Chapter Text
Jim pulled off his sunglasses with great effort. Finally, he was on a private jet headed somewhere warm and tropical where there would be no shortage of beautiful people to serve him colorful drinks.
He turned his head to the side, and Mycroft Holmes smiled back at him.
Jim returned the smile weakly. He’d been running for a week. The man had cost him more money than Sherlock had over the years combined in just the past three days and he wasn’t even having fun.
He’d had his name written up in smoke in the sky, and had to scramble to get balloons and helis up to blow them away. He couldn’t just have his location given out like that. He’d been in danger of becoming a national joke underground.
Then he came home to his second flat and found it full of roses. Literally filled to the brim. Had the man never heard of going overboard?
Perhaps Jim’s stance on grand gestures was made clear by his lack of response (and his packing up and moving the next day, selling the building). Mycroft had sent only a gift basket the following day. To his workplace . While he was undercover . It came with a giant stuffed seal that smiled like it was the embodiment of world peace, and Jim had had to jam it down the trash chute.
All thought that this odd behavior would wear off after the first day was clearly mistaken. He’d just have to go along for the ride then.
Mycroft rifled through the travel documents Jim had sticking out of his leather carry-on.
“Oh, Barbados - you should’ve told me, I know someone who’s invested greatly in the hospitality industry there,” Mycroft said. “I’ll give him a call once we land.
“Mm-hm.”
“I’m so glad you’re taking a vacation,” Mycroft said. “You’ve been looking a bit stressed lately.”
Jim gave him a funny look.
“Don’t you have a country to run?” he asked.
“Don’t be silly,” Mycroft said, waving it off. “Anthea’s got it under control.”
.
Eight hours was a long time, and it gave Jim time to think. If the British Government was going to continue to be besotted with him, it was Jim’s duty, his God-given right, to make use of that resource.
“Mycroft,” Jim said, as the plane began to descend.
“Hm?” Mycroft had curled up against him, his head pillowed on Jim’s chest, with Jim playing with his hair in some semblance of a cartoon villain petting his diabolical cat.
“If I wanted to break into the Tower of London…”
Mycroft peered up at him.
“What for? There’s not much of value in there. It’s a tourist site.”
“For bragging rights ,” Jim said, exasperated. He rolled his eyes.
“Well, I suppose I could arrange something.”
Jim considered the implications, and then put an abrupt stop to that. No, Mycroft’s interference would take all the fun out of it.
That help he’d given him with moving the Prime Minister’s conference for distraction still left a sour taste. He was good enough at what he did that he didn’t need the extra help. He could cheat without being given that stupid advantage.
Mycroft was meant to play the other side; Jim missed seeing him bristle when he did something particularly mad.
“What if I didn’t want you to?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Well now you know I’m going to break in, but I don’t want you to do anything about it.”
Mycroft blinked.
“Seems easy enough.”
“I’d still be arrested after?”
“Well, only if you got caught . Seems a bit silly to tell me not to let you get away and then not to catch you either, and then still get caught .”
“Well what if that was my plan , to get arrested?”
“Do you want me to arrest you, Jim?” he asked without innuendo. God this was so weird.
“Nevermind.” Jim sighed. The plane was landing. He couldn’t even have fun with all the resources of the British Government at his disposal. This was the worst. He had to get that heart out of the storage unit freezer and toss it into the Atlantic, or something.
.
Beachside lounging wasn’t so bad. The two of them had a balcony overlooking the bright blue waters and private stretch of sand.
Mycroft was practically dozing, post-massage, lying on his stomach, while Jim sat back in his bathrobe and tapped away on his tablet.
Jim snuck a glance. Mycroft was weird. So he’d be amenable to kinky sex even if he wasn’t mind-bogglingly lovestruck, wouldn’t he? Or, no, what if they did, and that just made him more clingy? Hm. Moral dilemmas were not Jim’s strong suit.
“Mm, don’t you ever stop working?”
Jim rolled his eyes. This new Mycroft had no work ethic.
“Well these crimes aren’t going to plan themselves,” he muttered. “There’s a couple at this resort - he’s running the hedge fund but she’s the one who holds all the accounts, and their marriage is on the rocks. Like bash-his-head-in-and-run-away-with-the-cabana-boy on the rocks. Only they don’t know it yet.”
“Mmph.”
“I’ve convinced the partner to let me help, ehm, offload their burden, pre-divorce settlings. So he’d make more now than later.”
Mycroft cracked an eye open.
“Why don’t you just pit them against each other? And running to the partner for help?” he said, trailing off with a yawn.
Jim looked up.
That...actually wasn’t half bad. It’d cause loads of grief. In half the time.
.
“Mycroft,” Jim said, as he floated from one end of the pool to the other on a large inflatable shaped and colored like a slice of pizza. The pitting-the-spouses-against-each-other thing had gone well. Quite well. And they’d be on a flight out before it all blew up.
“Yes, dear?”
“There’s an auction going down in Morocco, highly guarded, lots of valuables, all that jazz.”
“I’m aware.”
“Want to go?”
.
Forty-eight hours later, one Colonel Sebastian Moran received an encrypted text that opened up to a photo of Jim Moriarty decked out in museum-quality jewelry throwing up gangster signs.
Ping!
And then a second one, with both Jim and Mycroft so bedazzled they looked like Faberge eggs.
Ping!
Sebastian sighed.
Ping!
Ping! Ping!
.
Jim turned back to look at Mycroft, who, leaning against the hotel bar in an off-white linen suit, affected a carelessness Jim had never associated with the man.
“Your Duchess may be a good mark,” Mycroft said, “but look over her shoulder at the lone brunette in her entourage. She might not seem like much but unlike her friends here she has already inherited her family fortune.”
Jim narrowed his eyes. It wasn't like he made it his business to read royal family trees in his spare time.
“What are you suggesting?”
Mycroft lips curl up in an almost feline smile, what with the way his eyes crinkled when he did that. Jim wanted to poke at the lines, see if they were real.
“I suggest you watch,” he said, before he downed his drink and pushed off from the bar, diving straight into the throng of colorful heiresses.
.
Jim and Mycroft, arm in arm, stepped out of their private car into a private airport where they were to board a private jet. It was all awfully secure.
And it had to be, seeing as they just scammed minor royalty from six countries out of practically all their inheritance.
“You’re very good at telling people what they want to hear,” Jim said, still impressed.
Mycroft took off his sunglasses. “Me?” he said, smiling regardless. “ You’re ruthless.”
Jim smiled, smug despite knowing he was being conned in the moment.
“Only because it’s so handy that you know who’s who at a glance,” he said.
It’s not much of a compliment, but Mycroft goes all gooey with it anyway.
As they take their seats, it occurs to Jim that some time during the course of their cross-continent, trans-Mediterranean grifter spree, Mycroft being a clingy bastard has become considerably less annoying.
Jim went quiet for a while, considering this, and Mycroft just watched him.
“When we get to Italy, we're headed in for a wedding,” Jim said, ignoring the hopeful look on Mycroft's face. The first time it'd been terrifying. Then it grew to be mildly disconcerting. Now Jim was rather fond of it. It somehow gave him the urge to - to buy Mycroft an island, or something.
“It's not a real one, it'll be filled to the brim with mafia and peppered with undercover police. It was the only way they could get the Family all in one place at the same time.”
“So what's your part in all this? Ring bearer?”
“Rival house wants to take them all out, police and family and all.”
“Seems prudent. Then pin it on the third of the families, I suppose?”
Jim grins at him.
.
Jim walked two fingers up Mycroft’s arm slowly, as Mycroft held still in front of the mirrors.
“I have the best ideas,” Jim said, congratulating himself as the tailor ducked under his arm to finish measuring Mycroft.
“I feel certain I’ve already got a tailor somewhere that has my measurements on file,” Mycroft mused.
“Yes, but we’re on vacation, and the man does a wonderful bespoke,” Jim shot back, ignoring the tailor’s wry smile.
Mycroft rolls his eyes. “Says the man who wears Westwood .”
Jim’s smile turned dangerous, and Mycroft’s turned fond as he watched him through the mirror.
.
Jim sat on the leather couch, gun between his legs, as the man across from him, bloodied and bawling, begged for his life.
“Whisky or scotch?” Mycroft called from the bar.
Jim glanced over.
“Actually, I’m feeling some vodka. Russian fare, hm? Like those passports you’ve been dealing.”
He looked back at the sniveling man - hilarious. He really thought he and Mycroft were random mob muscle? Did he think just any two hired guns could handle hacking military-level security like the system he had installed through his mansion?
It’d been a slightly risky venture, and neither of them normally did this. But they’d been celebrating at a bar having just manipulated stock exchanges across the entirety of Europe.
A blabby investor seemed to be celebrating too, going on and on about it on the phone with someone they couldn’t identify, and Mycroft, sorry that Jim’s attention was being pulled elsewhere, leaned in and said, “well why don’t we just ask him?”
So here they were, asking for the identity of the investor’s confidant. It seemed someone else was pulling the financial strings on the continent, and Jim wanted a name.
“It’s - it’s Ales Yurchenko. Yes, the tech prodigy - believe me, he looks like a child, but he’s behind more than you know.” The poor man finally broke, and Mycroft smiled at him from behind the bar.
.
Jim revved up the engine; they’d sped off with one of the investor’s custom race cars, and were planning to have it drive itself off a cliff. Why did billionaires always choose to build their spaceship-esque mansions in the woods on a hill? (The view, obviously.)
He snuck a look at Mycroft, who seemed to be biting back a smile, and quite unsuccessfully at that. Jim let out a laugh, and then Mycroft’s giggles spilled over, and then the two of them were full-out laughing, and Jim was grabbing Mycroft by the neck and kissing him full on the mouth.
Mycroft managed to somehow simultaneously melt into the kiss and put a hand on the steering wheel, pulling it back where Jim had let it veer crazily out of line.
They broke apart and Jim stared, emotions warring, their faces still close together.
“We - should get out of the car,” he finally said, clearing his throat. “Gotta push it over the edge.”
“Mm,” Mycroft nodded, leaning in to kiss him on the corner of his mouth once more, before opening the car door.
.
The sundrenched seaside hotel only added to the fantasy that his three-week trip with Mycroft has been one long vacation away from reality.
Mycroft squints out at the hotel opposite theirs, where several of the guest parties are hosted.
“If things are going down here, wouldn't it be prudent if we weren't close when it all… goes down?”
Jim smiled, and took up Mycroft's arm as if leading him in a waltz.
“That's the beauty of it, it'll blow when least expected. The police will think they've caught all the baddies, and then once they start to round them up, boom. I think if I've timed this right we might even have time for a dance at the reception.”
Mycroft smiled down at him, overly fond.
“No.”
Jim blinked. Did he hear wrong? Mycroft still looked that carefree way, certainly he couldn't be having a moral conundrum now.
“Excuse me?”
Mycroft set his hands on Jim’s shoulders.
“We are not going anywhere near a wedding meant to implode on its head. No, if it’s necessary we even be in the same city we can wait it out all from a good distance.”
Mycroft fixed his cufflinks, and then Jim’s tie.
“Do order dinner for us, James, I think we shall stay in.”
Jim narrowed his eyes after him. This wasn’t just that Mycroftian brand of coddling protectiveness, no, this was something else. A bit pushy, and, and arrogant, and some of his megalomania was seeping through once again.
Mycroft step out closing the door behind him, and then as Jim turned back around - he jumped -
- seeing Mycroft’s assistant (Andrea???) standing right before him.
“Tsk,” she said, folding her arms, leaning against the balcony railing.
“How the fuck- ”
“Did I get in?” she asked, raising a hand and summoning a ball of flame, which turned into ice, which turned into light, water, and nothing again. “Magic.”
“What the fuck .”
She gave him a sort of disdainful look, and normally Jim would threaten to have her eyes pecked out by birds of prey for this sort of thing but she had just done impossible things to nature and, frankly, his head was still spinning.
The heart.
Shit.
“Yes, the heart,” she said, prompting Jim to jump back and clap his hands over his ears. She couldn’t possibly read minds, no.
She rolled her eyes. Oh, the audacity.
“Mycroft’s been without his heart for three months now,” she said. “Well, nearly.”
“He’d been without it for a while even before you, you see,” she added.
“Well if you’re here to steal it, I haven’t got it on me,” Jim said, prickly now. And really, who did she think she was? Popping in here and shaking him down over a theft she didn’t have proof he committed??
Her expression turned serious.
“You care about Mycroft,” she said. Rather, asserted it. She definitely wasn’t asking.
“Eh.” Jim waved his hand back and forth, and she ignored it.
“Well if you do care about him, you’ll give back his heart.”
Jim twisted his mouth up, as if chewing the words up in consideration.
“He may have ice in his veins - albeit a very small percentage - but he isn’t meant to go all mix-and-match with his organs for too long, especially not the major organs. Three months is nearly the limit of what he can stand without a piece of himself as vital as the heart ,” Anthea said with a sigh. “If you don’t give it back to him, he will become permanently heartless.”
Jim kept his expression carefully blank, but it didn’t matter. As soon as she’d finished speaking, she took one look at him, and disappeared in a puff of smoke.
.
Jim weighed the pros and cons of returning Mycroft’s heart en route to Germany. The difference was stark now; his moods hot and cold, the life dimming and sparking back in his eyes.
It wasn’t so bad. It was a little familiar.
But then - on the job…
It was supposed to be a fence and an auction. Simple - for Jim, anyway. A British spy had smuggled copies of Russian tech out of the country, and Jim wanted to see which way the chips would fall. Too what extent was Mycroft still loyal?
The spy had made a copy of everything, thinking it might make for good insurance, or a rainy day fund, until Jim came along and convinced him to let Jim sell it at auction. Tech goes to the highest bidder, no matter the country.
And Jim was...pleasantly surprised with Mycroft’s cooperation.
“The Saudis here are definitely out of their depth,” Jim said with a yawn and a stretch, sitting back on the hotel bed. “Though they’ve definitely got the money.”
“Mm, and once the Russians finish scrambling and make their offer to buy it back, we’ll make double,” Mycroft said without looking up from his laptop.
Jim turned so quickly he got whiplash.
“What?”
Mycroft tilted his screen - he’d -
He’d palmed a copy of the drive.
Jim stared, livid. Jim was running this show and he wasn’t going to let some two-bit bureaucrat waltz in and take over. Who the fuck - who the fuck did he think he was? Fucking around behind his back with his deal ? Did he think he could just fuck with him like this? Did he think he could just-
A moment later, as he had Mycroft’s laptop held over his head about to be slammed down on the nightstand, and flashbacks to that Aaron Sorkin film, he realized none of what he’d been thinking had actually stayed in his head.
Mycroft left the hotel shortly after that.
.
Jim sat in a decimated hotel room for - an hour? Two? He wasn’t sure how much time passed or when the hurricane had blown through but moments later, the knob on the door turned, and Mycroft Holmes strode in, eyes shining with tears.
“Oh, Jim.”
Jim jerked back to reality and flinched, hard, as Mycroft threw himself into Jim’s arms, and the two of them sat huddled together awkwardly on the ground beside the bed.
He started babbling on about apologies and “I don’t know what’s gotten into me” and “I never meant to cut you out of that deal,” and Jim tentatively reached out to place his hand on Mycroft’s head.
Warm.
As he stroked Mycroft’s hair and Mycroft babbled on, Jim knew there were no two ways about this. He was actually going to miss this. Maybe even more than a bit. Maybe even quite a lot.
But if he ever wanted to have Mycroft like this again, he was going to have to give back that heart.
.
Jim spent the next day dithering about in Paris, and Mycroft asked no questions about why they were there.
They had finally made it to some shady looking spot beneath a bridge when Jim’s fidgeting reached peak level and he spun on his heel to face Mycroft.
“I have something to give you,” he said. Mycroft just blinked back, expression open.
“Alright.”
Jim waved, and the door to the black car that had been following them the past 43 blocks popped out. A driver stepped out with a box, and brought it over to Jim. He set it down on the ground before rushing back to his post.
Jim picked it up. And icebox. Then he opened it, and took out a lumpy metal object.
“I,” Jim started, stopped, and sighed. Sucked at his teeth with his tongue. “Look, you’re not going to want to see me after this so, just.”
He grabs Mycroft’s arm, holds out his hand, and plops the lump right into it.
“I’ll just go,” Jim said. Dropping his hands. He cleared his throat, looking anywhere but at Mycroft, and then picked up the icebox and headed toward the car.
Mycroft was still staring at the tinfoil-wrapped hunk of ice as Jim left, staring like he couldn’t quite remember where he’d seen this before.
Jim stops at the door of the car, giving him another look.
“Don’t think over it too long. Anthea said um. You shouldn’t be without it for too much time, or you’ll get stuck that way,” he said, and then he got into the car.
.
Monday morning rolled around and Mycroft Holmes was back at the seat of government. In his office. Surrounded by assistants and analysts and lawyers.
He was again reserved, stately, and terrifyingly efficient.
At a quarter to noon, he pressed the intercom button on the desk phone.
“Anthea? Please come into my office.”
Then he stared at the door, prepared to meet his fate.
.
“You cursed me,” Mycroft said.
Anthea sat in seat across from his desk, looking every bit the young personal assistant he thought he hired. Mycroft squinted, willing himself, perhaps, to see a glimpse of the nebulous creature he’d bumped into in the halls that day.
“Not really,” Anthea said with a half shrug. “I just told you something that was going to happen anyway.”
“And since then you’ve been, what, spying on me?” he accused.
“I needed a day job,” she said. Another half shrug.
“Being a fairy godmother comes with a great pension plan, but I need the disposable income now,” she said, lifting on heeled foot. Manolo Blahnik, suede, Mycroft noted. Hm.
Anthea sighed, before sitting back neatly. Mycroft cleared his throat.
“Excuse me, fairy godmother ?”
“Mm-hm.”
“Aren’t you supposed to, I don’t know, keep me out of trouble then, dry clean on the spot, not ruin my life??”
Anthea looked a bit miffed at that.
“I nudged you straight into the path of true love! Few people ever encounter that throughout entire lifetimes, show some gratitude, will you?”
“True love! I went looney chasing Jim Moriarty across the country in an unsanctioned leave of absence, and then instead of arresting him for any of the very evident crimes committed, I went on an international crime spree with the madman!”
The full extent of Mycroft’s exhaustion started to seep through in his expression, in his posture.
“Do you know what a mess I’ve made? Good god, I’m complicit.” He buried his face in his hands.
Anthea got a bit shifty eyed at that; fairy godmother she might be, but seeing Mycroft suited up and so oddly vulnerable was still...difficult.
“Yes, well,” she crossed and uncrossed her legs, “now you understand the value of a heart, right?”
Mycroft slowly looked up at her, and Anthea gave him a reassuring smile. She positively sparkled .
“You must be joking.”
.
James Moriarty didn’t even make a single blip on Great Britain’s radar for the next few weeks.
Not that Mycroft was looking.
Definitely not.
.
Jim yawned, weaving through passersby on the sidewalk. A gaggle of college students were hanging outside an Apple store, and he sized them up from afar.
“Hey,” he said, holding out some folded cash. “You get me the latest iPhone and there’s enough change you can get one yourself as well.”
The trio of students stared at him, and then the middle on snatched up the cash.
“You run off with that and I’ll get you kicked out of school for cheating,” Jim called after him. “Get me the pink one.”
Three weeks, and this odd sense of melancholy still hadn’t left him. Like there was a shadow lurking he couldn’t shake.
Jim profited off people scheming against each other, but it seemed Mycroft had a talent for pitting them against each other, presence entirely undetected. Scary indeed, even moreso now that he’s seen it in action up close.
Jim missed him.
Ah, well, he thought, catching the box the college student threw at him before running off.
At least he could still play with the little brother. Clever Sherlock Holmes - he’d make for a proper distraction.
.
Mycroft winced, and brought his hand up to his jaw.
John Watson was a very, very bad liar.
Wherever these missile plans were, Sherlock was not anywhere near them, not matter what his brother’s flatmate was trying to convince him of.
.
“Sir, your brother seems to be playing a dangerous game.”
Mycroft looked up at Anthea in the doorway, and squinted. One minute she was some terrifying otherworldly being sent here to ruin his life, the next minute she was his very competent and tight-lipped assistant.
It was hard not to trust her.
“Is he now?”
“We think he’s made contact with Moriarty,” she said.
Mycroft’s blood ran cold, just momentarily, before heating back up to normal temperature yet again. It happened every so often these days; he was still getting used to the whole ice thing. Sherlock’d not have to deal with it for another seven years or so, if at all.
“How certain?”
“He’s been running after hostages strapped to bombs all day, but he’s just now posted a message about Carl Powers, sir. We cross referenced the term - from Sherlock’s files, to the database.”
Mycroft bit back a sigh, and dismissed Anthea with a nod.
He’d give it a few hours before he resorted to - to.
.
“Take it,” Sherlock said, hand extended.
“Huh? Oh! That!” Jim said, waltzing past John and snatching up the flash drive. Didn’t quite feel as satisfying as he hoped.
“Boring!” He shook his head. It just wasn’t the same . “Could’ve gotten them anywhere.”
It wasn’t like a normal breakup, Jim thought, there were no possessions to trash or burn. He threw the stick into the pool, and watched it flutter pathetically to the bottom of the pool.
“Sherlock, run!”
And then came Sherlock Holmes’s pet, grabbing him in a bid to get his friend to safety.
“Good! Very good!” Oh the pair made for a lovely distraction indeed.
So pleased Jim was with the distractions he had half a mind to let them leave. He wondered briefly if Sherlock had the same affliction as his older brother, if his heart was nothing but the kind stuffed toys had too. But no, it seemed not.
“Ciao, Sherlock Holmes,” he said, a bit sour about it. The more he thought about it, the worse it felt, and then Jim was turning on his heel yet again to march straight back in there and give the death orders.
“Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive, stayin' alive
Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive”
“Ugh . D’you mind if I get that?” Jim said, pulling out his phone without even looking.
“Hello?”
“Jim Moriarty.”
“Yes, of course it is. What do you want?”
“Just to meet.”
“SAY THAT AGAIN,” he shouted into the phone. “Say that again, and know that if you’re lying to me, I will find you and I will skin you.”
Mycroft held his phone away from his ear and gave it a funny look.
.
Mycroft held his umbrella overhead as the coffin was lowered into the ground. Around him, black-clad government workers moseyed around, this and that well wishes were passed, et cetera.
The man beside him bumped shoulders, and Mycroft turned ever so slightly to look.
“This is an awfully mobster cliche, isn’t it?” Jim asks, voice low and coat collar upturned.
Mycroft smirked at that.
“What can I say, you inspire such dramatics in me.”
Jim still looked wary and ill at ease, but curious nonetheless. He was going to get himself killed that way, some day.
Mycroft swallowed. His heart leapt, and he told it to stay still.
“I did a lot of. Things. The past few weeks,” he started.
Jim snorted. “Things. Yeah, yeah if you want me to keep shut about your little crime spree you don't have to worry. I've put it behind me, burned your belongings, and all that.”
“You leave my brother out of this.”
“Your brother? He's his own man. You leave him out of this.”
Mycroft pursed his lips and gave Jim an angry look, which Jim returned with defiance in equal force.
“I've missed you, you know,” Mycroft said suddenly, deflating and taking all the tension out of the moment.
Jim rocked back on his heels, needing a moment for the shock. There were a million possibilities here, from Mycroft luring him in to trying to play him to keep quiet. His ever-calculating mind immediately set out on the probabilities, before Jim threw them all away a split second later, launching himself at Mycroft, pulling him down for a kiss.
Mycroft flailed, momentarily off balance, and then went willingly.
“Psst!” an angry bureaucrat hissed from behind the two. “This is a funeral! Have some respect!”
They broke apart and Mycroft opened his mouth.
“Save it,” Jim said in a rush. “I've got a car just down there.”
Mycroft nodded.
.
“I'm not. I'm not doing any of those things again.”
Jim dragged himself up from the tangle of sheets and stared down at Mycroft.
“Are you insane? That was amazing. You didn't think that was amazing?”
“What? I meant the. Coercion, the espionage. At least not for you, I mean. I did a lot of horrible, terrible things with you and for no good reason at all. As fun as it is being with you, I won't indulge in your day job.”
Jim gave him a long, bewildered look.
“I've fucked the vocabulary out of Mycroft Holmes.”
Mycroft huffed.
“It's like you've completely forgotten how to string words together, it's extraordinary.”
Mycroft rolled his eyes and pulled Jim back down.
“Oof.”
Jim contented himself letting Mycroft for a few moments, and then looked up at him with some trepidation.
“Are you sure I gave you back the right one?” he asked.
“Hm?”
“The heart, are you sure, when I gave it back, that it was the right one?”
Jim asked with such seriousness that Mycroft could only stare back with incomprehension. Did the man have a side hobby just going around, stealing people's hearts?
“I mean, I didn't by any chance, and I still don't understand how this works, you'll have to explain it to me later what exactly you are if not human, but I didn't get it mixed up and give you mine instead, did I?”
And then it finally dawned, and Mycroft laughed.
And laughed, and laughed, even as Jim swatted him with flushed cheeks, until his stomach hurt.
“No, no,” he said. “This one is definitely mine.”