atlinmerrick:

Buuzzzz

It began when Sherlock was a boy.

Began when he wasn’t yet tall, when he was three and four and still lisped if he got excited or talked too fast, which was always. Back then, in those so-early days, he didn’t have words for the busyness in his brain, didn’t know other people didn’t know what was in a wrapped-tight birthday box or behind bedroom doors, didn’t know others didn’t think, think, think so very fast about so very much, but he knew his head was noisy and loud and one day he stomped his little foot and yelled at the top of his lungs, “Buzz!”

Eleven-year-old Mycroft stopped drawing, drawing, drawing the periodic table from memory and looked at his sibling and waited.

The red-faced little boy yelled again. “Bzzzzzzzz!”

Mycroft had seen the signs but hadn’t been sure; now he was. With a nod and an extended hand he said, “Come.”

Wound up with he knew-not-what, vibrating with knowledge he was too young to understand, Sherlock just hollered that one word again.

So Mycroft nodded and whispered, “Yesssss. Buzzzz,” and Sherlock nodded and grew quiet and he laced little fingers into big.

The sky was blue, the grass behind the back garden gone long and wheat-field pale. Mycroft carried his brother on his back and after awhile they came to a quiet spot where Sherlock had never been but a place to which he’d wear his own meandering path within weeks. They came to a neighbor’s field and her beehives.

Mycroft put Sherlock down and hand-in-hand they crept close, careful and quiet, until at last they knelt near the hives. For the next hour they peered at the busyness all around them; they sniffed and imagined they smelled honey; and for a long time the brothers listened and they listened to the bees soothe them sweet and soft.

Yes, murmured the bees, buzz. Buuuuzzzzz.

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This stunning artwork created by JustOneLastTrick, and it made me think that so much of who Sherlock became would come from Mycroft—who had to deal with the buzzing in his head long before Sherlock did. I think the bees would have been one of many gifts—coping strategies—he’d have given his baby brother.