Breaking the ice {Mystrade}

Chapter Eleven - Reflections

Greg impatiently tapped his steering wheel as the cars continued to crawl at a snail's pace across the M25.
It was a scorching hot day (well, as hot as England could get) and the air-con in Greg's dusty old Ford Fiesta had finally given up the ghost. What remained of a Buxton water bottle now lay discarded in the seat beside him, cloudy and dripping with lukewarm condensation, which by a surprising coincidence was also exactly how Greg felt.
He was already twenty-five minutes late to the airport, and the traffic still showed no signs whatsoever of clearing. Mycroft wouldn't be pleased, that was certain...
He found it difficult to comprehend what him and Mycroft's position was exactly. Every move had been on the spur of the moment, every interaction had seemed to further things both delightfully and worryingly in equal measures. Who could have known an month and a half ago, that none other than D.I. Greg Lestrade would fall into the loving clutches of the British Government himself? It was entirely unthinkable! The uptight, snide, bastard brother of Sherlock Holmes!
It had taken one meeting to change all of that.
He remembered the very moment Mycroft had entered the room, dressed to perfection, pristine, not a thread out of place. Beautiful.
"Eyes the warmest shade of ice." Greg murmured to himself, recalling the same words which flitted through his mind each and every time he looked at the auburn - something which happened remarkably often. Greg could stare at Mycroft for hours on end, never tiring of what he saw: fox-like hair; strong, inquisitive eyes; a diamond-rare smile.
Greg had firmly placed that smile as the Eighth Wonder of The World.
That side, of course, was at least one layer beneath the heartless exterior which previously was the only thing visible to Greg, as it was to most - save perhaps Sherlock. Later by layer, shard by shard, Greg was determined to melt the iceman, to unlock him entirely.
The key was in the lock, (so's to speak) at this point. The key fitted perfectly well, yet had jarred a little on the first attempt. In time and with strategy, a little wriggling might persuade it to turn...
Just how long it would take was aggravatingly indeterminate.
So far, they'd had four dates, fifteen "chance meetings", three coffee mornings, one accidental drunken stay-over and lots of kissing.
All of this happened within the space of one and a half months.
One and a half.
And now, Greg was on his way to the airport to spend four days in Spain with him. Admittedly, it was a work-focused trip, and Mycroft had asserted to the Yard that Greg was going with him as a private bodyguard of sorts ("He's the only one of your inadequate force that I have any form of trust in.", Mycroft had explained). However, Greg knew that he wasn't only there to protect. He had Thursday to look forward to for that.
Still, things were going absurdly fast - one minute, Mycroft Holmes was the occasional subject of a joke in the office, the next, he found himself kissing the auburn with as much passion as he would a long-term lover - on bridges, in cars... Greg had fallen for The Government like a schoolboy for a celebrity.
This is a work trip, not a holiday.
He reminded himself.
But Thursday is...

Without the aircon, the heat was intense, beating down through the thick wind mirror. At this rate, he'd be tanned before the plane even took off.
He would've opened the window, if it were able to be opened - it was a very old fiesta - a present from his late Granddad who no longer found the use of it in his declining years. The money was there to buy a new one, but nostalgia prevented him every time he took it through the car wash, as it would come out looking a little less dusty, and a little more like the car he'd grown with.
Lazily, he flicked on the radio, and the familiar BBC2 jingle floated through the car.
"Good Afternoon, you're listening to Steve Wright in the afternoon on BBC Radio 2..."
The car engine ticked over patiently as the motorway stacked up.
"...Okay, we have a call from a Mister Michael Holmesbury, how are you today, Michael?..."
"Bloody song requesters..." Greg murmured. He listened to BBC2 specifically to escape the hideous modern music other stations projected 24/7 - the all request hour utterly defeated the point. He leant forward to switch it off when suddenly, he froze.