Fic for kari77: An Education
Title:An Education
Author: randomly_rusted
Recipient: kari77
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock, Lestrade
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Summary: At the end of a long day Lestrade really doesn't want
to have to give Sherlock that kind of an education.
An Education
There was an art in Sherlock-managing, an art Lestrade was painfully learning. How to encourage him to say what he was seeing rather than bouncing around the scene like a demented monkey then running off for example.
How to draw him out to explain things, rather than just insulting their intelligences, spitting a couple of utterly wild ideas into their startled faces, then running off.
He'd mostly learned how to get information out of the man. The running off part, now that was harder.
It had led him through Hampstead Heath - meaning mud and a close encounter with the boating pond - icy roads - the bruises had been impressive - and on one memorable occasion the London Zoo. He would never look at ostriches in quite the same way after that.
Usually though, the running off ended up in either Sherlock's bedsit or Lestrade's flat. And with luck and a bit of properly formed encouragement (Lestrade was discovering just what blend of disbelief and gormlessness got the best results) he could get the answers he needed to finish the case.
And so it had proved this time. The train of logic had been followed, the suicide pact revealed as a murder gone very wrong for the murderer, and all was well with the world.
It was cold and wet outside, the heater in Sherlock's bedsit was notoriously not fit for purpose, and so Sherlock had ensconced himself on Lestrade's sofa and was showing no signs of leaving.
Lestrade was pleasantly tired, fed and watered and thinking of bed when...
"So why haven't you tried to seduce me?"
Lestrade blinked.
"Whaaa? Where did that come from?"
"Everyone else seems to want to, why not you?"
Lestrade just looked at Sherlock, who looked back, completely unaware of any social niceties.
"Come on Sherlock, just because I'm gay doesn't mean I'm into shagging anything that moves."
There was no doubt the boy was pretty enough. He certainly attracted attention! He'd heard people of both sexes saying things like "Those eyes! Absolutely magnetic" and "mmm... love the way he moves, like a cat!", and even "I love curly hair on men!". (Lestrade's own hair went limp and dead straight if he let it grow, a couple of ill-advised experiments when younger had proved to him that short was best. And if he let it go too long between cuts it had a horrible habit of standing up in tufts.)
So yes, aesthetically attractive to be sure. He might have, in his much younger days, considered a striking looking energetic lithe young man with a posh accent and wild ways, but nowadays that seemed like too much work. He'd rather a lot less magnetism and a lot more reliability.
"Is that common?"
Only Sherlock Holmes. There were times he was sure Holmes had been brought up by aliens and just dropped back on the planet at age 25 educated entirely by means of tabloid newspapers and anatomy textbooks.
"Is what common? Not falling into bed with the nearest warm body that stays still long enough? Very much so, outside the pages of porn mags. Come on Sherlock, how long have you been doing this detective game? You must have some idea how most people conduct their lives."
"Well.. no. Because by the time a crime has been committed, it's hardly a normal life is it."
He had a point. "Maybe not, but you will notice the streets are not full of rutting humans."
"So maybe people aren't totally indiscriminate. But it seems to me most people spend an inordinate amount of time wanting sex, thinking about sex, being annoyed because they aren't getting sex...."
Lestrade had been guilty of all of those things of course, but he didn't think he'd spent an inordinate amount of time at it.
"It's a basic human drive, but most sane people manage it well enough. If they aren't getting any they cope. It's the insane ones who go off murdering people. Or standing on street corners saying "wannafuck".
"People do that?"
Lestrade thought that with all the things Sherlock had read, a book of prehistoric jokes would have been in there, but obviously not.
"Not outside jokes no, at least I've never met one."
"But everything I've seen indicates that people are always thinking about sex. Conversations in pubs, magazines, and it is all over the net!"
Well that explained it. He was getting his information about sex from the internet. No wonder the poor beggar was confused!
"I don't believe it.. Sherlock, you know what police investigations look like right?"
"Yes, slow, and stupid. Can't see what's in front of them but still manage to generate mountains of paperwork."
Lestrade let that old argument slide.
"And you've seen police investigations on TV. Which are nothing like reality. Have you seen the police investigation stories on the net?"
Sherlock sniffed. "Of course. Even worse!"
"Precisely. So why on earth do you think people talk about sex on the net with any more sense than they talk about murder?"
"You said it yourself, sex is a basic human drive."
Lestrade was starting to think that murder was too. Murder of irritating gits who were asking poor bloody coppers stupid questions especially so. Must be some way of getting through to the man!
"Sherlock, how many humans do you know who you think are even marginally intelligent?"
"Well.. Mycroft of course.
"And?"
"You have your moments."
"I will get you to put that in writing. Meanwhile... if the world is full of monumentally stupid people, then what makes you think they will write about even a basic human drive with any sense at all? And the same with pub conversations, they can't talk about football without going over the top, why would they talk about sex intelligently?"
Sherlock thought about that for a bit.
"But there must be some way I can get an idea of what's normal and what isn't! If no one talks about it except to exaggerate or lie, then how can I be sure I know what's going on in people's heads?"
Lestrade got up to get himself a cuppa. "You could try it out yourself?" he said, just to be difficult. He'd never seen someone putting out so many "Don't even think about it" signs, so he knew the what the reaction would be.
And wasn't disappointed.
"No! That's impossible! I'm married to my work, the body is just transport, things like that just get in the way!"
Lestrade grinned to himself as he put the kettle on. This Sherlock-managing was getting easier and easier. He was learning where the buttons were and what they would do.
He realised his mistake when he emerged from the kitchen with tea for two and saw Sherlock with Lestrade's laptop on his lap.
"Oi! That's my work machine!"
"Then you should have a more secure password." said Sherlock without looking up. "And really, if you couldn't tell that break in at Wicks and Abercrombie was a blind and the guard was in on it then I take back my comment about intelligence."
Lestrade had realised that, but knew it would do no good to say so.
"Now," said Sherlock "You can help me with my investigations into normal and abnormal sexual intensities. Look at this, is this normal?"
On the screen was a picture of three men with extremely unlikely equipment and an anteater using its tongue in a way never mentioned by David Attenborough.
"SHERLOCK! That's my work laptop, if they find it's been to sites like that I won't just be sacked, I'll be shot!"
The bloody nuisance just waved dismissively "Oh don't be silly, there won't be any traces. Unlike your quick look at a certain video the other day."
Lestrade knew blackmail when he heard it.
"So stop fussing. Now, I need you to show me which of these is reasonable for a sexual being and which isn't. "
Lestrade suspected that some sexual beings would think spending time with a pretty boy wanting to look at porn with you would be quite a reasonable thing.
He knew better.
It was going to be a long night....
Author: randomly_rusted
Recipient: kari77
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock, Lestrade
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Summary: At the end of a long day Lestrade really doesn't want
to have to give Sherlock that kind of an education.
An Education
There was an art in Sherlock-managing, an art Lestrade was painfully learning. How to encourage him to say what he was seeing rather than bouncing around the scene like a demented monkey then running off for example.
How to draw him out to explain things, rather than just insulting their intelligences, spitting a couple of utterly wild ideas into their startled faces, then running off.
He'd mostly learned how to get information out of the man. The running off part, now that was harder.
It had led him through Hampstead Heath - meaning mud and a close encounter with the boating pond - icy roads - the bruises had been impressive - and on one memorable occasion the London Zoo. He would never look at ostriches in quite the same way after that.
Usually though, the running off ended up in either Sherlock's bedsit or Lestrade's flat. And with luck and a bit of properly formed encouragement (Lestrade was discovering just what blend of disbelief and gormlessness got the best results) he could get the answers he needed to finish the case.
And so it had proved this time. The train of logic had been followed, the suicide pact revealed as a murder gone very wrong for the murderer, and all was well with the world.
It was cold and wet outside, the heater in Sherlock's bedsit was notoriously not fit for purpose, and so Sherlock had ensconced himself on Lestrade's sofa and was showing no signs of leaving.
Lestrade was pleasantly tired, fed and watered and thinking of bed when...
"So why haven't you tried to seduce me?"
Lestrade blinked.
"Whaaa? Where did that come from?"
"Everyone else seems to want to, why not you?"
Lestrade just looked at Sherlock, who looked back, completely unaware of any social niceties.
"Come on Sherlock, just because I'm gay doesn't mean I'm into shagging anything that moves."
There was no doubt the boy was pretty enough. He certainly attracted attention! He'd heard people of both sexes saying things like "Those eyes! Absolutely magnetic" and "mmm... love the way he moves, like a cat!", and even "I love curly hair on men!". (Lestrade's own hair went limp and dead straight if he let it grow, a couple of ill-advised experiments when younger had proved to him that short was best. And if he let it go too long between cuts it had a horrible habit of standing up in tufts.)
So yes, aesthetically attractive to be sure. He might have, in his much younger days, considered a striking looking energetic lithe young man with a posh accent and wild ways, but nowadays that seemed like too much work. He'd rather a lot less magnetism and a lot more reliability.
"Is that common?"
Only Sherlock Holmes. There were times he was sure Holmes had been brought up by aliens and just dropped back on the planet at age 25 educated entirely by means of tabloid newspapers and anatomy textbooks.
"Is what common? Not falling into bed with the nearest warm body that stays still long enough? Very much so, outside the pages of porn mags. Come on Sherlock, how long have you been doing this detective game? You must have some idea how most people conduct their lives."
"Well.. no. Because by the time a crime has been committed, it's hardly a normal life is it."
He had a point. "Maybe not, but you will notice the streets are not full of rutting humans."
"So maybe people aren't totally indiscriminate. But it seems to me most people spend an inordinate amount of time wanting sex, thinking about sex, being annoyed because they aren't getting sex...."
Lestrade had been guilty of all of those things of course, but he didn't think he'd spent an inordinate amount of time at it.
"It's a basic human drive, but most sane people manage it well enough. If they aren't getting any they cope. It's the insane ones who go off murdering people. Or standing on street corners saying "wannafuck".
"People do that?"
Lestrade thought that with all the things Sherlock had read, a book of prehistoric jokes would have been in there, but obviously not.
"Not outside jokes no, at least I've never met one."
"But everything I've seen indicates that people are always thinking about sex. Conversations in pubs, magazines, and it is all over the net!"
Well that explained it. He was getting his information about sex from the internet. No wonder the poor beggar was confused!
"I don't believe it.. Sherlock, you know what police investigations look like right?"
"Yes, slow, and stupid. Can't see what's in front of them but still manage to generate mountains of paperwork."
Lestrade let that old argument slide.
"And you've seen police investigations on TV. Which are nothing like reality. Have you seen the police investigation stories on the net?"
Sherlock sniffed. "Of course. Even worse!"
"Precisely. So why on earth do you think people talk about sex on the net with any more sense than they talk about murder?"
"You said it yourself, sex is a basic human drive."
Lestrade was starting to think that murder was too. Murder of irritating gits who were asking poor bloody coppers stupid questions especially so. Must be some way of getting through to the man!
"Sherlock, how many humans do you know who you think are even marginally intelligent?"
"Well.. Mycroft of course.
"And?"
"You have your moments."
"I will get you to put that in writing. Meanwhile... if the world is full of monumentally stupid people, then what makes you think they will write about even a basic human drive with any sense at all? And the same with pub conversations, they can't talk about football without going over the top, why would they talk about sex intelligently?"
Sherlock thought about that for a bit.
"But there must be some way I can get an idea of what's normal and what isn't! If no one talks about it except to exaggerate or lie, then how can I be sure I know what's going on in people's heads?"
Lestrade got up to get himself a cuppa. "You could try it out yourself?" he said, just to be difficult. He'd never seen someone putting out so many "Don't even think about it" signs, so he knew the what the reaction would be.
And wasn't disappointed.
"No! That's impossible! I'm married to my work, the body is just transport, things like that just get in the way!"
Lestrade grinned to himself as he put the kettle on. This Sherlock-managing was getting easier and easier. He was learning where the buttons were and what they would do.
He realised his mistake when he emerged from the kitchen with tea for two and saw Sherlock with Lestrade's laptop on his lap.
"Oi! That's my work machine!"
"Then you should have a more secure password." said Sherlock without looking up. "And really, if you couldn't tell that break in at Wicks and Abercrombie was a blind and the guard was in on it then I take back my comment about intelligence."
Lestrade had realised that, but knew it would do no good to say so.
"Now," said Sherlock "You can help me with my investigations into normal and abnormal sexual intensities. Look at this, is this normal?"
On the screen was a picture of three men with extremely unlikely equipment and an anteater using its tongue in a way never mentioned by David Attenborough.
"SHERLOCK! That's my work laptop, if they find it's been to sites like that I won't just be sacked, I'll be shot!"
The bloody nuisance just waved dismissively "Oh don't be silly, there won't be any traces. Unlike your quick look at a certain video the other day."
Lestrade knew blackmail when he heard it.
"So stop fussing. Now, I need you to show me which of these is reasonable for a sexual being and which isn't. "
Lestrade suspected that some sexual beings would think spending time with a pretty boy wanting to look at porn with you would be quite a reasonable thing.
He knew better.
It was going to be a long night....