Work Text:
The door of the stuffy meeting room opened after Greg’s second interminable meeting of the day, and a stream of hungry and thirsty senior-but-not-too-senior detectives spilled out into the open plan office area. The benefits of a weekend squirreled away in Mycroft’s Pall Mall flat being spoiled rotten by the man himself, followed by a leisurely jog to the office after an even more leisurely exchange of pre-breakfast blow jobs, had been gradually ebbing away with every corporate buzzword that fell from the Deputy Assistant Commissioner’s mouth.
Finlay Spencer was fifteen years younger than Greg, still had a full head of brown hair, and had climbed the ranks so quickly that everyone around him had got second-hand vertigo just watching. Of course, the man was also a fuckwit of the very highest order who knew next to nothing about actual policing or the reality for officers on the ground, but that was usually the case with the double-first-in-something-unrelated-fast-track-toff-tossers Greg had worked with over the years. They all seemed to genuinely believe that going to an elitist school followed by an elitist university meant that they were God’s gift to anything they turned their hands to, regardless of their lack of personal attributes or temperament suited to completing the task at hand. That was also 90% of the problem with the morally bankrupt tossers sitting in the Houses of Parliament, in Greg’s opinion, and those specific tossers were the ones responsible for slashing policing budgets to the bone whilst subsidising grouse shooting for their mates. God, Greg hated that type, and being stuck in confined spaces with one of them first thing on a Monday morning was pretty much the worst possible way to start the week as far as he was concerned.
Of course, the man was still Greg’s boss, and he was still new enough to his promotion to detective chief inspector that he didn’t particularly want to ruffle the DAC’s feathers by pointing out the many, many flaws in his little team pep talk just yet. Greg was so distracted by imagining the many ways he would like to give Finlay Spencer a large, painful dose of reality that he almost completely missed the buzz in the air when he got back to his team’s area. He crossed the open-plan office, passing eleven suspiciously empty desks before reaching the cluster of officers and support staff clustered around detective inspector Whittard’s desk giggling like a group of school kids high on blue Smarties. “What have I missed?”
Detective sergeant Kapoor turned to face Greg with a bright grin, gracefully stepping aside to make space for Greg in the cluster. “We’ve got a mystery on our hands, guv,” he said, lips twitching with the effort of restraining laughter. “It’s going to take a very…penetrating investigation to solve this one.”
A collective guffaw bubbled out of the cluster of coppers so Greg, curiosity piqued, nudged his way closer to the centre. Heat rushed up his body the moment he saw ‘it’ sitting there in an evidence bag in the middle of Whittard’s desk, leaving him dizzy with what was sure to be an incriminating blush. Standing there, red-faced and horrified, Greg thought for a moment that he was living through what would doubtlessly be the most embarrassing moment of his professional life when he got a last-minute reprieve in the form of his newest team member. “Don’t worry, guv, just a dildo; they don’t bite,” detective constable Simmons said, tone bordering on patronising.
Greg had never been happier that the under twenty-fives seemed to be under the misapprehension that the over-fifties had long since forgotten what sex was, because that wasn’t just any not-bitey dildo: it was his not-bitey dildo. Specifically, it was a very expensive, custom made vibrating anal dildo that happened to be an exact replica of Mycroft Holmes’ cock down to every last ridge and vein, which the said Mycroft Holmes had gifted to Greg that morning as both an ‘I love you, my dear’ and ‘sorry I’m abandoning you for two weeks, but please continue enjoying my cock until we meet again. P.s. send videos’.
Thanks to the almost overwhelming wave of panic hitting like a tsunami when he saw his new toy sitting there in an evidence bag, it took a long moment for Greg to realise that the gaggle of CID staff had moved on from his arrival with nary a suspicious glance in his direction. “Well, it can’t be that hard to work out whose it is; one of us just needs to go for a walk around this floor and look for someone with a spring in her step,” detective sergeant Jakobsen said confidently, taking her usual pragmatic approach to the mystery.
“Oh, I don’t know: it looks very hard to me,” detective constable Thomas chipped in, setting off another wave of giggling.
“Where the hell was it?” Greg asked, mentally backward chaining to work out when exactly the thing had escaped from his bag. There weren’t really that many options; he’d got out of the lift on the major crimes division’s floor and crossed the open-plan office areas to reach the back corridor. The corridor was lined with lockers, changing rooms, and toilets on one side, and a large staff room with smaller meeting rooms on the other. It had been the work of minutes to pop into the changing room, get changed out of his jogging clothes and into his suit, and then back out into the corridor to stash his bag in his locker. He was suddenly very glad of the spate of thefts from lockers a couple of years back, because that had led to the decision to move the lockers out of the changing rooms and into the corridor where footfall was higher. Had his vibrator been found in the men’s changing room…well, that would have dangerously narrowed down the pool of potential owners.
“We arrested it in the hall outside the changing rooms, sir,” Whittard replied, every inch the detective inspector. “We’re bringing charges for loitering with intent.”
“And indecent exposure,” Kapoor chipped in, lips twitching. “He exposed himself to at least three women before we brought him in.”
A smattering of snickering started with Kapoor and worked it through the amassed coppers like a Mexican wave. Now absolutely confident that none of his colleagues were eyeing him with suspicion, Greg allowed himself to join in. He still didn’t know precisely how the precious gift had worked itself free of his bag, but the importance of the ‘how’ was now massively overshadowed by the question of ‘how the bloody buggering fuck am I getting the thing back?’.
“Photos!” barked Sheena, the team’s battleaxe of an admin who had the magical ability to get even the most recalcitrant printer to work with merely a stern look, as she shouldered and elbowed her way to the centre of the knot around Whittard’s desk brandishing a set of photos. Greg died a little on the inside when he saw them; Sheena had clearly got the code for overriding the ban on colour printing, one of the Met’s many cost-cutting measures, because the photos had been printed in glorious Technicolour. Even on the cheap brownish recycled paper that had been foisted on them – another of those cost-cutting measures – the deep purple of the silicone clone of Mycroft’s cock popped right off the page. Much to his horror, the team had really gone to town, placing an evidence marker next to it and photographing it from every conceivable angle. There was even a fucking ForensiGraph ruler next to it in one photo.
As mortifying as it was to see his new toy being subjected to a full investigation by some of Scotland Yard’s finest, the angle of the third photo triggered a vague memory of a dull thudding sound when he’d bent down to put his bag in his locker. Rather than it being one of his colleagues knocking into the wall inside the locker room it must have been his treasured new toy sliding out his bag. Fortunately, it had rolled a little on landing so it wasn’t directly in front of his locker, but that bit of luck got him no closer to getting the thing back.
“We could get prints off this easily,” Kapoor declared, holding the evidence bag up in front of his face and studying the dildo intently. “Someone should go and collect exclusion prints.”
“Not without arousing suspicion,” Jakobsen chirped, setting off another round of snickering in her colleagues whilst Greg fought to control a wave of abject terror. Every copper in the country had their DNA and fingerprints on record, so he really would be well and truly fucked if he didn’t knock this thing on the head soon.
“Or,” Whittard said, standing from her seat and reaching out to take the bag from Kapoor, “we could use our detective skills. Balance of probability says that it’s a woman’s, but it was found loitering closer to the men’s changing room, so I’d say it’s more likely that someone’s bought it for a wife or girlfriend. It’s got some weight to it and the silicone looks like good quality, so it wasn’t cheap, either. Bit of a random size, too, don’t you think? These things normally go in round numbers, so 6.3 inches just seems a bit odd,” she said, tapping the photo with the ForeniGraph ruler. She paused, taking a moment to glanced across the office to where DI Dimmock’s team occupied the side by the windows and DI Bradstreet’s lot resided closest to the stationery cupboard. “There’s, what, seventy of us on this floor? And then the guys from upstairs who use our changing rooms and showers because the drains upstairs always smell funny, so that’s well over a hundred suspects. Most of them are men, too, because the pace of change is slower in the police than almost anywhere else.”
The desperate need to cut this off before anyone actually broke out their fingerprinting kit was almost suffocating, but the fear of doing so in a way that would arouse suspicion was paralysing. He was on the verge of doing something - anything - to distract his team when the morning a turn in the very worst possible direction: the lift dinged and Sherlock fucking Holmes, the mad man who could spot an airline pilot by his left thumb, emerged in a dramatic swirl of designer coat and artfully arranged curls. Greg’s legs wobbled badly enough that he took hold of Whittard’s desk and held on for dear life as the horror of Baker Street strode purposefully in their direction. There was absolutely no way Greg was getting out of this situation with his dignity fully intact.
“I need to see the evidence from the Wapping jeweller break-ins again,” Sherlock declared, his gaze falling briefly on the dildo before flicking to Greg in a not-quite glance. “The chip shop owner’s alibi is false and his wife is an habitual liar.”
Greg’s mind presented him with two options: option one was to stand there panicking and annoy Sherlock, leading to the inevitable series of deductions that would have him hiding his face for at least the next six to nine months, and option two was to clap his hands, bring the current conversation to a decisive end, and give Sherlock access to the requested evidence in the hope of appeasing him, despite having the younger man on a two week case sanction on account of the said younger man reducing a witness to tears again. Greg clapped his hands. “Right, you lot, back to work,” he said, channelling as much authority as he could muster. “I want updates on all active cases in one hour.”
A collective disappointed sigh emanated from his team, but they did as they were told, dispersing in the direction of their desks. Greg watched as Whittard put his dildo in her drawer and locked it. That’s fine: I’ve got everyone’s spare keys, he thought to himself as he set off in the direction of his office with Sherlock hot on his heels. Sherlock was silent until they got to Greg’s office, and the older man was just starting to think he had got away with it when he turned and found Sherlock smirking his most disconcerting smirk. Greg tensed in anticipation but Sherlock surprised him again by simply holding out a hand for the requested evidence file.
“What exactly are you expecting to find?” Greg asked when Sherlock remained disconcertingly silent. “You only missed one of the interviews and that was because you said he was ‘boring’. Something about psoriasis, porn habits, and a sock fetish, wasn’t it?”
“Hmm,” Sherlock agreed with a lingering smirk that Greg knew had nothing to do with the witnesses. “I need to see if there is a link between the interview I missed and the false alibi.”
“Have at it,” Greg said, handing over the file and hoping that it would be enough to keep Sherlock’s mouth shut. He dropped into his chair, already planning how he was going to get his toy back. As tempting as it was, he couldn’t just use his spare key, because Whittard knew he was the only one with a copy. The way he saw it, he had two options at this point. Option one was to send out a division-wide email asking the owner to contact him in confidence to have it returned, and he would then simply ask Whittard for the dildo under the guise of reuniting it with its owner. Option two was to work late, use a paperclip to create scratch marks around the keyhole to make it look like a break in, and then use his spare key to open the drawer. Option one was probably the least likely to get him caught, but it also introduced more uncontrollable variables than option two.
“As I thought,” Sherlock declared, interrupting Greg’s mental flow. “This alibi corroborates the false one; the chances of that being coincidental are slim-to-none.”
It took longer than it should have for Greg to formulate an appropriate response, but he thought that was allowed, all things considered. And then Sherlock’s smirk developed an edged, an edge that never meant anything good for the person on the receiving end. Given what was at stake – namely the worst humiliation of his professional life – Greg thought ‘fuck it’ and did something he tried very hard never to do: he gave Sherlock Holmes, the high-functioning sociopath of Baker Street, carte blanche. “What do you want for keeping your mouth shut?”
“What a generous offer, detective chief inspector,” Sherlock drawled, eyes glinting. “I think half an hour’s unfettered access to the to the cold case archive should be enough. The old paper files and all of the physical evidence.”
Awash with relief, Greg’s breathing came a little easier. It seemed that Mycroft’s ‘talk’ about not embarrassing Greg for shits and giggles had worked. Not a word had passed between the brothers, the whole conversation seemingly conducted with a series of eyebrow twitches and scowls, but Mycroft had later shared with Greg that Sherlock’s unofficial access to various top secret research facilities and Bart’s were on the line. Greg hadn’t actually expected it to stop Sherlock from running his mouth off, but it seemed that he had underestimated Mycroft’s ability to call his feral little brother to heel. With the dissipation of some of panic that had been clouding his mind since finding his team conducting a forensic investigation into his dildo came an idea that might just solve the rest of the problem. “How about I round it up to an hour and you get my…thing back for me?”
Sherlock’s smirk turned into a disturbing grin. “Call it what it is, Lestrade: you want me to retrieve that replica of my brother’s cock for you.”
Greg’s face blushed so fast and hard that it actually hurt. Again. There had been a teeny tiny bit of hope that Sherlock would think it was just a generic dildo, but he should have known better. Hell, he could probably pick his own brother’s bits out of a line up thanks to almost two decades living together, so there really had been no hope that Sherlock, with his eidetic memory, wouldn’t spot Mycroft’s at ten paces. “Yeah, that, you smug twat.”
The glint in Sherlock’s eyes turned savage. “Say it, Lestrade.”
Greg’s pride clung on for another half beat but crumpled pathetically in face of the inevitable. “Please retrieve that replica of Mycroft’s cock for me. Preferably without getting caught or dropping me in it,” Greg growled through clenched teeth. “For the record, I fucking hate you.”
“I think we’d best leave any ‘fucking’ between you and the contents of DI Whittard’s desk whilst my brother is away, don’t you?” Sherlock drawled as he dropped the file onto Greg’s desk with a papery thwack.
Greg watched as Sherlock departed in a dramatic swirl of coat, his stomach sinking heavily and the words what the fuck have I just done ringing loudly in his head. One of the very first lessons he had learned after Sherlock staggered onto his crime scene and proclaimed that the victim had improbably died of hypothermia in a sauna was that one categorically does not trust him with anything personal. With his back to the wall, however, Greg had decided to trust Mycroft’s hold over his feral little brother, which he hoped would prove not to be entirely the same thing as trusting Sherlock directly.
A little before three, Greg’s work on preparing a press statement for a cold case that the red tops had suddenly decided to campaign on, despite showing no interest whatsoever at the time that the three sex workers were assaulted, was interrupted by the shrill tones of New Scotland Yard’s fire alarm. It took a moment for Greg to realise that it was still only Monday, which meant that this was not the weekly alarm test. A brief look at his emails showed nothing from facilities maintenance alerting management-level staff to a site-wide drill, so Greg was up and making for the open-plan office area as quickly as he could without falling over his own feet.
“Right, this isn’t a drill,” he shouted, adrenaline racing through his veins. Not a week went by when Met staff didn’t receive general threats of harm and violence from dangerous criminals, but since his promotion to DCI he was now party to senior management meetings where intelligence on more specific, very credible threats were relayed from MI5. There had been two highlighted at that morning’s meeting, and Greg did not like that one little bit. “Everyone out, now!”
Greg watched as his team transitioned from assuming that it was just detective constable Stevens, a slightly odd family liaison officer, on the floor below putting tin foil in the microwave again – an almost weekly occurrence, unfortunately – to moving quickly in the direction of the fire exits in a blink of an eye. He and Whittard lingered behind the rest of the team, checking that everyone on the sign-in sheet had left before them, and then they headed down the back stair case to the fire assembly point outside. Fire engines and ambulances, with their lights flashing and sirens wailing, were already starting to arrive, and Greg watched as fire fighters jumped out of their vehicles and ran for the building. Even as he reassured his team that everything was under control, a part of him really hoped that this was just a very dramatic dildo retrieval scheme and not an actual attack on New Scotland Yard.
Ten minutes later, Greg’s theory about the evacuation was looking more likely by the second. Fire fighters were starting to trickle out of the building rather than in, and, other than getting a little soggy from the relentless blanket of drizzle which had been squatting over Britain for the last six months, Greg’s team were otherwise cheerful. Something about the novelty of a wild dildo appearing in the office had had an arousing effect on the team’s mood, and it seemed to be enough to keep their collective pecker up despite the rain and spring chill.
Greg’s phone vibrated in his pocket just as the all-clear signal was given, much to the relief of the amassed coppers and support staff. In equal measure terrified and hopeful, Greg pulled his phone from his pocket and unlocked the screen.
Sherlock Holmes: I’ll be in touch to claim my fee, Lestrade. SH
The message flashed up on screen, accompanied by a picture of Greg’s dildo safely tucked away between the folds of his jogging clothes in his bag, swiftly followed by one of his locker closed with the padlock securely in place, and then a final photo of another dildo in an evidence bag in Whittard’s drawer. The colour was almost spot on, and whilst Greg doubted that it would pass muster in a Mycroft’s-cock-lookalike-contest, he was confident that it would prove to be an adequate decoy. Greg let out a sigh of relief and locked his phone screen before anyone else could catch sight of the pictures. He knew he should probably feel guilty about everyone being turfed out of the building in response to a false fire alarm that be been essentially caused by his own carelessness, but the immense relief that came with resolution to what could have been a deeply embarrassing situation was all-consuming. Besides, Mycroft was always very good at diverting money away from government vanity projects to compensate the public sector for Sherlock-related losses; he was confident that his partner could be…persuaded to use money intended for subsidising grouse shooting or the House of Commons bar to cover the cost of the fire engines and ambulances which had raced to New Scotland Yard’s rescue.
Finally able to relax, Greg bounded into the building after his team, reinvigorated and ready to tackle his press release head on. And the question of how he was going to confess all to Mycroft, who would doubtlessly find out whether Greg told him or not? ‘Well,' Greg thought, following his team in the direction of the staff room, ‘coffee first.’