My brain is too fried to write properly, so instead I’m just daydreaming this: John Watson is asked to The Diogenes one evening while Sherlock is out. He’s surprised to actually be asked by Mycroft, rather than just kidnapped in a limo. He’s even more surprised when he gets there, and finds Mycroft is accompanied by Greg Lestrade.
John takes a seat at Mycroft’s desk, fearing the worst. He’s never seen Greg in a jumper and jeans before, nor Sherlock’s brother looking so unsettled.
The two of them awkwardly explain that they’re about to go public with something, and they’d like John’s support in managing Sherlock.
John – concerned – asks what it is.
With Greg’s hand on his shoulder, Mycroft explains that they’ve entered the committed stages of a personal relationship. They’d rather have continued to keep it private from Sherlock, but he’ll realise soon anyway. It seems better for someone to gently inform him now than to let him deduce it on his own.
A shocked John agrees to do what he can.
In the end, he just has to tell Sherlock point blank. Hinting it gently doesn’t trigger any reaction, nor does subtly fishing for a hypothetical opinion.
Sherlock scoffs, and remarks that Lestrade’s romantic judgement hasn’t improved at all since the divorce – but that’s the worst of it.
When John phones Mycroft to tell him the reaction, he hears Mycroft exhale with shaky relief.
Over the next few months, he sees more and more human hints filtering into Mycroft’s behaviour. It’s like Greg is rounding off all his edges. One Friday night John bumps into them both at the supermarket. It’s the most surreal experience in the world, and oddly touching, seeing them both there with a basket in the bread aisle. Greg is coaxing Mycroft fondly into almond croissants for breakfast in the morning. “I’ll bring you them in bed,” he says, and John can’t quite forget the thought of Mycroft Holmes having breakfast in bed – sitting there in his pyjamas, eating almond croissants. Orange juice and a folded newspaper.
He can’t stop thinking about some other things, too.
Not in a creepy way, he tells himself – he just can’t get his head around it.
Two weeks later in the pub, he buys Greg an extra couple of pints and dares to ask the question. Greg is tipsy enough to grin at him, bright-eyed, and answer.
“Yeah. ‘Course we do.”
“What – what’s that like, though? Sex with… a Holmes.”
Greg visibly fishes around in his head for an answer he can give. It takes him a while. “He… pays attention to everything,” he says. “He learns. It’s like being studied. Like I’m fascinating. It’s… really good.”
It takes John a while to get to sleep that night. He’s not sure why.
He realises the next morning when Sherlock brings him a cup of tea – just the right shade of coppery light brown, in his old regimental mug, with one of his favourite oat biscuits positioned perfectly so he can pick it up and dunk it.
Sherlock doesn’t say a word. He never does.
He just puts the tea down, like he does every morning, and goes off upstairs to get dressed.
Perfect. I’m not sure I’ve ever read a fic (I don’t think Colors counts) where Mycroft and Greg being together gives John a hankering for something similar. I like it!
“Authors can’t use it in fantasy fiction, eh? We’ll see about that…”
–Terry Pratchett, probably
Try to implement anything but a conservative’s sixth grade education level of medieval or Victorian times and you will butt into this. all. the. time.
There was a literaly fad in the 1890′s for nipple rings for all genders(and NO, it was NOT under the mistaken belief that it would help breastfeeding–there’s LOTS of doctors’ writing at the time telling people to STOP and that they thought it would ruin the breast’s ability to breastfeed well, etc). It was straight up because the Victorians were freaks, okay Imagine trying to make a Victorian character with nipple rings. IMAGINE THE ACCUSATIONS OF GROSS HISTORICAL INACCURACY
people just really, REALLY have entrenched ideas of what people in the past were like
tell them the vikings were clean, had a complex democratic legal system, respected women, had freeform rap battles, and had child support payments? theyd call you a liar
tell them that chopsticks became popular in china during the bronze age because street food vendors were all the rage and they wanted to have disposable eating utensils? theyll say youre making that up
tell them native americans had a trade network stretching from canada to peru and built sacred mounds bigger then the pyramids of giza? you are some SJW twisting facts
ancient egypt had circular saws, debt cards, and eye surgery? are you high?
our misconception of medieval peasants being illiterate and living in poverty in one room mud huts being their own creation as part of a century long tax aversion scam? you stole that from the game of thrones reject bin
iron age india had stone telescopes, air conditioning, and the number 0 along with all ‘arabic’ numbers including algebra and calculus? i understand some of those words.
romans had accurate maps detailing vacation travel times along with a star rating for hotels along the way, fast food restaurants, swiss army knives, black soldiers in brittany, traded with china, and that soldiers wrote thank-you notes when their parents sent them underwear in the mail? but they thought the earth was flat!
ancient bronze age mesopotamia had pedantic complaints sent to merchants about crappy goods, comedic performances, and transgender/nobinary representation? what are you smoking?
Truth is stranger than fiction, and history is weirder than you think.
this post gets better every time it comes across my dash. To provide some more: those Romans also had vending machines, automated puppet plays, doors that opened to the sound of horns when you lit a fire in front of them, and working steam engines. All invented by one dude, Hero of Alexandria.
The misunderstandings of the Victorian era continue to vex and bewilder me, but all of these are good and I knew only some of them!
Do you all want to see a puppy that was so fucking hugelarge his mom had to get a C-section only specifically because of this puppy
big baby!!!
My child.
My friend’s dog had the same happen. They were supposed to have 4 puppies, they got one single puppy the size of 4 newborns bc he absorbed his siblings before they were fully developed. They named him Pangea.
