"Mary and Sebastian Morstan. Ever heard of them?"
Sherlock shook his head no.
"They may be after us. You or me. Or Mycroft, possibly. I can't tell." John scrubbed his hand over his face. His fingers still smelled like Sherlock's shampoo. "I really did leave MI6 when I came home from Afghanistan, but apparently it's not that easy to get out."
"Tell me what you know," Sherlock demanded.
And so John did, as thoroughly as possible. Sherlock interrupted with occasional questions, but for the most part he just sat and fixed John with that eerie all-seeing stare of his and listened. He usually only did that when he was truly fascinated with a potential case, so it was hard not to feel a bit flattered. It was rare that any one single thing was capable of catching Sherlock's entire attention at one time. John wound up the (disappointingly sparse) brief and sat back - time to let him do that thing he does. Sherlock's leaps of logic were distractingly sexy, sometimes, but right now John was just happy to get the burden of silence off his shoulders.
"I'll need to see pictures," Sherlock announced. "To assess for any actual familial resemblance. Their whole files, if possible."
"We can probably get one of your brother's minions to ferry them over."
"You have plans to meet Ms. Morstan again?"
John shrugged. "Not as such, but we exchanged numbers and she said she'd call me. I thought it best not to push it until we had a better idea of what they wanted."
Sherlock stared off into space for several seconds, brain obviously whizzing along. "Text her," he said finally.
John glanced at the time on his phone. "It's after eleven - bit late for a text. What would you suggest I even say?"
"Late is fine. Makes it look more spontaneous. Say you had fun today and you can't bear to go to sleep without telling her how much you enjoyed her company."
John stared at his flatmate. "Sherlock, that's . . . I hesitate to even say it, but that's sweet. Actually romantic."
Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Just because I never express the sentiment doesn't meant I'm not capable of mimicking it when necessary. Haven't you ever had to pretend to be in love before? For Queen and Country or whatnot?"
"I . . ." John thought back. "It wasn't really 'in love,' but I did have to maintain a secret relationship once. His name was Aarif, and his older brother was one of the kingpins in that business in Kandahar. He ended up being our best source of information for a while. It wasn't entirely acting, though - Aarif was a remarkably bright omega, considering the restrictive culture he lived in. His family was wealthy enough that he'd been allowed a tutor, so he spoke excellent English and knew more random academic tidbits than I did. Helping him through his heats wasn't exactly a hardship." He'd been a stunningly gorgeous young man, too, which hadn't hurt, although John wasn't about to mention that part aloud-
He broke off that train of thought at the look on Sherlock's face. "What is it?" he asked.
Sherlock hmmed and looked away, obviously embarrassed to be caught showing any sort of emotion. "Nothing."
"It wasn't nothing."
Sherlock grimaced. "Curiosity, then," he admitted. "I was just wondering what it was like."
"Faking being in love? Or sharing a heat?"
"The latter."
God, was that a blush stealing up Sherlock's neck? John didn't let even a hint of what would probably be a damningly fond smile show on his face. "It's . . . there's really no way to describe it, honestly. There's all the fun of sex, of course, but it's somehow more than that. No shame, no worrying about whether your partner is enjoying themselves, because you know they are. You're guaranteed to get off, several times in a row - as often as you can stand to - and so are they. So it's really all about allowing your primitive side to take over. It's . . . freeing, actually. I hope someday you'll be comfortable sharing a heat with someone, even if you don't ever want to bond - there's the obvious health benefits, of course, but it's also just an indescribable experience."
"You did just describe it," Sherlock pointed out. "Rather superlatively, I might add."
"Yeah, well, it's really that good." John couldn't suppress a bit of a nervous laugh. "Your choice, of course - I stood up to your brother to defend that for you - but I'd encourage you to not write off sharing your heat someday just because your brain gets left out of the party for a while. As long as you take precautions - use contraceptives, pick a partner who's not an arsehole, don't bond if you don't want to - you can let yourself go and your brain really just isn't needed."
Sherlock didn't look entirely convinced, but he did ponder that for a while. "The only sex I've ever shared with a partner was my experiment with Victor," he finally said. "It didn't . . . your description sounds completely different."
"Well yeah, obviously. There's a reason you don't hear of omega-omega pairs all that often. I mean, they exist, but our pheromones really aren't designed to work that way. Most omegas who won't or can't pair with alphas prefer to date women so the whole pheromonal thing is moot anyway."
"Which brings us back to Ms. Morstan." Sherlock pursed his lips, clearly done with the whole "sex" topic of conversation. "Text her and then ask Mycroft to deliver the files - I'm not going to bed yet anyway. There's got to be something his minions have missed."
Sherlock was still up when John came downstairs early the next morning. No reply from Mary, but he hadn't really expected one - foreign operative or not, she still had to sleep sometime. Unlike the lanky git currently sprawled over the sofa in his favorite "thinking" pose. A familiar pair of manilla folders lay on his stomach.
"Didn't even hear anyone bring those by," John said.
"Yes you did - you just didn't wake up."
"Same thing." John wandered on into the kitchen and filled the kettle. "Tea?"
Sherlock hummed something which could have been "yes" or could have been "I've deleted the existence of all hot beverages." John got down two mugs anyway, then went to use the loo while the water heated. It would have been too much to ask to get Sherlock to actually stand up and come put the teabags in the water, of course, so John took care of his morning hygiene needs as fast as possible. It didn't take a genius to realize this was going to be a "need caffeine" kind of day.
"So." He set the timer on the tea and wandered back out into the sitting room. "Please tell me you've had some fantastic revelations, because I'm drawing a blank on what to do next."
Sherlock waved one hand vaguely in the air. "No hurry."
"No h- Sherlock, you just had me text her last night. I've got to follow that up with something."
"She didn't answer, though."
"Not yet." John thumbed his phone on and glanced at his inbox anyway, even though he'd already checked it as soon as he woke up. "You think she will?"
"I think the speed of her reply will tell us something about her level of autonomy in this enterprise," Sherlock answered. "If she has to double-check orders with a supervisor - or with headquarters - it will naturally take her a bit longer to respond."
"Can't Mycroft just . . . I don't know, tap her phone or something?"
Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Obviously. Except it's absolutely trivial to detect that sort of manipulation, and if she's worth her salt she won't do anything work-related from the phone number she gave you, anyway. I assumed you'd know this."
"Didn't deal a lot with this sort of espionage," John answered honestly. "I was mostly focused on figuring out what they knew about us - troop movements and such. And then the drug thing. You'd be surprised how efficient a resisting force can be even in areas there's no reliable electricity."
"I wouldn't," Sherlock said, "but I suppose other people would."
John had to laugh at that. So Sherlock. "Okay, that's true. In the meantime, though, what should we do?"
Sherlock smiled and inclined his head toward the kitchen, a split second before the timer beeped. "Start with drinking your tea."
