AN: Have I mentioned that I love Mycroft? Mycroft is the most dapper-as-fuck human being ever to be envisioned, fictionally or otherwise. Enjoy this chapter of cake and back story, and keep an eye out for Chapter 12, because it's a gem, really it is.
Though he wasn't sure precisely why Mycroft kept a small stack of paper plates and a smaller bouquet of plastic flatware in his desk drawer – perhaps anticipating the occasion? – he didn't dare to ask, nor did he complain when he was wordlessly offered a substantial portion of the dessert he had so painstakingly decorated.
"I take it you've confiscated whatever it was he was shooting up this time?" Mycroft asserted, taking great care not to let any crumbs fall onto his suit as he took a bite of the cake.
John's stomach turned. He hadn't. He'd been so distracted by the…well, the entirety of last night that he had completely forgotten to demand that the stash be turned over. Now he had left Sherlock alone in the flat, with a presumably vast array of drugs hidden somewhere. He swallowed his suddenly unwanted mouthful of cake and made an effort to look Mycroft directly in the eye. "I don't imagine we'll have to worry about it again," he said evasively, "he learned a rather hard lesson."
Mycroft stopped mid-forkful and regarded John dubiously. "An overdose?"
John nodded, returning his gaze to the floor.
"Your mistake is to assume that this is the first time he has overdosed, and to likewise assume that the last time taught him anything." Mycroft completed the bite of cake, though with considerably less enthusiasm. "I had hoped it would be different with you," he stared wistfully at his brother's only companion, "I had hoped he would change for your sake, but old habits die hard, it seems."
John's heartbeat was suddenly rushing in his ears as he imagined all the horrible things that Sherlock could be getting into while he was halfway across London delivering a hate cake. He had to be the worst doctor in history. Sherlock trusted him, Mycroft trusted him, Lestrade trusted him, and here he was, leaving a cocaine addict alone in a flat with indeterminate – presumably vast - amounts of drugs. He forced himself to be calm. Sherlock was fast asleep, and if he was going to try anything, now was surely too soon, just a day after his...incident. There was no need to worry.
"I don't suppose he ever told you much about his…illicit past?" Mycroft presumed, raising his brows as he continued to attack his cake.
John shook his head. "Erm, just... bits and pieces, nothing much concrete."
"Well, now that he has so recklessly chosen to involve you in his substance abuse, it seems only fair to let you in on a bit of our…family history. It's your business now as well, should you choose to continue living with him." The subject was a hard one, he could tell by Mycroft's strained expression, but John could not deny that he was – at the very least – morbidly curious about Sherlock's life before he had entered it. He squirmed slightly in the lumpy chair and licked his lips.
Mycroft sighed. "It started with the prescriptions," He was now picking at his cake more than eating it, "by age thirteen my brother had been diagnosed with more than twenty separate mental afflictions by eight different psychiatrists, and was medicated intermittently for every last one of them. Ritalin, anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, quite an array of sedatives. I don't know the particulars of the progression to illegal narcotics, but by sixteen the nosebleeds were a dead giveaway. His personality had been so altered by prescribed medications for so long that it wasn't immediately obvious that anything was wrong, but when he would just sit at dinner with blood dripping down his front and not seem to notice, we all realised that Sherlock had spiralled out of our control. Our father, being the upright, controlling man he was, tried to shame him to sobriety, but the only change in his behaviour was to start injecting the cocaine rather than insufflating it. Track marks are easier to hide."
John suddenly remembered the dark blood trickling over Sherlock's ghastly pale skin and his throat tightened. It must have been Pavlovian, a trauma reaction, a reaction to the…the only word for it was relapse, he supposed.
Mycroft tapped his foot slightly and continued. "I distanced myself from him. I was twenty-three and living on my own, focused on a career, but at Mummy's pleading I tried talking to him. He wouldn't have it. I grew resentful, took it personally, and foolishly decided that somehow I would make him see reason. I knew that he couldn't be supporting a cocaine habit on his allowance, so I kept closer tabs on him until I had reason to believe he was stealing from our parents. I dutifully informed father, who to say the least, did not take it well…"
John knew the next bit, but he found himself wondering if Mycroft did, if he knew the full truth of it. He felt his hand was shaking slightly, and he balled up a fist to steady it.
"Father turned him out on the spot," he hesitated, took another comforting bite of cake, "and he told my brother that if he was planning to make it his goal in life to asphyxiate on his own vomit, he should do it sooner rather than later and save his family the embarrassment. Mummy tried to calm him. She was one of those rare people who love unconditionally, and she loved whatever was left of Sherlock with a fervour that brought her to tears more often than not." He sighed again. "I felt guilty immediately, of course, tracked him down and found that he had moved in with his dealer. Needless to say, the drug habit didn't improve with that sort of incubator as a living environment, so less than a year later, when I had finally secured a decent job, I offered to let him move in with me. I hoped it would let him start over, and hoped it would alleviate my guilt to some small extent, but on that very first night in my flat, he locked himself in his bedroom and suffered his first overdose."
John's whole body was shaking slightly now.
"He was legally dead for eight minutes before they could resuscitate him. As I'm sure you know, Doctor, that is an extraordinarily long time. They were amazed when his heart started again, and it was only then that I could bring myself to call our mother. I pulled some strings to get him out of court-appointed rehab, my second foolish mistake." He was quiet for a long moment. "Once he was finally conscious and saw Mummy sobbing over him, I was sure that he had seen the error of his ways. I was sure that what he wouldn't do for my sake he would do for hers, because in his lucid moments he loved her as dearly as she loved him… That love held out for perhaps two months, and I dared to hope that finally the drama of his short life was over, and that now he was bound to use his incredible mind for something meaningful. Wrong again." He smiled dryly. "It crept back up on him. First nicotine, then morphine, then within six months he was back to cocaine, as far gone as ever. He hardly left his bedroom, hardly ate. Even on good days he was catatonic. The only time he would pretend to be coherent is when Mummy came to visit, which she did often, always desperate to see improvement, never getting it. She even brought him a violin, but he showed only a furtive, manic-depressive sort of interest in it."
"He still has that violin, doesn't he?" John recalled, his voice slightly shaky from his long silence. "He plays it all bloody night sometimes."
"The very same." Mycroft agreed, glancing wistfully at the cake as though he wanted another piece, but restraining himself. "It's the closest he can come to apologising to her now, I should think."
John gave a slight start. He had never thought much about it, but he noticed that the brothers always referred to their mother in the past tense. Why? He knew she was still alive...at least, he thought so. He wondered now about their father, but decided that it wasn't the time to ask.
"Ironically, it was a complete stranger who finally saved my brother, and a dead one at that," He continued, "a young athlete by the name of Carl Powers. News of the boy's drowning came on the television late in the afternoon, it was summer, Sherlock was eighteen. He was spread over my armchair, high as a kite, as per usual, when his head snapped up and he said - " Mycroft paused to smile knowingly " - 'what about the shoes?' I asked what about them. He spouted off something that sounded like nonsense at the time, about his clothes in the locker room and something about jealousy. I hardly listened. Yet, for whatever reason, that brought his cocaine binge to screeching halt. He demanded that I bring him newspapers, which I did, for no reason other than my own curiosity, and he started insisting that the boy had been murdered. To my amazement, he stayed clean for the next week, doing research, making phone calls to the police, but no-one gave him the slightest consideration. He scoured the papers every day, started hacking the databases at Scotland Yard, and in the meantime he solved dozens of unrelated crimes that he stumbled upon, but his solutions were never accepted by law enforcement. Desperate to be taken seriously, he kept sober more often than not, forced himself to start school again, studied chemistry, and I'm sure you can guess the rest."
"So he had been clean for nearly twenty years before last night?" John marvelled, his stomach twisting with something between guilt and anxiety.
Mycroft somehow managed to laugh condescendingly. "Naiveté, Doctor, you trust him too much. He gets bored, you know, if he goes long enough without a case. Mercifully he usually only plays about with small doses. Clearly not this time."
"But he's got a case on," John explained with surprise, "a tricky one, in fact, he doesn't seem… bored."
Mycroft raised his eyebrows. "Well then, there is another explanation, isn't there?" The look he gave John was not the least bit accusatory, but even so, he felt the weight of blame fall on him with painful force. He was suddenly overcome with an interminable need to be back at Baker Street. He couldn't bring himself to believe that Sherlock was getting high back at the flat, but how well did he really know him? Compared to Mycroft? He had lived with Sherlock for less than a year and had never even seen him under the influence; his brother had known him his whole life, the good and the bad.
"I need to get home," he muttered pensively, having nearly forgotten that Mycroft was in the room.
"You're worried about him. How touching." He was being neither entirely acerbic nor entirely sarcastic.
"I slipped him a melatonin before I left," John added defensively, "left him sleeping on the sofa. He needed it, but I want to get back to him before it gets too late."
Mycroft's remarkable intelligence – certainly no less incisive than Sherlock's - was hardly wasted. He saw through every passing, anxious thought that flickered behind John's eyes, and John quickly realised his transparency. He could only clear his throat and impale his remaining cake on his fork.
"I'm sure you'll give Sherlock my regards," he affirmed, John gave a reflexively polite half-smile. "And John," he added, his tone dramatically softened, "take care of him. In some way, his own incomprehensible way, he needs you."