the little shadow that runs through the grass (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mesmiranda) wrote2011-01-01 04:47 am
mesmiranda) wrote2011-01-01 04:47 am
Fic: Please Confirm You Are A Human Below (Mycroft/Lestrade, WIP)
Mycroft/Lestrade, ~6000 words of awesome, PG, co-written with a fabulous person who has great taste in books, movies, and other assorted media (though I have no idea what their name is). Give them love!
Note: Roughly half the fic can be found in the comments below, from the back-and-forth messaging; this is just the whole thing put together.
discple HOLMES
Greg rolls his eyes at the captcha he's gotten, pinching the bridge of his nose with one hand. As if Sherlock at the crime scene wasn't enough. "No more Holmes for today" he types in instead, just as a joke--it'll come up with another error message and he'll put in the right one, no big deal.
He doesn't expect what comes up next.
Mycroft stares at the screen. Captcha is a pet project he'd picked up from a... friend who'd recently been... deposed. He'd gotten Anthea - no, she'd changed it again, it was Marie this week - to program it so that the more... unique responses were saved into his computer, with the most recent at the top.
God, he even thinks diplomatically. He needs a break.
The response at the top, dated just a few seconds ago, catches his eye. "No more Holmes for today."
All of the usual reactions - paranoia, curiosity, and so on - are tightly controlled, and prove to be irrelevant when he zeroes in on the user and discovers it to be one Greg Lestrade.
Then he takes control of the system for a second so he can stall Greg with an ad, and then he sits there blinking for far too long, because internationally respected leaders of the world do not blink like lovesick teenagers and to hell with international leaders of the world.
Well, fine. If he's going to break completely out of the character he presents to others, he might as well make it complete.
Smirking a little, he types in, "tomorrow, then?" into the box demanding Captcha's test.
Let's see what he does with that.
Greg's hands are hovering over the keyboard and mouse, set to type in some blurry pixellated gibberish, when they freeze. Those definitely aren't random words.
Is--no, come off it, there's no way.
Is the captcha box talking to him?
"Holmes should only be administered once a week. No heavy machinery or driving afterwards," he types in slowly, warily, both eyebrows raised.
Mycroft pauses the program he's working on, to give Greg his full attention. His lips quirk up again at the response, and he quickly types in a reply.
But just before clicking Submit, he pauses. Should he let Greg know to whom he's talking - well, typing? Does Greg even know there's more than one Holmes?
Better to err on the side of anonymity. Mycroft deletes his first response and spends a few minutes deciding on another one, knowing that Greg's computer will show only a loading page.
"Overdose much?" Of course, he could just find out everything about Greg through his network, but where would be the fun in that?
Yes, that's the Captcha box, right there, talking to him. Greg considers the possibilities of being really, really drunk and not knowing it, being really, really high and not knowing it, and having finally--blessedly--lost his sanity.
But he's completely forgotten the comment he was going to leave on his brother's blog, and he doesn't care. This is fun.
He types in: "Yes! Should be committed. Me or him? Don't rightly know."
After a moment's pause, before he clicks the 'submit' button, he amends it to: "Yes! Should be committed. Me or him? Don't rightly know. Not talking to him, am I?"
Mycroft sits back and tilts his head to the side. This is new; he hasn't heard of it yet.
Well, Sherlock can be a bloody idiot sometimes. Most times. Even if he is all that clever (which he's not, he just shows it off).
He is in complete agreement with Greg, and says as much.
"Sherlock= pest." A persistent, which is so much worse.
Greg laughs aloud, his face lighting up, then shakes his head. He pauses over the keyboard, his hands hovering.
"Mosquito," he enters, then pulls a rueful face. "That's not really right, more like a bee. Necessary and capable of making honey, but stings like hell all the same. If not Sherlock, then who is this?"
Mycroft reads Greg's answer and chuckles. True enough, he thinks, along with the annoying buzzing in your ear.
But what should he say? He could tell the truth - but that would lead to the inevitable questions about how can you do this and so on, and besides which, it would be boring. There's something mysterious about appearing as only an automated system that has apparently, suddenly, grown a mind.
"Captcha box" is what Mycroft finally types in. It's not a very good answer, but he only has two words to say something in, and it's certainly a less complicated answer than "his brother." A better one, too.
Right. And the captcha box just happens to know about Sherlock.
Greg shakes his head again, slower, and his eyes sparkle as he taps briefly against the keyboard before replying. "Magic? Skynet? A 15-year-old with his iPhone? Please, I have to know."
Mycroft bites his lower lips for a second, before realizing that he's doing it and stopping. He stares off into space for a second, wondering what to say. Should he tell--
Wait. Oh, that's good. And true, in multiple ways. It'll be interesting to see which way Greg takes it as.
"Big Brother" Mycroft enters into Captcha, grinning like he hasn't in far too long.
"Do it to Julia!" Greg types in promptly (in the back of his head: Big Brother, big brother who thinks Sherlock's a pest--he's going to corner John the next time he sees him), and adds, "Bit of a challenge using captcha, isn't it? You only get two words, like Twitter but worse."
Yes, it is a challenge, Mycroft thinks, because I want to say, "There are lots of oppurtunities for ambiguition, like that one just past," but this damn box won't let me.
He settles for typing in, "*shrug* works, no?"
"Maybe," Greg replies, trying to suppress a grin but failing. "I'd prefer something more face-to-face. Do you control all the captcha in the world or what?"
Face-to-face, hmm? A small shrieking voice in the back of Mycroft's head tells him that this is a bad idea. It sounds like Sherlock, so he ignores it and hacks into the CCTV camera right nearest Greg's house, which happens to be outside the window of the room he's in. How handy.
"Say hi" he types into Captcha, manipulating the camera so that it's "looking" directly at Greg.
Say hi? Greg peers over his shoulder in bewilderment, around the room, out the window--
He does not hide under the desk, but it's a near thing. He does jump about fifteen feet and send the chair skittering backwards.
When he manages to get his heart rate under control, he grabs a piece of paper and a pen, and scribbles furiously for a few minutes before sliding open the window and holding the sign up. It reads: HI. HOW ARE YOU? HOW WAS YOUR DAY? MAYBE SOME TIME IN THE FUTURE I WILL BUY YOU A COFFEE AND WE WILL TALK LIKE NORMAL PEOPLE.
Like normal people... No.
"Normal = boring" Mycroft types into Captcha - no again. Hang on, isn't there...?
He uses the camera to look around the area for something to hack into and write with - ah! One of those handy scrolling-text devices. Not useful on its own, but whoever is in charge of it has hooked it up to the internet so they can change the signal manually. Even better, it's in full view of the window.
He sets the text on the slowest speed and the thickest letters, and types in, "Normal people are boring. This is fun. And how can you offer me coffee if you don't know who I am?"
Right, this is officially certified insane now. Greg puts his hands over his face, laughing helplessly, and turns the paper over to write on the back. He holds it up:
I'M A POLICE OFFICER AND I'M VERY CLEVER AND I'M REALLY INTERESTED IN KNOWING NOW, I'LL TRY TO FIND OUT. THIS IS BETTER THAN NORMAL. YOU COULD HELP ME ALONG A BIT, THOUGH.
Mycroft finds himself biting his lower lip to stifle a grin again, and doesn't bother making himself stop. He tilts the camera to the side, as if it's "thinking," as he types a reply.
"I'm a civil servant-" he cuts off there and deletes it. For some reason, he doesn't want to give Greg the same lie he gives everyone else.
This is stupid, this is insane, this is a really bad idea, the little voice in his head chants, but he hasn't been listening to it so far, and he sees no good reason to start now.
"I'm the British government and I'm clever too and I don't know much about you beyond your name and what you just said but I could find out if you want me to. You could type in the response box, it'll save paper if nothing else."
Then he sits back, still worrying his lower lip, and hopes he hasn't just scared Greg away from replying.
Greg looks from the scrolltext to the camera for a moment, looking thoughtful. Then he moves back from the window and sits down at the desk, typing briefly and then leaning back in his chair as his heart does an odd stutter-thud:
"Yes, I do want you to."
Mycroft stares at the screen. He hadn't actually expected Greg to give him permission. Or take him seriously in the first place, for that matter.
But now that he has....
Mycroft spends a few minutes pulling up the details of Greg's life: birth certificate, last doctor's appointment, job records, clips of conversations. It feels strangely intimate, in a way, learning so much about this man that he's never seen with his own eyes. It's like learning all of his secrets, having his complete trust that he will never tell another soul.
He swallows as he realizes that that is exactly what this is, and types, "Your name is Greg Lestrade. You were born 45 years ago to Nancy and Drew Lestrade. As of your last doctor's appointment, you weighed 78 kg and stood at 180 cm. You work as a DI for Scotland Yard, where you occasionally give cases to Sherlock Holmes, at his insistence." This doesn't come from the computer - Sherlock's told him that he's found a job, and won't listen to Mycroft' protests that he doesn't get paid. "You were married, but divorced, and lost custody of your one child. He is twelve and has written you exactly one letter. You have not written back. Since then, you have had a handful of lovers, as well as experimenting with your sexuality with a friend. You don't define yourself as straight or gay, but instead figure that it depends on the person." This is where he has to be careful - this isn't just height and weight, but who he actually is, and Mycroft could very easily step over a line he didn't know was there.
"You love your work, even though it can be gruesome. You love catching criminals and feel responsible for each one that gets away. You think Sherlock's deductive ability is amazing, but won't admit it, and you've begun to, intentionally or not, mimic some of what he does. I could teach you more of that," Mycroft types. He pauses, then deletes the last sentence. There's a good chance Greg won't even want to talk to him after this, much less listen to him talk.
"Your favorite color is orange," he types instead, and for some reason, this feels more personal than any of the other things he's said. "You bought your house just a few years ago, having living in a flat before, and now regularly feed the neighborhood stray cat. You know, if you're not careful, he'll move in with you."
Heart in his throat and tongue between his teeth, Mycroft hits Enter.
Greg has to focus on breathing for a moment, two. He stares down at the keys and swallows.
"I call the cat Silver," he types at last, slowly. "Not really original but I couldn't think of anything else. I like the colour orange because my mum always insisted on having fresh oranges in the house during the winter, no matter what they cost, it was her favourite thing.
I'd never tell him in a million years, but I keep worrying about Sherlock--I think he's standing on the edge of a knife all the time and I want to him to get off and stop doing the stupid balancing act to show off. He annoys the hell out of me sometimes but I don't know where I'd be without him.
I still have that letter from Chris on the bookshelf near my bed, I couldn't get rid of it. He has his mum's hair, I remember that, the exact colour and softness. But he's got my eyes."
He stops because he can't keep typing, because his chest hurts at the memory, and his mobile pings at that moment. He grabs it off the desk and checks the messages: it's from Sally, down at HQ.
"I have to go, I'm sorry," he types in quickly, hitting Enter and powering off the computer as he grabs his things. His heart is still pounding, and as he flicks the light off he shoots the computer a wary look--as though it could come awake and talk to him again, as though the whole thing were a hallucination.
Mycroft's shoulders slump slightly and he exhales - it had taken Greg a long time to reply, and Mycroft had been almost sure he'd been saying something to the effect of, "That's creepy, go away, you stalker." Having closed the window with the camera's view, since he already knew what Greg looked like and didn't want to linger in the system, he couldn't be sure what Greg was doing.
A smile touches his lips, gentler than when he'd been trying to stifle laughter, and not even the mention of Sherlock can wipe it from his face.
"I used to hate cats," he types, because isn't this what you're supposed to do when you want to be close to someone, you tell them about yourself? Telling your companion about himself isn't the most orthodox of methods, but the result is the same. "Mummy had one of those hairless ones - the Egyptian ones, whatever they're called. It did nothing but hiss at me. My college roommate had his own cat, a much more agreeable sort. I made friends with it. Britain has well-funded shelters as a result.
"Your mother sounds like a wonderful woman. I should like to meet her sometime, if it's all right with you. Don't worry - I won't read out her own life to her." He takes a minute to remember one of those smiling-face things that people make out of keystrokes, Sherlock told him all of them once, how do you - oh yes. "; ) Will you be back soon?"
He hits Enter and waits for a bit. Usually Greg replies very quickly, so unless he's writing an essay, there should be something by now. Mycroft waits another five minutes, then tentatively types, "Greg? Are you there?"
Nothing. He's either already gone or ignoring Mycroft, and as hard as he tries, as much as Greg's answer belies that, for some reason the second one is much easier to believe.
He shakes his head, quickly, once. He's let himself get too attached. He should have listened to the voice in the back of his head. If Greg's gone, then fine. He has a life outside of talking to apparently sentient pieces of machinery, and now he has to attend to it.
Mycroft clicks away from the screen, setting the scroll-text back to the original words, and sorts out a few things that he's left unsupervised, before someone knocks on the door to his study, making him jump.
"Yes?" he calls. "Anthea" steps quietly into the doorway, barely sparing him a glance before turning back to her Blackberry. "Sir, the Russian embassy is waiting to begin negotiations, there's been a major blackout of cameras in Bristol, and I need your signature on the Halver Confederation documents, among other things. Can you spare a moment?"
Mycroft stands and puts the computer to sleep. It's never just "a moment." He'll be lucky to get any sleep in the next twenty-four hours. He begins to screw his head on straight again, half-listening to "Anthea" as she begins to fill him in on the Russian situation. He puts Greg firmly out of his mind, and, taking the documents and a pen from Anthea, walks out of the room without a backward glance.
At the crime scene the next day, when they're standing around a dead body and Sherlock is berating Anderson for something or other, Greg pulls John aside.
"Sherlock's got an older brother, doesn't he?" he says urgently, nodding towards the detective.
"Yeah, Mycroft Holmes. Pleasant chap, he kidnaps people a lot." John frowns and folds his arms, shivering in the cold. "Have you met him?"
"Not exactly," Greg says ruefully, looking around. "Listen--he says he's the British government, is that right?"
"As far as I know." John shrugs, looking at him curiously. "What did he say to you?"
"My life story," says Greg, rubbing a hand over his face. He deduced me like Sherlock does and it wasn't even--I didn't mind, I felt... safe.
John's eyebrows go up, and he realizes about two seconds too late that he said all of that out loud. But John is smiling, that crooked wry grin. "He and Sherlock don't get--"
"Lestrade," Sherlock's voice calls across. "Do you have an address for the man's ex-wife and children?"
Greg gets home late, tosses his shoes into one corner and drops his jacket on the floor. Settling into the desk chair, he flicks on the computer and rubs at his eyes, shifting uneasily and chewing on his lower lip, before pulling up his brother's blog.
Well. Here goes nothing. "Hello? Are you there?" he types into the Captcha prompt.
Mycroft cracks a yawn as soon as the Russian delegate leaves and he's able to drop his calm, polite, diplomatic mask. He stayed up late into the night negotiating and getting nowhere fast, until they agreed to sleep on the dilemma and rejoin the next day.
They sent one person out of their convoy of twelve or so, and he was very well prepared to deal with anything Mycroft threw at him. He had to spend all day manoeuvring the man into painting himself into a corner, and he's dreading the work that has probably backed up in his inbox as a result.
Knowing that some of it is time-sensitive, Mycroft wakes up his computer quickly and gets into his email. After much longer than he would like and much shorter than he should probably work, he gets sick of it and opens up the Captcha program on a lark.
The first entry hits him like a brick upside the head. It's Greg. He really was gone, he wasn't just ignoring Mycroft. Mycroft's stomach does a weird sort of flip-flop, first pleasantly, when he sees the question, and then much less so, when he sees the timestamp.
An hour and a half ago. Damn.
No time to take over the scroll-text. Mycroft clicks into Captcha and types, "YES! You?"
Greg has almost given it up as a bad job, is about ready to switch off the computer and go to sleep... one more try, just for the hell of it.
The Captcha prompt comes up, and it takes him a moment to process, and then he grins wide and bends over the keyboard--alert, wakeful, eyes bright.
"Didn't mean to leave you in the lurch like that, work called--dead banker, big jewel theft. How's being clever and the British government working out?"
Mycroft can't suppress his grin at the reply. He feels like a thirteen-year-old, which is stupid, but he doesn't care because Greg is there, which is also stupid, and now he's rambling to himself.
Mycroft quickly types into Captcha, "Just a minute," and then opens up the scroll-text. Luckily, it's rather late, so there isn't much chance of a random passerby seeing it.
"Tired. Russian fellow knows what he's doing. Has the cat come around again?"
Greg waits obediently, rubbing his fingers over his jaw--he needs a good shave, the stubble is getting prickly--and wonders. Smacks himself upside the head, ducks his head out the window, and smiles.
SILVER'S ON MY COUCH, he writes on a fresh piece of paper, to hold up to the camera. HIS COUCH NOW THOUGH. SORRY TO INFORM YOU THAT YOU HAVE COMPETITION FOR RULER OF THE WORLD.
Mycroft waits for the response from Captcha, but nothing is forthcoming. He refreshes the screen twice before he remembers what Greg did the last time Mycroft began using the scroll-text.
He opens up the camera he'd used the last time, and zooms in on the paper Greg's holding. The image is dark and blurry, but he can just make out the letters. He grins at the last bit and thinks a second before typing, so quickly that he has to go back and get rid of the typos.
"Tell him that while competition is always a good thing, one of the major prerequisites for that position is speaking a variety of languages. None of them, as far as I know, are Cat. However, I will take into account that I now have a rival for the title of Important Being To Greg Lestrade."
Greg turns the paper over and writes, his head bent and his face invisible in the lamplight. After a moment's time, he holds it up again.
NOT REALLY, YOU DON'T.
WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOU'RE NOT TALKING TO RUSSIANS?
It is only, of course, after Mycroft has hit Enter and watched Greg begin writing that the significance of what he's just said hits him. Luckily, this is also around the same time he adjusts the brightness on his computer and the nearest streetlamp, so he can see what Greg is saying.
He presses his thumb over his lips unconsciously, as if something will escape them if he doesn't, and types, more slowly this time, "Work, mostly. Talk to intriguing DIs with a gift for snark while masquerading as a piece of annoying technology and the shop sign across the street. Try to get Sherlock to come around and stop being an idiot." Now that he thinks about it, it's a little pathetic how much of his day is just working. Well, he does have several countries to run. But still. "Not much, actually. Mostly work." Stupid. He's said that already. Mycroft deletes the last two words, replacing them with, "What do you do when you're not catching jewelry thieves?"
Greg rubs the back of his neck, looking ruefully, and finds a new piece of paper:
I PLAY RUGBY AND BILLIARDS BUT I'M NOT GOOD AT EITHER OF THEM. I LIKE BUILDING AND FIXING THINGS AND DOING CARPENTRY. I WATCH ALL THE PREMIER LEAGUE GAMES AND DO SOME VOLUNTEERING ON THE WEEKENDS. MORE DULL THAN INTRIGUING.
YOU SHOULD BE FLYING AROUND THE WORLD AND HAVING ADVENTURES, WITH YOUR BRAIN.
Mycroft smiles wryly. "A very wise person once told me, 'An adventure is someone else having a terrible time a thousand miles away.' Well, no they didn't, it's from a book, but it's still true." He frowns. If he just says that, they're going to be stuck for something to say. They're not having a face-to-face conversation, they can't really have a companionable silence.
After starting to worry his lower lip again (a habit that he barely notices by this time), he types, "Both of us clearly need more excitement in our lives. Got any ideas?"
Greg flips the piece of paper over, pauses for a long moment before writing:
TURKISH OR ITALIAN FOOD?
Mycroft has to read Greg's handwriting thrice before the actual meaning registers with him. Oh. He means--oh. Ohhhhh. Um.
What should he say? Should he even say anything? Would he even have time--
Mycroft cuts off that thought before the question mark can appear. That's an excuse, not a reason. He stares at the blinking cursor, and thinks it must be mocking him. His brain is going blank, and he wonders if this is what happens when you fall in love, or might be, or something. If it is, thank heaven it hasn't happened earlier, he would never have gotten anything done.
Suddenly, he tastes blood, and realizes he's worried his lip so much the skin has broken. He sucks on the cut as he types, very precisely, "Didn't you say something about coffee? Believe it or not, sitting in front of a coffee shop with...." He stops that sentence when he realizes he doesn't know how to end it, either for him or Greg. He starts again: "Believe it or not, sitting in front of a coffee shop and relaxing is actually more exotic to me than foreign food."
New piece of paper, and an intent look as Greg bends over the windowsill to write.
COFFEE SHOP 10 MINUTES AWAY FROM SCOTLAND YARD, ON PARK STREET.
Mycroft raises an eyebrow. "It's almost eleven o' clock at night," he types. "I don't think coffee shops stay open that late, unless I'm even more out of touch with normality than I'd originally thought."
He hits Enter before the fact that Greg has asked him out, pretty much, and he's accepted, sort of, is picked up by the part of his brain that controls rational thought. This is definitely not rational.
Mycroft isn't at all surprised to find that it doesn't really matter anymore.
Greg shakes his head at the camera, smiling crooked and wide, and quickly scrawls below the previous sentence:
DEFINITELY NOT NOW. TOMORROW AROUND NOON?
Mycroft takes a second to look up current events around the city (extremely current events - the last update is dated three minutes ago), and grimaces when he sees the top.
Not giving himself time to think about what he's doing, he types, "Tomorrow at noon is going to be work for you. You've got another body. Looks like a normal murder, nothing to bring Sherlock in for, but still work. I could show up, though."
Greg thinks it over, and nods at the camera--hugely, obviously--before gesturing to the computer.
Sitting down at the screen, he types in: "Excitement will have to wait for another time. I'm pretty good at that, though."
As far as shots in the dark go, it's a BB gun being fired off into the space between Earth and Mars, but the hell with it--he knows about Chris and Silver and Will, he probably knows what kind of coffee he gets in the morning. And he started it, anyways.
--
Mycroft nervously taps his umbrella on the floor of the car, finding a rhythm, probably annoying the hell out of the driver, but there are butterflies in his stomach and if he thought he knew the meaning of that saying before, he was wrong.
God, this is crazy, this is stupid, a million things could go wrong--
And this is how normal people did it.
Mycroft has never had so much respect for normal people before.
"Stop here," he tells the driver, and gets out of the car. They're a house or two away from the crime scene: far enough away to keep the police officers happy, and close enough that he can walk. It's cold out, as well, and he wraps his coat tighter around himself to keep out the midwinter chill. His teeth find the edge of his lip as he walks, and he sharply tells himself to stop it, he doesn't want to look like a teenager.
Taking a deep breath, he ducks under the crime scene tape, keeping a tight hold on the sphere in his hand. Just before he enters the room with all the activity in it, he checks his watch. 11:58. Close enough.
Greg is standing near the body, in a group of other policemen and -women. He catches sight of Mycroft, does a double-take, and then begins walking towards him, trying to block his view of the body at the same time. "Oi! You can't be in here, didn't you see the--"
He stops short as Mycroft presents him with the orange that he's kept hidden behind his back.
"Black, two sugars?"
Greg looks down at the orange in Mycroft's hand, up into his face. "Excuse us, one moment," he says hurriedly to a group of blank faces, and grabs at Mycroft and hauls him off into the hallway.
He's tall. Easily six feet. He's impeccably dressed, his suit perfectly tailored and ironed as though it were hanging on a store mannequin. He's carrying an umbrella for some reason, even though the sky is partly cloudy and it's been snowing the last few days, and he smells very good--very expensive.
His hair is lighter than Sherlock's, a softer shade, and he's not as pale; his eyes are less icy-sharp, more calm, and his nose is more pronounced. It's the exact same air of command, the same look--the look that dissects the world in detail, disassembling it atom by atom.
Greg is staring.
"You came," he says, a sound of disbelief, you're real, and mentally smacks himself upside the head. "I mean--um--thank you. It's good to see you, you--you look good." His fingers close around the orange, lingering there before taking it carefully from Mycroft's hand.
Greg's voice is low, and, even though he keeps tripping over his tongue, calming. Probably a handy trait for a police officer. Mycroft is somehow reassured at Greg's nervousness, as well, as if Greg is saying, Yes, it's okay that your brain is giving you up as a lost cause.
"So do you," he says, softly, following the conversation that's taking place out loud. Greg looks - not tired, not like he hasn't gotten enough sleep, but world-weary. Like he's seen too much to be really afraid of anything anymore. He's got work clothes on, probably clothes he doesn't mind too much if they get blood on them. He looks better than he did in the camera's lens; part of that is just the lighting, and the area, but part of it is the way he carries himself, different when he's around people than when he's at home.
Greg's hair is dark, silvering at the edges, and his eyes are doing the same. His hand is closing reflexively around the orange, he's fidgeting with it - a nervous habit, like Mycroft biting at his lip, probably developed early in childhood-
He cuts off the inner monologue that's giving him this information and tells himself to relax. It's not like Greg is a stranger. He reaches for the hand with the orange and holds it up to the light. "Oranges in winter," he says, and then focuses on the hand he's holding. Three angry red lines mar the surface, parallel to each other. "Is Silver not at friendly as you'd hoped?"
Greg laughs at that, looking down. "Silver's protective of his food dish. I think he thinks it's going to be taken away for good every time I pick it up, he's all ribs and foul temper. I was going to stop by the pet store after work and get a bed for him to sleep in, in case he drops by again--"
He's rambling, he needs to stop this. "I sound like a dotty old cat lady, right?" he chuckles again, looking awkward. "Sorry. I--I didn't think you'd remember, about the oranges. It's... thank you."
(I still miss my mother, and her flowers and her bowl of oranges, he doesn't say. I miss Chris. Sometimes I miss being friends with Will. And in the middle of it you walk right in--)
"What about you?" he says, looking up. "What's your favourite colour?"
Mycroft blinks as he realizes he doesn't actually know. He looks at Greg, then blurts out, "Hazel," then berates himself for it because that wasn't really the most intelligent thing in the world to say, and now he's going to ask why and it will be silly-sounding.
And there was something Greg wasn't saying, just a second ago, when his eyes darkened for an instant, like the sky before a stroke of lightning, and Mycroft wants to know what it is, but knows better than to ask.
He uses Loki's trick of saying something to gets someone off of a particular subject, something that shoots off from the conversation rather than orbiting it. "Silver and silver," he says instead. "You match."
Hazel. Someone's eyes? Greg rubs his thumb over Mycroft's knuckles, contemplatively. "And both of us are old and cranky, so it's fate. We even eat mice the same way." He does a theatrical double-take for Mycroft's benefit. "I mean, er--"
Mycroft's laughter cuts Greg off mid-sentence, surprising them both.
"You know, in some countries, mouse is considered a delicacy. No, not really," he adds at Greg's expression, still grinning. "I should like to meet this cat of yours sometimes, he sounds like a good judge of character. After all, he did end up living with you."
Through all this, neither of them have moved their hands from about eye-level in between them, Greg still holding onto the orange.
Feeling the warmth of Greg's hand under his fingertips, Mycroft thinks that he doesn't really mind having half his vision be an orange, if this is the trade-off.
"He ended up living with me, he's a horrible judge of character," Greg protests, rubbing at the back of his neck, and then squeezes Mycroft's hand gently before letting it fall--the orange still clasped in Mycroft's fingers. "You hang on it, the coffee's on me. Let's go before Sally and Andy find us."
As he makes for the door, to hold it open: "Just how much excitement are you looking for, Mr. Holmes? For future reference?"
Mycroft starts at his last name, and doesn't bother to hide it. He's already decided he won't lie to Greg, that includes this.
Meeting Greg's eyes steadily - hazel eyes, he must have figured it out by now, especially since he hasn't asked - Mycroft says, "Call me Mycroft, 'Mr.' makes me feel like an old man. And as for the excitement?" He pauses and tilts his head to the side, pretending to think. "For future reference... as much as you're willing to give me."
God, did he really just say that? It's not on a computer screen, he can't take it back now. Mycroft can't decide whether this is a good or bad thing.
He goes with good.
"I'll hold you to that," Greg says, his mouth quirking up as he touches Mycroft's wrist--just above the orange--and opens the door for them to step outside. "Fair warning."
Note: Roughly half the fic can be found in the comments below, from the back-and-forth messaging; this is just the whole thing put together.
discple HOLMES
Greg rolls his eyes at the captcha he's gotten, pinching the bridge of his nose with one hand. As if Sherlock at the crime scene wasn't enough. "No more Holmes for today" he types in instead, just as a joke--it'll come up with another error message and he'll put in the right one, no big deal.
He doesn't expect what comes up next.
Mycroft stares at the screen. Captcha is a pet project he'd picked up from a... friend who'd recently been... deposed. He'd gotten Anthea - no, she'd changed it again, it was Marie this week - to program it so that the more... unique responses were saved into his computer, with the most recent at the top.
God, he even thinks diplomatically. He needs a break.
The response at the top, dated just a few seconds ago, catches his eye. "No more Holmes for today."
All of the usual reactions - paranoia, curiosity, and so on - are tightly controlled, and prove to be irrelevant when he zeroes in on the user and discovers it to be one Greg Lestrade.
Then he takes control of the system for a second so he can stall Greg with an ad, and then he sits there blinking for far too long, because internationally respected leaders of the world do not blink like lovesick teenagers and to hell with international leaders of the world.
Well, fine. If he's going to break completely out of the character he presents to others, he might as well make it complete.
Smirking a little, he types in, "tomorrow, then?" into the box demanding Captcha's test.
Let's see what he does with that.
Greg's hands are hovering over the keyboard and mouse, set to type in some blurry pixellated gibberish, when they freeze. Those definitely aren't random words.
Is--no, come off it, there's no way.
Is the captcha box talking to him?
"Holmes should only be administered once a week. No heavy machinery or driving afterwards," he types in slowly, warily, both eyebrows raised.
Mycroft pauses the program he's working on, to give Greg his full attention. His lips quirk up again at the response, and he quickly types in a reply.
But just before clicking Submit, he pauses. Should he let Greg know to whom he's talking - well, typing? Does Greg even know there's more than one Holmes?
Better to err on the side of anonymity. Mycroft deletes his first response and spends a few minutes deciding on another one, knowing that Greg's computer will show only a loading page.
"Overdose much?" Of course, he could just find out everything about Greg through his network, but where would be the fun in that?
Yes, that's the Captcha box, right there, talking to him. Greg considers the possibilities of being really, really drunk and not knowing it, being really, really high and not knowing it, and having finally--blessedly--lost his sanity.
But he's completely forgotten the comment he was going to leave on his brother's blog, and he doesn't care. This is fun.
He types in: "Yes! Should be committed. Me or him? Don't rightly know."
After a moment's pause, before he clicks the 'submit' button, he amends it to: "Yes! Should be committed. Me or him? Don't rightly know. Not talking to him, am I?"
Mycroft sits back and tilts his head to the side. This is new; he hasn't heard of it yet.
Well, Sherlock can be a bloody idiot sometimes. Most times. Even if he is all that clever (which he's not, he just shows it off).
He is in complete agreement with Greg, and says as much.
"Sherlock= pest." A persistent, which is so much worse.
Greg laughs aloud, his face lighting up, then shakes his head. He pauses over the keyboard, his hands hovering.
"Mosquito," he enters, then pulls a rueful face. "That's not really right, more like a bee. Necessary and capable of making honey, but stings like hell all the same. If not Sherlock, then who is this?"
Mycroft reads Greg's answer and chuckles. True enough, he thinks, along with the annoying buzzing in your ear.
But what should he say? He could tell the truth - but that would lead to the inevitable questions about how can you do this and so on, and besides which, it would be boring. There's something mysterious about appearing as only an automated system that has apparently, suddenly, grown a mind.
"Captcha box" is what Mycroft finally types in. It's not a very good answer, but he only has two words to say something in, and it's certainly a less complicated answer than "his brother." A better one, too.
Right. And the captcha box just happens to know about Sherlock.
Greg shakes his head again, slower, and his eyes sparkle as he taps briefly against the keyboard before replying. "Magic? Skynet? A 15-year-old with his iPhone? Please, I have to know."
Mycroft bites his lower lips for a second, before realizing that he's doing it and stopping. He stares off into space for a second, wondering what to say. Should he tell--
Wait. Oh, that's good. And true, in multiple ways. It'll be interesting to see which way Greg takes it as.
"Big Brother" Mycroft enters into Captcha, grinning like he hasn't in far too long.
"Do it to Julia!" Greg types in promptly (in the back of his head: Big Brother, big brother who thinks Sherlock's a pest--he's going to corner John the next time he sees him), and adds, "Bit of a challenge using captcha, isn't it? You only get two words, like Twitter but worse."
Yes, it is a challenge, Mycroft thinks, because I want to say, "There are lots of oppurtunities for ambiguition, like that one just past," but this damn box won't let me.
He settles for typing in, "*shrug* works, no?"
"Maybe," Greg replies, trying to suppress a grin but failing. "I'd prefer something more face-to-face. Do you control all the captcha in the world or what?"
Face-to-face, hmm? A small shrieking voice in the back of Mycroft's head tells him that this is a bad idea. It sounds like Sherlock, so he ignores it and hacks into the CCTV camera right nearest Greg's house, which happens to be outside the window of the room he's in. How handy.
"Say hi" he types into Captcha, manipulating the camera so that it's "looking" directly at Greg.
Say hi? Greg peers over his shoulder in bewilderment, around the room, out the window--
He does not hide under the desk, but it's a near thing. He does jump about fifteen feet and send the chair skittering backwards.
When he manages to get his heart rate under control, he grabs a piece of paper and a pen, and scribbles furiously for a few minutes before sliding open the window and holding the sign up. It reads: HI. HOW ARE YOU? HOW WAS YOUR DAY? MAYBE SOME TIME IN THE FUTURE I WILL BUY YOU A COFFEE AND WE WILL TALK LIKE NORMAL PEOPLE.
Like normal people... No.
"Normal = boring" Mycroft types into Captcha - no again. Hang on, isn't there...?
He uses the camera to look around the area for something to hack into and write with - ah! One of those handy scrolling-text devices. Not useful on its own, but whoever is in charge of it has hooked it up to the internet so they can change the signal manually. Even better, it's in full view of the window.
He sets the text on the slowest speed and the thickest letters, and types in, "Normal people are boring. This is fun. And how can you offer me coffee if you don't know who I am?"
Right, this is officially certified insane now. Greg puts his hands over his face, laughing helplessly, and turns the paper over to write on the back. He holds it up:
I'M A POLICE OFFICER AND I'M VERY CLEVER AND I'M REALLY INTERESTED IN KNOWING NOW, I'LL TRY TO FIND OUT. THIS IS BETTER THAN NORMAL. YOU COULD HELP ME ALONG A BIT, THOUGH.
Mycroft finds himself biting his lower lip to stifle a grin again, and doesn't bother making himself stop. He tilts the camera to the side, as if it's "thinking," as he types a reply.
"I'm a civil servant-" he cuts off there and deletes it. For some reason, he doesn't want to give Greg the same lie he gives everyone else.
This is stupid, this is insane, this is a really bad idea, the little voice in his head chants, but he hasn't been listening to it so far, and he sees no good reason to start now.
"I'm the British government and I'm clever too and I don't know much about you beyond your name and what you just said but I could find out if you want me to. You could type in the response box, it'll save paper if nothing else."
Then he sits back, still worrying his lower lip, and hopes he hasn't just scared Greg away from replying.
Greg looks from the scrolltext to the camera for a moment, looking thoughtful. Then he moves back from the window and sits down at the desk, typing briefly and then leaning back in his chair as his heart does an odd stutter-thud:
"Yes, I do want you to."
Mycroft stares at the screen. He hadn't actually expected Greg to give him permission. Or take him seriously in the first place, for that matter.
But now that he has....
Mycroft spends a few minutes pulling up the details of Greg's life: birth certificate, last doctor's appointment, job records, clips of conversations. It feels strangely intimate, in a way, learning so much about this man that he's never seen with his own eyes. It's like learning all of his secrets, having his complete trust that he will never tell another soul.
He swallows as he realizes that that is exactly what this is, and types, "Your name is Greg Lestrade. You were born 45 years ago to Nancy and Drew Lestrade. As of your last doctor's appointment, you weighed 78 kg and stood at 180 cm. You work as a DI for Scotland Yard, where you occasionally give cases to Sherlock Holmes, at his insistence." This doesn't come from the computer - Sherlock's told him that he's found a job, and won't listen to Mycroft' protests that he doesn't get paid. "You were married, but divorced, and lost custody of your one child. He is twelve and has written you exactly one letter. You have not written back. Since then, you have had a handful of lovers, as well as experimenting with your sexuality with a friend. You don't define yourself as straight or gay, but instead figure that it depends on the person." This is where he has to be careful - this isn't just height and weight, but who he actually is, and Mycroft could very easily step over a line he didn't know was there.
"You love your work, even though it can be gruesome. You love catching criminals and feel responsible for each one that gets away. You think Sherlock's deductive ability is amazing, but won't admit it, and you've begun to, intentionally or not, mimic some of what he does. I could teach you more of that," Mycroft types. He pauses, then deletes the last sentence. There's a good chance Greg won't even want to talk to him after this, much less listen to him talk.
"Your favorite color is orange," he types instead, and for some reason, this feels more personal than any of the other things he's said. "You bought your house just a few years ago, having living in a flat before, and now regularly feed the neighborhood stray cat. You know, if you're not careful, he'll move in with you."
Heart in his throat and tongue between his teeth, Mycroft hits Enter.
Greg has to focus on breathing for a moment, two. He stares down at the keys and swallows.
"I call the cat Silver," he types at last, slowly. "Not really original but I couldn't think of anything else. I like the colour orange because my mum always insisted on having fresh oranges in the house during the winter, no matter what they cost, it was her favourite thing.
I'd never tell him in a million years, but I keep worrying about Sherlock--I think he's standing on the edge of a knife all the time and I want to him to get off and stop doing the stupid balancing act to show off. He annoys the hell out of me sometimes but I don't know where I'd be without him.
I still have that letter from Chris on the bookshelf near my bed, I couldn't get rid of it. He has his mum's hair, I remember that, the exact colour and softness. But he's got my eyes."
He stops because he can't keep typing, because his chest hurts at the memory, and his mobile pings at that moment. He grabs it off the desk and checks the messages: it's from Sally, down at HQ.
"I have to go, I'm sorry," he types in quickly, hitting Enter and powering off the computer as he grabs his things. His heart is still pounding, and as he flicks the light off he shoots the computer a wary look--as though it could come awake and talk to him again, as though the whole thing were a hallucination.
Mycroft's shoulders slump slightly and he exhales - it had taken Greg a long time to reply, and Mycroft had been almost sure he'd been saying something to the effect of, "That's creepy, go away, you stalker." Having closed the window with the camera's view, since he already knew what Greg looked like and didn't want to linger in the system, he couldn't be sure what Greg was doing.
A smile touches his lips, gentler than when he'd been trying to stifle laughter, and not even the mention of Sherlock can wipe it from his face.
"I used to hate cats," he types, because isn't this what you're supposed to do when you want to be close to someone, you tell them about yourself? Telling your companion about himself isn't the most orthodox of methods, but the result is the same. "Mummy had one of those hairless ones - the Egyptian ones, whatever they're called. It did nothing but hiss at me. My college roommate had his own cat, a much more agreeable sort. I made friends with it. Britain has well-funded shelters as a result.
"Your mother sounds like a wonderful woman. I should like to meet her sometime, if it's all right with you. Don't worry - I won't read out her own life to her." He takes a minute to remember one of those smiling-face things that people make out of keystrokes, Sherlock told him all of them once, how do you - oh yes. "; ) Will you be back soon?"
He hits Enter and waits for a bit. Usually Greg replies very quickly, so unless he's writing an essay, there should be something by now. Mycroft waits another five minutes, then tentatively types, "Greg? Are you there?"
Nothing. He's either already gone or ignoring Mycroft, and as hard as he tries, as much as Greg's answer belies that, for some reason the second one is much easier to believe.
He shakes his head, quickly, once. He's let himself get too attached. He should have listened to the voice in the back of his head. If Greg's gone, then fine. He has a life outside of talking to apparently sentient pieces of machinery, and now he has to attend to it.
Mycroft clicks away from the screen, setting the scroll-text back to the original words, and sorts out a few things that he's left unsupervised, before someone knocks on the door to his study, making him jump.
"Yes?" he calls. "Anthea" steps quietly into the doorway, barely sparing him a glance before turning back to her Blackberry. "Sir, the Russian embassy is waiting to begin negotiations, there's been a major blackout of cameras in Bristol, and I need your signature on the Halver Confederation documents, among other things. Can you spare a moment?"
Mycroft stands and puts the computer to sleep. It's never just "a moment." He'll be lucky to get any sleep in the next twenty-four hours. He begins to screw his head on straight again, half-listening to "Anthea" as she begins to fill him in on the Russian situation. He puts Greg firmly out of his mind, and, taking the documents and a pen from Anthea, walks out of the room without a backward glance.
At the crime scene the next day, when they're standing around a dead body and Sherlock is berating Anderson for something or other, Greg pulls John aside.
"Sherlock's got an older brother, doesn't he?" he says urgently, nodding towards the detective.
"Yeah, Mycroft Holmes. Pleasant chap, he kidnaps people a lot." John frowns and folds his arms, shivering in the cold. "Have you met him?"
"Not exactly," Greg says ruefully, looking around. "Listen--he says he's the British government, is that right?"
"As far as I know." John shrugs, looking at him curiously. "What did he say to you?"
"My life story," says Greg, rubbing a hand over his face. He deduced me like Sherlock does and it wasn't even--I didn't mind, I felt... safe.
John's eyebrows go up, and he realizes about two seconds too late that he said all of that out loud. But John is smiling, that crooked wry grin. "He and Sherlock don't get--"
"Lestrade," Sherlock's voice calls across. "Do you have an address for the man's ex-wife and children?"
Greg gets home late, tosses his shoes into one corner and drops his jacket on the floor. Settling into the desk chair, he flicks on the computer and rubs at his eyes, shifting uneasily and chewing on his lower lip, before pulling up his brother's blog.
Well. Here goes nothing. "Hello? Are you there?" he types into the Captcha prompt.
Mycroft cracks a yawn as soon as the Russian delegate leaves and he's able to drop his calm, polite, diplomatic mask. He stayed up late into the night negotiating and getting nowhere fast, until they agreed to sleep on the dilemma and rejoin the next day.
They sent one person out of their convoy of twelve or so, and he was very well prepared to deal with anything Mycroft threw at him. He had to spend all day manoeuvring the man into painting himself into a corner, and he's dreading the work that has probably backed up in his inbox as a result.
Knowing that some of it is time-sensitive, Mycroft wakes up his computer quickly and gets into his email. After much longer than he would like and much shorter than he should probably work, he gets sick of it and opens up the Captcha program on a lark.
The first entry hits him like a brick upside the head. It's Greg. He really was gone, he wasn't just ignoring Mycroft. Mycroft's stomach does a weird sort of flip-flop, first pleasantly, when he sees the question, and then much less so, when he sees the timestamp.
An hour and a half ago. Damn.
No time to take over the scroll-text. Mycroft clicks into Captcha and types, "YES! You?"
Greg has almost given it up as a bad job, is about ready to switch off the computer and go to sleep... one more try, just for the hell of it.
The Captcha prompt comes up, and it takes him a moment to process, and then he grins wide and bends over the keyboard--alert, wakeful, eyes bright.
"Didn't mean to leave you in the lurch like that, work called--dead banker, big jewel theft. How's being clever and the British government working out?"
Mycroft can't suppress his grin at the reply. He feels like a thirteen-year-old, which is stupid, but he doesn't care because Greg is there, which is also stupid, and now he's rambling to himself.
Mycroft quickly types into Captcha, "Just a minute," and then opens up the scroll-text. Luckily, it's rather late, so there isn't much chance of a random passerby seeing it.
"Tired. Russian fellow knows what he's doing. Has the cat come around again?"
Greg waits obediently, rubbing his fingers over his jaw--he needs a good shave, the stubble is getting prickly--and wonders. Smacks himself upside the head, ducks his head out the window, and smiles.
SILVER'S ON MY COUCH, he writes on a fresh piece of paper, to hold up to the camera. HIS COUCH NOW THOUGH. SORRY TO INFORM YOU THAT YOU HAVE COMPETITION FOR RULER OF THE WORLD.
Mycroft waits for the response from Captcha, but nothing is forthcoming. He refreshes the screen twice before he remembers what Greg did the last time Mycroft began using the scroll-text.
He opens up the camera he'd used the last time, and zooms in on the paper Greg's holding. The image is dark and blurry, but he can just make out the letters. He grins at the last bit and thinks a second before typing, so quickly that he has to go back and get rid of the typos.
"Tell him that while competition is always a good thing, one of the major prerequisites for that position is speaking a variety of languages. None of them, as far as I know, are Cat. However, I will take into account that I now have a rival for the title of Important Being To Greg Lestrade."
Greg turns the paper over and writes, his head bent and his face invisible in the lamplight. After a moment's time, he holds it up again.
NOT REALLY, YOU DON'T.
WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOU'RE NOT TALKING TO RUSSIANS?
It is only, of course, after Mycroft has hit Enter and watched Greg begin writing that the significance of what he's just said hits him. Luckily, this is also around the same time he adjusts the brightness on his computer and the nearest streetlamp, so he can see what Greg is saying.
He presses his thumb over his lips unconsciously, as if something will escape them if he doesn't, and types, more slowly this time, "Work, mostly. Talk to intriguing DIs with a gift for snark while masquerading as a piece of annoying technology and the shop sign across the street. Try to get Sherlock to come around and stop being an idiot." Now that he thinks about it, it's a little pathetic how much of his day is just working. Well, he does have several countries to run. But still. "Not much, actually. Mostly work." Stupid. He's said that already. Mycroft deletes the last two words, replacing them with, "What do you do when you're not catching jewelry thieves?"
Greg rubs the back of his neck, looking ruefully, and finds a new piece of paper:
I PLAY RUGBY AND BILLIARDS BUT I'M NOT GOOD AT EITHER OF THEM. I LIKE BUILDING AND FIXING THINGS AND DOING CARPENTRY. I WATCH ALL THE PREMIER LEAGUE GAMES AND DO SOME VOLUNTEERING ON THE WEEKENDS. MORE DULL THAN INTRIGUING.
YOU SHOULD BE FLYING AROUND THE WORLD AND HAVING ADVENTURES, WITH YOUR BRAIN.
Mycroft smiles wryly. "A very wise person once told me, 'An adventure is someone else having a terrible time a thousand miles away.' Well, no they didn't, it's from a book, but it's still true." He frowns. If he just says that, they're going to be stuck for something to say. They're not having a face-to-face conversation, they can't really have a companionable silence.
After starting to worry his lower lip again (a habit that he barely notices by this time), he types, "Both of us clearly need more excitement in our lives. Got any ideas?"
Greg flips the piece of paper over, pauses for a long moment before writing:
TURKISH OR ITALIAN FOOD?
Mycroft has to read Greg's handwriting thrice before the actual meaning registers with him. Oh. He means--oh. Ohhhhh. Um.
What should he say? Should he even say anything? Would he even have time--
Mycroft cuts off that thought before the question mark can appear. That's an excuse, not a reason. He stares at the blinking cursor, and thinks it must be mocking him. His brain is going blank, and he wonders if this is what happens when you fall in love, or might be, or something. If it is, thank heaven it hasn't happened earlier, he would never have gotten anything done.
Suddenly, he tastes blood, and realizes he's worried his lip so much the skin has broken. He sucks on the cut as he types, very precisely, "Didn't you say something about coffee? Believe it or not, sitting in front of a coffee shop with...." He stops that sentence when he realizes he doesn't know how to end it, either for him or Greg. He starts again: "Believe it or not, sitting in front of a coffee shop and relaxing is actually more exotic to me than foreign food."
New piece of paper, and an intent look as Greg bends over the windowsill to write.
COFFEE SHOP 10 MINUTES AWAY FROM SCOTLAND YARD, ON PARK STREET.
Mycroft raises an eyebrow. "It's almost eleven o' clock at night," he types. "I don't think coffee shops stay open that late, unless I'm even more out of touch with normality than I'd originally thought."
He hits Enter before the fact that Greg has asked him out, pretty much, and he's accepted, sort of, is picked up by the part of his brain that controls rational thought. This is definitely not rational.
Mycroft isn't at all surprised to find that it doesn't really matter anymore.
Greg shakes his head at the camera, smiling crooked and wide, and quickly scrawls below the previous sentence:
DEFINITELY NOT NOW. TOMORROW AROUND NOON?
Mycroft takes a second to look up current events around the city (extremely current events - the last update is dated three minutes ago), and grimaces when he sees the top.
Not giving himself time to think about what he's doing, he types, "Tomorrow at noon is going to be work for you. You've got another body. Looks like a normal murder, nothing to bring Sherlock in for, but still work. I could show up, though."
Greg thinks it over, and nods at the camera--hugely, obviously--before gesturing to the computer.
Sitting down at the screen, he types in: "Excitement will have to wait for another time. I'm pretty good at that, though."
As far as shots in the dark go, it's a BB gun being fired off into the space between Earth and Mars, but the hell with it--he knows about Chris and Silver and Will, he probably knows what kind of coffee he gets in the morning. And he started it, anyways.
--
Mycroft nervously taps his umbrella on the floor of the car, finding a rhythm, probably annoying the hell out of the driver, but there are butterflies in his stomach and if he thought he knew the meaning of that saying before, he was wrong.
God, this is crazy, this is stupid, a million things could go wrong--
And this is how normal people did it.
Mycroft has never had so much respect for normal people before.
"Stop here," he tells the driver, and gets out of the car. They're a house or two away from the crime scene: far enough away to keep the police officers happy, and close enough that he can walk. It's cold out, as well, and he wraps his coat tighter around himself to keep out the midwinter chill. His teeth find the edge of his lip as he walks, and he sharply tells himself to stop it, he doesn't want to look like a teenager.
Taking a deep breath, he ducks under the crime scene tape, keeping a tight hold on the sphere in his hand. Just before he enters the room with all the activity in it, he checks his watch. 11:58. Close enough.
Greg is standing near the body, in a group of other policemen and -women. He catches sight of Mycroft, does a double-take, and then begins walking towards him, trying to block his view of the body at the same time. "Oi! You can't be in here, didn't you see the--"
He stops short as Mycroft presents him with the orange that he's kept hidden behind his back.
"Black, two sugars?"
Greg looks down at the orange in Mycroft's hand, up into his face. "Excuse us, one moment," he says hurriedly to a group of blank faces, and grabs at Mycroft and hauls him off into the hallway.
He's tall. Easily six feet. He's impeccably dressed, his suit perfectly tailored and ironed as though it were hanging on a store mannequin. He's carrying an umbrella for some reason, even though the sky is partly cloudy and it's been snowing the last few days, and he smells very good--very expensive.
His hair is lighter than Sherlock's, a softer shade, and he's not as pale; his eyes are less icy-sharp, more calm, and his nose is more pronounced. It's the exact same air of command, the same look--the look that dissects the world in detail, disassembling it atom by atom.
Greg is staring.
"You came," he says, a sound of disbelief, you're real, and mentally smacks himself upside the head. "I mean--um--thank you. It's good to see you, you--you look good." His fingers close around the orange, lingering there before taking it carefully from Mycroft's hand.
Greg's voice is low, and, even though he keeps tripping over his tongue, calming. Probably a handy trait for a police officer. Mycroft is somehow reassured at Greg's nervousness, as well, as if Greg is saying, Yes, it's okay that your brain is giving you up as a lost cause.
"So do you," he says, softly, following the conversation that's taking place out loud. Greg looks - not tired, not like he hasn't gotten enough sleep, but world-weary. Like he's seen too much to be really afraid of anything anymore. He's got work clothes on, probably clothes he doesn't mind too much if they get blood on them. He looks better than he did in the camera's lens; part of that is just the lighting, and the area, but part of it is the way he carries himself, different when he's around people than when he's at home.
Greg's hair is dark, silvering at the edges, and his eyes are doing the same. His hand is closing reflexively around the orange, he's fidgeting with it - a nervous habit, like Mycroft biting at his lip, probably developed early in childhood-
He cuts off the inner monologue that's giving him this information and tells himself to relax. It's not like Greg is a stranger. He reaches for the hand with the orange and holds it up to the light. "Oranges in winter," he says, and then focuses on the hand he's holding. Three angry red lines mar the surface, parallel to each other. "Is Silver not at friendly as you'd hoped?"
Greg laughs at that, looking down. "Silver's protective of his food dish. I think he thinks it's going to be taken away for good every time I pick it up, he's all ribs and foul temper. I was going to stop by the pet store after work and get a bed for him to sleep in, in case he drops by again--"
He's rambling, he needs to stop this. "I sound like a dotty old cat lady, right?" he chuckles again, looking awkward. "Sorry. I--I didn't think you'd remember, about the oranges. It's... thank you."
(I still miss my mother, and her flowers and her bowl of oranges, he doesn't say. I miss Chris. Sometimes I miss being friends with Will. And in the middle of it you walk right in--)
"What about you?" he says, looking up. "What's your favourite colour?"
Mycroft blinks as he realizes he doesn't actually know. He looks at Greg, then blurts out, "Hazel," then berates himself for it because that wasn't really the most intelligent thing in the world to say, and now he's going to ask why and it will be silly-sounding.
And there was something Greg wasn't saying, just a second ago, when his eyes darkened for an instant, like the sky before a stroke of lightning, and Mycroft wants to know what it is, but knows better than to ask.
He uses Loki's trick of saying something to gets someone off of a particular subject, something that shoots off from the conversation rather than orbiting it. "Silver and silver," he says instead. "You match."
Hazel. Someone's eyes? Greg rubs his thumb over Mycroft's knuckles, contemplatively. "And both of us are old and cranky, so it's fate. We even eat mice the same way." He does a theatrical double-take for Mycroft's benefit. "I mean, er--"
Mycroft's laughter cuts Greg off mid-sentence, surprising them both.
"You know, in some countries, mouse is considered a delicacy. No, not really," he adds at Greg's expression, still grinning. "I should like to meet this cat of yours sometimes, he sounds like a good judge of character. After all, he did end up living with you."
Through all this, neither of them have moved their hands from about eye-level in between them, Greg still holding onto the orange.
Feeling the warmth of Greg's hand under his fingertips, Mycroft thinks that he doesn't really mind having half his vision be an orange, if this is the trade-off.
"He ended up living with me, he's a horrible judge of character," Greg protests, rubbing at the back of his neck, and then squeezes Mycroft's hand gently before letting it fall--the orange still clasped in Mycroft's fingers. "You hang on it, the coffee's on me. Let's go before Sally and Andy find us."
As he makes for the door, to hold it open: "Just how much excitement are you looking for, Mr. Holmes? For future reference?"
Mycroft starts at his last name, and doesn't bother to hide it. He's already decided he won't lie to Greg, that includes this.
Meeting Greg's eyes steadily - hazel eyes, he must have figured it out by now, especially since he hasn't asked - Mycroft says, "Call me Mycroft, 'Mr.' makes me feel like an old man. And as for the excitement?" He pauses and tilts his head to the side, pretending to think. "For future reference... as much as you're willing to give me."
God, did he really just say that? It's not on a computer screen, he can't take it back now. Mycroft can't decide whether this is a good or bad thing.
He goes with good.
"I'll hold you to that," Greg says, his mouth quirking up as he touches Mycroft's wrist--just above the orange--and opens the door for them to step outside. "Fair warning."