Hard Day's Night
Um. Well. Ah. This is going to be unashamedly fluffy - overly fluffy - crazily fluffy, so turn back now if that's a problem for you. I figure if I'm the only one writing Mycroft/Lestrade (which, to the best of my knowledge, I am at this point, though I would LOVE WHOEVER WROTE SOMETHING ELSE FOR THEM FOREVER ;D), I might as well write the cliches, so that later fic-authors have things to rebel against and laugh at. So, yeah. Mycroft/Lestrade fluff, with a vague attempt at saving the fic and keeping Mycroft in character at the end. Yeah.
Also, again, it fits a prompt on the meme: this one, here.
And the title is, of course, stolen from the Beatles song/movie (yes, I've seen it, and it was kind of good and made me not dislike Ringo, which is always good, right? ;D).
The faint hints of Sherlock/John, which are very, very faint, are also very, very intentional, I promise, really. ;D
Anyways. *is trying to stall to avoid embarrassment* ... oh, to heck with it, here goes ...
Hard Day’s Night
There were times when Lestrade really, really hated his job.
Oh, not usually. Not when he was out there solving murders (though during his first year on the job, so very long ago, he began to question his own sanity when corpses and blood began regularly featuring in his dreams), or when he was chasing after criminals (though occasionally when he came home aching and exhausted, with his knees skinned from tripping and falling and his clothes stained dark with gutter filth, he had no idea what he could possibly have been thinking when he joined the police), or even when he was investigating a crime scene (though sometimes, when he caught himself looking at doors and classifying them based on how hard it would be to force them open and whether or not he would assume forced entry or assisted entry if he saw them at the scene of a crime, he wondered what the hell he was doing, pretending that being a detective was only a job). Most of the time he knew he was helping people, protecting them from criminals; making the world a safer place.
But when it was ten p.m. and he hadn’t slept for a solid two days and the heating system at the station was broken so he had to decide between being freezing cold or wearing a coat that stank of sweat, fear, and blood and Sherlock was still chemically analyzing results and John was glaring at Anderson and Donovan, who were alternating between insulting Sherlock and flirting with each other, God, he wanted to quit.
Well, all right, maybe not quit. But definitely take a long vacation somewhere else, preferably somewhere where he didn’t have to babysit a group of grown-up children who had all probably driven their respective kindergarten teachers crazy when they were younger and now had been let loose on the world, God alone knew why. (Lestrade himself had always been a good, solid student who had worked hard, though he had once gotten into trouble at age four for beaning the neighborhood bully over the head with a large, Lego construct.)
He sat there in put-upon silence instead, listening as his computer whirred away, attempting to search the criminal databases he had access to for any references to a man named “Leonard Strangely”, which was probably a pseudonym that would garner no results anyways. His head snapped up when he heard the faint boom of an explosion in the distance; then smoke came pouring out of the office that Sherlock had re-appropriated as a temporary workspace, and he looked back at the blank screen his computer was displaying. Sherlock was just blowing things up - fine, great, brilliant. Life as normal. Then he groaned softly, because that was Jones’s office, and he was going to have to apologize to him tomorrow morning and get a new room for him and get the old one cleaned up. With his luck, Sherlock had probably been testing poisonous chemicals, too, and the entire station was going to have to be ventilated ...
“Freak probably blew that up out of spite,” Donovan said, and glared in the general direction of Jones’s office. “It’s not like he doesn’t know how to prevent explosions, being an intelligent psychopath, after all.”
John suddenly frowned. “You’re right - Sherlock wouldn’t do that by accident.” Anderson snorted, but didn’t say anything. John shook his head. “He would only -”
Sherlock himself appeared at the door, his eyes alight, possibly with pride about his own cleverness. “It was sugar - just sugar, all of it!” He paused, then added, “Don’t you see what that means?” upon seeing their vacant faces. “Dear god, you’re dense. If the activating agent was sugar, then the poison itself must have been in the cake, meaning it was certainly - certainly! - the aunt. Who else had access to sugar? But wait,” he frowned, “the aunt - no, the aunt would have had to have - she would have needed an accomplice, and that was - the sister! Oh, of course, the sister - biotech, remember, biotech! The sister works in biotech! So she could design the catalyst in the poison so that it would activate when cooked into the cake, but would be completely harmless otherwise - even when the cake itself wasn’t at that particular stage of cooling, and that was why ... You’re not understanding this at all, are you?” he asked, when none of them looked like they were blown away by his brilliance. “All right, let’s try this with simple words. The victim’s sister made a poison that would only work when in the cake, and only then when the cake itself was at a particular temperature. The aunt brought the cake to the victim. She ate a slice, she died, the aunt and the sister split the property the victim’s mother left her, end of story.”
“How did you think of that?” John asked, awe clear in his expression, right as Lestrade asked, “Can we prove it, though?”
Sherlock ignored Lestrade’s query in favor of John’s; turning to the doctor, he said, “It simply occurred to me that the bonding in the poison seemed to have recently been degraded by heat, and from there, well ... It was quite simple.”
“Then why did it take you so long?” Donovan demanded.
“I had to test it myself - I made my own poison-cake dough.”
“So now you’re making weapons with murderous intent inside the police station?”
“I was simply testing a -”
“Yes, all right, you two can have at it later,” Lestrade cut in, because blast it, he was in charge here and all he wanted to do at this point was go home and whine at Mycroft about his irritating little brother and then sleep with his limbs all tangled up in his boyfriend’s. That would be nice. “But, in the interests of actually getting a case together for the lawyers: can we really prove that in court, Sherlock?”
“Yes, of course,” Sherlock said. “Just keep the cake as evidence - make sure that you don’t let it get eaten through your usual incompetence.” He paused, as if he’d had a thought, then added, “Though the affects of the inactive poison would be interesting to study ...” He shook his head. “No, too risky. Well, it’s been an interesting few days, and I believe I’m off home now. Coming, John?”
John nodded, and hastened over to Sherlock, who was fixing his scarf so that it would stay about his neck. John pulled on his own coat and then the two of them headed over to the door, Lestrade calling after them, “Hang on, you can’t just -”
“I’ll be by tomorrow to give you the final details,” Sherlock said, turning back for a moment. “Don’t clean up my work - I’ll need most of that as proof.”
Lestrade sighed and rubbed at his eyes, partially because he was tired but mostly because the last thing he needed right now was for his superior’s to be on his back about making messes at the office.
“Right, then I’m off,” Donovan said, passing him an overtime slip on her way out. Lestrade nodded his thanks distractedly - really, he was grateful that she’d stayed extra hours to help finish this thing sup, he just didn’t have the energy to say so - and managed to mumble something appropriate at Anderson when he followed her out the door. Then Lestrade was alone in the station and he really just wanted to go to sleep here at his desk with his coat for a pillow, but instead he forced himself to put on the smelly coat and lock up behind himself, and then travel home by Tube, carefully not looking at the other people on the subway late at night, because he was off-duty now, dammit, and he wasn’t going to go around being Mr. Justice.
When he reached his flat, the lights were all off; he turned them on, at “dim”, in the living room for a moment, hanging up his coat and taking off his jacket. A brief search of the kitchen yielded up no leftovers that could be warmed up in the microwave and ready in less than a minute, and, honestly, he was much more tired than hungry; he’d eat in the morning. He headed over to the bedroom, but caught a whiff of his own smell before he reached the door: he hadn’t showered in over a day and had spent the last forty-eight hours on duty, and as a result he smelled like city streets and sweat and cheap food. Not a smell he’d want to inflict upon a bedmate, then, particularly not when Mycroft would be already annoyed at being woken up from a comfortable slumber when Lestrade crawled into bed. He considered the bathroom for a moment, but shook his head. He just wanted to sleep, for God’s sake. He’d deal with showering and everything in the morning. The sofa would do for the night.
He turned off the lights and sat down on sofa, taking off his shoes, socks, slacks, and dress shirt before stretching out, dressed only in a pair of boxers, to sleep. He sighed in contentment when lying down eased a few of the aches that his body had developed over the last few days, a small smile making its way onto his face.
He’d only had his eyes closed for five minutes, though (five blessedly quiet, comfortable minutes) when the lights came back on. Lestrade screwed his eyes shut and mumbled incoherent disapproval at this development, then buried his head underneath a pillow. A moment later, footsteps made their way across the room over to him, and a body sat down on the couch next to him.
“And how was your evening, Inspector?” Mycroft asked, pulling the pillow away from Lestrade and instead methodically running his hands, with their carefully trimmed nails, through the other man’s short, silvery hair.
Lestrade sighed and then rolled sideways so that he was looking up at Mycroft, who was currently dressed in flannel pajamas, which rather undermined the whole “I am a sinister evil genius” look Mycroft usually had, though he did manage to look surprisingly powerful and enigmatic for someone who was only wearing dark blue pajamas.
“Terrible. God save me from children who think they’re grown-ups.”
“Work was particularly hard, then, was it?” Mycroft frowned and wrinkled his nose. “You smell terrible.”
“Yeah. Didn’t want to inflict the smell on you, so ...” Lestrade gestured with one hand to the comfortable, green sofa he was lying on.
“Foolish. You could just have showered.”
Lestrade groaned. “That would take effort.”
Mycroft waved an airy hand. “Not too much. We’ll discuss the possibility later.”
“Oh?”
Mycroft smiled so that all his teeth showed. “Exactly. Now, what precisely were you doing today, to gain such an offensive odor?”
“We had a murder, last ...” Lestrade realized he had no idea what day of the week it was, so instead continued, “yesterday. Yesterday morning. Young heiress who had a sister who didn’t like her and an aunt who’d had a falling out with the victim’s mum. Both thought they should get the money, so - murder. The trick was proving it. Your brother was trying to duplicate the poison they’d given her and figure out how it worked. Tell me,” he added, remembering the train of thought he’d had earlier, “was he always like that? Did his kindergarten teacher complain of headaches?”
“Constantly,” Mycroft replied, with an amused smile. “His first kindergarten teacher actually quit after the first two months - Sherlock’s analysis of the anachronistic flaws in the costumes all the other children wore during their week of studying Ancient Rome probably had something to do with that.”
“God, really?” Lestrade asked, chuckling slightly. “I think they were all that way - Donovan, Anderson, your brother, Watson. Their kindergarten teachers should form a union.”
Mycroft raised an eyebrow. “What, even the esteemed Dr. Watson?”
“Definitely him,” Lestrade said, remembering the way John had been glaring at everyone who’d dared poke fun at Sherlock. The good doctor’s presence certainly had not improved the strained atmosphere. “Sometimes, he and Sherlock just ... It’s like diplomacy, trying to make sure that they don’t all kill each other or pull each other’s hair or, I don’t know, steal each other’s toys, but worse.”
“Really? You’d be surprised at how some ambassadors think they can act ...”
“Not after dealing with those four I wouldn’t be,” Lestrade said darkly.
“So, all in all, not the easiest day.”
“Yeah.”
“You did catch the criminal, though,” Mycroft said, his fingers stilling in Lestrade’s hair for a moment.
“You know that already.”
“Yes, I can see it in your -”
“My left big toe or something,” Lestrade said, swatting away Mycroft’s hands and sitting up. He wasn’t actually very cross with Mycroft, though; somehow, the other man had managed to alleviate his frustration and annoyance during their conversation. Mycroft played people like Sherlock played violins; deftly and carefully, always achieving his intended results. It was no surprise to Lestrade that Mycroft had learned to defuse his own bad moods so well. After a moment, he leaned back against Mycroft’s shoulder. “God, you Holmeses ...”
“Actually, I was going to say your coat,” Mycroft said, nodding at the black coat, which was currently hung on the hat stand near the door. “It’s not very wet.”
“Yeah?”
“If you hadn’t solved the case, you would have walked home and tried to puzzle it out. You always take walks when you’re trying to think. Your coat would be soaking; it’s been raining heavily all evening. As it isn’t, I know you took the Tube, so you must have had nothing in particular to think about. Ergo, I can be sure you solved the case.”
Lestrade frowned. “Do I really always walk when I think?”
“Yes.” Mycroft stood up, pulling Lestrade up too a moment later. “Now, I believe a shower was mentioned at some point - I mentioned it, in fact.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, then.” Mycroft said, with a slight, fond smile. “Into the bathroom we go. I believe a bath may be in order ...”
“I thought you said a shower,” Lestrade said, following behind him.
“Use your imagination,” Mycroft said, opening the bathroom door for Lestrade and then stepping in behind him and shutting the bathroom door, flicking the lights off in the main room with a tap of the switch.
The next morning, Lestrade did indeed get a day off of work; an email early in the morning informed him that he’d received an unexpected vacation bonus for “services rendered” or something along those lines. He didn’t say anything to Mycroft, but the other man’s smug smile was quite telling. And, really, he could do with a day when he didn’t have to act like a surrogate kindergarten teacher.