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Mycroft was taller than Greg—not by miles, but an unmistakable two inches, or perhaps even a shade more. They weighed almost the same amount. Mycroft’s long, lean build and endless diets and exercise ensured that, even if the man lacked Greg’s own sturdy build—all muscle and bone and firm, neat joints. Greg suspected it was an open question which of the two was stronger, either in the abstract or in actual combat application. It would be a hard call: they both had training. They both preferred to avoid having to use that training. In the end, he thought, it was really the height more than anything. That height made a difference, though.
At 5’11” Greg wasn’t precisely what one might consider “short.” Not like John Watson. He was two inches above average in the UK, and he’d made enough arrests and been in enough fights to know the advantage it gave him. Kissed enough women and sleek little twinks to know the advantage there, too: what it was to bend over smaller lovers, wrap them in his arms, curl his body to shelter and adore… He’d felt lovers shiver as he’d gripped the nape of their necks, or cradled their skulls with hands large enough to hold them steady and firm. He knew his own excitement at being stronger, larger, being the bulwark, the palisade, the protector….
It had felt good. God, it had felt good. He could not deny it. He’d loved every moment of strength and male possessive protection his two extra inches bought him.
What he’d never known was what it felt like in reverse.
He shivered in Mycroft’s arms, and leaned into his lover’s chest.
It was evening at the Holmes estate. Early fall, with sunset just creeping back from the late hours of summer. There was a scent of burning on the wind—gardeners just starting their fall clean-up as various plants ran out of steam. He knew what it was because Mycroft had told him. Here, in the country—in Mycroft’s country—he was ignorant. It was through Mycroft that he knew that the lemon-drop gold and soda-pop orange foliage beginning to show in the wood nearby was probably field maple and black poplar. It was thanks to Mycroft he knew the bird chipping frantically as it dive-bombed the mowed lawn beyond the terrace was likely to be a flycatcher of some sort picking up dinner from the fluttering millions of bugs resident there.
His lover was taller than he, and, wrapped in Mycroft’s arms, Lestrade would have sworn his lover felt stronger to him. Heavier than him. More powerful… Yes, in authority and worldly standing, of course, but also more powerful in his actions. His hands felt capable and firm, one curving into the dip of Lestrade’s lower back, the other tucked into his nape, thumb caressing Lestrade’s close-cropped hair.
Lestrade had to look up to steal a kiss, stretch his spine, reach for the stars…
Not that Mycroft resisted. He bowed his head down, matched mouth to mouth, murmured softly before he slipped his tongue between Lestrade’s welcoming lips.
Lestrade had not had a male lover for years. Not a real lover. He’d had a few encounters with eager men when the divorce first came through. He couldn’t recall any he’d have considered a lover, though, nor one taller than him. Nor one who shook him to the bone, made him feel this confusing blend of raging, powerful man and precious little lover. He did—he felt both. There was something undeniably masculine in his arousal, in his sense of himself when he and Mycroft made love. Hell, a million somethings. Some nights he felt himself the taller, in spite of actual height. Some nights he felt the stronger, the more powerful.
Other nights, though, were like this night, feeling dependent and safe in that dependency. With Mycroft he was safe being shorter, smaller, weaker, less powerful. With Mycroft he was loved and protected, and he reveled in it.
They would move soon from the terrace to the sitting room, from the sitting room to the bedroom, putting off their dinner until late at night, when they’d raid the estate kitchen and stir up scrambled eggs and sausage on the vast black beast of a cast-iron cook-top. They’d swill gallons of orange juice, and nibble toast and butter, then scurry back up to bed to sleep in late, having left the cook a note saying not to worry about them until lunch time.
They would lie together in the big bed: Mycroft’s bed, all miles of mattress and sheets big enough to serve as sails for a yacht, made out of carefully chosen cotton. “Not too fine,” Mycroft would say. “No body if the thread count is too high, and it wears out in seconds even with a good grade of long-fiber Egyptian cotton.”
Not that Lestrade cared, except to hear his lover show off once again how much he knew. It was one more thing cradling him close. It was one more sense of being sheltered and looked after.
He was embarrassed what that did to him. He’d grown up blue-collar in Brixton. He’d learned how to be a man on the streets. He’d never given jack about the “rules” of only wanting women—his own gut had insisted from the start that manliness lay in loving who you would, when you would, and to hell with what the mob said was “right.” But he’d swallowed down every last drop of the rules about strength and capability and control. A man took care of others. He never sought care for himself.
Yet here I am, he thought, as they necked on the terrace, here I am, imagining the night ahead. Here I am, hard as a rock and on the edge of tears, all at the same time, because of two inches height and strong arms and a man who knows the perfect thread-count and cotton type to turn sheets into nirvana.
He rocked against Mycroft’s thigh, more excited by the second, as his lover kissed him, curved down to meet his embrace, wrapped him secure in his arms.
In the privacy of his mind, Lestrade chuckled. All filthy implications aside, he thought, size did matter. And he sighed into the two-inch difference, and gave himself entirely to the sense of being safe in his lover’s arms.