Title: In Dreams
Author:
ruyuRating: PG-13
Pairing/Characters: John/Sherlock
Word Count: 1277
Disclaimer: Don't own these guys. Obviously.
Summary: Sherlock has seen John in his dreams. He’s on the other side the street, watching, desperate to cross; in another dream they're in separate cabs and their eyes inevitably meet as they pass, John's eyes sad and longing.
Sherlock has seen John in his dreams. He’s on the other side the street, watching, desperate to cross; in another dream they're in separate cabs and their eyes inevitably meet as they pass, John's eyes sad and longing. Most recently though, it was in John’s bedroom, John on one side and Sherlock on the other, separate. Unresolved. Tension. Soft sheets and comfort waiting between them. Sherlock isn’t sure what to think about that last dream.
It’s completely illogical to compare his dreams to real life, and even more absurd to expect them to parallel each other. But a week later John falls behind, as usual, and Sherlock marches across the street as the light flickers and the streets clear. He turns and there’s John, just where he shouldn’t be, left on the other side as the traffic swarms between them. Barricading. It’s nothing... and everything like his dream. John’s face isn’t contorted into desperation like the dream, he’s focused and calm. But Sherlock is burning inside. He could call it impatience, conceivably, but that’s really not it at all, he realizes.
Minutes later, as John finally reaches him, Sherlock locks their elbows together, ignoring John’s complaints about his gangly height. Sherlock tugs him along, grins and thinks to himself, I just need you beside me.
~
The dreams are not visions, Sherlock reminds himself after the crossing incident. He just simply dreamt about common situations that John and himself find themselves in. It’s only logical to dream of places a person frequents often - familiar places, familiar people. So when he and John find themselves in separates cabs, he tries not to put too much stock into it. Not a vision, only coincidence. He tries terribly hard not to look out of his window, but he wants to see those eyes. He needs to watch John’s face, his reaction.
John is smiling. Sherlock’s heart shudders. Then John is gone.
A face catches Sherlock's attention, he looks up and realizes it’s his own in the cabby’s rear view mirror. He looks like John did in his dreams, sad and longing and waiting for the world to right itself where both of them are together. Sherlock ponders the dreams, imagining himself in John’s place, puts John’s expressions on his own face.
John is me. I am John.
This is an unexpected revelation.
I HAVE DREAMS OF US BEING APART - AND WISHING WE WERE TOGETHER, Sherlock types into this mobile, finger resting against the SEND button. He erases it and types, WHEN YOU FIND WHAT YOU NEED, COME BACK TO ME.
MESSAGE SENT
He watches as the world flies past, calculating how much distance is between them. Come back to me.
~
John has noticed. Surprising, but not unexpected. But still, John is beginning to ask questions that Sherlock isn’t prepared to answer.
“Are you alright?” John asks with his back turned making tea. Sherlock tears his away from John’s back, and it’s preposterous to think that John knew he was staring. Right? “As nice as the silence may be, you’re just too quiet. You’ve been like this for the past three weeks.” John picks up their tea and joins him at the table.
Sherlock can’t tell him anything. He can’t say that John has become even more important than he was before this whole dreaming business. He can’t tell him that it took his subconscious projecting his own emotions onto John’s face for Sherlock realize that he felt so strongly about John’s presence in his life. It’s embarrassing, humiliating and makes him feel even less human. Less like a person that could love another. Most of all, he feels undeserving of John’s companionship.
“I’m not sure what you think of me,” Sherlock whispers after a few moments, taping his nail against the side of his cup. He sounds defeated even to his own ears.
John must have heard something else in his statement because he grabs his wrists. His strong fingers wrap around his delicate bones. Stay here, right here with me. He isn’t sure what John’s doing, but he allows John to hold him. “Please, Sherlock.”
Fearing he’ll see his own emotions echoed on his companions face, Sherlock refuses to look at John, though he wants to. He wants, wants, wants so many things all at once he feels selfish.
Like many conversations before this, John grudgingly accepts that he will receive no answer and Sherlock feels the heat leave his wrists. Warmth lingers on his skin like a ghost and Sherlock is lost without him momentarily, like John is the only thing connecting him to the world. Perhaps he is.
~
Sometimes while John’s out, Sherlock will go to the man’s room and look at his meticulously made bed. The lines across the quilted top tell Sherlock how the man smoothed his hands across, tells him how he tugged the lower left corner down to match the other side - perfection. Upon closer inspection, the wrinkled pillow has been fluffed, but Sherlock knows how tightly John grips his pillow to leave such marks. He can imagine John struggling in his nightmare, fighting a great army, running but not going anywhere, suffering the pain of his wound over and over again. And so his fists tighten and crush the pillowcase between his fingers.
“Sherlock...”
He won’t look up now. Wrinkles, pillows, cheap thread count, store brand, left side, right side.
“Sherlock,” John says more firmly, moving further into the room, making Sherlock’s heart seize in his chest because this, this is it. This is where he looks up and he will see John on the other side, his bed between them, in all it’s perfectly made glory. Sherlock can only imagine how he’d mess it up with John, sheets pushed aside so he can explore John’s skin and his muscles and his....
“What are you doing in my room, Sherlock?”
“I have dreams of us being apart - and wishing we were together.” When he finally opens his eyes, he sees John is right where he shouldn’t be, across the room, looking at him over the bed. Only now John turns and he’s coming around and they’re both on the same side now. Together, like they should always be.
“And I dream of you pushing me away and sliding into the darkness,” John says softly and his warm hands are back on Sherlock’s wrist, like they belong there to always keep Sherlock grounded. He feels solid and whole next to John instead of simply floating away. “I look and look, but never know where you’ll go next.”
There is heat that wasn’t there before, glowing and burning between them. Aflame. John says,“But they’re only dreams,” and Sherlock can’t tell John, not yet, how he dreamed of what would happen.
But he didn’t dream John coming to him.
Sherlock pulls him closer, turning his wrists in John’s grip and pulls their fingers together. “I need you beside me.” Their lips are touching, dry, chapped and unprepared for the moment. “Always come back to me.” John’s mouth opens and heat escapes him like a furnace, enticing Sherlock with it’s heat and wetness. He licks at their lips, pushing past the seams of Sherlock’s lips.
John lets out a ragged, painful noise before he bites Sherlock’s bottom lip and plunges deeply into his mouth, spreading it wide with his forceful kiss. The kisses continue to be consuming and hot like molten lava and he can’t fathom how John can contain such heat in his body; surely he’ll burn from it. But then Sherlock feels the same burning sensation and maybe they’re both full of this sweltering heat.
They are going to melt each other down. They’ll melt anything that comes between them.