DI Lestrade

“Orrr…——you could go with Donovan? I mean, she’d follow you anyway, right?”

“Don’t make me arrest you.”

He hasn’t even had any coffee yet. None. At all. Hasn’t even smelled any. Which means that he’s, unequivocally, unequipped to deal with this situation.

     “ -- forgot where I parked it.”

Greg Lestrade, a twice-commended detective, detects a hint of bullshit. If he’s forgotten where he’s parked his car (unlikely) then he’s also forgotten where he left his keys (even more unlikely).

Barry isn’t stupid. And not always as naive as he seems. For all his hang ups about words and his innocence when it comes to trusting people, he’s still very good at his job. And being good at his job means being observant. 

He knows that drinking is a thin line with Greg, that they’re teetering on a high wire between relaxing and relapsing and he wants to do everything in his power to keep them up here, to keep them from falling. 

His fingers, still lingering on the cold glass of the bottle, drag themselves away to splay themselves on Barry’s thigh, instead. If this is a quiet intervention, than it’s certainly an effective one, with the added benefit of Greg not even realising.

But her tenacity fought that, trying with every ounce of might to push herself up with one hand. The weight to bear was too much and she dropped back down, hitting her head hard. 

This was not the place she wanted to die. In the dark, all alone, with no one to hear her ( now feeble ) screams. There was no energy left for her to try and move again, but the startling from the baton being dropped just beside her prompted her to wake back up again. 

The feeling of a stranger moving her around and touching her wound riles her up, a more louder and definite scream, but he was helping. Vesper gasped for her breaths, blearily looking up at him. 

        “ V-Vesper… thank you. ”

Concentrating on the breathing instead of the pain was becoming hard.

                         -- and, well, the phrase ‘three minutes’ is lodged in his consciousness, an answer dredged up from god-knows-where to a question he really doesn’t want to think about. How long since the report of gunfire had brought him running in? Maybe it’s just been nicked. Maybe it hasn’t been hit at all.

He glances up at the pallor on his face, and tries not to let those hopes falter.

      “Vesper.” 

                the PAIN had begun to blossom long before the sound of the shot rang through her ears, her blood spilling warmly down her leg. she had fallen, grappling at the wound to try and stem any of the flow. the gunmen long gone, she was no concern to them now, left her shaking and clenching her jaw, calling out with the last bit of energy she had.

The gunshot had galvanised him into action. With a frustrated get me SCO19, now! he’d abandoned his car and his radio, and eased the door to the building open. After a minute or so, he’d been thwarted by the silence until --

     -- he takes off, no longer concerned about how much noise he’s making. From the sounds of it, whoever was wielding the gun is gone; anyone who’s left to shout was probably in front of the barrel, rather than behind the trigger.

He finds her on the floor.

         “Christ.” The baton is dropped, and he struggles out of          his jacket. “I’m DI Lestrade, I’ve got help on it’s way, okay?          You’re going to be fine.”

He doesn’t deal with a lot of gunshot wounds. Not in his job description. Still, he knows the basics.

Barry takes the opportunity for what it was never meant to be, but that’s what he’s always done when it came to Greg. Pushed. Wheedled. Weaseled. A long leg thrown over the older man’s lap and he’s straddling him, the table digging into his lower back as he settles himself, fingers fanned against Greg’s throat, eyes gone wide and dark. 

“Better?”

    (Except for the other hand, that reaches out, unconscious, to      steady Barry’s waist, as though he might overbalance. Firm      fingers, once fixed at that juncture, seem unwilling to move.)

He swallows.

But that would involve a whole lot more explanation than he’s got the time, or energy for. 

“I’m not looking at you.” 

   “Well, at least sit down, then.” He reaches for the bottle, twists his head to cast a glance at the younger man. “You’re hovering.”

It comes out a jumpy little breath, and Barry swallows around the edges of it like he might be able to take the sound back down with him. He can’t. It’s already out in the air, soft and disappointed. 

“No, I uh…I understand completely. Sir.”

The word comes out more bitter than he intends, and Barry looks away for a moment, rubbing the tips of his fingers against his lips to try and gather himself back up. 

Greg was doing the right thing. He was putting his job first. And who could blame him? His job was more important than anything Barry could bring into his life. 

That ‘oh’, that breathy, unrestrained sound that’s part confusion, part realisation, is like a slap in the face. In comparison, the bitter-edged ‘sir’ is a punch in the gut, and he can almost feel the breath leaving his body. He closes his eyes, trying to focus for a minute.

All he can hear is Barry’s breathing. All he can feel is the phantom rise and fall of a sleeping body beside him, Barry draped across him like he’s been so many times in the past weeks.

When he opens his eyes, all he can see is the paperwork in front of him that he knows, he knows, has to be completed.

“Barry,” he says, and then can’t think of a single other thing to say. But he pulls the papers towards him, rather than pushing him over for Barry to sign. “Barry, I’m not just -- I thought about this a lot, y’know. It’s not some -- some spur of the moment thing.”

He rubs his hands across his face, and tries to remember if he’s ever felt more tired than this.

Lestrade rolls his shoulders unhappily at the shudder that passes down his spine.

His ex-wife. He thought she’d be his ex-wife. She might have read up on him before coming here. Just a little.

    “ -- oh.”

That does surprise him. Barry’s mentioned her, a few times, but he’d never expected her to turn up in his office. He reaches for his phone.

Q had rather hoped that he wouldn’t have to go to these lengths to get a hold of his elder brother but he was running out of options. He could have hacked his laptop but that would run the risk of just being ignored. However, getting in touch with someone involved with him- well, Sherlock couldn’t ignore that so easily.

Getting into the Met database was hardly difficult, and he could have done it in his sleep had he wanted to. Nothing to harm it of course, just to get their attention before finally setting up a video link after blacking out his office walls.

There’s a heavy silence in the room as they all stare first at the unfamiliar face on their screens, and then at the Detective Inspector, waiting for for him to make a move, to do something. After a long moment, he licks his lips, clears his throat, and gives a curt nod.

     (And if he taps a Sergeant’s desk meaningfully as he goes       towards his office, an unspoken order to continue trying to       find out who the hell this is and how the hell they’re doing       it -- well, he just has to hope that it’s enough to get the       message across.)

When he closes the door to his office, there’s still a sea of faces staring at him, eyes wide and muscles tense. He sits behind his computer.