While this fic is innocent enough, it was in fact written to launch a « Not-Porn Porn Challenge » on LiveJournal – i.e., take a kink's name and write a strictly PG-rated fic based on the name.

(I'm not saying what my own prompt was, but it's easy enough to guess if you know a little about kinks.)

The Necklace

"There's something," Lestrade said at last, looking into the warm haze of the fire.

He felt before he heard Sherlock's hum of breath still against his thigh and added quickly: "Something I want you to have."

"Oh," Sherlock said, prudent yet not unpleased. He rolled over from Lestrade's lap onto the rug, raising himself on his elbows to meet this new riddle eye to eye. Creature of the night, Lestrade thought with a fond nod at the bygone eighties, letting his eyes loiter with unabashed intent over the sight. For a self-proclaimed spartan, Sherlock fitted his nudity like a glove, and didn't half know it.

"It's not a ring, is it?" the Spartan was asking in almost plaintive tones. "Gold itches. I'd have to hang it on a chain, and that's a liability in my line of work. Think of ..."

"Hush" – and Lestrade placed a finger on the buxom underlip. "No, it's not gold. Or new." He fumbled in the shadow for his discarded trousers, carrying on with a nervous swipe at gravity. "Or blue, or borrowed,"

"Isn't it?" Sherlock's voice had gone low.

Lestrade found his gaze and raised it, literally raised it, tilting up Sherlock's chin with a finger while he kept his other hand behind his back. "Borrowed? Nope. No longer, so have another guess."

His to hold and give, even against the odds that time would one day double back again and deal him another pang, another bruised memory, the next day he'd find the little rope and wonder why he, she, hadn't gone the whole sodding symbolic hog and broken it, just broken the damn thing, instead of leaving it coiled at the bottom of his bedside table drawer. His first real gift to Debbie back when they were absolute beginners, and he still on a novice pay, too.

Squeezing it in the hollow of his hand, he'd tried to remember – what had she looked like, receiving his gift? Had she laughed, or gasped? Seen it for the sign it was, the pledge, or only the money gone to waste? He'd laughed, that he remembered, and said "Who waits thirty years these days?", fastening it round her neck. The drawer had jammed in the early morning grey.

"Three years," Lestrade said, pushing the waste to the back of his heart. He stretched his hand open so that Sherlock would see the grain-like pearls shadowed by the flames. Debbie had worn them every night in the first year, under her boiled wool sweaters. "They die if you don't," her words, and even though he'd joked about pearl-clutching, there had been pride and lust in his heart, in their feel against his cheek when he sucked at the soft dip of her throat.

He couldn't have said when she'd begun to take them off for choir practice, and Tai Chi, and swimming, and finally her new tone-up programme, but that was then and now Sherlock was taking them from his hand. The string was too short to let the necklace hang from his neck; rather, the pearls seemed to target it, encircle it, white upon white, a trophy that stayed and gleamed and changed. As Lestrade watched, he saw how they gathered a sharp dew of clarity, drawing the fire to them until they were matching Sherlock's own pellucid eyes – until they breathed the same quiet unquiet light.

Lust and pride no longer covered it.

His hand was being taken and wrapped around the slender neck, Sherlock's hand tightening the clasp until Lestrade could feel the pearls' sleek hardness against his flesh. There was nothing soft here, or bland, no reassurance for a domestic man, nothing that came close to Debbie's promise of yielding milkiness.

But the recent years had been a string of nights tied by loss, and Sherlock's hand was still wrapped over his, pressing it hard enough for the pearls to leave their imprint on both of them.

Three years, the gesture said, until Sherlock lowered their hands onto his lap. He tilted his head all the way back, the string tautening at his neck. And Lestrade felt his own heart tauten in response to the primal sight, the sign, pledge, and the beauty of it, decadent and all-decisive.

He leant forward until his lips touched flesh, and let the fourth year begin.