Eighteen Hours Earlier

Seagulls and waves and the babble of children and lovers and locals.

It's like a dream, but then life always seems dreamy when he wakes up and knows that his lover has lain next to him and touched his hair and watched him as he slept. Waking up on a beach in Bondi with a half-naked, sandy Detective Inspector pressed against his side, still idly stroking a finger up and around the slope of his freckly shoulder, is just a bonus, albeit a good one.

"What time is it?" Mycroft asks, cracking an eye open to take in the gentle, half-asleep expression of Greg's weather-beaten face.

The detective shrugs. "Does it matter?"

No, it doesn't, not really. They can lie here all day and all night if they want to, sleep until two in the morning and then shag until the shops open for breakfast if the fancy takes them. He sighs. It's a pity he can't get used to this.

A shadow falls in front of Mycroft's sun; he opens the other eye to see a group of young women in bikinis flicking out a towel in front of them, blocking their view of the ocean. He can't bring himself to mind much, but he sits up anyway.

"Oh! Sorry, are we in your way? Do you mind if we sit here?"

Whatever people said about Australians, Mycroft muses, he certainly hasn't found it the case. Perhaps Greg's teasing about how awkward he looks in casual clothing means that people still pander to his authority a little, but everyone has been scrupulously polite. He opens his mouth, but his lover beats him to it.

"Not at all. We were about to move anyway."

Mycroft wants to say something along the lines of oh, we were, were we?, but the Australian girls giggle amongst themselves. "Oh my God! You're English!"

Before the flicker of jealousy can even begin to stir in his stomach, Greg gives him an indulgent smile. "And gay," he says brightly. "Come on, love, we're going back to the bach."

The Detective Inspector picks up his towel, trails his fingers along Mycroft's arm down to his wrist, then heads back up the beach towards their little rent-a-bach. He blinks after him for a moment, not quite oblivious to the titters coming from the group of girls in front of him, feeling the beginnings of arousal raise its head again in the pit of his stomach. Then he shakes his head. "Excuse me, ladies," he says politely, getting up and trying not to run to catch up with his lover for fear of seeming too desperate.

Before he met Gregory Lestrade, Mycroft had thought it impossible to muster the energy to engage in sexual relations as often as the two of them have this past week; every time Greg says or does something that makes his skin tingle and his cock twitch, something in the back of his mind voices an incredulous, again?

Not that he's complaining, of course.

He catches the detective on the doorstep of the bach, his arms looping instinctively around that muscular, brown waist as they stumble the sand from the beach over the tiled floor and kick the door shut.

"Why do you have to be so attractive?" he pouts, burying his nose in the thick silvery hair and sniffing the smell of the sea. "Those girls were at least twenty years younger than you and they were still undressing you with their eyes. Not that there's much undressing to do," he points out, giving the loose shorts a tug to prove his point and divesting Greg of the only item of clothing he was wearing.

The DI laughs, catching Mycroft's head in his strong hands. "It certainly starts to explain the rising sex crime rate around the world. They're probably lucky I was very definitely not interested."

Greg presses his lips clumsily to the Government's temple and hooks his fingers into the waistband of Mycroft's own swimming trunks, tossing them easily to the floor. The two men clutch at each other's flesh, drawing them closer, feeling the rub of salt and sand against their skins and tasting it against their mouths. "Bedroom," Greg orders.

"Why bother?"

There's certainly no reason they can't just finish whatever it is they've started right there on the floor. It's not like anyone's about to walk into their private bach. But Greg gives him a long, hard stare that sends shivers up and down Mycroft's spine and makes his cock jump eagerly towards his older lover. "Because you're going to want a bed under you for what I have planned."

So he scrambles as fast as he can to the unnecessarily large bedroom and slams his lover none-too-gently against the wall, Greg's little yelp spurring him on to press their lips together, hard and bruising, and the tiny shades of pain from where they've done this before in the last week only serve to make this more intoxicating, more incredible, that Greg has sated himself so often on Mycroft's body and he still comes back, again and again until neither man can quite believe their luck.

They both know this isn't normal.

Greg slips one of his hands between them and takes hold of Mycroft's right middle finger, dragging it up between them and slipping it carefully into his mouth. The government advisor catches his breath, staring at his lover's gesture, the little glimpses of pink tongue around his own finger. He'd wanted to make this last, but it's not going to.

"Greg."

"I know."

From there they move quickly, onto the bed, the taller covering every inch of the shorter's skin as though he can protect him from the world like this, pressing gentle kisses along his jaw and down his neck. "I love you," Mycroft whispers. Greg smiles, but his only response is to wrap tanned arms around his lover's back and pull him closer.

The younger man's wet fingers slip between the DI's legs; with a breathy grunt, two slide in without trouble. They've done this so many times it can hardly matter anymore.

The feeling of being inside Greg makes Mycroft's heart squeeze around his lungs, holding them captive, forcing him still; they're warm against each other, their breathing synchronised, Greg's breath in for every breath out of Mycroft's, recycling each other's air until they're dizzy. There's been time for fast already, so when Mycroft finally takes a shuddering breath and shifts his hips in and out it's slow and warm and easy, and Greg's low groans blend with Mycroft's steady keening to make the harmony of some obscure love song.

After, Greg curls up in the hollow of Mycroft's underarm and breathes in the smell of his sweat as their heartbeats slow. "We've got to stop doing that," Greg voices finally. "We're getting old. I'm going to break something."

Mycroft chuckles, giddy. "I think we would have broken something by now." He grabs the sheet off the bed as he gets up and drapes it around himself. "Tea?" he offers, delivering a kiss to Greg's forehead. The DI smiles up at him.

"Thank you, my be-toga-ed Adonis," the stocky man replies. Mycroft laughs.

The bedroom is a few degrees warmer than the rest of the bach now, although that might be because the French doors are still open. He pulls the sheet tighter around him as he puts the kettle on in the kitchen and continues absently into the living area.

The woman sitting primly on the white settee clears her throat. "Sir."

Mycroft almost drops the sheet. "Miss Martin! Good God, girl, give me some warning next time!"

She smiles delicately and adjusts her skirt over her knees. "Sorry, sir."

"I thought I instructed you not to contact me even if the government was in crisis," he reprimands sternly, attempting to regain a smidgeon of dignity he lost when his assistant saw him wearing only a sheet.

"And I'm very sorry, sir, but it's not the government," Samantha Martin replies coolly, firmly placing a thin manila file on the glass coffee table. "It's Sherlock."

Mycroft looks around, his heart sinking and jittering with a familiar worry as his boyfriend wanders butt-naked and gorgeous into the living room. "Love, do we have any – Jesus Christ!"

The woman on the settee pointedly averts her eyes as the DI grabs a cushion from an armchair to protect his modesty.

Mycroft bites his lip. "Gregory, love… I promise I will make it up to you."