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The sky over London was draped in its usual midwinter shroud, thick grey clouds pressing low, casting a chill fog over Baker Street. The old city hummed with life beneath it, indifferent to the cold.
Sherlock Holmes didn’t feel the cold. Or, more accurately, he ignored it. He stood by the window of 221B, violin in hand, one note ringing endlessly into the room’s silence.
John Watson walked in holding a tea tray, pausing at the strange, suspended note.
"Bit early for haunted opera house impressions, isn’t it?"
"It’s never too early for truth," Sherlock muttered, frowning at the string.
In a sleek black room deep within Whitehall, Mycroft Holmes watched.
"Still refusing gloves in January," he said idly, observing his brother cross a street on a CCTV feed. "Will he ever learn to regulate body temperature like a human being?"
"Sir?" his assistant asked.
"Nothing," Mycroft said. "Just noting a variable. Continue observation."
Sherlock found the tiny microphone hidden in the handle of his new teapot. He held it up between two fingers.
"Tell your people surveillance doesn’t work when the subject is smarter than the entire operation."
The next day, Mycroft received a silver spoon engraved with the word " NICE TRY " in bold serif.
He chuckled, despite himself.
"He’s watching you again," John said over breakfast.
"He never stopped."
"You don’t mind?"
Sherlock stirred his tea with deliberate slowness.
"I’d be more concerned if he didn’t."
John didn’t reply. He just filed it away. One more piece of the Holmes equation.
At their parents’ house in Sussex, the old guest bedroom still had pencil marks from when Sherlock and Mycroft used to measure their height in silence. Mycroft was always taller. Sherlock, more determined.
When they visited after years apart, neither acknowledged the wall.
But Sherlock paused by it longer than he meant to.
"Nostalgia doesn’t suit you," Mycroft said, appearing with two cups of tea.
"Neither does domesticity, yet here we are."
They sat in silence, tea warming their hands.
An MI6 gala. Sherlock was not invited. He came anyway.
Mycroft sighed the moment he saw the coat swirl through the hall.
"You’re not on the list."
"Neither are most of your aliases. Didn’t stop you."
"You’re wearing Converse."
"I’m working."
Mycroft arched an eyebrow. "On what?"
"Determining how many agents are pretending to enjoy caviar. So far, eleven."
Mycroft sighed again.
"Stay out of trouble."
Sherlock smirked. "Why start now?"
"He hacked the Defence Ministry?"
"Technically it was a bypass, not a hack," Sherlock said, flipping through papers. "Poor password habits."
John gaped. Mycroft was stone-faced.
"This is treason, Sherlock."
"This is Tuesday."
Mycroft turned away, muttering under his breath.
John didn’t catch it. But Sherlock did.
"What did you say?"
"I said," Mycroft replied louder, "I’ll fix it. Again."
Mycroft’s office held a locked drawer.
Inside it, a file labelled simply: "SH"
It contained:
- Medical reports
- A photo of Sherlock at age six, covered in mud, smiling
- One of their mother’s old poems
- The last voicemail Sherlock left before the fall at Bart’s
Mycroft opened it once a year.
Only once.
A private jet. Rain on the tarmac. A case abroad.
"You didn’t have to come," Sherlock said.
"You’re not the only one with a mind," Mycroft replied.
"You miss me."
"I miss silence."
They both smirked. The plane took off.
Sherlock replaced Mycroft’s umbrella once. Quietly. Same make. Same weight. But newer. The owner of the umbrella far too busy to notice the damage to the old one.
They never mentioned it.
John saw it all.
The glances. The sideways concern. The barbed remarks that landed just a bit too sharp.
He watched Sherlock casually shield Mycroft from a press of people, eyes flicking to exits.
He watched Mycroft quietly cancel an interview Sherlock didn’t want to do.
They’d never say the word "care."
But John knew better.
A blown operation. Blood. Smoke.
Mycroft was wounded. Minor. But Sherlock looked like someone had carved into him.
"You’re not allowed to die," Sherlock said, voice low.
"Not planning to."
"You’re terrible at planning."
"You’re worse at feelings."
They both laughed.
It sounded like pain.
The flat was warm. For once.
John had turned the heat on. Sherlock didn’t complain.
Mycroft was there too. Tea, again. Quiet.
"We’re not good at this," Sherlock said.
"No," Mycroft agreed.
"But we try."
Mycroft nodded. "That counts."