Fifteen Years Later – 1994
"Mycroft, I do wish you would stop trying to force your views on me."
Twenty-one-year-old Sherlock was scowling. Twenty-eight-year-old Mycroft was scowling right back. He'd grown into his weight over the years, so that now he was almost as lean as his brother, all adolescent chubbiness completely vanished – although his younger brother never let him forget his former fondness for pastries and sweets and how it had affected his waistline.
"And I do wish you'd stop trying to deny the part biology plays in your life," he shot back. "You're an Alpha, Sherlock, that has been clear since long before you reached adolescence. Just because you have a higher level of self-control than most others…"
"Including you," was the snide interruption.
Mycroft did his best to ignore the hit – he was Lifebonded to an Omega he'd met through one of the many agencies available for higher level Alphas and had been for three years now – although his irritation was growing. "…doesn't mean you can ignore your body's needs indefinitely," he finished, his scowl deepening as he recognized the stubborn thrust of his brother's chin. "At the very least you should go to a House of Heat and burn off some of the excess energy you've been building up…what, ever since you left Harvard?"
Sherlock's red face told him he'd made a hit of his own that time. "It's been that long, hasn't it?" Mycroft pressed. "You've not been with an Omega since then, have you? And it's beginning to affect more than your temper, I'll wager."
The way Sherlock suddenly refused to meet his eyes answered him more clearly than words. "It's ridiculous," his younger brother finally growled, raking frustrated fingers through his hair. The same mop of ridiculous dark curls he'd had since infancy; why wouldn't he simply give in and chop them off was a mystery Mycroft had never plumbed. "Why should it make a difference if I Knot some random Omega or abstain? I've trained my body to respond to the control of my mind; to have it rebelling like some brainless adolescent at this late stage is utterly confounding!"
Mycroft knew the answer to his brother's protests – but then, so did Sherlock. Yes, biology could be overcome through sheer willpower – to a certain extent. If Sherlock had been a Beta or even a normal baseline Human or, God forbid, one of the rare male Omegas, he could most likely go indefinitely ignoring his body's needs. He could continue to eat only every few days, sleep even less, and forgo sex altogether. However, he wasn't any of those other types of Humanity, he was an Alpha. And as an Alpha there was a great deal his body required despite the mind's demands.
He needed to eat regularly, or else his metabolism went haywire. One low blood-sugar coma in late adolescence had been enough to convince Sherlock of that. He needed to sleep every forty-eight hours at a minimum, or else his senses – even his keen sense of smell, so valuable to an Alpha – became affected.
As for sex…well. The hormones secreted by Omegas helped to balance out a great deal of the aggressiveness and restlessness that was part of an Alpha's nature. And for one as highly strung as his brother, avoiding sex was tantamount to a sort of intellectual suicide. He put it that way, quite bluntly, reminding his brother that the one thing he valued most about himself – his sharp mind – was at risk if he didn't do something. "Drugs will only short-circuit your needs for so long, little brother," he said, making it clear that he understood exactly how Sherlock had been attempting to avoid physical intimacy with an Omega for the past two years. "Eventually the dependency you're fostering will do as much damage to your mind as avoiding sex."
Sherlock, who had been lounging on the chair next to his brother's in the front parlor of the Holmes family estate, rose abruptly to his feet and stalked out of the room. Mycroft sighed and passed a hand over his eyes. Did Sherlock honestly expect him not to notice his drug use? Even though he wore long sleeves and avoided the outdoors as much as he'd embraced it as a child, the pallor and dark smudges under his eyes, the excess jitteriness he exhibited, all told as much to Mycroft's keen mind as did the scent that now clung to Sherlock's body.
He just hoped it was a stage, experimentation his brother would quickly grow out of, grow bored with – or deduce for himself how damaging it could be to his mind. Well, perhaps not that last, Mycroft reluctantly concluded, or else he'd have already given up the damned habit. Which was just another piece of evidence cementing Mycroft's observations, actually; his brother needed to get laid, in the vernacular, or he would continue to fall apart until there was nothing left to him.
Their father's death the year before hadn't helped. Their mother's slow descent into melancholy – clinical depression, they'd call it if she weren't an Omega who'd lost her Bonded Lifemate – was just another nail in his brother's intellectual coffin, as it were. Both events were affecting Mycroft as well, but his own Bondmate had helped stabilize him, keep him grounded.
Even if Sherlock wasn't quite ready for that step, he needed to at least consider the idea of regularly visiting a House of Heat in order to help stabilize his own biology, to reach an emotional equilibrium he quite possibly had never felt. Didn't he recognize the difference in himself between now and when he was shagging the occasional Omega during his two years at Harvard?
Of course, those women had been illicitly provided to the male Alphas rather than belonging to a certified, regulated and government-endorsed House. The equivalent, Mycroft was given to understand, of a Beta or regular Human male seeking out a streetwalker rather than going to a government-run bordello. He understood the adrenalin rush of doing something relatively dangerous, but Sherlock was no longer an adolescent or a student; he'd begun to form some kind of ties to New Scotland Yard and was utilizing his considerable intellect in assisting some of the detectives there in solving their cases.
If he didn't do something about his growing hormonal imbalances, that could be jeopardized as well. Mycroft hoped Sherlock would come to that conclusion on his own, and not need to have it pointed out to him. His younger brother was painfully sensitive to having faults in his thinking pointed out to him.
Mycroft sighed and rose to his feet. All this tedious emotionalism was making him restless; he felt the need for Petra's soothing presence to calm him down. Sherlock, he decided as he headed up the stairs to the rooms he and his Bondmate shared, would have to work things out himself. Mycroft had done as much as he could to help the stubborn git.
oOo
Bloody Mycroft and his bloody, stupid, interfering ways. Sherlock snarled as he paced rapidly back and forth in his bedroom, the scowl on his face fierce enough to frighten anyone away. Not that anyone would challenge him, here in the family home. Certainly not now that their father had gone and gotten himself embroiled in some ridiculous iaffaire du Coeur/i leading to his death at the hands of an enraged Alpha. Even though the Omega in question hadn't been the other Alpha's Bondmate, she'd certainly been his property. Father should have known better; after all, he'd been regularly unfaithful to their mother ever since her inability to bear more children had been revealed.
That, Sherlock knew, was when it had begun. When his carefully ordered world had fallen apart. Mycroft had been away at school, his second year at Eton, when the doctors had given their parents the news.
Sherlock, of course, hadn't been meant to overhear any of it; he'd been out in the gardens with his nanny, a placid Beta named Eve, but had scampered away from her and hidden in the hedge maze. She was still looking for him there when he gleefully snuck back into the house, intent on raiding the kitchen for a treat when his parents' raised voices had caught his attention.
It wasn't unusual to hear Father shouting at something or other that had enraged him, but to hear Mummy's voice raised in anger was an entirely different matter. So he'd snuck over to the front parlor, stopping at the door and listening with wide-eyed attention as the argument escalated.
"We're Bondmates, Giles," his mother was shouting, the clear sound of tears in her voice. "Did you think I'd not know how you felt? How you still feel? For God's sake, it's not my fault! You heard Dr. Sigerson – it's some genetic defect, rare but not unheard of. Why do you persist in acting like I did it on purpose? Don't you think I wanted more children?"
She'd broken down in sobs at that point. Sherlock couldn't help it; he'd rushed into the room, unable to stand the sound of his mother so sad, only to meet his father's furious eyes. "Get out, Sherlock, this doesn't concern you!" he'd all but shouted at his youngest son.
The Alpha in Sherlock, still forming but backed by a strength of will far beyond his eight years, refused to back down. Instead of leaving, he'd gone defiantly to his mother's side – she was sitting on the sofa, rocking back and forth, hands over her face as she continued to cry – and put his arms around her. "You get out," he'd snarled, voice pitched high with his own anger. "You made Mummy cry, not me!"
He and his father had locked gazes; just as Sherlock was about to lower his eyes and admit defeat, his father had, miraculously, thrown his hands up and stormed out of the room.
Mummy had cried for a long, long time after his father left them alone, clutching Sherlock to her as if he were the only thing anchoring her to the world. When she'd cried herself out, she seemed to realize that her son, still so young, was comforting her when it had always been the other way round. She'd managed a smile, kissed him on the tip of his nose and sent him back out to the hedge maze once he admitted that was where Eve was looking for him. "Don't worry her, Sherlock, it isn't nice," his mother had remonstrated. "And thank you for letting me cry all over you, darling. But Mummy's much better now."
She hadn't been; Sherlock had known that even if he still didn't understand all the nuances of the fight between his parents.
But he recognized them now, in spite of his deliberate attempts to distance himself from emotions and sentiment all the distasteful fallout they left in their wake. He knew so much more now than he had when he'd first demanded answers from Mycroft, when he'd been six and so outraged by the fact that his parents weren't legally allowed to marry.
Not that it would have made a difference, he snorted disdainfully. Lifebonding was supposed to be forever, a link between mind and heart, but even that had proven fleeting, transient, when one half of the Bonded pair proved to be inadequate to the needs of the other half.
He didn't blame his mother; how could he? She'd been right, after all. A genetic defect that hadn't been detected – even though all Omegas considered for Bonding with members of the elite went through rigorous genetic testing before being placed, such tests were far from perfect – was the fault of the testing, not of the person being tested. That their father had been unable to hide his rejection of their mother due to the bond they shared only put the blame more firmly on him, in Sherlock's mind.
Lifebonding. The mere thought of putting himself through that kind of hell made Sherlock's blood run cold. How could Mycroft put himself into such a position, after witnessing firsthand the fact that it didn't guarantee anything? Not happiness, not faithfulness…nothing. Lifebonding was supposed to be more permanent than marriage, more binding, but in the end they both proved to be nothing but illusions.
Illusions he would never subject himself to. Yes, he was willing to admit (grudgingly) that Mycroft was probably right about the necessity of Knotting the occasional Omega just to relieve his body of the stresses of simply being an Alpha male, but as for taking one as a Bondmate…No. Never.
Besides, taking a Bondmate, even in this day and age, was still tantamount to taking on ownership of another Human being, which his intellect and much-hated emotions both rebelled against. If Omegas were allowed to vote, to marry, to go out in public without either their mate or a designated chaperone/bodyguard accompanying them, then he supposed he wouldn't feel as strongly about it. However, the world was the way it was, and there was damned little one person could do to change it.
Especially if one's elder brother was part of the government that condoned keeping roughly a fifth of the population in virtual slavery.
He ran over the pertinent facts in his mind, although he refused to admit that he was relieved to be thinking about something other than his personal situation for a few minutes.
There were far more "normal" Humans than Alphas, Betas, or Omegas. Betas outnumbered Alphas roughly three to one, and Omegas were an even scarcer percentage of the population. So scarce, in fact, that the current laws, which had been in place since the Victorian era, actually were designed to protect them, even while serving in actuality to keep them even more circumscribed than orthodox Muslim females in the Middle East.
Omegas had been traded about, sold, forced into near-constant heat cycles by the ruthless Alphas who controlled them, for centuries. The laws forbidding them to legally marry were old, so old that they'd hardened into unbreakable tradition, but the newer laws at least kept them from literal slavery. Unbonded females from the age of fifteen or after their first Heat (some Omega females were fortunate enough not to endure that particular biological torment until their early twenties) were removed from their homes and brought together in state-sponsored dormitories. Once ensconced there, they were thoroughly instructed on the lives they were expected to live – brainwashing, pure and simple, in Sherlock's mind – and how they were expected to cater to the Alphas they encountered from that point forward. They were instructed on childbirth, drilled on their duty to produce as many children as possible (although why that particular need was emphasized, given the world's current state of overpopulation, had always been and probably would always remain a mystery to him), and essentially turned into geishas who were taught to put their own needs far behind those of their potential mates.
And that, Sherlock knew from his research (he'd been fascinated and repelled by the world Omegas were forced to inhabit ever since his attempts to make Mycroft explain things to him when he'd been six and far too young, he admitted now, to understand) was just the life for the Omegas destined to become Bondmates to elite, upper class Alphas. The life his mother had endured, once upon a time. The Omegas who weren't deemed worthy of that type of life for genetic or societal reasons based on their race or age of first Heat and many, many other variables – some logical and some purely prejudicial – led far less comfortable lives. Yes, sexual slavery for Omegas was officially ended, but what had replaced it was no less sickening.
Houses of Heat, as they were commonly called, were no better than brothels in Sherlock's mind. Yes, both were legal and run mostly by the government, but both came down to the same thing: Women selling their bodies to multiple men for strictly sexual purposes. Yes, the official line on Houses of Heat was that they were to ensure that all Alphas had the chance to Knot an Omega and therefore keep their innate aggressiveness somewhat in check; yes, they were supposed to be available for Lifebonding and child bearing, but the truth was somewhat less than ideal.
Research Sherlock had conducted – clandestine research, since the government, worldwide and not just in Britain, flatly refused to allow statistics to be gathered in this area except by their own people – proved conclusively, at least to his mind, that Omegas for the lower class produced far less offspring than the government claimed. There were fewer Lifebonds as well, and not just because of the disparity between numbers of available Alpha males and numbers of available Omega females.
It was nothing less than an outrage – and one Sherlock had found he was absolutely unable to interest more than a handful of people in discussing. His friend in London, John Watson, was one of those few. DI Lestrade of New Scotland Yard was another. It was somewhat of a relief, being able to discuss his frustrations with the two other men – one a middle-class Beta and one an equally middle-class Alpha with a Beta wife who couldn't be faithful if her life depended on it, although Lestrade certainly had no interest in Sherlock ever pointing that out to him again – but still frustrating since neither of them had any more of an idea how to change things than he did.
He sighed and stopped pacing, throwing himself into one of the armchairs flanking his room's fireplace, staring moodily into the dancing flames. This absolute inability to change anything about his society in this one aspect was one of the other reasons he shied away from sentiment. If he could do nothing to ease the plight of Britain's Omegas – many of whom, he knew, would violently disagree with his labeling of them as downtrodden – then what was the use of feeling much of anything? Oh, friendship was, he'd reluctantly learned, something quite a bit more valuable than he'd believed it to be, especially since he'd met John, but love? Romance? Ridiculous. Pointless.
Which left only sex. His brother, of course, had been smart enough not to try and press Sherlock into seeking out a Bondmate, only in relieving himself sexually. And at least the Houses of Heat that would be available to him as an upper class Alpha would be the types to care for their Omegas meticulously. They would be somewhat educated, sophisticated, beautiful, impeccably groomed…and deadly dull. Boring as dishwater outside of their Heat cycles.
But then, since he had no desire to Bond, what did it matter? In fact, he thought recklessly as he jumped back to his feet, what the hell did any of it matter? The world was what the world was, and there was nothing he could do about it. So why not just give in and do as his brother advised? A good fuck wouldn't solve everything, but it would definitely help with his restless aggressiveness.
"Fuck it," he said aloud, heading for his bed and pulling his suitcase from beneath it. He slammed it down on the dark blue comforter, opened it and began throwing the clothes he'd brought with him for the weekend back into it, even though he'd just arrived a few hours ago. Once he made up his mind, he immediately followed through. Mummy would be disappointed, of course, but he'd been disappointing her ever since dropping out of Harvard; why change things now? Especially since there was absolutely nothing he could do to bring her out of her depression. Nothing short of his father's miraculous return to life could help an Omega who'd lost her Bondmate – even if said Bondmate hadn't been a physical part of her life for years.
A/N: Well, there's Part 2. Part 3 (the longest bit where Molly actually makes an appearance) will be posted shortly. The 2nd half of the story is still under construction but won't be long, promise!