Chapter Text
Although the Diogenes Club was principally a place of silence, its proximity to Whitehall and the composition of its membership meant that concessions to the world were sadly required. Consequently, the Stranger’s Room at the Diogenes Club was designed for conversations that could not be avoided but also not encouraged. Its armchairs, while serviceable, leant to the Presbyterian side of comfort. The fire was generally left unlit in winter and stoked to a blaze in summer and the side tables were placed just a little too far away from each chair to be useful. Mycroft’s hand could be seen in every choice.
However, human nature being what it is and men being the gossiping sex, there were occasions where it became a location where gentlemen would still linger and find themselves saying things they would never put in print, never repeat in front of a woman and certainly never admit to saying in the quiet of their own homes. It was discouraged but, Mycroft frequently sighed, inevitable.
On this occasion, as on so many, he had no intention of listening. He had merely stopped in the corridor by the open door because the dispatch he needed was not yet ready, and he was on the hunt for club stationary in the meantime.
Then he heard his family name. “Holmes?” It was clear that it was a question being posed rather than a call to him. The voice belonged to a gentleman whose family Mycroft knew well enough to know he was not particularly intelligent, but extremely well connected. One of the kind which still infested certain higher echelons of the civil service.
“Yes, Holmes,” the man continued. “The younger one. The strange one.”
A second man laughed softly. “Sherlock?”
“Who else? Everyone knows about him.”
Mycroft became absolutely still.
“Everyone?” the other asked.
“Everyone who pays attention.”
There was a rustle of clothing, the clink of a glass.
“Poor old Holmes. Such a promising family too. The older brother is all discipline and ambition. Then there is the younger one running about with that Moriarty fellow.”
“Moriarty?”
“Irishman. Clever, apparently. Charming, if one likes that sort of thing.”
The other man gave a low laugh. “And Holmes likes him?”
The first man chuckled. “Come now. Don’t pretend you haven’t heard.”
Mycroft’s expression did not change. He had spent years mastering the art of showing nothing. It was a useful skill. Especially now.
“They practically orbit one another,” the man continued. “Always together. Always whispering. Always disappearing off somewhere together, they say.”
“Students do that.”
“Not like this.”
The next words were spoken with the lazy confidence of someone who believed cruelty was a form of sophistication. “I wonder if the family knows.”
The other man laughed. “Surely not.”
“I should think the older brother must.”
“Imagine it.” More laughter. “His own brother.”
Mycroft’s hand tightened into a loose fist, but not one tight enough for anyone to notice.
“Still,” said the second man, “it explains a great deal. The younger one was always an odd creature. Too intense. Too theatrical. Those sorts often end up in strange situations.”
“Perhaps that Moriarty encourages it.”
“Perhaps he encourages Moriarty.”
The men laughed again.
“Moriarty is an interesting choice.”
“Interesting?”
The man’s voice now contained a smile.
“An Irishman with a clever tongue, no fortune, no family, no respectable connections, and far too much confidence.”
“And Holmes?”
“Well.” There was a pause, the sort men used when they wanted everyone else to understand what they were implying without having the courage to say it. “He does not exactly discourage attention, shall we say.”
Inside the room, the men had the comfortable air of people who believed they were being daring.
“He always was an unusual creature,” one continued. “Too intense. Too beautiful, in a way. I saw him at a gathering at Ashcombe’s place in Kent, oh, months ago. Flitting about the place, staring at all the men like he’d like to take bites out of them.”
“Beautiful?”
“You know perfectly well what I mean. The kind that slither about trying to catch the eye of all the normal men there to see if one will … you know…”
Another moment of silence followed by a filthy chuckle.
“Perhaps that is the attraction of that sort - the danger they present - like those tarts on the stage. Some of them are born knowing precisely the effect they have.”
The hypocrisy was almost impressive. They spoke of corruption while lingering over every detail and condemned desire while taking pleasure in imagining it. They painted themselves as guardians of morality while treating another man’s private life as entertainment.
“Still,” the other man said, “I cannot say I am entirely surprised. A young man like that, alone at university, with that sort of mind…”
“Yes?”
“Well. One can imagine he attracts attention. And enjoys it.”
Mycroft could have stormed in, reminded them that one of the men they were discussing was the son of an old and respected family, that the other had earned his place through intellect and determination, that neither had ever given them cause for their ugly assumptions. However. Mycroft knew from experience that anger was not useful. Anger was merely loud. Mycroft preferred precision. That is why, when the men maundered on into other areas of filth and speculation, he merely made a mental note and walked on.
⸻
That evening at his flat, he found Sherlock and James in the library. Sherlock was sitting on the floor surrounded by books, ignoring every sensible argument ever made about chairs. James was stretched in an armchair, reading a volume upside down because he was apparently more interested in watching Sherlock work than in the text itself.
“You are aware,” Mycroft said, entering, “that most people use furniture according to its intended purpose?”
Sherlock looked up. “Most people are dull.”
James smiled. “There it is. The warm welcome.”
Mycroft looked at him. “You are becoming entirely too comfortable in this house.”
“Am I?”
“Yes.”
James glanced around. His expression was humorous, except for the slight shadow that passed behind his eyes for a second. “Should I leave?” The question was delivered in a teasing tone, without a flicker in the voice. But once the words were said, he waited just a second too long, his gaze a little too fixed on Mycroft.
“No” said Mycroft. The answer came immediately, a little too intensely for the moment. Both young men looked at him: Mycroft rarely offered reassurance directly. It was not his way.
“You are family here,” he continued, briefly.
Sherlock went very still. James looked away for a moment. Luckily, neither made any further fuss about it. Mycroft disliked fuss.
He sat down and poured himself a drink. After a moment, Sherlock resumed his work. James resumed reading. The room settled back into its familiar rhythm: two young men who trusted one another and had found something rare in a world that would happily tear it apart. Mycroft knew exactly what the men at the club would call it. He also knew what he called it: love. And he would sooner dismantle half of London’s social establishment than allow anyone to make Sherlock ashamed of being loved.
A week later, one of the gentlemen from the Strangers Room found himself unexpectedly removed from a committee overseeing a charitable foundation. Around the same time, the other discovered that a promising introduction to a Foreign Office official had quietly evaporated.
⸻
Mycroft understood something that Sherlock did not. The truth was rarely the thing that destroyed a man: it was the story people preferred to tell about him. A man could survive being eccentric, he could survive being difficult, he could even survive being disliked, but a whisper, repeated in the right rooms, by the right people, could become a permanent stain.
And now there were whispers about Sherlock and James. Not many. Not yet. But just enough to sow the seeds of danger. Sherlock and James were too close: that was the simple fact at the centre of it. They were discreet, careful, and far more cautious than either of them had been at the beginning, but society had always been gifted at finding patterns where it wanted them. A shared glance, familiar gesture, a friendship closer than the usual back-slapping bonhomie, anything that risked suggesting that it had become something deeper…. Everything was a risk. The men at the clubs did not need proof. They just needed a suspicion and the pleasure of passing it along.
Mycroft sat at his desk, considering the problem with the same attention he would give a matter of state security. He could not make the friendship disappear; nor did he want to in any way, shape or form. The solution that finally presented itself was not to deny that James existed. The solution was to make James less interesting, more ordinary, conforming to the stories men already told in London drawing rooms about imaginary Irishmen. Society was far less frightened by a young man who fit a familiar pattern and James Moriarty, Mycroft thought, could be made to fit several.
He began quietly. A remark here, a raised eyebrow there. A recollection of some distant acquaintance in Ireland.
“Poor fellow,” someone would say. “Always had a way with the ladies.” A little laugh. “Too much of a way, perhaps.”
The story grew naturally because people liked stories that confirmed what they already believed. James had always been charming, James had always been reckless. And James had always had a weakness for beautiful women.
Soon enough, the details appeared. A girl in Ireland, no, two different girls there… one family angry enough to make him leave, another trying to catch him to force him into an ill-assorted alliance…. A young man with too much confidence and too little sense, forced to seek his fortune elsewhere….
Mycroft never told the entire story: that was important. A lie told completely was easily challenged - a suggestion was much harder to kill as people embroidered details with their own imagination.
As for Sherlock, that required a different approach. Sherlock Holmes could not be painted as emotionally reckless: no one would believe it - he was too obviously himself. So Mycroft gave them another explanation: Sherlock was cold and difficult, famously uninterested in romance. He was a man who barely noticed the existence of women and instead cared more for books, puzzles, and obscure theories than ordinary human affection.
The phrase appeared in conversation more than once. Cold fish. Unfeeling. Detached. The epithets were not applied cruelly, necessarily; in fact, they were uttered almost admiringly. A peculiar genius must, it was said, necessarily be a difficult creature, a man apart.
It was perfect, because people loved a contrasting pair, and now they had one: ying and yang personified. James Moriarty, the charismatic, emotional Irishman with too many admirers and Sherlock Holmes, the brilliant recluse who cared for nothing but his work. An unlikely pair, an amusing friendship and a strange one - but not the thing they had begun to suspect. Mycroft knew exactly what he was doing: he was feeding society a different story, a safer one, a story that allowed everyone to believe they understood the two young men.
Of course, there was a certain irony. The rumours about James were not entirely impossible. The man did possess a remarkable ability to charm people. And Sherlock had always been perfectly capable of appearing cold to anyone who did not know him. That was what made the strategy effective - all the best disguises contained pieces of truth.
That evening, Mycroft watched the two of them across the dining room. James laughing at something Sherlock had said and Sherlock pretending not to enjoy the laughter. Both of them believing they were hidden.
Mycroft knew better. They were not hidden. From now on they would simply be surrounded by people who had chosen the wrong explanation of them. And, for now, that was protection enough.