Fic: The List
They lay together in the silvery darkness, bodies cooling, eyelids drooping, hands and fingers grazing lazy patterns over each other’s skin. When Mycroft’s fingertips strayed over the markings he’d glimpsed earlier on Gregorys’s hip, he could feel the detective’s body tighten underneath his own. He looked up to meet his new lover’s eyes, eyes that gave silent permission to the question his own asked.
With no light but the glow from the window, he had to lift up and bend his head over close to the skin to make out the words. Not words, names. A list of five names, a thin line drawn through the second and third. He grazed his thumb across each one, testing to see if he could feel them, read them like braille, commit them to memory with sight and touch. Because, he realized, he did somehow feel the need to etch these names into his mind the way they were written into Gregory’s skin.
“Who are they?”
“It… it doesn’t matter,” the nervous tension was clear in his voice.
“It does matter. It very much matters. If you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine. But don’t tell me it doesn’t matter.”
“No. No, you’re right.” He heard him swallow, heard him clear his throat as he took a moment to decide whether or not to answer. “They do matter. They’re, ah, they’re dead people. Victims. Unsolved cases. “
Mycroft ran his finger along the first, and Gregory answered, “ Melissa Jennings, aged seven, found in the boot of an old, abandoned Ford.” They moved down the list, finger brushing, rasping voice answering. “David Keller, 19, abandoned building… Emily James, 14, her family’s back garden… Mark Evans, 6, under the slide at the park… Rose Elliot, 12, flop house in Camden.”
He felt that soft thumb rub over the two marked through, asking another silent question.
“Caught those two. Took 10 years for Keller’s, but we caught him.”
“You caught him?”
“Yeah. I caught him.”
“Those three files in your nightstand?”
Greg nodded. “I know it’s insane and unhealthy-“
“No. No, it’s just you. Part of who you are. I’m proud of who you are. Thank you for telling me.” He replaced his thumb with his lips, a sort of benediction acknowledging that he understood. He moved back up to lay his head on Gregory’s shoulder, and moved his palm to rest over the inky reminders on the man’s side.
Greg wrapped his arm around him, squeezed him so tightly that it hurt, and placed a hard kiss on the top of his head as he whispered, “You love me.”
“Yes,” Mycroft answered, though it hadn’t been a question.
He suddenly rolled Mycroft onto his back and pressed down into his body. And as he moved over him, kissing him deeply, touching him with desperate reverence, whispering his own words of devotion, Mycroft could feel Gregory’s heart drumming against his own chest and the blaze of five names burning into his own skin.