They say that opposites attract. But divorce rates offer staggering statistics that more often than not, they don't. Life is almost always anything but a fairytale. Sometimes though, with a little luck and maybe a pinch of magic, the odds can be overcome and conquered. Happiness, true soul-deep ecstasy, can be found and protected for the rare treasure that it is.

Mycroft Holmes stared at the man sleeping softly upon his stomach, his face turned towards him. The early morning light filtered through the bedroom window and limned the man's prematurely grey hair in a silvery-gold glow. The elder Holmes brother was struck at how heart-wrenchingly beautiful the man was.

The world was a place of such chaotic brutality. Change, the ever-present force that marched along with the progression of time, was hardly ever predictable. And even when it was, moments in time were singular and fleeting. What was here now could be gone tomorrow. Entropy was present in every particle of the universe. The progress of change was inexorable. It was quite possibly the one and only truism of this plane of reality occupied by humanity.

Mycroft closed his eyes, resisting the urge to reach out and touch his bed-partner. The man hardly ever got a full night's worth of sleep. And as Mycroft could well sympathize from personal experience, he deserved the chance to catch up whenever he could. He simply admired Gregory Lestrade's sleep-relaxed facial features, a bubbling warmth suffusing his chest as he took in the sight.

They'd been together for a bit over a year now. And yet there were times even now when he would awake in the gloaming of the predawn hours and marvel that this priceless gem of a man was truly flesh and blood and not some imagined fantasy.

Anthea had told him once in a moment of bald candor that she firmly believed this man had saved Mycroft from his own self-destruction. The grief that assaulted every second of his existence after Sherlock's demise had very nearly pushed him over the edge. And while it may have never outwardly affected his ability to conduct his affairs of State, it had left him a frozen and shadowed husk of a man who many had deemed frigid and nearly heartless even before his little brother's suicide.

But this man, this glorious man, with whom he now shared his bed had somehow found a way to glue together the shattered fragments of his soul.

His handsome doe-eyed DI never ceased to amaze. Mycroft certainly hadn't made things easy. Yet Gregory had stayed, even when the vast majority of other people would have thrown their hands in the air and given up. Over the weeks and months that followed Gregory had shown him that he still had the capacity to feel things that were wholly different from pain, grief, guilt, and self-loathing. He'd reached into Mycroft's heart without so much as a by-your-leave and had found the merest spark of joy that lay buried in the depths of the elder Holmes brother's tortured heart. And against all odds, he'd drawn that spark out and carefully nurtured it into a blazing fire.

Mycroft knew he loved this man as fully and deeply as the human heart allowed. He wanted nothing more than to wake up next to Gregory Lestrade every morning for the rest of his days. They had never talked about marriage, . . . not with the antiquated legislature still on the books. But things were changing fast. In fact, Mycroft had it on Good Authority that a marriage law was almost going to certainly be ratified in the next month.

He allowed himself a little smile.

For the first time in his life, he was beginning to feel a strange and alien sensation of happiness that he hadn't ever known existed. All because of the forthright, patient, and undeniably charming silver-haired Detective Inspector sprawled in contented slumber beneath his sheets.