Sherlock: Official Records Deny It
Title: Official Records Deny It
Fandom: Sherlock
Characters: Mycroft, Sherlock, John, NotAnthea
Words: ~5900
Notes: It's full of good things, really: fucked up sibling relationship, lifesaving, tacky plot devices... I could warn about how close Mycroft and Sherlock are to being full on incesty (is that a word?), but that seems a bit paranoid. And anyway, what's a fucked up sibling relationship without incesty vibes? Ah and I don't know the first thing about anything medical, I just guess and wiki it, so if there's something fatally wrong, let me know.
- Now with improved spelling and grammar. Thanks to kitsjay for the friendly beta. -
Five times Mycroft saved his brother and one time it might have been the other way around
(though official records deny it)
The sound of an incoming text on Sherlock's phone causes a series of events: Sherlock's arm falls from the couch to the floor to fumble lazily for the mobile phone. Reading the message makes him lift an eyebrow. John gives the freshly brewed tea (too hot to drink just now) a longing look, thinks a regretful thought and gives an internal shrug.
“Something interesting?” he asks as Sherlock rushes by on the way to his bedroom and adequate clothing.
“You could say that!”
It's hard to make out if it sounds mostly gleeful (especially mind boggling crimes) or more excited (especially dangerous criminals), but there's something to it John has never heard before. He's putting his shoes on when Sherlock swishes by, sloppy pyjamas and dressing gown replaced by the sharp lines of a suit, eyes aglow and coat billowing ridiculously.
“So, what is it?” he asks when they sit in the cab.
Sherlock is sitting on the edge of the seat, something he never does, because obviously, John, it doesn't make the car drive faster, does it. It's half amusing and half worrying.
“Apparently,” Sherlock says slowly and he looks somewhat disbelieving, bewildered by his standards, “my brother is about to die.”
“Mycroft?” There were small hands shaking his shoulder and an equally small voice. In the darkness of Mycroft's room, his little brother's shock of dark hair swallowed the washed-out moonlight filtering through the curtains while his pale face and big earnest grey eyes seemed to glow with it. “There are monsters in my room,” he whispered, when he saw Mycroft's eyes open.
“They're not real,” Mycroft said, his voice rough from sleep. For a moment he was tempted to tell Sherlock to go to his room and let him sleep, but then he sighed and didn't, because he couldn't stand his idiot brother looking so terrified and alone.
Sherlock gave a shaky little 'Hm', that managed to sound reassured and skeptical and frightened all at once.
For a moment Mycroft contemplated tactics, or, to be specific, the relative disadvantage of leaving his bed and searching Sherlock's room to that of Sherlock's sharp little elbows and his tendency to kick in his sleep. The laziness won however - or well, it was a disputable approach to try to prove a non-existence empirically - and he lifted one corner of his covers and slid back a little to make room on his bed. Sherlock's feet were a cold pressure between his pyjama-clad shins and a fluffy strand of hair tickled his nose. The rest of his brother was warmer than it should be after walking around in the draughty corridors of the old house and Mycroft pressed his lips to Sherlock's forehead. No fever, not really, but he reached over to tuck the covers firmly under Sherlock's shoulder.
There was a not entirely comfortable hot-damp huff against his neck. “You should tell them,” Sherlock murmured in this stubborn tone he had, when something was clearly somebody else's fault.
Mycroft retaliated with a quick poke to a ticklish rib. “I'm too old to talk to imaginary monsters. Why don't you tell them yourself?”
“They won't believe me,” Sherlock complained bitterly. Mycroft was unimpressed, because Sherlock wasn't frightened any more, but his usual petulant self, and that was enough. They stayed silent for a while. Mycroft refused to indulge Sherlock's every whim just because he was tiny and adorable and manipulative as hell. Sherlock huffed more hot dampness against Mycroft's throat, because he knew it irritated him, then stopped and Mycroft just knew there was that unholy grin on his face, even though he couldn't see it. “You're right, you're reeeeaaally old.”
“Oh shut up.” His hand made a strategic move to close in on Sherlock's ribs before he clamped the small bony feet between his shins.
The little devil giggled. “Old like a turtle.”
It was practically an invitation.
“I gather it's blackmail,” is the first thing Sherlock says when the doors of the lift slide open. The woman who is not Anthea is on the other side, absorbed by her BlackBerry as usual, but without the air of faint amusement. She looks less-than-perfect, which is probably the sign of a major crisis. They follow her through a corridor.
“Blackmail? You said he was dying. And who in god's name would blackmail Mycroft?” John asks incredulously. It seems like a tremendously bad idea.
“Stupid people,” Sherlock says with an irritated shrug. “There's never a shortage of those.” He half closes his eyes and gets this dreamy, highly concentrated look he had when he's thinking hard. “Although it could be clever people, too. But they'd have to be very clever; he's keeping a ridiculously low profile.”
“So what makes you jump to blackmail?”
Sherlock looks at him with an exasperated little frown that demands to know why John insists on sidetracking him with trivia just now. “If it were just random terrorism I don't see what I could do here,” he claims absentmindedly. He's already back to the problem at hand.
“You don't see- He's your brother!”
NotAnthea makes a sound to announce that any second now she could spare a second to speak; there's a very quick look over her shoulder. “Blackmail, yes. The note came half an hour ago.”
Mycroft took a deep breath of cold clear air as he stepped out of the country house. He was not a fan of Christmas, nor of the family gatherings. For a moment he stood still and watched the postcard view of snow-covered hills and the glistening of a lake in the pale winter sun. Or rather of water, considering they were in the lake district. It was hellishly picturesque, like time had stopped a hundred years ago and he felt painfully cut off from the world. The scrunching of his steps in the snow was loud in the frozen stillness as he made his way towards his car. It stood out black and efficient and modern against the all consuming white and the sickening nostalgia of the place.
Sherlock sat on the bonnet, leaning on the front window, his arms folded behind his head. The clouds of his breath mingled with the smoke rising from his cigarette.
“I told you not to violate my car,” Mycroft said with an irritated frown. “Get off, I'd hate to tell mummy you smoked.”
Sherlock threw him a dirty look out of the corners of his eyes, but rolled off with an impossible movement of too long limbs. “Tell me you're driving back to London,” he demanded with a note of not-quite-pretend desperation in his voice.
“I'd love to,” Mycroft couldn't quite suppress the dryly amused curl of his lips, “but I fear the retaliation.”
Sherlock took a deep drag from his cigarette before grinding it into the snow with his boots. “You always were a coward,” he blew out, smoke curling around the frustrated disgust in his words.
Mycroft shrugged and got into the car, Sherlock in the passenger seat before he even started the engine. “It's like being trapped in a particularly bad nightmare,” Sherlock said moodily, “the recurring kind. Like a time loop, and a year is clearly too little time to shake off the trauma.”
Mycroft's lips curled into a pained smile. “Oh, quit complaining, I have about ten of those abominable things on you and I'm still alive.”
“My condolences,” Sherlock said gravely, “although you have to ask yourself: what kind of life is there left after years and years of keeping awake through Aunt Margaret’s painfully detailed anamnesis?”
Listening to their hypochondriac aunt, Mycroft had to concede, was one of the graver ordeals of what Sherlock had termed quite accurately the holiday highlights of horror. He could see how fantasies of suicide could become a welcome distraction compared to Margaret's description of the new skin discolouration on her thigh.
“Trapped in a cottage in the rural countryside, family secrets and resentments nurtured by years of forced cheer, no escape...” Sherlock rambled with a theatrical growl, then smiled darkly. “The only thing reconciling me with my fate each year is the thought that this could be the year the murder happens.”
“That reminds me: the educational psychologist at your school had some things to say about your- I think 'morbid tendencies' was the expression he chose.”
“Don't be boring, Mycroft,” Sherlock said with cold arrogance. “I can assure you that no animals came to harm and while I admit that the arson was an impulse I should have better contained, it was not with homicidal intend. Not much, anyway.”
“I have no words to express how reassured I feel,” Mycroft said with a strange mixture of fondness and sarcasm. A look at the shut down expression of his brother made him regret bringing the topic up in the first place. Sometimes this over-grown child managed to fool even Mycroft into taking the untouchable attitude at face value, though he knew how vulnerable Sherlock could be. The apology sat uncomfortable in the back of his throat, but he couldn't bring himself to say it.
“Stop the car,” said Sherlock flatly after a few seconds of seething silence and Mycroft hurried to pull over. When he was in a mood like this, Mycroft wouldn't put it past him to jump out of a driving car. As anticipated, Sherlock was out of the door and jumping over the low wooden fence along the road even before the car stood completely still. Mycroft parked and sat waiting for a few moments, his head resting on the seat, staring at the ceiling. He was mad at stupid school psychologists and at touchy teenage brothers, but mainly he was mad at himself. He got out and, unwilling to wallow through the knee-high snowbank besides the street, leaned against the car. Twilight was setting in and Sherlock was a narrow black shadow on the blueish snow.
“Should I wait or do you want to walk back?” Mycroft enquired, because this was just childish. Sherlock's only answer was an eloquently raised middle finger.
There was a loud crack, like a shot, but oddly muffled, and it took Mycroft a moment to identify the sound as breaking ice. Before he could utter a warning, it happened. Quite undramatic. One moment Sherlock was there, the next moment he wasn't.
Mycroft quenched the impulse to just run after his brother. Tools, his ever-running thoughts supplied coldly, the boot. He found the tow rope and grabbed a spanner, then ran through the high snow and climbed the fence. He tried to kick the snow away to see where the ice began, but then saw that the snow was thinner on the ice, blown away by the wind and he could make out the outline of the pond. The cold and logical part of him noted that it wasn't even a very big pond, but the rest of him screamed that it was big enough. The hole in the ice was black and water was oozing out and melting the snow around it, the dark spot spreading like a bleeding wound. There was movement in the water that coincided with his own steps on the ice and he stopped dead, listening for the snapping noise of splitting ice, but it didn't come. He lay down in the snow, crept closer. A knocking sound made him stop. It was close, not in the direction of the hole, but to his left. He could reach the water around the hole, cruelly cold, and wiped it to the left hastily, melting the snow and rubbing the ice clear with his sleeves.
Impenetrable darkness, movement, and then, a pale long hand, pressed against the ice from below. Something about that picture short-circuited logic and he didn't think any more, just brought the spanner down again and again, until the ice broke. He lost the thing somewhere in between, cut himself on shards of ice, reached down into the freezing blackness of the water with hands that were already numb with cold. Something bumped into his hand and then he felt a hard grip on his wrist, hard enough to hurt even though he'd thought he couldn't feel anything and after that he just pulled and eventually Sherlock's head came up, out of the water, ice in his hair, gasping. The cracks in the ice, the cracks he had ignored until now, were spreading quickly, too many to keep an eye on. “Sherlock, hold still!” Mycroft snapped, almost hysterical, and was a bit surprised when Sherlock actually stopped struggling and took a couple of very deliberate breaths. They were shaky from the cold, but the blind panic was gone and it helped Mycroft to force his usual calm back. He held out the rope and they managed to tie it around Sherlock's chest. Mycroft crept backwards slowly until he could feel frozen grass under the snow. He pulled in the tow and Sherlock came nearer, the ice breaking around him whenever he tried to pull himself up, then he was on the ice, out of the water and it got easier and then he was lying next to Mycroft on the ground, rattling breath and clattering teeth, cold and soaking wet and gloriously alive. Mycroft needed a moment to realize what the wheezing beside him had become, interrupted by coughs and gasps as it was, and he stared down disbelievingly at his mad, mad brother.
“You're laughing,” he said tonelessly. It made Sherlock crack up and roll on his side, shaking uncontrollably. “I hate you.”
Hysterics, he told himself and forced his body to stand, then, when he felt confident that his legs wouldn't give out, he hauled Sherlock up and dragged him to the car. The shivers and cramps made it hard for Sherlock to move on his own. Halfway to the fence the laughing stopped and he began rambling, but it was hard to understand over his clattering teeth. “Not sure I can feel my feet not sure I want to can you remember the feeling of cold hands getting warm too quickly the needle pin burning hard to remember pain when it's gone I think the water hurt but it was too cold to think and dark have you ever been too cold to think just coldcoldcold and nothing else it was-” He stopped and said nothing while Mycroft helped him over the fence. He leaned against it, waiting for Mycroft to climb over. “It was why I laughed,” he said, breathing on his hands and refusing to meet Mycroft's eyes.
“I know.” He wished he wouldn't.
They stumbled to the car, got Sherlock's wet clothes off and wrapped him in the thermal blanket from the first aid kit. The car was still warm inside, but Mycroft turned the heat up to maximum anyway and made Sherlock sit in the passenger seat, while he picked up the clothes and threw them into the boot together with his own wet coat.
“You're the only one who gets me,” Sherlock said earnestly, when he sat behind the wheel.
Mycroft shifted uncomfortably and opted for fastening Sherlock's seatbelt around the metallic cocoon of the blanket instead of looking at him. “Well, I'm the only one you're honest with,” he said dismissively.
Sherlock gave him a dry half-smile. “I'm really not.”
“Sometimes,” Mycroft amended. “Often enough. As much as I can stand.”
“That's good.”
Mycroft thought about returning to the house, but he wasn't sure he could stand it at the moment and his hands were shaking, so maybe it was a good idea to just wait here for a few minutes before trying to drive. “Are you in shock?” he asked his brother.
Sherlock shrugged and the blanket rustled. “I'm still cold,” he offered.
“You're talking quite a lot.”
“I usually am. You saved my life, I wanted to say something nice.”
Mycroft groaned, “It's not nice to tell me you find almost dying funny, it's-”, he glanced over to Sherlock with his blue lips and dripping hair and the infuriating prat looked like he could have died and like he was mildly curious how Mycroft would finish this sentence, “It's deeply worrying.”
For a long moment they just stared at each other. Sherlock's eyes were very pale and very earnest and Mycroft thought that they would never get this whole brother thing right, because they were both too clever and guarded and Sherlock was entirely too mortal.
“I think you might be in shock,” Sherlock said.
Mycroft is sitting in an expensive looking armchair behind an expensive looking desk. He doesn't look too bad, though John can tell he has a fever from here, so maybe it's just the way he holds himself that gives the impression of a minor inconvenience.
“The upside to this,” Sherlock says by way of greeting, “is you might lose some weight.”
John suppresses the impulse to kick him inconspicuously, though he really doesn't know why.
“I see you were able to tear yourself from your manifold investigations,” Mycroft drawls.
Sherlock shrugs. “I had nothing on, I was bored.”
There is a pause, some strange and utterly incomprehensible staring contest between the brothers, then Mycroft smiles faintly. “They claim that it's...” he shuffles papers on his desk, for effect obviously, because there isn't much paperwork on it, and takes a piece of paper, folded two times and printed with a short line of text. “Tapanuli fever,” he reads out, “or Black Formosa. And of course they have the vaccine. Ringing any bells, Dr Watson?”
John thinks hard for a moment, but comes up empty. “None,” he says bleakly.
“Quite so. They're unknown to any medic I consulted, so it's either something customized or something else.”
“It's nonsense. What do they want?” Sherlock asks.
Mycroft leans his head to the side like he is listening to something, then shakes it decisively. “Political favours, but I'd rather not go into it, they're a rather delicate matter and I'm not convinced that the who is the pressing question in this matter. Not for you, anyway, that end is handled by different people.”
“So I'm just the backup plan?”
Mycroft lifts an eyebrow. He seems to hesitate with his answer, but then, John thinks he has trouble breathing, so maybe it's that. “It's not meant as a slight,” he says eventually, carefully. “I'm just exploiting all options. I rather value my life.”
It was a desolate sawmill, built in the late sixties by the look of it, closed down in the eighties. Probably due to abysmal work safety, Mycroft thought with a slight wince. It was this sawmill that Sherlock's latest case had lead him to, it was here where the money had been counterfeited- not very well in Mycroft's opinion, the smell had given it away - and it was two streets over where his holy terror of a brother had last been seen on CCTV. That was about twenty minutes ago. Surely even Sherlock couldn't get himself killed quite so fast.
Mycroft watched as the task force surrounded the building, unsubtle from the front and quite expertly at the back, were the van was parked. As anticipated, the three criminals beat a hasty retreat and came within about six feet of the car before they were face-down on the tarmac after a quick struggle, held down by one man each. Mycroft stepped out from behind the car and strolled over. This was not working out according to plan. He had anticipated that these imbeciles would come out with Sherlock taken hostage. Oh, it was not surprising at all, the man never did anything according to plan.
“I'm looking for someone,” he informed the men on the floor. “Black hair, bad haircut, about my height, skinny...”
One of them glanced back in the direction of the mill, which was all the answer he needed. Mycroft was on his way to the door, ignoring the officer-in-charge who informed him that Sir, I wouldn't recommend- and hastened to follow. He was most emphatically not picturing his brother dead, it was just a possibility, some of the possibilities, but it was useless to theorize ahead of the facts. His eyes adjusted to the bad lighting gradually, but the lack of sight heightened the impression of sound. The thumping, grinding, rattling of machines. The officer-in-charge and some of his men had entered the building, searching it. The dust was thick on the floor and it spelled out what Mycroft needed to know. Just before his feet, the number of people who went in and out, farther away to the right, the struggle. He followed the trail and there was Sherlock, bound to a conveyor and moving toward some unbecoming-looking disc saws.
“Only you, Sherlock,” Mycroft sighed with a shake of his head, “only you...”
Sherlock stopped struggling with one of the knots to look over his shoulder. “You don't have to sound so disapproving.”
“No? I think it's appropriate.”
Mycroft stopped the conveyor and Sherlock let his head fall with a growl that was half relieved and half annoyed. “Got them, didn't we?” He stubbornly refused to look at his brother.
Just as well, Mycroft had to close his eyes for a few seconds against the bone-deep frustration that settled in after the acute fear of this could be the time you're not fast enough. “Sherlock,” he said eventually and it sounded like an endearment and was the closest thing to an apology he was willing to give. “There is no 'we' in this madness.”
Sherlock didn't answer immediately, he had a knot to unravel, and when he sat up with his back to Mycroft it looked as if he didn't breathe as well. “Well, you always were a coward,” he said eventually, with flat inflection and when he left, he didn't look back.
“So we have five cases of this disease, including yours,” John sums up. “And its symptoms are, at least in the first two days, resembling those of a cold.”
“I might add that it doesn't seem to be contagious.”
Sherlock is pacing the room like a bloody Duracell Bunny while John is trying to work out the medical aspects of this. He feels a bit out of his depth. He's not an expert, he's used to splinting a fracture, to stitching up a wound, and to tending to a few common diseases, not to something like this and it doesn't help that Sherlock's pacing is driving him crazy.
“Sherlock. Sit down,” he says irritably and Sherlock stops and throws himself into one of the chairs in front of Mycroft's desk with an exasperated sigh.
“I tried that for thirty years,” Mycroft remarks before succumbing to a cough and Sherlock glares at him. “You don't need to concern yourself too much with the medical side, Dr Watson,” Mycroft continues. “I'm half convinced that at the moment there's more blood of me being scrutinized in various labs than flowing through my veins.”
“There's never been much blood in your veins,” Sherlock snipes. “What is this? Your text said my presence was required.”
John won't say anything, he won't. He will absolutely not get mixed up in this. But god help him, when this is over, he'll have to re-evaluate his notions of Sherlock being clever.
“Your presence is much appreciated, thank you,” Mycroft says with enough irony to sink the Titanic. “What have you got?”
“That couch is new,” Sherlock nods in the direction of the antique standing inconspicuously next to an equally antique globe, “there are scuff marks on the carpet and I know you only recently acquired a taste for the old and useless, a development, I can't help but think, caused by rapid senility. Whatever the reason, either this sofa was brought here less than three days ago or you should have words with the housekeepers. So. Did all of the people with symptoms come in contact with it?”
Mycroft looks like he's swallowing something bitter, but he does it with a smile. “It is quite obvious, isn't it,” he says hesitantly, “but you have to admit, I'm hardly working on full capacity.”
“I have to admit that,” Sherlock concedes with a grimace.
Sherlock wouldn't talk to him, he just glared daggers at Mycroft when he visited and sometimes refused to see him at all. The therapist said it was normal, that Sherlock had to work through the loss of control and the errors he'd made, that he probably felt guilty for causing his family pain, and Mycroft wondered what game Sherlock was playing on the man. He doubted that his brother would ever truly admit that he was an addict and it was ludicrous to imagine him following twelve steps that even Mycroft found sentimental and religiously convoluted. The only thing Mycroft felt he could count on was Sherlock's pride, and that pride he had wounded severely, which was the first part of his plan. The hardest part and the one that had him hesitating so long, hoping against hope that Sherlock would get over it on his own.
Mycroft wouldn't talk, too, because that would be showing his hand, but he found it uncannily hard with Sherlock looking at him like he had backstabbed him. Which, in a way, he had.
“You drugged me,” Sherlock spat one day and Mycroft had to fight hard to suppress a smile, then let it creep onto his face, well dosed and cold and mocking.
“That was hardly more than a drop in the ocean.”
Sherlock was seething, Mycroft could see, and for a moment he wished they were different, that they could do this together, but they weren't and they couldn't and it would have been too late either way. “You drugged me and brought me here,” there was so much anger in this one word it should have been enough to make the clinic go up in flames, but it faded against the next words. “You brought her here!”
Mycroft refused to look down, he refused to wince and he refused to feel anything. “Mummy was concerned about you.”
Sherlock didn't reply, probably couldn't with his jaw clenched so tightly, and Mycroft wondered if it was possible to pass out from suppressed anger. They had never had an argument, never. When Mycroft was fifteen, it had made no sense to argue with a toddler and when he was twentysomething it had made no sense to argue with a teenager, and after that Sherlock was just Sherlock and they never had arguments, so it had made no sense at all, never. It was always just the sniping and snarking and Mycroft being dismissive and Sherlock going utterly cold and still, because he couldn't trust himself not to say something childish.
It took a few minutes for Sherlock to compose himself, his hands the only moving things on him, twitching in his lap like he had to remind himself every few seconds not to clench them into fists. “You had no right,” he said coldly. “You don't-” he choked, he was so angry, “you don't get a say in this, in my life. You're not me, you don't have to be, you're just everything everyone expects and it's easy for you and you don't know what it's like and you don't care, you just-”
“I just stopped you from throwing it away!” Mycroft hissed. “Don't make yourself into a martyr about this, it's very unbecoming.” He stood and stroked some creases out of his suit. “It's good to see you're better.”
“Oh yes,” Sherlock sneered, “I'm splendid. And I'm so glad to see you're above everything I have to say, as usual.”
Mycroft smiled blandly. “Try to keep clean.”
“Try to keep your diet.”
Sherlock had never looked so hostile, not at Mycroft, and the worst part was that beneath it all he was terrified and alone. Show me, Mycroft thought desperately, prove me wrong. Show me it's your life and you don't need me to help you. You have to show me, because I'm not sure I could.
The couch has been removed and samples are on their way to being examined.
Sherlock is absorbed by the list NotAnthea made for him of everyone who has come in contact with the thing. It's not a very long list, Mycroft doesn't invite a whole lot of people to this office. Sherlock is staring at it with a stubborn glare, like it's somehow offensive to him. John catches Mycroft smiling, but Mycroft realizes it instantly and the smile vanishes. John won't say anything. Families are strange like that.
“Ah!” Sherlock exclaims suddenly. “Ah! Of course! John!”
“You figured it out?”
“Yes. BW, it's quite up your street. The people who got it were the delivery men, one minister plus secretary and Mycroft. It didn't infect anyone else, three persons, two security guards and the sidekick, who have in common that they're quite capable of handling a gun.”
So it's probably something the British Army vaccinates against, which narrows the field down a bit. John can't help but look at NotAnthea and yes, he can picture her with a gun quite clearly, it's just... what would she do with the phone? She looks up and gives him an amused wink, Sherlock glares. “Yes, you're brilliant,” John tells him with a smile.
“Ah, we better inform the laboratory that they're searching for anthrax spores, then,” Mycroft remarks like it's got nothing to do with him. “And then we should relocate to the next hospital as I'm quite fond of my lungs.”
Mycroft knew without a doubt that he wasn't wrong about the way he went about his relations to Sherlock. He wasn't entirely right about it either, couldn't be, because it wasn't a matter of right or wrong most of the time, but he emphatically wasn't wrong. He did what he could, which was, sadly, very little, because he was neither willing nor able to be what Sherlock wanted him to be. He could barely be what Sherlock needed at times, which was hard to admit and even harder to accept.
Sherlock was his little brother, which meant that he was brilliant and fragile and infuriating to Mycroft, and in some archaic illogical way impossible not to love. Sherlock wasn't so stupid not to know that in some remote part of the workings of his mind, but it wasn't enough, it wasn't earned in any way other than just being alive and for some insane reason, for some painful twist of personality, Sherlock didn't get it. Sherlock didn't get that this was what love is about, that one couldn't earn it the way one could earn praise or a compliment, that it just was. Mycroft loved his brother, because he was a fool and a genius and amazing, which weren't reasons at all. Sherlock wanted to make people love him, he needed to know the reasons, the motives, the cause and roots, he wanted to be able to deduce it.
But that was hardly Mycroft's problem, his life didn't revolve around Sherlock, for all he sometimes got the feeling it did, a big part was completely Sherlock-unrelated, which was good and sane and the reason Mycroft felt that he wasn't wrong. The problem was that Sherlock was alone and that people were too stupid to see what an amazing genius fool he was.
From a drop of water, Mycroft had once told his brother, you can logically infer the possibility of an ocean. From a smile Mycroft could infer the possibility of friendship. He knew he had to be quick, because Sherlock was incredibly idiotic about the whole thing, idiotic enough to let the chance pass by, to not even notice it, just because there was a shiny new serial killing going on. Sometimes it was approaching embarrassment being related to him, really.
By the time he got around to it, Sherlock had managed to get John Watson stranded on the other side of London, which didn't show quite enough consideration to make a desirable flatmate. The doctor was obviously in pain, and oozing annoyance when the car dropped him off in the warehouse. It took Mycroft only a few seconds to gather that John's instincts of self-preservation were as lacking as Sherlock's, which wasn't ideal, but amusing in an ironic way.
Mycroft didn't have qualms about manipulating people, they were so easy to read and so easy to lead. But this strangely stoic man didn't need manipulation, not really, just a nudge in the right direction. “What's your connection with Sherlock Holmes?” Mycroft asked and Dr Watson tried to deny it for about a second, then got this mildly baffled look that was so obviously common to him, because it had its own wrinkles in his face, and just like that it was not up for discussion any longer. Throw in the sad story of a man without friends and a bit of friendly bribery and Mycroft was almost certain that Sherlock had somehow managed not to alienate the man completely. He was absolutely certain that Dr Watson was feeling protective of Sherlock, which was good. Very good, indeed. The only blatant manipulation Mycroft deemed necessary was a short foray into what do you get out of it? and oh, the dear doctor was so desperately asking for trouble, it was written all over him, so very clear to see, and trouble he could get from Sherlock, trouble was what Sherlock strived for mastery in.
“You're not haunted by the war, Dr Watson - you miss it.” And Mycroft knew he was being creepy, he was being too obvious about the fact that he knew all this, really knew, not just guessed, but he was distracted by what he saw, by how well it might fit. The possibility of friendship. “Welcome back,” he said and strolled away. “Time to choose a side, Dr Watson.”
And he had no doubts which side that would be.
There's tea and it's not terrible dispenser tea, but real tea. In a hospital. John is impressed. He is watching NotAnthea, because at some point she might actually drink the tea in front of her and that will either require her to remove one hand from the BlackBerry or it will be very interesting to watch. She flicks him a look like she knows what's going on and won't drink just to spite him.
“How long will you be working for him?” he asks her, just to make conversation. The Holmes brothers are not an option for that, they're busy glaring at each other. Maybe that's not so bad, Mycroft could still have a respiratory collapse, though his chances are improving now, and then Sherlock would probably regret that there wasn't enough glaring time with his brother. John's just happy Sherlock didn't bring the violin.
“Oh eternity,” NotAnthea says slowly, probably multitasking some press conference and a coup d'état via e-mail at the same moment.
John nods. He knows the feeling.
.
Fandom: Sherlock
Characters: Mycroft, Sherlock, John, NotAnthea
Words: ~5900
Notes: It's full of good things, really: fucked up sibling relationship, lifesaving, tacky plot devices... I could warn about how close Mycroft and Sherlock are to being full on incesty (is that a word?), but that seems a bit paranoid. And anyway, what's a fucked up sibling relationship without incesty vibes? Ah and I don't know the first thing about anything medical, I just guess and wiki it, so if there's something fatally wrong, let me know.
- Now with improved spelling and grammar. Thanks to kitsjay for the friendly beta. -
Five times Mycroft saved his brother and one time it might have been the other way around
(though official records deny it)
The sound of an incoming text on Sherlock's phone causes a series of events: Sherlock's arm falls from the couch to the floor to fumble lazily for the mobile phone. Reading the message makes him lift an eyebrow. John gives the freshly brewed tea (too hot to drink just now) a longing look, thinks a regretful thought and gives an internal shrug.
“Something interesting?” he asks as Sherlock rushes by on the way to his bedroom and adequate clothing.
“You could say that!”
It's hard to make out if it sounds mostly gleeful (especially mind boggling crimes) or more excited (especially dangerous criminals), but there's something to it John has never heard before. He's putting his shoes on when Sherlock swishes by, sloppy pyjamas and dressing gown replaced by the sharp lines of a suit, eyes aglow and coat billowing ridiculously.
“So, what is it?” he asks when they sit in the cab.
Sherlock is sitting on the edge of the seat, something he never does, because obviously, John, it doesn't make the car drive faster, does it. It's half amusing and half worrying.
“Apparently,” Sherlock says slowly and he looks somewhat disbelieving, bewildered by his standards, “my brother is about to die.”
“Mycroft?” There were small hands shaking his shoulder and an equally small voice. In the darkness of Mycroft's room, his little brother's shock of dark hair swallowed the washed-out moonlight filtering through the curtains while his pale face and big earnest grey eyes seemed to glow with it. “There are monsters in my room,” he whispered, when he saw Mycroft's eyes open.
“They're not real,” Mycroft said, his voice rough from sleep. For a moment he was tempted to tell Sherlock to go to his room and let him sleep, but then he sighed and didn't, because he couldn't stand his idiot brother looking so terrified and alone.
Sherlock gave a shaky little 'Hm', that managed to sound reassured and skeptical and frightened all at once.
For a moment Mycroft contemplated tactics, or, to be specific, the relative disadvantage of leaving his bed and searching Sherlock's room to that of Sherlock's sharp little elbows and his tendency to kick in his sleep. The laziness won however - or well, it was a disputable approach to try to prove a non-existence empirically - and he lifted one corner of his covers and slid back a little to make room on his bed. Sherlock's feet were a cold pressure between his pyjama-clad shins and a fluffy strand of hair tickled his nose. The rest of his brother was warmer than it should be after walking around in the draughty corridors of the old house and Mycroft pressed his lips to Sherlock's forehead. No fever, not really, but he reached over to tuck the covers firmly under Sherlock's shoulder.
There was a not entirely comfortable hot-damp huff against his neck. “You should tell them,” Sherlock murmured in this stubborn tone he had, when something was clearly somebody else's fault.
Mycroft retaliated with a quick poke to a ticklish rib. “I'm too old to talk to imaginary monsters. Why don't you tell them yourself?”
“They won't believe me,” Sherlock complained bitterly. Mycroft was unimpressed, because Sherlock wasn't frightened any more, but his usual petulant self, and that was enough. They stayed silent for a while. Mycroft refused to indulge Sherlock's every whim just because he was tiny and adorable and manipulative as hell. Sherlock huffed more hot dampness against Mycroft's throat, because he knew it irritated him, then stopped and Mycroft just knew there was that unholy grin on his face, even though he couldn't see it. “You're right, you're reeeeaaally old.”
“Oh shut up.” His hand made a strategic move to close in on Sherlock's ribs before he clamped the small bony feet between his shins.
The little devil giggled. “Old like a turtle.”
It was practically an invitation.
“I gather it's blackmail,” is the first thing Sherlock says when the doors of the lift slide open. The woman who is not Anthea is on the other side, absorbed by her BlackBerry as usual, but without the air of faint amusement. She looks less-than-perfect, which is probably the sign of a major crisis. They follow her through a corridor.
“Blackmail? You said he was dying. And who in god's name would blackmail Mycroft?” John asks incredulously. It seems like a tremendously bad idea.
“Stupid people,” Sherlock says with an irritated shrug. “There's never a shortage of those.” He half closes his eyes and gets this dreamy, highly concentrated look he had when he's thinking hard. “Although it could be clever people, too. But they'd have to be very clever; he's keeping a ridiculously low profile.”
“So what makes you jump to blackmail?”
Sherlock looks at him with an exasperated little frown that demands to know why John insists on sidetracking him with trivia just now. “If it were just random terrorism I don't see what I could do here,” he claims absentmindedly. He's already back to the problem at hand.
“You don't see- He's your brother!”
NotAnthea makes a sound to announce that any second now she could spare a second to speak; there's a very quick look over her shoulder. “Blackmail, yes. The note came half an hour ago.”
Mycroft took a deep breath of cold clear air as he stepped out of the country house. He was not a fan of Christmas, nor of the family gatherings. For a moment he stood still and watched the postcard view of snow-covered hills and the glistening of a lake in the pale winter sun. Or rather of water, considering they were in the lake district. It was hellishly picturesque, like time had stopped a hundred years ago and he felt painfully cut off from the world. The scrunching of his steps in the snow was loud in the frozen stillness as he made his way towards his car. It stood out black and efficient and modern against the all consuming white and the sickening nostalgia of the place.
Sherlock sat on the bonnet, leaning on the front window, his arms folded behind his head. The clouds of his breath mingled with the smoke rising from his cigarette.
“I told you not to violate my car,” Mycroft said with an irritated frown. “Get off, I'd hate to tell mummy you smoked.”
Sherlock threw him a dirty look out of the corners of his eyes, but rolled off with an impossible movement of too long limbs. “Tell me you're driving back to London,” he demanded with a note of not-quite-pretend desperation in his voice.
“I'd love to,” Mycroft couldn't quite suppress the dryly amused curl of his lips, “but I fear the retaliation.”
Sherlock took a deep drag from his cigarette before grinding it into the snow with his boots. “You always were a coward,” he blew out, smoke curling around the frustrated disgust in his words.
Mycroft shrugged and got into the car, Sherlock in the passenger seat before he even started the engine. “It's like being trapped in a particularly bad nightmare,” Sherlock said moodily, “the recurring kind. Like a time loop, and a year is clearly too little time to shake off the trauma.”
Mycroft's lips curled into a pained smile. “Oh, quit complaining, I have about ten of those abominable things on you and I'm still alive.”
“My condolences,” Sherlock said gravely, “although you have to ask yourself: what kind of life is there left after years and years of keeping awake through Aunt Margaret’s painfully detailed anamnesis?”
Listening to their hypochondriac aunt, Mycroft had to concede, was one of the graver ordeals of what Sherlock had termed quite accurately the holiday highlights of horror. He could see how fantasies of suicide could become a welcome distraction compared to Margaret's description of the new skin discolouration on her thigh.
“Trapped in a cottage in the rural countryside, family secrets and resentments nurtured by years of forced cheer, no escape...” Sherlock rambled with a theatrical growl, then smiled darkly. “The only thing reconciling me with my fate each year is the thought that this could be the year the murder happens.”
“That reminds me: the educational psychologist at your school had some things to say about your- I think 'morbid tendencies' was the expression he chose.”
“Don't be boring, Mycroft,” Sherlock said with cold arrogance. “I can assure you that no animals came to harm and while I admit that the arson was an impulse I should have better contained, it was not with homicidal intend. Not much, anyway.”
“I have no words to express how reassured I feel,” Mycroft said with a strange mixture of fondness and sarcasm. A look at the shut down expression of his brother made him regret bringing the topic up in the first place. Sometimes this over-grown child managed to fool even Mycroft into taking the untouchable attitude at face value, though he knew how vulnerable Sherlock could be. The apology sat uncomfortable in the back of his throat, but he couldn't bring himself to say it.
“Stop the car,” said Sherlock flatly after a few seconds of seething silence and Mycroft hurried to pull over. When he was in a mood like this, Mycroft wouldn't put it past him to jump out of a driving car. As anticipated, Sherlock was out of the door and jumping over the low wooden fence along the road even before the car stood completely still. Mycroft parked and sat waiting for a few moments, his head resting on the seat, staring at the ceiling. He was mad at stupid school psychologists and at touchy teenage brothers, but mainly he was mad at himself. He got out and, unwilling to wallow through the knee-high snowbank besides the street, leaned against the car. Twilight was setting in and Sherlock was a narrow black shadow on the blueish snow.
“Should I wait or do you want to walk back?” Mycroft enquired, because this was just childish. Sherlock's only answer was an eloquently raised middle finger.
There was a loud crack, like a shot, but oddly muffled, and it took Mycroft a moment to identify the sound as breaking ice. Before he could utter a warning, it happened. Quite undramatic. One moment Sherlock was there, the next moment he wasn't.
Mycroft quenched the impulse to just run after his brother. Tools, his ever-running thoughts supplied coldly, the boot. He found the tow rope and grabbed a spanner, then ran through the high snow and climbed the fence. He tried to kick the snow away to see where the ice began, but then saw that the snow was thinner on the ice, blown away by the wind and he could make out the outline of the pond. The cold and logical part of him noted that it wasn't even a very big pond, but the rest of him screamed that it was big enough. The hole in the ice was black and water was oozing out and melting the snow around it, the dark spot spreading like a bleeding wound. There was movement in the water that coincided with his own steps on the ice and he stopped dead, listening for the snapping noise of splitting ice, but it didn't come. He lay down in the snow, crept closer. A knocking sound made him stop. It was close, not in the direction of the hole, but to his left. He could reach the water around the hole, cruelly cold, and wiped it to the left hastily, melting the snow and rubbing the ice clear with his sleeves.
Impenetrable darkness, movement, and then, a pale long hand, pressed against the ice from below. Something about that picture short-circuited logic and he didn't think any more, just brought the spanner down again and again, until the ice broke. He lost the thing somewhere in between, cut himself on shards of ice, reached down into the freezing blackness of the water with hands that were already numb with cold. Something bumped into his hand and then he felt a hard grip on his wrist, hard enough to hurt even though he'd thought he couldn't feel anything and after that he just pulled and eventually Sherlock's head came up, out of the water, ice in his hair, gasping. The cracks in the ice, the cracks he had ignored until now, were spreading quickly, too many to keep an eye on. “Sherlock, hold still!” Mycroft snapped, almost hysterical, and was a bit surprised when Sherlock actually stopped struggling and took a couple of very deliberate breaths. They were shaky from the cold, but the blind panic was gone and it helped Mycroft to force his usual calm back. He held out the rope and they managed to tie it around Sherlock's chest. Mycroft crept backwards slowly until he could feel frozen grass under the snow. He pulled in the tow and Sherlock came nearer, the ice breaking around him whenever he tried to pull himself up, then he was on the ice, out of the water and it got easier and then he was lying next to Mycroft on the ground, rattling breath and clattering teeth, cold and soaking wet and gloriously alive. Mycroft needed a moment to realize what the wheezing beside him had become, interrupted by coughs and gasps as it was, and he stared down disbelievingly at his mad, mad brother.
“You're laughing,” he said tonelessly. It made Sherlock crack up and roll on his side, shaking uncontrollably. “I hate you.”
Hysterics, he told himself and forced his body to stand, then, when he felt confident that his legs wouldn't give out, he hauled Sherlock up and dragged him to the car. The shivers and cramps made it hard for Sherlock to move on his own. Halfway to the fence the laughing stopped and he began rambling, but it was hard to understand over his clattering teeth. “Not sure I can feel my feet not sure I want to can you remember the feeling of cold hands getting warm too quickly the needle pin burning hard to remember pain when it's gone I think the water hurt but it was too cold to think and dark have you ever been too cold to think just coldcoldcold and nothing else it was-” He stopped and said nothing while Mycroft helped him over the fence. He leaned against it, waiting for Mycroft to climb over. “It was why I laughed,” he said, breathing on his hands and refusing to meet Mycroft's eyes.
“I know.” He wished he wouldn't.
They stumbled to the car, got Sherlock's wet clothes off and wrapped him in the thermal blanket from the first aid kit. The car was still warm inside, but Mycroft turned the heat up to maximum anyway and made Sherlock sit in the passenger seat, while he picked up the clothes and threw them into the boot together with his own wet coat.
“You're the only one who gets me,” Sherlock said earnestly, when he sat behind the wheel.
Mycroft shifted uncomfortably and opted for fastening Sherlock's seatbelt around the metallic cocoon of the blanket instead of looking at him. “Well, I'm the only one you're honest with,” he said dismissively.
Sherlock gave him a dry half-smile. “I'm really not.”
“Sometimes,” Mycroft amended. “Often enough. As much as I can stand.”
“That's good.”
Mycroft thought about returning to the house, but he wasn't sure he could stand it at the moment and his hands were shaking, so maybe it was a good idea to just wait here for a few minutes before trying to drive. “Are you in shock?” he asked his brother.
Sherlock shrugged and the blanket rustled. “I'm still cold,” he offered.
“You're talking quite a lot.”
“I usually am. You saved my life, I wanted to say something nice.”
Mycroft groaned, “It's not nice to tell me you find almost dying funny, it's-”, he glanced over to Sherlock with his blue lips and dripping hair and the infuriating prat looked like he could have died and like he was mildly curious how Mycroft would finish this sentence, “It's deeply worrying.”
For a long moment they just stared at each other. Sherlock's eyes were very pale and very earnest and Mycroft thought that they would never get this whole brother thing right, because they were both too clever and guarded and Sherlock was entirely too mortal.
“I think you might be in shock,” Sherlock said.
Mycroft is sitting in an expensive looking armchair behind an expensive looking desk. He doesn't look too bad, though John can tell he has a fever from here, so maybe it's just the way he holds himself that gives the impression of a minor inconvenience.
“The upside to this,” Sherlock says by way of greeting, “is you might lose some weight.”
John suppresses the impulse to kick him inconspicuously, though he really doesn't know why.
“I see you were able to tear yourself from your manifold investigations,” Mycroft drawls.
Sherlock shrugs. “I had nothing on, I was bored.”
There is a pause, some strange and utterly incomprehensible staring contest between the brothers, then Mycroft smiles faintly. “They claim that it's...” he shuffles papers on his desk, for effect obviously, because there isn't much paperwork on it, and takes a piece of paper, folded two times and printed with a short line of text. “Tapanuli fever,” he reads out, “or Black Formosa. And of course they have the vaccine. Ringing any bells, Dr Watson?”
John thinks hard for a moment, but comes up empty. “None,” he says bleakly.
“Quite so. They're unknown to any medic I consulted, so it's either something customized or something else.”
“It's nonsense. What do they want?” Sherlock asks.
Mycroft leans his head to the side like he is listening to something, then shakes it decisively. “Political favours, but I'd rather not go into it, they're a rather delicate matter and I'm not convinced that the who is the pressing question in this matter. Not for you, anyway, that end is handled by different people.”
“So I'm just the backup plan?”
Mycroft lifts an eyebrow. He seems to hesitate with his answer, but then, John thinks he has trouble breathing, so maybe it's that. “It's not meant as a slight,” he says eventually, carefully. “I'm just exploiting all options. I rather value my life.”
It was a desolate sawmill, built in the late sixties by the look of it, closed down in the eighties. Probably due to abysmal work safety, Mycroft thought with a slight wince. It was this sawmill that Sherlock's latest case had lead him to, it was here where the money had been counterfeited- not very well in Mycroft's opinion, the smell had given it away - and it was two streets over where his holy terror of a brother had last been seen on CCTV. That was about twenty minutes ago. Surely even Sherlock couldn't get himself killed quite so fast.
Mycroft watched as the task force surrounded the building, unsubtle from the front and quite expertly at the back, were the van was parked. As anticipated, the three criminals beat a hasty retreat and came within about six feet of the car before they were face-down on the tarmac after a quick struggle, held down by one man each. Mycroft stepped out from behind the car and strolled over. This was not working out according to plan. He had anticipated that these imbeciles would come out with Sherlock taken hostage. Oh, it was not surprising at all, the man never did anything according to plan.
“I'm looking for someone,” he informed the men on the floor. “Black hair, bad haircut, about my height, skinny...”
One of them glanced back in the direction of the mill, which was all the answer he needed. Mycroft was on his way to the door, ignoring the officer-in-charge who informed him that Sir, I wouldn't recommend- and hastened to follow. He was most emphatically not picturing his brother dead, it was just a possibility, some of the possibilities, but it was useless to theorize ahead of the facts. His eyes adjusted to the bad lighting gradually, but the lack of sight heightened the impression of sound. The thumping, grinding, rattling of machines. The officer-in-charge and some of his men had entered the building, searching it. The dust was thick on the floor and it spelled out what Mycroft needed to know. Just before his feet, the number of people who went in and out, farther away to the right, the struggle. He followed the trail and there was Sherlock, bound to a conveyor and moving toward some unbecoming-looking disc saws.
“Only you, Sherlock,” Mycroft sighed with a shake of his head, “only you...”
Sherlock stopped struggling with one of the knots to look over his shoulder. “You don't have to sound so disapproving.”
“No? I think it's appropriate.”
Mycroft stopped the conveyor and Sherlock let his head fall with a growl that was half relieved and half annoyed. “Got them, didn't we?” He stubbornly refused to look at his brother.
Just as well, Mycroft had to close his eyes for a few seconds against the bone-deep frustration that settled in after the acute fear of this could be the time you're not fast enough. “Sherlock,” he said eventually and it sounded like an endearment and was the closest thing to an apology he was willing to give. “There is no 'we' in this madness.”
Sherlock didn't answer immediately, he had a knot to unravel, and when he sat up with his back to Mycroft it looked as if he didn't breathe as well. “Well, you always were a coward,” he said eventually, with flat inflection and when he left, he didn't look back.
“So we have five cases of this disease, including yours,” John sums up. “And its symptoms are, at least in the first two days, resembling those of a cold.”
“I might add that it doesn't seem to be contagious.”
Sherlock is pacing the room like a bloody Duracell Bunny while John is trying to work out the medical aspects of this. He feels a bit out of his depth. He's not an expert, he's used to splinting a fracture, to stitching up a wound, and to tending to a few common diseases, not to something like this and it doesn't help that Sherlock's pacing is driving him crazy.
“Sherlock. Sit down,” he says irritably and Sherlock stops and throws himself into one of the chairs in front of Mycroft's desk with an exasperated sigh.
“I tried that for thirty years,” Mycroft remarks before succumbing to a cough and Sherlock glares at him. “You don't need to concern yourself too much with the medical side, Dr Watson,” Mycroft continues. “I'm half convinced that at the moment there's more blood of me being scrutinized in various labs than flowing through my veins.”
“There's never been much blood in your veins,” Sherlock snipes. “What is this? Your text said my presence was required.”
John won't say anything, he won't. He will absolutely not get mixed up in this. But god help him, when this is over, he'll have to re-evaluate his notions of Sherlock being clever.
“Your presence is much appreciated, thank you,” Mycroft says with enough irony to sink the Titanic. “What have you got?”
“That couch is new,” Sherlock nods in the direction of the antique standing inconspicuously next to an equally antique globe, “there are scuff marks on the carpet and I know you only recently acquired a taste for the old and useless, a development, I can't help but think, caused by rapid senility. Whatever the reason, either this sofa was brought here less than three days ago or you should have words with the housekeepers. So. Did all of the people with symptoms come in contact with it?”
Mycroft looks like he's swallowing something bitter, but he does it with a smile. “It is quite obvious, isn't it,” he says hesitantly, “but you have to admit, I'm hardly working on full capacity.”
“I have to admit that,” Sherlock concedes with a grimace.
Sherlock wouldn't talk to him, he just glared daggers at Mycroft when he visited and sometimes refused to see him at all. The therapist said it was normal, that Sherlock had to work through the loss of control and the errors he'd made, that he probably felt guilty for causing his family pain, and Mycroft wondered what game Sherlock was playing on the man. He doubted that his brother would ever truly admit that he was an addict and it was ludicrous to imagine him following twelve steps that even Mycroft found sentimental and religiously convoluted. The only thing Mycroft felt he could count on was Sherlock's pride, and that pride he had wounded severely, which was the first part of his plan. The hardest part and the one that had him hesitating so long, hoping against hope that Sherlock would get over it on his own.
Mycroft wouldn't talk, too, because that would be showing his hand, but he found it uncannily hard with Sherlock looking at him like he had backstabbed him. Which, in a way, he had.
“You drugged me,” Sherlock spat one day and Mycroft had to fight hard to suppress a smile, then let it creep onto his face, well dosed and cold and mocking.
“That was hardly more than a drop in the ocean.”
Sherlock was seething, Mycroft could see, and for a moment he wished they were different, that they could do this together, but they weren't and they couldn't and it would have been too late either way. “You drugged me and brought me here,” there was so much anger in this one word it should have been enough to make the clinic go up in flames, but it faded against the next words. “You brought her here!”
Mycroft refused to look down, he refused to wince and he refused to feel anything. “Mummy was concerned about you.”
Sherlock didn't reply, probably couldn't with his jaw clenched so tightly, and Mycroft wondered if it was possible to pass out from suppressed anger. They had never had an argument, never. When Mycroft was fifteen, it had made no sense to argue with a toddler and when he was twentysomething it had made no sense to argue with a teenager, and after that Sherlock was just Sherlock and they never had arguments, so it had made no sense at all, never. It was always just the sniping and snarking and Mycroft being dismissive and Sherlock going utterly cold and still, because he couldn't trust himself not to say something childish.
It took a few minutes for Sherlock to compose himself, his hands the only moving things on him, twitching in his lap like he had to remind himself every few seconds not to clench them into fists. “You had no right,” he said coldly. “You don't-” he choked, he was so angry, “you don't get a say in this, in my life. You're not me, you don't have to be, you're just everything everyone expects and it's easy for you and you don't know what it's like and you don't care, you just-”
“I just stopped you from throwing it away!” Mycroft hissed. “Don't make yourself into a martyr about this, it's very unbecoming.” He stood and stroked some creases out of his suit. “It's good to see you're better.”
“Oh yes,” Sherlock sneered, “I'm splendid. And I'm so glad to see you're above everything I have to say, as usual.”
Mycroft smiled blandly. “Try to keep clean.”
“Try to keep your diet.”
Sherlock had never looked so hostile, not at Mycroft, and the worst part was that beneath it all he was terrified and alone. Show me, Mycroft thought desperately, prove me wrong. Show me it's your life and you don't need me to help you. You have to show me, because I'm not sure I could.
The couch has been removed and samples are on their way to being examined.
Sherlock is absorbed by the list NotAnthea made for him of everyone who has come in contact with the thing. It's not a very long list, Mycroft doesn't invite a whole lot of people to this office. Sherlock is staring at it with a stubborn glare, like it's somehow offensive to him. John catches Mycroft smiling, but Mycroft realizes it instantly and the smile vanishes. John won't say anything. Families are strange like that.
“Ah!” Sherlock exclaims suddenly. “Ah! Of course! John!”
“You figured it out?”
“Yes. BW, it's quite up your street. The people who got it were the delivery men, one minister plus secretary and Mycroft. It didn't infect anyone else, three persons, two security guards and the sidekick, who have in common that they're quite capable of handling a gun.”
So it's probably something the British Army vaccinates against, which narrows the field down a bit. John can't help but look at NotAnthea and yes, he can picture her with a gun quite clearly, it's just... what would she do with the phone? She looks up and gives him an amused wink, Sherlock glares. “Yes, you're brilliant,” John tells him with a smile.
“Ah, we better inform the laboratory that they're searching for anthrax spores, then,” Mycroft remarks like it's got nothing to do with him. “And then we should relocate to the next hospital as I'm quite fond of my lungs.”
Mycroft knew without a doubt that he wasn't wrong about the way he went about his relations to Sherlock. He wasn't entirely right about it either, couldn't be, because it wasn't a matter of right or wrong most of the time, but he emphatically wasn't wrong. He did what he could, which was, sadly, very little, because he was neither willing nor able to be what Sherlock wanted him to be. He could barely be what Sherlock needed at times, which was hard to admit and even harder to accept.
Sherlock was his little brother, which meant that he was brilliant and fragile and infuriating to Mycroft, and in some archaic illogical way impossible not to love. Sherlock wasn't so stupid not to know that in some remote part of the workings of his mind, but it wasn't enough, it wasn't earned in any way other than just being alive and for some insane reason, for some painful twist of personality, Sherlock didn't get it. Sherlock didn't get that this was what love is about, that one couldn't earn it the way one could earn praise or a compliment, that it just was. Mycroft loved his brother, because he was a fool and a genius and amazing, which weren't reasons at all. Sherlock wanted to make people love him, he needed to know the reasons, the motives, the cause and roots, he wanted to be able to deduce it.
But that was hardly Mycroft's problem, his life didn't revolve around Sherlock, for all he sometimes got the feeling it did, a big part was completely Sherlock-unrelated, which was good and sane and the reason Mycroft felt that he wasn't wrong. The problem was that Sherlock was alone and that people were too stupid to see what an amazing genius fool he was.
From a drop of water, Mycroft had once told his brother, you can logically infer the possibility of an ocean. From a smile Mycroft could infer the possibility of friendship. He knew he had to be quick, because Sherlock was incredibly idiotic about the whole thing, idiotic enough to let the chance pass by, to not even notice it, just because there was a shiny new serial killing going on. Sometimes it was approaching embarrassment being related to him, really.
By the time he got around to it, Sherlock had managed to get John Watson stranded on the other side of London, which didn't show quite enough consideration to make a desirable flatmate. The doctor was obviously in pain, and oozing annoyance when the car dropped him off in the warehouse. It took Mycroft only a few seconds to gather that John's instincts of self-preservation were as lacking as Sherlock's, which wasn't ideal, but amusing in an ironic way.
Mycroft didn't have qualms about manipulating people, they were so easy to read and so easy to lead. But this strangely stoic man didn't need manipulation, not really, just a nudge in the right direction. “What's your connection with Sherlock Holmes?” Mycroft asked and Dr Watson tried to deny it for about a second, then got this mildly baffled look that was so obviously common to him, because it had its own wrinkles in his face, and just like that it was not up for discussion any longer. Throw in the sad story of a man without friends and a bit of friendly bribery and Mycroft was almost certain that Sherlock had somehow managed not to alienate the man completely. He was absolutely certain that Dr Watson was feeling protective of Sherlock, which was good. Very good, indeed. The only blatant manipulation Mycroft deemed necessary was a short foray into what do you get out of it? and oh, the dear doctor was so desperately asking for trouble, it was written all over him, so very clear to see, and trouble he could get from Sherlock, trouble was what Sherlock strived for mastery in.
“You're not haunted by the war, Dr Watson - you miss it.” And Mycroft knew he was being creepy, he was being too obvious about the fact that he knew all this, really knew, not just guessed, but he was distracted by what he saw, by how well it might fit. The possibility of friendship. “Welcome back,” he said and strolled away. “Time to choose a side, Dr Watson.”
And he had no doubts which side that would be.
There's tea and it's not terrible dispenser tea, but real tea. In a hospital. John is impressed. He is watching NotAnthea, because at some point she might actually drink the tea in front of her and that will either require her to remove one hand from the BlackBerry or it will be very interesting to watch. She flicks him a look like she knows what's going on and won't drink just to spite him.
“How long will you be working for him?” he asks her, just to make conversation. The Holmes brothers are not an option for that, they're busy glaring at each other. Maybe that's not so bad, Mycroft could still have a respiratory collapse, though his chances are improving now, and then Sherlock would probably regret that there wasn't enough glaring time with his brother. John's just happy Sherlock didn't bring the violin.
“Oh eternity,” NotAnthea says slowly, probably multitasking some press conference and a coup d'état via e-mail at the same moment.
John nods. He knows the feeling.
.