A/N: This prompt came from (a joke by) superpitching on Ravelry:

Mycroft is overweight and struggling with a lemon and poppyseed muffin addiction (shout out to opiates, works with him being lazy and not liking legwork in the books!). Sherlock is a caffiene addled speed freak! John Watson joins them as a barista on some godawful return to work scheme, and ends up weaning Sherlock down to Americanos with a mere 6 shots, and persuades Mycroft to start stocking croissants instead of the opium riddled muffins. Anyone can run with this plot if they'd like! Or alternatively, pretend you never read this. It's all good

I started to write it as a parody, but I couldn't bear not to take on the challenge of trying to make something serious out of something so very silly. Thanks for reading.

Speedy's

I got a job in the summer of '10. I'd been trying to live off an army disability stipend for a while, but it just wasn't cutting it in urban London, and I wasn't ready to go back to practicing medicine. The sight of sick people, well, that took me right back to the battlefield and all the friends who'd died under my hands. That's why I put in an application at Speedy's Café, a restaurant by night and coffee shop by day.

"That's wonderful, John!" said my therapist, who noted it on my file and told me that if it worked out, somebody might be calling me about doing adverts encouraging other veterans to get back to work. I just stared at her. I mean, I don't really blame them for trying. They don't have that many success stories to tout, not stories that start where mine did.

You don't know where it started, and that's how I like it. Nobody knows—well, that's not quite true. I'm getting this all the wrong way around. Sher— he would say I always get things in the wrong order.

The real action started on my first day of work. Our first customer of the day, right at 7:31 a.m., was an extremely heavyset man with short, brown hair and an umbrella. He came up to my little counter, where I was primed and ready to make any drink he might request, but instead he said, "Lemon poppyseed muffins. Five."

I stared at him for a moment in disbelief, before opening the case and divesting it of five muffins. These things weren't homemade-size muffins. They were the oversized kind that come in plastic packages, the kind most people make an entire breakfast of and end up throwing away the bottom because they can't finish it.

Gravely, the man handed me a debit card, and I caught his name because it was so unusual—Mycroft Holmes. He took the muffins and went for a table in a far corner, away from the window.

I tried not to stare, but he was the only one who stayed to consume his order in the shop. For the next two and a half hours, I watched the London drizzle and made a few coffees for women in yoga outfits, but the man in the corner never moved. Every half hour, like clockwork, he opened one of the muffins and downed it. Finally, at 10:00 a.m., he rose, took his umbrella, and left.

Ten minutes or so later, another customer came in. He was tall, at least six feet, with a mop of dark curly hair and extremely thin features. He was shaking, like someone coming down from a drug high. "Qua—quadruple espresso," he said. I looked around, wishing someone else was there to ask if I was supposed to serve him. I didn't want to be responsible for somebody having a heart attack. Unfortunately, Angelo was a very laid-back owner, and he wasn't supposed to check in for hours.

Doubtfully, I made the drink, and the man tried to get his card out of his wallet, only to drop it on the floor three times before finally succeeding in getting it onto the counter. "Why don't you stay and have your drink here?" I asked weakly, trying to sound pleasant. That way, I figured that if he went into cardiac arrest or something, I would at least be around to resuscitate him or call an ambulance.

"Too—too busy," he said, already starting to drink the ridiculous beverage. He made for the door, and I shook my head, wishing I had known what to do. In my confusion, I hadn't taken time to look at his name, but I saw it now, on the café's copy of his receipt: Sherlock Holmes.

Mycroft Holmes. Sherlock Holmes. Their names were burned in my memory. I couldn't decide if it was more absurd to imagine people with those names being related or not being related.

The rest of the morning was uneventful, and Angelo finally appeared in the early afternoon, sailing through the ancient door with the usual smile plastered on his face.

"You met the Holmes brothers?" was the first thing out of his mouth.

"Brothers, then," I said, trying to keep my annoyance out of my voice. If he knew them, I thought, the least he could have done was warn me.

"Yes, yes," he replied, shaking his head emphatically, "but they never come at the same time. Always with Mycroft, it's opening time and five huge muffins. He leaves, and Sherlock comes for his espresso, to help him—recover." Even Angelo, one of the most cheerful men I've ever met, looked the slightest bit subdued at this last part.

"He looked like he was going to keel over," I snapped, abandoning my attempt at remaining calm.

"It's always the same," my boss agreed, shaking his head, "but he never does."

I suppose I was fortunate that Angelo enjoyed long chats about his patrons. Another owner would have told me to shut up and do my job, but he pulled a chair up near the counter and sat down, leaning toward me conspiratorially. "You'd never think one of them works for the government and the other one is a detective, would you?"

"What?" I asked.

"The jittery one," he continued, "got me off a murder charge. Proved to the police I was somewhere else. The other one—I don't know what he does, but I've seen him get picked up from here in cars that looked important. Once, I swear I saw somebody who looked like the prime minister's secretary open the door for him."