sto morendo dal crepacuore, fratello mio

[punchmeitssubtext]

It was something of a given that the Holmes brothers tended to intrude on one another's privacy without either warning or apology. After a difficult adolescence and young adulthood, it had very nearly become habit (which, in retrospect, probably explained a good deal of the resentful and angry behavior), although that habit had somewhat faded after Sherlock's false death and resurrection.

Until today, at least.

The door of Mycroft's home banged open, and Sherlock stormed in, bringing a gust of the rain and muggy air from outdoors with him as if it were generated by the billowing drape of his coat. With no explanation aside from several furiously muttered obscenities, he slammed the door behind him and then practically threw himself onto his brother's couch, curling up in an awkward, angry ball.

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[punchmeitssubtext]

Sherlock's eyes are closed, and his breathing is uneven, like he's just run a mile. And yet this is a moment of calm: a rare, treacherous tenderness between them that allows him to be safe. Once, while slipping in and out of the delirium of cocaine withdrawal, he'd started howling as if raw sound could propel him back into the safety of the past, of knowing he was not in fact alone.

And he's not alone, not now. In fact--in fact he's so full he doesn't know what to do.

He thinks about sitting on the couch with John, watching really rather terrible films but enjoying them because they make John happy. He thinks about the two dozen songs he's learned on the violin (rock songs mostly, and a handful of things you'd hear people bellowing in a pub). He thinks about waking up next to someone in the morning, and curling up next to someone at night even during the descent into sleep. Everything, everything that isn't the work is a confession.

"All the time," he murmurs, with a strange kind of exhaustion in his voice. "I can't get away from it. From him. Even--he went up to Edinburgh yesterday to see an aunt of his, she's far more ill than he's letting on. And do you know what I said? 'Call me if there's a double homicide.' For God's sake. There should be a rule book. If there was a procedure, I could memorise it and then we wouldn't be in this mess."

True, John had laughed, in that short and huffing way that meant he was only partly irritated. But then he'd responded with a You too, idiot, and left, and now he... well, he feels the absence.

"The last time I ever said it--" and he hears his own voice crack, and hates himself for it, for admitting this at all-- "was to Dad. At his funeral. I can't manage this."

[the_government]

Mycroft pulls away slightly, his arm moving from around Sherlock's back to grip his nearest shoulder. He takes a deep breath.

"The last time I said it was the day I left for university."

It had been through a layer of solid oak, and the blasting of Verdi's "Dies Irae" (dramatic even then) had made sure no sullen pre-teen ears had heard.

He stops for a moment, thinking about what Sherlock had just told him, and then his somber expression cracks into a faint smile.

"Do you realize...you've just asked for a rule book? My brother, following rules?" He grins wider, ruffling Sherlock's unruly curls. "I would suspect some sort of grave illness had befallen you."

He looks at his brother, thinking how much he's changed. How much they've both grown, mistakes made along the way of course, but they're solving them now. Learning that being "the best" isn't always being the smartest or the most in control.

"Look at us, brother. Sitting here bemoaning ourselves. We're being ridiculous." His smile is wider now, the first smile that's felt real to him in a long time.

"Has there ever been anything we couldn't do?"

[punchmeitssubtext]

Some part of his brain has already tucked that implicit admission away for later: he'll put it in context, process the old anger and that strange ringing wistfulness that he'd once driven out with drugs, figure out some subtle way of antagonizing him to even the score. But for now, Sherlock makes no effort to pull away, though he does wrinkle his nose and duck a little when he feels Mycroft ruffling his hair.

"Cluedo," he points out dryly. "Three-legged races. Quiche."

He thinks, rather suddenly and for the first time in quite a while, of Victor--Victor, with his slow smile and enormous laugh, whose kisses were electric but ultimately meaningless. Experience, he's learned, is a nearly infallible teacher.

Most of the time, anyway.

"Besides, you've always been ridiculous, what with your--your pocket squares and the bespoke umbrellas. This is different."

[the_government]

Mycroft waived his hand airily. "I suppose we could succeed at those if we cared enough to try. And I beg pardon, I've always been ridiculous? Where you prance around in flapping coats and too-tight shirts? Hmph" His voice is sharp, but a twist of his mouth and the twinkle in his eye shows he's making fun in jest.

He fingers the knot in his tie, still perfectly taut as always, the pin keeping it from slipping. He sighs, leaning back on the sofa, his hand returning to rest on his brother's shoulders- a point of contact, keeping them grounded together in physicality is doing wonders for their relationship so far.

"It is different. It matters. Why is this sentiment, why this one man matters to you above any other."

A thought occurs to him, and he looks at Sherlock quizzically. His brother had always flamboyantly rejected normality, pushing any human emotions out of his system. But this emotion...even though it pained him, his brother clung to. Much the same as he himself had clung to his wreck of a brother, even as the downward spiral of drugs turned him into someone unrecognizable.

"You haven't tried to quell this attraction using chemical means, though. That's...quite interesting."

[punchmeitssubtext]

Sherlock makes a soft, contemplative sound; he's still leaning very slightly against Mycroft's shoulder, as if it's a muscle memory from his childhood days. As a little boy he'd quickly discovered that leaning on his brother afforded him an excellent view of Mycroft's sketchbook, or the sheet music he was reading, or something he might be building for school. It was a safe position, a position of knowledge and warmth, and now that he's older it's a little startling that that hasn't changed.

"It wouldn't work," he says. "It's too different. And anyway the problem isn't the attraction. It's..."

He pauses, trying to think of the right words, the right way to communicate the shape of this thing that's so wholly outside the realm of their experience.

Briefly, he recalls one of Mycroft's secretaries--an ambitious but anxious man whose accent placed his upbringing near Cornwall. While his brother was consciously careful not to betray himself, that secretary had given them away in a very specific manner. Every so often Mycroft would say something, or make a reference to their strange childhood, and the man would have an unconscious moment of looking utterly surprised... as if he were hearing certain words in certain combinations for the first time, as if he had suddenly stepped into totally unknown territory and found it fascinating.

He'd been replaced by Anthea four months later. But the image stuck with Sherlock; if he'd noticed it, he knows, Mycroft must have picked up on it too.

"I'm never bored," he finally manages. And it's true: while they have something that passes for a domestic routine, John is constantly surprising him. The cocaine had been an escape, a way of speeding up the world around him, but its effects had been predictable. Even now that he and John are intimate, he's constantly discovering things.