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His team teases him about it, and his wives had too, each of them, in the beginnings. Not in the ends, though. Angela, his Angie, saying it like a curse. Serial reset. You can’t be alone, she’d said, not a shout but something more painful, something more controlled and serious, but Greg, you are shite at relationships.
He’d reset before the separation, even, that time, and Greg felt guilt pulse through him with each fewer second. I’m not done, I’m not, we’re not, he’d raged against his veins, waking one morning to find months etched on his wrist. It didn’t do any good – never did – and as much as he wants to be master of his own fate he can’t hide it from her, not after all those trust exercises about bareness and honesty the therapist had put them through.
He shows her without a word and her breath catches, a short, sharp inhale, and she sits, heavily. She whispers, “You bastard, you bastard,” over and over, like a mantra, like it’s his fault.
Maybe it is. It’s his body, after all, his veins rearranging, his blood pumping, his numbers ticking down again rather than the solid, reassuring line of zeroes. He says he’s sorry, and he is, each time. With Angie and before that with Gabriela and before that with Melissa and the first time, long ago, with Karen. He’s sorry he works so hard, he’s sorry he doesn’t want kids, he’s sorry he missed that party, that dinner, that birthday. It seems a perpetual state of apology, his life, but the hope still thrums through him each time the numbers start up and he doesn’t know, after all, if they cause the hope or if hope causes them.
Melissa and Gabriela walk away with numbers faded, their blues less vibrant, the zeroes on his wrist not quite forgotten for all that they’ve disappeared. Love grown apart, a story frequently told, and he doesn’t keep in touch, couldn’t bear it if neither ever resets.
He wants them to stop, to stay zeroed, not least because divorce is expensive. People don’t always trust resets because even if it’s not adultery exactly it’s a near cousin, and Greg feels like shite knowing that his blood makes him a marked man. A used soulmate, someone else’s seconds, and, given his reset rate, a likely reoffender.
++
The ground beneath his shoes is the miserable grey-brown of the not-yet emerged spring. There’s no grass to speak of, yet, nor leaves on the stripped-bare branches, but there’s a hopeful gilded quality to the edge of the sun that slices around the clouds, and the people who pass through the park feel it, shoulders more square and cheeks tilted up like sunflowers.
He drinks his coffee and picks at his sandwich – chicken tikka, the spiced chicken spread too pink by half, luridly vibrant – and idly watches the people as they pass. It’s not often he takes his lunch outside, but he’d gone a bit grey with too many hours under florescent lights, and Donovan had told him to get some vitamin D. Her sergeant’s badge still shiny and new, she’s gotten puffed up with herself and cheeky. She’s done well, so he allows it – to an extent.
A man sits on the other side of the bench; Greg shifts up a bit, in the time-honoured tradition of giving strangers space even when there’s a foot between you and them. He inspects the sandwich once more, picking off and eating a bit of the crust, and his stomach grumbles unhappily.
“You should eat, Detective Inspector. You need your strength.” Greg jerks his head up, hands fumbling the sandwich; a corner falls on the ground and is immediately flocked to by a group of shameless pigeons. Next to him, the man sits stiff and straight as a corpse, staring ahead. His gloved hands fold together and rest on the curved handle of a black umbrella.
“What did you say?” Greg asks cautiously. He deals more with thugs and lowlifes, but it’s possible he’s made an enemy somewhere higher up along the way.
The man turns his head – just his head, not the rest of his body – and the effect, and his amused, dark eyes, unsettles. “I said you should eat. Though,” he adds, glancing down at the bedraggled sandwich in Greg’s hands, “I wouldn’t find that appetizing, either.” He fishes, with one gloved hand, into an inside coat pocket, producing a wrapped protein bar, and holds it out. Greg hesitates. “Go on,” he says, and it’s so very little like an encouragement and so much more like a command that Greg keeps his hands obstinately still.
The man’s lips purse, minutely, and the tiniest puff of air escapes his nostrils, very nearly like a huff, or a sigh.
“What do you want?”
The man inhales, shoulders pulling back even more – Greg wouldn’t have thought it possible – and says, “To speak of a mutual acquaintance.” Greg waits; he only hopes he’ll recognize whichever criminal this man knows, that he’ll remember the crime and the case. “How long have you been working with Sherlock Holmes?”
“What?” The word bursts out of Greg’s chest before he can catch it. Holmes – the gangly, cocaine-thin boy with the brilliant mind. Greg wouldn’t say he’s working with him; Holmes just seems likely to show up when things are particularly gruesome or convoluted.
The man waits. “I’m not,” Greg says, then again, more forcefully, “I’m not working with him, not really. He just sort of – insinuates himself.” He catches the tiniest flick of an eyebrow, raising.
“Do you plan to continue to allow him to – insinuate?” On the man’s tongue the words sounds sinuous and suggestive, and Greg immediately draws his shoulders up, ready to protest, when the man’s gaze falls on him once more, this time more searching. More intimate. It lingers at his wrist, and Greg reflexively covers his watchband with his other hand. He cocks his head, but doesn’t say anything.
“I don’t plan to continue anything,” Greg stresses.
“He could be of great help.” That’s true enough; he already has been, on the three cases solved in days only each. Greg’s tempted, he won’t say he isn’t. The man, sensing Greg’s cautious hesitation, adds, “What if I were to pay you a reasonably large sum of money? To continue to allow him to – assist?”
Greg blinks. “I’m a detective, you know that, right? You don’t just go around bribing coppers.”
“Not a bribe, not at all.” The man seems nearly affronted.
“Sounds like a bribe to me.”
“Call it an incentive, then.”
“Same bloody thing,” Greg says. Frustration tinges his voice. “I’m not taking it either way.”
The man inclines his chin, just a bit, and Greg has the startling feeling of having passed a test. The man stands, brushing the creases from his trousers. His wool top coat swirls gracefully at his knees, and from this vantage, Greg can see that his chin is quite weak but very sharply shaven and his hair, just around his ears and at his temples, glints ginger in the sun.
“I should warn you,” he says, hands still on his umbrella, looking out across the park, “my brother can be quite intractable. He can help you, but you should watch out if he doesn’t get his way.” He’s taken three steps away before Greg can process this new information and jump to his feet. The pathetic remainders of his sandwich clatter to the ground.
“Your brother?” he calls, a bit too loudly, and the man stills. “You’re Holmes’s brother, then,” he says, unnecessarily. The man turns, his profile silhouetted by the fading sun, and the stern Greek nose can only be familial.
“Mycroft Holmes,” he says, and tilts his head.
“Right then,” Greg says, uselessly. He holds out one hand – his right, watchband firmly buckled, no blue showing – and the man takes it and shakes firmly. He wears a watch as well, the logical choice for the white-collar classes, more traditional and functional than wristbands following each faddish trend.
“Charmed,” Mycroft says simply, and Greg lets his hand fall. They itch, his numbers – they always do now – just like before and after every reset, and the feeling is as familiar as it is hateful.
“Have you told your new wife yet?” Mycroft asks, and his eyes flick meaningfully down to Greg’s wrist; Greg grabs at it, affronted, and by the time he looks up Mycroft is gone.
++
Greg’s never been scrambled before: three resets and they’ve all had new hours and days and months inscribed immediately, a new finite future written in his blood. It unsettles. He can feel the numbers shift as blood flashes through the capillaries, quick quick, and he can barely keep from clamping his hand down over his wrist, fastening his watch too tight, bracing against the itching skin.
Sherlock notices right away, of course, and is delighted; Greg is tempted, nearly, to show him and be done with it, just to see if he can get some answers, but sod him, he’s not here to be experimented on. He watches until the taxi pulls around the corner, clenching his fist at his side.
Two weeks later, another serial suicide has cropped up, and Sherlock’s bringing an assistant – a friend? – to crime scenes. Buttoned-down collars and cuffs and an aluminium cane; Greg’s first thought is that he’ll never last with Sherlock. His second, seeing John watch Sherlock sweep out of the room and down the stairs, shouting something about a case, and catching the movement of John’s hand – the one with the cane – as he just touches his wrist, subconsciously, is you poor sod.
The next evening, when John is missing his cane and they’ve a disappeared shooter to find and dead serial killer to book in, Greg is too distracted to notice what he’ll discover tomorrow about Sherlock’s uncovered numbers. All the better, really, for the thick, heavy swoop of jealousy that settles in his stomach when he sees Sherlock and John at the station the next day, Sherlock’s zeros bold and proud and his hand hovering at John’s elbow, would only add to his distraction. His own have never taken so long to reset and, though sometimes it’s felt like a betrayal, at the moment the uncertainty unsettles him.
His head pounds and his stomach gnaws at itself and he’s contemplating the likelihood of finding a convenience store nearby when he hears the quiet clearing of a throat. Turning, he finds Mycroft Holmes – inside the police perimeter, mind you – holding out a protein bar.
“You need to keep up your strength,” Mycroft says mildly, and Greg laughs and takes the bar, tearing it open and taking far too large a bite. It’s far from the first – or second, even – time Mycroft has appeared very opportunely and Greg’s beginning to become fond of his favoured brand of protein bars. He doesn’t say anything, but chews, and when he’s finished Mycroft inclines his chin and says, “Goodnight, Detective Inspector,” and walks away to a very sleek, very dark car.
Greg gets back to his flat at half four and sleeps like the dead until seven, when he wishes quite fervently to set fire to his alarm clock. It’s not until he’s in the shower that he notices that his numbers have settled.
01:04:19:12:50:34
++
He sits across from Mycroft Holmes and there’s a menu and silverware and their knees just touching under the too small table before one of them shifts. He’s not sure if it’s him that nudges his knees away or Mycroft and the look Mycroft’s giving him – appraising, hands folded, fingers interlaced, lips straight and brow smooth – doesn’t help him decide.
Mycroft orders espresso and it comes in a tiny demitasse that should look ridiculous in his long-fingered hands but doesn’t. Greg cups his fingers around the wide mug of his basic black drip and feels the warmth in his blood.
This is something new: a meeting pre-arranged, a topic non-Sherlockian, a bump of the knees and a ghost of a smile and coffee not in paper cups.
Then he’s on vacation again, bloody Dartmoor and bloody Sherlock and bloody hallucinated hounds. There’s a faint tan line on his ring finger that shows and another at his wrist that doesn’t, watches and wristbands kept firmly in place as under his skin the numbers tick down to months and to days.
++
It occurs to Greg that Mycroft is not the sort of person one meets in passing; nonetheless, over the next two months, their sole encounters seem disconcertingly unscripted, Mycroft startled and on edge when Greg arrives just as he’s departing from 221b, when Greg phones him, a few weeks after Baskerville, to check in, and, once, when they nearly – literally – run into each other at St James’ Park during lunchtime.
This last is a funhouse mirror of their first meeting; Mycroft’s colour is high with the sun and his lip twists impatiently and he seems rather cross at having to be there at all. Seeing him, Greg jogs over, tries to make small talk, but Mycroft’s pointed look at his watch is more than enough hint, so he leaves.
Then, Sherlock jumps off a building.
++
The funeral is small, quiet. John doesn’t attend, which is awful, and better, really, for comforting a bereaved friend is one thing, but a widowed soulmate, wristtime zeroed and frozen and painfully blue, is another thing entirely. Mycroft presides coolly, distantly, speaking in plain, general terms about Sherlock’s childhood, his career, and his passing before allowing the coffin to be lowered. There are no flowers but for a slightly lurid bunch of peonies clutched by Mrs Hudson; she drops them, in a bunch, into the grave before the dirt is shovelled, and leans heavily on Molly Hooper as she walks away.
Greg lingers, hoping to speak to Mycroft alone once the few sparse mourners have gone. He would wonder at the tranquillity of the cemetery, so free of the press which has invaded every other aspect of Sherlock’s posthumous life, did he not know, or suspect, a bit of Mycroft’s power. It hadn’t been enough to save his brother, but a bit of dignity in death could be managed, it seems.
He catches Mycroft up just before he’s about to get into his car, grasping him with a hand to his elbow that makes the man go very still for a long moment before turning.
“I’m sorry,” he says, too quickly. “I wish I could – I don’t know. But I’m sorry, Mycroft, I really am.” Mycroft looks Greg up and down – a movement so familiar from both Holmes brothers, but lacking in Mycroft’s usual imperious authority. Instead, he seems sad.
Of course he’s sad, you git, Greg thinks. Nonetheless, the melancholy in the lines of Mycroft’s eyes, the greyness of his cheeks, and the way his fingers clutch, white-knuckled, to the handle of his umbrella, is deafeningly intimate and far more vast than the measured solemnity of his eulogy earlier. Greg wants to say more, to let the words pour out of him, how he’s torn up and missing Sherlock, how the guilt weighs heavy in his every breath, how he wishes Mycroft’s voice will someday have that graceful cheer again. The words are tangled, his tongue swollen and useless, so he doesn’t.
Mycroft nods, simply, and climbs into the car, and when the door clicks shut Greg’s heart pulses an extra beat.
++
He’s never wished for a reset, not ever, but even with his numbers zeroed he feels surprisingly alone this time. A little doubt, even, would almost be welcome, instead of the persistent knowing that he’s just zeroed out for a man who, quite clearly, does not feel the same.
Mycroft ignores his texts, his emails, his increasingly desperate calls and slightly pathetic voicemails. For three months after the funeral, Greg has absolutely no contact with the man who is apparently his soulmate. He gives up after a few weeks; Mycroft deserves his mourning in whatever form it requires, and Greg cannot demand his presence. He’s nothing to Mycroft, after all, not with Sherlock dead.
It feels deeply, desperately ironic to throw himself into work to forget not about a reset but about a zero. At any rate, it benefits his full attention: NSY is chaotic in the aftermath, his division especially, and though his head stays firmly attached it’s a near thing. Long hours would be required one way or the other, to sort through everything Sherlock contributed, every case he touched, and this way it can serve as a distraction.
He sees John, very occasionally, and they get drunk and angry and melancholy together. John rubs at his wrist constantly and speaks in a clipped, broken voice. On these occasions, Greg stays with him in the cab all the way to Baker Street and crashes on the couch more often than not, for he has little to welcome him in his own flat. Though it’s somewhere between a mausoleum and a shrine, 221b envelopes him in its sharp-edged warmth.
Comfort and guilt come in equal measures on those nights, when he stares at the lurid wallpaper and thinks it could be worse. He could be John, thirty-seven years’ counting down then seventeen short months only with his soulmate. John wore the rough mantle of widowhood with the stooped shoulders of one whose numbers would never fade or reset.
Three months, then six, then a year, and isn’t it funny how they live their lives in these increments, always counting to something. Greg has plans to get John spectacularly drunk on the year anniversary, but when he arrives, John’s already tried and given up that route – a glass and a half-empty bottle of scotch on the table – and instead sits, very quietly, in his armchair. Greg makes tea instead.
The knock at the door is, somehow, unsurprising. The raps – tap tap, tap tap – beat in time with his veins, which is enough to tell him who stands behind the door. Neither of them open it, and when Mycroft steps inside regardless, John says, roughly, “Fuck off.”
“John –“ Mycroft begins, and John stands with an agility Greg’s forgotten, grown more used to his slow, deliberate movements, heavy and mournful. Without another word, he steps up to Mycroft and punches him, quite neatly, on the nose. Mycroft stumbles back, and isn’t it a day for contrasts, for the look on his face is more startled than Greg’s ever seen and flecks of blood splatter across his stiff white collar. “John,” Mycroft says again, voice muffled, and John just shakes his head and sits back down.
Greg gets Mycroft a towel for his nose and follows him out of the flat. “Why are you here?” he asks at the base of the stairs, and he can see the way Mycroft’s neck stiffens.
“Just checking in,” he says quietly, voice still raw from his injured nose, and Greg touches his shoulder, turning him around, and lifts the towel to peer at it.
“I don’t think it’s broken,” he says. Mycroft flinches from his touch with more violence than the pain warrants. Greg follows his gaze to where – oh. His shirt sleeve, rolled and pushed up, and his watch taken off, so his numbers show. A brilliant, life-pulsing blue row of neat, small zeroes. John knows he’s zeroed, though he never asks for whom, so he’s often bare-wristed in the confines of Baker Street, enough that he’d forgotten.
“It’s not –“ Greg starts, but Mycroft shakes his head and shoves the towel into Greg’s hands, and walks, with more haste than is dignified, out the door.
++
Sherlock comes back after two years, seven months, twelve days, and a handful of hours. Greg hears about it on the news, which is – infuriating, actually – and he calls John immediately. It goes straight to voicemail, so Greg leaves the office – three hours early, but he doesn’t care – and drives to Baker Street, where the most spectacular shouting match can be heard from the pavement. Mrs Hudson ushers him in, beaming with happiness, and he stands at the base of the stairs uselessly, unwilling to interrupt.
He feels Mycroft’s interruption before it happens and wonders if it will always be like that, Mycroft’s movements in his veins.
“Detective Inspector.” Mycroft is gaunt, hollow-cheeked, but when he meets Greg’s gaze his eyes are bright. “May I speak to you?”
Greg nods as a shattering crash resonates from upstairs, followed by paired voices shouting. “Perhaps outside,” Mycroft says prudently, and they step under the awning of Speedy’s to shelter from the tentative drizzle just starting up.
“I have to tell you something,” Mycroft says, voice dark and serious and very obviously not shaking.
“You knew the whole time,” Greg says, dryly, and Mycroft opens his mouth, then closes it again. “I mean, that’s obvious.”
“You couldn’t be informed,” Mycroft says, which isn’t quite I couldn’t tell you, but the way he twists the corner of his lip says volumes. Greg works in law enforcement, he knows the Official Secrets Act and need-to-know, but it still stings.
“Because it would blow his cover?” Greg prompts, and Mycroft says, “Yes. And –” then doesn’t say anything else.
Greg breathes through his nose. His blood skates and skids through his body, reckless.
“And,” Mycroft finally continues, “you would be a distraction.”
“To Sherlock?”
“Yes. And –“ he says again, but the pause is shorter, this time. “And to me.”
“Oh,” Greg says. “I–“ He closes his mouth, uncertain.
“I find…” Mycroft swallows the pause, rolling the non-words in his mouth and Greg’s breath is on hold as he waits. “I find I rather want to destroy things because of you, Greg,” but he shakes his head even as he says it. “No. I want to destroy things when I’m not with you. I would –” the unfinished promise lingers in the air as Mycroft brings his hands together, fingers at his wrist, and flicks open the clasp on his watch.
“You don’t –” Greg doesn’t finish his thought before reaching, covering Mycroft’s hand, fingers brushing the skin of his wrist next to the warm metal band, and they’re so close, his numbers, there under his fingertips. “No,” he says and the fingers go still under his and he looks up to a face anguished and miserable. “No,” he says again, and laughs, because isn’t that just – isn’t that just them, misunderstandings and communications precise yet unintelligible?
“I’m sorry.” Mycroft withdraws his hands, withdraws himself, folding and composing and becoming the mask that Greg first met, not the man he’s learnt, the man who is vain and pristine, but likes being ruffled if it’s the right person doing it, the man who cares more deeply for his family and country than himself, the man who wants to destroy things and has started with Greg’s whole world but it’s okay because he’s building it up again.
“Stop,” he says, or commands, or pleads. “I didn’t mean –” He reaches out and grasps Mycroft’s hand, fumbles a bit, not sure what he’s doing, temptation and taboo wrestling in his mind as his fingers slip under the band. Mycroft just stands and waits and it’s agony, his patience, like Greg’s the one in control when nothing could be further from the truth.
His fingertips are there, against skin, against blue, against Mycroft’s wristtime that Greg knows, in one clear instant, is zeroed. Zeroed for him, it must be, because anything else would be too horrible to contemplate.
“Greg,” Mycroft’s voice is low and sweet and pained and Greg wants to catch it in his mouth, to swallow and vanquish its anguish, to be nourished by its love. The blood in his fingertips beats in time to Mycroft’s numbers and Greg takes the step that brings them into the same orbit.