A/N: Here we are at the end and I want to thank everyone who has commented on this story. With particular thanks to purplehedgehog13, OhGodYes_CptWatson, NotaCapriSun, and sweetmarly, who commented on so many chapters (and in some cases all of them) and made it so much easier to dive right into the next chapter so I could see what their reactions would be. This story wouldn't be the same without you.

To my beta, who in our long acquaintance has never had so many chapters thrown at her so often. I did the math and I averaged a chapter every four days. And yet she rose to the occasion. Thanks Old Ping Hai!

To my husband, sidheman, who must have gotten tired of my constant pestering on how to spell a word, or when to stop a chapter, or how to get around a plot wall that I had accidentally wrote myself into. He is a gem.

Enjoy!

From fantasymagonline .com, an interview from writer Toby Gregson and fantasy author Sherlock Holmes. Spring 2019.

I'm in a lovely cafe in Port Talbot, Wales, sitting across from Sherlock Holmes. He is looking stylish in his black suit and dusk blue shirt. He seems relaxed and at ease for someone who did not have a good first impression of the fantasy writing scene.

Toby Gregson: Thank you for meeting me.

Sherlock Holmes: It's my pleasure.

Toby: I can't tell you how excited I am to sit down with the comeback kid.

Sherlock: That makes me sound like I'm twelve.

Toby: (laughs) You look twelve.

Sherlock: I moisturize.

Toby: (laughs) Well, let's talk about your book, "The Spring of the Gryphon".

Sherlock: It is why I'm here, after all.

Toby: You could be here to talk about "Griffin's Steps".

Sherlock: (winces) That is certainly true, but I'm rather hoping it's the former rather than the latter.

Toby: (pulls out both books) How about both?

Sherlock: Is it too late to ask you to burn that? (he points to "Griffin's Steps")

Toby: Yep.

Sherlock: (groans)

Toby: Come on, it's not that bad.

Sherlock: That's not what people usually say.

Toby: No, it's not. I've seen the reviews and most of them can't be repeated here. Why do think that is?

Sherlock: There has been a lot of speculation by myself and other people in the industry, that it was because I "hid" behind a pen name, how young I was when I wrote it, the LGBTQ+ climate at the time and the public's perception of that. But honestly? No one knows for sure.

Toby: They all sound pretty plausible to me. It could be any combination of that or all of them.

Sherlock: Your guess is as good as anyone else's.

Toby: But "The Spring of the Gryphon" is not that book.

Sherlock: No. I deliberately went through and remade everything.

Toby: Almost everything. I understand there is a scene here that is still word for word what it was in "Griffin's Steps", what was it?

Sherlock: Ajay and Rhys's first kiss.

Toby: Really? Why that one?

Sherlock: I tried writing it so many times it made my head spin. But whatever I wrote didn't have the same punch, the same innocence that original had, so I left it alone.

Toby:(nods) It certainly was one hell of a kiss. Can we discuss the main character for a bit?

Sherlock: Sure.

Toby: He was always a self-insert.

And then like a bomb going off, the charming man I was talking to was gone in an instant, replaced by a cold, calculating machine.

Sherlock: I was seventeen.

I could tell I had hit a sore spot, so I rushed to bring back the Sherlock who had sat down with me.

Toby: That wasn't meant to be a criticism. I was just stating a fact.

And all at once the walls drop and I could see the scared kid he must have been when he wrote "Griffin's Steps".

Sherlock: Sorry. (ducks his head)

Toby: I'm the one that should be apologizing to you. I understand that the Mary Sue or in this case Bobby Stu aspect was a perceived fault that critics latched onto when they reviewed the book.

Sherlock: It was a juvenile thing to do.

Toby: But if it was a problem, your editor would have picked up on it and had you change it.

Sherlock: True. He didn't.

Toby: Did Rhys change from "Griffin's Steps" to "The Spring of the Gryphon"?

Sherlock: No. He needed to be the same naive teenage he always was to carry the plot.

Toby: Did any of the other characters change?

Sherlock: In this book, no. In future books, you'll just have to wait and see.

I sit up in my chair. This is the first time I've even heard the rumor there might be sequels.

Toby: Will there be more? Because that was one hell of cliffhanger.

Sherlock: (chuckles) So my partner keeps telling me. And yes, it is set for four books. When I wrote "Griffin's Steps" it was originally meant to be a trilogy, but when I expanded the story, it became clear that it wouldn't fit into three books.

Toby: What all was expanded?

Sherlock: New characters were added and their arcs were included to round out the story a bit more.

Toby: You mentioned your partner, John H Watson. He was the reason you started writing again, how did that come about?

Sherlock: (blushes) It sounds like something out of a rom-com or something even more sappy. Enemies-to-friends-to-lovers; caught in a rain storm, him finding my book amongst the hundreds of books in the library. And just loving it. And then convincing me to rewrite it.

Toby: You didn't start out as friends?

Sherlock: (shaking his head) No. God, no. I may have stumbled on a few secrets I guessed when I first met him and may have blurted them out loud.

Toby: Ouch. So is he one of the new characters in the sequels?

Sherlock: He is, but I made sure to run any developments with the character by John before committing them to paper.

Toby: So who is he?

Sherlock: You'll have to figure it out on your own when "The Summer of the Thunderbird" comes out next year.

I nearly fell out of my chair. You've read it here first, readers; not only will there be sequels but the next one is due out next year.

Toby: Do all your boyfriends get the same treatment?

Sherlock: Well, Ajay is based off my first boyfriend, so it only seemed fair to give John his own character.

Toby: You're talking about Victor Trevor.

The page shows a current picture of Victor Trevor and how he looked 10 years ago. The caption reads: Son of Conway Trevor and Judge Hasna Trevor.

Sherlock: To be fair, he was very fit.

Toby: (laughs) Too bad that was his only redeeming feature.

Sherlock: (rolls eyes) I know, right?

I had learned my lesson earlier and knew I had to tread carefully.

Toby: Do you want to talk about him?

Sherlock: (runs his thumb over his bottom lip) I learned recently that he was the one who had outed my real name to the press. That hurt.

Toby: Did he tell you?

Sherlock: (scoffs) As if he would stoop to speak to me. No, he was blasting me on some podcast and let it slip it was him. My brother dug a little deeper to see if he was making it up or not.

Toby: I'm guessing not.

Sherlock: Yeah. (bows his head) It was like being outed all over again.

Toby: Did he give a reason for throwing you under the bus like that?

Sherlock: He told the podcast host– (he clears his throat and he works his jaw. It is clear that this is not easy for him to talk about.) he told the host it was because he thought the furor around the book was because it was from–and I quote "a nobody". And that having the Holmes name behind it would cause people to swing back around to make it a hit.

Toby: But it backfired.

Sherlock: (He brings his head back up to look me in the eye) It very much had the opposite effect. Once people found out that I had used a pseudonym, the backlash became a veritable shit storm.

Toby: And to have to face all that at such a young age. You were only seventeen.

Sherlock: Made me an easier target, I think.

Toby: But there have been other teen authors, and such things weren't said about them.

Sherlock: No.

Toby: Well, "The Spring of the Gryphon" is not "Griffin's Steps", as it continues to rise on the best sellers' lists.

Sherlock: (chuckles) John and I have a bet on who hits number one first.

Toby: Tell him I'm betting on you, too.

Sherlock: Damn! That's what he said, too.

Toby: (laughs) So what do you say to all the haters now?

Sherlock (blows a raspberry)

Toby: Agreed!

But it appears our time is up and we say goodbye. I watch as he walks away, and I get the feeling that he's finally found his place in the world. And even though I hadn't spent much time with him, I feel a sense of pride on how happy he is now.

I hope you'll all join me on this ride that he has planned for us in The Seasons of the Beasts series and wish him all the happiness in the world.

Sherlock walked into the house that he was renting with John and tossed his wallet and keys on the island in the kitchen.

John looked up from the hob, where he was cooking dinner and smiled. "Hey, beautiful. How was the interview?"

Sherlock draped himself over John's shoulders and sighed heavily. "Tedious."

John reached up with the hand he wasn't using to stir to scratch Sherlock's head. "I can't imagine that he laid off the hard questions."

"He didn't. But he was kind about it. He even stopped the recording a couple of times to let me compose myself," Sherlock explained.

"That's good. I'm glad Mycroft's friend recommended him," John murmured. Tobias Gregson had been chosen in particular for the interview for that reason. That he would respect Sherlock and not tear him down for a better story.

John lowered the heat on the hob and turned around. "Are you okay?"

Sherlock melted into John, and the former soldier gripped him tightly.

"I'm elated and drained. How does that even happen?"

"Comes from getting something off your chest that had been weighing you down for years," John murmured. "You feel weightless because the stone you had been carrying for so long is gone, but the effort it took to get it off is draining."

Sherlock nuzzled his neck. "You are so good at this."

"I have a therapist, she explains these things to me," he said with a chuckle.

"What does she make of all this traveling?" the publicist asked.

"She's a fan, honestly. She seems to think I was stagnating in London," John said and kissed the top of Sherlock's head.

"You thrive on excitement and challenge," Sherlock replied. "It doesn't take a trained therapist to see that."

"Well, what do you know, you can be modest," John teased.

"But you see me just as clearly as I see you," Sherlock protested.

"I think it's that more that we understood each other on a level everyone else overlooked," he said with a shrug.

"You never cease to amaze me," Sherlock said, awed.

John chuckled. "I don't know why, I'm just ordinary."

"And there is nothing more important in this world than an ordinary man," Sherlock explained. "And you love me, which is marvelous."

"Loving you is easy," John replied. "I could love you forever."

Sherlock sealed their lips together and John let out a deep sigh of contentment.

When they broke apart, Sherlock murmured, "I was trying to impress you. The day we met."

John looked up, rubbing his nose along Sherlock's. "You certainly did. But I wasn't thinking like that. All I knew was that here was this absolutely gorgeous bloke walking into my life and pulling out my darkest secrets to the light of day and it hurt."

Sherlock blinked. "You thought I was gorgeous?"

John laughed. "You would pick out that one detail out of all of that. But yes, you berk. I thought you were gorgeous. Still do."

Sherlock hummed. "Well, I went and bagged me a very handsome soldier, so..."

"Handsome, hmmm?" John teased. "Well that is a step up. Before you left for Ireland, I was only good-looking, now I'm handsome."

Sherlock chuckled and dived in for another kiss. John hummed happily into his lips. He thought of that quote by Louisa May Alcott:

"I've got the key to my castle in the air, but whether I can unlock the door remains to be seen."

Only, he had unlocked the door. He opened himself up to his man and this life in ways he hadn't known possible. If someone had told him a year ago that he would be sharing a house with the man who had deduced him so thoroughly on their combined book tour, he would have thought them mad.

But as Sherlock continued to kiss him, all thoughts were filled with just the press of their lips together. Later he would curse about it and agree to going out to dinner, but right now he just wanted to kiss his partner as the meal he had planned turned slowly to sludge on the hob.

A/N: There is a little reference to Doctor Who in here. Just as there a tiny reference to Good Omens in chapter 19. If you spot them, let me know.

Again thank you for reading this lovely story of mine. I loved writing it. It made me very happy.

What's next? Well it's supposed to be Curses! But I keep stalling out on it. But now that I don't have an excuse not to write it, it might help getting it out. However, this means that in the mean time you will most likely see more of my Good Omens stories being put up. I have a different beta for those and with how fast I was churning out chapters for this story, I haven't had time to get them edited. So now that this story is done, I should be able to devote the time to getting those edited and posted.