Never Look Away
So, this fic also fits this prompt over at the sherlockbbc_fic comm. Moar MYCROFT/LESTRADE. Oh yes. It /happened/. ;D
Again with the bonus Sherlock/John pre-slash, because that also just sort of happens without me meaning it too, really, promise. ;D
Never Look Away
There were very few people in the world whom Mycroft Holmes cared enough about to keep an eye on.
One of them would be his younger brother, Sherlock Holmes, self-proclaimed sociopath and world’s greatest detective. Sherlock tended to get himself into all manner of ugly scrapes, and, upon occasion, he had needed Mycroft’s help (i.e. the assistance of various secret agencies the British government controlled) to extricate himself from particularly sticky situations. To guard against the possibility of one day having to explain to Mummy that Sherlock had been harmed by one of the many powerful people he’d managed to annoy, Mycroft kept near-constant tabs on his little brother’s whereabouts and safety. (His concern for Sherlock might also have been predicated upon the same sentiment that caused older siblings at playgrounds to beat up bullies after telling them that only they were allowed to talk like that to their younger siblings, though he’d never say as much to Sherlock.)
Another would be John Watson, doctor and longtime companion of Sherlock Holmes. After the incident at the pool with Moriarty last year, Mycroft had come to the conclusion that monitoring John Watson’s safety was just an extension of monitoring Sherlock’s, because if John was hurt, Sherlock was definitely bound to be in danger, too. Sherlock had even expressed (grudging) gratitude after Mycroft’s surveillance had kept Dr. Watson safe when a suspect in one of Sherlock’s cases had attempted to off Watson near the end of September, and “thank you” was not something Sherlock said lightly. It was only brotherly to make sure that John Watson was safe at all times, after all.
Detective Inspector Lestrade, one of Scotland Yard’s finest detectives (or at least the best of a bad lot, according to Sherlock), was the third person Mycroft had monitored at all times. He’d almost decided not to place him under surveillance, at first, because that felt ... different. Sherlock knew that Mycroft was watching him, and John Watson felt more like another part of Sherlock than anything else, but Lestrade ... Mycroft wasn’t sure the detective understood everything a relationship with the-man-who-was-the-British-government entailed, and he felt almost guilty about keeping an eye on him. A few days of worrying about what exactly Lestrade was doing and whether he was in danger at any given time, though, had cured him of his initial hesitance; Mycroft had placed Lestrade under surveillance less than half a week after they became involved.
He usually only checked up on those three once every few hours while he was at the office - often enough that he was reassured of their safety, but not so often that his private life became a distraction from his work. He made sure to keep a reasonable boundary between work and home. It was just that he was used to having any information that he wanted at his fingertips, so it was simply a matter of course, for him, being able to check up on his brother, his brother’s flatmate, and his own boyfriend every so often.
So it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary when, after finishing a memo that would later be sent to the Prime Minister, Mycroft tapped a few buttons on his computer and found himself looking at security camera footage of Sherlock and John. The two of them were in a library somewhere in London, Sherlock holding two copies of the same leather-bound book and looking back and forth between the two of them while John sat in a chair next to him and waited, watching him expectantly. Mycroft spent a few moments lip-reading, piecing together their conversation. They were bantering (flirting, really - and was Sherlock ever going to figure out what all this was between himself and John Watson? Really, this whole “oblivious-to-love” thing was starting to get very tedious), as per usual.
Mycroft clicked on a different window, and a live video feed of Lestrade, who was currently sitting at a desk at the station, came up. He looked at Lestrade for a moment, then frowned. Something wasn’t right ... He tapped a button and the camera zoomed in, so that Mycroft could see that the dark splotch on the left side of Lestrade’s face that he’d initially assumed was just shadow was actually a large, ugly bruise.
Mycroft’s lips thinned; after a moment more of looking at Lestrade, who was filling out paperwork, propping himself up above his desk with one hand (which he was very carefully not allowing to brush against the left side of his face), he tapped another sequence of buttons, and video files of Lestrade throughout the day popped up on his laptop. A quick browse through today’s surveillance of Lestrade revealed the cause of the bruising: a suspect in the recent burglary of a jewelry shop had gotten violent when confronted and had attacked the nearest police officer - who, it just so happened, had been Lestrade. The police had managed to subdue the burglar and bring him in, but Lestrade had been knocked out for a few minutes and the red mark on his face had begun blooming into an enormous bruise by the time he’d woken up.
And then of course he’d decided that the best thing to do was to continue working without even icing it or anything. Honestly, sometimes Mycroft wasn’t sure if the entire rest of the world wasn’t just completely insane. Was he really the only person in the world with any common sense?
He heaved a long-suffering sigh and then, after making a few quick calls to ensure that the jewelry store thief’s stay in jail was as unpleasant as possible, got back to work. He was going to see Lestrade in a few hours, anyways; it didn’t make sense to go haring off to the police station, when he’d see the man at half-past seven in his (well, their, for the time being (though Mycroft hoped that Lestrade would eventually agree that Mycroft’s perfectly suitable house was much more comfortable)) flat.
At 7:47 that evening, just as Mycroft was starting to get annoyed, Lestrade pushed open the door to the flat and came in, shedding his soaking-wet, black coat and letting it fall on the floor almost immediately in a pile of wet fabric. Mycroft frowned - he always did hate messes - but he supposed that he could let things slide this once; it was far more important that he deal with Lestrade himself first. Besides, Mycroft prided himself on being the Holmes brother who actually knew how to compromise and get along with people, unlike someone else he could name.
Then he got a proper look at Lestrade’s face and all thoughts of how he was the better brother flew from his mind. Lestrade had, at first, been attempting in a somewhat obvious fashion to keep out of the light; he’d also turned his face at an awkward angle so that Mycroft, sitting in the armchair in the center of the living room as he was, couldn’t get a proper look at him. But Mycroft just craned his neck, twisting so quickly that Lestrade didn’t have time to adjust, and - and then he saw that the side of Lestrade’s face that had been bruised an ugly, dark purple before was now several shades lighter and pasty-looking, because he was wearing some sort of makeup to hide the bruising.
A sudden, irrational anger reared its ugly head in the pit of Mycroft’s stomach, so that he felt himself getting to his feet and circling around a decidedly uncomfortable-looking Lestrade before he even knew what he was doing. He was about to launch into a withering stream of observations that would let Lestrade know exactly how much of a failure his attempted cover-up was (and would have been, even if Mycroft hadn’t already known exactly what was going on), when he stopped himself short and reminded himself that he wasn’t Sherlock, that he did have social graces, and that he needed to figure out why Lestrade didn’t want to talk about the injury before he did anything else.
So he sat back down in the red armchair and simply said, “You’re late.”
Lestrade shrugged, a fleeting look of relief making its way across his face, and sat down on the sofa opposite Mycroft. “Yeah, well, you know how it is. Work.”
“Yes.” Mycroft paused, then got up and went into the kitchen. When he came back, he had a dark blue icepack in his hand. He tossed it to a confused Lestrade, then said, his voice too casual, “I presume you’re in need of this.”
Lestrade sighed and made to rub at his eyes, then winced when one of his hands came into contact with the left half of his face. “How did you know?” he asked, accepting the icepack and pressing it against the side of his face.
“It was simple enough to figure out, really,” Mycroft said. “The makeup only drew attention to it.”
Lestrade shook his head. “You and bloody Sherlock. I swear, I’ll never ...” he trailed off, then looked Mycroft full in the face and sighed again. “I didn’t want you freaking out and killing someone.”
“I had him relocated to a much more unpleasant facility,” Mycroft offered. Lestrade only groaned softly once he realized that Mycroft did, indeed, know everything. “I’d only have had him ... ah, disappeared, if he had actually killed you,” Mycroft continued. “Any major injuries would just have landed him in prison for life. Minor injuries ... well, live and let live, as they say. He won’t be much worse for the wear, certainly, though things might have gone better for him had he chosen a different policeman to attack.”
“You consider this sort of thing often?” Lestrade asked with a mirthless grin.
“Of course.” Mycroft allowed himself a satisfied smile. “I do hate it when people think they can disturb what’s mine.”
He stood up and crossed over to the sofa where Lestrade was sitting while the detective protested, “Hey! I’m not -”
“But you are,” Mycroft said, silencing him with a light hand on his arm. He slid onto the sofa next to Lestrade and peered closely at his face, then nodded, satisfied, having ascertained for himself that the injury wasn’t any more serious than it looked.
“I’m a -” Lestrade began, but that was as far as he got, because this time Mycroft silenced him with a quick kiss. When they broke apart, Lestrade sighed, then leaned into him, resting his head against the taller man’s shoulder. For a few moments, neither of them said anything, until at last Mycroft stood up.
“I’ll call in for dinner,” he announced. “You can go wash the makeup off your face. When I get back to this room, though, I expect to see you using that icepack.”
Lestrade grumbled, but stood up and walked over to the bathroom, and Mycroft headed into the kitchen to call a local Italian restaurant (Sherlock was not the only one who knew all the good restaurants in London, after all). Within ten minutes a good meal was on its way to their home, Lestrade was applying the icepack his face, and all was right with the world. Mycroft allowed himself a slight smile at that thought; of course all was right with the world. He’d made it so himself, hadn’t he?