Gigantic hugs and several thanks to ThatGirlWhoWantsToBeAwesome, my beta reader. SHES WONDERFUL!

And I don't claim any credit for Sherlock BBC, as I can't. Shame.

One warm week in May, two things happened in Gregory Lestrade's life. The first? His wife, Chelsea, gave birth to their second child, a tiny, squabbling baby girl with unusually blonde hair (a trait neither Chelsea nor Greg had.) They named her Kate. The second thing that happened was that he was promoted to Sergeant, and soon he was running after criminals with Detective Inspector Gregson.

For about the span of five weeks everything was just fine. Chelsea and he celebrated his promotion properly, Kate and her older brother Oliver got along well, and Gregson had taken a liking to him. Greg could almost taste the raise.

Then a particularly difficult homicide came in, leaving all of NSY absolutely stumped. Greg told his wife that he was going to be home late, but an anonymous caller tipped the police that the killer was, indeed, the jealous brother-in-law. At first Greg replied to the caller that he was crazy, but then the man proceeded to explain himself in a series of what he named "deductions," and Greg realised he was scarily correct. He was about to ask for some way to identify the caller, or even how the hell he knew all that, but the line went dead.

He arrested the murderer with a sense of satisfaction and came home excited, expecting to be able to surprise Chelsea and his beloved kids with the fact that he was actually home early. With a grin on his face, Greg opened the door to their modest flat and found Chelsea vigorously shagging their next-door neighbor, eighteen-year-old Nicholas, on the living room floor.

Honestly, Greg was just happy the kids weren't there to see it. Chelsea had taken and dumped them off at her sister's so she could spend some "quality time" with her latest lover.

That night, Greg kicked a man out of his house and went on to have the row of all rows with his wife of six years. When their anger had worn out Lestrade felt an emptiness inside and asked the fatal question: why.

That night, Chelsea sat him down with a look of almost pity in her eyes. She told him she had been cheating on him for almost two years and Nicholas wasn't her first, second, or even fifth lover. Then she dropped the bombshell: she didn't even think little Kate was Greg's daughter.

That night, Greg went to bed at a seedy hotel with a rancid smell. He didn't trust himself to not throttle Chelsea in her sleep.

For about the span of five years Greg was involved in one of the messiest divorces of all time. And even though it was Chelsea who cheated on him, she was granted most of the physical custody and all legal custody of their children. Well. Child. Kate was taken from him - "you're not the father," he remembers Chelsea's attorney saying - without the bat of an eye. Chelsea's testimony of Greg being a workaholic and never having time for the children or his wife ensured that Greg was "awarded" to have his now nine-year-old son, Oliver, on every other weekend, and every weekend over the summer. As for Kate? Never.

It didn't feel like a bloody award to Greg. It felt like a punch to the gut.

In a half-hearted, feeble attempt to forget losing marriage, children and home all in one shot, Greg turned to drowning himself in work when Oliver wasn't there to keep him from going insane. Yes, he knew that doing so only proved Chelsea's point.

No, he did not give a damn.

His demeanor must have betrayed something, though, because DI Gregson would ask all the time what was wrong. Greg would momentarily struggle to fork out a desperately fake smile and say everything was just swell. Gregson, however, was not a senior detective for nothing, and that was how Greg found himself roped into a tiny pub having a pint with his boss a few months after his divorce.

Said pub was a homey little hole in the wall by the name of Sade, and it wasn't half-bad. Greg and DI - no, he had been told to call him "Tobias", not Gregson - sat down in a shaded, empty corner of the bar table, just lounging silently. The bartender, a young redheaded girl around twenty-five, slid over to them. "Whatcha gonna get?" she asked them through the bright pink gum in her mouth. Greg could see Tobias eyeing him. "Two beers, miss. Maybe a shot of something strong for this man here. Needs a little pick-me-up."

The drinks came and they sipped quietly, observing the nightlife around them. Greg appreciated the silence. One thing not on his to-do list was having a talk about his family issues with his superior. That was a line he wished to never cross.

And if Greg spent the whole night drinking and eventually had to be hauled home by said superior completely stoned at one in the morning and, once he left, collapsed on his bed and started to cry, well.

No one should know but him.

XxX

The next week there was a baffling murder that questionably could also have been a suicide. Accidental suicide, of course. The victim had a peanut allergy, and something must have triggered it, making him take his allergen medication. Unfortunately, the victim had ingested an excessive amount of it. In layman terms, he overdosed.

Gregson - "Tobias" didn't really work at a crime scene, Greg had discovered - paced around the very much dead body of twenty-nine-year-old Jared Kalanski, which lay frozen in the kitchen of his flat. "It doesn't make any sense!" he cried, tossing his hands in the air. "Not only are there no peanuts around to trigger his allergy, but the victim knew about it for all his life! There's no way he couldn't've not known how much medicine he was supposed to take. How could he possibly overdose?"

"About the triggering, there's a nut cart down the street, sir," Officer Sally Donovan interrupted. "Incidentally, they sell peanuts."

The DI chewed frustratedly on his lip. "It just doesn't compute. Oh, don't look at me like that, Lestrade! I'm not an old man yet!" Thoroughly chastised, Greg lowered his head to the ground. Gregson continued his little tirade. "This is murder. I know what murder is. This is it."

Greg sighed. "Yeah, but we can't form a case on just a feeling that it was a homicide. There's hardly an evidence for arguing that it was murder. Anyone with a tad of law experience looking at this file would say don't go for it."

His superior opened his mouth to retort, but an almost familiar voice cut him off. "Except for the fact that this is, indeed, murder."

The team looked up in shock as a skeleton-thin young man walked onto the crime scene, the lock picks he held betraying how he got in. He had thick, black, curly hair, strangely coloured eyes, and skin much too pale to be considered healthy. His grey hoodie was wrinkled, too big, and dirty beyond belief, and his frayed jeans had multiple sewn patches on them. "This is definitely murder," he repeated himself, gazing at the body.

Suddenly Greg knew where he had heard that voice from. "You're the anonymous tipper." The young man gave a loopy grin and bowed. "Sherlock Holmes, at your service." Greg took a good look at his ragged appearance. He was clearly malnourished, and his eyes - oh. "Are you high?" Greg asked with a twinge of shock. Gregson looked at him, startled.

Donovan threw her face into her hands. "How the bloody hell did a junkie get onto our crime scene, and why is he still here? Get. Him. Out!"

No one paid any attention to her, instead focusing on Sherlock's answer. He shrugged. "Would it matter to you if I was? It's my life, after all." His eyes zeroed in on Donovan. "Addiction runs in your family, doesn't it?" She went scarlet. "How the hell-"

Greg cut her off. "You're just a kid. How old are you, twenty? And how did you get in here?" He could say for certain he has never seen anyone infiltrate a crime scene before, and definitely not by someone on drugs.

"I'm twenty-one and three months, and if you can't figure out how I got in, you're an idiot."

Greg ignored the jab. Criminals had thrown worse insults at him. "What did you take? And don't say nothing."

The junkie pranced around the crime scene, the team looking on in disbelief as he surveyed everything around him. Everyone was too stunned that he actually got through security to stop him. "Doesn't matter what I took, I'm still going to solve this before you imbeciles." And with that, he bent over Jared Kalanski and began rattling off his prized "deductions" to the point that Greg was pretty sure the team's brain cells were completely wrecked.

"Freak," Donovan whispered under her breath. Then she looked around at everyone. "Oh, come off it! You don't actually believe him? Lestrade proved he's high, he snuck onto this property, and he contaminated a possible crime scene. Why isn't he in handcuffs yet?"

Gregson pinned her to the wall with a deadly glare. "That's Sergeant Lestrade to you, Donovan, and were you listening? Everything Sherlock said made sense."

Poor Donovan appeared to be blowing steam out of her ears. "He's not even a detective!"

Sherlock Holmes stood to his full height, said, "You're right. I'm a consulting detective," leaned a bit, and retched all over Donovan's shoes.

Greg took him to a holding cell to detox without much preamble after that.

XxX

A week later, Greg sat in a chair facing a barely awake Sherlock. "Go everything out of your system yet?"

Sherlock looked up at him with bleary eyes. "Why did you bring me here?"

Greg raised an eyebrow. "Aren't you straight to the point."

The young man cast a nonchalant glance at the cell's bars. "You still haven't answered me."

Leaning back in his chair, Greg said, "I'm here to offer you a deal."

"A deal?" Sherlock asked quizzically. Greg nodded. "You like crime scenes, don't you? Solving them, specifically. Well, I happen to be a Sergeant at Scotland Yard with access to cases, and I'll give you all of their cold case files and occasionally a present one if it's too difficult as long as you get off the drugs and quit stumbling in high on cocaine. You won't be paid, but you'll have cases."

Sherlock's shoulders slumped. "I hate rehab," he muttered. "Besides, I'm not going to be here much longer."

Greg frowned. "What do you -"

A knock sounded at the door. The young addict scowled. "That's him."

With narrowed eyes Greg opened the door. A tall man with thinning ginger hair and icy blue eyes stood there in a well-tailored suit and a brolly in his hand. "Sergeant Lestrade," he said cordially. "I am here to pick up Sherlock Holmes. I've already paid his bail." He moved to enter, but Greg blocked him.

"Sorry, but I've got no clue who you are and no word came to me that Sherlock's bail has been paid. Can't let you barge in here and take him. Now, who are you again?"

"The British Government," Sherlock sniped from his cell. The man gave no reaction. "I hold a minor position in the British Government. What my name is does not concern you, I am merely an interested party in Sherlock's well-being. I hope you understand I only wish the best for his person. Let me in, Sergeant."

Greg didn't budge. "Against protocol. I need identification and proof you paid his bail."

The man leaned back on his brolly. "What if I told you that if you didn't let me in I could have you fired faster than you could blink?"

Suddenly Greg realised he was dealing with a man of power (politician, perhaps?), and said man of power had a lot of it indeed. Still he stood his ground. "Then I'd leave with a crystal clear conscience."

Silence permeated the air as the man looked at him, a flash of surprise bursting in those stone-cold eyes when he saw the determination in Greg's stance. Sherlock whooped. "Oh, he got you, Mycroft!"

The wheels churned in Lestrade's head. Strange names, that identical level of insufferable arrogance… it clicked. "You're brothers."

Mycroft Holmes schooled his expression. "Yes, Sherlock is my younger brother. May you let me in now?"

Greg looked over at Sherlock, who glared daggers at the wall for a moment or two before finally huffing out a defeated sigh and a "Yes, just let him in already."

The cop finally allowed Mycroft to enter and sat back in his chair, ignoring the so-called "British Government" who stood by the wall and turning his attention back to the young man in the cell. "So do you accept my offer?"

Sherlock picked at his shirt. "Do I have to get clean?"

Greg rolled his eyes. "That's the point. Rehab, preferably, but I don't really care how you get clean as long as you do it. The second I find out you're doing drugs again, though, that's it. No more cases for you."

The self-proclaimed consulting detective studied the holes in his ragged jeans. "Then I accept. But one more condition - I can come on any case I please."

Greg winced. He knew he was risking his job, but deep down he knew the force needed Sherlock Holmes - he was brilliant. "Fine." Sherlock grinned and laid back down in the cell, obviously pleased with his negotiation. Greg turned to Mycroft as he headed for the door. "You can take him now, I guess."

The politician cleared his throat. "Sergeant, what did you offer to make him accept going to rehabilitation?"

Greg shrugged. "Told him he could solve some of our cases. He showed up to a crime scene and solved it for us in thirty seconds, so I knew I had to try to get him to help us."

Something almost like gratitude flickered across Mycroft's face. "Thank you."

Greg smiled. "Best I could do." He walked out the door.

XxX

A month after the meeting in the cell, Greg stepped out of his flat only to be abducted in a black sedan with a pretty woman (far too young for him, though) who called herself Amelia. Greg was about to comment on how he knew that wasn't her real name, but then he was getting kicked out of said sedan and into an alleyway where a familiar-looking man stood. Great. "Hello, Sergeant."

Greg heaved himself off of the dirt-covered ground and stood, wiping his hands on his trousers. He knew they were going to make a god-awful stain later, but he didn't care much. "Why the hell am I here?" he asked, staring, utterly annoyed, at the British Government.

Mycroft only chuckled. "To offer you a deal."

The cop tilted his head, unable to be anything but a little intrigued. "Oh, really?"

"In exchange for a fair-sized amount of currency - enough to compensate for a well-off lifestyle, in fact - you will give me information on Sherlock. Where he has been, what he is up to, who he is seeing, et cetera. His rehabilitation will be over within the week, and since he will be working with you, I see it as an opportunity to keep an eye on him with interfering too much."

Greg frowned. "Basically you want me to become Sherlock's stalker?"

"Well," Mycroft replied with a cringe, "I suppose, if you choose to use a certain type of wording."

The sergeant considered his "offer" for no more than a millisecond before shaking his head and saying, "Nope, I'm good."

Mycroft scrutinized him, and Greg felt that same deducing frenzy Sherlock went into come from the politician - but it was directed at him. It was a bit odd. "Are you sure about this, Sergeant? I hold control over many things."

For a moment Greg actually feared for his job - if introducing Sherlock to the team didn't get him sacked, then certainly Mycroft pulling strings from the shadows would - but then he remembered how Mycroft had thanked him in the room and opted for rolling his eyes.

The British Government appeared to approve. "Very well. You will do just fine as Sherlock's handler. And don't worry about your work - rest assured it is in the safest hands. I will be in touch, Sergeant. Good night."

Greg was about to frown at what "in touch" meant when a burlap sack went over his head and all he could see was pitch black darkness. When he came to, he was back in his flat.

He decided not to question Mycroft's methods after that.

XxX

Sherlock strolled onto a crime scene three days after that. It was very amusing for Greg to see Donovan's face fall into a million broken pieces. "Why is the Freak here?" she protested. Gregson scowled at her. He was retiring in a few weeks and did not have the patience to deal with bullshit.

However, Greg had to admit - Sherlock was a madman, despite his awfully clever deductions and high intelligence. He viewed crime scenes and murder as fun, gleefully anecdoted on the team's transgressions, and frequently commented about the brilliance of serial killers. Sherlock had no people skills whatsoever - something that made Greg question how Mycroft ended up being a politician - and genuinely didn't appear to care much about anyone.

But, he was solving their cases at top speed, he wasn't a junkie anymore, and now they were the chief's favourite. And really, could Greg complain about the large bonus in his wages?

As for Sherlock, he seemed pleased enough with their deal. Greg did worry about him a lot, though, because as smart as Sherlock was, in emotions he was truly lost. He was confident about one thing - Sherlock stopped people from being killed, and so he was a great man.

Now Greg could only hope for someone to encourage him to be a good one.

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