Chapter Text
Mycroft felt absolutely terrible. The report sitting prominently on his desk had something to do with it. He leaned back in his chair, cupped his face in his hands, and let out a long, hoarse sigh.
Tea. At the Moriarty’s.
Albert.
Albert might—no, he surely would—find himself a girlfriend.
The pain twisted his insides and burned his heart.
What a fool he was ! What a stupid idea to fall in love !
Mycroft felt like throwing up.
Albert was going to find a partner, a wife, and Mycroft would be left alone with these idiotic feelings he should never have had.
A stifled sob escaped his throat. Luckily, it was too late for anyone to hear him.
What would they say, huh ?
What would they say, all those people, if they saw the great Mycroft Holmes crying ?
They’d laugh at him.
Mycroft would lose all credibility.
And what if those people knew he was crying because his heart was broken ?
Broken by another man ?
Public lynching.
Social execution.
A tear rolled down Mycroft’s cheek.
Idiot.
He was an idiot, that’s all.
An idiot for letting himself be seduced by a damn pair of green eyes.
By a mesmerizing voice.
By a damn Lord of Crime.
Mycroft stood up, trembling, from his desk and walked across the room to lock the door.
He collapsed onto the sofa with a hoarse groan of pure pain.
He was in such agony.
His heart was burning.
With love. His heart was burning with the fire of love.
For a pyromaniac.
What irony.
Mycroft let out a small, hoarse laugh.
Oh, for heaven’s sake.
Yet he knew how painful love was.
He had suppressed it all. For years. All those idiotic feelings, all of it, he had ignored.
And now here he was, crying like a fool on his sofa, imagining Albert James Moriarty with a woman.
Why ?
Why was Mycroft Holmes, the coldest, most unfeeling man in the British Empire, weeping for love of a man ?
Why did he love them ?
Another sob rose from his throat. The tears were rolling down his cheeks too quickly.
He was in so much bloody pain.
Because of Albert.
Yet he didn’t blame him.
No.
Mycroft blamed himself for having been foolish enough to fall in love with someone so dangerous.
Whether for the nation he strove to defend.
Or for, yes, for his own heart.
Love…
‘Jealous time, could it be that these moments of ecstasy,
When love pours happiness upon us in long streams,
Fly away from us at the same speed
Only days of sorrow ?”
Why did Mycroft’s undeniably troubled mind recall such a sad poem, when the conscious part of his brain was thinking only of Albert, on the arm of some woman, with a beaming smile ?
Another hoarse groan rose from his throat.
Mycroft was suffering.
Far too much.
“There is the warmth of love, the vibrant breath of desire, the lover’s whisper, an irresistible magic that drives even the most sane of men mad.”
Homer.
What a fool, Homer.
Love, certainly, drives one mad with pain.
Not with happiness.
Love is nothing more than eternal torture.
Outside, the clouds were taking on an ominous hue.