#pre-tsot

When I woke, the ceiling was the wrong colour.

I had the memory of having seen it many times, but no familiarity with it any more. Sherlock's bedroom ceiling. From the angle of the light coming through the join in the curtains, it was still early. The sheet had gone cold under my neck. Dried sweat.

I lay looking at the ceiling. I couldn't think of a reason to get up, or a reason not to. Sherlock wasn't beside me. From the bathroom came the sound of the shower.

My body ached in various dull places. Somewhere deep in me, I could still feel the aftermath of him. I had gone to sleep praying it would all turn out to be a dream, and it appeared that every last thing about last night had been real.

I lifted my left hand and looked at the ring finger. Nothing on it yet. In three days there would be a ring. That was the arrangement. The order of service had been printed, the seating plan settled, the flowers ordered, and I could now more or less dance a waltz. The bridesmaids were Mary's friends. My best man was Sherlock Holmes.

Mary hadn't laughed at me for not being able to dance. "It's fine, I'll steer," she said — and then, dropping her voice, "Just don't let anyone see me doing it."

I tried to remember yesterday in order. The waltz practice ended, and then something happened, and now I was here. I tried to take it in sequence and gave up partway through. Sequence wasn't the point.

Only one thing had happened. I was here, and I had not gone home.

The water stopped. After a while Sherlock came into the bedroom with his hair still dripping, a towel round his waist and nothing else, and when he saw I was awake he said, picking his own shirt up off the floor:

"We're going out."

I didn't ask anything.

My clothes were scattered everywhere, and while I picked them up piece by piece and put them on, Sherlock didn't watch me. If he had, I think I'd have hit him.

Going down the stairs, I checked that Mrs Hudson's door was shut. The fact that I'd checked made me slightly sick.

"So — where exactly are we going?"

I asked Sherlock, at the wheel beside me. We'd cleared the clogged London traffic and been on the M4 for a while. The May sky was lightly, carelessly clear, and it appeared we were heading west.

"Land's End."

He answered without looking away from the road.

Land's End. The end of the world? No — there was a tourist spot by that name, I was fairly sure. Bottom-left corner of mainland England, the tip of the peninsula that trails off like a dragon's tail. Three hundred miles from here, give or take, as the crow flies.

"Have you ever been, Sherlock?" "No." "Do you know the way?" "I can think of roughly a hundred and sixty-five routes. I haven't decided which."

The hire car we'd picked up near Waterloo was an old Fiat Tipo, a superseded model, with nothing so civilised as satnav. Navy body, the paint scuffed white low on the front bumper. We'd walked in without a booking at the height of the May season, and it was the only car they had left.

I opened the glovebox and found a well-used road atlas. I was pulling it out to leaf through when Sherlock's left hand came across and stopped me.

"What? I'm looking at the map." "There's no point looking at the map." "Why not?" "What good would it do us to confirm where we are?"

What good would it do us to confirm where we are?

I turned the sentence over, found it landed with horrible accuracy, and snorted despite myself. Where are we now? Where are we going? He was right — for the two of us, just now, the questions had no meaning.

Me, three days out from my wedding, and Sherlock, my best man. Having committed our "mistake" last night, we were driving out of London as if fleeing it, towards a tourist attraction neither of us had ever seen, for no purpose at all. Men like us had no use for satnav or maps.

"Drive west until we hit the sea, then follow the coast south, and we arrive at Land's End."

A child could work it out, given the rough shape of England. Left, then down. The very tip. By Sherlock's usual standards it was an unbelievably slapdash route. But for us, just now, it seemed exactly the right sort of road.

"Hey. Sherlock." "What?" "Is this us running away together?" "Two sinners fleeing hand in hand to the ends of the earth? Your imagination remains, as ever, at the level of a soap opera." "You what?"

I glared at his profile, stung. He'd put on sunglasses, unusually for him, and sat staring straight ahead with his hands on the wheel; the customary theatrical polish was gone, and he looked faintly bad-tempered, and slightly savage, and — in short — extremely attractive. I forgot I'd just been insulted and stared at the line of his face.

"This is my holiday, John." "'Holiday'?" "Yes. I've left 'Sherlock Holmes' at 221B. Until tomorrow night, when we go back to London — keep me company on my holiday. Will you?" "We go back tomorrow night?" "That's the intention." "And after that?" "You're married two days after we're back, aren't you. I'm sorry to take you from the preparations. This will be the last time, so — please."

It surprised me that he'd been planning to have me back before the wedding. That morning I'd woken in his bed to "we're going out," been bundled into a cab, told nothing of where we were going, put into a hire car — and until a moment ago he had barely spoken a word.

"I half thought you were driving us off somewhere to die together." "Then why did you come? It's hardly an abduction. You've had endless chances to run."

He was right. I could have flattened the bastard with one punch and walked away at any point. The reason I hadn't — the reason I was tamely going along with this absurd elopement of a "holiday" — was that the sex, arriving without warning after two years, had been staggeringly good. My body, remade long ago by Sherlock's hands, had remembered what it was to be pierced to the deepest place and hollowed out with pleasure.

If it had been mere appetite, that would have been fine. For appetite alone there are any number of remedies: your own hand, or money, or a stranger. But if last night was the beginning of a hell, then the hell was this—

The pleasure I want can be given to me by Sherlock, and by no one else. In all the world, only Sherlock can take me apart. Only him.

It was like being swept off my feet by floodwater. The bond Mary and I had built, the small, decent, ordinary life that was waiting for me — all of it was gone somewhere in an instant.

Would it have been better if we'd never met? Better if we'd never met again? Would nobody have had to be unhappy, then?

On the way out, Sherlock had left his mobile on the dining table. Not ostentatiously, not as a declaration — just laid the black slab face-down on the wood, with the same offhand movement as picking up his keys.

For some reason I felt I should do the same, and went to, and couldn't.

I took my phone out and texted Mary. An urgent and serious case had come up; I was leaving London with Sherlock; I expected to be back tomorrow night; sorry to worry her right before the wedding — words to that effect.

Typing it, I was astonished to find my fingers didn't shake on a single letter. I hadn't known lying was this easy.

I tapped send, switched the phone off, and shoved it into the glovebox along with a guilt strong enough to make me want to die, and shut the lid on both.

"I'll keep you company. Till tomorrow night. Your 'holiday'." "Thank you, John."

He turned towards me a fraction, and smiled. That one flicker of a smile stitched itself cruelly through my heart, and I wished I could keep it for the rest of my life, and wished I could forget it that instant.

I wouldn't have minded, you know. Dying with you. Last night at least — the whole time you were inside me for the first time in two years and I was past all shame — that's what I was thinking. That it wouldn't be so bad, going together. But you won't even allow me that. So instead I'll live the rest of my life remembering the smile you just gave me. With Mary as my lawful wedded wife.

Anyway. A holiday needs music.

Unbelievably, the radio in the clapped-out Tipo was broken too — nothing I did to it produced so much as a crackle. In the cubby under the armrest there was a budget-label Janis Joplin CD some previous hirer had left behind, so on the off chance I fed it into the player, and by some miracle it began to read.

A languid, sorrowing, sweet guitar intro came through the stereo. And then, following it, Janis's voice, like the rasped crying of a cat.

Summertime. Don't cry. Please, please don't cry.

It was still a little early for summer, but with that song — a soul with nowhere left to go, howling — for our soundtrack, our holiday to the end of the world began.

We drove the M4 west, and kept driving.

Through the long monotony of countryside, to my surprise, the conversation never once ran dry. As if we'd gone back to those days, Sherlock and I talked rubbish and howled with laughter at it, the two of us. Strangely, I was able to forget what it was I was in the middle of doing. My brain, it turns out, is built for my own convenience.

"—so Anderson's so startled he drops the milk bottle he's holding—" "Heh. Idiot." "Right? And Donovan turns round and goes, 'What are you doing'—" "She invariably says that. The pitch rises at the end." "Yes! That's it exactly!"

I thumped his shoulder and carried on with the stupid story. Looking up at him from this close for the first time in ages, I noticed laugh lines at the corners of his eyes that I didn't recognise. I hadn't seen them till this moment — and they hadn't been there two years ago.

"What?" "You've got old." "John, look at yourself. You've lost five pounds, no? Losing weight in middle age accelerates the ageing process." "Shut up." "It's a fact." "I said shut up."

There were two years of Sherlock I knew nothing about, and two years of me he knew nothing about. It was a bit late to be finding that out.

I had wanted to see you so badly. I had begged every god in existence to make you stop being dead. My prayer was granted, and all of it came far too late. I waited two years, and the time left to the two of us runs out tomorrow night — thirty hours, more or less.

A restlessness close to pain came over me all at once, and I leaned across and bit the side of Sherlock's neck while he drove. The moment my face came close, the smell hit me — chamomile shower gel, good musk, tobacco, and under all of it the smell of the man himself — and the switch in me flipped, as easily as that.

"What?" "I want you." "I'm driving." "Don't care."

Entirely practical about it, I reached across to his lap and closed my hand over his cock through the fine cloth of his trousers. Not yet interested, naturally — but the soft, considerable weight of it pressed back against my palm, and that made it worse.

"John. At least wait until we're off the motorway." "No." "Even I can't promise safe driving under these conditions." "Good."

Something had come loose in me; I was flying. Under the stroking and the palming, even through the fabric, Sherlock's cock swelled hard in no time at all.

I undid the button of his beltless trousers, drew the zip down, tugged the waistband of his underwear out of the way, and freed him. Fully worked up, it sprang out and slapped back against his stomach. Like the man himself: arrogant, elegant, entirely sure of its own magnificence.

When I bent to take it in my mouth, the seatbelt locked and yanked me up short, like a dog hitting the end of its lead. Sherlock burst out laughing.

"Don't laugh." "Sorry. It was too—" "I said don't laugh."

Furious, and past the point of retreat, I unclipped the belt and folded myself down into the passenger footwell, and finally got my mouth on him.

"—John, put your seatbelt on—"

Terribly sorry: my mouth was full of your extremely hard cock and unable to reply. When I took him deep, to the back of my throat, the soft down at the base brushed my nose and tickled. Struggling for air, I breathed through my nose, and the old familiar smell of Sherlock himself filled me up, and for some reason I wanted to cry.

You always get cross that I can't wait. But right now I begrudge every second.

When I dragged my tongue up the underside, I felt his hands tighten on the wheel. Seventy miles an hour. This man's famous self-command, being shaved away by nothing but the movement of my tongue — it was more fun than I can say.

"You'll kill us both in a crash."

I'd already decided I wouldn't mind going together. Which comes first — you finishing, or the crash? From above my head came the sound of Sherlock exhaling, unsteady and hot.

By luck, good or bad, a slip road appeared, and he took us off the motorway. By some feral instinct he drove straight into a works yard without a flicker of hesitation and hunted out a perfectly deserted lane. He confirmed nobody was likely to pass, and stopped the car.

The moment the engine died, the outside came in. Birdsong, and the far-off sound of traffic. Nothing else.

Sherlock took my chin in his hand and lifted my face.

His mouth came towards mine. I turned my head away.

"John." "No." "Why." "Just — no."

Mary deserves better of me, but it isn't guilt that stops me. In those days, I loved kissing Sherlock. Every kiss overflowed. If I kiss him now, I am finished — I know it.

I want to kiss him. I won't. I want to kiss him so badly I can't bear it. I won't.

Sherlock held my face and didn't move for a long moment. He'd taken the sunglasses off; his eyes looked straight into me. I saw him start to say something, and decide not to.

Instead, he began unbuttoning my shirt.

"—ah,"

My chest bared, his tongue found a nipple. Licked, sucked, teeth set lightly against it. This man has the map of my body committed perfectly to memory, and after two years he finds the place without a millimetre of error.

"Ah— Sherl—" "Don't hold your voice back." "Shut up—ah,"

In the cramped car, my back pressed into the seat, I moaned. Outside the window it was bright, a May afternoon, birds singing. In a place like that, two men past forty, tangled together fully clothed.

His mouth moved down my chest, and he undid my belt. The moment he took me in, my hand closed in his hair without my telling it to.

"—f— christ—"

He's good. Infuriatingly good. This man has done this with nobody else on earth — so how is he this good? I know the answer. Because he has only ever done it with me.

He had me at the edge in no time, and I shoved his head away.

"Wait— wait, I'll come—" "Then come." "Not like this—"

I pulled myself, one breath from finished, out of his mouth. Ignoring the look of naked complaint, I somehow manhandled the both of us into the back seat. Cramped. My knees hit the seatback. Still — I ended up astride him, and lowered myself down onto him with my own weight.

"—ah—"

Breath gone. Deep. Too deep. In this position gravity takes you all the way down.

"John." "Don't talk." "John—"

Every time he says my name, I tighten around him. He knows it. That's why he says it.

I moved on my own. Hands braced on his shoulders, rising and falling. Every drag inside me sent something like current up my spine. My body knows the whole shape of this man by heart. I tried to forget it. I couldn't.

"Ah— ah— there—" "Here?" "There— right there—"

He drove up into me from below. I put my forehead against his shoulder and stopped trying to be quiet.

His lips travelled up the side of my throat, climbing. At my jaw, I turned my face away again.

"No." "John." "No kissing."

His rhythm broke — one beat only. Then it turned rougher than before.

"—ah—!"

I set my nails into his back. I could feel, from the inside of my own body, that he was angry. It made me glad. I am the lowest kind of man.

He turned me under him, and my cock dragged against his stomach with every stroke, crushed in the sealed heat between our bodies, and it was unbearable.

"Sherlock— I'm—" "Go on." "Don't— hh— don't come inside— it's a mess, after—" "I know."

He pulled out at the moment I broke, and finished on my chest. I striped my own stomach almost in the same instant.

Our clothes being past saving, we stopped at a Primark on the A-road and bought replacements.

"Two shirts and underwear." "For me as well." "You're choosing your own. Our tastes are irreconcilable."

Mine were the usual sort of thing. A check shirt, two plain T-shirts, dragged more or less at random out of the bargain bin.

The problem was Sherlock, who prowled the aisles for a quarter of an hour and came back carrying something beyond belief.

A parrot-print Hawaiian shirt. Red, green and yellow: three parrots among palm leaves.

"...What." "What?" "You're going to wear that." "What alternative use would you suggest?" "You said you'd left Sherlock Holmes at 221B." "I did." "No argument here. You've left every trace of him behind."

I laughed until it hurt. I laughed in the queue for the till, laughed leaving the shop, and kept remembering it in the car and laughing again.

"Is it so amusing." "Picturing you — choosing it — with a completely straight face—" "Selection took three minutes. The remaining twelve were spent in the fitting room." "You tried things on, and arrived at that." "...John." "All right, all right. I've stopped."

A lie. When he changed into it in the car park, I looked at him and laughed again. A tall, thin man in a parrot Hawaiian shirt. The world's only consulting detective. The man who makes the criminal classes of London tremble — standing in a car park off an A-road to Cornwall, wearing parrots.

In that moment I was very nearly happy.

I would go on to remember that fact many, many times.

Sherlock had decided against the motorway; we would take the ordinary roads.

The reason being that he wanted sex.

When he wanted it, he found somewhere unobserved and pulled over and had me. He was good at finding those places.

"I'm starving. Can we stop somewhere and eat?"

Sherlock drove us down emptier and emptier lanes. Eventually he stopped at what appeared to be the dead end of a farm track.

"I believe I said I was starving." "I want to have sex with you." "You selfish sod." "You forced yourself on me earlier. I'm merely reciprocating."

I had no comeback to that. His hand came across and drew me in.

He moved to kiss me; I dodged it. He said nothing. He'd stopped protesting, even.

Instead he bit the side of my neck. A bite meant to mark. Three days before my wedding.

"Sherlock, that's going to—" "I know." "Then stop." "No."

I didn't say anything further.

If it marks, let it mark. In that moment, for the first time, I admitted there was a part of me thinking exactly that.

Somewhere past the Mendips, Sherlock stopped the car.

A riverside, a little off the road. The tarmac gave way to gravel partway, and beyond that a grass slope ran down. It looked like a picnic area nobody used any more; one rotted wooden bench sat abandoned at a tilt.

The sound of water. A shallow river — the endless noise of it running over stones.

"Sherlock." "What." "We just did it." "Two hours ago." "Two hours ago, right." "Do you object?"

I didn't answer. Instead of answering, I went to unclip my seatbelt.

His hand came down on mine and stopped it.

"John." "What." "First — there's something I want to confirm."

The engine was off; Janis had stopped. Through the open window there was only the river.

"What?" "You won't kiss me."

I went still.

"...What?" "Three times. Today you have avoided my kiss three times. The first, immediately after we left the motorway. The second, fifteen minutes later, during the act. The third, early afternoon, at the end of the farm track. In each case, you turned your face away within half a second of my touching your jaw. The movement is reflexive. It is not considered." "—" "Meanwhile: you take me in your mouth without reluctance. You permit me inside your body. You choose positions; you initiate. Of the entire repertoire of the act, the one element you refuse is the kiss."

He wasn't looking at me. He was looking through the windscreen at the moving water.

"I am treating this as a data point." "Stop." "Two interpretations present themselves."

I said stop. He didn't stop. He never does.

"One. Out of guilt towards Mary Morstan, you are avoiding the kiss. Intercourse can be explained away as the body's mechanics; a kiss is a declaration of feeling, and admits no excuse. By forbidding the kiss alone, you are attempting to draw a boundary around the extent of your betrayal."

My fists were clenched on my knees.

"Two."

And here he turned to face me.

"You love kissing me. You love it too much. And so you know that if you do it, you will not be able to go back."

The air in the car went suddenly thin.

"...Which do you think it is." "The second." "Why." "If it were the first, you wouldn't let me have you at all. A man keeping accounts of his sins doesn't sleep with me in the first place."

I couldn't speak.

He had been observing this the whole time. Driving, laughing, trading idiotic stories — and counting the half-seconds it took me to turn my face away.

All through that time. All the time I'd been laughing.

"Get out." "John?" "I said get out of the car!"

I kicked my door open and got out.

The riverside grass had grown too long for May — over the knee. Stepping into it raised a wet green smell.

Sherlock climbed out after me. In that idiotic parrot shirt.

Minutes ago I'd been laughing at it. The stupidity of that laughing man made me want to be sick.

"John—"

I hit him across the jaw.

It went in at a good angle, if I say so myself. The straight right I'd learned in the army. His long body staggered, went back two steps, and one hand came down in the grass.

"—kh,"

The corner of his mouth had split; blood welled. He wiped it with the back of his hand and looked up at me. He didn't resist. That made me angrier.

"Get up." "John." "I said get up!"

I hauled him up by the collar. I drew back for the second one.

He caught my arm.

For the first time, he pushed back.

He was far stronger than I'd thought. In that one instant I felt I understood something of what these two years had been. In places I knew nothing of, he had become a body I knew nothing of.

We went down tangled together into the grass.

It was a slope, so we rolled a little way. Stones in my back. The water close. I ended on top, gripping the front of his shirt.

Sherlock had stopped resisting. He lay on his back, looking up at me.

"Why did you hit me?"

Flat voice.

"You know why." "I don't. That's why I'm asking." "—" "Is my deduction correct?"

Wind came across the river. The grass went down all at once, and stood again.

"Answer me, John. Is my deduction correct?" "Shut up." "Is it correct, or is it not?" "I said shut up!" "John." "Of course it's correct, damn you!"

I was shouting.

My voice rang out along the riverbank, and then there was nothing.

"If I kiss you, I can't go back. That's why."

There was no stopping now.

"You knew — you knew, and you asked anyway, you absolute— I love kissing you. Always have. More than being taken by you, far more— one of those and I'm— I'd be—"

I was gripping his shirt, and shaking. Because what had just come out of my mouth was, word for word, what he had said in the car.

It's over, then.

"All right. I won't."

That was all.

"I won't."

No reason. No conditions. He simply said it. Then that was the end of that conversation. What came next was already decided.

It was me who started the sex.

"John—" "Be quiet."

I wrenched the buttons of the Hawaiian shirt open hard enough to tear. One of them flew off somewhere.

"John—" "I said be quiet."

I bit the bared chest. Just below the collarbone. Hard, so it would mark.

I felt him stop breathing.

I went down his body and opened his trousers. He was already most of the way there; I drew him out and took him in my mouth.

The smell of grass, and the sound of water, and the May sky overhead, and me with a man's cock in my mouth. One passer-by and it was all over.

I didn't care. Let it all go however it wanted to go.

"—John,"

His voice came down from above me. It wasn't flat any more.

"John, wait, any more and I'll—"

I lifted my mouth off him and sat up.

I undid my own belt. Pushed trousers and underwear to my knees. And then I took his hand and guided it behind me.

"...John." "Get me ready." "The lubricant's in the car." "Then go and get it."

He lay there looking up at me and didn't move.

"Now!"

On the grass, on my knees, I went down onto all fours.

From behind, a finger pushed into me. The cold of the gel made my whole body jump.

"—hh," "John, are you all right?" "Shut up." "If it hurts—" "It doesn't hurt. Do it and be quiet."

His fingers were careful past all reason. I had just hit him in the face, and even now, even here, this man would not hurt me.

It was unbearable, and I shoved my hips back onto his hand myself.

"That's enough." "Not yet." "I said it's enough." "...John." "Just — get in me."

When the weight of him pushed into me from behind, I grabbed the grass. It came up by the roots, and there was soil between my fingers.

"—ah—"

Deep. In this position, everything goes in.

His chest came down over my back. His arms wrapped round and gathered my chest in. Rough breath behind my ear.

"John." "—hh," "John."

My name. Every other word, I'd forbidden him.

"Ah— ah—" "—John," "Harder—" "...Can you take it?" "Just do it—"

And Sherlock, who had been so careful all this time, was rough for the first time. Hands clamped on my hips, driving in hard enough to knock the breath from me at the deepest point. I pressed my face into the grass and let my voice go.

"Sherlock— I'm—" "John—" "—coming—"

I finished into the grass. He finished across my back.

South from Bristol, towards Exeter.

Towards evening the sky began changing colour. The low sun came straight at the windscreen, and Sherlock put the sunglasses back on. Parrot Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses. Two buttons missing. He looked appalling.

"Sherlock." "What." "You should investigate crimes dressed like that. Nobody would ever know it was you." "Effective. I'll consider it." "Please don't."

The country on either side of the road was changing by degrees. Fewer buildings; more hedgerows. Cattle. Sheep. Low stone houses. A church spire.

I opened the window a crack. The air coming in carried the smell of grass. Not a smell you get in London.

An hour ago I'd been rolling in it.

"...Hey. Sherlock." "What." "Where were you? The two years."

The moment it was out, I regretted it. I'd never once asked. Not since the day he came back.

Sherlock was silent for a while. Two bends in the road went by before he spoke.

"Serbia, at the end. Germany before that. Before that, several places." "Right." "...That isn't what you want to ask."

I didn't answer. Couldn't.

"If I told you I thought about you every day—"

His voice was lower than usual.

"—would you believe me?" "...No." "I see." "I don't believe it. But I don't think it's a lie either."

That was the best I could do.

He kept his eyes on the road, and the corner of his mouth lifted, very slightly. A smile, I think. Probably. The split at the corner must have stung, because it stopped almost at once.

We pulled into a services on the way and bought doughnuts.

They were sweet enough to kill. The glaze filmed your lips; you couldn't get them down without coffee to wash them through.

"This is vile." "You chose them." "You're eating one." "I'm verifying your selection." "Verdict?" "...Vile."

We leaned against the bonnet in the car park and ate the terrible doughnuts. Lorries came and went; a family walked past. Nobody looked at us.

A man with a split lip, and the man who split it, eating doughnuts side by side. Nobody looked. Nobody said a word.

It was the most peaceful twenty minutes of the day.

Water opened out on the right. I took it for a river at first. But the far bank kept receding, and at some point, there was a horizon on it.

We passed a small station called Starcross — rails and road and water all running level with one another. And coming into Dawlish, it opened completely.

The sea.

The low sun was hammering the surface of it, and I had to narrow my eyes.

"Sherlock." "I see it." "...It's the sea." "So it is."

An idiotic exchange. But I couldn't not say it.

We'd driven from London until we hit the sea. Exactly as he'd said. Drive west, and you hit the sea. Then follow it south.

No map, no satnav. Was it always this simple, I thought.

I wished life were even half so simple.

Mary tears the corner off my toast and eats it. She has her own; she always takes one bite of mine anyway. When I asked why, she said, "Yours tastes better."

It can't. It's the same toast.

If I go back tomorrow night, that's what the morning after will be. And the morning after that, and the one after that, probably until I die.

It should have been a perfectly good life.

Now all we had to do was keep the sea on our left and go down. Dawlish, Teignmouth. One small seaside town after another, and we threaded through them all.

"...Hey." "What." "Do you think it would have been better if we'd never met?"

I regretted it as soon as I'd said it. Truly stupid. About as profound as seeing the sea and saying it's the sea.

Sherlock said nothing for a while. The road bent twice; the sea vanished and came back.

"...John." "What." "I have never examined that hypothesis." "Never?" "Never."

He took the sunglasses off and set them on the dashboard. The sun had dropped; he didn't need them any more.

"On that day, in the lab at Bart's, I met you. Everything after follows from that point. To consider what I would have been had I not met you is, for me, identical to considering a world with no me in it. It's meaningless."

I couldn't say anything.

"Is it different for you?" "...No." "I see." "It's not different, damn you."

I turned to the window. The sea had gone again.

Somewhere past Teignmouth, one of those roadside hotels you find all over England. A Premier Inn or a Travelodge on the A-road — I don't even remember which.

We were tired, so we stopped. The young woman at the desk looked at us once, said nothing further, and handed over the key to a twin.

Sherlock's split lip, the grass stains on our clothes — she showed not the slightest interest in any of it. On this stretch of road she'd doubtless seen far worse.

The room was exactly the room you'd imagine. Two beds, one television, a kettle and teabags. Beyond the window, the car park. Beyond that, somewhere, the darkened sea. Nothing visible any more.

We showered, and ordered pizza by phone. It took thirty minutes to arrive and tasted of nothing much. The base too thick, the cheese cooling towards solid, and the chorizo on top strangely salty.

"This is vile." "That's twice today." "Because it's twice true." "Are you not eating?" "I am eating."

He ate one slice; I ate the rest. It was always like that, before.

A lorry went past outside. Light ran across the curtains and was gone.

I closed the box and set it on the floor. With the pizza finished, there was nothing left to do.

"Sherlock." "What." "Let's make this the last." "...Yes." "We've had enough. Haven't we." "Yes. We've had enough. Tomorrow night we go back to London. This is the last time I'll have you."

Enough was a lie. No amount of each other was ever going to be enough. But there is such a thing as an end. So the last time wasn't a lie.

He laid me down on the bed. I groped for the switch on the bedside lamp.

"John." "...What." "Leave the light on."

I said nothing. I brought my hand back down.

I closed my eyes and thought of the ceiling of 221B.

Collarbone. Chest. Flank. My body has changed a little in two years. I stopped running; the drinking went up. Sherlock touched all of it and said nothing. If he'd said anything, I think I'd have hit him.

Instead, this man was counting.

Each rib, one at a time, with the pad of a finger. The old graze low on my left side — the one I'd picked up in Afghanistan — traced and confirmed. His lips pressed to a small bruise on the inside of my knee that I hadn't known I had.

"Sherlock." "What." "...What are you doing?" "Memorising."

I opened my eyes. He was somewhere near my knee, not looking at me.

"The you of two years ago and the you of now are different. I had the old you memorised, and the record is obsolete. So I'm updating it."

He was making an inventory of my body. Before it was taken out of his sight for good.

I put my arm across my face. If I didn't, something was going to spill.

"I know you tried to forget. Two years — you tried. But your body remembers my sequences. Before I touch a place, it has already predicted where I'll touch, and answers in advance." "...Shut up." "I'm glad, John." "—" "That you couldn't forget me. I am gladder than I know what to do with."

I moved my arm and looked at him.

He wasn't smiling. There was nothing of triumph in his face. He only looked lost — like a man at the end of his knowledge.

The corner of his mouth was still split.

I reached out and touched his hair. He closed his eyes. Like a cat, he pressed his head into my palm.

The promise — nothing near my face — he was keeping it. But nothing stopped me touching him. I used that unfairness, and traced his cheek, his ear, his temple with my fingers. I touched, very lightly, the cut at the corner of his mouth.

The first touch in two years. The bones felt subtly different under my hand. Thinner. Him too, then.

"...John." "What." "Stay like that a little longer."

So for a while, I did.

He turned me over and drew my hips up.

He took a long time opening me. Far longer than by the river. Even at three fingers, he still didn't come in.

"Enough." "Not yet." "I said enough. Come on—" "...No."

His voice had gone slightly hoarse.

"It will be over."

I couldn't say anything to that.

He was stretching it out. Because once he was inside, the only thing after was the end.

For the first time since I'd known him, I was watching this man be afraid.

"...Sherlock." "What." "It won't be over."

A lie. I lied. To him.

"I won't let it end."

The second lie. I knew it was a lie in the moment I said it.

Even so, Sherlock pressed his forehead into my back and didn't move for a long time.

When he came into me, I gripped the sheets.

His chest lay along my spine. His arms came round and folded my chest in. Breath at the back of my ear. Fully inside me, he went still. He only held me, joined to me, unmoving.

"...Sherlock." "A moment longer." "Move." "Just a moment longer."

We stayed like that, neither of us moving.

I could feel his heart going against my back. Fast. Terribly fast.

I found his hand where it lay against my stomach, and laced my fingers through it. That wasn't covered by any promise. So it was allowed.

His fingers closed back around mine, hard. Hard enough to grind bone.

"John." "—" "John. John."

He moved slowly. No hurry, no roughness — only my deepest place, again, and again, and again.

Time stretched and stretched. Neither of us wanted to finish, I think. Because finishing ended it. Each time I drew close, he slowed, waited for me to come back down, and began again.

How many times, I don't know. My body was going mad with heat that had nowhere to go.

"—please—" "What." "I can't—" "Not yet." "Sherlock— please—"

If he holds me like this, I am going to——

"—Sherlock," "What." "—ah,"

I swallowed what I'd started to say.

What I'd started to say was, I think, I love you. Incredibly, it had more truth in it than I won't let it end. It wasn't a lie. I didn't want to tell any more lies.

So instead, I said:

"Come inside me. All of it."

He stopped moving.

"...John." "You heard me." "You're the one who said it would be a mess afterwards." "I don't care what happens afterwards."

He stayed inside me, motionless. Along my back, I could feel his body faintly shaking.

"...You're sure." "Please."

He turned me over onto my back.

He looked down at me. I looked back up.

My legs pushed wide; him deep inside. His face close. Close enough to share breath.

"Ah— ah—" "John," "Sherlock— hh—"

I tilted my chin up. Myself. Towards him.

I saw his eyes widen, a fraction. Saw the hope surface in his face——and then go out.

I had stopped, partway. A few centimetres short.

"...John." "Don't." "—" "Please. Don't say anything."

He didn't. Instead he came down over me, sealed his chest to mine, closed every gap between our two bodies until there was nowhere left that we weren't touching. Warm, and heavy. He disappeared from my sight, and the hotel ceiling took his place. That was better. I didn't want to see his face any more.

I took the weight of each long stroke. Went out to meet the pleasure climbing up from the base of me. Driven and driven until coming was the only thought left in my head, I grabbed his backside and pulled him deeper.

Deep, and deeper. To the very end of me, held there, and drawn back. I felt it coming.

"I'm— coming—" "John," "Sherl— ah—"

He finished inside me. I felt it pulse — unmistakably.

I felt the deepest part of my body filling up with him.

At three in the morning, we got back in the car.

We hadn't slept. We'd barely eaten. How many times had we come, in two days? I'd stopped counting. The body was wrung out, and only the eyes stayed strangely, uselessly clear.

Sherlock abandoned the coast road and turned inland. Before Plymouth he cut north, onto the road that rounds the top of Dartmoor. From here to Land's End there'd be no more sea.

The next time we'd see it would be at the end of the land.

There was nobody on the road. The world narrowed to the reach of the headlights. Janis Joplin was playing again. The same CD; we'd looped it over and over, the whole way.

"Sherlock." "What." "I—"

I started, and stopped. There was nothing left that needed saying.

Instead, I was thinking.

About a person falling from a height. I haven't seen it many times. Once. Once only, right in front of me.

That day, I stood on the pavement outside Bart's with a phone against my ear, looking up. That height — I looked up the whole length of it.

Since that day, the height has been inside me. The distance from that roof to that pavement. My body learned exactly how far it is, and has never let it go.

So when I heard Land's End, the first thing I saw was a cliff. The end of the land is a cliff. A cliff has height.

I understood now why I'd got into this car.

The day after tomorrow is the wedding. Mary is waiting. But as long as this car keeps moving, that tomorrow never arrives.

And there was exactly one way of making sure it never arrived.

The thought carried no fear with it at all. That was the most frightening thing about it.

"John." "...What." "What are you thinking?" "...Nothing." "That's a lie." "Yeah. It's a lie."

He didn't ask again. This man knows, probably, exactly what I'm thinking. Knows it, and is driving us to Land's End anyway.

What that meant, I didn't let myself consider at the time.

We picked up the A30. Past Okehampton, past Launceston, and as we came onto Bodmin Moor the sky began to grey.

There was nothing out there. Only the rise and fall of the land. Grass, and rock, and now and then sheep. Not one tree.

"There are no trees." "The wind won't let them grow." "Right." "There was an attempt at planting, once. Every sapling died." "...You really do know everything." "I know only what I know."

The road ran dead straight, and almost nothing came the other way.

Bit by bit the world emptied out, and we drove at nothing but the horizon. Redruth, Camborne, Hayle — the names surfacing on signs and streaming away behind.

At Penzance the A30 narrowed to a single carriageway each way. On the left, the sea again — nothing like yesterday evening's; a horizon the colour of lead.

"Nine miles." "Right."

At the Crows-an-Wra fork, the signs for Land's End began. Past that point there was nothing but villages. Drystone walls. Low houses. Trees grown aslant — shaped that way, presumably, by the wind.

Through Sennen. A pub sign went by: the First & Last Inn. The first, and the last.

The road to the end of the land is lined with names like that.

Land's End was close.

Sherlock drove in silence. I kept silence too.

The road ended.

There was a car park.

There was an information board, a ticket booth, a gift shop. All shut. Just before dawn; not a soul anywhere.

I laughed out loud.

"What?" "...No. Nothing."

At the end of the land: a car park and a gift shop. End of the land or anywhere else, the human race sets up shop. There is nowhere to run to. That was what was funny — but Sherlock didn't ask why I'd laughed.

When we got out of the car, the wind hit us head on. Wind you couldn't stand straight in. The door bucked in my hand and nearly tore away. Sherlock, coat thrown over the parrot shirt, hair being wrecked by the gale, set off ahead of me towards the headland.

I followed him.

We climbed the grass slope and came out at the top.

At the end of the land, there was nothing.

The grey rock simply stopped. Beyond it was the sea.

The wind roared, and under it the heavy concussion of breaking waves, and that was all. That was everything.

The sky was still dark. The sea nearly black. Where the water ended and the sky began, there was no telling. Far below, something white was moving. It took me a moment to understand it was the waves.

We reached the very point of the headland. Sherlock stood looking at the sea. I stood beside him and looked at it too.

Dawn hadn't come yet.

I had thought something would end here. Or that I would end it.

Nothing ended. The wind blew. That was all.

I looked over the edge. Height enough to kill — I knew it without needing to confirm. Not because I'm a doctor. Because I once watched it happen, with my own eyes.

But there was nothing down there. No voice calling. No meaning. No ending. Rock, and water, and the wind that has repeated this for tens of thousands of years.

While I was in London addressing wedding invitations — it was like this here. Through the two years I walked to this man's grave — like this. Yesterday, while he was inside me — while I was breaking his face by a river — here, there was only wind, and the waves breaking.

Nothing has been provided here. No punishment, and no forgiveness. It doesn't even pretend to provide them.

——Ah.

I breathed out. The breath was snatched sideways by the wind and carried off somewhere.

On the point of the headland, in the battering wind, we stood side by side and looked at the black sea.

Beside me, Sherlock turned and looked at me. I don't know what it was he saw.

Then Sherlock wept.

He wept past all care for himself. No sound, no hand over his face — he only looked at the sea and let it come. The wind swept the tears sideways off his face.

I wasn't crying. The thing that had been rising in me from the pit of my stomach for two years — in that moment, for once, it didn't come.

I put my arm round his shaking shoulders and held on. Hard. As hard as I could. His shoulders are a good way above mine, so it meant standing half on my toes.

Like that, the two of us stood facing the sea.

Sherlock took a cigarette packet from his coat pocket.

He tried to light one. His fingers were trembling. The wind was fierce, and the flame wouldn't take. Once, twice, three times. Each time the lighter's flame was blown out in the instant of its birth.

I closed my hands around his.

In the small hollow made of both our hands, the fourth flame caught. The tip of the cigarette went red.

He drew on it. Deep, and let it go. The smoke was torn apart before it could take any shape.

He was still crying.

"Give me one."

He looked at me, startled. I thought: I could look at that face forever.

From his trembling fingers, I took the cigarette he held out.

I leaned in to him. I set the tip of my cigarette, very lightly, against the tip of the one between his lips.

He drew breath. The fire crossed over. For one moment the flare lit both our faces out of the dark. His wet eyes shone dully in that light.

The first cigarette of my life. It scorched my throat and I coughed until my eyes streamed. The nicotine clamped every vessel down at once and my head swam. Dizzy enough that I might have pitched straight off the edge of England.

I'll be smoking again after this, I thought, from somewhere far off.

I threw the cigarette out over the cliff. Sherlock threw his after it. Two small orange embers, snatched away by the wind, gone almost before they left our hands.

Then Sherlock seized me and kissed me — a kiss like a bite.

It tasted of bitter smoke.

I let him. I let him do as he liked. There was only the wind, and the waves, and the sound of our breathing.

He let me go, and without looking back, started down the way we had come.

I stood where I was. Watching his back.

The wind beating at his coat. The long black line of him, going slowly back down the slope.

"Sherlock. Where are you going?"

I shouted it. The wind took half my voice.

He turned.

"John. Let's go." "...Where?" "No idea."

He held his hand out to me.

Below the cliff the waves were breaking. At the eastern edge of the sky, the first grey of light was starting.

I took his hand.

I went and took it.