"Oh, that is just adorable."
"What is it, Mira?"
"Oh, just a patient of mine. Well, two patients."
"Any trouble?" asked the tall, green-eyed man sitting in the chair opposite to the woman. He sounded annoyed - he has booked this table months in advance and now he did not have the woman´s full attention. Instead, she was staring somewhere behind his left shoulder. He suppresed the urge to have a look at this object of her focus.
"Well, one of the two things will happen: either one of them gets shot in the next minute," she waited patiently for said amount of time, eyes trailed at her watch and mischevous sparkles in them, "or we will be witnessing two messed-up guys snogging each other like madmen," her partner turned exactly the moment the older of the two men leaned across the table, so he missed Mira´s grin. "Right now."
"Enjoying the view?" she smirked as her tall partner watched fascinatedly what was happening in the far corner of the restaurant. He didn´t feel as they should be more discrete - their table was, after all, in the corner and covered from all sides by paravans and flowers in pots - except, of course, their direction.
"I stopped being hungry."
"Oh Chris, I hope you do not have problem with them both being guys," she warned.
"No. I don´t want a steak anymore. I want you."
"Nutrition is important, Your honour," Mira´s tone was teasing again. "I should know. I am a doctor, studied a medical school and all."
"Well, Doctor Dhaliwal, they didn´t teach you of the importance of occasional good shag?"
"We could ask them to pack our dinner with us."
"Brilliant idea, love."
"Greg, stop. We are at a restaurant."
"And what? I love you the same in the restaurant as in your house."
"I hope you do not want to shag me here. I am not that perverted."
"Well, we could slip under the tablecloth. It is long enough," Greg mused with a fake-wondering voice.
Mycroft decided to play along: "They would clean our food away if we both disappeared."
"Well then, I could disappear under the table and you could try to sit still."
"Eat your schnitzel, it will go cold. I can´t believe you forced them to prepare you this abdomination of food, even though it wasn´t on the menu."
"What´s wrong with it? It´s Austrian speciality."
"It is covered with breadcrumbs. It is basically a posh version of hot dog. And as you are eating both potatoes and the bread-covered meat, they are basically forcing you to eat two side dishes, so the meat is present at the sad ratio of one to two."
"Says the man eating a salad. You just don´t like it, admit it."
"And you have to admit there are certainly more interesting ways how to prepare veal."
"All right. What foods do you like? Like ten things you could eat all your life and would never grow tired of it?"
Mycroft didn´t hesitate a second: "Apples. Cherries. Bread and butter. Greek yoghurt with honey and wallnuts. Fried salmon with potatoes. Ratatouille. Wallnut ice-cream. Roastbeef. Lemon cake. Tenderloin with cranberry sauce. That sort of thing."
"I am happy to inform you that I can cook fifty percent of those dishes, Mr. Holmes."
"I look forward to the day I see you make home-made ice-cream," Mycroft grinned.
"I can´t make that. But I make a passing ratatouille, mix your yoghurt, roast your beef slowly while sallivating in front of the oven, have enough ability to put some butter on a piece of bread and learned to make a lemon cake, since it was my father´s favourite and I always helpd mum make it when it was his birthday."
"Brilliant. I was worried you would attempt to cook apples or cherries. You will make a good wife." As soon as the words left Mycroft´s lips, he would have slapped himself, but the policeman took it in good humour: "I can cook as long as you clean the dishes, honey."
"We´ll see."
"Can you cook?"
Mycroft shrugged: "It´s creative, so it´s fun. But I don´t have much time for it."
"Brilliant. So when we were staying at yours, you, me, Mrs Klubkova could cook and yet we allowed John Watson take care of our provisions for days. Do you know I haven´t eaten curry since?"
"I suspect Sherlock is able to cook too."
"Not surprising. He´s a good chemist, after all."
Mycroft speared an olive on his fork and asked carefully: "Were you close with your mother? Since you were cooking with each other..."
"She´s still alive. But we used to be much closer."
"Oh. I´m sorry."
"Don´t be. Not your fault. When Charlie died... things got just wrong. She thought I should´ve known he might be taking something. Since I was so keen to be a cop, rambling all the time about an excursion we took to a rehab facility or what sergeant Blake - a family aquaintance and a sort of a kid hero of mine - said. And she wasn´t wrong."
"Greg..."
"Sherlock would have known. You would have known, from one look at him."
"You don´t have to be like him or me. Or shouldn´t be."
"But you are so brilliant at this!" Greg answered petulantly.
"Yes. Because we are useless at all the others. Important things. Like affection."
"You´re not useless, Mycroft..."
"Oh yes, I am. But back to deductions - can´t you see we learned that because we had to? Because we felt... in danger? And we were trying to understand what might happen next and minimise the damage? No lesson or education can ever motivate you enough to hone that ability to such extent."
"You say that I didn´t see because I were too happy?"
"Yes."
Greg returned his focus to the schnitzel. "It does not matter now."
"I love you."
Greg´s head snapped. "Why did you say that?" he chuckled.
"Seemed like a good thing to say."
"It is. It certainly is."