
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/703542.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Choose_Not_To_Use_Archive_Warnings, Underage
  Category:
      F/M, M/M
  Fandom:
      Sherlock_(TV), Sherlock_Holmes_&_Related_Fandoms
  Relationship:
      Multiple_Relationships_-_Relationship, Temperance_Brennan/Sherlock
      Holmes, Sherlock_Holmes/Victor_Trevor, Sherlock_Holmes/Sebastian_Wilkes,
      Sally_Donovan/Sherlock_Holmes, Irene_Adler/Sherlock_Holmes, Sherlock
      Holmes/John_Watson
  Character:
      Sherlock_Holmes
  Additional Tags:
      Additional_Warnings_Apply, See_Story_Notes_for_Warnings, For_Science!,
      Sex, Oral_Sex, Frottage, Intergluteal_Sex, Vaginal_Sex, manual_sex,
      Trust, Trust_Issues, Intimacy, First_Time, Virginity
  Series:
      Part 5 of Written_for_Fan_Flashworks
  Collections:
      fan_flashworks
  Stats:
      Published: 2013-03-02 Words: 6258
****** Simple Machines (or, five times Sherlock Holmes lost his virginity, and
one time he didn't.) ******
by greywash
Summary
     A study of the motion of multiple bodies, and other straightforward
     problems in practical physics.
Notes
     Warnings for underage sex, consent issues, and disturbing content
     (warning trifecta!). 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.
     First posted 28 February 2013 for fan_flashworks Challenge #7, "Do-
     Over", via the sixth amnesty. (Original_post_can_be_found_here,_at
     DreamWidth.)
     All section headings have been lightly paraphrased for fluidity from
     the linked sources.
See the end of the work for more notes
****** 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
 
 
End Notes
     This is was written for the "Do-Over"_challenge at fan_flashworks,
     and fills the challenge in two ways: the first being the I think
     pretty obvious internal narrative reasons, and the second being that
     I started it just after "A Scandal in Belgravia" aired, because of
     reasons, and then abandoned it in disgust after about a week; then
     picked it up again when the "Do-Over" challenge turned up, and have
     taken another stab at it in every amnesty since. So, thanks,
     fan_flashworks; this one definitely never would've happened without
     you.
     I also want to note that despite the pretty epic revisions this story
     has gone through, for some reason Temperance Brennan, Sherlock's
     American cousin, has been there from the start, but as I have never
     watched Bones with any kind of regularity, I'm sure this is the least
     canonical character crossover of all time. I just... don't care all
     that much? Basically I went: "Weird facial structure! Crazy eyes!
     Likes dead things! Yeah, they could totally be related."
     Muchas gracias to HBBO, Wren, Tora, and The_Antidiogenes_Club for
     read-throughs, edits, Britpicking help, and cheerleading, assortedly.
     ♥
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