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•  Mycroft’s code name is Hades. Only a tiny number of people are aware of this. His brother isn’t one of them. He didn’t choose it, but he can’t argue that it fits.

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•  Mycroft and Sherlock both run cold, low blood

pressure their mother says, just like their father. 

It’s just a minor annoyance, with chilly fingers and icy toes.

 

Usually Mycroft runs cooler than Sherlock, but more consistently. 

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•  Babies like Mycroft.  He doesn’t understand why.
He’s calm, very calm– and he talks to them with real words, instead of just babbling baby speak.  

It’s marginally amusing to watch John boggle when Rosie, who’s teething and fussing and hasn’t stopped crying for hours, settles down and falls asleep in his lap.

Usually the preference wanes when they’re in their toddler years, and realize that Mycroft won’t be a person playing on the floor with them.

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•  Mycroft hates the taste of peppermint.  It’s supposed to be clean and fresh, but he finds it repulsive.  His toothpaste tends to be unflavoured, or cinnamon. And on the rare occasion that ‘minty fresh breath’ is a social convention, he opts for spearmint or wintergreen, which are marginally less disgusting.

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•  When they were little, Sherlock would go to Mycroft when he had questions. Would cry for him when he was scared, and crawl into his bed when he had bad dreams (or when he had ideas that couldn’t wait for morning!). Neither of them thought it was strange, it was their normal. Age and school and experience brought comparisons to siblings who fought differently; who didn’t understand that their brains and bodies were made of the same elements, in different measurements. They don’t talk about it now, people already think they’re strange.

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•  Mycroft doesnt play chess very often. There’s no challenge, his brain uniquely suited to tactics and entrapping manipulation. Its no fun if you always win.

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Sherlock doesn’t play checkers. His brain clicks with the aggressive, leaping, jumping spaces and finding patterns in the empty spaces. It’s annoying when you always win.

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Instead, they play Operation (because there’s no tactics, and both have steady hands); or games of their own design that nobody else can follow.

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•  Initially, Mycroft had no intention of buying a piano. He had little time to play, and too many things to juggle already. But it helps him think, ordering notes and key progressions, and ordering his thoughts at the same time. His music is private; great, complicated pieces with crashing, echoing crescendos, and fading, bittersweet melodies that express the emotions he won’t put names to.

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•  Mycroft isn’t in denial about being gay, and he isn’t ashamed of it. 

But he is ambitious, and far too aware that coming out would make his job much more difficult.

When he was younger, it may have even put a low ceiling over his head.

And since, by his definition, he isn’t lonely?  Why should he make trouble for himself?

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•  Mycroft left for university a year early.  It would have been more, because the tedium of his classes was agonizing.  But his mother and father thought he was too young to be away from home. And they hoped, as they’d hoped for most of his life, that maybe it would be enough time for him to find common ground with his agemates.

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Sherlock was nine, and he didn’t really understand what was happening.  Mycroft wasn’t sure he could explain. It was the ending of something, a paradigm shift that couldn’t be undone.

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University meant being alone for the first time since Mycroft was seven.  And for his brother, who never had been.

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•  Mycroft’s writing tends to be small, neat, and somewhat prone to being spiky.  

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Being left handed, he originally learned to write with his hand in a hooked shape, until third year, when a series of teachers were determined to teach him to write ‘properly’

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What followed was several years of consciously watching the way he held a pen, uncomfortably correcting his grasp, and trying not to smear his work.

 

To this day, if he’s thinking about his writing, he unconsciously adjusts his hand.  But if he’s in a hurry, he forgets to, and gravitates back to what feels more natural.

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•  When Mycroft was twenty-five, he wrote out his will.  It seemed like the prudent thing at the time, and he’s never had reason to change it.

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His head, and contents, have been bequeathed to the Royal Society.  His organs are to be donated to whoever can use them.  And the rest goes to his brother.  Every investment, coin and square foot of property.  

 

Of course, that information is just between him, and his solicitor.  As he’s alive (and intends to stay that way) it’s not important, for the moment.

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•  While far from the world’s most gifted polyglot, Mycroft currently speaks 28 languages, and sees no reason not to learn more.

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•  After his mummy got pregnant, Mycroft wanted to know where babies came from, because his logical brain refused the idea that it could just magically happen.  He was only six at the time, and her explanation was a confusing mash of ‘special hugs’ and magical storks.  Completely unsatisfied with this answer, Mycroft asked to go to the library, and while his mummy thought he was looking at Paddington (which he was sure he’d outgrown ages before) he crept off to find a book on biology.  It was equally informative, and very disturbing.

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•  Mycroft has a serious sweet tooth, which he stubbornly ignores.  If he would just relax and indulge a little, once in a while, it wouldn’t be so bad.  Unfortunately, because he denies it entirely, when he does break he’s been known to have a biscuit with his tea.. and another… and another… until a whole packet of Tim Tams has vanished.

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•  Mycroft plays the piano the same way he paints, and sketches… technically beautiful, but without abstraction.  He can sketch a landscape, or play a classical piece– but if you ask him to create something new, he can’t.

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•  The seven years before Sherlock was born were desperately lonely.  It’s become his measurement– if it isn’t a hollow, physical ache, it isn’t really loneliness.

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•  When he was three, his parents got him a pet bird, hoping it would be some company.  Something for him to take care of. A year later, when the bird died, Mycroft wanted to look inside it, to understand how it worked, and what made it dead.  He didn’t want to hurt it, but his mummy had already said that it was gone, and couldn’t feel pain. He didn’t understand why his parents were horrified.. or why they decided they weren’t going to have any more pets.