haven’t ever--,” Sherlock breaks off. He hasn’t ever brought someone home to meet his parents, he’d meant to say. But does he really need to say it aloud? “I haven’t any data to compare against.”
“I’ve got to go to the shops,” John says suddenly, springing up to his feet.
Sherlock glances at his wristwatch, which reads 19:50. “The shops” close in ten minutes. Sherlock judiciously does not point this out.
John makes a big to-do of gathering his essentials--mobile, wallet--but he can’t find his keys. “Where’d you put them.”
Sherlock swishes a hand toward the pile of burnt clothes. “Probably under there.”
A few days ago, Sherlock had conducted burn tests on various articles of clothing for the purpose of learning more about fibre classification. John hadn’t appreciated the smell, particularly from the acrylic fibre (bit fishy, that one).
“Oh, for the love of--I didn’t see you’d used this one, I loved this shirt!”
“I don’t wear linen,” Sherlock says, tossing his head. “I needed to test it. It was a horrendous shirt, anyway.”
John blows out a frustrated breath. “Just--clean this up while I’m out. I’m not going to ask you again.” John finally locates his keys, which had been nestled in a tattered foulard, and shoves them into his pocket. “When I get back, we’ll talk. “
“But--”
“Later, Sherlock. We’ll talk later.”
But they never do get around to talking about it.
Next Saturday, at dawn, they set off on the interminable journey to Yorkshire.
Sherlock tries to quell his anxiety by thinking rationally, which is what he does best.
John could be right.
They probably won’t have to “prove themselves,” which Sherlock assumes would involve some degree of physical intimacy. Over the years, anyone from strangers to close associates had mistaken him and John for a couple, and they hadn’t even been trying to play a couple. So, it stands to reason that they needn’t do much, if anything, to be convincing.
Or, a novel idea: they could tell the truth.
Mummy would be disappointed, yes, but she’d get over it. And Sherlock wouldn’t have to suffer through an entire weekend of innuendo and fussing and over-sentimental declarations.
But, then again, he does so hate to disappoint Mummy, and she had seemed inordinately uplifted by the idea of his and John’s entanglement.
And maybe Sherlock is the slightest bit curious about how things will play out--how John will be with him. John, his considerate and stubborn John, has committed to playing this role for Mummy’s sake. Will he lean into the role? Will there be potential for physical intimacy, even if just for show? It’s quite sad, really, that Sherlock still thinks about last week. The damnably quaint hand-holding. Its sole purpose may have been to offer a kindness in grief. Tangible affection. But had it set a precedent?
Anything that John offers, Sherlock will take.