Fic: Nor The Years Condemn (5/6)
Title: Nor The Years Condemn (5/6)
Characters: Sherlock Holmes, DI Lestrade
Pairing: Lestrade/OCs (mentioned); Lestrade/Sherlock
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I don’t own them
Word Count: c. 6,300 (this part); c. 37,000 total
Warnings: Language; Age Discrepancy; Mild Sexuality; Drug Use
Spoilers: None
Betas: sidneysussex, gentlest_sin, archea2
Summary: Greg Lestrade is forty-three when he saves the life of a brilliant drug-addict. Two years later, he's starting to realize there are some certainties to his life now that Sherlock Holmes is part of it. He's going gray quickly, for one thing. He starts finding experiments in his kitchen. And he may even be, inexplicably, beginning to care for the detective. A series of vignettes that cover the five years leading up to “A Study In Pink.”
Prologue (with full Author’s Notes)
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Notes for Part Five: I have fudged some details as far as drug use/withdrawal goes for the purposes of this installment, and the duties of policemen have again been stretched just a bit. There are some mild allusions to “The West Wing” in this part, and Lestrade does some heavy channeling of Carl Sagan. Further notes on all the references are at the end.
----
The city is hit with an unusually vicious storm that week, and they spend two days getting lashed by rain and hail. It downs power lines and branches, floods buildings, and generally makes life miserable for everyone in its radius.
“This can’t be usual,” Lestrade mutters on the first day, staring out of his office window.
“Sir?” Donovan pauses in dropping off a file on his desk.
“This,” Lestrade says, waving at the storm. From what little he can see, it appears as though the rain is gusting sideways. “This can’t be normal, having a storm like this in June.”
“I can’t say I’ve given it much thought, sir.” Donovan hovers uncertainly for a moment. “I can...find out for you, if you want.”
Lestrade hums, turning from the window and reaching automatically for the files, and mutters a distracted, “Thanks,” to Donovan’s retreating back.
----
You all right?
Fine. SH
----
“It’s happened twice already.”
Lestrade starts badly at the sound of the unexpected voice. “Sorry, what?”
“The storm.” Donovan is standing in his doorway, and waves a piece of paper at him. “You wanted to know how unusual it was. Turns out we had one like it in ‘87, and then a comparable one in ‘90.”
It takes him a moment to recall the morning's conversation. “You didn’t have to look that up, Donovan.”
She shrugs. “It’s kind of fascinating, actually. It’s the kind of superstorm that we’re only supposed to get once every several hundred years, only it happened in the 18th century and then twice in the 20th.”
Lestrade takes off his glasses and leans back in his chair. “I remember those storms. People died.”
She nods, glancing at her piece of paper. “Twenty-two in the 1987 storm. This one, like the others, has hurricane-force winds, but it’s not called a hurricane because those storms have a different wind profile.”
“Sir?” Smith appears behind Donovan and raps briskly on the door. “Sorry, but you wanted a reminder about that meeting.”
“Oh, right,” Lestrade mutters, getting up and reaching for his jacket. “Thank you, Smith; Donovan.”
Donovan catches his arm in the doorway as he moves to leave the office. “You’re thinking about him, aren’t you?”
“Donovan -”
“Don’t do anything stupid, all right?” she plunges ahead.
“Like what?”
“Checking in on him. Getting caught out in that storm. Dying. He’s not worth it, sir.”
Lestrade stares at her a moment, a dozen different replies flashing across his mind at once.
“Thank you, Donovan,” he settles on finally, “for the information.”
He pulls his arm from her grip and walks away.
----
Take any damage?
Minimal. SH
----
“This is what you call minimal?” Lestrade says incredulously the next night. He’s standing in the doorway to Sherlock’s flat, staring in amazement at the damage the small room has incurred. The thick branch of a tree has crashed through one of his living room windows, scattering glass, books, and papers about the room. The broken window is covered with plastic to keep out the very worst of the elements, but the branch has yet to be removed. Outside, the last of the storm rages at them, screaming in futility at its impending demise.
“You didn’t specify what kind of damage you were referring to,” Sherlock says. He’s sporting a busted lip, but otherwise looks immaculate as always. He flits about the room, gathering papers and books while Lestrade looks on, scarcely knowing where to begin.
“Right, yeah,” Lestrade mutters, and moves to turn on a light in order to better inspect the place. Nothing happens. “Oh, power’s out as well. Great.”
“Yes, thank you, I am aware,” Sherlock tells him icily. Lestrade gestures to his busted lip.
“Was that from the storm then, too?”
“No.” Sherlock hands him a stack of books, which he holds obligingly. “I was hired to investigate a somewhat private matter. There was an incident.”
“Going freelance now, are you?”
“I have been for some time.” Sherlock pauses, surveying the room, and runs a dusty hand through his hair. “I need to occupy my time between cases.”
“‘S’pose that’s a good thing, us not keeping you busy and all. Means we’re doing something right, I guess.”
“Or you’re all just deluding yourselves.” Sherlock rubs a hand across the back of his neck, and Lestrade notes for the first time that he looks weary; worn down. His face is ashen, as opposed to its usual ivory, and there are pronounced grooves under his eyes and around his mouth.
“Are you all right?” Lestrade asks, setting the books aside.
“Yes, fine,” Sherlock says shortly.
“You don’t look it.”
“Oh, hell,” Sherlock mutters, rolling a shoulder in an effort to stretch it. Lestrade hears the joint give a distinct pop. “I’m not using again, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I wasn’t, actually, believe it or not. It’s the withdrawal, though, isn’t it? At least, that’s part of the problem. It’s more difficult, this time.” Lestrade feels himself give an inadvertent smile. “You aren’t as young as you used to be. It’s harder to bounce back.”
“Yes, thank you for that reminder,” Sherlock says acidly. “I haven’t been able to think for days, what with that infernal storm pounding and pounding and this stifling flat and Christ, my head is killing me!”
He sweeps a stack of papers off of a table and onto the floor in a bout of furious frustration and places his palms on the warm wood, hanging his head and breathing heavily through his nose for some moments.
“This is what you signed up for,” he says in a too-high voice, just wavering on the edge of control. “Do you realize that, Lestrade? Do you see, now?” He sucks in a shuddering breath, and Lestrade can see, even in the dark, that he is trembling. He’s fighting hard for control over his body - his mind - and it’s a losing battle, tonight. “You should leave.”
“No.”
“Lestrade -”
“I made my choice, all right? Don’t think I didn’t know exactly what I was getting into,” he says firmly. He makes a move toward Sherlock, but the other man recoils. It’s only been a few days since the meltdown, and he knows that Sherlock is still trying to get used to the idea that Lestrade won’t leave him - but knowing doesn’t stop the hot flash of hurt that curls up in his gut at Sherlock’s movement. He fights it down and stays rooted to the spot, putting his hands in his pockets instead so that Sherlock knows he won’t reach for him again.
“I don’t want you here,” Sherlock says urgently in a thin voice. “Why can’t you understand that? For once in your life, will you listen to me?”
“Will it get better, if I leave?” Lestrade counters.
Sherlock lifts his gaze from the table, and Lestrade can see that his eyes are glassy and there is a faint flush on his high cheekbones. He looks feverish. “You know that it won’t. But the fact remains that I -”
He looks away, and continues, “I don’t want you here...when I’m like this. It’s unpleasant. I am...unpleasant.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Lestrade snorts.
“Please.”
Lestrade sobers instantly. “Sherlock, this isn’t going to work if you keep trying to shut me out.”
“Then it won’t work,” Sherlock snaps, and those words alone are enough to drive the air from his chest. Lestrade swallows hard, knowing full well that even he can’t mask the terrible way those words slice into him. They are too unexpected, and coming on the heels of the events of the past few days...Lestrade has no defense for this. “I can’t change for you, Lestrade, as we’ve already established.”
A thousand retorts spring to mind, each as inadequate as the last. It would do little good anyway, those words - as useless as if he waded out into the fury of the storm at its height and screamed for it to stop.
“Right,” Lestrade says slowly, mind spinning. He needs to fix this; he must fix this, and in the only way he knows how. Words are inadequate, they always have been, and he can’t rely on them any longer. “Okay. Well...I’ll be back in the morning to check on you. Just...stay safe ‘til then, all right?”
Sherlock snorts and nods, and Lestrade can tell that he doesn’t believe him.
----
The storm has abated by the following morning, and the drive to Montague Street reminds Lestrade of wading through a war zone. There are downed branches all along the streets, which are deserted except for the most intrepid commuters. The pavement is littered with people clearing branches, retrieving rubbish bins, checking in on one another. They’re salvaging what they can and rebuilding what they can’t.
And so is he.
Sherlock is - astoundingly - asleep as Lestrade nudges open the door to his flat, balancing the keys and two thermoses of coffee. He’s on the floor with his back against the sofa, knees drawn up to his chest and head resting on his arms. The flat smells sharply of rain, and Lestrade can see that the plastic on the window did little to keep out the water.
He moves into the kitchen, deposits the thermoses on what counter space he can find, and then debates for a while about whether or not he should wake Sherlock. He needs his sleep, this is undoubtedly true, but it can’t be doing him much good to be sleeping on the floor like that.
“Sherlock,” Lestrade calls out finally, going over to the huddle of limbs and shaking an arm. “Sherlock, you with me?”
He blinks awake instantly, head snapping up from his arms and fixing wide, if bleary, eyes on Lestrade. They stare at one another a moment, Lestrade giving a hesitant smile while Sherlock looks dumbfounded.
“What are you doing here?” Sherlock demands.
“S’morning. Remember? Said I’d be back. Have you been asleep long?” Lestrade stands and offers him a hand. Sherlock accepts it after a beat and gets unsteadily to his feet, limbs unresponsive after being held in one position for so long.
“I don’t -” Sherlock blinks furiously, still looking lost. “But what are you doing here?”
“I said I’d be back,” Lestrade repeats. He frowns. “You all right? You still don’t look well.”
“Yes, yes, I’m fine,” Sherlock says distractedly, waving away his concern.
“Come on, then,” Lestrade tells him, nodding to the kitchen. “I’ll help you save what experiments you can, and then you’re coming back to mine for a bit. Least until they can fix that window of yours. Oh, and I brought coffee.”
He turns to go into the kitchen without waiting for an answer, but a hand on his elbow stops him. He looks back at Sherlock. “Yeah?”
“Why?” is all that Sherlock manages. Lestrade feels his face soften, and he reaches out to brush a lock of unruly hair off the slightly-fevered forehead, making a mental note to find some paracetamol for him soon as they were back at his place.
“Isn’t it obvious?”
Sherlock stares at him a long moment and then, with painstaking slowness, shakes his head. Lestrade allows his hand to come to rest on Sherlock’s shoulder; the touch isn’t pushed away.
“Because you need to learn how not to be alone,” Lestrade says, and then adds softly: “We both do.”
----
Lestrade turns forty-seven, and spends the day acutely aware of the fact that his father didn’t live to see forty-eight.
----
Sherlock nicks Lestrade’s warrant cards now and again, usually when he’s bored or when he believes the DI is being unnecessarily irritating. This puts Lestrade in an awkward position once - and only once. No one (apart from Sherlock) has yet accused him of being an idiot, and he learns very quickly from that oversight. Sherlock still manages to get past him now and again, which is fine, because he’s not the only one who knows how to pick a pocket.
“You’re going to want to check out the...brother’s alibi, going by the mud on her shoes,” Sherlock is telling him one day as he paces around a body. They are alone in the room; Sherlock chased out the rest of Lestrade’s team some ten minutes ago. “And it’s likely that - Lestrade!”
His head snaps around at the same time that bony fingers lash out and seize Lestrade’s wrist, pulling the DI’s hand away from his pocket. Lestrade sighs; he had been so close to getting his warrant card back this time.
Sherlock frowns at him. “Trying to get into my pants after all, I see.”
“Wha - no! That’s not -” Lestrade says in a rush, going suddenly very cold. Shit, and he’d been so very careful in recent months about not infringing upon Sherlock’s personal space without express permission, too. He hadn’t meant -
But then Sherlock’s mouth twitches and his eyes crinkle at the corners, and Lestrade sighs in both relief and exasperation.
“You wanker,” he mutters, diving for the warrant card again and relishing Sherlock’s indignant, “Hands!”
“That’s what you get for putting it in your trousers,” Lestrade says with a smirk.
“Point taken,” Sherlock sighs. He brushes his thumb across Lestrade’s brow and they share a quick smile. “Tell me this, though, Lestrade: where is your wallet?”
There is a pause, and then: “Dammit, Sherlock!”
----
Migraines are an ailment they share, though Lestrade's are a good deal more frequent than Sherlock's. He hasn’t had a crippling one in over a year, not since the night that Sherlock broke into his flat (because now and again he liked a challenge) in search of something new to work on and instead found Lestrade seated on the floor of the darkened bathroom, his head buried in his arms in an attempt block out the light and between bouts of retching. He doesn’t remember much from that night apart from the unearthly pain. He had honestly been concerned, for a good portion of it, that his head was about to split in two. He remembers shoving away the hands that tried to help him, and so delirious was he with pain that Sherlock actually broke the wall of silence he had currently going with Mycroft and phoned his older brother for help.
Lestrade had spent the rest of that night in bed, pumped full of medication sent over by one of Mycroft’s subordinates. They had been the most glorious twelve hours of his life.
This migraine is a good deal more tolerable, and thinking about that night makes his teeth ache. Lestrade tries to shove it away and concentrate on the road rather than the sun, whose light is making his eyeballs throb. Sherlock, beside him in the passenger seat, has been texting for the better part of the trip - Mycroft, no doubt, going by the way he’s been angrily stabbing at the keys.
“‘Bout an hour away, now,” Lestrade tells him, though it’s more to reassure himself than anything else.
“Yes, I know,” Sherlock says distractedly.
“I was going to drop you off at home, ‘f that’s all right,” Lestrade continues. He’s trying to focus on something - anything - other than the growing pain. He can’t quite keep the slur from his words, though, and he knows Sherlock will notice. This happens sometimes, with his migraines. His entire face grows tight; his jaw and lips go numb. He can feel, even now, a tingling starting to spread outward from his ear, reaching long fingers down his jaw and spreading across the top of his head.
Sherlock pockets his phone and raps his knuckles on Lestrade’s leg. “Pull over.”
Lestrade waves him off. “I’m fine, Sherlock.”
“Clearly, you are not. Pull over.”
“Look, it’s only an hour. I can drive for an hour.”
“I’m certain of that,” Sherlock says in a world-weary voice. “But that will only serve to worsen the migraine and make you positively insufferable.”
“Oh, me, insufferable? Have you ever listened to yourself talk?”
“Lestrade.”
He glances over at Sherlock for the briefest of moments. Their eyes meet, and his resolve disintegrates.
“Fine.”
They switch at the next empty stretch of road, Lestrade sliding over to the passenger seat while Sherlock gets out of the car and comes around to the other side. He turns up the air conditioning, despite the chill outside, and points the blasting vents in Lestrade’s direction before reaching into the back and grabbing his discarded suit jacket. He drapes it over him and Lestrade mutters, “Thanks,” before pulling it up to his face, effectively blocking out the sun. It smells of tea and chemicals and sharp soap, scents that are entirely Sherlock.
He closes his eyes for a moment, losing himself to the ungodly pounding between his ears.
He opens them to darkness and quiet, the rumble of the car gone; the rough leather of the seat replaced by soft down.
Sherlock is seated next to him on the bed, legs outstretched before him and crossed at the ankles. He’s typing on his laptop, and they’re in the detective’s bedroom. Lestrade wonders how Sherlock got him upstairs. Perhaps someone helped. Perhaps, more worrisome, he got up under his own power and doesn’t remember.
“Sherl’k,” he whispers, voice cracking around the name. He touches the man’s elbow. “Time?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Sherlock replies without looking away from his screen. “I called in for you already. Well - you called in. I’ve become quite good at imitating your voice, you know. You won’t be expected back at the Yard until day after tomorrow. I trust that will be enough time for you to sufficiently recover?”
Lestrade wants to feel irritated - should feel irritated - but he simply sighs in relief. He’s too tired to worry about anything else right now, and the residual headache is lapping at the corners of his mind. He knows it’ll return in full force if he doesn’t find sleep again soon.
The glow from the laptop disappears, and Lestrade doesn’t realize that he’s been blocking it out with a hand cupped around his eye until Sherlock touches his fingers and asks, “Is this better?”
He nods, and then groans as the sudden movement causes the blood to pound louder in his ears, thundering against the inside of his head. A cool hand lays itself across his forehead, and for a moment the pounding blessedly abates. It doesn’t disappear completely, but it eases enough that he might be able to claim sleep again.
“Thank you,” he has enough sense to whisper as drowsiness overrides the pain.
“You needn’t ever thank me for this.”
Sherlock’s other hand reaches for his and Lestrade curls his fingers around it, squeezing lightly. He receives one in return, and drops off again immediately after.
---
He chops his hair now, finally giving into the inevitable. Short, his hair glows, and sticks up in all directions whenever he runs a hand through it absentmindedly - or when Sherlock does so purposefully. The silver and gray are brought out as the black ends are cut away, and he knows that the severe cut makes him look ten years older. But it saves him the trouble of giving it little more than a passing thought in the morning, and that’s fine by him. It keeps him from having to look in the mirror any longer than is necessary, and he can keep pretending that the forty-seven-year-old Lestrade looks the same as the twenty-five-year-old one.
Pretending is good; ignoring is even better.
----
They both have nightmares, too, but Sherlock is the one who suffers the most from them. He’ll wake Lestrade at all hours, arms flung out against the advancing phantoms, a thin sheen of sweat breaking out across his brow and eyes as wild as his hair. Sometimes he’ll talk about them, in gasping half-sentences that make very little sense but it doesn’t matter because at least he’s talking. It’s far better than the Sherlock who wakes from the terror of a dream and simply sits, huddled in Lestrade’s arms, silent to even the most earnest of questions.
And then there’s the night Sherlock wakes and snaps into a sitting position, drawing deep gulps of air and feeling frantically for Lestrade in the dark. The older man wakes to fingers digging into his shirt, running over his face, trailing down his shoulders and over his chest as Sherlock mutters, “No, no, no.”
“Sherlock.” Lestrade grabs the fingers and clamps the hands between his own, stilling their frenzied movements. He sits up and says nothing further. He can read Sherlock’s silences well enough to know that the detective is searching for words; on the verge of speech.
“You -” Sherlock stops and attempts to gather himself. Lestrade has never heard such a tremulous syllable, and one of his fingers finds its way to Sherlock’s wrist. The pounding beneath the delicate skin tells him that Sherlock’s heart is racing out of control.
“Yeah, me,” he says softly. “I’m here; you’re here. You’re fine. Everything’s fine. It was another dream.”
“You -” One of Sherlock’s hands breaks from his grasp and seeks out his chest again, probing. “You - you aren’t hurt.”
Lestrade has met all of Sherlock’s demons, either from the detective directly or from the frantic mutterings of a man on the edge of a nightmare, suspended between wakefulness and sleep. He thought he knew them all by heart, each and every one, and knew which reassurance was needed in the aftermath.
He’s wrong, because now he’s the one haunting the detective. He’s the one bringing the pain.
He hasn’t a clue what to say.
“C’mon,” he whispers, tugging Sherlock close. The detective offers little resistance, but he doesn’t sleep for the rest of the night. He passes the remaining hours of darkness with his head next to Lestrade’s on the pillow, close enough to hear his breathing, and a hand on the DI’s chest, positioned just over his heart.
Lestrade doesn’t try to give him false reassurances, because Sherlock would have appreciated it just as much as he would if the tables were turned - that is to say, not in the slightest. But he does linger an extra hour in the bed after his alarm goes off, reducing his morning routine down to the barest of necessities and pushing his usual arrival at the Yard back by half an hour. He doesn’t care, because it was an extra hour that he could give to Sherlock, and that means everything.
----
He knows that he must look ancient, next to Sherlock.
The other man might be nearing thirty, but he still holds a hint of boyhood in his face. He’s made more angular than normal by his quick metabolism and self-deprivation, but a softness lingers around his cheekbones and collarbones and in his hands, so smooth they might as well be polished marble.
Eighteen years is a large gulf to try to breach, even in adulthood. Lestrade can’t help the number-crunching; can’t help thinking, He’ll be forty-two on my sixtieth birthday or Fifty-two and seventy - Christ, what a gap. And it’s made all the more obvious when they stand shoulder to shoulder, Sherlock vibrant and wild while Lestrade is gray and ashen.
He can’t help feeling that maybe he’s robbing Sherlock of something; holding him back.
But now and again Lestrade catches Sherlock looking at him - perhaps at a crime scene, sometimes at his flat, other times when they’re in his office and Sherlock is eating while he wiles away the hours on paperwork - and he knows he wasn’t meant to do so. The detective is more vulnerable in those moments when he’s caught looking at him than Lestrade has ever had chance to see; more naked, even, than if he were standing there unclothed. Lestrade catches the unchecked emotion on his face for a brief moment before Sherlock ducks his head and tries to pretend that he had been looking elsewhere, and each time he feels as though the air has been sucked from his chest, so powerful is the look.
And Sherlock doesn’t need to hear the words any more than Lestrade needs to say them - not just yet - but on occasion they flit across his mind. The sentiment is especially strong in the moments when Sherlock is consumed by his work, or when he’s asleep and Lestrade is awake, or during the brief times when Sherlock thinks no one’s eyes are upon him. It’s then that he lets down his guard, and Lestrade is allowed a glimpse inside.
He loves him fiercely for it.
----
Lestrade stands behind the building, smoking, leaning with his back against the rough brick. His ears pick out the faint wail of sirens, off at some great distance - someone else’s crime scene. The ballroom behind him emptied long ago; a few people linger across the street, huddled in conference by their cars, shooting the occasional glance in the direction of the building. There’s nothing to see here, not anymore, but people do so enjoy a spectacle and will hang onto the memory of it for as long as they can.
Footsteps sound from around the corner, a steady slap of smart shoes against worn pavement. Sherlock appears before him, immaculate as ever, a slightly frayed quality to his curls serving as the only evidence that their evening was less than relaxing.
“You don’t wear ties,” he announces.
“And we don’t often infiltrate charity events in order to take down smuggling rings,” Lestrade tells him. “First time for everything.”
His hand strays to the tie, which had gone nearly-forgotten until Sherlock mentioned it. Now he can feel its presence about his neck, the mild but lingering pressure, and he loosens it, undoing the top button on his shirt along the way. He sighs as the cool night air touches his neck; as he breathes easily for what feels like the first time in hours.
Sherlock comes to stand next to him as Lestrade brings the cigarette to his mouth and shuffles uncomfortably, curling his toes in shoes that his feet aren’t accustomed to wearing. The suspects had been carted off long ago and the event had dissipated along with them - arrests tend to have that effect, he supposes. They’d wrapped up witness statements and, Lestrade was sure, gathered enough information to properly put the case to rest in the morning. This wasn’t really his purview, but a sloppy murder was the thread that connected them to the smuggling ring, and it seemed only right to see this through to the end. His people had all gone home by this point; he and Sherlock are the only ones lingering. He knows his own reasons for staying behind, but he hadn’t a clue what Sherlock’s might be.
Lestrade turns his gaze back to the blanket of ink spread out above their heads, and he smokes in silence for a while. He can pick out a few stars tonight, which is more than he can say for most nights, and thinks he can even spot Jupiter in the southern sky.
“They fascinate you,” Sherlock says, following Lestrade’s gaze for a moment before returning his attention to the ground; the couple arguing down the street. He has no use for the night in the hard drive that makes up his mind, and one can’t deduce the stars.
Lestrade hums by way of reply, and brings the cigarette to his lips.
He’d been seven the day they landed on the moon - Christ, just over forty years ago, now - and he can still remember watching the grainy footage in his family’s living room in the gray light of the pre-dawn hour. They went to Venus when he was eight, and Mars when he was nine. He’d been ten when Pioneer took to the stars, and fifteen when Voyager followed in her footsteps. Jupiter and Saturn had both been gained by his eighteenth birthday, and he remembers that, too - watching for the first pictures to come in, reaching him from a distance of one billion kilometers. Twenty-four saw Uranus; Halley’s Comet; the discovery of just how far they were from the center of the galaxy. Voyager 2 had flown past Neptune when he was twenty-seven. They’d gained Hubble at twenty-eight, and lost Mir at thirty-nine. He might yet still live to see a flyby of Pluto, scheduled for seven months after he turns fifty-three.
The entirety of his life can be mapped onto the timeline of space exploration, and it’s as intricately woven into his being as - well, it’s as much a part of him as Sherlock is.
“Yeah,” Lestrade answers finally. “Yeah, they do.”
Sherlock says nothing, and Lestrade knows that means that he should elaborate. He draws a deep breath, tapping his cigarette with one nervous finger.
“There’s this picture out there - you might’ve seen it in your schoolbooks somewhere, but no doubt you’ve deleted it. It’s grainy, and old, and at first glance looks like someone took a photograph wrong. It’s a black background streaked with orange and green and you wonder, ‘What could be so important about this?’ And then you look closer.”
He pauses, drawing on the cigarette.
“There’s something that sticks out if you look at it carefully, and once you notice it you can’t stop. It’s this little blue dot on the right half of the photograph. This little blue dot, sitting in a shaft of sunlight. And d’you know what? It’s us. It’s here, and the picture’s not been taken from anywhere on this planet but from six billion kilometers away. That’s a bit sobering, isn’t it? We’re all so very tiny - just specks, really. And look at what we do to each other.”
“Hardly an uplifting thought,” Sherlock observes, and Lestrade muses that this is probably the longest he’s heard the man ever go without speech.
“Perhaps not. But then you think - we did that. We built that spacecraft, and we sent it on its way. We’re specks of dust, but we have the ability to comprehend - the ability to understand. We’re not ever gonna know all the answers, but the fact that we’ve figured out any of them - well, that’s fascinating. That’s incredible.”
Lestrade gestures with his cigarette to the sky. “Have you ever looked at them? Really looked, Sherlock. Have you ever taken the time to think about the fact that the light we’re seeing is from millions of years ago? You see the past every time you look up - and it’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
Lestrade breaks his eyes away from the sky to look at his friend, and finds that Sherlock is staring at him, instead. He can’t read the look on the detective’s face, not accurately, but if he were to venture a guess - he supposes that it looks fond.
He clears his throat, takes another pull, and finally asks, “You all right?”
“Of course.”
They hadn’t technically needed the detective tonight, but the man does so enjoy putting on a costume and a show. He takes the cigarette from between Lestrade’s lips and brings it to his own. Lestrade, relieved of his cigarette, allows his eyes to stray over the lithe body tucked neatly in the designer suit that emphasizes the unbelievably long legs; the properly squared shoulders. It had escaped from the melee completely unscathed, which was astonishing given the fact that Sherlock had physically tackled one of the men - running leap and all, graceful as a cat, just like in the movies.
“Thanks for the save tonight,” Lestrade says finally as the silence stretches on. Sherlock gives a casual shrug.
“You’d have noticed him eventually.”
“Yeah, once he’d clubbed me about the head. I’m sure I would have noticed then.”
Sherlock smirks and Lestrade allows himself a brief chuckle - it sounds high and wobbly to his ears, as though about to spin out of control. He clamps down on it firmly and takes the cigarette back from Sherlock, drawing on it slowly. He’s still working off the adrenaline - still feeling the jittery tingle in his limbs and the strange over-alertness that follows near-attacks.
“You needed me,” Sherlock says. He reaches over and tugs at Lestrade’s collar, smoothing it out, piercing eyes meeting his for a moment before he plucks the cigarette from the DI’s lips again. Lestrade lets it pass, at first, but the silence hangs between them and it’s weighted with more than just companionship.
They aren’t good with words, no, but sometimes he needs a reminder that they haven’t perfected their actions, yet, either.
God help me.
“Yes, I did. I do.” He can’t resist adding, in a lighter tone, “I’d be lost without my detective,” and Sherlock smirks at that.
“That is all too painfully obvious, Lestrade,” he says in a long-suffering voice. “While you may be slightly less incompetent than the others, you still lack…imagination.”
“Huh.” Lestrade shakes his head. “Imagination, now, is it? I take it that’s a downgrade from - what was it you called me the other day?” Lestrade casts around for the exact wording, and fears that it’s escaped him. “Er - ‘the best of a bad lot’?”
Sherlock hums and pulls on the cigarette. “Hm. Yes. It was only partially accurate, though. Most handsome, too, though I doubt Donovan would have appreciated that bit.”
“Right. Now you’re just having me on,” Lestrade grumbles. He takes the cigarette from between Sherlock’s fingers and brings it to his mouth.
“Oh, come now, Lestrade,” Sherlock says, sounding entirely uninterested. “Surely you know this.”
“Dunno what you’re talking about,” Lestrade mutters. Sherlock reaches out, catching Lestrade’s chin in his hand and running a calloused thumb across his jaw.
“You could be thirty, if not for the hair.”
“Thirty?” Lestrade repeats, amused, taking Sherlock’s hand in his own and squeezing.
“Thirty-five,” Sherlock amends, but the smile he gives is unexpected and amused (and lovely), and Lestrade can’t help but return it.
Makes him seventeen, his mind is only too quick to point out, and Lestrade feels something catch in his chest.
“Stop it.”
It takes him a moment to realize that it was Sherlock speaking, rather than his own subconscious scolding him.
“Stop comparing yourself to me,” Sherlock continues, drawing his hand away. “And stop projecting your worries onto me. What makes you think I care how old you are?”
Lestrade snorts and shakes his head, and then stills as Sherlock reaches out and brushes the tips of his fingers over the bridge of Lestrade’s nose. He trails across his cheeks and over his brow, skimming down to his collarbone, where his fingers sit, splayed across the skin, five pinpoints of cold pressure that move when Lestrade breathes.
“And what makes you think,” Sherlock adds in a low voice, “that I would only find you attractive if you were my peer?”
He re-does the topmost button of Lestrade’s shirt and tightens his tie once more, and then takes a step back in order to scrutinize him. Lestrade stuffs a hand in his pocket and smokes with the other, thankful to have something to occupy them while Sherlock’s eyes flick over his shoulders and down his torso, lingering for perhaps a second on the softness around his middle before traveling down to his feet and back up again.
Sherlock takes the cigarette back from him holds it between two fingers. Lestrade catches the other hand in one of his own, twisting their fingers together until their wrists meet, pulse-point to pulse-point, steady beat thundering against steady beat. Sherlock’s breath hitches and Lestrade lets out a faint huff at the contact because Sherlock beats, alive and real, flush against his own skin.
“I would,” Sherlock tells him in a low voice, answering the thought blooming in Lestrade’s mind before it’s even had a chance to fully form. “I’d have you.”
A wild laugh escapes him, because it’s always been leading to this, hasn’t it? He was done for long ago.
“I don’t know if you realize this, Sherlock,” he murmurs, “but you already do.”
----
Lestrade starts to wear a ring on his left hand.
It’s a simple gold band that belonged to his grandfather, and its sudden appearance goes unremarked upon by his usually observant team - most likely because they are afraid of the answers they would get should they ask him about it.
He wears the ring to avoid the usual questions and the bothersome interest displayed by some - though, admittedly, it occasionally brings up a new host of impossible-to-answer questions. It sits on his nightstand in the evenings and on his finger during the day, so it’s a surprise when one morning he puts the ring on and feels an unusual tug against his skin. He removes the band and inspects it; he finds nothing at first. But then he runs the pad of his finger along the inside surface, and realizes that it’s no longer completely smooth. Holding it up to the light, he sees that the ring has been expertly engraved. The writing is minuscule, and he reluctantly pulls out the reading glasses he denies owning in order to see what’s been done to it.
We found each other, and that is wonderful.
Sherlock steadfastly denies any and all tampering, but it’s around that same time that he starts telling people he’s married to his work.
----
Part Six
----
Final Notes:
-credit for the warrant card scene goes to gentlest_sin
-The storms mentioned at the beginning of this installment are the Great Storm of 1703, the Great Storm of 1987, and the Burns’ Day Storm
The events mentioned during the penultimate scene are as follows:
-Moon Landing - July 20, 1969. Apollo 11 landed at 4:17pm EST and the first moonwalk occurred six hours later. This would have made it shortly before dawn in the UK.
-Soviet Venera 7 was the first probe to soft-land on Venus - 1970
-Mariner 9 became the first spacecraft to orbit Mars - 1971
-Pioneer 10 launched - 1972
-Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were launched - 1977
-Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 encountered Jupiter in 1979 and Saturn in 1980.
-Voyager 2 flew past Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989.
-Halley’s Comet flew past Earth on its 76-year orbit in 1986.
-It was discovered in 1986 that our solar system is 23,000 light years from the center of our galaxy.
-Hubble Space Telescope was launched in 1990.
-Mir was de-orbited in 2001, and subsequently broke up over the Pacific Ocean.
-The spacecraft New Horizons is scheduled to fly past Pluto in July 2015.
-The photograph that Lestrade tells Sherlock about is known as “The Pale Blue Dot,” and was taken by Voyager 1 as it left our solar system in 1997. Earth, in this photograph, is about the size of 0.12 pixels.
-Finally, the inscription on the inside of Lestrade’s ring was inspired by this quote from Ann Druyan.
Thanks to everyone for sticking with the story so far. I’ve appreciated the comments more than I can possibly say. The final part will be up within a week. As always, feedback is welcome and appreciated.
Characters: Sherlock Holmes, DI Lestrade
Pairing: Lestrade/OCs (mentioned); Lestrade/Sherlock
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I don’t own them
Word Count: c. 6,300 (this part); c. 37,000 total
Warnings: Language; Age Discrepancy; Mild Sexuality; Drug Use
Spoilers: None
Betas: sidneysussex, gentlest_sin, archea2
Summary: Greg Lestrade is forty-three when he saves the life of a brilliant drug-addict. Two years later, he's starting to realize there are some certainties to his life now that Sherlock Holmes is part of it. He's going gray quickly, for one thing. He starts finding experiments in his kitchen. And he may even be, inexplicably, beginning to care for the detective. A series of vignettes that cover the five years leading up to “A Study In Pink.”
Prologue (with full Author’s Notes)
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Notes for Part Five: I have fudged some details as far as drug use/withdrawal goes for the purposes of this installment, and the duties of policemen have again been stretched just a bit. There are some mild allusions to “The West Wing” in this part, and Lestrade does some heavy channeling of Carl Sagan. Further notes on all the references are at the end.
----
The city is hit with an unusually vicious storm that week, and they spend two days getting lashed by rain and hail. It downs power lines and branches, floods buildings, and generally makes life miserable for everyone in its radius.
“This can’t be usual,” Lestrade mutters on the first day, staring out of his office window.
“Sir?” Donovan pauses in dropping off a file on his desk.
“This,” Lestrade says, waving at the storm. From what little he can see, it appears as though the rain is gusting sideways. “This can’t be normal, having a storm like this in June.”
“I can’t say I’ve given it much thought, sir.” Donovan hovers uncertainly for a moment. “I can...find out for you, if you want.”
Lestrade hums, turning from the window and reaching automatically for the files, and mutters a distracted, “Thanks,” to Donovan’s retreating back.
----
You all right?
Fine. SH
----
“It’s happened twice already.”
Lestrade starts badly at the sound of the unexpected voice. “Sorry, what?”
“The storm.” Donovan is standing in his doorway, and waves a piece of paper at him. “You wanted to know how unusual it was. Turns out we had one like it in ‘87, and then a comparable one in ‘90.”
It takes him a moment to recall the morning's conversation. “You didn’t have to look that up, Donovan.”
She shrugs. “It’s kind of fascinating, actually. It’s the kind of superstorm that we’re only supposed to get once every several hundred years, only it happened in the 18th century and then twice in the 20th.”
Lestrade takes off his glasses and leans back in his chair. “I remember those storms. People died.”
She nods, glancing at her piece of paper. “Twenty-two in the 1987 storm. This one, like the others, has hurricane-force winds, but it’s not called a hurricane because those storms have a different wind profile.”
“Sir?” Smith appears behind Donovan and raps briskly on the door. “Sorry, but you wanted a reminder about that meeting.”
“Oh, right,” Lestrade mutters, getting up and reaching for his jacket. “Thank you, Smith; Donovan.”
Donovan catches his arm in the doorway as he moves to leave the office. “You’re thinking about him, aren’t you?”
“Donovan -”
“Don’t do anything stupid, all right?” she plunges ahead.
“Like what?”
“Checking in on him. Getting caught out in that storm. Dying. He’s not worth it, sir.”
Lestrade stares at her a moment, a dozen different replies flashing across his mind at once.
“Thank you, Donovan,” he settles on finally, “for the information.”
He pulls his arm from her grip and walks away.
----
Take any damage?
Minimal. SH
----
“This is what you call minimal?” Lestrade says incredulously the next night. He’s standing in the doorway to Sherlock’s flat, staring in amazement at the damage the small room has incurred. The thick branch of a tree has crashed through one of his living room windows, scattering glass, books, and papers about the room. The broken window is covered with plastic to keep out the very worst of the elements, but the branch has yet to be removed. Outside, the last of the storm rages at them, screaming in futility at its impending demise.
“You didn’t specify what kind of damage you were referring to,” Sherlock says. He’s sporting a busted lip, but otherwise looks immaculate as always. He flits about the room, gathering papers and books while Lestrade looks on, scarcely knowing where to begin.
“Right, yeah,” Lestrade mutters, and moves to turn on a light in order to better inspect the place. Nothing happens. “Oh, power’s out as well. Great.”
“Yes, thank you, I am aware,” Sherlock tells him icily. Lestrade gestures to his busted lip.
“Was that from the storm then, too?”
“No.” Sherlock hands him a stack of books, which he holds obligingly. “I was hired to investigate a somewhat private matter. There was an incident.”
“Going freelance now, are you?”
“I have been for some time.” Sherlock pauses, surveying the room, and runs a dusty hand through his hair. “I need to occupy my time between cases.”
“‘S’pose that’s a good thing, us not keeping you busy and all. Means we’re doing something right, I guess.”
“Or you’re all just deluding yourselves.” Sherlock rubs a hand across the back of his neck, and Lestrade notes for the first time that he looks weary; worn down. His face is ashen, as opposed to its usual ivory, and there are pronounced grooves under his eyes and around his mouth.
“Are you all right?” Lestrade asks, setting the books aside.
“Yes, fine,” Sherlock says shortly.
“You don’t look it.”
“Oh, hell,” Sherlock mutters, rolling a shoulder in an effort to stretch it. Lestrade hears the joint give a distinct pop. “I’m not using again, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I wasn’t, actually, believe it or not. It’s the withdrawal, though, isn’t it? At least, that’s part of the problem. It’s more difficult, this time.” Lestrade feels himself give an inadvertent smile. “You aren’t as young as you used to be. It’s harder to bounce back.”
“Yes, thank you for that reminder,” Sherlock says acidly. “I haven’t been able to think for days, what with that infernal storm pounding and pounding and this stifling flat and Christ, my head is killing me!”
He sweeps a stack of papers off of a table and onto the floor in a bout of furious frustration and places his palms on the warm wood, hanging his head and breathing heavily through his nose for some moments.
“This is what you signed up for,” he says in a too-high voice, just wavering on the edge of control. “Do you realize that, Lestrade? Do you see, now?” He sucks in a shuddering breath, and Lestrade can see, even in the dark, that he is trembling. He’s fighting hard for control over his body - his mind - and it’s a losing battle, tonight. “You should leave.”
“No.”
“Lestrade -”
“I made my choice, all right? Don’t think I didn’t know exactly what I was getting into,” he says firmly. He makes a move toward Sherlock, but the other man recoils. It’s only been a few days since the meltdown, and he knows that Sherlock is still trying to get used to the idea that Lestrade won’t leave him - but knowing doesn’t stop the hot flash of hurt that curls up in his gut at Sherlock’s movement. He fights it down and stays rooted to the spot, putting his hands in his pockets instead so that Sherlock knows he won’t reach for him again.
“I don’t want you here,” Sherlock says urgently in a thin voice. “Why can’t you understand that? For once in your life, will you listen to me?”
“Will it get better, if I leave?” Lestrade counters.
Sherlock lifts his gaze from the table, and Lestrade can see that his eyes are glassy and there is a faint flush on his high cheekbones. He looks feverish. “You know that it won’t. But the fact remains that I -”
He looks away, and continues, “I don’t want you here...when I’m like this. It’s unpleasant. I am...unpleasant.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Lestrade snorts.
“Please.”
Lestrade sobers instantly. “Sherlock, this isn’t going to work if you keep trying to shut me out.”
“Then it won’t work,” Sherlock snaps, and those words alone are enough to drive the air from his chest. Lestrade swallows hard, knowing full well that even he can’t mask the terrible way those words slice into him. They are too unexpected, and coming on the heels of the events of the past few days...Lestrade has no defense for this. “I can’t change for you, Lestrade, as we’ve already established.”
A thousand retorts spring to mind, each as inadequate as the last. It would do little good anyway, those words - as useless as if he waded out into the fury of the storm at its height and screamed for it to stop.
“Right,” Lestrade says slowly, mind spinning. He needs to fix this; he must fix this, and in the only way he knows how. Words are inadequate, they always have been, and he can’t rely on them any longer. “Okay. Well...I’ll be back in the morning to check on you. Just...stay safe ‘til then, all right?”
Sherlock snorts and nods, and Lestrade can tell that he doesn’t believe him.
----
The storm has abated by the following morning, and the drive to Montague Street reminds Lestrade of wading through a war zone. There are downed branches all along the streets, which are deserted except for the most intrepid commuters. The pavement is littered with people clearing branches, retrieving rubbish bins, checking in on one another. They’re salvaging what they can and rebuilding what they can’t.
And so is he.
Sherlock is - astoundingly - asleep as Lestrade nudges open the door to his flat, balancing the keys and two thermoses of coffee. He’s on the floor with his back against the sofa, knees drawn up to his chest and head resting on his arms. The flat smells sharply of rain, and Lestrade can see that the plastic on the window did little to keep out the water.
He moves into the kitchen, deposits the thermoses on what counter space he can find, and then debates for a while about whether or not he should wake Sherlock. He needs his sleep, this is undoubtedly true, but it can’t be doing him much good to be sleeping on the floor like that.
“Sherlock,” Lestrade calls out finally, going over to the huddle of limbs and shaking an arm. “Sherlock, you with me?”
He blinks awake instantly, head snapping up from his arms and fixing wide, if bleary, eyes on Lestrade. They stare at one another a moment, Lestrade giving a hesitant smile while Sherlock looks dumbfounded.
“What are you doing here?” Sherlock demands.
“S’morning. Remember? Said I’d be back. Have you been asleep long?” Lestrade stands and offers him a hand. Sherlock accepts it after a beat and gets unsteadily to his feet, limbs unresponsive after being held in one position for so long.
“I don’t -” Sherlock blinks furiously, still looking lost. “But what are you doing here?”
“I said I’d be back,” Lestrade repeats. He frowns. “You all right? You still don’t look well.”
“Yes, yes, I’m fine,” Sherlock says distractedly, waving away his concern.
“Come on, then,” Lestrade tells him, nodding to the kitchen. “I’ll help you save what experiments you can, and then you’re coming back to mine for a bit. Least until they can fix that window of yours. Oh, and I brought coffee.”
He turns to go into the kitchen without waiting for an answer, but a hand on his elbow stops him. He looks back at Sherlock. “Yeah?”
“Why?” is all that Sherlock manages. Lestrade feels his face soften, and he reaches out to brush a lock of unruly hair off the slightly-fevered forehead, making a mental note to find some paracetamol for him soon as they were back at his place.
“Isn’t it obvious?”
Sherlock stares at him a long moment and then, with painstaking slowness, shakes his head. Lestrade allows his hand to come to rest on Sherlock’s shoulder; the touch isn’t pushed away.
“Because you need to learn how not to be alone,” Lestrade says, and then adds softly: “We both do.”
----
Lestrade turns forty-seven, and spends the day acutely aware of the fact that his father didn’t live to see forty-eight.
----
Sherlock nicks Lestrade’s warrant cards now and again, usually when he’s bored or when he believes the DI is being unnecessarily irritating. This puts Lestrade in an awkward position once - and only once. No one (apart from Sherlock) has yet accused him of being an idiot, and he learns very quickly from that oversight. Sherlock still manages to get past him now and again, which is fine, because he’s not the only one who knows how to pick a pocket.
“You’re going to want to check out the...brother’s alibi, going by the mud on her shoes,” Sherlock is telling him one day as he paces around a body. They are alone in the room; Sherlock chased out the rest of Lestrade’s team some ten minutes ago. “And it’s likely that - Lestrade!”
His head snaps around at the same time that bony fingers lash out and seize Lestrade’s wrist, pulling the DI’s hand away from his pocket. Lestrade sighs; he had been so close to getting his warrant card back this time.
Sherlock frowns at him. “Trying to get into my pants after all, I see.”
“Wha - no! That’s not -” Lestrade says in a rush, going suddenly very cold. Shit, and he’d been so very careful in recent months about not infringing upon Sherlock’s personal space without express permission, too. He hadn’t meant -
But then Sherlock’s mouth twitches and his eyes crinkle at the corners, and Lestrade sighs in both relief and exasperation.
“You wanker,” he mutters, diving for the warrant card again and relishing Sherlock’s indignant, “Hands!”
“That’s what you get for putting it in your trousers,” Lestrade says with a smirk.
“Point taken,” Sherlock sighs. He brushes his thumb across Lestrade’s brow and they share a quick smile. “Tell me this, though, Lestrade: where is your wallet?”
There is a pause, and then: “Dammit, Sherlock!”
----
Migraines are an ailment they share, though Lestrade's are a good deal more frequent than Sherlock's. He hasn’t had a crippling one in over a year, not since the night that Sherlock broke into his flat (because now and again he liked a challenge) in search of something new to work on and instead found Lestrade seated on the floor of the darkened bathroom, his head buried in his arms in an attempt block out the light and between bouts of retching. He doesn’t remember much from that night apart from the unearthly pain. He had honestly been concerned, for a good portion of it, that his head was about to split in two. He remembers shoving away the hands that tried to help him, and so delirious was he with pain that Sherlock actually broke the wall of silence he had currently going with Mycroft and phoned his older brother for help.
Lestrade had spent the rest of that night in bed, pumped full of medication sent over by one of Mycroft’s subordinates. They had been the most glorious twelve hours of his life.
This migraine is a good deal more tolerable, and thinking about that night makes his teeth ache. Lestrade tries to shove it away and concentrate on the road rather than the sun, whose light is making his eyeballs throb. Sherlock, beside him in the passenger seat, has been texting for the better part of the trip - Mycroft, no doubt, going by the way he’s been angrily stabbing at the keys.
“‘Bout an hour away, now,” Lestrade tells him, though it’s more to reassure himself than anything else.
“Yes, I know,” Sherlock says distractedly.
“I was going to drop you off at home, ‘f that’s all right,” Lestrade continues. He’s trying to focus on something - anything - other than the growing pain. He can’t quite keep the slur from his words, though, and he knows Sherlock will notice. This happens sometimes, with his migraines. His entire face grows tight; his jaw and lips go numb. He can feel, even now, a tingling starting to spread outward from his ear, reaching long fingers down his jaw and spreading across the top of his head.
Sherlock pockets his phone and raps his knuckles on Lestrade’s leg. “Pull over.”
Lestrade waves him off. “I’m fine, Sherlock.”
“Clearly, you are not. Pull over.”
“Look, it’s only an hour. I can drive for an hour.”
“I’m certain of that,” Sherlock says in a world-weary voice. “But that will only serve to worsen the migraine and make you positively insufferable.”
“Oh, me, insufferable? Have you ever listened to yourself talk?”
“Lestrade.”
He glances over at Sherlock for the briefest of moments. Their eyes meet, and his resolve disintegrates.
“Fine.”
They switch at the next empty stretch of road, Lestrade sliding over to the passenger seat while Sherlock gets out of the car and comes around to the other side. He turns up the air conditioning, despite the chill outside, and points the blasting vents in Lestrade’s direction before reaching into the back and grabbing his discarded suit jacket. He drapes it over him and Lestrade mutters, “Thanks,” before pulling it up to his face, effectively blocking out the sun. It smells of tea and chemicals and sharp soap, scents that are entirely Sherlock.
He closes his eyes for a moment, losing himself to the ungodly pounding between his ears.
He opens them to darkness and quiet, the rumble of the car gone; the rough leather of the seat replaced by soft down.
Sherlock is seated next to him on the bed, legs outstretched before him and crossed at the ankles. He’s typing on his laptop, and they’re in the detective’s bedroom. Lestrade wonders how Sherlock got him upstairs. Perhaps someone helped. Perhaps, more worrisome, he got up under his own power and doesn’t remember.
“Sherl’k,” he whispers, voice cracking around the name. He touches the man’s elbow. “Time?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Sherlock replies without looking away from his screen. “I called in for you already. Well - you called in. I’ve become quite good at imitating your voice, you know. You won’t be expected back at the Yard until day after tomorrow. I trust that will be enough time for you to sufficiently recover?”
Lestrade wants to feel irritated - should feel irritated - but he simply sighs in relief. He’s too tired to worry about anything else right now, and the residual headache is lapping at the corners of his mind. He knows it’ll return in full force if he doesn’t find sleep again soon.
The glow from the laptop disappears, and Lestrade doesn’t realize that he’s been blocking it out with a hand cupped around his eye until Sherlock touches his fingers and asks, “Is this better?”
He nods, and then groans as the sudden movement causes the blood to pound louder in his ears, thundering against the inside of his head. A cool hand lays itself across his forehead, and for a moment the pounding blessedly abates. It doesn’t disappear completely, but it eases enough that he might be able to claim sleep again.
“Thank you,” he has enough sense to whisper as drowsiness overrides the pain.
“You needn’t ever thank me for this.”
Sherlock’s other hand reaches for his and Lestrade curls his fingers around it, squeezing lightly. He receives one in return, and drops off again immediately after.
---
He chops his hair now, finally giving into the inevitable. Short, his hair glows, and sticks up in all directions whenever he runs a hand through it absentmindedly - or when Sherlock does so purposefully. The silver and gray are brought out as the black ends are cut away, and he knows that the severe cut makes him look ten years older. But it saves him the trouble of giving it little more than a passing thought in the morning, and that’s fine by him. It keeps him from having to look in the mirror any longer than is necessary, and he can keep pretending that the forty-seven-year-old Lestrade looks the same as the twenty-five-year-old one.
Pretending is good; ignoring is even better.
----
They both have nightmares, too, but Sherlock is the one who suffers the most from them. He’ll wake Lestrade at all hours, arms flung out against the advancing phantoms, a thin sheen of sweat breaking out across his brow and eyes as wild as his hair. Sometimes he’ll talk about them, in gasping half-sentences that make very little sense but it doesn’t matter because at least he’s talking. It’s far better than the Sherlock who wakes from the terror of a dream and simply sits, huddled in Lestrade’s arms, silent to even the most earnest of questions.
And then there’s the night Sherlock wakes and snaps into a sitting position, drawing deep gulps of air and feeling frantically for Lestrade in the dark. The older man wakes to fingers digging into his shirt, running over his face, trailing down his shoulders and over his chest as Sherlock mutters, “No, no, no.”
“Sherlock.” Lestrade grabs the fingers and clamps the hands between his own, stilling their frenzied movements. He sits up and says nothing further. He can read Sherlock’s silences well enough to know that the detective is searching for words; on the verge of speech.
“You -” Sherlock stops and attempts to gather himself. Lestrade has never heard such a tremulous syllable, and one of his fingers finds its way to Sherlock’s wrist. The pounding beneath the delicate skin tells him that Sherlock’s heart is racing out of control.
“Yeah, me,” he says softly. “I’m here; you’re here. You’re fine. Everything’s fine. It was another dream.”
“You -” One of Sherlock’s hands breaks from his grasp and seeks out his chest again, probing. “You - you aren’t hurt.”
Lestrade has met all of Sherlock’s demons, either from the detective directly or from the frantic mutterings of a man on the edge of a nightmare, suspended between wakefulness and sleep. He thought he knew them all by heart, each and every one, and knew which reassurance was needed in the aftermath.
He’s wrong, because now he’s the one haunting the detective. He’s the one bringing the pain.
He hasn’t a clue what to say.
“C’mon,” he whispers, tugging Sherlock close. The detective offers little resistance, but he doesn’t sleep for the rest of the night. He passes the remaining hours of darkness with his head next to Lestrade’s on the pillow, close enough to hear his breathing, and a hand on the DI’s chest, positioned just over his heart.
Lestrade doesn’t try to give him false reassurances, because Sherlock would have appreciated it just as much as he would if the tables were turned - that is to say, not in the slightest. But he does linger an extra hour in the bed after his alarm goes off, reducing his morning routine down to the barest of necessities and pushing his usual arrival at the Yard back by half an hour. He doesn’t care, because it was an extra hour that he could give to Sherlock, and that means everything.
----
He knows that he must look ancient, next to Sherlock.
The other man might be nearing thirty, but he still holds a hint of boyhood in his face. He’s made more angular than normal by his quick metabolism and self-deprivation, but a softness lingers around his cheekbones and collarbones and in his hands, so smooth they might as well be polished marble.
Eighteen years is a large gulf to try to breach, even in adulthood. Lestrade can’t help the number-crunching; can’t help thinking, He’ll be forty-two on my sixtieth birthday or Fifty-two and seventy - Christ, what a gap. And it’s made all the more obvious when they stand shoulder to shoulder, Sherlock vibrant and wild while Lestrade is gray and ashen.
He can’t help feeling that maybe he’s robbing Sherlock of something; holding him back.
But now and again Lestrade catches Sherlock looking at him - perhaps at a crime scene, sometimes at his flat, other times when they’re in his office and Sherlock is eating while he wiles away the hours on paperwork - and he knows he wasn’t meant to do so. The detective is more vulnerable in those moments when he’s caught looking at him than Lestrade has ever had chance to see; more naked, even, than if he were standing there unclothed. Lestrade catches the unchecked emotion on his face for a brief moment before Sherlock ducks his head and tries to pretend that he had been looking elsewhere, and each time he feels as though the air has been sucked from his chest, so powerful is the look.
And Sherlock doesn’t need to hear the words any more than Lestrade needs to say them - not just yet - but on occasion they flit across his mind. The sentiment is especially strong in the moments when Sherlock is consumed by his work, or when he’s asleep and Lestrade is awake, or during the brief times when Sherlock thinks no one’s eyes are upon him. It’s then that he lets down his guard, and Lestrade is allowed a glimpse inside.
He loves him fiercely for it.
----
Lestrade stands behind the building, smoking, leaning with his back against the rough brick. His ears pick out the faint wail of sirens, off at some great distance - someone else’s crime scene. The ballroom behind him emptied long ago; a few people linger across the street, huddled in conference by their cars, shooting the occasional glance in the direction of the building. There’s nothing to see here, not anymore, but people do so enjoy a spectacle and will hang onto the memory of it for as long as they can.
Footsteps sound from around the corner, a steady slap of smart shoes against worn pavement. Sherlock appears before him, immaculate as ever, a slightly frayed quality to his curls serving as the only evidence that their evening was less than relaxing.
“You don’t wear ties,” he announces.
“And we don’t often infiltrate charity events in order to take down smuggling rings,” Lestrade tells him. “First time for everything.”
His hand strays to the tie, which had gone nearly-forgotten until Sherlock mentioned it. Now he can feel its presence about his neck, the mild but lingering pressure, and he loosens it, undoing the top button on his shirt along the way. He sighs as the cool night air touches his neck; as he breathes easily for what feels like the first time in hours.
Sherlock comes to stand next to him as Lestrade brings the cigarette to his mouth and shuffles uncomfortably, curling his toes in shoes that his feet aren’t accustomed to wearing. The suspects had been carted off long ago and the event had dissipated along with them - arrests tend to have that effect, he supposes. They’d wrapped up witness statements and, Lestrade was sure, gathered enough information to properly put the case to rest in the morning. This wasn’t really his purview, but a sloppy murder was the thread that connected them to the smuggling ring, and it seemed only right to see this through to the end. His people had all gone home by this point; he and Sherlock are the only ones lingering. He knows his own reasons for staying behind, but he hadn’t a clue what Sherlock’s might be.
Lestrade turns his gaze back to the blanket of ink spread out above their heads, and he smokes in silence for a while. He can pick out a few stars tonight, which is more than he can say for most nights, and thinks he can even spot Jupiter in the southern sky.
“They fascinate you,” Sherlock says, following Lestrade’s gaze for a moment before returning his attention to the ground; the couple arguing down the street. He has no use for the night in the hard drive that makes up his mind, and one can’t deduce the stars.
Lestrade hums by way of reply, and brings the cigarette to his lips.
He’d been seven the day they landed on the moon - Christ, just over forty years ago, now - and he can still remember watching the grainy footage in his family’s living room in the gray light of the pre-dawn hour. They went to Venus when he was eight, and Mars when he was nine. He’d been ten when Pioneer took to the stars, and fifteen when Voyager followed in her footsteps. Jupiter and Saturn had both been gained by his eighteenth birthday, and he remembers that, too - watching for the first pictures to come in, reaching him from a distance of one billion kilometers. Twenty-four saw Uranus; Halley’s Comet; the discovery of just how far they were from the center of the galaxy. Voyager 2 had flown past Neptune when he was twenty-seven. They’d gained Hubble at twenty-eight, and lost Mir at thirty-nine. He might yet still live to see a flyby of Pluto, scheduled for seven months after he turns fifty-three.
The entirety of his life can be mapped onto the timeline of space exploration, and it’s as intricately woven into his being as - well, it’s as much a part of him as Sherlock is.
“Yeah,” Lestrade answers finally. “Yeah, they do.”
Sherlock says nothing, and Lestrade knows that means that he should elaborate. He draws a deep breath, tapping his cigarette with one nervous finger.
“There’s this picture out there - you might’ve seen it in your schoolbooks somewhere, but no doubt you’ve deleted it. It’s grainy, and old, and at first glance looks like someone took a photograph wrong. It’s a black background streaked with orange and green and you wonder, ‘What could be so important about this?’ And then you look closer.”
He pauses, drawing on the cigarette.
“There’s something that sticks out if you look at it carefully, and once you notice it you can’t stop. It’s this little blue dot on the right half of the photograph. This little blue dot, sitting in a shaft of sunlight. And d’you know what? It’s us. It’s here, and the picture’s not been taken from anywhere on this planet but from six billion kilometers away. That’s a bit sobering, isn’t it? We’re all so very tiny - just specks, really. And look at what we do to each other.”
“Hardly an uplifting thought,” Sherlock observes, and Lestrade muses that this is probably the longest he’s heard the man ever go without speech.
“Perhaps not. But then you think - we did that. We built that spacecraft, and we sent it on its way. We’re specks of dust, but we have the ability to comprehend - the ability to understand. We’re not ever gonna know all the answers, but the fact that we’ve figured out any of them - well, that’s fascinating. That’s incredible.”
Lestrade gestures with his cigarette to the sky. “Have you ever looked at them? Really looked, Sherlock. Have you ever taken the time to think about the fact that the light we’re seeing is from millions of years ago? You see the past every time you look up - and it’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
Lestrade breaks his eyes away from the sky to look at his friend, and finds that Sherlock is staring at him, instead. He can’t read the look on the detective’s face, not accurately, but if he were to venture a guess - he supposes that it looks fond.
He clears his throat, takes another pull, and finally asks, “You all right?”
“Of course.”
They hadn’t technically needed the detective tonight, but the man does so enjoy putting on a costume and a show. He takes the cigarette from between Lestrade’s lips and brings it to his own. Lestrade, relieved of his cigarette, allows his eyes to stray over the lithe body tucked neatly in the designer suit that emphasizes the unbelievably long legs; the properly squared shoulders. It had escaped from the melee completely unscathed, which was astonishing given the fact that Sherlock had physically tackled one of the men - running leap and all, graceful as a cat, just like in the movies.
“Thanks for the save tonight,” Lestrade says finally as the silence stretches on. Sherlock gives a casual shrug.
“You’d have noticed him eventually.”
“Yeah, once he’d clubbed me about the head. I’m sure I would have noticed then.”
Sherlock smirks and Lestrade allows himself a brief chuckle - it sounds high and wobbly to his ears, as though about to spin out of control. He clamps down on it firmly and takes the cigarette back from Sherlock, drawing on it slowly. He’s still working off the adrenaline - still feeling the jittery tingle in his limbs and the strange over-alertness that follows near-attacks.
“You needed me,” Sherlock says. He reaches over and tugs at Lestrade’s collar, smoothing it out, piercing eyes meeting his for a moment before he plucks the cigarette from the DI’s lips again. Lestrade lets it pass, at first, but the silence hangs between them and it’s weighted with more than just companionship.
They aren’t good with words, no, but sometimes he needs a reminder that they haven’t perfected their actions, yet, either.
God help me.
“Yes, I did. I do.” He can’t resist adding, in a lighter tone, “I’d be lost without my detective,” and Sherlock smirks at that.
“That is all too painfully obvious, Lestrade,” he says in a long-suffering voice. “While you may be slightly less incompetent than the others, you still lack…imagination.”
“Huh.” Lestrade shakes his head. “Imagination, now, is it? I take it that’s a downgrade from - what was it you called me the other day?” Lestrade casts around for the exact wording, and fears that it’s escaped him. “Er - ‘the best of a bad lot’?”
Sherlock hums and pulls on the cigarette. “Hm. Yes. It was only partially accurate, though. Most handsome, too, though I doubt Donovan would have appreciated that bit.”
“Right. Now you’re just having me on,” Lestrade grumbles. He takes the cigarette from between Sherlock’s fingers and brings it to his mouth.
“Oh, come now, Lestrade,” Sherlock says, sounding entirely uninterested. “Surely you know this.”
“Dunno what you’re talking about,” Lestrade mutters. Sherlock reaches out, catching Lestrade’s chin in his hand and running a calloused thumb across his jaw.
“You could be thirty, if not for the hair.”
“Thirty?” Lestrade repeats, amused, taking Sherlock’s hand in his own and squeezing.
“Thirty-five,” Sherlock amends, but the smile he gives is unexpected and amused (and lovely), and Lestrade can’t help but return it.
Makes him seventeen, his mind is only too quick to point out, and Lestrade feels something catch in his chest.
“Stop it.”
It takes him a moment to realize that it was Sherlock speaking, rather than his own subconscious scolding him.
“Stop comparing yourself to me,” Sherlock continues, drawing his hand away. “And stop projecting your worries onto me. What makes you think I care how old you are?”
Lestrade snorts and shakes his head, and then stills as Sherlock reaches out and brushes the tips of his fingers over the bridge of Lestrade’s nose. He trails across his cheeks and over his brow, skimming down to his collarbone, where his fingers sit, splayed across the skin, five pinpoints of cold pressure that move when Lestrade breathes.
“And what makes you think,” Sherlock adds in a low voice, “that I would only find you attractive if you were my peer?”
He re-does the topmost button of Lestrade’s shirt and tightens his tie once more, and then takes a step back in order to scrutinize him. Lestrade stuffs a hand in his pocket and smokes with the other, thankful to have something to occupy them while Sherlock’s eyes flick over his shoulders and down his torso, lingering for perhaps a second on the softness around his middle before traveling down to his feet and back up again.
Sherlock takes the cigarette back from him holds it between two fingers. Lestrade catches the other hand in one of his own, twisting their fingers together until their wrists meet, pulse-point to pulse-point, steady beat thundering against steady beat. Sherlock’s breath hitches and Lestrade lets out a faint huff at the contact because Sherlock beats, alive and real, flush against his own skin.
“I would,” Sherlock tells him in a low voice, answering the thought blooming in Lestrade’s mind before it’s even had a chance to fully form. “I’d have you.”
A wild laugh escapes him, because it’s always been leading to this, hasn’t it? He was done for long ago.
“I don’t know if you realize this, Sherlock,” he murmurs, “but you already do.”
----
Lestrade starts to wear a ring on his left hand.
It’s a simple gold band that belonged to his grandfather, and its sudden appearance goes unremarked upon by his usually observant team - most likely because they are afraid of the answers they would get should they ask him about it.
He wears the ring to avoid the usual questions and the bothersome interest displayed by some - though, admittedly, it occasionally brings up a new host of impossible-to-answer questions. It sits on his nightstand in the evenings and on his finger during the day, so it’s a surprise when one morning he puts the ring on and feels an unusual tug against his skin. He removes the band and inspects it; he finds nothing at first. But then he runs the pad of his finger along the inside surface, and realizes that it’s no longer completely smooth. Holding it up to the light, he sees that the ring has been expertly engraved. The writing is minuscule, and he reluctantly pulls out the reading glasses he denies owning in order to see what’s been done to it.
We found each other, and that is wonderful.
Sherlock steadfastly denies any and all tampering, but it’s around that same time that he starts telling people he’s married to his work.
----
Part Six
----
Final Notes:
-credit for the warrant card scene goes to gentlest_sin
-The storms mentioned at the beginning of this installment are the Great Storm of 1703, the Great Storm of 1987, and the Burns’ Day Storm
The events mentioned during the penultimate scene are as follows:
-Moon Landing - July 20, 1969. Apollo 11 landed at 4:17pm EST and the first moonwalk occurred six hours later. This would have made it shortly before dawn in the UK.
-Soviet Venera 7 was the first probe to soft-land on Venus - 1970
-Mariner 9 became the first spacecraft to orbit Mars - 1971
-Pioneer 10 launched - 1972
-Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were launched - 1977
-Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 encountered Jupiter in 1979 and Saturn in 1980.
-Voyager 2 flew past Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989.
-Halley’s Comet flew past Earth on its 76-year orbit in 1986.
-It was discovered in 1986 that our solar system is 23,000 light years from the center of our galaxy.
-Hubble Space Telescope was launched in 1990.
-Mir was de-orbited in 2001, and subsequently broke up over the Pacific Ocean.
-The spacecraft New Horizons is scheduled to fly past Pluto in July 2015.
-The photograph that Lestrade tells Sherlock about is known as “The Pale Blue Dot,” and was taken by Voyager 1 as it left our solar system in 1997. Earth, in this photograph, is about the size of 0.12 pixels.
-Finally, the inscription on the inside of Lestrade’s ring was inspired by this quote from Ann Druyan.
Thanks to everyone for sticking with the story so far. I’ve appreciated the comments more than I can possibly say. The final part will be up within a week. As always, feedback is welcome and appreciated.