Baker Street Boys

27

//NO WARNING APPLY//

 Sherlock can go into heat, but still identifies as asexual.

"What are you planning to do, then?" John asks. It's Sherlock's first heat since they moved in; there's no reason John wouldn't ask. Curiosity is good, Sherlock tells himself. If only John would apply it to something other than sex.

John's home from the clinic early, after a boring day prescribing antibiotics when he could have been examining a corpse. He looks over when Sherlock walks in, nostrils flared. "You're going into heat," he says. "Tonight, probably."

It's casual. Small talk. It's not like it can be ignored, after all. Lestrade glanced at him earlier, after he'd finished with the body John refused to leave work to see, and said, "Nothing for the next week, eh?"

But Lestrade knows him, has known him for years, and has grasped the concept of none of your business. And he's a beta.

John isn't.

"Yes," says Sherlock. He'd hoped he'd have a bit longer. Months, maybe. He's never been regular. Once he had an anestrous year, but he was in rather terrible physical condition then.

"Inviting a friend over?" Most omegas work out some sort of arrangement like that, now that there's birth control. A week of insatiable arousal is not fun, as Sherlock knows very well. It doesn't have to mean anything, he's been told.

"No."

"What are you planning to do, then?" John asks. It's Sherlock's first heat since they moved in; there's no reason John wouldn't ask. Curiosity is good, Sherlock tells himself. If only John would apply it to something other than sex.

"Lock the door." He gives it his most scornful tone, the one where he doesn't even need to say obviously.

"Oh."

There are two ways it could go, now. John could drop the subject, and everything Sherlock has observed of his un-alphalike behaviour suggests he will. Not to mention his attraction to that beta woman at the clinic.

Or he could offer his services.

John drops the subject.

Sherlock sets up insulation around the bedroom door and an inward facing fan in the ensuite and is, as always, quiet.

*

Two months later Sherlock is in the middle of a long and wonderfully complicated case involving a missing businessman last seen in a drug dealer's flat, with no body and an obvious suspect who can't possibly have killed him. He's focused on the case, and so doesn't realize anything's wrong until he's talking to the disappeared man's wife and notices John staring at him as if he can't look away, licking his lips every few seconds.

He considers possible reasons for this and then curses himself for an idiot and scraps the deductions he'd made based on the wife keeping the heat on into June. She's an omega too; no wonder she's been acting so pleased about surprising him. She subconsciously wants to have an advantage over him now, just as John wants something else entirely.

Not enough time to finish this properly. Not even enough time to stabilize all his experiments at home. How ridiculous all this is. He wraps up the interview quickly and leaves. John catches up to him, saying, "Sherlock, you're -"

"I know, I lost track of time," says Sherlock, and something about the phrase sparks an idea in his mind. He stops in the middle of the sidewalk.

"What is it?" says John, coming closer. Far too close. "Are you all right? Dizzy?"