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Mycroft Holmes had sat at table by the bedroom balcony reading the works of Robert Browning in the late afternoon. For once he was reading for the sheer pleasure of it. It was something he had once let slip by the wayside and not done in years. Deep in his soul he concedes he may not have done so again until after he retired in another decade or so were it not for Gregory Lestrade.
Mycroft chuckled to himself at the memory. Gregory had been appalled to learn that Mycroft had never read “Charlotte’s Web,” when it came up in a conversation that even as a young child of seven or eight his reading material was more George Orwell or Sun Tzu than EB White or A. A. Milne. Mycroft had been reading a report for work when the paperwork was gently pulled from his fingers and a hardcopy of the novel, one he had not known existed in their home, was placed in his hands. It was an old copy. Mycroft realized it was Gregory’s own personal copy that he has owned since a child. Once he realized his lover was indeed serious, and he had no hope of getting get back to his work until it was read, he relented.
At first, the alpha only was merely going to skim through it, but surprisingly found himself charmed by the tale as it unfolded and read it properly. He knew Gregory could tell once he was really into it and chose to ignore the tender, but smug smile when the man cheekily handed his reports back to him and Mycroft placed them aside to finish reading the novel.
He understood the novel’s purpose as allegory, but he had to admit to himself it was relaxing to read again for pleasure. He did not admit to Greg the relaxing reading had made going through the reports afterward easier to bear and he was finished with the work quickly. He began to read just for pleasure again. He finished Browning and picked up a random novel in his too be read pile.
It was one of the many, many things he was ever thankful for when it came to having Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade in his life. Another being the comfort he finally felt in his own skin as he sat in nothing more than his pyjamas bottoms after having come home from work and showered before he sat in the waning afternoon sun to read. He smiled at his pale freckled complexion, the dark ginger hirsute chest and lower arms on casual display. It was something he had never done even in the privacy of his own bedroom before Greg had oh so slowly and patiently showed Mycroft just how much he found him pleasing physically as Mycroft himself found the physique of his silver fox of a lover gorgeous.
The alpha never had expected to fall in love again after the fiasco of that last time back in his twenties. In fact, had sworn to himself that he would not. Universe clearly had other plans, and Mycroft was grateful. What the alpha now shared, and with a beta male(!), was so beyond the ken of anything the younger him could have ever hoped to imagine, let alone understand of his own capacity to love or be loved.
Grow old along with me… slipped into Mycroft’s mind and he smiled in the knowledge of the question to be asked and the ring that waited to be given after dinner tomorrow.
Neither were spring chickens, his own receding hairline and Gregory’s thinning silver strands gave testament to that. Still, Mycroft knew then and there that he was not going to wait until tomorrow to ask. His soul filled with hope and he smiled to himself as he heard the shower shut off.
Gregory had slipped into something slimy and most foul smelling at a crime scene. Once home, he literally stripped down to his pants and socks just inside the front door, much to surprise, amusement, and delight of Clemmons, their chief of staff for the townhouse. Gregory stormed past Mycroft and went straight to the shower having refused to be touched until he felt detoxified. Mycroft placed a marker in the current novel he read. It was one in which he had already deduced the plot and ending but found the author's insipid writing unintentionally hilarious and read on anyway.
Mycroft's warm smile was genuine as he stood when Gregory exited the bathroom moments later. Universe was into gift giving as Greg stepped into a ray of dappled sunlight and stopped as he dried his hair. Mycroft’s breath caught as memory of an old woman’s voice dropped into his mind just them.
[“I give you a gift, Alpha Mycroft Alexander David Holmes. When the time is right you will know when to use it. You are worthying.”]
Mycroft’s smile widened. The time is now.
Gregory wrapped in only a towel around his hips with another in hand as he dried his hair stopped cold at the sight of him. “Mycroft?” Greg’s head tilted slightly as he took an unconscious step back. “Alpha!”
Before beta Gregory Lestrade could finish the last syllable of his first name, Alpha Mycroft Holmes had crossed the room at his full alpha speed and was on him. At the last syllable of the next word Mycroft’s arms had pulled Greg close in a tight grip the man could not escape.
The panicked yell of his second gender from Gregory’s lips was vaguely the last coherent thought Mycroft had before he dropped as Alpha as he never had before and and now operated on deep core instinct alone.
Gregory Michael Lestrade was a beta. An ordinary human. He did not have a scent gland as alphas and omegas do. He did not have any type of gland that could relate to their physiology. Yet Alpha’s canines grazed blindly along the side of the neck of the terrified human in his arms until he reached a juncture just past where the shoulder meets the neck and he bit.
Alpha's canines slid into flesh, past muscle, and found a spot somewhere between the levator scapulae and the trapezius that felt right. The beta screamed as he struggled in Alpha's arms, but Alpha did not let go.
Alpha injected his own unique enzymes into the beta’s bloodstream. All the while he held the beta in a tight grip that could not be broken. He felt as the beta body in his arms quickly dropped in temperature.
Something within him sensed the beta was dying, still Alpha does not relent somehow knowing he was not done.
And just when the beta ceased in his struggle, Alpha then drew blood and enzymes from the beta and mixed them into Alpha’s own blood.
Canines still sunk into the beta, Alpha's grip tightened anew on the vibrating beta body he held as a foreign entity like nothing ever known flashed across Alpha’s body and core with a white-hot blaze that seared.
His own body struggled against the invasion, but his Alpha core knew, and would not let go. Blood and enzymes flowed ice and fire between the two men in a vicious fight for possession until…
He was no longer quite Alpha and the being in his arms was no longer quite Beta there was…
Balance.
Emotions and thoughts raced in Beta’s mind and slowed in Alpha’s mind as their minds also united in an equal balance.
Something in Beta’s core called to Alpha's core, both having sensed it is done.
The newly animated Beta moaned as he pulled Alpha’s head away, turned and kissed him deeply, hungrily.
They instinctively know they both have cores now where only Alpha's core had existed before.
And something in Alpha's core recognized what was within in Beta as a Rut, even as he realized something in Beta core recognized what was within Alpha as Heat.
Still, core is core.
It has no logic other than there is a Rut and there is a Heat.
Alpha and Beta do what comes naturally between them now.
Neither think anything of it when Alpha takes Beta. It was as it had always been right between the two of them.
Nor do either even register when Beta takes Alpha for the first time. It is equally right between them now.
And they know, between those cores there will always be a give and take, but there will always be a balance between them as there has never been before and that too is right between them.
A stripe of moonlight through the open curtains found them lucid in bed hours later.
“What have we done to each other?” Gregory softly asked the alpha spooned in his arms. “I have never felt so much joy and hope and wonder before in my life.”
“I apologize. It just came over me. I had no warning and I could not ask your permission if this was something you even wanted…” Mycroft winced when a sharp pain struck his mind in reminder of what can and cannot be spoken.
“Whoa!” Greg pulled back having sensed, though not actually having felt, the pain. “This has something to do with South America?
“Yes,” Mycroft nodded, “thus I cannot explain it.”
Mycroft had told Gregory everything that he could about what happened to John, Sherlock, himself, and his assistant Lauren, while they were in South America some months ago. Greg, intelligent man that he his is in his own right, had deduced the reason why Mycroft could not tell the rest and had let it go in understanding.
“Then don’t.” Greg snuggled close again. “I feel you now as I never have before, and I am grateful for...whatever this is…whatever we are.”
“Whatever this is. Whatever we are has no standing in A/O or Crown court.” Mycroft turned to face him, “I was thinking earlier that I wanted to fix the Crown one between us before this happened. Now that it has, it seems like it would be a most opportune time. That’s if you’d like to...Mr. Lestrade-Holmes.”
It was odd feeling it within himself. He felt Greg's momentary confusion, but then the joy that infused him as he realized the enormity of what was said, even before he audibly responded, more than made up for it.
“We’d have to wait until after the fourth month or the new parents will never forgive us, but yes! Yes, I’d like. I’d like it very much, Mr. Holmes-Lestrade.”
Mycroft looked forward to the remaining days, however long there were of their lives together, and the hope that those days would be many.
“…The best is yet to be…”, Browning had it right.