Written for the "Let's Write Sherlock!" Challenge #6: Horror.
Enjoy!
It was difficult, sometimes, to resist the urges, but Mycroft had years of experience. Even minor government officials had to keep their noses clean, and oh, what scandal the rags would make if they knew his secret!
He envied his brother, in a way. The younger Holmes had his issues: Addiction, the Asperger's (there had never been a formal diagnosis, of course; Mother and Father would never allow testing or evaluation), the inability to connect on an emotional level with another person, the inability to connect on a physical level with another person.
Well, the inability to connect with another living person.
But even through all his faults and shortcomings compared to Mycroft's station and achievements, Sherlock had at least remained true to himself. Sherlock hid but didn't deny his predilections. He insinuated himself into places that allowed him access to what he wanted—what they both wanted, but Mycroft denied—and partook on a semi-regular basis.
That his brother continually derided him about the personal sacrifice he chose to make—"How's the diet?" and other childish japes—didn't help.
Sometimes, however, sometimes when the stress got to be too much, when the weight of the world bore down too heavily on his shoulders, all he wanted was to curl up and indulge. He wanted nothing more than to eat and eat until his stomach could hold no more, and then he'd fill his mouth and just wait, wait until there was just enough room in his gut to swallow that final, savory mouthful and have the euphoric sensation of being full to bursting again—
Sometimes, when he needed it most, Sherlock called him.
"There's one at Barts. Enjoy."
Sherlock never texted when offering this to him. There would be no evidence of the exchange. Mycroft never responded to the succinct fragments of sentences either, and his younger sibling would disconnect the line.
Mycroft never knew how Sherlock could determine it was one of his danger nights, but then again, they were brothers. If family didn't know you, who could?
So Mycroft found himself walking the silent halls under the hospital proper. It was after hours; it was dim. His wingtips made muted clicking noises on the tile.
No one stopped him. No one saw him.
Then, in the chill of the morgue, he removed his suit jacket and hung it on a hanger meant for lab coats. He debated removing his waistcoat and shirt, but time was pressing. He settled for rolling up his shirt sleeves to his upper arms. Finally, his breath coming more quickly in the adrenaline rush of anticipation, he turned on his heel to the bank of drawers set in the wall opposite.
Only one could have been the one Sherlock had meant.
"Doe, John; Hyde Park"
Mycroft opened the latched door. A breath of colder air from the refrigerated unit burst forth, eddying around him with the faint underlying scent of rot.
Mycroft breathed deeply, nostrils flaring, to hold it in his lungs for a moment, then tugged the tray out.
The man had been stripped and washed, although not shaved. The suggestion of the soap the attendants had used warred with the aroma of decay, and Mycroft wrinkled his nose with distaste. But beggars can't be choosers, as his Father would say.
The y-shaped autopsy incision was still fresh, the black sutures and red line of it vibrant in their contrast to the pallor of the body. For a moment Mycroft tried to fight his baser instincts, tried to deduce who this man had been in life, tried to reason and think and hold tight to humanity.
In the end however, like always, his mouth flooded with saliva and he fell on the corpse with a cry of relief. He made short work of the sutures holding the skin together, and found the sweet meat of organs: deep-colored, shiny jewels buried below the surface. He filled his mouth again and again, and he reveled in the ecstasy of it.
DI Lestrade had meant to get here during regular business hours. He didn't, of course; so many of his intentions were side-tracked by other, more pressing matters. The dead didn't carry as much importance as the living.
He needed to see the DOA the beat cops had brought in. There was a notation in the report he'd received that struck him as odd, a tattoo that may link that man with others in a human-trafficking ring he'd been building a case against for months now. Any break or lead had to be investigated.
No one stopped him. No one saw him.
He pushed open the swinging doors to the morgue and came face-to-face with the vision of Mycroft Holmes elbow deep in a corpse, smeared and splattered with blood and bile.
Lestrade stopped short. The doors closed on their automatic hinges with a sigh.
Mycroft looked up, caught.
The world stopped spinning and held its breath.
"Another one," Lestrade said, his voice not horrified, not angry. It was resigned.
Mycroft remained silent. Silence prodded lesser men to fill it, and he used that to his advantage a thousand times over. He could not help but swallow what he already had in his mouth, however. That bite of liver slipped down his throat with wet delight.
"I should have known," Lestrade continued.
Mycroft waited, now still as the grave.
"I should have known! Sherlock and his . . . well, exactly this. And you, now! Of course. Runs in the family, does it?"
It was almost a rhetorical query but Mycroft felt compelled to answer.
"It does." In this chilled air, Mycroft's voice was deeper. He didn't take his hands out of the body, but straightened to his full height. He continued, "Detective Inspector, I would ask that you not speak a word of this—"
"Seriously?" Lestrade interrupted, with a laugh.
Mycroft figured he struck less of an authoritative pose in the current situation.
"Mr. Holmes, I've kept Sherlock's secret for years now. I'm certainly not going to blab that I found his brother—who has more means to make me disappear forever—eating the corpse of a nameless, unidentified man. Whatever your habits, I don't care."
Mycroft narrowed his eyes. "You don't."
Lestrade shook his head. "I don't. Yeah, I could run you in for desecration of a corpse or cannibalism or some other nonsense. But Sherlock assists me. You've pulled some strings now and again—don't think I don't know about that! I don't care, because other things people are doing are worse. You're not murdering these people. You're not vandalizing graveyards. You're not hurting anybody. You're kind of scavenging, I guess. And I guess people like you—ghouls, Sherlock has said?—have been around just as long as we have. So as long as you don't start doing anything overtly illegal to do . . . this, it makes no difference to me.
"Okay?"
The taller man considered this for a moment. "You're an astute man, Detective Inspector."
Lestrade waved off the praise. "Greg. Please. I'll leave you be, but I do need to see this guy's right forearm."
Mycroft assented, even going so far as to pull his hands out of the abdomen to stand aside. The slight suction felt as he did so was a sweet as a lover's caress.
He sucked idly on his fingers while Lestrade examined the arm.
Finally the Detective Inspector was finished.
"There's a washroom through that door," he said, although Mycroft already knew of it. "Sherlock left some flannels there, when he cleans up."
Looking over him critically, Lestrade continued, "I think he leaves an extra shirt in there too. You look like you may need it; you've got some red on you."
In his haste and hunger, Mycroft hadn't noticed he'd soiled his sleeves, or that he'd managed to smear fluids down the front of his shirt. Later he would have to decide if sending the suit to the cleaner was worth the possibility of people talking, or if he'd just have it burned.
"I'll drop an email to Miss Hooper to let her know the state of the corpse. She'll come in early and tidy up before anyone else comes in," Lestrade had gone on.
"She's aware as well?"
Lestrade snorted. "Yeah, she knows too. How do you think Sherlock gets all those bodies and body parts for his . . . experiments?"
He hadn't considered that, not really. He'd kept track on whether or not his brother was grave-robbing, but there were never any reports and Sherlock never smelled of freshly turned earth or embalming fluids—
"And John Watson?"
An eyeroll was controlled, but barely, as an answer to that ridiculous question.
Mycroft abandoned that line of thought. "Thank you, Detective Inspector. I appreciate your discretion and you not . . ."
"Freaking out?" the older man filled in the blank with a grin. "You're welcome. Like I said, as long as you're discreet, I can turn a blind eye like I do for your brother. And call me Greg."
Mycroft acquiesced. "Greg. Thank you again."
In a normal situation, under the eyes of human society, etiquette would dictate he offer a hand to the other man. Although he'd cleaned most of the fluids off his fingers, there was still enough wet Mycroft didn't think Greg would appreciate a hand shake.
He nodded instead, received slight nod and a forefinger's touch to the forehead in return, and the Detective Inspector was gone, back through the swinging doors.
Mycroft returned to his interrupted meal slowly, with more thoughts in his head than had been. Sherlock, his off-putting, rude brother, had found people to help him procure what he wanted. He'd found people who supported the Holmes' family's ghoulish propensities. That was curious, and a little bit worrisome, and more than a little bit relieving all in one.
It would do to keep closer tabs on all of them.
fin.