Sherlock's eyes slipped shut.
The world fell away beneath him, his thoughts grinding to a sluggish, drugged halt. Like a busy train station during a power cut. Everything just...
stopped.
Y/N had claimed his mouth almost possessively---to smother his self-deprecating ramblings, to soothe his churning thoughts, to shut him up.
He's shut up now.
Y/N's mouth is warm. One of her hands is splayed at his chest, to steady herself, and that is warm too. All of it's warm, and kind of wet, and it's stirring a sensation deep within his stomach and it feels good.
Softly, Y/N sucked the full curve of Sherlock's lower lip, soft, helpless, and achingly innocent. She did it until he moaned weakly, a bolt of sensation shooting right down to his core. Every muscle in his sinewy body melted at once.
He is so full of things, of frayed nerves, of heightened, acute senses, of thoughts and emotions all entwined so nothing is simple.
Almost nothing. This is simple. Each subtle nudge of Y/N's mouth is hitting a refresh button on Sherlock's brain. He needed this. For so long he's needed this.
Needed Y/N.
...
When Y/N broke the kiss, she didn't pull away, not completely. She stayed leaning over him, resting her forehead against his, Sherlock's breathy, humid gasps pooling at her chin.
"You think too much," she muttered, sort of explaining why she'd leapt on him so suddenly. It got her a chuckle, just a single, tumbling syllable, and one of Sherlock's hands slid up to curl into her hair, tugging her back down again.
He can't stop kissing her. He's not even shy anymore, just needy, just desperate, and utterly, completely addicted.
Despite being the one to initiate the kiss, he automatically awarded leadership to Y/N. Yes, sweeping her off her feet would have been nice...
But he's not really thinking about that right now. He's not really thinking about anything. He's very content just laying there, letting Y/N do what she wants with him. She seems to know what she's doing. Even if she didn't, would Sherlock even care? He's just happy she's touching him.
Y/N didn't need to coax his jaw open to deepen the kiss. It just fell open on its own, pliant, curious, hungry. Y/N pushed into his mouth, finding the slick, powerful heat of his tongue. This got a very ungentlemanly groan, the hand in Y/N's hair tightening.
That noise.
It's like a mountain crumbling to the ground. Him, moaning, deep, unchained, rumblings purrs. They ripple through his body and into Y/N's, into the floor, the walls, shaking the whole flat. A series of vibrations more than a sound, tugging at parts of her she'd forgotten about.
Everything she did got that noise.
Her hand moving down the plane of his exposed torso to grip at his side.
Lightly flicking the roof of his mouth.
Easing it open a little further with her thumb at his chin.
Kissing Sherlock is different from kissing most men, Y/N thought. For a start, most men's mouths are narrow and slightly hardened; a thin dash of lip framed by a strong, squared-off chin. Rugged. Masculine.
But Sherlock's lips aren't like that at all. They're a plush cupid's bow; a delectable, biteable shape, full and curved and wide. They're probably red now, too, red and raw and kiss-bruised---and that's going to be their constant state from now on, Y/N decided.
And he's letting Y/N kiss him. She is the one doing most of the kissing. Where other men are forceful and firm, taking what they want, claiming control in strong, dominant hands, Sherlock is soft. Undemanding. Well, he's not soft; he's just gone soft; his usual confident, cocky attitude has fallen away and now he's spread out on the floor, all six foot of his lean, impressive body utterly surrendering to Y/N's touch.
He is kissing back, but not in that brazen, harsh way so typical of his gender. He's all tentative presses and hesitant sweeps. It's refreshing, in a way, his innocence, the full level of his need searing Y/N to her core. Everything he's experiencing is new and exciting and he quivers every time the pad of Y/N's thumb rubs softly at his ribs, every time she gives him any kind of friction or pressure.
Suddenly, when Y/N slid her whole hand forwards over the plane of his belly, he made a little bitten down sound, muscles contracted below that questioning touch. He pushed himself into a sitting position, taking Y/N with him, breaking the kiss to gulp in a breath.
"Sorry," Y/N apologised, retracting her hand as though she'd been burnt---is he sensitive there? Had she startled him? She shouldn't have---
But Sherlock shook his head, nudging the side of Y/N's nose with his own. "Don't be." The movement urged her head back so he could claim her lips again greedily. "I liked it."
He did. The need to touch aches as deep as his bones.
"More please."
So Y/N gave him more. She can, now that he's sitting up, one hand finding its way into his shirt and the other sliding into Sherlock's curls. It gets her a soft, contented noise, and a little tilt of his head, a desperate plea for more. More prickly, tingling sensations trickling from his scalp, more kissing, more of Y/N's other hand clutching into him; he doesn't really mind. More everything.
...
When Y/N breaks the kiss properly, Sherlock is breathing---a bit heavily---through a smile. His hand at her head slipped down to hold her waist, keeping her close, so close he's sure she can hear the frantic rhythm of his pulse.
A current ran through them both now, he could feel it. Before, he'd thought it had just been within him, in his body and only his, circulating like an electric pulse, persistent, deprived, pining. But now its passing though Y/N too, from his skin to hers, across the tiny slither of space between them. She's completing the circuit and its some kind of tension, and it's making it very hard not to pull her up against his chest.
A little while passed of just respiring; bringing in new air and expelling the old. Cooling down, like a pot of boiling water removed from the hob.
It didn't help. That tension, that tautness like a net stretched between their bodies is showing no sign of lessening.
So Y/N said: "Do you want to finish the picture?" she'd panted it, really, so close that her words grazed the lush contours of Sherlock's mouth. Her tone is low, almost sultry, and it made that tightening in his belly double in on itself.
It almost hurts, but in a good way, like a stabbing of arousal, and he lets himself fall forwards to lean against the crook of Y/N's shoulder. She supports his weight, the pad of her thumb rubbing a tender stroke onto the line of muscle below his ear. It's relaxing, and he tries to centre his attention on that, the compassionate purity of it, rather than the rapidly building heat in his---everywhere. His very blood is thick with a deliciously sweet demand for more. It doesn't help that Y/N smells inexplicably good. He wants to turn his head sideways a bit and mouth at her neck.
"What?" he managed to ask, his voice gritty and laden with friction. His vocal cords had done nothing but produce unrestrained happy sounds for the past ten minutes---an activity in which they are wildly out of practise.
The corner of Y/N's lips twitched. If he can be utterly undone with a simple kiss, how will he react to...other things?
Easing out from Sherlock's sort-of-cuddle, Y/N released him and moved away enough to retrieve the sheet of paper atop the pile of drawings by the bed. Sherlock let her go reluctantly, watching her with heavy-lidded eyes, all glassy and dazed. His hair sticking up, pale skin flushed with colour, his shirt still undone and hanging limply from his shoulders. He looks like he's just stumbled in drunk.
"This." Y/N handed him the A4 and he blinked at it. It's the picture he'd crossed out, Y/N's bare collarbones teasing his aroused body. "Do you want to finish it? I'll pose for you."
Sherlock met Y/N's gaze, her having crawled back over to face him. Blushing, he muttered tentatively: "...I told you it was going to be a nude."
The shy way Y/N's smile curved at one side into a smirk made him have to moisten his lips. "I know."
He went red to the roots of his hair. The idea was appealing, yes, beyond appealing. But he's already a panting mess from being kissed. If Y/N laid naked before him---
Swallowing thickly: "I've never..."
Drawing someone naked would not be a problem. Back when he used to sneak to life-drawing sessions, Sherlock had drawn several people who had no clothes on, and done a very good job of it. It's all just biology, after all, limbs, bodies, faces. He'd sat there for hours staring at bare skin and felt nothing---because life drawing sessions are a lot less sensual than you'd think. In fact, they're the polar opposite of sexy. They're basically a bunch of people getting slowly more frustrated because they can't get that curve right, and their eraser keeps smudging, and why is that muscle on the model's leg so hard to shade?
But drawing Y/N naked? Both of them, alone? Now that he knows he can touch her? Her feminine curves and alluring skin all exposed, pricked with goosebumps---
His abdomen clenched. Again. "I mean, I've watched films, but I've never actually seen a woman that I'm attracted to...like that. In real life."
Y/N looked unphased. She shouldn't be unphased, he thought, she should think him a pathetic mess, so he continued valiantly, wanting her to understand:
"I won't be able to help getting---you know." He made an awkward little gesturing motion to his now slightly uncomfortable dress trousers. The coarse, starchy cotton wasn't enough to hide the fact that his ridiculously-sensitive body had already gotten a little over-enthusiastic about its first kiss.
Y/N chuckled, a little flurry of syllables like a swirl of autumn leaves. She touched a finger to Sherlock's chest, between his collarbones and drew it down, torturously slowly, to the dip of his navel.
He shivered.
"That is rather the point."
...
Y/N helped Sherlock off the floor, his legs spaghetti. He stood, then in the centre of his bedroom, not really sure what to do, or what happens next. He would be lying if he claimed not to have had dreams like this. Just to be sure this wasn't one of those, he, discreetly, edged a hand to his arm and gave it a sharp, hard pinch.
No. He's awake.
He'd put two and two together by now: Y/N questioning whether he would like to finish the drawing had been a smooth way of asking something else:
If he's ready for what comes after the picture.
Y/N had suggested he sketch her naked because it's---in a way---a form of foreplay; a bridge between their heated makeout session on the floor, and some kind of sex.
Sherlock didn't need to ask himself whether he's ready for 'some kind of sex', especially as that sex would be with his best friend. She knows him. She'll take good care of him.
He has been ready for a very long time.
Y/N was watching Sherlock expectantly and he just blinked back dully before realising she's waiting for him to give her instructions.
He raked his mind for some kind of direction, but it was slow to respond, all drugged and useless. That would have been frustrating had it not felt so goddamn good. He almost giggled giddily; look what love's done to him.
When he still seemed sort of puzzled, just smiling like an idiot, Y/N helped him along. "So." She gave a shrug, gesturing to the room around them. "Where do you want me?"
Sherlock's cheekbones dappled crimson. He could think of several places.
The corners of her lips curling: "Not like that."
Hastily, his mouth opened, a shameful apology about to roll off his tongue, but Y/N added, flashing him a smile that made his knees turn to fudge:
"Not yet anyway."
...
It was decided that Y/N would pose on Sherlock's bed, framed neatly by the dark length of the headboard. Sherlock would sit at the other end of the mattress with a pillow and a book in his lap to lean the paper on.
He scrambled about for a pencil, then arranged himself on the mattress, his pulse quickening with childish anticipation. He'd seen Titanic once and he's finding this whole thing to be quite romantic in a dream-come-true kind of way. He's always been a fan of romance---mainly because he thought he'd never get any.
"You still with me?" Y/N teased, waking him from his stupor. She smiled when Sherlock gives her an embarrassed little nod.
"Yes. I'm just sort of...in awe." He's loosened now; he's with his best friend, the familiar weight of a pencil in one hand, about to do one of his favourite activities---then what he's fairly sure will be his new favourite activity. Life is good.
Y/N laughed. "I haven't even started getting undressed yet." She gravitated closer to the bed, taking off her socks with each step. Everything she did solidified the situation slightly, Sherlock noticed, the blurry, sated state Y/N's kiss had left him in dissipating.
Nudging the door closed until the handle clicked.
She doesn't want their intimate time alone to be disturbed.
Shutting down the glaring main bulb dangling from the ceiling, and clicking on the bedside lamp.
She's giving the room atmosphere.
Bunching the frayed material of her socks down around her ankles, then slipping her feet from them, tossing them aside.
She's undressing for him. She wants to make him excited.
Each moment brought everything into focus like a camera lens---made it more real---from a fuzzy fantasy, to vivid, physical reality.
He gets to see Y/N naked.
Then she's going to---
Y/N can feel Sherlock's transparent eyes cutting inquisitively into her like a whetted blade as she undresses. Methodologically, she removes each garment, aware of his gaze, steady and interested. She took her time easing buttons and slipping fabric; playing with him, finding his desperate frustration amusing.
Now only in her underwear, Y/N paused, noting Sherlock's chest rising and falling with his quickened breaths.
His pupils are so wide they're drowning out their disk of molten silver. They slid languidly up the stretch of Y/N's legs and lingered purposefully over the swell of her hips. He's staring fixedly at the lacy band of her pants as if hoping he could eat through it just by concentrating hard enough.
She reached back, unfastened her bra, and dropped it to the floor.
The jut of Sherlock's adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed roughly.
...
Sherlock has never really struggled to draw before but now. Sure, the initial stages of learning how exactly to transfer mind into matter had been a frustrating period of his life, but not difficult. He'd mainly spent that time sketching things from books, or the women in his mother's fashion catalogues. Those women had been beautiful, yes, but, at the end of the day, they were still two dimensional; pin-pricks of ink clustered together to look like a person. An air-brushed, ethereal person, all rigid poses and constant, plastered-on smiles that look like they'd slip loose if you shook the page too hard.
But Y/N is real, and very naked, and she's all sprawled out on Sherlock's bed like butter on toast. Her smile isn't like the women's in the magazines. It's Y/N's smile, the one Sherlock had become so bafflingly fond of, and now it's laced with a teasing note of wickedness; unchained female sensuality.
She's not a flat page in a magazine, or a series of harsh pixels on a screen. She's soft and subtle and has texture, curves to hold and smother with your hands, lips--- she has scent that'll cling to his duvet covers. She has mass and taste---
Sherlock turned back to the paper on his lap with a silent groan in his chest.
Y/N had gotten to pick the pose she took, so long as it roughly lined up with the position of her shoulders in the part of the sketch that's already finished. Because of this---because part of it is complete---she also got to choose her expression. She wanted it to be provocative. It wouldn't affect the outcome of the image, she just did it because she liked how the solid dashes of Sherlock's cheekbones flushed a shy pink every time he caught the fiery line of her sight. It was an easy look to give; all she had to do was mentally undress him. Picture his elegant structure, angular bones, sleek muscles moving under alabaster skin.
When she does eventually undress him---and she will---she's going to eat him alive.
Judging by the way he's biting his lower lip so fetchingly, Sherlock knows this, and is more than looking forward to it.
...
Despite being utterly nude---probably the most vulnerable a human being can be---Y/N feels at-ease and untroubled. She's not shy showing her body to Sherlock Holmes; his reaction banished all self-consciousness before it had even arrived. She's not bored either, even though her job is to mainly stay very still. She's perfectly content to just observe the artist before her as he quietly goes about his work.
It is funny, Y/N contemplated to herself, that the first time she gets to watch Sherlock draw, she's barely paying attention at all. Well, she is paying attention, just not to that part of it. She can't see what's on the paper he's leaning over, not from her angle; lounging in a feline sort of way where his pillows would usually be. She can't watch the actual sketch take shape, so she watches Sherlock make it do so instead.
The loose waves of his curls springing from his parting; how they fall about his face when he dips his head.
Each gritty scrape of the graphite, sometimes a mere light brush, others stronger and laden with purpose. Y/N imagined the type of lines they produced in her mind, wondering if he's using the sound or the give of the pencil to predict whether he's using enough pressure for the stroke he wants to conceive.
The large, slender, cradle of his hand lightly teasing the direction of the instrument with well-practised precision and accuracy.
Finesse. Everything Sherlock does is with finesse, his posture, the minute adjustments to the position of his arm, or the angle of the paper. Even the way he's shyly blushing has an air of experience, as if he's been doing it for most of his life.
The room is chilly, and Y/N can feel her bare skin tightening as the steamy heat of arousal slowly ebbs from her bloodstream. There's no need to adjust the heating, though. It's impossible to be uncomfortably cold whilst those eyes are on you.
Sherlock had noticed the cold too, but not because his shirt is still hanging open, loose and forgotten, exposing a long column of pale skin that Y/N keeps staring at. No, he'd noticed the slight sharpness of the temperature because Y/N's nipples had hardened to pink, tempting little pert buds. He spent two minutes trying to remember how to breathe.
Another reason for his heart making little leaps every now and again is because he'd so used to Y/N...not knowing he's looking at her. She's looking at him now, and it keeps making him jump. He'll raise his head---to make sure he's getting everything right, the proportions, the shadows, the way the bedside light is falling onto her, etcetera---and become startled by her pupils trained on his. By the fact that she knows exactly what he's doing.
Despite having full permission---she's posing for him, for Christ's sake---he's not used to it; to his secrets being out in the open. Although, they may be out in the open, but they don't feel exposed. There's no building sense of dread as if a hawk is going to swoop down at any moment and snatch them up with black talons. No, what it actually feels like is as though a window has been opened. As if planks of sunlight are now falling into what used to be a sullen, shut-up and dusty room.
...
I'm not sure if you've ever done it, but drawing often takes a little while. And, due to the rather flustered artist, and nature of the picture, this particular drawing is taking even longer. Thus, naturally, a conversation was bound to blossom like mushrooms on a moist log.
"The police sketch," Y/N said after some time. "That was you, wasn't it." It hadn't really been a question. She didn't need to be more specific, either.
Sherlock's head is bowed to the paper. He's trying to estimate the distance between the ridge of Y/N's right shoulder and the sharp point of her elbow, but keeps overshooting. Whilst scrubbing at the extra few millimetres of graphite with the nub of an eraser: "Yes."
"I asked you who drew it and you said a person upstairs."
The corner of Sherlock's lip quirked up as he muttered into his lap: "That's not technically a lie; I was upstairs and I am a person."
"Don't flatter yourself," Y/N quipped, getting a little chuckle. It rolled up from his chest, almost as delicious as his moans of pleasure. Y/N shifted against the duvet and Sherlock's grey eyes noticed. Seriously, now, all jokes metaphorically pushed aside: "Why did you keep it a secret? The fact that you can draw, I mean, not just the police sketch."
The wide line of Sherlock's shoulders rose and fell in a shrug.
Y/N watched his pale torso shift about between the two sides of his shirt; the furrows that formed behind his collarbones, the svelte shift of muscles. He's softer than he used to be---now more strength than bone---softer and warmer to touch than most would think.
"Because you would have asked me what it is I draw, and I would have had to show you those," he tilted the bitten end of his pencil to the left, indicating to the pile of sketches still on the floor. Then he wavered. "...And I like to keep it to myself because I don't like people knowing that I waste my time."
"It isn't---"
"It is, and I'm okay with that" he corrected, and he sounded like he was telling the truth. "I do it because I enjoy it."
Gently: "If you are okay with it then why do you hide it?" Y/N fears she's pressing him, but he doesn't seem to object.
Sherlock has never been one to disparage curiosity. "I have a reputation to uphold," he said simply. "I usually have to dress, talk, and act a certain way so people take me seriously. It's good for business." His gaze keeps lingering on the stretch of Y/N's legs now, and she can't tell whether he's not-so-discreetly admiring them, or if he's just reached that part of the portrait.
She doesn't mind either way. "I appreciate the irony."
This did make Sherlock raise his head, and he tipped it to the side curiously. "What irony?"
Y/N shrugged this time, and it made him blush.
He found it curious that even philosophical conversation and the passage of time isn't enough to extinguish that tingling sensation between his legs.
"How the world thinks you're unfeeling and indifferent."
With a small, hopeful edge: "Am I...not unfeeling and indifferent?"
"Of course you're not, you're the complete opposite. You care about everything. That's the irony."
When he still seemed confused, she said, sounding sad:
"I think people have told you you're those things so many times, you've started to believe it, even if it's not true."
Quietly: "People always told me I have no heart." The edge of Sherlock's pretty mouth tugged into a brittle smile, and he added another sweeping line to his picture. "I once heard Sally and Anderson arguing over what's in its place. Anderson suggested ice, but Sally thought its more like flint."
The corners of Y/N's eyes prickled. How could she be singed with arousal one minute, and teetering on the verge of tears the next?
She moistened her lips. They still taste of Sherlock. "You're not what they think you are. I don't even think you're what you think you are. Because you're not actually a puzzle solver, really, are you? You do that because you get bored, not because you're in love with it."
Sherlock's hand stopped nudging the tip of the pencil over the bump of Y/N's knee.
Cautiously, he picked up this observation, this shiny new perspective. Y/N had dropped it before him so simply---so easily---as if it didn't rattle the very foundations of which his very sense of self had perched for so many years. He turned it over in his head, examined all the sides and angles.
It didn't shock him. He feels as though he's always been wearing a name badge---SHERLOCK HOLMES; DETECTIVE---but it's actually just a sticker over the top of something else. Y/N has just peeled it off to reveal what's underneath---
But there's nothing there. It's blank.
"...So...what am I?" Am I anything?
Y/N thought for a moment and then smiled. It was a nice smile, as if the conclusion she'd reached pleased her. "You're...an illustrator. And a musician. An actor." Another few moments of contemplation, then, metaphorically, she wrote in that gap on his name badge simply:
"You're an artist."