Title: To Jump off a Cliff
A/N: Warning, au (childhood). Response to #21 Lick.
"Mycroft! Mycroft!" cried John, breathless from running all the way from the farmyard in the snow.
Mycroft looked up from the book on American politics he was reading and frowned at his stepbrother's interruption.
"What is it, John?" he grumbled.
"It's Ho-Sherlock," John gasped.
"What has he done now?" Mycroft demanded, even more displeased at being interrupted.
"He tried to see if it was really true that licking a cold piece of metal was a bad idea," John explained. "I told him it was a bad idea, but he wouldn't listen."
If Matthew Holmes and Rebekkah Watson-Holmes came home from their day-long trip into town to find their young son stuck to a water pump (Mycroft hoped that Sherlock had at least been smart enough to lick the water pump and not some other, less savory, metallic object in the farmyard) by his tongue, Mycroft knew he would be in trouble too, since he was supposed to be keeping an eye on his siblings.
Unfortunately, he didn't have any inkling of how to free his idiotic younger brother.
"He's going to have to stay put until Mom and Dad return, John," he said, "unless he's willing to rip off his tongue."
"No need for that, Mycroft," John replied. "My dad told me 'bout an old trick to free a stuck tongue."
"Why did you come bother me then, John?"
"Well, because I'll need help getting the warm water over to where Sherlock is at," John stated, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Which it was.