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Sally was the first one to hear it. It was just some simple melody, bright and full of energy, Commander Lestrade was humming—an old Earth song, she assumed—as he came on shift, relieving her for the day. The security chief winked at her as he took his place at tactical.
“You seem extremely…cheerful for someone just starting a shift, commander,” she said, eyeing him warily. “Most officers are not this excited to be going on duty.”
Greg just grinned at her, very nearly beamed, his dark eyes crinkling at the corners. “Could be I’ve got something to look forward to after this, and thinking about it’s put me in a ruddy good mood. You are relieved, lieutenant commander.” His smile went a bit lopsided as he turned away from her and settled into his station.
“Yes, sir,” Sally replied quietly, stepping away from her station and heading for the turbolift. As she walked away, she could still hear Greg humming to himself.
John scrubbed a hand over his face, his exhaustion weighing him down like one of those old-fashioned lead aprons people used to use when taking X-ray images. He really shouldn’t have stayed up all night helping Sherlock test his newest bit of programming, though it had, admittedly, been fun to run though the alleyways and over the rooftops of an early twenty-first-century London. The lack of sleep was already seeping into his bones as his trudged down to sickbay for alpha shift.
Quietly swishing, the door to sickbay slid open, and John found Greg inside, waiting for him. His back was hunched as he leaned over a table, and that was when John heard it, that something Sally had heard Greg humming days before. This time, though, there were words mixed in with the humming, quiet and breathless and barely there as John entered.
“Well I’ve been hmm-mmm hmm-mm hm hm hmmmmm, but thinking hmm-mmm, nothing could go wrong,” came the song in Greg’s husky voice.
“Lovely tune,” John said, and Greg started upright, twisting his body to face John. His eyes were wide and a subtle pink crept over his cheeks. He looked like a schoolboy who’d been caught out.
“Jesus, doc! Don’t sneak up on a bloke like that,” Greg gasped, clutching at his chest in surprise. “Nearly scared me out of my skin.”
“Well, if I did, I’m sure we’d find a way to put you back in it. Now what brings you down my way?”
Sherlock barreled down the corridors, chafing at having been sent packing from sickbay by none other than his very own diminutive medico love, Commander John Watson.
“No, Sherlock, you cannot stay here and take blood samples for your new simulation,” John had said, pushing past him. A small problem had occurred in engineering, resulting in an explosion that had given a handful of crewmen plasma burns and abrasions from shrapnel. Nothing too serious, all things considered, but people were still injured and needed tending to. “These people are in need of medical attention, and you poking and prodding at them is helping neither them nor me.”
“But John, I need them!” Sherlock had insisted, going so far as to pout at John a bit, his eyes watering and lower lip going all wibbly. He placed himself in front of the good doctor, hoping to tug on John’s heartstrings a bit to get his way. “Please, John? It will only take a moment. I’ll even do the draws myself, so you won’t be taken away from them.”
John’s jaw tensed and green spread over his face as he started to get well and truly angry. He straightened his spine, rolled back his shoulders. Went very, very still. He glowered up at Sherlock, five-feet-seven-inches of quietly thundering fury. “You’re already taking me away from them because I’m standing here, scolding a six-foot genius who insists on acting like a toddler to get what he wants instead of treating them. Now shove off, and let me work.” All Sherlock was able to do in response was stare, mouth hanging open as he felt the smaller man’s rage ricochet through his chest.
“That’s an order, lieutenant!” John barked. Shaken from his shock, Sherlock had pivoted on his heel and fled from sickbay.
Now Sherlock was at a bit of a loose end. He was technically off duty; he’d wanted the blood samples for a personal project he was planning. He didn’t think John would be so bent out of shape over a few vials of blood; the whole thing would have taken him less than five minutes, and really there were plenty of people down there from whom he could have taken a sample. John was clearly being unreasonable. Sherlock would tell him so when they both got back to quarters.
He needed something to do until John finished his shift; testing and then programming the viscosities of different blood types—as he’d planned to do, thank you, Commander Watson—would have sufficiently alleviated his boredom, but now he had nothing to do. He hadn’t thought John would deny him a few samples and thus hadn’t made a contingency plan. Actually, his current contingency plan was to stalk through the ship, pounding along and glaring at anyone who came to close.
He ploughed through two ensigns. He knocked into a lieutenant, sending her clipboard skittering to the floor. He very nearly ran bodily into Lieutenant Commander Donovan but had felt the Klingon from down the hall and decided a physical confrontation with her was not something he really wanted to pursue at the moment. Or ever, to be honest. He contented himself with shooting her a hateful look as he walked past.
Having fumed and paced around the ship for the better part of half an hour, Sherlock’s situation had not improved. He needed something to do. He could go back to sickbay and see if John was willing to listen to reason and let him have a few samples, but chances were John was still upset. No, that wouldn’t do. Lestrade was off duty, though. He had plenty of blood for Sherlock to sample, and his quarters were only two decks away. Sherlock practically sprinted to the turbolift.
Once on deck ten, Sherlock wound his way to Greg’s quarters. He tapped the panel outside Greg’s door, which announced his presence with a chime on the other side of the door. He waited. Tapped again. Waited. Tapped. Waited. Tapped. Got tired of waiting.
“Oh, for god’s sake,” he moaned, rolling his eyes and opening the door. He was not at all expecting the scene into which he was about to barge his way.
Greg’s quarters were filled with the pulse of music, something loud and, in Sherlock’s estimation sickeningly synthetic. It immediately set his teeth on edge with its saccharine, up-tempo…Sherlock didn’t even have a chance to figure out what because at that moment, Greg danced into the room. Literally danced, hips swaying and torso twisting, shirtless, as he moved to the beat of the music. He clutched a pair of his drumsticks in one hand, singing into them as the song moved on from its chorus.
“Well, I don’t really know her, I only know her na-ame,” he belted, eyes closed, body bowing over his “microphone.” He had no idea someone else was in the room with him. “But she crawls under your ski-i-in—you’re never quite the sa-a-ame. And now I know—”
Taking two long strides, Sherlock walked over to where Greg was dancing and tapped him on the shoulder. The security chief’s head whipped around, mouth seemingly stuck open as he gawped at Sherlock, his singing shuddering to a halt mid syllable. The music continued to play around them, pop-y and overly loud. Greg shook himself and shouted to the computer to end the playback; Sherlock merely smirked at him, raising an eyebrow.
“Late twentieth century pop music? Really, Lestrade. I expected better,” he scolded, clucking his tongue.
“Well, we can’t all have tastes that run as fine as yours, princess,” groused Greg as he crossed the room to tuck his sticks back into their bag on his drum kit. Sherlock just rolled his eyes.
“I suppose Queen and Prince are acceptable—the former was fairly innovative and the latter was a gifted musician. But Genesis?” Sherlock grimaced and gave a full-body shudder, simply for the effect of it, before flopping down on Greg’s bed.
“I’ll have you know Phil Collins was a bloody decent drummer,” Greg returned from across the room, rummaging in his closet for a shirt and tugging it on. “He was no Alex Van Halen, I’ll grant you, but the man knew what he was doing.”
“Drumming aside, the rest of that song was absolute drivel. Why were you even singing it in the first place?”
“I was…I. It’s none of your business,” Greg managed to stammer, his ears going a bit red. Sherlock stared at him through slitted eyes.
“Oh,” he drawled, mouth quirking up in a smirk. “Have a date with MOLLY, do we?”
Greg puffed out his chest, bristling a bit. He lifted his chin, staring Sherlock down. “So what if I do?”
“Then best not keep her waiting!” Sherlock jumped up from the bed and all but shoved Greg from the room. The door gave a soft whuff as it closed behind him. Greg sighed and turned, knocking on the door.
“Sherlock, open the damn door—I need my shoes!”
Greg wrapped his arm around MOLLY as they shouldered their way onto the dance floor. The holodeck had them in a facsimile of a London club, circa the late 1980s. Flashes of bright color from the lights above sliced through the club’s dark interior, and everything was far too loud as they wound their way through the crush of dancing bodies. The bass of the music playing pounded through Greg’s chest, but his heart pounded far louder as he danced with MOLLY, slowly and subtly guiding them toward the stage. The computer-generated band finished their song, and Greg beckoned to their frontman, who leaned down so Greg could ask him something. The man nodded, extending his arm to Greg and hauling him up on stage.
Greg grinned down at MOLLY, eyes dark and glittering in the stage lights, and she never thought he’d looked so gorgeous. Tight jeans, ripped at the knees, hugged his thighs, and silver spikes glinted on the toes of his boots. A dark, threadbare t-shirt clung to his torso as he talked to the other members of the band.
“All right, lads and ladies, this here is Greg,” piped up the holographic frontman as he jerked his thumb at Greg. He passed Greg his guitar. “And he’d like to sing a special song for his lady.” Greg stepped up to the mic and nodded at the band. The drummer counted them in, pounding his way into the song’s intro and setting up the beat as Greg picked out the melody on his guitar.
“Well I’ve been waiting, waiting here so long,” Greg sang, smiling at MOLLY. “But thinking nothing, nothing could go wrong. Ooh, now I know she has a built in ability to take everything she sees, and now it seems I’m falling, falling for her!” He leaned down, singing just to her as they went into the chorus.
“She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah—she reaches in, and grabs right hold of your heart!” He sang, beaming, the smile on his face bright enough to power one of the club’s strobe lights. MOLLY blushed prettily below him as Greg kept right on singing. “She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah—it takes control and slowly tears you apart!”