Saving Sherlock Holmes (7/43)
Oct. 10th, 2012 08:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
earlgreytea68Title - Saving Sherlock Holmes (7/43)
Author -![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
earlgreytea68
Rating - General (eventually as high as Adult, which will be adjusted on a chapter-by-chapter basis)
Characters - Mycroft, Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson, Sherlock, Molly
Spoilers - Through "The Reichenbach Fall"
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on.
Summary - Sherlock Holmes, schoolboy. Yeah, that basically sums it up.
Author's Notes - Thank yous! Toflawedamythystand sensiblecatfor the Britpick; to the readers who read as this was being written, including chicklet73; and to arctacuda, who uncomplainingly betas massive amounts of fic.
I fly out tomorrow for a weekend full of job interviews. If you could think really good thoughts that I get the job I really want, I would appreciate it!
Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6
Chapter Seven
September had been an unusually quiet month. Not global-politics-wise, of course, no, that was as much of a mess as it ever was, but Sherlock-wise. All was quiet on the Sherlock front, and that made Mycroft nervous beyond belief. He was used to escalating phone calls from distressed college officials. The first short leave of the Michaelmas term was approaching, and usually by this time Mycroft had progressed from tutor to house master to headmaster and was considering the amount of the first check he should write to keep Sherlock in school. His phone, however, was eerily quiet, had not rung once with a single Sherlock-related problem, and that meant they had either lost his phone number or Sherlock was dead, Mycroft concluded.
So he phoned Eton, just to be sure.
Sherlock’s house master sounded amused to hear from him. “Mr. Holmes, I cannot deny that I have so missed our little chats. I assume you have as well?”
“I don’t know what to do without them,” remarked Mycroft, smoothly, which was true as far as it went. “You haven’t rung me once so far this term.”
“That’s because I haven’t had any complaints.”
Mycroft felt dread settle into a cold ball in his stomach. “What’s happened to Sherlock?”
The house master laughed. “Nothing. He seems to be well. Have you not been in touch with his new tutor about him?”
Mycroft’s desk had two neat piles of paper on it. One was related to a flare-up of relations in the Middle East. The other was related to Sherlock. The Sherlock pile was the much bigger pile, and on top of it was a subfile on Gregory Lestrade, Sherlock’s new tutor. Most senior boys at Eton got to choose their own tutors. The headmaster had chosen Lestrade for Sherlock. Mycroft had had no problem with taking Sherlock’s choice away from him, but he had been uncertain about Lestrade, who was certainly qualified but came from rather a different background than the typical Eton master. Mycroft hadn’t bothered to contact Lestrade, assuming he would shortly be hearing from him, the usual litany of complaints about Sherlock. Now he wondered if normal people contacted their charges’ tutors just to check up on their progress, not just waiting for bad news to be delivered. Maybe he had been remiss in not phoning Lestrade before this.
“No,” said Mycroft. “I haven’t. But I’ll phone him.”
***
Greg had a message from Mycroft Holmes. He recognized the name, of course, and he hesitated before ringing him back. Mostly because he had really thought things were going well with Sherlock, but maybe Sherlock had complained about him to his brother?
Greg took a deep breath and rang the number, and a female voice answered, and Greg asked for Mycroft Holmes. The woman said, “Please hold,” in a very official manner, and Greg thought that he had been slightly mad to take this job at Eton and be thrust into this world of people whose secretaries answered their phones for them. Most of the time he liked Eton. The boys were mostly clever and not really bad and usually just needed somebody not to treat them like gold all the time. But every once in a while, like now, Greg felt desperately out of his depth.
“Mr. Lestrade,” said a voice on the other end of the line, silky, smooth, with a more polished posh accent than Sherlock sported. “Thank you for getting back to me so promptly.”
“No problem,” said Greg, and wound the telephone cord around his finger. “Is there something wrong?”
“I was hoping to ask you that question,” said Mycroft Holmes. “You see, normally by this point in the term I am positively inundated by details about the vast number of things wrong with Sherlock. And yet you have not contacted me once.”
“There’s nothing wrong. Sherlock’s doing well.”
There was such a long silence at the other end that Greg actually said, “Hello?” He hadn’t heard a click of disconnection, but it still seemed an improbably long silence.
“I’m here,” Mycroft assured him. “Just thinking. What does my brother look like?”
“What does he look like?” repeated Greg, blankly.
“What color are his eyes?”
“They’re…I don’t know. Blue? Ish? Sort of.”
“That does sound like a fair description of his eyes,” Mycroft allowed, musingly.
“Hang on.” Greg realized the purpose behind Mycroft’s question. “Do you think Sherlock has somehow tricked me into thinking that another student is him?”
“I wouldn’t put it past him. He’s viciously clever.”
“You’re extremely suspicious of him.”
“Not at all. I’m extremely realistic about him.”
Greg was annoyed by this. “Sherlock’s doing well,” he repeated.
“Forgive me, but I must ask you to tell me what magic trick you’ve performed to transform my brother into a model Etonian.”
“You know, he’s just bored here,” Greg pointed out.
“I know. I hear little else from him.”
“So I gave him a puzzle.”
“What sort of puzzle?”
“An unsolved crime. One of the more famous ones.”
“You gave him an unsolved crime? For what?”
“To solve, of course.”
“That makes sense.” Mycroft’s voice sounded as if he were piecing things together. “Sherlock likes mysteries. And you started reading criminology, before you switched to biology. Hmm, and quite a bit of chemistry, too. You’re a good fit for his interests.”
“Are you reading a file on me?” asked Greg, incredulously.
“No, I’m reading the file on you,” Mycroft responded, simply.
Greg considered getting upset about this, and then decided there was really no point. Whoever Mycroft Holmes was—and Sherlock never spoke about his brother, or anything, really, other than the Taman Shud case—he clearly had access to things Greg would rather not know he had access to. Greg, instead, decided to turn the conversation back to Sherlock. “I made arrangements with the other masters to trim Sherlock’s schools to only the subjects he’s truly interested in. He’s still too quick for them, but at least he tolerates them if he thinks they’re not a complete waste of his time. And I’ve received permission from the headmaster to fill up the rest of Sherlock’s time with what we’re calling an independent study.”
“That’s clever,” said Mycroft. He sounded almost grudgingly impressed. “That’s a good approach. Why was I never contacted about any of this?”
“You’d have to ask the headmaster. I got approval from him. I didn’t think it was also my job to get approval from you.”
“What case did you give him?”
“This case about an unidentified man found dead on Somerton Beach in—”
“The Taman Shud case,” Mycroft interrupted him, and Greg was surprised. “Very good. That should keep him busy for ages.”
“So far it seems to have worked. Sherlock hasn’t said anything to you about it?”
“We haven’t spoken.”
“You haven’t spoken…since when?” Greg asked, confused.
“Since the beginning of term, of course,” Mycroft answered, as if that should have been obvious. “I’ll see him at the short leave; I’ll ask him about it then.”
Greg processed that, and then said, “Well, he seems quite taken with it. You should see the bulletin board he’s put together for it. It takes up an entire wall of John’s room and is covered in stuff, and none of us can understand it, but—”
“John?” Mycroft interrupted him.
Oh, Greg realized. Mycroft hadn’t spoken to Sherlock since the beginning of the term. “Yeah. John Watson. A new boy in his last year, has the room next to Sherlock’s. He and Sherlock have become quite good friends.”
“You must be mistaken,” said Mycroft.
Greg couldn’t imagine what that was in reaction to. “About?”
“Sherlock doesn’t have friends.”
At several points during the conversation Greg had been annoyed, but now he was full-fledged angry. “That’s a terrible thing to say about your brother.”
Mycroft scoffed. “Oh, please, you’ve met him, you know it’s true.”
Greg did know it was true that Sherlock didn’t seem to have friends aside from John. Sherlock wasn’t the type of boy who was ever going to be the center of popularity. And that didn’t seem to bother Sherlock; as far as Greg could tell the only person whose opinion he cared the least bit about was John. Greg couldn’t puzzle out why; he just accepted that it was true and that Sherlock Holmes would rather have had a single John Watson than a dozen other friends. But sometimes Greg tried to imagine what Eton had been like for Sherlock prior to this term, bored to tears and lonely to boot. And it didn’t surprise him in the least that Sherlock had been difficult, Greg thought anyone would have been, even someone not inclined to be a rude, arrogant, insufferable genius the way Sherlock was. And Greg really didn’t think it was the sort of thing Mycroft should be discussing so lightly. “You know,” Greg began, hotly, “the only thing wrong with Sherlock is that he learned to be great without learning to be good first.”
“Oh, I suppose you blame me for this?” Mycroft’s voice was brittle.
“No, I blame whoever raised him.”
“I raised him.”
“Then yes, I blame you,” said Greg, recklessly. “You could be nicer to him.”
“I’m always nice to him. He isn’t nice to me.”
“Which is a lovely, mature thing for you to have just said to me,” remarked Greg.
“You are being entirely inappropriate.”
“This seems to be something your brother and I have in common. You can hang up this phone and call the house master about me, which I know is what you want very much to do at this moment. But you should really think first about the fact that for the first time since he’s been at Eton, you went the entire month of September without getting a single call of complaint. And I don’t mean a call from any of us; I mean a call from Sherlock.”
Mycroft was silent, and Greg knew his wild surmising on that point had been correct.
“I have a div to teach,” Greg lied, because mostly he thought he should stop talking to Mycroft Holmes before he went and said something that would definitely get him sacked. “Did you have anything else you wanted to discuss?”
“No,” said Mycroft, crisply.
“Fine. Good-bye then.” Greg didn’t wait to hear the response before he hung up his phone.
***
Mycroft was seldom astonished. That was especially true when it came to Sherlock. Nothing Sherlock did ever really surprised him anymore. He felt as if he could predict the contours of Sherlock’s dramatic, spoiled histrionics, even if he couldn’t predict the exact details of them.
But Sherlock was not currently engaging in any dramatic, spoiled histrionics, and that was surprising. Sherlock, if his tutor was to be believed, was contentedly working his way through an unsolved crime. Sherlock, if his tutor was to be believed, had a friend. Mycroft didn’t know what to make of that. It was possible Sherlock had a brain tumor that was altering his personality.
In any other person’s life, thought Mycroft, this news about one’s little brother would have merited jubilation. It only made Mycroft worry tremendously. It sounded not at all like Sherlock, and he didn’t know what to make of it.
Of course Mycroft ran into a dozen unexpected work problems on the day when he was supposed to pick Sherlock up for the short leave, and he ended up sending a driver in his stead, and by the time Mycroft himself got to the estate, it was much later than he’d intended.
Sherlock preferred the estate these days. He said he hated coming home to London, and Mycroft indulged him on that. Mrs. Hudson preferred the estate as well, anyway, as it was closer to her sister, so Mycroft thought that it all worked out.
His shoes crunched over the gravel of the drive as he walked to the front door, and he was surprised when it opened before he could quite get to it, the light from the front hall silhouetting Mrs. Hudson.
“Mycroft,” she said to him, with a scold in her voice. “You shouldn’t have driven up so late.”
“If I’d waited until tomorrow,” said Mycroft, wearily, “I’d hardly have seen Sherlock at all before having to bring him back, and something else might have come up to keep me in London by then.”
“Come in,” Mrs. Hudson said, fussing about him. “I’ll fetch you something to eat.”
“You’re not my housekeeper,” Mycroft reminded her, mildly, following her through to the kitchen and taking off his coat.
Mrs. Hudson smiled at him fondly and began assembling ingredients in the kitchen. Cheese on toast with fried tomatoes, Mycroft deduced, and decided it sounded heavenly.
He sat at the kitchen table and said, “Where’s Sherlock?”
Mrs. Hudson was slicing bread, lovely country bread from the market in town, and Mycroft’s mouth watered. “He’s supposed to be sleeping, but we both know he’s not. If you’re anxious to see him, I’m sure he’s upstairs reading. He brought an enormous pile of books home with him. He says he’s solving a murder.” Mrs. Hudson chuckled and put the bread in to toast and began cutting up liberal amounts of cheddar.
“He seemed well?” asked Mycroft.
Mrs. Hudson had turned her attention to the tomatoes, but she abruptly turned to face him, and she looked on the verge of tears, and Mycroft felt the weight of all of the dread that had been building in him throughout this silent September.
“What’s wrong with him?” he asked, hoping he didn’t sound as terrified as he felt.
Mrs. Hudson shook her head and said, tremulously, “Oh, Mycroft, he doesn’t seem ‘well,’” and Mycroft ran through all the things that could be wrong with him, rapidly processing, already cataloguing where they would go for the best doctors, the best anything that money could buy for him, but Mrs. Hudson’s next words stopped all of his racing thoughts in their tracks. “He seems happy.”
***
Mycroft wasn’t sure if Sherlock was asleep or not when he went to bed. The light was still on in his bedroom, shining underneath the door, but it would not have been the first time Sherlock had fallen asleep with the light on. Mycroft decided that, all things considered, it would be best to talk to him in the morning.
Sherlock deigned to come down to breakfast late, still in the T-shirt and pajama bottoms he’d clearly slept in and clutching a book, a small notebook, and a pen. His hair was an uncombed mess, and Mycroft thought he looked ever so slightly too thin, and he didn’t even say hello before he dropped into a chair and stuck his nose into his book. Mycroft nevertheless knew exactly what Mrs. Hudson had meant when she had said he seemed happy. There was a relaxed and casual brightness to him that Mycroft had never quite seen before, and he admitted being somewhat irrationally annoyed about this. In the span of a month, Gregory Lestrade and-slash-or John Watson had managed to unlock something in Sherlock that Mycroft had never been able to even locate, and that was bloody irritating.
“Good morning,” Mycroft said to Sherlock, a bit more sharply than he’d intended, and Mrs. Hudson, putting tea down in front of Sherlock, gave Mycroft a surprised and disapproving look.
Sherlock glanced briefly up from his book. “You’ve put on weight,” he remarked.
Mycroft frowned. “It’s lovely to see you, too.”
“It’s because you have a desk job, and also because you’re busy most of the time, and when you’re busy you eat mechanically and don’t realize how much you’re eating,” Sherlock explained to him, as if Mycroft didn’t already know this, and then took a sip of his tea.
“Mrs. Hudson,” said Mycroft, dryly, “how do we blunder through our day-to-day lives without Sherlock’s insightful observations?”
Sherlock smiled at him and went back to his book.
Mycroft took notice of the book for the first time, tipped his head at it. “Are you reading The Rubaiyat?”
“Yes,” said Sherlock, shortly, making a note of something.
“In the original Persian?”
“Well, how else am I going to know for sure what it’s about? You can’t trust the translators of these things, they’re idiots.”
“I didn’t know you knew Persian.” Mycroft tried not to sound as amazed as he really was.
“I taught it to myself.”
“This past month?” Mycroft tried not to sound as impressed as he really was.
Sherlock made an impatient noise. “Is this an important conversation? Because I’m just in the middle of something.”
The back door that led to the veranda opened, and Molly Hooper poked her head in and said, with cheerful nervousness, “Knock knock!”
“Oh, God,” Sherlock muttered, not nearly quietly enough not to be heard by Molly.
Mrs. Hudson gave him a scolding look, and Sherlock lifted the book up to hide behind it.
“Molly, dear,” said Mrs. Hudson, graciously. “Won’t you come in and sit down? Sherlock was just going to have some breakfast.”
“No, I wasn’t,” said Sherlock, from behind the book.
“You need to eat something,” Mycroft told him, the reason for Sherlock’s ever-so-slightly-too-thinness becoming blindingly apparent to him now. Sherlock didn’t eat when he was busy thinking about something. What sort of friend was this John Watson idiot not to be noticing that?
“You eat enough for the both of us,” Sherlock rejoined.
“If only it worked that way,” said Mycroft, and then he turned his attention to Molly, who had settled into a chair and was torn between looking adoringly in the direction of Sherlock—which really meant looking adoringly in the direction of Sherlock’s book—and fidgeting self-consciously. Molly lived in town and had started to come to the estate when Mrs. Hudson, expert in gossip, had heard that she was clever and interested in science, books about which the estate’s library was flooded with as a result of generations of Holmeses with scientific minds. Mrs. Hudson had offered use of the library, which Mycroft did not object to. That she would develop an improbable and resilient crush on Sherlock had not been anticipated by either Mycroft or Mrs. Hudson. Or Sherlock, who disapproved of her and her crush very strongly. Mycroft saw no harm in it and liked Molly well enough, although he doubted her ability to handle Sherlock in the long run. Or the short run. “Good morning, Miss Hooper,” he said to her. “I hope you’ve been well.”
Molly beamed at him, relieved at the welcome. Mycroft was never anything other than polite to Molly, but she always behaved as if she thought he might bite her head off, given half a chance. “Very well, thank you. I just stopped by because I thought it might be a short leave weekend.” Molly glanced to Sherlock’s book again.
“Brilliantly deduced, Molly,” said Sherlock from behind its safety.
“Sherlock, stop being rude and talk to your guest,” chided Mrs. Hudson, putting a full English on the table in front of Sherlock.
“She isn’t my guest; I didn’t invite her,” replied Sherlock.
Molly went pink, but Mrs. Hudson ignored him and said to her, kindly, “Would you like something to eat, Molly?”
“No. That’s okay. I just came to say that a bunch of us are going to see a film tonight, Sherlock. I thought you might want to come along?” She looked at Sherlock’s book hopefully.
“Trail along with a bunch of dull, idiotic imbeciles who will only want to be discussing who kissed whom and when and where and whether or not there mightn’t have been such things as ‘cheating’ and ‘triangles’ involved, and then, when they are not discussing such trivialities, will be watching some sort of drivel that is so stupendously stupid as to metaphorically cause brain cells to leap from one’s head in despair, and yet they will consider themselves to be vastly entertained by it? Absolutely not.”
“Sherlock!” Mrs. Hudson exclaimed at him.
“…Oh,” said Molly, looking as if she didn’t know how else to respond, and then she forced a smile. “That’s all right, then. Maybe some other time?”
Sherlock turned a page of his book.
“Maybe,” Mycroft said, on his behalf, thinking it was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever said but feeling rather sorry for poor, forlorn Molly.
Molly flickered a grateful smile at him, and then said, standing, “Well, I guess I’ll see you around, then. Enjoy your weekend home, Sherlock.”
Sherlock made a noncommittal noise, and Molly departed the kitchen with a little wave. Mrs. Hudson waited for the door to close behind her before taking Sherlock’s book forcefully out of his hands.
“That was rude of you, Sherlock Holmes,” she told him, sternly. “She likes you.”
Sherlock was calmly eating his breakfast now, having been deprived of his book. “Precisely. It’s extraordinarily annoying.”
“You should be nice to her,” Mrs. Hudson told him.
“That would make things worse,” said Sherlock.
“She’s a nice girl, and she wants you to take her to the cinema. What’s the harm in that?”
“It would be dull. Mycroft, tell her.”
“It would be dull,” Mycroft agreed, since he had avoided taking perfectly nice girls like Molly out on perfectly nice dates to the cinema almost his entire life, once he had determined for himself that it really was dull. Mrs. Hudson sighed and left Sherlock’s book on the table and moved over to the sink to start washing dishes. “But I should make you go into town and apologize to her,” Mycroft continued.
Sherlock looked astonished. “Apologize for what?”
“Being rude. You are astonishingly terrible at cultivating acquaintances.”
“I don’t need to cultivate acquaintances. I have you for that.”
Mycroft wanted to ask Sherlock about his apparent friend John Watson. But Sherlock was eating with a definite sulky edge to him, much sharper than when he’d come down for breakfast and had seemed so comfortable and pleased with himself, and Mycroft didn’t want to have the conversation while Sherlock was in a mood. He ventured, instead, “How’s school?”
“Boring,” Sherlock answered, automatically.
“You haven’t called me to complain about that recently.”
“Because you never listen to my complaints,” rejoined Sherlock, lightly. “It’s like talking to a brick wall.”
“I’m terribly unreasonable,” said Mycroft.
“Dreadfully so,” said Sherlock, and picked up his book again.
Next Chapter
Author -
earlgreytea68Rating - General (eventually as high as Adult, which will be adjusted on a chapter-by-chapter basis)
Characters - Mycroft, Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson, Sherlock, Molly
Spoilers - Through "The Reichenbach Fall"
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on.
Summary - Sherlock Holmes, schoolboy. Yeah, that basically sums it up.
Author's Notes - Thank yous! To
flawedamythystand sensiblecatfor the Britpick; to the readers who read as this was being written, including chicklet73; and to arctacuda, who uncomplainingly betas massive amounts of fic. I fly out tomorrow for a weekend full of job interviews. If you could think really good thoughts that I get the job I really want, I would appreciate it!
Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6
Chapter Seven
September had been an unusually quiet month. Not global-politics-wise, of course, no, that was as much of a mess as it ever was, but Sherlock-wise. All was quiet on the Sherlock front, and that made Mycroft nervous beyond belief. He was used to escalating phone calls from distressed college officials. The first short leave of the Michaelmas term was approaching, and usually by this time Mycroft had progressed from tutor to house master to headmaster and was considering the amount of the first check he should write to keep Sherlock in school. His phone, however, was eerily quiet, had not rung once with a single Sherlock-related problem, and that meant they had either lost his phone number or Sherlock was dead, Mycroft concluded.
So he phoned Eton, just to be sure.
Sherlock’s house master sounded amused to hear from him. “Mr. Holmes, I cannot deny that I have so missed our little chats. I assume you have as well?”
“I don’t know what to do without them,” remarked Mycroft, smoothly, which was true as far as it went. “You haven’t rung me once so far this term.”
“That’s because I haven’t had any complaints.”
Mycroft felt dread settle into a cold ball in his stomach. “What’s happened to Sherlock?”
The house master laughed. “Nothing. He seems to be well. Have you not been in touch with his new tutor about him?”
Mycroft’s desk had two neat piles of paper on it. One was related to a flare-up of relations in the Middle East. The other was related to Sherlock. The Sherlock pile was the much bigger pile, and on top of it was a subfile on Gregory Lestrade, Sherlock’s new tutor. Most senior boys at Eton got to choose their own tutors. The headmaster had chosen Lestrade for Sherlock. Mycroft had had no problem with taking Sherlock’s choice away from him, but he had been uncertain about Lestrade, who was certainly qualified but came from rather a different background than the typical Eton master. Mycroft hadn’t bothered to contact Lestrade, assuming he would shortly be hearing from him, the usual litany of complaints about Sherlock. Now he wondered if normal people contacted their charges’ tutors just to check up on their progress, not just waiting for bad news to be delivered. Maybe he had been remiss in not phoning Lestrade before this.
“No,” said Mycroft. “I haven’t. But I’ll phone him.”
***
Greg had a message from Mycroft Holmes. He recognized the name, of course, and he hesitated before ringing him back. Mostly because he had really thought things were going well with Sherlock, but maybe Sherlock had complained about him to his brother?
Greg took a deep breath and rang the number, and a female voice answered, and Greg asked for Mycroft Holmes. The woman said, “Please hold,” in a very official manner, and Greg thought that he had been slightly mad to take this job at Eton and be thrust into this world of people whose secretaries answered their phones for them. Most of the time he liked Eton. The boys were mostly clever and not really bad and usually just needed somebody not to treat them like gold all the time. But every once in a while, like now, Greg felt desperately out of his depth.
“Mr. Lestrade,” said a voice on the other end of the line, silky, smooth, with a more polished posh accent than Sherlock sported. “Thank you for getting back to me so promptly.”
“No problem,” said Greg, and wound the telephone cord around his finger. “Is there something wrong?”
“I was hoping to ask you that question,” said Mycroft Holmes. “You see, normally by this point in the term I am positively inundated by details about the vast number of things wrong with Sherlock. And yet you have not contacted me once.”
“There’s nothing wrong. Sherlock’s doing well.”
There was such a long silence at the other end that Greg actually said, “Hello?” He hadn’t heard a click of disconnection, but it still seemed an improbably long silence.
“I’m here,” Mycroft assured him. “Just thinking. What does my brother look like?”
“What does he look like?” repeated Greg, blankly.
“What color are his eyes?”
“They’re…I don’t know. Blue? Ish? Sort of.”
“That does sound like a fair description of his eyes,” Mycroft allowed, musingly.
“Hang on.” Greg realized the purpose behind Mycroft’s question. “Do you think Sherlock has somehow tricked me into thinking that another student is him?”
“I wouldn’t put it past him. He’s viciously clever.”
“You’re extremely suspicious of him.”
“Not at all. I’m extremely realistic about him.”
Greg was annoyed by this. “Sherlock’s doing well,” he repeated.
“Forgive me, but I must ask you to tell me what magic trick you’ve performed to transform my brother into a model Etonian.”
“You know, he’s just bored here,” Greg pointed out.
“I know. I hear little else from him.”
“So I gave him a puzzle.”
“What sort of puzzle?”
“An unsolved crime. One of the more famous ones.”
“You gave him an unsolved crime? For what?”
“To solve, of course.”
“That makes sense.” Mycroft’s voice sounded as if he were piecing things together. “Sherlock likes mysteries. And you started reading criminology, before you switched to biology. Hmm, and quite a bit of chemistry, too. You’re a good fit for his interests.”
“Are you reading a file on me?” asked Greg, incredulously.
“No, I’m reading the file on you,” Mycroft responded, simply.
Greg considered getting upset about this, and then decided there was really no point. Whoever Mycroft Holmes was—and Sherlock never spoke about his brother, or anything, really, other than the Taman Shud case—he clearly had access to things Greg would rather not know he had access to. Greg, instead, decided to turn the conversation back to Sherlock. “I made arrangements with the other masters to trim Sherlock’s schools to only the subjects he’s truly interested in. He’s still too quick for them, but at least he tolerates them if he thinks they’re not a complete waste of his time. And I’ve received permission from the headmaster to fill up the rest of Sherlock’s time with what we’re calling an independent study.”
“That’s clever,” said Mycroft. He sounded almost grudgingly impressed. “That’s a good approach. Why was I never contacted about any of this?”
“You’d have to ask the headmaster. I got approval from him. I didn’t think it was also my job to get approval from you.”
“What case did you give him?”
“This case about an unidentified man found dead on Somerton Beach in—”
“The Taman Shud case,” Mycroft interrupted him, and Greg was surprised. “Very good. That should keep him busy for ages.”
“So far it seems to have worked. Sherlock hasn’t said anything to you about it?”
“We haven’t spoken.”
“You haven’t spoken…since when?” Greg asked, confused.
“Since the beginning of term, of course,” Mycroft answered, as if that should have been obvious. “I’ll see him at the short leave; I’ll ask him about it then.”
Greg processed that, and then said, “Well, he seems quite taken with it. You should see the bulletin board he’s put together for it. It takes up an entire wall of John’s room and is covered in stuff, and none of us can understand it, but—”
“John?” Mycroft interrupted him.
Oh, Greg realized. Mycroft hadn’t spoken to Sherlock since the beginning of the term. “Yeah. John Watson. A new boy in his last year, has the room next to Sherlock’s. He and Sherlock have become quite good friends.”
“You must be mistaken,” said Mycroft.
Greg couldn’t imagine what that was in reaction to. “About?”
“Sherlock doesn’t have friends.”
At several points during the conversation Greg had been annoyed, but now he was full-fledged angry. “That’s a terrible thing to say about your brother.”
Mycroft scoffed. “Oh, please, you’ve met him, you know it’s true.”
Greg did know it was true that Sherlock didn’t seem to have friends aside from John. Sherlock wasn’t the type of boy who was ever going to be the center of popularity. And that didn’t seem to bother Sherlock; as far as Greg could tell the only person whose opinion he cared the least bit about was John. Greg couldn’t puzzle out why; he just accepted that it was true and that Sherlock Holmes would rather have had a single John Watson than a dozen other friends. But sometimes Greg tried to imagine what Eton had been like for Sherlock prior to this term, bored to tears and lonely to boot. And it didn’t surprise him in the least that Sherlock had been difficult, Greg thought anyone would have been, even someone not inclined to be a rude, arrogant, insufferable genius the way Sherlock was. And Greg really didn’t think it was the sort of thing Mycroft should be discussing so lightly. “You know,” Greg began, hotly, “the only thing wrong with Sherlock is that he learned to be great without learning to be good first.”
“Oh, I suppose you blame me for this?” Mycroft’s voice was brittle.
“No, I blame whoever raised him.”
“I raised him.”
“Then yes, I blame you,” said Greg, recklessly. “You could be nicer to him.”
“I’m always nice to him. He isn’t nice to me.”
“Which is a lovely, mature thing for you to have just said to me,” remarked Greg.
“You are being entirely inappropriate.”
“This seems to be something your brother and I have in common. You can hang up this phone and call the house master about me, which I know is what you want very much to do at this moment. But you should really think first about the fact that for the first time since he’s been at Eton, you went the entire month of September without getting a single call of complaint. And I don’t mean a call from any of us; I mean a call from Sherlock.”
Mycroft was silent, and Greg knew his wild surmising on that point had been correct.
“I have a div to teach,” Greg lied, because mostly he thought he should stop talking to Mycroft Holmes before he went and said something that would definitely get him sacked. “Did you have anything else you wanted to discuss?”
“No,” said Mycroft, crisply.
“Fine. Good-bye then.” Greg didn’t wait to hear the response before he hung up his phone.
***
Mycroft was seldom astonished. That was especially true when it came to Sherlock. Nothing Sherlock did ever really surprised him anymore. He felt as if he could predict the contours of Sherlock’s dramatic, spoiled histrionics, even if he couldn’t predict the exact details of them.
But Sherlock was not currently engaging in any dramatic, spoiled histrionics, and that was surprising. Sherlock, if his tutor was to be believed, was contentedly working his way through an unsolved crime. Sherlock, if his tutor was to be believed, had a friend. Mycroft didn’t know what to make of that. It was possible Sherlock had a brain tumor that was altering his personality.
In any other person’s life, thought Mycroft, this news about one’s little brother would have merited jubilation. It only made Mycroft worry tremendously. It sounded not at all like Sherlock, and he didn’t know what to make of it.
Of course Mycroft ran into a dozen unexpected work problems on the day when he was supposed to pick Sherlock up for the short leave, and he ended up sending a driver in his stead, and by the time Mycroft himself got to the estate, it was much later than he’d intended.
Sherlock preferred the estate these days. He said he hated coming home to London, and Mycroft indulged him on that. Mrs. Hudson preferred the estate as well, anyway, as it was closer to her sister, so Mycroft thought that it all worked out.
His shoes crunched over the gravel of the drive as he walked to the front door, and he was surprised when it opened before he could quite get to it, the light from the front hall silhouetting Mrs. Hudson.
“Mycroft,” she said to him, with a scold in her voice. “You shouldn’t have driven up so late.”
“If I’d waited until tomorrow,” said Mycroft, wearily, “I’d hardly have seen Sherlock at all before having to bring him back, and something else might have come up to keep me in London by then.”
“Come in,” Mrs. Hudson said, fussing about him. “I’ll fetch you something to eat.”
“You’re not my housekeeper,” Mycroft reminded her, mildly, following her through to the kitchen and taking off his coat.
Mrs. Hudson smiled at him fondly and began assembling ingredients in the kitchen. Cheese on toast with fried tomatoes, Mycroft deduced, and decided it sounded heavenly.
He sat at the kitchen table and said, “Where’s Sherlock?”
Mrs. Hudson was slicing bread, lovely country bread from the market in town, and Mycroft’s mouth watered. “He’s supposed to be sleeping, but we both know he’s not. If you’re anxious to see him, I’m sure he’s upstairs reading. He brought an enormous pile of books home with him. He says he’s solving a murder.” Mrs. Hudson chuckled and put the bread in to toast and began cutting up liberal amounts of cheddar.
“He seemed well?” asked Mycroft.
Mrs. Hudson had turned her attention to the tomatoes, but she abruptly turned to face him, and she looked on the verge of tears, and Mycroft felt the weight of all of the dread that had been building in him throughout this silent September.
“What’s wrong with him?” he asked, hoping he didn’t sound as terrified as he felt.
Mrs. Hudson shook her head and said, tremulously, “Oh, Mycroft, he doesn’t seem ‘well,’” and Mycroft ran through all the things that could be wrong with him, rapidly processing, already cataloguing where they would go for the best doctors, the best anything that money could buy for him, but Mrs. Hudson’s next words stopped all of his racing thoughts in their tracks. “He seems happy.”
***
Mycroft wasn’t sure if Sherlock was asleep or not when he went to bed. The light was still on in his bedroom, shining underneath the door, but it would not have been the first time Sherlock had fallen asleep with the light on. Mycroft decided that, all things considered, it would be best to talk to him in the morning.
Sherlock deigned to come down to breakfast late, still in the T-shirt and pajama bottoms he’d clearly slept in and clutching a book, a small notebook, and a pen. His hair was an uncombed mess, and Mycroft thought he looked ever so slightly too thin, and he didn’t even say hello before he dropped into a chair and stuck his nose into his book. Mycroft nevertheless knew exactly what Mrs. Hudson had meant when she had said he seemed happy. There was a relaxed and casual brightness to him that Mycroft had never quite seen before, and he admitted being somewhat irrationally annoyed about this. In the span of a month, Gregory Lestrade and-slash-or John Watson had managed to unlock something in Sherlock that Mycroft had never been able to even locate, and that was bloody irritating.
“Good morning,” Mycroft said to Sherlock, a bit more sharply than he’d intended, and Mrs. Hudson, putting tea down in front of Sherlock, gave Mycroft a surprised and disapproving look.
Sherlock glanced briefly up from his book. “You’ve put on weight,” he remarked.
Mycroft frowned. “It’s lovely to see you, too.”
“It’s because you have a desk job, and also because you’re busy most of the time, and when you’re busy you eat mechanically and don’t realize how much you’re eating,” Sherlock explained to him, as if Mycroft didn’t already know this, and then took a sip of his tea.
“Mrs. Hudson,” said Mycroft, dryly, “how do we blunder through our day-to-day lives without Sherlock’s insightful observations?”
Sherlock smiled at him and went back to his book.
Mycroft took notice of the book for the first time, tipped his head at it. “Are you reading The Rubaiyat?”
“Yes,” said Sherlock, shortly, making a note of something.
“In the original Persian?”
“Well, how else am I going to know for sure what it’s about? You can’t trust the translators of these things, they’re idiots.”
“I didn’t know you knew Persian.” Mycroft tried not to sound as amazed as he really was.
“I taught it to myself.”
“This past month?” Mycroft tried not to sound as impressed as he really was.
Sherlock made an impatient noise. “Is this an important conversation? Because I’m just in the middle of something.”
The back door that led to the veranda opened, and Molly Hooper poked her head in and said, with cheerful nervousness, “Knock knock!”
“Oh, God,” Sherlock muttered, not nearly quietly enough not to be heard by Molly.
Mrs. Hudson gave him a scolding look, and Sherlock lifted the book up to hide behind it.
“Molly, dear,” said Mrs. Hudson, graciously. “Won’t you come in and sit down? Sherlock was just going to have some breakfast.”
“No, I wasn’t,” said Sherlock, from behind the book.
“You need to eat something,” Mycroft told him, the reason for Sherlock’s ever-so-slightly-too-thinness becoming blindingly apparent to him now. Sherlock didn’t eat when he was busy thinking about something. What sort of friend was this John Watson idiot not to be noticing that?
“You eat enough for the both of us,” Sherlock rejoined.
“If only it worked that way,” said Mycroft, and then he turned his attention to Molly, who had settled into a chair and was torn between looking adoringly in the direction of Sherlock—which really meant looking adoringly in the direction of Sherlock’s book—and fidgeting self-consciously. Molly lived in town and had started to come to the estate when Mrs. Hudson, expert in gossip, had heard that she was clever and interested in science, books about which the estate’s library was flooded with as a result of generations of Holmeses with scientific minds. Mrs. Hudson had offered use of the library, which Mycroft did not object to. That she would develop an improbable and resilient crush on Sherlock had not been anticipated by either Mycroft or Mrs. Hudson. Or Sherlock, who disapproved of her and her crush very strongly. Mycroft saw no harm in it and liked Molly well enough, although he doubted her ability to handle Sherlock in the long run. Or the short run. “Good morning, Miss Hooper,” he said to her. “I hope you’ve been well.”
Molly beamed at him, relieved at the welcome. Mycroft was never anything other than polite to Molly, but she always behaved as if she thought he might bite her head off, given half a chance. “Very well, thank you. I just stopped by because I thought it might be a short leave weekend.” Molly glanced to Sherlock’s book again.
“Brilliantly deduced, Molly,” said Sherlock from behind its safety.
“Sherlock, stop being rude and talk to your guest,” chided Mrs. Hudson, putting a full English on the table in front of Sherlock.
“She isn’t my guest; I didn’t invite her,” replied Sherlock.
Molly went pink, but Mrs. Hudson ignored him and said to her, kindly, “Would you like something to eat, Molly?”
“No. That’s okay. I just came to say that a bunch of us are going to see a film tonight, Sherlock. I thought you might want to come along?” She looked at Sherlock’s book hopefully.
“Trail along with a bunch of dull, idiotic imbeciles who will only want to be discussing who kissed whom and when and where and whether or not there mightn’t have been such things as ‘cheating’ and ‘triangles’ involved, and then, when they are not discussing such trivialities, will be watching some sort of drivel that is so stupendously stupid as to metaphorically cause brain cells to leap from one’s head in despair, and yet they will consider themselves to be vastly entertained by it? Absolutely not.”
“Sherlock!” Mrs. Hudson exclaimed at him.
“…Oh,” said Molly, looking as if she didn’t know how else to respond, and then she forced a smile. “That’s all right, then. Maybe some other time?”
Sherlock turned a page of his book.
“Maybe,” Mycroft said, on his behalf, thinking it was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever said but feeling rather sorry for poor, forlorn Molly.
Molly flickered a grateful smile at him, and then said, standing, “Well, I guess I’ll see you around, then. Enjoy your weekend home, Sherlock.”
Sherlock made a noncommittal noise, and Molly departed the kitchen with a little wave. Mrs. Hudson waited for the door to close behind her before taking Sherlock’s book forcefully out of his hands.
“That was rude of you, Sherlock Holmes,” she told him, sternly. “She likes you.”
Sherlock was calmly eating his breakfast now, having been deprived of his book. “Precisely. It’s extraordinarily annoying.”
“You should be nice to her,” Mrs. Hudson told him.
“That would make things worse,” said Sherlock.
“She’s a nice girl, and she wants you to take her to the cinema. What’s the harm in that?”
“It would be dull. Mycroft, tell her.”
“It would be dull,” Mycroft agreed, since he had avoided taking perfectly nice girls like Molly out on perfectly nice dates to the cinema almost his entire life, once he had determined for himself that it really was dull. Mrs. Hudson sighed and left Sherlock’s book on the table and moved over to the sink to start washing dishes. “But I should make you go into town and apologize to her,” Mycroft continued.
Sherlock looked astonished. “Apologize for what?”
“Being rude. You are astonishingly terrible at cultivating acquaintances.”
“I don’t need to cultivate acquaintances. I have you for that.”
Mycroft wanted to ask Sherlock about his apparent friend John Watson. But Sherlock was eating with a definite sulky edge to him, much sharper than when he’d come down for breakfast and had seemed so comfortable and pleased with himself, and Mycroft didn’t want to have the conversation while Sherlock was in a mood. He ventured, instead, “How’s school?”
“Boring,” Sherlock answered, automatically.
“You haven’t called me to complain about that recently.”
“Because you never listen to my complaints,” rejoined Sherlock, lightly. “It’s like talking to a brick wall.”
“I’m terribly unreasonable,” said Mycroft.
“Dreadfully so,” said Sherlock, and picked up his book again.
Next Chapter
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no subject
Date: 2012-10-11 02:22 am (UTC)You don't know how much I like Lestrade's interaction with Mycroft, he understands Sherlock's needs and does something about it.
Yeah! also for Mrs. Hudson, I love how she can control and correct Sherlock (and Mycroft when need it) and he just lets her.
I will never be able to tell you how really much I love your story.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-16 03:40 am (UTC)I'm so glad you're enjoying this, and that the timing of the chapter posting worked for you!
no subject
Date: 2012-10-11 03:59 am (UTC)We need more Lestrade-type teachers in this world. So many kids are bored by the material or too advanced or just can't learn in the old lecture method. I can't even tell you how much Sherlock here reminds me of my sister with her high school chemistry teacher. My sister was far too smart for her own good and, getting bored, would correct the teacher constantly (and, to be fair, rightly so) and just cause all kinds of hell in the classroom. Bored = trouble when it comes to kids (and Sherlock).
That's a long-winded way of saying that all of the dynamics here make complete and utter sense to me (*sigh* yep, I'm Mycroft alright... XD). Keep Sherlock engaged and he'll still be an anti-social, screw-the-norms kind of bastard...but at least he's less likely to set the school on fire. A *little* less. ;)
I can definitely see why you became so taken with this story. It's absolutely fantastic and I can't wait to read more!
no subject
Date: 2012-10-16 03:42 am (UTC)I think that yes, smart kids can often be a huge amount of trouble because of how smart they are, and I could see Sherlock falling into that category. In fact, that basically is the way he is, because he spends so much of his life bored, so he was doubtless even worse as a 16-year-old. And I think the other teachers at Eton just didn't know what they could come up with that would engage him. The idea of an unsolved murder didn't occur to them.
Glad you're enjoying it!
no subject
Date: 2012-10-11 04:44 am (UTC)(Well, maybe not the last part.)
I'm a little sad that the closeness we saw in the early chapters, with 11-year-old Sherlock and 18-year-old Mycroft, seems to have dissipated in the intervening years, but maybe that's just this particular glimpse, and Sherlock's hurt that Mycroft hadn't contacted him, or picked him up from school, or came in when he came home? Because even if Sherlock had fallen asleep with the light on - Mycroft could have at least gone in to turn it off. I was so mad at Mycroft when he didn't do that. Sherlock would have woken up with the light on and known that Mycroft hadn't even done that much. :(
Clearly, Greg has some serious butt-kicking to do in the How To Have a Healthy Relationship category.
Me shipping Mystrade is your fault, btw, so if I'm totally off base in regards to their relations in the scope of this story, you have no one to blame but yourself.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-16 03:43 am (UTC)I think that--and hopefully this comes across as the story keeps going on--Mycroft and Sherlock have just kind of fallen into butting heads with each other. They're both extraordinarily stubborn people, and I think Mycroft still adores Sherlock, and Sherlock still loves Mycroft, but they end up warring a bit over things like independence and stuff like that. Part of this story is their journey back to each other, I think.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-11 10:57 am (UTC)And most of all thank you for your fic!
no subject
Date: 2012-10-16 03:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-11 11:57 am (UTC)I roared with laughter when Mycroft admits to Lestrade that he thinks Sherlock "swapped" with another student and since Sherlock has now made a friend he MUST be seriously ill with some dreadful disease like brain cancer. Poor Mycroft, he's tolerated so much from Sherlock that he just can't believe that no news is good news. I love the teasing banter between Mycroft and Sherlock at the end. You can see that distance and time seem to be seperating the two brothers and lessening their bond. But it's still there.
There needs to be more teachers like Lestrade who notice that smart + bored = powerkeg for disruption. A friend of mine was like that, luckly our Maths teacher realized this and adjusted the curriculum for her. He taught the rest of us the normal stuff but gave her University level problems to solve.
I can't help but feel that if John had come to the Estate for the break he would have been the only one to temper Sherlock's ire against Molly. It really was unfair of him to treat her so badly.
That she would develop an improbable and resilient crush on Sherlock had not been anticipated
A resilient crush, that's a great term for Molly's reaction to Sherlock. I think we've all had one of those be it with someone we know personally or with a celebrity.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-16 03:51 am (UTC)Everybody needs a teacher like Lestrade. Just like all consulting detectives need a DI like Lestrade!
Poor Molly, Sherlock is really terrible to her. As I think Sherlock generally is on the show, especially in the beginning. And yet Molly--especially my Molly, at 16--can't help it! He's Sherlock Holmes!
Thank you for the crossed fingers!
no subject
Date: 2012-10-11 01:44 pm (UTC)xoxoxoxo
no subject
Date: 2012-10-11 01:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-16 03:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-16 03:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-11 04:37 pm (UTC)“Not at all. I’m extremely realistic about him.”
I don’t think it’s really possible to be ‘realistic’ about Sherlock!! But what a lovely thought from a confused Mycroft!
I loved the bit about “the” file . . . poor Greg, that will bother him for a long time, I think.
But of course Sherlock would teach himself Persian – I laughed loud and long at that. Of course the translators are idiots!!
What a lovely update – especially the rant about the cinema and young people’s conversations. I do have to admit I feel like that, too, sometimes!!
no subject
Date: 2012-10-16 03:52 am (UTC)Can you imagine Sherlock trusting anyone else to catch the nuances of a translation? Never!!
And Sherlock solidarity! Glad you enjoyed!
no subject
Date: 2012-10-12 02:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-16 03:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-12 02:27 pm (UTC)Good luck with the interviews.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-16 03:58 am (UTC)Thank you!
no subject
Date: 2012-10-16 11:45 am (UTC)I loved the introduction of John. Poor guy doesn't know what hit him until it's too late haha.
Oh and Lestrade standing up to Mycroft was delightful! Mycroft must have been very confused about Lestrade not cowering before him. Only someone who's not afraid of Mycroft could handle Sherlock of course.
I eagerly await the next chapter!
no subject
Date: 2012-10-18 03:30 am (UTC)You're very right that someone able to handle one Holmes is most likely someone able to handle both of them.
Glad you enjoyed!