Chapter Text
His mind must be playing tricks. His hearing's going funny now he's within spitting distance of 5 decades on the planet. Or it's just a dream. Nothing makes sense because he's standing in Mycroft's townhouse, having been collected after his shift at the Yard and deposited in - of all places - the man's bedroom.
Or rather, the ridiculously posh 'sitting area' that attaches somehow to the man's bedroom. He's never been before, and these are not the circumstances he'd have preferred experiencing it for the first time.
They are now alone, Mycroft watching him from a wingback by the fireplace, still in one of his posh intimidating suits, unfairly long legs crossed elegantly at the knee, two glasses of amber liquid on the small table beside him, Greg stood just inside the door in rumpled off-the-peg synthetics.
And now apparently he's hearing things.
"You think I'm spying? On Sherlock? If I wouldn't do it for you, who the hell you think would tempt me to?!"
"It's... there have been rumours circulating in re your recent absences from the office. Not every one corresponds with times I have summoned you, and those that do not seem to line up with some of my dear brother's more... auspicious disappearances." He sighs, closes his eyes around a sip. He doesn't meet Lestrade's eye, instead searching for answers in the swirling liquor in his glass. "It's my b-brother, you understand. I have to be certain. He is always my priority."
"So I'm what? S'posed to be wearin' a wire? A tracker? Maybe GPS in my shorts?"
"I do not give credence to speculation which flies in the face of everything I know about you. I pride myself on being a good judge of character!"
"That make two of us! You've still had me fetched and brought to your home - and hang on. Why am I in your home? Why aren't we doin' this at your office, or your club? Security's gotta be better there."
"It is... an additional measure. I can control things quite well from here."
I'll just bet you can, gorgeous, Greg's mind supplies unhelpfully. The lie should be his focus.
"And I would never make such a request as I am about to anywhere but the safety of my home."
This man will be the death of him. Funny, really. He'd always figured if a Holmes was gonna kill him it'd be Sherlock. "Request? For what?" Fuck a duck. "Speak English, Myc!" Greg's fingers instantly ache to clench in his own hair and yank til things make sense again.
"I need you to take your clothes off." There's no air in the room. "Please."
It's the courteous afterthought he almost finds more shocking than the... request it was meant to emphasize. He feels the strangest urge to laugh. It has to be a joke.
"You are taking the piss?"
Mycroft deploys an eyebrow. "Enough time has passed between us for you to be well aware I am not known for my mirthful nature, Mr. Lestrade."
After 7 years, the correction is automatic. "Greg, and you can't be serious."
"I am, therefore I can."
"Mycroft-"
"Strip, Detective Inspector." The command and the low voice in which it's issued have an instant tightening effect on Greg's trousers, and then everything goes quiet in his head.
What? The fuck is really going on here?
He could explain the 'recent absences.' It'd be mortifying and he might melt through the carpet in shame, but he could do it. But something's flaring in his gut, shadow boxing with the long-banked flames of his desire for this hopelessly out of his league man, and he suddenly doesn't give a tinker's damn that he could explain. He doesn't think he should, and fuck it - he's not going to now. He wouldn't give Mycroft bloody Holmes the satisfaction if his life depended on it.
A sinfully long digit indicates a chair to Greg's left. "Clothes there as they come off, if you please."
Greg doesn't please. Greg is bloody well furious, the heightened emotion translating into jerky tight motions. He skins out of his blazer, slapping the fabric into a rough approximation of a ball and punting it at the chair.
Shirt next. He nearly snaps a button in half. If he didn't know it was only a trick in the movies, he'd rip the damn thing apart in one hard go.
"Slower, please, Detective Inspector."
Oh, fuck off, posh boy, he thinks viciously. I'll go my own pace. The movements don't slow at all. The shirt peels off him like a hunter field dressing a catch- methodical application of a swift economy of motion. It receives the same treatment, huffed into a wad and pitched at the chair.
He toes off his shoes one at a time, nudged together with his sock-clad feet as his eyes pin Mycroft's like sniper fire.
This is the last scenario he'd ever have considered for how he'd end up naked in front of Mycroft Holmes.
His fingers fly to his belt and the metal of the buckle barely has time to ring or click before the leather is whipping through his belt loops at speed.
"Inspector..." There's a warning in the quiet clipped tone, the shortened title. It will be summarily and blatantly disregarded.
Greg's fingers tighten on the width of material in a valiant attempt to keep from shying it at the man's head like Eliza Doolittle armed with a pair of slippers. And oh, he does not need another reminder right now of all the differences between them.
The leather is still warm from his body as he imagines strangling Mycroft with it. Nah. He'd just use the man's own tie, some stupidly expensive scrap of silk twisting tight around the marble column of his throat. Better yet, his bare hands. Mess up at least one bloody Holmes, get a hand on skin just to prove once and for all they're something approximating human. Flesh and bone instead of steel and silicon.
He tosses the belt, flung like a far-reaching hope, and reaches for his fly.
"Please, Lestrade." The voice is almost a growl now. And we're getting warmer, Greg thinks. Still not there yet, though.
He tips his head defiantly, screaming what? without a sound. The zip goes down, the harsh uncoupling of the metal teeth loud in the quiet. The only counterpoint is the sound of their breathing, and all the things going unsaid.
His hands jam into the gap between polyester and pants, and he is about to shove them -
The elder Holmes is on his feet in a flash. "Damn it, Gregory! Slow down!" It's imperious but impassioned and Greg is officially at the end of his tether.
"Mycroft?" Greg growls through gritted teeth, fully aware he sounds every bit the mongrel the elder Holmes thinks him to be. The faithful hound, the watchdog, the police mutt. "Fuck. You."
There's a moment, stretched fine and shimmering as a line of spidersilk, broken only by a few fluttering blinks that shutter those mercurial grey eyes.
"That... is... precisely what I'd like you to do."
Wait... what?
"However you'd prefer. As fast or slow, hard or calm as you like. If you like."
Wait a bleeding mo'. WHAT?!
Mycroft clears his throat before pressing on again. "I'd be content merely to look at you unclothed and compare it to my numerous mental approximations. However... in the event of anything further, I require... a few moments to... come to grips with the... burgeoning reality of this moment." He's blushing. Mycroft "minor position, my Aunt Petunia" Holmes is turning shell pink. Heaven help him, the man is blushing! And still talking like that. "I'm sorry for... but I've... wanted it rather a long time, you see and... I, in truth, had not ever really expected... Perhaps in my wildest of-"
Warm lips pressed to his own cut off what could've (and likely would have) devolved into self-recrimination and flagellating doubt, rapidly mutating into a rush of apology and a call for a car to take him far away while the man collects himself and leaves his life for good. He cannot make his brain process the speed with which Lestrade crossed the gap between them, insurmountable as it had seemed just a moment ago. He simply does not know how Gregory got to him so fast... in every way. It's the first time tonight he hasn't minded the Det. Inspector's speed.
All he can focus on is sensation. Warm steady pressure. Delicate skin. A faint trace of hours-old cologne and a hit of masculine pheromone. The bump of a nose against his own as the kiss realigns without breaking. A moan he can't imagine came from him, though he is in no shape to analyse determinative data. A soft slick shape - merciful heavens is that a tongue?! - tracing the seam of his lips, startling him to a gasp that allows it entry. The muted explosion of the flavour of Gregory hits his mouth like a bomb detonated underwater and his hands alight on Greg's arms, thumbs settling like fallen snow into the crease of his elbows. Large warm hands with lightly callused fingers are cupping his face, holding it like it's something delicate. Like he's something to be treasured and handled with care. Mycroft would swear he can feel every whorl and ridge of those prints imprinting on his skin.
Then it all ceases. His face is still held, gentle and light, but the kiss is gone. Their noses slide along one another and there's a tickling brush of hair before their foreheads press together. They're sharing breath, he's still holding onto Gregory's arms. If their relative position were rotated on axis 90 or so degrees, it'd be extremely intimate.
"You... brilliant idiot." The statement is a puff of perfumed air, a zephyr breathing into his soul. He can't bring himself to open his eyes. "I've wanted you for ages."
Wait. What?
"Absolute ages. I mean it. There was Sherlock, and makin' sure he was alright. But then you kidnapped me and... fuck me up. That was the start of it. Right down the rabbit hole. You even had a pocketwatch. Always figured you were outta my league."
"I am." Mycroft's lips move restlessly over Gregory's skin, dotting here and there with soft kisses, opening wide to taste and breathe him in. He pauses with the tip of his hawk nose at the juncture of Lestrade's jaw then closes his teeth around the sensitive lobe of his ear, worrying it a second before whispering like a secret into the delicate shell. "You are, put quite simply, magnificent. Far too beautiful ever to have noticed someone like me."
He can feel as much as hear the answering smile.
"Nice try, gorgeous. You're the hot one. I'm..." His lips carefully map the tender topography of the underside of Mycroft's jaw, like some wonderfully erotic cartographer. When he speaks again, Mycroft feels the vibrations to the tips of his curling toes. "I'm the scruffy Essex boy, divorced, cop on the job, all this grey-"
"Silver," the elder Holmes pants at the ceiling, his arms threading under the inspector's to clutch him close, buffed nails digging deliciously into the man's broad rock hard shoulders. "Not grey. It's silver, a precious metal. A standard."
"Mmmm..." Greg chuckles, the noise eventually rumbling into a drawn out moan when Mycroft rakes one set of nails down to the base of his spine, slips between the fabrics and tentatively cups his buttock. "Whatever you say, sunshine." His own hands are working methodically at the myriad buttons and fasteners on the too many sodding layers keeping him from Mycroft's skin. "Though... if I'm the silver standard..." He pauses to part the layers and slide his hands inside, marveling at the smooth expanse of pale skin he suddenly has access to. "S'at make you the copper?"
It's a terrible joke. Regardless, Mycroft's surprised burble of laughter is smothered up when Greg claims his mouth again in a crushing kiss.
Those tenderly capable hands are still roving over his flesh, flattening over his back and urging him forward until he's pressed intimately against Lestrade's own bared torso. His brain blinks, the sparest of seconds lost in feeling. The hot slide of tongues learning each other. The firm globe of muscle he's kneading in one hand, warmth radiating through the thin material still covering it. The tattoo of Gregory's heartbeat he can feel echoing in his own chest. The rather interested parties below currently introducing themselves through trousers and cleanly expressing their desire to better know one another... intimately. And immediately.
"What's your schedule like tomorrow, darlin'?" The question vibrates against his lips and oh good Lord that voice. Better than a drug, he'd wager - it's the first time he's ever been able to sympathise with Sherlock's former chemical dependencies if they were half so affecting as that sound.
"Mmmm," he shivers as Greg dots up his hawkish nose with little pecks, leaves Morse Code trails over the ridge of his cheekbone. "I believe... a light day. Relatively. A status meeting at 9, the Home Secretary at half 11, then meetings all afternoon. Why do you ask?"
"Because," comes the harshly sweet growl in his ear. "You might wanna clear your morning."
Gregory's hands have slid down to cup Mycroft's arse, and with a stunningly smooth surge, he lifts him clean off the ground. So startled is the minor official that his legs instantly thread themselves about the man's waist, holding on for dear life despite the trust he has that Gregory won't let him fall, won't let him down. It's a strange feeling, faith in another person, but when considered of the man he's wrapped around, a decidedly unshakable one, pleasant in its stability.
His fingers stretch up and tighten in Greg's gorgeously lustrous locks, and he wants almost nothing more than to snog the man breathless. Almost.
"The bedroom. Just there." He indicates the half-open door a few yards behind, and Greg is on the prowl before the last syllable has fallen from his lips. They stop in the doorway, Greg taking in the sizable sleigh bed decked in blue and grey linens, the reading glasses atop the bookmarked novel on the far bedside table, the cold fireplace.
For all that he's not a Holmes, he still sees a distant shimmer- six months, not more than a year or so on. There's an Arsenal mug on the near table, a bigger armoire so he can stash all his jeans and sweaters, a pair of toothbrushes keeping each other company in the en suite. Two halves, fit together like puzzle pieces, snuggling to create a perfect whole in the center of the bed.
It's nice.
"And next time you want me, naked or otherwise, just tell me. No need for games, alright? I do better when I know what I'm meant to be doing." A blush paints itself over Mycroft's cheeks as he worries at his lower lip, a frisson of shame over his false pretense threading through the haze of desire. It's jolted right back out when Greg bounces him sharply in his arms, shooting him a decidedly cheeky grin. "Your voice already turns me on. Don't be afraid to speak up with me, deal?"
There's a brief consideration, cost/benefit analysis, a future to be glimpsed in the cocoa depths of the man's eyes. Then he pulls out his Very Serious 'I absolutely mean business' tone.
"Gregory. Shut up and take me to bed."
"Yes, sir."