Though I Walk Through the Valley (27/38)
Though I Walk through the Valley
Title:Though I Walk through the Valley (27/38)Series: Still Waters (Run Deep) (Part II of IV)
Author: melody_in_time
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: Through S1 only
Disclaimer: I wish, I wish upon a star... but until that works, not mine and sadly no money made.
Author's Notes: Sorry to leave you all with Greg storming off and such a mystery as to Mycroft's reasoning, but here is the explanation. Can't say resolution, that would be lying, but a bit of explanation at least.
Warnings: Nothing I can think of for this chapter
If you've wondered here by mistake, you may wish to start at Part I of the series, Rarest of the Rare: Chapter 1.
Prologue - Chapter 10 - Chapter 20 - Chapter 21 - Chapter 22 - Chapter 23 - Chapter 24 - Chapter 25 - Chapter 26 - Chapter 27 - Chapter 28 - Chapter 29
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Greg felt like a drowned rat and reflected as he hammered on the door that it was his own fault for walking the whole way in the rain. Of course, the reason he’d walked from Knightsbridge to Baker Street was the same reason he was pounding on the door hoping someone opened it soon rather than using his key. The lack of a trip upstairs had left him wallet-less, key-less and phone-less.
“Now you listen to me - Detective Inspector!” Mrs Hudson had apparently been disturbed enough to move first. “Oh, you’re soaked right through, come in, come in. Now, you just give me that coat, oh it’s dripping everywhere. I think we might hang this over a bucket in the kitchen.”
She bustled off, leaving Greg dripping from every other item of clothing onto the foyer carpet. Moving wetly, he squelched his way up the seventeen steps to 221B, Mrs Hudson’s mothering tones admonishing him for not having an umbrella and oh all those footprints on the carpet, and knocked on the door.
If he were being truthful, it was less of a knock and more a full bodied thud as he leant on it, forehead connecting sharply with the refreshingly solid wood.
This week the door opened quickly, almost causing Greg to fall into John as he lost his support. The button up was mostly correct this time, though the last few buttons weren’t sitting quite smoothly so evidently he’d interrupted again, but the ruckus downstairs had given them a little more warning.
“You’re soaked.” John commented, stepping aside with a sigh to let Greg in. “What did you do, walk here?”
“Yes,” Greg replied bluntly.
He was glad he had. Over the course of the walk his anger had faded to a sort of numb tiredness.
John sighed and wondered off to find a towel, flicking the kettle on as he passed. Sherlock raised himself to his elbows and glared sulkily at Greg from his supine position on the couch.
If Greg had missed the more subtle clues in John’s attire that he’d barged in on something again, they were written in bold over Sherlock and he was making no effort to hide them. His midnight blue shirt was undone, one end untucked from his trousers, the other shoulder somewhere down his arm, leaving a lot on display. The dark blue only emphasised the alabaster and ebony contrast of his skin and dishevelled hair, making him appear even more like a renaissance artwork than usual. Artwork painted by an artist with more than untouchable purity in mind, with reddened kiss swollen lips and blatant seduction written into every line even as Sherlock sulked.
“Do you and my brother time your arguments?” Sherlock hissed, blue-grey eyes flashing. “Some kind of schedule to ensure they’re disruptive for everyone else?”
By everyone else, Sherlock clearly meant himself.
“What did he say this time, that you needed a better wardrobe?” He continued.
“That I had no say in our child’s name, actually.” Greg fired back without thinking.
Sherlock always had known how to push his buttons.
The look he received in return was pitiful disgust.
“Well of course not.” Sherlock pushed to his feet and stomped over to the fireplace where his shoes had landed almost in the fire. “Why would you?”
“Why would-” Greg chocked on his words disbelievingly. “He’s my son too.”
“Dear God, you’re pathetic.” Sherlock finished with his shoes and started towards the door. “As if that counts for anything.”
He pushed past Greg who stood there dumbfounded, totally shocked at what he was hearing from Sherlock.
“So what, you wouldn’t give John a say in your child’s name?” He managed belatedly.
Sherlock paused on the first step, fingers halfway through his buttons. “Of course, but then I’ve never been a contender for the world’s foremost example of filial piety, have I? Tell John I’ve gone to Barts.”
He was out the door, coat in hand and summoning one of his mystically available taxis, before Greg had gathered enough of his sluggish thoughts to form a coherent question.
“I heard. Here.” John passed a towel and a pair of worn scrubs into his hands. “Might be a little short, but better than drenched?”
“Uh, thanks.” Greg headed to the bathroom to change.
The scrubs were too short and Greg fancied they made him look ridiculous, ending where they did mid-ankle and leaving his feet sticking out like a hobbit’s. The top was fine though and they fit around the waist. He surrendered the bundle of wet clothes to John and the dryer as he exited, but kept the towel. He hadn’t felt totally comfortable wearing John’s trousers sans pants and didn’t want to leave a wet spot on the couch when they soaked through.
“So I’m guessing you heard that?” Greg sighed, accepting his cup of tea and settling into one of the armchairs.
“Flat’s not that big. Mycroft refusing to budge on his choice of name, then?” John sat opposite with his own tea in hand.
“Yeah.” Greg sighed again. “Won’t even open the topic.”
“Did he say what he wants?” John asked quizzically.
Greg grimaced.
“Oh come on. It can’t be that bad.” John grinned.
“Abernathy. Abernathy Emrys Holmes.”
“Oh.” John’s face froze. “That’s, that’s lovely, Greg. Very, um, traditional.”
“It’s going to get my son beaten up every day of school from kindergarten to A levels is what it is.” Greg snarled softly.
“Probably, yes, a few times.” John winced. “At least you can call him Ben? And Emrys isn’t bad. What kid doesn’t want to be a wizard, yeah?”
“Merlin, right?” Greg sighed lifelessly.
“That’s what the BBC tells me, so must be true.” John winked at him and managed to raise a small smile from Greg.
“How do you find time to watch these shows?”
“Stockpile them for when Sherlock gets bored and I need to ignore him?” John shrugged. “It’s not that hard, and you can catch up online readily enough when you miss one.”
“True. Do that for Doctor Who myself.” Greg acknowledged blandly, not really that interested.
John indicated the miserly stack of DVD’s half buried by Sherlock’s case files. “Himself keeps buying me the box sets. I think he secretly enjoys them.”
Greg almost let out a bark of laughter that didn’t go well with his mouthful of tea, and spent several seconds trying emphatically not to spry lukewarm liquid over John.
“Are you okay with the rest of it, though?” John asked sympathetically. “You know, him being a Holmes?”
“Huh? Yeah, that’s the only bit I am fine with, to be honest.” Greg sighed. “He was always going to have My’s name. It just makes more sense. Mycroft needs a public heir, and let’s face it, why be a Lestrade when you can be a Holmes?”
“I can think of a few reasons.” John mumbled into his tea, glaring at an unknown point.
“A couple, yeah,” Greg managed a weak chuckle. “This is also easier for secrecy, given Mycroft has to disappear anyway. So, no, yeah I’m fine with that. Might have liked to be asked so I could say so, but they don’t ask, Holmeses, do they?”
“No,” John agreed, “they tell you and look bewildered you haven’t jumped five steps with them.”
“Too right,” Greg slouched deeper into the couch. “And they don’t get that sometimes the question is as important as the answer.”
“More so with them. They can work out the answer.”
You prefer it.
“Definitely.” Greg agreed, pushing the echo away.
They both sat quietly, occupied with their own thoughts. Greg tried not to squirm as an errant drop of water fell from his hair and trailed down his back, joining the sodden mess his pants were turning the towel into.
“What do you think you and Sherlock will name your kid?” He asked, curious to know what John would come up with.
“If we have one.” John replied bleakly.
“When you have one.” Greg said sternly. “It’s way too soon for you to have given up, so don’t give me any of that.”
“Sorry, Sir, when, Sir.” John smiled a cheeky sly smile Greg suspected had been a big hit for him when the Alpha was younger. “Not sure actually. The idea of maybe having one is so overwhelming I haven’t thought further. What did you come up with?”
“All sorts.” Greg sighed. “Anything I thought would be formal enough to suit Mycroft, but normal enough I could happily name a kid that. You know, Alexander, Edmond, that kind of thing.”
“Alex, Ed,” John waved his hands to indicate the etc.
“Yeah, open to pretty much anything as long as we chose it together - would have been happy with Quentin and that’s hardly common anymore.” Greg tried to be angry, but he just got bone weary tiredness instead.
“Mycroft didn’t take trying to discuss it well.” John didn’t bother to make it a question. Greg’s presence provided a clear answer.
“No.” Greg replied shortly.
“So you walked here?”
“Forgot my wallet.” Greg mumbled.
“Right.” John rolled his empty mug between his palms.
“Say it.” Greg rolled his eyes.
John’s eyes narrowed. “You won’t like it.”
“Gathered that.” Greg muttered into his mug.
“Really want me to say it?” John searched Greg’s face looking for confirmation. “You didn’t last week.”
“Just say it.” Greg was glad he was too tired to be properly sharp.
John studied him a little longer then nodded decisively, obviously deciding to say whatever he felt he had to.
“You and Mycroft have issues and you need to sit down and sort a lot of things that you’ve been skating past and ignoring.”
“That’s your great pronouncement?” Greg laughed in shock. “I know that, it’s how I ended up here.”
“You didn’t want to hear it last week.” John replied. “Refused to.”
“Yeah, well,-”
“I’m not talking about baby names, Greg. I’m talking about what you are to each other. I’m talking about who you are to the baby.”
“I’m his father.” Greg hissed, back going rigid as John scraped close to the bone. “His Sire.”
“The public doesn’t know that.” John pointed out reasonably. “Will he? Should he? Kids don’t keep secrets well, when is he old enough to know?”
“I…” Greg stuttered as John ploughed on.
“Are you going to tell him you’re together? Are you going to tell him you’re gay to cover it up? Are you going to tell the wider public? If not, is the physical side of your relationship going to continue since he can’t find out? If it doesn’t, what’s left? You and Mycroft didn’t go into this in a way people would really consider freely consenting on either side. Without the sex and the pheromones, what’s left? Friends? Will you be seeing other people?”
“I don’t want to see other people.” Greg sounded as bewildered as he felt.
“Is that the pheromones talking? Even if it’s not for you, will Mycroft want to look elsewhere, especially if the physical side of things doesn’t continue? Will you be okay with that?”
“Mycroft doesn’t like dating, he won’t.” Greg tried to sound convincing.
John leant forward intently. “Until last week you didn’t even know you weren’t his Sub, not really, not in the important ways, no matter what you claimed in retrospect. This child is not going to be recorded as yours. What legal rights will you have, will you be formally adopting him, and when? How old will he be when you do? If things do go south between you and Mycroft, what will happen to him?”
“I…I…”
Some of it were vague thoughts he’d almost half formed himself, but never to completion and never so brutally. Before he would have said that his son would know him, that he would grow up knowing him as more than his father’s friend and lover, but now he didn’t know whether that would be true, not if he wasn’t even involved in choosing their baby’s name.
He and Mycroft would stay together, of course they would, and the one thing he could be assured of was that with Mycroft’s attitude to it all, even if they didn’t continue the sexual side of everything, he would be the only person in Mycroft’s life in that way. It might not be him, but there wouldn’t be anyone else.
But the baby…how much of a role would he be allowed? Would he have a say in bedtime stories and outings and activities, or would he be relegated to babysitter and close stranger? It was a terrifying thought that last week he would have denied, denied, denied, but Mycroft wouldn’t even let him -
No, he would be allowed into his son’s life. He would. Mycroft wouldn’t deny him that, not when he was having the baby for Greg, at Greg’s request, only because of him. He wouldn’t be shut out of their son’s life.
Would he?
“What are Mycroft’s expectations, Greg?” John asked kindly. “What are yours?”
“Whatever he wants.” Greg replied softly. “That’s what I promised. Whatever he can give me, as much or as little, that’s enough. It’ll always be enough.”
John flexed his jaw, but didn’t comment on Greg’s statement. “The two of you need to talk about these things, if you can’t then you may need to consider calling it all off because it won’t work. This needs to be a partnership, especially with a child involved.”
“It will work.” The sharpness Greg thought he was well past exploded out before he had time to even register what John had said.
Of course it would work. Mycroft was his friend, his love and carrying his baby. Greg wold not leave him, ever, no matter what John said.
“Mycroft won’t bring these topics up, you’ll have to.” John warned. “It won’t be easy.”
“We are fine.” Greg hissed, body straightening as he instinctively defended the challenge.
“I’m not challenging you, Greg,” John sounded weary, leaning back in his seat, giving Greg the extra space, “but you are not fine.”
“We are fine.” Greg tilted his chin up and broadened his chest, mimicking the actions he’d seen Sherlock use when aggravated.
John sighed and pushed out of his chair. “I told you you didn’t want to hear it. Discussion over, mate, I’ll stop. Stand down.”
Greg watched John walk out of the room and didn’t feel his body relax until the Alpha Dom was in the kitchen fiddling with the kettle for another cup of tea, the great English cure-all.
He and Mycroft would be fine. Of course they would be and he would not hear otherwise.
John continued shuffling things around in the kitchen, dishes clinking with soft thuds as he moved items around. The fridge door gave a sticky welch as he opened it a few times, the seals resisting the motion until the last. If there was one thing Sherlock had splurged on, it was a good quality fridge to ensure his experiments weren’t compromised.
The water ran, then stopped, several drawers shuffled out and hitched their way back in on unsmooth tracks until they came to a juddering halt in place. More bangs, and thuds, and clinks as John continued whatever he was doing, which was obviously more than just fixing tea.
“Anything on TV tonight?” Greg called, wondering whether he’d offended John in some way.
John instantly reappeared in the sitting room, tea in hand. It wasn’t until Greg felt his chest start to clench, then give in and relax that he realised John had been giving him space to calm down, nothing to do with the tea in his hands.
“Where’s mine, then?” He demanded, holding out his empty mug.
“Kettle’s over there.” John picked up the remote. “Fridge is safe. Get your own.”
“Prick.” Greg muttered loudly enough for John to hear and walked into the kitchen head high, ignoring the massive wet circle on his arse.
John wasn’t quite sniggering when he sat back down. “Movie or TV?”
~*~Greg ended up spending the night on the couch again as Sherlock still hadn’t cleaned off the spare bed and John was refusing touch it, whatever it was. Clearly it wasn’t biological in nature because John had a clear time limit on how long they were permitted residence in the flat, but when Sherlock was involved that didn’t mean it was normal, legal or otherwise suited for a domestic household.
It meant Greg was very glad he’d used the towel. Sleeping in the wet patch was never fun, but was at least bearable when there had been some enjoyable exertion involved in creating it.
It also meant that Greg had spent the night lying there trying to quiet his thoughts enough to sleep under the deliberately ignoring him eye of Sherlock Holmes, who had breezed in around midnight, plonked down at his Dom’s side and proceeded to sneer at the Bond film Greg and John had eventually settled on. He had quieted when John asked in a light voice whether he thought Mycroft would like a fluffy white kitten for Christmas, and sat out the rest of the movie in disdainful, but mildly approving, silence.
Greg really hoped Mycroft’s Christmas present didn’t have air holes. He wasn’t quite sure what his rather particular love would do with a rambunctious kitten.
Unlike John, who had traipsed off to bed not long after the movie finished, first furnishing Greg with the blanket and pillow he’d used last time, Sherlock had merely moved into the kitchen and started to tinker with his laptop and microscope. This had left Greg trying to sleep in the darkened sitting room feeling slightly paranoid that his sort of brother-in-law could read his every thought each time he twitched. His paranoia wasn’t helped when Sherlock rolled his eyes, sighed in exasperation, and then stood to close the connecting doors.
At least it helped block a little of the light.
Greg woke up grumpy, mainly due to choppy interrupted sleep and intense dreams that he couldn’t remember, but left a bitter, angry-sad taste in his mouth and the tight knot aching in his chest, all most likely fuelled by all the thoughts he’d been pushing away as he had tried to get to sleep.
Luckily John was already awake and had made coffee. He smiled at Greg as best he could with toast hanging out one side of his mouth and tilted his head towards the coffee.
“Ish’s fresh, closhes should be done inna dryer. Make shure he eash.” Without another word, he dashed out the door, toast still hanging from his mouth, tie flapping undone around his neck.
“Late for work? How’d he pull a Sunday shift?” Greg asked.
Sherlock, still sitting at the table with laptop and microscope, grunted.
Greg sighed and gingerly opened the bread bin, just in case Sherlock was using it to store something that wasn’t bread. John must have cleaned it out recently as other than a half-finished loaf there were only a couple of petri dishes tucked right at the back. Given John had been eating toast on his way out, Greg assumed the bread was safe.
He poured his coffee and ate his toast in silence, letting his natural morning distemper fade away with the provision of his morning caffeine dose. The bad mood from lack of sleep he was used to controlling by now, though if he ended up being called in to work he made no promises to play nice.
John had left fresh towels in the bathroom, which meant Greg could shower before redressing in dry clothes. Scrubbing his hand over his face, he wished that he had a razor. Unlike Sherlock, who as far as Greg could tell had been sitting at the kitchen table without moving all night and didn’t have the slightest hint of a beard coming in (an Omega trait), Greg did fall victim to five o’clock shadow, or right now, morning after stubble. That was a price of being an Alpha - fast growing body hair.
Returning to the kitchen table he studied Sherlock over the rim of his second cup of coffee. The Omega ignored him, whether because he was ignoring him or because he was so far buried in his own head he didn’t realise Greg was there, it was difficult to tell. Greg was leaning towards the former, attempting for the latter. It would be possible to talk to Sherlock, but only if Greg managed to capture his interest.
He had to ask the right question. Otherwise, Sherlock wouldn’t even deign to hear him.
The question he wanted answered was ‘why won’t Mycroft let me help choose our child’s name and why aren’t you surprised/appalled by this?’ That was also the obvious question, and would fly straight past Sherlock’s head as if Greg hadn’t opened his mouth.
He needed to ask the right question, the intelligent question, the insightful question, not the obvious one.
He sipped his second coffee, forcing his mind through mental gymnastics he didn’t really want to perform at that time of the morning.
“Who chose your name?” Greg asked eventually, not bothering to raise his voice. Sherlock wasn’t so lost in thought he needed to drag him out of it, just get him to stop tuning him out.
Sherlock didn’t look up from his microscope, but a half smirk pulled at one side of his full lips. Greg could almost hear him saying “Good, Inspector, good” in the overly patronising, arrogant tone he always delivered his compliments in when he felt people around him had been semi-intelligent. Positive reinforcement, Sherlock-style.
“Our paternal grand-sire named both of us.”
“Your grand-sire?” Greg repeated.
The smirk disappeared off Sherlock’s face and he fiddled with something under the microscope while touch typing something onto the laptop one handed. Greg cursed in his head. Sherlock hated it when people repeated information pointlessly. A rookie mistake and it had cost him ground in the game.
Sherlock and Mycroft were named by their grand-sire. Specifically, their paternal grand-sire. Did that matter?
Yes, Greg decided, it mattered, because this was Sherlock and otherwise he wouldn’t have specified. So what was special about the fact it was their paternal grand-sire?
Their Sire’s Sire. Alpha’s Alpha.
Their sire was dead, Mycroft had told him and John that, and given Mycroft and Sherlock’s ages it was unlikely their Grand-Sire was still alive. Which meant his next question should be…
“So does that make Mummy the head of the family?”
“In a manner of speaking.” Sherlock deigned to lift his gaze from the microscope. “It’s complicated.”
He sat there waiting for Greg’s response, elbows crossed in front of him on the table. When Greg didn’t say anything, he sighed and leant back in his chair, grey eyes trained on Greg’s face.
“I assume my brother has made you aware of the reaction to his presenting as an Omega?”
“He said enough I know it wasn’t good.” Greg replied cautiously. “He didn’t say anything explicitly or go into specifics.”
“I doubt he ever will.” Sherlock raised an eyebrow. “There’s a reason my brother is so good at his job. International politics has nothing on the Family.”
The capital letter was audible.
“Sounds wonderful.” Greg’s own broken family was sounding better and better, even by implication.
“If you enjoy machination with pre-dinner cocktails. Personally I prefer to limit my obligatory contact to Mycroft, and that’s only because the fat lout won’t stay away.”
“But Mycroft doesn’t share your view.” Greg decided to ignore the insult in favour of information gathering. It wasn’t like Mycroft needed Greg to protect his honour, especially from Sherlock, and right now Greg was still too annoyed with him to bother on principle.
Sherlock arched an eyebrow and didn’t say anything, arms still crossed over his chest, gaze firm.
“Because he’s trying to make up for being an Omega.” Greg supplied the answer for himself. “He should be the head of the family, oldest Dominant son of the previous Alpha, but he’s not an Alpha and being traditional, as an unbounded Omega he can’t hold the position, and if he Bonds, it passes to his bond-mate, not him.”
The last was conjecture, but Greg had watched enough period dramas courtesy of Josephine to work out some of the internal manoeuvring that must be occurring behind the scenes.
“So right now,” he mused, “the dowager duchess is running the Family.”
“Marchioness, actually.” Sherlock looked slightly approving.
“Oh.” Greg had been being sarcastic, but on reflection, of course the family had a title somewhere in it. You didn’t own a house like that in Knightsbridge without a title somewhere along the line to match the family money.
“Mycroft’s a Dom.” He said slowly. “The public think he’s an Alpha.”
“Yes.” Sherlock drew the word out in a way that suggested Greg was losing his interest fast. “That’s why it’s complicated.”
Greg switched tacks. He’d work out how he felt about that not entirely unobvious revelation that Mycroft should be a Lord of some sort later.
“Mycroft said he chose Abernathy.”
“Pride would hardly let him say otherwise.” Sherlock replied coolly. “Technically I suppose one could say he chose it off the approved list Mummy would have returned to him.”
“So he did choose it. Who chose the list?” Greg had no doubt the submissions would have come from all Mycroft’s PA’s hopefully tedious research.
“He would have submitted a selection of his preferred relatives for approval. That does not mean any of them would have been returned on the list, nor is it likely to have affected what was on it. A formality, you could say.”
Sherlock’s gaze was still heavy. He was waiting for Greg to get something, to ask something. As usual when that look was levelled on him, Greg had no idea what he was meant to be reaching for.
“And how long would this list have been?”
Maybe if there had been some other options Greg could talk Mycroft into one of them. They couldn’t be too bad, not all of them. He could live with quaint, for example. Maybe one of them would just be quaint.
“Anywhere from one to one hundred. Given Mummy’s current attitude, I suspect the former.”
Greg sat quietly while he let things arrange in his head.
“So let me get this straight.” He finally said. “The illustrious Mummy has chosen our son’s name, and under the family rules that’s it, done and dusted. Mycroft won’t challenge this because he’s still trying to make up for some mistake of biology thirty years old that’s not even his fault.”
“Succinctly put, Inspector.”
It sounded like an insult.
“And I’m supposed to go along with this?” Greg wasn’t sure whether he was incredulous or angry.
It’s been sorted, indeed!
“The Family would never have contemplated otherwise.”
“Right, so because your family has a stick up its collective arse, my kid gets saddled with a crap name he’s got to live with for the rest of his life?” Greg drummed his fingers on the table, anger beginning to work its way to the fore for another round. “That’s bollocks.”
“Possibly.”
Sherlock sat like he was in an interrogation room. Greg had seen the posture before, the crossed arms, the guarded pose, but for once Sherlock was actually answering questions and providing information on the Holmeses. His body language didn’t match the quantity of his answers. Greg didn’t flatter himself his questions had been all that clever, which meant Sherlock was getting something out of this, something more than just goodwill. There was something he wanted.
Greg ran his cop’s eye over Sherlock.
“You think I should press the issue.”
“I think it’s been thirty one years.” Sherlock’s voice didn’t waver, didn’t change pitch or tone or volume or cadence. It still sounded like a challenge.
“You think he needs to get over his issues. Welcome to the club.” Greg slouched down and stared diagonally over Sherlock’s shoulder. “It’s not my job to fix his problems when he won’t even let me know they’re there. I don’t know what you’re expecting, but there is no way Mycroft is going to open this topic, let alone take on Mummy over a name if he hasn’t over all the other shit I presume has been going on, so like it or not, your nephew’s name’s apparently going to be Abernathy.”
Sherlock continued to stare a hole into Greg’s head. He didn’t seem to blink. “Give in to him over this, what else will you yield? You’re kidding yourself if you think you’ll start standing up to him once the baby’s born if you don’t do it now.”
Greg glared holes in the wall of the kitchen, insulted beyond belief that it wouldn’t catch fire while Sherlock’s gaze burnt on his forehead.
“That’s not true.” He countered. “I just don’t see-”
“Do stop lying to yourself, Lestrade. It is indescribably tedious.” Sherlock’s voice was a whip crack through Greg’s half-hearted attempt at denial.
They sat there in silence, Sherlock glaring at Greg, Greg trying to bore holes in the wall. The deadening quiet was broken only by Greg’s arrhythmic tapping on the kitchen table.
“Fucking Hell, this is going to be it, innit? This is going to be our issue.” Greg swore and rapped his knuckles angrily on the table surface, bringing his tapping to a halt. “Every couple has that one stupid irrational thing they can’t agree on no matter how simple it bloody is, cause that’s The Issue and if you give in on that, you lose, and this is it. Our kid’s name. Fuck.”
He stood and stormed to the toaster, slamming down the lever harder than was required. The toast took too long to cook. Impatiently he jabbed at the cancel button once it was halfway to brown and dragged the knife over it in an entirely slapdash manner.
“Eat.” He dropped the plate loudly at Sherlock’s elbow.
Sherlock didn’t say anything, watching him mutinously.
“Just bloody eat it, Sherlock.” He collapsed down in his seat and resumed glaring holes in the wall.
Sherlock studied him a few moments longer, then relaxed. The tension that had been hovering in the room since Greg began the extraction process dissipated as Sherlock took a bite of toast and resumed ignoring Greg in favour of whatever he had under the microscope.
Greg didn’t really care, angry thoughts chasing themselves around his head, the most prevalent of which was ‘why fucking me?’
John was only on a half day and leant Greg enough money for a taxi back to his wallet without comment. Standing on the doorstep and having to ring his own doorbell was a humiliation Greg wasn’t looking forward to, but fiddling in his pockets as the cab trundled down the street revealed a loose key that had not been there before, yet mysteriously fit his front door.
Greg made a mental note to slip it to John next time he saw him. It would be less embarrassing than having to return it directly to Sherlock.
“You’re back.” Mycroft appeared to have a habit of catching Greg partway up the stairs. Like last time his eyes swept appraisingly over Greg and there was a hint of softening in his shoulders when he was done. “The sofa again, I see.”
“Hardly going to share the bed.” Greg retorted. “Threesome with your brother and his Bonded a little beyond my kinky side.”
“Quite.” Mycroft’s chin jutted out at the suggestion, clearly not appreciating the humour in Greg’s statement. That was fine as Greg hadn’t tried to be funny.
Assessment done, Mycroft turned to go back to his study.
“Had an interesting little chat with Sherlock earlier. He was obviously feeling informative for once.”
Greg watched Mycroft’s step hitch slightly as he froze, before his training countered the movement and turned it into a dramatic, sweeping about face.
“Indeed?” Mycroft asked, eyebrow delicately arched. “Was he waxing poetically about the flight paths of bees again?”
“No, more like ‘machinations and pre-dinner cocktails’, but he did clarify a few things.” Greg glared over the railings. “Things that you should have said, Mycroft, and I don’t care what Mummy commands, we are not naming our son Abernathy Emrys, I am still pissed off at you, and don’t think we won’t be having a very long talk about this later.”
He stomped up the rest of the stairs before Mycroft had a chance to respond. He reached the landing then stomped back down just enough steps he could see Mycroft over the railing as a nasty thought occurred to him.
“What was your Sire’s name?” He demanded harshly.
“Our-”
“His name, Mycroft.” Greg interrupted fiercely. “What was it?”
Mycroft paused, hand on the banister as he watched Greg.
“Siger.” He said finally, voice soft.
“Good.” Greg nodded, relieved. “That’s good.”
The anger drained out of him, disproportionally appeased by the fact that no matter what happened, his son wouldn’t have His name.
“A distant relative, some generations back.” Mycroft’s gaze was gentle, and when their eyes met Greg felt like they might actually be in agreement over one thing.
“We’re still going to have that talk.” He warned, and continued to his room without looking back.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Not Mycroft's POV, but at little bit of insight in to why he acts the way he does.
Previous - Next
Title:Though I Walk through the Valley (27/38)Series: Still Waters (Run Deep) (Part II of IV)
Author: melody_in_time
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: Through S1 only
Disclaimer: I wish, I wish upon a star... but until that works, not mine and sadly no money made.
Author's Notes: Sorry to leave you all with Greg storming off and such a mystery as to Mycroft's reasoning, but here is the explanation. Can't say resolution, that would be lying, but a bit of explanation at least.
Warnings: Nothing I can think of for this chapter
If you've wondered here by mistake, you may wish to start at Part I of the series, Rarest of the Rare: Chapter 1.
Prologue - Chapter 10 - Chapter 20 - Chapter 21 - Chapter 22 - Chapter 23 - Chapter 24 - Chapter 25 - Chapter 26 - Chapter 27 - Chapter 28 - Chapter 29
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Greg felt like a drowned rat and reflected as he hammered on the door that it was his own fault for walking the whole way in the rain. Of course, the reason he’d walked from Knightsbridge to Baker Street was the same reason he was pounding on the door hoping someone opened it soon rather than using his key. The lack of a trip upstairs had left him wallet-less, key-less and phone-less.
“Now you listen to me - Detective Inspector!” Mrs Hudson had apparently been disturbed enough to move first. “Oh, you’re soaked right through, come in, come in. Now, you just give me that coat, oh it’s dripping everywhere. I think we might hang this over a bucket in the kitchen.”
She bustled off, leaving Greg dripping from every other item of clothing onto the foyer carpet. Moving wetly, he squelched his way up the seventeen steps to 221B, Mrs Hudson’s mothering tones admonishing him for not having an umbrella and oh all those footprints on the carpet, and knocked on the door.
If he were being truthful, it was less of a knock and more a full bodied thud as he leant on it, forehead connecting sharply with the refreshingly solid wood.
This week the door opened quickly, almost causing Greg to fall into John as he lost his support. The button up was mostly correct this time, though the last few buttons weren’t sitting quite smoothly so evidently he’d interrupted again, but the ruckus downstairs had given them a little more warning.
“You’re soaked.” John commented, stepping aside with a sigh to let Greg in. “What did you do, walk here?”
“Yes,” Greg replied bluntly.
He was glad he had. Over the course of the walk his anger had faded to a sort of numb tiredness.
John sighed and wondered off to find a towel, flicking the kettle on as he passed. Sherlock raised himself to his elbows and glared sulkily at Greg from his supine position on the couch.
If Greg had missed the more subtle clues in John’s attire that he’d barged in on something again, they were written in bold over Sherlock and he was making no effort to hide them. His midnight blue shirt was undone, one end untucked from his trousers, the other shoulder somewhere down his arm, leaving a lot on display. The dark blue only emphasised the alabaster and ebony contrast of his skin and dishevelled hair, making him appear even more like a renaissance artwork than usual. Artwork painted by an artist with more than untouchable purity in mind, with reddened kiss swollen lips and blatant seduction written into every line even as Sherlock sulked.
“Do you and my brother time your arguments?” Sherlock hissed, blue-grey eyes flashing. “Some kind of schedule to ensure they’re disruptive for everyone else?”
By everyone else, Sherlock clearly meant himself.
“What did he say this time, that you needed a better wardrobe?” He continued.
“That I had no say in our child’s name, actually.” Greg fired back without thinking.
Sherlock always had known how to push his buttons.
The look he received in return was pitiful disgust.
“Well of course not.” Sherlock pushed to his feet and stomped over to the fireplace where his shoes had landed almost in the fire. “Why would you?”
“Why would-” Greg chocked on his words disbelievingly. “He’s my son too.”
“Dear God, you’re pathetic.” Sherlock finished with his shoes and started towards the door. “As if that counts for anything.”
He pushed past Greg who stood there dumbfounded, totally shocked at what he was hearing from Sherlock.
“So what, you wouldn’t give John a say in your child’s name?” He managed belatedly.
Sherlock paused on the first step, fingers halfway through his buttons. “Of course, but then I’ve never been a contender for the world’s foremost example of filial piety, have I? Tell John I’ve gone to Barts.”
He was out the door, coat in hand and summoning one of his mystically available taxis, before Greg had gathered enough of his sluggish thoughts to form a coherent question.
“I heard. Here.” John passed a towel and a pair of worn scrubs into his hands. “Might be a little short, but better than drenched?”
“Uh, thanks.” Greg headed to the bathroom to change.
The scrubs were too short and Greg fancied they made him look ridiculous, ending where they did mid-ankle and leaving his feet sticking out like a hobbit’s. The top was fine though and they fit around the waist. He surrendered the bundle of wet clothes to John and the dryer as he exited, but kept the towel. He hadn’t felt totally comfortable wearing John’s trousers sans pants and didn’t want to leave a wet spot on the couch when they soaked through.
“So I’m guessing you heard that?” Greg sighed, accepting his cup of tea and settling into one of the armchairs.
“Flat’s not that big. Mycroft refusing to budge on his choice of name, then?” John sat opposite with his own tea in hand.
“Yeah.” Greg sighed again. “Won’t even open the topic.”
“Did he say what he wants?” John asked quizzically.
Greg grimaced.
“Oh come on. It can’t be that bad.” John grinned.
“Abernathy. Abernathy Emrys Holmes.”
“Oh.” John’s face froze. “That’s, that’s lovely, Greg. Very, um, traditional.”
“It’s going to get my son beaten up every day of school from kindergarten to A levels is what it is.” Greg snarled softly.
“Probably, yes, a few times.” John winced. “At least you can call him Ben? And Emrys isn’t bad. What kid doesn’t want to be a wizard, yeah?”
“Merlin, right?” Greg sighed lifelessly.
“That’s what the BBC tells me, so must be true.” John winked at him and managed to raise a small smile from Greg.
“How do you find time to watch these shows?”
“Stockpile them for when Sherlock gets bored and I need to ignore him?” John shrugged. “It’s not that hard, and you can catch up online readily enough when you miss one.”
“True. Do that for Doctor Who myself.” Greg acknowledged blandly, not really that interested.
John indicated the miserly stack of DVD’s half buried by Sherlock’s case files. “Himself keeps buying me the box sets. I think he secretly enjoys them.”
Greg almost let out a bark of laughter that didn’t go well with his mouthful of tea, and spent several seconds trying emphatically not to spry lukewarm liquid over John.
“Are you okay with the rest of it, though?” John asked sympathetically. “You know, him being a Holmes?”
“Huh? Yeah, that’s the only bit I am fine with, to be honest.” Greg sighed. “He was always going to have My’s name. It just makes more sense. Mycroft needs a public heir, and let’s face it, why be a Lestrade when you can be a Holmes?”
“I can think of a few reasons.” John mumbled into his tea, glaring at an unknown point.
“A couple, yeah,” Greg managed a weak chuckle. “This is also easier for secrecy, given Mycroft has to disappear anyway. So, no, yeah I’m fine with that. Might have liked to be asked so I could say so, but they don’t ask, Holmeses, do they?”
“No,” John agreed, “they tell you and look bewildered you haven’t jumped five steps with them.”
“Too right,” Greg slouched deeper into the couch. “And they don’t get that sometimes the question is as important as the answer.”
“More so with them. They can work out the answer.”
You prefer it.
“Definitely.” Greg agreed, pushing the echo away.
They both sat quietly, occupied with their own thoughts. Greg tried not to squirm as an errant drop of water fell from his hair and trailed down his back, joining the sodden mess his pants were turning the towel into.
“What do you think you and Sherlock will name your kid?” He asked, curious to know what John would come up with.
“If we have one.” John replied bleakly.
“When you have one.” Greg said sternly. “It’s way too soon for you to have given up, so don’t give me any of that.”
“Sorry, Sir, when, Sir.” John smiled a cheeky sly smile Greg suspected had been a big hit for him when the Alpha was younger. “Not sure actually. The idea of maybe having one is so overwhelming I haven’t thought further. What did you come up with?”
“All sorts.” Greg sighed. “Anything I thought would be formal enough to suit Mycroft, but normal enough I could happily name a kid that. You know, Alexander, Edmond, that kind of thing.”
“Alex, Ed,” John waved his hands to indicate the etc.
“Yeah, open to pretty much anything as long as we chose it together - would have been happy with Quentin and that’s hardly common anymore.” Greg tried to be angry, but he just got bone weary tiredness instead.
“Mycroft didn’t take trying to discuss it well.” John didn’t bother to make it a question. Greg’s presence provided a clear answer.
“No.” Greg replied shortly.
“So you walked here?”
“Forgot my wallet.” Greg mumbled.
“Right.” John rolled his empty mug between his palms.
“Say it.” Greg rolled his eyes.
John’s eyes narrowed. “You won’t like it.”
“Gathered that.” Greg muttered into his mug.
“Really want me to say it?” John searched Greg’s face looking for confirmation. “You didn’t last week.”
“Just say it.” Greg was glad he was too tired to be properly sharp.
John studied him a little longer then nodded decisively, obviously deciding to say whatever he felt he had to.
“You and Mycroft have issues and you need to sit down and sort a lot of things that you’ve been skating past and ignoring.”
“That’s your great pronouncement?” Greg laughed in shock. “I know that, it’s how I ended up here.”
“You didn’t want to hear it last week.” John replied. “Refused to.”
“Yeah, well,-”
“I’m not talking about baby names, Greg. I’m talking about what you are to each other. I’m talking about who you are to the baby.”
“I’m his father.” Greg hissed, back going rigid as John scraped close to the bone. “His Sire.”
“The public doesn’t know that.” John pointed out reasonably. “Will he? Should he? Kids don’t keep secrets well, when is he old enough to know?”
“I…” Greg stuttered as John ploughed on.
“Are you going to tell him you’re together? Are you going to tell him you’re gay to cover it up? Are you going to tell the wider public? If not, is the physical side of your relationship going to continue since he can’t find out? If it doesn’t, what’s left? You and Mycroft didn’t go into this in a way people would really consider freely consenting on either side. Without the sex and the pheromones, what’s left? Friends? Will you be seeing other people?”
“I don’t want to see other people.” Greg sounded as bewildered as he felt.
“Is that the pheromones talking? Even if it’s not for you, will Mycroft want to look elsewhere, especially if the physical side of things doesn’t continue? Will you be okay with that?”
“Mycroft doesn’t like dating, he won’t.” Greg tried to sound convincing.
John leant forward intently. “Until last week you didn’t even know you weren’t his Sub, not really, not in the important ways, no matter what you claimed in retrospect. This child is not going to be recorded as yours. What legal rights will you have, will you be formally adopting him, and when? How old will he be when you do? If things do go south between you and Mycroft, what will happen to him?”
“I…I…”
Some of it were vague thoughts he’d almost half formed himself, but never to completion and never so brutally. Before he would have said that his son would know him, that he would grow up knowing him as more than his father’s friend and lover, but now he didn’t know whether that would be true, not if he wasn’t even involved in choosing their baby’s name.
He and Mycroft would stay together, of course they would, and the one thing he could be assured of was that with Mycroft’s attitude to it all, even if they didn’t continue the sexual side of everything, he would be the only person in Mycroft’s life in that way. It might not be him, but there wouldn’t be anyone else.
But the baby…how much of a role would he be allowed? Would he have a say in bedtime stories and outings and activities, or would he be relegated to babysitter and close stranger? It was a terrifying thought that last week he would have denied, denied, denied, but Mycroft wouldn’t even let him -
No, he would be allowed into his son’s life. He would. Mycroft wouldn’t deny him that, not when he was having the baby for Greg, at Greg’s request, only because of him. He wouldn’t be shut out of their son’s life.
Would he?
“What are Mycroft’s expectations, Greg?” John asked kindly. “What are yours?”
“Whatever he wants.” Greg replied softly. “That’s what I promised. Whatever he can give me, as much or as little, that’s enough. It’ll always be enough.”
John flexed his jaw, but didn’t comment on Greg’s statement. “The two of you need to talk about these things, if you can’t then you may need to consider calling it all off because it won’t work. This needs to be a partnership, especially with a child involved.”
“It will work.” The sharpness Greg thought he was well past exploded out before he had time to even register what John had said.
Of course it would work. Mycroft was his friend, his love and carrying his baby. Greg wold not leave him, ever, no matter what John said.
“Mycroft won’t bring these topics up, you’ll have to.” John warned. “It won’t be easy.”
“We are fine.” Greg hissed, body straightening as he instinctively defended the challenge.
“I’m not challenging you, Greg,” John sounded weary, leaning back in his seat, giving Greg the extra space, “but you are not fine.”
“We are fine.” Greg tilted his chin up and broadened his chest, mimicking the actions he’d seen Sherlock use when aggravated.
John sighed and pushed out of his chair. “I told you you didn’t want to hear it. Discussion over, mate, I’ll stop. Stand down.”
Greg watched John walk out of the room and didn’t feel his body relax until the Alpha Dom was in the kitchen fiddling with the kettle for another cup of tea, the great English cure-all.
He and Mycroft would be fine. Of course they would be and he would not hear otherwise.
John continued shuffling things around in the kitchen, dishes clinking with soft thuds as he moved items around. The fridge door gave a sticky welch as he opened it a few times, the seals resisting the motion until the last. If there was one thing Sherlock had splurged on, it was a good quality fridge to ensure his experiments weren’t compromised.
The water ran, then stopped, several drawers shuffled out and hitched their way back in on unsmooth tracks until they came to a juddering halt in place. More bangs, and thuds, and clinks as John continued whatever he was doing, which was obviously more than just fixing tea.
“Anything on TV tonight?” Greg called, wondering whether he’d offended John in some way.
John instantly reappeared in the sitting room, tea in hand. It wasn’t until Greg felt his chest start to clench, then give in and relax that he realised John had been giving him space to calm down, nothing to do with the tea in his hands.
“Where’s mine, then?” He demanded, holding out his empty mug.
“Kettle’s over there.” John picked up the remote. “Fridge is safe. Get your own.”
“Prick.” Greg muttered loudly enough for John to hear and walked into the kitchen head high, ignoring the massive wet circle on his arse.
John wasn’t quite sniggering when he sat back down. “Movie or TV?”
~*~Greg ended up spending the night on the couch again as Sherlock still hadn’t cleaned off the spare bed and John was refusing touch it, whatever it was. Clearly it wasn’t biological in nature because John had a clear time limit on how long they were permitted residence in the flat, but when Sherlock was involved that didn’t mean it was normal, legal or otherwise suited for a domestic household.
It meant Greg was very glad he’d used the towel. Sleeping in the wet patch was never fun, but was at least bearable when there had been some enjoyable exertion involved in creating it.
It also meant that Greg had spent the night lying there trying to quiet his thoughts enough to sleep under the deliberately ignoring him eye of Sherlock Holmes, who had breezed in around midnight, plonked down at his Dom’s side and proceeded to sneer at the Bond film Greg and John had eventually settled on. He had quieted when John asked in a light voice whether he thought Mycroft would like a fluffy white kitten for Christmas, and sat out the rest of the movie in disdainful, but mildly approving, silence.
Greg really hoped Mycroft’s Christmas present didn’t have air holes. He wasn’t quite sure what his rather particular love would do with a rambunctious kitten.
Unlike John, who had traipsed off to bed not long after the movie finished, first furnishing Greg with the blanket and pillow he’d used last time, Sherlock had merely moved into the kitchen and started to tinker with his laptop and microscope. This had left Greg trying to sleep in the darkened sitting room feeling slightly paranoid that his sort of brother-in-law could read his every thought each time he twitched. His paranoia wasn’t helped when Sherlock rolled his eyes, sighed in exasperation, and then stood to close the connecting doors.
At least it helped block a little of the light.
Greg woke up grumpy, mainly due to choppy interrupted sleep and intense dreams that he couldn’t remember, but left a bitter, angry-sad taste in his mouth and the tight knot aching in his chest, all most likely fuelled by all the thoughts he’d been pushing away as he had tried to get to sleep.
Luckily John was already awake and had made coffee. He smiled at Greg as best he could with toast hanging out one side of his mouth and tilted his head towards the coffee.
“Ish’s fresh, closhes should be done inna dryer. Make shure he eash.” Without another word, he dashed out the door, toast still hanging from his mouth, tie flapping undone around his neck.
“Late for work? How’d he pull a Sunday shift?” Greg asked.
Sherlock, still sitting at the table with laptop and microscope, grunted.
Greg sighed and gingerly opened the bread bin, just in case Sherlock was using it to store something that wasn’t bread. John must have cleaned it out recently as other than a half-finished loaf there were only a couple of petri dishes tucked right at the back. Given John had been eating toast on his way out, Greg assumed the bread was safe.
He poured his coffee and ate his toast in silence, letting his natural morning distemper fade away with the provision of his morning caffeine dose. The bad mood from lack of sleep he was used to controlling by now, though if he ended up being called in to work he made no promises to play nice.
John had left fresh towels in the bathroom, which meant Greg could shower before redressing in dry clothes. Scrubbing his hand over his face, he wished that he had a razor. Unlike Sherlock, who as far as Greg could tell had been sitting at the kitchen table without moving all night and didn’t have the slightest hint of a beard coming in (an Omega trait), Greg did fall victim to five o’clock shadow, or right now, morning after stubble. That was a price of being an Alpha - fast growing body hair.
Returning to the kitchen table he studied Sherlock over the rim of his second cup of coffee. The Omega ignored him, whether because he was ignoring him or because he was so far buried in his own head he didn’t realise Greg was there, it was difficult to tell. Greg was leaning towards the former, attempting for the latter. It would be possible to talk to Sherlock, but only if Greg managed to capture his interest.
He had to ask the right question. Otherwise, Sherlock wouldn’t even deign to hear him.
The question he wanted answered was ‘why won’t Mycroft let me help choose our child’s name and why aren’t you surprised/appalled by this?’ That was also the obvious question, and would fly straight past Sherlock’s head as if Greg hadn’t opened his mouth.
He needed to ask the right question, the intelligent question, the insightful question, not the obvious one.
He sipped his second coffee, forcing his mind through mental gymnastics he didn’t really want to perform at that time of the morning.
“Who chose your name?” Greg asked eventually, not bothering to raise his voice. Sherlock wasn’t so lost in thought he needed to drag him out of it, just get him to stop tuning him out.
Sherlock didn’t look up from his microscope, but a half smirk pulled at one side of his full lips. Greg could almost hear him saying “Good, Inspector, good” in the overly patronising, arrogant tone he always delivered his compliments in when he felt people around him had been semi-intelligent. Positive reinforcement, Sherlock-style.
“Our paternal grand-sire named both of us.”
“Your grand-sire?” Greg repeated.
The smirk disappeared off Sherlock’s face and he fiddled with something under the microscope while touch typing something onto the laptop one handed. Greg cursed in his head. Sherlock hated it when people repeated information pointlessly. A rookie mistake and it had cost him ground in the game.
Sherlock and Mycroft were named by their grand-sire. Specifically, their paternal grand-sire. Did that matter?
Yes, Greg decided, it mattered, because this was Sherlock and otherwise he wouldn’t have specified. So what was special about the fact it was their paternal grand-sire?
Their Sire’s Sire. Alpha’s Alpha.
Their sire was dead, Mycroft had told him and John that, and given Mycroft and Sherlock’s ages it was unlikely their Grand-Sire was still alive. Which meant his next question should be…
“So does that make Mummy the head of the family?”
“In a manner of speaking.” Sherlock deigned to lift his gaze from the microscope. “It’s complicated.”
He sat there waiting for Greg’s response, elbows crossed in front of him on the table. When Greg didn’t say anything, he sighed and leant back in his chair, grey eyes trained on Greg’s face.
“I assume my brother has made you aware of the reaction to his presenting as an Omega?”
“He said enough I know it wasn’t good.” Greg replied cautiously. “He didn’t say anything explicitly or go into specifics.”
“I doubt he ever will.” Sherlock raised an eyebrow. “There’s a reason my brother is so good at his job. International politics has nothing on the Family.”
The capital letter was audible.
“Sounds wonderful.” Greg’s own broken family was sounding better and better, even by implication.
“If you enjoy machination with pre-dinner cocktails. Personally I prefer to limit my obligatory contact to Mycroft, and that’s only because the fat lout won’t stay away.”
“But Mycroft doesn’t share your view.” Greg decided to ignore the insult in favour of information gathering. It wasn’t like Mycroft needed Greg to protect his honour, especially from Sherlock, and right now Greg was still too annoyed with him to bother on principle.
Sherlock arched an eyebrow and didn’t say anything, arms still crossed over his chest, gaze firm.
“Because he’s trying to make up for being an Omega.” Greg supplied the answer for himself. “He should be the head of the family, oldest Dominant son of the previous Alpha, but he’s not an Alpha and being traditional, as an unbounded Omega he can’t hold the position, and if he Bonds, it passes to his bond-mate, not him.”
The last was conjecture, but Greg had watched enough period dramas courtesy of Josephine to work out some of the internal manoeuvring that must be occurring behind the scenes.
“So right now,” he mused, “the dowager duchess is running the Family.”
“Marchioness, actually.” Sherlock looked slightly approving.
“Oh.” Greg had been being sarcastic, but on reflection, of course the family had a title somewhere in it. You didn’t own a house like that in Knightsbridge without a title somewhere along the line to match the family money.
“Mycroft’s a Dom.” He said slowly. “The public think he’s an Alpha.”
“Yes.” Sherlock drew the word out in a way that suggested Greg was losing his interest fast. “That’s why it’s complicated.”
Greg switched tacks. He’d work out how he felt about that not entirely unobvious revelation that Mycroft should be a Lord of some sort later.
“Mycroft said he chose Abernathy.”
“Pride would hardly let him say otherwise.” Sherlock replied coolly. “Technically I suppose one could say he chose it off the approved list Mummy would have returned to him.”
“So he did choose it. Who chose the list?” Greg had no doubt the submissions would have come from all Mycroft’s PA’s hopefully tedious research.
“He would have submitted a selection of his preferred relatives for approval. That does not mean any of them would have been returned on the list, nor is it likely to have affected what was on it. A formality, you could say.”
Sherlock’s gaze was still heavy. He was waiting for Greg to get something, to ask something. As usual when that look was levelled on him, Greg had no idea what he was meant to be reaching for.
“And how long would this list have been?”
Maybe if there had been some other options Greg could talk Mycroft into one of them. They couldn’t be too bad, not all of them. He could live with quaint, for example. Maybe one of them would just be quaint.
“Anywhere from one to one hundred. Given Mummy’s current attitude, I suspect the former.”
Greg sat quietly while he let things arrange in his head.
“So let me get this straight.” He finally said. “The illustrious Mummy has chosen our son’s name, and under the family rules that’s it, done and dusted. Mycroft won’t challenge this because he’s still trying to make up for some mistake of biology thirty years old that’s not even his fault.”
“Succinctly put, Inspector.”
It sounded like an insult.
“And I’m supposed to go along with this?” Greg wasn’t sure whether he was incredulous or angry.
It’s been sorted, indeed!
“The Family would never have contemplated otherwise.”
“Right, so because your family has a stick up its collective arse, my kid gets saddled with a crap name he’s got to live with for the rest of his life?” Greg drummed his fingers on the table, anger beginning to work its way to the fore for another round. “That’s bollocks.”
“Possibly.”
Sherlock sat like he was in an interrogation room. Greg had seen the posture before, the crossed arms, the guarded pose, but for once Sherlock was actually answering questions and providing information on the Holmeses. His body language didn’t match the quantity of his answers. Greg didn’t flatter himself his questions had been all that clever, which meant Sherlock was getting something out of this, something more than just goodwill. There was something he wanted.
Greg ran his cop’s eye over Sherlock.
“You think I should press the issue.”
“I think it’s been thirty one years.” Sherlock’s voice didn’t waver, didn’t change pitch or tone or volume or cadence. It still sounded like a challenge.
“You think he needs to get over his issues. Welcome to the club.” Greg slouched down and stared diagonally over Sherlock’s shoulder. “It’s not my job to fix his problems when he won’t even let me know they’re there. I don’t know what you’re expecting, but there is no way Mycroft is going to open this topic, let alone take on Mummy over a name if he hasn’t over all the other shit I presume has been going on, so like it or not, your nephew’s name’s apparently going to be Abernathy.”
Sherlock continued to stare a hole into Greg’s head. He didn’t seem to blink. “Give in to him over this, what else will you yield? You’re kidding yourself if you think you’ll start standing up to him once the baby’s born if you don’t do it now.”
Greg glared holes in the wall of the kitchen, insulted beyond belief that it wouldn’t catch fire while Sherlock’s gaze burnt on his forehead.
“That’s not true.” He countered. “I just don’t see-”
“Do stop lying to yourself, Lestrade. It is indescribably tedious.” Sherlock’s voice was a whip crack through Greg’s half-hearted attempt at denial.
They sat there in silence, Sherlock glaring at Greg, Greg trying to bore holes in the wall. The deadening quiet was broken only by Greg’s arrhythmic tapping on the kitchen table.
“Fucking Hell, this is going to be it, innit? This is going to be our issue.” Greg swore and rapped his knuckles angrily on the table surface, bringing his tapping to a halt. “Every couple has that one stupid irrational thing they can’t agree on no matter how simple it bloody is, cause that’s The Issue and if you give in on that, you lose, and this is it. Our kid’s name. Fuck.”
He stood and stormed to the toaster, slamming down the lever harder than was required. The toast took too long to cook. Impatiently he jabbed at the cancel button once it was halfway to brown and dragged the knife over it in an entirely slapdash manner.
“Eat.” He dropped the plate loudly at Sherlock’s elbow.
Sherlock didn’t say anything, watching him mutinously.
“Just bloody eat it, Sherlock.” He collapsed down in his seat and resumed glaring holes in the wall.
Sherlock studied him a few moments longer, then relaxed. The tension that had been hovering in the room since Greg began the extraction process dissipated as Sherlock took a bite of toast and resumed ignoring Greg in favour of whatever he had under the microscope.
Greg didn’t really care, angry thoughts chasing themselves around his head, the most prevalent of which was ‘why fucking me?’
John was only on a half day and leant Greg enough money for a taxi back to his wallet without comment. Standing on the doorstep and having to ring his own doorbell was a humiliation Greg wasn’t looking forward to, but fiddling in his pockets as the cab trundled down the street revealed a loose key that had not been there before, yet mysteriously fit his front door.
Greg made a mental note to slip it to John next time he saw him. It would be less embarrassing than having to return it directly to Sherlock.
“You’re back.” Mycroft appeared to have a habit of catching Greg partway up the stairs. Like last time his eyes swept appraisingly over Greg and there was a hint of softening in his shoulders when he was done. “The sofa again, I see.”
“Hardly going to share the bed.” Greg retorted. “Threesome with your brother and his Bonded a little beyond my kinky side.”
“Quite.” Mycroft’s chin jutted out at the suggestion, clearly not appreciating the humour in Greg’s statement. That was fine as Greg hadn’t tried to be funny.
Assessment done, Mycroft turned to go back to his study.
“Had an interesting little chat with Sherlock earlier. He was obviously feeling informative for once.”
Greg watched Mycroft’s step hitch slightly as he froze, before his training countered the movement and turned it into a dramatic, sweeping about face.
“Indeed?” Mycroft asked, eyebrow delicately arched. “Was he waxing poetically about the flight paths of bees again?”
“No, more like ‘machinations and pre-dinner cocktails’, but he did clarify a few things.” Greg glared over the railings. “Things that you should have said, Mycroft, and I don’t care what Mummy commands, we are not naming our son Abernathy Emrys, I am still pissed off at you, and don’t think we won’t be having a very long talk about this later.”
He stomped up the rest of the stairs before Mycroft had a chance to respond. He reached the landing then stomped back down just enough steps he could see Mycroft over the railing as a nasty thought occurred to him.
“What was your Sire’s name?” He demanded harshly.
“Our-”
“His name, Mycroft.” Greg interrupted fiercely. “What was it?”
Mycroft paused, hand on the banister as he watched Greg.
“Siger.” He said finally, voice soft.
“Good.” Greg nodded, relieved. “That’s good.”
The anger drained out of him, disproportionally appeased by the fact that no matter what happened, his son wouldn’t have His name.
“A distant relative, some generations back.” Mycroft’s gaze was gentle, and when their eyes met Greg felt like they might actually be in agreement over one thing.
“We’re still going to have that talk.” He warned, and continued to his room without looking back.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Not Mycroft's POV, but at little bit of insight in to why he acts the way he does.
Previous - Next