The BBC owns Sherlock.
Prompted by, and filled for, TYRider.
Enjoy reading, and do let me know if you liked it - I, like many others, thrive on feedback.
Prompt: Instead of Sherlock Holmes, Mike Stamford introduces John Watson to recently divorced Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade.
"Couldn't Harry help?" Mike Stamford asked.
John abruptly remembered one of the many reasons they had stuck together through med school: where John had been sharp-eyed and steady-handed, Mike had had a memory for detail that no-one else in the class could match. They hadn't seen each other in, oh, it must be over a decade now, and for the man to remember that John had a sister, and what her name was…
But either he'd forgotten she had a history of alcohol abuse, or - and this was more likely, it had been the cause of more than one heated debate between them as students - he was being the eternal dreamy-eyed optimist.
John snorted. "Yeah, like that's going to happen."
The Mike of his med school days would've sniffed and looked offended; this one just nodded and grinned a bit, as though he'd been expecting an answer of that sort, before tossing out another question, "I don't know - you could get a flatshare or something?"
Another snort. Yep, Mike was dreaming. He'd been home from the war for three weeks, three endless fleeting weeks, and he wasn't anywhere near ready to share living space with a civilian. If it wasn't the looks of pity and the long stares at his shuffling limp when they thought he wasn't looking, it was the bitter scowls and mutters of serves you right for signing up… what are we paying taxes for, eh? So blighters like you can get sent home and not have to work another day in your life? Nights were the worst. Phantom strains of remembered adrenaline flooded his system and crashed against the terrible towering waves of gushing blood and survivor's guilt coming the other way; he would jolt awake, bite back the scream of rage and pain and sheer tangled emotion, and the mixture left his body the only way it knew how, trailing saltwater streaks down his cheeks.
He waved an arm, encapsulating his bung leg and the crutch leaning against the seat, "Come on, who'd want me for a flatmate?"
Mike's mouth twitched and stretched into another grin. He chuckled lowly.
"What?"
"You're the second person to say that to me today."
Knowing Mike's capacity for picking up the stragglers and loners of society, it was hardly surprising, and yet… well. His mate had that look on his face, the one he recognised from their school days. It called up memories of mischievous pranks gone spectacularly right.
And so he asked: "Who was the first?"
Mike strolled into New Scotland Yard looking, well, not as if he owned the place - that simply wasn't Mike's style - but as if he knew everyone there and, what's more, knew their mums as well. John swallowed his nervousness at calmly walking in the front doors of the Yard in search of a potential flatmate and hurried after Mike, who had nodded politely to the nearest uniform, made a brief enquiry of the nearest desk clerk, and was now heading for the lifts.
Three minutes brought them to the ninth floor and the Homicide and Serious Crime Division.
"Left here," was Mike's only comment as they exited the lift. He'd said nothing about the person they had come to see, smiling enigmatically and staying stubbornly closed-mouthed in the face of John's questions.
John followed Mike down the hall, around a corner, and through one of a number of wide doors: this one was marked MIT IV. They wound their way between the open offices and desks, Mike calling cheerful greetings to the few officers present, and then he was knocking on the open door of a glassed-in office and walking on in without waiting for an invitation.
"Morning, Greg."
The man behind the desk was in his mid forties, with spiky silver hair that gave him the look of a teen rebel not quite grown into sober adulthood. Frowning ferociously at the computer in front of him, he paused his frenetic typing for long enough to hold up a finger at Mike's greeting and mutter, "…pursuant to - be with you in half a minute - the ongoing investigation into the murder of Johannes Wicken, 37, of Finsbury…"
He lapsed into silence, eyes darting down to the keyboard, over to the files spread across the desk, up to the screen again as he typed. John perched on the edge of one of the two visitor's chairs; Mike lowered himself heavily into the other, shooting John an infuriatingly cheerful grin as he did so.
John admitted himself confused. This man - what had Mike called him? Greg? - was presumably the potential flatmate Mike had been referring to, but what need would a Yarder have for a flatmate? The rookie uniforms might not get paid all that well, but this one was a plainclothes with the CID, and had his own office to boot; they were hardly the marks of a minimum wage earner.
The room held little more than the desk and chairs. A couple of filing cabinets were shoved up against one wall, a coat rack had been attached to the back of the door, and a printer was plugged in and left on the floor beside the power socket. Beyond that, a quick look around the office showed nothing more personal than a battered coffee mug emblazoned with the sunburst-and-crown of the Metropolitan Police - no photos of a wife or kids, no quirky artwork on the walls, not even the traditional manically cheerful 'You Don't Have To Be Mad To Work Here But It Helps!' poster. Before he could draw any conclusions from his observations, the man was hitting the full stop key with a heavy forefinger and a sigh - if John's short weeks of keeping an empty blog had taught him anything, it was what a finger pressing that final full stop sounded like - and turning to face them.
"Right, that's that done. Sorry, Mike. Hi, uh…" he saw John sitting beside Mike and trailed off questioningly.
"John Watson." John stood, leaning awkwardly on his cane, and held out a hand for the man to shake.
"Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade," accompanied by a firm handshake.
He was aware of dark eyes scanning him as he sat back down, noting the cane, the stiff leg, and the presence of Mike, who was after all a doctor, and coming to entirely the wrong conclusion, "Assaults can be reported downstairs - "
"No - no, it's nothing like that. I'm not hurt - I mean, it's not - "
Ever the voice of reason, Mike interrupted, "John was in Afghanistan until three weeks ago. He's looking for a place to stay."
"Flatshare," John added quickly, horrified that the detective would think he was asking for charity, "you know, go halves on the rent, type thing."
He fell silent, aware that he'd made a hash of things already and he'd barely even met his potential flatmate. There was a long moment of silence, during which the detective looked between Mike and John, Mike nodded encouragingly into the middle distance, and John stared, embarrassed, at the front corner of the desk.
"Right," the detective said finally, drawing the word out slightly. "Well. Uh. It's a bit unexpected, to tell you the truth - you could've given me a bit of warning, Mike - and this is hardly the place to discuss it, I'm meant to be working."
"How's that going, by the way?" Mike nodded to the open file on the desk.
"About as well as can be expected, given the autopsy results," was the guarded answer, with a subtle tilt of the head toward John - but not so subtle that John didn't catch it.
He could feel himself reddening slightly at the implication. Lestrade didn't want to talk about it in front of a relative stranger.
"Oh - " Mike's correction was almost too artless to be believed, "John's a doctor, too. He was with the RAMC."
Lestrade straightened slightly, but said, "Be that as it may, he's not the attending forensic pathologist. You are."
"Only because Molly's off on conference, Nick and Jacko are both sick, and I don't have any classes to take until next week."
The detective shrugged and turned to look at John, "Sorry, you understand how it is - ongoing investigation, we can't discuss it with unauthorised personnel."
"Yeah - yeah, absolutely," John agreed. No need to make this any more awkward than it already was.
Lestrade scrubbed a hand through his hair, "Uh, look, I really can't talk now, but d'you know The White Horse pub? It's in Soho, just up from Piccadilly Circus off the A401. Corner of Rupert and Archer."
"I know it." In fact he'd been kicked out of it as a second year med student.
"If you're serious about wanting a flatshare, if this - " he waved a hand around the featureless office, "hasn't scared you off - "
"It hasn't," John said quickly.
"Then I'll meet you there at eight and we can have a chat, how about that?"
Maybe he hadn't ruined his chances right off the bat after all. "Brilliant. I'll see you then."
They stood, said their goodbyes, and were on their way out in under a minute as Lestrade turned back to his computer.
"So?" Mike prompted once they were on the street.
"So what?"
"What did you think?"
John made a noncommittal noise, "Don't know yet. Wait and see how tonight goes. How do you know him?"
"Like he said, I'm attending forensic pathologist for this case."
"Doesn't sound like you're a regular for it, though."
Mike shrugged, "I step in every few months when someone's out sick or when they're busy enough to need more than one person. I don't love it, but I do what I can to help."
"How'd you get into it?"
"Molly Hooper introduced me a couple of years back. She's their regular, but they needed more than just her - so now there's Molly, Nick, Jacko, and me. Molly's a sweet young thing: innocent as anything to look at, but she loves the job and she knows her stuff. Jacko's a bit older and a bit tougher, he and Greg give as good as they get when they're working together. Nick's only just out of school, and it shows; he's usually posted under the supervision of one of us."
John nodded, mulling this over. "And the Detective Inspector? What's he like?"
"Greg works hard - too hard, some would say. Long hours. It's a stressful job. He's…" Mike hesitated, "he's going through some stuff at the moment, but he can tell you about that himself, when or if he chooses. He's got a good sense of humour. Snarky. You'll like him."
They parted ways on Victoria Street, Mike flagging a taxi to head back to Bart's and John making for the tube station, but not before Mike had wrangled John's mobile number off him and made him promise to call the next day and let him know how the meeting went.
"And if I don't hear from you by dinner time I'll be calling you," he called as he turned away, raising an arm for an approaching cab, "so you may as well spare me the trouble."
John managed a brief half-smile by way of response. He watched the cab pull out into traffic and disappear, leaving him once more alone in the midst of the London crowd, and his smile disappeared too, fading into the old pain-worn lines it had come to know so well these last few weeks.
He bit back a sigh and turned toward the tube station. His meeting with Lestrade was over three hours away; that was more than enough time to head back to the bedsit and grab a bite to eat before heading for Soho. Maybe he'd update his blog before he went - or wait until he got back, when he'd have something to say. That was a better idea.
Bumped into Mike Stamford earlier today. Found a flat tonight. Shouldn't think I'll be seeing much of my flatmate - he's a detective with the Met, keeps all sorts of odd hours.
He snorted. What an exciting life he had.
Leaning on his cane and limping, tap-step, tap-step, John vanished into the bowels of the Underground.