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Where most of the rest of the world thought of “Holmes and Watson,” Lestrade thought of “The Holmes Brothers.” Sherlock and John’s partnership came later, and as Lestrade liked to point out to the few he could trust with the observation, those two were never quite what outsiders thought them to be. People knew them through John’s reports, through his observations and his understanding—and while John might be known for many virtues, “observations and understanding” were not among them.
“Now, if Sherlock were given to writing up their adventures, it might come closer,” Lestrade said to Sally Donovan. Then, when she scoffed, he shrugged and admitted, “Well—at least it would be dead wrong in an entirely different way.”
“Wouldn’t bet on it, myself,” Sally said. “They’re both dead gone on treating it all like some adventure story—and the only person more impressed with how clever Sherlock is than John—“
“—is Sherlock,” Lestrade said. They both laughed, then, and clicked their cardboard coffee cups together, the steam of their breath rising in the chill air.
In any case, for Lestrade, “John came after.” Five years after—after meeting the Holmes Brothers. After his own adventures with them began.
Where John met a mysterious, solitary stranger, singular in his brilliance and amazing in his deductive ability, Lestrade met two brothers, like and unlike, alone but never quite solitary, “Holmes and Holmsier,” he sometimes thought.
He had one visual memory that would, somehow, always serve as the anchor of his memory, the key to his understanding. He had been contacted by his MI5 superior and told he was being seconded to an assignment working with an MI6 agent and one of his informants. Relatives, he’d been told. Brothers. His superior had suggested that this was an exceptional assignment, with exceptional people. The MI6 agent was high-ranking, and considered something of a talent. His brother, while too erratic for The Great Game, was useful. SIS wanted to get the best out of both of them, and had concluded that pairing them was not the way to accomplish that. So… they were looking for a third star to join the constellation. Someone who could somehow step between the two brothers and ease their interactions.
“Where do I meet them?” Lestrade asked.
“Kensington Gardens, Peter Pan Statue, mid-morning, before the crowds,” he was told.
He saw Sherlock first. Well—one did. Sherlock always made sure of that. On that occasion he was sprawled in one of the two benches flanking the river overlook immediately across the pavement from the statue in its neat fenced yard. The bench was large, and metal, and painted a handsome dark green. Sherlock had placed himself at the end, in the sun. He wore a vast, dramatic coat—not the Belstaff, he didn’t find that coat until a few years later. But the first coat was much of the same type, only more so—Sherlock had been that much younger, that much more audacious, than much louder in his tastes. It had been a great coat, Lestrade recalled, the sort with a small shoulder cape as well as high, flaring collar. The lad had been playing violin.
No—on that day it would have been more correct to say he’d been playing the fiddle: fast jigs and reels, wild and wooly and patched in with plenty of popular music. A soft cloth cap sat on the bench beside him, open to contributions without being too obviously intended to receive such. He could probably just about get away with claiming he wasn’t busking, especially as there was no one there but Lestrade and the other man at the far end of the overlook. At the very least, there would be a hell of a debate in court if an honest copper tried to drag him in. Thus, no honest copper was making the attempt. So the wicked boy half lay on the bench and watched the world out of sharp, clever eyes as his fingers flew over the neck of the fiddle and his bow sawed and fretted. He scanned the empty walks and the shadowed groves and Lestrade would have sworn that, if asked, he could have given precise descriptions of every bird on the Long Water—every duck and drake and duckling, every swan and cygnet. In return Lestrade would have bet the birds could describe the boy just as well.
He drew the eye, Sherlock did—at the time, he was a copper’s nightmare. The age to make trouble, the brains to be creative about how he did it, and every inch of his long, lanky, and lovely body announcing all the many ways he could be troublesome. Pretty as a rent-boy—and given everything Lestrade couldn’t help but wonder warily if he wasn’t on the pull that way on occasion.
He wasn’t immune to that—and God, Sherlock was a lot of “that” to try to be immune to. No one who hadn’t seen him at that age had any idea of how staggering the lad was. Tall, skeletally thin, with the tell-tale signs of drug abuse. Hair a wild, Byronic hurricane of curls. Blue eyes ablaze in a face that was not yet as angular as it came to be. Instead it was soft, awkward, oddly proportioned, but with the eyes, the brows, the commanding, full mouth so plump and pronounced.
Before the decadent sight could catch hold of his gonads, Lestrade threw up barriers—almost instant boundaries put up in his own defense. He was married, for God’s sake, and even if he wasn’t… It was one thing to fall for that type when you were as young and as pretty and as able to play the fiddler instead of paying him.
That was one thing: Lestrade had been as pretty a lad in his time, and took it with a solid sack of salt and good sense. He had one advantage of this lad, and he knew it already: he’d learned young not to take it all too seriously. Beauty was passing and ephemeral, intelligence often illusory, and charm entirely in the eyes of the beholder.
While on one level this boy laughed at himself, on another he was dead serious in his pose as a Bedlam Boy. Seeing that about him, Lestrade was suddenly safe. At least, safe from infatuation. Instead the lad made him feel older, smarter, and vastly amused.
Only then, though, was he able to look away. Without that bit of distance, and that sense of knowing recognition, he wasn’t sure he’d have been able to, no matter how old he was, no matter how married, no matter how his own job and self-respect might demand it. Sherlock commanded the eye, insisted on your attention. It took a certain something to turn from that burning salamander spirit.
Only when he did, though, did he spot the other brother…and at first he wasn’t sure. He didn’t doubt for a moment that Sherlock was one of the men he’d been assigned to meet. Sherlock screamed “SIS informant.” The other man, though?
Lestrade wasn’t even sure they were related, at first. Yes, both were tall. The elder was slightly soft, slightly plump, and gawky in spite of it. His joints seemed made for comedy—a man designed to trip over his own shoes, or step on banana peels, then flail around the stage with elbows flapping and knees jigging, all akimbo as he staggered and fell. Where the lad’s hair was a brown so dark it bordered on jet, the man’s was a rusty brown, hovering between auburn and chestnut—and of a tone that led Lestrade to suspect he colored it to darken blazing ginger to something a bit less audacious. If he hadn’t kept it so neatly combed and stuck into shape, Lestrade might not have noticed the first faint signs of a receding hair-line. As it was he combed it so severely it was hard to miss.
Nor had the man the lad’s jolie-laide features. While the younger man was so peculiar he was beautiful—madly elven and alien—the elder was a pleasantly plain gnome, with a long beak of a nose, a wide mouth, and small eyes.
At first glance the only similarities Lestrade saw in the two were height—and a tendency to dress for a role. Where the younger brohter begged for the center of the stage, the other man seemed dressed to “pass.” He was at first glance the very model of a modern minor bureaucrat. Someone with money and old school ties; someone with the tailored suits that announced a certain milieu, but not outstanding in particular.
He stood at the far end of the overlook, at the other end of the space, by the other bench, in a jaunty pose. It was a pose, too, Lestrade thought—as studied in its own way as the younger man’s arrogant sprawl. He leaned on a furled umbrella, one leg crossed over, forming a strong silhouette. His neat overcoat was open and pushed back on one side, where his hand thrust deep into his trouser pocket. He gazed contemplatively out at the swans gliding over the Long Water.
The more Lestrade studied them, the more alike they seemed. Each burned with awareness. He knew, for example, that they knew he was watching them—studying them. They were permitting it, all the while they studied him in return. And they were in communication of some sort, though Lestrade was damned if he knew what to make of it. He had no sense that they got on together—indeed, there were silent, invisible vibes of ill-temper and frustration, once you knew what to notice. They were not in sync. They didn’t read each other’s minds. But, God, each knew the other was there, and each knew they were being compared and—
And that was it, he thought. Each expected to be the loser in any comparison, and resented it like fire. The younger one was ready to fight, too, determined to resist.
The elder was..resigned, but too proud to admit it.
And there, he thought, was another similarity. Pride. God, they could have held the patent. Or at least entered the Olympics and been arrogant for England.
He gave a sudden, surprised chuckle, imagining the events. “And here’s Mycroft Holmes, representing England in long-distance vanity. He’s considered a good bet for a medal, and there’s some hope he’s good for another gold to match the one his brother brought us in attitudinal vaulting…”
“Are you so easily amused?” Sherlock spoke for the first time, the fiddle still held high, his eyes narrow and his voice spiteful. “We got another simple one, Mycroft. Tell them to try again.”
The older man turned, then—a slow, patient motion, and for the first time he met Lestrade’s eyes. He studied his observer. His awareness had an entirely different flavor from Sherlock’s, somehow—in no way less intense, and certainly no less penetrating. And, yet, Lestrade found it softer, gentler, though also cooler. He blinked those small, aware eyes—eyes of an intelligent goblin, not one bit less alien than Sherlock’s, if less romantically elvin.
“I think not, brother mine,” he said, voice smooth as polished linen, and as cool. “This one’s clever.”
“Thus explaining why he’s sitting there chuckling like a dafty.”
“Well, he is watching you,” the elder said, tartly. “I know I always find that amusing. Or tragic. I’m not always sure which.”
The younger brother glared at his elder. “You are so….” He stopped, clearly beyond words in his annoyance.
The other smirked. “Out of superlatives, baby brother?”
Sherlock’s eyes narrowed, and the blue went electric. “Fat head.” He looked at Lestrade, and snapped, “I’m good, I’m fast, and I’ll do anything to get away from my brother. I need a contact. Are you willing?”
Lestrade blinked. “Any chance you could unpack that a bit, sunshine? What do you do? What do you need me to do?”
“He’s anti-terrorism surveillance,” Mycroft drawled. “He needs someone he’s got good reason to contact. At first they thought that, being brothers, it would make sense for us to rendezvous.”
“Then they realized that my darling brother’s the last person anyone would plausibly expect me to spend time with,” Sherlock cut in. “I may not be the most stable personality in the trade, but even I’m not masochistic enough to willingly socialize with the Hermit of Whitehall.”
Mycroft grimaced. “Nor I with my ramshackle brother. Hardly a convincing partnership, after all.”
“And you expect…what?” Lestrade shook his head. “I don’t—“
“I solve murders,” Sherlock said, abruptly. “You’ll want to consult with me. It makes perfect sense.”
Lestrade looked at him, stunned. “Sorry, sunshine, what’s that? I’m with the Met. We don’t deal with private detectives.”
“Consider me a consultant,” Sherlock said, those burning blue eyes locking on his brother’s softer gray. He smirked. “The World’s Only Consulting Detective. The genius they call in when they’re at their wits’ end.” He smiled, then, and it was all teeth and malice. “Apparently it runs in the family.”
Mycroft grimaced, and looked away, but drawled, “It will do for a cover. It might even keep you too busy to fall back on your…chemical solace.” He glanced back at Lestrade, considering, then said, more amiably, “I’d take him up on it. He is rather clever at that type of problem, and if you’ve got any trouble arranging for him to be let onto your sites, I’m sure your superior and I can work something out.” Something in the chill dismissal in his voice, in the very turn of his body, suggested that it was decided.
Lestrade scowled. “Haven’t said yes,” he grumbled.
Mycroft turned back, brows rising, mouth already opening. Then he stopped, and blinked, surprised. “I…see.” He considered. “Will you?”
Lestrade considered.
On the one hand, MI5 and MI6 wanted this. And working with the lad—if he was half so bright as he and his brother suggested, it could be a merry game. Shake up his team, but that wasn’t all bad. A bit cocky and full of themselves they were, sometimes—best solve-rate in the division, working under Lestrade, who was considered among the best the Met had to offer. Got a bit cheeky, they did, Donovan and Anderson and the lot of them. Might not do them harm to get that arrogant bastard run through their self-satisfaction on a regular basis.
“He really good?” he asked, not sure why he trusted anything the elder brother more than he’d trust the same from the younger.
“He’s quite good. Particularly at the kind of problems that respond well to leg work. He’s…energetic.”
Lestrade would have guessed at least some of the energy was chemically induced…but, hell. He wasn’t a tame lion, any more than the lad was. They might well have a time of it, they might. After consideration he nodded. “I’ll be counting on you to work things out with the Met,” he said—again, not sure why he trusted the older brother to manage the details that would make it all work.
The man nodded, smiled a tight, artificial smile, and turned back to watch the swans.
“Well, then, that’s settled,” the younger man said, and in a sudden, brilliantly dramatic move, he was up from the bench, with his fiddle stowed in a case and his cap on his head. He gave a little head nod, chirped, “Ta, then! Be seein’ ya, sunshine. Laters, Mike!”” and he was gone, loping easily down the pavement and away toward Kensington Palace.
“Well, then,” Lestrade said, to no one in particular. The older brother wasn’t looking at him any more, after all, and the younger was gone.
He risked a glance at the remaining brother.
“I’ll keep an eye on him,” he said, quietly. “Try to keep him out of too much trouble.”
“Probably pointless,” the man murmured, still not looking back.
Lestrade found himself smiling. “I’ll watch anyway.”
One shoulder rose and fell in a restrained shrug. “I suppose someone ought to.”
“I can report back to you.”
The other man froze, then. “You would?”
Then Lestrade worked it out. The other man had fully expected this to be Sherlock’s exit—his chance to cut the ties entirely.
He considered. Perhaps it would be better for the lad?
But—
He looked at the tall man…so different from his brother, and so alike. Sherlock’s allure shouted at you. Mycroft’s though…
Lestrade smiled. “I will,” he said.
Then he tipped his hat and walked away, leaving the tall man to commune silently with the swans.
And from that time on, they were there in Lestrade’s mind: the Holmes Brothers: complicated and conflicted, competing and collaborating, together and alone.
And Lestrade, so help him, adored them both