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Greg emerged from his throng of friends with a lopsided grin on his face.
“Are you sure you’re not my nanny? I can handle the bus ride home.”
Greg’s crew looked on curiously as the impeccably dressed young man straightened his back almost imperiously.
“I thought we might study at my house today.” The words tumbled from Mycroft’s lips with a carefully rehearsed smoothness, and he kept both hands tight on the handle of his umbrella to quell any nervous tremors. In spit of all this caution his eyes widened, just enough (for him) to appear beseeching. Even if he’d intended to, Greg would have found trouble denying him.
Greg turned and waved to his friends, then ducked into the open car door.
“What’s with the sudden change in location?” He asked as Mycroft slid smoothly in beside him.
“I thought it might be nice.” Mycroft began picking at the chest pocket of his vest and forced himself to stop. “There are more resources there, besides. You do have a paper to do, right?”
Greg nodded and the conversation petered out. As they slipped further from the city Greg started peeking continually out the window.
“Where d’you live, anyway?”
“Out in the country. It’s a bit… set apart.”
“Right.” Greg cranes his head as they approach a grassy hill. “How much longer?”
Mycroft extended a long finger as they crested the hill. “We’re coming up on it now.”
Greg was silent, jaw gaping as the road merged into a driveway. The car stilled, but even when Mycroft opened the door Greg remained in place, eyes fixed on the house through the windshield. Mycroft cleared his throat softly and Greg held up a finger.
“Hang on. I’m trying to count the windows…”
Mycroft turned and chuckled into his hand, then extended it towards Greg – and promptly snatched it back before he could take notice.
“You’ll have a better time of that out here.” Greg clambered out beside him, still squinting towards the house, fingers drumming on his thigh as he counted.
“…twenty-five windows, just on the front.” He shook his head in amazement. “I knew you were posh and all, but I bet we could lay out just your windows and they’d be bigger than my flat.”
Mycroft tapped his umbrella on the ground and looked up with a nervous smile (inwardly nervous. It was perfectly charming on the exterior). “I’ll show you inside.”
They turned and strolled down the driveway. Greg’s mouth didn’t completely close the entire way as he took in the fantastically shaped hedges and the bubbling fountain at the end of the drive. When they reached the house Mycroft held open a door made mostly of stained glass and Greg stepped into an expansive foyer with gleaming marble floors. He stared self-consciously at his shoes, the dirt crusted onto the soles already flaking onto the entryway.
“Er…”
Mycroft glanced down and raises his eyebrows. “Oh, yes, we’ll want to take our shoes off. The floor’s just been polished.” It didn’t matter, really; he only said it for Greg’s benefit. Somehow it didn’t seem right to say that a maid would sweep by to pick up whatever debris their footwear left behind.
Greg awkwardly toed off his shoes, aware of the hole in the heel of his grey sock (Mycroft’s, he noted, were crisp and white. The cuffs almost looked starched – and itchy).
Mycroft proceeded to march them through the house, idly pointing out the gold-framed artwork adorning the walls, before stepping into a room whose walls were made of dark wooden shelving that was stuffed with tome-like books.
“The library, obviously,” Mycroft stated. “The study is through the back.” He glanced around as they headed towards the door nestled among the shelves – he’d bribed the nanny into keeping Sherlock out of the house, but his little brother could very well have tucked himself away before she could get to him. Luckily no gangly, nest-headed figure burst out demanding to know the name of their intruder (Greg), and they arrived in the study without incident.
Greg had the couth to keep his mouth shut this time. The study looked more like an up-scale office, like he’d seen a handful of times on the telly, and he half expected the glass-faced cabinets along the wall to contain expensive bottles of liquor. It was odd to see them instead packed with more books, ones that were more easily identifiable than the ones in the library. He recognized one of the mathematics ones, and his nose wrinkled as he settled onto the leather sofa in the corner of the room.
Greg had to admit that he worked much faster here than he would have in the public library – Mycroft seemed to have precisely the books he needed and within a few hours they had a detailed outline laid out and Greg was starting to pack up his things. Mycroft had been hoping to engage in some kind of conversation that wasn’t related to academics before the boy left and so he struck out somewhat wildly.
“Would you like to see the garden before you go?”
Greg had been shoving a sheaf of papers into his bag and only caught the end of his sentence. “Hm?”
Mycroft’s face reddened and he cursed himself as he stammered. “Your mother – she said you liked to help her in the garden, so I thought… perhaps you’d like to see ours. Before you leave.”
Greg stood and hooked his backpack over his shoulders, grinning brilliantly. “That’d be nice.” He ruffled his hand through his spiked hair and followed Mycroft, who was willing his cheeks to return to their normal color and still berating himself though he was at the same time immensely pleased, through to the back of the house. He only realized he was still in his socks once they’d stepped onto the perfectly trimmed grass, but he quickly forgot about that.
“Oh, wow, my mum would kill to have roses like these!” Greg reached out longingly for the roses that were climbing up the wall, fingertips brushing over their cool petals. He didn’t even look at the rest of the garden – he was thoroughly fixated. Mycroft’s eyes darted over the wall and then he turned on his heel, slipping into the shed attached to the house and emerging with a pair of clippers. He avoided looking at Greg as he approached, stepping past him and stretching up with the clippers, delicately pulling on the stem of a perfect rose – deep, true crimson, not terribly unlike the color staining the tips of Mycroft’s ears, and purely unblemished – and snipping it free of the rest. He made swift work de-thorning it, then turned and thrust it into Greg’s hands.
“For your mother.” He’d almost said ‘for you,’ and then he was turning again, acting purely on impulse which felt terribly odd, and removing another rose from the wall.
“A-and another. Flowers like company.” It was drivel, but that didn’t stop him from saying it. He cleared his throat roughly as Greg blinked down at the flowers. “A car will be waiting up front for you. I – goodnight.” With that he fled into the house, leaving Greg standing in his socks among the flowers, looking very confused.
When Greg got home and offered his mother the roses she swept him up in a hug and kissed him hard on the forehead, but that’s not what made him blush – it was the words that followed. “That’s for Mycroft. Such a thoughtful boy!” She crooned over the flowers as she filled a long-necked vase with fresh water and slid them inside.
Quite mysteriously, one of the roses was missing the next morning. Greg’s mother frowned, wondering why anyone would steal a single rose. Her forehead was still creased when she made her way into Greg’s bedroom to do up his bed (he’d woken up late again that morning. She’d hear him dashing madly about), but it immediately smoothed out when she stepped inside.
On his bedside table, next to a stack of cassettes and a cereal encrusted bowl, was a large glass of water, and in it the vacant rose.
After she’d finished making up his room she fetched another vase and switched it out for the cup. Neither of them ever mentioned it.