This page is somewhere for me to keep all the amazing fanfics and art I see so I can revisit (especially since tumblr). Sometimes I post original stuff of mine, too. Not only Mystrade, but I liked the username.
Poll:
I wrote a fic set xmas morning. Should I post it now or on actual xmas morning?
Presumably someone’s already written a MasterChef Professionals AU?
Mycroft Holmes, reclusive development chef with a reputation for harsh words to those who don’t carry out his instructions well enough to bring his culinary vision to life. He’s been out of normal service for a few years so it’ll be a challenge to cook in front of Marcus, Monica and the food critics; but the real danger is his perfectionism, the way he beats himself up when he can’t deliver. He’s very controlled, and likes the challenges where he can prepare and practice obsessively.
Greg Lestrade, who’s worked himself up within the industry from potwasher to sous chef of a five-star restaurant in Mayfair. His life outside cookery has fallen apart: his wife’s left him, sick of the hours and his obsession with the job. He’s easygoing, friendly, but a little experimental in his cooking – his favourite challenges are the invention tests, because he can just wing it…and to be fair, it usually pays off.
Mycroft and Greg get at cross purposes on the first day, when Greg tries to chat while they wait behind the scenes, and Mycroft frankly says he has no interest in talking. (Unbeknownst to Greg, Mycroft is feeling so sick with nerves he can hardly stay calm.)
and it’s… fine. The prince is great! They’re in love, he’s very sweet and passionate, writing her poems and songs, giving her anything she wants. The time she spends with her husband is great.
but cinderella is not royalty, her family was noble but she never spent time in those circles. She’s used to being busy, she’s used to cooking and cleaning and mending. There are hours, days, where she has nothing to do.
time passes. cinderella learns the fancy lady type of needlework. Learns to ride horses. Reads a lot.
as is normal for royalty at the time, they travel and are hosted by nobles or stay at castles owned by the king. But even that variety begins to become routine. The prince is distracted, there’s a lot of young women living and working on their route. Daughters of nobles. Younger and prettier with soft hands that have never done a day’s work.
cinderella needs something to spend her time on, and there’s a part of her thinking a couple-only trip might get her husband’s attention again, so she suggests making an old castle that’s fallen into disrepair their “project.” It was built in the time when castles were made to be defensible, so it’s quite sturdy, but it’s overgrown and secluded. The prince doesn’t know why his family stopped living there either. A hundred years ago it was their summer home.
so they go. And they work. And for a while it’s great! But when they leave for winter cinderella’s husband forgets her once again. cinderella resolves to make the best of her life and stop worrying about a man who has gotten what he wanted from her.
summer comes again and this time cinderella goes alone to the old castle (minus staff, of course, but cinderella manages to narrow it down to only repair workers and one maid). She can cook and clean and mend again, but this time it’s her own choice. She is happy.
this summer they make more progress on repairs. The workers say that most of it can be salvaged, except one tower that’s been completely overgrown with vines and briars. It will have to come down, eventually, but for now it can be safely ignored.
cinderella has more free time now. The old castle has a surprisingly untouched library, though time and moisture have damaged many of the books. Behind a collection of greek poetry cinderella finds an old diary. Very old, in fact, at least a hundred years. It’s rude to read a diary, of course, but whoever wrote this is long dead, and cinderella is bored, so…
from the description of activities the author looks to have been nobility. Maybe even a princess. She’s sensitive and sweet and smarter than she seems to realize. If circumstances had been different cinderella wishes they could have been friends…
after the summer ends cinderella returns to her husband. He’s spending a lot of time with a young musician and cinderella can’t even work up the energy to care. She does some research about the castle and the family she’s married into, finds out the name of the princess who wrote the diary.
aurora. Cursed and forgotten. She died young, they say, in a plague that also took out the castle staff and her own parents. Luckily they avoided a succession crisis, but not so lucky for the dead.
time passes. cinderella goes to the old castle again and again, even out of season. Soon enough all that remains to be done is the old tower, and the builders say they should tear it down and fill the gaps before it gets cold.
one night cinderella is restless. The princess from the diary had been fond of that tower, and cinderella is far more attached to a dead woman than she ought to be. She gets out of bed, reads by candlelight, and finally goes to walk the empty halls.
she finds herself going to the tower. Pushing past the vines that don’t seem so troublesome really. They almost part before her. The stairs are perfectly intact, the door at the top is already cracked open. As if she should have done this years ago, cinderella steps into aurora’s bedroom.
she’s as beautiful as the stories say. And sitting under her hands, crossed across her stomach as it rises and falls, is a book of greek poetry.
years later, people will tell the story of cinderella as a cautionary one. Don’t seek above your station. Don’t marry for prestige. After all, a girl who grew up as a servant once married the crown prince, and disappeared after only three years. She ran away, they say, she couldn’t handle the lifestyle.
two old women who run a bookshop together agree with the lesson. Marrying for the wrong reasons never ends well. It’s best to wait for someone you have things in common with, shared interests.
or, failing that, the more linguistic of the two says, wait a decade or ten for someone to fall in love with you from your diary.
her partner laughs and hits her with the socks she is mending.
(“I’m living in a world of goldfish,” he said. “I also don’t frequent cafés,” he said.)
It’s not the most imaginative name, but there’d been a Gregg’s down the street and “Gregory’sCoffee” had been the best name he could think up. Running a coffee shop was one thing; he wasn’t going to sink to naming it with bad puns. He’d thought about calling it Lestrade’s made it sound like a French bakery and a lot fancier than a shop that sold tea, coffee and the occasional toastie.
It was an unassuming shop that mostly sold to men and women in fancy suits, rushing around Whitehall. Not the suburb Greg would have picked, but Sherlock found the shop at a discount rent (guilt, Greg thinks. He’d got shot following one of Sherlock’s hunches – sorry, deductions – and even though it was Sherlock’s fast reactions that made the wound debilitating rather than lethal, he still seemed guilty about it.)
The shop does a steady trade. Enough to cover rent and salaries, and give Greg a little to set aside for a rainy day fund. More importantly, it keeps him busy. If he’s not serving coffee to queues of interchangeable faces in suits, he’s ordering stock or paying bills or rostering staff or reporting VAT. There’s a never-ending list of paperwork and cleaning, and it doesn’t leave him much time left to bold over his divorce or the ugly scar across his left side.
“Gregory,” someone says after ordering tea. “It’s an unusual name.”
Greg shrugs. “Not really,” he says, then, “Four pounds twenty.”
The man gives him a fiver. “It’s an unusual name for a cafe.”
Greg looks up then. He usually doesn’t bother. Best part of this job is that he doesn’t have to look at people and wonder what they’re hiding, constantly judge his honest they’re being with him. All he has to do is ring up the order and make sure the right drink gets made. “Better than Lestrade’s.”
The man – tall, strong nose, weak chin, sharp grey eyes – blinks twice. “Gregory Lestrade,” he says. “I owe you a debt of gratitude.”
“For what?”
“Sherlock.” His eyes flicker down as if he knows exactly where Greg was shot.
Greg hands back the man’s change, noticing the fine black leather gloves. “Sherlock saved my life. Not the other way around.”
“I disagree. Since the incident, Sherlock has stayed clean.” There’s a weight to the way he says clean, an emphasis Greg’s heard from family members and ex-junkies.
Sherlock may be a brilliant, messed-up kid – late twenties, yes, but still a kid – but he talks a lot when he’s high. “You’re the mysterious older brother? Running the world and keeping tabs on everything Sherlock does?”
He gets another blink and then the tiniest quirk of soft lips. Amusement softens his face, makes Greg see the five year old kid he must have been: precocious and bright, fascinated and thrilled by the world. “One of those is true, yes. Mycroft Holmes. If there’s anything I can do for you…”
“Like what?”
“Anything,” Mycroft replies, too serious, once again such a sensible adult.
“Let’s call it even.” Without Sherlock, that bullet would have gone through a lung and nicked his heart. Greg’s seen the trajectory projections. He also knows life’s too short to dilly-dally and waste opportunities. “But if you’re free Friday night…”
“I am, yes.”
“Want to go to dinner with me?”
Mycroft pulls himself back to his full height, ducks his chin in. There’s a small confused crease between his brows. “Dinner? As in a romantic…” He seems lost for words.
“A date, yeah.” Greg smiles hopefully and ignores the two person queue forming behind Mycroft. They can wait or they can go to the Cafe Nero round the corner. “You and me.”
Mycroft looks him up and down, so much like Sherlock used to that Greg almost laughs at the similarity. “This Friday?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’ll pick you up at eight.”
“You don’t have my address.” Then, Greg thinks of something else. “You don’t have my phone number.”
“Not a problem,” Mycroft replies with the kind of confidence that Greg finds irresistible.
But when they first start dating/fucking, Greg says the filthiest thing to Mycroft. Just utter trash. Mycroft blushes each and every time he does too which is what Greg really loves.
Until one day Mycroft says something to Greg so incredibly filthy that Greg swears to god he blacks out for a few seconds due to the immediate rush of blood to his cock.
Mystrade-Lecroft 