Part 1
"Something isn't right."
John barely looked up from his laptop. It was a difficult email to write and he'd been trying to broach an appropriate way of conveying 'your daughter wants nothing more to do with you' for the last ten minutes. His fingers hovered over the hatefully unproductive keys.
"I know you heard me."
Clearly Sherlock decided when and how often John was a necessary player in one of his monologues. Mostly, he could have been a floating balloon head, but this time it seemed, participation was necessary. Unfortunately.
"Yeah I did hear you Sherlock. Something isn't right, but then why would you want it to be? Surely your bread and butter is all about things not being … right."
If Sherlock conceded to any part of this argument, he seemed unable to capitulate to it, turning from the window towards his friend (and co-worker), clothed in both a blue silk dressing gown and the heavy (and disagreeable) burden of perplexity.
"Certainly, you have a point John (although I do recognise sarcasm when I hear it) and while I do succumb to the lure of deductive reasoning on a regular basis, I do not revel in navigating the insidious miasma of sticky intrigue that curls its way around my brother, pulling me in when I least desire it."
"Mycroft been nagging you over a case again then?" John relaxed, slightly vexed at the trivial reason behind such melodramatic disruption when he least needed it. "Isn't that his M.O.? Brother baiting, or inciting passers-by into government funded espionage to keep tabs on you? Tell me something I don't know." His fingers hovered again, constructing a kindly adverbial phrase to soften the blow to the lacklustre but pitiable Mr Rucastle regarding his absent daughter.
Sherlock had flung himself across the sofa, lighting a cigarette and inhaling his first breath of it before hitting the cushions. John had to wonder how he managed to inject feline grace into the most ugly of movements. Sherlock looked at him, vulpine through the smoke.
"Yes, it's a talent of mine; people think so slowly before they act, resulting in the clunky and clumsy rendering of their movements. It's quite avoidable if your thoughts move a little quicker."
John scowled; he hated it when Sherlock peered into his brain like this.
"However," continued Sherlock, "in answer to your question, I WILL tell you something you don't know."
John's fingers halted again, waiting.
"It isn't being bothered by Mycroft that bothers me - quite the opposite in fact." He inhaled deeply, crossing pale, bony ankles and blowing smoke into the air above his head. "It's the fact I haven't seen or heard from him in over a month and I have absolutely no idea why."
Sherlock abruptly turned his dark head, squinting through dissipating smoke at his friend, the crease of puzzlement still evident between his brows.
"I hate not knowing," he breathed.
~x~
Part 2:
Her hair was less immaculate than he was used to seeing before she swept through it, brusque, with a Pearson hairbrush, transforming back into her public self. He adored how he now was able to compare the outer serenity with the layers beneath; where her lack of composure and …. limitations almost took his breath away.
Pearls fastened, skirts smoothed into their customary stiffness and shoulders squared, ready for the real world. He watched, indulgent, spread comfortably across the bed, eyes soft, and caring less about it than was advisable.
"Careful Mr Holmes." She was applying lipstick between the words and his heart leapt, just a little.
"Should I be? Need I be?"
She snapped the lid (Givenchy: ashes of roses) and turned, smiling but with an air of admonishment he endeavoured to savour.
"Sentiment. What is it we already know?"
He lay back on the bed, holding his cigarette, blowing smoke upwards and making no attempt to dress. He really was becoming quite dangerously reckless. It would have to stop. Eventually.
"The chemical defect? The lure humanity cannot resist? The caring that has no advantage? Always an intriguing little set of rules to protect those who need such protection." He smiled. "Which we do not."
She capitulated then, smiling through admonishment, with eyes meeting his - hand reaching out and taking his cigarette, him allowing such a thing.
"Indeed we do not." She inhaled, leaning back and allowing him to admire her throat, which of course he did.
"You really are an atrocious big brother, aren't you?" The volte-face was so abrupt he almost felt the whiplash, but caught up instantly.
"Appalling, yet I have always tried to give Sherlock what he needs, rather than what he may imagine he wants."
"Such a Nietzschean approach to filial bonds my dear. One might think you had more than a small shaft of concern, even love…"
Mycroft felt the inevitable (detestable) clutch in his chest but refused to bat it away; she would know, like always.
Stubbing out the cigarette, she leant forward, realising that some games should not be played and gently touched him, a warmth from her eyes reflected in the hand across his shoulder.
"The girl?"
"Certainly the girl. Always the girl. It has become a more frustrating cluster of mind games than the Moriarty conundrum."
"My goodness. I thought, perhaps, after Sherrinford…?"
"Infuriatingly, no. It appears that peeling back the layers of your atrophied heart and making a coffin into matchwood with your bare hands can be swiftly compartmentalised into the filing cabinet of your audaciously named memory banks."
"The Mind Palace?" Her smile was gentle, encouraging.
He shook his head, refusing to acknowledge his brother's self indulgent foibles, but standing and pulling his shirt from the floor, acknowledging subconsciously that a professional laundering might be necessary.
"I will not be compartmentalised along with everything Sherlock wishes not to think about. This has gone on long enough and all manner of cases or distracting intrigues have ceased to be sufficient to build up what our childhood stripped away."
She listened, as such confidences - such outpourings - were not common fodder, even between the two of them.
"Stubborn lack of self-awareness and regression into childhood rituals are no longer to be tolerated; Sherlock must open up what is left of his heart before his outstanding mind has chance to … meddle."
"Ah." Instantly she saw him. "You mean us? Does he even suspect?"
Mycroft fastened the ruined buttons carefully, focused in his intent.
"It is merely a matter of time. It will be more than tiresome to engineer, but if successful, Sherlock will be irretrievably distracted by Dr Hooper…"
"You have a plan?" She almost clapped in delight, but that simply would not have done.
Shrugging on his jacket, Mycroft Holmes cast around a hopeful eye for his briefcase and umbrella since he realised the patience of his driver should not really be tested beyond the bounds of what was tolerable. He looked up at her, a discernible glint illuminated the habitually beleaguered cast to his eye.
"Indeed, and if successful, so many birds will find themselves denuded by a single stone."
As she watched him alight into its sleek blackness and the car pull away, she wondered if Mycroft Holmes had any idea how inadequately his rules regarding caring protected him where his little brother was concerned.
"Sentiment," she sighed. "Naturally."