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Of all Gregory’s nephews, it is Benny who bothers Mycroft the most.
“Bothered” is perhaps the wrong word for it, but Mycroft can’t think of a better one. He isn’t afraid of the boys, or nervous around them. They don’t annoy or exasperate him. He doesn’t mind when they invade the house in St John’s Wood, shouting and running up and down the stairs as they attempt to slide down the banisters or use the laundry basket as a sled.
Greg glances at him when they arrive, as though he worries that he’ll go into his office and shut the door firmly between himself and the chaos they bring with them. He can tell, by the way Greg wears the sheepish, almost embarrassed twist of his lip, that he expects Mycroft to draw away.
He never does. He leaves his door open and dutifully hands over pencils and paper and the occasional pair of scissors upon request. When he passes the boys in the hall, he greets them politely and steps over the obstacle course they’ve laid out for their various toy cars and trucks.
When the boys squirm and wiggle their way through dinner, he ignores them, and when Greg has to remind them for the fifth time to lower their voices, Mycroft simply whispers, and they are instantly silent.
“How?” Greg demands later, when Jessica has retrieved them after yet another disastrous date. (Completely unsuitable; he’s smoked pot at least twice in the previous month and has an undisclosed girlfriend in Surrey.) “How the hell do you manage them? I’ve known them all their lives and they never listen to me.”
“Because,” replies Mycroft smoothly. “You’ve known them all their lives. I am a new entity.”
“They adore you.”
“I hope,” says Mycroft, and he can already feel the blush rising to his cheeks, “they’re not the only ones.”
Greg growls playfully, and the rest is… not appropriate for conversation about young nephews, that’s certain.
The two older boys are clever enough, loud and raucous and sure of themselves. They speed through their homework, never missing a question, speed through their dinners, never missing a bite. They’ll speed through their entire lives, Mycroft can tell already, and reap everything life has to offer.
The youngest, though….
“Uncle Mycroft,” says Benny. He is wearing his pajamas; Greg has the older boys in the lounge, which once housed the formal sitting room and now boasts a comfortable, squashy sort of couch, and a television that had required some deft contortions to actually fit through the front door. It’s a beautiful room: dark panels and built-in bookshelves, some exposed and sporting various photographs and precious mementos. Other bookshelves are hidden by panels that hide the garish colors of Greg’s extensive collection of films and music.
It was the first room they’d finished – even their bedroom and the kitchen were later, because they had a perfectly serviceable if bright bedroom upstairs, as Greg pointed out, and neither of them were much for cooking, as Mycroft pointed out.
It’s to be some terrible movie marathon, until Jessica returns after another failed rendez-vous. This one’s a banker in The City. Mycroft has already determined that he’s unsuitable (a rather heavy-handed insistence on boys who play sport and girls who play with dolls), but he’s hardly dangerous and it’s better if Jessica determines his unworthiness on her own.
“Uncle Mycroft,” says Benny, and Mycroft doesn’t bother to look up from where he is stirring the chocolate into the milk. “If I ask you a question, will you tell me the truth? The true truth?”
“I will try,” says Mycroft, and turns up the heat under the pot; the chocolate is dark flecks in the milk, though it’s melting slowly. “What is it you wish to know?”
“It’s to do with Father Christmas,” says Benny, and for a moment, Mycroft is transported back thirty years, to another kitchen in another house, and it’s not a pot of hot chocolate in his hands but a small trainer coated in soot. It’s not Benny but another boy, looking up at him in all seriousness, and hoping for an answer that suits. “Do you know him?”
“I am aware of him, yes,” says Mycroft cautiously. “Though I cannot say we are on a first-name basis.”
“Well,” says Benny carefully. “He comes in through the chimney, isn’t that right? And there are an awful lot of houses, with an awful lot of irregularly shaped chimneys, and he has to bring presents for every child in the house, and there are an awful lot of houses so that’s an awful lot of presents he has to take everywhere with him, and I know you work for the government so I was wanting to know if he’s a Time Lord or not.”
Mycroft, for a moment, forgets to stir the hot chocolate.
“I… I’m sorry, Benny, could you repeat that?”
“A Time Lord,” says Benny, a bit more earnest now. “Like the Doctor. He could keep all the presents in the TARDIS because it’s bigger on the inside and use it go in and out of the houses without bothering with the chimney – I’ve looked at them, some of them aren’t very big at all, I couldn’t even fit down them – and that way he’d have everything with him and he wouldn’t have to worry about whether or not all the toys would fit in his sleigh or if he’d fit down the chimney. And he’s a Time Lord, so he could just zip back in time and keep doing houses when he runs out of time, that’s how he’s able to deliver presents the whole world over in one night, and the Doctor works for U.N.I.T. sometimes, and you work for U.N.I.T., I think, so I thought maybe you could tell him that I was wrong, I don’t want the blue bicycle for Christmas, I’d rather have a purple one. With a basket in the back, because one in the front is for girls. Uncle Mycroft, the hot chocolate is burning.”
Mycroft jerked with a start and quickly pulled the pot from the heat. He switched off the burner and gave the hot chocolate a brief stir – it was scalded, a bit, and made a sort of hissing noise as he scraped the spoon against the base of the pan, but otherwise it appeared to be all right.
“Well?” asked Benny. “Can you?”
Mycroft can remember pi to the fifteenth place. He can remember each of the nannies Sherlock had in order, as well as the exact length of their employment. He can recite every country in the world as well as its capital city, head of state, main export and a brief description of their state flag.
He cannot for the life of him remember Benny’s question.
“Can I—?”
“Tell Father Christmas. About the bicycle, and the basket.”
“I could,” says Mycroft carefully. “That was quite good reasoning, Benjamin.”
Benny puffs with pride. “It makes sense.”
“And you reached this conclusion by yourself?”
“Well,” says Ben, a bit embarrassed. “I asked my teacher, you see, and she said that Father Christmas doesn’t always go down the chimney, see, because not all houses have them—“
Benny keeps talking, but Mycroft only half hears him. Instead, he’s still thirty years before, listening to another little boy’s insistence that the only way to be sure of anything was through physical experimentation.
“So can you?”
“I’m afraid that I don’t work for U.N.I.T.,” says Mycroft as he reaches for the mugs. “Though of course I will ensure the message reaches the proper personnel.”
Benny wrinkles his nose, as if trying to determine if this would do, before finally nodding his acquiescence. “I suppose. If you’re sure the message will reach him in time.”
“I’m sure,” says Mycroft sincerely, but that is mostly because he has not purchased the bicycles yet, though a rear-mount basket may be difficult to obtain.
*
The boys fall asleep halfway through the second film; Greg is a heavy weight next to Mycroft, and might be asleep himself. The older two boys are sprawled on the sofas, but Benny has pressed his bare feet up against Mycroft’s thigh, toes tucked under, and Mycroft is afraid that if he moves, he’ll wake the youngest boy up.
“Are they asleep?” murmurs Greg.
“Yes.”
“Good,” says Greg. He reaches over and hits the mute button on the remote, and then twists next to Mycroft, craning his neck up to kiss his jaw.
“Benny is next to me.”
“Benny has been known to sleep through James’s band recitals,” says Greg as he continues to kiss down Mycroft’s neck. “While he was sitting in the front row.”
Mycroft rests his head back on the sofa. Greg might be all talk, but he does stop kissing, and rests his head next to Mycroft’s, staring up at the ceiling. It’s a more interesting view than one might guess; Mycroft had insisted on preserving the ornamental plaster at all costs, and once it was cleaned and repainted, Greg hadn’t put much of a fight. In the dim blue light thrown off by the television, it’s a lesson in the continual play of light and shadows.
“Benny asked me about Father Christmas earlier,” says Mycroft.
“Oh, Christ. Tell me you didn’t—“
“I did nothing that would dispel his belief, Gregory. Honestly, do you really think so little of me?”
“It’s not that I think so little of you, love, it’s that—“ And Greg pauses, as if choking back the words.
“That I would think so little of their imaginations?” fills in Mycroft, and Greg shrugs.
“That’s one way of putting it, I suppose. What did you tell him?”
“It wasn’t so much what I told him as what he told me. He apparently has been putting a great deal of thought into who exactly Father Christmas is, and has come to the conclusion that he is an alien.”
Greg is quiet for a moment. “An alien.”
“A Time Lord, to be precise.”
“Well, that makes a bit more sense.” Greg settles into the couch. “Come to that, it does make sense. If the sleigh was a TARDIS, and being able to control time, and all.”
“That was exactly Benny’s way of perceiving it. It was quite a clever deduction on his part.”
“Put it that way, he sounds like a shorter version of Sherlock.”
“Hardly. Benny, when faced with the problem of how a man could possibly deliver so many packages to so many houses in a finite amount of time, took account of the sources available to him and came up with a reasonable hypothesis, which he tested out by asking my opinion. Sherlock, at the same age and with the same problem, decided to simply test the theory by attempting to enter the house by way of the chimney.”
Greg sat up and turned to stare at Mycroft. “Wait. Sherlock tried to climb down the chimney? At the age of six?”
“Five, actually. Is Benny really six?” mused Mycroft, and looked down at the sleeping child. “He’s quite small.”
“Mycroft.”
“The point is, Benny and Sherlock are quite different. I dare say that Benny may surpass Sherlock, intellectually speaking, at least.”
Greg continued to look at Mycroft – and then started to laugh. “Oh. Oh, I see. It all makes perfect sense now.”
“What?”
“Why you like Benny best.”
“I don’t like Benny best,” says Mycroft, a bit annoyed.
“Of course you do; you’re always so careful around him. I mean, you’re careful around all of them, but the older two, you take them as they come and send them on their way, and whenever you’ve spent time with them, it’s exactly as if you’ve just spent a very pleasant hour with a pack of very excitable puppies, and now that they’re gone you don’t have to think about them anymore. But with Benny – he sticks to you, after he goes. You get this odd look in your eye, and it always takes you an extra moment to respond to anything I ask you. As though you’re reviewing every moment you’ve spent with him, cementing it in your mind.”
Mycroft couldn’t help but be impressed. “That’s…rather poetic of you, Greg.”
“I have my moments,” says Greg. “But that’s it, isn’t it? He reminds you of you. Sherlock always says you’re cleverer than he is. And now you’re saying Benny is cleverer than Sherlock. That’s why he sticks to you, I think.”
Mycroft looks down at the little boy, his feet still tucked under his thigh. “It’s a theory,” he allows.
Greg chuckled and stood up, stretching. “I don’t much relish the thought of moving them tonight; I’ll fetch the blankets, if you want to try to coax them into more comfortable positions.”
“Right,” says Mycroft, but he waits until Greg’s left the room before he stands, careful to slip a pillow over Benny’s feet, so the removal of the warm thigh doesn’t wake him.
It doesn’t matter; the moment Mycroft is up, Benny’s eyes open sleepily. “Uncle Mycroft?” he says, a bit fuzzy with sleep, and Mycroft turns to him.
“Yes, Benjamin?”
“Purple bicycle,” says Benny, and he turns his back to Mycroft, curling into the back of the sofa. “Don’t forget.”
Mycroft smiles, and pulls the afghan on the back of the sofa over the boy, who is surely already asleep again. “I won’t,” he promises, and goes to put his brothers to rights before Greg returns with the blankets.