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The first thing Mycroft notices is hair. Dark and dishevelled, thick enough that the odd temptation to stroke fingers through it is automatic, and laced through with glittering streaks of silver-grey. It's the opposite of Mycroft's own thin, artificially darkened ginger that will no doubt start receding when he reaches his thirties.
Going by nothing but the hair, Mycroft's mind instantly puts the age of the man standing over his table in his mid-forties. Then Mycroft's gaze shifts, dropping (oddly reluctantly) from that thick nest of hair down to the man's face, and his prediction of age flies out the window.
Bright, round, shadowless dark eyes. A young face, as young as Mycroft perhaps. A smile, wide and open and crooked.
The disparity between hair and brilliant youthful smile makes Mycroft's thoughts stutter, like a hitch in a video tape. He lowers the newspaper he was reading before this stranger approached, further thrown off when he sees the expectation in that smile and realises that something has been either implied or said directly and Mycroft somehow missed it.
He clears his throat, soft and mannered. “Pardon me?"
The man, the strange grey-haired young man, lofts his mug and plate. “I'll be in and out in a tick,” he says, and there's a rough thickness (and the west – Essex, ten years out) in his voice that is one more disparity considering the friendliness of his smile. “Only the place is mad this morning, and there's nowhere else...”
Mycroft glances around the cafe mostly to distract from the warmth trailing up his face. The place is rather busy this morning, all tables occupied and a line of people waiting at the counter.
He sits back and folds his newspaper closed, gesturing at the empty seat at his normal table as gracefully as he can manage. “Certainly.”
The man grins and slides into the chair, setting his dishes down with ceramic clinks. “Cheers.” He takes up his coffee again instantly, balancing it between both hands and all but burying his nose in it as if the caffeine could be absorbed through deep enough inhalations.
Mycroft watches him for a moment – calloused hands but not tanned or cracked from manual labour, threadbare jacket and ill-fitted, wrinkled white button-down: professional but not blue-collar. Holes in his ears from old earrings, tanline on his right middle finger from some well-worn ring that is unacceptable at his job. Working man, unmarried, middle class. No disparities there.
He turns back to his newspaper and cooling tea.
“Hope this isn't an imposition,” the man says after a sip of his coffee. “I figured you'd be on your own, since you always seem to be.”
The paper lowers again and Mycroft studies the man with new focus. “Excuse me?”
His companion grins. “I'm in here every morning, same as you. I've seen you go through that paper time and again, and no one's ever come round to sit with you."
Mycroft blinks in surprise. He looks around the cafe again, at the people around him he never worried might be paying him any mind. And no one else seems to be. He looks back at his companion, mouth opening to quiz him on his interest in Mycroft.
The man's hand is jutting halfway across the table, that crooked smile well in place. “Greg. Lestrade.”
Ingrained politeness has Mycroft returning the handshake before he can think twice about it. “Mycroft Holmes,” he says, formal.
Greg's grin grows wider. “Posh name, voice like the BBC. You're a student, right? I see you dragging books in here a lot. Oxbridge, I'm guessing.”
It takes willpower for Mycroft not to gape at the man, Greg. He takes his hand back carefully, folding his paper into quarters, and then again. “Oxford,” he confirms, unsure why he's saying it when he simply wants to be away from this interruption into his well-scheduled day.
He doesn't bother contributing his own observations, which have Greg pinned to the years he spent in Essex, the average grades he earned in school, the loss of his parents, a recently-ended relationship that shows in the cut of his hair and the beginnings of disrepair in his clothes. The evening out the night before that he's still feeling the affects of.
Mycroft has learned not to read people out loud. It never seems to end well.
He clears his throat, debating whether to simply stand up and surrender the table to the nosy (attractive, amiable, smiling) stranger.
“What are you studying, then?” Greg asks into the silence, sipping his coffee before tearing into the pastry on his plate.
No harm in answering, he thinks, though he wouldn't normally indulge in small talk with a total stranger. “History and politics.”
Greg nods, chewing about half his croissant in one bite. “Gonna take over the nation someday?”
“That's the plan.” There's coolness in his voice, and though that's also reflexive Mycroft almost winces when he hears it. He's been trying to train his natural aloofness into something more subtle. Government work, he knows, requires constant diplomacy. Coldness repels people. He is trying to find a mid-ground.
But Greg either doesn't hear the coldness or doesn't realise he's supposed to be offended by it. He simply chuckles. “And what's your boyfriend think about your evil ambitions?”
“My...” Mycroft scowls. “What business is that of yours?” Then, because staying closeted is also something he's been desperately working on as his education progresses, he asks, “Whatever makes you think I'm gay?”
Greg shrugs, a quick, careless heft of shoulders. “Wishful thinking,” he answers.
Mycroft peers at him suspiciously.
Greg laughs again after a moment. “I'm flirting with you, Mycroft. Can't be all that offensive. Anyway, tell me to shut up or bugger off as you like.”
His face heats up, his wariness instantly curling and shifting into something less familiar. And he's not sure what he's more confused by – this stranger, the lovely unshadowed smile he's aiming at Mycroft of all people, his words...or the fact that Mycroft reacts so strongly to them.
He searches Greg's face for hints of mockery, and can't stop his gaze from sweeping up to the thick disheveled mass of greying hair that he first noticed.
Flirting. Mycroft would never believe that from anyone, not right away. Not a man as attractive as this one. Mycroft is not warm, not friendly, and though he's not repulsive he is no great beauty. He's finally close to reaching his goal weight after a lifetime of being heavy, but thinner or not he is still an awkward, freckled ginger (through the dark hair dye that never seems to cover it all up), still cold-eyed and beak-nosed and inherently unfriendly.
Mycroft has a great many strengths. His self-esteem is rather healthy, he thinks. But he is also self-aware, and he knows that the remarkable things about him aren't the sort of things that attractive strangers are drawn to. For Mycroft, his body – that thing that people care so much about when first meeting each other – is simply an unwanted machine he has to pilot around in order to put his rather impressive brain to work.
Greg is nothing like him, Mycroft could tell that at first glance. It's in the roughness of his accent, the worn patches in his jacket and the loose threads in the collar of his wrinkled shirt. And it's in the charm of his crooked smile, the openness of vivid brown eyes. Greg is attractive, friendly, and his intelligence is average. He is normal, and normal people don't approach Mycroft Holmes and flirt.
But that hair. For some reason Mycroft's focus lands on that hair as something that seems to make this make more sense than it should. Greg is lovely, rough-edged but charming, a man that could chat up anyone in the cafe around him. But he is a man only two or three years older than Mycroft with a head full of premature grey hair. Is he self-conscious about that? Does it ground him into being drawn to people less attractive than himself because he considers it a fault?
It's different, anyway. It's oddly calming, the glitter of silver in rich dark hair.
It relaxes Mycroft before he can lose himself in overthinking the whole matter.
He is unpracticed at this, and when he answers Greg finally, the words are tinged with an unnatural bashfulness he rarely hears in himself. “No boyfriend, actually,” he says simply.
“Well. Good news there.” Greg tears at the remains of his croissant, popping a flaking corner into his mouth and grinning as he chews.
After a moment Mycroft smiles back.
Greg Lestrade is a strange man.
He doesn't seem to realise things that everyone else in Mycroft's life has always accepted. He doesn't understand that Mycroft's aloofness is off-putting, that his intelligence is intimidating. That he is odd, abnormal, robotic, or any of the other things Mycroft is inevitably called.
They talk over the telephone and Greg doesn't seem put off by either the awkward silences or the rambling speechifying that tend to make up Mycroft's side of conversations. He doesn't seem put off by Mycroft's vocabulary, and though he's quick to ask what some words mean he always seems more amused than annoyed at the asking.
He sits beside Mycroft in the cinema and sneaks his arm over halfway through the film to lay his hand over Mycroft's, without the obvious realisation that Mycroft isn't particularly touchable. He walks into restaurants to have dinner with Mycroft as if unaware that Mycroft Holmes is not a man to be shown off, to be proud of being seen with.
He will be, one day. He will be a figure of power and responsibility, and he will have respect. He is determined. But that means making it through school and the first busy years in government service making himself indispensable. He is in-between right now, awkward, unremarkable, but he hasn't told Greg that and somehow Greg isn't drawing the conclusion on his own.
Greg draws eyes from all corners, male and female, old and young, and doesn't seem to care. Greg likes Mycroft, genuinely seems to like him, and that's about as alien as anything Mycroft could imagine.
He makes it easy on Mycroft. He asks him out each time, unbothered by Mycroft's hesitation in taking the lead. He invites Mycroft back to his flat, invites himself to the family home Mycroft is staying in while at school, and when Mycroft occasionally says no he doesn't seem put off by it.
He's with the police, a new constable with CID. It's the one thing Greg seems to be entirely serious about. He works long hours, then spends his evenings reading criminal code and law, watching horrible police dramas on BBC One and taking notes on procedural errors and what he himself might have done with the same cases.
“They're all about confessions, these shows,” he grouses to Mycroft one evening. They're at Mycroft's home, as usual (Mycroft isn't a snob about estate flats, he just doesn't see the need to subject them both to Greg's when there is a preferable alternative available).
Mycroft is studying, or was before the drama on the telly reached its denouement and Greg began his inevitable tear into the plotline. “Confessions are good, I should think.”
“I suppose, but they're also flimsy. These shows, most of the time they've got no bloody evidence at all, just one copper sitting in a room growling at the killer until he confesses. That's why they end the shows with that, because in real life the killer gets himself a lawyer who realises there's no evidence and talks him into recanting the confession, and then the coppers are buggered. They've got nothing to go to trial on, killer goes free, and that's the real end of the episode.”
Mycroft smiles at that. “You were disappointed to find that out,” he says. “You watched these shows as a child and wanted that sort of job, instead of the one you got.”
Greg glances at him, his annoyance tilting with amusement. “Eerie when you do that, you know. But yeah, I suppose so. Once I make Sergeant it'll be better. Worst thing about the job now is catching some shit and then just handing him over so the higher-ups can worry about evidence and confessions and all that.”
“That's hardly ambitious, Greg,” Mycroft answers, hearing his own mild disdain and wishing he didn't. “What about a position of real power? How about making the laws instead of just seeing that they're enforced?”
Greg only laughs. He reaches out and plucks the long-shut textbook from Mycroft's lap. He leans to set it on the coffee table, and then stretches himself out on the long (expensive, ornate, stuffy) couch as if it's utterly comfortable. He uses Mycroft's lap as a pillow, looking right up at him as the theme music for the next show comes on.
“I'll leave that sort of thing for you, love,” he says, reaching up to tweak at the line of buttons down Mycroft's shirt. “You make the laws, I'll grab up anyone who doesn't listen to you. Perfect team, you and me.”
Mycroft has to smile, it's not something his body waits for approval on. He buries his fingers in thick greying hair, petting Greg easily. (He'd been awkward at it, but this is a position Greg loves watching his telly from and Mycroft has gotten quite used to it.)
Greg isn't ambitious. He doesn't like to see the bigger picture of things. He has a very simple sense of right and wrong, an ideal about the world that Mycroft's education proves more every day simply isn't realistic. But Mycroft never feels more restful than when he's sitting on this horrid stiff-backed couch with his fingers sliding through soft grey hair.
Of course he's a virgin. He's a cold, posh, repressed gay man and always has been. His Mummy sometimes tells people that he was born forty, and he's got no reason to think otherwise. When his schoolmates grew obsessed with women and sex, he kept right on being obsessed with knowledge. He knew – remotely, dispassionately – that he was gay, since he was old enough to understand the concept of it. That limited his options in a practical sense, but Mycroft is fairly sure that even were he straight he wouldn't have bothered with the whole thing.
His family isn't particularly physical. Mycroft is closest to his Mum, though close for the Holmes family is still nothing like the families he hears about from schoolmates or sees on telly.
The easy physicality of people around him is a mystery to Mycroft. They are quick to hug, to squeeze a hand or pat a back. The couples are a thousand times worse, with their hands all over each other, their public kissing. Mycroft has always been contained in a bubble of personal space that he doesn't take steps to breach, and no one else has been interested in approaching.
And then there's Greg.
Greg, who is one of those thoughtlessly physical people. Greg, whose hands find Mycroft without the fear they'll come away pierced by invisible thorns, or frozen off entirely. Greg, who lays his head in Mycroft's lap and straightens Mycroft's collar mindlessly the way old married couples do. Who has never hesitated to offer a kiss at the end of a date – at first on the cheek, and then lingering against Mycroft's lips.
Greg, whose existence suddenly makes Mycroft's bubble of personal space feel suffocating.
For the first time in his life Mycroft closes his eyes in bed at the end of an evening and thinks about the possibilities. For the first time when he wakes up with an erection he steps into the shower and takes himself in hand and feels the ghost of someone else's fingers – Greg's fingers - on his skin until he comes. Mycroft wants because of Greg. He dreams and imagines and blushes, he slides his fingers along his collarbone and down his almost-thin-enough chest and stomach and dreams of Greg doing the same.
He finds his eyes caught on slivers of skin when Greg's poorly-abused wardrobe bunches or shifts and uncovers tantalizing peeks. He listens to Greg's appreciative hums and moans as he does innocent things like stretching or eating, and it makes his hands shake.
Greg is slow to act, though. Patient to an unnatural and utterly maddening extent. They spend hours alone together, studying or watching telly or talking, and Mycroft tries to be clear in his desires. He tries to angle his body towards Greg as they sit together, tries to get caught staring at Greg's hands or mouth or the line of his solid chest or broad arms or the way his ill-fitting work slacks hug at his arse.
If Greg notices, he shows no sign of it. Mycroft is just at the stage where he's starting to worry that means something.
They're at Greg's that evening: Mycroft needs to be up ridiculously early for a meeting and Greg's flat is closer to the teaching professor's home, so Mycroft is going to stay overnight.
He's already a mess over that aspect of it, fretting over whether he'll be sleeping beside Greg or handed some blankets and pointed towards the couch, and what either of those possibilities will mean if they happen.
Mycroft is never so far from his normal impassivity as when he's with Greg, and tonight it's worse than ever. His mind is taking everything too far, doubting himself, doubting this unlabeled relationship with this unusual man. Doubting how easy everything has been, how impossibly easy.
He jumps halfway into the front room when Greg's shrill telephone rings. Greg goes over as he peels off his jacket, grabbing the receiver.
“Lestrade,” he says as always in case it's work calling. Normally the terseness of that greeting makes Mycroft smile, but tonight he's wound too tight. “Oi, mate,” Greg says a moment later, grinning and dropping onto his hideous worn sofa. He gestures at Mycroft and at the sofa beside him, but goes on talking to his friend.
Mycroft isn't sure what to do with himself so he goes to the sofa and sits, straight-backed.
And then Greg says it. Casual as he always is, smile still on his face. “Nah, mate, some other time. Got the boyfriend 'round tonight. Call me laters, yeah?”
He hangs up the phone a second later, reaching back behind him to drop it on the receiver. He gives Mycroft a smile, easy, when he catches Mycroft staring. “Thought I'd try that on for size. Bit of a schoolboy term, I know, but I like it.”
Mycroft keeps staring.
Greg's eyebrows hike up. “Tell me to piss off if you like. Hey, and that was my mate, George, from the Met. You ought to come out with us one of these nights.”
Mycroft has no idea what the done thing is in this situation, but his fretting is over with for the moment. He's got a rush of warmth going through him that he can't account for, and it makes him feel terribly irrational.
Because, Greg. Greg, who has never noticed a thing off about Mycroft. Who has made Mycroft's first kiss, his first date, his first boyfriend, so ridiculously easy for him. Who wants Mycroft to meet his mates, and if those mates think Mycroft is weird or off-putting then Mycroft knows, knows somehow like it's written in law, that Greg will shrug and tell them to fuck off and won't even look at Mycroft any different than he is right now.
Mycroft can't say those things out loud. He can't smile or chuckle and casually agree that 'boyfriend' is a perfectly adequate term. So instead he pushes up, twists onto his knees on the sofa, and throws himself bodily at Greg.
His kiss is frantic, his fingers digging into Greg's shirt as their mouths come together hard enough to bruise. There's a moment of frozen stillness from the body Mycroft has sealed himself against, but then Greg's arms are around him and they're lined up awkwardly but tightly, and an almost pained voice growls against Mycroft's lips, “Oh god, finally.”
It's messy and frantic and it doesn't give Mycroft time to worry about what or how or how far. He finds himself pushed back on the couch and he goes willingly, pulling Greg's solid body on top of him. Greg's breath is hot against his cheek, his mouth warm and full and greedy against Mycroft's. Greg's tongue probes his mouth, and Mycroft answers voraciously, pulling him in and then trying to explore his mouth, wanting everything all at once. He feels wild, a kind of wild he has never felt before, and later he might worry about it but right now everything is utterly delicious.
Greg's arms are braced against the cushion to keep his full weight off Mycroft, and Mycroft takes full advantage. He runs his hands along Greg's chest, feeling the broad planes of him eagerly. He tugs at Greg's shirt and thrusts his hands underneath to slide up smooth warm skin. Greg growls against his mouth, nipping at his lower lip and dragging his mouth down to explore Mycroft's jawline.
It's intoxicating. The eager press of full, damp lips against his jaw, the skin under his hands, the press of Greg's body. More than Mycroft knew to expect. For a man who has never felt precisely connected to his own body, the sensations are dizzying.
He's hard, has been hard, and he can feel Greg's erection digging into his hip. It's new, foreign, but Mycroft isn't scared of it. He pushes up against Greg's body, arches his hips, tries to get closer.
Greg's mouth slips from his skin, and his breathing is ragged. “Mycroft...christ. What do...you are...” He growls and buries his face in Mycroft's neck, nipping and licking at the skin there.
Later he'll be pleased at having for once rendered Greg unable to finish a sentence, but for now Mycroft simply whimpers. He tilts his head back against the overstuffed arm of that horrible couch, losing himself in the intensity of sensations. The press of Greg's mouth makes him shiver, his skin is alive and sensitive under lips and tongue and teeth. Mycroft arches helplessly upward into the solid warmth of Greg's body, and the friction makes his vision spot with white.
Greg jerks back all at once and rolls them over onto their sides, freeing his hands and instantly grasping to yank at Mycroft's starched shirt, tugging to free it from his slacks. It's a tight press for them on the couch, but neither are complaining. Greg gets his shirt free and pushes it up roughly, stroking his hands across Mycroft's skin, up his spine and down his side, and Mycroft is astonished at how his body responds to something as simple as skin against skin.
He tilts his head up and grasps Greg's hair to tug him down, and their mouths find each other eagerly. Mycroft can feel the hard thick length of Greg's erection, and it's stunning to think that he himself caused it. That he is the one pressed so tightly to Greg, wanton and eager and shameless.
Greg pushes his knee between Mycroft's, and suddenly they're tightly intertwined. Greg's erection is a distinct press against Mycroft's thigh, and the slightest movement pushes Mycroft's cock into Greg's leg.
Greg's hands find Mycroft's arse, and that press of bodies gets even more intense. Mycroft's fingers clench helplessly in Greg's shift, his head tilting against the cushions as the need for air makes him break away from Greg's mouth.
Greg's lips press damp and full against Mycroft's neck again, and he murmurs unsteadily between kisses. “So hot, Mycroft. Christ, wanted you for weeks now. Want to taste you, fuck you. Want to make you come, just...fuck, just like this...”
Mycroft can't stop himself from thrusting against Greg's body. He's not in control of himself any more, he's operating on pure unfiltered instinct. They come together, driving against each other in a slow, intense rhythm that's already getting less steady. It's a fierce, unabashedly physical pleasure. Mycroft pants for air, hearing high, sharp noises escaping him helplessly. Doesn't matter that they're both still fully dressed and rutting each other like frantic teenagers, it feels so good Mycroft can't even slow down let alone stop.
He slides his hands up and down Greg's side, up his back, down to grasp at his full, firm arse. He's on the edge of something, and it makes his eyes squeeze shut and his body pulse faster and wilder every breath. Greg moans, driving harder against Mycroft until they're frantic with it.
Mycroft is so distracted by the sheer pleasure under his skin that when he comes it almost catches him off guard. He gasps out a strained sound and feels his cock pulsing in his slacks, feels a white flush of pleasure that makes his previous solitary orgasms feel like little more than tickles. His hands clench around Greg's arse convulsively, and he's rewarded a minute later by a harsh, cracked groan from Greg as he comes too.
Mycroft sags back against the back cushions once he's emptied and panting for air. His legs stay twined with Greg's and he's in no hurry to escape the overheated sofa. Greg's hands unclench from his arse, and he returns the favour reluctantly a moment later. He settles for keeping his arms loosely around Greg, against the damp, warm skin under his rucked-up shirt.
Greg buries his face against Mycroft's neck, pressing the occasional kiss as he waits for his breathing to get back under control. “Hope you're happy now,” he murmurs into Mycroft's skin.
Mycroft laughs through thick-feeling lips. “I've been in worse moods.”
Greg echoes the laugh drowsily. “Good, 'cause now that you've got us started I plan on making you come at least twice a day from now on.”
Mycroft twitches unconsciously, and from Greg's soft snicker it's clear he feels it.
Mycroft grins, tilting his face down and brushing his cheek along soft, sweaty grey hair. He attempts a sigh of resignation, but doubts its efficacy. “'What fates impose, that men must needs abide; it boots not to resist both wind and tide.'”
Greg peers out at him before slumping back comfortably. “If that means you consider this to be your unhappy fate, then cheers. Carry on.”
Greg seems surprised at how fast he's promoted to Sergeant. Mycroft isn't, but he's too busy with exams to list all the reasons why.
Finally, though, exams are over and Mycroft is busy diving into his new job as assistant in the office of the Home Secretary. It's an exhausting time, since Mycroft is determined to begin on day one in his quest to make himself utterly indispensable. His family's name and money will help him rise quickly, but to become truly important, to become what he wants to be, he will have to work fiercely.
He doesn't neglect Greg – Greg is busy in his new position as well, and they both spend the night at Mycroft's more often than not, and eat breakfast together at their cafe before rushing off to their demanding careers.
Still, he's caught off guard when he walks into the bathroom one morning (after reluctantly unfolding himself from Greg's sleeping body) and finds a box on the countertop. A horrible, sickening box.
He confronts Greg with it the moment he's awake. “You brought this into my home.”
Greg sits up, rubbing his eyes and squinting at him and then the box in turn. His brow furrows. “Well. Yeah. It's not for you, you know, it's for--”
“Don't. Don't you dare tell me it's for you, as if that somehow makes things better.”
Greg blinks, but grins after a moment and pushes off the bed, as casual in his nudity as he is most other times. He comes around, kisses Mycroft as he passes, and plucks the box from his hand. “You taking the piss or do you have some sort of religious aversion to this kind of thing?”
Mycroft follows him, grouchy. “Neither, or both. Whichever will drive this madness from your mind fastest.”
Greg chuckles, but his eyes catch on the mirror over the counter and he squints at his reflection critically. “You know, I never gave a toss what I looked like, but this is the one thing I figured I'd change about myself if I could.”
Mycroft approaches him, watching his reflection as he curls himself behind Greg, lacing his hands against Greg's stomach.
Greg's eyes shift in the mirror to look back at Mycroft. “Got my first greys before I was twenty. Dad died young so I don't know if it was from his side of the family or if I was just odd. Thought it was cool at first. A bit punk, having silver hair. I never had trouble finding a date, anyway, so who cared? But now I'm almost thirty and I look like I'm sixty.”
“You don't. But even if you did, you still don't care,” Mycroft replies. He knows Greg, perhaps better than he knows anyone else by now.
Greg is used to Mycroft all but reading his mind, so he doesn't bother arguing. “Willoughby, the DI I'm working with now, he's bloody obsessed. Calls me Old Man and can't stop the broken hip jokes. Git's in his fifties now and he's greyer than I am, but he thinks it's hilarious.”
“I'll have him fired.”
Greg's eyes shift to his hair, then back to Mycroft a moment later. “What?”
“As soon as I'm in a position of real authority. I'll have him fired for mental infirmities. Maybe shot, if I can bring back firing squads. Treason against the crown.” Mycroft peers at Greg in the mirror, utterly solemn. “Perhaps I'll have his home burned down and spat on, for good measure.”
Greg laughs after a moment. “You will, will you?”
Mycroft reaches around him and grabs the box of hair dye. “I'll create a government mandate, a ban on all hair-colouring products. A complete moratorium through all the United Kingdom. Health and safety issue, probably. It can be arranged.”
Greg turns around and loops an arm around Mycroft's back, pulling him close. “I get the strangest feeling that you're against the whole plan.”
“Brilliant, Detective Sergeant.” Mycroft slips his fingers through that lovely thick brown and grey hair. He strokes soothingly.
Greg raises his eyebrows and regards him, waiting for him to explain why.
A complicated question to answer, though. Mycroft could simply explain that it was the very first thing he ever noticed about Greg, that it was the thing that made him stand out, that made Mycroft comfortable enough to talk to him. That it puzzled him for even a moment, the disparity between the thoroughly greying hair and the smiling, young face, and that moment was enough to keep Mycroft from running off at the unexpected meeting with a stranger.
He might say that he simply always adored it. That without it Greg might be too unnaturally handsome to ever feel real to Mycroft. That it grounds him in a way, this one solitary aspect of Greg that isn't what the magazines or telly would describe as perfect. That it's somehow a fitting symbol of Greg himself, the light-hearted, charming man who may well become the finest police officer in London. Greg is a man of constant easy-going smiles, and he's also full of gravitas and responsibility. The hair of a middle-aged man, the smile of a schoolboy skiving off his lessons. Somewhere in the middle of those extremes is Greg.
But Greg's not one to be heartened by symbolism or metaphor, and god knows Mycroft isn't a man for speaking such sentimental words aloud. So Mycroft pets a hand through that lovely lush hair and shrugs.
“I think it's sexy.”
Greg considers that, and leans in to kiss Mycroft lightly. “Right. Guess that's good enough for me.”
“Quite so.” Mycroft smiles and kisses him again, more thoroughly, before he turns to leave him the bathroom for his ablutions. He drops the unopened box of dye into the rubbish bin as he passes, and it hits with a satisfying heavy thud. Greg's chuckle follows him out.
Crisis averted, Mycroft gets ready for work, cheerful as he always seems to be these days.
End