raison d'être

chapter II

trigger warnings: panic attacks, nightmares, drinking

dashes separate perspectives and italic represents flashbacks

enjoy! <3

Lestrade stormed into the building, "WHAT?"

He was greeted by shushes and disappointed stares. There were several people around him, all sworn to never speak in this setting. This confused Lestrade for two reasons. One; who would voluntarily stop talking? Two; how was he supposed to find Mycroft in a massive building full of people who couldn't bother to actually tell him. And Lestrade couldn't understand a word of sign language.

A man who stood at a desk, which looked to be a secretary's desk, mouthed the name, Gregory Lestrade. Lestrade let out a sigh and nodded, silently. The man gestured to a hallway and mouthed once more, Last door.

Lestrade opened the door at the end of the rather long hallway, quickly shutting it behind him. Silently, because he didn't know if there were rules against speaking here too, he dramatically raised his arms up in a partial shrug.

"Relax, Inspector, you may speak in this room." Mycroft said, opening a cabinet behind his desk and pulling out a bottle of some sort of beer. He filled a glass—definitely more full than empty—and set it down near the edge of the desk, opposite of him. "Do sit down."

Lestrade didn't budge, he stood there, obviously annoyed.

Mycroft bit his tongue, trying his best not to deduce several things—not right now, at least, "Please." He added.

Greg had no idea why, but that added word was all the difference to him. He sat down in a chair, opposite of where Mycroft stood, "What could you possibly want?"

Mycroft's face scrunched up in confusion, "You promised to look after my brother, did you not?"

Lestrade groaned, rubbing his eyes. He had way more pressing matters at hand that didn't involve the Holmes brothers. At least, not directly. One of which happened to be the cold murder cases of several random people—all seemingly linked by something he couldn't see. He also had to worry about the constant photos taken of him randomly as he entered or exited buildings. Who knew that by saving the British government personified and the most famous detective out there, and recovering their forgotten sister, you'd earn so much paparazzi?

Not only was he forced to deal with such things, he also had promised each of the brothers that he'd look after the other. Originally, the night of said incident involving one Eurus Holmes, Sherlock had asked him to look after Mycroft. At the time, Lestrade had no idea what that meant. To be fair, he still didn't, but as he saw that Mycroft genuinely cared for his brother, he'd come to consider that maybe Mycroft wasn't entirely as emotionless as people said he was.

Of course, he had no idea how to "look after Mycroft". The man was a closed book, secured by a padlock, in a vault twenty feet below the surface with no way out or in. So when Mycroft asked Lestrade to care for Sherlock that night almost a week ago, Lestrade not only had to watch the eldest Holmes sibling, but also the middle one. God knows what he'd do if he was suddenly ordered to watch the terrifying Eurus Holmes.

He opened his eyes after rubbing his busy thoughts away with the tiredness as well, "Yeah, what about it?" Mycroft had turned to look for scotch in his cabinet and found it quickly. Too quickly—as if it were normal for him to grab it.

"Well?" Mycroft spun around, scotch bottle in hand. "Is he alright?"

Lestrade held back a laugh. He surely wasn't used to the concern coming from Mycroft Holmes, but after a moment of cold blue eyes staring at him with worry, Lestrade couldn't laugh. What would he do if someone close to him was upset? Of course, he didn't have to worry much about that any longer. The closest to him was his mother, who lived in Wales and had no interest in him unless it was his birthday or a holiday. "Yeah—uhm, John and I found most of his staches." Technically it was John who had, but he wanted to include himself so Mycroft was happy with him.