Title: "Simple Machines (or, five times Sherlock Holmes lost his virginity, and one time he didn't.)"
Summary: A study of the motion of multiple bodies, and other straightforward problems in practical physics.

Fandom: Sherlock (BBC)
Rating: Explicit
Pairing: Sherlock Holmes/basically everyone (het and slash). Sherlock Holmes/Temperance Brennan (yes, from Bones), Sherlock Holmes/Victor Trevor, Sherlock Holmes/Sebastian Wilkes, Sherlock Holmes/Sally Donovan, Sherlock Holmes/Irene Adler, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson.
Length: ~6500 words
Content notes: Warnings for underage sex, consent issues, and disturbing content. My full warning policy is in my profile, or you can email me with any questions. Also, I would hope that this would go without saying, but just in case: I do not necessarily condone or support any of the things I make fictional characters do or say or think fictionally in fiction. Okay? Okay.
Author notes: For fan_flashworks Challenge #7, "Do-Over", via the sixth amnesty. Muchas gracias to HBBO, Wren, Tora, and The Antidiogenes Club for read-throughs, edits, Britpicking help, and cheerleading, assortedly. All section headings are lightly paraphrased for fluidity from the sources linked.

* * *

Simple Machines
(or, five times Sherlock Holmes lost his virginity, and one time he didn't.)


5. 1987.

A lever consists of a beam or rigid rod pivoted at a fixed hinge, or fulcrum. The lever operates by applying forces at different distances from the fulcrum, amplifying an input force to provide a greater output force, or vice versa.

Temperance is your cousin, Mycroft says, which is true, and just your age, which is false; Sherlock is nearly eight months older, and Temperance isn't even properly eleven yet. Mycroft still expects Sherlock to entertain her, but Sherlock doesn't know how. Then she finds a dead bird and asks if he knows where she can find a shoebox for it. Shoeboxes being inadequate for corpse storage, Sherlock suggests that they put it in the crisper and dissect it together in the morning.

Mrs. Fowler, the housekeeper, is displeased. A week later, based on Sherlock's brief and obviously imperfect research, Sherlock and Temperance appear to be friends.

It's a useful summer, in many ways. Mycroft is in the village constantly; Temperance helps Sherlock narrow the cause down to either Gretchen Partridge or her friend from King's, but they can't resolve which. He helps her with her stealth advances; she helps him with his right hook; and finally they catch Mycroft caressing Gretchen Partridge's older brother in the lane behind the Horrocks's house, thus solving the mystery without the satisfaction of either of them being right. In July, for research, Sherlock kisses her; she kisses him back; over the next two days they conduct extensive experimentation based on encyclopedia reading, with baffling and unsatisfactory results. Then in August Temperance and her brother go home.

Sherlock hasn't ever had a friend before. He understands that he is supposed to write her letters, so he copies out his observational data on his kitchen investigations into sodium acetate reactions; and then, upon reflection, copies out his observational data on Mrs. Fowler's ensuing hysterics, as well. In reply, she writes to him at school, and encloses both a half-pound of boiled sweets and instructions for synthesizing ammonium nitrate. A week later, Sherlock is called in to see the headmaster. Twice.

Sherlock doesn't much care for school. Mycroft informed him that he would find both classes and pupils more interesting than he had heretofore; this, however, turns out to be false. No one here is like you, he tells Temperance in November, in a letter which he writes while tucked into the most elderly of the supplies cupboards in the music room. It's the one advantage of being small for his age: there are a lot of places where no one can follow him. It's little consolation. Sherlock spends his twelfth birthday in the pipe space in the walls behind the third-storey toilets and most of the rest of the winter working on trigonometry and Middlemarch while hiding under his bed. No one here is like you, he had written, in a moment of foolish and ill-advised honesty; but he didn't ever get a reply. All through the winter, Rob Rigby kept stealing Sherlock's letters, and by the time Sherlock got stealthy enough to steal them back, Temperance had stopped writing.

 

4. 1991.

A wedge can be used to separate two objects or portions of an object, lift up an object, or hold an object in place by converting a force applied to its blunt end into forces perpendicular to its inclined surfaces.

Victor Trevor has muscular forearms, liberally spattered with freckles, and a collection of skin mags that he'll show you for five pounds. Victor Trevor has thick, sandy-colored hair and a loud, snorty sort of a laugh, and he plays rugby; but he's hardly ever beaten Sherlock up, which gives him a considerable advantage over most of the rugby squad. These days he sometimes says, "All right there, then?" and then smacks Sherlock on the back, smiling in that way people do when they recognize someone without actually being able to call up a name.

"Hullo, Trevor," Sherlock finds himself calling, after Victor Trevor's retreating back; then, cringing, retreats to the music room.

Sherlock hates himself for the way he pants after Victor Trevor. He catches himself thinking absurd things, about Victor Trevor's arms and freckles and solid, square jaw, already dusted with enough whiskers to make his chin look dirty. Sherlock beats his head back against the wall of the supplies cupboard and thinks: in four years at school, Victor Trevor's only smashed his face in twice; they're very nearly friends! and then folds his hands over his eyes. With his knees pulled up around his ears, because he's grown and the supplies cupboard hasn't, Sherlock doesn't have much room for self-delusion. He knows it's irrational. He desperately needs extra notebooks and illicit cigarettes and more agar, because these days Mr. Schopenhauer is refusing to let Sherlock use the school's supplies for his extracurricular mold cultures, but when his pocket money comes, he still, furious with himself, sets aside twenty-five pounds.

It doesn't take twenty-five. It only takes fifteen. Sherlock spends his first go turning the pages without seeing anything other than Victor Trevor, lounging sprawled in his desk chair with his feet kicked out and his sandy head resting against the back rest. On the second, Sherlock somehow ends up with Victor sitting next to him on the bed and pointing out highlights while Sherlock feels dizzy and sick over Victor's warm thigh, just against his own, not quite touching, and the obvious bulge in Victor's trousers; and on the third, Sherlock turns four pages with his heart pounding in his ears, and then drops down to his knees.

Victor stares down at him, eyes huge. Sherlock says, "I want to," and his voice doesn't crack, thank God. Victor doesn't say anything, but there is a hot, magenta flush creeping up from his collar. Sherlock's mouth is watering. He reaches towards Victor's knees, which fall—slowly, dreamily—apart.

"You," Victor says, "you want to," then stops at Sherlock's hand on his flies.

"All right?" Sherlock says, tugging.

"Um," Victor says, and then, "y—Christ," when Sherlock puts his mouth over him, his thigh muscles tensing as he pushes up into Sherlock's mouth. Sherlock gags and then pins him down; Victor gasps and leans back, spine hunched. Sherlock's pulse keeps going all funny and he can't quite get the rhythm right. Victor's hand lands in Sherlock's hair; pulls him down then lets go, fast; and his fingers drift down over Sherlock's face. Victor touches the head of his own erection through Sherlock's cheek, and Sherlock chokes and comes in his pants in a hot, humiliating rush. "Jesus," Victor gasps, and grabs Sherlock's hair; Sherlock moans, helpless, and Victor comes thick and too-salty all over Sherlock's tongue and the back of his throat. The sensation makes Sherlock feel as though he is going to be sick, but he doesn't want it to. He pulls off and spits in his hand, then licks it off, his pulse a jackhammer in his ears.

He looks up at Victor, who stares back down at him, flushed, eyes huge.

"Victor," Sherlock says, and Victor straightens up, face turning from pink to scarlet, and says, "Get out."

Sherlock moves, but apparently not fast enough, so Victor Trevor grabs Sherlock by the shoulders of his shirt, roaring, "Get out, get out, get out," and pushes. Sherlock hits the base of the wall opposite; Trevor's door slams shut; Sherlock catches himself badly, scraping all the skin off the palm of his left hand.

 

3. 1996.

A rope and pulley system is characterized by the use of a single continuous rope to transmit a tension force around one or more pulleys to lift or move a load, with a mechanical advantage given by the number of parts of the rope that act on the load.

In their first year, Sebastian Wilkes had said, "It's Seb," and then, "Seb," and then, "Seb, Sherlock," flicking his fingers gently against Sherlock's ear when Sherlock, tongue clumsy, kept calling him Wilkes—Sebastian—Wilkes. Seb's father is above Mycroft in the Home Office and his mother is an important philanthropist, so Sherlock ought to loathe him, by all rights; but Seb thinks Sherlock is clever; and laughs into his wrist when, over dinner in the Hall, Sherlock explains about the torrid affair between two of the philosophy Fellows, both married to other people; and is rather handsome, Sherlock supposes, if you like that sort of thing—which unfortunately, Sherlock does. Seb plays rugby, Sherlock notes, with despair.

By the start of their third year Seb's persistence has become nearly merciless: his hands always falling on Sherlock's shoulder as Seb pushes up from the table; the way he always says, This is my friend, Sherlock Holmes, to his great mass of muscle-bound rugby mates (all of them, to a man, the sort of blokes who Sherlock sees and thinks: knuckles, knuckles, knuckles, through habit of long training); the endless invitations, to the JCR bar or to watch the match or to dance at the Junction. Sherlock, looking desperately about for some practical force of common sense and coming up blank, almost invariably ends up tagging along. Sherlock still knows how this will end. Seb's friends mostly ignore him, at least, for now; but that won't last. Inevitably, Seb shares: trading sip for sip of lager or the cheap whiskey he keeps on his desk; splitting cigarette after cigarette, with his arm draped over Sherlock's shoulders and his breath warm against Sherlock's ear; pills: three, a half at a time; Seb smiling at him as Sherlock licks his third half off of Seb's salty thumb. Sherlock knows how this will end. Seb holds his door for Sherlock and then looks out and then locks it behind them and then kisses Sherlock lying down. Sherlock tries to keep his hands at his sides as much as he can, because he doesn't trust them, because he knows how this will end.

In their first year, Seb had had a... liaison with Arthur Poole, another of his square-jawed rugby mates, but Sherlock had found it... confusing, as an observer, at the time; and whatever he's since said over breakfast about the adulterous philosophy Fellows or Owen Beale's fondness for suspender belts or Jim Cooper and the probable sexual proclivities of his endless parade of slim, needy girlfriends, Sherlock hasn't ever quite got around to mentioning Seb's involvement with Arthur Poole. So Seb and Poole both keep hanging about with their meat-headed rugby mates, who all like to laugh and slap each other's arses in the manner of the inconceivably heterosexual; and at night Sherlock follows Seb into his room, and lets him check the hall, then lock the door.

When, in November, after a week of The bar?, and Come watch the Arsenal match, and Stay, you can revise here, can't you? Seb presses Sherlock hard to his narrow bed, and Sherlock, still hot and itchy and hungry from three hours with all his cells jostling up against each other at warp speed and the bass throbbing under his skin and Seb's pulse throbbing just the other side, breath hot on Sherlock's cheek, moans and presses up. Against him, Seb gasps, "Christ, I—sorry, sorry," and jerks his hips back, pressing his forehead to Sherlock's forehead, eyes closed, as Sherlock, all the hairs on his body quivering up in desperation, groans, "Oh, God, will you just make up your mind," and Seb's eyes snap wide open and he shoves Sherlock down into the mattress, knocking the air out of his lungs as Sherlock, heart slamming up to full speed, shoves his hands down the back of Seb's trousers.

"I thought," Seb is saying, nearly laughing, "you seem so—so bloody shy," pressing his mouth to Sherlock's mouth and jaw and throat and God, while Sherlock grunts and twists his leg up around Seb's leg and says, "Christ, you idiot, when have I ever been shy," and runs his hands up over Seb's arse with staticky sparks tingling from his palms up over his arms in waves. Sherlock's hair stands on end. "Have you?" Seb asks, and Sherlock groans, "Yes, and—you, with–with Poole," as Seb yanks Sherlock's trousers open and rubs one huge, ungainly hand against him, saying, "Oh, you—bloody—oh, of course you know," and Sherlock gasps, "I wouldn't—say, if," as Seb slips his hand to Sherlock's hip and slides his body against Sherlock's body and says, low and hot, "Don't, just—fuck Poole, fucking prig," and Sherlock bites down on his own lip and arches up, arches up, and then, heart pounding, rolls over, pressing his face down and his arse up, and Seb gasps, "Christ, you're—Sherlock—"

"Please," Sherlock gasps, sliding a hand between himself and the bed, and Seb presses against him, moaning into Sherlock's hair as he slides in between, but not in, and Sherlock wants to cry. He gasps, "You bloody—can't you—" and Seb laughs and gasps, "I—no," voice shaking into a long drawn out groan as he jerks, wetness spattering against the small of Sherlock's back.

"Fuck," Sherlock gasps, blinking against the mattress as Seb eases up just enough to trail one blunt finger down Sherlock's thunder-quaked skin and wind-shivering spine, and then presses just inside. "Unh—Seb," Sherlock gasps, pressing into his fist, and Seb rubs his hot-wet mouth over Sherlock's ear and whispers, "Later," and Sherlock's voice mists away as Seb whispers, "tomorrow," pushing until Sherlock feels bowstring-taut, stretched wide, around Seb's thick finger as Seb—Christ—moves harder and faster over skin suddenly shocked awake as Seb pants out, "Saturday, after the match—twice on Sunday if you like, Sherlock, Christ—" as Sherlock's hips jerk over and over and pink-white lightning sparks all along the insides of his eyes.

Seb pulls Sherlock around and puts his arms around him, blankets his body with his body until Sherlock is weak; drenched with sweat; half-drowned.

"You," Seb says, and then laughs.

Sherlock puts his hands in Seb's hair.

Seb says, "You—Christ, Sherlock," then presses his mouth tight to Sherlock's jaw, and whispers, "You're not like any other person on earth."

Sherlock freezes. He says, "I," and then stops, all of a sudden feeling desert-hot all over, skin flayed raw. "I am," he says, uncertain. "I'm just like—I mean, wasn't—" and Seb breathes, "No," and then, laughing again, "We got off in the Cavendish once, even, and it wasn't like that."

"In the Cavendish?" Sherlock echoes, as he tries to parse: it wasn't like that, you're not like any other person on earth.

"Yeah," Seb says, and then props himself up on his elbow. His skin is shiny with sweat, his smile lopsided and wide. "He had a late afternoon practical on a Friday and we had a Saturday match, so..."

"Oh," Sherlock says, then licks his lips. Seb presses his thumb to the middle of Sherlock's mouth, and then eases himself down. "You stopped," Sherlock says, "with Poole."

"Poole's a bit..." Seb's mouth twists, and he sighs. "He always wanted me to be more careful about—well, doesn't matter."

"I wouldn't tell," Sherlock says, very quietly. "Tell me?"

"It's not important," Seb says, with a half-hearted twist of his mouth. He presses his face down into Sherlock's shoulder, and sighs.

In the morning Sherlock wakes up to Seb's mouth on his, fast, a little breathless, as Seb says, "I have to go, I have—forgot; we have a run, but—I'll see you later, bye," and then dashes out the door while Sherlock's still blinking the crusts out of his eyes and cringing away from his hangover and then realizing that Sebastian Wilkes, damn him, has left Sherlock alone in his room with the door pulled to but not latched and nothing to put on but the jeans and sweaty t-shirt he wore to the Junction and nine minutes to get to a lecture, feeling dizzy and sticky and sick; leaving him, however much he might have braced himself and planned and prepared, surprised. He goes to his lecture and ignores anyone who looks at him oddly and has a nap before lunch and a wash before dinner and feels, with every second, a growing rage so painfully hot that it makes his eyes sting from the inside out. He goes to dinner early and eats mechanically and waits, sinking into oceans-deep dread, as the table fills up with all of Seb's huge, idiotic, square-jawed friends: Williams and Beale and Cooper and Poole, fucking Arthur Poole, who got Seb for four bloody months, and why? For what? Sherlock can't swallow, doesn't want to, his headache back in agonizing force; sets his fork down as, just Seb sits down opposite him, grinning as he pats Cooper on the shoulder.

"Bloody Sowden, always running late," he says, and Cooper laughs, and Sherlock looks away as Seb looks at him and says, "And what are our plans for Friday night, then?"

"Essay," Beale says, sounding depressed, and the rest of them immediately start in to get him to come out with them instead, and Sherlock sits in a heart-throbbing haze of nothing he likes to name and doesn't listen until Beale's protest rises above the morass, "Can't all have bloody interesting nights every day of the bloody week, can we?" which is, Sherlock knows, Seb's opening.

"Well," Sherlock says, snapping back to attention, "none of us can have as interesting Friday nights as Wilkes," and looking up to meet Seb's eyes, "and Poole, in the Cavendish, back in our first year."

 

2. 2005.

A screw is a mechanism that converts rotational motion to linear motion, and a rotational force, or torque, to a linear force.

Constable Donovan always says, "All right, Mr. Holmes?" and smiles up at him, and when he's feeling good, Sherlock smiles back and says, "All right, Constable," and she always says, "You know, you can call me Sally," with her eyes wrinkling up at the corners.

This is how people flirt. Sherlock is finding it much more instructional than the films.

It still takes him three months to take her up on it, one early winter's night for which he was very well-prepared; riding high with the light glittering warm and sharp and two dead bodies (lovers, murder-suicide, less obvious than usual) and him feeling very nearly like a person. When he's headed back towards the tape, she tilts one hip and says, "You off, then, Mr. Holmes?" and he says, "You can call me Sherlock, Sally," and she grins at him and says, "All right, Sherlock," and he lets his eyes crinkle at the corners, easy, and says, "I rather think you should come with me."

She gives him that smile again and says, "Well, I'm still on duty, so Lestrade would probably prefer that I stayed."

"Oh, naturally," Sherlock says, letting his lips curve, too. He tilts his hip up a bit, matching her, and says, "When do you get off, then? Buy you a pint?"

Her smile widens. "Eight," she says. "On the dot."

"On the dot," he agrees, and when she heads back inside she looks over her shoulder, once; throws him that smile again, like it's something she can afford to give away for free.

"Donovan!" Lestrade calls, and she runs to catch up. On their second case, Lestrade had told Sherlock that Donovan was the best of his constables, sergeant in no time if she kept it up, despite being so young—dangerous for him, of course, if it's true. Sherlock evaluates his heart rate. He has time to make a stop by his flat before he comes back to pick her up, so he does; after, breathing easier, he cleans his teeth, too.

He meets her at eight; they get a pint, which leads to two; which leads to him kissing her slowly in a back booth in the pub, his fingers sliding under the hem of her knee-length off-duty skirt. She's very different from—from other people; and her perfume is clean and warm, like lemons and summer herbs; and the noises she makes into his mouth are soft and purry, and she means them. It is how Sherlock knows it is always supposed to be.

"We should," she says. His fingers are brushing against the crotch of her knickers. He wonders what they look like. They feel hot and damp, so he pushes his thumb against her. "Oh," she sighs, tucking her forehead against his neck. She laughs, a little, and says, "we should probably get out of here," then looks up at him with that same warm, conspiratorial smile.

Sherlock's pulse is still pounding everywhere, but what she doesn't know can't hurt her, so he smiles back. "Lead the way," he says, so she does.

In her flat, he follows her down onto the sofa and slides his hand back up her skirt, pushing it up around her hips: her knickers are butter yellow, low rise, cotton. He bends back down to kiss her; she wraps her legs around his hips, which makes it tricky for him to get a hand between them. She presses up against his erection, and he sucks in a breath and twists away, his heart suddenly going much too fast. "Um," he says, sliding his three fingers into the leg hole of her knickers and up into her, wet and slick and—and warm. He would like it in there. If he were a person he thinks he would slip his fingers in and out of her over and over again and she would let him. If he were a person she would let him come to her again and again but she won't. Beneath his fingertips she makes a fast, careless sort of a noise, and whispers, "My flatmates will be out late; do you have a condom?"

"No," Sherlock says, with his heart resting in the cradle of his tongue; he can pretend, he knows he can. She doesn't need to know. "Do you?"

His voice is even. She doesn't notice anything; just says, "C'mon, then," and wriggles out from underneath him; grabs his sticky hand and tugs him into the second bedroom off the hall: tiny, cramped, dominated by her single bed with its rumpled leaf-green sheets. Sally keeps condoms in the tiny drawer in her bedside table; she has a book in there, too, but he can't see which because she's pushed him down onto her bed and the angle is wrong. He flips through his extensive mental cinematic library and tugs down her knickers while she's trying to get the packet open. She reaches for the button on his trousers and tugs them open and his pants down and when she pushes at his hips he lets her, he lies flat on his back, trying to keep his breathing even. She throws her legs over him and kneels up over him, rolls the condom down over his erection, and then grins down at him, transparently pleased with him and herself. All of this happens very fast.

"All right?" she asks.

Sherlock nods, his hair scraping on her pillow. Her eyes flutter half shut and she sighs, pushing herself down onto him, and he says, "Sally."

He is beginning to feel less—much less good. She rocks, slowly, and he does the only thing he can think of, which is to curve his left hand around her hip and dump her over onto her back with her heel dragging up the back of his leg to hold him in place as she laughs.

You like that? says the man in the film with the lithe brunette; "You like that?" he asks, steady, holding himself up with his arms braced on her bed, and she smiles up at him and murmurs, "You like it, too," which is—Sherlock swallows and presses his hand between them, can't quite—he thrusts—oh, no, just—so he swallows sudden and hard to keep silent and rubs his thumb against her, over and over and over again, rocking his hips as little as he can bear to until she gasps, "Oh—I, please—" which he can't stand, bracing his knee on the bed hard justonce and pushing into her, oh, God, and then pulling out, hurry, quick, before, while she's still gasping, rippling around his fingers when he pushes them up into her. He strokes her clitoris and watches her shiver; bites delicately at her fingers when she reaches up to pull him down for a kiss; does it all with his hand again, twice; and keeps his eyes on her face: careful, careful, careful.

After she's caught her breath, she asks him, "Did you..."

He says, "Of course I did." He gives it teeth.

Beneath him, her face changes, brow wrinkling, smile slipping, just a little.

"Well." Sherlock smiles. "That was lovely."

"Sherlock?" she asks, with spaces in the middle.

His pulse is throbbing everywhere. He can't bear it, so he kisses her on the—on the—on the forehead, tidies his clothes, and leaves.

He knows what will happen. Either he will push her hard enough that she stops looking; or she will keep looking and then she will know, and then he will be finished. He doesn't want to be finished. He wants—he wants a great many things that he will never have, so instead he will just have to push and she will just have to hate him and that will be convenient, and sufficient. In the alley out back, he presses the back of his left hand to his forehead and wills the wild riptide tumult of his pulse to ebb down into stillness but it does not, it will not, it cannot; so he turns his face towards the skip and angles his hips towards the wall. It will be convenient, and sufficient. She will flinch, when he calls her Sally.

Sherlock unfastens his trousers, stuffs his left hand into his pants, and slips the sticky-salty first three fingers on the right into his mouth.

 

1. 2012.

An inclined plane is a flat, supporting surface tilted at an angle, with one end higher than the other, used as an aid for raising or lowering a load. Moving an object up an inclined plane requires less force than lifting it straight up, at a cost of an increase in the distance moved.

Eighty-one hours after Pakistan, they end up sharing a hotel room in Cabo San Lucas. It only has one bed. Irene, damn her, uses their enforced proximity as an excuse to dig into him and root around, while laughing.

"I'm really not," Sherlock insists, for perhaps the seventh time, but Irene just laughs harder, so he rolls away from her, and onto his back on the bedspread.

"Oh, don't be a baby," she says, propping herself up on her side and flicking his nose.

He looks at her and slowly, slowly pushes his lower lip down and out; and she laughs, then snorts, then laughs again, settling down against his side.

He thinks: if I were a person, I would put my arm around her—but he is these days (sometimes; mostly), so he does.

Irene rests her chin on his chest. She's smiling, a little. He helped her cut her hair in Mumbai, helped her dye it crimson in Sydney; it curls more, this short, framing her face in a soft, fiery halo. He spreads his hand wide on the small of her back, and her eyes slip halfway shut.

"All right," she says. "How old?"

Sherlock frowns. "Thirty-six?"

Her smile widens. "When you lost your virginity, you ass."

"Oh." Sherlock clears his throat. "Eleven."

She blinks. "What?"

"Eleven," Sherlock repeats.

"You were not," she says, flat, and then laughs again. "Were you even pubescent at eleven?"

Sherlock frowns.

She leans in. "It's fine, you know. Not even—"

"Don't," he warns. He can feel his face heating up.

"Well, it's true," she says. "I'm quite sure he didn't. Not when he was eleven."

Sherlock doesn't entirely know how to respond. "But," he explains, "I did." It leaves him a little off-balance.

Her eyes crinkle up at the corners. "At eleven?"

"Yes," he says.

"Try again," she says, laughing, and sets her hand on his sternum, warm through his crumpled shirt. She curls her fingers, very slowly. "Make me believe it and I might even give you a prize."

Sherlock shifts, very slightly, as her fingertips slide over his ribs. "Fifteen, then," he says. "If you don't like eleven."

"Hm." Her hand stills, one eyebrow lifting.

"Twenty?" he suggests, and she laughs, but her hand doesn't move. "Twenty-nine?" He curls his fingers against her back. "I'm out of times," he admits, and something shifts: a minute, tectonic movement beneath the surface of her face.

"Twenty-nine," she says, very quietly.

He doesn't say anything. His throat aches. It makes him feel ashamed.

"Hm." She rubs at the placket of his shirt, then licks at her top lip, then says, "Thirty-six?"

Sherlock still can't quite think of anything to say. She pops the shirt button directly beneath her fingers, and then is still.

"Eleven," he says, very quietly, and she breathes out, and nods. He says, "You're gay."

"So are you," she replies, under her breath.

"No." He meets her eyes. "Not quite."

Her face shifts; thoughtful. How odd, he thinks, that he would discuss these things. Less odd, perhaps, that he would discuss them with her.

After a minute, she rubs her chin on his chest, then asks, "Do you want to?" Her fingers slip down to the next button, and then still.

"Yes," he says. The light through the hotel room curtains is melting and turning gold. Irene is very, very beautiful. "Do you?"

Her lips quirk up. "Yes," she says. "You were right, about that."

She unfastens his button, then her fingers slip down.

"I am right about..." He pauses, then rolls onto his side to face her. "A number of things."

"A number of things," she echoes, smiling. Another button. One left, beneath her hand; and one at the top, above.

"A few things," he concedes, and slips his fingers up under the improbable t-shirt of her most recent disguise.

It's warm, in Cabo San Lucas, in March. It is warmer still between them, her breath absorbing his breath in the soft, shallow space between their mouths. Her fingertips slip his bottom shirt button free, so he undoes the top one, above where she started, as her hand flattens out on his belly. She requires very little encouragement to remove her t-shirt.

She lets him touch her breasts. Her nipples are not as sensitive as he has been given to expect, but the whole of her torso seems to make her breath pick up. He caresses her shoulders, her ribs; presses a kiss against the notch of her throat, and she unfastens his flies, and draws his hand to her belly. His breath catches as his knuckles brush over the waistband of her jeans.

"Will you touch me?" she whispers, and he nods. The jeans are new. The button sticks; the zip wants coaxing. He slips his hands inside as she wriggles them down. She doesn't wear knickers. He pets over her springy, reddish curls—curious; she didn't have those before, and he hadn't thought the auburn was natural—and slips his fingers down through the creases of her thighs. She sighs and frees him, so that he lays upon her hand.

"I don't have anything," he whispers, but she shakes her head. She gives him her left palm.

"Lick," she says, so he licks, and she switches and gives him the right. He gathers his saliva in his mouth, and spits into her hand. When she slips her hand back low between them, he presses his fingers together and slips them down, curls them into dampness, and then eases them apart. She is hard beneath him, swollen and wet. Her hand is soft and steady upon him. He kisses her throat. She twists, and kisses his mouth. He pets her in circles, he has to—she is wet, so wet, so wet and warm and she opens for him, with her breath coming fast; she rubs her thumb against him as he rubs his thumb against her with her fingers tight around him as he slips his three fingers inside. Her tongue is velvet against his. He is only getting air in short, ragged gasps. Her noises are small. His are not. She smells like animal, and the sea.

They are still, after. It's very hot. His heart is pounding too hard to allow for movement. When it has slowed, she curls her fingers through the wetness on his belly, very gently, and he curls his fingers inside her.

She breathes out. He can feel her heartbeat. "Sleep with me," she says, very softly, and he nods.

Sherlock doesn't move his hand. He presses his face to her shoulder, and Irene twists to kiss his cheek.

 

 

 

+1. 2014.

The wheel and axle consists of a wheel attached to an axle such that these two parts rotate together, and a force is transferred from one to the other.

At first their silences are brittle, sharp-edged. John has changed. What a thing to think: John has changed. Of course John has changed: Sherlock made a trade, John's trust for his life; he's not foolish enough to expect the former back. Sherlock doesn't regret it. And yet.

And yet.

Sherlock keeps finding himself not himself: behaving, keeping the fridge well-bleached and the Entoloma rhodopolium out of the sink; he tidies, even, once, when John is working. Sherlock-not-Sherlock keeps telling himself, Enough, enough, but it is not enough. He means to stop, but can't, quite.

John means to stop too, but can't, quite.

Sherlock keeps finding John snagging on himself, John's voice rough and angry and then breaking, turning his face to the side as he steps back, jaw working. Sherlock keeps finding John's back turned towards him. An interesting observational note: John enjoys being angry with Sherlock less, now.

On Thursday John's voice breaks and his back turns and Sherlock, because John is unhappy, tells him, "You can yell at me, if you like," and John makes a noise and turns, grabbing the front of Sherlock's shirt.

They are at arms' length—John's arms, not Sherlock's—and John's face is red, still turned away. John's pulse shows, ticking under his throat. "Don't talk," John says. His voice is rough. "Just. Don't talk."

Sherlock curls his fingers into his palms before he does something still more foolish, and doesn't say, John.

"Just—" John swings towards him like a pendulum, muttering, "I'm so, I'm so fucking angry with you, I," and then shoves himself up onto the balls of his feet.

All of Sherlock's blood rushes up into his face, and John kisses him.

John is not a good kisser. Sherlock holds very still, at first, except—except that John didn't tell him to, did he? so Sherlock steps closer to John's body and puts his fingers on the side of John's head, and—and John is a very good kisser. Sherlock is hot all over and then John puts his arm around Sherlock's waist and Sherlock gets hotter. He presses all the places he is hot against the places that John is hot through their clothes and John says, "Unh," and rocks down onto the soles of his feet.

Sherlock makes his hands into fists and holds still.

John rubs at his face and says, voice gritty, "I," and then pushes back up onto his toes. Sherlock's heart is beating very, very hard. He unwraps his fingers and lays his hand on John's cheek, and when John parts his lips against Sherlock's lips, Sherlock curls the first joint of his thumb into the corner of John's mouth. John's breath catches, and his tongue—

Sherlock stumbles forward and his toes touch the wall.

Between him and it John is stretched taut, his broad arm hard along Sherlock's back, drawing Sherlock in closer. Sherlock can feel John's erection against his thigh. John's tongue slips into Sherlock's mouth and Sherlock—Sherlock feels incendiary, explosive. He pushes his body against John's body against the wall and wishes to press further. John is panting around his tongue, pressing against him; John is angry with him, so—so fucking angry with him, and—and John grabs Sherlock's hip and drags him closer and closer, and Sherlock's skin expands, and contracts, and contracts, as John groans—teeth sharp hips jerking hand hard—pressing his evidence into Sherlock's skin.

"Christ," John is gasping, into Sherlock's mouth, and Sherlock hears a noise from his own throat and presses, impossibly, closer. "I'm angry with you," John tells him, voice ragged, and Sherlock nods, and kisses him; "I'm so," John mumbles, around Sherlock's tongue, "so fucking angry with you," with his hands making fists in the nothing of fabric available of the back of Sherlock's shirt. Sherlock can't breathe, so he kisses John instead.

Again.

And again.

"Angry with you," John sighs, and Sherlock nods.

"Yes," Sherlock says.

"Supposed to be with me," John mumbles.

"Yes." Sherlock slides his thumb into John's mouth, rubs it over John's tongue. He whispers, "I am."

"You're with me," John whispers, and Sherlock whispers, "Yes," and John repeats, "With me," slipping into Sherlock's mouth as Sherlock breathes, "Yes," into "With me," into "Yes."

 

 

Give me the place to stand, and I shall move the earth.
- Archimedes