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“Be still, Sherlock.”
The infant wailed in the six year old boy’s arms and screwed up his pale little face, fists curling and flying through the air dangerously. The ginger-haired boy scowled and held out the squirming infant with a look of distaste. “Mother…”
“A minute, Mycroft.”
“Mummy, Sherlock won’t stop wailing and he smells something awful.”
Mrs Holmes turned, a slender brow arching up into her hair. “Mycroft, dear, he’s a baby that’s what babies do.” Taking the infant into her arms and settling him on her hip, she turned back to her work, which at the moment was gazing out the greenhouse window and tending to a lovely potted azalea. Mycroft’s thumb found its way to his mouth and he began to chew. It was an awful habit he had picked up when he was a tiny tot himself, and had mostly grown out of it (so his mother thought when her back was turned).
A few seconds later he had the thumb taken from his mouth. When Mycroft scowled, his mother looked down on him as he sat on the bench, kicking his feet and staring at his thumb. “You mustn’t do that, Mycroft.”
“Why?” He mumbled impudently.
Sherlock had a lock of his mother’s hair and earring balled up in his impossibly tiny fist and with a gleeful, slobbery expression, was testing his limits by pulling experimentally. As if on autopilot, Mrs Holmes pulled her hair from her youngest’s grasp and shook her head free.
“Because.”
Urgh, thought Mycroft. Grown ups always started off impossible reasoning with the excuse ‘because.’ He never found the answer as satisfying as the adults saying it seemed to find. “You need to set a good example for Sherlock. He’ll look up to you when he’s older and you mustn’t teach him bad manners, like chewing on his thumb.”
“I don’t have bad manners.”
“Chewing on your thumb qualifies, Mycroft.”
“It’s a nervous habit,” Mycroft countered. The usage of a particularly grown-up phrase made him feel proud that he could speak to his mother with clarity as a six year old, but his mother seemed far from impressed.
“I advise you stop, my dear. Be a role model for Sherlock, please, I beg you.”
Urgh, thought Mycroft again. There she goes with her impossibly large doe-eyes that looked like an illustration straight out of his old picture books. Mycroft hung his head. He could never disappoint mummy. Not in a million years. “Yes, mummy,” He murmured and when she kissed the top of his head, he promptly left the greenhouse.
He could be found two years later, at the solid age of eight with a stack of books in his lap, on that same bench of the greenhouse while their mother tottered around the plants. This time, a rare, yellow slipper, Chinese orchid sat on the windowsill where the azalea had once bloomed in its terracotta pot. It was winter holidays and the greenhouse was delightfully warm, if not rather humid. Sherlock could walk now, and talk at a rapid speed and it was often Mycroft’s responsibility to follow him and make sure that he didn’t hurt himself, or anything else around him.
This, Mycroft thought impatiently, was quite hard to do when you were trying to read. With a sigh he placed his book on simple machines on the bench and rose, following the noise of happy chatter to a section of the greenhouse his mother had told him under all costs to avoid. Ivies hung from the ceiling and there were particularly prickly cacti in the corners. Sherlock was lingering fairly close to a blooming Thumb Button cactus that was just starting to turn purple at the tips. While not particularly poisonous, Mycroft knew the cacti still had sharp needles, one of which was two inches from his younger brother’s nose.
Careful not to surprise the toddler, Mycroft made his presence known well in advance by stomping over rather loudly. Sherlock, a grin (one their father would certainly call ‘shit-eating’) plastered on his face, turned to his brother and pointed. “Plant!” He enthused.
Mycroft took this moment to yank the boy solidly away from the plant of toddler-pain and pointed to it from afar. “Cacti.”
“Cat eye.”
“Cact-tie.”
“Cack-eye.”
“Close enough.”
“My, My, My! Lookit!” A chubby finger pointed up at a shelf close to the ceiling, far out of reach from both of them, where a venus fly trap rested. “Look’s clam!”
Mycroft sighed, groaned, and rubbed his free hand across his forehead. “No, Sherlock. That’s a fly trap.”
Sherlock raised a brow, in the strange way that he despite being only two, could, and shoved his thumb into his mouth. “Trap flies?” Mycroft removed Sherlock’s thumb and nodded.
“It’s how the plant eats. Don’t put your thumb there.”
“Eats flies?” The toddler questioned.
“Yes, bugs, like flies and spiders. And lures them in with its little teeth like … things.”
“Teef.” Sherlock poked at his own teeth, two of which were finally cutting through the gums directly in the front of his mouth. Mycroft tugged and pulled the toddler back further as he chattered on about teeth and flies, and how the plant eats flies with his teeth but he was still a plant and Mycroft noticed that all of the sudden the plant had been involved in some sort of story to do with a missing fly-family and Mycroft shook his head.
Too many bed time stories.
“Sherlock, I’d like to read my book.”
“Oh. My-my go read book.”
Mycroft glanced longingly at the bench and his stack of books, followed by the discarded pile of picture books underneath the bench that had been reserved for his brother. Sherlock tugged at Mycroft’s grip, attempting to get a closer look at a bug on the ground, and the older boy sighed. “No, see, when you look at plants you have to be still and quiet.”
“…Mummy’s not quiet.”
He was theoretically right. Their mother did sing when she was with the plants from time to time, humming lullabies and old folk tales of the English countryside. “No, because she sings. Singing helps plants grow. I read it somewhere.”
“My found in book?”
“Yes, I found it in a book.” Slowly, Mycroft began to lead Sherlock back to the bench where his schoolwork rested. His tongue poked out from his mouth with the increased effort. “You see… quiet except for singing and observing.”
“Ob surfing.”
“Observing.”
“Oh.”
“Shhhh…” Mycroft whispered. “Observing. Do you know what that means?” Sherlock shook his head, his black curls bouncing. Mycroft patted the empty spot on the bench next to him and Sherlock pushed himself up, tiny feet dangling over the edge. The elder brother pointed a finger at their mother who was now outside the greenhouse, a cap on her head and scarf around her neck as she cleaned snow from the outdoor flower beds. “It means you watch people, carefully. You follow them with your eyes and you watch. What do you see, Sherlock?”
“Mum!”
“…Well, yes, but what is Mummy wearing, what do you notice?”
Mycroft couldn’t expect much from his two year old brother, but his mother’s words from years ago had consistently echoed in his head. Being a good role model for his brother involved teaching Sherlock every trick in the book and in Mycroft’s highly esteemed eight-year-old opinion, observation was key. Mycroft watched his brother’s face as his wide and inquisitive eyes traced their mother’s movements through the glass panels.
“Mum cold.”
Mycroft supposed that was a start. “What else?” He leaned back and figured the more questions he asked, the more Sherlock would be entertained, the more he could read his book and pretend to pay attention (he had seen the adults do it all the time). And it worked, because soon Sherlock was babbling about buttons, snow, flowers, the sprinkler in the corner for the tropical plants, Mummy’s scarf that Father had bought her from India, and last week’s gardener’s shoes that he had left by the doormat.
Sighing contentedly, Mycroft turned another page in his book and held onto Sherlock’s hand tight, preventing any run aways.
A few years later, running away was still highly discouraged.
Now eleven, Mycroft’s had a deathly grip on Sherlock’s wrist as he tugged him back into the shadow of the staircase. Mycroft’s other hand placed a finger to his lips and the five-year old scowled impatiently. He stamped a foot and Mycroft hushed him yet again. “I wanna go ask why can’t we just aaaask…”
“Because, we listen and then we wait, and then we ask again if we need to.”
Sherlock stamped his sock-clad feet once more and Mycroft knelt on the hardwood floor, gripping both his brother’s wrists in his slightly-larger hands. Sherlock’s lower lip was protruding ever so slightly and his brows were tightly knit together in a typical annoyed fashion. “I want to ask,” he ground out.
Mycroft raised a brow and shook his head. “We can’t,” he whispered. “We asked earlier and if you keep asking, we’ll never get it. Patience.” After a moment of looking at each other, both stoic and both stubborn, Mycroft felt satisfied enough to let go of his brother’s wrists and proceed to wrap one arm across the front of Sherlock’s torso, effectively trapping the boy with his older brother back in the dark corner of the stairs. But Sherlock had had enough and ran down the stairs, ripping away from his brother, and defiantly striding up to their parents who had been conversing in the foyer.
“I. Want. A. Dog,” Sherlock declared.
Mycroft let out the tiniest of moans in distress and sat cross-legged on the floor.
Good role models always kept tabs on their charges.
Good role models did not let their charges misunderstand the meaning of patience and replace that meaning with one of pig-headed stubbornness. Mycroft was a good role model, who had a stubbornly rubbish charge. A stubbornly rubbish little brother who couldn’t wipe the smug grin off his face when a red Irish setter came home the next week. Sherlock watched that dog, fondly named Redbeard (“But I wanted to name him Gladstone!” “That’s a dumb name; he’s red! And a pirate dog!” “Your name’s a dumb name!” “No, you!” “That doesn’t even make sense!”) and he observed quite well; Mycroft often sat with Sherlock at his side doing schoolwork as Sherlock threw Redbeard’s stick across the garden, all the while Mycroft keeping a close eye on his little brother as to make sure he didn’t throw the stick at Redbeard.
But sometimes the roles were quite reversed and it was the role model himself that was being watched. Curled up on his side and deeply involved in a book on Oliver Cromwell’s Parliament (far beyond what was considered his appropriate reading level), thirteen-year-old Mycroft had a sordid case of the flu and was ordered to stay in bed and keep his pajamas on.
“Mum said to put the book down.”
“It’s resting on top the sheets, doesn’t that count?”
“No. That’s not down, My.”
Mycroft sighed and Sherlock sought his opening and took the book promptly from his brother’s hands and began to read himself. “Cromwell was absolutely sordid,” Sherlock remarked. Mycroft reached out and grasped desperately for the book, cheeks flushed.
“He was, now could you please return my book to my hand – ”
“No.”
“Sherlock… please…”
“No. I’ll read it to you if you’d like but the book must be either down or in my possession.”
“You’re seven; you can’t be reading about Cromwell – ”
“If Dad lets me observe the medical college lectures I can read Cromwell. Shut up.”
With a pout, Mycroft crossed his arms and leaned back into his pillows. “Rubbish,” he mumbled. But within minutes Mycroft was silently and patiently listening to his younger brother read of the Glorious Revolution and the Cromwellian protectorate before his breathing had evened out and eyes had shut. Sherlock, satisfied but now invested in Cromwell’s pursuits himself, paused his reading to glance at his older brother who was safely nestled under the covers. He reached out and felt Mycroft’s forehead with the back of his hand, feeling quite content with the temperature and pleased with himself; with one brief glance, Sherlock opened the book once more and continued reading.
The year Sherlock revisited Cromwell, driven once more to return to the book by a brief mention during school, was when he was fourteen. Mycroft had begun university for the third year and Sherlock was displeased with the lack of rivalry and compatriotism in the house once more. Because Mycroft was away, however… Sherlock found other ways to entertain himself.
“You smell like smoke.”
“So do you.”
“I’m at least old enough,” Mycroft answered succinctly as he got out of the car with a sleek black suitcase for winter holidays. Sherlock pulled out the cigarette from behind his back and with a cocky brow, took a puff and dramatically blew out the smoke. His brother scowled and reached out with a leather clad hand to snatch the cigarette away. “You, on the other hand, are not. Nasty habit. Does Mummy know?”
“Too busy.”
“And Father?”
“Never around. Dead boring around here… I almost decided to play homeless again to see if there are any interesting chaps about to talk to but – ”
“It’d be unwise to get caught again. It’d break Mummy’s heart.” Mycroft took a puff of the confiscated cigarette himself before stamping it out on the gravel beneath his well polished shoe. Mycroft was moving up in University and doing very well; the last time the brothers had talked, it had seemed as though Mycroft was digging his fingers into the government and had his eyes set on a pretty little entry-level job opportunity in international security.
Sherlock, on the other hand, was still coming to terms with the GCSEs. And how horridly stupid they were. To be frank, he was bored, all the time, and with Mycroft gone there wasn’t much to antagonize or observe with. Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Mummy’s heart,” Sherlock began, “is far more occupied with baking for your return to notice twice the smell of nicotine.”
“Horrid habit,” Mycroft continued, but the brothers then walked up the drive to the front door side by side to receive the over-joyous wails from their mother. That weekend, Mycroft promised Sherlock a wander around London and as they sat on a park bench, legs crossed in a similar fashion, long dark trench coats protecting them from the brisk winter air, they returned to their old playground game of observation.
“Cocaine,” Mycroft mumbled.
“Too easy,” Sherlock countered. His eyes flicked up and down the ragged man’s posture as he leaned against a car halfway down from where they sat outside Old Spitalfields Market. “Cocaine withdraw, more likely…”
“Explain,” demanded Mycroft, placing his used mystery paperback on his lap. Sherlock crossed his arms, tucking his hands tightly by his sides to protect against the cold and nodded in the man’s direction.
“He walks by here once every week, paces outside the door in the same outfit – jeans, plaid jacket that was down-filled at one point but now worn flat with holes in both elbows, and a knit wool cap that’s slightly coming undone. He paces, with that,” Sherlock nodded to a small alley dividing the tenement buildings, “alleyway usually in the centre, and then he turns up to the right and passes the church.”
Mycroft raised a brow.
“I watch him from time to time; his hands shake, he’s obviously not eaten much in the past few days, and seems very irritable. I bumped into him once when I was playing homeless, on purpose,” Sherlock smoothly states with a smug grin.
“Anyone who bumps into anyone in London is going to be annoyed, Sherlock, surely you know – ”
“He wasn’t annoyed because I ran into him, brother, he was annoyed because I distracted him, got up close… could see him. He’s used to being invisible. That,” Sherlock pointed at the alley, “is where his dealer used to meet with him. You see, he used to do cocaine, but now that he’s off it, he’s lost and annoyed, starving, no longer has the … the drive he once did when on cocaine. He’s visible.” Sherlock, lost in thought, continued his observations about the poor cocaine-withdraw man as he, true to Sherlock’s story, rounded the corner and proceeded down around the Church out of sight. Mycroft kept a careful eye on his brother as Sherlock began to explain the intricacies of cocaine withdraw and the symptoms associated.
Years later, Mycroft sighed at the bedside of his brother.
“You’ve got to stop doing this. Cocaine isn’t an appropriate leisure to practice, Sherlock.”
Sherlock, hiding amongst his covers in the run-down flat of 221B issued a muffled grunt.
“I can’t hear you.”
“I said,” came Sherlock’s voice from under a pillow. “That you’ve got to stop keeping tabs on me! I’m not five!” A vague bundle of legs kicked out briefly in Mycroft’s direction before huddling up in a ball near the top of the bed. Mycroft rolled his eyes and yanked down a cover experimentally.
“I will stop ‘keeping tabs’ on you when you stop acting like you’re five, brother dear.”
A scowl met the eldest’s gaze and Sherlock, complete with wild hair and an expression of childish contempt. “It’s none of your business.”
“It’s all of my business. You’ve got to control yourself –”
“I have everything under control!” Sherlock stated loudly, tossing off the covers and padding barefoot, duvet wrapped around his shoulders, to the living room of the flat and gazing out on Baker Street. Mycroft followed him, pushing piles of trash, old shoes, month old bills, and several concerning plates full of fungi out of the way with an umbrella.
“If you call this under control I’d have hated to see you and this place when you first got here…” Mycroft mumbled.
“I’m. Fine.”
“Not doubting you.”
With his back turned to his brother, Sherlock huffed. “I’m not an idiot, Mycroft.” But there was no answer, no retort, for Mycroft had left the apartment as swiftly as he had come, stepping nimbly over piles of rubbish and leaving. With a heavy sigh, the younger Holmes turned back to the window and observed Baker Street’s events from afar. He was just fine here on Baker Street. Mycroft had begged him incessantly to get out of the house and try being on his own, (“but carefully, mind you!”) and here he was, experimenting, observing, watching the city work at its most inner layers and Mycroft was criticizing him!
The beginning consulting detective, as he liked to call himself, kicked open a silk lined case at his feet and brought a violin to his chin after placing a cigar between his teeth. Scrapes of music filled the open hall and dirty flat, and after Sherlock was certain that Mycroft was out of earshot, a blissful Russian tune replaced the screeching.
Most people would not consider the exchange which had just occurred to be a fight. But for the Holmes brothers, it had been. Mycroft kept his distance, as Sherlock had subtly asked, and kept an eye on his brother as he struggled through making ends meet, fenced in the living room and almost stabbed the poor landlady Mrs Hudson with an exaggerated roar, and through the arrival of one John Watson had switched to nicotine patches and the odd cigarette (no more cocaine, Mycroft hummed to himself happily) and was off around the city with the poor man in tow.
Upon Sherlock’s ‘death’, Mycroft reinstalled some of his surveillance in his brother’s flat, and realized with a heavy heart how much the true loss of Sherlock would worry him thin. He was to set a good example, so their mother had told them, and here Mycroft was, watching his poor brother go ragged at the edges ‘solving crimes’, getting shot and shot at, and nearly shipped off away from his reach. Was being distant a good trait to model? No, surely not, Mycroft thought. The loss of his younger brother, though he’d never admit it anymore than he already had (“Your loss would break my heart”) especially not after the disastrous family Christmas, would rob Mycroft of his chance to be at least something of a good example…
Mycroft shut off the surveillance camera, shut his laptop, and called Anthea for his car.
“Pickpocket.”
“No, too relaxed. Prostitute?”
“Does being relaxed in public suggest sexual endeavors or personal comfort? Not everyone is as annoyed with the public as you are, Sherlock.”
Sherlock shrugged. “That one, there, in the red cap… gardener.”
“Hardly a crime.”
“Of marijuana?”
The man in question outside Old Spitalfields Market held a large garbage bag full of green leaves. Mycroft raised a brow. “Wrong,” He casually disagreed, puffing lightly from a cigarette. “Those are the remnants of tomato plants. You must get your eyes checked.”
“I have perfect eyesight, thank you very much. The one with the coffee – black market arms dealer.” Mycroft’s eyes narrowed as he gazed at the man in question.
“Yes, yes alright…possibly…”
“Ha! You admit it!” Sherlock declared triumphantly, taking a puff from his own newly lit cigarette.
“Alright, I concede,” the eldest Holmes threw his hands in the air and rose from the park bench, but not before swiping the cigarette and stamping it out under his heel. The trademark pout, identical to the one Sherlock had given his elder brother hushed in the staircase before he demanded a dog, graced his face. Sherlock wouldn’t believe his eyes later (perhaps he should get them checked), but he would swear that a childish grin had crossed his brother’s face as they both turned back in the direction of Baker Street, and that Mycroft had mumbled something akin to ”you’re a rubbish little brother.”
“Rubbish must run in the family…”
Good example, indeed.