AN: So. My first multi-chaptered Sherlock fic. Let me say upfront that I have no idea how often I'll find the time to update this, and it's likely to be highly irregularly. I'm working on my MA thesis right now, and any fanfiction I write is exclusively as a way to relax. I will finish this (the rough draft is already done), but there's not telling when. It shouldn't be long, though – the story is relatively short (12 chapters or so).
Anyway, I hope you'll like it. As is usual for me, I went with the realistic approach – if Mycroft found someone, how would it most likely come about? This is what my mind came up with as an answer to this question...
I don't own them. Or not him, certainly.
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As Miss Taylor was putting a report on his desk, Mycroft's eyes shot up and caught her cleavage. It was a very modest one, but enough to keep his attention for a couple of seconds. Internally, he sighed. It was time again.
„Miss Taylor," he said, „I will need the car again tonight."
„Of course, sir. Where are you going?"
„To town."
She just nodded and turned to her blackberry. He tied up all the work he had planned for the day, then rose, changed and exited the office, his assistant following him without a word. The car was waiting and without him having to say anything, the moment he got in, the wheels started to turn.
They were passing through the brightly lit town centre, Mycroft looking speculatively out of the window. It was around midnight and the evening crowd was beginning to thin slowly. Finally, he saw what he wanted. "Here," he said, and the driver obligingly stopped.
It was these evenings that Mycroft always regretted that his brother was the better actor of the two of them. Part of it, of course, was that Mycroft disliked acting so much – even pretending to be expressive seemed repulsive to him. Yet it had to be done, unless he wanted to end up like his brother in that embarrassing Bond Air affair. It was fairly obvious, really, and only Sherlock's absurdly inflated ego could make him miss this: if you repressed something, it was just going to show somewhere else. They were fairly extraordinary, the Holmes brothers, but they were still, regrettably, only human.
Mycroft entered the bar and it took him only a couple of seconds to spot a woman suitable for his needs. There was a wine glass in front of her, and she was currently being chatted up by a man, but she obviously didn't find him entirely satisfactorily – apart from all the other clues indicating that, she wouldn't be still sitting there otherwise, since this woman went out that evening for only one reason. A reason that suited Mycroft perfectly, as it was.
"May I?" He asked.
She smiled at him dazzlingly. "Of course, love."
The man on her other side started to protest, but Mycroft just looked at him scathingly. "Given your state of health, I wouldn't recommend you bother the lady any longer. Spreading infections knowingly is actually against the law, you know. You could get in serious trouble for that." He paused. "I have a very good memory for faces." And he raised his eyebrow.
The man muttered something incomprehensible and disappeared. The woman smiled again and said: "Your place or mine?"
Mycroft blinked twice. That made her smile even broader.
"I am the only woman in the bar that is clearly indicating by her clothes and body language that she is here for a one-night stand. If you noticed this guy's syphilis, I'm certain you noticed that. And you headed straight to me. And I like you. So?"
"My place." It was always his place, of course. Going home with an unknown woman was too risky. Not that they were really going to his home – but they were headed to a suitably impersonal flat that was in Mycroft's property.
As they got into a taxi and Mycroft gave the address, he turned to her and asked, indulging his curiosity: "If you knew he had syphilis, why didn't you send him on his way sooner?"
She shrugged. "It is marginally more amusing to sit in a bar being chatted up than to be alone, and it makes me seem more attractive. Besides, I might have gone with him if no one else appeared. Obviously there was no way I was going to touch any part of his body unprotected, but there are things we could have done and been reasonably safe. It was preferable to doing this again tomorrow, honestly."
Mycroft knew precisely what she meant. "It is very time consuming, isn't it?"
She nodded. "That's another reason why I went straight to the point with you. I could see you wouldn't really mind. And I so dislike wasting time."
They arrived to the flat, and she looked around curiously. "Nice," she said. "I'm glad you said we can go here. I have a place like this, naturally, but I'm afraid it's much smaller and less stylish." She raised her eyebrows. "It seems I've caught myself quite a fish today, if you'll forgive the uncomfortably ownership-implying metaphor."
During the speech, she followed him to the bedroom, getting out of her clothes on the way.
"It is quite all right," Mycroft replied, unbuttoning his trousers. "I am rather intrigued with my catch today, too." Apart from all the other things, it was interesting how she immediately spotted that this wasn't his real flat. 'A place like this,' indeed. But then again, he'd known she was observant since the moment she spotted his intention for the night in his body language. Identifying the syphilis could have just meant she was a doctor, but reading body language that easily was another thing entirely.
In response to his comment, she just laughed a little as she got out of the last piece of her clothing, and then she sprawled on the bed and looked at him. "I trust you understand that I need to get something out of this, too?"
"Naturally."
"Good."
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Afterwards, he let her have the shower first like the proper gentleman he was. While she was absent from the room, he pondered her. He was actually mildly intrigued, which didn't happen to him often. It was a good thing that he had such a good memory for faces, because he suddenly discovered that he wanted to know who she was. Just for curiosity's sake. Not that he planned to see her again – that would be absurd, actually, and would defeat the entire purpose of this – but he wanted to know.
He couldn't deny that she was very pleasant company, though. By the time his turn in the shower was over, she was already dressed and fully prepared to leave. No need to invent stories about early morning obligations to get her out. How very comfortable. When he met his car at the exact place where he'd left it, it was only a little over an hour since they had.
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The next day, it wasn't a difficult task to create her likeness in the police program for identification, and it was an even easier one to search the photo database for her look-alike. What he found, however, threw him off balance significantly.
The question was: was it a coincidence (but the Universe was rarely so lazy) or did they intentionally try to find him? And if so, why? He hadn't told her anything, he didn't indicate anything, she couldn't have seen anything, he knew that – it was entirely pointless. Was it some sort of preliminary experiment, or what?
He needed to know, and this time for serious reasons, not just out of curiosity – though thank God for that character trait, without it, he would never have realized.
He was just about to find her and send his people for her when his phone vibrated. The message read: "It would be nice if you could ask your people to let me in." Attached to it was a photo. Her photo.
So she had known. It had been intentional. He turned to Miss Taylor. "There is a woman outside, trying to gain access to my office. Let her in."
When his assistant came back in company of another woman, he blinked. Last night, he had sex with a black haired, dark eyed woman with crimson lips, in bright red dress, with huge eyes and cleavage that could make men faint. The woman who entered now was dressed in a perfectly fitting luxurious beige suit, her light brown hair pulled into a smooth bun at the nape of her neck, blue-gray eyes of unremarkable size hidden behind glasses. Yet there was no doubt.
He had expected this, of course, he didn't go hunting for sex in his three-piece suit either, but perhaps not that the change would be so perfect.
She greeted him with a nod. "Mr. Holmes."
"Miss Ollivier."
She smiled, though that smile was very different from those from last night. "It seems I caught myself a much bigger fish than I could have predicted."
Mycroft returned the insincere expression of mirth and replied: "Yes, that is the pivotal question, isn't it? Did you?"
"We are both asking ourselves the same things, it would seem. May I sit down?"
"By all means."
She did, and continued. "You know I didn't get anything yesterday. It would have been pointless."
"I could say the same about myself. And I don't believe in coincidences."
"Neither do I, much," she conceded, "but then again, is this really such a coincidence? We both appear to have the same approach to sexual encounters, so perhaps it was really only a matter of time till we came across each other."
"London is a big city," he said noncommittally.
"Yes. But the number of bars that stay open this late is limited, and most people go there on Fridays and Saturdays," Miss Ollivier pointed out. "The chances still weren't too high, I admit that, but not as low as it would seem."
"I do confess that I don't see what you could have gained by yesterday's contact per se, but there are always preliminary experiments."
"You keep forgetting, Mr. Holmes, that I am facing the same questions you are."
He scoffed. "Do you honestly believe that I would have gone, personally, for a preliminary experiment?"
She tilted her head. "Forgive me, but I find it hard to interpret that sentence in any way that isn't absurdly self-centred on your part. I know you do your research. You know who I am."
"You could have gone personally because of your superior set of skills."
"The same questions, Mr. Holmes."
It was true. He knew that, of course. He'd hoped she didn't.
It was an impasse.
He could simply choose to trust, of course, but that didn't seem reasonable or safe.
Any kind of pressure was almost impossible to exert.
Another possible approach was repeated contact. That meant increased risk, of course. But he was confident that he could stay as neutral as the night before. And she might not.
"What are your plans for next Tuesday, Miss Ollivier?"
She smiled, the day-smile. "Yes, I think that would be best," she answered a slightly different question. "I have always rather enjoyed the principle of poker, but found the practice boring. Till next week, then, Mr. Holmes, and thank you for seeing me."
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AN: Mycroft was not the virgin brother, so apparently, he sometimes did have sex. When I tried to imagine how he'd go about it, this seemed most likely. Thoughts?
