Warnings: This chapter has fluff, a teaspoon of jealousy, scattered general silliness, lemon-flavoured paragraphs, more literature and… the end.

Home

"Hello, Mummy," Mycroft answered the call as his car pulled up alongside the kerb in Baker Street a few days after the Sherrinford visit when Eurus had spoken for the first time in months.

"Are you still in London, Myc?" his mother asked. "What time are you setting off?"

"I've just arrived at Sherlock's flat. We'll leave in thirty minutes if he hasn't vanished on the trail of some case and forgotten that the rest of the world exists. If he's upstairs and ready to go, we should be with you in time for lunch."

They had decided to spend the weekend at their parents' home as Mummy and Daddy were still unsettled by Eurus' cryptic words from that day, and also to update them about her.

Mycroft's thorough investigations – roping in Sir Edwin and Lady Smallwood to verify that all was above board – had proven that the new Sherrinford governor and his team had followed every rule to the letter from the time of Eurus' re-incarceration. It meant that no one could have told her about the Chinese case, nor could she have overheard or seen anything that would have provided her with such information.

Mycroft's assessment: If her quoting from A Dream of Red Mansions wasn't a lazy coincidence of the universe's, then Eurus must have been first exposed to details of the old Zhu Yu, Patterson and Mollard case in the years when Uncle Rudy was still trying to use her remarkable brain to obtain otherwise inaccessible insights into political and criminal cases. In more recent months, when she had left Sherrinford freely while the old governor was under her control, her extensive information-gathering resources might have provided her with updates about Mollard, Carter, Zhu Zheng and the people who feared the latter. She might have learnt details about Zhu Zheng that included his incestuous love for his sister, and the fact that he likened her to Lin Daiyu. For a woman who had been able to predict the dates of three terrorist attacks after a mere hour on Twitter, inferring the eventual outcome of the whole tangled web – and knowing that her brothers would work on the case – was not too great a step.

For now, that was the best conclusion Mycroft could offer, and it was accepted by Sir Edwin, Lady Smallwood and the prime minister as the most reasonable explanation. More importantly, Sherlock concurred. So it was time to see their parents and give them his assessment in person without revealing the classified political aspects of the matter. This weekend was a good time to do so, with Parliament in its autumn recess.

"Are you certain that John wouldn't like to come too?" Mummy was checking for the umpteenth time. "He and Rosie are always welcome. If Sherlock regards him as family, then we do, too."

"Yes, Mummy, you know he's staying put this time because the clinic needs him, and Dr Hooper is available this weekend to babysit. John promises that he and Rosamund will go down with us at Christmas, so you can coo and fuss over the baby all you want then."

"She's such a darling, Myc! So bright! I swear she understood most of that mathematical equation I was trying to teach her that morning. Oh, if only you or Sherlock would have little ones of your own, they'd be ever so brilliant – are you sure you're not seeing anyone you might possibly have children with…?"

Mycroft took a deep breath and closed his eyes as if he could block out all his bizarre family problems by shuttering his vision. As he slowly exhaled, he tried not to think about how it might literally kill his mother and father to learn that their two sons were not only not seeing anyone who was likely to gestate their spawn, but were instead seeing each other. "No, Mummy, I'm afraid I'm not engaging in procreational activities with anyone who's likely to bear me children, and I very much doubt that Sherlock is, either. You'll be the first to know if the situation changes. But we'll be seeing you in the flesh in two hours, provided we don't perish in a horrifying pile-up on the A3. We'll talk then, all right?"

Upon ringing the bell for Sherlock's flat and straightening the knocker, Mycroft was buzzed in. There was no sign of the landlady; she was out. Upstairs, John was trying to coax food into Rosamund while Sherlock, still in his sleepwear, appeared to be absent-mindedly packing an overnighter with one hand while holding a glass flask in the other.

"Sherlock," Mycroft sighed. "You're not even dressed! And why haven't you finished packing?"

"Almost there, Mycroft," he murmured inattentively as he swirled the semi-liquid/slime thing/world-ending toxic horror in the vessel. "Just making sure this isn't going to change colour or consistency any time soon…"

"If its colour or consistency becomes any more horrifying than that, it would grow teeth and tentacles and wipe all sentient life off the face of the earth," Mycroft remarked, staring with distaste at the substance, which looked like the illegitimate offspring of Ebola-contaminated vomit and mould-infested mud. "I hope you're not planning to leave it in the same fridge as whatever ingredients John has prepared for his poor innocent child's meals."

"Of course not. I'm locking it in the temperature-controlled box in my room so Watson can't get to it. It should look really promising by the time I'm back."

"What on earth is that horror, anyway?" Mycroft inquired.

"I'm cloning Philip Anderson for unethical experiments," he deadpanned, trotting off to his bedroom with it. When the sounds they heard from the room told them that he was starting to rummage through his drawers to grab things he needed for the weekend, Mycroft and John both yelled in alarm: "Sherlock! Wash your hands first!"

His impossible brother re-emerged with a protest ("My hands are clean! I didn't get a molecule of Anderson slime on them!"), but dutifully scrubbed his nails in the bathroom, anyway, before returning to his room for the items he needed.

"Still needs watching like a child," John remarked, half to himself, half to Mycroft.

"That he does."

"Been on any more dates with Lady Smallwood?" John asked with no further preamble.

"It wasn't a date you saw us on that night, John," Mycroft stated coolly.

"Oh, really?" the doctor said, with a tight smile and a note of faux brightness in his voice. "The body language suggested otherwise."

"We're very good friends."

"Ah."

Sherlock came back out in a navy-blue jacket and a lighter-blue shirt Mycroft had had tailored for him years ago. His dark grey trousers didn't match the jacket, but he looked casually delectable. Mycroft's eyes roamed over his body appreciatively, only for his brain to abruptly stumble over the surprisingly unnerving obstacle which was his suddenly noticing that John was clearly noticing his unbrotherly appraisal of his brother's beauty.

The doctor blinked at Mycroft for a couple of seconds, but said nothing. He only put Rosie's food down on the coffee table and settled her into her baby chair so he could say goodbye to his flatmate.

"Don't touch the experiment, and if you need to unlock my room door for any reason, for pity's sake, don't let Watson near the flask, or I won't take responsibility if she sprouts horns before I return," Sherlock told John. "And… oh! The milk – I've used up an awful lot more of it than I expected, but it expires tomorrow, anyway, so you'll have to buy another quart before I return."

"Yes, yes, I know," John sighed, handing him his overcoat. "You don't have to tell me – your milk-wasting misdeeds are always plain as day."

"Call me if an urgent case crops up," Sherlock said, reaching for his coat while Mycroft picked up his overnighter.

Before John released the coat entirely to his flatmate, he stepped into Sherlock's personal space, reached one hand round to the back of his neck, and drew him down to peck him on the corner of his mouth – an action that almost had Mycroft dropping his umbrella and Sherlock's overnighter.

"… have a good weekend with your family," was the tail end of what John was saying to Sherlock – the loud, alarming buzzing in Mycroft's head at the sight of him kissing Sherlock had drowned out anything else he might have said before that.

Worse, John lowered his hand to Sherlock's waist and kept it there as he walked him to the door of the flat. And Sherlock wasn't objecting.

"Text me if you need my help with anything," the doctor was saying now, hand moving to the small of Sherlock's back, triggering further alarming noises in Mycroft's head. "If minor cases come up, I'll handle the initial queries while you're gone. And Greg knows you'll be away this weekend, so don't even think about rushing back for work. Have a nice time with Mum and Dad, both of you. I'd like to cheesily tell you not to do anything I wouldn't, but I guess that's unlikely to go down well with you two right now."

"Bye, Watson, bye, John," Sherlock called over his shoulder as he scooped up his violin case and began to descend the stairs. "Come on, Mycroft! You're the one who's been chivvying me along – don't just stand there!"

Mycroft gave John a single stiff nod before following Sherlock down. The doctor didn't follow. He even closed the door to the flat proper, leaving the brothers alone in the stairwell.

At the foot of the stairs, before Sherlock could reach for the inside handle of the door to the street, Mycroft put the overnighter and his umbrella down and spun him around, forcing him back against the wall outside the landlady's rooms.

"What was that about?" Mycroft demanded softly but with a heated undertone.

"I take it you're referring to John's behaviour?" Sherlock asked calmly, hands full with his violin case and coat.

"Yes. Did you know beforehand that he was planning to use you to demonstrate his point to me about body language?"

"No," Sherlock replied, and Mycroft knew it was an honest answer.

"I didn't see you objecting," Mycroft noted. "Is this revenge for letting Lady Smallwood touch my hand that night?"

"No, Mycroft," Sherlock rolled his eyes. "I didn't know. John wasn't pleased to learn that you were still seeing other people after you and I got together, but I didn't know he was going to do that."

"You seemed very comfortable with his touches."

"I am. We touch. We're friends. I'm mostly attracted to men, while he's apparently all right with the idea of being attracted to some men, so we're both cool with pecking each other on the cheek, or him kissing my hand, or smacking me on the arse, or…"

Mycroft cut Sherlock off with a devouring kiss on the mouth that had not a little possessiveness in it.

"Mmmff… Mycroft," Sherlock gasped when they broke apart. "Now it's my turn to ask you what the hell this is about…"

"That's not work, not obligation, not diplomacy," Mycroft stated firmly. "Not like what I have to do even when I don't want to. How much touching will you allow before you stop him, Sherlock? What's the point at which a line gets crossed?"

"It's friendship, Mycroft," Sherlock insisted. "Like it is between you and Lady Smallwood. We're just the way we are. I have no intention of crossing any lines, and neither does John, just as I believe you when you say you don't plan to cross any more lines with your Alicia."

"Sherlock–"

"Nothing is going on between me and John. Not any more. As you said, he was making a point to you, that's all."

Sherlock pushed away from the wall and Mycroft let him, watching as he pulled the door open and stalked out to the car. Mycroft straightened his jacket, picked up his brolly and Sherlock's bag, and joined him on the pavement. They looked up at the windows of 221B to see John, Rosie in his arms, holding one of the child's tiny hands in his and moving it back and forth, prompting her to wave goodbye to them. Sherlock waved back and Mycroft glared at the doctor as the driver put Sherlock's overnighter into the boot.

"Why do we need another car with us?" Sherlock asked, glancing at the second black sedan behind Mycroft's usual Jaguar as they slid into the back seat.

"So that we can have one bulletproof car at the house for our use in an emergency, and Andrew and Louis can keep the other with them. I'd like our family to have privacy this weekend, so my men will stay in a room over The King's Arms in the village high street instead of having to be put up in the house or freezing miserably in the car outside. I always have private security keeping a distant eye on Mummy and Daddy – they never intrude; I doubt Mummy knows they exist, although Father might. Anyway, we'll make do with them as a first line of security this weekend. In a crisis, they – or we – can summon Andrew and Louis, and they can drive up from the high street in minutes. By the way, did you know that Anthea regards your presence as a positive security factor for me?"

"Seriously?" Sherlock huffed in amusement.

"I suspect that she thinks of you as an unruly dog who may occasionally bite the hand that feeds him, but who'll defend that hand to the death if a threat looms."

Sherlock made a scoffing noise but looked pleased, too. Mycroft gathered that he'd had an inkling all along, as he surely knew that Anthea left Mycroft's visits to the Baker Street flat largely unmonitored, and they were never smothered by bodyguards when they went to their parents' together, or when he and Mycroft met up at suitably private restaurants.

"Does she also know that the hand that feeds the dog is likely to fling itself between the dog and danger? If she does, she might not feel so secure about the presence of the cur," Sherlock remarked as he buckled up.

"I have a feeling she knows very well that we'll protect each other. Also, she does not perceive you as a cur. More like a very badly behaved, spoilt and temperamental Saluki with none of the usual dignity of its breed."

As their cars pulled out and prepared to face the daunting London traffic, Mycroft put the privacy barrier up, and Sherlock tipped himself sideways to rest his head on his shoulder saying: "I don't mind us having the occasional spat – that's what we've done all our lives, isn't it? Argue with each other. As long as we can talk it out, it's fine with me. But I wasn't looking for a fight today. I really didn't know John would do that. It was just him being protective."

Mycroft sighed and rubbed his cheek against Sherlock's hair. "I know. I'm sorry for shoving you up against the wall like an ill-bred yob."

"Hmm, I dunno, I thought it was quite hot." There was definitely a smirk in his voice.

"Did you?" Mycroft asked with a smile, dropping a kiss on his curls.

"Yup," Sherlock answered, lifting his head to nuzzle Mycroft's neck. "I'm entirely neutral to John's touches now, but every time you touch me, it's searing. Like electricity."

"That's almost romantic, coming from you."

"What do you mean 'coming from me'?" Sherlock teased. "I can be bloody romantic."

"Literally, yes – you've been known, at least in your youth, to think that showing someone an amputated foot was better than presenting them with a bouquet of roses, or the like. And God only knows how you wooed John with blood and abrasions, danger and hallucinogenic substances, insults and demands."

"He liked it. Mostly. Sometimes. Once in a while."

Mycroft laughed softly and tipped Sherlock's face up for a gentle kiss. "I'll take your version of romance with pleasure."

"Hmm… how much longer is this drive going to be?" Sherlock asked playfully, nipping Mycroft's chin.

"An hour and 20 minutes, if we ever get out of this snarl of London traffic."

"We could try for a lot more than just romance in an hour and 20 minutes."

"Tempting as that sounds, I can't have us leaving this car in an obscenely dishevelled, kiss-wrecked, orgasm-rumpled state," Mycroft said regretfully. "And once we're out of the city proper, I'd like to put the screen down so we can have a better view of the landscape."

"Boring. Too much greenery, too much open space," Sherlock grumbled.

"That's what makes Surrey prettier than London, don't you think?" Mycroft asked.

"No. All that breathing room. And the sheep poo. And the cows… just… no."

"Isn't all that part of the countryside's charm?"

"Has your tremendous brain forgotten that in our green and pleasant land, cows kill more people than dogs do?"

"Just steer clear of the bovines if they make you nervous," Mycroft suggested. "You'll appreciate the rest of the natural surroundings when you're older."

"Never."

"No, I think you will like the space and the greenery in your later years. We can retire to the country together."

"Nonsense. You'll never get London out of your blood. Neither will I."

"The city may feel too… frenetic, when one is elderly."

"Pffft."

"Very mature of you, Sherlock," Mycroft sighed, feeling tiny droplets of Sherlock's saliva flecking his jawline to accompany his juvenile expression of disagreement, although he shut up quickly enough when Sherlock proceeded to lick him clean…

However, they did succeed in keeping their hands and mouths mostly to themselves, so they were presentable when they reached their parents'. Andrew and Louis drove off in the other car, and Mycroft's Jaguar was parked at the back of the house.

"Can you even drive that beast yourself?" Sherlock asked doubtfully as they walked round to the front of the house, glancing back at the Jaguar crouching silently on the gravel under the outdoor shelter covered in creepers that completely camouflaged the structure when viewed from the air.

"I do practise regularly so that I can get myself out of a pickle if my driver should be incapacitated," Mycroft revealed.

"I certainly hope so. I'll probably crash whatever I'm driving into a ditch within five minutes because I'll be speeding, as I'm supposedly so irresponsible with machinery, Daddy's a bit too old to take the wheel safely if speed is of the essence, and we'll all die if Mummy's steering."

"What's that I hear about my steering?" Mummy asked, opening the door.

"Nothing!" Sherlock said quickly. "Hello, Mummy. Hello, Dad."

"Hello, you two," their father said pleasantly.

"Oh, Sherlock, you look so sharp!" Mummy cried in delight, admiring his jacket and silk shirt after kissing him and Mycroft in greeting. "Isn't this the jacket from one of those lovely, lovely suits Myc made for you years ago which you refused to wear? It was one of those you stored here with us forever, wasn't it, before you took them back after your Baker Street wardrobe was blown up?"

Mycroft turned to Sherlock and gave the jacket another once-over. "Is that why the old suits I gave you survived when the flat was blown to bits?" he asked indignantly. "They're in such good shape because you were keeping them all here, with Mummy and Daddy, using their home like rental storage you didn't have to pay for!"

"Well, it's good that I did, isn't it?" Sherlock asked logically. "If I hadn't left them here, they'd have been shredded like most of my wardrobe, and my chest of drawers, and my bed – which I haven't replaced properly yet, by the way, I'm still sleeping on that uncomfortably narrow, rickety one I bought from the first furniture shop I passed…"

"I did offer to help you purchase a bed similar to your previous one, and you said you couldn't be bothered to shop for one or even glance at an online catalogue," Mycroft pointed out in exasperation. "So don't you start complaining about your rickety choice now…"

"Goodness, will the two of you stop?" Mummy chided, ushering them into the house and shooing them upstairs to put their overnighters and cases away. "Not even past the door and already squabbling away. You should be embarrassed – two great big grown men bickering like a pair of kindergarteners!"

"Old habits," their father mumbled, shaking his head. "But I have to say you two liven up every occasion, even if it's with objectionable behaviour."

"I think we can do with less of that," Mummy sighed. "And are you implying that I'm not lively enough for you, my lover…?"

Mycroft and Sherlock groaned in sync and fled upstairs before their parents started on a public display of affection.

When they deemed it safe, they joined their mother in the kitchen just as she was turning off the heat on the stove and in the oven, where the dishes were keeping warm. What she plated and ladled out, he and Sherlock carried into the dining room. Mycroft grumbled that they should just eat in the kitchen as they normally did so they wouldn't have to cart things about. Then, Sherlock grumbled that for today, Mummy should have called in the part-time help that she and Daddy had in a few times a week to clean the house, mow the grass, do the laundry, and cook the occasional meal. Mycroft went on to counter his brother's grumbling by reminding him that there was no point in arranging a private family weekend if their parents were going to ask the part-time help to hover around the house all day just so they wouldn't have to carry plates of bacon soup and carrot-and-squash salad into the dining room.

The grumbling, sniping and parrying helped them maintain the façade of nothing having changed between them. Sherlock's fierce defence of Mycroft at The Diogenes Club had given their parents a hint that their younger son didn't regard their eldest with as much contempt as he once had, so they had to present all signs of the status quo being in place in order not to give Mummy and Daddy any more evidence of their closeness. However, he and Sherlock were such good actors that Mycroft felt mildly troubled about how easy it seemed for them to go back to superficial hostilities.

This niggled at him all day, coupled with mental images of the physical intimacy between Sherlock and John. If it was such a breeze for them to act like this, perhaps it would also be all too easy for them to resume their former poor relationship in reality and turn to other people again. Distracting himself from that troubling thought took the form of concentrating on a text exchange with Anthea in between the hours when he needed to give Mummy and Daddy his attention.

Anthea was reporting on her progress in working out the details of what he'd asked her to re-examine a few days ago, and he did at least feel better with her assurance that so far, she saw nothing that would prevent them from setting out new guidelines for his work. He alternated his scrutiny of the proposals she had outlined with sitting and talking to his parents after lunch, at teatime and after dinner, about whatever was on their minds – repairs the house needed, village gossip, Eurus, what they would do for Christmas this year, their health…

Sherlock, on the other hand, draped himself over an armchair and dragged out a few vague tunes on his violin, dipping into the conversation only when his parents directed specific questions at him.

When they were done with after-dinner drinks, and Mummy and Daddy were winding down with a bit of television before bedtime, Mycroft announced that he needed to do some work. Sherlock had disappeared by then, first into the garden, and into the conservatory, then the bathroom, from the sound of it, and somewhere else after that.

The house, large as it was, no longer had a room set aside for use as either a library or study – after Sherlock had graduated from university and moved to London, Mummy and Daddy had not felt the need for a dedicated space for books, or for big desks at which large amounts of paperwork could be done. These items had been moved up into the two guest bedrooms on the top floor. Mycroft and Sherlock still had their own bedrooms on the first floor beside the master bedroom, but these were furnished for them to sleep and rest in when they came to stay, not for serious work.

So Mycroft took himself up to the second floor and opened his laptop on the biggest desk in the larger of the two rooms. He'd shed his tie and pocket watch at around teatime, but kept his waistcoat on out of habit. He was glad for the extra layer now, with this room being so chilly. He turned the radiator valve to its full extent to get the boiler water flowing fast, and once he felt warmer, he got a good quantity of work done. Parliament might be in recess, but he couldn't let his other duties slide even on his weekend off.

About 90 minutes later, his father knocked on the door and poked his head into the room: "Your mother and I are going to bed. I'd tell you not to stay up too late, but that never did a bit of good when you were younger, so I won't delude myself into believing you'll heed my advice now. And while I would love to trot out the old line about how the world won't fall apart just because you're not working, in your case, I'm not sure I can. So just try to get some rest when you feel able to, all right?"

"I'll try," Mycroft smiled. "Thank you for worrying about me even now that I feel and probably look nearly as old as you are."

"You and Sherlock never did want much sleep, nor did you ever listen to anyone else," Daddy mused. "You two are like your grandmothers from both sides of the family. Those eccentric genes didn't even skip a generation – Rudy got a full blast of them. Hmm… do you know… you're quietly working away here while Sherlock's ensconced in the next room with his nose buried in a book, and as usual, he only grunted when I put my head round the door. It's like old times, except in different rooms!"

His father withdrew, closed the door, and went down to the master bedroom. Mycroft paused in his work and listened to the familiar old noises around the house – the creaking of floorboards, the surge of water through the pipes, the hum of the boiler system, twigs and leaves tapping against the windowpanes in the wind, the little skittering sounds that came from the slate roof right above him because bats were crawling over it and dislodging particles of soil and dirt, or a nocturnal bird of prey had paused there to readjust its grip on something wriggling in its talons. He'd become intimately familiar with all these sounds after the family had moved into this other ancestral property at the end of the 1980s, in the wake of Musgrave Hall's destruction by fire. He and Sherlock had scoured every inch of the grounds, usually separately, but sometimes together, if Sherlock wasn't being too distant or disdainful, or declaring that Mycroft was much too fat to make it through a hole in a hedge without bringing the entire hedge down.

Mostly, though, he'd listened for Sherlock. He'd kept an eye and an ear on him moving all over the property, and he'd instinctively done this for years until he'd left for varsity. A part of his mind and senses were always dedicated to tracking where the child was, what he was up to, whether he needed rescuing (though he'd never admit it), whether he was still blocking Eurus, Victor and Musgrave from his memory, and what mood he was in. It had always registered in some way, consciously or unconsciously.

Tonight, however, he hadn't noticed – until their father drew his attention to it – that Sherlock was in the next room, where most of the books were. Had he lost his sense for Sherlock's whereabouts over the years in London? Even now that they were back on familiar childhood territory, had he forgotten his instinctive sense of his brother's movements just because they'd spent the whole day acting in their parents' company as if they had no personal interest in each other?

Mycroft rose, picked up his laptop and phone, and crossed the landing to the other door. He hesitated to knock, turned away, but turned back and raised his hand again, at which point Sherlock intoned from within the room: "Oscillation on the landing always means there's a love affair."

"Does it?" Mycroft asked wryly after he'd turned the door handle and entered the second guest bedroom, which had three shelves of books lining one wall.

"In this case, it does," Sherlock murmured with a dry, crooked smile. "Of course, when it's Mummy oscillating on the landing, it usually means she's trying to recall if she's left the pudding burning merrily in the oven downstairs."

Mycroft quirked his lips in amusement and surveyed the picture before him. Sherlock was lying on top of the bedcover in his dressing gown and pyjamas, and he too had turned the heating to the maximum some time ago, so the room was warm. These upper rooms had been intolerably chilly in Mycroft's teenage years no matter how he fiddled with the radiators. But over the years, double glazing, better sealants, an upgraded boiler system, new layers of ceiling insulation and a small amount of interior remodelling had improved things.

He cast his eye over the small pile of books Sherlock had stacked up on the sheepskin rug beside the bed – an eclectic selection – before his eyes came to rest on the one Sherlock was holding open in his hands. With a start, he realised it was the old, fallen-apart-and-taped-together copy of John Ford's 'Tis Pity She's A Whore, which he'd left in this house along with many of the other literature textbooks he'd read for his A levels and at university. By then, he'd purchased a new copy that he'd taken with him to London.

"This is the copy I so often saw you reading when you were home between school and varsity terms, isn't it?" Sherlock asked, holding it up. "This very one. Not the one in your London house."

"Well, as you can see, it fell apart, literally," Mycroft said, seating himself on the edge of the bed and placing his laptop and phone on the rug.

"A cautionary tale, you said."

"I chose to regard it as such."

"Rather beautiful language for a cautionary tale."

"Why are you reading it now?"

"It informed your approach to keeping your distance from me, presumably to save us from the characters' fate. Maybe it has some lessons to impart to me."

The emotion that surged up in Mycroft was that of dismay. He reached out and took the book from Sherlock, saying: "No – don't read this like I used to." He pressed the volume shut and set it down on the sheepskin rug, next to his laptop and phone.

"What do you mean?" Sherlock asked, surprised.

"If you want to go through it as a literary text, carry on. But don't read it like I did, warning myself off you, treating it as a manual of how not to fall in love with your sibling and have it all end in murder and death."

"It seems to have served you well," Sherlock observed.

"Maybe, but let's look for a happier story. Let's make a better story."

"We still have to be practical and discreet, Mycroft. You know that better than I do."

"In terms of secrecy, yes, we must be practical to a certain degree," he agreed. "But let's aim higher than merely avoiding tragedy. I'd like us to be happier, Sherlock. I've been making arrangements with Anthea to establish new guidelines that will keep me out of the messiest diplomatic frontlines. There may be still be one or two occasions when I'll have to butter up an old flame to keep crucial ancient networks oiled, but that will almost never happen – maybe once in five years or thereabouts…"

"Mycroft, I told you to do what you need to do," Sherlock reminded him. "Don't damage your career on my account…"

"I'm not damaging it; I'm managing it. I can be very good at that too, in case you've forgotten."

Sherlock gave him an eye-roll paired with the comment: "Tell me what you're not accursedly good at, besides legwork."

"Although you've assured me that you want me to do what needs to be done and then come home to you, I truly don't want to give you any more cause for unhappiness than is absolutely necessary," Mycroft went on, ignoring his brother's remark. "So for a few days now, Anthea's been looking at how practicable it would be for me to pull back from some engagements. It appears that it could work very well indeed."

"You'd do that for me?" Sherlock asked, shifting towards Mycroft to slide his head onto his lap.

"I would. I'll keep the unsavoury engagements at bay as far as I can, you'll try to keep future Janines at bay as far as you can, I'll try to curtail my unfounded jealousy of John's displays of affection, and you'll try to curtail your unfounded jealousy of Lady Smallwood's displays of affection," Mycroft said, looking down fondly at Sherlock's face and playing with his curls. "At the same time, we'll fine-tune our public coolness towards each other so it doesn't seep into our private interactions. I'd hate for us to get so into character when we act that it becomes hard for us to remember how close we really are when we're alone. It was challenging for me, today. I feared that you seemed distant. It felt as if we'd need an extended re-entry phase when we were on our own, but I don't want to draw the re-entry phase out, do you?"

"What re-entry phase?" Sherlock asked mischievously, sliding a hand all the way up Mycroft's thigh while he mouthed at his fly.

Mycroft drew in a sibilant breath and felt his cock leap in his trousers. "Perhaps it's not a good idea here… if Mummy or Daddy get up to use the loo – which they do a distressing number of times each night at their age – they might hear something or check on our rooms and come upstairs…"

"What were you just saying about re-entry?" Sherlock's nuzzling against his groin was more insistent now.

"What were you just saying about discretion?" Mycroft demanded.

"Lock the door, Mycroft."

"Not a good idea – Father said they were going to bed, but Mummy usually says goodnight herself unless she's exhausted. She hasn't come up yet, so–"

"So lock the door," Sherlock insisted. "It won't be our only warning. I've got another."

He opened a tab on his mobile phone which showed a live image of the only staircase leading up to this landing, and another tab showing an app receiving data from a device which Mycroft quickly worked out was a portable motion sensor.

"You've rigged up a motion sensor and a camera feed at this staircase?" Mycroft asked.

"Of course I have. Your post-dinner conversation was boring. And I knew you'd come up here after. Naturally, I didn't want us to be caught in a compromising position, and I fully intend for us to be in a compromising position, so why wouldn't I set up a warning system?"

"You were waiting in here to get into a compromising position with me?" Mycroft sighed with resignation.

"Well, I wasn't waiting in here to get into a compromising position with Daddy," Sherlock breathed, putting a suggestively dirty emphasis on the last word.

"Oh my God!" Mycroft yelped, leaping to his feet as an uncontrollable, visceral shudder ran through his entire frame. "Bloody hell! What did I say previously about never mentioning our blood relatives when we're… ugh… honestly, Sherlock! I feel utterly filthy now!"

Sherlock fell onto his back on the bed, laughing soundlessly and choking out: "If you could see the look of horror on your face…!"

"You are appalling!" Mycroft hissed, knowing he'd turned completely red.

A soft beeping noise sounded from Sherlock's phone, and he snatched it up at once to show Mycroft the live feed of their mother at the foot of the staircase. "Mummy incoming!"

"What? What?!" Mycroft panicked, oscillating in place.

"You really do turn to jelly when it involves family, don't you, Mycie?" Sherlock stared at him curiously. "Mummy, Daddy, me, Eurus… we all just leave you flustered and wobbly."

"Shut up! What do we do?"

"Calm down. Open your laptop. Sit here at the edge of the bed. I'll sprawl on my back on the sheepskin like this. Go on, tap on your keys and furrow your brow. I'll just stare at my phone. See? All fine."

That very second, Mummy's knock sounded on the door.

"Come in!" Sherlock called, not moving from where he was, while Mycroft tapped at random keys and hoped he wasn't accidentally sending an SOS alert to Anthea.

Mummy popped her head round the door much as Daddy had, and smiled at the sight of her boys together. "I've come to say goodnight," she said, entering.

"We're discussing a classified case, Mummy," Sherlock droned in a bored voice. "And Mycroft is being unbearably conservative in his approach. Will you tell him to loosen up a bit? It's fine to be naughty sometimes."

"You two have to stop bickering over everything," Mummy sighed. "I won't linger as you're working, but try not to stay up too late, all right?"

She bent down and pecked each of them on the cheek, and Sherlock grumbled: "You know better than to bother to tell us that, Mummy – you know perfectly well that you birthed vampires."

She shook her head and left the room, shutting the door behind her. Sherlock reopened the visual-feed tab on his phone, watched her go back down the stairs and disappear into the corridor, setting off the soft motion-sensor alert on his other app again. Then he sprang to his feet and locked the room door.

"There, all safe," he announced smugly.

"Hellfire and brimstone," Mycroft muttered, sagging over his laptop.

"Why let us render you so helpless this easily?" Sherlock asked. "Why can't you be as cold with us when you need to be, like with everyone else? You allow Eurus to terrify you, you give in to me all the time, you let Mummy get you upset… just because we share genetic material, it doesn't mean you can't be icy to us, you know."

"I told you caring wasn't an advantage, didn't I?" Mycroft murmured dolefully. "It really, really isn't."

Sherlock crouched in front of him, closed his laptop, put it on the rug, and took Mycroft's hands in his own. "Calm that great heart of yours. You didn't fool me for a second during that catastrophe at Sherrinford, you know, when you said your heart wouldn't make much of a target. I happen to believe that you have the biggest heart. Everything's fine now. Mummy and Daddy won't come up here again even if they get up to use the loo. In the unlikely event that they do, I have my warning system. So just breathe."

"What would I do without you?" Mycroft asked, not completely certain, even as he spoke, how much or how little irony he was putting into the question.

"Live a much less complicated life, that's for sure. Come on, shuffle over, lie down, compose yourself," Sherlock instructed, lying beside him. "Settle all that fluttering and talk to me."

"What do you want to talk about?" Mycroft inquired, lying back but careful to keep his feet over the edge of the mattress as he still had his shoes on and didn't want to dirty the bedcover.

"Tell me how it began."

"Hmm?"

"Tell me how and why you ever began loving me. It started here, didn't it, right in this very house?"

"I suppose it did."

"Well?"

"There's both nothing and everything to tell. How do I begin?" Mycroft murmured.

"You begin at a suitable beginning point, of course – what are you? Three? Still figuring out how to write an essay?"

Mycroft glared at him, then turned his head to stare at the ceiling for a while before finding a starting point: "When we came here, you were so psychologically fragile. You'd erased Eurus, Victor and Musgrave Hall. This house was always in our family, but it wasn't habitable at the time, so we moved temporarily into one of Uncle Rudy's London flats while the house was made fit for living in. But by the time we came here, your memory had decided to tell you that we'd always lived in London but were now moving to the countryside. I was constantly worried about what you would or wouldn't remember, whether you might recall something that would devastate you. I watched you and quietly fretted over you. By then, you were already distant to me, and downright horrible most of the time…"

"I'm sorry, Mycie."

"Don't be. I was terribly immature too. I'm sure I lost my patience with you countless times. Mostly, though, I worried about you and cared for you and loved you to bits. Your brain had decided to save you from the pain you felt by forgetting, but you couldn't seem to forget that I had failed you, although you didn't remember that the reason I'd failed you was my inability to save Victor. Anyway, even though you were rude and unpleasant to me every day, do you know, Sherlock, that you were still the most beautiful thing in my life?"

Sherlock buried his face in Mycroft's neck and went very quiet.

Mycroft hugged him close and went on: "You were, you know. You were my only light sometimes, on the darkest days when Mummy couldn't stop crying and Daddy was helpless, and they both sank deeper into misery when Uncle Rudy told them Eurus had died in the fire she'd started at the institution she was in. I watched you as if you were my only source of sunlight. All those years, you were the only one who could understand me, who could keep up with me, who grasped everything my brain could grasp when even Mummy in all her genius couldn't – Mummy was a specialist, but we were generalists, the two of us – Renaissance children. What I used to say to you about how I was the bright one and you were the idiot until we met other children – it was all to cover the numerous truths I had to conceal – the fact that we had already met other children long ago, like Victor, and that we'd had a younger sister. You weren't the stupid one; you were in fact the only one who truly understood me without twisting my thoughts into horrifying things, like Eurus did. Then when I came home from varsity that summer when you were thirteen, you'd grown so, and I could see in your features and build just how you would look when you became an adult. I'd spent so many years watching you that I couldn't look away then, and you seared my soul in ways you never had because you were the same, yet different, and by God, I wanted you and loved you and yearned for you, but I couldn't. It was wrong, and you were so much younger that it would have been predatory of me to even breathe a hint of it. Besides, you loathed me still, and I didn't want to disgust you and drive you further away from me."

"And then I went a drove a blade through your heart by offering you sex for money."

"Shh, that's past. You were barely responsible for your words and actions at the time. That chapter is closed. But really, the story of how it began, well, that's all there is to tell. Everything and nothing, in so many ways."

Sherlock snuggled into Mycroft and shook his head. "It's not nothing. It's everything. I do want to aim higher with you – I want us to make a happier story for ourselves. No more cautionary tales, no more tragedies."

"There'll be a lot we may say or do in public that we'll have to forgive each other for."

"Understood."

"And we'll have to become even less readable to others while becoming more readable to each other."

"Not impossible. If anyone can pull it off, we can."

"We'll have to trust each other completely."

"I've always trusted you."

"You didn't trust me enough to stay off the toxic cocktail of drugs before we put you on that plane to Serbia," Mycroft noted grimly. "Didn't you know that no matter how coldly I appeared to be handling your case, I would have brought you back? I'd have secretly sent you the most competent help possible so you could finish your mission, then I'd have found you and brought you back."

"My brain was in a twist then. Too much time in solitary. Too deep a belief that John didn't need me any more now that he had Mary and their yet-unborn baby. Remembering how difficult it was for you to track me down the first time in Serbia… I didn't see a point in going sober and clean into that mission."

"You could have died from the drugs. You're always so certain that you know your limits and how to dance along that fine line between getting deliciously high and dying, but sometimes you don't, Sherlock."

"I should have thought as much about you as I did about John and Mary then."

"I don't think you had a reason to, at the time."

"Mycroft, I can't promise I'll always and forever be clean. But I do normally know my limits. And I haven't deliberately taken a thing since the Culverton Smith case. I don't plan to. I have a reason not to, now. Also, we've both stopped smoking, I don't touch alcohol except when I have company… this is a good place to start, isn't it? You'll trust that I have every intention of staying clean, I'll trust that you want the best for me even if you seem overbearing at times, and we'll both trust that we won't cross emotional or sexual lines with others except in a life-or-death situation. Can that be the foundation on which we start building something with which we'll be happy?"

"Somehow, I thought the recipe for happiness would be far more complex than that."

"Even the most remarkable cake recipes may start out with a really basic sponge or biscuit base."

Mycroft angled his head to stare down at Sherlock's mop of curls. "What do you know about cake recipes?"

"At one point I might have considered baking a cake for you, but I realised that inadvertently poisoning you wouldn't be a good expression of my affection."

Mycroft laughed. "Was that why my team and I ended up stuffing our faces with a massive confection from Ottolenghi's instead?"

"Naturally," Sherlock murmured, looking up with a crooked grin that stole into Mycroft's heart just like every other smile his brother had ever freely given him.

He pulled him up for a kiss, and Sherlock eagerly plunged in, sprawling over him as if he thought he were still a child who could climb all over his big brother. Mycroft was pleased to allow him to set the pace, indulging Sherlock's impatience when he quickly turned the kiss into more, unbuttoning Mycroft's waistcoat and shirt and making his way down, caressing his body hair, lingering at the sensitive spots, making him moan when he laved his nipples with his tongue and dipped into his navel. His shirt tail was tugged loose and the front fully unbuttoned, then Sherlock was undoing his trousers, kissing him through his boxer shorts. When he hooked his fingers into the waistband, however, Mycroft put his hand over his.

"I haven't taken a shower yet," he warned. "Would you like to wait until after I've washed?"

In answer, Sherlock tweaked the waistband down, ran his tongue round the head of Mycroft's cock, drawing a helpless groan and a shiver from him. He looked up to say with another grin: "You taste perfect to me. I'm not the hygiene freak here. And showering before would just be you wasting water, as we're both going to need to wash very thoroughly by the time we're done here."

"Oh…" Mycroft's voice felt choked off by his tightening throat.

"Despite what you say about my being an exception in everything for you, I've washed in anticipation of your finicky preferences, I'm clean, and I'm very ready for you – but I'm going to get you really ready for me first," he purred.

With that, he pulled Mycroft's boxer shorts as far down as the undone trouser fly would allow him, and he took the length of him deep into his mouth, causing Mycroft to arch his back off the bed with a soft cry. He didn't, however, pleasure him in typical rhythmic fashion as he might have expected, but instead licked, laved, teased and occasionally moved his head up and down at the most maddeningly slow pace until Mycroft was hard as flint and nearly ready to beg.

"Sherlock!" he cried tightly, straining with frustration from the elusive sensuality.

"Ready for more?" Sherlock asked teasingly.

"Yes!" Mycroft snapped, tense.

"Take me over the desk, Mycroft."

"What?" Mycroft asked, glancing at the solid piece of oak furniture across the room from the bed, which had very possibly stood in this house since it was first built – it looked that old. He'd spent many hours studying at it when it was in what used to be the study downstairs. "That desk? Now?"

"I don't see another one in this room. And of course now!"

"Why the desk?"

"Because it's there. I've been lying here all evening staring at it and thinking about it," Sherlock stated matter-of-factly before his voice dipped a little to add: "And you must have thought about it whenever you were home from university or work and I was misbehaving, so let's do it."

Against the propriety of his loftier senses, Mycroft's cock rebelled, stiffening further at the mental image of Sherlock bent bare-arsed over his desk, open and willing. He struggled to be sensible, forcing out a logical protest: "You're not ready, we haven't…"

"What do you think I was doing in the bathroom after dinner, brother dear?" Sherlock asked playfully as he began to undress, completely dismantling Mycroft's objection.

"You were…?" he began, not knowing how to continue the question without sounding like an idiot, for he truly hadn't noticed this detail either – just how much had he missed along with Sherlock's whereabouts in the house after dinner?

Looking quite insufferably smug and cheeky as he disrobed entirely, Sherlock retrieved a toiletry pouch he'd jammed between the mattress and the wall and fished out a tube of lubricant, a few resealable freezer bags, surgical gloves, and half a roll of loo paper. He then reached back around to his own bottom with a gloved hand and, to Mycroft's surprise, carefully began to extract a silicone plug, slick with lubricant. He shook his head when his brother moved to help him, so Mycroft just watched as he completed the operation with a tiny grunt of effort, wiped the plug dry with some of the loo paper, and dropped the plug, the used paper and the glove into one of the freezer bags, which he promptly sealed and put back into the toiletry pouch.

"All ready for you," Sherlock leaned forward to whisper against his lips.

He picked up the lube and pulled Mycroft – still half-undressed – up and out of the bed, keeping his arms around him as if he thought he might dig his heels in and refuse to proceed, leading him to the desk in a strange kind of slow, persuasive dance, with Mycroft taking care not to tread on Sherlock's bare feet with his shoes. At the desk, he kissed him again to keep him in place before turning around and bending face down over the wood, gazing invitingly over one shoulder to give Mycroft the most tempting of come-hither looks across the pale, lean length of his back.

"Don't tell me you never thought about this," Sherlock prompted, placing the lube on the surface of the desk beside him. "Or about taking me over your knee when I'd been incorrigible, exposing my arse, just coming down hard on me…"

Mycroft stopped the stream of vocalised imagery by gripping Sherlock's hips and giving a sharp tug, positioning him properly, nudging his feet apart. "You'll be the death of me," he growled.

"But you'll die happy," Sherlock countered.

"This is your latest scheme to shorten my lifespan, isn't it?" he asked, uncapping the lube and slathering the product generously over his cock before pressing the tip against Sherlock's rear.

"Let's see which of us dies first."

"La mort ou la petite mort?"

"L'un ou l'autre."

"Are you sure?" Mycroft asked as he parted Sherlock's arse cheeks with his thumbs and thrust in. Sherlock gave a muffled cry against the top of the desk, but proved he had prepared himself well when he showed no signs of discomfort as he pushed back to meet Mycroft's thrusts. "I won't let you go first if it's one, but I'd be pleased to let you come first if it's the other."

"Are we going to play with words all through this?" Sherlock huffed, breathless from the arousal of being penetrated, turning back slightly to glance at Mycroft, showing a light, pretty flush over his left cheekbone.

"If you want to." Another thrust, eliciting another groan and push.

"Right now I'd prefer it if you'd just take me harder," Sherlock bit out.

Mycroft seized his hips in a near-bruising grip to keep him still and impaled him without holding back, forcing a loud, obscenely erotic moan from him. He lifted one hand to stroke Sherlock along his slender back, a gesture of command and reassurance, while inwardly, he lamented the faded scars marring the creamy flesh, silently noting how prominent the vertebrae looked and felt – he was too thin, he needed to eat better.

As Sherlock panted against the desk surface, Mycroft leaned forward and kissed him down his spine, gently, one vertebral protrusion at a time, before he couldn't go further without affecting the angle of his thrusts. Interestingly, he noted, Sherlock's excitement increased each time the fine wool of Mycroft's unzipped trousers brushed against his arse, and each time his unbuttoned waistcoat and shirt swept his hips or flanks. At once, he understood that this was part of Sherlock's fantasy of being taught a lesson at this desk after provoking Mycroft – in such a scenario he would have been ordered to strip, while Mycroft would have kept all his clothes on.

"Would you like it even better if I was also wearing my jacket?" Mycroft asked, dropping his voice, still caressing the creamy back before him.

Sherlock moaned again and shifted his hips, apparently trying to shuffle closer to the desk to get some friction against it for his neglected member.

"Oh, no, you're not doing that," Mycroft warned, pulling his brother's hips flush against his groin again, making him cry out, and nudging his feet further apart with the sides of his shoes. "You'll come when I allow you to."

Sherlock, gasping, pushed himself back against and over Mycroft's cock, wordlessly demanding more stimulation, more speed, more movement.

"Answer my question: Would you be even more aroused if I were wearing my jacket now?"

"Y-yes… ohhh… harder, Mycroft."

"But you hate my suits," Mycroft pointed out, refusing to give in this time to Sherlock's demands. Topping from the bottom, as always.

"No, I always thought you l-looked really hot in them," Sherlock stuttered breathlessly. "But of course I'd never let you guess that I thought so."

"Of course," Mycroft growled softly. "Of course you wouldn't."

He gave him what he wanted then, mercilessly leaving him not so much as a moment to catch his breath, ploughing him with hard, long strokes that drove all the way in while his hands kept his groin away from the side of the thick wooden desk. Only when Sherlock's cries – smothered against his forearms and the table surface – grew desperate did he reach down with his right hand to pay attention to his neglected cock.

"All right, you can come now," Mycroft grunted.

Timing it perfectly, they climaxed together, moving as one until they subsided into a heap of panting breath, heaving chests, sweaty limbs and rumpled bespoke tailoring draped over old English oak.

It took them a minute to gradually recover from their state of semi-consciousness, but when they did, they disentangled themselves from each other and the desk, staggered over to the bed, and collapsed on it. There they lay for a while – Mycroft on his back, Sherlock face down – until they could breathe noiselessly again. Mycroft tore a length off the loo roll and wiped himself while passing the roll to Sherlock to use before he ended up soiling the bedcover.

"No wet wipes, of course," Mycroft noted. "Because those…"

"… yeah, those don't flush," Sherlock finished his sentence.

"And we don't want to leave evidence lying in Mummy's waste bins."

"Absolutely," Sherlock muttered, hauling out a resealable bag for them to drop the tissue paper into. "Right. I'll go wipe up the mess I left under the desk. You shower in the bathroom downstairs. I'll use the one up here."

"All right."

They did what they needed to do, separately. They showered and got themselves clean, flushed away all the incriminating loo paper, thoroughly washed the silicone toy with soap, and zipped it up in the toiletry bag along with everything else non-flushable. After that, they returned to the upper room, locked the door again, and lay down together in their pyjamas and dressing gowns.

"Sleepy?" Sherlock asked Mycroft.

"Not in the least."

"Stay here with me a while more until we go back down to our bedrooms?"

"Of course."

"What's on your mind? You're thinking about something."

"Earlier today, on the phone, Mummy was asking me about grandchildren."

Sherlock choked on his saliva and coughed violently for a while before regaining control of his voice. "Grandchildren?"

"We'll never be able to give her any. Not a single one of us."

"Because Eurus will be locked away for life, and we…"

"Even if one or both of us adopt children or find a surrogate mother, we could never safely raise a child, Sherlock. Because any child who lives with either of us or both of us…"

"… would very quickly work out what our true relationship is…" Sherlock realised.

"… and it would be terribly unfair to burden a child with keeping such a secret for us until you and I are both dead," Mycroft finished.

"So our family line ends with the three of us, unless you and I break up for good."

"I would never want to resort to that just to pass on our somewhat dubious genetic material," Mycroft murmured soberly. "Can you imagine, if we took the surrogacy route, and the children who resulted from that turned out to be like Eurus?"

"Or like me," Sherlock sighed. "I think I was born seeking one thing or another to be addicted to. You're the only one who might be able to safely reproduce."

"No. The genes that made me and you also made Eurus, and those genes are in each of us. Just because I appear to be better socialised than you and saner than Eurus, it doesn't necessarily mean that I don't have just as much potential for being completely batty deep down in my DNA."

"So that's it, then," Sherlock said.

"I believe it is."

"Well, then, if we may abandon our family's traditional beliefs of what happens to the soul when we die, and just run with Eurus' allusion to other lives to come, then in my next life, Mycroft, I'd willingly be the Annabella to your Giovanni, but we'd have a much happier ending – you wouldn't stab me in the belly to kill our unborn child or tear my heart out of my body. Or I'd willingly metamorphosise in my next incarnation into the Gilfaethwy to your Gwydion, and bear you a calf and a cub – and it would be no punishment for us then but a pleasure instead."

"That sounds like both a terrifying and enticing next life," Mycroft said thoughtfully.

"Whether we get to that next life or not, let's not waste our energy worrying about how we can't give our parents grandchildren in this life – we don't know what things are yet to come," Sherlock mused. "We can intelligently predict and extrapolate and follow events to their logical conclusion all we like, but we don't know for certain, do we? Who knows? I never for one second predicted that someone like John would come into my life, and now, look at us – after all the nightmares we've endured, he's still my best friend. And look at you and me – after everything that seemed impossible, we're here together. So let's wait and watch and seize our opportunities when they arise."

"You'd be a disaster as a political planner, but you're uplifting to listen to as a philosophical optimist," Mycroft commented.

"Horrors. No one's ever accused me of being an optimist."

"But you are. You throw yourself into life with all the fearlessness of someone who thinks he can't fail, while I stay in the shadows watching and manipulating because I know only too well how terribly people can fail."

"Then you should keep a light rein on me, and I should drag you out into the sun kicking and screaming once in a while."

"Oh, horrors," Mycroft echoed Sherlock drolly.

"We'll give each other balance and keep hoping for the best. Honestly, you never know what the world will surprise us with – we might love each other openly someday, or even persuade someone to give us, ugh, children. You and I together like this were an impossibility, weren't we? But that impossibility has become real."

"Hmm, that reminds me…" Mycroft began, leaning over the edge of the bed to flip through the pile of books on the sheepskin rug. "There was another literary work besides Ford's miserable tragedy that I often used as a reminder of how you and I could never be. I think it offers us a more hopeful recipe for happiness because it gives the reader space in which to manoeuvre so that he can see how an impossibility might be possible… ah, this anthology should have it… here we go – Andrew Marvell's poem, The Definition of Love."

Sherlock took the volume from him and looked at the words as Mycroft recited from memory:
"My Love is of a birth as rare
As 'tis for object strange and high:
It was begotten by despair
Upon Impossibility.

Magnanimous Despair alone
Could show me so divine a thing,
Where feeble Hope could ne'r have flown
But vainly flapt its Tinsel Wing.

And yet I quickly might arrive
Where my extended Soul is fixt,
But Fate does Iron wedges drive,
And always crouds itself betwixt.

For Fate with jealous Eye does see
Two perfect Loves; nor lets them close:
Their union would her ruine be,
And her Tyrannick pow'r depose.

And therefore her Decrees of Steel
Us as the distant Poles have plac'd,
(Though Loves whole World on us doth wheel)
Not by themselves to be embrac'd.

Unless the giddy Heaven fall,
And Earth some new Convulsion tear;
And, us to joyn, the World should all
Be cramp'd into a Planisphere.

As Lines so Loves oblique may well
Themselves in every Angle greet:
But ours so truly Paralel,
Though infinite can never meet.

Therefore the Love which us doth bind,
But Fate so enviously debarrs,
Is the Conjunction of the Mind,
And Opposition of the Stars."

"Where do you see the hopefulness in it?" Sherlock queried.

"The lines that describe how vastly impossible such a love is are the very same lines that show how that despairing love could become a reality."

"So… if heaven falls and Earth is torn…"

"Yes, Sherlock," Mycroft said, slipping an arm over him and turning towards him to nuzzle his cheek affectionately. "You're here with me, so heaven has fallen, Earth is rent, all the world has flattened itself into a single plane, and the parallel lines that we are have come together."

"I like that, Mycie. It puts a new perspective on 'Did the earth move for you?'."

Mycroft laughed, Sherlock chuckled, and they burrowed into each other's arms again, seeking each other's lips and warmth, in the place where the possibility of their impossible love had begun for them.

They had come home.

-END-

Text Notes:
1. Mycroft plays on Sherlock's mention of death by asking, in French, whether he means actual death ("la mort"), or the "little death" that people experience in orgasm ("la petite mort"). Sherlock's reply in French means: "One or the other".

2. The poem Mycroft recites is The Definition of Love, by the English metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell, who lived from 1621 to 1678.

Other Notes:
To everyone who's read this fanfic, thank you for staying with it to the end. I've enjoyed writing this and have loved exchanging views with those of you who've left comments. I appreciate all the time and thought that has gone into each comment you've given me. To the readers who've loved the story, thank you once more for sharing this rather wordy journey with me which at times may have referenced potentially off-putting amounts of British and world literature and mythology, as well as mind-numbing case-solving detail. To the readers who may not have liked the story so much, I thank you also for at least giving it a shot even if it wasn't ultimately to your taste :)

I've done my best to make this fanfic as consistent as possible with BBC Sherlock canon from Series 1 to 4, but I can't promise that every detail is perfectly consistent with it. And I tried to keep my updates as prompt as possible at the start, one chapter every ten days or so, because I began this story during a bit of a lull at work. But several chapters in, real-life work got demanding, so I had to post new chapters at two-week intervals or thereabouts, and I thank you for your patience if you were among the readers who waited for updates!

Finally, of course, I don't own Sherlock and am not profiting financially from this fanfic.