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There are questions that even Sherlock Holmes cannot answer.
"Why does John ignore the existence of clothes that aren't terrible sweaters and shirts just as bad?" "How can Mycroft become more unbearable with every passing day?" and also "Why am I at that kind of party that I would usually avoid like the most dangerous of diseases?"
The answer to the last question can be found in sharp blue eyes and lips even sharper, in the voice of a woman who owns a confidence that the other girls of her age hardly have. The answer lies in the taste of paper on the tip of his tongue, in the binding of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol to its brain receptors and the consequent increase in the level of dopamine. The answer is in what is commonly called "being high."
Sherlock sighs and that one simple gesture takes him back to days not too far away, holidays spent with parents and memories of sultry summer afternoons, punctuated only by the ticking of the clock and made even heavier by the loneliness that comes with the awareness of being different, alone in the world. Sherlock sighs and closes his eyes. He wears what he likes to call "his armour" – even if a pirate costume can hardly be called that.
Only then he steps inside.
The first thing he does is rolling his eyes.
Low and dim red lights that are meant to be "scary" but instead make the room look like the back of a sexy shop, terrible trashy decorations and boring loud people wearing cheap costumes that don't look accurate at all.
He wants to leave. No, he has to.
The squalor of that place is already slipping under his skin; it starts as a tingling sensation on his fingertips and like an infection it spreads, it becomes an itch that cannot be scratched, a constant feeling of discomfort that can be sent away only with sharp words, with that kind of cruel and sarcastic comments that were one of the causes of his loneliness since he has memory.
Sherlock pulls out his phone from his pocket – it's anachronistic, but he couldn't do otherwise – to take, before leaving, a photo to prove his presence at the party. He feels a bit stupid, dressed as a pirate and with his right arm up to take a selfie – ugh – but if that is the price of freedom, so be it. He looks at the screen, moves a little to find the perfect angle and lightning, presses the button in the middle and...
And then nothing, because the picture is blurry and there is a hand around his wrist.
The grip is gentle and firm at the same time, a bit like her. It's a touch from which Sherlock knows he can't (or doesn't want to?) escape.
"Sherlock! You're finally here!"
Irene's voice is loud enough to be heard over the music and there is no need for her to get closer to his ear, but she does anyway, lips that doing so leave a red mark that Sherlock will later clean with the back of his hand.
"Mhn. I didn't have much choice."
Irene holds a chuckle and moves away so Sherlock can look at her.
Dressing up as a vampire for Halloween is ordinary, but there is nothing ordinary in Irene Adler. Dressed in faux black leather and fabric red like her lipstick, the Woman – with a capital W, since she's the only member of the female sex to have ever carved out a space in Sherlock's life – has never looked more at ease, beautiful and intimidating at the same time.
Somehow, she reminds him of a poisonous flower.
"C'mon, I want to introduce you to someone."
Before he can say a single word, Irene takes him arm in arm. They walk across the room, between "sorry" unheard because of the loud music and emergency manoeuvres to avoid collisions and the subsequent showers with colourful cocktails.
When they stop, Sherlock strongly hopes the person in front of him isn't Irene's friend.
"Sherlock, meet Jim. Jim, Sherlock."
Jim is unknown and familiar at the same time, like a stranger you brushed shoulders with while walking a little too fast or a shadow in the corner of your eye. It's not impossible they have met before, maybe at a seminar or in the library.
He's a couple of inches shorter than him, big black eyes under a thin line of eyeliner and a midnight blue shirt with more open buttons than it's appropriate – not that Sherlock's eyes have stopped on his exposed skin and noticed the detail, of course.
Jim moves with the unpredictable clumsiness of drunks, clearly unable to stay still. He looks at him and then curls his lips in the most pleased and annoying smile Sherlock has ever seen. It's the kind of grin that he's used to see in the mirror. On someone else disturbs him.
"Hey sexy..."
The words fade into a giggle that becomes higher when Jim leans forward and wraps his hand around Sherlock's arm.
Irene, in the meanwhile, left. Of course she left him with a clearly gay and available guy. Of course she tried to hook him up because, to quote her words, he "needs to get laid".
"I would sing a song for you, but..."
Jim huffs, trying to move a lock of the curly blue wig he's wearing. His idea doesn't work out, so ultimately he decides to use his free hand. By doing so he removes one of the pearls adorning that terrible mass of synthetic hair and plastic decorations that was surely Irene's idea. Sherlock can totally imagine Irene telling Jim about his pirate costume and dressing him up as an improvised mermaid (merman?).
"I could never kill someone with such a pretty face."
The pearl drops to the ground and Jim's hand moves towards Sherlock's face. By some divine miracle, it stops before reaching its destination.
"Fascinating. I can go then."
With what is supposed to be a farewell, Sherlock turns.
He's stopped by a childish whine, a petulant "nooooo" that makes his eye twitch. Before he can reply, however, Jim talks again.
"Wait, I changed my mind. Bring me outside."
"And why would I do that...?"
"Because if I don't get a breath of fresh air I'm gonna throw up on your boots and honey, I'm not interested in hanging out with someone who stinks like vomit."
It's not difficult for Sherlock to choose between being alone (even if smelling like vomit) and having to endure Jim's company. Vomit can be washed away, but no one is ever gonna give him back time spent with annoying ordinary and drunk human beings. He opens his lips to articulate his thoughts but Jim pulls him and Sherlock's legs move on their own and he can't do anything but follow the insistent stranger outside.
Once outside, Jim leaves him. He winks – Sherlock replies by dramatically rolling his eyes – and sits on the ground, hands that immediately start playing with the grass of the lawn surrounding the house.
Jim seems relatively fine. Of course, he will probably throw up few times during the night, but he's more or less aware of his surroundings and, if he doesn't drink again, he won't find himself passed out somewhere.
The thought somehow makes Sherlock feel better. Realizing it annoys him. It clashes with the image of himself Sherlock built, the cold and insensitive sociopath who isn't touched by anything and doesn't show any feeling, not even a little bit of concern for a friend of someone important to him.
"Now I can go back to my room."
A nod and Sherlock gives Jim his back.
"It's better out here without them, isn't it?"
It's just a spark, the flame of a lighter that flickers on a windy day, but even if faint, the hope that someone could be capable of understanding him makes Sherlock turn.
Sherlock is only twenty-three and his cynical hard shell is not as strong as he would like, sometimes a small crack appears and everything he tries to repress – with a desperation that can only be called human – escapes and comes to life in a small smile that most don't even notice.
Sherlock gives Jim another look and, without being fully aware, he finds himself walking in his direction and sitting next to him on the cold ground.
Maybe Jim is really a mermaid. Maybe with his voice he attracted him for real.
"I thought you liked to party."
Jim laughs. He throws a handful of blades of grass in the space between their knees.
"Sure, it can be fun and is quite a nice distraction, but I wouldn't call it something I like."
Distraction from what? He would like to ask. Instead, Sherlock swallows the question with saliva. He doesn't want to be disappointed by the answer. For one night he wants to linger in the possibility that someone else is like him.
"What do you like then?"
"You."
Cheesy. Corny. Jim laughs again but this time it only lasts a moment. He immediately goes back to talking, not letting Sherlock reply, as if he didn't want to lose his interest and attention.
"Irene, sometimes. The stars."
"Please, don't tell me you study astrophysics."
The giggle that escapes Jim's lips is an eloquent answer. It fills Sherlock with an exaggerated and childish frustration, an irritation that warms him in the cold fall night and that makes his words even faster than usual.
"It's useless!" Sherlock leans forward. His knee brushes Jim's. "Why focus on something so far away when there is so much here that we don't know?! Why study things that in no way affect our lives? W-"
"Because nothing here is worthy enough."
Everything stops.
There is only Jim.
Jim shaking in the thin shirt he wears, his lips parted and only slightly curled in a smile that Sherlock can't fully comprehend but that somehow feels close to him. Jim that looks at him with such an intensity that it hurts, completely different from the frivolousness he showed just five seconds before.
Jim that suddenly becomes the most interesting person in the world.
Sherlock wants to look at him. Seconds, minutes, hours: it doesn't matter. He wants to stay there for as long as necessary, because something in Jim is interesting and keeps slipping from his fingers, because for the first time in months he found something – someone – that he can't read, because Sherlock is a scientist at heart and would never abandon something that has stimulated his curiosity.
"Do you think you're broken, Sherlock Holmes?"
Jim's voice is quiet and soft, a sigh in the wind. And yet, it's capable of breaking the moment and make Sherlock frown.
"Why are you asking?"
"I don't know. Maybe you want to study the infinitely small and everything within us that is still obscure and unknown by science because you want to understand better yourself or others. You didn't answer, by the way."
A ten years old Sherlock would have answered yes. He would have said it looking down and with wet eyes behind closed eyelids. He would have said it in a broken whisper, thinking of his classmates and the insults he only pretended to not hear. He would have said it thinking of their smiles and games, of the envy he tried to repress having his nose in science books all the time.
A fifteen years old Sherlock would have answered no. He would have said it with voice too loud and tainted with anger, with nails leaving marks in his palms. He would have said it with trembling fists, the same fists that sometimes met cheekbones and noses and blood, because not every problem can be solved with words. He would have said it thinking about the sense of power he felt – and still feels – when humiliated those around him, ignoring however the wet corners of his eyes.
Now Sherlock is twenty-three and is a different person.
"No."
It's good to say it out loud and it's even better to say it calmly, without anger or shame but with just a touch of arrogance that Sherlock doesn't really see as a flaw.
"Good. Don't ever think that. Not even for a second."
No one has ever told him that. Not even Mycroft, the only person to live a situation similar to his own, taught him to be proud of who he was, of who he is. Going back with his memory, Sherlock reminds complaints and recommendations, dozens of "don't be stupid and do things that you will regret" and "what if others don't understand it? Let them and use it to your advantage."
Funny how, despite his intellect, Mycroft never understood what Sherlock needed to hear.
"You are – actually, we are" and at this point Jim winks once again "just different from them. Thank God."
"Are you saying we are the same?"
"Mhn, no."
Jim laughs and leans forward. The tips of their noses almost touch.
"I'm cuter. And more clever, of course."
"No way."
Jim laughs again and Sherlock pushes him, ignoring how his gesture is more playful than anything else and smiling when Jim falls on the grass – thing that make the Irish boy laugh even louder.
"I'll prove it to you. Not now though. Too drunk."
"Alcohol or not alcohol, it's still impossible."
And yet, Sherlock wants to see him try.
Jim is drunk, annoying and far too inclined to flirting – something tells Sherlock that these characteristics were only highlighted by alcohol – but he's also quite interesting. Maybe he's not like him, but he's definitely different from those around them and that's enough for now.
"Well, we'll see."
"Ok."
Jim smiles and lies down on his back, eyes on the starry sky. He whispers something like "we have a date" that Sherlock decides to ignore.
They stay still and in silence for few minutes – Sherlock is surprised to notice the lack of tension and awkwardness, they are in a comfortable silence that he can share only with a number of people that can be counted on the fingers of one hand – until Jim turns to one side and looks at Sherlock.
"Want to stay here with me a little?"
Sherlock has no doubts about his answer.
"I don't have anything else to do."
***
At some point – Sherlock can't say exactly when, he hasn't felt the need to check the time and his phone is left in the pockets of a pirate outfit now almost forgotten – Jim got up to go back inside and retrieve his coat.
Sherlock watched him walk unsteadily and he barely held back a chuckle when Jim foot hit a rock that became the target of dozen of curses in what Sherlock recognized as Gaelic. He watched him come back with his wig way messier than before and he flinched when Jim lay next to him, touching his leg in a gesture that Sherlock wasn't sure was accidental.
Jim spent a good fifteen minutes babbling about stars and constellation, mixing legends with physics formulas and he spent the same amount of time looking at Sherlock, eyes dark like oil and a smile sharp but genuinely happy. Even then Sherlock didn't get up and left. He interrupted Jim with his usual sarcastic comments that in response got giggles and words equally sarcastic and not the mix or irritation, anger and shame he's used to.
Insulting and arguing with someone who answers in kind is funnier that he would like.
Sherlock likes spending time with Jim and he hates it, but he doesn't hate it enough to get up and get back to the loneliness of his room – after all, he wouldn't be capable of doing anything productive, it's Halloween and the dorm is probably full of loud people.
Now, after having thrown up a couple of times in a bush not far away, Jim closed his eyes. Sherlock observes him, attentive gaze that glides on full long lashes – made even more striking by the mascara – and then moves to the tip of the straight nose and slightly parted lips on which he stops more than necessary.
"I'm telling you, if you fall asleep I'm gonna leave you here."
Jim groans, with incredible effort opens his eyes and sits, placing a hand on Sherlock's knee to help himself getting up.
"Bring me home then, come on."
He mumbles, grabbing the wig and throwing it – finally, Sherlock would add – on the ground.
What Sherlock sees makes him laugh. Laughs Sherlock, with a genuine laugh that hasn't took life on his lips for too long, a laugh that shakes him and makes him look like a boy of his age, a laugh that feels warm.
"What."
"Your..."
Jim raises an eyebrow. For some reason Sherlock finds it funny.
"...Your hair!"
Jim's hair are... indescribable. Locks black as the most dark of nights goes in all directions, falling on his pale forehead or stuck in the hair like many small spines.
If only he used social networks or captured everything with his camera phone, Sherlock would have taken a picture.
Jim huffs and pushes him. He stumbles while Sherlock remains perfectly still.
"Sherlock Holmes, you are an asshole."
***
Jim's dorm is far from his own and Sherlock just can't bring himself to let him go back to his room alone.
He's doing it for him, he says, it's because Jim can't even stay still, not for any other reason. Sherlock repeats it like a mantra in his mind and ignores the petulant little voice – now he understands why the people around him can't stand him – that keeps calling him a liar, because when does he ever put someone else's desires before his own, when does he ever show kindness, word whose very sound makes him shiver, to strangers?
Sherlock sighs and wraps an arm around Jim's side. He brings him close and tries to not think about how nice the weight of another body feels, about the heat that through clothing makes him feel a little warmer in a fall night. Sherlock tries to ignore it and he manages to, he compartmentalizes these feelings in drawers of his mental palace that are never open, he puts them between his affection for Mycroft and all the messages his body sends him and remind him he's human.
He walks without thinking about the body close to him and everything is going well, but then Jim has the brilliant idea to put his head on his shoulder and whisper "my knight in shining armour" and his breath is so hot against his neck – did he had to not wear a scarf that day?! – and the sigh that comes out Sherlock's mouth is not only made of irritation. He wasn't this physically close to someone in a long time.
Determined to not let anything get to him, Sherlock doesn't stop though. After all, they are almost there.
It's when the dormitory stands in front of his eyes that he fails in his attempt. The drunk and irritating boy clinging to him places his lips against his neck and not happy enough begins to leave small soft kisses between disconnected and nonsense phrases and Sherlock's ice shell breaks into many fragments that crash on the ground, producing a noise that exists only in his mind.
Sherlock stops abruptly, curses his own (too) sensitive skin and pushes Jim away.
Jim looks at him straight in the eye for seconds that seem centuries – centuries in which Sherlock's heart beats faster, centuries in which his hands are sweaty, centuries in which he can't understand what he wants – and then moves.
He covers the last few metres that separate them from the dormitory running, suddenly like only a drunk can do.
"We're arrived."
He says, with a smile, once Sherlock catches up with him.
Then, he leans forward and closes the gap between them.
In the movies Sherlock watched – or rather, that John, his roommate, made him watch – there are often scenes where time flows slowly, moments in which the protagonist can see every single detail and movement of the scene around him and behave accordingly. Sherlock knows he's not an action movie hero – hell, he's not even a hero in his own story – but he feels in that situation.
Except that he can't move and dodge whatever comes towards him.
The only thing he can do is closing his eyes and thinking that maybe – just maybe – a kiss wouldn't be so bad, because they are alone and tomorrow Jim will wake up with just a bunch of fuzzy unclear memories of the night before. Kissing Jim is a tempting idea because it could give him more information on that person as bizarre as full of surprises, because there are no witnesses, because the kiss would soon be forgotten.
Their kiss would be without implications of any sort and, for once, Sherlock is attracted by simplicity.
It's when he's psychologically prepared for what is going to happen that he finds himself frowning. Jim's lips touch him yes, but only on the corner of the mouth.
"What was that?"
He whispers, voice more harsh than he wanted. Jim smiles with that grin he had on when they were introduced.
"A goodnight kiss. I know you wanted more, but we didn't even have our first date yet and I'm not letting you into my pants, I'm not that kind of guy."
"You look exactly like that kind of guy."
Jim opens his mouth in a perfect O. It's theatrical and exaggerated. He blinks a couple of time, long black lashes falling on big eyes.
"You want to fuck me!"
If Sherlock wanted to kiss him before, now he doesn't anymore. His desire melted like an ice-cream under the hot summer sun. Sherlock just wants to go back in his dorm to his books and experiments, he wants to replace from his mind Jim with things much more interesting and worthy of his attention, with things less childish.
"No."
"If that's what you want to say to yourself..."
Jim shrugs. He turns and walks toward the dorm and Sherlock doesn't stop him.
"Goodnight Sherlock Holmes. Think about me in the shower."
Sherlock stays there and watches Jim's back until the door closes behind it. Then, he breathes deeply, pulls out his cell phone from his pocket and sends a text to Irene, fingers moving fast on the touch screen.
"I hate you."
He presses the button with a pout on his lips.
He knows he won't be able to get Jim out of his mind so easily.