Author: LinzyQ
Title: Smokey Solitude
Summary: On one of Greg's rare days off we find him alone in his flat, reminiscing about his past.
Warnings: Swearing, drinking, good music/albums mentioned
Fandom: Sherlock (Moffat & Gatiss)
Characters: Greg Lestrade
A/N: One shot, un-BETAED, Greg Lestrade is originally property of Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle but this incarnation of Greg Lestrade is property of Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss from their Sherlock television series on the BBC

There had to be something said about a honest to god good cigarette - even the carcinogen filled hazy blue smoke seemed to "slide" easily down his throat and into his lungs (rather than the usual "drag and scratch" feeling seemingly suffered with all others), half a tumbler of 100 year old Walker Black - neat, of course (because anything else would be a sin), side two of "Dark Side" on a tried, true and well loved 35 year old record player, and utter, fucking solitude.

There really was nothing like it in the world.

Like so many of his generation, he'd fucked up early. His first taste of rebellion came by way of a half empty pack of Woodbines left on the table beside his father's chair, which had been forgotten by the aforementioned man, after he'd finally given in and let his long suffering wife coax his drunken ass into bed one night, and an overly curious 9 year old with something to prove. He'd went for the first job available to him straight out of secondary and married his first girlfriend because he'd gotten her pregnant, and ended living in a loveless marriage for what many considered the best years of a persons life.

The only solace came in the form of his three children (because, fuck it – they'd fucked up once…why not try it again, twice?), his job (which, by some miracle of fixed fuck ups, he'd managed to stay at and enjoy), his cigarettes (and, if he was feeling particularly adventurous – a cigar every now and then), his Scotch (some would say probably a bit too much solace was found in this particular highlight, but who were they?) and of course, his music (from Paranoid and London Calling to Aladdin Sane and Learning to Crawl and everything in between, nothing was left untouched or unheard).

Something happened around his 40th birthday. He just seemed to wake up one day and realise that he was being screwed over in many more ways than one; his life was no way to live and he desperately needed out. Of course, it was a gigantic help to his self-made plight when he learned his "dear wife" was quite active with her mysterious "personal trainer " and had no intention of continuing the faulty "faking it" spectacle with him, like she'd done for the last 20 plus years.

He'd had to kiss his shared flat in Brixton, most of his "shared" belongings, and what little and precious time he had with his (nearly grown) children goodbye and strike out for the first time by himself after a suspiciously quick, uncontested divorce. However, it was the price he needed to pay in order to finally get his life in order – the way it all should have been.

The first year alone was probably the hardest thing he'd ever gone through. Far worse even, than that time he'd gotten stabbed four times in the lower abdomen by a Cocaine addict during a call near Chesham tube station some 15 years earlier. At least then there was an end to it all, and everything had gone back to relatively normal. With this there was no return to normal. He had to create a whole new "normal" before he could ever return to it. And you know what? He did. Yes, a lot of good toasters, cookers, kettles and micros had gone down during the transition –there was even that time where he'd nearly burned the entire row of flats down trying to make Steak Stir Fry using his cigarette and a seemingly broken gas cooker that ended up being not so broken. But hell, he'd survived, come out the other end relatively unscathed and independent in every sense of the word for the first time in his long and insignificant life.

He was finally free and it felt fantastic!

-I'll drink to that.- he thought with a smirk as he sipped from the crystal tumbler again and watched the smoke from his cigarette slither up his hand to about his wrist before it rose up slowly, twisting and turning as the blue tint faded into white before finally dissipating into the air.