Sherlock X Reader One Shots || 𝐹𝐿𝑈𝐹𝐹 + 𝑆𝑀𝑈𝑇

"You Have A Lot Of Explaining To Do" (Part 4)

The flat seemed darker without Y/N to light it up. Only her belongings kept it from returning to the dismal grey it had been before she'd moved in. Sherlock had never really noticed how dingy the apartment had been before Y/N, how dingy his whole life had been. How had he survived for so long without laughing with a friend? Without messing around, sharing jokes, just talking to someone?

However he'd done it, he obviously no longer knew how, because loneliness was eating away at him within an hour of Y/N's absence. Thoughts of what Y/N was doing right now were eating away at him too, and he was struggling to keep them at bay. Tom letting her try some of his meal, holding his fork out for her pretty lips to close on. Y/N taking his hand resting on the table. Tom admiring her over the rim of his wine glass. 

Sherlock was getting a stomach ache.

...

As the clock on the kitchen wall's hour-hand dripped down to Six o'clock, Sherlock decided to visit Mrs Hudson. He hadn't spoken to her since he'd gone out to get the milk the other day, and felt it was time to render that. Plus he could really use the company.

His landlord's door swung open welcomingly almost immediately after the first knock, as if its occupant had been waiting by it for some time, anticipating his call. 

She probably had.

"Hello, dear. All on your own tonight, are you?"

Older people had always been a place of comfort for Sherlock. Maybe because he was the youngest child, and thus always drawn to motherly figures. Maybe because his job is so full of darkness that he often feels he carries the weight of the world on his shoulders; being with older people---people who have seen more things than he could imagine---often offered a new perspective that he would never have been able to fathom due to the simple fact that he isn't wise enough yet. How many times had he brought a problem to this woman, handed it over to her and she'd picked it apart quickly and easily for him, as if it was nothing more than a troublesome ball of yarn?

His pain soothed a little by her aura, he offered her a smile, but it still came with obvious effort. "How did you know?"

Mrs Hudson placed one of her little bird hands on his back (the small of it, that being as high up as she could reach) and ushered him into the flat. He liked her flat, probably because while his flat's decor was that of cold indifference, hers was homely and quaint and splashed with evidence of a rich and exciting life. Gifts from past lovers, souvenirs from far-away places. She'd done things. Sherlock...hadn't. He kept little prizes from cases he'd found especially interesting, but all they reminded him of were blood stains and the looks on family's faces as he delivered the truth of what had happened to their loved one. Mrs Hudson's trinkets were nothing like that, they were splashed with colour and wrapped in webs of stories.

"I saw Y/N get in a taxi a little while ago. She was all dressed up, she looked ever so pretty, didn't she?" Her eyes, brimming with sagacity, graced his face casually, daring him to admit that, yes, he did think she was pretty, very pretty indeed.

"Yes, if you like that sort of thing," he answered blandly, making the older woman roll her eyes.

Mrs Hudson asked Sherlock if he would like to stay for dinner, which he was grateful for. He didn't want to go back to the flat alone again, be left to his own devices; he knew that would mean hours of hiding from his own thoughts. To keep his mind busy, and because he was nice, Sherlock had cooked their meal, telling the older woman to 'relax, really, it's no trouble' whenever she tried to nudge him out of the way and take over in the classic maternal way many women over sixty seem to magically acquire.