“Knew you'd agree. 'Course, you're obligated. Prefect.” Has Sherlock ever been so willing to jest with anyone else before in his life? He doesn't think so. Certainly can't recall, if so. Never even Mycroft, not even when they were close. Mycroft was always too old for his years, shut-in and stuffy, stuck up, restrained. Even the infamous tendency to drama that they both share manifests in Mycroft wholly differently than in Sherlock.
Even as a boy. Even as a boy he sublimated himself for image, propriety, advantage, and safety, and though Sherlock blames their father for this, the father he himself largely escaped and who could, therefore, not twist him into some similarly cold and miserable thing, though he understands it, he can't help but resent Mycroft all the same. They're brothers. Mycroft understands him better than anyone else ever has and likely ever will, no matter how wrong he is in however many ways, and yet he still prefers to smother Sherlock, to stifle him, to hurt him in exchange for a modicum of security.
It's altogether too obvious which one of them Mycroft is really trying to protect.
And it seems vulnerability rendered him humourless. It could never have been like this. Never, and cruel though it might ultimately be Sherlock already considers John more a brother than the one to whom he's tied by law and relation. Not by blood. John's already seen as much of Sherlock's as Mycroft ever had, and he's handled it more kindly.
“What do you think, sixth floor near the tower where there's always the funny smell, or the classroom on the fifth floor that everyone says is cursed?”
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Even as a boy. Even as a boy he sublimated himself for image, propriety, advantage, and safety, and though Sherlock blames their father for this, the father he himself largely escaped and who could, therefore, not twist him into some similarly cold and miserable thing, though he understands it, he can't help but resent Mycroft all the same. They're brothers. Mycroft understands him better than anyone else ever has and likely ever will, no matter how wrong he is in however many ways, and yet he still prefers to smother Sherlock, to stifle him, to hurt him in exchange for a modicum of security.
It's altogether too obvious which one of them Mycroft is really trying to protect.
And it seems vulnerability rendered him humourless. It could never have been like this. Never, and cruel though it might ultimately be Sherlock already considers John more a brother than the one to whom he's tied by law and relation. Not by blood. John's already seen as much of Sherlock's as Mycroft ever had, and he's handled it more kindly.
“What do you think, sixth floor near the tower where there's always the funny smell, or the classroom on the fifth floor that everyone says is cursed?”