Author's Note: So I got thinking the other day about how people have been asking me to continue this with at least one more chapter and I realised how much I liked it. I thought about how much potential it had to be a small series. I wouldn't update it often but I thought whenever I have the time and an idea that works well as the following chapter came to mind I could write one. So please read it and let me know what you think of this chapter and how it fits with the original. Please read, review, and enjoy!
Disclaimer: Clearly I don't own Sherlock. The show is the baby of Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, while Sherlock Holmes itself is the creation of Arthur Conan Doyle.
Mycroft was reeling from that kiss all day. His cheek tingled incessantly. No words would form out of his mouth, no thoughts would coherently connect in his mind. He dropped things and stuttered all days. He certainly couldn't look at Alice at all. He spent all of English looking down at his page so he wouldn't have to see the back of her head. He found some convoluted reason to escape Chemistry. He didn't know how he did it with the state his brain was in but he managed to convince the teacher that his time would be better off assisting the Drama teacher in reprogramming the lighting board. If he had had to sit next to her in Chemistry… If Mycroft had to smell her shampoo and see his book on the desk next to her he might have died.
When Mummy's car pulled up to pick him up after the school day Mycroft practically sprinted to the passenger door and yanked it open with all the force he could muster. He got in and slammed the door behind him.
"Myc! Careful!" His mum chided him.
"Hi Mycie!" A voice came from the back of the car. Mycroft craned his neck to look in the back seats. Sherlock was there in his school uniform with a pirate hat in his lap. Eurus, she did not go to school, but she was absent all together. That wasn't good.
"Hi Sherlock." Mycroft responded to his brother's eager greeting. If Eurus were here he would have told the boy off for calling him Mycie. If Eurus was not here there was a good chance that he and Mummy had enough troubles for one day. Mycroft looked back at his mother.
"Where's Eurus?" He asked quietly, hoping Sherlock wouldn't hear him. Mummy smiled sadly and her eyes grew sorrowful. Ah. It was a bad day. So Eurus would have had a break down, and a call to the hospital was made. It would be at least a week until she was allowed back home. Mummy cleared her throat and blinked her eyes.
"Soo?" She sung, directed at Mycroft. The teenaged genius rose an eyebrow.
"So?" He muttered. Mummy grinned.
"How did it go with your friend?" She asked happily. "Did you dad pick out a good book?" Mycroft felt his face grow hot. He looked down at his hands in his lap. He tried to put a few words together.
"Ah… yes… ah… she…" He couldn't. He pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to control his brain.
"Ooooh." Mummy sung with laughter in her voice. "She kissed you?" Mycroft's head shot up and he looked at his mother in fear. If he didn't know how smart she was he'd be questioning how she worked it out so quickly. She was also his mother and had an unfair advantage in understanding his body language.
"Gross!" Sherlock moaned from the backseat. Mycroft sent a glare his way.
"That is so cute." Mummy was cooing. Now Mycroft was wishing he could just disappear out of existence. Not even home was going to be safe. "You're a little charmer, just like your Dad!"
"Mummy!" Mycroft hissed.
"Eww!" Sherlock yelled. Mummy clicked her tongue and shook her head.
Mycroft was feeling more himself the next day. He'd gotten himself together and could think clearly. How he was feeling yesterday, that was nonsense! Whoever got themselves so worked up over a little kiss? Well, a lot of people did according to literature and history. Why, Helen of Troy was the face that launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium… But not smart people! Smart people were better than that. Mycroft was better than that.
So regardless of what history might be telling him to do Mycroft moved on. After avoiding further questioning from his parents, he should have never told them, he went to school and had an average day. He hated his classmates, was bored with his work and completed it quickly, and spent a lot of time reading. Until Chemistry, that was.
Mycroft was in the middle of taking his textbook out of his schoolbag when she walked in and he immediately dropped it. It hit the floor with a heavy thud, earning eyes from other students. Mycroft scrambled to pick it up. His heart was racing and his breathing was erratic. Why? Because a pretty girl walked into the room? That was ridiculous? She wasn't even that pretty! He looked over to her approaching. Her chocolate curls, her deep blue eyes. That perfect noise, that cheeky grin…
Stop it!
Mycroft snapped himself out of the stupor before Alice could catch him staring. He quickly whipped open the text book and began reading about organic chemistry. He heard the seat next to him pull out as Alice sat down. His whole body grew tense.
"Hi Mycroft." She greeted him chirpily. He looked over to see her pulling that book of poems out of her bag and put it on the desk next to her pencil case. Mycroft quickly looked back at his book. He cleared his throat.
"Yes, hello." He muttered. He scowled at himself inwardly for how he sounded.
"How was your night?" She asked, trying to start small talk.
"Fine." Mycroft answered shortly. It wasn't fine. There a dinner of his parents asking him questions and pretending everything was okay and then hours of looking after Sherlock as they went to the hospital to check on Eurus and get her settled. He wouldn't have told anyone that normally and he certainly wasn't going to poor his heart out to a girl who was making him sound like a moron.
"Oh." Alice pouted. She looked at the board, then she tapped on the desk, then she looked behind her at her group of friends. She whipped her head back around to face Mycroft and out of the corner of his eye Mycroft could see Alice's hair whip around and hit her gently in the face.
"I had a good night." She says, still trying to continue small talk. "Jamie and I read some of Byron's poems. They're amazing." Mycroft felt a heat rise from his neck into his cheek. His brain refused to come up with an answer for the girl. "Your dad has good taste." She tried again. Mycroft leant further forward, his long nose almost touching the pages of the book. "There was this one sonnet… Um…" He could just picture her tilting her head to the side and chewing on those pink lips. "Sonnet on Chillon! The line Eternal spirit of the chainless mind. That line reminded me of you." Mycroft's neck felt extremely itchy and his throat felt dry. He began scratching at it like clawing for breath as he continued trying to read. "Mycroft?" Alice asked. "Myc?" She asked again.
"Yes, I heard you!" He blurted out sharply. His heart was beating even faster now. "I'm reading!" Even glaring at the pages he could see as Alice leaned back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest.
"Oh." She said coldly. "Fine."
When class started and the teacher began talking Mycroft's brain began to function again. Normality had set in and his body no longer felt like it was in a fight, flight, or freeze scenario. It was only then as he looked over to Alice that he could see the metaphorical dark cloud hovering over her and he realised he might have done something wrong.
What have you done? His heart yelled.
Saved you from a lot of problems in the future. His brained answered.
It took a week for Mycroft to get over the whole kiss on the cheek thing. A whole week before he could look at Alice and not feeling like he was falling into one hundred thousand little pieces right in front of her. He took one of those school days off to go to the mental hospital with his mother to visit his sister so that made it easier. Only four school days of looking like an idiot and begin able to form complete sentences in front of the girl.
But it seemed by the time Mycroft was ready to talk to Alice again she was not prepared to talk to him. That dark cloud had frozen over into a complete cold shoulder, and Mycroft should know, he liked to think he was an expert at acting cold. Apparently he wasn't the only one not meeting eye contact as she had somewhere along the lines stopped looking at him either. It ripped his gut apart and his heart began flinging accusations and insults at his brain. In fact his brain was even feeling like it might, just maybe, be a little bit, tiny bit guilty.
Mycroft didn't attempt to talk to her in Chemistry. The proximity was too close, there could be great collateral damage. He was safer attempting in English where he didn't actually sit next to her.
"Hello." He said with a little nod as he walked past her desk to sit at his behind her. Alice scoffed.
"The genius is talking to me again." She said to her blonde friend next to her. It was said loud enough on purpose so he could hear.
"Nice of him to grace you with his acknowledgement." Her friend answered just as sarcastically. Mycroft rolled his eyes at the friend but that guilt in the back of his mind only increased. Alice was like the only friend Mycroft had had outside of the family… well… ever. She was smart for an average person and she was funny and light. She counteracted his doom and gloom and met his sass with equal measures. He didn't want to lose her. It was that kiss. That kiss was the problem! This is why the always warned against office romances. It should apply to schools, too!
The next day he tried in Chemistry again. They were doing a worksheet. Correction; the class was doing a worksheet. Mycroft had already finished. Their teacher had told him to do the practice questions in the book. Mycroft put his pen and tried to think about something to talk about.
"Did I ever tell you my sister can answer these questions and rarely make an error?" He said. Alice didn't respond. "She's eight years younger than me but she can answer them at the same speed it takes my mother to answer them."
"Well some of us need to focus on our work." Alice barked, widening her eyes in annoyance.
"Pardon me for sharing an interesting anecdote." Mycroft muttered, turning back to his book and picking up his pen.
"Yeah, doesn't feel great, does it smarty-pants?" Alice whispered. Mycroft's pen froze just above the page as he let Alice's words sink in.
It was Friday when they next spoke. The bell had rung for the end of day. Mycroft was walking towards the carpark when he felt a hand grasp him arm. It yanked on him, pulling him backwards. It was Alice. At a fast pace Alice walked Mycroft behind the drama building.
Alice dropped her bag to the ground and folded her arms across her chest. Her eyes were pretty when full of fire. She looked lovely and dangerous. That was an attractive combinations. Mycroft's throat refused to let air into his body once more and his heart skipped a beat.
"What's your problem!?" She asked in an accusatory manner. She stepped forward right into his personal space. He hated people in his space but from hear he could smell not only her shampoo but her body wash.
"What?" Mycroft spluttered. He shook his head to try and get his body to connect to his brain again. "Excuse me, you are the one who has been ignoring me all week." He replied.
"Yeah! But only after you acted like a jerk." She poked him in the chest. Mycroft hated that. He hated his space being intruded upon and he hated being touched like that. He looked at her in annoyance.
"I wasn't being mean." He pushed her finger away from his chest. "You were being mean, I simply couldn't talk!" Alice stepped closer, looking right up at Mycroft.
"And couldn't look at me?" She interrogated
"Yes!" Mycroft replied in an exasperated heavy sigh.
"Why?" Alice asked. "What could have happened between you giving me that book and school to make you hate me?"
"Nothing!"
"Then what was it!?"
Mycroft couldn't take it anymore. He couldn't form words again. Here she was looking so lovely and asking him why he hadn't been able to look at her? How can he answer why he couldn't speak when it made him unable to speak? How could he explain how that kiss had made him feel? How his cheek never stopped tingling and how his heart created its own rhythm when he thought about it?
Mycroft took Alice's arm and pulled her in the final centimetre that separated them. It was hastily and chaste but Mycroft kissed Alice on those soft pink lips. She stiffened at first as his lips touched hers but Mycroft felt quite quickly as her body loosened and she leaned into it. It was better than that other kiss. The tingles were so much better and the way all the hairs on his neck and arms stood up, it was like electricity.
It was too much for the solitary teenager. As quickly as he began the kiss he ended it. He let go of Alice, blinked at the floor a few times, and began walking away like he had somewhere important to be.
"Myc!" Alice called out. Mycroft stopped. He took a shaky breath and turned around to face the new girl.
"I – uh…" Now she too was at a loss for words. "See you Monday?" She asked, smiling shyly. Mycroft's brows furrowed and he nodded.
"Of course." He replied. Alice's smile widened and she looked at the ground while tucking a curl behind her ear. "See you then." She laughed a little. Maybe even giggled. Giggled? Alice Clarke had never giggled so far at her time in this school.
"I…" Mycroft looked behind him and then back at Alice. "Yes. See you… then." Alice hid her face and laughed silently as she turned around to pick up her bag.
It was clear that Alice was feeling it now too. Whatever it was she had done to him by kissing him on the cheek he had returned to her by kissing her on the lips. Here they were unable to actually communicate like idiots. She was all smiles and he was all frowns. What did this mean for them? What happened now?
Mycroft might have further questions for his father…
Author's Note: How was it? Okay? I hope it didn't ruin the original. It's always hard to come back to the teenaged mindset when I'm usually writing the adult versions. Thank you for spending time reading this. I hope you enjoyed it! Let me know if you like the idea of occasional new chapters.