Mycroft gets home

It was well past eleven when his black car pulled up to his
door and let him out.  Anthea always waited until he'd pressed the secret
button in the umbrella stand with the tip of his brolly, the anti-panic
button.  That meant that he was alive and well and no one was pointing a gun at
his face.  The car pulled away and he laid his back against the door and
sighed.  His day had started at two that morning, and Christ help him, brother
or no, if Sherlock said one word about laziness the next time they crossed
paths—

Mycroft sighed again.  Never mind.  He was home.  This day
was over until the next text came, the next phone call on the red rotary
telephone that didn't actually dial out as though he was the bloody Batman. 
Only a matter of time until they put a Mycroft signal on the top of Big Ben and
flashed a glowing umbrella up against the London clouds. 

He peeled his eyes open and pushed away from the door,
taking off his overcoat and hanging it on the coat tree, unbuttoning the two
buttons on his suit jacket and slipping it off his shoulders.  This was the
most familiar feeling of blessed relief in Mycroft's entire world: The friction
of silk charmeuse jacket lining rubbing over the starched fine cotton
broadcloth of his shirt sleeves.  It made a whispering sound like heavy,
drifting snow, and somehow, the removal of the weight of the jacket was the
removal of the weight of the world. 

He placed the jacket on a wooden hanger and walked into the
kitchen, flipping the switch on an elaborate coffee machine whose instructions
were entirely in Italian.  He returned to the parlor and lifted the hook of the
hanger upon his two fingers, then walked up the stairs to his room, other hand
lightly skimming the handrail of the staircase for safety.  His door was the first
to the left of the top of the stairs, the light switch on the left, the door
opening in to the right.

He had only worn this suit once.  No need to be wasteful. 
He opened his closet door and hung the hanger on a hook within, then undid the
four buttons of his waist coat, slipping it underneath the jacket.  Braces
came next, the small buttons within his trousers always an aggravating pain
when he was so tired from such a day, but still less so than a belt, with its
strained holes a perpetual judgment on his diet.  The braces went back on a
tiered rack of their very own.  He stepped out of his trousers carefully, not
allowing them to crumple on the floor as though he were some pillock shedding a
track suit at the gym, and folded them over his forearm, smoothing them, before
hanging them on the center bar of the hanger.  From there, he buttoned the
waist coat, then the jacket, and placed it on the far right hand side of his
closet.  The far right was for the recently worn, the far left for the
opposite.  Three fine black tuxedos held the second, third, and fourth leftmost
positions.  A black SWAT uniform held the first.  He shut the closet doors. 

He sat on the cushioned bench at the foot of his bed,
wondering as he did every night whether the guarantee against slouching socks
was worth the red lines that his sock garters cut into his calves.  Each little
clip undone, the garters and the black socks they upheld went into his laundry
basket for colors, his pants and undershirt into the one for whites. 

He stood in front of the Queen Anne free-standing
mirror that he'd inherited from his grandmother and stared at himself briefly. 
He hadn't been out in the sun for far too long, even the big bang of freckles
that exploded across his shoulders and back looked as though they were losing
color.  His sparse chest hair seemed oddly wilted, though a hot shower would
remedy that, simply too much time in clothes.  Mycroft did not succumb to the
urge to pinch the flesh above his hip bones.  The last thing he needed was to
waste still more rest by using his fingers as calipers to estimate his
percentage of body fat.  The small swell of roundness around his navel was
obvious enough, after all.  He stalked away from the mirror and opened the
drawer, pulling out a night shirt that bordered on the Dickensian and tugging
it over his head, stepping into slippers and making his way back down the
stairs.

What in god's name would he do with well-defined abdominal
muscles anyway?  Flex them threateningly at the Premier of Croatia?  Bounce
euros off of them to taunt the Latvians? 

Christ. What a truly disturbing thought.

In the kitchen, the espresso machine ticked softly, well
warmed up, and Mycroft steamed a ceramic novelty mug which his mother had
gotten him on a lark.  It was emblazoned with the standard logo of the Central
Intelligence Agency of the United States, but also had the words around it:
"The CIA Lacks Overt Intelligence."  Sherlock had said something snide about
puns being the lowest form of comedy.  Mycroft had silenced him by replying
that he could have sworn that was sarcasm, and oh by the way it was a gift from
Mummy and didn't Sherlock like it?  That, of course, was checkmate. 

Mycroft opened his icebox and regarded the two glass bottles
within balefully.  One white caped carafe contained whole milk, while the
other, blue capped one held skim.  He had had rice milk at one point, but that?
that was a substitution too far.  Weighing the difficulty of the day quite
literally against the convexity of his abdomen, Mycroft grudgingly took out the
skim milk and filled his mug, recapped and returned the carafe to the
refrigerator, then crossed the room to stick the steaming spigot into the mug. 

Someone must have invented a milk-steamer by now that didn't
shriek like an Irish banshee, but the end result would be worth it, he well
knew.  Once the top was sufficiently foamy, he spooned in two scoops of fine
cinnamon cocoa powder and stirred, tapping the spoon on the side of the mug and
setting it aside to cool as he took a clean mug, filled it with water from his
tap, and fired steam into it to clean the espresso machine's spigot before
turning it off.  Spoon and water mug went into the sink, and Mycroft took up
his cocoa mug once more, turning off the kitchen light and padding softly up
the stairs.  He returned to his bedroom, shutting the door behind him, and
switching the radio on to Radio 4.  There was a poetry program of which he'd
grown fond, the Wondermentalist Cabaret.  He might have to see about
commissioning more of it.  In calmer times, the Book at Bedtime had been his
refuge, but he rarely made it home that early any longer; another hour lost to
the empire.  What, he wondered, was a wondermentalist?  Sherlock?  Mycroft
himself?  Both of them, two different subspecies of the same? 

He sat and listened and took a tiny sip of his cocoa to see
if it was yet cool enough to drink.  Wondermentalist.  It had a lovely, old
world ring to it, even if it did seem to indicate that he should be selling
hair tonic or holding séances.  Perhaps, in the old world, he would have been. 
Perhaps Mycroft would run away and join the circus tomorrow under the job
category of wondermentalist, or wonderalienist, or something equally mysterious
and sepia-toned; perhaps he would tell fortunes and fix psyches in a fabric
tent with incense over sweet warm cocoa and never have to wear another god
forsaken sock garter in his life. 

It was, however, unlikely.  He drank deeper of his cocoa,
licking the residue it left on his upper lip, a gesture that was unchanged
since he was a child.  The warm way it wound through him to pool in his belly
was well worth any additional softness it might leave on the exterior.    He
drained the mug and rose, setting it on his bedside table, and went to brush his
teeth. 

The flavor of cinnamon chocolate faded and was overtaken by
that of pumpkin pudding.  Supposedly pumpkin had much the same hormonal effect
on men as chocolate was alleged to have upon women.  It was a nice change from
the sharp artificiality of mint, at any rate, and he found it soothing. 
Perhaps it was a placebo effect, but Mycroft had no complaints even if it was. 
There were far worse ways to start and end his day than pumpkin pudding
flavored paste. 

Perhaps he should have been an astronaut, and he made a
mental note to look into the feasibility of having a Briton be the first man on
Mars.  Not him, of course.  Legwork. 

He drew back his covers, toed off his slippers, and slid
into the bed, turning out the light, pumpkin pudding lingering on his tongue.

Tomorrow.  Mars could wait until then.