CONTEXT: Someone requested...
ð a drunken confession from Sherlock
ð taking care of a sick Sherlock
ð Sherlock having a sexual dream about Y/N and feeling awkward about it the next day
So I thought, let's kill three birds with one stone :-)
___
Y/N is staring at him.
The sun has set quicker than usual---falling, almost---dragging the white counters and of the kitchenette into a ripe orange. Outside, the ocean roars, waves crashing against the sea wall, exploding in a plume of spray, turning the air salty.
Sherlock's mouth tastes sweet and, when he looks down, he's holding an apple. Half its yellow flesh is missing, its pitch-black pips exposed.
Y/N is standing, one hip jutting out, leaning leisurely against the fridge. She's in that dress. The one she wore to Mrs Hudson's Christmas party. Frost chewed the window panes but no one could tell through the condensation; she always keeps her heating up so high, the dial twisted right around to the red zone.
Y/N's bolero had been slipped off and draped over a chair within ten minutes.
He'd never seen so much of her back before. Smooth. A feminine curve. Shoulderblades where wings surely once protruded. Her earrings touched he shoulders, whenever she shrugged, her hair up, her neck sweet with perfume.
Sherlock had just stared at her, feeling things he'd never felt in his life.
She's staring at him, now, and he doesn't know what it means.
Whatever it is, it's making his voice come out all wobbly. "What are you looking at?"
"You."
His cheeks heat. "Why?"
"I was just wondering what it would be like to take you."
He chokes around his mouthful of banana. "Take me?"
"Right here. On this table."
"Take me as in...?"
"You know what I mean. You know what I want to do to you. And I know you want me to do it."
He hesitates. He's waited for this his whole life but now it's here...
It's terrifying.
"Well...yes. I've wanted it for a long time. I just didn't think you---"
Softly, the tips of her fingers touch to his knees.
Perched on the table, he watches as they slide higher, closer, over his jeans. Prickles of interest shoot through his thighs, up into the pit of his belly.
"Y/N," he gasps. Not for any particular reason. He just likes the sound of it.
He'd like to reach out and hold her. Any part of her. Preferably her waist, where her dress becomes taught over her hips. His blood warms, rushing somewhere, and he shifts uncomfortably.
She must be able to tell, it must be written all over his face because his mouth forms an 'O' shape as, slowly, she pushes his legs open wide enough to get her hips between them.
A little moan rises in his chest and he blinks at her. She's so close he can't breathe. He can feel her warmth, her hands climbing his ribs, sliding over his chest, setting it tingling. They tangle in his hair and his eyes roll closed, his own hands finding the curve of her waist.
He uses it to bundle her closer, up against him, and she laughs and it's the best thing he's ever heard.
Outside, the setting sun lights up her hair like a halo.
She's leaning down, he can feel her breath. With a burst of fire, her lips press to his neck.
Sherlock tenses up, taught as a bowstring, the whole of him narrowing to the feeling of her mouth.
Hot.
Wet.
The sea rages against the window.
He's drowning.
She presses her lips to him again, parting them slightly and her fingers in his hair grip him at the same time, sensation bursting in two places on his body at once.
He groans.
"Do you want me to stop?" Y/N asks, her low voice gracing his ear, and he begs, shaking his head.
"No, don't." His grip tightens.
"Does it feel good?" she asks, her smirk curved against his neck. Another kiss, higher. She catches his earlobe and licks at it, giving it a slow suck.
He breaks against her with a pathetic little sobbing noise. "...You know it does."
When she pulls away, it's just enough to look into his eyes, and he stares at her, mouth open, pupils swelled and cheeks flushed. As though he's been running, his shirt buttons tightening and loosening with his quickened breaths.
Something is beeping.
"I wasn't lying, Sherlock," she says, seriously. As serious as he's ever heard her.
His gaze flicks to her lips then back up, his hands still clutching her waist.
"I want you. I've wanted you since the first day we met."
Is it the oven?
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Like stones flicked against a window.
Sherlock's eyes have closed, his forehead coming to lean against hers. "I want you too."
She supports the weight of his head, his breath hot on her open lips. All of him is quivering, pleading, aching. "Please," he swallows. "Please, Y/N. Do whatever you want with me."
Her hand, heavy and hot, drags over his thigh, painfully, agonisingly to the left, over---
Sherlock blinks.
A beam of bleached white sunlight is cutting through a chink in the curtain, falling like a blade across his face.
Reaching across the bed, his hand touches to the cold, starchy covers. There's his chest of drawers. And his wardrobe. His bookshelf and framed pictures, his bedroom walls.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
His clock blinks at him from the bedside table and he thinks about whacking it with something, maybe the lamp---
---but stops himself. The glowing red number eight watches him like eyes as he swings his legs over the mattress and stands, stretching his arms up over his head. His fingers brush the ceiling, then fall back to his sides heavily.
He sighs.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
...
Autumn may soldier on in the South of England but, for London at least, the season had been over as soon as it started. Amongst the concrete skyscrapers and buzzing signs, October is already crisping and curling into what promises to be a dry, prickly winter.
Lestrade frowns at a colourless sycamore leaf as it skitters along the pavement. As it tumbles, it trips over wads of yellowed gum and cigarette butts crushed between the even slabs, and he shakes his head.
Sherlock doesn't notice. He hasn't noticed many things for a while. "I dreamt about her again last night."
Turning back to the chalk outline, Lestrade peers at its shape one last time, sketching it into his mind.
An arm stretched up over its head.
Blood, but not much.
Not as much as there should be.
He makes a note in his pocketbook. "And?"
"We were on holiday by the beach this time, I think, but it's hard to tell. Things kept moving around."
"They often do. I swear most nights I dream I'm in my office, but it's never my office, if that makes sense. Everything's all where it shouldn't be, and the furniture's different and, when I look outside, I'll be in New York or something. Which is odd because I've never been to New York."
Lestrade's words pass over Sherlock's head like the planes crisscrossing the cloud-freckled sky. He's wilted like the branches curving overhead, bowing to the wind. "Y/N initiated it again. Even in my dreams, I'm not brave enough."
"You hunt murderers for a living but you can't tell a woman you fancy her?"
Moodily, Sherlock kicks the sycamore leaf with the pointed toe of his Oxfords. "I get the irony, thank you."
"Maybe you're just into dominant women?"
Sherlock's neck heats below his collar and, self-consciously, he flicks it up. Stuffing his hands into his pockets:
"Well, who wouldn't be?"
Lestrade makes a whistling sound. "Trust me, I know what you mean. My Sandra, once she---"
"Hey, hey hey!" Sherlock's gloved hands make a show of ramming themselves into his ears. "I don't want to hear it. I still can't get that whipped cream image out of my head."
"Okay, okay, look." Laughing, Lestrade gives Sherlock a hefty pat between the shoulder blades. "You know what always cheers me up?"
"If you say 'The Horse's Head' again, I will walk away and you'll have to solve this thing by yourself."
"Come on, it's what guys do when they're pining over a woman."
"I'm not pining," Sherlock snaps. "And even if I was, I don't want to be one of those sad men who spends his evenings hunched over a bar, drinking away his sorrows."
"No, I mean going down the pub with a mate, having a chat about it. It helps to talk about things, you know. At least, that's what my marriage councillor said."
"You go to marriage counselling? I thought you got on with Sandra?"
"No, this is from my first marriage."
Sherlock's pale eyes blink down at Lestrade's close-clipped, neat grey hair. "You're divorced?"
The head turns and rolls its eyes. "Yes, and you'd know that if you did what normal men do and come have a chat down the pub."
"I don't want to be like normal men. Y/N says she likes that I'm not normal," Sherlock preens and Lestrade puts on a voice, high and insulting:
"Y/N says, Y/N says, Y/N says."
Nudging him hard in the ribs, "Hey!"
"God, Sherlock, I'm just pulling your leg---another thing normal guys do. I just mean; you go on and on about what Y/N says; what about what Sherlock says?"
"Sherlock is stupid and annoying, but Y/N..." He trails off and Lestrade has to nudge him this time.
"Y/N is...?"
"Y/N is...she's just.....Brilliant."
"If this is your level of conversation maybe I don't want you to come down the pub."
"Well, that's good because I wasn't going to."
Electing to ignore his long, slightly irritating companion, Lestrade circles around the body, making another note in his pocketbook.
Not liking this one bit, Sherlock follows his heels like a hungry cat and, when he doesn't get an answer after thirty seconds, he prods:
"Anyway, isn't 'The Horse's Head' full of idiots?
Lestrade sighs again. On the one hand, he gets more notes written down when he's ignoring Sherlock but, on the other hand, his notes are practically useless. They're mostly about what he could get Sandra for her birthday. Reluctantly, he turns back to Sherlock. "You mean police officers."
Smiling one of those stupid smiles---once again like a cat but, this time, like one that's learnt to use a tin opener. "Tomato, tomato."
"Look, just come along if you want, is all I'm saying. It's just a nice, low-key sort of joint people go to chat about their problems. A problem shared is a problem halved, and all that. I worry about you, all lovesick. That's not the Sherlock I know."
His smile falling sideways, Sherlock kicks the leaf again but it's already dead.
He would like to talk about it. To talk about Y/N. He wants to tell the whole world about her smile and her laugh and that, once---on New Year's Eve---she kissed his mouth.
It was amazing.
He hasn't stopped thinking about it for nine months.
"The thing is...I don't see how talking about it would help."
"It might do. You know Darren, the short guy from forensics? He was in love with this woman who works at the fast food place he likes. All of us guys got together and we brainstormed a pickup line and first date and everything. We sent him off like a soldier into war, and you know what?"
"What?"
"They're married now."
Sherlock wavers, diamond rings and golden bands rolling about his head.
They glint at him, teasingly.
He used to sneer at them, glowering at him through the windows of jewellery shops but, recently...
"Come on, one drink."
"I don't drink."
"I'm sure we'll find something you'd like. Just half an hour then you can go home."
"I don't even drink beer."
"Larger?"
"No."
"Stout?"
"No. And no wine or whiskey or anything else."
"They probably do cocktails. You like chocolate liqueurs at Christmas, don't you?" He almost adds 'You big man-child, you' but thinks better of it. Sherlock often reminds him of some sort of animal he's constantly trying not to scare away.
"Yeah."
He shrugs. "So have a baileys."
"Baileys? My mum drinks baileys."
"It tastes like sugar. You'll like it."
"I highly doubt it."
"Just try it."
Sherlock sighs, his breath curling in front of him. "Fine. Fifteen minutes."
"Half an hour---and I'll buy you some chips."
"With cheese?"
"Yes."
"...Okay."