Chapter Text
Greg had never been so thoroughly fed up with Sherlock before that morning and that’s of course saying a lot. He’d been divorced into going on holiday alone (not so bad), bullied into going to Baskerville (decidedly worse), and now locked up in a laboratory (really not how he was hoping to spend the day). What topped it all off, however, was that this was the laboratory with the door marked DANGER DO NOT ENTER, and Greg had been forced to enter because he’d been chased by a huge terrifying dog. And now he was stuck. His being fed up with Sherlock had reached new levels this morning, but by the afternoon it was up to volcanic, and Greg’s head is all cotton-y from it.
This laboratory has clearly been made to keep something in rather than out, and while at first he’d been terrified of finding out what it was, by hour six or seven he’d become just bored. He has reception, and his phone is currently being charged on a cable he’d found in a drawer in one of the desks (and hadn’t that been a fun way to spend almost two hours, turns out desk drawers are revolting everywhere!). He’s sore from playing Tetris all day, drained from the fear and the boredom and the lack of daylight. Apparently, Sherlock and John have left the premises to chase down a lead or something, but Greg has known for a while what Sherlock is like in a crisis. So he’d called Mycroft first.
The more useful of the Holmes brothers appears like a goddamn vision. The door from the lab slides open, bright light from the hallway shines in, outlining himself and his umbrella. “Thank god you’re here,” Greg says, his voice rough with joy and exhaustion, and Mycroft steps inside. “Wait!” He calls, but it’s too late. The door slides closed again.
“I’ve an entry card, Lestrade,” Mycroft says, like it’d be perfectly obvious that he has everything under control.
“Yeah? And where’ll you swipe it?” Greg’s struggling to remember the last time he was this unimpressed but then again, it has been a very long day.
Mycroft whirls around, and Greg moves closer to be able to see what his face looks like when he’s not totally in control. Still very good-looking, he finds. He stretches his back while looking at Mycroft.
Mycroft is on his phone in seconds, calling and rattling off instructions Greg can’t follow while flitting his eyes up and down the lab. It’s a mostly uninteresting place, to Greg, especially now that he’s nicked the chocolate biscuits from one desk drawer, and the charger from another. He keeps his eyes on Mycroft though. Who frantically paces up and down, and then with a snarl hangs up.
“Bad news?” Greg asks, holding out the package of biscuits to Mycroft.
Mycroft almost growls at him from the looks of things, flushed and terribly angry. “Surely even you can – ”
“I think you need a biscuit,” Greg interrupts him, and Mycroft just gapes at him in disbelief. “Seriously, if we need to be freed by someone from outside, and that phone call was bad news, then we’ll be here a while. May as well sit down.”
“Hours!” Mycroft yells, his eyes bright with anger. Bit strange, Greg thinks, what is going on outside that Mycroft can go in but it’d take a long time for him to be followed?
He turns away from Greg and starts digging into panels by the door, which seems a bit ridiculous and far-fetched until one gives. In surprise Greg steps closer again, and he sees Mycroft close his eyes, look at the ceiling, and enter an impossibly long string of numbers into the keypad. As soon as he’s done, all the doors including the one to the hallway open, and an alarm starts blaring. Then lights flicker with it, red and threatening, and Greg grabs Mycroft by the elbow, pulls him away.
He drags Mycroft through the door, to the stairs, and urges him to keep running knowing that whatever may have come loose with all the doors opening, he wants nothing to do with it. Sooner than he thought they would be, they’re outside of the building, panting in the cold night air, the sirens behind them.
Two figures walk up to them, and stop several meters away. Greg takes a step forward, and they step back before he realises that of course. “Where were you when the alarm started?” one of the men calls.
“6F,” Greg calls back, and he watches them look at each other, and back away slowly. “Fuck.”
“Indeed,” Mycroft agrees. He looks a little more dishevelled than Greg is used to, still catching his breath, and the way he clutches his phone reminds Greg that his own phone, probably fully charged by now, is still somewhere far below ground. Fuck.
They get approached again by a crowd of people in hazmat suits, and urged into the back of a van. Mycroft snaps out instructions to his assistant who apparently knows how to operate a Blackberry while covered head-to-toe in rubber. Then the van starts driving.
Mycroft sits on the little bench by the side with his face in his hands, swaying as the van turns but otherwise entirely silent, and Greg decides it’s time for his talents.
“Hey fellas?” he calls. “Any chance you can tell an old copper what’s going on?”
“Sure mate,” the intercom crackles with it. When Greg stretches to peek through the little window to the front part of the van he can see two people wearing hazmat suits, and that can’t be comfortable surely? “Far as we know you’ve been exposed to an unknown agent, it’s been determined it isn’t lethal and that it’ll wear off soon-ish but until then best to keep you in quarantine.”
“So we’re off to a hospital?” Greg asks, it’s starting to take effort not to raise his voice, he’s not comfortable and he doesn’t want them to know.
“Can’t,” Mycroft says, his voice a bit small as he continues not to look at Greg. No way Greg could fool Mycroft into thinking he’s fine. “It’s impossible to secure. There’s a safe house that’s stocked and solitary enough to be useful.”
“What’ll happen to me?”
“You’ll stay,” Mycroft explains it like it’s all mostly boring, but Greg knows that tone on him. “We are both proficient at first aid and basic security, it is best we are not alone, and this way we won’t needlessly affect anyone unexposed.”
“Makes sense,” Greg says, and he sees Mycroft relax with it, the wrinkle in his suit from where he was holding his shoulders wrong disappears. So predictable. “What are we to expect of the unknown agent?”
“It’s all highly classified,” a new voice says, through the intercom, like whatever it is isn’t in Greg. “Tests done so far have all shown behavioural effects that last no more than a few days. Don’t seem like you’re having them though.”
It’s not true, Greg feels like a sinner in church, his clothes are sticky and sweaty and too-tight, he hopes it’s anything but a fever until anything presents itself and then he wishes it were a fever. But he won’t be telling Hazmat 1 and 2 that.
“And what were those tests conducted on?” Mycroft asks, and Greg almost tells him good question. But he’s trying not to think about his sudden but insistent erection.
“Rats, sir,” the first voice says. They both groan.
The safe house turns out to be a strange little shed in the woods, absolutely no one around for miles judging by the absence of the droning of the motorways Greg always manages to miss when he’s away from London. Inside it’s comfortable enough, and when the van they arrived in has left again, another van shows up. “STAY AWAY,” someone bellows through a microphone, and Greg sees Mycroft take note of the license plate. When that van leaves again a nice large shopping bag from Tesco’s, and a leather weekender that probably has all the clothes Mycroft needs stands on the gravel.
“Lucky,” Greg says, and Mycroft frowns at him before he catches up.
“It’ll be well-stocked here I’m sure, and we could send for your things if you’d prefer, though it might take a day or so.”
“Whatever,” Greg turns to head inside, leaving Mycroft to deal with the bags. He’s not really mad at Mycroft for initiating the utter meltdown they’ve just witnessed, but he is feeling extremely aware that he’ll be wearing underwear that’s not his even though he’d been perfectly content to wait for help to come.
Inside is like a little studio apartment. A kitchenette, the hum of a half-sized fridge that probably runs on a generator, a nice twin bed, a comfortable chair, and a door that leads to a bathroom. At least there’s a tv, Greg thinks, and then: “Did she pack you a charger?”
“Excuse me?” Mycroft asks, quite sensibly now that Greg thinks about it.
“Your PA,” he clarifies, as he gets to helping Mycroft unpack the groceries. “Did she pack you a charger for your phone.”
Mycroft zips open his bag, rummages around for a second, and then looks up at Greg. “She did.”
“Lucky,” Greg says again. At least there’s nice biscuits in here. He has a feeling they’ll be needing them. One more look around the shed they’ll be sharing makes the decision for him. He’ll have a shower.
The little bathroom is a bit cramped but it'll do for a nice good wank. Greg feels decidedly more human when he gets out again, even though he forgot to figure out post-shower clothing and so is made to awkwardly step around Mycroft while wearing only a towel. Mycroft has put away the groceries, it seems, and figured out tea somehow, judging by the steaming mug on the counter.
“That tea’s yours,” he hears, and when he turns around Mycroft is awkwardly holding his bag, his face a bit more pink than it should be. Maybe he heard Greg in the shower.
Yikes, thinks Greg. “Thanks,” he says. Then Mycroft disappears into the bathroom. The shower turns on immediately, and Greg settles in on the chair and tries to get the tv to work. He sips his tea and tries to think about how Mycroft only made one mug instead of the shower-situation. Was it really meant to be his? Or had he forgotten to make two? Is this a Holmes apology?
“There’s no reception,” he complains when he hears the door to the bathroom open. He’s made a pot of tea so they can share the next round, in a little pan because they don’t have teapots. “Only BBC1.”
“We could ask Anthea,” he hears Mycroft say, and whatever else it is he says gets lost to the rushing angry-ocean-against-rocks noise in Greg’s ears. He’s turned to look at him as he speaks, and that was apparently a terrible mistake. Mycroft is fresh from the shower, in sleeping clothes, with woollen socks and a woollen pullover and his hair still wet, awkwardly holding a towel. Greg is hard again so fast he can’t help the noise that escapes him, and Mycroft looks away with red-hot cheeks, embarrassed and frowning.
“Sorry,” Greg says, sitting up a little, sloshing his tea. “I’m – god I’m so sorry.” Mycroft’s nose wrinkles a little and he still won’t look back up. “What’s it you said? Please – please tell me again.”
“DVDs,” Mycroft tells the floor. “We could ask for – for DVDs to be brought in, when they bring your things.”
“They’re bringing my things?” Greg hadn’t realised that Mycroft had already sent for them, he tries to focus on it.
Mycroft hums something. “Seemed unfair.” It would have been. But plenty in life is, Greg hadn’t counted on it. “Are you?” He swallows. “Are you tired?”
“A bit,” Greg says, finding it’s true. “We could watch something and then sleep?”
Mycroft agrees and perches on the edge of the bed while Greg stays in the chair and gets the tv going. BBC1 is showing a home-fixing sort of show, so that’s what they watch. It’s dreadful but it does make Greg tired enough to start yawning. When the episode ends he turns to Mycroft.
“Did you want to watch more?”
“No, that’s alright,” Mycroft says. “Terrible show, the things people watch.”
“Yeah,” Greg agrees, a bit absentmindedly as he gets up and puts the cups away.
“And it was a repeat anyway,” Mycroft adds, and that niggles on Greg’s mind until he’s between the sheets. “Oh,” Mycroft says when he steps out of the bathroom and sees Greg.
“What?”
“The... you took the bed,” he says. “Not that you shouldn’t, I’d have insisted of course, but I hadn’t anticipated...” he trails off a bit sadly, his back too straight.
“What?” Greg sits up a little and looks at him. “Did you consider the possibility that I wouldn’t put up a gentlemanly fight for taking the comfy bed because neither of us is sleeping on the floor? Get in here you daft git.” Mycroft sputters a bit more but does as he’s told, lies stiffly on his back. “Besides,” Greg adds, “don’t think I didn’t catch that. Only one way to know something’s a repeat Mr BBC Radio 3.” With that he turns to his side, facing away from Mycroft. He hears Mycroft huff out behind him, and is almost entirely certain that that was a laugh.
Silly sod, he thinks, too clever for his own good. Thinks he has it all figured out. Panics as soon as his power fails him and fails to anticipate basic decency. And then he drifts off.