Work Text:
Written for this week's prompt. Work has been hellish so this is more rushed than I would like and it isn't properly edited yet.
Pride and Romance
A wave of excitement hit Greg as he watched an Evri van park at the bottom of the drive, just outside the ornate electric gates that separated Mycroft’s house from the rest of the world. A tall young man with bright red hair got out, scratched his arse, and then disappeared around the side of the van, hopefully to retrieve Greg’s much anticipated parcel. ’About bloody time,’, Greg thought as he put his secateurs and garden gloves down on his new raised bed and started making his way down the short drive. No need to make the driver waste time working out how to use Mycroft’s cutting-edge intercom system when Greg knew he was there, after all. That, however, was the moment Greg’s goodwill drained out of him like he had plugholes in his feet: right before his very eyes, the delivery driver took one look at the intercom, shrugged, stuffed Greg’s parcel into one of the potted dwarf conifers flanking the gate, and scrawled something on a card which he promptly crammed into the letterbox attached to the boundary wall.
Moving at speed, Greg got down the bottom of the drive just before the driver got back into his van. “Oi, mate!” he called, angrily waving his fob to open the gate. The driver froze on the spot, giving Greg time to fish his small, abused parcel out of the conifer. “What the bloody hell are you playing at?” Greg snapped, glaring at the hapless young man with the pent-up frustration of three failed deliveries and not enough coffee. “Look at it!”
Rather than offering an immediate apology, the young man – Tim, according to his ID badge – only managed to look vaguely shifty. “It’s a box, mate, and it’s got whatever you ordered in it. Do you want it or not?”
“This is a joke, isn’t it?” Greg asked with a vicious stab at the crumpled brown box with its suspicious stain, peeling tape, and random sprig of conifer protruding from a under a flap. “You’re meant to deliver parcels, not stick them in bushes!” Tim opened his mouth in protest, but Greg was so done with excuses from the UK’s very worst delivery company. “No, I’ve had enough. This should have been delivered on Saturday, and then Sunday, and then there was that stupid email telling me it had been delivered with a picture of someone else’s front door in the background yesterday, and now this.”
“But you’ve got it now, so chill, mate,” Tim said, body language indicating that he still wasn’t taking Greg seriously.
Greg’s temper, poked and prodded by days of sheer incompetence topped off by an idiot with an appalling attitude, spiked. “Right,” he said decisively and did something he had never, ever done outside of work: he pulled out his warrant card. “Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade of the Metropolitan Police Service. For the record, I specialise in murder – usually the weird ones – and know exactly how not to get caught.” Tim, now looking torn between fleeing and shitting himself, squirmed on the spot and Greg felt a flare of savage satisfaction. “So, Tim, would you care to tell me why you put my package in a tree and then posted a ‘sorry you weren’t in’ card instead of doing your job properly? Don’t bother denying it,” he snapped when Tim looked like he might actually attempt to. Pointing back in the direction of the house, he continued, “I was in the garden and literally stood and watched you pull up, take one look at the intercom, and think ‘fuck that’. Now, unless you would like me to go to your boss’s boss’s boss and tell them what a stellar job you’re doing, I suggest you apologise and explain why you think it’s okay to leave parcels in trees.”
The man paled so hard and fast that Greg was briefly worried that he might faint. “I’m sorry!” Tim blurted, but the rest of what he had to say for himself came out in such a tumble that even Greg, with his decades of experience interviewing nervous idiots, struggled to parse it.
“That’s the best you can do?” Greg arched a disapproving eyebrow, a trick he had picked up seemingly by osmosis from Mycroft, and sighed. Relishing the look of unadulterated fear on Tim’s face, Greg pulled his phone from his back pocket and took a photo of the Evri van. “That’ll be all, then,” he chirped and turned his back on the spluttering young man, taking off in the direction of the house with his long-awaited parcel and a spring in his step.
“Was that really necessary, my dear?” Mycroft asked, amused, as Greg entered the house.
“Oh, yeah. They’ve been fucking around and failing to deliver this for nearly a week,” Greg said as her waved his parcel triumphantly. “Piss poor attitude from the lot of ‘em. I’m not actually going to make his life hell, but hopefully that scared him enough that he’ll do a proper job for a while.”
Mycroft smiled indulgently and stepped into Greg’s personal space to claim a kiss. “Now,” he said, lips brushing Greg’s teasingly, “are you going to tell me what was so important about this particular parcel? You had that trouble with Amazon last month and weren’t nearly as annoyed by it.”
“One,” Greg said, running his fingers through the short hair at the back of Mycroft’s head, “Amazon kept changing the delivery date but weren’t actually trying to tell me they’d delivered it, and when it did eventually arrive the box didn’t look like it had been dragged through a garden centre. Two, that guy had a really bad attitude. And three, well, this one is…special. And for you.”
Making quick work of opening the box, aided and abetted by the terrible condition it was in, Greg found an intact smaller box inside.
“Oh?” Mycroft asked as Greg battled his way through the two layers of tape sealing the object inside the box. “What is it?”
“A surprise. Give me a sec,” Greg said, feeling a little flutter of nerves as he finally got into the box. It was a silly little trinket, really, and he doubted Mycroft would actually wear it, but waiting for it to be made and then delivered had –
“– stop overthinking, Greg. No gift from you would be unwelcome,” Mycroft said, cutting through Greg’s rising anxiety. He kissed Greg gently and carefully took hold of the smaller box. “May I?”
Greg nodded and watched as Mycroft opened the box and removed the shredded paper it had been packed with. Inside was the item, stored inside a small velvet bag, and it was barely the work of three seconds for Mycroft to open it and withdraw the handcrafted platinum tie clip inlaid with a series of gemstones arranged in Pride colours. “The stones are all genuine,” Greg said as Mycroft turned it in his hand. “A proper jeweller made it, so nothing should fall out or damage your ties if you wear it.”
“It’s beautiful,” Mycroft said, cutting off Greg’s nerves at the knees. “Of course I shall wear it. Tonight, when I take you for dinner at your favourite restaurant so I can ask you to be my husband, will make fitting debut for such a special gift, don’t you think?” Whilst Greg’s brain stalled at ‘husband’, Mycroft blithely continued, “You will forgive me, of course, for using it to make a statement occasionally. Some of my colleagues in the civil service certainly need the odd reminder, and that’s before one considers the various Secretaries of State and their underlings.”
“One, Pride is a political statement so go for it.” With a grin, Greg leaned in and kissed Mycroft squarely on the lips before pulling back to give Mycroft a searching look. “Two, did you really say you’re going to propose to me tonight?”
“Yes,” Mycroft replied, looking very pleased with himself.
“Can’t you just do it here and now?” Greg asked, almost vibrating with urgency. “I can tell you the answer if you want.”
Mycroft smiled one of his teasing little smiles. “Of course not; the table is booked and I fully intend to do this properly.”
Heart pounding, Greg took hold of Mycroft’s free hand and tangled their fingers. “So, Mr Formal, you were already planning on taking me to a nice restaurant to ask me a question we both know the answer to. You get that it’s a bit daft, yeah? We could just do that bit here and now and get down to the celebrating.”
“Of course I know that. The only change I am willing to make to my plan is that I will now be wearing this beautiful new tie clip,” Mycroft replied, amusement lighting his eyes as he leant back in to Greg’s personal space. “Besides, who said we can’t have a little…pre-emptive celebration?”
Greg watched as Mycroft sank to his knees right there in the hallway, with the front door still wide open, and could not quite believe that this was happening or that this was his life. Six months ago, to the day, Greg took the biggest risk of his personal life and propositioned his best friend, and now said best friend – and soon-to-be- fiancé – was on his knees in the hall of their home. He watched as Mycroft used the hand not clutching his gift to pop the button of Greg’s jeans open, and the sound of his zipper lowing almost had Greg weak in the knees.
“—Oh,” Greg gasped, hands anchoring onto the cabinet behind him as Mycroft took his cock into his mouth. It was hot and wet and fucking perfect, and, as Greg clung on for dear life, he was struck with the sure and certain knowledge that this was the start of what would be the happiest period of his life. He looked down at Mycroft, whose lips were stretched around Greg’s cock and grey eyes glinting up at him, and was on the verge of saying something appallingly soppy when Mycroft sucked.
Three hours later
Greg watched, excitement pulsing through every inch of his being, as Mycroft, his new tie clip sparkling proudly in the late evening light streaming through the mullioned window, sank to his knees for the second time that day. Well, strictly speaking it was one knee, but Greg had never been one for splitting hairs.
“Gregory Clive Lestrade,” Mycroft said, opening a jewellery box containing a pair of beautifully crafted wedding rings, “would you do me the honour of becoming my husband?”
The restaurant had fallen silent around them, their fellow diners holding their collective breath as Greg stared down at Mycroft.
The many ways Greg had considered answering this question whilst they showered and dressed for dinner flew right out of his head, leaving him sitting there gawping like a fish out of water as the magnitude of the moment hit. From somewhere to his left, Greg heard an anonymous male whisper ‘He’s going to say no!, and that was exactly what he needed to jolt him out of his momentary stupor.
“Of course I will, you daft sod. Come ‘ere,” he said, pulling Mycroft into his arms as the restaurant around them exploded into applause. “You’re a proper old-fashioned romantic.”
“Correction, my dear,” Mycroft said, radiating happiness, “I’m your ‘proper old-fashioned romantic’. Now, give these people what they so clearly want and kiss me.”
Greg had never been able to deny Mycroft anything, and he certainly was not about to start now. Heart pounding and smiling so widely that he was sure it was going to make this the worst kiss in history, Greg did as he was told and claimed his first kiss from his fiancé.