A/N: So all of a sudden I've become obsessed with kidfics and I don't know why. This is the second one I've written in two weeks and I already have an idea for a third and half the story I'm writing now takes place when Sherlock's a kid. Since I'm getting so much inspiration for them I'm considering making them into a series, so y'all should tell me if that's a good idea or not. Actually y'all should tell me anything you feel about it because I feed on reviews.
Mycroft Holmes liked to think that, even at eleven, he had something of a mark on his four year old brother. Yet somehow the boy still managed to surprise him every day; Mycroft found it quite interesting himself, but Sherlock's oddities simply confused and baffled their parents, who didn't understand him compared to their more normal elder child. So, while they did their best to overlook Sherlock's behaviors, Mycroft actively tried to thresh out what was going on in the little one's head. Sometimes it seemed like there was something new cropping up every day.
One day, shortly after lunch (which in their household translated to 'getting Sherlock to eat anything') Mycroft went into his father's study to get himself a book to read and found the younger boy crouched over a thin book on the floor. Mycroft leaned over to see what he was reading; it was about speleology. Mycroft knew he was reading every word, but he didn't know how much Sherlock was actually taking in. Mycroft shrugged and moved over to the desk, grabbing himself a book about politics. After a few minutes, he noticed something odd in his peripheral vision; he looked away from his book and concentrated on Sherlock, watching him read. Sure enough, just as he'd noticed, Sherlock read down to the end of the page, but instead of turning it, went back up to the top and read again.
"Hey, Sherlock?" The young boy glanced at him in acknowledgment and then looked away again. "What are you trying to do? Do you not understand something in the book?" Sherlock shook his head, going back to his fifth consecutive reading of the same pages. Mycroft marked the place in his book and went next to his little brother.
"I like this book," Sherlock muttered. He scanned his finger down the page as he read, and carefully touched one of the illustrations in the upper corner. Mycroft saw an opportunity and decided to take it; it wasn't often that Sherlock spoke, but they could sometimes get him talking about something he enjoyed.
"What do you like about it?"
"The pictures are nice. And I like the rocks and the science." Mycroft was amazed; that was the most Sherlock had spoken at once in as long as he'd been alive. It was like the boy just wasn't interested in making noise. It wasn't until he was nearly two that he'd made even a sound, and even though after that he could speak in nearly full sentences, he rarely did, preferring gestures and simply getting things for himself.
"Caves are very interesting," Mycroft agreed, trying to keep him going. "And that book does have nice pictures." He made to point to the one in the lower right corner. It was a picture of a particularly delicate structure called a cave raft, that formed when the limestone in water droplets hardened on the surface into paper-thin structures that really did look like rafts. Mycroft leaned over to read the caption: 'When the pond grows still, calcite precipitates on its surface as rounded, floating cave rafts. Each raft will eventually sink, either from its increased weight or because of a disturbance of the surface.'
Sherlock pointed to each of the other pictures in turn, but didn't touch that one. Mycroft reached out for it but as his finger got closer his little brother seized his hand urgently. "Can't touch it!" He pushed Mycroft's hand back from the picture, looking slightly panicked.
"Why can't I touch it?" Mycroft decided to try again, but Sherlock pushed his hand back even more vehemently than the first time.
"You can't touch it," he repeated, pinning Mycroft's hand to his side. "It'll fall." Mycroft was now thoroughly confused; the book was spread out on a flat surface. How could it possibly fall?
"How will it fall? It's flat on the ground." Sherlock jabbed his finger at the caption wordlessly. Mycroft looked it over again, trying to figure out what he meant. It still didn't make any sense. How could it-? Oh… That might be it. Yeah, that would- well, make sense wasn't quite the right word for what Mycroft thought might be causing his brother's issue. It was more of a hunch.
Sherlock finished the page yet again and reverted back to the first line. "Is it the picture? Is that why you won't let me turn the page?" Sherlock nodded.
"It'll fall," he repeated shortly. Well, so much for getting him to talk. Mycroft nodded slowly to himself, his suspicions confirmed. The line from the caption, that was it. 'Each raft will eventually sink… because of a disturbance of the surface.'
"Do you think they'll fall if we turn the page?" Sherlock nodded, wrapping his hands around the picture to make sure there was no way for anyone to touch it. Mycroft was not sure how to get around this one. Sherlock had had other random fears over the course of his four years. No one was sure what caused them, but it seemed to be a combination of his sharp mind making every connection it could muster and a difficulty telling the difference between fantasy and reality. "Why do you think they'll fall?" The only way to get around his fear was to figure out what was causing it.
"'Cause the caption says so," he responded bluntly. "If we mess up the surface they'll fall and I don't want them to fall." Mycroft bit his lip, not sure how to convince Sherlock that wasn't going to happen.
"Sherlock, it's just a picture. The rafts are somewhere else. You know that right?" he asked gently. It wouldn't be the first time the little boy had confused the real with the fake. Once, after they went to a movie, Sherlock had thought that the villain was in the theater and had run away before his family could stop him. An hour later they'd found him hiding underneath the concession stand. He had kicked the attendant who walked by, under the impression that it was the bad guy coming to get him. That time, as with most of the others, it was Mycroft who finally managed to get the little boy out, and it usually fell to him to talk Sherlock down when these irrational worries struck him.
"No they're not," Sherlock responded. "They're on the page. It says so above them." Mycroft didn't know how to get around this one; he couldn't convince Sherlock that the cave rafts were, in fact, in Brazil and not on the page of a book on a study floor. So, he would have to be blunt about it. He reached for the page. "No!" Sherlock sounded petrified. "If you turn the page they'll fall!"
"No they won't, Sherlock, I promise." The little one looked at him.
"You promise?" Mycroft smiled at his younger brother."
"Yes, Sherlock, I absolutely promise that they will not fall if I turn the page." Slowly, Mycroft turned the book over to the next pair of pages, smoothing them down. Sherlock looked at him warily.
"Can we check if they've fallen?" Mycroft smiled at him again.
"Alright, we can check if you want to." He took his hand off the book and let Sherlock turn the page back to make sure the cave rafts hadn't toppled and sunk to the bottom. The four year old breathed an audible sigh of relief when he saw that the picture hadn't changed. "See? I told you I promised nothing will change." Sherlock smiled faintly, then carefully turned the page back over so that the cave rafts were again facing the bottom, but couldn't resist the compulsion to check one more time before he turned it for good.
Mycroft leaned back and smiled. Finally, it seemed, his brother had gotten over that particular anxiety. He stood back up and returned to the desk; his politics book was waiting to be read and he had another four hours before dinner. It was another ten minutes before his brother spoke again. "None of the other pictures are going to move, are they?"
"I absolutely, one hundred percent, for sure promise that you can turn as many pages as you want and the pictures will stay the same." Sherlock nodded slowly.
"Thank you."
"It was no problem." It was something of a problem, of course. These constant, unexpected anxieties were becoming hard to manage and nobody knew how to get rid of them; it was almost as if his mind refused to fear normal things and so made up for it by fearing what it didn't need to, what wasn't even real in some cases. The doctor just kept saying that they would have to wait for him to grow out of it, that this was common in children with 'skewed developmental paths', whatever that meant. Personally, Mycroft thought that doctor was a quack; his brother wasn't crazy, he just wasn't normal. Mycroft did sincerely hope that his little brother could get over his problems, but not at the expense of his personality. And so Mycroft decided that no matter what, as long as Sherlock had his fears, he would be there to convince him that it was okay to turn the page.