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Sherlocks hands were shaking.
They were also bruised, bloody, and scabbing, so the shaking was not the highest item on the docket, so to speak; it was not even on the list.
The list began and ended with his brother, who lay on pristine white hospital sheets, fighting for his life with every choking, thin breath.
Three broken ribs, fluid in the lungs, and a series of long, deliberate cuts along the torso where the men who bore a grudge against Sherlock for imprisoning their kin had begun to— to flay at Mycroft.
When Sherlock had burst through the doors of the abandoned pool house, James a breath behind, hed found them trying to drown a thrashing Mycroft. He had not slowed as he threw himself bodily at them, howling, (“unarmed,” James voice tsked in his head), a satisfying crunch as the first man's nose bone was driven into the soft matter of his skull, a cry as another fell to his knees, eye gouged.
His mind, untethered now to helpful, step by step problems like the necessary violence needed to save his brothers life, snagged on little details; the bruises mottling Mycroft's eyes and nose, the chafed, reddened skin in bands around his wrists, the spot of blood in his mustache. Sherlock ought to clean that up, before he woke. The doctors had done the best they could to patch him up, but they would not hold up to Mycroft’s standards of cleanliness.
That was, assuming he woke at all.
He took in a deep, shuddering breath, raising his bowed head to struggle with his tie, which was now doing its level best to choke him. There was water rising in his lungs, black and stagnant as what had spilled from Mycroft's lips when James had forced him to let him go, the man can’t breathe like that, Sherlock, turn him on his side. Would he had died there, if his friend hadn't been there? Left Mother with the son responsible for the death of her daughter, and now for her eldest child?
Black spots popped in the edges of his vision. He couldn’t breathe.
He swayed, head spinning, clutching at anything that would give him purchase in the rapidly darkening room. He couldn’t— His hands scrambled and tore at starched sheets, fingers tangling in Mycroft’s. With enormous effort, he lifted heavy arms a scant inch, turned over his brothers hand, and found his wrist.
He clung to the thread of a weak pulse.
—————-
The trouble was, it was Mycroft who cleaned up Sherlocks messes, Mycroft the schoolmarm who nudged him with dry remarks and a weary, beleaguered humor into a semblance of respectability. Sherlock was not respectable on a good day; indeed he felt more and more unhinged with each passing hour watching evening shadows carve Mycroft's face into bruised depressions.
Mother or James made him eat, through creative applications of cajoling and blackmail. He slept, and dreamt of Mycrofts head going under the water, of his corpse floating alongside little Bea’s, their hands interlocked.
—————
On the fourth day Mycroft didn't wake up, Sherlock crawled into the narrow bed with him and fit his head to his heartbeat.
He was wondering idly whether having died in his sister's place would have fixed anything, when there was a knock upon the doorway.
“Ah, ain't this a sweet sight. Snug as two bugs in a rug, you are.”
Sherlock hadnt slept in something like three days. Still, he found the strength to roll his eyes. Of course it was James, not his Mother, who had found him when hed given up on dignity.
“You'll be happy to know I finally lured your Mother into bed—“
Sherlock jerked up, fury swimming red in his vision.
James snorted, eyes darting over him. He had gotten the reaction he wanted, then.
“To sleep, you daft man. Even I am not so much a cad.” He jerked his head to the adjoining bed, which had been cordoned off with curtains.
“You are a cad,” Sherlock snapped, keeping his voice low.
“Ah, there's that witty repartee,” James smiled, producing a silver tea tray with a flourish, crossing the room, “not dulled one bit by that elusive wisp, the sandman himself. Now, will you let me take a look at that?”
“At what?” Sherlock rasped. His voice sounded strange, after little use.
“Your hands,” James wiggled his fingers. “You'll have need of them after this, oh great detective. How are you to help poor Mycroft with his recovery when you're a right mess yourself?”
Sherlock blinked down at his hands. They looked, now that he noticed, rather like ham gone through a meat-mincer. They'd begun to swell, where one of the knuckles had popped breaking a kidnappers nose.
What use in protesting? He handed them over.
“Good lad,” James said, approving, and dipped a handkerchief into a bowl of icy water.
James dabbed at the crusted blood with a surprising grace, motions feather light. Sherlock couldn’t recall many times they'd sat in silence, instead of moving in sync, buzzing with the same corked lightning, or taking merry jabs at each other, quoting increasingly obscure novels.
He studied James face, his expression of utmost concentration, the coiled tension that seemed to always live under his skin, bunching in his shoulders. The familiar crows feet that crinkled down his cheeks, gone. The slight downturn to his eyelids that painted him a permanent hedonist. There was something in them of Caravaggio's Bacchus, the sly mouth always pulled into a half smile.
James' eyes flicked up to his. Sherlock near jumped out of skin.
James chuckled quietly. His thumb swept over the newly bandaged knuckles, leaving a stinging path in its wake. He winked.
Sherlock felt abruptly very stupid, in a way he hadn’t since he was a small child. There was a jest here, in the gleam of James' eye, the puckish curve of his brows, and Sherlock was far too tired to play along.
James sighed, letting go his hands.
Sherlock took them back with a huff and a stiff nod of thanks.
“Bloody English,” James sighed, “youre welcome.” He wrapped hefty chunks of ice in the remaining tea towels and plunked them onto Sherlocks hands.
He felt even more a fool. Here James was, cajoling Mother to sleep and forcing him to accept his help, and Sherlock had only snapped at him like a brute.
“Thank you, James.”
James brows went up. “Ah. Youre most welcome.” He even bowed at the waist, like a servant to a King.
Sherlock huffed something approximating a laugh.
“Now, get back to your cuddling.”
Sherlock sputtered. “I was not—“
“Course not,” James sat back in his chair, legs splayed like an indolent King. “Just like I’m not keeping watch.”
Something thick and heavy settled in Sherlocks throat, and he found he couldn’t seem to speak another word around it. He could almost forget, at times, that to James it was all a game; people and sex, Sherlock and his family dramas and the equation to burn the world around their heads.
———-
On the seventh day of what Sherlock would begin to think of as the worst week of his life, Mycroft grimaced and opened his eyes. He blinked fuzzily at the shape swimming before him, frowning.
“Sherlock? What on earth..” And then, in drug addled, wide pupiled confusion, even more alarmed; “Are you alright?”
“Am I—“ Sherlock choked, and found to his abrupt horror that he was weeping.
James didn't do anything useful like help, or go and wake Mother, but stood with his hands tucked in his pockets, watching them with the curiosity of a play goer. And then it didn't matter, because Mother sat up all of a sudden and threw back the curtains, darting across the room to them with her hands landing like birds on Sherlock's back, holding him up, and she was crying, too, even as Mycroft looked between them again and asked what was wrong, and why was there blood in his mustache.
———
Sherlock refused to admit that James was right, on this particular occasion. He did have need of his hands.
Of course Mycroft had insisted on being properly dressed as soon as he could sit up without going grey in the face. “In hospital pyjamas,” hed hissed, “I cannot be seen like this!”
“Correct me if Im wrong, but is it not your coworkers visiting to wish you good health?”
“Precisely,” Mycroft groaned. “A pack of vipers, the lot of them, sniffing out the slightest sign of weakness. Help me sit up. And fetch me a comb, for gods sake.”
“Remind me again why I should aspire to your line of work?”
“Because, Sherlock,” Mycroft said in tones of infinite wisdom, wincing as he was hauled gently up, “one day they will all come crawling to me for help, and I will take immense satisfaction in hearing them beg.”
Sherlock snorted. He liked this snappish, irritable version of his brother when he could forget he was so because he was in pain, that it was his fault hisfaulthis—
Focus. The waistcoat. The fussy little buttons seemed designed to nip at Sherlocks fingers as he slid them into the appropriate button-holes. He stood back to appraise his work; Mycroft's legs would have to remain hidden under the blankets, but it would do.
Mycroft looked down his nose at himself and nodded. “Passable work, brother dear, thank you.”
Sherlock rolled his eyes, crossing the room to obligingly push the little half desk closer to Mycroft’s bedside. He currently lay in a mad circle of the paperwork he’d asked his secretary to bring up, since he was “falling dreadfully behind on matters of state.” Nevermind the dangers of being caught working again.
The clack of heels in the hallway. Both brothers looked at each other, frozen in alarm, and began frantically shoving papers and pens into the desk drawer— too late. A two headed shadow loomed in the doorway.
“Boys,” Mother said, “youre not trying to run the British government from a hospital room again, are you?”
“Of course not,” they said in sync.
Mother sighed. James laughed, his head tipping back with the force of it.
—————-
In the end, weeks later, they had to shuffle out the hospital holding shoulders and waists, supporting a Mycroft who insisted he was perfectly fine and wouldn’t go jelly legged again and nearly brain himself on the stone steps again if they let go.
“Just like a three legged race,” James snorted, humming a can-can as they descended.
“Oh, James, stop it,” Mother’s laughter shook her sides, pressed against Sherlock.
James shot a wink at her.
“Yes, James, stop it,” Sherlock hissed.
Step by perilous step, like some eight legged, shambling creature, they made their way to the carriage and placed a listing Mycroft inside. It was an interminably long ride, one where Mother tucked Mycroft's arm in hers and squeezed his hand for every suppressed wince as they passed over potholes. She and James filled the space with easy chatter. Sherlock spent the time gritting his teeth, staring out the window.
Finally, they reached home; Mother spilled out in search of bedding and bandages, tugging James behind her, the door swinging shut behind them. No doubt she meant Sherlock ought to talk about it, as he’d refused to.
Mycroft cleared his throat. “As much as I enjoy hearing your teeth grind from here, perhaps you might break the usual convention and tell me what’s wrong?”
Sherlock stared at him, incredulous.
Mycroft studied him, an equally incredulous look spreading over his face. “You can't— after all the times you ought to have taken responsibility, growing a beehive in the attic ceiling, or making petri dishes of the fine china—“
“I was eight,” Sherlock said mulishly.
“Sherlock, listen to me,” Mycroft said urgently, “It was not your— they were madmen, clearly—“
“Yes, but I so rarely listen to you, why start now?”
The carriage was stifling; Sherlock threw open the door and surged out, inhaling crisp country air with a shuddering breath. Damn his meddlesome, too perceptive brother.
“Sherlock! Sherlock, for gods sake, will you slow— blast it—“ The click of Mycroft's new cane descending the carriage steps. A dangerous creak and a sharp inhalation—
Sherlock turned, lunging, and caught Mycroft before he could fall onto the gravel. He staggered under the weight, felt Mycroft's chest rise and fall in unsteady breaths; they’d ended up in a strange sort of embrace.
“Damn it all,” Mycroft huffed, “must you make everything so terribly difficult?!”
“But you’d be so boring without me,” Sherlock said, without much fervor. He was drinking in familiar details; the wooly scratch of expensive tailoring under his cheek, the familiar, musky scent of cologne.
There had been a time when Mycroft had fashioned himself Father, Mother and Brother in one convenient package that steamrolled everything in its path into dull rules. Sherlock needed a firm hand, he'd said. An echo of their Father, no doubt. Strange, to think Mycroft had been younger than Sherlock was now, when Father began to mold him.
“I shall not dignify that with a response,” Mycroft said, tightening his embrace stiffly. “Now will you listen?”
He tensed, gritting his teeth, trying to work his way free.
Mycroft tsked, leaning back, clasping Sherlocks neck so he could not look away, their foreheads touching.
“It was not your fault, brother.”
Sherlock swallowed around a shard of glass, eyes prickling. Damn him, he had to go and be kind now, of all times. He would've preferred James right hook.
He jerked back. Mycroft let him go.
“On this point, I beg to differ.”
Mycroft looked almost pitying. Sherlock wanted to step hard on his boot almost as badly as he wanted to collapse like a puppet with its strings cut.
Mycroft exhaled, eyes softening. “Why can you never be sensible and take credit for your mistakes when they are actually due? One day you will end up a wolf with its paw trapped in a trap of his own feeling.”
Sherlock thought of James, his eyes glinting dark as whiskey as they darted to the key hidden in his pocket.
“Now who is being dramatic?”
Mycroft huffed, rolling his eyes. “You, brother dear. Always.”
It never failed to please Sherlock that he could reduce Mycroft to teenage mannerisms. He slid an arm under Mycroft's, patting his hand condescendingly as he held him up.
“Well, it is life in my veins, not our government’s standard issue ink, brother dear.”
“Don't think this conversation is over. I will remind you as many times as is needed to get into your thick skull.” Mycroft rapped gently on Sherlocks head. They strode down the dappled path to their childhood home arm in arm, Sherlock slowing his steps to match Mycroft's staggering ones.
”And if you cannot see sense, I will be involving Mother.”
”Mycroft!” Sherlock groaned.