AN: This part takes our boys further into an unconventional direction.

Asexual!Sherlock/Straight!John/Straight!Lestrade (queerplatonic love/romantic friendship/who knows)

Part XII

Another three months pass, moving the men to the one year mark. They don't talk about Sherlock's fears of abandonment and loss explicitly again, though all of them can sense the presence of that fear. Their established routines continue: Lestrade spends the night at Baker Street three to five days a week, Sundays are reserved for Sherlock and John, they hide their intimacy from the people they know as much as they can, cases come and go for Lestrade, Sherlock and John solve a fair share of their own. New routines take shape: Lestrade and John take advantage of days when Sherlock needs solitude to recharge, spending that time alone together; occasionally, when Lestrade sleeps in his own flat, Sherlock shows up without warning to join him; John stops introducing the women he dates to Sherlock and Lestrade, stops bringing them around Baker Street altogether.

Lestrade's sex drive is all but dead. Half the time when he tries masturbating in the privacy of his own flat, he quits without even getting hard. Last week, after one too many pints at his favorite pub in celebration of a victory football match, he let a much younger woman take him home. He has no idea how he managed an erection. His orgasm was like an electric awakening for the ten seconds it lasted. Afterward, he felt a physical and spiritual satiation he couldn't remember ever experiencing; it went hand in hand with his inner confirmation that he neither wanted nor needed sex in his life, until further notice.

The first thing out of his mouth when he saw Sherlock and John the next day at Baker Street was, "I shagged someone last night."

John merely glanced at him over his shoulder and said, "Cheers."

Sherlock didn't look up from his copy of the Sunday Times at all. "Obviously."

Lestrade blinked, standing on the threshold dividing kitchen from sitting room.

"Don't tell me you're suffering from some sort of ridiculous remorse," Sherlock said, turning to the next page in the paper.

"I don't think so," said Lestrade, pushing his hands into the pockets of his jeans. "You okay with it?"

"Why wouldn't I be? I'm not interested in shagging you." Sherlock curled one hand around the handle of his mug and sipped at his coffee.

"Well, I know that. It's just, a couple months ago, John told you I'd lost interest in sex because of how I feel about you. That must've given you certain expectations."

"You didn't intend for it to happen," said Sherlock, as John sat across from him at the kitchen table with his tea. "And now that it did, you feel your disinterest validated in a way you didn't before. You got over your little sexual identity crisis weeks ago, thank God, or last night would've solved that too."

Lestrade just grinned at Sherlock brightly.

John has sex in bursts, drawing women looking for hot flings like a magnet, occasionally disappearing for two, three, four nights in a row. Once, near a week, coming home at five in the morning each day. Sherlock deduces that John lied to the woman, telling her that he's in a bad marriage and sneaking away to see her. The lie excited her. Sherlock and Lestrade never ask John for details about the women or the sex, and John doesn't volunteer any information. Sherlock sees all he needs to see in John's clothes, face, gait. The fact that John always showers upon arriving home from a shag, no matter what time of the day or night, hasn't gone unnoticed by either of his partners.

"You know, you don't have to do that," Lestrade said to him once, as John emerged from his bathroom towel-drying his hair. "At least not right away."

"I feel better cleaning up," John said. "I can't crawl into bed with Sherlock or the both of you smelling like sex. Wouldn't feel right. And God knows what Sherlock would figure out about the girls by scent alone."

"True. I just hope you don't feel ashamed or guilty about it, John."

John frowned in disbelief, damp towel coming to rest over one shoulder. "Of course not."

"You sure? Because you're the only one of us getting any right now, so I could understand if you felt a bit weird about it."

John waved him off. "If there's one thing I've never had hang-ups about, it's sex."

But now, a week away from the one year anniversary of John and Lestrade's decision to become intimate with Sherlock, the DI can't shake the sense that sex has changed in meaning and value for John as much as it has for Lestrade. He just can't be sure how. What he knows is the way John moves for a day or two after he's with a woman, like he's disconnected from his own body except for when Sherlock or Lestrade touches him; the somber set of John's face that conceals something Lestrade can't identify.

Lestrade's been thinking about Sherlock. About sex and celibacy and love and intimacy. About the way he's lived most of his life somewhere in between John's full cup and Sherlock's empty one. He's thinking about the future. About what he can do to fuel their love.

He pays a visit to a tantric sex therapist.

"What can you tell me about tantric celibacy?" Lestrade asks. On his way home to his own flat, at half past five on a Monday, he stops at the therapist's studio.

The woman, in her late thirties with a pretty face and soft hair dyed black, looks at him in surprise. "Well... not much, I'm afraid. It's as old as tantric sex, I know that. Sometimes, I recommend a period of celibacy to my couples when they're first starting out, but not often. I could do a bit of research and see what I find. Are you thinking about celibacy?"

Lestrade smiles briefly. "I've ended up celibate without thinking about it."

"Oh, no!" she laughs. "Are you all right with that?"

"Yeah. I am. Actually, the reason why I came here to ask about it from a tantric perspective is because I'm sort of... I have these relationships. They're not sexual... Or romantic. Well, they might be romantic. I don't know. They're... complex."

She looks at him with an amused, perhaps faintly skeptical expression, and Lestrade purses his lips with a muffled sigh. He's never had to try describing what he has with Sherlock and John before.

"They're emotional and physical, but not in a sexual way. And none of us want it to be sexual because we're not actually attracted to each other like that. But the relationships are important. The most important. And I guess I'm... looking for a way to approach the no sex part so that it's useful. For all of us."

"Are you sure the lack of sex isn't a problem?" she asks. "Because if there are underlying issues in the relationships preventing sexual intimacy, I can help you work through them. In fact, tantric sex can be a very powerful way of healing relationships..."

Lestrade shakes his head, trying not to get frustrated. "No, it's nothing like that. We've never been sexual, and that's intentional. That's why tantric celibacy caught my eye when I was surfing the internet. It's not just about going without, is it? I mean, there's an angle that can make it... meaningful on an emotional or a spiritual level, right?"

She eyes him with a mix of intrigue and skepticism. "Tantra as a general philosophy is all about spiritual enlightenment. So I wouldn't be surprised if the tantric approach to long-term celibacy makes that a goal. But like I said, I don't know much about it. Usually, it would be a practice centered on the self, but you're talking as if you want to get something out of it in your relationships."

"Well, there's more to tantric sex than sex, isn't there?"

The woman makes a noise between scoff and snort. "In a word."

"Maybe you can tell me about the nonsexual parts," says Lestrade.

She does.

Lestrade's already sitting at the bar in Hog's End, sipping at his pint, when John arrives wearing his brown leather jacket. They greet each other the way any two men would, who are friends. Not like partners. John slides up onto the stool next to Lestrade and one of the bartenders takes his order. John turns toward Lestrade, his elbow on the bar top, and says, "So what's this about? You sounded a bit serious on the phone."

Lestrade sets his glass down and licks the foam from his upper lip. "I have some ideas that I want to run by you, before I talk to Sherlock."

"What kind of ideas?" The bartender delivers John's beer to his coaster, and John says, "Thank you" with a quick glance.

"First, I have a suggestion specifically for you." Lestrade looks at him, pausing for a moment. "I want you to consider becoming celibate."

John's face furrows at the bridge of his nose. "What?"

"Not forever. It doesn't really matter how long, though I think it'd have to be at least a month to be worthwhile. Let me explain."

John drinks some of his beer, staring at Lestrade sideways.

"I've been doing a lot of thinking lately," Lestrade says. "You know it's almost a year since we first talked to Sherlock."

"Yeah," John says, nodding.

"Well, it's made me realize that I want things to be stronger with us. All of us. And I've been giving some serious thought to sex and the fact that we're deliberately not having it with each other."

John suddenly pulls his body back from Lestrade a little, a flash of surprise and even alarm passing through his face.

Lestrade lifts one hand between them in a placating gesture. "I'm not saying we should start."

"I bloody hope you're not," says John, everything about his face and body language expressing guarded alertness. "I don't care what other people might think if they knew how we are together, women are still the only ones I think of that way."

"I don't doubt it for a minute," Lestrade assures. "And I feel the same way, though you know I haven't been in that frame of mind for a while. What I'm trying to tell you is that it occurred to me: aside from knowing from the start that we didn't want to have sex, we haven't given it any meaning between us. And I think it could mean something, if we would just be more conscious of it."

"I don't understand. We don't have sex because we don't want to. Why would that mean anything beyond what it is?"

"Well, so far, it hasn't. That's my point. I think we've been underutilizing the lack of sex." Lestrade shifts, his body facing John's side and his feet on the lowest rung of the stool. His right arm rests on the bar. "I talked to this woman who's a tantric sex therapist."

"Jesus!" John says, half-smiling in disbelief. "Where the hell are you going with this, Greg?"

"I found something online about tantric celibacy. Never heard of it, right? Yeah, well, it's not nearly as popular as tantric sex."

John tsks as he brings his pint glass to his lips again.

"I asked the therapist about it," says Lestrade, "And she didn't know much but we did have a pretty interesting conversation about the non-sex elements of tantric sex. I went home and thought about what she said, and I've decided it's what I'm looking for."

"Okay…. I want to hear what that entails, but what does any of this have to do with me being celibate?"

Lestrade drinks more of his beer, his glass only a quarter full now. "John—why do you have sex?"

John stares at him blankly. "Because…. It feels good. And it's a physical urge."

"Is that enough?" Lestrade asks. "For you?"

John doesn't answer, visibly stunned by the question.

Lestrade maintains steady eye contact and murmurs in a lowered tone, leaning toward John. "I've noticed something change in you the last couple months. Sex affects you differently. I'm not sure when or why it changed, but I can feel that it isn't as simple as it used to be. You told me once that it's okay for me to not want sex right now, that it doesn't change who I am. I'm not trying to say you're like me, but…. I think maybe it's worth seeing how life feels without sex in it for a while."

John lowers his gaze.

Lestrade moves his arm on the bar top to touch John's arm with his fingers. "Look, you don't have to do anything you don't want. If I'm all wrong about this, if you want to carry on the way you have, it's fine. We can still go forward with my other idea, together. I just wanted you to think about the celibacy thing."

John shakes his head. "You're right. The last handful of times I've been with a woman, it's felt off. I don't know why. It's not that I don't enjoy it anymore. I do. I just don't know if I go looking for a shag out of habit or because it's what I really want. It feels…. empty afterward. Do you know what I mean?"

"I think so," Lestrade says softly, his thumb brushing along the skin of John's inner wrist. Maybe they should be concerned with what the bartenders will think, but neither of them pulls away.

"And I just haven't been able to bloody figure out what to do," says John, rubbing at his forehead with one hand. "Because I don't want an actual girlfriend, and even if I did, it'd be damn near impossible to manage. But I'm getting tired of the way I feel about the sex I have."

"Maybe a break is what you need. As long as you want, a month or a year. It's up to you."

John stares into space for a beat, contemplating, then picks up his beer again to drink. He clears his throat a little and asks Lestrade, "So what's this about tantric sex without the sex?"

Lestrade drains his glass. "We've already been playing at it, a bit. The cuddling and touching. I guess what would change more than anything is the way we go about it. There are a few things we haven't done that I want to try: breathing and massage. Meditation. The therapist taught me some techniques for building intimacy."

John's mouth twitches at the corners, a smile not quite made. "Christ, we can be more intimate?"

"Only one way to find out," says Lestrade. "That's the other thing about going celibate for a while—it can help you focus on feeling differently with us."

"Might bring me closer to Sherlock," John says, thinking out loud, eyes unfocused. "Help me understand him more, I mean. It could bring me closer to both of you somehow, I guess."

"Like I said, no pressure. Take a few days to think about it. Let me know."

John sips at his beer. "Well, I do want to try whatever you've got for the three of us."

"Just have to get Sherlock on board," says Lestrade.

Lestrade doesn't say a word to Sherlock about any of his ideas until after John decides three days later that he wants to try being celibate for the next ninety days.

"Sherlock can't fathom why I want to do it," John tells Lestrade, sitting before Lestrade's desk in the DI's office. "But after the shock wore off, he seemed a bit…. touched. Confused but touched. I told him I want to see what it's like partially because I want to sort of understand his experience."

"Well, there's only so much understanding celibacy can give you," Lestrade says. "Sherlock doesn't abstain from doing what he wants, he doesn't feel the need to do it in the first place."

"I know. But this is the closest I'll ever get."

Lestrade talks to Sherlock the following day when the younger detective comes into the Yard for a new case Lestrade wants his help on. He explains the action he wants them to take together: the meditation, the new ways of touching, thinking and feeling around their physical intimacy deliberately. "John and I have decided to make the most of our celibacy," he says, looking at Sherlock from behind his desk. They're both on their feet in Lestrade's office. "It's not casual anymore. It's not because we can't get any or because we feel guilty about sex or because we want to shag you. I stopped looking for it because I just... don't need it. You said it yourself once, I'm gray-something. Not quite asexual but not sexual the way most men are."

Sherlock watches Lestrade with a partially skeptical, utterly baffled expression.

"John's not unhappy to give it up for a while either," Lestrade continues. "Sherlock—we want to be celibate for as long as it's comfortable because we want it to be a way of loving each other and you. We want to focus on our love, our intimacy. We want to see if we can feel better without sex."

Sherlock lifts his chin. "Greg... I don't want you or John to suppress a biological drive you can't help having."

"We're not. My libido's good as dead, and as for John... Wanting sex physically isn't the same thing as wanting it mentally. Understand?"

Sherlock just stares at him for a beat, before nodding.

They meditate in three different rooms: John in his, Sherlock in his, and Lestrade in the sitting room. They've been practicing every day for two weeks, increasing the time gradually. First, it was fifteen minutes, then thirty, then forty-five. Today, they sit in silence for an hour. Their breaths start out deep, then even out. They stop thinking. They don't feel anything either. They become acutely present in their bodies, before losing touch with those too, except for their own breath.

Sherlock's breathing becomes more and more shallow, the deeper he goes into the blackness. He took some convincing, when Lestrade explained what he wanted them all to try; he never imagined meditation could bring him a kind of mental peace that's eluded him his whole life. It's similar to what happens when he blacks out while talking to John for a lengthy period, only he's aware of his brain shutting down. It takes him longer than John and Lestrade to go quiet in his mind, but when he does, he's gone completely.

Lestrade must go to him, stirring him gently. Sherlock's hands rest on his knees, his legs crossed, and Lestrade covers them with his own. He murmurs Sherlock's name until the lids lift slowly from those pale blue eyes. Lestrade brushes his fingertips along the side of Sherlock's forehead and into his hair. He pulls Sherlock to his feet and leads him by the hand upstairs to John's room.

John's sitting at the foot of the bed, waiting for them. "Now what?" he says.

"I want you and Sherlock to lie down next to each other, on your sides, facing each other," Lestrade says.

Sherlock climbs into bed without a word. The sheets and blanket are rolled open to the end of the bed. The pillows are propped against the headboard, so John and Sherlock can lay their heads on the mattress.

"Just look at each other," says Lestrade, as he retrieves a box of matches from the top drawer in John's dresser. He lights three orange candles around the room, one after the other: on the dresser top, on the windowsill, on the night table to the right of the bed.

Sherlock and John stare into each other eyes. They don't speak.

"Try not to think," Lestrade tells them, sitting on the trunk at the foot of the bed, looking at the other two men. "Look into each other's eyes and meditate."

Lestrade closes his own eyes and takes a deep breath, carrying on his meditation from downstairs. For an unknown amount of time, he sits still like this and listens to the silence and the sound of his own breath.

Sherlock and John do as they're told. They lie motionless on the bed and maintain eye contact. They don't touch. The light from the candle behind Sherlock falls across John's face, and Sherlock watches the reflections in his irises. The room, the whole flat, is silent. Minutes pass. Sherlock wants to reach out and touch John but doesn't because it feels like physical contact might interrupt whatever connection they've established. The longer they look into each other, the more they feel as if they're in that same meditative trance they entered alone.

Lestrade opens his eyes and looks at them. "Try to feel how much you love each other."

It doesn't take long for Sherlock and John to tap into the feeling. Sherlock blinks, as his eyes sting. John's glisten too. Their facial expressions remain mostly unreadable. They continue to gaze at each other.

"You can touch if you like," says Lestrade, beginning to let his love for them come into his body.

For a moment, Sherlock and John don't move. Then Sherlock cups the back of John's skull with his hand and pulls him closer, so their foreheads touch.

"Keep breathing."

Sherlock closes his eyes, as emotion floods him. John continues to look at him, at his thin white eyelids and lashes on his cheeks. He takes a breath, focusing on the sensations around his heart. Eyelids drop, lift. Sherlock's still lowered. John reaches his hand up to Sherlock's face and pushes the other man's curls back along his skull. He pulls his head away from Sherlock and presses a kiss to Sherlock's brow, filled with a sense of reverence for Sherlock's brain. He cradles the base of Sherlock's skull with his hand as he holds his lips to the center of Sherlock's forehead.

Then, he pushes himself up from the bed and rolls Sherlock onto his back in one fluid motion. Sherlock looks up at him, as John buries his fingers in Sherlock's hair. The candlelight flickers across Sherlock's face as he breathes. John leans down and kisses Sherlock's right eyelid, then his left, as the first tears slip down Sherlock's face. John touches his forehead to Sherlock's again, closes his eyes, and holds himself there as they breathe. Sherlock just lies boneless, not touching John. John kisses him gently on the lips. The kiss is dry and brief. He kisses the left corner of Sherlock's mouth, then touches his nose to Sherlock's cheek. He lowers himself to the bed again, snug to Sherlock's side, and pulls him into a one-armed embrace.

Lestrade watches them in detached observation, feeling his own love for them flow from the middle of his chest outward.

After a few minutes of holding Sherlock, John says, "Greg. Do you want to join us?"

"Yes," Lestrade says. "I want time with Sherlock first."

John sits up and helps Sherlock do the same, as Lestrade crawls onto the bed from the trunk. He tells Sherlock to sit cross-legged in the middle of the bed, while John sits in front of him. Lestrade positions himself behind Sherlock, legs on either side of the younger man with his knees up. He wraps Sherlock in his arms and rests his chin on Sherlock's shoulder. Sherlock's arms are limp at his sides, tear tracks drying on his face.

"Close your eyes," Lestrade tells him. "And breathe with me."

He takes a deep breath in and blows it out slowly. Again. Again. Sherlock begins to match him. They breathe steadily together, Lestrade's chest pressed to Sherlock's back. They feel the warmth of each other, the air moving in and out of each other's lungs. Lestrade pushes his hands under Sherlock's t-shirt and folds them over his heart. They breathe. Lestrade feels his own heart beating and Sherlock's, warm energy flowing from his heart and his hands into Sherlock's heart. He feels his love for Sherlock envelop him.

John takes Sherlock's hands in his as tears begin to stream down Sherlock's face. Both Lestrade and Sherlock keep their eyes shut. John closes his too. Sherlock's hands are hot in his.

Lestrade breathes with Sherlock for a long stretch of time. He feels love burn in his heart and move out into the rest of his body. He imagines, as he and Sherlock breathe in time with each other, that they are one. He imagines their energy moving down from their heads to the base of their spines and back up again. He feels Sherlock's heart beating against his right palm and is filled with the deepest sense of awe and gratitude for it—the source of the other man's life force. He turns his face into Sherlock's hair and breathes in the scent of mint shampoo, exhaling against Sherlock's neck.

Gradually, their breathing grows shallower. Lestrade holds Sherlock from behind with his head resting on Sherlock's shoulder. He keeps his right hand on Sherlock's heart and moves his left hand down to Sherlock's belly. He feels the breath circulating through Sherlock's torso and for a moment, he feels love just for these things: Sherlock's heart, Sherlock's breath, Sherlock's belly.

"Lestrade," Sherlock says. "I need a rest."

Lestrade opens his eyes and loosens his arms a little. "Are you okay?"

"Yes." But Sherlock sounds dazed. "I'm fine. I just need... I need to lie down on my own for a moment." His hands are still in John's, and John's watching his face now.

Lestrade pulls away from him and moves off to one side of the bed, leaving Sherlock space. Sherlock grabs at one of the pillows, pulls it down the bed, and curls on his side. He faces the wall to the right.

John and Lestrade look at each other.

"Let's leave him alone for a bit and focus on each other," Lestrade says.

John nods.

In the space Sherlock leaves them on the bed, Lestrade and John sit opposite each other. They take each other's hands, resting on their knees that touch, and close their eyes to breathe. Lestrade still feels the energy in his body buzzing from his connection with Sherlock, though less intensely. He breathes to bring himself back into balance. John's fingers are warm in his.

John looks at Lestrade first, then Lestrade opens his eyes. They look at each other in silence for several beats. Lestrade reaches out and lays his hand on John's heart. John presses his hand against Lestrade's heart. They stare into each other's eyes in this pose, breathing gently. Their faces are supple with inner quiet, relaxation, the energy of love. Lestrade holds John's hand to his heart. John holds Lestrade's to his. They feel, at the same time, a deep gratitude for each other.

He smiles at John. And John smiles back. He squeezes Lestrade's hand over his heart just a little, then moves forward into Lestrade's lap. Lestrade shifts to accommodate him comfortably, looking into John's eyes and waiting for whatever John wants to do. John looks back at him, hands on Lestrade's shoulders. Lestrade's right arm is curled around John's waist and the DI leans back on his left hand planted flat on the bed. John kisses him on the cheek, full of tenderness. He cups Lestrade's face in both hands and looks at him, then kisses him lightly on the lips—a lingering peck. He hugs Lestrade tight, and Lestrade sinks down onto his back, taking John with him.

For a few minutes, they lie still together with their eyes shut, breathing in each other's scent and feeling the air move through each other. Chest to chest, belly to belly. John covers Lestrade's body with his own, head on Lestrade's shoulder and arms around him. Lestrade's left hand rests on John's back, and he feels the other man's weight with gratitude. Eventually, he opens his eyes to stare up at the ceiling, watching the light of the three candles playing across the wood.

"I feel you," John murmurs.

And Lestrade knows intuitively just what he means. He pushes his hand beneath John's shirt and presses it firmly into the warm skin of John's lower back. John turns his face to bury it down in Lestrade's shoulder, breathing. They hold this pose for a while. The candles are shrinking.

At some point, John pushes himself up from Lestrade, and they both look over at Sherlock who hasn't moved or made a sound. He lies on his side with his back to them, in a white cotton t-shirt and pajama pants, the bare soles of his feet pale pink. John climbs off of Lestrade and moves to Sherlock, touching him gently. "Sherlock," he whispers. "Sherlock, you with us?"

"John," says Sherlock, lifting his hand up toward John.

John takes it in his. "Do you want to join us now?"

Sherlock doesn't reply for a beat. "Yes. I think so."

John moves down to the foot of the bed, giving Sherlock space. "Go to Lestrade, and I'll get on your other side," he says.

Sherlock rolls over onto his other side and blinks at Lestrade as if he'd forgotten the DI was in the room. He drags himself over, Lestrade lifts his arm, and Sherlock settles against Lestrade's side with his head on the older man's shoulder. He's already got his eyes closed, looking utterly exhausted in his face and body alike. John lies down next to Sherlock and pulls the sheets and blanket over the three of them. He starts stroking Sherlock's lower back because that always soothes him. Sherlock's top hand lies on Lestrade's belly near his side, and Lestrade covers it with his own hand. His other one finds the top of John's head, and he brushes his fingers along John's short-cropped hair. Lestrade turns his head to rest his lips against the top of Sherlock's forehead. John sets his forehead against Sherlock's back between his shoulder blades and cups Sherlock's waist with his hand, rubbing his thumb back and forth. He focuses on Sherlock's breath moving in and out of his lungs.

"We've got you," Lestrade whispers to Sherlock. "We've got you."

They drift into sleep together.