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“Do you think he talks like that in bed?”
The giggling voice, much louder than its owner intended, is immediately shushed by her laughing companions. The small group, composed of both men and women, turns as one to stare at the person in the corner of the room in a way most unsuited to remaining unobserved. Sherlock keeps his face impassive with the ease of long practice.
Satisfied by his apparent deafness, the group pursues its subject. “Can you imagine?” New voice now. The brunette in the corner, judging by its tone. “I notice by your right ear that your last partner enjoyed biting you. Would you like me to do the same?” The mockery of his voice sends them all into peals of laughter.
Right then. Sherlock checks his phone. More than time for him to make his way to the lab.
As he sweeps from the room, however, a man’s eyes follow him, his expression speculative. Sherlock glances towards him for a split second – just long enough to prove he has noticed – then continues on his path.
It comes as absolutely no surprise, then, when a knock comes at his door late that night. He opens it to the entirely expected sight of the dark-haired man whose gaze had followed him from the room.
“Sebastian.”
The man’s eyes widen for a moment. “So you know me.” He laughs, and the sound is like a donkey’s bray. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“Obviously.” Sherlock stares him down. He knows everything important there is to know about Sebastian. Fourth year, reading Economics. Poor study skills, but with the family connections to ensure his success in the business world. Slim but tending towards weight issues that a sedentary lifestyle would only aggravate. Bisexual with a decided preference for males but would probably marry a female for appearances, with plenty of affairs on the side.
Then the other man surprises him. “Then I suppose you also know why I’m knocking on your door,” he says. Of course Sherlock does, but most people who come to him like this don’t like to admit it so openly. He tilts his head. Beneath the bravado, Sebastian is nervous. The slight shuffle of his feet gives that away. Sherlock drags out the silence until the exact moment before Sebastian will make an excuse to leave, and then he speaks.
“Of course.” He waits a beat, then steps aside. “I assume you planned on doing this indoors?”
Sebastian hesitates, just as Sherlock knows he will. Then he seems to gather all his courage and bravado in one, flashing it at Sherlock in a cocky smile. “Just as you say,” he says, and steps inside.
When it is over, Sebastian dresses and leaves. Sherlock cleans himself up and goes back to the chemistry paper he’s been working on, the encounter already fading into unimportance.
At least, until three days later, when he receives another knock (this one completely unexpected) on his door. For a moment he debates with himself over whether or not to open it, but the sheer novelty of being surprised demands further investigation.
“Sherlock,” Sebastian smirks, and he leans against the doorway and into Sherlock’s room as if he has a right to be there. “You know what I want.”
For once, Sherlock doesn’t. They’ve already had sex, already satisfied whatever inexplicable curiosity drives men and women to proposition the freak. He and Sebastian share no classes, even if it were feasible that anyone would ask Sherlock for tutoring. That Sebastian is at his door now defies all logical explanation.
While he stares soundlessly at the other boy, eyes darting from his hair to his shoes in an attempt to understand just what he is doing here, Sebastian sighs in the put-upon way that suggests that Sherlock is the unreasonable one. Then he crowds Sherlock back into his room, shuts the door, and pushes Sherlock against it.
Oh.
Sherlock has always considered repeatability a vital part of any experiment, but he has long since learned that most people do not share his respect for the scientific method. Certainly no one has ever considered sex with him something worth repeating. The physical evidence of Sebastian’s aroused body, however, leaves him with no other explanation. Still calculating, he allows Sebastian to manhandle him towards the bed.
Their second time is – strange. Sherlock’s hands remember Sebastian’s body, remember where to touch to achieve the best results, and the unexpectedness of the sense memories throws him shockingly off balance. When Sebastian comes, loudly, with a cry that almost resembles Sherlock’s name, Sherlock feels as if he has been abruptly plunged into cold, deep water. Suddenly all he wants, desperately, is for Sebastian to leave.
Contrary to every expectation, after panting for a few minutes, Sebastian rolls over and looks Sherlock over. “You didn’t get off,” he observes.
Sherlock blinks at the blindingly pointless statement. It hardly matters, after all. He feels far too unbalanced to focus on his own body. Why doesn’t Sebastian leave?
Then Sebastian’s hands are on him, and he hardly has time to blurt out, “I don’t require-” before Sebastian's mouth gets involved as well, and suddenly Sherlock can’t think.
This time, Sebastian falls into a light doze for almost an hour, during which time Sherlock lies completely unmoving next to him, staring straight up at the ceiling, hardly blinking. His body hums pleasantly, providing a strange counterpoint to the way his mind works at a furious pace. No matter how he tries, he cannot arrange the facts into a recognizable pattern, and the frustration is more than enough to keep him from sleep.
Eventually Sebastian comes awake, and when Sherlock does not so much as twitch to acknowledge the fact, he huffs out a laugh and reaches for his clothing. Sherlock moves just his eyes in order to watch him as he dresses, staring in a way that Mycroft has tried for years to train out of him, despite the fact that it often leads to Sherlock’s more brilliant insights. Sebastian turns, meets Sherlock’s gaze, and abruptly takes a few steps back. Sherlock’s stomach clenches. Now, of course, Sebastian will leave.
After only a few steps, though, Sebastian turns again. Sherlock has no time even to begin to hypothesize what his motives are before Sebastian swoops down and plants a kiss on Sherlock’s cheek. He smirks, amusement written all over his face. “See you around, Sherlock.”
***
Two days later Sherlock has seen no more of Sebastian, and he has come to the definite conclusion that for whatever reason, Sebastian felt the need to experiment with sex with an atypical partner more than once, and now that need has been satisfied. His parting words, obviously, fulfill some expectation of social propriety and do not in any way indicate positive intention. Everything has happened exactly as Sherlock has predicted, and he tells himself that what he feels now is satisfaction.
Driven by a strange restlessness, Sherlock makes one of his rare trips to the café down the street from his college, rather than attempt to wheedle coffee from the lab assistant in the chemistry building in which he spends most of his days. The man has become irritatingly uncooperative since Sherlock informed him that he has no interest in attending any kind of pub night, and it will be nice to receive coffee from someone who doesn’t glare at him unreasonably and pretend to forget that Sherlock detests milk.
Halfway down the street, the café door opens, and a group of students spills out, clutching paper cups. Sebastian walks out with them, and Sherlock recognizes several of them from the group that had been discussing his sexual habits. He stops to watch them pass. No one acknowledges him, which he expects.
What he does not expect is when Sebastian – who has worked his way unobtrusively to the back of the group, allowing him to remain unobserved – turns his head and winks, quite deliberately, right at Sherlock.
He’s in the café staring at a coffee he can’t remember ordering before he comes back to himself.
***
Sebastian knocks on his door that night. And the next.
***
The fourth time, Sebastian stays the night. Sherlock wakes up to the entirely new sensation of the circulation cut off in his right arm, numb and tingling from the unexpected weight of another body. While he works to free his arm, Sebastian mumbles something and turns over in his sleep. Sherlock freezes, almost forgetting to snatch his arm away as the pressure shifts. Sebastian is facing him now, his face lax and smooth in sleep. The morning sun sneaks through Sherlock’s blinds to highlight the planes of his face, the muscles of his back.
With a sudden jolt, Sherlock realizes that the sunlight means that this is now the seventh day since Sebastian first caught his eye and knocked on his door. One whole week has passed, and Sebastian is still here, lying in Sherlock’s bed.
The realization stuns him, despite its simplicity. His heart beats unusually quickly, and his stomach feels strange in a way he cannot attribute to any physical cause.
As he attempts to reason through his reaction, lay out every fact in proper order, Sebastian stirs again and wakes. He looks confused for just a moment, disoriented. Then his eyes focus. “Too early to be thinking,” he rasps, voice sleep-roughened and somehow pitched to send tremors racing along Sherlock’s nerves. Sherlock opens his mouth to contradict him, then finds himself cut off by Sebastian’s mouth against his own. His breath tastes sour and unpleasant, but then Sebastian is drawing away, smiling, and Sherlock forgets everything else when Sebastian’s eyes darken and he says, “Why don’t we try something new?”
Sherlock wakes up every day after that with a number in his head. Nine days. Twelve.
By the second week, Sherlock feels confident enough in his observations to draw certain conclusions. Sebastian invariably comes to his room on those weeknights when he has no early classes the next day; otherwise, there is a 40% probability. Sherlock does not yet have enough data for weekends, but when Sebastian opens his eyes and gives Sherlock the knowing smirk that pulls him away from his laptop in seconds, Sherlock dares to think for the first time that someday he will.
***
The days pass and Sherlock buzzes beneath his skin, every atom awake and alive in a way he has never experienced before. His tutors alternately praise and despair of him as he leaps from project to project with dizzying intensity. Several of his papers will be published soon, some with his name at the top, some without. Sherlock knows which of his tutors will do which, and he does not care. He exists on a higher plane than this petty academic infighting, brilliant and incisive and powered ever higher by nineteen days of covert glances and secret smiles.
Each day seems to bring something new to Sherlock’s attention. He has always devoted himself entirely to the subjects that interest him, but he has never realized that this, too, can be studied – that he can learn another’s body the same sure way he knows which catalysts to add to which reactions. He applies himself with all the intensity he possesses to this new subject, until he knows Sebastian’s body better than his own, until he knows he can recreate it flawlessly in memory, in clay, in marble.
At night, Sebastian lies in his bed and Sherlock talks, talks as he never has before because no one has ever listened. His theories, his observations about the people in his classes and the chemicals in his lab and just what the third floor janitor’s sudden schedule change means about his relationship with his son, all spill uncontrollably from his lips, resplendent and shining in the sex-scented air. Even after Sebastian falls asleep, Sherlock talks, and he feels the universe expanding around him in infinite combinations, shaped into being by the very air that resonates warmly between his lips and Seb’s ears.
***
When Sherlock wakes up on the twenty-seventh day, he’s alone. He expects this. He’s long since memorized Sebastian’s schedule, and he knows Sebastian has an early tutorial today. The position of the sun against his wall suggests that it is nearly noon.
Twenty-seven days. Sherlock dresses quickly, energy coursing through his veins and demanding action, activity, movement. His stomach growls, and for once he decides to answer its call.
Clattering down the stairs, ignoring the comments of those silly enough not to move out of his way, he contemplates his options. There are many places he can pick up something to eat, something quick before he runs over to his labs. He thinks of a new variation on an experiment that he wants to try today. He can be there in minutes if he chooses.
Instead, his feet carry him the opposite direction down the street to the corner café. For once, his body moves faster than his mind. It’s Tuesday, and he knows that Sebastian almost invariably meets with his friends in the café on Tuesdays. He wonders, with a feeling that’s almost like panic, what will happen if he dares to order a meal and sit down with them. To sit down next to Sebastian.
His breath catches, and he shakes his head sternly. No. No, he won’t do anything of the sort. He will approach this situation scientifically, just as he does everything else. Any scientist knows that it’s a mistake to approach an unknown blindly.
But perhaps, if he were to sit at a table next to them…
Sherlock cuts off that line of thought as he opens the door. Speculation is useless without evidence.
A quick survey provides the information that Sebastian and his friends have not, in fact, congregated in their usual place. Sherlock’s shoulders sag, just for a moment. Then he hears a familiar laugh and thinks of course, back room, even as his skin flushes and tingles unexpectedly.
Sherlock orders, receives a number. For no reason he can explain to himself, he stops just short of turning in to the back room, standing shielded by the screen separating the two spaces. He can’t understand why he feels short of breath.
Then he hears someone say his name.
“Don’t deny it, Seb. Ben saw you. Said you walked straight out of Sherlock’s room this morning, looking pretty well fucked!”
A new voice. “Please tell me you’re joking. The freak, Seb?”
“Hey now, it isn’t as bad as all that,” comes Sebastian’s voice at last, and its nearness suggests that Sebastian’s party is sitting at the table directly backing the screen, separated from Sherlock only by thin fabric. When he hears it, Sherlock sucks in much-needed air, realizing all at once that he has stopped breathing.
Over the shouted protests of his friends, Sebastian continues. “Think about it – the freak’s desperate. He’ll do anything I want.” His lascivious tone curls around the word, prompting mock-scandalized shrieks from at least two women.
Sherlock remains very still. Every buzzing atom of his body seems to have turned to stone, weighing him down in space and time. Each heartbeat, each passing second, sounds slowly and distinctly in his ears.
“Please. If you’re hooking up with the freak, you’re the one who’s desperate!”
The words filter slowly through the strangely elapsed time with perfect clarity. In the back of his mind, his brain flips rapidly through a list of illnesses, unhelpfully highlighting each one that could be responsible for the way his heart pounds in his ears, the way his stomach churns and his body shivers. He wishes it would stop.
“Number thirty-one?”
Sherlock pulls himself out of contemplation so abruptly he feels dizzy. He stares at the girl in front of him with no comprehension.
“Number thirty-one? Isn’t this your sandwich?” Any concept of hunger feels ludicrously distant. He shakes his head. “You mean you don’t want it?”
“No. Thank you,” he manages to say, then would give anything to take it back. He has spoken too loudly, and Seb’s voice has fallen silent behind the screen.
Sherlock pushes past the girl without another sound, making for the door as quickly and directly as he can. He can still hear the laughter following him.
***
That night Sherlock paces, unable to remain still. Sebastian has no early classes tomorrow. He wonders what Sebastian will say when he arrives. He wonders what he will say. What he will do. The thoughts chase round and round his brain, driving him mad with uncertainty because he has no data for this, no possible way to imagine what might come next. For once in his life he has no idea what someone else will say or do. He should feel ecstatic at the challenge, but Sherlock just feels sick.
He paces late into the night, far past the hour he has learned to expect Sebastian. The other man doesn’t come. By the time sunlight peeks through his window, Sherlock understands that he never will.
Sherlock comes to a dead halt in the middle of his room. His legs tremble with exhaustion, and he stares at the wall without seeing it for several endless minutes.
Then he makes a few phone calls, and he goes to class.
When he returns late that night, it’s clear someone has entered his room. He knows without checking that all the money he has secreted within his bookshelf is gone. In exchange, a human skull rests in a prominent position on his desk.
Sherlock walks over to the desk, his face expressionless. He examines the skull from all directions, taking in its blank stare, its meaningless, eternal grin.
He takes it in his hand and begins to talk.