Rolling in the Deep (13/?)
Rolling in the Deep
Title: Rolling in the DeepSeries: Still Waters (Run Deep) (Part III of IV)
Author:
melody_in_time
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: Through S1 only
Disclaimer: I wish they were mine, but they aren't. Nor am I creative enough to have written the song that gave this instalment its title. That belongs to Adele, and whomever else had IP rights along side her.
Author's Notes:
Evening everyone. So this chapter is completely different to others. Some of you might remember that at the end of the last story I asked whether anyone had anything they particularly wanted to see in the next instalment and I'd try to fit it in. This chapter is in response the the request by LiviKate for "a scene of Mycroft sneakily listening to Greg talking to his son. It could be just cute fluffiness or it could be serious confessions of concerns about their relationship or something like that. I just want to see Mycroft getting teary eyed from listening to Greg talk to his son when he doesn't know he's there :) preferably beautiful things about his mum, especially if they're kind of sad too."
Being me... that's not what we've ended up with at ALL. It's a lot less fluffy and sweet, and a bit more angsty ... and there's a lot less Greg... but it is the request that inspired the chapter so I shall credit it and back slowly away from all the sharp pointy objects.
Just in case anyone missed it, at the extremely wise request of Baelorfan I've written up a bit more of an explanation as to genders, dynamics and reproduction. If you're a bit confused as to Mummy, or just want some more background info to better understand the world, please check it out. ( http://melody-in-time.livejournal.com/20628.html)
Thanks as always to theartofprose for the dedicated work on this chapter. Appreciated as always.
Warnings: None really for this chapter.
If you've wondered here by mistake, you may wish to start at Part I of the series, Rarest of the Rare: Chapter 1.
Chapter 10 - Chapter 11 - Chapter 12 - Chapter 13 - Chapter 14 - Chapter 15 - Chapter 16 - Chapter 17 - Chapter 18 - Chapter 19 - Chapter 20
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
They’re hard to watch sometimes. Most of the time, really.
Some people would assume it’s because I’m jealous, or unhappy at being replaced. If I ever mentioned it, at least one of them would be ‘some people’ too.
I’m not. Jealous, that is. It was only ever physical between Mycroft and I, a convenient adjunct to our working lives. I won’t claim I don’t miss it sometimes, but that’s entirely to do with the quality and quantity of the sex. Mycroft can be an extremely. . . inspired Dom when he chooses.
No, they’re hard to watch because they could be - however that sentence finishes it would be true - amazing, in sync. Perfect. The point is they could be, but they keep missing each other and they’re just …not. That makes them hard to watch.
Like now: miscommunication, confusion, both of them too overloaded by their pasts to manage that crucial shift so maybe they can fix things. From where I stand at the top of the stairs I can hear them: Mycroft not managing to apologise and say what he actually meant, Gregory not managing to hear the apology behind the hurt and rage.
I can already tell it’s not going to be today. This isn’t the incident where they’ll somehow find that middle ground they’ve been circling around since last December. Maybe even before that. Maybe since they first met, poetically drawing ever towards each other. Fate.
Mycroft would hate the thought. That’s part of their problem.
Lestrade leaves, striding self-righteously out of the nursery, clothed in anger, indignation and pain. His face does its usual dance when he sees me, trying to decide whether today I’m friend or foe.
Sometimes I’m an ally: the helpful comrade who got him access to the birth of his son and the fellow conspirator who helps manage Mycroft. Those are the days the cheer is genuine, even if its hiding how annoyed he is with his lover.
More often I’m a reminder, an allegory. Sherlock has the Work, Mycroft has Duty, and I am Duty personified, the one who keeps him late and picks him up early, who shuttles him away on mysterious weekends and unknown flights. He hates Duty, deep down, but Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade has no right to comment on it-not with his own record of nights at the office and overtime on the weekends-so he doesn’t and the bitterness sits, aimed at me if he absolutely must let it out.
The rest of the time I’m the enemy. More than a competitor for Mycroft’s time, I’m a competitor for his life, heart and bed-the gorgeous, talented ex still spending ten or more hours a day with his love.
There’s a difference between convenience and desperation, and while my arrangement with Mycroft was convenient, I am not desperate, but that seems to matter less and less since Ben was born and they took that great fracturing step together. The only two people I know who can move backwards by moving forwards.
Lestrade thinks he trusts us: that he doesn’t believe we’d do anything behind his back. He’d be right, if he really did believe that, but what Alpha is really comfortable in those circumstances, excluded on the side lines with no assurance of forever?
There’s nothing I can do about the excluded and nothing Mycroft will do about the forever. He’d been getting there, inching slowly towards accepting. Before all this. Before the Mummy shaped topping on the poisoned cake. Now, if not square zero, he’s certainly back to square one.
If the universe had been kind and everything about them and their relationship was normal, Lestrade would be getting increasingly aggressive, because that’s what Alpha Doms do when surrounded by all this uncertainty. I’m stereotyping, but stereotypes exit for a reason. As a Sub he keeps getting more withdrawn and bitter, pulling away from everyone and locking himself up in his head. A withdrawal Mycroft, buried deep in his own problems, probably sees as acceptance.
The Sub is withdrawing, not the Alpha. Very few people would notice, but Lestrade has had almost thirty years practice splitting his personality into segments. Every time he sees me it gets worse. Every time, the fracture in him grows a little more: the Alpha becoming more aggressive and as the Sub drifts further away.
Denial.
He likes to think he trusts us because the alternative is more than he can handle. Lestrade has an almost unmatched ability to bury his head in the sand. Only Mycroft’s is better.
I’m not even sure if he realises: his smile is always friendly, but the eyes and the musculature twitches give him away. No, when Lestrade sees me, I’m always evaluated and mostly found wanting. Today I’m not a friend, but not necessarily an enemy. I can’t tell. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t acknowledge me beyond the harsh tainted nod, and heads straight for the front door.
I continue down the corridor towards the nursery, heels silent on the carpet. I hear a sigh within and think Mycroft must have heard me, but it’s not me he starts talking to so I stop and listen.
I’m in intelligence after all and all information is valuable. Especially information about Mycroft. Especially if he doesn’t want me to know. Lately more and more of my job seems to be interfering between Mycroft and his own best interests, so forewarned is forearmed.
It was the sigh that clued me in first that this might be something to listen to. It was heavy, heartfelt, not exasperated or smug. A genuine expression of emotion-unusual for Mycroft Holmes.
“I sometimes wonder whether I made the right choice with you,” he says.
I can picture him, holding baby Ben in his arms and talking to him as the youngest and cutest Holmes stared up at him or maybe Ben’s in the cot and Mycroft is leaning over and speaking to him that way, with his fingers smoothing through the baby’s hair. I’m not sticking my head around the door to check.
There is another sigh and Mycroft continues.
“With your name, I mean. Making you a Holmes. It was the most logical choice. The family needs someone to inherit when I’m gone, and Sherlock and John will never produce children who are suitable, not with John Watson raising them. You’ll always be provided for, go to the best schools, never want for anything. If you want to try it, you can: music, science, art. It will all be at your fingertips and one day you’ll be the most powerful Alpha in Britain. . . . If you are an Alpha, I suppose.
“Money, success, purpose, access to the privileged of the world... I can give you all that. It was the logical choice. It still is logical. Easier for me too. If you’re an Alpha, well, they might finally be satisfied. An heir.
“I sometimes wonder though, if it was right. Do you think it was right? Would you have preferred to be a Lestrade? After today, I think he’d prefer it if you were.
“It would have been harder for you: less money, no privileges. You’d be in a two room flat with a parent who works too much overtime and constantly misses recitals and birthdays because he’s running down some criminal or another with your uncle. Not that you’d know he was your uncle. You’d be in a government school, not a public one - no great teachers, no peers with influence once they graduated, most without ambitions beyond graffiti and recreational substances. Cheap beer, most likely.
“Would you join in? Gregory had his punk days, would you follow that path too? Or would he have managed to scrape together enough to get you into somewhere else by then? He’d try-never underestimate how much he will do for you Abernathy, and he would try-even if it would mean more overtime.
“Would you have been happier? Having a Sire who loved you unconditionally and could show it? Scraping through life, but as a team? You laugh more for him already, smile. Would you still smile when you were older and could understand the struggle?
“He’s a better father than I am. He always will be, I suspect. Would that have been enough to make the difference?
“Listen to him, when you’re older, but don’t emulate him. Your Sire’s best traits are his unfailingly large capacity to care for everyone and everything and his unflagging sense of right and wrong. Don’t adopt them. Admire them and appreciate that people who think and feel like that exist, but don’t become one. You can’t. I gave you my name and my path, and on this road, caring is not an advantage and morals, well, it’s a very grey world, Abernathy, and you will operate from the shadows. Just like me.
“You could have had that, been that. Normal. Not ordinary, just normal, but I gave you my name. Because it was logical, but now that you’re here . . . maybe putting my path beneath your feet wasn’t the best choice.
“Remember this though. Remember that you are wonderful and you are loved. That you are perfect, and that no matter what happens, and what you do, your Sire will be there and he will protect you. From anyone. Always. Because he is a good person, one who cares deeply, and loves you more than good sense should allow. He will chase away every nightmare, and take on everyone who ever dares criticise you, because he’s a good person, a brave person. Because he has a heart. Because he’s everything I’m not. Yet you’re mine. With my name.
“I’m sorry.”
Of course, Lestrade knows none of this. Will never hear any of this, because that’s not how Mycroft works. The doubts, the worry, the admiration and implied caring, will stay the providence of a baby who can’t yet understand English.
I back soundlessly down the corridor then proceed back towards the nursery, not muffling my footsteps as I go so he can hear me coming. Sure enough, Abernathy is safely ensconced in the crib and my boss has well and truly wrapped his walls back around himself in a frozen cloud.
“Ah my dear, has the car arrived?” he asks.
He knows the answer. I wouldn’t have come to fetch him if it hadn’t.
“Indeed, Sir. If we’re going to be on time to your meeting with the Minister for Education we need to leave soon. Mrs Potts has returned from the store and is downstairs.”
“In that case, my dear, after you.”
For Duty.
As if nothing had ever happened, and as far as the world will know, nothing did.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Previous - Next
Title: Rolling in the DeepSeries: Still Waters (Run Deep) (Part III of IV)
Author:
melody_in_time
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: Through S1 only
Disclaimer: I wish they were mine, but they aren't. Nor am I creative enough to have written the song that gave this instalment its title. That belongs to Adele, and whomever else had IP rights along side her.
Author's Notes:
Evening everyone. So this chapter is completely different to others. Some of you might remember that at the end of the last story I asked whether anyone had anything they particularly wanted to see in the next instalment and I'd try to fit it in. This chapter is in response the the request by LiviKate for "a scene of Mycroft sneakily listening to Greg talking to his son. It could be just cute fluffiness or it could be serious confessions of concerns about their relationship or something like that. I just want to see Mycroft getting teary eyed from listening to Greg talk to his son when he doesn't know he's there :) preferably beautiful things about his mum, especially if they're kind of sad too."
Being me... that's not what we've ended up with at ALL. It's a lot less fluffy and sweet, and a bit more angsty ... and there's a lot less Greg... but it is the request that inspired the chapter so I shall credit it and back slowly away from all the sharp pointy objects.
Just in case anyone missed it, at the extremely wise request of Baelorfan I've written up a bit more of an explanation as to genders, dynamics and reproduction. If you're a bit confused as to Mummy, or just want some more background info to better understand the world, please check it out. ( http://melody-in-time.livejournal.com/20628.html)
Thanks as always to theartofprose for the dedicated work on this chapter. Appreciated as always.
Warnings: None really for this chapter.
If you've wondered here by mistake, you may wish to start at Part I of the series, Rarest of the Rare: Chapter 1.
Chapter 10 - Chapter 11 - Chapter 12 - Chapter 13 - Chapter 14 - Chapter 15 - Chapter 16 - Chapter 17 - Chapter 18 - Chapter 19 - Chapter 20
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
They’re hard to watch sometimes. Most of the time, really.
Some people would assume it’s because I’m jealous, or unhappy at being replaced. If I ever mentioned it, at least one of them would be ‘some people’ too.
I’m not. Jealous, that is. It was only ever physical between Mycroft and I, a convenient adjunct to our working lives. I won’t claim I don’t miss it sometimes, but that’s entirely to do with the quality and quantity of the sex. Mycroft can be an extremely. . . inspired Dom when he chooses.
No, they’re hard to watch because they could be - however that sentence finishes it would be true - amazing, in sync. Perfect. The point is they could be, but they keep missing each other and they’re just …not. That makes them hard to watch.
Like now: miscommunication, confusion, both of them too overloaded by their pasts to manage that crucial shift so maybe they can fix things. From where I stand at the top of the stairs I can hear them: Mycroft not managing to apologise and say what he actually meant, Gregory not managing to hear the apology behind the hurt and rage.
I can already tell it’s not going to be today. This isn’t the incident where they’ll somehow find that middle ground they’ve been circling around since last December. Maybe even before that. Maybe since they first met, poetically drawing ever towards each other. Fate.
Mycroft would hate the thought. That’s part of their problem.
Lestrade leaves, striding self-righteously out of the nursery, clothed in anger, indignation and pain. His face does its usual dance when he sees me, trying to decide whether today I’m friend or foe.
Sometimes I’m an ally: the helpful comrade who got him access to the birth of his son and the fellow conspirator who helps manage Mycroft. Those are the days the cheer is genuine, even if its hiding how annoyed he is with his lover.
More often I’m a reminder, an allegory. Sherlock has the Work, Mycroft has Duty, and I am Duty personified, the one who keeps him late and picks him up early, who shuttles him away on mysterious weekends and unknown flights. He hates Duty, deep down, but Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade has no right to comment on it-not with his own record of nights at the office and overtime on the weekends-so he doesn’t and the bitterness sits, aimed at me if he absolutely must let it out.
The rest of the time I’m the enemy. More than a competitor for Mycroft’s time, I’m a competitor for his life, heart and bed-the gorgeous, talented ex still spending ten or more hours a day with his love.
There’s a difference between convenience and desperation, and while my arrangement with Mycroft was convenient, I am not desperate, but that seems to matter less and less since Ben was born and they took that great fracturing step together. The only two people I know who can move backwards by moving forwards.
Lestrade thinks he trusts us: that he doesn’t believe we’d do anything behind his back. He’d be right, if he really did believe that, but what Alpha is really comfortable in those circumstances, excluded on the side lines with no assurance of forever?
There’s nothing I can do about the excluded and nothing Mycroft will do about the forever. He’d been getting there, inching slowly towards accepting. Before all this. Before the Mummy shaped topping on the poisoned cake. Now, if not square zero, he’s certainly back to square one.
If the universe had been kind and everything about them and their relationship was normal, Lestrade would be getting increasingly aggressive, because that’s what Alpha Doms do when surrounded by all this uncertainty. I’m stereotyping, but stereotypes exit for a reason. As a Sub he keeps getting more withdrawn and bitter, pulling away from everyone and locking himself up in his head. A withdrawal Mycroft, buried deep in his own problems, probably sees as acceptance.
The Sub is withdrawing, not the Alpha. Very few people would notice, but Lestrade has had almost thirty years practice splitting his personality into segments. Every time he sees me it gets worse. Every time, the fracture in him grows a little more: the Alpha becoming more aggressive and as the Sub drifts further away.
Denial.
He likes to think he trusts us because the alternative is more than he can handle. Lestrade has an almost unmatched ability to bury his head in the sand. Only Mycroft’s is better.
I’m not even sure if he realises: his smile is always friendly, but the eyes and the musculature twitches give him away. No, when Lestrade sees me, I’m always evaluated and mostly found wanting. Today I’m not a friend, but not necessarily an enemy. I can’t tell. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t acknowledge me beyond the harsh tainted nod, and heads straight for the front door.
I continue down the corridor towards the nursery, heels silent on the carpet. I hear a sigh within and think Mycroft must have heard me, but it’s not me he starts talking to so I stop and listen.
I’m in intelligence after all and all information is valuable. Especially information about Mycroft. Especially if he doesn’t want me to know. Lately more and more of my job seems to be interfering between Mycroft and his own best interests, so forewarned is forearmed.
It was the sigh that clued me in first that this might be something to listen to. It was heavy, heartfelt, not exasperated or smug. A genuine expression of emotion-unusual for Mycroft Holmes.
“I sometimes wonder whether I made the right choice with you,” he says.
I can picture him, holding baby Ben in his arms and talking to him as the youngest and cutest Holmes stared up at him or maybe Ben’s in the cot and Mycroft is leaning over and speaking to him that way, with his fingers smoothing through the baby’s hair. I’m not sticking my head around the door to check.
There is another sigh and Mycroft continues.
“With your name, I mean. Making you a Holmes. It was the most logical choice. The family needs someone to inherit when I’m gone, and Sherlock and John will never produce children who are suitable, not with John Watson raising them. You’ll always be provided for, go to the best schools, never want for anything. If you want to try it, you can: music, science, art. It will all be at your fingertips and one day you’ll be the most powerful Alpha in Britain. . . . If you are an Alpha, I suppose.
“Money, success, purpose, access to the privileged of the world... I can give you all that. It was the logical choice. It still is logical. Easier for me too. If you’re an Alpha, well, they might finally be satisfied. An heir.
“I sometimes wonder though, if it was right. Do you think it was right? Would you have preferred to be a Lestrade? After today, I think he’d prefer it if you were.
“It would have been harder for you: less money, no privileges. You’d be in a two room flat with a parent who works too much overtime and constantly misses recitals and birthdays because he’s running down some criminal or another with your uncle. Not that you’d know he was your uncle. You’d be in a government school, not a public one - no great teachers, no peers with influence once they graduated, most without ambitions beyond graffiti and recreational substances. Cheap beer, most likely.
“Would you join in? Gregory had his punk days, would you follow that path too? Or would he have managed to scrape together enough to get you into somewhere else by then? He’d try-never underestimate how much he will do for you Abernathy, and he would try-even if it would mean more overtime.
“Would you have been happier? Having a Sire who loved you unconditionally and could show it? Scraping through life, but as a team? You laugh more for him already, smile. Would you still smile when you were older and could understand the struggle?
“He’s a better father than I am. He always will be, I suspect. Would that have been enough to make the difference?
“Listen to him, when you’re older, but don’t emulate him. Your Sire’s best traits are his unfailingly large capacity to care for everyone and everything and his unflagging sense of right and wrong. Don’t adopt them. Admire them and appreciate that people who think and feel like that exist, but don’t become one. You can’t. I gave you my name and my path, and on this road, caring is not an advantage and morals, well, it’s a very grey world, Abernathy, and you will operate from the shadows. Just like me.
“You could have had that, been that. Normal. Not ordinary, just normal, but I gave you my name. Because it was logical, but now that you’re here . . . maybe putting my path beneath your feet wasn’t the best choice.
“Remember this though. Remember that you are wonderful and you are loved. That you are perfect, and that no matter what happens, and what you do, your Sire will be there and he will protect you. From anyone. Always. Because he is a good person, one who cares deeply, and loves you more than good sense should allow. He will chase away every nightmare, and take on everyone who ever dares criticise you, because he’s a good person, a brave person. Because he has a heart. Because he’s everything I’m not. Yet you’re mine. With my name.
“I’m sorry.”
Of course, Lestrade knows none of this. Will never hear any of this, because that’s not how Mycroft works. The doubts, the worry, the admiration and implied caring, will stay the providence of a baby who can’t yet understand English.
I back soundlessly down the corridor then proceed back towards the nursery, not muffling my footsteps as I go so he can hear me coming. Sure enough, Abernathy is safely ensconced in the crib and my boss has well and truly wrapped his walls back around himself in a frozen cloud.
“Ah my dear, has the car arrived?” he asks.
He knows the answer. I wouldn’t have come to fetch him if it hadn’t.
“Indeed, Sir. If we’re going to be on time to your meeting with the Minister for Education we need to leave soon. Mrs Potts has returned from the store and is downstairs.”
“In that case, my dear, after you.”
For Duty.
As if nothing had ever happened, and as far as the world will know, nothing did.
-----------------------------------------------------------
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