When Lestrade comes to Mycroft's office, it's like a west wind off the Atlantic sweeping through the open windows of a beach cottage on the Cornish coast, flinging white cotton curtains wide and fluttering the tidy piles of papers and magazines. Or like a rangy deerhound loping in from the moors to sit grinning on the hearth of a small holder, heather caught rakishly in shaggy fur carrying the scent of pine and peat. The great outside comes to dance attendance in the court of the master of the great indoors.

The master of the great indoors doesn't always know quite what he thinks about that. His normal prim self clucks fretfully, maintaining his command of his space, grateful when Lestrade stands respectfully in front of the desk. Mycroft tells himself that everything is as it should be. Order is maintained. Hierarchy is respected. Rank matters. Mycroft's control is never challenged, his reserve never shattered.

And, yet…

There's nothing about Lestrade that doesn't announce that if he chooses to step away from that respectful stance in front of the desk he will… and someday he might. And there's something about the laughter that seems integral to the man that leaves Mycroft feeling a tad insecure, as though Lestrade were amused at Mycroft's shadowed, light-shattered oracular cave, and unintimidated by Mycroft's role as star oracle of espionage.

But, then, there's little reason for Lestrade to be intimidated. If Mycroft is the master of the Delphic hearth, Lestrade's no less potent in his own realm—the very realm in which Mycroft falters and fears. Lestrade: the hunter in deep cover, a field operative with the skill to pass in the midst of professional detectives and never be spotted. A man who forces even Sherlock's respect, not only for his role as Detective Inspector, but even more for his mastery of Sherlock's best-loved skill in the Great Game. Sherlock may beat Lestrade at pure detection, but Lestrade runs rings around Sherlock in undercover work.

He is, Mycroft tells himself, a goldfish. But…if he's a goldfish he's of a different sort entirely compared to the average inhabitant of fishbowls. Mycroft was reminded of the Demon at Chen village, in Journey to the West, who had proven to be a goldfish transformed and empowered by listening to the sutras at the feet of Kuan Yin.

Lestrade was considerably more beneficial, of course. Still, there are moments when Mycroft can see him as a Chinese warrior in red-gold scaled armor, with a mace made of a lotus bud. The thought amuses Mycroft, not least because he's fairly sure Lestrade would be both amused and horrified. Lestrade survives by his ability to pass as a bloke's bloke, at home in a pub with a pint, at home on the football field, ready to put a tenner in the betting pool for the World Cup. Not the sort to be seen in golden armor like burnished sunset waving a pink and green enameled mace.

In spite of that, the fact remains: Lestrade's no mere goldfish. His mind's quicker than most people realize, and in areas neither Mycroft or Sherlock are skilled. In Lestrade Mycroft faces something he's rarely forced to reckon with: a form of intelligence that is real, but alien to him. A man whose skills exceed his own, in an area that defeats him over and over, in the end. Mycroft can go undercover. He's even good at it. But he never returns without being exhausted, with dozens of cringing memories of how he fell short of perfection. The thought of living as Lestrade lives, day after day, embedded in the midst of the bustle and furor of the Met's Investigative division, surrounded by goldfish and even lower life-forms leeches the spirit out of him. And then there's Lestrade, who thrives on it…goldfish and non-goldfish at the same time.

Lestrade stands respectfully, but when he talks to Mycroft it's never with awe or reserve. He's not intimidated by Mycroft any more than he's intimidated by Sherlock. He sees the genius. Mycroft fears he also sees the stupidity of the two Holmes boys.

Sometimes he thinks if Lestrade wanted, he could simply walk away from that spot in Mycroft's office, settle himself on the edge of Mycroft's desk, and begin to talk about something other than Sherlock, or the state of London's terrorist community, or upcoming strategies for maintaining the safety of the populace.

He could, Mycroft thinks. He could manage it. I'd never stop him. One move from him and he'd have the freedom of this office. He'd be able to treat it as his home. Is that the skill of the undercover operative, who can make himself at home anywhere? Or is it something else?

Mycroft tries hard not to ask himself if he'd like Lestrade to at least try. Sherlock's been too unsettling already, with his talk about adopting goldfish, and his prodding questions of Mycroft's loneliness. It's safer, Mycroft thinks, to remain separate.

Lestrade is in a dangerous job. He takes terrible risks. Mycroft tallies the deaths too often.

One lost to Lord Moran's little plan, mere months ago. Mycroft wrote out the condolence letter, and made himself comfort the grieving spouse.

When Lestrade leaves, though, the office seems smaller than it had. The west wind has left. The curtains are still. The hearth may still burn, an eternal oracular flame, but the deerhound doesn't pant merrily beside it, heather hanging over one ear. Goldfish are once more mere goldfish, not sutra-reciting demons waving flowery weapons and returning to the Goddess of Compassion when their adventures are done.

oOo

When Lestrade comes to Mycroft's office, it's like coming into a sanctuary, far from the shouting and the furor of London. Lestrade knows London lives and breathes mere feet away, out the mirrored glass windows of Mycroft's space, but that space itself seems to exist outside ordinary time. He can almost hear the chanting of monks and smell incense on the air.

He's never understood how it is that light behaves differently for Mycroft than for ordinary mortals. He'll come into the office from the glare of overhead fluorescents, hard light illuminating every inch of Babylon-on-Thames, but as soon as he crosses Mycroft's threshold it's all hushed silence hinting at music just out of hearing, and seductive shadows ripped open by falling gouts of light. Lestrade thinks, sometimes, of the Bernini sculpture, The Ecstasy of St. Theresa.

Lestrade doesn't usually let people know he knows about Bernini statues or Catholic saints. Blokes don't, and Lestrade's life depends on passing as a bloke. But sometimes he wonders what would happen if he made the comparison to Mycroft. He's quite sure the man would recognize the statue—had probably actually seen it himself, at some time.

He wondered, too, if Mycroft would catch the seductive, sensual element of the comparison—Mycroft as a saint stricken down by orgasmic revelation, swooning from the arrows of light driving down upon him. Mycroft as intersection of heaven and earth, there in his dim office pierced by shafts of light and knowledge. He's such a contradiction, the elder Holmes. Lestrade wonders what he'd do if Lestrade made the comment, if Mycroft understood the implications.

Sherlock's been bitingly open about some aspects of Mycroft's life over the years—and the years are fast approaching a decade, now. Time and more than enough time for Lestrade to exercise his skills on the two Holmes boys. Just as he's become fairly sure of the limits of Sherlock's sexual experience, he's become as sure that Mycroft's not Sherlock. But everything Sherlock's said, hinted, or accidentally given away with a roll of his eyes and a wrinkle of his nose suggests that in his own way Mycroft's chaste. Heart-chaste, if not chaste in body. Here in his sanctuary, here behind his altar-like desk, Mycroft's as pure as the saint, shying from any passion but the passion of the mind.

Mycroft's the saint in the dark sacred precinct. He's the wizard in the crystal cave. He's white deer in the holy grove.

And, yet…

And, yet, Lestrade's studied him, as the angel studies the saint; as the sorceress studies the wizard; as the red-eared hound studies the deer. Even the saint will fall to the angel's arrows of light. Even the wizard will be trapped by the sorceress' smile. Even the white deer will be brought to bay by the red-eared hound as it hunts in the oak forest.

If he chose, Lestrade could say things like that to Mycroft, where he can never say them to the blokes at the pub, or the other officers at his Met station. Mycroft might laugh…no, Mycroft would laugh. But at least he'd know what Lestrade was saying.

Lestrade, standing in front of Mycroft, sometimes shivers thinking thoughts like that. The truth is it's seductive. Almost erotic. The thought of stepping out of character, moving into Mycroft's dim, sweet shadows, crossing through the spears of light as himself?

Would he fall, like St. Theresa, overwhelmed by the nakedness of mental intimacy? By the revelation of self?

He could. He knows he could. Mycroft's holy office isn't intimidating—it's comforting, sensual, soothing. He could set their roles aside, step across the deep carpet, say what he chose, step close and closer, sit on the desk, meet Mycroft's eyes, see what happened.

So far he hasn't tried. He's not sure he ever will. And, yet…

When he leaves Mycroft's office, it's always as though he'd walked out of Narnia and already yearns to return. It's like he's closed the door on holy time, turned away from sacred space. As though he's walking away from something magical eternally waiting to happen.

Someday, maybe it will.