Archive of Our Own ^beta

[. . .]

“You better tell him where you want to kip, then,” Lestrade said, nodding toward the driver. 

“I think it’s going to have to be Bayswater again. Do you mind?”

Greg shook his head, forever bemused by the wonder of a choice of flats every night. Mycroft never understood Greg’s view of it, either. Mycroft made his choice based on schedule and mood - did he have to be in Parliament the next day, or in Prague? Was Greg staying over? Would they have time for breakfast, or would they be eating en route and a kitchen was surplus to requirements? And Greg had stayed over so many times in so many of the flats now that he had at least one change of clothes at all of them, himself. It felt strange that Mycroft’s seemingly endless material resources had actually produced a more nomadic lifestyle, but they stayed over at Greg’s flat occasionally too. Not as often, it was true, but Mycroft still seemed to cherish the domesticity of it. 

[. . .]

Mycroft glanced toward the bed, but he must not have been able to see Greg’s eyes open, watching him. He moved back behind the bathroom door again, and the next time the door moved, there was Mycroft’s paisley robe draping loosely down along him, the belt hanging unused. He wore his striped pajama bottoms, but his chest was bare under the robe, as were his feet.  Once again, something about the way he moved was striking Greg as slightly off. 

Normally, his movements were smooth. Languid. He had long, elegant legs, and while he might be intent on whatever he was doing, he was never rushed. It was all very efficient - Mycroft would see in a glance what would have taken Sherlock two long minutes of silence with Anderson’s back to the room. Poised, in control, effortlessly powerful, his height registering subliminally as he surveyed a room, Greg had thought of him as a lion, a king of the Sahara: he could see for miles, and didn’t do his own hunting. Well, not unless something got too close. He never needed to do the hunting himself. Or the killing. He had people. It had amused Greg even more when he’d remembered that related masculine lions did not get along. Lions? Lions are fine. As long as you can see them.

It was the way the robe moved that convinced Greg. He’d expected it to trail Mycroft neatly, the way it hung open. But one side of it flared slightly, as though Mycroft had stepped out of line. Greg wouldn’t have noticed at all if Mycroft hadn’t worn the robe, if it were in daylight, if Mycroft had been in a suit. But that slight ripple answered the question - Mycroft had taken his sleeping pill. Any thought Greg had had of greeting his partner amorously and welcoming him to bed died with that fact. If the pill had kicked in enough to affect Mycroft’s walk, then he must be well and truly away. Greg probably still could have made an advance, and Mycroft might even have responded, but it just seemed cruel, as he might not even have remembered in the morning. Coupled with the fact that Mycroft only ever used the pills if he absolutely needed to sleep and would not otherwise have been able to still his mind enough to allow it, and the decision was made. It explained the slight tremor he’d seen as Mycroft undressed, why Mycroft hadn’t seen Greg was awake, even why he had glanced out to the bedroom door. If the pill hit him right, he might be hearing things, or seeing things, even. 

Jeopardizing his awareness in such a way was against everything Greg had ever expected of Mycroft until he had come to understand the particular curse of the Holmes mind: restless, insatiable, omnivorous, at once their glory and their downfall. In Sherlock, it meant a tendency toward recreational substances, a craving for puzzles, something to sink his mental teeth into and devour in an exhausting frenzy before sinking into oblivion afterwards. Mycroft was more disciplined but also more limitless. Everything interested him, and he galloped through information, storing it away with no hint of limits. Sherlock might feel the need to delete huge tracts of what he considered useless knowledge, but in Mycroft’s mind, nothing was useless. He was constantly hooking something together, finding new connections, reconsidering everything in relation to everything else. It followed that a mind so sharp would be at least two-edged, being as indispensable to the world as the world was to it. Rare indeed were the days when Mycroft wasn’t dealing with someone’s crisis, and so he could not afford to be unavailable due to a prolonged sulk, as Sherlock could. He needed his mind to have a minimum amount of down time, and the most efficient manner was to make sure that his mind did get some rest, which was provided in the form of one small white tablet and a minimum of fuss.

 And so his cure was also two-edged: the price of resting his mind was that during those times, his mind was simply not responsible. Before Greg was regularly spending the night, Mycroft had found the pills made him eat. It was a strange side effect; bizarre and inconvenient, with consequences. Greg had been surprised by the discipline brought to bear and at once thwarted. Mycroft had become aware of the amnesia induced by the pills by the simple method of keeping a notebook beside the bed and leaving himself messages. He’d noted the fluctuation in his weight, the morning evidence in the kitchen of strange experiments in cooking, even crumbs in the bed, and begun taking notes of what the experience was like, finding that the pills made him hungry, if he hadn’t eaten recently, and when he tried moving his final mealtime later, the pills meant he simply didn’t care. Sometimes he would be able to hold out against what always seemed inconsequential at the time, but too often he simply did not care. Only Greg’s presence had derailed what had been settling into a very self-destructive routine: take the pill and gain the weight from ghostly half-meals, or skip the pill and work to exhaustion, with the longer recovery time that required.