A Case of Identity

BBC Sherlock

Rating: PG

Summary: More backstory for the David fics about Mycroft's first marriage. Set in the year that UTA Flight 772 went down.


London, January 1989

One of Mycroft’s early lessons in the Service was the danger when forecasting events. All too easy to predict what you wanted to happen and ignore worst-case scenarios. You had to learn to face less favourable possibilities, have a plan ready for the things you most feared happening.

What he feared was David not returning from Africa. When the year was up, would he really be prepared to come home, he wondered, as he read David’s letters, with their extravagant descriptions of places, and their long accounts of conversations with his houseboy. He found himself looking obsessively at the photos David enclosed of the beautiful black-skinned boys by Lake Chad. Was he secretly comparing their exotic beauty to Mycroft’s pallid body?

No, David wasn’t like that, he would be faithful. But they were growing up, growing apart, even. Despite their marriage, or perhaps because of it. David didn't properly realise yet that life wasn't going to be like his dreams, that love didn't conquer all. Mycroft knew by now, though, that you had to live in the real world, where gay men might be tolerated, but never fully accepted. There was no proper place for him, for them. So what he most feared, finally, was that it wasn't just his own heart that was going to get broken.

***

N'Djamena, June 1989

David fell in love with places easily. The birch grove at Wakehurst Place, aged six, where he'd naughtily peeled away the papery bark from a trunk to reveal the pale pinkness underneath. The stony hillsides of Attica, aged twelve. And now he was falling for the savannas, and the starry nights, full of sudden harsh noises.

He fell in love with people much more rarely, but he fell hard then. Achilles, when he was eleven and first read Homer in translation. Them Alcibiades and Socrates, of course. And now Mycroft, who was flesh and blood, not just a hero on a page.
 
He'd enthusiastically dragged Mycroft off to Wakehurst Place and to Greece, but he couldn't imagine Mycroft enjoying this bit of Africa. He'd probably call it 'primitive'. As if that mattered. He wondered if eventually he could talk Mycroft round to coming to Chad, maybe even living here for a while. Though he'd promised that the next post, his first proper posting, would be nearer home. He'd stick to that, of course. It wouldn't kill him to go to Paris, would it? 

They had world enough and time, now they were married. Mycroft didn't understand yet how that had changed everything. That it meant that they'd be together forever, proving their enduring love even to the bigots.

***

London, November 1989

 

Stuart was fun in bed, Lestrade thought, but he could be a pain afterwards. Still, that was barristers for you: never shut up, even when they didn't have any briefs. 

"You need to grow up, Greg," Stuart announced. "Twenty-six and still just a constable? If you tried, you could go places." 

"Been a lot of interesting places already tonight. You come back over here, maybe we can find some more." 

"Can't you be serious for once? I've worked out what you should do. You should apply to the CID." 

"Me, a detective? Come off it, Stu, they'd never take me." 

"I know you hate exams, but you're bright, observant. I spotted that the first time I cross-examined you." 

"Wrecked your case, didn't I?" Lestrade said, smiling. 

"And then wrecked me. The point is, you can change your life, if you want to. Like the East Germans." 

"What?" 

"You've seen the news, haven't you? They're pulling down the Berlin Wall. You need to pull down the wall in your head that says: Can't go there." 

"You're just weird. And I'm fine as I am." 

"In twenty years time, you'll be a desk sergeant at best. And you'll have lost your looks." 

In twenty years time, Lestrade thought, maybe at least I'll have got over my weakness for posh bastards. 

BBC Sherlock

Rating 15 (slash, swearing)

A sequel to David which was about Mycroft's first marriage. Also heavily influenced by Fengirl's Quiet Storm and Blooms84's Some Things He Doesn't Need to Know. Betaed by Blooms84.

Summary: the morning after the night before is never good, especially, when it's the morning after Mycroft finds out about Lestrade and Sherlock having slept together.

Part 1
Part 3 

 

( The headache Lestrade felt the next day was not improved by going into work and finding John there )

 

 

BBC Sherlock

Rating: PG (preslash)

Summary:  A prequel to David with a snippet of back story. Inspired by the translation class scene in Maurice, so thanks to Fengirl for introducing me to that film.

 

David had spent seventeen years feeling alone. The subtle disappointment of his parents that their son might be precocious, but was also awkward, timid. Melissa was a wonderful big sister, but she didn't see the point of writing poetry. Even the others doing classics at school couldn't understand why he was so obsessed with the Greeks.

People understood obsession at Oxford. At the Principal's sherry party, he'd met a tall, solid boy, with a fancy waistcoat and an odd name: Mycroft.

"I'm doing PPE," Mycroft said. "Mainly for the politics. The economics is straightforward, but tedious, and I've never really seen the point of philosophy."

"To show you how to lead a good life," he'd replied, all his diffidence vanishing. "How can you achieve anything in politics unless you know what's ultimately important?"

"Greatest good of the greatest number."

"That presumes you know what 'good' means."

They'd spent most of the afternoon arguing in David's tiny room, with the small wall heater that could barely heat a small wall. It didn't matter, in their absorption with ideas they struggled clumsily to express:  the social contract, truth and beauty, democracy, what happiness really was.

"Friendship," said David. "The meeting of minds, souls. It's all in Plato." And wondered, daringly, whether some day he could tell Mycroft what Plato said about the beloved.