Small Families Chapter 16
Title: Small Families
Fandom: Sherlock (BBC)
Rating: T
Summary:
Dr. John Watson is turned into an eight year old child, dealing with Sherlock who doesn't know him in a world where he was never born. But now he meets with Dimmock.
Author's Note: Betaed by Caroline and tentacle_love. Thank you to both of you wonderful folks!
The place Mycroft took John was very much the restaurant equivalent of one of those little damask coffee cups; beautiful, hand gilt and small to prove a point. The entire place had been rented out and then neatly arranged to seem less empty. It might have been considered to look a bit like a very rich and real life version of a children’s story inside. John was going to have to be very clever about this. He thought back to the first meeting he’d had with Mycroft, the first first meeting and tried to draw that sense of awareness, of rules of decency, of a hard immoveable jaw. He would fall face first if he tried to be sophisticated about this. He was just going to have to be the coolest cucumber to ever be interviewed in a cleared out restaurant.
As implausible as it might sound at first, John almost wished he could just tell Mycroft everything, just make a clean breast of things. It was a real temptation hovering against the back of his teeth, but then he looked up and saw that cool arch of a smile, false as a face on a puppet. Of many things politic John was ignorant, but he knew danger when he saw it. Sherlock could be distracted with shiny dead things and chemicals but Mycroft had planetary systems in his head. If Mycroft discovered anything about Grendel’s little life ruiner it was going to disappear before John or Tim could get their hands on it and get it to someone who could try and resist the effects. With his extra brain power, Mycroft would no doubt convince himself it would be a good idea to play with the gun and explode the space time continuum and cause mass chaos.
Like with Irene, only with less riding crops.
The second reason the W illusion had to stay firmly in place was one Timothy Dimmock, widower, who occasionally forgot he was meant to avoid death. The only thing protecting him from all the ears pressed to the ground was W. The man that wasn’t and didn’t, maybe, couldn’t perhaps outfox and cut deep into the efforts of Dr. Grendel; if Grendel could master time, W could stand above it. Bloated to importance past the exaggeration kernelled in the mind of a madman and the impossibility observed by masterminds. A big enough mythology for anyone to hide behind, never mind Tim’s little army.
John attempted his innocent look, neck craning back to meet Mycroft’s eyes. It didn’t appear to go over terrible well, but at least the eldest Holmes stopped looming in the doorway and allowed the maître d’ to escort them to a table before the poor man went from unflappable to flapped.
The maître d’ moved, circling like a bland faced member of a ballet troop, a sort of regal piece of scenery, not flinching as John leaned away from his hands on the back of the chair, scooting him in under the table. There was Mycroft, watching each discrete shift of John’s face, waiting to be tucked in at the table himself. Then the waiter orbited them, laying the menus down precisely. John couldn’t have been more out of place in this restaurant, this world where everything had its orbit, its set dimensions, its fixed revolution. John knew rounds and rotations, swing shifts at a Green Zone hospital, waking up with the rest of the base, Sherlock’s feeding schedule. He wasn’t a part of menus on linen paper, fine china luncheons, waiters in tailored waistcoats.
When the waiter had retreated with their orders, both men anxious not to involve anyone else in their conversation, Mycroft leaned back slightly in his chair. His hands arranged elegantly as he unfolded his serviette and slid it into his lap. This was the sort of restaurant where they probably put the serviette on their patron’s laps for them, but Mycroft wasn’t the sort to miss playing with a prop and John was liable to panic and stab someone with his salad fork. John’s hand snuck out to gently grab his own and hide it in his lap to shake out and tuck it around his legs.
“Doctor Watson,” Mycroft began rather innocuously.
“Mister Holmes,” John replied just as seriously, he might as well have a sign over his head reading liable to sass.
“Very well, if that’s the attitude you wish to take we won’t waste time with pleasantries. You do realize that you potentially constitute a serious threat to national security.” Mycroft spoke with the practiced absence of a man who regularly enjoyed having people by their necks without them realizing.
“You really do get to the point,” he smiled mildly.
“It’s likely that I won’t have the chance to conduct a similar interview with you under such friendly circumstances in the future. I’d rather be direct if I need to be direct,” he was giving John a look as if he were planning to attack parliament instead of trying to avoid Mycroft’s impossible posturing.
“I’m not a threat to anybody.”
“You’ve killed at least two men,” Mycroft’s face was as arranged as always but somehow it was more honest. An open analytical curiosity. “You showed no distress moral or otherwise. The only things that crack that mulish expression on your face are a threat to Sherlock or your position with him.”
“Those are the important things.”
“Why?” Mycroft asked. The sleek, spinning razor wire of that question brushed against John’s heart, the all that I have left of it that couldn’t be allowed to pass his lips pressed narrow and thin against each other.
The waiter brought the rolls and soup as one might tread into the middle a minefield. Wide eyed and watching every inch.
Once she had slipped away John set the line of his lips into something firm, his eyes resting on the edge of danger rolling over in ocean before a storm. “Does it matter?”
“It does to me.”
“Can’t it be enough that I say I’m not a threat. That I don’t plan on ever being a threat to national security?” John settled back in his chair, watching.
“Plans change,” Mycroft’s words lay heavy like stones.
“If I’m a threat so are you. So is Sherlock,” John spoke carefully.
“I have no interest in harming this government because of duty and Sherlock has no interest because I dare say he would find it boring.”
John looked at Mycroft, staring. “You didn’t plan ahead at all did you?”
He tilted his head slightly to the side.
“For when Sherlock does something stupid and trips up something important and governmental,” John honestly thought he had. But maybe he should have known better with the tense pained silence, the low vibrating anger under Mycroft’s skin after the Irene fiasco.
“Sherlock won’t. You underestimate the control I’m able to maintain on situations.”
“He has the emotional awareness of a paving brick,” John said worriedly.
“You see that as a weakness. That is something that surprises me,” he lifted his spoon, taking a neat swallow of his soup while John was left fiddling with his own. “Sherlock is seeing to your education? For all his interest in a variety of subjects, I’m sure,” Mycroft asked courteously over his soup. John was left blinking over the sudden change of topics.
Deliberately John set his face into a stubbornly idiotic innocence that brothers everywhere perfect to annoy their siblings, “He has a good strategy. If he doesn’t know something he pretends like he’s an expert or proclaims it dull and then makes me write a paper on it.”
“The two of you have dangerous expectations of what an education should be,” Mycroft set down his spoon. “It’s not just cramming everything into your head about the things that interest you and ignoring everything else. You need to learn about politics, philosophy, English - Sherlock having you read the latest edition of The Handbook for Scholarly Submissions does not count.”
“Why?” John set down his spoon, throwing that dangerous word back in Mycroft’s face.
Mycroft gave him a slanted annoyed look.
“I mean it. Why should I? Because you think so?”
“So you have options,” he snapped tersely. “When you’re young you think you’ll live forever. All that time in the world.”
That was unexpected. John pulled back, watching him.
“That’s what’s so strange about this whole arrangement. Out of all the things Sherlock can offer the environment in which you might grow to your… full potential is not one of them.”
Making a face, John fiddled with the serviette in his lap, “What is it with you and Sherlock? I don’t need training. I need Sherlock.”
“But why Sherlock?”
“Why not?” John rolled his eyes. “Because he hasn’t joined in the family hobby of world domination?”
“It doesn’t fit in with any plan. There’s nothing to be gained from him you couldn’t get from someone else.”
“I know it’s a bit of a shock, so do prepare yourself, but has it occurred to you that what I get from my relationship with Sherlock is my relationship with Sherlock? That I don’t want to be trained up, I just want I flatmate I like. I know he’s a supreme prat, but he has his moments. And he doesn’t maneuver to interrogate me.”
No, any interrogations were strictly honest. Even the sneaky ones.
John tried the soup halfheartedly, gripping the spoon shaped for smaller hands. The soup rolled across his tongue like a novel, full of character, theme and the well textured highs and lows of depth. It was some of the best soup he had ever had. Mycroft appeared so used to exceptional soup that he could ignore it in favour of piercing stares.
“Don’t embellish my part in this little luncheon Dr. Watson,” he tilted his head in that way he had, sinuous and considering.
“Of course not,” John sassed straight faced.
That earned him a second face that had more to do with John’s cheek than what he actually said. Mycroft never did like him.
“You’ve been after in an interview with me for months,” John lifted in eyebrow.
“However Sherlock might have… exaggerated about me,” he tucked his index and middle finger into his linen napkin and dapped first the left and then right corners of his mouth, eyes down and away. What a wonderful, artful mimic. How his brain must ache all the time. “I’m not interested in playing his little games, I actually have responsibilities. Something he may finally be learning for himself. He asked for my help in an effort of keep you safe. Strangely he doesn’t prefer your absence.”
“Ta,” John snarked, crinkled nose and all.
“Don’t be such a child. Sherlock does not touch. He does not feel the need for it. And yet he often asks you to hold his hand instead of the other way around. I find this most peculiar. It tastes of maneuvering, but in what direction is Sherlock being maneuvered. You can understand how this would upset me. I don’t like other people manipulating my brother.”
John watched him. The low frowning dips at the corners of his mouth. The overtly groomed civilized threat of desolation behind doors and bureaucracy, finely tailor silk lined suits and art deco styled haircuts.
“I like to be aware of the motivations of all players. As such, I need information about the individual who calls himself ‘W.’ Short for Watson I assume?”
“That assumption certainly makes logical sense,” John answered calmly.
The lift of his brow, like a bird’s wing. The subtle shift of his right shoulder, lifting with more helpless power than most people could imagine imitating in their lifetimes. He was very much like a crane, for all Sherlock cawed crow like at him. He seemed all bird’s bone and long neck, discreet tuck of wing and foot and that long probing beak that snatched at every silverfish. Or perhaps a swan was a better metaphor, there had been a fair share of young smashed blokes who had discovered the joy of being assaulted and battered by a swan.
“Dr. Watson, I would appreciate if you would look at me and answer my question.”
John looked at him.
“Does the individual known to myself and others as W exist in the context I and others are led to believe?”
John’s face twisted.
“You’ll need to be more specific,” Mycroft narrowed his eyes. He was terrifying like this.
“He’s lots of things to lots of people,” John diverted; it was an obvious diversion so he didn’t bother trying to hide it too much.
“You’re going to have to be more specific.”
“I’m afraid I can’t,” John protested.
Mycroft leveled a look at him that could have been used to carve steel.
John picked up his spoon and kept his mouth full of soup. He had a few years’ experience living with the nosiest consulting detective in existence. He simply ate his soup as slowly as possible, setting his small jaw mulishly. The stare held for a while before it was shifted, sorted in Mycroft’s impossible expression catalogue. John wasn’t sure that all of them weren’t true in their own way, there was so much going on in Mycroft’s head all the time, an arrangement of layers of thought that maybe it was a matter of truest and not falsest.
Finally Mycroft settled on rolling his eyes in a way that took his whole upper body, something that John had thought was reserved just for Sherlock. “You do realize I grew up with Sherlock.”
“We’re similar?” John cocked his head to the side, surprised curiosity breaking him out of his obstinacy, in a move strangely concordant with a sparrow.
“You both don’t like to be touched by people you don’t know, both are irritatingly stubborn and both borderline sociopathic.”
Eyebrows scrunching together, John started his automatic, “Sherlock’s not a-” before he stopped and blinked at Mycroft staring calmly at him.
“You were meant to be a sociopath, weren’t you? Or as close to it as they could make you,” It slipped out from between Mycroft’s lips, sleekly as a shard of ice.
John watched, caught in the lazy sway of Mycroft’s blank, blank, blank, face; the swaying tilt of his neck and shoulders, the degree of his head.
“Don’t look so surprised. You clearly see nothing wrong with killing for what you consider acceptable purposes. You were more upset that you had almost let Sherlock be injured than the fact you shot a man in the head. And it’s not like you don’t calmly and regularly show affection for a drug dealer who regularly performs violent acts to sustain sis limping, petty little empire. And you are fairly ruthless. And certainly smart enough to pass. All it takes is memorizing expectations. Normal people do it all the time.”
John swallowed, wide eyed. Everything he had done, trying to survive, trying to keep Sherlock alive. He hadn’t thought how an outsider might categorize them, hadn’t considered they could be catalogued so coldly.
“But you don’t quite fit the classification, do you Dr. Watson? Clever? Very. Capable of killing. Obviously. But you are not what I think anyone would consider amoral. I imagine you a bit of a sleeper cell in their little handcrafted military unit. You’re something much more dangerous than a sociopath aren’t you? That’s why W wanted you. Why he wanted you here I’m not sure yet, but I’m slowly getting some idea. Because you’re the most dangerous when you have someone to protect, aren’t you? And Sherlock does need so much protection, from his own thoughtlessness mostly,” he made an absent chiding sound as if Sherlock was a thoughtless child being indulgently scolded.
John watched him.
“I have a theory. That something happened to make you fear for your brothers and sisters in your little military unit. Because I think you would have considered them your brothers and sisters. Because that’s your nature. You like to take care of things, tend them. They, your designers, tried to make you a sociopath and you became the opposite. You’re too moral, too set, too dissuadable about right and wrong. And a doctor as well,” Mycroft clicked his tongue again, shaking his head. “I imagined you revolted. A good man doesn’t need to hesitate with his finger on the trigger.” Mycroft eyes seemed so large, so dark, like tunnels going back and back into the cavern of some terrible beast. “He already knows right and wrong. He wastes no time with debate or remorse, not in such matters.”
John’s face could have belonged to a stranger, still and steady. Watchful and cautious as a cub hiding in a thicket. It was the face of a man who had killed without pause and would kill again. Who’s absolute moral compass allowed him perfect peace for the soldier in him and in turn ripped ragged along the edge of his soul as in incessant reminder to protect those he held in his responsibility. In the secret pressed line of his mouth, the perfect tension of someone completely at peace in the flex and furl of their body. So human, so small and fallible, a tiny tucked in piece of origami that was dashed again and again against circumstance and maintained each precise crease.
Such was John Watson, erstwhile member of the Northumberland Fusiliers, that Mycroft, seated across from him, with his calm impassive face, saw in him something that might be W. If it were the case, Mycroft thought, while John tried to stay steady and unaffected, then that was truly it. The sort of man John Watson would be, bloomed into maturity, was not a man affected by threats or bribery. One could not ever win with a man like that. Even broken he was always maddeningly incomprehensible and set apart.
“Who is Bill?” Mycroft asked. Pulling on the thread of a muttered word cried in terrified dreams.
John’s face shattered for a moment, more startled at the potential of his mind betrayed by his dreams and his privacy invaded by Mycroft’s infinite sets of eyes and ears across London. Where John shook out his troubled dreams. There were many things John Watson was good at; shuttering his face was not one of them.
“Ah,” Mycroft murmured knowingly. “Part of you unit then? I suspected as much.”
“I’m not talking about Bill.”
“He features often in your nightmares,” Mycroft moved in his refined little gestures, like a clockwork figure going through its motions.
“Stop shamming,” John snapped arms wrapping around his middle. Too much, too much, too deep into his heart, muscling and bullying into the tidy chambers, shouldering everything out of its careful order. “Don’t sham with me.”
Something slipped when it usually would have caught in that great machination that was in Mycroft’s head and he blinked at John before leaning back, steepling his fingers against his lips. “What do you mean ‘shamming’?”
John scowled at him, “That…” John made a vague motion at him. “Your face, the prop stuff, the presentation.”
“Why does it make you uncomfortable?” Mycroft was just watching now.
Giving his lip a pass with his tongue, looking off to the side, John thought for the right answer. “It feels strange. It’s distracting. And confusing, but that may have been what you were trying for. It’s too-” The lack of a word chugged against itself like a choking engine, huge foggy clumsiness filling up any free space in his head, making it impossible to think.
“Loud,” Mycroft murmured softly, his head tilting back in thoughtful recognition. “I didn’t mean entirely to distress you,” his voice was incredibly gentle, so strange and tender while twisting there on the edge of considering. Even kind he was plotting. “I wasn’t aware being called a sociopath would be so upsetting to you. Sherlock usually takes comfort in hiding behind it.”
He closed his eyes, small face solemn and tensed, “I just want to be left alone. I just want to solve crimes with Sherlock and be left alone.”
“You must know Sherlock is not equipped to give you the comfort and affection you obviously crave.”
John’s eyes flicked to his face.
“When you’re distressed you hug yourself. It’s a consistent if usually brief behavior,” he explained. “Sherlock’s noticed by now, but he usually ignores it. When he doesn’t he scolds you.”
Reaching back into his memory for something powerful and true John spoke carefully, looking away again. “Sherlock likes to play at being a sociopath, but he has the brain of a scientist or a philosopher. Yet he chooses to be a detective.”
“What am I meant to deduce from that?” Mycroft asked quietly, considering John as somehow more than he had before.
John looked at Mycroft slowly, as if somehow his exhaustion made the touching of their gazes move slower than dictated by physics. There was so much anguish there Mycroft had to try very hard not to inhale sharply. “That he has a heart.”
“You think you know my brother very well.”
“No,” John spoke quietly, the ease of every line spoke of honesty. “I’m just better with people.”
That seemed to convince Mycroft of whatever he needed convincing, “Very well. I don’t suppose you would tell me what you r people skills tell you about me?” he tilted the words up at the ends half-sarcastic.
“I’m pleading silence on that one. It’s beautiful what you’ve made of yourself but you’re too big inside. I might as well write on the orbits of the planets.”
Mycroft gave him something that might have been a blank look. John rolled his eyes at it.
“Your life is a series of well executed deux ex machinas and the political version of opera where you are consistently the prima donna. I don’t think I’d be able to sift past your first fifty layers without going cross eyed and giving up. You’ve designed yourself to be incomprehensible. It’s very beautiful, but it’s too much for me.”
Mycroft stared at him for a moment.
“What? Only Sherlock can be the beautiful one? You practically raised him. It only makes sense what makes him beautiful is a variation of what makes you beautiful too,” John realized being overwrought may have caused him to run his mouth a little too long in a little too sharp absolutes. John didn’t need to be attracted to the Holmes brothers to know that with their impossible spinning brains and their flitting brilliant language, not to mention their flitting brilliant brilliance, that they were beautiful the way carved marble was beautiful and Buckingham Palace was beautiful and a finely shaped suit was beautiful.
Mycroft, wearing a maddeningly composed face, raised a few fingers at the waitress who was shifting back and forth by the kitchen door as if she wasn’t sure she wanted to approach the table. “We’re canceling the rest of lunch,” Mycroft pronounced imperiously. It was like Sherlock, but better. “One coffee, one milky tea and your chocolate creme cake for the child.”
Order placed Mycroft pulled out his impressively fortified mobile and started to do something to it, a silence dropping between the two of them as if he had dropped a steel safety door between the two of them. John was grateful for the opportunity to compose himself, tucking his fingers around his serviette, consciously trying not to hug himself like Mycroft had said. He wondered where his bag was. Mycroft surely had it secreted somewhere.
The waitress’s hand trembled slightly when Mycroft deigned to drift his eyes up in her direction when she returned with the desert. John didn’t know if he could hold down the thick slice of chocolate cake artfully arranged in a mountain range of creme and fancy arabesques of chocolate decorating it. But he wasn’t entirely sure what would happen tonight so he took his fork to it with every bit of military training he had. The milky tea calmed him, nearly against his will, a long ingrained signal for end of case, end of shift, end of wrestling Harry into something similar to bed, working its magic.
Mycroft somehow arranged it so that he took his last sip of coffee to coincide with John’s last bite of cake. “I need to get back to the office immediately. I have a secure car that will take you to a safe house. This will be over soon and you and Sherlock can go back to playing your lovely little games.” John nodded, stiff and determined. The maître de’ appeared randomly out of nowhere and spoke from a respectful distance about something soft voiced. Mycroft nodded and made a vague motion at him, the perfect image of a lazy emperor. With a gentle swoosh Mycroft stood and made a faint motion at John to do the same and come with him. They went out a side entrance, walked through a small shoe and hat shop of the sort where it was just assumed nothing was under triple digits and then out into an alley where there were two cars waiting.
John was handed his bag, which he wrapped his arms around tightly, holding it to his chest while Mycroft ignored him in favour of speaking something that sounded vaguely Chinese into his mobile. A tall guard made a wide nonthreatening gesture toward the second car and John, sighing, climbed in the car without complaint.
Is this Bad Davey? - D
That depends on entirely on who’s asking.
I’m Dimmock. A close friend of John Watson’s -D
How did you get my private number?
What other Johns are there? What’s up with the suit at 221B?
Did he just kidnap my boy.
He’s not your boy. - D
And the man is dangerous, it’s better to stay out of his way - D
Probably taking John 2 safe house. How much do u know about the plan 4 2nite -D
Ugh. Don’t do that. Just spell things out. Not that hard.
I know enough of the plan to be helpful.
You’re that drunk who hangs out on John’s roof.
I’m not a drunk. - D
And how do you know? -D
I own the eyes of London. I’m just amazing like that.
We have a few things to discuss. John may be in danger. -D
I’m ringing you now.
Previous Next
Fandom: Sherlock (BBC)
Rating: T
Summary:
Dr. John Watson is turned into an eight year old child, dealing with Sherlock who doesn't know him in a world where he was never born. But now he meets with Dimmock.
Author's Note: Betaed by Caroline and tentacle_love. Thank you to both of you wonderful folks!
The place Mycroft took John was very much the restaurant equivalent of one of those little damask coffee cups; beautiful, hand gilt and small to prove a point. The entire place had been rented out and then neatly arranged to seem less empty. It might have been considered to look a bit like a very rich and real life version of a children’s story inside. John was going to have to be very clever about this. He thought back to the first meeting he’d had with Mycroft, the first first meeting and tried to draw that sense of awareness, of rules of decency, of a hard immoveable jaw. He would fall face first if he tried to be sophisticated about this. He was just going to have to be the coolest cucumber to ever be interviewed in a cleared out restaurant.
As implausible as it might sound at first, John almost wished he could just tell Mycroft everything, just make a clean breast of things. It was a real temptation hovering against the back of his teeth, but then he looked up and saw that cool arch of a smile, false as a face on a puppet. Of many things politic John was ignorant, but he knew danger when he saw it. Sherlock could be distracted with shiny dead things and chemicals but Mycroft had planetary systems in his head. If Mycroft discovered anything about Grendel’s little life ruiner it was going to disappear before John or Tim could get their hands on it and get it to someone who could try and resist the effects. With his extra brain power, Mycroft would no doubt convince himself it would be a good idea to play with the gun and explode the space time continuum and cause mass chaos.
Like with Irene, only with less riding crops.
The second reason the W illusion had to stay firmly in place was one Timothy Dimmock, widower, who occasionally forgot he was meant to avoid death. The only thing protecting him from all the ears pressed to the ground was W. The man that wasn’t and didn’t, maybe, couldn’t perhaps outfox and cut deep into the efforts of Dr. Grendel; if Grendel could master time, W could stand above it. Bloated to importance past the exaggeration kernelled in the mind of a madman and the impossibility observed by masterminds. A big enough mythology for anyone to hide behind, never mind Tim’s little army.
John attempted his innocent look, neck craning back to meet Mycroft’s eyes. It didn’t appear to go over terrible well, but at least the eldest Holmes stopped looming in the doorway and allowed the maître d’ to escort them to a table before the poor man went from unflappable to flapped.
The maître d’ moved, circling like a bland faced member of a ballet troop, a sort of regal piece of scenery, not flinching as John leaned away from his hands on the back of the chair, scooting him in under the table. There was Mycroft, watching each discrete shift of John’s face, waiting to be tucked in at the table himself. Then the waiter orbited them, laying the menus down precisely. John couldn’t have been more out of place in this restaurant, this world where everything had its orbit, its set dimensions, its fixed revolution. John knew rounds and rotations, swing shifts at a Green Zone hospital, waking up with the rest of the base, Sherlock’s feeding schedule. He wasn’t a part of menus on linen paper, fine china luncheons, waiters in tailored waistcoats.
When the waiter had retreated with their orders, both men anxious not to involve anyone else in their conversation, Mycroft leaned back slightly in his chair. His hands arranged elegantly as he unfolded his serviette and slid it into his lap. This was the sort of restaurant where they probably put the serviette on their patron’s laps for them, but Mycroft wasn’t the sort to miss playing with a prop and John was liable to panic and stab someone with his salad fork. John’s hand snuck out to gently grab his own and hide it in his lap to shake out and tuck it around his legs.
“Doctor Watson,” Mycroft began rather innocuously.
“Mister Holmes,” John replied just as seriously, he might as well have a sign over his head reading liable to sass.
“Very well, if that’s the attitude you wish to take we won’t waste time with pleasantries. You do realize that you potentially constitute a serious threat to national security.” Mycroft spoke with the practiced absence of a man who regularly enjoyed having people by their necks without them realizing.
“You really do get to the point,” he smiled mildly.
“It’s likely that I won’t have the chance to conduct a similar interview with you under such friendly circumstances in the future. I’d rather be direct if I need to be direct,” he was giving John a look as if he were planning to attack parliament instead of trying to avoid Mycroft’s impossible posturing.
“I’m not a threat to anybody.”
“You’ve killed at least two men,” Mycroft’s face was as arranged as always but somehow it was more honest. An open analytical curiosity. “You showed no distress moral or otherwise. The only things that crack that mulish expression on your face are a threat to Sherlock or your position with him.”
“Those are the important things.”
“Why?” Mycroft asked. The sleek, spinning razor wire of that question brushed against John’s heart, the all that I have left of it that couldn’t be allowed to pass his lips pressed narrow and thin against each other.
The waiter brought the rolls and soup as one might tread into the middle a minefield. Wide eyed and watching every inch.
Once she had slipped away John set the line of his lips into something firm, his eyes resting on the edge of danger rolling over in ocean before a storm. “Does it matter?”
“It does to me.”
“Can’t it be enough that I say I’m not a threat. That I don’t plan on ever being a threat to national security?” John settled back in his chair, watching.
“Plans change,” Mycroft’s words lay heavy like stones.
“If I’m a threat so are you. So is Sherlock,” John spoke carefully.
“I have no interest in harming this government because of duty and Sherlock has no interest because I dare say he would find it boring.”
John looked at Mycroft, staring. “You didn’t plan ahead at all did you?”
He tilted his head slightly to the side.
“For when Sherlock does something stupid and trips up something important and governmental,” John honestly thought he had. But maybe he should have known better with the tense pained silence, the low vibrating anger under Mycroft’s skin after the Irene fiasco.
“Sherlock won’t. You underestimate the control I’m able to maintain on situations.”
“He has the emotional awareness of a paving brick,” John said worriedly.
“You see that as a weakness. That is something that surprises me,” he lifted his spoon, taking a neat swallow of his soup while John was left fiddling with his own. “Sherlock is seeing to your education? For all his interest in a variety of subjects, I’m sure,” Mycroft asked courteously over his soup. John was left blinking over the sudden change of topics.
Deliberately John set his face into a stubbornly idiotic innocence that brothers everywhere perfect to annoy their siblings, “He has a good strategy. If he doesn’t know something he pretends like he’s an expert or proclaims it dull and then makes me write a paper on it.”
“The two of you have dangerous expectations of what an education should be,” Mycroft set down his spoon. “It’s not just cramming everything into your head about the things that interest you and ignoring everything else. You need to learn about politics, philosophy, English - Sherlock having you read the latest edition of The Handbook for Scholarly Submissions does not count.”
“Why?” John set down his spoon, throwing that dangerous word back in Mycroft’s face.
Mycroft gave him a slanted annoyed look.
“I mean it. Why should I? Because you think so?”
“So you have options,” he snapped tersely. “When you’re young you think you’ll live forever. All that time in the world.”
That was unexpected. John pulled back, watching him.
“That’s what’s so strange about this whole arrangement. Out of all the things Sherlock can offer the environment in which you might grow to your… full potential is not one of them.”
Making a face, John fiddled with the serviette in his lap, “What is it with you and Sherlock? I don’t need training. I need Sherlock.”
“But why Sherlock?”
“Why not?” John rolled his eyes. “Because he hasn’t joined in the family hobby of world domination?”
“It doesn’t fit in with any plan. There’s nothing to be gained from him you couldn’t get from someone else.”
“I know it’s a bit of a shock, so do prepare yourself, but has it occurred to you that what I get from my relationship with Sherlock is my relationship with Sherlock? That I don’t want to be trained up, I just want I flatmate I like. I know he’s a supreme prat, but he has his moments. And he doesn’t maneuver to interrogate me.”
No, any interrogations were strictly honest. Even the sneaky ones.
John tried the soup halfheartedly, gripping the spoon shaped for smaller hands. The soup rolled across his tongue like a novel, full of character, theme and the well textured highs and lows of depth. It was some of the best soup he had ever had. Mycroft appeared so used to exceptional soup that he could ignore it in favour of piercing stares.
“Don’t embellish my part in this little luncheon Dr. Watson,” he tilted his head in that way he had, sinuous and considering.
“Of course not,” John sassed straight faced.
That earned him a second face that had more to do with John’s cheek than what he actually said. Mycroft never did like him.
“You’ve been after in an interview with me for months,” John lifted in eyebrow.
“However Sherlock might have… exaggerated about me,” he tucked his index and middle finger into his linen napkin and dapped first the left and then right corners of his mouth, eyes down and away. What a wonderful, artful mimic. How his brain must ache all the time. “I’m not interested in playing his little games, I actually have responsibilities. Something he may finally be learning for himself. He asked for my help in an effort of keep you safe. Strangely he doesn’t prefer your absence.”
“Ta,” John snarked, crinkled nose and all.
“Don’t be such a child. Sherlock does not touch. He does not feel the need for it. And yet he often asks you to hold his hand instead of the other way around. I find this most peculiar. It tastes of maneuvering, but in what direction is Sherlock being maneuvered. You can understand how this would upset me. I don’t like other people manipulating my brother.”
John watched him. The low frowning dips at the corners of his mouth. The overtly groomed civilized threat of desolation behind doors and bureaucracy, finely tailor silk lined suits and art deco styled haircuts.
“I like to be aware of the motivations of all players. As such, I need information about the individual who calls himself ‘W.’ Short for Watson I assume?”
“That assumption certainly makes logical sense,” John answered calmly.
The lift of his brow, like a bird’s wing. The subtle shift of his right shoulder, lifting with more helpless power than most people could imagine imitating in their lifetimes. He was very much like a crane, for all Sherlock cawed crow like at him. He seemed all bird’s bone and long neck, discreet tuck of wing and foot and that long probing beak that snatched at every silverfish. Or perhaps a swan was a better metaphor, there had been a fair share of young smashed blokes who had discovered the joy of being assaulted and battered by a swan.
“Dr. Watson, I would appreciate if you would look at me and answer my question.”
John looked at him.
“Does the individual known to myself and others as W exist in the context I and others are led to believe?”
John’s face twisted.
“You’ll need to be more specific,” Mycroft narrowed his eyes. He was terrifying like this.
“He’s lots of things to lots of people,” John diverted; it was an obvious diversion so he didn’t bother trying to hide it too much.
“You’re going to have to be more specific.”
“I’m afraid I can’t,” John protested.
Mycroft leveled a look at him that could have been used to carve steel.
John picked up his spoon and kept his mouth full of soup. He had a few years’ experience living with the nosiest consulting detective in existence. He simply ate his soup as slowly as possible, setting his small jaw mulishly. The stare held for a while before it was shifted, sorted in Mycroft’s impossible expression catalogue. John wasn’t sure that all of them weren’t true in their own way, there was so much going on in Mycroft’s head all the time, an arrangement of layers of thought that maybe it was a matter of truest and not falsest.
Finally Mycroft settled on rolling his eyes in a way that took his whole upper body, something that John had thought was reserved just for Sherlock. “You do realize I grew up with Sherlock.”
“We’re similar?” John cocked his head to the side, surprised curiosity breaking him out of his obstinacy, in a move strangely concordant with a sparrow.
“You both don’t like to be touched by people you don’t know, both are irritatingly stubborn and both borderline sociopathic.”
Eyebrows scrunching together, John started his automatic, “Sherlock’s not a-” before he stopped and blinked at Mycroft staring calmly at him.
“You were meant to be a sociopath, weren’t you? Or as close to it as they could make you,” It slipped out from between Mycroft’s lips, sleekly as a shard of ice.
John watched, caught in the lazy sway of Mycroft’s blank, blank, blank, face; the swaying tilt of his neck and shoulders, the degree of his head.
“Don’t look so surprised. You clearly see nothing wrong with killing for what you consider acceptable purposes. You were more upset that you had almost let Sherlock be injured than the fact you shot a man in the head. And it’s not like you don’t calmly and regularly show affection for a drug dealer who regularly performs violent acts to sustain sis limping, petty little empire. And you are fairly ruthless. And certainly smart enough to pass. All it takes is memorizing expectations. Normal people do it all the time.”
John swallowed, wide eyed. Everything he had done, trying to survive, trying to keep Sherlock alive. He hadn’t thought how an outsider might categorize them, hadn’t considered they could be catalogued so coldly.
“But you don’t quite fit the classification, do you Dr. Watson? Clever? Very. Capable of killing. Obviously. But you are not what I think anyone would consider amoral. I imagine you a bit of a sleeper cell in their little handcrafted military unit. You’re something much more dangerous than a sociopath aren’t you? That’s why W wanted you. Why he wanted you here I’m not sure yet, but I’m slowly getting some idea. Because you’re the most dangerous when you have someone to protect, aren’t you? And Sherlock does need so much protection, from his own thoughtlessness mostly,” he made an absent chiding sound as if Sherlock was a thoughtless child being indulgently scolded.
John watched him.
“I have a theory. That something happened to make you fear for your brothers and sisters in your little military unit. Because I think you would have considered them your brothers and sisters. Because that’s your nature. You like to take care of things, tend them. They, your designers, tried to make you a sociopath and you became the opposite. You’re too moral, too set, too dissuadable about right and wrong. And a doctor as well,” Mycroft clicked his tongue again, shaking his head. “I imagined you revolted. A good man doesn’t need to hesitate with his finger on the trigger.” Mycroft eyes seemed so large, so dark, like tunnels going back and back into the cavern of some terrible beast. “He already knows right and wrong. He wastes no time with debate or remorse, not in such matters.”
John’s face could have belonged to a stranger, still and steady. Watchful and cautious as a cub hiding in a thicket. It was the face of a man who had killed without pause and would kill again. Who’s absolute moral compass allowed him perfect peace for the soldier in him and in turn ripped ragged along the edge of his soul as in incessant reminder to protect those he held in his responsibility. In the secret pressed line of his mouth, the perfect tension of someone completely at peace in the flex and furl of their body. So human, so small and fallible, a tiny tucked in piece of origami that was dashed again and again against circumstance and maintained each precise crease.
Such was John Watson, erstwhile member of the Northumberland Fusiliers, that Mycroft, seated across from him, with his calm impassive face, saw in him something that might be W. If it were the case, Mycroft thought, while John tried to stay steady and unaffected, then that was truly it. The sort of man John Watson would be, bloomed into maturity, was not a man affected by threats or bribery. One could not ever win with a man like that. Even broken he was always maddeningly incomprehensible and set apart.
“Who is Bill?” Mycroft asked. Pulling on the thread of a muttered word cried in terrified dreams.
John’s face shattered for a moment, more startled at the potential of his mind betrayed by his dreams and his privacy invaded by Mycroft’s infinite sets of eyes and ears across London. Where John shook out his troubled dreams. There were many things John Watson was good at; shuttering his face was not one of them.
“Ah,” Mycroft murmured knowingly. “Part of you unit then? I suspected as much.”
“I’m not talking about Bill.”
“He features often in your nightmares,” Mycroft moved in his refined little gestures, like a clockwork figure going through its motions.
“Stop shamming,” John snapped arms wrapping around his middle. Too much, too much, too deep into his heart, muscling and bullying into the tidy chambers, shouldering everything out of its careful order. “Don’t sham with me.”
Something slipped when it usually would have caught in that great machination that was in Mycroft’s head and he blinked at John before leaning back, steepling his fingers against his lips. “What do you mean ‘shamming’?”
John scowled at him, “That…” John made a vague motion at him. “Your face, the prop stuff, the presentation.”
“Why does it make you uncomfortable?” Mycroft was just watching now.
Giving his lip a pass with his tongue, looking off to the side, John thought for the right answer. “It feels strange. It’s distracting. And confusing, but that may have been what you were trying for. It’s too-” The lack of a word chugged against itself like a choking engine, huge foggy clumsiness filling up any free space in his head, making it impossible to think.
“Loud,” Mycroft murmured softly, his head tilting back in thoughtful recognition. “I didn’t mean entirely to distress you,” his voice was incredibly gentle, so strange and tender while twisting there on the edge of considering. Even kind he was plotting. “I wasn’t aware being called a sociopath would be so upsetting to you. Sherlock usually takes comfort in hiding behind it.”
He closed his eyes, small face solemn and tensed, “I just want to be left alone. I just want to solve crimes with Sherlock and be left alone.”
“You must know Sherlock is not equipped to give you the comfort and affection you obviously crave.”
John’s eyes flicked to his face.
“When you’re distressed you hug yourself. It’s a consistent if usually brief behavior,” he explained. “Sherlock’s noticed by now, but he usually ignores it. When he doesn’t he scolds you.”
Reaching back into his memory for something powerful and true John spoke carefully, looking away again. “Sherlock likes to play at being a sociopath, but he has the brain of a scientist or a philosopher. Yet he chooses to be a detective.”
“What am I meant to deduce from that?” Mycroft asked quietly, considering John as somehow more than he had before.
John looked at Mycroft slowly, as if somehow his exhaustion made the touching of their gazes move slower than dictated by physics. There was so much anguish there Mycroft had to try very hard not to inhale sharply. “That he has a heart.”
“You think you know my brother very well.”
“No,” John spoke quietly, the ease of every line spoke of honesty. “I’m just better with people.”
That seemed to convince Mycroft of whatever he needed convincing, “Very well. I don’t suppose you would tell me what you r people skills tell you about me?” he tilted the words up at the ends half-sarcastic.
“I’m pleading silence on that one. It’s beautiful what you’ve made of yourself but you’re too big inside. I might as well write on the orbits of the planets.”
Mycroft gave him something that might have been a blank look. John rolled his eyes at it.
“Your life is a series of well executed deux ex machinas and the political version of opera where you are consistently the prima donna. I don’t think I’d be able to sift past your first fifty layers without going cross eyed and giving up. You’ve designed yourself to be incomprehensible. It’s very beautiful, but it’s too much for me.”
Mycroft stared at him for a moment.
“What? Only Sherlock can be the beautiful one? You practically raised him. It only makes sense what makes him beautiful is a variation of what makes you beautiful too,” John realized being overwrought may have caused him to run his mouth a little too long in a little too sharp absolutes. John didn’t need to be attracted to the Holmes brothers to know that with their impossible spinning brains and their flitting brilliant language, not to mention their flitting brilliant brilliance, that they were beautiful the way carved marble was beautiful and Buckingham Palace was beautiful and a finely shaped suit was beautiful.
Mycroft, wearing a maddeningly composed face, raised a few fingers at the waitress who was shifting back and forth by the kitchen door as if she wasn’t sure she wanted to approach the table. “We’re canceling the rest of lunch,” Mycroft pronounced imperiously. It was like Sherlock, but better. “One coffee, one milky tea and your chocolate creme cake for the child.”
Order placed Mycroft pulled out his impressively fortified mobile and started to do something to it, a silence dropping between the two of them as if he had dropped a steel safety door between the two of them. John was grateful for the opportunity to compose himself, tucking his fingers around his serviette, consciously trying not to hug himself like Mycroft had said. He wondered where his bag was. Mycroft surely had it secreted somewhere.
The waitress’s hand trembled slightly when Mycroft deigned to drift his eyes up in her direction when she returned with the desert. John didn’t know if he could hold down the thick slice of chocolate cake artfully arranged in a mountain range of creme and fancy arabesques of chocolate decorating it. But he wasn’t entirely sure what would happen tonight so he took his fork to it with every bit of military training he had. The milky tea calmed him, nearly against his will, a long ingrained signal for end of case, end of shift, end of wrestling Harry into something similar to bed, working its magic.
Mycroft somehow arranged it so that he took his last sip of coffee to coincide with John’s last bite of cake. “I need to get back to the office immediately. I have a secure car that will take you to a safe house. This will be over soon and you and Sherlock can go back to playing your lovely little games.” John nodded, stiff and determined. The maître de’ appeared randomly out of nowhere and spoke from a respectful distance about something soft voiced. Mycroft nodded and made a vague motion at him, the perfect image of a lazy emperor. With a gentle swoosh Mycroft stood and made a faint motion at John to do the same and come with him. They went out a side entrance, walked through a small shoe and hat shop of the sort where it was just assumed nothing was under triple digits and then out into an alley where there were two cars waiting.
John was handed his bag, which he wrapped his arms around tightly, holding it to his chest while Mycroft ignored him in favour of speaking something that sounded vaguely Chinese into his mobile. A tall guard made a wide nonthreatening gesture toward the second car and John, sighing, climbed in the car without complaint.
Is this Bad Davey? - D
That depends on entirely on who’s asking.
I’m Dimmock. A close friend of John Watson’s -D
How did you get my private number?
What other Johns are there? What’s up with the suit at 221B?
Did he just kidnap my boy.
He’s not your boy. - D
And the man is dangerous, it’s better to stay out of his way - D
Probably taking John 2 safe house. How much do u know about the plan 4 2nite -D
Ugh. Don’t do that. Just spell things out. Not that hard.
I know enough of the plan to be helpful.
You’re that drunk who hangs out on John’s roof.
I’m not a drunk. - D
And how do you know? -D
I own the eyes of London. I’m just amazing like that.
We have a few things to discuss. John may be in danger. -D
I’m ringing you now.
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