A/N: This short little fic is dedicated to one (very long-suffering) G. Lestrade of Scotland Yard, my favorite character in the Sherlock Holmes stories. He endured so much flak from Sherlock, it would figure if he already had suffered at the hands of another absurd, eccentric genius.

A life of ease I am much afraid
Was denied to Inspector G. Lestrade.
With the Study in Scarlet in '81
You'd think that his job had just begun.
But nevertheless the fact appears
He'd already been put in some twenty years.
And yet if the Garrideb case were true
he was still at the Yard in 1902
I feel it must be exceedingly hard
To spend forty years at Scotland Yard.

-Gavin Brend

When Gregory Lestrade heard that familiar wheezing engine, he thought he was imagining it. Too long a day, coupled with not enough coffee. He was just about to get up to refill his mug when an excited fellow wearing an absurd tweed jacket and bow tie burst into his office.

"Ah, there you are, Lestrade!" he exclaimed brightly. "I've been looking for you. Come on, we've got to save Sherlock from the Great Intelligence!"

He turned around and started to leave before realizing that Lestrade wasn't following. "Well, come along, we haven't got all day!"

"That you, Doctor?" Lestrade asked wearily (and warily) after several long moments.

The fellow looked slightly affronted. "Of course it's me, Lestrade!" Then he suddenly seemed taken aback. "Wait, how, how, how did you know it was me?"

Lestrade shot him a sardonic look. "I thought I heard that blasted TARDIS of yours, and then a man, apparently under thirty, shows up in my office wearing a tweed jacket and a bow tie and demands my immediate assistance on some absurd mission involving aliens. Of course it's you."

The Doctor straightened the bow tie in question with a rather hurt look. "Bow ties are cool!" he asserted.

"It's bloody ridiculous, it is," Lestrade retorted acerbically, eying his clothes with disdain. "Especially on you!"

"I leave you alone for a few years, and suddenly you're a fashion critic, and a tetchy one at that," the Doctor huffed in annoyance.

"I think I earned the right to be 'tetchy', Doctor. A few years?!" Lestrade scoffed. "Try thirty three! The last time I saw you, Doctor, you were wearing a leather jacket and a chip on your shoulder the size of the iceberg that sunk the Titanic!"

The Time Lord had the decency to actually look embarrassed. "I am sorry about leaving you in the lurch like that, but mauve alerts wait for no man."

The irate human glared at the time traveler. "You left me on Felspoon, you idiot! I spent three days climbing off that blasted swaying mountain, and two more trying to figure out how to either call you or get home on my own! You know how I finally managed to get back to Earth?"

The Doctor winced.

"I hitchhiked. I bloody hitchhiked! With a ship full of alien pensioners! They kept on saying how adorably young I was, and how they'd never seen a species quite like mine, and every five minutes for three whole weeks, I was badgered and poked and teased and driven completely mad!" Lestrade all but bellowed at the other man. "And then I discovered that it was 1980, not 1890!"

"Really? I could have sworn that it was 1890 when we were on Felspoon," the Doctor commented in bemusement. "The TARDIS must have skipped a bit. You mean to tell me that you've spent the last thirty three years living in the wrong century?"

Lestrade glowered darkly at him. "Obviously," he replied acerbically. It'd been a blasted awkward time, learning all the modern technology, terminology, and culture that had changed out of all proportion. The only positive note had been that it was the Eighties; everything was already so weird that no one really noticed that he was out of time. They merely thought he was either doolally or high, either possibility hardly worth mentioning.

"What have you been doing?" the Time Lord asked, staring at Lestrade as if he were a curiosity in a museum.

Lestrade stared at him in flabbergasted disbelief. "Honestly, Doctor, how the hell are you still alive? You are literally standing in my office at the Met!" They were even getting a few curious stares from the other CID detectives outside, who were probably mostly wondering who besides Sherlock could get Lestrade so riled up.

"The Met?" The Doctor's brow furrowed in either confusion or disbelief. "Hold on, you're a policeman? I thought you were a grifter when we met. I mean, that was literally what you were doing when we met."

"That's Detective Inspector Grifter, to you, Doctor," Lestrade said flatly. Not one of the proudest eras in his life, but it served him well when he found himself stranded in a whole new century. Turning to the law had been an unexpected twist in his life, but he'd taken to it like a fish to water. "Yes, for goodness' sake, Doctor, I'm a copper! A real life, honest-to-God copper!"

The Doctor's expression brightened. "Brilliant! Well, then, come along, Lestrade! There's no time to waste! We have to go rescue Sherlock!" Without waiting for any reply, the Doctor ran out the door and dodged through the busy bullpen. "Just wait 'til you meet Clara! She's going to love you..." his voice faded as he disappeared into the hall.

With a groan of resignation, Lestrade grabbed his coat and chased after him, not wanting at all to know (one) how the Doctor knew Sherlock and (two) what mess the consulting detective had gotten himself into.

"Unbelievable," Lestrade muttered under his breath.