Sherlock stretched out his fingers in the darkness and flicked the bathroom light on, blinking against sudden glare. The door closed with a soft internal click as Sherlock moved to capture any light which might try to leak out into the bedroom beyond.
John needed his sleep.
He could have stayed in bed, he could have watched the time march slowly past on the clock and wait for the sun to finally rise and start the day. But John would know, he always knew. Sherlock was not sure if it was his breathing or if it was the way he moved, he tried to keep his breath deep and even, he tried to stay still and not squirm but if he was awake, if he couldn't sleep, John always woke up too.
He tried different experiments, different hypothesis, but all of his tests ended the same. It was like John had an extra sense. Sight and hearing and touch and smell and taste and Sherlock. No matter what he did blue eyes would blink open and refuse to close so long as he knew Sherlock couldn't sleep.
Tonight John needed to sleep.
John had already spent the entire day watching over him, the least Sherlock could do in return was make sure he could rest now.
Sherlock sat on the closed toilet and prodded his naked stomach, Batman sleep shirt rucked up under his chin. It was still flat, maybe slightly concave, but he could feel the stretch of food, could still taste it on his tongue even though he had brushed away the remnants. He had not been hungry, of course, but they had looked so happy. Mycroft and John. John watching and so proud and smiling.
John was good like that. John made him want to be good.
Sherlock gave up prodding the pale unblemished skin of his stretched stomach and gingerly poked the spread of black and blue which engulfed the upper portion of his chest and spread out over his shoulder and ribs like water.
It hurt, but he stayed away from where heat radiated from the injury, away from where it ached, just prodding the spread of blood black and blue where it faded to yellow and green at the edges.
He didn't mind really.
He was strong.
Another second, another few steps and it would have been John instead of him.
John falling backward, John crying out in pain, John breaking.
And that would have been bad.
It would have been horrible.
It is unspeakable when John gets hurt. Not just because he should have done better, should have protected him and if he was hurt it meant he had failed.
Injuries did more than hurt John.
They terrified him.
They made the dreams come.
John hates when Sherlock gets hurt, he becomes quiet and hold his hand so tight it feels like maybe John can feel the pain too, but it isn't the same.
When John gets hurt, it is like drowning. It is like not breathing, like all the good things in the Universe, all the things that make it okay, Nana and Mycroft and him, it is like they were never existed at all.
Like John cannot see them.
And no matter what he does or says or screams, Sherlock cannot reach him.
Like John can dissolve. Like he can disappear so seamlessly that some people do not even know he is gone, but Sherlock knows. He knows when John is vanished and the hand he is holding is nothing, a doll left where his John should be. He is touchable and warm and human and real, and you do not have to blink for it to happen but if you could break him open, tear him apart in your hands, he would be the hollow space in the bodies of old toys. Dead air and crumbling plastic.
Nothing.
Injuries are the only things John ever keeps secret from him.
A scrape, a bruise, anything visible, anything that should be kissed better or fussed over, John hides as if it is a terrible secret. Like it is wrong.
Like it is his fault.
John lets him see when they are alone, when they are locked away in the semidarkness of their room and Sherlock demands to see or else he will not sleep, will not eat. When he needs to know that John is okay even though logically he knows that it is just a cut, just a scrape…
But Nana can never see, Mycroft can never see. Not even when Sherlock asks, when he pleads because it looks inflamed and angry and red.
But what if one day it was bad?
What if one day they needed to look?
What if something happened that Sherlock could not fix?
What if he needed to protect John, what if he needs to be strong and brilliant and good and he fails?
What would happen when they forced him, to help him, and never knew that John was dissolving?
Sherlock put his hand over his stomach again, feeling the stretch of food beneath his palm.
Healthy. Good.
John is always fixing him, watching over him, making him good. John knows how to make him better.
Sherlock would fix John too.
Mycroft turned off the alarm clock which informed him in its hideously honest way that he had three more hours of rest available to him. As if sleep was truly as simple as that.
The tiles on the bathroom floor were cool, the room holding its reservoir of night air, an unconscious balm on his sleepless body. He switched on the light and let it wash over him, yellow white light bleeding through his closed eyelids.
If he was going to be awake he might as well do so fully dressed.
Mycroft was never one to let ideas haunt him; there was no use in lingering over the impossible or letting emotion stand in the way of solution.
But of course his boys, as always, were the exception to the otherwise stalwart rule; their complications following him into his almost rest.
He did not want them to grow up. The idea of pushing them back into adulthood or forcing their education onto them preemptively was…repulsive.
He wanted them to be happy this time. He wanted a childhood they could reminisce about and smile at the memory of. A life they could be glad to have lived.
But he was holding them back.
Two isolated geniuses locked away in their tower, never interacting with more than a handful of others, never experiencing the world as normal children because of course they were extraordinary and nothing approaching normal.
But how could he thrust them into more, into education and society and everything they would need to survive life without knowing how they would fair? Without knowing if they could interact with others? Without knowing if they could pass as normal when they were anything but?
It seemed like a simple test, to take them out, to watch them interact, to watch them thrive or fail where he could be there to catch them if they should fall. Harry did it all the time, treated them as if they were little boys, as if no matter what they did they would come out alright, the fleeting consequences of childhood, a real childhood.
Simple really, to take them out to a meal as if they were any other family.
Mycroft gave one reproachful glare to his bed and carried on in the pre-morning darkness to find his first cup of strong tea.
After all, there were only 137 separate and plausible ways this could go wrong before Sherlock uttered his first bleary eyed hello and conceded that pants might be necessary for a trip outside.
The boys went out with Mycroft, of course. They went to museums and got to look behind all of the locked doors and see restorations in progress and hidden collections and pieces that no one ever got to see but that Sherlock could touch. They visited ruins and churches and Mycroft explained the history and the architecture and John stayed close, his small hand wrapping around two of Mycroft fingers as they walked or holding onto the edge of a coat sleeve so that if he had any questions or if he wanted to hear the story again all he had to do was tug- just a little.
When Mycroft took them out they were bound to do something grand and amazing, the kind of adventures other little boys could only dream about, if they had the imagination necessary to conjure such astounding things.
So when Mycroft promised that morning when two little boys wandered into his study, still rubbing the sleep from their eyes and clutching the orange blanket which trailed behind them like a beacon telling him that the night had been for them, difficult, that he was going to take them out, there was a moment of apprehension he could not voice.
Would he disappoint them to only take them to eat and to wander the city a bit on their own? Would John still want to hold his hand? Would Sherlock still whisper discoveries in his ear as if they were secret and divine?
John was pouting; a nightmare rather than memories then had haunted his restless sleep. Mycroft wondered what had kept Sherlock from waking him as he normally did on such occasions.
Sherlock closed the door behind them, John tended to fall between memories and old habits when he was tired, like his mind had not fully woken to the proper reality yet. He waited for the click if the door lock and his shoulders relaxed, slumping into the safety they both knew he felt. John slumped over to where Mycroft sat and very much like the small child he resembled, scrambled into Mycroft's lap, curling into his arms and closing his eyes, small fist rising to curl into Mycroft's perfect shirt, linen crinkling beneath his fingers.
"Where are we going?" Sherlock seemed unperturbed by John actions, only walking closer, pulling out the drawers of Mycroft's antique desk and using them as steps to sit himself on top of the desk so that his legs brushed Johns body as they dangled, his hand reaching out mindlessly to tangle in the blond strands as his eyes wandered over Mycroft's papers, top secret documents concerning at least four countries and one impending war.
Mycroft coughed in slight reprimand at the blatant disregard for not only his property but for the papers Sherlock knew he was supposed to leave alone. The boy smiled, a small private thing accompanied by a slight shrug as if to say 'Afghanistan again huh?' and waited for a reply to his question.
Mycroft could see why Sherlock had not woken John now. Sherlock had not been in bed at all, save for perhaps the few minutes before John woke.
Again Mycroft felt the old emotions sweep through him as familiar blue eyes stared unblinkingly into him, sleep deprived and holding that wordless spark of untested hypothesis.
It was an emotion that was more memory than it was relevant and real to the child sitting in front of him. Something he should be able to tamp down and separate utterly from the present.
But he could feel it, the way he felt it when he was telling himself that museums and galleries were simply the proper places to take his boys.
That gut deep feeling, the knowledge, that Sherlock would rather be any place on earth than with him. That if he brought work, brought information to occupy every moment they spent together he could steal a few precious moments, but never, never just to be with him.
"To lunch," His voice did not shake. "Perhaps walk around for a bit if you are up to it."
He did not betray the way he was waiting for the rejection or at best, disappointment.
Sherlock nodded, not as if he were disappointed or upset or bored or all of the other things Mycroft's betraying subconscious were searching for, but as if he had taken the data and found it acceptable, turning away and back to the papers, idly playing with them as if he could not feel Mycroft's anxiety raking over him. Mycroft closed his arms around John and shifted his slight weight in his lap just to feel him curl closer.
John had fallen asleep in his arms, the smile on his lips half hidden against his own chest.
"Mycroft." A bare foot prodded his thigh to get his attention. Sherlock's curls bounced as he looked up from the paper he was holding with the word CONFIDENTIAL stamped across its manila folder.
"When do I get to run a country?"
It was a small restaurant, unassuming, and only a handful of families were seated in the booths lining the walls, small children cooing at one another from highchairs blocking the aisles like dogs barking their greetings at each other over fences and yards. The wait staff was predominantly young, some working their way through university, others decidedly not. The nighttime crowd would have been different, tables lit with candles and couples imagining that they see love in each other's eyes, the dim lighting making their pupils blow wide in an imitation of unconscious desire.
But for now John is holding his hand and they fit into the scenery like another essential piece to this three dimensional puzzle, Sherlock marching a step ahead of them, oddly in sync with his surroundings and the children emoting from their tables all around them.
Mrs. Hudson thought herself quite clever when she recommended this place, it was the way she smiled, the way her voice was just the side of too cheerful, purposeful tells that she used when she wanted you to know her secret but thought that words would be too indelicate, that her joy would ruin it.
Of course Mycroft knew this place before she had ever said a word or smiled that smile, mentioning how often they had gone as adults together, how often they would come home with a takeout box and the remains would be left on the table when they ran out the door, two forks poking out at odd angles.
He had CCTV footage from the very first day they spent together here, a camera peering into the table by the window, a candle lighting their faces in soft shadows and light.
Sherlock walked up to the young woman in charge of seating, early twenties, recently engaged but they will push up the wedding as soon as she finds out she is pregnant, family values and all. Mycroft expects wide eyes, perhaps a loud declaration of her pregnancy or a demand for the table he prefers but instead Sherlock ducks his head shyly, peering up at her through what Mycroft knows from experience are almost absurdly long black eyelashes. John is holding on tighter to his hand but the woman is already squatting to the floor, making the soft cooing words that people make to small frightened animals and meek children. Mycroft is reminded suddenly of cooing to a small, ferocious, bear.
Mycroft steps forward, ideas half formed in his mind of saving the young woman but his vantage point improves as he moves. Sherlock is smiling at her, his entire demeanor one of coy sweetness. He points to a table, hesitantly, shyly, and she spends the next five minutes cleaning the table by the window while Sherlock asks her eighty points of interest he thought of the second he walked into the establishment.
John watches silently, he holds on to Mycroft's hand and watches with curiosity and something that might be begrudging amusement. Sherlock waves them over when the table is clean, exasperated motions, and John does not run to him as Mycroft thought he would. John is slow and calm; he grips Mycroft tighter and stays by his side as they walk.
Whatever Sherlock is up to he knows exactly what he is doing.
And more worryingly, this time John does not share this knowledge.
