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Lestrade is just getting a meal-for-one out of the microwave when the door bell rings. He swears as the plastic container burns his fingers then throws the cottage pie on the table as he goes to the door.
He's still sucking the tender burnt patch on his finger when he twists the lock and pulls it towards him.
It's Sherlock.
"Something interesting?"
Lestrade frowns. "Pardon?" He asks, as he steps aside to let Sherlock in.
"On your fingers," Sherlock replies, going straight through into the living room. Disgruntled by the large blast of cold air from outside, Lestrade throws the door closed and follows him.
"Not exactly, I burnt myself."
He steps into the living room and finds Sherlock already in the kitchen, sniffing around his food. "Hey, that's mine. Hands off."
Ignoring him completely, Sherlock reaches for the fork already set out on the table and helps himself to a stool at the breakfast bar. "Rory Tellingrath."
"Who?" Lestrade asks, settling into the familiar mode of feeling one step behind every time Sherlock speaks. He joins him at the counter and grabs another fork, determined to get a little bit of his own food.
"You don't remember?" Sherlock asks, blowing carefully on the mouthful balanced precariously on his fork. "Behind that robbery I helped you with in the City two years ago, acquitted on a technicality."
Lestrade thinks. Which, with Sherlock sitting a mere matter of inches away, isn't actually all that easy to do. It's been four days - four days - since they got back from Brighton and he hadn't expected to see Sherlock so soon. Especially not suddenly on his doorstep after a hard day at work, anyway.
"The one with the ginger hair?"
"No, his friend, the one who likes goats."
"Goats?" Lestrade frowns, swallowing some food. He realises he's going to have to work quickly if he wants to get at least half of it - Sherlock seems hungry.
In reply he gets a fork waved at him in a lazy fashion, as though it doesn't matter. "Oh, I found out some things about him when we were investigating, did a little research."
"But... goats?" Lestrade replies, knocking Sherlock's fork away with his when he appears to be stealing all the mashed potato.
"Doesn't matter," Sherlock says, childishly knocking his fork in return, just to retaliate. "What matters is I need your file on him, his background checks, previous convictions, that sort of thing."
Watching a tongue dart out over lips that Lestrade now feels he knows pretty well (and oh God, lips that have been wrapped around his - no, don't think about that) he gets slightly distracted. "What for?"
"A case," Sherlock says, looking up from the food. He meets Lestrade's eyes. "This is good."
"Sainsburys," he replies. "And what case?"
"Tell John, he does the shopping, remind him to buy some."
"Of course," Lestrade hears himself sigh, as though this visit isn't a pleasant addition to his evening. "Because obviously I'm your butler, running your errands for you."
Sherlock raises his eyes to catch Lestrade's as he gathers another fork full of food and smirks slightly as he speaks. "We'll have to get you a uniform."
There is a second when he wonders, was that - ? No, it couldn't have been, Sherlock doesn't know how to flirt. Surely?
But then he's ploughing on and Lestrade doesn't have time to wonder. "It's a defence case this time. He's asked me to represent him."
"Who, Tellingrath?"
Sherlock nods, stealing another fork full of food. "He's being tried for a second round of robbery, has asked for my assistance."
"And you agreed?" Lestrade asks, watching the movement of Sherlock's Adam's apple as he swallows. He could get fascinated by that, if they had the time. He considers the fact that he has Sherlock in his house late at night and realises that actually, they might have the time. And a thrill runs through him.
Because of course the problem is that since arriving home from Brighton four days ago, Lestrade has been able to think about very little else but Sherlock. Specifically sex with Sherlock, a topic he hadn't been able to dwell on too carefully after the last time they did it given that things had been left so badly between them. But now he's been able to consider it as much as he likes given the fact that this time there is a stab at normality between them. Well, normal for Sherlock, anyway.
Okay, so there is still the sticky problem of Lestrade harbouring feelings Sherlock very much doesn't, but he can ignore that. For now. And hopefully they've reached an understanding of some sort, a sexual kind of understanding.
Because Lestrade wants him more than ever.
"Of course I didn't agree," Sherlock mutters, as though this is pure idiocy. "I'm ignoring his phone calls until I find out whether the case is interesting enough."
"Which is where I come in."
"Obviously," Sherlock replies, getting in faster than Lestrade can with another mouthful of food, swiping it from the plastic tray with ill-disguised triumph.
"And you thought I'd just have the entire Met case files here, hanging around my living room..."
"No," the tongue darts out again, licking the fork clean, "I just know you have Tellingrath's file, from when you were working on the art theft on the South Bank two months ago, you did a case search on the most prolific suspects still at large in the - "
"How did you know I was - "
"You're boringly easy to predict," Sherlock says, stealing the last mouthful of cottage pie then throwing down his fork. He doesn't even look particularly smug, just sort of unsurprised by being right. "Where's the case file?"
Lestrade swipes a thumb over the corner of his mouth and tries not to look at Sherlock's lips. "Um, spare bedroom probably, there's a box of files."
"Good."
Sherlock is up and away from the breakfast bar before Lestrade has time to let his brain catch up. He wasn't even aware he had the file, but he's known Sherlock long enough to believe that if he thinks the file is in the house, it will be. He throws the dirty forks in the sink, the cool plastic tray from the food in the bin and then slowly follows Sherlock upstairs.
The annoying thing is that Lestrade can't work out if this is an excuse or not - would Sherlock use a case as an excuse to come around and see him? Or is he the type that would just show up and say, 'I demand sex' if that was what he really wanted? He's complicated, yes - but not really in that way. He plays games all the time, Lestrade is sure of that, but he's also found him to be pretty blunt about saying the things other people avoid saying.
Lestrade knows what he wants, anyway. He hopes this is all just a flimsy excuse.
"Find anything?" He asks, leaning on the frame of the door to the spare room. He slips his hands in his pockets to stop them reaching out and grabbing as he watches Sherlock sprawled on the bed, a selection of case files around him.
"Only your inadequate filing system."
He rolls his eyes despite the fact Sherlock has his head bent over a brown case file and can't see him. "How's John?"
Sherlock shifts another file aside and then looks up at him. "What?"
"John - how is he?"
"Fine, I think," Sherlock replies, "I don't check his health on a regular basis." He pulls another file towards him and starts flipping through. "Why do you ask? I thought we'd agreed you don't like him."
"I don't - " Lestrade sighs, feeling his face flushing red. Christ. "I never said - " But Sherlock doesn't appear to be paying him much attention anyway, so he lets it drop. He really doesn't want to get into that one again. "How's Mrs Hudson?"
"Will you stop trying to be polite?" Sherlock sighs, glancing up at him again. "It's tedious. I'm fine, John's fine, everyone's fine - now come over here and help me look, do something useful."
Lestrade goes, climbs onto the bed beside Sherlock and grabs a handful of files from the open box at it's foot. His knee wedges itself against Sherlock's thigh and Lestrade tries to ignore the proximity as he starts opening case files, checking names and photographs before putting them aside.
He can hear Sherlock breathing evenly in the quiet of the room and starts to wonder if he should do something. He feels stuck between wanting to do something and not knowing what the rules are - are they friends with benefits these days? Or more like colleagues with benefits? Or indeed nothing at all, just two people who have slept together a few times with no outward sign it's ever going to happen again?
Lestrade glances sideways at Sherlock under the pretence of reading. Sherlock actually looks like he's just checking case files.
Then he spots something. "The button's come off your coat."
"Pardon?" Sherlock looks up, frowns at him and then down at the patch on his coat. "Oh, that. I've been trying to get Mrs Hudson to fix it for days; she keeps muttering something about not being my housekeeper."
"That's because she's not," Lestrade replies, putting his file down. "Here, I'll do it."
Sherlock throws yet another set of case notes aside and glances at him. "Do what?"
"Fix it, Sherlock," Lestrade hears himself say, sounding exasperated. "I'll sew your button back on, take your coat off."
Looking wary for the briefest of moments, Sherlock shrugs out of his coat, wearing only his deep purple shirt underneath, collar pressed and sharp as usual. He appears to shiver from the cold and Lestrade tugs the coat from underneath him.
"You sew?"
"You learn these things when you don't have a wife to do them for you," Lestrade replies, leaning behind them over the pillows of the bed to get to the cabinet on Sherlock's side. He roots around amongst the things in the drawer there for a moment for some cotton before feeling Sherlock relaxing back against him as though he were an over-sized cushion. "Oi," he says, and Sherlock sits up.
"How very domestic of you," Sherlock mutters, still dragging files towards him and opening them up. Some of them he lingers on longer than others, interested purely by the 'Private: Restricted Access' stamp, no doubt.
"I can forget this, if you want?" He holds up the coat and the needle, already feeling stupid for trying to help someone who never needs any help, but then Sherlock glances at him and nods.
"No, fine, go on."
In silence Lestrade locates the spare button sewn to the inside label and snips it off, pulling the bulk of Sherlock's silly, over-dramatic coat over his knee and threading the needle in his hand. He pushes himself slightly further up the bed, leaning against the headboard and unfolds his legs, making sure to let his knee fall to the side slightly, still making contact with Sherlock through their clothes. He already has that unpleasant desire to always be touching him in some way, hopes with every alert nerve in his body that this really is just an excuse for Sherlock to come round here.
"Of course you were going about this all the wrong way," Sherlock suddenly says, and Lestrade looks up from the coat in his hands to watch as Sherlock also pushes himself back up the bed, resting comfortably against the headboard beside him. "You were trying to trace a thief rather than a Scottish Nationalist."
"Excuse me?"
Lestrade gets that familiar sensation of Sherlock trying to tell him his job, but the blow is softened by the fact a foot is purposefully resting against his, rubbing slightly - idly - as though he doesn't realise he's doing it.
"The 'Fall From Grace' was painted by Harold McGough in the mid nineteenth century, given - amongst other things - to his English landowner because he couldn't afford to pay the rents on his home; McGough was eventually thrown out and took a further ten years to become a noted artist. The Scots have wanted it back since he became a national heritage figure."
Lestrade frowns. "How do you - "
"I read," Sherlock says sarcastically. "You should attempt it one day. The painting never came up at auction anywhere after the crime because it's being kept in a private collection somewhere in Scotland, probably one of the major estates, Skeldon or Leys Castle."
Letting the half completed sewing rest in his lap, Lestrade watches as Sherlock throws another case file aside, goes on looking. "Have you known this all along?"
"Of course."
"And you never thought to let me know?"
Sherlock turns to him, the vaguest trace of a smile on his features. "I was under the impression you become irate when I try to tell you your job."
The frustration at the hours of time wasted on trawling through the stagnant McGough case plants itself in Lestrade's chest, but he manages to diffuse it carefully. "So who should I actually be looking at?" He asks, voice tight and annoyed.
"I'd try Robert Astor or Clive MacGregor," Sherlock replies, tone clearly smug as he flicks through the file in his hand. "They both have the connections and have both expressed disgust that an English art board held the painting for so long."
"Thank you," Lestrade bites, his teeth gritted. Two months that case has been annoying him, two months...
His mind is drawn away from his anger by the feel of a foot sliding slowly back and forth against his though, the comfortable drag feeling warm and promising. He almost jabs himself with the sewing needle as he glances carefully sideways at Sherlock, still checking files.
Lestrade has utterly no idea what's going on here, but is more than aware of Sherlock's dislike for talking about things, so keeps his mouth resolutely shut. Plus of course it doesn't help that he's lied and said there isn't anything to discuss, which rather kills that option. So how is he supposed to know when to make a move?
And why does he feel like a teenager in his own bloody house? Angsting over stupid situations? He was under the misguided impression that adulthood meant no more difficult sexual encounters where you weren't sure what the other person was thinking.
But of course he's dealing with someone who doesn't always act like an adult.
"Any other unsolved cases you know the answers to that you want to tell me about?"
Lestrade can tell Sherlock is smiling from the tone of his voice. "Possibly; I like to keep a store of these things, just in case."
He finally finishes with the coat and turns sideways slightly, pushing his knee against Sherlock's. "For bribery, I suppose."
"You never know when you'll need to bribe your friendly local policeman," Sherlock replies, resting the open file on his knee. When he looks at Lestrade his eyes flicker briefly to his mouth and Lestrade wonders if this is the moment he should do something.
Is it?
He hates not knowing.
For a second they just look at each other and Lestrade feels himself want, stronger and more powerful than anything he's felt in a long time. He wants to climb onto Sherlock's lap and -
"I think I'm going to take the case."
"What?"
Sherlock holds up the brown file in his hands. "Tellingrath."
"You found it?"
"Yes; quite an interesting man, rather... colourful history."
"Right." Lestrade glances down at the file, surprised it was actually there, still half believing that Sherlock was making all this up just so that they could -
"I'd best get back to John."
And then suddenly Sherlock is up and moving off the bed, pulling on his coat (now with the neatly sewn button) and moving towards the door, file under his arm.
"Right," Lestrade says again, running a hand through his hair as though hoping it will help to clear his head. "See you, then."
"Goodnight, Lestrade."
The sound of Sherlock's feet on the stairs going down and then the resolute slam of the door at the bottom hit Lestrade like an alarm clock, waking him up. He sits forward on the bed surveying the scatter of messy brown files everywhere - all private and confidential police documents, all of them recently thumbed by someone very much not in the police force.
He feels stupid and embarrassed all of a sudden, that sick feeling like he can't be quite sure whether or not he's being used.
He pushes it away, gathers the files quickly and throws them back into the evidence box he brought them home in. Keen to get out of the bedroom, he goes back downstairs, the smell of warm, tempting cottage pie still lingering in the kitchen.
Lestrade is just passing the sofa ( that sofa, the sofa where they first...) when his phone vibrates in his pocket. He picks it out quickly, selects 'Read message':
Just because it's happened before doesn't mean it will happen every time I see you.
SH.
He stares at the phone for several long minutes, enough time to read it over and over again, enough time to consider all the possible ways it could have been meant. Then eventually Lestrade realises his hand is shaking slightly (from embarrassment, from anger, from stupid, frustrated lingering arousal) and he tosses the phone down on the cool leather of the sofa.
He's not sure what he's got himself into. He really isn't.