Sherlock X Reader One Shots || 𝐹𝐿𝑈𝐹𝐹 + 𝑆𝑀𝑈𝑇

A Cure For Insomnia ((FINAL) Part 6)

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 because—the way he sees it— 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.