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It had been the absolute icing on the cake. A cake that had been rammed down Lestrade’s throat for over a month.
A simple open and shut case of fraud had been muddied and delayed by inaccurate reporting, meddling relatives and a rather venomous ex-girlfriend of the accused. All this had culminated in Lestrade having to give a curbside interview outside the courts and being walloped in the face by said ex-girlfriend’s current boyfriend during a live television interview.
Needless to say, the fallout had resulted in a temporary lapse in the two-week strong cigarette cull, as well as reruns of the incident being played on every TV in the Yard, much to the amusement of Lestrade’s subordinates and superiors.
The car park seemed to be his only safe haven now, here where he lit his cigarette between his throbbing fat lips.
The sound of his text alert jolted him back to the here and now - here and now being numb hands from the late autumn cold and an ache in his tight jaw.
Rough day? MH
Although Lestrade didn’t have the number saved, there had been no need for the two letter signature. He knew the digits off by heart by now. The uninjured side of his mouth curled slightly.
I’ve had better.
Dinner then. 7.30. Aubrey’s - Wilton Road. MH
He didn’t phrase it as a question. He never phrased it as a question. Lestrade wasn’t sure if that was a reflection on Mycroft or himself. It didn’t really concern him either way; dinner with company beat soup in a mug in front of the box in his flat any day of the week.
ooo000ooo
It turns out Aubrey’s was an intimate little restaurant in the middle of Pimlico, tucked in amongst all those Victorian houses with the grand white facades standing at least three stories high.
The rain had picked up from about lunchtime meaning everything touched by streetlights emitted a glistening shimmer. It was that misty kind of rain, that kind that soaked you quietly - and by the time Lestrade had walked from Victoria tube station to the restaurant he felt damp; hair dewy.
He spotted the umbrella before the man himself. Mycroft was stood in the doorway. Soft plumes of milky grey smoke catching in the light of the restaurant window before evaporating. He too must have fallen off the wagon on the no-smoking front.
“Mycroft,” Lestrade announced as the addressed flicked his cigarette into a nearby puddle.
“Inspector.”
Mycroft tilted his open umbrella a little behind him to get a better look at Lestrade.
From anyone else, this unsubtle visual appraisal - where Mycroft’s eyes lingered on his soggy leather jacket, then up to his dishevelled hair and back down to that rosy split lip - would not go without a ‘piss off’ but Lestrade had grown used to it, had come to see it as an odd Holmes sign of endearment.
*
The restaurant was warm - a little too warm, as if the owners were willing their patrons to turn to steam after such a climate change from the great outdoors. But there were no complaints.
They were sat at a cosy red leather booth in the corner before being told the wines and the specials.
Lestrade shrugged out of his coat, ran a hand through his hair and let Mycroft order the wine.
He felt underdressed. He always felt underdressed in these places and the three-day stubble was likely betraying him in the eyes of the waiters and fellow diners. Coming straight from work, he had his white shirt and his off-the-rail suit trousers but it was all about the finer details in these places.
The ties, the cufflinks, the shine on the shoe, the lack of scuffs on the jacket.
Mycroft was impeccably dressed as ever. Grey dinner suit, maroon waistcoat, a rose gold pin clipped across his tie at an almost obsessively straight angle.
“Always knew you had tact,” the DI said, grabbing a bread roll from the basket and splitting it open with his now blushing red hands - the temperature shift really was quite severe.
“Whatever do you mean?” Mycroft asked, knowing full well what he was referring to if the knowing smile was anything to go by.
“We’ve been here five minutes and you haven’t mentioned the..ugh…” Lestrade gestured in the general direction of his face.
“I was waiting until the starters at least,” Mycroft replied, taking his own bread roll and cutting it with his knife. “I’m not one to kick a man while he’s down. Not on an empty stomach anyhow.”
Mycroft’s eyes flickered to the harsh split extending across the right side of both Lestrade’s top and bottom lip. The corner of his mouth looked pinched and there was a smudge of purple extending from that corner to jaw on his otherwise light-tanned face.
“Being who I am, I could have him assassinated...causing undue damage to the face of Scotland Yard. A grievous offence indeed,” Mycroft added.
“I’ll pin something on him. If not I can sell the clip to You’ve Been Framed for £250.”
That being said, he couldn’t imagine either Holmes brother knowing what You’ve Been Framed was. The thought of them sat in front of the TV together watching people falling over to a laughter track was funny in itself.
The wine arrived. A light Cabernet Sauvignon. They were having steak then, Lestrade deduced. For Mycroft always ordered and he would just roll with it.
Mycroft always poured too and would toast to something obscure - the weather, the Queen’s fair choice of hat, the fact it was a Thursday but only felt like a Tuesday.
“To the demise of Ms Porter’s unruly spouse and to your small windfall,” he said after the red was poured and Lestrade had picked up his glass.
They both gave a short laugh before chinking the rim of their glasses together and taking a sip.
The DI savoured the taste. God, he’d needed a drink.
They fell into a comfortable silence for despite his intimidating British Government persona, Mycroft radiated a kind of warmth and security Lestrade always struggled to place. He wasn’t sure why a man in such a seat of power and in such an immaculate suit would give off such an aura to him, the rough and ready copper, but he did.
When starters - a minted soup of some description - came it was Lestrade who broke the silence again, admitting, “you’re saving me from either an evening of Pot Noodle at home or something from the vending machine at the office.”
“And you’re saving me from a night of bleak isolation so we’ll call it even.”
It was odd hearing isolation being described as bleak from a man Lestrade was sure relished seclusion. A man who to most people was cold, business-like and rarely indulged in anything as trivial as ‘a chat’. And yet here he was eating food, enjoying company. Did that make Lestrade special? These little dinner dates were not a one-time thing after all.
They had met for an evening meal six times now and each time there was less of a grace period between the next one and the last. Lestrade always kept the label of these meetings as something casual in his head. Yes it wasn’t a pint and the football at the pub, but these weren’t dates. There was no hand-holding across the table, no trying each other’s food, no awkward silences filled with tedious questions about favourite films, childhood pets or whatever people spoke about on dates these days.
And yet there was a certain intimacy about these meetings that he never had with other friends. And if Mycroft reached over and grabbed his hand now, would he jerk it away and say ‘oi what are you playing at’? - probably not. No, definitely not.
“You seem lost in thought this evening,” Mycroft said, taking another sip of his wine, fingers lightly caressing the stem of the glass.
“Just wondering what I can get that bloke with the left hook down for,” Lestrade replied, eyes not moving from his company’s wine glass and the hand clutching it.
For one mad second he was gripped by the impulse to pull the hand towards him, as if the thought of it being something normal dates had meant that if they held hands it would somehow confirm what these meetings were. What a laughable idea, they were both on the cusp of 50 and here he was acting like a teenager.
And yet was it so laughable? If the psyche of the younger Holmes was anything to go by - it wasn’t but this was the best insight he had - these meetings could go on for months, years even, without confirmation of anything because that was something trivial, something boring people did.
Lestrade was tugged out of his musing by a cold sensation wrapping around his wrist.
Surely, not even Mycroft could perform telepathy. And yet here was his hand wrapped about his own, fingers teasing with the cuff of his shirt, sweeping across the underside of his wrist and palm.
Lestrade could do little but stare at the phenomenon, his other hand clutching a spoonful of soup that had been left hovering a mere centimeter or two from his bowl.
“If it’s any consolation, the cut lip gives you a devil-may-care look that is quite striking.”
The DI didn’t look up from where his eyes rested, transfixed, on the sight of their hands together, Mycroft tracing shapes in the heels of his hands.
“Every cloud and all that,” he replied, his voices sounding as if coming from someone else, surely he couldn’t sound so cool and collected when this was happening.
Had he ever held a bloke’s hand? Christ, when was the last time he held anyone’s hand?
“Your dinners, sirs,” came a voice beside the table and Lestrade snatched his arm back so fast his glass of Sauvignon nearly toppled.
Mycroft turned to the waiter with a small smile, his arm still outstretched, resting on the table, fingers lax as if they were committing the touch to muscle memory.
The waiter looked at the largely untouched bowl of soup and asked ‘finished?’ raising an eyebrow.
Lestrade nodded.
Their dishes were set down in front of them creating a barrier of fine white China between the two men.
His guess had been right. Steak. And exactly as he had it. Lestrade made a mental note to check his phone hadn’t been tapped. How could be know exactly how he liked his steak?
“Bon appetit,” Mycroft said, folding his napkin on his lap.
ooo000ooo
When dinner came to a natural close, a second bottle of wine had been drunk, dessert had been refused and Mycroft had insisted on squaring the bill.
The weather hadn’t let up in the two hours they had spent in the warmth of the restaurant. In fact the rain was heavier and there was now a nip in the air owing to the false sense of security the establishment’s heating had given them. In short it was cold and wet outside. Even huddled under Mycroft’s umbrella, Lestrade could feel a chill creep down his neck.
This was always the odd moment of these meetings. The parting of ways that left so many routes unexplored.
If this was a mate he had gone to the pub with, there’d be a simple one-armed hug and a ‘see you when I see you’. If this was a date there’d be talks of going for coffee some time or - if things had gone well enough - talks of going for coffee now, preferably at a house where there was a bed or a sofa…
But this was neither and, as they walked almost in step to where the taxis sat on the main road and Mycroft’s private car would be waiting for him some hundred or so yards down the street, there was no exchanges of ‘we need to do this again soon’ or ‘I’ll text you’.
Because without saying such things, these promises were already assumed.
When they reached the taxi queue Mycroft stopped and turned to face Lestrade.
Suddenly the rain felt loud under the umbrella as if magnified to this singular spot in London, under the sturdy canvas of Mycroft’s protection skewing anything from Lestrade’s vision other than the dark backdrop of the tilted umbrella and a pair of bright eyes in the nightlight.
“Do let me know if you need some help getting rid of that boyfriend,” Mycroft said.
“Huh? Oh yeah,” Lestrade caught up, seeing the smirk on the other man’s dimly lit face.
“Take care..” Mycroft slid open the taxi’s sidedoor.
And as Lestrade began bundling himself into cab’s rear seats, Mycroft’s hand on his wrist - a second phenomenon of the evening - halted him. It even moved him back a little so that both of his feet were back onto the rainwashed pavement.
Lestrade looked at the man, at his face cast in the shadow of his umbrella apart from his thin mouth illuminated by the streetlight above. His eyes were upon his, tracing over lines and features as if reading a book.
Lestrade nodded slightly but made no move for the taxi.
“I mean it…” Mycroft began, eyes having found the darkening bruise of Lestrade’s lip, line of sight lingering there. “Do…” he began.
His breath was warm, rich from the wine. And before Lestrade noticed himself doing it, he was leaning towards Mycroft and the shelter of his umbrella once again.
“Take…” Mycroft continued, the words barely registering in Lestrade’s ears.
“Care, Greg.”
The words were punctuated by a kiss that touched the space between Lestrade’s lower cheek and corner of his lip. He winced instinctively, the area still tender from its previous physical contact, but he refrained from drawing back.
Mycroft’s free hand cupped his jaw before rubbing the bruise gently with his thumb.
Then another kiss, again to the very corner of his lip where the skin was still hot from a relatively fresh wound.
A random thought floated into Lestrade’s head. That damn tie pin. How neatly it had been clipped to the fabric of Mycroft’s tie. Meticulous. And yet here the man was giving kisses at odd angles.
Lestrade’s hands moved down to Mycroft’s chest. To the offending tie pin. He felt the length of it, how cold it was against the warm fabric.
He brought his hand up to Mycroft’s face. Oddly soft. Maybe his subconscious assumed touching another man’s face meant the scraping of short beard hair, the coarse feeling of a well-weathered skin...not that he’d given it much thought before.
Lestrade rightened the kiss. Bringing their lips together dead centre before tilting his head a little to catch the corner of Mycroft’s lip - playing him at his own game.
He opened his mouth slightly - testing the waters - and it was only then that he noticed how odd kissing with a fat lip was. There was too much flesh, too much that could get in the way, be accidentally nipped. But before he could retreat, Mycroft slipped him the very tip of his tongue, pushing all thoughts but this from his head.
When they pulled apart, Lestrade realised his hands were now curled around the lapels of Mycroft’s coat. Mycroft’s hand was still at his jaw.
A small cough from the cabbie, followed by “you coming in or what? You’re letting all the bloody heat out”, was enough to break the spell.
A quick glance up at Mycroft’s face and a hasty retreat into the taxi took the place of a formal goodbye.
As the cab driver pulled off and the cab made its way down the street Lestrade braved a look behind him.
A fading silhouette of the man and his umbrella was being swallowed by the night and London’s misty rainfall.