Warnings: Drinking, references to infidelity
Disclaimer: Don't own Sherlock
Chapter 3 – In Which the Whiskey is Blamed
Greg Lestrade had had a bad day.
It had been a week since the disastrous Christmas party at Baker Street, when he had been... informed of his wife's latest infidelity. He had honestly believed that they could work it out this time; that they were moving forward.
It would seem that he had been wrong.
Greg was on his third whiskey of the evening when he looked up at his phone, lying on the glass coffee table before him. He was slouched on the sofa of the flat that he had moved into when he and Louise had separated. She had moved into that same flat with him when they had decided that they would try to work things out. She had gone out a few hours ago, citing a 'girl's night out' with a couple of friends. He doubted that was where she was really going.
The bottle of whiskey was sitting on the coffee table next to his phone, already half empty when it had been full only half an hour before. He rolled the glass in his hand as he stared at the device atop the glass table-top, wondering if he should pick it up.
He had heard stories of drunk dialling in the past. He had known many friends to have fallen into that trap: calling up an ex, having had one too many, and then rambling on until it got uncomfortable for the one person in the conversation who was unlucky enough to have to endure the ordeal sober, and they hung up.
Greg had always considered himself good at holding his alcohol. He never got roaring drunk, no matter how much he seemed to drink in a single night, and he was blessed with never really getting hangovers. He was surprised he had been allowed to last this long with this incredible ability without being kidnapped off the street and taken in to be studied by scientists.
As a result, he was fairly certain that he was rather immune to drunk dialling. If he never lost his head when drunk, then why would he want to make a devastatingly bad decision and call someone up that he really shouldn't be talking to at that time, and certainly not in that state?
Why, then, did he want to call someone up?
He fought the urge to pick up his phone and scroll through his contacts for as long as he could – for he only knew that he wanted to ring someone; his mind had not yet settled on whom. Eventually, however, he lost the battle, and reached over to pluck his mobile off of the table-top.
He considered ringing his wife, catching her in the act. But was that a conversation he really wanted to have over the phone? He wasn't nearly drunk enough to be able to handle something like that.
If he rang Sherlock, he would just get shouted at. Not the kind of thing he was looking for.
John had enough to deal with already.
It wasn't until he had begun to properly look through his contacts that his eyes fell on the name of the one person whom he thought would be a good idea to ring at this time. He wasn't sure how much of this decision was being influenced by the amber liquid flowing through his veins at that moment in time, but nevertheless, he found himself really wanting to talk to Mycroft Holmes.
He honestly didn't remember dialling the number, or even holding the phone up to the side of his head; all he remembered was hearing that voice over the phone, the voice that suddenly sounded rather more appealing when it was heard through whiskey earphones.
"Detective Inspector, to what do I owe the pleasure?" Mycroft asked suavely after he answered on the second ring.
"She's cheating on me!" Greg wailed through the phone, not completely understanding why he sounded so pathetic.
There was a pause on the other end of the line, before, "Ah."
It was only a mere word – well, in actuality, it was really only a mere noise – but there was a lot said in that noise, and Greg wasn't nearly drunk enough to miss its hidden meaning.
"You knew!" he cried, now accepting of his new tone of voice, pitiable as it was. He could always blame the whiskey. "You knew and you didn't tell me!"
Mycroft sighed. "I didn't think it was my place."
Greg couldn't think of a comeback to that. He settled for a stubborn, rather childish, mumble: "Well, you could have told your brother that."
Greg slumped further into the fabric of the sofa – if that was even possible – and found himself deeply desiring of the grey material to swallow him up altogether. He had no want to carry on with this charade. As long as he tried to make things work with Louise, it would only get worse, and why should he have to put himself through the pain of knowing that she was still cheating on him again and again? Why did he always go back to her, when she proved herself time and time again to be bad news?
"That," Mycroft began, "is easier said than done."
"He'd probably listen to John," Greg muttered, and realised instantly that it was possibly one of the worst things he could have said in this situation. He thought of blaming it on the whiskey, but even the whiskey couldn't take the fall for something as low as that.
Despite lacking the brothers' impressive skills of deduction, Greg had noticed one thing about Mycroft since John had moved in with Sherlock, and that was that the elder didn't seem to get on well with the ex-army medic. It wasn't that he didn't like him; he seemed to admire and respect his loyalty and bravery. It was more as though he was jealous of him. John could persuade Sherlock to do things for his own good, or to not do things for the same reason, and he would always get listened to. Were Mycroft to attempt the same feat, he would be thrown out of the flat on Baker Street with a torrent of insults.
In a way, Greg almost felt sorry for Mycroft. It wasn't fair that he was being rejected so harshly by his own brother, but there were rifts in that relationship far too deep for them to ever be properly healed now. They could attempt to glue the fissures back into one piece, but the cracks would still be there, ugly mars on the surface that would always be ready to crack open again.
"S-sorry," he quickly added, taking another swig of whiskey. It didn't make him feel any better. "That was uncalled for."
"Yet, it is true," Mycroft said sadly on the other end of the line. "Sherlock does not listen to me any more than he did his teachers. But that is another issue. I believe we were discussing your wife."
"Oh, yeah…" Greg finished off his glass of whiskey and placed it on the table, firmly fighting the urge to pour himself another one. "She, er… she's gone out again tonight. 'Girl's night', apparently. I doubt it. She's probably off seeing that… that… that PE teacher."
"So you're staying at home and getting drunk?" Mycroft asked, sounding slightly amused.
Greg shrugged, momentarily forgetting that Mycroft couldn't see that over the phone. "Something to do. Something to take my mind off my aching heart!" He fell back onto the sofa, now lying across it with his feet on one arm and his head on the other, dramatically bringing his arm across his body in a sweeping motion to lay his palm across his heart.
For some reason, this elicited a noise that Greg didn't think he would ever hear in his entire life: Mycroft Holmes chuckled.
It wasn't a sinister chuckle, or one that spoke of impending doom, or the kind that was the last thing people would ever hear. It was a genuine, heartfelt sound: the kind that rumbled in your chest and reverberated across your vocal chords until it emerged from your mouth.
It was… beautiful.
Greg was beginning to think that the whiskey was to blame for a lot tonight.
"Is that the wisest way of going about it?"
"I don't know," Greg slurred, dropping his arm back down on the sofa by his side. "It seemed appropriate at the time."
They lapsed into silence, one that was fairly awkward. It was another thing that Greg wouldn't ever have been able to foresee: there was nothing about Mycroft Holmes that suggested that the man was capable of feeling the emotion that mere mortals gave the name 'awkward' to. Greg had no doubt that he would be able to make anyone else feel awkward at any given moment, but to actually be participate in the awkwardness himself?
Could he blame that on the whiskey?
Suddenly, Greg came to a realisation that sobered him immediately. He supposed that, on some level, he had always known that it would come down to this, but he had supressed it, kept it at the back of his mind in order to procrastinate as much as possible, until that time when he could no longer ignore it.
It would seem that that time had come.
He sighed loudly, wiping his hand over his face and dropping it onto his stomach. "I have to confront her, don't I?"
Another moment's quiet.
"I am not an expert in these areas, Detective Inspector," Mycroft began, but was interrupted by a spurt of laughter.
"I never thought I'd see the day when Mycroft Holmes would admit that there was an area he was not an expert in," Greg laughed.
"'In which he was not an expert'," Mycroft corrected with a grumble; he ignored Greg's more insistent laughter and continued, "but I would think that… yes. That is the way that this has to go."
Greg's laughter subsided once more. A dull, almost depressing silence fell between them, only broken by the ringing in Greg's ears.
"Okay," he sighed, and sat up. He glared at the whiskey on the table. This was all the whiskey's fault. "I'll talk to her."
"Good luck," Mycroft bid, and hung up.