Since the summary is too big to fit, I wrote it out here.
Once upon a time, in a crack universe...
Sherlock Holmes was an upper middle class consulting detective and Mycroft Holmes was a married MI6 official. Mrs. Hudson was their godmother, if that existed even after the children came of age. She drilled an idea into Mycroft's head to make his brother leave the danger life and lead a sedentary one like himself by settling down and marrying some stupid law-abiding, decent cow in a purely decent family.
John Watson was a sweet, unassuming and kindhearted doctor, who belonged to one of the richest crime families with his elder step-brother, Jim and double step-brother Sebastian. They made it their responsibility to get their little brother married to a decent boy, but they were unsuccessful because no decent family wanted to ally with a criminal family like theirs.
Like in every Johnlock fic, Sherlock and John fell in love and they wanted to spend the rest of their lives with each other. Sherlock is ready to elope but John is insistent that Sherlock's family accept their liaison. But will Mycroft and the rest of the Holmes family accept the alliance?
WARNING: FATAL AMOUNTS OF CRACK. EVERYONE IS DECONSTRUCTED HERE.
There were some of my readers telling me that I was punching out too many sad stories and chapters... so here's my attempt on 10 chapters of total crack and humour and madness.
By the way, just to warn you, Mycroft and Jim are the characters who will be deconstructed the most here. Sherlock and John... well, I'll try to leave them alone. Everyone else... may God be with you.
"Cobra is go, talk later," Mycroft Holmes muttered into his phone, leaning against the window of the Stranger room in Diogenes club. He looked into a file and sat down on his usual seat, yawning widely. The meeting was scheduled to be at four, before Sherlock came back home tired and exhausted with his latest case and running around London. He was still a child, Mycroft sighed, and only marriage could tame him. Happy marriage to a fine, decent lady who had not a speck or shadow of crime in her entire family.
And why marry Sherlock off? Yes, Mycroft loved his little brother more than himself, but now he had a wife too, and it was really, really inconvenient to have Sherlock around in the house. And the times Sherlock had been with a flatmate had been an utter disaster. The first one had almost introduced him to drugs, the second one had introduced him to crime-solving, and the third one had introduced him to hatred towards marriage. Rest others had mostly been criminals. In the light of such disastrous flatmates, Mycroft (actually Mrs. Hudson) decided to get Sherlock a life partner, clean and decent and stable.
But Sherlock was disinterested in every girl he had set him up with. Once or twice, Mycroft even had to send one or two his way, or send him investigating into the way of three or four girls, such that Sherlock might take interest in. He himself used to be a staunch cynic of the institution of matrimony, but now, with a happy domestic life with Andrea and a baby on the way—she had done the test day before yesterday by the way—he knew how satisfying a happy marriage could be. After all, his own parents were testimony to that.
But now that he was happy and well-settled, Sherlock wasn't. And that fuelled by Mrs. Hudson, their godmother telling him to fix Sherlock's marriage with some girl without his notice, and then drug him so that he woke up at the altar after having exchanged vows (somehow), Mycroft had forced Sherlock to join an online dating site, which the elder Holmes brother was going to check up.
Five minutes later, Mycroft's face rested in his palms. Sherlock had still not joined the dating website, and Mycroft was understandably tired.
Fifteen minutes later, Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade of New Scotland Yard stood in front of him, chin up, hands to the side and left leg twitching a bit. Mycroft enjoyed having that effect on people, and Mycroft hated not having a similar effect on Sherlock.
Greg was however, a little wary of the elder Holmes brother. As long as he followed his instructions to the letter... well, no fucking way. He was a sodding Detective Inspector, and not a dog who could be summoned by the big brother of the man who contributed to more than half of his closed cases and to the whole of his annoyance.
Mycroft called him over to his side, and showed him the website.
"Sherlock's name must appear here, when I search for him tomorrow," he growled, and Greg flinched visibly. Mycroft leaned back in his chair, and Greg shrugged, wondering why Mycroft couldn't do it himself.
As if to almost answer his question, Mycroft spoke, "You have much more influence over him than I do. You refuse him cases, unless he joins the site."
Greg forced a wolf-like bark of laugh down his throat. He had so many brilliant ideas for this. Donovan and Anderson would love to wager in for this.
"Alright, you could've told me on phone," Greg shrugged, but Mycroft shook his head, "Detective Inspector, I want you to help me."
Greg frowned. Mycroft? Asking for help? Well, he should as well wish for a sports car too. He did not voice that aloud, instead going with, "For?"
Mycroft stood up, "Come along with me."
Greg groaned. He now knew exactly what Mycroft was calling him for.
Half—an—hour later, Mycroft, Greg and Andrea found themselves in front of a posh mansion with iron gates opening into the villa. This was the three hundred and seventh time Greg found himself being dragged out of his working hours to look for a girl suitable for Sherlock. Although it was fun and was the daily topic of gossip at Scotland yard about how the freak couldn't get a girl for himself and how Mycroft had to go about for the final, the last resort: arranged marriage since Sherlock wasn't interested in dating. But the thing was, it was difficult to find a contender for arranged marriage since most people went for dating first and Sherlock had decided that if divorce was going to be the ultimate result, he had no wish to go through the intermediate steps. At that time, Mycroft had thought that Sherlock had been joking, now he had come to believe that maybe he wasn't.
Anyway, Mycroft Holmes was a staunch Briton, in love with the Queen and the country, a law abiding man in Britain and a rule breaker beyond Her international borders. If there was a girl for Sherlock to marry, she would have to come from a decent family, and Mycroft Holmes had his own formula for determining that.
And Greg Lestrade was happy to work overtime if it only meant that he would not get dragged to what seemed like a very family thing for the Holmeses. In short... going out with Sherlock's big brother and his wife to sort a girl for him... not really his division.
The whole thing could've been ridiculously simple, said Sherlock once. If only it was a girl who had no family. Mycroft had conveniently shut him up by telling him that such girls never opted for arranged marriages. Not that it mattered to Sherlock in any way. He knew that it would be only on the day of betrothal and separation that Sherlock would see her at all.
So, why was Greg dragged to these things? He had realised it after Mycroft had made him meet the first two families. He was supposed to be impersonating Sherlock for the time being, and also because he was an inspector. By some chance, all the families that the Holmeses had gone to were all well-established criminal families who concealed their black-marketing behind the white names of their industries, and Mycroft, ever the workaholic, used Greg and his wife as an witness for everything that happened, and proposing Sherlock's marriage to them was the easiest way to get through. But since Sherlock refused to come for such events, it had to be Greg.
So, by proposing Sherlock's marriage to the daughter of every bad guy in the city, Mycroft successfully usurped their crime networks. Easy peasy.
Meanwhile, in the mansion, they were led to the sitting room where the family in question, the Roman Catholic mother, her husband and their beautiful, docile daughter were sitting, waiting for them. Mycroft shook his hands with him, pretending to appear impressed at the grandeur of the house and the decorum of the servants. He came right down to business, mingling with them as easily as sugar does with water. After fifteen minutes of tiresome chatting and upon noticing that Greg was eyeing the girl meant for Sherlock, Mycroft cleared his throat in a businesslike fashion.
"Uhm... Mr. Sanchez, your daughter is indeed a very beautiful woman, and it'll be my pleasure to..." At this point, Mycroft's neck turned sideways on its own accord in what would seem to an unassuming girl a very rude and perverted gesture and that too in front of her parents and his own wife, which incidentally proved to be the direction in which the bedrooms were also located, "ask for your daughter's hand in marriage..."
Actually this was Mycroft's problem, and also a problem of the office he held in front of the foreign dignitaries, who had no idea about this particular problem of his. As a holder of a "minor position" in the British government, Mycroft Holmes was entitled to all health facilities and insurance, and yet he never put an end to the misunderstanding created by the slight bob of his head in often the wrong direction: out of the room, the lavatory, the bedroom, the closet, all sorts of potential makeout places, so much that for the first year of his job, he was considered to be a complete pervert, and there had been several lawsuits filed against him by women in his workplace.
But now, everyone knew that it was just a problem, not an insinuation or an invitation.
(If you're wondering why the BBC Mycroft doesn't do that... well, he actually does, but since that would be very unsettling for a "serious" character like his, Mr. Gatiss and Mr. Moffat have insisted upon cutting those scenes away)
But the girl in front of him clearly didn't mind, and she didn't say a single word, did not even express unease. Mycroft instantly knew what sort of family they were. He smiled across at the father, who had the top button of his shirt completely done up to the neck, and he was clearly uncomfortable in it.
"But, I really can't lie to such decent, domestic people like yourselves..." and the bob again. The girl across him smiled coyly, "I hold a small, modest office under the British government, but in reality, I supply pot and cocaine to the Eastern European countries, you know... and don't ask about my brother here," he indicated to Greg, who grinned lopsidedly, "Smoking, drinking, gambling are his virtues, so as to speak."
The family across his gasped in horror. Mycroft wondered for a small second whether the information had been false. But the family straightened up, and the father unbuttoned the top button of his shirt with a relieved expression. Mycroft knew that he had them under his thumb now.
"To tell you the truth, I really don't think your daughter deserves such a vile youth as my brother... what happened, dear sir?" Mycroft asked, looking a little surprised. Andrea sat back, smiling to herself at the tactics her husband was playing upon them.
The man laughed heartily, "Oh dear me, Mr. Holmes! Dear me! This drama was seriously smothering me, like choking my breath in my throat, you know? You should've told us, otherwise we wouldn't have put up with this Catholic nonsense!"
Greg reached into his pocket and turned the Dictaphone on as the man blabbed on proudly about how similar their families were and how well they suited each other.
"My Big Daddy is in prison for that Arthur Merlin murder case, Mr. Holmes, oh you should've told us!"
Mycroft guffawed, "Is that so? How fortunate, isn't it, darling?"
"Simply marvellous!" Andrea quipped.
"Oh, Mr. Holmes, I look forward to this union between our families!"
"So do I," Mycroft rose from his chair and shook his hands with him, and with the bob as well. Another two hours, and Mr. Sanchez's conquests were all recorded into the Dictaphone. Mycroft, Andrea and Greg took their leave and exited the mansion safely, having visited the three hundredth and eighth. Operation Cobra was go, over and out.
Another week, and Mr. Sanchez's property was seized, all the black money restored to the British Treasury and the entire Sanchez family in prison for all eternity.
"Sherlock!"
A head full of dark curls turned in Greg's direction, "What? Come to—"
"Your brother busted the arse of the three hundredth crime lord today," Greg yawned as he accompanied Sherlock to the duct tape where Donovan and Anderson were standing, listening to the freak argue with the DI, "Says that you will be thrown off cases if you don't go and join that sodding dating website!"
Sherlock rolled his eyes, "Oh come on! I'm better off as a bachelor. I've heard that women don't like mould and thumbs in the fridge—"
"Look, it's not my problem. You know how your brother is, right? Seriously Sherlock, just make that bloody account, and then maybe your idiot brother will stop—"
"It's not my brother's fault," Sherlock leaned against the police car and spoke in a low, forlorn voice, "My mother's dying wish was to get me married to a decent girl before thirty."
Greg shifted his weight to his left foot uncomfortably, not wanting to go into such a sensitive issue, "Maybe you should honour it."
"What for?" He mumbled, "I—"
"You bloody well listen to me, Sherlock! Your brother regularly drags me out to impersonate you. It's stupid for me, alright? Just—just make an account. You don't have to go and meet these people in person, alright? Just... keep your brother at peace."
At this, Sherlock smirked up at him, "I never keep my brother at peace, Lestrade."
"Okey, dokey," Lestrade, Donovan and Anderson were gathered around the desktop computer in Greg's cabin as Sherlock created his account on the online dating website. It was only after Sherlock had found out that a string of men were being murdered by a lady serial killer that he had agreed to sign up for it. If anything, Greg vowed to send that serial killer chocolates every week for good riddance, that was of course, only after Greg caught her.
"Okay, now to upload a photo. Freak, smile!"
Sherlock gave his most fearsome glare as Donovan clicked a photo of him, and connected the camera to the desktop triumphantly. Sherlock looked away as he saw his latest text. A new case!
He strode out of there promptly, with Greg following him and a shout of, "Donovan!" She strode to walk out of Lestrade's cabin when Anderson pulled her by her wrist. They both grinned knowingly. Sherlock hadn't closed the browser window, and he certainly wasn't going to log into his account again.
"Want to take it all out?" Donovan smirked, and clicked on "Interested In", changing it to: Men.
A black limo pulled up in front of the gates of a large mansion, with a swimming pool on the other side and palm trees adorning the garden. From the doors of the mansion to the gate of the entrance, tough looking security guards stood in a line as the door opened in anticipation for James Moriarty, the city's most fearsome don, and a jumpy little character in a two-piece suit. His body guards saluted him as he approached the car. Jim rolled his eyes at them and took a good look of his handsome face in the tinted glass of the bulletproof limo, checking himself out shamelessly. Jim had always dreamt of being an actor when he first came to London. Soon, before he knew it, he was rotting in a care of a stepmother and with the only lovable character in the house being John Watson, his step-mother's son. Not long after, Jim's father married another woman, whose son Sebastian became bosom friends with him. Jim might be the god of the underworld, but his passion for acting still hadn't died even after all these years.
Jim wanted to be an actor, but he ended up becoming a gangster. But whenever he saw his reflection, the true actor inside him rose like an animal rising from hibernation. He now had only one dream, that his dearly beloved stepbrother John must marry a decent boy and live happily ever after like those handsome princes in children's tales. But why in God's good name would a decent boy marry a Don's brother, if only step? So that's why, he had his own formula to talk with the "good" fella in his own style.
Like the good brothers that they were, Jim and Sebastian took it upon their shoulders to find a boy for their sweet little Johnny when John tried to reassure them that he could find a boyfriend on his own. For the past, John had had bastards for boyfriends. One of them left him at the altar, the other left him to make out with John's receptionist in his own private clinic. But most of the time, John broke up with them. Somehow, the love and the habit to play with risk and danger had rubbed off onto him from his brothers. He got tired, he hated the quietude and the routine that fell upon his life as a result, and most of his boyfriends were with him only because of his money. So, Jim and Sebastian took it upon themselves to find John a husband and let their little brother leave in peace with his clinic and his daily work.
Today, Jim had a meeting with the owner of a steel mill in Germany, whose son had taken an attraction to John when he had been invited to the inauguration of Jim's hotel. With the alliance, Jim's business would prosper and John would've found himself a nice, respectable, decent, and very handsome husband. Jim could make a person say "wow" over and over again like a tape-recorder with the show of grandeur and his yachts. That was where he had been meeting that boy, and more importantly, his parents.
"Everything is God given," Jim would begin humbly while crossing his legs in a comfortable show of power, with his set dialogue for everyone, "Health, wealth, respect in the city, in actually the whole country..."
Jim threw a death glare at one of his companions, who coughed at the last word very pointedly.
He turned to his in-laws-to-be with a heavenly smile on his face, "SO much that if I were to marry my dearest brother to any man, there is no denying that it would be a certain yes."
The in-laws-to-be smiled back at Jim in agreement, as he spoke about how great and how vast his businesses were, and how he had named all of them after John.
"A decent boy is very hard to come by, a decent family much less..."
"But," the boy's father interrupted. In usual cases, Jim would have loaded all the barrels of his revolver into that man's brain for having interrupted him, in this case...
"But, we really haven't the faintest idea about the businesses you were talking about. For example, John Airlines... John Textiles and Company?"
As if right on cue, Jim heard a jubilant scream coming from somewhere outside, out in the waters at a distance from his yacht. His smile faded as he realised that it was his crackpot of a lawyer, Crayhill.
"Sir!" Crayhill shouted, almost enough to shatter all the glass panes, "I have such good news that you'll want to jump off the face of the Earth and go to the moon."
"Great, simply great," Jim groaned to himself. His two companions, one with crutches and the other, a bald headed man he used to use as his sniper, groaned in unison as Crayhill came rushing into where Jim had been sitting with the "decent" family.
"Sir, you won't believe the double good news I've brought for you, sir! One phone call, and the mention of your name did all the magic, sir!"
Jim slumped against the back of the sofa, knowing that he would have to go back with nothing but spilled milk, "Is that so?"
"Oh, that Abbey murder case on you, it's all resolved now, sir! I told the brother, sir, that if he would ever press charges against you, you'll destroy his whole family, sir!"
Jim could seriously hear a sax playing in his ears, making fun of him for all his efforts being dashed over mud. He stole a look at the scandalised family, who gasped, horrified at the "good news".
"And," Crayhill didn't stop there, "Richter took his police complaint back, wants to settle it with you, sir! I have the twenty million in my briefcase here, sir, and the rest thirty, he'll surrender over to you on Thursday, sir!"
By this time, if it were a cartoon, Crayhill the lawyer would have clearly seen smoke coming out of Jim's ears like from a pressure cooker. Nevertheless, he passed the teapot to the horrified family, who looked like they had made their decision.
"Tea?" He tried to smile innocently and failed miserably.
Jim stared helplessly as the decent family made a run for it in their speedboat. He let out a defeated exhale as Crayhill stared at him incredulously.
"Who were they, sir?" asked Crayhill's apprentice. Jim finally snapped, and dragging him by his collar, threw him overboard.
"GO and fucking ask them!" He bellowed, and wanted to crumble in a heap of skin and bones. It was so bad, so stupid! Every time Jim managed to find a decent and fairly well-off boy for John, he either ended up as a sham after Jim's money, or they came to know about Jim's real businesses.
Crayhill gulped as Jim fretted around the deck frantically. One of Jim's companions supplied helpfully, "They came with a marriage proposal for John—"
"From Germany!" Jim bellowed frustrated with everything, as Crayhill winced, "First get a boy, then a gay boy, and then a decent gay boy, and then a decent gay boy from a fucking decent and well-off family! Fuck decent!" He shouted at Crayhill, "Had to tell them a thousand lies! I was making a fucking fool of myself with John Airlines and John Textiles and John Hopkins Hospital!"
"S-s-sorry, sorry sir!" Crayhill stammered, "I-I thought-in-in excitement—"
"What the hell do you mean by 'excitement'?" He yelled, "Where the hell am I sitting, who the bloody hell am I talking to, what am I talking about, can't you process it-control, Jim," he drew a sharp breath and closed his eyes, fisting his hands... "Oi, Legless," he called the companion with the crutches, "tell him what the fuck I can do when I get angry!"
Almost immediately, as if a prose learnt by heart, Legless began in a bland, expressionless voice, "I have a prosthetic leg. I was a big-shot hockey champion. One day, Mr. Moriarty got angry with me about something or other and he broke my two legs into four pieces with my own hockey stick," Crayhill cringed in fear at that but Legless continued his verse, "but being a good man at heart, he immediately took me to a hospital, got an operation done with a prosthetic leg. He gave me these crutches and-"
"Yeah, yeah, shut up!" Jim snapped, as Crayhill turned back to him, literally trembling with fear at Jim's nonchalant pose seething with fury, "Now tell me, what should I do to you?"
"S-s-sir," he stammered, "I-I thought that if-if I g-gave you two-two-two good—doog, sorry-good n-news... you'll p-pat my b-back," with this, he gestured to his back and tried to make a visual of those pats. Jim turned to his seven feet tall body guard, and motioned to him to give to Crayhill exactly what he needed. By the looks of things, a quick congratulatory pat was out of the option.
"Control, Jim," he took in deep breaths, "Control."
"Philip! PHILIP!" Donovan called Anderson over to her desk as they were about to leave for the day and Anderson had to give to Greg the test results for some sample that he had passed on to the forensic expert, "Look! Come over! See this!"
Anderson strode over to Donovan's desk and peered into the monitor. She had opened the dating website that Sherlock had signed up for a week ago. In fact she was in Sherlock's account, having changed the password for it. The impossible had happened. Someone had actually messaged Sherlock back, even after the devilish glare as a profile picture that Donovan had set up for him.
"Jesus!" Philip looked at her, "We've got to tell Lestrade! The freak actually—"
On the screen, there was the photo of a blond young man with a charming smile.
"Victor Trevor." They both rolled the name together on their tongue. The name was too normal, too strangely normal for Sherlock.
"You gonna tell him?" Donovan asked him, but Anderson shook his head vehemently.
"Neither am I... but Lestrade's gonna find out eventually... he's awfully protective of the freak—"
"You know, he's got a name," came a strict voice from behind them. Lestrade was looking down at his Detective Sergeant and the forensic analyst. Greg crossed his arms, "What's all the fuss about?"
Donovan didn't speak, simply pointed to the screen, at the notification: one unread message.
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