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John comes around and Lestrade makes himself scarce. So what if three years ago, he fell asleep in his own bathtub and got thrown up on his for his trouble as he nursed Sherlock through withdrawal? So what if he sometimes came home to find Sherlock passed out on his couch with Lestrade's cat purring like an engine on his chest? So what if Sherlock had no sense of personal space and once, memorably, a year and a half ago kissed him full on the mouth in the middle of a crime scene and Lestrade was treated to a ride to an empty warehouse where he was offered tea and asked about the nature of his relations with one Sherlock Holmes? So what. Sherlock had never looked at him the way he looked at Dr. Watson, and the way everything including the latenight visits stopped altogether, well, maybe Sherlock didn't strictly have friends, but whatever he had, he clearly only needed one of them.
Of course it didn't take long to come around to John Watson, dependable and stoic Dr. Watson who never needed to be told twice and knew exactly when to offer a man a drink. Traumatized civilians were drawn to him like moths, Lestrade's officers all wanted to be his best friend, and, of course, Sherlock Holmes couldn't take his eyes off him.
Perhaps Lestrade had just now accepted a few too many of those drinks. John was staring at him. He stared back, in the unconcerned misty watery place of of the decidedly dizzy and tried to remember if he had said outloud any of the questions that leapt to mind when Sherlock had just now placed his hands on John's shoulders to move past him behind the chair.
"Can I get you another glass, Lestrade?" Lestrade broke the inadvertent drunk staring contest he had been having with the foggy-eyed man in the opposite armchair. Sherlock was holding up a china tea cup balanced on a matching plate, and filling it with over an inch of what looked and smelled suspiciously of light rum. Out of a beaker.
"You did not," Lestrade managed, sitting up in an armchair that was most determined that he slouch.
"An experiment." Sherlock passed a matching cup to John and gestured the half full beaker in a toast. They weren't going to sip it then. It went down like acid after the first two swallows and Lestrade felt a distinct feeling of unease settle in his stomach as he managed the rest of it.
"Lovely," Lestrade managed, breathing carefully. Sherlock had no such compunction about coughing, and did so, leaning with one elbow on the armchair until John snorted and sprayed the moonshine back into his teacup, running off to blow it out of his nose a moment later.
"Any interesting cases?" John broke the comfortable silence after a while. Sherlock gazed into the ceiling from the couch, one hand trailing on the ground.
"No, not for the likes of you two," he said. To be honest, he had thought that he had been called over so that Sherlock could inform him that one of the files on his desk was more interesting that he thought, but that perfectly reasonable assumption had flown out the window the moment Sherlock had opened the door and shoved an unreasonably generous glass of wine in his hand.
It was only polite to stay a minute and drink it.
And then, it all went to Hell. He thought about it for a minute, and decided this was most definitely the moment he would remember as the Moment it Went To Hell. He stood up a minute later, vague ideas of searching for an actual cup of tea swimming in his mind, and the world tipped sideways, a soft/hard surface coming up to slam into him. He registered Sherlock's pale fingers making a fist in his shirt and blinked, and blinked again as the world seemed to keep stretching and contracting like a mirrorhouse.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Sherlock's preternaturally deep voice was right up agaist his ear. He focused with a little effort on the other man's blown out eyes, pupils practically obscuring the strange silver color entirely. It was creepy, Lestrade decided, and he struggled to sit up straight on the couch.
"I haven't done anything like this for... Do people my age get this drunk?" Lestrade leaned back until he was slouching at the level of the man beside him, another piece of furniture that wanted to swallow him. He tried to remember why he didn't do this more often. Maybe that's what they did here all the time, throw shots out of Mrs Hudson's china when there wasn't a case. Maybe that's why Sherlock never came by to pet his cat anymore, never once, not since John, not that Sherlock picked his lock once a week merely to say Hello to Angelo, but that wasn't the point. What was the point?
Sherlock's hand landed on his thigh above his knee, casually curling around, and with a rush of heat Lestrade remembered why he never drank like this. He swallowed, and didn't look away from the low-playing movie John had put on the telly, and didn't see Sherlock move out of the corner of his eye, and it's not like it was obvious, not unless someone had been looking right at his lap in expectation of a reaction.
Lestrade forced himself to relax, to stop fighting the oceanic buzz settling itself in his veins as he zoned out on the television, and ignore how very very wrong Sherlock's hand felt on his knee, thumb idly rubbing across the seam of Lestrade's trouser leg.
He swallowed the strange guilty feeling that had been building with every catch of Sherlock's nail on his jeans when John squirmed, folding his leg underneath him and caught Lestrade's eye, smiling unconcernedly.
"You're making him nervous, John," Sherlock said without opening his eyes, his head cradled in the sofa.
"I'm making him nervous?"
"Yes. I'm not bothering you, am I, Inspector?" Sherlock furrowed his brow and his fingers slid around to rest in the hollow under Lestrade's knee. John was rolling his eyes, pointedly staring at the television.
"I-- no, not exactly," Lestrade said, making a decision not to get involved in or deal with whatever powerplay was going on until the next morning when he could be properly horrified in the cold light of sobriety. He cringed as Sherlock's fingers curled possessively.
Sherlock frowned from his near-supine position, studying Lestrade's face as he gripped his knee. "Are you in pain?" he asked. "At this moment I don't think you should be be feeling much pain."
No, nothing hurt. "No, I just-- you're just," he huffed an irritated breath as Sherlock squeezed again, short fingernails pressing under his knee, the sharp feeling ricocheting ridiculously up his leg in a way that had nothing to do with pain. Someone rescue me from geniuses with no sense of appropriate personal space, Lestrade prayed to himself.
"Oh," Sherlock said flatly. Having discovered no mystery injury to interrogate him about, Sherlock removed his fingers from the back of Lestrade's knee again. Lestrade sighed with relief, sinking an inch deeper into the sofa, wishes of his own clean sheets and uncomplicated feline companions who never used him to make their boyfriends jealous surfacing vaguely.
"Are you ticklish here, too?" Sherlock asked suddenly. His casual grip suddenly turned mean, clamping down on the muscle just above Lestrade's knee in a kneading grasp.
"Fuck!" Lestrade swore as he was shocked from his comfortable sprawl. He grabbed at Sherlock's wrist, prying at fingers that somehow knew exactly how to drive him crazy. Sherlock quirked an eyebrow at him curiously, and then began to laugh, releasing Lestrade's tormented limb to wrap his arm around his stomach and cover his eyes with the other hand.
"Damn it, Sherlock." Lestrade had never seen Sherlock Holmes giggle like that and he grinned, even as he realized that they must be very drunk, and he was perhaps in a lot of trouble.
"Okay, but come here." He feinted for Lestrade's kneecap, and Lestrade bent over to protect himself, squirming as fingers prodded his ribs and ghosted along his hairline. A hand snaked under his leg when he wasn't looking and pinched the sensitive skin there viciously, interrupting Lestrade halfway through a lunge for the safe clutches of the armchair.
He landed on his knees on the floor, arms wrapped around it and hating Sherlock Holmes. His breath was forced out of him as he was grabbed and pushed to land in a disorganized heap on his back in the middle of the floor. John fastidiously pulled his other foot up into the armchair behind his head and Lestrade groaned as he was straddled by a great gangly mass of consulting detective. "You could help," he said.
"Whom, though?" Sherlock answered for John and grinned, his eyes narrowing in concentration a moment later. Lestrade glared back at him, trying to put as much disapproval and irritation into his eyes as possible, as he bit his lip trying to hold still and keep a straight face as as his torso was poked and prodded.
"Sherlock!" Lestrade writhed as Sherlock's wandering hands settled resolutely over his lower ribs and set about cracking him open. He let loose a string of curses before he lost the game entirely and was helpless for laughing.
"Not there, god damn you." At least no one else from the Yard was here to hear him giggling like a teenager who hadn't yet completely dropped his voice, he thought, as Sherlock's fingertips found the weak soft spots above his hipbones, where his shoulder met his neck, and on his back above his kidneys every time he tried to crawl away.
"Here, then?" Sherlock reached back with one hand, getting a relentless grip on Lestrade's knee and Lestrade yelped and tried to curl up at the intolerable electricity of it, shaking Sherlock by his shirt front for lack of a better option.
"I had better not be the only one," Lestrade managed when his knees were given a much needed break. He reached for Sherlock's bony ribcage. Sherlock let himself be pushed to the floor, but he only laughed when Lestrade was forced to give up as Sherlock got bored with being tickled and found his own more sensitive sides.
Sherlock stilled finally and Lestrade caught his breath half on top of him in the center of the floor, unable to move just yet. He shivered as Sherlock reached towards his neck, and drew the line of his spine with his fingertips until his hand came to rest gently at Lestrade's lower back.
Lestrade raised himself cautiously on his elbows. Sherlock opened one eye irritably, as if he had been planning to sleep there on the carpet, with a Detective Inspector blanket.
The television had been turned off, and the sounds of brushing teeth could be heard in the other room. Sherlock stared up at him, unreadable and impossible and Lestrade felt a familiar weight settle in his stomach, one now heavily tinged with embarrassment and prescient regret. And why wasn't he maintaining some miles distance between them, again?
"Sherlock..."
"Yes, you may."
"May what?"
"Kiss me. And John, too, most likely."
Stiff fingers curled into Lestrade's sides when he hesitated. "You're going to hold this against me for the rest of my life, aren't you?" Lestrade asked in lieu of any one of the more slippery questions that were reeling and faltering through his mind.
"Yes."
Lestrade jumped as Sherlock's fingertips twitched dangerously. He smiled and leaned down before he could let himself think, before he was alone in the morning and throwing up in his own bathroom and it was all his own horrible fault because he couldn't say No to Sherlock Holmes, but like a mantra-- he was drunk he was drunk he was drunk.
"Wait," he said, pulling back, beginning to process the impossible words, wonderful or deadly he didn't yet know, but was there a difference, with Sherlock Holmes?
"'John, too, most likely'?" he repeated.
Sherlock rolled his eyes and sighed heavily, and wasn't that familiar. "Well, yes. He's making up the bed just now, but you can verify with your own lips in mere minutes. Now kiss me. Or else," he added.
Lestrade laughed and did so, gladly.