A/N: Inspired by my ceiling.
When Sherlock is eleven, they move house. It is for a new beginning, Mummy says, after Father's death, and Mummy decides Sherlock is old enough to decorate his room as he likes. Somehow, Sherlock convinces Mycroft to help him.
Mycroft regrets this decision as soon as he gets to the doorway of what is to be Sherlock's room. The wallpaper is peeling, and the ceiling needs a fresh coat of paint. The floor is discolored concrete, and a musty smell fills the whole room. The whole room could do with a scrubbing, and Mycroft would like to simply shake his head and leave, but Sherlock is tugging at his sleeve and chattering about how he wants to do it, so Mycroft rolls up his sleeves and follows.
Windows opened wide and armed with buckets of hot suds, they begin. There is a water fight while they're scrubbing the walls, and halfway through Mycroft decides that all the wallpaper should come off. This means paint, but it would be easier to paint the whole room, he reasons, then to re-paste or replace the paper. So it comes down, and Sherlock gets a strip stuck to the back of his neck. It takes hair with it when it comes away.
When the walls are bare and the floors and ceiling have been scrubbed, it's time to paint. Old tee shirts, trousers from the rag bucket, and drop-clothes are named imperative by their mother, and the brother's roll their eyes and comply.
They start with the walls, painted a vibrant dark blue that reflects light when there is any, and makes the whole room cave-like in the absence of it. Sherlock gets a splotch on his cheek, and it's nearly dry before Mycroft notices. Sherlock decides soon after that he does not like face flannels.
The ceiling is next, and after a few attempts to paint in straight lines end in streaky, drippy paint, Sherlock stares at the ceiling for several minutes before climbing the stepladder with a brush and paint. He proceeds to paint the ceiling in small, circular patterns, moving the brush on an axis for each stroke. The end result looks similar to the clouds one would see on a child's drawing, stacked half-circles one on top of the next. It looks like round shingles to Mycroft, but Sherlock likes it, so they leave it. He manages to get his hair filled with the cream colored paint, making him look far more like an old man than Mycroft would have thought possible.
Finally, because the sun is going down and there's no more time for a trip to the store for supplies and they are determined to finish today, they take large white tiles, twenty centimetres each, and glue them to the floor, meticulously press the grout into the cracks for appearance. Mycroft figures they'll locate a rug later to cover them.
When at last the boys stumble from the room, covered in paint and grout and paste, they spend commandeer the bathroom, one after the other, to shower, and rush downstairs to fall onto their mattresses, made up with sheets on the floor of the kitchen while they move in. As Sherlock drifts off, cuddled up against Mycroft's chest like a teddy bear, he hears Mycroft chuckle into his hair. "Wha's funny?" he mumbles sleepily.
"Tomorrow we get to do my room."
A/N: Seriously, I got all that because I was looking at the ceiling and wondering what to write. I'll post a pic when I can be bothered to find a camera and take a picture.