The Bone Fiddle, Chapter 7/13
Title: The Bone Fiddle
Authors: htebazytook and vulgarweed
Beta Read By: bethbethbeth THANK YOU!
Fandom: Sherlock
Rating: Overall NC-17
Word Count: ~62,000
Pairing: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Also featuring (in order of appearance): Mrs. Hudson, Greg Lestrade, Sally Donovan, Mycroft Holmes, Molly Hooper, Irene Adler, several OCs (original characters) and OCs (original corpses).
Summary: Appalachian AU!
For full summary and warnings, see Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Download the fanmix
In this chapter: The woods are closing in, and John and Sherlock begin to go deeper--about six feet.
Chapter 7 - Dig My Grave With a Silver Spade
After a change of drivers at John's driveway, he'd been almost unceremoniously thrown out of the hearse as it moved up the hill in a spray of gravel, Sherlock having gone from catatonic to manic in .01 seconds.
John found that his trailer seemed even smaller than he'd left it. He tossed his overnight bag down on this sad little couch, noting that his clean-clothing supply was approaching critical. Nothing was going to come easy these days, was it?
He stormed out of the door and looked at his pickup truck. He itched to move. Half a tank left, last he remembered. Even with a gas shortage on, couldn't he treat himself a little? He was glad Sherlock hadn't taken him up on his half-assed offer to drive all the way to White Sulphur Springs.
When he was young and his driver's license was new and so was the world, God, how John had loved to drive. That sense of freedom all boundless and shining, the backs of the mountains and the branches of the trees whirling past, the tires hugging the rolling and twisting roads, it felt like riding some giant, graceful sea serpent. He didn't expect to get much of that back right now, but his accelerator foot was twitching nonetheless. Well, why not? In the guise of an errand, he tossed a bag of laundry into the truck and told himself he'd go to the laundromat. Later.
Leaving Route 221 behind felt like a weight off his back, and the wider two-lane road welcomed him, the one that went through the heart of downtown Stanger and beyond, aiming southwest.
One of Main Street's four stoplights was out of commission, so John pretended its perpetual green color was sincere.
So far so good. The heavy gray November clouds were even deigning to let a little blue and gold shine through, and the cold wasn't too bad, and so John even rolled the window down a little to let in the smell of wood smoke and leaf mold and moss and coal dust and truck exhaust.
John remembered these roads better than he thought he would, but they were still full of surprises since it had been so long. Unsurprising, though, was the way his subconscious mind tended to turn him; no matter where he thought he wanted to go (and he had no opinion on the matter really), his treacherous steering hands always turned toward that particular the ruined mountainside on the very edge of the county; just a statistic, another horrific example of the very real consequences of that abstract legalese broad-form deed. The land that should have been his, that was barely even still land at all.
John had to wonder where the owner of the company lived. New York? Philadelphia? Washington? London? Mars? Certainly nowhere near here. No one would do this to a place they actually had to look at every day, where they had to try to grow things and drink the water.
Some sad dregs of woods remained near the foot of the decapitated hill, below where the cranes and bulldozers worked and the heavy chain-link fences sported terrifying arrays of KEEP OUTS and WARNINGS, as if the toxic dust clouds and the blasts of dynamite and roaring rock falls weren't forbidding enough.
John actually got out of the truck this time and approached the edge of the glade, where he could still see the grown-over ghost of a driveway and a stubborn clump of old rhododendrons, grown together in that way that formed dark, tangled caves, irresistible to the sort of child John had been. He'd buried a dead bird in one of them once, marked it with a little black stone. What were the odds that he'd know it if he saw it again? Not good.
He took a short stroll up the faded-out old driveway. If he was still that little boy, he could pretend it was an Indian trail or a secret path to buried treasure, promising adventure up ahead. Then again, it could also resemble one of those very real paths through the Vietnamese jungle where every step could be death. Some of the luster had gone out of those make-believe games for good, then.
He'd only just turned around to head back to his truck when he heard a twig snap, and froze dead still, every instinct yelling to find cover.
Nothing. Who or what could be out there? Probably just some animal. Hunters, maybe. Should he have worn blaze orange? Probably.
Or maybe what he needed was more camouflage, not less.
John's hands had gone dead still, and his breathing dead silent.
Ridiculous. He started to hum an aimless little tune to convince himself of his lack of fear, that every hair on the back of his neck standing up meant nothing at all.
Still, just on the off chance that it wasn't some innocent woodland creature, John thought it was best that he not telegraph his sudden fear. So he forced himself to amble. To meander. To look at the ruined ridgetop with a leisurely sadness, and above all to put his hand nowhere near the place where his concealed pistol rested.
Slowly, calmly, listening intently, he drifted towards his pickup truck, and climbed in. He pulled slowly out of his impromptu parking spot on the shoulder of the road, and he turned on the radio. Miraculously, there was a rock 'n' roll station unmarred by mountain static.
Rape, murder, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away, yeah
Okay, maybe that hadn't been the best idea. John turned the radio slowly down but not off, not at first, as he eased out onto the two-lane blacktop.
Respectable moderate speed at first, until the road started to curl and twist. John paused for a moment and slowed at a bend with a break in the trees, looking two switchbacks above.
Yes. A flash of metal in the dim late sun.
The whole murder business was making him paranoid, John thought. It was just paranoia. Had to be. And yet. He'd been to war, and he'd come back home again, damaged but alive. Some of that was dumb luck, and some of that was the work of a medic who'd been there when he couldn't be, and maybe some of that was fate or God - but still. John also knew damn well a big part of that was the fact that he'd learned to trust that particular kind of twinge.
In the jungle, on foot, he'd have some idea how to dodge. Ironically, on his home turf in good American steel, he wasn't quite so sure. It was a similar instinct, though. Roll slow. Don't use the signals. Keep going like you have all the time in the world. Wait til there's one good blind turn, when the trees and kudzu still have some leaves, and you happen to see a little dirt road, and that's when you gun it, but only enough to get out of sight. Then meander slowly and take the smallest fork road you see, so slow as to be silent.
Know where your gun is. Lay it out on the passenger seat, nice and handy, just in case they don't lay off. If they keep following, know when the next straightaway is where you can speed up fast. If they follow you at high speed, then that's when you need to start thinking about how to shoot and drive at the same time. If they don't, if they go easy behind you, then lead them along til dark, and know where the next steep up-down fork is, and that's when you go fast and down and make them hit the median sideways (if they're running fast), and if not, to take the littlest fork and cut headlights.
Oh yes, John thought, knuckles white on the steering wheel, I guess the instincts do translate, don't they?
Up above, through the brown brush, he could see it. Dark blue pickup truck, distinctive dent in the side. He remembered it from the parking lot at the dance, but it could still be almost anyone.
Drawing a deep breath, he continued on a leisurely way down the road. If he was being followed, his pursuers were hanging back just enough to avoid showing up in his rearview mirror.
Alright, well, if they wanted a slow-motion chase, he was up for it. He gunned it just a little until they reached the nearest junction, and he swung the wheel hard, turning down a little barely-marked access road that he knew looped back to the main road about half a mile down.
Slowly, he crept along, listening for tires behind him. They were none, and from his vantage point he watched the truck blow past on the main road without pausing.
Either they weren't trying that hard, or they already knew what they wanted to know, or they hadn't been following him at all.
John allowed himself a sigh of relief, but the creepy feeling never fully dispersed. This place is cursed now, he thought. There is something here that doesn't like me. Not one bit.
Well, that wasn't an entirely bad thing, if it made the place where he actually lived feel a little more like home.
He decided to sit back and allow some time to make sure his shadow was really gone. He turned off the radio, suddenly too loud without the grind of wheels to contend with. He hadn't brought anything to read, and found that despite all the old memories and the anger and the fear, the new center of gravity of thoughts, the Rome all roads in his mind led to, was Sherlock Holmes. Who could have told him in an instant who those people were, and what they wanted, and possibly what to do about it. Who would have said so in an assured, quick, deep voice, probably thrown in a mild insult or two, and still left John wanting more.
That was the problem, wasn't it? Sherlock was just too much - too smart, too demanding, too intense, too present . . . and no matter how much too much he was, John still wanted more.
John counted to ten slowly, trying to focus only on numbers and breathing and the brusque conversations of crows in the woods around him. Grateful for the old county map in his glove compartment, he was careful to take a different route home.
He took out his stash of chew to relax a bit but after the initial wash of nicotine he of course remembered that Sherlock had gotten it for him and that was it, then - Sherlock was lodged forever in his thoughts, and he might as well get used to it.
He took a different route home, grateful for the old county map in his glove compartment.
When he reached Route 221, he didn't stop at his own trailer. Still a little creeped out, he kept going until he saw Mrs. Hudson out in her yard. He was horrified to see her with a rake in her hand sweeping leaves, and he pulled up in her driveway and leapt out quickly.
"Oh no, ma'am, you're not doing that. Not while I'm around."
"You're so kind, but really . . . "
"Nope," John said, taking the rake.
"Well, is there anything I can do for you?"
"Well," John said, looking down a little. It wasn't a huge favor, really, but still, to actually ask . . . wasn't easy for him. Never had been. "You did say you had that washer-dryer . . . "
Mrs. Hudson brightened up to a ridiculous degree. "Oh, I'd be delighted. That laundromat in town is such a sad place, ain't it? Seems there's always somebody in there who's blind drunk and just watchin' the clothes go round all day like there's nothin' else to do in life."
That could have been me, John thought.
He picked up the bag of laundry from his truck and followed her into the clean, cheerful house. Still smelled good, another stew pot simmering slowly and a pan of cornbread browning on the stovetop. "You do love to cook, don't you?" John said.
"It's relaxing," she said. Her face took on a serious note. "I lived through the Depression, you know. I just feel good knowing that I have enough for myself and enough to share too."
"Sure is a blessing, ain't it?" John said as she showed him how to work the shiny new appliances. "Now, is there anything else I can do for you? After I rake your leaves?" He glanced at the woodstove. "You don't have much firewood in here right now."
"Well, there is a whole cord out by the garage. I wouldn't mind having some of it moved in here, if you don't mind."
"I'm on it!" John said happily. And he was. There was nothing like a little spot of manly yard work in the crisp and cool afternoon, wan sun on his face and chill wind on his head, watching his breath rise up in steam and staring to sweat a little warmly under his coat as he brought in armload after armload of fresh-smelling firewood, through the back door to pile by her wood heating stove, and a little by the fireplace in the living room.
"And so did you go to the dance like I insisted?" she said with a smile in her voice.
"I sure did. Good idea. Did me good to get out."
"And did you meet anyone special?"
"I met a lot of people," he said wryly. "Probably not in the way you were thinkin' of, though."
John almost dropped a pine quarter-log on his foot when he heard her front door take a pounding. With a little smile, she pushed by him into the entry way to get it.
John heard her voice go high and happy as she cried out, "Oh Sherlock, hello!" and his stomach did an odd little flip. He turned around to see Mrs. Hudson enfolded in Sherlock's arms and his dark curly head bent to kiss her cheek. The smile he gave her as he gently squeezed her petite shoulders was the most heart-meltingly normal thing John had yet seen him do. "And how are you doing, stranger?" she said to him as she firmly strong-armed him into the kitchen, smiling over her shoulder at John.
"Oh, I can't stop and visit now," Sherlock said, eyes bright and voice surging. "I'm on the trail of . . . "
"A case, is it?" Damned if she didn't look almost as excited as he did. "Is it . . . the murders?"
"Yes!"
"You shouldn't be so happy about it. It isn't decent. I know, I know, you don't care about decent, the game is on. I know you!"
"Well, I intend to make them stop," Sherlock said. "If that makes you feel any better about it."
"If anyone can, it's you."
Slick as anything, while Sherlock was distracted with talking, Mrs. Hudson took one of his hands, turned the palm up, and slapped a wedge of warm cornbread into it. "Don't you dare set that down," she said. "Only way you can get rid of it's to eat it."
Sherlock laughed, and devoured half of it one bite. John boggled, and was also relieved to have evidence that Sherlock was not, in fact, a supernatural being.
"I really came to get John here," Sherlock said, mouth still full. "Hope you don't mind. He's been a great help so far."
"I have?" John asked, startled and pleased beyond all reason.
"I'm so glad you know each other," Mrs. Hudson said. "Being neighbors and all."
"We met at the dance, as it happens," Sherlock said. "I bet you're surprised I went."
"You surprise me so much you can't surprise me at all," she said, and she winked at John with such an unmistakable I-told-you-so she might as well have hired a plane to skywrite it. Oh. Right. It's not like that, John thought frantically.
"I can't go right now," John told Sherlock. "I just put laundry in."
"Oh, don't worry about that honey, I'll take care of that for you. Just this once. I know it's important."
God damn it. She was going to touch his underwear. "That ain't right. You're not my housekeeper."
"Of course not. I'm your neighbor and that's better. Now go catch yourselves a murderer."
Sherlock had finished the cornbread, or at least there was no trace of it but two golden crumbs on his scarf. It was John who accepted the heavy old-fashioned lunchbox she wouldn't let them leave without.
Sherlock all but flew down the porch to the driveway where the hearse waited with his long coat and John right behind him.
"Where are we going now?"
"Graveyards. Old ones," Sherlock said, half-distracted. "The bones in the fiddle are human, female, and young, but they aren't Hannah's. I found soil traces full of mast from Castanea dentata. Allowing for downward sinkage of topsoil, those bones had to have been buried for no less than 30 years."
"Dentata what?"
"American Chestnut. Once the dominant tree in the region, virtually wiped out by an imported blight decades ago."
"I know what a chestnut is and what happened to them. So they're old, so why are we going . . . "
"I want to know where they came from. Theories need testing."
"There's not much light left, where are we . . . ?"
Sherlock gestured over his shoulder, and John peered through the window into the hearse's back as they pulled out of the driveway and down towards 221's only exit. John groaned with a horrified little sense of resignation.
Gloves. Sample bags. Two old-fashioned coal miner's helmets with the lamps on them. And shovels.
Just breathe, John told himself. It'll only get weirder from here. "Do you have a specific graveyard in mind? 'Cause, you know, every family used to have their own on their own land, and every church too. There've gotta be hundreds just in this one county."
"I've got it narrowed down to a short likely list," Sherlock said with a cool certainty.
"So you really want to go digging up graves."
"Not necessarily. More likely we'll find some graves that have already been dug recently. One, at least, for sure."
"Okay," John said. "Because, you know, I do have to draw the line somewhere, and I'm gonna put it right about there for now."
"Sentiment or superstition?"
"Respect."
The sound Sherlock made might have been a chuckle, but it wasn't especially derisive, so John let his hackles lie. They'd probably get enough exercise soon enough.
The main two-lane road had little to offer them; just half a mile down was the dreary little road Sherlock had in mind, with its dry brown grass overhanging its edges and deep ruts carved in it by seasonal floods. The road curved and twisted as it climbed.
"Mind if I eat?" John asked, reaching for the lunchbox.
"No," Sherlock said as he struggled a little with the gear shift.
"I noticed this thing was four-wheel-drive," John said. "How the hell did you manage that?"
"I didn't. But there was a body-shop man in Hinton who wanted to repay a favor."
"A crime you solved?"
"Both one I solved and one I chose not to."
John had no idea how Sherlock could resist the scent of the pork-and-beans and cornbread Mrs. Hudson had packed. Come to think of it, he wasn't sure Sherlock was resisting entirely, judging by the twitch of his nose and the glance of his eyes. John helped himself with the little tin spoon, and had a wild mental image of leaning that spoon over to feed Sherlock like a child while the mad genius continued to force the hearse to push itself up that road unfit for man or beast.
But the road was starting to level off a little, and they found themselves on a relatively flat level of ground - once cleared for a yard, but now overgrown in weedy little scrub trees, first level of the forest taking its own back. A wooden frame house was nearly completely collapsed, sprawled over in a tangle of warped boards and consuming vines. There was still a little bit of daylight left, though that clearly would have to be dearly spent.
Once they cleared the relatively bare patch that had once been the garden and climbed the little rise to the place where a rusted fence protected a cluster of rough stones, Sherlock immediately leaped the low gate and went down on his hands and knees among the homemade grave-markers, pushing aside years of weeds and leaves to get at the soil underneath.
John would have gladly helped if he'd had the faintest clue what to look for. Instead he just climbed the fence much more carefully than Sherlock had, and stood around watching.
"This isn't the one," Sherlock said. "Completely undisturbed. That narrows it down a little." He didn't look too dismayed, so it probably didn't narrow it down enough for John's liking.
When they were driving back down the terrifying little cattle trail, Sherlock presented John with paper covered in scrawls and scribbles. On the back was a fairly convincing topographical map with locations of likely boneyards marked.
The next one was a good seven miles away, on roads that didn't seem to improve much. Sherlock deigned to take one bite of cornbread and chew it like a cow the whole way, saying nothing at all, but at one point making a rather complicated gesture with both his hands that left the steering wheel bereft for so long John panicked and reached over to take it. Quick as a striking snake, Sherlock caught his wrist. "I'm fine."
"Didn't say you weren't," John said, looking down at his hand trapped in that relentless grip. And did Sherlock's fingers slide unnecessarily down his arm as they released him?
The road ahead could hardly even be called that anymore; grey, mostly-bare tree limbs pressed in over them as the daylight faded to a thin strip of orange at the top of the ridge, and in among the trees deep twilight was setting in. "I should have known this was the one," Sherlock muttered. "Had to be. Waste of time."
"There's hardly any light left."
"That's all right." And then the road was all but dead, a mere double footpath of aged wheel ruts. Young fast-growing trees had started to take over and render it all but impassable. "We'll have to walk the rest of the way."
"Right."
They got out, and Sherlock opened the back of the hearse. Someday, John thought, he was going to sneak in and find out exactly what was in that fascinating pile. But right now, it was clearly all about the shovels and the sacks of little collecting jars, and those damn coal miner's helmets.
John took the one he was handed and looked at it with great misgivings. He'd never been in a coal mine, but dammit, he'd known a shitload of men who'd spent most of their lives there, and had those lives broken and shortened by it - the black lung, the silicosis, the asthma, the deforming back strains and limb breakages, the repetitive strain injuries, the skin abraded and ruined and never completely clean again. And the ones who'd died - every month you heard about it, another handful of men gone not too far away. Could have been your brother, your cousin, your friend. For a lot of people John knew, it was. And that didn't even count the decades of picket line ambushes and sabotage and murders, brother turning on brother and flames of class and race hatred stoked by strikebreaking and hunger.
Some fathers wanted their sons to take after them. And other fathers would do anything to keep their sons out of that, including joining the army. Being a miner didn't take any less courage than being a soldier, and the odds weren't necessarily any better. It was going to feel to John like putting on a uniform he hadn't earned.
At least John took a little comfort in how ridiculous Sherlock looked wearing one, sighing with impatience and clearly thinking of it as nothing more than a flashlight that kept his hands free.
Seeing no alternative, John put it on and was unnerved by how well it fit. "Hi-ho," he said, and picked up a shovel.
The path through the woods was slow-going, full of lumpy roots and grasping briars, hard to see in the waning light. Second-growth woods. Very little evidence of recent human presence. Even the path itself seemed as much a product of wishful thinking as a concrete reality.
But suddenly the trees gave way on a hillside, granting a view of the shallow valley below. Two long-abandoned houses, a wood-frame and a log cabin, slowly sank into the earth, twined in vines.
At their feet stretched a graveyard, weedy and covered in fallen leaves. A handful of huge trees had been spared the logging here, and they stood stern and forbidding and protective among the tombstones. There was a massive fallen log just in front of them, finally giving in to rot. Chestnut, probably, John thought. Maybe the same one that's got its stuff all over those old bones.
Sherlock's long legs cleared the log easily, but John had more of a climb.
Sherlock had turned on the little lightbulb over his forehead like a visible metaphor, the better to study the places where some brown dead leaves might not be identical to their millions of relatives. He never stumbled on the uneven ground, never shivered at the places where the earth had sunk inward towards an occupant, never paused to be distracted by the saddest, smallest stones that marked babies who didn't live long enough to get a name.
Most of the stones were unreadable now, moss and lichens digging into their carvings, acid rain washing away white limestone. Less than half the stones were store-bought, and most of the crude etching hadn't been more than barely legible to begin with.
John knew how most of them went anyhow, and he knew a lot of what they didn't say. All ages, at any old time. Smallpox, yellow fever, diphtheria, tuberculosis, cholera, scarlet fever, rubella, meningitis, influenza, dysentery, emphysema, cancer, rheumatic fever, pneumonia. Mining, logging, farming, hunting, construction accidents. Drownings, falls, hypothermia, snakebite. Complications related to pregnancy and childbirth, biggest killer of women in their teens and twenties in those days. Fifteen years old, that one, and already with two tiny graves beside hers.
"John!" Sherlock yelled, turning around to face him and shining his helmet light directly into John's eyes, blinding him.
"Ow, don't," John said, whirling around and doing the same thing to Sherlock. We should have practiced this, he thought.
"Here," Sherlock said, pointing down. "They didn't do a bad job of covering it. I'm almost impressed. But this is it, right here!" He reached out for one of the shovels John was holding, keeping his light averted this time.
"I thought you heard me say I wasn't gonna dig up any graves."
"If I'm right, this one was already been dug up and almost half the occupant isn't home anymore. And I know I'm right."
"Well, if you know you're right . . . "
"Do you trust me?"
"That's a loaded question," John said. The answer to that could go a few different ways. "Okay, on this, yeah."
"You dig?"
Oh God, Sherlock was making a joke. "Yeah, man. I can dig it."
So they did. Carefully at first and then with cardiovascular vigor.
A few minutes in, John was beginning to be skeptical of Sherlock's utter conviction that this soil had been disturbed in the last decade. It seemed very settled, packed, and slightly frozen to him. But he kept going.
Sherlock paused for a moment, looking down at the tangle of roots in the deep black loam. He squinted for a moment at the alignment of the rough slate slabs, and made a disgruntled sound.
"Oh really now," he said, apropos of apparently nothing but obviously something, and kicked leaves up from a spot about four feet to the left and further down the hillside. "So clever it comes all the way around again to stupid," he said.
"So that wasn't the exact spot."
"Not exactly, no. Very close."
John chuckled a little and started digging near him.
"I did manage to narrow it down to here out of the whole county, you know," Sherlock grumbled.
"We'll see. Keep digging." John could already tell Sherlock was probably right, though. It was going a lot more easily here than it should. In what seemed like very little time, the hole grew wider and deeper and grave-shaped, and then dirt begin to fall in and shuffle of its own accord.
"Faster. Deeper," Sherlock gasped, panting with exertion and eagerness. "We have to get deeper."
"Trying," John grunted, sweat loosening his grip.
They were both sweaty and filthy, coats long abandoned due to surging body heat even in the chill of the night.
With a frustrated sound, Sherlock pulled off one of his gloves with his teeth, flashing like his eyes in the dim light, and reached his hand deep into the freshly dug-up grave dirt. He rolled soil around in his fingers, sniffed it, and to John's horror, actually licked a sampling from the palm of his hand. John's hand clenched around the handle of the shovel.
"Deeper," Sherlock repeated. "This isn't a match yet. Too recent. Close, though. So close."
Right. He was sticking to his story, then. John kept digging, and Sherlock kept digging, and then it happened. John's shovel hit wood, and he jumped, horrified. Not quite six feet down, more like five and change, down in the pit, there were pieces of an old coffin that was shattered and broken, and his helmet light gleamed off something off-white that just had to be carelessly scattered bone.
"I knew it," Sherlock said in unseemly triumph as their shovels worked double-time.
Then he froze, solid and still, even the steam of his breath going dark. John mirrored him. He'd heard it too.
It wasn't just a snap of a twig, it was a whole damn forest of twigs crackling, leaves rustling. Whoever it was, wasn't even trying to be quiet, and that could not be good, not out here in the woods miles from a house, no one around but wildlife and the dead. John quietly shut off his helmet light and eased the heavy thing off his head, the better to hear.
They were sitting ducks. Well, not unarmed at least, John thought. At least I'm not, don't know about him, didn't ask. Stupid. That's something we ought to know about each other if we're going to keep finding ourselves in the horror-movie zone.
The noises were getting closer and sounded bolder. "Sherlock, get down!" said John's ingrained civilian-protective instinct. John's voice was low and sharp, and his body lunged faster than his mind could think as they crashed together; Sherlock's shoe caught on a small granite footstone, and they both fell - far further than they'd expected, because they were falling into the open grave. Sherlock's helmet went spinning away above them, and its light still burned, perfectly illuminating their position, and there was nothing to be done about it.
There was a sickening crunch as they hit - on shards of rotten coffin wood, on bits of grit and rock and ancient, broken bone, and John felt Sherlock's body bending under him in a way that had to be painful. Right, John thought wildly, people were mostly shorter back then. This grave would never fit him. It's almost too short for me.
Almost
They listened hard for the sound of running feet, human voices, inevitable confrontation, probably death - yes, likely, death; as murder sites go, this one could hardly be more convenient. John supposed he ought to be making peace with God. But all John's thoughts were on wildly immediate and carnal things. Like Sherlock's body beneath him, squirming to rearrange his absurdly long limbs - usually so graceful, not right now - that lean thigh crammed between his, that earthy scent of sweat and dirt and him.
John even let out a strange little sound at the feeling of Sherlock's hand sliding under his shirt, toward the back of his jeans - at least he hoped the hand was Sherlock's - and almost giggled giddily when Sherlock whipped John's pistol out of his waistband and began to carefully aim at the rectangular patch of sky above them. So now he knows that's not my gun against his crotch, then, John thought, still perversely impressed with his own inappropriateness.
There were no human noises, none at all. In their near-perfect silence, though, there were footsteps of a sort, and an odd snuffling noise. Sherlock held so still and breathless he could almost have been a fitting grave-occupant but for his thrumming heart and intense heat, and John tried to match him. John couldn't slow his own heart either. Probably pounding through Sherlock's chest just as hard as Sherlock's pulse was rocking his.
John craned his neck to look up, and then he saw it. A curved line of a creature's side suggesting great size - shaggy black fur, beady eyes glowing red in the light from their abandoned helmets, a blunt snout snuffling and peering down at them.
"Cover your ears, John," Sherlock commanded.
"Wait, don't - "
John saw that Sherlock was aiming over the lip of the grave, well away from the beast, and he did as he was told. He felt Sherlock's chest swell with a deep intake of breath, and then came the noise. A guttural, forceful, ridiculously loud roar, rising and falling and seeming to have more than one tone, drawing itself out into a supernaturally ragged high animal shriek, as Sherlock fired the pistol three times into empty air.
John hadn't known human voices could do that. He was sure that they shouldn't. And he remembered that he'd heard it before.
The bear let out a horrified huff, and the only sounds they heard after that were those of heavy paws beating fast on the ground, and twigs and underbrush breaking, noises that rapidly got further and further away.
"What the hell?"
"That's how I chase 'em away from my beehives," Sherlock said, his voice barely hoarse at all.
"Wow," John said. "Effective!"
"You thought I was going to shoot it," Sherlock said.
"For a minute, yeah. I mean, lots of guys would."
"I wouldn't, unless I absolutely had to. Ursus americanus is rarely aggressive to humans. I helped to break up a poaching ring once."
John watched Sherlock's face change for a moment in reminiscence. John's eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and there was a slim line of cool blue moonlight. John smiled and started to push himself up to try to start climbing out of their grave.
There was a hand on John's spine, and another at the back of his head. Sherlock was holding John still - in the grave, on top of him. The grip of those hands was firm, but not full-strength. John could break it easily. If he wanted to.
He didn't.
John froze, and looked as deep as he could stand to into Sherlock's uncanny eyes. He could feel what might very well be about to happen. The Rubicon was right in front of him - and it was so very intelligent and aware, and hopeful.
"Does that happen to you when you feel a rush of adrenaline?" Sherlock asked quietly, a movement of his hips leaving little doubt as to what he meant by that. "In battle, sometimes?"
Oh God. Oh God. "Um . . . wow . . . what a question. Um . . . alright sometimes yes, it just happens."
"Not uncommon," Sherlock said. "A complex cocktail of hormones flooding the nucleus accumbens, causing a cardiovascular response . . . " John's mind glazed over. He was a fucking doctor and none of this was new information, but there was new information pressing against his thigh that was really fucking fascinating. A good-sized amount of new information - well, of course, that made sense, Sherlock was a tall man; big hands, big feet, therefore . . .
"Do you think that's sick?" John asked, pressing back against that hard ridge he felt in Sherlock's pants. "That . . . arousal from danger?"
"No, it's normal. But you're not in danger now," Sherlock said with an unreadable quirk to his mouth. "You never really were."
"I'm not so sure about that," John blurted. "I think maybe I am."
John felt his head moving lower. Closer. Sherlock was reading every single movement of every muscle in his face, John knew that by now. And John knew with terrible clarity exactly what his own body language was shouting to him.
Sherlock's hand that was on the back of John's head trickled its fingertips through John's close-cut hair briefly, and then trailed down the nape of his neck.
"I . . . I'm not a homosexual," John said quietly.
"I know," Sherlock said, and kissed him.
It only took a few seconds of those soft lips against his, and then John's nerves fired up into flame. Their lips opened slightly, parted, came together again. Again and again.
A high whimper came out of John's mouth, a deep groan came out of Sherlock's throat, and then both their mouths were slightly open and their tongues were licking each other.
Sherlock's hand tightened around John's neck and jaw to take a slight degree of control, pulling him away and drawing him back again. It was only a gentle tease, but the effect it was having on John's desire was anything but.
"Kinsey's scale is crude and limited . . . but functional in basic practice," Sherlock said, drawing back from John's mouth to use his own for what he did best. "You're not gay. Far from it. You're barely even bisexual - but you obviously are to some degree, at least enough to enjoy what you're doing with me right now. I'm currently calculating that you're about a 1.41. That could be subject to change with more data."
"Please. Please stop talking. The more you talk, the more freaked out I get. Don't."
"What will you do if I stop talking?" Sherlock asked. For once, he looked sincerely invested in the answer.
John kissed him roughly and urgently. He sucked at Sherlock's lips, he shoved his tongue into Sherlock's mouth, and he raised his body up just enough to work his hand between their bodies to squeeze that undeniable physical evidence that Sherlock had an opinion about the outcome. A sound came out of Sherlock that sounded involuntary, and that was enough for John.
John kept doing that, squeezing and tugging in rhythm, working a little bit of finesse into it, taking every little bit he remembered of every awkward clothed handjob that had ever worked for him and putting it to use.
But his - partner? Competitor? - was no slouch. What Sherlock did as a counterstrike was devastatingly effective: it was to moan and grind his cock up into John's touch, and then slide his free hand down John's back, scratching freely with his nails, pressing down on John's ass when he got to that territory, and squeezing with a claiming grip, pushing John's aching groin harder against his own.
"Do you really want me to stop talking?" Sherlock asked in a guttural sort of whisper right in John's ear, low and intimate. "I will, if you really want me to."
"Fuck," John said. "Your fucking mouth."
The mouth in question enclosed his earlobe and sucked. The hand on his ass slid down and pushed fingertips shamelessly between John's legs, and pressed.
"It's not fair!" John moaned into Sherlock's ear.
"What isn't fair?"
"You can run your hands all over me, and I'm stuck lying on you . . . "
"Push yourself up then," Sherlock said softly, and then made that very difficult by biting John's neck. Electric heat surged through John's spine, and he almost resented the delicious heating swell in his cock because he knew Sherlock would feel it and it would make him smug, so the very least he could do was to use his free hand more skillfully, scrabbling at Sherlock's belt buckle.
"Oh, I am going to make you . . . "
Sherlock's voice expressed something that wasn't a word, just an animal sort of yes, as his long legs fell open to the full extent that the fucking GRAVE, what the hell is wrong with us would allow. John closed his eyes and groaned as his hand closed around bare flesh holy shit, rock hard, slick already, uncut, at least seven inches, what have I done?
If John had had any ideas of retreating into memories of resolutely straight-oh-yes-really j/o sessions that Army men will get up to with no women around (and he'd been there), Sherlock was ready to cut that off at the pass. Those fingers pressing against his perineum through his jeans never missed a beat - their touch was rough there, gentle here, creeping around the long way to find the softness of his balls and the hardness of his cock on their way back up.
Sherlock's hand squeezing his ass was expert cruelty, as were the lewd movements of Sherlock's hips that enticed John to ride him harder, grinding between Sherlock's thighs, feeling long muscles there respond and clench, tightening and releasing around him.
John moved into that touch and push. Shamelessly, arching his back and rolling his hips in teasing hard circles sometimes, then going back to forward thrusts, his weight lifted up just a little to give space to move his hand up and down Sherlock's cock. Which was a fairly amazing and fascinating thing, an iron column cased in velvet-soft skin.
He did this knowing full well that every time he opened his eyes, he'd meet Sherlock's, and there was a good chance that Sherlock would want to kiss him again, and then John would not be able to deny how good that was, kissing him while they moved together like this, groin to groin; chest to chest; mouth to mouth, and then he'd be stuck having to admit that this was no mere utilitarian release, it was sex in its purest, finest form.
John looked down, and Sherlock's eyes were actually closed as he rode John's hand. Sherlock was overwhelmed. He was enjoying it so much. He was close to coming, had to be. Fuck, his face was beautiful like that. The heat in John's own groin was nearly critical, but first he wanted, needed to make Sherlock come. It wouldn't be long, he thought, not if he knew the male body as a doctor and he was pretty sure he did . . . but Sherlock still had enough awareness to try to make a challenge, so he fought one hand free to push John's hip up and away from him on one side, enough to wind fingers in around John's belt buckle and jeans fly, opening his pants enough to touch . . .
And then those weird eyes flew open again, dilated and dark and knowing. And then Sherlock froze. And then John heard it.
So quiet. Gravel on the bend of the road far below. The driver wasn't trying to be quiet, the car was coming fast.
"Left rear tire worn down on the inside because of the untreated driveway of the back lot at the sheriff's office," Sherlock said quickly and quietly. "It's Lestrade."
John all but wailed in frustration. "Really? Fuck, how much time do we have?"
"He's reached the end of the road," Sherlock said, handing John's pistol back to him. The cold of the metal was a shock after the heat of Sherlock's skin. "Judging by his speed, he thinks it's an emergency. He'll have to walk the path as we did, but at least one of our lights is still out there, so he can follow that lead. My estimate is four minutes at best. We need to not be in the grave when he arrives."
John groaned. He decided he had the right to stake out at least a few seconds, and he shoved his cold, filthy hands into Sherlock's wild hair and kissed him hard, thrusting his tongue in. Sherlock responded, but John could tell the attention was no longer all there.
"Right," John said, struggling to kneel up and close his pants, taking a last longing look at Sherlock beneath him.
It was so dark in that grave, he wasn't even sure he read Sherlock's lips correctly, but he thought that beautiful man still trying to shove an erection that couldn't possibly fit into pants so well-tailored, might have whispered, "Later, soon, I promise."
***
Chapter 8
Authors: htebazytook and vulgarweed
Beta Read By: bethbethbeth THANK YOU!
Fandom: Sherlock
Rating: Overall NC-17
Word Count: ~62,000
Pairing: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Also featuring (in order of appearance): Mrs. Hudson, Greg Lestrade, Sally Donovan, Mycroft Holmes, Molly Hooper, Irene Adler, several OCs (original characters) and OCs (original corpses).
Summary: Appalachian AU!
For full summary and warnings, see Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Download the fanmix
In this chapter: The woods are closing in, and John and Sherlock begin to go deeper--about six feet.
Chapter 7 - Dig My Grave With a Silver Spade
After a change of drivers at John's driveway, he'd been almost unceremoniously thrown out of the hearse as it moved up the hill in a spray of gravel, Sherlock having gone from catatonic to manic in .01 seconds.
John found that his trailer seemed even smaller than he'd left it. He tossed his overnight bag down on this sad little couch, noting that his clean-clothing supply was approaching critical. Nothing was going to come easy these days, was it?
He stormed out of the door and looked at his pickup truck. He itched to move. Half a tank left, last he remembered. Even with a gas shortage on, couldn't he treat himself a little? He was glad Sherlock hadn't taken him up on his half-assed offer to drive all the way to White Sulphur Springs.
When he was young and his driver's license was new and so was the world, God, how John had loved to drive. That sense of freedom all boundless and shining, the backs of the mountains and the branches of the trees whirling past, the tires hugging the rolling and twisting roads, it felt like riding some giant, graceful sea serpent. He didn't expect to get much of that back right now, but his accelerator foot was twitching nonetheless. Well, why not? In the guise of an errand, he tossed a bag of laundry into the truck and told himself he'd go to the laundromat. Later.
Leaving Route 221 behind felt like a weight off his back, and the wider two-lane road welcomed him, the one that went through the heart of downtown Stanger and beyond, aiming southwest.
One of Main Street's four stoplights was out of commission, so John pretended its perpetual green color was sincere.
So far so good. The heavy gray November clouds were even deigning to let a little blue and gold shine through, and the cold wasn't too bad, and so John even rolled the window down a little to let in the smell of wood smoke and leaf mold and moss and coal dust and truck exhaust.
John remembered these roads better than he thought he would, but they were still full of surprises since it had been so long. Unsurprising, though, was the way his subconscious mind tended to turn him; no matter where he thought he wanted to go (and he had no opinion on the matter really), his treacherous steering hands always turned toward that particular the ruined mountainside on the very edge of the county; just a statistic, another horrific example of the very real consequences of that abstract legalese broad-form deed. The land that should have been his, that was barely even still land at all.
John had to wonder where the owner of the company lived. New York? Philadelphia? Washington? London? Mars? Certainly nowhere near here. No one would do this to a place they actually had to look at every day, where they had to try to grow things and drink the water.
Some sad dregs of woods remained near the foot of the decapitated hill, below where the cranes and bulldozers worked and the heavy chain-link fences sported terrifying arrays of KEEP OUTS and WARNINGS, as if the toxic dust clouds and the blasts of dynamite and roaring rock falls weren't forbidding enough.
John actually got out of the truck this time and approached the edge of the glade, where he could still see the grown-over ghost of a driveway and a stubborn clump of old rhododendrons, grown together in that way that formed dark, tangled caves, irresistible to the sort of child John had been. He'd buried a dead bird in one of them once, marked it with a little black stone. What were the odds that he'd know it if he saw it again? Not good.
He took a short stroll up the faded-out old driveway. If he was still that little boy, he could pretend it was an Indian trail or a secret path to buried treasure, promising adventure up ahead. Then again, it could also resemble one of those very real paths through the Vietnamese jungle where every step could be death. Some of the luster had gone out of those make-believe games for good, then.
He'd only just turned around to head back to his truck when he heard a twig snap, and froze dead still, every instinct yelling to find cover.
Nothing. Who or what could be out there? Probably just some animal. Hunters, maybe. Should he have worn blaze orange? Probably.
Or maybe what he needed was more camouflage, not less.
John's hands had gone dead still, and his breathing dead silent.
Ridiculous. He started to hum an aimless little tune to convince himself of his lack of fear, that every hair on the back of his neck standing up meant nothing at all.
Still, just on the off chance that it wasn't some innocent woodland creature, John thought it was best that he not telegraph his sudden fear. So he forced himself to amble. To meander. To look at the ruined ridgetop with a leisurely sadness, and above all to put his hand nowhere near the place where his concealed pistol rested.
Slowly, calmly, listening intently, he drifted towards his pickup truck, and climbed in. He pulled slowly out of his impromptu parking spot on the shoulder of the road, and he turned on the radio. Miraculously, there was a rock 'n' roll station unmarred by mountain static.
Rape, murder, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away, yeah
Okay, maybe that hadn't been the best idea. John turned the radio slowly down but not off, not at first, as he eased out onto the two-lane blacktop.
Respectable moderate speed at first, until the road started to curl and twist. John paused for a moment and slowed at a bend with a break in the trees, looking two switchbacks above.
Yes. A flash of metal in the dim late sun.
The whole murder business was making him paranoid, John thought. It was just paranoia. Had to be. And yet. He'd been to war, and he'd come back home again, damaged but alive. Some of that was dumb luck, and some of that was the work of a medic who'd been there when he couldn't be, and maybe some of that was fate or God - but still. John also knew damn well a big part of that was the fact that he'd learned to trust that particular kind of twinge.
In the jungle, on foot, he'd have some idea how to dodge. Ironically, on his home turf in good American steel, he wasn't quite so sure. It was a similar instinct, though. Roll slow. Don't use the signals. Keep going like you have all the time in the world. Wait til there's one good blind turn, when the trees and kudzu still have some leaves, and you happen to see a little dirt road, and that's when you gun it, but only enough to get out of sight. Then meander slowly and take the smallest fork road you see, so slow as to be silent.
Know where your gun is. Lay it out on the passenger seat, nice and handy, just in case they don't lay off. If they keep following, know when the next straightaway is where you can speed up fast. If they follow you at high speed, then that's when you need to start thinking about how to shoot and drive at the same time. If they don't, if they go easy behind you, then lead them along til dark, and know where the next steep up-down fork is, and that's when you go fast and down and make them hit the median sideways (if they're running fast), and if not, to take the littlest fork and cut headlights.
Oh yes, John thought, knuckles white on the steering wheel, I guess the instincts do translate, don't they?
Up above, through the brown brush, he could see it. Dark blue pickup truck, distinctive dent in the side. He remembered it from the parking lot at the dance, but it could still be almost anyone.
Drawing a deep breath, he continued on a leisurely way down the road. If he was being followed, his pursuers were hanging back just enough to avoid showing up in his rearview mirror.
Alright, well, if they wanted a slow-motion chase, he was up for it. He gunned it just a little until they reached the nearest junction, and he swung the wheel hard, turning down a little barely-marked access road that he knew looped back to the main road about half a mile down.
Slowly, he crept along, listening for tires behind him. They were none, and from his vantage point he watched the truck blow past on the main road without pausing.
Either they weren't trying that hard, or they already knew what they wanted to know, or they hadn't been following him at all.
John allowed himself a sigh of relief, but the creepy feeling never fully dispersed. This place is cursed now, he thought. There is something here that doesn't like me. Not one bit.
Well, that wasn't an entirely bad thing, if it made the place where he actually lived feel a little more like home.
He decided to sit back and allow some time to make sure his shadow was really gone. He turned off the radio, suddenly too loud without the grind of wheels to contend with. He hadn't brought anything to read, and found that despite all the old memories and the anger and the fear, the new center of gravity of thoughts, the Rome all roads in his mind led to, was Sherlock Holmes. Who could have told him in an instant who those people were, and what they wanted, and possibly what to do about it. Who would have said so in an assured, quick, deep voice, probably thrown in a mild insult or two, and still left John wanting more.
That was the problem, wasn't it? Sherlock was just too much - too smart, too demanding, too intense, too present . . . and no matter how much too much he was, John still wanted more.
John counted to ten slowly, trying to focus only on numbers and breathing and the brusque conversations of crows in the woods around him. Grateful for the old county map in his glove compartment, he was careful to take a different route home.
He took out his stash of chew to relax a bit but after the initial wash of nicotine he of course remembered that Sherlock had gotten it for him and that was it, then - Sherlock was lodged forever in his thoughts, and he might as well get used to it.
He took a different route home, grateful for the old county map in his glove compartment.
When he reached Route 221, he didn't stop at his own trailer. Still a little creeped out, he kept going until he saw Mrs. Hudson out in her yard. He was horrified to see her with a rake in her hand sweeping leaves, and he pulled up in her driveway and leapt out quickly.
"Oh no, ma'am, you're not doing that. Not while I'm around."
"You're so kind, but really . . . "
"Nope," John said, taking the rake.
"Well, is there anything I can do for you?"
"Well," John said, looking down a little. It wasn't a huge favor, really, but still, to actually ask . . . wasn't easy for him. Never had been. "You did say you had that washer-dryer . . . "
Mrs. Hudson brightened up to a ridiculous degree. "Oh, I'd be delighted. That laundromat in town is such a sad place, ain't it? Seems there's always somebody in there who's blind drunk and just watchin' the clothes go round all day like there's nothin' else to do in life."
That could have been me, John thought.
He picked up the bag of laundry from his truck and followed her into the clean, cheerful house. Still smelled good, another stew pot simmering slowly and a pan of cornbread browning on the stovetop. "You do love to cook, don't you?" John said.
"It's relaxing," she said. Her face took on a serious note. "I lived through the Depression, you know. I just feel good knowing that I have enough for myself and enough to share too."
"Sure is a blessing, ain't it?" John said as she showed him how to work the shiny new appliances. "Now, is there anything else I can do for you? After I rake your leaves?" He glanced at the woodstove. "You don't have much firewood in here right now."
"Well, there is a whole cord out by the garage. I wouldn't mind having some of it moved in here, if you don't mind."
"I'm on it!" John said happily. And he was. There was nothing like a little spot of manly yard work in the crisp and cool afternoon, wan sun on his face and chill wind on his head, watching his breath rise up in steam and staring to sweat a little warmly under his coat as he brought in armload after armload of fresh-smelling firewood, through the back door to pile by her wood heating stove, and a little by the fireplace in the living room.
"And so did you go to the dance like I insisted?" she said with a smile in her voice.
"I sure did. Good idea. Did me good to get out."
"And did you meet anyone special?"
"I met a lot of people," he said wryly. "Probably not in the way you were thinkin' of, though."
John almost dropped a pine quarter-log on his foot when he heard her front door take a pounding. With a little smile, she pushed by him into the entry way to get it.
John heard her voice go high and happy as she cried out, "Oh Sherlock, hello!" and his stomach did an odd little flip. He turned around to see Mrs. Hudson enfolded in Sherlock's arms and his dark curly head bent to kiss her cheek. The smile he gave her as he gently squeezed her petite shoulders was the most heart-meltingly normal thing John had yet seen him do. "And how are you doing, stranger?" she said to him as she firmly strong-armed him into the kitchen, smiling over her shoulder at John.
"Oh, I can't stop and visit now," Sherlock said, eyes bright and voice surging. "I'm on the trail of . . . "
"A case, is it?" Damned if she didn't look almost as excited as he did. "Is it . . . the murders?"
"Yes!"
"You shouldn't be so happy about it. It isn't decent. I know, I know, you don't care about decent, the game is on. I know you!"
"Well, I intend to make them stop," Sherlock said. "If that makes you feel any better about it."
"If anyone can, it's you."
Slick as anything, while Sherlock was distracted with talking, Mrs. Hudson took one of his hands, turned the palm up, and slapped a wedge of warm cornbread into it. "Don't you dare set that down," she said. "Only way you can get rid of it's to eat it."
Sherlock laughed, and devoured half of it one bite. John boggled, and was also relieved to have evidence that Sherlock was not, in fact, a supernatural being.
"I really came to get John here," Sherlock said, mouth still full. "Hope you don't mind. He's been a great help so far."
"I have?" John asked, startled and pleased beyond all reason.
"I'm so glad you know each other," Mrs. Hudson said. "Being neighbors and all."
"We met at the dance, as it happens," Sherlock said. "I bet you're surprised I went."
"You surprise me so much you can't surprise me at all," she said, and she winked at John with such an unmistakable I-told-you-so she might as well have hired a plane to skywrite it. Oh. Right. It's not like that, John thought frantically.
"I can't go right now," John told Sherlock. "I just put laundry in."
"Oh, don't worry about that honey, I'll take care of that for you. Just this once. I know it's important."
God damn it. She was going to touch his underwear. "That ain't right. You're not my housekeeper."
"Of course not. I'm your neighbor and that's better. Now go catch yourselves a murderer."
Sherlock had finished the cornbread, or at least there was no trace of it but two golden crumbs on his scarf. It was John who accepted the heavy old-fashioned lunchbox she wouldn't let them leave without.
Sherlock all but flew down the porch to the driveway where the hearse waited with his long coat and John right behind him.
"Where are we going now?"
"Graveyards. Old ones," Sherlock said, half-distracted. "The bones in the fiddle are human, female, and young, but they aren't Hannah's. I found soil traces full of mast from Castanea dentata. Allowing for downward sinkage of topsoil, those bones had to have been buried for no less than 30 years."
"Dentata what?"
"American Chestnut. Once the dominant tree in the region, virtually wiped out by an imported blight decades ago."
"I know what a chestnut is and what happened to them. So they're old, so why are we going . . . "
"I want to know where they came from. Theories need testing."
"There's not much light left, where are we . . . ?"
Sherlock gestured over his shoulder, and John peered through the window into the hearse's back as they pulled out of the driveway and down towards 221's only exit. John groaned with a horrified little sense of resignation.
Gloves. Sample bags. Two old-fashioned coal miner's helmets with the lamps on them. And shovels.
Just breathe, John told himself. It'll only get weirder from here. "Do you have a specific graveyard in mind? 'Cause, you know, every family used to have their own on their own land, and every church too. There've gotta be hundreds just in this one county."
"I've got it narrowed down to a short likely list," Sherlock said with a cool certainty.
"So you really want to go digging up graves."
"Not necessarily. More likely we'll find some graves that have already been dug recently. One, at least, for sure."
"Okay," John said. "Because, you know, I do have to draw the line somewhere, and I'm gonna put it right about there for now."
"Sentiment or superstition?"
"Respect."
The sound Sherlock made might have been a chuckle, but it wasn't especially derisive, so John let his hackles lie. They'd probably get enough exercise soon enough.
The main two-lane road had little to offer them; just half a mile down was the dreary little road Sherlock had in mind, with its dry brown grass overhanging its edges and deep ruts carved in it by seasonal floods. The road curved and twisted as it climbed.
"Mind if I eat?" John asked, reaching for the lunchbox.
"No," Sherlock said as he struggled a little with the gear shift.
"I noticed this thing was four-wheel-drive," John said. "How the hell did you manage that?"
"I didn't. But there was a body-shop man in Hinton who wanted to repay a favor."
"A crime you solved?"
"Both one I solved and one I chose not to."
John had no idea how Sherlock could resist the scent of the pork-and-beans and cornbread Mrs. Hudson had packed. Come to think of it, he wasn't sure Sherlock was resisting entirely, judging by the twitch of his nose and the glance of his eyes. John helped himself with the little tin spoon, and had a wild mental image of leaning that spoon over to feed Sherlock like a child while the mad genius continued to force the hearse to push itself up that road unfit for man or beast.
But the road was starting to level off a little, and they found themselves on a relatively flat level of ground - once cleared for a yard, but now overgrown in weedy little scrub trees, first level of the forest taking its own back. A wooden frame house was nearly completely collapsed, sprawled over in a tangle of warped boards and consuming vines. There was still a little bit of daylight left, though that clearly would have to be dearly spent.
Once they cleared the relatively bare patch that had once been the garden and climbed the little rise to the place where a rusted fence protected a cluster of rough stones, Sherlock immediately leaped the low gate and went down on his hands and knees among the homemade grave-markers, pushing aside years of weeds and leaves to get at the soil underneath.
John would have gladly helped if he'd had the faintest clue what to look for. Instead he just climbed the fence much more carefully than Sherlock had, and stood around watching.
"This isn't the one," Sherlock said. "Completely undisturbed. That narrows it down a little." He didn't look too dismayed, so it probably didn't narrow it down enough for John's liking.
When they were driving back down the terrifying little cattle trail, Sherlock presented John with paper covered in scrawls and scribbles. On the back was a fairly convincing topographical map with locations of likely boneyards marked.
The next one was a good seven miles away, on roads that didn't seem to improve much. Sherlock deigned to take one bite of cornbread and chew it like a cow the whole way, saying nothing at all, but at one point making a rather complicated gesture with both his hands that left the steering wheel bereft for so long John panicked and reached over to take it. Quick as a striking snake, Sherlock caught his wrist. "I'm fine."
"Didn't say you weren't," John said, looking down at his hand trapped in that relentless grip. And did Sherlock's fingers slide unnecessarily down his arm as they released him?
The road ahead could hardly even be called that anymore; grey, mostly-bare tree limbs pressed in over them as the daylight faded to a thin strip of orange at the top of the ridge, and in among the trees deep twilight was setting in. "I should have known this was the one," Sherlock muttered. "Had to be. Waste of time."
"There's hardly any light left."
"That's all right." And then the road was all but dead, a mere double footpath of aged wheel ruts. Young fast-growing trees had started to take over and render it all but impassable. "We'll have to walk the rest of the way."
"Right."
They got out, and Sherlock opened the back of the hearse. Someday, John thought, he was going to sneak in and find out exactly what was in that fascinating pile. But right now, it was clearly all about the shovels and the sacks of little collecting jars, and those damn coal miner's helmets.
John took the one he was handed and looked at it with great misgivings. He'd never been in a coal mine, but dammit, he'd known a shitload of men who'd spent most of their lives there, and had those lives broken and shortened by it - the black lung, the silicosis, the asthma, the deforming back strains and limb breakages, the repetitive strain injuries, the skin abraded and ruined and never completely clean again. And the ones who'd died - every month you heard about it, another handful of men gone not too far away. Could have been your brother, your cousin, your friend. For a lot of people John knew, it was. And that didn't even count the decades of picket line ambushes and sabotage and murders, brother turning on brother and flames of class and race hatred stoked by strikebreaking and hunger.
Some fathers wanted their sons to take after them. And other fathers would do anything to keep their sons out of that, including joining the army. Being a miner didn't take any less courage than being a soldier, and the odds weren't necessarily any better. It was going to feel to John like putting on a uniform he hadn't earned.
At least John took a little comfort in how ridiculous Sherlock looked wearing one, sighing with impatience and clearly thinking of it as nothing more than a flashlight that kept his hands free.
Seeing no alternative, John put it on and was unnerved by how well it fit. "Hi-ho," he said, and picked up a shovel.
The path through the woods was slow-going, full of lumpy roots and grasping briars, hard to see in the waning light. Second-growth woods. Very little evidence of recent human presence. Even the path itself seemed as much a product of wishful thinking as a concrete reality.
But suddenly the trees gave way on a hillside, granting a view of the shallow valley below. Two long-abandoned houses, a wood-frame and a log cabin, slowly sank into the earth, twined in vines.
At their feet stretched a graveyard, weedy and covered in fallen leaves. A handful of huge trees had been spared the logging here, and they stood stern and forbidding and protective among the tombstones. There was a massive fallen log just in front of them, finally giving in to rot. Chestnut, probably, John thought. Maybe the same one that's got its stuff all over those old bones.
Sherlock's long legs cleared the log easily, but John had more of a climb.
Sherlock had turned on the little lightbulb over his forehead like a visible metaphor, the better to study the places where some brown dead leaves might not be identical to their millions of relatives. He never stumbled on the uneven ground, never shivered at the places where the earth had sunk inward towards an occupant, never paused to be distracted by the saddest, smallest stones that marked babies who didn't live long enough to get a name.
Most of the stones were unreadable now, moss and lichens digging into their carvings, acid rain washing away white limestone. Less than half the stones were store-bought, and most of the crude etching hadn't been more than barely legible to begin with.
John knew how most of them went anyhow, and he knew a lot of what they didn't say. All ages, at any old time. Smallpox, yellow fever, diphtheria, tuberculosis, cholera, scarlet fever, rubella, meningitis, influenza, dysentery, emphysema, cancer, rheumatic fever, pneumonia. Mining, logging, farming, hunting, construction accidents. Drownings, falls, hypothermia, snakebite. Complications related to pregnancy and childbirth, biggest killer of women in their teens and twenties in those days. Fifteen years old, that one, and already with two tiny graves beside hers.
"John!" Sherlock yelled, turning around to face him and shining his helmet light directly into John's eyes, blinding him.
"Ow, don't," John said, whirling around and doing the same thing to Sherlock. We should have practiced this, he thought.
"Here," Sherlock said, pointing down. "They didn't do a bad job of covering it. I'm almost impressed. But this is it, right here!" He reached out for one of the shovels John was holding, keeping his light averted this time.
"I thought you heard me say I wasn't gonna dig up any graves."
"If I'm right, this one was already been dug up and almost half the occupant isn't home anymore. And I know I'm right."
"Well, if you know you're right . . . "
"Do you trust me?"
"That's a loaded question," John said. The answer to that could go a few different ways. "Okay, on this, yeah."
"You dig?"
Oh God, Sherlock was making a joke. "Yeah, man. I can dig it."
So they did. Carefully at first and then with cardiovascular vigor.
A few minutes in, John was beginning to be skeptical of Sherlock's utter conviction that this soil had been disturbed in the last decade. It seemed very settled, packed, and slightly frozen to him. But he kept going.
Sherlock paused for a moment, looking down at the tangle of roots in the deep black loam. He squinted for a moment at the alignment of the rough slate slabs, and made a disgruntled sound.
"Oh really now," he said, apropos of apparently nothing but obviously something, and kicked leaves up from a spot about four feet to the left and further down the hillside. "So clever it comes all the way around again to stupid," he said.
"So that wasn't the exact spot."
"Not exactly, no. Very close."
John chuckled a little and started digging near him.
"I did manage to narrow it down to here out of the whole county, you know," Sherlock grumbled.
"We'll see. Keep digging." John could already tell Sherlock was probably right, though. It was going a lot more easily here than it should. In what seemed like very little time, the hole grew wider and deeper and grave-shaped, and then dirt begin to fall in and shuffle of its own accord.
"Faster. Deeper," Sherlock gasped, panting with exertion and eagerness. "We have to get deeper."
"Trying," John grunted, sweat loosening his grip.
They were both sweaty and filthy, coats long abandoned due to surging body heat even in the chill of the night.
With a frustrated sound, Sherlock pulled off one of his gloves with his teeth, flashing like his eyes in the dim light, and reached his hand deep into the freshly dug-up grave dirt. He rolled soil around in his fingers, sniffed it, and to John's horror, actually licked a sampling from the palm of his hand. John's hand clenched around the handle of the shovel.
"Deeper," Sherlock repeated. "This isn't a match yet. Too recent. Close, though. So close."
Right. He was sticking to his story, then. John kept digging, and Sherlock kept digging, and then it happened. John's shovel hit wood, and he jumped, horrified. Not quite six feet down, more like five and change, down in the pit, there were pieces of an old coffin that was shattered and broken, and his helmet light gleamed off something off-white that just had to be carelessly scattered bone.
"I knew it," Sherlock said in unseemly triumph as their shovels worked double-time.
Then he froze, solid and still, even the steam of his breath going dark. John mirrored him. He'd heard it too.
It wasn't just a snap of a twig, it was a whole damn forest of twigs crackling, leaves rustling. Whoever it was, wasn't even trying to be quiet, and that could not be good, not out here in the woods miles from a house, no one around but wildlife and the dead. John quietly shut off his helmet light and eased the heavy thing off his head, the better to hear.
They were sitting ducks. Well, not unarmed at least, John thought. At least I'm not, don't know about him, didn't ask. Stupid. That's something we ought to know about each other if we're going to keep finding ourselves in the horror-movie zone.
The noises were getting closer and sounded bolder. "Sherlock, get down!" said John's ingrained civilian-protective instinct. John's voice was low and sharp, and his body lunged faster than his mind could think as they crashed together; Sherlock's shoe caught on a small granite footstone, and they both fell - far further than they'd expected, because they were falling into the open grave. Sherlock's helmet went spinning away above them, and its light still burned, perfectly illuminating their position, and there was nothing to be done about it.
There was a sickening crunch as they hit - on shards of rotten coffin wood, on bits of grit and rock and ancient, broken bone, and John felt Sherlock's body bending under him in a way that had to be painful. Right, John thought wildly, people were mostly shorter back then. This grave would never fit him. It's almost too short for me.
Almost
They listened hard for the sound of running feet, human voices, inevitable confrontation, probably death - yes, likely, death; as murder sites go, this one could hardly be more convenient. John supposed he ought to be making peace with God. But all John's thoughts were on wildly immediate and carnal things. Like Sherlock's body beneath him, squirming to rearrange his absurdly long limbs - usually so graceful, not right now - that lean thigh crammed between his, that earthy scent of sweat and dirt and him.
John even let out a strange little sound at the feeling of Sherlock's hand sliding under his shirt, toward the back of his jeans - at least he hoped the hand was Sherlock's - and almost giggled giddily when Sherlock whipped John's pistol out of his waistband and began to carefully aim at the rectangular patch of sky above them. So now he knows that's not my gun against his crotch, then, John thought, still perversely impressed with his own inappropriateness.
There were no human noises, none at all. In their near-perfect silence, though, there were footsteps of a sort, and an odd snuffling noise. Sherlock held so still and breathless he could almost have been a fitting grave-occupant but for his thrumming heart and intense heat, and John tried to match him. John couldn't slow his own heart either. Probably pounding through Sherlock's chest just as hard as Sherlock's pulse was rocking his.
John craned his neck to look up, and then he saw it. A curved line of a creature's side suggesting great size - shaggy black fur, beady eyes glowing red in the light from their abandoned helmets, a blunt snout snuffling and peering down at them.
"Cover your ears, John," Sherlock commanded.
"Wait, don't - "
John saw that Sherlock was aiming over the lip of the grave, well away from the beast, and he did as he was told. He felt Sherlock's chest swell with a deep intake of breath, and then came the noise. A guttural, forceful, ridiculously loud roar, rising and falling and seeming to have more than one tone, drawing itself out into a supernaturally ragged high animal shriek, as Sherlock fired the pistol three times into empty air.
John hadn't known human voices could do that. He was sure that they shouldn't. And he remembered that he'd heard it before.
The bear let out a horrified huff, and the only sounds they heard after that were those of heavy paws beating fast on the ground, and twigs and underbrush breaking, noises that rapidly got further and further away.
"What the hell?"
"That's how I chase 'em away from my beehives," Sherlock said, his voice barely hoarse at all.
"Wow," John said. "Effective!"
"You thought I was going to shoot it," Sherlock said.
"For a minute, yeah. I mean, lots of guys would."
"I wouldn't, unless I absolutely had to. Ursus americanus is rarely aggressive to humans. I helped to break up a poaching ring once."
John watched Sherlock's face change for a moment in reminiscence. John's eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and there was a slim line of cool blue moonlight. John smiled and started to push himself up to try to start climbing out of their grave.
There was a hand on John's spine, and another at the back of his head. Sherlock was holding John still - in the grave, on top of him. The grip of those hands was firm, but not full-strength. John could break it easily. If he wanted to.
He didn't.
John froze, and looked as deep as he could stand to into Sherlock's uncanny eyes. He could feel what might very well be about to happen. The Rubicon was right in front of him - and it was so very intelligent and aware, and hopeful.
"Does that happen to you when you feel a rush of adrenaline?" Sherlock asked quietly, a movement of his hips leaving little doubt as to what he meant by that. "In battle, sometimes?"
Oh God. Oh God. "Um . . . wow . . . what a question. Um . . . alright sometimes yes, it just happens."
"Not uncommon," Sherlock said. "A complex cocktail of hormones flooding the nucleus accumbens, causing a cardiovascular response . . . " John's mind glazed over. He was a fucking doctor and none of this was new information, but there was new information pressing against his thigh that was really fucking fascinating. A good-sized amount of new information - well, of course, that made sense, Sherlock was a tall man; big hands, big feet, therefore . . .
"Do you think that's sick?" John asked, pressing back against that hard ridge he felt in Sherlock's pants. "That . . . arousal from danger?"
"No, it's normal. But you're not in danger now," Sherlock said with an unreadable quirk to his mouth. "You never really were."
"I'm not so sure about that," John blurted. "I think maybe I am."
John felt his head moving lower. Closer. Sherlock was reading every single movement of every muscle in his face, John knew that by now. And John knew with terrible clarity exactly what his own body language was shouting to him.
Sherlock's hand that was on the back of John's head trickled its fingertips through John's close-cut hair briefly, and then trailed down the nape of his neck.
"I . . . I'm not a homosexual," John said quietly.
"I know," Sherlock said, and kissed him.
It only took a few seconds of those soft lips against his, and then John's nerves fired up into flame. Their lips opened slightly, parted, came together again. Again and again.
A high whimper came out of John's mouth, a deep groan came out of Sherlock's throat, and then both their mouths were slightly open and their tongues were licking each other.
Sherlock's hand tightened around John's neck and jaw to take a slight degree of control, pulling him away and drawing him back again. It was only a gentle tease, but the effect it was having on John's desire was anything but.
"Kinsey's scale is crude and limited . . . but functional in basic practice," Sherlock said, drawing back from John's mouth to use his own for what he did best. "You're not gay. Far from it. You're barely even bisexual - but you obviously are to some degree, at least enough to enjoy what you're doing with me right now. I'm currently calculating that you're about a 1.41. That could be subject to change with more data."
"Please. Please stop talking. The more you talk, the more freaked out I get. Don't."
"What will you do if I stop talking?" Sherlock asked. For once, he looked sincerely invested in the answer.
John kissed him roughly and urgently. He sucked at Sherlock's lips, he shoved his tongue into Sherlock's mouth, and he raised his body up just enough to work his hand between their bodies to squeeze that undeniable physical evidence that Sherlock had an opinion about the outcome. A sound came out of Sherlock that sounded involuntary, and that was enough for John.
John kept doing that, squeezing and tugging in rhythm, working a little bit of finesse into it, taking every little bit he remembered of every awkward clothed handjob that had ever worked for him and putting it to use.
But his - partner? Competitor? - was no slouch. What Sherlock did as a counterstrike was devastatingly effective: it was to moan and grind his cock up into John's touch, and then slide his free hand down John's back, scratching freely with his nails, pressing down on John's ass when he got to that territory, and squeezing with a claiming grip, pushing John's aching groin harder against his own.
"Do you really want me to stop talking?" Sherlock asked in a guttural sort of whisper right in John's ear, low and intimate. "I will, if you really want me to."
"Fuck," John said. "Your fucking mouth."
The mouth in question enclosed his earlobe and sucked. The hand on his ass slid down and pushed fingertips shamelessly between John's legs, and pressed.
"It's not fair!" John moaned into Sherlock's ear.
"What isn't fair?"
"You can run your hands all over me, and I'm stuck lying on you . . . "
"Push yourself up then," Sherlock said softly, and then made that very difficult by biting John's neck. Electric heat surged through John's spine, and he almost resented the delicious heating swell in his cock because he knew Sherlock would feel it and it would make him smug, so the very least he could do was to use his free hand more skillfully, scrabbling at Sherlock's belt buckle.
"Oh, I am going to make you . . . "
Sherlock's voice expressed something that wasn't a word, just an animal sort of yes, as his long legs fell open to the full extent that the fucking GRAVE, what the hell is wrong with us would allow. John closed his eyes and groaned as his hand closed around bare flesh holy shit, rock hard, slick already, uncut, at least seven inches, what have I done?
If John had had any ideas of retreating into memories of resolutely straight-oh-yes-really j/o sessions that Army men will get up to with no women around (and he'd been there), Sherlock was ready to cut that off at the pass. Those fingers pressing against his perineum through his jeans never missed a beat - their touch was rough there, gentle here, creeping around the long way to find the softness of his balls and the hardness of his cock on their way back up.
Sherlock's hand squeezing his ass was expert cruelty, as were the lewd movements of Sherlock's hips that enticed John to ride him harder, grinding between Sherlock's thighs, feeling long muscles there respond and clench, tightening and releasing around him.
John moved into that touch and push. Shamelessly, arching his back and rolling his hips in teasing hard circles sometimes, then going back to forward thrusts, his weight lifted up just a little to give space to move his hand up and down Sherlock's cock. Which was a fairly amazing and fascinating thing, an iron column cased in velvet-soft skin.
He did this knowing full well that every time he opened his eyes, he'd meet Sherlock's, and there was a good chance that Sherlock would want to kiss him again, and then John would not be able to deny how good that was, kissing him while they moved together like this, groin to groin; chest to chest; mouth to mouth, and then he'd be stuck having to admit that this was no mere utilitarian release, it was sex in its purest, finest form.
John looked down, and Sherlock's eyes were actually closed as he rode John's hand. Sherlock was overwhelmed. He was enjoying it so much. He was close to coming, had to be. Fuck, his face was beautiful like that. The heat in John's own groin was nearly critical, but first he wanted, needed to make Sherlock come. It wouldn't be long, he thought, not if he knew the male body as a doctor and he was pretty sure he did . . . but Sherlock still had enough awareness to try to make a challenge, so he fought one hand free to push John's hip up and away from him on one side, enough to wind fingers in around John's belt buckle and jeans fly, opening his pants enough to touch . . .
And then those weird eyes flew open again, dilated and dark and knowing. And then Sherlock froze. And then John heard it.
So quiet. Gravel on the bend of the road far below. The driver wasn't trying to be quiet, the car was coming fast.
"Left rear tire worn down on the inside because of the untreated driveway of the back lot at the sheriff's office," Sherlock said quickly and quietly. "It's Lestrade."
John all but wailed in frustration. "Really? Fuck, how much time do we have?"
"He's reached the end of the road," Sherlock said, handing John's pistol back to him. The cold of the metal was a shock after the heat of Sherlock's skin. "Judging by his speed, he thinks it's an emergency. He'll have to walk the path as we did, but at least one of our lights is still out there, so he can follow that lead. My estimate is four minutes at best. We need to not be in the grave when he arrives."
John groaned. He decided he had the right to stake out at least a few seconds, and he shoved his cold, filthy hands into Sherlock's wild hair and kissed him hard, thrusting his tongue in. Sherlock responded, but John could tell the attention was no longer all there.
"Right," John said, struggling to kneel up and close his pants, taking a last longing look at Sherlock beneath him.
It was so dark in that grave, he wasn't even sure he read Sherlock's lips correctly, but he thought that beautiful man still trying to shove an erection that couldn't possibly fit into pants so well-tailored, might have whispered, "Later, soon, I promise."
***
Chapter 8