Atrophy, Analysis

Atrophy. He'd grown soft. Too much time spent watching, tapping buttons, signing orders, strategising at a distance, giving commands from behind a desk: the general who had soared through the ranks so long ago, he'd forgotten how to drive home the blade.

He had amassed influence, made himself an indispensable coordinating force with unparalleled insight, foresight and knowledge. One with the capacity to mobilise domestic and foreign security, intelligence and counter-intelligence resources in the most efficient ways. MI6, MI5 and every branch of the Home Office leaned on him to oversee the blind spots that tumbled into the gaps between them – gaps that morphed between crevice-tight spots and ravine-wide chasms. They valued him for such oversight, as well as to prevent overlapping that might compromise valuable manpower, finances and time.

Home Secretaries, Foreign Secretaries, Ministers of Defence, prime ministers and lords had learnt, long ago, that they could give any number of brilliant personnel and specialised departments the same resources they gave Mycroft Holmes. But the useful projections and life-saving outcomes squeezed out of them would be 75 percent of what he could do alone or with smaller teams in four-fifths of the time, shuffling impossible connections around in his brain until every fragment lined up to shape a picture that spoke sense. No intellect, human or artificial, had thus far matched Mycroft's preternatural talent for gazing into a whirlwind of disparate nothings and coalescing them with mystifying speed into a shape that might expose an insidious plot underway.

His genius had its limitations, of course. Even he could do nothing about lone wolves who leapt out of nowhere to savage lives and property. He wasn't omniscient. But if a suspicion was on record, if a whisper was heard, if a picture looked off on a security camera on the fringes of the kingdom, and something clearly wasn't right but no one at Scotland Yard or MI5 could pinpoint why, Mycroft would be the man to submit the reports to so he could visualise how they fitted into one frame, or ten.

Equally invaluable on the diplomatic front, he knew all the invisible loopholes and secret points of weakness. He had mastered all the subtle ways he could instigate someone to do one little thing, two little things, and something elsewhere in the world that he had foreseen would soon be in a position to threaten British stability would take a critical knock. It might be an armed force, a head of state, a seemingly minor political figure, or an entire nation, but certain of its vital structures would go tumbling down, putting it on the back foot, and somehow, the discreet undermining would appear to have come from anywhere but MI6.

Every street camera and several satellites were at his disposal. Armed squads mobilised at a word from him. Ostensibly peculiar orders of his were obeyed with very little eyebrow-raising these days, because he had proven that he had abundant method to his madness. And he knew what other people in power had, in addition, learnt to think by now: "As for that brother of his, well, the madness in his method must be humoured and abetted by us closing one eye or both, because the eventual results of that other Holmes' eccentric, law-breaking investigations nearly always turn out to be worth more than whatever precious rules he's smashed along the way."

There. There it was. That last assurance was the valuable stuff that filled out the other half of his purpose. Professional pride, his love for monarch and country, his old-fashioned patriotism – all these were driving forces. But adding ballast to the other half of the scale to keep him upright as he bore the burden was knowing that he had the power to protect his family. Especially Eurus at this time, lethal waif that she was – Ophelia in her fragility, Medea in her viciousness – poised on the edge of a blade.

Lady Smallwood had alluded to it behind the locked doors of his office an hour ago, answering the unuttered thought that had nudged insistently against his running analyses of the situation.

"Murmurings about the thirteenth protocol have reached me," she'd revealed, coolly, rearranging her outfit into its usual order after another of their mutually gratifying transactions.

"I thought they might," Mycroft had said calmly, adjusting his tie.

"A handful of voices, cautiously testing the waters for a vote to damn adherence to the convention, and make an exception in this case," she had added as she'd tilted her head first to one side, then the other, to slip the posts of her pearl studs back through her earlobes.

"Those voices aren't the ones we really need to worry about either," he'd filled in the blanks thoughtfully.

"She's killed too many people. Others with more say are still hanging back, but they will soon ask what use she is to national security now that she isn't talking, or analysing trends, or preventing bloodshed."

"Still, they can't touch her."

"Not while you're here," Lady Smallwood had stated plainly, although not unkindly. "Even after the recent debacle, you've remained more or less untouched. There was talk of removing you as you were ultimately accountable for oversight of Sherrinford, but for all intents and purposes for the foreseeable future, you are irreplaceable, so your position is reasonably secure for now. No one lasts forever, though. When you do at last leave or are driven out, retire, or die – whichever comes first – there'll be no guarantees."

"I know. Thank you for thinking about this, in any case."

"You'll work something out," she'd remarked, sounding – for her – almost breezy, as she picked up her coat and strode towards the door, which he unlocked. "You always do. You or that brother of yours – you'll find a solution, one or both of you."

He needed ruthlessness now. But he was Cerberus lulled to sleep by Orpheus, Argus rendered drowsy by Hermes and slain, his hundred eyes bizarrely gathered up by Hera and set into her peacock's tail. Perhaps when he was dead, Lady Smallwood could do him the kindness of picking up where he'd left off with his millions of street-camera eyes and adding them to her figurative peacock's plumage. Perhaps her protégés could continue watching over the land in his place.

Watching, too, the other monster on his behalf. The monster who was of his flesh and blood, and whom he had failed in his own way. If he had only understood her when she was a child…

And Sherlock. Who would watch over Sherlock when he was gone? Was it ironic that Sherlock himself was the Orpheus to his Cerberus, the Hermes to his Argus? The one he could never refuse, who rendered him pliable, ready to bare his throat, eyes closed; make a target of his heart, eyes open.

The only one he wouldn't retaliate against for twisting his arm up behind his back and slamming him into a door frame at Baker Street in the heat of a narcotic high.

To his shame, all he had thought about in those moments was that it had been too many months since Sherlock had touched him physically for any reason at all.

Perhaps in that vile high, Sherlock had forgotten that Mycroft had once been a young MI6 case officer who had undergone rigorous field training. Thanks to the formidable reputation he had built up at university, and Uncle Rudy's influence, Mycroft had been earmarked from the start of his career for an administrative and supervisory role in intelligence. But to give him a first-hand feel of what went on in the frontlines, he'd had to go through the posts assigned him and learn the basics in case he found himself in a tight spot.

He had honed every offensive and defensive manoeuvre one in his position would need in the most desperate of circumstances. He still had it. Mostly. He had employed those very skills to extract Sherlock from Serbia. Yes, his silver tongue, irreproachable accent, forged documents and all the assumed confidence in the world had got him to Sherlock, but he and his backup had had to cripple a good number of limbs and send bullets spiralling into skulls on the way out.

He hadn't quailed or gone limp then. Not for a second. It was a battlefield, and he had to protect Sherlock. The alternative did not bear thinking about – precisely because he had already thought about it in that basement cell where he had finally found him. Alive. Battered, but breathing. When at last they were alone, all that had filled his head was the intoxicating sense of his gloved fingers pushing their way into his chained-up brother's filthy curls of hair, tightening their grip in a mad cocktail of relief, sorrow, anger, resentment, possessiveness, love and desire into a fistful of locks matted with sweat, blood and grime, helplessly hearing John Ford in his mind: "I hold fate clasp'd in my fist."

And more darkly: "For in my fists I bear the twists of life."

Like a feral dog whose instinct was to devour her pups when they were threatened, he'd thought for a moment in that prison that if he failed to get Sherlock out, he would kill him in an act of mercy, arrogance, hubris. If I can't save you… If I can't have you… Was that the clichéd thought tearing through Giovanni's mind as he had ripped out the heart of his sister and lover and impaled it on his dagger? "For in my fists I bear the twists of life"… Annabella's gouged-out heart, trailing its twisting arteries around Giovanni's fist like snakes, twisting like Medusa's hair, curling like Sherlock's hair… Sherlock, whose burning gaze could turn Mycroft to soft stone, whose penetrating voice could drag him back to life.

Just shut up.

His thoughts were all tangled up like Sherlock had accused them of being in the car two days ago. How silly, when it was Sherlock whose thoughts leaned towards delightful jumbling. Of course, chaos suited his younger brother all through the chase before he ordered it into perfect clarity in the denouement; it didn't befit Mycroft, who had begun with order but was descending into chaos. Primodial Chaos, when "nulli sua forma manebat/obstabatque aliis aliud, quia corpore in uno/frigida pugnabant calidis, umentia siccis/mollia cum duris, sine pondere, habentia pondus".

Shut up, Mycroft. Shut up…

As if Sherlock was reading his mind again – from halfway across the city this time – and had decided to jump in to force his hurtling thoughts to a halt, Mycroft's phone interrupted him with an alert to a text.

Sherlock
Dinner at Marcini's, 8pm?

Mycroft frowned. Sherlock never asked him out without a motive. He chose to probe the anomaly with a light jibe:

M
You mean the classier of your two favourite Italian establishments for romantic suppers with John?

Sherlock
Fire your surveillance teams. Their intel is dismal.

M
Surely it's time you made an honest man of Dr Watson.

Sherlock
John says to tell you he'd rather snog Mrs Hudson. Mrs H says she refuses to come between a bickering married couple. Is 8 all right for you? Just you and me.

M
You and your Baker Street coterie are conveying distinctly mixed signals. Would you care to unmix them?

Sherlock
Mrs H adds with utter insincerity that she's terribly flattered by John's offer but she'll pass. Rosie is wailing. See you there at 8.

M
I haven't said yes.

Sherlock
You haven't said no. It's a date.

Mycroft stared at the messages far longer than was necessary for a man of his intelligence and education levels. Atrophy. In the brain too, it seemed. What the devil did Sherlock want now? Mycroft hadn't the foggiest idea.

Analysis. To test for the presence of a substance, he had to know its properties. Which he did (more or less).

But he was uncertain how those properties would manifest themselves in the increasingly complex matter Mycroft had become over the years, as well as the exponentially more complicated thing that was Mycroft added to Sherlock.

Some conditions under which this qualitative analysis would be conducted were beyond his control. However, he could manipulate certain factors for more accuracy.

Which was why he sat in his cab just off the King's Road and watched until Mycroft's car stopped outside Marcini's. His brother emerged, armed with his umbrella and armoured in one of the charcoal-hued suits he favoured for autumn (Sherlock knew that suit – a bespoke one that appeared to be a solid dark gray from a distance, but proved at closer range to be a plaid subtly shot through with moss-green). He waited for Mycroft to enter the restaurant, gave him two minutes in there for his eyes to adjust to the lighting, then instructed the cabbie to drive up the road too and drop him off.

Mycroft was already seated, looking at the menu, a glass of still water before him, when he approached the table. It was Sherlock's usual spot – the one in the private corner that Dominic Marcini always did his best to give him.

"See anything you fancy?" Sherlock asked before coming to a complete stop across from Mycroft.

His brother raised his head (purely out of manners, to acknowledge his presence – it wasn't as if he wouldn't have known the second he walked in the door; neither of them ever really had to look straight at the other to see him.)

Slight pupil dilation. Only minimally more than would occur at sight of anyone else in the family he had an appointment with. He would measure nearly the same infinitesimal flicker in those irises whether it was Mummy, Daddy or even a non-relative Mycroft had no excessive objection to – like John or Lestrade – showing up for an expected meeting with him.

Inconclusive.

"I seem to remember enjoying the pappardelle with Parma ham and porcini in cream sauce here last year," Mycroft said with one of his neutral social smiles, which he often used when running an initial assessment of the layers that might lie beneath the surface of an innocuous setting.

"Can't go wrong with that," Sherlock agreed, unwinding his scarf as he accepted with a nod the waiter's offer of still water and dismissed him for the time being by declining his help with his outerwear.

Sherlock favoured this table in the corner because it had a coat stand beside it, near the wall – it saved him and his dining companions from checking their coats in at the cloakroom and running the risk of their being tampered with while out of sight. As he slipped off his coat now and draped it over the stand along with his scarf, he needed only the briefest glance at his brother to register the appreciable increase in Mycroft's pupil dilation.

Interest, attraction. Observed.

He'd chosen this suit and shirt to test his assumption. The outfit was nine years old, but so well made and rarely worn that it still looked perfect. The items were among several Mycroft had had tailored for Sherlock when he was starting to get his life in order and had begun sniffing around Lestrade's cases. He'd been scrawny as an imp back then, in his early twenties, still on shaky ground with both his narcotic use and the Metropolitan Police.

Which meant that the claret silk shirt and the deep-gray wool-silk jacket and trousers hugged the lines of his body more closely than anything he regularly wore these days. They weren't tight, of course – Sherlock had absolutely no intention of appearing vulgar – but he knew they showed him off to good effect. (Before he'd left the flat, Mrs Hudson had gone "Oooh, Sherlock!" and trailed him like a puppy all the way from the sitting room to the hallway downstairs with an absurdly ditzy look on her face; while John, brow furrowed in puzzlement, had stammered at sight of his ensemble while feeding Rosie: "W-wait a minute – just who did you say you were meeting tonight?". Sherlock hadn't, in fact, said. So no one was the wiser.)

And Mycroft was eating him up with his eyes, irises practically swallowed by the dark depths behind them when Sherlock undid his jacket to sit down, exposing more of the form-fitting claret shirt, top button undone.

Lust, desire. Noted.

"They do a good sirloin with wine and chocolate sauce," Sherlock murmured at the printed menu before making a show of glancing at the wall-mounted chalkboard displaying the specials of the day to see if he might prefer anything else. Peripherally, he saw Mycroft continuing to take him in, eyes roving from his face all the way down the dip of his open neckline.

When he glanced back at Mycroft, his brother's pupils remained dilated, but his lids had narrowed marginally as they fixed on Sherlock's face.

"All right, what do you want from me?" Mycroft asked, smile not quite reaching his eyes. He had set the menu down on the tabletop and was resting his fingertips just on its corners.

"What are you talking about?" Sherlock said with calculated disingenuousness, raising a hand to signal their waiter over.

"You only ask me out to supper when you need me to get something done for you," Mycroft observed.

(Sherlock conceded privately that the observation was not without justification.)

They hung fire while placing their orders. Both declined to have wine with their meal. He guessed that Mycroft wished to stay clear-headed while dealing with him; he himself preferred that no intoxicating substances contaminate his investigation until he had obtained the data he needed from this evening.

"What do you think I want from you, Mycroft?" he asked evenly after the waiter had left, interlacing his fingers and resting his wrists on the edge of the table.

Mycroft's eyes narrowed a shade further. He sat back in his chair, scrutinising Sherlock, then began to list his observations: "You haven't roped the restaurant staff into one of your schemes to spike my food or drink with sedatives so you can steal my gadgets – no one here on the floor or in the open kitchen is displaying signs of nerves that point in that direction. It's not about getting you on a case or into a restricted site – your eyes aren't flashing that borderline demented look. You do not need my help with obtaining classified information – your posture's wrong for that; you curve your spine forward stiffly when you're pretending not to be attempting to snuffle out state secrets. It's not about your finances – that pained microscopic twitch in the corner of your mouth hasn't made an appearance; also, you haven't needed such help from me in years. I'm not here because you need a favour for one of your friends – you're not wearing that blindingly obvious protective expression. It's not about Mummy, Daddy or Eurus – your forehead is displaying its normal light creasing, whereas of late, your scalp muscles have been unconsciously tightening and pulling back when a matter concerns them."

"So what does that leave?" Sherlock wanted to know, biting his tongue to stop himself from indignantly echoing the patently unfair descriptors of "borderline demented" and "blindingly obvious".

"I imagine it leaves many things," Mycroft answered logically. "However, considering the timing – only two days after your outburst in the car on the matter of my state of mind – I would say that this has to do with me."

"You're right," he chose to go with an honesty he calibrated to be disarming.

The barest flash of surprise crossed Mycroft's face; he hadn't expected him to outright admit it.

"I just want to have dinner with you," Sherlock stated, using the momentum and cover of his genuine honesty to divert his words down a side path paved with omission. "Am I allowed to do that, Mycroft? Just have dinner with you?"

He wasn't convinced. Sherlock could see that. But strategy wasn't considered Mycroft's forte for no reason; he knew when pushing forward would be the equivalent of using his head as a battering ram against a wall of stone.

"Of course you're allowed to have dinner with me," Mycroft answered more softly, letting his smile reach his eyes this time.

It was a concession made to see what else would be forthcoming with permission given to proceed.

"And we can just talk about… us," Sherlock proposed.

"Yes," Mycroft agreed cautiously. "We can just talk about us."

"Don't worry, Dominic Marcini gets enough politicians and colleagues of yours in here to know he needs to constantly be on guard against listening devices. And that camera's off tonight." His eyes flicked towards the one aimed at their end of the room.

"I know," Mycroft said dryly. "I do run my own scans too."

"So," Sherlock began, leaning forward like a dog who'd caught a whiff of something intriguing. "I almost missed it among all the restaurant smells, but I'm not mistaken: Claire de la Lune. Traces on your waistcoat, clashing with your usual autumn cologne. Lady Smallwood – really?"

He could see Mycroft swiftly determining if this formed part of whatever ulterior motive he suspected Sherlock had for the evening. Was Sherlock angling for information about Lady Smallwood? Or Mycroft's tryst with her? Was this linked to a case he was on? In two seconds, he saw his brother conclude that he wasn't digging up anything about the lady, and that their liaison was merely an opening topic of casual conversation.

"Why not Lady Smallwood?" Mycroft asked, relaxing his voice while letting through a minor twitch of actual curiosity about how Sherlock would answer the question.

"Not a goldfish."

"Far from it."

"It's not an… emotional thing," Sherlock ventured, watching Mycroft closely to demonstrate – above-board for now – that he was analysing this. "I say that based on what I know of you both."

"If you're planning to trot out the 'cold fish' expression, please spare yourself the effort."

Sherlock was about to fire a retort about it being a perfect expression for both Mycroft's exterior persona as well as everything he happened to know of Lady Smallwood's current inner, outer and medial personae. But for the second time that evening, he had to bite back what might have sidetracked him from his experiment.

Instead, he chose his words carefully: "Right. Well, as long as you make each other happy, I'm happy for you."

There. That fractional hesitation. He wondered if Mycroft was going to gloss over it, but he didn't. Instead, he spoke with unexpected frankness: "I wouldn't call it 'happiness'. But it works for us."

They locked eyes over the table, and Sherlock took in every clue in Mycroft's face before saying with a slow nod of his head: "She's an important… ally. And you're one to her. With 'benefits', as normal people say."

Mycroft took a sip of water. "That fairly accurately sums it up."

"I hope you're at least contented – hmm, no, contentment has a warmth to it that this arrangement does not strike me as having," Sherlock mused. "I should say that I hope you're at least satisfied."

A caustic rebuke seemed to be on the tip of Mycroft's tongue, but to Sherlock's surprise, he apparently swallowed it before saying in a thoughtful voice: "Satisfaction is, I suppose, satisfactory in this case."

Sherlock glanced at Mycroft's hands resting on the table. Right thumb, stroking the side of the right index finger beside the proximal interphalangeal joint.

"She mentioned Eurus today," Sherlock murmured.

Mycroft took very little time to work out how Sherlock had deduced that. Raising his right hand just an inch from the table, he tapped his thumb against the spot on the index finger it had gone to earlier. "Did that give it away?"

Sherlock nodded. "You do that when you're concerned about Eurus. I didn't know what to associate the gesture with before, but now I've put her back into my head, I know you unconsciously do that when she's on your mind. She bit you really hard on that finger when she was four."

"Have you remembered everything?" Mycroft asked. To less discerning ears, his voice would sound perfectly even. To Sherlock, it sounded too even.

Unblinking, he studied Mycroft's face as he stated plainly: "I remember many things now."

It was fleeting, but there nonetheless. No one would have spotted it but Sherlock, who knew him so well. Fear. A flash of fear.

"Do you," Mycroft said softly. It wasn't a question.

"A lot more than I did before."

"Do you need me to fill in any blanks?" he sounded resigned.

"Eventually, perhaps. But I'm not here to grill you tonight. Promise."

"Nothing about anything you've remembered recently raises questions?" Mycroft asked doubtfully.

"Nothing urgent. Nothing that won't be answered in time."

The food was served then, so they put their exchange on hold. After the waiter left, they remained quiet through the first few mouthfuls of their respective dishes, finding no complaints about the quality of what they had ordered. As they ate, they gave the other customers – away from their corner in the main body of the restaurant – swift, casual once-overs. No one of interest here.

In those moments of silence, Sherlock cut a strip of his steak which had enough sauce on it and offered it to Mycroft by pushing it to the far edge of the plate. "Try it. It's good. Not drugged, I swear – unless the cattle ingested something iffy."

Mycroft grimaced at yet another reminder of that abortive family Christmas which had gone entirely to hell (complete with drugs, a stolen laptop on which the fate of the free world depended, manslaughter, and what Sherlock was starting to suspect was the most terrifying part of it all for Mycroft: Sherlock in the cross hairs). Still, he reached over, speared the strip of sirloin with his own fork, and savoured it. "It is good," was the judgement he pronounced on it. "I thought the sauce would be unbearably rich, but it's not. I might order it the next time I'm here."

"Please do. So, are you going to tell me why you're worried about Eurus?" Sherlock rerouted them to the topic they'd been on before the food arrived.

Keeping his eyes on his pasta while slowly twirling a ribbon of it around his fork, Mycroft spoke: "Among the few people who knew of her existence all along, some wanted her dead very early in the game. Uncle Rudy fended them off by reiterating how useful her brilliance could be in a crisis. When he finally told me that she was alive – after I had spent more than a decade believing she had died in that fire – he trained me how to keep her safe while protecting others and myself from her. I did all I could. However, the recent catastrophe at Sherrinford has made her existence known to more people in power. With so many deaths caused by her within such a short period of time, including those of civilians, there was only so much covering-up we could do. The voices insinuating that she should be… put down, as it were… are growing more insistent. And I can no longer use Uncle Rudy's old argument for her usefulness in a national crisis."

"Because she's not even talking now," Sherlock, laying down his knife and fork, muttered what Mycroft didn't need to spell out.

"Yes."

"Is she in imminent danger?"

"No. Not while I'm still doing what I do," he said, looking up from his plate. "And we have time to make plans for how to continue protecting her in time to come."

"Mycroft, are you in danger?" Sherlock asked, his appetite disappearing.

"Not for the foreseeable future," he gave a tight, ironic smile, understanding at once that Sherlock was referring both to danger to his person as well as to his position and the power he wielded. "It seems I am still regarded as 'irreplaceable', whatever that means in these times."

"Lady Smallwood is on your side in this matter," he realised.

"Her support has been invaluable."

Sherlock gave a single slow nod. "All right. Is there anything I can do–"

Mycroft cut in with a no-nonsense order: "Don't shoot any more blackmailers in cold blood."

Sherlock reflexively bit his lip, feeling surprisingly chagrined about how much trouble his killing Charles Augustus Magnussen had brought Mycroft. "Yeah, no. Won't do that. Unless other lives are at stake, you know. Or–"

"Please," Mycroft interjected again. "Just don't."

"Yes, all right," he mumbled quickly. "Fine."

"Good."

"Yes, good," Sherlock echoed awkwardly. "So. Lady Smallwood. Satisfactory satisfaction. That's fine, although… although I do think that… you should be happy too."

Mycroft looked up, apparently startled by his words, as Sherlock rediscovered his interest in his steak. He forced his appetite to return – both for the food and his qualitative test.

A long pause sat in the air between them before Mycroft asked with surprising gentleness: "Are you?"

"Am I what?" he sought clarification, glancing up.

"Happy."

Sherlock had not asked himself that question for longer than he could accurately put a time frame to. And since he hadn't originally anticipated making that remark to Mycroft about how he should be happy, he likewise wasn't entirely prepared to answer this. But he thought about it – really thought about it instead of pretending to do so – and was able to say in all seriousness, without prevarication: "I think I can reach a state of being so one day. Not right now, not for a while to come. Some things are still rather raw. But eventually, I think I'll get there."

(Things that were still rather raw. Remembering Mary. John's grief, pouring forth and receding in waves. Mourning Victor at last. Looking up Victor's family to give them closure and in the same stroke remove all hope by telling them that they had found his bones after so many years. Eurus. Finally recalling everything Mycroft had done for him; finally recalling how Mycroft had felt about him.)

Mycroft acknowledged his spoken admission with a nod, and they ate in silence again for a while.

When they were ready to continue their conversational theme, however, Mycroft overlaid it with a lighter note by making reference to the earlier exchange of text messages, saying: "To arrive at happiness, though, it seems you may have to fight Mrs Hudson for John? Oh, no, I misremember. Your text implied that you might instead have to fight to keep John away from Mrs Hudson?"

He was smirking.

"Mycroft…" Sherlock growled. "John and I are not a couple. As you well know."

"I know no such thing. You act as if you are. The constant bickering, the unbreakable loyalty, all that communication without words, so much unspoken understanding, the juvenile behaviour, the private jokes…"

"Doesn't all that apply as well to you and me?" Sherlock sliced through Mycroft's list with a sharp smile, ruthlessly hurling the verbal spear that would pin the meandering exchange down to keep his experiment on track. "We might be a couple, Mycroft."

Mycroft's smirk disappeared to be replaced by a hint of colour in his cheeks. No wine to blame it on. He governed himself well, though, willing his reaction into submission and responding tangentially: "Ah. Well, then, I suppose I can't expect a happy announcement from you and John Watson any time soon."

"As John says, he'd rather snog Mrs Hudson."

"Oh God, the mental image," Mycroft groaned.

Sherlock chuckled. "Hmm, I don't know, they might be quite sweet together…"

"Stop. Please don't take me there."

"Where would you like me to take you, then?"

Mycroft actually coloured again, and dived back into his pasta. "Anywhere but there," he murmured between mouthfuls.

This was the point at which Sherlock would have been ready to dig in more bluntly with a hackneyed "Your place or mine? You did say to take you anywhere", but he pulled himself up short, caught off-guard by how unexpectedly vulnerable Mycroft looked.

His hesitation gave the other time to recover his composure enough to lift his head again with a curious expression. Glancing once more at Sherlock's jacket and shirt, Mycroft asked: "Well, if not John, then, are you meeting someone else for drinks after this?"

"No. Do I look like I'm meeting someone for drinks after this?" Sherlock asked innocently.

"As a matter of fact, you do. It's been a long time since you've worn anything like that."

"Contrary to what you might believe, I didn't always sell everything you gave me to fund my next high. But I do admit it has taken me unconscionably long to remember that if you hadn't stepped in to see to a lot of my practical needs at certain times, I would probably have spent the last decade wearing nothing at all."

Mycroft very nearly spluttered, but with admirable self-command, wrestled it down enough to pass as a light cough which he promptly drowned in a generous mouthful of water.

Susceptibility to putting a sensual spin on what should arguably be a neutral – or even repulsive – mental image of a sibling: check. Interest, attraction: inferred and noted.

An alert server stopped at their table to refill their glasses, but when they were alone again, Sherlock extended his arms very briefly out to the sides – just for a moment, to focus Mycroft's attention once more on what he was wearing (as if he really needed to) – and said: "While I don't thank you often enough, or at all, for everything you've done, just take this as one of my ways of doing that."

"You dressed up for… me." Mycroft both sounded and looked disbelieving.

"Yes, Mycroft. Not meeting anyone else after this for drinks, euphemistic or otherwise. I'm all yours tonight."

That did it. That was the point at which he had planned to push Mycroft a shade too far, to see if he would get a stronger reaction. Mycroft's eyes were wide open at first, intrigued and curious. Then the fear flickered over his face again, a flash of worry that Sherlock might have remembered that night. But immediately, still looking full-on at Sherlock, Mycroft narrowed his eyes, allowing Sherlock to assess that he had sussed what this whole evening was about. Just as he braced himself for an explosive confrontation, however, the rug was pulled out from under his feet when Mycroft's expression changed in another swift second. Quite suddenly, he simply looked sad. And then, worst of all, he smiled again, said "That's nice", and carried on eating.

Sherlock reeled internally.

He read it all on his brother's face: Mycroft realised that he'd remembered. He knew that he knew. Mycroft thought Sherlock was getting back at him, toying with him to taunt him. Yet, he wouldn't confront him or thrash out the past. He would accept being toyed with, he would play along, because he thought this pretence was the best he could get when it came to this one particular damning facet of his agonisingly complicated relationship with Sherlock.

"Mycroft…" Sherlock began, before discovering that he truly did not know what to say next.

"Oh, I never did ask you, did I?" Mycroft said, so lightly and with such an open smile that the ground shifted under Sherlock's feet again, necessitating swift reorientation. "How did it go with Molly Hooper? When you explained what that phone call was about? You did explain it to her, didn't you?"

"Mycroft, I… Yes, I did," Sherlock backed off quickly, readjusting his position, re-angling his approach to this whole business. "I told her everything – why I had to do that to her. I told her it wasn't a lie. That I did… I do love her very much, as a friend I would trust with my life. A friend I have, in fact, trusted my life with before, and whom I would trust with it again, without question."

"Did she accept that?"

"When I told her how desperately I did not want her to die, how much I was willing to hurt her in order to save her, and that I would readily hurt her all over again to save her once more, that was when she came back to me. I wasn't certain, before then, that I wouldn't lose her."

"It's remarkable, is it not? How far the people who love us are willing to go to forgive us?" Mycroft asked in a manner that struck Sherlock as half-rhetorical, half-pointed.

Mycroft had finished his pasta, and Sherlock was done with his steak, and there was nothing else to do but ask for the bill. Dominic Marcini himself came over when Sherlock was signing for it, to ask how they had found their meal.

"Excellent, as always," Sherlock flashed the proprietor a smile. "Thank you for giving me my usual table at such short notice."

"Not a problem at all, Sherlock," Marcini assured him with the utmost sincerity, palms out, fingers spread. "You and Dr Watson have helped me so much all this time with so many things, and you even saved me from that homicidal sous-chef… this is nothing at all. Whenever you need it, I will hold your table for you all night. Oh, and how is Dr Watson? I haven't seen him for some weeks."

"His baby daughter takes up all his spare time."

"Well, we hope to see him back here with you soon. Although you have a very handsome date for tonight too," Dominic grinned.

Sherlock swallowed a lump in his throat he hadn't realised had formed. He glanced at Mycroft, then said to Dominic: "I do, don't I? Mycroft looks amazing. He always does. Even when he thinks that I don't think he does."

This time, it was his turn to shift the ground under Mycroft's feet. He could see, out of the corner of his eye, the sheer surprise on his brother's face. But it seemed that Mycroft was steadier than he was, for he quickly recovered, smiled briskly at Dominic, stood up to shake the man's hand, then put them all out of their misery with a plain, simple, no-hidden-layers-of-meaning statement: "Signor Marcini, please don't listen to Sherlock's nonsense – except, of course, when he is saving you from homicidal sous-chefs. I'm Mycroft Holmes. Sherlock is my little brother."

Sherlock pulled on his coat while Dominic was gushing over getting to meet "Sherlock's big brother" and inviting him to come by very, very often. Then Mycroft picked up his umbrella, and they left the restaurant. He reached into his breast pocket for his phone once they were outside, but Sherlock stopped him. "Wait. Don't call for your car yet."

Mycroft turned to face him and slipped the phone back into his jacket. "I really have had a lovely evening, Sherlock," he said, sounding as if he meant it. "Thank you."

"Indulge me a while longer?" Sherlock asked with equal parts contrition and hopefulness. It was as close to a plea as he'd made to Mycroft since leaving his teens behind.

Mycroft sensed the change in his tone and looked more closely at him, with renewed curiosity.

Sherlock gestured with a light toss of his head towards a spot a couple of doors away from Marcini's. Two shuttered, boarded-up shopfronts of businesses whose premises were undergoing remodelling, their awnings still extended, potted shrubs still in place along the walkway. Mycroft walked with him until they were standing in the darkness outside those shuttered shops.

"I picked Marcini's tonight not only because of the relative privacy Dominic's usually able to offer me, but also because I knew these two businesses were temporarily closed," Sherlock said when they came to a stop. "No security cameras here. It's a blind spot for the street cams too, especially with those awnings. Even dashboard cameras from cars on the street don't catch much, with this faux pillar and these potted plants."

"And why do you need this blind spot?" Mycroft asked.

Sherlock stepped up to his brother, right into his personal space, noting that Mycroft didn't shift away at all, and said softly: "I didn't want us to be caught on camera."

"Why not?" Mycroft's voice had dropped to match his.

"It would probably ruin my reputation."

"Is there anything left to ruin?" Mycroft asked, gently sardonic.

Sherlock's mouth twitched at the understated humour of it. "Well, we have to conserve what we're running short of, don't we?"

"What don't you want to be seen doing?"

"I got you something."

"Oh?" Mycroft's voice had recovered its note of interest.

"Spent part of yesterday shopping for it."

"You. Shopping."

"Yes. Me. Shopping. Really shopping. Not nicking stuff off people's clothes lines. For you."

Sherlock extracted the folded-up scarf he had stashed in his right coat pocket, wrapped in a large handkerchief. He put the hanky away, unfolded the scarf, and slipped it over Mycroft's head to lay it against the back of his neck, moving so close to him to do so that the front of his coat pressed right up against the buttons of his brother's jacket.

"I know scarves aren't really your thing – you almost never wear them," Sherlock said, still speaking low, his face no more than two inches from Mycroft's. "But there've been times when I thought you could do with one. And I think this would suit you. I'll take the box round to you another time – I didn't want to fuss with a shopping bag today."

It was a mark of how much Mycroft trusted his safety to Sherlock (or perhaps, more heartbreakingly, how little he cared if only it were Sherlock driving home the blade) that he hadn't so much as flinched even when he had no idea what he was pulling from his pocket or putting around his neck. It almost hurt Sherlock physically to think how his brother seemed to have no self-preservation instincts when it came to him. No sense of how to retaliate. The only one he wouldn't defend himself against even if he twisted his arm up behind him and slammed him into a door frame.

Mycroft fingered the ends of the scarf, feeling the goassamer softness of it, and Sherlock could tell that his practised fingers would have detected by now that it wasn't just wool, or cashmere, or anything so basic. "This is…" he began to say.

"After all the expensive wardrobes you've bought me and I've destroyed," Sherlock interrupted him, "it's small recompense."

Let Mycroft have a fit later, when he confirmed it was vicuna. Let him wonder if Sherlock had emptied every last bloody bank account in his name to buy it. (He hadn't; Mycroft shouldn't underestimate how much he earned from the endless string of drop-dead boring cases he didn't even know Sherlock took for goldfish who had far too much money.)

For now, Sherlock leaned in even closer and whispered into Mycroft's ear: "I meant what I said, you know, about you looking amazing. I never saw it before, but I do now. You look really good."

This close, and in physical contact, hands brushing Mycroft's throat as he straightened the scarf, he actually had further data – elevated heart rate, shallower, more rapid breaths. (Arousal and desire: present and observed.)

But the qualitative analysis didn't matter any more. To hell with the raised levels of C8H11NO2 and C43H66N12O12S2 and whatever else. His quasi-chemical test had proven too cold and cruel a tool to use on the fragility, the sheer tenderness, of Mycroft's emotions. He knew now, and Mycroft knew, that it was still there – that forbidden desire, the impossible want. Sherlock had confirmed its presence, and it was up to him to decide what would be done about it.

"You should call for your car now," he said, taking a small step back.

Mycroft, never taking his eyes off his face, drew his phone out and rang his driver, then told Sherlock: "I'll give you a lift back to Baker Street."

"No, you've already given me too much of your time and patience tonight – and your forgiveness," Sherlock said frankly. "Truly. Besides, I want to be alone to think."

Mycroft's Jaguar, which had evidently been waiting in one of the nearby side streets, rolled up. The driver held the door open for Sherlock as well, but he shook his head to communicate that he wasn't getting in. Mycroft, already in the back seat, hesitated, but nodded at last to confirm to the driver that his brother wouldn't be needing a lift tonight.

The door closed, breaking their eye contact, and the car drove away.

Analysis done. Findings: some expected; others not at all. Consequences: life-altering.

Sherlock stood there for a whole minute, staring after Mycroft's car. Then he hailed the first empty cab that came along, and returned to Baker Street. To think.

Notes:
· Marcini's, of course, is the restaurant mentioned at the end of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles, when Holmes whisks Watson off on what I personally like to think of as a hot date featuring an intimate candlelit dinner and passionate opera. But oh, all right, if I'm to be objective, then Holmes merely invites Watson to join him for Les Huguenots, with a little dinner at Marcini's on the way, and would he please be ready to leave in half an hour. To the best of my knowledge, that original Marcini's no longer exists in London, so I've simply made a new one pop up – almost certainly in the wrong borough of the city – for this fic. (Because the location, look and feel of Angelo's simply doesn't work for what this part of my story calls for.)

· The Latin text is from Ovid's Metamorphoses, first published around 8 AD. The English translation by John Dryden, Sir Samuel Garth, Joseph Addison, Alexander Pope and others, compiled by Sir Samuel Garth in 1717, renders those lines as: "No certain form on any was imprest;/All were confus'd, and each disturb'd the rest./For hot and cold were in one body fixt;/And soft with hard, and light with heavy mixt."