#l4l.writes

[l4long-winded]

i really wanna see carmy groveling 🤭 might be fun, after a fight or something

how cruel... i like the way you think! i tried to write him as close to his character here while still adding in that groveling element. i hope i've done it justice!

o.s. a guilty heart's plea(s)

summary: carmen's said some unforgivable things to you. and yet here he is at your doorstep, pleading for you to forgive him (carmen berzatto x afab!reader)

reflection: as much as i pride myself in my ability to write scenes and descriptions, i still struggle a lot with making dialogue sound good while flowing with my writing. i think this has been good practice for me to really get inside this character's head and see what he could possibly say with a prompt as heavy as this. this took me about a week to write so i really hope i gave it the time and energy it deserves. thank you all for reading and feedback is always welcomed, appreciated, and encouraged!

warnings: cursing, angst, established relationship, implied smut, reminiscing, they're on a break, inner monologue, carmen's pov, rambling, self-loathing, carmen pleading, inability to express feelings, apologies, missed calls, insecurities, acts of service, sydney sweeney mention, smoking, somewhat happy ending (please let me know if there are other warnings i need to add)

word count: 2,132

( this work has been cross-posted to ao3 )

Carmen knocks on the screen door ahead of him. It’s his seventh time doing so, the clattering and aggravating sound of metal reverberating against the second door behind that one. Dust coats his knuckles because it transferred from the opaque metal, a small spot shinier than the rest of the door because he continued to rap at the same area. Maybe he should clean it for you later if you actually decide to speak to him again. His hands fidget at his sides, clenching and releasing, staring blankly as he thinks of all the times he’s come over. For his first initial visit, you unlocked the door, gave him a cautious glance over your shoulder, and then led him inside. During the second time, you held his hand as you stepped past the threshold, squeezing it in reassurance.

On Valentine’s Day, when he surprised you with an assortment of flowers from the farmer’s market, you greeted him with a deep kiss, tugging the collar of his shirt to pull him inside of your house. He didn’t show any resistance, blindly following your lead, dropping off the flowers onto your couch as your hands lifted his shirt, and your mouths departed from one another for a smidgen of a second before they found each other again, more impassioned and desperate.

“Open the door, come on, I’m sorry,” he says, more so to himself than your screen door. He’s been close to shouting at it this entire time, making his pleas, encouraging you to open it for him so he can have a discussion with you face-to-face.

He’s called you plenty of times. Each one has either rang for as long as the line allowed or went straight to voicemail. Two weeks have passed without seeing each other. Two long weeks of unanswered text messages he’s sent day by day and missed calls clogging up your phone’s notifications. You’re ignoring him and he knows he deserves it, guilty as the hand in the cookie jar, but he still can’t shake this overwhelming feeling inside of him to see you again. The albums dedicated to you in his gallery are not enough to satisfy this. His fingers twitch every time he swipes at an image and relives the sensation of running them along your skin. That’s when his nose begins to miss the scent that clings to your neck. That’s when his ears long to hear the lilt of your laughter and that particular way you say his name. That’s when his tongue rejects the nicotine and implores him for a taste of your chapstick, or the bubblegum flavor lingering in your mouth greeting him after a shift at work, or the giggles you fall into as he chases the subtle pecks you graciously feed him.

The door behind the one he’s attending to opens. There you are. He can’t see you since the sun is positioned right behind him, warming his back as it sets into the background. At most, he makes out the silhouette of your frame, recognizable to his eyes as he’s acquainted himself with every curve and slope of you, but he’s aware you fully see him on the other side. He wonders if you’re able to tell how little he’s slept since a look in the mirror this morning painted the picture of an exhausted man through dark rings under his eyes and a slackened jaw.

“What do you want, Carmen?” You ask. Not Carmy. Not Bear. Not any of that cheesy shit Richie pokes fun at him for. Carmen. He’s not sure whether he’s relieved to hear the sound of your voice or offended he’s lost every sweet moniker you’ve bestowed upon him.

“To talk,” he explains quickly, “I just want to talk. If you want me to fuck off, then,” he inhales sharply. It would kill him if you told him to fuck off, but he’s also not about to make you uncomfortable for an issue he caused. “Then I’ll fuck off.”

Unlike Carmen, you’re not rapidly firing away sentences in response to him. You’re quiet for a beat and it’s rather agonizing for him because even though there’s only a door separating the two of you, you’re still so far out of his reach. He’s tempted to cup his hands over his eyes and look past the individual holes of the door to check if you’re still there.

“Go ahead,” you say, interrupting his thoughts and refuting his fear you’ve stalked back inside your living room.

“Talk.”

He gulps. He was hoping to at least do this without a barrier in the way, but he’s not about to fumble the one opportunity and chance you’ve given him after two weeks of nothing. He’d be a fool to.

“Fuck… I…” Well, this is off to a great start. He tries to think about the texts he’s sent. He had time to sit down and write out apologies and yet none of them are splurging onto his tongue to save him the awkward discomfort currently stirring in his stomach.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what I said,” Can you let me figure this shit out without breathing down my fucking neck ringing in his ears, haunting him like a phantom stuck on his shadow because it’s one of the last things he said to you before you took off and rightfully gave him the cold shoulder.

“I was stressed and frustrated and, and I wasn’t thinking. Those aren’t excuses for being shitty,” he shakes his head so hard that his hair untucks from his hat and grazes his eyelashes, “If anything, they make me more shitty because only assholes do that and that’s what I am. I’m a fucking asshole and and and and…” He’s rambling, losing the point of this. He’s got a talent for berating himself. He falls into it naturally if he’s not careful.

“And I fucked up. I really, really fucked up. I didn’t mean any of it. I never wanted to hurt you.” But you did. “I don’t know why I do that. I don’t know why I ruin shit, I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me, but something is and you, you, you always… you’re always there and and and then you weren’t and…”

This is hard. He’s never been good at articulating his feelings. He wants nothing more than to just tell you how he’s fucked up and you’re one of the only people who doesn’t think he is, but after his true colors have splintered out of him and sliced at you as they have other people in his life he cares for, your perception’s possibly changed from that. He believes he’s confirmed every horrible thing he’s ever thought and said about himself and usually, he can handle that self-loathing and dissonance on his own, but consternation bubbles in his ribcage and sparks embers licking at the lining of his stomach at the very idea of you becoming desensitized to the version of himself you’ve fallen for. He wants to shove the curtains back into place, pretend you never stumbled upon the man behind them, and continue walking hand in hand with you in the reverie he knew wouldn’t last. But damn it. He wants it to last longer than this. It wasn’t enough time. He craves more of it, grasping for the seconds in his hands despite how much they’re attempting to evade him as the clock ticks and ticks. 

“Fucking fuck,” he bellows, “Man, fuck me, fucking fuck me.” Vulnerability is so fucking repulsive. Who the hell invented it? He can’t finish a keynote to save his life.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he settles on.

“I can’t fucking sleep, I can’t fucking eat, Richie keeps calling me a dumb shit like I’m not already thinking that. I-I-I need you. I’m sorry for making you feel like I don’t, but I do. I don’t blame you for leaving and I don’t blame you for ghosting me, but please, I can’t fucking do this anymore. I know I’m being a selfish fuck, but I can’t shake what you make me feel and I won’t leave until you talk to me.”

He stares hard at the door. The sun’s lower in the sky, making it more difficult to see if you’re still standing there listening to what he has to say, as jumbled of a mess that it is. His hands leave his sides, anxiously pressing palms first into the metal like it’ll ground him. An urge presents itself to rip it off its hinges and see it for himself rather than wait for verification, but he manages to remain steady where he stands. It’s about the same experience he’s had over the past two weeks of texting and calling to no avail. You’re not saying anything. You’re not denying his insecurities, you’re not soothing his temper, you’re not reflecting it, and you’re not engaging like he’s envisioned time and time again. You’re eluding him. You’re slipping past his fingers like liquid as he desperately grasps.

“Please, please, please say something.” His forehead leans into the surface, eyes shutting tight. “Tell me I’m not shit, tell me you never want to see me again, please talk to me.”

Please forgive me, he swallows. Please forgive me and take me back.

“Just… please… I… I want to fix this. I want to make it up to you. I’ll do anything to make it up to you. Please don’t shut me out. I’ll make you something? Yeah? Your favorite? What about that place you wanted to go off Lake Shore? Or, or that movie you wanted to see with, uh, that Sweeney girl? What the fuck was it?” Carmen’s eyebrows knit together as he tries to remember the name. “We can go see it… we can go to dinner… I can make dinner. I can take time off work and we can travel somewhere, we can take a trip like you wanted, whatever—I want what you want. Please…? Hello?”

Carmen speaks your name a few times among his pleading. His forehead slowly detaches from the door, indents of the mesh left behind on his skin. He goes quiet to listen for any movement, but he can’t even hear your breathing like this. He can’t hear anything besides the wind picking up, blowing cold over the tips of his ears sticking out from his hat. He steps away from the door, a lump in his throat alongside all the affection he doesn’t know how to let out that he swallows with great difficulty. Instead of walking away from your house, he sits on the cement step leading up to the walkway. He meant it when he said he wouldn’t leave until you talked to him.

He camps outside your house. One hand fishes for his carton of Sapphires, plucking a cigarette from the box. He’s got about two left since he’s been chain-smoking to fill the void. Carmen greatly considers trying to make his plea again on his knees in front of the door if that’s what it’ll take as he lights the end away from his mouth. The pressure of the cement will be a motherfucker, but he’s concocting another game plan to gain your attention since he’s already here and the walk back to his apartment is too long for him to jump at it. If that doesn’t work, then he can leave and come back in the morning before work. He can afford to be slightly late as his normal is showing up early and Sydney and Tina know the prep work that needs to be done.

All his thoughts fade as he hears the door behind him creak. He glances back suddenly, catching it as it slowly swings open. He’s in the midst of standing to his feet and flicking his cigarette into a patch of dirt when you come into view. Your hair’s messy, a white tank top on your torso, and a pair of fleece pajama pants he knows are new. His hands yearn to become acquainted with them as he has your other bottoms. Carmen stares at how you’re hugging yourself, presumably because the cold air is filtering into your warm house. The goosebumps littered over your biceps and forearms confirm his theory.

He’s on you in an instant. His arms wrap firmly around your frame, sighing out as his stress undergoes the mitigation of your own arms embracing him back. Your hand finds his hair, incidentally causing his hat to fall off to the floor, but he doesn’t care. He’s far too busy stamping your temples, cheeks, jawline, and lips with kisses he has weeks of time to make up for.

“M’sorry,” he mumbles into your hairline, “so, so, so sorry. Missed you.”

#l4l.writes #carmen berzatto #carmen berzatto x reader #carmen berzatto angst #l4l.oneshot #the bear fic #carmy the bear #jeremy allen white #a guilty heart's plea(s)

[l4long-winded]

o.s. fresh, unwilting daisies

summary: carmen gets possessive after your ex boyfriend stops by and leaves you a bouquet of daisies (carmen berzatto x afab!reader)

reflection: wrote this yesterday and edited it today. i have received a few requests in my inbox if anyone is interested in leaving me some more, i'll get to those as soon as i can. let's relish in the collective carmy brain rot together <3 please enjoy and feedback is always appreciated!

warnings: cursing, cynicism, reader has an ex boyfriend, inner monologue, carmen's pov, filth, oral (f receiving), overstimulation, possessive!carmen, jealous!carmen, praise, multiple orgasms, use of "sweet girl," reader doesn't like daisies (they're pretty, let's pretend, sorry to all the daisy lovers), past relationship, donna mention, office setting, p in v sex, dom!carmen (please let me know if there are other warnings i need to add)

word count: 1,750

Stupid.

Stupid, stupid, stupid motherfucker. Who does he think he is? Waltzing into Carmen’s restaurant, the cuffs of his dirt infested denim jeans dragging over Carmen’s pristine floor, said denim jeans hanging low on his hips like an asshole who can’t even present himself to you as an individual who actually gives a fuck. Grant didn’t hold the common courtesy to put on a belt, and Carmen doesn’t believe the man owns one, but if he’s going to saunter in and try and request time with you, Carmen’s girlfriend, then he should at least be decent and dress like he’s attempting to win you back and not as if he just got home after a hard day’s work of laying down brick. Grant doesn’t have a job so that explanation for his asshole outfit and his asshole beanie and his asshole demeanor is not worth excusing him, especially not as he smugly leaned over Carmen’s counter and let his jacket covered elbows smear his Grant-ness all over the surface. Carmen had no choice but to wipe it down with high-grade sanitizer, scrubbing away as if he could scrub away Grant completely out of your and Carmen’s life, since they’re entangled with one another now whether Grant likes it or not.

Carmen shifts his tongue within you utilizing a bit more pressure, undulating the pink muscle in and out until he forms the shape of a well to scoop your slick and curl it into his fervent, perpetual mouth. He gulps you down into the back of his throat, exhaling against your folds at the satisfying, addicting drink equivalent to a desert traveler’s first and desperate swallow of refreshing water. Carmen breathes your scent since it permeates throughout his office space and your wetness coats his cheeks and the tip of his nose, inhaling and exhaling air that causes your thighs to twitch in his hands at the sensation. He ought to be kinder to you, you’re sensitive from the two orgasms he’s endlessly worked out of your cunt, and it’s not your fault Grant continues to be an annoying fixture in your atmosphere having denied his pleas time and time again, but every time Carmen locks eyes with Grant’s lazy, complacent gaze, Carmen feels a surge of jealousy within him compelling him to mark his territory and reinforce the notion of you being his and his alone. Sure, you dated Grant first, but in Carmen’s eyes, you belong to him like you’ve never belonged to anyone.

“Mine,” he utters, slipping his tongue out to lick his puffy, swollen lips clean, exposing his line of thinking as he presses a kiss to your clit, growling and slightly smirking to find the little button still pulsing for him with need. His fingernails dig into the meat of your thighs as you attempt to clamp them around his head, and normally he would let you, but he holds them spread and open for him so he can continue to lap you into the whining mess you’re becoming atop his desk. The downside is how each of those adoring and pleasant sounds are muffled due to your palm actively pressing down against your lips, “good girl” muttered because that’s what he told you to do for him when you started and you’ve done an excellent job of quieting yourself while he practically drowns himself in your cunt. He doesn’t miss the whimper you reward him with at the praise, his right hand generously kneading the flesh of your thigh as a sign that he’s almost done, to just hang on a touch longer and allow him his fill.

“One more,” he promises, “just one more for me, sweet girl, one more,” Carmen litters your pussy and inner thighs with kiss after kiss, stamps of pure affection to calm you down and ready you for his next onslaught. He peers up at you, noticing how your body is trembling just as much as your thighs are, half your ass hanging off the edge of his desk, your upper shoulders slumping partially into the wall behind. Poor thing. Close to sobbing, your eyes glassy from the tears of pleasure that never fall from them, your shirt riding up your stomach since he only bothered to take your pants off in his rush to have you when you came in to check up on him. You deserve his fingers, and he plays around with the idea of sliding them inside you, drumming them against your skin as he thinks about stuffing you with them as his mouth closes over your clit. He’s done it in the past, he knows it would drive you to that climax he currently craves in an instant, but from scanning your disheveled features and writhing frame, his crystal blues eventually attach to the vase of daisies at the side of the two of you, taunting him as they have this entire time.

The notecard sticking out flashes Grant’s name. You don’t even like daisies, you’ve told Carmen, but Grant used to get them for you when he fucked up numerous times throughout your relationship. No matter how much you hated to accept them and therefore reinforced the habit, you would always vase them and frown as they started to immediately die the next morning. That’s who Grant is. He didn’t bother to at least buy you fresh and lively daisies, but the ones right on the verge of dying. Today, months and months into your and Carmen’s relationship, Grant stopped by with vased daisies under the intent of getting you back and they’re actually fucking beautiful, Carmen admits, but they’re pissing him the fuck off. Every glance to them sitting there has brought about this carnal desire to part your legs further for him. The flowers are taunting him, milky and lemony, an assorted arrangement plopped into a blaring, golden vase that Carmen’s mother would definitely keep if she had been gifted it herself, muttering something about hidden treasures, son while storing it away in her cabinet’s hoarding of dishes and “fine china” she gathered from the thrift store. They’re nice. Too nice. Carmen should get you some flowers, he decides to himself, flowers that you would actually like without some underlying motive, simply because he cares about you and because he wants to see your smile light up when he personally hand delivers them.

Fucking Grant. His fucking daisies are taking up too much fucking space on Carmen’s desk and he hates it, he hates that he had to move them from the front of the restaurant into his office so they wouldn’t obstruct the customers, he hates the contents of the notecard begging you to be Grant’s again as if you were ever his in the first place.

“Mine,” Carmen grunts again, lapping up your slit with the full flat of his tongue, dragging it to relish in your taste, in the moan you choke out against your hand, his nose catching between your folds. He glances up at the flowers, the line “want you to be mine again” ringing in his ears from when you read the note aloud to him. Well, fuck you, Grant, he thinks, it’s his tongue and mouth on your cunt and it’s his cock that’s going to be plunging in and out of you tonight on his couch, in his bed, in the shower as you brace yourself with your hands planted on his tile walls.

Fucking cry over it, motherfucker. Fuck your flowers. I’m the one fucking her.

And something… miraculous(?) happens. A single petal falls from the flowers as Carmen licks at you. He watches it swish and sway through the air, descending down until it lands right next to his hand, right on top of your thigh, his thigh.

He pushes his head in further, yanking you by your (his) thighs to meet his mouth as he simultaneously swipes away the petal like it burned you. You squeak out in surprise, your opposite hand flying down to grip the curls in his hair as you sputter above him. Carmen seals his mouth over your clit, done with the teasing, done with his thoughts, and all he wants is to send you over that blissful edge he’s pushed you towards already, stroking you with rolls of his tongue and strong suckles of his suctioned lips. You don’t even last a minute, swaddled pleas of something resembling his name being cried out into your hand, your head bumping into the wall behind as you cream around nothing. He glances down, petting your cunt with merciful, languid brushes of his tongue, in awe of the mess you’re soaking out onto his desk. He drops his jaw lower to catch all of it, close to licking your essence right off the surface if it weren’t for how you’re currently teetering on it. Carmen stands up, unbuckling his belt hurriedly as he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, your cunt’s release once on his lips and chin now transferred to the digits and knife tattooed over it.

“Wha-… Carmy?” You ask as you sit up, only for him to pull you by your hips back into position for him. You look so dazed, fucked out beyond belief, and as he manhandles you to spreading your thighs all over again, his elbow knocks the vase of daisies with enough force to send them crashing down to the floor. The glass breaks into scattered shards, causing you to jump, but Carmen doesn’t seem to have noticed. He’s just lining himself up and pushing straight through your walls, well lubricated with his spit and your cum, having been loved on long enough for your shared coworkers to begin questioning your and his whereabouts. You actually yelp this time, grasping at his broad shoulders as you adjust and clench around him. He latches his lips to yours to mute your noises, thrusting away, pounding the cunt belonging to him and no one else, growling as he bites at your bottom lip.

As he steps his feet apart from one another to open your knees up for extra access, glass crunches under his shoe, water splashing under the sole of the other, and a few daisies are crushed as he fucks you with a quickening pace. He’s not worried about it. He’ll get you some tulips or maybe some sunflowers, something pretty for you to look at as he has you bent over the kitchen table tomorrow morning.

#l4l.writes #carmen berzatto #fresh unwilting daisies #the bear series #carmen berzatto x reader #jeremy allen white #carmen berzatto imagine #the bear hulu #carmy the bear

[l4long-winded]

o.s. the phone call regarding the onions

summary: richie won't stop calling and despite how busy carmen is, he picks up the phone. he didn't know richie would take so long to tell him about his trip to the farmer's market, let alone how impatient you would be in his lap (carmen berzatto x afab!reader)

reflection: i wrote this last night and edited it this afternoon. i find i have a hard time writing dialogue because i always want it to flow with my other descriptions. it's tricky for me, so this was an interesting challenge for myself. indulgent? yes. but intriguing nonetheless. as always, enjoy, and feedback is always appreciated!

warnings: cursing, kissing, phone call during sex, riding, religious allusions, more cursing, pussydrunk!carmen (the best kind), longwinded descriptions, slander of the elderly, cynicism, filth, secret girlfriend!reader, humorous dialogue, richie being richie, set before or during season 1 ig, double entendre ending, very slight dirty talk, overuse of the word "cousin" (please let me know if there are other warnings i need to add)

word count: 2,101

“Are you even listening to me, Cousin?” Richie’s voice irritates Carmen’s eardrum drastically more than it usually does, and that’s saying something considering how his tone and words always sift right under the flesh of Carmen’s forearms to scrape against his bones. He should really tell Richie to shut the fuck up, to get to the godforsaken point of this overdrawn story about his trip to the grocers, but Carmen can’t find the speech in him to do so. As a defensive and sharp individual, Carmen seldom runs into the issue of not being able to come back with a witty remark of his own speckled in a seasoning of honesty, but his brain’s already having difficulty concentrating on his shallow breathing. If he loses focus on that particular aspect, he would never hear the end of it. Richie’s too much of a pain in the ass to hang up on, in fact, he’s part of the reason Carmen’s in this predicament.

Richie just had to keep on calling over and over and over and over again. Carmen’s phone buzzed and buzzed and buzzed and the motherfucker on the other end would not take the fucking hint. Carmen recalls catching the flustered, frustrated, and deprived expression on your features as you looked at him, disappointment in your blown pupils because you knew you had to climb off his lap in the middle of your shared fun. Carmen assured you that it wouldn’t take long, to remain where you were because he couldn’t bear to depart from your heat for a single second in this state of mind, the state of nothingness possessed by desire. He’s confronted that compelling phenomenon too often with you and it’s absolutely everything for him. Richie’s call, Carmen surmised and explained to you during the fifth ring, would only take three minutes, five at the most.

Carmen forgets how bad at math he is until it smacks him upside the face and attempts to ruin his day. Richie’s been yapping on the line for about… how long has it been? Carmen stares up at the ceiling, phone pressed to his ear, pink lips parting as your tongue and teeth glissade down his neck. He can feel his body’s primal need to roll his eyes far into the back of his head, but he somehow sustains his half lidded gaze so he can raise his phone away from his ear to check the call’s duration.

14:53. 14:54. 14:55.

Seriously? Fifteen minutes of this bullshit? Carmen’s close to tossing his phone across the room so he can fuck you properly against his bedroom door, but he knows Richie. Richie would bolt on over here to tell Carmen his story in person, stomp away on Carmen’s remnants of alone time with you before he’s back to busting his ass in the kitchen. Carmen can’t have that. A fucking crowbar couldn’t pry you off his cock, and he’s sighing out shakily, pushing the mic away from his mouth far off to the side of the couch and into the cushion so he can release the tendril of fucked out noise you’re igniting in his stomach. Its smoke is climbing up and up, swirling around his lungs, collapsing into purrs and grunts of pleasure since he can’t be any louder than that. You haven’t made his mistake easy on him, fluttering your walls around him, arching as you rise and fall, adding in your lips and dutiful tongue into the sum of his impending eruption. He notices the twinkle atop the slim rings of your irises, how in awe and turned on you are from hearing those little noises he can’t will himself to wrangle down.

Do you like that?

He mouths.

Yes,

you nod your head.

For a moment, resolve slips. Carmen’s other hand maneuvers from gripping the throw pillow on his couch to gripping your thigh, sliding slightly down where he sits so he can roll his hips up into you. He revels in the gasp you inhale, your hands steadying yourself by the use of his shoulders. A ghost of a smile forms on his lips catching your pout and he’s about to inform you to behave when his phone speaks from under the cushion, still in Carmen’s other hand as he was trying to metaphorically and literally smother Richie, but the bastard’s gumption defeats Carmen’s efforts. He tightens his top and bottom lip together as he snatches the phone in agitation from under the cushion to lift it back to his ear.

“Carmy? Carmy? I’m fucking talking to you, Carmy,” Richie grits out, the bass in his voice scratching an unpleasant portion of Carmen’s ear. Carmen shuts his eyes, instructing himself soundlessly to breathe in through his nose and out through his mouth… the same mouth you kiss, your hands cupping his cheeks, tongue shyly petting his. He should put a stop to it. He’s powerless when you kiss him, it’s why he avoided doing so this entire phone call with Richie. He knew he couldn’t stop you, the hand once at your thigh palming up to your ass, his middle finger slipping under the fabric of your lacy panties that you still had on. It rests there, like it’s part of the ensemble (or lack of), twitching and clutching as the lace hugs him and tethers his digit to you.

“Hey, bozo, are you going to answer me or not?” Richie snarls, and Carmen almost tells him to fuck off, but you’re the one who takes mercy on him. Your mouth slides back down, lapping over a sensitive vein in his neck. Carmen finds himself falling back into the couch, licking his dry lips, a desire in him present to curse his friend out.

“I hear you, Richie, I fucking hear you,” Carmen blurts suddenly. He’s got a breathy rasp to him due to the sex, crimson in the face, yelling almost in the same fashion he does at work. You hide your amused grin under your hair as you tenderly kiss his jaw, picking up the speed of your hips. Before, your movements were gentle and small. But now, you have intention as you fuck yourself on Carmen’s cock, sucking spots on his skin to conceal your moans away. The worst part is that even though Carmen can barely hear them, he can feel the hum of each one vibrating against his flesh. And it feels like he knows you sound. How does someone begin to describe that? The walls of a cathedral must know exactly what he’s experiencing, angelic hums reverberating through their surfaces, etching sound waves into crevices and making them whole. That’s it. He feels whole. Complete. It’s almost as good as when he swallows those moans into his mouth and feels them alive in his throat.

“Yeah? Yeah? Then what the fuck did I say, huh?”

Shit… yeah, what the fuck did he say? Carmen’s horrid at multitasking outside his craft and he’s especially inept at maintaining his control and composure when he’s watching his secret girlfriend impale herself repeatedly on his throbbing length. He closes his eyes again to subtract sight’s distraction, middle finger sweeping back and forth so that your lace can rub his knuckle and jog along his memory. Oddly enough, it helps him collect the thoughts you’re so keen on dissipating with those gorgeous, enticing hips of yours.

“You said… you went to the farmer’s market,” Carmen begins, gulping heavily as you clench. “You went to… uh,” Carmen tilts his phone away from his mouth, biting hard on his index finger to refrain from hissing out. He glares at you, you’re being unfair, and the mischief is written all over your gaze despite the innocent smile you attempt to give him. He’s definitely going to pay this back. He’s not a saint, he holds grudges, and he’s harboring one against you for almost causing him to moan into his phone.

“Carmy,” Richie disrupts Carmen’s plans for vengeance and fortunately, Carmen instantly recalls what they were talking about like an epiphany, no thanks to you.

“You went to pick up the onions!” Carmen rushes, his syllables spilling over one another. He hates how he sounds. It’s different from his regular speaking voice and if they weren’t dealing with shitty cell service, Richie probably would’ve noticed.

“Then, what? I’ve been talking for almost twenty minutes,” oh, Carmen fucking knows, “and that’s all you’ve gotten from that?”

“Richie,” Carmen says as sternly as he can as your tightness sinks to his base. He sucks onto his upper row of teeth, pulsing increasing, lighting up with heat inside of your delectable walls. This is your fault, too. You and your enveloping warmth. You and your pretty face and your pretty cunt and your persistent needs, your pliant open legs as you ride him and make him drunk without a smidgen of alcohol around. He might as well have bathed himself in scotch, the effects most likely easier to handle than the vise you’ve got on his mind, body, and cock. “Did you, or did you not get the fucking onions?”

Richie scoffs, “Ugggghhhhhhh,” into Carmen’s ear. Annoyed by it, Carmen grips his phone tighter as he pushes it away from his head for as long as Richie does it. He shakes his hair out of his eyes as he retracts the phone back to its original position, his stare greedily finding where his cock disappears and reappears with more and more of that wonderful slick that glides him in deeper and deeper. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you! The fucking old broad from the lot gave me that dirty ass look as she took all of the product right in front of me. What the fuck is some old chick with a bad hip going to do with sixteen onions, Carmy? She had her stumbling grandson with his little toddler hands dropping the motherfuckers on the floor right in front of me because he couldn’t carry them all. Like, are you kidding me? Are you cooking French Onion soup for the whole neighborhood? For the next winter?”

“Richie,” Carmen grinds out as you grind down on him. His teeth clatter as he scrapes them together. “Richie… Richie…” He can’t gain Richie’s attention back as he rants in Carmen’s ear, as you swivel your hips and whine at the stretch. Carmen’s holding himself back, painfully hard from the experience you’re condoning.

“Next time I see her, it’s on. Watch what fucking soup she can make when I buy the whole stock and flip her the bird,” Richie continues, the sound of a trunk being harshly slammed on the other end. But Carmen’s had enough. He can’t take it anymore. He feels feral, he’s going to burst any second and he refuses to do so with Richie still on the line.

“Cousin, Cousin, Cousin, Cousin,” Carmen parrots, rolling his eyes as he increases his volume with each repetition.

On the other side, Richie talks over him. “She’s driving some ugly ass Pontiac, no wonder she’s bitter.”

“Cousin, Cousin, listen to me.”

“Do you think they’ll notice me if I take a stab at one of her tires?”

“Richie!”

“Nah, you’re right, it looks like there’s a bunch of fucking narcs around here.”

“Motherfucker, stop talking,” Carmen spits and that’s when Richie shouts back, his own irritation building because that entire time, he could hear Carmen babbling on and on. Apparently no one knows how to listen to a fucking story anymore.

“What? What, Carmy?” Richie responds with a yell. He must be inside of his car because Carmen heard a crash right after. Carmen pinches the bridge of his nose having finally snaked his other hand away from your underwear.

“So, you’re telling me… you don’t have the onions?” Carmen asks.

Richie sighs. The reason he felt the need to orate what happened is because of Carmen’s temper regarding the restaurant. He had one task today and he failed it because of some greedy elderly woman. Though, he understands how Carmen’s busy. Through this phone call, Richie hasn’t been able to hold his Cousin’s focus for very long. He doesn’t think there was any interval longer than three minutes where he had it all to himself.

“No, I… I don’t ha—”

The line goes dead. Richie looks down at his phone, fully tempted to call Carmen one more time to explain himself and make his stubborn, mule-headed friend see his point of view for once. He only doesn’t because he swears Carmen sounded like he was about to explode.

#l4l.writes #carmen berzatto #carmen berzatto x reader #the bear #the bear series #jeremy allen white #richie jerimovich #the phone call regarding the onions #l4l.oneshot

[l4long-winded]

o.s. those sweet, sweet, effectual praises

summary: in which you talk an inexperienced carmen through it (carmen berzatto x afab!reader)

reflection: i meant this as a blurb, so it turned into a really short one shot. forgive me, i overdo things and get lost in the details of very small, small interactions. i've been thinking of finally making some taglists as well, so if anyone is interested, let me know. and, of course, enjoy! feedback is always appreciated!

warnings: cursing, praise kink, pussydrunk!carmy, dirty talk, absolute filth, subby!carmy?, inexperienced!carmy (you can imagine him as a virgin in this if you'd like), sensory words, slight overstimulation, finger sucking, reference to oral (please let me know if there are other tags i need to add)

word count: 1,137

“Christ, stop… s-stop that,” Carmen hisses, his knuckles pigmented ivory as his fingers compress the fitted sheet’s extra fabric tighter into his grip. His other hand is occupied with holding his throbbing girth and, of course, he feels lightheaded as he pulses and sustains the heartbeat against his calloused digits. But the real issue isn’t how hard he is (he surmises he can carve a statue with himself at this point), the issue is the string of slick he focuses on connecting the tip of his cock to your glistening outer lips. It’s that damn wetness his mouth waters for, tongue envying his dick for a flash of a moment, poking out to lick his suddenly dry lips as he imagines it spread over his chin and jaw.

“I’ll hold still,” you relent, like a fucking saint, petting the muscles in his shoulders as your thighs relax into the mattress below.

Carmen leans down to kiss you in that moment, first your cheeks, your nose, then forehead, amply covering every centimeter of surface area to display his appreciation for your patience, because it’s really not your fault, it’s his lack of will power. Mere seconds ago, you chanced a shift of your hips upwards and struck gold on your first try, your dripping slit sliding the head of him right between your folds. It happened so abruptly and he was ill prepared for the surge of pleasure he’d undergo, retracting to just breathe and calm his excitement. He lingers when he finally kisses your mouth, relishing in the noise of approval you hum against him, a sign that he hasn’t completely fucked this up because of his inexperience and clumsy, innate reactions to this entire endeavor.

“Let me,” you mumble against his mouth, your hands tracing from his shoulders, to the back of his neck, and ultimately into his hair, fingers slipping his unruly curls right into the crevices. Your nails and fingertips lightly massage his scalp and fuck, he’ll let you do whatever the hell you want if you keep doing just that, nodding mindlessly despite that small voice inside advising him how he should be the one in control.

“You’ll do it next time,” you promise him, as if sensing his self-doubt, and that’s enough for him to ignore it, his eyelids heavy as you cease kissing him to reach down and grasp him. Your hand is smaller than his is, but your touch has him inhale shakily, slowly removing his own hand so that it can join the other on the mattress, right at the opposite side of your head where he cages you in. You give him a sweet smile, one he wants to kiss and bite at, but his arms flex as he watches your features and remains where he is, glancing down to see how you guide him.

“Breathe for me, Carmy,” you say, which is easier said than done, but he listens to you, inhaling through his nose and exhaling through his mouth. It’s easier, he finds, feeling you brush his tip back and forth along your warmth, willing his eyes to stay open to view, his jaw hanging open at the sensation. He particularly enjoys the image of your slick coating your fingers in the process.

“You’re so hard,” you comment, your teeth biting on your lower lip. He forgets you’re also hanging on in anticipation just as he is. He’s glad he’s not the only one losing his mind here, managing a small grin at the lilt your voice adopts.

“Ready?” You ask next and he’s nodding his head again, perhaps a little too eagerly, but he’s past the point of looking desperate and depraved, he really is losing the amount of fucks he has left about how you could negatively perceive him. It’s a waste, anyhow, since you think the world of him.

With his willingness, you offer him a peck on the mouth before you’re fluttering your lashes at him in warning of what’s about to happen. He gulps, monitoring his breathing as you had told him to, and he stares at your face the entire time you align him and gently pull him forward, his hips shifting in accommodation naturally until the swollen head of him breaches your entrance. And shit, breathing is a lot harder to do once he’s halfway inside of you, faltering because he gasped while he was inhaling and almost choked on air.

“shitshitshitshitshit,” he mutters, groaning from deep in his chest when he accidentally makes the mistake of falling to his forearms, sinking himself deeper as a result, drawing collective cries from the both of you. He really didn’t mean to, noticing the tremble of your thighs from how physically close you both are now, your walls clenching him somehow even tighter, astonishing him because he’s never felt anything this enveloping, nothing this welcoming and yet so resisting, twitching and clamping away at him in a vise his hips chase with an additional, involuntary push forward. As he pants out and attempts to find the oxygen he’s lost, he can see the pleasure written on your features, your mouth falling open as he prods at the hilt, your whine infiltrating his eardrums as you clutch onto his shoulders at the stretch.

“Yes, that’s perfect, Carmy,” you say, cupping his cheeks into your hands as you kiss him. His hips stutter, you can’t say things like that to him, not when he’s buried this deep and aching.

“I can’t, I can’t,” he shudders, but you’re cooing at him, calming him down, placing kiss after kiss on his lips even though he believes he’s going to pop any second. His brain tells him to just fill you up and let go, but as always, you’re able to lure him out of that space and force him into the present moment.

“You feel incredible,” you tell him in between kisses, “doing so wonderful,” he moans as he softly thrusts, “fucking me just right.” It’s a miracle he doesn’t blow his load right then and there, beginning to return every one of your kisses slowly but surely. He shifts again and that impending, urgent need rears once more, especially from how you whine right into his mouth, but it fades away as he stills and focuses on your hands on his cheeks. The digits of your right hand feel rather slippery on his stubble and that’s when he remembers what had pooled out of your cunt onto them in the midst of sliding him in on home.

He turns his head, capturing your index finger into his mouth, sucking at the wetness still there while he simultaneously drives his hips into you. It’s instinctual from there, picking up his pace as he moans around your finger, and at your encouraging “yesyesyesyes, fuck, Carmy, yes!”

#l4l.writes #those sweet sweet effectual praises #carmen berzatto x reader #carmen berzatto #the bear hulu #the bear #jeremy allen white #carmen berzatto imagine

[l4long-winded]

mad carmy with sassy reader that doesn’t take his shit!!! (smut!)

ask and you shall receive (happy valentine's day, love)

o.s. fire in the freezer

summary: it's opening night and you're stuck inside the walk-in with your boss, carmen. can the night get any worse? (carmen berzatto x afab!reader)

reflection: this took me embarrassingly long. i had a lot to get through these past weeks. i still have a busy schedule with college and life, but i want to do more of these. i have about 3 or 4 prompts i need to get to, but i think i'll be able to manage. also, this might be ooc for some people? idk, it's fiction. please enjoy and feedback is always appreciated!

warnings: cursing, longwinded descriptions, angry!carmy, angry!reader, takes place during the season 2 finale (pretending claire doesn't exist), implied enemies to lovers, reader's pov, reader is a line cook(?), arguing, surprise kissing, walk-in shenanigans, dirty talk, mention of fridge guy, use of the word "slutty," walk-in p in v, unprotected (please let me know if there are other warnings i need to add)

word count: 2,140

( this work has been cross-posted to ao3 )

“What the fuck did you just say?”

It’s alarming how crimson his face appears considering the walk-in’s cold air biting at both your limbs, how you imagine the rising heat of his breath combats the freezer’s chill, puffs relaying the steam building within him. It’s a miracle it doesn’t fume from his ears. Fifteen minutes have passed, fifteen minutes of remaining silent as Carmen mouthed off about the unfairness of the situation, how his cell phone doesn’t have service, how he doesn’t know what the fuck is going on out there when your coworkers have seemingly abandoned the both of you to fend for yourselves. You don’t blame him. You don’t want to be in here any more than he does, but there’s this wretched thing about Carmen that he does when tensions are high and his temper flies off the handle. He gets mean. He becomes hurtful. You’ve worked with him long enough to see it occur, the venomous speech he mutters at a high volume as a tendon in his neck protrudes and the person being yelled at flinches in shock. Though such poison’s never been doused over your head, he’s never directed that anger towards you.

Until now. He inadvertently called you an idiot along with the coworkers busying themselves outside the walk-in. There’s not much they can do about the freezer’s handle breaking, and you both know that, but he’s not calming himself down, nor is he making this easier on you when you’re stuck in the same situation as him. You two are prideful and confident in your actions in the kitchen. Sure, you’ve butted heads a few times and stared each other down from afar, but your relationship’s been tame for the most part.

“I said, ‘Stop acting like a fucking cunt.’” You bark back. So much for being tame. You couldn’t stop the words from spilling from your mouth. Everyone has the grace and privilege of being able to ignore him since he’s locked away here with you, but unfortunately, you’re not as lucky. You don’t appreciate being talked down to and you won’t take it from your boss just because he’s irate and the world is crumbling beneath your feet. You want to head out there and contribute to the restaurant as he does, but you’re also not spewing hateful soliloquies to the one person who could possibly understand what you’re going through. That, and it’s fucking cold in here, you’re irritated by the temperature frosting over your skin. It’s opening night and you’re stuck with your least favorite person in the kitchen—your least favorite person possibly in Chicago. The last thing you’re going to do is sulk near the stored ingredients while he shouts and pounds away at the freezer’s door.

This is his fucking fault. How fucking dare he? Why are you paying for his sin?

Just as it did the first time, the second time renders him, miraculously, speechless. It’s not because he doesn’t have anything to reply back, this is evident in how he purses his lips together and clenches his jaw. You notice it flex as he swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing, previously hidden by the collar he’s now unbuttoned. He stares at you with a pointed gaze, eyebrows ever so slightly knitted inwards. Neither of you has to utter a single word to understand how much you can’t fucking stand each other, how Carmen is purposely holding back since you’ve caught his petulant tantrum and condescended him for it. The absence of sound between you two is grim as if he’s waiting for the apology, but fuck him, you’re not apologizing for shit. Instead, you mimic his facial expression like he’s staring into a mirror, crossing your arms against your chest for good measure to illustrate the guard he won’t be breaking through anytime soon.

Carmen steps forward. It’s a singular step. There’s only backwards to go before you end up meeting the shelves, so you remain where you are. His body heat radiates, prominent not because you’re that close, but because the freezer’s becoming more unforgiving the longer you’re both in here.

“Say it again,” he breathes.

You blink rapidly as if he’s a mirage, as if he’ll disappear, and as if he’s grown two other heads. He wants you to say it again? Is this some kind of a test? It has to be. There aren’t many other options, besides how he steps even closer within your vicinity and away from the locked palisade ahead. The temperature rises, and the fucked part about it is that your body’s instinctual need to survive urges you to collide into his frame to share feverish flames instead of standing in the chilled atmosphere on your lonesome. Carmen’s mandibles buckle, a sign of his bottled intentions, of what he really wants to say. You wish he’d just spit it out rather than goad you into the unemployment line.

“Call me a cunt again,” he dares and confirms your previous thoughts. He’s standing so close, proximity lacking to the point where his hot breath ghosts your nose and cheeks. Again, your instincts urge, and again, you will them to shut the fuck up and let me handle this. How convoluted and capricious you are. Arguing with innate impulses on the inside while arguing with your superior on the outside, fastened to him inside an icy cage as your coworkers take advantage of the kitchen’s liberating space without you. Fuck them too, they haven’t told either of you shit in what feels like forever and Carmen’s acting out of character. He’s not supposed to be with you like this. He’s not supposed to be gazing at you like he’s about to blow up. He’s not supposed to be challenging you into an impossible situation. You’ve called him a cunt twice. Twice. Three times symbolize the three strikes before you’re out.

Well, if you’re going out, you’re going down swinging your bat as hard as you can, spins and all, dirt flying and wind ricocheting. He’s thrown his virulence. Now, it’s your turn.

“Cun—nnnmph,” is not what you expected to utter, but before you could punctuate that final phoneme, Carmen’s mouth swallowed it greedily, and transitioned it into an astonished noise muffled by his lips. Your eyes flutter, searching his face for a way to explain why the hell this is happening, but suddenly, Carmen shifts his head, the kiss he’s sprung on you deepening, and an accidental swipe of his tongue shuts your eyes. All in a matter of two conflicted seconds.

“Thought you,” you murmur between his stifling, repeated connections, “wanted me to,” he’s practically shoving his tongue against yours, “call you a–”

He grunts in frustration. Seemingly towards you. His hands grasp your biceps, forcing your eyes onto his as his breathing shallows out. “Believe me, it won’t be the only time you put a cunt in my mouth tonight,” he says sharply. You don’t know why your thighs tremor. You fault the near-hypothermia.

“Shit, you’re cold,” he states the obvious as his attention turns to his palms on your arms, as if he didn’t just plant such a filthy image in your mind’s eye. His thumbs stroke over your goosebumps, examining your skin with careful scrutiny. If you didn’t know any better, you swear you see worry cross his visage for a moment. His hands aren’t any better, but they’re warmer than your flesh, and skin-to-skin makes this situation a little more bearable. You won’t tell him that, but he seems to have an idea of how you’re not flinching away from his touch. In fact… you’re leaning into it.

“Of course I am. It’s the walk-in,” you say sarcastically. “Wouldn’t be here if you had just called Tommy,” you add, but he exhales a heavy breath through his nose. He shrugs off his jacket to his Chef’s Whites, rolling his eyes, muttering something to himself about Tony, Terry, and Tommy, fucking fuck it all.

“Shut the fuck up, put this on, and turn around,” he hands you the jacket. He had the prerogative of wearing sleeves in here, so he’s not as frigid as you are (temperature-wise, anyway).

“It’ll keep you warm while I fuck you,” he promises, hard gaze on your eyes. You gulp, a desire within you to tell him off for being so presumptive of what’s happening here. Yet, that desire is viciously censored in favor of the desire to do as he says, or more so, the idea of being railed to distract you from how cold you are.

You slip his jacket on, pivoting on your heel, biting your tongue as you lean forward and grasp the metal belonging to the shelves ahead. The inside of his sleeves are already snug and cozy on your arms because of how long he wore it. You hate it. The smug bastard’s not supposed to be right.

You gulp as Carmen’s knuckles graze your lower back, lifting his jacket out of his way for a moment to tug at the waistband of your pants. You hear his breathing stutter, his hand skimming down the sensitive flesh of your ass as his eyes trace over the thin fabric of the panties you chose today.

“Is your underwear always this slutty?” He asks, his voice lower than you’ve ever heard it. To be fair, you didn’t know this would be happening today.

“Find out tomorrow,” you settle for. It seems to be the appropriate response because he groans and kneads at the flesh gathered at your hip as an appreciative gesture. This won’t be the last time this happens. It can’t be.

There’s rustling behind you. You hear the sound of Carmen’s belt before you feel the cold metal prod at the meat of your posterior, sent forward since he’s not fully tugging the leather material from the loops of his pants. It’s just enough for him to get at his zipper, the noise causing your hands to grip the shelves ahead of you even tighter. Carmen’s thumbnail slides along your skin as he tucks his thumb under your panties to position them to the side. The blunt head of him strokes at your entrance, his opposite hand pushing between your shoulder blades to exacerbate the bend at your hips and the pretty dip in your spine.

“You’re really hard for a man who’s surrounded by this much cold,” you mutter smugly. It’s all your doing, revving up his engine through simply challenging him amid his grizzly attack.

However, the smugness dies on your tongue once Carmen pushes in. He didn’t offer you a smartass response, instead offering you the breach of his length, the swollen head of him prying at your soaked walls up until his hips are flush with yours. Your trembling returns and it’s no longer because of the cool air, but because Carmen begins to thrust the second your cunt gives to him. Wrath fades from your mouth, and a moan replaces it, indicating your lust and enjoyment from this, much to your own dismay.

“M’this hard because I was thinking about how fucking warm you’d be around me,” he grunts, leaning over you and jostling you with his strong movements. His pace isn’t brutal, but the pressure of each of his thrusts is. He pulls back and then buries himself as deep as he could go, the sounds of his effort being in the way his hips collide with the flesh of your ass, a smack every time he hits it just right. And fuck, does he hit it just right. The horrible thing is it’ll stroke his massive ego. The great, amazing, toe-curling thing is that it feels like nirvana. The tip of his cock becomes acquainted with a pivotal point within you that has your vision blurred, unable to make out a single label of the cans and containers in front of your face.

“H-how warm is it?” You manage. Somehow. Conversation isn’t your prerogative while you’re bent over and being receptive, gasping for air every time you attempt to shift your hips back into him and he surpasses another inch inside of you. But you’re curious.

“Like a damn furnace,” he answers quickly, increasing his pace just as fast as the sentence leaves his mouth. “Tighter than I imagined,” he confesses, his forehead pressing into your shoulder. Your feet shuffle apart, legs spreading further for him as you pant and do your best not to whine. You can’t give him that satisfaction.

But it’s no use. His name shoots off your tongue like a prayer, a Freudian slip, his middle finger stroking along your clit in time with his bruising plunges.

“Wet, so, so fucking wet,” he continues, “drenching me and setting me on fire at the same fucking time.”

Fuck, you hope they never open that door.

#l4l.writes #carmen berzatto #carmen berzatto imagine #carmy the bear #carmen berzatto x reader #jeremy allen white #the bear fic #the bear #fire in the freezer #l4l.oneshot

[l4long-winded]

carmen loves when you wear his white shirt. he loves seeing the fullness of your breasts stretching the fabric gathered at the chest. he loves how the stiff peaks of your nipples are hugged with the soft cotton, especially when you’re both too desperate to paw each other’s clothes off and he’s mouthing hot and wet over the cloth to tongue them alive and at attention. he loves how it rides over your abdomen when you reach for something in his cabinets, he loves when it rides high enough to expose your navel, when you’re writhing on his bed and fisting it into your hands as he’s curling his fingers deep, deep inside your warm cunt.

#carmen berzatto imagine #carmen berzatto x reader #brain rot little bit #l4l.thirsts #l4l.writes #l4l.carmy #l4l.blurb

[l4long-winded]

s e r i e s m a s t e r l i s t

r e a d o n a o 3

summary: your upstairs neighbor is a pain to deal with for several reasons. not only does he annoyingly play his violin at all hours of the day, but he's also rude and patronizing. what makes matters worse is how he soon requires your help in a case he's working on. or, in other words, the five times sherlock holmes deduced you and the one time he was wrong (cavill!sherlock x afab!reader)

warnings: enemies to lovers, friends to lovers, condescending!sherlock, seamstress!reader, denial of feelings, close proximity, reader has a nickname, arguments, murder mystery, sexual tension, miscommunication, original characters, offscreen character deaths, alcohol consumption, cursing, overthinking, longwinded descriptions, kissing, flirting, suggestive language, a slight slowburn, dirty talk, praise, vaginal penetration, vaginal fingering, grief, angst, fluff, victorian era, smut (please let me know if there are other warnings i need to add)

word count: 50,000+

t a b l e o f c o n t e n t s

i. a sleep deprived meeting

your upstairs neighbor plays the violin often. so much so that it's distracting you from your work. you decide it's time to confront him.

ii. consequences and a lead

sherlock doesn't usually regret things, but he's regretting how he spoke to you. it's not out of the goodness of his heart, however.

iii. mr. wright and jane austen

sherlock observes you from afar and learns things against his own whim. that's what he'll keep telling himself.

iv. the distraction of rising temperature

now that you and sherlock are at a friendlier standing, it's time to explore more of your friendship. or whatever it is.

v. concealed feelings and abstract attitudes

the morning after your drunken fiasco is not any less awkward than you could have guessed. there seems to be a strain on your relationship with sherlock that seeps into the trips you go on together for his investigation. you don't know why he's acting the way he is, you just know that it's angering you.

vi. the puzzling case of clara grace and intricate, convoluted emotions

there are a few ways that you and sherlock reconcile. one involves a bed, the other involves a carriage, a dance, and then there's the matter of the revolver. what was once unclear begins to be disclosed, but it can only be unveiled to a willing, open, and observant eye. you're going to find what's there as well as what you want to be there.

#beyond answers #l4l.writes #sherlock holmes #sherlock x reader #henry cavill sherlock #henry cavill x reader #henry cavill #enola holmes #sherlock holmes x reader #beyond answers masterlist

[l4long-winded]

i. a sleep deprived meeting

summary: your upstairs neighbor plays the violin often. so much so that it's distracting you from your work. you decide it's time to confront him (cavill!sherlock x afab!reader)

reflection: this is the first part of six. two have been written, and another is currently in the works. i did plan to finish everything and post it in one piece, but then it would be too long. i have dove into a rabbit hole here and i hope i am able to curse others as much as henry's sherlock has cursed me. please enjoy and of course, feedback is always encouraged and appreciated.

warnings: seamstress!reader, sherlock is rude, condescending!sherlock, cursing, somewhat slowburn, enemies to lovers, eventual smut, victorian era (please let me know if there are other warnings i need to add)

word count: 2,604

That damn violin’s surpassing the dimension between floors separating you from your upstairs neighbor again. The vivid sound is so clear that you’re positive your fingertips could rest against the surface of the wall and vibration would greet you not only harmoniously, but physically. Music you could touch because of how it swells in the building, how it echoes out to your flat and bounces off the empty spaces not covered by scraps of fabric. The hum shouldn’t bother you as much as it does, but your fingers are not occupying themselves with the task of becoming familiar with the tunes of a skilled violinist; they’re busy with a commissioned dress that must be finished within the time slot of a day. Normally you wouldn’t rush the process, but work came fast and aplenty, leaving you with little to no choice but to overload yourself and answer it with vigor and stubbornness others would describe as not knowing how to quit. You’ve never had a quota this full to meet and you were, after all, one woman, but you’re going to work day and night if that’s what it takes. Or, in your case, another day and another night of nonstop work to add onto your seemingly endless and perpetually sleepless cycle of being.

In your haste, your index finger meets the needle of your incoming thread. It’s a stab straight to your flesh, one of many, and one managing to aggravate your already high level of frustration brewing within. Quickly and without thinking, you shove your finger into your mouth to nurse the small, repetitive wound underneath your tongue. The taste of metal mixes off with your saliva and soon fades from blood and light salt to nothing but a feeling of your pulse throbbing from the unwelcome intrusion. The drum in your fingertip only speeds up as a warning of you to be careful, of how each misstep with the needle may be miniscule, but multiplying the instances periodically would leave behind more pain to ache alongside the pressure forming in your back and neck. Your eyes burn the longer you keep them open, the longer you focus on sewing, there’s no need to add pricked fingers to your list of pain that you would wind up ignoring in favor of more work. And yet, through all of this, it’s not your cramping hands, your stiff neck, your tired eyes, or your crouching back that cultivates your irritation. No, it’s the crescendo of the violin from upstairs nestling in your ear, yelling at you to shut it up.

After personifying the instrument and imagining its voice as a cry for help, of how it’s a victim to the criminal musician’s overuse, you somehow justify yourself pushing the cloth in your lap aside to place it onto the table of your machine. You blow air to flip the hair strands that have fallen out of their way and laid on your lips, the rest pinned to your head so you wouldn’t have to worry about your hair draping over your skin during your job’s duties. You’re so focused on gripping the material of your skirts that you fail to notice the strands falling right back into your eyes on the way up the stairs you’re marching on one by one. The violin increases in volume with every step you take until you’re soon facing a door, a golden label of 221B staring back at you, the contrast being in the floor letter. This is not the first time you’ve been disturbed by this tenant, but it’s the first time you’ve come up here to this door in particular and you’re aware of this as you hesitate and merely glare forward. This self-awareness sets you back two seconds, only two seconds of precious time before you decide to see this through and confront your unnamed tormenter.

Your hand raises into a fist, prepared to knock onto the door seemingly taunting you for some course of action, but it’s then that it swings open and unveils a rather large man with squared shoulders and an annoyed expression that you know mirrors your own. His face is sculpted, boyish curls surrounding masculine and inquisitive features that become more so with a raise of his left eyebrow. Almost as if you were actually staring into your own reflection, your shoulders perk up and you rectify your posture to try and replicate the amount of space he takes in the same fashion that you would imagine a human doing in front of a bear to appear bigger than it was. But it doesn’t matter what he looks like, this complaint must be said with confidence and you won’t let this man’s size or gender intimidate you. Your lack of sleep may have made you a bit reckless, but at least you could move forward and continue without his infuriating habits robbing you of your sanity whether it’s while you work or while you try to unwind (a much rarer phenomenon, but still not as plausible with him around).

Or so, you thought.

“You’re heavy on your feet,” the man cuts the silence without allowing you the chance to speak. “I could hear you coming before you started to ascend the stairs.” Your voice catches in your throat hearing such an utterance, your eyes automatically drifting down to look at your choice of footwear. Your heels weren’t the quietest of shoes, but the clack of them against the stairs is not something that you were noticing in your simmering rage walking up and across the hall. Thinking clearly is difficult to do without sleep on one’s side in general. Embarrassment and shame flit over your chest all at once, but as you peer into this man’s disarray of a flat behind his broad frame, you can see the violin sitting atop a table. That wretched thing that you can no longer stand the sound of, the reason you came up here in the first place despite having not known one another. You didn’t plan to introduce yourself, either, and it seems like a bad idea with the tension currently sitting between you and Shoulders.

“Yes, well,” you slowly clear your throat and try to regain a semblance of decorum after being caught so off guard, “I made my trip here for a reason. You do play a string instrument, correct?”

Without preamble, he takes a single glance behind him and locates the very thing you were about to complain about. It’s not long before his brilliant blues return and level you with the same steely gaze he’s adopted from the moment he first opened the door. It prompts you to close your mouth. You don’t know why you do, but there’s this restraint you’re putting onto yourself in the presence of this domineering stranger. You want to continue on, but he takes advantage of the beat and he leans into the door frame with one capable hand. The position tells you of how you’re wasting his time, how he would rather get back to what he was doing before you interrupted him. “What on Earth told you that? Was it, perhaps, the sound of the Caprice in A Minor or the meek snooping of prying, sleep-deprived eyes unabashedly scrutinizing my flat?”

His sarcasm takes you aback. He couldn’t have known that you were coming up here with any hint of aggression to be speaking to you so poorly. The last thing you wanted to do was portray yourself as judgmental when your own flat was a mess in itself, but you’re also not in the mood to question and doubt yourself knowing the motive for this impromptu visit in the first place. The realization hits you that he also could not have known about your sleep schedule being askew, so you must’ve looked like the walking undead. While your face scrunches up in defense, you rapidly shake your head despite the migraine currently gripping it by the crown. Your neighbor certainly isn’t helping with that. Your disheveled appearance should be the least of his worries.

“Listen, I did not come up here to quarrel—”

“But that’s not true, is it?” His expression changes. It’s subtle, but you catch it from how intently you’re burrowing your eyes into his in an attempt to search for the audacity he seemed to possess without a lick of shame behind it. His expression communicates his words as a fact, as if he had you figured out, as if he had the world around you two figured out. The certainty in his pupils unwavers and you’re a skeptic before anything else, but you already believe what he’s about to say before he even says it just from how he carries himself. So sure. So omniscient.

A deep sigh slips past his lips as he brings the door closed to where only a narrow crevice of his flat is now displayed to you. You can no longer drink in the furniture and trinkets this man holds because there’s no longer a view beyond him and rich wood facing you, leaving you vulnerable to look solely at the curls framing his sturdy facial structure. It’s a dichotomy you’re not prepared for: soft decorating solid, flowers strung along stone. If you dare the eye contact further, then you’ll test how much your own can stand before they start to water from sheer perseverance. You’ve been wiping tears away casually while you sat at your sewing machine today from how exhausted they were and from how you forced them open to continue. You don’t want to shed a tear in this instance since he might think himself the reason and it’s obvious to you that you can’t give him any more of a reaction, any more of a way into how you felt.

“Ordinarily, a walk up this staircase alerts simply from the creaks crafted by age and the weight of a person’s shoes. If you were on a mission to borrow sugar loaves, it wouldn’t have easily caught my ear since I was occupied playing the Caprice.” He gestures to the stairs, the rickety sound of the steps coming back to mind from how you previously walked them. “However, you did catch my ear and it’s not because of an enhanced ability or cautious observation, but because you climbed your way here with intention behind every stomp your elevated heels etched into the floorboards. No one scuffs flooring unless they’re dragging about some kind of vendetta or they’re lackadaisical in their steps, yours far too prominent to be considered the latter.”

Out of curiosity, you throw a look behind your shoulder to assess his story and there’s a lemony scratch in the floor standing vibrantly against the opaque hickory that surrounds it. You compare the mark to the shape of your heel and you foolishly gulp down from how transparent your perturbation has been up to this point. Still, while he may be right about your less than friendly arrival, it doesn’t change anything. Actually, you’re finding yourself more irritated than before, his attitude too set in writing when you’ve barely muttered two sentences to him. Two sentences and he’s gone on some soliloquy exemplifying how he’s most likely not the easiest person in the world to talk to. Great, you have the worst kind of neighbor and you can join that bitter population of people who must deal with those they live beside no matter how much they don’t want to. Your exhale is steady leaving your nostrils in an attempt to calm yourself.

“Fine, then I have some kind of vendetta,” you parrot back to him and match his matter-of-factly tone. “It’s against you and your violin—”

“A noise complaint, right.” He nods his head as a headmaster would, as if you were a little girl raising her hand with an answer needing validation from the authority figure running the class. Your fists ball up at your sides. You don’t think you could handle one more second of his condescension.

“Yes, a noise complaint. I’ve been incredibly busy working and your violin makes it extremely difficult to think.” You puff out your last words, a breath of your current mood following closely behind. It doesn’t deter him and neither do your words. He remains where he is and mulls it over simultaneously as he regards your frame. Stagnant. Inspecting. Almost brooding. You’re in the middle of attempting to conjure another way to put this dilemma in order for this brick wall of a man to understand when he tilts his head down to look at the watch in his vest’s pocket.

“Strange. A seamstress needing to think,” he says, but it’s more to himself than it is to you. It doesn’t mean that it’s any less insulting. By how your blood’s curdling in your veins from the heat beginning to bubble underneath your skin, you’d argue that his response and behavior is that much more insulting.

“I beg your pardon, Mister—”

“Holmes. It’s Holmes.” He points a broad shoulder towards the door behind him. “I understand your concern, but you’re not the only tenant who works from home. While you claim the violin may not aid you in thought, it aids me greatly in it. So, if that’s all,” he leans forward and somehow the above fluorescence catches a gleam to the ice of his irises, “Some of us need to get back to work.”

With that, Mr. Holmes turns away from you, a flabbergasted feeling dawning onto you in his wake. Your mouth’s agape in an odd mix of shock, disgust, and incredulity as you watch him disappear and then promptly shut the door. Just as before, the golden letters taunt you all over again, beckoning your hand to knock and hold your ground. Except, that doesn’t happen. You don’t reach your hand up to try and create another debate with the tenant in flat 221B, not when you’re sure he would just walk you in circles. There are some people in this world you can’t win through speech and quite frankly, you’re too tired and agitated to engage him in anything other than another form of aggression. From how you recall him glancing at his pocket watch, it reminds you how you’re wasting your own limited time squandering over someone you just met. He’s a problem certainly, but not your current problem to resolve. The commission still needs to be dealt with and there’s better success there than here.

Swallowing your pride and gathering your last bits of etiquette to appear as a lady, you slowly withdraw from Mr. Holmes and his door to trot yourself back to the stairs. His voice echoes in your mind, the matter in which you previously ascended the steps being a stark volume. Despite this, you don’t hesitate to resume your stomping, each step booming as resolve slips through your fingers and your heel thuds into the wood with full intent rather than a subconscious one he caught onto too quickly. You take one final look back at the bottom of the staircase to see if the door budges, but nothing happens. But you know he heard it and for now, that’s enough for you to return to your flat to continue your current sewing project.

You sit at the machine and reset your needle, thread, and how you position the fabric before you’re falling back into the rhythm. It’s only when you begin to hear the violin humming through the walls again that it occurs to you that you never told Mr. Holmes you were a seamstress.

#enola holmes #henry cavill #henry!sherlock #sherlock holmes #sherlock holmes x reader #condescending!sherlock #cavill!sherlock #sherlock fanfic #l4l.writes

[l4long-winded]

The tighter he shuts his eyes at the sensation of your lips dragging along the column of his neck, the difficulty of maintaining a semblance of composure increases. Carmen can’t possibly restrain himself as your tongue glides over his feverish skin and lingers where his pulse point quickens against it, his rooted hands on your hips gripping the supple flesh gathered there with ever growing strength and tenacity his grip succumbs to naturally, without his permission. Every chemical firing within his body is actually being done without his control’s approval, instincts betraying him into a pliant and panting mess underneath your hunched body. He’s not used to this. Sure, he can barely hold a grip on his own authority with the contents of his overbearing brain’s usual overload, but this is something different. Every twitch of your hips smothers the weight of those consistent thoughts away, a haze surrounding the crown of his head in a thickening cloud that ironically only leaves him with tunnel vision narrowed in on you. Is this what it’s like to be liberated? Have you been the key to the cage’s steel bars he’s clawed and ripped away at for ages?

It’s a hypothesis worth exploring. He’ll ask more of those questions to his gaze in his bathroom’s mirror once this is all over, he knows himself. His reflection will judge him for considering this unconventional method of rendering his thoughts into an unrecognizable pomace of nothing while his dick will lurch at the idea with a promising affinity. He hasn’t truly listened to the latter’s needs in the past, but you’re quickly erasing those mistakes and replacing them with carnal desires he has to attempt to pacify by the use of his hand under his shower head’s spray in the mornings before work. You’ve done that to him. He’s mildly flustered until he can have your cunt again, much like he has it now, your sweet, sweet walls clamping down on him as he moans his pleasure out, his curls flattening the more he digs and digs his scalp into his pillow beneath.

“Fuck, fuck, fuuuck me,” he mutters more so to himself, his tone airy, uncharacteristically breathy due to your combined efforts. He continues to go slack jaw, panting with heaving breaths that cause his chest to swell and fall in a rapid rhythm. You must be made of magic. He can’t find any other alternative explanation because how else could you make him this stupid, how else could you be able to have him so slick with perspiration, why does it feel like he’s floating on air while mercilessly driving him to the brink of absolute insanity all the same?

His eyes snap open when your fingers hook into his mouth, a familiar and yet not unwelcome taste coating them and now his tongue. His production of saliva comes instantly, sucking onto your digits, rolling the pink muscle inside into them with enthusiasm despite how he can barely muster shaky breaths through his nostrils. It’s then that he realizes you must’ve touched right above where you and him connect while you kissed his neck, his favorite place to bury his head into, because he knows this flavor on your index and ring fingers. He’s lapped it off and suckled it into his mouth off his own time and time again and dug his tongue at the honeydewed source his cock’s currently occupying selfishly. Maybe you’ll do him the honor of climbing up his chest to hover above his lips until he inevitably pulls your full weight down into him after this, give him a rewarding reprieve while exacerbating his poor oral fixation’s habit of latching onto anything addicting. Whether it’s a cigarette pumped full of nicotine or your debauched pussy pumped full of him, he’s got to keep his mouth busy. And you know that. He can see your damn, crooked smile as he hollows his cheeks to swallow down the remnants of your nectar from your prodding fingers.

He should’ve known you’d use this against him from that look alone, but no, his inexperience shines bright in moments like this, his neck craning as his lips chase after your departing fingers. Your other hand pushes him back flat into the mattress as a result, his hammering heart thundering up against your palm. Carmen watches as you utilize the fingers once in his mouth to trail over your puffy clit. He wants to protest and do it himself, but it’s like he’s gone frozen with inability, stuck in the present, self-awareness flying out the half open window that pours in wind barely stroking his sweating limbs with cool relief. He feels you. God, he fucking feels you. Everywhere. Constantly. His hips push up as you come down, reveling in the way you cry his name out, how you manage to rock those marvelous hips even while his hands hold onto them with bruising pressure.

“You’re close,” you gasp, that knowing tone of yours somewhat pissing him off because yes, he’s absolutely close, he’s going to spill any second now. But it doesn’t piss him off because he doesn’t want to cum (god fucking damn it all to hell, he wants to cum so fucking badly), but because you always know. How do you always know? Is it in his face? Is his mind so obviously blank to you? Who knows, he can’t figure it out. He doesn’t want to at this point, living for this, breathing in you, sharply chanting your name, losing himself to the dreaded finality of his second climax of the day, the first drawn from a simple handjob. He couldn’t stop himself, you have such soft and delicate hands, and right now, he can’t constrain what’s happening to him even if he tried. His teeth sink into his lower lip and Carmen finds his release into your silky and intoxicating cunt, his back arching off the bed, hips lifting you up with him from his power, his hands steadying you so you don’t slip off.

And there’s so, so much of it. He watches you shudder, his cum dripping from your outer lips onto his pelvic bone. You hold his eye contact as you drop those fingers to capture some of it and use it as further lubrication on your clit. Holy... you... how... he can’t...

What... what was he thinking about again?

#l4l.writes #l4l.blurb #carmen berzatto x reader #carmen berzatto #carmen berzatto x afab!reader #jeremy allen white #the bear #the bear imagine #i couldnt resist #hes on my mind lately #i got a little carried away

[l4long-winded]

ii. consequences and a lead

summary: sherlock doesn't usually regret things, but he's regretting how he spoke to you. it's not out of the goodness of his heart, however (cavill!sherlock x afab!reader)

reflection: this second part may be the shortest of this mini-series, but i do plan for things to pick up after. the third part is already sitting at over 3,000 words and it's unedited and unfinished. i am excited to see interest going up since i've been thinking about this story for months now. watching it come to life has been a fun and challenging endeavor so i hope you enjoy! please feel free to leave feedback to your heart's desire.

warnings: seamstress!reader, condescending!sherlock, mystery brewing, cursing, suggestive language, somewhat slowburn, enemies to lovers, eventual smut, victorian era (please let me know if there are other warnings i need to add)

word count: 1,834

previously: a sleep deprived meeting

The joints in Sherlock’s knuckles crack as he flexes his hand at his side, jaw squaring off the longer he stands and stares at the golden 221A sitting on the door ahead. He’s not one to be apologetic, and he currently isn’t whatsoever. There always come these instances where he comes off as rude because of how blunt he is and how blatant he can be in his dismissing tone. Misunderstandings occur, bitterness emerging as a result since he’s a problem solver, not a linguist meant for socializing and getting along with others. Because of this, sometimes he’ll say the wrong thing and hurt feelings he never meant to in the first place. Though, he doesn’t turn back on the things he says, not unless he finds he’s logically in the wrong. This is hardly ever the case. He may be inept in reading and coddling emotions, but that doesn’t mean he’s off the mark. That doesn’t mean he’s not right.

In his line of work, there are bound to be feathers ruffled. No one likes to be analyzed, much less when it comes to a crime they’ve committed. You, the one sitting behind this door, have not committed any crime (to his knowledge), but you’re connected to the one he’s investigating at this moment. It’s been two days since you rattled the stairs and confronted him at his flat. He made it very clear how he didn’t want to be disturbed through how he talked and how he disregarded you, how he ignored your complaint about his violin because it was the only thing helping him navigate his proactive brain in this puzzle of a mess. Much like you, he hadn’t slept in a while, which could have caused him to be ill-mannered from the stress building in the background (another thing to ignore), so he didn’t want to rid of the one thing keeping his head together. He could have just gone to sleep to avoid being discourteous and refrain from chiming his violin further, but that’s not how it went down. He’s now suffering from the consequences of his actions, having to wait patiently after he knocks, to which then he would have to answer for his actions, all for a chance at a lead.

He went back to reviewing his evidence yesterday, a day after the incident with you, and he realized the piece of fabric etched with dried crimson at his disposal matched the same fabric of the sleeves adorning your forearms. You didn’t utilize the same fabric on your skirts or on your bodice, he would have noticed this. He has a tendency to notice just about everything and with you… with you it was easier than usual. Every detail matters, it’s the mantra that plays every time he observes someone much more than they need to be. It’s the same one that egged him on to note the color of your eyes, the way your hair fell into your face, and how your chest heaved in the anger you tried and failed to hide in order to file your noise complaint. Where he can restrain himself and dwindle down whatever emotions may lie in him, the little that there are, you are the antithesis. You wear your emotions on your sleeve, the sleeve made out of his evidence, even if the occasion calls for a calm demeanor. Perhaps such a demeanor would have worked with someone else who wasn’t Sherlock, who wasn’t as stubborn about their music and their contemplation.

It’s the demeanor he writes on his face at this moment, willing himself to knock onto the door with a cautious fist that doesn’t teeter on too soft or too hard of a pressure. Either one and you may consider him passive or a brute. He thinks about things like this, things others would brush over since they deem them too simple or too trivial. Nuances can make or break perception even if said person’s perception is unaware of them.

“Be right there!” comes through the door and Sherlock unconsciously begins to time your arrival. He shifts his weight to his right and counts the seconds under his breath, 16, 17, 18, you must be in the middle of something. It could be you’re crafting a dress, or he’s caught you in the middle of lunch, or perhaps you’re tending to a customer at this very moment and he’s interrupted your business. You interrupted his, but from how you didn’t seem to care about his appearance and his name, he knows you’re unfamiliar with him and his work. 34, 35, 36, he couldn’t possibly think everyone in the area knew him, but he would think that at least his downstairs neighbor would. This is a place where it’s easy for infamy to travel. Word gets out through the papers, through his visits to various locations nearby, his legend expanding with every case he solves. But, now that he thinks about it, he doesn’t recall when you moved in. You must be new, certainly. He would’ve remembered… oh, he definitely would’ve remembered you.

Sherlock is about to start the 50s in his counting when your door comes open. He watches the scenery come slowly to him from your flat, his head moving until it stops to see you step through in… in a chemise sans any other form of layering. Your hair is up again, but the strands that have fallen out of the pins are wet and darkened. That’s why it took you so long. You weren’t working on anything nor were you eating—you were taking a bath. And a relatively good one since your face immediately falls upon the recognition of Sherlock, a bright, relaxed grin giving way to a grimace. Something about that is amusing to him, but he doesn’t let it show on his face. Antithesis, remember?

“Mr. Holmes… to what do I owe the pleasure?” You’re mocking in your tone, eyes rolling to the ceiling. Oddly enough, you don’t turn away from him. Your shoulder sags into the door frame, arms crossing against your chest. The dainty fabric draws attention there coupled with the action, swells above your breasts that he immediately turns away from. He’s rebellious in refusing to look despite a curiosity filling him. It’s an unfortunate matter that you’re not the worst thing to look at. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Something about you is pleasing to his eyes, attractive in a way he knows is bound to turn heads had you walked down the length of a pub with suitors tossing waves about for a single glance their way. He’s come across beautiful women in the past, some who have attempted to gain his favor, others who have done so to gain his fortune. You’re a bit different since you’re seeking to do neither and he’s the one who needs something here. The power scales have tipped, and he can feel sweat on his brow thinking of how you can deny him and saunter back into your flat. Back into that bath. Free of the chemise, the gentle steps of your bare feet tracing back to a tub most likely. He smells lavender coming from you and he determines you were trying to relax before he showed up.

“Uh,” he clears his throat, stands straighter and focuses on a spot just above your head. It’s easier than staring since his brain is deducing everything about you without his permission. It has a wreckless habit of doing that, working against him instead of for him. “Excuse me for bothering you, but I’ve discovered something that requires your expertise.” He swallows a knot in his throat when he hears you laugh in what he can only call spite. He stops himself from knitting his eyebrows together, knowing very well how he must be put together if he wants to gain further information. This is one of the routes he saw thinking of how this conversation could go.

“Mr. Holmes, surely you must be joking. My expertise? Really?” Your hand covers your mouth to muffle further laughter so at least you’re trying to be friendlier than days ago, but it’s a futile endeavor. Sherlock can feel the disdain for him radiating off of you and he can’t blame you considering how he acted. He’s still not sorry for it, but it’s understandable. Just like others who were the victims of his observations, you’re scorned and you’re not about to let him forget about it. “After how you treated me the other day, this is the last thing I expected. Not only do you have nerve, but you’re rather tenacious.” You wipe off an imaginary tear from under your eye and then sigh out blissfully once the invasion of the giggles flees. He’s not jovial in the slightest.

“I know how you feel, but this is a crucial endeavor, I can assure you. I’m a detective consultant, you see, and your knowledge may prove valuable in solving the current case I’m working on.” You’re laughing again before he even finishes. The greater good is at stake and you’re laughing. Is this how you felt two days ago? The annoyance surfacing within him is the equivalent of ants crawling in his bloodstream, air he exhales through his nose in the same fashion that a bull about to charge would. This isn’t the time for this, not at all, but it seems your talent is finding a way under his impenetrable skin. He reminds himself to maintain his steady breathing and his impassive expression as you rise taller to evade your disbelieving laughter.

“My apologies, you have a noble profession, but I’m sorry, you’re going to have to find someone else.” Your reply is what he feared would happen. Humans are riddled with emotions and they’re not always positive. He made a bad first impression and now anything he could say would only exacerbate the situation. By your reaction, you’re not taking him seriously and you won’t take him seriously even if he explains the direness of the situation. He already hates disclosing too much to anyone, this was a dud of a visit. If he thought it would get better results, he would have stopped by as soon as he made his discovery yesterday. His options ran too low and he’s reached yet another dead end.

“Fine. I’ll speak to another seamstress, maybe a tailor. Thank you.” He slightly bows at the hip, but it’s barely a motion since he’s aggravated on the inside. The puzzle will be in pieces longer until he can get to his next lead/clue and this just proves he can’t rely on anyone but himself. He pivots away from you before you could respond, before you could say anything else that would inevitably rub him the wrong way. It does little to achieve the desired effect because he hears “Good luck finding one that could think” followed by a shutting door on his way to the staircase.

#henry cavill #enola holmes #sherlock holmes #henry!sherlock #sherlock holmes x reader #enemies to lovers #beyond answers #consequences and a lead #l4l.writes

[l4long-winded]

Lip’s dreamt of this before. Multiple times. It always starts the same.

The heady, citrine illumination glowing from your bedside table, the lampshade atop of it dangling in tassled beads along the rim. He’s made fun of it before, knowing damn well it’s your grandmother’s sense of style in her decor and not yours. A shadow casts over the walled corner it sits in, blanketing your frame in moody lighting, his eyes trailing the exposed portions of your skin.

It’s one of his favorite dreams. Then again, his favorites tend to involve you. You’re competing with yourself in his cherished reveries for the number one, two, and three spots.

Only, in the present moment, this isn’t a dream. This is actually happening. You’re writhing on your bed before him, and it’s better than his imagination could’ve ever conjured on its own. What a sight. What a view. What a fucking honor.

“Lip, please don’t tease,” you whimper. But he’s not teasing, you’re stretched out over the three digits he’s prepped into you over the course of half an hour. Just because he’s halted the pumping, it doesn’t mean he’s not delivering the pleasure he promised. If anything, he’s committing to it, making due on it, crooking his fingers, and sliding in deeper to pet the sensitive spot within you he located with his index when all of this started.

“F-fuck,” you choke out. There you are. His good girl. His dream girl. He’s not wronging you.

“That’s it,” he breathes, swallowing hard as your head tilts back, as your neck strains, and your hands ball up your sheets into your grip. Your slick glides down into his palm, almost down his wrist. He’s tempted to lick it off, but his vision’s sense is being too greedy.

Because fucking look at you. Look at you. Crop top shoved up to your clavicle, tits heaving with every shallow breath you take, nipples stiff, abdomen clenching while your pussy clenches the girth of his fingers. Your navel isn’t visible, but that’s because of how he shoved your short skirt up, insisting on leaving it on after you shimmied your panties down your thighs. Said panties are half hanging out of his back pocket, in the back of his mind since he’s sitting on his haunches in the space between your spread thighs. Your face contorts in bliss, the bliss he’s brought you—blessed you with. Lip uses his other hand to reach back and secure his phone, shifting his fingers accidentally in the process.

“Ah,” you inhale sharply, “Liiiip...” you whine, your thighs threatening to close. You somehow squeeze him tighter. His cock throbs in his jeans, but he ignores it.

“Shh, shh, shh, legs open,” he taps your inner thigh with his phone’s edge. You mutter another sound, but you comply and create the distance he wants.

“Perfect,” he says, his phone raising up. He taps the button of his camera app a few times. He’s not letting this escape his memory. His thumb slides upwards, stroking your neglected clit, and that’s where the party really fucking starts. You’re mewling for him, hips lifting off the mattress, and he saves a series of pictures. One of his thumb on your clit, his fingers lodged inside, another of your chest pushing towards the ceiling, another of your face as you part your lips and chase another high.

His recent pictures are now a stop-motion movie with you as the star. And since you’ve been such a good subject and muse for him, he’s back to plunging his fingers alongside his working thumb. You’ve earned it.

#l4l.lip #l4l.writes #l4l.blurb #lip gallagher #lip gallagher blurb #unedited #brain child of my one hour of free time

[l4long-winded]

vi. the puzzling case of clara grace and intricate, convoluted emotions

summary: there are a few ways that you and sherlock reconcile. one involves a bed, the other involves a carriage, a dance, and then there's the matter of the revolver. what was once unclear begins to be disclosed, but it can only be unveiled to a willing, open, and observant eye. you're going to find what's there as well as what you want to be there (cavill!sherlock x afab!reader)

reflection: i apologize for how long it took me to write this chapter. i also apologize for the behemoth that this installment is, but i had a certain vision that i wanted to portray so desperately. i pondered breaking this chapter up into several parts, but seeing that i intended this as the end, i kept it as is. i have been planning to write more involving this relationship, but i am not sure if i should. if that is something that any of you are interested in, please let me know. i intend to work on other projects as well from a geralt fic and a new idea that i have. thank you to everyone who has read. as always, feedback is always appreciated and encouraged and i hope you all enjoy!

warnings: seamstress!reader, emotionally-stunted!sherlock, reader has a nickname, close proximity, investigation, murder mystery, original characters, enemies to lovers, vulnerability, near-death scenes, sexual tension, kissing, dirty talk, praise, vaginal penetration, vaginal fingering, loss of virginity, implied breeding kink if you squint, rough and soft, grief, past deaths briefly mentioned, angst, fluff, revelations, overthinking, flashbacks (please let me know if there are other warnings i need to add)

word count: 19,551

previously: concealed feelings and abstract attitudes

( this work has been cross posted to ao3 )

Teeth, lips, tongue—you’re acquainting yourself with the mouth of another, greeting your moans that Sherlock swallows incessantly, almost like he’s gulping for air. He’s a wall of muscle mass visibly speaking, but it’s a different phenomenon to experience said muscle mass pressing you back into the actual wall of this flat behind, the door nearby since your shared eagerness only carried you both in by a few steps. You’re hardly concerned with how far you’ve made it in, instead wrapping your legs tightly at Sherlock’s waist as he supports you and holds you up. The surface gradually fades away as he deposits you from it to then walk blindly to his bedroom. You’re still hanging on, secure he’ll protect you, and miraculously through listening to his instincts (he’s always right, you’re not shocked), he pushes the door open, his forearm strung around your midsection as he uses his other hand. You can sense his desperation’s desire to cling to you and not let go for a moment.

You’re still connected with him as he lowers you to the mattress. There’s conflict heavy in his shoulders because he’s caught between meeting your affection bar for bar and standing straight up to get a better look at you. You gradually make the decision for him, hands landing on his chest to lightly push him up. You sit up on your elbows as he lifts away from you, his chest heaving in his departure, eyes scanning you over with interest you can only describe as lust. Sherlock removes his undershirt that he was clad in, the buttons already undone, and drops it carelessly to the floor. You’re familiar with the image of Sherlock shirtless, but it doesn’t mean you’re not any less astonished. You’re gazing up at him in awe, awe that is seemingly swimming in his eyes the very same as he turns his attention to his robe adorning your figure. Except where part of the fabric is hanging off one shoulder due to your combined efforts. And said exposure beckons Sherlock in closer; he reaches for the robe’s belt sitting atop your waist, your hips jutted out, body language’s permission granted for his exploration.

“You’re not…” he inhales deeply, like he’s preparing himself. Sherlock knows something and you know it too. You can’t help the sly grin threatening to take over your expression breaking free.

“You’re not wearing anything underneath,” he resigns, saying it as he says every conclusion he comes to as a statement, as a cold, hard fact. Albeit he’s not revealing a mystery’s answer to a curious audience, he’s confirming the thought that crossed his mind at the initial sight of your bare shoulder. He would’ve guessed it earlier if he wasn’t so preoccupied with entangling his mouth with yours. His adam’s apple slowly rises and sinks as he restrains himself, as he allows his hand to divide the seams of his robe, as your naked breasts become visible to him for the first time.

“Surprised?” You tease, but it’s more breathless than you care to admit because of how Sherlock’s drinking you in. Your flesh rises as he offers you solely his fingertips. He lets them linger from your neck to your collarbone, hesitantly traveling down the curve of your left breast.

“Pleasantly,” he finally replies and you think To hell with it and lift yourself up enough to wrap your arms around his neck and pull him back into another searing kiss. His chest hair tickles against you, the thick patch sliding over your quickly hardening nipples. He surrenders to your invitation and follows you up the bed as you scoot up its length in the meantime, until your head meets one of his pillows above.

Sherlock descends and mouths along your jaw and then your neck, he takes advantage of the dip there to suckle onto a spot and taste your skin. Your breath catches in your throat, your mouth falling open as you whimper in reaction, hypersensitive to his every touch and graze. If you thought the light stubble stimulated you before from just kissing, then you’re critically mistaken when it catches on your susceptible flesh as he lowers his head to your clavicle. From gripping his hair for some kind of purchase, you let your hands wander down the width of his back, not wanting to claw down it in your attempts to remain in a semblance of composure. That’s when you feel the waistband of his trousers, the reminder set of how you haven’t seen him without them there, hiding away the arousal you felt heavy against your inner thighs earlier at Mrs. Thomas’s. Depraved, but careless regarding that truth, you whine out your displeasure and snake your hands beneath his frame to work the button of his trousers open. Unlike Sherlock’s sixth sense (learned from the structure of his well-developed cognitive map), you’re not gracefully unlatching the damned thing despite your previous experience with this detail of clothing. You fumble and clumsily brush your yearning knuckles along his bulge by pure accident, fleeting warmth you crave but are unable to indulge in further because Sherlock abruptly pulls his hips away like he’s been stung by a wasp.

Your mouth goes dry watching him rise up from your neck, his jaw hanging slightly open. Your throat wishes to beg for his return back, but you stop yourself from doing so seeing his fingers clutch at the fabric bunched at his crotch, his hips bucking in efforts to readjust himself. You’re affecting him greater than you initially thought. You feel rather petulant under his gaze right now, small for being selfish and pushing, an impatient brat flushing in a richer pigment from your head to your toes.

“Can’t think, can you?” Sherlock asks, but you both already know the answer. “Everything’s done with great difficulty. Breathing, holding still, practicing restraint.” He trails off, observing your features and especially the way he notices your eyes trace down to where his hand is slipping the button of his trousers properly out of its position. He continues to speak with you, intent on watching, commemorating the intrigue in your hungry pupils as he removes the next button, then the next.

“In your case, undoing a pair of trousers…” It’s a whisper and the air of it hits your cheek from how close he is. “You’ve rendered me a mindless vessel for weeks,” he confesses, to which you had no knowledge of, and then he follows it with a gritty promise that has your spine arching, “I’m going to do the exact same thing to you.”

A reply barely has any time to form because you’re being kissed again, your vision blocked from viewing his length. With your fervor and effort, you use your calves to push the material down his waist to his thighs and thankfully, Sherlock pushes them out of the way alongside you until they’re being kicked and shucked away from his legs and ankles. You try to kiss Sherlock back, but your leaking center comes into contact with the crown of Sherlock’s length suddenly and your lips come apart in a gasp, one he takes advantage of by shifting his tongue into the space as if it was his invitation. He grunts in response to the whimper that leaves you as you greedily attempt to roll your hips up to gain friction. One particular roll accomplishes the goal, your weeping slit running up his shaft in one fluid motion, surprised noises vibrating against your mouths from how good it felt, from how needy you both are for each other.

But, much to your dismay, Sherlock removes your legs from his waist to press them down into the mattress at the apex of your inner thighs, preventing you from continuing your forlorn, silent pleas. There’s a slight stretch in the muscles and in a way, you feel shy from how your most sensitive area is being displayed so lewdly, sure to try and close your thighs if Sherlock glances down for a peek. He doesn’t, as much as he wants to seal his mouth around that tender pearl, instead glowering at you with sincerity in his eyes.

“We’re going at my pace,” he warns. You feel like you might lose your mind if he doesn’t fuck you this instant, your lip tucking away in a pout you would normally be ashamed of. Though, currently being at his mercy is making your cunt spill over with desire.

“But, b-but, I can take it—” You babble and protest, to which Sherlock squeezes your thighs to admonish and quiet you down. It achieves its desired effect as you clamp your mouth shut and stare up at him with pleading flutters of your lashes. He almost caves.

“I know, I know, believe me, slow isn’t easy for either of us at this moment,” he breathes heavily, his voice sounds like sex, “but I won’t risk hurting you. You’ll take what I give.” He’s stern and to the point and it offers you a bit of clarity. You completely forgot about your virginity, how this is not only your first time with Sherlock, but your first time with anyone ever. That’s why you’ve felt guilty during this ordeal, because you’ve been rutting up into him for more and more while he’s been successfully supervising his control. It’s not because there’s a lack of longing on his end, his protruding length and orally fixating mouth prime examples, but because in all of this, he’s recalled the seriousness of the situation. Clearly, he holds a candle above you in knowledge of this as he does in everything else, besides sewing, so of course he surmised you a virgin ignorant to the incoming physical and emotional sensations involved with this plunge. And yet, as you watch the dilation of his pupils in real time, the way his biceps flex as he holds himself back, and the light glistening of every sinew and bulk of him from the pure heat radiating between you, you brace your hands at his shoulders and allow need to talk for you.

“Please, Sherlock, I don’t think I can go on any longer without…” Fuck, you’re realizing this is harder to say with his intense gaze fixated on you. Have his eyes always been that shade of deep royal? “W-without you inside me,” you stutter. Your face washes over with fire and you would’ve been embarrassed if it weren’t for the same fire you see flash in Sherlock’s eyes.

“Fuck, stop talking,” he mutters, but there’s extra motivation that trembles the shoulders you’re holding onto as he reaches down to grasp himself at his base. You catch a glimpse, careful not to linger in staring because then you’re positive a fear would grow from his size. Like the rest of him, it’s impressive to the point of where it could possibly cause you to question his insertion, so you focus on his features and wait in pure anticipation.

No matter the speed in which Sherlock complied with your request, he’s still maddeningly slow dragging the tip of himself up and down your entrance. It sears you from the outside, your legs twitching from how badly you wish to slither them back around him, how they convulse from how fervid it feels to inch away from the sensation and conflicting it is to chase it all the same. There’s one hand still wrenched onto your thigh so there’s little motion that you can do. The worst part has to be how you can feel him pulsating repeatedly. Sherlock ignores primal instincts urging him to slide right in, his underlying wish in all of this being your absolute pleasure. He gathers your slick on himself and you’re close to begging him again when you begin to feel a decisive push forward, a spreading sting passing throughout your core as he settles in deeper, slow on his intrusion. You bury your head into his neck as you squeeze your eyes shut, yelping from how the action involuntarily caused your resisting walls to clamp down on him at the same time. Sherlock chokes and finally releases your thigh to slam his fist down into the pillow adjacent to your head, like he did with the desk, a tell in his supposed composure much like the one in his throbbing cock stretching you with every pulse that alerts you how he’s still fucking growing whilst inside of you.

“You feel… so warm. So, so tight,” he gasps, perhaps in a bit of shock of his own, “Relax. Breathe for me, yes, yes, just like that.”

Your inhales and exhales come at his command, but each one is shakier than the last. Due to how lubricated you are, and how Sherlock cradles you caringly against him, the pain from all of this fades into a dull ache. With your attention on your breath, a blissful sigh manages its way through as Sherlock shifts himself, discomfort there, and then beautifully replaced by something you believe feels heavenly. A harp’s twang echoes in your head. Your taut limbs slacken and you didn’t even know how rigid you were until then. Sherlock did, he’s been in tune with every nerve, every flex, and every sound that’s come from your body, willing himself to not only satisfy you, but to act on those pesky fantasies that have snuck on him for almost as long as he’s known you. It’s indecent to think about your estranged neighbor bent over the desk you’re supposed to be attending to professional work on. Sherlock’s immunity to your charms is and was nonexistent and honestly, everything could’ve been easier if he just left the two of you as enemies and ignored your existence until you inevitably moved away. But what a crock of shit that is. He’s nestled so deeply in your folds that he doesn’t care how lost he is, if this is a distraction from getting his much needed night of sleep, he just has this parroting thought blaring in his mind to move, move, move.

Your head slips from his neck, forehead pressing against his. There’s a shyness in how you enclose your arms around his broad neck and shoulders. Maybe, just as he has, you’ve come to the crashing revelation of how intimate this really is, how ultimate and permanent he’s now etched himself into your life. He’s wedged inside of you and whatever is to happen next, it can’t subtract away this physical connection, it can’t be denied that Sherlock Holmes is your first lover. Sherlock listens to his brain and pumps gently, slowly inside of you, groaning like your cunt’s the first he’s ever filled/stuffed. Surely, the ache subsides but battles with another, and that’s the ache of wanton need, each push inwards and each pull out gratifying and yet not enough to kindle the overwhelming shrill of the flame bubbling within you.

“God,” you peck Sherlock’s lips despite the oxygen being driven from your lungs with every undulation of his hips, “please, please,” you say for the second and third time tonight. He acquiesces enough to push in just a little faster, your throat catching on a whine as you tremble from the pleasure overtaking you. Sherlock plants his mouth on yours, halting any other pleas that transform into hiccupping moans against him, such that he captures and reignites with every thrust he offers. You can’t help the yearning in you that increases, working on Sherlock’s time and pace like he promised, so you know he’s drilling into you so sweetly on purpose.

Logically, to you, he did so because he didn’t want to hurt you. You appreciate that sentiment, but from how your heart is racing to the point of where you can hear it reverberate in your ears, slow is winding you up tighter and tighter. It wrings your body up like a rag being twisted and turned to release the moisture sitting in its cloth. You need more and more, stretched and primed for him to speed up and show you what he held back. It almost felt like being let in on a secret, like how you wanted to know about the details of his investigation. You want to know what Sherlock will do if he gives in to his own pleasure, if he will become as single-minded as you are, let feeling and emotion instruct him rather than the inquisitive nature of his mind. You don’t want parts of him—you want all of him.

You lift a hand to cup Sherlock’s cheek, among your continuing please, please, please without anything specific in mind, the holy word chipping his resolve away by the passing minutes, between the kisses Sherlock’s mouth steals from you after each one. They linger, either short or lasting, varying in time, varying in pressure, but never relenting. Using your hold on him as he exchanges a particularly sharp thrust, you mutter an impassioned “uh” against him having not expected it (it elevated you to a new height), one leg coming up at his waist to hook around his hip. Just as you theorized, and just as he knew, it sinks his tip to the hilt. In reaction, he grunts, “how the fuck did you get tighter,” under his breath and you feel prideful for throwing him slightly off track. Using this to your advantage, your thumb presses into the gentle divot in his cheek, and then you experimentally tug his bottom lip between your teeth. He pants and you hear the masculine noise pour out of him at an increased volume. It’s then that Sherlock creates distance between your heads, his forearm tucking under your thigh to lift it higher on his torso, his hand coming to rest at your side from underneath.

“Couldn’t help yourself, could you?” His thumb digs into your hip bone, his fingers clutched into the flesh gathered at the side of your waist. The new angle begs a deep stretch in your thigh, but he exacerbates the test of your flexibility by using his other hand to pin your opposite thigh to the bed much like he had done earlier when he deprived you. Your walls quiver around Sherlock’s cock, constricting him because of how accommodating to him they’ve become. He fucks you harder, an accumulative speed and pressure that doesn’t have any obstacles or road bumps, just a smooth crest upwards that has you keening beneath him, arching and praying his name to the ceiling. He’s no longer purring out short grunts, but allowing them to slip past his parted lips as he pounds you into the spot you slept in that morning.

“This is what you w-wanted?” He’s completely breathless, but he still manages coherence, not that you’re jealous of it at the moment because you may be forgetting grammar and basic linguistics, but you’re also forgetting your own name. You recall it when Sherlock moans it and you cry out from the utterance, from how he fucks you closer and closer towards mania. 

“yesyesyesyes,” you repeat, your blunt nails scraping over his shoulder as you reach a peak, something washing over you like an eruption. Your arms cling to Sherlock, holding him close as you confine your face back to his neck and feel the shudders of your first orgasm. You don’t understand it, you’ve never experienced anything like it, but you tremble as you feel soft tears gather in your lash line. Sherlock curses from how your body convulses and how it does so around his girth, but he generously fucks you through it.

Your hold loosens on Sherlock, but your clinging remains. You’re clutching him like a savior, whining as he continues to pump in and out of you. He might have continued if he wasn’t so fucking exhausted, close to his climax himself, but he can’t be that irresponsible as much as he wants to fill you with his seed. You gasp as he slips out of you, your channel clenching around nothing, your bud swollen and sensitive. You watch as Sherlock grasps his length and immediately releases himself onto your stomach, his hands detaching from your body to press into the mattress below, to stop himself from crushing you because his frame slumps forward and he has to give in as he lowers himself to his forearms caging your head in. You’re both gasping, inhaling and exhaling air by the mouthfuls, and Sherlock is pressing a majority of his weight into your frame. Somehow, you don’t feel boxed in, but safe and protected. You appreciate how he didn’t roll away from you, how his sweat slick skin glistens with his lamp’s light, how he looks at you in awe and slight worry.

“It was… wonderful,” you say in efforts to appease this aforementioned worry, and you absolutely fucking mean it. It’s not because you’re saving his ego, but because you’re satiated, boneless, floating despite being firmly underneath him in space and time.

“You did perfect,” he whispers, again not because he’s coddling your brain or even heart, but because he’s proud of you, in pure astonishment of you, hopelessly enthralled by you. At the praise, you feel this urge to intertwine yourself further with him as if he isn’t already as close as he is. Your hands cradle his face as he smiles and leans in to kiss you.

Sherlock yanks a bedside drawer open and removes a handkerchief from it, then he lifts up away from your body to clean your abdomen. He’s delicate as he attends to you and then himself, the soiled rag set aside so he could get back to being settled in with you. Something in Sherlock feels awfully drowsy, the sleep deprivation and his stolen remnants of energy to blame, and he can’t envision laying anywhere else other than where his head sits on your heaving breasts. You run your fingers through his curls, spent, your eyes heavy. Someone should say something in the afterglow, but it’s not about thinking right now. You could feel the silence getting louder, your eyes slipping closed and then gradually coming back open to relish in how Sherlock’s mass blankets you with weight and heat. You only finally let yourself sleep when you can hear the light snores coming from the detective laying atop of you, his rhythmic breath nuzzling the swell of your right breast, content that he’s getting the sleep he’s missed out on for weeks.

Sherlock gingerly rolls to his back when the sun decides to beam its light through his curtain. It disturbs him, but with how high it is in the sky, he wonders the hour of day and how long he had been asleep. Clarity finds him like an old memory. It’s in bits and pieces and then it comes crashing in altogether. He’s missing that impending stress in his neck and shoulders that would usually wake him with a startle when his body felt he slept for too long when he could be tangled with his work instead. He should be plenty able to solve his case like he told himself he would and now his brain is back to its optimal setting and functioning, reset presumably from the mind-blowing sex, but he instead remembers your beautiful face, your harmonic moans, and your welcoming legs.

He sits up and realizes you’re no longer in bed with him at this. He scans along the length of the room, the robe you two got rid of at some point in the night on the floor next to his trousers. Sherlock groggily stands to his feet, he flings on the robe, and then opens the door of the room, the smell of food wafting through the air. His stomach growls, but he’s not padding towards the kitchen because he’s hungry, but because he’s searching for you. He ultimately comes across you there, your back to him, his button-up on your frame that goes just past your posterior. You soon turn around to lay the eggs in the pan on top of the toasted bread on the counter. You both lock eyes and you could feel the blood rising up to your cheeks with how he glances at your choice of outfit. If he could call it that.

“Are you going to be a thief and ransack my closet later, as well?” He wouldn’t be that opposed to the idea. Thus far, you modeled his coat, his robe, and now his undershirt better than he did. There’s also something particularly domestic about how you don his clothes. He feels an inkling of possessiveness. The gestures unspokenly cement you as his in some form and for some reason, that thrills him.

“I don’t have to ransack anything to get into your trousers, Shoulders,” you reply. Your voice is a lot more airy than it usually is no matter the teasing tone you adopted. You’re rather confident for someone who’s still behaving so coyly, especially with the way Sherlock’s jaw slackens at the implication.

Sherlock chooses not to answer verbally. Instead, he slowly approaches you until you could feel the counter press into your back from how you went the opposite direction. It’s not in avoidance, the same goal present to tease as before, and it’s displayed with how you initiate the kiss he intended on doing himself at this close proximity. He hums his approval, lifting you immediately by your thighs. If you’re not mistaken, you’re not, he seemingly has an affinity for your legs wrapped around him. You comply with this silent desire and earn another noise of approval, sighing against his mouth as he leads you to his kitchen table. Sherlock lowers himself to sit into his chair with you in his lap, his hands settling at the small of your back as you use the leverage to press your mouth against the sharp lines of his jaw. Your mouth relocates his in no time, his manspreading legs creating distance between your own as a consequence.

There’s a collective soreness from your affairs, you’re thoroughly reminded from the stretch currently sitting in your hovering thighs, but it doesn’t hinder you from attending to Sherlock. If anything, you wish to guide his hand down where you need him most, shifting your hips against the quickly hardening length underneath. His hands don’t halt your motions, perfectly fine with your bucking movement as it’s allowing him friction. The morning wood he woke with is particularly sensitive so he will indeed be susceptible to receive whatever you could possibly offer him at this moment. As far as aspiration goes, he’s thought about having you in his lap this way countless times. In fact, the thought recently snuck up on him only yesterday while he paced the floor and you laid in his bed completely unaware of the daydream haunting him, the murky image of your frame rising and falling on him while his head and mouth buried into your chest.

He thinks about sex more than one would presume and with you, it crept up on him and stalked him after you met, attacked him while he bathed, while he read, while he was supposed to be deciphering this puzzling case he had no choice but to bring you into. So, now that he’s practiced a mere fraction of these wants and vicious reveries, he’s no longer resisting their insistence and no longer censoring the depictions of your bare form or muffled moans. He’s a primary witness of real stature who holds a firsthand account of how supple your naked breasts are, how you babble nonsense lost in the throes of passion, how you climb octaves when you crest and how marvelous your walls feel through the process. If he thought it difficult to think before, he’s surely in for a debacle regarding anything productive from here on out harboring this intensive, yet fascinating, insider knowledge.

A stomach growls. Neither of you are sure who it came from entangled this heavily, but you sigh out against Sherlock’s mouth and depart from it with great reluctance through pressing your palms against his shoulders.

“Breakfast first,” you murmur, cupping his jaw and stroking his cheek. On the upstroke, your thumb meets the scratch of his stubble.

“It could wait,” Sherlock insists. It’s enough to convince you, really, but then you hear that growl again and now you’re both certain of who it came from. Especially when said perpetrator closes his pretty eyes in defeat. You smile before you steal another kiss.

It’s difficult standing from where you sit, but you do eventually detangle yourself from Sherlock. He relinquishes you as you clamber back to the food you left behind on the counter, adjusting himself in the process to will his current… dilemma to go away. He attempts to shift his focus after he realizes his eyes are lingering where his shirt ends and where your flesh begins, turning his head towards the table in his efforts. His gaze lands on the discarded letter from yesterday that he somehow read a numerous amount of times without absorbing any information. He recalls his humanity during issues like this, scorned by his lack of energy and by his betraying insomnia, by his overactive mind trapped inside a body with physical boundaries despite purposely exercising to combat that. But now that the temptation is there, he reaches for the letter, a glance taken from it to you who returns with two plates, one steaming in front of him. The Sherlock from yesterday most likely would’ve put this away, or perhaps excused himself to read it alone, but after his behavior, and the proper sleep to assess said petulant behavior with clarity, he believes it necessary to at least give you a choice.

“Do you still wish to know the details of my investigation?” He asks, and expectantly, you snap your head in his direction in the middle of placing your own plate down to the table. A clink of the glass resounds and then there’s a beat of quiet, your stare on him searching his face for a sign of regret, for jest, for anything negating his words. As always, he’s as serious as serious gets, never one to mince his speech, compassion embedded in how he uplifts the inner corners of his eyebrows.

You’re blindsided. After yesterday, you were certain Sherlock wouldn’t divulge anything related to his case. After last night, you pushed the concept into the far recesses of your mind to focus on him and solely him. As your head travels back to your interactions together and how he closed himself off, you’re not positive you want to open Pandora’s box. But you would also be deceptive if you didn’t admit to your ever-growing curiosity.

“If… if you want me to, then yes,” you begin, trusting his judgment, “but only if you do. I never wanted to muddle your work. I just wanted to help.” And you still do. You hope that your cautious glances at him can convey that without putting yourself out on a limb in the position of a fool.

Sherlock slowly nods his head and his eyes divert from yours to stare at the letter in his hand. You were tempted to read it, but you didn’t have any time to do so at Mrs. Thomas’s considering your previous predicament leading to her arrival, nor did you in Sherlock’s company traveling back to your shared building. If anything, you quickly disposed of it to quench that temptation and leave the arguments from before in the past to carry on with this intimate connection you and Sherlock transparently have with each other. Whatever it is, it’s deeper than the contents of this letter, than the aspects of his case, than losing his… friendship. Or whatever you two are calling it now.

You almost rush syllables out to deny the question seeing the visible contemplation on Sherlock’s features. This is a vital decision and it could very well be life threatening, because at this point, you’ve educated yourself on Sherlock’s previous cases through small talk with your clientele and old newspapers, all of which he closed in due time despite the danger surrounding. That’s not what scares you. What scares you is becoming privy to this part of his livelihood to then be ostracized, pushed away by his inability to accept succor, by his inability to properly undergo the emotions flitting throughout you and himself. Say, that bullshit you convinced yourself before is wrong, you do have a grasp of how to read Sherlock. It’s that grasp that urges you to waive this all away, eat your breakfast, and distract your earnest thoughts from their incessant need to know more by straddling Sherlock’s lap and having him instruct you when to surge and when to plummet.

Great, now that’s firmly back in your mind. To appease your overthinking, you grasp your toast and take a bite. The crunch is louder than initially thought, but it makes sense since neither of you two are saying anything. You chew slowly to ease the tension, startled when Sherlock suddenly speaks.

“Clara Grace of Beckenham, age fifty-three, was pronounced deceased at the scene at 6:43 pm on Wednesday, September 3rd, 1884. The murder instrument? Presumably, to the police anyway,” he gives you a knowing look, “a simple revolver. To me?” The correct observation, his eyes convey. “It was the revolver M1882, produced exclusively in Switzerland. There were remnants of black powder and the 308 diameter bullet left behind a clean orifice in Clara’s chest. Which would mean our suspect most likely shot her at a close distance, face to face, and they may have an affiliation with the Swiss army and such an outrageous claim could be enough, and was enough, for our dear police officials and her family to subtract yours truly’s aid moving forward in the investigation.” He clears his throat at this, his gaze set on the table, on the food, but you know he’s looking right past it.

So, not only is Sherlock’s involvement unwanted by the police and unwanted by the victim’s family, he carried on with an investigation of his own. Sherlock didn’t tell you these details because of his ego (okay, maybe a small part of it was that), but because he doesn’t have proper authorization and from how he won’t meet your gaze, it’s possible he’s embarrassed. You don’t say anything, waiting for him to continue and leap over this disappointment he carries in his features.

He eventually does with a shake of his head. “Clara’s parents were sparing in their accounts. They left for the theater, came home early, and then found Clara dead. Her father was in shambles, sobbing as they covered Clara’s body with a sheet. Her mother was quieter, however, less hysteric. When I resolved the matter of the murder weapon and how it could have possibly been someone Clara knew given the close proximity, I was soon told by her father, once he calmed, that I would no longer be needed. Thus, I no longer had access to their home nor possible suspects.” Sherlock’s tongue runs along his upper row of teeth, sucking on them so harshly that his jaw pops. You’re not sure what to say to him. The only dead body you had seen in your lifetime belonged to your father and it was after his heart afflictions, not due to someone inhumanely claiming his life. You grieve for Sherlock’s frustration. He barely had anything, it seems, and yet ironically more than the police.

“Regardless,” he continues, “I acquired evidence. A piece of fabric, fabric that you seemingly specialize in because I was unable to locate it in over thirty establishments,” he clicks his tongue at you, to which you shyly grin because he wouldn’t have had to take that journey if you had helped him from the beginning, “and this fabric came with dried blood. Clara’s blood, I’m sure of it. Now, believe me when I tell you that nowhere on this woman’s outfit did it appear to be missing even a loose thread. Which means this fabric came from—”

“The suspect,” you breathe, pieces falling together in your head. You look at the letter and then the other piece of fabric on the table that you.. that you took from Mrs. Thomas’s. The implications of this… you can feel your head reeling.

“Yes… the suspect. This entails the suspect to be wealthy as that factor is the commonality amongst your clientele and as agitating as it was visiting all those businesses, it has narrowed down the possibilities and confirmed it for me. This does not mean that any of your clients are murderers,” Sherlock reaches for your hand. He seems to know what’s currently lurking through your head as you level him with teary eyes. Your trust is breaking the more he explains this. You don’t know what to think having visited these homes so recently of people you thought were at least good natured. While he’s reassuring you of the likelihood, it’s not completely unfound and he knows that. Anyone and everyone could be guilty.

“If they are not involved themselves, then they might have connections to the true culprit. Remember, your clothing is not solely worn by the retrieving consumers, but also by their friends, by their family, by the complete strangers they may have donated it to. Though,” he sighs, his thumb repeatedly stroking back and forth on your hand. There’s always a catch. You squeeze his hand back to try and lessen his worry.

“Though this line of thinking may all change if I read you this letter. I attempted to do so last night, but… I faced distractions.” His grip tightens a fraction on your hand. It’s a lovely memory to recall and since it happened so recently, both of you succumb to the fragments that hit at you. Still, you gesture to the letter.

“You can go on,” you bravely reply. He slants his mouth.

“Are you certain? Whatever may lie in this letter could be telling of your companion and the state of your companionship with—”

“Please, Sherlock,” you contest. You gradually remove your hand from his so you can sit taller, your expression morphing with confidence other than the blemish of ignorance. “I have to know.”

It’s heavy being here at the table with Sherlock like this. The letter you stole from Mrs. Thomas could unveil more than you could bargain for, but there’s this white knight in your heart craving the truth, craving justice for a woman you didn’t know even if it comes at the cost of erasing the idealized image you held of someone you thought you did.

“Very well,” he relents. He flips the letter, “For Blanche, with love,” he announces. A bit of relief floods you at this because it means that this letter is addressed to Mrs. Thomas and not something she wrote. You still prepare yourself as he reads.

“My dearest Blanche, this is quite possibly the longest we have undergone without seeing one another. I know we have faced our trials and distances in the past, but this certainly feels different. If I were to be honest, I would tell you how it feels as if a part of me is missing. I would tell you how lost I am, how heavy I carry my heart, and how I think of you every day. It has worsened the longer we have been apart. This rail system has stolen plenty of my time from you and so I am proposing a plot that requires your initiative and word.

“I have pondered retirement. This would mean we would see each other daily, no longer concerned with distributing our activities, reconciling at our own pace to do our own biddings. I know we were reluctant in our youth to even think of such an endeavour, but now we are blessed with enough wealth to last us and then some for the rest of our lives. I made a vow to spend that measure with you and I hope you share this ambition. I am ready for this next chapter and to say goodbye to the last one, but I can only do so with your hand in mine.

“I ask you to contemplate this decision well. There are many ventures we can accomplish together with this newfound time. We could travel anywhere, we could move to a different country, we could settle down further where we are. We could renovate the house or keep it as is and go on those peaceful strolls that you love. There are endless prospects. I won’t officially retire until I have your input. Seeing that I will be returning Saturday, October 25th, I do anticipate our reunion. Forgive me for being unable to be there earlier in the day, but I am sure I will be arriving just in time for our planned outing. We can continue this discussion then. I will see you at the ball. Travel with caution and mind your surroundings. Love, Edmund.”

The absence of sound is prevalent when Sherlock finishes reading the letter. Truthfully, a portion of you feels corrupt and unsettled for listening to it because of the intimacy the letter described. You hardly knew Mr. Thomas, having only met with him twice in your tenure, once at your family home, and another when you stepped up to take over your father’s business. You don’t know how Sherlock could stomach disrupting the privacies in the lives of others, but it doesn’t leave you with a pleasant feeling. You feel guilty for even thinking Mrs. Thomas could commit such an atrocity when she’s actually a lonely woman away from her hardworking husband. At least, that’s how you view this. You don’t see the connection that Sherlock does so you’re incredibly surprised when he instantly stands from the table, the legs of his chair screeching on the floor from how suddenly he pushed it backwards. You watch with confusion as he knits his eyebrows inwards.

“The rail system. He wasn’t talking about the Metropolitan Railway,” he proclaims out loud. As many of his discoveries are, Sherlock says it more to himself, but he corrects this immediately after and looks to you. You’re still not following, but you do stand from your chair and lean over it to try and grasp ahold of what he means.

“Then which did he imply?”

“The railway network being attended to elsewhere… in Switzerland.”

The hesitation in Sherlock’s voice depicts to you how he must’ve figured this out already while he read the letter. You hold a hand to your mouth at this startling revelation, the familiar lines and wrinkles of Mr. Thomas’s facial structure coming to your head as you think about what Sherlock is leading you towards. That guilt from seconds ago manifests into denial, your head shaking back and forth as you wordlessly stare at Sherlock. You know he’s right in his assumption, and that’s what exacerbates it for you, unable to believe that Mrs. Thomas’s husband could execute someone. There still isn’t a motive, you tell yourself. Maybe on the offhand chance, Sherlock is wrong for once. The connection to Switzerland is a coincidence and Mr. Thomas did not have a revolver specially akin to the nation.

However, as your head spins back to the content of his letter to Mrs. Thomas, you glance down at the lone piece of fabric you found alongside it locked away in that desk full of cat figurines. Your heart thuds faster, your head whipping back to Sherlock who appears as if he’s thinking of comforting words, anything he could do or say in this situation. While you appreciate the sentiment, you tap the surface of the table.

“Where’s the fabric you found?”

“Lily, I know this is a plethora of information, but—”

“Where’s the fabric from the crime scene? I need you to bring it to me at once.” You demand. He seems to catch on to your urgency and he starts to move as he calls back, “In the study,” on his way out of the kitchen.

You ground yourself to reality by placing your palms facing downwards on the surface of Sherlock’s kitchen table. The events from yesterday replay in your mind, the elite class referring to the same ball both Mr. and Mrs. Thomas will be present at. Then you think back to the specific purchases you’ve relayed in the past two months or so, but there’s no direct confirmation when the fabric in question was sold or what it specifically belonged to since you have a scrap and Sherlock presumably also has one too short to recognize. In your desperation, you recall the first time you met Mr. Thomas. He stopped by to greet your father, all smiles, a comical top hat on his head which he removed with enthusiasm as you practically bounced into the room for a better view.

You were too young to understand the business lingo they engaged in, pieces and sentences of their conversation lost, but you weren’t too young to understand the blissful expression on his old face, how he spoke of love and its rekindling because he mentioned struggling at the time with his wife, Blanche. He kneeled down to your level, insisting to your father that you hadn’t interrupted anything important. He beckoned you to come closer with his hand, but as a shy child, you remained in your spot unmoving. That’s when he reached for one of his coat’s pockets, a coat your father made, and then retrieved a handful of farthings that glinted under your home’s lamp. Your eyes widened with intrigue, possessed by your childlike curiosity and greed as you thumped over and took the farthings from him. You counted them as he chuckled over you, still relatively hulking even bent down. His knee popped as he slowly stood and told you the history of farthings and how they were made, much of which you tuned out to stare at the currency in your little palm. When you looked up, you noticed the handkerchief sticking out of the pocket that held the coinage and the way he smoothed his vest like a gentleman.

Sherlock returns into the kitchen and noticing your current gaze, he places the other scrap of fabric alongside the one you’re staring intently at. Side by side, you know what item of clothing these scraps came from and while there is more missing, you don’t require it to comprehend the weight of this observation that Sherlock couldn’t have caught on his own.

“What is it?” He asks.

“The fabric is from a handkerchief. Mr. Thomas’s handkerchief.”

The horse’s hooves of your carriage trot nonchalantly along the busy streets of London, and you assume there are other carriages nearby from the sound of offbeat steps creating something resembling white, background noise. You cross your leg over the other, the heaviness of your dress’s layered skirt becoming apparent during the action since the material ruffles and bunches in the process. Sherlock glances at you at the contention point of the noise and then he awkwardly reverts his gaze forward again to the curtain concealing away your coachman. You wish he would talk to you instead of entertaining this silence you accidentally fell into, but you also understand how there’s an upcoming event you two must remain focused on. It’s vital you don’t stray away from the objective, the possible perpetrator of a murder case Sherlock’s chased at this ball you two were currently en route to. You probably should’ve denied Sherlock’s invitation that he felt he owed you after roping you into his investigation through releasing the nuances and details, but you couldn’t withstand the idea of waiting at home in anticipation as Sherlock brought an old family friend to justice on his lonesome. That’s if Sherlock could find anything through questioning Mr. Thomas directly, the very plan of your night. Sherlock explained to you that he was still missing a motive.

In a twisted way, it offered you the opportunity to get dressed in your best attire. You don’t recall when you last wore something this extravagant, when you last were able to choose from the assortment of clothing at your disposal for your own prerogative. Secretly, you also wished to pick an option that would be eye-catching not only for the ball’s attendees, but for Sherlock. You got your wish since he froze in his spot once you opened the door to your flat and stepped past the threshold. To him, you floated further into his sight as if you had wings, the obsidian bows and tule dipping around your biceps in gentle sleeves connecting to your sweetheart corset brushing him as you walked past and reminded him of the carriage ride you both had to catch if you desired to arrive on time.

Sherlock wore the suit you tailored for him as well as the tie you picked out. The difference became all clear to his regular clothing because of how it hugged the hard lines of him while still highlighting his frame and bulk. It took extra time than your other projects did and you realized you ran low on azure products while placing it together having adjusted an already-made-suit, but the end result was worth it. How you found the time in the midst of developing deep feelings for him, embarrassing yourself to him in a drunken manner, arguing with him, fucking him, and deciphering a mystery case’s answers is beyond you, but you worked miracles in the past before.

“You look…” Sherlock breaks the silence, but his voice is uncharacteristically soft. You turn towards him and he still faces the curtain as he wrestles with what he wants to say. If he looks at you, it’ll be worse for him. You’ve stumped him of his speech and his mind is currently blanking as he tries to locate the words conveying how you make him feel, how one glance robs his breath, and how your appearance commands full attention. As clever as he is, in all his wits and skills, this is seemingly a game he doesn’t excel in. His attempts come with strain, his emotions crumpled for what reason you don’t know, but you nudge your shoulder against his and he looks at you with admiration despite it all.

“Thank you,” you respond to the unsaid compliment that hangs in the air. You slyly grasp his hand and lace your fingers together, the hold led into your lap. His knuckles linger on the golden lace adorning the opaque tule of your skirt beneath it. “So do you,” you finish in a whisper.

You two remain that way. Sherlock’s grateful for how you don’t press, albeit a touch disappointed in himself for not being able to fully articulate what’s in his head. Frustratingly, he doesn’t fully comprehend what’s going on with him, either. There are feelings, that’s already a realm he’s unfamiliar with, but to add further to it, he doesn’t know what these feelings are. They don’t logically spell out their motives nor their purpose like everything else he approaches in his life does. Humanity is exceedingly simple, driven by its selfish nature and complex emotions and so he shouldn’t have any issue with unraveling whatever it is he feels for you, and yet the gossamer web has no rhyme nor reason. It taunts him, it laughs at him, it encircles his head in a vague question he barely can read despite it entrapping him for what feels like ages now. The puzzling case of Clara Grace is coming to its solution, undeniably because of how all answers reveal themselves in time, but what of the puzzling case involving him and you?

“We never slept together, did we?” You question, saving him from his thoughts while simultaneously ushering in others he thought you wished to avoid. He looks at you quizzically and you quickly correct yourself even though he already knows what you’re referring to.

“I mean, before. When I fell asleep in your flat. We didn’t do anything of that nature, did we?” You’re sheepish as you stare at your hand in his, the unit you’ve created still in your lap. He doesn’t know where this is coming from nor if this is the appropriate time to discuss this, but he might as well if you’re willing to no matter the hour or where you two are heading.

“Did you believe we did?” It’s a logical assumption if you wake in someone else’s bed after a night of consuming wine.

“Perhaps. I thought we did something, but I didn’t know what. You approached me with such seriousness and so I attempted to connect lines that weren’t there and..”

“You came to the conclusion that we had intercourse and I was searching for a way to reject you?” He continues for you. You meet his gaze then, because that implies you thought him as someone that sleazy and you quickly clear the air.

“No, no, well, yes, but not exactly,” you clarify and Sherlock furrows his brows in rare bewilderment. “I thought that the conversation could possibly lead there and I wasn’t ready for it. Whatever we did while I was drunk, I wasn’t ready for the consequences.”

Understanding now encompasses Sherlock’s features, much to your relief. He seems to be thinking of something, “That’s why you wanted to pretend as if nothing happened. Self-preservation.”

You chew on your lip. This definitely isn’t easy, almost as difficult as you foresaw it before just as he did. But if you’re going into a mission with grand players and high stakes, you don’t want anything possibly holding either of you back sitting between you any longer.

“And I didn’t want to lose you,” you confess quietly and you can see Sherlock’s shoulders lower in surprise. That’s not what he expected. His mouth parts like he could add something, but he doesn’t. You sigh, your head tilting down in shame. “I’ve lost my father, I haven’t seen my mother nor my sister in months, the friend I made in Mrs. Thomas came because of work and now I’m about to have a hand in possibly sending her husband away to prison. You’ve been a steady factor during this time. Forgive me for trying to hold on as best as I could manage.”

That’s who you are now. You don’t want your world to crumble all over again so you must tighten your vise on what’s present to prevent it from happening again. Yet, the guilt from attempting to control life and its ups and downs, from attempting to control Sherlock and his appearance in your day-to-day activity, it’s catching up to you. You gradually pacify the pressure you have on Sherlock’s hand, because as much as you would hate it, it’s not up to you whether or not he stays or doesn’t. He has his own autonomy and if he believes it as correct, then he can walk away from you when all of this is done and you have to stand by and let him. Not wanting to ruin your makeup by thinking of this, you breathe evenly to halt the tears threatening to fall over your lash line. You only gasp when Sherlock reinforces his hold on your hand, his grip now the dominant one.

“You asked me to lay with you… that night. I didn’t know if it was you or the alcohol in your system speaking, so I chose to forego the opportunity, but believe me, it was with great, great reluctance.” His jaw hardens, his mind begging him to stop talking because of how he’s discussing with you what he held back for days, private information that he wouldn’t tell to anyone else, not even to himself out loud in front of a mirror. “While you slept, I couldn’t bring myself to. My mind preoccupied itself with your safety, with what your reaction would be in the morning, if there was a way to salvage our,” he loses his speech then, not sure of the label he could give the two of you. He settles for gesturing back and forth between you and him in the miniscule space among your bodies with his opposite hand. You get it immediately. “I planned to encourage nothing but friendship. You’ve been a distraction to me. Doing anything with you, whether it was as simple as laying at your side and falling into a shared slumber, I needed to establish our boundaries.”

For a split second, Sherlock notices a tendril of emotion cross your face. He’s never been good at reading these allusive signs, but he recognizes the antecedents before particular behaviors. That tremble of your lip and how you rapidly blink your eyelids, he’s seen you do it. He’s seen you do it before you’re about to cry. That means you’re hurt. He’s not sure why a sense of panic envelopes his chest, hurriedly tucking his knuckles under your chin with his free hand to rectify his words.

“But then you dismissed it and… and I was… I believed… I wanted… ah, fuck,” he blurts. Seldom is he this tongue tied. Seldom is he at a loss for words, able to direct an audience as they hung onto every syllable he uttered. You’re attaching yourself to every one he currently struggles with all the same, but it’s somehow harder. Everything is with you. He can’t think properly, evidently can’t speak properly, but goddamn it, you pull him back with how you flutter your glassy eyes at him, and how you maddeningly tilt your head at him. Enola was right. You’re pretty. You’re so, so fucking pretty. It makes him stutter. It makes him stupid.

“I thought you regretted it. Not just the alcohol intake, but… I thought you regretted what you asked of me. I thought you regretted being with… with me.” It’s Sherlock’s turn to be contrite. He doesn’t do this. He doesn’t talk about the things that make him.. human. He doesn’t expose his weaknesses and this is surely one, his flesh peeled back for your discretion, to pick at his bones, and he’s ashamed of himself to feel anything that isn’t confidence, self-certainty, or inquisitive. But after you laid out your fears, the overbearing trepidation of loneliness that he can relate to (though, he would never say it), he couldn’t remain quiet of what his subconscious desperately needed to release itself of.

Much to his surprise, you don’t stomp on his confession and its vulnerability, you don’t judge him for his antics as Mycroft would, and you don’t tease him for his revelations as Enola would, either. Instead, you smile, and it feels as if the carriage ride stops. You kiss him, his knuckles still along your chin, the movement causing them to touch the delicate, silk choker’s eggshell rose replacing your usual charm necklace for the night. He changes his hand’s position to cup your jaw, inadvertently deepening the kiss by shifting your head for better leverage. Your hand kneads his, your other reaching for his wrist. It doesn’t pull it away as he initially thinks, but it maintains his hold, ensures he remains there. It’s completely unnecessary to him. He’s not going anywhere.

Neither of you have the time to escalate this as much as you both desire it. The door to your carriage comes open to the left of Sherlock and he retracts his mouth from yours. It’s not because he’s embarrassed to be caught like this by the coachman who clears his throat awkwardly in front of you and the carriage, but because Sherlock hates being interrupted. He huffs out his displeasure, releasing your jaw and hand as he straightens his coat and thinks to himself, I surmise the carriage did actually stop.

He descends the single step, peering at the coachman who won’t look at him for some odd reason. Before Sherlock extends his hand out to you, he lifts an eyebrow in question at the other man.

“Does something concern you?”

“No, Sir, I,” the coachman trails off. He glances at you and then back at Sherlock before he ultimately stares at the floor again. “It’s… her lipstick is all over you.”

“Focus. Am I losing you, Lily?”

“I am focused!” You lie, swiftly tearing your gaze away from his sculpted jawline to the crowd of people watching the couples who litter the dance floor, you and Sherlock among said couples who practice the same choreography. Being this close, his scent permeates your nostrils like a pheromone, beckoning you closer to his neck that your lips crave to kiss and drag along. You didn’t know that dancing with Sherlock would rile you this way and render him so desirable, but it’s probably also the alarming fact that he prohibited any other forms of affection since you stained him so horribly and thoroughly back at the carriage. He eventually got himself clean, with the help of the coachman, and he glared at you for snickering to yourself, accusing you softly in your ear of allowing him to enter this event without giving him notice had the coachman not said anything. You protested that your own lips had to be salvaged by the concoction you brought along in your purse, but he’s been weary ever since.

It must be because he’s now in detective mode. As much as your heart soared when he asked you to dance, he reassured you it was because it was the best way to survey the ball’s participants, scope who came in and who went out. Regardless, you couldn’t refrain from swaying to the music, leaning into him closer than necessary, your hand lingering on his chest and shoulders as he pulled you into him after twirling you at a distance. It’s not like he’s in any better shape. You’re so concerned with trying to maintain your composure that you’re failing to notice how his jaw tightens and flexes, how his hands draw your hips in flush against his body, how he inhales your perfume indulgently with every lack of proximity. He’s never enjoyed dancing. Not like he’s enjoying it with you. He should’ve known this experience would be so distinct since you flip every assumption on its head.

“I see Mrs. Thomas,” you alert when your heads are centimeters apart.

Your gaze is over his shoulder, his own in the opposite direction. He nods, still searching through the crowd. He only has your description to go off with Mr. Thomas and his memory of a photograph that sat at Mrs. Thomas’s shared residence. You would definitely know him and could assess if you saw him, but Sherlock knows how dangerous that could be and he’s not letting you anywhere near the man if he can help it. Your part in this is to lead Mrs. Thomas away while he confronts and restricts Mr. Thomas without making a scene. He did tip the police off of his discoveries, but with how they excluded Sherlock from this investigation already, he doesn’t know what time they will show up if they even decide to. Like most things, which were more apparent when he started this career, he has to do this all himself. In all his credibility and fame, it’s been ages since he’s been shunned this way. It proves to him that he only has himself to count on.

Well. Himself and you. You, who looks up at him, ready and willing to carry out your set duty while he carries out his own. He’s suddenly regretting that rule he implemented, reluctant to depart from your frame. He eventually slips his arms away and fights off the demand within him urging him with great pressure and insistence to kiss you.

“Good luck. Find me if you feel anything is wrong or if you happen to run into Mr. Thomas.” He walks with you from the dance floor, a few glances taken your way that have been conducted from the moment you stepped in here together. It’s probably because Sherlock is such a renowned and “eligible” (according to the papers, anyway) bachelor. Pride sinks into your posture.

“I will. Be careful, I’ll see you soon.” Although you two can’t kiss, you do embrace Sherlock. It’s decisive and as quickly as you slotted yourself into his arms, that’s how quickly it’s over. He yearns for the attachment, your lips close to his ear as you murmur “time will explain” and flee from him thereafter.

He soundlessly parrots your words to himself and watches as you cut through the sea of people. He weaves among the patrons himself to ensure you find Mrs. Thomas with his own eyes. From this distance, he sees you greet her and she beams when she recognizes you. After a bone crushing hug, she looks around and then stares at you, presumably asking about where Sherlock is since this is not an event you attend alone and only days before, you lied to her and said you were dancing with him. He can only imagine what the conversation is between you as you hook your arm with hers and begin to walk her away from the thick of the people. He cranes his neck to view until you’re out of sight and while he would rather be in your company, he braces himself for what’s to come.

Sherlock is unable to pass through the attendants unnoticed. Without you at his arm, the attention from unmarried women comes in heaps, one after the other asking him to dance, some not-so-subtle caresses of his biceps as he does his best to appear dapper and without an ulterior motive for his visit. Then there are the officials who realize it’s him, among them by the name of Inspector Lestrade, whom Sherlock doesn’t recognize, who tries to apologize for the expulsion he had no part in, to which Sherlock asks if Lestrade received his note from the night prior. Lestrade confirms it, ready for Sherlock’s signal, and then they part as Sherlock continues his search. At least more than two individuals are searching for Mr. Thomas and he notices other police officials sipping away at glasses of champagne. It’s both irritating and relieving to see. Irritating because this case could have possibly been solved sooner had they just involved Sherlock from the beginning. Relieving because their presence and abundance means your safety is guaranteed and for once, his top priority isn’t bringing someone to answer for their crimes, it’s you.

He grows impatient as he scans more faces, greets people with politeness Mycroft taught him, speaks fondly when they ask him about you since they saw you enter with him and dance with him. In his haste, he pauses at the glasses set for champagne and wine. There are usually service providers who pour and distribute, but he doesn’t see any in sight and concludes to himself that they must be attending to other elites and people of importance. So, he partakes in opening a bottle himself, the smoke from the chilled glass rising up and stroking the length of his nose in pure, fleeting cold. As he chooses a glass, he hears a nearby exchange between a woman in pearls and another woman in rubies. So much for scolding Enola about eavesdropping. What she doesn’t know cannot be used against him.

“Did you attend the funeral?” Pearls inquires, her hand tucked at her elbow, the other nursing a glass of champagne.

“No, her father wasn’t quite fond of inviting his ex-mistress. Or perhaps her mother wasn’t,” Rubies replies and Sherlock has to blink away how staggering that statement is. They’re in public, this should be the last conversation they engage in. He’s aware he shouldn’t continue listening, but he does anyway to occupy the void that comes with pouring his glass to his desired volume.

“Shame. You missed out on the entertainment.” Pearls slyly nudges her friend and masks a wicked grin with a sip of her glass.

“Oh, please. A funeral filled with weeping men and women over a harlot? How depressing,” Rubies mutters aloud. Sherlock can’t believe what he’s hearing. Well, he can. He’s heard outrageous sentences come from wealthy mouths. It’s the entitlement.

“Clara was not a harlot,” Pearls retaliates in a hushed voice through her gritted teeth. At this, Sherlock’s head snaps up. They still haven’t caught wind that he’s listening nor how invested he now is in this topic of discussion.

“That’s up for debate,” Rubies says, but she leans in closer. Like she wants to hear the secret Pearls desperately wants to tell her. “But go ahead. What was so entertaining? Did Clara rise from the dead?”

Pearls lightly smacks Rubies on her arm. Sherlock is sure it’s in good nature since they both snicker.

“No, no, no, nothing of the supernatural sort,” she drops her voice an octave. Sherlock has to strain his ears to hear. “Get this… I was sitting with Peter during the ceremony when suddenly he taps my thigh. He says, ‘Darling, darling look,’ and I look around and do you know who I saw?”

“Who?” Sherlock is not religious, but he finds himself praying silently as he steps closer.

“Edmund. Thomas.”

“No, no he did not,” Rubies gasps, and Sherlock’s eyebrows fly to his forehead. What the hell was Edmund Thomas, the possible murderer, doing at Clara Grace’s, the victim’s, funeral?

“He was standing like a ghost meters away and he had to be chased off by Matilda. It was embarrassing and even more so when she tried to explain herself to Nicholas,” Pearls continues. Sherlock recognizes those names. Matilda and Nicholas Grace. Clara’s parents that Sherlock barely had time to question before they and the police excluded him. Sherlock is no longer concerned with the glass of champagne he’s poured himself. He doesn’t even hide the fact that he’s listening now, his mind racing as he attempts to deduce why Edmund would possibly attend Clara’s funeral.

“Guess love really does make people do crazy things. I think Matilda is taking that secret to the grave with her before she tells Nicholas.”

“Hey, and so are we. Clara didn’t want anyone to know. Especially not Blanche.”

Both women abstain from their gossip at the sound of glass shattering. One even gives a shriek that Sherlock hears having rushed away from the table right after he accidentally bumped into the corner of it. Neither of them noticed him, their eyes locked on the puddle of champagne on the floor, heels clacking as they maneuver away from the shards of glass that burst near them. A servant hurriedly runs over and calls for help to clean the mess, and that’s the last that Sherlock hears because he’s dashing through the crowd now, his thoughts crashing against each other in waves grander than the ocean could muster. His heartbeat drums in his ears, his target in Mr. Thomas not his intent now because doubt is filling him. Not the doubt that Mr. Thomas is not the culprit, he fucking knows that now, but the doubt attempting to convince him that maybe he is and not the hunch Sherlock currently has. Sherlock is doubtful because for once in his fucking life, he wants to be wrong. He wants to be wrong more than he can feel his heart rate quickening.

If I were to be honest, I would tell you how it feels as if a part of me is missing, rings in his head, the convenience of finding the fabric in the desk, the disappearance of one old woman, being coincidentally locked in a room where said fabric and other evidence lied. Everything repeats itself and it doesn’t stop at one time. He can hear voices overlapping, his own, yours, Mrs. Thomas’s, Matilda’s, Nicholas’s, Lestrade’s, Enola’s, Mycroft’s. They’re all trying to tell him the same thing. Images flash, the letter, the fabric, the key, the blood, Clara, the letter, the key, Clara, Rubies, Pearls, Mrs. Thomas, Mr. Thomas, you, you, you, you, you, you, a handkerchief, Switzerland, the revolver, you, you, Clara, the key, the letter, Mrs. Thomas. Mrs. Thomas. Mrs. Thomas. Mrs. Thomas. Mr. Thomas and Clara. Mr. Thomas and Clara. Mr. Thomas and Clara.

I would tell you how lost I am, how heavy I carry my heart.

I am ready for this next chapter and to say goodbye to the last one.

How could he have been so blind? He has a motive now, perhaps the most important part of this investigation besides the murder weapon, which he still did not have. Love is a vicious motivator, he’s known this, and yet, he didn’t realize it despite reading the letter and dealing with the trapping door days ago. Edmund was talking about Clara in the letter, an emptiness referred to that had initially puzzled Sherlock, but it’s becoming clearer to him the more he runs around the ball.

I remember when Edmund and I would dance randomly. Being in love and all, made you spontaneous.

Mrs. Thomas. Mrs. Thomas. Mrs. Thomas.

He catches up to Lestrade, and Lestrade attempts to question what’s gotten into Sherlock, but Sherlock cuts him right off.

“What, what is it? Did you f—”

“Never mind Mr. Thomas, it’s not him, it never was.”

“But your note and explan—”

“I know what the hell I wrote,” Sherlock snaps and earns a few concerned looks thrown his way. He doesn’t care, his hand grasping Lestrade’s sleeve in a death grip. “It’s Blanche Thomas, she’s the one. She shot Clara, she… she…”

Sherlock abruptly stops speaking. He could hear his panting, but at the same time, he doesn’t feel any oxygen being driven out of him. Everything surrounding him goes mute, even Lestrade who pats his shoulders and demands he tells him why Sherlock thinks it’s her. He ignores Lestrade, his expression going blank as he contemplates what he had just done. He got the murderer wrong. Wrongwrongwrongwrongwrong. But as that word echoes through the recesses of his brain, he mulls over its implication. And that’s the horrid, stomach twisting implication that you’re currently with said murderer. In his diligence and caution to ensure your safety, he led you right into the danger’s arms. He did the exact opposite of what he originally intended and now Mr. Thomas is the last person on his mind.

Sherlock speaks your name. He says it again after Lestrade repeats it in complete confusion. Then, he’s gripping Lestrade again, fury in his irises.

“She’s with Mrs. Thomas, we have to find her!” He orders, breaking into a sprint as Lestrade stumbles backwards.

In the midst of Sherlock opening door after door in the building, Lestrade signals his men and then they’re on the hunt themselves, the entirety of the ball in shambles as women screech and men protest. There are slams of the doors they push open, others ushering out the people who fail to form single file lines marching out of the establishment. No one understands the fiasco that’s ongoing, but due to the police being frantic, every patron within the building becomes so. Eventually, Sherlock climbs up a staircase leading up two flights. He attempts to search through the endless amount of rooms, catching couples off guard who took to them to engage in what they should be engaging in their private houses. He rolls his eyes as they try to explain themselves, slamming the door to then do the same with the next and then the next and the next.

There’s one white door with a golden frame that he tries and as soon as he steps through, a gun points right at him. He stops in his tracks, his blood running cold and not for the plain fact of how Mrs. Thomas points a M1882 revolver at him, but for how she’s wound an arm around your waist, the two of you right up against the balcony’s handrail. He doesn’t move a muscle. At least, not in his legs or arms, but the ones in his jaw flex in unbridled anger, his stare intense as he locks it with Mrs. Thomas. Gone is the facade he first saw when he met her outside of your shop, gone is the forgetfulness she feigned when he broke her door’s handle, gone is the sweet and tender expression of an old woman, present is the slickness of a master manipulator and a scorned lover. She’s been right under his nose this entire time.

“You were right, dear. He did figure it out,” she states, hinting that she must’ve unveiled herself to you before his discovery. He wonders why you didn’t come find him, her patronizing tone causing him to step forward only for her to point the gun from him to you, and that alone tells him all he needs to know. The tip of the revolver presses into your ribcage and he once more refrains from coming any closer, every morsel within him screaming for him to think, Think of something, anything. He eyes the balcony, the revolver, and then your face. There’s fear, but there’s also disappointment.

“It’s over, Blanche. Release her, she has nothing to do with this,” he declares, willing for the police to not enter at the wrong moment. If she’s crazy enough to murder Mr. Thomas’s mistress at close quarters, he doesn’t put it beneath her to try and do the same to you. He has to separate you two first. It’s crucial you’re away from the mayhem before there is anything enacted.

She laughs. You once thought it to be sweet, but now you can’t think of any other adjective to describe it besides deranged. “She doesn’t? Isn’t she the reason you visited me two days ago? Isn’t she the one who stole from my desk?”

“You planted that evidence for us to find,” Sherlock spits, his teeth grinding as he watches Mrs. Thomas press that revolver into your covered flesh harder as a consequence. Mrs. Thomas clearly doesn’t appreciate being patronized. He wonders how she held herself back from people consistently underestimating her and fawning over her in her old age. You do nothing but grimace, pleading with your eyes for Sherlock to stand back.

“And who are you to judge me for it? Who are either of you to judge me?” She asks, her gaze hardening. Sherlock misses that confused elderly act she pranced around in before. “I wrapped up the evidence for you practically in a bow and both of you still managed to muck it all up. She could’ve left with you unscathed, but no, she had to guide me here. Ask question after question about my marriage, try to run off when she caught an unlucky glimpse of the gun in my purse that is now going to be acquainted with her guts.” Mrs. Thomas clicks the hammer back, her expression serious, although regretful. You gulp as you stare at Sherlock, the concern on his features ripping away at you more than this terrifying predicament.

“Stop, stop,” he bargains, his hands flying in front of him to indicate his surrender. “You don’t have to do this. You care about her, I know you do.”

“I care about her? Look at you, you care about her!” She exclaims in hysterics. “Here you are, close to groveling when you hardly know her,” Mrs. Thomas turns her head towards you, “Here he is attempting to save your life, he’ll promise you the world, dear, he might even marry you and kiss the ground you walk on for the first few years, but it all ends the same. You’ll find him years from now with someone younger, try twenty years younger, and you’ll feel the same rage that I do. Women in love never win. We lose. We always lose.”

She’s bitter and vengeful, it’s a dangerous combination. Sherlock hates how you’re caught in the middle of it and you hate that even though she’s pressing a gun into your ribs, you mourn for her struggle. She didn’t deserve what Edmund did to her, no one did… but Clara didn’t deserve to be hurt, either. You’re conflicted since Clara clearly knew about Mrs. Thomas and still met with Edmund anyway, from what you gathered from Mrs. Thomas’s ramblings before Sherlock arrived, murder and framing someone else for it couldn’t be the solution. You’re not sure what exactly that solution could’ve been, but if she had confided in you, maybe you two could have found it together. This is what you told Mrs. Thomas before Sherlock appeared. You attempted to reason with her and appeal to the scraps of humanity left within her, but Clara and Edmund have rendered Mrs. Thomas into something you couldn’t bargain with. The sole reason you kept up your efforts to persuade her into freeing you was because of the glimmer of restraint in Mrs. Thomas’s eyes. She didn’t want to do this. She pointed a gun at you and threatened you to be silent, but she did it with hesitation, with shaking hands, with longing glances confirming she thought of the same memories you had with her along with your father and mother.

Your empathy gallops valleys, it shouldn’t end like this, and you think you should say something else so Mrs. Thomas won’t take any drastic actions. You certainly don’t wish to die today, but it would be much worse to die in front of Sherlock, powerless despite his size and intellect, to which Mrs. Thomas knows because she’s not breaking her grip on the revolver for a second. If Sherlock gains any leeway, then Mrs. Thomas would not stand a chance. He’s stronger, younger, faster, and because of this, Mrs. Thomas digs her gun until it uncomfortably greets the bone underneath all your layers.

“You’re right,” Sherlock says, and you blink at him in reaction because of all the things he could’ve said, that’s not what you expected. He’s always so keen on proving himself right rather than declaring someone else with that title, so you and Mrs. Thomas stare at him dumbfounded. There were a string of things that Mrs. Thomas said as well so you’re both wondering which in particular he’s referring to.

“Not about the affair part, but about me… caring. I do care for her. Eminently. Undeniably. Profusely,” he looks at you, steady despite how hard this is for him. You think back to the carriage. How his lips moved, how no words came from his mouth, how his shoulders fell in defeat as he allowed you to take the reins. “You can condemn all men, brand and categorize women according to your philosophy, but I would never, ever do that to her. If you pull that trigger, you’re not punishing Edmund—you’re punishing me. You’re punishing her. And I will make sure that I thoroughly pay it back tenfold.” Sherlock states this as he states everything. As a cold. Hard. Fact.

Dissension collects on Mrs. Thomas’s face. Sherlock is sure he can see her bottom lip wobble, but then the gun is back in his direction. He sucks in his breath, straightening his posture to accept his fate because at least it’s not pointed at you. He readily stares at the barrel of the gun, catching through his peripheral as you begin to move and with a decisive push of your hands, you knock the gun right out of Mrs. Thomas’s hand. You don’t know what possessed you to act so bravely, but this is the leeway you and Sherlock needed. Sherlock cuts across in the opposite direction of its aim, a bullet shot at the floor and ricocheting into the wall behind. The gun hits the floor with a thud, and so does Mrs. Thomas, the force of your shove enough to propel her to the ground since she is still a feeble, old woman. Neither you nor Sherlock dive for the gun to get it away from her, instead running into each other’s arms. The breath you held sputters out sporadically, breathing as if you just ran miles upon miles as Sherlock cups your face into his large hands. He examines you for any injuries, tilting your head as you grasp his wrists.

“Are you alright?” He asks, but it’s rushed, almost pained. He presses his forehead to yours, eyes shutting.

“I… I apologize,” he croaks, the first time you’ve heard it from him, but it doesn’t even apply, “I shouldn’t have- I should’ve known-.. It’s all my f—”

“Don’t, you’re here now. I’m okay, we’re okay, it’s you and me.” 

Sherlock latches his mouth to yours, breaking his own rule, his broad arms wrapping around your waist to haul you into him, distance nowhere to be found between your warm bodies. Your arms find their home at his neck, and as impassioned as the kiss is, it’s more than longing or desire. It’s all the things he can’t say, it’s trembling from how close you came to the worst, it’s his and your shared fear of losing one another when you just found each other. You’re so enraptured with Sherlock and he with you that neither of you notice Mrs. Thomas crawling for the gun. It’s the rotation of the cylinder that alerts the both of you, your gazes landing on Mrs. Thomas who aims the gun at you two from her seated position on the floor.

Sherlock steps in front of you, much to your dismay, his arms pushing you back behind him. You look over his shoulder, your head shaking for Mrs. Thomas to not do this, to have a second thought, and you can see her reluctance as her eyes meet yours. Then, the door bursts open, Lestrade leading the charge of men bolstering in with firearms. They push past you and Sherlock and surround Mrs. Thomas and from Sherlock’s sheer size, he can see over the officials and watch as she lowers her gun in defeat and raises her hands. Sherlock holds you in his arms protectively as they book her, even as he explains everything to Lestrade.

As they have her in bound wrists, that’s when the ever elusive Mr. Thomas arrives. He was late because he stopped to visit Clara Grace’s grave.

Blanche Thomas confessed to the murder of Clara Grace and to the attempt of framing her husband Edmund Thomas for it. Edmund had no idea Blanche found out about his affair, but she insisted this had been ongoing for years, solely acting out after he sent her a bouquet of flowers when she knew he was with Clara. She waited for him to leave for his job in Switzerland and then she struck once Matilda and Nicholas Grace left home to catch a train. She cleaned the revolver of Clara’s blood with Edmund’s handkerchief and intended to leave the gun behind, but couldn’t do so due to how Matilda and Nicholas came home early. Inspector Lestrade and the police force agreed that Sherlock would’ve solved this case sooner had he been granted access to the case’s witnesses and the preliminary suspects and because of this, they apologized thoroughly to Sherlock and after Sherlock told them of your involvement, they apologized to you as well. For having to become entangled as an expert advisor in clothing manufacturing and for not finding your location sooner. Clara’s parents, on the other hand, refused to comment. It was the sound of the gunshot that ultimately led the police to find you, Sherlock, and Mrs. Thomas on that balcony.

After everything, that’s the part that enraged Sherlock the most. If it had not been for their negligence, you could’ve possibly died, and he answered every question and remark with visible irritation he didn’t bother to hide. The self-blame bloomed throughout his chest, but you reassured him how nothing happened and how Mrs. Thomas’s deception was on her and no one else. A portion could be blamed on Clara and Edmund, but Clara met her bitter demise, and Edmund’s affair would be soon shared in the papers as there were journalists and reporters at the scene initially attending the ball for their own sake, later leaving with yet another one of Sherlock’s adventures, and another case closed. The masses would go wild when they found out about how Mrs. Thomas was skeptical about Sherlock when he coincidentally first appeared to ask about Mr. Wright’s beautiful daughter and how she counted on the both of them finding the planted fabric and letter in her desk drawer. They would get a kick out of how she shoved the end of a small fork into the keyhole of her door to trap Sherlock and you inside of her living area while she hid the revolver in another room. Sherlock wasn’t so pleased learning that certitude, either.

To appease the impact of Sherlock’s rage and gain his favor back, Lestrade recruited an officer with the task of giving you and Sherlock a carriage ride home. You accepted it seeing that he wouldn’t utter a word without agitation thick in his accent, hanging onto his arm as you were both escorted to it. The entire time, the rouge from your lips covered Sherlock’s mouth. He knew. You wondered how he could still be so intimidating to Lestrade in that state.

He doesn’t say anything during the carriage ride home. He’s not mad at you, more so at Mrs. Thomas for what she tried to do to you and what she did do to Clara, at Mr. Thomas for being unfaithful, at Clara for harboring the secret, and at Matilda and Rubies and Pearls and whoever the fuck Peter was for not alerting the police of this connection. At most, Sherlock grasps your thigh through your dress’s skirt and his hand never leaves until the carriage strides into a gradual and smooth halt. That’s when he acquiesces, slips his hand from you, and then offers it to help you out of the carriage. He doesn’t hold your hand as tightly as he held you back at the balcony, but his grip isn’t wavering, either. He walks with you to your flat, still wordless, still littered with worry as he looks at you, and as you unlock the door, you turn towards him.

“My bed isn’t as substantial as yours is,” you crack, playing with your fingers instead of meeting the intensity of his gaze. A storm’s actively brewing in his pupils, clouds of anger left behind from everything tonight, lightning flashing as he recalls. His knuckles uplift your head by tilting your chin up, steering your gaze back to his with tenderness contrasting the hurricane lurking in his eyes. While his irises are practically cobalt in his grudge, his affinity for you lingers there somehow, somewhere among the clouds and impending disaster. His care. Eminent. Undeniable. Profuse.

“But?” he resumes where you paused. Of course he knew there was a but. There’s also the diminutive victory that is his first utterance of the night since the fiasco absent of irritation and his temper, something for you alone to relish in. His voice is as velvety as you remember, and that sounds melodramatic, but considering how you faced death and escaped her clutches, you deserve to be.

“But there’s sufficient space for the two of us if you wish to come inside with me. I could utilize the help in removing my dress as I definitely required it by donning it earlier.” You deem this the correct response as Sherlock’s thumb traces your bottom lip, the leftover rouge on it staining his thumb just as it did his blemished mouth.

“Pity. I would’ve certainly helped. I suppose I could rectify it by aiding in your conundrum now, it’s only fair.” Your smile widens, removing his hand from your chin to guide him into your flat, the door shut and locked behind.

It’s dark in your home, so you depart from Sherlock to light your oil lamp nearby. Once it glows with life, you pivot on your heel and collide with his broad chest. Through the almost pitch black, he followed you here to this spot, and you can see the flame dancing in shadows on his features. The storm’s officially melted away and now, you sense the aftermath. There are hints of grief with how he drags you into him by your hips, and you understand him because just as he almost lost you tonight, you almost lost him. You want to ask him about what he said, what he declared to Mrs. Thomas with finality and belief in his words, but it’s transparent neither of you are going to be able to talk about this until you’re both comfortable again. That may be tomorrow or a week from now, but near death experiences don’t have specific timelines for how quickly one can move past their atrocities. For now, the both of you can indulge in one another’s company, indulge in what you both could’ve gone on without through one person’s skewed judgment.

You moan into Sherlock’s mouth, his hands on your hips keeping you flush to him while his body contrastingly backs you up until your dress meets your sofa’s back. He turns you around in one fluid motion, your hands grasping the edge of the backrest, pulse after pulse rapidly thrumming against your ass even through the layers of your skirt. You shudder as his hand traces the lacing of your corset, eager for him to release you of your clothed prison, arching as his fingertips draw along the lines of your shoulder blade.

“Fine, fine work,” he compliments your dress, or perhaps some higher power for your figure, two of his fingers maneuvering upwards until they’re able to tuck under the thick band of your choker and you inhale shakily, it holds your esophagus down just right for your head to become delirious with need. “I don’t think I can remove it. I think I want you just like this,” he breathes next to your ear, gooseflesh trailing your skin at the severe implication of what his words mean. He kisses the point where your neck and shoulder meet sweetly as his hands begin to toy with the golden lace. “I’ll be careful not to rip it.”

By the handfuls, Sherlock bunches the first layer of your skirt up until his hands meet the next layer of obsidian tule. Then that fabric starts to push up and in the midst of it, you attempt to step out of your heels and from how close Sherlock is and how he’s exposing part of your legs in this endeavor, he pinches your hip in warning. You freeze where you are, noticing how he’s stopped bunching the fabric up as he originally intended. You almost whine, but you remain quiet because you know from his arousal that he can’t wait for long.

“Leave them on. Like I said, I want you just like this,” he repeats and then to punctuate his sentence, the heel of his palm slides right between your shoulder blades and he pushes down on that spot until you bend at the waist and use the couch for support. You’re standing on your tiptoes, the heels of your shoes barely meeting the wooden floor beneath, but you consider this the point of Sherlock’s manhandling. He needs this sharp and he’s setting you up to where you will feel everything he wants you to, a thrill bubbling in your belly the more you think about it.

Once the tule is out of his way, next comes the fleshy netting, and then finally the silk that glided along your smooth legs with every step you took tonight. Those same two digits that further constricted your choker a minute ago find your dirty secret, and that’s how you decided against your bloomers, a hopeful feeling within you that something like this would happen. His reaction doesn’t fail to meet your standards, a curse flying from under his breath as he curls his fingers in the crevice between your outer lips. You whimper at the touch, bracing yourself on the couch because you have nowhere to turn to in this position.

“No undergarments, no decorum. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were scheming for me to fuck you in that carriage, or perhaps at the ball in some private room,” he circles your entrance with his index finger. The wetness that he collects is then properly used to smother your clit and you keen, desperately moaning his name, gravitating a majority of your weight on one foot.

“Shh, shh,” he quiets you. You do your best to lower the volume of your voice as he slips his finger away from your clit, back to teasing your clenching hole. “So, which was it? The carriage? The ball?”

Before you can answer, Sherlock’s index finger plunges home, your walls gripping it immediately. You rock your hips for friction, but he remains stagnant as he awaits your reply. You’re already wound up tight, maybe from the corset hugging your ribcage, or maybe from how you teeter on your footing, or maybe from how your cunt should be filled, but you’re not ashamed of succumbing so quickly to his teasing.

“Both, both,” you confess, your voice high pitched and strained. You sulk as he slides his finger out, panting along the sofa. This interlude of nothing doesn’t last thankfully.

“Good answer. I’ll save the knowledge for next time,” he whispers, and you would’ve ruminated with this imagery if it weren’t for how you peered at him from the side of your head and saw him undoing the buttons of his trousers. Unlike your coyness two nights ago, you opt to watch him free himself, but his opposite hand turns your head away, “just feel me” mumbled near your ear.

You oblige him, not just doing so by ensuring your head’s positioned forward, but by gradually closing your eyes shut. The low light and warmth of the oil lamp adds onto the experience, a mostly opaque void behind your eyelids as you hone in on how he skillfully holds the layers of your skirts at your hip and eventually guides himself to your entrance. The head of him breaches first, your lower jaw falling open with a hushed breath that remains that way through the entirety of Sherlock’s cock filling you. Your walls grip him with soft spasms, and although you can hear the hiss that comes from him, he doesn’t push in faster, nor does he halt, it’s just a smooth and perpetuated glide until he’s as deep as he can be, the action resembling a train pulling in to its station. You’re unbearably warm through all of this, warmed by the layers you still have on, by the layers Sherlock has on, by his frame curving along yours, by the overwhelming and comforting heat of his girth, by an invisible and unidentifiable wave washing throughout your chest. He expands further within you the more you two relish in and savor this moment, the time between each of his pulses increasing, but the pulses themselves are heavy and achingly acute against your stretching walls.

“Tell me I can move,” Sherlock heaves, his voice as strained as his control currently is, a sign he’s been holding his breath for as long as he’s been sheathed inside of you. Even now, he’s holding himself back. His feelings and where they are only presented themselves because of how dire the circumstances became, from how he viewed you as close as you were to that revolver and that balcony. Without saying it, he’s ushering his resolve into your capable hands, not willing to hurt you unless you ask him to do so. If today, and the days that have passed, has told you anything, it’s how almost everything is out of your control despite how both you and Sherlock have tried to hang on with gritted teeth. Him and the prowess of his intellect, you and the prodigal responsibility bestowed upon you. Your life hasn’t been easy and with the addition of Sherlock, it’s bound to become more difficult, but for once, as this man buries his nose into your neck to hold himself off, you don’t care about soft and easy. For the first time in a long time you’re in control and it’s your overwhelming aspiration to have Sherlock lose his entirely.

“You can move,” you swiftly grasp his hand on the sofa’s edge after you feel him slightly shift, stopping him so you can convey what you want. Sherlock stares into your eyes, confused, but waiting regardless. The pace of his pulsing speeds. “But no thinking. I want you to feel me, too,” your lips graze his, a trembling sigh spills into your mouth from him. You can feel that tremble in the hand you hold, the ensnarement on himself he won’t dare to release. “Give me everything.”

“It won’t be gentle,” he admonishes, catching onto what you’re implying and what you’re asking for.

“I don’t need gentle,” you rebuke, watching how his expression goes from confusion to self-discipline and finally to pure lust.

Something plays at his lips, but whatever it is he fails at saying, it’s soon forgotten as he presses his mouth against yours, his hips surging back and then forward with poignancy that leaves you teetering all over again. You break the kiss to cry out as Sherlock begins to do as he was told, as his instincts steer him and not the thrall of his all-too-consuming thoughts. Your hands find purchase on the edge of the sofa your hip bones are scraping against, white knuckling the backrest as Sherlock thrusts into you without abandon, with the pressure and pace he sets being above what you imagined. He pounds into your cunt without constraint nor pause, the sofa’s legs lightly skidding against your floor from the sheer force. You can feel your eyes rolling into the back of your head as your back arches and seemingly grants him the access necessary to thrust in deeper, your mouth agape to accommodate a succession of incoherent moans. As for Sherlock himself, he’s focused on fucking you into the same oblivion he finds himself in when you come across his mind, panting as he chases after what his body craves instead of what his usual contemplation convinces him into. The tule of one of your skirts scratches at him and in reaction, he juts his palm out to push it and the other layers up again, the provocative image of his cock spearing in and out of you greeting him in its tantalizing view.

“You have such a pretty cunt,” he mutters, much to your surprise. If the heat before was bad, it’s attacking you cruelly now from his praise, fire tempering within you, licking at your skin from underneath. Sherlock reinforces his grip at your hips, his hands claiming you under your dress on top of your bare skin. His thumbs stroke along the flesh of your posterior, over the top swells of your rounded cheeks because otherwise, his hips are forcefully clapping against them. The backrest’s edge has found the same thumb shaped bruises Sherlock left behind days ago, a soaring sting that you welcome with the influx of sensations that come with being railed wide open for Sherlock and his withstanding stamina.

“Pretty back, pretty hair,” he says, rambling on with items you never thought would come from Sherlock. He could barely compliment you back at the carriage, but then again, the circumstances are massively different. You can’t form your own words of praise and what you feel for him, not with how he’s thrusting into you, so you have no choice but to hear him, but to whine as one of Sherlock’s hands leaves from your hip, his digits tracing your bare shoulder.

“Pretty throat,” he gruffs, his fingers trailing higher and higher along your shoulder until they brush along your nape. You shiver at the touch, craning your head upwards. Whilst doing so, Sherlock’s hand rounds to the front of your neck, his palm pressing flat against your larynx, flat against the silk rose of your choker, smashing the fabric you cautiously sewed in place as his fingers drape and almost engulf your throat in the process. It’s not enough to choke you, the corset is doing a more efficient job of that, but when you swallow, Sherlock feels it. He feels the way it shifts your esophagus, and suddenly, he adds a guiding pressure to your neck, straightening your posture by it with your compliance.

You gasp for air as you stand taller, now more weight back on your heels that were teasing your floorboards before. Your head falls back into one of his broad shoulders as his hand remains atop your neck, the other abandoning your hips entirely to press into your abdomen, right above where the backrest’s edge digs into your corset. He can’t pull his hips back as much as he wants at this angle, but he’s now undulating them against you, the tip of his cock endlessly and frustratingly flirting with a spot inside of you that’s pushing you closer and closer to that unfamiliar euphoria you only felt once, and that was with Sherlock.

“Fuck, f-fuck, you’re so fucking pretty, it infuriates me,” his hand goes along the boning of your corset until it reaches your heaving chest, “it haunts me.” He dips under the corset, past the ebony fabric holding your breasts up, and the calluses meet your skin as he explores until he’s able to cup one of your tits from underneath. The lack of space already is propelling the air from your lungs, as is his cock and heavy hand on your neck, so this isn’t helping you any. But he soon grants you a semblance of reprieve by slipping your breast out of the corset, your reward in how his thumb rolls along your pebbled nipple.

You’re a goner. You’ve been a goner. Since the very moment you marched up the staircase and confronted Sherlock over his fiddle, you’ve been subject to falling. Now, you are subject to fall off the cliff’s edge he’s pushed you towards. He doesn’t cease the delicious thrusts he gives you, nor the soft hold he has on your larynx, nor the stroke of his thumb on your nipple, and there’s something about your head becoming dizzy as you near your climax. It could be due to how you can barely breathe. It could also be due to how your legs are shaking. Whatever it is, you stutter out a breath, his name, and squeeze your eyes shut as you hit your peak with something close to a shriek. You clamp down on Sherlock’s length, hiccupping and close to downright sobbing as you feel electricity in your spine, in your clit, tingling in spots of static in every portion of your being.

“That’s it, I’ve got you,” he says, supporting your weight as you drench his cock in your cum, as he continues to fuck you through it, as his hold on your breast keeps you from falling forward. You’re twitching, panting in the aftermath, bracing yourself on the sofa.

He can’t last much longer. Not at the rate he began, or the way your heat tightened around his cock. Once he’s certain you won’t crumble on your baby deer legs, he retracts from you, one hand bracing on the sofa’s backrest, the other pumping himself twice. Although he is no longer seated inside of you, he imagines your wet heat surrounding him. He imagines shooting his seed while sliding his cock inside to your hilt. It’s not the same, but it’s over for him. He cups what he can in his hand as he finishes himself off, inhaling and exhaling deeply behind you. To appease his breaths, he rains a trail of affection with his lips along your shoulder. Both the air he expels and the drag of his mouth kiss at your sensitive flesh.

“Are you alright?” God, his voice still sounds so heady, most likely hazy from his orgasm, and from what you two just did. It’s deeper than it usually is. “Didn’t hurt you?” He speaks against your skin, unable to truly depart from it.

Adrenaline is what helps you pivot back around. You’re still wobbly on your own two feet, but you gather enough strength to grasp his tie and pull him in for a kiss. He sputters, but returns it. Your arms wind around his neck and one of his attempts to wrap around your waist, but it stops itself. His other hand lifts near the space away from the both of you and even though your eyes are closed, you can feel the motion. It causes you to cease your kissing, your eyes finding his stained hand that he sheepishly glances at and then back at you.

“As much as I wish to hold you,” he gestures, though, he seems bashful of the pearlescent mess there and on his fingers. Sherlock fully expects you to sneer or at least mimic the bashfulness he’s sinking into, but you don’t. He’s in the midst of lowering his hand when you reach for his handkerchief, the one in his pocket matching his tie, and then utilize it to clean it. Sherlock observes as you cleanse his hand of his cum, perturbed by the benignity, by how many strands of defiant hairs have slipped free from your updo, his doing. He’s staring at you in fondness, with a soft grin on his features, and although you want to ask why he’s visibly jovial, you’re too pleased with the fact that he’s assuaged in the rage built from tonight. Besides, you don’t need to be a detective of his skills to understand what possibly conciliated his irate mood.

“Thought I said no thinking,” you pipe up, discarding the handkerchief, your gaze looking up at him from under your lashes.

“How do you know I’m thinking?” He hums as you begin to remove his tie. Then the buttons come undone to his vest by your fingers.

“Well… you get this far away look in your eyes. Your eyebrows pinch together… the bridge of your nose slightly scrunches, your lips fall into a flat line. I can see your dimples flash as your jaw tightens—”

“Are you deducing me, Lily?” He narrows his eyes at you, shrugging the vest off as you push it off his shoulders. He feels far more liberated by the action. You busy yourself with the buttons of his undershirt now. It’s possible that an image of you and him undressing one another in a domestic routine floats by.

“Funny way of pronouncing seducing, but yes, I am. I’ll be sure to welcome you naked in my bed if you would so kindly take this off,” you remove the last button of his shirt, and there isn’t any hesitation in how Sherlock removes that next as well. It falls to the floor as forgotten as his vest is. He gently laughs at your cheeky response, a bit of pride in him that you’re starting to pick up on his habits, nevertheless if you use them against him. It’s quite possible you’ve been looking at him as much as he has you. Then again, he’s vastly attuned to you, so you have some competition.

“You think yourself clever,” he muses, “In my defense, I presumed the no thinking law only applied to the sex we just had.” He watches as you are in the midst of removing a clip from your hair, your head slightly jolting from the blatant use of that word. But there isn’t any reason to be vague, you two have now seen each other naked, and he knows what your face looks like when you cum. Regardless, he revels in the pigment of your skin adopting a rosy hue. The clip in your hair is removed and then another, and another. Soon, it’s down, free of any tools, of any worries. You stretch the choker around your hands and then pull that over your head. Then you gesture for him to help, turning your back towards him. He begins to undo the lacing of your corset.

“No, it applies when I opt for it. And I am currently opting for it. You’re much more carefree when you think less.” You breathe correctly and evenly for the first time since you adorned your dress, each lacing that he pulls free giving you relief. The soreness settles further in so you know you’ll have to deal with that in the morning. You don’t think Sherlock would oppose relaxing for a day after everything you’ve both gone through tonight. He might need some convincing, but you’re learning what exactly persuades him and how you can institute it.

“If I thought less, the world would tear itself apart,” he replies, finally reaching the bottom. Then he aids you in its elimination. You’re pivoting on your heels, stepping out of your skirts, and then your shoes. During this, Sherlock is dropping his trousers to become as bare as you are. The sheets are going to be incredibly warm tonight. You lose the height that brought you closer to Sherlock’s face, but unlike when you first met him, you’re not intimidated. You stare up at him with the same gleam in your eye that you find in his.

“Ah, ah, there you go, easy, detective,” your hand pats his bare chest, but it lingers there once it touches. “Don’t think about the world. Think about me.”

“I was thinking about you,” he says before he can stop himself, clearing his throat at the intimacy his confession entails. It seems as if thinking less prompts the vulnerability he hates to display to anyone. Except, you aren’t just anyone. He sees your gaze soften, your hands cupping his cheeks.

“Thinking of how pretty I am?” You mean it as a tease, a reference to how he babbled on and on about how pretty you were during sex. But with how he’s looking at you, it came out a lot softer than originally intended. Tenderhearted. A whisper, even. You didn’t know you could feel so cherished in something once described to you as uncomfortable, the source being an elderly woman who wanted to advise you about the affairs of man and woman. You’re glad Sherlock’s proved her wrong.

“Yes,” he confirms and your head swims. “I’m thinking about how pretty you are.”

There isn’t anything else left to say. You can see and feel the sincerity radiating off him. There are a number of ways that either of you could ruin this, but you’ve had enough of the talking, instead reaching up to kiss him with fervor. He kisses you back, naturally, his arms lifting you as he clumsily navigates the space of your flat. He’s unfamiliar with the floor plan, so you’re kind enough to whisper directions along with sweet nothings into his ear, giddy that he follows and lowers you into your bed. You shift the blankets so you can travel underneath them, holding the sheets away from your body as an invitation for Sherlock to join in.

He doesn’t tell you the truth, the full truth, behind his thoughts, the ones that formed as he gazed at you with post-orgasmic clarity. Sure, he knows you’re pretty, that’s something he’s always known, and it snuck up on him heavily while he buried himself inside you and allowed his hands to roam your body through their own discretion, but there were other ideas bursting into his head. Concepts, really. He couldn’t decipher them and their complexities still, but whatever it is that you make him feel, it’s beyond answers, it’s beyond concrete and definitive laws. There is not one straightforward result nor explanation for him to pick apart and analyze as a scientist, or a physicist, or a chemist, or even a logician. Deductive reasoning can only take him so far and if he is to look back on the year he’s had, there are limitations to how he views the world despite his heightened awareness and inability to miss the details. This is raw and indistinguishable for someone like him. You’re a woman who he’s drawn to magnetically, a phenomenon he never thought would happen to him. And as he looms over you, those… concepts spring back to life. Admiration. Wonder. Affection. Worry. Care. Avidity. Humanity. Beauty. Lust. Luck. Loss… L…

He normally would scrub his brain if it dared to consider that last thing. But here you are, blinking up at him with those long lashes, nuzzling your nose against his, kissing his mouth with enthusiasm and adoration he hopes he replicates, gratifying him with the parting of your legs so he can be as close as your bodies can warrant, and he thinks he can. He can let his brain stray there. He thinks he might be in…

He doesn’t know if he is. But as his cases have taught him, anything is possible.

#henry cavill #l4l.writes #sherlock holmes #enola holmes #henry!sherlock #sherlock holmes x reader #beyond answers #henry cavill x reader #henry cavill imagine

[l4long-winded]

v. concealed feelings and abstract attitudes

summary: the morning after your drunken fiasco is not any less awkward than you could have guessed. there seems to be a strain on your relationship with sherlock that seeps into the trips you go on together for his investigation. you don't know why he's acting the way he is, you just know that it's angering you (cavill!sherlock x afab!reader)

reflection: this took a bit of time to put together, but as i have previously stated, i have a certain vision for this story. we are nearing the end of it and i hate to depart from these two emotionally stunted beings, but i am also glad to begin offering them what they deserve. i hope everyone enjoys and as always, feedback is welcome and greatly appreciated!

warnings: seamstress!reader, conflicted!sherlock, sherlock is in denial, reader has a nickname, arguments, sherlock is rude, close proximity, investigation, enemies to lovers, shame, miscommunication, sexual tension, cockblocking, original characters, sleep deprived!sherlock, kissing, escalation (please let me know if there are other warnings i need to add)

word count: 10,017

previously: the distraction of rising temperature

( this work has been cross posted to ao3 )

Sunlight pours in through a crevice of the curtains ahead of your sleeping face, warmth melting into your eyelids, sinking into your cheeks and your nose that scrunches up in reaction to the beam’s discomfort. You rightfully turn away from the brightness with a gruff, an ache you’re now extremely aware of settling into the base of your skull, pounding away against the fluffed pillow beneath your hair. Everything feels like a blur, you can barely bring yourself to open your eyes. You don’t recall your pillow being this comfortable, smelling of peppermint and bark and something familiar you can’t quite place in your sleepy haze, but you do nuzzle your face further into it in an attempt to get back to the appetizing thrall of cloud filled dreams and undemanding realities. Your knee raises up bending your leg into an acute angle on the bed that you seemingly have more of than usual, the edge not nearby despite how you try and stretch it out into the vast material of blankets that smoothly graze your skin and beckon you to explore the contrasting cooling effect beyond. You answer it in kind by scooting towards the relief away from the heat your body’s generated from being in one spot for too long, maneuvering until your toes flex out and finally greet an edge that you don’t venture out towards because you would much rather catch up on the winks you’ve been unable to for over a month.

Despite this willingness and acceptance to remain where you are, there’s this nagging feeling pressing down into your chest the more coherent you become. You’re not sure what possesses you to open your eyes in this instance, but when you do, you come to a shocking realization, and that is the realization that this is not your bed, this is not your flat, and by how memories begin to come forward in fragments, you know exactly where you are, or more so, exactly where you aren’t.

You shoot up seconds after your revelation with a heaving chest, the sudden movement too much for your brain to catch up with, dizziness overtaking you and joining alongside the migraine forming as the wine from last night’s bitter parting gift. In reaction, the palm of your hand nurses your right temple and you’re forced to control the pace of your breathing then to calm your spiking blood pressure. It helps with your equilibrium (though, you’re literally only sitting up), but it does little to help the racing thoughts vying for attention inside of your head. From the images you’re gathering one by one, you remember leaving your flat and ascending the stairs. You can’t for the life of you remember whose door you knocked on or if they let you in or not, they clearly did, but you do remember climbing into bed and nodding in and out as the fumes of black tea flooded your nostrils. You can still smell it. It was masked away by that maddening aroma coming off your [not yours] pillow, but now you’re awake enough to register the tray at the bedside table. The tea’s cold, but you reach for it anyways needing some kind of hydration that isn’t wine or the dryness your mouth’s succumbed to while you let exhaustion get the best of you in a stranger’s flat.

A knock resounds at the door during your second gulp. At the same time, you glance up at the wooden barrier and sputter on the tea, coughing to clear the liquid from the wrong pipe it chose to pour down in your distracted manner. A muffled “Is everything alright?” comes through the door and you recognize that voice all too well. A string of memories float by, pigmented photographs and images of Sherlock’s arms assisting you in your balance, guiding forces into his home as you babble about who knows what. You don’t know if anything transpired between you two, if you did anything to offend him. You just know that you’re occupying his personal space while he’s on the other side knocking as a gentleman should, checking on your well-being when you’re the one who turned up here without warning. In a fit of shame and guilt, you stumble out of the agonizingly pleasant mattress. Your overcompensation for your headache manages to knock your knee into the bed frame and you unwillingly squeak because of it, hand flying to your mouth, but it’s too late. As if sirens went off, Sherlock comes bolstering in and you can see his shoulders rise and fall from what appears to be relief that you’re unharmed. The sudden stop of his momentum awkwardly shifts his weight back and forth from one foot to the next. You’re unsure what caused the hurry, but you preoccupy yourself with taking him in.

“Forgive me,” he begins, fully dressed, one arm having an azure robe hanging off of it as his hands’ knuckles meet in front of him, “It sounded like you needed… aid.”

“No, I,” you grasp at your knee, a dull pressure in it from the bump it took against his bed frame. “I’m not used to your bed, evidently.” You chuckle, but it fades out as quickly as it comes into fruition. It’s humorless, a half-hearted attempt to try and make this normal when it’s anything but. It doesn’t help the nature of the situation any when Sherlock doesn’t laugh and cooperate with your failed gesture out of common decency.

In this refractory period you’re both in now, you both take advantage of the silence to look over one another. At least, you sense Sherlock glancing down and then at the top of your head and it causes you to think that perhaps you’ve done something wrong. The only time he’s looked at you in such a way, respectful and yet cautious, it was when… oh, it was when you answered the door fresh out of the bath. At once, you take a long look down at your current state and much like that incident, you’re clad in a dainty chemise. Which means, either you came in this attire last night or you stripped yourself of your clothes. With that possible alternative in mind, your head snaps around in search of any of your usual layering, but there’s nothing around for you to consider the possibility. But really, you don’t know which is more embarrassing. Showing up at your neighbor’s door in such a scandalous setting or removing your clothing in front of said neighbor who’s only recently decided that he didn’t hate you. Overthinking and almost drowning from the waves of implications, no thanks to your imagination trying to cram in puzzle pieces where they don’t belong, you drag off Sherlock’s duvet from his bed in order to hide your body from his eyes. The damage’s been done, but it’ll help soothe your psyche and maybe lower the chances of what Sherlock may think as attempts to seduce him with unladylike measures. You can see his smile lines quiver from how he reinforces the narrow shape his mouth has formed.

“Here,” he extends the robe at his arm. It’s warm from what you can tell and most definitely his size. You almost squirm at the thought of him surrounding you in fabric as if you didn’t just spend a slumber already in that position. “I brought it for you.”

Gingerly, you eye the robe he offers and can feel the tension rising in the room by the minute. It seems to grab the both of you so forcefully and yet neither of you make any efforts to confront whatever it is. You won’t be the one to do so, not when you’re scrambled, when you hardly know anything of what transpired last night, if anything at all. This, in your mind, is an intimate gesture. You wonder if there were other intimate actions to warrant this.

As if hearing your thoughts, Sherlock jostles the robe slightly. “I don’t wish for you to get back to your flat without some kind of security.” It hardly answers any of your questions swarming your head. It’s kind… as long as nothing happened, something you’re far too afraid to ask about for fear of looking like an imbecile, for forgetting him of all people, for bringing up what could’ve been a harsh/lovely night. And if something did indeed happen, touchy, feely, invasive, his reaction is rather worrisome. It appears he wants to get rid of you and that could mean your drunken mess has scared him away, the sole person you’ve interacted with outside of work, the sole person who you consider a friend in this trivial city.

“Thank you,” you murmur as you retrieve the robe from Sherlock’s hand. Your knuckles graze his, your skin lighting up from the contact. You don’t dare to snatch your hand away since you don’t want to show him how much that alone affected you, but an odd motion comes from him. His hand jolts like it’s been burned and he immediately catches himself, a mere centimeter in drawing the arrow back, but you noticed it nonetheless. It does nothing to appease your negative thoughts. If anything, it fans the flames of the notion that you’ve offended him, that maybe you took things too far, that your actions have crossed boundaries. You turn away from him then to conceal the disappointment in yourself setting in your features, his duvet discarded so you could mask your intent through putting on his robe sleeve by sleeve. What have you done? echoes in your head for a moment. Only a moment passes when you realize just how soft his robe is, just how much more overpowering his scent is now that you’re engulfed by it, by the extra fabric that bunches around you, by warmth so intense that you realize he perhaps wore it himself very recently, perhaps before he came in here. You swallow hard thinking about it, tying off the robe in an instant to busy your hands and maintain your cover-up. It goes past your knees and then some. You don’t recall when the last time was when you didn’t wear something fitted to your body, you had your profession and mother to thank for that, but it doesn’t dispel you or make you feel out of place. You try and smother how right it feels on you as you pivot back to look at Sherlock again.

“Better?” He asks. His hands are stuffed in his pockets.

His robe soothes you more than you can admit. You nod your head, “Better.”

“Good… good.” He looks to the ground, and you can see his thinking features setting in. He must want to say something. From previous affiliations and altercations, you understand how he can have plenty to say at any time. He’s biting his tongue and it just spells further bad news for you. You don’t know if you wish to have this conversation so early, with a bottle-ache pounding on your brain, in a humiliating white flag in the form of a cozy robe he’s given you to hide away your sin. Either nothing occurred or something occurred and it’s maddening to you no matter how you can imagine it. Your hand slowly comes up to the wall behind to steady yourself because you’ve unknowingly held your breath for too long.

“So, I… I wanted to speak with you about last night—”

“We don’t have to talk about last night,” you blurt suddenly, against your own will. It seems the fear of the unknown has won this round and decided this as the best route. The surprise on Sherlock’s face would mimic your own if you let it seep through. You, instead, half smile and wave off the awkwardness collecting. “We can pretend it never happened.”

Sherlock blinks at you and waits. You know he’s expecting an explanation for you to continue on, but you have nothing more to say. You already improvised this to mend whatever faults you may have committed and this is as far as it goes. If he deems this incorrect for his conversation, then he will tell you so. From what you have gathered, Sherlock could not resist the chance to correct someone. But, he merely looks at you. His talents, as grand as they were, could not read your scurrying thoughts. You don’t give him the option with your smile still present and how confidently you stand your ground. He observes and you won’t give him anything to read into.

“Are you sure?”

Success. You chose the right response. “I’m sure. I’ll be on my way.”

“Oh, alright. Yes. I’ll walk you out.”

You don’t want to rush out of there, especially when you don’t know what you turned down, but it’s difficult not to run out of the room and avoid him. You take gentle steps out from there, a soft expression you give him as he steps aside to let you pass through. Your shoulder brushes his chest. To you, even with the robe, it’s the same spark that carried over your knuckles when your hands touched. You don’t wish to contemplate this any further and opt to ignore it, but you could swear you hear Sherlock exhale as you make it past the first threshold, past his body that generates almost scalding heat. You don’t turn around as much as you think you should. You just keep walking forward with his front door in your sights, your exit to get back to where you can remove your veil and panic away from him. As you get near the door, he maneuvers in front of you. You immediately pause in your tracks as he presses a hand up into the air sitting between you.

“Wait here for a second.” Sherlock opens the door and steps out, the obstruction shut enough to block out the hall. Curiously, you stare at the crevice he’s left and ironically taken up with his frame. He soon comes back in, this time, widening the door open for you with a movement out of your path. “The coast is clear,” he confirms.

It’s not what someone wants to hear if they had intimate relations with an individual. If you and Sherlock slept together, whatever sense of the word, you have every right to slap him across the face from the shame he seems to feel at the idea of someone finding you leaving his flat. You refrain because it was your conception to not speak about last night.

With this point of contention floating around your head, you stop in front of him. “We’re alright, right, Sherlock?”

He smiles. It’s a half smile, but you have a feeling he isn’t done with you and for some reason, that’s enough for you. It’s odd how much you wish to keep a person around that you haven’t had much time knowing. “We’re alright, Lily.”

You crack your first genuine grin of the morning and then step into the corridor. “I promise I’ll return your robe,” you reply, and the corridor leads you to the staircase which then leads you to your flat. Much to your chagrin, the door is unlocked. You mutter your lashings to yourself as you get inside, soon finding the empty wine bottle that brought you into this mess. Nothing looks like it’s been tampered with save for your clothes on the floor that you haphazardly took off last night. You can ditch the theory of stripping in front of Sherlock, but the image of you showing up at his door in barely any clothing is mortifying enough for you to trudge over to the bath to scrub yourself clean to the bone. You can move on. You and him don’t need to have any ailments in your friendship, whatever the context of last night.

This is the same belief Sherlock hangs onto as he busies himself in his flat. He’s not thinking about last night, hell, he didn’t want to talk about it, either, not really. He was getting ready to tell you how you two were only friends, anyway, how he throws himself into his work, how he has no time for nothing but his private practice. He’s not thinking of how you asked him to lay with you. He’s not thinking of how close he came to doing so, how he paced the floor wrestling with whether he should climb into bed with you or not for almost as long as you slept. And he’s certainly not dwelling on the fact that you regretted it. No, it doesn’t bother him. It can’t. It won’t.

It’s noon when the bell at your shop’s entrance rings. You can’t help but spring up from the back room. As it’s been for weeks, work is slower. Your usual clients come in, get their pieces, and then leave. They have kept you in business with their rampant commissions, but it’s rare for you to gain new customers steadily. You would like to see new faces, perhaps younger ones at that, but you’re also aware that the person who rang that bell isn’t a new prospect. As you almost skip from the back of the shop to the main counter, you see Sherlock standing around, his gaze on a yellow dress you’re saving for a client.

“Right on time. You’re very punctual, you know?” Your smile broadens, but peculiarly, Sherlock acknowledges you with a noise, a half-breath half-grunt. Strangely, with that alone, you could hear his tone beneath it agreeing with the statement. Or, more so, seeing it as a fact that is perhaps not worth exploring any further than the greeting.

“Did you acquire that list of names?” He confirms your assumption by bypassing it altogether and diving straight into this planned meeting’s purpose. As much as you wish to read into it, you compose yourself, nod, and then retrieve a piece of paper scribbled with the list he requested in your prior discussions of what he needed from you for his investigation. His hands are quick to steal away the paper. You could see his eyes studying every name on the list, every address associated, every curve of your handwriting as he mouths it to himself. From what his lips form and from how you guess through the position of his eyes on the paper, you can tell where he is and just how far he is from reaching the end of it. You can’t resist twiddling your thumbs as you wait for his further direction, occupying them as strings of pure nerves bounce around through your digits.

When he finishes, Sherlock doesn’t say anything like you expect. He doesn’t say anything at all. He holds the list higher to himself and then turns away from your counter heading straight for the door, not bothering to bid you any form of goodbye or grant you his appreciation for your compliance. You’re so flabbergasted by his antics that it takes you two seconds longer than normal to step from behind your counter and start after him, “Sherlock?!”

You call for him at the same time that he exits your shop, but you don’t let that stop you from hurrying outside and repeating his name. One hand lands on his left shoulder and he instantly pivots around to look at you. And it appears… it appears as if he looked disturbed by the action.

“Yes? What is it?”

The hard lines surrounding his eyebrows add onto his exasperated expression. You’re not sure where this attitude is stemming from, but from this morning’s exchange and how eggplant rings decorate in half wreaths under his eyes, little sleep can possibly be the scapegoat. Your patience with him is higher than it would usually be with anyone else through this understanding. That and you didn’t plan on lingering in your empty shop for the rest of the day when Sherlock’s holding an opportunity to venture out into London.

“I thought you required my expertise?”

“It contrived me this list, did it not?” He raises the parchment into the air. You stare at it with a hardened gaze before you dare to look back into the intensity of Sherlock’s now royal blues. You’re not like him. You can’t read him as well as a book like he can read you so you stop your searching (for whatever the fuck it was) and snatch the list out of his hand. It slightly irritates you how his exasperation seemingly deepens.

“When you asked me to scribe you a list of the names of those who’ve purchased that particular exported fabric, I trusted that you understood of just how much I was implicating myself offering private information regarding my father’s—m-my clientele…” Your slip displaces your uneasiness in your hands to your throat. That familiar lump begins to form in your neck, your head repeating No, not here as you try and quickly collect yourself. Sherlock’s expression softens at the mention of your father and the inner corners of his eyebrows upturn. You set your jaw, No, not here, not in front of him, and clear away the cobwebs of grief to return to your point. “You’ve made it perfectly transparent how you don’t wish to divulge the details of this case to me because of the entanglement it could garner, but please,” you gesture to your list, “allow me to assist you in this. I know these people better than you do and I doubt they would be keen on welcoming a stranger into their homes, much less a snooping one.”

Sherlock’s gaze hasn’t moved a centimeter from you. The tone of his intensity has shifted, but not in the pressure it engulfs you with. The sympathy expanding in his tired pupils causes you to cringe inwards because you didn’t want to bring your father up in the first place, but it had happened so organically. As organically as the bystanders passing you both by. They chance singular glances at you and Sherlock, some curious about the endeavor because you’re halting traffic, others brushing by you without a care of who you are or what you’ve been through. Perhaps being invisible could have its perks, perhaps then you would feel normal and not a scared girl desperate for an escape an emotionally-stunted man could provide.

Said emotionally-stunted man relents and sighs. Thankfully, without you telling him to stop staring at you like that, he drops his gaze and readjusts his gloves. “Fine, but at any sign of risk, you will do as I say.”

A smile blooms on your features. You can feel the excitement building inside of you and before you realize what you’re doing, you take a step forward and then hop on the next step into Sherlock’s frame. Your arms wrap around his neck, the scent from this morning, the one from his robe sitting in your flat and from his pillow sitting in his, radiating off him. It permeates your senses immediately. It haunted you until you scrubbed yourself from it in a bath, but now you have this fleeting desire to sink further into it. It’s Sherlock’s hands gently acquainting themselves with your hips that causes you to remember how you’re both out on the pavement in public and not in some otherworldly dimension you two keep finding your ways towards.

“I’m sorry,” you murmur, gradually lowering yourself down to your heels that elevated in efforts to match his height. Your arms slide from his neck, linger at his chest, and then detach altogether. Sherlock’s pace is about the same in removing his hands from you. You can feel tension as you both initiate eye contact.

“I’m going to go… close my shop for the day.” You point with your thumb to the establishment behind you. You almost forgot about it, but it seems like as good an excuse as any. “Wait for me?”

It’s hard to explain what it is between you two. It sits as thickly as ever as you look awkwardly at each other with looming responsibilities to attend to. Sherlock looks at your shop instead of the obscure air in the space occupying the gap your bodies share. Maybe he’s using the same excuse as you.

“I’ll wait for you.”

Mrs. Blanche Thomas’s living space is full of cat figurines from the arms of the sofa to the nearby desk perched next to a windowsill with semi-drawn cherry curtains. Sunlight invades the room with a vengeance and illuminates the porcelain of each figurine while the rest of the room is draped in a fuchsia pigment, no doubt from the curtains, that naseates your head. All of your clients were rich in so many senses of the word, but at least they didn’t lower themselves to buying endless streams of knick knack felines. You almost think you’re going to knock some over with where you sit on the sofa, the skirt of your dress ruffled along the lace doily you’re on top of. You cross your legs to try and limit the space you take in order to save the figures, but in doing so, your knee brushes against Sherlock’s. He doesn’t budge from where he sits, seemingly doing the same thing as you in attempting to minimize himself for the sake of Mrs. Thomas’s decor, but it’s of little use with someone his size. You can read his discomfort on his face, but a small part of you can’t help but feel triumphant over it.

All day, he’s found a way to antagonize you. It started to occur around the second house you visited. During the first visit, he barreled into the house with hardly any warning and began to investigate the Newtons’ hearth wordlessly to their horror. After you lectured him on how he couldn’t just go full detective mode with these individuals and their prized possessions, he pulled away the friendliness you two engaged in at your shop more and more, bit by bit. As you two arrived at the second house belonging to the Jeffersons, he departed from you to roam their rooms while you kept up in conversation. You tried to be casual, but they soon caught wind of the antics and asked you both to leave. On your way out, you glared at Sherlock while he stared forward with his chin turned towards the air. You couldn’t believe how he blatantly ignored your input and carried on with what he saw fit. His haughty demeanor turned away from you showed you that he knew he did it too.

“Didn’t I just tell you how you couldn’t do that? They were mortified and—”

“They had nothing worthwhile. It was a complete waste of time.”

He grunted his words out at you, not only cutting you off, but speeding his gait so he could maintain a clear lead ahead of you. Your annoyance grew as you followed after him.

It didn’t end there. From today’s length, you would guess that he was purposely trying to get under your skin. He played ball at the third house and made small talk with you to persuade the Porters, but when it came time to observe, when you accidentally bumped his frame in crossing each other’s paths towards written letters sitting atop furniture, he leveled you with a glare of his own.

“I didn’t bring you along to get in the way.” You gulped the hurt that it gave you and replaced it with your heightening vexation. Your eyes shot daggers into the back of his head as he took items into his hands and carried on as if nothing happened. You’ve learned more and more about how Sherlock does not apologize for his ramblings, much less for the ones that sting the most. Keeping your composure, you donned a fake smile and discussed taxes with the Porters until he emerged from a hall and stated, “We’re done here.” You wondered how moronic you appeared chasing after him because after his assertion, he walked right out the front door without any preamble, the same fashion he underwent this afternoon at your shop. It forced you to apologize on his behalf, a parroting dialogue as every house you attended from that point felt the wrath of his attitude and severe lack of manners. Your word was also at stake since you were defying trust.

You didn’t say another word to him for fear of further adding onto the weight of the enormous chip sitting on his shoulder. Fortunately, you two found a rhythm of talking to your clientele and continuing on with the investigation. You didn’t know what exactly you were looking for, but there were times where the trust of your clients meant that they left you two alone to investigate to your hearts’ desire. You dreaded this trust at those moments. Not wanting to sit idly, you busied yourself looking around, searching for ways to ensure you entertained yourself and stayed firmly out of Sherlock’s way. In one instance, you lifted up a handbill discussing an upcoming ball. It was an event you kept seeing in the other houses, but seeing as it was a common thread, you felt excitement spur within you at the prospect. It almost made you forget about how Sherlock was acting and how he was treating you. Almost. Almost since he quickly reminded you.

“That ball has no value to this investigation.”

You could’ve shrunk into yourself at his dismissal. He didn’t even look at you, just continued to flit through items, scrubbing the tips of his fingers clean against one another from the dust he found.

And now at the seventh house, the one belonging to Mrs. Thomas who insisted you two sit down and have tea and perhaps something to eat for your troubles and the journey there, you’re caged in and all alone, the door to the area shut behind her as she stalked off to fetch the necessities she spoke of. Minutes passed. Only minutes. Minutes of silence sans for the movements the two of you made to try and get comfortable on her tiny couch (which would be fucking easier to do if it weren’t for the mammoth of a man sitting beside you). You can feel every brush of his bicep the more he tries to adjust.

“What’s taking her so long?” Sherlock blurts, but from how today has gone and from how he’s furrowing his brow at the empty space ahead, you assume he’s talking more so to himself. He fidgets, much like he’s been doing this entire time, and again, your knees touch. This time, he doesn’t hold his impassive demeanor, his eyes flitting down to the point of contention, where your skirts don’t hide away the skin. You notice his reaction and to try and assuage him, you bring your knee away from his. You think it’s what he requires seeing that he can hardly find comfort in this position and you really don’t want him to harm you with another illy-thought sentence, but as you have been all day today, you’re wrong.

He stands to his feet in an instant with an audible scoff. If you didn’t know any better, you swear it was directed towards you. Your patience is running thin for the detective, watching as he stands and husks out another noise as he simultaneously lifts an orange cat from the table in front of you both. He won’t find anything there, and you know he knows that, so you’re aware the action is because of how he’s avoiding talking to you like an actual person. He would rather waste time doing something miniscule than engage you and it’s this discovery that has you mimic the sounds he’s made all day and stand from the sofa yourself. Fine, if he doesn’t want to talk or be near you, then you’ll increase the distance. You stubbornly walk away with your back towards him in the direction of Mrs. Thomas’s desk, your arms crossing against your chest, shielding yourself from whatever onslaught possibly lurking on his tongue. But you don’t want to be caught off guard again and you certainly won’t let him get to you as he has before. The fire inside of you has been tempered all day and you don’t want to remain quiet.

“That cat have all the answers does it? Was it at the crime scene? Are you questioning a real, live eyewitness?” You can feel Sherlock’s eyes on your back and can hear him shuffling. A tap of glass on wood tells you he’s put the cat down. So much for the eyewitness.

“Don’t speak of things you know nothing about.” Your smirk shifts into a grimace. Still, even as you hear Sherlock’s heavy footsteps across from you, he must be digging for something to remark in the background, you don’t turn around. You hug your arms tighter into yourself.

“I would know of such things if someone wasn’t so greedy with the details.”

Much to your chagrin, Sherlock doesn’t reply. You can hear his fumbling, but he doesn’t even offer you a sound of acknowledgement. You should be happy that he’s not falling into the trap of a brewing argument, but for some reason, you’re having trouble accepting it. After how much he’s tested you today, you feel a misguided desire to test him back.

“Have you found anything yet? You know, with me out of your way.” You’re bitter in droning your words, your glance at your shoulder to turn your ear towards Sherlock. You hear the shuffling come to a sudden stop and you can’t help but smile to yourself knowing he’s staring hard at you. You can feel the heat of it.

“If you have something to say, then say it.”

Oh, it’s at the tip of your tongue, choice words to bring a sailor’s cheeks crimson, you can feel it, but you relent on that sentiment and continue on. “I’m just reflecting on the obvious, Sherlock. Or do you really think you haven’t found any clues because the distance between us hasn’t been enough?”

You wait a few beats for something, any kind of response, but you’re met with silence. Growing impatient with the circumstances yourself, you turn fully to look at him to find him already looking back. His jaw’s set tight, the molars of his teeth accentuating the chiseled line of it as he holds still. It appears as if he has something to say himself, but he’s holding back on purpose, much like you are. You’re about to coax him to it, ready for venom, when he removes his eyes from yours and beelines towards the door.

“Perhaps more distance will be sufficient, then,” he mutters cruelly under his breath. It’s the opposite of what you wanted. Though, as much as you would like to face this head on even if it’ll lead to a fight, you don’t have enough of the physical fire present to saunter after him. You stay where you are, your heart throbbing with something in your chest at the thought of being left alone stranded with Mrs. Thomas in the other room.

You almost call his name to halt him, but he doesn’t get far. You hear the door handle rattle under Sherlock’s hand. From your annoyance, confusion replaces it. You slowly walk towards him as he releases the handle and grunts out another deep noise.

“It’s fucking locked,” he croaks, backing away from it and you. His hands land on his hips, perplexed eyes glaring at the door as if he could burn a hole through it if he tried hard enough. “Why would it be fucking locked?”

You reach for the handle yourself and much like Sherlock’s luck, the same goes for you. “Yes, I just tried that,” he sarcastically reminds you and you have to inhale and exhale slowly so that you don’t remove your heel and throw it at him. It agitates you and just like that, you remember how he tried to leave you here. You groan your displeasure and sulk from the door back to the desk near the window. The furniture’s the furthest thing away from Sherlock in the room so you sit on top of it, cautious to avoid the figurines, and your arms return to crossing over your chest.

“Serves you right,” you sneer, “after trying to abandon me when you’re the one who’s been a belligerent oaf all day.” You hear him scoff and he says nothing. You take this is as a means to continue since the both of you couldn’t go anywhere until Mrs. Thomas returned. “I should be the one storming out.”

You don’t expect anything from Sherlock. He’s thick and stubborn to avoid conversation with you. Just seconds ago, he tried to leave in order to avoid a discussion, so you’re thinking you can get more of your issues with him off your chest in the silence he offers you. Only, he doesn’t offer you silence when you’re expecting it. No, he’s unpredictable that way. You’re not even looking at him when you hear, “Mhm, just like you did this morning.”

Your head whips in Sherlock’s direction. That’s the last thing you’re thinking about and it’s rather ridiculous to bring up now in this context, but his expression is dead serious. You don’t know if you prefer him ignoring you or him boring his eyes into yours like he’s doing now.

“Me? You couldn’t wait to get rid of me! You didn’t even want people to see!” You’re aware of how you’re raising your voice, how Mrs. Thomas might hear, but at this point, you don’t care anymore. You’ve been poked and prodded at for hours and you’re at your wit’s end. Sherlock takes two steps in your direction.

“How the hell was I supposed to keep someone around who was that ashamed of their own actions, actions that put them in that situation in the first place—not me,” he comes closer and closer as he talks, his footing carrying him forward after every three words or so. You don’t feel intimidated by how much bigger he appears the closer he gets to you, how his voice is getting louder and not because of how he’s lessening the space between you, nor how the vein in his neck strains against the collar of his undershirt sandwiched underneath his vest.

“Oh my god, I told you that we can pretend last night never happened, you can save me the responsibility speech.” You roll your eyes, the huff that falls from your lips being the gust that pushes your hair strands out of your face. They land right back, but your attention is solely on Sherlock. There’s less than a meter between you and him, you can pinpoint the burning in his eyes now from the lack of sleep and from the agitation.

“You are so… stubborn. And defensive. And meddling.” His hands reach the edge of the desk. You surmise it’s to support himself as he leans forward in incredulity of your words. It brings him closer than before, the lines on his face more apparent, the passion simmering in his gaze that he refuses to rip from you.

You hate how small he makes you feel. Always having to show off intellect as if no one knows he’s the smartest person in the room. Your hand lands on his chest in efforts to push him away, but it just stays there limp. “And you are improper, pompous, brash, impatie—”

The last syllable of the word “impatient” doesn’t resonate any further into the atmosphere, instead lost to the plushness of Sherlock’s lips, muffled by his contact, cut loose by a noise you fail to suppress as your eyes slip closed to relish in the feeling. His mouth bruises yours, robs it and your mind of the English language and the unpleasant choice words you had for him. Normally you don’t take kindly to being cut off, but as your other hand joins your left on his chest, you can feel the thrumming heartbeat in his ribcage accelerating almost as quickly as your own is. It somehow greets your palm beyond the hard lines of muscle you tread over, the same ones you trace blindly without your vision, without the breath in your lungs Sherlock is currently kissing away and swallowing into himself. Dizziness overtakes you and you don’t trust your body to support you and you lean back to try and find the desk as a means to help you here. To Sherlock, he views it as you backing away from him and he reluctantly brings his mouth away from yours. He knows he’s overstepped.

You both utilize this time to breathe heavily as you stare into each other’s eyes. You don’t know what came over him to act so boldly and from how he’s hesitant, you don’t think he knows either. Something plays at his lips, the very same that just grazed over yours, and you know he’s about to say something else. Whatever it is, you decide at that moment it can wait and you grasp the collar of his shirt in your fingers to pull him in once more. This time, you’re rewarded with a lecherous noise from the back of his throat and one arm wraps around your waist, his bicep and forearm deluging the small of your spine. It’s just the support you require to keep you upright, whimpering as he licks into your mouth, doing so immediately when he mashes the word “again” against you in a straining command. You’ll leap off a building if he keeps kissing you this way, if it means he’ll slip his tongue along yours and leave your mouth reddened and swollen from your affairs.

Sherlock wants, needs, to get closer. Every touch and caress is driving him mad, to the brink of an area he hasn’t really explored before. He’s not completely inexperienced, but he doesn’t recall ever being this eager, eagerness you meet with earnest of your own through those beautiful sounds he’s muting, through the tilt of your head that allows him to deepen the kiss. “Part your legs,” he requests, bass in his tone, never neglecting the lock you currently have on each other. Obediently, you do as he says, your knees separating to make room for his frame that he instantaneously occupies, as if he was made to be there. Your skirts bunch up at your mid thighs and the sensitive flesh of them rubbing along his trousers’ material has you reeling. He groans as he steps in, contrasting to the idea of being made to fit between your legs because his width forces them even further apart, his concealed arousal bumping into your thigh, scraping into your flesh as he lowers you onto the desk and bends at the waist to ensure the connection of your lips.

The cat figurines lining the desk fall to the floor, thumps that resound one after the other as they are pushed off sporadically with the movement of your bodies. Your leg wraps around Sherlock’s waist, heel digging into his back, and your lips fall open to a silent gasp as he descends and kisses down the column of your neck. The sensation almost tickles, his stubble catching along your skin almost as frequently as his teeth do. As he rises back up to greet your mouth with his, you forgot to use the opportunity to breathe. It didn’t matter, you would rather be empty of oxygen than miss out on how Sherlock renders you simple-minded, on how he generously lets you moan into his mouth, you depraved thing, on how he slams his hand into the desk beside you because your body intuitively rolled your hips up into him without realizing, sending more figurines flying off the wood to their far drops. Your fingers run up from his collar to the hair at the back of his head, clutching his curls like they will ground you into this moment in time permanently. But it barely helps. Luckily for you, it’s Sherlock who grounds you down. Who covers your body with his. Who subjects you to the durable surface below as well as his muscle mass.

There’s a knock on the door and a laugh. “Oh dear, I hadn’t realized I locked the two of you in here!” Mrs. Thomas taps the door. “This old handle is broken, would either of you mind helping me open it?”

The two of you have refrained from kissing, looking at each other in disbelief. Disbelief of being interrupted, disbelief of how far you two were going in someone else’s home, an old woman’s at that, and disbelief of what you had just done. Neither of you move, catching your breaths, exhales hitting at both of your mouths from how Sherlock is still half on top of you, your faces startlingly adjacent. Clearing his throat, he pushes off the desk to his feet and reaches a hand out to you.

You clear your throat the very same and capture his hand to sit up, your chest heaving from that intense interchange. You, as well as Sherlock, got caught up in it all and now the repercussions were waiting in anticipation. Neither of you say anything to each other, you simply stare. Sherlock, in all his faults and issues with social cues, knows he should say something that could help you both. It can’t be an untouched subject, not when bottled feelings came up earlier and led you two to argue… led you two to whatever that was thereafter.

“Can you hear me?” Mrs. Thomas asks. Remembering where you are, you nod at Sherlock and, reluctantly, he slowly walks to the door away from you. You scoot off the desk and compile the fallen heroes on the floor into your cradled arm. You then place them messily back on the desk, not sure if there was any particular order or not (goddamn were those things uncomfortable on your back).

You adjust your clothes after as you hear Mrs. Thomas talk with Sherlock through the door: “Alright, son, you are going to push the handle in and then open it while lifting upwards…”

You’re in the middle of fixing your corset when you spot a glint of indigo hanging out of one of the desk’s drawers. Interestingly, the sun’s rays cause it to glimmer and you don’t know how many things can shine like that besides… the fabric.

Your fabric.

You dart your eyes to Sherlock, unsure if you should follow this lead because everyone’s house you visited also had this fabric as you kept inventory and created your list, but he’s not paying you any mind. His attention is on trying to get the door open with Mrs. Thomas’s guidance. The problem, or perhaps lucky circumstance, was that Sherlock couldn’t get the door open. Mrs. Thomas kept changing her damn instructions.

“I thought you said to pull up!” Sherlock exclaims at the door, no doubt annoyed by the obstruction, by his already pent-up frustration, by being cockblocked, and how he doesn’t hide his agitation of poor Mrs. Thomas who’s forgetful in her old age.

“No, dear, I said to push down!”

You try to open the drawer, but it needs a key. Searching around the desk in a frenzy, you alternate between snatching papers and promptly placing them back to avoid suspicion when you catch another glint at the floor beneath. The sun bounces off it when you align your eyesight and it flashes a weaponized beam straight into your vision. You kneel to pick it up, while blinking away a memory of light imprinted, only this isn’t illusion-ally reflective, this is golden and small, exposed by a sun taking its time to set. It was hidden by the shadow at the corner of the desk that you and Sherlock accidentally knocked off. Blushing, you lift the key and work on the drawer.

“I have pushed in every direction, are you confident this is how you open the door?”

You twist the key and hear a soft click. Excitedly, you pull the handle and stuff the fabric into your bodice, alongside the envelope that was left with it. You close the drawer and lock it when you finally hear a loud noise crash into your perception. You stick the key into your corset at the same time that your head snaps up to see the door’s handle sitting in his hand… detached from the door. Sherlock’s looking at you now, his eyebrows knit in, his eyes closing in irritation of what he had just done. You could tell he’s forcing himself to breathe manually so he could keep a hold of his agitation. You round the desk and politely curtsy to Mrs. Thomas, who enters the room now that the door is broken. She shakes her head at Sherlock on the way in and you point to the desk.

“Oh, dear, Mrs. Thomas, we accidentally knocked over your figurines! We’re sorry,” you exclaim and she’s distracted from the door to tend to you. She rests her hands in yours and chuckles as she always does. Sherlock raises an eyebrow as he watches the scene unfold.

“It’s alright, thank you for telling me! They were due for a reorganization, anyhow.” She squeezes your hands and then walks to the desk. You think you might be in the clear, but then she looks at you puzzled on her way there. “Wait, how did you two knock them over?”

Sherlock releases a breath of amusement that both you and Mrs. Thomas hear and turn your heads towards. He can hardly believe it since she can hardly hear anything else.

You give Sherlock a look and then raise your hand to rest on Mrs. Thomas’s shoulder to get her attention back. She turns to you and you offer your best smile. It’s hard on you to smile in general after everything, but these days, it’s easier and easier. “We were… we were dancing.”

Mrs. Thomas gasps and both of her hands go over her mouth. She looks back and forth between you and Sherlock and then she reaches her arms out to hug you. Sherlock’s confused by the reaction, and honestly, you are as well since the excuse was so bad. You shrug your shoulders as subtly as humanly possible without alerting Mrs. Thomas. He notices.

“I am so proud of you, you deserve to be happy.” She squeezes you without any real pressure. Real pressure would be suffocating, but it’s what her strength is allowing and such a thing makes you think about the fact that she may be trying her best to convey it and something in you feels blanketed.

“I remember when Edmund and I would dance randomly… being in love and all… made you spontaneous.” She laughs to herself, as if remembering right before your eyes. There’s a lump in your throat again, you have fought these off so consistently, but it’s there because Mrs. Thomas cares for you. Even if it is a lie, she could think you and Sherlock arrived here together because you were in fact together. He seems to look at you with shock at the lack of denial on your end. He doesn’t know what to make of it, if you’re saving him from trouble with the door, if you’re tricking her so she wouldn’t ask questions of the desk, but he stays quiet and trusts your judgment. Because it’s obvious you’re hiding something and chances are, it didn’t involve the affection and intimacy of what occurred on that desk.

“Mrs. Thomas, we apologize for the mess, but we have to go. The sun will set soon and we are a long way from home.” You reassure her and she looks at you and then at Sherlock.

“I promise to fix this door in the near future,” he states and she actually laughs at it.

“Do you feel better now that you’ve eaten something?” You ask as you walk alongside Sherlock, your shared building close in distance. Your feet ache from all the walking, from trying to keep up with Sherlock, but you’re glad he’s calmed down. Mrs. Thomas sent you both off with bread and since you felt slightly guilty, you lost your appetite and gave the rest to Sherlock. You’re joking, clearly since you both know he’s lightened up even before Mrs. Thomas gave you bread. Who knows the reason. The unsaid, unexpected, wonderful reason.

“Yes, actually. She’s lousy with her timing, but she knows how to bake bread.” You laugh at his reply, your hands pulling his coat closed that he gave to you after you complained about the cold. The two of you have been switching nonchalantly in conversation since leaving Mrs. Thomas’s house. You told Sherlock you needed to tell him something and he asked if it could wait until you made it back to Baker Street. With your agreement, you didn’t talk about it or what happened. You were afraid to. Sherlock didn’t want to ruin it again. It was nice to just walk and enjoy each other’s company on the way home, the occasional question asked.

Once on Baker Street, you nudge Sherlock and he pauses for you to continue. There are hardly any people walking around the two of you so you feel secure and you bring forth the scrap of fabric that you hid in your bodice. Sherlock recognizes it, to your surprise, and reaches for it, to which you hand off and watch as he examines it with great interest.

“Where did you get this?”

“I found it locked in a drawer. While you were trying to get the door open, I,” you jump as Sherlock grasps your upper arm.

“You unlocked the drawer and took this along with something else, didn’t you?”

You blink, the envelope folded in your bodice the next thing you were going to share with him.

“How did you know I took two items?”

“Three,” he corrects, “you took the golden key that’s currently resting in your corset’s left breast.”

You glance down and just at that moment, a street lamp flashes the shine at you. Sherlock couldn’t have missed it. Not when neither of you have let up on looking at each other fondly on the walk home. At all of each other. You then look to your envelope’s hiding spot and yes, it’s peeking out from under your corset since you attempted to place it between your skirts. All the layering worked both for and against you.

“I didn’t catch the fabric, but I caught the other parts while you were chatting up Mrs. Thomas.” He shrugs his shoulders. “Honestly? I didn’t think they were that important to discuss, separately, of course,” he corrects himself since he saw your face fall for a brief moment, “but altogether? It means something. I… I appreciate it.”

You smile at him, overwhelmed by a feeling to gravitate towards him, but there’s still tension between you two. It’s confusing and you know it’s magnetic for a reason, but there’s still a bridge that links the two of you. Tonight, you met each other halfway, but you also barged into each other’s sides with aggression and hostility intended. Kissing didn’t magically make everything you both said and did okay and that frightened you, what could lay beyond that.

After handing him the key and the envelope, you glance up at him with something new dazzling in your eye. He walks you into the building. “Goodnight,” you kiss his cheek, ending the evening with a pleasant exchange, on a beautiful high note. “Until our next meeting, Shoulders.” Sherlock’s heat warms your mouth and he glances at his coat, opting to let you have that as well since he didn’t want you heading into your flat freezing at any moment. You took it with you and didn’t look back.

Sherlock read the letter again. It’s probably the 50th time since he’s opened it. His game was off today. He couldn’t focus, not with you around. Every time he looked at you, all he could think about was why you regretted staying at his flat. He assumed you were ashamed of your behavior, but did that mean you were ashamed to ask him to join you in bed as well? Did it mean you held an attraction for him or comfort solely under alcohol’s vise?

The worst part about looking at you today, however, is by far how much he enjoyed it. There he was, in his effective functioning and bidding as his occupation demands, tenfold, and then there’s you who always stole his attention away, your honey sweet voice erasing his thoughts and replacing them selfishly with you. He thought about the embrace, he thought about your chemise, he thought about your smile at the library, your sleeping face, your gentle hands on his chest, how his robe wrapped around you, how he couldn’t think of anything but you if he didn’t actively catch himself. You hovered over him and he retaliated to deter you away. He changes when he’s trying to solve a case. He keeps to himself and does it his own way and he knows it’s flawed, that’s why he prefers people staying away when he gets like that.

At the same damn time, he had an urge to get closer, a physical instinct that would lead him to you like a tired horse requiring a drink of water. He acted on both his anger and need back at Mrs. Thomas’s, a combination he’s never felt before you. It’s worse for him now. This is his 56th time reading this letter all because his mind is sailing back to you, you and your lips, you and your arching spine, you and your delectable noises, you who’s just downstairs, a staircase and a few knocks away, you, you, you.

He relaxes his shoulders to regain his focus. This is vital to his case, he can feel it, he knows it. The envelope reads “For Blanche, with love” and the signature on the letter itself reads “Love, Edmund” for Christ’s sake. Everything is interconnected, the pieces showing him what is there, and he cannot for the life of him focus to read this damn letter to make sense of it all. He does enough to catch the line “I will see you at the ball.”

He chastises himself at that and he remembers your comment about the upcoming ball these elites were attending.

“I owe you an apology, Lily,” he says aloud, to no one in the space but himself so he can deliver one first thing in the morning. It makes sense now that he’s contemplating on it, but you were making it difficult to put logical thought together. It’s not your fault. It’s his fault for not sleeping. He can’t read this letter and he acted like an ass today because he’s running on pure fumes. The words are starting to melt together and he tries to blink the sleep out of his eyes only to find that he’s been blinking the sleep out of his eyes for the past hour. Grunting, he folds the letter and decides he will solve this case in the morning, it’s Thursday and the ball isn’t until Saturday.

Sherlock stands and walks towards the corridor when he hears a knock at the door. He wasn’t expecting anyone, especially not at this hour. He turns his head to look at it and he only stutters a second before he rushes to it and brings it open. Just as he suspected, you’re standing there in front of him, in his robe, fluttering your lashes at him in an innocence he cannot believe. As you reach up to kiss him, he catches you by the waist, by your momentum, midair as he directs you into his flat and firmly pushes the door closed with his other hand.

#henry cavill #sherlock holmes #henry!sherlock #sherlock holmes x reader #enola holmes #beyond answers #l4l.writes #henry cavill sherlock

[l4long-winded]

step #1: move in with your ex's best friend

summary: having just broken up with your ex, you're left with little options. you turn towards a mutual childhood friend who is reluctant to receive you for a myriad of reasons. the top one is surely how he looks at you (austin butler x afab!reader)

reflection: i posted this on my other account before, but seeing as that is now gone, i am starting to look at my works and which will be suitable to reupload. this piece is still up on archive so i want to make it even more convenient and post it here. please enjoy and feedback is always encouraged and appreciated.

warnings: cheerleader!reader, college au, drinking, alcohol, cynical!austin, somewhat bitter!austin, objectification, slight obsession, oral, degradation, filmed, dirty talk, dom!austin, naive!reader, childhood friends, friends to lovers, friends with benefits, cursing, pet names, austin's pov, reader's ex is an ass (please let me know if there are other warnings i need to add)

word count: 15,081

( this work has been cross posted on ao3 )

Austin isn’t exactly sure what comes over him seeing one of his best friends in the world consistently flirt with other girls with you, his friend’s girlfriend, sitting at home waiting. He’s loyal to perhaps a fault; he’s grown up with these people, their parents acting as parents even to him, so it’s the least he can do. To think the thoughts he thinks about you, to sit in a bar where he spots the same magazine you were reading this morning, to catch the dull lighting shining in his oblivious friends’ faces as he commits silent betrayal—guilt lingers alongside the condensation seeping off his cold beer’s glass. It’s a combination of his hand’s sweat and the sweet alcohol allowing him to try and forget.

He shouldn’t even be feeling these things. Not just because of the principle of the fact, but because you’re also all kinds of wrong for him. You’re combative, a bit materialistic, and bratty because your father’s got an edge in the political regime that’s spoiled you rotten.

But goddamn it... he wishes he didn’t think of the berry gloss that stains his friend’s lips every time he steals a kiss away from you. Austin is tired of being envious of someone he’s supposed to be there for, of gloss smearing his mouth in his guileful dreams.

He drinks to try and muddle the angelic tone of your features sitting on the permanent photograph his mind lingers to against his best wishes. You’re there no matter how hard he tries to dispose of you with his liquor and it doesn’t help that his friend is chatting up a storm nearby about how good he is in the sack, the subtext lost on him in definition as he gets bolder and bolder by the passing seconds. It’s to the point where Austin can no longer stand to hear about it, shifting up to his long legs and dropping cash onto the counter. Typically, Fabian doesn’t notice Austin deserting him with the two women hanging off of his arms. Austin walks until he reaches the designated driver appointed for the night, Wesley glancing up from his beer and from his girlfriend Veronica he seemed to be in a deep conversation with.

“You mind driving me home or are you as busy as Fabian is over there?” Austin doesn’t bother to hide the bitterness latching onto his vocal chords. If anything, it appears as if he’s jealous of the attention Fabian is getting over him and definitely not the intimate secret of how he has you at the forefront of his mind. Wesley can’t see through flesh and skull, not that anyone can, so Austin’s in the clear to think about you in any which way that he pleases without stepping on anyone’s toes or crossing any boundaries.

“Yeah, man, I got you. You don’t mind me dropping off Veronica first, do you?” Wesley steps from the stool, his jacket coming off his lap to then wrap around Veronica before Austin could even answer his displeasure. His tolerance for his friends and their romances while being the fifth wheel could only prevail for a certain amount of time. Under the influence, he’s not completely stone faced, rolling his eyes at the “sweet” gesture. Veronica sticks her tongue out.

“Don’t have much of a choice, do I?”

“Oh, not a chance.”

Somehow, Austin survived two duets and several solos among Wesley and Veronica in the duration of the car ride from the bar to Veronica’s house. He clenched his fists in his jacket’s pockets watching the two of them give each other a liplock as if they would never see one another again, prolonging the time before he could get out of the car to transfer himself in the passenger seat that Veronica left behind. This is the reason he usually went to places in his own beat-up car, but he also wanted to drink without putting a limitation on himself. The day wound up being shitty from start to finish, something he could have predicted if it weren’t for a gnawing need to numb his brain from thinking so much.

His factory job is in the midst of laying people off and labor never guarantees your spot, his cynicism with his boss as of late causing him to believe that he would have to embark on the job hunting fiasco soon enough. Hanging out with friends used to alleviate these kinds of stresses, but now he can’t see them doing anything other than aggravating with the state his head’s in.

He enters his small apartment after climbing several flights of stairs. The exercise gives him the sense of a pre-hangover so he lifts a hand up to grasp at the ache and switch the light on. He blinks through the new balance, the sound of sniffling quietly filling his ears in his efforts to adjust to the state of the climate around him. When his eyes come through, he sees your recognizable frame sitting on his couch, a pink pillow with your name on it in contrasting crimson thread adorning the front of it. It sits between your arms held tightly against your chest, your chin at the top of it with dead streaks of tear tracks rounding the apples of your cheeks down to your plump, pouting lips.

“What the hell are you doing here?” He grumbles, marching on over as steadily as a tipsy person could possibly manage. He didn’t expect to see you there, especially not since you didn’t live there and he owned this place on his own. The overwhelming images of you throughout the night seemingly intensify in your presence. He’s better off ignoring your existence than it is to risk implicating himself.

“Fabian, he… he…” You hiccup your words. It’s obvious you were crying in here before Austin arrived, but you continued where you left off and he visibly sees the fresh tears forming above your lower eyelids. Who knows how long you’ve been in here on your lonesome. “He cheated on me. After I confronted him, he kicked me out and I… I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

Austin scoffs at this, a lack of remorse stemming from his alcohol stunt and from his need to look as if he couldn’t care less about the situation. Despite growing up together alongside him, Fabian, and Wesley, you two never explored a decent realm of friendship. You came from different worlds entirely, your dad being rich and his dad being nowhere to be found. It’s a miracle private school didn’t separate your two lives any further, but you attended public school and began your on and off again relationship with Fabian. Apparently, it’s off again. It would explain Fabian’s unabashed behavior earlier. He was technically a free man and Austin’s jealousy streak suddenly seemed foolish. “Last I checked, you had a bigger house than any of us combined.”

“I can’t go back there. My dad thinks I pledged to a sorority and I lied to him so I could stay with Fabian. Besides, it’s too far from campus and you’re not.” You’re quite the sight rising up onto your knees, your hips suspended in the air just the right amount to see the chosen pair of oh-so-short sleep shorts riding above your thighs. He’s quick to flicker his gaze down and then back up to the lost expression on your face. He’s positive he wasn’t your first choice in this decision given the severe lack of history between the two of you and those shorts of yours are reminding him of the loyalty he ought to be committed to for his dear friend.

“You can’t just stay with me. This isn’t a hotel for you to come and go as you please. I have had one hell of a day and I shouldn’t be arguing with someone about whether or not they can stay in the place that is supposed to be mine alone.”

Austin throws his hands in the air to get his point across, anything for you to take it into your head and accept the circumstances as they were. If you weren’t so heartbroken, he would’ve daringly added salt to the wound by commenting on how things weren’t going to go your way like you were used to. He told himself he refrained because you’ve undergone a lot in the last twelve hours and not because of a deep rooted feeling tearing away at him within. He never has done well with crying in general, never the one to comfort, and never the one to be comforted. He’s not sure how to handle you in this state.

He turns his back to you to rummage through the ashtray he utilizes in a duality as a key tray. It’s a bad idea to leave at this hour, and given how much he’s drunk, he shouldn’t even be operating a vehicle. Soon, the ring belonging to his keys slips onto his index finger when he hears your voice in a whisper.

“... Did you know?”

Silence. It’s pure silence as he slightly tilts his head to the ceiling and guilt sobers him to see through the thick cloud of irrationality attempting to send you away in this vulnerable position. The truth is that he’s considered plenty of times where he could have put an end to all of this by ratting his friend out, but he never followed through on such plans. It’s Fabian’s parents who guided him away from the same path his father was once on, and so Fabian’s actions may have been shitty, but that didn’t grant Austin the right to be a shitty friend in return.

But as Austin slowly turns and drops his keys back into the tray, he focuses on the aftermath of his indecision and the hurtful consequences of his silence matching Wesley and Veronica’s. It’s written in swelling glass in your tear ducts, in the drops sliding over your chin, in the gentle and tragic way your nose quirks to accommodate the light sniffles you could barely breathe from. Austin’s seen you cry plenty of times because you were a sensitive girl, but he knows that this is different than the times before. He can tell by how you bow your head in shame, opaque spots littering your pillow from where you’re soaking it with your pain. He’s not privy to what occurred between you and Fabian this time around, but it’s evident it’s cut you deeper than before.

“Austin… I don’t want to be made a fool of anymore. Please, please do me this favor. I just need somewhere to stay until I figure things out and then I’ll be out of your hair. I promise.”

He wants to protest. He wants to ask why it has to be him (he just knows that the universe has it out for him at this point setting this shitstorm waiting to happen up). It’s just that he’s exhausted, under the influence, and his cold exterior always gives the slightest way for you. He’s got to be as bad as all the other people who enable you in your life, but he continues to blame the lack of energy and his waning patience.

“How did you even get in here?” He asks in lieu of giving you a proper answer, his way of welcoming you to his home without really having to do so. He doesn’t miss the small curve of your lips through your pout as you play with the fringe of your pillow. Austin removes his jacket a sleeve at a time, anything to help how constricted he feels in heat (thanks, whiskey) and from how close you are to him. He can’t remember the last time the two of you were alone together. It’s odd how it’s in this capacity and you’re simultaneously about to spend the night for the very first time. He realizes it’s also been a few weeks since he last had a woman alone in there, a long streak for him compared to average.

You tuck strands of your hair behind your ear, that innocent shrug of your shoulders coming through that tells him your words will be anything but: “I sorta’ told your landlord that I was your girlfriend and I got locked out. He got his keys and let me in.”

Austin bites his tongue so hard that he swears he tastes metal, anything to refrain from talking about how spoiled you are. You currently have a free pass, but it’s not going to run for an unlimited time. He can quip at you in the morning when he’s more coherent and feeling less generous as normal. He hates how much you’re already affecting him. He hopes to everything that you will get this fixed within a day or else there’s his loyalty, bachelorhood, and self-control at stake.

Austin startles awake hearing the sound of pans clattering in the kitchen. He stupidly stumbles out of bed and picks his bat up from the corner of the room before he moves to check where the noise came from. He’s got it resting on his shoulder as if he might just swing wildly as he walks into the area and sees you turning the island into a personal mess. He forgot that you were there, but the conversation you had the previous night comes back to him in images at first and then pieces of audio connect into place. Right, he’s supposed to play host while you figure your shit out.

“Woah there, Babe. Put the bat down, I’m just making breakfast for us.” You scoop the scrambled eggs onto a plate. The smell fills the apartment along with that of smoke that Austin sneers at. He waves his hand to try and whisk it out, the window opened to help with the dilemma. Birds annoyingly chirp and he huffs in retaliation.

“What did you call me?”

“Oh, you know… Babe? Like… like Babe Ruth. He’s the one who played baseball, right? Or did I get that wrong?”

Austin’s expression towards you is serious. He grimaces, but he says nothing in return and sits onto his futon that you’ve transformed from your bed (that you insisted on) back to his couch. A large hand comes down his features, the migraine unrelenting as it digs into his skull. When he’s scrubbing his face with his palms, he brings his hands away to see you there in front of him with a plate and a glass of water. The water comes closer to his features, a gesture for him to take instead of gawking at you and the surprise food.

“It’ll help your hangover.” You smile at him, that damn way of yours too that he has to peel his eyes from or else he’ll resemble a deer in headlights. But even facing away from you, he can see the remnants of your smile in the same fashion of a blob chasing his vision after staring at the sun. He grasps the water and drinks without saying a word, hesitantly delivering the plate to himself to start eating his first home cooked meal in… in probably ever within this apartment. Scanning the kitchen, he spots his counter full of grocery bags. You must’ve gone while he was knocked out cold.

“How’d you know I was hungover?” Austin questions it through a mouthful, noticing that his television was playing what appeared to be a cheer competition. He’s well aware of your college cheering, but he didn’t think it extended to where you would watch it for fun or for studying or maybe even both. It’s at least something to distract him, his eyes narrowing in on a skirt, unable to help himself.

“Uh… Fabian posted on his IG story from the bar last night. I saw your jacket in the corner of the picture and knew I’d have to wait longer for you to get here.”

He can hear the subliminal Thanks for the invite in your tone and he sighs. The division in the friend group is clearly evident, however this may be the realization for you that it definitely leans one side more than it does the other. He reminds himself that he isn’t close to you, that this is something out of an alternate reality in the thick of his own compromising reality and he’s not letting his guard down for a second. In actuality, he doesn’t owe you any kind of explanation since he went out and had fun according to his autonomy.

“You didn’t miss much. Wesley and Veronica fell into their own world like they usually do and Fabian…” Despite trying to stay loyal, he stopped himself from stomping on your feelings any further than they have been in the past twenty-four hours. He sees how your face drops at the slip of Fabian’s name in his peripheral as you plop on the seat right next to him. You’re on your phone, your mouth slanting to one side in disappointment.

“I know, I see it right here. He posted some girls he was with last night. Funny how no one would’ve told me about it.”

Your eyes are glued to the phone. Austin watches you click back and forth among the photos and videos making up Fabian’s “wild” night on the IG story. Austin’s not technologically challenged by any means, but he’s not a frequent poster. Therefore, he doesn’t spend a lot of time on social media in general. Witnessing the effects of it in real time messes with his head, that pretty face of yours sullen and defeated in a way that also doesn’t sit right with him. He may not have time for this relationship nonsense, but he can’t turn away from how sorrow is hitting at you hard. He would like to, but his damn conscience won’t let him.

“Stop looking at that,” Austin advises as he takes your phone away. You whine trying to retrieve it back, but he gets up from the couch and sets it on the coffee table. He grabs his glass of water and heads to the fridge for a refill. “If you want to get over him, you can’t be looking at his accounts. You’re just torturing yourself and I can’t stand you crying all over my furniture.”

He sets the water jug back into the fridge before he maneuvers to have his drink at the island. He didn’t expect you to actually get up and follow him. He notices how your phone is still on the coffee table and how you’re nervously tapping your manicured nails on the surface of the counter. Something’s on your mind clearly, an anxiety in your expression that you don’t know how to voice to him. He can’t blame you. After years of knowing one another, conversations such as these evaded you on more than one occasion. It’d be a miracle if the two of you understood how to talk to each other without any kind of misconception sitting between.

“What?” He breaks the ice, eye level with you as he hunches over the counter and awaits an answer.

You inhale a steady breath, but Austin can see you’re close to crying again. “I-I don’t know how to get over him. I feel like we fight so much and I always forgive him and I always turn back and… Austin… Shit.” You didn’t really curse. At least, beyond the occasional use of “damn” and “hell”. This was certainly messing with you. “I don’t want to forgive him this time. I don’t want to turn back. I just want to move on.”

Austin’s warnings didn’t do a damn thing to stop you from openly crying in front of him again. Your pajama sleeve lifts so you can messily wipe your eyes away and he feels discomfort wash over him. He cautiously rounds the island, a hesitant hand moving to gently grasp your shoulder. He’s not completely useless with this kind of thing having seen good examples of guardians being warm and inviting growing up, and if those references failed, there were always the life lessons of the melodramatic television shows and eccentric films at hand. He tries to ask himself what Dan Conner might do in this instance and how Veronica may give you advice.

The overthinking he engages in is soon silenced by how you utilize the advantage of his open arms and scoot yourself into the empty space. He’s not wearing a shirt, but you don’t seem to care as you cry into his chest and leave behind warm tears trailing his pectorals and then his abdomen. Your arms capture him next and Austin is reeling from the amount of touch you’re attacking him with, slight pressure on him that he deems worse than a punch to the gut because at least then he could respond with a cocked back fist and an eager jab. He has no idea how to react to this besides patting your back and then the hair at the top of your head.

“Hey, princess, come on…” This is probably the first time he uses that moniker without a lick of wit and sarcasm dripping from it. Austin used it to tease you, spoiled brat in his vocabulary in your presence at all times. He feels awkward at this moment, to have it sound so affectionate is foreign for him. “Hey, hey, look… I know this fucking sucks, but it’ll get better. You’ll move on, get over him, and graduate. It’s just a matter of time.”

It’s difficult not to stray away from your frame. He knows he’s rigid, but his statuesque form is still not being pushed away by you. Slowly, you lift your head from his chest about the same pace that you reduce your sniffling. A cherry tint coats your cheeks and nose, your lips dry from how you’ve bitten them bloody out of nervous habit. He hates that you’re such a pretty crier, how spellbinding you are despite having puffy eyes and an equally as puffy mouth he wants to swell further by bruising kisses onto it and prying it open with his fingers and then cockhead. To objectify you while you’re struck with such hurt is wrong and he knows it, but he can’t stop the thoughts telling him he should give you something real to cry over, something worth hiccuping sobs and whines over.

“H-how do you know that? What if… what if I never get over him? What if I always feel like this and the only way to stop it is by having him around?” Your distress is beginning to stress Austin out. This topic is about one of his best friends, someone who will come to their senses in a few days if history has served you both well enough in Austin’s memory. Mind you, he never heard this perspective or thought of it before, the reluctance to accept a relationship because of the avoidance of mourning it for too long. Is this why you’ve ran back to Fabian in the past? Because you can’t undergo the shitty and difficult sadness that comes with a breakup? It’s starting to make sense to him that you’re looking for remedies to prevent this from happening before a weaker and more vulnerable version of yourself accepts Fabian’s hand again.

Austin sucks in a breath, his hands coming in front of your face to clasp together. He’s not sure which route to take, a limited array of options. He can advise you to go back to Fabian and clean this mess up before anything else could happen. He could have the place to himself again and things would be normal until the next inevitable separation between the two of you.

Or… or he could do something else that could save him the future headaches and the misery of having to watch you two get so up close and personal. That’s the selfish solution, but a solution nonetheless that might even benefit both you and Fabian in the long run. By how much Fabian strays and how much he winds up putting you down, Austin doesn’t think it to be real treachery. Ruining your relationship together is one thing, but attempting to save future damage is another… right?

“When I was about fourteen, I had my first girlfriend. Remember her?” Austin sees your face dip into confusion, but you nod your head. There’s a point to this, as left field as it may seem. He doesn’t talk about this anymore, hell, he barely talked about it when it happened, but he feels like it’s necessary for this conversation.

“Well, she dumped me to date this other punk named Ben. I was fucking pissed so I drank a lot, distanced myself, listened to angry music, all of that. And eventually, one day, I saw them together at the central mall and I didn’t feel a thing. No anger, no love, no nothing. It took time, but it worked. It felt endless when it was happening, but an end did come around. I’m telling you that you just have to wait it out and soon enough, those shit feelings will quit fucking with your head.” For good measure, Austin’s knuckles form a fist and tap the crown of your cranium with a shockingly contrasting pressure, soft to go with the overwhelming weight of his honest words. There’s not a lot of things that he expects to happen by doing any of this, but the very least of those actions had been the one you embarked on and that was the sheepish smile you let break way despite the veil of tears still slipping on down and down.

“T-Thank you, Austin.” Your voice is feeble, and the weeping is reducing ever so slowly. He counts it as a victory, his reassurance. But solely a small one since realistically, he doesn’t know if you’ll listen, if everything he just said will go in through one ear and out the other. He just tells himself things will be okay as he anxiously runs a large hand down your back, your frame fitting back into his still-hesitant arms.

“She had ugly shoes.”

“What?” He glances at you and shifts you to where he can get a better look at your face. You stare up at him with amusement spreading from the crinkles around your eyes and the curve of your mouth broadening.

“Nancy,” you begin with his ex’s name, the very one he just spoke about, “She had ugly shoes. I was glad she was gone so I didn’t have to look at them anymore.”

Austin rolls his eyes and hides his laugh because of course you would remember such a trivial thing, anything that has to do with fashion and not at all how Nancy contributed to Austin’s corroded trust issues.

“Are you sure that you don’t want to come with me? I promise it’s a lot more fun than wasting a Sunday night drinking a beer.” Your tone echoes from Austin’s bathroom, the slightest creak in the door since you insist on speaking with him through it as you do your makeup. After your conversation yesterday, Austin found it easier to talk with you. That’s scratching the argument the two of you fell into over switching the television to an action movie he wanted to catch instead of the modeling videos you spammed on YouTube, but otherwise, you two got along better.

You made dinner, unsurprisingly since you got up to make breakfast so early. He thought it was a means to repay him, to show some kind of appreciation for allowing you to stick around, but then you were bouncing about his kitchen the next morning at the same hour with the same cheer competition footage playing. He realized it was a routine you fell into out of habit, another reason to curse his friend in the confines of his mind because who the hell would turn so easily from housewife material. The kind of housewife material who could bake a pie, who doted on their beloved husband, who wore those fitted aprons scattered with red and pink hearts to stand out against the quilted white background. The very one in your possession that shot the bullet igniting the race of his rapid imagination running wild. It’s just the right size to hide your skimpy pajamas, for a fantasy to plaster itself into his cognitive files (joining the rest) involving nothing underneath the apron that has the potential of catching his release.

“I’ve had my fair share of socializing Friday night,” he grumbles back, “I don’t want to be around any crowds. Especially not with a bunch of college kids.” That would mostly be around his age since you were only a year younger, but he can pretend he’s more mature because the hard labor he indulges in leaves dirt under his nails and soreness in his back muscles. Bitterness is rightful here, the path his friends took being in books while he decided to go a different route. He’s still thinking of what he should do, but surviving is always number one. Figuring how to stay afloat is a priority.

“There might be cute college girls!” You try, but that’s not something he needs either. Austin’s never been one for the dating scene. If he needs to hook up with someone, he’ll go to a bar or a club. A college football game didn’t sound very entertaining for him. The entire premise of attending anything with you still sat sour in his mouth, anyway. Soon, you’d be moving out and then you two could go back to barely talking to each other sans for when you’re together with Wesley, Veronica, and eventually Fabian. He doesn’t think you’ll back out of the group due to this recent betrayal, but there’s bound to be impending awkwardness coming as a result.

Sitting at his couch, he lifts his bottle opener to work open the cap of his beer. The satisfying thsk resounds, the cold smoke beckoning him in that he quickly attaches his lips to. He dips his head backwards to get his first swig, making it a proper one at that to fill his cheeks with and coat his tongue over. It’s then that he hears the bathroom door come open from behind him and he turns in that direction from the simplest reaction of sound detection.

“How do I look? Be honest.”

Austin swallows the drink in his mouth with a difficult gulp, one he feels expand as it travels down his throat. It takes effort not to cough, but he wills himself to sit still as he takes in your appearance, that small cheer outfit of yours not helping the thoughts he’s carried for a long while. It hugs your chest, your hips, your thighs, and it’s not fair. It’s really not fucking fair looking the way you do, batting your long lashes at him, awaiting an answer from him like you don’t know how much he wants to cross the room and test the access capabilities of that skirt slimming not even past the invisible equator of flesh dividing the portion to your mid thigh. From how form fitting it is, he wouldn’t have any choice but to bunch it upwards in his curling fingers, offering himself leverage in the process of pushing into you from behind.

Austin swears in his head and he commands himself to look away from the little number to give his opinion on your face, the makeup you’re actually asking about. He gets a final glance of the golden Cal bright and bold against navy blue across your chest before his eyes land upon your facial structure. There’s the slightest wisps of blue glitter over your lids, a sheen on your nose and cheeks cool toned and shimmery that he knows will glow luminescent under the football field’s beaming lights overhead. Curiously, a black, tiny heart rests beneath your left eye, something you most likely drew on to complete your look. He can’t ignore any of it, not how complementary it’s come together for your features, not how glossy your lips appear, and definitely not how you tuck your bottom lip between your teeth with his obvious gaze attached to every detail.

“Is the heart too much? I thought since my hair was in a ponytail that I could pull it off, but I can just take it off if—”

“Don’t, it’s… different. You don’t look bad.” You don’t look bad? Seriously? Austin thinks to himself, that piss poor excuse of complimenting you without being too forward sounding jumbled and meaningless because of a few seconds of overthought filling his brain to the brim. He could’ve just given a simple nod of his head to show his approval, but of course his big mouth had to relay the warped images in his mind through his ditching effort to show care and no care at the same exact time.

But miraculously, your lips spread into a wide smile, your white tennis shoes squeaking over the floor as you bounce a path to Austin and wrap your arms around his neck. His beer rises towards the ceiling to protect it from spilling to the floor, jasmine and orange blossom invading his nose due to your perfume wafting from your neck to it in a direct attack. Against his better judgment and before he realizes what he’s doing, he inhales deeply and suddenly you’re just about in every one of his senses. All he’s missing is… oh God, he’s just missing taste and he can’t believe that his mind would roam there to remind him of it. What flavor is that lip gloss that you’re so obsessed with swiping over your lips to resemble a cushioned aphrodisiac? What mix of lotion and perfume and you would coat his tongue if he traced it right along your neck to locate your pulse point so he can feel it quicken in real time? What sweetness will drip into his open mouth if he sits you atop of his face and smacks the supple flesh of your ass to begin riding at his command?

Your embrace becomes loose as you stand back from him on the couch, “Thank you, Austin,” short and soft on your tone. You step away and grab your purse and gym bag in the process of heading to the front door, Austin sitting in confusion of how you got so close to him in proximity so easily and why you accepted his barely-there validation.

He tries to bring himself back from the place you led him to, your face and body being the real culprits here in all their temptations corralling him in. Saliva returns to moisten his dry mouth as you’re putting your coat over your shoulders.

“No one will even be able to tell that you’ve been crying,” he retorts against his own sentiment, anything to make it seem as if he just complimented you to throw you off and not see a planned insult fitted within. It’s discomforting to get too along with you, to alert you of how he sees attraction in any kind of regard.

“God, I hope not. Fingers crossed!” You say with a roll of your eyes, relief un-strangling the firm grip on his throat and he finally exhales the scent of you away from him and out of his nostrils. But the relief doesn’t last long because as you open the door and step one foot out of his apartment, your head peeks back to him with that same smile on your face resting there. “I’ll try to bring you back a hot dog or something.”

He gruffs out a noise in the form of a reply and firmly stills his attention on the television ahead of him playing a movie he all but forgot about. He doesn’t look at the front door until he hears it close, your footsteps marching away, and the distant sound of fading walking beneath descending the stairs.

Austin rubs the sleep out of his eyes hearing the knocks at the door. The television’s glow is shining right into his pupils and he has trouble acclimating to the atmosphere despite the rest of the apartment being dark. He must’ve fallen asleep before he could go and get ready for bed for the night. He had an early morning shift, another reason why he didn’t wish to spend his Sunday night with you at a football game with his social battery already so low and slowly recharging. He supposes it’s semi-a-good-thing since he would’ve been groggier waking up from his bed and even more annoyed with you than he currently is, trudging on to the door to unlock it for you and let you in.

“You’re so fucking loud,” he grumbles down at you half-lidded, probably half-asleep as well as he turns from you and walks to the couch in the similar fashion as a zombie. Two large hands come up to scrub down the length of his face, the technique of rubbing his eyes conducted to push the sleep away without the hurtful ray controlled by his living room’s light switch.

“You could’ve given me your keys, but nooo, ‘This is a temporary stay, brat’.” Your voice drops an octave as you mock Austin’s voice, the jacket over your shoulders being slipped off. The material falls over the armrest opposite of Austin’s frame and then you plummet yourself to sit next to him, one arm and thigh curving on the couch to face him properly. His head slips backwards, his eyes shutting in what you think is the first of his actions to fall back to sleep.

“It is a temporary stay, brat. If I give you keys, how the hell am I supposed to lock you out?” crushes that doubt, the conversation carried in the usual quipping. Austin only slightly flinches after your hand lightly smacks at his shoulder. It’s with no pressure so he quickly lets both of his hands come up to cradle his head. Letting it remain limp on the cushion would cause a strain in it, but he also wanted to continue laying without any effort applied.

“So, I, uh… this guy asked me out tonight after the game…”

That captures Austin’s attention. Annoyance bubbles up in his chest for several reasons, some he won’t bother to confront since he would much rather deny them, others he isn’t aware is his brain trying to form to correlate further with that denial. For example, the idea of you moving on so soon from one of his best friends is going to be like a stab to the chest. The prospect of having to tell Fabian emerges, but then Austin would have to explain why the hell you were sleeping there with him in his apartment. While he only plans for it to be short term, Austin could not beat the allegation of having you so close to him in any capacity. You’ve stayed with him for a total of two nights and nothing could be said or done to take anything away from that cold, hard fact. Then, would it look like he was picking sides when he was trying to do the opposite? Staying out of it entirely was the best option and yet, he’s already offered you shelter, company, banter, and worst of all, advice on how to rid of your feelings for Fabian.

He peeks at you through one eye, the image of your bottom lip tucked between your teeth coming into view as he stares at you with a nervous anticipation of where this is going. By your silence, he could tell you searched for some kind of reply.

He bites the bait and asks, “And what did you say?”

Your lashes flit downwards and follow your gaze at the slightly empty space sitting between you and Austin. That alone conveys to him of your answer and so he closes his eye back up and reinforces his position on the cushions, his shoulders and neck adjusting into it to seem relaxed instead of agitated by this news.

“I said I would think about it,” surprises Austin, the only indication he gives that it does being how his eyebrows arch upwards and then immediately come down. Luckily for him, you didn’t catch it in your casual and anxious summary of the hours before your return to his home, “I mean, he was a stranger I just met, but I also didn’t want to turn the opportunity down. I saved his number on my phone.”

It’s not totally what he initially thought, inwardly scolding himself for jumping to conclusions. However, it barely changes the weight of responsibility on him from his spiraling contemplation before. The regret of allowing you to stay has surfaced due to conflict overtaking his head, the mix of emotions attempting to be repressed to the point of where the worst possible case scenario pops into his doubts. You could say no to this mystery guy and yet here you are maintaining a residence with him, temporary or not. How could he explain this to Wesley or Fabian if either of them walked through his door? He’s positive they would think something happened between the two of you no matter what he could possibly say to salvage the pretend and yet very real event.

Despite all of that, there’s still a chance that you would agree to the rendezvous. At least in that route he could get rid of you sooner. Your… new boyfriend could hold the mantle of giving you somewhere to stay and then Austin wouldn’t have to deal with the problems of his friends finding out about his loyalties lying elsewhere. It’s complicated. He knows it. He also knows that it would be a lot less complex if he didn’t harbor any affinities for you. He fears being caught because maybe the accusations that would come with it would just unveil truths to everyone. Austin could argue with Fabian and Wesley that the two of you did nothing, but there was no guarantee that Austin could hide how he wanted something to happen, how he wished for the imagined things they pointed their fingers at him with. He didn’t trust his facial expressions for that task, much less whatever oral speeches he could muster.

After his delusions stew for a moment, arguments playing and then replaying on the projector screen of his eyelids, he realizes you’ve been quiet this entire time, for as long as his thoughts ran rampant with pessimistic plots nagging at him. His eyes squint to look your way, expectancy in your features that he doesn’t understand. You drive logic from his head and in its wake, you replace it with curiosity. He wonders why you’re looking at him like that and why he didn’t have the ability to read minds so he wouldn’t have to communicate beyond his emotional intelligence level.

“And…?” He questions and expects you to carry on with your story. You nudge his arm, a bright laugh coming off your lips. Austin thinks it might be the most genuine laugh you’ve had this weekend with him. He actually can’t remember the last time he’s heard it, but he remembers the first time vividly. Before puberty hit any of you, when he hung out in Wesley’s garage fucking around with his friend’s father’s guitar talking about starting a band despite there being nothing but makeshift drums made out of trash cans and Fabian being unable to hold a note, you giggled from the other side of the fence and revealed you’d been watching their ‘band practice’ the entire time. You and your sly grin that you turned into a sneer when Fabian flexed his arms to show off for the female attention. Wesley called you the annoying little girl next door and Austin scrambled for reasons to hold the same sentiment while Fabian completely ignored it and flirted with you anyway. It was simpler when he didn’t have to worry about the ongoing situation and only had to worry about why he enjoyed your laugh as much as he did, finding it anything but annoying in actuality.

“And? And what do you think? Do you think I should go for it?” You continue to surprise Austin. In how much he drowns himself in a silent accountability, you’re reminding him of where he currently sits, where you currently sit next to him, where your knee brushes against his as you await his answer in earnest and not sarcastically.

“Why do you care what I think?” He sits up straighter, his head shifting up from where he previously laid it back on the couch. He finally looks at you, albeit through groggy eyes, but he looks at you nonetheless. That same excitement and intrigue is still there. You’re sure of yourself in this decision.

“Because since I blocked Fabian, I haven’t looked at any of his recent posts. I caught myself navigating there three times today and it’s like it’s a reminder. I don’t feel any better than yesterday, but I had fun at the game and forgot about him for a little bit. I don’t think I would’ve been able to without what you said… so, thank you.” This gratitude is genuine. He almost wants your nose to scrunch and you to burst into laughter so it could just be some kind of weird joke, but none of that ever happens. You withhold your ground, not breaking the eye contact that isn’t in full effect due to the television being all the illumination the room offers. It’s a good thing, too. If the light was on or if it spilled naturally from his windows, he would have to face the depth of your eyes and each fan of your lashes.

“I never told you to block him,” he tries to deflect, but you scoot closer and it shuts him up from further dismissing your acknowledgment and appreciation.

“You didn’t have to. I’m creating that distance you talked about. You were right. Looking at his stuff is just torturing myself and I just want to get this hurting period over with. So, please be honest with me: should I wait or take the plunge? Is a rebound what I need?”

A rebound. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn’t. Austin figured early on how feelings could get attached even if arrangements were made to stop that from happening. The casual flings he has run into women looking for more, ones he leaves and turns away in their own disappointment because that’s not at all what he’s searching for. He’s clear of his good time and then he can get back to working his stupid job and then hanging out with his friends to pass the time and make life less suckish.

He doesn’t want to envision you with anyone else. He already had a hard time seeing you with Fabian throughout the years, but he can’t be involved with you more than he currently is. As his earlier thoughts indicated, you could move to another relationship and dump your ex-related issues onto him instead of Austin and sleep on his couch or bed, whatever the hell mystery guy had at his place.

“I think that… it might do you good to put yourself out there again,” he reluctantly chirps and stares at the television ahead. He has to or else he’s going to advise you that this isn’t a good idea. “You’ve only been with Fabian, right? You could see what’s out there and if it goes to shit, then you can stay out of the dating pool until you’re ready.” He doesn’t miss how you lean forward and that top of yours hugs your chest tighter from the compromising position. Your cleavage swells and he wills himself to lean his head back again, his eyes shutting. That’s how he managed not to be swayed by your subconscious charms before.

“Oh, okay! Yeah, that’s good!” Austin feels the couch shift as you stand to your feet. Your sneakers squeak on the floor and air hovers over his feet. He doesn’t need to open his eyes to know you’re pacing back and forth. “I don’t even know what to wear. I haven’t been on a first date in… in years. How do I entertain a grown man for that long?”

Austin makes a sound resembling a tsk as he clicks his tongue. A laugh filters from him and he points his chin up to the ceiling to try and get more comfortable.

“Blow him.”

His guard’s lowered staying out of his head and focusing on not staring at you for too long, for the afflictions that it may cause. The statement slipped from his mouth easily because he fell into banter with you without thinking and suddenly, by how quiet you are and how he can no longer feel gusts floating over his skin, he comes to the revelation that you’ve stopped in your tracks. His joke must’ve offended you in some way. Here you were seeking out his opinion and he ruined it by being blunt and a typical man. Austin sighs and forces himself from where he is to lean onto his elbows. He looks from your face, those lips parted and eyes of a doe, down to your shoes.

“Sorry, I was just kidding and I didn’t m—”

“Austin, can I tell you something private? It’s about me and Fabian.”

Austin’s eyes skirt from your shoes up to your eyes and he gazes at you with nothing but suspicion. He’s not sure how the two of you wound up circling to this premise on your mind, but he’s also too inquisitive for his own good. He’s debating on waving you off and just forgetting about this whole conversation, but you seem to take his silence as a means to continue talking.

“We never really did… that kind of thing. We fooled around and I’m not a virgin, but that? No… Ha. I wouldn’t even know what to do if someone asked me to.”

Whatever god or gods were out there if at all did not like to see Austin comfortable in any capacity. He didn’t ever think he would be here talking with you about getting over Fabian while you stayed at his place, much less about sucking someone off you planned to use to move on. He almost doesn’t want to respond because it might be his brain still dreaming and dream-you was setting him up for the embarrassment of the rejection his masochistic subconscious warned him about in the past. He tries not to acknowledge the sick thrill that runs through him knowing that you and Fabian didn’t get to that level of sexual activity. It pisses him off that Fabian took your virginity, but from your skittishness, Austin surmises you’re not sexually experienced and that means that Fabian’s filthy hands didn’t taint you, at least, not like how he thought. Relief floods him at that since the idea of you and Fabian in bed used to churn his stomach the wrong way.

Those lonely nights when you came to mind, Austin came over his hand imagining himself with you. Fabian wouldn’t ruin his need for release.

All of this is evidently troubling you. Your shoulders keep rising and falling as you fidget with your thumbs shyly in front of Austin. This information was told because you needed to confide in someone over it, but your concern isn’t relevant to this future date.

“You don’t have to blow anyone, I was joking, alright? You shouldn’t do anything you don’t want to.” And if the guy didn’t want his teeth down his throat, he wouldn’t try to pressure you into anything.

“Yeah… yeah, you’re right. This is just a first date. I’m not even planning on sleeping with him, I don’t know what came over me.” Your arms swing from one side to the next, the atmosphere becoming cumbersome with the thick absence of sound between the two of you. Austin watches you sit yourself back next to him, your elbows coming to rest on your knees in the same way his own did. Seeing that you two were at the same level in that regard, Austin leans backwards and outstretches his arms over the waterfall back of the sofa. He’s not sure if he should bust out some kind of apology for reacting that way to your confession, but he’s clueless in this circumstance. He doesn’t know what you wanted to hear and it’s clear to him it was something specific by how you gradually hug yourself and fight off inner demons batting around the circumference of your cranium.

You chew on your lip and soon, your leg starts to bounce. You’re lost in a contemplation and now neither of you are trying to ease up on the tension surrounding. Austin considers standing up to leave you to get ready for bed without any disturbance and because he has work in the morning, but he can’t seem to move from his spot. He’s glued to the cushions, finding other places to stare off at and unfocus his eyes so he doesn’t linger them for too long on you. If you were to turn to him and see it, it would just make everything more awkward than it already was. He’s silently praying you’ll stand up, that you’ll tell him goodnight, anything for him to just get to bed and get out of this weird trap you’ve fallen into.

“Can you teach me?” You whisper, your head turning solely a few degrees from where it hung to stare at the floor. Austin’s bewildered by what you mean, unprepared entirely for the request since he was trying to find ways to slip out of this mess without further damage.

“Teach you what?”

He racks his mind for what you could possibly mean. If you were referring to how to go on a first date, he could somewhat help. He’s been on plenty of those. If you were referring to remaining cool under pressure, he could help you with that too. But it’s the way you swivel where you’re sitting and flutter those lashes at him. You release your bottom lip from where you ensnared it between your rows of teeth and it juts out in a fullness he wants to touch with his thumb. It’s a gentle pout, your head slightly tilting as you say nothing and just wait. Austin almost asks what exactly it is you’re waiting for when it hits him with the weight of a 1,001 bricks upside the chest, a puff of his breath punching out of his mouth in a gasp.

“Are you serious? You want me to explain how to suck dick?” He doesn’t blink an eye being that explicit, not like how you do with hair falling into your face for the purpose of hiding it away in a sheepish manner. That part he also doesn’t understand since you were the one coming forward with this odd request out of nowhere. He hates how the image of your mouth being stretched open by a cockhead springs to life in his brain. He especially hates how he feels himself twitch in reaction.

“Well,” you turn from him completely to look at the floor again, like it’ll help you gather the courage to carry on. “I don’t want you to explain it to me…” For a moment, Austin thinks that he misinterpreted everything. That or his shock caused you to back away. Either option, he holds hope you’ll drop this until you inhale a deep breath and face him with determination in your irises and a confident rise of your shoulders. “I want you to show me.”

Austin’s heart races as you place your hand onto his knee. It’s underneath a layer of his sweats, but somehow, the heat from your palm reaches past the cloth and singes him regardless. You don’t make any further motions, but Austin believes it worse, holding still when his nerves are bouncing all over the place. Touch could chase away doubt and anxiety, but there’s currently too much room for self-aware thought. He even thinks that you could mean some kind of porno that he could refer you to as a possibility, but you both know where you’re going no matter how many hoops he’s diving through to justify this behavior.

“I want you t-to… I want you to guide me. I know I probably won’t need this skill for a while, but I don’t want to embarrass myself. I need practice and… and I trust you.” It has to be you, is unspoken, but it’s flashing loud in your gaze on him. He gulps as you squeeze him in reassurance and then fold your hands in your lap. He gawks at you with a hardened stare, not sure if he should kick you out or grasp your face to kiss your mouth until you plead for air. Of course he wants it. He’s thought about it, dreamt about it, and now there’s an opportunity for it to happen, but he cannot capitalize on it because his damn friends arrive on both of his shoulders to reject the offer. Only rejection doesn’t come off his lips. Nothing does. He’s watching as you nervously clasp and unclasp your fingers in anticipation.

“Come on, we’re both adults. I would greatly appreciate it.” Oh God, Austin needs you to shut the fuck up or his brain is going to short-circuit. He couldn’t believe you were the one trying to convince him, the one even expressing gratitude for it when he’s desired it for so long. It’s surreal hearing it in real life, how you’d be grateful to have his dick in your mouth. “Are you really going to make me beg to suck your dick?” There’s playfulness in your tone and he flexes his hands on the sofa to restrain himself. You’re not making the right thing easy to do by any means. Austin doesn’t even know what the right thing is since all he could think about right now is your bratty, little mouth being filled with his girth.

He forgets to answer you because he’s overthinking. His eyes follow your frame as it stands from the couch and then maneuvers towards the wide V his manspreading legs are creating. As you lower yourself to your knees in front of him, his eyes drift down and his jaw locks seeing you so willing and eager to do something you know nothing about. You’re being naive and he should push this all away for the sake of his friendships and for a less complex of a web being weaved, but your hands land on his thighs and he’s steadily pitching a tent in his sweats from how turned on he really is.

“Please, Austin. Please, I want to. I want to learn how to—”

As much as Austin wants to hear you beg, he can’t halt himself from roughly grasping your chin into his hand, the first pleas on your tongue snapping the resistance band that’s kept him back tonight, yesterday, and for the majority of time that he’s known you. His doubts may have been a little ridiculous and off the mark with how Fabian may react to you staying in Austin’s apartment, but this is an act that would be completely unforgivable. It’s wrong and Austin knows it, but Fabian fades away from his head staring at your timorous features shifting from enthralled fear to innocent lust, a dichotomy he believes only you can manage. Well, if his friends believe that something happened between you and him even if it didn’t, he might as well let that something occur.

“You’ll learn. But you have to do everything I say, princess. Everything. None of that backtalk you always give me or I’ll leave you on your knees and finish myself off in my room.” He pauses and although he just gave you a warning about it, he does expect you to reply with something snarky. Oddly enough, you don’t say anything in retaliation and astonish him with an eager nod of your head, as if his cock is the reward and he was the one being the stickler for not letting you have it sooner.

He releases your chin in satisfaction, his arms moving back to their place stretched along the couch. He’s thinking of what he should tell you to do first, but he’s cut off watching you scramble to sit up higher on your knees as you fumble for something in your skirt. There’s no pockets in it, so he sees more skin appear as you lift your top and retrieve your phone tucked in the waistband of your skirt. Austin’s about to ask if you need him to set it aside when you turn it on and then thrust it into his lap. He blinks down at it in confusion, the camera app open. He sees part of his couch and the opaque silhouette of his thigh facing it from where he sits.

“Why is your camera on?” is what he decides to go with, Why’d you give me your phone being another that he plans on asking. He raises the phone up, but before he could turn it off and place it down, your hand takes his wrist. His eyes lock onto yours, an eyebrow coming up quizzically.

“I want you to film me.” Austin’s eyebrows must hit the ceiling from how far they fly up. You’re not letting up on him whatsoever. “I don’t just want to be good at this, I wanna look good too. I can watch it back after this and see what I need to work on. Is that okay?”

The throbbing in his sweats is more prevalent than before from how this is going. He’s fulfilling desires he’s put on the backburner for so long now that you keep finding ways to catch him fully off guard. This is everything he could ever want, stressors melting in the background as he chooses not to reply and simply raises the phone up and presses record. He watches your face through your phone screen, the shy smile once there morphing into one of glee that is too sweet for the context of all of this. With the knowledge that he started the video, your hands reach for the drawstring of his sweats, but his opposite hand not holding the phone stops you from going any further with a simple hold on your wrist. Confusion dawns on your pretty face, the look plastered there forewarning him of all the questions you’re going to summon during this process.

“You don’t want me to take off your pants?” Worry encompasses your features as if Austin has changed his mind and you just made a fool of yourself in front of him groveling. He quickly chases that away by shaking his head.

“No, not yet,” he reassures and feels the bones in your wrist shift in accordance to your visible relief, “First thing’s first, I need you to take off that hair tie.”

“What?” You blink at him in confusion, a speck of glitter flicking off the tip of your lashes down to the fabric of his sweats. By the end of this, he expects to find specks of the shiny monstrosities all over him and his couch, a downside he’s willing to accept recalling the nature of what you two were about to do. “But I thought it’d keep my hair out of the way.”

“What I’d say about backtalk?” Austin clicks his tongue and he watches in real time as your mouth shuts immediately. He’s never had anything close to this kind of power over you. He’s emboldened by it, by how willing you are to learn from him, and by how he notices how you shift from one side to the next. While his own arousal is on display in front of you, yours isn’t as obvious. But those shifting hips, those give away how uncomfortable that underwear of yours must be getting underneath that stupid, short skirt. “Now, as I was saying, I want your hair down. Sure, it’d be easier for you, but I like something to grip at. I like something to pull on. I don’t think any woman should look clean after giving a blowjob. I like ‘em to look downright filthy when they’re done.”

He illustrates your future with what he deems as simple words, but somehow, the inorganic flush you painted on your cheeks earlier has deepened in reaction. His thumb drifts along the rouge experimentally, this being the first time he touches your face in any kind of capacity and as he imagined it plenty of times before, it’s soft under the pad of his finger. He doesn’t stop bringing it back and forth until one motion in particular nears your mouth and your lips gently part from one another, a silent invitation you grant him for entry. If he angles his thumb to the side, your welcoming mouth would embrace it immediately. He knows it just from how your breath releases from the back of your throat and ghosts over his skin, quietly beckoning him in to use it to his liking. While he would love to feel your slick tongue on it, that’s not what this was about. He was doing the noble honor of honing your oral skills and you’re eager to be filled with another one of his appendages begging for some kind of attention in the confinement of his sweatpants.

Gradually, he lets go of your chin to resist the temptation of sliding his fingers into your mouth. He can see the confusion in your eyes, but you’re quick to sit up again and reach your arms up to the back of your head to fulfill his request in due time. The hair tie soon evades your hair and you present it to him. He thinks you’ll put it aside, but as you have been doing these past two days, you surprise him and reach for his hand, slipping the band onto his wrist that only makes a small appearance in the camera shot. He doesn’t comment on it, just flexes his jaw as you sit back into place with your hands on your thighs as you await his next instruction.

“Good… Now you’re ready to go. You can start by taking me out of these fucking sweatpants before I poke a hole in them.” He gestures with your phone to himself to emphasize his point, watches as your eyes follow the movement and glue to the length protruding stiffly against the gray material horribly covering him away. You don’t waste any time scooting closer to him, your dainty hands latching onto his waistband to maneuver it out of the way. He lifts his hips off the couch to help your movements and soon enough, the surrounding air touches his girth, his cock and balls sitting on the outside of his pants that you try to pull further down. Austin waves your hands away and you pull them back as if he slapped them, wanting to be obedient in every sense to where he can’t help but slyly smirk. Your hands fall to your lap, but he sees your eyes are on his, widening from the sight, perhaps his size, but whatever the reason, he can tell you’re intimidated.

“Relax, brat. We’re taking this slow. Go ahead… touch me.” Austin purposely maintains a vagueness to this direction because he wants to see what you’ll do naturally, that way he can gauge where you lack the skill and how he can help from there. You’re hesitant as you lift a hand out of your lap and reach for him, your palm meeting his bare flesh, fingers wrapping around him in a loose hold that sets his senses ablaze. He gulps down to keep himself at bay and under control and you gulp down because you’re wondering how you’re going to fit him inside of your mouth. His length pulses against you, throbs rhythmically and then speeds as you barely tighten your grip and shift your hand upwards. He groans out into the air and you’re encouraged to move your hand a tad faster, slightly more confident as you look up at him and not at the camera pointed at you.

“Is that good?” You ask, not stopping your motions enough for coherent thoughts to form in Austin’s brain at a regular rate. It takes him longer to answer by a few seconds since he’s flickering his attention back and forth between your face and your hand on him.

“N-not bad… Grip should be a little tighter. S-should feel l-like this.” The hand not holding onto the camera comes down without second thought to engulf yours still locked onto his cock’s base. The veins in his hand bulge as he guides your hand along him, the vise on yours increasing in pressure and when you attempt to mimic it, he emits another groan. You’re a fast learner by the look and feel of it. He curses loud and steadily lets go of your hand to grip onto the couch cushion for purchase.

“Yes, fuck, that’s good. That’s really fucking good, princess. K-keep going. All the way to the tip.”

He didn’t even have to tell you twice. You adopt the grip he showed you and pump your hand from his base to his tip as he says and he can feel his breath shortening, his camera work becoming shakier and shakier by the second. For someone who hasn’t done this before, you seem to be poised and up for the challenge, still looking up at him through impossibly long lashes in an eager effort to please him. To please him, to please Austin. He thinks for a moment that he’ll wake at any point, but this isn’t a dream. This is real and it feels better than any imagery his brain can muster while he’s out cold. There’s nothing that can beat the sensation of actual touch, the sensation of your hand curled around his cock, a fist for him to fuck without doing any work besides the occasional buck his hips push out against his awareness.

As much as he’s enjoying himself off this alone, this isn’t exactly what you asked for. He can see you’re waiting for him to tell you what to do and that fact turns him on in more ways than one, but there’s still the main subject matter to attend to that has yet to be addressed. Freeing the cushion of his clutch, he props two fingers up to point at your lips, to which he then crooks in a motion towards himself. That’s when he witnesses your face light up, your lips parting further than they have all night in a lustful thirst that can only be quenched by what’s currently thrumming with need in your hand. You stumble slightly coming closer to him, where your elbow rests on his knee and your left hand eases onto his thigh to stabilize your form.

“Look into the camera.” Austin’s command is stern and it slides off his tongue with a force that you comply with without a lick of protest. As your mouth opens and your tits press against his leg, you daringly look up into the camera lens through your lashes and bring his swollen tip inside. He’s hot and heavy on your tongue, spongy and throbbing in a matter that you try to widen the entry so your teeth will be out of the way. The contact has Austin slam his fist into his couch cushion, an action to keep himself in the continued position. If he listened to his instincts, he’d be pushing your head down until you choked on him.

“Deeper… until you can’t anymore.” Tension collects in his muscles holding himself stationary, crescent indents creasing into his palm from how taut his fist is clenching into itself. His short, blunt nails stop it from stinging as much as it would if they were long, but everything is being drawn like a bow to accommodate your lethargic pace descending on his length. Never mind how your tongue proceeds to curiously swipe at him with every inch glissading into your mouth, his cock twitching against the miniscule mounds of your tastebuds. And while all of this feels like a sensory overload at this snail’s race, the part that persists in aggravating the difficulty of being immobile and ignoring his own insisting pleasure is how you defy his order and stray your eyes from the lens to lock them with his cerulean that he bets appear royal from the lechery traveling throughout him. He can see himself in the reflection of your eyes, his jaw slightly agape from every breath he’s consciously exhaling and inhaling back in. When he focuses past that, he notices the dilation of your pupils, how glassy and moist they appear because of the long forgotten television light in the background. The silhouette of your body bent over him is a shape that will haunt him going forward.

Eventually, you have to stop. You stop with a mouthful of cock, clinging closer to his leg, drool seeping from your bottom lip down the underside of him, the remaining girth not inside, that he feels seep to his balls. Austin unfurls the fist of the hand not holding the camera to finally part your hair with his digits, the pads of them shifting against your scalp as the pleasant and silent job well done. He registers how you hum on him, it vibrates your teeth on his skin and he shudders watching you lean into his fingers to relish in the praising contact. In a turn of events, he’s learning about you and what you like just as you’re learning about him.

“Almost all of me, not bad. Not bad at all. But let’s see if this is really your limit.” You blink at him bewildered to what he could mean, but he gives you no time to figure it out. Austin’s hold on your head reaffirms itself as he faintly lifts his hips to drive himself in further and immediately, you sputter around him, your eyes shutting and your neck straining in the instinctual motion of trying to pull away from him. Your lips drag only a centimeter backwards because of how Austin keeps your head in place, throat tightening and constricting him to where he lets out a satisfied moan. Soft tears collect in your eyes, the very same ones you blink up at Austin in a plea to be released, but he only returns said plea with an open-mouthed grin and a rising and falling chest.

“I guess it really is your limit… but that’s where it’s supposed to be.” He leans forward from the couch to get closer to your face. He can tell you’re barely getting over the gagging he just subjected you to. “You should take it until you feel you’re about to choke. The closer to the throat, the better. And don’t worry about the gagging.” His fingers nuzzle against your scalp, affectionately massaging your head despite the predicament being anything but gentle. Still, you flutter your lashes at him in a hope that shows you’re still game. You’re still up for the task, even with the praise, and even with the manhandling. “It feels good for me, looks good too. You’ll have to watch this back to see what I mean.”

Eventually, Austin’s fingers deviate from your scalp and tangle themselves into your hair. They’re still relatively close to your head, enough to hold the reins on your hair and guide you according to his desires. “Suck, princess. Suck my cock like a good, little slut.” His words are nothing short of bold and exploratory at best, but your eyes glaze over, and he can tell you’re close to downright humping his leg from how much you’re unashamedly enjoying yourself. You suck at him as he told you to do, whimpering in the process because Austin pushes his hips up again and tests your gag reflex. Taking the hint, you begin to move your head along with how you’re sucking him, back and forth, tongue gliding under the underside of him, your hand steadying at his base to ensure he wouldn’t slip out. “Yes, yes, fuck, fuck me… T-that’s it. From your choking point back to the h-head. J-just like you did with your hand.”

That seems to be the right form of technicality to direct you with because you move and bob your head faster on him. It’s harder to suck at the same time of the movement, but you work diligently to suck in tandem with your lifting and falling head, spit trickling and slicking him up to where it coats over your fingers sitting at his base. To try and alleviate the sticky feeling forming, you wiggle your digits, a motion that Austin moans louder for. For him, it’s further friction on him, a neglected portion of him not being stuffed inside of your mouth. The remainder is attended to with a clumsy fist, but in his eyes, something’s better than nothing. You attempt to pump him at the same time that you’re bobbing on him and he rewards you with a harsh tug of your hair, his head thrown backwards to moan towards the ceiling.

“Fucking n-natural. Come on, close… lemme fuck your throat.” The restraint he’s practiced is beginning to evade him. His hips are meeting some of your pushes downwards and he can tell you’re struggling to keep up when that occurs. That bit of speed, coupled with the reverie of always wanting to fuck your mouth, he needs it to hit that sweet edge, the one that he knows is going to be colossal for him because it’s never felt this fucking good. For someone who’s never sucked a dick in her life, you’re quickly getting the hang of it. But that didn’t matter. He could help you practice tenfold, whenever and wherever, he didn’t even fucking care if it was in front of Fabian—your mouth was made to take Austin’s cock. He wonders if your pussy was made for him the very same.

He can’t possibly receive audible permission with his dick in the way. He also doesn’t want to pull out being on the brink of an orgasm. Fortunately for him, you look up at him through wet lashes and slowly remove your hand off his base, both of your palms planting onto his thighs. It’s your way of being receptive, something in your irises conveying that he could go on with what he requested and he doesn’t hesitate to do so.

Using his hold in your hair, Austin pistons his hips upwards and presses down on the accelerator to deliver that extra bit of speed and momentum he requires. The tip of his cock meets organic flesh with every thrust into your mouth and the back of your throat tickles to the point of where you cough around him and grasp his wrist to slow him down, and he does, but he continues with the force he has. He pushes himself until he smothers your gag reflex, tears sliding down your cheeks as he holds you in place and gives you no room to breathe from your mouth since it’s filled to the brim with his girth. “Relax your throat, it’ll be easier.” He brings his hips backwards, his cockhead suctioned by your lips. He senses your hesitation to try and pull off of him, a denial of simple instinct to breathe since he’s made it clear that you need to stay on his cock at all times during oral sex. He appreciates your resistance to place your needs first and your insistence to prioritize his, a lesson in cock sucking that he’s been more than happy to literally drill into your head.

“Your mouth’s for fucking—not for breathing. B-breathe through your nose.” Austin’s hand slides along the side of your head to cup the curve of your jaw into it. He focuses his gaze and the camera on your features, mascara running down the paths of the tears that passed through. Your lips are crimson from how swollen they are, from the suckling and from how he’s pried them open and stretched them to mold over his length. Even that tiny heart from earlier has been ruined. It’s smeared at the bottom and resembles a miniature mountain more than it does an accented heart. As he observes you with a glowering intensity in his eyes, he repeats his actions from before and lifts his hips until the tip of him approaches the hilt once more, your eyes filling with more tears. You struggle to meet his gaze this way, going as far as closing your eyes to endure what he’s bestowing upon you, fresh tears falling freely down your cheeks, some falling to his thighs, others caught by the palm caressing your face. His thumb runs up your cheek to catch a free falling tear before it can make it past the hollow of your cheekbone. The pink blush you powdered to the area coats the pad of his thumb along with the moisture of the tear he rescued from its dive downwards.

It’s shuddering and shaky and you’re trembling to where the uneven bone of your kneecaps shift uncomfortably on the floor, but you breathe through your nose as Austin instructed you to do before, all while watching as he brings his thumb to his mouth to suck off the blush and the salt of your tear away. You whine at the sight, your tongue somehow flicking despite the lack of room in your orifice, but the light-headed feeling collecting in your skull floats away with the filtering of oxygen returning back. After that initial breath, you’re inhaling heavily through your nose, straining yourself to stay coherent and suck on him with every pull backwards. Once he realizes you’re not going to pass out on him, he resumes that brutal pace from before and slides his hand from your jaw to the back of your neck. Your hair strands are wildly flying with every thrust of his hips, some sticking to your face due to the wetness gathered there from light perspiration to the tears that have dropped by and are still dropping by since relaxing your throat isn’t as easy with Austin downright pounding into your mouth. He sees your thighs squeeze tight from this angle and the image pops into his mind of how wonderful they would feel squeezing at his head as he slotted his tongue deep inside of your cunt. He could use that and his fingers to spread you as wide as possible for him so he could fuck you just as he’s fucking your mouth. By the looks of it, you’re already delirious from how much he’s giving you. You’d probably go cock dumb if he split you open with his dick and played with your little clit.

“I’m so fucking close, princess, fuck, fuck, fuck,” he gasps, holding himself off, unable to stop from maneuvering in and out of you in the process of how fast he’s talking. “I-I’m gonna’ cum in your mouth. Swallow what you can, Jesus Christ, fuck—”

Your whimpering has actually transitioned into what Austin can only describe as desperate moaning around his cock, the sounds vibrating on his girth, the sounds alerting him of how much you want his cum in the place he promised to do it. It does him in, everything does. From how wrecked your face appears to the images littering his mind every time he closes his eyes to raggedly take in air to the absolutely delicious feel of your warm mouth wrapped around him and the tightening of your throat each time he pushes himself past your breaking point, he hits his peak sooner than he would like and compresses his hold at the back of your neck to manage your position completely still. Cum spurs from his base to his tip, gushing out to meet the taste buds at the back of your tongue and the wall at the back of your throat. You promptly gag in reaction from the thick liquid drowning you and from the overload of the max capacity sitting inside of your mouth. Part of his cum leaks from the corner of your lips, but you wrestle to swallow what you can with his girth still pulsing and spurring with more to glaze your mouth with.

Solely when he’s finished does Austin release your neck, panting above you, coming down from his high. He almost drops your camera, but in his haze he somehow manages to remember his task and he props the phone up to film your face, groaning as you remove him gently and cough sporadically from the heaving and hauling you just endured. He glances down at his cock, a ring of that berry gloss near his base as evidence (along with all the spit) that it was you who just gave him the blowjob of his life and not some whore who’s sucked 1,000 cocks over. That truth causes his cock to twitch, another desire quickly coming over him to bend you over his armrest, but his orgasm has given him some clarity and he remembers that you asked for this and not for penetrative sex. Assuming when this was for your own practice would be crossing that line further and he wouldn’t do that… not unless you asked him again.

“Make sure to get all of it,” he grits, his voice raspy from the moaning. He leans to use his thumb again, pushing the drops of cum that fell past your lips into your mouth. From how you were just spluttering in your recovery, he doesn’t expect you to drape your tongue over his thumb the way that you do, but as tonight has proved, you’re astonishing in action just as you are in looks. He clears his throat when you’re done, his back falling into the couch as exhaustion melds into him as it did right before all of this began. He believes he’s going to get a good night’s sleep after all.

“Did… Are you good? Did any of that help?” He would’ve dwelled on coming up with something better than what he said, but he was having trouble considering how you just wiped his damn mind blank.

“Yes, Austin,” damn, if he thought his voice was raspy, he was poorly mistaken. Not only do you look like you just sucked his dick, you sound like it too. “That was… I liked how… informative you were. I can’t wait to watch this back.” He gets one last shot of your face flitting over with an excited glee and mirth before you retrieve your phone from him and stop the recording. He’s not sure what he was thinking you would do next, but it certainly wasn’t how you all but sat into his lap and threw your arms around his neck. His body is humming with endorphins, too many to make any efforts to push you off of him, but you are dangerously close to smashing him from where he was still hanging out of his sweats.

“Hey, hey, careful, brat—”

“Sorry, sorry!” You jut your hips back to ensure his safety, a glance taken down at his half hard cock that leaves you timorous as you look back to his face, as if you didn’t almost beg to have it in your mouth and then moan like a slut for his cum. It makes him want to do it all again. “Thank you, Austin. I mean it. I’ll send you the video so we could both have it and so you can give me some tips if you have any more.”

Not only did you almost beg him to suck him off, but you thanked him for it. He’s so hung up on that part that he didn’t register what you said about sending him the video. His brain stops dead in its tracks thinking about having that kind of footage on his phone to incriminate him further (but satisfy him during those particularly lonely nights) and so he doesn’t notice how close you’re getting to him until he feels your pillowy lips puckered and smacking against his cheek for a light kiss. He blinks, positive his face is rosy from the exertion and from how you just heated him up from a simple peck on the cheek, but you just smile and scoot off of him to stand on your feet. You’re already replaying the video and he can hear the depth of his own voice floating away behind him as you announce “I’m going to take a shower!”

He doesn’t attempt to stand up since he’s still coming down from his climax, the images from what just happened colliding together in his mind, flashing so bright to the point where he believes he’s never going to be able to forget this happened. The weird part is how unguilty he feels over the whole ordeal, contrasting greatly to the guilt he felt before from simply letting you stay here in his apartment with him. He wants to make some kind of sense of it, but he’s also been drained of energy and sanity, something he thinks he’ll have more of tomorrow morning. He’ll be suitable to contemplate all of this after getting some much needed rest, letting that weight down to lift up to his shoulders the next day instead. He’s grasping at the couch to help himself up when he hears a distinct ding from his own phone neglected at his coffee table. Austin gulps reaching for it, having a feeling of what the notification might be. He’s proven right opening your bland message thread together, the thumbnail of the video being the image of you on your knees in front of him.

He presses play at the same time that he hears the shower head turn on from his bathroom.

#austin butler #austin butler imagine #austin butler x reader #austin butler x you #how to get over your ex #l4l.writes

[l4long-winded]

iv. the distraction of rising temperature

summary: now that you and sherlock are at a friendlier standing, it's time to explore more of your friendship. or whatever it is (cavill!sherlock x afab!reader)

reflection: i am terribly sorry that this took so long. i just wanted everything to be how i envisioned it and of course, i ended up overdoing it. i have that nasty habit of rereading and editing until i have a singular part. then, i do it all again with the next and the next until it becomes far too much. i intended this series to be shorter, but alas, some things are not meant to be. please enjoy and feedback is always appreciated and encouraged!

warnings: seamstress!reader, conflicted!sherlock, reader has a nickname, flirting, fluff, close proximity, mystery brewing, cursing, longwinded descriptions, overthinking, sherlock is in deep denial, suggestive language, alcohol consumption, enola makes an appearance, off screen character death, somewhat slowburn, enemies to lovers, sherlock observes reader, a fitting with far too many boundaries crossed, sexual tension, victorian era, eventual smut (please let me know if there are other warnings i need to add)

word count: 10,023

previously: mr. wright and jane austen

( this work has been cross posted on ao3 )

This is the second time you face the golden 221B in front of you and it’s definitely different than the first time, less animosity, about the same nerves, much more intrigue. After you received your book from Sherlock, he seemingly began to appear frequently around the building and around your shop. Only a couple of days passed by and you could recall seeing his recognizable frame through the window strolling by, through his voyages to and from his flat in which he would say nothing but give a slight nod of his head in acknowledgment. He certainly must know you found the book, but it’s clear he won’t approach unless you do so first out of respect for your boundaries. While his note conveyed his desire to restart fresh, it didn’t mean he would go out of his way to assume what you decided to do. Something about that sustained reverence is what pulled you to his door this afternoon, this being the sole amount of free time you’ve had in these troubling times. You’re steady as you breathe in and out for some extra confidence and to quite possibly shake some traveling nerves (it barely helps).

Once you dictate yourself as ready, you rap onto the door and take a single step backwards when you remember how much space Sherlock takes up on his lonesome. The last time, when he insulted you and disregarded your noise complaint, you felt rather small not just by his words, but by your stature compared to his. He loomed over you and narrowed his eyes in a way that caused you to lose hold of your convictions for just a moment, but the moment was enough for him to gain the upper hand, a shark smelling blood in the water. You’re convinced he’s not going to purposely agitate you this time around, but you also don’t want to accidentally toss him another opportunity. You’re hopeful he’ll be true to his word, not stupid enough to drop your guard. You still barely know anything about each other and strangers took advantage of people all the time.

The door comes open with a haste you’re not prepared for and you can’t help but take a half step back from it in reaction. Your hands capture themselves in front of your abdomen in efforts to balance yourself, as if the pull of the door would suction you inside and awkwardly leave you standing in Sherlock’s flat without invitation. It’s hardly a dramatized action since you feel the air surrounding whip around the rebellious strands of hair framing your face. Except, as you ground yourself and shuffle your feet, the person standing in front of you is very obviously not Sherlock, but a young woman with familiar features. Her eyes widen upon recognition of you, her head turning back to look into Sherlock’s flat for what appears to be answers.

“It’s a woman,” she calls back and it gives you the indication that you probably interrupted the two from some sort of discussion. It would explain her haste and why Sherlock’s marching over in what you surmise is in a mix of impatience and irritation. “Were you expecting a seamstress?” The girl asks as Sherlock gets closer and you can see him pause as he gains a better look at you, your eyes locking onto his despite the young woman sitting in between the two of you. From your peripheral vision, you could see her engaging in careful glances switching back and forth between you and Sherlock, an attempt present to decipher what the correlation to one another is since Sherlock’s offered silence. His gait’s suffered a stop enough for the girl to draw on her inspection and you’re not prepared for her scrutiny while seemingly under his.

“Give us a moment,” he finally utters, his eyebrows pinching together in the process of giving the young woman a simple, yet loaded, look. You may not know what’s going on here, but you’re aware of this look having been on the receiving end of one and having conjured it on your own. She seems to quickly catch on and she backs away with her hands up from the door and floats into the flat without further questions. Sherlock seems grateful for her lack of continued communication as he steps through the frame and shuts the door behind him.

“Excuse my sister… Enola’s fully prepared to insert herself into anyone’s business at any time if she becomes interested in any form.” Ah, his sister. That’s what looked so familiar about her. Well, you probably should have guessed it from how she quickly came to the conclusion that you were a seamstress. You suppose that such observational skills run in the family. That dynamic must be insufferable to be around, but you came from your own version of chaos in a family. There’s hardly room for judgment.

“She’s curious, huh? Sounds like she’s trying to mimic someone we both know.” You’re teasing, of course, teasing with an inkling of truth to your choice of words. To your amusement, you watch in real time as Sherlock exhales and musters a small smile.

“Trust me, she doesn’t want to be like me,” he replies and you ponder what he could possibly mean for a second since Enola’s enthusiasm proved to you in a shortened time frame of just how much she matches Sherlock. Your hesitation to ask about it warrants him to continue speaking. “You’re not at work at this hour?”

Somehow, he’s accounted for your schedule and you’re taken aback for an interlude. He doesn’t budge or comprehend how this information is not common knowledge so you have a feeling he’s not trying to be all knowing or superior. It’s perhaps something that just happens to him whether he’s in control of it or not. “No, I didn’t have too much to do today so I decided to take a break. I actually wanted to speak with you about something, but it seems as if I’ve arrived at a bad time.” You don’t want to interrupt him and his sister and could always return later, but Sherlock waves it off and crosses his arms.

“It’s not a bad time at all. Please,” he presses his arms forward into the air, “continue. I trust you received my informal letter?”

“That I did… Thank you for the book. I love it. I have my own copy back home, but I failed to bring it with me during the move. It’s already helped immensely.” You can’t stop yourself from beaming thinking about it. It’s been something to turn to when your brain’s overloaded or your hands are itching for relief from remaining in the same position for so long.

“I’m glad to hear it. Jane Austen’s work doesn’t get nearly enough attention. I assume it’s because people are too behind to understand.” He shrugs his shoulders because it really is an unfortunate circumstance. While she has some traction, much more than when she was alive, you and Sherlock both know why that traction isn’t grander or why she didn’t become acclaimed until later on. It’s a stark elephant in the hall, but you choose not to address it and shake your head to change the subject.

“Well, as much as I appreciate the gesture, I do hate how you’ve ruined the mystery of your name. I was going with Shoulders Holmes before you had to add your input.” Your hands come up to your hips in a mock scolding. It achieves the desired effect as Sherlock releases his arms from the hold against his chest and he stares at you with levity in his eyes. Him and his damn bluer-than-blue eyes.

“At least you had something to go off. I’ve referred to you as Lily for a while now.” The confession causes your hand to come up and grasp your charm out of habit and you want to release it the second you do, but you endure where you are as you try and study his face. It’s not the most terrible nickname since you enjoyed flowers, but it’s come out of left field.

“Not bad,” you exhale, “but my name is Y/N. Or… if you wish to call me Lily, I wouldn’t be opposed.” You grasp the charm tighter, though you’re not sure why you feel inclined to do so. You shouldn’t care so much what he would think of your name as even if he doesn’t, it’s not something you could change. His validation ought to mean nothing to you, and yet as you stare up at him, you feel relief flood your system as he repeats it to you. Warmth nuzzles across your back and shoulders and you could swear the same comes up to hug the apples of your cheeks, all because Sherlock saying your name is a new experience and sensation you didn’t know you could be so fond of. It eloquently rolls off his tongue and his tone is one of approval.

“So, we’re officially acquaintances, then? No longer mortal enemies who glare at each other from across the stairs?” You can’t help but laugh at the dramatics of the situation. But looking back, glaring at each other or refusing to acknowledge one another did seem to be the pattern you both fell into. You feel sheepish about how you acted, but from his body language, he also seems to be ashamed of his antics. His question was genuine as much as he intended it to sound as if he was joking.

“Correct, officially acquaintances. And I, your new acquaintance, have a proposal for you.” You watch as confusion flits over Sherlock’s face. The lines he does have are there from thinking, you can tell. “I want to help you with your investigation.”

This is not what Sherlock expects. His eyebrows raise in incredulity as he regards you. The movement in his shoulders tells you how he’s restraining himself, but you can’t tell if it’s from celebrating or expressing to you of his surprise. He persists in his stillness, quiet befalling the both of you as you look into the depths of his eyes and he traces them at different points of your facial structure and then different points of your body. Normally, a man gazing this intently at you would cause you to protect yourself and hide away, but you can almost see the cogs shifting inside of Sherlock’s head. He does what most don’t and that’s think before he speaks, analyze before jumping to conclusions that may be wrong. Considering how he’s done that before and it ended with you two disliking each other, you don’t say anything to properly give him his time of contemplation.

“I sense a condition of some sort incoming,” he decides on after a beat and you fidget with your hands because he’s right, you do have a condition. You didn’t come up here for just a friendly chat as you had days to mull over what you wanted to say to him and how you two could move forward from starting off on the wrong foot.

“Right,” you begin, and you know he hears that too often, “I want to help you with your investigation, but only if you come down to my shop and allow me to fit you for something. You don’t have to buy anything, I’m not trying to be bought,” you reassure him, “but I also could use some more business. What I’m implying here is that we could help each other out.”

Sherlock is still again. He doesn’t display to you much besides that recurring restraint. You don’t know how he could possibly read you and you could barely do the same to him, but it doesn’t stop you from trying. You stand taller to appear more confident in this and you wait for him to say something with bated breath. There are a number of ways he can respond and you lean more towards rejection than anything else. You wouldn’t be angry if he refused this altogether, there’s nothing obligating either of you to each other just because you’re now standing on common ground. He wants to say something, you can see it playing at his lips, but it’s difficult to dwell on because suddenly the both of you lightly startle hearing Enola’s voice through the door, “I have places to be, Sherlock!”

The impromptu rushing has you falter. You’re sure he’ll wave you away now, but he doesn’t create any rampant motions. He simply looks at you one last time before he speaks, “I’ll think about it.” That’s all you could ask of him since the task isn’t the most conventional of sorts. It came to fruition because of how you didn’t recognize his gift as a full reason to forgive him for his past behavior. There’s also something particularly sleazy about the idea of Sherlock presenting you with a gift of your liking solely to encourage your succor in his work, a light test behind asking him of this. By how he didn’t immediately leap at the opportunity, you’re guessing his heart was in the right place and cease those questions burdening you, the ones asking of his intentions and morals.

You depart thereafter with a polite dip of your head, one he mirrors before he watches you retreat to the stairs. It’s when you’re out of his sight that he enters his flat once more, his sister sitting comfortably in the chair at his desk. He needs to talk with her about areas being off limits because this is becoming ridiculous at this point.

“It’s about time,” Enola chimes, which in turn leads to Sherlock rolling his eyes. He resumes what he did before you knocked on his door and that’s tending to the map in front of him where Enola marked off new spots for him to travel to. They helped each other from time to time and she would soon be off embarking on another adventure he would wind up worrying over with the dangers of the world in his head. He’s examining the map with a comical magnifying glass, too busy immersing himself back into the work because he doesn’t want his mind to stray to you. Lately, it’s been doing that more than he could handle and such a detriment in focus must be tended to accordingly. While you hold the fabric he’s chased for ages now in your possession, he’s treading lightly since any interaction with you might further cloud his head. This is a phenomenon he’s not used to.

“You could use a new tie,” Enola says, breaking him free of his current task. He attempts to imagine she’s not sitting there to continue, at most shooting her an annoyed glare. Still, he can’t completely ignore her. There’s a reason she said what she said, why she chose those certain words, why she’s lying because she knows he has an impressive tie collection.

“I could’ve sworn I’ve talked with you about eavesdropping.” He doesn’t notice her stand until she reaches for the magnifying glass from him. He stands at his full height and looks down at her, again in agitation as he watches her continue on with his task. It’s like she knows he’s trying to corral his thoughts towards this subject to not stray away against his best wishes.

“I’m just making an observation. If you’re going to a fitting, why not?” Sherlock refrains from scoffing. He didn’t decide to attend yet and here Enola goes acting as if he has a plan set in stone to visit you at your shop. It confirms her eavesdropping, but he doesn’t want to give away any more information than that. Enola cannot know of how much you’re in his head, how he accidentally fell into a repetition of observing you from afar, how he wrote you a note and sent you his copy of Persuasion by Jane Austen. He knows his sister and she will just get the wrong idea. He knows what this may look like to her and that could be farther from the truth.

“... She’s pretty.”

It’s the last thing Sherlock anticipates for Enola to say. While she regularly institutes new ways to catch him off guard, this is not one he could have accounted for easily. His ego alerts him he could have prevented this had he just given more thought to what is lurking through her young mind, but alas, it’s too late for him. She’s said her piece and he now has no choice but to scrutinize it deeper than it needs to be. He doesn’t want to explore anything to do with that factor or anything relating, but Enola’s robbed him of his decorum and magnifying glass, left him a foreboding entity standing at his own desk with nothing to do but think back to how you stood before him just moments ago. You and your imperfect hair pinned to your head save for the defiant strands that love to dangle over your eyes, you and your fluttering lashes that you’re unaware almost whisp to your cheekbones from the length and fan, you and that cheeky smile adorning your lips when you say something teasing or sarcastic.

Enola’s observation is not unprecedented or incorrect. As much as he wants to declare to Enola that you’re indeed unpleasant to look at, he can’t bring himself to do so. You’re attractive, he’s known this already. He didn’t need Enola’s opinion on it. Especially not since such an opinion has led his head to recall the curves within your facial structure, the slope of your neck, how the lily of the valley rests right above your accentuated chest, how the corset cruelly punctuates your hips almost as if they’re beckoning in a pair of hands to rest upon them. These are the thoughts he wishes to avoid. They’re distractions to him and his work, they make his palms feel clammy, his fingers twitch on his desk as he imagines the pair of hands referred to on your hips as his own. This hasn’t happened to him before. He doesn’t know how to approach it or push the less than gentlemanly images beginning to flood his mind.

Thankfully, Enola passes him back his magnifying glass. “Earth to Sherlock,” she says and he’s centering himself back to this reality. He merely gives her a look before he returns to the map. He won’t dare say a thing. Enola’s too much like him and she would know something’s bothering him inside whether his comments were negative, agreeable, or neutral. It’s not worth fanning the flames of her active imagination.

You’re at the front desk busying yourself with checking off commissions and reworking invoices on parchment paper. Mrs. Thomas is there again at a nearby chair resting her feet before she goes home. She’s attended this shop often and you would regard her as a friend by how much you see her if it weren’t for how she’s a paying customer and how her closeness with your father wrote any of her actions off as mourning and pity in your eyes. You don’t want to necessarily see it this way, but it’s difficult not to with how she always seems to smile at you with sympathy lurking in her pupils. As much as you appreciate it, you’re tired of people looking at you with emotion rather than respect since you’re running this shop on your own. Even before, your father may have done a lot, but it’s you who’s created clothing under your former roof with your mother and sister. You don’t think that credit will ever be rightfully handed to you with how everyone cautiously addresses you.

The sad part is that each time it happens, you are hit with the painful reminder of how your father is gone. You’re already constantly thinking of that on your own and it follows you to your work since his last name is plastered on the building and sewed into the tags of the clothing you design. It’s bitter icing on top of the cake for your (his) remaining customers to come in here and talk to you about it or subconsciously bring the fact forth with how they maneuver their facial expressions towards you. Running on fumes is not easy at all and it’s harder with complex emotions involved.

The bell to your front door rings alerting you of a customer walking in. Their steps are heavy on your floorboards and there’s about three taken until you lift your head to view who’s entered your establishment. It’s those broad shoulders you’re sure you could recognize from kilometers away, his face a bit weary as he takes in the area of the shop for the first time inside instead of searching through the window. He walks to you slowly and instead of allowing this awkward gait to greet you at your desk, you round the obstruction and meet him halfway on the path. He pauses in front of you and you’re unable to suppress the grin forming on your features in surprise and disbelief that he came so soon. You thought he would take longer to think about what you offered, perhaps a few days, not mere hours.

“Pardon me,” he begins, “you wouldn’t happen to know where I could possibly be fitted for a tie around here, would you? My sister instructed me how I was in dire need of one.” Much like your own grin is growing by the second, as is his with his emboldened statement feigning cluelessness. You tap your chin in pretend thought as you look up at him, one arm tucking beneath your elbow across your chest.

“Ah, you have a wise sister. You’ve come to the right place. We have a large assortment of ties. Is there anything specific you’re searching for?”

“Whichever you deem best,” he responds almost instantly, his face leaning towards yours in the process for just you alone to hear. It’s a curious endeavor since there’s only you and him and Mrs. Thomas sitting in a chair. It’s then that Mrs. Thomas reminds you both of her presence, “I thought you wanted to commission more than that,” she booms out. She can be loud for an older woman.

You glance back and forth between Mrs. Thomas and Sherlock, then. You didn’t know that they knew each other and by the look on Sherlock’s face that crosses for a split second, he seems alarmed. It quickly passes through and then he’s impassive all over again.

“Yes, you’re right. I wanted to commission a, um…” his eyes scan momentarily, a sign that he’s trying to think fast that you know Mrs. Thomas won’t notice, but you do, “a vest” he decides. “A vest and a suit jacket.”

Not taking the hint that this is more than he’s bargained for, Mrs. Thomas laughs. “Might as well be fitted for the entire suit! Don’t you think so, Ms. Wright?”

Mrs. Thomas holds an unusual expression you haven’t seen before, a genuine and beaming smile that reaches her eyes and erases the sympathy from them that you consistently detect. You’re not sure what she’s doing, but instead of dwelling on her, you pivot to bring your full attention to Sherlock. It’s transparent to you that he’s hiding something, though you feel as if it’s more for Mrs. Thomas then it is for you. Still, you might as well have some fun with his visit. It’s not like you had a line of customers to dawdle on.

“Why, Mrs. Thomas, you are correct,” you can just see how Sherlock narrows his eyes at you in a warning, but despite this, you continue and hook one arm into his, now side by side, “Let’s do an entire fitting and then we can discuss that commission of yours, Mr. Shoulders.”

Sherlock fakes a smile at you, it’s tight lipped and you know this is not what he wanted, but he goes along and waves his goodbye to Mrs. Thomas who is finally standing from her chair to leave. She lingers watching you two disappear into a backroom.

“I did not agree to this,” Sherlock mutters, almost petulantly. It sounds foreign coming from such a deep voice.

“But here I am agreeing… Come on, it’ll be over before you know it. Remove the items on your torso besides the undershirt, please.” You half expect him not to listen, to put his foot down and ask for the tie again, but to your surprise, Sherlock blows a breath out through his nose and then he starts by ridding off his jacket sleeve by sleeve. You feel rather smug by his obedience, but you don’t wish to stop him through this, so you leave him to strip as you said as you go to retrieve your measuring tape and return with fresh paper for your pen and inkwell. When you return, you’re met with Sherlock undoing the current tie sitting at his neck. It slips free and the shirt is as poofy as a falling parachute through the sky.

“Erm… that shirt’s rather… large on you,” you don’t know if that’s the correct word. It seems as if it fits and yet it doesn’t, extra fabric bunching at his arms and waist. You tilt your head examining it and Sherlock takes a glance down to assess what you may mean.

“I’m aware,” he mutters. “I have trouble finding correct sizing and I don’t necessarily make the time to have actual appointments with tailors. Some things fit enough, nothing like a glove.” He shrugs his shoulders and it’s obvious to you he’s reserved himself to this way of dressing. For the most part, he didn’t do a bad job. He dressed elegantly and his other items seemed to fit him accordingly, but the bunched up fabric was for sure going to hinder you in taking his measurements. Because of this, you know what you have to do, and your fingers nervously wind the tape around your hands as you stare at him almost abashedly.

Noticing this, Sherlock looks at you quizzically. “What?”

“Sherlock, do you mind… removing your shirt? It’ll be easier to take your measurements that way, but if you don’t wish to, you aren’t obligated.” You’re already pushing him further out of his comfort zone and how he probably thought this would all go. You can see his hands flex at his sides, quiet as he stares forward and visibly ponders what he should do in this situation. You wouldn’t blame him if he rejected it entirely and put his tie and vest back on, strung his jacket along his arms and walked out of this invasive nature. It shouldn’t be this awkward, it never is with other male clients, but there’s a palpable energy between you that neither of you understand. Each step towards each other in any setting feels like a step too far, but always in the right direction.

He says nothing. You wish you could see past the flesh and skull in his head to truly capture what he may be thinking, but eventually, he whispers, “Very well, then,” and he starts at the cuffs. He unbuttons them gradually, and he glances at you once before he starts to tackle the buttons at his torso. One by one, they come undone, pectoral muscles displayed, a patch of hair on his chest that you had not expected to be there from how clean shaven he keeps his face. From every masculine element about him, it’s something you should’ve probably guessed. That and the swell of muscles in his arms that you didn’t regularly encounter on men around, such that bulge as he slips the white garment off of him completely. He turns away to discard the item with his other clothes, and then he’s left vulnerable standing in front of your full body mirror. He doesn’t look at himself. He keeps his eyes on you, waiting for another direction perhaps.

“Thank you. Let’s start with your arms.” You must carry this out as confidently as humanly possible even with the stature of Sherlock taking you a bit aback. Like a professional, you have him shift his arms out to measure his wingspan, the width of his back rather prominent to you at this moment since he is by no means a small man. You’re timorous as you measure around his biceps, as you catch the scent of his musk and tobacco standing this close by. You alternate between stretching your tape out at his limbs and then moving downward to write off the numbers each time. It’s an intimate affair as much as neither of you would like to admit it, and all that can be heard is the sound of each of your breathing. Not wanting this to be cumbersome, you try and find your voice literally kneeling before him while asking him to adjust his legs. Fortunately (and unfortunately) for you, his trousers are concealing him and it’s less inconvenient on you than when you tended to his torso.

“So, you spoke with Mrs. Thomas about a commission, hm?” You mark off the measurement with your thumbnail and then jot it down.

“Technically,” he admits. It bewilders you further. You stand so you can wrap the tape about his waist, one hand behind his back feeding it through. His warm skin touches your fingers. You’re face to face with his chest and neck here, but you ensure your eyes stay on the tape measure. You’re unaware of how he’s examining the top of your head.

“Technically? What’s technical about it?”

“Well, I wasn’t asking about a commission from you.” This is enough for your head to snap up. Your hands are still firmly on the tape measure around his waist, locking him in position to be this close to you, to be centimeters from this boulder of a man as he stares down at you with sincerity in his eyes. He’s literally so close that you can feel the heat radiating off of him. Those nerves from earlier are recollecting in your veins holding his steely gaze, but you don’t make any efforts to depart after his confession.

“You were asking… about my father? Why? Did you know him?” You should let go of the tape, but you don’t have the number yet to do so. Letting go just to wrap it back around him would be redundant. This isn’t any better since it’s trapping you practically against him, minimal distance between the two of you that any onlooker would confuse it as some kind of flirtatious bout, his naked torso feeding into the hypothetical guess. You stay where you are, blinking up at Sherlock who shakes his head back and forth.

“I did not. I just noticed that you were here alone so often. It made me question who Mr. Wright was. And so I came up with a bit of deception to tell Mrs. Thomas on her way out one day. It wasn’t exactly a pleasant conversation.” While honesty is easy for him to undergo, he does seem ashamed of his actions. The corner of his lips quirks for a second and it clicks for you that he knew about your father’s passing. And if he knew about your father’s passing, then it had you questioning his motives again. You want to give him the benefit of the doubt, but you hate this kind of subject.

Slowly, you look down to mark the number and then write it onto the pad of paper below. Having that be his last measurement, you detach from him and sigh out in displeasure as you look over the other measurements you’ve taken thus far. “So you got me that book out of pity,” you note, the excitement in your voice drained out from yet another person giving you special treatment you never asked for. “You asked about him because you thought he would help with your investigation since I wouldn’t, didn’t you?” You’re disappointed and you don’t bother to hide it. His cold exterior melting away so abruptly suddenly makes sense now. For a moment, you feel like a fool.

But Sherlock doesn’t allow this to last long. “Yes and no,” he replies and it leaves you puzzled. You stare at him from the side. He’s grabbing his shirt and slipping it back over himself, but he’s still looking at you in the process. “I thought that Mr. Wright may help me with my investigation, yes, but I also wanted to know if you ran this establishment by yourself. I guess a part of me knew that already, but I’ve never been one to carry out without confirmation or evidence.” He leaves the shirt open, the hair on his chest trailing down still very much visible. He conceals more of what makes him a man underneath those professional clothes, the clothes of a proper gentleman and a proper detective, but it’s not any less distracting. “Now, I don’t wish to offend you, but I did not know your father. I had little reaction to the news that Mrs. Thomas broke to me. But I knew you. I didn’t get you that book out of pity. I did it because I misread you.”

He buttons his cuffs somehow without struggling. You’re used to watching men and women alike grapple with said buttons because of the transition between left hand and right hand. You don’t think he’s ambidextrous, but much like other things about him, he’s most likely perfected it in a way where there are less steps, where there is less of a scuffle. You pay attention to this because his words are different from what you’ve experienced during your time in the city with a plethora of people coming to and from your shop. They hold weight because they’re about you, not about anyone else, but you and how you feel. It’s strange to be so known in the eyes of someone you met more than three weeks ago, but it’s also paradoxically freeing to be seen in a light free of that shame that’s haunted you since your arrival.

“I’ll… I’ll bring you that tie.” You settle on, a bit overcome with emotion in this instance from your thoughts bouncing to your father, his passing, the overwhelming “support” everyone’s extended out to you, and how Sherlock has given you what you’ve been craving for a long while now, and that’s validation and transparency. You don’t want to face him with the sting of tears in your eyes so he does appear to be confused as you walk away from him, but in your movement, you take heavy breaths to pull yourself together. It’s only when you feel secure in your features that you move to pull a royal blue tie into your hands. You’re sure it’ll bring out his eyes and he hardly uses color from what you’ve seen in his attire.

Soon, you remerge into the room, and Sherlock’s hands are politely cupping one another behind the small of his back, his shirt now fully buttoned. He’s still not looking in the mirror, the floor his choice of perspective, but with your return, he shifts his eyes up to your face and a thoughtful expression forms. He extends a hand out to you, but you raise your own to stop him.

“May I?”

He falters. You can tell he’s juggling whether he should allow you to or not, but in due time, he lowers his hands back to where they were before behind his back. It’s the slight nod that permits you to walk to him, which you do and you upturn the collar of his now wrinkled shirt for the access necessary. His pupils follow your hands with every movement and they only shut when you lift the fabric over his head to lay it around his neck. You situate both ends and Sherlock involuntarily takes a single half step forward from the light tug, his abdomen brushing against yours. Both of you hear the hitches in your breaths, and you could swear his adam’s apple bobbed from a light gulp, but neither of you choose to comment on it. You busy yourself with maneuvering the tie into its correct loops. You try to ignore how awfully domestic it feels and how your heart thuds harder in your ribcage.

“Your heart’s beating fast,” he says, that matter-of-fact tone as present as the day you met him. You forgot that your chests are pressing together and you rectify it by stepping that half step backwards that Sherlock took forward. He’s sturdy this time and doesn’t budge.

“It’s the temperature here,” you lie. This seems to appease him since he doesn’t say anything else about it, to your relief. You slip the knot upwards, one hand holding the tail, the other not stopping until it reaches his neck. Normally, you’d pull away from the client and have them view themselves in the mirror. Since this is not a normal time, you stay there in that position, your fingers against the cloth against his neck. His pulse is resting right into them and by how his jaw sets, you know he’s aware of what you’ve discovered and what you’re about to say.

“Your pulse is—”

“It’s the temperature here,” he parrots and you can’t even fault him for it because you used the same line. His wit may just hold a candle to yours. The speeding pulse introducing itself with your digits remains this way as you gaze at Sherlock. He doesn’t make any efforts to push you away and you don’t stagger backwards even if you think you should. It’s obvious to the both of you that you’re riddled with nerves and this is not an ordinary encounter nor an ordinary fitting. Eventually, you release the tie and step off to the side to maneuver out of his way. His stare follows you, but he soon removes that to walk to the mirror and view how the tie looks on him.

“Not bad, Lily,” he says.

You hide your smile behind your hand as you meet his eyes in the mirror. You were right, the tie enhances his irises. “Blue’s your color, Shoulders.”

It’s late at night, Sherlock paces the length of his floor, cautious in each step since he did not wish to alert the tenants below of his confusion and distress. Or more so, he did not wish to alert you. He’s refrained from playing his violin at such late hours in consideration of you and it’s well past the time that you’ve arrived home from work. He chose not to discuss the fabric he needs for his investigation and opted for it to occur tomorrow. He didn’t want to put a dent in whatever it was that was going on between the two of you since he usually transformed into a different person in detective mode. He’s been told he’s a pain in the ass to work with and it all has to do with the fact that he’s not a team player whatsoever, but someone who does everything by himself. He plans to get that over with when the time comes in his efforts to not completely scare you off as he has done to others in the past. You’re new to getting along with each other and he would like to keep himself from ruining it, a prophecy he holds in his head as a possibility since he is the reason for his lack of approachability. For once, for reasons he doesn’t understand, he would prefer to maintain a friendly status with you rather than antagonistic, or worse, estranged. Don’t ask him why that would be worse, he won’t answer.

Although he will see you tomorrow and he will most likely receive another piece to aid him moving forward, it didn’t stop him from trying to think about the details of the murder. They’re swarming his head all over again and he’s reliving his arrival at the crime scene to see if there’s anything he missed. This would be easier on his brain if he could just return back to the area, but of course, the police force wouldn’t be too keen on letting him reenter. Many officers hold resentment towards him and his intellect because of spite and envy and they don’t appreciate the proud aspects of Sherlock’s personality. Details stand out to him, almost perfectly outlined in paintings of what others deem as muddled colors. A man like Lestrade may display his appreciation for Sherlock’s talents and inevitable solutions, but there’s always the matter of ego to contest. A man’s ego in the fit of the “game” is fragile, especially when another’s wit and ideas are involved, superiority pouncing on what already is insecurity and vulnerability. Men in positions of power such as these hold, in Sherlock’s eyes, the most amount of emotion because they allow their arrogance and pride to corrupt their performances. While they’re in competition with Sherlock, Sherlock is in competition with himself and therefore it ensures the progression of his self growth, a means to always expand on what is already extraordinary.

But the unnerving fact of all of this despite these truths is how Sherlock’s pride still gets in the way. He stubbornly avoids the veracity of his arrogance because even if he did accept the claims of others in terms of his self-conceit, it doesn’t erase the many accomplishments he’s done up to this point. There are more to be consummated, just like this case in particular that refuses to let him sleep and refuses to let him think about anything else in his life, the basic essentials to survival sometimes neglected as a result. Forgetting to eat and nourish himself is not the ideal way to go about everything and really, nutrients would surely help him think better, but it’s how his brain is wired. It will linger on a subject until he can carve a path to the answer, until he can properly close a case and contribute a difference to the world the best way he can. This is his benefaction. Where others still trace as their purpose, he knows he’s in the thick of his own and this slump will be hurdled over as he’s done to other slumps of yesterday.

A clumsy sort of sound disrupts his current brain’s thought cacophony, knocking out of rhythm drawing his focus to his door. He’s not expecting anyone at this hour, especially not this late, so he’s bewildered to say the least. He stares at the door with intrigue, hopeful he imagined the distorting noise as he did not wish to halt his growing examination and introspection, but soon enough, the knocking continues and he knows it won’t disappear unless he answers the door as the person behind intends the impromptu meeting. He sighs his displeasure, but ultimately adjusts his loosened tie for the sake of etiquette, saunters to the door and brings it open after counting to three in his head. Sherlock’s not sure what he expected or who he assumed would be standing across from him, but it certainly wasn’t your back covered in alabaster lace, soft knots of fabric at each arm dangling from where you’ve adjusted the ties accordingly. He swallows with difficulty, especially noticing how your hair isn’t in its usual condition shapened by various tools and pins. It’s loose and free and no longer haphazardly restrained, bold in movement as you turn your body towards him upon your recognition of the door being open. He swears there’s brilliance in your eyes as they widen at him, light up in a fashion he cannot fathom correctly from how they also appear to be bloodshot, almost as rosy as the tint currently coating your face and chest.

“Sherlock!” You beam, definitely with more excitement he’s ever been confronted with in your presence, “I thought I heard you pacing. I knew I wasn’t the only one in this building who couldn’t sleep.” As you lean towards him, your hands find the left and right sides of his door frame. Your cheek presses into your shoulder as you regard him with commendation in your glowing features, innocently acute joy settling in your smile and the crinkles around your eyes. He doesn’t understand how you could be so happy to see him nor why you’re even standing here before him this late, but he does catch how you’re swaying from one side to the next on his frame he feels an odd surge of resentment suddenly for.

“Pardon my asking, but what are you doing here at this time of night? Is something troubling you?” It would explain the time and lack of warning for this visit, and he almost furrows his brows in preparation for some kind of predicament to heed, but those inclinations soon fly out the window as your palm reaches out to lay on his chest in efforts to appease the situation and dull the severity he’s approximated. He’s aware of how his heart rate picks up at the contact, but it’s hardly a point of contention or even importance because it’s occurred to Sherlock how you’re leaning not for warmth or security, but because you’re off balance. The disturbance of your equilibrium leads him to watch your body language and hear your speech pattern which sounds oddly slurred now that he’s thinking on it.

“No, nothing, nothing is troubling me,” you reassure with a pregnant pause in the air. You knit your eyebrows together as your smile falls into a thin line. “I suppose the apparent absence of company is troubling, but other than that, everything else is swell. It’s just the loneliness.” Your hand comes off his chest to wave off the worry simultaneously as your other hand departs from Sherlock’s door frame. In doing so, you stumble forward and almost fall, but Sherlock’s stature does not allow for that to happen. Seeing that he’s a force in front of you, his arms piston out to hold underneath yours, and under another circumstance possibly coupled with deep embarrassment, you would most likely lean away and apologize. Instead, you linger into his touch, weight shifting into him that is both nothing to Sherlock and yet so critically eminent to him all the same. He can smell something florally sweet coming from you and something so distinct that his conclusion of your visit is strengthened and emboldened by it.

“You’re drunk,” he conjects aloud, having already deciphered it internally. It’s relevant and obvious and sure it took him little time to figure it out, much less than the average person would take, but there’s a small portion of him that feels foolish because for a split second, for a split second he believed you were overjoyed to see him simply because he was him. Your drunken stupor’s seeking another’s companionship and there’s nothing particularly special about it being Sherlock since he was clearly the closest nearby.

“It would seem that way, but nonetheless alone!” You protest and concurrently confirm his thoughts at the same time. “You’re aberrantly strong,” you continue, your hands grasping at his tight forearms without a hint of shame. He almost slips and grins, but he keeps his impassive nature and gestures towards the hall. If he takes a few steps out, he could see your flat’s door from here. There’s not much distance to cover to get you safely back into your home.

“I’ll walk you back to your flat.” Sherlock’s willing to help you back and is fully prepared to do so, but you’re quick to rip your arms from his hold. The motion almost sends you flying backwards which then prompts him to shoot his arms out to further guide and protect, but fortunately, you find your footing and attempt to stand taller, squaring off your shoulders and raising your chin.

“You can’t make me go back there. If I see that damned sewing machine again, I’ll… I’ll put it out of its misery!”

A threat of this sort should not bother Sherlock whatsoever, especially not one threatening an inanimate object that not only he does not use, but one that couldn’t affect him directly no matter its livelihood or destruction. Yet, as he takes in your stance, your folded arms over your chest in your sincerity, drunk or not, he knows you’re not at all bluffing. You’ll break it and your sober-self will experience the consequences of such, your work no longer able to be attended to unless you replace the item. It’ll greatly inconvenience you and you have quotas to fill, clients to attend to, a business to run that he cannot authorize to be blundered due to one night of overindulgence. You work too hard and he couldn’t let you throw that away just because you drank a bit too much in one sitting.

“I suppose I could see what our other neighbors are up to. There’s bound to be someone awake, right? Maybe Mrs. Hudson is having a late night tea,” you ponder audibly with one finger coming up to thoughtfully caress your chin. You solely take one step to venture further into the hall, but Sherlock’s arm captures your waist this time, firmly planting you in your spot in front of his door frame. Before you could kick your feet out and push him away (you do neither, and make no efforts to do so, really), he levels you with his gaze and tilts his head to his flat. He feels your hands lightly grasp his arm in place at your waist. If he didn’t know the context of this situation, he would’ve guessed your arms would then wind about his neck for some kind of intimate dance. This does not happen, his mouth dry from how close this contact is nonetheless. It’s almost as overwhelming as how he had to hold still as you prodded him for measurements earlier in the day, except it’s you who’s in a vulnerable position with an inebriated dilemma and an insufficiency of clothing. Such insufficiency that others would deem improper, and worse, take advantage of, your reputation around bound to be soured due to everyone’s perception of what it meant to be a gentleman and what it meant to be a lady. This behavior is in defiance of that perception and he couldn’t enable you to make a fool of yourself, he wouldn’t forgive himself. He does not trust people.

“I have tea,” he clarifies after he realizes that there was too long of a bout of you two just locking eyes. His arm slowly snakes from where it’s encircled about your waist, but a helpful hand maneuvers to your back to further help you steady yourself. Your smile soon returns and your walking continues, this time into Sherlock’s flat.

“Why didn’t you just say so?”

One arm lays over Sherlock’s broad shoulder, the other reaching out to touch trinkets that Sherlock gingerly pulls you away from. From what he can tell, you’re in awe of what you see the more you two explore the length of his floor. He gently deposits you onto his loveseat to sit down.

“Here you are,” he says and then stands towering over you. You’re gazing up at him with the same admiration and astonishment that you did when you first entered his home and he chooses to ignore it. “Stay here and try not to touch anything. I’ll get the tea brewing.”

He’s reluctant to leave you behind seeing as his work is in disarray, his own form of organization that could easily be misshapen by your currently all-too-curious hands, but he also fears that you’ll do something worth regretting if he doesn’t entertain you and keep your attention in some way.

“Sir, yes, Sir,” you nod, one hand saluting him. “I won’t touch anything.” Normally, he wouldn’t believe someone with sticky fingers under the influence, but it’s different with you. He finds it easier to trust you when you smile at him like that and the amusement from how you then sit on your hands certainly skews his judgment.

Despite the slight nerves urging him to stay here with you, he soon finds his kitchen and pours water into a pot. He drank tea earlier so there’s not any that he can grab for you at this time at his disposal. It’s not much of a hassle placing the pot onto heat, his teapot checked for the proper leaves he would soon pour boiling water into. He wonders what preference you may have, if you favor lavender, or perhaps peppermint, or maybe something simple like black tea. He wonders if you drink some in the early hours of the morning to properly wake up, if you brew some for the sake of having something warm to drink with a fresh muffin for breakfast, if you rely on it to calm your rapidly beating heart in the plight of increasing stress. Sherlock wonders if this what you drink when you’re reading, if it’s what you nurse with cautious sips in the midst of stitching pieces together, if it’s what you turn to when you cannot sleep and you decide that you might as well find some kind of warmth in it with blankets that aren’t doing their job, and dreams that won’t make slumber any more appetizing. He wonders if it’s stopped assisting like it used to and instead of taking distance from it to rebuild its charm and tease tolerance, he wonders if it was easier to turn to wine. If it was easier to drink more and more than to sit with thoughts that won’t dare to leave you alone, if each gulp of the alcohol silenced them and buried them until the consciousness of being alive is nothing but a ghost of a whisper you cannot hear unless you’re left without hobby, task, or another human being. If you become painfully aware of how you have no one but yourself in moments like these. Oh, he wonders, he wonders. He wonders if you’re just like him.

It’s the distant sound of a door opening and closing that stops him from wondering. His head snaps up from staring at the surface of the water and immediately, he attends where he left you. When he sees you’re no longer sitting at his loveseat, he pivots to the front door and then marches over to it. Swinging it open, he glances back and forth to see if you left. Knowing that you’re drunk, you couldn’t have possibly gone far, but you’re nowhere in his sight and the thrill of panic sets into his back. It’s the creaking floorboards in his flat that drive him to step back inside, the door shut behind him as he tries to follow the muffled sound for as long as it carries, which isn’t long. Still, it leads him into his bedroom and he cautiously infiltrates the area only to find his made bed now in disorder with you settled underneath his comforter. Your hair fans out in a halo on his pillow as you bury your head into it, your eyes lazily coming open to meet his gaze.

“I told you not to touch anything,” he says, his voice quiet. It’s lacking sternness, but he can’t really be upset since he brought you into his flat with little control in your hands. He’s taking in your size in comparison to the size of his bed.

“I know, but,” you yawn, your eyes shutting in the process, nose wrinkling, a cushiony soft sigh falling from in between your lips that he equates to the hymns he’s heard inside of churches, “I got tired waiting for you. Your bed’s awfully comfortable. I think I might actually fall asleep.”

He didn’t take long in the kitchen, he knows that. However, he’s been drunk before, he understands how those minutes alone must’ve felt like centuries to your own devices. He should be shooing you out and getting you downstairs to sleep in your bed, but something in him can’t seem to do so. You look so… peaceful. It’s not like he was going to make any use of his bed himself since he planned to think all night, at most falling into his sofa for an hour or two of rest. With how much you’ve been through and how you’re constantly working yourself to the bone, Sherlock’s long acquiesced to having you spend the night here before he’s rationalized it.

“Go ahead. You deserve repose.” Sherlock comes closer to adjust your/his pillow. He doesn’t want you to wake with an uncomfortable kink in your neck or aggravate the impending migraine you’ll certainly wake with. He’s in the middle of fluffing, his wrists above your head, when he feels your hands grasp at them. Your hold is dainty, barely there, but he could feel it scorching him. He restrains himself, from doing what he doesn’t know, as he looks down into the depths of your pleading eyes, as your right thumb maddeningly strokes the sliver of skin unprotected by his shirt’s cuff. He confronts the drought in his mouth again and it travels to his throat the longer you keep your hold on him. An onlooker would surely be apprehensive to this image. His brother would absolutely lose his mind if he knew about Sherlock’s abandonment of propriety with an unmarried, unbetrothed woman laying in his bed. He would absolutely lose his mind if he knew of the thoughts mashing together in Sherlock’s head, one after the other, of how he could climb in and join you.

“Lay with me,” you breathe, almost as if you could hear those pesky fantasies clouding his mind. He grips the pillow tighter as he considers it. The prospect, as much as he wants to deny it, is tempting. Something… something in him wants to accept it. Something in him wants to settle in beside you. It’s that something, whatever the hell it is, that causes him to release the pillow from his tightening vise. He brings his hands to himself, your hold physically easy to depart from, but the willpower to pull away is what he had to muster. He feels out of breath.

“I… I-I have to go get your tea.” He points to the door and thankfully, you don’t say anything else. You just watch as he leaves the room.

What you don’t see is how his back leans into the door after he closes it, a large hand coming up to scrub down the length of his face. He’s not sure what came over him or why he even dared to consider laying with you in such a state. It’s wrong. For many reasons. The main being how you’re not sober and unaware of what you were asking for. This is not something he can do. It’s against everything he stands for. Whatever this is, whatever realm of feelings you’ve awakened within him, they have to stop. It’s unknown, thought manipulating—a distraction. Before you came in, he was busy with work. Work he has to get back to now that you’re taken care of and out of his sight. His hands clench into fists and then stretch out at his sides as he ventures back to the kitchen and pours the hot water into the teapot. He picks out the black tea leaves at the end and stares at the door to his bedroom with a tray in his hands.

He’s ready to tell you how there will be no funny business and how this is purely a friend looking out for a friend, nothing more or less, as he brings the door open… only to find you asleep, one of his pillows firmly in your arms, half of your face pressing into it. He sighs and eventually brings the tray to his bedside table. You’ll need it when you wake up.

Maybe he’ll tell you tomorrow morning.

#henry cavill #henry!sherlock #sherlock holmes #sherlock holmes x reader #enola holmes #l4l.writes #beyond answers #the distraction of rising temperature #henry cavill x reader

[l4long-winded]

I need to see that filthy one right about now

oh, babe, it's still in the editing stage! it's ROUGH, but since you popped up in my asks, here is a snippet (18+ only):

Your tits make for just-a-great-a canvas, he’s found. If he props himself above your abdomen, one knee at the side of you, his foot drawing up at the other until his leg is at a right angle, his tip always lines itself at the inception of the valley between your breasts. He cautiously focuses his aim to paint your cleavage while resisting the urge to stripe your neck and chin, earnestly observing slack-jawed as some dribbles over your nipples. Would you judge him if he sucked his cum off while tonguing around your areola as a dual effort of cleaning his mess and pebbling your nipple to frenetic attention? The uncontrollable sounds of pleasure petting his eardrums don’t signify negative judgment, but Carmen wouldn’t be Carmen without believing in his self-doubt. And you, you fucking angel, you wouldn’t be you if you didn’t chase and stomp that out until its light dimmed. Sometimes that comes through words of reassurance and patience and other times it’s as simple as your howl of his name or your digits tugging his unkempt hair further into its mad man state.

#carmen berzatto x reader #l4l.writes #l4l.carmy #<3 <3 <3 #this fic will probably wind up longer than it should