He wakes up some undetermined time later and realizes several things at once: he's inside a land dweller's habitation; he's warm and dry, lying on some sort of couch with thick coverings atop him; and he's starving.
Also, along with human legs he now has an external penis, and it's making its interest in being utilized known to him in no uncertain terms.
"Fuuuuck," he groans, dramatically throwing one arm over his eyes. It's a human term he learned from a fisherman - Grady? Gavin? he never can remember the man's first name - he'd saved from drowning during a particularly bad storm. (An act that had nearly gotten him banished for life until his brother intervened and had him sent on this six-month surveying-slash-factfinding mission instead.)
It's a rude word, crude and - frankly - common, but it perfectly expresses his current state of frustration-unease-arousal.
He shifts uncomfortably, doing his best to will away the unfortunate erection he's been cursed with, but nothing works, not even mentally cataloguing his brother's collection of pearl-encrusted corals, the most boring thing he can think of. Instead, the memory of the kiss he shared with her - Molly - flashes across his memory, his lips tingling as if they were still pressed against hers, and he finds himself savoring it before scowling and - with a great deal of difficulty - thrusting the memory away. Not helping, he admonishes his subconscious, to be rewarded with the distinct sound of mocking dolphin laughter echoing through his mind. No being could manage mockery quite as well as a dolphin, even one conjured up by his own mind. As if in sympathy with his lips, his erect penis throbs and he directs his scowl toward his nether regions. If he was in his true form, this wouldn't be a problem. Why human males don't have sensibly tucked-away internal genitals like his own, far superior, species he has no idea, but it seems rather foolish.
And damned inconvenient; not just because he's used to his intellect controlling his baser instincts, but because its current state only serves to confirm the truth he's feared from the moment he regained consciousness in a human woman's arms: He has a soulmate. Her name is Molly Hooper and because she's human...so is he, now.
At least until he manages to impregnate her - or so he hopes. He's never really retained any of the specifics about soulmates, only enough to realize what was happening to him when he met Molly. Will he remain human or be able to go back to the sea in his own form some day? Will the child be human, Mer, or some hybrid form? He shouldn't have deleted those particular lessons, he thinks ruefully, but to be fair, he'd never expected them to be applicable in the solitary life he'd cultivated even before his exile.
"Oh good, you're awake."
He peeks out from beneath his arm, lowering it and flashing her an insincere smile. The quicker he gets this over with, the quicker he'll be able to return to the sea, where he belongs. "I apologize for my earlier rudeness - and, er for kissing you without permission," he says, being sure to lower his voice to its deepest, most seductive rumble. "I was in shock." He waves the edge of the orange blanket draped over him as if in demonstration.
"Oh, right, yes, of course," she stammers out, a faint blush riding high on her cheeks. "That's, that's all right, it was my pleasure - I, I mean, I didn't mind." Her blush deepens and she hastily changes the subject. "I hope you don't mind that I brought you inside, but it seemed like the right thing to do under the, um, circumstances." She glances down toward his lower half in silent reference to the fact that he now has legs, her eyes widening and her blush deepening as she recognizes his current physiological predicament even with the blanket covering him. "Sorry!" she squeaks out, then turns and makes as if to leave the room.
Quick as a striking shark he reaches out and grasps her wrist in one hand. "Don't go," he says, grimly determined to get this whole procreating nonsense over and done with. "I'd like to thank you. For saving my life." He kisses the tip of her finger, being sure to give her his most smouldering look from beneath his lashes as he does so. "I've already deduced that you don't exactly find me...repulsive." Another kiss as she stands, frozen, gaping down at him through wide (deep brown) eyes. "And you're not exactly repulsive yourself."
That last, he's surprised to realize, is the truth; if anything, it's an understatement. He finds her enormous brown eyes and upturned nose and long, wavy brown hair appealing. Her trim, petite figure isn't quite up to the voluptuous standards of his own species, but he finds those differences appealing as well.
While he's been lost in his appraisal of her, she's tugged her hand free and backed away. "Look, whatever-your-name-is, I'm sorry if I've given you the wrong impression, but I don't just jump into bed with the first good looking merman I meet!"
He leans back, eyeing her critically. "Your elevated heart rate, labored breathing, and the noticeable dilation of your pupils would imply otherwise, Molly Hooper. And it's Sherlock," he adds with a (he hopes) disarming smile. "Sherlock of the Holmes Clan. Incidentally," he continues before she can speak, " how many mermen have you met before me? Is this a common occurrence? Because normally my people don't come this close to shore."
"You're my first," she admits, but at least she's stopped retreating. Good. "I mean, there are all kinds of myths and legends about mermaids and of course there's the legend of Atlantis, but my God, this is-it's amazing, actually!" Her eyes light up and she plops down on the seat opposite him, leaning forward eagerly as she speaks. "I have so many questions, I don't even know where to begin! How do you survive underwater? I didn't see any gills before you, um, turned human, I guess? Or is it just because you're on land, is that it? Legs on land, a tail in the sea? Like in that movie with Daryl Hannah and Tom Hanks? How does that even work? I mean, it seemed very painful, do you go through that every ti-"
He silences her with an upthrust hand in her face, causing her to rear back with a yelp of surprise. "Are all humans this inquisitive?" he asks. "You have even more questions than the fisherman I saved from drowning!"
She gasps, clasping her hands to her mouth. "That was you? Greg wasn't just concussed?" she whispers from behind her fingertips. Her eyes have grown impossibly wider, rounder, with her surprise. "He said a merman saved him but no one believed him!"
His brother would say there are no coincidences, that the Ocean is rarely so lazy, but unless all humans know one another (doubtful, being that there are so bloody many of them) it can only be a coincidence that Molly knows...Greg, did she say? Interesting, but hardly pertinent except that it proves he's no danger to her or other humans. Or at least, he hopes she'll take it that way.
She continues to pepper him with questions, and gradually, despite himself (and his suddenly hyper-active libido) he begins to answer them. She's genuinely interested in everything he can tell her about himself and the world he inhabits beneath the ocean's surface, but seems especially fascinated by his anatomy. The fact that she's studying landwalker medicine explains her interest, but he can tell, rather smugly if he must be honest, that it's not just a clinical interest. That, despite her shying away when he offered sex as a way of saying thank you, she is very much interested in eventually, how did she put it? Oh yes, 'jumping into bed' with him.
It surprises him, how quickly he starts to enjoy the conversation - and not, as some brothers not to be named might snippily say, just because her obvious interest flatters his ego. Nor is it simply because of the biological imperative to mate that has crashed over him; no, he's genuinely interested in her as a person, in knowing more about her and her life.
So they talk, and they laugh (another surprise, he hasn't laughed so much since his youth), and she feeds him and helps him into warm clothing left by the previous caretaker of the lighthouse, and his penis sullenly subsides once it realizes it's not getting its way. (Not yet, at any rate.)
When exhaustion finally overtakes them, she leads him to the 'guest bedroom' to sleep. She makes sure he's comfortable, her hand lingering as she smooths the comforter over his chest (he's learning many new human words today!), but she pulls away, blushing, when he tries to capture her fingers and pull her down to join him. "Stay?" he asks, but she shakes her head and goes off to her own bed and he grumpily pulls the blanket over his head and falls swiftly into sleep.
He awakens only a few hours later when he feels a soft, warm body slip beneath the comforter to lie next to him. "Sod it," he hears her mutter as she grabs his hand and places it on her (small, but pleasingly soft) breast. "When am I going to be propositioned by a sea god again?"
Her mouth is on his, her kisses tasting sweetly of the wine they shared with the simple dinner they'd shared earlier, and he's eager to explore every single inch of her. (His penis, he notes in some dim corner of his mind, definitely approves.) He presses his lips to her throat, her shoulder, the tops of each breast, then takes one nipple into his mouth and sucks lightly. She gasps, arching beneath him, and he scrapes his teeth across the hard nub. This pulls a high-pitched squeal from her lips, but not of pain - no, Molly Hooper is no fragile female, wanting only soft caresses and cautious touches! He already knows she's stronger than she looks, as witnessed by the way she'd manhandled him into the lighthouse while he was unconscious, and he's encouraged by the way she tugs at his hair and wraps her legs around his waist, encouraging his passion with her own.
He surges up to kiss her again, teeth clashing, tongues tangling, and feels a surge of purest lust coursing through his veins like molten lava. She turns her head, nips sharply at the lobe of his ear, and he sees a burst of color behind his closed eyes, groaning with pleasure as she reaches down between his legs and strokes his erection. Her hand may be small but her grip is firm, and he twitches in her grasp, desperate for more.
"Say please," she purrs in his ear before once again nipping it between her sharp white teeth.
"Please," he gasps out, wondering what happened to the stammering, blushing woman who'd been embarrassed by the sight of his arousal - or to the bright, eager, curious medical student with whom he'd dined. Now, he wanted nothing more than to feast on her - and for her to do the same for him.
As if divining his thoughts, she shoves him backwards; he lands on the bed with a startled 'oomph' and then she's diving between his legs, her sweet little mouth on the head of his - what's the human word? Oh yes, 'cock'. His eyes roll back in his head, his hands clutch the coverings, and it's all he can do not to thrust upwards, grasp her head and hold her in place so he can fuck her mouth until he comes.
That thought brings him up short; this isn't about mere pleasure (no matter how pleasurable it is), it's about biological imperative and getting back where he belongs and so he (reluctantly) places his hand on her head, tugging gently at her hair until she releases him with a wet popping sound that does things to him. "Too much?" she asks cheekily, and he responds with a growl as he flips their positions so that she's the one sprawled across the bed and he's the one diving between her legs. He may be inexperienced in such matters, but his body knows what it wants and his mind is content, for once, to allow instinct to rule. He finds the pearl of pleasure almost immediately, slippery and musky and oh, yesssss...delicious.
Molly lets out a deep, heartfelt groan and digs her fingers into his curls. He shudders with purest pleasure, and sets out to make her feel the same, tongue and lips and even fingers delving between her slick folds while she writhes beneath him. In between panting breaths she calls out his name, swears like a sailor (he's heard them, they swear a lot), and eventually, satisfyingly, screams her pleasure as she climaxes. He can taste it when she comes, the salty musk sweetening just the slightest bit beneath his tongue, and crawls up to take her in his arms as she shudders through the aftershocks of bliss.
He doesn't allow her to fully recover; he's a man on a mission - a very, very pleasurable mission - and he eases himself between her legs, instinct once again coming to the rescue where intellect falters. He teases her entrance with the head of his cock; she moans out his name and spreads her legs wider as he eases himself inside her.
The sensation is overwhelming, even better than the feeling of her mouth on him. Better than anything he's ever experienced; better than the illicit substances he's consumed in his past (all in the name of scientific experimentation, of course), better than the bottle of human wine Lestrade had left for him by the jetty on the other side of the cove.
That bottle had been part of the reason he found himself here; he'd consumed a large portion of it, overestimating his capacity for strong drink (to be fair, he rarely if ever had the opportunity to test said capacity) and causing him to lose track of where he was heading. He'd been aiming for the open sea and had ended up here, instead. Well, not here here, of course; not here in Molly Hooper's guest room rutting like a pair of sea otters during mating season, but here at the lighthouse where she was…
The feel of her legs wrapped around his waist, her body thrusting impatiently upwards beneath his, brings him out of his own thoughts and back into the delicious, delirious present. Legs, he decides distractedly, are incredibly useful when it came to sex.
His stamina, it would appear, remains undamaged by either his accident or his transformation; with every thrust, every tidal surge of his body within hers, he can feel his pleasure growing, mounting, but he only crashes through an intense, prolonged orgasm after Molly's achieved her own. Her voice, crying out his name over and over again, is music to his ears; his own roar of completion the call of a bull seal triumphing over a rival and claiming his mate for his own.
Within two minutes of rolling off of Molly's body and tucking her close to his side, Sherlock is fast asleep.
When he awakes in the morning she's lying next to him still, no longer held in his arms but close by his side, her face soft and warm in the early morning light. He studies her for several minutes, committing every detail to memory without asking himself why – and wondering how long it takes for a human woman to discover she's carrying a child. He could just ask her, he supposes, but it seems…wrong. Unkind. He tells himself he's being ridiculous, that it would be kinder for him to be honest about the reason he'd had sex with her, but something holds him back, keeps him silent.
She stirs, mumbles something in her sleep, and rolls away from him. He's astonished by the feeling of loss this generates; she's still right there next to him, he silently scolds himself, but the feeling persists. Is this another aspect of being soulmates that he's forgotten or never learned? If only he could bring up the relevant memories, but no, he's completely purged them from his mind as useless.
When he returns home, he resolves to research everything he can about the phenomenon, and when he comes back he can explain it all to Molly. She's bound to be as fascinated by their bond as she was by everything he shared with her about his people, and there's so much more he hasn't told her yet…
These thoughts bring him up short. He's not coming back once he leaves, not ever! A feeling of loss is one easily ignored, especially once there are other things to distract him. The Work will consume him again, he's certain of it, and besides, Molly will be better off without him. She deserves better than him, an outcast from his own world, a freak who'd never really fit anywhere-
But you could fit here, with her, some traitorous (seductive) part of his mind points out. You're soulmates, after all; how could you not fit here?
He breaks out in a cold sweat and rolls out of the bed. Walking, he notes abstractedly as he heads for the bathroom (humans have specific places to vent their wastes, interesting), is no longer the challenge it had been the night before. He's getting his land-legs, as Molly had laughingly put it, and that realization is what finally sends him spiraling into panic.
He's becoming used to being human after less than a day. He's becoming comfortable, and one thing he's never been is comfortable.
He sprints for the entrance to the building (lighthouse, she called it), fumbling with the handle. Flinging the door wide he runs for the water, not stopping until he's waist-deep and can dive below the waves.
He comes up for air, gasping and brushing his wet hair from his eyes and feels a sudden, stabbing pain in his legs. He curls up on himself, allowing the waves to wash over him, grimly riding out the cramps in his legs and the burning in his lungs and the slashing pain in the sides of his throat (his gills, returning? Poseidon, please be so!) until suddenly he can breathe in the salt water and his legs have fused together into his glorious tail. Without a backwards glance, he races for the open sea.
Molly Hooper watches from the shore, arms folded tightly across her chest, blinking tears from her eyes but knowing sadly this is the way it was always going to play out. "I'll miss you," she whispers. "Thank you for bringing the magic back into my life."
Then she turns and trudges back up to the lighthouse, not realizing that she'll still be here a year from now - but not alone.