Y/N blinks. "...I am?"
Sherlock nods, watching her with a sort of sharp anxiety. "I know I'm older now...and you've met my weird family, and you've seen me in ragged old pyjamas and looked after me when I was sick with flu that time, and you know I'm a bit..." he waves his hands as if searching the air for a word. Sighing, he settles for:
"...Peculiar. In general. But...if---by some miracle---the offer is still on the table..."
His eyes flick down to Y/N's mouth and she realises, distractedly, that they do that a lot. They find a grin there, and his own ghosts with a tentative smile. As if he wants to reach out and hold some part of her, his hands clutch tighter in his lap---as if he's making a great effort to hold them back.
"Sherlock," Y/N soothes, able to feel every beat of her heart in her chest. "You talk as though those things would make you less attractive to me."
He looks hopeful. "Do they...not?"
"Of course not. I like those things."
"...Even though I keep awful Tupperware boxes in the fridge and play my violin at two in the morning and drag you around London looking for murderers?" He spills his foibles out between them on the duvet and Y/N sweeps them away, taking his hands.
They're tense knots of muscle, but, under the pads of her fingers, they open to her. When she squeezes, Sherlock grips back as if he doesn't want to let go.
"More so because of that stuff. They're what makes you you. Without them..." Words fail her, this time, as she tries to picture William Sherlock Scott Holmes as 'Normal' and finds it cannot be done. "...You'd just be some shockingly gorgeous guy who's good at puzzles."
He blushes, a smug smirk curling his lip. "You think I'm gorgeous?"
Two patches of pink bloom on Y/N's cheeks. "...Stupidly so."
Sherlock has wriggled closer, nearer and nearer until his knees are almost in her lap. His gaze is doing that thing again, daring to dart to her mouth then retreating back to her eyes, abashed.
She looks at his hands, his hands entangled with hers and, not for the first time, realises she'd really like them on her. They're so large and wide when his fingers are spread. He's so large, tall with the muscles in his arms and chest showing through his pyjama shirt. She'd like him over her, his hips pressing her into the mattress.
Lazily, she realises she's wanted that for a long time.
Wanted him.
Every time they'd wrestled over the TV remote, she'd hoped they'd roll off the sofa and onto the floor in a giggling, panting heap.
Every time she's cooking, she's hoped he'd slide his arms about her waist and step up behind her, his chin on her shoulder.
Sometimes, when they're reading together, content in their comfortable silence, she'd put off going to bed for hours, just to spend another ten minutes with him.
He's staring at her, his strange beautiful eyes sparkling and she realises he's been thinking the same things.
He's been thinking about them for a long time.
Hesitantly:
"Y/N?"
"...Hm?"
They're huddled together, their voices low like children sharing secrets by torchlight, leaning closer and closer, his nose bumping hers.
When he'd muttered her name it had graced her lips like a warm breeze from the open window. It was sweet and minty like toothpaste. "...I really want to kiss you."
Y/N is positive he can hear her heart beating. "Please do." She swallows, sliding one of her hands free so she can take the side of his face. The curve of his jawbone slots into her palm as if it was designed to be there.
Savouring it, his eyes close.
"I...need you to."
And then he's kissing her.
He'd pushed his face forwards, capturing her mouth as if he couldn't wait.
He kisses her surprisingly tentatively.
Encouragingly, Y/N slides her hand up, past his ear and into his hair and he moans, his grip tightening on her waist. He stiffens almost instantly, embarrassed, but Y/N's grin flowers against his mouth.
"Good?" She asks in a low voice and feels goosebumps prickle the back of his neck.
She presses a hand to the solid bone of his sternum, her fingers splaying to feel his heartbeat.
It thuds below her palm like a fist.
"Amazing." The tips of Sherlock's ears are red, his eyes a dark, glittering blue---as if they've trapped a piece of the summer sky. He gazes at Y/N with a kind of bewildered adoration and, when she cups his cheek with one hand, he butts into it with greedy eagerness.
"Look at you." Y/N giggles, beaming. She can't stop it, it's lighting up the whole room. Giving Sherlock a teasing nudge:
"You're pathetic."
He chuckles, the sound rolling up her spine. He's still cupping the side of her face with one hand, his fingers submerged in her hair.
"You're pathetic; scared of foxes and noises in the night."
To wipe that smirk off his smug face she drags him in for another kiss and he collapses into it with a hungry, pleased sound.
Drawing her closer in a tight tangle of his long limbs, Sherlock nudges her down onto the bed, his weight pushing her into the soft old mattress.
His body up against hers, powerful and insistent, makes Y/N's fingers tighten painfully on his hair and he groans.
"Shh!" Breathless, Y/N shushes him. "Your family will hear!"
"...Sorry." His curls are springing from his head in touseled coils, his chest rising and falling like he's been running. He nudges her nose with his own, pushing her head up enough to get at her lips again. He kisses her for such a long time her lungs blaze like the last embers of the bonfire amongst the twigs and bracken.
Y/N can feel the temperature of her blood rising with every passing second, every squeeze of her waist, every tug at her shirt.
Eventually, Sherlock gasps, breaking the kiss. "...Y/N...I think it's obvious how much I want to continue..."
Her legs have wound about his middle and she can feel how much he wants to. Wants her. She can't help rutting against his waist needily, setting the muscles supporting him above her shaking. "...But?" Her lips on his neck, she places the question between a chain of kisses, all tongue and heat and the vague saltiness of his pale skin. He has a mole there and she has become rather fond of the noises she makes when she pays it particular attention.
"But---" Somehow, Sherlock just about manages to stop himself from collapsing onto her, one arm rigid to prevent his weight from squashing her. Unsteadily:
"...But I don't want my first time with you to be..." His eyes flick disappointedly to the wall. "...Here."
For a moment Y/N can see through it, through the wallpaper and brick to Wendy below, to Trudy next door and Eunice across the hall, sitting up in their beds---perhaps with a book and warm milk, waiting for their husbands to come in from the night, or the television on, an episode of Gardeners world mumbling about perennials.
Amongst the lust and the desire and smell of Sherlock's pyjamas...Y/N falters.
Disappointedly, her legs about his waist fall away, her fingers loosening. Gently, she smoothes his curls. "I understand. There's no rush."
Gently, with latent, masculine strength, he kisses her again, slower, sucking the swollen curve of her lower lip. It is a penitent, apologetic kiss, to soothe---
But somehow that's worse---
Y/N feels her legs inching about the pillar of his middle again---
"Sherlock," she whines, chastising him with a warning nip on the ear.
"I know, I know, I'm sorry." He chuckles, the pad of his thumb tenderly rubbing her flushed cheek. "I just really like kissing you."
Y/N grins. "I really like kissing you too."
A muffled snore makes its way up through the floorboards like an unwanted weed through a flower bed, and they feel each other sigh.
Exchanging a disappointed frown, they peel out of each other's grip and flop onto the bed.
"You have no idea how difficult that was," Sherlock mutters, opening an arm for Y/N to wriggle up against his chest.
His heart is still beating below her ear, his arm securely wrapped about her protectively as if he's worried something will leap out and snatch her away from him. "I've wanted to do that for so long. You know...when I first fell in love with you, I thought I was sick." Pensively, he runs a hand through her hair, toying with the strands. "Do you know the feeling?"
She thinks back to that day; the day she'd first bumped into the detective. She remembers how her heart had clenched when she'd looked at him, tight like a knot. She smiles. "Yes, I do."
"I couldn't sleep, I was distracted and excited and confused." He looks at her. "But I knew I wasn't sick because I liked it."
...
The next morning the room is once again flooded with the butter-yellow warmth of summer. The air is thick with the slightest hint of humidity, and, in the form of brilliant warbling songs, the garden birds outside rejoice at the promise of rain.
Usually, during her stay at The Holmes's cottage, Y/N's eyes would squint under the sun's rays, then she'd push herself up to gaze sleepily out the window to see what sort of day has begun.
Today, however, she is not nearly as interested in the front garden with its pretty flowers and colourful little birds.
The sight of Sherlock is much more rapturing. Still dozing, his head is tucked under Y/N's chin, his nose warm and nudged up against her neck.
Getting a happy mumbling sound at the attention, she tangles her fingers in his hair, and, groggily, he pushes himself up, the morning sun lighting up his ruffled curls like a strange, fluffy halo. Half asleep, he kisses her forehead, her hairline, down her cheek.
Unable to stop herself, Y/N guides his lips to hers, feeling him give a gravelly, contented hum.
She smiles with shy joy when they break apart. "This is new."
"It's good though." He kisses her again, taking his time indulgently. When he pulls away he settles back into the crook of Y/N's neck as though it's second nature. Sighing languidly:
"It feels as if we should have been doing this all along."
"You realise if we were better at communicating we could have been doing this this whole time."
He stretches like a big, lazy cat. "Hm. From now on, no more secrets."
"Okay..." Tenderly, Y/N runs her fingers through his hair getting a grateful moan. "If there are to be no more secrets...remember the Regent Street case?"
"The one Mycroft forbid me from finishing and confiscated all my evidence?"
Reluctantly:
"...Yeah. I actually...asked him to step in. It was too dangerous. I was worried about you."
He is silent, processing this. It seems to please him because he revels in Y/N's feminine arms wrapped about him protectively. Then he says, carefully:
"...Okay....you know that book you lost? You left it on the table and I accidentally set fire to it."
"That's okay, it was an awful book."
"I've got another one. You know how we're always running out of cheddar? Sometimes when you're at work I nibble it like it's shortbread."
Her eyes widen and he begins again:
"Ages ago---"
Y/N giggles. "Okay, okay, no more. I think some secrets should stay secret."
"No, wait, I have one more."
"What? You accidentally dissolved my driving licence in nitric acid?" She teases but, when he answers, his voice is uncharacteristically vulnerable with honesty.
"No, it's just...on the first day we met, you called me brilliant. It had been so long since someone had said that to me...And then you said it again. Every day. 'You're brilliant'. You'd say it when I did something big like solve a case. But you also said it for little things. Like if I cooked a good meal, or made you laugh."
He turns onto his front so he can meet her eyes, his arms wrapping around her. He's grinning. "I liked those the best. I didn't have to do anything amazing or impressive. You just liked...me. 'You're brilliant'. Those words became a spell to me. And then, soon, every second with you made me feel that way. Even when you weren't saying anything at all. I just wanted to thank you."
Her heart swelling a little at his confession---the most vulnerable and honest of them all---Y/N tries to hide her emotion with a giggle. "You've been reading too much Tolstoy, " she teases, but drags him close enough to kiss him deeply, so deep it stirs his blood, whipping it up like leaves on the wind.
They pull away breathlessly, and Y/N realises something.
"Should we tell your family? About us?"
"We can, but our relationship will be examined like a science experiment at first," Sherlock says regretfully. "I've never brought a partner back to the house before---or had a partner, for that matter---so they're going to be very excited."
Y/N runs her fingers through his hair, grinning as he nudges her pyjama top aside enough to kiss her shoulder. "...Are you excited?"
Sherlock's arms encircle her waist, bringing her tight against his hips as he lets his teeth graze a pulse point.
She can feel his beam against her skin.
"I'm ecstatic."