So! Here we are. This is my contribution to the Mythea Christmas Swap thingie thing that my friend tragic-vampire organized. This is then a belated gift for dragonsbain (that's her username on tumblr at least). I really hope she likes it, but this is my first fanfiction EVER so I'll understand if she doesn't (?). I hope you all people reading this enjoy it too, of course. I also want to seize the occasion to thank to the aforementioned tragic-vampire, for everything I've learned reading her work and talking to her, and for being a fabulous friend. Now, that's it. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
I own only the nerd Greek part, all the other stuff is Mark and Steven's and also Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's little creature.
She had worked for Mycroft Holmes her entire life. That was the feeling she got, anyway. It was obviously not true, but it had been so long, or better, so consistent, that it seemed to be forever, since ever. When he hired her she was 26, and it had been almost four years since then. Only a tenth part of her life had she worked for her current boss, but as soon as she had gotten the job her whole life seemed to have been a preparation for it. Not a preparation in the sense of a… warming up, but an airstrip, a pastime until she got to her purpose in life. It could not be her destiny, she didn't think that she was made for that job, made to serve to Mycroft Holmes. But it certainly was the best she could get from life. And it was also far beyond an average life.
Anthea was her name, though not her birth one. It was the name she inwardly called herself by, and the most honest one she could give if asked. Which, however, didn't happen often. She liked how it sounded, her name. Anthea. He liked it too, he told her once. Anthea had always liked Ancient Greek stuff. She had read Plato, and Euripides, and Solon, and Archilochus, and Sappho. She loved Sappho. There was so very little of her. Some poems here and there, and a new one coming to light every few years. Like scattered flowers. Anthea came from there, yes, from the Greeks… and from the flowers. Anthos, that's it. The Greek word for flower, Antheia being the adjective, or something for the like. Anthology had that very root, Mr Holmes told her. The Greek verb lego (turned into logy) meant something like gather, and then you had the flowers; to anthologize is to gather the best flowers. And that was how he had hired her. He picked his flowers very carefully, and she was the most beautiful, loyal and efficient one he'd ever had. Assistant, anyway. Not flower.
They worked so well together. They went on missions very rarely, but when they did, on action days, they made a great team. On paperwork days they survived, which was enough. They both would work hard, silently, until one of them would make some annoyed comment or a particularly snarky remark on whatever they were doing, and they both would laugh, or smirk, or quietly chuckle. And that was it, they saving each other's life on a busy paperwork day.
This was the longest relationship Anthea had ever had, and it was strictly professional. That is to say, they were kind of friends, yes, and although it was true that they never met out of work hours, there really wasn't time out of work hours. They both were on call 24/7, and because of that they were together almost 24/7. On the other hand, she had never had any romantic long term relationships. She suspected it was because of the sex. She wasn't really into it, and regardless what they said, the guys she had been with didn't seem to like that. They all dumped her after a few months, and she didn't mind that much. She didn't need them.
Mr Holmes, for his part, was a particular case… to absolutely no one's surprise. She remembered some of the nights he spent away, relieving tensions like he said. It didn't happen very often, but it happened. She thought he was gay before getting to know him better. And before counting women within those he spent nights with, of course. Very rarely Mr Holmes repeated his company, but there were occasions, and very soon she learnt that he was not one for labels. He had sex with both men and women, and got involved with neither. That's how it worked, and it was made clear since the very beginning. She had also made clear almost since the beginning that she considered herself to be somewhere within the asexual spectrum, or the way she preferred to word it, not interested at all in sex.
They always chatted a bit, when attending to official meetings, while being driven around the city, while doing stupid and exhausting paperwork. Anthea had always felt Mr Holmes' interest as a polite way of getting close enough to her to guarantee her loyalty. As if her salary wasn't good enough for anyone to want to be loyal. Still he had become, with time, quite protective around her, almost in a fatherly way… Or that's what she thought. She had been helping Mr Holmes with the great walking ordeal that was his little brother, helping to keep him clean and hooked to life, among some other stuff. There were no funny doctors around yet, and things got so hard for the Holmes boys from time to time. A month and a half ago Sherlock had nearly overdosed for the first time since Anthea had gotten the job, and it had somehow gotten her and Mr Holmes even closer. That's when the staring started.
During car ridings she often complained about how guys always wanted everything to be immediate. How they rushed things and how she hated being pushed. Mr Holmes would state that they were goldfish and she would agree. She would joke about longing for a Victorian gentleman that wooed her with flowers and stuff, and he would retort that in Victorian times she would be a maintained wife. Then she would playfully glare at him and laugh, and he would smirk. That was almost routine.
There were times, though, where Anthea would want to feel more… normal. Although she was happy with who she was, deep down she knew that she could have had an opportunity with him. With her boss. But there was no way he would get involved, and there was no way she would sleep with someone just like that. So she did what she thought was the best, keep him close, go on with her Perfect and Loyal PA role and enjoy the mere sight of him, which was actually a lot.
To anyone else, it would have gotten suspicious the same day of the Sherlock Holmes incident, at the clinic, when Mycroft no-touching Holmes had very slowly, very carefully and very fleetingly, grabbed her hand. But she didn't suspect then. And she didn't suspect when he started staring either, and not even that exact morning before leaving her flat, when she opened the door only to find a bouquet of very discreet, very beautiful flowers leaning neatly on the floor. Anthea thought it was weird, yes, but she had learned that weird things happened when you were around a Holmes so much. It wasn't until just before the lunchbreak that she suspected.
She looked up from her paperwork and caught him, for the fourth or fifth time that day, staring at her. She cracked a smile. He blinked.
"Are you having lunch today, sir?" she asked.
"Well, are you, dear?" he said, but it wasn't the words but the smile that got her brain ticking away. He didn't smile like that. She had never, ever seen him smile like that, in all those four years.
"Whatever do you mean?" and she forgot the sir. And she thought it was clear that she asked for the smile, not for the words.
"Oh, nothing" he feigned to hurry to answer. "I was just… thinking. We could go to this bistro I told you about, and have a fine lunch without any work-related things to bother us. Instead of ordering takeaway, that is." She was the one blinking this time, and then there was silence for about ten seconds.
"I… don't see why not. Sir."
He then smiled again, a more common smug smile this time, and got to his feet. Anthea went to grab her handbag from the chair behind her desk, and when she turned back to Mr Holmes she saw him looking at the flowers resting on it. She was just about explaining the episode from that morning when he cut her off.
"I take it you liked them. The flowers." And then all the pieces clicked together, and Anthea found herself feeling somehow dizzy, and confused, but definitely optimistic about this lunchbreak and the whole thing to come, because if Mycroft Holmes was a tenth part of the attentive and thoughtful he was at work regarding his personal life, then she wouldn't complain about being wooed, gentleman-like, by a man that knew how she felt about relationships and all what came with them. And she certainly wouldn't complain about Mycroft Holmes taking her to lunch.
Time passed by, things moved on, and Anthea quickly learned that the one weird thing about them being together was that it hadn't happened sooner.