Another one for an arbitrary-aubergine prompt: "3. Mycroft’s car breaks down in the countryside. There are cows and/or sheep." This is all I'm giving you, too. Also: bulls are not cows. Bulls are males, and have horns. And you usually don't have more than one, although you might have quite a few cows, which are the girls who give milk. Got it? Ok.
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“There’s a tree.”
There was a sigh on the other end of the line. “You do know about GPS. I don’t need a description of where you are in order to find you.”
“The tree doesn’t alarm me.”
“So something does.” Greg’s voice was on the verge of a laugh now.
“There are animals.” Another sound on the other end of the line. It wasn’t meant to be recognizable, but Mycroft knew all of the sub-verbal noises that Greg used. “Large animals.”
“What, like a bear? Maybe a lion?”
Mycroft ignored the fact that he was being teased. Proximity to large animals was distasteful enough. “Cows.”
“They scary?”
“The one with horns in the next field might be.”
“No, no,” Greg said quickly. “Stay with the car.”
“I am.”
“Are you inside it?”
Mycroft looked at the field across the top of the car. “No. There is only so long I can sit in a hot car.”
“But what about the scary cows?”
“They will have to take their chances.”
“Do they look like they’re willing to risk it?”
Mycroft turned to face the animals, his back against the door of the car. “Risk it in what way?”
“Pick a fight with you. I don’t know. What do scary cows do?”
“If you mean a rutting bull charging with its head lowered, I don’t think I need to explain. Unless you are far more stupid than I have ever thought.”
“Good God, stay in the car!”
“I didn’t say it was charging,” Mycroft said calmly. “I was answering what, in your words, ‘scary cows do.’”
“It’s not charging?”
“Not as yet. Not even in sight.”
“Then how do you know there is one?” Greg asked, exasperated.
“Because I drove past it five minutes ago.”
He heard Greg take a deep breath, making a show of striving for patience. Mycroft pushed his back closer against the car, staring into the large brown eyes in front of him with distaste. “But right now, you’ve just got cows. No bulls. Nothing with horns. They’ve all got udders, yes?”
“You were born in London,” he sighed. “What do you expect me to do, frisk them?”
“Just look!”
“Basic animal husbandry, Greg. You do not keep the bull in the same field as the cows.”
“Oh, so now you’re all fine with the big scary animals?” Greg’s voice was now full of the sarcasm he used right before giving up.
“We are not going to become friends. I would still wish to be elsewhere.” He raised his leg, setting the flat of his foot against the animal’s shoulder and pushing. It didn’t budge, but did raise its head and turn to look at him, and made a loud sound. “Oh, stop,” Mycroft told it.
“What the hell was that?” Greg gasped. “Are you sitting on an air-raid siren?”
Mycroft rolled his eyes. “Did I not mention the cows?”
This started in a fit of frustration, then got continued in another fit of some kind. It only got finished because arbitrary-aubergine asked for "2. Greg or Mycroft goes on a date." And this kinda fit, so... Dis.
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Mycroft smiled, taking one girl’s hand fondly. “Be kind. She’s on vacation as well.”
“Then why is she reading the newspaper?” another girl pressed, kicking the chair her sister was in and getting a slap in return, and laughing.
“Emma.”
“She hit me!”
On this visit, Jenny had been driving her two sisters across country to meet their father’s yacht. Cambridge hadn’t exactly been on the route, but time didn’t seem much of a priority. Emma and Kate were brighter, happier versions of Jenny, blonder, sillier, and with the confidence of wealth and privilege to back their good skin and long hair. They weren’t stupid, but being seen to do anything as serious as reading a newspaper was definitely not going to pass unchallenged. As the youngest, Kate was expected to stay shallow at least as long as her elders thought that they had. Jenny would occasionally look across a paper’s headlines, if Mycroft left it lying next to her breakfast. Emma routinely binned every paper not actively being read, on principle. What the principle was, exactly, had yet to be discovered.
“I’m reading it,” Kate insisted.
Emma, nearly as tall as Mycroft, set three sweating, ice-laden glasses down on the table, passing one each to Mycroft and Jenny. “Are you sure you don’t want a drink, Kate?”
“No,” from behind the paper.
Mycroft smiled, letting Jenny swing his hand between their chairs. “What are you reading about?” he asked.
“They’re raising £3.2 million for new laboratory equipment -” Kate began.
“Since when are you interested in chemistry?” Emma demanded, still laughing.
“The princes going to be at the announcement,” Kate said.
“A little young for you, aren’t they?” Emma asked.
“We’ll be on the yacht by then anyway,” Kate said calmly. “Anyway, I’m a pacifist.”
“Since when? Shut up!” Emma burst out, kicking her sister’s chair again.
As the bickering continued, Jenny squeezed Mycroft’s hand. He glanced over. “They’re always going to be like this, aren’t they?” she said quietly, her eyes bright.
“Yes,” he assured her. “I’m afraid you’re stuck with them. It could be worse - they could be boys.”
“Yuck!” Emma said, picking up on the last few words. “Did you just call us boys?”
“I said you would be far worse if you were,” Mycroft repeated, his face calm, knowing how to wind up the middle sister.
“Worse? You think we’re bad? She’s only reading the paper to try to impress you!”
“I read the paper every day, at home,” Kate insisted. She still hadn’t set it down.
“Which sections?” Mycroft asked.
“The TV reviews!” Emma cut in.
“And if I didn’t, you wouldn’t’ve known there was a new series of Chef! on.”
“You’re interested in cookery?” Mycroft was surprised.
“No, the comedy! Lenny Henry!”
“Ah.” His eyes drifted back to Jenny. “I’ve not seen it.”
“I know you haven’t been revising,” Jenny teased, twisting his fingers. “So what have you been doing with your evenings?”
“Research,” he said smoothly. “Next term will be busy, as I’ll be spending half of it in London.”
“Shall I be seeing more of you then?” she grinned.
“It depends where you look.”
“Emma, there’s a crossword here, if you want it,” Kate said suddenly.
Jenny let her head fall back against her chair, sighing theatrically. “We weren’t anywhere near each other,” she announced.
“Totally safe to come out, Katie. Are you sure you won’t have a drink?”
“No, I’m fine,” Kate insisted. “I had a soda in the car, remember?”
“Well, at least try mine.”
“I’m not thirsty!”
“Dear Lord, it’s a good thing I was available,” Mycroft interrupted. They all fell silent whenever he spoke. It was possibly a bit cruel to use this, but it amused him. “If the three of you had to drive across by yourselves, there might have been a murder in the family.”
Emma laughed, which was a mark of her infatuation. He knew the bickering was petty and spiteless, more to establish a pecking order for his attention. Jenny was complacent, as the eldest, thinking her younger siblings far too naive for him. Emma only knew one way to seek attention as yet, and that was by being the loudest. But Kate was by far the more interesting. She did seem to be reading the paper, and hadn’t laid eyes on him, to his knowledge, since they had sat down. She didn’t have any kind of chance at actually playing hard to get, but he appreciated the attempt as the most novel.
“Where will you be spending your summer?” Mycroft asked, leaving the question open to all of them.
“We’ll be on the boat with Daddy,” Emma said, stroking a finger down the side of her glass, and licking the water off of it. “As long as we’re within reach of the shore, he isn’t all that concerned about where we go. I’m hoping we’ll get to Portugal this time.”
“Thought you wanted south of France,” Kate said.
“That was me,” Jenny corrected calmly. Mycroft could feel the tension in her hand, however, and the way she didn’t look at him.
“I understood you weren’t joining them,” he said.
“Not for the first two weeks,” she admitted, turning away briefly before glancing at him.
He would disappoint her. She hoped he would give her a bit of encouragement, a plan, some intent. She wanted a decision that he wished to see her, something she could pretend was a promise of exclusivity. There had been no hint of it before, on either side. He had made no promises, implied none, and accepted none. To do so would be folly. She was a rich girl with a good family, no trace of shame nor threat of future embarrassment. She was solid, sensible enough to avoid scandal but not so dull as to go unnoticed. Ambitious, intelligent, correct, reliable, and of only momentary interest to him.
The most important thing, though, was that she hadn’t assumed, but she had asked. She wasn’t so attached to him, then, that she would cry. If she were, she would have tried to manipulate his choice, rather than leaving the question open like this. He appreciated the respect this showed, and it deserved his respect in turn.
“I’ve a friend, near Cannes. His family have a place there. I believe they’ve already gone across for the summer. If you’d like a destination to use as encouragement, say the word.”
She smiled again. It wasn’t sad, but it lacked the sly promise from earlier. She kept hold of his hand, though. “Consider it said.”
It's good! It's a totally different game play to the other Sims games. My laptop is having hot flashes though and kept shutting down so I'm going to clean it out today. Then I'll be able to play properly. :)
