Um, I believe you mentioned the old horrible-alternative-is-worse-I'm-doing-this-for-your-own-good-even-if-you'll-hate-me-forever scenario?
Also, I totally fail at comment fic, this is 2.5K....
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(pre-series)
While Lestrade was working his way up through the ranks he pulled a few hard years in Narcotics. That time had included three stints undercover. He hadn’t liked them much, but he’d gotten the job done all the same. He’d grown his hair out a bit, worn clothes that let his muscles and his service tattoo show, ratcheted up his accent and kept his eyes dead. Only once did anyone ever come close to making him as a copper.
Lestrade wondered if Sherlock had ever told John about it.
+++
He was working for a mid-level dealer named Joe Wren. Joe had a bird tattooed on the left side of his neck, a bird that looked even less like a wren than Joe did. So people mostly called him Hawk. More like a vulture, Lestrade thought. Hawk had a wrestler’s build, an accountant’s mind, and a sadist’s energy. A few weeks into the job, Lestrade had begged his superiors to let him bring Wren up on assault charges. He’d been refused: they were after Hawk’s higher ups, they said, everything else would come out in court, Lestrade shouldn’t get ahead of himself.
So here he was on another enforcement of payment expedition, with Hawk and a concrete slab of a man he knew only as Georgie, kicking down the door of a grubby bed-sit in Lambeth.
“No point in salutations, boys,” Hawk had said. “Best not to give him a chance to do a runner.”
The flat was a wreck. It smelt of dust, and unwashed clothes and something sharp and chemical. A chaos of books and papers and half-full test tubes and beakers littered every available surface. A threadbare dun-colored sofa was the only significant piece of furniture. At the sound of the door banging on its hinges, the lanky figure sprawled across it lifted its head and blinked dully at them.
“Up and at ‘em, Sunshine,” Hawk said, like this was his favorite thing in the world. Probably was. “We’ve come for what’s owed us.”
Lestrade had to dig his fingernails into his palm to keep from saying anything. He knew this man. It was Houghton’s wonder boy from the Yard, the one he’d been going on about for months.
“He just turned up one day,” Houghton had said. “Offering to consult. Straight out of university, looking like the worst kind of prat. You could smell the drugs on him, and other unsavory things besides. But damn if he didn’t solve the case by looking at the calluses on the vic’s right hand. Couldn’t say no to him after that.
Lestrade had seen him only once, coming out of Houghton’s office. Tall and thin, spectrally pale and weirdly elegant in his tight black clothes. Their eyes had caught—the youth’s a pale feline green, not the blue or hazel Lestrade had been expecting—and he’d smiled at Lestrade, just the slightest curl of his lips, before Lestrade tore his gaze away. There were certain aspects of his personal life he refused to indulge at work.
He held his breath now, waiting for the man to blow his cover. A hundred contingencies and fallbacks rushed through his mind. But the man gave no sign of having recognized him. Too strung out, perhaps—or else not quite as strung out as he seemed, already sussing out the situation.
Certain Events in Lambeth, Lestrade/Sherlock, non-con, (nc-17), 1/5
Also, I totally fail at comment fic, this is 2.5K....
++
(pre-series)
While Lestrade was working his way up through the ranks he pulled a few hard years in Narcotics. That time had included three stints undercover. He hadn’t liked them much, but he’d gotten the job done all the same. He’d grown his hair out a bit, worn clothes that let his muscles and his service tattoo show, ratcheted up his accent and kept his eyes dead. Only once did anyone ever come close to making him as a copper.
Lestrade wondered if Sherlock had ever told John about it.
+++
He was working for a mid-level dealer named Joe Wren. Joe had a bird tattooed on the left side of his neck, a bird that looked even less like a wren than Joe did. So people mostly called him Hawk. More like a vulture, Lestrade thought. Hawk had a wrestler’s build, an accountant’s mind, and a sadist’s energy. A few weeks into the job, Lestrade had begged his superiors to let him bring Wren up on assault charges. He’d been refused: they were after Hawk’s higher ups, they said, everything else would come out in court, Lestrade shouldn’t get ahead of himself.
So here he was on another enforcement of payment expedition, with Hawk and a concrete slab of a man he knew only as Georgie, kicking down the door of a grubby bed-sit in Lambeth.
“No point in salutations, boys,” Hawk had said. “Best not to give him a chance to do a runner.”
The flat was a wreck. It smelt of dust, and unwashed clothes and something sharp and chemical. A chaos of books and papers and half-full test tubes and beakers littered every available surface. A threadbare dun-colored sofa was the only significant piece of furniture. At the sound of the door banging on its hinges, the lanky figure sprawled across it lifted its head and blinked dully at them.
“Up and at ‘em, Sunshine,” Hawk said, like this was his favorite thing in the world. Probably was. “We’ve come for what’s owed us.”
Lestrade had to dig his fingernails into his palm to keep from saying anything. He knew this man. It was Houghton’s wonder boy from the Yard, the one he’d been going on about for months.
“He just turned up one day,” Houghton had said. “Offering to consult. Straight out of university, looking like the worst kind of prat. You could smell the drugs on him, and other unsavory things besides. But damn if he didn’t solve the case by looking at the calluses on the vic’s right hand. Couldn’t say no to him after that.
Lestrade had seen him only once, coming out of Houghton’s office. Tall and thin, spectrally pale and weirdly elegant in his tight black clothes. Their eyes had caught—the youth’s a pale feline green, not the blue or hazel Lestrade had been expecting—and he’d smiled at Lestrade, just the slightest curl of his lips, before Lestrade tore his gaze away. There were certain aspects of his personal life he refused to indulge at work.
He held his breath now, waiting for the man to blow his cover. A hundred contingencies and fallbacks rushed through his mind. But the man gave no sign of having recognized him. Too strung out, perhaps—or else not quite as strung out as he seemed, already sussing out the situation.