Sherlock sleeps so well that night, he doesn't wake until late morning, the clock on Y/N's bedside table just about ticking past Ten.
Recovering from his reluctant entrance into the conscious realm, the first thing he becomes aware of is:
Y/N isn't there.
She's not wrapped around his back, or nestled against his chest. That's where he'd like her to be; her nose buried between his pectorals, her arm lazily draped over his middle. She holds him in her sleep in a way he's become embarrassingly besotted with, her hands subconsciously clinging to the trunk of his body like some kind of tree-dwelling primate.
"You remind me of something," he'd mumbled into the dark last night, his voice gravelly and slightly slurred in a sated, love-drunk sort of way.
"What do I remind you of?"
"One of those things in Madagascar."
"There's lots of things in Madagascar." Y/N's words had bumped, muffled, into Sherlock's chest.
"They have a stripy tail. Black and white."
"A lemur?"
"That's the one."
"Why do I remind you of one of those?"
Sherlock had flexed his fingers, even though she couldn't see them, demonstrating. "The way you cling to me when we sleep."
He'd pointed this out to her becauseâthe way he sees itâ it is his duty as her best friend to alert her whenever he thinks up a new insulting thing he can compare her to.
Unfortunately, this had the unwanted effect of Y/N loosening her hold.
"Oh, sorry," she had uttered sheepishly, making to move over to her side of the bed.
"It's not a bad thing." Immediately (and admittedly a little panicked) Sherlock took her hands, pressing them right back against the warm patches they'd left. " I like it." Sighing in relief as her fingers squeezed onto a handful of him once more:
"I'm actually rather fond of lemurs."
Presently, he reaches out to the other side of the bed, feeling blindly around the cool duvet.
Propping himself up, the window is close enough to Y/N's bed for him to lean over, hooking the curtain with one finger.
A soupy layer of grey cloud hangs low in the sky, the pavement slick and pocked by a steady, persistent rain, droplets dribbling down the pane in rivulets. People hurry back and forth across the street below, their umbrellas wind-battered and bobbing about like colourful mushroom caps.
Sherlock considers the people cowering below their canvas pityingly.
They have to go to work.
They're soaked through, battling the sharp droplets of water pelting them like stones.
He's in a woman's bedroom, in the warm, nestled amongst a thick duvet that smells of the shampoo Y/N uses.
Craving her smile already, Sherlock throws off the covers and stumbles out of bed, fishing his pyjama t-shirt off the floor.
The trousers have to be plucked off her dressing room mirror, a grin twitching his lip at the memory of how they'd got there.
...
Sherlock can hear Y/N before he can see her.
She's in the kitchen and she's got the radio on, the music winding its way up the little staircase and down the hall.
She's singing along to it, in that way she does when she thinks no one can hear her, and Sherlock's mouth quirks with a grin.
Pancake batter crackles quietly in a pan, the smell of it setting his stomach rumblingâ
âbut Sherlock resists the temptation to join her in the kitchen, perch on the table and snack on dry Frosties while he waits for the pancakes to curl at the edges.
He doesn't want to make his presence known just yet.
If anything, he's forgotten he has a presence.
In this moment there is just Y/N standing at the stove in her pyjamas, rhythmically prodding a pancake about a saucepan to the beat of [fav song].
Enraptured, Sherlock edges closer and, as if punishing him for his hubris, the floorboards let out a frustratingly obnoxious squeak below his feet.
He mentally curses them as, sure enough, Y/N's ears prick and she turns to face him.
Her hair actually fans about her shoulders, time itself seeming to slow down in a way Sherlock thought was only possible in eighties movies, the shot overlaid with glittery sparkles and a cut of 'Hello, is it me you're looking for? '.
Y/N's face lights up with a beam as she spots him in the doorway, then falls with disappointment. "I was going to make you breakfast in bed."
No one had ever made Sherlock breakfast in bed beforeâapart from his mum that one time when he was eight and recovering from chickenpox.
The fact that Y/Nâthat someoneâwas about to, even though he's not even sick, throws him off balance for a secondâ
âbut he quickly regains it, unable to help smiling a gratefulâslightly baffledâsmile. "Darling, you didn't have to do that."
Her cheeks redden and he realises what he'd let slip.
He hadn't planned on saying that.
He knows why he'd said it.
Several times throughout their friendship he's had to clamp his teeth shut on that stupid little word, but for some reason this time he hadn't been quick enough.
Y/N doesn't slap the word away, though. She just turns back to her pancakes, prodding it quickly with the spatula, setting it sizzling. "No, but I wanted to," she insists, sounding sad that her plan had been foiled.
"I'm sorry." Guiltily, Sherlock steps up behind her, letting his arms do what they've been aching to do since he woke up; snake about her waist. Pulling her against his chest, he mutters into her ear apologetically:
"If it'll make you feel better, I can get go back to bed," he teases, knowing she'll like that idea even less.
As predicted, she shakes her head. "No, it wouldn't be the same."
"How about tomorrow I make you breakfast in bed?"
"So you're staying in with me again tonight then, are you?"
"If it would please the court," he jests, nipping the lobe of her ear playfully with his teeth.
"It would indeed. And you? Wake up early enough to make someone breakfast? That'll be the day."
Indignantly:
"Hey, I could do it."
"You have the circadian rhythm of a racoon."
"A racoon that makes french toast in that way you like." Nuzzling his nose into her shoulder, he kisses her neck, squeezing her tighter against his chest. He wants Y/N to forget the pancakes and kiss him properly, his mouth pressing insistently along her neck, the underside of her jaw, her ear.
He feels her chest expand and contract as she finally sighs, wiping the flecks of batter off her hands with the tea towel.
Turning the hob down, the flame shrinking to a low flutter:
"Can't you not go ten minutes without getting some attention?" Feigning reluctance, she lets him turn her around with two strong hands on her hips.
"It's been longer than ten minutes," he refutes; after all, he doesn't want Y/N to see him as needyâ
âeven though he is. He has checked and he definitely does have some dignity left.
He'd lost some when he'd moaned her name so loud she'd had to shush him, glancing worriedly to the wall they share with the neighbours.
He'd lost a little bit when she'd stopped sucking that pink mark onto his neck and he'd begged her to keep going in a whiney, pitiful voice he'd never heard before.
And clasping her like this must mean he's given up a fairly large chunk of whatever crumbs remain.
He's not letting her go, though.
Sod dignity.
"No, I kissed you before I came downstairs."
He blinks. "While I was asleep?"
"Yeah. Here." She admits, unable to meet his eyes. The tip of her finger touches to the center of his forehead, leaving it tingling. "Sorry, it was stupid."
He imagines her caressing him there, while he's not even awake to feel it, and beams, pulling her in for a proper kiss.
She lets him happily, her hand splaying on at his chest with a contented hum.
Against her lips:
"It wasn't stupid."
He kisses her slowly, lazy, sleepily. Even though she's against him, she feels too far away and he brings her closer, liking her hands having to grasp the muscles in his arms for support.
It's her fingers finding his curls and winding into them that makes him tilt his head, deepening their kiss with a broken groan.
Y/N's self-satisfied smile curls against his mouth as she regains a little control, using it to take a step backwards, guiding him with her. Finding the counter, she leans against it, tugging his waist between her legs.
That gets some more noises from Sherlock.
Theâvery much forgottenâpancake begins to smell like it's browning underneath, and Y/N breaks the kiss, spinning in his arms to face the hob.
Sherlock lets her grudgingly, his chin coming to rest on her shoulder. He watches as she dishes out the pancake along with its golden, slightly steaming brethren.
She has given herself three, and him two extra, both plates sitting side by side on their small circular lap trays.
They'd bought them from the gift shop when they'd visited the Natural History Museum. Sherlock's is a picture of a rather fugly dodo, which Y/N had bought because she'd pointed at it and claimed it was him.
He had retaliated by holding up a tray featuring a Glyptodonâan extinct clade of grumpy-looking heavily armoured armadillosâclaiming it was her.
Their pancakes teeter in piles on plates they'd bought on a trip to Windsor Castle.
The honey dipper is from a farm shop located in his childhood village. It's wooden and hand carved and shaped like a bee.
Y/N had bought it for him when he'd taken her to stay with his parent's over the holidays.
They'd fallen instantly in love with her, and, mistaking them for lovers, asked when they planned to get married.
Sherlock's cheeks had turned very red as he'd sputtered a hasty correction.
Y/N had just watched him with mild amusement, her whole face curved with a subtle and affectionate smile.
Presently, she fills a dish with blueberries, the dish actually being an ashtray Sherlock had stolenâwhile Y/N nervously giggledâfrom Buckingham Palace.
Not the gift shop.
The actual palace.
The memory makes Sherlock's mouth twitch.
He hadn't taken the ashtray because he wanted it. What he'd wanted was sat on the sofa next to him, trying to keep a straight face, her posture rigidly, respectfully, upright should The Queen herself walk in at any moment.
Sherlock realises suddenly that his flat is full of things that have meaning to him, and they only really have meaning because they remind him of Y/N.
She must feel his arms tighten about her middle because she says, her tone lightened by a smile. "You've gotten so touchy-feely recently."
"I like being touchy feely. It feels..." he hunts for a word, a word that sums up how her arms around him have solved problems he didn't know he had, how her touch and her love has made life colourful and bright and delicious and wonderful.
âbut he can't find one.
So instead he says, stupidly:
"...good."
He can feel Y/N laughing in his arms.
"You need to get a girlfriend."
He stops nuzzling his nose into her hair. "What?"
"I know you always say you're married to your work, but you seem to like romantic stuff and sex. Definitely sex. That's what girlfriends are for."
"I don't want a girlfriend."
"Wanting to share a bed, cuddling on the sofa at night; sure seems like you do," Y/N teases, not seeming to have picked up on the fact that his heart had lurched uncomfortably against her shoulderblade.
"No, I didn't mean I don't want to be with anyone," he says carefully. He has to release Y/N as she crosses the room to the fridge, taking out a Muller yogurt.
It's the one with the bits in the corner, biscuit and chocolate and things, and he knows instinctively she'd fetched it for him.
She squashes it in amoungst their overcrowded trays and turns to look at him scrutinously, her brows furrowed.
Sherlock shifts under her gaze. His bare feet suddenly feel very cold on the kitchen floor. "I meant...I don't want to do that with anyone new."
"Well, we can't be..." she struggles, the words seeming to taste bad on her tongue, "'friends with benefits' forever, Sherlock. I'm glad I could help you fix your sleeping problem, and I had an amazing nightâtwo amazing nights," she corrects herself, blushing with a colour Sherlock realsies with horror, is shame. "But I want a relationshipâa proper relationship. Has it not occurred to you that one day, maybe I'd like to meet someone?"
"I don't want you to meet someone." It slips out before he can catch it, edged with something curt and sharp.
Y/N's mouth opens and closes several times, then, finding herself, she sputters, an affronted frown forming where her good natured smile had been:
"Well, what do you think I was going to do? Spend the rest of my life making sure you get a good sleep?"
"Hey, don't act like I was the only one benefitting; you looked like you were having a pretty good time too."
"I didâ"
He shrugs. "So why would you want to meet anyone else?"
"Because I want to do those things with a man who loves me, Sherlock."
Something in him flares. "A man? What man? Who is he?"
"There isn't a man!" She sighs, shaking some sugar over her pancakes. "Even if there was, it's none of your business who I sleep with."
"I know, of course it's not. I didn't mean---" He moistens his lips. They seem to have turned to sandpaper within the space of a few seconds. "I'm happy to just make love with you. Only you. I don't want anyone else. I wanted you so much, you were the reason I couldn't sleep." His brows have come together, so rucked up they meet over his nose. "Did you only make love to me because you felt sorry for me?"
She turns to look at him now, and he's thrown off his rhythm when he finds her lip is twitching.
Not with anger.
With a smirk.
He almost wishes she would go back to strategically plopping blueberries over her breakfast.
"...'Make love'?" she asks carefully.
He glowers back defensively, embarrassed. "Well, what would you call it?"
"Sherlock, making love is what you do with a partner. It's not just sex it's...cuddling after, and sharing a meal before. It's kissing to show how you feel about each other."
Reproachfully:
"Weren't we doing those things?"
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying I was. Weren't you?"
She stares at him as if his words had slapped her in the face.
He gets the strange feeling he'd like to run awayâ
âbut he doesn't.
He stands his ground because he needs to know.
She doesn't say anything for a beat too long, and he sighs, deflated.
"Look, it doesn't matterâ"
"It does."
"It doesn't."
One of the floor panels is sticking up a bit at one end and Sherlock nudges it with the toes of his sock. The back of his neck feels too hot, as though the label is grating against his skin, but he knows it's not because Y/N had cut it out for him.
His neck keeps doing that; turning red, fuchsia, blush. Over the past few days it's been more shades of pink than a cherry blossom.
"It does matter," Y/N is saying. "All of it mattered to me. I'm crazy about you, Sherlock."
His heart lurches so far up his throat it knocks the back of his teeth. "Then...what was all that about wanting to meet someone?"
"I thought you didn't...And I didn't want to ask. You're so new to it I thought I'd scare you away, which I definitely couldn't do becauseâwell, because it's you." She takes his finger, hooking it with her own. "I need you in my life."
Ever so slightly, something ghosts the corner of Sherlock's lip.
No one else would have spotted it; and if they had they wouldn't know what it means.
Y/N does. She's smiling. She hasn't stopped smiling since his little outburst. "Get over here."
"No." He pulls his hand away, stepping back towards the fridge.
"Come on, drama queen, get over here and kiss me."
Moodily:
"I don't want to now."
"Yeah you do."
"No, I'm mad at you, you scared me."
"I'm sorry. Come on." She slips her arms around his waist, trying to turn him around. "I'll make it up to you."
Stubbornly, he doesn't budge.
"Sherlock."
Her hand is rubbing his stomach and its making it hard to remember why he was angry at her. It's making it hard to remember anything.
He hesitates. "...How."
"I'll take you to Angelo's. We can bring dessert home in little boxes and eat in on the bed."
He perks up a little. "Why the bedroom?"
She raises one eyebrow and he goes maroon.
"Oh." A tiny, tentative smirk ghosts his mouth. "You are very much forgiven."
She grins, dragging him down for a kiss.
He falls into it as if he's never been kissed before, as if he's been waiting for it for a hundred years.
"Hey." He buries his nose in her neck, stooped over her little body almost possessively. "No more trying to meet someone, okay?"
"Same to you." She turns her head, giving his ear a warning nip. "You're mine now, Mr Sherlock Holmes."
He growls, a shiver skittering its way up his spine.
Why does his name sound so good rolling off her tongue?
Why does he like it when she calls him that?
Mine.
He's never been anyone's before.
She laughs. "You got so mad at the idea of me seeing some hypothetical guy."
He kisses her neck, the rocky edge of his teeth grazing a pulse point. Growled from the back of his throat:
"I hate that hypothetical guy."
Giggling, Y/N takes the sides of his face, bringing him out of the crook of her neck so she can catch his lips once more.
He lets her, because he'll always let her, unable to wipe the grin from his mouth, his eyes, everything. "Me with a girlfriend?" He asks, puzzled in between her kisses. "How did that happen?"
"I'm shocked and appalled it didn't happen much much sooner," Y/N says distractedly, his thumb inching its way under the hem of her pyjamas.
The wide, smooth pad of it rubs a small, teasing circle. "Do you want breakfast now?" She asks, his head already back in that space between her neck and her elbow.
He likes it there, where it smells of her skin and her hair, her little body all warm and so alive against his nose.
Sensing his shift in mood, she asks, a sly grin playing across the lower half of her face:
"....Or would you rather we go back to bed?"
"How about the living room? The rug. By the fire," he's speaking between gasps, Y/N's leg inching higher between his thighs.
She gives a tiny, teasing rub and he gasps. "It's not even on."
"Huh?"
"The fire."
"Fuck the fire, I just want somewhere I can lay you down and climb on top of you."