"Wait, where's it go?" He asked, hurriedly scanning his vicinity, then his clothes. He didn't know how it would have travelled from the cup to the table, then to his attire so fast, but he wasn't willing to take any chances. And delight he'd previously experienced from engaging in playful banter with his rather attractive flatmate had instantly evaporated and been replaced by a relentless, instinctual need to stand on a chair.
A look of momentary confusion crossed Y/N's face, then, as her mind connected the dots, she turned her gaze down to the glass in her hand. While she'd been distracted by---whatever they had been doing, her hand seemed to have wandered an inch to the left, taking with it the sheet of paper. A gap had appeared between the rim of the cup and the paper and...well---
"Clever, isn't she?" Y/N chuckled fondly, although the idea of a spider whose location was unknown unsettled her slightly. She almost mirrored Sherlock's anxious searching of his own body for the critter, but then she saw a dark shape disappear over the top of one of the cupboards. One of the high-up ones mounted to the walls that they use to hold the plates and bowls.
"She's not clever, she's trespassing in my flat," Sherlock muttered, wondering if he'd be safer to move to another part of the apartment, or if that's exactly where the spider would also go to get away from its pursuers. What he knew for sure, though, was that he craved some kind of comfort, so edged sheepishly around the dining table until he bumped into Y/N's side.
"Hello?" she questioned but got no reply.
Sherlock was still raking the room with his eyes like a rabbit who knew he'd heard a fox but didn't exactly know where it was.
"It went on top of that cupboard," she said matter of factly, wondering how she'd entrap it now. Even if she stood on a chair, her arm wouldn't be long enough---
"You should have got rid of it when I told you to!" Sherlock scolded usefully.
"Well it's a bit late for that now, isn't it? I guess it just lives here now. Should we charge it rent?"
The noise Sherlock made at that was kind of like how a deer would sound if you trapped one of its spindly, delicate legs in a car door; if you can imagine that sort of thing. "What?! No! It's not staying, I won't be able to sleep at night." He'd wilted, the threat of the spider becoming a permanent resident scaring him so much dignity was no longer something he cared about.
Y/N wanted to call him pathetic again, but the sharp word dissolved on her tongue. It would be too heartless, too much of a dick move to poke fun at someone when they were relying on your protection. How could she mock Sherlock when he was subconsciously pressing one side of his body up against hers in search of reassurance?
Awkwardly, because she'd never really needed to comfort Sherlock before, Y/N gave his stomach a little pat. The small of his back had been her first choice but she feared the unexpected contact would make him jump so violently he'd hit his head on the ceiling. It didn't seem to matter. A little colour had returned to his face anyway. "I was joking," she said, "We'll get it out. I don't know how, though, I can't reach that far back."
"It might have moved a bit further forwards?" Sherlock tried hopefully.
"Somehow, I doubt it, but I'll check." Y/N left the surprisingly pleasant solid warmth of Sherlock's side and dragged a chair over to the counter. The legs made a scraping sound on the wooden, uneven boards of the floor and Sherlock watched as Y/N climbed on top of it and pushed herself up on tiptoes. Even with that slight added height, her eyeline barley met the top of the cupboard. Their cupboards weren't just boxes, either, they had a sort of skirting around their top to hide all the dust that collects there, an extra few centimetres blocking not only Y/N's view of possible spiders, but any chances of capturing them as well.
Y/N got back down but left the chair where it was.
Which made Sherlock's stomach (previously tingling pleasantly where Y/N had touched him) to drop to the floor.
"You're going to have to get it," Y/N said, the words he'd been dreading.
"No! Are you crazy?"
"No, but if you want the spider out you're going to have to be the one to do it. I'm not tall enough, Mrs Hudson isn't tall enough---and even if she was there's no way I'm letting you get her to climb on a chair."
Sherlock knew she was right, and chewed his bottom lip. He had a choice to make. He could wait for the spider to vacate its new hiding spot and relocate to a more accessible position. This could take days, he knew, because once a spider makes camp it really does tend to make camp. Being ambush predators, they can remain still for days on end. This posed the obvious threat of the spider moving from the cupboard when no ones looking, and then popping up somewhere else. Like in Sherlock's bedroom. Or in the sink. A mental image of pouring himself some cornflakes only to have a spider spill from the box and into his breakfast bowl made a shudder spiral its way down Sherlock's spine.
Of course, the other option is doing as Y/N suggested and dealing with the problem here and now, himself. Which he really didn't like the thought of.
"Can the cup fit in that space?" he asked, trying his best to sound curiously casual. As if he was just asking for fun, not because he was actually considering---
It was too late, though, Y/N already looked impressed, having assumed his interest meant there was some small chance she could actually persuade him to go through with it. "Yeah, just about. You should be able to just slide the top of the glass along the ceiling until it's over the spider, then place it down."
"I know, I'm not entirely useless," Sherlock scowled, then instantly softened. "Sorry. I'm just...you know."
"Yeah, I know. I was trying to use step by step instructions to ease your nerves."
She sounded so kind and the gesture was so thoughtfully sculpted to Sherlock's zany personality that he felt the tips of his ears reddening with shame at snapping at her.
"It won't touch you," Y/N assured. "You just reach out and put a cup over it. Then the paper, move it close enough for me to take it and I'll put it outside."
Sherlock narrowed his eyes at her. "For real this time?"
"For real this time."
ð·ð·ð·
Sherlock had thought about it for a long time, nibbling on his bottom lip while his mind churned away. He had been thinking so hard that he didn't even notice Y/N approach him and gently reach out to stroke her thumb over his lip, freeing it from the smooth white edges of his teeth. It sent a little shiver of what could only be described as pleasure crawl across his skin and he blinked at her. His jaw, which has been tightly gritted only moments before, had slackened, his mouth falling open enough for her to get a glimpse of his pink tongue.
"You're going to end up eating half your face," Y/N chuckled at him, and he realised with a hollow feeling that she had only been preventing him from biting his lip. Nothing else. Not that he knew of anything he'd have preferred her to do.
Nothing he'd let himself think about, anyway.
He smiled with obvious effort. "Yeah, I need to stop doing that."
"You don't have to get the spider out," Y/N said, "I don't mind if we leave it." She was saying it to comfort him, give him the option just in case, for some reason, he thought he had to be The Man Of The House.
He'd like to be The Man Of The House, even though, he reflected with chagrin, that metaphorical ship had long since left the metaphorical harbour.
Although nothing is set in stone. And the mental image of a spider loose in the apartment was as unsettling as it was repulsive.
Sherlock shook his head. Tentatively: "All I have to do is put the glass on it, then the paper under the glass and pull it forwards?"
"Yep," Y/N affirmed the plan with so much ease, Sherlock wished---not that he wished discomfort on her, ever---that their roles were reversed. He'd like to be the one to do the comforting, soothe Y/N's frazzled nerves as he solves the problem with capable efficiency. He'd like her to look at him with admiration rather than soft pity, even if pity did mean tender touches.
The way she'd touched him. Loss of dignity was almost worth getting used to just to have her do that again.
Almost.
"Okay." He approached the chair cautiously, as if scared it'll suddenly come alive and bite at his ankles as he stepped onto it. Y/N watched him, he could feel her eyes on the back of his head and that sort of...kindled a small, feeble flame of confidence.
He wanted to impress her.
Standing on the chair, now, he's so jumpy and skittish that when Sherlock felt his hair lightly brush the ceiling, the sensation sent chills skittering over his scalp. He ignored it, though, wishing Y/N was thinking about how valiant he was being, and dared to shift his gaze over to the top of the cupboard. He could see perfectly, with his extra height, and, for the first time in his life, he wished he was shorter.
The spider is staring right at him. Well, it has eight eyes so it's probably staring right at everywhere, but in Sherlock's mind it was sizing him up, challenging him, judging the distance between them and getting ready to jump or crawl right at his face---
"Can spiders jump?" He asked, not one hundred per cent sure he wanted to know the answer.
"House spiders?" Y/N said from behind him; she'd come closer to stand by his legs, which comforted him slightly. "No. Other types can, though. She's not going to leap at your nose, if that's what you're worried about."
Sherlock was glad she couldn't see his expression properly from down there because he was blushing. "That's not what I was thinking about, I was just curious."
Liar.
"How do you know so much about spiders anyway?" He opened his right hand, motioning for Y/N to pass him the glass and paper, which she did. The glass felt calmingly cool against his palm. That and Y/N's voice were welcome distractions from---what he saw as---the herculean task he was currently faced with.
"Mrs Hudson has a spider cupboard. I guess that's where she puts all the ones she finds in the apartment."
Another blush on Sherlock's part at the reference to his earlier confession.
"She thinks they're cute. She tells me about them when I go around for tea sometimes."
"You go for tea at Mrs Hudson's without me?"
Y/N almost giggled at the hurt in his voice. "Yes, when you're on a case and I'm worried about you she makes me tea. That's the part you take offence with? Not the fact that there's a cupboard full of arachnids in the very building you live in?" Y/N watched Sherlock move the cup up to the top of the cupboard, doing as she said and sliding it along the ceiling.
"You worry about me?"
On any other occasion, Y/N would have denied it, not wanting to feed his already overweight ego. But now, as he---clearly tense all over---softly set the cup down over his small adversary, she knew he could probably use the diversion. "When you're on a case without me, yes. I worry."
"You worry because you're not on the case? Or you worry because I am?'
Y/N couldn't see from her position on the ground, but Sherlock had lifted his other hand; the one holding the paper; up to slip it along the top of the cabinet, so she assumed he must have succeeded in trapping the spider and was now working on phase two. The paper scraped along the wood and through, no doubt, a thick layer of fluffy thunderstorm-coloured dust. That was the only sound for a few seconds while Y/N contemplated her answer. "Both. Mainly the second one. Have you got her?"
He'd pulled the cup-containing-the-spider-atop-the-paper close enough to the edge of the cupboard for the whole package to be lifted out, and beamed down at Y/N with what could only be described as genuine pride. "Yes. You really worry about me?"
Y/N's eyebrows knitted together. "Of course."
When he still didn't get down from the chair, Y/N asked:
"Do you want me to take it now?"
Sherlock seemed to turn her offer over in his head, then gave her a wobbly, half-certain smile. "No, I'll do it."
"Really?"
"Yeah." To his absolute delight, this had the effect he'd been craving; an answering proud grin, admiration, and a little clap. "Don't patronise me," he warned, but only half meaning it. Any attention from Y/N was good attention, even if it was slightly humiliating, or involved taunting him with eight-legged creatures that looked like they'd crawled straight out of Hell.
Carefully, so carefully, and whilst his heart thrummed away at what was surely an unhealthy pace, Sherlock eased the cup upwards, making sure to bring the paper with it, slowly as to be absolutely certain he was leaving no escape holes. The spider, not liking the way the world was now moving around her, scuttled fervently around the inside of the cup several times and Sherlock's mouth went very dry.
When she'd settled again, upside down on the bottom (which was now the top) of the glass, Sherlock continued to step off the chair, glad to have the soles of his feet in contact with the floor once more. The floor meant more space to run if everything suddenly went tits up, although, now that he had the spider safely contained, he didn't feel as though it would. Not as much as before, when it was in the hands of a surprisingly evil Y/N, or simply free to travel where it wished.
He stood for a little while, just sort of...looking at the spider's belly through the glass (which magnified it slightly, a useful happenstance). It was almost interesting, in an unnerving, freakish sort of way, the thick hairs, minuscule joins, tiny organs. The curious part of Sherlock's brain (which was the majority of it, really) couldn't help finding fascination with the way it all worked.
"Look at you, holding a spider," Y/N said, sounding satisfied and conclusive, like a TV character delivering her last line at the end of a movie. "Shall I get the window for you? Although I must warn you, it's said that house spiders can't survive outside. If you put it out there it might die; I can't remember if it was a myth or not." She'd said it with an air of indifference, assuming Sherlock would be in more than a hurry to do whatever it takes to rid his home of the intruder that has caused him so much distress, so she was slightly taken aback to see his horrified expression.
"Wait, really?"
Y/N nodded. "Yeah."
"Well, I'm not letting her die." He'd stood a little straighter, like a defiant parent refusing to let his child go on a school trip to somewhere he deemed unsafe.
Raising her eyebrows in mock scrutiny at his rapid change of heart: "It's a her, now?"
Sherlock gave a shrug; or as close to a shrug as he could get without shaking the spider up too much. "That's what you said she is, isn't she?"
Y/N couldn't help noticing, with a rush of fondness, how gentle he was being with what had been an invader but was now being treated like a stray dog that had somehow wandered into the apartment. Even before, when Sherlock been scared out of his mind, he still hadn't asked Y/N to kill the spider.
"Yeah, I think she's a she. We should ask Mrs Hudson, she's the one---" a light clicked on behind her eyes, "That's what we'll do with her. We'll ask Mrs Hudson if we can use her spider cupboard."
ð·ð·ð·
The next morning, Y/N gravitated, sleepy-eyed, to the kitchen in search of sustenance, expecting to find Sherlock at the table already. He used to remain in bed until ungodly hours, but in recent months it had become his habit to join Y/N for breakfast. Maybe because he enjoyed her company. Maybe because the kitchen is a hub of interest and he's scared of missing out. Maybe because Y/N sometimes offered to make him eggs just the way he liked them. She wasn't sure.
She wasn't even entirely sure why she wanted to make him eggs in the first place; couldn't he do it himself? But his eyes would go all glowy and his handsome mouth would widen into a grin every time Y/N set the plate down before him, which she had grown a considerable affinity for.
On this particular day, though, he was absent.
Y/N needed her fix of Sherlock's glowy eyes and happy smile, so she let her bare feet carry her to his bedroom door and raised her hand to give it a little knock.
No one answered. Sometimes she has to fetch him, wake him from sleep, and he'll give her a lopsided grin and a 'good morning' thick with the last remnants of a dream, then stumble after her to the kitchen. It is because of this that Y/N felt so easy in pushing the door open and approaching the bed.
That easiness faltered when she found the bed empty. Not faltered as in its momentum came to an abrupt halt, but rather it gained a new kind of energy, her mind now filled with curiosity. Sherlock got up early for roughly four things: to check on a science experiment, Christmas, his birthday, and crime (both ones he has and hasn't committed himself).
When Y/N had walked the entire apartment and still failed to locate her friend, she decided to widen the search so that the area she was scouring was to encompass the entire building. This included Mrs Hudson's flat, and 221C in the basement (although Y/N had no idea why anyone would be down there of their own free will).
Much to Y/N's relief, the hunt ended long before the damp bowels of the building had to be penetrated.
"Have you seen Sherlock?" Y/N asked Mrs Hudson when she answered the door. It wasn't early, but it wasn't late either, so Y/N didn't know whether to apologise for the intrusion or not.
If she had apologised it probably would have merely been waved off with one of Mrs Hudson's claw-like hands; she was already dressed and probably had been for some time; the apron tied about her waist freckled with miniature pale fireworks of flour. She'd been baking again.
In her usual motherly fashion, Mrs Hudson ushered Y/N into her squat little flat as if a blizzard was raging in the hallway, her fluttering and genial mannerisms easing nerves Y/N didn't even know were frayed. She led Y/N to the kitchenette as if it was her first time visiting, apologising for the mess that wasn't even there. That seems to happen when your age tumbles over the sixty-year-mark; you start hallucinating clutter and awakening before the birds with an innate need to bake.
"He came to see how Mycroft is doing," Mrs Hudson explained.
With confusion: "Mycroft is here?"
"No, Mycroft the spider. You know, that one you brought yesterday."
They had ended up donating the spider to Mrs Hudon's rapidly growing collection. The idea of disposing of the spider by humanely and discreetly sealing it away in a cupboard had seemed to ease Sherlock's mind and conscience considerably because his face had broken out into a grateful smile. He'd followed Y/N close at her heels, which made her a little uneasy, fear that he'd seize the opportunity for revenge whilst her back was turned nibbling at the corner of her mind. She felt his arm brush hers at one point and almost left her own skin, thinking for a horrible second that he had let the spider loose on her---or something.
But he hadn't.
Sherlock had watched attentively as Mrs Hudson accepted his strange gift, then offered him tea.
When Y/N had left them, craving sleep and the warm embrace of her duvet, Mrs Hudson was telling Sherlock about how 'the ogre-faced spider spins a web between its front legs and casts it over its prey'.
He'd looked fascinated.
The spider cupboard is located in Mrs Hudson's sitting room and that is where Y/N found Sherlock, a plate of butter-slick toast balanced on one of his crossed legs. He tipped his head back to smile up at Y/N and she tried to stop the corners of her own lips pulling into a smirk.
"You called the spider Mycroft? I told you it was a female."
Sherlock shrugged, turning back to the cupboard, its door open wide, the whole thing looking like a dark, square little mouth. The mouth was gummy and toothless, completely empty besides fluffy webs, dust clinging to the wispy tendrils like gritty ice crystals.
Y/N felt a shiver curl its way around the base of her spine as her eyes adjusted more to the lack of light and several looming shapes materialised. More than several, now that she thought about it; like those optical illusions, the longer Y/N stared at the spider cupboard the more the name suited it.
She took a seat next to Sherlock who had been watching the scene as if it was an episode of his favourite TV show.
"Yeah, but it was big. And invading my space, so it just seemed to suit."
This made Y/N giggle which in turn made Sherlock glow.
"Are you not scared of them anymore?" Y/N asked, realising that, with such so many concentrated in one small space, that she might be.
Another shrug. "They're okay if they don't go on me. Mrs Hudson has been telling me about them. They're sort of interesting to watch. Like fish, but they don't move nearly as much."
It was then that Y/N caught sight of a slender notepad by Sherlock's right foot. His handwriting---much like one of the spiders had been dipped in ink and meandered drunkenly over the paper---filled the first half of the top page.
"What's that for?"
"I've been documenting them."
"Did you name them all?"
"No, I left eleven for you to name. There was a twelfth but the numbers decreased when Cindy ate Harris."