...He's My Brother
"Stay with me My."
His umbrella contains a concealed sword, his Italian shoes are steel-toed, and he knows three martial arts, including one of which no one's ever heard. Even so, some god-forsaken little terrorist got to him just a few dozen feet from the Diogenes.
"Please Mycroft, please."
They've played the game since they were children and let's be honest, they'll never be grown men, not with each other. So the game is ever on, the one where a bored Sherlock follows a busy Mycroft, trailing him from one dull embassy to another, from Downing Street, to the Diogenes, to Scotland Yard (the only place of interest).
The game has no set hours because Mycroft keeps to no clock. While London sleeps, Sydney, Shanghai, and New York scheme and then too does Mycroft. So it isn't odd for Sherlock to again pick up his brother's trail as he glides down the Duke of York Memorial steps near midnight, and it isn't odd for Mycroft to see Sherlock's shadow shifting near those wide and lonesome stairs.
What is odd to both is an unrecognised laugh and then the speed at which a shadow becomes a stranger with a grudge and a knife. Between the two Holmeses the assassination attempt is over before it begins.
Except not quite.
"Nearly there."
Trafalgar Square's less than a quarter mile from the memorial steps—closer than any hospital or ambulance. Never quiet, the great square rumbles ever with taxis, tourists, night buses.
"Be still My, I've got you."
London is no battlefield but when John Watson sees one man in a fireman's carry over another's gore-red shoulder his response is immediate: Stop the bleeding.
They don't say a word, John Watson and Sherlock Holmes. Instead Dr. Watson puts pressure on the single stab wound and the artery above it, while Sherlock calls for an ambulance, his hand never leaving his wounded brother's face.
...
In the morning John says little while Mycroft says even less but with far too many awkward words. In his rarified occupation the elder Holmes is used to expressing a certain stiff-backed gratitude, but so rarely for himself. How do you thank a man for your life?
"Shut up Mycroft."
At Sherlock's arrival beside his brother's hospital bed, John smiles. Escape at last.
John's about to utter his first and last words to Sherlock—it was nice to meet you is probably not what he's going to say—but he never does find out because Sherlock talks for him. And for his brother. And probably for god and his twelve apostles, who the hell knows?
"You saved his boring life and so what my brother's so verbosely trying to say is thank you. What you no doubt will reply is it's nothing, or that's my job, or something similarly self-effacing and dull but what you'll mean is you're welcome, though what you should say is I certainly did and you damn well owe me. Yes? Good. Now what I say is…would you like to have coffee?"
From the man's averted gaze and the speed at which he rapid-fired his monologue, John's pretty sure Sherlock just asked him out.
Saying I'm not gay would be presumptuous, saying no thank you seems rude. John's not sure what he's about to say when he glances at Mycroft Holmes but when he does, John knows. Because Mycroft's eyes are pleading now in a way they weren't last night.
Please, the bed-bound man says without saying it, please say yes.
John doesn't know their story, he doesn't know why the brothers show their obvious love for one another with bickering and eye rolling, but John's a healer, right down to his bones. If this is what his patient—well, ex-patient—needs, then John doesn't see what harm saying yes can do.
It's just one coffee. What on earth can happen over one coffee?
Kitmerlot1213 wanted Mycroft to be the reason John and Sherlock meet. Since I think Mycroft's job can be dangerous, I also think that might catch up with him one day. And yes, I gave the elder Holmes all the defensive skills ACD says the younger Holmes possesses. Where do you think Sherlock learned them, after all?