My brain is too fried to write properly, so instead I’m just daydreaming this: John Watson is asked to The Diogenes one evening while Sherlock is out. He’s surprised to actually be asked by Mycroft, rather than just kidnapped in a limo. He’s even more surprised when he gets there, and finds Mycroft is accompanied by Greg Lestrade.
John takes a seat at Mycroft’s desk, fearing the worst. He’s never seen Greg in a jumper and jeans before, nor Sherlock’s brother looking so unsettled.
The two of them awkwardly explain that they’re about to go public with something, and they’d like John’s support in managing Sherlock.
John – concerned – asks what it is.
With Greg’s hand on his shoulder, Mycroft explains that they’ve entered the committed stages of a personal relationship. They’d rather have continued to keep it private from Sherlock, but he’ll realise soon anyway. It seems better for someone to gently inform him now than to let him deduce it on his own.
A shocked John agrees to do what he can.
In the end, he just has to tell Sherlock point blank. Hinting it gently doesn’t trigger any reaction, nor does subtly fishing for a hypothetical opinion.
Sherlock scoffs, and remarks that Lestrade’s romantic judgement hasn’t improved at all since the divorce – but that’s the worst of it.
When John phones Mycroft to tell him the reaction, he hears Mycroft exhale with shaky relief.
Over the next few months, he sees more and more human hints filtering into Mycroft’s behaviour. It’s like Greg is rounding off all his edges. One Friday night John bumps into them both at the supermarket. It’s the most surreal experience in the world, and oddly touching, seeing them both there with a basket in the bread aisle. Greg is coaxing Mycroft fondly into almond croissants for breakfast in the morning. “I’ll bring you them in bed,” he says, and John can’t quite forget the thought of Mycroft Holmes having breakfast in bed – sitting there in his pyjamas, eating almond croissants. Orange juice and a folded newspaper.
He can’t stop thinking about some other things, too.
Not in a creepy way, he tells himself – he just can’t get his head around it.
Two weeks later in the pub, he buys Greg an extra couple of pints and dares to ask the question. Greg is tipsy enough to grin at him, bright-eyed, and answer.
“Yeah. ‘Course we do.”
“What – what’s that like, though? Sex with… a Holmes.”
Greg visibly fishes around in his head for an answer he can give. It takes him a while. “He… pays attention to everything,” he says. “He learns. It’s like being studied. Like I’m fascinating. It’s… really good.”
It takes John a while to get to sleep that night. He’s not sure why.
He realises the next morning when Sherlock brings him a cup of tea – just the right shade of coppery light brown, in his old regimental mug, with one of his favourite oat biscuits positioned perfectly so he can pick it up and dunk it.
Sherlock doesn’t say a word. He never does.
He just puts the tea down, like he does every morning, and goes off upstairs to get dressed.
Perfect. I’m not sure I’ve ever read a fic (I don’t think Colors counts) where Mycroft and Greg being together gives John a hankering for something similar. I like it!
I’m 827% positive that the reason Anderson doesn’t think Sherlock is dead is because Sherlock purposefully let Anderson see tiny glimpses of him the past several years, just to screw with his head. Appearing through Anderson’s window in the woods, standing across the street of his favorite coffee shop, leaving small traces of his presence in his office.
