Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/120353.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Sherlock_Holmes_&_Related_Fandoms
  Relationship:
      Mycroft_Holmes/Sherlock_Holmes
  Additional Tags:
      Sibling_Incest, Crossdressing, Pre-Canon, Community:_kink_bingo, Queer
      Themes
  Stats:
      Published: 2010-09-23 Words: 5457
****** Pass, repass, glide away ******
by lotesse
Summary
     It was a very good disguise, but having once observed it Mycroft
     could not fail to see with strangely doubled vision: at once the
     familiar stripling boy-body he'd watched from childhood and the
     enchanting odd lovely girl-form that Sherlock was wearing like a
     second skin.
The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make
their appearance; pass, repass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety
of postures and situations. There is properly no simplicity in it at one time,
nor identity in different, whatever natural propension we may have to imagine
that simplicity and identity. ~Hume
When Mycroft Holmes was a young man at University, some twenty-two years of
age, his brother Sherlock was a boy of fifteen: bright and inquisitive and
utterly impossible. The lad crawled, climbed, and ran across the entire of West
Sussex, wild as a young falcon. Their father did not even try to contain him;
he had done so with limited success when they were both boys, but Sherlock's
persistence had worn the old man down. His second son had been the child of his
age, born long after he had looked for any additional progeny to his heir; it
had perhaps been unfortunate that the son of that age had been born the most
energetic, perceptive, inquisitive child that Mycroft had ever seen.
Sherlock's mind was like a machine, or like burning magnesium. It consumed all
impediments, blinding and bright, grinding information down to a fine grist of
theory, narrative, and science. And the flame of the boy's mind was not
quenched when it had burned through its fuel; instead it turned back on itself,
becoming increasingly nervous, hyperactive, and self-defeating.
He had been a strange child, and showed fair to grow into a strange young man:
oddly solemn for his years, pale-faced and quiet, introspective to a fault,
unexpectedly sensitive, unexpectedly callous.
Mycroft frequently found his little brother exhausting in the extreme, but his
deep and ineradicable sympathy for the boy helped him to patience. It was
scarcely Sherlock's fault that he had been made a tightly-strung instrument and
then had been put into the hands of a tired and rather bored paternal musician.
He was not a happy child, and as Mycroft often reflected when he found himself
dealing with the boy, Sherlock's mind was as much a curse to himself as it was
to everyone around him. However, the aforementioned sympathy did him little
good when he found himself home on holiday, having to endure both his father's
sullen temper and his little brother's flaring, fitful temperament.
That morning, Sherlock had been discovered experimenting with vitriolic acid
clandestinely under his bed. In the ensuing gunpowder quarrel between himself
and their father he had thrown out several very pert remarks concerning things
that he ought not to have known about their mother - the mother that he had
never known save in babyhood. The boy was too French for his own good, Mycroft
reflected ruefully. Their father had gone white to the lips, visibly struck by
Sherlock's verbal arrow, which had by Mycroft's estimation discomfited him
extremely. She had been no more a proper wife than Sherlock was a son; in his
almost uncanny ability to nettle their father, Sherlock was very much her
child.
No person not of their family ever would have seen the lines of strain and
harshly enforced control around their father's lips and eyes, but Mycroft noted
them, and would not have been surprised if Sherlock had not also seen the marks
of his victory on his father's face. Sherlock saw absolutely everything, and
most particularly he saw the things his parent most wished him to remain blind
to.
Perhaps it was the force of this blow, or the renewed pain that the memory of
her always awakened in him, that caused Holmes pere to run cold. Instead of
boxing his youngest son's ears, or even tanning his hide with a willow switch,
he grew still as a stone, and then after a dreadful long frozen moment he
turned silently on his long legs and stalked out of the room. The boy remained
red-faced and short-breathed behind him, caught in the ice of his father's cool
rage. When their father strode past the housekeeper in the hall, he'd pitched
his voice to be heard: "Send the young master to his rooms, and keep him there
until further notice. I do not wish to see his face until I send for him -
which I am quite unlikely to do any time in the near future."
Sherlock's face was set and pale, and he looked rather more shocked than
Mycroft had seen him for quite some time. Had he not known, then, what it was
that he'd said?
Mycroft had watched his little brother being led off unresisting with sympathy
but without surprise; Sherlock's words had effected him more than he might have
expected, and he was not entirely sorry to have the boy out of his sight for a
while. Mycroft missed their mother fiercely; yet he could not in truthfulness
admit his little brother to have been wrong. But Sherlock's astute perception
was painful nonetheless, ripping apart the scar tissue that had formed over one
of the worst of the Holmes family wounds. She had been unconventional, she had
been foreign, she had been eccentric and exciting and beautiful in a strange
way that belonged only to her - and now she was dead and buried, and the three
of them were left alone. Sherlock himself had scarcely known her, having been
but a child, still in short dresses, at the time of her death - and so perhaps
the wound for him was different, a bloodless scar at which he could somehow
jest.
Their father had gone black-clouded into his study, and Mycroft did not dare
follow him. The man tended to grow cruel and cutting in anger, and Mycroft saw
very little reason to expose himself to that scathing rage. Instead he slipped
down the hall towards his little brother's room, moving quickly and quietly
despite the fact that he was an exceptionally tall young man, and not
particularly slender either. Sherlock, just come into his own height, was thin
as a willow wand, his large dark eyes and fine-boned face lending him
occasionally an inhuman look.
The boy had clearly oiled his hinges and lock recently; good lad. The copy of
his little brother's key that Mycroft had taken the precaution of having made
some months ago opened the lock without a sound, and he stepped inside the room
to deal with the exasperating child in his own way.
But Sherlock was not there; the window was open, and the scuffed traces of his
habitual shoes indicated that he'd climbed through it to shimmy down the gutter
pipe. Where he'd gone then, it was impossible to tell from his vantage point.
He'd have to go out onto the grounds if he was to read the signs that Sherlock
would have left behind. And he would have to do it; if their father found that
his younger son had gone runaway, he feared that the entire affair would end
very, very badly. He did not want to think about it. It had to be prevented of
all things.
The staff of the house had changed somewhat since he'd gone away to University,
but some of the structures of influence and loyalty he'd erected as a boy
remained. A few words in the proper ears and their absence would be covered
over for at least the rest of that day, if not longer - their father did not
like the labor of childrearing, even less so when it involved Sherlock, who saw
around his every disciplinary method and perverted his every parental end, and
he would avoid the necessary encounter with the boy for as long as humanly
possible. Obstacles thrown in his way, business to conduct, would offer him the
excuses he so badly desired, which complicity might allow a ruse to operate for
far longer than it would in a better-arranged house.
Mycroft took his coat, his overcoat, and a warm woolen muffler; it was spring,
but only just, and still damp enough that once the sun went down it would be
chill. He did not dare hope that they would be home ere nightfall, for he knew
his brother's agile wit, not to mention his energetic youthful body, too well
to hope for a brief chase. He wore his old shoes. He was going to being by
tramping over the grounds, and might not ever gain better terrain. Who knew
where Sherlock was likely to go, having bolted? His mind was all quicksilver
and lightning, impossible to predict or pin down. Beneath Sherlock's window,
footprints indented the damp earth, leading off through the orchard and then
into the loose gravel of the path. Sherlock had gone, not to the wood, but to
the town. Mycroft was not at all sure that it was a positive indicator.
Sherlock was unlikely to have gone out in his own skin; the boy had a
particular delight in disguise and in the vagaries of costume. In another life,
Mycroft thought, he might have made a splendid tailor or fashioniste. But
instead the boy tended to turn his attention to outlandish guises, assuming
deeply inappropriate accents and bodily postures along with his strange clothes
and facepaints. So as he made the not-inconsiderable trek into town he kept his
eyes sharp, knowing that he would have to perceive the irreducible truths of
his brother's being through the layers of the boy's not inconsiderable skills
at artifice. He could not afford to overlook even the most unlikely figure, for
inevitably that one would be the one he sought. The afternoon was wearing on,
and the pale light was losing its golden tinge.
Chichester was a centre of light; it was a city of cesspools. It was a a large
enough market town that it would have little difficulty concealing a clever
runaway boy; it was, Mycroft hoped, a small enough one that it might take such
a boy more than a few hours to find any serious trouble.
Alongside the old Roman wall around the town, various knots and currents of
humanity tangled, halted, and rushed on. A tramp held out his hat for stray
coins. A tall figure stood on the street corner declaiming a sermon in an
impassioned and unsteady tone. A girl was loitering outside a little millinery
shop, chatting animatedly to a matron, seemingly about the colored laces that
adorned her neck. Mycroft did not see his little brother anywhere, and with a
heavy sigh he resigned himself to a long afternoon, quite possibly an evening,
of sifting his errant sibling out of the larger world.
His attention dragged, surprisingly inexorably, back to the girl with the
laces. She was a strange girl, he noted: tall above the average, long and
coltish where so many young girls were small and round and compactly delicate.
She was, in point of fact, one of the most dazzling specimens of young
womanhood he had ever seen. Perhaps it was the energy that snapped and danced
in her angular little face, or the elegant grace of the long fingers which
toyed unselfconsiously with her dove-grey poplin overskirt. Her hair was of a
pretty soft curling dark sort, pulled back to reveal her ears.
Mycroft Holmes did not usually waste his time with empty appreciations of the
female forms around him, choosing rather to move in abstracted and thoughtful
modes. He saw little point in such casual appraisals, which after all yielded
very little information of any import. A girl's character, her discourse and
the readiness of her mind, were all of much greater matter than the shape of
her face. And yet he could not look away from this young woman's vivid,
laughing mouth, or stop himself from perceiving with excruciating clarity the
pretty way the cuffs of her sleeves fell around the delicate bones of her
wrists.
He moved closer, not sure what he intended but drawn to her. It took him almost
embarrassingly long to see it, but at last his perspective shifted and clicked
into place, allowing him to look through to the truth of things. Her fingers
were long and dexterous and stained with chemicals. She was tall as a boy. And
her eyes were those he'd seen every day of his childhood, looking out from his
mother's face.
Sherlock.
It was a very good disguise, but having once observed it Mycroft could not fail
to see with strangely doubled vision: at once the familiar stripling boy-body
he'd watched from childhood and the enchanting odd lovely girl-form that
Sherlock was wearing like a second skin. His heart turned over in his chest
with a dull, thumping feeling. The likeness was unnerving. Sherlock had not
merely copied dress and hair, but expression and manner and posture. He was an
uncanny mimic; had it not been for that peculiar sense of magnetism, Mycroft
would not have lost a second glance. The coltishness that was gauche in a young
boy had softened into something ageless and appealing in the girl.
The boy had to be mad. It was terribly unsafe; it was downright perverse. If
anyone saw – if he was found out - Dr. Alfred Taylor's celebrated pamphlet on
the Eliza Edwards case had retained enough of its reputation over the years to
be yet included in medical and legal curricula, and Mycroft had had to read the
odious document cover to cover several times over in the course of his
University career. It was not the only case of its kind, but the details had
struck his mind most vividly on the occasion of his having first learned them:
the dead unclaimed body of the girl, the violation implicit in the exposure of
that sad corpse's masculine genitals and the subsequent horrors of the
examination for traces of indecent acts. And now his little brother – his dear,
sweet, strange, haunting little brother – was parading about the high street in
a corset and gown, with his lips stained a blushing pink and high-heeled boots
on his narrow feet, talking blithely about ribbons beside a shopfront. It was
enough to stop his heart from beating altogether.
Moved by a rare paroxysm of panic, Mycroft went quickly to his errant sibling's
side, laying a heavy hand on Sherlock's daintily-clad arm. The boy started
mightily, dark eyes widening – good, he'd not lost all sense – and whirled on a
high-heeled foot to face his brother. Mycroft observed that while some of the
high color fled Sherlock's face, he did not pale as much as he could have done.
He was clearly taken by surprise, but evidently regarded himself as safe in
fraternal company.
"Hello, brother mine," the boy said softly. The milliner quietly excused
herself, leaving the brothers Holmes alone with one another on the street.
Anger rose in Mycroft's throat, followed by confusion, but he swallowed both
emotions down again. Sherlock was high-spirited enough to fight him in public,
or to run from him, or to engage in any number of unwise and unsafe actions if
pushed too hard. After all, he'd left home after a scolding from their father
and promptly taken up women's clothing. Hoping to coax him out of the public
street before the occurrence of either a quarrel or a break, Mycroft clasped
Sherlock's fineboned wrist more closely, and replied in an equally dulcet
voice, "Come away now, petit" - here he had to catch himself, the gendered
endearment he was so accustomed to having very nearly slipped them into scandal
- "come away and talk to me. It isn't safe here; a private room in the inn will
do us much better."
Sherlock fixed him with a piercing glance through eyes that looked even larger,
darker and more depthless than usual – were those subtle smudges of kohl edging
his eyes? - and then, thankfully, followed the guiding pull of Mycroft's hand
on his arm, at least temporarily docile.
He could not help but notice, as they passed together arm in arm down the
street, the change in Sherlock's gait and posture. He presumed it to be
effected by the footwear and - though he very nearly blushed to think of it,
which was rare for him – the feminine undergarments that were clearly engaged
in sculpting and narrowing Sherlock's slender waist.
Sherlock's wrist felt delicate as bone china between his fingers, and he did
not resist or try to pull away. Instead, an acquiescent look slipped out
between his girlishly long lashes, causing Mycroft a short sharp breath and a
stumble. He needed to get Sherlock out of the street, he needed – he needed,
suddenly, wildly, to touch Sherlock's painted lips, span his narrowed waist,
clasp him close and hear the rustle of Sherlock's skirts as he was taken
possession of.
Having bundled his sibling through the pub and into a private parlor, trying to
ignore the favoring looks Sherlock received in the process from several of the
more masculine publicans, Mycroft at last found himself able to breathe with
more freedom; at least he no long had to worry about the boy giving himself
away. The only concern left to him was to sort out the meaning of all of it,
and to try to decide what to do, and to somehow resolve the matter without
their father ever so much as knowing they'd been away.
The private room that he gruffly demanded on entrance to the inn featured a
broad, clean-covered bed – indeed, Mycroft wished for his own sanity that it
were featured less centrally. He could not avoid notice of it, and Sherlock
could not avoid notice of that fact. As his control slipped him by, he thought
briefly that he might be the one to fling his younger sibling down onto it, but
she anticipated him, and slid down languidly to recline on its surface,
propping herself up on one indolent arm. He followed him down, pausing only to
unpin his hair and shake it loose, letting it tumble down over his shoulders.
Giving the lad a brief but fervent shake, he said heavily, "For heaven's sake,
Sherlock, have you completely taken leave of your senses?"
Sherlock broke away from him, sulkily cradling his abused arm at the other end
of the hired parlor. "I do not see why you'd bother asking, brother mine," he
said – and though he was not modulating his tone in any artificial way,
nevertheless his voice exited that feminized form with an oddly appropriate
grace.
Sighing, Mycroft said, "I do not mean to be in any way insensitive, Sherlock,
but I do have several rather grave concerns about this venture. I must request
that you open your mind to me in this, petit frere. I cannot help you if I do
not understand."
Sherlock's mouth beneath his was sweet with scented paint, and he made a small
sound of contented pleasure as he parted his lips against Mycroft's. "Yes," the
boy breathed, hands tensing and releasing in the bedclothes like catclaws as he
pressed against Mycroft's more solid boy wantonly. It was at once completely
like and completely unlike the other kisses Mycroft had enjoyed before: the
sight and the smell and the texture of Sherlock's rouged mouth were familiar,
but the boyish timbre of his ragged breathing was not. The rustle of skirts and
the feeling of corsetry under his groping hands he knew, but the erect cock
concealed beneath Sherlock's gown was as-yet unexplored territory – and the
conjunction of the two sent a frisson of unspeakably pleasure down his spine.
Suddenly, the mercurial thing's sulkiness was gone, and he was all bright
smiles and engaging looks, as if he'd decided to take Mycroft completely into
his confidence – to give him his complete trust. "I can do it, brother!" he
crowed. "I can fool them all, every one! The first time I tried it out, I only
wanted to see if I could. Some of the things I bought, and some Vanessa and
Marianne from the threepenny theater gave me. They helped me get the
underthings right, too – though now I don't need any help, for I've grown quite
good at putting myself together girl-fashion."
"Do you mean to tell me that you've been going about town dressed as a young
woman by way of a lark?"
Sherlock cocked his head, considering. "Not entirely, I don't think. It's been
interesting, trying to get it all right. Everything feels different in these
clothes, Mycroft. Walking, and breathing, and everyone looks at me differently
when I'm dressed like this, especially if I'm doing well at playing my part."
He hesitated, biting at his pink-tinted lip, and then blurted out, "At any
rate, I really don't see why it should be any different from my playing at
being a chimney sweep or a pickpocket. I'd get in trouble in either case, were
I found out. Why do you care so much more about this? You've never minded my
disguises before. In fact, you've encouraged me to put into practice my
observations of others."
Mycroft raised an interrogative eyebrow at his sibling. "Are you truly in doubt
as to the difference of this scenario, Sherlock? You ought not to be; the
situation ought to be more than clear to you. You are not such a child as that
anymore."
"It's due to sex, then, that you object?" The boy's tone was scathing,
sarcastic. He clearly regarded it as an extremely illegitimate reason.
Mycroft sighed, sitting down heavily on the edge of the neatly made bed and
then looking at his little brother, who'd drawn his legs up under his skirts,
clasping his knees tightly in an all-too-familiar gesture of upset and anxiety.
This was not going at all in the way he'd intended – which, considering that it
was Sherlock he was dealing with, was only to be expected.
"We've never really talked about sexuality, you and I," he said at last. "I
suppose you know the biological facts, and I can see clearly enough that you've
gained a thorough knowledge of the variant behaviors contained within human
sexual dimorphism. Do you understand that not all sexual behavior is considered
lawful, petit frere?"
Sherlock nodded, eyes wide, quiet and somehow solemn.
After a long moment, he softly confessed, "I am beginning to suspect, Elder
Brother, that I am not entirely lawful, not in that way."
Mycroft took in the sight of the wretched boy, looking strange and bright in
his borrowed plumage, the fragility of the stilted slope of his narrow
shoulders heightened by the trim of pale lace framing them. "No, Sherlock," he
said, very gently. "I would not be at all surprised if you were not."
It was, after all, scarcely a shocking idea. Sherlock had always been odd, in
every way that a child could be. There was no doubt in Mycroft's mind but that
he would make an equally peculiar man, should he manage to survive that long.
He'd been worried about this for a while now, holding his tongue until reason
for speech became clear. It was clear enough now – clear enough that he had
waited too long, in fact, to speak, and had left Sherlock to find his own way,
and to find it crookedly and strangely.
It took a moment to get Sherlock's clothes off, because he did not know how to
lie back gracefully and let himself be undone. But then the outer gown was off,
and Sherlock's corset laces were tracing patterns over his sharp shoulderblades
and the narrow planes of his back and waist. His underthings were plain enough,
serviceable rather than elegant, but somehow that only served to make them seem
all the move lovely, encasing as they did his youthful pale body. He was so
beautiful that Mycroft could scarcely breathe: brilliant and new and sharp as a
blade, fair and open as a lily, at once innocent and unbearably erotic.
"My dear boy," he said, going to sit beside his little brother, "I will tell
you that I have never believed there to be anything strictly wrong with these
things, though they are against our English laws. They were not always so; many
great wise men knew these forbidden passions, and knew them with the full
permission of their own laws and worlds."
Sherlock peered up at him out of lightning-bright eyes.
Mycroft dropped his own away. "I merely mean for you to know, my dear boy, that
I in no way censure you. We Holmes brothers are an odd lot; we must stick
together in our various peculiarities. But what you have been doing is terribly
unsafe, Sherlock, and I must absolutely insist that it stop. You are known in
these parts as the son of Squire Holmes, and you are not such a commonly-
featured boy as all that. Sooner or later you will be discovered, and then - !"
"So then what am I to do?" Sherlock asked plaintively. "I never have a moment
to myself, and no one ever seems to understand things. Father is worst of all.
This – going out in these disguises, I mean – has been stimulating. If I am not
to be allowed to do anything real, and not be allowed to pretend myself someone
else, even for the course of an afternoon, then what am I to do? Sometimes I
think I will run mad."
"You are to survive, petit frere, and to endure as long as you must, in the
promise that it will get better someday. You will not always be a child,
Sherlock, and when you are a man grown you can decide the course of your own
stars. I have no doubt but that you will do so; you are far too unconventional
to live expectedly. But I will swear to you now that no matter what – no matter
how you decide to live your adult life, I will always support and protect you
to the best of my abilities. All I ask of you in return is that you keep as
safe as you may."
Sherlock nodded his dark head, and Mycroft leaned in to affectionately pull the
long false hair away, letting his brother's short black curls free and then
ruffling them up with a steady hand. "You did it very well, you know," he told
the lad. "A most impressive deception."
"Do you think so? I spent ever so long doing motion studies – not to mention
the hours it took me to get the face paints right. I suppose real girls have
someone about to teach them such things. Learned through experimentation, the
process is quite exhausting!"
"You will be in disgrace with father this evening, you know."
"I know. Does he know that I escaped?"
"He hadn't discovered it when I left the house, and I think it unlikely he's
been enlightened since. You ought to be all right on that score. For that
remark about mother, you're still set to be payed out – but then you deserve
that. You really must learn to mind your tongue, dear heart, or it will get you
into very great trouble some day."
Sherlock gave him a crooked smile. "I'll try."
Mycroft had little enough hope of that. When occasion gave him reason to see
clearly the extent of his little brother's tendencies toward self-destruction,
anxiety for the child threatened almost to overwhelm him. Sherlock was so very
bad at valuing himself above whatever momentary freak had engaged his
quicksilver attention. But there was nothing else to be done, at present;
lecture the boy and he'd just level a sarcastic eye at you and grow suddenly
and mysteriously unable to hear a word you said. It was an impressive instance
of mind over matter. Instead, he said only: "We will need to get home quickly
if we are to remain undiscovered. I don't think you'll be able to get by Father
in that rig; we'd best get you proper now, so as to avoid any greater scenes.
Where are your things?"
"Marianne has them, back at the theater."
Mycroft sighed once more. "Then I suppose that I will have to go around and
collect them. Does she know who you are? Will she give them to me, if I
identify myself?"
"Yes, she knows me. She's been – a very great help, brother mine. Please don't
be rude to her, or give her the cold shoulder. She's kept all my secrets, and
been a good friend."
"I don't doubt it. I'll offer no insult to the lady, Sherlock, no matter as to
her calling. But you, my boy, are to stay here – and to sit quietly until I
return." He reached into his coat, and produced the thin volume of Plato's
Symposium he'd been carrying about in the appropriately-sized pocket. "Read
this over, while you wait for me. You may find in it something to interest
you."
His little brother lay naked in his arms, quiet and contented and still.
Mycroft had never seen him so still – always he was restless and filled with
motion, body and mind. "Are you all right? Sherlock?" he whispered roughly
against the scented neck.
"Mmm," Sherlock murmured wordlessly, and then roused himself to words. "Yes,
I'm quite all right. And – I'm glad. That it was you, and not someone who was
strange to me. I know what to do now, and I don't have to be worried."
"And you'll be able to wait, now, and be safe when I'm not by you? Don't risk
yourself for pleasure, not when I'll care for you whenever you find yourself in
need. Wait, and grow up – and even then, even when you're an adult, I hope that
you never sacrifice your own safety for sexual experience. You are worth far
too much, brother dear.
Leaving the dark room and stepping out once again into the gathering evening
was like exiting a dream. The cooling air slapped at Myroft's face, and he
hurried away from the high street down into the less reputable districts where
more personal wares could be bought and sold. He'd never himself been the
patron of a whorehouse, caring more for his privacy that he did for sexual
congress, but the right places for such things were known to him well enough.
Mycroft Holmes was not such an optimisitc fool as to believe that all would be
well with Sherlock; brotherly acceptance meant very little to fifteen-year-old
boys. The child had acquiesced so quickly as to set his every suspicion
running: he would try it again, with as little care for his own preservation as
ever. It was simply the way he was made.
Very well, then. Mycroft would just have to see to that preservation himself.
He had no intention of letting Sherlock languish in gaol for crimes against
nature, nor to see him laid out and dissected or questioned and viciously
examined as a pervert.
His mental perambulations coincided with unusually brisk physical motion, and
he reached the threepenny opera sooner than might have been expected.
Sherlock's Marianne was a young woman, not yet twenty-five, with a loose pile
of pitch-black hair and a dusky roseate complexion. Her voice was low for a
woman's, and rich. When he approached her and requested Sherlock's things, she
gave him one long assessing look, and then nodded. "You'll be his brother,
then? He said you were coming home for a spell."
Mycroft gave a silent, affirmative nod, feeling uncomfortably as if he'd
somehow failed to measure up to her expectations. The beauty mark on her cheek
was a real one, he noticed, and her accent was unexpectedly fine for a woman of
her station.
"Keep an eye on that one," she said as she handed him the neat bundle of
clothes, bound about with a dove-grey satin ribbon. "He's an odd little bird,
but with a heart of great value."
"I've always kept both my eyes on him," Mycroft told her candidly, "but he
moves too quickly for me to make out clearly."
"Then just love him as best you can," she said, and shut the door. He stood for
a moment silently, watching the playbills for the night's entertainment going
up, and then he trudged back up the street. He had a little brother to
extricate from a tightly-laced corset.
*
Years later, when Sherlock took up with his sun-browned lath-thin ex-Army
medic, Mycroft Holmes did not so much as bat an eyelash. He may, in point of
fact, have smiled a very little bit to see his brother's heart settled at last,
filled with the stillness that only contentment with one's self and one's
companions can grant.
He very carefully did not consider the lovely contrast of his brother's
delicate body with the doctor's broader-built one, or imagine anew the color of
Sherlock's mouth when it was painted red with the pressure and the friction of
kisses.
He said nothing, of course.
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