AN: I've returned because I love this fandom and can't get enough. The original title which proved too long was "Four Times Sherlock and Molly Cuddle (And One Time They Don't)" so that's a huge heads up as to what this fic contains. I was thinking of posting all five chapters at once, but the chapters are ending up a bit longer than I had originally expected - or at least this chapter did - and so they've been broken up. I wanted fluff, but I wanted realistic fluff and I hope this turns out to be just yet. Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated.

1.

The first time is an accident.

In a way.

And it doesn't really count as cuddling he thinks later.

Besides, he doesn't go to her bedroom with the intention of even touching her much less cuddling her. The trouble is that now that Sherlock realizes that she counts, he also seems to have subconsciously realized that he is afraid of losing her and so every night for the past two weeks he had been having the same nightmare: He dreams that they are running through dark vaguely familiar alleyways. There's a sense of urgency greater than he's ever felt before, urgency and panic. They duck into a warehouse and when he turns back to Molly he looks down to find that he is only holding onto her glove. And then he's running again, but this time with a sense of purpose – to find her. He hears her voice murmuring his name, he thinks he sees her ducking around corners always ahead of him and out of his reach and as he's running and calling for her, the building very slowly begins to crumble away while somewhere behind him Moriarty is laughing.

He woke suddenly. He's not panicked, he told himself despite the way his heart raced in his chest. He was sleeping in the small spare room of her apartment and he kicked his blankets away as he sat up and pushed himself up out of bed, padding down to her bedroom. She slept with the door closed; the empty darkness of the hallway unnerves her. She hasn't told him this, but she doesn't need to.

The knob gave easily in his hand and he pushed the door open silently. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness and then the dim glow of the moonlight through her blinds; his eyes traced out her prone form on the bed. She was curled up on her side turned away from the door. There, he told himself. She's there. Well, of course she's there. Where else would she have been? He expected her to be there, but he needed to actually see her and yet somehow now that he had even that wasn't enough. He walked over to her bed, looking down at her for a moment before he reached his hand out to touch her shoulder. He didn't shake her. He just placed his hand there on her shoulder and felt her arm beneath his palm. He was uncomfortably aware that the part of his brain that was still shaken by the nightmare had thought she might crumble away. He was feeling something he had never felt before – a yearning for physical closeness.

He hesitated and then he shook her. She was like a child when sleeping with her fist curled up against her mouth. She frowned, pushed his hand away while breathing out a phrase lost in sleep and rolled away from him. Slowly it dawned on her what was happening and who had to have been shaking her and she looked back at him over her shoulder, blinking up at him slowly. Suddenly she sat up. "What's wrong?" She swayed lightly where she was sitting as if the urge to fall back to the pillow was pulling at her.

Sherlock was lost for words for a moment and then he decided on the simplest version of the truth. "I can't sleep."

She stared at him blankly and then her brow furrowed as she said slowly. "You woke me . . . because you can't sleep?" She inhaled deeply then and blew it out through her mouth. Sherlock was such a child. She had fallen in love with him the moment she had met him and now two years later he had moved in with her and she had fallen out of love with him and started to like him, to realize that while she was aware of most of his flaws, the idealized version of him didn't contain all of his idiosyncrasies and mood swings and the childlike behavior he was prone to exhibiting.

"I think you were having a nightmare and you woke me," he lied effortlessly as he rounded the bed. "I'll just sleep in here for the night."

She watched him, her brown eyes going wide. "In here?" She clutched the sheet tighter. From what Sherlock had seen, Molly had a nice figure but she never quite dressed in anything that flattered it or hinted at it at all. For example, she was sleeping in an old pink t-shirt and red pajama pants with dancing cats and mice on them so why she had clutched the sheet to her chest he couldn't be sure. It could hardly have been her modesty she was worried about.

"Only to keep an eye on you." He slid under the bedclothes and turned away from her, effectively ending the conversation. He didn't really feel badly about lying to her; he manipulated her all the time to get what he wanted and now he wanted what he couldn't quite put into words. She was still for a long moment, presumably still looking at him and trying to work out what he was doing in her bed. Then he felt her shift and knew that she had lain down again. He waited until her breathing had slowed and she was asleep again and then he rolled over, tentatively and very slowly scooting in closer to her until he could feel the heat of her body. He reached out his hand awkwardly and placed it on her shoulder again. Her pillows smelled of rose linen water and she was soft yet reassuringly solid under his palm.

Since the occurrence on the roof of St. Bart's, his faked suicide, his going into hiding, he no longer felt real. It was the same problem as 'If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?' Of course it made a sound, but did it matter if there was no one around to hear it? In the same way, when he was completely off the grid without human contact, he wondered if it mattered that he existed. Molly coming and going and bringing him news was what tethered him to the world. Molly made him real.