It Started With Stealing | Sherlock Holmes

2 - A Meeting With Mycroft

"That."

"What's 'that'?" He paused, "Are you alright?" John questioned, bewildered with his friend's behaviour.

Sherlock looked to John with a clueless look, "Yeah, fine. Why?" He offered him a small, sane-seeming smile.

John tried to hold back a smile as he noticed a certain look on his friend's face, "Because you have that look."

"What look?"

"That look."

"John, you point out my many 'looks' a lot and yet always fail to remember that I cannot see my own face."

"The look of 'if we don't alert Mycroft, he will forget about us'."

Sherlock couldn't argue with that. In fact, he didn't even have time to as the door unexpectedly opened without their doing so to reveal Mycroft. He gave a forced smile to the two men.

"Good evening, John, Sherlock." He greeted them, opening the door wider for them to come in.

"Good evening, Mycroft." John greeted him politely as he walked past.

Sherlock walked past Mycroft without a word.

"I'm so glad you could come, brother mine." Mycroft took the intiative to speak first to his brother as he shut the door.

"Glad?" Sherlock scoffed, "I thought you were incapable of the emotion."

Mycroft rolled his eyes, "I don't have time for an argument. Go through to the living room."

John silently walked into the room as the brothers continued to mumble incoherently to each other. One day, John prayed quietly, one day they would get along. He took a seat in one of the chairs by the fire as the brothers walked into the room. The fire crackled, casting an orange glow across the entire room.

"Would you like a drink?"

"Please, Mycroft." John nodded with a curious look on his face.

"You're being oddly hospitable, Mycroft." Sherlock noted as he sat in the other chair facing the fire, "Must be really serious if you're being this nice."

"Indeed it is."

Mycroft set down a glass of water on the small oak table besides John's chair before he pulled up a chair from the dining table. It made a rough, uncomfortable sound as the legs of the chair were dragged across the polished floor. John shuffled a bit in his seat as the older brother took his seat.

"Well?" Sherlock prompted.

"A certain acquaintance of mine is requesting your help. He - "

"How about no?" Sherlock frowned.

Mycroft sighed, already understanding why, "Seamus Kelly is requesting your assisstance."

"Isn't he that politician? The one who was accused for the murder of his wife?" John questioned.

"It is."

Sherlock stayed quiet for a moment, "His brother did it. Come on, Mycroft, surely you could have worked that out as well."

"Of course I know that his brother did it."

"Then why do you need our help?"

"His brother was murdered."

John's brow raised, "Well, that's a twist."

Sherlock rested his hands under his chin in the trademark steeple position that he always did, "And now people think he was responsible for both the murder of his wife and brother? And he wishes for me to prove him innocent of both murders?"