Fic: Thicker Than Water
Title: Thicker Than Water
Wordcount: 1580
Rating/Warning: PG for horror elements, death (sort of).
Notes/Summary: Prompted by this quote by marshwiggledyke , who writes an amazing Mycroft;
"No," said Mycroft. "I don't fear you. For all your posturing and shock tactics, I never have. No, dear brother. I'm afraid of having to end you."
Mycroft worries about Sherlock, constantly- and it’s hard to define exactly what aspect of Sherlock worries him the most. A while ago, I went to see Mark Gatiss talking about his work and his career at the National Theatre, and he described Mycroft as very much wanting Sherlock ‘inside the tent, pissing out’ as opposed to the opposite.
‘He wants to bring him in- as a family thing, and also because it’s better than having him as a loose cannon.”
And, well, all that worry has to go somewhere.
Wordy summary is wordy, onto the fic.
~~~
It's raining.
Mycroft is crossing a wide sweep of gravel, walking towards the entrance of their family home. The turning-circle is a leftover from the days when a horse-and-four needed a hell of a lot more room to reverse than a Merc or a Bentley, and the lawn stretches out on all sides, rolled in gentle back-and-forth stripes. It's raining, and the tiny pebbles underfoot are turning black.
His umbrella keeps the rain off. This is not its primary function, but he's glad to have it. It's raining hard, and his shoes are already splashed and ruined.
The clouds are heavy-bellied, low, deep purple. The rain rolls in long ribbons from the cornerstones of the roof, between the crenels, spattering on the gravel with a sound that seems to Mycroft unpleasantly sentient, a grinning, mocking liquid hiss. It sculls down the ancient walls, staining them berry-black, sluices across the grass, which will probably not survive. Somewhere beyond the vast sward of lawn the lake will be filling, the rain spreading though the clear water in great blooming veins, fish gasping helplessly at the surface as their air supply dwindles to nothing.
Mycroft grips the handle of his umbrella, and hurries inside. The main doors are ajar. They swing closed behind him, caught in a sudden breeze that ruffles through his hair with fleshless fingers and stinks of copper and gunpowder and sticky breathless decay. He stands in the entrance hall of his family home, the ceiling high above his head, invisible through the wet black canopy of his open umbrella.
It's raining.
The rain trickles sluggishly through the carved balusters and spirals to the ground. The Oriental rug is thick and squelching with it, red and blue and gold now just red, the sodden arterial red of a stopped heart. The rain helter-skelters down the staircase, falls in drifting mist from the ceiling. Spatters of it stand bright and livid on the wallpaper, on the mirrors, pooling on the tables, dripping, clotting.
Mycroft climbs the stairs slowly, watching his feet. Each step of his stained leather brogues sends a ripple through the downwards-racing stream. He doesn't want to touch the banister, which is slick and blistered with hundreds of droplets, like pincushioned flesh.
He reaches the top and walks deeper into the house, surrounded by the endless sound of the rain, dripping, tricking, laughter in a liquid-choked throat. He walks through rooms, down hallways, past side-tables decorated with silver bowls that overflow with the rain, cut flowers and pinecones bobbing in murky soup. The rain is turning the beautiful old wallpapers the same hateful uniform shade and coating the glass of every window, so that even the light- the air itself- seems polluted by it. Mycroft moves alone in his one clear shadow, the sane dry space beneath his umbrella, although the rain has breached his shoes and his socks are saturated in it, and his trousers are starting to cling wetly to his ankles.
And here is the long gallery- imaginatively titled 'the Long Gallery'- where Mycroft aged seven had once patiently reconstructed the Duke of Wellington's victory at Waterloo (over four days, using nineteen hundred lead soldiers, and getting in the way of absolutely everybody who needed to get from one end of the house to the other) and where Sherlock aged nine had once not-so-patiently reconstructed Donald Campbell's attempt on the land-speed record at Lake Eyre (over forty miles an hour, using a lawnmower engine affixed to an antique wooden sled, blowing out all sixty-two windowpanes and concussing himself).
The rain falls down the Long Gallery in fine, spindrifting sheets, caught in the rancid breeze. Mycroft stops at one end. He can feel the rain misting his back below the protective canopy, and tries to steel himself in case a stray flurry of it catches him in the face. He can imagine this sensation perfectly, far too well. Nausea rises in his throat.
Sherlock is standing at the far end of the long hall.
I got you a present, he says.
Sherlock looks utterly, effortlessly striking- as usual. The same set of genetics which has conspired to play silly buggers with Mycroft's waistline and do worrying things to the hair just at the crown of his head- at age forty-three, thank you so much- has blessed Sherlock with the metabolism of a shrew and the bone structure of, if not a young Greek god, exactly, at least an old Pagan one, all snow and ice and agelessness and strange wintery angles. He is smiling and- standing full under the thick downpour- entirely dry.
How kind, Mycroft replies. Between them, the rain courses down the walls, through the gold-carved portrait frames, streaking long glutinous lines down over faces and features, noses like Mycroft's, eyes like Sherlock's, long hands like theirs resting on globes, on the necks of tall wolfhounds, on unsheathed swords.
I redecorated and everything, says Sherlock, and he starts walking towards Mycroft through the red rain, through the coagulating pools underfoot, pristine in his acceptable Bond Street suit and deplorable high-street shoes. Mycroft has never run from his younger brother in his life and will not start now, but there's something in that smile like the death of a universe, all chemicals and chain reactions and bright, flaring annihilation.
Don't you like it?
Mycroft shuts his umbrella. The cold sticky spotting as the rain begins to hit his unprotected face is easily as bad as he'd thought it would be, but he ignores it and curls his hand around the heavy gluey folds of waterproof fabric and the shaft underneath, and with his other hand he pulls the hidden blade free and holds it in a guard position, levelled steadily.
Sherlock keeps coming.
Mycroft? Don't you want your present? He is halfway down the Long Gallery by now, walking with that unstoppable cocksure stride of his, and the rain is growing heavier, sliding sluggishly down the back of Mycroft's neck and sticking his hair to his forehead in spare spikes. It's something you've always wanted.
Mycroft can't speak. The rain is driving hard against his face, and if he opens his mouth some of it will get inside. He has a terrible presentiment that, if that happens, if the filthy watered-down taste of copper and dead meat spreads across his tongue and fills his nose and creeps down into the back of his throat, he’ll either vomit or lose his mind.
Sherlock closes the distance between them and grins at him, a happy, diamond-sharp smile that is utterly devoid of all sanity. The sight of it leaves Mycroft's insides cold and struggling like something sinking in a brick-weighted sack.
Still he stands his ground, and still Sherlock keeps coming.
He stops, finally, when they are only a matter of inches apart. For one nightmarish moment, Mycroft thinks his younger brother is about to hug him.
Many happy returns, says Sherlock, and a thin red bead forms at corner of his mouth. Mycroft looks down.
Oh, yes. The blade.
His brother’s smile becomes fixed, the bright eyes start to glaze. As if some kind of invisible shield has been broken, the sticky rain that fills the air starts to spot and spatter across Sherlock's face, beading in his fringe and on his cheeks, the deep stain blossoming across his shirt. It drips from the slender blued blade that spans the gap between them in a rapid, thickening stream. Sherlock staggers, and his hand is suddenly catching at Mycroft's wrist, and oh God he looks young, young and surprised and hurting, far from the burning contagious wrongness in the shape of a man he’d been just a moment ago.
This is only his little brother, only idiotic brilliant intemperate chaotic Sherlock who never did know when to back down. They look at each other for a moment, and then Sherlock's eyes go blank and his knees give way and he slumps forward and hits the puddled floor at Mycroft's feet with a ghastly splash.
Many happy returns.
~~~
“Sir?”
Mycroft opens his eyes. Like his brother, he is able to go from asleep to awake with the minimum of messing about with the usual tedious questions- why, who, where, etc. Even when hideously tired- which, to be quite honest, he is- his recall is excellent. This is why his first thought upon waking isn’t any of the above, but instead whether or not his secretary has noticed that her employer just spent a twenty-minute car journey sleeping like- well, like an old man nodding off in the back of a car, that's what.
Fiona (today) is beside him, certainly, but her eyes are on her phone.
“We're here. Am I to accompany you?”
Mycroft turns his head and looks out through the tinted glass. The front door of 221B Baker Street is a heavy fortressy black, drained to burnt sodium orange under the streetlights.
“No, that won't be necessary,” he says. “This shouldn't take long.”
“Yes, sir.”
The driver opens the door for him. Mycroft gets out and crosses the pavement to the door, giving his clean unspoilt shoes only one passing glance as he does so, and raps the handle of his umbrella against the black paint of his brother’s front door. He doesn't believe in the slightest in dreams or omens, but somewhere- in the tiny not-quite-awake part of him that can still, faintly, smell copper- he’s still fervently glad that it isn't red.
Wordcount: 1580
Rating/Warning: PG for horror elements, death (sort of).
Notes/Summary: Prompted by this quote by marshwiggledyke , who writes an amazing Mycroft;
"No," said Mycroft. "I don't fear you. For all your posturing and shock tactics, I never have. No, dear brother. I'm afraid of having to end you."
Mycroft worries about Sherlock, constantly- and it’s hard to define exactly what aspect of Sherlock worries him the most. A while ago, I went to see Mark Gatiss talking about his work and his career at the National Theatre, and he described Mycroft as very much wanting Sherlock ‘inside the tent, pissing out’ as opposed to the opposite.
‘He wants to bring him in- as a family thing, and also because it’s better than having him as a loose cannon.”
And, well, all that worry has to go somewhere.
Wordy summary is wordy, onto the fic.
~~~
It's raining.
Mycroft is crossing a wide sweep of gravel, walking towards the entrance of their family home. The turning-circle is a leftover from the days when a horse-and-four needed a hell of a lot more room to reverse than a Merc or a Bentley, and the lawn stretches out on all sides, rolled in gentle back-and-forth stripes. It's raining, and the tiny pebbles underfoot are turning black.
His umbrella keeps the rain off. This is not its primary function, but he's glad to have it. It's raining hard, and his shoes are already splashed and ruined.
The clouds are heavy-bellied, low, deep purple. The rain rolls in long ribbons from the cornerstones of the roof, between the crenels, spattering on the gravel with a sound that seems to Mycroft unpleasantly sentient, a grinning, mocking liquid hiss. It sculls down the ancient walls, staining them berry-black, sluices across the grass, which will probably not survive. Somewhere beyond the vast sward of lawn the lake will be filling, the rain spreading though the clear water in great blooming veins, fish gasping helplessly at the surface as their air supply dwindles to nothing.
Mycroft grips the handle of his umbrella, and hurries inside. The main doors are ajar. They swing closed behind him, caught in a sudden breeze that ruffles through his hair with fleshless fingers and stinks of copper and gunpowder and sticky breathless decay. He stands in the entrance hall of his family home, the ceiling high above his head, invisible through the wet black canopy of his open umbrella.
It's raining.
The rain trickles sluggishly through the carved balusters and spirals to the ground. The Oriental rug is thick and squelching with it, red and blue and gold now just red, the sodden arterial red of a stopped heart. The rain helter-skelters down the staircase, falls in drifting mist from the ceiling. Spatters of it stand bright and livid on the wallpaper, on the mirrors, pooling on the tables, dripping, clotting.
Mycroft climbs the stairs slowly, watching his feet. Each step of his stained leather brogues sends a ripple through the downwards-racing stream. He doesn't want to touch the banister, which is slick and blistered with hundreds of droplets, like pincushioned flesh.
He reaches the top and walks deeper into the house, surrounded by the endless sound of the rain, dripping, tricking, laughter in a liquid-choked throat. He walks through rooms, down hallways, past side-tables decorated with silver bowls that overflow with the rain, cut flowers and pinecones bobbing in murky soup. The rain is turning the beautiful old wallpapers the same hateful uniform shade and coating the glass of every window, so that even the light- the air itself- seems polluted by it. Mycroft moves alone in his one clear shadow, the sane dry space beneath his umbrella, although the rain has breached his shoes and his socks are saturated in it, and his trousers are starting to cling wetly to his ankles.
And here is the long gallery- imaginatively titled 'the Long Gallery'- where Mycroft aged seven had once patiently reconstructed the Duke of Wellington's victory at Waterloo (over four days, using nineteen hundred lead soldiers, and getting in the way of absolutely everybody who needed to get from one end of the house to the other) and where Sherlock aged nine had once not-so-patiently reconstructed Donald Campbell's attempt on the land-speed record at Lake Eyre (over forty miles an hour, using a lawnmower engine affixed to an antique wooden sled, blowing out all sixty-two windowpanes and concussing himself).
The rain falls down the Long Gallery in fine, spindrifting sheets, caught in the rancid breeze. Mycroft stops at one end. He can feel the rain misting his back below the protective canopy, and tries to steel himself in case a stray flurry of it catches him in the face. He can imagine this sensation perfectly, far too well. Nausea rises in his throat.
Sherlock is standing at the far end of the long hall.
I got you a present, he says.
Sherlock looks utterly, effortlessly striking- as usual. The same set of genetics which has conspired to play silly buggers with Mycroft's waistline and do worrying things to the hair just at the crown of his head- at age forty-three, thank you so much- has blessed Sherlock with the metabolism of a shrew and the bone structure of, if not a young Greek god, exactly, at least an old Pagan one, all snow and ice and agelessness and strange wintery angles. He is smiling and- standing full under the thick downpour- entirely dry.
How kind, Mycroft replies. Between them, the rain courses down the walls, through the gold-carved portrait frames, streaking long glutinous lines down over faces and features, noses like Mycroft's, eyes like Sherlock's, long hands like theirs resting on globes, on the necks of tall wolfhounds, on unsheathed swords.
I redecorated and everything, says Sherlock, and he starts walking towards Mycroft through the red rain, through the coagulating pools underfoot, pristine in his acceptable Bond Street suit and deplorable high-street shoes. Mycroft has never run from his younger brother in his life and will not start now, but there's something in that smile like the death of a universe, all chemicals and chain reactions and bright, flaring annihilation.
Don't you like it?
Mycroft shuts his umbrella. The cold sticky spotting as the rain begins to hit his unprotected face is easily as bad as he'd thought it would be, but he ignores it and curls his hand around the heavy gluey folds of waterproof fabric and the shaft underneath, and with his other hand he pulls the hidden blade free and holds it in a guard position, levelled steadily.
Sherlock keeps coming.
Mycroft? Don't you want your present? He is halfway down the Long Gallery by now, walking with that unstoppable cocksure stride of his, and the rain is growing heavier, sliding sluggishly down the back of Mycroft's neck and sticking his hair to his forehead in spare spikes. It's something you've always wanted.
Mycroft can't speak. The rain is driving hard against his face, and if he opens his mouth some of it will get inside. He has a terrible presentiment that, if that happens, if the filthy watered-down taste of copper and dead meat spreads across his tongue and fills his nose and creeps down into the back of his throat, he’ll either vomit or lose his mind.
Sherlock closes the distance between them and grins at him, a happy, diamond-sharp smile that is utterly devoid of all sanity. The sight of it leaves Mycroft's insides cold and struggling like something sinking in a brick-weighted sack.
Still he stands his ground, and still Sherlock keeps coming.
He stops, finally, when they are only a matter of inches apart. For one nightmarish moment, Mycroft thinks his younger brother is about to hug him.
Many happy returns, says Sherlock, and a thin red bead forms at corner of his mouth. Mycroft looks down.
Oh, yes. The blade.
His brother’s smile becomes fixed, the bright eyes start to glaze. As if some kind of invisible shield has been broken, the sticky rain that fills the air starts to spot and spatter across Sherlock's face, beading in his fringe and on his cheeks, the deep stain blossoming across his shirt. It drips from the slender blued blade that spans the gap between them in a rapid, thickening stream. Sherlock staggers, and his hand is suddenly catching at Mycroft's wrist, and oh God he looks young, young and surprised and hurting, far from the burning contagious wrongness in the shape of a man he’d been just a moment ago.
This is only his little brother, only idiotic brilliant intemperate chaotic Sherlock who never did know when to back down. They look at each other for a moment, and then Sherlock's eyes go blank and his knees give way and he slumps forward and hits the puddled floor at Mycroft's feet with a ghastly splash.
Many happy returns.
~~~
“Sir?”
Mycroft opens his eyes. Like his brother, he is able to go from asleep to awake with the minimum of messing about with the usual tedious questions- why, who, where, etc. Even when hideously tired- which, to be quite honest, he is- his recall is excellent. This is why his first thought upon waking isn’t any of the above, but instead whether or not his secretary has noticed that her employer just spent a twenty-minute car journey sleeping like- well, like an old man nodding off in the back of a car, that's what.
Fiona (today) is beside him, certainly, but her eyes are on her phone.
“We're here. Am I to accompany you?”
Mycroft turns his head and looks out through the tinted glass. The front door of 221B Baker Street is a heavy fortressy black, drained to burnt sodium orange under the streetlights.
“No, that won't be necessary,” he says. “This shouldn't take long.”
“Yes, sir.”
The driver opens the door for him. Mycroft gets out and crosses the pavement to the door, giving his clean unspoilt shoes only one passing glance as he does so, and raps the handle of his umbrella against the black paint of his brother’s front door. He doesn't believe in the slightest in dreams or omens, but somewhere- in the tiny not-quite-awake part of him that can still, faintly, smell copper- he’s still fervently glad that it isn't red.