Chapter Text
It's four in the morning, and Mycroft can't sleep. Or rather, he can’t afford to waste time on sleep. He's holed up in the library, typing desperately at his laptop, trying to get this utterly stupid twenty page paper done so he can work on something worthwhile. He's getting into why teaching mathematics as a general education requirement is necessary when he hears beeping.
Looking around, he finds that the student sitting across the narrow hallway has left, and there's a different student, shoulder bag instead of backpack, messy papers sticking out with different names at the tops, hair beginning to grey. He’s broad. His hair looks soft, even in disarray.
Mycroft corrects his assumption: a graduate student, dead to the world with his alarm going off. Probably meant to take a quick nap. But he isn't responding to the alarm. The clear solution to this is to ignore it. It's a distraction he could frankly ignore, and quite easily too. However, social niceties require him to wake up the graduate student so that he doesn't sleep through his work and his alarm won't bother others. It is a library after all.
Mycroft gets up cautiously. He takes the one step across the hallway. Clears his throat.
The graduate student begins to snore.
Mycroft doesn't like this, but society overrules irrational fear. He steels himself. Taps the student on the shoulder.
Nothing happens.
"Pardon me." Still nothing.
He sighs. He'll have to shake him to wake him up. He closes his hand around the grad student's shoulder, the rough material warm from his body heat. Mycroft shudders and shakes his shoulder quickly so he can release him.
The grad student wakes abruptly, jolting, his eyes opening quickly. His hand closes around Mycroft's wrist. Tight. Warm. Mycroft can feel his own pulse thundering through his wrist. Fuck .
“Let go.” He chokes out.
“Sorry, mate. I. Sorry.” The grad student lets go, but Mycroft can still feel his grip. His skin .
"It's fine." He tries to not sound curt, rude, but he doesn't think he manages. He can’t breathe. He knows, logically, why this happens. Panic attacks are commonplace to him. He needs to breathe, but his body won’t obey him.
The student puts his hand on Mycroft’s shoulder. Which is supposed to help, in any regular situation. Reassure the person that there’s someone who cares, get them to focus on you, make them breathe regularly. This has never worked for Mycroft. Head between his knees with everyone within a 100 meter radius looking away is what works for Mycroft.
Mycroft is a little fuzzy on what happens next. He manages to somehow communicate that the grad student should stop touching him, he sits against the wall with his head between his knees, and he breathes. In and out. In and out. Slowly.
He looks up to find the grad student hovering nervously on the other side of the hallway. All of three feet away.
“Are you ok, mate?”
“Yes, I. I’m fine.”
"Alright. Ehm. I’m really sorry for...” The grad student trails off and waves his hands in the air. It’s an effective method of communication and Mycroft understands.
“It's perfectly all right.”
“Thanks for waking me up, definitely need to finish grading these papers. What are you studying?"
Mycroft appreciates both that he ignored the panic attack and that he assumed Mycroft was at University. Some assume that he's still working on his A levels, which would be a fair assumption based on his age, but it still rankles.
"Political science and Economics, with a minor in math, if I can get into the right courses"
"Oh damn, that's way out of my scope. M’name’s Greg, by the way”
Mycroft finds himself pulled into conversation. Greg volunteers that he is indeed a graduate student, getting his DPhil in Criminology. He’s a first year and completely swamped by the course load and added weight of teaching, so he really should get back to grading, but he’d love to hang out after he gets this problem set done.
They continue to study, all of six feet apart, and Mycroft initially can hardly focus with the knowledge that someone is sitting so close to him. Someone who breathes and thinks and produces heat and someone who has touched him. Someone who knows that he’ll have a panic attack if touched. Someone who didn’t make a big deal of it and treated him like a regular uni student and who wants to ‘hang out’ regardless.
But then he gets caught up in his essay, fleshing out the reasons a basic understanding of mathematics is useful in everyday life, fine tuning his transitions, writing a concise conclusion, and all of a sudden he's done. He submits it. He knows exactly what he's written and there's no need to proofread. But now he desperately needs to sleep before his classes in the morning.
Greg looks up as Mycroft stands and tears off the corner of the homework he’s grading.
Their hands brush as Greg hands him his number, and he can't suppress a shudder. Greg's face does something that Mycroft can’t quite pinpoint, and Mycroft’s brain supplies: concerned, worried, curious , but Greg doesn't comment.
"We should study together, call me anytime. See ya around, Mycroft"
"You as well."