mottlemoth:

The Lestrade family is huge. Greg has four older brothers, and enough cousins to populate a small village. Nearly all of them have children. Family weddings are enormous affairs, and seem to go on for several days.

Mycroft dreads the bloody things. 

He’s never felt so out of place in a room – noisy children, gossiping aunties, Greg’s brothers asking if he’s a football or rugby man. 

The worst part?

He doesn’t understand why the Lestrade family are so welcoming to him. The whole lot of them are always delighted to see him, and it’s frankly bewildering. No matter how awkward and overwhelmed he feels, they just don’t seem to realise. He sits among them at every happy gathering, lost, feeling like a neurotic giraffe surrounded by happy monkeys. Not a word is ever said. He’s not had the slightest suggestion that a single Lestrade finds him stuck-up, strange, or boring. They just throw their arms around him, shout “Mycroft!”, and ask if anyone’s gotten him a drink yet.

It would somehow be easier if they disliked him.

Then, at the wedding of Greg’s… second cousin? Who is called… Sharon? And is marrying a man called… Dave? – Mycroft finally succumbs to the only possible source of relief, and starts drinking with intent. Uncle Greg is off being chased and climbed on by hoards of excited children. It could be some hours before he’s returned to the gathering at large. 

And so Mycroft takes solace in the bottle of whiskey that he and Greg brought – feeling it would be unbearable of him to drink the family’s liquor in an attempt to blot them out.

He can’t actually remember at what point he was joined at the table by Greg’s father and two of the brothers – the discussion is largely football, and Mycroft is staring dazedly at the balloons across the hall – and then he realises Greg’s father is speaking to him, and the cosy drunkenness of men sharing whiskey at a wedding is upon them. 

The old man is telling him he’s glad. 

Mycroft wonders what about.

“She was no good,” Greg’s father says – and Mycroft knows at once the ’she’ who is being discussed – the ’she’ that Greg’s family do not name. “Greg was never happy. Never saw him smiling, then. Different person.“ 

The old man pats Mycroft’s knee. 

"Happy, now there’s you. Smiling again. M’glad.”

Greg’s brothers pat him, too. Not a word is said – just a pat to each shoulder, and they fill up his glass for him, and ask if he and Greg are going away for summer.

Mycroft barely manages to answer them around the lump in his throat.

Half an hour later, Uncle Greg is brought back by the children – in largely one piece. He barely manages to hug Mycroft and get a glass of wine down his neck before he’s hauled up on stage for karaoke with his eldest niece. 

As Mycroft watches the two of them sing Shania Twain’s ‘Don’t Be Stupid’ to the entire family’s rapturous approval, he realises with a thrill that he’s watching the man he’ll marry – watching him sing and dance and laugh, grinning from ear-to-ear – and he’s grinning straight across the room at Mycroft.

It takes some planning – some discreet checking – some reassurance from a helpful mother-of-the-groom that such a gesture would not be seen as usurping a special day.

(And on the day itself, it takes several substantial glasses of whiskey to go ahead with it.)

But the roar that goes up as he sinks to one knee at the wedding of Greg’s nephew is nearly enough to raise the roof – and he never forgets Greg’s arms around his neck, and the laughter in his ear, and the pile of happy arms that the two of them then vanish beneath.