theredheadinquestion:

green-violin-bow:

Mycroft Holmes, 16, at university two years early. Fiercely intelligent and curious. Auditing as many classes as he can alongside his own core lectures and seminars. Spending every spare moment – whole nights, sometimes – in the library.

Spiky. Uncompromising. Very, very lonely.

Greg Lestrade, 18 and in the first year of his Applied Criminology course, finding his obligatory Social Theory module hard to handle, using the library to try and understand –

They get talking. Mycroft laughs for what feels like the first time in months, and blushes, and he’s just a kid.

Greg has a girlfriend. She’s beautiful. Funny. Clever. He plays football, and hangs around with the team – but studying with Mycroft in the library becomes a regular thing.

It takes Mycroft under two weeks to develop a life-ruining, heart-stopping, painful crush.

He knows, to Greg, he’s just a kid.

Two years – two years of pining, and Greg won’t even allow himself to think it – they’re friends. Good friends.

And Mycroft blossoms: some of his spikiness wears away, with a friend. He finds himself with people, tentatively: a group. A guy who asks him out on a date.

He should go, shouldn’t he? Because he’s learned from Greg to take opportunities when they come. Live life. But –

But –

Still.

Okay okay okay…but consider this:

Mycroft goes on the date, and they run into Greg and his girlfriend at a coffee shop near campus. Greg’s thought about ending things with her–she’s hinting about engagement rings one second, and aloof the next.  Something’s just…off. It doesn’t help that he enjoys talking to his friend Mycroft just as much as he does her.  And then…Mycroft walks in with his date, and Greg can’t look away. Myc’s wearing a jumper that shows off the red in his hair and he’s wearing scruff on his face, and Greg’s heart twists as Mycroft laughs at a joke his date told. He wants to be the one Mycroft is laughing with…looking at…on a date with.