I felt a need to do this.

So basically, Lestrade is my favourite character in the history of ever, and quite frankly Rupert Graves is bloody gorgeous. And I have a ridiculous amount of headcanons for him that were just sitting round gathering dust in a box in my brain. So here is my THINGS YOU DONT KNOW ABOUT GREG LESTRADE.

This is not the last. This is but chapter one. There are many more coming.

No specific pairing, but I fear there could be some Lestrade/Molly (I'm hoping the ship name Mole Trading will catch on) in later chapters because I ship those two q uite passionately.

But enough about me: let's hear about Lestrade.

If you've read this much, thanks. Now keep going.

And apologies in advance for my Canada.

He's a musician at heart.

For every moment he wishes he was Sherlock - and there's quite a few - there's a moment he thanks God he isn't, because he's seen what that man's gone through.

He can sing. Like, well. Very well. But it's rare you'll hear him outside of the shower.

He has a thing for redheads. But he's never actually dated one. He just stares at them on the street. But not in a creepy way.

He has a motorcycle. He's been riding since he was a teenager, but he hardly touches it now. Maybe he should.

He can eat an entire cheesecake in one sitting. It was a bet so the calories don't count.

Whenever he makes Sherlock smile, he feels like he's just won a very prestigious award. It's the greatest feeling in the world.

His favourite new series companion is Rose. But for some reason he feels as though he shouldn't tell people that.

He's reasonably sure Sherlock and John are secretly married.

He's good at football.

He's sterile. Infertile. He can't have children. And it breaks his heart.

He was the lead singer in his high school rock band.

He's seen some really terrible things.

It kind of bothers him Sherlock didn't know his name. I mean, it's a one-syllable name. He must have room for it somewhere in that head of his.

He had his first kiss when he was nine. She moved away that summer. She was the first girl he ever lost.

He remembers every single time he's ever shot that gun to kill.

Anderson really, really pisses him off sometimes.

He grew up in the country. His family moved to London when he was eleven.

He's a film buff. Name any movie and he'll give you a plot synopsis, director, full cast list, rating out of ten and throw in some fun facts for good measure. He has a basement full of DVDs and a huge home entertainment system. There isn't much else to do when you live alone.

Sometimes he cries at said films. Quite often, actually. If they're sad. And it's not like there's anyone to see him.

He had to give Sherlock mouth-to-mouth once. You really shouldn't mention it in front of either of them.

He never misses work. Even when he's sick. Even when he's very sick. He's dedicated, sure, yes, but mostly it's because being home alone when you're sick is really awful.

He knows how to deactivate the smoke alarms in the toilets at the Yard, and sometimes he will so he can go in there and smoke without being detected. He goes home immediately after to shower and change, so that not even Sherlock can tell. He's betraying Sherlock and he feels awful, and filthy. But quitting is hard, and he's weak.

He's been involved in only three serious relationships.

Sometimes he figures things out on his own, but he lets Sherlock tell him anyways.

He has this problem where he can't stop drawing on his hands. He's had to take all the sharpies out of his desk and hide them because it distracts him from work. He spent his teenage years with his hands covered in ink. Someone told him you can get cancer from that. He thinks it was Gregson, though, and he doesn't really care what Gregson thinks anyways.

He played trombone in high school, but he dropped it after he graduated. Same with his guitar, but for a completely different reason.

He's been shot twice. The first was a clean shot through his thigh. The second was his chest. Just below the lungs, just above the abdomen. The bullet embedded itself in his spine and he was paralysed waist-down for about a month. They told him it would be his whole life. Spinal surgery, and then therapy for months, and he could walk again. But he never takes walking for granted. Never.

He took that bullet for Sherlock. Jumped in front of him at the last minute. And he still doesn't regret it.

He doesn't have many friends. It's strange, that. Primary school, high school, he was the most popular kid in the class. The grade, even. In Oxford, still, people were drawn to him. He graduated with a good circle of friends. But they've all moved on, been married, had children, and they're in a world he can't quite reach. Not their fault, for moving on, it's his, for standing still. He's at a point now where his closest friends are John and Oh-what's-your-name-again Sherlock Holmes, and it's a bit odd, but he doesn't mind it at all.

He still meets with his old friends, in bars, restaurants, but it's less and less of a gathering and more and more of a duty. They grill him about his job, and Sherlock, and his life they find so terribly exciting. They tell him how lucky he is, and he offers to trade. They think he's joking. He's not.

He played basketball, football and rugby in high school. Still could, probably. But he doesn't have anyone to play with.

He loves the idea of pickup trucks - there's something odd and romantic about them, something special, a ghost of summers and country roads and wide black skies full of stars. There is no use for them in London, but sometimes now he looks at his car and wishes he had one. He's not sure why he's so drawn to them. Although Sherlock would probably just make him cart around dead bodies in it.

He's never had a one night stand. It's his go-to whenever the drinking games start up and someone suggests "I Never." He's not really sure why. He supposes it's because he likes it to mean something. Dimmock thinks this is beautiful. Donovan thinks this is ridiculous. Sherlock doesn't know what a one night stand is, and John has to explain it.

He wrote dozens and dozens of songs in high school, for his band. He doesn't remember any of them now, save one. But bits and pieces come to him sometimes, and he'll sing them aloud, or hum them out, only to forget them in the next second. He thinks if he wasn't a cop he would have been a musician.

He witnessed almost all of Sherlock's detox and it was horrible.

Once, when Sherlock was cleaning up, he came by, just on a whim, and took Sherlock out to look at stars. He figured it would be twenty minutes at most before Sherlock got bored or the two of them got into a screaming row. But they spent three hours out on the hillside, and Sherlock never once complained. They hardly said a word to each other, but Lestrade thinks those three hours were the best conversation he's ever had with anyone.

He started going grey around the time he met Sherlock. More than enough said, really.

His favourite kind of ice cream is plain chocolate. He hates it when you add all those little chocolate chips and brownie pieces and cookie-dough chunks and fudge icing and rubbish. People should enjoy chocolate for chocolate's sake. Really.

He eats when he's stressed. Which is a lot. But you try putting up with Sherlock without gaining a few pounds.

He has this weird urge sometimes to learn how to ballroom dance. He doesn't know why. It's not like he has anyone to dance with.

Rebecca. He met her through his school musical. He was sixteen and trying out for the male lead. Usually it was the oldest students in the title roles, but Lestrade was anything but usual and he got the part. The day they called him down to the theatre department to tell him the news was the day he met Rebecca. She was on set design, and had come to the drama office to get a key to the storage room. That was why she thought she was there, but the truth, Lestrade later decided, was that she'd been sent there. To congratulate him as he walked out of the office, beaming. To strike up that conversation, to make that lunch date, to toss her brown hair over her shoulder in that way he adored. She was sent there for him. To make him better.

Even later, of course, he decided that she'd been sent there just to tear him apart.

If he'd never met her, he'd never had had to lose her.

They were friends, and then best friends, and then they were dating, through the end of that year and all through the summer, and the year after. And when auditions came round for the musical he convinced Rebecca to try out. She was a phenomenal actress and a beautiful singer and she made female lead effortlessly, while Greg had the starring role again. Maybe he should have seen then that it was all too perfect. But he didn't. He was too busy. Musical consumed both their lives, but they never fell behind in their schoolwork, they always made time to study together. The car crash was two months before opening night.

No one ever expected Greg or Rebecca's understudies to see any stage time. The two were completely devoted to the performance. But on opening night both the understudies took the stage for them.

The first thing you learn as an actor is that the show must go on. But Greg wasn't an actor. He was a singer.

He wrote her three songs, one for her birthday and two more just because. He sang them to her whenever he could, and sometimes she'd pick up the words quickly and sing a duet part in her delicate soprano. She never tired of having him sing to her. His band picked up her favourite of the three, Ten Thirty Indigo Skies, and won a thousand quid cash prize in the local talent competition. That remained their biggest claim to fame - the band never made it far. But she came up to him and kissed him at the end of the piece, and that was worth more than a thousand quid any day of the week, and he was happy.

He named that song for her favourite colour. You asked Rebecca what her favourite colour was, and she would tell you purple. But Greg alone knew that her favourite colour was the beautiful deep shade of blue-purple the sky turned around ten thirty, that made the stars stand out like nothing else. A good part of their lives were spent sitting out on the roof of Greg's house watching the stars, and they knew the colours of the sky very well. But the deep purple-blue, the one they named 10:30 indigo, was always her favourite. They'd once spent many hours and countless bottles of Rebecca's paint - she was a painter - trying to replicate it. But they found it impossible. Rebecca wasn't fazed. "Some things aren't meant to be captured." she said. "Some things you just have to experience." So they abandoned the paint and laid back on the roof together as the sky turned to 10:30 indigo and the stars shone like diamonds.

He was going to ask her to marry him. He thinks the best moments of his life were spent on that roof under 10:30 indigo skies. He'd decided, he'd dreamed, that when - it had been a when, not even an if, even at seventeen years old, - he proposed to her it would be under a 10:30 indigo sky full of stars.

He sang Ten Thirty Indigo Skies for the last time at her funeral. There was a memorial, and everyone from his school came, everyone who'd heard him belt out those same lines on a stage lit with all the glitz and the trappings of a high school auditorium, and he sang that song for the very last time in his life. For her, one last time. And never again. He stopped singing. He hung up his guitar. But he still knows every word, every chord. He's forgotten every other song he once wrote for his high school band - hell, he's forgotten the name of his high school band, the name that's importance was second only to Rebecca Lindsey in his high school life - but he'll never forget a word of Ten Thirty Indigo Skies.

He can't remember her. He's forgotten her handwriting, the smell of her perfume, the length of her hair, the name of her dog. Her face is a blur in his memory. It hurts sometimes, to think he's forgetting her. But he'll never forget a damn word of Ten Thirty Indigo Skies. And almost every night round ten thirty he'll look out the window and wonder if that's a good thing or not.

He's going to sell his house. One day. He'll buy a nice little place. A proper London flat, tiny and cramped and barely enough room to move. It's too big. Four bedrooms, two and a half baths? He doesn't know what the hell he was thinking. Actually, he does. He was thinking he would have a family there. A wife who didn't cheat, kids to fill the bedrooms, a dog, even. He likes dogs. But that's stupid and impossible and he pretends he doesn't know what the hell he was thinking buying a house because knowing he has to give up on that dream is more painful than it should be.

People thought he was gay for his first year and a half of university. Of course no one tells him this until his wedding. Turns out it was a general consensus on campus. He's not sure if he should be offended. But then, he never looked at girls. He'd had his heart broken enough. Love scared him. He was afraid to fall in love again. So he didn't.

He thought she was the one. He met her half-way through his second year at Oxford. He didn't want to fall in love. Love meant eventual heartbreak, and his heart was far too fragile to risk that again. But she strengthened him. Built him back up, taught him to love again, to trust again. And when they were out of university he asked her to marry him.

Twenty five years later she was sleeping with a gym teacher.

Funny how things work out.

His favourite Beatles song is "Hey Jude" So let it out and let it in, Hey Jude, begin, you're waiting for someone to perform with...

He loves the rain. People complain about gray, rainy London, but he likes the rain. It's calming, it's beautiful, it helps him think. And in the rain, no one can tell if you're crying or not.

Some nights he sleeps in his desk chair. Sometimes there's so much work he just doesn't bother leaving. It's not like he has anything to go home to. Sometimes it's not even a decision, he just passes out late one night and wakes up eight hours later.

He thinks he's meant to be alone.