Welcome to the Normal Life

Sherlock wasn't sleeping.

He was very close to it, teetering precariously there, but he wasn't asleep and he doubted he'd be drifting off anytime soon. So, instead, he was watching Molly.

Okay, he wasn't technically watching her, because she was curled up behind him, spoon style, her arms draped about his waist, but he didn't need to look at her to see her.

Unlike Molly thought, Sherlock did see her. He saw her quite clearly, actually, in the way that her hair fell down around her shoulders, that her forehead creased in concentration over a pan of brain matter and body fluid, how she sometimes danced to imaginary music as she washed dishes, becoming flustered when she knew Sherlock was there.

He saw the real her in the way that she made dinner every night, even if a case-obsessed Sherlock snapped that he wasn't hungry. It was in the way that she surprised him on Valentine's Day with lacy black lingerie - so not Molly and undeniably so attractive. It was the way that she let him crawl into bed at four in the morning after he got home from a late train and curled her arms around him.

Domesticity was weird. Not to say that Sherlock didn't like it, but he just wasn't used to it.

Molly's alarm blared, deafening in the peaceful silence. Sherlock winced - he'd never much believed in alarms to begin with; you would wake up when you no longer were tired - and pressed his face further into his pillow, hitching the blankets up over his head.

Molly came around quickly, years of practice having trained her body to wake up at a certain time due to certain stimuli, shuffling over to hit the alarm.

Sherlock warily peered out of the blanket, rolling himself over onto his back and then his other side. "Morning," he greeted sleepily, feigning grogginess as though he'd been asleep long before the alarm had blared. Molly worried if he didn't sleep often, just like John had always used to do. Just... a little bit different, that.

"Morning," Molly said with a small smile.

He tilted his head slightly to be able to press his lips against Molly's shoulder. "Sleep well?"

"Mhmmm..." Molly stretched and rolled over, shuffling her way into Sherlock's arms. "How long did you sleep?" she murmured.

"Seven hours or something," he replied, tucking her into his chest. Really, it had been around five, but Molly didn't have to be out of bed for seven point four minutes, if they pushed it, and this was warm and comfortable.

Molly mumbled something that was lost in the warmth of Sherlock's skin, but he didn't bother to question it. It had been noncommittal, anyway.

There were things Sherlock had only learned about her since they'd gotten together. He'd learned that she preferred shampoo that smelled of kiwis, and that was the unidentifiable smell he'd always got a whiff of at the lab. He now knew that she liked waffles for breakfast but rarely had time for them, so Sherlock, if he was up all night with a small break, would make some for when she woke up. She liked what Sherlock called tasteless romance novels and had affections for cartoon characters (anime, he thought it was called? Molly watched it once in a while).

Sherlock breathed in the smell of kiwis and closed his eyes, sighing softly. Molly's hair moved with the breath and tickled Sherlock's face.

There were things that he had learned about himself, too. Like the fact that he had allergies to cats. Like sex wasn't as bad as he had maybe previously thought, not that he threw himself into that particular endeavour often. Or maybe like that he never really liked spending time on cooking, but, after Molly, had found out that he loved it and was talented at it.

Well, relationships were about both of the participants of said relationship, after all.

Molly sighed, pulling Sherlock back into his warm reality.

"Dreams?" he asked out loud. This was something he'd learned to do, too, ask if Molly had good dreams the night prior. He wasn't sure why it was important, honestly, but he just knew it felt right for a morning, still-in-bed conversation.

"I think..." Molly yawned. "I dreamed about my old neighbor and her hedges..."

Sherlock scoffed, hiding his smile against Molly's hair. Mundane things. But... mundane was good, sometimes. Mundane was fine.

Every once in awhile, anyway.

Sherlock's mobile buzzed from the nightstand. He yawned and untangled himself from Molly, rolling over to grab it. The luminosity from the tiny screen was still too bright for his eyes this early in the morning, but he made out Lestrade's name on the Caller ID.

"Oh." He jabbed the button and pressed it against his ear. "Lead on the suffocation?" he greeted, trying to clear his throat to shake away the deep, throaty tone that said he'd definitely been asleep.

Molly had kissed his forehead and crawled out of bed by the time that Sherlock was off the phone. He dropped his phone into the blankets and stumbled to his feet, grabbing his dressing gown from its pool-like state on the floor.

"Greg found something on the case?" Molly asked, poking her head out of the bathroom. She'd already brushed her teeth and combed her hair, going by her silky brown locks falling smoothly past her shoulders.

Sherlock smiled without being consciously aware of it - something he did a lot now. "Oh, yes. And another potential victim, so we need your help, too," he added, joining her in the bathroom.

Molly rolled her eyes, but she was smiling, too. "Oh, great!"

Sherlock ducked his head to kiss her cheek, subconsciously avoiding his own reflection as he did so. (He wasn't ashamed, he wasn't, he just thought, if he let himself think about it, he thought he might, you know, start to be soppy, way too soppy, like John, and Mary, and he wasn't sure he could handle seeing himself soppy.) "I always need you," he said, twisting his fingers around her hair briefly before pulling away to brush his teeth.

Molly was blushing, but she beamed at him before leaving the bathroom to go find clothes to get dressed. At least some things never changed... Sherlock would get bored if Molly never blushed anymore. That would definitely take away from the fun if she didn't.

Sherlock rolled his eyes and reached for his toothbrush.

He'd never put much stock into domesticity, but it definitely wasn't as bad as he thought it would be.

Not that he'd admit that to John; he hadn't shut up since Sherlock had taken Molly out to dinner the first time. Apparently, John found some satisfaction in teasing him about it, especially when Valentine's Day rolled around and Sherlock was studiously silent and red in the face when John tried to help him plan a romantic day. (Never-mind that the plan had gone wonderfully, but John didn't need to know that.)

"Sherlock, there's a frog in the sink!"

Sherlock's head snapped up. "Don't touch him!" He spit toothpaste in the sink. "I'm analysing the behaviour when-"

"Sherlock, it's a live frog in the sink! Get rid of it!"

"It's not doing anything!"

"Now!"

Sherlock huffed and scrubbed the back of his hand against his mouth after rinsing, striding to the kitchen. "Fine, fine, fine. It's not like it's hurting anything; it's not poisonous."

But Molly looked murderous now, instead of flustered and embarrassed, so Sherlock coaxed the frog from the sink and headed back down the hallway.

"Don't put it in the bathtub!" Molly called.

Sherlock stopped in the doorway. "... Damn it," he muttered.

She knew him too well.

I don't even ship Sherlolly, not romantically, but I had a Sherlolly itch for cuddles and this happened. I'm more of a Sherlock falls asleep with his head on Molly's lap accidentally while having a chat in the lounge at Barts rather than the hardcore stuff. But yeah, Sherlolly. =p

I do not own Sherlock. Thanks for reading!