Sherlock X Reader One Shots || 𝐹𝐿𝑈𝐹𝐹 + 𝑆𝑀𝑈𝑇

There's A Spider In The Loo (Part 1)

CONTEXT:

Sherlock is scared of spiders. Y/N finds this hilarious. (Pre-relationship)

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As well as love, the desire to impress also conquers all fear.

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The kitchen---of almost any home---is usually where things happen. It's the core, a hub, the centre, feeding the dwelling with sustenance from its fridge, its sink, its cupboards like a heart feeds a body with blood.

This is true of 221B, as any one of its slightly disgruntled neighbours---after many years of various bangs, thumps, thuds (and on one occasion: a fizzing noise)---can attest to.

One man, Sherlock Holmes, is responsible for all of these (apart from the times when he has company; usually an angry thug with a thirst for revenge who tries to murder him with one of his own vegetable knives). He's always doing something, staving off boredom with chemical experiments, slightly illegal target practice, and or letting thugs who want to behead him into his house just to pass the time.

It is because of this, the abundance of life, that Y/N had taken to reading at the kitchen table.

She used to read in her bedroom upstairs, but that felt too far away, so she moved to the living room. That still wasn't close enough, so now, whenever she feels the inkling to absorb herself in a fictional realm, she does so at the dining table.

The dining table is not comfortable, as anyone that has ever sat at one for even a minute will be able to tell you. The chairs are made of hard, stubborn wood that---for some unknown reason---always seems to curve at just the wrong place; right where your spine begins arching, the chair's rigid back forces it in the opposite direction. We no longer live in the middle ages; our furniture does not need to be made from misshapen sticks, and yet, that way it remains.

As anyone that has also read a book will be able to tell you, reading tends to be done whilst your limbs conduct some strange, slow form of yoga. You open the book whilst sitting with both feet planted firmly on the floor, your back straight, your arms neatly spreading the novel over your lap. Ten minutes later, you're somehow upside down, legs twisted like a pretzel, with one arm supporting your head by its temple; your body's attempt at getting comfortable. Why does reading come with an array of unnecessarily complicated sitting positions? More things we do not know.

Y/N has been reading for quite a bit more than ten minutes, so her reading position closely resembles that of a frog who's been perched on a too-small lilypad for much longer than it would have liked. She had the good sense to pre-prepare her selected dining room chair with pillows, which managed to make the unyielding flat surfaces marginally more tolerable, but that didn't change the fact that it was a dining room chair.

Sherlock would look up every now and again, take a brief hiatus from staring at colourful blobs through his microscope, jotting down numbers or scrawling words, to observe his flatmate with what could only be described as amusement. It was not just Y/N's more than imaginative arrangement of her own framework that caused a smile to tug at the corners of his lips, but the fact that she'd rather sit here on these horrible chairs, with him, than, well, literally anywhere else.

Even if that did mean losing all sensation from her thighs downwards.

Sherlock didn't even consider himself to be doing anything worth Y/N's time. If he'd been conversing with a client, piecing together clues, or even deciphering a code, maybe then he'd understand Y/N's desire to be close to him. After all, he too has a fear of missing out on anything remotely noteworthy, and action does tend to follow Sherlock Holmes around like a stray cat begging for food. By his side is a good place to be if you're looking for adventure.