How to Love a Goldfish, or, The Art of Getting By in a World Without Wolves

[igrab]

Mycroft/Anthea • 5240 words • ao3 • sequel to The Art of Scheduling • s3e2 spoilers

"But why would he think I was lonely," Mycroft hissed, throwing himself down into his favorite armchair in his favorite corner of his wife (if you like that sort of term)'s flat.

Anthea arched an eyebrow at him from across the room, the expression that suggested he was at once both very dear and very stupid.

"Sod off," he groused. "You don't think - "

"But you are," she interrupted.

Mycroft stared down at his hands. They were not particularly capable hands, not like his brother's, and for all that he was indubitably the smarter one, he would never let Sherlock know how much he envied his brother's vices. He couldn't, because Mycroft had taught him that sentiment was weakness and weakness could not be tolerated.

"How much longer do you have me down for blathering on," he muttered.

"Oh, another four and a half minutes. Only I call it 'post-Sherlock decompression'." He let his eyes close as he heard her move towards him, her heels sinking into the plush carpet, but she still kept her balance perfectly, with her hips swaying side to side. The uncomfortable part of him that steadfastly refused to forget that it inhabited a physical form was not displeased with the image.

Her hand came to rest at the nape of his neck and he wondered if this, too, had been scheduled. "I cannot be lonely," he said, obstinate but paper-thin.

"One cannot live on love alone," Anthea countered. He could feel the cool touch of the gold wedding band on the third finger of her right hand, and suddenly the deductions came to him in flash. Sherlock had seen that his ring was missing. He had seen that Mycroft was distressed. Unable to comprehend that the distress had been about him, for him, Sherlock had incorrectly put one and two together and determined that something had happened between him and Anthea.

Thus, the sudden insistence that he was lonely, that he needed someone. A pet. A pet like John, and perhaps there was an element of wish fulfillment there, that if Sherlock couldn't have his own goldfish at his side, insisting his brother needed one would ease the ache.

But he wasn't lonely. He wasn't. Quite the opposite, he was horrifically oversaturated and all he wanted was -

There was a cool glass of wine, pressing into his hand. "Time's up," Anthea murmured. "Moving on."

She straddled his lap, her illegally short skirt sliding up with the spread of her thighs, and then she leaned in and kissed him. Oh, he thought. Very effective. I suppose I should - oh.

He hated the world, not with fire, as Sherlock did, but with ice. Everyone except her. He wasn't lonely, he couldn't be, not when he loved her beyond reason - a phrase he did not use lightly. He could not possibly be lonely.

•
He would've asked why Anthea had known about his parents' arrival before he had, but that would've been a very stupid question, and Mycroft was not a very stupid man, only a stupid one, compared to her.

"You're taking them to Les Misérables," she informed him, and he sputtered at her in disgust.

"Of all the inane - "

"And I wouldn't bother trying to get Sherlock to do it instead, he's a bit busy running about London with his knickers down looking for his heterosexuality."

Now that was just ridiculous. "Sherlock never had any heterosexuality."

"Hence his inability to find it." The corners of her eyes crinkled when she smiled at him and they hadn't before. He was sure of it. Was she smiling more? Getting old? A combination of both? He liked it. It was a change, but she was still with him, and either option plus that fact meant that things were going to be all right.

"There's singing in Les Misérables."

"It's not half bad."

"Only if one hasn't heard Dame Morton, and I know you have."

"You can't compare opera and musical theater," she told him, flat out, as she slipped three tickets into his breast pocket. "And three hours enduring the latter is three hours you don't have to listen to them speak."

"Only three?" And because she was Anthea and far smarter than any creature had a right to be (himself included), she knew he was referring to the tickets, not the hours.

"I can't, I'm sorry," she said with a sweet and soft smile that made him horrifically jealous of anyone she'd ever looked at in her entire life. "I'm not entirely certain your brother will remember that bombs have off switches. You wouldn't forgive me if I was anything less than a hundred percent."

And damn him, he would. He both loved and hated how well she knew him - well, mostly loved, but it was going to be an intolerable evening. He hoped she realized that he'd need at least a week to sit quietly and unwind afterward.

Anthea's Blackberry made a quiet noise. "Ah, good. She figured it out. I knew it was right to introduce them."

She did this, she said things like this, without context, because she knew that Mycroft liked to have something to think through right when he was about to start a downward spiral. He had never fallen fully into depression and substance abuse as his brother had, but he had been quite corpulent once, before Anthea. He was determined not to eat his way out of his head any longer, not in the least because of the terrible inconvenient mess that heart surgery and diabetes would incur. No, he was just shallow enough to tell himself that Anthea actually enjoyed his appearance, and changing it would constitute a change in their relationship. He did not like change, and he assumed she didn't for she'd never given him any indication otherwise.

Mary. She was talking about Mary.

•
"Miss Morstan?"

Mary looked up from her filing. There was a beautiful young woman at the desk, neatly dressed, with a single drop pearl necklace and a ring on her right hand. Quality clothing, but tasteful, discrete, and she was in perfect health, which begged the question of why she was here.

"I'm sorry, do I know you?"

A small, private smile curled over the woman's face. "Not yet, no. I'm Beth. You're a nurse here, aren't you?"

Mary looked around at the small private practice. It wasn't much, two doctors that barely had any time here away from their primary locations, but it was a living. She liked it, she liked knowing people, helping them. "Yes, I am. May I ask - "

"I'm here on behalf of a patient." Beth hadn't removed her coat, but she wasn't wearing gloves, so it was likely she had driven rather than walked or taken the tube. "If you had some time to spare, I would really very appreciate you seeing him."

"I'm not a doctor," Mary felt the need to say, her voice stuttering a little. "Just a nurse. I don't know if I - "

"This isn't strictly professional," Beth interrupted. She had a way of seeming completely disinterested, but Mary had a strange feeling that it was in fact the exact opposite - that this was the most important thing she'd ever done, and she was trying her damnedest to pretend as if it didn't matter. It was... intriguing.

"Go on," she said, leaning against the counter.

Beth reached into the inner pocket of her coat and drew out a file folder with a government seal on the cover. "This is your charge," she said, flatly. "His name is John Hamish Watson, he resides at 221B Baker Street, he - "

"Hang on," Mary cut in, "what is it exactly you're asking me to do, here?"

Beth smiled as if Mary was very stupid, and it made her draw up a little, her chin jutting out, because she was not stupid, thank you very much. She was a great deal more clever than anyone ever gave her credit for.

"He's dying," Beth murmured. "We want you to save him."

She left, then, the file still on Mary's desk, and when curiosity got the better of her, she gave up and went 'round to Baker Street with the file and the story of the pretty girl named Beth - never intending to actually do anything, never intending to follow orders from a suspicious government agent, never intending to fall in love and save a man's life from the very blackest pit of grief.

She never did read the file. Never. She mailed it to Pall Mall (John knew the address) without a single peep, because she didn't want to know. Or, rather, she didn't want to know like that - she wanted to find out the hard way, to learn John Watson one piece at a time, to let him unfold like a beautiful mystery before her eyes. She would not want the cheat sheet, the punchline, not for all the world.

But she knew, right from the start, that there was someone out there pulling strings who loved this man very, very much.

•
It is one thing to know your brother is going to be faking his death, another entirely to experience it.

Mycroft did not go to the funeral, because John would know, and the whole point was John not knowing. Anthea went, and apparently she was a better liar than he had expected, because John never once questioned Mycroft's absence to be out of anything but intense sorrow. So while they were burying a corpse - a skin sack, a web of bones wrapped in flesh - Mycroft sat in his armchair at the Diogenes club and found, quite to his surprise, that he felt somewhat... upset.

He could not rightly say sad. He wasn't grieving. Sherlock wasn't dead. If he had been -

Mycroft did not know what would happen, if he were to actually lose his brother. Perhaps that was what had him so off-center. This whole ordeal brought into close relief the possibility of a life without him, a life that Mycroft could not contemplate.

He was very nearly distressed at the mere thought of it.

When Anthea came to collect him, her eyes were wet. He frowned at them, and she gave him an arch look, isn't that expected at a funeral? "How," he said, and she smiled at him across the leather seat of the car.

"Practice," she replied smoothly, and for all his knowledge in the world, he did not know what that meant.

•
This wasn't part of the plan.

Or rather, it was, but it shouldn't have been. Sherlock wasn't supposed to go off half-cocked (but had he really expected otherwise?) give no notice (but did he really expect him to?) and leave no trace behind, as he systematically wiped out the branches of Moriarty's network.

It infuriated Mycroft, who liked definition above all things, and detested chaos. How bloody difficult would it be to send him a sign? Oh, the lives were snuffing out, to be sure, and perhaps normally that would have been enough, but -

"It's all right to be worried about him."

His shoulders twitched, he glared over at the unwelcome intrusion.

"I'm not worried," he said automatically, and they both knew what a lie it was so he sighed.

"Correction. I shouldn't be worried. I have every confidence in my brother's skill."

Warm hands touched the back of his neck; he could feel the soft swell of her breasts as she leaned over to press her lips to his forehead, her hair falling all around them. "Must I remind you that emotions do not always make sense?"

"That doesn't mean I have to like it," he grumbled. He appreciated her attempt to waylay his black mood. Really, he did. But he did not want to be comforted. He did not want to be all right.

He just wanted his brother back, safe.

"Has Miss Morstan taken the bait?" he asked instead, because if anything could distract her, it was her precious pet project. Matchmaking. How dull. But she seemed to enjoy it, in some perverse fashion.

"Oh, yes. I believe we'll be receiving the file in the mail any day now. Unopened," and there was a deduction in that, but Mycroft simply couldn't be arsed. He wondered if Sherlock would remember to keep his glottal stops under control. "Are you listening to me?"

"No," he said, shortly, and if God existed it was surely he that sent this woman to earth, because Anthea did not take offense, just left him alone, quiet and unobtrusive.

If he must be lonely, then he would rather be alone.

•
"I told you he would pick the right one," Anthea murmured, smirking, the devil woman. Mycroft almost threw his phone at her head, but his aim was terrible and he didn't want to risk actually hitting her by mistake.

"It wasn't a particularly difficult deduction," he snapped, and she deftly took the phone from his hand and stood on her toes to press a kiss to his lips. He scowled.

"If he didn't actually know of the existence of your sex life, he wouldn't joke about it."

"Oh really?" Mycroft was never at his best after exercising. The whole thing was so... physical, and unlike sex, which he did have, thank you, it wasn't the least bit enjoyable. Not even for a moment. "Somehow I find that hard to believe."

"He never even mentioned it before Mabel, in sixth form. Then he went quiet again until Diane, which was a terrible mistake and I've barely managed to keep myself from ruining her life, and then when..."

"Hang on," Mycroft interrupted, looking pained. "How did you know about Mabel? Don't answer that. What do you mean, ruining her - oh, don't tell me you're jealous."

Anthea blinked up at him with that distracted innocence. "Not anymore, sir, of course not. But I made a mistake, with her. I was very cross with myself."

A mistake. Anthea had made a mistake. He couldn't quite comprehend it; of course, he knew she was human, all human beings are capable of error, but somehow it had simply never seemed possible, not with her. Not with Anthea. His Anthea.

"You made a mistake," he said, slowly and delicately.

She made a noise of derision; he was repeating himself, and he detested repeating himself. "I never intended for you to like her."

"You are still jealous. I knew it."

"No," and the noise she made was delightful, when he caught her by the waist and pulled her in close. He loathed sentiment, but he loved that sound, and the feeling of her under his hands, warm and supple and alive. You make me alive, he thought, but he didn't say it. Because he did loathe sentiment. Even if it was true.

"However, he does still think something's the matter with me," he said instead, and she hummed and checked her blackberry over his shoulder.

"He's not wrong," she said. Mycroft scowled.

"You just want me to figure it out on my own?"

"Of course."

"But that's what I have you for."

"No," and she tipped her head, hair falling to one side as she brushed her lips to the line of his throat. "You have me to figure out what you need to deduce, and what you don't. Tell me why Sherlock thinks you need a goldfish."

She was right, which was the worst part. He could read between the lines, though. He heard something is the matter with you, I agree but then Sherlock thinks you need a goldfish, which was an important distinction. She didn't agree with him on that one. But she had said he was lonely, which he wasn't. Absolutely not. It was preposterous.

That was another difference between him and his brother, Mycroft thought as he brought his lips to the soft skin just under Anthea's ear, the spot that made her sigh. Sherlock loved thinking, loved using his brain, and Mycroft?

Mycroft hated it.

•
He took his ring off and balled it in his hand and pressed his clenched fingers to his forehead. He had gained five kilos in the past fortnight, and that was just a rough estimate. He wouldn't go near the scale, couldn't bear it, not to mention Anthea probably had the damn thing rigged with a pressure pad to send her a text alert. It wouldn't be the first time.

He remembered how it was when she first met him. He was rotund, and Sherlock was in and out of college with frequent detours to rehab, a jail cell, or on one memorable occasion, France. Mycroft had had to go there himself because their parents were too busy with their... charity organizations, or bridge club, or whatever it was that middle class people with middle-class minds did with their time. Sherlock, what are you doing in Paris? Don't be ridiculous, Mycroft, he'll come home eventually if that's what he wants. He's probably doing it for attention. Have you lost weight? He hadn't.

He had just gotten the position at Whitehall, and had made the decision to hire a secretary, rather than make the seemingly-enormous effort to fetch his own coffee and whatnot. He fired the first few within hours, and had begun to despair of ever encountering someone in London who was not offensively stupid, when -

He could still remember it, now, with the ring twinned to hers warm in his palm. It was an otherwise unimportant moment, but he loved her, and he kept this one, safe as a treasure, safe as the sound of Sherlock's violin.

Her heels made a pattern on the crisp marble and, like dominoes, the deductions fell. Neat. Confident, but not overly so. Sedate pace, not too anxious, not too eager, but not shy or wary. Simple. Excellent shoes, expensive shoes - Louboutin - but they don't look it, she isn't that flashy. She'll wear them well, she'll let them make her legs look long and shapely, but no pause in rhythm - she doesn't sway her hips purposefully. All this, before he opened his eyes.

She stood there in a crisp white shirt and a plain black skirt, everything about her lining up to the surprising lack of an image forming in Mycroft's mind. He could see all the things that she was not, and in between them, the shape of a politely beautiful young woman appeared.

She didn't say hello. She didn't even say her name. "You have a conference call in five minutes, and you'll use that time to make your own coffee. I'm having an espresso machine brought in tomorrow. Coat," and she held out her hand for it, matter-of-fact, and without quite knowing why he surrendered it to her subtly manicured nails. "I'll have it back to you tomorrow, but for future reference, people can hear it in your voice when your coat needs laundering." When she turned to... well, he didn't have the faintest idea of what she was about to do, he just stood there and stared like a complete blithering idiot. She stopped and peered at him over her shoulder, an amused smile playing over her face. "Coffee, sir. Down the hall, on your left."

"Yes, quite." His coat dwarfed her. Mycroft had never, not once, given any thought to his body as anything more than a biological support system for his brain, but his coat dwarfed her, and he felt something about that. "I'm sorry, what do I call you?"

She smiled as if he'd done something particularly clever, which, to his knowledge, he hadn't. "I despise my name, it's boring. Call me Anthea."

She swept out of the room and her heels went click, click, click. He had never actually said he'd hire her, which, he supposed, might actually make it rather difficult for him to fire her.

He considered it now, though, with the ring making sweat pool in the palm of his hand.

You're emotionally compromised, he told himself. You cannot make decisions in anger. This is not her fault.

Sherlock had been captured by Serbians.

The only reason Mycroft even knew about it was because Anthea was not a bloody stupid ignorant tit, and the only reason he hated her in this moment was because in the face of this pain, ignorance did seem like bliss.

"Anthea?" he called out. For one horrible, terrible moment there was silence, but then her heels clicked against the floor.

"Yes?"

"I can't," he said, voice cracking at the edges. "I can't - you don't know what it's like out there."

Something had changed between them, in the last five minutes or so, and he had no idea what it was. It was eating at him, gnawing away at whatever he had left in the metaphysical cavities of his soul. "I don't care," she said, flat and simple. "I'm booking you on the next flight out. You have five hours to learn Serbian, it shouldn't take you more than one."

It took him four. He kept reading the same phrases over and over again, and he didn't know why.

•
Mary Morstan was a lovely girl and Mycroft met her at John's new flat, an entirely colorless and lifeless place that Mycroft should have loved but hated instantly. He wasn't even sure why he was here; Anthea had planned this, and he was almost certain it was a ruse to get him out of the office. She was keeping something from him, and not particularly skillfully, either. It was alarming.

"Can I get you anything? Tea, biscuits?"

"Nothing, thanks." His stomach twisted. "Actually, biscuits wouldn't be half bad, I suppose."

Mary gave him a wry, knowing look, saying "All right, then," and went to get the tray.

Mycroft took a seat on the sofa and frowned at the way it creaked.

"There's some scones, too, John made them, so they're actually edible. Sure you won't take tea?"

"Who are you?" Mycroft said suddenly, cutting through the pleasantries. It was rude, but there was only one woman he ever regretted being rude to, and she was coincidentally the only one who didn't care that he was.

Mary, though, seemed to take it with good grace. She also seemed to understand the question, which gave her rather higher marks than his first deductions might've implied. "Just a nurse with very bad taste," she said, and meant every word of it. "I like taking care of people, interesting people. John is interesting. He has a lot more depth than most account for."

"I know," Mycroft murmured, without heat. He bit the end off a scone - it really was very good. Excellent, in fact. Sherlock was really missing quite a lot. "Has he spoken much of Sherlock Holmes?"

Mary smiled, sadly, but it was sympathetic, not pitying. "A more accurate question would be, does he speak of anything else?"

My brother is a fool, Mycroft thought, suddenly and with force. He's going to lose the one good thing he ever had.

"I think," Mary said carefully, "that I should consider myself lucky to love John even half as much as Sherlock did."

Mycroft stared down at his scone and thought about the word love.

"I'm not sure that's possible," he muttered, quietly.

"Some people would say that's because you can't take half of zero." Mary Morstan was looking at him, and he had the uncomfortable feeling that she actually saw what was really there.

His phone made a noise. A text noise. Mycroft hated texts.

"I have to go," he said, taking the scone but not apologizing for the abruptness of his visit.

S in Serbian custody. SM moving. HA missed first check-in. Car outside.
--A

•
Harold Atwood might have been a decent goldfish, passable at least, but he'd died, from a long-range sniper bolt to the head. All he'd managed to send was 'London' and 'underground terror cell', and Mycroft had only needed one word to get Sherlock back home.

Moran.

They divided responsibilities, as the Holmes brothers did best. For Sherlock, the legwork, the bomb threat; for Mycroft, it was the Lord Sebastian Moran.

Jim Moriarty's right hand. If it was Jim pulling the strings at all, which Mycroft wasn't entirely convinced of. He was just a little too brash, a little too unfocused, and the breadth of the Moriarty network was so vast and integrated that it was hard to believe so young a person had done it without help.

Lord Moran was help, but he wasn't the mastermind. He was a gun arm, he needed to be pointed and shot. Which was why this plot was so intriguing, why Sherlock had let himself be rescued when Mycroft finally found him in that horrid little dungeon. Was Moran simply losing control without Jim Moriarty, or was there something more afoot? Was this just another part of the plan?

Only time would tell, unfortunately. But Mycroft had heard whispers, rumors of a painting being sold that wasn't part of the pattern. Sherlock knew London; Mycroft knew the world.

"I don't know," he said, into the warm curve of Anthea's shoulder as they lay curled together on his too-old leather sofa, the one with the bits peeling off at the corners because he liked it and he wasn't ready for a change.

"Mmm?" Right, he should have gotten her attention first. She looked unspeakably beautiful like this, distracted and barely present, her great mind somewhere that even Mycroft could not follow.

"My goldfish," he murmured. "I don't know why I need a goldfish. I can't imagine why Sherlock thinks me lonely."

He waited for her to protest that he was; she didn't. Her eyes fixed on his, though, and her pupils dilated the slightest bit, and when she smiled there were lines at the corners of her eyes. "Go on."

Go on? What was there to go on with? He hated repeating himself. "I cannot be lonely, I have you."

"And," she added, expectantly.

"And?"

He did not doubt she loved him. He could never remember when it was he deduced it or if he'd just known it all along, and at some point the knowledge became relevant, but it was never an uncertain thing. She loved him. "And Sherlock," she murmured. "You have your brother too, and you don't just love him because you're blood."

"Blood," he'd said, and Mycroft hadn't understood why it made him feel decidedly odd.

"He is your muse, as John is Sherlock's. He keeps London safe, but you keep the world safe, and why? For Sherlock. For your brother. You've been angry because he's been out there, embroiled in it, and you felt powerless to help. I gave you that power and it was exhausting, yes, but how did you feel?"

Mycroft closed his eyes and let his forehead rest against hers, against this lovely, beautiful, perfect woman that he didn't deserve in the slightest. "I felt as if I meant something again."

"There," she murmured against his lips, "was that so hard?"

•
"You're going to Paris," she told him, and Mycroft sputtered. For one, he couldn't fit on a train seat, and for two, that meant -

His new secretary, or whatever the hell she was, gave him a look that clearly suggested he had best do as she said, or there would be Consequences.

I must never let Sherlock become aware of how utterly whipped I am, he thought as he flew across the Channel on a private plane, chartered from god-knows-where. She could be trying to kill him, he supposed, but she'd had ample time to do so previously, and this was a rather expensive and far too clumsy method.

On the flight home, with his addled little slip of a brother folded carefully into the seat next to him, Mycroft didn't feel whipped. He felt whole, and pure, and alive. He felt like more than these pounds of fat that clung to him like bad dreams.

You cannot protect him from your skin cave like this, he told himself, and traced the scars on the inside of Sherlock's left arm. Right here, right now, you promise him that things will never get this bad, that you will never be too late to save him because you're carrying around so much extra weight. Swear it.

He did not swear aloud, because he loathed sentiment. But he thought that maybe he did love his brother, and though he hated thinking as much as he hated dieting and exercise and going out into the great chaos - he would never let Sherlock down.

•
"I do love you, you know," Mycroft said suddenly, breaking the silence between their breaths.

Anthea looked surprised - not at what he'd said, but that he'd said it at all, out loud, anyhow. "I'm well aware," she murmured, low and somewhat amused. "What brought this on?"

"Sherlock's wretched best man speech," Mycroft grumbled. "Do you know, he tried to get me to come to the wedding? I hate weddings," and Anthea's chest moved with a shudder of her laughter. "If I'd wanted to go to a wedding, I would've actually had one. Does he realize we're married? Don't answer that," and she hadn't been about to, she was simply laughing, and he wanted to hate her for it but couldn't.

"It wasn't the speech, it was the look on John's face, wasn't it," Anthea said with a sigh and a smile.

"I look terrible in formal wear."

"You got the notion in your head that it might matter to me, to hear it out loud."

"You would be ridiculous in white, everything you own is black."

"I really do love," and he stopped trying to talk over her, because he wasn't a complete idiot, he knew they were attempting to have something somewhat resembling a significant moment, "the way you look up to him."

Mycroft blinked. "I'm sorry?"

"Sherlock," and she pushed her nose in against the hollow of his throat, and he thought about it. Yes, he supposed he did, when it all came down to it. He had thought this wedding would mean the end of his little brother - surely, Sherlock had thought so as well, given the increasingly alarming things he had done with table napkins. But to stand there and lay his soul out bare, to say he loved John more than anything, and the man was literally married to another but he still -

"I want a wedding," Anthea said, and everything in his head went abruptly still.

"What?"

"Nothing extravagant. You, me, Sherlock, John, Mary. Your parents. My parents."

"You have parents?"

"Mycroft." He shut up instantly, because she rarely said his name, and the moonlight made her eyes look blue rather than green, but they were still beautiful. "I think it would do your brother well to remember that you are as human as he is, and capable of all the same emotions."

He loved her, he really did. He would never be able to explain just how much, he was sure of it, not even when they were old and grey and Sherlock was keeping bees in the countryside or something equally ridiculous. She was a genius, pure and simple, and Mycroft was categorically the smartest man in the world, but she outclassed him by a mile. He did not deserve her, but then, no one did. She chose him, one goldfish among many, for whatever reason - and that would have to be enough.

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