Lestrade met Auryn at the cottage. It was a danger night.
He would not be gone this year and he knew it would to tempting to visit. Go to Baker Street, visit Bart's, maybe stop in at one of their favorite eateries. Maybe worse; the hole felt immense tonight, not even Mycroft would have been able to handle the weight of the grief.
This had hit a day early.
They were not prepared for it to have this type of hold on him. Shaving, he had been shaving. Then it overcame him the feeling to just slit his throat. Not a thought, a compulsion, a need. More than that, a biological imperative. He had placed the straight razor down and walked out of the room to the living room. He could give an arse if he was only in is towel and Mycroft had the feed live today. He looked directly at the only pin-head camera that had ever been pointed out to him for emergency sake and dialed his brother directly.
When he answered, Auryn crumbled.
Gregory came with two bottles of scotch and plain dinner of rough meal bread and a dense lamb stew, weather be hanged. Who gave a care if it was June; this was fine food for getting a piss on. They walked about the grounds a while, the air sweet and solid. It was a very fine day, hadn't even reached into the eighties. The shade dense under the massive canopies above them.
The talked of the newness of his two favorite men and how they were getting on between the stress of the jobs they held and their relationship. Gregory admitted to it being hard but worth it. He had learned so much from reading their old journals about not taking things for granted in anyone, not just a significant other. It was so heart rending to read them, but inspiring to know that Auryn's feelings had never changed. That after all this time, he still had a soft box with a band nestled away.
He still wore the family signet and his band from the lover he never knew.
Hopelessly romantic to a fault, Auryn simply stated he was never lonely, it was that he had begun experiencing some of the largesse that Sherlock had always complained of. There were times that he felt the need for a good puzzle, but there was none. He enjoyed his new life, found it rewarding for the most part. Then there were the times he was away allowing his training to kick to the surface. He had studied Bartitsu, which had come in handy once already.
They discussed is once almost-lover over dinner, then opened the first bottle. He went upstairs, grabbed two Fuente Opus, the crystal ashtray that Sherlock had stole from Her Majesty, and his small smoke bag. They settled in the well loved chairs in front of the fireplace and lit up. The gloves came off at that point. That was their rule.
Auryn opened up about the wrenching instantaneous need to cut his throat earlier. It had surprised him though he couldn't be arsed to care, that is what really bothered him. He no longer cared about his own life not at that moment anyway. He needed to find someone that could be a companion. Nothing would ever compare to Sherlock, but he was beginning to become lonely in his new life.
Lestrade commiserated about the loss of one of his closest friends. It hadn't been the same since they lost him. The unsolved cases were beginning to rise again and it did worry the Inspector. He had brought him a few to look over tonight hoping that he might see something that he had missed. He wouldn't deem to ask My as that was one of their hard and fast rules: no work at home. Besides he was monitoring other situations abroad that were far more pressing.
Around eight, they grabbed the second bottle and decided to head toward the main manor two miles down the way through the small winding footpath in the forest.
It was a good night to walk.
A good night to live and laugh. To reminisce.
They found there way to the old silent cemetery and stole their way through the markers winding toward their destination. He was loathe to see it. He had not been here since the service and burial. Now, there would be a stone, a tablet of ebony with gilded letters.
Letters he could lovingly trace until he himself expired. Then he would be happily buried beside to rot with his ether-realm'd lover in the umbra.
In this place, would he still feel, he wondered.
As they reached their charge, Auryn fell to his knees, the ever faithful lover of the bones safely ensconced in the earth below. If he could he would bury himself in the loamy earth by his own hands just to press upon his lover's body once again. Morbidity be damned, he no longer wondered why necrophilia was romanticized. If Sherlock were his Juliet, he would indeed would have claimed purchase to his softly rose tinged lips.
They were no longer, but before, they were.
He would ever regret not being able to tease the sweet humidity that would have been tartly rich infused of milky tea and nicotine burn. How he pined, even now for just that once small moment in time where everything was possibility and light; not warm earth and deep unabated slumber.
Rising to his knees, he kissed the cold stone instead. Murmuring thanks pouring graces into the air hoping they could some how reach the man he loved so very dearly before standing and departing once again.