Westermarck, Rejected, Mycroft/Sherlock, NC-17
(Yes, this is totally me getting it out of my system.)
Title: Westermarck, Rejected
Rating: NC-17
Length: 2200 words
Pairing: Mycroft/Sherlock
Warnings: Incest
Summary: But you've always had poor impulse control when something you wanted was within arm's reach. Follows Westermarck, Refuted.
You hold a list of names in your head of people you've wronged -- the mistress framed for the poisoning of a prominent diplomat, the men who died because they held secrets they couldn't be trusted to protect. There are politicians who had to be blackmailed because they wouldn't accept your bribes, and police officers whose careers were ruined when they refused to look the other way.
Your brother's name is on this list. His is the only one not related to your work. His is the only one you regret. But the regret doesn't matter and neither does the guilt, because what it ultimately boils down to is that you wanted him, and you'd taken him (it doesn't matter that he'd offered himself to you first; it was your duty to refuse).
But you've always had poor impulse control when something you wanted was within arm's reach.
He's here now, in your flat. He's high -- very high, with another hour or so to go before he comes down from the cocaine, but that's not what you notice first. He found out where you live and broke into your flat without leaving any obvious signs of entry, but that's not what you notice first either.
What you notice first is this:
He is older now (older than the last time you saw him, older than the last time you touched him), and his lips are wet and parted. He is wearing a suit even though you know he hates suits, and the topmost button of his shirt is deliberately unbuttoned.
You want him even more now than you did before.
He doesn't have an excuse for being here (he wouldn't be able to come up with one you wouldn't see through), but you know what he wants. You see it in the nervous, defiant set of his shoulders and the way his eyes rake over your body with poorly-hidden hunger.
You should send him home. You should send him away. You should, at the very least, say no.
But he's brilliant and observant, almost as much as you are. The facts are laid bare and obvious between the two of you.
He dressed in a suit, even though he hates wearing them (you like them, and he knows this). He came to your house and waited for you to return from work. He is high (for courage -- your brother is only ever nervous in regards to people, and you are one of the very few he cares about), and has been experimenting with recreational drugs ever since he dropped out of Cambridge. He has condoms and lubricant in his trousers pocket. Your mother does not know where he is -- has not known for the last three months, and her calls to you have become increasingly distressed (normally, she does not speak of him to you, and you politely pretend he doesn't exist).
You are home from work. You still prefer men, and are single not by choice but because your position at work is not strong enough to introduce overt homosexuality. You were not expecting to see him, but you are not surprised to see him either at your flat or in his current conditions. You already had a vague idea of where he's been and what he's been doing. You noticed his face, mouth, and clothing before you noticed the drugs or registered that he'd broken in.
If he's been here long enough to go through your belongings, he will know the following as well -- you do not have friends at work, you have not bothered to have sex with another person in years, and you speak to your mother regularly even though she never mentions you to Sherlock.
He is going to offer himself to you. Again, because he's done it twice before, and you'd said no the first time but yes the second. But it's different, because this time, he's not seventeen and a virgin and you're not without influence at your workplace. He's had lovers besides you (and a boyfriend too, at least one, possibly more), but is currently unattached.
If he offers, you'll accept. If you don't, he'll make a token attempt at coercion and you'll capitulate too-easily for the refusal to be genuine.
So you skip it all and jump to the inevitable conclusion:
Your mouth on his, the tangle of his hands in the sheets as you press into him, and the sound he makes, low and broken, as he begs you, "Fuck, yes, harder, Mycroft please".
The next morning, you go to take a shower and leave your younger brother (the words play themselves over and over in your mind, in your mother's voice, equal parts horrified and disgusted -- he's your brother, your younger brother) asleep in your bed. He is stained with sweat and semen and the thought makes your prick twitch with interest even as the guilt twists in your chest.
When you come out of the bath, he is going through the highly confidential government files on your desk. You should be angry at this but you aren't -- partially because you know him and understand his curiosity, but mostly because his hips carry bruises in the shapes of your fingers, and the sight derails your thoughts entirely.
He turns around. A dark purple mark blossoms across his collarbone. When you see it, you're struck with the sense memory of putting it there -- his hardness sliding against your belly and the helpless gasps he'd made when you'd sucked on his clavicle. His skin had been smooth against your lips and tongue.
Your brother (your brother) doesn't look like a boy anymore. He has grown to his full height. His hands and feet are no longer disproportionate to the rest of him, and there are no traces of baby fat left to soften the edges of his face. He has a day and a half's worth of stubble (you'd noticed the aftereffects of it on your skin this morning), and when he meets your eyes, there are no traces of the hero worship he'd used to feel for you.
Somehow when you weren't looking, you realize, the half-grown, sullen youth from your memories has become a man.
He glances at you briefly, then drops his attention back to the file in his hands. "You need to talk to the wife about her dogs."
You know this already, but you've been looking for an alternate solution; you hate legwork and can't trust any of the teams you command to ask the right questions. But. You trust your brother -- he doesn't notice as much as you, perhaps, but he observes enough to solve a case as clear-cut as this one.
You drop your towel to get dressed, and suggest to him while his thoughts are distracted, "Why don't you do it?"
He does.
In fact, he solves the entire case for you, using only the evidence he finds and the notes you'd left in the files. The notes had been written in your personal shorthand of course, but he'd learnt to decipher that at age thirteen, when he'd found your old journals.
You are so impressed with his work that a month later, when you have another case that would require more legwork than you prefer, you instead pay a visit to Sherlock's flat. He's surprised to see you, but takes one look at the folder you hold and comes to the right conclusion. "Another case you can't be bothered to solve on your own?"
"I think you'll find it interesting enough," you tell him, and pretend you aren't concerned at the way his shirt hangs too loosely on his shoulders and that you don't notice the myriad of other signs of his drug use. "Blackmail of a high-ranking politician. Also," you add, this time looking pointedly at him, "I'm taking you to dinner. Mummy would be upset if she knew how much weight you've lost since she's seen you last."
"There are other things about me that would upset Mummy much more," Sherlock replies with his usual petulance, but you know he's interested from the way his attention shifts from you to the folder. He takes it when you offer it to him, and your fingers brush (deliberate; every move of Sherlock's is deliberate now).
"Yes, well. She doesn't need to know about those. You know how fragile her health is." You aren't sure if you are talking about the drugs or the incest. Both, probably.
His reply is a distracted murmur of acknowledgment. You linger in the doorway to his flat until he snaps the folder shut. He glances up quickly, meeting your eyes. You can't read the expression in them, and it strikes you again how much he's changed from your memories.
"I'll need to examine where the letter was found, of course," he says, and then, "If I find the blackmailer for you, I'm sure you'll use that knowledge in a way that benefits you the most. Why should I help you?"
You know what he wants (the only thing he wants from you, the only thing you have the power to give him). "Me, on my knees."
He quirks an eyebrow at you, as you knew he would, but after another second you're rewarded with the way he sucks in a quick breath. His eyes widen as he realizes exactly what you're offering. "Done," he says quickly, as if afraid you'll change your mind and retract your offer -- you'd been considering doing to, actually, but you won't (can't) back down now.
Several days later, he emails you with the names of the blackmailers. Once you've taken care of the situation, you make good on your promise.
You undo his zip with your teeth, on your knees between his splayed legs, his fingers buried in your hair. You let him fuck your mouth, suppressing your gag reflex until your lips meet the base of his cock. He makes soft, desperate noises when you suck him and several times, you hear your name on his lips.
After he comes (he goes still and his hand in your hair tightens almost to the point of pain), there is a moment where things change. His body is slack with pleasure and his hand drops down, briefly, to cup your cheek. You duck away from the touch, giving him the moment he needs to remember who he is. Who you are.
You don't let him take care of the erection that tents your trousers, but when you masturbate to the memory afterwards, you imagine letting him touch you. You fantasize about his hand on your prick, and the warm huff of his breath against your neck as he presses you to a wall and slides his hand inside your trousers. You think about the way he gasps your name when you fuck him, and the wet, sloppy way he kisses when he's too lost in desire to control himself.
You pretend you're not violating half a dozen taboos -- mostly incest, but everything else too, because you'll never stop remembering how he was as a child, small and trusting. It'd been your duty to care for him and in this you've failed miserably. Because you wanted him when he was fifteen, and you had him when he was seventeen, and you told yourself never again but you've had him twice in the last month and a half.
Instead of disgust, all you feel is the urge to do it again.
It will happen again, you know, because Sherlock is good at getting what he wants, and you are good at getting what you want, and in this, you both want the same thing (you don't lie to yourself about it, because he'd see through the lies and tear them to shreds).
There's no point in agonizing over it, so you take your guilt and shame and place it carefully into a box in your psyche. You leave it in a corner of your mind, next to the other scruples you've carefully excised from yourself.
You tell yourself, it's inevitable and he's not a child anymore. You think, this is leverage to control the cocaine and it'll be easy to hide it from Mummy now. You carefully don't think about need or want, but they are conspicuous by their absence in your thoughts.
You have a list of people in your mind -- people who have been hurt (ruined or frightened or sometimes even killed) on your advisement, people who didn't deserve what happened to them. On the list are politicians and government officials and wives and mistresses. Some of them were guilty (of something, because there's always something), but many were not.
You don't recall them often, but you do sometimes, when the day feels gray and melancholy and you find yourself wondering if you'd made the right decision in choosing your country over all else. You press your fingertips against each other and wonder if it'd be worth it, in the end, having all these sins on your conscience.
Sometimes you don't know if you even have a conscience anymore, because when you think of murder, your mind brings up a cost-benefit analysis instead of a moral argument. You aren't sure if this is a bad thing. So you memorize the names of people you've wronged, just in case.
Your brother's name is no longer on this list.
Title: Westermarck, Rejected
Rating: NC-17
Length: 2200 words
Pairing: Mycroft/Sherlock
Warnings: Incest
Summary: But you've always had poor impulse control when something you wanted was within arm's reach. Follows Westermarck, Refuted.
You hold a list of names in your head of people you've wronged -- the mistress framed for the poisoning of a prominent diplomat, the men who died because they held secrets they couldn't be trusted to protect. There are politicians who had to be blackmailed because they wouldn't accept your bribes, and police officers whose careers were ruined when they refused to look the other way.
Your brother's name is on this list. His is the only one not related to your work. His is the only one you regret. But the regret doesn't matter and neither does the guilt, because what it ultimately boils down to is that you wanted him, and you'd taken him (it doesn't matter that he'd offered himself to you first; it was your duty to refuse).
But you've always had poor impulse control when something you wanted was within arm's reach.
He's here now, in your flat. He's high -- very high, with another hour or so to go before he comes down from the cocaine, but that's not what you notice first. He found out where you live and broke into your flat without leaving any obvious signs of entry, but that's not what you notice first either.
What you notice first is this:
He is older now (older than the last time you saw him, older than the last time you touched him), and his lips are wet and parted. He is wearing a suit even though you know he hates suits, and the topmost button of his shirt is deliberately unbuttoned.
You want him even more now than you did before.
He doesn't have an excuse for being here (he wouldn't be able to come up with one you wouldn't see through), but you know what he wants. You see it in the nervous, defiant set of his shoulders and the way his eyes rake over your body with poorly-hidden hunger.
You should send him home. You should send him away. You should, at the very least, say no.
But he's brilliant and observant, almost as much as you are. The facts are laid bare and obvious between the two of you.
He dressed in a suit, even though he hates wearing them (you like them, and he knows this). He came to your house and waited for you to return from work. He is high (for courage -- your brother is only ever nervous in regards to people, and you are one of the very few he cares about), and has been experimenting with recreational drugs ever since he dropped out of Cambridge. He has condoms and lubricant in his trousers pocket. Your mother does not know where he is -- has not known for the last three months, and her calls to you have become increasingly distressed (normally, she does not speak of him to you, and you politely pretend he doesn't exist).
You are home from work. You still prefer men, and are single not by choice but because your position at work is not strong enough to introduce overt homosexuality. You were not expecting to see him, but you are not surprised to see him either at your flat or in his current conditions. You already had a vague idea of where he's been and what he's been doing. You noticed his face, mouth, and clothing before you noticed the drugs or registered that he'd broken in.
If he's been here long enough to go through your belongings, he will know the following as well -- you do not have friends at work, you have not bothered to have sex with another person in years, and you speak to your mother regularly even though she never mentions you to Sherlock.
He is going to offer himself to you. Again, because he's done it twice before, and you'd said no the first time but yes the second. But it's different, because this time, he's not seventeen and a virgin and you're not without influence at your workplace. He's had lovers besides you (and a boyfriend too, at least one, possibly more), but is currently unattached.
If he offers, you'll accept. If you don't, he'll make a token attempt at coercion and you'll capitulate too-easily for the refusal to be genuine.
So you skip it all and jump to the inevitable conclusion:
Your mouth on his, the tangle of his hands in the sheets as you press into him, and the sound he makes, low and broken, as he begs you, "Fuck, yes, harder, Mycroft please".
The next morning, you go to take a shower and leave your younger brother (the words play themselves over and over in your mind, in your mother's voice, equal parts horrified and disgusted -- he's your brother, your younger brother) asleep in your bed. He is stained with sweat and semen and the thought makes your prick twitch with interest even as the guilt twists in your chest.
When you come out of the bath, he is going through the highly confidential government files on your desk. You should be angry at this but you aren't -- partially because you know him and understand his curiosity, but mostly because his hips carry bruises in the shapes of your fingers, and the sight derails your thoughts entirely.
He turns around. A dark purple mark blossoms across his collarbone. When you see it, you're struck with the sense memory of putting it there -- his hardness sliding against your belly and the helpless gasps he'd made when you'd sucked on his clavicle. His skin had been smooth against your lips and tongue.
Your brother (your brother) doesn't look like a boy anymore. He has grown to his full height. His hands and feet are no longer disproportionate to the rest of him, and there are no traces of baby fat left to soften the edges of his face. He has a day and a half's worth of stubble (you'd noticed the aftereffects of it on your skin this morning), and when he meets your eyes, there are no traces of the hero worship he'd used to feel for you.
Somehow when you weren't looking, you realize, the half-grown, sullen youth from your memories has become a man.
He glances at you briefly, then drops his attention back to the file in his hands. "You need to talk to the wife about her dogs."
You know this already, but you've been looking for an alternate solution; you hate legwork and can't trust any of the teams you command to ask the right questions. But. You trust your brother -- he doesn't notice as much as you, perhaps, but he observes enough to solve a case as clear-cut as this one.
You drop your towel to get dressed, and suggest to him while his thoughts are distracted, "Why don't you do it?"
He does.
In fact, he solves the entire case for you, using only the evidence he finds and the notes you'd left in the files. The notes had been written in your personal shorthand of course, but he'd learnt to decipher that at age thirteen, when he'd found your old journals.
You are so impressed with his work that a month later, when you have another case that would require more legwork than you prefer, you instead pay a visit to Sherlock's flat. He's surprised to see you, but takes one look at the folder you hold and comes to the right conclusion. "Another case you can't be bothered to solve on your own?"
"I think you'll find it interesting enough," you tell him, and pretend you aren't concerned at the way his shirt hangs too loosely on his shoulders and that you don't notice the myriad of other signs of his drug use. "Blackmail of a high-ranking politician. Also," you add, this time looking pointedly at him, "I'm taking you to dinner. Mummy would be upset if she knew how much weight you've lost since she's seen you last."
"There are other things about me that would upset Mummy much more," Sherlock replies with his usual petulance, but you know he's interested from the way his attention shifts from you to the folder. He takes it when you offer it to him, and your fingers brush (deliberate; every move of Sherlock's is deliberate now).
"Yes, well. She doesn't need to know about those. You know how fragile her health is." You aren't sure if you are talking about the drugs or the incest. Both, probably.
His reply is a distracted murmur of acknowledgment. You linger in the doorway to his flat until he snaps the folder shut. He glances up quickly, meeting your eyes. You can't read the expression in them, and it strikes you again how much he's changed from your memories.
"I'll need to examine where the letter was found, of course," he says, and then, "If I find the blackmailer for you, I'm sure you'll use that knowledge in a way that benefits you the most. Why should I help you?"
You know what he wants (the only thing he wants from you, the only thing you have the power to give him). "Me, on my knees."
He quirks an eyebrow at you, as you knew he would, but after another second you're rewarded with the way he sucks in a quick breath. His eyes widen as he realizes exactly what you're offering. "Done," he says quickly, as if afraid you'll change your mind and retract your offer -- you'd been considering doing to, actually, but you won't (can't) back down now.
Several days later, he emails you with the names of the blackmailers. Once you've taken care of the situation, you make good on your promise.
You undo his zip with your teeth, on your knees between his splayed legs, his fingers buried in your hair. You let him fuck your mouth, suppressing your gag reflex until your lips meet the base of his cock. He makes soft, desperate noises when you suck him and several times, you hear your name on his lips.
After he comes (he goes still and his hand in your hair tightens almost to the point of pain), there is a moment where things change. His body is slack with pleasure and his hand drops down, briefly, to cup your cheek. You duck away from the touch, giving him the moment he needs to remember who he is. Who you are.
You don't let him take care of the erection that tents your trousers, but when you masturbate to the memory afterwards, you imagine letting him touch you. You fantasize about his hand on your prick, and the warm huff of his breath against your neck as he presses you to a wall and slides his hand inside your trousers. You think about the way he gasps your name when you fuck him, and the wet, sloppy way he kisses when he's too lost in desire to control himself.
You pretend you're not violating half a dozen taboos -- mostly incest, but everything else too, because you'll never stop remembering how he was as a child, small and trusting. It'd been your duty to care for him and in this you've failed miserably. Because you wanted him when he was fifteen, and you had him when he was seventeen, and you told yourself never again but you've had him twice in the last month and a half.
Instead of disgust, all you feel is the urge to do it again.
It will happen again, you know, because Sherlock is good at getting what he wants, and you are good at getting what you want, and in this, you both want the same thing (you don't lie to yourself about it, because he'd see through the lies and tear them to shreds).
There's no point in agonizing over it, so you take your guilt and shame and place it carefully into a box in your psyche. You leave it in a corner of your mind, next to the other scruples you've carefully excised from yourself.
You tell yourself, it's inevitable and he's not a child anymore. You think, this is leverage to control the cocaine and it'll be easy to hide it from Mummy now. You carefully don't think about need or want, but they are conspicuous by their absence in your thoughts.
You have a list of people in your mind -- people who have been hurt (ruined or frightened or sometimes even killed) on your advisement, people who didn't deserve what happened to them. On the list are politicians and government officials and wives and mistresses. Some of them were guilty (of something, because there's always something), but many were not.
You don't recall them often, but you do sometimes, when the day feels gray and melancholy and you find yourself wondering if you'd made the right decision in choosing your country over all else. You press your fingertips against each other and wonder if it'd be worth it, in the end, having all these sins on your conscience.
Sometimes you don't know if you even have a conscience anymore, because when you think of murder, your mind brings up a cost-benefit analysis instead of a moral argument. You aren't sure if this is a bad thing. So you memorize the names of people you've wronged, just in case.
Your brother's name is no longer on this list.