Sherlock tried to extract a promise not to tell anyone but the Inspector shook his head as if he were still lost in thought and incapable of emerging back into the world where little boys asked impossible things. Trapped in it the way Sherlock and John could get trapped in dreams.
It was a good sign.
It was brilliant.
The questions could be asked, adults could get lost in bad thoughts and memories that do not deserve words. And they could come back.
Because they could talk about it, they could get lost and still come back and be alright and real and not invisible or broken at all. Lestrade was already blinking as if bringing the world back into focus. The screaming children, the cool wind against his damp face, the way it swept napkins from Nana's neat piles so that colourful paper danced in red and blue across subdued green grass.
The men of nightmares could not hurt you just because you whispered terrible things into foreign ears, knowing does not mean that bad things would happen, that they would come in the dark when you close your eyes, too tired to stay awake any longer.
A word was not enough to damn.
'You can't tell anyone, they won't understand.'
Lies. He knew it the moment it was too late to turn back, the moment fear and pain should have made him stop if there had been an ounce of truth to it.
'I would have to make them understand…you wouldn't want that would you?'
All of it. Terrible. Beautiful. Lies.
Because Sherlock was still breathing. He could still feel the wind and smell the grass crushed beneath running feet. And when this was all over he would still be able to reach out touch Johns hand and let him curl their fingers together like he had missed him, like he was something amazing.
And if he could have, if there was any truth to those promises made by invisible bodies, if the man had any power here…
Then there would be nothing left of this world.
Nothing left of him to be sitting here now.
Lestrade was staring off into the crowd of boys, his eyes following John in an unconscious motion. It made Sherlock want to smile, a feeling that did not reach his cheeks or lips but was no less real, something private and internal, hidden deep in his heart where it could never be harmed.
Lestrade looked at John as if he were the balm that could soothe Sherlock's words.
His better half. The cure to Sherlock's poison.
Sherlock had been careful. He had never told these things to anyone; never let them read it in his body or face. If later, alone, without a John or a Mycroft to hold him, Lestrade suffered nightmares from this, silly dark dreams, then he would only have to suffer things he could survive. Dreams which would take a breath, and a tear, and nothing more.
Little pains. Little anguishes.
Sherlock would never tell him anything that would break him.
Lestrade is brave and strong. Even if he turns too pale as he listens, even as his lips press closed and tight as if he were afraid of what might come out of them, words and a half a mind run off without him.
Sometimes bravery is being afraid and doing the right thing anyway.
Lestrade saved John once.
If he had known, if Sherlock could have asked him, Lestrade would have volunteered for this.
Even without knowing he had said the words, perfect. Like a story book. John would have loved the resonance, the sound of it as he closed his eyes tight and pictured the knight on his impossibly white stead with shining armour.
"I won't let anyone-" the words stuttered and stopped as if they were painful, but not too terrible to bear, not like drowning, starving, dying. Just pain. Knowing the words were an impossible lie even as they fall from your lips. A pause. A correction. Out of place against the streamers and the rays of cold sunshine lighting their artificial signs of Happy Birthday!
"You do not have face this alone."
Sherlock shifted closer as the long dead words settled between them and the laughter of the others seemed very far off. He was done now. He had his answers, his brilliant unfathomable test results.
Too good to be true.
Soon Nana would call them all over for presents. Sherlock would not whisper any more dark things today, he had no more questions to ask or stories to tell that would linger like something bitter and acrid on the back of their tongues, lingering in their minds like a physical pain.
Lestrade had, for a moment at the beginning, tried to hide his reaction from Sherlock. He had tried to mask his actions, to make them deliberate and comforting as an adult should be to a child, tried not show the strain he felt.
He had given up on that.
He had taken one look at Sherlock and eyes that seemed far too old and too clear for a soon-to-be six year old and seemed to decide that coddling would be a wasted effort.
Sherlock loved him a little more for that.
Lestrade's hands rose to cover his face in a motion that seemed to be an unconscious habit, like he was permanently on the edge of trying to dispel a migraine, fingers pressing against temples and then shifting to press into closed eyes.
Sherlock shifted closer, reaching out and taking one of the hands from his face, gently insinuating his own hand into the open fist. His clean trousers pressed into the mud he had smeared onto his jacket before. A Lestrade-Sherlock shaped stain on his clean clothing.
He knew how this part worked.
Even if Lestrade would not suffer, even if the pain never came and the man was trapped only in dreams he would suffer from this. It was like waking up alone in the dark without knowing where or why or how.
It was falling without reason or knowledge from one world into another and unless someone grabbed your hand, unless they pulled you close and made you feel something real…
You could feel so alone that you might forget how to speak.
Lestrade smiled, quietly, the kind of smile you could miss or mistake for sadness. Sherlock thought for a moment that Lestrade might pull him down off the table and hug him. He didn't.
Slowly the bigger hand wrapped gently around Sherlock's, holding him lightly, gently. A man who knew how to hold a child's hand, knew how to make it feel as if they were both holding onto one another.
In the throng of boys John was edging closer, circling towards them with every deliberate step.
Lestrade would not promise not to tell anyone but just because he had asked, because he had tried, he would keep his almost-secret, mostly.
Mycroft would be told but Sherlock had always known that. In his own way Mycroft already knew about the man, he knew about the dreams, he knew that sometimes even when they were there and holding his hand that they were not really there at all. That they had disappeared, gone to where not even he could reach them.
Now Mycroft would know just a little more. And he would worry and would try so very hard to keep them safe and eventually he would discover the things that Sherlock had not said and he would dream of what John would not speak of and it would hurt him.
But Sherlock could stop that. Because when Mycroft asked him tomorrow or the next day he would have a plan.Things would not be good, but they would be better.
John was silent as he slid into the seat at the head of the table, ignoring the chair set up for him, pressing close against Sherlock as the others all sat down around them, completely oblivious. They were getting too big to share a chair anymore but he didn't care. Under the table John touched the back of Sherlock's hand, just a finger tracing across delicate bones, unsure, but Sherlock gripped his hand tight, holding them together as he gave him a smile John could feel in the pit of his stomach.
Nana was handing them presents and the other boys were yelling out who they were from before Nana could read the tag aloud and John was smiling because it was the right thing to do. Because it was a birthday and everyone was happy and at birthday parties you smiled.
When you smile no one wonders if everything is okay.
But two men were sliding closer to Lestrade who still looked as if he had seen a ghost, too pale and not quite shaking but giving the impression that given the chance he would really like to. The three of them sliding into the background.
John opened the first present with his left hand and Sherlock's right. A toy, something shiny and expensive that they would never ever play with from a boy whose daddy liked to say 'money can't buy happiness, but it can rent it'.
John smiled harder, said thank you, and wondered fleetingly if it would be more beautiful when Sherlock took it apart, a hundred glittering pieces laid out on the floor.
Mycroft's men, both with ear pieces in and little microphones hidden in their clothing (John only knows because they have two hidden in their toy box for when they play hide-and-go-seek with the body guards), are trying to persuade Lestrade to go with them. One of them was not very good at hiding, touching his clothing, his ear. John felt a little sorry for him. The obvious ones never lasted long. Maybe he could get a job he liked more now; maybe he would be an astronaut.
Mycroft had not come himself to their 'Friend party', he said that he was really very busy and that he was really very sorry. Sherlock had laughed and stuck out his tongue, John had just given him a smile that Auntie Harry called his 'uh-hu, sure and I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you' Look.
Later they decided that it was because Mycroft didn't want to have the 'and what do you do for a living' talk with any of the other grown-up's, apparently saying 'top secret' was only funny when you were just-about-to-be-six.
As for the bridge? They decided that was just an Auntie Harry thing.
John shook himself mentally, trying to fall back into the present even as more inane thoughts sparked in his mind, stealing his attention away. He did not think he was obvious about it but Sherlock held his hand tighter, a reassuring press of fingers like a whisper in his ear. I am here.
Yes, John thought with his heart climbing into his throat, but for how much longer?
The next present set before them was wrapped in gold ribbon with matching paper that shone in the sunlight, warm and cold all at once. Frozen, glistening, metal. John touched the invisible bump in his shirt where his ring lay warm against his chest like a promise. Sherlock pressed closer against him, curling their joined hands in his lap, pressing Johns hand into the warmth of his stomach. If they were alone Sherlock might have kissed him, he might have whispered in his ear a joke or some silly story to make him laugh.
It didn't help.
It made it so much worse.
He could still see the look on Lestrades face as Sherlock whispered something not even the wind would catch. Something secret and heavy that could bring Lestrade close to shaking, something that could make Mycroft suffer pedestrian obviousness. Something that John could not read when Sherlock's sad blue eyes looked at him and revealed…nothing.
It was a nothing kind of word. A nothing feeling. It was subtle. A feeling that he had always carried with him but sometime he could forget, drown it out in laughter and hugs and smiles. Sometimes life was enough to drive it back but it had always been there, lurking in the dark corners of his heart. Until it reached out to overshadow him. An innate, sublime knowledge. A comfortable familiarity that is dark and cold and smells like the hot copper tang of blood.
Nothing good last forever.
Eventually, everyone will leave you.
John touched the ring under his shirt again, wanting to pull it out, to look at it and watch it shine in the light and prove that it was real.
A promise. His. Always his.
John tried to remember how it felt the first time, when they had looked up marriage and watched the royal wedding and found so many answers to questions they never knew they had. He tried to recall the moment when it was just them and he wanted to say the words but he was so nervous that all he could hear was his own heart and then Sherlock surprised him, John's words coming in Sherlocks voice.
'John, Will you marry me?'
And then, because his heart was still pounding, because the answer was so obvious but somehow Sherlock couldn't see it. Like his heart had been pounding too.
'Please?...I mean, If you want to.'
He remembers it was joy and rapture and love, but he can't feel it now.
He can feel the moment he looked at Sherlock with his devastating blue eyes and an ashen faced Lestrade and knew that Sherlock no longer held all of his secrets in his own heart, in John's.
John smiled as the golden wreckage shifted in the wind and Nana saved it from escape, as the golden ribbon tangled around his fingertips. The words were falling from his lips, 'thank you', the next present being placed before he realized he had never looked to see what is was they had unwrapped.
Lestrade had shaken off Mycroft's men for the moment, letting them sink back into the background as he took a seat at the back of the table, beyond the crowd of children. He offered a smile to John over their animated faces as if by accident. As if he had not meant to look at him at all but now that he had, now that he saw Johns birthday-party smile all he could do was return it. A smile that says 'I know everything isn't okay but we try to look the part don't we?'
John felt naked. Exposed.
The smile on his face felt suddenly like plastic. Like it was crumbling over his lips.
Two separate presents were set down in front of them, bright boy-blue paper and their names in curly elegant script written by someone who cares more for appearances than for children.
Sherlock pressed his cheek to Johns shoulder, curls tumbling endearingly into his face. White and black and blue with a smear of red. He could feel John's anxiety, his slow mounting panic as easily as if he were a book in their lessons. Could he feel the shadow unfolding inside him? Starting in his heart and reaching out to touch his toes, slinking through his veins while he sat here smiling?
Yes. Of course he could. Sherlock still had all of John's heart. All of his secrets.
He knew Sherlock wanted him to press his own cheek into curly black hair, to curl closer, to pretend as they did when they were younger that they were one person, that nothing could ever tear them apart.
John took his hand back from Sherlock, his hand damp from holding on so tight. He opened the wrapping on his gift slowly, peeling away the tape, folding back the thick paper, hoping that if he prolonged it he could buy himself enough time for the shadow of nausea to settle.
Sherlock turned his face on his shoulder, blue eyes looking into him from inches away but John refused to look back. He did not want to see the secrets he was no longer privy to. He did not want to see walls building up against him.
He did not want to look and know that he was losing him.
It was his own fault.
Before it had been okay. It was enough to wake up and not be alone; it was enough to hold on so tight that nothing could get them.
So close beneath their blanket it was like they were one person and no one would ever be able to tear them apart.
But now John can't sleep at night. Now there are two men haunting his dreams and sometimes he cannot tell them apart. Laughter and screams. The heavy thud of boots and the light click of dress shoes on tile. And every night Sherlock holds him tighter and every night the look on his face, the feel of his heart pounding against his back grows more worried.
Scared.
Scared for him.
John had given him all of his secrets. Almost.
Sherlock knows that there are things you can never talk about. John has asked, begged for Sherlock to tell him those secrets but he can't. Just like John.
But Sherlock told Lestrade. Told him a secret, because John wouldn't tell him the secrets that were keeping him up at night.
And now, because he couldn't say, because he couldn't hide it, he was going to lose him.
It starts with secrets shared. Simple and slow and innocent. But secrets can grow, they branch out and build. And if Sherlock gave a secret to everyone, if he kept them away from John, there would be a forest of little secrets, a little piece of Sherlock's heart in everyone they loved.
Auntie Harry teased them and called them Sherlock-John and John-Sherlock.
But now Sherlock would have all of John and John would only have a little piece of Sherlock. One tiny piece of a heart spread around a dozen people. One tree in a forest of secrets.
There would be inside jokes and looks and smiles he would not understand.
They would never be Sherlock-John again.
Just. John.
A kiss pressed against his shoulder, at the edge of his chest. A smile pressed to his shirt, his skin. In front of everyone. Like they were still one person.
And he looked. He couldn't help but look.
Eyes more familiar than his own. Silent words that he imagined he would never know again.
You promised you would trust me.
And Johns smile became effortless. The cold blood dark shadow creeping through his limbs burned away in a blush that rose to his cheeks, leaving behind only an aching need to prove it wrong. A Sherlock sized hollow in his heart that began to fill when Sherlock beamed at him in silent understanding.
The presents before them were torn open, ready to be done, ready to be just them, just their family.
John tore the blue paper away at last, letting Sherlock do the same next to him, he smiled and had a 'thank you' ready at hand when laughter, loud and cruel, erupted from the mouths of his friends.
Beside him Sherlock was holding a pain of sunglasses up to his face, examining their weight and shape, asserting how much of his eyes could seen through the darkened lenses.
The boys' laughter continued. John did not have to hear their whispers to know what they were saying. He had heard it all before.
Mr. Too-cool-for-us
Mr. Misunderstood-Genius with the Ice-Blue-Eyes
John wanted them to stop. He wanted to throw the glasses back at them and tell them that they could never hope to be half as amazing as Sherlock. That they could spend their entire lives searching and never find a person as loving or loyal.
The smile dropped off his face, crumbling to nothing, shattered on the ground.
They were supposed to be his friends.
New words were on his lips, heated and harsh, heart still pumping from the thought of losing Sherlock. He would make them stop. But beside him, quietly, amused. Sherlock laughed.
John turned to see him smile, to see him slip the dark glasses onto his face, erasing his crystal blue eyes, black curls falling down against black glass and hiding him away.
The boys continued to laugh but it was less cruel now. It suited him, they said through giggles and the snap-flash of cameras and adults thinking that this was a moment that should be saved forever on film, a memory to treasure.
Mr. Too-cool-for-us
Mr. Misunderstood-Genius with the Ice-Blue-Eyes
Sherlock knew of course. He had beaten them at their own game. He had saved John from exposing himself, from ruining his birthday-party demeanor.
Sherlock squeezed his hand. John turned and looked at him, needing to see that it was okay, to know exactly what he was thinking, needing that closeness that has no words. Needing Sherlock.
But he wasn't there.
Black glass reflecting his own sickly smile back at him.
He stopped smiling.
If Sherlock noticed John could not tell.
The presents came and went, the cake was brought out sans candles. They had made Nana promise. No candles until later. They did not want meaningless people to distract them from their wishes; they did not want to lose something precious in a crowd. Nana said they could do candles twice but they refused. What if it negated their wishes altogether because it was greedy to get more than one?
No one mentioned the lack of candles, or the fact that two little boys did not want their birthday wishes. They just wanted the cake, wanted fizzy drinks and ice cream.
John crushed his cake with his fork, swirling the melting ice-cream into it until it looked like he might have eaten some of it, until it was nothing but swirls of thick creamy colour that smelled sickly sweet in the air.
Sherlock did not touch his. The ice-cream in a dish, pooling into an untouched ocean.
The boys said goodbyes in shouts as they trailed after their mothers, streaming past with frosting smudged onto their faces, sticky hands stuck with bits of grass waiving in the air in carefree goodbye.
Sherlock still wore his black on black glasses, the image of aloof, of frosty detachment.
John did not care what he looked like. As the adults cleaned up and claimed their children and streamed past them and Lestrade went at last with Mycroft's men John locked his arms around Sherlock, pushing his cheek into black curls.