A/N: The tides start to shift. That might not look like a powerful metaphor, but if you grew up by a tumultuous sea, you'd know that's exactly when the undercurrents pull you under, drag you to hidden jagged rocks, and take you down for the count, if you are not careful. -csf


7.

'It didn't work, Mycroft. You can finely comb my tax returns for the past twenty years, it still doesn't change the fact that John Watson is one loyal bast—'

'Gregory', the overly well-dressed man intervenes at this point. 'I seem to understand your meaning without further explorations.'

Both man sit in opposite ends of a park bench, trying to blend in inconspicuously by observing the pigeons pecking at the frozen grass. There are only a few sparse people on the park grounds, and if anyone is in the least suspicious about the two men sharing a bench, they'll just chalk it down to coincidence, because life is hardly ever as neat as a story.

Greg doesn't remove his focus from the birds as he sips a very disappointing paper cup coffee.

'Well, then. You've got the highest IQ, tell me how can I get John's attention. D'ya think you could kidnap him?' The inspector steals a glance at the other man.

Mycroft keeps absolutely serene at that remark; not even a sign of pondering the option, which to Greg probably means he's thought of it plenty already.

'The poor doctor is by now too acclimatised to kidnaps.' Mycroft takes a longer pause. 'I believe John has a brother?'

'Sister. They barely talk. No angle there.'

Mycroft glances at the inspector.

'Anonymous letter?' he suggests.

'John won't give it the time of day.'

Greg glances at Mycroft.

'His therapist?'

'John never tells her a personal story', he inspector assures.

The man in the three piece suit smirks.

'Hypnosis?' Mycroft suggests, loftily now.

Lestrade doesn't know whether to take the older Holmes seriously anymore. The overdressed park dweller remarks, as he scrutinises the tip of his faithful umbrella:

'Then I'm afraid there's only one way to achieve our goal of swaying John to our little cases.'

'What is it?'

Mycroft's face goes sombre. 'Beg on the basis of John's sense of duty.'

Lestrade's face falls, and he finishes his cold, ashy coffee in one go.

He thought Mycroft was supposed to be the clever one.

.

'John didn't come with you', DI Lestrade remarks, tiredly, as the familiar dark wool clad detective enters his office.

Sherlock gives him a second look, slowing on his way to the filing cabinet, as if we had been about to help himself to cold cases, by force if necessary. There's an aura of repressed frustration about to burst in the thinner, wiry man, and Lestrade isn't sure he could have stopped the consulting detective from committing cold cases theft.

Sherlock spins so he's facing Lestrade, back to the filing cabinet, no longer his aim nor interest.

'You met my brother.'

Greg splutters his cold coffee at once. 'What? Who?'

'Your question is best phrased as "how did you find out", inspector.'

'Well, yeah, I suppose, but... how the hell did you find out?'

The younger man smirks and plonks himself in the empty chair next to the filing cabinet.

'Interesting', he comments dreamily, to himself. Then his gaze hardens. 'What did my meddling brother want from you?'

The inspector gives up, or gives in, or gives over – he's not entirely sure which applies.

'Mycroft got me some cases for you', Greg confesses with a sigh and a hand wave. 'No, don't be so happy. They're boring.'

Sherlock blinks and fights a particularly amused smirk. His whole façade slipping in the act. He sits down quietly.

'Leave them somewhere John can find them.'

'What do you mean?'

'John will notice the cases then insist it's my patriotic duty to take them. I will then take them, for John. But I will not overload my brain with Mycroft's cases for no recompense.'

Greg is stunned. He gets up, walks to the tiny office's recurrent guest, and drops the files in his lap.

'You may go', Sherlock dismisses.

Greg goes. Feeling as if he's just been spun by the whirlwind of a tornado.

Then he spots, turns back, and announces: 'You go, this is my office, Sherlock.'

The dark haired man shrugs and positively saunters his way out of Lestrade's little glass cage.

If Lestrade notices Sherlock has taken possession of an extra couple of cold files in the two seconds Greg turned his back, Greg is not bothered enough to say something about it.

The inspector feels worn out and a bit self-pitying as he rubs the small of his back. He eyes the pile over ongoing cases on his desk – evidence being processed, not even Sherlock could find enough data go proceed on these cases yet – that demand typing out long and elaborate reports onto the system. He decides he's taking his break right now, and instead goes online on his laptop so to appreciate the mayhem he's planted with this fictitious character, Lupin. He already feels a nice (hellish) warmth in his chest when the screen shows new entries and commentaries.

Lestrade bends over the table, his nose inches away from the screen. He curses.

'Who the hell is that?'

.

'Yes, I heard about the new Scottish consulting detective, Greg. What about it?'

John's commonplace response is anything but what Lestrade expected. In fact, he has come over by 221B explicitly searching to share some outrage with John Watson. He seems to have forgot John lives with the mad man, he takes all surprise, shock and gore in his stride.

The inspector accepts the nice, fragrant cup of tea with a despondency that does not befit it. John seems to catch at that, and he shows a bit more interest.

'What can you tell me about this guy, John?'

'She is a cold reasoning machine. From what I heard', John hastily adds.

'It's a woman?'

Greg Lestrade is not a Neanderthal graded misogynist. He seems genuinely surprised, as if he hadn't thought of that, John notices.

John thinks the male reasoning machine is too well represented by his flatmate and his overseas copy, a bit of transposition of gender in character was in order. Maybe it'd soften the human machine's edges, maybe for once the fridge might not be a bio-hazard zone. No, no, John is sure the state of the fridge is not a gender thing. Sherlock is just Sherlock, and the kitchen is his home laboratory. Besides, John scrubbed that fridge just last Monday.

'Why not a woman? Woefully underrepresented so far, don't you think?'

'A Scottish woman, why didn't I think of that?' Lestrade muses to himself.

'You can't have gone to school with every wannabe genius sleuth, Greg', John points out in fake constriction. But some wicked light in his eyes could indicate he's enjoying this, if only the inspector had looked up in time. He didn't. Greg was too busy think the thing up.

'I bet our boy Sherlock is having a crush on the Scottish woman right now. Aye, he will be.'

John manages to choke on his tea somehow. 'Because she's Scottish?' he ventures a guess.

'Because she's dastardly clever, solving a case like that, where the formaldehyde evaporated over time through the porous surface of the coffin lid. You know Sherlock is attracted by a superior intellect, more so than the phenotype of the person.'

John nods quietly, and plays with the rim of his cup using a restless finger. There was Irene, of course. And Jim Moriarty, in a dark, perverse version of the intelligence cliché. John feels a bit out of league, all of a sudden.

'I suppose', he admits at last. 'That and curious army doctors, huh?' he jokes.

'Don't sell yourself short, John. You are clever and a doctor, for goodness sake! You're the dream of any mother in town.'

John's face is too stoic not to betray some surfacing insecurities. Lestrade could beat himself up now. 'And you make great tea', he adds.

John chuckles at that. 'Blueberry cupcakes? We've got plenty left', he volunteers easily. 'Sherlock made them. He's as great baker as the French fellow.'

Lestrade watches the quiet wince with which John gets up from the chair. The man looks thoroughly exhausted, even though his shift ended a while ago, as if instead of an earned good night sleep John had carried on working outside the hospital, and, going by the timetable pinned on the fridge's door, that was a silly thing to do. He's due back in a few hours.

'Look, John, shouldn't you be resting?'

The doctor follows his friend's gaze and waves a hand dismissively.

'I can pull a few consecutive shifts', he claims. 'Warzone training, you could call it.' He smiles tightly, no amusement in dead tired eyes.

Lestrade raises from his own chair, across the narrow kitchen table.

'You're not riding that silly motorcycle Sherlock got you, today', he dictates, fatherly. The shorter man would only succeed in getting himself into an accident.

John frowns, as if confused by the inspector's forceful statement.

'How do you know about the motorcycle anyway?'

'Mycroft. No point asking how Mycroft knows, of course.'

'Of course', John seconds. Then he scrunches his face. 'Why have you been talking to Sherlock's brother?'

Greg quickly deflates and sits back down. He ponders whether he can tell John where those two international matters cases came from, the ones Lestrade has already spotted on the side table by the red armchair, but that John has yet to find so to peruse them, and persuade Sherlock to take them.

Greg decides to keep quiet, as John silently shrugs and returns to the collection of cupcakes for the guest. Greg decides a lie is hardly a good investment. It grows like tumorous appendages to deceptive truths, intertwining and clobbering up the whole thing.

.

Four hours later, Lestrade answers the door for the takeaway he ordered, hardly paying attention to the young person delivering, his eyes rounded on his phone.

Damn it. What's he going to do now?

Sherlock has just metaphorically slapped Lupin with a white silk glove, and challenged Lupin for a meeting in person. And he's gone and done it online, in the eyes of a growing crowd of bored Londoners and beyond, following and sharing every single interaction the two clashing geniuses do.

Lupin can't show up, because Lupin doesn't exist.

That's it, Lupin will show up when the Scottish woman shows up.

The inspector drops his Thai food parcel on the speckled surface of the sofa cushion next to him and types the condition to the meeting. A battle of wits, he pre-empts.

The Scottish detective, being a real person, won't fall for such a waste of time!

Lestrade leans back with a smug smile. Sorted.

Almost immediately his phone pings. Lestrade grabs it with regrettably greasy fingers and eyes the screen in utter consternation, shock and disbelief.

The Scottish detective accepts the meeting, according to Sherlock. She'll text Sherlock details soon.

Oh, rats!

I suppose Lupin can pull a sickie, right?

Lestrade jumps in the air when his phone starts ringing. Sherlock?

Sherlock never rings when he can text. And if he's forced to, he'd withhold his number.

'Sh-Sherlock?' the inspector answers shakily. Is this it, has the detective deduced the con? How did he do it in the end?

'Lestrade. Meet me at the hospital. Hurry. John's crashed the motorcycle, the ambulance is on the way to the scene.' The connection breaks hastily, and Greg assumes it's to disguise Sherlock's emotional response. Even in extremis, the detective can't bear to crack his protective hard wall. As if he feared to spill out in crumbled bits if his emotions got loose.

But John, an accident, the hospital?

No... The doctor was too exhausted to ride or go for another shift. The inspector told him that, but John was too stubborn to admit weakness.

Lestrade dry swallows the rest of a mouthful of duck, but he can't taste the fragrant spices. His stomach feels heavy as lead.

He gets up swiftly to find his car keys. He bets Sherlock is being driven to the hospital by a slick black car with tainted windows, so there's no point in swinging by Baler Street on his way to the nearest hospital.

.

TBC