Chapter Text
Though the phrase ‘may you live in interesting times’ was popularly attributed to the Chinese, it had actually originated in British diplomatic circles. This, Mycroft mused, was no coincidence. He rolled his shoulders to loosen them and leaned back in his chair to stretch for a moment. It was dark early, this soon after New Year, and he was weary to the bone.
Though he didn’t really count himself as a diplomat per se, he still invariably would be drawn into anything top-level; the recent shenanigans in North Korea coinciding with a massive dust-up within OPEC as well as the Russians playing silly buggers again and a nuclear warhead going missing in Iran meant he’d been juggling world-ending crises for most of the last six weeks. The last two in particular had been…concerning enough that he’d had to call everyone in for large chunks of the Christmas period, something he abhorred doing. He’d had his staff doing shifts as far as possible—few could manage on quite so little sleep as he—but he’d been in the office the whole time apart from a few hours during the afternoon of Christmas Day. And that had hardly been restful.
John had finally persuaded Sherlock to spend Christmas with their parents, which was excellent of course, but hadn’t let Mycroft know they’d be there. As it was, he’d sacrificed a valuable afternoon’s work, and the whole thing had been doubly draining. Sherlock had vented his irritation on Mycroft, delighting in the number of jibes he could bring into a celebration which involved Mycroft and a large dinner. John had remonstrated a little, but Sherlock had ignored him. Mummy had just shaken her head and told Mycroft to stop being so sensitive — the usual line. It was probably true, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t be nice if she stood up for him once in a while.
Besides, she’d been so busy ever since trying to persuade Sherlock to allow her to throw a party for his birthday on 6th January, she’d forgotten Mycroft’s was 5th. Again. Not that this was anything new, but for some reason this year the contrast had felt a little pointed. He was used to being invisible—to everyone but Sherlock apparently, and that not in a good way—but today had passed with no acknowledgment from anyone but Anthea. She at least had wished him the best and brought him a particularly nice sandwich for the lunch that neither of them had had time to eat.
He bit into it now, though it was warm and a bit floppy. He needed the fuel. With the exception of the ever-faithful Anthea, the office was dark. His staff were all exhausted, and several had families who actually wanted to be in the same house as them, so now that everything was calming down, he’d suggested they all work from home.
It was the right thing to do, of course, but the emptiness of the place did not help his spirits one whit. He was working quite hard not to feel as if that was representative of anything and losing that battle slightly. Happy birthday to me, he thought, making a face that Maggie Smith would’ve been proud of. He allowed himself a few moments to be tired—of course it wasn’t loneliness, he was never lonely! —and then threw the cardboard wrapper in the bin and straightened up, donning his work persona again.
“Just another day,” he told his image on the monitor as he opened a virtual meeting with various of his subordinates. He watched as the windows opened one by one, everyone wearing headphones, and as the clock rolled over to 6pm, he began to speak. “Latest everyone, please. Alistair?”
The call was fairly lengthy, but eventually everything had been settled to Mycroft’s satisfaction, the various crises all simmering down to a more manageable level with suspicious simultaneity, which he noted with both relief and a certain amount of wariness.
He drew the call to a close. “Good work, everyone. It’s been a hard few days, but you’ve all done remarkably well.” In fact, so remarkably well as to be positively unlikely. He expected to receive another call shortly. “Please pass on my thanks to your people for their unstinting efforts, and let’s call it a day. Have a good weekend, all: you’ve earned it.” He allowed his expression to soften to what was almost a smile and saw them all sit a little straighter; it wasn’t often the Iceman thawed. “And in the nicest way possible, I hope not to hear from any of you till Monday at the very earliest.”
Acknowledging their various goodbyes, he finished the meeting and closed the lid of his laptop. There was more to be done, of course – there was always more to be done—but nothing that couldn’t wait till morning, and he was tired. He’d had perhaps two hours’ sleep a night over the last week, and it was making him inefficient and melancholy. Maybe a cup of tea would help.
As if she’d read his mind, the door opened silently to reveal Anthea holding a tray. “Do we have a few minutes of calm, do you think, sir?”
Mycroft smiled. “I’m hopeful that that may be the case, yes. Let’s take a break.” He moved to the nearer of the two leather club-style chairs in the corner of the room.
Anthea followed, setting down the tray on which was a teapot, fragrantly redolent of his Puerh tea, two cups and a plate on which was a slice of the truly excellent elderflower and lemon cake that could only have come from his favourite bakery. Beside it was an envelope. “Delivery for you earlier in the day, sir, but you were in with the Prime Minister.”
Mycroft frowned as he poured the tea. “A delivery?”
Anthea smirked. “Inspector Lestrade sends his best. He was hoping to see you in person, but he was called away to a stakeout. He left these.” She nodded at the cake and the envelope. “You should have seen him blush. He’s very sweet.”
“Very kind indeed.” She meant to fluster him, he knew, and he was determined not to show that it had worked, quickly passing her a cup to distract her from the fact that the tips of his ears were burning and had probably gone pink.
“Aren’t you going to open it?”
He glared at her. “Am I allowed to take a sip of tea first?”
She sipped her own pointedly.
He took the little cake fork from the plate and took a tiny taste of the cake, allowing the perfumed tang of the elderflower and lemon spread across his tongue, bright against the subtler taste of poppyseeds. “This is very good.”
“It is.” Anthea leaned across conspiratorially. “He said you’d mentioned it one time and asked me where to get it. It’s miles out of his way, you know. He was going to get you the full cake, but after what happened to Baxter, I thought it might be better not.”
Mycroft snorted inelegantly. “Baxter. I’d forgotten him. Trust that buffoon to eat so much poppyseed cake he failed the drug test.” He was touched at the Inspector’s gift, though.
“Well…?!” Anthea pushed the envelope closer to him.
“You won’t leave me to enjoy my cake until I’ve opened it, will you?” He set down his cake fork with a clink and picked up the envelope – cheap paper, thick item inside, probably a card. Smelled of diesel fumes, coffee and freshly cooked doughnuts: it had been on a rack outside the little stationers next to the Trafalgar entrance of Westminster station, the one by the doughnut stall (they might spell it ‘donut’, but Mycroft was having none of that nonsense).
Slitting the envelope with one tine of his cake fork (one never forgot the sabotaged letters of the Troubles, even now), he slid out possibly the most garish card he had ever seen in his life and snorted involuntarily. “Good grief…”
Anthea smirked. “I mean, you have to award him points for effort.”
Mycroft raised an eyebrow, holding the card gingerly. On the front was a large dinosaur with googly eyes and the number 9 blazoned across the top, a 4 biro’d thickly in front of it. When he opened it, large thick letters in the font used by Jurassic Park proclaimed, “Have a RAWRSOME birthday!” and ‘Happy Birthday’ rang out in the sort of tinny tones guaranteed to send any adult homicidal in seconds.
Anthea sniggered. “What has he written?”
Mycroft read out, “This was not the birthday card I was hoping to find for you, but in cases of dire necessity, roll out the T-Rex, I guess! Hope your birthday is better than this card. I was coming across to ask if you were available for a drink, but the Trefoot case has kicked off; however, once we’ve got him, I’ll try again and hopefully wish you a great year to come over a decent single malt! All the best, Greg.” He shook his head, amused. “Roll out the T-Rex, indeed!” He looked up to find Anthea had gone all Cheshire Cat, her grin so bright that the rest of her was barely visible. “What?”
She pursed her lips and looked away, faux-prim. “It’s not my place to say, sir.”
“Hmph! Doesn’t normally stop you.”
When she looked back, her eyes were a-sparkle with laughter. “Certainly not my place to say that you’re grinning like a giddy schoolboy. Or that you suddenly look ten years younger. And it would be outrageously inappropriate to suggest that you like him as much as he likes you, and you should really do something about that.”
“That would be inappropriate indeed.” He scowled at her severely, but spoiled the effect somewhat when, with no apparent involvement of his brain, his mouth said, “Do you really think he does?”
Anthea rolled her eyes. “I know so.” She smirked as his phone went off. “Saved by the bell, eh?”
Mycroft answered: it was another video call, but a welcome one. “Saraquael, how nice to see you. And not totally unexpected, if I’m honest. I’ve just had four different parts of the world curiously fail to implode at once, and you know how I abhor coincidence. Restore my faith in reality, would you?”
The other caller was an angel in a nifty hoverchair, and her eyes were full of mischief. “Couldn’t have the world blowing up on your birthday, Mycroft. That would be just rude.”
He inclined his head. “That was very kind. A lovely birthday present.”
“Oh, that’s not your present.” Saraquael looked at the giant globe beside her, clearly waiting for something. “We’re just getting that lined up for you. My advice, not that you asked for it: go home, get a good night’s sleep and take the next few days off. We’ll make sure nothing big kicks off until you’re back. Tomorrow morning, make some popcorn, get comfortable and then watch the CCTV on your brother. You’ll enjoy this.” Mycroft’s face must have shown his concern. “Oh, don’t worry; no hurt will come to him. But he’s been an absolute arse to you all year, and we could do with a bit of light entertainment this side, so I’m taking the liberty of dealing him a bit of annoyance back, courtesy of our esteemed freelancing ambassadors in Soho.”
Mycroft frowned. “What are their orders?”
“Oh, they have no orders at all.” Saraquael’s face didn’t change by much, but somehow it was as if she had actually giggled. “It’ll be enough for Sherlock to turn up in Soho. You see, Aziraphale’s a big fan. He won’t be able to resist introducing himself.”
“Good Lord.” Anthea’s face was a picture.
“Not directly involved, but he’ll probably want to watch the chaos too. We have quite a few Sherlock fans in the ranks, but winding your brother up about religion is never going to stop being funny. We have a screen set up and everything.”
“Oh dear.” Mycroft’s lips twitched. “I suppose after everything else I’ve done in this life, a touch of schadenfreude isn’t going to make much difference to my ultimate destination?”
“Call it temporary diplomatic immunity. And a birthday present from me.”
Mycroft allowed his smirk to bloom across his face. “My weekend has looked up immeasurably.”
“Happy Birthday, Mycroft.” Saraquael ended the call.
“Well!” Mycroft stood and brushed imaginary lint from his trousers. “I suppose we have orders from on high. Anthea, would you care to come over and watch with me at the house? Your room is as always at your disposal.”
“Wouldn’t miss it for worlds.” Anthea stood. “I’ll bring snacks.”