Certain Events in Lambeth (Sherlock/Lestrade, NC-17)
Title: Certain Events in Lambeth
Rating: nc-17
Pairing: Sherlock/Lestrade
Genre: pre-series
Warning: non-con, of the aliens-made-them-do-it variety, except with no aliens.
Word Count: ~2.5K
Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit.
a/n: written for brighteyed_jill for the 5 Acts Meme: Round Four. The act was: non-con.
a/n: not part of my Sherlock/Jewish!Lestrade series.
Summary: While Lestrade was working his way up through the ranks he pulled a few hard years in Narcotics. That time had included three stints undercover. He hadn’t liked them much, but he’d gotten the job done all the same. He’d grown his hair out a bit, worn clothes that let his muscles and his service tattoo show, ratcheted up his accent and kept his eyes dead. Only once did anyone ever come close to making him as a copper.
Certain Events in Lambeth
Certain Events in Lambeth, Sherlock/Lestrade, nc-17, non-con.
While Lestrade was working his way up through the ranks he pulled a few hard years in Narcotics. That time had included three stints undercover. He hadn’t liked them much, but he’d gotten the job done all the same. He’d grown his hair out a bit, worn clothes that let his muscles and his service tattoo show, ratcheted up his accent and kept his eyes dead. Only once did anyone ever come close to making him as a copper.
Lestrade wondered if Sherlock had ever told John about it.
+++
He was working for a mid-level dealer named Joe Wren. Joe had a bird tattooed on the left side of his neck, a bird that looked even less like a wren than Joe did. So people mostly called him Hawk. More like a vulture, Lestrade thought. Hawk had a wrestler’s build, an accountant’s mind, and a sadist’s energy. A few weeks into the job, Lestrade had begged his superiors to let him bring Wren up on assault charges. He’d been refused: they were after Hawk’s higher ups, they said, everything else would come out in court, Lestrade shouldn’t get ahead of himself.
So here he was on another enforcement of payment expedition, with Hawk and a concrete slab of a man he knew only as Georgie, kicking down the door of a grubby bed-sit in Lambeth.
“No point in salutations, boys,” Hawk had said. “Best not give him a chance to do a runner.”
The flat was a wreck. It smelt of dust, and unwashed clothes and something sharp and chemical. A chaos of books and papers and half-full test tubes and beakers littered every available surface. A threadbare dun-colored sofa was the only significant piece of furniture. At the sound of the door banging on its hinges, the lanky figure sprawled across it lifted its head and blinked dully at them.
“Up and at ‘em, Sunshine,” Hawk said, like this was his favorite thing in the world. Probably was. “We’ve come for what’s owed us.”
Lestrade had to dig his fingernails into his palm to keep from saying anything. He knew this man. It was Houghton’s wonder boy from the Yard, the one he’d been going on about for months.
“He just turned up one day,” Houghton had said. “Offering to consult. Straight out of university, looking like the worst kind of prat. You could smell the drugs on him, and other unsavory things besides. But damn if he didn’t solve the case by looking at the calluses on the vic’s right hand. Couldn’t say no to him after that.
Lestrade had seen him only once, coming out of Houghton’s office. Tall and thin, spectrally pale and weirdly elegant in his tight black clothes. Their eyes had caught-the youth’s a pale feline green, not the blue or hazel Lestrade had been expecting-and he’d smiled at Lestrade, just the slightest curl of his lips, before Lestrade tore his gaze away. There were certain aspects of his personal life he refused to indulge at work.
He held his breath now, waiting for the man to blow his cover. A hundred contingencies and fallbacks rushed through his mind. But the man gave no sign of having recognized him. Too strung out, perhaps-or else not quite as strung out as he seemed, already sussing out the situation.
“Now then, Mr. Holmes,” Hawk said, with a bookkeeper’s precision. “What form of payment will you be making today?”
Holmes-Lestrade struggled to remember his first name, something unusual, faintly comic-poured himself off the couch and straightened his clothes. He didn’t look particularly scared, or even upset that his dealer and two thugs had just forced entry into his flat. Nor did he give any sign of recognizing Lestrade, thank goodness. He looked miffed-in a supercilious kind of way.
“Ah. Mr. Wren. I’m afraid you find me a bit short of ready cash,” Holmes said, in a deep drawl that seemed too resonant for his slight frame.
“Well, it don’t have to be money, Sherlock, do it?” Sherlock, that was it-how could Lestrade have forgotten a name like that? “Toss the place, lads.”
“Nothing here but trash, boss,” Georgie proclaimed, a fine leather-bound volume dangling from each hand, after they’d done the obligatory shake down of the flat.
“What about you, Lou?” That was the name by which they knew Lestrade. “You find anything?” Lestrade shook his head. “No gold watch, Sherlock? No silver cufflinks?”
Sherlock looked down his nose at them. “I think you’ll find the first edition Lytton Strachey your colleague is mauling would fetch a pretty penny at the antiquarian book dealers. You’re welcome to it, if you like.”
“If you say so, ducky, but it won’t do.” Hawk’s happiness seemed to be expressing itself as an odd form of courtesy. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to take it out of you in kind. Grab a hold of him, would you, Lou?”
Lestrade stepped behind Sherlock and pulled his arms tight behind his back. Sherlock didn’t resist-indeed, he seemed somewhat limp, skin clammy through his shirt sleeves, perhaps finally realizing the gravity of the situation. Lestrade steeled himself to witness another beating, for another miserable hour of trying to make his own blows look as realistic as possible. But Hawk seemed to have something different in mind this time.
“Now, ordinarily I’d do a pretty young thing like you myself,” he said, drawing a deliberate finger up Sherlock’s ribs, “but you’re a bit scrawny for me-need something to dig my hands into, I do. Care to do the honors, Georgie?”
Georgie smiled, slow and mean, and the back of Lestrade’s throat went cold. He’d seen plenty of Georgie’s forms of persuasion: they were all thorough, efficient, and unremittingly brutal. His methods of sexual coercion were bound to be worse. Sherlock’s arms stiffened under Lestrade’s hands, as if he had deduced the same thing.
“Aw, boss,” Lestrade heard himself say, though he had no real plan in mind. “How come Georgie gets all the fun?”
Hawk squinted at him, leered. “So the new boy wants a piece of the action, eh? Took you for more of the retiring type, Lou. But if you fancy him, be my guest. Provided Georgie here don’t mind.”
“No problem, boss,” Georgie grumbled.
Lestrade felt Sherlock’s muscles relax infinitesimally. He wondered why. Maybe simply because Lestrade looked less rough than Georgie. Maybe because Sherlock really had made him for a copper, and thought Lestrade had a way out of this for them.
Which he hadn’t. There was no other room to take Sherlock into, and Lestrade very much doubted that Hawk would respond to a plea for privacy in any case. The point of this was Sherlock’s humiliation, not anyone’s pleasure. And so Lestrade probably hadn’t made anything better by volunteering for the job. In fact, he was starting to feel ill at the prospect.
“Alright, then,” said Hawk, all business. “Get his trousers down. We don’t have all day. I’d do it over the end of the sofa if I were you, but suit yourself.”
“Hey boss,” Lestrade said, grasping at straws. “Wouldn’t mind a bit of cigar rolling, if you know what I mean. Been jonesing for it all week.”
He didn’t know if it would be any better that way. But at least Sherlock could keep his clothes on-and there’d be less chance of him getting hurt. And maybe, just maybe, Lestrade could think of a way for them to fake it.
“Yeah?” Hawk looked interested. “I like the way you think, Lou my boy. He does have a very pretty mouth. Very pretty indeed.” He ran the pad of his thumb over Sherlock’s lips, played with sticking it between them, laughed nastily when Sherlock jerked his head away. “Right. On your knees, you junkie cunt.”
He kicked Sherlock’s legs out from under him with a vicious, well-placed blow, and wrenched his head around so that Sherlock was facing Lestrade. “All yours, mate,” he said, and settled into one of the room’s spindly chairs as if he were watching a game of darts down the pub.
Sherlock gathered himself from the ungainly heap Hawk had left him in. If the kick had hurt him, he didn’t show it. He looked up at Lestrade, his pale eyes gone even paler, almost translucent. Something bubbled to the surface in them, some shard of lucidity.
“I know you,” he said, very distinctly.
Lestrade froze. Fuck, oh fuck. Why hadn’t he had the sense to hang back, be inconspicuous? Why had he taken this risk that wasn’t going to do anyone any good anyway? Trying to be some kind of bloody hero. Sherlock was going to hate him, even if they survived the night.
“What’s that?” Hawk said sharply. “Is he saying he knows you?”
“Probably knows every drug dealer in London, this one.” Lestrade fumbled with the zipper of his jeans, trying to keep his voice level. “Could have sold him blow sometime, I don’t know.” He jammed his fingers into Sherlock’s overlong hair and forced his head down. “Go on. There’re better uses for that mouth of yours than talking.”
Sherlock let himself be pushed, though Lestrade almost wished he would struggle. Hawk, satisfied, settled back to watch.
Lestrade kept one hand in Sherlock’s hair, thick and luxuriant for all it was in need of washing, and shoved his jeans and briefs down with the other. It was truly the worst moment of his not-very-long career, caught between exposing his body to these sadistic bastards, and exposing the whole undercover operation he’d worked to set up. And the worst of it was that he really did fancy Sherlock Holmes-under better circumstances might have found some way to ask him out for a drink, shared a walk along the Thames after the pubs closed, a tender, maybe even a fumbling, tender kiss.
And thinking these horrible thoughts he felt Sherlock take him into his mouth. He wasn’t tentative about it, just very slow, as if he were measuring and probing every millimeter of Lestrade’s prick, working at half speed. Lestrade had thought this would be the part he’d have to fake. He hadn’t thought there’d be any way get hard under these circumstances. He wasn’t the type of bloke who got off on coercion, much less exhibitionism.
But his body came to his aid. Or betrayed him, depending on how you looked at it. Sherlock’s mouth was sweet, his tongue looping languid circles up Lestrade’s cock, teasing at the slit. And Lestrade still had the picture of that other reality in his mind, of kissing Sherlock on some balmy night, out in the open air, running his hands over that lean body, the tight arse. He was rock hard and aching before he knew it.
“Oi,” Hawk said. “Put some back into it, Lou. This ain’t the bloody Proms. Nobody’s paying for your refinement and gentility.”
Georgie cackled from his perch on the sofa arm, but Lestrade barely heard them. He was fucking into Sherlock’s mouth in earnest now, swept up in the rhythm of it, feeling the tip of his cock bump up against the back of Sherlock’s throat. And Sherlock took him in, took him in as far as he could go, though whether it was through expertise or a byproduct of intoxication, Lestrade didn’t know.
Perhaps the former, because at the last minute, Sherlock reached up a hand to cup Lestrade’s balls, squeezed gently, and Lestrade was gone. Sherlock swallowed him down, coaxed him through the aftershocks, and Lestrade was so grateful he would have leaned down and kissed him in truth if he hadn’t thought it would bring a beating on them both.
Finally, Sherlock pulled off and sat back on his heels, looking shattered, mouth unnaturally red in his pale face. Lestrade felt drained. He couldn’t tell if he were more relieved or horrified that he had pulled this off-that they had pulled it off, he corrected, suddenly sure that Sherlock had been helping, there at the end. He heard his own breath ragged in his ears as if it belonged to somebody else.
“That’s the spirit, Lou,” Hawk said, coming over and slapping him on the back. He looked a little flushed and glassy-eyed himself. “You popped your cherry all over again today, mate. Zip up and let me buy you a pint.”
Hawk raised his foot again, and pushed at Sherlock’s shoulder until he toppled over, an untidy pile of limbs, unnervingly still. “And you. Don’t think this means you don’t still owe us money. This is just a taste of what’s going to happen to you if you don’t pay up. Come on, Lou-stop gaping.”
“Yeah,” said Lestrade, “just a minute.” He crouched over Sherlock-near enough to whisper and devil take the consequences. “Are you alright? Do you need a hospital?”
“Mmmn.” Sherlock’s voice was very faint, but steady. He didn’t lift his head from the floor. “No. I’m fine. It’s only transport, after all.”
Lestrade had no idea what he meant. “I’m sorry,” he said, feeling shamed and ridiculous. “Thank you.”
+++
Lestrade’s undercover work wrapped up pretty quickly after that. He was reasonably sure that the events in Lambeth were what led Joe Wren to finally bring him into his inner circle, to introduce him to the big suppliers who had been the target all along. But it made him hot and sick to think about it, so he tried not to, most of the time.
Once he was back in his own clothes, hair newly shorn and tattoo safely hidden away, he made a trip to that shabby block in Lambeth, trudged up the stairs to the third floor bed-sit, heart in his mouth. He wasn’t sure what he intended to do if he found Sherlock. Apologize? That seemed laughably inadequate. Maybe just reassure himself that he still existed.
The flat was deserted. No one had bothered to fix the door, and he could see that the whole place had been swept clean, as if no one had ever lived there at all. He banged on all the other doors on the floor, showing his badge, but no one knew anything. One day he was here, the next day he was gone. No one knew anything.
Lestrade tried Houghton next.
“Ever hear from that bright young thing of yours?” he asked, trying to sound offhand. “The consultant?”
“It’s the damnedest thing,” Houghton said, and Lestrade tensed. Sherlock’s name had never appeared in any of the depositions, he’d made sure of that, but there were other, much worse things, that might have befallen him.
“What is?”
“Seems our boy was better connected than I thought. Friends-family-very high up. One day a very quiet gentleman indeed came along and told me to forget all about him. Swept him off for a long rest in the country. Very posh. Very private.” Houghton touched a finger to the side of his nose. “Can’t say he didn’t need it, though.”
Lestrade let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. So not dead, then. Not in a gutter someplace. Well looked after. “I hope it does him good,” he said, with more feeling than he’d meant to.
“So do I, mate, so do I. London could use a mind like that.”
end
Rating: nc-17
Pairing: Sherlock/Lestrade
Genre: pre-series
Warning: non-con, of the aliens-made-them-do-it variety, except with no aliens.
Word Count: ~2.5K
Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit.
a/n: written for brighteyed_jill for the 5 Acts Meme: Round Four. The act was: non-con.
a/n: not part of my Sherlock/Jewish!Lestrade series.
Summary: While Lestrade was working his way up through the ranks he pulled a few hard years in Narcotics. That time had included three stints undercover. He hadn’t liked them much, but he’d gotten the job done all the same. He’d grown his hair out a bit, worn clothes that let his muscles and his service tattoo show, ratcheted up his accent and kept his eyes dead. Only once did anyone ever come close to making him as a copper.
Certain Events in Lambeth
Certain Events in Lambeth, Sherlock/Lestrade, nc-17, non-con.
While Lestrade was working his way up through the ranks he pulled a few hard years in Narcotics. That time had included three stints undercover. He hadn’t liked them much, but he’d gotten the job done all the same. He’d grown his hair out a bit, worn clothes that let his muscles and his service tattoo show, ratcheted up his accent and kept his eyes dead. Only once did anyone ever come close to making him as a copper.
Lestrade wondered if Sherlock had ever told John about it.
+++
He was working for a mid-level dealer named Joe Wren. Joe had a bird tattooed on the left side of his neck, a bird that looked even less like a wren than Joe did. So people mostly called him Hawk. More like a vulture, Lestrade thought. Hawk had a wrestler’s build, an accountant’s mind, and a sadist’s energy. A few weeks into the job, Lestrade had begged his superiors to let him bring Wren up on assault charges. He’d been refused: they were after Hawk’s higher ups, they said, everything else would come out in court, Lestrade shouldn’t get ahead of himself.
So here he was on another enforcement of payment expedition, with Hawk and a concrete slab of a man he knew only as Georgie, kicking down the door of a grubby bed-sit in Lambeth.
“No point in salutations, boys,” Hawk had said. “Best not give him a chance to do a runner.”
The flat was a wreck. It smelt of dust, and unwashed clothes and something sharp and chemical. A chaos of books and papers and half-full test tubes and beakers littered every available surface. A threadbare dun-colored sofa was the only significant piece of furniture. At the sound of the door banging on its hinges, the lanky figure sprawled across it lifted its head and blinked dully at them.
“Up and at ‘em, Sunshine,” Hawk said, like this was his favorite thing in the world. Probably was. “We’ve come for what’s owed us.”
Lestrade had to dig his fingernails into his palm to keep from saying anything. He knew this man. It was Houghton’s wonder boy from the Yard, the one he’d been going on about for months.
“He just turned up one day,” Houghton had said. “Offering to consult. Straight out of university, looking like the worst kind of prat. You could smell the drugs on him, and other unsavory things besides. But damn if he didn’t solve the case by looking at the calluses on the vic’s right hand. Couldn’t say no to him after that.
Lestrade had seen him only once, coming out of Houghton’s office. Tall and thin, spectrally pale and weirdly elegant in his tight black clothes. Their eyes had caught-the youth’s a pale feline green, not the blue or hazel Lestrade had been expecting-and he’d smiled at Lestrade, just the slightest curl of his lips, before Lestrade tore his gaze away. There were certain aspects of his personal life he refused to indulge at work.
He held his breath now, waiting for the man to blow his cover. A hundred contingencies and fallbacks rushed through his mind. But the man gave no sign of having recognized him. Too strung out, perhaps-or else not quite as strung out as he seemed, already sussing out the situation.
“Now then, Mr. Holmes,” Hawk said, with a bookkeeper’s precision. “What form of payment will you be making today?”
Holmes-Lestrade struggled to remember his first name, something unusual, faintly comic-poured himself off the couch and straightened his clothes. He didn’t look particularly scared, or even upset that his dealer and two thugs had just forced entry into his flat. Nor did he give any sign of recognizing Lestrade, thank goodness. He looked miffed-in a supercilious kind of way.
“Ah. Mr. Wren. I’m afraid you find me a bit short of ready cash,” Holmes said, in a deep drawl that seemed too resonant for his slight frame.
“Well, it don’t have to be money, Sherlock, do it?” Sherlock, that was it-how could Lestrade have forgotten a name like that? “Toss the place, lads.”
“Nothing here but trash, boss,” Georgie proclaimed, a fine leather-bound volume dangling from each hand, after they’d done the obligatory shake down of the flat.
“What about you, Lou?” That was the name by which they knew Lestrade. “You find anything?” Lestrade shook his head. “No gold watch, Sherlock? No silver cufflinks?”
Sherlock looked down his nose at them. “I think you’ll find the first edition Lytton Strachey your colleague is mauling would fetch a pretty penny at the antiquarian book dealers. You’re welcome to it, if you like.”
“If you say so, ducky, but it won’t do.” Hawk’s happiness seemed to be expressing itself as an odd form of courtesy. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to take it out of you in kind. Grab a hold of him, would you, Lou?”
Lestrade stepped behind Sherlock and pulled his arms tight behind his back. Sherlock didn’t resist-indeed, he seemed somewhat limp, skin clammy through his shirt sleeves, perhaps finally realizing the gravity of the situation. Lestrade steeled himself to witness another beating, for another miserable hour of trying to make his own blows look as realistic as possible. But Hawk seemed to have something different in mind this time.
“Now, ordinarily I’d do a pretty young thing like you myself,” he said, drawing a deliberate finger up Sherlock’s ribs, “but you’re a bit scrawny for me-need something to dig my hands into, I do. Care to do the honors, Georgie?”
Georgie smiled, slow and mean, and the back of Lestrade’s throat went cold. He’d seen plenty of Georgie’s forms of persuasion: they were all thorough, efficient, and unremittingly brutal. His methods of sexual coercion were bound to be worse. Sherlock’s arms stiffened under Lestrade’s hands, as if he had deduced the same thing.
“Aw, boss,” Lestrade heard himself say, though he had no real plan in mind. “How come Georgie gets all the fun?”
Hawk squinted at him, leered. “So the new boy wants a piece of the action, eh? Took you for more of the retiring type, Lou. But if you fancy him, be my guest. Provided Georgie here don’t mind.”
“No problem, boss,” Georgie grumbled.
Lestrade felt Sherlock’s muscles relax infinitesimally. He wondered why. Maybe simply because Lestrade looked less rough than Georgie. Maybe because Sherlock really had made him for a copper, and thought Lestrade had a way out of this for them.
Which he hadn’t. There was no other room to take Sherlock into, and Lestrade very much doubted that Hawk would respond to a plea for privacy in any case. The point of this was Sherlock’s humiliation, not anyone’s pleasure. And so Lestrade probably hadn’t made anything better by volunteering for the job. In fact, he was starting to feel ill at the prospect.
“Alright, then,” said Hawk, all business. “Get his trousers down. We don’t have all day. I’d do it over the end of the sofa if I were you, but suit yourself.”
“Hey boss,” Lestrade said, grasping at straws. “Wouldn’t mind a bit of cigar rolling, if you know what I mean. Been jonesing for it all week.”
He didn’t know if it would be any better that way. But at least Sherlock could keep his clothes on-and there’d be less chance of him getting hurt. And maybe, just maybe, Lestrade could think of a way for them to fake it.
“Yeah?” Hawk looked interested. “I like the way you think, Lou my boy. He does have a very pretty mouth. Very pretty indeed.” He ran the pad of his thumb over Sherlock’s lips, played with sticking it between them, laughed nastily when Sherlock jerked his head away. “Right. On your knees, you junkie cunt.”
He kicked Sherlock’s legs out from under him with a vicious, well-placed blow, and wrenched his head around so that Sherlock was facing Lestrade. “All yours, mate,” he said, and settled into one of the room’s spindly chairs as if he were watching a game of darts down the pub.
Sherlock gathered himself from the ungainly heap Hawk had left him in. If the kick had hurt him, he didn’t show it. He looked up at Lestrade, his pale eyes gone even paler, almost translucent. Something bubbled to the surface in them, some shard of lucidity.
“I know you,” he said, very distinctly.
Lestrade froze. Fuck, oh fuck. Why hadn’t he had the sense to hang back, be inconspicuous? Why had he taken this risk that wasn’t going to do anyone any good anyway? Trying to be some kind of bloody hero. Sherlock was going to hate him, even if they survived the night.
“What’s that?” Hawk said sharply. “Is he saying he knows you?”
“Probably knows every drug dealer in London, this one.” Lestrade fumbled with the zipper of his jeans, trying to keep his voice level. “Could have sold him blow sometime, I don’t know.” He jammed his fingers into Sherlock’s overlong hair and forced his head down. “Go on. There’re better uses for that mouth of yours than talking.”
Sherlock let himself be pushed, though Lestrade almost wished he would struggle. Hawk, satisfied, settled back to watch.
Lestrade kept one hand in Sherlock’s hair, thick and luxuriant for all it was in need of washing, and shoved his jeans and briefs down with the other. It was truly the worst moment of his not-very-long career, caught between exposing his body to these sadistic bastards, and exposing the whole undercover operation he’d worked to set up. And the worst of it was that he really did fancy Sherlock Holmes-under better circumstances might have found some way to ask him out for a drink, shared a walk along the Thames after the pubs closed, a tender, maybe even a fumbling, tender kiss.
And thinking these horrible thoughts he felt Sherlock take him into his mouth. He wasn’t tentative about it, just very slow, as if he were measuring and probing every millimeter of Lestrade’s prick, working at half speed. Lestrade had thought this would be the part he’d have to fake. He hadn’t thought there’d be any way get hard under these circumstances. He wasn’t the type of bloke who got off on coercion, much less exhibitionism.
But his body came to his aid. Or betrayed him, depending on how you looked at it. Sherlock’s mouth was sweet, his tongue looping languid circles up Lestrade’s cock, teasing at the slit. And Lestrade still had the picture of that other reality in his mind, of kissing Sherlock on some balmy night, out in the open air, running his hands over that lean body, the tight arse. He was rock hard and aching before he knew it.
“Oi,” Hawk said. “Put some back into it, Lou. This ain’t the bloody Proms. Nobody’s paying for your refinement and gentility.”
Georgie cackled from his perch on the sofa arm, but Lestrade barely heard them. He was fucking into Sherlock’s mouth in earnest now, swept up in the rhythm of it, feeling the tip of his cock bump up against the back of Sherlock’s throat. And Sherlock took him in, took him in as far as he could go, though whether it was through expertise or a byproduct of intoxication, Lestrade didn’t know.
Perhaps the former, because at the last minute, Sherlock reached up a hand to cup Lestrade’s balls, squeezed gently, and Lestrade was gone. Sherlock swallowed him down, coaxed him through the aftershocks, and Lestrade was so grateful he would have leaned down and kissed him in truth if he hadn’t thought it would bring a beating on them both.
Finally, Sherlock pulled off and sat back on his heels, looking shattered, mouth unnaturally red in his pale face. Lestrade felt drained. He couldn’t tell if he were more relieved or horrified that he had pulled this off-that they had pulled it off, he corrected, suddenly sure that Sherlock had been helping, there at the end. He heard his own breath ragged in his ears as if it belonged to somebody else.
“That’s the spirit, Lou,” Hawk said, coming over and slapping him on the back. He looked a little flushed and glassy-eyed himself. “You popped your cherry all over again today, mate. Zip up and let me buy you a pint.”
Hawk raised his foot again, and pushed at Sherlock’s shoulder until he toppled over, an untidy pile of limbs, unnervingly still. “And you. Don’t think this means you don’t still owe us money. This is just a taste of what’s going to happen to you if you don’t pay up. Come on, Lou-stop gaping.”
“Yeah,” said Lestrade, “just a minute.” He crouched over Sherlock-near enough to whisper and devil take the consequences. “Are you alright? Do you need a hospital?”
“Mmmn.” Sherlock’s voice was very faint, but steady. He didn’t lift his head from the floor. “No. I’m fine. It’s only transport, after all.”
Lestrade had no idea what he meant. “I’m sorry,” he said, feeling shamed and ridiculous. “Thank you.”
+++
Lestrade’s undercover work wrapped up pretty quickly after that. He was reasonably sure that the events in Lambeth were what led Joe Wren to finally bring him into his inner circle, to introduce him to the big suppliers who had been the target all along. But it made him hot and sick to think about it, so he tried not to, most of the time.
Once he was back in his own clothes, hair newly shorn and tattoo safely hidden away, he made a trip to that shabby block in Lambeth, trudged up the stairs to the third floor bed-sit, heart in his mouth. He wasn’t sure what he intended to do if he found Sherlock. Apologize? That seemed laughably inadequate. Maybe just reassure himself that he still existed.
The flat was deserted. No one had bothered to fix the door, and he could see that the whole place had been swept clean, as if no one had ever lived there at all. He banged on all the other doors on the floor, showing his badge, but no one knew anything. One day he was here, the next day he was gone. No one knew anything.
Lestrade tried Houghton next.
“Ever hear from that bright young thing of yours?” he asked, trying to sound offhand. “The consultant?”
“It’s the damnedest thing,” Houghton said, and Lestrade tensed. Sherlock’s name had never appeared in any of the depositions, he’d made sure of that, but there were other, much worse things, that might have befallen him.
“What is?”
“Seems our boy was better connected than I thought. Friends-family-very high up. One day a very quiet gentleman indeed came along and told me to forget all about him. Swept him off for a long rest in the country. Very posh. Very private.” Houghton touched a finger to the side of his nose. “Can’t say he didn’t need it, though.”
Lestrade let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. So not dead, then. Not in a gutter someplace. Well looked after. “I hope it does him good,” he said, with more feeling than he’d meant to.
“So do I, mate, so do I. London could use a mind like that.”
end