A Dream of Pirates and Maidens Fair

A/N: This little ficlet was inspired by a larger work I am collaborating on with WickedWanton, who blames my muse for kidnapping her into participating, completely against her will (to which I say PHOOEY – YOU WENT VOLUNTARILY!). Without giving too much away, the story will involve both modern and Victorian versions of Sherlock, featuring Molly Hooper in a very prominent way and hopefully turning out to be something everyone will enjoy reading. This bit is a dream the Victorian version of Sherlock has (yes, one of THOSE dreams all teenaged boys experience…), and I own nothing and no one, not even the first paragraph! That's WickedWanton's, which she graciously loaned me. Thanks, Wicked!

When he was fifteen, he was home for the Christmas holiday when he experienced his single bout of nocturnal emission. Before he could strip the sheets from his bed and smuggle them down into the laundry, his brother caught on. He heard of nothing but 'Titania' from him for the rest of the holiday. Veiled threats that he should check under his bed, 'fearing Oberon's wrath.' Trying to look up the phenomena on his own, he learned a new word: succubus. As frustrating as his dream was, he couldn't envision the girl in it as a demon draining the life from him. Mycroft, however, was another matter.

As for the dream itself…he removed it from his memory, erased it, pretended it had never happened. (But it remained, lurking in the background, persistently ignored but never truly as erased as he pretended it was…)

He was on a pirate ship. He hadn't dreamed of being a pirate since he was six, but nonetheless there he was, fifteen and dressed in ragged breeches, feet bare and a short sword at his hip. No eyepatch, no peg leg, but there were plenty among the crew with those piratical aspects so that was fine. Made the dream more enjoyable (he always knew when he was dreaming, could even affect them to a certain extent if he wanted to - it certainly helped keep the nightmares he occassionally experienced from getting too horrific).

They'd just sunk another ship; he could see the wreckage burning in the distance, while the rest of the crew cheerfully drank themselves into stupors and tussled over the booty they'd collected from the English vessel. A merchantman, with a fat haul. Perfect end to a perfect day at sea.

He turned, and she was there, a girl about his age, looking terrified. Her dress was torn at the shoulder as if someone had grabbed her, and he felt a sick feeling in his gut; the cap'n didn't allow the men to force themselves on the female captives, preferring to ransom them off to their families - or, if they had no family with money to ransom them, then he'd take them back to the island they called home and find places for them.

It was most likely Anderson; that bastard couldn't keep his hands to himself (how did he know so much about this crew, he'd never had such a detailed dream before, part of his mind mused) and the black eye the other pirate was now sporting was proof that someone had taken the time to remind him about the captain's rules.

His lip curled into a sneer as he thought about their captain, his elder brother who had only reluctantly taken Sherlock on as a crewman this past year, after their mother's death. There was no one left on the island after the illness claimed her to keep Sherlock from running wild, and so Mycroft had decided that yes, a pirate ship was a better option than leaving his little brother home to terrorize the natives and families of his crew who called their little island home.

The girl was still looking at him, glassy eyed, terrified, and impulsively he put out a hand and patted her clumsily on the shoulder - the one without the torn sleeve. "You'll be fine," he assured her. "Cap'n'll get you ransomed off soon enough."

Sadly she looked even more terrified at his words, lowering her eyes and clutching her hands tightly together. "I'm an orphan," she whispered, and he felt a strange sensation in the area of his heart, as if it had been squeezed tightly in a vice.

"So'm I," he confessed in a low voice, thankful that it was staying in the deeper register it had recently lowered to and not squeaking the way it had when he was fourteen. He was also glad that he hadn't yet reached his full height, was only a head taller than the petite girl with the big brown eyes and cinammon colored hair standing before him. He tugged at her sleeve. "Don't worry, anyway. None of the others'll touch you, they know better. Come with me to the galley," he coaxed. "Cookie'll have something for you to eat."

Like all dreams, it changed after the girl shyly slipped her hand into his. Instead of being on the pirate ship, they were now on dry land - a tropical island of the sort he'd only ever read about in the waking world,although here he could feel the sand between his toes, the warmth of the sun on his shirtless back (when had he gone shirtless?) and head - and especially the comfortable feel of her hand in his. He glanced back at her; she was no longer wearing the torn gown, was clad instead in what were most likely a pair of his own trousers (cleaner than the ones he was sporting) and a shirt (also most likely his) tied snugly at the waist. Her hair was caught back in a simple tail, and there were freckles on her sun-kissed cheeks.

She looked adorable, lovely in a way that was so natural, so unselfconscious, that he felt his mouth drying and his heart pounding at the sight of her. She caught his gaze and ducked her head, but not before he saw the blush suffusing her cheeks. "Don't look at me like that, Sherlock," she said in that soft voice of hers. "It's not proper."

His response was a lazy grin and "Oh? And you wandering about in boy's clothes IS proper, Molly?"

"Margaret," she protested, but there was a dimple showing and he knew she didn't mean it.

He startled a squeak out of her when he suddenly turned off the path they'd been following (they'd been going to the beach, this path lead from the village to the beach and they'd snuck away from the chores Mycroft had set them at, giggling like children the entire time) and pressed her up against a smooth-bored palm. She stared at him through wide brown eyes as his hands landed on either side of her face. "Molly," he said hoarsely, then suddenly they were kissing, her mouth opening beneath his, her hands on the bare skin of his back.

They shouldn't be doing this, it was wrong, and Mycroft would have his hide if he knew his little brother was rutting up against Molly like a common sailor in a brothel, but she wasn't exactly pushing him away and so Sherlock found he could care less what his brother thought. All he could think about was how soft and warm and curvy Molly's petite form was beneath his; all he could hear was her breathy little moans, the way she said his name with such eagerness, the way her hands had shyly slid down to his waist and settled on his hips.

He'd never felt like this before, like his body was a burning brand, one part in particular throbbing insistently inside his trousers. Molly's delicate fingers had moved from his hips to the ties of his trouser, and she was begging him to help her with her own clothing - and Mycroft always insisted that a gentleman did whatever a lady asked of him, didn't he?

When he'd freed her of her borrowed clothing she blushed but didn't try to hide herself, asking softly if he liked her body, if her breasts were too small or her hips too wide...He answered her with a feverish kiss, took her hand and placed it on his cock, gasping against her lips as she stroked him, bringing him closer and closer to the fulfillment he longed for, while his own hands brushed against her small, perfect, breasts, feeling the nipples hardening into tight little nubs as his fingers closed around them. "Sherlock," she cried out, her hand stroking stroking stroking...

...and he awoke with a strangled gasp, blinking sweat out of his eyes as he adjusted to the fact that he was no longer on some tropical island with the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen (what did she look like, why couldn't he remember that one detail) but instead lying in his own bed.

With a sticky wetness covering his groin and belly.