Song for this chapter: Smooth Operator by Sade

London, Borough of Enfield, 1982

Mary's waiting for him outside Hooper's, because of course she is.

Explaining how she found him would just interfere with her air of mystery, Sherlock thinks irritably.

Leaning against the door of the Merc, smoking a cigarette, she barely looks up when he joins her, just continues to hum along to the car radio. Notes tumble out, some New Romantics bollix which Sherlock hates on general bloody principles; Smoke clouds around her face, a face which breaks into a familiar, cheeky grin as she puffs a ring of smoke at him.

He coughs and she laughs.

"Good shag, boss?" she drawls, laughing again when he nods. "'Bout time." She waggles her eyebrows."You must've been gagging for that little agent: You've been so tense-"

"Get into the bloody car and drive," he says, cutting her off and hopping into the back seat. Those last moments with Hooper have left him feeling more rattled than he wants to admit, and his right hand woman's questionable sense of humour isn't helping. "And change that music-"

She gives a jaunty, sarcastic salute and stubs out her cigarette before getting behind the wheel and turning the music higher.

Sherlock cocks an eyebrow at her. "Word is, you work for me," he says.

Her grin turns wicked.

"Some people labour under that misapprehension, boss," she drawls. "They have been misinformed." Despite himself he snorts in amusement. "So, where to? Whitehall?"

He nods, not surprised that she guessed his destination. Like Hooper, she's a great deal sharper than she looks. "Need to talk to the Ice Queen," he tells her. "Make sure the terms of our arrangement still hold."

Mary nods, pulling out into traffic. "Made them nervous, did it? This afternoon's disappearing act?"

He looks at her. "What did you hear about that?"

He can't imagine that Winters let that get about.

"Nothing," she answers, frowning as a bus moves in front of her, blocking her in beside the path. "Just- You. Criminal genius, cutting a deal." She shrugs. "You're only out the length of a fly's fart and you're off the radar."

She turns her attention back to the road, studiously nonchalant. "Sort of thing makes the authorities nervous, no?"

He grimaces. "They can piss their knickers, for all I care," he snaps. "I find Jimmy, and I bring him in. Then it's me and Euri out of jail and that little bastard rotting in Wormwood Scrubs." He pulls sharply at his shirt-cuff, settles back more solidly into his seat. Tries, resolutely, to forget that he can still smell Hooper's perfume on his skin, but he can't. "The authorities' feelings are nothing to do with it," he says, rather than think on it. "Got that, Mary?"

Again that quick grin. "If you say so, boss."

She turns her attention to the road, her demeanour utterly unapologetic.

Sherlock swears, raking his hand through his hair and pushing away a wave of annoyance: Trust Mary to start a conversation she had no intention of finishing up. Truth be told though, he's glad to see her (even if it does mean that his thing for Hooper's not so secret as he'd like it to be). Of all his associates, she's the only one he trusts. Euri had arranged for assistants aplenty over the years- mainly hand-me-downs from her various chattels across the city- but Mary had been the only one who stuck. The only one Sherlock could work with. She was smart, like him. Vicious, like him. Always on her guard, ready with a plan or a knife or a gun. And yet, she had a sense of proportion, when it came to violence: She used it, she didn't let it use her. Sherlock liked that.

He liked the reminder that his sister's way wasn't the only one, that the shark-cage he lived in wasn't the only habitat on Earth.

He also liked that Mary wore her difference proudly, not trying to pretend to be normal: Like him she did what she wanted with who she wanted and sod anyone who didn't like it. Sod the Home Office, even: if he wanted to shag an MI5 agent then he would.

With her skintight, pink hair and men's suits, she was a far cry from the tarts and good-girl wives a man like him normally encountered. Mary was something else, something special. Almost the way that Euri was special. And because she was something else, because they worked well together, it was Mary he talked to when thinking over signing the deal with Whitehall. Mary he had trusted to help him track down Wee Jimmy. (She liked his brother-in-law almost as little as he did, after all, and she was itching to get her hands on him.)

All of which was useful, he thinks now, staring through the window, but not necessarily good.

He taps his lip as he thinks it, annoyed with himself, but forced to allow the realisation nonetheless.

He doesn't like that she was waiting for him outside Hooper's flat.

Because he's gone out of his way to keep Hooper out of it: If Mary was getting the notion that he was stuck on the little agent, well then she might think she had something on him. She might get the idea that she has leverage on him, and that wouldn't do- It wouldn't do at all-

He glances at her in the car mirror, chewing at his lip: there are few people he cares about, but he cares about Mary. It would be a real pity if he had to do something about her-

"Oh stop bloody worrying, boss," she says, pulling him out of his reverie.

He blinks at her, and belatedly it occurs to him how far inside his Mind Maze he'd strayed.

"I'm not going to tell anyone about your little MI5 agent," Mary's saying, "and I'm not going to tell anyone how much you like taking off her knickers, so unclench, yeah?"

And she pulls out another cigarette, lights it as they wait in the traffic at the foot of the Embankment. A copper by the side of the road glances at her askance and she blows him a kiss. Sherlock glares, unhappy that Mary had guessed the direction his thoughts have taken him, but he says nothing.

Some things are, he knows, best kept to himself.

Still, he finds himself a little calmer at the promise: Mary rarely makes promises, and those she does, she keeps.

He supposes that means he can relax for now.

"Just get me to Whitehall," he tells her, leaning over and gesturing for her to give him one of her cigarettes and her lighter. She does, and as he takes his first puff he relaxes somewhat. The smell of the smoke covers the smell of Hooper's perfume, and the smell of the sex.

He leans back in the cab and puffs away, unwilling to examine why he finds that thought so calming- But he does.

Meanwhile,

Inside Agent Molly Hooper's House

Major John Watson steps around her door and glowers down his nose at her.

"Something you want to tell me, Mols?" he asks, holding out a polaroid of Sherlock Holmes hastily exiting her flat, stuffing his shirt into his trousers.

"Well, bugger," Molly mutters. "I suppose you'd better come in."

A/N: Welcome to the latest installment of The Honey Trap Chronicles, which started with "The Trap in the Honey, The Honey in the Trap" by hobbitsdoitbetter (who so skillfully penned this chapter) and was followed up by "Unfinished Business" by yours truly. We hope you enjoy this joint endeavor.