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Mycroft Holmes has always been a very rational man. He has built his world around sensibility and cool-headed precision, collected and controlled right down to his rehearsed mannerisms. But Mycroft, like everyone else, has a dirty little secret which haunts him in the form of Sherlock’s imagined suffering.
He’s obsessive and he’s compulsive but he doesn’t have OCD. It’s only a disorder if it gets in the way and he won’t let it. It will remain an aspect of his personality, a quirk, if you will. The British Government does not have an anxiety disorder and Mycroft intends to keep it that way.
~
“Mummy!” Sherlock yelled, catching Mycroft off guard. He held his breath and willed himself desperately to just stop. The switch was off. He knew it was off. But he couldn’t stop flicking it on again just so he could be sure of the difference. “Mummy! Mycroft’s being weird again!”
Mycroft swallowed, feeling a knot of tears beginning to form in his throat. Mummy would be upset. He had told her he was okay. Trust Sherlock to ruin everything.
When Mummy arrived in the doorway, Sherlock latched onto her arm. “See!” He smirked accusingly. “He won’t stop. He’s trying to break it.”
Mycroft shook his head and averted his gaze, continuing his ceaseless counting to thirteen before beginning again. He was trying to do nothing of the sort - breaking it, indeed. He was trying to keep Sherlock safe, to prevent a fire. But a five year old couldn’t possibly understand that, particularly a five year old Sherlock Holmes who understood very little of emotion beyond irritation and boredom. Mummy took a tentative step forward, shaking her arm free of Sherlock’s grip as she crouched down beside him.
“Darling?” She asked gently. Her arms reached to embrace him momentarily before they froze mere inches from him and realisation clouded her gaze. Mycroft was thankful to be spared from begging her not to touch him yet again. It broke her heart a little every time. He never wanted to hurt her. “Can you stop for me, baby?”
Mycroft shook his head, eyes focussed once again on the switch. This time would be the one. He could feel it. He tuned her out, just for a moment, and muttered the numbers under his breath – skipping six as always. Ten. Eleven. Twelve.
“Thirteen,” came with a sigh of relief on Mycroft’s part and he turned to relax against the wall, breathing heavily. Mummy looked him over sadly. He couldn’t bring himself to meet her gaze.
Sherlock was sent to his room and Mummy had a long chat with Mycroft which ultimately ended in floods of tears and Mycroft’s desperate attempts to make her understand that he was just so afraid of losing the people he held most dear. She kissed his forehead right in the middle and said she understood. She didn’t and Mycroft wasn’t naïve enough to believe she ever would.
~
Mycroft hates being out of control but it seems the very thing which he uses to seek control is only sending him spiraling out of it again. The anxiety returns as always, worse every time. It’s not a permanent solution but arranging and rearranging pencils and bottles and papers gives him a sense of peace. When it all boils down to it, that’s the reason he does what he does. He wants to breathe quietly again, wants to sleep in his own bed at night without thinking of Sherlock in trouble.
It’s four o’clock in the morning when Mycroft’s eyes shoot open and he immediately rushes to the kitchen, fully expecting to see the whole place up in flames. He’s met with total and utter normality and sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose in both irritation and exhaustion. The world is spinning too fast tonight and he’s sick of waiting for it to slow down.
He goes back to bed and repeats one phrase over and over in his mind. I did lock the door. I did lock the door.
But suddenly he’s not so sure if he did. He checks.
~
Mycroft absolutely hated family gatherings, particularly Christmas ones where he was expected to enjoy himself and be festive and generally not put a damper on everybody else’s good spirits. It was one of the few things he and Sherlock were able to agree on: Christmas was agony.
Leaving aside the twinkling fire hazard by the living room window, Mycroft found himself relatively calm. He politely nodded to everybody as he greeted them, avoiding any hand-shaking on the premise of, “feeling a bit under the weather” which Sherlock saw through immediately. Mycroft caught him narrowing his eyes from the corner of the room where he had isolated himself with a book. Seeing Mycroft was looking, Sherlock stuck his tongue out. Mycroft just couldn’t suppress a smile.
His breath caught as some relative or another - he didn’t see who - brushed lightly against his right arm on the way past. He swallowed the cry for help, for balance, which threatened to spill from him and stood helplessly in frozen panic. Mycroft didn’t panic. He couldn’t panic. Not in public. It wouldn’t be becoming.
He excused himself breathlessly and bolted upstairs, shutting his bedroom door and sinking down behind it to prevent Sherlock from bursting in. He could feel his chest struggling for air and his heart racing and his skin burning. Out of balance again. Thoughts raced through his mind a mile a minute. Sherlock’s limp body hanging from the ceiling with a rope around his neck. Sherlock’s mangled limbs over the bonnet of a car (a green one, not that it mattered) and then he saw-
"Stop!" Mycroft was horrified to find the cry had come from himself. He buried his head in his knees and hugged them tight while the panic reached his peak. His palms were sweaty. His mouth was dry. Sherlock was in danger and it was all Mycroft’s fault and-
The terror died down. Mycroft flushed in embarrassment, wondering if he should be disappointed or relieved that nobody had come to check on him.
~
Meetings are dull but essential. Mycroft knows this. He also knows that the secret to staying attentive during every long, dragging meeting is to pretend he’s thoroughly interested in the subject even if it’s something tedious like the importance of plastic cutlery over metal in primary school canteens. Though, Mycroft had to agree on that one. Children like Sherlock could do far less damage with a plastic knife than a real one.
He found himself internally scoffing at his last remark; there were no children like Sherlock.
Nobody comments on the way he scribbles on scrap paper with his left hand while he takes notes. They know about Mycroft’s quirks. He tells them it helps him concentrate and lets them poke fun at him good-naturedly like the very thought of loosening his grip on one pen doesn’t make his heart clench painfully. It has become apparent over the years that the worst thing Mycroft could do is be out of balance.
As is often the way, Mycroft contributes little, distracted by the mess of disorganised papers on the desks of other people. How can they concentrate in a workspace like that? He only notices he has stopped writing when Anthea gently touches one arm and then the other. He looks to her and sees her shorthand notes with a smile.
A nod is shared between them. Mycroft knows then that he won’t be attending any more meetings. He’ll need a representative and there is nobody better for the job than Anthea. But it’s still not a disorder, he tells her when they’re back in his office which had to be re-floored out of his own pocket so he wouldn’t have to avoid the cracks.
He sits. It takes five attempts for his chair to feel right.
~
Rules One to Twenty Five were a long list of things Sherlock was not allowed to do. Of course, he delighted in breaking them every chance he got, much to Mycroft’s dismay. Today, he had committed cardinal sin number one - he was in Mycroft’s room.
"Get out!" Mycroft’s voice was dangerously low. Sherlock stood his ground, arms crossed defiantly across his chest.
"Or what?" He asked gleefully. "Scared I’ll mess something up?"
Mycroft swallowed. Fatal error. Sherlock read all he needed to know from that and then a little more. Casually, he strolled to Mycroft’s desk and knocked a pencil out of place. It was such a stupid gesture; it was childish and petulant. But it completely shattered Mycroft’s nerves and the room started moving, his breath started hitching and glitching. It was happening again.
The thoughts repeated themselves but this time he saw Sherlock dying at his hands. It was Mycroft who pushed him under that bus, Mycroft who tied him to the train tracks, Mycroft who set the timer ticking on the bomb strapped to his baby brother’s chest. He gazed at his own hands in horror. How could he be capable of such a thing?
"Mycroft?" He could hear Sherlock’s worried voice. It calmed him somewhat. He was still here, he was still alive. Still the annoying git he’d always been.
He was breathing again and his vision cleared enough for the abject horror in Sherlock’s eyes to become evident. He looked distraught. Mycroft ducked his head in shame. He’d never meant for Sherlock to see him like this.
"Sherl-"
"I’m sorry," Sherlock cut him off hastily. He looked like he wanted to say something else before deciding better of it and scurrying off.
(He doesn’t disturb Mycroft’s compulsive organisation again.)
~
Mycroft straightens the knocker of 221B absently before wandering inside to be greeted by the sound of Sherlock’s violin; another original piece by the sounds of it. He always had been a talented musician.
He’s facing the window when Mycroft strolls in, still playing. When he reaches the end of the song, he stops.
"What’s it called?" Mycroft asks, lowering himself into John’s armchair.
"A violin," Sherlock deadpans as he flops lazily into his own chair and Mycroft hesitates. Sherlock frowns. "What’s wrong?"
Mycroft tries a smile. “Who said anything was wrong?”
"I did. You missed your chance to frown at me disapprovingly. You never do that," Sherlock’s brown furrows in confusion though Mycroft pretends it’s the same concern he feels constantly in the pit of his stomach. "You’re losing weight."
It’s Mycroft’s turn to frown. “Yes,” he murmurs, twirling his umbrella between his fingers.
There’s a short silence before-
"I’ve been researching," Sherlock says and his voice is uncharacteristically soft. Mycroft hums in response and Sherlock goes on, tossing his phone carelessly into Mycroft’s lap. "Another self-help website."
Mycroft looks down to where the phone is nestled on his dark suit trousers, three letters grinning up at him hungrily. “Sherlock, I-“
"Don’t have OCD, I know," Sherlock says and, when Mycroft glances up, he has rearranged himself so his legs are draped over one arm and his head flops back against the other. Seemingly as an afterthought, Sherlock adds, "You do, though. That much is obvious. But let’s not argue. I haven’t had a chance to tell you about that case I was working on last week."
Mycroft rolls his eyes and lets Sherlock delve into a cesspool of information he’s heard before. It acts as background noise while Mycroft scrolls through the website. It’s nothing Sherlock hasn’t shown him before.
~
Mycroft’s yoyo-ing weight problem was a source of continual teasing on Sherlock’s part. It always had been. Mycroft was simply glad he wasn’t one to be self-conscious. As a brother to Sherlock Holmes, one had to be thick-skinned (Sherlock found endless material in that phrase alone).
When Sherlock became suspicious of the amount of time Mycroft spent in the bathroom, he promised himself this would be the last time. But, as he lay in bed the following night, he realised that it was no longer within his control. Obsessive habits come out of nowhere. They latch on as part of your daily routine and, as soon as you try to change them, they dig in their heels.
Mycroft couldn’t stop throwing up but often he no longer wanted to. Mycroft didn’t want to binge but he was just so hungry. And so his waistline continued to expand and contract while Sherlock came up with many more subtle ways to call him fat.
The destructive desperation Mycroft had to control his weight like he couldn’t control his life was Sherlock’s ammunition and would be for years to come because Mycroft would never tell him of the cold sweats he experienced in the middle of the night if he didn’t purge at least once.
~
In Mycroft’s experience, the obsessions almost always outweigh the compulsions. While flicking switches on and off is tedious and throwing up hurts, the unwelcome thoughts of Sherlock’s relapse or John’s indefinite absence if Sherlock ever got too much for him or Sherlock getting hurt in the fallout of something Mycroft had done wrong is far more frightening.
It always came back to Sherlock. Magnussen had been spot on; Sherlock was his pressure point.
Perhaps what irks Mycroft most of all is his inability to shake the knowledge that his fears are completely unfounded. There’s no way Sherlock’s pain will be directly linked to Mycroft’s stepping on the cracks in the pavement but he’d far rather not run that risk. He puts his head in his hands dejectedly and stares down at the files piled up before him. He knows he’s in no fit state to handle such important matters when he’s running on three hours sleep yet again.
He doesn’t bother to look up when Anthea enters and places a travel cup of coffee down in front of him. He can smell it. He doesn’t have to see to know. But she doesn’t say anything which he deems to be odd and Mycroft glances up just in time to catch a glimpse of Sherlock’s coat swishing round the doorframe. He can’t resist smiling.
It’s a Starbucks and there’s a smiley face drawn in the middle of the ‘O’ of Holmes in a different colour of marker. Mycroft shakes his head and checks his buzzing phone.
Thought you might need this. –SH
He barely has time to smile before-
And this. –SH
And there is the URL of that same self-help website Sherlock had shown him just days ago. He bites his lip gently, giving into a nervous tick of his own, and remembers something Mummy had said when he’d been hopelessly trying to convince everyone around him that help would be futile even if it was a problem. He was cleverer than the psychiatrists. They’d do no good. But she’d sat him down and squeezed both hands and whispered that the journey of one thousand miles began with a single step.
He opens the website.