Fic: Unattached, Like Me (Sherlock/Sebastian)
Well! Evidently I've stopped posting in this to some degree. Or to every degree. I'm still about on lj a little bit, but not much. And approximately 95% of that time is currently spent on the sherlockbbc_fic meme. Since it is the most chaotically prolific and enormous meme I have ever tried to navigate, read in, or write in (come back, Brooker meme! I could keep up with you with such relative ease!), and I've ended up writing two longish fills, I thought I might as well post them like real things. One of them is still a WIP, but the other one is finished! have that.
Oh also it occured to me, about 90% of the way through writing this, that what I obviously should have done for this prompt was to reimagine the Holmes/Victor Trevor relationship. Didn't think of that though so never mind
Title: Unattached, Like Me
Fandom: Sherlock
Pairing: Sherlock/Sebastian
Rating: R? I have forgotten how to rate things
Prompt: Sebastian was the type of guy who was used to having whatever, and whomever, he wanted.
A/N: I also only remembered part way through writing this that there were references in the show to them having been to what what was probably Cambridge (or somewhere similar). By this point it was too late, so I guess this is a very mild AU in which they went to a less old-fashioned Any University.
They meet a couple of weeks into the first term. 'Meet', perhaps, is not exactly the word; it implies an introduction, some kind of greeting, perhaps an exchange of information.
Sebastian is single, newly so, and, rather humiliatingly, not by choice. His reaction - which is, he thinks, fair - has been to attempt to have as much meaningless sex as possible, and a freshers' week in a new city is perhaps the most helpful environment he could have found himself in. He's already garnering a minor reputation, but he seems to be carrying off 'charming cad' as opposed to 'sleazy', which is good. He's slept with a couple of girls and one thin, freckly boy, and made it clear every time that there were no strings attached, and that was fine. Everyone's been fine with it.
Their halls are a little worse for wear, but not dreadful. Sebastian had expected far worse. After a few nights out, enough friendships have been formed that most of the flats leave their main doors propped open (against the guidelines on the laminates blu-tacked to the walls), and people pretty much come and go between them as they please. Sebastian already has a fair few friends in the flat directly above his, and there's a pretty, short-haired girl who sometimes pinches his cheeks when she's drunk, and he thinks he might be in with a chance.
He wanders up there one afternoon with nothing in particular to do - lectures started this week, and he already has more reading to get through than he feels like he's done in his life, but fuck it, seriously, it's the first week of first year - and when he peers into the flat's communal kitchen through the window on the door, he can see a figure sat at the excuse for a dining table. He's at the wrong angle to make out who it is, but he's been out with everyone in this flat already, so presumably he knows them. He pushes the door open.
"Hello!" he says.
The boy at the table looks up at him over steepled fingers, raising his head slowly; he seems to have been staring into a mug of coffee. Actually, Sebastian realises, he's never seen him before. He must be a friend from somebody's course. Or possibly, Sebastian thinks fleetingly, some kind of waif they've rescued off the street. He has a shock of dark untidy hair and a pale, almost ill-looking face, which serve only to intensify each other.
"Sorry," says Sebastian, when the boy doesn't say anything, "Don't think we've met. I'm Seb. I'm from downstairs."
"Hmm," says the boy, perhaps in reply.
This is mildly socially awkward. Enough time passes that Sebastian decides he's going to have to say something else - have a conversation with himself, if necessary, until someone less odd turns up - and he's just opening his mouth when the boy says, "Did she tell you it was because of the distance?"
"What?" says Sebastian, nonplussed.
"Your ex-girlfriend."
"My - sorry, what?"
"She said it would be too difficult to maintain a relationship over a couple of hundred miles and monthly visits."
Sebastian just stares at him, which the boy seems to take as an invitation to continue.
"But you didn't believe her. She was too nice about it, and stressed the practicalities of it too much, and you knew she was hiding something. Already cheating on you, probably, or had done in the past." Demurely, he sips the coffee.
"I don't - sorry. What the fuck."
"Oh my god," says a voice behind him, as the kitchen door swings open, "Seb, whatever he's saying, ignore him. What's he saying?"
"Nothing," says Sebastian.
The girl he's trying to nail has come in, glancing over at table coffee boy with a mixture of pity and disdain. "He makes stuff up to freak people out."
The boy sighs, audibly, and gets up. The slightly malnourished look is either enhanced or undercut by the fact he's wearing smart black trousers and a crisp white shirt.
"Back to work?" the girl asks.
"Yes," he says, and, Sebastian still staring at him, he picks up the coffee, crosses the kitchen, and elbows his way through the door.
"Yeah, well, have fun," she says, after him. To Sebastian, she adds, "He started working before term started. Insane."
"How does he do that?"
"Work? I don't know."
"No, how does he come up with the stuff to freak you out?"
"No idea."
"He lives here?"
"Yeah, he's right down the end of the corridor. Nobody really sees him." As an afterthought, she adds, "He doesn't even eat."
"Who the hell doesn't eat?"
She shrugs, and opens one of the cupboards under the worktop. There's an industrial-size packet of coffee, a small bag of pasta, unopened, and a few jars, unlabelled.
"I don't know what's in them," the girl says, darkly, "but it's not food."
*
Sebastian learns, through casual interrogation, that this boy - Sherlock - has definitely been here for the past couple of weeks too, but is just incredibly rarely seen. His flatmates think he studies Chemistry, although none of them seem prepared to swear to it; the boy with the room next to his does, however, swear that the occasional ominously explosive sound filters through the wall.
Sebastian doesn't find it odd that everybody seems to be rather indifferent towards this boy, on a personal level - if you don't interact with people, what can you expect - but what he does find odd is their absolute lack of interest. Frankly, Sherlock sounds bizarre, which doesn't make for a great friend, but does make for an interesting specimen. If they lived together, he can't assume they'd get on, but Sebastian certainly would be fascinated by him.
Also, apparently he can read minds?
A week or so later, Sebastian bumps into Sherlock, literally, at the bottom of their flight of stairs; Sebastian heading up, Sherlock descending. He's tied a scarf round his neck, dark against his pale throat - his skin looks paper-thin, but maybe it's weak autumn light - and, Sebastian notices, appears to be carrying one of his unlabelled jars. He's about to ask what it is and what he's doing with it, but Sherlock speaks first.
"You still haven't been to the library, then."
"It's fine, I'm going to get some stuff out tomorrow," says Sebastian, without thinking, before pausing, and saying, "Wait, how do you know - "
"Oh, please," says Sherlock. "Look at your bag." Sebastian looks at his bag. "New. New for this year, anyway - clean, tidy, nothing damaged. There's still a plastic loop on the zip there from the price tag. And all the corners are exactly in place, just like it was in the shop, when there was cardboard holding it in shape. Nothing bigger than a wallet's been in there. Books, certainly, would have rounded it out, put a bit of pressure on those corners. But nothing's touched them."
"Well," says Sebastian, after a pause. "You're insane."
"No. I'm right."
"I didn't say you weren't."
Sherlock smiles, very briefly, but not at Sebastian; just in recognition of the fact.
"How do you do that?"
"I just explained." Sherlock is beginning to look less interested; Sebastian thinks his attention might be returning to whatever he's going to do to the contents of the jar. He hopes he's not going to eat it. Or fuck it.
"Okay," says Sebastian. "Fair enough. You keep on keeping on. I'm going up."
"I'm Sherlock Holmes, by the way," says Sherlock.
"Yeah, so I've heard."
"Oh, good," he says, and leaves.
*
Sebastian is fascinated by him, actually. The fact that he's so difficult to stumble across only makes him more intriguing, and a couple of months go by during which Sebastian lays eyes on him only about once a week, and speaks to him even less than that. But it only takes him that long to notice that there is something of a pattern to Sherlock's comings and goings; it's not like clockwork, but he tends to head out at certain times on certain days. He certainly isn't spending his time as his timetable dictates - he spends too much time locked up in his room for that - but Sebastian knows people who have barely set foot on campus, so that in itself doesn't make him a complete oddity. Other things do that.
Physically, Sebastian thinks, he isn't conventionally attractive - too bony, too awkward, very much with an air of still waiting to grow into himself. But that's okay. Sebastian, on the other hand, is well aware he's in his prime (he's going to go steeply downhill after about twenty-five, but he's accepted that and is making the most of it). But bony and awkward can be alluring, sort of, especially when coupled with elusiveness and presumably fierce intelligence and - Sebastian doesn't know why it is that he wants to do him, exactly, but the longer it goes on for, the more he does.
"They tell me you don't eat," says Sebastian, one day. Sherlock, when he speaks, doesn't bother with greetings or pleasantries before making statements, so neither does Sebastian. Sherlock is coming in, this time, and Sebastian is heading out, and maybe he waited until he heard the door open, and the tread on the stairs, before he started in the opposite direction.
"They're wrong," says Sherlock. After a moment, he says, "I don't eat much."
"Do you drink?"
"Yes."
"Do you want to have one?"
"What," says Sherlock, "Now?"
Sebastian shrugs. "Yeah. I'm meeting someone in the coffee shop over the road. But not for fifteen minutes." He isn't meeting anybody.
Sherlock shrugs too, and follows him back down the stairs.
Across the road, Sebastian buys them two black coffees, and says, "So tell me what you do all day."
Sherlock looks surprised. "Really?"
So Sherlock explains, to some degree, the particular areas of chemical and biological experimentation in which he is interested, and which he has, from what Sebastian can gather, been reading up on and researching in his own time for a good few years. This would make sense, he supposes, in the context of Sherlock's apparent disregard for a sciences undergraduate's harsh timetable.
"I didn't really need the course," Sherlock says, confirming Sebastian's thought process, "so much as the equipment available here."
"How are you going to deal with exams?"
Sherlock waves a dismissive hand, and Sebastian finds that he entirely agrees that they are unlikely to be a problem.
After half an hour or so, Sherlock quite calmly announces that he'd better go back to his room, because it's time to "check on the finger". Sebastian doesn't ask, but he does walk back with him, letting himself back into his own flat. Neither of them mentions his apparently unkept appointment.
*
Another week goes by. Sebastian eats, sleeps, talks, laughs, and sometimes works, and, occasionally, wonders if Sherlock is scoring upwards of maybe two of those five. He doesn't see him to ask. By the weekend, it occurs to him that he does actually have the ability to change that.
He pauses outside Sherlock's door, at the end of his corridor, and wonders who else in the flat is in, and if they'll hear them if they talk, and whether that matters. Then he knocks: a pattern with both hands.
There is no response for a good twenty seconds or so. Sebastian waits, because he might as well, though it seems increasingly likely that Sherlock's in a laboratory somewhere - but then there is an indistinct noise from beyond the door, and, after a few more seconds, it opens wide enough for Sherlock's thin frame to be mostly visible. He squints at Sebastian - the room behind him seems to be cloaked in darkness - and he looks surprised, though Sebastian doesn't know whether it's to see him or to see anybody.
"All right?" says Sebastian.
"Yes," says Sherlock, slowly. "Hello."
Sebastian, in turn, is slightly surprised to see that Sherlock has a cigarette between his fingers, burnt halfway down, though he doesn't know why he should be. "I didn't know you smoked," he says.
Sherlock shrugs in response. There are a few more moments of silence, until, as if the thought hadn't previously occurred to him, he says, "Did you want to come in?"
"Why not," says Sebastian.
Sherlock steps back into the room, and then opens the door properly. Initially, Sebastian can't see much at all: the curtains are drawn and the light is off. When Sherlock closes the door behind them, the only illumination comes from a shaft of half-hearted sunlight fighting its way between the curtains where they don't quite fit together, along with a high-powered lamp picking out a small section of the desk. There's a thin haze of smoke, too, all around them, which means it takes even longer for Sebastian's eyes to adjust. When they do, he is able to confirm that Sherlock's room is about as insane-looking as he'd expected. Books are everywhere, literally everywhere; overflowing from the same shelves that Sebastian has near-bare in his room, on the desk, on the bed, and piled on the floor in gravity-defying sculptures. Any space not covered in books is taken up with the sort of equipment that looks like set dressing for a film about a mad scientist. Test tubes, jars, lamps and burners, microscopes, and the bowl on the desk genuinely has something bubbling in it.
"Well," says Sebastian.
"Make yourself at home," says Sherlock.
"I like what you've done with the place."
Sherlock drags on his cigarette, and doesn't answer. Sebastian can't see it behind the curtain, but the window obviously isn't open. Glancing towards the ceiling, he sees the smoke alarm; the plastic cover is missing, and the wires hang in loops.
"Literally child's play," says Sherlock, following his gaze. "I used to take them apart for fun when I was young."
"Of course you did."
"The smoke helps me think."
"Right," says Sebastian. He's only slightly wrongfooted by this lair of a room. "By the way, there's something I didn't ask you."
"Which is?"
"What you said about my ex-girlfriend, ages ago. How did you know?"
"Oh, that," says Sherlock, perhaps recalling the memory; he narrows his eyes at Sebastian, like he's studying him, reading him. "That sort of thing's easy. People display everything about them, only most other people don't know where to look. You just work it out, like anything else." He pauses, drags again, sees that Sebastian is evidently waiting for more of an explanation, and carries on. "In you come, Seb from downstairs, and I'd heard the name before that - thin walls here - and everybody knows you've had, what, two, three people back within two weeks. So that's single and looking for sex but not looking for a relationship, which means another relationship's just ended. Just left home for university means it ended for practical reasons; but that's fair enough, that's a decision people come to together, and you're proving too much of a point for it to have been mutual. So she left you. Non-mutual break-up at a point where mutual break-up would have been easy means she tried to cover it up as that; but as we can see, it didn't work."
There is a long pause. Then Sebastian says, "Is this - what you do for fun?"
"Pretty much."
"Wow." Silence, again, and then Sebastian says, "It's impressive."
"Oh. Thanks." Sherlock is turning his almost-finished cigarette over and over in his fingers.
"How did you know it was a girlfriend?"
"That," says Sherlock, "was a guess." He stubs the cigarette out in an empty petri dish.
"She smoked," says Sebastian, watching him. "I didn't. Apart from when I was drunk. Do you know what smokers taste like?"
"No."
"Sour. Sort of sour and bitter and dusty, almost. People say it's like kissing an ashtray, but it's not, obviously, it's like kissing a person. A person who tastes weird. It burns the back of your throat. Horrible. Horrible in a good way, if you like that sort of thing."
Sherlock doesn't reply for a while, but eventually says, "And do you like that sort of thing?"
"Depends," says Sebastian.
They are close together, closer than social etiquette would dictate, because the room is small and is made even smaller by the lack of floor space. Sherlock is close enough to touch, close enough that Sebastian can easily rest a hand against his waist to see what he will do. What he does it look at it, with some interest. "Oh, right," he says, not with displeasure.
Sebastian kisses him then, hard and quickly and oddly relieved, triumphant; maybe it's been too long since something hasn't been easy to get. Sherlock's mouth is unmoving against his, for a moment, but then it responds slowly, perhaps experimentally.
When Sherlock gets hard, which is fairly quickly, Sebastian manoeuvres him gently towards the bed, and Sherlock reaches behind him to push the books he can reach out of the way, up towards the pillows. They end up with Sherlock sitting on the bed, in the one patch he's managed to clear, back against the wall; and Sebastian kneeling over him, both their dicks in his hand, stroking roughly. Sherlock comes quickly, so there's no point in stringing it out any longer, and Sebastian does the same.
"Well," says Sherlock, while Sebastian's forehead is still pressed against his shoulder, so he hears it deeper and louder than usual, "Thanks, I suppose."
*
Sebastian doesn't sleep with people again. It's not so much a rule as a principle of convenience; have sex with somebody enough times, without romantic involvement, and awkward unspoken questions start to hang in the air afterwards. People form bonds: they can't help it. Sebastian wants either the clear, defined bond of a relationship - although not that right now, obviously - or a clear, defined lack of a bond. Friends with benefits sits somewhere uncomfortably in the middle.
Apart from this time. Sebastian, initially, assumes that his first encounter with Sherlock will be his last, because that is how things work. It doesn't take him long to realise that he is still curious, though, both in terms of Sherlock as a person, and also in terms of wanting something slightly more than a quick wank in quite a dark room. Once more can't hurt, Sebastian thinks, even though it goes against his own instincts, and actually, he's right. Once more doesn't hurt, when he goes back another day: Sherlock is apparently exactly the same as every other time he's spoken to him, and apparently also willing to kiss him again, and to clear the bed properly, and to have his cock sucked, and to reciprocate with a vaguely charming mixture of precision and ineptitude.
It's drawing towards the end of term, and they do this three or four more times before Christmas. Sebastian feels as though he's made a fairly important breakthrough in finding what seems to be the ultimate no-strings fuck. Sherlock genuinely seems to have no desire to prolong any encounter beyond its defined parameters; afterwards, they clean up and get dressed and usually end up having a chat about something else before Sebastian goes on his way. There is no guilt, no feeling that either of them is being short-changed. If anything, Sebastian thinks he probably harbours the more affection of the two of them himself; he's started to develop a strange sort of fondness for Sherlock, not quite like friendship, and perhaps more like an ongoing interest. Sherlock - while evidently content with their arrangement - doesn't seem particularly interested in him in the same way, but that really isn't a problem.
It seems obvious that they should carry on when they return in January. By then, things are well-established enough that Sebastian occasionally stays the night out of sheer laziness, if it's late, without having to worry about whether this has any implications; the two of them sprawl on Sherlock's small bed and Sebastian falls asleep almost instantly.
They never develop a particular ritual or routine, which is good, maybe, because it feels less like any kind of relationship and more like a series of separate incidents. Sebastian goes to Sherlock's room when he knows he's in, or at least thinks he's in, and if not, he tries again later. There's no specific day or time. Occasionally, Sherlock will leave a note slipped under Sebastian's door - he never sees him come up, but he must do sometimes - to say he'll be away for a few days; or that the gaseous product of whatever experiment had been underway last time Sebastian was there is going to make the room effectively uninhabitable until next week; or that he'll be in Tuesday, but not Wednesday or Thursday, so it's up to Sebastian as to whether he wants to wait until Friday or come down tomorrow.
One day, Sebastian finds a note that reads:
Come later today if free. 21.30 - 23.30 optimum. -SH.
Sherlock has never actually extended a specific invitation in note form before, using the medium instead for more general updates. All the same, there's no reason not to go. Perhaps he's incubating or monitoring or marinating (Sebastian is hazy on scientific details) something for those two hours and simply wants a distraction during the wait.
That night, when he knocks on the door, Sherlock opens it with a wide smile; a rare enough beast that Sebastian smiles back without even thinking about it, before he has time to wonder what it might mean. There is music playing, he realises, as Sherlock lets him in and closes the door again; something classical, something he doesn't know, with violins cascading cheerfully over each other. Sherlock, slightly hilariously, conducts a few bars, apparently for his own benefit, then smiles at Sebastian again.
"Isn't it beautiful?"
"Er, yes," says Sebastian. It does sound nice.
Sherlock, humming along under his breath, gives Sebastian one of his careful, searching looks, except he's still smiling; Sebastian is still smiling back, slightly confused, and he wonders if something in Sherlock doesn't look quite right, something in his face, or his eyes. His pupils are blown.
"So beautiful," Sherlock concludes, looking back towards the speakers in the corner of his room - Sebastian has never noticed them before, but then again, they were probably under a combination of books and dubiously-sourced experimental materials - "So beautiful. I'm so glad you can hear it. Aren't you glad?" He puts a hand to the side of Sebastian's face, unexpectedly, his fingers splaying gently against his cheek.
Sebastian is still staring at him, starting to frown in confusion, and then he says, "Have you taken something?"
"What?" says Sherlock, vaguely, apparently absorbed in his own fingers, now tracing Sebastian's cheekbone down to his jaw.
Sebastian laughs, genuinely surprised, and says, "Jesus, Sherlock are you high?" Sherlock snaps to attention, finally, dropping his hand and looking properly at Sebastian again. "Are you all right?"
"Never better. Never better. Listen, Seb, it's - are you listening? I think this is really important, that we, that we, because it's really good, you know? Do you know what I mean?" Sherlock is half-frowning, now, in concentration, his eyes bright and his uncharacteristic sincerity written on every feature. "God, I don't know what, it's just this is - this is really good and I want to, I want to make it good."
"Yeah?"
Sherlock kisses him, perhaps deciding that the speech was going nowhere; kisses him in a way that he doesn't usually, though, slowly and deeply, nothing frantic or base in it. He slides a hand up the side of Sebastian's arm, along his shoulder, up into his hair, and rests it there, the other hand on his hip, holding their bodies together. They stand and Sherlock kisses him and kisses him and Sebastian kisses him too, surprised but not complaining, resting his hands on the small of Sherlock's back.
"What did you take?" he asks, when Sherlock pauses.
"Oh," says Sherlock, and briefly waves the hand that rests on his hip. "It's a form of methamphetamine."
"It's...?"
Sherlock surveys his presumably blank face until he realises further explanation is needed. "I believe it's commonly known as ecstasy."
"How do you even know where..." Sebastian shrugs, and cuts off his own thought; momentarily surprised again, he now wonders why he was. It seems more conceivable that Sherlock has a dealer than a friend.
"Hmm?" says Sherlock, and, apparently, understands the part of the question he didn't hear. "Oh. No. I made it."
"You made it?"
"Simple. Really simple. I can make it for you if you need it. Tell me."
Sebastian just holds up his hands in resignation.
Sherlock undresses him, kissing skin as it becomes exposed, huffing air over the places he's made wet so that Sebastian shivers beneath his mouth. Everything is slower, more considered, than usual; Sherlock's fingertips tracing patterns across his body instead of pressing firmly into his shoulders or waist; the slow roll of their hips against each other, standing and then on the bed, when Sherlock straddles him and kisses him on the mouth again. When Sebastian fucks him, Sherlock leans into him, his face pressed so that he murmurs things into Sebastian's hair that he can't hear.
Afterwards, Sherlock lies crookedly on the bed next to him, and neither of them move to get up or get dressed for a while. Sebastian has his eyes half-closed, and is considering staying put; he is starting to doze when he realises he can feel a light pressure along his spine.
"What are you doing?"
"Your vertebrae," says Sherlock, mildly. His fingers run from the base of Sebastian's spine up to his shoulders, again, carefully. "They're lovely."
"Do you do a lot of E?" asks Sebastian, amused.
"No, no." Sebastian hums in assent - it makes sense for this to be another experiment - before Sherlock adds, "Mostly cocaine." Sebastian is surprised, again, for a moment; but then he thinks of Sherlock not sleeping, not eating, intense and intent, and thinks, oh, actually, yeah.
*
Sebastian sleeps well, because why wouldn't he, and when he wakes up, Sherlock is no longer in the bed. He's dressed, and sat at the desk, poking at instruments and occasionally making notes that Sebastian knows are illegible and indecipherable.
"You're feeling all right, then," says Sebastian.
Sherlock ignores him, which Sebastian has long since realised is not to be interpreted as a personal slight. If anything, it's reassuring. He sits up and swings his legs off the bed, running a hand through the mess of his hair. He feels groggy and hungry, but also something else; not uneasy, but just like he's maybe missed something.
"Sherlock."
Sherlock doesn't look round. "Not... now."
"But I have to go."
"That's fine."
"But before I do."
"Hmm?"
Sebastian is pulling his clothes on; his jumper is somehow under some books, like they've moved there in the night, steadily advancing towards their goal of obscuring every other item in the room. "Before I go, we should probably say - I mean, any particular reason for anything? Did you want me to come over while you were high, or was that a coincidence?"
Sherlock does turn round, finally, and looks surprised. "Of course it wasn't a coincidence."
"Oh. Okay. So does that - what does that mean?"
"I thought it was obvious," says Sherlock. When Sebastian shrugs, he says, "I thought it would help."
"Help what?"
"Ecstasy simulates feelings of compassion, euphoria, affection and intimacy towards others." Sherlock is frowning, now, slightly. "Is that - not the idea?"
Sebastian sits back down on the bed, and realises that this maybe means a lot of things that he doesn't want it to mean. "But that's not what this is about, is it? I mean, that isn't what this is based on."
Sebastian can't tell, can never tell, when silence means something or means nothing. Sherlock's face is impassive. "I thought," he says, after a moment, "that it would be expected."
"Yeah," says Sebastian, slowly, and then, "Well, no, I mean, it's just - this is a different thing. Right?"
Sherlock doesn't say anything, again. Then, almost abruptly, he says, "Okay. Right," and turns back round, and carries on writing.
Sebastian is left floundering, slightly. He feels like he should keep going, so he says, "I mean, if you're in a situation where you have to artificially make those emotions happen, then - probably that isn't the place for those emotions anyway?"
There is another pause, until, without turning round, Sherlock says, "But what if you don't ever feel them." He doesn't make it sound like a question.
Sebastian doesn't have an answer, and just looks at the back of Sherlock's head for a while.
"But anyway," Sherlock says. "You don't feel those things at the moment."
The silence is horrible. "You know that," says Sebastian, eventually. When Sherlock doesn't reply, he says, "You know everything."
"I'm getting there."
"I didn't think you thought this might be anything else," says Sebastian, awkwardly, staring at his own hands. Sherlock is still writing. Sebastian gets up and stands behind him, as if to touch his shoulder or make some other gesture, but doesn't, quite. "So. This is, um. We can stay friends."
"I don't really do friends."
"Okay," says Sebastian, "okay," and just stands there, for a little bit, and doesn't know what he's supposed to do. After a while, he says, "I'm sorry."
Sherlock turns to face him, finally, thoroughly inscrutable. "All right."
Sebastian leaves, and, in some sort of fit of confusion and conscience - which, it turns out, will be relatively rare - feels like an absolute shit.
*
Sebastian sees Sherlock, now and again, over the next couple of weeks, but not much. He sees him as in literally sees him: from a distance, usually, and not to speak to.
Spring fights its way clear of winter, and Sherlock is busy, Sebastian supposes, with whatever it is that he does. The Easter holidays come and go. Sebastian's uncle is on the board of directors of a bank in the city, and gets him a couple of weeks' work; he'd temped there for a bit the previous year, too. The manager on his floor shakes his hand when he leaves, and tells him to get in touch if he's free over the summer; his uncle tells him he's all but guaranteed a graduate position if he carries on like this for the next couple of years. His life falls into place.
The next time he sees Sherlock is in mid-May, back again, when lectures are wrapping up and exams are looming. He wonders if Sherlock is actually sitting any of his. Sebastian spots him on a bench in one of the greens on the edge of the campus, writing, and, before he can think it through enough to abandon the idea, he changes direction, and sits down on the bench too.
Sherlock looks at him for a moment before he speaks, and Sebastian remembers - not that he'd forgotten, just hadn't really thought about it - that for some reason, he genuinely likes him. He looks as pale and intense and displaced as ever.
"Hello," says Sherlock.
"Hi," says Sebastian, and then, automatically, "How are you?"
Sherlock looks at him with an expression that seems to sum up the impossibility of an answer, and Sebastian doesn't expect one.
"Listen," Sebastian presses on, "the thing is, I feel like things are weird. Well, they are. I didn't mean to make that happen. I am honestly sorry if that's my fault."
Sherlock looks like this isn't any of the things he might have expected to hear.
"So, I thought - I don't know. You don't have friends. That's fine. I don't mind. We don't have to stay in touch. But I want you to be able to contact me, if you need to."
"Okay," says Sherlock, still looking a tiny bit bewildered. In a way, Sebastian is proud of that.
"This is the address of the house I'm moving into next year." Sebastian finds a leaf of paper in his bag, and a pencil, and scribbles it down. "And this is the bank I'm working at over the summer. And for the indefinite future, probably."
He glances up at Sherlock as he writes, and watches him watch his hand move.
"My uncle works there. It'll be easy." Sherlock doesn't say anything. "I'll probably get rich. Unfairly so. You can hate me for that, if you like. So, if you need anything, I suppose. I don't know what you'd need - " therapy, he thinks, rehab - "but if you do, please get in touch."
He folds up the piece of paper, perhaps unnecessarily, and holds it out. Sherlock takes it, and says, "That's very kind of you." Sebastian's not entirely sure if he's being sarcastic, which is about as good as it's going to get. Then Sherlock says, "Likewise."
Oh also it occured to me, about 90% of the way through writing this, that what I obviously should have done for this prompt was to reimagine the Holmes/Victor Trevor relationship. Didn't think of that though so never mind
Title: Unattached, Like Me
Fandom: Sherlock
Pairing: Sherlock/Sebastian
Rating: R? I have forgotten how to rate things
Prompt: Sebastian was the type of guy who was used to having whatever, and whomever, he wanted.
A/N: I also only remembered part way through writing this that there were references in the show to them having been to what what was probably Cambridge (or somewhere similar). By this point it was too late, so I guess this is a very mild AU in which they went to a less old-fashioned Any University.
They meet a couple of weeks into the first term. 'Meet', perhaps, is not exactly the word; it implies an introduction, some kind of greeting, perhaps an exchange of information.
Sebastian is single, newly so, and, rather humiliatingly, not by choice. His reaction - which is, he thinks, fair - has been to attempt to have as much meaningless sex as possible, and a freshers' week in a new city is perhaps the most helpful environment he could have found himself in. He's already garnering a minor reputation, but he seems to be carrying off 'charming cad' as opposed to 'sleazy', which is good. He's slept with a couple of girls and one thin, freckly boy, and made it clear every time that there were no strings attached, and that was fine. Everyone's been fine with it.
Their halls are a little worse for wear, but not dreadful. Sebastian had expected far worse. After a few nights out, enough friendships have been formed that most of the flats leave their main doors propped open (against the guidelines on the laminates blu-tacked to the walls), and people pretty much come and go between them as they please. Sebastian already has a fair few friends in the flat directly above his, and there's a pretty, short-haired girl who sometimes pinches his cheeks when she's drunk, and he thinks he might be in with a chance.
He wanders up there one afternoon with nothing in particular to do - lectures started this week, and he already has more reading to get through than he feels like he's done in his life, but fuck it, seriously, it's the first week of first year - and when he peers into the flat's communal kitchen through the window on the door, he can see a figure sat at the excuse for a dining table. He's at the wrong angle to make out who it is, but he's been out with everyone in this flat already, so presumably he knows them. He pushes the door open.
"Hello!" he says.
The boy at the table looks up at him over steepled fingers, raising his head slowly; he seems to have been staring into a mug of coffee. Actually, Sebastian realises, he's never seen him before. He must be a friend from somebody's course. Or possibly, Sebastian thinks fleetingly, some kind of waif they've rescued off the street. He has a shock of dark untidy hair and a pale, almost ill-looking face, which serve only to intensify each other.
"Sorry," says Sebastian, when the boy doesn't say anything, "Don't think we've met. I'm Seb. I'm from downstairs."
"Hmm," says the boy, perhaps in reply.
This is mildly socially awkward. Enough time passes that Sebastian decides he's going to have to say something else - have a conversation with himself, if necessary, until someone less odd turns up - and he's just opening his mouth when the boy says, "Did she tell you it was because of the distance?"
"What?" says Sebastian, nonplussed.
"Your ex-girlfriend."
"My - sorry, what?"
"She said it would be too difficult to maintain a relationship over a couple of hundred miles and monthly visits."
Sebastian just stares at him, which the boy seems to take as an invitation to continue.
"But you didn't believe her. She was too nice about it, and stressed the practicalities of it too much, and you knew she was hiding something. Already cheating on you, probably, or had done in the past." Demurely, he sips the coffee.
"I don't - sorry. What the fuck."
"Oh my god," says a voice behind him, as the kitchen door swings open, "Seb, whatever he's saying, ignore him. What's he saying?"
"Nothing," says Sebastian.
The girl he's trying to nail has come in, glancing over at table coffee boy with a mixture of pity and disdain. "He makes stuff up to freak people out."
The boy sighs, audibly, and gets up. The slightly malnourished look is either enhanced or undercut by the fact he's wearing smart black trousers and a crisp white shirt.
"Back to work?" the girl asks.
"Yes," he says, and, Sebastian still staring at him, he picks up the coffee, crosses the kitchen, and elbows his way through the door.
"Yeah, well, have fun," she says, after him. To Sebastian, she adds, "He started working before term started. Insane."
"How does he do that?"
"Work? I don't know."
"No, how does he come up with the stuff to freak you out?"
"No idea."
"He lives here?"
"Yeah, he's right down the end of the corridor. Nobody really sees him." As an afterthought, she adds, "He doesn't even eat."
"Who the hell doesn't eat?"
She shrugs, and opens one of the cupboards under the worktop. There's an industrial-size packet of coffee, a small bag of pasta, unopened, and a few jars, unlabelled.
"I don't know what's in them," the girl says, darkly, "but it's not food."
*
Sebastian learns, through casual interrogation, that this boy - Sherlock - has definitely been here for the past couple of weeks too, but is just incredibly rarely seen. His flatmates think he studies Chemistry, although none of them seem prepared to swear to it; the boy with the room next to his does, however, swear that the occasional ominously explosive sound filters through the wall.
Sebastian doesn't find it odd that everybody seems to be rather indifferent towards this boy, on a personal level - if you don't interact with people, what can you expect - but what he does find odd is their absolute lack of interest. Frankly, Sherlock sounds bizarre, which doesn't make for a great friend, but does make for an interesting specimen. If they lived together, he can't assume they'd get on, but Sebastian certainly would be fascinated by him.
Also, apparently he can read minds?
A week or so later, Sebastian bumps into Sherlock, literally, at the bottom of their flight of stairs; Sebastian heading up, Sherlock descending. He's tied a scarf round his neck, dark against his pale throat - his skin looks paper-thin, but maybe it's weak autumn light - and, Sebastian notices, appears to be carrying one of his unlabelled jars. He's about to ask what it is and what he's doing with it, but Sherlock speaks first.
"You still haven't been to the library, then."
"It's fine, I'm going to get some stuff out tomorrow," says Sebastian, without thinking, before pausing, and saying, "Wait, how do you know - "
"Oh, please," says Sherlock. "Look at your bag." Sebastian looks at his bag. "New. New for this year, anyway - clean, tidy, nothing damaged. There's still a plastic loop on the zip there from the price tag. And all the corners are exactly in place, just like it was in the shop, when there was cardboard holding it in shape. Nothing bigger than a wallet's been in there. Books, certainly, would have rounded it out, put a bit of pressure on those corners. But nothing's touched them."
"Well," says Sebastian, after a pause. "You're insane."
"No. I'm right."
"I didn't say you weren't."
Sherlock smiles, very briefly, but not at Sebastian; just in recognition of the fact.
"How do you do that?"
"I just explained." Sherlock is beginning to look less interested; Sebastian thinks his attention might be returning to whatever he's going to do to the contents of the jar. He hopes he's not going to eat it. Or fuck it.
"Okay," says Sebastian. "Fair enough. You keep on keeping on. I'm going up."
"I'm Sherlock Holmes, by the way," says Sherlock.
"Yeah, so I've heard."
"Oh, good," he says, and leaves.
*
Sebastian is fascinated by him, actually. The fact that he's so difficult to stumble across only makes him more intriguing, and a couple of months go by during which Sebastian lays eyes on him only about once a week, and speaks to him even less than that. But it only takes him that long to notice that there is something of a pattern to Sherlock's comings and goings; it's not like clockwork, but he tends to head out at certain times on certain days. He certainly isn't spending his time as his timetable dictates - he spends too much time locked up in his room for that - but Sebastian knows people who have barely set foot on campus, so that in itself doesn't make him a complete oddity. Other things do that.
Physically, Sebastian thinks, he isn't conventionally attractive - too bony, too awkward, very much with an air of still waiting to grow into himself. But that's okay. Sebastian, on the other hand, is well aware he's in his prime (he's going to go steeply downhill after about twenty-five, but he's accepted that and is making the most of it). But bony and awkward can be alluring, sort of, especially when coupled with elusiveness and presumably fierce intelligence and - Sebastian doesn't know why it is that he wants to do him, exactly, but the longer it goes on for, the more he does.
"They tell me you don't eat," says Sebastian, one day. Sherlock, when he speaks, doesn't bother with greetings or pleasantries before making statements, so neither does Sebastian. Sherlock is coming in, this time, and Sebastian is heading out, and maybe he waited until he heard the door open, and the tread on the stairs, before he started in the opposite direction.
"They're wrong," says Sherlock. After a moment, he says, "I don't eat much."
"Do you drink?"
"Yes."
"Do you want to have one?"
"What," says Sherlock, "Now?"
Sebastian shrugs. "Yeah. I'm meeting someone in the coffee shop over the road. But not for fifteen minutes." He isn't meeting anybody.
Sherlock shrugs too, and follows him back down the stairs.
Across the road, Sebastian buys them two black coffees, and says, "So tell me what you do all day."
Sherlock looks surprised. "Really?"
So Sherlock explains, to some degree, the particular areas of chemical and biological experimentation in which he is interested, and which he has, from what Sebastian can gather, been reading up on and researching in his own time for a good few years. This would make sense, he supposes, in the context of Sherlock's apparent disregard for a sciences undergraduate's harsh timetable.
"I didn't really need the course," Sherlock says, confirming Sebastian's thought process, "so much as the equipment available here."
"How are you going to deal with exams?"
Sherlock waves a dismissive hand, and Sebastian finds that he entirely agrees that they are unlikely to be a problem.
After half an hour or so, Sherlock quite calmly announces that he'd better go back to his room, because it's time to "check on the finger". Sebastian doesn't ask, but he does walk back with him, letting himself back into his own flat. Neither of them mentions his apparently unkept appointment.
*
Another week goes by. Sebastian eats, sleeps, talks, laughs, and sometimes works, and, occasionally, wonders if Sherlock is scoring upwards of maybe two of those five. He doesn't see him to ask. By the weekend, it occurs to him that he does actually have the ability to change that.
He pauses outside Sherlock's door, at the end of his corridor, and wonders who else in the flat is in, and if they'll hear them if they talk, and whether that matters. Then he knocks: a pattern with both hands.
There is no response for a good twenty seconds or so. Sebastian waits, because he might as well, though it seems increasingly likely that Sherlock's in a laboratory somewhere - but then there is an indistinct noise from beyond the door, and, after a few more seconds, it opens wide enough for Sherlock's thin frame to be mostly visible. He squints at Sebastian - the room behind him seems to be cloaked in darkness - and he looks surprised, though Sebastian doesn't know whether it's to see him or to see anybody.
"All right?" says Sebastian.
"Yes," says Sherlock, slowly. "Hello."
Sebastian, in turn, is slightly surprised to see that Sherlock has a cigarette between his fingers, burnt halfway down, though he doesn't know why he should be. "I didn't know you smoked," he says.
Sherlock shrugs in response. There are a few more moments of silence, until, as if the thought hadn't previously occurred to him, he says, "Did you want to come in?"
"Why not," says Sebastian.
Sherlock steps back into the room, and then opens the door properly. Initially, Sebastian can't see much at all: the curtains are drawn and the light is off. When Sherlock closes the door behind them, the only illumination comes from a shaft of half-hearted sunlight fighting its way between the curtains where they don't quite fit together, along with a high-powered lamp picking out a small section of the desk. There's a thin haze of smoke, too, all around them, which means it takes even longer for Sebastian's eyes to adjust. When they do, he is able to confirm that Sherlock's room is about as insane-looking as he'd expected. Books are everywhere, literally everywhere; overflowing from the same shelves that Sebastian has near-bare in his room, on the desk, on the bed, and piled on the floor in gravity-defying sculptures. Any space not covered in books is taken up with the sort of equipment that looks like set dressing for a film about a mad scientist. Test tubes, jars, lamps and burners, microscopes, and the bowl on the desk genuinely has something bubbling in it.
"Well," says Sebastian.
"Make yourself at home," says Sherlock.
"I like what you've done with the place."
Sherlock drags on his cigarette, and doesn't answer. Sebastian can't see it behind the curtain, but the window obviously isn't open. Glancing towards the ceiling, he sees the smoke alarm; the plastic cover is missing, and the wires hang in loops.
"Literally child's play," says Sherlock, following his gaze. "I used to take them apart for fun when I was young."
"Of course you did."
"The smoke helps me think."
"Right," says Sebastian. He's only slightly wrongfooted by this lair of a room. "By the way, there's something I didn't ask you."
"Which is?"
"What you said about my ex-girlfriend, ages ago. How did you know?"
"Oh, that," says Sherlock, perhaps recalling the memory; he narrows his eyes at Sebastian, like he's studying him, reading him. "That sort of thing's easy. People display everything about them, only most other people don't know where to look. You just work it out, like anything else." He pauses, drags again, sees that Sebastian is evidently waiting for more of an explanation, and carries on. "In you come, Seb from downstairs, and I'd heard the name before that - thin walls here - and everybody knows you've had, what, two, three people back within two weeks. So that's single and looking for sex but not looking for a relationship, which means another relationship's just ended. Just left home for university means it ended for practical reasons; but that's fair enough, that's a decision people come to together, and you're proving too much of a point for it to have been mutual. So she left you. Non-mutual break-up at a point where mutual break-up would have been easy means she tried to cover it up as that; but as we can see, it didn't work."
There is a long pause. Then Sebastian says, "Is this - what you do for fun?"
"Pretty much."
"Wow." Silence, again, and then Sebastian says, "It's impressive."
"Oh. Thanks." Sherlock is turning his almost-finished cigarette over and over in his fingers.
"How did you know it was a girlfriend?"
"That," says Sherlock, "was a guess." He stubs the cigarette out in an empty petri dish.
"She smoked," says Sebastian, watching him. "I didn't. Apart from when I was drunk. Do you know what smokers taste like?"
"No."
"Sour. Sort of sour and bitter and dusty, almost. People say it's like kissing an ashtray, but it's not, obviously, it's like kissing a person. A person who tastes weird. It burns the back of your throat. Horrible. Horrible in a good way, if you like that sort of thing."
Sherlock doesn't reply for a while, but eventually says, "And do you like that sort of thing?"
"Depends," says Sebastian.
They are close together, closer than social etiquette would dictate, because the room is small and is made even smaller by the lack of floor space. Sherlock is close enough to touch, close enough that Sebastian can easily rest a hand against his waist to see what he will do. What he does it look at it, with some interest. "Oh, right," he says, not with displeasure.
Sebastian kisses him then, hard and quickly and oddly relieved, triumphant; maybe it's been too long since something hasn't been easy to get. Sherlock's mouth is unmoving against his, for a moment, but then it responds slowly, perhaps experimentally.
When Sherlock gets hard, which is fairly quickly, Sebastian manoeuvres him gently towards the bed, and Sherlock reaches behind him to push the books he can reach out of the way, up towards the pillows. They end up with Sherlock sitting on the bed, in the one patch he's managed to clear, back against the wall; and Sebastian kneeling over him, both their dicks in his hand, stroking roughly. Sherlock comes quickly, so there's no point in stringing it out any longer, and Sebastian does the same.
"Well," says Sherlock, while Sebastian's forehead is still pressed against his shoulder, so he hears it deeper and louder than usual, "Thanks, I suppose."
*
Sebastian doesn't sleep with people again. It's not so much a rule as a principle of convenience; have sex with somebody enough times, without romantic involvement, and awkward unspoken questions start to hang in the air afterwards. People form bonds: they can't help it. Sebastian wants either the clear, defined bond of a relationship - although not that right now, obviously - or a clear, defined lack of a bond. Friends with benefits sits somewhere uncomfortably in the middle.
Apart from this time. Sebastian, initially, assumes that his first encounter with Sherlock will be his last, because that is how things work. It doesn't take him long to realise that he is still curious, though, both in terms of Sherlock as a person, and also in terms of wanting something slightly more than a quick wank in quite a dark room. Once more can't hurt, Sebastian thinks, even though it goes against his own instincts, and actually, he's right. Once more doesn't hurt, when he goes back another day: Sherlock is apparently exactly the same as every other time he's spoken to him, and apparently also willing to kiss him again, and to clear the bed properly, and to have his cock sucked, and to reciprocate with a vaguely charming mixture of precision and ineptitude.
It's drawing towards the end of term, and they do this three or four more times before Christmas. Sebastian feels as though he's made a fairly important breakthrough in finding what seems to be the ultimate no-strings fuck. Sherlock genuinely seems to have no desire to prolong any encounter beyond its defined parameters; afterwards, they clean up and get dressed and usually end up having a chat about something else before Sebastian goes on his way. There is no guilt, no feeling that either of them is being short-changed. If anything, Sebastian thinks he probably harbours the more affection of the two of them himself; he's started to develop a strange sort of fondness for Sherlock, not quite like friendship, and perhaps more like an ongoing interest. Sherlock - while evidently content with their arrangement - doesn't seem particularly interested in him in the same way, but that really isn't a problem.
It seems obvious that they should carry on when they return in January. By then, things are well-established enough that Sebastian occasionally stays the night out of sheer laziness, if it's late, without having to worry about whether this has any implications; the two of them sprawl on Sherlock's small bed and Sebastian falls asleep almost instantly.
They never develop a particular ritual or routine, which is good, maybe, because it feels less like any kind of relationship and more like a series of separate incidents. Sebastian goes to Sherlock's room when he knows he's in, or at least thinks he's in, and if not, he tries again later. There's no specific day or time. Occasionally, Sherlock will leave a note slipped under Sebastian's door - he never sees him come up, but he must do sometimes - to say he'll be away for a few days; or that the gaseous product of whatever experiment had been underway last time Sebastian was there is going to make the room effectively uninhabitable until next week; or that he'll be in Tuesday, but not Wednesday or Thursday, so it's up to Sebastian as to whether he wants to wait until Friday or come down tomorrow.
One day, Sebastian finds a note that reads:
Come later today if free. 21.30 - 23.30 optimum. -SH.
Sherlock has never actually extended a specific invitation in note form before, using the medium instead for more general updates. All the same, there's no reason not to go. Perhaps he's incubating or monitoring or marinating (Sebastian is hazy on scientific details) something for those two hours and simply wants a distraction during the wait.
That night, when he knocks on the door, Sherlock opens it with a wide smile; a rare enough beast that Sebastian smiles back without even thinking about it, before he has time to wonder what it might mean. There is music playing, he realises, as Sherlock lets him in and closes the door again; something classical, something he doesn't know, with violins cascading cheerfully over each other. Sherlock, slightly hilariously, conducts a few bars, apparently for his own benefit, then smiles at Sebastian again.
"Isn't it beautiful?"
"Er, yes," says Sebastian. It does sound nice.
Sherlock, humming along under his breath, gives Sebastian one of his careful, searching looks, except he's still smiling; Sebastian is still smiling back, slightly confused, and he wonders if something in Sherlock doesn't look quite right, something in his face, or his eyes. His pupils are blown.
"So beautiful," Sherlock concludes, looking back towards the speakers in the corner of his room - Sebastian has never noticed them before, but then again, they were probably under a combination of books and dubiously-sourced experimental materials - "So beautiful. I'm so glad you can hear it. Aren't you glad?" He puts a hand to the side of Sebastian's face, unexpectedly, his fingers splaying gently against his cheek.
Sebastian is still staring at him, starting to frown in confusion, and then he says, "Have you taken something?"
"What?" says Sherlock, vaguely, apparently absorbed in his own fingers, now tracing Sebastian's cheekbone down to his jaw.
Sebastian laughs, genuinely surprised, and says, "Jesus, Sherlock are you high?" Sherlock snaps to attention, finally, dropping his hand and looking properly at Sebastian again. "Are you all right?"
"Never better. Never better. Listen, Seb, it's - are you listening? I think this is really important, that we, that we, because it's really good, you know? Do you know what I mean?" Sherlock is half-frowning, now, in concentration, his eyes bright and his uncharacteristic sincerity written on every feature. "God, I don't know what, it's just this is - this is really good and I want to, I want to make it good."
"Yeah?"
Sherlock kisses him, perhaps deciding that the speech was going nowhere; kisses him in a way that he doesn't usually, though, slowly and deeply, nothing frantic or base in it. He slides a hand up the side of Sebastian's arm, along his shoulder, up into his hair, and rests it there, the other hand on his hip, holding their bodies together. They stand and Sherlock kisses him and kisses him and Sebastian kisses him too, surprised but not complaining, resting his hands on the small of Sherlock's back.
"What did you take?" he asks, when Sherlock pauses.
"Oh," says Sherlock, and briefly waves the hand that rests on his hip. "It's a form of methamphetamine."
"It's...?"
Sherlock surveys his presumably blank face until he realises further explanation is needed. "I believe it's commonly known as ecstasy."
"How do you even know where..." Sebastian shrugs, and cuts off his own thought; momentarily surprised again, he now wonders why he was. It seems more conceivable that Sherlock has a dealer than a friend.
"Hmm?" says Sherlock, and, apparently, understands the part of the question he didn't hear. "Oh. No. I made it."
"You made it?"
"Simple. Really simple. I can make it for you if you need it. Tell me."
Sebastian just holds up his hands in resignation.
Sherlock undresses him, kissing skin as it becomes exposed, huffing air over the places he's made wet so that Sebastian shivers beneath his mouth. Everything is slower, more considered, than usual; Sherlock's fingertips tracing patterns across his body instead of pressing firmly into his shoulders or waist; the slow roll of their hips against each other, standing and then on the bed, when Sherlock straddles him and kisses him on the mouth again. When Sebastian fucks him, Sherlock leans into him, his face pressed so that he murmurs things into Sebastian's hair that he can't hear.
Afterwards, Sherlock lies crookedly on the bed next to him, and neither of them move to get up or get dressed for a while. Sebastian has his eyes half-closed, and is considering staying put; he is starting to doze when he realises he can feel a light pressure along his spine.
"What are you doing?"
"Your vertebrae," says Sherlock, mildly. His fingers run from the base of Sebastian's spine up to his shoulders, again, carefully. "They're lovely."
"Do you do a lot of E?" asks Sebastian, amused.
"No, no." Sebastian hums in assent - it makes sense for this to be another experiment - before Sherlock adds, "Mostly cocaine." Sebastian is surprised, again, for a moment; but then he thinks of Sherlock not sleeping, not eating, intense and intent, and thinks, oh, actually, yeah.
*
Sebastian sleeps well, because why wouldn't he, and when he wakes up, Sherlock is no longer in the bed. He's dressed, and sat at the desk, poking at instruments and occasionally making notes that Sebastian knows are illegible and indecipherable.
"You're feeling all right, then," says Sebastian.
Sherlock ignores him, which Sebastian has long since realised is not to be interpreted as a personal slight. If anything, it's reassuring. He sits up and swings his legs off the bed, running a hand through the mess of his hair. He feels groggy and hungry, but also something else; not uneasy, but just like he's maybe missed something.
"Sherlock."
Sherlock doesn't look round. "Not... now."
"But I have to go."
"That's fine."
"But before I do."
"Hmm?"
Sebastian is pulling his clothes on; his jumper is somehow under some books, like they've moved there in the night, steadily advancing towards their goal of obscuring every other item in the room. "Before I go, we should probably say - I mean, any particular reason for anything? Did you want me to come over while you were high, or was that a coincidence?"
Sherlock does turn round, finally, and looks surprised. "Of course it wasn't a coincidence."
"Oh. Okay. So does that - what does that mean?"
"I thought it was obvious," says Sherlock. When Sebastian shrugs, he says, "I thought it would help."
"Help what?"
"Ecstasy simulates feelings of compassion, euphoria, affection and intimacy towards others." Sherlock is frowning, now, slightly. "Is that - not the idea?"
Sebastian sits back down on the bed, and realises that this maybe means a lot of things that he doesn't want it to mean. "But that's not what this is about, is it? I mean, that isn't what this is based on."
Sebastian can't tell, can never tell, when silence means something or means nothing. Sherlock's face is impassive. "I thought," he says, after a moment, "that it would be expected."
"Yeah," says Sebastian, slowly, and then, "Well, no, I mean, it's just - this is a different thing. Right?"
Sherlock doesn't say anything, again. Then, almost abruptly, he says, "Okay. Right," and turns back round, and carries on writing.
Sebastian is left floundering, slightly. He feels like he should keep going, so he says, "I mean, if you're in a situation where you have to artificially make those emotions happen, then - probably that isn't the place for those emotions anyway?"
There is another pause, until, without turning round, Sherlock says, "But what if you don't ever feel them." He doesn't make it sound like a question.
Sebastian doesn't have an answer, and just looks at the back of Sherlock's head for a while.
"But anyway," Sherlock says. "You don't feel those things at the moment."
The silence is horrible. "You know that," says Sebastian, eventually. When Sherlock doesn't reply, he says, "You know everything."
"I'm getting there."
"I didn't think you thought this might be anything else," says Sebastian, awkwardly, staring at his own hands. Sherlock is still writing. Sebastian gets up and stands behind him, as if to touch his shoulder or make some other gesture, but doesn't, quite. "So. This is, um. We can stay friends."
"I don't really do friends."
"Okay," says Sebastian, "okay," and just stands there, for a little bit, and doesn't know what he's supposed to do. After a while, he says, "I'm sorry."
Sherlock turns to face him, finally, thoroughly inscrutable. "All right."
Sebastian leaves, and, in some sort of fit of confusion and conscience - which, it turns out, will be relatively rare - feels like an absolute shit.
*
Sebastian sees Sherlock, now and again, over the next couple of weeks, but not much. He sees him as in literally sees him: from a distance, usually, and not to speak to.
Spring fights its way clear of winter, and Sherlock is busy, Sebastian supposes, with whatever it is that he does. The Easter holidays come and go. Sebastian's uncle is on the board of directors of a bank in the city, and gets him a couple of weeks' work; he'd temped there for a bit the previous year, too. The manager on his floor shakes his hand when he leaves, and tells him to get in touch if he's free over the summer; his uncle tells him he's all but guaranteed a graduate position if he carries on like this for the next couple of years. His life falls into place.
The next time he sees Sherlock is in mid-May, back again, when lectures are wrapping up and exams are looming. He wonders if Sherlock is actually sitting any of his. Sebastian spots him on a bench in one of the greens on the edge of the campus, writing, and, before he can think it through enough to abandon the idea, he changes direction, and sits down on the bench too.
Sherlock looks at him for a moment before he speaks, and Sebastian remembers - not that he'd forgotten, just hadn't really thought about it - that for some reason, he genuinely likes him. He looks as pale and intense and displaced as ever.
"Hello," says Sherlock.
"Hi," says Sebastian, and then, automatically, "How are you?"
Sherlock looks at him with an expression that seems to sum up the impossibility of an answer, and Sebastian doesn't expect one.
"Listen," Sebastian presses on, "the thing is, I feel like things are weird. Well, they are. I didn't mean to make that happen. I am honestly sorry if that's my fault."
Sherlock looks like this isn't any of the things he might have expected to hear.
"So, I thought - I don't know. You don't have friends. That's fine. I don't mind. We don't have to stay in touch. But I want you to be able to contact me, if you need to."
"Okay," says Sherlock, still looking a tiny bit bewildered. In a way, Sebastian is proud of that.
"This is the address of the house I'm moving into next year." Sebastian finds a leaf of paper in his bag, and a pencil, and scribbles it down. "And this is the bank I'm working at over the summer. And for the indefinite future, probably."
He glances up at Sherlock as he writes, and watches him watch his hand move.
"My uncle works there. It'll be easy." Sherlock doesn't say anything. "I'll probably get rich. Unfairly so. You can hate me for that, if you like. So, if you need anything, I suppose. I don't know what you'd need - " therapy, he thinks, rehab - "but if you do, please get in touch."
He folds up the piece of paper, perhaps unnecessarily, and holds it out. Sherlock takes it, and says, "That's very kind of you." Sebastian's not entirely sure if he's being sarcastic, which is about as good as it's going to get. Then Sherlock says, "Likewise."