Sherlock X Reader One Shots || 𝐹𝐿𝑈𝐹𝐹 + 𝑆𝑀𝑈𝑇

There's A Dog In This One (Part 4)

At 1:37 am it began to rain. Sherlock was awake to hear it. He's one of those people that struggles to submerge himself in subconsciousness; not necessarily an insomniac, but close. He can't switch his brain off. It's always thinking.

When it started to rain at 1:37 am, he was thinking about three things.

The first was about how the sky didn't seem to be raining, just leaking; like a tap you can't properly turn off no matter how many times you turn it. He can't usually hear the rain from his bedroom; there's nothing for the droplets to land on and the window is too tucked away for them to be thrown against the glass. Y/N's bedroom window is around the front of the house, though, facing the street. Two floors below, and a little to the side, is Speedy's Cafe, the stretched fabric of the striped awning out the front acting as a giant drum.

Sherlock had never slept in this room before, even when it was unoccupied. He'd barely been in it at all, really, in all the years he's lived here. He'd thought it best to let his flatmate, whomever they were at the time, have the best room in the apartment. He'd hoped the view and pleasingly airy space would make up for the various shortcomings of his personality that they'd have to put up with while living with him.

The second thing he was thinking about was how he couldn't get to sleep (which, ironically, wasn't helping him achieve his goal). This usually bothered him---those endless hours crawling by---but this time it didn't, due to the third thing he'd been thinking about:

Y/N.

Sherlock layed, curled around her back for quite some time, trying to shut his multitudinous thoughts down for the night. He'd held his breath when he'd moved up against her, waiting for the inevitable disgusted scolding, the hands pushing him away, the humiliating stammering as he tries to explain himself. He'd stammer not because of embarrassment (although God knows he'd have his fair share of that too) but rather because he didn't actually have an explanation planned. He'd tried to formulate one, carefully slotting some words together to form sentences, but once he mentally tried to test them out they collapsed and buckled like poorly-designed railway tracks. There was no excuse, no reason for cuddling up to his friend besides the fact that he wanted to.

But he hadn't needed an excuse, thankfully, because Y/N had just silently let him. She even---to Sherlock's delight---pushed her body backwards slightly, mouldering the curve of her spine into his lanky figure. He continued to hold her long after she'd fallen asleep. Partly because he didn't want to let go yet, and partly because Y/N was sort of unconsciously gripping one of his arms so he couldn't, even if the mood had taken him.

Which it didn't, even when the arm he'd snaked under Y/N's pillow went from prickly with pins-and-needles to so numb he forgot he had fingers.

...

When morning came you couldn't really tell. The inside of Y/N's room, despite the curtains being closed, had the same tenebrosity as the outside. A stodgy brick of cement-coloured clouds had hardened in the sky, hanging low and heavy, threatening to fall out of the air all together.

The sound of a car honking its horn at a cyclist several streets away woke Y/N up roughly an hour before the time she would have prefered. Usually she's immune to the restless muttering of the city, but she'd fallen asleep with a head full of grassy knolls and countryside cottages, so maybe her brain thought the sound didn't belong.

She'd also fallen asleep wondering what it would be like to be married to Sherlock Holmes, so maybe that's why it didn't come as a shock to her when she realised she was up against his chest; in her dreams, she'd been there too.