Mycroft held his breath, because he knew he was going to sigh. He would sigh, Gregory would ask him why, it would not lead anywhere good. He glanced at his watch to ascertain how much time he had before they really had to make their way back.
Turning his head, he looked at Gregory, struck by his beauty as always. He looked like a statue, like an illustration in one of the books they had to self-censor back in school. Which was hardly fair.
Mycroft had been determined to keep his perversions to a theoretical escapade, a mental exercise. And then the gardener's son just had to grow up to look like this and had to have an inclination to do his work without a shirt on. Had to notice when Mycroft looked at him and how Mycroft looked at him and had to simply do all those little things that essentially swept him off his feet.
Just kissing. As long as it was just kissing, it was not so bad. Kissing and lying here on a mattress in the old boats house, holding Gregory's hand, their fingers interlocked. The summer had been the best of his life. He dreaded going back to school in a way he never had before.
So, yes, once he could not hold his breath any longer, he did sigh.
Gregory didn't move from where he was lying on the mattress, lazily looking up at the ceiling and thinking about how he should really clean this place up. Mycroft was far too fancy to slum it out here, he would tire of such things and wouldn't want to come back. Maybe if he painted the ceiling and cleaned up all the litter and webs, he might be more inclined to come back. Of course, he wouldn't be able to do it now summer was ending but maybe next year, whenever he Holmes came back. He graduated next year, maybe he'd be around more.
Maybe he'd spend more time out here. Would it draw attention? Be suspicious? He never knew. He guess he didn't care as much as Mycroft. Mycroft often told him that he was far too careless about the whole ordeal.
He supposed to him, love was a simple thing. Even if it couldn't be, even if it was dodgy, he just found it... natural. Easy. Obvious. The risk was worth it.
Mycroft sighed and Greg turned his head, looking at him. The dreaded sigh. A sign that time was running out.
"It's always bad when you sigh. Some people sigh when they're happy or sad. You don't." It was always a longing, tired or irritated sigh. Never a good sigh. "You okay?"
"Just thinking about what I need to get done." There were a lot of things to do, obviously. To get into order. Only a few days before the new semester. Sherlock's first year there too, so that was bound to be a joy. Sorting the books out here, making sure everything was in working order, because he knew his parents would neglect such matters. "I'm behind schedule. Who knows why? Something must have been distracting me."
Someone. Filling his every waking moment and invading his dreams as well, which was ludicrous. Just one transgression. One passing fancy while he could still claim youthful impulsiveness. But he had to get over this. He could not spend his last year mooning over the gardener's boy.
All he wanted was for Gregory to come with him. Mycroft lifted Gregory's hand to his lips, kissing it. He didn't want to part.
"It's almost as if I was a bad influence. Couldn't be possible, not the likes of me." Gregory huffed out a small laugh and watched Mycroft kiss his hand, wondering idly if this was the end. No more kissing in the boathouse, no more feeling each other up in the dark of night, no more fun together. Maybe when he came back, he'd pretend he didn't know him. Wouldn't be the first time either. Greg had tried with boys before, it always ended the same.
The same damn story each other. If only girls could hold his attention the same way blokes did, maybe then he'd have less worries.
Suddenly, he rolled over and clambered on top of Mycroft, cupping his face and making him look at him. "Come back at Christmas and bring me a present." There. A simple want from a boy who liked him. "Nothing too tricky, Mr Holmes. You just bring me something. Cheap, small, whatever. But you should." He looked into his eyes, hoping to catch his attention. To make a small commitment, whatever it was.
Mycroft looked up at Gregory and he thought about things he'd like to tell him. Tell him how he cared for him. How he thought he was special, beyond special, for having a mind that sparked, for the words he said and the things he did. That simple, straight-forward kind of intelligence he had. And, yes, of course, his physical appearance, that too. He wanted to bond them forever. Ask promises of him. Make promises.
He wasn't sure how many of those thoughts showed on his face. Probably not many. Everyone always told him he was free of emotion. Someone like him, of course this was all he got. He was not meant for true romance. Gregory could do better. "It's 'Mycroft', Gregory." Silly boy. "I will bring you something. Something special."
"I'm gonna get you something so you better or I'll be hurt." Gregory insisted as he leaned forward and kissed Mycroft, making the most of the fact that his lover hadn't tried to slip free from him and dash off yet. It meant he wasn't too low on time, plenty of chance to sneak a few more kisses in. "It's Greg, you know? Most people call me Greg when I'm not here but I kind of like Gregory from you. I don't know, it's expected - you know? Like ... I can't imagine you calling me anything else."
Just like he couldn't imagine Mycroft ever letting him call him Myc. He had tried but he always got the look. And he didn't like the look much, it usually meant he'd get a scolding. Very boring, very tedious. "Names are tricky, ain't they? Though you could call me anything and I'd still come to you."
"You shouldn't. Sometimes, a name is all a man has." So maybe he should scold Sherlock again for continuously getting Gregory's name wrong, it was rather disrespectful. Difficult subject to breech, however, with the risk of Sherlock catching on. Luckily, Sherlock was too alarmed by sex and human relations in general for that to be all that likely. "Gregory is a fine name. It suits you. I could think of a few other names, but Gregory will do."
He moved his hand to run his fingers through Gregory's hair. Who had hair like this? He really needed a haircut, but he loved how he looked with this. He loved how his hand felt in his hair.
"You think? I think it's posher than I am. Gregory. My dad didn't want a common name though I think Greg does just the trick. More my level. Besides, what does a name really matter? I've been here how many years and your mom and your brother, they don't have a clue." He was just Lestrade to all of them and he was fine with it. He didn't much care. He did his job and he did it well, he didn't expect their sort to know his name. Hell, he would be shocked if they did.
Mycroft was different. He knew every name, every person, every single little thing he could know. His mind was giant, endless, full of facts and figures. It gave Lestrade a headache to think about it.
"My brother should call you Ganymede, if he insists on seeing the g-theme through." Mycroft highly doubted that Gregory would catch that reference, so he decided to explain, as he did not mean to act elitist. The lack of humanist education was hardly Gregory's fault. "In Greek mythology, Ganymede was a youth so beautiful that Zeus fell in love with him. There is a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, all about how the boyish youth is adored and seduced by God."
Pausing, Mycroft wondered how much that explanation had really helped. Probably not very. But it was easier than to outright answer Gregory's question. So he just looked up at him, caught his eyes, quoting poetry. It seemed easier than using his own words. "With thousandfold love-bliss the holy feeling of your eternal warmth presses itself upon my heart, unending beauty."
"... Zeus was queer? Eh? I always heard different in school. We did a bit of the Greeks but I... I dunno, maybe I missed it? History was shite, Peters was always poking me in the bleeding back the whole lesson." Greg wasn't as well educated as he wished he was but he wanted to learn, to keep up. He was trying to read more these days but it was blinking hard. He tried to read one of Mycroft's books recently but he couldn't make heads or tails of it so he put it back.
Like now. He couldn't make any sense of what Mycroft said but it sounded nice and he assumed it was nice too. He tilted his head to the side, frowning lightly. "Poetry is nice, innit?" That was dumb. Why did he say that? Gregory rolled onto his back and covered his face, embarrassed. "... That was -- I'm not stupid, I promise. I ain't an idiot. I just didn't do much schooling, I left at 14. Dad said it was a waste."
"I know you are not stupid. You are one of the very few people in this world who are not. Education is simply down to the accident of where you are born, Gregory. And the quality of your schooling is nothing I blame you for." Of course, here he was, trying to be somewhat romantic for once in his life, and he ended up making his beloved cover his face in shame. What did he even say to that?
Mycroft sighed again, wishing he had more time. "The Greeks, on the whole, were quite queer. Let's leave it at that."
"I like when you say that stuff to me so don't stop just cause I'm not -- I don't always understand it but I feel it, if that makes sense? I dunno much but... eternal warmth pressing against your heart?" Greg sat up and then reached out, trailing his hand along Mycroft's chest lazily as he felt where the heart was. "I hope I stay that way to you. I hope it keeps you warm. And when you're gone, you think about it and me. And even if I ain't the main thing on your mind while you study and all that, you can know I'm there."
He supposed he would always be with Mycroft now, even if he wasn't there in reality. First love and all that. "I won't stop thinking about you so think of it as like... me reaching out in my head or something to you."
Wasn't it cruel to them both? It would be better, at least for Gregory's sake, if he broke this off decisively. Leave him to have dalliances with the many girls he had noticed whispering about him, commenting on his good looks. Something more natural than this. Someone on his level and of the opposite sex. Not feed into this shared denial of reality. What did they have in common? Not a potential future, he knew that much. "You'll be on my mind, Gregory."
Whatever. He could break it off next time. He would. For now he moved forward, to kiss him again. To pretend as if no kiss between had to be the last one. "I need to go."
"All right, makes sense. Just -- make sure to say goodbye. When you go."
He didn't know if Mycroft would but he hoped that before he left until Christmas, he would at least get a wave or something. Then they could see each other in winter time. He would make it warm in here, maybe get a load of candles. He didn't care. He kissed Mycroft again and leaned their heads together. "See you soon, Myc."
"See you soon." Truthfully, he wanted to never leave. Why did he have to deal with the world? Why bother with ambitions when he already knew that he would never be able to fulfil his own deepest desires? Mycroft pressed his lips together to keep from sighing again, instead finally letting go of Gregory and rising to his feet slowly. He wished he could say he'd write to him, but how would that look? Getting letters from him. "Goodbye."
He nodded stiffly, then simply headed for the door, wondering just how ridiculous that exit must have looked. Doomed love was so much more poetic in books.
"This is long and tedious. Could we not just go by coach. On the coach, you can people watch. It has an advantage." Whereas in the back of a car, there was little advantage. It was loud, smoky and jittery and no people were around to observe. Just himself and his brother. Tedious. Deeply tedious. "We always have to do things the boring way just to try and look above others."
Sherlock huffed out an annoyance sigh and idly plucked the violin he had insisted on bringing in with him. He wasn't playing, just plucking strings whenever he wanted to empathise a thought. "Do you have any cigarettes?"
Without a word, Mycroft offered up his cigarette case and opened it. Then he remembered having tucked the last cigarette Greg had given him - hand-rolled - into it prior to their departure, so he pulled the case back and simply removed one of the cigarettes without nostalgic value attached to it, holding it out to Sherlock. "This is a more convenient mode of travel."
Supposedly. He was not convinced himself. "We are almost there anyway. Then we shan't have to keep each other company any longer."
Sherlock took a cigarette and lit it up with one of his matches, tossing the used match out of the window with little care. He exhaled smoke into the small cabin they were sitting in and sighed loudly. "Will you ignore me at university besides a polite nod? Oh, I do hope I get a nod. I would be heartbroken without one." He and Mycroft were not close, not for years, and he had been trying to do anything but university with his darling brother for a year. And then he failed.
And here he was now, in hell, going to a tedious school to learn nothing important.
"Everyone wants to see us off this time around, I'm sure they're sick of us. Even the gardener came - good thing he did too, apparently you can't lift your own case." So Lestrade had done it for Mycroft. Very odd. Maybe he knew what a weakling Mycroft could be.
"Then a nod you shall have." Mycroft could answer Sherlock's casual scorn in kind, even if his heart wasn't in it. His heart was remembering the clumsy, perfect words that Gregory had found and his own inability to make himself understood, for all the poems he had memorised, for all the rhetoric he'd studied. "My case is heavy. Full of books. He's a well-muscled youth, so of course it would be an easy feat for him."
So impressive, Gregory's physical strength. "I rather assume your course load shall keep you busy, brother mine. You won't have time to worry about me nodding your way."
"I will not attend anything but chemistry." Sherlock had constantly warned his family that he had no desire to be a fully rounded young gentleman who would study literacy, theology, business and philosophy. He had signed up for science and intended to not attend any extra classes he had been advised to take. He would take chemistry and, when he felt like it, mathematics and a little biology. Everything else was a complete waste of his time.
"Maybe maths and biology but only chemistry. And even then, only to a point. I am going to make mummy happy, not because I want a degree." Seemed like a waste of time for him. Three years of boredom for some paper? Awful.
"Do as you wish. You understand what a privilege it is, to have the opportunity to study at such an institution?" Of course not. Sherlock had never understood his privilege, whether it had to do with class, money or his position as the younger brother, as the one his parents were consistently soft on. Mycroft could not even blame them, he knew he was soft on him too. "I simply - humbly - request that you don't entirely shatter this family's reputation."
"Now you are asking the impossible of me. I thought you were smarter - we both know how this will end."
And, with that ominous warning, Sherlock peered out of the window as they reached the school. He exhaled smoke against the window to fog it up and drew a smiley face with x's for eyes. Such was his future fate. "I'm staying on the west campus, far from you. I will not attend the ludicrous Sunday service so hopefully, we will not have to meet until Christmas, when we catch the idiotic car back."
The car came to a halt and Sherlock shoved the door open before the engine even stopped, jumping out of the car with his hands gripped around his violin.
Mycroft nodded his head, not sure what else to expect. He clutched the cigarette case, wondering whether he'd be such a sentimental fool that Gregory's cigarette would still be in there come Christmas. Probably. Seemed like something he'd do. Leaning forward, he called out of the window. "Sherlock?"
He waited until it seemed as if his brother was paying attention. "Take care of yourself."
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boxish2022-09-25 03:04 pm
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Turning his head, he looked at Gregory, struck by his beauty as always. He looked like a statue, like an illustration in one of the books they had to self-censor back in school. Which was hardly fair.
Mycroft had been determined to keep his perversions to a theoretical escapade, a mental exercise. And then the gardener's son just had to grow up to look like this and had to have an inclination to do his work without a shirt on. Had to notice when Mycroft looked at him and how Mycroft looked at him and had to simply do all those little things that essentially swept him off his feet.
Just kissing. As long as it was just kissing, it was not so bad. Kissing and lying here on a mattress in the old boats house, holding Gregory's hand, their fingers interlocked. The summer had been the best of his life. He dreaded going back to school in a way he never had before.
So, yes, once he could not hold his breath any longer, he did sigh.
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Maybe he'd spend more time out here. Would it draw attention? Be suspicious? He never knew. He guess he didn't care as much as Mycroft. Mycroft often told him that he was far too careless about the whole ordeal.
He supposed to him, love was a simple thing. Even if it couldn't be, even if it was dodgy, he just found it... natural. Easy. Obvious. The risk was worth it.
Mycroft sighed and Greg turned his head, looking at him. The dreaded sigh. A sign that time was running out.
"It's always bad when you sigh. Some people sigh when they're happy or sad. You don't." It was always a longing, tired or irritated sigh. Never a good sigh. "You okay?"
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Someone. Filling his every waking moment and invading his dreams as well, which was ludicrous. Just one transgression. One passing fancy while he could still claim youthful impulsiveness. But he had to get over this. He could not spend his last year mooning over the gardener's boy.
All he wanted was for Gregory to come with him. Mycroft lifted Gregory's hand to his lips, kissing it. He didn't want to part.
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The same damn story each other. If only girls could hold his attention the same way blokes did, maybe then he'd have less worries.
Suddenly, he rolled over and clambered on top of Mycroft, cupping his face and making him look at him. "Come back at Christmas and bring me a present." There. A simple want from a boy who liked him. "Nothing too tricky, Mr Holmes. You just bring me something. Cheap, small, whatever. But you should." He looked into his eyes, hoping to catch his attention. To make a small commitment, whatever it was.
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He wasn't sure how many of those thoughts showed on his face. Probably not many. Everyone always told him he was free of emotion. Someone like him, of course this was all he got. He was not meant for true romance. Gregory could do better. "It's 'Mycroft', Gregory." Silly boy. "I will bring you something. Something special."
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Just like he couldn't imagine Mycroft ever letting him call him Myc. He had tried but he always got the look. And he didn't like the look much, it usually meant he'd get a scolding. Very boring, very tedious. "Names are tricky, ain't they? Though you could call me anything and I'd still come to you."
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He moved his hand to run his fingers through Gregory's hair. Who had hair like this? He really needed a haircut, but he loved how he looked with this. He loved how his hand felt in his hair.
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Mycroft was different. He knew every name, every person, every single little thing he could know. His mind was giant, endless, full of facts and figures. It gave Lestrade a headache to think about it.
"You gonna miss me when you're gone?"
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Pausing, Mycroft wondered how much that explanation had really helped. Probably not very. But it was easier than to outright answer Gregory's question. So he just looked up at him, caught his eyes, quoting poetry. It seemed easier than using his own words. "With thousandfold love-bliss the holy feeling of your eternal warmth presses itself upon my heart, unending beauty."
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Like now. He couldn't make any sense of what Mycroft said but it sounded nice and he assumed it was nice too. He tilted his head to the side, frowning lightly. "Poetry is nice, innit?" That was dumb. Why did he say that? Gregory rolled onto his back and covered his face, embarrassed. "... That was -- I'm not stupid, I promise. I ain't an idiot. I just didn't do much schooling, I left at 14. Dad said it was a waste."
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Mycroft sighed again, wishing he had more time. "The Greeks, on the whole, were quite queer. Let's leave it at that."
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He supposed he would always be with Mycroft now, even if he wasn't there in reality. First love and all that. "I won't stop thinking about you so think of it as like... me reaching out in my head or something to you."
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Whatever. He could break it off next time. He would. For now he moved forward, to kiss him again. To pretend as if no kiss between had to be the last one. "I need to go."
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He didn't know if Mycroft would but he hoped that before he left until Christmas, he would at least get a wave or something. Then they could see each other in winter time. He would make it warm in here, maybe get a load of candles. He didn't care. He kissed Mycroft again and leaned their heads together. "See you soon, Myc."
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He nodded stiffly, then simply headed for the door, wondering just how ridiculous that exit must have looked. Doomed love was so much more poetic in books.
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Sherlock huffed out an annoyance sigh and idly plucked the violin he had insisted on bringing in with him. He wasn't playing, just plucking strings whenever he wanted to empathise a thought. "Do you have any cigarettes?"
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Supposedly. He was not convinced himself. "We are almost there anyway. Then we shan't have to keep each other company any longer."
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And here he was now, in hell, going to a tedious school to learn nothing important.
"Everyone wants to see us off this time around, I'm sure they're sick of us. Even the gardener came - good thing he did too, apparently you can't lift your own case." So Lestrade had done it for Mycroft. Very odd. Maybe he knew what a weakling Mycroft could be.
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So impressive, Gregory's physical strength. "I rather assume your course load shall keep you busy, brother mine. You won't have time to worry about me nodding your way."
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"Maybe maths and biology but only chemistry. And even then, only to a point. I am going to make mummy happy, not because I want a degree." Seemed like a waste of time for him. Three years of boredom for some paper? Awful.
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And, with that ominous warning, Sherlock peered out of the window as they reached the school. He exhaled smoke against the window to fog it up and drew a smiley face with x's for eyes. Such was his future fate. "I'm staying on the west campus, far from you. I will not attend the ludicrous Sunday service so hopefully, we will not have to meet until Christmas, when we catch the idiotic car back."
The car came to a halt and Sherlock shoved the door open before the engine even stopped, jumping out of the car with his hands gripped around his violin.
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He waited until it seemed as if his brother was paying attention. "Take care of yourself."
Yes. Definitely a sentimental fool.