Sherlock X Reader One Shots || 𝐹𝐿𝑈𝐹𝐹 + 𝑆𝑀𝑈𝑇

"Sherlock, You're Having A Nightmare" (Part 1)

Sherlock was asleep in bed, the sheets knotted about his lean frame, but apart from that...everything looked ordinary.

Y/N felt her muscles slacken.

Sherlock whined again, writhing, reminding Y/N of the ants that would get into the break-room cupboards at one of her old jobs. The cleaners dealt with them by setting poison out, the chemical resembling innocent grains of sugar which the ants naively consume, then lay twitching as the toxin takes effect. Sherlock was twitching in such a way now, his limbs moving only slightly with the restraint of his own blankets.

With horror, it suddenly occurred to Y/N that he could have been poisoned, just like the ants, and she reached out to shake his shoulders---

but stopped herself. She recognised this.

He wasn't convulsing.

He was dreaming.

First of all, she thought, what an odd thing it was to see him unconscious.

Y/N had only witnessed the detective at his most vulnerable once before; when he'd fallen asleep opposite her in a cab. He'd worked a long case that involved running several blocks, and a sleepless night. He'd been relaxed then, his lanky body flopping against the door like a pile of old clothes, head lolling lazily against the window. Strangely at peace. 

He didn't look like that now, though. A muscle feathered in his neck as his teeth clenched, the sheen covering his forehead reflecting the soft glow of the bedside lamp like street lights in a rain puddle.

Nightmares.

She knelt next to his bed, placing a gentle hand a little way below his ear. She hadn't touched him much in all the time that she had known him, and took a moment to turn over how it felt to do so in her head. His skin was hot. If Y/N didn't know any better, she would have guessed he'd just returned from sprinting around the block in his pyjamas before getting into bed and falling asleep. He probably had been sprinting, not with his physical form but in his mind, fleeing from some unimaginable horror.

'What scares this man?', Y/N half-heartedly pondered.

Y/N never asks Sherlock about his past. Obviously it hadn't been rich in joy. She spares him the chore of reliving it, but at moments like these Y/N can't help but wonder about the images his brain holds, the information he could deliver, the stories he could spin.

'A fascinating mind', she thought absently.

The angle of his jawline, not as a sharp close up, fit snugly in the palm of her hand. She ran her thumb over the side of his face, the pad of it taking in the feel of this part of him she'd never touched; stubble below his tissue-paper soft skin like sand caught between two pages in a book.

Sherlock stirred, and Y/N retracted her hand.

"Sherlock," she'd said it in a tone she'd heard lovers use on television. She hadn't meant to.

He whimpered again and she was reminded of his pain. A pain she ached to relieve.

"Sherlock. You're having a nightmare." The word 'darling' was just behind her lips, concentration needed to keep hold of it, prevent it from slipping out.

In a flurry of limbs, he awoke, clawing up the bed until he was in a sitting position as if the sheets were the bonds of a snake's coils that had held him captive before it almost swallowed him whole. Sherlock doesn't usually look entirely human. His skin is always just a shade too pale, irises holding a little too much light, limbs moving in such a way that makes even sceptics doubt whether he was one-hundred percent homosapien. Now, however, he looks more human than Y/N had ever seen him. Eyes wild as they darted about the room, that drowsy vacancy behind them clearing, replaced with the confusion of a brain thrust, unprepared, into cognisance.

When he saw Y/N, sitting there, crouched on his floor, a living, breathing anchor to which he could tie his racing mind, he threw himself forward, wrapping her torso in a tight hug.

Surprising even herself at the speed in which she recovered from this; Y/N held him.

He gripped back, his pointed nose burrowing into the crook of her neck, the force of his eagerness almost pushing Y/N backwards onto the floor.

"It's alright, I've got you," she muttered, stroking a hand over his hair. Despite this being one of the few hugs the two had ever shared, the thoughts flooding Y/N's head at present were more along the lines of 'thank God he's awake enough to remember not to grip me too tightly' rather than 'he smells nice' or contemplating the feel of him being so close. "You were just dreaming, it's all over now." Y/N wasn't sure if what she was saying was helping, or even managing to penetrate the fog of fear Sherlock was currently wandering around in.

The detective hadn't let go of her, his body twisted and sort of leaning over the side of the bed to get at her embrace.

In an effort to give him better access to the comfort he so clearly needed, Y/N---still cradling him---stood, and awkwardly manoeuvred herself over Sherlock's legs and into the other side of his bed.

He shifted closer to her until his thigh pushed against hers. He hadn't released her, his long, solid arms still encompassing her, but less tightly now. Where before he'd gripped as if letting go meant plummeting to his doom, presently his pressure was that of someone in recovery. Someone who'd already plummeted, fallen, flailing, spiralling out of control, the feeling of it still fresh in their mind.

Acting on some instinct, some deeply-rooted intelligence passed down a line of mothers stretching through history, Y/N gentled him. "You were just dreaming, you're safe now. I'm here now."

Sherlock repositioned himself, somehow managing to without causing a break in their cuddle. A memory nudged at Y/N's brain of last winter. She'd been walking home from the supermarket and seen a woman holding a baby struggling to put her own shopping into the boot of her Volvo. Y/N had offered to hold the child while she did so, to which the woman had seemed grateful, and shown Y/N how. The baby's face had creased with malcontent at being separated from its mother, tiny hands reaching out to grab at her, bottom lip wobbling with the onset of tears. So the mother had shown Y/N how to rock the baby gently from side to side by swaying her upper body, which---as if by magic---had instantly soothed the infant. Y/N did this now, moving Sherlock back and forth rhythmically. It seemed to help, because she felt his torso expand, then contract with a sigh.

From over his shoulder, Y/N watched the slender minute-hand of Sherlock's bedside clock fall from the three to the four. Five minutes of just rocking him, turning their intertwined bodies into a pendulum, flooding his body with calm via hypnotic rhythm.

She waited until the minute-hand was pointing at the eight, then removed her hands from him.

Sherlock's muscles stiffened like she'd ripped a plaster from his delicate alabaster skin, and it pained her.

She kissed his forehead. "It's okay, I'm not leaving you, I'm just going to pull the covers up. Okay?" She waited for his nod of consent, his limbs unfurling like the shy bud of a flower, enough for her to lean down the bed, taking the duvet in her hands. The sheet was so tangled that the stuffing had been squeezed---like toothpaste---to the very bottom, leaving Sherlock's ankles bound in fabric twisted until it was as taught as rope.

"Lift your feet up," she instructed, gently.

He did, and she worked at disentangling him, released him from his own bounds. She had to exit the bed to shake out his duvet, his pale eyes watching her fixedly, body unmoving, lips parted, ready to call her back were she to show any hint at leaving.

Without thinking---without asking if he'd like her to---Y/N climbed back onto Sherlock's mattress. It didn't matter, though, because he enveloped her in a hug, his nose finding the crook of Y/N's neck and burrowing there, clearly glad for her return.

She repeated nothings to him, lines uttered so much that they lost all meaning, syllables melting into one comforting string of affection.