marysutherland: (Default)
Sherlock BBC

Rating: PG

Summary: A couple of fluffy 221B fics about Mycroft and his first love at Oxford. The second is for Pudupudu, whose exams have just finished.


David dyeing

Oxford changed both Mycroft and David rapidly  – or maybe it simply revealed what was already there. Mycroft had known his sexual preferences, but never expected a boyfriend. The appalling college food, and more exercise – walking with David, sex with David -  meant the pounds were now falling off him, along with some of the defensiveness.

David was learning how to talk to people, rather than just at them. Coming out of his shell. Coming out in other ways as well. David was the one who wanted to hold hands in public; Mycroft was far warier. There was a flamboyant streak in David, despite his shyness, Mycroft concluded. Maybe he needed to get the urge to be noticed out of his system harmlessly, before they joined the civil service.

So he didn't protest too much when he found David staring intently at the notice on the JCR board: Dye your Hair for Rag Week. He simply smiled benevolently and said: 'I'll sponsor you, but I won't be seen associating with you."

The hair dye was fluorescent green, and turned David's beautiful blond hair into a rigid mat. Mycroft helped him wash it out at the end of the week, rinse after rinse. And said: "If you ever do dye it again, at least try something more appropriate. Maybe a tasteful dark blue?"


Testing Times

Mycroft enjoyed exams, found the challenge exhilarating. Especially at Oxford, where you got to dress up, and march through the town in subfusc to match wits with the examiners. David hated exams: sick with nerves beforehand, dazed afterwards. The evening before David's Mods, the Gilbert and Sullivan Society marathon sing through started. Mycroft dragged David along, as a distraction.

“You stay for the whole thing.” David said, “I'll be fine.”

Twenty-three hours in, just before The Mikado started, Jo Malone appeared and collared Mycroft.

“Sorry chaps,” he announced, “got to go.”

“You're singing Ko-Ko,” Colin complained.

“I'm sure I won't be missed.”

“David was in a terrible state after the exam,” Jo said, scurrying to keep up with Mycroft's long stride. “We ended up taking him to the college doctor, only David got even more wound up when she asked if he'd taken any drugs. Did you really give him something last week?”

“Poppers. Helps with...internal tension. Nothing to do with this."

He'd picked up supplies, so when he got to David's room it was simple. David stood up, his face almost as white as his tie, gasping for breath. Mycroft gave him a gentle hug before they sat down on the bed.

“Hyperventilation, Jo told me. So here's a paper bag, and we'll sit together, and you just breathe.”

marysutherland: (Default)

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. 
marysutherland: (Default)

Sherlock BBC

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: Mycroft may have frozen out Lestrade, but a change in the weather might help...

Part 1, Part 2

 

It was the first week of November, coming up to their anniversary – sod it, not thinking about that, how bloody stubborn could any man be? And then the whole of London went completely haywire.  )


marysutherland: (Default)

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 )

 

 

marysutherland: (Default)

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.

David

Mar. 3rd, 2011 07:39 am
marysutherland: (Default)
BBC Sherlock

Rating 12 (implicit slash, OMC death)

Blooms84 wrote a fic The Instigator in which Mycroft is a widower. This is a sequel to that, and it may make more sense if you read her story first. Many thanks to Blooms84 for the inspiration and for her betaing.

John had discovered far more peculiar things, during his periodic excavations of Sherlock's piles of paper, than the order of service for a funeral. It was only the name that gave him a minor start.  )

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