"John? John!"
He would have recognized that deep, toe-curling voice anywhere. "Sherlock? I'm in the medical stacks."
A pale, slim shadow rounded the corner of the university library, and there he was: the seventeen-year-old subject of all John's filthy fantasies—which he kept mostly in check, thanks. As a medical student, John Watson was much too old to take advantage of the famed underage phenom of campus.
Who just happened to be, on occasion, too bloody beautiful to look at.
"Don't you have class?"
Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Boring. I need a book about spider venom."
John paused in putting away a podiatry text. "Why? Have you been bitten by a spider recently?"
"Don't be silly, John." Sherlock reached out one of his delicate hands and began plucking books from John's grip. One by one, he shoved them back on the shelf.
"Oy, I need to put them in their proper place." John worked at the library sometimes to help pay for school, which was how he'd met Sherlock the year before. Sherlock was only sixteen then and—embarrassingly—already capable of inspiring John's lust … and the lust of several other students, as John had observed, none of whom probably knew Sherlock's actual age.
See, John often justified his carnal interest in the younger, younger man with the fact that Sherlock seemed older, what with all his advanced classes and encyclopedic mind. He dressed older, too. Not many teenagers wore expensive pressed button-downs and dress coats with those dark jeans that hugged his ass just—
Nope. John Watson kept himself mostly in check, thanks.
Because, no matter how he seemed, Sherlock wasn't older. He was seventeen, obvious in the way his sweet, angular face had no wrinkles. In the way John could so easily make him blush. In the way he sometimes smelled like the peppermint candies he stole from the corner shop if the owner wouldn't let him buy cigarettes.
"John, I need the book now," he whined, and a deep crinkle appeared across the bridge of his nose.
John chuckled. "God, you're a child."
"I am not." Sherlock pouted.
John laughed some more before shaking his head and reaching his hand up to the back of Sherlock's neck. Much stronger than Sherlock, he pulled the younger man down toward him and pressed their lips together—a quick kiss, then another—and smiled up at his friend who he would absolutely love to bugger and whose mouth always tasted sweet.
But nope.
From what John could tell, Sherlock was a virgin. A seventeen-year-old virgin, compared to John's vastly experienced twenty-three years.
It would be ages possibly before John felt morally all right taking the virginity of the mad genius, but a kiss didn't hurt anyone—and John only kissed Sherlock when he was being especially adorable.
A rare sign of affection, Sherlock wrapped his fingers around John's and allowed himself to be guided to books about snake venom. As soon as he had one, he rushed away without a goodbye.