Care, Security

They had to take care. It wasn't a good idea to kiss. But this was something they both knew without having to discuss it, or needing it to be at the forefront of their minds. It was simply obvious that with medical teams trotting around swabbing and testing everyone who'd been in the dining room, it was asking for trouble to permit the existence of a sample that could reveal to someone capable of Moriarty-level snooping that traces of their saliva had been in each other's mouths. Or anywhere lower down on their bodies.

Sexual intimacy was impossible, but strangely, this wove a deeply intimate cocoon around them as Mycroft's soul processed what it meant that Sherlock had echoed his own words to him from the Christmas before last. "Your loss would break my heart" – a statement he had made at a time when he had never dreamt that Sherlock would ever learn the full range of emotion and desire that lay behind his words.

But now, his brother snuggled against him and refused to raise his head from Mycroft's chest. The more petulant equivalent, perhaps, of Mycroft keeping his back to him as he'd made his declaration two years ago, to hide his eyes and face from him. So he let him be for a good 22 minutes, until he saw the medical teams approaching.

The masks came down over their faces as they drew apart and unlocked the doors to let the officers and doctors swab them and check for immediate danger signs or symptoms of poisoning. They were then given four bottles of drinking water and left alone again – probably for several hours – while the labs ran the toxicology tests.

"Can you go home after this?" Sherlock asked, dropping his mask and curling into his body when the car doors were closed and locked once more.

"No," he answered, snaking an arm round Sherlock's waist. "My teams are waiting to debrief me, then I'll report to the Cabinet, and call Ambassador Luo. We have an understanding that the Chinese side will take care of Wu Guangrong and anyone else from the embassy they find to be involved, but MI6 will begin its operations against Eskov at once. I'm not likely to see the inside of my house for three days."

"I hate it that you're always overworked." Sherlock sounded as if he was pouting.

"Nonsense," Mycroft scoffed affectionately. "You love it that I'm always overworked. It keeps me out of your hair."

"Well, I don't like it any more. Can I stay by your side until you're done?"

"For three days? In the JIO ops room at Whitehall?" Mycroft asked incredulously. "You'd be climbing the deathly dull, drab walls in there and driving me insane with your complaints."

"Then can I wait in your house?"

"You can, although I fear you'd go just as mad of boredom in there by yourself," Mycroft laughed, kissing the top of his head. "Since you've already stolen or read half my books."

"Call me when you're done, then, and I'll meet you there. I want to be with you."

"Do you? You're not just overreacting to almost losing me to an explosive anthrax assault?"

"It's not funny."

"I'm sorry," Mycroft apologised, kissing the top of his head again.

It was all very chaste here in the back seat of the car, and very endearing, he thought, with Sherlock nestled against him almost like he had when he'd been very small and was always looking for a cuddle from his elder brother.

"I'm not overreacting," Sherlock insisted, murmuring into Mycroft's chest. "I want to be with you."

"I'll give you my spare set of keys, how about that?" Mycroft coaxed him into agreement. "When I'm ready to go home, or any time before or after that, you can let yourself in."

"Without breaking in."

"Without breaking in."

Sherlock reluctantly released Mycroft for a few moments to let him stretch his body and one arm over to the front of the car and tap a passcode into the locked compartment beneath the dashboard, from where he retrieved one of his spare sets of house keys.

"You've broken in so often, I wonder if you remember that you have to use these in tandem with a code. The current one is…"

"I know what the current code is."

Mycroft raised an eyebrow. "Do I want to know how you know it?"

"No," Sherlock said childishly, pocketing the keys before diving into Mycroft's arms again and burying his face in his chest.

"Sometimes, I think you really never did grow up," he said with genuine wonder, stroking Sherlock's curly hair.

"I didn't. Or maybe I regressed. Whatever," he shrugged against Mycroft's torso. "Mummy was totally wrong, in any case, when she asked me what to do about Eurus because I was the grown-up. Stuff and nonsense. I was never the grown-up. She only said so to needle you because she thought in the heat of her anger that your politics and intelligence work and security worries and diplomacy were silly games. But they're silly only when they're played by goldfish – they're deadly serious when you're the one looming over the chessboard. I've always been the brat messing things up for you. She was so wrong about you."

"All right, shush," Mycroft whispered. "Don't get worked up over Mummy again. It's fine. You and I weren't very nice to each other at different times of our lives, but we're here, and we're both alive and in one piece, so I think we, and Mummy and Daddy, all got the most crucial parts right. It's worked out, somehow."

He could feel Sherlock chewing his bottom lip against his shirt front – perhaps biting down against his urge to dispute the advice not to get worked up over Mummy, or to express that he too was glad it had worked out. But in the end, he settled for saying nothing, only dragging his head, catlike, over the front of Mycroft's shirt and dinner jacket up to his shoulder, then burying his face in the side of his neck. The tip of his nose felt cold against Mycroft's skin, but the rest of his face was warm, as were the puffs of breath issuing from between his lips.

"You should take a nap before you get into your three-day op," Sherlock said sensibly, lifting a hand to rub soothing circles over Mycroft's forehead and temples.

"Now, who says you're not the grown-up?" Mycroft smirked, closing his eyes as Sherlock's fingers did their magic on his stress levels.

"I'll be a brat if I want to," Sherlock murmured levelly, the low timbre of his voice calming Mycroft immeasurably.

"Sherlock."

"Hmm?"

"You know that things don't have to be good between us only as lovers, don't you? Right here and now, we're not doing so very much more than any other pair of brothers might, and it's still good. So… I want to say that… if you don't want what we recently became, it won't change the welcome aspects of what we are now. I'd be happy with whatever makes you happy."

"Be quiet," Sherlock said softly. "Your mind's too noisy again. I don't just want to be one thing to you, Mycroft."

"Oh?"

"I want what you want. This is the first stage of my life at which I can say that honestly, and consciously mean it from every angle, in all its permutations."

Mycroft started to open his eyes, but Sherlock dropped the palm of his hand over his eyelids to keep them closed.

"Promise me you'll do everything you can not to die on me, and I'll promise you the same for myself. If we pull it off, I'll have plenty of time to show you that I mean what I say," Sherlock told him. "We could talk till the cows come home, but we're both too bloody good at manipulating others and ourselves with words, so I can see why you'd wonder if I'm just talking myself into it. But I'm not, I promise you. I'm in this with you, and I want everything you want for us."

Mycroft's breath hitched, but he smoothed it again, and forced his breathing and heart rate to slow. "All right," he acquiesced.

Perhaps he was evading the confrontation that he felt he needed to have with Sherlock, but certain things could neither be uncovered nor improved by persistent digging. Perhaps he should stop feeling that he had to interfere in or interrogate the shifts of the strange new landscape he and Sherlock were weaving around themselves, and just explore it as it grew. This was unfamiliar territory. In his vast experience, things tended to go wrong when he didn't micromanage them. But this time, Sherlock was his partner, not his adversary, in nurturing this unusual garden twining and branching out over and about them, and that alone might make a brave new world of difference.

Knowing he would indeed need some rest before the operation ahead, he sank into a middling depth of sleep, the blanket Sherlock had grabbed from the medical team keeping his knees warm, while Sherlock's arms, wrapped around him, warded off the autumn-night chill in the unheated car.

By his pocket watch, it was two hours later when Sherlock woke him with a warm brush of his lips under his left ear, and a whisper: "You can wake up now. Anthea's texted to say they've done the initial processing with a quick version of the test just for us, and they're reasonably sure we're not going to kill half the population by scattering anthrax spores everywhere."

"Mm." Mycroft's mouth felt dry and stale.

"Have some water," Sherlock said, opening one of the bottles that the medical team had left.

"Thanks," he said, after a few mouthfuls had revitalised him and his breath.

"She's coming over to trade places with me. You're both off to Whitehall at once with your usual driver, and the Bentley will take John and me back to Baker Street."

"Efficient as always, that girl," Mycroft commented.

"Can't I stay with you while you go through this?"

"Go home and spend some regular time with John, Rosamund and Mrs Hudson," Mycroft said to him, stroking his cheek. "After that, if you like, you can come to me with a clear conscience that you haven't neglected your work or your friends."

"Okay. Just don't think I'll forget all about you while we're apart. I'll never forget all about you again."

"We'll see," Mycroft said archly. "By tomorrow it'll have escaped you that you even have an older brother."

Sherlock stuck his tongue out at him, but darted in for a quick peck on the cheek just as Anthea came within two feet of the car, the darkened windows the only thing keeping them from being seen by her. He opened the door and got out, and Mycroft saw him give Anthea a "Take care of Mycroft" look, which she responded to with her own "You know I always do" look. Mycroft rolled his eyes and clucked in irritation, but watched with a softer gaze as Sherlock strode off in the direction of the Bentley, disappearing from view round one of the medical tents before the Jaguar pulled away from the scene.

Once he and Anthea reached Whitehall and descended into the ops room in the JIO office, Mycroft switched to kill-and-destroy work mode and dismissed all sentiment by convincing himself that Sherlock would come to his senses by daybreak and run screaming from him – after getting in a swat about his massive weight, of course.

By the time 27 hours had passed since Mycroft had had any sleep beyond a 20-minute catnap, the first text from Sherlock arrived, followed two hours later by another. The surreal feeling of reading those messages prompted Mycroft to consider if it might not be unreasonable to assume he was hallucinating. However, knowing that his hallucinations never began before the 72-hour sleep-deprivation mark, he had to accept that the messages were real. Probably. Especially when a third arrived via John, another couple of hours after the last.

At 05:03:
Sherlock
In Finsbury Park on a case. Dead turtle, dismembered parrot. Don't worry, not moving around too evasively to lose the usual minder you have on my tail.

At 07:17:
Sherlock
Now at Highgate for one of the parrot's feet. Old grave, new body. Had to dash, but not so fast your man couldn't keep up.

At 09:08:
John Watson
Sherlock wants me to tell you he's deep underground. Literally. But you're not to be concerned unless he doesn't surface after three hours. I'll update you. He says he doesn't want you to worry when you have so many other things on your mind. Which, frankly, is more than a tad strange. Should I be worried about him not wanting to worry you?

Deep into the operation to strike several concurrent blows against Anatoly Eskov by going after his associates, a mere handful of hours after Mycroft had thoroughly debriefed the Cabinet about what had happened at The May Fair, following debriefings he'd received from a string of Home Office units, going through a series of dull phone calls to various diplomats, and having to assure a sincerely solicitous Lady Smallwood that he was truly unharmed and in good health, he had the peculiar experience of not needing to worry about Sherlock's whereabouts. Because, wonder of wonders, his impossible brother was voluntarily keeping him updated.

However, at the 48-hour mark of no sleep beyond catnaps and two minutes of unconsciousness on his feet while showering in the bathroom near the ops room, he did start to think he might be seeing and hearing things. Because Anthea sounded nervous.

Anthea never sounded nervous.

Yet, as she answered a call and stared at her laptop screen with a disbelieving expression on her face, she made the following illuminating vocalisation with unmistakably tremulous uncertainty: "Er… sir…?"

An "Er… sir?" coming from Anthea was never a good thing. Never.

"What is it? What?" he asked anxiously, gliding round her desk to see what terrifying image she was staring at.

The sight of which gave him a certain degree of instant comprehension as to why she had produced that hesitant utterance, while not genuinely offering any true illumination at all.

It was a security-cam screengrab of Sherlock. A security-cam screengrab of Sherlock cheekily smiling – smiling – straight into the camera, holding his hands up with his fingers forming a cheesy heart shape. A screengrab from right outside the Whitehall building their ops room was in, recorded ten minutes ago. And Anthea was now saying to someone over the phone: "All right, yes, bring it in."

"Bring what in?" Mycroft asked in a daze, still staring at the picture of his brother's incongruously cheerful face.

"Cake and chocolate."

"What?"

"For you, and me, and the team. To keep us going. Apparently." Anthea frowned, evidently still processing the reality of the situation. "Sherlock rang to say he'd handed it directly to Lawrence, so there's no fear of sabotage or contamination, and Lawrence says he's bringing it in now."

Within ten minutes, Mycroft's regular driver entered bearing Sherlock's gifts of a large coconut-and-chocolate-meringue cake from Ottolenghi's, and 15 chunky bars of what promised to be pistachio praline-filled dark chocolate from a French chocolatier, along with a card that simply stated in Sherlock's handwriting: Not drugged. Promise.

Mycroft whipped out his phone at once.

M
Are you trying to kill me?

Sherlock
I swear I haven't drugged the cake and choc.

M
That's not what I meant!

Sherlock
Oh. No, I'd never try to kill you. Just trying to feed you. You need some sugar in you. And probably sleep. But sugar first.

M
My waistline will never recover.

Sherlock
Don't be ridiculous, Mycroft. You're much too thin. We need to fatten you up a bit. Seriously.

Now he knew he had to have slipped into a parallel universe. Or that Sherlock had been body-snatched. Or that he was merely hallucinating well before his 72-hour limit.

"Oh my god," Anthea groaned.

"Now what?" Mycroft breathed, almost fearfully, looking up from his phone screen.

"Eat this."

"You ate that without having it sent for testing?" Mycroft stared at Anthea in disbelief.

"He says it's not drugged."

"And you believe him?"

"I do, sir," she stated firmly. "I actually do believe him. Besides, for a taste of chocolate this good at a dire time like this, I'd die happy."

With a small plastic knife that Sherlock had thoughtfully provided for the chunks of chocolate, Anthea cut Mycroft a one-centimetre-thick strip off the bar she'd unwrapped. He slipped the dark, glossy piece with its bright pistachio-green centre into his mouth, and promptly went weak at the knees.

"Oh my god," he gasped.

The dark chocolate was the perfect encasement for the rich, creamy praline in which whole pistachios nestled. Anthea was already Googling fast in between sending out confirmations of orders that were telling people to kill other people.

"Pralus is selling it at the Salon du Chocolat event at the Olympia," she said, transparently mulling the idea of sending some MI6 lackey out for more. "It might be available at a few chocolatiers here after the event if anyone shows interest in stocking it, but otherwise we'd have to get it from France."

Sherlock
I know you like that cake, but I think you'll like the chocolate even better. I've left a few bars on your kitchen counter at home, all for you. So don't get into a spat with Anthea over the last fragments of it.

Mycroft's already melting heart melted further.

Sherlock
Oh, and by the way, I've already called Mummy to apologise for being rude to her. She says she's sorry for being unfair to you too and sends you lots of love. Also, our infernal parents have tickets to Mamma Mia! at the Novello Theatre next week, horrors. I've promised I'll go with them, so you don't have to.

For once, Sherlock was behaving like a considerate, responsible adult without being strong-armed into it. And he was offering to tolerate almost three hours of unbearably tacky Abba numbers just so that his elder brother wouldn't have to suffer through yet another ghastly, lowbrow West End musical with their parents. And he'd delivered cake and a divine variety of chocolate while Mycroft was drowning in work.

All of which, Mycroft suddenly realised – as far as public gestures could go between them – was figuratively and literally the sweetest possible declaration of "I love you" that could come from someone as generally obnoxious, manipulative, thoughtless, self-absorbed and impatient as Sherlock.

For the first time in his career, Mycroft found himself in the alarming position of very nearly losing his composure in front of Anthea, and having to lean on her desk to steady his breathing before he did anything irredeemable like bursting into tears.

Without a word, and before anyone else could notice, she discreetly took his left elbow and steered him back into his own small office off the ops room, shut the door behind them, and said firmly: "Sir, you are going to lie down on this sofa and get some proper rest."

"Anthea, it's nothing," he muttered, pressing his right hand over his eyes. "It's just the stress of–"

"Sir, I had six hours of sleep last night. You haven't had anything worth describing as sleep for 48 hours."

"I'm always fine for stretches of 72 hours–"

"Sir, the human body is not a machine!" she snapped.

"Sherlock would disagree with that," he mumbled, fighting the urge to giggle hysterically and cry at the same time.

"Sherlock disagrees with many things, sir, and we're not obliged to agree with him – except where his choice of chocolate and cake are concerned," she said begrudgingly. "Now, lie down. I'll cut you a large slice of cake and a few more pieces of chocolate and I'll come back in quietly to leave them here on a paper plate for you, so you can have them when you wake up. But you are to really rest before that. I won't wake you for anything short of a bomb going off in Windsor Castle. I'd rather send you home to sleep, but we do need you here when our assets start moving in on Eskov's pieces of property in Moscow, Beijing and Belgrade."

"And I'm perfectly–"

"That won't happen for at least three hours yet, so sleep now," she talked right over him, taking his phone from him and switching it to silent mode. "I'll tell Sherlock, Dr Watson and DI Lestrade to contact me in an emergency."

Mycroft sighed in resignation, lay down, closed his eyes, and heard Anthea switching off all the lights in the room except the desk lamp. She stepped in quietly five minutes later to leave the promised slice of cake and chocolate on his desk, then she closed the door, and he was alone.

This latest disorientating shift had begun, hadn't it, from the moment Sherlock had stepped into that dining room with the aim of saving him? In a role-reversal between them, his brother had walked in there playing a part like the grey-eyed deity Homer had repeatedly described the goddess Athena to be, as she had taken on one disguise after another to bring Odysseus home after ten years of war in Troy, and ten more years lost to mishaps and delays at sea.

The grey-eyed one, assuming the forms of old warriors, a young man, a little girl, a tiny swallow – anything that would help Odysseus make his way back to Ithaka, give encouragement to the loyal Penelope waiting for her husband, and lend courage to their son Telemakhos, whom Odysseus had not set eyes on since he was an infant.

Like Athena, Sherlock had entered in one of his many guises, for Mycroft's sake. Then later, in the Jaguar, when he had dropped all his masks and clung to Mycroft like a kindergartener, petulantly insisting that it shouldn't always be his job to sacrifice himself for others, Mycroft had felt he was coming home at last after 20 years adrift. Sherlock had given him the permission of safe passage, going beyond even all the roles the goddess had played for Odysseus' sake. He was the deity who was smoothing Mycroft's journey now, as well as the child Mycroft thought he had lost to a hostile adulthood so long ago, and the faithful Penelope whose love he had yearned for even when nymphs and other goddesses had embraced him as their lover.

Overwhelming as the idea was, Mycroft cautiously explored what Sherlock was promising to be by caring for him, and weighed the idea that perhaps, just perhaps – even beyond the far-reaching hopes of dreams and wishes – he could be all things to Mycroft.

Security. Here, in the safety of the lab at St Bart's, he and John and Molly could talk freely, and he listened with contentment as Molly rambled on after they had shared with her what details they were allowed to of the case: "…so it's not like Dr Rama really had any other information from talking to Henry Carter's mother and girlfriend – or friend, or whoever she was supposed to be."

"No, I think what Dr Ramachandran reported about the angry things Hulme and Samuels said, and the threats of personal harm they made against Carter's killer, will be of use to Lestrade when he's putting the evidence together," Sherlock said, glancing up briefly from the microscope to give Molly a little smile. "Thanks, Molly. What you told us over the phone two evenings ago was really helpful."

Molly beamed at him and added: "Once this whole thing is out in the open, and you're able to give me more details, fill me in, won't you? It's always nice to know the facts and the real people behind the news reports."

"Of course," he promised.

He had learnt the vital lesson from once being tricked by Irene Adler that even innocuous little things could add up to huge revelations for people who were working against them. Molly would never harm them, but she might inadvertently let something slip, which could be used by somebody else. With Mycroft in the end stages of drawing his net tighter around Anatoly Eskov, it was best to keep as much under wraps as possible, until it was all over.

"What are you looking at today, anyway?" she asked, peering at the slide he had under the microscope.

"Exactly what I thought they were," he said smugly. "Moth wing scales."

"From the cemetery," John chipped in cryptically.

"Where the parrot's foot was," Sherlock smiled.

"Which meant that the turtle was definitely murdered," John stated.

"Oh, definitely."

"Which, of course, means that the son of the turtle's owner is the one who's stolen all her diamond jewellery."

"And dismembered the parrot."

"Because it squealed."

"Or squawked, to be more precise."

"And because he likes torturing moths."

"Oh, yes."

Molly looked between the two of them as if she were a spectator at a ping-pong match, then shook her head before returning to her own work of testing samples from a body that had come in last night and needed urgent processing because it wouldn't hold together much longer – not after having spent the last three weeks soaking in bathwater before being discovered.

"I hope your brother's all right after all that excitement," Molly murmured, concentrating on adding a catalyst to a flask.

"He's fine," Sherlock murmured back, peering at his next slide, which confirmed that it was definitely tiliacea citrago. Not out of the ordinary, then, so the son wasn't likely to be getting his moths from some breeder of obscure species. Probably just netting them out of the air.

"Eh? You said last night that Mycroft was overworked," John pointed out.

"Overworked is a normal state for Mycroft," Sherlock grumbled. "Despite his natural preference for being lazy."

"I've never known Mr Holmes to be lazy, honestly," Molly said earnestly. "He's always moving mountains to keep you safe."

"I know," Sherlock murmured awkwardly. "I'll stay with him for a couple of days when he's done with this case, to make sure he doesn't, you know, slip into a coma or something."

"It's a nice thought, but are you sure it's a good idea?" John asked.

"Why wouldn't it be?" Sherlock asked.

"Because things have been good between the two of you of late," John said logically. "And being in each other's hair is only going to screw it all up again. I really don't want to get a call from Greg two days later informing me that you and Mycroft have murdered each other in a temper."

"Well, either it works, or it doesn't. Might as well find out."

"Maybe I'd be slightly more worried if it turns out that the two of you can get along at close quarters after all," John remarked, lightly knitting his brows.

"Why's that?" Sherlock asked.

"Because what's saved you both on more than one occasion has been the assumption of your enemies that you detest Mycroft," John said. "Moriarty didn't even try putting a sniper on Mycroft that time, and I'm guessing it wasn't only because Mycroft would never have been an easy target, but mainly because he didn't think you'd care if your brother lived or died. And Eurus counted on you choosing to kill Mycroft, because she was sure that you didn't care about him. You flummoxed her by opting not to. If you get along great now, that's one less thing keeping you from the big bad sharks we don't know about yet that are lurking, watching you from the deep."

"I'll try not to be too publicly lovey-dovey with him, how about that?" Sherlock grinned.

"Sherlock, this isn't a joke."

"I know," he replied more seriously, feeling slightly chastened.

"And along exactly the same lines, it was precisely because Moriarty didn't know how much you cared for Molly either that he didn't put a sniper on her, and that really saved your skinny arse," John drove home the point, nodding at Molly, whose cheeks reddened.

"I know," Sherlock repeated with a sigh. "Which is why, as I said, I won't get too lovey-dovey with Mycroft in public."

"What really made it better between you two, anyway?" John asked, curiously. "I know Sherrinford changed things, but you and Mycroft were still pretty much going on like normal for weeks after that, minus the very ugliest of the spats, of course."

"Sherrinford did change everything," Sherlock said, thinking of how to tell the truth without telling the truth. "But we were still… working out… how to behave better with each other without having to make the process agonising."

"Why would it be agonising?" Molly asked innocently.

"Because everything Mycroft and I put each other through is some bizarre variation of hell," Sherlock muttered, before hitting on a way to explain it reasonably. He went on: "John, remember that day I told you Mycroft had said in his text that I should make an honest man of you, and you said you'd rather snog Mrs Hudson, but just a couple of weeks later, you were suggesting that you and I should come to some sort of arrangement?"

"You did what?" Molly gasped at John, eyes wide, almost fumbling her flask.

"Sorry, Molly. There was a damn good practical reason for it, but never mind, it's not on the table now," John grimaced, before turning back to Sherlock to say: "Well, yeah, I know I said what I said, then did what I did later, but I hadn't fully worked us out in my head when he texted you, so I just threw out whatever wouldn't lead to some painful, involved discussion between us when neither of us was ready for it."

"That's rather like what happened between me and Mycroft. Things had changed, but we just went on throwing out, in a reflex, whatever pointed to the status quo between us just so it wouldn't lead to some painful, involved discussion that neither of us was ready for. But we sort of became ready for that painful discussion at some stage, and that was how things got… better?"

"I can kind of see that, but I also kind of can't," John said, shaking his head, and Molly nodded in agreement.

"Well, it's the best I can do," Sherlock grumbled.

His phone chimed, and he glanced at the incoming message. At once, he drew back from the microscope, put his slides away, and picked up his coat, saying: "John, you'll have to be the one to tell Mrs Clarke where her diamonds are – deep inside her son's moth torture chamber. In other words, in one of the secret gaps he knows about somewhere in the graves at Highgate Cemetery. Better bring the police with you – he might not stop at dismembering animals."

"Where're you off to?" John queried.

"Mycroft's," he answered over his shoulder. "He should be done by this evening. I'm going to get him a takeaway so he doesn't starve."

As he left the lab, Sherlock could just make out John's baffled murmur to Molly: "Since when has he ever thought that Mycroft should be allowed to eat anything?"

Acknowledging the truth of John's remark as he exited the building, Sherlock felt a little angry with himself. He and Mycroft had always had a similar constitution: They could both go without sleep and food for days with little discernible effect. And all along, because he'd never cared much for his own body, he had high-handedly decided that Mycroft shouldn't care for his either. He'd tormented his brother for giving himself meals, and treats, and rest, because, surely, it was understood that the two of them didn't need such things.

But he didn't like this ridiculous understanding any more. He had found it startling to notice how fragile Mycroft had been after Sherrinford, how brittle he'd seemed after Mummy had been hard on him, and how tired his body was. He now also hated how punishingly disciplined he was about his food. Sherlock knew it was hypocritical to care about these things now on Mycroft's behalf while still brushing off friends' concerns about his own health and well-being, but he would wrap his head around the stupid contradiction later. For the present, he could see the need for Mycroft to be well, and happy, and that would have to do.

John had often commented on Sherlock's poor practical knowledge of how normal humans functioned, and the accusation was not an unjust one. However, he'd been trying to pick things up little by little, and he'd paid attention to Rosie's needs, and absorbed tiny details from John and Mrs Hudson about… well, normal stuff.

He tried to put those bits of information to use now as he considered what Mycroft would like for dinner. Not that Mycroft was normal. But if he was trying to take care of him, what would be best? Well, he wouldn't have eaten properly the last three days, that was for sure. Anthea would have tried to give him reasonably nutritious sandwiches or anything else she thought he'd be willing to bite into while his mind was running in full work mode, but chances were good he'd have nibbled on the greens and left half the bread and meat uneaten. So, even though Sherlock knew he enjoyed Northern Indian food, which might be good for whetting his appetite, he had better not have anything excessively spicy before his stomach readapted to normal meals.

A saag paneer, then – he'd like the spinach and cubes of mild cheese, and there was no curry or chilli in that. A chicken tandoori too. Some naan – maybe half of them plain, and half with garlic, which he did appreciate. Sherlock hailed a cab and headed for St James's, where he ordered a takeaway of the items he'd decided on from a Northern Indian eatery there. When the packs of food were handed to him, he walked over to Mycroft's place, let himself in, and hoped he'd timed it well enough for his brother to be home soon. Because he still didn't trust himself to reheat real food properly in the microwave or on the stovetop without burning it to an intriguing but inedible charcoal crisp.

It took slightly longer than he'd anticipated, and the food had cooled somewhat – but not too much – before he heard the sounds of the door opening and went downstairs to the foyer.

Mycroft looked tired. And hungry. And rather impossibly handsome, not a hair out of place, black pinstriped three-piece suit perfectly uncreased beneath the black overcoat, skimming lightly over the lean lines of his body, a dark contrast against the pallor of his face, the faint hollows in his cheeks setting off the delicate bones, which had always been finer in structure and more fragile-looking than Sherlock's.

And Sherlock's breath caught. Because it had been a damned long time since he'd instinctively found Mycroft really, actually bloody attractive. How long had it been? He must have been fifteen or so when that last lightning strike of physical attraction to his brother had dashed through his psyche and seared him. After that, for years, it had gone missing. Even on the night they'd first made love here in this very house, and in the bunker office, he'd known that he wanted Mycroft, that he cared about him, that he wanted to be with him, but this was different – very old, and also very new – this silly, heady, dizzy realisation that Mycroft was gorgeous.

"Hello," Mycroft said, looking quizzically at him, frozen on the stairs.

"Hi," Sherlock managed to say, from a throat that had gone dry.

Mycroft's eyes narrowed. "What have you done?"

"Hmm?" he asked, puzzled. "I haven't done anything."

"Then why do you look nervous?"

"Do I? I haven't done anything, really. I just hope you like saag paneer and tandoori chicken. I got a takeaway for your dinner. I'm sure you haven't had any real food in days."

"I love saag paneer," Mycroft smiled as Sherlock made it down the last of the stairs and walked over to him while he removed his coat. "But that can't be why you're nervous."

"I didn't want to get anything too spicy for you if you hadn't eaten properly in days," Sherlock told him. "I wanted to get it right."

"That's why you're looking this uncertain? You think I'd complain about what you've chosen for my dinner?" Mycroft asked, cupping the right side of Sherlock's face with his hand and running his thumb over his cheekbone.

"I just wanted to make sure I got something you would actually eat," Sherlock whispered, his voice seeming to dry up again.

Mycroft looked into his eyes and saw what he saw there, and then his own eyes widened, and he said: "Oh."

Sherlock broke the eye-contact, feeling hot in the face, glancing down a few inches to his neck, where it was his own turn to go: "Oh, you're wearing the scarf."

"Of course I am," Mycroft smiled a little shyly as he unwound the said scarf. "I wear it more often than I'd expected to when you gave it to me. I wore it every day that I was away on that two-week trip. And I locked it in the glove compartment of the car on the evening of the ambassador's dinner because I knew I would have to leave my coat in the cloakroom, and I didn't want to risk losing the scarf. I always think of you when I wear it. But then I think that I always think of you even when I'm not wearing it."

Mycroft leaned in for a kiss, which Sherlock gladly gave, though he wished his heart would stop pounding like this, because it was making him even more nervous and trembly, and he wanted to give Mycroft a good kiss…

"Thank you for the cake, and the wonderful chocolate, and for keeping me updated about your activities," Mycroft whispered against his lips. "It meant a great deal to me."

"I really, really wanted you not to have to worry about me," he whispered back. "You've spent too much of your life doing that, and I need to stop putting you through that. And I really, really need to feed you up, because you've become so thin it hurts my bones just to see it."

"Are you quite sure you haven't been body-snatched by aliens I will now be obliged to wage war on to make them switch you back? Your usual brain and personality seem to have vanished into the far reaches of space," Mycroft remarked fondly, lips now brushing Sherlock's jaw.

"If being my usual self means being horrid to you I'd rather be brain-switched by aliens," Sherlock said frankly.

"Do you really want to fatten me up now? Are you sure?" Mycroft asked doubtfully.

"Mm-hmm. As long as you're healthy and happy, everything else is fine," Sherlock insisted. "You need more meat on your bones."

"Maybe you're just getting me ready to be shoved into some witch's cauldron."

"I have no doubt you'd taste utterly delicious, but I prefer you alive, uncooked and in one piece, if you please," Sherlock said. "We'll hold out bones for blind old witches to feel so they won't know if you get plump, and we'll eat up their houses of cake and sweets when we've killed them, and we'll live happily ever after."

"A fairy-tale ending."

"Fairy-tale endings don't include perishing of hunger, so come and have something to eat before you drop," Sherlock insisted, taking Mycroft by the hand and leading him upstairs to the table in the drawing room, where they sat close to each other on either side of one corner of the table, and he made Mycroft tuck into as much saag paneer and tandoori chicken and naan as he could eat, feeding him several bites by hand, as Mycroft made sure that Sherlock, too, mopped up his fair share.

Then they cleared the table and headed down into the kitchen, where they binned what could not be recycled, and washed the rest.

Sherlock stood behind Mycroft at the sink and slipped his arms around him, unable to suppress the frisson of attraction and nervousness and what felt like absurd quantities of affection, and he knew Mycroft wouldn't have missed a single shiver against his back.

"Thank you for looking after me, and looking out for me," Mycroft said, turning his face towards Sherlock's.

"I could just as well say that to you too," Sherlock responded, nuzzling him and not minding all the aromas of food on their breath and the scent of dishwashing liquid and hot water from the sink, because he could smell the warmth of Mycroft's skin and the seductiveness of his cologne, and it was making his heart speed up again.

He was behaving like a teenager with a crush on his brother, and Mycroft could read him like a book. He could have taken so much revenge for all the suffering he'd endured, for the horror of Sherlock trying to sell his body to him at 17, for simply not being loved back as a brother for so long. But, being forgiving towards him as always, Mycroft leaned back into his embrace and permitted everything – the nervous touches, the possessive embrace, the growing hardness Sherlock was pressing against him, the kisses.

"You're my grey-eyed goddess, aren't you?" Mycroft asked him, kindly, hopefully, gently.

"Hmm?" he questioned, surprised to be cast in the figure of the one doing the rescuing when it was Mycroft who'd always been there to save him.

"My Athena, in all her disguises, bringing me home. And my Penelope. And my Telemakhos. All of them. After so many years of war and misadventure."

"Have you been lost so very long?"

"Twenty years, I think."

"You're home at last," Sherlock's voice shook a little as he said it. "I wasn't there for you before, but I'll always be here for you now. I'll never let you go again."

Note: I suppose I could just leave it here, and it would work as a final chapter. But I think I'd like a bit more of Mummy being sweet to Mycroft for a change, and our boys in bed, and being good to each other. Maybe getting up to much more than they should in bed under their parents' roof while on a visit? Should John find out about them? That could be a bit scary – for John. Maybe not? Let me know if you think I should add one last chapter, or an epilogue, or something.