It was easy to blur and then cross the line between jokes and flirting. He didn't mean to the first time, just made an accidental double entendre. But when Rich responded with a simple, "aha. was that because your truncheon was a bit too big?" it was all he could do not to grin while in a press conference.
As soon as they left, tabloids taking a few photos of the back of his head as he escorted the victim and his family from the room, he rattled off a reply. "Unfortunately, that's always been my problem. As an experienced actor, I'm sure you've encountered your fair share of oversized weapons." As they drove back to NSY, he kept checking his phone, even though it hadn't beeped yet. In fact, he didn't' get a reply until he went home and came out at Bank, quickly walking along to Mansion House, and got a burst of signal. His phone beeped twice, a message from his wife was also sat in the inbox. He checked it second.
Without knowing it, Greg Lestrade had made a friend in Rich Brook.
Saturday evening came and so did John Watson. It was an informal sort of arrangement. Every now and again they'd meet on Saturday. So far that had been every other Saturday since the funeral. It had never bothered Greg before; after all, it gave him a reason to leave the house. He'd realised within a few weeks that he was probably facilitating his wife's affair, but he also didn't want to realise it, so he pretended that Bryan, being a Sports Science teacher, must know a lot about physiotherapy, in fact, he was probably just a masseuse. The missus had a high stress, high powered job, she needed help relaxing most likely.
And wasn't it nice that while she relaxed, he did the same, popping to the local [well, semi-local, it was fifteen minutes on the tube], and having a well earned pint or two with a friend.
Today was different though. Because now he felt guilty.
John was talking about Sherlock again, understandably too, the man had been the source of his reintegration into civilian[okay, debatably civilian] life. The doctor didn't always sit there and lament their friend's death, in fact most of the time they didn't even mention Sherlock, even though without him they'd never have met.
Just as they were shaking their heads, smiling into their respective pints about a case in which Sherlock had managed to work out exactly the time the Abernetty family had been murdered, not the reason they were smiling, very brutally, also not the reason, his phone rang. The reason they were smiling was because he'd worked it out by noticing how far the mint had sunk into a cheesecake in summer!
Mid-laugh, he checked the text and his grin settled into a small chuckle and a smile. He set his pint down and both thumbs flew over the keys. He pressed send and turned back to find Dr. John Watson giving him a particularly curious look combined with a smirk. Instantly he remembered Rich Brook. The smile froze on his face and his blood ran cold.
"You're a married man, Detective Inspector." Thank God.
"Just a joke with a friend, Doctor." Greg realised that actually, it was. "And anyway, he started it." He forced the grin to stay in place, and thankfully John shook his head and dropped it.
"Policemen, eh...You're worse than squaddies."
It was his ace in the hole. They all said that being gay was fine. And it was. But as a married man, he could close off any suspicions by mentioning the man he was texting dirty jokes to was just that. Another man. It was sort of the nature of being a bisexual, you were totally invisible. People never noticed that you were checking out the waiter's arse, because why would you be when you're sat opposite your wife, except to joke? And if someone spots you in a gay bar with a wedding ring, well, you're either in a civil partnership, wearing it to stay in the closet at work, or the straight friend they've brought along. And of course, once Dave started getting eyes from the younger men, which he always did, if one of their friends started talking to him, they'd catch the way he looked at some of the people in the club, and they'd think he was gay.
It had caused a lot of problems actually. Once, he'd been propositioned, which made it sound much more elegant than a hand on his arse and a whisper in his ear, and had declined, showing the ring. He'd been met with disbelief at first. Then, he'd been told that he just needed to be true to himself, and that they'd seen him looking at their arse. He couldn't deny that, but he wasn't a heavily closeted gay. He knew what he liked, and women were definitely on that list. Men often went onto it too.
In fact, he had realised that at the moment he was thinking about men a lot more than usual. And he was a detective, he wasn't stupid enough to think it was unconnected to a good looking actor flirting with him.