Characters: Lestrade, Donovan, Anderson, John, Sherlock, Mrs. Hudson

POV: Lestrade

Prompt: Lestrade is injured on a case. Anderson, Donovan, John and Sherlock all offer their opinions and comfort, in their own particular styles.

Submitted by: ButterscotchCandybatch

Monday

London is freezing and covered in a blanket of fresh snow on the day that Greg breaks his ankle. It's a bad landing from a four-foot drop that does it, during an adrenaline-fueled chase of a robbery suspect who's eluded capture for nearly a month. He doesn't realise at first that he's hurt himself - adrenaline and all - so he carries on running on it, catches the bugger he's been chasing, books him in, and goes about securing the crime scene. Twenty minutes later, the adrenaline has worn off and he starts limping. Sally asks him what's wrong and he says he thinks he's rolled it. Ten minutes pass and he's starting to find excuses to lean up against a patrol car to take the weight off it, and he starts to wonder if he's sprained it. After fifteen minutes, the pain is bad enough that it stops his breath whenever he accidentally stands on that foot, but he's Greg and so he doesn't say anything. It's not until a few minutes later that John and Sherlock catch up with him and John notices his greenish pallor and tells him to sit down before he falls down.

"What is it?" John asks, kneeling in front of the inspector.

Greg is sitting on the kerb, and he tries to wave John away. "Ah, it's fine, it's just a sprained ankle. Could use a couple paracetamol, though."

"This one?" John gingerly rolls up Lestrade's left trouser leg and peeks under his sock. The bruising is already a deep purple and spreading up his leg. The doctor hums thoughtfully and eases Greg out of his shoe and sock to get a better look. He sighs when he sees the full scope of the injury. The swelling is already noticeable, the bruising evident from the middle of his foot to part of his calf. He palpates the joint gently.

Lestrade barely contains a hiss of pain.

"Yeah, that's not a sprain, that's a break. And how long have you been walking around on a broken ankle?"

"Better part of an hour?" Greg guesses.

John sighs. "Go to the hospital."

Greg thinks that is sound advice. "Okay, I just need to - "

"Go now."

Tuesday

"Bollocks." Lestrade feels spectacularly stupid. He's standing in his division's kitchenette at the Yard, staring down at a cup of coffee overflowing with the entire contents of the sugar bowl. His dominant hand is occupied with his crutches, and he had thought that stirring sugar into his coffee would be easy enough to do with his left. Putting the crutches down might have been an option, except that he's in too much pain to try to stand without them. And, well, balancing on one foot for more than a few seconds is and always has been out of the question.

"Alright, Boss?"

Greg glances over his shoulder, sees a mop of curly hair, and turns back to his embarrassment of a coffee cup. "Fine," he says, trying to get rid of Sgt Donovan before she sees what he's done.

But it's too late. Sally chuckles good-naturedly and stands beside him. "Bit of a mess, that."

"Yeah."

"Sit." Donovan pulls a chair from the nearby folding table with her foot and steers Greg into it. "I'll do this."

"It's fine, I can manage," Lestrade stutters, thoroughly humiliated by his inability to pour coffee.

"I can see that!" the sergeant responds. She dumps his entire cup in the trash and starts over. "Y'know, I think there's a reason they give you some paid time off after you've broken your leg. If you can't stand here for two minutes to make a cuppa, you probably ought to be at home with the good drugs."

"Eh." Greg fidgets. "Didn't want to put you all out. We've been swamped lately…"

"Oh, right." Sally stirs a much more reasonable amount of sugar into the new cup of steaming black liquid. "It has nothing to do with the fact you'd miss it sitting at home."

Lestrade grins sheepishly. Guilty as charged.

Donovan puts a fresh cup of coffee in front of him with a knowing smile.

Wednesday

Greg is in a good mood when he arrives at a homicide scene early in the morning. He took his good drugs last night and finally got a full night's rest. He even managed to go about his morning routine without falling over, knocking anything down with his crutches, or banging into any doors. So far, it's a good day.

"What have we got?" he asks as he arrives on scene.

Anderson meets him at the doorway of the house in question. "Female, mid-thirties, multiple stab wounds. Looks like a crime of passion. Neighbours say she's been suspiciously attached to the pool-boy. Seems pretty straightforward."

"Yeah, good. What about the…?" Lestrade makes a slicing gesture across his throat.

"You'll want to have a look at that," the forensic analyst assures him. "This way."

Greg follows Phillip inside the house, down a hall, and through a sparsely decorated sitting room. At the stairway, Anderson starts to go up, but turns when he realises that the DI isn't following. He glances at the boot on Greg's ankle, at the crutches, then makes eye contact. "Oh…"

Lestrade looks at the staircase. From here, it looks like an awfully long set of steps. Steep, too. "Bugger…"

Anderson grimaces at first, but then his eyes widen and he thrusts a finger in the air. "Hang on!" he says, and turns and rushes up the stairs, leaving Greg to wait at the bottom. He's gone just a couple of minutes, and when he runs back down the steps, he has his phone in his hand. "Here, have a look," he says, stepping down to stand beside the DI so that they can both see the smartphone's screen. He cycles through a few photos of the scene, and the ligature marks on the woman's throat.

"Yeah, you're right, that is strange. Why strangle her if he'd already stabbed her? Doesn't make sense."

"Could be a sex thing," Phillip offers. He frowns at the grimace Lestrade makes. "Alright there?"

"Fine," the DI replies immediately. He shifts his booted foot painfully. "Damn thing."

Anderson nods, then flicks through a couple more of the macabre photographs. "Well. At least you're not her."

Lestrade must admit that this is a good point.

Thursday

"Yes, but why in my bedroom?" Sherlock demands, carefully setting a stack of Burberry suits down on John's armchair.

John's voice is thin with impatience. "Because mine's upstairs, and that's the whole point - he can't be going up and down the stairs half a dozen times a day. And put your clothes somewhere else."

"There are seventeen stairs leading up to our flat," the detective points out.

"Yes, but he won't be going up and down those either," John fires back with a pointed look at Greg.

Lestrade is seated on the sofa, having been forcibly removed from his flat after John found out that he was not only back at work, but that his bathroom and his bedroom are on the small rental home's second floor.

"He's taking the next two weeks off - perhaps more, if he keeps insisting on impeding progress by walking around all the time - and he's not going anywhere that isn't the bathroom, the kitchen, or the surgery." John rounds on Greg. "Right?"

"Whatever you say, mate," Lestrade concedes, having already been subjected to one of John's lectures. They've come to an agreement that he can have Sally round once a day to update him on their ongoing cases, but he's not to do any legwork whatsoever.

John flashes a satisfied smile. "You're an easier patient than this one," he observes, jerking a thumb toward Sherlock.

Friday

Sherlock's bedroom is a thing of wonder. Until now, Lestrade has never seen it - not in this flat or any of the other ones he's occupied in the last seven or so years. The bookshelves are stuffed with everything from Shakespeare to Poe to Mendeleev, and a good two dozen other great minds Greg has never heard of. The subjects range from fiction to the sciences to crime scene analysis. Above his bed hangs a Judo certificate. There are old photographs of famous people on the walls, and Lestrade suspects that one or two of them are originals, worth a lot of money. Boxes upon boxes of closed case files are stacked in the closet behind the designer suits. But, most surprisingly, everything is neat and tidy. Unlike the rest of the flat, everything has a place here. Actually, the room looks hardly lived-in, and Lestrade realises that that's just the thing - Sherlock never spends any time in here.

Greg finishes his inspection of the room and, winded, sits down on the bed, the barely-used mattress sinking deliciously beneath him. There is sweat beaded on his brow. The oxycodone is barely taking the edge off tonight - John was right. He should have been taking it easy. He glances at the clock and notices with some dismay that it is 3AM. He's been fighting sleep for the better part of three hours.

He barely notices the footsteps at the door until he hears the near-whispered, "Oh," and looks up to see Sherlock standing in the threshold, looking uncomfortable.

"Apologies," the detective says softly. "I didn't think…"

"S'alright," Greg replies with an easy smile. "It's your room."

"I was just…" Sherlock peers toward the chest of drawers.

Lestrade follows his gaze and notices the Stradivarius, in all its flamed maple glory, perched upon the bureau. "Oh, of course," he says, making to stand.

Sherlock waves him back down and crosses the room in three strides. He picks up the instrument by the neck and fishes the bow out from between the chest and the wall. He pauses on his way out of the room, his expression unreadable as he looks down at Lestrade. "Are you… alright?"

"Mm? Ah, yeah. Fine. Just… blasted ankle. Seems I should have taken that injury leave after all."

The detective tilts his head ever so slightly. "John could - "

"No," Greg cuts him off quickly. "No, it's not that bad. 'M just gonna try and sleep it off."

Sherlock nods, lifts the violin in a silent salute, and glides away.

Greg lowers himself back down into bed and stares at the ceiling. Something upstairs creaks; John's awake, too, it would seem. Nobody in 221B is sleeping tonight, apparently.

The first soft strains of a Mozart concerto float through the flat, and Greg feels himself enveloped in old memories. His body relaxes back into the mattress, the tension slowly easing its way out of his shoulders and middle back. He closes his eyes and listens.

Two weeks later - Saturday

"Well, it's looking a lot better," John says, examining Greg's ankle under the light of a lamp that's been relieved of its shade. He's sitting on the coffee table across from Lestrade to have a better look. "How does it feel?"

"Not too bad," Lestrade replies, though his entire body is tense and he is sweating. Mrs. Hudson is seated on the sofa beside him, patting his arm reassuringly.

"Good," John murmurs. He steals a glance at his patient's face. "Now how about the truth?"

Greg's stomach churns. "A little tender. Worse at night."

"Paracetamol cutting it or are you still on the oxy?"

"Oxy. But only at night."

John nods and says, "That's about what I expected. I think you could try taking the boot off once in a while and putting it up for a bit with some ice, see if that helps with the pain. And start using those crutches. They aren't for decoration, you know."

Greg grunts in pain as John's fingers explore the break some more.

Mrs. Hudson clucks her tongue and rubs Greg's arm sweetly. "Oh, dear. But he's right, Inspector. I should know - I've got a hip."

Both men pause and turn to her.

"How did you hurt your hip, Mrs. H?" John asks curiously.

"Oh - I broke it. Long time ago. Nasty business, a lot of physical therapy and such."

John glances sidelong at Lestrade, who shrugs, and then returns his attention to his landlady. "Doing what?"

"I fell off my balcony in Florida," she says casually. "After a fight."

"A what?" John and Lestrade exclaim in unison.

The landlady blinks innocently back at the two men. "Some of my husband's former business partners needed… well, it doesn't matter, does it!" She shakes her head and busies herself with fixing her hair. "Anyway, they burst in like they owned the place, and I wasn't having any of it! Only I was just a little wisp of a thing back then, eight and a half stone, and when push came to shove… well, I took one of them down with me, at least."

"Mrs. Hudson!" John exclaims, grinning. "You mean to tell me you fought members of a cartel to defend your husband's, er, product, and fell out of a balcony during the resulting, what - firefight?"

"Well, as I never got any shots off, it wasn't a proper firefight, was it?" Mrs. Hudson replies, all in a tizzy now. She stands suddenly and straightens her blouse, looking down at Lestrade with a mix of maternal concern and utter mortification. "I'll fix you that cuppa, dear. You just rest here." With that, she bustled away.

Lestrade, dazed, stares out at John in bewilderment. "And here I've only fallen off of a garden shed."