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.
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.
[Mystrade ficlet – pure fluff and happiness. ❤ M-rated. Inspired by this photo.]
It takes a lot to get Mycroft to laugh – but when he does, he laughs.
They’re practically living together before Greg even sees it happen. One Friday night with the weekend ahead of them, they end up lying on the couch beneath Mycroft’s winter blanket together, watching Blackadder in the dark with a bottle of red wine. They have nowhere to be in the morning; the bottle soon empties itself. Greg digs a pint of chocolate ice cream out of the freezer. He feeds it to Mycroft with a teaspoon as Mycroft lies comfortably against his chest, watching the TV with a gorgeous little smirk on his face. By the time they reach the middle of series two, his snorts of amusement are cracking open into unguarded chuckles. He gets ten minutes into the fifth episode before it’s all over for Mycroft and he’s laughing helplessly against Greg’s chest, barely able to breathe. There are tears in the corner of his eyes. He’s shaking, collapsing into more laughter each time he tries to get a hold of himself, and his helpless amusement and distress set Greg off too. They have to stop the DVD just to breathe, their sides now hurting from the laughter. Mycroft is a mess – he tries desperately to wipe his face, but the helpless tears keep on coming.
Greg’s voice filtered down into Mycroft’s consciousness, arriving delayed and wrapped in cotton wool. He hummed and sank deeper into the bath water, foam tickling his nose. The warmth of the water soaked into his bones. With a sigh he breathed in deeply, enjoying the calming aroma of the orange blossom oil that the water had been infused with.
“Darling?”
Mycroft opened his eyes slowly, but was still temporarily blinded by the light, even though it was turned down to a soft glow. As he blinked sleepily, the bathroom came into focus. He laid eyes on the golden lamps, the glass covers that looked like magnolia flowers, the green marble finish that glinted luxuriously in the low light.
He wanted to answer, but then he felt a hand in his hair, carding carefully through the strands, scratching slightly and he closed his eyes again with a sigh.
“Just wanted to check if you haven’t drowned, love…” Greg said with a chuckle.
Greg was leaning against the wooden paneling of the wall, almost hidden by a large fern. He eyed the crowd with feigned interest, quietly nursing a flute of pink champagne. He would never tell anyone that it was actually one of his favourite drinks, and this was the main reason that he was already on his fourth refill. Well, he didn’t actually know anyone at this charity party, to which the super had invited him. It was held in a ballroom of a big hotel in western London and had gone on for quite a while now. Greg had long run out of patience for meaningless small talk, but he felt bad for leaving early because he’d received a personal invitation as the only inspector. He only hoped that no one would approach him, as he was definitely feeling more than tipsy from the champagne.
As if on cue, a tall man in a tuxedo detached himself from the crowd. As their eyes met he smirked and Greg drew in a sharp breath. With a leisurely step the man walked over to him and came to stand entirely too close to be proper. Greg stared into the stormy blue eyes until the man raised his glass – also filled with pink champagne. Greg grinned as their glasses clinked.
“I don’t believe we’ve met?” the man said and took a sip.
My brain is too fried to write properly, so instead I’m just daydreaming this: John Watson is asked to The Diogenes one evening while Sherlock is out. He’s surprised to actually be asked by Mycroft, rather than just kidnapped in a limo. He’s even more surprised when he gets there, and finds Mycroft is accompanied by Greg Lestrade.
John takes a seat at Mycroft’s desk, fearing the worst. He’s never seen Greg in a jumper and jeans before, nor Sherlock’s brother looking so unsettled.
The two of them awkwardly explain that they’re about to go public with something, and they’d like John’s support in managing Sherlock.
John – concerned – asks what it is.
With Greg’s hand on his shoulder, Mycroft explains that they’ve entered the committed stages of a personal relationship. They’d rather have continued to keep it private from Sherlock, but he’ll realise soon anyway. It seems better for someone to gently inform him now than to let him deduce it on his own.
A shocked John agrees to do what he can.
In the end, he just has to tell Sherlock point blank. Hinting it gently doesn’t trigger any reaction, nor does subtly fishing for a hypothetical opinion.
Sherlock scoffs, and remarks that Lestrade’s romantic judgement hasn’t improved at all since the divorce – but that’s the worst of it.
When John phones Mycroft to tell him the reaction, he hears Mycroft exhale with shaky relief.
Over the next few months, he sees more and more human hints filtering into Mycroft’s behaviour. It’s like Greg is rounding off all his edges. One Friday night John bumps into them both at the supermarket. It’s the most surreal experience in the world, and oddly touching, seeing them both there with a basket in the bread aisle. Greg is coaxing Mycroft fondly into almond croissants for breakfast in the morning. “I’ll bring you them in bed,” he says, and John can’t quite forget the thought of Mycroft Holmes having breakfast in bed – sitting there in his pyjamas, eating almond croissants. Orange juice and a folded newspaper.
He can’t stop thinking about some other things, too.
Not in a creepy way, he tells himself – he just can’t get his head around it.
Two weeks later in the pub, he buys Greg an extra couple of pints and dares to ask the question. Greg is tipsy enough to grin at him, bright-eyed, and answer.
“Yeah. ‘Course we do.”
“What – what’s that like, though? Sex with… a Holmes.”
Greg visibly fishes around in his head for an answer he can give. It takes him a while. “Myc… pays attention to everything,” he says. “He learns. It’s like being studied. Like I’m fascinating. It’s… really good.”
It takes John a while to get to sleep that night. He’s not sure why.
He realises the next morning when Sherlock brings him a cup of tea – just the right shade of coppery light brown, in his old regimental mug, with one of his favourite oat biscuits positioned perfectly so he can pick it up and dunk it.
Sherlock doesn’t say a word. He never does.
He just puts the tea down, like he does every morning, and goes off upstairs to get dressed.
and in the scene where Greg Lestrade appears downstairs at the B&B
Mycroft Holmes
is 100%
without any doubt in the matter
upstairs
in the fanciest double room they have
sleeping off the sex of his life
and I will never believe a single word to the contrary.
Mycroft could barely gasp Greg‘s name as the man moved slowly inside him. His wrists were tied to the iron decorations of the headboard, body safely cradled in the softest, deepest blanket, eyes blindfolded. He was unable to feel anything but Greg‘s body over him, his nails scratching down his torso and the place where they were so intimately connected.
„Getting close?“ Greg said with a smile in his voice.
Mycroft could only whimper through his gag, nod even though it was futile. Greg had asked him the same question over and over again for the last half hour. He had woken up already tied. Not that he minded.
„I know you told me you couldn‘t come from this alone, and honestly? I‘m so glad… I want you pinned under me for hours. You make the sweetest noise…“
Greg leaned forward to lick along Mycroft‘s neck, driving himself deeper into the other‘s body. Mycroft moaned shamelessly into the gag, body convulsing, as his cock received just the tiniest bit of contact.
„If I knew you‘d need me to fuck you into submission, I would‘ve volunteered years ago,“ Greg whispered into Mycroft‘s ear, voice strained and husky.
Mycroft could feel himself drifting off, his mind was floating, high on the mix of sensations which felt like it could tip him over the edge at any time, but were never quite enough. He heard Greg talking, murmuring endearments, but his voice barely filtered through the haze. At some point he had let go completely, existing only for Greg‘s enjoyment.
„…Mycroft? Darling? Stay with me, will you? You‘re here for my reward, not yours.“
Greg gently eased the improvised gag out of Mycroft‘s mouth, while never stopping his gentle rocking movement. Then he leaned in and claimed his mouth roughly, bringing Mycroft back to his senses with a start. Mycroft shouted into Greg‘s mouth, when at the same time Greg picked up speed, and his eyes grew wide behind the blindfold.
„Yesss….“ Greg said against Mycroft‘s mouth and reached between them to take hold of his neglected cock. Mycroft almost broke out into tears as he started moving his hand quickly, with just the right amount of pressure.
„And for my reward I‘d really like to feel you come on my cock, gorgeous. Can you show me?“
„A-anything for you…“ Mycroft managed to say. „Gregory… oh god…“
„Oh yes… Show me!“
Mycroft had been overstimulated for so long, Greg barely had to move his hand to make him come. He twisted in his restraints, fingers white around the iron, as he painted his own chest and Greg‘s fingers. He could barely contain his shouts, mouth open, panting. Only seconds later he could feel Greg‘s mouth on his again, and swallowed his groans as he came inside him, shivering.
They remained like this for a while, until Greg had found enough energy to untie Mycroft and remove the blindfold. As Mycroft attempted to get up, Greg pushed him back gently into the sheets.
„I still can‘t believe you agreed to this.“
„You took a gamble,“ Mycroft said.
„A huge one. I knew you‘d either have me sent to Siberia or agree. Nothing in between. But I was betting on the first.“
„Mhmm,“ Mycroft hummed. „I admit that I had expected some kind of demand, but ‚Come with me and let me fuck you every day until I have to leave Dartmoor again.‘ wasn‘t it.“
„Glad you saw it my way.“
„Yes, I admit I am too.“
Greg grinned and snatched a towel from a nearby cupboard to wipe Mycroft‘s chest clean.
„I‘m going to have a shower so I‘m ready when your brother arrives. You held up your end of the bargain so far, time to honour mine.“
„Tell them to bring me breakfast in two hours, will you? I‘m not leaving this room while Sherlock roams the town,“ Mycroft said and stretched on the bed like a giant cat.
„Two hours?“
„Let me indulge a little, inspector.“
Mycroft drew the blanket over himself and promptly went back to sleep. Greg could only laugh to himself.
„What the hell have I gotten myself into this time?“
Mystrade-Lecroft 