Title: Cloud Dancing
Fandom: Sherlock (BBC)
Length: 475 words
Pairing: Sherlock/Lestrade
Content notes: no warnings apply
Author notes: sequel to Suddenly, A Familiar Song, from Sherlock's point of view. Direct quotations from The Sign of Three are taken from Ariane DeVere's transcript.
Summary: On the morning after the events of The Sign of Three, Sherlock wakes up with a hangover and finds that he is not alone.




Sherlock wakes up with a small but enthusiastic team of carpenters renovating his skull from the inside, and a pneumatic drill going full tilt somewhere close by.

“Bloody hell, they’re starting early,” Lestrade’s voice grumbles from behind him.

An actual pneumatic drill, then. No works were scheduled in Baker Street. Probably some dastardly plan of Mycroft’s to punish him for … he can’t remember what. Champagne came into it, and dancing. And a murder, of course. There’s always a murder.

A photographer. Hats in the air. A speech, his. Index cards. Shocked faces.

Running frantically through the hotel after John’s old commanding officer, what was his name, Major Sholto, damn him.

Oh, Sherlock. Neither of us were the first, you know.

Mary Morstan; Mary Watson, now. Ravenously eating canapés. Grimacing at the wine she’d chosen.

The signs of three.

He couldn’t stay and dance with them, though he was the one who’d taught John to dance, Baker Street behind closed curtains, don’t know how those rumours started. Written the waltz for their wedding. And then walked away, leaving them together.

Happy Families. He knows where he belongs, and where he doesn’t.

Outside in the garden, smoking a cigarette, not his. Lestrade’s. The last one in the pack. Passing it between them like a pair of schoolboys behind the bike sheds.

That ghastly song, and Lestrade saying something nonsensical about the moves of a jungle cat.

“Dancing,” Sherlock says, fuzzy with disbelief. “We were dancing.”

“Yeah,” Lestrade says. “And the rest.”

Which would explain the pneumatic drill. Not Baker Street: Lestrade’s flat. Lestrade’s bed, not for the first time, though it’s been a while.

“How’s the hangover?” Lestrade asks, sliding an arm around Sherlock’s waist.

“Foul,” Sherlock says, leaning back against him.

“Tea?” Lestrade suggests. His face is scratchy against the back of Sherlock’s neck. It’s not unpleasant.

“Tea,” Sherlock agrees, knowing he won’t have to make it. “And a shower.”

“Good idea,” Lestrade says. His arm is heavy, but the weight is oddly comforting, and doesn’t feel so much as if bits of Sherlock might be about to fall off or float away.

“Why aren’t you at work?” he asks, squinting at the alarm clock.

“My day off,” Lestrade says. “Just as well, considering.”

“Oh,” Sherlock says.

He doesn’t have days off, but he supposes this could be one. Tea, and a shower, and then –

“Why don’t Baptists fuck standing up?” he says, remembering a joke from his school days he thought he’d deleted.

“Because it’s too much like dancing,” Lestrade says, and snorts. “I fell out of the egg laughing at that one.”

“Huh,” Sherlock says. He wriggles experimentally. A bit stiff from last night’s activities, but apart from the hangover nothing actually hurts…

“Tea first,” Lestrade says firmly.

He kisses the back of Sherlock’s neck, a promise for later, and Sherlock sighs, surprisingly content.




***

Title from The Roches' song.