Chapter Five.
.
Irene Adler let herself into the building with a key provided by a friend. Or at least, a man she knew. The apartment was on the fifth floor, but she ignored the lift, moving lightly up the first staircase. A second key let her into the apartment. She pulled the door to behind her until she heard the quiet snick of the lock. The apartment was light and airy – inexpensive, a little shabby, but tasteful for all that.
There was a man in the kitchen. A tall man, broad in the shoulders, trim-waisted. He hadn't seen her – he was facing the bench, chopping carrots with precise, economical movements. For a minute, Irene stood back and observed him. A shirt of deep indigo, rolled to the elbow and open at the collar; dark, superbly-tailored trousers that emphasised the curve of his arse; dark hair, a little longer than she'd last seen it, curling loosely at the nape of his neck. Moving noiselessly, Irene slipped her overnight bag onto the end of the bed and struck an easy pose in the doorway behind him.
"Hello Mycroft."
"Ms. Adler."
Mycroft laid down his knife and turned towards her. He inclined his head in acknowledgement and retrieved two glasses of red wine from the sideboard to his right. Irene accepted hers with a nod of thanks. No point in asking how he knew when she'd be arriving.
She let her eyes run openly up his frame, noting the way the shirt lay taut over his pectorals, the black leather belt, the pale skin exposed by the open collar.
"You're looking good, Mycroft," she said, a flicker of admiration in her voice. Mycroft raised one eyebrow sardonically. Irene laughed.
"Any particular reason you're impersonating Sherlock?"
"I thought it might come in useful," Mycroft said drily. "I can assure you that the sacrifice of my morning teacakes has not, so far, proved worth it."
"Oh, I don't know about that."
The illusion wasn't perfect. You couldn't hide seven years' difference in age with a change of clothes and a few skipped haircuts. Mycroft was still the heavier of the brothers, with a certain softness lingering about the hips and abdomen despite the forfeited brunches. The skin exposed by his open collar was faintly freckled, his mouth smaller, the set of his features less remarkable. The half-grown curls spilling over his forehead, however, did an admirable job of hiding the receding hairline. She wondered, in a moment of impishness, if that was why Sherlock did it.
"Did John notice?" she asked, genuinely curious. Mycroft rolled his eyes.
"What do you think?"
"In some ways that speaks well of him, you know. Suggests he's not just in it for your brother's pretty face."
"As I'm sure you are aware," Mycroft said drily, "My face is unchanged."
"Mmm... I didn't know your hair was curly."
"An excellent argument for keeping it short, believe me."
Irene ran her eyes over the length of his body again, making sure he noticed. Mycroft huffed.
"Are you quite done?"
"Just enjoying the view. Shall we have dinner?"
"It will be ready in twenty minutes."
"That wasn't what I meant."
"You shock me."
"Nothing shocks you."
"No."
"So… Dinner?"
.
She came to lean against the counter in the kitchen to watch him. His movements were methodical and unhurried, but with an easy dexterity that recalled his brother. They were alike, Irene thought. The clothes helped, of course, but the resemblance had always been there – little mannerisms, little tells. The shift of muscles beneath his shirt as he worked was unexpectedly alluring.
The meal was jasmine rice and Thai green curry – nothing complex, but pleasant. She should have guessed that Mycroft would be like this. Beneath the pretension and the ostentatious trimmings of power there lay a surprising austerity of manner. Another thing he had in common with Sherlock.
When the dishes were cleared away, Mycroft settled himself in an armchair with his legs stretched out in front of him, his steepled hands finding their accustomed position against his chin. He scrutinised her intently, eyes moving over her in that familiar, roving way. Another man, she thought wryly, would have been appreciative, but to him it was merely data. She wondered what story her body told.
Guilelessly, Irene reached up and began unpinning her hair. The arrangement was complex, and not easily unravelled. Mycroft watched her, unblinking.
When her hair was loose, falling in heavy waves behind her, the woman slipped out of her shoes. Perched on the arm of the sofa, she unrolled her stockings and slipped them over her feet. Then she stepped forward and came to stand over the armchair where Mycroft Holmes watched.
For the first time, a smile touched Mycroft's mouth.
"As incorrigible as ever, I see."
"Did you expect anything else?"
"No; but we have work to do. Business before pleasure, Ms. Adler."
"Oh, I think that we can manage to combine both, don't you?"
.
There was something very strange, John thought, in travelling the world this way – as part of some immense, complex, Mycroftian scheme. He should have been thrilled – the chance for a family holiday on someone else's money, with good wine and good friends. Yet he could not help feeling that the clock was against them; that every day spent posing with his daughter in front of the Eiffel Tower or the Berlin Wall, the Colosseum or Saint Peter's was another day with no trace of Sherlock Holmes. He was twitchy and snappish, constantly on the alert, and missing Sherlock so keenly that he could scarcely focus. A mystery with Sherlock as the subject made no sense. It was all wrong, inverted the natural order of things.
They had met their tour group at the hotel in Paris. They were for the most part inoffensive, if a little dowdy. Middle-aged couples second-honeymooning and retired baby-boomers desperate to grasp a little more of life before it was too late. Following their instructions from Mycroft, they had downplayed their own histories – John was a suburban GP, not an army surgeon; Greg was a plain old copper, not a detective; Molly, rather vaguely, 'worked at the hospital'; and Mary, oddly enough, had never been an international assassin. Upon learning that John was a doctor, several of their fellow travellers had been inclined to tediousness on the subject of their own ailments; yet they were, on the whole, innocuous and reasonably pleasant company. John couldn't help but wonder whether, if this rescue attempt failed, this holiday was to prove a snapshot of his future. In a life without Sherlock Holmes, what would he be? An over-qualified GP with a little nuclear family and occasional holidays with equally normal friends – none of them remarkable anymore; none of them with that edge of danger and idiocy that once they'd revelled in. Sherlock would be just a story to their kids – a story met with rolled eyes and supercilious teenage slang, because by then it would be assumed that the myth must have usurped the man, that no one could possibly do the things that Sherlock Holmes had done.
The other three didn't seem to share John's anxiety, or if they did, they hid it better. Mary and Molly were having the time of their lives; they spent hours sightseeing, ticking off landmarks in colourful little brochures, cheerfully queueing for a glimpse of the Mona Lisa or the Sistine Chapel. But the hours spent sightseeing paled into insignificance compared to the hours spent shopping; John hadn't known that the continent contained so many shops – shoes and handbags and perfumes, dresses and scarves and souvenir knick-knacks, things neither woman had hitherto shown the faintest interest in. John was uncertain quite how much of this was genuine and how much 'cover', but he still had to dissuade Mary from purchasing a pair of beer stein bookends, an enormous wall hanging of Michelangelo's David, and a full-scale replica of the Manneken Pis ("it would be amazing in the guest bedroom, don't you think?").
Even Greg hadn't seemed immune to the holiday atmosphere. Practically the moment their flight landed in Paris, he had donned a pair of colourful shorts and an enormous, decrepit straw hat. He spent mornings climbing hills or strolling along waterfronts, hunting out tiny little hole-in-the-wall eateries and returning laden with squares of baklava, girls' phone numbers and bottles of excellent wine.
By default, almost, John had ended up spending most of his days with Billie. He'd tried to make an effort to blend in, aware that if any of them were to be recognised it would likely be him. For the first few days he'd tagged along on bus excursions to old ruins and listened gamely to Mrs Mossman from Brixton, who told him all about her problems with her daughter. After a while though his heart just hadn't been in it. While the others went off exploring, John would take Billie to the closest park, where they would go for little walks at her slow, disjointed pace, stopping every few metres to examine cracks in the pavement or bits of brightly-coloured rubbish, snails or patches of clover or butterflies. Mrs Mossman and the other ladies began to smile at him, indulgent and perhaps a little pitying ("He's a bit of a homebody, isn't he?"; "Not much of a one for excitement"; and "I see you've got him well-trained, Mrs Watson"). John was reminded of his first day with Sherlock, of Mrs Hudson's complacent soothing ("I can see you're more of the sitting down type"). The memory gave him a pang of nostalgia, more painful than warranted by the words themselves.
John tried to express his anxiety to Greg, one sunny afternoon in Budapest. Billie had been in a fractious mood that morning and they hadn't moved far from the hotel, merely finding a small bench outside in the street where they could watch the locals come and go, and where Billie could spot pigeons – an all-consuming hobby. For an hour and a half they sat on the same bench while Billie pointed out every new arrival to John with steadfast dedication and great solemnity. It reminded him, in a strange way, of entertaining Sherlock.
It was close to two, and John had begun to think vaguely about returning to the hotel and finding Billie a snack, when Greg appeared. He had a loaf of bread under one arm and the by-now-ubiquitous bottle of red swinging from his hand. He waved when he saw them, and was then required to keep waving solemnly for the entire length of the street, answering Billie's rapidly opening-and-shutting fist.
"Hey," he said, slumping down onto the bench next to them. "How you doing Bilbo?"
Billie scrambled over John's lap to get to Greg, her small heel jabbing sharply into her father's thigh. John winced, and rubbed the abused region. For reasons best known to herself, his daughter loved Greg with the sort of ardent devotion she had never displayed towards either of her parents, nor to her Aunt Harry or Nana Hudson. John didn't take it personally, though he had made a mental note not to introduce her to either of Greg's sons until she was at least twenty-five – particularly if they showed any signs of having inherited their father's fondness for motorbikes.
"Duck!" Billie informed Greg seriously, pointing to one of her many winged followers. Greg raised his eyebrows, lifting her beneath the armpits until she stood upright on his lap.
"Duck, huh? Weird. Looks like a pigeon to me."
"Duck."
"If I might interrupt this stimulating discourse on avian biology," John said drily, "How was your morning, Greg?"
Greg chuckled, though Billie looked rather offended at her father's lack of appreciation for her linguistic talents.
"Not bad," Greg said. "Walked along the riverfront for a bit. Some pretty ladies down there. Some very pretty ladies." He waggled his eyebrows, and John grinned.
"An old man like you has no business noticing pretty ladies."
"You wouldn't say that if you'd seen them, believe me."
They faded into silence for a while. A pigeon pursued a cheeky sparrow, chasing it away from the small scattering of crumbs left by Greg's loaf of bread. Billie scolded the pigeon soundly, flailing her pointed finger in a fair impersonation of Mary's motherly wrath, to the complete and utter indifference of both birds.
"You alright?" Greg asked abruptly, looking sideways at John with an oddly scrutinising expression. John passed a hand through his hair, wondering what he could say.
"Just a bit edgy," he settled on, shrugging. "I can't help but feel like none of this is getting us any closer to Sherlock, y'know?"
"Yeah, I know. But Mycroft knows what he's doing, I reckon. We just need to trust him."
"I wish I could believe that."
Greg looked at him again, his eyes disconcertingly kind – the type of look that was only a small step from 'gentle' to 'pitying'.
"He'll be ok, John. He bounces back – he always does."
"He always does," John echoed, subdued. "Until one day he won't. He's not invincible."
"No, but he does a pretty good impression of it."
But not without me, John wanted to say. Not without me at his back. It wasn't true, of course – Sherlock, despite his tendency to behave like an oversized toddler, was a grown man, and better able to look after himself than most. That didn't stop John from feeling as though something was very wrong with the world when Sherlock was left alone. He couldn't say that to Greg though – not without seeming pathetic, and not without receiving another of Greg's patented 'Are you sure you're not in love with him?' speeches. Given that both Greg and John were, well, blokes, these speeches tended to be supremely awkward for both parties and consisted largely of inference and things-we're-not-actually-saying.
"Come on," Greg said at last, correctly divining John's mood. "Let's go back to the hotel. I can dump this stuff, then we can find the ladies and convince them to give up their shoe-shopping and join us for dinner. I'll carry the monster."
He hoisted Billie onto his shoulders. She squealed, and wrapped her hands over his eyes. Patiently, Greg disentangled them.
John's brow scrunched upwards in an insinuating fashion. "You wouldn't rather that Team Watson just went off somewhere and left you and Molly alone?"
Greg's face remained to stoic, but John's experienced eye discerned a faint flush of pink creeping its way up his neck."Shut up," he said, gruffly.
"Ah, come on Greg. Just go for it. I'll be your wing-man."
Greg looked at him with uncharacteristic seriousness. "You're not my wing-man. You're his. And don't you forget it."
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A/N: Thanks to everybody who's commented or added this to their favourites list. If you're still reading and enjoying it, please leave a review. :-) If you're reading it and not enjoying it, please tell me why not!