Fic: Nor The Years Condemn (1/6)
Title: Nor The Years Condemn (1/6)
Characters: Sherlock Holmes, DI Lestrade, Ensemble
Pairing: Lestrade/OCs (mentioned); Lestrade/Sherlock
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I don’t own them
Word Count: c. 6,000 (this part); c. 33,000 total
Warnings: Language; Age Discrepancy; Mild Sexuality; Drug Use
Spoilers: None
Betas: sidneysussex, gentlest_sin, and archea2
Summary: Greg Lestrade is forty-three when he saves the life of a brilliant drug-addict. Two years later, he's starting to realize there are some certainties to his life now that Sherlock Holmes is part of it. He's going gray quickly, for one thing. He starts finding experiments in his kitchen. And he may even be, inexplicably, beginning to care for the detective. A series of vignettes that cover the five years leading up to “A Study In Pink.”
Full Author’s Notes in the Prologue
Prologue is here.
----
It’s raining.
Lestrade pops the collar of his jacket to shield his neck against the infernal spray and digs his hands into his pockets, thinking darkly that this is almost worse than an outright downpour. It’s a misting rain, like cold sea spray, and coupled with the strong breeze the evening is nothing short of miserable.
They’ve just wrapped a case (more or less) and are presiding over the scene as it’s cleared. Lestrade has an ungodly amount of paperwork waiting for him back at the Yard and isn’t exactly in a hurry to head back there, though it would be nice to get out of this awful weather. He stamps his feet once, twice, trying to get some heat to his quickly-numbing toes and considering whether paperwork is preferable to rain. He honestly can’t say.
And then suddenly Donovan is at his side, snickering into his ear and causing him to start at the sudden sound. He glances at her askance, and then follows her gaze to see Sherlock leaning against one of their cars, arms folded, chin dipping to meet his chest.
He’s fallen asleep.
“Christ,” he mutters while Donovan gives in and lets out a bark of a laugh. “Right, I’ll take care of this one. You lot can take off.”
“Can’t I take a picture -?”
“Goodnight, Sally.”
He walks over to Sherlock and touches his shoulder, ignoring the snorts and snide comments from behind him as the rest of his team take notice of the sleeping detective.
“Sherlock,” he says curtly and, receiving no response, tries again with more force. “Sherlock.”
The detective blinks awake and fixes Lestrade with an unnaturally wide-eyed stare. “What, Lestrade?”
“You -” Lestrade stops and tries to stifle a smile. He fails. “You fell asleep. In the middle of the street.”
Sherlock glances around and sniffs. Droplets of rain drip off his aquiline nose, and his curls lay plastered against his forehead by the water. “Hm. So I have.”
“Do you - ah - do this often?” Lestrade asks uncertainly, even though he’s never witnessed the detective do something like this over the course of their association, because the last thing he needs is for this to become a regular occurrence.
“Only after a particularly taxing case.”
This wasn’t something Lestrade could argue with. The case had been, as Sherlock put it, “taxing.” Lestrade would have chosen more colorful phrases - “bloody awful” came to mind - and he knew for a fact that the detective hadn’t been home in about forty-eight hours.
“When was the last time you slept?”
Sherlock fixes him with a glare. “I don’t think that’s your business, Lestrade.”
“No, but while you’re working my crime scenes you’re my responsibility. And I can’t have you falling asleep all over the place.”
“Then I’ll try to be more considerate next time,” Sherlock says, a small bite to his voice, and Lestrade marvels for a moment at the fact that Sherlock had managed to make him sound like a complete and utter bastard even though it was the detective who had fallen asleep out in the open.
Sherlock pushes himself off the car and stumbles; Lestrade catches him and holds him by the shoulders, steadying him.
“Easy, sunshine,” he mutters. “Where d’you think you’re going?”
“Home,” Sherlock says shortly but Lestrade cuts him off.
“Not on your own, you’re not. You’ll probably fall asleep and fall in front of a car. Get in.”
“I don’t -”
“Now, Sherlock, and don’t make me force you. I doubt that would be too difficult to do right now, so save yourself the embarrassment.”
Sherlock grunts but complies, and within ten minutes Lestrade is hauling him out of the car before the flats on Montague Street.
“Where’s your key?” he asks the drowsy man standing next to him when they reach the front of the building. Sherlock stares blankly at the door, swaying on his feet, and it takes Lestrade’s snapping his fingers in front of the man’s face to get him to react.
“Yes, right,” Sherlock mumbles, digging through his pockets until he finds the aforementioned object.
Sherlock lives on the third floor of the building, and Lestrade keeps a steadying hand on the man’s elbow in order to ensure that he gets up the stairs without injuring himself. It takes another prompting from Lestrade at the top of the steps to get Sherlock to unlock the door, and he fumbles so badly with his keys that Lestrade sighs and does it for him.
The DI has visited the too-small flat often enough to fetch Sherlock for various crime scenes and he can find his way around it easier than his own place. He settles Sherlock on the sofa and the detective slumps sideways almost immediately.
“Right dead on your feet tonight, aren’t you?” Lestrade mutters, bending to lift Sherlock’s legs onto the cushions. “You going to be all right if I leave you alone?”
“Mmm, yes,” Sherlock mutters, waving a hand. “Off with you, Lestrade.”
“Yeah, you’re welcome,” Lestrade mutters, shaking his head. He fetches a blanket from Sherlock’s bedroom and drapes it over the detective before switching off the lights.
“I’ll text you in the morning; make sure you’re still alive,” Lestrade says from the doorway as he’s on his way out.
There is no answer from the sofa.
----
Lestrade has never considered himself a particularly vain man, at least not in recent years, but he finds himself becoming more and more fixated on his hair as the months go by. It hadn’t always been short - that came along with the territory of his job. Efficiency is key when sleep becomes a luxury and hours at the office that trail into the morning became an odd sort of norm. He doesn’t have time to deal with personal grooming the way he had as a teenager, when his hair had grown long enough so that the ends curled at the base of his neck and his various partners could thread hands through it, tugging and playing, curling locks around teasing fingers. He’d cut it shorter in his twenties and shorter still in his thirties, though it still remained long enough to have an infuriating mind of its own, but as much as he may find it irritating, secretly he is pleased that it’s retained its color for so long.
----
Sherlock’s bouts of sleep are rare and Lestrade discovers, quite by accident, that the detective keeps hours as terrible as he does. His own sleeplessness has become such a facet of his existence that he doesn’t even really notice it anymore, and he has long since forgotten what it’s like to be rested and aware. He only knows exhaustion that tugs at the back of his mind and slows his limbs; makes him dull. Sherlock’s insomnia, he presumes, is brought on by an over-active mind that seldom quiets, always running hot.
And tedium makes the detective desperate for a distraction, so Sherlock texts him one night asking if he has anything on. It’s two in the morning and Lestrade is awake; likely will be so for an hour yet. He texts a sharp response back and thinks that will be the end of it, but then his phone buzzes again almost at once and he sees that Sherlock has actually replied.
Dull.
Lestrade snorts and lets it be, but around the same time the next night he receives another text. It happens twice more, and by the end of the week, no matter how much or how little they’ve seen of one another during the day, it’s developed into a kind of routine. They always speak of the work, whether it’s Sherlock fishing for new cases or providing Lestrade with information on current ones as his experiments conclude, but that suits Lestrade just fine. His life has always been about the work, and that’s at least one thing he has in common with Sherlock even if their motivations are entirely different.
----
He’s inherited his grandfather’s good fortune, it appears, because even though he’s well into his forties he still has yet to see a strand of gray appear in his hair. It’d been dark when he was a child, like the color of spilled ink, and lightened to a deep chocolate in his twenties - the same as his eyes. He notices these days that it’s a shade lighter than Sherlock’s, and he clings to that with faint pride as his peers rapidly turn gray.
He’s forty-five; he’ll take what victories he can.
----
Lestrade has known Sherlock for two years now, and it still amazes him when the detective manages to tell what he’s thinking - especially when his thoughts are still muddled and half-formed in his mind. He usually refrains from saying so, because the last thing Sherlock needs is an ego boost, but he’s sure the surprise shows in his face anyway.
It astonishes him even more when it happens and they’re not even in the same part of town.
You’ve overlooked something in the Dower case.
Lestrade glares for a moment at the small screen on his mobile - why couldn’t he just goddamn call? - and waits for the next text. It’s ten in the morning and he’s already on his third cup of coffee. Last night had been rough, and the way his day was going now, tonight wasn’t going to be any better. The last thing he needs is Sherlock reading his mind. How could he possibly have known that, at that moment, Lestrade had been pondering the Dower case?
Nothing further comes in on his mobile and he sighs, because this means that Sherlock is in one of his laconic moods. Face-to-face, Lestrade can’t get the man to shut up; when texting, however, he’s found that Sherlock is brief and vague. It holds little interest for him when he can’t see his captive audience’s reaction to his reveals.
Lestrade sighs again and types back, What?, though he’s sure his irritation doesn’t translate over the mobile. A pity, though likely Sherlock wouldn’t have cared anyway.
You tell me.
Oh, bloody hell.
Give me something to go on, he demands.
I already have.
It takes another hour of coaching on Sherlock’s part and frustration on his before he finally sees what they’ve all been missing.
It wasn’t murder, he texts Sherlock finally.
Sherlock’s response - You’re not as dull as you look. Well done. - shouldn’t really make him feel as pleased as it does.
----
Sherlock should go to the hospital.
He’s bloodied and battered, with bits of glass embedded in his face, and he’s stooped from a number of blows that landed on his torso.
He should go to the hospital.
Right now, however, he’s sitting in the back of an open ambulance and refusing any and all help, resulting in some very frustrated paramedics and an even more exasperated consulting detective.
“I am fine,” he repeats over and over, shoving hands away and trying to get up but continuously pushed back down.
And Lestrade is with them on that one, because Sherlock was terribly unsteady by the time they finally got to him and required the assistance of two people (which he absolutely loathed) to get him over to the ambulance in the first place. He snarls in anger, spitting profanities, and Lestrade can see that his teeth are stained red with blood.
He needs to go to the hospital.
“Lestrade, tell them!” Sherlock says furiously, ducking away from a hand that tries to clean the blood from one of his wounds. “Oh, this is ridiculous.”
And Lestrade doesn’t know what possess him to do it, but he finds himself saying, “He’s fine,” and sends the paramedics away. He grabs Sherlock by the elbow, whispers, “Walk steadily as you can,” and, pulling him to his feet, they make for the car. When a glance over his shoulder shows that the paramedics have left, Lestrade allows Sherlock the support of a firm arm around his waist.
“You okay with the Yard?” he asks as some careful maneuvering gets Sherlock into the back of his car, and some pained fumbling gets the detective somewhat secured. He’s not sure if Sherlock’s vague hum was a yes or no, but it really doesn’t matter because that’s where they’re going anyway. He can better take care of Sherlock in the Yard’s facilities.
Lestrade half-carries Sherlock into the building once they arrive and takes him to a bathroom just down the hall from his office. It’s expansive and blessedly empty at this time of the night, so Lestrade leaves Sherlock propped up against a wall while he runs back to his office for his first aid kit.
“Right, let’s get a look at you,” Lestrade says when he returns, helping Sherlock onto the counter and allowing him to lean back against the mirror. He’s a mess, but it appears that the majority of the blows missed unprotected parts of his torso. They landed a few to his head, though, and Lestrade casts around for bits of trivia that Sherlock might not have deleted from his brain.
“What’s today?” he asks as he runs the tap and wets a paper towel.
“Tuesday.”
“Month?”
Sherlock glowers. “I’m fine, Lestrade.”
“Where are we?”
“A delightfully dingy bathroom at New Scotland Yard, London, England,” Sherlock says with a sigh.
“Full name.”
“Nice try.”
“Fine. My full name.”
“Gregory James Lestrade.”
Lestrade doesn’t know whether he should be surprised at the fact that Sherlock managed to discover his middle name or startled by the fact that he didn’t immediately delete it. He presses the paper towel to the side of Sherlock’s face and methodically begins cleaning away the blood.
“That was a bloody foolish thing you did.”
“He’d have gotten away if I hadn’t.”
“It was still foolish,” Lestrade insists, even as a voice in the back of his mind wonders why exactly it matters. He’s always known Sherlock to be careless, even downright idiotic. He knows the man lives for the work and little else, and there’s never been much of a doubt in his mind that one day the work would drive Sherlock to an early grave. And Sherlock did catch them a murderer tonight, one that they might not have caught otherwise, and he didn’t get himself killed on Lestrade’s watch. All in all, Lestrade should be chalking this one up to a victory.
And yet.
And yet he can’t get the images out of his mind - Sherlock crumpling, Sherlock covered in blood. He can’t ignore the fact that the entire world slowed the moment Sherlock went down, and if pressed, Lestrade would remember little more than watching the lithe body fold in on itself. It’s as though he’s watching a movie reel, when he tries to remember exactly what happened; he sees only individual frames, and not the whole thing strung together.
He sees only Sherlock. Everything else has faded away.
“Look up,” he commands softly. He tilts the man’s head back and uses tweezers to extract the shards from his cheek. He also contemplates for a while the cut across Sherlock’s temple, wondering if stitches are needed.
“Here,” he says finally, grabbing a fresh paper towel and pressing it to the wound. “Hold this here while I clean up the rest of you. I want to see if we can slow the bleeding; otherwise I’m dragging you to A&E.”
“I am perfectly capable of cleaning up,” Sherlock tells him, but the retort lacks his usual vehemence. Lestrade finds more glass embedded just below his lower lip, and blood flows freely when he removes it, even though the pieces hadn’t actually been all that large. They stand there for several long moments, Lestrade with a towel pressed to Sherlock’s lip and Sherlock with the one against his temple, listening to the buzzing of the lights and waiting to see if the bleeding will stop.
It does, at least well enough for Lestrade’s satisfaction, but there’s a scar forever afterwards just below Sherlock’s lip. It’s faint, and only visible when the light is right, but there all the same.
----
Lestrade grows a beard, briefly, around the time that a vicious triple-murder leaves them all, even Sherlock, on edge for weeks. They have little time to breathe over the course of the case, let alone tend to personal grooming, so when Lestrade notices one day that his stubble is out of control he simply lets it be and pretends that he meant to do it all along.
The beard is dark, the same as his hair, and he takes solace in that. It reminds him that age has yet to touch him; that he still has time - time to make a difference and time to get the work done. And there’s a touch of vanity there, too, he knows. He notices it in odd places, such as press conferences - when the reporters shooting him questions are his age and far more gray - or in meetings, when the younger officers look more lined and more worn.
It’s a temporary thing; the calm before the storm. But he’ll take all that he can get.
----
Sometimes there are days when he simply can’t shake the crime.
Everyone has their own way of dealing with the bad days - Anderson goes drinking; Donovan goes dancing - and it’s rarely ever spoken about.
One particular crime on a Thursday night - and he’ll always remember it’s a Thursday night, just like the smell of bleach will now forever afterward make him nauseous and the sight of roses will send his mind immediately back to the scene - has Lestrade heading for home as soon as he’s able to get away. He doesn’t remember propelling himself up the stairs to his flat or stumbling into the kitchen, or even digging his phone out of his pocket. He comes back to himself with his sister’s worried voice in his ear and to find that he’s slid to the floor, his legs crumpled beneath him.
Lestrade manages to move a single word past numb lips.
“Marissa.”
His niece is five - young and sweet and so very alive. She chatters to him about her new school and her friends and her puppy, an endless stream of chirping words. Lestrade can hear his sister in the background, coaching her daughter to just keep talking and not worry about the fact that her uncle isn’t responding. She’ll understand, when she’s older, that all Lestrade needs on nights such as these is to hear her voice.
It’s several long minutes before he can bring himself under some semblance of control; several long minutes before his breathing returns to something close to normal and his heart stops hammering painfully against his ribcage. He still feels lightheaded and there’s a faint taste of bile in the back of his throat, but eventually he’s able to say, “Thank you, sweetheart,” into the phone.
“You’re welcome,” Marissa tells him cheerfully, pleased because she appears to have done something right even though she’s not quite sure what it is. Lestrade hears his sister tell her that it’s time to get off the line, and she tosses him a heartfelt, “Bye! Love you!”
He closes his mobile with shaking hands, and weeps.
----
Lestrade holes himself up in his office most nights, completing paperwork and answering emails long after everyone else has gone. He runs into Sherlock now and again on these late nights, sometimes because the detective is looking for a file for a current case but usually because he’s looking for something new to work on, and he’s far too impatient to wait for Lestrade to come to him. He tries once to pick the lock on Lestrade’s office door, arrogant sod that he is, and is thwarted by the man actually being there. When they finish bellowing at one another, Lestrade tells Sherlock to sit.
He’s not sure why he doesn’t demand that the other man just leave.
“Stay there and be quiet,” Lestrade says angrily, jabbing a finger at the chair across from his desk, and feels as though he’s scolding a child. “We can go over one of my cold cases when I’ve finished this paperwork. But only then.”
Sherlock is silent for twenty-nine minutes. Lestrade about passes out from shock.
At some point (days, maybe weeks later) he’s no longer surprised when he looks up from his paperwork to see Sherlock framed in his office doorway. He never asks how Sherlock gets into the building; he’s probably better off not knowing, and it’s useless to think that he’d ever be able to stop him. It isn’t something that happens with any sort of regularity, anyway, but it happens enough that at some point Lestrade’s flat becomes the backdrop to their nights more often than the Yard.
Lestrade can’t say for certain whether it’s because he invited Sherlock back or whether it’s because the detective broke into his flat and Lestrade didn’t have the strength to kick him out. The latter seems more likely, but it hardly matters, because at the end of it all he finds that he’s ending his days with Sherlock, and that - well, if he were honest with himself, that’s more than tolerable.
Even if they’re ending their days in argument - but how could he have expected anything else? That’s how they work.
“You can’t just ask a widow if she knew her husband was cheating on her. Jesus, Sherlock!”
“Why not? Shouldn’t she want the killer caught? Every bit of information is relevant, Lestrade!”
“Well, that may be, but there are procedures for this! And there’s common decency, d’you ever think of that? Our goal is to not traumatize the victims -”
“That’s your goal, Lestrade; don’t make it mine.”
And, eventually, they will sleep - Sherlock on the sofa or slumped in a chair; Lestrade in his own bed.
He should find this odd, just like he should find Sherlock an irritation and should find the constant intrusion infuriating. He finds instead that the nights together are ones he starts to look forward to, and isn’t that a terrifying thought.
He’s out walking the streets one Tuesday night, his paperwork abandoned in his office and his feet carrying him far from the Yard and his car. It’s early, yet, for home, and he’s not quite ready to go back to his flat - trading one quiet four-walled room for another. He slows his gait and tilts his head to the sky, feeling the slap of chilled air against his cheeks and neck, and through the hazy clouds and heavy city lights he thinks he can pick out a star or two.
There’s Polaris, of course, and he mentally fills in the rest of Ursa Minor. Orion’s Belt lies along the southern horizon tonight, he knows, with Ursa Major to the east and Andromeda to the west. Beautiful, all of them, and snapshots of long-ago. How many had gone now, dying so far away from the planet that no one will know for years? How many had passed into nonexistence with no one to notice them leave?
Time doesn’t stop; not for the stars, and certainly not for him.
Lestrade resumes his pace, returning his gaze and his mind to the ground. He’d always meant to escape to the country, someplace far enough from the city lights where he could look up and see the stars rather than imagine them. He might still, one day, but retirement’s not something he’s ever honestly considered reaching. But if he did - he suppose he’d have a house somewhere. And a dog. And -
- and then, abruptly, he finds himself at Sherlock’s door, though he has no memory of walking into the building or up three flights of stairs. He makes a mental note to bring up locks with Sherlock one of these days. If the detective is going to live in such a place, he’d better have damn good locks on his doors. Perhaps even a security system.
He contemplates this for a few more minutes and then realizes that he’s been idly staring at the detective’s door for some time. He hadn’t actually meant to come here and, after a moment of thought, turns to go back down the stairs.
The door swings open and Sherlock’s gruff voice tells him, “Don’t be an idiot, Lestrade.”
Lestrade sheepishly follows the detective inside and stands, unsure, near the door until Sherlock indicates the worn sofa with a careless sweep of his elegant hand. It’s obvious the detective has been working on something, but Lestrade can’t for the life of him fathom what - there are papers scattered on the couch that appear to be half complex mathematical equations and half sketches of an odd plant he’s never seen before. Lestrade carefully sets them aside and sits. He doesn’t realize how exhausted he until he sinks against the old leather and the weight of the day settles in around him.
They don’t speak beyond Lestrade’s soft, “Hello,” and Sherlock’s, “Lestrade.” The detective works for a while, pen dancing across the paper, words and numbers springing up in its wake as he brings order to the whole. He reaches for his violin at some point and Lestrade is captivated by the haunting notes he teases from the instrument. It has never before occurred to him that Sherlock might have a hobby (apart from dogging his crime scenes), but seeing him there, standing before the window with the instrument cradled under his chin while blue light pools around him - he wonders how the thought ever failed to come to mind.
He leaves not long after midnight and arrives home at his usual indecent hour. It’s two when he finally crawls into bed and he’s just about to drop off when his phone starts buzzing.
I do hope you managed to make it home without doing grievous injury to yourself. I would hate to have to break in a new DI. Horribly inconvenient.
Lestrade smirks and types back, In that case, I’ll be sure not to inconvenience you.
It’s several minutes before he gets a response.
I intend to hold you to those words.
----
He shaves the beard when he discovers strands that start to look silver in certain lights, and not long after that he notices his stubble starting to come in ashen rather than its usual black. His five-o’clock shadow is now more of a five-o’clock dusting.
He rubs his chin, sharp stubble scratching at his palms, and frowns in annoyance.
He’s not ready to go gray.
---
Sally is the one responsible for Dave, a friend of hers at the Yard that she invites along to pub night one week after she catches Lestrade staring at him for a beat too long earlier that day.
“He’s very kind,” she insists.
“He’s very quiet,” Lestrade points out.
They both agree, though, that he’s very attractive, and when they end up in bed later that week Lestrade discovers that very-quiet Dave has a very-wicked tongue.
----
There are times when sleep simply doesn’t come, even for weary and deserving men.
There are other times when sleep does come, but it’s a sinister visitor and one he’s better off without.
Lestrade is at his kitchen table one such night, briefcase open and paperwork spread out in front of him. He rubs his eyes and glances at the clock just as the numbers change, and he idly muses that it’s been a while since he’s seen four in the morning. He has to be up in less than two hours, and wonders if there’s any use in going to bed again at this point. He’d tried already, and it hadn’t worked out well.
His phone buzzes, and he punches a button to read the message he’s just received.
What was it about?
Sherlock has been texting him for a couple of hours now, and they’ve moved from their usual banter - Sherlock accusing him of being dull and Lestrade casually tossing “wanker” and “idiot” at him - to the crime Lestrade is currently trying to puzzle through. Sherlock is trying to get him to understand his conclusions; trying to get him to make the great leaps of logic that only make sense in the detective’s brain, but even at his best he has a hard time following Sherlock. Right now, at this level of exhaustion, very little makes sense to Lestrade, and it’s unusual for him to have continued this conversation past three.
There’s only one reason why he would, and Sherlock’s figured it out.
Of course he has.
The usual, Lestrade types back shortly, in no mood to discuss it any further, and especially not with Sherlock.
The response is immediate.
I may be able to deduce that you’ve had a nightmare, but I’m not a mind-reader. Much as you may believe otherwise.
He doesn’t know what to say to that and so sets his phone aside. Twenty minutes later, a new message comes in:
Good night, Lestrade.
----
Eventually there comes a night when his level of weariness eclipses all the previous ones - something Lestrade never thought possible, but there it was. He can feel it in his bones, a dull ache that won’t subside and a low tingling that signals the very worst of exhaustion. Sherlock is standing next to him, hands buried in his pockets, watching blankly the flashing blue lights and the suspect being taken away. It’s morning, now, and as London is waking they are starting to pack it in, a whimper of an ending after the hell of the previous night.
Sherlock’s exhaustion radiates off him in waves that threaten to pull Lestrade under as well, and with the last of his reserves Lestrade feels for him. In the past twelve hours they have both been shot at; Sherlock’s nearly been stabbed and Lestrade almost took a header off a bridge and into the Thames. It’s been fifty hours, at least, since Lestrade last saw his bed and been longer, he knows, for Sherlock.
“Come,” he mutters, elbowing Sherlock and turning away. “Let’s go.”
Sherlock doesn’t even question it anymore. He silently follows Lestrade to the DI’s car and folds himself into the passenger seat while Lestrade fiddles with the keys in the ignition.
“I’m not entirely sure I trust you driving, Lestrade,” Sherlock tells him, his words slow and deliberate.
“Yeah, not sure I do either,” Lestrade tells him, and it earns him a snort.
The flat is bitterly cold when they arrive. Lestrade tinkers with the thermostat, cursing under his breath, while Sherlock hovers near the kitchen, hunched now with the chill in the air in addition to his exhaustion.
“You’re not staying out here,” Lestrade says flatly when Sherlock makes a move toward the sofa. “Too damn cold. Come on - my room will heat faster.”
It is a measure of Sherlock’s exhaustion that he still doesn’t protest; he merely kicks off his shoes and follows Lestrade into the bedroom. They fall - well, Lestrade falls; Sherlock slumps - onto the bed, which is large enough for two plus a good deal of elbow room. It’s the one luxury Lestrade has afforded himself, and it was worth every bit of his paycheck. They toss their coats and scarves onto the floor and wrestle with the blankets for a moment until they are under the covers and safely cocooned against the chill.
The sun is high when Lestrade next becomes aware of his surroundings - he can make out thick golden light around the edges of the opaque shades that cover the windows. Sherlock is sprawled on his stomach across the left half of the bed, limbs everywhere and one hand latched onto the shoulder of Lestrade’s shirt.
And then Lestrade blinks, and it is night. The golden light of high noon has been replaced by the artificial yellow of the streetlamp just outside his window. Sherlock is still in his bed and he has been restless, as evidenced by the blankets twisted around his lithe form. He’s on his back, now, feet exposed to the air and one arm flung above his head; the other, tucked somewhere beneath the blankets bunched around his middle. His shirt has ridden up, revealing a great swath of shockingly-white skin. His face holds its shape even in sleep, and unconsciousness wipes some of the tension from it.
He looks so young.
He is young, Lestrade reminds himself.
The detective doesn’t look it, though, most days. He sometimes looks as old as Lestrade feels, and it’s all in his eyes. Lestrade’s often wondered about the years those eyes hide; the secrets that they keep. Sherlock’s never spoken about it; Lestrade’s never asked.
But even more than that, Sherlock looks human. Sleep erases the sharpness of his cheekbones; it tousles his hair and parts his lips and, if Lestrade stays still enough, it even pulls a snore or two from the detective’s nose. There’s a strange sort of beauty in the almost too-angular features, something that draws others in, makes them want to keep looking.
And he could look forever.
Lestrade pulls the blankets tighter around his shoulders. Beside him, Sherlock shifts, and their feet brush; he doesn’t pull away.
The man is gone when he wakes again.
----
The lines in his face are deepening, and new ones appear every so often. He has a crease now between his eyebrows and his mouth is bookended by parentheses that become furrows when he smiles. Little lines fan out from his eyes and they, too, are emphasized with every movement of his mouth. Sometimes he feels Sherlock’s gaze drift to his face and he knows the detective is cataloguing; processing; committing it all to memory like he does everything else.
I’m getting old, sunshine, he finds himself thinking bitterly. No need to remind me of it.
----
A mistakenly-delivered letter leads Lestrade to Catherine, who lives in his building. She’s a single mother, and it works for as long as it does simply because they never resent the other for their lack of free time. They steal what moments they can - at midnight; on the weekend; in the spare few minutes before the morning commute - and it runs its course within a few weeks.
----
It doesn’t take long for Sherlock to begin conducting experiments at Lestrade’s flat, and the DI isn’t sure whether he should be flattered or terrified.
It begins with a piglet, which appears in his fridge one day while he’s away at work. He’s too wrapped in his own thoughts to register it at first beyond, “Oh, a pig,” when he returns home that evening. He pulls milk from the fridge and makes himself tea and only after he’s consumed half the cup does he realize what Sherlock’s done.
Furious doesn’t begin to cover it, and when the specimen is disposed of properly he bans Sherlock from all of his crime scenes for a month.
The finger in the butter dish comes next, and that startles him so badly that he nearly drops the whole thing onto the tile floor. Sherlock is in the living room when Lestrade discovers it, and he shoots him a scathing look.
“Do be careful; it’s for an experiment.”
“It’s a finger.”
“Yes.”
“In the butter dish!”
“You’re in top form today, aren’t you? Very eloquent.”
“Sherlock!”
“Oh, just put it back if it bothers you so much. I’d rather not have all that work go to waste just because it makes you a bit squeamish.”
“I -” Lestrade splutters incoherently for a few more moments but ultimately (inexplicably) does what Sherlock tells him to.
The eyeball in the carton of eggs really should have been the last straw. Lestrade spends several moments cursing at Sherlock - who, conveniently, actually isn’t there - before pulling the eggs out of the carton he had originally been after and sticking it back in its place. The eyeball is gone the next day, Sherlock’s experiment concluded.
It occurs to him not long after that he’s becoming used to this; used to Sherlock and the bundle of eccentricities that come along with him.
Bloody hell.
----
Final Notes: Credit for the piglet in the fridge and the eyeball in the egg carton goes to archea2.
----
Part Two
Characters: Sherlock Holmes, DI Lestrade, Ensemble
Pairing: Lestrade/OCs (mentioned); Lestrade/Sherlock
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I don’t own them
Word Count: c. 6,000 (this part); c. 33,000 total
Warnings: Language; Age Discrepancy; Mild Sexuality; Drug Use
Spoilers: None
Betas: sidneysussex, gentlest_sin, and archea2
Summary: Greg Lestrade is forty-three when he saves the life of a brilliant drug-addict. Two years later, he's starting to realize there are some certainties to his life now that Sherlock Holmes is part of it. He's going gray quickly, for one thing. He starts finding experiments in his kitchen. And he may even be, inexplicably, beginning to care for the detective. A series of vignettes that cover the five years leading up to “A Study In Pink.”
Full Author’s Notes in the Prologue
Prologue is here.
----
It’s raining.
Lestrade pops the collar of his jacket to shield his neck against the infernal spray and digs his hands into his pockets, thinking darkly that this is almost worse than an outright downpour. It’s a misting rain, like cold sea spray, and coupled with the strong breeze the evening is nothing short of miserable.
They’ve just wrapped a case (more or less) and are presiding over the scene as it’s cleared. Lestrade has an ungodly amount of paperwork waiting for him back at the Yard and isn’t exactly in a hurry to head back there, though it would be nice to get out of this awful weather. He stamps his feet once, twice, trying to get some heat to his quickly-numbing toes and considering whether paperwork is preferable to rain. He honestly can’t say.
And then suddenly Donovan is at his side, snickering into his ear and causing him to start at the sudden sound. He glances at her askance, and then follows her gaze to see Sherlock leaning against one of their cars, arms folded, chin dipping to meet his chest.
He’s fallen asleep.
“Christ,” he mutters while Donovan gives in and lets out a bark of a laugh. “Right, I’ll take care of this one. You lot can take off.”
“Can’t I take a picture -?”
“Goodnight, Sally.”
He walks over to Sherlock and touches his shoulder, ignoring the snorts and snide comments from behind him as the rest of his team take notice of the sleeping detective.
“Sherlock,” he says curtly and, receiving no response, tries again with more force. “Sherlock.”
The detective blinks awake and fixes Lestrade with an unnaturally wide-eyed stare. “What, Lestrade?”
“You -” Lestrade stops and tries to stifle a smile. He fails. “You fell asleep. In the middle of the street.”
Sherlock glances around and sniffs. Droplets of rain drip off his aquiline nose, and his curls lay plastered against his forehead by the water. “Hm. So I have.”
“Do you - ah - do this often?” Lestrade asks uncertainly, even though he’s never witnessed the detective do something like this over the course of their association, because the last thing he needs is for this to become a regular occurrence.
“Only after a particularly taxing case.”
This wasn’t something Lestrade could argue with. The case had been, as Sherlock put it, “taxing.” Lestrade would have chosen more colorful phrases - “bloody awful” came to mind - and he knew for a fact that the detective hadn’t been home in about forty-eight hours.
“When was the last time you slept?”
Sherlock fixes him with a glare. “I don’t think that’s your business, Lestrade.”
“No, but while you’re working my crime scenes you’re my responsibility. And I can’t have you falling asleep all over the place.”
“Then I’ll try to be more considerate next time,” Sherlock says, a small bite to his voice, and Lestrade marvels for a moment at the fact that Sherlock had managed to make him sound like a complete and utter bastard even though it was the detective who had fallen asleep out in the open.
Sherlock pushes himself off the car and stumbles; Lestrade catches him and holds him by the shoulders, steadying him.
“Easy, sunshine,” he mutters. “Where d’you think you’re going?”
“Home,” Sherlock says shortly but Lestrade cuts him off.
“Not on your own, you’re not. You’ll probably fall asleep and fall in front of a car. Get in.”
“I don’t -”
“Now, Sherlock, and don’t make me force you. I doubt that would be too difficult to do right now, so save yourself the embarrassment.”
Sherlock grunts but complies, and within ten minutes Lestrade is hauling him out of the car before the flats on Montague Street.
“Where’s your key?” he asks the drowsy man standing next to him when they reach the front of the building. Sherlock stares blankly at the door, swaying on his feet, and it takes Lestrade’s snapping his fingers in front of the man’s face to get him to react.
“Yes, right,” Sherlock mumbles, digging through his pockets until he finds the aforementioned object.
Sherlock lives on the third floor of the building, and Lestrade keeps a steadying hand on the man’s elbow in order to ensure that he gets up the stairs without injuring himself. It takes another prompting from Lestrade at the top of the steps to get Sherlock to unlock the door, and he fumbles so badly with his keys that Lestrade sighs and does it for him.
The DI has visited the too-small flat often enough to fetch Sherlock for various crime scenes and he can find his way around it easier than his own place. He settles Sherlock on the sofa and the detective slumps sideways almost immediately.
“Right dead on your feet tonight, aren’t you?” Lestrade mutters, bending to lift Sherlock’s legs onto the cushions. “You going to be all right if I leave you alone?”
“Mmm, yes,” Sherlock mutters, waving a hand. “Off with you, Lestrade.”
“Yeah, you’re welcome,” Lestrade mutters, shaking his head. He fetches a blanket from Sherlock’s bedroom and drapes it over the detective before switching off the lights.
“I’ll text you in the morning; make sure you’re still alive,” Lestrade says from the doorway as he’s on his way out.
There is no answer from the sofa.
----
Lestrade has never considered himself a particularly vain man, at least not in recent years, but he finds himself becoming more and more fixated on his hair as the months go by. It hadn’t always been short - that came along with the territory of his job. Efficiency is key when sleep becomes a luxury and hours at the office that trail into the morning became an odd sort of norm. He doesn’t have time to deal with personal grooming the way he had as a teenager, when his hair had grown long enough so that the ends curled at the base of his neck and his various partners could thread hands through it, tugging and playing, curling locks around teasing fingers. He’d cut it shorter in his twenties and shorter still in his thirties, though it still remained long enough to have an infuriating mind of its own, but as much as he may find it irritating, secretly he is pleased that it’s retained its color for so long.
----
Sherlock’s bouts of sleep are rare and Lestrade discovers, quite by accident, that the detective keeps hours as terrible as he does. His own sleeplessness has become such a facet of his existence that he doesn’t even really notice it anymore, and he has long since forgotten what it’s like to be rested and aware. He only knows exhaustion that tugs at the back of his mind and slows his limbs; makes him dull. Sherlock’s insomnia, he presumes, is brought on by an over-active mind that seldom quiets, always running hot.
And tedium makes the detective desperate for a distraction, so Sherlock texts him one night asking if he has anything on. It’s two in the morning and Lestrade is awake; likely will be so for an hour yet. He texts a sharp response back and thinks that will be the end of it, but then his phone buzzes again almost at once and he sees that Sherlock has actually replied.
Dull.
Lestrade snorts and lets it be, but around the same time the next night he receives another text. It happens twice more, and by the end of the week, no matter how much or how little they’ve seen of one another during the day, it’s developed into a kind of routine. They always speak of the work, whether it’s Sherlock fishing for new cases or providing Lestrade with information on current ones as his experiments conclude, but that suits Lestrade just fine. His life has always been about the work, and that’s at least one thing he has in common with Sherlock even if their motivations are entirely different.
----
He’s inherited his grandfather’s good fortune, it appears, because even though he’s well into his forties he still has yet to see a strand of gray appear in his hair. It’d been dark when he was a child, like the color of spilled ink, and lightened to a deep chocolate in his twenties - the same as his eyes. He notices these days that it’s a shade lighter than Sherlock’s, and he clings to that with faint pride as his peers rapidly turn gray.
He’s forty-five; he’ll take what victories he can.
----
Lestrade has known Sherlock for two years now, and it still amazes him when the detective manages to tell what he’s thinking - especially when his thoughts are still muddled and half-formed in his mind. He usually refrains from saying so, because the last thing Sherlock needs is an ego boost, but he’s sure the surprise shows in his face anyway.
It astonishes him even more when it happens and they’re not even in the same part of town.
You’ve overlooked something in the Dower case.
Lestrade glares for a moment at the small screen on his mobile - why couldn’t he just goddamn call? - and waits for the next text. It’s ten in the morning and he’s already on his third cup of coffee. Last night had been rough, and the way his day was going now, tonight wasn’t going to be any better. The last thing he needs is Sherlock reading his mind. How could he possibly have known that, at that moment, Lestrade had been pondering the Dower case?
Nothing further comes in on his mobile and he sighs, because this means that Sherlock is in one of his laconic moods. Face-to-face, Lestrade can’t get the man to shut up; when texting, however, he’s found that Sherlock is brief and vague. It holds little interest for him when he can’t see his captive audience’s reaction to his reveals.
Lestrade sighs again and types back, What?, though he’s sure his irritation doesn’t translate over the mobile. A pity, though likely Sherlock wouldn’t have cared anyway.
You tell me.
Oh, bloody hell.
Give me something to go on, he demands.
I already have.
It takes another hour of coaching on Sherlock’s part and frustration on his before he finally sees what they’ve all been missing.
It wasn’t murder, he texts Sherlock finally.
Sherlock’s response - You’re not as dull as you look. Well done. - shouldn’t really make him feel as pleased as it does.
----
Sherlock should go to the hospital.
He’s bloodied and battered, with bits of glass embedded in his face, and he’s stooped from a number of blows that landed on his torso.
He should go to the hospital.
Right now, however, he’s sitting in the back of an open ambulance and refusing any and all help, resulting in some very frustrated paramedics and an even more exasperated consulting detective.
“I am fine,” he repeats over and over, shoving hands away and trying to get up but continuously pushed back down.
And Lestrade is with them on that one, because Sherlock was terribly unsteady by the time they finally got to him and required the assistance of two people (which he absolutely loathed) to get him over to the ambulance in the first place. He snarls in anger, spitting profanities, and Lestrade can see that his teeth are stained red with blood.
He needs to go to the hospital.
“Lestrade, tell them!” Sherlock says furiously, ducking away from a hand that tries to clean the blood from one of his wounds. “Oh, this is ridiculous.”
And Lestrade doesn’t know what possess him to do it, but he finds himself saying, “He’s fine,” and sends the paramedics away. He grabs Sherlock by the elbow, whispers, “Walk steadily as you can,” and, pulling him to his feet, they make for the car. When a glance over his shoulder shows that the paramedics have left, Lestrade allows Sherlock the support of a firm arm around his waist.
“You okay with the Yard?” he asks as some careful maneuvering gets Sherlock into the back of his car, and some pained fumbling gets the detective somewhat secured. He’s not sure if Sherlock’s vague hum was a yes or no, but it really doesn’t matter because that’s where they’re going anyway. He can better take care of Sherlock in the Yard’s facilities.
Lestrade half-carries Sherlock into the building once they arrive and takes him to a bathroom just down the hall from his office. It’s expansive and blessedly empty at this time of the night, so Lestrade leaves Sherlock propped up against a wall while he runs back to his office for his first aid kit.
“Right, let’s get a look at you,” Lestrade says when he returns, helping Sherlock onto the counter and allowing him to lean back against the mirror. He’s a mess, but it appears that the majority of the blows missed unprotected parts of his torso. They landed a few to his head, though, and Lestrade casts around for bits of trivia that Sherlock might not have deleted from his brain.
“What’s today?” he asks as he runs the tap and wets a paper towel.
“Tuesday.”
“Month?”
Sherlock glowers. “I’m fine, Lestrade.”
“Where are we?”
“A delightfully dingy bathroom at New Scotland Yard, London, England,” Sherlock says with a sigh.
“Full name.”
“Nice try.”
“Fine. My full name.”
“Gregory James Lestrade.”
Lestrade doesn’t know whether he should be surprised at the fact that Sherlock managed to discover his middle name or startled by the fact that he didn’t immediately delete it. He presses the paper towel to the side of Sherlock’s face and methodically begins cleaning away the blood.
“That was a bloody foolish thing you did.”
“He’d have gotten away if I hadn’t.”
“It was still foolish,” Lestrade insists, even as a voice in the back of his mind wonders why exactly it matters. He’s always known Sherlock to be careless, even downright idiotic. He knows the man lives for the work and little else, and there’s never been much of a doubt in his mind that one day the work would drive Sherlock to an early grave. And Sherlock did catch them a murderer tonight, one that they might not have caught otherwise, and he didn’t get himself killed on Lestrade’s watch. All in all, Lestrade should be chalking this one up to a victory.
And yet.
And yet he can’t get the images out of his mind - Sherlock crumpling, Sherlock covered in blood. He can’t ignore the fact that the entire world slowed the moment Sherlock went down, and if pressed, Lestrade would remember little more than watching the lithe body fold in on itself. It’s as though he’s watching a movie reel, when he tries to remember exactly what happened; he sees only individual frames, and not the whole thing strung together.
He sees only Sherlock. Everything else has faded away.
“Look up,” he commands softly. He tilts the man’s head back and uses tweezers to extract the shards from his cheek. He also contemplates for a while the cut across Sherlock’s temple, wondering if stitches are needed.
“Here,” he says finally, grabbing a fresh paper towel and pressing it to the wound. “Hold this here while I clean up the rest of you. I want to see if we can slow the bleeding; otherwise I’m dragging you to A&E.”
“I am perfectly capable of cleaning up,” Sherlock tells him, but the retort lacks his usual vehemence. Lestrade finds more glass embedded just below his lower lip, and blood flows freely when he removes it, even though the pieces hadn’t actually been all that large. They stand there for several long moments, Lestrade with a towel pressed to Sherlock’s lip and Sherlock with the one against his temple, listening to the buzzing of the lights and waiting to see if the bleeding will stop.
It does, at least well enough for Lestrade’s satisfaction, but there’s a scar forever afterwards just below Sherlock’s lip. It’s faint, and only visible when the light is right, but there all the same.
----
Lestrade grows a beard, briefly, around the time that a vicious triple-murder leaves them all, even Sherlock, on edge for weeks. They have little time to breathe over the course of the case, let alone tend to personal grooming, so when Lestrade notices one day that his stubble is out of control he simply lets it be and pretends that he meant to do it all along.
The beard is dark, the same as his hair, and he takes solace in that. It reminds him that age has yet to touch him; that he still has time - time to make a difference and time to get the work done. And there’s a touch of vanity there, too, he knows. He notices it in odd places, such as press conferences - when the reporters shooting him questions are his age and far more gray - or in meetings, when the younger officers look more lined and more worn.
It’s a temporary thing; the calm before the storm. But he’ll take all that he can get.
----
Sometimes there are days when he simply can’t shake the crime.
Everyone has their own way of dealing with the bad days - Anderson goes drinking; Donovan goes dancing - and it’s rarely ever spoken about.
One particular crime on a Thursday night - and he’ll always remember it’s a Thursday night, just like the smell of bleach will now forever afterward make him nauseous and the sight of roses will send his mind immediately back to the scene - has Lestrade heading for home as soon as he’s able to get away. He doesn’t remember propelling himself up the stairs to his flat or stumbling into the kitchen, or even digging his phone out of his pocket. He comes back to himself with his sister’s worried voice in his ear and to find that he’s slid to the floor, his legs crumpled beneath him.
Lestrade manages to move a single word past numb lips.
“Marissa.”
His niece is five - young and sweet and so very alive. She chatters to him about her new school and her friends and her puppy, an endless stream of chirping words. Lestrade can hear his sister in the background, coaching her daughter to just keep talking and not worry about the fact that her uncle isn’t responding. She’ll understand, when she’s older, that all Lestrade needs on nights such as these is to hear her voice.
It’s several long minutes before he can bring himself under some semblance of control; several long minutes before his breathing returns to something close to normal and his heart stops hammering painfully against his ribcage. He still feels lightheaded and there’s a faint taste of bile in the back of his throat, but eventually he’s able to say, “Thank you, sweetheart,” into the phone.
“You’re welcome,” Marissa tells him cheerfully, pleased because she appears to have done something right even though she’s not quite sure what it is. Lestrade hears his sister tell her that it’s time to get off the line, and she tosses him a heartfelt, “Bye! Love you!”
He closes his mobile with shaking hands, and weeps.
----
Lestrade holes himself up in his office most nights, completing paperwork and answering emails long after everyone else has gone. He runs into Sherlock now and again on these late nights, sometimes because the detective is looking for a file for a current case but usually because he’s looking for something new to work on, and he’s far too impatient to wait for Lestrade to come to him. He tries once to pick the lock on Lestrade’s office door, arrogant sod that he is, and is thwarted by the man actually being there. When they finish bellowing at one another, Lestrade tells Sherlock to sit.
He’s not sure why he doesn’t demand that the other man just leave.
“Stay there and be quiet,” Lestrade says angrily, jabbing a finger at the chair across from his desk, and feels as though he’s scolding a child. “We can go over one of my cold cases when I’ve finished this paperwork. But only then.”
Sherlock is silent for twenty-nine minutes. Lestrade about passes out from shock.
At some point (days, maybe weeks later) he’s no longer surprised when he looks up from his paperwork to see Sherlock framed in his office doorway. He never asks how Sherlock gets into the building; he’s probably better off not knowing, and it’s useless to think that he’d ever be able to stop him. It isn’t something that happens with any sort of regularity, anyway, but it happens enough that at some point Lestrade’s flat becomes the backdrop to their nights more often than the Yard.
Lestrade can’t say for certain whether it’s because he invited Sherlock back or whether it’s because the detective broke into his flat and Lestrade didn’t have the strength to kick him out. The latter seems more likely, but it hardly matters, because at the end of it all he finds that he’s ending his days with Sherlock, and that - well, if he were honest with himself, that’s more than tolerable.
Even if they’re ending their days in argument - but how could he have expected anything else? That’s how they work.
“You can’t just ask a widow if she knew her husband was cheating on her. Jesus, Sherlock!”
“Why not? Shouldn’t she want the killer caught? Every bit of information is relevant, Lestrade!”
“Well, that may be, but there are procedures for this! And there’s common decency, d’you ever think of that? Our goal is to not traumatize the victims -”
“That’s your goal, Lestrade; don’t make it mine.”
And, eventually, they will sleep - Sherlock on the sofa or slumped in a chair; Lestrade in his own bed.
He should find this odd, just like he should find Sherlock an irritation and should find the constant intrusion infuriating. He finds instead that the nights together are ones he starts to look forward to, and isn’t that a terrifying thought.
He’s out walking the streets one Tuesday night, his paperwork abandoned in his office and his feet carrying him far from the Yard and his car. It’s early, yet, for home, and he’s not quite ready to go back to his flat - trading one quiet four-walled room for another. He slows his gait and tilts his head to the sky, feeling the slap of chilled air against his cheeks and neck, and through the hazy clouds and heavy city lights he thinks he can pick out a star or two.
There’s Polaris, of course, and he mentally fills in the rest of Ursa Minor. Orion’s Belt lies along the southern horizon tonight, he knows, with Ursa Major to the east and Andromeda to the west. Beautiful, all of them, and snapshots of long-ago. How many had gone now, dying so far away from the planet that no one will know for years? How many had passed into nonexistence with no one to notice them leave?
Time doesn’t stop; not for the stars, and certainly not for him.
Lestrade resumes his pace, returning his gaze and his mind to the ground. He’d always meant to escape to the country, someplace far enough from the city lights where he could look up and see the stars rather than imagine them. He might still, one day, but retirement’s not something he’s ever honestly considered reaching. But if he did - he suppose he’d have a house somewhere. And a dog. And -
- and then, abruptly, he finds himself at Sherlock’s door, though he has no memory of walking into the building or up three flights of stairs. He makes a mental note to bring up locks with Sherlock one of these days. If the detective is going to live in such a place, he’d better have damn good locks on his doors. Perhaps even a security system.
He contemplates this for a few more minutes and then realizes that he’s been idly staring at the detective’s door for some time. He hadn’t actually meant to come here and, after a moment of thought, turns to go back down the stairs.
The door swings open and Sherlock’s gruff voice tells him, “Don’t be an idiot, Lestrade.”
Lestrade sheepishly follows the detective inside and stands, unsure, near the door until Sherlock indicates the worn sofa with a careless sweep of his elegant hand. It’s obvious the detective has been working on something, but Lestrade can’t for the life of him fathom what - there are papers scattered on the couch that appear to be half complex mathematical equations and half sketches of an odd plant he’s never seen before. Lestrade carefully sets them aside and sits. He doesn’t realize how exhausted he until he sinks against the old leather and the weight of the day settles in around him.
They don’t speak beyond Lestrade’s soft, “Hello,” and Sherlock’s, “Lestrade.” The detective works for a while, pen dancing across the paper, words and numbers springing up in its wake as he brings order to the whole. He reaches for his violin at some point and Lestrade is captivated by the haunting notes he teases from the instrument. It has never before occurred to him that Sherlock might have a hobby (apart from dogging his crime scenes), but seeing him there, standing before the window with the instrument cradled under his chin while blue light pools around him - he wonders how the thought ever failed to come to mind.
He leaves not long after midnight and arrives home at his usual indecent hour. It’s two when he finally crawls into bed and he’s just about to drop off when his phone starts buzzing.
I do hope you managed to make it home without doing grievous injury to yourself. I would hate to have to break in a new DI. Horribly inconvenient.
Lestrade smirks and types back, In that case, I’ll be sure not to inconvenience you.
It’s several minutes before he gets a response.
I intend to hold you to those words.
----
He shaves the beard when he discovers strands that start to look silver in certain lights, and not long after that he notices his stubble starting to come in ashen rather than its usual black. His five-o’clock shadow is now more of a five-o’clock dusting.
He rubs his chin, sharp stubble scratching at his palms, and frowns in annoyance.
He’s not ready to go gray.
---
Sally is the one responsible for Dave, a friend of hers at the Yard that she invites along to pub night one week after she catches Lestrade staring at him for a beat too long earlier that day.
“He’s very kind,” she insists.
“He’s very quiet,” Lestrade points out.
They both agree, though, that he’s very attractive, and when they end up in bed later that week Lestrade discovers that very-quiet Dave has a very-wicked tongue.
----
There are times when sleep simply doesn’t come, even for weary and deserving men.
There are other times when sleep does come, but it’s a sinister visitor and one he’s better off without.
Lestrade is at his kitchen table one such night, briefcase open and paperwork spread out in front of him. He rubs his eyes and glances at the clock just as the numbers change, and he idly muses that it’s been a while since he’s seen four in the morning. He has to be up in less than two hours, and wonders if there’s any use in going to bed again at this point. He’d tried already, and it hadn’t worked out well.
His phone buzzes, and he punches a button to read the message he’s just received.
What was it about?
Sherlock has been texting him for a couple of hours now, and they’ve moved from their usual banter - Sherlock accusing him of being dull and Lestrade casually tossing “wanker” and “idiot” at him - to the crime Lestrade is currently trying to puzzle through. Sherlock is trying to get him to understand his conclusions; trying to get him to make the great leaps of logic that only make sense in the detective’s brain, but even at his best he has a hard time following Sherlock. Right now, at this level of exhaustion, very little makes sense to Lestrade, and it’s unusual for him to have continued this conversation past three.
There’s only one reason why he would, and Sherlock’s figured it out.
Of course he has.
The usual, Lestrade types back shortly, in no mood to discuss it any further, and especially not with Sherlock.
The response is immediate.
I may be able to deduce that you’ve had a nightmare, but I’m not a mind-reader. Much as you may believe otherwise.
He doesn’t know what to say to that and so sets his phone aside. Twenty minutes later, a new message comes in:
Good night, Lestrade.
----
Eventually there comes a night when his level of weariness eclipses all the previous ones - something Lestrade never thought possible, but there it was. He can feel it in his bones, a dull ache that won’t subside and a low tingling that signals the very worst of exhaustion. Sherlock is standing next to him, hands buried in his pockets, watching blankly the flashing blue lights and the suspect being taken away. It’s morning, now, and as London is waking they are starting to pack it in, a whimper of an ending after the hell of the previous night.
Sherlock’s exhaustion radiates off him in waves that threaten to pull Lestrade under as well, and with the last of his reserves Lestrade feels for him. In the past twelve hours they have both been shot at; Sherlock’s nearly been stabbed and Lestrade almost took a header off a bridge and into the Thames. It’s been fifty hours, at least, since Lestrade last saw his bed and been longer, he knows, for Sherlock.
“Come,” he mutters, elbowing Sherlock and turning away. “Let’s go.”
Sherlock doesn’t even question it anymore. He silently follows Lestrade to the DI’s car and folds himself into the passenger seat while Lestrade fiddles with the keys in the ignition.
“I’m not entirely sure I trust you driving, Lestrade,” Sherlock tells him, his words slow and deliberate.
“Yeah, not sure I do either,” Lestrade tells him, and it earns him a snort.
The flat is bitterly cold when they arrive. Lestrade tinkers with the thermostat, cursing under his breath, while Sherlock hovers near the kitchen, hunched now with the chill in the air in addition to his exhaustion.
“You’re not staying out here,” Lestrade says flatly when Sherlock makes a move toward the sofa. “Too damn cold. Come on - my room will heat faster.”
It is a measure of Sherlock’s exhaustion that he still doesn’t protest; he merely kicks off his shoes and follows Lestrade into the bedroom. They fall - well, Lestrade falls; Sherlock slumps - onto the bed, which is large enough for two plus a good deal of elbow room. It’s the one luxury Lestrade has afforded himself, and it was worth every bit of his paycheck. They toss their coats and scarves onto the floor and wrestle with the blankets for a moment until they are under the covers and safely cocooned against the chill.
The sun is high when Lestrade next becomes aware of his surroundings - he can make out thick golden light around the edges of the opaque shades that cover the windows. Sherlock is sprawled on his stomach across the left half of the bed, limbs everywhere and one hand latched onto the shoulder of Lestrade’s shirt.
And then Lestrade blinks, and it is night. The golden light of high noon has been replaced by the artificial yellow of the streetlamp just outside his window. Sherlock is still in his bed and he has been restless, as evidenced by the blankets twisted around his lithe form. He’s on his back, now, feet exposed to the air and one arm flung above his head; the other, tucked somewhere beneath the blankets bunched around his middle. His shirt has ridden up, revealing a great swath of shockingly-white skin. His face holds its shape even in sleep, and unconsciousness wipes some of the tension from it.
He looks so young.
He is young, Lestrade reminds himself.
The detective doesn’t look it, though, most days. He sometimes looks as old as Lestrade feels, and it’s all in his eyes. Lestrade’s often wondered about the years those eyes hide; the secrets that they keep. Sherlock’s never spoken about it; Lestrade’s never asked.
But even more than that, Sherlock looks human. Sleep erases the sharpness of his cheekbones; it tousles his hair and parts his lips and, if Lestrade stays still enough, it even pulls a snore or two from the detective’s nose. There’s a strange sort of beauty in the almost too-angular features, something that draws others in, makes them want to keep looking.
And he could look forever.
Lestrade pulls the blankets tighter around his shoulders. Beside him, Sherlock shifts, and their feet brush; he doesn’t pull away.
The man is gone when he wakes again.
----
The lines in his face are deepening, and new ones appear every so often. He has a crease now between his eyebrows and his mouth is bookended by parentheses that become furrows when he smiles. Little lines fan out from his eyes and they, too, are emphasized with every movement of his mouth. Sometimes he feels Sherlock’s gaze drift to his face and he knows the detective is cataloguing; processing; committing it all to memory like he does everything else.
I’m getting old, sunshine, he finds himself thinking bitterly. No need to remind me of it.
----
A mistakenly-delivered letter leads Lestrade to Catherine, who lives in his building. She’s a single mother, and it works for as long as it does simply because they never resent the other for their lack of free time. They steal what moments they can - at midnight; on the weekend; in the spare few minutes before the morning commute - and it runs its course within a few weeks.
----
It doesn’t take long for Sherlock to begin conducting experiments at Lestrade’s flat, and the DI isn’t sure whether he should be flattered or terrified.
It begins with a piglet, which appears in his fridge one day while he’s away at work. He’s too wrapped in his own thoughts to register it at first beyond, “Oh, a pig,” when he returns home that evening. He pulls milk from the fridge and makes himself tea and only after he’s consumed half the cup does he realize what Sherlock’s done.
Furious doesn’t begin to cover it, and when the specimen is disposed of properly he bans Sherlock from all of his crime scenes for a month.
The finger in the butter dish comes next, and that startles him so badly that he nearly drops the whole thing onto the tile floor. Sherlock is in the living room when Lestrade discovers it, and he shoots him a scathing look.
“Do be careful; it’s for an experiment.”
“It’s a finger.”
“Yes.”
“In the butter dish!”
“You’re in top form today, aren’t you? Very eloquent.”
“Sherlock!”
“Oh, just put it back if it bothers you so much. I’d rather not have all that work go to waste just because it makes you a bit squeamish.”
“I -” Lestrade splutters incoherently for a few more moments but ultimately (inexplicably) does what Sherlock tells him to.
The eyeball in the carton of eggs really should have been the last straw. Lestrade spends several moments cursing at Sherlock - who, conveniently, actually isn’t there - before pulling the eggs out of the carton he had originally been after and sticking it back in its place. The eyeball is gone the next day, Sherlock’s experiment concluded.
It occurs to him not long after that he’s becoming used to this; used to Sherlock and the bundle of eccentricities that come along with him.
Bloody hell.
----
Final Notes: Credit for the piglet in the fridge and the eyeball in the egg carton goes to archea2.
----
Part Two