Trigger Warning: Eating disorder content. No specific numbers or behaviors, but definitely worth flagging.

In any other family, being Mycroft Holmes would have been enough.

He'd learned to read at twenty months, made his way through Machiavelli's The Prince by age five. Graduated secondary school at sixteen with a full scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford—where the professors whispered in half-darkened faculty lounges that they simply did not have coursework advanced enough for this Holmes boy, and wouldn't it be better to offer him a faculty position now before those twats at Cambridge got to him first?

In any other family, Mycroft would have been the smart one. Would have been the child whose parents trotted him out at dinner parties to do something precociously clever, like differential calculus, or Latin.

But Sherlock was smarter, would always be smarter. Sherlock and his deductions, his parlor tricks. His total inability to tell when your parents' friends were watching you like a creature in a zoo, one that might fling its own shit as soon as deduce your blood type from the dust on your lapel.

Sherlock was the smart one. And Mycroft was left to find another role to fill. He could not be the artistic one. Was certainly not the athletic one. Didn't have a hope in hell of being the charming one. So he settled into the only niche his younger brother had given him, the only role in the family left for him to play.

The fat one.

It felt, somehow, like what he deserved.

#

"Mike, you coming?" James called over his shoulder.

He'd already lit up a joint, letting the smoke curl out from between his thin lips. Though he smoked comparatively rarely, Mycroft found the scent of pot comforting at this point. It smelled like James. Like midnights spent stargazing on the roof of the Bodleian, sleep-deprived and arrogant, arguing over the existence of God. Like waking up hungover and naked in someone else's dormitory ten minutes before an exam and knowing you'd still pass, because that's what you did when you were Mycroft Holmes, you got places on time and you took exams and you passed them.

"No," Mycroft said, hanging back at the edge of the rugby pitch. His whole head buzzed between his ears, though he hadn't touched the joint. He sighed. It had been doing that, on and off, for almost a week.

James stopped walking and glanced back. His flop of brown hair, half obscuring his eyes, did not remotely mask his scowl. Mycroft was younger than James by two years, but he couldn't help thinking how much James looked like a child, when he scowled like that.

"What, you reckon I'm gonna smoke the whole lot myself?" James asked.

Mycroft shrugged. "It's Siblings Weekend."

James stared as if Mycroft had just proclaimed it to be the Tibetan Day of the Dead. "And? What do you care, Mr. Every-Christmas-At-School Holmes?" he teased. But James already knew the answer. Had to—he wasn't an idiot. Mycroft wouldn't have tolerated his company if he were.

"My little brother," Mycroft said. "Mum's decided to leave him with me until Sunday." He rounded his shoulders slightly and pressed his hands deeper into his pockets. Maybe if he kept them there, James wouldn't notice how badly they were shaking. "Think I'm meant to be a good influence."

James raised an eyebrow, mentally already in another world. Mycroft could feel him drifting away across the pitch, to the crook in the arm of a willow tree where he could smoke until the whole world sparkled. Where no mother or brother would ever interrupt him. Where, today at least, Mycroft could not follow.

"You? Christ. If you're the good influence, he must be a fucking axe murderer."

Mycroft smiled, a smile thin as the smoke billowing again from James' mouth.

"Close," he said.

#

Mycroft didn't remember when he'd made the decision. It hadn't felt like a decision at the time, really. The way nuns didn't decide to be nuns, or geese didn't decide to up and leave in November to shit somewhere warmer for a few months.

It went like this. He woke up on Boxing Day—the second Christmas gone at Oxford during which he had not called his mother, and she had not called him—and he knew, as he knew which way was north, that he could not eat.

He tried, at first. Looked at the packet of miniature Mars bars his roommate Stephen had gotten him from Tesco as a Christmas present. A pathetic present, he'd thought then, and thought now. £1.99, the price sticker still on the side even. But even as he considered it, he felt—

At first he couldn't tell what he felt.

Disgust, perhaps, at the reflection he knew would meet his eyes if he'd gotten in front of a mirror. A fat stupid little boy. A failure.

Shame, for being what his parents always said he was, what other children had always taunted him for being.

Later, as he came to sit with the sensation, let it simmer between his ribs, he would learn that neither of those feelings were correct. It was not disgust, and it was not shame. It was fear.

But no matter how many times he nudged slipping jeans back up over shrinking hips, or stitched together half-assed excuses to skip out of meals, he would never quite know exactly what he was afraid of.

After a few weeks, the fear settled so deeply into his stomach that he no longer even felt hungry.

#

"Holmes! I say, Holmes!"

Halfway down the corridor toward the library, Mycroft glanced over his shoulder. He got his fair share of taunts at Oxford—being a twenty-year-old in doctoral-level macroeconomics didn't have the same effect on popularity as captaining the football team—but these days it was hardly usual to be shouted at from the opposite end of a building.

Spotting the source of the voice, he stopped. Professor Spencer, a threadbare-looking old man who taught Mycroft's course on Weimar political theology, limped as quickly as he could to close the gap between them.

"Professor," Mycroft said as the man wheezed slightly, catching his breath. "Everything all right?"

"Oh, quite all right," Spencer managed. "I merely…wondered if you would have time to…take tea with me this afternoon?"

To his own surprise, Mycroft wished he did. This eccentric old man had been one of the first—other than James—to be kind to Mycroft, at whatever size he was. And with the political science professor's connections in MI6, well… Under other circumstances, even the fear would not have kept Mycroft from an invitation like that.

He smiled, hoping the gesture looked genuine. "I wish I could, Professor. But I'm already late. Siblings Weekend."

The surprise coloring Spencer's features was sharp, brief, and vaguely insulting. "Ah yes, of course. Forgive me. I didn't know you were expecting visitors. Are your parents coming?"

Mycroft shook his head, casting about for a diplomatic way to say that his father was out of the country and his mother couldn't be bothered. If he couldn't even manage a piece of discretion that small, he would never make it anywhere in government.

"Just my younger brother, Professor. For the day."

Spencer's eyes lit with sudden understanding, making him look ten years younger. Mycroft had seen that look come over others at the mention of Sherlock's name hundreds of times. Each time he saw it, it made him want to put his fist through a wall.

"Oh yes, little Sherlock Holmes. I was just speaking to the headmaster about him yesterday. His scans and test scores are completely unprecedented. Right little genius, isn't he?"

"Yes," Mycroft said, turning to go. "I expect so."

"Holmes?"

With an expansive sigh, Mycroft turned round again. "Yes?"

Spencer, formerly so effusive in Sherlock's praise, now seemed to have lost his way with words. Quite abruptly, the professor was unable to meet Mycroft's eye.

"Stephen Harper told me you…took ill, last night. In the residence hall lavatory."

Mycroft scowled at his hands—the damn things would not stop shaking. The next time he saw Stephen, he would punch him square in the nose.

"He's quite worried. As am I."

"I'm fine," Mycroft said shortly. "Just a bug."

"Holmes, forgive me, but, well…you've lost a great deal of weight this term."

Mycroft's gaze turned icy. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

"That was the point, Professor," he said, and again turned away. "Now, if you'll excuse me. I am quite late."

#

When he saw Sherlock from across the library, Mycroft felt as if someone had cut his legs from under him with a scythe. He almost stumbled, but aggressively snatched back his composure just in time.

You're joking.

Mum had made the problem quite clear over the phone. She'd described the rehab stints, the hospital visits, the late nights and manic spells and the police bringing Sherlock home at four in the morning half-unconscious and soaked through from rain. Mycroft knew the situation was serious. He hadn't expected Sherlock to be doing gymnastics in the library.

But no one had bothered to tell Mycroft that Sherlock was Thin.

With a capital T, the kind of Thin that made you stare a little too long, think a little too much, pretend a little too hard. Sherlock looked like he'd been put together the night before out of matchsticks and chewing gum. And Mycroft hated him for it.

He almost turned and left on the spot, but Sherlock had caught his eye, and there would be no escaping now. Hesitantly, Mycroft took a seat opposite him. His stomach growled loudly. Sherlock noticed, of course, he spent every second of his life in a state of noticing things, but he did not seem to care.

"Mycroft," Sherlock said. His extraordinary intellect notwithstanding, he still managed to pack his brother's name with as much boredom and disdain as the average sixteen-year-old off the sidewalk.

"Little brother."

Sherlock's eyes lazily scanned Mycroft's body, starting at the table and sweeping slowly up toward his face. Mycroft wondered if the dope had slowed his brother's electric-fast brain, forcing him to make deductions at molasses speed.

"Putting on weight again?" Sherlock asked coolly.

Mycroft's mouth tightened. He folded his arms across his chest, equal parts protection and confrontation. "Losing it. In fact."

"Right. Sorry. It's been a while."

It had. Three years. Mycroft would have given anything to make it longer.

"What do you think of Oxford?" Mycroft asked, pointedly changing the subject.

Sherlock glanced pointedly over Mycroft's shoulder. Other, normal students, welcoming other, normal siblings. Smiling. Laughing. Parents, too, though they seemed artificial to Mycroft, acting out the archetype of what they thought mothers and fathers ought to be. A pair of professors in tweed and corduroy respectively, talking about Descartes near the door.

"Bit dull, isn't it?"

Mycroft bit his tongue, but the pain did not stop his brain from forming words anyway. "Perhaps we should all shoot up heroin and piss on a police car. That would liven things up."

Sherlock did not take the slightest offense. He stretched his taut back, arching it away from the wooden chair like a languid alley cat. The movement shifted the position of his sweatshirt, and Mycroft could see the punctures of track marks skating upward along the veins in his wrist. He cleared his throat and self-consciously tugged his own sleeves down to the first knuckle.

"You don't want to be here, do you?" Mycroft asked.

Sherlock might not even have realized he was sneering. His face seemed to arrange itself naturally that way.

"Not at all. And you don't want me here either."

Mycroft found himself staring at his brother's wrists instead of his eyes. "Not like this, no."

It wasn't a lie, not exactly, but it wasn't what he'd meant either. Mycroft wouldn't have welcomed any iteration of Sherlock, at any time. However his little brother transformed, he would still cast a shadow at once too narrow and too wide to overcome.

It wasn't charitable. It wasn't even particularly rational. But Mycroft's empty chest and humming mind had nothing but disdain to serve up to this strung-out, stretched-out version of his brother. And Sherlock was just hollow enough to take it.

Mycroft frowned and stood up from the table—after a petulant moment, Sherlock did the same. He'd always been rubbish at being alone with Sherlock, really. It was like trying to entertain a highly irritable encyclopedia. But sitting here letting his anger boil through the vents in his ribs would get them nowhere.

Sherlock followed him out into the corridor, both hands in the pockets of his sweatshirt.

"You're smoking pot now, are you, Mycroft?" he asked, a note of interest entering his voice for the first time.

Mycroft did not even dignify that question with eye contact. "Judge not, lest ye be judged."

"Judge? I'm not judging. It's the first time you've ever done something human." Sherlock jogged a few paces to catch up to Mycroft, tagging along beside him. "But it's not yours, though, is it."

Sherlock paused, and Mycroft could see the cogs and gears of deduction cranking behind his eyes. In his death's-head face, it looked more like madness than observation.

"It's clearly cannabis, the smell is obvious, but it's good quality. You wouldn't spend money like that on yourself. And…and that's cologne too, isn't it. Barely, but it's there. Sandalwood, maybe. Not something you'd ever wear, you've hardly brushed your hair, for God's sake, you don't care what you look like. But someone you've been close to does. And—"

Sherlock didn't need to finish the sentence for Mycroft to know what he'd spotted.

Sherlock's too-bright eyes travelled to Mycroft's blazer, which a person paying careful attention would notice did not fit well, and in the most peculiar ways. Not the kind of misfit from losing weight, everything too loose all the way round, but too small in some places and too big in others. An item of clothing clearly tailored for someone else, picked up off the floor when getting dressed quickly would save scandal and running to your own room for a proper jacket would take too long…

Sherlock whistled. "Well, Mycroft. That is interesting."

Mycroft scowled. To his relief, he had somehow managed to keep the color from rising to his face. "Don't do that."

"Do what?" Sherlock asked.

"That. It's obscene."

"I'm not doing anything. I'm just looking. I admit, I thought you were only attracted to toffee pudding, but—"

"Shut up."

Mycroft tried lengthening his stride, but over the last year or so his wind had gone to hell in a handbasket. Sherlock easily kept pace, his matchstick legs loping along like some insufferable gazelle. He pushed the door open, stepping out into the fresh air and relative brightness of the quad. The idea flashed in Mycroft's brain, wild and stupid, of a crook in the arm of a willow tree behind the rugby pitch, but he did not have time for that.

"I don't understand why you won't just say it," Sherlock drawled. "It's obvious to anyone with eyes."

Mycroft spun round to glare him down, shout he wasn't sure what yet, smack the self-satisfied smirk from his brother's skull of a face. And that, he knew immediately, had been a mistake.

Fainting was odd that way. You could almost sense it coming, but there was no way to be certain you'd do it until after you'd already done it. One minute he was glowering down on his brother, lightheaded with what he assumed was anger. And the next he was opening his eyes, lying in the grass, a faint buzzing shimmer dancing like a scrim in front of the world.

Gradually, the sky and grass and walls regained their focus. He could see Sherlock sitting cross-legged in the grass beside him, absently flicking a Zippo lighter open and closed, lit and unlit. The faint scent of flame twitched in Mycroft's nose.

He started to sit up, but the glittering scrim sharpened with a roar in his ears. He groaned softly and lay back again.

Too fast. Apparently.

Stress. You've been letting the anxiety get the better of you. Need to drink more water. Maybe some of those asinine mindfulness exercises James keeps rattling on about.

Even through the fog, he knew that wasn't true. Hydrating and meditation were good ideas, but they wouldn't fix what was wrong with him. Not until he was thin. And who knew when that would be.

He made a mental note—though whether it would stick was anyone's guess—to look up hunger strikes in the library once Sherlock had gone. Gandhi, perhaps, or the IRA. Surely Bobby Sands did not go losing consciousness once or twice a week like a goddamned idiot.

Flick, went Sherlock's lighter.

Slowly, Mycroft sat up and bent his head between his knees. The only comfort he could find was that the quad was empty at this time of day. No one had seen but Sherlock, and Sherlock didn't care.

Flick.

"I'm fine, by the way," Mycroft said shortly, head still between his knees. "Seeing as you asked."

Flick.

"Good," Sherlock said without looking up. "I can't stand funerals. All that sentiment. It's a colossal waste of time."

"When they fish your body out of the Thames, brother, I'll remember your feelings on funerals."

The venom in Mycroft's voice surprised himself. He hadn't thought he had the energy left to be angry. The humming behind his eyes, he was relatively sure, no longer had anything to do with the residual vertigo, but rather from a deep and boiling rage he had not felt in years. Fear he had known. Fear he had sat with for years, learned to navigate, learned to embrace. Anger was new. He rolled it through his brain like the smoke of James' joint, letting it carry his thoughts forward.

"Not that I'd have many people to turn away. Sentiment. How would you know?"

He had stood without realizing it, and suddenly realized he'd misjudged the lack of vertigo. As his vision cleared, Sherlock rose from the grass with the deathly, angular grace of a praying mantis.

Sherlock looked at Mycroft for a moment. Then, with a grim smile, he reached over to pat Mycroft's belly, like a well-behaved dog, like bloody Father Christmas.

"New diet's finally working, Mycroft. Do keep it up."

#

To Mycroft's enduring relief, Sherlock only stayed until Sunday morning. Although the abbreviated visit had obviously not been scheduled with Mycroft's interests in mind, he couldn't help but consider himself blessed. It could have been worse, he told himself sternly. There could have been another full twenty-four hours.

Had there been twenty-four more hours, there also would likely have been a body to bury. Whether it would have been Sherlock's or his own, Mycroft hadn't decided.

He leaned against the wall of his dormitory, a tiny whitewashed room he shared with Stephen Harper. Stephen had cleared out until Sunday evening, though—put off, no doubt, by the idea of sharing a space with his roommate's dope fiend kid brother. Mycroft could hardly blame him.

Sipping coffee from a cardboard cup, he watched silently as Sherlock shoved his things into a knapsack, while their mother continued talking with no awareness of the fact that neither of her sons were truly listening. She, Mycroft noted as if from a distance, had not even bothered to take off her coat.

"And you'll phone your father soon, won't you, Mycroft? He's on assignment in Bratislava, but I've left his number on your desk. Just the other day he was telling me how long it's been since he's spoken to you. Promise me you'll phone him?"

Mycroft closed his eyes, inhaling the feathers of smoke undulating upward from the coffee. The liquid warmed him from the inside, though it did not help the buzzing between his temples. He pressed both his palms against the cardboard and sighed.

"Yes, Mum. All right."

"And sleep, mind you. I'm not supposed to be worrying about your health. You look positively gray."

"Yes, Mum."

"Sherlock? What's that?" she asked, frowning.

Mycroft, following her gaze, frowned too.

Sherlock straightened up, knapsack over one bony shoulder, an off-white envelope in one hand. He smiled. It seemed a distinctly unfriendly smile, though perhaps he was merely out of practice. Extending one arm, he flourished the envelope in Mycroft's direction.

"Campus mail slid it under the door. Didn't think you noticed. Congratulations, I suppose?"

Mycroft's brow furrowed. He couldn't fathom what Sherlock could possibly be congratulating him for, but prior experience gave him a sinking feeling it wasn't anything good. That is, until he looked closely enough at the envelope to spot the subtle government seal embossed on the back. His heart shuddered, jerking against his ribs like a hooked fish.

Sherlock's grin lost a note of its artificiality, though Mycroft suspected most of the pleasure in it came from the shock on his own face.

"Do let me know how that turns out," Sherlock remarked.

Never ones for sentimental leave-taking, the rest of the Holmes family was gone in moments, leaving Mycroft to sink down on the edge of his bed, holding the envelope. He took a bracing gulp of too-hot coffee—whiskey would have done better, but he'd make do with what he had—and slit open the envelope with one finger.

The paper was thick, the type dark and rich, the signature along the bottom clearly done with a pen and not a photocopier.

Mr. Mycroft Holmes,

On behalf of the department of intelligence at the Secret Intelligence Service, I thank you for your comprehensive and exemplary application for the position of security strategist.

While it is highly unusual for my department to make a comparable offer to someone of your age and inexperience, I would nevertheless like to extend the opportunity for you to interview for the position at our London office, 14 November at 10:15 a.m.

Please arrive two hours prior to your interview, as my staff will be administering an extensive questionnaire to ensure your suitability for the position. Rest assured that we have already completed a comprehensive background check and personal inquiry, which you—as you doubtless will infer—have passed.

Again, Mr. Holmes, thank you for your application, and I look forward to discussing your qualifications in person quite soon.

Regards,

Henry Coopersfield
Director, Department of Intelligence
MI6

When Mycroft laid the letter down, his hands were still shaking. For once, he made no effort to hide it.

He was still sitting there on the edge of the bed, holding the letter, coffee turned stone-cold beside him, when James swept in through the door as if the room belonged to him. He glanced around the dormitory, as if expecting to see something other than the usual shabby furniture and faded white walls.

"Ah, damn, I've missed him, haven't I?" he said, thumping down on the bed beside Mycroft. "Baby Holmes the Junkie?"

"Only just." Mycroft did not look away from the letter. Against his will, a small, stupid smile had begun to inch across his face.

James kneed Mycroft in the thigh, a playful bid for his attention. "What's wrong with you, then?"

Finally, Mycroft turned away from the paper. James raised his eyebrows with gentle, polite exasperation, inviting Mycroft to speak.

"I've got an interview," he said finally.

James grinned. "Brilliant. Who with?"

Mycroft bit his bottom lip, though that did not quite stop the smile. "Can't say. It's…classified."

James' eyebrows rose so dramatically they were lost to sight in the flop of his hair. He drew back several inches, looking at Mycroft straight-on as if a slightly distanced view would enable him to spot the lie.

"You're having me on."

"I'm not."

"They fucking didn't."

Mycroft grinned outright. "They fucking did."

James laughed, that same unrestrained, unself-conscious laugh Mycroft had never quite been able to emulate. "Well, no wonder. I knew you'd get it. Of course they want you."

"What do you mean?"

"You're Mycroft fucking Holmes, mate. You're the smart one."

Mycroft looked down, away from the letter, to the gentle shrinking curve of his stomach beneath his shirt.

"No," he said. "I'm not."

#

Mycroft lay awake that night, listening to his roommate's snoring from the opposite side of the room and watching the clock tick away the minutes. Midnight turned to one. One to two. The back of his brain occupied itself calculating how much sleep he could get if he drifted off at exactly that moment.

Five hours, twenty-six minutes. Five hours, eighteen minutes.

The rest of his brain settled on a different thought, one that didn't change with the minutes.

Sherlock has never been worried a single day in his life.

A beautiful way to live, that. Experimenting with the limits your mind could push and your body could sink to, but always pulling away at the last moment. No danger, no consequences. Scientific method, without sentiment.

Four hours, fifty-nine minutes.

Worry had always been Mycroft's job. An emptied-out head stuffed full of straw, buzzing with flies and worry. Worry ate him away from the inside, stripping him hollow until it resonated off every wall, an echo chamber of fear.

Sherlock had the advantage in that respect. The smart one. Born the kind of empty vessel that could swallow the world and still emerge thin and hungry and ready for more.

Four hours, twenty-one minutes.

Sherlock had been born hollow.

Mycroft, on the other hand, had to work for it.