Secretly I Think You Knew

The Devil Returning to the Fire

Sherlock walked over and held the sheet as John rolled Mycroft's very heavy, very frozen body onto the sheet, making sure all arms and legs were inside the car at all times before wrapping the sheet in a little Mycroft burrito.
"Ya, I'm not going to be able to get him up the stairs by myself." John decided. Sherlock nodded, taking a deep breath before grabbing the other end of the sheet and pulling it up with all of his might, lifting his brother's frozen legs and regretting never doing one push up in his life.
"Oh my god, how is that normal?" Sherlock groaned, letting the sheet fall back to the floor, Mycroft's body landing with a little thump.
"It's not normal, he's frozen and dead but we need to get him up these steps." John insisted. Sherlock nodded, shaking his arms out a little bit before grabbing the sheet and lifting it up once more. This time John started to move, and very progressively they moved the body out of the freezer. Sherlock took a break to close and lock the freezer door once more, just in case another one of those bodies wanted to rise from the dead and say hello.
"Are you alright?" John asked as Sherlock messaged his forearms.
"Ya, just...weak." Sherlock admitted.
"And you said you could beat me up." John laughed. Sherlock stared at him for a moment, trying to remember when he could've possibly said something so ridiculous.
"I never said anything like that." Sherlock debated. "You made that up to get Greg off of our trial."
"I'd like to say it worked, but he's as suspicious as ever." John sighed.
"Is that why he left?" Sherlock wondered.
"No, it's why I left. He accused you of murdering Victor, and I left, I couldn't put up with him accusing you of things he has no idea about." John insisted.
"But I did kill Victor; his body is right in there." Sherlock pointed out.
"But Greg doesn't know that." John debated. Sherlock stared blankly at him, not seeing the problem here. "You know what, it doesn't matter, let's just get your brother upstairs before he melts."
"That's not a sentence you hear every day." Sherlock muttered, but nevertheless he grabbed his end of the sheet and lugged it up the stairs with John. John was right though, he always seemed to be right. As they dragged the body up the stairs, into the warm part of the house, the ice crystals and the blood started to warm up, dripping through the sheet and scattering through the house as Sherlock and John carried him through the house and out the back door.
"You don't have any neighbors do you? The last thing we need is the fire department showing up." John asked.
"No I don't have neighbors, that's half the reason I can get away with all of this screaming." Sherlock insisted.
"Well everyone needs their fair share of screaming, it's a necessity for any household." John assured. He pulled open the back door and stepped very carefully down the back steps, quite an accomplishment since he was going backwards and lugging his share of about 200 pounds. Sherlock's arms were wobbling as they made their way slowly to the fire pit, and just when he thought he couldn't go any longer John dropped his half, letting Sherlock drop his as well and collapse on the ground next to his brother's thawing corpse.
"My god he's heavy." Sherlock groaned.
"Well he's frozen, that can't help anything." John agreed, shaking out his arms and looking around for the fire wood. Sherlock sat up, watching John in the moonlight, blood covering his hands from moving Mycroft's body onto the sheet. His hair sparkled and his eye gleamed, he looked like someone out of a children's story book, the prince, who had come to save Sherlock from himself.
"You're beautiful John, do you know that?" Sherlock asked, gazing up at John's beautiful silhouette in the moonlight.
"As are you." John assured.
"No but you're...you're just...breathtaking." Sherlock muttered. John just laughed, a beautiful sound from a beautiful boy.
"You're only out of breath because you dragged your brother's dead body up the stairs." John insisted.
"That too." Sherlock agreed. He had one messed up life, but it all seemed worth it. All of the wrongs he had committed, maybe they really did make a right.
"Where is that firewood?" John wondered, looking around as if it had snuck up on him while he was watching Sherlock. Sherlock got to his feet, groaning with the effort and shaking out his wobbling arms, nodding towards the house and starting his way over. In the back next to the door was a large pile of firewood, stuff Mycroft kept around to make fires outside or inside, when the heating wasn't working.
"I remember when I was little, Mycroft used to make bonfires out here for me, we'd pitch a tent and roast marshmallows and make s'mores. Then we'd camp out under the stars as the fire died out." Sherlock sighed, looking at the wood as if it brought back happy memories. He saw himself and Mycroft, smiling, happy, together. That was back before Sherlock started to break Mycroft's rules, back when Mycroft was a fair older brother, just trying to do what was right. Back when Sherlock realized he didn't conform to the mold Mycroft had forced upon him.
"If you focus too much on the happy memories, the bad ones will fade away. And you'll be under the impression that you killed your peaceful, happy older brother when that's not what happened at all." John pointed out.
"I know, he was a tyrant, and I don't regret killing him." Sherlock assured. John just sighed, looking over at Sherlock with pity, obviously wondering if Sherlock actually believed that.
"He was horrible Sherlock, a horrible brother and a horrible man, I don't care what he was like before, it's what he grew to be. The horrors of reality crushed him, changed him into a beast, and it wasn't your fault and his death wasn't your fault either." John assured, grabbing an armful of fire wood and making his way to the pit. Sherlock mimicked him, not able to carry nearly as much wood, but soon they had an ever growing pile, building up next to Mycroft's watery body.
"I know it wasn't my fault." Sherlock assured.
"Do you really?" John muttered.
"Yes, so please stop questioning me. You were talking about Greg downstairs, what really happened?" Sherlock asked. John sighed, lingering over by the firewood and staring at the firewood, thinking about something.
"I'll make you a deal." He decided, turning to face Sherlock who was on his way for more wood. Sherlock stopped on the grass, the cold night air cutting through his pale skin as he watched John in the moonlight.
"What do you mean?" he asked suspiciously.
"A story for a story. You want to know more about Greg, and I want to know what happened with you and Victor Trevor." John decided. Sherlock was a little bit nervous, but he wasn't surprised. He knew John would ask questions, he knew that he would want to know more about Sherlock's past life, and honestly he deserved to know.
"Why do you want to know about Victor?" Sherlock asked nervously. John sighed, looking almost embarrassed.
"I don't know what happened between you, I want to know...I really want to know if I was the first." John admitted.
"The first to what?" Sherlock wondered.
"To love you. To have you love me. To be together." John muttered.
"I'll tell you everything, once the fire's lit." Sherlock decided. John nodded, turning rather reluctantly and scooping up another handful of wood.
"I think he'll burn, he's a bit wet, but we could always add some gasoline to help him along." John decided, dropping the logs at his feet and staring at Mycroft's broken body.
"We've got a tank in the garage, just in case we ran out of gas out here." Sherlock pointed out.
"Do you mind going to get that? I'll start over here, arranging the logs and stuff." John decided.
"Ya, alright." Sherlock nodded, rushing back into the house to get the gasoline. As soon as he got into the house though, the looming darkness surrounded him once more, and he didn't have John to protect him like he did last time. Thankfully though, he knew that Mycroft wasn't here, he was outside, with John, and even though the basement door stood open, Sherlock knew that no one except Victor and his uncle lay down there in the frost. So John wanted to know about Victor, to know if he was the first. How did Sherlock answer that? He loved Victor, of course he had, and if what Victor had said in his last moments was true, then Victor loved him as well. It all came down to what John counted as reality. When Sherlock had been locked in the freezer, the night that Mycroft had found out about John, Victor had been there and the two of them loved each other as they were meant to, but that had been a dream. If it was not a dream then a hallucination, because no matter how Victor's heart beat that night, Victor had been dead the whole time, so it really didn't count in Sherlock's mind, because it never really happened. Sherlock and Victor had kissed in so many of his dreams and visions, in the notebook that was now no more than charred ashes in the fireplace, but then again, so had Sherlock and John. Long before their lips met, Sherlock had kissed John in so many altered versions of reality, long before he was trapped in the freezer with the hallucinated version of Victor Trevor. Oh, his love life was so messed up, was it not? When he got back from the garage, gasoline in hand, John had somehow managed to get Mycroft's body arranged on the logs; it looked almost ceremonial, as if this were some ancient tradition, to burn the dead in the backyard. But of course it wasn't an ancient tradition, most of their dead were still in the freezer, but nevertheless Mycroft looked impressive, getting ready to burn. His skin was obviously a bit water logged, it looked wet and puffy and still slightly blue, but most of the ice had long since thawed away.
"Alright, so, cook on high for twenty minutes, flip, and continue until preferred level of crispiness." John said with a sarcastic little laugh. Sherlock stared at him blankly, wondering what in the world he meant by that.
"What, you've never had oven food?" John asked.
"Mycroft made all the meals." Sherlock shrugged.
"Alright then, that would be why." John muttered. There was a bit of a comfortable silence as they both stared at Mycroft, the last time they would probably see him like this again.
"I got the gasoline." Sherlock muttered, holding up the can proudly.
"Alright, brilliant, just douse him in it I guess." John decided, waving his hand carelessly over the display. Sherlock nodded, unscrewing the cap and spilling the gas all over his brother's body, making sure he got nice and drenched before pulling away and setting the can on the ground.
"Would you like to do the honors?" John asked, holding up a lighter with a mischievous gleam in his eyes.
"I was the one that killed him; I think you should be the one to light him on fire." Sherlock decided. John shrugged, nodding as if that sounded fair to him, and walking over to the body, the small flame on his lighter waving in the cool night wind but not going out. Sherlock was shivering slightly but he knew that he'd have a nice fire to warm himself once Mycroft went up.
"Well Mycroft, it wasn't nice knowing you." John muttered, and with that he touched the lighter to the body and the gasoline went up in flames, immediately shooting towards the sky in a great curtain of fire. John stumbled back in shock, obviously not expecting it to be that quick.
"Whoa!" Sherlock yelled, pulling John back away from the wall of flame.
"I'm fine, I'm fine." John assured. He closed the lighter and threw it onto the grass for them to find in the morning, the flames starting to die down a little bit and start eating away at Mycroft's watery corpse. Sherlock took a deep breath as he watched what was left of his brother's face go up in flames, the fire eating away at his flesh, his eyes, burning his hair and melting off his skin.
"He deserved it Sherlock, it would've been me." John whispered. Sherlock nodded, wrapping his arms around John's stomach and pulling him closer, so that John's head could fall back comfortably onto Sherlock's shoulder. They were made for each other, like puzzle pieces fitting together in front of the heat of the fire.
"I met Victor last year." Sherlock started. "He was the grade above us, charming, handsome, polite, we were in the same math class. He seemed to pay attention to me, to care about me like no one else did, for some reason we automatically connected. And I felt these feelings that I had never felt before, feelings I couldn't place, but looking into his eyes...it made me feel so good, so important, and soon I stared thinking that maybe I wanted to be more than just friends. And I thought maybe Mycroft's rules were meant to be broken. But I told my brother everything, about Victor, about my feelings for Victor, and he was nice about it, for a moment I thought that maybe it could actually work. And so Mycroft invited him for dinner, and locked him in the freezer, and made me go down with the kitchen knife, just as he made me do to you, and slit his throat. We never kissed, we never formally told each other that we loved one another, we never did any of the things you and I have done. Unless you count dreams, fearful hallucinations, and drawings."
"Drawings? Were you really that creepy?" John asked with a small laugh. Sherlock took a deep breath but nodded, knowing that John could feel his nod even if he couldn't see it.
"I had a little notebook; I hid it under my mattress, and in it I drew Victor, I drew you, I drew myself. Mycroft found it the night I came to your house, the night when he found out about...us." Sherlock muttered.
"What did he do with it?" John asked. Sherlock sighed; closing his eyes and watching the notebook go up in flames, just as Mycroft was right now.
"He threw it into the fire." Sherlock admitted.
"And now we're throwing him in the fire. A complete circle, it was meant to be." John decided. Sherlock just held John closer, the heat of the flames making them both uncomfortably warm but too shy to try to step into the fresh night air. The night smelled of burning flesh, wood smoke, and gasoline, all very unpleasant smells. But when Sherlock was next to John he could smell his cologne, his shampoo, the slight smell of John's house and whatever he had for dinner, and that was a nice smell, a nice change from the odors rising from the bubbling, burning body of his brother.
"I never loved Victor as I love you John. He never came close to being adequate, but he was the only boy that was even a possibility to love, and he was the only one mad enough to love me back. In those days I didn't know you and you didn't notice me." Sherlock admitted.
"I'm happy I finally came to." John muttered.
"You would never have noticed me if your car didn't break down." Sherlock pointed out.
"I might've. We're in the same English class." John pointed out.
"We've been in school twelve years together, we were bound to have the same classes then as well." Sherlock insisted.
"Are you saying I didn't care enough about you to notice you in the back behind a book?" John muttered.
"Yes I am." Sherlock agreed.
"I guess you're right. I guess I owe that junky car my life." John decided, turning his head so that he could press a kiss to the only part of Sherlock's face he could reach, which would be his jaw bone. Sherlock just smiled, pressing a kiss to the top of John's head and holding him closer, the fire crackling and popping and sizzling in front of them, releasing a large cloud of black smoke.
"What happened with Greg today?" Sherlock asked. John took a deep breath, as if not really into this whole show and tell thing.
"He waited until you were out of the locker room, all of them, they ganged up on me. Greg said you killed your brother, he said you killed Victor, and that you were going to kill me." John muttered.
"Well, he was right, wasn't he?" Sherlock asked with a small laugh.
"But he doesn't know he's right. He has no proof except for a hunch, he heard you ask Victor to dinner, he said that it was probably the last place Victor went before he disappeared. He's just convicting you of these crimes because he's jealous of you, he wants to be the primary focus of my attention, him, the team, my friends, like it used to be." John muttered.
"So what did you do?" Sherlock asked.
"I left. I wasn't going to take any of that, so I left him, I quit the team, and I have no intentions of going back. I don't need them as long as I have you." John insisted. Sherlock nodded, taking a deep breath knowing that John could feel as his lungs expanded, John could feel his heart beating.
"Thank you for doing all of that on my account." He muttered.
"It was no trouble; you're the only thing that really matters in my life anyway. Except I would've kind of liked it if you had come to watch a game." John admitted.
"And sit with all of the students and parents, watching as you and Greg paraded around the field, kicking a ball around for two hours?" Sherlock asked with a laugh. John laughed as well, nodding and letting his head fall back into the crook of Sherlock's neck.
"Ya, I guess it is pretty stupid. I'm glad I quit that stupid team." John decided.
"Well if they didn't want me, I guess they didn't want you enough." Sherlock agreed.
"As long as we have each other, I'd be willing to give everything else away." John assured.
"And I think you almost have." Sherlock agreed. "I certainly have."
"If you're suggesting I kill my family, I don't think that's going to happen. Not until they try to get between us." John decided.
"I don't want you to kill your family; they have no reason to die. I don't want to turn into my brother, forcing people to kill for my own selfish needs." Sherlock insisted.
"Your brother was twisted, he was messed up in the head, it's not your fault and as long as you listen to your heart you will never end up like him." John assured. Sherlock nodded, taking a deep breath and watching his brother's skin melt off more, the flames licking away and destroying him as much as they could, already blackened bones were visible. This is what Mycroft needed, this is what he deserved. A stab in the stomach and an informal cremation, the devil was returning to the fire. How appropriate.