theonewhocounted | (no subject)

His eyes are still closed, but he's smiling now, that slanting smile that he reserves for moments when he's well and truly pleased about something.

"Really well, thanks." Sherlock breathed in, out, and finally his eyes fluttered open. It took him a second to find a focus on her, but the pleased look didn't fade a bit. "You?"

That smile gives her life and when his eyes finally open, he's greeted with a similar smile on Molly's face.

"Better than I have in ages," she admits.

Sometimes the reality of sharing a bed with someone could be challenging. Too much body heat can bake you or someone's stealing the covers or constantly moving around. And maybe it was just due to complete exhaustion on both of their parts, but sharing her bed with Sherlock just seemed natural, like they've been spending years cuddled up together.

"And after I brought you coffee, even." His smile quirks. He hadn't expected to be so calm after earlier, but he feels renewed and calm and not at all bored, which aren't generally three things that go together for him.

It's pretty brilliant.

"We'll get to do this part again later, right?"

Playful, morning Sherlock is maybe her new favourite Sherlock she decides as she watches him smile.

Brilliant, indeed.

"By this part do you mean the cuddling? Because we can do that anytime you'd like."

She images calling into work on Monday. Sorry, Mike. Can't come into work today. Have some important cuddling to do.

"Ugh." His nose wrinkles. It doesn't chase away the grin, though. "That is a revolting word for something this enjoyable, Molly."

Molly huffs out a laugh at his aversion to the word. It does please her immensely that he's enjoying it so though.

"What would you prefer to call it?"

"I don't know. First time I've thought about it, actually." One of his hands flattens against her back, sunlight and her hair both a tangled spill over his knuckles. "I'll have to look up alternatives later and get back to you."

"Alright," she says with a smile. Her back warms under his touch and she tucks her face into the crook of his neck and inhales pure Sherlock. She can't think of a more perfect morning in the history of mornings.

Outside, Toby mewls. Molly sighs. Almost perfect.

He captures that sigh for later, guiding it under glass in his mind like some frail insect, to be studied later with things like her laughter and the press of her lips against the corner of his mouth. It feels like an accomplishment.

Her breath tickling his throat, though, that's different. It feels... warmer, not just physically but in some other way he's having trouble classifying at the moment. His heart speeds up a little at the sensation of her face burrowing into his neck.

There's a reason he hates wearing a tie, or even keeping his shirt collar buttoned all the way. There's a reason the only scarf he owns is ridiculously expensive and softer than anything else in his possession. And abruptly he realizes having a sensitive neck is something he now has to think about in an entirely new context.

She shifts a little against him, and that extra heat suddenly makes sense, too.

"Um." He's been in more awkward situations than this, arguably, but it still makes his ears burn. "You're--welcome to ignore that."

Molly's breathing stops for a moment when she shifts against him, but so as to not embarrass him she isn't going to say anything about it unless he does. It happens. Especially in the morning.

But he does mention it and he sounds...well embarrassed. He shouldn't be. It's flattering and she can't help the smile that spreads over her face.

"Am I welcome to not ignore it?"

Oh. Oh, that doesn't help the situation at all. Sherlock swallows, mouth suddenly dry. He's never wanted this in reality, only sort of on principle when one of his physical needs asserts itself on occasion, but now that he thinks about it there's no one he'd rather try this with than Molly.

"More than welcome," he whispers. His body's betraying him, pupils blowing wide and pulse kicking into high speed, and there's something about this that's like being high in all the right ways.

From her current vantage point, Molly has a front row seat to Sherlock's bobbing adam's apple and quickening pulse. She takes them as both very good signs and leans in to press a kiss to the thrumming point on his neck.

A sigh shivers out of him. Some distant part of his mind notices that it's fascinating how his body is helping to selectively narrow his perceptions--and then that part shuts down, because there's a lot of power getting rerouted to sheer sensory and emotional intake.

He tips his head back, a thoughtless little movement, eyes closing.

When Sherlock tilts his head, she takes that as an invitation and starts to trace a path of kisses up his neck to the underside of his jaw where she scrapes her teeth lightly before soothing it with her tongue. He tastes smoky and spicy like she always imagined. Her own senses are on overdrive and the dull ache between her legs that she's been trying to ignore since the night before, becomes a persistent throb.

She's assertive, a confidence Sherlock hadn't thought to guess her capable of, and his fingers are tingling as they slide up into her hair. He's rapidly losing his grip on self-control, unable to reach for anything like a poker face while she's tasting him like this. Again his breath shudders in, and when it escapes him this time there's sound behind it: a short, rumbling moan.

His hips lift a little, tilting towards her.

Christ. She just made Sherlock Holmes moan. Breathe, Molly. It won't do to pass out on the man.

Her lips and tongue continue to taste him and she trails her mouth back down, sliding his shirt to the side a bit so that she can kiss over collarbones. Her fingers instinctively move to the top button on his shirt, but she hesitates and lifts her head to look at him.

He seems more than amenable to his current situation but she remembers the ground rules he set from the previous night.

"Kissing from the waist up, hands only from the waist down?" she asks in a much more breathless voice than she intends.

"Yeah. Yes. Exactly." Words are very difficult right now. The consonants run together, their rattling almost obscuring what he means, and Molly's voice is entering a range he's never heard it in before and that's so exciting he's having unprecedented levels of trouble with vocabulary retrieval. "Safest option. For now. The shirt can go, though. Any time."

Her mouth on his skin makes him aware that this is part of the function of his nerves. That he can feel and interpret pleasure from another human being. And he realizes, on some wordless level, that Molly knows her way around a living body every bit as well as a dead one.

It's a thought that knocks the breath out of him again, this time in the shape of her name.

It's when he uses the word "safest" that it finally clicks with Molly why he's made these rules. His latest bender. He hasn't been tested yet. It causes that kernel of worry in the pit of her stomach that represents his drug addiction to grow.

She pushes it aside for now though and nods in agreement at his request.

"Would be easier if you sit up," she says as she pulls herself into a more seated position next to him and pushes the bed covers down and off of them. They're just making her hot and getting tangled around her legs. It's then she sees for the first time the visual proof that Sherlock Holmes is very much aroused right now. Aroused by her. Molly's mouth goes dry. As if his trousers weren't tight enough as it is. He must be terribly uncomfortable.

When he wakes up hard in his own bed--because of course he does, his brain might be extraordinary but it's housed in a human body--he either lets the situation deflate on its own, or he takes care of it as quickly as possible. It's always been entirely practical for him, the way hunger is, or the need for sleep when that manages to drag him down.

In Molly's bed it's different in a way he didn't think possible.

She's looking at him, taking in exactly what she's done to him and exactly what it means even as he pushes himself up and backwards to sit up for her. Molly is observing him, mentally disassembling clues and putting them back together in a proper order.

Brainy is the new sexy, Irene Adler said to him. He had no idea, he thinks, just how right she was.

"Better?"

"Much," she says as she takes in the rumpled mess that is Sherlock Holmes in her bed. His hair is sticking up at all sorts of angles, his cheeks are rosy and his pupils are dilated in a way she's only ever witnessed when he's high (on drugs or just murder). Maybe she can get him addicted to a new kind of high.

She smiles and there's a bit of mischief in it as she moves to straddle his thighs, tucking her legs underneath her so as to not put the whole of her weight on him. This is a much preferable angle to rid him of his shirt and she takes no time in leaning forward to capture his lips with hers while her hands start to make work of the tiny buttons.

The look she gives him is both fond and wicked, somehow, and it stays burned into the backs of his eyelids for a second when she kisses him again. People have given him all sorts of looks, and he's not so oblivious he hasn't been able to recognize other people undressing him with their eyes (which happens for a reason he's not at all sure of and only sometimes remembers to exploit), but this one registers because it's Molly. This one he'll have to make a study of.

Later, though. Right now she's unbuttoning his shirt, careful and efficient even though her eyes are closed.

She must have to undress corpses like this all the time, he thinks suddenly, and he doesn't know why that makes him even harder.

When Molly gets to the end of his buttons, she breaks the kiss and sits back a bit before going for the buttons at his cuffs. She's awkwardly trapped enough men (and corpses) in their dress shirts by accident, to remember to see to this detail before trying to push the shirt off. It's also an opportune time to catch her breath.

When she's done with that bit, she looks up and takes stock of the man in front of her again as her hands finally slide up his bare torso. He's far too thin thanks to the drugs and being generally terrible at taking care of himself when he's on cases. She'll have to see to that, starting with breakfast. But she still feels an awe at being able to touch him like this. He's still gorgeous.

Her hands slide over his shoulders and take the shirt with them, sliding it down his arms until it pools behind him on the bed.

"Better?" she repeats his last question to him.

There are a handful of scars on him, pink and tan marks on pale skin--burns, cuts, awkwardly healed breaks, a single white circle that indicates where a bullet punched into him. They stand out thanks to how thin he's let himself get, how far he's pushed himself recently for the sakes of those around him.

He can't really find the brainpower to spare for self-consciousness, though, because Molly's pushing his shirt down off his arms with smooth warm hands and it's so erotic he actually trembles a little.

No wonder there's so much murder over this. Though possibly it's just that everyone's as frustrated they can't be as improbably effective at it as Molly Hooper, he manages to think.

"Substantially," he nearly growls, as much a clear and open invitation as the way he leans in and kisses her bare shoulder, just below the strap of her camisole.

Molly can't focus on all the marks and blemishes on his skin right now. Each one brings her physical pain and is a reminder of how much danger he often puts himself in and how little regard he sometimes has for his own being. She vows though that later she will kiss everyone of them and be thankful that he's still alive.

He trembles at her touch and sad thoughts leave her mind. He is alive and responding to her in a way that makes her own body respond in turn. That's all she needs to focus on right now. Her hands settle at his waist, thumbs sliding over his skin idly.

She sighs as his lips touch her overheated skin. He's barely touched her at all so far and she's embarrassingly aroused; can feel her nipples poking against the thin fabric of her top.

Her breath is hot, angling down into his hair and across his neck, and it makes him forget to be polite with her for a moment. Free of his shirt now, the unbuttoned cuffs falling away from his wrists easily, he can bring his hands up to touch her. He can tell--he's trained himself to tell--what her body's doing.

It's the first time he thinks he understands it, though. And based on his very limited understanding...

One hand slides into her hair, to pull her in for a kiss. The other settles just below her breast, pressing upwards to feel the shape and soft weight filling his palm.

Something pops in his brain, a fuse overloading, some capacity for detachment burning away.