Here it is: the follow-up to Frustration.

Sherlock is not quite sure why he'd done it.

Boredom certainly had played a factor in it (Molly Hooper had very little in the way of laboratory equipment in her flat), though he honestly could not claim that that was the sole reason he'd entered her room that night. Curiosity had certainly played its part; he'd never performed that type of manual stimulation before and the data from it might be useful in a future case (that is, when he finally rises from the dead). But that – that wasn't quite all of it, was it? He's forced to grudgingly admit to himself that there was a part of him that wanted to touch Molly; wanted to watch her move under his efforts, wanted to watch as –

He shakes his head vehemently to clear his mind. It is exactly for this reason that sentiment is so repulsive to him, so devastating. It takes over an otherwise sensible and intelligent mind; makes it weak and vulnerable, difficult and unfocused. He had a brief moment of fallibility, it's true – but now he simply needs to ignore it and possibly delete it from his memory if need be. It wouldn't do to be distracted now, not with Moriarty's empire to hunt down and destroy.

So he acts like nothing ever happened, and Molly, blushing and embarrassed the morning after, seems only too happy to go along with it.

He starts to find it hard to sleep.

Well, he should be clear – he finds it hard to stay asleep. Falling asleep is in itself not an issue; it's only when he enters into REM and begins to dream that he seems to run into problems. Deep within his own mind, he begins to dream. Molly is there (always there), her face flushed and her eyes wide, lying on her back in her bed. He is positioned over her, usually (though in one instance he found himself underneath her somehow). Her arms come up to encircle him and she pulls him close, kissing him softly, then harder, as her hands move down his body, exploring his skin. Her touch makes him react in a way that he's never reacted like before; almost like the way cocaine made him feel, happy and euphoric and unbelievably alive. In his dream, he starts to grind against her leg instinctively, the feel of her body underneath his driving him mad, making him want – want... something, anything to make this feeling go away, to rid himself of the heaviness that is pooling in his belly, as he feels himself grow hard against her thigh, breathing ratcheting ever higher as she –

And then he wakes up with start, as he always does.

He despises waking up this way. Not only for the physical side-effects (his body does not seem to comprehend the difference between dream and reality), but for the intense feeling of frustration that permeates him, that courses through his veins, making him tight and tense and unbelievably annoyed.

He sits up on the sofa and runs a hand over his face. This was getting to be exhausting. It repulsed him, to be so fallible, to be so... ordinary. To be subject to this type of base reaction, animalistic tendencies left over from millennia ago. Perhaps there is a way he could –

A light switches on suddenly, and he freezes, caught unaware.

"Sh-Sherlock?" a voice calls out from behind the sofa, and he swings around to look over at Molly, standing in the space between her room and the sitting room, her hair dishevelled from sleep, her eyes blinking hard in the sudden light.

"What is it?" he growls, a little too harshly even for himself. It certainly does not help that his body is still stuck in a state of arousal.

"I – uh," she starts, looking around the room nervously. "I heard a... sound," she finishes softly.

"A sound? Do be more specific, Molly," he tells her, his tone still gruff.

Her cheeks flush red then, her gaze moving down towards the floor. "A – a moan," she nearly whispers, her voice almost inaudible.

Oh, he realizes.

He wills himself calm. "Yes , well – nothing to be concerned with. Go back to sleep," he replies, looking away from her and back down to his lap. He curses himself mentally for being so weak, so... hungry for her. Even looking at her standing in her heavy and cumbersome nightgown is enough to get his pulse racing again, remembering how it felt to touch her, both in his dreams and in real life...

"I could – I could help, you know," she says softly from right next to him, and he starts with surprise at her drawing closer to him. He quickly moves his hands over his lap, but he's certain she must have already seen.

"That won't be necessary, Molly," he tries to say, but it comes out mostly as a hiss, as his mind conjures up an image of her 'helping' even as he attempts to send her away.

She moves to kneel in front of him now, and oh God the temptation to ask her to stay is stronger now than ever, and he's not sure if he evenwants her to go away now...

She looks up at him, her eyes wide. "Please," she says softly, "I want to... return the favour," she finishes, and that blush creeps back up into her cheeks now, her neck flushing red, and he finds himself wondering just how far that blush goes down.

He doesn't say anything in reply, but it doesn't matter, because he's sure she can see his answer in his eyes. The last remaining bastion of logic and sensibility in his brain is telling him to reconsider, reminding him that he doesn't 'do' this type of thing (has never actually done this type of thing), but God does he want her (more than he would ever care to admit, even to her).

She takes his silence as assent and moves her hands to the top of his knees, pushing them apart from each other. The pressure of her palms on his limbs, even through the fabric of his pajama bottoms, is enough to make him shiver, enough to make his body feel like there is an electric current running through him, electrifying everything. She strokes his thighs lightly for a moment, as if revelling in the motion, and then inches her hands higher, her fingers dragging her palms upward until she skims past his groin and grasps the waistband of his second-hand pajama pants. She looks up at him then, a question in her eyes, and it's all he can do to just nod, his own hands already splayed onto either side of his body, his nails digging into the softness of the sofa cushions.

She looks down again and pulls on the fabric, his hips lifting automatically to let her slide them under his buttocks and down his legs. He catches a glimmer of surprise when she notices that he isn't wearing any pants underneath, as she slides her hands back up to either side of his inner thighs. She bites the corner of her lip and looks up at him again, and he's harder now than he thinks he's ever been.

He wonders if she knows what she is doing to him in this moment; he wonders if she knows how angry and how pleased he feels in this moment. "Molly," he tries to say, but it comes out as a deep growl, and he notes with surprise at how she shivers at that, at the sound of his voice.

And then she finally moves her hands higher, and he throws his head back into the back of the sofa, his fingers clenched into the fabric as her small hand closes around him. She moves it back and forth, sliding up and down slowly at first, and then picking up speed as she adjusts her hold. She starts to change the pressure as she moves, and Christ if he'd known how good this felt he might have never turned to cocaine in the first place. With the few remaining functional neurons he possesses, he wonders if this is how she felt when he touched her; if he had made her feel this good. The thought alone makes him groan, and he fights hard not to thrust against her hand.

He's still got his eyes closed when she slides further forward and takes him in with her mouth, and the sheer surprise of it makes him straighten up, his eyes snapping open. The sight of her between his legs (not to mention the feeling of her mouth around him) almost makes him reach his breaking point, and this time he can't stop the small, involuntary movement of his hips as he pushes into her mouth. He feels so... animalistic, so base, so primal – so much unlike himself that he wonders if he is still dreaming; if he is still just asleep on the sofa, caught in another of his endlessly frustrating subconscious fantasies. This just feels too good to be real; to have Molly's lips wrapped around him, her hands on his shaft, her elbows pressing into the skin of his thighs. He fights the urge to cry out and buries his fingers in her hair, stroking through the strands before pulling on her scalp, urging her back up again.

She wipes at her mouth with the back of her hand and looks up at him, confused. "Is – is this not, not okay?" she asks, uncertainty in her voice, and he almost wants to slap her for thinking that, for thinking that this isn't the best he's felt in a long, long time.

"I – I want," he pants, and the quickness of his breath surprises him (though he should have known from the pounding of his pulse in his ears). "I need – I need you," he tells her, pleads with her (because if he is going to do this he is going to do it the whole way, because he's a dead man and this doesn't really count as being real, does it?).

Her eyes go wide at that, surprise pulling her mouth open into a small 'O'. "Wh-what?" she stutters, shocked.

He leans forward then and catches the bottom of her jaw with two of his fingers. "You," he tells her softly, and before she can react he's sliding down and forward, not caring that he must be a sight, half naked and half clothed. He pulls her down beside him and he moves to hover over her, pulling at her nightgown with unbridled impatience. He finally succeeds in pushing it up over her hips and sliding it over her shoulders, before tossing it away into some far corner of the room. She doesn't even have a chance to say anything before his lips drop down onto her chest, nipping at her breasts. She wiggles underneath him and God if she keeps that up he won't be able to last. He's running on instinct now, instinct and his knowledge of anatomy, though he's not quite sure what to do next.

Molly surprises him then by reaching up and kissing him, her lips soft against his, and he's really not certain if he can handle this amount of sensory information, not with her skin pressed against his, not with her breasts under his fingers, not with her legs coming up to wrap around his hips. He slides his hand down and takes himself in hand, realizing that he must have to guide himself in. He wants to go slow but he can't, so he thrusts in all in one motion, and it feels like all the lights in London have gone on all at once, his body crashing into hers as he moves over and over again. She kisses his neck, his cheek, his shoulder as he fights to keep it together, but it's been too many sleepless nights and before he can stop it he's coming hard, and he thinks he breathes her name (Molly, Molly, Molly).

It feels... it feels like the best high he's ever had, it feels like every time he'd gotten high combined into one single experience. He feels light and heavy all at once. He feels... he feels complete.

He slumps forward against her, and she shifts slightly to transfer some of his weight down to the ground. His head comes to rest on the top of her sternum as he tries to regain his composure, his heart racing and his pulse racing and his mind racing, all at once. He can feel her fingers hesitantly come to stroke through his hair, and bizarrely, he finds that he enjoys it (oh Molly, dear sweet Molly).

"That's – that's not usually how I return favours," she whispers softly, and the worry in her voice makes him smile.

He runs a hand over her belly, the skin soft under his fingers. "I am not in the habit of rendering my assistance in sexual matters either," he tells her matter of factly. He starts to chuckle then, and he can feel her start to laugh too, his head rising and falling with the movement of her body. They stay like that on the ground, caught on each other, until they both fall asleep, letting all thoughts of what might happen next escape them until morning, both content for now in the achievement of their release.

The ending is a little open, but I'd like to think that Sherlock (being the addict that he is) won't just stop at one 'hit'. ;)