"Nicked all his Smurfs? Broke his Action Man?"
Mycroft Holmes, aged nine, three months and a day, was a touch more than displeased when he found Sherlock gleefully setting his jigsaws alight in the shadiest part of the mansion gardens.
He hadn't yelled. In fact, his demeanour didn't change at all. Mycroft Holmes simply turned on his heel and marched away, straight through the oak doors, nodding fleetingly at his Mummy in the drawing room and allowed himself to smirk at the swish of a long coat as Sherlock came haring after him. He reached the door to the first floor bathroom before his brother caught up despite being so unusually coltish. The pair of them stopped still, eyeing each other coldly until the younger blushed and chose to admire his slightly muddied shoes.
"You're not going to tell Mummy." He said factually and Mycroft frowned, how he hated that his brother just knew everything about everyone with barely a glance – even the bits he couldn't understand.
"Should I?"
The two boys were quiet at dinner. Neither said a word other than a quick thank you as they departed. Sherlock was fussed over, normally he had at least one startling observation to make about the staff, last week he'd had two of them fired, but today whatever he noticed he kept to himself.
In truth, the little boy was anxious. He'd been so bored that morning; Mummy had confiscated his bee larvae experiment and shrieked at him for an hour when she found the Bunsen burner under his bed. At her wit's end, she'd even gone as far as taking his violin so he couldn't chase Mycroft about the mansion playing odd little arpeggios until he turned purple. As a result, a bored Sherlock and some wonderfully aflame 1000 piece jigsaws.
But Mycroft had caught him, happily throwing his Houses of Parliament into the fire piece by piece and wondering if there were any dead frogs about in the bushes. Sherlock had expected Mycroft to hit him, or run and tell Mummy, but he did neither and that worried Sherlock more than anything. That meant rache.
All afternoon he'd been forced to sit with his Mummy while she read aloud from one of her books.
"Oh, Sherlock darling I do wish you'd relax." But how could he, sitting poker straight on the edge of the red velvet chaise, listening to drab characters and a terribly predictable plot – Sherlock could have told her the ending but he wanted his violin back – when Mycroft could be anywhere in the house destroying his things?
Eventually, he became so twitchy that he was sent away, forbidden to go cause his brother grief. Sherlock looked everywhere for Mycroft but couldn't even catch a glimpse of him so decided to go account for everything in his room.
The violin had gone, obviously, as had the bees and the Bunsen but nothing else appeared to be touched.
It was perplexing, and Sherlock liked being perplexed even less than his physics tutor.
"Good night Sherlock." Mycroft whispered through the gap in his little brother's door, ignoring the slight rush of affection as Sherlock shuffled in his bed, black curls like a bird's nest because he'd been tossing and turning. "Good night Sir Arthur." Sir Arthur was Sherlock's teddy bear, a fat, lumpy old thing that had once belonged to their grandmother and had been passed down to him. Of course, Sherlock wasn't content with an average name for his bear so had gone with the stately, Sir Arthur. It was custom for Mycroft to bid them both goodnight.
"Night Mycroft."
Mycroft was already safely inside his room when he hear Sherlock's high pitched scream and the thundering of feet as Mummy flew down the hall to find out what was wrong with him.
Revenge, as always, was sweet and Sherlock wouldn't be sleeping with any kind of stuffed animal any time soon.
A/N: Thank you for reading:) and thanks to everyone who read and reviewed my last Sherlock story, A Three Patch Problem (shameless plug) - it means a lot :) This was wonderfully beta'd by FezzesRCool25, if you're a whovian or are into Harry Potter you should check out her stuff, 'tis brilliant.
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