randomly_rusted

Silver Fox: In the beginning

randomly_rusted — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 20:53:41 GMT

Summary: Lestrade is a silver fox. He's a handsome animal but he's still an animal three days a month, and most people hate weres.
Type: Gen
Rating: G
Word Count: 3400

Written for this prompt:
http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/7277.html?thread=36271981#t36271981
Lestrade gets turned into an actual silver fox. And still manages to be awesome.

And these pictures:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattknoth/3006330731/

http://www.pbase.com/vkantabu/image/69505741

This appears to be the first in a series....

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The night was cold but clear as Mycroft Holmes walked up the steps to his front door, the porch light fighting with the street lights to make strange shadows around him.

One of which shouldn't be there.

He paused, letting the light angles play in his head to determine what had thrown the odd shadow when the shadow itself moved into the light and sat on its haunches watching him.

A fox. Not your usual vulpes vulpes red urban fox of London, a larger and darker one. Dark underfur , mask, and ears, lighter guard hairs giving it an overall silver sheen, darker tail with a splash of white on the tip that was curled around its feet as it sat there like a cat, regarding him.

A "silver" fox, native to North America and the forested tundras of the former Soviet Union. So wha t was one doing on a doorstep in Kensington?

Man and fox watched each other for a long moment.

Mycroft did not think this was a wild animal, seeing as it was quite calm in his presence. A domest icated one from the Russian experiment, a pet lost and waiting for someone to take it home? That seemed unlikely, it had clearly been waiting for him and had taken a conscious decision to step into t he light and sit down.

Which meant that this was not precisely a fox, instead it was a sufferer from the rare and dangerous disease of lycanthropy. But why would a were be on his doorstep?

It wouldn't be a foreign agent, if any country had a functional were in its intelligence service it wouldn't want to break the cover in this fashion. A request for asylum would seem the most obvious reason for this encounter, but why here, why now, why him?

He climbed the last step, but stopped as the fox began to stand up.

He pointed his umbrella in unmistakable threat. "No closer. While the chances of infection are less than 20 percent, the failure rate of the conversion is closer to 45 percent and I do not wish to risk that."

The fox's reaction showed it was most definitely were, had there been any lingering doubts in his mind.

The intelligent brown eyes seemed to dim, the beast dropped its head and turned to walk away, the long brush tucked between its legs, sorrow and despair in every line.

Much safer to leave it, whatever entanglement this animal represented it was best he was not involved. His anonymity was important. He could report the incident and it would be followed up, it wasn' t as if a large silver fox was a usual sighting, if it turned up elsewhere it could be caught.

But who was it? Why was it here? Why him? If it went away, maybe they wouldn't find it, maybe he would never find out.

And if there was one thing that defined Mycroft Holmes, was his reason for being, was his talent, his value, his driving force... it was his need to know.

"I didn't say leave. Just keep your distance. I'm sure you understand why."

The fox hesitated clearly debating the issue, then turned to face him, staying standing, still uncertain of its welcome.

"So what do you want? You have a message for me?"

The fox tilted its head then turned and put one paw on the front door. Well that was sensible, there really was no reason to be conversing out here on the street. While Mycroft had no particular feelings about were he knew the prevailing attitude was very much against them. To be seen conversing with an obvious lycanthrope was to bring unwanted negative attention and he abhorred any attention at all.

He stepped to the door, umbrella still guarding. He didn't think it would suddenly attack him - for one thing it would be a decidedly uncertain and foolish method of assassination - but it was best to take precautions.

The fox backed up a little to give him room, and waited to be invited in, delicately wiping its paws on the mat before stepping inside.

Then ruined the effect by trotting to the unobtrusive side door, the one to the living/dining area where visitors did not normally go.

So someone who knew the layout of the house. It was not a normal floorplan for this type of townhouse having been extensively modified many years before he had bought it, so while it was possible someone who had not been here knew where that particular door led to, and that the more obvious living room was not much used, it was not likely.

Mycroft Holmes did not knowingly number a were amongst his small circle, who could it be?

Someone he had not known for long, but long enough and at a level that they would be willing to expose themselves to him. It did not seem anxious, it so far had not tried to give him any kind of message or communicate much, so it did not seem it was someone who wanted his help. But someone who thought he needed to know their were status. That was not something you imparted to a casual acquaintance. And you didn't tell a colleague by showing up on his doorstep at 7 o'clock in the evening!

He absently put his umbrella in the stand as it was clear now he was in no danger of a deliberate attack. The fox seemed a little more relaxed as he approached it; it made no move to come close to him but trotted calmly through the door he held open for it.

He waited in the doorway to see what it would do next and once more it surprised him. Instead of sitting or lying down, instead of exploring the area or sniffing the chairs or table, it made directly for one of the chairs and hopped up onto it in one neat jump, sitting once more on its haunches with its tail dangling over the side.

The chair it had taken was not the obvious one with its back to the side wall, but the one nearer the kitchen, the one anyone would have thought would be used by the house's owner. But the fox had not sniffed the others to know which had Mycroft's scent, it had gone straight to that chair, as if it had done it before.

"So Inspector Lestrade" said Mycroft Holmes "this is an unexpected pleasure."

-----------------------------

The next time they met it was in the same room, around the same time, but not at all in the same manner.

For one thing, they were both human.

They had gone through the formalities of tea and weather and how was your day, and now it was time to talk about the real reason Lestrade was here.

"I admit that I was surprised. And rather annoyed that I hadn't seen the pattern in the days you were not available."

"Well... it isn't as if those are the only times I'm out late. And even if you had known me.. umm.. before, there do seem to be more murders around the time of the full moon."

Mycroft looked at Lestrade, considering. It was three days after the full meaning that he must have changed that morning when the moon set. He looked a bit tired but not ill and he had not been moving like a man in pain, so he must be quite used to the change by now.

"I know you were not were at the time you met Sherlock, the background check would have flagged that. You seem to be quite at home in that body so I'd say some time between 12 months and 4 years?"

"A little over 3 years ago. The dogman killings"

"Ah, the children killed by a were, at first thought to be a rabid dog? One of those partial changes where the sufferer ends up part man part dog and insane while changed? That was who bit you?"

"Yeah. Someone had spotted him running from the kill and we had the dog squad out trying to track him. The dogs were going mental, bystanders raging around with silver knives tied to broomsticks waving them at the dogs, I was trying to manage the crime scene when this... thing leapt out of someone's front yard and next thing I knew I was on the ground and it was trying to tear my throat out. It was only that I was bigger than your average twelve year old that saved me: I was strong enough to hold the jaws away after that first bite. That and one of the uniforms snatched a knife-on-a-stick from one of the vigilantes and stabbed the thing."

Mycroft noted the hitch in the voice and the way Lestrade's head turned a little as he told the story. The telling was matter-of-fact but the memory was clearly still very painful indeed. Not surprising, to go from respected member of society to pariah, to "disgusting animal" in a few minutes mustbe quite an ordeal.

"I take it the Met did look after you?"

"Sort of. They did a blood test and saw the antibodies, but you can't tell if you have the disease until the full moon. So I had to wait four weeks with everyone tiptoeing around me and pretending nothing had happened... but there were enough conversations that stopped as I approached to know it wasn't going to be easy. Then when the moon waxed to full they put me in the isolation chamber to see what happened. So I got to go through my first change with half a dozen blokes watching me, and spend the next three days being fed through a bloody hole in the door and pissing in the corner."

The indignity was still raw it seemed. Mycroft could not blame him, to be naked and in pain and no one willing to come near you could not have been easy.

"But they didn't force you to resign."

"No. It was a full change, and it was caught on the job, and I wasn't disabled as such so while they gave me some pretty strong hints that I should ah.. do the right thing, they didn't kick me out. I did use up most of my sick leave working out how to manage the change though, and no help from the bloody Met then!"

"You have found ways to cope though, as you are listed as full time and you would not have enough sick leave to be off four days a month."

"I was expecting to be forced out I admit. I was lucky though, the Super had a cousin who was were. He told me about it after my third change when it was clear I was planning to stay on if I could, saying that if I could work out how to make myself useful he'd be willing to let me try.

Apparently the cousin is a normal lyker, standard grey wolf. Costs a bit to feed and chews through a motorcycle tyre a month but otherwise spends most of his time asleep in front of the fire. Even gives doggy rides to the local kids, so the Super knew the beatup about how weres are slaves to their "animal nature" and are less than human when on two legs is all bullshit. So he was willing to give me a go. I just had to prove I was still able to do the job."

--------------------------------

He knew he'd have to prove himself. Find a way to do his job when he couldn't talk, couldn't type, couldn't even make a cup of coffee. Because even though the Super was on his side, he'd be out on his ear if he couldn't persuade them a copper was a copper, two legs or four.

The Super had told the others that they should co-operate if he wanted to go on a case with them, but Lestrade knew that what a Superintendent said and what people did were two different things. He didn't want to chance his luck with people who didn't really know him but would a suitable case just fall into his lap when he was changed?

Well it did, but not until the fifth change, and it wasn't his team, it was DI Wilson's, but it was a case and he took the chance.

He'd changed in the first aid room - the nurse had to know he was were, it was a notifiable disease after all - and managed to make it down to the car park just as the team was piling into the cars. He picked the one the DI was in, his report would be make or break after all.

"Shit! It's the bloody werewolf!"

"That's Detective Inspector Werewolf!" said one wag getting a nervous laugh or two.

"That's enough" snapped Wilson, striding into the mess of them, "the Super says he's still on the job, so he's still on the job. Come on, get moving, we've got a job to do!"

Lestrade hopped into the car, ensconcing himself on the back seat. There was a pause as no one else was willing to get in there with him until DI Wilson climbed in and yelled "Come ON already. Stop being such crybabies and get in the bloody car!"

"In the car? with him? But what if he bites us?"

"Oh come on Vinnie, this is Lestrade. He doesn't eat anything unless it's smothered in vinegar and served with chips."

With the DI as a bulwark between the coppers and the fox, the others clambered in and the cars headed off to the crime scene.

A body in the house, a tale of mysterious burglars who apparently preferred killing to nicking the Playstation, Lestrade knew his face looked at cynical as everyone else's. But there was no obvious pointer to the husband as killer. Lots of blood in the house but none on him, or his clothes, no clothes in the bins, no mysterious ashes in the yard or the BBQ.

"He could have thrown them anywhere" muttered Linton as they all gathered in the back yard, Lestrade included in the huddle mainly because no one was looking down. "He didn't have much time by his own admission, and Ahmeed just phoned me, the club secretary confirmed his time of leaving the darts game." said the DI. Linton grunted. "Maybe he did it naked? Came home, stripped off, wife was so shocked she just stood there as he cut her to bits like the Sunday roast?"

Lestrade left the huddle and looked around. He was still getting used to the way the whole world was different: the different perspective when your eyes were only two feet above ground, the different colours, and of course the smells. There had been dogs here not that long ago, and he could tell where Linton and Vinnie and the DI had been, he could smell the rubber gloves and the fluids from forensics, the bitter tang of old blood when they opened the door to the house... except the door wasn't open and he could still smell blood.

Not much, it wasn't like the reek from the house that had overwhelmed him earlier, but it was here somewhere. He lifted his head and concentrated.

It was odd, it was like seeing things in a mirror maze. So much information, he was sure with more practice he could overcome the weirdness, the distortion, but right now the scents smashed in on him: dogs and the fumes from cars and the smell of a cat on heat and flowers and someone's Vindaloo and someone else's vomit and the far sweet scent of a vixen.... And an eyewatering smell of camphor, what the hell was that doing in someone's back yard?

He trotted around the yard trying to pick up the smell of blood in the rich confusing air. The camphor was stronger here, mothballs thrown carelessly away? Or did someone want to mask the scent of blood?

Yes! There! He lifted his head.. no.. head down he cast for the scent under the vicious blow of the camphor and finally found it again.

There! An overgrown patch of garden, bushes and weeds and vines, prickly and thick. Impassable to a tender skinned bumbling human, but easy enough for a fox to slip into following the smell of blood.

The camphor was overlaid here, hiding the blood but if he concentrated he could ignore that. He snuffled and scrabbled, pushing aside branches and pebbles and leaves, there! The ground under him was broken up and recently too. The last few nights had been cold, the ground should be hard and frostbitten not broken and soft... He scrabbled his paws into the earth, pushing his muzzle into it and then suddenly something that was not earth and the smell of blood exploded in his face. Yes! He so far forgot himself as to yip loudly in delight before rushing out of the thicket in search of the DI.

There he was, looks like they were about to go home. No! Not now! He ran to Wilson's feet, yipping in consternation.

"What's that Lassie? Timmy's fallen down the well?"

"Shut it Linton! OK, so what's got you going then Lestrade? Under there? Christ. Come on, give us more to go on, that lot's hell for anyone over two foot tall!"

Lestrade thought for a moment. How to communicate, how to tell them what he'd found? He didn't want to disturb it more than he had already by pulling the clothes out, it was a slim enough clue as it was. He looked around and realised he was right by a flower bed lit by the kitchen window. He reached a paw out, cursing as he realised just how much writing was muscle memory as he tried to make readable letters in the soil.

The C looked more like an L, the L more like a C, the O was leaning drunkenly. "Christ it's bloody modern art!" That was Linton again, but it seemed he'd gone too far this time. As Lestrade managed the T and a messy H and ran out of room for the S DI Wilson said "Detective Constable Linton, I said shut up! So right now you find a shovel and clippers because you are going to get into that mess and dig out whatever the hell it is that Lestrade found."

There was a moment of tension with Wilson staring down his DC, promises of endless night shift and hours of data entry in his gaze. Linton muttered a very insubordinate "yes Sir" and went over to look at the mess he would have to fight his way into.

And startled everyone with his yell. "Bloody hell! It's cut already!"

The coppers crowded around as Linton pulled the cut bushes away. "The bastard's cut his way in and hidden the track, must have cut it earlier, so he could bury the clothes and the weapon. We've got him, premeditation right there!"

Forensics poured out of the house, floodlights were set up, and it wasn't long before the husband's bloody clothes were packed neatly in evidence bags and the husband was packed neatly into a car, both headed for the long tedious job of getting from crime scene to courtroom.

Wilson found Lestrade who was off in the shadows trying to avoid the bright lights which hurt his eyes and squatted down to look him in the face. "Good job Greg. I was a bit dubious but you pulled your weight tonight. Can't expect to have that sort of luck every month, so you had better come and chat when you change back. We'll work out what other groups can use your special talents, I've got some contacts in Covert and Gangs, maybe they'll be interested. And don't worry about Linton, he's always been an arse and if he doesn't lift his game he'll find himself on traffic duty."

Lestrade yipped in acknowledgement, and trying to show he understood what had been said and what had not been, he put forward a paw. The DI hesitated for a moment, fighting his instincts, then gravely shook Lestrade's hand.

It was a start.

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Thanks once more to elfbert for bouncing around ideas.

Fic: Footsore

randomly_rusted — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 06:25:10 GMT

Summary: Lestrade takes care of Mycroft, whether he wants it or not
Rating: G
Type: Quiet and fluffy
Word Count: 2500

This is definitely a sequel to A Reliable Man, but I think it stands alone and you don't need to read Reliable to read this. Just a little slice of life as two men get more comfortable with each other.

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Lestrade was a bit iffy about turning up to Mycroft Holmes's place.

He had to admit he enjoyed the luxury of the living spaces, especially the bathroom which had blown his little mind the first time he'd seen it. A massive shower cubicle with 6 shower heads each individually controllable. A large bathtub - the swimming pool he'd called it in his head - big enough for a man taller than Mycroft to lie in without anything above water but his head and still have plenty of room around him. With spa jets. (Lestrade had indeed thought of what two willing men could do in that bathtub but the chance hadn't come up yet.) Plus the underfloor heating, the heated towel rails with their crop of big properly absorbent towels, the warm dry cupboards to hang any clothes in...

(Then there was the apparently endless supply of hot water. Lestrade, who had had to replace his small hot water system last year with one equally inadequate, was in lust with it. Such are the secrets of the home owner.)

A man could get used to this, and he was trying very hard to do so.

But he still felt rather out of place, as though there was a sign saying "Yokels keep out" on the Kensington High Street. As though someone was going to feel his collar as he went up the steps and give him in charge as an obvious trespasser.

There were certainly times he didn't want to be here. When his shower was good enough, his elderly but worn-into-the-right shape couch was good enough, his video collection and TV was good enough, even his kitchen was good enough. When he just wanted to come home, unwind, not have to think about someone else.

And he knew Mycroft had his days of wanting to be alone too. After all, both of them had been alone for a long time, this fitting in with another was more work than the romance novels (All he could find at the station bookseller for a trip to Manchester, he swears it!) tell you.

But as their schedules had finally coincided he was due to be at Mycroft's today. So he'd used his key in the front door (given to him that night at his flat, fond of symbolism Mycroft Holmes), ignored the posh front rooms, and wandered into the kitchen.

No Mycroft.

Leaving his coat on a hook and his bag by the door he went Holmes-hunting.

No Mycroft.

Ah well, late for some reason, that wouldn't be unusual. No phone call saying "don't come" so he settled in to wait, keeping one eye on the monitor for the front door camera.

He'd just about finished the sports pages (how he hated all the post season bullshit) when movement on the screen caught his eye as the black car pulled up and Mycroft Holmes emerged. Lestrade looked again... something was not right. Not right at all.

He shouldn't have been able to make it through the hall and nearly to the door before Mycroft got up the steps, there was definitely something wrong. Watching the way he moved, the tiny wince as the right foot pushed off, he was fairly sure he knew what it was.

He waited until they were in the kitchen, marking the change from formality to friendship before he spoke.

"So how come you've been on your feet all day? Car break down?"

Mycroft gave him one of those looks. Level three 'none-of-your-concern' which was alright because it wasn't until level five that you had to worry about rendition to Egypt.

"Six years on the beat remember? I know sore feet when I see them. And those " pointing at the expensive but thin soled Italian shoes "are not designed for a day on the hoof."

"I have spent more time than... I am used to... walking and standing, it is true. However, there is no difficulty."

Lestrade snorted. "Like hell there isn't. Come on, let's have a look."

A small part of his mind shivered as he sat on the floor at Mycroft Holmes's feet, but it was only the ghost of a memory. He banished the feeling as he carefully eased shoes and socks off and examined the feet within.

"What happened to get them in this state?" he asked with surprise as he looked at the reddened abraded skin and the newly formed blister on the right heel.

"The Permanent Undersecretary has decided to try to streamline meetings by holding them standing up. However he apparently feels that his dignity requires that he has a seat."

There was a short silence as they both considered what method of assassination would be most enjoyable. Lestrade was a simple man, and so beating the Permanent Undersecretary to death with the nearest blunt object would do him. Mycroft's solution was more elaborate involving a spiked chair, a red hot floor and Prime Minister's Question Time on endless repeat.

"Add to that the renovations at both Parliament House and my office building on the Strand which means the lifts in both buildings were out of order, and as it is near budget time I had to attend a number of meetings, I found myself on my feet much more than I am perhaps used to."

Lestrade ran his hand over the feet in question, and could see it was so. He knew from his own beat days, both as a raw constable breaking in his boots and crying at night from the pain and as a Senior helping poor bloody probationers through the same hell, just what Mycroft was going through. And how it would be worse tomorrow if something wasn't done tonight.

"Stay there, don't move." he said and headed for the downstairs bathroom. (The normal everyday one. If marble basins and a double shower stall were normal.)

He had no idea how Mycroft managed to get all his taps to produce hot water pretty well instantly - probably had them scared they'd be posted to the Falklands - but they did, so filling a bowl with suitably warm water and snaffling a cloth and a towel and the first aid kit from the cupboard he was back before Mycroft could get his shoes back on and vanish. He knew he'd thought about it, but it was a measure of his tiredness that he was willing to sit here with his bare feet in plain view.

Lestrade settled down and took hold of the left foot, running his hands gently over it feeling for the warmest part and checking for abrasions and the beginning of blisters. He then took the warm wet cloth and began to wash the foot, gently running it over heel and sole and instep, cleaning between the toes, wiping sweat and soreness away.

He carefully dried that foot, looking up as he did so to see Mycroft watching him, the shoulders still tense, the face unreadable. This might be a dreadful mistake... It might be he should have left Mycroft to recover by himself, but he was committed now.

Wrapping that foot in a towel, and leaving it resting on his thigh, he turned his attention to the other one, being very careful of the forming blister. When he was done he put some Aloe Vera cream on the blister and covered it with a plaster, being as light fingered as someone with his size hands could be.

He dried that foot, feeling the tension in it. Right, onto the next part. He just held the foot in both hands, warming it, getting Mycroft used to the feel. Moistening his hands with some of the cream he began the massage proper. Circular strokes with his thumbs on the sole. Long motions of his fingers along the sides and top. Gently rotating his knuckles into the ball of the foot and then once more the long strokes from toe to ankle, thumb along the arch with slowly increasing pressure.

While he did this, he kept glancing at Mycroft's face. With each long stroke he saw that face relax a little more, the shoulders relax a little more, the spine slowly lose some tension. As the iron control softened he was sure he saw a bone deep tiredness, the kind that makes it impossible to relax.

He wrapped that foot, and repeated the exercise on the other.

Then he ran hand up one calf, gently kneading the muscle, feeling how tight it was. "Lots of stairs? Meaning your legs started hurting?"

The lack of answer was answer enough.

He snaffled the shoes as he stood up, holding them casually out of reach as though it wasn't deliberate, and said "You've got some slippers or something upstairs? Shouldn't put any stress on that heel tonight. Take the weight off them and do something relaxing before dinner."

Lestrade had no idea if Mycroft Holmes was used to wandering around in his bare feet, but he seemed willing enough to climb the stairs in them, probably thankful they didn't hurt quite as much now.

He placed the shoes on the floor by the bed, toed off his own, and eyed the tense, tired, closed off man in front of him. "Right" he said, forestalling whatever it was Mycroft was about to say "the next step requires you to get undressed."

That got a response alright!

"Inspector! I don't think that..."

Lestrade jutted his chin forward and gave him a full on 'don't-you-bloody-dare' look, putting all his feelings into it, and apparently got through. This was at home, in the bedroom for God's sake, he wasn't having it.

A sigh and "Very well. Gregory. I am not.. I am tired. I do not think I am.. able..."

Lestrade came closer and laid his hand on Mycroft's shoulder. "Trust me?" he said. And waited.

It seemed a very long time before he got the nod, he was more and more worried that he was heading in the wrong direction. Perhaps the best would have been to make his excuses and leave the man to recover on his own as he was used to doing? But no... He had said he wanted someone to look after him. This was exactly what Lestrade would have wanted someone to do for him those first few nights of pain and exhaustion... And couldn't hurt to give Mycroft ideas! ("If you want someone to exhibit behavior, model it" the voice of his psych lecturer floated back to him over the years.)

He went into the bathroom for supplies, came out again to find, as he'd half expected, Mycroft still standing, still dressed. Control issues, surprise surprise! He laid the towels out on the bed, dragging it out a little as he wondered what the hell to do now. How long to wait before he'd have to get out of here with his tail between his legs? Having totally misunderstood everything? What the hell did Holmes..no Mycroft, don't make that mistake, think this bloody relationship was about?

It seemed an age before Mycroft removed his pocket watch, placing it precisely on the table.

Coat and waistcoat, each one hung up carefully, trousers folded and hung, shirt and vest , finally he stepped out of his underpants and stalked back to the bed, calm, aloof, in control.

Only Mycroft, Lestrade decided, could pull off the whole Posh Bastard act while stark naked.

He surveyed the long lean body stretched out on the towels, but not for long. He had a job to do, and anything else would have to wait. Especially given the signals Mycroft was putting out, why did he have to be so damn tricky?

Lestrade knew he was pretty average as a masseur, but he also knew that for most people that didn't matter, so with luck it wouldn't matter here.

He laid a towel over Mycroft from hips to calves and one from knees to ankles, warmed some oil in his hands, and got to work.

He knew Mycroft Holmes to be a rather one-sided lover: happy to please his partner while reluctant to lose control, to abandon himself to sensation. But at the same time Lestrade could feel him soaking up the attention, the touch, and gradually unwinding, learning to enjoy the sensations and the letting go. He had a taste for the dramatic, all those offices each one different, the business with cameras John had told him about, the black car, the waiting in Lestrade's flat... So perhaps in time he'd learn to be more open, more adventurous, more abandoned.

Well he would if Lestrade had anything to do with it!

He worked the long muscles of the back, more to get Mycroft used to the idea than anything else, feeling for the tension to slacken just a little As it did, he moved up to the shoulders, softly, gently, knowing they'd be bar tight. Shoulders and neck and down the back again, getting to know the way this man was put together.

He put his thumbs into it, hunting knots, up then down, up then down, losing himself to the rhythm.

He removed the lower towels, placing them across the warmed, loosened back, and started work o the legs. They were what he was here for after all! With luck the massage and some stretching later would take the edge off the stiffness tomorrow.

It was awkward to do this on a bed, clambering over and around, but he managed it, keeping the strokes long and even, using thumbs and forearms, focusing completely on his work. The long legs with their light dusting of hair, different from his own more solid ones. Everything about Mycroft was pale and lean and fined down.

He eased off the pressure, feeling tension slowly bleeding away. Back to the torso now, long strokes from neck to hips, over the gentle swell of the buttocks and along the legs, then replacing the lower towel and smoothing his strokes as he watched the breathing even out, the arms soften, felt the last of the tension slowly drain.

It had been hard work, his hands and arms were tired and his back would let him know about the awkward positions later. But as he looked at the Mycroft Holmes shaped puddle on the bed, relaxed and zoned out, almost asleep, he reckoned it was worth it.

The aloof arrogance was gone from the dozing man's face, leaving no trace. It wasn't Mr Holmes anymore, it was his Myc, the man he only ever saw in moments like these, when they were safe and hidden from the world.

It was Gregory Lestrade's mission in life to see more of Myc and less of Mr Mycroft Holmes, one evening at a time.

Besides, he thought as he arranged the duvet over Myc then lay down still fully clothed beside him, when Myc woke up he'd probably want a shower and Lestrade was looking forward to christening that bathroom.

Fic: A Reliable Man. Part Nine: Resolution

randomly_rusted — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 05:20:22 GMT

Summary: Lestrade is back at work, and a routine bit of legwork turns dangerous. For once it is only marginally Mycroft Holmes's fault. What happens later, well that's different. Very different. Very different indeed.

Rating: PG

Wordcount: 7600

This really is the final part of A Reliable Man. It does rely rather heavily on what has gone before, so it is important to read from the beginning: Part One: First Encounter

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The first person Lestrade saw when he finally got back to work was his DCI who somehow managed to intercept him before he made it to the lifts.

Moe ran an eye over Lestrade and grunted. "I suppose it's all Official Secrets Act stuff and I'll never know why I was down a DI for damn near six weeks?" he said.

"'Fraid so boss." said Lestrade. "All I can say is I'm glad to be back with real coppers because that lot... well it was a bit of a bloody shambles."

"Two weeks stress leave would point to that, yeah. Well if they sniff around again, you tell 'em they can't borrow our things again if they don't look after 'em properly."

Lestrade grinned at that. "It's good to be back."

"Let's see if you still say that when you see the backlog!" said Moe, as the lift door opened.

Lestrade wasn't lying when he said he was glad to be back. After a couple of days of rest and relaxation he had run out of things to do and gone a bit stircrazy.

Well.. no... He now knew what that meant and whatever his boredom and aimlessness was like, it wasn't like that.

He'd had another meeting with Mycroft Holmes, who provided more coffee and pastries and an update on the ongoing investigation into the corruption in the specialist unit. Which was now disbanded, it appeared Holmes had found more than one problematic copper there and had moved swiftly. He'd assured Lestrade that the ones who had been clean had gone to other specialist anti-terrorist squads. Lestrade didn't ask about the ones who weren't. He just enjoyed the excellent coffee, the strange sweet pastries (Moroccan, Holmes had said) and the way the conversation ranged were it would. A pleasant afternoon in a sea of boredom.

But he was back at work now, and even routine wasn't as boring as leave had been.

(He might not say the same about a very long morning of meetings with HR about leave and compensation and medical reports and compliance training. Five weeks of admin bullshit in one morning was best
forgotten)

Donovan had dealt with the various cases they'd had on the go. Moe had decided to see how she would go and so hadn't split the work up amongst the other DIs but had let her get on with it and report to him.

Lestrade was happy with that. More visibility wouldn't hurt her, and neither would stretching her wings a bit. He made a note to take her out to a damn good lunch sometime soon in celebration of a job well done.

He was champing at the bit to get back into some real work, so he dived headfirst into the current workload. Which, despite Moe's warning, wasn't much - apparently the citizens of London had taken a bit of a break from knocking each other off. Aside from a knifing in Finsbury (consequences of an armed robbery, the gang squad was taking an interest) and a suspicious death-in-the-bath (which was waiting on the autopsy report - Donovan reckoned it really was a stroke or heart attack rather than someone copying George Joseph Smith), there was only the cleanup from previous jobs. Seems the team had gone from horribly overworked to light and easy while he'd been gone. As sometimes happened.

Amongst the cleanups was the finishing up of the murders of Geoffrey Maddox and Lyn Starling. The killer had been taken down with tasers and the odd baton, so was a bit the worse for wear. Add to that the inevitable insanity plea and they still didn't have a court date. Stanner was glad to hand the file back to him, noting there were a few odds and sods they still needed but on the whole the CPS wasn't interested until they knew if he'd be standing trial or off to Broadmoor in a funny coat.

Lestrade decided to finish it up and get it out of the way, besides he didn't want to go trampling over the work his people were doing on the current cases unless he had to. Donovan was doing a good job and he wasn't going to undermine her.

So he refreshed his memory of the two killings and worked out what would be needed to nail the case down properly, some information from Holmes about Maddox and a few stray documents from Starling's school that the previous team had missed.

Once that was done then his desk was clear and he'd be ready to take new jobs on.

Most of the rest of the day was spent chatting and catching up, he'd do the final legwork at the school and Holmes's office tomorrow.

Lestrade was way too happy to be back in harness to muse on how different he felt about seeking out Holmes over these killings compared to the first time.

-------------------------------------------------

It was latish when he got to Holmes's office (this one off the Strand, he wondered how many the man had!) to be shown in by Anthea who offered him a smile and a cup of tea which he accepted with a grateful smile of his own, and settled down at the side table where he had an excellent view of Mycroft Holmes in action.

He was acknowledged with a glance and a nod by the man at the desk who was discussing something stiflingly bureaucratic by the sound of it. Holmes's voice was by turns fussy and stern, he sounded like a man who had been working at ledgers all day. (Or whatever the modern equivalent was, Lestrade wouldn't be surprised to find out there were bits of the government that still used ledgers.)

The conversation finished, Holmes sat back and composed himself. "I'm afraid I cannot be with you just yet Inspector, there's a Situation brewing. I do not expect it to take much longer."

He then turned to his computer, focusing as intently on that as he had on the phone call.

All coppers are people watchers, at least the good ones are. So Lestrade watched. He watched the way the long fingers wrote short neat notes on the pad, the minute changes of expression as Holmes worked the keyboard or spoke on the phone, the way he moved to reach for things.

An elegant man, very spare in his movements, neat by temperament and long practice rather than conscious care. Capable of strong focus on more than one thing, but then Lestrade knew that already.

Suddenly those blue eyes were focused on him.

"Inspector, what would your reaction be if someone told you they'd be in Brega to watch Arsenal play Brega?"

"I'd think they were being a bit hopeful. The qualifier's not till tomorrow and unless Seville do something silly Brega won't make the cut."

Holmes flashed that amazing smile, making Lestrade grin in return. "Thank you, that has made things much clearer. If you were considering betting on the football in the near future then I suggest that you don't. It is clear someone is very certain Brega will make the cut."

The phone rang, Holmes answered it with "Yes Minister" which made Lestrade grin again. He had no doubt Holmes was going to manipulate whichever politician was on the line as adroitly as the fictional Sir Humphrey did. He expected the words "That's quite courageous Minister" any moment.

What he got was "We don't know yet Minister. We do know our agents found him before he could abstract the physical files, but what else he has been able to pass on we won't be able to tell for some time. Yes, we are... talking to him now. The cover story we have given his embassy is that he's asked for asylum, they won't believe it of course but it is how these things are done."

"No Minister, we have that covered. Thank you."

He hung up with a fleeting expression of distaste and made another call. "Marcus. I have been talking with the Minister... yes, exactly. We will need some good headlines tomorrow, can you arrange something? No, I don't think that's possible, I'll see if MI6 can cover it. Send one of their fancy types in to make a bit of noise."

Lestrade tried very hard not to wonder what this Situation was. Or just what Holmes did in this office. There were more calls, Holmes's voice and manner changing subtly on each, as though he was a different man having each conversation. He had thought there was only one Mycroft Holmes, he was now wondering just how many there were.

They were all of them very much in control though. Even when the conversation seemed to be going round in circles Holmes kept his voice even and his breathing controlled although in the middle of that call he caught Lestrade's eye and flashed such an utterly fed up look at the phone that Lestrade nearly inhaled his tea.

Somewhere in the middle of it all the cups were refreshed, different files appeared and the old ones vanished. Lestrade was given a trickle of papers and DVDs relating to his case, discussing them with Holmes in the intervals between phone calls and sudden intent focus on whatever was on the man's screen.

It was after nearly three hours of this that Holmes sat up, patted his tie and cufflinks into exact place and looked at Lestrade. "I think it is all under control now. I do apologise for keeping you so late, would you care to have dinner with me?"

Lestrade's stomach agreed that it was bloody close to dinner time, and he accepted with thanks. He gathered up the various files to be stopped by a dismissive wave from Holmes. "Never mind those Inspector, I will have them sent to your office." What it was to have minions Lestrade thought. He'd be lucky to find a spare DC never mind being able to persuade one to deliver papers.

-------------------------------------------------

The evening was warm enough that Lestrade removed his jacket and slung it over his shoulder as he walked with Holmes out into the open air.

Given what he'd been listening to he was somewhat surprised that Holmes was sauntering out into the open streets without any sort of entourage. Perhaps his security was following at a distance, Lestrade looked around to see if he could spot them.

"I don't have a security tail Inspector" said Holmes, reading him like a book as usual. "After all, I am just a civil servant with a minor role in the Government."

Lestrade looked sideways at him and snorted, a sound met by a slight twitch of the lips.

He felt a bit silly for wondering if he was in a spy movie, expecting some bad guy to materialise and stab the man next to him with a radioactive umbrella. Poetic justice or something... But the feeling wouldn't leave him and he was just that bit on edge as they made their way down Bedford St in search of dinner.

Which was why, when the fight broke out ahead of them, he reacted with much more than a raised eyebrow.

Nothing draws a crowd like a fight: all surrounding eyes were on the two yelling men. Lestrade's instincts flared because whatever draws eyes is very good cover for something else... And a closer look at the combatants ramped his paranoia to unbearable levels.

"The one in the khaki shirt was hanging about your office when we left" he said "and I think I saw him when I went in three hours ago. Let's get out of here now!"

"A diversion you think Inspector? Very well, we shall take this street"

They changed direction suddenly, swerving around a knot of people who had stopped for the fight and into a side street, Lestrade lengthening his stride to get as much room as possible between them and whatever that diversion was designed to cover.

They hadn't got more than a few yards in when swift footsteps sounded behind them.

He half turned to put himself between whoever it was and Holmes using arm and body to shove Holmes back and to the side, wondering as he did so if he was over-reacting to someone running for a bus.

The twist and step back saved him, perhaps the shove did too as the man in the brown suit coming at them starting that stereotypical upward knife thrust was startled by the movement and hesitated for a moment as his targets vanished.

Lestrade took advantage of the hesitation to sweep his jacket off his shoulder hard onto the knife hand, covering the blade and hindering the man's movement for a fraction of a second. Long enough to slam his right fist into the man's face with all his weight and his fear behind it.

As the man grunted and twisted back, Lestrade grabbed for the knife arm but got a handful of coat instead. He lurched forward trying to be inside the knife's range, the knife man sidestepped and whacked his left hand into Lestrade's head in some sort of karate chop. That dazed Lestrade so much he nearly missed his clutch at the man's hair and ears but he managed to get hands on him and pull his head hard forward for a sloppy but more or less effective Glasgow Kiss. Which made him see even more stars!

He staggered - nearly losing his balance - but managed to avoid the body as it dropped, thanking God he'd managed to nut the bastard before he'd been cut.

That there were two of them was unfortunate.

He saw #2 as #1 hit the ground, saw the hand and the blade and the face and the surprise as something long and black and pointed slammed past Lestrade's shoulder and into #2's throat.

Lestrade stood for a long moment, stunned.

Then his survival instincts took over, if there were two there might be three or the bods playfighting as a diversion might come looking and get into a real fight.

They had to get out of here now, into a building, somewhere defensible, the open street was danger. He turned to Holmes who had his foot on #2's knife hand and was examining the tip of his umbrella.

"We have to get off the street" he barked, trying to look everywhere at once.

"I have called for my people." said Holmes and if it hadn't been for the time spent Holmes-watching that afternoon, Lestrade would have said he was unconcerned.

Lestrade ignored the bodies, one down and out, one thrashing on the floor half choking and scanned the street for more. No one coming near, just someone with a shocked expression and a mobile phone taking video which would probably be on YouTube inside 30 minutes.

He'd no idea how long it would take for the police to turn up but he did know he'd have some explaining to do, this was going to be all over the papers. Never mind that though, he had to get Holmes somewhere safe, his "people" could pick him up there. They wouldn't thank Lestrade for letting Holmes loll about here being six foot something of clear target.

But how the hell could he get them out? There were more eyes upon them, more mobiles recording video, which meant he couldn't leave #2 lying there and risk front page headlines about callous coppers leaving men to die.

"At least get your back to a bloody wall!" he growled at Holmes as he dropped to one knee for a quick look. At least it seemed #2 wasn't going to die just yet, breathing was obviously difficult but he was breathing.

He pinned a nearby gawker with a look, ordered "Call an ambulance. Now!", and kept the look on him until the man fumbled for triple 9.

There was a disturbance off to the right, he shot up and stepped back in front of Holmes, wondering if he should take the umbrella for a weapon, now wouldn't that look good on the nine o'clock news!

The disturbance was the local uniforms and Holmes's people turning up at about the same time.

Lestrade flashed his warrant card but he needn't have bothered. Holmes was on his mobile, and before Lestrade could get much past giving his name the senior constable was taking an urgent radio message. Next thing Lestrade knew he and Holmes were being escorted by a couple of biggish men in snappy suits towards a familiar black car parked half on the footpath as though parking regulations were for lesser mortals. Which, he supposed, they were.

Once inside the car, he could more or less relax. With luck it would be all someone else's problem and he could hope that Holmes would cite National Security and Lestrade wouldn't have to fill in any damn forms.

-------------------------------------------------

The house was fairly typical for the area: three stories of white stone and bay windows. And worth something like sixty times Lestrade's annual salary. Or more.

Lestrade got out of the car wondering if he should find the tradesman's entrance.

Holmes headed for the door, the car and its follower containing the snappy men in suits headed off for the Bat-Cave or wherever they came from. Lestrade followed Holmes through the door and into a panelled hallway, the rooms on either side furnished in Expensively Elegant..

He felt horribly out of place, as though he was tracking mud in on his big flat feet. Holmes read his mind as usual, dismissing the whole set up with a wave of his hand. "One must occasionally... play host to certain people.. The ambiance is expected. These rooms aren't used except for that."

They went through into a kitchen that was also expensive. But, Lestrade noticed, it was used. He'd been in places with top of the line everything where the only item in constant use was the microwave but he was fairly certain someone was cooking here regularly. It was neat but not photoshoot neat the way the outer rooms had been, and the copper bottoms of the pans showed definite marks of use and of age as well. The implements were not matched, there was a teatowel on the bench, crockery on the draining board, and a paperback book on the table.

Probably had someone to cook for him Lestrade thought. He clearly had the money for it.

Holmes waved him to a seat at the table, saying "There is still the matter of dinner Inspector, are you ah... ready to eat something?"

Lestrade realised he was more than ready and said so.

"In that case, please select from this, anything you wish although I suggest something from the pasta menu as it will arrive in reasonable speed."

The menu was Italian, the dishes recognisable, and the prices surprisingly reasonable for the area. Lestrade hesitated for a bit, finally choosing almost at random. Holmes didn't look at the menu as he ordered, which meant his hours were probably as irregular as Lestrade's. So who did the cooking and when?

Putting his mobile away Holmes opened a cupboard and said "Brandy Inspector?"

Lestrade thought a stiff drink was perfect! "Yes please" he said. "And some ice."

Holmes looked at him with a definite Posh Bastard expression: eyebrow raised, lips pursed with suppressed distaste.

Lestrade snorted. "Not for the drink. For this." he said, holding up his rapidly swelling right hand.

Holmes's face cleared and he brought the bottle of brandy - French, and Lestrade was only mildly surprised to see it was Armagnac not Cognac, after all why would Holmes do anything in any way normal - to the table. Pouring it into two balloon glasses he passed one to Lestrade and went to the pigeon pair fridge/freezer in the kitchen.

"This should be suitable" he said, as he reached for Lestrade's right hand. He held the hand for a moment, looking at the swelling and the grazes and flicking his eyes up to meet Lestrade's.

"But first it should be cleaned up a little, wait a moment if you will."

He vanished, returning a moment later with a first aid kit and a damp cloth. He took Lestrade's hand in his, wiping the grazes gently. Lestrade twitched as the antiseptic stung, and Holmes stilled instantly, looking up in enquiry then, apparently satisfied, went back to his work. Lestrade leant back in his chair, rather enjoying the gentle touch. Made a change from fixing it up himself or worse dealing with a snarky nurse's aide at the Yard who would scrub it with sandpaper if you were lucky.

Holmes placed a small plaster over the worst of the damage before gently laying a cold pack in a snowy white cotton cover onto Lestrade's abused knuckles. He held the hand for a moment longer before placing it back on the table, carefully resettling the pack, then narrowing his eyes as he looked more closely at Lestrade.

"I take it you have no obvious symptoms of concussion or other injury beyond those bruises?" he said, reaching out to ghost a finger over what felt like a thickening ear.

"Not even a headache. I'll ice it turn about with the hand and all will be right in the morning."

Holmes looked unconvinced but said nothing more about it.

Lestrade swirled the Armagnac in the glass, obviously working up to say something, Mycroft Holmes waited, willing him to speak.

"I haven't thanked you for backing me up back there." He looked up, clearly uncomfortable.

"Given... who you are, you'd have been sensible to take off. Call your people, get out of there. Not waste any time."

Mycroft looked at him, somewhat surprised. "You really think I should have left you to the second attacker? Saved myself and left you?"

"It's what most people would have done." Lestrade said baldly. "Run, or stayed back to leave it to the copper. Leave it to the ones paid for it. There aren't many would step in and risk their lives to save a bobby."

"Few people are capable of violence unless seriously provoked."

That's true, but it doesn't matter whether it's some bloke with a knife or someone yelling, or just talking at a party." Lestrade shrugged, clearly an old grievance worn smooth with time.

"The police... we are on our own. It isn't just the hours, it's how other people see you. You tell someone you are police and they look at you.. well... they search their conciences. They can only think 'police' they can never think 'man'.

Everything they do or say is tainted by 'he's a cop, have to be careful.' Silly jokes about handcuffs are the least of it. What hurts is they shut you out."

Lestrade laughed mirthlessly. "I suppose vicars have the same problem. But no one expects a vicar to beat them up."

"They expect police to?"

"Well.. maybe not quite that far but they do expect you to heavy them. Everyone has a guilty conscience you see.. It's the authority, the power. The fact we can do things other people can't and enforce laws other people think are stupid. Speeding. Smoking dope. They don't see the bodies and the ruined families, so to them the laws are stupid. And we are the bully boys, who should be going after real crims but will nick them instead. Most a vicar will do is pray at them."

Mycroft nodded, watching the play of light in the glass. Power was an uncomfortable thing for most people to come in contact with. He himself walked a careful line because the fewer people whom he dealt with who understood his power, the better. "Minor government official" was as much to soothe as to mislead.

"Once they realise the power," he said "realise how you are different... Some are afraid. And hate that they are. So pretend they are not but still distance themselves from you..."

He paused.

"It happens to everyone who has power. The greater the perceived power, the less you are a man and the more you are someone to be pleased. Or used... Or feared."

Another pause.

"Even if you would want them to feel none of those things."

Looking up from his glass, he watched Lestrade. He had not expected to have this conversation but now it was happening he could not shy away.

"There are times, Inspector, you have used your power suddenly and without warning because you have had to, correct? And, I expect, times you have abused it too. "

Lestrade looked at him, eyes narrowed a fraction, seeing where it was going, nodding warily.

"It happens" he said. "Every copper's been there. Personal gain, anger, even being so damn scared you just about piss yourself. Coppers understand that. It's why cops marry cops. They are the only ones who know. Who realise what the job is. The only ones who don't look at you like that. The hours, the stress, the temptations. No one else understands."

"Anyone with genuine power would understand I think."

The brown eyes hardened.

"Small abuses happen yeah. Those are easy. But big ones, well that's different. A bad cop is a bad cop."

They were both tense now. Talking around the subject. Neither willing to come right out and say it. Talk about what was between them. What had happened.

One of them might have, if the bell had not rung.

The food, in ceramic serving dishes and not plastic boxes, was excellent. The red wine was smooth and full.

The conversation was light and inconsequential and nothing about police or power or the abuse of same.

Lestrade left, soon after they had eaten. He did accept Mycroft's offer of a lift home and he did agree to say something if there were repercussions from the evening's incident.

Mycroft did not sleep for some time that night.

Lestrade took sleeping pills..

--------------------------------------------------

Mycroft Holmes finished the last briefing report, closed the file, and decided he couldn't put the problem off any longer.

Inspector Lestrade.

He had to keep calling him that in his mind, keep his distance. He suspected that keeping that distance was not helping his...well... relationship was probably not the word, but it had to be done.

He had tried to suppress his feelings after they had overwhelmed him and brought disaster but it was clear that wasn't working.

They had formed some kind of working partnership but that was not enough. It just made the longings worse and forbade him to do anything about them.

Lestrade was either a tool or a friend and possible lover. He couldn't be both.

Mycroft laid out what he knew.

Lestrade was strong and honest, and perhaps a little short tempered. Brave and intelligent and searingly independent. Treated as a colleague he was co-operative and willing. Pushed he would fight back, or else withdraw and refuse.

Chained and hurting he had flinched from Mycroft's touch. Free and met as an equal he had accepted it and even welcomed it a few moments later.

Pressured and with, as Mycroft had thought, no place to run he had run anyway. Found a way to escape. In every encounter they had had where Mycroft had sought to control him, he had resisted and evaded the control. Until the pressure had been too much for either of them.

Mycroft Holmes was under no illusion as to where he stood compared to the majority of men. More intelligent, more able, more powerful than the vast majority, he could have sexual partners of any kind had he wished, even ones who would simulate strength if that was what he demanded. Ones who would resist if that was what he demanded.

But if he wanted Lestrade he could not demand. If he wanted that strength, that integrity, the man who did not lie to him or bow to him but looked after him and smiled to make his world sing... If he wanted him then it had to be as equals.

If he had learned anything from his twisted relationship with Sherlock it must be that.

But how to get Lestrade to understand that? To get past his obvious issues of class and money? And even if he did, that dreadful night where Mycroft had mistaken everything about his own feelings and had tried to take what could only work if given... that night was against him.

"How can you trust me?" he had asked, and the only possible answer had been understood but unspoken.

Trust cannot be demanded, it has to be earned. If Mycroft wanted Lestrade - and he did, he must face that and acknowledge it - then he must fully earn that trust.

If he could.

What he was about to do now would be the turning point. Lead to his desires, or shatter them and ruin everything.

Mycroft Holmes steepled his hands and looked past them into the middle distance, thinking.

-------------------------------------------------

There are many ways the conversation could have gone.

In a car, discussing it in the abstract, not looking at each other.

In an office, discussing a case, discussing it as though they were not hoping the other would see the parallels.

Over dinner, light and easy, just barely touched on.

Instead it was in Lestrade's flat, with past horrors playing through both men's minds, and nowhere to run.

-------------------------------------------------

Lestrade would have been earlyish home, well earlyish for him, except some brain dead bureaucratic snarl blew up out of nowhere and had to be sorted before he could leave.

He might not have much waiting for him at his flat but anything was better than that.

He remembered thinking that, remembered it in the sort of blinding clarity you remember a gun pointed at you.

Because, of course, he was quite, quite wrong.

Nothing in the letterbox, up the stairs, unlock and shoulder the door open balancing his briefcase and his coat in his other hand, step inside, look up, and see something much much worse than any administrative ballsup standing there looking at him.

The sofa. The table. The nightmare personified. Twice in reality so many times in his dreams.

He stopped. His breath stopped. His heart didn't stop, it hammered.

But life does go on, and after the first sharp sudden shock he recovered quite quickly. Practice he supposed.

Practice and the fact that this was not like the other times. Holmes was not sitting down, relaxed, aloof, in control, in charge. He had shot to his feet and was standing almost braced for bad news.

On the table was not a bottle of whiskey but a tangle of electronics.

For once Holmes did not offer his hand. Lestrade had got rather used to that odd habit, the offer of equality, the human touch. You don't know what you've got till it's gone.

They stood looking at each other. Lestrade tense and bewildered, Holmes tense and focused.

"This will be the last time. And this " Holmes said, pointing at the table "will not be replaced."

Lestrade stepped forward to pick up the tangle of wires. A lens gleamed in the light. A camera! A bloody camera! He searched the room looking for where it had been.

"In the Northwestern corner Inspector. On the top of the pelmet. Out of the way and close enough to a window for the transmitter to work."

Lestrade turned the tangle over in his hands. Small enough to be invisible if you didn't know it was there, but plenty big enough to show everything in the room with a fish eye lens. Every thing he did in here. On show to whoever the hell monitored Holmes's network.

He could feel his temper build.

"Since when?"

"Since the night I ah... discussed finances with you." said Holmes, holding up his hand in a calming gesture. Lestrade was not inclined to be calmed but he did let Holmes continue.

"The information was sent directly to me. My operatives have not seen it. I have destroyed all copies."

Lestrade threw the camera onto the floor, barely restraining himself from stomping it into shards.

"So 'no cameras' was a bloody lie was it? Every time I think I can trust you... But why? Why put it there, why remove it?"

Holmes looked down, examining his feet almost nervously. When he looked up he couldn't meet Lestrade's eyes. "I had it put it there.. after you gave me that resignation letter. You had bested me, and I... I needed to recover ground. I needed to know more, to watch you. To get the information I needed to control you. "

Lestrade said nothing. He couldn't trust himself to speak.

"And when I... when... well after... after that night I realised I couldn't control you without doing serious violence to myself. And... And that control wasn't what I wanted."

Holmes still was not able to look at him, the disjointed speech being delivered to the wall over Lestrade's shoulder.

"Then you were hurt and I used it to watch over you. Because I couldn't stand the idea you were hurt and I wasn't there to help. I told myself it was because Sherlock needed you. I wouldn't let myself think I needed you."

Lestrade watched Holmes's face. His hands. The usually arrogant stance was subtly different, the hands were still but it was the stillness of hard control not of calm.

Suddenly, baldly, Holmes said "I wanted you to need me, but now I know you don't. You can look after yourself. "

Lestrade dragged his eyes from Holmes, and sat down in the nearest chair, trying to absorb what he'd just heard. He wished he hadn't dropped the camera, it would have given him something to do with his hands. Instead he started manipulating the left with the right, falling automatically into the physiotherapy exercise while he tried to make sense of what Holmes was saying. Bending the hand back to the point of pain, resisting the pull, relaxing, watching himself do it. While his thoughts churned.

From the corner of his eye he saw Holmes examining his nails, fingers touching fingers in an almost nervous way.

Mycroft Holmes watched Lestrade as he sat there. Watched him but terrifyingly unable to meet his eyes.

The silence dragged on, Lestrade's right hand pulling his left monotonously, his expressive face showing nothing that Mycroft could read.

This was foolish he realised. A reasonable working relationship was all they would have, and as seeing as being in Lestrade's presence disconcerted him and upset his life and his thoughts and his digestion he couldn't really afford even that. He'd not understood just what the man was doing to him until it was too late. The signs in anyone else would have been perfectly clear, but who watches the watcher?

He would not walk out, he must stay until the bitter humiliating end.

It was the least he could do to repay Lestrade, to finish what he started. And then he must learn to do without, to go back to his calm ordered life in his calm ordered office. To forget the laughter and the easy conversation, the quick stunning smile, the strength and the competence and the comfortable silences and the way he felt when his hand grasped Lestrade's.

He could do it, people did it all the time.

He had to find once more that place where he was calm and content in his web of information and intrigue, calm and content in his circuit of home and office and club, in the ordered life of the intellect. Solitary and aloof.

The only life he'd had or wanted until now.

The only life he could have. Because why would this man want him? Want someone who had blackmailed him to resign his job of twenty years, forced him into sexual humiliation, deprived him of his privacy, left him in the hands of torturing thugs in order to gain information?

Mycroft Holmes stilled his hands and waited for the verdict.

Lestrade's thoughts were jumbled, incoherent. That dreadful night, he'd thought it was about power and so it was. That it had been about something else, that he hadn't known. But looking back... Looks and gestures and smiles and that habit of taking his hand. Had he dreamed Holmes had been by his bed in hospital or had he been there?

To be wanted, didn't everyone want that? But for what?

Touches and smiles, and light conversation. Easy laughter, easy silences, sudden intense stares from those blue eyes so unlike the dismissive alien glances he got from Sherlock. Genuine liking he thought, genuine care. Genuine respect. A man could get used to that.

But... but only sometimes. He remembered thinking it, the default was Posh Bastard and just look at his house. Sherlock slummed it because Sherlock didn't give a shit, borderline autistic, no social graces at all. This bloke had a house with reception rooms! When he had what he wanted, would he still want it?

Lestrade was no fool. He'd seen too many infatuations gone bad to trust in fairy tales. Even when (to his surprise, it was a night of surprises) he very much wanted to.

"Need me? For what? What am I to you? I don't fit in your life at all. As soon as there's anyone else in the offing you act as though I'm the bloody tea boy. I don't think you've called me by my name in all the time we've known each other, am I supposed to believe you want more than a bit of rough for the thrill of it?"

Holmes was looking at him now. "It isn't I'm ashamed to be seen with you, it is that I can't afford to be anything less than formal with you."

Lestrade snorted in disbelief. He stood up, needing to be eye to eye.

"What, because I'll ruin your reputation? To be seen with a bit of rough trade? Lose face in the club?"

"No. No! The formality enables me to be stable when you are there. It stops me focusing on my feelings. Without it I can't keep myself properly together. I want to be with you and enjoy myself... If I keep to formal interaction I can control myself. If I don't I can't. It isn't just you, I am formal and aloof to everyone. Even Sherlock. "

It was like a blinding light.

"It's how you keep sane isn't it. " he said slowly "The formality. That's the barrier you built between you and what you do... " He fumbled for words, working it out. "And you can't afford to make a hole in it, you can't afford to weaken it."

But then... "So why all this? Are you making a hole or bricking one up? If you need the formality, if you can't handle being around me, why are you here, why didn't you just remove that bloody camera and get on with your life?"

Holmes was looking everywhere but at him again.

"I used to think I couldn't afford you. Because you... you made me drop that barrier and forget myself completely." The next words were so soft he had to lean forward to hear them. "No one should ever forget themselves completely when they have a loaded gun in their hands..."

"I tried to distance myself, to get rid of those feelings. Wall them off or stamp them down or break them up. But I couldn't. I couldn't have what I wanted and I couldn't stop wanting. So I had to learn how to manage my feelings about you."

Lestrade didn't know what to say. The raw honesty was just not Mycroft Holmes, not as he knew the man. He kept perfectly still, perfectly quiet, wondering what Holmes would do when he came to his
senses.

Then the blue eyes were looking right at him, catching him, holding him. Lestrade was suddenly shockingly aware of Holmes's hands, his mobile mouth, the way the light caught his jaw, the line of his shoulder and arm down to his long elegant legs.

"After all... never mind what I did to you, what would you see in me? "

Honesty called to honesty. Whatever happened he owed Holmes that. But what did he see in Mycroft Holmes? Was he more than well dressed trouble?

"Sherlock, he has this intensity. This.. I suppose charisma is the word. He overwhelms you, But.. I once saw a kid's toy, it was a cross between a kaleidoscope and a telescope. you looked into it and saw the world around you distorted and broken into amazing images. It was incredible to look at... but you wouldn't want to live there."

"Your attention.. your... your charisma is as strong as his. But different. Not as blinding. More... I don't know, human?"

Lestrade looked embarrassed. "What do I see in you? You are intelligent and powerful and well.. you think I'm intelligent. No one's said that before. The thing you Holmeses, you and your brother, the thing you value most of all. And you think I have it. Enough that you listened to me as if I had things worth saying. You say Sherlock thinks it too, but you said it."

Holmes leant forward, almost eager.

"It has to be about equals. About respect between equals. I get people kowtowing to me every day. I get people trying to trick me, or make bargains. Tugging forelocks and sharpening knives. I don't want someone who thinks they are my inferior. I don't want someone who won't stand up to me. And... " he stopped. Lestrade waited, tense, not even breathing.

" and... I want someone who can look after me when I need it. How can someone who isn't my equal do that? how can they have the strength for that? How can I believe I'm safe with someone who isn't strong and capable and .. well.. you?"

Lestrade stayed still, eyes unfocused, absorbing that. ("Not like this, never like this" he'd said. Lestrade finally understood.)

He did look up when Holmes took his right hand in both of his, then turned it over, and gently stroked his long elegant thumb over the grazes on the knuckles.

Then opened his hands flat, so Lestrade's hand was no longer held, save by his own will.

Lestrade left his hand there, feeling the warmth, feeling the intensity of Holmes's... of Mycroft's gaze. He looked at their hands, knowing whatever he did now was final.

He met those eyes as he lifted his hand away from its resting place, back towards himself, saw hope change to uncertainty to sorrow and, he was sure, to acceptance.

Which was when he made his decision.

He lifted his hand to Mycroft's cheek, resting it gently there. The blue eyes looked at him, widening, and then suddenly closed... and Mycroft's face took on an expression of serene joy. He leaned into Lestrade's hand, concentrating on the feel of it, utterly content with this small thing,

Lestrade was stunned at the response. How the strength, the power, the intelligence were all still there, but all meaning nothing compared to the joy of resting his head in Lestrade's hand.

He framed Mycroft's face between his two hands, pulling him gently forward, stepping closer, knowing what he was proposing, knowing what he was accepting.

It was not a frantic kiss. They were too tired, too drained for that. It was gentle and full of promise and afterwards they just stood there embracing, the broken camera at their feet, forgotten.

-------------------------------------------------
Author's Notes:
This one took a long time, and there are a number of different beginnings, middles, and ends in the reject pile. Thanks to the ever-patient elfbert for her encouragement over the months this series has taken. Thanks too to the people who commented and encouraged me and made me think I was doing something right.

The scene at the end was inspired by http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/4777.html?thread=15115433#t15115433

Fic: The Power of Imagination

randomly_rusted — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 20:12:43 GMT

Summary: Mycroft gets his man. With the help of the dessert menu.

Rating: PG-13

Word Count: 1670

written for this prompt:

http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/4777.html?thread=13451433#t13451433

"So. I want Mycroft to cheat on his diet."

-----------------------

Never let it be said that Mycroft Holmes lacked imagination. It is true he was not given to flights of fancy, to wild stories or conspiracy theories or seeing ghosts or imagining horrors, but his imagination was in perfect working order.

When Mycroft Holmes imagined, he did not imagine outlandish things, it was more in the nature of a prediction. He decided that things must be as he saw them, and he would ensure they were.

When it came to diplomatic matters, or the current interest rate, or even which maverick MP was going to vote the party line this time, those were things he could imagine, and things he could control or at least influence.

When it came to certain Detective Inspectors however, the case was, sadly, very different.

The imagination part, he could do that. And did. Often. Occasionally at the most inappropriate times. It was getting so a glimpse of silver hair of a certain length, or a strong jaw without a tie beneath it would have his imagination taking over rather too much of his mind, no matter what he should be thinking about.

Now this would not necessarily be a bad thing save for one difficulty: imagining was all he was able to do.

It wasn't that the Inspector had rejected him.

It wasn't that the Inspector was already taken.

It wasn't that the Inspector did not, as the phrase went "swing that way".

(Mycroft Holmes was a thorough man. He knew exactly how Gregory Lestrade swung. And which side he dressed to come to that, which had been the subject of one of his more intricate imaginings. Unfortunately it was during a meeting with members of an influential union, and while he did not think his vision of undressing Lestrade paying attention to which side he dressed to was responsible for the Tube strike, he did sometimes worry it might have been a contributing factor.)

The Inspector was not taken, not theoretically averse to the fact Mycroft was definitely male, and had not rejected him. Had not even thought about rejecting him.

Because, apparently, the man was utterly oblivious!

They had had dinner. Several times. Mycroft had provided his car (and himself. Without, alas, any result.) on rainy days and on the day of the aforementioned tube strike.

They had discussed politics and football and the songs of Ella Fitzgerald (agreeing on their excellence) and of Genesis ("Pretentious tosh" said Lestrade. "Complex and ahead of its time" said Mycroft.).

They had even seen a play ("Incomprehensible" said Lestrade "Agreed" said Mycroft "I do not believe staging Twelfth Night as taking place inside a beach ball and intercutting the dialogue with pieces taken from The Importance of Being Earnest was a sensible decision.")

He had sat close to the Inspector in the car. He had called him Gregory and persuaded Gregory to call him Mycroft. He had put an arm around his shoulders. And yet as far as he could tell (and Mycroft prided himself on his knowledge of human response to stimuli, it was an important part of his job) Gregory Lestrade had completely ignored every move he'd made.

He had not rejected them, he had not even noticed them!

They were due for another dinner tonight, and this was it. Time for the big guns. Time to be very obvious about just what he was after, and what he was imagining.

Which as a goal was all very well, but how to bring it about? He did not feel he could say "Well, How about a bit of hows-your-father then?" Or even "Would you be averse to some sexual intercourse?" The tried and true "Wannafuck?" was not even considered. Outright asking was not suitable, it was not how Mycroft Holmes did things.

He was distracted by his problem all through dinner. So much so that Gregory asked him if he was all right, if something from work was upsetting him. "Should I worry about a war starting or that the Coalition is going to privatise the Met? It's not your diet is it? Is that why you've been picking at your food? Worrying about your waistline?"

Mycroft was not sure how to answer. The whole diet problem was another difficulty. Not as pressing as how to get Gregory Lestrade into bed and so convert imagination into reality, but still a problem.

Then the dessert section of the specials board caught his eye and just like that there was the answer. He would sacrifice one for the other, the diet for the man. Diets could be resumed, but something told him if he didn't get Lestrade tonight he never would.

So with an almost invisible gesture he summoned a waiter, and made his order. "Well, that answers the diet question" said Gregory, smiling. "Oh the eclairs here are excellent" said Mycroft, who had been told they were... But even if they were soggy or too sweet, they would do for what he had in mind.

He made small talk, while paying attention to relaxing his shoulders and his neck and throat and arms. Breathing through his nose, opening up his airway. Preparing himself.

When the eclair arrived it was everything he could want. Long and thick and glistening. The shining glaze of the chocolate drizzled symmetrically over the pastry, the cream in thick slippery ridges oozing out from its confines. It was, as he had hoped, almost obscenely sensual.

He caught and held Gregory's gaze with his own as he (to Gregory's obvious surprise) disdained the knife and fork and took the eclair in both hands.

He cradled it gently, running a finger along its length, looking at it with desire and yes hunger in his eyes. He brought it closer to his mouth and then extending his tongue just so, licked the tip of it once then twice, and on the third time swirling his tongue around, paying particular attention to the underside.

He was gratified to see that Gregory had stopped investigating his own dessert (another from the specials menu, involving brandy and chocolate cream) and was watching with interest.

Mycroft ran his tongue along the side of the eclair, just below the cream, knowing that some of it was transferred to the side of his mouth. He slowly and sensuously licked his lips while one hand stroked the other side of the eclair in a long motion with just a little pressure.

He was sure Gregory's pupils were a little wider, good!

Once more he licked around the tip of the eclair, cleaning up cream with his tongue in long slow licks. The hand closest to the other end of the pastry stroked gently up and down rythmically, now and then the tips of the the fingers extending as though massaging something that was only there in Mycroft's imagination.

Yes, it seemed Gregory's breathing had sped up....

Very well, now or never!

Mycroft breathed in and out, letting some of his imaginings show on his face, in the opening of his lips, in the widening of his eyes.

He relaxed his jaw, opened his mouth, and slowly, carefully, and with exquisite neatness, engulfed nearly half of the bulging, glistening, thick creamy thing.

He neither bit nor licked, but removed it from his mouth for just a moment, before once more taking as much of it as he could, this time closing his lips on it and sucking the cream from it. He knew his cheeks told Gregory what he was doing, and Gregory's breathing told him that it was working!

He worked his mouth over the eclair, trying hard to let no cream escape, swallowing it as obviously as he could. He removed the length from his mouth, then licked it with care and attention before opening wide and taking it in once more. Twice more. Three times.

He sucked the end hard, swallowing pastry as well as cream. Gergory was swallowing in his turn, his dessert still untouched.

Mycroft returned to licking, to swirling his tongue around, paying attention to all sides of the pastry, particularly the underside, and every few licks he would once more take as much of it in as he could, in and out and then resume licking until nearly all the cream was gone, and it appeared Gregory was nearly gone too!

Time now for the last hurrah, he wasn't oblivious now! Mycroft reached over the table for Gregory's hand and taking it gently in the hand not currently occupied with a very well attended to eclair drew it towards his face.

He indicated and as though in a dream (in fact Mycroft had dreamed of something like this last week) Gregory wiped some cream from Mycroft's mouth with his finger and Mycroft captured that finger with his tongue, encouraging it inside his mouth where he sucked it clean.

One of the things he liked about Gregory Lestrade was his intelligence, and he was reminded of that when Gregory gently swiped the finger around the other side of Mycroft's willing mouth and placed it temptingly on the lips. Mycroft wasn't sure how much of his own intelligence was available right now as he sucked that finger and swirled his tongue around the tip.

He drew his head back, placed the limp and spent eclair upon the table and both hands on Gregory's, where they gently squeezed and stroked as he said softly "Shall we go now?"

Gregory's breathing was faster, his eyes wider, his own tongue licking his lips. "Go?" he said. "Ah. Umm. yes. Ahhh. Go. Yes. Good idea. Umm.. Yes. Bed. I mean... umm.. yes."

Mycroft Holmes smiled. It was just as he had imagined.

As they left the restaurant he was imagining other things he was going to put in his mouth tonight....

Diet be damned.

Fic: Protection Detail

randomly_rusted — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 12:30:33 GMT

Summary: Mycroft's closest companion saves Lestrade! (And Mycroft, but that's the damn job!)

Rating: G

Word Count: 1875

Written for this prompt:

http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/5013.html?thread=15542933#t15542933

"BAMP!mycroft saves Lestrade life. " Where apparently BAMP means BAD ASS MOTHER PARASOL!!

This stars Mycroft's Umbrella, first met in It's Not About The Rain and while I don't think you need to read that first, it won't hurt.

======================================

You can't always tell how good a man is when you are watching him, but you can get a fair idea. You won't know for sure until he has handle in hand and you can feel his confidence and his understanding of just what an umbrella is for, but you can tell a lot by looking.

I've seen a lot of men in my time. You are protection detail for a man like Mycroft Holmes, you see all sorts. Even relaxing in the stand in the office, I keep my wits about me because you never know when you might need to get involved, you had better have been watching then!

And so it proved with that Detective Inspector.

Now I know my job. And I'm good at it, ask anyone. Hard rain and 40 knot winds, a summer shower, or a stroll around Pall Mall I'm ready and able.

And I know when to keep quiet, believe it or not there's some as doesn't. Some of the gossip I've heard! Oddly enough, it's overcoats are the worst, apparently some people keep them on far longer than you'd expect...

But I don't gossip, when you are privy to the sorts of things I have been you don't chatter about them. Whether it's a seat on the 6:17 you are resting by, or up against the door in a car with blacked out windows, you will hear things. If you are close protection detail you had better be quiet as the grave because while you might not have signed the Official Secrets Act, there are standards you are expected to uphold. Else at best you'll be in the bargain bin at the Salvation Army faster than you can say Clearance Revoked, and at worst... well let's just say there are apparently 2,000 umbrellas in the lost property warehouse at Virgin Trains and some of them haven't seen rain in fifteen years.

So when it became rather clear my employer was seeing the Inspector in more than a purely business capacity, I kept my thoughts to myself and my mind on the job.

Should you find yourself on the Detail when the Inspector's around, take a look. He's not hard on the eyes as men go, but it isn't the face you should be noting. Never is. Check the hands, are they steady? Sure in the grip and strong in the wrist? Check the walk, and the balance, are you going to be more of a crutch than a protector? Bugger all you can do against trouble, H20 or human, if your tip's on the ground and 12 stone of weight holding you there!

I liked the look of the inspector when I saw him. Good hands, and a solid confident walk. Although he was a raincoat wearer, so I wasn't sure he and I would mesh well if we had to work together. Nothing against coats you understand but their wearers tend to be a bit awkward with a brolly, open you up too late, and tilt you at the wrong angle thinking their coat does all the hard work and you are just to keep the rain out of their eyes. And they have no idea of the space you take up so you are forever trying to keep your ribs out of people's eyes and no help from the handle end!

I suppose given his job, he would find a proper protection detail too much trouble so he had to make do with the lesser stuff, but it did mean when trouble came I had no idea how he'd react.

He and Mr Holmes were out that evening. Dinner (proper umbrella stand for once, nice to find standards haven't slipped everywhere), and then a stroll along the edge of St James's on a balmy summer night.

Some of what happened might be my fault I admit. I wasn't expecting rain, and while I suppose I should have been expecting other trouble, we'd done that stroll through the park every week for months without so much as a beggar looking for cash, never mind thugs in balaclavas with trouble on their minds.

So when they came bursting out of the bushes, I was taken by surprise as much as Mr Holmes and his companion were. I blush to admit it, but if you don't admit your mistakes, you can't learn from them.

The other mistake I made was assuming they were after my employer. So I had my weight shifted for close defence and my tip to the front, but they shouldered us aside and went for the Inspector!

Once we realised that though, it was shift for attack and all in!

The Inspector was no pushover mind, he was giving as good as he was getting but three against one is bad odds in anyone's language.

Mr Holmes and I went for the closest one, and the practice paid off. He provided the power, I shifted my weight well forward and it was perfect distance so I hit him on the temple with my tip at full weight and Mr Holmes's not inconsiderable strength behind me,

It's good working with a man who knows how to use you properly. None of this whack 'em with the middle so half the power is robbed by your fabric and even a Solid Stick model might end up with a sprung shaft or a bent rib. Tip or handle, anything else is asking for trouble.

So one down two to go, and then it all went pearshaped.

They realised there was trouble and instead of legging it they turned their attentions to us! They were quick and determined and knew that the man with the weapon was trouble and best thing is to take the weapon out of the fight.

Mr Holmes wasn't going to run, and running probably wouldn't have worked anyway, he's no athlete. One of the grabbed for me and I slicked my fabric as much as a could and twisted in his grip, while Mr Holmes jerked my handle up at as close to the right angle as he could to rip me out of the bastard's grasp. He did let go but the other bloke grabbed Mr Holmes's arm and whacked him hard, and he let go then!

I fell to the ground, hard on the path, and I tell you, there's nothing so damned helpless as a brolly flat on the damned floor in the middle of a fight. Sure, the TV stars might roll and manage to trip someone up, but in the real world you'll just get 14 stone and a size ten hard on your midsection and you'll be lucky to get just creases out of that!

Now unarmed, Mr Holmes is not helpless. He's used to me and I'm used to him, and if there's trouble we work well together, but he's no fool and he's done the training. It was down to two against two now, and those odds weren't too bad until one of 'em pulled a knife!

I think they wanted the Inspector, and figured they'd threaten Mr Holmes and get him that way, but they reckoned without me. I rolled quick as I could and nudged the Inspector's foot hard, twice.

Had to be twice, there are some who are used to tuppenny ha'penny cheap import brollies who are helpless useless things in a shower never mind a fight and it would never occur to such people that a trained brolly is a partner in the enterprise. But the Inspector had been around Mr Holmes long enough to know I was not some nine to five jobsworth who could hardly roll his own fabric, so he slammed his fists into his man one! two! gut and solar plexus, dropping him like a stone, ducked and grabbed me, and twisted around to give us room for a strike.

I think he was a bit disconcerted as I shifted my weight tipwards, he'd never handled a trained brolly before so didn't know what to expect. I wouldn't normally shift before the strike but I thought it best to indicate to him what he should be doing, seeing as he wasn't used to my sort of fighting,

He got the idea quick enough though, stepped around, and brought me down hard into the knife man's wrist, metal tip crunching very satisfyingly into bone. It's amazing how much weight you can get into your tip if you try. Another blow to the head and down he went. Didn't have the luck to fall on his knife, but can't have everything.

So we had three down, in much less time than it takes to tell, but just as the Inspector was handing me back, one of them was up again!

If he'd had any sense he'd have run, but maybe he thought his mates would be up soon, maybe he wasn't thinking. Anyway Mr Holmes's hand had just closed around my midsection (the Inspector is a good man, but like I say, not used to brollies) when this bloke came up and hard at the Inspector! He'd grabbed him and twisted him and had him in a joint lock before you could say "Look out!"

Mr Holmes wasn't slow, he brought his arm back, grip loose, so I ran back through the loose grip and co-ordinated my weight shift as he brought me down handle end first onto the thug's head.

Now I knew it was going to hurt, and believe me when I tell you Mr Holmes knew too. If the Inspector had handed me over properly then I'd have been tip into kidneys or under the ear, and no problem. Instead I was handle-to-bloody-hard-skull and well you can imagine what that felt like!

The thug dropped and the Inspector yelped as he did so, because of that joint lock you understand. Mr Holmes damn near dropped me at the sound, but he's not done it deliberately before and he didn't do it now. A man you can trust, Mycroft Holmes.

He was on his knees by the Inspector, placed me to hand, and checked the man over, very much concerned. I kept watch as best I could in case one of the others got up, but they didn't seem to have any fight left in them.

Now you know I said you couldn't know a man till he'd had you handle in hand? Well I tell you, the Inspector has hands that look like they know how to manage, and a good striding walk, and although I know I shouldn't be thinking such things, I don't think a man like my employer would be seeing him as he does if he wasn't a good 'un.

Well I've only spent a few minutes in the Inspector's hand but they were enough. He was clearly not used to a good brolly as a partner in the exercise but he learned quick enough, and I bet those hands can do anything he has a mind to.

I can always hope he'll get rid of that raincoat and work with a proper protection detail, and I'd say if he does young'un you could do a lot worse

Fic: A Reliable Man. Part Eight: Framed.

randomly_rusted — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 07:20:10 GMT

Summary: Lestrade has been arrested and the evidence against him appears overwhelming. Nobody likes a bent copper....

Rating: PG - mild language

Type: Gen

Word Count: 7500

This is part of a series of connected stories, the others are here.

Thanks again to elfbert for general encouragement and long chats about all sorts of things.

==========================

He sat on the bench staring at his hands. He'd never been on this side of it before. And really had no idea why he was now.

He'd been checking the letterbox when the two plainclothes and the uniform had walked up to him. Older of the plainclothes had flashed a card - DCI Kent it had said - and confirmed his name. "You are Gregory Lestrade?" Which had seemed a bit odd, you'd expect him to use the rank.

"Yes?"

"Gregory Lestrade, I am Detective Chief Inspector Kent and I arrest you on suspicion of terrorist activity. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence."

He'd just *looked* at him. "You what? For what? It's not April Fool's you know!"

"You are under arrest, please come with me" he'd said and produced a set of cuffs.

The uniform had his hand on his baton, whatever this was could be cleared up later. "OK, no need for those" but they'd gone on anyway and he was in the car quick and neat.

He didn't bother asking any more questions, they'd no more answer him than he would in their place. Instead he racked his brains for what the hell was going on. If it wasn't a paperwork error the only possible answers had one or the other Holmes attached...

------------------

The point man for the close surveillance team had tagged it as an emergency as soon as he'd seen the way Lestrade was moving. He knew a cuffed man's walk when he saw it. The bare facts were on Mycroft Holmes's desk within four and a half minutes of Lestrade being hustled into the car, the location he'd been taken was there before the car's engine had stopped. The rest of the information as to what was going on and why took many agonising hours.

-------------------

The car had dropped him off at a building in Edgeware Road, one of the extensions the terrorist guys had taken over. Out and hustled into a custody suite.

"Look" he'd said as soon as the cuffs were off, "there's been a stuffup somewhere. Someone's mixed up the paperwork, I'm in the job." And he'd reached for his warrant card, hoping that this was a simple wrong name on paperwork.

But the uniform behind him had grabbed him and pushed him against the table. "We know who you are. We know what you are." in a voice cold as ice.

While he was processing that, they ran him through the drill. Empty pockets, remove belt, prints and swab and photos, no un-necessary words, but a lot of nasty looks, then it departed from script.

"Strip" they'd said, one of them holding a bundle of grey shapeless cloth.

Damn, taking his clothes? That meant a long stay.

"How long are you going to keep me? What the hell's going on?" he got no answer of course, but one of the bigger blokes began to move forward.

No point in getting his clothes ripped off him so he stripped - half expecting a cavity search - changed into the t-shirt and trackpants that fitted about as well as you would expect, and was taken to a cell.

Not quite standard issue. Camera, sleeping bench, toilet. Solid door, Judas hole currently closed. But no window. No sounds from outside that he could hear. Solitary cell then.

No watch, no way to know the time, so far so standard. Pressure. And to keep reminding the cop he wasn't a cop anymore.

Be hard to deal with someone who knows the system from the inside. Although.. these were the terrorist boys and they were different. Wider powers, less oversight, and - or so rumour had it - inclined to be cowboys. Could that be it? Some stupidity and he'd been caught in it? May or may not be good, as no one likes to be caught stuffing up.

It was the weekend, no one would be looking for him until Monday unless Sherlock got himself equally arrested. Which he hadn't done for some time...

That you know why you are being kept on ice in a soundproof cell doesn't make it any easier to bear. He was by nature a doer, he wanted to be up and moving, playing squash or football, cleaning the flat, fixing that wobbly chair, doing *something*. At least watching telly was something. That he knew they wanted him off balance and upset and bored wasn't helping the fact he was all of those things.

He decided to try breathing. He'd done a meditation course a while back as suggested by a bod he'd been sort-of involved with. The involvement hadn't lasted but the breathing techniques had helped occasionally when he'd been stressed out.

It took him a while to find the rhythm of it, but when they finally came to get him he was fairly calm. Didn't last long.

He was taken to an interview room, which had the two plainclothes who picked him up, and a pile of documents on the table.

"Interview started 16:30 DCI Kent DS Hislop"

Kent was the older one, the one who had done the actual arresting.

"What am I supposed to have done? What's this terrorism business? I'm a Serious Crimes copper, you must have got the wrong information from somewhere. "

"So, not going to make it easy then? We know what you have been doing."

"More than I do." he said, "I’ve got no idea what this is about."

"We know you have been meeting with known terrorist sympathisers, and taken money from them. Here's the proof."

He looked at the photos. "Never met them. Any of them. Except that one, met him over an investigation last month. But the rest I've never seen. I have no idea what you are on about. You've got the wrong man."

"Don't lie to us. We have photographs, we have marked notes and bank statements, we have witness statements. "

"I don't have a clue what you are on about. I haven't met these people, the only money I've taken comes in a Met pay packet."

They went around like that a couple of times, voices getting louder.

Hislop was in his face now. "We know what you are. What you did. You took money from them, it's all there. Bloody slime you are, they are cop killers. And you.. you got passed over and you sold out."

Lestrade was getting more and more angry. This was bullshit, all their so called evidence was bullshit and now this green young shit with fuck all time in the job was calling him slime?

"We know their plan. We know there are parts of the bomb ready to go. Make you feel big old man to kill coppers with a bomb?"

Lestrade grabbed Hislop's lapels and shoved his face right into the other man's "Listen you little prick, I dunno what the hell you are on about but you are so full of it your eyes are brown!"

With that he flung his arms wide and stepped back from the startled man, before he hit the bastard.

Kent must have hit the panic button, next thing he knew he had been slammed face first into the door frame and was being cuffed behind with what the regs called "unnecessary force"

"That's enough!" said Kent who apparently had some shreds of self respect left. "Take him back to his cell."

"Yes... sir" said Hislop and Lestrade didn't like his tone. Neither did Kent but he did nothing about it.

Lestrade was right to dislike it. They took him back to the cell alright, and laid into him when he got there. Quick but effective, gut and kidneys and a final knee to the balls. As he howled and tried to breathe in their hold they dropped him to the ground and wrapped some cable ties around his ankles leaving him trussed and helpless on the floor.

He had no idea how long he lay there, his gut and back aching, his arms and legs stiffening in the restraints. He was cold, and he hurt and he had no idea what would happen next.

---------------------------------

Mycroft Holmes pondered the information he had so far. Which was very little. An arrest warrant for terrorist offences, obtained and served by a DCI very recently transferred to the anti-terrorist squad from Birmingham. So he wouldn't know who Lestrade was, as a longer serving Met man might,

The evidence as stated on the warrant was enough for an arrest, the report that led to it was more comprehensive and if the information had been correct then it would seem damning. That it was false went without saying as far as Mycroft was concerned but that had to be proven. And he had to get Lestrade out of there, if they thought he was this bent then he would not be having a pleasant time.

There was yet no evidence as to who had planted this or why. Well resourced, and with a desire to deal with Gregory Lestrade. Mycroft had his suspicions but needed more information.

First thing was to make sure the Inspector was alright.

He reached for the telephone.

----------------------------

Eventually the door opened, new faces, but not at all friendly.

They cut the ties, picked him up off the floor and dragged him to another interview room. More bullshit it looked like.

They sat him down and left. Hislop and Kent were already there, folders and photos as before. Round and round we go he thought. Not that he felt all that capable of thinking.

Then what looked like the answer walked in the door. Umbrella and all.

It was one possibility. A fairly vicious revenge combined with getting Gregory Lestrade out of the way forever. Didn't need him now John Watson had Sherlock under control. Funny, he'd thought they'd reached some sort of mutual respect, why all this now? Didn't make sense. He so wanted to wipe his face, rub his eyes, rub his confusion away.

He looked at Holmes, then away. Didn't want to see him, didn't want to be seen by him but no choice there. Prison clothes and bare feet and dirty face covered in snot and tears. Trussed up like a fucking turkey.

"I don't understand, it makes no sense, why?" he muttered, mostly to himself.

"What was that Inspector?" said Holmes.

"I don't understand. What are you doing here? It doesn't make sense. You doing this. You have a perfectly good resignation letter in your files. You didn't need to go through all this. Why would you?"

"Correct on both counts. Which is why I didn't. "

Lestrade blinked at that, struggling to get his head clear. But if it wasn't him....

Kent was looking a bit startled by the exchange, Of course, he had no reason to know there was history with Holmes... And tried to take back control.

"He is still insisting he's innocent, but as you know sir the evidence is very good".

Lestrade would have put his head in his hands if he could have.

"Christ" he said "if the frame is tight enough that *you've* bought it, then I'm dead meat."

Holmes didn't answer, just approached and brought his hand up to Lestrade's face. Lestrade couldn't suppress the flinch and some odd expression passed across Holmes's face for a moment. And was gone, back to Posh Bastard.

He touched a finger to Lestrade's jaw, turning him to the light. Judging by the ache the bruise was probably well coloured up by now. "What happened here?"

"He attacked Sergeant Hislop, and had to be taken down and restrained." That was Kent. True enough as far as it went.

"He said I was a slime who was planning to set off a bomb in the Yard to kill coppers. "

"Remove the restraints please".

Kent didn't like that, began to protest about danger and regulations, got a full on high wattage Posh Bastard So Senior You Would Get A Nosebleed At My Level look which shut him right up. Lestrade could sympathise.

Hislop did the honours, Lestrade staying very still until the things were off and Hislop well out of the way, then he stood up and stretched all over, wincing at the pain of stiff muscles and the bruises under his shirt. He shambled over to the table and poured himself some water, daring them to say anything about it. God it tasted good!

----------------------

Mycroft Holmes fretted at the time it took to get the Inspector out of wherever they had him. It did not show on his face of course.

When they finally took him to an interview room to see the arresting officers and their suspected bent cop with terrorist links he had no idea what he would find, and was certainly not ready for what he saw.

He took in Lestrade's condition with a glance. A bruise blossoming on his face, he'd been hit by something long and thin, a baton or possibly a door frame. Tear and mucus stains on one side of his face, faint dust marks on clothes and hair, he'd been lying on his side for some time while restrained. It was likely he had been beaten then left.

Again, nothing showed on his face. Even when Lestrade appeared to think he'd been responsible, an accusation that cut him so very deeply, he showed no sign. But when Lestrade flinched from his touch, he very nearly lost control.

----------------------------------

Holmes was watching him, just what the hell was the man playing at? If this wasn't his idea, why was he here? To help?

"What have they told you Inspector?"

"Not much. They say I'm associating with various known terrorists, that they've proof I've taken money from them, and that they know I'm involved with at least one plot to blow up the Yard during some conference or other. They showed me some pictures which have to be fake, and that's about it."

"Lay out the photographic evidence please DCI Kent. Thank you. Inspector, please sort through these into those you know are correct, those you know are forgeries, and those you are unsure about."

"This one I remember. Was that Maddox business. He was one of the people who had been there when Maddox met the girl. I remember him because there was something off about him... Not enough to follow up at the time, but there was something. These are definitely fakes because I know that face from the briefing we all got after that bomb scare ballsup at Peterborough and I know I've never met him. These I'm not sure about. I think this one might be real, there's something about the face but the angle makes it hard to tell and there's not enough information in the background to place it. These others I don't recall but I did a lot of legwork in the last two months. Mostly the Maddox business but some because we had a bout of 'flu go through the place and I was down two people."

Holmes took the two he'd classed as fakes and looked over them. "This one is a manipulation. You can see the artist missed a border here so there's a discontinuity where they didn't quite remove something. This one might be as well, there's something not quite right about the light levels." He flipped through the unknowns and selected one. "I think this is the donor, you can see the Inspector's image is very similar, with shadows drawn on here."

Lestrade looked over at Kent who was starting to look a bit green. As well he bloody might! "But who the hell would do it? This is a major hit against someone who is pretty small beer. The mob who took Maddox out? They'd just knife me or shoot me, why such an elaborate frame?"

"Why indeed Inspector. The question is what would have happened to you if I had not intervened?"

Holmes was looking at Kent as he said this, one eyebrow lifted and the horrible smile well in evidence. Kent squirmed, Lestrade hoped he'd never looked that rattled when confronted with Holmes on full song, but he probably had.

"He would be detained while we followed up anything he said. If we thought it might work we'd offer him a deal if he turned."

Lestrade considered that "That's no good to whoever it is, if I'm not in a conspiracy I can't betray it. But if someone said they'd fix the charges if I helped them... that could well work after 21 days cuffed in a cell and my career in ruins."

"Then it seems I interfered too early. Had I waited you would have been able to point out someone who had offered that." Holmes looked around the room, clearly wondering if it was worth throwing Lestrade back in the box to see who came calling. Wondering who would have to keep quiet and if they would.

Hislop. Kent, Lestrade himself. Kent felt clean, Hislop was a cowboy but that didn't mean he was bent. It might work. And it might be the only way to stop whoever it was trying again which would be good because there might not be a Holmes ex Machina next time. But to volunteer would take more courage than he possessed.

Then something struck him "But if they waited until I was ready to go rogue then I'd be useless to them. I wouldn't have a job, even if the charges were secret I'd have been missing for weeks."

"Indeed. So someone would have to have covered that. Which they have done, as I have discovered. You are apparently seconded to a task force in this very building. Your Superintendent has an email confirming it and asking him to see your DCI keeps it all quiet."

Lestrade looked down at his hands, noting the cuff marks absently. He didn't know what to say, what to do. Could he trust Holmes? Was there some twisted tale he didn't have a hope of unravelling that meant he was the patsy and if he went back into that cell he was never coming out? But then why bother? He had no doubt Holmes could have him there or somewhere similar any time he wanted. No, it only made sense if Holmes was being straightforward.

Could he stand it? Alone, bored, hurting, being accused of God knows what, hated by everyone he came in contact with?

"I don't know I'm a good enough actor. And are these two? Whoever it is has to believe I'll turn, which means they have to believe I'm being done over properly."

He couldn't believe he was saying it.

Hislop proved his cowboy status and his stupidity by saying "That won't be a problem." Kent didn't quite roll his eyes at that but it was a near thing.

Holmes turned the horrible little smile on Hislop. "I see Sergeant. I will keep that in mind. And you DCI Kent?"

Kent didn't know where to look, settled for somewhere over Holmes's shoulder. "If it helps us find the terrorist organisation we are sure is targeting the Yard then I will do what is necessary. It shouldn't be too hard to seem to put pressure on Inspector Lestrade if I involve people who don't know the true story." Hah. Inspector now is it. Well Kent knew what side of the bread his butter was on, that was for sure. And he appeared to have abandoned Hislop, did Hislop realise that?

Holmes touched Lestrade's arm gently and drew him to one side, as much out of earshot as possible in the small room, turning so their faces were hidden from the men at the table.

He looked down for a moment, then up and straight into Lestrade's eyes. "And you Inspector? Do you think you can do it? "

Lestrade looked down in his turn. Could he? There wasn't a lot of choice but could he pull it off?

"Inspector" said Holmes very softly "I will be watching over you. I will have a man here, if you need me you will be able to get word to me through him. Or through DCI Kent. I will not abandon you, or allow you to come to harm. And I will have you released if you say the word."

Lestrade looked at him, trying to read him. This was not the Posh Bastard talking now, this was the man he had shaken hands with, the man he'd worked with so easily over Maddox's murder.

"All right.I'll try. It's the only way I can be safe I think. We have to find them, and there's no other link. If they can do all you have said they have to be stopped."

Holmes nodded. And placed his hand on Lestrade's arm, firming his touch for a moment in some kind of... Reassurance? Benediction? Approval? Lestrade didn't know but it felt somehow right.

-----------------------

Mycroft Holmes left the room, his stomach in knots. He had known Lestrade was bright enough to see what the answer must be, and brave enough to do what was needed. "If I'm a target I'm a target! It's part of the job." he'd said and he'd meant it. But there was a world of difference between the open street and being held in a cell under strict secrecy at the mercy of anyone who cared to enter.

That he'd left Lestrade there ate at him, but it had to be done.

There had to be someone relatively senior in this anti-terrorist unit who was involved, that would need to be investigated. He had left Kent in no doubt as to whose orders he should be obeying but that stupid man Hislop was not to be trusted, he would have to be dealt with immediately.

Which made Mycroft Holmes feel somewhat better.

==================

He was back in the cell, unrestrained at least. To stretch out was a wonderful comfort, he wondered how long it would last. And how much sleep he would get. And what food if any.

He'd once brought in a right prick of a man when he was in uniform, a bloke who had been building himself a little gang, lording it about and charging the small traders protection. He'd clearly had connections to other bigger gangs and his sergeant had said "We need to soften him up a bit before CID get to him, watch and learn."

He'd learned then all the ways you can make a prisoner's life hell within the letter of the law. The ways you can be sure they don't get any sleep. Feeding them cold inedible food and warm brackish water. Taking them for "interview" meaning cuffing them and leaving them that way in a room for a while, with palms out and cuffs too tight. Even making sure the plumbing doesn't work! "Easier in a remand prison, less oversight, but seeing as Brixton's full as a boot at the moment we do what we can here."

Lestrade hadn't felt right about it, even though the man was a complete waste of space. Brutalisation wasn't what he'd joined the Met for.

His sergeant knew that he realised later, but made him do it anyway.

To teach him the limits, and that he'd better have a damn good reason to go beyond them. And to know when someone else was doing it... He'd heard a few years later that someone in that very nick had been raked over by Internal Affairs for doing similar things to some protesters. Handed over by that same sergeant. Always had his own view of policing had Sergeant Hastings.

Knowing what is going on is supposed to help in dealing with it, but he wasn't finding it so. He saw Mycroft's man now and then, and DCI Kent sat in on a couple of the interview sessions (looking damned uncomfortable about it) but so far he'd managed to keep going and not call for help. Knowing he could did seem to make it a bit easier to keep going one more day.

They badgered him about terrorists and meetings and bank accounts and phones and SIM cards, and people he'd never heard of. He didn't have to fake his confusion or his anger. He hoped he was faking his despair, he didn't know anymore.

Then late one night (he thought it was night he hadn't seen the sky since he'd got here, the light was on but they did that a lot, part of the sleeplessness thing), the door opened. He thought it was for another interview session, but the man who came in was a new face and he shut the door after him after making a bit of a show of checking the corridor. He then reached into his coat and brought out a packet of sandwiches and a can of Coke, handing both to Lestrade. "The camera is out of action for a bit. So we can talk."

Lestrade took the food and tore into it. Yeah, could be strychnine, he didn't damn well care. "Talk about what?" he said around a mouthful of roast beef and mustard.

"About getting you out of here and shoving it to these bastards."

Lestrade chewed, waiting for more.

"Look it's obvious someone's done you over, right? And these pricks they don't care, you are just another tick on their performance charts. "Yes Minister look how many we've got, give us more money." If they can make you confess then they've got another one and trumpet it all over the papers. The Met's got no loyalty to you or they'd have been here sorting it out."

Lestrade swallowed and said "yeah well no one gives a shit I can tell that much"

"Want to get the bastards?"

Lestrade narrowed his eyes. Can't look too eager.

"How?"

"They reckon you were going to hit the Yard, so they did this to you. Well, maybe they deserve to be right eh?"

"What, you mean do what they say I was planning? Get a bomb in?"

"Exactly. It's not as if there's any point in being loyal to the bastards is there? What's the Met done for you? Left you to rot in here for the cowboys to pretend to be the CIA. Hell, they'd waterboard you if they were allowed to play with water without adult supervision."

Lestrade snorted. "Yeah, got that right. But how the hell can I blow up anywhere from in here? And even if they let me out tomorrow I wouldn't have a job to go back to."

"The job we can take care of. These guys pulled you in and did you over on a couple of dodgy photos and their own arrogance. Didn't check their facts and ran right over an innocent man. Once that's clear then they'll fall all over themselves to make it right. You'll get official communication that you will be on stress leave for a couple of weeks. Where you can work off the stress by learning how to blow the pricks up!"

Lestrade grinned at him. Yeah, perfect. Just what I want. You to take me to your leader... or at least to your organisation. "Yeah. that sounds good. I'd make the biggest fucking bomb you have ever seen. Because fuck the Met. Fuck 'em right over."

"Damn right! Fuck 'em. Want more of that beef?"

"shit yeah!"

Lestrade inhaled the second sandwich as fast as he'd done the first. He hadn't realised how much edible food mattered.

"So how's it going to work?"

"You hang in there. They are about to find out they've fucked up and you'll be out of here and home free. We'll contact you soon after."

Lestrade thought he'd have to be far more out of it than he was (or was supposed to be) not to wonder how the dodgy evidence had turned up in the first place, but if they weren't asking why he wasn't asking, he wasn't going to remind them.

"Contact me?"

"Yeah, you'll know it when you get it, don't worry. OK, time's up I've gotta get out of here before they notice the camera's dodgy. Hang in there, you'll get the bastards soon!"

And he was gone. Lestrade had only managed half the can before the man had left taking it with him, but that was more sugar and caffeine than he'd had in what felt like years. That and the buzz of finally getting somewhere had him practically bouncing off the walls. He'd best calm down or they'd notice something wrong, so he forced himself to lie on the bench and get his breathing under control.

==========================

He was given his clothes and possessions back, and spent a few moments in a room with some senior officers who either wouldn't look him in the eye or overdid the false bonhomie. Kent said in the fewest possible words that all charges had been dropped and he'd been granted two weeks stress leave.

No one mentioned compensation, they probably hoped he wouldn't think of it. Lestrade didn't bother to crow, he just wanted out. Out and away from these cowboys, these useless excuses for coppers.

Out he got, looking at the sky as though he'd never seen it before. He wasn't seeing it now, cloudy as usual, but still it wasn't the ceiling of the bloody nick and that was enough for him.

He briefly wondered if he'd see the car, but no of course not. They'd be watching him, if Holmes was going to debrief him it would have to be stealthier than that.

When he got home he was surprised to see the place was sparkling clean (later he found they'd even washed the curtains) and there was fresh fruit in a bowl on the table. Next to two insulated containers.

He wasn't surprised to see a note. Which said "I have taken the liberty of providing dinner. Tomorrow morning at 10 please go to the Tescos on the Kilburn High Street where Davies will meet you. MH"

The insulated boxes proved to contain a bowl of excellent lamb curry and a couple of bottles of Young's Bitter to go with it. He would have spent longer under the shower but he was starving.

After dinner eaten in decadent sloth on the couch watching Die Hard because it made him feel good, he dressed in clean comfortable pyjamas, climbed into a clean comfortable, wonderfully familiar bed and slept in the welcoming dark. If he had any dreams he didn't remember them.

(And if he wished for (while nearly asleep) someone to have greeted him and hugged him and looked after him while he dealt with the memory of horror, well it was no more than he had wished for a thousand times before. And he was by no means the only one with a stressful job and difficult hours who wished for that.)

=====================

"Ah Inspector" said Holmes, getting to his feet and extending his hand. "I am glad to see you safe and sound. They took longer than I expected to contact you."

"Longer than I liked too... I still don't get it though. Why me? Must be heaps of coppers they could have picked."

"I am certain it is to do with the people Maddox was investigating. To use you means you get punished for annoying them, and I have no doubt you are meant to end up dead but recognisable in the explosion."

"They said they'd contact me soon after I got out. The bods who signed me out said I had a couple of weeks leave. Guess that gives me time to look more human before I go back to work."

He'd seen himself in the mirror last night before his shower. He'd lost weight and not in a good way, had bags under his bloodshot eyes, lifeless straggly hair in need of a cut and a few bruises from an episode in the showers which looked accidental and definitely wasn't.

He looked a little better in the morning, but only a little.

"We were able to track the man who contacted you, he's another lead to them, but we don't want to pull that thread too soon."

Anthea appeared with coffee and pastries, eyes raking over him as she set them down. Some sort of wordless communication between her and Holmes and she left.

It seemed he was still food focused. The coffee and pastries sent him into sensual bliss. He tried to eat them slowly and enjoy it, but it was hard.

He looked up to see Holmes watching him, an unreadable expression on his face. Holmes reached out to the hand not occupied with coffee and pushed back the sleeve. There were no cuff bruises there now, just faint lines on the skin. "You were moving... stiffly when you walked in Inspector, and you are sitting slightly askew in the chair. Were you..ah.. manhandled after we talked? I received no reports of any such thing."

"They didn't repeat the thumping, just did the sorts of things you can do within the letter of the law which are bad enough. There was a bit of a shove in the showers, having a go at me for being rogue I think, rather than anything official."

"No names? Ah, I suppose not. Never mind, it will keep. You may be pleased to know that Sergeant Hislop has been posted to the burglary squad in Tower Hamlets. Your old friend Superintendent Darton may have been told he needs a bit of knocking into shape."

Lestrade grinned. Tommy was known for disliking young squirts who hadn't done enough time in uniform and he was willing to bet Hislop had only done the minimum. He'd get some old fashioned policing under Tommy that's for sure.

"Of course if you think he isn't suitable for the police I can arrange for him to be fired. And to have trouble getting another job."

Lestrade blinked at that. While it was tempting, it was also a little close to home. "That won't be necessary. If he can't handle what Tommy throws at him, he'll quit soon enough."

He ate most of the pastries, only wincing once when he moved quickly to catch a piece that flaked off. Holmes had that odd expression on his face again.

They didn't speak much, not having much to talk about, and anyway Lestrade was eating. When he'd finished Holmes delicately asked if he had enough money to tide him over. "Are my accounts frozen?" he asked, it not having occurred to him.

"I believe so, I don't want to reverse it myself as I suspect the people we are after may get wind of that. They were able to produce evidence of payments after all."

Lestrade was rather uncomfortably reminded of someone else who had walked all over his finances, and he suspected Holmes was remembering that too... but still there was the question of cash. He checked his wallet. "I have 30 quid. The haircut will leave me a bit short."

Holmes went over to his desk, opened a drawer and pulled out a wad of cash. Ten 20 pound notes were placed neatly in front of Lestrade. "Government money Inspector, take it with a clear conscience."

"One last thing Inspector. Please go and visit Sherlock today."

"Sherlock? Why? I'm on leave, I can't help him with anything."

Holmes touched a couple of buttons on his phone and showed the screen to Lestrade.

"You have Lestrade - SH" it said.

"He initiated contact, a thing he almost never does. He usually waits for me to contact him, for him to not only contact me but demand conversation is highly unusual."

Lestrade couldn't see that as demanding conversation, but between Holmeses it was no doubt the equivalent of a four page letter.

"I was obliged to explain the circumstances and the difficulties, and only persuaded him to refrain from breaking in and rescuing you by promising him regular updates and that you would see him as soon as you were released."

Lestrade just stared at him. "You are joking! Sherlock? The most self-centred git on Earth?"

"While I am inclined to agree with you about that Inspector, in this case you do him an injustice. He has always been... different when it comes to you. Ending his drug habit for example. Or in the case where you were injured, he expressed his concern by making sure the case was properly finished."

"I thought that was you, pressuring him to help."

"I am afraid I don't have that sort of influence over him. No, helping to finalise that despite DI Halford's manifest inadequacies was entirely his own idea."

Lestrade shook his head. Just when he thought he understood Holmeses...

"I'll drop by on my way home and reassure him I'm in one piece and it wasn't your fault." he said.

======================================

He got his hair cut after leaving Holmes, preferring to be reasonably presentable when dealing with Sherlock.

He had not expected a tearful reunion, and didn't get one. He stuck his head around the door of Sherlock's flat to see no sign of the Doctor and Sherlock hunched over his laptop banging away at the keys and muttering to himself.

He hadn’t got two steps in when Sherlock said, without looking up, "Mycroft said you were coming over. And that you were perfectly fine. Are you?"

"Pretty much." he said.

"Good. Are there any cases for me?"

"I'm on leave until the 10th, so no idea."

That got him a snort of annoyance, and a demand for tea. Which he managed to make, blessing the Doctor for bringing some kind of order to the kitchen.

Sherlock looked him over as he returned with tea, demanded to see the bruises he'd deduced were there, and wanted a thorough description of how and when they'd been inflicted and what he'd done to doctor them. It wasn't the first time Lestrade had been an entry in Sherlock's mental catalogue of the effects of violence, maybe it *was* as close as the man could get to expressing concern.

===================

Lestrade spent the rest of the weekend out and about, having had far too much time indoors in the last three weeks. He kicked a ball about in the local park, had a couple of games of squash, and did a lot of walking.

He received a short letter on Monday confirming his stress leave, so now he just had to wait for someone to collect him for his bomb making course.

Which happened on the Tuesday, they were not wasting time.

Just before he'd left Holmes he'd been handed a new phone. "This has a GPS tracker Inspector so we know where you are at all times. And this device is an audio transmitter that will stream to our server, the battery is good for more than 6 hours, so turn it on when you are contacted."

It made sense, and he did feel a lot better with the tracker on him, although he did wonder what Holmes's people had made of his trip on the tourist sightseeing bus. Travelling around London with a bunch of happy strangers was a good antidote to prison he found.

He did fleetingly wonder when he'd decided having Holmes know where he was was a *good* thing, but only fleetingly. It is amazing how a spell in a soundproof cell realising no one knows where you are changes your perspective.

So when he was contacted by the same man who had visited him in the cell he went willingly. And wired.

They headed off to an industrial area vaguely near the river, into a ratty brick building with no visible names or numbers on it.

Inside the building were two men and a bunch of electricals and chemicals. They gave him names that were probably lies, and began the lesson in assembling the thing in front of them. He actively participated while pretending to be a bit thick trying for talk and description to give the listeners something to chew on.

About halfway through Lestrade realised two things. One, he didn't know when Holmes was planning to raid the place, and two, one of the men was looking at a laptop and frowning, looking at him, and frowning. Which was Not Good.

"Something up mate?" he asked, hoping the listeners were indeed listening.

"There's something sending data in here" said the bloke with the laptop.

Lestrade leant against the table trying like hell to look innocent and vaguely interested and not like he was scanning for weapons and exits. Chunk of waterpipe was the closest weapon, the one exit was a bit far away and there were two bodies between him and it. Toilet over the other end so that excuse no good.

"The bastard's wired!" said the man with the laptop, which gingered the other two right up. Lestrade lunged for the bit of piping but one of the men realised what he was doing and went for it too.

They wrestled for it for a second then Lestrade dropped the bit he was holding and grabbed his opponent's head, smashing his own into it in a neatly executed Glasgow Kiss. That made him drop the piping alright but the others were on him now.

He lashed out with fists and feet yelling "Fuck Fuck Fuck" because yelling "they are attacking me" would take too much breath. He had no idea if Holmes's men were nearby or listening in horror across town, he was just trying for the exit.

He got clear and ran, hoping no one had a gun or a knife, because "clear" meant a step or so in front of pursuit. Something hit him in the side, knocking him off his feet, he rolled and tried to get back up.

They were on him though, he kicked sideways at a knee and connected, spinning the attacker around but not dropping him. He used the motion to try and flip backwards but he was no gymnast and while he escaped one grab, he didn't escape the next. A boot in the back had him seeing stars but he managed to get his head out of the way of the next strike.

Suddenly yells and whistles and that stopped the thugs for a moment, long enough for him to scramble to his feet and stagger out of reach, long enough to straighten up and grab a chair as a weapon. He yelled "In here!" at the top of his lungs, the thugs turned to leg it. But one of them detoured in the direction of the bomb, that was not on!

Lestrade heaved the chair at him, then followed up as fast as he could, crashing into the man with no real plan but "stop him!". They rolled on the floor with limbs smashing into table legs and heads hitting the floor, grabbing and gouging and no science to it at all.

Then a forest of feet, and hands grabbing them. It took a moment for him to realise the cavalry had arrived, when he did he stopped fighting them and went limp with relief.

Whoever had hold of him assisted him to his feet and patted him down. He looked around, all three thugs in custody and two men looking over the bomb parts with what appeared to be more than idle curiosity so presumably they were safe with it.

He shrugged the hands off, and made inventory. All body parts present, correct and working. His back hurt from the kick but no real damage, his ribs hurt but not enough to be broken, he'd got out of it well enough.

And there was Holmes, striding through the mess a look of distaste for such surroundings on his face. Which changed to something approaching relief when he caught sight of Lestrade.

"It is a pity they found the transmitter Inspector but we now have a lot more to go on. The equipment in the bomb, the three men, the paperwork for this building, the car, some computers... Now are you hurt?"

"A few bruises is all Mr Holmes, nothing a good lunch won't fix."

"Well then Inspector, let us go and find some lunch."

It is a measure of how far they'd come that lunch with Mycroft Holmes seemed like a very good idea indeed.

Part Nine: Resolution

=============================

Author’s Note: I have played very fast and loose with the UK’s laws on the rights of terrorist suspects, including how long they can be held, and their access to lawyers. I also apologise to the Metropolitan Police for my intimation they’d behave in this unprofessional manner. Although every force has its share of wankers.

Fic: A Reliable Man. Part Seven: Damned If You Do, Damned if You Don't

randomly_rusted — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 21:28:24 GMT

Summary: Two murders and a business card. Lestrade must walk away or deal with a man he never wants to see again.

Rating: PG

Type: Gen

Word Count: 6400

This is part of a series of connected stories. The other parts are here

My thanks as always to elfbert for ideas and encouragement. And a massive thank you to bronwynferchdai for forensics and crime ideas and information, much of which ended up on the cutting room floor alas.

===================================

How many muggings there are in London depends on who you ask and how you define "mugging".

How many people are banged up for it depends on how stupid the muggers are, and this one wasn't stupid, but odd.

Neat, careful, focused. Which, in a "bash some poor sod up and steal his stuff to buy another hit" sort of crime is odd.

Lestrade wasn't all that happy being called out to stand about looking at the victim of a neat, careful, focused killer because neat, careful, focused meant the cops were clueless in both senses of the word.

The victim was neat. No signs of struggle: no torn or pulled clothing, no marks of dirt from the ground or the wall he was lying nearby. No defensive wounds, just a bit of blood on the breast of his jacket where the knife had gone in. The clothing very neat: no sign of a hasty search.

So neat that the woman who had found him had thought he was a drunk sleeping it off. And then a heart attack victim who had not got help in time. She hadn't even seen the blood in the dark, the beat constable who had been sent to investigate had seen that.

The killer had been careful. No witnesses, and according to the constable, the CCTV didn't cover this side street. The body was hidden by a skip so not easily visible from the main road.

Focused. They'd know more after the autopsy but from what Lestrade could see it was one clean strike. That was skill, add that to the list.

Neat, careful, focused, skilled. He had a feeling he knew what that added up to.

Especially when the victim's wallet is found dropped right near the body, admittedly without any cash in it, and the victim still has his expensive phone.

If the killer was trying to make it look like a mugging he'd done a piss poor job of it. If there was something in the wallet, then why not take the whole thing and dispose of it later? And how did he get the wallet, the corpse didn't look like it had been searched?

Single strike up into the heart meaning killer had been standing very close to the victim. Had he known his killer? Wallet out. Arranging for a quick blowjob and got a quick knifejob instead? Would explain being down the side street hidden by a skip. Autopsy would tell if there had been any sexual activity, until then it was all speculation.

There were two odd things about the body itself.

One was a wad of handwritten sheet music in the man's inside coat pocket.

The other was inside the wallet and not in the card case with all the other cards the man had on him. A simple white card.

With the name "Mycroft Holmes" and a number.

====================================

Lestrade looked at the sum total of their knowledge about the death of Geoffrey Maddox.

Which was bugger all really.

The autopsy confirmed the cause of death and found no sign of sexual activity, they could find no intimation at all that he was in the habit of paying rentboys. The place he was found was not on his usual way home but it was a possible path. The partial palmprint found on his wallet was not his but was not on file either.

That left the only other odd thing about this case. The wad of handwritten sheet music in Maddox's inner coat pocket.

Lestrade was no musician, so had no idea if the music was reasonable or not. But who hand wrote music nowadays? Maddox was no musician according to his ex-wife and his law firm, so why did he have it?

Learning to read or write music? An odd manifestation of a mid life crisis but probably cheaper than blondes and sportscars.

Then Donovan appeared with news.

"Sir, we may possibly have another by the same killer. Same MO: single fast upward strike into the heart and no sign of struggle. That's about all that's the same though. A woman, done in her flat in Peckham and not the street, nothing taken that we know of, there was money in her bag."

"Still it's more than we have now. Whose is that then?"

"DI Harding sir."

Harding was one of DCI Taylor's lot, down on the 3rd floor. Time to take a wander....

It hadn't been hard to find DI Harding, getting a few minutes of his time was the problem.

He was either way more overworked than Lestrade, or running round like a blue-arsed fly was his normal mode of operation. Either way it took a bit of effort to get his attention.

"Oh, the stabbing in Peckham. Yeah, pretend art student. I reckon she was turning tricks, there's more money in that place than a student should have, and more money in the bank. Probably offed by a john, never find him."

"Any prints at all?"

"Don't think so. Look, there's the file. I've got every sod and his dog on my back over that Hammersmith child killing, so no hurry to get it back to me. Having trouble finding the next of kin, so the flat's still sealed. If you can find anything, good luck to you!"

The flat did show more signs of money than an art student might usually have. Good furniture, expensive clothes in the wardrobe. Art on the walls and sculptures on the floor but those didn't mean much to him.

An easel over in one corner, set up for painting and some canvases stacked nearby. Place neat but not overly so. No signs of forced entry, so it was likely she had known her killer. Known him well enough to let him in, known him well enough to let him get close enough to her to drop her in the middle of her own living room.

And he had known enough to leave no traces.

"What are we looking for boss?"

"I have no idea." he said but then considered "Any kind of appointment diary or anything with dates on it, or addresses. Oh... and any sheet music."

Harding's people had been over it so there wasn't going to be much to find. But Stanner struck gold. "This was under a dresser sir. I think it had fallen behind and then down."

It was a full sheet of music, handwritten, with some pencil marks on it. "Don't suppose anyone's musical?"

"I had a few piano lessons as a kid" said Stanner "but I can't recall much. Looks a bit odd for a song, maybe it's exercises?"

There was nothing else here or in the file. No appointment book, no address book, no indication the woman had known any other human being.

And something else was missing that made Lestrade doubt Harding's theory that she did escort work. In Lestrade's experience women who did that preferred to have a room set aside for it so the trade didn't contaminate their private lives. The spare room had Ms Starling's paints set up in it so she wouldn't take johns there. Perhaps she worked in hotels? Where was her appointment book? Taken by the killer?

But if she wasn't getting her money that way, where was it coming from?

==============================

Lestrade looked at the case board. Nothing to link the two but sheet music and the way they were killed. Nothing. Harding's people had found the woman had been sporadic as a student, but had not been able to track her movements. Maddox was easier to track, but not by much. He lived alone, so while he arrived at work and left it at regular times, attended client meetings and the occasional after work drinks, what he did other than that was anyone's guess

Lestrade turned Mycroft Holmes's card over and over in his hands. There was no indication Holmes would know anything about this. If it had been his order then why the money gone? And why leave the body lying about? Hidden behind a skip it was too visible for a clandestine killing and too hidden to send a message.

And too sloppy generally, he was sure that if Holmes organised a killing he wouldn't be leaving bodies around for early bird cleaners to trip over when taking out the rubbish.

But Maddox had the card. Lestrade was sure Holmes didn't give them out to just anyone.

When his phone beeped he welcomed the distraction. Until he saw the message.

"I would like to talk to you about Geoffrey Maddox - MH"

====================================

Lestrade was shown into a different office, this one in a rather upmarket building in the City. Expensive furnishings, reasonable size. And Mycroft Holmes behind the desk, looking calm and in control.

Lestrade paid attention to his body language: head up, eyes sweeping the room then focusing on Holmes. A policeman doing a job he was good at.

"Good afternoon Inspector. I understand you are investigating the death of Geoffrey Maddox".

"I am Mr Holmes. What is your interest in Mr Maddox's death?"

"He was.. ah.. known to me."

Well that was ambiguous enough. Known as being on which side then?

"In what capacity Mr Holmes? It might have bearing on the case."

Holmes sat back and steepled his fingers, looking at Lestrade, showing that horrible little smile.

"I'm afraid I can't tell you that, Inspector. You do understand, I'm sure." He paused, watching, calculating, and Lestrade felt as if he wanted to squirm away from the intense gaze. He kept his eyes on Holmes and his hands from fidgeting.

"Yet I can tell," Holmes continued, "that you think you need that information. And were this a simple mugging - a street crime gone too far - you wouldn't feel that way. Tell me, Inspector, do you have any suspects?"

"At the moment Mr Holmes, my only suspect is you."

Holmes raised an eyebrow at that. "Really Inspector? Fascinating. I can assure you he was more use to me alive than dead. Why do you think I was involved?"

"Because when a man is killed in a way that suggests a professional hit, and someone whom I know organises professional hits enquires about it... But I don't think it was you. It was too sloppy. I think if you had been involved I wouldn't be."

He'd passed some sort of test it seemed as Holmes gestured him to a seat.

"What makes it a professional hit Inspector?"

Was Holmes fishing? Or did he know something? Lestrade suspected he didn't, meaning that there was nothing useful here.

Unless Holmes could make sense of the music.

He had a choice he realised. He could go back to the Yard and throw this in the Too Hard basket where Harding was going to throw the woman's death, or he could abase himself and ask for help from Holmes.

He was willing to endure Sherlock's insults in the hope of being thrown some crumbs, why mot Mycroft Holmes's? If it gets the case solved, then personal feelings are irrelevant.

"A single strike up into the heart under the breastbone. Fast and neat. No defensive wounds, no struggle. Practiced and clean."

Holmes acknowledged that with a nod.

Lestrade placed the autopsy report on the desk.

"Money gone, but not the phone or the watch, both expensive. No sign of the body being searched, the wallet found nearby all intact including your card except for the cash as far as we can tell.."

Photos of the scene joined the autopsy report.

"No indications of sexual activity, meaning it is unlikely it was a sexual transaction gone wrong. Not ruled out, but not likely, given the wound and that he wasn't robbed."

"We have half a palm print on the wallet, probably left because the owner’s glove slipped, but it's not on file. We have nothing else... except these."

And he placed the music sheets in their protective sleeves on Holmes's desk next to the reports.

Holmes picked them up and looked at each one in turn, Lestrade was sure he was humming as he did so. As he'd thought: if one brother was musical they both would be.

"We have also found another possible victim."

That got Holmes's attention.

"A young woman, killed in her flat in Peckham. No money missing, no obvious robbery. Just the same knife wound," a second autopsy report and a second set of photographs joined their fellows "and this under a dresser where it seems to have fallen from a larger pile."

The sheet of music joined the others on Holmes's desk.

"A code" said Holmes.

"It's the only sensible explanation. But what and why, and what do Maddox and Lyn Starling have in common? That's what we don't know Mr Holmes."

Holmes leaned back and steepled his fingers again, looking in Lestrade's general vicinity rather than right at him. For which he was grateful.

"Geoffrey Maddox was doing some work for me involving issues of national security." he said. "Very important, very secret work."

Lestrade should have realised he supposed. Ah well, out of his hands then. He stood up and started to gather the documents.

"I can leave you copies of the case summary Mr Holmes, and of the records of interview, but you will need to go through channels to take possession of the autopsy reports and the physical evidence. "

Holmes leant forward "And why would I do that Inspector? "

"I presume you will want your own people to investigate...."

"Why would I do that when there is already a competent intelligent investigator on the job who is familiar with it, and will work with me. You will work with me won't you Inspector?"

It was what he'd wanted. Why was he feeling wary? Because it was Holmes's idea and Holmes's terms?

Lestrade stopped putting the documents away and looked at Holmes. "I want to find out who killed these people Mr Holmes. If working with you will help me do that, I'll work with you."

To his surprise Holmes got up and came around from behind the desk. Lestrade paused with his hands full of papers and his briefcase and as he turned to face Holmes the case jarred against the desk and he
dropped the music and reports.

Without thinking he dropped to one knee to pick them up... and froze.

The silence was very loud in his ears as he felt his heart speed up and his shoulders hunch in remembered despair. As he looked at the same legs and shoes he had looked at that dreadful night when he had knelt to whore himself to this man to save Sally Donovan's life.

And then Holmes was down on one knee too, his hand just touching Lestrade's on the documents.

He looked at Holmes's face and was startled to see his own worry and confusion and.. yes... fear mirrored there.

They looked at each other, neither wanting to speak.

(He had said "Not like this, never like this." What had he meant?)

It was Lestrade who broke eye contact, shooting to his feet, leaving half the documents on the floor to be gathered up by a rather more composed Holmes.

Who brought them back to the present problem, leaving the past one still uncomfortably raw and undiscussed.

"The second murder Inspector. The woman. What do you know about her?"

He went over all he had with Holmes, photographs, reports, interview records. All they knew and suspected about Maddox and Starling, their lives, their last hours, their deaths. Holmes contributed some information about places Maddox had been frequenting and people he'd been seeing in the course of his investigations.

By the time they had finished, it was surprisingly late.

Holmes tidied the last of the papers into a neat pile. "Would you care for some dinner Inspector? "

Lestrade was rather hungry, and aside from that ugly moment the day had been surprisingly pleasant. But duty called.

As he said "No thank you Mr Holmes, I need to drop these back to the Yard" he could have sworn he saw something like disappointment on Holmes's face.

"In that case, please leave the sheet music, I wish to... examine it."

Lestrade knew he shouldn't leave evidence unsecured and unwatched, but he did it for Sherlock, why not for the brother?

"I will need it back in a day or two Mr Holmes, it's been dusted so you can remove it from the sleeves if you need to."

As he settled down in the comfortable leather seat of the black car (Holmes had insisted and Lestrade was glad to save the taxi fare) he pondered the afternoon. It was pleasant not to be called an idiot every few moments and truth be told he was rather pleased with a Holmes calling him competent and intelligent. Sherlock and Mycroft could be such different men, perhaps they weren't brothers after all...

Lestrade was wondering which space aliens had dropped Sherlock off and why when the car drew up at the Yard.

=============================

When Lestrade got into work the next morning, he was distracted from investigating the latest pile of paperwork (emailwork mostly these days, but no less revolting for that) by Stanner.

"Boss, you recall we found an SD card in Maddox's wallet? The IT guys have cracked the encryption, and you won't guess what's on it!"

"Nude pictures of Maggie Thatcher?"

Stanner reeled back theatrically "I should raise a harassment case over that remark! No. Pictures of sheet music."

Lestrade took the printouts. They might be the same ones as on the body or not, either way he should take them to Holmes.

Who, he bet, was getting his teeth into that code right now.

Easiest way to find the man was to ask... "Have more music, where do I bring it? GL" and counted the seconds in his head.

Less than 12 seconds later the answer came: "Car will be outside the Yard".

He thought briefly about handing his current list of Maddox's possible movements over to Stanner or Parker, but decided to keep them to himself for now. He suspected he should minimise their exposure to this case. "National Security" was a tricky beast, especially where Holmes was concerned.

He was shown into Holmes's office to see Holmes apparently exactly where he had left him. Something was playing rather tinny and definitely odd music, and Holmes was scribbling on various sheets of paper.

The man didn't look up or acknowledge his entrance in any way.

Lestrade was familiar with the ultra focus and knew nothing would penetrate it until the work was done. So he slid the printouts into Holmes's field of view and sat down at the side table to start on his own job of working out where to go today to trace Maddox's movements.

He tuned out the mutterings and music and concentrated on the map, the calendar, and the list. Until he was startled by a yelp of triumph.

Mycroft Holmes very seldom got to properly exercise his brain on pure logical problems. He wasn't a mathematician by preference, his strengths lay in synthesis and facts about people and things, but when required he could bend his mind to numbers and codes.

Which he had been doing for some time. He had no idea how long, the problem had hold of him now and nothing else mattered.

He was somewhat aware of people, in that he registered as unimportant his assistant's presence and absence and presence again, and someone else coming in. But only somewhat aware.

He had wrung all he could out of the data he had and was almost ready to admit defeat when three more sheets of music made themselves apparent. Two were the same as he had, but one was new... he avidly broke it open for the meat it contained.

The code fell apart into readable usable information, laid out in all its beautiful logical glory.

Mycroft Holmes laughed with pure pleasure.

He looked up to see Lestrade by the side table. Some part of his mind connected Lestrade with the new data that had appeared but that was irrelevant. All that was important was the he had broken the code.

He beamed happily at Lestrade and sparked a quick answering smile that made him laugh again.

"I have it! I know it! It's simple!" he crowed and leapt to his feet his hands full of lovely lovely data to show.

Took two steps and stumbled as his legs refused to support him.

The delighted grin on Holmes's face made Lestrade smile.

As he got up to see what the fuss was all about, Holmes leapt up from his seat to meet him waving sheets of calculations and permutations in the air.

Took two steps, and stumbled.

Lestrade caught him awkwardly, holding the man up at the end of his arms and struggling to get his body under the weight.

He managed to half push half carry Holmes back to his chair."Damn it I thought you were the one with sense!" he muttered as he got him seated.

"Have you been sitting there all night Mr Holmes? And when was the last time you ate?"

Holmes was leaning on him, so he stayed where he was for a moment.

"I'll go and find some breakfast then we go over the code Mr Holmes" he said, once he was sure all was stable, easing away from Holmes and out in search of food.

The more time he spent with Mycroft Holmes the more he saw the resemblances to Sherlock Holmes, maybe they were brothers after all. Although up to now he really had thought the man was free of Sherlock's sillier habits!

As he emerged into the outer office the PA looked up from her Blackberry in enquiry. "Mr Holmes is ready for some breakfast," he said "is there anywhere I can get some?"

She smiled blindingly at him, flowed to her feet, opened a cupboard that proved to be a concealed fridge, and passed him a tray containing wrapped sandwiches, a bottle of juice, and a glass. Which, he suspected, had been waiting for some considerable time.

"Thank you Ms....?" he said, head tipped enquiringly

"Please call me Anthea Inspector" she said, extracting a kettle from another cupboard “I will be in with tea in a moment. Or would you prefer coffee?”

Chalk that up as a win he thought. My Holmes-handling skills have promoted me to someone you talk to! "Tea is fine thank you Anthea."

He bore the tray back into the office, wondering if he’d see the Posh Bastard or the happy code solver, and was chuffed to see Holmes was still smiling. He much preferred the smiling Holmes or even the one he’d been working with on Tuesday to the usual version.

(And most definitely to the devil he'd met that night in his flat, it was hard to see them as the same man.)

He set the tray down in front of Holmes who looked at it, blinked, and came down to earth enough to say "Thank you Inspector, please help yourself."

Lestrade took a sandwich but waited to see if Holmes did. If the man started talking now he'd not eat, and that meant another collapse. Lestrade didn't want to spend his morning picking Holmes up off the
floor!

It wouldn't be necessary, Holmes inhaled a sandwich without noticing as he sorted through the papers on his desk.

"I know why Maddox was killed, and I think I know why the woman was."

"The music decodes into addresses." Holmes said, not letting Lestrade see any of the papers. "Addresses that are of.. interest to me. And to certain other people. I knew that someone was leaking them, and Maddox thought he knew how it was being done."

"So these people found he was on their trail and killed him? So what about Starling then, where does she come into it?"

"I think she was how Maddox found out. I think she was a courier, picking up the music and passing it on when told. Hence the money from no obvious source, the sporadic attendance at school, and the odd movements you have noticed."

"Payment for services, when and where required, well it fits I suppose. She must have been doing more than this job though? Unless you had a lot of addresses you didn't want known."

Holmes waved a hand dismissively "Oh undoubtedly, I imagine the whole thing was done as a job for hire. These were only some of the things she was acting as courier for."

"So why kill her then? Job finished? Or because someone caught her with Maddox and decided she'd snitched?"

"The latter I expect." said Holmes, who apparently did not have Sherlock's attitude towards food once he'd decided to eat. Lestrade couldn't work out how that many sandwiches had disappeared while Holmes was talking, but he wasn't going to complain.

The door opened and Anthea came in with a tray of tea - pot and cups and Lestrade suspected both milk and cream - and removed the empty breakfast tray.

And with her entrance, Holmes closed down. Not quite Posh Bastard, but not the open happy man he'd been a minute earlier. "Doesn't want to be seen being chummy with the Old Bill." Lestrade thought, knowing that while secretaries might fraternise with the lower orders, mandarins were a different thing. The good old English class system, alive and well.

He waited for the tea ritual to end, accepting his with milk, before resuming business.

"I'm tracking both Maddox and Starling, trying to see where and when they met, or if they ever did. And who might have met them. But it is slow going, none of Maddox's usual acquaintances know much about his movements, and finding anyone who knew her is proving difficult."

Holmes nodded "I will arrange for the CCTV footage to be examined" he said. "You have probable times and dates?"

"These are the ones I know, these are leads I am still working on. I don't suppose you have anything more?"

"Not yet Inspector, but I will let you know if my operatives come up with anything."

Lestrade knew a dismissal when he heard it, and gathered up his things. "Thank you Mr Holmes" he said and left, feeling vaguely annoyed. A feeling he stamped on. He knew Holmes's default setting was Posh Bastard, and that was what he was going to get, much as he preferred the others he'd got glimpses of. Almost enough to make a man prefer Sherlock. At last you knew where you were with him: irritating insulting know-it all git was what you got every single time.

Mycroft Holmes pondered the address list on his code sheets. Well, that explained how the safe house and witness protection information was being smuggled out, but not who was doing it. However now he knew the how, the who would not be far behind.

As his eye passed over Lestrade's empty teacup it flashed through his mind how refreshing it was to have someone who could cope with his ultra focus on a problem without needing to be trained. It had taken some time to get Anthea to see reason on the subject, and even now she *would* try to interrupt with irrelevancies like food.

================

Lestrade crossed another line off his job list. He hadn't done this much legwork since his promotion. Not only had he felt it wise to involve as few people as possible, but some bug or other had gone through the place like the Grim Reaper and he was shockingly short handed.

Meaning that everyone left was working their legs off and he had no one to hand this to even if he'd wanted to.

He'd tracked Maddox's movements in the week before his death via interview and phone records and credit card receipts, it definitely looked like he was looking for people in places he didn't normally go to. That or he'd managed to hide a second life as a middle-aged tragic clubber just a lookin' for lurve from everyone he knew. He'd been in and out of all sorts of places notable only for drinking and loud music.

Some of which, it appeared, Lyn Starling had also been to.

He'd have thought it more people would have remembered her - tallish woman with Chinese ancestry and an art student haircut - than Maddox, but he'd been so out of place that door staff had taken note. "Trying, you know? Fish out of water mate. Finding his lost youth or something but I reckon he was more into James Last than House if you know what I mean."

He cast an eye over the current progress boards, wished with all his heart he could fill that vacant DC slot before someone dropped dead of overwork, and headed out.

The attack didn't catch him entirely by surprise. He'd been driving a desk for years, and Serious Crimes cops see crime scenes only when the crims are long gone, but he'd been in uniform for six years in one of the nastier boroughs in London so he knew trouble when he saw it coming.

Even though trouble was very average. Average height, average clothing, average face, average everything.

There weren't that many people on the street this time of night, so he could be properly aware of everyone in sight. He was aware of Mr Average and that something wasn't quite right. What it was he couldn't have told you, but when Mr Average drifted in his direction for no reason, he noticed. And when Mr Average began to ask him something and stepped so close to do so, he was already moving out of the way as the knife came whistling up to where his chest had been.

He twisted and the blade mostly missed him, cutting coat and shirt and by the sharp sting cutting him.

He didn't even think about being a hero. Twenty years ago and preferably with a stab vest and a radio he might have taken an assassin on, but this man knew how to use a knife and Lestrade had no desire to serve as an anatomy lesson for passers-by. He had an impressive scar to remind him of just what happens when you get cut, he didn't want to complete the set.

He slammed his fist out more by reflex than anything else, connected with something, hoped that slowed Mr Average down a fraction, and got the hell out.

Mr Average had the same idea, he clearly wasn't interested in knifing someone who knew he was going to do it for which Lestrade was grateful. Not grateful enough to pursue though, only an idiot (or a fit young man with something to prove) goes after an armed killer when he himself is armed with nothing more than indignation.

Once in his flat he investigated the damage. His coat was history, his shirt ditto, but the only mark on him was a little scratch that was hardly worth mentioning.

Of course the cut clothing was evidence and so he would have to trek back to the Yard to get everything photographed and documented and filed.

"Ah well," he thought as he finally got into bed some hours later "I must be getting close. You don't knife someone who isn't on your track."

================

Mycroft Holmes looked up as Lestrade entered his office, gesturing the man to a seat as he finished the current round of briefing notes on the Kashmiri situation.

Putting some files on the table, the Inspector sat down, a definite smile on his face.

And when he had Mycroft's attention he dropped a bomb.

"I know we are close. He had a go at me last night"

Mycroft's heart thumped hard once, although he did not allow anything beyond polite interest to show on his face.

"Do you mean you were attacked last night Inspector? You don't seem to be injured."

"I'm not, although it was a near thing. He had to get close for that move he likes and I didn't let him. He cut my coat then ran like a rabbit."

Mycroft had not considered that he needed to put Lestrade under close surveillance, clearly an oversight that must be remedied.

"I see. Well, you will need to take precautions now, I will assign you a bodyguard. A car and driver are probably the most sensible solution."

Lestrade looked rather upset at that. "I can't drag a bodyguard about, never mind one of your cars! I will be spending the rest of the week ducking in and out of sleaze spots all over Soho, I can't take muscle with me! No one will talk to me then."

Mycroft raised an eyebrow and waved his fingers at Lestrade's left arm. "And that is healed well enough to fight knife-wielding killers with? He may not run away next time."

"You tell me, I bet you've been looking at my medical records."

"No. I haven't. I don't need to. You have been doing physiotherapy exercises and stretches at frequent intervals in the times you have been here, and have more than once massaged the forearm as though it hurt. While you deliberately use your left hand and arm more than you did before the injury you still don't trust it as you are very careful what you do with it."

Lestrade stopped stretching his left hand, a nervous tic Mycroft was sure he had not realised he had.

"That doesn't matter. If I'm a target I'm a target! It's part of the job. You have what you need anyway. So leave me to do my job, I know what he looks like now, and I'll be ready for him."

Mycroft huffed. "You are only interested in the murders, the people passing information don't know that, if they think you are after them they may send someone else."

Lestrade bristled like a fighting dog. "I'm not an invalid, and I know my job. Which is finding the man who killed Geoffrey Maddox and Lyn Starling. If trouble comes from that, then it does. The Met will manage."

Mycroft let it go. He would not be able to force a bodyguard on the foolish man, but a suitably configured close surveillance team would be a reasonable substitute.

Lestrade kept eye contact with Holmes for a little longer then slowly relaxed and went back to his papers.

"I think the key is this club here. It's the only place I've found that Starling has been in more than once that Maddox has been to, and I was talking to the doorman the night before I was attacked. I've got some club camera stuff here, what do you have?"

He could, of course, have looked through footage on his own. Getting the CCTV tapes was easy enough after all. But not only was Holmes way more experienced in interpreting the fuzzy grainy stuff, Lestrade had a strong suspicion that Holmes knew the killer. Maddox had, after all. And while your average city lawyer might be a bottom-feeding scumbag, few of them numbered hands-on killers amongst their acquaintanceship if they weren't working for spooks. Spooks like Mycroft Holmes.

So when he handed Holmes the card containing the club camera data, and when Holmes called up the outside CCTV footage, he was watching Holmes with more attention than he was watching the screen. Because he knew when the man he had tagged as "Mr Average" in his mind would turn up on the club's camera that watched the door area, and he wanted to see Holmes's reaction.

He wasn't disappointed.

"You know him." he said. The reaction had been very very small, but it had been there. Posh Bastard was very good, but Lestrade bet he'd been hoping he wouldn't see that face, and when he had, there'd been a tiny tell. Just enough.

"Know whom Inspector?"

"The killer. That's him there, and you know him. You were hoping it wasn't him, but now you know it is. Who is he Mr Holmes? Where can I find him?"

Holmes leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers. Lestrade waited for Holmes to invoke national security, or insult his intelligence, or just sit there looking snootily superior hoping Lestrade would back down.

He kept pushing. "You know who it is, but you didn't know before, I'd lay odds. So he wasn't working for you, he was working for these people who are actively against you, trading in information. Information secret enough to go to these lengths to smuggle it out. Information that can't be trusted to the internet, information that has to be encoded in a way that the couriers can't sell or decode, but is easily enough encoded and sent without needing a pad or a book page or any of the usual things."

Holmes examined his nails, saying nothing.

"We want him for the killing. If he's hired help he won't know much about them. He's probably upset them anyway, given he messed up with that wallet. The toxicologists say there’s traces of opiates in that palm print. Which is probably why he took the money, was jonesing at the time, so just grabbed the cash and ran. If he’s using then he’s not reliable is he? He's betrayed you already, why cover for him?"

He waited, watching Holmes, hoping the man would see reason. Whoever the killer had been in Holmes’s organisation he was clearly on his own now. Did Holmes know him personally? Or was he shielding him because he didn't want the coppers near any of his people, ex or not? Or because he wanted to clean up that loose end himself?

Then there was silence.

Finally Holmes came to a decision.

"The man's name is Martin Alexander. The address I have for him is in Croydon. He is a dangerous man Inspector, I trust you will take backup?"

Lestrade grinned at him "I don't like someone carving me up like the Sunday roast. I'll let the Armed Response boyos do the hard work."

He gathered his papers, gestured for the club camera card which Holmes handed over.

"Thank you Mr Holmes." he said, meaning it.

"You are welcome Inspector" said Mycroft Holmes, meaning it too.

========================

Part Eight: Framed

Fic: It isn't just about the rain.

randomly_rusted — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 13:22:22 GMT

Summary: Mycroft's closest companion shows great bravery.
Rating: G
Word Count: 3170

Written for this prompt:
http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/4076.html?thread=11931628#t11931628

I've told it all at the debriefing, but if you want to hear the story young'un, then I'll tell it again. You definitely need to understand what you might be getting into!

It's more than protection detail, you have to understand that. It isn't just about the rain.

It's about being in tune with your employer, about being there for him to do whatever needs doing. If he wants to show the world he's calm and in control then I am there the right height, furled neatly,handle at just the right angle, weight distributed evenly, tip firmly planted, taking his leaning weight with no sign of strain. The proper swing to show irritation or joy, even the right tension and weight distribution for self defence. All part of the job for a really good operative.

So there he was eating out that night, and I'm waiting for him. Closed but unfurled because it really doesn't do to furl up when wet, unless you have to. But only lower class brollys sit about indoors all open for the world to see! I'm a James Smith Solid Stick, I know how to behave.

Hell of a night that night, nearly an inch in 3 hours, so I wasn't alone. Usually it's just me or a couple of acquaintances, similar design and training, because you don't see the hoi polloi on a dry day. To hear some of the old boys tell it, used to be you couldn't tell if it was raining or not till you got close enough to feel the damp as everyone of any breeding had a decent umbrella. But nowadays if it isn't actually bucketing I'll be all on my own, with not even a walking stick for company.

He does like the place were were at, goes there a lot, but really it isn't what you might call high class. No proper stand for one thing, if you aren't slouching against the wall getting dust marks all over your handle you are dangling from a hook trying to keep yourself decently furled and not expose your ribs to all and sundry.

Since the storms started they've added a couple of plastic buckets, so there I was jammed rib-by-fabric with all sorts. I mean really!

There were those deformed little folding things with short ribs and not a proper shaft between them, and half of them not even a decent colour. There was even a tartan one in the other bucket, miles from any golf course, how it could sit there without blushing I don't know. And that's not all! There were... whisper it... working girls there too, right in with us. Company names on them bold as brass! Even furled you could tell they were no better than they should be and there was one of them flaunting her ribs as though this was a drying room!

So anyway, there I was, slowly drying out, taking the time to relax. You have to in this game, you never know when you'll get home or what the work will be. Never furl when you can relax your fabric, never relax when you can open. Words to live by!

There are those who praise individuality, and say it's easier to find your own if it stands out, but a man who can't tell his own brolly by the grain of the handle or the way it furls doesn't deserve to have one. Breeding will tell I say, umbrella or owner.

So when a strange hand touched my handle, I thought it was some parvenu who mistook me for his own, not that there were any other James Smiths there you understand, but some people can't tell by the first touch, so I expected to be put down as soon as he realised his mistake.

But he didn't! I was being stolen!

I knew what to do, naturally. Have you been on the course yet? No? Well they'll teach you how to spring open, how to change your weight, how to go for an eye or catch on the door frame. Have to be fit of course, and it's damned hard on the ribs, but learn it and practice it because you will need it one day.

Now this was no ordinary thief this one, because he was wise to the usual tricks. He knew he wanted me, he had big strong hands, and he knew how to use them. He had me out of that bucket, one hand right round my ribs holding them tight to my shaft, and me clamped under his other arm as though I was in a vice. I shifted my weight, I turned my handle, I tried to get my ribs free until I damn near tore a seam, but to no avail.

This was not good. He knew how to deal with a me, and that meant he knew what he had. He knew who he had. And there was only one reason for him to take me.

Now most brollys aren't privy to much. From the stand in the hallway to the seat on the train, to the railing at the foot of the hatstand. Maybe overhear something on the train, or a bit of a natter with a greatcoat, but on the whole an umbrella doesn't need a security clearance.

But you and I young'un, we are different. Like I said before, it's isn't just about the rain. I've heard things in that office, I've seen things on his phone, I've been present when coups have been organised and wars avoided. I've helped him convince terrorists they have to find another way, I've been part of his negotiations with the Americans so often I even had one of them try and lure me away to work in the Pentagon!

So I knew he knew what he had, and what he had was information locked up inside 2 foot 10 of ash and nylon and steel.

Now I won't pretend lad. No point. There's no one, no matter their wood, who wouldn't be scared. Some oak walking stick might go on about toughness but they splinter same as any of us if the knives come out. The key is to not let the fear take over. Brace your ribs, flatten your fabric, and keep your eyes open for whatever you can turn to your advantage.

He walked off fast as you please, no one taking any notice of someone with a perfectly good umbrella who wasn't opening it to deal with the rain. Some people wouldn't notice if Fred Astaire was dancing on the ceiling! He stood under the awning for a moment then a car came up and he jumped in. The car took off and before he fastened his seatbelt he had me tied up tight. Two velcro straps and my tip jammed into some
polystyrene and I wasn't going anywhere.

I listened best I could, hoping I'd get some idea as to who they were and where we were going, but they weren't the chatty sort and I was too low in the car to see anything out of the windows.

Didn't take long before we were out of that car and next thing I know I'm tip up on a table with a clamp around my handle holding me firmly. Not so much as a bit of rag to cushion the jaws either, you can see the mark still. It hurt, but I was sure that was just the start of it.

So this weaselly looking bod comes up, sits down, and looks at me. I wait him out, not that I have any choice in the matter.

He said "Now, it will all go easier with you if you just cooperate. Can't be too comfortable clamped up like that and those velcro straps are going to crease you if they stay on much longer."

I said nothing, he'd have to do better than that!

"You are a fine specimen. Don't come better than James Smith. Be a terrible shame if we had to get heavy with you..."

Then it all changed, he suddenly put his head right close and growled "Listen sunshine! You are going to tell us what we want to know. You can do it the hard way or we can do it the easy way, up to you."

And just to show he was serious, he gave my fabric a hell of a twist, against my normal furl. Talk about creasing! He rotated it hard against those damned velcro straps and I felt them scuff my nylon and I was worried I was going to feel a rib-pocket go he pulled so hard.

But it was going to take more than that to make me talk!

He ran his fingers down my fabric and it was all I could do not to rip a seam myself trying to get away from his touch. He laughed a bit and said "Oh we have plenty more for you, just wait."

"Now" he said "we can do this the easy way or the hard way. The easy way is you answer our questions. The hard way is we use this and then you answer our questions."

He held up a bottle and I felt my fabric shrink. Bleach!

Not only would it streak me some horrible uneven shade of grey making me unfit for even the golf course, it would weaken my fibres, meaning I was likely to split the moment I felt a breeze.

The bastard was threatening to cripple me!

Now this is the point young'un. If I wanted an easy life I'd be some commuter's companion with a nice quiet round from home to office and back, about the only danger being pigeons. Or belong to some retired gent only going out when I absolutely have to, otherwise dozing in the stair cupboard all day long.

But I chose this life, I volunteered. Just like you did. And this is where we earn that place in the heated office, the chats to the lovely young Singapore Silks during trade talks, this is where we pay back the money spent on our training.

I"m proud of my profession, I'm the one he relies on to support him and protect him. And it doesn't matter if it's a summer shower or clamped to a table by some lowlife with a bleach bottle, it's all the same. It's what I'm here for.

So I just straightened my fabric as well as I was able under the straps and resolved to make not a sound. He could dye me fuchsia and attach bloody tassels to every second rib, I know my duty.

Now I wasn't just sitting idle in all this you understand. Escape is a duty, and I wasn't about to sit around feeling sorry for myself. If I could get out of that clamp then it was all bets off. Even velcroed up there was a chance!

So I wriggled and pushed, and I reckoned there was some give. It was going to hurt like hell and mark me up, but what was the alternative? now if he'd only take those damn straps off...

Anyway, he uncaps the bottle and wafts the fumes towards me. The smell was enough to twist your ribs, really it was. I ignored it though, because if he took the straps off, I was going to go for him. Eyes, throat, dammit even a tip into his foot would be better than sitting here waiting to be recoloured!

Now he wasn't completely stupid. He wasn't going to give me a free go at his face, he had hold of my ribs tight enough when he took the straps off, and used his other hand to control my slider. I was wise to that though... and jammed!

Now you take a lesson from me young'un, jamming might sound easy but it means distorting your shaft, and it puts a lot of strain on you. If you are doing it because some thug is pushing on your collar for all he's worth then you won't hold him for long and you risk a sprung rib when you have to let go. I didn't want to hold him for long, I just wanted him to push hard enough that when I let go he'd be off balance and not ready for a rib where it hurts.

So I suddenly freed and his hand shot up, and I was flying open like something belonging to Mary Poppins. I jerked hard sideways in the clamp and strained to aim a rib and he realised what I was doing and tried to grab me but too late! A raking cut up the cheek and I got him in the eye! That rib was twisted something awful though as it hit, and I think that's when I strained the seam.

I jerked and swayed again, and could feel the clamp gouging my handle, I never want to feel something that hurts like that again. I thought being banged handle first against a jammed steamer trunk lid was painful, but I'd take that any day over dragging myself out of that clamp.

But I was out and I was free and he was howling like a banshee, and holding his face with blood everywhere. It wasn't until later that I found I'd knocked over the uncapped bleach bottle and got some on my outer circumference, didn't feel it then.

So anyway, there I am out of the clamp, and unstrapped, but with that rib the way it was there was no way I was going to be able to furl. And that meant any rolling would be pretty damned uncontrolled.

But I had a moment to breathe and think. I had no idea what happened to the bods from the car, no one had come to hear what the screaming was about, and weaselface was still sobbing by the table.

The question was... when would I be missed? I'd been fitted with the tracker of course, in my position that's a given, but someone had to be looking for me, and I had no idea whether I'd been taken during mains or as late as the cheese platter. I decided the best course of action was to furl up as best I could, even if that meant even more damage to rib and seam, and roll outside. In the dark my people could find me but the kidnappers couldn't.

So I tensed against the pain, closed as much as I could, and tried to get vaguely cylindrical. Let me tell you, it's damn hard to order your fabric when you've a bust rib and you can feel more than one seam is gapping! But I got as close as I could and I started to move.

I braced myself for the drop off the table, the bounce made me see stars I can tell you. I was disoriented, couldn't tell where I'd landed and so didn't know where the door was. I think, to be honest, it was all getting a bit much for me. Some brollys might be able to heave themselves out of a clamp with no effect and feel a broken rib is no worse than a fabric crease, but me I was finding it damned hard to focus.

Now I tell you, if it was in a story you wouldn't believe it. No fiction writer would have the rescue team turn up then, the poor hero would have to roll outside picking up gravel and glass shards and getting wet and cold.... But truth is stranger than fiction and before I could work out which direction the door was in, the door burst open and there he was!

Now he's my employer, and I'm not one to presume on the relationship, but we've been working together a long time. Good times and bad, wet and dry, casual clothes and full mess dress. I've sheltered his brother when called on, I've gone tip-to-face with bods who've tried to take him out, I've sat quietly by his knee when he's been staring at the telephone waiting for it to ring to tell him it's all been for nothing and war has been declared.

So when he came in behind his bodyguard and saw me and picked me up, I admit I was damn glad to see him, and I was perhaps not as professional as I might have been. I should have squared up handle and furling tie, I should have insisted on giving him a situation report and been ready to debrief right then. I should have been at attention, handle to hand, tip properly planted, ready for duty.

Instead, and don't you dare breathe a word of this to anyone young'un, I just leant on him. And he understood I tell you, he did. He picked me up so carefully and looked me over. He saw the handle damage first, and he touched it so lightly I hardly felt it, didn't hurt a bit.

Then he carefully eased me open to check the rest of me. He saw the broken rib of course and I tell you the look on his face. Made it all worth while. He cradled me and turned to where his people had secured weaselface and when he saw the bottle of bleach spilled over the table, I could hear him hiss. "Take him to the secure facility." he said "I want to know who he works for and what he was after. " And then he added "And no need to find a doctor tonight."

Then he carefully closed me again, gently easing the collar down and smoothing my fabric, being careful of the rib and the seams. He wraps his own handkerchief around the gouges in my handle, it just broke me up. My fabric relaxed, my handle turned to lie more comfortably in his hand. he could have asked anything of me then.

And do you know, I think I could have asked anything of him.

The following morning he took me to James Smith for repairs. They pointed out the bleach mark, and said that given the whole fabric would have to be replaced it wasn't worth it but he wasn't having any. He said if they couldn't fix the colour than Fox or Swaine Adeney could! Well that got them on their mettle alright, and you can hardly see the scar. The clamp marks are mostly polished out, and the new rib's a perfect match. I'm still a bit creaky though, so if it's a really nasty night out you might get called on until I'm fully fit.

So there you go. Hell of a night that eh? But you learn from it young'un. Keep your wits about you and never give in!

But the real moral is this. With a good man, it's never just man and umbrella. It's a partnership, and there's nothing better in the world.

Fic: Duvet Day

randomly_rusted — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 07:41:05 GMT

Summary: Lestrade decides Mycroft needs a day off.

Rating: PG-13

Type: Fluffy as all hell

Wordcount: 850

Inspired by http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/2727.html?thread=5776039#t5776039

============

It had taken some talking. And several of his best smiles. But eventually the lady who was not called Anthea agreed.

"It's just for 24 hours. If there's something really earth shattering then you can text me, but I'm sure there's nothing short of nuclear explosion that can't wait for 24 hours."

He left it to her to organise the blackout and to give the driver the day off. That left his end of the job...

Mycroft had got home late. As usual. Had checked his messages and his phone and his mail. As usual.

Had eaten a late supper and gone to bed. As usual.

He may have remembered it was his birthday the following day, but probably not. He had not made a habit of celebrating it.

He woke up perhaps later than normal, but he couldn't confirm his internal clock via the clock by the bed, because that appeared to be turned off.

He couldn't confirm it by the clock on his phone, or his watch because both of those were missing.

he couldn't confirm it by the sky, because the curtains were closed and the cords looped well out of reach.

He could perhaps confirm it by getting up and checking the computer in his home office or the kitchen clock or the laptop in the living room. He rolled back the bedclothes and was about to get out of bed to do just that when a sleek, self satisfied, and very naked Detective Inspector appeared in the doorway.

Bearing, it appeared, breakfast.

"What time is it? And if you say breakfast time I will not be amused."

"But if I said lunch time you wouldn't believe me. So breakfast time it is." A piece of delectable looking bruschetta was being held temptingly in front of him.

"It would be churlish to refuse" he thought, and didn't.

"Where's my phone?"

"You don't need a phone, you are having a lie in on your birthday and
a phone would only get in the way."

"Inspector! Where is my phone!"

"You have been kidnapped. Prisoners don't get phones."

"Don't be silly! I have important work to do!"

"Indeed you do. Sit here, eat breakfast, lie back, and see what ... umm.. occurs to you."

"If you are going to keep me here, you are going to have to tie me to the bed. I didn't think you were into that. I am certainly not!"

"I'm not... but there are other ways you know."

Lestrade climbed onto the bed, sliding up until he was lying right on top of Mycroft, imitating a rather heavy, rather warm, blanket. Mycroft was the taller by an inch or two, but Lestrade was the heavier more solid man.

Mycroft knew several ways of reversing their positions, some didn't even damage your opponent. As he wondered which one to use more bruschetta made its way to his mouth, and it didn't occur to him to refuse.

It was probably not a good idea to refuse the tea (Darjeeling, first leaf) that was next in line either, spilt tea would make a mess of the sheets.

Lestrade placed the food on the bedside table and resumed his blanket imitation, although in Mycroft's experience blankets didn't tend to nuzzle one quite like that.

"Consider it a duvet day" said the imitation blanket, the huff of the words over his skin doing interesting things to Mycroft's state of mind. "Hello, my name's Greg and I'll be your duvet for the day"

"What, pray tell, is a 'duvet day'"?

"It's where you spend all day in bed, under..." and at that point there was possibly a little more independent movement than a blanket usually made "your duvet. Ignoring the outside world. "

"I have important work to do!"

"Yes" said Lestrade, running his hand through Mycroft's hair "And very competent people who know where you are if they really need you." The hand movement changed to a massage with just the right amount of pressure.

"You can't distract me like this all day!"

"Are you sure about that? Shouldn't we test that hypothesis?"

At some point Lestrade had changed his head angle, and the huffs of his breath were, if not at the level of an all day distraction, certainly more distracting than they had been before.

The idea of testing the hypothesis was becoming more and more attractive.

He made one last token protest "I should go...." but it didn't sound sincere even to him.

"You aren't going anywhere right now." which was true enough, even if it hadn't been followed by Lestrade adjusting position to cover more and more of Mycroft, with the effect of making Mycroft less and less inclined to get out of bed.

He gave one last thought to his missing phone before he settled down to durance vile, being held captive by a large warm heavy blanket. That had gone back to nuzzling in ways his previous blankets had most definitely not done.

Over the course of the day he discovered it did quite a few other things that his previous blankets hadn't been known for....

Fic: Bad Day

randomly_rusted — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 22:54:03 GMT

Summary: Lestrade has a bad day. But it gets better.

Type: Gen

Rating: PG

Word Count: 800

This was originally written as part of a 5 times fic but I decided I didn't like much of that and pulled it. So I post the parts I did like separately.

========================

Some people said Lestrade could be a bit short-tempered. Perhaps even a little inclined to running towards punchups rather than away.("You can take the boy out of Southwark...." his DCI had been heard to mutter.)

But he did pick his time and place, and however much he may have wanted to beat the living shit out of the bod running this seminar on "Modern Policing An Internal Drive For Change", and however much his fellow victims would have applauded him, he didn't.

Even though he knew Ted would have held the bastard down for him.

So he sat through four hours of turgid pointless prose, Powerpoint slides, and unrealistic "case studies". (What copper ever said that? What crim ever did that?).

He even managed to pretend a vague interest in the "audience participation exercises" that were supposed to "inculcate the appropriate mindset". (Meaning he didn't actually sabotage them, settling for being as non-participatory as he could and glaring at any of the "facilitators" who might think about trying to jolly him into getting involved. Maybe they'd heard about him, maybe they weren't as jolly as they pretended, anyway the glare worked.)

To really rub it in, those four hours had been at the end of a day
involving:

Meeting with Human Resources about Donovan's inability to suffer fools gladly. (He ran interference for her easily enough because he'd had a lot of practice)

Meeting with a CPS "prosecutor" who was apparently much more a non-prosecutor because every bloody case he was given he knocked back for minor procedural problems or staffing issues or not the right colour ink.

A "shepherd's pie" from the canteen that seemed to involve very old very smelly German shepherd and potato substitute made of hide glue and papier mache.

No less than seven different requests from seven different departments requesting the same statistics sliced up and presented in seven different (and mutually incompatible) ways. Of which four were marked "Senior Level" meaning he had to do them himself and not pass them onto the nearest DC.

Another meeting with Human Resources about his request for a DC to replace Halverson who had tested up and was now a DS in Fraud, but apparently due to the hiring freeze he could bloody whistle for one. And he mustn't increase the overtime bill either. His DCI had managed to absent himself from that meeting, which skill was probably why he was a DCI.

The coffee machine on their floor gasping its last and expiring in a pool of lukewarm water and cheap coffee concentrate leaving a smell they were not going to get out of the carpet any time soon

And on top of all that and the aforementioned four hours of death-by-training-course, he still had his caseload to keep up with.

It was a very tired, very hungry, and exceedingly fed up inspector who came out of the Yard two hours after his official shift end to be met by huge bus queues outside and far too many people on the street by Westminster station for this time of night. Which meant, yes, a bloody breakdown on the Jubilee line.

He leaned against a lamppost, put his head back, and considered howling at the injustice of it all. But that took both thought and energy, so instead he just groaned. It was going to be a long walk home.

So when the black car nosed its way to the kerb and sat with its door open it took him a while to notice.

When he did, it was the first good thing that had happened to him all day.

The next good thing was waiting inside the car in the form of one Mycroft Holmes who handed him a bottle of Youngs Bitter almost before he'd sat down. And a shoulder to lean against while he drank it. And a hand to rub away the tension in his neck.

The third good thing was a decent dinner at a place that served excellent steak with all the trimmings and a Tiramisu cake for dessert that had his eyes crossing in pure pleasure.

The fourth good thing that happened was going back to Mycroft's place (instead of his own flat) to have a shower in the bathroom-that-should-be-illegal-it-was-so-sinfully-decadent. (Mycroft Holmes could be quite the sybarite, which for some reason surprised people.) And finding a set of clean clothes ready for tomorrow

The fifth good thing that happened to him is none of your business. It isn't your business how often it happened, how long each time lasted, who did what to who and how, or who should be arrested for eating a cream doughnut in that particular way.

Just rest assured that the fifth good thing was a very good thing indeed.

Fic: Horror Movie

randomly_rusted — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 09:03:53 GMT

Summary: Mycroft is scared of horror movies. No really! Honest! It isn't just an excuse for... Well maybe it is.

Rating: PG

Type: fluff really.

Word Count: 1480

Written for this prompt:

http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/3114.html?thread=8720682#t8720682

===============

It was a latish evening at Baker Street. Chinese food, a selection of DVDs, fewer than usual body parts on available flat surfaces (we shall say nothing of the bathroom cupboard) and it would seem a pleasant evening would be had.

The case was over, the baddies more or less collared, John and Sherlock could have a good evening in, except for one fact.

Well, two actually, as coming in the door without so much as "and by the way of course I have keys" was Mycroft Holmes, followed by DI Lestrade who wasn't looking as embarassed as he bloody well should have been given the circumstances.

But since he'd been..umm... involved with Mycroft (John, who despite what the restaurantiers of Londom thought, was straight, refused to think about what that entailed. Straight men don't like to think about that at all as a rule.) he tended to be utterly unflappable when Mycroft did things Lestrade should be embarassed about.

OK, Mycroft didn't tend to do things-your-companion-should-be-embarassed-about to nearly the level that Sherlock did, but Lestrade was hardly embarassed at all and John was pretty evenly spread between envy of his composure and hatred of same.

"Ah Sherlock. You are home. Good. We need to discuss a few things about the case."

"No we don't. You might, I plan to sit back and watch a movie"

With that he got a rather disturbing look of glee on his face. John had seen it before and it usually meant Sherlock was about to do something utterly cracked and Holmesian and no one who wasn't a member of that family was going to be safe. Or understand until too late.

John braced himself. It might be the start of one of those verbal battles that non-Holmes mortals understood one sentence in three of. It might involved sudden rushing around London. It wasn't going to involve gunshots (John hoped) but given the latest round of experiments it might well involve poisons, untraceable and otherwise.

But no.

What it appeared to involve was a DVD of "Dawn of the Dead". Which was a fairly solid zombie flick it's true, but it didn't seem to warrant the look on Sherlock's face.

Or, it would seem, on Mycroft's.

At first there was nothing different in the elder Holmes's expression. Then, as Sherlock fast forwarded to where the action started, Mycroft flicked a look at the screen, then looked away rather firmly.

"Sherlock, I need to discuss with you the..." Someone had just had their face eaten. The slurping noises were a bit over the top and all but still... That shouldn't have bothered Mycroft!

Sherlock looked at his brother, a happy and yet utterly evil expression on his face and said "Oh look! They'll be trapped!"

That seemed to make up Mycroft's mind. He turned on his heel and said "There's no talking with you in this mood Sherlock!" and headed for the door. Lestrade looked at Sherlock, looked at the screen (no one was dead or undead at the moment, it was some Exposition) looked at the vanishing Mycroft, shrugged, said "Zombie flicks. About as interesting as slasher flicks, see enough of that at work" and followed his partner down and out.

"Ah hah!" yelled Sherlock, jumping up in rapture. "It worked! It worked! I had thought he was becoming immune, but it worked!"

"What did?"

"Horror movies. Ever since Mycroft was a boy he has hated them. They really do scare him. He hates that! So whenever I wanted him to leave me alone I'd play one. It hasn't worked for a while, but maybe Zombie movies are too new for him to have learned to tune them out. Must make sure we have one in the flat at all times!"

John sighed. Minds the size of a planet with horribly large chunks of those minds still stuck at the primary school level. Both of them!

"Well you can keep it as a Mycroft-deterrent, *I* want to watch something funny tonight."

Mycroft and Lestrade returned home, Lestrade having noticed the odd sidelong glance....

"So" he said, pouring the wine "What was that about then?"

"Sherlock was in no mood to talk, I wouldn't have been able to get anything out of him. Once he put that ridiculous movie on I realised that. He wanted to chase me away"

"And he decided to do that by playing a DVD? Instead of answering in cryptic crossword clues or just saying 'boring' to every question?"

"He is convinced I am scared of horror movies. When I was much much younger I was a little disconcerted by them, but I grew out of it. Sherlock, being the selfabsorbed little nuisance that he is never realised that. So he brings them out as a sort of nuclear deterrent. I play along with it because if he realised they didn't work he might try something else!"

"But you still don't like them I take it? I don't mind the occasional one, but only occasional."

Mycroft looked at him again "Oh I'm sure I could watch the occasional one. Even if I might be a bit... scared."

Lestrade suspected something about that look. But he was the recipient of a commendation for bravery, he would not retreat!

"Scared?" he said, playing with his wine glass and absently (yeah right!) licking a stray drop of wine from the rim.

"Oh yes. Terribly. Makes me curl up on the couch and want to hide. Preferably behind someone. You know, to feel protected."

Lestrade had seen Mycroft Holmes face down armed Irish terrorists and spinster Departmental Secretaries, he was not convinced the man knew what fear was.

(And if you think the ones with the guns were more frightening you haven't worked in the civil service! Lestrade had 20 years in, and between fanatics with guns and bombs and women with blue rinses, reading glasses, and an encyclopaedic knowledge of The Regulations, he'd take the explosions every time))

However... As he had previously told both Holmes brothers... he wasn't stupid.

So... "I can see that, so if someone was on the sofa " he said, suiting action to words "you would tend to...?"

"Oh I might start like this...." And also suiting action to words, Mycroft sat next to Lestrade on the sofa, upright, relaxed, leaning lightly onto Lestrade's shoulder, just like hundreds of times before.

"And when the movie starts?" said Lestrade, having located and inserted a suitable disk (his, of course) into the player.

"Oh I doubt much would change in the beginning, although if the credits had some unsettling parts I might.." and his hand stole into Lestrade's.

Lestrade obligingly squeezed the hand, and covered it with his other one. They sat through Jonathan Harker's journey, Lestrade stroking Mycroft's hand when the werewolf howled. As the coach journey got darker, Mycroft scrunched closer to Lestrade, and as the tension mounted Lestrade (selfless this man, selfless!) wrapped his arm around Mycroft's shoulder in a suitably comforting and protective manner.

When the vampire first appeared, Mycroft covered his eyes and Lestrade quickly learned that was his cue to cuddle closer and perhaps make comforting strokes through Mycroft's hair. And if he was rewarded for that by a sound that while it was definitely a whimper was not one of fear, well who was there to know?

And if the closeness and snuggling continued through the non-frightening bits well that was just conservation of energy.

When the vampire rose up from the coffin in the ship, Mycroft ended up on Lestrade's lap, an imposition the dectective bore with great fortitude (although he did shift a bit so Mycroft's hipbones didn't dig in). The turning of Lucy, the chases, and the final confrontation required much reassurance and comforting stroking of back and hair, and protective arms defending the poor scared Mycroft from the horrors on screen.

All in all a successful evening!

You might think that this is a silly game for two grown men to play. But then you clearly aren't someone whose partner has a stressful and difficult job, who spends all day shouldering great responsibility and deserves to have some silly, happy, enjoyable time on the sofa with a lover and a movie.

As both Mycroft and Lestrade were such people, you will just have to cope!

And you must live with the fact that gradually the household acquired more horror DVDs. Especially ones with good music cues, because that made the proper snuggling much easier to.. umm.. orchestrate.

As for Sherlock, he was disappointed that Mycroft had acquired an immunity to Zombie movies so quickly. The next time he tried that trick, Mycroft just looked at Lestrade, Lestrade looked back, they shared a look he could not interpret (although John could, so it was probably more like would not) and Mycroft kept right on doing whatever it was Sherlock had wanted him to stop doing.

He wasn't sure what to do next, hopefully Hollywood would come out with a new horror genre that might have more scaring power.

Oddly, Lestrade was hoping the same.
===============

Author's note: I have never seen Dawn of the Dead. But it is a zombie movie so of course someone's face has been eaten! And of course they are trapped somewhere surrounded by zombies wanting to eat their brains. And of course there will be Exposition. I know how these things work!
~

FIc: Crack. You have been warned

randomly_rusted — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 10:50:51 GMT

Summary: Crack: Lestrade, Sherlock, take a number....

Rating: R. Oh yes.

Type: PornWithSillyLines. Oh Without Plot too, but the silly lines are the thing.

It appeared on my hard drive, I have no idea where it came from. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

============

Lestrade had 'come out' as gay as part of a Yard-wide push for "diveristy and integration'. As well as a certain amount of drink.

There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth from those of the (straight) female persuasion although as Donovan had said "Looking like that and unmarried, what did you expect?"

Down the blokier end of the pub the reaction was a bit more mixed with most of the less comfortable men twitching a little but trying to pretend it didn't matter, while a few who might (if very drunk) have admitted to a bit of heteroflexibility looked into their beers with thoughtful expressions.

Lestrade rode out the jokes and the discomfort, and things settled down, except for the new man.

Who had not, it appeared, done the diversity training. Or if he had, had slept through it. (Lestrade had too, but that was different!)

It didn't help that around about the same time, one Sherlock Holmes appeared on the scene. Dress sense out of the more flamboyant issues of GQ, hair and eyes to make a statue blush, magnetism that was measured at something like "can pull the Queen Mary up into dry dock", and as far as anyone could tell (and you can bet there were people looking, oh yes!) with no interest at all in anyone who was equipped with an innie rather than an outie.

So there was Lestrade, diverse as all hell and making tongues hang out whenever he laughed (and faces fall whenever he wore a tie) who appeared to be letting this posh poster boy in on cases and the bugger (well no one doubted it!) was solving them for him!

And this was upsetting New Boy rather a lot.

"Look at him! He lets that poncy little sod into all the crime scenes, waits for him to do the work, then takes the credit! "

And in a slightly (but only slightly) lower voice "Bet he's paying him for it. And not in money either! These poofs, they are all like that! Bet Lestrade wouldn't get any results if he wasn't sucking cock!"

There were a few people who thought New Boy had a point, although they wouldn't have put it quite like that. Out loud.

So when one day Lestrade got a new case, a particularly juicy one with lots of strange and fascinating detail, no one was surprised when Sherlock Holmes turned up within 15 minutes of the file landing on the DI's desk.

It was a bit unusual for him to dive into Lestrade's office without so much as a "The tilt of your neck shows you've been sleeping on the couch again, what was it this time, too many beans for dinner?" in passing.

New Boy had had enough. He was going to show up Lestrade's dirty little secret to the whole floor. He was going to fling that door open and show Lestrade on his knees sucking cock to persuade The Freak to please solve his cases because he was too useless to do it.

So with a yell of "Hey! Lookit over here!!!!" he flung the door open!

To indeed reveal a scene of definitely enthusiastic fellatio.

But it was Lestrade sitting in the chair looking very happy with life indeed, and Sherlock Holmes on his knees, mouth full (with some left over, there were going to be some horses with issues if this got out), and humming Beethoven's Fifth with special attention to the deeper registers.

The floor looked on with collective amazement.

Sherlock ignored them in favour of concentrating on his performance and on doing something no one (all right two people) wanted to think about with his left hand. Lestrade ignored them in favour of coming with a moaning cry that made more than two people's hair stand up (And more than two other things stand up it has to be said)

Sherlock swallowed (you doubted it?), looked up at Lestrade and said "OK, got the file?"

Lestrade reached down, rumpled his hair, and said "Of course!" and handed him the case file.

New Boy just stood there, gobsmacked. It appeared he had got the wrong end of the ... umm.. stick indeed.

"You... I thought he was doing you so you would do his work for him! You mean you do him so he'll let you solve his cases?"

"No, I solve his cases so he'll let me do him! It's the only way I could jump the queue. Otherwise I'd be waiting years." said Sherlock, holding up a square of card with the number "197" clearly visible.

Donovan looked out the window. She had noticed that there did seem to be an awful lot of good looking men hanging about this bit of Westminster..... She wondered how many of them had numbers greater than 197.

Fic: Kidnapped

randomly_rusted — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 21:01:47 GMT

Summary: When they kidnapped Lestrade to use him as a lever against Mycroft Holmes they should have expected Mycroft's reaction. They most certainly did not expect Lestrade's.

Rating: PG-13. Warning for torture scenes

Type: Gen, established relationship.

Word count : 5700 (!)

Note: this was not written as part of A Reliable Man, but you never know.... Thanks once again to elfbert who made very sensible suggestions and got rid of plot things that were not helping.

It's easy to kidnap a man off the street if there are four of you, you work together, and you have a van.

Lestrade was walking down the Euston Road when he found that out.

His arms were grabbed, someone kicked the back of his knee so his leg collapsed and he was rolled in through the side opening door of the van. A man on each limb and he had no chance to fight back. He yelled as the van door closed but too late then.

A hand on his mouth, another pinching his nose shut and he got the message right quick.

A few seconds later and he was face down on the van floor, hands cuffed behind him, someone's weight across his legs, and a voice saying "Shut up and behave or we'll make you". He was in no position to think the voice was lying so he shut up and behaved. Better to be awake and undamaged when he had more of a chance to fight.

Thank God, he thought, that they were wearing balaclavas. That meant they cared if he saw their faces, and *that* meant this was probably not a one way ride.

He was no Sherlock Holmes, he had no idea which bits of London they were travelling through. No distinctive sounds or smells, and enough turns they were probably deliberately confusing him. He did have some idea they had crossed the river, but that was about it.

They hadn't blindfolded him so he might get a chance when he got out to see something. He'd take it if it came. Any information is useful information.

The van stopped, sound of something like a large door opening, van moved again, stopped again. He was manhandled out of the van into a largish garage-like space. Old brickwork with additions, warehouse?

He saw an unusual car out of the corner of his eye... and pretended to trip. He twisted out of their hands and fell to the ground (which hurt, doing this with your hands cuffed behind you is not recommended!) and managed to roll enough to see more of the space. A proper (as in small and old) Mini Cooper with an original registration plate (WYH324F, he must remember that) and not covered in dust, so probably driven regularly or at least recently. Nothing else of interest and he couldn't see the van's plates. Probably borrowed or stolen anyway.

They jerked him to his feet and one of them (who he'd knocked off balance as he'd gone down) said "Smart bastard eh?" and hit him a good one in the gut. He fell again, but they held onto him this time wrenching his shoulders into the bargain. "Ease up!" said the one who had told him to shut up earlier "Time enough for that later."

He wondered if that was the good news or the bad news.

Curling over his abused stomach he was shuffled into a lift and up. Lift was newer than the brickwork, so definitely refurbished.

He kept looking where he could. Probably commercial building, lift looked to be older than the warehouse-into-expensive-flats fad and was fairly basic.

Through an office building type corridor into a room with your average interrogation setup: table and a chair in front of it. He was not surprised given his method of getting here, but what an earth could they want from a Serious Crimes cop? He wasn't Gangs, he wasn't Customs, he wasn't on any fancy task force. The most he could tell them was who was going to win the Police vs Fire Brigade football series this season - it wasn't going to be the coppers, what a shower! - and he didn't think there was a fortune to be made from inside information on that.

They shoved him into the chair, and one of them stayed behind him, hand gripping his hair to keep him in place. It made Lestrade's skin crawl.

Voices outside turned into voices inside as two men came in. Thirties, reasonably fit, one blond and in tshirt and jeans, one brown haired with a rather regrettable red tie. Blondie sounded like your average London thug but RedTie was American.

What was an American doing in all this then, whatever this was? Their faces were bare, that wasn't good, not good at all.

Blondie took the lead "Right copper, you are going to be a film star, make a little video for us."

Lestrade processed that. He was a hostage? Who was the video for then?

"You are going to tell Mycroft Holmes that unless he does what we tell him to, we will send you back to him. One piece at a time"

Holy shit! His heart sped up, his fingers clenched into fists. It was something they had discussed of course, but there's a big difference between theory and reality in the shape of a knife on a table too damn close to you right now.

The man behind him fumbled and removed the cuffs as RedTie set up the camera. Three to one and the van crew still around for all he knew, no point in playing silly buggers. Go with it for now, try and get some information out. Would they give him a script or could he improvise?

The thug in the balaclava held the knife against his right little finger as the camera started rolling.

--------------------

He watched the camera and its recording leave, feeling still wound up and no way to relax. That was his last hope of rescue walking out the door. Mycroft Holmes was good but he wasn't superhuman, there would be no clues as to where he'd gone. Tracking the van would be impossible given CCTV focused on footpaths not roads.

RedTie was chatting to Blondie over by the door, he strained but couldn't hear much at all and they mumbled so no lipreading. The cuffs were back on, without his jacket he was feeling the cold a little.

Blondie came back and settled against the desk. "Right, now that's out of the way, part two. You have some questions to answer copper."

Lestrade just looked at him. Waiting. Silence is always best in interviews. THe interrogator's job is to get the interviewee talking and talking without thinking. The interviewee is always better off saying nothing at all.

"Just in case you are feeling all manly and stoic...."

Something like a red hot iron punched him in the ribs and he yelped, rocking sideways, held in place by a hand in his hair and his arms looped around the chair back. Panting in shock he saw his attacker step into view, a tube in his hand. A fucking cattle prod?

"Right, now you understand... Tell us about Mycroft Holmes. Specifically about the security arrangements at his home and at his new offices."

"Oh hell" he thought. That was going to be tricky. He didn't know if he had it in him to be stoically silent given what he'd just experienced especially as that was probably just the start. And if he tried to lie or give them half truths he wouldn't keep them straight.

But there might be another way... He'd read a book ages ago about some bod with an allergy to truth drugs: they made him free associate wildly. He remembered thinking at the time that he was glad none of his interviewees had thought of doing that because it would make life bloody hard for the copper running the show.

His thinking obviously took too much time because he copped another blast.

Ah well, in for a penny in for a pound...

"Homes hardly worth it, rents are high but mortgages higher, interest rates are crap, why is there so much pigeon crap in London? Why is there so much crap in the Yard, fourteen meetings last week and none of them worth my time do you know it takes 15 minutes to get served in the canteen and they can't make custard worth a damn but insist on making spotted dick and that dick Halford has been making everyone's life miserable now he's gone off to some think tank I reckon a tank would be the perfect London cop car just drive over those plonkers parked in-"

That's when another jolt hit him! OK, they were going to do that anyway, he was on a roll!

"jolt is a drink it has heaps of caffeine but tastes like shit and back to pigeons or maybe bloody Arsenal you'd think after this many years they'd know not to spend millions on some bloody striker who couldn't hit the goal from inside the net and it's a crying shame that all the best ones have gone to Europe overpaid sissies did you see-"

He was stopped by a hand over his mouth, at least this time without pinching his nostrils too.

Blondie came forward looking thunderous.

"So, comedian eh? Well, we'll give you a bit of time to think about your routine."

He was jerked to his feet and his shirt ripped open and dragged down his arms as the cuffs came off. A push forward, a foot to his knee so he dropped down, and within a few seconds they had him almost kneeling with his hands tied to the far side of the table, the sharp table edge digging painfully into his ribs, and his knees tied apart so they were not resting on the ground. His whole weight was on that sharp table edge and it was excruciating. He tried to shift to relieve it but the ropes held him right where he was.

They said nothing, just left him like that. Until all he could focus on was the pain in his ribs.

Suddenly Blondie pulled his head back "OK smartarse. How do you like that? Now, you tell me about the security at Holme's place in St Johns Wood."

Lestrade couldn't think, the strain on his ribs and his legs was horrific. If he let his thighs relax he'd pull half a dozen muscles but had no idea how long he could keep them tensed.

He tried to speak but all that came out was a whine. Blondie greeted
that with a knuckle on the pressure point under his ear which he couldn't escape and he almost howled with the shock of it, it went right through his head.

The finger through his skull finally went away and he panted trying to cope. Blondie said nothing, just sauntered around the table and looked at him. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Letting him stew.

"You'll be there as long as I please copper, and it won't get any easier. So tell me about the security".

He could hear his breath sobbing in his throat. He felt such a wimp, but this was one of the most painful things he'd experienced. A blow is done and past, this just kept on. And he could feel his thighs straining and the groin muscles starting to pull, lines of pain signalling damage.

He was no hero. He was in his mid-forties, fit enough from squash but not hard, not at all. No TV hero running about with guns and taking a beating every episode. This hurt, it would sound mild if he told someone about it but it hurt, it hurt, it hurt.

For some reason he started up again, focusing on the words: "security is the householder's responsibility but do the buggers care of course they don't key under the mat like this was the thirties they had amazing bikes in the thirties but they had no brakes you know the record holding Brough Superior bike did 150 on the Pendine sands with no front brake balls of bloody brass the rider but brass tarnishes which is how you tell gold rings aren't I saw this pikey pulling the ring trick down the Embankment and people fell for it, one born every minute a minute is a long time when I'm 64 which isn't that far off these days but I'd like to be under the sea I did wonder about the Thames division but i get cold and wet enough as it is..."

The words helped. He could just keep thinking about what was spewing out of his mouth and not the line of white hot pain along his chest and the lesser but growing pain in his legs. Or the ropes cutting into his wrists and knees, no not those, talk! talk!

"...bugger all on telly which is a good thing hasn't been anything on since that dinosaurs thing why does everyone think Anderson is into dinosaurs anyway? Bet they make lousy eating and I've probably eaten one at that cafe in Houndsditch I swear if the meat was any older it could only be served as primordial soup, soup soup of the evening beautiful soup I've never met a walrus but I've met carpenters..."

He didn't know if the words were even audible, he wasn't trying to be understood, he just wanted to take his mind off the pain.

Another jolt with the prod, the startle more than the shock relaxed the tension in his legs and he felt something tear. A horrible "broken! broken! take the pressure off, broken!" pain but he couldn't take the pressure off and he was broken! broken!

Words, argument, agreement, maybe. He didn't care, he was not able to focus on anything but what he was saying because then he'd have to think about how much he hurt.

Suddenly his knees were released and someone pushed him up so he was standing leant over the table but no longer with all his weight on the sharp edge. The relief was so wonderful he almost moaned with delight.

He tried to get his breathing under control as they got him back into the chair, hands cuffed behind again and a couple of ropes around his legs.

RedTie produced a glass of water and held it to his lips. He thought about refusing it for a moment but who knows when he'd get more and there were plenty of ways they could get drugs into him. If he assumed it was drugged then he could be on the alert for effects.

So he drank it, and drugged or not it tasted damned good. "Okay, I can give you more later. Don't push him so much, I can't hold him back if you do."

So that's what was going on. Someone should tell them that "good cop bad cop" only works if the subject doesn't know it's happening. Rather stupid game to play on a cop then, but maybe they didn't know any other?

"Look, he'll just start up again. He'd got all the time in the world, he'll break you eventually."

Lestrade tested... "I need to piss."

"Not yet, you tell me something useful and I can take you to the bathroom". OK, no go. Conserve strength, he should play along with good cop but that needed thought and he had none.

He sat there quietly for as long as they'd let him, then the questions started again. "How does Holmes vary his routes, is it random or is it to a pattern?"

And so he started up again, taking a perverse pleasure in it. Better to be beaten up for doing something than for not doing something!

"Patterns are for knitting or so I'm told my old sergeant used to knit back in southwark you wouldn't call him on it though he would whack you into the wall then send you into the stews on night shift, shift work sucks everyone will tell you that epecially rolling shifts rolling drunk I can't remember the last time I was that pissed damn I need to piss if I do now it's all your fault fault lines in modern policing was one of the most boring presentations I ever sat through and the chair was ready for the tip sherlock's place is a tip I dunno why because he's so neat in himself but he lives in a pigsty i wonder why it is a sty and not a pen, the yanks say pen I think, I think therefore I am that was some philosopher according to Monty Python it was about the drink and I could do with a beer and-"

Blondie cursed and Lestrade suspected he was about to cop it again but RedTie put up a hand. "Leave him for now, we'll check in and report. Plenty of time to soften him up, we need him more or less in one piece at the moment."

Well that was encouraging, but for how long?

He relaxed as well as he could and tried to zone out. Not easy given the burns and bruises.

Best just work on his breathing.

=======================

There were three people crowded around one laptop at Baker St, watching the video as it streamed its chilling message into the room.

Mycroft had debated who he should tell, he didn't want a flap about this as the more people involved the more chance for a stupid and fatal mistake. He would need Sherlock and the Doctor came as part of that package. But he would not involve any of his department, because they would quite rightly take over and refuse him any say in it at all. But if he and his brother couldn't find Lestrade, the entire department would do no better.

Sherlock reached out to replay the video again.

"Watch his head. Just before he says some words he's giving that odd tic."

Mycroft paused it "Except here. But then his right index finger is moving. First letter of the word and a number?"

"That would make it... W for which, Y for you, H for help, then... three, two, four, then... a long wait and F for follow. WYH324F."

"It's a registration number." said Watson "An old one, 1960s."

Mycroft nodded, started to send a text and stopped, his face suddenly white. At the Doctor's enquiring look he said "I would normally ask the Inspector to chase it for me."

"It's a Mini Cooper, 1967, registered to one Felix Manton, registered address in Finsbury." said an irritated Sherlock from over by his own laptop "Really Mycroft you are letting emotions get in the way."

Sherlock returned to stabbing at the keyboard muttering. "Hosted in Belarus, no just proxied through there, has to be a botnet I can jump on, yes! there, alright, here's the host, now how can I get logs, alright there, now that's back through a French router, there's the other end of the tunnel, good, right! London ISP, that's most of a whole class B how have they netted it, do they bother, what does this router say, I hate appliances... "

"Aha! It was uploaded from somewhere in London, south of the river. Probably one of Brixton or Southwark exchanges or a sub station off those. Best I can do."

"We need more" said Mycroft. "And I need to know the Inspector is... alive. I will email their drop address and ask for a phone call. Be ready to track it Sherlock. May I use your number Doctor? For obvious reasons I will not give them mine".

John was not sure he wanted a bunch of finger-severing kidnappers to have his number either, but he could see Mycroft's point.

Email sent, they waited in an uncomfortable silence, broken by Sherlock's occasional bursts of keyboard activity and once by John making tea. Which nobody drank.

John's phone going off startled them all. That meant even Sherlock was showing the strain.

Number blocked, not surprising thought John as he passed it to Mycroft.

"Holmes. Your...desires are quite clear. Before I can even consider them I must speak to Inspector Lestrade. No, that is not negotiable, and I will not engage in any discussions until I have spoken to him. Very well, within half an hour."

Half an hour is a very long time when there is nothing to do but wait.

No one jumped when the phone went for a second time.

============

After some indeterminate time with him staring at the wall and trying to find some way to sit that didn't hurt, they came back.

RedTie put a phone on the desk, and plugged it in. Picked up the handset said "Okay, transfer it" pushed a button and put the handset down.

"Inspector? Are you there?"

"Mr Holmes?"

"Inspector, are you all right?"

"I'm a bit bashed around the edges but mostly OK. Look I'm sorry, four of them jumped me on the Euston Road and had me in a van before I knew what happened. "

"That's quite all right Inspector, you couldn't guard against that."

He realised that Mycroft was speaking more slowly than usual, and with longish pauses at the beginning of sentences. Tracing the call? He followed suit, trying to slow down without it being obvious.

"Slammed into a van and into some bloke's fixed up warehouse, I should have!"

"Calm yourself Inspector. I am negotiating with them, it is part of the agreement that you are not harmed."

"Listen, they have been asking me about you, they want to know..."

Blondie slapped a hand over his mouth and punched him in the gut. Message received, don't tell Holmes what they wanted to know.

"He'll be OK if he behaves himself." That was Blondie.

"Inspector? Let him speak."

Lestrade was panting from the shock of the punch but got his breathing mostly under control before he answered."I remember what we talked about. I know what you have to do."

Mycroft surprised him.

"It doesn't matter what we said. " A pause as though the speaker was thinking "Greg! Listen to me! Tell them what they want to know. I can contain the difficulties. I will work with them, forget what we said. "

"That's enough" said RedTie and slammed the handset back into the cradle. "Should have stopped that earlier, they were tracing it! "

"Nah" said Blondie "I have fixed that up at the exchange. They'll trace it to the general area but no further."

Lestrade's heart sank. So much for that then. Sherlock might manage to get around a block, but not for some time. Last hope gone.

"So... your poncy loverboy says to co-operate eh? You can start by telling us about the security in St John's Wood"

Lestrade Looked at him, trying to work out what was safe and what wasn't. Nothing was. He didn't have it in him to spin lies, and not give a grain of truth. He had to trust that help was coming. And that they wouldn't kill him yet.

He sat there, saying nothing.

"What, you aren't going to do what he says either? You must be right
fun in bed!"

He wanted to swear and scream and strangle the bastard. He should do another round of nonsense but instead he just looked at Blondie and said "He will kill you. If I don't do it first. Now fuck off."

He got another slam of the prod for that, and collapsed against the restraints breathing raggedly with his heart galloping and his vision blurring.

=================

Mycroft stayed frozen in place when the call ended, Sherlock ignored everyone in favour of his laptop screen.

"Mr Holmes? " asked John rather diffidently "are you going to go along with them?"

Holmes's face was quite grim. "No Dr Watson, I will not. We.. the Inspector and I... have discussed this scenario, we agreed that I could not compromise my position in this situation. He understands that. So it is quite important that we find him. They will have asked him about my security, he won't tell them anything, he knows not to believe what I said. But we must find him before they break him. Anyone can be broken. Given time."

John Watson had once said that Mycroft didn't look very frightening. He did now. Very frightening indeed.

Sherlock erupted in frustration: "Damn! They have somehow protected the call. I can't trace it to a specific address, just a subexchange in Southwark. Union Street."

Mycroft hunched over his own keyboard. "Southwark? This Manton has a telephone account at premises in Sawyer Street which appear to be a warehouse re-furbished as office space. Which would fit something the Inspector said. Is that within your area?"

"Yes, that would fit."

"Well" said Mycroft "That seems to be the only lead we have, so we will use it. Sherlock, find a building plan please. The SAS team will need it."

Mycroft picked up his phone, dialled, and began to speak as he walked into the kitchen. "Ah hello Marcus. How are you? And Ella? Oh that's good, the cold can be so treacherous. I have a small job I need done, perhaps your people can help?"

==============

"Face it, the prod's not working. Put him on ice. See if that makes him more amenable. We have time." That was RedTie from over behind him somewhere.

They untied him, dragged him out and along and into a small room, concrete on the floor and rather obviously no connection with any heating system.

His legs were kicked from under him, and in a few short seconds he was naked face down with his hands cuffed behind him palms out so the strain on his shoulders and wrists was phenomenal. His legs spread and tied to something, he couldn't move or roll or ease anything at all. The floor
was cold...

"Right smartarse" that was Blondie "you can hang about here for a while. Hope your heart's in good nick. Oh and have something to remember me by!"

The something was lines of fire across his legs and back as Blondie hit him with something like a length of heavy cable. He jerked and yelped with each blow, stoic be damned!

Then it got worse because Blondie threw a bucket of water over him as he left.

It didn't take long to be unsupportable. His shoulders were the only warm part of him as they burned with strain, matching the bright lines of pain in his wrists as the cuffs bit. The fire of the blows had faded to be replaced with a deep ache. He was shivering as the evaporating water chilled him and the cold floor leached any warmth that was left.

Then his legs started cramping.

It felt like his muscles were tearing loose as the ropes held his legs straight, he heard himself give a stuttering whine that just went on and on.

He wished he could pass out, didn't people with hypothermia feel all relaxed and happy? Not happening. He was cold and everything hurt with that horrible broken! broken! pain. His breath sobbed in and out, each breath drawing in more cold air.

Distraction, keep it together, the more you think the more it hurts...

"Once two is two. Two twos are four. Three twos are six. Four twos are eight."

He kept going, he'd always loved the six times for some reason, the pleasing symmetry of the even numbers. There was something about six followed by the anarchy of seven. He stumbled over the nine times as he'd always done, got through the tonguetwisting of twelve. He tried to continue with thirteen but that needed arithmetic and it wasn't happening.

So he started again.

====================

They congregated a short distance from the target. Five tough looking bastards in what looks like military kit trying to look civilian and three civilians trying to look like they weren't really with the tough bods form a group that is rather obvious. Here's hoping no one was keeping a lookout.

"I realise it makes it more difficult Captain, but it is important that we keep as many of them alive as possible. They hold a hostage and it isn't certain this is where he is. Besides, I will need to... obtain information."

Sherlock materialised (no one had noticed him leave except the Doctor and he'd kept quiet) to say he'd picked the locks front and back and were they going to stand there all day?

It took far too long to find Lestrade, tucked into a horrible bare room off a small corridor. Mycroft was absolutely frantic by they time they did, umbrella tapping and his voice more and more sarcastic and he'd even loosened his tie.

It was John who found him, calling out "Jesus! In here!" which brought Mycroft at the closest to a run anyone had ever seen. He dropped to his knees beside the blue whimpering figure on the floor then snapped "Get those damn cuffs off!"

John fetched Sherlock from a room where he was investigating a computer setup, he had the locks open in seconds.

John held Lestrade's arms where they were, meeting Mycroft's startled and affronted gaze. "They'll hurt badly when they move. Be prepared. We have to warm him up, and that will hurt too."

But what hurt more was that he didn't recognise them. As they released him he gave a rasping howl of pain but his eyes didn't focus and a stream of almost inaudible nonsense spewed from his lips.

Mycroft Holmes sat on the floor and gathered Lestrade into his arms wrapping his greatcoat around them both, hugging the man into his own warmth.

"You are safe now Inspector, it is all right you are safe now. It is all right, we are here, you are safe now. "

The horrible rambling stopped as Lestrade's eyes finally focused.

"I didn't.... Didn't..."

"I know Inspector, you never would."

"We have to get him to a warmer room" that was the Doctor, bending down to help Mycroft get the bruised and shivering wreck up off the floor. Trying (and mostly failing) to avoid the bruises and burns on ribs and legs and back they carried him to an nearby carpeted office and set the heating as high as it would go.

There they set him on the floor, with a jacketless Mycroft wrapped instantly around him, both covered in Mycroft's greatcoat. Lestrade tried not to make a sound as Mycroft settled his hold unable to avoid hurting Lestrade as he did so.

John disappeared for a few moments, returning with a steaming mug and a curtain. He wrapped the cloth around where the coat didn't reach and gave Mycroft the mug,

"Give him that, slowly. It will help him warm up. Give him these when he's had a few sips of the water."

Gradually Lestrade's colour returned as he relaxed into the warmth, burrowing into into the arms around him.

The SAS commander popped his head into the room ignoring the sight with admirable discipline. "Mr Holmes Sir? Looks like they are all hired muscle, some locals and one American who probably works for one of the American mercenary outfits like Xe. I don't think he's CIA but you might want to confirm that."

"Thank you Captain. I'll follow that up. Meanwhile please arrange for them all to be taken to the secure facility. At some point I will wish to... talk to them."

Sherlock appeared again to say "They've got some nice malware on their computers, quite elegant. Also quite a lot of correspondence with all sorts of interesting people in Russia and India."

"Thank you Sherlock. File the encryption keys in the usual place. Please don't release any of your variations of their software onto the internet, it really does make things difficult when you do that."

Lestrade was still shivering and everything still hurt. But he didn't mind. He was happy where he was....

Then the Doctor spoke up after inspecting the mess the cuffs had made of his wrists, one arm out from the enveloping warmth at a time. "We should get him to hospital, get him looked over."

Mycroft shook his head "No, he will do perfectly well at home. Please do accompany us Doctor, Sherlock will assist me in carrying the Inspector."

"No!" said Lestrade, attempting to struggle up from Mycroft's embrace without much success as abused cramping muscles made themselves felt and his big clumsy feet were on fire with pins and needles. "I will walk out of here on my own two feet!"

"Of course Inspector. Forgive me. We will wait until you are able to walk."

Wrapped in Mycroft's coat, he made it down to the garage and into the car.

Under his own steam.

Just.

====================

Much later he was drowsing in bed, warm and sleepy from shower and painkillers and hot food. He was wrapped around Mycroft Holmes, his head on Mycroft's chest and Mycroft's arm strong and warm and comforting wrapped around him in turn.

"Do I want to know how close it was?" he said drowsily.

"Too close as far as I am concerned. It took too long to get the assault team in place. "

"I nearly gave up hope when they said the trace was blocked. I couldn't lead them on like you wanted, I was just too out of it."

Mycroft kept himself from tensing by sheer effort of will.

"I just wanted you to know that I was going to do as we had decided. That I couldn't negotiate but that I would do everything I could to find you."

"I realised in the middle of the call... we had talked about it, but we hadn't set up a code. I didn't know what you were thinking, I was almost scared you would give in... But you called me Greg and I knew."

"It's all over. We wouldn't have found you without that registration number, not in time. You did everything right. I knew you would understand my message. Go to sleep, it's all over."

Mycroft stroked his arm and back, gentling him to sleep.

He knew his Inspector was smart enough to realise what the name had meant. After all, he only called him Greg in certain specific circumstances...

He leant forward and kissed the sleeping head "Goodnight Greg."

Fic: A Reliable Man. Part Six: Substitute

randomly_rusted — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 07:13:46 GMT

Summary: Even when it's someone else's case, if Sherlock is involved Lestrade will be too.

Rating: PG-13

Timeline: Between Study in Pink and The Blind Banker

Word Count: 3800

Type: Gen,

(yes I know I said Part 5 was the final. I was strongly encouraged to do more.)

Once more the creative elfbert came to my rescue with much biffo and some insights into Lestrade not coping.

Part One: First Encounter

Part Two: The first time he saw the car

Interlude in a Blue Suit

Part Three:Irresistable Force and Immovable Object

Part Four: Well of Courage

Part Five: Power Corrupts

====================

Lestrade had barely got halfway across the floor to his office when he heard Moe bellow "Lestrade! Get your arse in here"

DCI Andy "Moe" Macdonald was a pretty hands off manager as a rule, saying "You've been around long enough to know your job, don't need me to wipe your nose for you" and letting him get on with it.

So something that had Moe bellowing across the room was important and Lestrade got his arse in there pretty damn smart.

In Moe's office was DI Halford looking upset, a couple of case files, and an atmosphere of "shit aimed at fan and already in transit" that just about choked you.

"Right. That pet weirdo of yours has been fouling up one of Halford's jobs to the point we have no chance of a result. And we need one because it's just the sort of twisted thing the tabloids will pick up unless some footballer's wife is found in the wrong bed. So you take it and you sort your weirdo out and make sure he doesn't bother anyone else. Clear?"

Lestrade looked at Halford who was obviously Not Coping With Sherlock. He could understand that, Coping With Sherlock was not easy for anyone and years of experience was no guarantee.

He wanted to say "Do Halford good to learn to cope, he's been coasting too long" but Moe was no fool and knew Halford was marginal. OK on the routine simple stuff, but hopeless on anything tricky. What he was doing in Serious Crimes was anyone's guess.

So he gave the only possible answer which was "Yes Sir", took possession of the files and waited for Halford to have his whinge in the guise of briefing him.

He wasn't disappointed.

Seems that Sherlock had barged in, been warned off, broke in to the site after Halford left, been chased off again barely escaping arrest, had possibly nicked something, had been texting all and sundry with insults and deductions and was generally driving Halford mad. (not hard thought Lestrade...)

As Lestrade sat through the diatribe he cast a weather eye on Moe to see if the DCI was angry or amused. Amused if he was reading correctly. That was a relief, if Moe decided he needed to be a hands on manager you knew all about it. He escaped as soon as he could.

He sorted through the file - at least Halford was comprehensive, he'd even recorded the texts - and pondered. Sherlock was on about a wine bottle with an expensive label, which Halford had dismissed.

What else... not much. Sherlock had definitely seen more than he was letting on, but Halford had held things back too. That notepad for example. Idiot. If the doodle was important Sherlock would decipher it in ten seconds flat, so far none of Halford's people had a clue about it.

Lord knows why Halford had been given this job. Probably because they hadn't seen the connection to the minor celebs until the body had been identified. Lestrade wondered if that was what had caught Sherlock's interest but probably not. Celebs were not his thing. He'd probably just seen the crime tape and decided to stick his nose in because he was bored.

Lestrade preferred to go to Sherlock rather than Sherlock coming to the Yard, fewer applications for stress leave that way.

Although now he had that Doctor fellow in tow, he seemed fractionally more stable. Still inclined to bait people with his deductions about their personal lives just to watch them squirm, but less inclined to yell said deductions to the room, and less inclined to wild gestures which was easier on the furniture. (Lestrade had been fond of that chair, the replacement was definitely not as good.)

Lestrade pulled out his phone.

I have file and evidence for case with wine bottle. - GL

The answer came back quick as thought.

bring milk - SH

Lestrade stopped by the evidence locker to sign for the notepad and a few other things from the crime scene Sherlock wouldn't have seen then headed off to pick up milk. And biscuits. And teabags. Voice of experience that.

He took an unmarked car, not wanting to travel on the tube with evidence. Not as easy to lose as a USB stick but why take chances?

Parking the car more or less nearby he texted to Sherlock to let him in, toted the bag and file up the stairs, and wandered in to 221b.

Sherlock was draped over the couch, hands steepled in his "Genius thinking, do not disturb" pose.

The Doctor was putting a laptop down on the table, carefully moving various Things that Lestrade knew better than to enquire about.

Sherlock's eyes snapped open at his entrance. Leaping up from the couch with a "hah!" of glee he snatched the evidence bag from Lestrade's hand and dropped crosslegged to the floor to paw through the contents.

Lestrade handed the other bag to the Doctor who received it with thanks and a roll of the eye in Sherlock's general direction and went off to the kitchen. Tea might be forthcoming, you never knew.

"Boring! Not relevant!" Sherlock declared, tossing items Lestrade had signed for over his shoulder. "Aha!" that was the notepad, Lestrade congratulated himself on spotting that was the big one. "Printer's ink smudge, was there some on the corpse's thumb?" Lestrade checked the autopsy report "Yes, at least a blue smudge on the thumb, they don't know what it was".

"Incompetents!" was the answer.

Sherlock examined the doodle on the notepad, turning it around, but who knew what upside down or sideways was on a bunch of squiggles and a square or two?

"It's an address of course" said Sherlock, the "of course" was part of the ritual. "No way" said Lestrade, folding his arms. Which was what he was supposed to say. To give Sherlock a reason to show off.

"This rectangle with the marks is a sketch outline of a wine label, so it's to do with the forged label on the bottle in the room, they match up. This rectangle with the squiggles on the side and the top is a candle, the circle means the flame or wick, not the whole candle. That's a tree leaf. He wanted to note the address but didn't want to write it down so he made a pictogram"

"Oh come on. Might as well say it's a copy of something in the Tate!" The next step in the ritual, disbelief. Which should be met by pronouncement then action.

Sherlock had been frantically working the phone keypad while pontificating. "Wick Lane, Poplar. Storage buildings to lease. That's where they are storing the counterfeit wines before sending them to wine merchants. The lines here are the number, 31, that will be a building not a room"

So that's what this was about, Lestrade thought. Money in that game, but murder?

Watson came out with the steaming cups just as Sherlock shot to his feet. "Come on John, time to go!"

The Doctor looked resigned to losing his cuppa. Clearly it hadn't taken long to get him accustomed to Sherlock's ways.

"I can give you a lift" said Lestrade, knowing the answer.

"Not in a police car! Not even an unmarked one!"

Which wasn't true, he'd been in both kinds before when it suited him. Or when Lestrade insisted, but doing that had consequences so he only did it when it was important. He still made the offer though, if only because sometimes Sherlock accepted.

"I'll meet you there" Lestrade said to the vanishing backs as he gathered up his scattered pieces of evidence. And snaffled half a cup or so of tea as he did so and a couple of the cream biscuits. He'd brought them after all.

================

Lestrade approached the building, no one around apparently which was odd for a weekday afternoon. Maybe it was just for storage?

No sign of Sherlock or the Doctor which meant they were in there somewhere. Side door probably and don't ask how they'd got in, best not to know. THe whole evidence chain was irretrievably wrecked anyway, so here's hoping there was going to be enough here to mean they could skate over the illegalities when it came to putting it in front of the CPS.

John Watson had followed Sherlock into the warehouse with no thought of trouble because Sherlock had no thought of trouble. And so far there had been none. Just boxes of wine stacked on pallets, some boxes opened and bottles lying about.

Sherlock jumped to the nearest bottle checking his phone. "See John! There's a mistake in the label, the colour registration is off here, and here, here's the correct label from a Sotheby's auction."

He darted through the room tearing at boxes "The whole lot is worthless. That's why the dead body, he organised the labels this end, see there's the pack of them over there! None of this can be sold, if the labels were right these counterfeits would be worth thousands."

Suddenly a yell "Hey, what the fuck! Marky get him!"

Two men ran at them from the back of the building, one pulling a knife as he ran.

Sherlock dodged the first slice but was hemmed in by the wine boxes nearly tripping as his foot was caught by a pallet corner and then he was grabbed by the second, thankfully unarmed, man.

John lunged towards the melee, with the intention of at least distracting the one with the knife to even out the odds when a noise from the side made him spin, ready for more assailants. Instead he saw Lestrade charging in from the side door yelling "Police!" Lestrade crashed into the nearest man, shoved him face-first into some nearby boxes, grabbed him by the hair, pulling him off balance as he flailed wildly with the knife, and dropped him with a savage punch to the kidneys.

John would never have picked Lestrade for a dirty fighter but he was a bloody effective one. The man rolled into a ball, knife forgotten on the floor, groaning.

Sherlock had taken advantage of the surprise and flipped his remaining assailant into the wall head first, then, whilst he was still dazed, buried his knee in the man's groin. John turned to see who was left in the fight just in time to half-yell a warning as Lestrade was almost blindsided by someone with a wine bottle - barely managing to get an arm up to protect his head, wine and glass expoding everywhere as the bottle shattered.

Lestrade pivoted clumsily and kicked out at his attacker, John clubbed his two fists into the man's neck and finished the job. The last man - the one who had yelled? - faltered, then took to his heels.

Lestrade saw him go and tried to follow, tripping over the knifeman and extending his hand to catch himself. As it landed on the wine boxes he let out a choked scream and fell in a twist on top of the thug he'd tripped over.

John realised with horror that the red all over Lestrade's shirt and the floor and the boxes wasn't all red wine.

Lestrade struggled up with his weight still on the groaning knifeman, holding his torn and bleeding arm. "Someone secure these bastards before they start up again!" he barked and John found himself instinctively obeying the command, grabbing the man's own belt to secure the knifeman then his own for the one he'd punched. Sherlock's one was dead to the world.

He returned to a whitefaced Lestrade, helping him to a more comfortable position against some boxes and looking at the damage.

John's hands were covered in Lestrade's blood, he froze for a moment remembering sand and blood and too many dead men...

Then his training took over, he pressed onto the wound trying to get the edges together. He could see the shining white of bone, and too much blood but not much else in this light. Which got darker "Out of the light Sherlock, and give me your belt!

Wordlessly Sherlock handed him the belt, and he set a torniquet to try and slow the bleeding. "Need something to bandage it, a towel or a shirt or something!" Lestrade was trying hard to make no noise, just the occasional little whining sound. John was as gentle as he could be, but was still hurting Lestrade with every movement.

Muttering his thanks as a scarf fell into his hands he wrapped the bloody mess as well as he could, lifting the arm up still applying pressure. Too much blood soaking through all over everything. Lestrade was looking shocky but fighting it.

After a moment or two to gather his strength Lestrade shifted, eased his phone out with his good hand, and called the Yard. "Donovan? Lestrade, I'm at a storage place in Wick Lane, Poplar, number 31. You'll see a pool car out the front. We've got some injured thugs to process, and a bunch of evidence to deal with. May as well bring some forensics techs to go over for prints, doubt we'll get any but do it anyway."

John realised he wasn't going to say anything about his own injury, stupid damn man. So snatched the phone and barked into it: "Sergeant! This is John Watson, Your DI's been injured and needs an ambulance quick smart! Serious tendon and muscle damage, he needs surgery as soon as we can get him in."

"Watson? The Doctor? Ahh.. right, ordering ambulance now, should be there soon." He heard her yelling to someone "The boss is down! Get an ambulance to this address, get a move on!"

John gave the phone back to Lestrade who didn't have the energy to even scowl at him.

===============

Lestrade had only been here two days and already was sick of the bed, sick of the damn cast, and really just generally pissed off.

The doc had been quite clear: torn tendons did not heal well if you used them and the graft had been a tricky job. If Lestrade wanted the use of his hand then the cast was on from fingertips to elbow till he damn well said it was coming off. And he was staying in bed until the foot they'd taken the graft from was ready to bear his weight.

The mild concussion was just another complication.

He'd had bad dreams the first night, courtesy of the concussion and the anaesthetic and the painkillers. He only clearly remembered bits of one, seeing Mycroft Holmes's face fading in an out of sight. Figures... He was trapped by this damn cast and in pain, what else would he dream of?

Well if that's what morphine does, Sherlock can have it, Lestrade would stick to beer.

Moe had come in once he'd been cleared for visitors, all jolly and Moe-like. "So you jammy bastard! You've scored four whole weeks recovery leave with more subject to medical advice from your own surgeon. And not so much as a 'please explain' never mind a p745 in triplicate and a medical board."

"Thanks Moe, how did you swing that?"

"Wasn't me old son, someone on the ninth floor must have cancelled the order at the wine merchants and decided to pass on the favour which counts as a miracle in my book."

And in Lestrade's come to that.

"Anyway, your pet weirdo's being amazingly helpful, Halford's clearing it all up now. I'll send Gregson in later, get him up to speed on your current jobs and you tell your DS I want him back in one piece."

Lestrade grinned. Gregson had once tried to patronise Sally Donovan as a "woman of colour" and had been thoroughly and publically savaged for it. He'd been wary of her ever since. This was probably the DCI taking the opportunity to tell them both to get over it already.

"Well" said Moe "I'll see you in four weeks time. If your Holmes character turns up again I'll get Dimmock involved, could do with him out of my hair for a month!"

With that he slapped Lestrade on the shoulder and strode out telling his accompanying DC to get a wriggle on they had work to do and couldn't lie about here all day, leaving Lestrade immeasurably happier for the lightning visit.

A good antidote to the earlier appearance of one Dr John H. Watson which had been surprising and welcome, but disturbing too. He'd been worried about the injury and the possible consequences. Trying to be all upbeat and encouraging but the worry shone through. He'd managed to talk to the surgeon and what he wasn't saying was depressingly clear. Which hadn't helped Lestrade's mood any.

==============================

Life in the flat with one usable arm was not at all pretty. People from his team dropped in to help him with food now and then (mostly takeaway though Parker - or his partner, he didn't ask - was quite a decent cook) and he could manage most things with difficulty so it wasn't as if he was helpless.

Most things. He couldn't dress in anything but slops, shaving was spotty, putting on a jumper was an exercise in gymnastics and he'd tried for what seemed like hours to get the new jar of coffee open. He was frustrated, he was bored, he was climbing the bloody walls!

The knock on the door was a welcome distraction. No idea who it could be at this time of day but anything that wasn't the TV or a website was a godsend. He pulled his shirt down and answered the door.

Which was a mistake.

===================

Mycroft Holmes watched the inadequate footage from the tiny camera with concern. The man was clearly not coping: uneven stubble, sloppy clothing, unsuitable diet, little mental stimulation, body language of a man unhappy and in some pain. His sleep patterns were disturbed which wasn't surprising, he seemed to have reduced the dosage of his medication presumably not liking the side effects.

His people did seem to be helping as they could, which was also not surprising, loyalty went both ways.

But it was not enough.

If you had asked Mycroft the reason for his concern, he'd have smiled and said that DI Lestrade was important to Sherlock's wellbeing. (And would have totally ignored the fact that Sherlock had totally ignored Lestrade.)

He'd have said nothing about how the sight of Lestrade distressed and run down and in pain made him feel. Because feelings about Lestrade had caused him problems before, and he was not going to let that happen again.

=====================

Lestrade had once walked through that door into a nightmare, now the nightmare was walking through into him.

"May I come in Inspector?"

He wanted to say no, he wanted to slam the door and hide, but there was no hiding place. He wanted to say no, but what good would it do? If the bastard wanted in, he'd be in. So he took a step to the side in reluctant invitation, unconsciously hunching over his wounded arm to protect it.

Holmes strolled in, and surveyed the place. Lestrade had kept it as neat as he could, but he knew he'd been a bit slack.

He straightened up and looked Holmes in the eye. "What do you want?"

"I'm told you saved Sherlock from being stabbed Inspector. I wish to thank you for that"

Well that was the first time anyone had thanked him for saving Sherlock's skinny little arse, it was true. Sherlock hadn't. But there was no way Holmes was here just for that.

"It is a pity you were injured doing so."

"Sherlock has Doctor Watson to look after him now, so why do you care about a crippled detective? What are you here for?"

Holmes looked down his nose at him.

"You are not coping, are you Inspector. You find shaving difficult, uneven stubble indicates where you can't stretch the skin and so risk cutting yourself. Some of the crockery on the draining board is freshly chipped because you can't easily manage to wash it with one hand and you won't ask your visitors to help. Your kitchen drawer is partially out and the wood is damaged because you have tried using it as a vice to hold jars you wish to open, with minimal success."

Lestrade stared at him. Jolted out of his apathy by the sheer bloody cheek. "On top of everything else, that's all I need. Yes I know I'm bloody useless. Carved up by a shonky little chav because I was too slow and too stupid to see him. No one else with a bloody scratch on them, and me having to leave the cleanup to Halford who couldn't close a door properly let alone a bloody case."

"I can't even tie my own shoelaces! Having to ask people with better things to do to bloody well feed me, never mind everything else I can't manage! Crippled and no good to man or beast, don't need you to tell me that! And if this damn thing doesn't heal I'll be out of a job, or stuck with deskwork which is the same thing. So here I am going stir crazy and the last thing I need is for some posh bastard to come in here and rub my bloody nose in it! Go find some other tame copper for your damn fool brother!"

Lestrade ran out of steam and slumped into the nearest chair, wincing at the pain shooting through his arm.

Holmes waited until he had clearly finished before speaking again.

"It isn't a slur upon you Inspector. You manage surprisingly well for a man in your condition, your determination is impressive. But you won't manage another what...two weeks? more? like this."

"You need regular skilled help. To that end I will arrange a visiting nurse to come daily to do the things you can't."

He paused, as if remembering something "That is... I ahh.. request that I may arrange a visiting nurse."

Lestrade looked at him, gobsmacked. He couldn't quite reconcile the (admittedly grudging) request with the manipulative bastard he was dealing with.

His arm hurt, he was tired, he was dealing with an unpredictable man who waltzed in, insulted him, then offered him help worth about 300 quid a week as though it was nothing...

Lestrade hunched over his aching arm and said "Do what you want, I can't stop you."

He knew he was being bloody ungrateful, but he didn't want to be grateful to Mycroft Holmes.

The following day as he was luxuriating in clean hair and a shaven face, decent clothing, and a belly full of Neil-the-Nurse's excellent scrambled eggs he decided he had no idea what the posh bastard was up to, but as there was nothing he could do to stop the man he might as well enjoy it.

Part Seven: Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't

Fic: A Reliable Man. Part Five: Power Corrupts

randomly_rusted — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 19:50:23 GMT

Summary:
Mycroft Holmes under familiar stresses didn't make mistakes,
Mycroft Holmes under an unfamiliar stress made a mistake.
It wasn't a fatal mistake. It was worse than that.

Rating: PG-13
Warnings: dub-con, mentions of rape and sexual violence
Type: Gen
Word Count: 3100

~~The final part of this series of connected stories.~~

My thanks to elfbert and et_cetera55 for their invaluable help.

Part One: First Encounter

Part Two: The first time he saw the car

Interlude in a Blue Suit

Part Three:Irresistable Force and Immovable Object

Part Four: Well of Courage

==============================================

There were times Lestrade wished he was a detective in the Golden Age of detective fiction.

All right he'd be useless at his job while some amateur swanned in and sorted it all out before breakfast (and there are those who say that's the case now, but they don't say it where he can hear, not any more) but at least the corpses were decent.

As in fully clothed, and killed by some nice decent clean method. A poison that never caused the victim to choke on vomit or void themselves but just to keel over quiet as. Or an injection or perhaps a very neat knife wound that doesn't sent blood gouting everywhere.

They were usually boring middle aged people, often nasty ones because only bad people die in fiction. Boring middle aged people, fully clothed, and found somewhere clean.

They were not horribly young good looking boys, found in a muddy back lane, naked and covered in rope marks and welts and signs of rough sex (Lestrade is the sort of copper who won't call it rape until he knows it is) with the congested face of someone who has been choked or smothered, and a nose that had been sniffing something it shouldn't. ("Poppers" Anderson had said, "Coke affects the tissues differently, he's been on the Amyl I bet")

The usual way young pretty boys get rope marks and welts and a nose full of Amyl Nitrate is down at any one of a number of clubs in the seedier bits of London. Perfectly consensual (although Lestrade was willing to bet there was money involved) and not usually fatal.

They took the photographs and the swabs and the measurements, writing another rent boy's epitaph in police jargon on police forms.

"Bit of S&M gone wrong" said Donovan "but if it was one of the usual clubs why dump him here? Fair bit of travel from Soho or Leicester Square . And you'd think if they were close to the river they'd just dump him there."

She had a point. "No real way to tell if it was a club or a private effort. We'll have to hope those tatts get us somewhere."

Body lifted, the cops departed. Back to the Yard to sort what they had and start the long routine slog of identifying one of London's poor and unwanted and tracking his movements, hoping it would lead them to the heartless bastard who had let his cock overrule his common sense and had killed a man.

A Golden Age detective had a small cast of suspects and they were all living in the village. Lestrade had all of London to trawl through to get justice for some mother's son whose name he might never know.

==========

Mycroft Holmes looked at the photographs on his desk. Some were CCTV, some police forensic, some taken by operatives.

They showed a dead body and the police doing their routine investigation in a squalid back lane in White City. The squalid back lane where a senior treasury official had dumped his mistake.

Ridlington was now A Problem. He'd been on Mycroft's mind for some time,

Mycroft had been to Ridlington's club, it was important to know how these things worked and what people did there. A certain portion of the Establishment gravitated to it, and them thinking he did too was no bad thing. He had even tried some of it, and it was interesting the way any new experience was interesting, but he wouldn't do it again. Not like that, anyway. Not with paid partners. It might be interesting in a different way with someone who was more than a convenient body.

Power was a drug it is true. To some an aphrodisac, certainly creatures like Ridlingtom found arousal in dominating and controlling and,yes, hurting. Pain and fear was apparently a great deal of the attraction.

While it didn't affect their work, it was allowable. If it kept them happy then it was desirable they had the ability to feed their appetites for power and sex.

Mycroft saw power as more like food or water. It was required for him to live, but too much or wrongly handled and it was bad for you. He knew how to handle it properly which is why he was where he was.

Mycroft Holmes was relied upon by many people. People who trusted him to handle his power responsibly.

Ridlington was no longer reliable, no longer responsible. Ridlington was no longer suitable for his position, and must be dealt with.

He turned back to the crime scene pictures, looking at at one man in particular. At the face, at the way he stood and looked. At how he interacted with his people, dealing with the young one who hadn't coped with the sight. Mycroft looked perhaps a little longer than strictly necessary.

An interesting man. Intelligent and competent, but one who had been difficult, Mycroft Holmes didn't like difficult. Perhaps it was time he was dealt with.

(And if he remembered (while nearly asleep) an arm around him while he was afraid and hurting, a thing competent elder sons in certain kinds of families perhaps do not get enough of, the memory was gone in the morning.)

====================

Lestrade checked his progress notes and gave the rentboy job to Donovan. "Grab one of Stanner or Parker for your offsider, they've not got too much on. Start by following up the tatts, probably the rough trade end not the goth or prettyboy clubs."

He headed into his office confident she'd find out all there was to find. She knew her job.

Two days later she gave her first report.

"We haven't been able to place him in any of the clubs, Stanner didn't get any hits there. But I was able to find a sometime mate of the vic's. He confirmed our man - he called him Steve - was a rentboy between building site gigs, and had been seen lately with a posh bloke in an expensive car. He was into motors a bit so knew it was a top range Audi last year's registration, and had a couple of numbers of the plate so I'm sorting that with DMLA now."

Well that was better than he'd expected! "Excellent! What were the forensics?"

"They think 10-12 hours before he was found, so call it after 10pm. They incline towards murder rather than accidental death, it's all in the report here. Seems as if the killer had to have known the boy was in trouble well before the end. So likely he kept on deliberately. No identifiable DNA unfortunately."

She was calm in reciting it, but he could see she was upset. So was he come to that. He had no desire for S&M games himself, if others wanted to do it between consenting adults that was OK. This was different though, this was about buying some meat for something you wouldn't do to someone of your own class. Then dump it when done.

"Better than we had before. Let me know if you get a hit on the car. Meanwhile keep your feelers out for his movements and anyone else he might have been seeing. Take Michelson of Vice out for a drink on Friday and see if he can point you to any blokes who might talk a bit."

This was the sort of slow grinding work that was the core of the job. Couldn't write a best selling series about coppers trawling databases and chatting to rentboys over beer and twenty quid, but that's what policing looks like.

He checked his list and called Vikram in for a progress report on the knifing in Islington, and so the day went on.

At the end of his shift he headed straight home. He knew some of his people were off to the pub and a trivia night but they didn't need the boss there.

===========

He walked in the door and remembered terror seized him for a moment.

There on the sofa, bottle of whiskey on the table (this time open, and a single glass in evidence) was Mycroft Holmes.

Sleek, controlled, and in charge.

After the first shock, Lestrade fixed his body language right up. Loose shoulders, head up. Walk like a cop: take up room, measure up those around you, project confidence, competence, danger. Not tension or worry, don't give any indication you remember what happened. Don't give the bastard the satisfaction.

Mycroft watched the Inspector walk in. Tough, competent, every line of him deliberately so. He did look impressive, and Mycroft felt a little frisson of interest which he almost didn't recognise as such.

Holmes looked measuringly at him, there was something almost predatory in that gaze. Lestrade didn't like it at all.

"You are, I believe, engaged on the case of an.. unfortunate young man found dead in White City. You will not need to spend any more time on it"

Lestrade held onto his temper with both hands. "Are you telling me to stop investigating a crime?"

"I will see the matter is taken care of. You will get the name of the man involved in due course. Once he has... done the proper thing."

Lestrade processed that. Once the man had shot himself or gassed himself or whatever Holmes had arranged for him to do. The room got smaller, claustrophobic. Keep talking, don't stand here like an idiot! You are a copper, he's a civilian, feel the uniform you aren't wearing, feel the baton you aren't carrying...

"So what happened? Forensics say it was murder. And why do you care?"

"Many powerful Establishment men prefer the rough trade Inspector. So unlike their usual millieu. The strength and the hardness make it so much sweeter when the man submits." A pause, a considering look. "So I'm told"

Lestrade kept himself under iron control. Why was Holmes telling him this? What was the message? Was it a threat? A promise?

"Ridlington is such a man. His desire to break someone has gone too far before, a man who makes that mistake twice is no longer reliable."

Lestrade blinked at that. Twice? Did they have any others like this? Donovan hadn't mentioned any, and she'd have checked, so either it didn't get that far or else it was better hidden. By, one presumes, the man in front of him.

"So what's different now? And why tell me?"

"The boy was apaprently trying to blackmail him, the next one may be smart enough not to get into the car to do so. And why tell you? Because I choose to Inspector."

Something in Holmes's eyes worried Lestrade. The voice was matter of fact, but the predatory eyes were gleaming, and it took all he had to stay still.

"Now it is time we came to an agreement. To, shall we say, a working relationship. My man is outside, do not think to leave this time." There, that got his attention. "I do think you will co-operate with me Inspector. Your Sergeant, the young woman? Very competent it seems, she should go far. Be a great pity if she doesn't, wouldn't it."

Mycroft watched Lestrade, The line of him, the tension, the eyes. He sat back enjoying his effect on his target, feeling something delicious rise within him.

Holmes sat there, all power and arrogance, legs splayed and a rather noticeable bulge in his trousers. He was no longer the distant aloof bureaucrat, the face no longer closed and controlled.

Lestrade realised what was going on. Tonight he was as slow as Sherlock said he always was but he got there in the end.

This man as brilliant as Sherlock and as twisted as Sherlock just in a different way was very used to people doing what he told them. Sherlock manipulated with words and looks and that weird intensity that rode right over you. This man had his own intensity but also he manipulated with doctored records, and hard men with guns, and whatever it was that had so scared Sergeant Bloody Cornwall.

And now this brilliant, twisted, manipulative and above all *powerful* bastard wanted his bit of rough. Was going to take his bit of rough. And was making sure the bit of rough was very aware of what would happen if he didn't come up to scratch. .

The picture of Sally Donovan being followed by the killer with the flat blue eyes was burned into his brain.

He had once thought that no bureaucrat could frighten him but that was a lifetime ago. Mycroft Holmes was no ordinary bureaucrat of course. He was something else never seen before or since, and he was frightening Gregory Lestrade very much indeed.

Lestrade felt his shoulders hunch, his gaze drop. And his well of courage run dry.

"All right" he said, in a broken man's broken voice "I'll do whatever you want, just leave my people alone"

He took two halting steps forward and dropping to his knees reached for Holme's belt buckle.

Mycroft Holmes was riding high on something, the tightness in his groin intensified by the taste of power and the desire for this man. Desire for the strength and the courage and something else... He pushed harder, racking up the intensity enjoying the fog that had hold of him.

And then it all came crashing down.

Mycroft came back into himself with a sudden shock, feeling his arousal vanish as Lestrade's face crumpled and he fell to his knees.

This was wrong. The proud devastating man who had inflamed him so was gone. Was broken. Was this what Ridlington enjoyed? Or was this why he did it to strangers? Because to do it to someone you.. yes.. respected was terrible? Unforgiveable?

He had done this, had allowed his control to slip, had allowed his base feelings to take over, and Lestrade was paying the price.

He had as good as killed for no reason beyond a sexual thrill. He was no better than Ridlington. He was where he was because he could be trusted with great power and he'd abused that trust.

Mycroft leapt from the sofa, away from Lestrade, trying to gather himself, to distance himself from the creature he had become.

Time had slowed for Lestrade, prolonging his humiliation and his fear. His hands took forever to reach their target, he couldn't bear to lift his head to look at Holmes. Which is why he was totally unprepared for the man to shoot from his seat and move away. Totally unprepared for hands to reach down what seemed like an instant later and pull him to his feet, for the almost frantic voice saying "No! Not like this! Never like this!" Totally unprepared to be deposited on the sofa in his turn.

He flinched away from the arm around him, a parody of concern, a rigid restraint keeping him where he was. He was tense and folded in on himself, struggling to cope with it all.

The silence lengthened and gradually Lestrade was able to pull the pieces of himself together. His heart slowed, his back straightened, he lifted his head.

Holmes was sitting in one of the chairs from the kitchen, staring at nothing.

Neither spoke.

Somewhere a man named Ridlington was committing suicide because Mycroft Holmes deemed him unreliable.

Somewhere there was a flat-eyed killer with a silenced handgun.

Holmes didn't move. He seemed to be lost inside himself, unable to get out.

Finally Lestrade said "What now?"

Holmes blinked and slowly focused on Lestrade. "I don't know. That I have lost control twice now in your presence is not your fault. But it is a weakness I must deal with"

Lestrade went very still. He kept his eyes fixed on Holmes's eyes, if you are going to kill me Mycroft Holmes then you will know it is a man you kill, not an object to dismiss as an annoyance. He didn't know what the difference was between seeing a man on his knees and seeing him dead on the floor, but clearly Holmes saw one as better than the other.

Face like an open book... because "No Inspector! No! The fault is not yours and if I...remove you the problem remains and will resurface. I allowed my emotions to overrule my intellect and that is what must be dealt with."

"How long do I look over my shoulder? Must I give thanks for every day I see Sally Donovan walk to her desk? Do I flinch every time I see a black car, waiting for you to force me into this again?"

Holmes winced. And could not meet Lestrade's eyes.

"How can you trust me?" he said to the wall. "I can't answer that. I can only say that If I do... deal with you in that way again, it won't for personal reasons. Not for me or for Sherlock."

That was no guarantee. He somehow found the strength for indignation "Why do it at all? Why not bloody well *ask*?"

That at least got Holmes looking at him.

"If it's National Security, do it through channels. If it's for Sherlock then just ask!"

"And if it is for me?" said a very tiny voice in the back of Mycroft's head. He ignored it.

Holmes considered. "Very well Inspector. If that's what it takes."

He stood and walked towards Lestrade who struggled to his feet in self defence.

To find Holmes's hand outstretched. "An agreement Inspector. If it is National Security I go through channels. If it's for Sherlock, then I ask."

Lestrade didn't take his hand, not yet. "And you understand I might say no."

Holmes breathed in as if to speak, stilled... And then nodded. "and you might say no."

Lestrade took his hand, feeling odd, almost silly. A fantastical ritual end to a horrific day. Holmes's handshake was strong and warm and dry and thank God neither of them felt the need to play knucklecracking games.

They held it for a moment then parted.

Holmes dropped his gaze for a moment as if thinking, then came to a decision. He met Lestrade's eyes, said "Good night Inspector" and turned to go. Lestrade watched him as he left, seeing the posh bastard return in the few paces it took to reach the door. The arrogant walk, the umbrella gathered from beside the door and swung as he left.

Mycroft Holmes went out into the London night air. To his car, his bodyguard, his web of influence and intrigue, and away from the man he was almost sure he didn't want.

Lestrade sat back on the sofa, the tension slowly draining out of him.

"Might as well drink the bloody whiskey" he thought. And did. The whole damn bottle

Part Six: Substitute.

=======================

Author's Note:

This all started because I read this story by gloria1 . I really enjoyed the beginning and the end (and the writing generally, especially her descriptions of Mycroft) but in the middle I thought Mycroft and Lestrade had got together way too easily. It was almost as though Lestrade had jumped into bed with Mycroft because there was nothing on telly that night.

So I wondered... what did I think would happen when they first met, and what path would the relationship take?

It rather surprised me to be honest.

Fic: A Reliable Man. Part Four: Well of Courage

randomly_rusted — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 08:28:00 GMT

Summary: Lestrade trusts his instincts.

Rating: PG

Word Count: 3850

Timeline: before A Study in Pink

Part One: First Encounter

Part Two: The first time he saw the car

Interlude in a Blue Suit

Part Three:Irresistable Force and Immovable Object

Once more my thanks to the patient and encouraging elfbert

--------------------------

If you judge by the TV shows, there's a lot of interesting crime in England. Strange murders and baffling robberies. Mysterious strangers bringing equally mysterious messages to people who then die mysteriously.

The real story wouldn't make good TV.

So far this week there have been no mysterious deaths, they've all been boringly straightforward. Fights over drugs or drink or "respec" or someone who can't take it anymore and lashes out with a knife or a lump of two by four. Or a car, more of that these days. Or a husband drunk on cheap lager or a sense of entitlement slashing about with his fists once too often.

Boring routine work with boring routine answers.

A heartbreaking death of a child from abuse, Lestrade was glad that wasn't on his plate.

Nothing for for Lestrade's lot in that so far, so a good chance to catch up on the scut work.

While routine is.. well... routine and no one joined the Met to fill in forms, there's a lot to be said for spending a quiet day in the office. A nice quiet day that didn't involve standing about in the rain or smelling 4 day old dead bodies or talking to deaf old ladies about what they might have seen last week,

But a nice quiet day means nothing for Sherlock this week either.

Lestrade wondered what his chances were of a nice quiet day, compared to his chances of a skinny git infestation.

He'd had three Sherlock-free days, it couldn't last. Three days without text messages and phone calls and whining about boredom and the bloody nuisance trying to alleviate same by driving Donovan to commit murder. By that point he'd have called it justifiable homicide himself.

He finished his first (and best because he'd bought it from the Greek stall by the station) coffee of the day and started in on the routine.

Talking to his team. Progress reports and who was doing what. Who had interviews to do, who had forensic results to go through, who had to brief CPS, who was stuck where, who thought they'd clear up soon, who thought they were never getting anywhere. Who was due on training, who was due on leave, who was overdue for both.

It was Parker's turn to do the monthly stats, and he could write that "Community Interaction Initiative" report the Poicy and Affairs lot wanted or whatever it was called this month. He'd hate it but they all did so no ice there. Same shit different day, seems that a new idea came down on from on high every other week on powerpoint slides full of terms like "substantive generational change" and "appropriate metrics in place", with every one requiring coppers to fill in forms and attend meetings and generate reports and none of it anything to do with actual policing.

Lunchtime came, the paperwork pile did appear to have a small dent in it, so Lestrade decided to make it an even nicer day by heading out to find non-canteen food that wasn't eaten at his desk.

As he strolled towards his favourite Indian joint, watching everything around him as coppers will until the day they die (and they'll probably size up St Peter and rate the security at the Pearly Gates) he became aware of a feeling something was wrong.

It niggled and niggled at him all through the Vindaloo, making him replay his walk in his head to try and work out what it was. Someone acting funny? A car out of place? A construction hoarding slightly wrong? Patterns of people not quite right? What the hell was it that was making him uneasy and ruining his quiet non-canteen non-desk non-Sherlock lunch?

Non-Sherlock.

Not even an enquiry? No phone calls? Not one text saying "bored" or "bruises to the left side fade at a different rate"? Or even "the sister did it, check car left front wheel" which would mean he'd have to track down whose team had a case that had been in the papers involving a sister and a car.

He should be happy that he didn't have to deal with Sherlock because that meant not dealing with brother Mycroft and the Holmes brothers between them were the cause of almost all his grey hairs.

Should have been happy, but the more he thought about it, the more he realised a quiet Sherlock was a worrying Sherlock. He'd check the man's website when he got back to the office, see if there was any activity there.

But when he emerged from the restaurant he found himself hailing a taxi.

"Montague Street" he said.

======================

Mycroft was frazzled.

He prided himself that no one at the table could tell it from his demeanour, but he was getting very close to the end of his tether.

Sherlock might complain about unimaginative rule bound police but at least he had Lestrade who appeared to own a few functioning braincells. Compared to the idiots Mycroft was dealing with who were sharing theirs on some departmental rota with the current custodian on leave.

Or if anyone here did actually have something to think with, Harcourt for example, they were using it purely for personal gain in the vicious game of interdepartmental throat cutting. Time to get Harcourt's attention back to the job.

"Gentlemen, the Minister is aware of the date of the Estimates Committee, however the funding for item four is guaranteed. If we cannot reach an agreement on this matter, then I expect the Minister will have to bring forward the re-structuring of the Policy Division, which may well have implications for some ongoing initiatives."

There, that got Harcourt's attention. Good. The man wanted a Permanent Undersecretary's job so badly he was salivating, Mycroft could use that ambition. Not that Harcourt would get a sniff of a promotion if his affair with the Brazillian attache blew up which judging by his tiepin and the shaving nick under his left ear it would do any day now. Might need to do something about that.

Finally! Harcourt at least had worked out what was wanted, which was more than Ridlington was capable of. Ah well, the man looked good on television and that was important.

After a little more blathering the meeting wound up and Mycroft decided he wouldn't go back to his office, he'd take a stroll around St James, be good for his waistline. And for his incipient ulcer, four days of back to back committee meetings were too much for anyone, never mind the stress of the Kashmiri situation. Dismissing his assistant with a wave he went out into the sunshine.

==================

As he got out of the cab Lestrade pulled out his phone to text Sherlock, it was more reliable than knocking.

Downstairs, let me in - GL

You could usually bank on a reply within seconds unless he was asleep but he seldom slept deeply. He might though if he was sleeping off a binge....

No answer. Not "come up" not "busy" not even "piss off copper" which he'd got once when Sherlock had been doing 'undercover work' meaning dressing up as a homeless man and following some agenda of his own.

Lestrade's instincts were on fire now. Sherlock never slept in the daytime. Sherlock never missed a text.

He ran up the stairs to number 3 and banged on the door. "Oy Sherlock! Open up!" Better to be invited in than....

He sniffed. Something in there was bad, and it wasn't the usual sort of Sherlock-experiment smell either. Ear to the door he strained to hear, no loud noises but dammit he *knew* there was a problem.

Breaking down doors is usually done with a ram and two big burly constables, but an alarmed DI on a sudden adrenaline rush can do the job if pushed.

Some digging with his knife and some solid hits with shoulder and shoe finally popped the door and he got inside.

To be met by the full smell of vomit and blood and piss and shit and something else that cut through it all and the sight of Sherlock Holmes lying on the floor in the mess looking at him groggily with unfocused eyes and a horrible foolish expression.

He leapt forward, kneeling down heedless of the filth.

"Christ Sherlock, we had an agreement! What have you taken! Come on, sit up, oh God what have you taken?"

Sherlock's bloodshot eyes tried to focus, failed. "aghhreeemen' yeshhh. Ekshper'm'nt. " he tried to lift his arm up but it flopped and shook with tremors "shheee? c'l'n"

The arm did seem clean, so whatever he's taken didn't go in that way.

Grabbing his mobile to call for help Lestrade looked around for whatever the hell it was. Given Sherlock's condition he can't have hidden it, it would be in plain sight somewhere.

Whatever it was, it wasn't any of the big three, no overdose of heroin or cocaine or meth did this.

"Christ what a tip Sherlock! How the hell can I find anything in here?"

Experiment... OK, that meant the table. Too much shit on that, packets, powders, dishes, burners, any of it could be involved, right outside his area. How long to get a team in, how long did he have? And they didn't have the facilities...

He metaphorically slapped himself. You wouldn't think he could have forgotten Mycroft bloody Holmes, but as the posh bastard had kept his hands off (and his car away) since that memorable night he'd been glad to. But if anyone could pull a top flight analytical lab out of the air on a Wednesday afternoon it was him.

Thank God! Sirens!

Lestrade ran down to wave the paramedics up. They did their quick efficient thing, and let him into the back of the ambulance once he flashed his warrant card. "UCH then?" he asked and getting the nod pulled out his mobile.

sherlock very sick taken to uni coll hosp. Need top chemist to look at stuff on table in flat find out what he's taken - GL

Lestrade squeezed right over to the side so as not to be in the way. He fretted at the pace but knew from his own experience that sirens made no difference in London afternoon traffic.

Damn he'd forgotten about the door. He rang the Yard, got Parker, and organised for someone on the door to keep the lowlifes out and let the chemists in. He had no doubt Holmes would have yanked some poor white-coated bastard into a taxi within minutes of the text.

They rolled into the emergency bay, he dived out and kept out of the way, looking for the triage nurse to tell her what he knew. Name, date of birth, don't think he has allergies, no idea what he's taken.

"What's your interest?" she asked meaning "Is this a crim?" He could have said "just a friend" but for some reason said "An important witness, we don't want people to know about it if possible". Go with instinct every time.

"Next of kin?" What could he say? "Yes, Mycroft Holmes, address care of a current model black Mercedes, if you want him just find a CCTV camera and hold up a sign"?

Instead he said "I don't have that information at the moment, I'll pass it on as soon as I do."

He picked a post in the waiting area where he could be seen by the nurses on the desk and he could see the entrance. He was surprised Holmes wasn't there already, although maybe he'd pulled rank and was insisting on being in the operating room? No, there he was. Right, proactive, that's the ticket.

Lestrade walked to meet Mycroft Holmes and steered him to a quietish corner. Wednesday after lunch isn't usually a busy time in A&E so there was a quietish corner. "Mr Holmes" he said quickly taking charge "he's in surgery now. I don't know what it was, but it wasn't any drug I'm familiar with. He said something about 'an experiment' so could be anything. They'll get me when he's been given a bed".

Holmes looked angry and frightened and annoyed that the world wasn't going to do what he told it.

"You have people checking the flat Sir?"

"Yes yes Inspector, 2 top men are there now to see if they recognise anything, pack what they think is important, and take it back to the best pharmacological lab in London"

They both waited, both tense, both fidgeting, neither speaking. Holmes moved about walking up and down, nose in the air, Lestrade leant against the wall fiddling with his keyring for something to do
with his hands.

A movement by the nurses's station, Lestrade made himself known and they were taken to ICU. Machines, tubes, Sherlock whiter than the sheets he was on and just as lifeless, the doctor standing nearby
looking grave.

"You are?" he said.

"Detective Inspector Lestrade" he said, flashing his card by reflex, "And this is Mr Mycroft Holmes, next of kin".

"You don't know what it he took?"

"No, but there are people working on it, we'll pass the information on as soon as we have it"

"Some stomach contents would be useful, although judging by his nasal passages he has been inhaling something quite nasty. I strongly suspect it's crossed the blood/brain barrier. We won't know for sure until we have more, but the symptoms are not good."

Holmes's mobile went off, he looked at it, and turned the screen to the doctor. The doctor blinked, thought about it for a bit and blanched. "Oh dear, if he's been heating that and breathing it then that would explain the symptoms."

He had been looking professionally calm before, now he looked actually worried.

"And?" said Holmes, tense and focused "what is the prognosis?"

"We won't know for some hours" said the doctor, "we might have got to him in time".

"And if not?"

"He won't die, we have arrested the damage and he's stable, but... I'm sorry, there might be some brain damage." Holmes's face froze "We won't know until he can do without the oxygen and is conscious."

A pager went off and the doctor excused himself, presumably thinking the copper could handle it now. The copper looked at Holmes and wasn't at all sure.

They both stood there, staring at the pale man in the bed with the tubes snaking out of him, his hair the only colour they could see.

Then suddenly Holmes broke.

He just dropped straight down to the floor, no noise no collapsing slowly, straight down. It was shocking to see the calm controlled powerful mandarin collapse like his strings had been cut.

Lestrade had seen it before though, tough people who coped with everything life threw at them would sometimes find they couldn't cope anymore. It might not be anything big either, he'd seen SAS troopers cry about a dog being run over, he'd seen the headmistress of a well known girl's school go to pieces when she realised there was no sugar in the bowl.

His old uniformed sergeant had told him that everyone has a well of courage that they drew on when stressed. Some people had a deep one and they could draw on it for a long time, some had a very shallow one. But when it was empty it was empty and then it didn't matter how deep it had been.

"So get yourself on to stress leave and fill yours back up you stupid bastard" he'd said after that fight when Lestrade's beat partner had been smashed in the head with a two by four after 5 days of riots and double shifts trying to keep it all contained. Lestrade had come in to work the next day with his hands shaking and still tasting Mike's blood in his mouth but thinking that somehow if he admitted he was not coping they'd all think he wasn't a real man.

So here was Mycroft Holmes with his well of courage dry and all that control just... gone.

Lestrade grabbed the glass of water from the side of the bed (why was it there, do hospitals just put them by every bed even when the occupant was dead near as dammit and might never make those crazy beautiful obvious startling deductions again?) and went to the man on the floor, put his arm around him.

The right thing to do would probably be to get hold of the man's assistant or driver or someone but Lestrade's instinct said no.

He'd been running on instinct through this whole mess, why stop now?

"Come on,breathe. In. Out. In. Out. That's it. Now take this, come on, both hands, that's it, focus on not spilling it, come on, breathe, come on drink a bit, that's it" giving the man something to do, something to focus on, words and actions and some human contact as another focus point. Something for him to cling to as the poor bastard's world collapsed.

if anyone had told him he'd have his arm around Mycroft Holmes comforting him and getting him to engage and control himself he'd have known they'd been drinking.

But right now he wasn't Mycroft Holmes, posh smarmy bastard manipulator, he was distraught relative of a victim and while managing those wasn't his favourite part of the job he knew how it was done.

Which was not to leave him, but be with the man till he was back to his old top echelon civil servant dinner with the PM self. Looking down his nose at a mere copper and not sitting on the floor shivering and breathing funny as though crying needed too much attention and control.

"Come on Mr Holmes, stand up, that's right over here... Come on, sit down, focus, you have to be strong, you are all he has."

"Or at least the only one who gives a shit" but he didn't say that.

Holmes looked at him for a moment, terrifyingly open, a disturbing look on that face that had always been closed and aloof. "I wasn't there." he said.

"*I* wasn't there." he said again "I'm not the only one Sherlock's got".

He looked down again, Lestrade almost didn't hear the next words "But he's the only one I've got..."

Lestrade didn't want to think about why that meant surveillance teams and putting the cops onto him. An old CID maxim was "never get involved in other people's family dynamics. They are not only more fucked up than you can cope with , they are more fucked up than you can imagine."

"Look Mr Holmes we don't know what's wrong, we have to wait. They say he's stable, that means he's not getting worse and for all we know that doctor was talking out his arse and Sherlock's out of it because he hasn't eaten or slept for 3 days, you know he does that."

Holmes sniffed, mechanically taking a handkerchief from his breast pocket which was an encouraging sign given his earlier helplessness. He fixed his eyes on the man in the bed, who knew what he was
thinking?

After some time staring at the white man on the white bed, Holmes seemed to startle a bit more into life. He fumbled his phone out of his pocket, held it to his ear, and it was as though the phone was pouring Mycroft Holmes back into himself.

His eyes focused, his head lifted, he turned to Lestrade "Inspector! Find that doctor!"

Lestrade waylaid a nurse, using his best smile to persuade her to locate the right MD. (Charming nurses is a useful skill for a Serious Crimes man and he had cultivated it assiduously.)

When he got back into the room, Holmes was the one he remembered, not the odd vulnerable broken man but the posh bastard, firing on all cylinders.

Who thrust his mobile at the medico and stood there impatient and overbearing as the man listened, asked a rapid spate of incomprehensible questions, looked at monitors, and rapped orders at the nurse.

A bit of medical bustle, a change in IV lines, and the doctor said "Good news. He did inhale some bad stuff, but it seems there was not enough to do major damage. We have the antagonist in now, and in a few days he'll be fine. A bit of a headache and sensitivity to light is all. But you will need to talk to him about his food hygiene! As well as the biflouride derivative toxin he had one of the nastiest cases of food poisoning I've seen. Nothing notifiable, no salmonella or botulism, just poor food management. Combine that with the biflouride and the agent the biflouride was bound with and you get what we see."

"He seems quite healthy and strong, so he should come out of it alright, he was lucky he didn't inhale any more of that stuff. Nasty rubbish, God only knows what he thought he was doing."

Lestrade snorted. Food poisoning. Well, if a man keeps dead bodies in the bloody kitchen cupboards then he gets what he deserves.

The doctor left and Lestrade found Holmes was between him and the door. "A moment of your time Inspector".

"Mr Holmes?"

Holmes looked a bit uncertain for a moment, as he appeared to make up his mind to say something his PA walked into the room. "An update on the Kashmiri situation" she said, and handed him her Blackberry. He looked, typed something, gave it back, and returned his attention to Lestrade.

"Thank you for your efforts with my brother today Inspector" he said "I'm sure Sherlock will thank you later". The horrible little smile was back as though it had never gone, as though its owner had never lost control and cried his heart out for his brightly shining, lost and dying brother. The horrible little smile and the lofty disposition of other people's lives. "I will send a car to take you back to the Yard, please do pass on your drycleaning expenses".

Holmes and his assistant swept out of the room, Lestrade looked towards the bed to find Sherlock looking back at him. "I knew what I was doing, I had it under control. Wasn't my fault the kebab was
bad!"

Lestrade didn't point out that someone who was keeping decomposing fingers in the butter dish and eyeballs in an olive jar (with the odd left over olive) was probably not a victim of a street vendor's poor hygiene. There was no need, Sherlock knew it perfectly well but there was no way he'd say so.

"He won't acknowledge it you know"

"Acknowledge what? Who?"

"Mycroft. He won't acknowledge you looked after him when he lost control. He hates people to know he has emotions. Hates it when he can't control everything."

Lestrade shrugged "It's over, you'll be out of here tomorrow, doesn't matter if he doesn't say anything."

It wasn't until later that he wondered what a brilliant powerful control freak who hated people knowing he had emotions did when someone found out..

Part Five: Power Corrupts

Fic: A Reliable Man. Part Three: Irresistible Force and Immovable Object

randomly_rusted — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 15:01:07 GMT

Summary: Mycroft wants an agent. Lestrade has his own priorities. The irresistable force meets the immovable object... but is the object unbreakable as well?

Timeline: before A Study in Pink

Rating: PG-13
Warning: Strong Language

Type: Gen

Word Count: 3800

This piece would be considerably worse without the creative talents of elfbert who dug me (and Mycroft) out of a hole and who has a nice line in bad language.
-------------------------------------------

There were 7 shots from last night that were definitely Sherlock, 12 that probably were, and 24 that were definitely not.

There shouldn't have been that many definites. The tail shouldn't have been able to pick him up again and track him to that winebar in the Tottenham Court Road, it was as though Sherlock didn't really care about shaking the tail, as though dodging it was just habit and not desire. Or he'd been too focused on something else.

The footage outside the winebar was clear enough, it was Sherlock, he wasn't even disguising his walk. At least he didn't come out the same door he went in, and he wasn't picked up again until Montague St, but the timing said he had gone straight home.

CCTV footage is too grainy to pick up expressions or much at all really, but the more experienced of his operatives said Sherlock looked a bit jittery, a bit nervous on the way in. The Montague St man didn't corroborate that, but he wasn't as good.

Mycroft looked again at the pictures and the reports. Studied the dates and times of Sherlock's movements that they knew about.

And didn't like the conclusion he came to.

A Sherlock who was becoming more erratic in his behaviour. And eating less. Who was getting worse and worse at evading the surveillance. Who was regularly going to an area of the city frequented by City high fliers and fancy creative types, not his preferred sort of criminal at
all.

Sherlock was always cyclical, Mycroft understood that quite well. After all he suffered from it himself, he was just a lot better at controlling it. But Sherlock's cycle was changing. Instead of sleeping for a while then going out for a day or two he was inside more often. And when he went out, it was more often an evening, and usually he lost his tail somewhere around the Square Mile. Rather than say down at the docks.

Which meant that whatever he was doing on those regular trips every few evenings leading to him staying in most of the next day or two was in the City.

He wanted to go and see for himself, to confront his brother and have it out with him. But the relationship was too fragile for that. The last time he'd had a confrontation with Sherlock was when the boy was experimenting in the seedier parts of Soho. And that had not ended well.

He needed someone who knew Sherlock and knew about this sort of problem. Who could be relied upon to help and keep quiet. And who Sherlock might just listen to.

Mycroft turned back to his laptop and set the wheels in motion.

The summer heat had gone from enjoyable to annoying some considerable time ago. Lestrade, like most of his team, spent as much time in the airconditioning at work as possible. It was inadequate but better than the outside world.

The tube was unbearable, he had taken to getting off a couple of stops early and walking the rest of the way home. Get a bit of exercise and postpone the unpleasantness of his baking flat.

He varied the route a little each day, watching people and houses and feeling the city around him, letting his manor seep into his soul. He was even walking like a beat copper again: the slow even twenty mile pace.

The connection to his beat days was so strong his first thought on seeing the black Merc coming slowly towards him was Sexual Offences Act 1985 solicitation from a vehicle. But that was banished quickly when he recognised the driver.

He stopped, feeling his heart thump with sudden fight-or-flight shock but tamped it down. They knew where he lived after all. If they had done nothing since, they weren't going to do a driveby now.

So he waited for the car to approach and stop, not even bothering to check his mobile. Feeling angry and annoyed with himself for doing it:that posh bastard had said "Sit! Stay" and like a good little dog he did.

While he waited for the car to arrive Mycroft pondered his approach. The man tended towards the standoffish in his dealings with Mycroft, careful of who he was talking to, aware of rank. Polite and correct, very used to dealing with senior officers with their own agenda.

He had helped Sherlock without being asked, but then he had been involved in that once Sherlock had flashed the stolen ID. He'd had to clear that up. He was stll using Sherlock, although not often, but hadn't apparently suspected anything wrong with the boy... He was an experienced policeman, he must have seen something! Which means he didn't want to get involved.

He must be made to get involved.

He owned a 2 bedroom flat in a reasonable area, bought before the worst of the price inflation but the mortgage and maintenance was clearly difficult even on the top level inspector's salary.

Mycroft smiled.

When the car pulled up into the warehouse, there was no Mycroft Holmes. There was no expensive PA either, the car had been empty when he got in. The weightlifter driver opened the door said "this way please sir" and shepherded him into a lift, along a corridor, and into an office.

There the man was behind the desk, all snooty and superior. Just like being called on the carpet by the Superintendent because your team haven't filed some useless report or other on time, and that makes him look bad. Because paperwork trumps policework every time.

"Thank you Davies, that will be all. Sit down please inspector, it is time we had another talk."

Lestrade sat down, wary, wondering what the hell this was about. Nothing good, he was sure.

"So Inspector. I understand you have had a lot of work recently. But you haven't passed any of it on to Sherlock. Haven't seen him much at all. Now why is that?"

He wanted to say all sort of things about just what work a CID murder team got in the middle of a heatwave, the stink and the shattering banality of it all and how Sherlock bloody Holmes wasn't interested in anything but himself, and would Mycroft bloody Holmes stop banging on about him... But no way was any of that going to show in his face.

"The heat means a lot of work for the Yard Mr Holmes, but none of it is of the sort that Sherlock is good at."

"I did ask you to keep an eye on him".

"I have operational priorities Mr Holmes. I can't neglect them."

"Ah yes. Your priorities. I think you should change them Inspector. In fact you will change them."

Lestrade sighed, back to this again. Man wouldn't take no for an answer, well if he was going to want the Yard on his brother's case he could damn well go through channels. He obviously could when he wanted to so let him do the work to get the team off far too many domestics and drug shootings.

"My DCI is the one who sets those Mr Holmes, you should talk to him".

"Oh I don't think I need to do that do I? After all, Sherlock is valuable to you. It can't be too difficult to change your priorities. To... shall we say... protect your resources?"

Well Sherlock was useful now and then, but despite what television would have you believe fancy crimes were the exception not the rule. When they happened they got the airtime it's true but this plonker wanted them to drop it all for the one time in a hundred? Not likely.

Then the bombshell.

"And I will make it very worth your while. After all now they've stopped paying overtime to Inspectors that mortgage is quite a burden isn't it."

Lestrade felt his jaw drop. He wasn't a stranger to offers to make it worth his while, he'd been in the job more than 20 years and he'd been offered things from cold drinks (which he took) to Cup Final tickets (which he hadn't taken but damn he would have liked to.) Usually people were a little less blatant in their attempt to fall foul of the Prevention of Corruption Act. But then the Holmes brothers tended to just do what they wanted.

Holmes leaned forward, that horrible smile on his face making the moment that little bit nastier. "A little bit of re-focusing and you don't need to worry about that mortgage again. You could even put air-conditioning in."

What the hell was it that made Holmes think he was bent? This posh bastard pushed him from pillar to post anyway, what the hell was going on, why this all of a sudden?

"I am a serving policeman Mr Holmes. My job is to protect members of the public, and I do so. What I Do. Not. Do. is take bribes."

Holmes's face didn't shift, he was utterly sure of himself. The underling will do as he's told. Because underlings were grubby little sub-humans that smile said, who will beg for treats.

"Come Inspector. Your sentiments do you credit but let us be realistic. I need you to spend time and energy on Sherlock, including making sure he doesn't get into any more trouble with your fellow police. It's quite reasonable you should want... some form of compensation for your time. I'm not averse to such an arrangement. Providing of course I get value for money."

Lestrade just stared at him, unable to believe what he'd just heard. Feeling the anger boil to the surface, insult piling on insult for weeks, for months as he'd been pushed about by this.. this....

He leapt to his feet all caution forgotten.

"Listen, you posh smarmy bastard. I'm not in the job for the pension, I'm in it to make a fucking difference - and I do, I get scum off the streets. And Sherlock might be an unmitigated arse sometimes but he understands that it's not the money, it's knowing that people can walk around this city a little bit safer, knowing that you might have saved someone's life by catching some murdering bastard. "

He was right in Holmes's face, ready to swing and hit the man to drive his point home, ready to grab him by the thousand quid lapels and fucking nut him.

"I'm not bent, I won't be swayed by your dirty money. Fuck you - fuck you for thinking you can buy me. I'm not fucking stupid – one little favour, one helping hand and then you've got me by the balls - with that hanging over me there's no way I'll ever be able to say no again. Well you can take your slimy ideas and shove them up your arse - I'm not fucking interested."

That was when the brawny arm was around his neck, his right arm twisted in a vicious lock and he was hauled bodily back nearly losing his footing.

Mycroft took a moment to recover from his surprise. Davies had Lestrade off balance and held in what looked like a painfully efficient hold, that arm would be sore for some time. The man was showing no signs though, his anger presumably protecting him.

Mycroft pondered letting him hurt for a while but that would be counter-productive. The man needed to realise who was in charge but there were better ways than crippling him.

"You can let him go now Davies, thank you."

The man regained his balance, shrugged his coat back into place, his eyes never leaving Mycroft. There was anger in them and a certain stubborn pride, that was all well and good, but not for what was wanted now.

"You will do as I ask Inspector. The money is already in your account after all".

Lestrade felt as though time had stopped. As though all the world had stopped.

He stood there as emotions washed over him. Disbelief. Fear. Uncertainty. Until he was empty of emotion. There should be anger, righteous anger but it had all vanished. He had no more anger left.

Once bent always bent, and in the end it didn't matter if you were bent or it was just everyone thought you were.

Holmes had just bought a detective inspector, whether he wanted to be bought or not.

There was only one possible answer. He had never felt this numb in his life. Never felt this numb. But there really was only one possible answer.

Someone else said, as though the world still turned "I see. And you'll tell Internal Affairs the moment I step out of line."

Feeling distance as if in a dream he reached the miles across to the far side of the desk to the pen (expensive) and paper (ditto, why was he noticing these things?) there, pulled them towards him and did the only thing he could.

"Well tell them when you like. And give them this while you are at it"

Mycroft Holmes leant forward to take the paper, unfolded it, and read the few lines.

Commissioner for Metropolitan Police
New Scotland Yard

Sir,

I hereby tender my resignation from the Metropolitan Police effective immediately,

G Lestrade

Mycroft looked up sharply at Lestrade. Who was looking back. Exhausted, drained but determined. This wasn't a bluff, he'd made his decision and would live with the consequences .

Mycroft turned the paper over in his hands, realising with sudden urgency that Lestrade wasn't the only one who would have to live with the consequences.

Without this man at the Yard one of Sherlock's major outlets was gone. And quite probably his brother would know what had happened and that would cause an even greater rift.

"That... will not be necessary Inspector."

But Lestrade had turned and was heading for the door. Maybe hadn't even heard. Mycroft waved Davies away as Lestrade walked out of the office like an automaton, he would be easy enough to find and this required thinking about.

Lestrade left the office he could no longer bear to be in, some part of his mind noting with mild interest that the bodyguard had been called off.

Office buildings are all alike there's the lift - and with the only piece of luck he'd had that night it didn't need a keycard.

He got himself out into the night air and looked around. He did not, of course, know where he was. They'd headed South and East from Euston Rd he thought, so North and West it is. Summer, so no clouds, but London so no stars either. He lifted his head to sniff the breeze and listen for traffic. Main-ish road over there, so head for it.

He followed the sound of the trucks and tried very hard not to think about what he'd done, what had happened. Who would take a possibly bent copper? And how far did that man's writ run? Wouldn't put it past Holmes to make sure he couldn't even get a job in McDonalds!

Lestrade kept walking, his head going round and round, navigating by instinct and the sound of traffic and the smell of the river. Along highways and back streets, vaguely North, vaguely West, the same few thoughts in his mind, trying to walk them out of his head.

He bought some cigs from a convenience store, patches be damned. If a man couldn't have a cigarette on the night he threw himself under a bloody bus when could he?

He was tired. Tired in body, tired in soul. He wanted to lay him down to rest but he didn't know the safe places for the rough sleepers and didn't want to risk being rolled for his wallet as he slept. He'd need to know soon enough, but right now he would keep walking.

It was well past 3am when he finally hauled himself up the stairs to his flat.

His body remembered the motions of checking the letterbox on the way into the building, the angle to take to avoid the broken floor tile, the last little wriggle of the key in the lock because the fit was too loose.

He walked into his flat and into a nightmare.

On the living room table was his resignation letter, leaning up against a bottle of very expensive single malt. And sitting quite at home on his sofa was Mycroft Holmes. Reading one of his books. The one from the bedside table.

Lestrade stood there, too tired to move, too tired to be afraid. He didn't bother looking for the bodyguard, or the assistant. Too tired to care.

No hiding place, no home, nowhere safe. Not any more, not ever again.

"I expected you home somewhat earlier Inspector"

Lestrade said nothing. There was nothing to say. If Posh Bastard Holmes was annoyed at waiting for a couple of hours in a baking hot flat then there was nothing Lestrade could do to soothe him. Lestrade wouldn't have been surprised if the bodyguard stepped out to drive the point home, but instead Holmes spoke again.

"No, there is no bodyguard, no PA. No security, no cameras. I wanted to meet with you on your own ground. Without all the trappings."

That didn't matter. They'd be around soon enough.

Holmes fidgeted a bit, a small part of Lestrade's brain had enough energy to notice that.

"I.... must apologise Inspector".

More of his brain woke up.

"My only defence is that I spend too much time in Whitehall. I had forgotten there are honest men in the world. I deal every day with the greedy, the ambitious, the stupid. When I meet a competent honest man I don't realise until it is too late"

Lestrade slumped against the wall. He so wanted to find his bed and oblivion, not listen to this jack-in-office justify himself.

"The money has been removed from your account - as has any trace of it ever being there. I'm sure you'll check that for yourself, but I promise you it's true. You don't even have to keep the single malt, if you don't wish to, although it is a particularly well aged specimen. I thought we could both do with a drink...but like I say, that was some hours ago."

Lestrade closed his eyes for a moment then opened them to look straight into Holmes's, unconsciously straightening his back.

"You might have removed the money but you can put it back any time you please. Look, I know you want to own me because you think I can manage Sherlock. But if you own me, that puts my team in danger and I can't allow that. The decisions have to go their way, every time."

He searched Holmes's face, willing him to understand, but saw nothing and slumped back against the wall. "I'll be putting that letter in in the morning."

"And after that Inspector?"

Lestrade wondered what the man would call him when he wasn't an Inspector. "You there" probably.

"I will do what I can. Yes I know you can probably stop me working in this country or even have me knocked on the head and chucked in the river. Do what you want, I'm past caring."

And he was. He had not slept for... what was it, 20 hours? More? He'd walked across London, he'd thrown more than 20 years of his life away, and he was still talking to the self-satisfied bastard who had ruined him with a tap on his keyboard.

"I do have an immense amount of power, Inspector, you're correct. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say I hold in my hands the lives of millions of people. I can influence decisions all over the globe. That, Inspector, is what makes it so very hard for me to admit that when it comes to Sherlock, I'm utterly bereft of any form of power. There is nothing I can do or say to him to make him change his ways. Indeed, my influence usually has exactly the opposite effect."

"Lucky Sherlock" thought Lestrade, "he should bottle it, I'd buy some"

"So your brother doesn't listen to you. Welcome to the real world. Why should it matter? You can pull him out of any hot water he gets into. "

"Not any hot water Inspector. I can protect him from physical danger, but the only way to protect him from himself is to lock him up in an institution. "

Lestrade was finding it harder and harder to stay upright. To stay even vaguely focused.

Holmes stood up "You are too tired to think straight Inspector. So I'll leave you to your bed. Please understand that you are in no danger from me over this, nor is your team. My word on it, even though you won't think that worth anything"

Lestrade was able to jerk himself away from the very comfortable wall as Holmes passed by, to make sure he wasn't in the way of this nightmare leaving the flat.

He did make it all the way to his bed before he lost consciousness.

In the morning, the bottle of whiskey was still there. Sitting on top of what looked like an evidence file.

Lestrade looked at both of them with loathing. He held the bottle with the tips of his fingers as he stowed it in the deep recesses of the least-used kitchen cupboard along with the rice cooker and the lidless plastic containers. He washed his hands before he organised breakfast.

He couldn't help looking at the evidence file though. He was, God help him, apparently still a policeman, and evidence files were his natural prey.

He looked at the pictures and the surveillance reports, compared times and dates, closed the file and pondered.

So that's what had the posh bastard upset. He thought Sherlock was using. Which he might be, although on that Wednesday and that let's see... yes, that Sunday Lestrade hadn't noticed anything amiss, and why weren't those meetings in the file?

And why the hell couldn't the man have just come right out and bloody well asked?

He finished off his coffee, checking the time. Time to get dressed and head off, because if there was fallout from this mess best to know it now.

Mycroft Holmes watched the footage from the tiny camera with interest. 4 minutes and 35 seconds, which was only around four times the amount of time it had taken Mycroft to reach a conclusion from the evidence presented. Given the man was operating on little sleep and much aggravation that was impressive.

Now to see what he did with the information.

Mycroft shut down the laptop and tidied the file in front of him, placing the resignation letter inside. Such a thing might come in handy one day.

Part Four: Well of Courage

Fic: Backup's Coming

randomly_rusted — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 20:28:30 GMT

Summary: Sally Donovan is a copper. She's part of Lestrade's team, and no one messes with his people.

Warning: strong language

Sally Donovan kept to the shadows as she approached the building. She couldn't see any watchers, but that didn't mean anything.

This had to be it. The few hints the Freak had dropped, combined with what they knew about how the gang operated and records of movements in this area pointed to an industrial unit around here. The taxi driver she'd tracked down earlier had dropped the Doctor and the Freak off not far away. She felt in her bones it was the right one.

She worked her way slowly through the yard, pausing in a nice deep patch of shadow to pull her phone. She didn't want to risk a voice call but had to keep the team informed, so a quick text would have to do.

Ah, there was a door, fractionally ajar, OK. Listen and if there was life then wait for backup and we go in. Damn! Someone there, keep very still....

Suddenly a squeal of brakes, a car slid into the yard and caught her in the lights, she ducked back and it all went to hell in a handbasket.

Someone grabbed her from behind, she twisted her weight down and around, trying to lever out of the hold as she elbowed him, the angle was wrong and he grunted but kept hold. She scraped her booted foot down his shin and hard into his instep. He yelped in pain as she slipped his grip and sprinted for the gates.

Two more appeared, she scrabbled for her warrant card, "Police, stay where you are" but they didn't give a shit and three against one is no odds if you were one of the riot squad, never mind five foot six and eight stone. Oh God, that crunch was her phone, she was sure of it.

"Police are you love? Well, won't that be fun" said the tatooed thug holding her left arm. He twisted it into a jointlock and dragged her into the building.

This was not good. Not good at all.

She was shoved into a largish room containing one Freak, tied to a chair, one Doctor, ditto, a large table, a bunch of crates that could contain anything, a couple more rent-a-thugs and a man wearing a suit and a skinhead haircut.

"Says she's a copper Mick" said Tatts, still holding her arm twisted painfully.

"Didn't make 'em that good looking when I was young" said Skinhead as he wandered over.

Time. Backup coming, needed time. Keep quiet, see what he wanted, play for time.

Skinhead looked her over "Bit skinny darling, but I'll take what I can get." He turned back to the Freak "Don't think much of your backup pretty boy"

The Freak looked at them in contempt "Police. Stupid, they are stupid, you are all stupid".

Skinhead walked over and backhanded him, making the Doctor surge in his seat "Maybe, but I'm not the one tied to a chair eh?"

"Sammy, do a sweep of the area in case there are more coppers wandering about." Well that was one less thug, not that it made much difference right now.

He turned his attention back to her. Tatts handed him her warrant card, which he glanced at and dropped "A Detective Sergeant eh? Well that's going to be something to boast about, having a DS"

She knew this sort of thing was coming, she'd been warned about it early on in her CID career by a more experienced detective over drinks. "You'll get some blokes who will see you as a notch on the bedpost. They'll go all gooey about sticking it in a copper. You just have to distance yourself from it if it ever happens. They'll try to reduce you to a cunt, but you are a copper. So remember that and don't let them make you forget it."

"Did it happen to you Sharon?" she'd asked, greatly daring. DS Harker had looked at her sideways "It's not just villains you have to worry about" she'd said, and gone off to get another drink.

Sally just looked Skinhead in the eye and said nothing. Time. Play for time.

"What are you doing here then bitch? Looking for these two? Dunno why, the little one's crippled and the other one's not good for much."

Well she could agree with that, but didn't think saying so was going to be useful.

"Now... where there's one copper there's going to be others. So where's the rest of 'em bitch?" And he casually slapped her, fast, shocking!

"Assaulting an officer will get you a jail term" she said with more bravado than she felt. "Only if anyone knows about it darling" he said with a very unpleasant smile.

"Fix her up, we'll have some fun".

The Doctor started making a fuss. Tatts's mate went over and slapped him silly which got the Freak going and he copped a bit too. Meanwhile Tatts and another bloke had her hands tied behind her and pushed her against the wall. Must have run out of chairs. All three of them trussed up like chickens in the butcher's, fine crimefighters they were!

Skinhead had that look in his eye and she knew it was all going downhill from here. Come on backup! Come on.

"The rest of the squad will be here soon, don't make it worse for yourselves" she said, feeling monumentally silly saying it in this situation, but what could you do?

Skinhead reached over and patted her cheek "Oh I look forward to it, but meanwhile you are here and I'm going to have my fun".

She looked him in the eye hoping her terror didn't show. And to avoid looking at the bulge in his pants.

He reached forward, mashing her breast lust in his eyes but if that was for sex or for pain she couldn't tell and didn't want to know. A jerk and he'd ripped her shirt open, grinning. One hand groping her viciously between the legs, the other her breast, his mouth coming closer. She bit at him and he pulled back backhanding her as he did so. Maybe that hadn't been such a good idea.

Because Skinhead had a knife now. A wicked looking thing gleaming in the light. He brought it forward to her face, she couldn't help her eyes widening, and her body tensing. "Oh yes bitch. You are going to be all mine, you are going to beg for it" and he fondled himself through his trousers.

"Come on backup!" she thought as he brought the knife down to her exposed skin and she cringed away from it because she couldn't help herself.

The door exploded.

Two big uniforms slammed through and then the DI came pounding in, stabvest over shirtsleeves and a baton in his hand.

Skinhead looked up his eyes wide, stepped back, lifted the knife, and got the baton across his wrist with a very satisfying crack.

Lestrade's eyes swept her, saw the bruises and the torn clothes, turned back to Skinhead who was holding his wrist and yelling. The baton swept up hard between the bastard's legs practically lifting him off the ground as the DI put some body English into it. Skinhead collapsed onto the floor unable to even scream.

She felt Mike then, scrabbling at the ropes, cutting them off, breath on her ear, holding her as the ropes came free, his frantic "Sally, you OK Sally?" the most welcome sound in the world. Even better than Skinhead's choked noises.

"I'm OK, oh God I'm glad you're here, I'm OK Mike" as she pulled her torn shirt over herself. Mike wrapped his coat around her, she knew he wanted to hug her and hold her but not here, he got as close to it as he could though.

There was a moment of almost quiet, the gang under control, the only noise the sobbing from the man on the floor.

The DI looked around the room, baton tapping against his leg. "Sally, any of these other pricks guilty of resisting arrest?"

Tatts shifted looking ready to make a break, the uniform nearest him raised his baton hopefully and he subsided.

"You're late as usual" that was the Freak, arrogant as always.

"Shut up Sherlock, I'll get to you", said the boss, turning back to her.

"Do you need a doc Sally? You sure you are OK?"

"Yes sir, I'm fine. Couple of bruises, could do with a drink, that's all."

He gave her his quick grin and said "we'll do the drinks good and proper later, after we've sorted this lot".

Someone had got the Freak and the Doctor loose, and the DI went over to talk to them. She shared a look with Mike, wishing not for the first time (or the last) that they didn't have to sneak around.

Then they turned back to the job of sorting this lot. Because that's what coppers do.

A Reliable Man. Interlude in a Blue Suit

randomly_rusted — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 12:36:40 GMT

Summary: Silenced guns and silenced policemen. Lestrade walks into trouble.
Timeline: before A Study in Pink
Rating: PG

My grateful thanks to elfbert for brilliant suggestions

-----------------

It had been a clear picture perfect summer's day which meant dealing with a bored Sherlock was harder than usual. Couldn't the man just relax and enjoy the sun? Probably not given the pale skin, probably thought the sun was just something that accelerated decay in corpses and made them harder to read.

Lestrade had been lucky enough to have something odd to give him, just odd enough to catch the butterfly interest and stop him whining about his boredom and how it was all Lestrade's fault. Later he wondered if he'd have been so happy to bring Sherlock and the case together if he'd known how it ended. But it did keep the brat out of his hair for nearly two days straight running around London chasing the man with the limp and the cameo ring.

The nondescript two up two down was just like every other one in the area although Sherlock was prattling on about marks on the step not being there and they should have been, and look at the flap on the letterbox, and couldn't they just see? The way the rug in the front room was rucked up could only mean the culprit was the chip shop man so all they had to do was find him, he'd be somewhere close to the docks and not too far from a betting shop and besides wasn't it obvious that he'd be wearing a blue suit?

The short sharp cough as he turned the corner meant nothing to him at first nor did the black car nearby but when the man in the blue suit dropped to his knees coughing with an altogether different sound they both meant a great deal indeed.

He should have dived for cover, he should have run, he should have called for backup but he recognised the car and the driver. He didn't recognise the two hard men who looked like SAS in mufti, but he did recognise there was a lot more to this than a simple murder over a ring.

The taller of the hard men turned to him as his partner lifted blue-suit into the boot of the car.

"This didn't happen Inspector. You won't hear anything more and we won't hear anything more, clear?"

Lestrade scowled. He wasn't 22 anymore, he had been driving a desk for years and there was no way he could take these two on especially as he had no idea which one had the gun, but there was a dead man and his case needed that dead man!

"Let me search him first" he surprised himself by saying "he might have evidence on him I need for a murder case".

"There is no murder case" said a familar voice from behind him. He shouldn't have been surprised and he hid it as well as he could.

"Tell that to my inch thick case file" he said turning to face that damned sleek self satisfied posh bastard. "I have a job to do and I'm going to do it" in his best no-nonsense lets not make this difficult hand it over please sir police officer voice.

"My dear Inspector, there is no murder case. You will find the coroner's report now says the unfortunate gentleman with the mismatched shoes who lost the cameo ring died of natural causes. This ...person " (a slight moue of distaste as though even mentioning the man was unpleasant) " has sold his business and left the country. By now the paperwork at the Yard will reflect this."

Lestrade did his best to avoid imitating a goldfish. The sheer arrogance that shoots a man in front of a Detective Inspector and then tells the police to run away and play because reality has been altered to suit the current agenda... No one could blame him if he gaped but damned if he would.

And damned if he'd just slink off either. "So what's your interest in this not-a-murder?" he growled "Wouldn't want the stupid flatfoot to trip over anything you've missed in your rummage through our records so tell me why I shouldn't look for answers?"

Mycroft looked at him, as though he was a dog that had stood up on its hind legs and asked him to pass the mustard. He didn't care. He was past caring. Two weeks of legwork while dealing with Sherlock dancing in and out and calling them names. He had put Donovan so far off her game Lestrade had actually had to take her out to the pub and and talk her self-confidence up after she made an uncharacteristically stupid mistake and went to pieces over it. And this Whitehall Wonder was telling him to drop it. No bloody way!

Another man would have left well enough alone, but stubborn was his middle name (Sherlock would have said it was stupid but Sherlock thought that was everyone's name) and he wasn't going to just walk away from a murder case he'd put his name on.

There was a long silence.

Lestrade became very aware of the flat light blue eyes of the taller of the two hard men and of the way the man's right side was turned away and his right arm was straight down along his leg.

"Let us just say" said Mycroft "That it is a matter of national security. You must understand that I'm very grateful to you and to Sherlock for tracking this all down for us, but you should also understand that it is no longer your case. I'm very sure you have other work to do."

He gave that horrible little smile, a touch of social lubricant while you screw the lower classes, and climbed into the car. The two hard bastards got in too and the car silently wafted them away while Lestrade stood there wondering what the hell he'd tell Donovan when she asked if he'd had any luck.

When he finally got home, he noticed a printout on the table, a CCTV shot of him walking home from the tube station. Just few feet behind him was one of the hard men, he'd never noticed, never noticed at all!

That was bad enough but what made him sit down heavily was that under it was another one. This time of Donovan, near the Aldgate tube station, waiting for the bus. In the queue just behind her was the other hard man. The one with the flat light blue eyes.

Part Three: Irresistible Force and Immovable Object

A Reliable Man. Part Two: The first time he saw the car

randomly_rusted — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 10:23:01 GMT

Summary: Lestrade is overworked and Sherlock just makes it worse. Mycroft isn't helping.
Timeline: before A Study in Pink

Warning: strong language (although not by Australian standards)

Type: Gen

Part two of A Reliable Man, a series of connected stories. Part One is here

See the end for glossary

ETA: minor edit for Elfbert's very welcome Londonpicking
==================================

The first time Lestrade saw the car was when it picked him up outside the house of a witness he'd been interviewing. He was eying the sky wondering if he should have brought his raincoat when a text arrived: "Car will pick you up now. MH"

After a moment to remember who MH might be he checked the number against the card in his wallet and wondered just what "now" meant. And pick him up from where?

He couldn't believe it when a big black car stopped right next to him and the door opened before he had put away his phone.

Which chimed again "Into the car Inspector - MH"

He was still staring at that when the woman inside said "Come on Inspector, we can't stop here for long"

She was right, double yellows large as life. Feeling like he'd been hit on the head with a gold plated brick he climbed in, buckled up, and the car pulled away smoothly and quietly. Expensive suspension and a lot of weight if it could do that on these roads. Islington Council, breeding potholes since 1963.

The woman across the seat from him (30s, slim, expensive business suit, good legs and knew it, hundred quid haircut, someone's very expensive PA) didn't look up from her Blackberry even when he spoke.

"Where are we going? What's this all about?" Given the phone number checked it wasn't your average kidnapping, so what was it?

"Your questions will be answered soon Inspector" she said, still typing away, may as well have had "don't bother me little man" in glowing letters abover her head.

It didn't really surprise him, high class City types tended to view coppers as about the level of a toilet cleaner: important when you need them, but you don't want to be around when they visit. Hired help should be seen and not heard. He'd get nothing out of her unless he had her in an interview room and maybe not even then because there'd be a five hundred quid an hour brief in the room with her, and they'd just be exhibiting a perfect 10 performance of synchronised sneering.

He bowed to the inevitable and putting his head back allowed his exhaustion to catch up with him

Work came in waves. Some days you'd be easy with time to relax and joke and eat sitting down. Other days you'd be out till sparrowfart and only sitting down to spend hours on the phone talking to people who were uninterested and unhelpful if they weren't just plain unpleasant. To say nothing of the whole mess with Sherlock and the shoes.

Sherlock would have been able to tell you the exact route they took and where they were going, deeply tinted windows and excellent soundproofing not withstanding. Lestrade was paying enough attention to know they were heading vaguely southward towards the river, but there are only so many interviews with covertly hostile witnesses, battles with overtly hostile computers, and cups of sullenly vicious Met coffee that a man can take before he decides a carnapping by the Secret Service to an unknown destination is a perfect excuse to close his eyes and relax.

He didn't open them until the car came to a smooth silent halt. He could see through the windscreen a large well lit underground warehouse and a large well dressed man leaning on an umbrella.

"Welcome Inspector, so glad you could make it. Now tell me why my brother was in the cells overnight and left with obvious bruises."

Well yes. He should have known that's what this was about. The flu had gone through the whole floor, everyone from the newest DC to DCI McClellan who had been in the Met since the Ripper's day had to take on extra cases, He had just about all of Gregson's on his plate, there was no way he had been up to nursemaiding Sherlock.

The problem was that Sherlock had done what Sherlock was so good at doing: getting up multiple people's noses so far they'd needed sniffer dogs to find him.

What he wanted to say was "Your bloody idiot of a brother damn near caused a religious riot in one of the most dangerous places in London and if there was any justice in the world he'd still be rotting in Brick Lane holding cells. Or better still getting a taste of the real deal on remand in Brixton or Wandsworth."

He had no idea where he was, that driver looked like he didn't so much lift weights as toss them carelessly, and the posh bastard had had a very iffy expression on his face when he had said "bruised".

So what he said was "He was in the cells because he caused an affray. He was in the cells overnight because he refused to produce identification and when he finally did, it had my name on it ."

Silence.

Lestrade ran his hand through his hair, and barreled on. There was no way to be polite about this.

"Look. He went to a mosque during Friday prayers, and went through all the shoes outside, examining them and tossing them into a pile in the mud when he was done. He was in the middle of it when prayers ended and the congregation came out. They took exception, he called them all stupid and then the fight began. He's lucky the Imam in Nelson St is a moderate so he called the cops instead of letting them get on with it. Sherlock gave as good as he got, but he'd have had more than a few bruises if the panda hadn't been just round the corner."

Holmes closed his eyes for a moment. Good Lord he seemed to think it was as damn stupid as everyone else did! But then the last time Shadwell had flared up it had burned for two days, even the Secret Service wouldn't like that.

"When they contacted me about the ID, I went down there and was able to get him out and take him home. If he shows his face there again it won't be as easy."

Not that it had been easy then. It was only that nothing had been damaged or stolen, just a bit muddy, and any assault orcharges would not get past the CPS because they'd degenerate into he-said-she-said and both sides claiming self defence that had allowed him to call in a favour from Tommy Darton (whose manor it was) who he knew from his Southwark days .

Promising Tommy that yes he would take that fucking ponce out and bang some sense into his fucking head he'd got Sherlock out of the cell and into the car and had yelled at him all the way to Montague St.

Not that it had done any good. As far as Sherlock was concerned "It was an experiment" was all the explanation anyone needed. He'd wanted to examine the wear pattern on the shoes and that was that.

About the only consolation (aside from the magnificent black eye) was the fact that despite the lying-on-his-back-hands-steepled-I-know-who-you-are-without-opening-my-eyes act when Lestrade came to fetch him, being in the cells overnight seemed to have knocked a bit of the arrogance off him. At least he'd only made token protests in the car and had gone up to his flat when told. He was looking a bit pale and shaky once he was there, reaction probably. Lestrade had told him to eat something already and gone back to the Yard and his foot long interview list.

Holmes gave that horrible little smile. "I would have preferred if you had got there earlier Inspector"

Lestrade would have preferred not to have got there at all, as the git would have been out in a few days anyway and that would be a few days without avalanches of texts that were either whiny or cryptic.

"Sherlock has been helpful to me, and I do try to return the favour but operational requirements have to come first".

There, chew on that Mr Permanant Undersecretary Spook or whatever you are. I have a real job, which is not babysitting your little brother.

Holmes looked at him for a long moment, umbrella swinging gently in his hand. He didn't look the violent type, he probably had minions for that, but that thing could still give you a bit of a jolt if it hit you.

The silence stretched, then Holmes seemed to make up his mind. "Well I'm glad you did what you could Inspector, but please do keep my request in mind". And then with a little Royal Wave he strolled off stage left, calling over his shoulder "The car will take you back to
the Yard".

Lestrade pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers and sighed. The man had more people skills than his brother, but so did most cockroaches. Called up here, given a C minus and told to do better next time, what a way to make friends and influence people. But then this man didn't need friends, he had power.

On the other hand... with all that power, he still needed a copper to get his brother out of chokey, which must piss him right off. Hence all this because he had to say "thank you" but couldn't do it without a show of power to get some self respect back in the face of said copper.

That cheered Lestrade right up and he sauntered back to the car, smiled at the Blackberry and its assistant and slid into his seat. "The Yard if you would" he said and sat back to enjoy the ride.

Next: Interlude in a Blue Suit

====================

DC: detective constable

panda: police car, used to be black and white in a time when all cars were solid tinted, the name stuck

I have never been to London, so I do what I can with google maps. I have no idea if there is a mosque in Nelson St in Shadwell and the two day riot there is a figment of my imagination. I don't even know if Brick Lane police station *has* holding cells. I apologise to Islington Council (if there is one) for any implication that they encourage potholes to do the dirty.
.

A Reliable Man. Part One: First Encounter

randomly_rusted — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 04:28:12 GMT

Summary: Mycroft wants to know if the people around Sherlock are reliable. Lestrade just wants to get the paperwork finished. The first in a connected series.
Timeline: before A Study in Pink

Rating: PG (some mild language although not by Australian standards)

Type: Gen

See the end for glossary.

I really appreciate comments, especially ones that tell me what you did and didn't like, and what didn't work for you.
==============================================================================================

Mycroft Holmes usually devoted a few minutes of his day to worrying about his brother.

There was a lot to worry about, the boy was hopeless! Darting about in that rackety fashion dabbling in this and that, no application, no control and no understanding of the consequences of his actions.

He did seem to be a bit more focused now he'd latched onto a policeman and persuaded the man to let him use all that forensic knowledge. At first it had been a few emails pointing out the obvious, but according to the surveillance Sherlock was now being allowed to inspect crime scenes by this Lestrade. And only Lestrade apparently, there'd been a bit of an altercation when he tried it on someone else.

So who was this Lestrade, was he someone Mycroft could trust around his brother?

Born in Somerset, standard state schools, reasonable marks, moved to London and joined the Met after a few odd jobs, so far so normal. A solid career if nothing special. Commendation for bravery in a hostage situation which appeared to have tilted the balance in favour of his promotion to DI. Other than that he seemed to be an average policeman although admittedly his clear up rate was rather good even before he met Sherlock. Not stellar, and he'd made a couple of obvious mistakes; surely he'd realised that fraud case was much more about the adultery than about the money?

He had started his criminal justice degree part time while still in uniform, a 2:1 wasn't a bad result given that, there had to be some brains in there somewhere.

Sherlock seemed to think so, as this Lestrade was his brother's man of choice. The others might not be as accommodating Mycroft supposed but Sherlock wouldn't give the time of day to someone he considered averagely stupid.

Lestrade was getting value for his willingness to let Sherlock in though, he could see his brother's influence in the man's statistics. He would have to find out if this was a way of hunting promotion, a man who was using Sherlock for that would not be reliable.

Mycroft needed reliable people around his brother.

==========

Lestrade was grinding through the last of the paperwork for the death in the newsagents, which would probably be downgraded to manslaughter by the CPS as while Sherlock might be convinced by the shape of the scrape on the victim's shoe the CPS lawyers wouldn't see themselves putting that before a jury! He sorted the final pages, checked the photos were properly marked and indexed and looked up to see the Superintendent's assistant.

He blinked. Sergeant Bloody Cornwall barely gave lowly DIs the time of day except when summoning them by phone or more usually a terse email to come and kneel on the carpet before God. For her to leave her desk on the Sacred Ninth Floor to slum it down here was unprecedented short of a Royal Visit (or one from the Comnmissioner which was much more important)

"DI Lestrade" she said "you are to come with me. There's someone from the Home Office who wishes to talk to you".

With that she turned and headed out obviously expecting him to follow Right Now, not even giving him the chance to stuff the report back into the file. With a groan he got up and followed because he already had enough "needs to focus more on departmental processes" black marks on his record.

Some men would have been worried, maybe even scared by the fact they'd been pulled out of the office and sent in to talk to a nameless Home Office man who clearly had the Super's people nearly shitting themselves. Anyone who could have Sergeant Bloody Cornwall playing fetch-the-DI was special.

Not Lestrade though. Whoever this bloke was, he was just another manager and management wasn't something he feared. He might feel frustration or anger or sheer wall-thumping pissedoffedness, but not fear.

Fear was being a 22yo beat constable facing a lagered up crowd, being outnumbered what felt like 20 to one, trying to defuse the situation and it all going to hell and him with no stab vest because the Superintendent of Southwark Division thought beat cops in stab vests "sent the wrong message" so there he was in the middle of fists and feet and screaming and wondering when some young idiot with delusions of masculinity was going to pull a knife and cut him to ribbons.

Fear was being alone in a house with a crazy bastard and a gun and a hostage. He'd said he'd talk to Lestrade because he knew him from the squash club so there he was in his bloody shirtsleeves again trying to talk the nutter down as he sobs about about his wife and how he was sorry and it was all her fault and the gun wavering between the crying girl's head and Lestrade's chest.

Compared to that, some bureaucrat from the Home Office was easy. He could make life a bit difficult, but it's still nothing like staring down the wrong end of a gun.

Lestrade tramped through the Sacred Ninth Floor at Cornwall's heels like a puppy on best behaviour, and was shown into a small meeting room and the presence of a posh looking Whitehall type complete with umbrella and supercilious expression.

"Detective Inspector Lestrade, please sit down, it is time you and I had a talk".

Saville Row bespoke tailoring, accent upper class enough to show he was "one of us" without being too much so. Question was, was he a Whitehall drone dumped in the Home Office because even Daddy's contacts weren't going to come at a pupillage for a barely scraped pass in law. So he was here on some makework, or was he someone Lestrade needed to pay attention to?

Management wasn't something he feared, but a sensible man didn't piss off the higher ups without good reason. And given the Super wasn't anywhere to be seen and he usually was anywhere he could look good to the home office, if this man was here on real business it was likely to mean trouble for a DI who wasn't sufficiently helpful.

Lestrade sat down and prepared to be a polite helpful policeman ready to drop everything for the Home Office and provide whatever stats they wanted, or take on some disadvantaged work experience students or maybe do something discreet about a leak from the Cabinet Office. So he got rather a shock at the man's next words.

"How much of your clear up rate is down to Sherlock Holmes?"

Lestrade closed his mouth quickly enough and scrambled for something vaguely intelligent to say. Who was this bloke and what was this about? If he was going to get another bollocking for involving Sherlock it would be from his DCI or the Super, not some Sir Humphrey type. So why did the man know Sherlock's name? And what he'd been doing? Mind in overdrive, mouth in civil-service mode....

"He's been very helpful on a number of occasions where his skills and knowledge have made him a useful source of information and avenues of approach" he said.

He wanted to say "I don't care what the conceited little brat tells you, there's no conviction without legwork and you don't catch him doing the hard yards, those clear-ups are my team's work and don't you dare say otherwise".

What he said was "but a sound conviction needs a solid foundation of police work which is not Mr Holmes's strong point."

The man's muouth quirked in a meaningless little smile, Lestrade couldn't have told you what tipped him off, but every cop's instinct he had was yelling a warning. This man was trouble and a DI with a few marks on his record and a reputation for not following the rules didn't need trouble.

There was something about this man, something about the tilt of the head, a fleeting expression, the hands, reminded him of someone... Who was it, who was it...

"How much work is needed when you have Sherlock to tell you what to do? You have been filing reports all day by the state of your cuffs, is that all you do?"

Lestrade half stood in anger, why the arrogant know-it-all sod! Just like....

"You're related to him!" he blurted out, shocked into speech by the idea that Sherlock had family, and hadn't been spontaneously generated by a malevolent fate to make a policeman's life difficult.

The man across the table was equally shocked it seemed, if he was Sherlock's brother than he probably thought your average copper only had enough intelligence to put one flat foot in front of the other so having one who was able to work out who he was might be startling.

But who was he besides Sherlock's brother? Clearly upper echelon civil service, Sherlock's brains on someone who could work with people and play departmental politics didn't bear thinking about! He wouldn't be some policy wonk, he'd be a lot more than that. Secret Service?

Mycroft did start a little. There was very little physical resemblance and the man had not seen him for more than a few moments and he was sitting down, so what had tipped him off? Ah, that he was talking about Sherlock at all was probably a large part of it, and they both did have their mother's cheekbones if you looked from the correct angle and of course the throwaway line about the filing.

Very well he was observant and quick, although Mycroft hoped he wasn't in the habit of saying everything that popped into his head.

"You will report everything he does to me." said Mycroft, feeling it was time to put a little pressure on.

That got him another wide eyed look. So what would it be, acquiesecence, false outrage, mute incomprehension?

"You don't need me for that, I'm betting you have access to all the surveillance you need, and I don't see him all that often. So what are you really after?"

Because, Lestrade realised, this was about family and you can't get to DI without learning more than you wanted to know about the ways families worked. And the ways they fouled up their kids. This man had to be a brother, some years older, so the eldest? Just as bright he'd lay odds, but much more together. So what had happened between this man's formative years and Sherlock's to produce two such different men? And why was this one wanting his brother watched by the cops? Sherlock's not really fit to be let out without a keeper, there is that, but still... there's protective and there's manipulative and just which side of nice does Mr Five Thousand Quid Suit play on?

Mycroft found himself startled for the second time in as many minutes. This policeman really was out of the usual run, maybe he would be good for Sherlock. Not easily put off or pressured, and the body language showed a good underlying confidence born of competence. He knew his job, and it was rather pleasant not to have to deal with forelock tugging or bluster. That fitted with the man's origins showing in his voice: somewhat mutated by his time in London and the Police into RP flavoured Estuary but still enough Somerset to show he wasn't ashamed of where he came from and so hadn't gone the whole RP hog.

Myhcroft leaned back and steepled his fingers. "Sherlock is, as I'm sure you know, inclined to be impulsive. I need to be sure that this does not...lead to trouble."

Nursemaid? He wanted a nursemaid? Not bloody likely, not only would the barmy git drive him mad, there was real work to be done.

It must have shown in his face because the man across from him did that damn little smile again and said "Oh nothing much more than you are doing now. I just want you to take notice of him and to let me know if there are any problems. After all Superintendent Marshall did say you would be helpful".

Superintendent Marshall was saying he thought he would look nice in a Chief Super's uniform more like, meaning any jumped up jack in office could get that out of him. After all it wasn't difficult for Marshall to say "spend all your time babysitting that interfering civilian you are so fond of and still get all your other work done" no skin off his senior management nose. But now he'd been told and Marshall had been told, now it would be yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir, and leave stopped for operational reasons if he didn't babysit a child who was convinced he was God's gift to the stupid coppers when he wasn't stealing warrant cards or mutilating corpses.

Lestrade pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers and counted to 10. "If I noticed anything in the course of my duties I would of course handle it in a professional manner" he said, when what he wanted to say was "If that crazy bastard wants to go to hell in a handbasket I'd write the address label myself if it would get up your nose. "

"I'm sure you will Inspector, just so we understand what that means."

The man behind the table rose to his feet, the interview was over, don't call us we'll call you. Except no such luck, he handed Lestrade a card, said "As I said, let me know if there are any problems" smiled that horrible little smile, and walked out, his umbrella like a viciously pointed walking stick leaving a stunned DI Lestrade to stand there looking at the card.

"Mycroft Holmes" and a number. Mycroft? Ah well, if your brother is Sherlock, you aren't going to be a John are you! What were the parents thinking?

Hyper intelligent children would already have it bad at school without the added burden of those silly names.

It almost made him sorry for them.

Almost

Part Two: TheFirst TIme He Saw The Car

==============================================================================================

2:1 means Second Class Honours, Upper Division, which is a solid good degree.

Lagered up: drunk on cheap lager, a dreadful thin beer the poms exported to the colonies and I for one have never forgiven them

Pupillage: traditionally barristers - lawyers who represent clients in court - go through an apprenticeship system called pupillage. Competition is fierce and rumour has it that parental influence can play a part in getting a place

Policy wonk: A wonk is a civil service nerd. Focused on making policy and analysing statistics, not interacting with real people.

RP: Received Pronunciation. The stereotypical upper middle class accent as demonstrated by old style BBC announcers
Estuary: the current London accent, which is clear when you hear it but indescribable.

CPS: Crown Prosecution Service, the body providing the prosecution lawyers and which decides whether or not to prosecute.

.