Chapter Text
“Come on, let’s have it,” Greg said, nudging Mycroft’s knee under the table. It was a rare quiet night at his flat, but Mycroft had been off since he’d arrived, and dinner had done nothing to help him relax. Greg didn’t normally press for information, knowing that much of what Mycroft did went way beyond top secret, but he’d been increasingly tense over recent weeks. They’d only got together properly three months ago, but Greg was already head over heels for the other man - had been since the beginning, if he was honest - and the thought that something was going wrong, something he couldn’t fathom, was enough to leave him feeling cold. “What’s got your goat?”
“When you’re anxious or irritated, you fiddle with your wedding ring.” Mycroft put his knife and fork down on his plate, dinner only half eaten. “The ring I’ve been asking you to remove for several weeks.”
Uncomfortable, Greg glanced down at his hands. The gold thick gold band, being restlessly twisted around his ring finger, had been the subject of more than one conversation recently, all of them memorable and none pleasant. “Yeah, I know,” Greg sighed. “Old habits and all that.”
“Which doesn’t explain why you’re still wearing it,” Mycroft replied blandly, fingers steepled beneath his chin. “I’ve narrowed it down to twelve possible reasons but I’m honouring the agreement we made when we became friends that I don’t ‘go all Sherlock’ where you’re concerned.”
“I’ve told you there’s nothing in it.” Greg stopped fiddling with the ring, settled his hands atop the table, left hand covered by the right, and nudged Mycroft’s foot with his own. “It’s nothing for you to worry about; I just haven’t got round to taking it off.”
“Do not lie to me, Greg,” he said frigidly, feet withdrawing. “Unless you expect me to believe that removing a ring is so truly arduous that it requires three months’ preparation, of course.”
“It’s just habit, I suppose. And taking it off after the divorce’d’ve got tongues wagging at work and I couldn’t be doing with the hassle,” Greg hedged, aiming for the middle ground and hoping that it was enough. “Seemed easier to leave it on and not have the questions.” He reached across the table and touched Mycroft’s hand.
“My partner - the term you chose to define our relationship to each other, I might add - continues to wear the wedding ring given to him by his adulterous ex-wife despite us having been in a relationship for three months.” Mycroft pinned Greg with an intense look but did not move his hand. “I find that to be something of an insult.”
Greg floundered, blood running cold. Mycroft had brought up the ring several times, but he’d not pushed like this before, and the older man didn’t have a clue how to handle it. The fact of the matter was that he wasn’t out at work or with his casual acquaintances and had no intention of outing himself to them. “I— Mycroft, you know how much I care about you. It just stops people asking questions. That’s all.” It sounded weak to his own ears, but even weaker to Mycroft’s if his expression was a reliable indicator.
“Hmm, yes,” Mycroft replied acidly. “Questions about your relationship status specifically, which you clearly don’t want to answer, which leads me to doubt how serious you are about this relationship.”
“Are you fucking serious?” Greg demanded, a curious mix of hurt and anger surging through his veins. It chased away some of the cold fear; in an odd way he was almost grateful for it because it helped to clear his head. “I’m as committed to this – to you - as it gets. You’ve met my kids! Do you really think I’d’ve done that if I wasn’t serious?”
Mycroft raised his left eyebrow, jaw tensing. “Yet you continue to wear your wedding ring. Do you really not understand why I may find this objectionable?”
Uncomfortable, because he could understand how that could be a problem, Greg shifted in his seat and fiddled with his cutlery. “Well, yeah, I can see it, but you know better. My family and close friends know about you – they even like you - but work’s different. It’s just easier to leave things as they are.” He caught his fingers wandering towards his ring, as was their wont when he was wound up, and diverted them, straightening his cuffs instead. “Anyway, it was me who pushed for this when you were going to walk. I wouldn’t have pushed you like that if I wasn’t serious.”
“Are you planning to raise my mistakes every time we have an argument? How tedious,” Mycroft snapped, exasperated. For a moment, the thoughts running through his mind were visible on his face, but he dismissed them with an irritable wave of his hand. “Regardless, I fail to understand how this is in any way difficult: remove the ring and dispose of it.”
“It’s not that easy!” To buy himself time to think, Greg picked up the wine and split the remainder of the bottle between their glasses. “Look, it’s just for work. Anyone who matters knows about us, but coppers’re the worst gossips you’ll find; it’d take less than half a day for it to go round the station, and then there’d be questions and –”
“—Questions you don’t want to answer, because you will either have to lie to your colleagues or admit that you’re in a relationship with a man,” Mycroft cut in. “You’re gay and in a committed relationship; unless you want to spend the rest of your career lying, I suggest that you rethink this strategy of yours. If you don’t, you forfeit the right to take issue with me finding it offensive.”
The discomfiture Greg was feeling increased fourfold. He’d long since admitted to himself that he was gay, but he could count the number of other people who knew that on three fingers and and have one left over. His family knew that he was in a relationship with a man - his kids had met Mycroft as his partner, even if they did seem to think that he was Greg’s midlife crisis - but he’d downplayed what it meant for his sexuality, implying that it was Mycroft specifically he was attracted to. Aside from Kapoor, no-one at work knew that he wasn’t straight, and he’d made damned sure that his constable would be the last to put the pieces together like that. The thought of having that particular conversation with people after working together so long, people who could make his life hell if they so chose, caused his anxiety to spike. “You make it sound so simple. Toss the ring in the bin where it belongs and just say ‘yeah, I’m with a bloke now. Oh, didn’t you know I’m bent? Sorry about that!’ when they ask. Nice an’ easy, yeah?”
“We’re not living in the nineteen eighties, Greg.” Mycroft fiddled with the stem of his wine glass, turning it between his fingers, the effort it took to keep his voice level written across his face. “I promise that there will be no repercussions; you have nothing to fear on that front.”
Greg’s hold on his tongue snapped. “Says the one of us who isn’t a cop. You might not have to worry about your back at work, but I fucking well do. ” He put his glass down harder than was strictly necessary and stood, picking the plates up as he went. “They say things’ve changed, but they haven’t changed that much for those of us on the ground, believe me. It might be illegal to go round harassing gays, but believe me when I say a lot of the ones who’re meant to be upholding the law are some of the worst. It’s got better, yeah, but there’s a fucking long way to go.”
In the small kitchen, the work surfaces were strewn with pots and pans and it took a long moment to find space for their plates of barely-touched cottage pie. Greg didn’t need the creaking of floorboards to tell him that Mycroft had followed him; the weight of the younger man’s attention was heavy on the back of his neck. “Slow progress is better than no progress,” he said, voice less angry than is had been, but all Greg could hear was the patronising words of someone who thought that he understood something he didn’t. “Homophobia isn’t unique to the police service, and nor are you the only one wary of experiencing it, but us hiding does nothing to help bring about change.”
Anger surging, Greg turned on the spot. “You’ve got no idea, have you? No fucking idea. Public school, Oxford, and a government job’re nothing like going to a state school and working in the real world! Christ, buggery’s practically a right of passage at Eton from what I hear, never mind how much the Oxbridge set were getting away with even back when shagging a bloke was illegal.” Face flushed in anger, Mycroft opened his mouth to speak, but Greg held up a staying hand. “I’m not saying it was – or is - easy for you, but it’s different and people like you just don’t get it. When I signed up, the Met were still sending cops into public toilets to catch us in the act. I can still remember what my boss said when Freddie Mercury died, never mind what Baines said when they legalised gay marriage, and that was only three fucking years ago! I’ve got to work with these people, Mycroft, and I know exactly what they think of queers.” Greg folded his arms across body but held Mycroft’s gaze. “They might not be allowed to say it to my face, but they’ll sure as hell be thinking it and saying it to other people. This — you — Christ, I don’t want them talking about us like that, turning this into something dirty, something to be ashamed of. I know they will if they find out, and I won’t be able to do a bloody thing about it because they’re not stupid enough to do it where I’d be able to catch ‘em!”
“I do understand your concerns,” Mycroft replied, determinedly calm in the face of Greg’s shouting, but hurt and anger shone from his eyes. “But I wish that you’d come to me with them sooner, rather than dodging the subject every time I’ve tried to discuss it and allowing it to fester. It may be less obvious on the surface, but the security and intelligence services are not the havens of tolerance you believe them to be. Admittance of openly gay staff into both services is relatively recent, and there are those who still feel that we should be publicly hanged.” He reached around Greg with his left hand, turned the taps off, and settled it on Greg’s waist. “There are also those who never fail to miss an opportunity to share those views with me, in one way or another. They are, however, powerless to do anything more than pontificate, and I promise that you are as protected as I.” He stroked Greg’s hip with his thumb. “This isn’t going to go away, Greg,” Mycroft said, pressing their lips together in a brief, tentative kiss. “You fear that the homophobes among your colleagues will make your life difficult if they find out that you’re gay, but they’re already doing that without realising it.”
The fight left Greg, leaving an uncomfortable mix of fear and shame in its wake. He wanted to pull away, put some distance between them, but Mycroft’s proximity was comforting and he found himself leaning towards the other man, soaking up his warmth despite the fact that they’d been arguing mere minutes earlier. “I know that, but it’s fucking hard. I won’t tolerate homophobia any more than I will racism or sexism, and they all know it, but it’s something else entirely to come out myself, and it scares me. Christ, it scares me shitless, and not much manages that anymore.” Greg leant forward and dropped his head onto Mycroft’s shoulder, unable to look his partner in the eye. “I’ve got gay staff, but they’re all still kids; they didn’t grow up with the shit we did. It’s one thing to be like that, to be out from the off and know that your boss has got your back, but it’s not — Fuck, I can’t even justify this to myself.”
Mycroft closed the space between them and wrapped his arms around Greg. “I apologise,” he said, hands settling on Greg’s back, palms warm through the fabric of his shirt. “I didn’t mean to distress you.”
Pressing his forehead into the other man’s shoulder, Greg inhaled, letting the fading scent of Mycroft’s cologne sooth him. The beige fabric of his jumper was soft against Greg’s skin, but he knew that the skin underneath was softer still; he worked his hands under the hem and settled them on Mycroft’s warm skin, taking a moment to pull his thoughts together. Mycroft was right, he knew, but it wasn’t going to be a quick change, and it wasn’t going to be easy. “I — no, you were right to force it. I’ve been dodging this for months, and I’m hurting you,” Greg sighed. The adrenaline and anxiety were dissipating, but guilt at hurting Mycroft was starting to take over, clawing at his skin and leaving him feeling queasy. “I’m sorry.”
“You are, yes, but not deliberately.” Slipping a hand under Greg’s shirt, he stroked soothingly. “But you are aware that we need to deal with this. You’re my partner, Greg, and it hurts to see you wearing someone else’s ring. You know me well enough to know that I’m not used to experiencing hurt, and I confess myself unsure how to handle it.”
“How about this? I’ll take it off when I leave the office,” Greg said, thinking fast. The thought of outing himself at work still terrified him, but Mycroft was right. “I’ll only wear it at work, and I promise I’ll work on the rest of it.”
It was obvious from his expression that Mycroft wasn’t wholly satisfied, but he smiled nonetheless, much to Greg’s relief. “That is acceptable,” he said, leaning in for a kiss. It was tender and warm, and Greg’s guilt flared anew at the thought that he’d been hurting him. “Might I suggest that you contact the Police Federation’s LGBT group? I imagine that they’ll have plenty of experience in this area. Perhaps there are officers of your generation who have been through this that you could talk to.”
“I didn’t have you down as a union man,” Greg replied, smiling softly. “Full of surprises, you.”
“I’m not, for the most part. They constitute a massive security risk and many of their most vocal activists are as odious as they are dangerous, but they have their uses when they stick to their remit.” He slid his hand out from under Greg’s shirt and captured his left hand. Eyes intense, his fingers drifted to the wedding ring. “May I?”
“Yeah,” was Greg’s instant response. “Might take a bit of work, though; my fingers’re fatter than they used to be.” Why he found himself holding his breath he didn’t know, but he gave himself a mental shake and took a deep breath as Mycroft’s fingers closed around the ring. It took a long moment for Mycroft to work it off his finger, and the older man briefly worried that it wasn’t going to cooperate, but Mycroft was nothing if not persistent. A couple of twists later and the heavy gold band was sliding off. Mycroft slipped it into the back pocket of Greg’s jeans and settled his hand over it, palm moulding itself to the curve of Greg’s arse. His finger felt naked without the ring, but it wasn’t a bad feeling. More of a relief than anything else, really, but he didn’t know how to put what he was feeling into words, so he kissed Mycroft instead. “I’ll get there,” he promised, lip brushing the other man’s. “I can’t promise it’ll be quick, but I will.”
“You will,” Mycroft agreed, tangling their fingers. “I don’t care how long it takes, but you will not keep problems like this from me again.”
Chastised, Greg nodded. “I’m sorry,” he said, looking up at Mycroft from under his lashes. Needing to be close, to feel connected, he pressed closer, until they were touching from torso to thigh. “How do you feel about make up sex?”
Mycroft wound the fingers of his left hand into Greg’s hair and kissed him. This kiss spoke of words they hadn’t said, of love and affirmation. “Oh, I think I could be persuaded.”