Thank You For Letting Me Pretend - Standalone
Title: Thank You For Letting Me Pretend
Author: Pic Akai
Rating: PG
Fandom: Sherlock
Summary: Mycroft is facing either a lonely retirement or death (he hasn't yet decided) when Lestrade notices him, and gives him another option.
Word count: ~3,800
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the people, characters, situations etc in these works of fiction, except for the ones I have created. They are written for entertainment purposes and no infringement or specific comment on any person is intended.
Status: Finished.
Notes: This is dedicated to the anon(s?) on the rant meme who were discussing what they think would happen when Mycroft retires. Thank you for the unintended prompt.
It is a companion piece (a fixit fic for a fic, if you will) to When I Am Gone, The World Keeps Turning which is the angsty version of the end of Mycroft's life.
As this is set several decades into the future, I thought it likely that there may be some changes to the way we live, particularly where technology and transport are concerned. If you see some unfamiliar concepts or words in the narrative, that ought to account for them. They should be clear enough in context if you keep the fact that this is set in the future in mind, but if you do find anything confusing, please feel free to ask about it or let me know and I'll try to explain it better.
WARNING: Highlight for warning:Suicidal thoughts, though no plans or actions.
When Mycroft is seventy, he realises that his time will soon be coming to an end.
He doesn't mean his time on this earth in total, though that is also a possibility. What he means when he thinks of this is his time as one of the foremost people that hold up the British establishment - some might say, the world. He is not a member of government, nor royalty. He will never be a peer in the House of Lords and he will receive no commendation for his work, though he has always been highly regarded.
If any record of Mycroft Holmes exists it will be as a minor civil servant with little influence over the type of biscuits served at Cabinet meetings, never mind anything else.
Off the record, he will be spoken about in undertones for many years, mostly by people who never met him and don't quite believe he did half of the things which are attributed to him only in whispers. They are quite correct to be so cynical and yet their beliefs are erroneous; Mycroft has done more than anyone will ever know. But even those rumours will fade, unbeliavable as they are, and in fifty years' time the whispers will refer to entirely new people, and Mycroft Holmes will not be anybody's memory.
He wonders how he will manage when he is finally required to leave his post. Most people dream of retirement, of endless days spent doing whatever one desires, putting off anything until tomorrow and making hobbies into work, like gardening or making small scale models of aeroplanes. Mycroft is not most people and his work is what he desires. He has no hobbies save those which benefit his work in some way. It is not that he is incapable of enjoying himself through something entirely unprofitable, merely that he has never been shown how to.
When he thinks about what it might be like, spending days and weeks and months and years alone in the old house in Kent, kept company by only zeroes and ones in a hundred different formats and occasionally entering his brother's life, to see only how it is so different from his own, it scares him. He is not a man given easily to fear and he cannot remember the last time it happened when it wasn't because of something happening to Sherlock, but he can admit at least to himself that this is fear. It would be even more cowardly to deny it.
Anyone who knew both Mycroft and Sherlock when they were younger would have said - did say - that Mycroft was the more sociable one, the more functional one. Sherlock was likely to crash and burn but Mycroft would always be steady, be dependable, be an adult. Mycroft could have a successful career and a perfect family and happiness. Sherlock would struggle to survive.
What those people didn't understand was that both the brothers were playacting. Mycroft pretended to be more sociable, more stable, more normal than he felt. He had his job, and over the decades he had relationships, both sexual and what purported to be romantic. His job lasted because he was damn good at it and it went unspoken that to be that good, you had to be both fairly unstable and excellent at pretending not to be. The relationships didn't, because when it was one on one people could tell if you didn't trust them. He wasn't trying to make them work because they weren't his job, and people always worked that out eventually.
Sherlock, on the other hand, pretended to be wilder, more dangerous, more emotionally stunted than he really felt. Which wasn't to say that he was none of these things, but never to the degree that he showed the world. But Sherlock was a man of extremes and he found it easier to pretend that was all there was to him, rather than let others believe he could be normal. That only worked until he found John, a man remarkably similar to Mycroft in that he came across as reliable and secure so long as he had a job to do when actually, inside he was lost and unsure of himself, of his place in the world.
And Sherlock let John in when he would never do the same with Mycroft, perhaps without even realising it, and then a few other people began to chip away at his facade and sooner or later Sherlock was successful in so many ways, was a happier person that Mycroft could ever hope to be, even with all of his past. And Mycroft was proud, rather than jealous, because at least one of them managed it.
Mycroft has never considered suicide before, not in the personal sense. He has, naturally, considered it in the abstract, particularly during the time when Sherlock took it upon himself to try the method out, and everyone except Mycroft and that woman from Barts was given a taster for how they might cope. Now, faced with the imminent change, he does consider it. It's not for the reason that most people attempt it (and if Mycroft does, it will not be an attempt; it will be an achievement) - trying to rid themselves of pain in one form or another. It is simply that if there is nothing left in his life, he wonders whether it mightn't make more sense to end it. Mycroft is used to being in control, and he sees no reason why nature should presume to have the final say in the timetable of his death.
He continues in his work, unimpeded, he thinks, by these more frequent thoughts. He cannot afford to flag, because that will speed everything up, the point at which he is no longer who he has been since he was twenty, who he was groomed to be since before he was even conceived. Except one day, somebody notices.
He is taking a guest at home, which is rare. He is in his penthouse and the only reason he is not undertaking this business elsewhere is because it is four in the morning, and despite all of John's efforts to train him, sometimes Sherlock can't help but be gripped by a puzzle and draw everyone else in too, whether they are interested in it at that moment or not.
So it is four am and Mycroft has requested the presence of the former Detective Chief Inspector Lestrade, which he has not been now for going on six years. He still carries himself, though, like a man who was meant to be there, partly because of his own skills and partly because of his ability to recognise superior skills in others, and to use them rather than be envious and bitter.
DCI Lestrade (as Mycroft calls him in his head, and always has to pause for a moment before amending his speech to, "Mr Lestrade,") is still Sherlock's closest connection with the police, on the rare occasions now when he takes up their work. Over the years his attention has shifted more towards private clients, due in no small part to the fact that Lestrade has spent more time in the office and less time on crime scenes. There are officers who will work with Sherlock, but it's usually grudgingly, as though they resent him for being better than them at the detecting part of their jobs and therefore allowed to be worse than them at every other part, like paperwork and dealing with witnesses. It doesn't hold true for all of them, of course - there are a couple of younger detective sergeants, for example, who almost revere Sherlock - but it is easier for Lestrade to be the go-between, even when he shouldn't technically be involved at all.
When Lestrade arrives, Mycroft is sitting in the kitchen, dressed and composed as if it were four pm rather than the opposite, and sipping a cup of coffee. Lestrade is shown in and Mycroft notes that he is wearing just what he went to bed in, with the addition of a pair of jeans and trainers.
"Your brother had better be dying, at this time of the morning," Lestrade says in lieu of a greeting, and drops into a chair across from Mycroft without being asked. Mycroft has always rather liked that about him, though he has pretended not to; Lestrade could never be accused of being insensitive but he is entirely pragmatic, and blunt when he so chooses.
"I do apologise for calling you at this late hour, Mr Lestrade," Mycroft responds, and then sets to business. Even in the middle of the night in what counts for his pyjamas, Lestrade is attentive and willing to be helpful, even at cost to himself. He understands that his role does benefit the greater good, even if it's not directly obvious to most people.
Mycroft concludes his briefing with, "Once again, Mr Lestrade, I must thank you for your efforts in aiding my brother's dealings with the force," which has always in the past been a clear dismissal. Usually here Lestrade would stand, shake his hand or nod his head depending on how annoyed he was about the task, and then take his leave. Today he stands, but hovers there for a moment, as if undecided, and then speaks.
"You don't seem very happy."
Mycroft is rarely surprised by another person's behaviour, but this is the moment when he realises that perhaps his inner thoughts on the state of his life have become more obvious than he would have liked: that is to say, obvious at all.
"Is this a recent observation?" he asks.
Lestrade looks at him and quirks his lips. "I've never noticed it before. Not like this."
"And how happy are you, Mr Lestrade?" Mycroft bats it back, implies that maybe he's just projecting, and he knows Lestrade will pick up on that.
"I'm all right. I could be happier."
There is a long pause. Usually here Mycroft is just waiting it out, letting the other person get to the point where they feel too awkward to pursue it and then they either drop the subject entirely or continue, fumbling, until he maneouvres them into missing the point, but today he stays quiet because he doesn't think he can answer. He is afraid if Lestrade asks directly, he will say, "Yes. I am struggling with the realisation that I will not live like this forever," and as soon as he says it out loud, he will be as good as gone.
Eventually, Lestrade says, "You need a holiday," and then, after a moment, "I'll see myself out. Bye." He does the nod today but Mycroft knows it isn't because he's annoyed.
Two weeks later, he hears from DCI Lestrade again. This is not to count the amount of times he has heard Lestrade speaking from his memory, telling him he doesn't seem happy, he needs a holiday. Mycroft still isn't sure what he is supposed to do with this information. Then he gets a call from Lestrade, a proper old-fashioned call, on a spring Tuesday afternoon.
"Mr Lestrade," he answers, finding a point in the room before him on which to fix his eyes, because it has been so long since he spoke to someone without seeing them that the experience of only hearing their voice is moderately unnerving. "Your phone's visucall function appears to be broken."
He knows, of course, what Lestrade will say, but part of pretending to be more sociable and well-adjusted than you are is pretending that you don't know people as well as you do. He comments on it not to make Lestrade uncomfortable - not that it would work - but because it is expected. This is how Mycroft both exerts and corrals his power.
"I don't use it," Lestrade says. "Creeps me out." That, of course, was what many people said when the function was first implemented, bluetooth technology extending to give people an image in front of their eyes of the person they were speaking to, taken from one of the billions of cameras around the world. In the beginning you often got grainy CCTV footage where you could just make out the silhouette of your friend or your workmate, but nowadays the vast majority of people are either holding their tablets as they multi-task anyway, or have cameras sitated in front of their most common talking spots. Most people were resistent to the change purely because it was a change; Lestrade dislikes it on its own merits, and Mycroft likes that.
"Quite," he replies. "What can I do for you, Mr Lestrade?"
"I've got tickets to The Comedy of Errors, RSC production, next Thursday. Do you want to come?"
"I wouldn't have thought you a fan of the Bard," Mycroft says, deferring his answer out of shock.
"I don't think The Comedy of Errors will be your thing, either, but it's a holiday, isn't it?" Lestrade returns, and Mycroft appreciates his sense of humour. This is out of the ordinary for both of them, so it may as well be wildly so.
"In that case, I accept your invitation." He is distracted from work for a full five minutes after the call ends, and he would have said he can't afford to be, but perhaps now he can.
They see the play. It is, naturally, exceedingly well performed, and neither of them really appreciate it all that much. Afterwards Lestrade asks him if he drinks coffee, "like the rest of us," and they move to a small cafe which is violating numerous health and safety policies and is mostly dead at this time of the evening.
"You do look like you're on holiday now," Lestrade tells him, smiling over the rim of a badly-washed white mug. "Quite uncomfortable but trying not to enjoy yourself."
"Why do you presume I would try not to enjoy myself on holiday?"
"When was the last one you took?" Lestrade asks, and Mycroft concedes. "You couldn't be seen to be enjoying yourself. It's just not done."
Mycroft likes that Lestrade appreciates his place in the world, the roles he has to play and why. Many people, even those who work with him, don't quite understand and don't quite accept it. Lestrade simply takes it in his stride as he also does with Sherlock, and this is why he is one of the few people Mycroft has ever been able to say he trusts.
They have a perfectly pedestrian time on their holiday, and ten days or thereabouts later, Lestrade invites Mycroft to visit an aquarium with him. It is one of the most ridiculous things Mycroft has ever done, and he enjoys it immensely. He tells Lestrade that a fascination with sea creatures is proof only of fear at the awe-inspiring power of humans, and is thankful that Lestrade knows better and simply laughs at him.
Mycroft realises a few days after this that manners dictate he should make the next move, even if he is unsure of the game they are playing, so he sends Lestrade a message.
Lestrade phones him six minutes later. "I'm not a genius but I'm not that stupid. You'd like going to The Riverside, probably one of those pale ales bores. That's not the point of this, we can do that later." Mycroft wonders when later is. "Come on, what don't you like?"
"I don't enjoy opera," Mycroft says. Lestrade is only the second person he has ever admitted this to. The first was Mummy, and he was promptly told, "Don't be silly, Mycroft, of course you do." Of course he does; except he doesn't, and he can tell Lestrade.
"I do, actually," Lestrade says. "A bit, anyway. My granddad was really into it so he used to take me. So it's mostly the things he was into, but still. Where else?"
They settle on a trip to a 'sports bar' and Lestrade tells him he has to pick a team to cheer for. He picks Zimbabwe and Lestrade accuses him of still being enamoured with colonial rule.
A month and a half later is when later arrives. Lestrade tells him that they don't have to be on holiday any more because he doesn't look that bad now. For a moment he thinks Lestrade is saying they're not going to see each other again, and surprises himself with how unpalatable he finds the idea, but then Lestrade says, "So let's go to The Riverside, then," and he smiles, and knows that Lestrade can't see it because he is an individual.
They sip their ale outside, where it's freezing but sunny, and Lestrade says it's not for him but he drinks the pint anyway, then orders another of a different brand.
"What do you enjoy?" Mycroft asks, not because it is polite but because he wants to know, and Lestrade talks about television programs and MotoGP and horror stories and his nephew, and Mycroft finds it all interesting.
This scares him, because Lestrade isn't work, isn't Sherlock, isn't what he is supposed to find interesting, and then he doesn't respond to Lestrade's next message. That isn't unheard of; Mycroft is a busy man, which Lestrade respects, but the next message comes a few days later and says simply: You do know I'm not dating you, don't you?
Mycroft is quite embarrassed to admit that he didn't know. He calls Lestrade and says, "Mr Lestrade. My apologies for replying to your message so late."
"I'm not looking for anything in particular," Lestrade says, ignoring Mycroft's ignoring, and adds, "I just think you need a bit of downtime. I know how to do that."
"Yes," Mycroft agrees, "You are excellent at it," and then Lestrade asks him to dinner at his flat. Mycroft finds this slightly at odds with Lestrade's insistence that they aren't dating, but perhaps it is only because he has now said that, that he feels able to make the invitation. Mycroft is willing to take the man at his word.
When the call is coming to an end, Lestrade says, "And stop bloody calling me Mr Lestrade. It's Greg, now." There is a minute pause, and he adds, "Not Gregory."
Mycroft allows himself to laugh, just a huff under his breath, down the phone.
He knows that Lestrade is bisexual. The fact has never been hidden - not, even if it were, that it would have stopped Mycroft from knowing - and he also knows that he has been single for the past four years, since his last lover died shortly after suffering a stroke. Mycroft himself is heterosexual, he supposes, given that he has only ever felt sexual desire for women. Still, he knows that sexuality can be fluid, and that it's not just about sex. There is good evidence in the form of Sherlock, who appeared to be to all intents and purposes asexual until John arrived in his life, and John, who declared his heterosexuality loudly and on many occasions before quietly giving in to the assumptions, and then one day asking Sherlock to marry him because, "I'm traditional in some ways, you know. I'd get a thrill out of calling you my husband." The sexual component of their relationship, Mycroft has chosen not to know about.
Mycroft and Lestrade have dinner in Lestrade's flat, and Lestrade says, "Wine? You clearly don't know anything about my cooking," instead of hello. The food is forgettable, the wine is literally forgotten (Lestrade finds it two months later and sends him a message asking how much he could sell it for) and the evening is a splendid way to spend time.
Over the next six months, Mycroft talks to Lestrade a lot. Lestrade scolds him when he pretends to forget to say Greg. Mycroft's superiors do not talk to him about his time at work coming to an end, but he gets the message all the same. He is fine, he thinks, facing it well, until his last day comes and he realises on his way home that his diary is blank from now on. Mycroft Holmes has never before owned a blank diary, and he is thinking again about the timetable for his death, because now he has ceased to be useful.
He thinks about this for two days, in between washing and dressing and eating and reading the newspapers, until he receives a phone call.
"All right? What are we doing to celebrate your retirement? Is it time to finally take down the establishment with a few well-placed stink bombs?" And suddenly there is a reason to keep going.
Except, Mycroft thinks, this surely can't be it. This can't be all there is.
"I got a message from your brother this morning," Lestrade tells him one evening when they are not watching the final episode of a terrible crime drama, because neither of them find any redeeming features in it. It just always happens to be on when they happen to sit down in Mycroft's living room at this time, when they have plates of food which he has failed to teach Lestrade how to cook. "He asked me when I was going to suck it up and ask you to move in."
Mycroft pauses, a forkful of rogan josh held just below his lips.
"Yeah, I thought it sounded stupid too," Lestrade continues. "I told him that, but then he said I could hardly ask you if I could move in with you, because that would sound a bit presumptuous."
Mycroft eats the rogan josh and clears his throat. "You should know that I am heterosexual," he says.
"I do," says Lestrade.
"So if we were to live together, we would be..."
"Happier," Lestrade supplies. "Look, mate, I'm not going to pretend I don't fancy you, at least a bit. That wouldn't be fair, but you know that anyway. Besides, once I passed seventy I sort of assumed sex with anyone else was off the agenda. This'd just be...companionship." He is uncharacteristically serious when he says the next bit. "You're lonely, and you don't take it well. You haven't got anything to fill up the gap now you're done with work, and...I like you."
"Sherlock will crow about it," Mycroft says, because he can't just say yes, he'd love for Lestrade to move in, and Lestrade doesn't need him to, which is one of the many reasons why they would fit together - will fit together.
"We've survived worse," says Lestrade cheerfully. "This rice, for one. It's like chewing tyres," and he goes without asking into the kitchen to get chapatis to replace it.
Mycroft wonders how his life might have ended if he hadn't found someone to share it with. But as Lestrade had walked into the gap just as it started to open, he finds it difficult to imagine. Perhaps if he hadn't known what he was missing, it wouldn't have bothered him, but thankfully he doesn't know if that's true because he's not missing anything.
Pic
This entry was originally posted at http://ficofpic.dreamwidth.org/50144.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Author: Pic Akai
Rating: PG
Fandom: Sherlock
Summary: Mycroft is facing either a lonely retirement or death (he hasn't yet decided) when Lestrade notices him, and gives him another option.
Word count: ~3,800
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the people, characters, situations etc in these works of fiction, except for the ones I have created. They are written for entertainment purposes and no infringement or specific comment on any person is intended.
Status: Finished.
Notes: This is dedicated to the anon(s?) on the rant meme who were discussing what they think would happen when Mycroft retires. Thank you for the unintended prompt.
It is a companion piece (a fixit fic for a fic, if you will) to When I Am Gone, The World Keeps Turning which is the angsty version of the end of Mycroft's life.
As this is set several decades into the future, I thought it likely that there may be some changes to the way we live, particularly where technology and transport are concerned. If you see some unfamiliar concepts or words in the narrative, that ought to account for them. They should be clear enough in context if you keep the fact that this is set in the future in mind, but if you do find anything confusing, please feel free to ask about it or let me know and I'll try to explain it better.
WARNING: Highlight for warning:Suicidal thoughts, though no plans or actions.
When Mycroft is seventy, he realises that his time will soon be coming to an end.
He doesn't mean his time on this earth in total, though that is also a possibility. What he means when he thinks of this is his time as one of the foremost people that hold up the British establishment - some might say, the world. He is not a member of government, nor royalty. He will never be a peer in the House of Lords and he will receive no commendation for his work, though he has always been highly regarded.
If any record of Mycroft Holmes exists it will be as a minor civil servant with little influence over the type of biscuits served at Cabinet meetings, never mind anything else.
Off the record, he will be spoken about in undertones for many years, mostly by people who never met him and don't quite believe he did half of the things which are attributed to him only in whispers. They are quite correct to be so cynical and yet their beliefs are erroneous; Mycroft has done more than anyone will ever know. But even those rumours will fade, unbeliavable as they are, and in fifty years' time the whispers will refer to entirely new people, and Mycroft Holmes will not be anybody's memory.
He wonders how he will manage when he is finally required to leave his post. Most people dream of retirement, of endless days spent doing whatever one desires, putting off anything until tomorrow and making hobbies into work, like gardening or making small scale models of aeroplanes. Mycroft is not most people and his work is what he desires. He has no hobbies save those which benefit his work in some way. It is not that he is incapable of enjoying himself through something entirely unprofitable, merely that he has never been shown how to.
When he thinks about what it might be like, spending days and weeks and months and years alone in the old house in Kent, kept company by only zeroes and ones in a hundred different formats and occasionally entering his brother's life, to see only how it is so different from his own, it scares him. He is not a man given easily to fear and he cannot remember the last time it happened when it wasn't because of something happening to Sherlock, but he can admit at least to himself that this is fear. It would be even more cowardly to deny it.
Anyone who knew both Mycroft and Sherlock when they were younger would have said - did say - that Mycroft was the more sociable one, the more functional one. Sherlock was likely to crash and burn but Mycroft would always be steady, be dependable, be an adult. Mycroft could have a successful career and a perfect family and happiness. Sherlock would struggle to survive.
What those people didn't understand was that both the brothers were playacting. Mycroft pretended to be more sociable, more stable, more normal than he felt. He had his job, and over the decades he had relationships, both sexual and what purported to be romantic. His job lasted because he was damn good at it and it went unspoken that to be that good, you had to be both fairly unstable and excellent at pretending not to be. The relationships didn't, because when it was one on one people could tell if you didn't trust them. He wasn't trying to make them work because they weren't his job, and people always worked that out eventually.
Sherlock, on the other hand, pretended to be wilder, more dangerous, more emotionally stunted than he really felt. Which wasn't to say that he was none of these things, but never to the degree that he showed the world. But Sherlock was a man of extremes and he found it easier to pretend that was all there was to him, rather than let others believe he could be normal. That only worked until he found John, a man remarkably similar to Mycroft in that he came across as reliable and secure so long as he had a job to do when actually, inside he was lost and unsure of himself, of his place in the world.
And Sherlock let John in when he would never do the same with Mycroft, perhaps without even realising it, and then a few other people began to chip away at his facade and sooner or later Sherlock was successful in so many ways, was a happier person that Mycroft could ever hope to be, even with all of his past. And Mycroft was proud, rather than jealous, because at least one of them managed it.
Mycroft has never considered suicide before, not in the personal sense. He has, naturally, considered it in the abstract, particularly during the time when Sherlock took it upon himself to try the method out, and everyone except Mycroft and that woman from Barts was given a taster for how they might cope. Now, faced with the imminent change, he does consider it. It's not for the reason that most people attempt it (and if Mycroft does, it will not be an attempt; it will be an achievement) - trying to rid themselves of pain in one form or another. It is simply that if there is nothing left in his life, he wonders whether it mightn't make more sense to end it. Mycroft is used to being in control, and he sees no reason why nature should presume to have the final say in the timetable of his death.
He continues in his work, unimpeded, he thinks, by these more frequent thoughts. He cannot afford to flag, because that will speed everything up, the point at which he is no longer who he has been since he was twenty, who he was groomed to be since before he was even conceived. Except one day, somebody notices.
He is taking a guest at home, which is rare. He is in his penthouse and the only reason he is not undertaking this business elsewhere is because it is four in the morning, and despite all of John's efforts to train him, sometimes Sherlock can't help but be gripped by a puzzle and draw everyone else in too, whether they are interested in it at that moment or not.
So it is four am and Mycroft has requested the presence of the former Detective Chief Inspector Lestrade, which he has not been now for going on six years. He still carries himself, though, like a man who was meant to be there, partly because of his own skills and partly because of his ability to recognise superior skills in others, and to use them rather than be envious and bitter.
DCI Lestrade (as Mycroft calls him in his head, and always has to pause for a moment before amending his speech to, "Mr Lestrade,") is still Sherlock's closest connection with the police, on the rare occasions now when he takes up their work. Over the years his attention has shifted more towards private clients, due in no small part to the fact that Lestrade has spent more time in the office and less time on crime scenes. There are officers who will work with Sherlock, but it's usually grudgingly, as though they resent him for being better than them at the detecting part of their jobs and therefore allowed to be worse than them at every other part, like paperwork and dealing with witnesses. It doesn't hold true for all of them, of course - there are a couple of younger detective sergeants, for example, who almost revere Sherlock - but it is easier for Lestrade to be the go-between, even when he shouldn't technically be involved at all.
When Lestrade arrives, Mycroft is sitting in the kitchen, dressed and composed as if it were four pm rather than the opposite, and sipping a cup of coffee. Lestrade is shown in and Mycroft notes that he is wearing just what he went to bed in, with the addition of a pair of jeans and trainers.
"Your brother had better be dying, at this time of the morning," Lestrade says in lieu of a greeting, and drops into a chair across from Mycroft without being asked. Mycroft has always rather liked that about him, though he has pretended not to; Lestrade could never be accused of being insensitive but he is entirely pragmatic, and blunt when he so chooses.
"I do apologise for calling you at this late hour, Mr Lestrade," Mycroft responds, and then sets to business. Even in the middle of the night in what counts for his pyjamas, Lestrade is attentive and willing to be helpful, even at cost to himself. He understands that his role does benefit the greater good, even if it's not directly obvious to most people.
Mycroft concludes his briefing with, "Once again, Mr Lestrade, I must thank you for your efforts in aiding my brother's dealings with the force," which has always in the past been a clear dismissal. Usually here Lestrade would stand, shake his hand or nod his head depending on how annoyed he was about the task, and then take his leave. Today he stands, but hovers there for a moment, as if undecided, and then speaks.
"You don't seem very happy."
Mycroft is rarely surprised by another person's behaviour, but this is the moment when he realises that perhaps his inner thoughts on the state of his life have become more obvious than he would have liked: that is to say, obvious at all.
"Is this a recent observation?" he asks.
Lestrade looks at him and quirks his lips. "I've never noticed it before. Not like this."
"And how happy are you, Mr Lestrade?" Mycroft bats it back, implies that maybe he's just projecting, and he knows Lestrade will pick up on that.
"I'm all right. I could be happier."
There is a long pause. Usually here Mycroft is just waiting it out, letting the other person get to the point where they feel too awkward to pursue it and then they either drop the subject entirely or continue, fumbling, until he maneouvres them into missing the point, but today he stays quiet because he doesn't think he can answer. He is afraid if Lestrade asks directly, he will say, "Yes. I am struggling with the realisation that I will not live like this forever," and as soon as he says it out loud, he will be as good as gone.
Eventually, Lestrade says, "You need a holiday," and then, after a moment, "I'll see myself out. Bye." He does the nod today but Mycroft knows it isn't because he's annoyed.
Two weeks later, he hears from DCI Lestrade again. This is not to count the amount of times he has heard Lestrade speaking from his memory, telling him he doesn't seem happy, he needs a holiday. Mycroft still isn't sure what he is supposed to do with this information. Then he gets a call from Lestrade, a proper old-fashioned call, on a spring Tuesday afternoon.
"Mr Lestrade," he answers, finding a point in the room before him on which to fix his eyes, because it has been so long since he spoke to someone without seeing them that the experience of only hearing their voice is moderately unnerving. "Your phone's visucall function appears to be broken."
He knows, of course, what Lestrade will say, but part of pretending to be more sociable and well-adjusted than you are is pretending that you don't know people as well as you do. He comments on it not to make Lestrade uncomfortable - not that it would work - but because it is expected. This is how Mycroft both exerts and corrals his power.
"I don't use it," Lestrade says. "Creeps me out." That, of course, was what many people said when the function was first implemented, bluetooth technology extending to give people an image in front of their eyes of the person they were speaking to, taken from one of the billions of cameras around the world. In the beginning you often got grainy CCTV footage where you could just make out the silhouette of your friend or your workmate, but nowadays the vast majority of people are either holding their tablets as they multi-task anyway, or have cameras sitated in front of their most common talking spots. Most people were resistent to the change purely because it was a change; Lestrade dislikes it on its own merits, and Mycroft likes that.
"Quite," he replies. "What can I do for you, Mr Lestrade?"
"I've got tickets to The Comedy of Errors, RSC production, next Thursday. Do you want to come?"
"I wouldn't have thought you a fan of the Bard," Mycroft says, deferring his answer out of shock.
"I don't think The Comedy of Errors will be your thing, either, but it's a holiday, isn't it?" Lestrade returns, and Mycroft appreciates his sense of humour. This is out of the ordinary for both of them, so it may as well be wildly so.
"In that case, I accept your invitation." He is distracted from work for a full five minutes after the call ends, and he would have said he can't afford to be, but perhaps now he can.
They see the play. It is, naturally, exceedingly well performed, and neither of them really appreciate it all that much. Afterwards Lestrade asks him if he drinks coffee, "like the rest of us," and they move to a small cafe which is violating numerous health and safety policies and is mostly dead at this time of the evening.
"You do look like you're on holiday now," Lestrade tells him, smiling over the rim of a badly-washed white mug. "Quite uncomfortable but trying not to enjoy yourself."
"Why do you presume I would try not to enjoy myself on holiday?"
"When was the last one you took?" Lestrade asks, and Mycroft concedes. "You couldn't be seen to be enjoying yourself. It's just not done."
Mycroft likes that Lestrade appreciates his place in the world, the roles he has to play and why. Many people, even those who work with him, don't quite understand and don't quite accept it. Lestrade simply takes it in his stride as he also does with Sherlock, and this is why he is one of the few people Mycroft has ever been able to say he trusts.
They have a perfectly pedestrian time on their holiday, and ten days or thereabouts later, Lestrade invites Mycroft to visit an aquarium with him. It is one of the most ridiculous things Mycroft has ever done, and he enjoys it immensely. He tells Lestrade that a fascination with sea creatures is proof only of fear at the awe-inspiring power of humans, and is thankful that Lestrade knows better and simply laughs at him.
Mycroft realises a few days after this that manners dictate he should make the next move, even if he is unsure of the game they are playing, so he sends Lestrade a message.
Lestrade phones him six minutes later. "I'm not a genius but I'm not that stupid. You'd like going to The Riverside, probably one of those pale ales bores. That's not the point of this, we can do that later." Mycroft wonders when later is. "Come on, what don't you like?"
"I don't enjoy opera," Mycroft says. Lestrade is only the second person he has ever admitted this to. The first was Mummy, and he was promptly told, "Don't be silly, Mycroft, of course you do." Of course he does; except he doesn't, and he can tell Lestrade.
"I do, actually," Lestrade says. "A bit, anyway. My granddad was really into it so he used to take me. So it's mostly the things he was into, but still. Where else?"
They settle on a trip to a 'sports bar' and Lestrade tells him he has to pick a team to cheer for. He picks Zimbabwe and Lestrade accuses him of still being enamoured with colonial rule.
A month and a half later is when later arrives. Lestrade tells him that they don't have to be on holiday any more because he doesn't look that bad now. For a moment he thinks Lestrade is saying they're not going to see each other again, and surprises himself with how unpalatable he finds the idea, but then Lestrade says, "So let's go to The Riverside, then," and he smiles, and knows that Lestrade can't see it because he is an individual.
They sip their ale outside, where it's freezing but sunny, and Lestrade says it's not for him but he drinks the pint anyway, then orders another of a different brand.
"What do you enjoy?" Mycroft asks, not because it is polite but because he wants to know, and Lestrade talks about television programs and MotoGP and horror stories and his nephew, and Mycroft finds it all interesting.
This scares him, because Lestrade isn't work, isn't Sherlock, isn't what he is supposed to find interesting, and then he doesn't respond to Lestrade's next message. That isn't unheard of; Mycroft is a busy man, which Lestrade respects, but the next message comes a few days later and says simply: You do know I'm not dating you, don't you?
Mycroft is quite embarrassed to admit that he didn't know. He calls Lestrade and says, "Mr Lestrade. My apologies for replying to your message so late."
"I'm not looking for anything in particular," Lestrade says, ignoring Mycroft's ignoring, and adds, "I just think you need a bit of downtime. I know how to do that."
"Yes," Mycroft agrees, "You are excellent at it," and then Lestrade asks him to dinner at his flat. Mycroft finds this slightly at odds with Lestrade's insistence that they aren't dating, but perhaps it is only because he has now said that, that he feels able to make the invitation. Mycroft is willing to take the man at his word.
When the call is coming to an end, Lestrade says, "And stop bloody calling me Mr Lestrade. It's Greg, now." There is a minute pause, and he adds, "Not Gregory."
Mycroft allows himself to laugh, just a huff under his breath, down the phone.
He knows that Lestrade is bisexual. The fact has never been hidden - not, even if it were, that it would have stopped Mycroft from knowing - and he also knows that he has been single for the past four years, since his last lover died shortly after suffering a stroke. Mycroft himself is heterosexual, he supposes, given that he has only ever felt sexual desire for women. Still, he knows that sexuality can be fluid, and that it's not just about sex. There is good evidence in the form of Sherlock, who appeared to be to all intents and purposes asexual until John arrived in his life, and John, who declared his heterosexuality loudly and on many occasions before quietly giving in to the assumptions, and then one day asking Sherlock to marry him because, "I'm traditional in some ways, you know. I'd get a thrill out of calling you my husband." The sexual component of their relationship, Mycroft has chosen not to know about.
Mycroft and Lestrade have dinner in Lestrade's flat, and Lestrade says, "Wine? You clearly don't know anything about my cooking," instead of hello. The food is forgettable, the wine is literally forgotten (Lestrade finds it two months later and sends him a message asking how much he could sell it for) and the evening is a splendid way to spend time.
Over the next six months, Mycroft talks to Lestrade a lot. Lestrade scolds him when he pretends to forget to say Greg. Mycroft's superiors do not talk to him about his time at work coming to an end, but he gets the message all the same. He is fine, he thinks, facing it well, until his last day comes and he realises on his way home that his diary is blank from now on. Mycroft Holmes has never before owned a blank diary, and he is thinking again about the timetable for his death, because now he has ceased to be useful.
He thinks about this for two days, in between washing and dressing and eating and reading the newspapers, until he receives a phone call.
"All right? What are we doing to celebrate your retirement? Is it time to finally take down the establishment with a few well-placed stink bombs?" And suddenly there is a reason to keep going.
Except, Mycroft thinks, this surely can't be it. This can't be all there is.
"I got a message from your brother this morning," Lestrade tells him one evening when they are not watching the final episode of a terrible crime drama, because neither of them find any redeeming features in it. It just always happens to be on when they happen to sit down in Mycroft's living room at this time, when they have plates of food which he has failed to teach Lestrade how to cook. "He asked me when I was going to suck it up and ask you to move in."
Mycroft pauses, a forkful of rogan josh held just below his lips.
"Yeah, I thought it sounded stupid too," Lestrade continues. "I told him that, but then he said I could hardly ask you if I could move in with you, because that would sound a bit presumptuous."
Mycroft eats the rogan josh and clears his throat. "You should know that I am heterosexual," he says.
"I do," says Lestrade.
"So if we were to live together, we would be..."
"Happier," Lestrade supplies. "Look, mate, I'm not going to pretend I don't fancy you, at least a bit. That wouldn't be fair, but you know that anyway. Besides, once I passed seventy I sort of assumed sex with anyone else was off the agenda. This'd just be...companionship." He is uncharacteristically serious when he says the next bit. "You're lonely, and you don't take it well. You haven't got anything to fill up the gap now you're done with work, and...I like you."
"Sherlock will crow about it," Mycroft says, because he can't just say yes, he'd love for Lestrade to move in, and Lestrade doesn't need him to, which is one of the many reasons why they would fit together - will fit together.
"We've survived worse," says Lestrade cheerfully. "This rice, for one. It's like chewing tyres," and he goes without asking into the kitchen to get chapatis to replace it.
Mycroft wonders how his life might have ended if he hadn't found someone to share it with. But as Lestrade had walked into the gap just as it started to open, he finds it difficult to imagine. Perhaps if he hadn't known what he was missing, it wouldn't have bothered him, but thankfully he doesn't know if that's true because he's not missing anything.
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