Sherlock joined Y/N on her bed quickly this time, rather than hovering next to it like the entire thing was something expensive he was afraid to break. He petted Basil's shaggy head then climbed onto the mattress with the same ease he'd have getting into a taxi or curling up in his favourite armchair. His cheeks are pink, still, but with more of an excited flush than a bashful blush as he stretches his long legs before him and gave Y/N a tentative smile.
She had propped the pillows up along the headboard, making them into a plush backrest, which Sherlock settled against, his shoulders becoming engulfed in their embrace. Y/N's bed is comfier than his, and always slightly aglow with warmth. He thinks that's because her duvet has 'down' on the label, but that's got nothing to do with it; what he's actually enjoying is the sensation of another life being so close to his own.
"Here." He'd brought something with him, a purple box dappled with pink spots, the familiar logo and framed white font peeking out from under his thumb. "I got these for Christmas and haven't gotten around to eating them."
Y/N raised her eyebrows. "You never got around to eating chocolates? Who are you and want have you done with Sherlock Holmes?"
His cheeks coloured but Y/N could see he was trying to fight off a smile. "Shut up. Do you want any or not?"
"Ah, he's back."
If Sherlock was a child, he definitely would have stuck his tongue out at her. Instead, he started picking the sticker that held the two halves off the box together off with his nail, and, once he'd peeled it free, stuck it to Y/N's forehead.
She blinked in surprise, not that he noticed; he'd placed the Cadbury's Milk Tray on his lap and opened the lid like a book, revealing the plethora of treats sitting unsuspectingly in their black plastic tray. He took a plain chocolate cube and popped it in his mouth. He didn't chew it, just sucked it a little, letting the chocolate melt around his teeth.
Y/N watched his tongue push against the insides of his cheeks as he arranged the chocolate in his mouth, for some reason unable to look away.
Eventually, he chewed whatever was left and swallowed, Y/N's gaze being drawn along the stretch of his throat and down into his pyjama top. She waited for him to offer her one, but he didn't. He just took another for himself; one of the ones that have a layer of white, milk and dark chocolate, which he ate separately, biting off each one with the rocky edge of his front teeth.
Eventually, Y/N realised he might have expected her to just take what she wanted, so reached out to do so---
But he moved the box slightly to the left just before her thumb and forefinger could close around---well, anything. Her empty hand looked like one of those claw machines that had just failed to grab a prize.
She narrowed her eyes. "I thought you said I could have some."
With the hand not inconspicuously clamped to the box, Sherlock had taken the television remote and started flicking through films to watch. Feigning nonchalance: "Well, I'm not sure I want to share now." But the corner of his lips kept twitching like it wanted to turn up into a smirk.
Y/N matched his pretend moody pout, her expression a cocktail of playful determination and mock contempt as she tried a different approach; simply snatching a chocolate.
Once again, Sherlock pushed the box out of her reach. Y/N huffed at him. "Sherlock," she warned, and he bit the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling at the sound of his name on her tongue. "Stop mucking around." She of course didn't really want him to stop---she's rarely seen him muck about, but the few times he has (all in much more recent months) have been glistening jewels in the crown of her memories.
"I'm not mucking around, you implied I was greedy. You don't deserve any." Sherlock had run out of lap, now, so for Y/N's fourth attempt he'd had to start lifting the box into the air, just out of her grasp. She could have sworn he was doing that on purpose; making her feel like she was about to reach the box then putting another centimetre between it and her fingertips just as she lunged for it.
Basil had been laying like a peaceful sphinx at the end of the bed, but opened his eyes now to watch Y/N and Sherlock's impromptu game curiously.
"What if I said sorry?"
"Well are you?" He's not even trying to contain a smirk anymore; it curled his lips and lit his eyes as he watches her perseverance with what could only be described as amusement. She'd moved closer to him on the bed, the mattress dipping with their concentrated weight until Y/N was leaning into Sherlock's side, both their arms outstretched over the lip of the bed. Y/N knew he was doing that on purpose; his grin is obvious in the corner of her eye, little chuckles bubbling up from his chest every now and again. She could feel them; how his torso moved when he laughed, his muscles shifting about as he tried his best to keep them upright.
Y/N didn't want them upright, she'd concluded that her adversary being pinned to the bed would give her an advantage. Smiling to herself, now, she retracted the arm reaching for the box, and, before Sherlock could utter his confusion at her surrender, she planted both hands on his shoulders and gave him a shove.
With a startled little yelp, he fell onto his back, Y/N---having also lost her balance---falling with him.
She hadn't meant to end up sprawled on over Sherlock's front like butter on toast.
That had been a pleasing happenstance.
He'd been very close to falling right off the bed; from his shoulders upwards there was nothing supporting him, the trunk of his body tensing below Y/N in an effort to keep his arm (and the Milk Tray) well out of her reach. Not that she was thinking about the Milk Tray at that second.
It felt different being this close to him now because they were both awake. Not as in conscious, but as in just...not sleepy. The lights are on. They can see each other, see all the places where their skin would be making contact were it not for an exhilaratingly thin layer of material. They can see each other's faces, their expressions. He was grinning up at her. His eyes kept flicking around her eyes to her lips---or maybe chin, she couldn't tell. They're not shyly cuddling anymore, they're wrestling, parts of them scuffing and bumping into each other.
And his body feels softer than Y/N had expected (even though it's solid with the exertion of making him into a sort of human gangplank). She'd been surprised by that last night, too; how...alive he is, how malleable, the little bit of soft at the base of his back. The onset of stubble at his chin and down his neck, rough and gritty. Each bump of his ribs. Not because she didn't see him as human, but because when she'd moved in he'd been all jagged bones. Hollows. Like a length of wire bent into the shape of a man. Not just in his appearance---even though, when he sat still for long enough it had sometimes been difficult to tell if he indeed did have a pulse---but in personality too. He'd drift about like the air he walked through was slipping between gaps in his bones, brain and body not managing to interact with reality unless it physically grabbed him and gave him a shake.
Now he wasn't like that. Like any of it. His hollows replaced by something, Y/N wasn't sure what, but it was good. He'd gone well over a year of getting whatever he'd been missing before, whether that be healthy eating habits, a steady sleep cycle, or simply a friend---and it showed.
Y/N managed to right herself, pushing her body away from the distracting warmth of Sherlock's and up into a sort of crawling position. Her eyes darted from her flatmate's to the chocolates suspended by his arm now conciderably more within Y/N's reach.
Sherlock realised what she planned to do and wriggled below her, aiming to escape by worming his way over the side of the mattress and onto the floor, to no avail. Crouching over him, Y/N managed to climb her hand along Sherlock's arm and close it on the corner of the box, letting out a triumphant 'Ha!' as she drew it to her chest, sitting back on Sherlock's stomach.
She grinned proudly down at him and he stared moodily back. "I'm not sorry, and you are greedy for not sharing with me."
Her victory was short-lived.
She felt something take her waist, two large, strong hands that pushed her suddenly to the right, clamping her to the bed as she shrieked, a strange mixture between a scream and a laugh. Sherlock had sat up and expertly swapped their positions, his knees either side of Y/N's hips as he released her middle, only to catch her flailing wrists and pin them above her head.
He wasn't trapping her. Not really. His grip at her arms bordered on tender, resting his weight on his legs rather than using it to hold her down. If she wanted she could shove him off, call a stop to all of this, but she didn't because it was fun and because every time he touches her it's like her nerves are awakening for the first time, and he's got this smile---
She squirmed, laughing because having him on top of her was making her giddy, and he gave her a wolfish smile that died as suddenly as if it had been shot.
"Where are the chocolates?" He asked, swelled pupils roving the duvet around Y/N's head for the box.
"You think I'll just hand them over to you?"
"No, I mean are they with you or Basil?"
"Oh, right. I don't actually know where they are, I think I dropped them."
Sherlock let Y/N go and climbed off her, turning to face the bottom of the bed. Basil had been sprawled there, watching Y/N and Sherlock's tusull with contempt, like he was 'too old for this nonsense', but he isn't there anymore, the bottom of the bed is empty besides his calling card; a dog-shaped indent in the puffy sheets now prickly with loose hairs.
Y/N hauled herself up, the fear of accidentally poisoning her friend's dog enough to distract her from whatever being pressed against Sherlock's chest had awoken within her humiliatingly treacherous body. In the process, caught sight of a butterscotch-coloured column of fluff making its way along the side of the bed. Quickly, she scrabbled towards it and swiped the box of chocolates just as Basil nosed at one Y/N knew to contain a subtle pink sweet strawberry filling. Several had fallen out of their little compartments and bounced onto the carpet, and Y/N made sure to gather them all before sitting back on the bed, Basil staring up at her grumpily from the floor.
"You go to all that trouble to get them, then loose them," Sherlock quipped as Y/N resumed her position on her side of the bed.
"It's hard to hold onto them when a six foot man is pinning you to a mattress," Y/N answered smoothly. The tomato colour Sherlock's cheekbones had turned went unnoticed. Y/N was preoccupied with choosing a chocolate; her well earned reward. She wanted to make a show of closing her eyes at the taste and humming, to rub her success in her friend's face---a sort of victory lap---but she was still a little out of breath. God knows why. All they'd done is roll around on a bed.
Ah, that's why.
"Are you going to share your spoils?" Sherlock asked, bringing Y/N back to earth.
She pursed her lips. "I don't know if I feel like sharing now." But she nudged it three centimetres in his direction anyway.
He took a chocolate and removed the top of it, bringing the rest away from his mouth, trickling strands of caramelised sugar stretching between his hand and lips. He's very close to Y/N, she realised. So close she can see the reflection of the bedside lamp on his lips where he'd moistened them. His teeth part and his pink tongue darted out to catch the treat and draw it into his mouth, eyes lighting with obvious joy at the taste. The television screen flickered in his pupils. If Y/N would lean a little closer she'd be able to make out the picture.
Lost in a rather inspiring speech the hero is giving, Sherlock's hand gravitates back to the chocolate box to retrieve another. This one, too, gets stripped apart, reduced to its fundemental elements that are then individually consumed. He seems to prefer eating things that way; shelling them, nibbling away at their harder outer casing, the softer, now unprotected, center a reward for his efforts. The long, paper-coloured column of his throat bobbed as he swallowed. That's covered in reflections too; not as defined as the ones in his pale eyes and bitable lips. Just a haze of light caressing him softly, shifting with every new scene and creating new shadows, highlighting things Y/N hadn't even concidered beautiful before. Like the fluffy, tufty curls, much shorter than the rest, licking the tops of his ears. Or how his nose, from the side, has a delicate, ever so slight upwards point. A scalene triangle.
"You're watching me again."
Y/N almost jumped, his voice cutting neatly through the quiet between them. She blushed. "Sorry."
"I don't mind. I just don't understand why."
Y/N didn't want to tell him it's because he's pretty. She should have done, because it probably would have made him smile, and his cheekbones to go pastel pink.
But maybe that's why she didn't want to tell him. He'd shyly say something like 'Really? You think I'm pretty?', which would only make him seem more pretty, and then what would she be? A hopeless romantic pining pathetically over her best friend? Well, she was that already, but he mustn't know that.
So she said instead: "You eat things in a certain order. Well, you do everything in a certain order, but you eat the outside of things first then the inside last."
This also made Sherlock's cheeks go pink. "Everyone does that. Like biting the skin off Jelly Babies, or seeing if they can strip all the chocolate off the biscuit part of Chocolate Fingers."
Y/N's lips twitched as she remembered watching him try to do the latter whilst they were driving to York to investigate a murdered lawyer. The trip was long and, during Y/N's shift at the wheel, Sherlock had managed to remove about eighty-percent of the chocolate before the biscuit shattered between his teeth and fingers. The company they'd rented the car from probably thought they'd had a child on board due to the sheer amount of crumbs. "Yeah, but you do it with everything. Like turning a slice of cake on its side so you can cut the frosting out of the middle, which you save for last. And when you have salad you eat each thing by itself, ending in tomatoes. Or when you have a custard cream---"
"Okay, okay, I get it."
"It's not a bad thing, it's just a thing."
"I've always been like that. Favouring routine...and stuff. I think it runs in my family. Mycroft got the worst of it; he used to line up all his toys in size order. Not to keep his room tidy but because he enjoyed it. He had their names written down in a notebook and he'd check them off if they were there---like how school would take the register---or get very upset if one was missing. They didn't usually go missing because he never played with them. Although, I guess, in a way, that was his version of playing. I wasn't much better; my idea of fun was taking all my books off their shelves then putting them back again."
"Was'Â ? I saw you do that last week," Y/N laughed, giving his side a small nudge with her own.
He pushed her back, their bodies swaying like a sleepy newton's cradle.
When their momentum dissipated, Sherlock said quietly: "I can't believe you remember all that stuff. About my strange eating things." Had she called him pretty by accident after all? Because he's flushed a bashful shade of pink and he's got this tentative smile---
Y/N shrugged her shoulders. "You're not the only observant one around here."
"Evidently."
"And it's endearing." That sounded too close to what she had tried so hard not to say, so she quickly buried it under more words: "You know; entertaining. Not in a weird way but just... different".
"I'm glad I amuse you," It was sarcastic but he was still smiling, a gentle curve to his sugar-stained lips.
...
If you leave two scoops of ice-cream next to each other in a bowl on a hot day, they will, given enough time, melt into each other. In this sense, Y/N and Sherlock's bodies were like ice cream. And, like ice cream, it had happened so slowly no one had really noticed.
They were leaning against each other, but, given his extra several inches, Sherlock was leaning against Y/N a little more than she was leaning against him. He'd brought his legs up, too, bent at the knees, and let them fall partially onto Y/N's lap. He seemed to be subconsciously seeking her touch as if she was a heat pack and he was a man dying from hypothermia. Y/N didn't mind. She wanted to put her arm around him. She wanted his head to fall onto her shoulder.
"I was thinking about what you said yesterday." Sherlock's voice sounded so much deeper up close. Maybe because Y/N could feel it as well as hear it; the low vibrations seeping from his body and into hers, bleeding like ink through paper. "About how some people agree to move in together when they reach a certain age---if they're not in a relationship."
There was a pause, as if he was shuffling through cue cards in his head, one of them having gone missing. He found it, eventually, and cleared his throat a little, checking his vocal cords still worked. If he had a microphone, he would have given it a little tap with the end of his finger then winced as it screeched with feedback. "And I was thinking about what we were talking about yesterday. Our...our dreams, or whatever you want to call them. Of living in the countryside. I couldn't help noticing that they're...quite similar. Identical, in fact. It makes sense, then---it's worth asking---would you like to do that with me?"
Y/N couldn't see his expression, or his eyes. Maybe, at the moment, he prefers it that way. When she didn't answer right away, because her mind was swamped with pleasing images of cornfields and winding roads, he hurriedly added:
"We already live together. It would be just like it is now but...you know, not in London."
"...Are you talking about a marriage pact?" One pro to not being in a position to read Sherlock's facial expressions is Sherlock not being in a position to read Y/N's. She was positively glowing as she asked: "Between us?"
This is Sherlock's last chance to metaphorically jump ship, but he doesn't take it. Instead he swallowed and pushed himself upright, turning to face Y/N and earnestly met her eyes. "Yes." His shoulders are set in an unmoving line, but something in his face softens as he glances at Y/N's lips and find them to be smiling.
"You'd really want to do that with me?"
"Yes." That's about as much eye contact he can muster, because his gaze retreats back under his fringe. "If you want to. With me. I'd understand if you didn't---"
Embarrassingly eagerly: "No I'd like to."
He perked up considerably.
"Are you sure you wouldn't get bored of me? What I mean is; do you really want to? You don't need to be married to have a cottage in the countryside, you can have that alone."
Sherlock seemed to take a second to arrange some words in his head. When he spoke them it was as if he was hanindg them to Y/N, pressing them into her hands and waiting for her reaction: "When I was a child I had blue bedroom walls."
Brows furrowing: "Where are you going with this?"
"Just listen," his tone soothed her confusion as if it was boiling water that simply needed to be removed from the hob. "The blue was nice, but I put lots of posters up anyway because I preferred it with the posters." He's thumbing at the corner of the chocolate box with one hand, the cardboard becoming fluffy and worn. "You're the posters. A countryside cottage is nice, but nicer with someone to share it with. Why do you think I have a flatmate?"
Y/N inclined her shoulders in a shrug. "Because you can't afford rent alone?" Now that she thought about it she knew that to not be true. She'd seen the cheques some clients write him; prestigious law firms with stolen documents that need retrieving, rich upper-class couples suspecting their partner of cheating, etcetera. Once their little problem is solved they hand over a figure with, frankly, an inordinate amount of zeros.
Sherlock shook his head, a few of his curls jumping with the movement. Y/N wanted to reach out and submerge her hands in them. "No, I can afford it. And even if I couldn't, Mycroft would jump at the opportunity to humiliate me by lending whatever amount I needed. My point is; I like having a flatmate. Granted, I've liked some flatmates more than others," his cheekbones go pink at this, a shy smile playing on his handsome mouth, "But I choose to live with someone even though I don't need to. It makes the metaphorical plain wall more interesting."
Y/N regarded him. "And---if you can't find anyone else, of course---you think I'll make it more interesting?"
The subtle golden light from the bedside lamp at Sherlock's side pooled in his palms as he kept his eyes lowered to them. "Yes." It was strange seeing him so unsure of himself. He's charting unexplore territory, metaphorically poking the ground with a stick to make sure it was safe enough to take the next step. He glanced sideways at Y/N and added quickly when he saw her bare, eager smile: "But...before you agree to anything, I meant what I said yesterday about... kids. I'd like to have all of it. The whole family thing. I would want children."
Y/N blinked and Sherlock's almond eyes widened as he realised what he'd implied.
"No, I don't mean you'd have to---I don't expect you to---with me. What I meant was---we could adopt."
This time Y/N shook her head. She didn't know it, but Sherlock wanted to submerge his fingers in her hair. "That's not why I went quiet."
Curiously: "Oh?"
"I just couldn't help imagining you raising a child."
He wilted. "Oh. Yeah, I know."
Y/N's brows met in the center of her forehead as she narrowed her eyes at him like he was a math problem she couldn't figure out. "Why do you sound sad? I don't mean it's a bad idea. Not at all. You'd be a wonderful dad."
"I would?" He asked it as if he was stepping onto a rug she could easily swipe out from under his feet.
"Of course you would." Y/N said. She just said it, not with any particular tone, her voice hadn't risen slightly at the end, stressed any syllables. She just said it. Like it was a fact.
Sherlock looked elated.
It made Y/N smile. "I only hesitated because I got a little lost in mental images of you trying to teach a two year old the periodic table."
A tentative giggle bubbled up from Sherlock's chest, his mouth turned up in a proud little grin. He's glowing. Y/N wondered if it was the television reflecting off of his delicate alabaster skin again, like the sun's rays off the moon, but it can't be; the television is dark with a scene set during the dead of night. It's just him, and its wonderful. Like a moth to a flame, Y/N wanted him to touch her. With his hands, or his lips, or the tip of his nose as he softly nudges at her during a hug.
The room is still, apart from Basil's occasional twitches as he dreams. Stretched out to his full length, he's almost as long as the bed, his moist nose hanging off the edge of the covers. It was depressing to think that he was someone else's dog. He seemed more at home here than 221B's actual residents; like a friendly ghost who'd been around long before them and would still reside in these walls long after them as well.
Y/N was so distracted watching his fuzzy chest flow up and down as he breathed that she hadn't noticed the credits rolling by on the television screen. Films used to give her a welcomed escape from reality; the rectangle of flickering pixels like a portal into lives that were not her own. But now, recently, she finds her need to escape from reality has dissipated. Worn off, as if her body had fought it and won, like a flu-virus slowly eliminated by her white blood cells. She focused on the warmth of Sherlock's side against her own. Of the shape of his arm fitting neatly between their bodies, the solid knot of bone at his elbow, the smooth edge of his hip. Why would she want to submerge herself in pixels when her life is full of this? With a smile, it occurred to her that she hadn't been paying attention to anything the TV had to say.
"...Did you really mean it?" Sherlock asked. He hadn't been paying attention either, it seemed. What a waste of electricity. "That you think I'd be a good father?" He had to move along the bed to reach the TV remote, cold air spilling into the gap between him and Y/N like water pouring into a rockpool at high tide. He returned, though, just not as close as before. He seemed to want to be able to turn his head enough to meet Y/N's eyes.
"Of course. You're great with children." Y/N's voice felt naked without the mumblings of the television to buzz around with her words. A sheep left without a flock. Vulnerable. "It's other adults you have issues with," she tried, wanting to burn off some of the seriousness hanging in the air, and it worked because Sherlock smiled.
"But I have so few issues with you that one day you might marry me?"
Y/N turned herself to face him, crossing her legs. She'd found the little index card that came with the chocolates and was examining the pictures. "I don't have any issues with you. Apart from that one time you stored a finger in the fridge and it leaked onto my sandwiches. But that wasn't really your fault, those ziplock bags were rubbish." The mattress started shaking. "Why are you laughing?"
Sherlock looked up at her through his fringe, his gaze focused somewhere just above the bridge of Y/N's nose. His irises have flecks of amber in them; like sand stirred up by waves. He was leaning closer to her and suddenly her muscles felt like cake. "You still have the sticker on your forehead."
Y/N's cheeks prickled rose-coloured as he delicately took the frayed edge of the little sheet of plastic between finger and thumb and teased it from her skin. It had been there so long she felt its reluctance to let go, wincing, although it didn't hurt much; Sherlock's proximity had awakened her nerves. Sherlock noticed anyway, because of course he did, and soothed the tender red circle at Y/N's temple with the pad of his thumb. She felt his skin drag across hers, a smudge of glue from the sticker-back bunching between them, and he took it with him when he retracted his hand.
He gave her a shy smile. "So...what age do people usually set these things for? Marriage pacts, I mean."
Y/N inclined her shoulders. Sherlock looked much more nervous than Y/N felt. He keeps chewing his bottom lip, the smooth wedges of his teeth leaving it cherry red, and Y/N slightly breathless. They're agreeing to marry each other---provided they don't manage to find someone else to marry first. Y/N, if she wasn't so disratced at present by her friend's mouth, would be confused as to why she doesn't feel more...anything. She should also be picking a loose string at the hem of her pyjamas, she should also be too nervous to meet the large wells of his pupils, just like Sherlock has been for the past several minutes. But she's not.
Maybe because she doesn't believe it will really happen. Someone like Sherlock not manage to find a partner? He'll either get snatched up by a loving woman who matches him in intellect and attractiveness, plus has a shimmering career to boot---or he'll just have strings of meaningless flings with whichever women he fancies most at the time. Yes, a life of celibacy will bore him eventually and romance will greet him with open arms wherever he goes. There's no weight to agreeing to be his safety wife because it's just that; for safety. When has he ever had to resort to a Plan B? "How about we both say a number and we meet somewhere in the middle?"
"Okay." Sherlock gave a nod of his head. He sounded like he'd prefer Y/N to just hand him a number, as if he's scared of toeing a line, but he'd agreed to it now.
"Okay, on the count of three."
Another nod of his head.
"One, two, three---"
"Thirty-five---?"
"Forty-five---" She blinked. "Wait, did you say thirty-five?"
Sherlock retreated under his curly fringe and Y/N's mouth curled into a smile.
"The idea is to give each other a chance to meet someone."
He stuttered out: "Yes of course." Going red as Y/N added salt to his wound with:
"Thirty-five is only---"
"Yes, I know, I get it now. It was a slip of the tongue. I meant forty-five. That's a good idea." He made a show of turning to the bedside table to his left and said, even though Y/N couldn't remember that side of the bed ever having a clock on it. "Oh look at the time." He flicked off the bedside light and wriggled under the covers, turning promptly onto his side, facing away from Y/N who was watching with what could only be described as amusement. "Good night."
"...Night," Y/N pushed from her smile. She was mentally stamping down her desire to laugh at him as he laid there, stock still, obviously too embarrassed to even unknot his muscles enough to breathe.
Placing the almost-empty chocolate box with its lid firmly in place (to keep out any Basils) on her own bedside table, Y/N clicked out her own light and shimmied the lip of the duvet out from under herself so she could get underneath it too.
The bed dipped invitingly the closer to Sherlock's side she got, as if the mattress was taking her hand and guiding her to where she should be. So she let it, moving up to Sherlock's back until she was curled around him, like he had been with her the previous night. She paused, rigid with self discipline before closing that final, pesky space between them; giving him a chance to pull away, to push her away, to protest or politely decline her embrace.
But he didn't.
So she nuzzled her nose into his hair. It smelled like the sofa. And how the bathroom smells when he'd just had a shower; sweet, with the faintest edge of a citrusy tang. Men's shampoo doesn't seem to have a particular scent. Women's come with labels like 'honey blossom' or 'coconut' or 'argan oil'. Men's is just...an assortment of randomly selected smells, it seems. Nice smells, like a bag that had been filled with pic-a-mix sweets, and Y/N can't help huffing out her breath just so she can bring in another one. It ruffled Sherlock's curls, humidity swirling over his scalp, the strands caressing her nose.
The muscles in his back loosened.
Hesitantly, Y/N slipped her arm around his middle, holding him close and felt him sigh, the sheets rustling like sun-warmed autumn leaves as he seemed to be searching for something under the covers. He found it; Y/N's hand, and closed his own over the back of it, hugging it to his chest. She held him tighter.
She wanted him to turn over, then. She wanted him to kiss her. She didn't care where. Her skin was empty for it, waiting.