I am not lonely [Mystrade]

Chapter 134 : Post

Greg stretched his arms and yawned feeling awfully relaxed and comfortable under the warm and heavy duvet of his bed. A ray of sunshine was pouring inside the room through the badly closed curtains. He turned on his side and rested his head on his arm, his gaze wandering over the silhouette of his partner, from his half uncovered chest to the shape of his legs under the duvet. He took his time to analyse the pattern of the freckles on the man's shoulders and the goldness the sun was giving to the discreet auburn hair chest.
After a few minutes of observing the sleeping man, a spectacle he was rarely allowed to witness as the official was most of the time awoken far before him, he proceeded to wake him up, tracing a path of soft kisses from his left collar bone to his lips, earning himself a little moan from the awakening man. The elder Holmes opened his eyes, blinking a few times to get use to the surrounding lightening, while a smile spread on his lips.
"Good morning honey ..." the detective whispered softly.
"Morning darling." Mycroft moaned, his voice still hoarse from sleeping. "What time is it ?"
"8.30." the policeman smiled, knowing that the other man would curse himself for having slept that long.
"Oh bugger ..." the auburn sighed before rejecting the duvet and standing up in one smooth movement.
Gregory didn't say a thing and simply sat against the bedhead, collecting the warm duvet over his bar chest to avoid getting a cold, appreciating the spectacle of the naked man before him. Sadly for the yarder, the official quickly got hold of a pair of boxers and a pair of beige chinos, covering his bare bum, closely followed by a white shirt to cover his naked torso, letting the detective feeling a bit deprived, like a child brought to a sweet shop only to say that he had got the right to look for a while but not to taste.
"I can hear you cursing me in your head." the auburn chuckled while putting up his socks.
"No I'm not ..." the inspector defended himself with all the dishonesty he was able to give.
"You are an awful liar Gregory Alan Hugh Lestrade." the elder Holmes laughed, making his way to the bed and giving his husband a little slap on his nose.
"And you are depriving me." the policeman mumbled, pouty.
"That's not what you said last night ..." the auburn remarked giving his partner a last, chast, kiss on the lips before exiting the room.
He then made his way downstairs to the kitchen where Michael was preparing pancakes while Alden, still in his pyjamas was eating them and drinking a huge bowl of chocolate milk. As soon as he noticed his father in the door frame, the little boy jumped down his chair and ran to the man, throwing himself in his arms.
"Daddy !" he half-yelled in his ears, apparently already very excited.
"Good morning Aldy." the elder Holmes smiled, placing a soft kiss on the boy's head before putting him down back on the ground so he could go back to his breakfast. "Good morning Michael."
"Good morning sir." the cook answered, diverting his attention from the pan for a minute. "There is some post for you. I've placed it on your desk. Do you want your breakfast now or do you want to wait for mister Lestrade to join you ?"
"I'll have a tea in my office. Gregory shouldn't be long to come. Thank you, Michael." Mycroft simply answered before joining his office where, indeed, a large pile of post was waiting for him.
He quickly had a look at the first half a dozen of it, all of them being thanks note from random important people he barely even remembered helping out in the previous weeks. He then had a look at a couple of letters from foreign officials asking for his help in difficult cases their own staff hadn't been able to solve before noticing a brown, large, envelope, bearing the stamp of the Ministry of State for Children and Families. Suspecting what the subject of the letter could be, he decided to put it apart in order to open it last and continued through the stack of letters he still had to open.
Ten minutes later he already had enough work to fill an entire week if he was to answer all the solicitation but thankfully for him and his sleep time, he hadn't seen any cases that especially required his personal intervention and decided to reply negatively to all the demands, not even feeling bad for doing so. He took a stack of paper from the first drawer of his desk and a stack of envelope and simply signed as many papers as he had got solicitations and putting them in the envelopes. Those were standard refusal letters that he got printed by stack of 500 and usually that amount of papers didn't even last for a month.
He was to open the letter he had put apart when he heard his partner coming down the stairs. He put the envelope back down on the desk. After all, this letter was most probably concerning the detective as much as him. He put the letter in his pocket and joined the rest of his family in the kitchen, ready for his breakfast.
"So, anything interesting in the post ?" Gregory wondered, serving himself a glass of orange juice.
"Maybe ..." the auburn replied, taking the brown letter out from his pocket and placing it on the table in front of his lover.
"Ministry of State for Children and Families." the yarder read out. "Would that be ... ?"
"More than probable if you ask me." the elder Holmes nodded, a little grin on his face.
"Can I open it ?" the inspector requested.
"No, I think we are going to let it here, just to admire it for a couple of weeks before we open it." Mycroft denied, deadpan. "Of course you can open it, you silly idiot."
His hands shaking slightly, the DCI opened the envelope and took the letter out of it, making sure his partner was able to read over his shoulder as he was himself reading. As they were getting aware of the content of the letters, a wide smile spread over the face of the two men.
"What is going on Daddy !" Alden whined, after having stayed silent for a few minutes, but not able to contain his curiosity much longer.
"You are going to have a little sister !" the elder Holmes exclaimed, grabbing his son by the waist and lifting him in the air. "A beautiful little sister !"
The little boy's eyes instantly filled with sparkles of happiness and he smiled widely at his fathers, apparently over the moon. Even Michael, who was still cooking pancakes and only showing his back to the family had a smile on his lips, genuinely touched by the happiness of his employers.

"Don't worry, I'll manage to put him to sleep." Molly chuckled, glancing a look at the excited child a few meters away. "I usually never have anyone waking up when they are laid down by me."
"If that was supposed to get me less anxious it's a fail." the auburn smiled before planting a kiss on the woman's cheek. "Have a good evening."
"And you'd better go before you are late. Chop chop !" the post-mortem winked before closing the Holmes Mansion's door and turning back to the child. "So Alden, what do you want to do ?"
"I'm going to have a sister !" the boy repeated for the twentieth time since the woman had arrived half an hour earlier.
"Yes, but that doesn't answer the question ..." Molly smiled before sighing internally. As much as she loved this child, it surely was going to be a long night.

"Where are we going ?" Greg wondered, sat in the back seat of his husband's black Jaguar.
"Hélène Darroze at The Connaught." the auburn replied with a little smile. "I wanted to go to the Sketch Lecture Room and Library but they had no table available for tonight. But everybody told me very good thing about Hélène Darroze so I suppose it will still be good."
As he was finishing his sentence, the car stopped before the Connaught and a man in a uniform opened their doors before leading him inside and taking their coats. A waiter then sat them at a small table in the corner of the dining room, Greg instantly feeling that it was going to be a very good evening just as he sat in the voluptuous armchair.
"May I explain you how does the menu work ?" the waiter elegantly asked when the two men were sat comfortably, earning himself a nod from each of them. "So, as you can see our menu is composed only of a list of very fine ingredients. You just have to choose as many ingredients you want from the list and our kitchen will figure out the best way to make a dish out of your choice."
He left in front of each of them a wooden plate with white marbles and a menu before disappearing. That was probably the most surprising menu even Mycroft had ever experienced and he had to read at least three time the menu before being able to start making a choice. As he was starting to wonder how he was supposed to remember the ingredients he had chosen, he remarked that the white marbles were engraved with the name of all the ingredients on the menu, making the game less of a game and more of a sort of weird abacus.
Half an hour later they finally had been able to order their dishes and were sat before two glasses of the best Krug Grande Cuvée champagne, which price was most probably over the earning Greg made in a week, but that night, the yarder couldn't care less about how much they were to spend.
They toasted to their new little girl, even tho they didn't knew her yet. Despite the crowded restaurant, they were completely alone in their head and were even midly-surprised when the waiter brought them their starter, a Scottish lobster ajo blanco and bottarga for the auburn and some risotto with alba truffles for Gregory.
The first mouthful of it made both of them smile irrepressibly, the already beautiful evening becoming only better as things were unfolding. Who cared tomorrow was Monday and they had to go back to work as long as their evening was magical ?