Chapter Three: Le Petit Mortification
The functional design of a yurt did not lend itself to blackout curtains. As such, the morning light woke Sherlock rather rudely when it filtered inside his temporary home the next morning. Apparently, overcast skies meant very little to a structure made primarily of felt and wood.
Reflecting back on the proceedings of that day, Sherlock would later laugh at his naiveté. If only that had been the only irksome thing to happen to him.
In fact, Sherlock's rude awakening only became more so when he realized just what a compromising position he'd worked himself into over the course of a few short hours.
They'd lain on their sides in the bed, bickering over whether or not they should relocate to Sherlock's hire car. He insisted that the yurt was sound. Molly insisted that crushed bodies were not attractive things.
"I'd know," she had informed him waspishly, whispering even though they had no neighbors to bother. "If the immediate trauma doesn't kill us, the crush syndrome will. Ever seen the kidneys of a crush syndrome victim, Sherlock? Not pretty. Not pretty at all."
He'd glared at her shadowed form. They were huddled under the feather duvet, though they were hardly cold, thanks to the thick bedding, the wood-burning stove, and each other's proximity.
"Well, our kidney's are going to be pristine," he shot back, "because we aren't going to be crushed. Quit being so melodramatic, Molly."
It was a rare occasion for Sherlock not to be the reactionary one, and he secretly relished it. Until the yurt's wooden ribs groaned menacingly and Molly's foot darted forward, pinching his calf with her distressingly strong toes. He yelped, more in surprise than actual pain.
"If I die in a busted yurt, Sherlock, I swear I'll…."
"Swear you'll what?" he challenged, scooting closer to her in hopes that she would see the defiant gleam in his eyes. Also, so he could press his chest to hers, but that was irrelevant.
She'd drawn in a sharp breath when he made contact, but it didn't distract her for long. "I'll use my last breaths to compose an obituary for you. I'll send it to the Guardian, identifying you as a teenybopper."
"Go ahead. I'll be beyond caring."
"His twin loves were skinny jeans and One Direction," she intoned mournfully.
Sherlock scoffed. "I have no preference about directions. North is no more superior to south, and so on. That's not even a good insult. Try harder."
Molly sighed. "Never mind. But I do think you'll be singing a different tune when a bunch of wood beams land on us."
"And what tune is that?"
Pitching her voice low, she sang a dirge. "Ouch. This really hurts, Molly. I can feel my long bones and muscles rupturing. If only I'd listened to your sage warnings and gone to sleep in the Peugeot."
Rolling his eyes, he bumped one of her calves with his knee. "If I believed in an afterlife, I'd tell you to gloat to me then. Since I don't, however, I'll just suggest you feel satisfaction over your assumed correctness now."
"Oh, believe me, I do," she sniffed.
The yurt had chosen that moment to creak overhead, and in a flurry of movement, Molly threw herself onto Sherlock, shielding him with her body. Stunned, he lay there, cataloging sensations: the pull of her fingers in his hair where they'd gotten tangled when she'd wrapped her arms around this head, the smell the wool detergent on her jumper where his nose was pressed to her shoulder, and each point of contact with the weight of her body on top of his. The feeling of her knees, pressing into the mattress and against his hips almost made him shiver.
When a pile of wood and stiff fabric failed to crash down on them, Molly had cleared her throat awkwardly and moved away again, breaking all contact with him, to his great regret. But he also couldn't contain the feeling of warmth that moved through him as he finally registered what she'd just done. It had nothing to do with the initial shock of lust.
She was clearly mortified by the entire thing, so he only muttered a low, "Thanks for that," and knew her squeak of acknowledgment was all he'd hear of it.
By the time they'd regained their composure, Sherlock realized that the wind had abated, the rain slowing to a drizzle. He listened to the drops of water tapping on the yurt roof, thinking about his champion, Molly Hooper.
When he glanced over at her again, squinting through the dark, he realized that she'd fallen asleep.
That, or she was doing a rather good job pretending. Truthfully, Sherlock could not tell which.
Sharing a bed with Molly was nothing new. When Sherlock started using her flat as a bolthole, he'd quickly discovered that her mattress was far too comfortable to miss when deep thinking or sleep were necessary. To avoid any awkward encounters, he'd initially tried to convince her that she'd be much happier elsewhere. After all, he needed the larger bed to accommodate his longer frame. No use recrowding it with a second person.
Unfortunately (or far, far too fortunately, depending on Sherlock's sentiment and libido's wakefulness at any given moment), she'd only raised an eyebrow and suggested that the small fire escape outside of her flat might better accommodate him. Not keen to take her up on her offer, he'd decided he could ignore his baser urges and Molly would not be in his way on her side of the bed.
For the most part, he'd been right, save for a few, isolated incidents. A cold shower or two had remedied those, though, and Molly had never been any the wiser.
Their first night on the Isle of Lewis had not been difficult because they were both too tired to speak, let alone notice each other. They'd trudged in from their evening at the bothy and had hardly managed to get ready for bed before collapsing onto the bed and sleeping heavily until daybreak.
Last night and this morning were different. Sherlock had known it as he'd lain beneath the covers and had his argument with Molly about the durability of their yurt, and he most certainly recognized it now. It was painfully obvious.
Somewhere between his finally drifting off in the post-storm hours and waking in the rude, bright morning, Sherlock had moved over in the large bed. He'd traversed the considerable amount of space between his body and Molly's, stopping only when he'd reached her.
If he could have slept ramrod straight with just the length of his side pressed to hers, it wouldn't have mattered. He might have even found a way to accuse her of invading his space.
But no. It would be much, much harder to convince her that any of this was her doing when he'd wrapped himself around her so insistently. He'd moved off of his pillow, scooted down the mattress, and taken advantage of her splayed arms. The side of her soft breast rested against his temple where he'd pressed his face into her ribs just below her underarm.
That was bad enough, of course. Even worse, however, was the arm he'd thrown around her, his hand worming its way up inside her jumper, fingers curled over her ribs to hold her tightly to him. But, of course, not so tightly that his thumb didn't have free range to strum the nipple on her other breast, over and over.
Worst of all—and Sherlock wasn't sure he'd ever encountered anything worse than this—was the heavy erection he rhythmically worked against Molly's thigh, his leg thrown across hers. He could feel the damp, growing patch of pre-ejaculate on his pajama bottoms, rubbing against the sensitive head of his cock in concert with her warm thigh beneath him. The tightening in his lower back and his balls told him that he'd somehow managed to wake just as he'd reached the very cusp of an intense orgasm and a low, hedonistic groan alerted him to the fact that he was moaning in time with the rocking of his hips
Though shock has the ability to slow down one's perception of time, all of these realizations only took seconds in succession.
Sherlock had, on several occasions, experienced the effects of adrenaline in moments of fear or emergency. Perhaps someday he would find value in his definitive proof that adrenaline was not inhibited by near-to-bursting sexual arousal. But all he knew in that waking moment was that he'd never moved as quickly as he did in his scramble to get away from Molly.
He nearly backed all of the way off of the bed, but he caught himself before he landed in heap on the chilly wood flooring. Struggling to pull in a breath, he finally looked at her face, only for his heart to stutter at what he found.
She was awake.
She stared back at him, her cheeks flushed, and her chest rising and falling rapidly. The moment their eyes met, she licked her lips, and he watched her hands fist the bed sheets at her waist, her knuckles white. She'd kicked off her blankets at some point, and he could see her thighs rubbing together ever so slightly, as if to relieve pressure between them.
She was awake and… and aroused. Though his grasp of social cues had its limits, Sherlock felt no doubt about it.
His cock gave an excited twitch, as if trying to pull him back over to her, onto her, but however Molly felt about the matter, he couldn't ignore his troglodyte behavior. Whirling so his back was to her, so she couldn't see just how excited he truly was (as if she hadn't already realized, what with his sleeping body doing its best to take her), Sherlock rested his elbows on his knees, scrubbing his face with his hands.
"Forgive me," he said hoarsely, his voice deep with disuse and arousal. "Please."
Silence filled the space between them for several moments before she whispered, "Don't apologize. I'd only just woken up, too. You didn't know."
Though her dismissal left him feeling slightly better, Sherlock shoved off of the mattress, eager to end this whole, awkward interval. He muttered an excuse and darted over to the toilet area, yanking off his shirt as he moved and shoving his pajama pants down as soon as he'd cleared the privacy screen.
He didn't bother to turn on the rickety shower until he'd leapt into the tub, and he couldn't stop a small noise of surprise from escaping when the frigid water hit his fevered skin.
Despite the tidal wave of humiliation and distress, his erection didn't flag at all. He stared down the length of his body, glaring. His cock showed no reaction to the cold water, even after a minute-and-a-half standing under the spray. His mind wouldn't let it abate, not with all of its new source material.
Cursing under his breath, Sherlock looked up, afraid he'd see Molly standing there, taken aback by his continued excitement. But the coast was clear. And then he made the mistake of glancing between the panels of the privacy screen. He could just see her where she still lay on the bed, one arm thrown over her eyes.
One arm thrown over her eyes and the other… the other wasn't.
His view was limited and she'd pulled the duvet back over her. He couldn't be sure. But, oh, he hoped he was right.
Because if he was right, the hand belonging to that other arm was currently occupying itself between her legs. What little he could see of her face beneath her arm was flushed, and her lips looked damp and almost plump as she pulled in and let out heavy breaths.
Not even realizing he'd done it, Sherlock wrapped his fingers around his thick length until he felt it twitch against his palm, as if reminding him of his perfidy. He looked away quickly, trying to give her at least what remaining of her privacy.
Here he was, spying on Molly and wanking in the shower at the same time. The juvenile quality of his day just kept regressing more and more.
It only took a handful—ha—of firm strokes up and down his length (and the now-persistent memory of Molly's maybe very possibly touching herself) for him to orgasm. He managed to choke back a shout as his come spilled out over his hand, spattering onto the tub floor and sliding down the drain.
Sherlock's bones tried to liquefy from the intensity of his climax, but he firmly slapped his face to ward off a prolactin stupor. After quickly washing his hair and his body, he shut off the water, though he didn't step out of the tub until he was certain he could wrap a towel around himself without scarring poor Molly with any awkward, lingering bulges.
With that accomplished, he tied the fluffy terrycloth closed at his hips. Clearing his throat and sucking in a deep breath, he strode out into the main area, back straight, face austere.
Molly now sat upright in the bed, working a brush through her thick hair. Though her cheeks were still a little red, she looked calm and collected. And she seemed more than willing to act as if whatever-it-was-that-had-happened hadn't happened, too.
"I was wondering… if you'd like to drive around and see a bit of the island?" he asked her, and then blinked. He'd not realized he was going to make such an offer until it came out.
Molly smiled, quite happily really. "That would be lovely."
Nodding once, awkwardly, he turned and flung open the wardrobe, grabbing the first shirt and trousers his hand found in its depths. Shuffling and unzipping alerted him that Molly, too, was pulling out clothing, and he wondered if they'd have to make a mad dash to the partitioned bathing area to change. Normally, Sherlock was not one for blushing modesty, but even he had his limits.
Deciding he'd be gracious, he kept his back turned until he'd heard her move across the room and out of sight (or mostly out of sight, he acknowledged with a frustrated mutter. Is it really so hard to build a solid wall without hinges? he silently asked the high-end yurt developers).
By the time she reemerged several minutes later, dressed in jeans and an enormous cable knit jumper (she looked rather… cuddly… Sherlock noticed with keen distress) and a blue ribbon in hair, he'd moved to the kitchen area. When she reached him, he thrust a piece of heavily buttered bread at her. She jumped a little at the stilted, bashful offering, but accepted the food with quiet thanks.
He thought he'd managed to affect an air of nonchalance about the whole ordeal. Where'd that glibness gone?
"I searched the cupboards for coffee and tea. There doesn't appear to be any. Coffee or tea, that is. Not cupboards. They're right here," he said with a nervous bray, slapping the knotty wood door of one. He shook his head, aghast by his sudden impression of a schoolboy. And still, he continued to stutter, "But maybe perhaps it's possible and feasible that the bothy has some. But maybe not. You never can tell unless you… you look."
She looked at him over the bread, an eyebrow arched as she bit off a large helping. "'But maybe perhaps it's possible and feasible,'" she ruminated around her bite. A slow smile tilted her lips. "Indubitably but doubtful."
"Oh, shut up," he sniffed, moving to the door. "Let's go. Some of us would like to start our day."
"And some of us have to figure out if Schrödinger's coffee can be located."
He snorted, indignant. Grabbing his coat from a twee, iron hook shaped like a bird on a branch (he'd heard Molly resentfully mutter "anthropologie" the night before, and she'd then made mimicky, sarcastic sounds at his correction that the study of birds was actually ornithology), Sherlock tugged it on and moved out into a cold, misty morning.
Settling into the car, she turned and watched Sherlock fasten his seatbelt, smiling slightly. "Good morning, Sherlock. Did you sleep well?"
He almost gawped, but her intent occurred to him at the last second: a restart. An accord to move past any awkwardness and get on with it.
"Well enough, Molly," he said, smirking slowly. "But I do wish you hadn't insisted on staying in the yurt. I fear its structural integrity is not up the task of braving Scottish weather."
Her cackling laugh had him smiling as he accelerated away from their temporary living quarters. His mood improved as they put more distance between them and it. From there on out, he told himself, he'd face none of the stress of earlier.
Things, indeed, were looking up.
A/N: Sometimes, you just have to take awkward boners to a whole new level.
Thanks to dietplainlite for the beta!
As ever, thank you to everyone who has favorited, kudos'd, followed, and subscribed! And thank you so much to everyone who commented on the last chapter. I will hopefully have time to respond individually later this evening, but in the meantime, I truly appreciate the kind words!