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Later, it would feel inevitable. Even in a city as big as London, no one could escape their ghosts for long. Still, after twenty years, Greg wasn’t expecting it.
It was the end of a terrible day, to top off an awful week. They had been called to a small flat on Willow Street – only two small rooms, blood splattered in every corner. And the wife collapsed on the front step of the building, her fingers gentle as they turned the golden ring, again and again, ignoring the endless chatter of forensics going back and forth.
“I thought we’d have more time,” she’d repeated, over and over. “Fifteen years together, and yet… It all passed in the blink of an eye.”
Greg had sat down next to her, their shoulders brushing. He hadn’t said anything – nothing would be enough, he knew. He let Sally deal with the forensics and the bags of evidence and the witnesses. He listened to the wife as she spoke, haltingly, of her wedding day.
Later, walking down the street towards the nearest tube station, trying to keep his headache at bay, he didn’t realise where he had ended up, not before standing right in front of it.
The Alcott.
The blue paint was chipped in several places but the sign was still legible. On any other day, Greg would have walked away quickly, shoulders high and tense. But he was tired and high-wrung, enough for the door in his mind to open a sliver, and for a few memories to slip through.
Slender fingers running over the piano keys. Drops of condensation slowly dripping into the dark wood of the table. The taste of posh scotch burning against his mouth.
Small drops of rain splattered on his shoes, as soft as old memories. Greg blinked and the illusion vanished, replaced by the grey light of Anchor Lane.
The street had altered considerably in twenty years – the small, dingy shops had collapsed under the strain, forever lost.
A few meters to the left there used to be a tattoo parlour. It’s where Greg got his first – and only – tattoo. In retrospect, it was no wonder the place had shut down, they had mixed inks without a care in the world – though, at the time, Greg had only been delighted by the low prices.
In its place, Greg found a florist, proudly proclaiming to ‘have a flower for every budget’. An employee with cracked nail polish walked out and leaned heavily against the rough, uneven plaster, and lit a cigarette with trembling fingers.
Greg’s hands ached with the sudden need to feel the weight of a cigarette in them. He had stopped, a long time ago, when the smoke scratching at his throat began to feel too much like a shadow of his absence.
He slowly made a fist and breathed until the ache in his hands alleviated – there was nothing to be done for the ache in his chest.
***
Sherlock and John stepped forward for their first dance. A magnificent black piano, gleaming from its perch on the stage, was holding its breath.
A musician silently walked up the stairs.
He was wearing a blue suit that accentuated his lean legs and his red hair. Greg’s pulse skittered and quickened, holding a tempo staccato against his ribs. He ignored it.
He had seen Mycroft in the shadowed figures hidden under black umbrellas, in the vacant eyes of the composit sketches, in the sharp smiles half-concealed behind unlit cigarettes. A hundred times, he had stopped in his tracks, convinced to see a ghost, only for it to pass right past him – through him.
Then the musician started playing, and Greg’s breath caught.
The familiar melody rose around him, waves of notes spreading under his feet, slipping around his ankles – and Greg drowned.
He had heard it played only a handful of times, sitting in his usual place at the Alcott, scribbling nonsense poetry in his notebook – but the memories had haunted him all the same. He had spent enough sleepless nights humming it under his breath, heartache digging sharp nails into his chest, to be able to recognise it instantly.
Greg tipped his champagne glass and drained its contents. All this time, waiting in front of a closed door, measuring the distance of the emptiness stretching inside his chest, and nothing, never a word. And now… Now, when he had lost all hope…
***
The small breeze was a welcome relief against his face after the stifling heat of the reception hall. Greg loosened his tie and leaned heavily against the balcony.
Flowers were scattered everywhere around the park, and the buzzing of insects filled his ears. Above, a murmuration of starlings, their wings silent in the air.
Greg stayed unmoving for a long time. Perhaps, if he slipped out, his exit wouldn’t be noticed. The married couple were sharing their first dance, after all, and all eyes were on them.
The door behind him opened and faint footsteps came outside, the sound echoing strangely in Greg’s ears.
“Gregory,” a low voice whispered at his back.
He inhaled the scent of jasmines and mint – quieting his treacherous heart beating, beating, beating – before he turned around.
The man standing before him was taller than the pianist he once knew. His hair had thinned and he had let his beard grow. Thin-rimmed glasses were perched on his nose and faint lines were etched into his skin. Still, Greg would have recognised him in a heartbeat – had known before turning around – for the unmistakable way his heart strained and stirred to life.
“I apologise for my sudden appearance, after all this time, but I had to know…” Mycroft ducked his head, and in that small movement, Greg spotted a shadow of the man he had once been, there and gone in a flash like foam catching the light. “Do you remember?”
“I do.” Greg contracted his hand around his empty glass, swallowed against the dagger in his throat, tried to remember how to form sentences. It was all over now, it shouldn’t matter – shouldn’t affect him – and yet…
“Do you still–” Mycroft shifted, and the golden light of the candles cut new shapes in his expression, cracking it open. “Do you still write?”
“Not anymore.” Greg’s mouth twisted. “I thought I was a genius. As if I was the first doofus to write a few verses about love.”
“Don’t– Your poetry was magnificent, Gregory.”
“Is that not why you left, then? My questionable understanding of rhythm?” Even after all this time, the joke stuck to his throat and the last words were uttered in a shaky voice that sounded all too vulnerable.
“No.” Mycroft sounded wrecked. “No, I– I thought I could distance myself from you, set you free. I thought that my feelings for you would be tarnished with time. I was wrong.”
“Would you…” Greg extended his hand, staring into those grey eyes he had spent two useless decades trying not to miss. “Dance with me?”
Mycroft’s hand closed around his.
There would be time, later, for words. Time for explanations – time to realise who the elusive Mr Holmes was, time to fill in the blanks of those long years of separation. For now, looking into each other’s eyes, tracing new wrinkles and old scars, was enough.
As the band started to play, they stepped forward, their hands still enclasped. Together.