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“Mycroft!”

Mycroft turned around. It was his brother, looking worse for the wear, in a rather criminal sense. “Stay out of trouble,” Mycroft said. “One simple request.” It was one that he had made of Sherlock for nineteen years and one that his brother had not substantially complied with for even one of those years at a time. 

“Is there any point in protesting my innocence?” 

No, Mycroft thought. He had not accused Sherlock of anything, but as to whether he thought his brother capable, the answer was yes. Sherlock had a penchant for attracting the sort of disorder that frayed Mycroft’s nerves. 

Three constables were storming toward them down the hall in Downing College, which, if you asked Mycroft, was precisely the sort of thing he had been seeking to avoid in bringing Sherlock to Oxford. It would not have taken a great genius to deduce that they were not here for Mycroft. “Sherlock Holmes!”

“What,” Mycroft said, “is that?” He turned on his brother. “You need my help, don’t you?”

“No,” Sherlock drawled, just as the leader—for he was certainly their leader, in ambition if not in rank—pulled a set of handcuffs from his belt. 

“Sherlock Holmes, I am arresting you in suspicion of theft.”

Mycroft didn’t sigh out loud, but it was a close thing. “You won’t be needing those,” he said, instead, as ever his brother’s keeper. And Cain killed his younger brother, he thought savagely. Perhaps Abel had been on his nerves. 

“Sir, stop,” the constable said, raising a hand to cut Mycroft off. “I am a constable.” Mycroft repressed another sigh. The man seemed obnoxious and dim-witted; at least he was handsome. 

“Yes, the clue is in the uniform.”

“Constable Lestrade of the Oxford City police force.”

“And I am Mycroft Holmes of Her Majesty’s Foreign Office.” He did the accounting, but Lestrade did not need to know that. “I’m in Oxford with Sir Bucephalus Hodge for the opening of his new science building.”

“Surely this is more…detective’s work,” he added, just to provoke the man.

“I thought I’d make initial inquiries,” the constable said. “Early worm catches the bird.” 

“Could be in trouble here,” Sherlock said, not even bothering to keep it under his breath. Mycroft took a longer blink than necessary in a futile attempt to fend off his inevitable headache. 

“I’m merely trying to prevent you the professional embarrassment of being reprimanded by your chief officer,” Mycroft said. “Who happens to be my bridge partner, and is, as you know, a stickler for due process.” Mycroft liked Officer Davies well enough. He was not particularly good at bridge, but Mycroft quite enjoyed due process, having the brother he did, and so he maintained that particular relationship.

“Yes, sir,” Lestrade said. “Quite. Thank you, sir.” 

Mycroft experienced a sense of vicarious embarrassment at his sudden deference. “Good man,” he said, as Lestrade and his men stomped away. 

He had not so much as taken a deep breath and opened his mouth to reprimand his brother when Sherlock started talking. “I need you to get me into the library.”

Along the way Sherlock acquired his Irish friend, James Moriarty—he, too, was intolerably troublesome. Mycroft wondered if there was perhaps a room next to his mother’s at the sanitarium where he could retire in peace. “You have ten minutes,” he said. “Don’t embarrass me again.” This seemed unlikely, but it was worth repeating on the off-chance it worked this time. 

Not seven minutes later it was Mycroft experiencing the professional embarrassment of which he had spoken. Bucephalus Hodge was vicious and temperamental, but until now Mycroft had never had cause to be on his wrong side. It seemed to him that Lestrade pulled his handcuffs back out with a sort of smug glee at seeing Sherlock—and by extension, Mycroft—laid low. 

“Mr. Holmes,” Lestrade said, after Sherlock, Moriarty, and Shou’an set off on their latest adventure. Up close, undistracted by his tiresome brother, Mycroft noticed his long eyelashes.

“Constable Lestrade,” Mycroft said. 

“The expression is ‘the early bird gets the worm,’” Lestrade said. “And I knew that.”

Mycroft fought to keep a straight face. “Ah,” he said. 

“I was nervous,” Lestrade admitted. “Fit, posh man such as yourself.” He took his helmet off. His hair curled at the ends, Mycroft noticed, despite his attempts to tame it. 

“Ah,” Mycroft said again, finding himself at a loss for words. 

“Well. Good day, sir.”

“Constable,” Mycroft said, before Lestrade could take his leave. “Might you like to get a drink tonight? You and I.”

Lestrade shook his head. “Mr. Holmes, I don’t know the first or last thing about bridge.”

Mycroft laughed. “No one said anything about bridge.”

“You did,” Lestrade said. “You said that you play bridge with Davies.”

“Just a pint,” Mycroft said. “Without my brother, or Hodge, or Officer Davies.”

“Forgive me, sir, but you don’t seem the sort for a pint.”

“I am not,” Mycroft said. He disliked the pub; it was too noisy. But he thought that Lestrade would be an interesting person to know, and he thought that he was handsome, and he thought that Lestrade was the sort for a pint.

“You’re a funny bloke, Mr. Holmes,” Lestrade said. “I’ll get a pint with you.”

They met at the pub after Lestrade’s shift was over. “Mrs. Lestrade will likely wonder where I’ve wandered off to,” he said. 

“You are married,” Mycroft said. He tried not to let his disappointment creep into his voice. He took a sip of beer to cover his face; it was awful, as he anticipated that it might be. 

“Nine years now,” Lestrade said. Nine years! He certainly did not look old enough to have been married nine years. “Are you married, Mr. Holmes?”

“No,” Mycroft said. “I am only twenty-six.” In truth Mycroft had no desire to get married. He was expected to produce heirs to inherit his mother’s estate; he had no desire for that, either. 

Lestrade looked at him for a beat too long. “Why did you ask me here?”

Mycroft shrugged. “I expect we might be seeing a lot more of each other,” he said. “And I would prefer that we were on the same side.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem, so long as you have no criminal intent,” Lestrade said. “But I did think you were a bit of a prick.”

“You were trying to arrest my brother!”

“Lucky for your knowing Officer Davies,” Lestrade said.

“And for your pretty face,” he added. 

Mycroft took another long sip of his beer, steadfastly refusing to think about that comment. “Christ alive,” he said. “This tastes terrible.”

“I see I was right about you being a posh bastard,” Lestrade said. His eyes sparkled in the dim candlelight, and he drank the rest of his own beer in one go, never once breaking eye contact. 

“You said fit, as well,” Mycroft said boldly. 

“I was right about that, too.”

“Do you fancy yourself a charmer, Constable?” Mycroft did not care to be flattered. He recognized the hypocrisy; he was here to flatter Lestrade, but that was different. Lestrade was an officer of the law, for one.

“There’s an expression about flies and honey,” Lestrade said. 

“Probably best to leave that one alone,” Mycroft said. “We wouldn’t want the flies going the way of the birds.”

Lestrade jostled him with his shoulder. “Hush, you,” he said, but he was smiling. 

“Let me walk you home,” Lestrade said. Mycroft had drunk a second beer; he liked that one more than the first, but maybe he was just getting used to it. 

“I am hardly inebriated, Constable.”

“You talk so fancy,” Lestrade said. “Inebriated.” He put on an accent for that. Mycroft winced. “Just say drunk.”

“I do not sound like that,” Mycroft protested. 

“You do a bit, mate,” Lestrade said. “I reckon you’re on the way, anyway.”

“To being drunk?”

Lestrade laughed. “To my place,” he said. 

There was a spring chill in the air, and the alcohol was a decent cover for walking a bit nearer to the constable than was strictly necessary. Their shoulders brushed occasionally, sending a small, childish thrill through Mycroft. 

His rooms were just north of Oxford University. He thought that he might be near Hodge’s girl, Edie, but he couldn’t say for certain; no matter how diligent he endeavored to be, she always appeared at the college before he did. “I’m just through here,” he told the constable, with some regret. “I must give my thanks to the constabulary for your dedicated service.”

“Mr. Holmes,” Lestrade started, then stopped. “Perhaps we should have this conversation inside.”

A chill of dread came over Mycroft, and he fumbled with his keys. “I trust that I have not broken the law.”

“No,” Lestrade said, grimly. 

“Well, then,” Mycroft said. “After you, please.”

“Mr. Holmes, please trust that I do not mean to, er—entrap, or offend you.”

“Entrap me?” Mycroft’s mind was moving a fraction too slowly, and when Lestrade kissed him, he recoiled instinctively.  

“Ah,” Lestrade said, a furious glow coloring his cheeks. “I see that I have misunderstood.”

“Wait,” Mycroft said. 

Lestrade turned away anyway. “Good night, sir. I hope—”

Mycroft caught him by the sleeve. Lestrade was stocky and likely stronger than he was, but Mycroft had the element of surprise. He bent his head to kiss the man firmly on the mouth. “There,” he said. “You did not misunderstand.”

“Mr. Holmes.” Lestrade’s eyes were wide, his pupils an inky black in the dark.

“Give me a moment to light a candle.” Mycroft took the matches from the little drawer next to his armchair. He could not get it to light on the first or second try; his hands were shaking. Finally he was successful, and he turned back to the constable, who was standing stock-still just where Mycroft left him. Mycroft took his helmet and hung it on the hat rack next to his own hat. He put his walking stick next to the door and Lestrade’s jacket with his own coat. 

“You are an officer of the law.” 

“I am, sir,” Lestrade said. He cleared his throat. “Would you like me to arrest you?” He sounded sweetly confused, unthreatening, and so Mycroft let this slide. 

“I would prefer if you did not.” He guided Lestrade to sit. “You are ambitious. You meant to arrest my brother.”

“I believed that he had done wrong.”

“And me?” 

Lestrade frowned. “How a man chooses to live is his own affair,” he said. “So long as no one is being hurt.”

“But there are laws, and you took an oath.”

“My duty is to the Crown,” Lestrade said. “But I’ve got a duty to myself, too. To my conscience.”

“You can understand that I am wary, given your ambitions, that you might see—shall we say—an opportunity.”

“Do you always speak in riddles, Mr. Holmes?”

“Would you make a case against me to advance your career?”

“No,” Lestrade said forcefully. “It’s not right. After my job is done, I’ll still have to stand before God.”

“Thou shalt not commit adultery,” Mycroft said, lightly. 

“You ain’t a woman,” Lestrade said. “Does it bother you?” Mycroft had slept with married men before; it bothered him only so far as it bothered them, which was to say, rarely, and very little. One such man told him that their affair was a relief for his wife because Mycroft was willing to do things that she was not.

“No,” Mycroft said. He had made peace with his sins. If there was a God in Heaven—and he was not always certain that there was—he would accept his punishment at the Gates of Saint Peter. 

He cradled Lestrade’s jaw as he bent to kiss him again. It was too tender for all that he was risking; he couldn’t bring himself to care. Lestrade tugged on his lapels, pulled him down until Mycroft was sort of half-straddling his lap. “Constable,” Mycroft said, hoping that the man could not hear his heart racing. “My furniture is not made for two grown men.”

Lestrade gave him a bemused sort of smile. “Sorry,” he said.

“No trouble,” Mycroft said, disengaging himself. He undid his cufflinks and lowered his voice. “I have a bed.”

“You should know I’ve not done this before,” Lestrade said. He worried at the edge of his shirtsleeve. 

“I have,” Mycroft said. “It is, I assume, much the same as being with a woman.” Lestrade looked at him dubiously. Mycroft turned away and deposited his cufflinks on top of his dresser. “You will not need to…touch.”

“I’d like to,” Lestrade said. Mycroft forced himself to turn back around slowly. “If it’s all the same to you.” 

It was not all the same to Mycroft, but he nodded anyway and sank to his knees. He got to work on the constable’s trousers, pushing them down his thighs to reveal his cock. It was not the largest Mycroft had ever had, but it was thick and well-made, half-hard already. His mouth watered. 

“You don’t mean to—”

“I do,” Mycroft said, and took Lestrade’s cock into his mouth before the man could lose his resolve. Lestrade cried out, his hips jerking up. Mycroft didn’t gag, but it was a close thing; he ran a soothing hand down Lestrade’s thigh.

“Jesus fuck. You—ah!” Mycroft hummed and relaxed his throat, letting Lestrade thrust in past his soft palate. Lestrade brushed Mycroft’s hair out of his eyes. “Bloody gorgeous.”

Mycroft reached down and squeezed his own cock through his trousers, just for a bit of friction. He felt off-balance, humiliated by lust, the way a few words and a coarse accent undid him. He had wanted the man abstractly; he hardly knew what to do now that he had him.

Lestrade was a man like any other man, Mycroft reminded himself, a cock like any other cock. 

He brought his hand up to stroke what he could not fit comfortably in his mouth. Lestrade was loud, fussy, his hands alternately fluttering around Mycroft’s head and fisting in his sheets. Finally Mycroft pulled off. “I am not a woman,” he said. “You will not hurt me.” He thumbed gently over the head of Lestrade’s cock. 

“I—"

“I enjoy it,” Mycroft said. He would not go so far as saying that he liked to be pushed around, but he hoped that the constable would catch the hint. 

Lestrade gathered some of Mycroft’s hair in his hand and set him back to his task. Mycroft groaned at that and looked up at him through his eyelashes. “Holmes, I—fuck. You’ve got to stop, I’ll—” Mycroft stopped. “Christ, you’re still dressed.”

“Would you like me to undress?”

“Please,” Lestrade said. Mycroft undressed efficiently, avoiding eye contact. “You look lovely. Handsome.” Mycroft wanted him to stop saying such things, but he didn’t know how to ask. “C’mere.” Lestrade seemed to enjoy kissing. He kept wanting to kiss more, deeper, his hands moving tentatively over Mycroft’s shoulders. It could be that he was married, perhaps more accustomed to making love than to fucking. 

“How do we—er, I know how. I’ve…heard.” 

Mycroft took Lestrade’s cock in hand to distract from the awkwardness. “I would need to prepare for such a thing,” Mycroft said, trying to be delicate. “I have not done so.”

“Ah,” Lestrade said. 

“There are other things.” Mycroft took a bottle out of his nightstand and poured oil into his palm. “If you’ll allow me.” Lestrade nodded, and so Mycroft slicked up Lestrade’s cock, the inside of his own thighs.

“Mr. Holmes,” Lestrade said. It was not a question, but Mycroft could tell that he wanted to ask. 

Mycroft climbed back into the bed and braced himself against the headboard. “Come,” he said, feeling absurd, exposed. He had never had to explain this before. He reached behind him to guide Lestrade’s cock between his legs, pressing them together to give Lestrade something to fuck into. “Like this.”

“Oh,” Lestrade said, pushing in hesitantly. “I didn’t know—you look so—I’ll be ruined.” 

“I am not going to break,” Mycroft said. 

Lestrade thrust forward again, more confidently. “Christ. Does this—ah!—feel good? For you?” He was fucking Mycroft’s thighs with real rhythm now, but he was still holding back. 

“Yes,” Mycroft said. “A bit harder, please.”

“You’re so…proper,” Lestrade said, wondering, but then he slammed in, and that was good. That was perfect. 

“Like that,” Mycroft moaned, rocking his hips back to meet it and making the kind of soft sound he was embarrassed about. He wished they were doing this properly, and he knew the world too well to hope that he would ever get it. 

“I’m going to—” Lestrade jerked, once, and came with a stifled shout; then there was a new wetness between Mycroft’s legs, and Lestrade was turning him roughly over so they were again face to face. 

“Oh,” Mycroft said softly. 

“Jesus,” Lestrade said. “Bloody hell, you’re—” He got a hand around Mycroft’s cock, never breaking eye contact, and after a few firm strokes, Mycroft was coming silently all over his own chest. 

After, there was an odd tension that Mycroft was not sure how to manage. He retired to the toilet to clean himself and returned with a damp flannel for the constable. “I should have done this for you,” Lestrade said. 

“It is my home,” Mycroft said. 

The constable took his time getting dressed. “I suppose I’ll see you around,” he said. 

“Don’t take offense to this, Constable,” Mycroft said. “But I hope that I have no further encounters with the law while I am in Oxford.”

Lestrade grinned. “Still,” he said. “I would like to see you again.”

He was so forward that it made Mycroft’s skin prickle. He was a good man, Mycroft supposed—poor for finishing sentences, but handsome—and a decent fuck once he did away with the nerves. “Perhaps,” he conceded. “If our paths cross again.”

He didn’t have to wait long. The next day Mycroft rose late; he had no early meetings. By the time he arrived at Oxford the place was crawling with constables. It seemed that Her Majesty’s entire police force had descended on the university. “Mycroft Holmes!” It was Lestrade, stormier, even, than he had been yesterday. 

“Constable,” Mycroft said. “What the hell is going on?”

“Your brother,” Lestrade said. “You needed an alibi, did you?”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“Your brother’s killed a professor,” Lestrade said. 

Mycroft laughed. “There must be some misunderstanding. Sherlock isn’t dangerous.”

“No one is misunderstanding his knife in Thompson’s back.”

A chill went over Mycroft. “Where is he now?”

“Oxford Gaol,” Lestrade said. “Took him there myself.” Mycroft could not tell whether the constable provided this detail vindictively or as a favor. He wished that he had Sherlock’s penchant for deductive games or his distaste for social niceties. “The DI will be wanting to ask you questions.”

“I have nothing to hide,” Mycroft said. 

“Don’t you?”

“Sherlock is innocent.”

“Is he?” 

“My word is good. I believed that we were on good terms.”

“We were,” Lestrade said. “Which is why we were at the pub, and then went to your rooms, where we drank and you smoked a cigar.”

“I smoked a cigar.” Mycroft rarely smoked, unless he was unavoidably tied up in a social engagement or being subjected to his brother’s whims.

“I don’t smoke,” Lestrade said.

“Very well.”

“Mr. Holmes,” Lestrade said, and then stopped. “After you talk with the detective—I would like to talk to you as well.”

“In your professional capacity?”

“No,” Lestrade said.

“Fine.” Mycroft was no stranger to miscalculation; he had been wrong about things before, and he would be again. Perhaps he had been wrong about Lestrade. Not dangerously so—otherwise Lestrade’s story would have been a different one—but it was clear that he wanted something. Mycroft did not care to be blackmailed. He sighed. “Take me to the station, then.”

The detective was tedious. Mycroft was under no illusion that he would be capable of solving the murder, presuming that Sherlock had found himself falsely accused. “I know that you work for Her Majesty’s government, and so I’ll let you in on a secret,” the detective said. “We’ve got your brother dead to rights.”

“Have you?”

“His knife was still in the professor’s back,” the detective said. “Clearly the murder weapon. And your brother’s clothing was covered in blood.” 

“The clothing that he was wearing?”

“Yes,” the detective said. “You’re dead lucky you happened to be with Constable Lestrade last night.” Mycroft kept his face very, very still. 

“I believe my brother is innocent,” Mycroft said. 

“Mr. Holmes, allow me, if you will, to give you a word of warning.” The detective puffed on his pipe and blew the smoke upward in a manner that he probably thought made him look like a great thinker. “The Crown has the burden of proving the case against your brother. What reasonable doubt could twelve men—not, of course, including your brother’s relations—have as to his guilt? He was caught literally red-handed.”

“You, my friend, have an alibi,” he continued. “An excellent one. In this case. Will you have one tomorrow? Your insistence on defending your brother is noble, but a bear, caught in a trap, will bite off even its own leg.”

Even the man’s metaphors were tedious. “Am I free to leave, Detective?” 

The detective sighed. “Stay out of trouble, Holmes.”

Lestrade was standing outside of Mycroft’s front door. “Hello, Constable,” he said cautiously. 

“Mr. Holmes.” The constable removed his helmet. “Shall we talk?”

“I suppose you will not be taking no for an answer.”

“I won’t be your fool,” Lestrade said. “Did you know?”

“My brother is innocent.” Mycroft unlocked his door, and Lestrade followed him in. 

“Damn it, Holmes,” Lestrade said, turning and shoving him up against the wall. “Answer me straight.”

Mycroft endured the twin waves of terror and arousal that washed over him; he thought about pushing Lestrade off, but he didn’t. “Then you should ask it straight.”

“Did you ever really want me?”

Which was rather straighter than Mycroft had anticipated. “Yes,” he said. 

“Oh,” Lestrade said, and let him go. The constable’s naivety was endearing, if somewhat ill-suited to his profession. “Well.”

“Is that all?” 

“With no—er, strings attached?”

Mycroft stepped neatly around Lestrade and straightened his clothing. “There are always…strings attached, as you say. But I did.”

“And you don’t anymore.”

“My brother is a suspect in a murder investigation.” What Mycroft wanted or did not want was irrelevant when Sherlock was at issue. Besides, out of a perverse sense of loyalty, he did not want to give the man who had delivered his brother to the gaol the satisfaction. 

“The prime suspect,” Lestrade supplied, unhelpfully. 

“So you understand the position this puts me in.”

“You really believe he didn’t do it?”

“Yes,” Mycroft said. “My brother is a thief; he is not a killer.”

“And you?”

“Is this an interrogation?” Mycroft said. He was very tired, and frustrated; he wanted to lock himself up and sit in silence for some time before being asked to deal with this further. He wanted to put his head in his mother’s lap and sob. He wanted to wire his father in Vienna and make him deal with Sherlock, for once. He wanted Sherlock to get out of prison and stay there. He wanted, for one shameful second, Sherlock to hang, so he would never have to worry about him again. 

“No,” Lestrade said. “Just a friendly chat.”

“Believe it or not, in my experience, friends do not often ask one another to confess their crimes. Tea?”

“I have to return to work. But—”

“I am a sodomite who wanted you to fuck him. Is that what you needed to hear?” 

The blood drained from Lestrade’s face. “Mr. Holmes—”

Mycroft turned away from him and busied himself with nothing. “I think you should leave.”

“I’m sorry,” Lestrade said. “I didn’t mean—”

“Go, Constable. Please.”

Which would have been the end of that, except that professors kept being murdered, and Lestrade kept being around, staring at him with big, doleful eyes whenever he thought Mycroft wasn’t looking, which he found both unwelcome and distracting. It was not lost on him that he had come to Oxford to oversee the opening of a science building. Both he and Hodge had gotten rather more than they had bargained for. Only Edie, Hodge’s assistant, seemed to be taking all of it in stride. 

Worse, every day his career was newly threatened. Hodge had fired him once already. Mycroft had begun working for the government when he was fourteen years old. Sherlock accused him often of being boring, but that was because Sherlock’s life was full of options, each more interesting than the last, made possible by his dull elder brother. 

Mycroft was not responsible for any murdered professors; nor, the Oxford Police Force conceded, was his brother. Nevertheless the deaths weighed heavily on him. There was a permanent pain in his shoulders and he was finding it difficult to sleep. An even half-decent lay would have solved many of his problems, but he was miles from London and in no mood to ask Lestrade for a repeat performance. 

And that all was before Hodge died. 

“Bloody fucking hell,” Lestrade said, which was hardly the sort of bedside manner one wanted from a constable. Mycroft surveyed his feelings. Shock, obviously; his hand was on Hodge’s chest, which was eerily still, and he had only just spoken to the man. A sort of terror—unlike the others, there was no blood anywhere, no evidence of what had killed him. And then a dullness that felt a bit like relief and which Mycroft was determined to ignore. “Are you alright?”

“He’s obviously not alright, he’s dead!”

“Not him,” Lestrade said, slowly, as if Mycroft were a child. “You.”

“Ah,” Mycroft said. “I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?” 

He was not sure, but he had bigger problems than whether or not he was alright. “Yes,” he said.

He was packing his things for London when there was a knock at his door. “Mr. Holmes,” Lestrade said. He had his helmet under his arm, as always. Mycroft wondered if there wasn’t someplace he should leave it when he was off-duty. 

“Constable Lestrade,” Mycroft said. There had been a tremor in his hands all evening, so he put them behind his back. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

The constable shrugged. He came in and closed the door behind him, dropping his helmet on an end table with a heavy thunk. Mycroft flinched. “Thought you shouldn’t be alone on a night like this.”

“Much obliged.” Mycroft said. He did not want company. He wanted, very much, to sit in complete silence and to think about nothing. “Do you coddle all your witnesses this much?”

“Drop the tough guy act,” Lestrade said. “It doesn’t actually suit you.”

That, more than anything, rankled. Mycroft drew himself up to his full height. “I do not act.”

“You do,” Lestrade said. 

“I also do not take kindly to being condescended to.”

Lestrade put up his hands like Mycroft was a spooked horse. “I didn’t mean no offense,” he said. “Just wanted to see you, is all.”

“We see each other altogether too often.”

“At work,” Lestrade said. “That’s different.”

“I don’t see any reason why it should be.”

“I took you to bed,” Lestrade said. 

“Which meant nothing,” Mycroft said. “You have no continuing obligation to me.”

“It meant nothing.” Lestrade got that infuriatingly flinty look in his eye. 

“Nothing more than sex. I am not your wife.”

“But you are my friend.” Mycroft would not exactly consider the constable a friend, but he inclined his head anyway to acknowledge the sentiment. “And you shouldn’t have—been there. It’s something that’s hard to see. A dead man.”

“Constable, for the hundredth time, I am a man.” This conversation was intolerable; it seemed that so many were, these days. He wondered if it had something to do with him, with short nerves and low tolerance. 

“I know,” Lestrade said. “So am I. And I don’t like to see a dead body, either.”

“You are a constable.”

Lestrade grimaced. “Not for long,” he said. 

“Ah,” Mycroft said. “We may be similarly situated, then.”

“So you see,” Lestrade said, “I reckon the both of us could use someone.”

“I can see you thinking,” he continued. “I’m no genius. Not like you or that brother of yours. But I think I understand you, Mr. Holmes. You’re an English gentleman. You don’t want to feel what you feel.”

Mycroft went immediately lightheaded. He willed himself not to collapse. “I don’t—”

“You said that you wanted me.”

“Yes,” Mycroft said, softly. 

“Is it still true?” Of course he did, of course, the sweet and inelegant and infuriating man. In lieu of an answer Mycroft stepped forward and kissed him. 

Lestrade made a soft sort of stifled sound and kissed back, clutching at the back of Mycroft’s waistcoat. It was nice to be desired desperately, even though it felt somehow gauche; they were both grown men, after all, and Mycroft’s superior was dead. 

“Come to bed,” Lestrade said. 

“Don’t invite me to my own bed, Constable,” Mycroft said, trying and failing to keep the fondness out of his voice. “Wait here,” he said, pushing Lestrade to sit on the mattress. “I will prepare myself.”

Lestrade raised his eyebrows. “Can I watch?”

“Absolutely not,” Mycroft said. 

“Mr. Holmes.”

“Constable Lestrade.” 

“I looked into it, you know,” Lestrade said, stubbornly. “After last time. I want to be the one to do it.” 

The thought was strange and awful and made Mycroft feel hot under the collar. “You don’t.”

“I do,” Lestrade said.

Mycroft sighed. There was a reason he preferred to conduct his affairs by code; all this talking and breaking of convention was unsettling. He steadfastly ignored the hum of arousal settling into his skin. “Fine,” he said. “Only, please let me—clean myself up, first.”

Lestrade was as gentle in this as he was in everything else they’d done, which is to say, he pressed a finger in with an unbearable slowness. Mycroft resisted the urge to push back, to take more. 

“Jesus,” Lestrade breathed. “Does it—does it feel good?”

“Not particularly,” Mycroft said. 

“Oh.”

"It’s not—you have to—here, let me,” Mycroft said, reaching back so Lestrade could oil up his fingers for him. The stretch was just on this side of painful, but bearable, for the reward. 

“It doesn’t hurt?”

“No,” Mycroft said, brushing his fingers against the place inside that made him sigh in relief. 

“Bloody hell,” Lestrade said. Mycroft was in no position to look back at him, but he could feel the man’s eyes on him, watching. It made him feel singularly self-conscious. 

“You say that often,” Mycroft said, as tartly as he could manage under the circumstances. 

“Forgive me if I’m running out of swears, sir,” Lestrade said. “Fuck.”

It had to be said of the constable that he was coachable; on his second go around he had Mycroft writhing, biting down on the bedsheets to keep from crying out. “Please,” he said. “You can—that’s enough.” Lestrade lined his cock up. Mycroft knew that he didn’t mean to tease, but he was. “Please.”

“I don’t think it’ll fit, mate,” Lestrade said. He sounded nervous. Mycroft tabled this; he would decide whether or not he found it endearing later. 

He buried his face in his arms. “It will,” he gritted out.

Lestrade pushed in slow. Mycroft took great, gasping breaths, and then tried to pretend that he wasn’t. The stretch was worse like this. It went on and on, every centimeter a new, dizzying pleasure until finally Lestrade’s hips were flush against his. “Shit, I don’t—I’m sorry,” Lestrade said, strained. “I won’t last long.”

“Give me a moment, please,” Mycroft said. It had been a long time since he’d had a man like this, and his body had forgotten the intensity. He stroked himself briefly to settle his nerves, to make it feel good. 

“Jesus bloody fuck,” Lestrade said. His blunt fingernails were digging into Mycroft’s hips. 

“Alright,” Mycroft said. “Move.”

Things dissolved after that, sense and sound and sweat, until Mycroft was shaking apart with Lestrade’s hand pressing down between his shoulders. 

“I’m going to—”

“Inside,” Mycroft demanded, and Lestrade obliged in a stutter of hips, a warm, heady rush that made Mycroft feel filthy. 

“You’re a sight,” Lestrade said, afterward. “Do you know? Feel like I’ve won the fuckin’ lottery.”

Mycroft took a drag of his cigarette. “You do not have to flatter me.”

“It’s true.” He didn’t blush, because Mycroft Holmes did not blush. But if he did.  

It was a mistake, he realized later. He was lying alone in bed, unable to sleep. It was too quiet, the tick of the clock was too loud, somehow both too warm and too cold. He prided himself on never letting any man get too close. It was too big a risk. And then he had let this one—married, with four children—take him to bed and sweet talk him. 

Mycroft didn’t mean to get fired when he went to the Foreign Office the next morning, exhausted due to the insomnia. He had dedicated his life to working for the government, and yet he had to admit that the men who staffed it were difficult, to say the least, unbearably bureaucratic if not straightforwardly corrupt, the sort of men who fired people for asking questions.

Nevertheless. He wanted his job back. 

Lestrade’s home was just as he had described it. There were children and goats and fields, and the washing was out. And his wife, a stern-looking woman with dark hair. Mycroft took his hat off. “Who are you, then?” she said. 

“Mycroft Holmes,” he said. “I was wondering if your good husband might be home.” 

Mrs. Lestrade laughed. “My good husband. I only have the one.” Mycroft had never met the wife of a man he’d slept with before. He liked her, in spite of himself. 

He couldn’t quite square her exasperation with Lestrade’s sweetness. But then, maybe he could. 

She showed him into a sort of shed; Lestrade was the brightest thing in the room. “Visitor,” she said. 

“Thank you, light of my life,” Lestrade said, and that wasn’t like him at all, either, not the way he’d said being with Mycroft felt like winning the lottery. 

“Thank you,” Mycroft said. There were goats in the shed. “Excuse me,” Mycroft said to the goat, which obliged. “A little early, isn’t it, Constable, to be on the cider?”

“I’m drowning my ambition, Mr. Holmes. Scotland Yard, that’s what I had my sights on.” Mycroft unbuttoned his coat and took a seat. “But after everything that’s gone down—Hodge dead, Shou’an fled—I’ll be lucky to keep my job in Oxford.”

Mycroft took a deep breath. “Constable, it is a safe bet, is it not, to assume that Professor Malik killed Sir Bucephalus Hodge?”

“It is.”

“Well, then, is it also a safe bet to say that if we were to apprehend Professor Malik, we could also rescue both our careers?”

“I’m listening.”

“When we were at the police station in Oxford, you mentioned Professor Malik having a file.”

“What of it?”

“What was in it?”

“Nothing,” Lestrade said. “Just his name and his address in Oxford, which we’ve already searched.”

“But if he had no criminal record, why bother to create a file for him in the first place?” Lestrade looked at him, his brow furrowed slightly. “Answer,” Mycroft said. “There was something in that file before that has since been taken—”

“So where’s the arrest report?” Lestrade interrupted. 

“Worth another gander, don’t you think?”

“I’ll get my coat.” Mycroft could have kissed him.

He quite liked to see Lestrade in his element when the man wasn’t arresting his brother. “As I said, it’s empty.”

“Someone trying to protect him, you think?” They were standing too close together, given the location. Lestrade glanced over at the desk officer. “Look at this,” Mycroft said. “The ink was wet when the document was put into the file."

“Well, I can’t read it,” Lestrade said. “It’s backward.”

“Never leave home without a dressing mirror, Constable,” Mycroft said. He knew how posh he sounded, how—but Lestrade already knew that about him, and so he tried to put it out of his mind. “Two names, two addresses.” Mycroft felt ill. Deductions were Sherlock’s game, not his, but he had his logic, and he knew the ways of his own world. 

“The first is undoubtedly Malik’s,” he said, hoping that he didn’t sound too breathless. He would have to tell Lestrade eventually. He didn’t want to do it here. “The second is harder to make out. Alvie Gordon.”

“What exactly is your relationship with the professor?” Lestrade said. Gordon sighed. He would lie again, Mycroft thought; Mycroft did not have a lover, as such, but he would have done the same. It was an allegation that ruined lives, and Malik was already in the wind. Gordon was here, with his hotel. 

“We have the arrest report, Mr. Gordon.” Mycroft blinked. “Someone tried to suppress it, but recently it came into our possession.” He glanced over at Lestrade, whose somber face betrayed nothing of the lie. 

“Now, as far as I’m concerned, how a man chooses to live his life is his own affair.” Butter wouldn’t have melted in Lestrade’s mouth. Mycroft briefly wondered what Gordon would say if he knew how it was that the constable chose to live his own life, as it were. “But many in my profession hold a different view entirely. Fortunately for you, I’m able to ensure the arrest report remains hidden. As I’m sure you would prefer.”

Malik was in Paris. “I suppose we will have to go to France,” he said. He could admit that he was wrong; he had underestimated the constable. He entertained a brief fantasy wherein Lestrade was transferred to Scotland Yard and took up residence in his spare rooms, and then he let it go. “Bluff and blackmail, all in the same breath. You’ll go far at Scotland Yard, I’m sure.”

“I won’t be able to come to Paris,” Lestrade said.

“Oh,” Mycroft said. “That is a shame.”

“I have to get back to work. Can’t leave Mrs. Lestrade with her hands full.” Right, Mycroft thought, the wife.  Adventures had to come to an end eventually. The bubble—sneaking around, Malik and Gordon, the city of love—it had to burst eventually. Real life would creep in. “Not to mention the goats,” Lestrade added, but the joke fell flat. His eyes cut away from Mycroft’s for a second. “Find Malik,” he said, his face open and sincere again. 

“Yes,” Mycroft said. “If I do—”

“When you do.”

“When I do, I’ll be sure you let your superiors know quite how invaluable you were.” Invaluable. It seemed like too small a word. He put his hand out to shake. Lestrade took it, his grip strong and sure. 

“Thank you, Mr. Holmes.”

It was absurd, somehow. He wanted to keep a distance between them; he had utterly failed, and yet here they were, clinging on to such things. “Please,” he said, “call me Mycroft.”

Lestrade looked at him a long time. “Greg,” he said, eventually. “Gregory.” And then he turned to leave, though they’d come together, by carriage, and Mycroft watched him go. 

—

When everything was over—Malik dead, Karsgali dead, his father dead—Mycroft returned to England. He resumed his position in the Foreign Office, and, amidst a leadership shakeup, received a small promotion that brought him no satisfaction. He kept his promise, and wired Davies for a meeting. “My role in all of this was aided significantly by a member of your force in Oxford,” he said. “Constable Gregory Lestrade.”

Davies took a thoughtful puff on his cigar. “Constable Lestrade is—shall we say—an interesting sort of man,” he said. 

“Yes,” Mycroft said. “I got that impression.”

“Not many men are both ambitious and principled.”

“Neither are negative characteristics,” Mycroft said. 

“I never said they were,” Davies said. “Just that they were interesting. The man has designs on a career at Scotland Yard.”

“I am aware.”

“London will chew him up and spit him out,” Davies said. 

Mycroft sipped his brandy. “I think that he would surprise you,” he said. “I had my doubts, as well. Those doubts have been eliminated.”

“You rarely speak so highly of my subordinates,” Davies said, smiling. 

“They rarely give me reason to.”

Davies laughed. “I’ll try not to take your low opinion of Her Majesty’s police force personally.” 

“Present company excluded,” Mycroft said, raising his glass. 

His obligation thus discharged, Mycroft put the man out of his mind; he would not see Gregory Lestrade again for years. He heard Lestrade accepted a transfer to London and made no effort to seek him out. There was the matter of Lestrade ending things with him, publicly. Besides, he was busy with work, and ever since Moriarty absconded to Ireland Sherlock had been even more difficult to manage. 

“Gainful employment,” he said. “You should try it, brother dear.”

Sherlock groaned. “Brother dear, kindly spare me the lectures,” he said. “It’s aging you.”

“Aging me?!” 

“Relax,” Sherlock said. “No threat to your vanity, yet.”

“Won’t Mother take you in?”

“I want to stay in London,” Sherlock whined. “It’s hardly my fault that you’ve been irritable since you lost your bit of constable rough.”

“Get out of my house,” Mycroft said, manfully holding his tongue as to the whereabouts of James Moriarty and therefore Sherlock’s presence in his home. 

“Oh, Mycroft,” Sherlock said, softly. “You were hardly obvious. And I don’t have a problem with it.”

“Do not patronize me.” Mycroft could have strangled him. “You have no right.”

“I’m not patronizing,” Sherlock said. “I’ll pretend I never knew it, if you want me to.”

“Leave,” Mycroft said. But he did not say that it was not true. He understood Gordon better now. There was no sense in denying things, in prolonging punishment. Things that were true were true. A man died with his secrets or because of them. 

“And go where?”

“I don’t care,” Mycroft said. “Somewhere that is not here.”

And though he knew his brother was hurtling, inevitably, toward his own future—that it was not actually Mycroft’s fault—he could not forgive himself for saying that. He had accelerated things.

The wire came three days later. His brother had always been terrible at staying away, even as a child, but Mycroft had not heard from him. He supposed things had changed and worried that Sherlock had, again, found himself incarcerated. “Hello,” Mycroft said, careful not to betray any of the panic he felt.

“Mycroft Holmes,” Lestrade said. He was handsome as ever, new lines carved into his face by time or worry. “Long time.” 

“Why, pray tell, are we standing in a hospital?” If his brother was dead he would never forgive himself. His heart had been racing since he left Pall Mall. He felt shaky and cold, so he’d smoked a cigarette, which had not helped. 

“He’s alright,” Lestrade said, as if he had read Mycroft’s mind. “Recovering.”

“Recovering,” Mycroft said. “From what?”

“Does your brother have a problem with cocaine?”

“With—no,” Mycroft said. “No, I don’t—well. I wouldn’t know, would I? You know him.”

Lestrade studied his face. “And I know you,” he said. “He overdosed on the stuff. But he’ll be fine.”

Mycroft swallowed hard. “I’m sorry. Thank you.”

“Don’t be,” Lestrade said. Sorry, or grateful? “Hoped we might see each other in better circumstances, though.”

“Can I see him?” 

“No,” Lestrade said. “He’s sleeping. Doc won’t risk him waking up.” There was an empty bench in the lobby; Mycroft sat down on it. He felt dizzy. He’ll be fine, Lestrade had said. 

“Constable, can I tell you a secret?” He felt brave, in front of this man. He was nearly thirty and had never quite figured out how to be brave. Not since Constantinople. 

“Greg,” Lestrade said. He sat down next to Mycroft. “And I suppose you’ve already told me a few.”

“Gregory. I worry that I am failing him.”

“Who, Sherlock?”

“He has a brilliant mind. Unique. And yet I can never stop worrying about him.”

“He attracts trouble,” Lestrade—Gregory—said. “But he’s a good kid.”

“In five years he’s been to prison twice and hospital twice.” Mycroft ran his fingers over the edge of his pocketwatch chain, a nervous habit. “He’s restless, is all. I fear that the world is…too small for him."

“And I wish he would get a job,” he added. 

Gregory laughed at that. “He’d be a hell of a detective.”

“My brother is a moralist,” Mycroft said, amused. “But he can’t be said to have any respect for the law.”

“Oh, I’m well aware,” Gregory said. They settled into an uneasy silence, then; Mycroft itched to smoke another  cigarette, just so he would have something to do. “Listen. About Oxford.”

“What about it?” Mycroft said. 

“I didn’t mean for you to never speak to me again.”

“I did not wish to interfere with your life,” Mycroft said. 

“They said your father was dead,” Gregory said. 

“He deserved his fate,” Mycroft said. “He was consumed by greed. A killer. He broke my mother’s heart, and Sherlock’s.”

“And you?”

Mycroft waved his hand. “That is not important.”

“I’m sorry,” Gregory said. His voice was so quiet that it was nearly lost in the sounds of the hospital. 

“You have nothing to apologize for.”

“I do,” Gregory insisted. “I ran.”

“You did no such thing. You had—have—a family.”

“That doesn’t mean I wasn’t an arsehole.”

“I told you that you did not owe me anything,” Mycroft said. 

Lestrade stared at him. “You’re allowed to be mad.” Which was taking a rather high opinion of himself, if you asked Mycroft. 

“Mr. Holmes?” The nurse was a slight woman—a girl? She looked like a child. Perhaps Mycroft was getting old. “Your brother is awake."

“Thank you,” Mycroft said, standing to follow her. 

Sherlock was pale and looked somehow thinner than he had only days ago. “Hello, brother dear. Sorry to be a bother.”

“No bother,” Mycroft lied. Sherlock never thought of anyone other than himself until it came time to be rescued. “How are you feeling?”

“I’ve been better,” Sherlock said. As if it were the time for irony. “I suppose they’ve told you what I’ve done.”

“What have you done?”

“A seven percent solution,” Sherlock said. “It clarifies the thoughts.”

“And have they been clarified?”

“Not particularly,” Sherlock admitted. “Though that may have been the morphine.”

“Jesus, Sherlock!” Had he any idea how worried Mycroft was? Yes, Mycroft thought, bitterly, and he had not cared.  

“I am sorry, you know.”

“Don’t apologize.” When they had found Beatrice—when they had pretended to find the girl that was not Beatrice, the dead girl—Sherlock had been in Mycroft’s bedroom. My fault, the boy had said, rocking himself back and forth. My fault, my fault, my fault. 

It’s not your fault, Mycroft wanted to tell him, but he didn’t. Nothing was Sherlock’s fault. He had only been a child. Twenty-three now and he was still only a child.

“He’s here, you know. Lestrade.”

“I know,” Mycroft said. “He wired me.” 

“That was kind of him.”

“Enough,” Mycroft said. 

“I am restless,” Sherlock said. “I fear that I have punched my ticket for a great adventure, and that there is none more waiting for me.”

“There is no need for adventure! You could settle down, start a family of your own.” Sherlock leveled him with a glare, the effect of which was diminished somewhat by his incapacity. 

“Fine,” Mycroft said. “It was a long shot. Just—don’t be lonely, Sherlock.”

“I’m not lonely,” Sherlock assured him. “Only bored. And James will be back in London soon.” Mycroft hadn’t asked about Moriarty. “Anyway, you’re one to talk.”

“I—”

“Don’t think I don’t know,” Sherlock said. “You spend all your time at work, or in your…misanthropic club.”

“You could be a detective,” Mycroft said drily. Wasn’t his life hard enough without his brother constantly insinuating he was holding a torch for the constable?

“I have considered it,” Sherlock said. “I am not one for the constabulary. I would need to forge my own path.”

“No,” Mycroft said. 

“You suggested it!”

Mycroft sighed. “It seems that you are well, and that you need nothing further from me.” He turned to leave. “You may return to my home when you are discharged.”

“Thank you, brother dear. Thank Inspector Gregory for me, as well.”

“Inspector Lestrade,” Mycroft said. 

“Yes?”

“I was not aware that you had been promoted. I apologize for my oversight.”

“The clue is in the uniform,” Gregory said, smiling. 

“I was rather preoccupied,” Mycroft said, but he returned Gregory’s smile in spite of himself. “You are on duty?”

“Yes,” Gregory said. He winced. “Probably took a bit more time out than I should have.”

“I suppose I should apologize for that as well.” Mycroft held the door, and the two of them went out into the street. “Thank you,” he said. “I find myself, once again, quite indebted to you.”

“Only doing my job,” Gregory said. Mycroft took a calling card and a pencil out of his coat pocket and wrote his address on the back. Their fingers brushed in the exchanging of the card; Mycroft snatched his hand away. “I’ll see you around, then?”

“Tonight, if you like,” Mycroft said, in a fit of boldness, and then he remembered Sherlock. Strange—he had never managed to forget him before. “Later,” he amended. “When Sherlock is settled. I belong to a gentlemen’s club.”

Gregory laughed, sharp and shocked. “I don’t belong in a place like that.”

“You would be with me the entire time. It is very private,” Mycroft said. “Silence is mandatory.”

“You are a very interesting man,” Gregory said. He shrugged. “I’ve nothing better to do.”

Mycroft raised an eyebrow. “A ringing endorsement of my company.”

“I’m not much for silence,” Gregory said. “Least my view’ll be good.”

“Flatterer. Don’t wear your uniform.”

“What d’you take me for?” Gregory said. “I have other clothes.”

The next week Mycroft fussed over his own clothing, then reminded himself that he was being ridiculous. It had been years, and Gregory was no longer interested in their engagement. This was merely a social call. Perhaps Gregory would have some insight into what to do with Sherlock, now that he was mostly recovered and apparently quite bored. 

“Right fancy, this is,” Gregory said, staring up at the facade of the Diogenes. He was wearing a black coat that rather resembled his uniform, only without the markings. Mycroft felt a rush of fondness that he suppressed as quickly as it came. 

“Remember,” Mycroft said. “Silence.”

The club was hardly busy, though the hour was not late. None of the members raised an eyebrow at the two of them as they made their way through the public areas; true to the club’s mission, they read newspapers or smoked in silence.

“Please, sit,” Mycroft said, once they were safely ensconced in a private room. 

Gregory furrowed his brow. “Is this a trick?” he mouthed. 

“No,” Mycroft said. 

“I thought I wasn’t allowed to talk.”

“We may speak in private.” Mycroft poured them each a fifth of whiskey, careful not to let his fingers brush Gregory’s in the transfer. 

“What’s the point of a place like this?” Gregory said, peering around. “I thought the gentlemen’s clubs were for talking.”

Mycroft frowned. “I do not care to socialize,” he said. “I like my silences, as many men do; I also like to read and to take my meals away from home.”

“Can’t say I like a silence,” Gregory said. “It’s a bit spooky, innit? Whole building of people, none of them saying a word.”

“We are in the building,” Mycroft pointed out. “And we are speaking.”

“So it’s not a sex thing,” Gregory said. Mycroft opened his mouth and closed it again. “The silence,” Gregory clarified.

“No,” Mycroft said, faintly. 

“Are you sure?”

“Quite.”

“Oh,” Gregory said. “Well, then.” 

The silence after that was long and oppressive, as if it were making some sort of point about silences and their relative awkwardness. 

“How is your brother doing?” 

“He has taken to reading the agony columns,” Mycroft said. 

Gregory let out a low whistle. “Can’t imagine raising the boy.”

Mycroft did not have to imagine. “How are your children?”

“Well enough,” Gregory said. “My wife—” he stopped there, running a thumb over the engraved edge of the table. 

“I apologize. I did not mean to bring up bad feelings.”

“Probably better for them, not having—well. I tried, you know.”

“My father wasn’t around,” Mycroft said, quietly. 

“And look at you now.”

“Why did you come here?”

“To London?”

“Here,” Mycroft said. “To this club, with me.”

Gregory shrugged. “Wanted another look at you,” he said.

“Don’t say things like that,” Mycroft said. 

“Not my fault if it’s true."

“Gregory,” Mycroft said. “Please.”

“When they moved me to the Yard—that was you. I never got to thank you.”

“There is no need.”

“I’ve been thinking about you,” Gregory said. “I never stopped. I’m a coward, Mycroft.”

“You are not.”

“I knew where you lived,” Gregory said. “I must have walked past your door a hundred times, trying to get the courage to knock.”

“I would have let you in.”

Gregory’s gaze was hot, heavy. “To fuck.”

“I—”

Gregory set his glass down with a hard thunk. “I want to.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“Mycroft.”

“Gregory,” Mycroft said. “It is too big of a risk.”

“It was a risk back then.”

“This is different.”

“Explain it to me,” Gregory said, standing and coming around the table to loom over Mycroft.

Of course Mycroft could not explain it to him. Mycroft could hardly explain it to himself. “I am…compromised.”

“Compromised.” 

“You understand how such things could be used as blackmail,” Mycroft said. “You have done it yourself.”

“Push me away,” Gregory said. He leaned down, a breath away now. “If you don’t want me, push me away.”

Mycroft felt like he was drowning. It was absurd; he did not think himself particularly moved by lust, and yet he could not control his reactions to this man, in particular. His heart thundered in his chest. He wanted to oblige Gregory’s taunting, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it, or to force his muscles to cooperate with that desire. 

“Okay,” Gregory said, and then kissed him. 

Suddenly Mycroft’s body was possessed by motion. He kissed back with an urgency—a lack of decorum—that scared him. In an instant he was halfway up out of his chair and fumbling at Gregory’s braces, making all manner of soft, humiliating sounds. 

“Sit,” he gasped between kisses. “I want to suck you.”

“No,” Gregory said.

Mycroft drew back. “No?”

Gregory did sit, but he busied himself with Mycroft’s trousers instead of his own. “No,” he repeated. “Turn around and put your hands on the table.”

Mycroft’s cheeks flamed but he did as he was bid. The door was locked, he reminded himself. They would not be interrupted. Men fucked in the Diogenes all the time; Mycroft had done it before. Still. It was not the most graceful of positions. 

He cried out involuntarily at the first touch of Gregory’s mouth to his hole, collapsing onto his forearms. “What—ah—are you doing?” He felt hot all over. 

“Does it not feel good?” Gregory said from behind him, sounding equally breathless and concerned. 

“No,” Mycroft said. “It’s not—I like it. But—”

“It’s been a long time.”

“You have had other men,” Mycroft said. He closed his eyes against the rush of jealousy. He did not consider himself special, not in that way; there was, after all, the matter of Gregory’s wife. But it stung nonetheless. 

“Only one,” Gregory said. 

Mycroft made to turn over, but Gregory held him still, licking back into him with real purpose, gentle but self-assured. He could hardly reconcile this Gregory with the one who had been so clumsy with his fingers, so uncertain. He thought of the other man who had had him and hated him passionately. “Who was he?” Gregory shushed him and then got back to fucking him with his tongue. 

Mycroft sobbed into the crook of his own elbow. “Fuck,” he whispered, just for himself. He felt sloppy, loose—like a rent boy, he thought, with mild, thrilled horror. 

“Christ, you’re so pretty,” Gregory said hoarsely. “I’d forgotten.” He rubbed the head of his cock over Mycroft’s hole, and Mycroft felt himself clench around nothing. 

“Please,” Mycroft said. “Please, Gregory.”

And so Gregory pushed in, centimeter by unbearable centimeter. The stretch was too much, Mycroft realized, just over the knife’s edge of pain; he gritted his teeth, and bore it. “He was a gentleman,” Gregory said. He sounded nearly conversational, but there was an edge in his voice. He pushed in a little more, a gentle rocking that felt like lightning up Mycroft’s spine. “Like you.” 

Mycroft despised that man.

“Except no one is like you,” Gregory said, running a hand over Mycroft’s shuddering side. “No one.” He wrapped that hand around Mycroft’s cock, which had gone soft due to the discomfort. 

“And not half so handsome,” he continued. A push, then a stroke over his cock, then another, and another, until he was in to the hilt and Mycroft forgot how to speak, how to think. He was distantly aware that he may have been babbling. 

“Fuck, sweetheart,” Gregory said. Mycroft clung to that sweetheart like a lifeline. “You’re so good. So tight.”

“You can move,” Mycroft said, after a while. His voice sounded entirely too thin to his own ears. “Go slow.”

And so Gregory went slow, but it was still too much. Mycroft was shaking. He was standing, technically, barely managing to hold himself up, and he was sweating, and he was still wearing even his waistcoat, and his shoes.

“C’mere,” Gregory said, and then he pulled out, which was even worse. He put a strong arm around Mycroft’s middle and sat back, pulling Mycroft down with him. “Let me—” he spit on his hand and slicked himself up with it, then slid back in in a single motion. 

Mycroft bit back a scream. Gregory settled him more securely in his lap and went back to touching him, his cock pressed just against where it was good inside. “Like you were fuckin’ made for me,” Gregory said, and Mycroft squirmed. 

“He offered me money to fuck him.” Mycroft made an involuntary, indignant sort of sound. “I took it.”

Mycroft’s orgasm caught them both by surprise. “Oh,” he said, doubling over and fearing for the state of his clothing. 

“You liked that?” Gregory said, dubiously. 

“No,” Mycroft gasped. “Do me properly.”

“The mouth on you,” Gregory said. “Christ, you’re—”

“Fuck me. Please.”

“Jesus,” Gregory said, but complied. He took Mycroft over the table, hard and nearly painful, and then it was over. 

“You alright?” Gregory said, as Mycroft attempted to put himself back in order. 

“Yes,” Mycroft said. He took a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. His hands were steady, but he could not shake the vaguely unsettled feeling in his chest, the slight overwhelm.

“Was it—er—good? For you?”

“Yes,” Mycroft said. “You do not need to worry about me, Gregory.”

“I do, though,” Gregory said, stubbornly. 

Mycroft was already bruised. He decided to press on it. “Was what you said true?”

“Yes.”

“You took his money?” 

“Yes,” Gregory said. “I was new to London. I wanted to provide for my family. It was stupid.” 

“I missed you,” he added.  

“You missed me.”

“I did,” Gregory said. “And I thought I would never be lucky enough to see you again.”

“And he…taught you certain things.”

Gregory blushed. “Yes.”

“Who was he?” Mycroft took a marginally longer drag than usual. He pictured the warm smoke settling into his lungs, which was oddly comforting.

“Dunno,” Gregory said. “I never got his name.” Mycroft stared. Gregory, to his credit, did not avert his eyes. “I mean—I know. It was slaggy, a bit.” 

“A bit?” Gregory glared at him. “I apologize,” Mycroft said. “I meant no judgment.”

“Have you—well. Never mind.” Mycroft raised his eyebrows. “I would like to see you again.”

“I do not think that we should.”

“I thought…I thought I would change your mind.”

“Oh, Gregory,” Mycroft said. He ground out his cigarette. “It isn’t my mind that needs changing.”

“Your heart, then.” 

Mycroft put his head in his hands. “Please,” he said. “Don’t make this harder for me than it already is.”

“Say what you want,” Gregory said, “and I will give it to you.”

“I want to be left alone.”

Gregory stood up, then, his chair scraping harshly against the floor. “Fine,” he said. “Lie to yourself, if you like, but don’t lie to me.”

“Gregory.”

“I meant it,” he said. “Every second of it. But I can’t keep doing this dance.”

“I thought that I was the coward,” he continued. “But I was wrong.”

“It’s not that simple,” Mycroft said. There was an awful chill creeping up his throat. He stood and turned to face the bookcase. 

“It is,” Gregory said, from behind him. “I love you.”

“You don’t.” Mycroft tried to keep the horror from his voice. 

“Don’t tell me how to feel.”

“It isn’t real,” Mycroft said. How dare he—Mycroft let the man have him twice? Three times? And then he came to him talking about love, as if life was a Brontë novel. “Love.”

“You’re saying this ain’t real?”

Mycroft rolled his eyes. “Of course it’s real,” he said. “It is also illegal. You are married, and an officer of the law.”

“If you are a man,” Gregory said, “look at me.” Mycroft turned to look at him, steeling himself. Sherlock thought him vain, because he was concerned with appearances, but appearances were his armor; he hardened his jaw, straightened his spine. 

“Mycroft Holmes,” Gregory said softly. 

“What do you want from me?”

“I want to make love to you,” Gregory said. “And I want to hold you afterward. I want you to go to bed with me and no one else.” 

Mycroft made his hand into a fist. The dull bite of his own fingernails was bracing. “No one else,” he said, coldly. “And I suppose you would be free to do as you please.”

Gregory put his hands up in surrender. “Didn’t say that.”

“I am not your wife,” Mycroft said. He recognized his own hypocrisy in light of his jealousy at the thought of Gregory having another man. But Gregory had not made him any promises. 

“I know that,” Gregory said. “Christ. Men…men like you have got lovers. Haven’t they?” 

“Men like me.”

Gregory ignored him. “I want you to bring your problems to me,” he said. “I want to help you carry them. And I want to see that pretty face of yours more than once a decade.”

It was the sweetest thing anyone had ever said to him, and it made Mycroft feel vaguely nauseous. He took a deep breath to steady himself. “Allow me to think about it.”

Gregory nodded resolutely, the trace of a smile flickering around his mouth. “Better than a no,” he said. He shrugged his coat on. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then?” 

“Monday,” Mycroft said firmly, and saw him out. 

From a young age he knew that he would never marry. He did not have the disposition for it. He was a child—maybe nine or ten—when he started noticing the boys in the village. His mother made an effort to force him to socialize with the girls, but they only ever fawned over Sherlock, who was still a baby. Mycroft was invisible to them, which was fine by him. He knew he was meant to be interested. He did not care. 

Only it was as if the boys never saw him, either. He had no way of explaining what he desired from them, those boys who played football in the mud and wrestled the sheep. Except to be included. To touch and to be touched. To speak to someone other than his parents and Mrs. Crowle and his babbling siblings. 

Being liked—being a person that someone wanted to have around—was not a feeling familiar to him. To have those sentiments articulated was unthinkable. Mycroft poured himself another glass of brandy. Christ. If he had known it would end up like this he would never have slept with Gregory at all.

“Your misery is making the whole place unbearably gloomy,” Sherlock said. 

“It’s my flat,” Mycroft said petulantly. 

Sherlock peered at him. “I cannot recommend alcohol as a solution for your problems. Don’t look at me like that.”

“I am doing no such thing.”

“Sure,” Sherlock said. He poured himself his own glass and downed it in a single motion. “I won’t presume to advise you—”

“Good.”

“But I hate to see you so disconsolate.”

“Touching,” Mycroft said. He remembered his life before Sherlock had taken up residence in his home. The peace and quiet he used to experience!

“You are nothing at all like our father, you know,” Sherlock said thoughtfully. “Anyway, that is all. I don’t fancy winding up in the streets again.”

“Do try to be happy, brother dear,” he continued, and then made his escape before Mycroft could work up the nerve to evict him.

On Monday it was raining. “Forgot an umbrella,” Gregory said. This did nothing for Mycroft’s nerves. 

“Come in,” Mycroft said. “Don’t drip on my floors.”

Gregory rolled his eyes. “Yes, dearest.”

“You are rather sure of yourself.”

“If you didn’t want to see me, I wouldn’t be standing here right now,” Gregory said. He hung his coat. 

“Remove your boots,” Mycroft said, ignoring him. “They’re muddy.”

Gregory leered. “Should I take off my trousers too, then?”

“Gregory.”

“Sorry,” Gregory said. He took his boots off but left his trousers on. He was wearing thick woolen socks. “Should I—”

“Sit,” Mycroft said. “Please.” 

He busied himself pouring them each a cup of tea. “Cream and sugar?”

“Two sugars,” Gregory said. “Thank you.” Mycroft took his tea with cream. It was, like loving men, a vice that he could not shake.

“I thought about what you said.” There was a long pause. Mycroft took a sip of his tea to steel himself, then another. 

“I hoped you might.” 

“To speak frankly, I have never had such an agreement with another person. I believe it to be an unnecessary risk.”

Gregory opened his mouth, and Mycroft held up a hand to silence him. “But I have also never…regarded a man, shall we say, the way I do you.”

“Is this a riddle?"

Mycroft sighed. “No,” he said. “I enjoy your company, Gregory. I believe that we work well together. I do not wish to lose you.” Gregory grinned. “Stop smiling at me.”

“I won’t.” 

“I cannot pretend that I will not worry,” Mycroft said. “About the law. About your obligations to your family.”

“I know,” Gregory said. 

“But I consent to your terms.”

Gregory put his cup down and crossed the room. “My terms?”

Mycroft did not like that Gregory was towering over him, and so he stood as well. “That I would be…that I would be yours, and yours alone.”

“Oh,” Gregory said, bravado gone in an instant. “Alright. Er, thank you.”

Mycroft stifled a laugh. “Quite. Well—” 

Gregory cut him off with a kiss. “Take me to bed,” he said. “I want out of these wet clothes.”

“Is this what you consider romance, Gregory?”

“Take me to bed, sweetheart,” Gregory said, and Mycroft was helpless, as he had always been, he thought grimly, in the face of that. 

Gregory undressed them both slowly, between soft, open-mouthed kisses. “I had other—what did you call them? Terms?” Mycroft hummed in response. “Lay down.”

“Lie down,” Mycroft murmured. 

“Swot,” Gregory said, but he was smiling, eyes warm, as he pushed Mycroft back onto the bed. He kissed Mycroft’s collarbones and ran his thumbs over his nipples. Mycroft shuddered. “You’re very pretty.”

“You talk so much.”

“I like to talk to you.” On pain of death Mycroft would never admit to Gregory that he liked it, too. “You like it, too, don’t you?”

“No,” Mycroft said, a warm flush creeping down his chest. 

Gregory laughed. “Alright, then.” He kissed Mycroft’s stomach, his hip bones. “Guess I should shut up, then.” He took Mycroft into his mouth, sweetly unpracticed. Mycroft gasped anyway. His clear inexperience was both endearing and arousing; he was really trying, and Mycroft would venture that he had never done it before. He felt a kind of fierce possessiveness about that. 

Gregory pulled off and frowned. “D’you like it?”

Silly man. “Yes,” Mycroft said. “Come here,” and Gregory came, and let Mycroft kiss him. 

“I want to see your face,” Gregory said.

Mycroft swallowed hard. “Yes,” he said. “Go slow.” Because it was Gregory, he insisted on preparing Mycroft with his mouth and his fingers, even though Mycroft had done it himself in a haze of queasy anticipation.

“Look at you, sweetheart,” he said, when Mycroft was squirming for it. “Jesus.”

“Gregory,” Mycroft said.

Gregory grinned at him again. He was always smiling during sex. The way that Mycroft felt about that was not worth contemplating—except that it was allowed, because they were lovers, now, were they not? But that had only just happened; he should not be so hasty to indulge. “Stop thinking,” Gregory said, tapping his temple. “Bloody big brain of yours.”

“If you would stop dallying.”

“We’ve got time,” Gregory said, softly, and then he pushed in, one slow, delicious thrust. 

Gregory stifled a moan with a kiss, and Mycroft swallowed the sound. It was nice. The kissing, and the slow rock of Gregory’s hips, the constant stretch and press inside of him. There was love, and there was sex, and those were different things, and anyway Mycroft had never loved anyone other than Sherlock and his mother, and Beatrice a little less, and, he supposed, his father. 

“Can hardly believe it,” Gregory said. “A man like yourself, all mine.” He kissed Mycroft’s cheekbones, his forehead, the tip of his nose. It felt as if he were reaching up into Mycroft’s chest and squeezing out a frantic heartbeat. Mycroft blinked. “Look at me.”

Mycroft looked at him, his dear face, which had aged but which he liked as much as he ever had. “Oh,” he said.

“Mhm.” Gregory lowered himself so his forearms were framing Mycroft’s head and kissed him more. Mycroft came like that, pleasantly surrounded, Gregory’s skin warm and soft and everywhere. 

“You should show me where you keep your linens,” Gregory said. 

“Why?”

“So I can clean you up.”

“I can clean myself up,” Mycroft said. He handed Gregory a damp cloth for himself and began dressing. 

Gregory sighed. “Not the point, mate. C’mere.” Mycroft went over. “Why’re all your clothes on?”

“We are finished,” Mycroft said. “Do you wish for me to remove them again?”

Gregory frowned. “I don’t know,” he said. Mycroft looked him over; he himself was still naked. Delightfully so—Mycroft wanted to touch him again.  “Take off your shoes, at least.” Mycroft took off his shoes. “Are you going somewhere?”

“No,” Mycroft said. 

“Then come back to bed.”

“I cannot spend every minute of the rest of my life in bed with you,” Mycroft said, trying to be gentle. But he got back into bed anyway, his clothes still on. 

“Didn’t ask you to,” Gregory said. “It’s late.” Mycroft glanced at the wall clock. It was, indeed, past nine. “I had one more request.”

“I cannot say that I know what you are asking.”

“Let me hold you,” Gregory said. Mycroft shivered. “What is your fixation on such an activity?”

“Why won’t you let me?”

Mycroft considered it. “I am not…averse, shall we say. But I have not done it before, and I cannot say that I understand the appeal.”

“Do you think this hard about everything?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Why do I think?” Mycroft closed his eyes. “I cannot help it.”

“Everyone thinks,” Gregory said. “I wager no man in the world thinks as much as you.” Gregory took Mycroft’s hand in his and rubbed it gently with his thumb. “You can do things first and think about them later.”

So Mycroft tucked himself into Gregory’s waiting embrace and relaxed, minutely, listening to the steady thump of Gregory’s heart. Gregory ran a hand through his hair, and that, too, was nice—the dull scrape of fingernails against his scalp. Against his will he found his eyelids growing heavy. 

“Gregory,” he murmured. He considered this new development. He was not sure that it was…done, but it was comfortable. 

Gregory shushed him. “I can hear you thinking,” he whispered back. “Stop that.”

“Oh,” Mycroft said. It felt, for the first time, like his life was full of possibility. His mother was well, Beatrice was alive, someone else was looking after Sherlock. He had found something—someone—to call his own. There was no reason he could not lay down his anxieties for an evening. He would think about it tomorrow, when his head was clearer. Or maybe the day after that. He had time.