A/N: Sorry, I was supposed to upload this last night, but The Legend of Aang: The Last Airbender was on Netflix and... I realise that it isn't an excuse but my evening sort of dissolved into Doritos and orange juice so yeah.
He doesn't look up as I walk in with father trailing behind me, clutching the solitary bag I've chosen to lug home with me for my compulsory week end break in the family home. Sherlock has an array of apparatus set out before him, sketches of a pair of shoes, captioned with his deductions. A photocopied police report sits by his elbow. Badly printed, so I assume his acquiring it was a hasty affair, likely illegal. I roll my eyes at his apparent absorption with his work, noting the halting scrawl of his pen across the page. He's paying fine attention not to his latest obsession, but to me, a very old obsession.
Over the past few years we've grown increasingly distant, Sherlock and I, and he increasingly preoccupied with this foolish occupation he seems bent upon spending his talent pursuing. The next best person in the world to me and he's solving crimes like some glorified detective. Precisely like a glorified detective, in fact.
"What is it you're calling yourself again?" I ask as Mother sets down a plate practically brimming with food, appropriating a far less ambitions portion beside Sherlock with a thump that makes it abundantly clear just how his detecting will proceed if he doesn't eat it. Despite a cursory greeting, Sherlock hasn't yet chosen to acknowledge me. Must he always behave so childishly?
He sighs dramatically as though committing his attention to me is a great trial on his patience, "Consulting detective, Mycroft. Do try to keep up."
I resist the temptation to roll my eyes at his theatrics, "I shall endeavour to, brother mine."
I frown, noting how his fingers shake as they trail carelessly to pluck a slice of toast from his plate. My brother is nine, hardly within the age profile for me to be worried quite yet. It's probably exhaustion, or a sugar dependency in the process of being stamped out by Mother. Where Sherlock's diet is concerned, she has become more and more stringent of late. "And have the authorities… consulted with you on anything yet?" I ask as Mother bustles back to make a valiant attempt not to burn the scrambled eggs.
Sherlock fixes me with a slit-eyed glare, but his lower lip wobbles like so much jelly, "I've told you this love affair with the macabre is simply childish."
"Hmm," Sherlock mused, back in his haughty element, "You seem intent upon labelling everything I do as such."
"Not without reason," I grumble, slicing my sausages into equal quarters before placing one greasy portion into my mouth. Sherlock watches as I chew, his disgust clear on his features. I will never understand this derision toward food in general. Sherlock regards his body as a machine, and machines need fuel, thus the human body needs food. Yet the piece of toast he'd picked up lies abandoned on the edge of the table, and Redbeard is eyeing it jealously from across the room, his auburn coat shining in the morning sun.
Sherlock's fingers tremble again as he picks up his pencil, and I find my stomach turning with this strange, churning emotion I've been set upon by at largely inappropriate moments over the past few months. I believe they call it concern. "Your hands are shaking, Sherlock," I caution, making sure Mother can't hear. She wouldn't approve of my pointing it out.
My brother regards his long, pale fingers with annoyance, "Yes, I've already dropped two important things today. I'll spend weeks campaigning for a new microscope now. I cracked more than just the lens this time. The focus is splintered and-"
"Yes," I interrupt, "I'd keep an eye on that." Understanding dawns in his eyes and he turns to regard the plate of food speculatively.
"This is a pressing case," he tells me, "And I don't have to take your advice, brother." Nonetheless, he snatches his abandoned piece of toast moments before Redbeard's gradual assault comes to its climax. The dog slinks back toward the door, freezing as something strikes his shaggy mane. Turning his elderly head, his eyes almost bulge out of their sockets as he notices the fragment of sausage on the tiles behind him. His gaze falls questioningly on Sherlock, who is chewing contemplatively on his toast, eyes trained on the case files spread over the table. Passing over him, they settle on me and I read confusion in eyes lightly filmed with incipient cataracts. I'm not particularly fond of any organism on this planet, but Redbeard is a universally acknowledged exception to mind and Sherlock's general apathy toward other living things. I even manage to flash a smile at Redbeard before he lunges for the sausage.
Noticing Mother watching me from the stove, I return my attention to my food. Glancing over at Sherlock several minutes later, after enduring conversation with my parents (the indescribable horror!), I see the subject of his recent obsession. Carl Powers I see from the police report. Ah, that was an interesting case, set down on my desk as a sort of dare by one of my colleagues. I'd indulged myself with it. Missing shoes, and the only POE even remotely connected to it all… a child, like Sherlock, as clever as Sherlock.
My brother continues to mutter to himself, grudgingly reaching for more food under my watchful eye. Always so eager to plunge himself into danger; I can only imagine what the knowledge that another young boy existed in the world with that same unquenchable drive, already straying to the opposite side of the line Sherlock has so hastily constructed for himself. Best not to tell him just yet, preferably never, though I doubt that will be possible. Still, I do try to live in hope.
