Sherlock stayed silent for a long time, and Y/N wondered if he was going to answer at all. Maybe he's too shy, too English to talk about sex. She didn't even dare consider the fact that he wasn't answering because he'd hated it and was trying to spare her feelings. 'He couldn't have hated it,' She thought, 'Unless he's a really good actor.' Remembering the way her touch had run over things that made him hiss and arch beneath her: 'He must have enjoyed it, at least a bit'.
Just when she thought he was never going to say anything:
"More than you can possibly imagine."
Y/N's lips twitched into a smile. 'He's not shy, he just couldn't find the right words to sum it up,' Y/N mentally chuckled to herself, a little swell of pride blooming in her chest at the thought that if someone was to look through Sherlock's memories they'd come across that night, that spike of joy, and she'd be able to say 'that was me. I did that'.
Sherlock's shoulders weren't squared anymore, the fabric of his shirt going loose again as his muscles relaxed. Like a weight had been lifted from his back and he suddenly felt free from it, lighter.
...Had he just wanted to talk about it? That night? Y/N's smile grew into a smirk; 'Maybe that's what was bothering him. He'd just experienced the most amazing feeling in his life and he thought he wasn't allowed to talk to anyone about it.'
"Did you?"
Y/N dragged her mind back to reality to see that Sherlock had turned to her, now, concerned, as if he'd been itching to ask her all day long. He probably had. He was so eager for the answer that he'd forgotten his still-unsorted pile of socks completely. "I know it was my first time so I didn't really know...you know. But you didn't...hate it, did you?"
Y/N laughed out loud now at Sherlock's expression, so vulnerable, his whole demeanour laced with hesitancy. Her heart swelled with love for him and it made her giddy. He wants to talk about it so they are going to talk about it. Taking the sock from him and matching it with the one she'd been holding, "No, of course not. How could you even ask that? It was amazing, that whole night was amazing. You were amazing."
He flushed pink.
"You were gentle and generous and...the most beautiful man I've ever seen. You clearly cared about my pleasure, maybe even more than your own." A memory swamped her mind, filling it like warm syrup, and she was beaming without realising. "Some people would have just...you know. Skipped to the end, focused wholly on themself. Not you, though." Remembering the sensual trail of kisses he'd drawn down her whole body. The way he'd given each centimetre of her skin his undivided attention, using her reaction to find the places she especially liked, learning her body. "You took your time. That night with you was the best night I've ever had." She wasn't even lying. "Getting to touch you, feeling you touching me, it was better than I dreamed." That last part had slipped out by accident and Y/N flushed up to her ears. That had been too close. Too close to her secret love for him and too close to sounding creepy.
Sherlock didn't seem to mind, though. If he was sitting in a seat he'd be perched on the edge of it. "Really?" The corner of his perfectly biteable lips were tugged into a more than smug smirk and he bashfully peeked at Y/N through his fringe. "And...you dreamed of making love to me?"
Why did hearing him call it that send shivers coursing through every nerve? "Yes." What's the point in denying it?
He saw her blushing and said gently, his smugness being replaced with bashful sincerity. "Don't feel bad. I...I imagined it too."
Her heart missed a beat, like when you save yourself just in time from falling down the stairs. Trying to hide it, Y/N placed the last of the sock pairs into their correct place. Sherlock had imagined it too? She found herself wishing there were more socks to sort. They'd given her hands something to do, her gaze a place to rest that wasn't on her friend. She didn't want to scorch him with the laser beam that was all of her attention. She didn't want to scare him away. She wanted him to keep talking.
Casually, as casually as she could muster: "You did?"
"Yes." Sherlock took a pile of his shirts from the laundry basket and started hanging them up in his wardrobe. Waiting until his face was sort-of-hidden in the cupboard: "I imagined you touching me. Accidentally. Like, my brain would just suddenly put images in my head." It took him a little while to get up enough courage to say: "They were wonderful, so wonderful I felt it was worth seeing if you'd be okay with me maybe kissing you." He took another shirt from the pile, arranged it neatly on a hanger then slotted it amongst its peers. "And then not only did you kiss me, you kissed all of me---took me to places emotionally and physically that I never thought I'd get to go." He turned back to face Y/N, then, a wistful look swirling about his pretty eyes.
But he looked melancholy rather than nostalgic as he gave Y/N a grateful smile.
"Thank you."
Y/N had to study his face for a second to read his emotions because his tone of voice had confused her. He seemed...sad. Why does he seem sad? He's talking about his first kiss, his first time with a woman, and here he is looking like a flower weighed down by heavy droplets of rain. What could Y/N say to comfort him? How is she supposed to comfort him if she doesn't even know what the problem is? If he refuses to even acknowledge that there is one?
Another idea occurred to Y/N. A cheap idea, but an idea all the same. It would make him smile. It would raise his spirits. His soulful expression would be replaced with eyes crossed with pleasure.
But the question was, would Y/N want to do that again? It had felt absolutely brilliant, completely fantastic and yet...watching Sherlock leave her room this morning had almost made all of that not worth it. Could she really go through that again just because she wanted to cheer him up?
Well, not just because she wanted to cheer him up. It had almost made it not worth it. Almost.
Y/N stepped closer to Sherlock, taking some of the front of his shirt and running the smooth fabric between her finger and thumb. She could see Sherlock's chest freeze as he stopped breathing. She'd noticed that recently; how the steady rhythm of his respiration falters whenever she gets particularly close.
Sherlock watched Y/N with curious eyes, his hands remaining stiffly at his sides.
Her voice a low murmur: "You know...we could do it again if you like. If you really enjoyed it that much, if you had as much fun as I did---"
He nudged her away. "No, thank you."
Y/N blinked. That was, obviously, not how she had been expecting those next few seconds to go. The blood in her cheeks rose to uncomfortable temperatures, from embarrassment but also from confusion.
He'd liked it, yes?
He was fine with one night stands, yes?
Stepping backwards, out of respect, "Wait, what? Why not?"
The laundry basket was empty now so there was no real reason for them to be standing here like this, anymore. Well, Sherlock had a reason; it was his room. Y/N didn't, and with every passing second, she began to feel more and more like someone who was very much in the wrong place. Like how you feel when you're around a friend's house and they start arguing with their parents in front of you.
It didn't help that Sherlock's expression was set in a firm frown. "Because for me it wasn't fun." He put air quotes around 'fun' as if the word disgusted him, and Y/N felt her stomach plummet to the floor. "For me, it was...staggering. Life-changing. Breathtaking. It was...it sounds stupid, I know, but it was the best experience of my life and it meant something. It was meaningful, even if it wasn't for you."
'Oh,' Y/N thought as the pieces slotted together, 'So he doesn't like one night stands?'
"But for me it was meaningful---"
Sherlock cut her off, shaking his head, looking like he'd very much like to drop the conversation now. However, Y/N was still staring at him, baffled and clearly craving an explanation so he held onto it, reluctantly: "Not in the same way. When you gave me permission to touch you, when you said you wanted me to touch you...I thought I had everything a man could ever want. But then," he wilted damply "...you went away."
Y/N's brow furrowed in a deep rift of confusion. Her brain was so full of confusion that his compliments barely sank in. "I didn't go away! You're the one that left my room!"
"I left because you'd already left me. We woke up and you didn't mention the previous night at all, didn't say anything about our kiss, about any of it. You'd left me, the Y/N I had danced with was gone and she hasn't come back. I'd only want to...do that again with that Y/N." It had spilt out in a rush, any hesitancy Sherlock had felt before clearly overridden by the need to be heard, to be understood.
But Y/N hadn't understood, not any of it. Her brow hadn't unfurrowed yet. If anything, she was now even more baffled than before. "No, I was the same Y/N when I woke up as the Y/N I'd been when I fell asleep in your arms. I didn't go anywhere---"
"Yes, I realised that." Evidently, Sherlock's miniature rant's momentum was pittering out and he ran a hand through his hair, saying, slower and quieter, now: "What I mean is: I think the you I saw at the wedding was all in my head, because I wanted to believe she existed."
"What are you talking about?"
Impatiently: "The Y/N who wanted to kiss me. Me, as in...my personality, who I am as a person not just my appearance. The Y/N who wanted to kiss me. I think I was just imagining her. I realised it when we woke up and you were acting like it was just a fling. The Y/N I kissed had disappeared because I realised she'd never really been with me at all."
His raw emotion, the things he was saying and the tone in which he said them grated against some part of Y/N's heart, making it ache. Sherlock thought she didn't like him for who he is. His whole life he'd been surrounded by people that leave, then he thinks he finally found someone who's going to stay, and they leave him too.
Y/N stepped closer to him, putting her hands on his chest, planting herself before him. She wished she could send her love for him from her chest, down her arms, through her hands and into his shirt-covered skin. "Yes, she had. The Y/N that wants to kiss you was with you then and is right here with you now, still."
"No, you don't understand." He stepped back, Y/N's palms cold without the solid warmth of Sherlock's body beneath them. "I like you, Y/N. As in, I really like you. I have for a while now. And...the way you touched me...I kind of started to hope that it meant you... felt the same way. I never would have even wanted to go to bed with anyone I didn't...love." His eyes are fixed on the patch of the floor by Y/N's feet. He uttered the last word quietly, so quiet he probably hoped Y/N hadn't heard.
But she had.
Taking a deep breath, Sherlock brought his head up to meet Y/N's eyes and held them with his own. "I wouldn't feel safe doing that with anyone I hadn't fallen for. And I think when we were dancing...my brain wanted you to love me so badly that it made up a version of you that did." He sighed deeply as if someone had let him free from ropes that had been restraining him too tightly. He could finally breathe properly again. He must like that freedom because he continued:
"When we woke up, I kept thinking you'd tell me what last night meant. I kept hoping you'd tell me you'd felt it too, when our hearts had beaten in unison, when we'd held each other as our bodies fell over that pique of pleasure at exactly the same moment."
At the memory, some of that light returned to his pale eyes, sparked behind them like a weak flame finding one last piece of fuel it hadn't yet consumed. Like a lantern, the brightness shone through his irises, lightning them up from within, turning them that selcouth colour somewhere between lime green and robin's egg blue. "But you didn't." The flame flickered and died, casting them back to puddle-grey. "I would have said something, I got close, but then I realised why you probably hadn't said anything; you didn't care as much about it as I did. You saw it as just a fling, and I saw it as more. I didn't want to ask for what I craved, I didn't want to beg you for more than you were willing to give."
Y/N was just staring at him, and he shifted uncomfortably under her gaze then his expression hardened. Not at Y/N, but at himself, because he looked away, letting his head hang like a child who knew they'd done something wrong.
"So...thank you for offering, but no. I don't want to do it again. Please forget I said anything. It's my fault, I shouldn't have complicated things."
He took the empty laundry basket, plucking it hurriedly up by one handle and started a brisk walk towards his bedroom door but Y/N caught his arm, stopping him. He looked at her hand gently holding his wrist, kept his eyes fixed on it as if he still couldn't believe she was touching him, even though she'd touched him lots more than that not so long ago. It still made his cheekbones flush pink. It still made his chest fall still as the breath caught in his throat.
"You should have asked me."
"What?"
Y/N didn't let him go. He's so much bigger than her, so much stronger, he could easily just pull himself free.
But he didn't. He just watched her.
"You should have asked me. This morning, what it meant. You should have asked me if I cared."
The magic of her touch must have worn off by now because Sherlock just looked tired. "You have to remember: I've never been with anyone before, Y/N."
She remembered. God, how she remembered. She remembered his shyness, how when she gave him his first kiss---as she'd coaxed his mouth open enough to taste him---the shaky edge of a moan pushed up from his lungs. She remembered the look of almost comical surprise that had come over his face at the new dimension of feeling he'd acquired the first time he felt Y/N run the pad of her thumb over his nipple. She remembered how his touch starved body clamoured for her caresses, his flesh so sensitive, so responsive, his reactions so unguarded as he melted at every simple touch.
Sherlock was still talking, and it required all Y/N's strength to ignore the pleasing memories sliding past her mind's eye. "I've never had a one night stand---which you seemed to think it was. I didn't know that talking about what you'd done was allowed."
That blush was back, his confidence dipping suddenly as he said: "And it occurred to me, the next morning, that what I'd felt could have just been the way everyone felt during sex. It might not have been special at all, you may have felt it too but paid it no attention because that's just...what making love is like. I didn't know how one night stands work. Hell, I didn't even know how to ask if I could kiss you when we were dancing. You didn't mention feeling so much joy your heart could burst when we saw each other naked for the first time, so I didn't mention it either. What would have been the point anyway? If you had felt what I'd felt you would have said something."