#alwaysanaddict

Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective. Arthur surveyed the business card with some amusement, turning the white piece of card stock over in his fingers as he made his way through the maze of London streets, slender fingers curled tightly and possessively around the silver handle of his PASIV case. His nostrils flared as he took in the crisp city air, the scent of rain heavy in the moist atmosphere. If there hadn’t been a down pour recently, there was going to be; but that was London and Arthur wounldn’t have had it any other way. He was quite fond of the city, regardless of its unpredictable weather and he never turned down an opportunity to work a job there; especially one like this.

221 b Baker Street matched the address on the rectangular paper and the point man reached for his lock picking tool, knowing it was only a matter of moments before Holmes would be passing out from his heavily sedated morning cuppa. They had scheduled the job strategically around the vacation of their mark’s clingy sidekick, Dr. Watson, and made sure the land lady had been out to avoid any unpleasant surprises. Arthur counted down the seconds on his over priced watch before he picked the lock, pushed the door open, and silently allowed himself inside.

Just as he had anticipated, or more really, made sure of, Sherlock was sleeping soundly, head flopped over as he drooped in his living room chair. The tea cup had fallen from his long fingered hands and rolled across the floor, and Arthur didn’t bother to retrieve it; what was the harm in adding a bit more clutter to an already untidy apartment?

In seconds, Arthur had opened the dream share device and placed it carefully atop the mess of books and papers on the coffee table. Eames, Cobb, and Ariadne came filing in shortly thereafter to take their appropriate spots about the room, finding space to sit or lie down where ever it was available. The point man tugged the compound tubes from inside the case, capping the ends with fresh needles and he wasted no time sliding them into the arms of his co-workers, the mark, and finally, himself.

Mycroft Holmes believed that he was a very upright sort of Englishman. Perhaps a bit uptight compared to his peers - he wore his ginger-brown hair neatly parted and combed, he often remembered to say 'please' and 'thank you,' and sometimes even went so far as to rinse his dishes before his Mummy washed them - but he was quite without an underbelly. He could hear his father talking loudly and at length in the kitchen, scolding his mother as Mycroft sat cross-legged in Father's arm chair, a leather bound book on Hindu philosophy open on his lap. It was quite difficult to concentrate when Father was struggling to control the volume of his voice, when Mummy's voice came in loud and frightened whispers. The world of theology was lost on him for the time being, so he closed his book, slipping off the chair to pad up the stairs in his socks.

Being a Holmes, Mycroft was discovering, was much different from being anyone else, especially those peers with whom he went to school. They were all of them part of the elite upper class, nobody struggling for money nor for fame, but the rest of them prattled heedlessly as the teachers lectured, wrote notes to one another under the desks, and, in the case of the girls anyway, had begun flirting with him more explicitly than he'd seen fully adult women ever flirt with fully adult men. It was intimidating to be thrust into such average society; even nightmarish. 

And the other children his own age were so common, and so dull, and seemed to move at a glacial pace compared to how swiftly his own mind functioned. When he excelled far beyond their own mental capacities, they fell back on insults, poking fun at his weight (which was heavier than was deemed acceptable by society), at his freckles, at his somewhat archaic language for someone who was still so young. 

But mostly, he noted that the other children had close relationships with their parents; their mothers read to them, their fathers built tree houses with them. They didn't have to rely on distant French grandmothers for life lessons, nor try to feel their way through life completely blind. And Mycroft, despite everything he had, was jealous. He wanted to be read to, wanted to be cuddled, wanted to be loved the same way that Michael and Stephanie and Georgette were loved. 

He loathed the thought of being average, but still he found himself envious of those who had more loving parents than the two boys who resided here.

Sherlock was four. It was a difficult age to handle, especially since little Sherlock was already showing signs of being much... different than most children. Not necessarily a bad sort of different, but definitely not a good sort of different. Mycroft had noticed it in the way Sherlock arranged his blocks according to color and shape, in the way he drew everything exactly aligned rather than the random squiggles of most small children. Mycroft worried for the day that their mother or father would notice and begin to question it. He did his best to try to work the strangeness out of Sherlock's system without drawing attention to it, but Sherlock simply didn't function the way that he did, the way their parents did. So instead, carefully, he tried to work with it.

He turned the corner into Sherlock's room, not bothering to knock, and sat on the bed. He could still hear the argument, which was growing in volume all the way from the kitchen, and there was the sound of a pot clattering to the floor. Mycroft folded his legs up to his chest on the bed, which was small still (only a small size above a toddler bed), and pressed his face into his knees. 

Victor had gone through dinner expecting the worst, and yet, surprisingly, the two weren't met with any sort of embarrassing disaster. They'd eaten together with idle conversation (which was a bit flirtatious on Victor's part, hoping to clearly convey that he was definitely interested in more than just friendship with Sherlock), or sometimes just fell into companionable silence while Victor picked at his pasta and Sherlock made deductions about the people around them (mostly, he guessed, for Victor's own amusement). Every now and again, the owner - a personal friend of the Trevor family - came by to make sure they were having a good time. All in all, as first dates went, it wasn't bad.

Though in all fairness, Victor had nothing else to compare it to. He didn't date, because he'd never been romantically interested in anyone before, not like this. He could barely even make friends, let alone ask someone out to dinner.

They drove back to the dormitories in the rain, and Victor pulled the collar of his coat up over his head, already feeling his hair become frizzy under the moisture. He recalled Sherlock's offer to allow him to stay the night here so that he wouldn't have to drive back home in the rain, especially since thunder was beginning to sound in the distance, but he wasn't sure his nerves could handle that much prolonged proximity.

"So..." Victor awkwardly trailed off for a moment, not wanting to just invite himself inside. "I had a really great time! We should definitely, er... definitely do it again. In the future." He wasn't normally so tongue-tied. It was more than a bit frustrating that his IQ seemed to drop fifty points whenever he was around the other. He felt his face flush and hoped he could just blame it on the rain. "I should start heading back before the rain gets too bad. I'll, er... leave you to it?"