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holmesticeTitle: Caring is not an Advantage
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frozen_delight
Author:dioscureantwins
Characters: Sherlock, Mycroft, Anthea, Mummy, Daddy, John, Mrs Hudson, OC’s
Rating: T
Warnings: no warnings apply.
Beta: the amazingstardust_made was so kind as to help me. She’s a wonderful writer and an incredibly kind and resourceful beta. Thanks to her this has become a much better story than it would have turned out to be otherwise.
Summary: “Fine.” A sharp click in his ear told Mycroft Sherlock had ended the call, robbing Mycroft of the chance to implore him to be careful. Slowly, he put the receiver back in place. Perhaps that was better, after all.
I was very happy and honoured to find I had been assigned the lovelyfrozen_delight. Dear frozen_delight, I’ve endeavoured to write you a story that would give you pleasure and sincerely hope I’ve succeeded in doing just that.
“…and of course he’d put them exactly where I told him to look in the first place.”
“Hmm,” Mycroft offered into the receiver he was holding in his left hand while the right drove his fountain pen over the final draft for the Independent Press Council bill, jotting down corrections and alternative formulations.
“Are you listening, Mikey?” His mother’s voice had acquired the peeved tone she had spent years polishing to a precision few women in history had managed to reach, Lady Hamilton included. Mycroft rolled his eyes, sighed inwardly and put down the pen.
“Of course I am listening to you, Mummy,” he replied, pinching the bridge of his nose. “It’s rather difficult to do anything else.”
“There’s no need to get snippy with me. Do you know, in some ways you’re only a little better than Sherlock! Sometimes I wonder what I did wrong to deserve the two of you. Such wayward children…How is Sherlock, by the way? Have you heard—”
“Sherlock is dead,” Mycroft cut into the verbal torrent. His free hand balled into a fist. They had talked about the need never to discuss Sherlock over the phone. He had instructed both his parents repeatedly. Not that his father needed any instructing. The man wasn’t even allowed near the instrument.
“Yes, I know that,” his mother said, the pitch of her voice conveying her opinion of Mycroft’s mental faculties loud and clear. “But we’re worried and you never tell…”
Mycroft replaced the receiver in the cradle. Fifteen seconds later the phone started ringing. Seething internally Mycroft reached for the other phone on his desk, the secure line. His parents belonged to the chosen few who had the number—Mycroft himself had entered it into their landline explaining they only had to press the number ‘six’ for three seconds to establish a connection. Yet his mother persisted in calling him on one of the other, less secure lines, and began each conversation with a diatribe on the amount of keys she had to tap in order to contact him.
“Holmes speaking,” his father answered his mobile after it had rung for half a minute straight. He was a little out of breath. In all probability a frantic search for the phone had just been conducted.
“It’s Mycroft, Daddy.”
“Oh, Mycroft, my boy. What a coincidence. Your mother was just trying to call you again. The line was disconnected all of a sudden. Wait… wait, I’ll hand you over to her…”
The sounds of a minor scuffle travelled over the line, soon followed by his mother asking sternly, “Mikey, is that you? Why did you hang up?”
“I didn’t, Mummy.” Mycroft chose to play innocent rather than engage in another endless discussion on Mrs Holmes’s scorn for the security measures he tried to impose on her. “These things happen sometimes, even in our modern day and age. Now you were asking about Sherlock. He was in Tibet last I heard, working hard on his Dharma.”
# # # #
The day was so swelteringly hot it was really unpleasant. The sun was beating down on him mercilessly as Mycroft loitered beside his new Jaguar coupé at their local station car park. He was leaning against the searingly hot metal of the hood with what he hoped was casual grace, his one buttock—clad in the inconspicuous camel twill he’d changed into upon arriving at the parental home—slowly roasting.
His mother had sent him to the station to collect his seventeen-year-old brother. After some demurring, which Mycroft undertook for the sake of form rather than the expectation that it would affect the outcome of their discussion, he had acquiesced with her request. Sherlock, he ratiocinated, would suffer as much acute vexation at having to use this particular form of transportation as Mycroft would from having to put up with him for the duration of the drive to their home. Contrary to Sherlock’s discomfiture, however, Mycroft’s would be sweetened by the pleasure of driving his own beautiful car. Mycroft shifted his stance against the gracefully shaped metal of his pride and joy. To derive satisfaction from the idea of one’s younger sibling eating his heart out was rather immature, Mycroft supposed. Yet in this particular instance there were enough exonerating circumstances to condone such base emotion—a little at least.
The train had stopped at the station about a minute earlier and the first hasty travellers began pouring out into the car park, clashing with the few belated stragglers who were hurrying towards the station in the hope of catching the train. Behind him Mycroft discerned the sound of hurrying high heels, striking the tarmac to the irregular rhythm of a desperately panting breath. As, earlier, Mycroft had found the parking lot filled to overflowing necessitating him to manoeuver the Jaguar into a slot at quite a distance from the station itself, it was easy to deduce this late arrival was going to miss her train. A girl his own age materialised at his side, then slowed down and halted. She was dressed splendidly, but the overall effect was spoiled by her slightly crouching posture and the hand that was pressed against her side in acute physical distress.
“Blast,” she muttered, glaring at the station building. She took a look at her watch and then back at the station that glimmered in the distance like the mesmerising mirage of an oasis in the overheated haze that rose from the blistering pavement. After drawing in a few deep breaths the young woman straightened. She fixed her eyes on the building with renewed vigour and lifted a foot to start walking at seemingly more leisurely pace.
Something she must have spotted made her put the foot down again. The same thing lit a beaming smile on her face. Mycroft could just hear her inward “Oh my!” She had the luminosity of someone who had chanced upon an exceptional work of art. Intrigued, Mycroft followed her gaze to see what had piqued her admiration.
He was amazed to realise that the vision her eyes were drinking in was none other than his little brother. Sherlock had just separated himself from the throng of commuters churning out of the station and had halted on the second-to-last step, posing like a statue on a dubious pedestal. The step was part of the corrugated iron overpass, whose twentieth-century utility made short work of the attempt at elegance the Victorian architect had endeavoured to imbibe to the original station building by adding such details as the mock Tudor herringbone brickwork, the mullioned windows and the steeply pitched roof.
After flinging his holdall to the ground Sherlock’s fingers delved into the pocket of his bluer to whip up a packet of cigarettes. His heavily despised, oblique hat was conspicuous for its absence; stuffed into the holdall, no doubt.
Eyes scanning the parking lot, Sherlock lit up the cigarette and threw his head back to draw the first inhalation of nicotine deep into his lungs. The long column of his throat shone pale beneath the darkness of the overpass roof, its creamy incandescence contrasting with the bright-hot flare of the cigarette tip above.
Two city workers, dressed in the identical, insipid garb of the harassed pen pusher, burdened with attachés and with the urge to start the weekend, jostled past him. The burlier man inadvertently bumped against Sherlock’s shoulder in his haste. Sherlock shot him an annoyed glance, sighed deeply and flicked his cigarette, then wrapped his lips around it again. He took another drag before hopping down the last couple of steps and bending forward to lift his bag from the ground. He slung it over his shoulder with the casual grace of a black panther lifting itself up on its hind legs to sharpen its nails on the bark of the tree from which it had just descended.
Mycroft had forgotten the girl’s existence but was reminded of it by her sighing and resuming her journey across the car park. Whether the swing of her hips was wholly attributable to the relative height of her heels was a question Mycroft, who had never held much interest in women’s footwear, preferred to refrain from answering.
Sherlock, naturally, ignored her. He sauntered towards Mycroft, tossing his curls when he discerned what exactly Mycroft was leaning against. His eyes travelled over the discreet Davy grey leather of the seats and the steering wheel, as well as the beautifully wrought walnut dashboard. The curl of his lip conveyed his opinion on Mycroft’s pride and joy all too clearly. Challenging his elder brother with his stare he whisked the bag off his shoulder and dumped it onto the backseat. Then, deliberately turning his gaze away from Mycroft, he opened the door from the passenger side, slid into the seat, pulled the door shut, and tipped some ash of his cigarette onto the asphalt beside the car. Slowly, he took another drag and just sat waiting for Mycroft to enter the car and chauffeur him home, eyes scrunched closed and a look of long suffering on his features.
The whole time Sherlock’s exhibition of ennui had lasted—with the world in general and with certain persons of his acquaintance in particular—Mycroft had been unable to move, or even speak. He vaguely perceived that he was opening and closing his mouth helplessly. Why had he thought he could beat Sherlock at his own game?
Sherlock’s chest heaved with the effort of another sigh. “What,” he began, voice saturated with suppressed irritation, “is it now?”
Mycroft’s gaze had latched itself onto Sherlock’s profile, the heavy shelf of his lower lip, the long, flowing line of his slightly retroussé nose, all in plain view beneath the jumble of curls that both fell haphazardly over Sherlock’s high forehead and brushed his nape, just above the bluer’s collar. The urge to slap the insolent, little wisenheimer was overwhelming.
“You…” Mycroft only managed, but thankfully that sound was the ‘open sesame’ he needed to make himself get into the car.
“Nothing,” he said, starting the engine. His left hand reached for the clutch.
The car shot forward as if of its own accord, nearly bumping into a Vauxhall Viva which, despite creeping at a snail’s pace, had suddenly sprung up in Mycroft’s vision.
Next to him Sherlock huffed impatiently and turned his head away, disdain tugging down at the corners of his mouth.
# # # #
Three seconds after the brief knock Anthea stuck her head through the gap of the open door.
“Sir,” she addressed Mycroft, throwing the Secretary of State for the Home Department an apologetic smile. “Lazarus wishes to speak to you.”
Mycroft forced himself to rise from his chair with his usual composure rather than with the intemperate haste beating in his chest.
“Would you excuse me for a moment, please?” He inclined his head briefly to acknowledge the permission his guest granted him and followed his PA out of the room.
“Where?” he asked.
“Leatherby is not in today, sir. He phoned yesterday evening, the talks in Scotland are taking longer than he expected.”
“I’ll want to speak to him about that later today,” Mycroft said. True to form, Anthea’s fingers were flying over her Blackberry while he was hurrying out of the anteroom.
In Leatherby’s office one of the phones on the desk was already ringing. After Mycroft picked up he waited for half a second to make sure the light indicating the line was secure was indeed flashing.
“Yes,” he spoke into the receiver the moment he was convinced no one was listening in.
“Jesus Christ! Don’t tell me that enormous backside of yours got stuck in the chair straining under your weight.”
Relief washed over Mycroft at hearing Sherlock’s tone was its usual mixture of brazenness and impatience.
“What do you need?” he asked, terse. God forbid Sherlock picked up how happy the realisation his little brother was in no immediate danger made Mycroft.
“I’m done here. Some further arrests have been made. You’ll be contacted about those shortly.”
“Good. Any glimpse of the main aide yet?”
“Not really. It’s nothing but whispers; as if the man doesn’t exist.”
“That would be too good to be true, so most likely it isn’t.”
“Yes, brother mine, I do realise that.”
“Good,” Mycroft repeated. “Did anything happen to cause a change of plan?”
“No, my plane for the next destination leaves in three hours.”
“Excellent. I’ll let them know you’ll be in the vicinity.”
“Fine.” A sharp click in his ear told Mycroft Sherlock had ended the call, robbing Mycroft of the chance to implore him to be careful. Slowly, he put the receiver back in place. Perhaps that was better, after all.
# # # #
Considering Britain’s reputation as an island languishing under a perennial onset of precipitation in all conceivable forms, it was a tad unsettling that so many memorable events in Mycroft’s life took place on bright, sunny days.
More than thirty years later he could still feel the warmth of the sun coalescing in the freckles on his nose as he rode his bicycle home from school, that fateful day when he’d first failed to live up to Sherlock’s expectations. He’d only been eleven years old at the time. But seeing as he was Mycroft Holmes, that tiny detail didn’t suffice to absolve him from letting down his younger brother.
After parking his cycle in the garden shed he discovered the kitchen to be empty. A pot of tea was sitting in its usual place beneath the cosy with a stack of sandwiches and a slice of fruitcake next to it.
“Mummy!” he called.
“Your tea is on the table, Mikey,” his mother called back. Her voice came from up high which informed him she was in the attic, ironing shirts in all probability.
“Thank you!”
Carefully, for the pot had been his great-grandmother’s as he was reminded every day, Mycroft poured himself a cup of tea and took a bite from a sandwich. Munching, he strolled through the short passageway into the sitting room in search of Sherlock and his inevitable four-legged companion. The sunny nook where Sherlock had been spending a lot of time since he’d learned to read was empty. Mycroft returned to the kitchen, finished his cup of tea and took his sandwich outside. He walked to the clump of yew trees surrounding the great beech at the far end of the garden and soon enough spotted Redbeard’s gleaming red coat amidst the greenery.
The dog’s tail began a half-hearted thump at Mycroft’s approach but the animal’s gaze remained locked on the structure resting on the beech’s lowest branches. Mycroft’s heart sank a little when he didn’t see the rope ladder dangling from the small platform in front of the treehouse, for this meant the situation was even worse than he’d feared.
“Hello, Redbeard,” he greeted the dog in soft tones, thereby announcing his presence to the building’s occupant. Redbeard whimpered, his tail whacking more enthusiastically when Mycroft scratched him behind the ears. The beast’s main attention, however, stayed with his little master, who had turned his back upon the world and gone into hiding behind the buttresses of his wooden castle stuck high up in the air. Surreptitiously, for Sherlock was probably observing him through one of the cracks between the floorboards, Mycroft followed Redbeard’s gaze upwards in search of movement. All he could see was a stirring of the fresh green leaves in the faint breeze that had risen in the course of the afternoon.
“Sherlock?” Mycroft didn’t raise his voice knowing his brother could hear him perfectly well. “Sherlock, why don’t you lower the ladder so I can come up?”
He stepped away from the tree, waiting. After a few moments his ears detected the scrape of Sherlock’s soles against the planking, followed by the quick, white flash of his brother’s hands throwing the ladder over the side of the platform. Mycroft tugged a few times to test whether the ladder was secured firmly enough to support his weight and began the laborious climb up to Sherlock’s hideout.
“Sherlock,” he called out in an undertone once he’d reached the platform. He seated himself on the edge with his legs suspended in the air and planted his arms behind himself to support his upper body. Inside the house, Sherlock shifted. Mycroft didn´t look round, quietly praying his nonchalant pose would draw his little brother out of his self-imposed solitude.
Redbeard’s sudden yapping informed Mycroft that Sherlock had emerged onto the platform. He lifted his right hand and held it out in invitation. When he felt Sherlock’s small, blazing-hot hand land on his palm, he closed his fingers around it and squeezed.
“Was it that bad?” he enquired, carefully keeping his face averted from Sherlock who had crept so close Mycroft’s side was warmed by the heat that his tiny body exuded. On the ground beneath them the shadowed outline of Sherlock’s head nodded. A sob wrung itself from his throat. Below them, Redbeard whined in response to the sound of its master’s despair.
“There,” Mycroft murmured, squeezing Sherlock’s hand some more. “There, there.” Suddenly Mycroft’s neck was enwrapped by Sherlock’s stick-thin arms, holding onto him for dear life. Sherlock’s wet face was pressed against his cheek, covering it with a film of snot mingled with warm, bitter tears.
“It was horrid,” Sherlock cried. “I never want to go there again. But Mummy says I have to. She said you liked it…”
The last sentence was spoken in accusing wonder. Mycroft patted Sherlock’s soft curls. The shafts of sunlight that penetrated through the beech’s canopy struck fiery glints of auburn in the dark, silken whorls.
“Yes,” conceded Mycroft. He paused, torn between loyalty to their mother—who honestly tried to provide her children with all the elements that constituted her idea of an idyllic childhood—and his little brother who so sincerely lacked the wherewithal to pretend to conform to the prescribed rules of social niceties she laid down for the family. As happened so often, compassion for his sibling’s sensibilities prevailed.
“Yes,” Mycroft repeated. “I told her I liked it. That’s what she wanted to hear.” He paused. Beside him Sherlock sniffled, his breath coming out as a warm gust of air against Mycroft’s neck. “You see,” continued Mycroft. “It’s easier that way, for everyone. She lives a constant lie, because she wants to believe in it. Thus, my diversion from the truth served us both. I was saved from her fretting; she was saved from the need to fret.”
“But they’re all so stupid! And some of them are mean…”
Mycroft slung his arm around Sherlock’s back and pulled him closer. “I know,” he murmured. “You’ll have to get used to them, it will be the same in school. Always remember you have one advantage, Sherlock. You’re cleverer than any of them.”
Upon hearing these words Sherlock began snivelling even louder. “I hate them!”
“Please, Sherlock, listen to me.” Mycroft shook his brother lightly to extricate him from his misery and have him pay attention to Mycroft instead. “Most of them are stupid and mean, just like you pointed out, but you shouldn’t let that upset you. You should make use of it. Mingle with them and pretend to be interested in their silly games.” Sherlock’s hand shot up in fierce dismissal of Mycroft’s suggestion. Ignoring the gesture, Mycroft pushed on, “All you need to do is observe them for a few days. Find out who the bullies are, and their victims. The rest is unimportant.”
Briefly, he closed his eyes. God, Sherlock was so right in despising those children and in being angry with their mother for making him interact with them. Why couldn’t she accept that she had two exceptional sons and let them fend for themselves? In a year Sherlock would have to attend school, but at least Mrs Whitby would be there for him with her special cupboard full of mathematical riddles, and science problems, and historical puzzles to solve. To have Sherlock participate in a playgroup was akin to an act of severe cruelty. The sole excuse was, as with everything Mummy undertook, that it was done with the best of intentions.
Suppressing the surge of anger with their parent that crested in his chest, Mycroft continued. “The bullies are the meanest, and the stupidest. Make use of that knowledge to put them in their place. Then, you will be the king of the realm and the others will leave you in peace. They will be happy enough to know you’re there to protect them against any sudden attacks.”
“Is that what you do?”
Mycroft smiled down at him. “Yes it is. You’ll find it to be surprisingly easy, once you get the hang of it.” He rubbed Sherlock’s arm. “I realise you couldn’t care less, Sherlock, but if you follow my advice the hours you’ll have to spend there will be bearable at least.”
“Can’t you talk to Mummy?” Sherlock asked, hopeful.
Mycroft sighed and shook his head. “You know her. It won’t be any use. I already told her I didn’t think it was a good idea when I heard her discussing sending you to the playgroup with Daddy.”
“You should have warned me,” Sherlock complained, his voice raw.
Mycroft flinched. Should he have? He’d chosen not to, in order to spare his sibling the anxiety over the inevitable doom hanging over his head. Except, perhaps, in deciding to screen Sherlock from future unpleasantness, he’d only lent a hand to augment the shock. Remorse draped its debilitating veils over his mind, temporarily shrouding access to his quick decision-making capabilities. The touch of Sherlock’s hand on his arm roused Mycroft from his stupor.
“Talk to her. Please, Mycroft?” Sherlock fixated him with his most beseeching look, the look no one in the world could resist, apart from their mother. His fingers grabbled at Mycroft’s arm, begging him to intercede.
“All right.” Mycroft yielded. “I’ll talk to her. But I’m telling you in advance, she won’t budge, Sherlock.”
# # # #
The car drew to a halt at the next traffic lights and Mycroft stifled the sigh of annoyance he felt pushing against his teeth. Next to him Anthea kept working her fingers over her phone while she said lightly, “You still have ten minutes to spare, sir.” She knew as well as he did that he was aware of both the time and his agenda, so her remark served merely to convey her sympathy and remind him of her faith in his powers, even if the car he was sitting in had to stop for a red traffic light just like anyone else’s. In answer, Mycroft grumbled something indefinite; ending with a sincere “thank you” for her remark had chased away most of his irritation. These days he was suspiciously prone to sudden mood swings. Of course, their origins were transparent to anyone who’d have cared to observe. Mycroft supposed he ought to be grateful that in one of those perverse twists fate delighted in the continuing absence of the one person capable of doing just that was the cause of these occasional slips from his customary impassive demeanour.
His gaze flitted over the mass of pedestrians struggling past the front of the car. So many people, each of them living their tiny, unimportant lives and believing themselves the centre of the Universe. Good God, the term pedestrian certainly was an apt description for the lot of them. All they wanted was a little love and the leisure to indulge in a few dreams every now and then. It didn’t take that much to have them happy and satisfied. Mycroft should know as it fell to him to ensure that they were. Of late he had thought his self-imposed task increasingly trite. Never before had he been so blasé about the welfare of his old friend’s subjects, and their interests which she expected him to serve.
Suddenly a man appeared in his line of vision and Mycroft straightened up further in his seat. It was John Watson, hurrying along in that black coat of his with a Tesco shopping bag in his hand. The image struck Mycroft as so iconic that he felt an indulgent smile form itself at the inside of his cheeks. Then John shot a look at the car—it would have been impossible for him to discern Mycroft and Anthea behind the tinted glass—and Mycroft’s smile melted off his mouth, leaving him with an unpleasant sense of something icy, as if he’d just taken too big a gulp of improperly chilled white wine.
John looked dreadful—the English language offered no better word for it—with hollow cheeks which had lost all their colour and sunken eyes gazing out from their orbits with something dead in them. The man’s shoulders were drooping, lending him the aspect of a dejected dog suffering under a regime of daily beatings. He was still mourning Sherlock, then, after almost a year. Good heavens, that couldn’t be natural, could it? Not if they’d been nothing but flatmates and friends.
The hideous beast of jealousy—always affecting a deep slumber in the subterranean dwelling to which Mycroft had banished it, but perpetually on the lookout from the narrow slits of heavy-lidded eyes—reared its ugly head. Oh, how from the very first moment he’d found it a struggle not to resent John Watson and his easy access to his brother’s affections. Sherlock must have been lonely, as lonely as Mycroft, to let John insinuate himself into his life so wholeheartedly.
Every encounter with John had felt like a slap to Mycroft’s face. A fresh reminder of Sherlock’s steadfast determination not to approach the one person who had always gone out of his way to help him, who’d bent down and picked him up from whatever floor dirtied with Sherlock’s own vomit and the instruments of his addiction. Had Mycroft made a mistake then, in wishing his brother should live?
Mycroft’s fingers tightened their grip on his umbrella handle, pressing the thick ribs of the Malacca cane against the nerve-endings in his palm until the pain had tears threaten to prick behind his eyes. In the next instant John was gone, devoured by the ever-roiling masses of London.
Perhaps Mycroft should call him to enquire after his wellbeing. A visit, naturally, was out of the question.
# # # #
In his talk with Sherlock Mycroft had portrayed the art of manipulation as one of the easiest things in the world. It was the bane of his young existence that this was indeed the case, except with regard to his parents. Sometimes he felt that he’d wasted most of his barely over a decade long life on the observation of their mother. She was as fierce and fickle as a force of nature, charting her own course through life with the inevitability of the thunderstorm that had been brewing in the air for the whole of the long, blazingly hot summer day.
Later that evening, after Sherlock had been put to bed, Mycroft brought up the subject of the playgroup. The three of them were sitting cosily around the kitchen table, their father with The Times, Mycroft with his homework and Mummy with her sewing basket and Sherlock’s new trousers which already sported a tear on the right knee. Every now and then the comfortable silence was disturbed by Redbeard snorting in his basket.
In all fairness Mycroft had to admit that his mother never interrupted him when he spoke. In that he was better off than his father, he supposed, who hardly got the chance to finish a sentence he’d begun.
Now she sat silently thrusting her needle in and out the fabric of the trousers and the patch she was applying. “Are you done?” she asked when Mycroft had delivered his last argument.
Mycroft nodded. “Sherlock is really unhappy there,” he finished. One of Daddy’s few firm beliefs was that everybody should be happy, so Mycroft hoped against all odds that this remark would impel his father to side with him and speak up against his wife on behalf of his youngest son.
Instead—as he’d feared—his father rustled his newspaper and appeared to be shrinking behind it.
“I realise Sherlock didn’t have a good time today,” Mummy began, her needle fiercely stabbing its way through the cloth. “Ms Holly called me three times to ask me to come and fetch him as his constant crying was disturbing the other children. What you fail to see, Mikey, is what this is about.” A particularly sharp prod accompanied the last word.
“Unlike you, Sherlock has a tendency to be antisocial. The only people he deigns to speak to are us, and that nice Mr Wiggins from the Post Office. Now, if you stop to think for a moment, you’d agree with me that he needs to learn to play with other children. Otherwise school will be nothing but a punishment for him, and I don’t want that.”
“But Mummy,” Mycroft protested, “in sending Sherlock to the playgroup you’re punishing him as well.”
“Nonsense! He’s crying now, but the playgroup will help him discover friends are fun and he’ll be rearing to go there every day. You probably don’t remember this, but you weren’t too enthusiastic about playgroup the first few times I took you there, either.”
She used the scissors to snap the thread and started putting the sewing basket away. Recognising he’d effectively been dismissed, Mycroft bent over his homework. Early tomorrow morning he’d have to explain to Sherlock that he had done his best, but Mummy had defeated him as always. If Sherlock would put Mycroft’s advice regarding playground politics into practice he would have a hold on the other children in a mere three days.
Still, Mycroft realised to a four-year-old three days were an awfully long time, especially for such an impatient four-year-old.
The look of hurt betrayal Sherlock shot him on the following day tore at his heart, all the more that Sherlock then appeared to serenely accept his fate.
“I understand, Mycroft,” he said, sitting up in his bed with Mr Buzzy, the stuffed toy bee, clutched tight against his chest. His lower lip wobbled and he was blinking furiously to force back the tears that were threatening to spill over. “Thank you for asking.” He raised his arm and used his pyjama sleeve to wipe at his eyes. The blue and yellow teddy bears tumbled happily over each other as the cotton slipped back and forth along his arm.
“I wish I knew how to make her listen,” said Mycroft. Later he’d remember how thoroughly helpless he had felt at that moment and he would vow he’d let no one else get so close to him, ever.
“It’s fine. Maybe I won’t have to go if I tell her my tummy hurts.”
“Does your tummy hurt?”
“Oh yes, terribly,” Sherlock replied immediately. The blue streaks in his wide open eyes glinted in bright innocence.
“I’m afraid she won’t buy it.” Mycroft smiled. He tousled Sherlock’s curls and levered himself up from the bed. “Besides, you would be lying and you know lying is a very bad thing to do.”
“Not always.”
“Well.” Mycroft thought for a moment. “It depends,” he conceded. “But it would be bad if we were lying to each other.” He accompanied the last sentence with a mock-stern look at Sherlock, who sat staring up at him, still holding Mr Buzzy close in his arms.
“You’ll never lie to me, won’t you, Mycroft?”
“No, never.” Mycroft promised. “Not unless I can possibly help it.”
A scratching sound at the door informed them Redbeard was trying to gain admittance to the room. Mycroft opened the door and the setter leapt past him, straight for his little master who fell back onto the mattress and sought the aid of Mr Buzzy to defend himself against the onslaught of the overenthusiastic dog. The bedclothes churned up into a heaving tangle of limbs and legs from which peals of laughter and exhilarated barks erupted at irregular intervals.
“Boys!” their mother shouted up the stairs, adding her voice to the general chaos. “Your toast is getting cold. Mike, you’ll have to hurry or you’ll be late for school.”
After breakfast, while riding his bicycle out of the shed, Mycroft watched how Mummy grasped Sherlock’s hand and told him they must be off to the playgroup. Sherlock followed her to the car with his head hanging down, as quiet as a lamb led to the slaughter.
# # # #
The clock on the wall cabinet behind Mycroft’s back struck six. Mycroft finished the sentence he’d been writing and screwed the cap onto his fountain pen. After clearing his desk and locking the confidential material away in the safe, he got into his coat, slung his scarf around his neck, and picked up his umbrella. Balancing on the balls of his feet he threw a last, longing look at his den, before bracing himself and straightening his shoulders.
“I’ll be off then,” he informed Anthea casually, while pulling the door shut behind him. Her gaze unlocked itself from her computer screen and swivelled towards him. Her fingers meanwhile kept running over her keyboard. They stuttered to a halt when she took a look of his face.
“Oh,” she said. “Of course…I forgot.” Frustration flitted over her features but then they lit up. “Perhaps you’d like me to text you, sir?” she suggested. “You can show them the message during the interval and go AWOL. Well, with leave.”
A most tempting offer and a more sophisticated plan than the one Mycroft had toyed with before rejecting it as too outlandish. Initiating a minor Cabinet reshuffle in order to eschew a visit of The Phantom of the Opera with his parents was not quite a viable option. He’d endure the experience and play the dutiful son. After all, he’d spent years practicing the part.
“Thank you.” He raised his umbrella to emphasise his appreciation. Anthea had met his parents once, briefly, when she’d brought over some files to his flat when they had happened to be on one of their twice-yearly visits. As she actually had eyes and knew how to use her brain, one look had been enough for her to gauge the lay of the land.
“It can’t be any more tedious than the European budget talks we sat through three weeks ago,” Mycroft endeavoured, putting on a brave face.
“No, I guess not. But a lot louder.”
“You astonish me. I always come prepared.” Mycroft dipped his fingers in his right hand jacket pocket and produced a small Perspex box with a pair of earplugs. “Those should do the trick. I might even catch a wink of sleep.”
She smiled. “I assume you’re familiar with the story, so you probably can afford it.”
“Even if I were a stranger to the tale’s contents, I’m sure it wouldn’t have impaired my ability to contribute to the discussion of the events on stage. I look forward to the dinner afterwards with great confidence.” Mycroft paused. “I suggest you call it a day. Enjoy an evening off.”
Now she laughed. “I might do that. After I finish this first. Good night, sir.”
She didn’t wish him a pleasant evening.
Bright girl.
# # # #
“Thank you, Mr Graham. And please give my kind regards to Mrs Graham.” Mycroft handed their local cab driver the fare and lifted his suitcase from the ground.
“I will, Mycroft. Same to your Mum and Dad. Enjoy your holidays.”
After throwing the man a last weak smile, Mycroft pivoted on his heels and began the trek up the garden path, suitcase and his new, hideously expensive but already indispensable umbrella swinging at his side. His new London life fitted Mycroft’s twenty-two-year-old person like a glove. While strolling down the corridors of power, affably nodding his head or raising an eyebrow at various some- and nobodies, he knew he’d found his element at last. This was what he’d been preparing himself for at school and University, where he’d always felt a little ill at ease, surrounded by too many goldfish. Now he was among the best and brightest of the land, in that quiet nook of exclusivity where he belonged, his humble birth notwithstanding.
In the house Mycroft deposited his suitcase by the stairs and made his way to the kitchen. On the kitchen table the best tea set was laid out amongst stacks of sandwiches and his mother’s citrus cake. A tray of fresh scones was cooling on a rack. Obviously, their mother had decided to go all-out in celebration of her two boys visiting simultaneously for the summer holidays, never mind last Christmas had felt like a disaster on a scale akin to a civil conflict in a Balkan country.
“Mummy,” Mycroft called.
“Is that you, Mikey?” Her questioning voice sounded from the scullery. “I had expected you on an earlier train.”
“I had to finish some work.”
“Well, I must say I fail to see what can be so important to have you be late for a visit to your family but never mind. Go and find Sherlock, would you? He’s out in the garden somewhere. He got back three hours ago and he’s already got himself in one of his moods.”
Well, Mycroft mused, while pulling open the backdoor, at least that was nothing new.
Outside, he ambled across the small terrace with its elaborate setting of lobelias, geraniums and impatiens in terracotta pots and enamelled buckets and down the turf to the far end of the garden. The treehouse had been demolished two years earlier, but this corner of the garden remained one of Sherlock’s favourite spots when home from school, as far away from the house as possible while remaining inside the garden walls.
As expected Sherlock was sitting on the wall, his back turned towards the house. He’d already shed the detested school uniform and donned his habitual garb of faded blue jeans that slung low on his hips and a simple white t-shirt. The arms protruding from the frayed sleeves were pathetically thin, even for a wiry fifteen-year-old that was nothing but floundering limbs and angles and general clumsiness.
Mycroft positioned himself in front of the wall next to his brother. Sherlock’s eyes remained locked on the tiny herd of clouds in the distance, gliding along the line of the horizon. Below them fields of clover stretched from the garden into the valley where a fast, clear stream gurgled among clumps of willows and alders.
They stayed like that in silence for almost two minutes. Mycroft scratched at his nose; he felt distinctly uncomfortable in his suit and waistcoat, attire more suitable for air-conditioned conference rooms than for a garden in the height of summer. Sherlock didn’t move at all. Even his lashes didn’t waver once during the ten seconds Mycroft directed his gaze at him.
When he’d moved it away again, Sherlock said, “I’m not going to thank you for coming over to be miserable with me.”
“Always this tendency to think everything revolves around you.”
“Oh, please.” There was no need to look at Sherlock for his sneer to be evident. Mycroft cleared his throat. Sweat was beginning to prick on his brow.
“Actually,” he said, “I was wondering whether you’d want to come back to London with me for a few days. The flat has ample space, you’d have your own room, and I’ll be off working, so I won’t be in your way…” His voice trailed off, withering at the massive bulwark of Sherlock’s silence.
A bee droned past them, its body a tiny nudge of golden pollen glittering brightly in the sharp afternoon light. They both followed its dance with their eyes until the insect dipped into the clover and disappeared from their vision.
“Why ever would I want to do that?” Sherlock enquired, in what seemed genuine bafflement.
“Because you might like it. You’d be able to visit some museums, the libraries, spend time at Kew Gardens,” Mycroft enumerated. After a deliberate pause, he played his trump card. “You wouldn’t have to be here.”
Sherlock laughed—a sharp bark devoid of true emotion. “No.” He pretended to wipe away fake tears of merriment from his cheeks. “I’d be with you. Tell me, in what way would that improve my plight exactly? I loathe you every bit as much as I do them.”
“Grand words,” Mycroft murmured. More than anything he wanted to get his handkerchief from his jacket pocket and wipe at his forehead, but he foresaw the gesture would subject him to further ridicule.
“Not if they’re true,” shot Sherlock, twisting towards Mycroft. “And I’m afraid, brother dear, though you like to pretend otherwise, they quite, quite are. I loathe you, I loathe you, I loathe you!” He paused. “And do I need to remind you that—unlike some of us— I never lie?”
He deliberately raked his gaze from the top of Mycroft’s head down to his feet and back up again. The scrutiny drew even more beads of sweat from the pores on Mycroft’s face. In the crease between his eyebrows a drop pearled and toppled over, on a descent down the line of his nose. To prevent the embarrassment of having it hanging from the tip, Mycroft capitulated and whipped up his handkerchief. Turning away from Sherlock he dabbed his face with the cool linen. In his back he could feel the holes burned by Sherlock’s eyes.
With measured, slow movements he refolded the cloth and put it back into the pocket. It wasn’t until he’d patted it flat that he rotated once more to confront Sherlock.
“Is my opinion important to you?”
“Of course it isn’t. You’re nothing to me.”
“Wrong answer, Sherlock. In order to truly loathe someone one must spare them more than the occasional thought.”
“Your clever conundrum just serves to support my assertion.”
Mycroft shrugged and pushed himself up from the wall and onto his feet again. “Fine,” he said. “You stay here and rot for the duration of the summer. Pardon me for suggesting a diversion from your pleasant plans.”
“As a matter of fact, I’m going to put up a beehive this summer. I wrote to Mr Wiggins from school. He promised to help me.”
“Just out of curiosity, have you discussed this project with Mummy yet?”
“No.” Sherlock pushed his lower lip forward in aggressive defence.
“Ah,” Mycroft said. He slid his hands into his trouser pockets and rocked back onto his heels, but didn’t issue any additional commentary.
“What?” Sherlock’s shoulders rose in self-protection.
“Nothing. Anyway, we’re wanted for tea. These family gatherings are always such a delight, aren’t they? We’re all so happy.”
Mycroft pivoted around and walked away from Sherlock. He could feel the sharp aim of Sherlock’s stare prodding between his shoulder blades, but kept his back erect and engaged in pretence of enjoying the garden’s abundant florid offerings. Next to the rose border he drew to a halt and with great fastidiousness chose a Rose de Rescht. After taking in its scent deeply he drew the stem through his lapel buttonhole, and proceeded on his lazy perambulation back to the house.
# # # #
He hadn’t heard from Sherlock for over a month and by now Mycroft was frantic with worry. As ever, the strain was affecting his weight, and he had to put in on the treadmill many extra hours he couldn’t really afford. Apart from the sheer discomfort, this had the drawback of giving him ample time to work out increasingly distressing scenarios in his head. While his feet thumped the endlessly revolving rubber matting, his mind raced along between Sherlock shot by a sniper—the merciful script—to Sherlock taken prisoner to be raped and tortured for weeks until he expired.
While seated at his desk Mycroft’s hand reached for his phone innumerable times to start dialling the number of his agent in the country Sherlock had left for five weeks ago, only to withdraw it and pull a file towards him instead. His eyes scanned the letters, but they were as meaningless to him as an unknown script from a civilisation that was wiped from the face of the earth a long time ago.
Never before had he spent so much time standing in front of the window in his upstairs office, gazing down to the heads moving along the sidewalks of Marsham Street.
# # # #
There was a knock on the door. Mycroft sprang up from his bed, stashed the book he’d been reading between the bed and the wall, straightened the bedspread and fast tracked for his desk.
“Come in,” he called in a tone that indicated he’d been so engrossed in his homework he’d only belatedly realised someone had been seeking his attention.
The door opened to reveal the pimply visage of Trevors, the house prefect. Mycroft considered him the most perfect example of exasperating mediocrity he’d encountered at the school so far, but he was sixteen as opposed to Mycroft’s fourteen, and that was aside from being the house prefect where Mycroft was still practically nobody.
“You’re wanted on the phone, Holmes.” Trevors threw at the room at large and disappeared, no doubt to engage in some vaguely offensive act. Pressing the tallow out of the pimples that shone on his forehead in blatant mockery of Christ’s crown of thorns came to mind.
Mycroft sighed, pushed back his chair and rose to his feet.
“Mycroft Holmes,” he spoke into the receiver he found dangling from the telephone’s body in the main hall.
“Oh, Mikey.” The sound of his mother’s teary voice hit his eardrum. “Oh God! It’s been such a horrid day. We had to have Redbeard put down.”
“What? Why? What happened?” The animal had been fine when Mycroft left back for school three weeks ago.
“I don’t know,” Mummy wailed. There was the sound of her blowing her nose, some sniffling and then she continued in a voice thick with grief. “He was fine until last week. Then he started eating less and his coat lost its shine. At first I thought it was this sudden unexpected heat, what with him already being ten years old, but this morning I got really worried when he didn’t even thump his tail after I put his food in front of him.”
She broke off. Mycroft produced some sympathetic humming sounds to indicate he was listening. His mother sniffed a few times before resuming. “So I took him to the vet and she said it was cancer and poor Redbeard must have been in agony. He didn’t whimper at all, not once, the stupid beast. Just lay there looking at us with his tongue hanging out. She suggested putting him down straightaway and I felt so sorry for the poor thing that I said she should do it. He died in my arms, and…” She started crying loudly.
It was so unexpected coming from his mother that Mycroft felt glued to the ground. “Oh, Mummy,” he said, trying hard to soak up his voice with more sympathy than he felt. Redbeard’s demise left him a little cold, as he’d never greatly cared for the animal.
Then he thought of his younger brother. Oh god, Sherlock!
Before he could query after the reaction of his sibling, his mother was talking again. “He was dying; but oh, Mike, he just looked at me as if he wanted to thank me for delivering him from pain. Oh, the poor, poor animal. Imagine him having suffered so much. I felt so bad—”
“How did Sherlock react?” Mycroft cut straight to his sole interest in the story.
“Oh, he doesn’t know.” At least his mother seemed to have got a grip on herself again. “When… After… When Redbeard was dead the vet asked what I wanted to do with the body. It wasn’t until then that I realised Sherlock hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye to him and… Well, he’s only seven years old so he doesn’t understand the concept of death yet. I called your father and he suggested we tell Sherlock that Redbeard had jumped over the garden’s fence then run off and gone to live in a happy little valley.”
“What?” Mycroft couldn’t help his incredulous exclamation. His mother pressed on, ignoring his yawp.
“I thought it was a great suggestion. So I left Redbeard at the vet to be disposed of and went home to make Sherlock his favourite dessert.”
“And what did he say when you spun him the tale of Redbeard galloping off to his ‘happy, little valley’,” Mycroft sneered.
“I don’t wish to hear such a tone from you, young man.” His mother corrected him sharply. “I’ll have you know your father and I still know what’s best for you, never mind you’re doing so well in school which we’re very glad to hear. Sherlock looked a little dubious at first, but later on he seemed to accept it, and he had two helpings of his Queen Victoria pudding.”
Mycroft swallowed the sarcastic remark that was burning on the tip of his tongue. “I doubt you’ve chosen the wisest path,” he put forth instead. “Sherlock found that dead bird in the garden last year, remember? We buried it beneath the treehouse. You could have made use of that to tell him the truth. Now he will think Redbeard decided to abandon him.”
“Nonsense. We told him to be happy for Redbeard as he’s in a better place. And of course we promised to buy him another dog. He was quite content when I put him to bed. You’re not exactly being of help, Mycroft.”
In his mother’s world not being of help was an offence the enormity of which could not be excused under any circumstances, safe for the outbreak of World War III perhaps.
“I’m sorry, Mummy.” Mycroft offered in his most contrite tones. “And I’m sorry to hear about poor Redbeard.”
“That’s more like it. Now please confirm the story to Sherlock the next weekend you visit. He’s bound to ask you whether it’s true.”
“You’re ordering me to lie? Really, mother!” It was, he realised, rather childish of him to try to get his own back by drawing out his mother’s unease with the situation, but he was so exasperated with her he felt he could be excused for his momentary lapse from the role of dutiful son.
“Mike,” his mother said, warningly.
Mycroft sighed and rubbed his nose. “Fine,” he uttered. “I’ll support your silly story. But I still think you’ve not acted terribly wise in this.” Suppressing the urge to end the call there and then, he added, not shielding the reluctance from his voice, “Good night.”
# # # #
Find part two of the fic here
Recipient:
frozen_delightAuthor:
dioscureantwinsCharacters: Sherlock, Mycroft, Anthea, Mummy, Daddy, John, Mrs Hudson, OC’s
Rating: T
Warnings: no warnings apply.
Beta: the amazing
stardust_made was so kind as to help me. She’s a wonderful writer and an incredibly kind and resourceful beta. Thanks to her this has become a much better story than it would have turned out to be otherwise.Summary: “Fine.” A sharp click in his ear told Mycroft Sherlock had ended the call, robbing Mycroft of the chance to implore him to be careful. Slowly, he put the receiver back in place. Perhaps that was better, after all.
I was very happy and honoured to find I had been assigned the lovely
frozen_delight. Dear frozen_delight, I’ve endeavoured to write you a story that would give you pleasure and sincerely hope I’ve succeeded in doing just that.“…and of course he’d put them exactly where I told him to look in the first place.”
“Hmm,” Mycroft offered into the receiver he was holding in his left hand while the right drove his fountain pen over the final draft for the Independent Press Council bill, jotting down corrections and alternative formulations.
“Are you listening, Mikey?” His mother’s voice had acquired the peeved tone she had spent years polishing to a precision few women in history had managed to reach, Lady Hamilton included. Mycroft rolled his eyes, sighed inwardly and put down the pen.
“Of course I am listening to you, Mummy,” he replied, pinching the bridge of his nose. “It’s rather difficult to do anything else.”
“There’s no need to get snippy with me. Do you know, in some ways you’re only a little better than Sherlock! Sometimes I wonder what I did wrong to deserve the two of you. Such wayward children…How is Sherlock, by the way? Have you heard—”
“Sherlock is dead,” Mycroft cut into the verbal torrent. His free hand balled into a fist. They had talked about the need never to discuss Sherlock over the phone. He had instructed both his parents repeatedly. Not that his father needed any instructing. The man wasn’t even allowed near the instrument.
“Yes, I know that,” his mother said, the pitch of her voice conveying her opinion of Mycroft’s mental faculties loud and clear. “But we’re worried and you never tell…”
Mycroft replaced the receiver in the cradle. Fifteen seconds later the phone started ringing. Seething internally Mycroft reached for the other phone on his desk, the secure line. His parents belonged to the chosen few who had the number—Mycroft himself had entered it into their landline explaining they only had to press the number ‘six’ for three seconds to establish a connection. Yet his mother persisted in calling him on one of the other, less secure lines, and began each conversation with a diatribe on the amount of keys she had to tap in order to contact him.
“Holmes speaking,” his father answered his mobile after it had rung for half a minute straight. He was a little out of breath. In all probability a frantic search for the phone had just been conducted.
“It’s Mycroft, Daddy.”
“Oh, Mycroft, my boy. What a coincidence. Your mother was just trying to call you again. The line was disconnected all of a sudden. Wait… wait, I’ll hand you over to her…”
The sounds of a minor scuffle travelled over the line, soon followed by his mother asking sternly, “Mikey, is that you? Why did you hang up?”
“I didn’t, Mummy.” Mycroft chose to play innocent rather than engage in another endless discussion on Mrs Holmes’s scorn for the security measures he tried to impose on her. “These things happen sometimes, even in our modern day and age. Now you were asking about Sherlock. He was in Tibet last I heard, working hard on his Dharma.”
# # # #
The day was so swelteringly hot it was really unpleasant. The sun was beating down on him mercilessly as Mycroft loitered beside his new Jaguar coupé at their local station car park. He was leaning against the searingly hot metal of the hood with what he hoped was casual grace, his one buttock—clad in the inconspicuous camel twill he’d changed into upon arriving at the parental home—slowly roasting.
His mother had sent him to the station to collect his seventeen-year-old brother. After some demurring, which Mycroft undertook for the sake of form rather than the expectation that it would affect the outcome of their discussion, he had acquiesced with her request. Sherlock, he ratiocinated, would suffer as much acute vexation at having to use this particular form of transportation as Mycroft would from having to put up with him for the duration of the drive to their home. Contrary to Sherlock’s discomfiture, however, Mycroft’s would be sweetened by the pleasure of driving his own beautiful car. Mycroft shifted his stance against the gracefully shaped metal of his pride and joy. To derive satisfaction from the idea of one’s younger sibling eating his heart out was rather immature, Mycroft supposed. Yet in this particular instance there were enough exonerating circumstances to condone such base emotion—a little at least.
The train had stopped at the station about a minute earlier and the first hasty travellers began pouring out into the car park, clashing with the few belated stragglers who were hurrying towards the station in the hope of catching the train. Behind him Mycroft discerned the sound of hurrying high heels, striking the tarmac to the irregular rhythm of a desperately panting breath. As, earlier, Mycroft had found the parking lot filled to overflowing necessitating him to manoeuver the Jaguar into a slot at quite a distance from the station itself, it was easy to deduce this late arrival was going to miss her train. A girl his own age materialised at his side, then slowed down and halted. She was dressed splendidly, but the overall effect was spoiled by her slightly crouching posture and the hand that was pressed against her side in acute physical distress.
“Blast,” she muttered, glaring at the station building. She took a look at her watch and then back at the station that glimmered in the distance like the mesmerising mirage of an oasis in the overheated haze that rose from the blistering pavement. After drawing in a few deep breaths the young woman straightened. She fixed her eyes on the building with renewed vigour and lifted a foot to start walking at seemingly more leisurely pace.
Something she must have spotted made her put the foot down again. The same thing lit a beaming smile on her face. Mycroft could just hear her inward “Oh my!” She had the luminosity of someone who had chanced upon an exceptional work of art. Intrigued, Mycroft followed her gaze to see what had piqued her admiration.
He was amazed to realise that the vision her eyes were drinking in was none other than his little brother. Sherlock had just separated himself from the throng of commuters churning out of the station and had halted on the second-to-last step, posing like a statue on a dubious pedestal. The step was part of the corrugated iron overpass, whose twentieth-century utility made short work of the attempt at elegance the Victorian architect had endeavoured to imbibe to the original station building by adding such details as the mock Tudor herringbone brickwork, the mullioned windows and the steeply pitched roof.
After flinging his holdall to the ground Sherlock’s fingers delved into the pocket of his bluer to whip up a packet of cigarettes. His heavily despised, oblique hat was conspicuous for its absence; stuffed into the holdall, no doubt.
Eyes scanning the parking lot, Sherlock lit up the cigarette and threw his head back to draw the first inhalation of nicotine deep into his lungs. The long column of his throat shone pale beneath the darkness of the overpass roof, its creamy incandescence contrasting with the bright-hot flare of the cigarette tip above.
Two city workers, dressed in the identical, insipid garb of the harassed pen pusher, burdened with attachés and with the urge to start the weekend, jostled past him. The burlier man inadvertently bumped against Sherlock’s shoulder in his haste. Sherlock shot him an annoyed glance, sighed deeply and flicked his cigarette, then wrapped his lips around it again. He took another drag before hopping down the last couple of steps and bending forward to lift his bag from the ground. He slung it over his shoulder with the casual grace of a black panther lifting itself up on its hind legs to sharpen its nails on the bark of the tree from which it had just descended.
Mycroft had forgotten the girl’s existence but was reminded of it by her sighing and resuming her journey across the car park. Whether the swing of her hips was wholly attributable to the relative height of her heels was a question Mycroft, who had never held much interest in women’s footwear, preferred to refrain from answering.
Sherlock, naturally, ignored her. He sauntered towards Mycroft, tossing his curls when he discerned what exactly Mycroft was leaning against. His eyes travelled over the discreet Davy grey leather of the seats and the steering wheel, as well as the beautifully wrought walnut dashboard. The curl of his lip conveyed his opinion on Mycroft’s pride and joy all too clearly. Challenging his elder brother with his stare he whisked the bag off his shoulder and dumped it onto the backseat. Then, deliberately turning his gaze away from Mycroft, he opened the door from the passenger side, slid into the seat, pulled the door shut, and tipped some ash of his cigarette onto the asphalt beside the car. Slowly, he took another drag and just sat waiting for Mycroft to enter the car and chauffeur him home, eyes scrunched closed and a look of long suffering on his features.
The whole time Sherlock’s exhibition of ennui had lasted—with the world in general and with certain persons of his acquaintance in particular—Mycroft had been unable to move, or even speak. He vaguely perceived that he was opening and closing his mouth helplessly. Why had he thought he could beat Sherlock at his own game?
Sherlock’s chest heaved with the effort of another sigh. “What,” he began, voice saturated with suppressed irritation, “is it now?”
Mycroft’s gaze had latched itself onto Sherlock’s profile, the heavy shelf of his lower lip, the long, flowing line of his slightly retroussé nose, all in plain view beneath the jumble of curls that both fell haphazardly over Sherlock’s high forehead and brushed his nape, just above the bluer’s collar. The urge to slap the insolent, little wisenheimer was overwhelming.
“You…” Mycroft only managed, but thankfully that sound was the ‘open sesame’ he needed to make himself get into the car.
“Nothing,” he said, starting the engine. His left hand reached for the clutch.
The car shot forward as if of its own accord, nearly bumping into a Vauxhall Viva which, despite creeping at a snail’s pace, had suddenly sprung up in Mycroft’s vision.
Next to him Sherlock huffed impatiently and turned his head away, disdain tugging down at the corners of his mouth.
# # # #
Three seconds after the brief knock Anthea stuck her head through the gap of the open door.
“Sir,” she addressed Mycroft, throwing the Secretary of State for the Home Department an apologetic smile. “Lazarus wishes to speak to you.”
Mycroft forced himself to rise from his chair with his usual composure rather than with the intemperate haste beating in his chest.
“Would you excuse me for a moment, please?” He inclined his head briefly to acknowledge the permission his guest granted him and followed his PA out of the room.
“Where?” he asked.
“Leatherby is not in today, sir. He phoned yesterday evening, the talks in Scotland are taking longer than he expected.”
“I’ll want to speak to him about that later today,” Mycroft said. True to form, Anthea’s fingers were flying over her Blackberry while he was hurrying out of the anteroom.
In Leatherby’s office one of the phones on the desk was already ringing. After Mycroft picked up he waited for half a second to make sure the light indicating the line was secure was indeed flashing.
“Yes,” he spoke into the receiver the moment he was convinced no one was listening in.
“Jesus Christ! Don’t tell me that enormous backside of yours got stuck in the chair straining under your weight.”
Relief washed over Mycroft at hearing Sherlock’s tone was its usual mixture of brazenness and impatience.
“What do you need?” he asked, terse. God forbid Sherlock picked up how happy the realisation his little brother was in no immediate danger made Mycroft.
“I’m done here. Some further arrests have been made. You’ll be contacted about those shortly.”
“Good. Any glimpse of the main aide yet?”
“Not really. It’s nothing but whispers; as if the man doesn’t exist.”
“That would be too good to be true, so most likely it isn’t.”
“Yes, brother mine, I do realise that.”
“Good,” Mycroft repeated. “Did anything happen to cause a change of plan?”
“No, my plane for the next destination leaves in three hours.”
“Excellent. I’ll let them know you’ll be in the vicinity.”
“Fine.” A sharp click in his ear told Mycroft Sherlock had ended the call, robbing Mycroft of the chance to implore him to be careful. Slowly, he put the receiver back in place. Perhaps that was better, after all.
# # # #
Considering Britain’s reputation as an island languishing under a perennial onset of precipitation in all conceivable forms, it was a tad unsettling that so many memorable events in Mycroft’s life took place on bright, sunny days.
More than thirty years later he could still feel the warmth of the sun coalescing in the freckles on his nose as he rode his bicycle home from school, that fateful day when he’d first failed to live up to Sherlock’s expectations. He’d only been eleven years old at the time. But seeing as he was Mycroft Holmes, that tiny detail didn’t suffice to absolve him from letting down his younger brother.
After parking his cycle in the garden shed he discovered the kitchen to be empty. A pot of tea was sitting in its usual place beneath the cosy with a stack of sandwiches and a slice of fruitcake next to it.
“Mummy!” he called.
“Your tea is on the table, Mikey,” his mother called back. Her voice came from up high which informed him she was in the attic, ironing shirts in all probability.
“Thank you!”
Carefully, for the pot had been his great-grandmother’s as he was reminded every day, Mycroft poured himself a cup of tea and took a bite from a sandwich. Munching, he strolled through the short passageway into the sitting room in search of Sherlock and his inevitable four-legged companion. The sunny nook where Sherlock had been spending a lot of time since he’d learned to read was empty. Mycroft returned to the kitchen, finished his cup of tea and took his sandwich outside. He walked to the clump of yew trees surrounding the great beech at the far end of the garden and soon enough spotted Redbeard’s gleaming red coat amidst the greenery.
The dog’s tail began a half-hearted thump at Mycroft’s approach but the animal’s gaze remained locked on the structure resting on the beech’s lowest branches. Mycroft’s heart sank a little when he didn’t see the rope ladder dangling from the small platform in front of the treehouse, for this meant the situation was even worse than he’d feared.
“Hello, Redbeard,” he greeted the dog in soft tones, thereby announcing his presence to the building’s occupant. Redbeard whimpered, his tail whacking more enthusiastically when Mycroft scratched him behind the ears. The beast’s main attention, however, stayed with his little master, who had turned his back upon the world and gone into hiding behind the buttresses of his wooden castle stuck high up in the air. Surreptitiously, for Sherlock was probably observing him through one of the cracks between the floorboards, Mycroft followed Redbeard’s gaze upwards in search of movement. All he could see was a stirring of the fresh green leaves in the faint breeze that had risen in the course of the afternoon.
“Sherlock?” Mycroft didn’t raise his voice knowing his brother could hear him perfectly well. “Sherlock, why don’t you lower the ladder so I can come up?”
He stepped away from the tree, waiting. After a few moments his ears detected the scrape of Sherlock’s soles against the planking, followed by the quick, white flash of his brother’s hands throwing the ladder over the side of the platform. Mycroft tugged a few times to test whether the ladder was secured firmly enough to support his weight and began the laborious climb up to Sherlock’s hideout.
“Sherlock,” he called out in an undertone once he’d reached the platform. He seated himself on the edge with his legs suspended in the air and planted his arms behind himself to support his upper body. Inside the house, Sherlock shifted. Mycroft didn´t look round, quietly praying his nonchalant pose would draw his little brother out of his self-imposed solitude.
Redbeard’s sudden yapping informed Mycroft that Sherlock had emerged onto the platform. He lifted his right hand and held it out in invitation. When he felt Sherlock’s small, blazing-hot hand land on his palm, he closed his fingers around it and squeezed.
“Was it that bad?” he enquired, carefully keeping his face averted from Sherlock who had crept so close Mycroft’s side was warmed by the heat that his tiny body exuded. On the ground beneath them the shadowed outline of Sherlock’s head nodded. A sob wrung itself from his throat. Below them, Redbeard whined in response to the sound of its master’s despair.
“There,” Mycroft murmured, squeezing Sherlock’s hand some more. “There, there.” Suddenly Mycroft’s neck was enwrapped by Sherlock’s stick-thin arms, holding onto him for dear life. Sherlock’s wet face was pressed against his cheek, covering it with a film of snot mingled with warm, bitter tears.
“It was horrid,” Sherlock cried. “I never want to go there again. But Mummy says I have to. She said you liked it…”
The last sentence was spoken in accusing wonder. Mycroft patted Sherlock’s soft curls. The shafts of sunlight that penetrated through the beech’s canopy struck fiery glints of auburn in the dark, silken whorls.
“Yes,” conceded Mycroft. He paused, torn between loyalty to their mother—who honestly tried to provide her children with all the elements that constituted her idea of an idyllic childhood—and his little brother who so sincerely lacked the wherewithal to pretend to conform to the prescribed rules of social niceties she laid down for the family. As happened so often, compassion for his sibling’s sensibilities prevailed.
“Yes,” Mycroft repeated. “I told her I liked it. That’s what she wanted to hear.” He paused. Beside him Sherlock sniffled, his breath coming out as a warm gust of air against Mycroft’s neck. “You see,” continued Mycroft. “It’s easier that way, for everyone. She lives a constant lie, because she wants to believe in it. Thus, my diversion from the truth served us both. I was saved from her fretting; she was saved from the need to fret.”
“But they’re all so stupid! And some of them are mean…”
Mycroft slung his arm around Sherlock’s back and pulled him closer. “I know,” he murmured. “You’ll have to get used to them, it will be the same in school. Always remember you have one advantage, Sherlock. You’re cleverer than any of them.”
Upon hearing these words Sherlock began snivelling even louder. “I hate them!”
“Please, Sherlock, listen to me.” Mycroft shook his brother lightly to extricate him from his misery and have him pay attention to Mycroft instead. “Most of them are stupid and mean, just like you pointed out, but you shouldn’t let that upset you. You should make use of it. Mingle with them and pretend to be interested in their silly games.” Sherlock’s hand shot up in fierce dismissal of Mycroft’s suggestion. Ignoring the gesture, Mycroft pushed on, “All you need to do is observe them for a few days. Find out who the bullies are, and their victims. The rest is unimportant.”
Briefly, he closed his eyes. God, Sherlock was so right in despising those children and in being angry with their mother for making him interact with them. Why couldn’t she accept that she had two exceptional sons and let them fend for themselves? In a year Sherlock would have to attend school, but at least Mrs Whitby would be there for him with her special cupboard full of mathematical riddles, and science problems, and historical puzzles to solve. To have Sherlock participate in a playgroup was akin to an act of severe cruelty. The sole excuse was, as with everything Mummy undertook, that it was done with the best of intentions.
Suppressing the surge of anger with their parent that crested in his chest, Mycroft continued. “The bullies are the meanest, and the stupidest. Make use of that knowledge to put them in their place. Then, you will be the king of the realm and the others will leave you in peace. They will be happy enough to know you’re there to protect them against any sudden attacks.”
“Is that what you do?”
Mycroft smiled down at him. “Yes it is. You’ll find it to be surprisingly easy, once you get the hang of it.” He rubbed Sherlock’s arm. “I realise you couldn’t care less, Sherlock, but if you follow my advice the hours you’ll have to spend there will be bearable at least.”
“Can’t you talk to Mummy?” Sherlock asked, hopeful.
Mycroft sighed and shook his head. “You know her. It won’t be any use. I already told her I didn’t think it was a good idea when I heard her discussing sending you to the playgroup with Daddy.”
“You should have warned me,” Sherlock complained, his voice raw.
Mycroft flinched. Should he have? He’d chosen not to, in order to spare his sibling the anxiety over the inevitable doom hanging over his head. Except, perhaps, in deciding to screen Sherlock from future unpleasantness, he’d only lent a hand to augment the shock. Remorse draped its debilitating veils over his mind, temporarily shrouding access to his quick decision-making capabilities. The touch of Sherlock’s hand on his arm roused Mycroft from his stupor.
“Talk to her. Please, Mycroft?” Sherlock fixated him with his most beseeching look, the look no one in the world could resist, apart from their mother. His fingers grabbled at Mycroft’s arm, begging him to intercede.
“All right.” Mycroft yielded. “I’ll talk to her. But I’m telling you in advance, she won’t budge, Sherlock.”
# # # #
The car drew to a halt at the next traffic lights and Mycroft stifled the sigh of annoyance he felt pushing against his teeth. Next to him Anthea kept working her fingers over her phone while she said lightly, “You still have ten minutes to spare, sir.” She knew as well as he did that he was aware of both the time and his agenda, so her remark served merely to convey her sympathy and remind him of her faith in his powers, even if the car he was sitting in had to stop for a red traffic light just like anyone else’s. In answer, Mycroft grumbled something indefinite; ending with a sincere “thank you” for her remark had chased away most of his irritation. These days he was suspiciously prone to sudden mood swings. Of course, their origins were transparent to anyone who’d have cared to observe. Mycroft supposed he ought to be grateful that in one of those perverse twists fate delighted in the continuing absence of the one person capable of doing just that was the cause of these occasional slips from his customary impassive demeanour.
His gaze flitted over the mass of pedestrians struggling past the front of the car. So many people, each of them living their tiny, unimportant lives and believing themselves the centre of the Universe. Good God, the term pedestrian certainly was an apt description for the lot of them. All they wanted was a little love and the leisure to indulge in a few dreams every now and then. It didn’t take that much to have them happy and satisfied. Mycroft should know as it fell to him to ensure that they were. Of late he had thought his self-imposed task increasingly trite. Never before had he been so blasé about the welfare of his old friend’s subjects, and their interests which she expected him to serve.
Suddenly a man appeared in his line of vision and Mycroft straightened up further in his seat. It was John Watson, hurrying along in that black coat of his with a Tesco shopping bag in his hand. The image struck Mycroft as so iconic that he felt an indulgent smile form itself at the inside of his cheeks. Then John shot a look at the car—it would have been impossible for him to discern Mycroft and Anthea behind the tinted glass—and Mycroft’s smile melted off his mouth, leaving him with an unpleasant sense of something icy, as if he’d just taken too big a gulp of improperly chilled white wine.
John looked dreadful—the English language offered no better word for it—with hollow cheeks which had lost all their colour and sunken eyes gazing out from their orbits with something dead in them. The man’s shoulders were drooping, lending him the aspect of a dejected dog suffering under a regime of daily beatings. He was still mourning Sherlock, then, after almost a year. Good heavens, that couldn’t be natural, could it? Not if they’d been nothing but flatmates and friends.
The hideous beast of jealousy—always affecting a deep slumber in the subterranean dwelling to which Mycroft had banished it, but perpetually on the lookout from the narrow slits of heavy-lidded eyes—reared its ugly head. Oh, how from the very first moment he’d found it a struggle not to resent John Watson and his easy access to his brother’s affections. Sherlock must have been lonely, as lonely as Mycroft, to let John insinuate himself into his life so wholeheartedly.
Every encounter with John had felt like a slap to Mycroft’s face. A fresh reminder of Sherlock’s steadfast determination not to approach the one person who had always gone out of his way to help him, who’d bent down and picked him up from whatever floor dirtied with Sherlock’s own vomit and the instruments of his addiction. Had Mycroft made a mistake then, in wishing his brother should live?
Mycroft’s fingers tightened their grip on his umbrella handle, pressing the thick ribs of the Malacca cane against the nerve-endings in his palm until the pain had tears threaten to prick behind his eyes. In the next instant John was gone, devoured by the ever-roiling masses of London.
Perhaps Mycroft should call him to enquire after his wellbeing. A visit, naturally, was out of the question.
# # # #
In his talk with Sherlock Mycroft had portrayed the art of manipulation as one of the easiest things in the world. It was the bane of his young existence that this was indeed the case, except with regard to his parents. Sometimes he felt that he’d wasted most of his barely over a decade long life on the observation of their mother. She was as fierce and fickle as a force of nature, charting her own course through life with the inevitability of the thunderstorm that had been brewing in the air for the whole of the long, blazingly hot summer day.
Later that evening, after Sherlock had been put to bed, Mycroft brought up the subject of the playgroup. The three of them were sitting cosily around the kitchen table, their father with The Times, Mycroft with his homework and Mummy with her sewing basket and Sherlock’s new trousers which already sported a tear on the right knee. Every now and then the comfortable silence was disturbed by Redbeard snorting in his basket.
In all fairness Mycroft had to admit that his mother never interrupted him when he spoke. In that he was better off than his father, he supposed, who hardly got the chance to finish a sentence he’d begun.
Now she sat silently thrusting her needle in and out the fabric of the trousers and the patch she was applying. “Are you done?” she asked when Mycroft had delivered his last argument.
Mycroft nodded. “Sherlock is really unhappy there,” he finished. One of Daddy’s few firm beliefs was that everybody should be happy, so Mycroft hoped against all odds that this remark would impel his father to side with him and speak up against his wife on behalf of his youngest son.
Instead—as he’d feared—his father rustled his newspaper and appeared to be shrinking behind it.
“I realise Sherlock didn’t have a good time today,” Mummy began, her needle fiercely stabbing its way through the cloth. “Ms Holly called me three times to ask me to come and fetch him as his constant crying was disturbing the other children. What you fail to see, Mikey, is what this is about.” A particularly sharp prod accompanied the last word.
“Unlike you, Sherlock has a tendency to be antisocial. The only people he deigns to speak to are us, and that nice Mr Wiggins from the Post Office. Now, if you stop to think for a moment, you’d agree with me that he needs to learn to play with other children. Otherwise school will be nothing but a punishment for him, and I don’t want that.”
“But Mummy,” Mycroft protested, “in sending Sherlock to the playgroup you’re punishing him as well.”
“Nonsense! He’s crying now, but the playgroup will help him discover friends are fun and he’ll be rearing to go there every day. You probably don’t remember this, but you weren’t too enthusiastic about playgroup the first few times I took you there, either.”
She used the scissors to snap the thread and started putting the sewing basket away. Recognising he’d effectively been dismissed, Mycroft bent over his homework. Early tomorrow morning he’d have to explain to Sherlock that he had done his best, but Mummy had defeated him as always. If Sherlock would put Mycroft’s advice regarding playground politics into practice he would have a hold on the other children in a mere three days.
Still, Mycroft realised to a four-year-old three days were an awfully long time, especially for such an impatient four-year-old.
The look of hurt betrayal Sherlock shot him on the following day tore at his heart, all the more that Sherlock then appeared to serenely accept his fate.
“I understand, Mycroft,” he said, sitting up in his bed with Mr Buzzy, the stuffed toy bee, clutched tight against his chest. His lower lip wobbled and he was blinking furiously to force back the tears that were threatening to spill over. “Thank you for asking.” He raised his arm and used his pyjama sleeve to wipe at his eyes. The blue and yellow teddy bears tumbled happily over each other as the cotton slipped back and forth along his arm.
“I wish I knew how to make her listen,” said Mycroft. Later he’d remember how thoroughly helpless he had felt at that moment and he would vow he’d let no one else get so close to him, ever.
“It’s fine. Maybe I won’t have to go if I tell her my tummy hurts.”
“Does your tummy hurt?”
“Oh yes, terribly,” Sherlock replied immediately. The blue streaks in his wide open eyes glinted in bright innocence.
“I’m afraid she won’t buy it.” Mycroft smiled. He tousled Sherlock’s curls and levered himself up from the bed. “Besides, you would be lying and you know lying is a very bad thing to do.”
“Not always.”
“Well.” Mycroft thought for a moment. “It depends,” he conceded. “But it would be bad if we were lying to each other.” He accompanied the last sentence with a mock-stern look at Sherlock, who sat staring up at him, still holding Mr Buzzy close in his arms.
“You’ll never lie to me, won’t you, Mycroft?”
“No, never.” Mycroft promised. “Not unless I can possibly help it.”
A scratching sound at the door informed them Redbeard was trying to gain admittance to the room. Mycroft opened the door and the setter leapt past him, straight for his little master who fell back onto the mattress and sought the aid of Mr Buzzy to defend himself against the onslaught of the overenthusiastic dog. The bedclothes churned up into a heaving tangle of limbs and legs from which peals of laughter and exhilarated barks erupted at irregular intervals.
“Boys!” their mother shouted up the stairs, adding her voice to the general chaos. “Your toast is getting cold. Mike, you’ll have to hurry or you’ll be late for school.”
After breakfast, while riding his bicycle out of the shed, Mycroft watched how Mummy grasped Sherlock’s hand and told him they must be off to the playgroup. Sherlock followed her to the car with his head hanging down, as quiet as a lamb led to the slaughter.
# # # #
The clock on the wall cabinet behind Mycroft’s back struck six. Mycroft finished the sentence he’d been writing and screwed the cap onto his fountain pen. After clearing his desk and locking the confidential material away in the safe, he got into his coat, slung his scarf around his neck, and picked up his umbrella. Balancing on the balls of his feet he threw a last, longing look at his den, before bracing himself and straightening his shoulders.
“I’ll be off then,” he informed Anthea casually, while pulling the door shut behind him. Her gaze unlocked itself from her computer screen and swivelled towards him. Her fingers meanwhile kept running over her keyboard. They stuttered to a halt when she took a look of his face.
“Oh,” she said. “Of course…I forgot.” Frustration flitted over her features but then they lit up. “Perhaps you’d like me to text you, sir?” she suggested. “You can show them the message during the interval and go AWOL. Well, with leave.”
A most tempting offer and a more sophisticated plan than the one Mycroft had toyed with before rejecting it as too outlandish. Initiating a minor Cabinet reshuffle in order to eschew a visit of The Phantom of the Opera with his parents was not quite a viable option. He’d endure the experience and play the dutiful son. After all, he’d spent years practicing the part.
“Thank you.” He raised his umbrella to emphasise his appreciation. Anthea had met his parents once, briefly, when she’d brought over some files to his flat when they had happened to be on one of their twice-yearly visits. As she actually had eyes and knew how to use her brain, one look had been enough for her to gauge the lay of the land.
“It can’t be any more tedious than the European budget talks we sat through three weeks ago,” Mycroft endeavoured, putting on a brave face.
“No, I guess not. But a lot louder.”
“You astonish me. I always come prepared.” Mycroft dipped his fingers in his right hand jacket pocket and produced a small Perspex box with a pair of earplugs. “Those should do the trick. I might even catch a wink of sleep.”
She smiled. “I assume you’re familiar with the story, so you probably can afford it.”
“Even if I were a stranger to the tale’s contents, I’m sure it wouldn’t have impaired my ability to contribute to the discussion of the events on stage. I look forward to the dinner afterwards with great confidence.” Mycroft paused. “I suggest you call it a day. Enjoy an evening off.”
Now she laughed. “I might do that. After I finish this first. Good night, sir.”
She didn’t wish him a pleasant evening.
Bright girl.
# # # #
“Thank you, Mr Graham. And please give my kind regards to Mrs Graham.” Mycroft handed their local cab driver the fare and lifted his suitcase from the ground.
“I will, Mycroft. Same to your Mum and Dad. Enjoy your holidays.”
After throwing the man a last weak smile, Mycroft pivoted on his heels and began the trek up the garden path, suitcase and his new, hideously expensive but already indispensable umbrella swinging at his side. His new London life fitted Mycroft’s twenty-two-year-old person like a glove. While strolling down the corridors of power, affably nodding his head or raising an eyebrow at various some- and nobodies, he knew he’d found his element at last. This was what he’d been preparing himself for at school and University, where he’d always felt a little ill at ease, surrounded by too many goldfish. Now he was among the best and brightest of the land, in that quiet nook of exclusivity where he belonged, his humble birth notwithstanding.
In the house Mycroft deposited his suitcase by the stairs and made his way to the kitchen. On the kitchen table the best tea set was laid out amongst stacks of sandwiches and his mother’s citrus cake. A tray of fresh scones was cooling on a rack. Obviously, their mother had decided to go all-out in celebration of her two boys visiting simultaneously for the summer holidays, never mind last Christmas had felt like a disaster on a scale akin to a civil conflict in a Balkan country.
“Mummy,” Mycroft called.
“Is that you, Mikey?” Her questioning voice sounded from the scullery. “I had expected you on an earlier train.”
“I had to finish some work.”
“Well, I must say I fail to see what can be so important to have you be late for a visit to your family but never mind. Go and find Sherlock, would you? He’s out in the garden somewhere. He got back three hours ago and he’s already got himself in one of his moods.”
Well, Mycroft mused, while pulling open the backdoor, at least that was nothing new.
Outside, he ambled across the small terrace with its elaborate setting of lobelias, geraniums and impatiens in terracotta pots and enamelled buckets and down the turf to the far end of the garden. The treehouse had been demolished two years earlier, but this corner of the garden remained one of Sherlock’s favourite spots when home from school, as far away from the house as possible while remaining inside the garden walls.
As expected Sherlock was sitting on the wall, his back turned towards the house. He’d already shed the detested school uniform and donned his habitual garb of faded blue jeans that slung low on his hips and a simple white t-shirt. The arms protruding from the frayed sleeves were pathetically thin, even for a wiry fifteen-year-old that was nothing but floundering limbs and angles and general clumsiness.
Mycroft positioned himself in front of the wall next to his brother. Sherlock’s eyes remained locked on the tiny herd of clouds in the distance, gliding along the line of the horizon. Below them fields of clover stretched from the garden into the valley where a fast, clear stream gurgled among clumps of willows and alders.
They stayed like that in silence for almost two minutes. Mycroft scratched at his nose; he felt distinctly uncomfortable in his suit and waistcoat, attire more suitable for air-conditioned conference rooms than for a garden in the height of summer. Sherlock didn’t move at all. Even his lashes didn’t waver once during the ten seconds Mycroft directed his gaze at him.
When he’d moved it away again, Sherlock said, “I’m not going to thank you for coming over to be miserable with me.”
“Always this tendency to think everything revolves around you.”
“Oh, please.” There was no need to look at Sherlock for his sneer to be evident. Mycroft cleared his throat. Sweat was beginning to prick on his brow.
“Actually,” he said, “I was wondering whether you’d want to come back to London with me for a few days. The flat has ample space, you’d have your own room, and I’ll be off working, so I won’t be in your way…” His voice trailed off, withering at the massive bulwark of Sherlock’s silence.
A bee droned past them, its body a tiny nudge of golden pollen glittering brightly in the sharp afternoon light. They both followed its dance with their eyes until the insect dipped into the clover and disappeared from their vision.
“Why ever would I want to do that?” Sherlock enquired, in what seemed genuine bafflement.
“Because you might like it. You’d be able to visit some museums, the libraries, spend time at Kew Gardens,” Mycroft enumerated. After a deliberate pause, he played his trump card. “You wouldn’t have to be here.”
Sherlock laughed—a sharp bark devoid of true emotion. “No.” He pretended to wipe away fake tears of merriment from his cheeks. “I’d be with you. Tell me, in what way would that improve my plight exactly? I loathe you every bit as much as I do them.”
“Grand words,” Mycroft murmured. More than anything he wanted to get his handkerchief from his jacket pocket and wipe at his forehead, but he foresaw the gesture would subject him to further ridicule.
“Not if they’re true,” shot Sherlock, twisting towards Mycroft. “And I’m afraid, brother dear, though you like to pretend otherwise, they quite, quite are. I loathe you, I loathe you, I loathe you!” He paused. “And do I need to remind you that—unlike some of us— I never lie?”
He deliberately raked his gaze from the top of Mycroft’s head down to his feet and back up again. The scrutiny drew even more beads of sweat from the pores on Mycroft’s face. In the crease between his eyebrows a drop pearled and toppled over, on a descent down the line of his nose. To prevent the embarrassment of having it hanging from the tip, Mycroft capitulated and whipped up his handkerchief. Turning away from Sherlock he dabbed his face with the cool linen. In his back he could feel the holes burned by Sherlock’s eyes.
With measured, slow movements he refolded the cloth and put it back into the pocket. It wasn’t until he’d patted it flat that he rotated once more to confront Sherlock.
“Is my opinion important to you?”
“Of course it isn’t. You’re nothing to me.”
“Wrong answer, Sherlock. In order to truly loathe someone one must spare them more than the occasional thought.”
“Your clever conundrum just serves to support my assertion.”
Mycroft shrugged and pushed himself up from the wall and onto his feet again. “Fine,” he said. “You stay here and rot for the duration of the summer. Pardon me for suggesting a diversion from your pleasant plans.”
“As a matter of fact, I’m going to put up a beehive this summer. I wrote to Mr Wiggins from school. He promised to help me.”
“Just out of curiosity, have you discussed this project with Mummy yet?”
“No.” Sherlock pushed his lower lip forward in aggressive defence.
“Ah,” Mycroft said. He slid his hands into his trouser pockets and rocked back onto his heels, but didn’t issue any additional commentary.
“What?” Sherlock’s shoulders rose in self-protection.
“Nothing. Anyway, we’re wanted for tea. These family gatherings are always such a delight, aren’t they? We’re all so happy.”
Mycroft pivoted around and walked away from Sherlock. He could feel the sharp aim of Sherlock’s stare prodding between his shoulder blades, but kept his back erect and engaged in pretence of enjoying the garden’s abundant florid offerings. Next to the rose border he drew to a halt and with great fastidiousness chose a Rose de Rescht. After taking in its scent deeply he drew the stem through his lapel buttonhole, and proceeded on his lazy perambulation back to the house.
# # # #
He hadn’t heard from Sherlock for over a month and by now Mycroft was frantic with worry. As ever, the strain was affecting his weight, and he had to put in on the treadmill many extra hours he couldn’t really afford. Apart from the sheer discomfort, this had the drawback of giving him ample time to work out increasingly distressing scenarios in his head. While his feet thumped the endlessly revolving rubber matting, his mind raced along between Sherlock shot by a sniper—the merciful script—to Sherlock taken prisoner to be raped and tortured for weeks until he expired.
While seated at his desk Mycroft’s hand reached for his phone innumerable times to start dialling the number of his agent in the country Sherlock had left for five weeks ago, only to withdraw it and pull a file towards him instead. His eyes scanned the letters, but they were as meaningless to him as an unknown script from a civilisation that was wiped from the face of the earth a long time ago.
Never before had he spent so much time standing in front of the window in his upstairs office, gazing down to the heads moving along the sidewalks of Marsham Street.
# # # #
There was a knock on the door. Mycroft sprang up from his bed, stashed the book he’d been reading between the bed and the wall, straightened the bedspread and fast tracked for his desk.
“Come in,” he called in a tone that indicated he’d been so engrossed in his homework he’d only belatedly realised someone had been seeking his attention.
The door opened to reveal the pimply visage of Trevors, the house prefect. Mycroft considered him the most perfect example of exasperating mediocrity he’d encountered at the school so far, but he was sixteen as opposed to Mycroft’s fourteen, and that was aside from being the house prefect where Mycroft was still practically nobody.
“You’re wanted on the phone, Holmes.” Trevors threw at the room at large and disappeared, no doubt to engage in some vaguely offensive act. Pressing the tallow out of the pimples that shone on his forehead in blatant mockery of Christ’s crown of thorns came to mind.
Mycroft sighed, pushed back his chair and rose to his feet.
“Mycroft Holmes,” he spoke into the receiver he found dangling from the telephone’s body in the main hall.
“Oh, Mikey.” The sound of his mother’s teary voice hit his eardrum. “Oh God! It’s been such a horrid day. We had to have Redbeard put down.”
“What? Why? What happened?” The animal had been fine when Mycroft left back for school three weeks ago.
“I don’t know,” Mummy wailed. There was the sound of her blowing her nose, some sniffling and then she continued in a voice thick with grief. “He was fine until last week. Then he started eating less and his coat lost its shine. At first I thought it was this sudden unexpected heat, what with him already being ten years old, but this morning I got really worried when he didn’t even thump his tail after I put his food in front of him.”
She broke off. Mycroft produced some sympathetic humming sounds to indicate he was listening. His mother sniffed a few times before resuming. “So I took him to the vet and she said it was cancer and poor Redbeard must have been in agony. He didn’t whimper at all, not once, the stupid beast. Just lay there looking at us with his tongue hanging out. She suggested putting him down straightaway and I felt so sorry for the poor thing that I said she should do it. He died in my arms, and…” She started crying loudly.
It was so unexpected coming from his mother that Mycroft felt glued to the ground. “Oh, Mummy,” he said, trying hard to soak up his voice with more sympathy than he felt. Redbeard’s demise left him a little cold, as he’d never greatly cared for the animal.
Then he thought of his younger brother. Oh god, Sherlock!
Before he could query after the reaction of his sibling, his mother was talking again. “He was dying; but oh, Mike, he just looked at me as if he wanted to thank me for delivering him from pain. Oh, the poor, poor animal. Imagine him having suffered so much. I felt so bad—”
“How did Sherlock react?” Mycroft cut straight to his sole interest in the story.
“Oh, he doesn’t know.” At least his mother seemed to have got a grip on herself again. “When… After… When Redbeard was dead the vet asked what I wanted to do with the body. It wasn’t until then that I realised Sherlock hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye to him and… Well, he’s only seven years old so he doesn’t understand the concept of death yet. I called your father and he suggested we tell Sherlock that Redbeard had jumped over the garden’s fence then run off and gone to live in a happy little valley.”
“What?” Mycroft couldn’t help his incredulous exclamation. His mother pressed on, ignoring his yawp.
“I thought it was a great suggestion. So I left Redbeard at the vet to be disposed of and went home to make Sherlock his favourite dessert.”
“And what did he say when you spun him the tale of Redbeard galloping off to his ‘happy, little valley’,” Mycroft sneered.
“I don’t wish to hear such a tone from you, young man.” His mother corrected him sharply. “I’ll have you know your father and I still know what’s best for you, never mind you’re doing so well in school which we’re very glad to hear. Sherlock looked a little dubious at first, but later on he seemed to accept it, and he had two helpings of his Queen Victoria pudding.”
Mycroft swallowed the sarcastic remark that was burning on the tip of his tongue. “I doubt you’ve chosen the wisest path,” he put forth instead. “Sherlock found that dead bird in the garden last year, remember? We buried it beneath the treehouse. You could have made use of that to tell him the truth. Now he will think Redbeard decided to abandon him.”
“Nonsense. We told him to be happy for Redbeard as he’s in a better place. And of course we promised to buy him another dog. He was quite content when I put him to bed. You’re not exactly being of help, Mycroft.”
In his mother’s world not being of help was an offence the enormity of which could not be excused under any circumstances, safe for the outbreak of World War III perhaps.
“I’m sorry, Mummy.” Mycroft offered in his most contrite tones. “And I’m sorry to hear about poor Redbeard.”
“That’s more like it. Now please confirm the story to Sherlock the next weekend you visit. He’s bound to ask you whether it’s true.”
“You’re ordering me to lie? Really, mother!” It was, he realised, rather childish of him to try to get his own back by drawing out his mother’s unease with the situation, but he was so exasperated with her he felt he could be excused for his momentary lapse from the role of dutiful son.
“Mike,” his mother said, warningly.
Mycroft sighed and rubbed his nose. “Fine,” he uttered. “I’ll support your silly story. But I still think you’ve not acted terribly wise in this.” Suppressing the urge to end the call there and then, he added, not shielding the reluctance from his voice, “Good night.”
# # # #
Find part two of the fic here
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Date: 2014-06-17 05:10 am (UTC)I really like that you've mentioned the treehouse on several occasions as it also features heavily in my own Holmes brothers headcanon. It seems to be the only safe haven that Sherlock knows, apart from Mycroft that is, before poor Mycroft inevitably fails him too and loses said "privilege".
Ha, I have to confess I laughed out loud when Mycroft almost hit that Vauxhall - he really shouldn't be driving when he's so obviously being distracted by his pretty little brother.
Last but not least, allow me to say that I love what you've done with Anthea, she's charming and sassy, just like she should be. Especially this was such a perfect piece of dialogue that I'd rather like to see it on screen some day:
“It can’t be any more tedious than the European budget talks we sat through three weeks ago,” Mycroft endeavoured, putting on a brave face.
“No, I guess not. But a lot louder.”