2010/04/24

John came to consciousness, his head aching abominably, dimly aware of the Holmes brothers having a heated dispute above him. "I must check, Mycroft. If I don't look now, they'll have time to remove all signs and we'll have to start again."

"Your flatmate is unconscious on the floor, Sherlock," Mycroft pointed out. "How can you justify leaving him –"

"It's not as if he'll be alone, Mycroft," Sherlock retorted. "Or did you plan to abandon him?"

"What are you going on about?" John said, pushing up on his elbows.

Sherlock was instantly on the floor beside him. "Stay where you are, John. The police will be here soon."

"The police? What . . ." John remembered suddenly that they'd been looking into the gang's hideout. How had Mycroft come to be here? "Go, Sherlock, make sure we get the evidence."

Sherlock nodded sharply. "Mycroft, stay with him, keep him awake. He's clearly concussed." With that, Sherlock took off. Mycroft squatted down beside John and looked pensive.

After several moments of silence, John blinked at him. "I think, perhaps, you've misunderstood how to keep someone awake." Mycroft glanced down at him and raised his eyebrows. "It rather involves talking, you see."

"What shall we talk about?" Mycroft asked, and John thought it was highly unfair to put the onus of coming up with subject matter on the man with a concussion.

"Sherlock's had other flatmates, hasn't he?"

"He has," Mycroft said. "Why do you ask?"

"I just wondered if you ever grabbed any of them the way you grabbed me."

"Of course," Mycroft said. "As I told you then, I worry about my brother constantly."

"You didn't tell me he was your brother then."

"No, I didn't."

"It was a test," John posited. Mycroft shrugged. "Have you ever given anyone else the same test?"

"Of course I have," Mycroft said. "I couldn't risk Sherlock moving in with someone who'd prove a danger to him."

"He's of age," John pointed out. "Capable of making his own decisions."

Mycroft was silent for a moment, and John wondered what he was thinking. His head ached, and he closed his eyes briefly to avoid the light. "Do you think my brother is a sociopath?" Mycroft asked abruptly.

John opened his eyes. "No. Why, do you?"

"Not hardly," Mycroft said. "He feels very deeply, and he's made errors before, trusting the wrong person, and it's put him in terrible situations. I wish to avoid that ever happening again."

"Seems reasonable." Mycroft nodded and fell silent again. John's eyes drifted shut.

"Don't go to sleep, Dr. Watson," Mycroft said.

John forced his eyes open again. "Fine, tell me about them."

"About whom?"

"The flatmates that didn't work. I need you to talk to me."

Mycroft pursed his lips, looking irritable. "Are you quite serious?"

"I am. Is that a problem?"

Mycroft gazed at him for a long moment, then sighed. "The first one I abducted was a man called Alan Reid," he said. "He wasn't a particularly pleasant fellow. I'm not sure where Sherlock picked him up."

2009/08/19

Alan doubted his flatmate even noticed when he left 221b Baker Street, too busy staring at the ceiling and thinking inscrutable thoughts. That worked for him. He wasn't after lifelong friendship, just a place to live. This Sherlock bloke was an odd duck, but if he kept his mouth off Alan from here on in, he'd be good with him. Having his life described in fifty words or less kind of pissed him off, but this was purely a monetary arrangement. He didn't have to like his flatmate, he just had to live with him. And since the twit didn't seem to notice or care about insults, that made things easy.

His friends were expecting him at half past ten, so he hailed a cab. After climbing in and giving his instructions to the cabbie, he pulled out his phone and started flipping through his texts and checking the dismal information regarding his stock portfolio. It wasn't until he realized that too much time had passed that he looked up and discovered that he was in an entirely unfamiliar part of the city. "Where are we?" he demanded, sitting forward. "This isn't Lewisham. What's going on here?" The cabbie didn't respond, and when he tried, the little window between the front and the back wouldn't open. He tried the door, but it wouldn't open, either. "Where are you taking me?"

"Just a bit further, sir," the cabbie said, his raised voice muffled and hard to hear between the noise of the engine and through the plexiglass. "There's a gentleman as wants to speak with you."

"What gentleman?" Alan asked, leaning up close to the partition. He couldn't think of anything he'd ever done that would lead to something like this. There had to be some mistake. "Why? Are you sure you've got the right guy?"

"Alan Reid?" the cabbie asked. When Alan just stared at his reflection in the rearview mirror with wide eyes, the cabbie nodded. Alan could only see his eyes in the mirror, and the man never turned around. "Very good, then, sir. Relax, and we'll be there shortly."

Alan sat back uneasily, scanning his mind for anything he might have done or witnessed that could lead his being abducted, but there was nothing at all. After several more minutes, the cabbie pulled into a multi-story car park, abandoned at this hour. They headed up to the third level, and then the cabbie parked suddenly. There was a click in the car door, and Alan tried it hesitantly. It popped open and Alan got out, staring around him uncertainly. Lights came on, bright, blinding lights, silhouetting a large figure, a tall, fat man, leaning on an oddly shaped cane.

"Mr. Alan Nathaniel Reid." The voice was light in tone, very posh, and it exhibited a calm poise that Alan found somewhat intimidating.

"What do you want?" Alan asked, keeping his tone as calm as possible.

"What is your connection to Sherlock Holmes?" the man asked, his tone noncommittal and nearly disinterested.

"Connection? He's my flatmate." Alan's eyes narrowed as he considered possible reasons why this slightly scary guy would be interested in Sherlock. "Why, what's he done?"

"What makes you think he's done anything?" Faint surprise coloured the posh voice, and Alan wondered what this man's connection was to Sherlock.

Alan shrugged. "What do you want from me? I'm not his friend or anything, the arrogant git is just my flatmate."

"I see," the man said dryly. Now that Alan's eyes had adjusted, he realized that the big man was leaning on an umbrella, not a cane. "I have a proposition for you."

"What sort of proposition?"

"I will pay you a meaningful amount of money to pass on information to me regarding your flatmate's activities."

Alan stared at the man, gaping. It was an outrageous suggestion, asking him to spy on his flatmate. He opened his mouth, prepared to refuse, but what came out startled him. "Define meaningful."

The man raised his eyebrows. "Say, two hundred pounds a month."

Alan considered this. "What sort of information?"

"Nothing indiscreet, I just want to be informed about his day to day activities."

"I don't spend a great deal of time with him. I don't know where he goes when he's out, for instance."

"Oh, I can find that out," the man replied with quiet assurance. "I need someone who can tell me what he does at home."

Alan thought the idea over for a moment. It wasn't as though Sherlock was or ever would be any kind of a mate. The man thought far too highly of his own intellect, and he made every interaction into an intellectual puzzle. If he ever did try to get off with a girl, he'd probably wind up explaining his sexual attraction to her – and hers to him – in such unflattering terms that she'd go off in a huff. A good thing, no doubt. Weirdos like him didn't need to breed. Having thus disposed of any need to be loyal to a man who would never feel the same towards him, he nodded, but there were other issues to be considered. "How would you go about paying me?" he asked. "It doesn't strike me as the sort of thing one writes out cheques for."

"How very pragmatic of you," the man said sardonically, tilting his head. "Hmmm . . . you seem to have rather missed the point of this interview."

Alan's brows knit, and he had no idea what that meant. "I don't understand."

The fat man's lips stretched in a small smile. "When the cab takes you back to Baker Street, you will pack up and move out."

"What are you talking about?" Alan exclaimed, startled beyond comprehension. "Why would I move? It's –"

"You will move out of 221b Baker Street, in fact, you will move out of London." Alan started to protest, but the fat man overrode him. "If you don't, I will bring certain trades you have engaged in to the attention of the proper authorities." He held out a file and Alan took it. Flipping it open, he found exactly the evidence he didn't want to see. He didn't think what he'd done was so terrible, but he'd be in deep trouble if anyone found out. The man clearly knew that, because he smiled more broadly. "Do we have an agreement?"

Alan looked up at the man, flabbergasted by how entirely upside-down the interview had turned. "I can't afford to move."

The man gazed at him silently for a moment. "You cannot afford not to," he said quietly, nodding towards the file. "Be out by noon tomorrow. Good night, Mr. Reid." With that he turned and walked away, leaving Alan to stare after him in stunned amazement.

Mycroft sighed. Sometimes he thought his brother selected his flatmates with the use of a dartboard. Ever since that debacle during Sherlock's last year in uni, Mycroft had made it his business to ensure that anyone who moved in with his brother was up to a decent standard of ethical behaviour, yet not so high up on the scale that he would feel competent to disapprove of Sherlock. It was a difficult balance to strike.

For example, Mycroft could have overlooked Mr. Reid's foray into insider trading if he had simply responded appropriately to the challenge placed before him. It was unfortunate that he had failed. Sherlock clearly did not like living alone, but he had made it abundantly clear that any attempt on his older brother's part to provide him with suitable companionship would be met with outright hostility and a direct attempt to drive the interloper out. Mycroft had lost two otherwise competent agents that way. Not only had they left Sherlock's flat, they had left Mycroft's employ. Mycroft had no clear idea of what Sherlock had said to either man. Sherlock wouldn't say, neither of his agents had been willing to be explicit, and every time he tried to insert surveillance devices into Sherlock's dwelling, they mysteriously failed within the first twenty-four hours. Mysterious to his technical staff, not to Mycroft.

He returned to his usual work of managing nations. Somehow that seemed easier than managing his younger brother's life.

2010/04/24

"So what would you have done if I'd said yes?" John asked. "What could you have blackmailed me with?"

"I don't honestly know," Mycroft replied, and John blinked at him. "I didn't, then, have anything to blackmail you with, nor any other hold on you." He shrugged. "I didn't blackmail all of them."

"No?" John asked, wondering what else he might have tried. He snorted. "How did Sherlock feel about your interference?"

"Sometimes he quite appreciated it," Mycroft said defensively. "In fact, the next time I got involved, he actually thanked me."

"Really?" John said, having trouble imagining that. "He actually said those words?"

"Those words exactly," Mycroft said. "The fellow was a complete idiot, who somehow became convinced that he and Sherlock were, in his words, 'closer than brothers' after less than a week."

"It does happen," John pointed out, thinking of soldiers he'd known.

"I know," Mycroft said, giving John a look he couldn't quite read. "But not with Roger Hemrick."