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He’s six years old the first time he listens to the sound of a human heart, his own in fact, and it’s much louder than he expected. The physician hooks the stethoscope into his ears and calls him precocious. 78 beats per minute. Perfectly healthy. At six years old, it’s a biological marvel, this thing contained within his small, unimpressive chest that’s the source of so much noise, and so much life.
He remembers stealing glances at the pictures in Mycroft’s biology books: intricate multi-coloured cross sections labeled with mysteriously elegant words like superior vena cava. Science isn’t much different from art, he thinks, though he keeps it to himself; Mycroft would be quick to point out his ignorance of both subjects.
Sometimes he wonders what he’d find if he could cut open his brother’s chest, if there’d be a wide, gaping hole, or perhaps something utterly ordinary.
*
Mycroft hasn’t been eating, Anthea tells him. It’s the fourth time she’s contacted him directly since they made each other’s acquaintance two years ago. The last time had been an assassination attempt in Helsinki that gave Mycroft a torn deltoid for his troubles, so if Sherlock is unresponsive this time, it’s mostly due to perspective.
Two weeks pass before she texts again. He’s constantly tired. He’s lost weight.
“What?” John pauses his typing from his seat at the desk—probably updating his little blog again, which, as far as Sherlock’s concerned, contains far too many exclamation marks and far too few hard facts.
“What what?”
“You just yelled oh, for God’s sake! at your phone.”
“Oh, that.” He waves a dismissive hand and returns to his book on classic ciphers. “Mycroft’s assistant seems to think I’m his doctor. Or his mother. I can’t decide which I find more unappealing.”
The words have barely left his mouth when he hears footsteps on the stairs accompanied by that damned umbrella.
“Well, well, speak of the devil.”
The floorboards creak, announcing the intruder.
“How quaint.” His brother’s voice sounds strange, strained, breathing a little laboured. “I should’ve found you a live-in ages ago. It’s been remarkably effective at keeping you off the streets.”
“Always a pleasure, Mycroft.” John lets words, opinions, get under his skin too easily and Mycroft knows, no doubt already has the weakness catalogued and detailed under Watson, John.
When Sherlock finally diverts his attention from his book, what he sees catches him off guard. Anthea wasn’t being dramatic; Mycroft’s lost weight, and it’s nothing to do with his diet. For a man who retains five personal tailors, he looks bizarrely disheveled, navy suit notably ill-fitting. Sherlock follows the lines and angles with his eyes and finds a distinct lack of conviction.
“What sort of trouble has the British government gotten himself into today?”
Mycroft sits down gingerly in John’s usual chair, looking worse for wear upon closer examination. He draws out his handkerchief to cover his mouth before coughing. Sherlock narrows his eyes and sits up a little straighter. The last time his brother was ill was—well, so long ago he can’t be bothered to place the time or the circumstances. He presumes the consequences would be nothing short of apocalyptic.
“Feeling okay, Mycroft?” The typing halts again. “You look a bit peaky.”
“I’m fine. A common cold. I’ve endured, and survived, worse, believe me.” The polite smile directed at John’s concern isn’t entirely truthful. “I need you to take a trip to Kiev, brother mine.”
Mycroft proceeds to talk at Sherlock and he pays attention insofar as his brain retains the information for later perusal. The symptoms, both reported and visible, point to a number of possible conditions, none being the common cold. His brother’s always had a natural aversion to admissions of weakness, physical or otherwise. He imagines even Death will have a hard time getting Mycroft to capitulate in the end.
“This is time-sensitive, Sherlock. Not your usual trivia.” After all these years Mycroft still hasn’t grown out of the notion that he has the right to give orders and his little brother has a duty to follow them.
Instead of responding, Sherlock lunges forward and grabs him by the wrist.
“What are you—” Mycroft jerks instinctively, face bewildered. It’s not often that Sherlock takes his brother so effectively by surprise and he allows himself to revel in the unintended victory for a second. The hand in his grip goes limp, but Mycroft isn’t conceding; he’s humouring him, playing along with his puerile little game. His brother’s always had a special talent for condescension.
“Loss of appetite, fatigue, coughing, shortness of breath, irregular pulse. What am I missing?” He lets go and settles back into his chair, hands splayed on the armrests.
“She’s been texting you.” Mycroft looks equally resigned and aggravated. “I really must reassess her loyalties.”
“Have you been experiencing chest pain?”
John’s question is all it takes for the pieces to fall into place, and the final picture makes his world, so rarely perturbed, tilt a little on its axis.
“I didn’t come here to be interrogated, so if you’ll excuse me.”
Mycroft makes a move to stand, and Kiev is the last word on his lips before he loses consciousness.
*
They take the longest route to the park to waste time. Their mother ordered them out of the house on account of the weather. Such a beautiful day, it would be criminal to stay indoors.
Mycroft walks with lazy, purposeful strides and Sherlock with erratic bursts of energy, careening round a corner and nearly colliding with a cyclist.
“Do take care to avoid a broken neck, little brother. You know Mummy will place the blame entirely on me.”
When they reach the park, there’s one unoccupied bench overlooking the wide stretch of lawn littered with noisy dogs and even noisier children. The faint smell of lilacs marks the transformation of winter into spring, a warm smell that soothes his chest.
They sit down beside each other. Mycroft crosses his legs and Sherlock curls his against his chest, eyes darting from one familial sight to another until they land on two boys passing a football back and forth.
“Brothers.”
“Obviously.” Mycroft reaches into his pockets for a cigarette and lighter. Sherlock doesn’t turn to watch but a second later he smells it, strong and slightly sweet.
“They’re close in age so their parents bought two of everything. Shirts, shorts, shoes. In different colors and patterns, though, so they don’t look stupid.”
“No.” Mycroft tilts his head and blows a thin stream of smoke through the air that’s carried away quickly by the wind. “What have I told you about being too eager? Look again.”
Sherlock turns back and frowns, gnawing at his lower lip until it dawns on him.
“The oldest brother isn’t here. These clothes are secondhand.”
“Good, very good.”
Mycroft, as always, gets in the last word, and Sherlock fumes silently for a moment, mouth pressed against his knees. He watches the older brother scoop the ball into his arms before the younger one cries foul and gives chase. Laughter and shouts ring through the air.
“We’re not normal, are we.” His anger dissipates, leaving a space in his heart that stays unfilled.
“Life’s too short for you to concern yourself with something so inconsequential as normalcy.”
“I’m not concerned,” Sherlock says, though Mycroft’s answer reassures him all the same.
*
They transfer him from A&E to the ICU in two hours, 13 minutes, and 52 seconds. The catheter stays in for 24 hours, the ventilator an extra eight, and then only the morphine is left, to dull his senses and make sleep come more easily.
John brings Sherlock seven cups of coffee, six of which he drinks. The first he lets slip and spill onto the newly polished floor because his fingers are stiff and clumsy.
Anthea comes, only to leave an hour later, fingers flying across her Blackberry. Damage control, he presumes. She must be out of practice given her boss’s impeccable record, but nevertheless prepared. There would be no scandal, of course, nothing with which the media or the public would concern themselves, but behind closed doors chaos would erupt, the free world would unravel. They all believed Mycroft Holmes to be invincible, and he never saw an advantage in convincing them otherwise.
Molly comes straight from the morgue, Lestrade soon after. They’re here for Sherlock. He knows, but doesn’t understand. He isn’t the one with a failing heart. He isn’t the one in 10 cases that lives through the first 48 hours following cardiac arrest, with a 70% chance of survival over the next four years.
“We’re all reduced to statistics in the end.” You don’t get distracted by miscalculations, you—“Recalculate.”
“Sherlock.” He keeps his eyes fixed on the electrocardiogram. QRST. Depolarization, repolarization. Muscular minutiae. “Sherlock, you should get some sleep. I’ll wake you as soon as—”
“Death is a certitude, John.” He doesn’t need to be placated or coddled; he knows death, knows what it looks like and how it smells, its biological implications. “We try our best to conquer it, evade it, beat it back, because, in our hearts, we know it’s only biding its time.”
“He’s your brother, Sherlock.”
His eyes refocus on John’s reflection in the glass. “And by that I suppose you mean I should show a little more compassion.”
“More or less, yes.”
“Compassion can’t cure a sick man. You of all people should know that.”
His mobile chimes before John can give his usual long-suffering response about how Sherlock could put a little more effort towards being normal.
Flight to Kiev leaves in an hour.
“Leave it to Mycroft to still give orders when he’s drugged and unconscious.”
“Orders? What orders?”
He takes one last look at the hospital bed and the shade of his brother occupying it, diminished by the sterile whiteness bearing down on him from all sides.
Then he deletes the text and tucks his mobile away. “Duty calls.”
*
He’s livid. His heart burns a hole into his chest, like one of Mycroft’s cigarettes pressed into paper. Ashes to ashes.
He cuts out a path through the woods, as fiercely as his limbs can carry him, through brambles and low-lying branches that scratch his bare arms and cheeks.
He hates his brother, hates him for being right all the time, for being good at everything. Hates him for always winning at the games they play, even the ones he calls juvenile, dull, simple-minded, that he plays because Mummy wants him to indulge his baby brother.
The East Wind is coming.
He runs harder, faster, towards the dying light sinking below the horizon. The young trees sway and beckon. Deeper, deeper, they say.
Then dusk is upon him, so suddenly he thinks for a second he’s going blind. His foot catches on a root and he pitches forward, landing hard on his chest and palms, rocks gouging into tender skin. He doesn’t make a sound, biting down on his tongue and tasting blood.
Stupid little boy.
His ankle throbs, his hands sting, and he trembles a little under the tide of misery breaking against his chest. With his rage subsiding he finds that the forest is lonelier and more terrifying at night, its sounds haunting and its shapes sinister. He’s ready to cry for help, knowing no one’s close enough to hear, when he sees a beam of light moving across the forest floor and hears footfalls drawing closer.
“Sherlock.”
Mycroft’s thrown on a jumper and boots without bothering to tie the laces. His brows are drawn tightly, lips pressed into a thin line.
“You probably won’t be able to walk all the way back.” He sets down the torch and kneels to inspect Sherlock’s ankle with a light touch, fingers cool and dry. Sherlock’s always had difficulty reading his brother; the dark makes it near impossible. “Can you climb onto my back?”
“I think so.” He recalls the last words he said to Mycroft before he fled. Go to hell. Mummy’s likely cross about that, too, the language and the sentiment both. Mycroft looked like he’d been slapped across the face, like he cared.
Sherlock shifts his body weight forward and wraps his arms around his brother’s neck, pressing his face against itchy wool. Mycroft smells like bergamot and lemon. He’d never admit it out loud, but it comforts him now, when everything around him feels vast and strange.
Mycroft stands with a bit of effort, hands coming up to support Sherlock’s legs. The torch casts a sickly, unnatural light against the tree trunks that fades from sight as they leave the forest behind.
*
By the time he returns from Kiev—extracting a political prisoner, Mycroft had all the cards, he just needed someone to lay them down, the usual tedious legwork—the doctor’s already cleared Mycroft to leave hospital.
is his dictatorship back to terrorizing his subjects? SH
He’ll be picked up in one hour.
When he gets to Bart’s, Mycroft’s halfway dressed in a white Oxford tucked into pinstripe trousers. Pinstripes mean a day at the office, most likely several meetings, with either MPs, foreign dignitaries, or both.
Sherlock steps inside the room as he’s reaching for his tie. Red. Foreign dignitaries, then.
“You’re going against doctor’s orders.”
Mycroft looks up, surprise showing for just a second before fading to neutral. “I’m fine. And you’re hardly a poster boy for obedience.”
Sherlock sits down in the bedside chair, legs patiently crossed, and drums his fingers against the armrests. Mycroft turns up his collar, fingers steady and methodical as they tie a perfect half Windsor.
“Kiev is taken care of.”
“So I hear. There were no surprises then?”
“I was well-equipped, thanks to your lovely assistant.”
The waistcoat is next, buttoned with practised ease, followed by the pocket watch, jacket, pocket square. Sherlock narrows his eyes. It’s a ritual he’s never observed before, or wasted his energy contemplating. He certainly wouldn’t have expected it to be the least bit interesting, but against all odds he finds himself transfixed. It’s much more than a lingering compulsion, an irrepressible need for order. His brother puts on his layers like he’s putting on armour. Sharp, exacting lines of wool and silk, as much as of weapon as they are a defense. In his suit his spine is straighter, stature more formidable, and no one would ever guess that what lies beneath could so easily be broken.
The umbrella is last, and Mycroft slides his hand over the curve, reacquainting himself, before he looks up.
“I’m perfectly capable of walking out on my own, Sherlock. There’s no need for you to be doing—whatever it is you’re doing.”
“Oh, just passing the time.” He uncrosses his legs abruptly and stands, sliding his hands into the deep pockets of his greatcoat. “John’s busy doing a bit of research at a comic shop.”
Mycroft raises an eyebrow as they leave the room and proceed down the corridor. “Spare me the lurid details.”
He presses three fingers against his chest, between his heart and his collarbone, the second time in five minutes.
“An implantable cardioverter defibrillator.” Sherlock hits the button for the lift. “A device approximately the size of a pocket watch with wires that run through the blood vessels to the surface of the heart and deliver electric shocks to regulate its rhythm. Not terribly elegant but it gets the job done.”
Mycroft lets his hand drop. “You’ve done your homework.”
“You forget I had ambitions of being a doctor once.”
“At the age of six and for a grand total of three days. You asked the family physician if he might have a human heart for you to dissect; how could I forget,” Mycroft responds, words coloured with no less than five distinct emotions of varying intensity. Sherlock ticks them off as they descend to the ground floor.
“I’d be good at it,” he insists.
“Competent, perhaps. Good? No. Your bedside manner would be appalling.”
“Ah, yes. Empathy. It’s not enough to save a life, you also have to show you care.”
The lift opens and Mycroft pauses to grace the waiting nurse with one of his courteous, non-threatening smiles.
“What people fear more than being alone is being alone in their suffering.”
Sherlock observes his brother discreetly. He knows Mycroft excludes himself from that assessment, convinced that loneliness isn’t loneliness if it’s self-imposed.
A black car pulls up to the entrance as soon as they step outside. The sky is cloudless and bleak, wind rising, rattling bare branches like bones. Sherlock feels an itch spreading outward from the base of his spine. He’ll need a fix soon enough. Work always slows in the winter months, which has as much to do with the quantity of prospective clients as it has with the quality of their grievances.
“Need a lift?” Mycroft turns to him with one gloved hand around the car door, as if nothing’s changed. The sun travels along its East-West trajectory, time progresses linearly, the universe follows an immutable order. But something has changed, something fundamental that he struggles to reduce to an exact science.
“Sherlock, I don’t have all day.”
“No, I’ll walk.” He turns up his collar, facing downwind. “Go start a war.”
*
Every other evening at precisely six o’clock, Mycroft sits down at his desk to study literature. Wordsworth, Tennyson, Shakespeare, Milton. Names that bear a significance Sherlock is either too stupid or too impatient to understand. When he peers over his brother’s shoulder he finds the words archaic and dull, their rhythm slow and their meaning obscure. It’s only when Mycroft reads aloud that he wonders if he’s misjudged. Mycroft’s voice, deep and expressive, brings the dead to life, makes them speak to Sherlock in tones that stir and sway his heart.
Some days Mycroft writes rather than reads, though Sherlock can never predict which days. He fills sheets and sheets of paper, the motion of his hand unfailing, borderline manic. It’s the intensity that keeps Sherlock quiet in his seat, even when his curiosity threatens to get the better of him.
Today turns out to be an exception. Today, the weather is unusually muggy, air stagnant, viscous in his lungs, and he can no longer contain himself.
“What are you writing?” he blurts out, perched on the edge of the sofa with sticky, restless limbs, his own book discarded on the floor.
There’s no answer so he asks again, louder this time.
“It’s none of your concern, go back to your reading.” Mycroft doesn’t look up or pause, and Sherlock moves before he second guesses himself, darting across the room to snatch up a single page filled edge to edge with Mycroft’s tidy script.
“Sherlock!” Mycroft stands, so forcefully his chair topples with a bang.
Sherlock looks down and frowns. It’s the same phrase, over and over and over again. Disciplined, uniform, and utterly meaningless, and for a moment he feels frightened.
Then fingers grab his wrist, digging into his skin with the intention of teaching him a lesson.
“Mummy doesn’t have the heart to punish you properly for your misdeeds, but don’t think for a second that I won’t.” Mycroft looks murderous, which only serves to harden his resolve.
“What does it mean? Why are you doing this? Is there something wrong with you?” The fingers around his wrist tighten but he doesn’t flinch. He knows Mycroft would never hit him.
They stare long and hard at one another but it’s not their usual contest. He senses there’s more at stake than he bargained for, certain calamity whether he wins or loses.
Then, without warning, Mycroft lets go, leans against the edge of the desk and covers his face with his hands for a moment before dragging them away.
“Compulsions. Repetition eases the fear. And yes, I suppose there’s something very wrong with me.” The admission leaves him exposed, a little undone, and Sherlock nearly looks away.
“Fear of what?” A lingering momentum propels him forward.
“Forgetting. Losing control.”
“It doesn’t make any sense.”
The irony doesn’t escape him. It’s sense on which Mycroft builds his entire world. If he trusts anything, he trusts his mind, and now, it seems even that’s betrayed him.
“If you breathe a word of this to anyone, I will make you rue the day you were born.” Mycroft stiffens his spine and holds out a hand for the half-crumpled paper in Sherlock’s fist.
There’s a moment’s pause. Sherlock’s often imagined what it would be like to have power over his brother, to make Mycroft look at him and pay attention, regardless of how he’s earned it. With this discovery, this crippling flaw in Mycroft’s design, he could stop imagining. Only, all he can think about as he stares at Mycroft’s outstretched hand is dead poets and tragedies in iambic pentameter.
He gives up the paper without a word.
*
It’s midday on a Tuesday, or a Thursday, he can’t be bothered to remember. John’s out, on an errand, he hopes, to refill his stock of nicotine patches that’s been depleted since morning. The silence that he usually covets is suffocating, and for once his mind is a prison rather than a refuge.
His pistol rests in his hand, safety off and magazine loaded. Mrs. Hudson will no doubt put it on his rent again, but with no cases and no drugs, he needs an outlet. The energy’s pushing up against his skin, like water pressure against glass. Spidery cracks running across the surface signaling an imminent explosion.
He lolls his head back against the chair and aims at the wall that still bears scars from the last target practice. He fires a few rounds and indulges in the violence of the sounds, the sweetness of the recoil, forward and backward momentum perfectly balanced.
“Oh my god, I thought someone was getting murdered in here!”
He lolls his head to the left to glance at John, who’s just sprinted up the stairs in a panic.
“Unfortunately, no one’s getting murdered anywhere. Winter depresses violent impulses.” He returns to his examination of the ceiling and allows John to wrest the gun from his hand.
“Not yours, apparently.” John sounds predictably disapproving. “Mrs. Hudson will make you pay for that.”
“I’m giving the wall character, John. It used to be a plain old boring wall before I came along, and now—” A cigarette is a stuck in front of his face and he pauses for a moment, sitting up to peer at John. “Why?”
“Well, if you have to ask, you must not—”
He snatches it from John’s fingers before standing abruptly and covering the length of the room in three long strides. “It was rhetorical.”
“How’s Mycroft?”
He lights up and inhales, slow and deep, holds the smoke in his lungs and feels it diffuse into his bloodstream, pulmonary veins delivering the nicotine to his heart and then his brain in under seven seconds. He closes his eyes as he exhales and feels the pressure ease.
“Fine, I imagine.”
“You haven’t gone to see him?” John frowns and crosses his arms over his chest.
“No, why would I?”
“Sherlock.”
He makes the smoke curl out of the corner of his mouth, a thin stream ballooning into an amorphous cloud that clings to the air.
“He has doctors, what does he need me for?”
“If your roles were reversed, he’d come see you.” John holds up an aggressive finger to shut him up. “Yes, yes, he would. In his dysfunctional, demented way, he cares about you.”
Sherlock flicks a bit of ash off his cigarette and then crushes it against the corner of the desk so it leaves a perfectly circular burn.
“It doesn’t matter. None of it matters.” The nicotine isn’t enough. He needs something stronger, or else more wall to shatter.
“That’s where you’re wrong.” John’s voice is gentler now, less accusing. “And you are wrong sometimes, you know.”
Instead of responding he picks up his violin and starts to play, furiously, with little regard for technique, stopping only when he hears John give up and walk away.
“I meant to thank you.”
John turns back with a slight frown. “For what?”
“For saving my brother’s life.”
*
“Sherlock.”
He feels a cool, dry hand against his forehead, the width of the palm and length of the fingers familiar.
“How many times have I told you not to get into trouble I can’t get you out of?”
The voice is low and reproachful, equally familiar, drawing him towards wakefulness.
“Our parents will have to put a hold on their line dancing.”
He opens his eyes with some effort and sees the contours of his brother, tall, thin, exasperating.
“What were you thinking?”
Stupid little boy always in over his head. He’s a constant thorn in his brother’s side, he knows. One day Mycroft will yank him out for good; the more he can speed up the process, the better.
He curls his fingers and arches his spine, testing for deficiencies.
“I was experimenting.” He sounds like he hasn’t spoken in days.
Mycroft shuts his eyes briefly.
“Your heart stopped, Sherlock. I know responsibility is a difficult concept for you to grasp, but we’re talking about your life.”
“Sentimentality, Mycroft? Must be the diet.” He’s gotten so thin they’re starting to look like brothers.
“Don’t be smart. I expended valuable resources to keep you alive.”
“Why bother? You’re only delaying the inevitable.”
“And you have a death wish, do you? Is that why I found you catatonic, choking on your own vomit with a needle stuck in your arm?”
Sherlock rolls his shoulders in a slow shrug, testing the limits of Mycroft’s patience. It’s an old game he hasn’t gotten tired of playing.
Mycroft lets out a long-suffering sigh and checks his pocket watch. Swiss movement, blued steel, guilloché engraving, inarguably his most expensive possession. It’s a fact from which a number of deductions could be made about his character, and only a few he’d be willing to concede.
“I have to get back to the office. Behave, or I will gladly persuade our parents to put their spare bedroom to use.”
“You wouldn’t.” Sherlock frowns and lifts his head from the pillow. While his brother rarely makes good on his threats, he always delivers them with the precise degree of conviction needed to leave open the possibility.
“Do you really want to take the risk?” Mycroft smiles at his own ingenuity and then turns to leave, getting as far as the doorway before he halts. “I bother, Sherlock, because you’re my brother and, if you haven’t figured it out yet, you’re all I’ve got.”
*
The thick carpet mutes his footfalls as he makes his way through the club, past decrepit men lifeless in their chairs, embalmed by the silence. He’d be inclined to call the place a mausoleum if he didn’t secretly find comfort in it, in the minimal lighting, the dark oak, and the clean symmetry that echoes his brother’s fondness for Neoclassicism.
He finds Mycroft in the Stranger’s Room, head bowed over a document, detailing state secrets of catastrophic proportions no doubt. A pill bottle sits at the corner of the desk beside a glass of water. He pauses in the doorway and takes a moment to observe. There’s weariness in the hunch of Mycroft’s shoulders, the negligent curve of his spine, the pressure of his fingers against his left temple. But it’s not a simple matter of exhaustion; his brother excels at functioning at high levels of efficiency and low levels of sleep. Something’s been troubling him, something relentless enough to leave Mycroft Holmes beaten.
“I hear the Korean elections went well.”
Mycroft turns, taken momentarily by surprise.
“The result was satisfactory, yes.” He raises his eyebrows. “What happened to being actively ignorant about politics?”
“I read the paper.” Sherlock takes a seat and glances around the room. The decanter is full. No visitors yet then.
“No, you don’t.”
He rolls his eyes. “All right, fine. John insists on reading the paper out loud now because he can’t tolerate my inability to name the current Prime Minister.”
“How charming. What do you want, Sherlock? I’m busy.” The words have more bite than usual, as if his presence today demands an inordinate amount of patience.
“What makes you think I want something?”
Now that they’re face to face, Mycroft’s vulnerabilities are dangerously apparent. He’s tight-lipped and pale, hounded by terrors that slink in the shadows, biding their time until they can sink their teeth into his heart.
“So I’m supposed to think you’ve dropped by for a chat?”
Sherlock pauses and averts his eyes to the chandeliers overhead that lend the room more extravagance than light.
“Up to a quarter of survivors of cardiac arrest experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.”
Mycroft sets down his pen and leans back in his chair. “Are you making a diagnosis?”
“You’re giving me too much credit. I’m making an observation.”
“Credit implies you’ve made the right one.”
“Haven’t I?” He feels the limit of Mycroft’s patience stretching and tightening like a rubber band, collecting tension until it can strike its hardest.
He waits, and watches, and waits, but all it does is loosen without a sound.
“It’s nothing I can’t deal with. You must have better things to do than play doctor. A case to crack? A flatmate to aggravate?”
“John told me to come.”
Mycroft hardly looks surprised. “You’ve never listened to anyone quite so diligently.”
“He never lets up. Puts Mrs. Hudson to shame.”
It’s a clear deflection but Mycroft lets it slide.
“We all need someone to bring out the best and the worst in us.”
Sherlock stands abruptly and walks to the nearest bookcase. He trails two fingers over the shelf at chest height, the cracked spines, most of them first editions. Put together they’re worth a small fortune but he knows his brother would sooner sell his soul.
“Judging by the radio silence on our parents’ end, you haven’t told them.”
“And I don’t plan to.”
“A little hypocritical, don’t you think?”
“The circumstances are different.” Mycroft fixes him with a hard stare, one that lost its effectiveness at shutting him up a long time ago.
“Of course you’d want to argue the finer points of a near-death experience,” he mumbles petulantly, even though he knows Mycroft is right; he always is.
“It makes things more painless for everyone. Our parents’ distress will be kept to a minimum, as will the family dinners.”
He imagines that, between his habits and Mycroft’s line of work, their parents have found a hundred reasons to live in fear of a day when they have to bury their sons.
“I already wagered you’d outlive me.” He’d been hovering just below his pain threshold that time, with Mycroft above him, saying his name over and over again.
“John wouldn’t be too happy to find out about that.”
He closes the book in his hands with a resounding bang. “John wasn’t supposed to happen.”
Mycroft smiles like he’s finally faced with a problem he can’t reduce to costs and benefits.
“The world has a proclivity for making things happen when they’re not supposed to. Our parents weren’t supposed to have a second child, I wasn’t supposed to be such a poor excuse for an older brother, and I certainly wasn’t supposed to care.”
Sherlock’s observed plenty of hearts, from the pure to the polluted, of various strengths and sizes, Mrs. Hudson’s tougher than she lets on, John’s perpetually on his sleeve. But he’s never seen his brother’s heart quite like this, out in plain sight, damaged but beating, and so ordinary that the loss of it would be acute, and entirely unbearable.
“You used to read aloud, sometimes for an entire afternoon, and I would just sit and listen, get lost in other worlds I hadn’t known existed but were suddenly within reach.”
He returns to his chair and sets the book down on the edge of the desk, watching Mycroft pause before he picks it up and begins to read.