maybe then i could sleep at night; a sherlock fic.
maybe then i could sleep at night, john/sherlock, pg
John’s having trouble sleeping; his past and present start to collide when he finds himself sharing a bed with Sherlock.
(This is totally for thiefofcamorr, who wrote the first two paragraphs and asked me to finish the story.)
Sherlock’s violin eventually slipped into the background-like the nearby traffic and hum of the heater-and he usually played something nice anyway, rather than the screechy racket he made when annoyed. Midnight was usually for thinking. So when something moved on his bed at three in the morning, John woke instantly-though groggily-even before Sherlock’s head had hit the pillow. (4,400 words)
source
John Watson had always been a light sleeper. It came from years of training to be a doctor-working and studying so hard that catching a 15 minute nap in an empty ward felt like Christmas. Then there was the war, where the only possible way to get an actual good rest was to be so utterly exhausted that your body just couldn’t stay awake any
longer.
Although he’d left that life behind, he still woke at the smallest of noises. Sherlock’s violin eventually slipped into the background-like the nearby traffic and hum of the heater-and he usually played something nice anyway, rather than the screechy racket he made when annoyed. Midnight was usually for thinking. So when something moved on his bed at three in the morning, John woke instantly-though groggily-even before Sherlock’s head had hit the pillow.
“Sherlock, what the hell are you doing?” Shaken, the words came out sharper than he had intended.
“Really, John, I thought your powers of observation were better than that. Clearly, I’m trying to sleep.”
“In my bed? In all your clothes?”
“Very good.” His voice was exceptionally dry. The sarcasm prickled across John’s skin; it seemed he was in a bad mood tonight.
“And what’s wrong with your bed?”
“It’s covered in engine parts.”
“…Why?”
“Research,” he said dismissively, bringing his hands up under his chin in that oh-so-familiar steepling motion.
A small part of John wanted to be curt, tell him to clean off and sleep in his own damn bed. He’d been frustrated lately-work at the clinic had become rather tedious and things hadn’t been going well with Sarah. Well, to be strictly honest, things hadn’t been going anywhere with Sarah. Then, of course, there was the whole nearly-killed-by-a-bomb-toting-psychopath (and yes, that was the right word for that bastard) issue. Over the last two weeks he’d felt as if he had just returned from the war again, and that small, angry part of him had become rather dissatisfied and prone to snap at the slightest provocation.
But at three in the morning that part of John seemed very petty and small indeed. And while his flatmate could be annoying and exhausting and, yes, sometimes he had the urge to smack him, he was also there. Occasionally, as he was drifting off to sleep, John realized just how alone he was in the world. This didn’t frighten him much; he had never been what you would call a social butterfly. But sometimes, late at night, he did wish his life didn’t echo quite so much. Having Sherlock around was reassuring-he was tall enough to muffle the reverberations.
“You don’t kick in your sleep, do you?” John asked finally, rearranging his sheets and settling back against his pillow.
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Did you just admit that?” John demanded, turning over onto his good shoulder and putting his back to the detective, staring at the paisley wallpaper. “You honestly don’t know something about yourself?”
“I’ve never claimed to know everything in the universe, John,” Sherlock retorted, and there was an edge of weariness to his voice that was unfamiliar and unsettling.
John’s hand tightened around the edge of the sheets; it suddenly felt as though there were snakes writhing in his stomach. Holmes was worried about something, preoccupied, and he could guess the topic.
“…Sherlock, are you alright?”
“Go to sleep, John.”
---
“You talk in your sleep,” Sherlock announced the next day as they were sitting down to breakfast. John had awoken minutes earlier to find the other side of the bed empty, an indentation in the pillow the only evidence that Sherlock had been there at all.
He glanced up from his plate of scrambled eggs. “Oh. Sorry about that.”
“There’s no need to apologize.” He was very precise in his movements as he spread jam across his toast. Every line of his body was straight and steady-there was no hint of last night’s strained tension. John took this as a good sign and felt his own back straighten in response.
“So, what’s the plan for today?” John asked brightly. “Taking the case from that duchess?”
“No. There’s nothing there to interest me.”
“…Disappearing staff and ghostly encounters don’t interest you?”
“There isn’t the slightest thing occurring in that house that could be considered supernatural. The duchess has a quack for a doctor, who’s been inappropriately mixing her medication and causing her to hallucinate. As for the disappearing staff, the woman’s husband is very free with his charms and is simply paying off the maids to disappear when he’s through with them.”
“You never even met these people, Sherlock. You only got the phone call yesterday.”
“As I said, nothing there to interest me. At all.”
“So what is the plan, then?”
“Haven’t decided yet. Might spend the day with the network. Familiarize myself with new contacts.”
John sighed. He knew what that meant-sneaking around dark back alleys and abandoned tube tunnels, rubbing elbows with the unfortunates Sherlock had transformed into one of the greatest spy systems in London.
Sherlock was staring at him. He could feel those pale eyes on him; the hairs on the back of his neck were standing to military attention in response. He finally looked up from his eggs.
“I wasn’t suggesting you waste your day with me, John,” Sherlock said calmly.
He hesitated. He could go out to lunch with Harry, as she’d been pressuring him to do for months. He could run errands, pick up more milk (where did it all disappear to? He never saw Sherlock actually drink any of it), stop in at the clinic and pick up an extra shift. He could try to talk things out with Sarah and get a better idea of where they stood.
But then he’d only have half a mind on what he was doing. He knew he would be thinking about Sherlock all day, worrying that he was getting himself into another scrape, or perhaps running into one of Moriarty’s vicious little traps. For a man who gave the impression of being supremely capable and confident, he sure did need a lot of help from his ‘idiot blogger’.
It was funny, considering how distant and remote Sherlock always seemed, that it was becoming harder and harder to get through a day without spending it by his side.
“I know you weren’t,” John said finally. “You don’t have to. Where shall we start?”
---
The hot water felt miraculous on his shoulders as he leaned his forehead against the tiled wall. He may not have that bothersome limp any more-and no matter what Sherlock said, even psychosomatic limps are painful, at least in the mind-but his shoulder still ached constantly in this damp, chilly weather. Spending almost an entire day tramping around London, talking to various homeless and delinquents in as discreet a manner as possible, was exhausting.
The faucet handle squeaked shrilly as he turned the shower off; he made a mental note to ask Mrs. Hudson to have a plumber look at it. With the steady hiss of the water gone, he could hear Sherlock downstairs with his violin. Playing something haunting and melancholy.
“You were in there for almost an hour,” his flatmate said as he walked into the room in a tee shirt and sweat pants, hair mussed and still wet.
“Yep,” he replied noncommittally.
“Mrs. Hudson will be angry with us if she doesn’t have any hot water for her herbal soothers.”
“I’ll blame you,” John said, picking up the book he had left beside his chair the night before.
For several minutes there was a companionable silence between them as John read and Sherlock stared into the fireplace, violin in his lap and bow twirling in his long fingers. A car alarm began to wail in the street below, and for a split second John felt his whole body tighten as if in preparation for a blow before he recognized the sound and sucked in a quick breath.
“John.”
He looked up from his book to find his flatmate staring at him again. “Yes?”
A pause stretched between them, and it seemed as though Sherlock was struggling to say something. Which was preposterous-Sherlock had never had a problem finding the right words, or in speaking them plainly, bluntly, even cruelly. John had never known a man with a tongue as sharp and ready as Sherlock Holmes’.
Sherlock sighed; it was more a short puff of irritation than a sigh. “Damn it.”
“Sherlock?” said John, confused.
“How are you, John?” he said sharply, eyes fixing on him, fingers tight around the violin bow.
“I’m, I’m fine,” he said awkwardly, licking his suddenly dry lips. “…Is something wrong?”
“You haven’t been acting like yourself lately. Not since the pool,” Sherlock said after a shorter pause, as if swallowing some distasteful medicine. As if trying to get something painful done and over with.
“What do you mean?” John demanded. “I get up at the same time, I run errands, I cook dinner, I ask you about your cases, I go to the surgery. Same old, same old.”
“You’ve black circles under your eyes, which are always bloodshot, so I know you haven’t been sleeping well,” Sherlock began in that cadence John knew very well by now-he was running through a mental list of clues and observations he’d been compiling. “You’re not quite limping again, but there’s a definite awkward stiffness to your gait. At the slightest unexpected sound, you jolt as if shocked, and you flinch every time one of our phones rings or gets a message. You took your gun out of the drawer,” he gestures with his bow. “And put it under your bedside table the day we came back, just within reach of the bed. I know you’ve been cleaning it every evening. All of these reactions are understandable after what you’ve just been through, but there’s one other detail that puzzles me.”
“Oh?” John said.
“Yes. You’ve stopped complaining about my experiments and mess. You haven’t mentioned the head in the refrigerator once, and you haven’t asked me to do the shopping. I’ve used your computer twice without asking for prior permission and you haven’t said a word.”
John stared at him blankly, still confused. “…Maybe that’s because I’ve got other things on my mind? I mean, as you said, I’ve been through something most people would call traumatic.”
“But that can’t be all of it,” Sherlock said leaning forward towards him, hands under his chin and eyes narrowed. “You were a soldier, John; you’ve been in far more dangerous situations. And despite what your idiot of a therapist said, you never suffered from post-traumatic stress. What about this incident is different?”
“I dunno, maybe the fact that I didn’t expect to have explosions strapped to me,” John snapped irritably. “When I went overseas, I knew what to expect-hell, I’d signed up for the whole bloody mess. You can’t say the same about stepping out of here, intending to visit Sarah and instead finding myself at a pool, turned into a walking bomb.”
He picked up his book and flipped the page with an angry flick of his wrist, forcing his attention back to the printed words.
After a moment, Sherlock settled his violin on his shoulder and began playing a piece by Mendelssohn-John’s favourite piece, in fact, and despite everything he felt a smile twitch at his lips. It was Sherlock’s way of apologizing without having to say the words at all, and when he played that well, John couldn’t help but accept it.
Twenty minutes and two pieces later, John was marking his place and pushing himself out of his comfortable chair with a yawn. Sherlock wiped a cloth over the violin’s strings before placing the instrument carefully into its velvet case, his long fingers deftly snapping the catches. John wondered how someone who could show that much love and consideration to an inanimate object could be so utterly useless with breathing beings.
“I’m off,” he said, stretching until his back popped. “Got the clinic in the morning.”
“I’ll be up in a few minutes,” Sherlock said casually, dismissively, as he made his way over to the bookcase.
“Didn’t you clean off your bed yet?”
“Nope. It doesn’t bother you, does it? Sharing a bed?” He glanced over his shoulder, face utterly expressionless. “I can sleep on the sofa, if it does.”
John only shook his head slightly before walking out of the room.
“I’ll do my best not to wake you when I come up,” Sherlock called after him.
---
He was dreaming, he must be dreaming, this wasn’t happening. No, this wasn’t-it already had. This had come and gone, he couldn’t change what happened, no matter what he said or did, or didn’t say or do.
He realized all of this in a flash of surreal clarity, and wished he could find some comfort in the knowledge. But no, there could be no comfort in it, because he was paralyzed with fear and watching it happen again, as he had dozens of times in the past year.
It unfolded as it always had. The anticlimactic pop, the sudden pain, the fall to the rocky dirt. And he was lying there, immobile, unable to speak as Christian took that one last step-
The explosion of earth and light and blood, and it was raining down around him, falling onto his face, and he realized through the numb first moment of shock that it wasn’t only dirt clogging his eyelashes. It wasn’t tears that were dampening his face, because he hadn’t had the chance to cry yet, no-it was blood. So much blood, the air had gone pinkish with it, the ground was splattered with it, and it was as if the lanky young man who had pushed him back to safety, who had only moments before been smiling at him, had simply vaporized.
He lurched upright, gasping for breath, his shirt sticking to his hot skin. For one wild moment the room was foreign and strange to him. The paisley wallpaper was unfamiliar, the bed felt too big.
“John.”
Everything snapped into focus as he turned sharply at the quiet voice. Sherlock was sitting beside him, impossibly long legs stretched out across the duvet, back pressed to the wall, his blue robe cinched tightly around his waist. His expression was unreadable.
“Sorry if I woke you,” John managed to say hoarsely, trying to steady his breathing. It was difficult-his lungs were cramping, as if he’d been holding his breath for too long. He realized he must look a sorry state. Probably red in the face, eyes glazed and wild, sweat trickling down his neck. He tried to focus on this, on the embarrassment of being caught in a nightmare like a little boy, rather than on the all-too-vivid images emblazoned across his mind.
“Do you need some water?” Sherlock asked.
“What? No, no,” John shook his head.
“Do you often have that nightmare?”
“Uh, occasionally.” His heart was finally starting to slow into a more comfortable rhythm; the burn of adrenaline in his veins subsided.
“Who was Christian?”
He stared at Sherlock in the semi-darkness. “How the hell do you know his name?” His voice came out brittle, uneven.
“As I said this morning, you talk in your sleep.” He still hadn’t moved, hands laced together and lying on his stomach. “I would guess that he was a soldier, but you know how I hate to go off of assumptions.”
John hesitated. He had never spoken of Christian-not to the unhelpful therapist, not to Harry. It had never felt right to speak of him with people who would never understand. And, looking at Sherlock in the late night gloom, those long legs stretched before him, angular face full of shadows-the sharp pang of familiarity was painful. Something clicked inside John Watson’s head, and he realized just why he had been so quick to trust Sherlock Holmes, and why his dreams had become especially terrifying.
“He was a friend,” he said finally, quietly, rubbing his hands across his face. “My best mate, in the Army. We only knew each other a couple of months, but it felt like we’d known each other our whole lives. He had this manner about him-got under most people’s skin. Very confident, very certain; he liked to show off sometimes, prove how good he was. Most of the guys thought he was an insufferable prat, but I liked him. Life was more interesting around Christian, and he was a good man for all of his dramatics. Always had my back when things got rough, yeah?”
“How did he die?” The question was delivered somewhat clinically, utterly devoid of emotion-but then John hadn’t expected sympathy from Sherlock.
“Land mine,” he said bluntly, falling silent.
“He died in front of you, didn’t he?”
John’s hands clenched into fists. “We’d been out on patrol with five other guys,” he heard himself saying, the words tumbling out of him awkwardly. “Making our way back to the camp. And suddenly we’re in the middle of a firefight. Christian and I were ahead of the others, completely in the open-the others dropped down behind some cover, but we didn’t have anything. I was hit, and I didn’t even realize it for a moment-the shock dulled the immediate pain-but Christian knew. He pushed me back and started to run-I don’t know what the hell he thought he was doing, maybe trying to pull their attention away from me, draw their fire, and then he hit the land mine. Took me almost a minute to realize what had happened. Just kept staring at the spot where he’d been, at the bits of uniform and pack and limbs that had been my best friend-”
The gasped breath hitched painfully in his throat, silencing him. He stared at the wall. Tried to focus on the hideous paisley print because he sure as hell didn’t want to start crying in front of Sherlock Holmes.
Several minutes ticked by, each second loudly counted by the antique alarm clock by the bed.
“…For my part, John, I’m sorry.”
He must still be dreaming; he had to have imagined that tone of voice, the sincerity, those implausible words coming out of that particular mouth. Sherlock never apologized, not really, because snide jibes and words laced with sarcasm didn’t count. He looked at him finally, brow furrowed.
“What do you mean, you’re sorry? What the hell do you have to be sorry for? You didn’t make the land mine, you didn’t pull any triggers, you never even knew I existed when it happened.”
“I’m sorry for making you relive the death of your closest friend,” Sherlock retorted, and some of the habitual, reassuring sharpness was back to his voice. “For making you a target in Moriarity’s little game. Everything that happened at the pool-it’s perfectly logical that you’d be thinking about Christian as a result. Hence the reoccurring nightmares.”
“You know what? You’re a bloody idiot sometimes.”
“Oh?” His eyebrow twitched incredulously.
“Never mind,” John said, shoving back the bedsheets and climbing out of bed. “I’m going to sleep on the sofa. Good night.”
---
John didn’t see much of Sherlock the next day. He kept himself occupied outside of the flat working a half shift at the surgery, posting some bills, avoiding Harry’s daily texts, and having an early dinner at a little Thai place he’d become fond of. He didn’t think about the night before, or the insight that had struck him, or Christian.
It was nearly nine when he finally climbed the stairs to 221b, pausing on the landing to wish Mrs. Hudson a good night and thank her for the jammy dodgers she’d left on the kitchen table a few days ago. Sherlock was standing by the right window-hands shoved into his pockets, suit jacket unbuttoned, his back to the door-when John entered.
“Good day?” Sherlock asked casually.
“Middling. Yourself?”
“Fairly boring.”
“I see the wall’s still in one piece,” John said lightly. “So it couldn’t have been too boring.”
“Lestrade called-apparently there’s a cat burglar lifting expensive trinkets out of the bedrooms of the gentry. His higher ups wanted him to pressure me into helping. I said I might look into it.”
“That’s kind of you. I’m making tea, do you want any?”
“No, thank you.”
The refrigerator door slammed shut.
“Exactly when are you going to take that head back to St. Bart’s? There’s never any room for the carrots with it in the crisper bin.”
“I don’t understand why you would need to keep carrots in there.”
“Because it’s meant for vegetables, to keep them fresh. And crisp. That’s why it’s called the vegetable crisper, Sherlock.”
“Yes, I understand that, John, but what could you possibly want carrots for?”
“What is it with you and carrots? They’re good in soup!”
“Soup, ha! No one ever eats the carrots in their soup; they just scoop around them.”
“I eat the carrots in my soup! In fact, they’re one of my favorite things about soup!”
Sherlock suddenly grinned, and John realized how ridiculous they must seem, shouting across the room at one another about carrots.
“I’m glad to see something of your old housewifery reasserting itself,” Sherlock said archly, dropping into his chair with a careless spread of limbs. It was a wonder none of the furniture’s springs had collapsed from the strain yet, the way the man abused everything.
“And here I thought you didn’t like it when I nagged you,” John said, stirring his cup. “Given all of the prima donna hissy fits you throw.”
“It’s nice to have a good sulk once in a while,” Sherlock said, smiling. “And anyway, it would be too god awful boring around here if you didn’t natter on about every little thing.”
“Oh, thanks,” John retorted curtly. “Wanna watch some telly?”
“Drivel. Brain rot. A waste of my impressive faculties.”
“Big Brother’s on. I’ll let you hurl insults at the chavs.”
“…Fine.”
---
“Seriously, though, when are you going to use your own bed again? Everyone thinks we’re shagging already-I don’t want Lestrade to find out we’re sleeping in the same bed.”
“Oh, what does it matter what the imbeciles at the Yard think, anyway?” Sherlock threw himself back against the pillow, limbs tucked in close, a perfectly straight line across the bed.
“Do you really sleep like that? On top of the sheets, in your robe?”
“What else would you suggest?”
“You could at least use the duvet,” John suggested. “It would be more comfortable.”
“Perhaps my idea of comfort is different from yours.”
“Fine, fine,” John muttered, turning off the light.
When he jolted awake, the clock read 2:38. He was struggling to catch his breath, and he knew he’d had another nightmare.
He also realized there was a hand around his arm, and that it had been the touch that had woken him.
“Sorry,” he said, looking up at the ceiling. “You’d probably get more sleep with the engine bits than with me, the rate this is going.”
“Was it the same dream?”
“It’s always the same dream.”
“…Then why did you call out my name?”
John took a deep, steadying breath and tried to organize his thoughts. Sherlock’s hand slid down his arm to his wrist; he was taking his pulse, measuring just how stressed he was.
“This morning,” Sherlock said. “I looked up your friend. Christian Marchbanks, that was his name, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Awarded two medals posthumously for bravery-no doubt they were a comfort to his mother. He was an only child, and his professors called him brilliant, ambitious, and focused. They also noted that he was extremely anti-social and went to great lengths to distance himself from his classmates and discourage any sort of close relationships. He never had a girlfriend to his contemporaries’ knowledge. A genius-level IQ and a biting wit, as evidenced by his political and scientific essays. When asked why he enlisted, his only explanation was, “I was tired of feeling useless.” A generally good-looking young man, as far as average tastes run. Fancied himself a collector of rare books and obscure knowledge.”
“That’s Christian,” John said softly.
“He sounded incredibly interesting. I would have liked to have met him.”
“You know that wonderful brain you’re always bragging about?” John asked the darkness. “Does it have blinkers on?”
“What do you mean?”
“Really, are you that blind? He could have been your brother, Sherlock. Oh, he was nothing like Mycroft,” he said quickly. “He could have been your twin, I suppose. Do you see? Any of it?”
The clock ticked.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, I don’t have many friends,” John said. “Everyone says I’ve got trust issues. There’re blokes like Mike that I’m friendly with, sure. Go to the pub, have a bit of a chat. Simple stuff, yeah? But I can’t really call them friends. All my life, I can count the people I’d die for-the people I’d kill for-on one hand. Christian was one of them.”
John looked over at his strange, exasperating flatmate. A man with an impossible name and an impossible life, who was still gripping his wrist as if he’d forgotten to let go.
Sherlock turned his head, the light from the window falling across his face, and his pale eyes met John’s steadily. His hand squeezed the arm it held, just the slightest of pressures.
“The pool. Moriarty. The bomb. You weren’t frightened for yourself, were you, John?”
“No.”
“I never asked you to worry about me.”
“I know you didn’t.”
“Thank you, John.”
“…Does your bed really have engine parts in it?”
“Yes.”
“Was that just a convenient excuse to keep a closer eye on me?”
“Do you really think I would stoop to something like that?”
“Thank you, Sherlock. For caring.”
“I don’t care. I just wanted to figure out why my blogger had stopped writing about my adventures.”
“I thought you didn’t like me calling them adventures.”
“Stop arguing with me and go to sleep.”
John smiled and waited for Sherlock to let go of his arm.
He fell asleep waiting.
John’s having trouble sleeping; his past and present start to collide when he finds himself sharing a bed with Sherlock.
(This is totally for thiefofcamorr, who wrote the first two paragraphs and asked me to finish the story.)
Sherlock’s violin eventually slipped into the background-like the nearby traffic and hum of the heater-and he usually played something nice anyway, rather than the screechy racket he made when annoyed. Midnight was usually for thinking. So when something moved on his bed at three in the morning, John woke instantly-though groggily-even before Sherlock’s head had hit the pillow. (4,400 words)
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John Watson had always been a light sleeper. It came from years of training to be a doctor-working and studying so hard that catching a 15 minute nap in an empty ward felt like Christmas. Then there was the war, where the only possible way to get an actual good rest was to be so utterly exhausted that your body just couldn’t stay awake any
longer.
Although he’d left that life behind, he still woke at the smallest of noises. Sherlock’s violin eventually slipped into the background-like the nearby traffic and hum of the heater-and he usually played something nice anyway, rather than the screechy racket he made when annoyed. Midnight was usually for thinking. So when something moved on his bed at three in the morning, John woke instantly-though groggily-even before Sherlock’s head had hit the pillow.
“Sherlock, what the hell are you doing?” Shaken, the words came out sharper than he had intended.
“Really, John, I thought your powers of observation were better than that. Clearly, I’m trying to sleep.”
“In my bed? In all your clothes?”
“Very good.” His voice was exceptionally dry. The sarcasm prickled across John’s skin; it seemed he was in a bad mood tonight.
“And what’s wrong with your bed?”
“It’s covered in engine parts.”
“…Why?”
“Research,” he said dismissively, bringing his hands up under his chin in that oh-so-familiar steepling motion.
A small part of John wanted to be curt, tell him to clean off and sleep in his own damn bed. He’d been frustrated lately-work at the clinic had become rather tedious and things hadn’t been going well with Sarah. Well, to be strictly honest, things hadn’t been going anywhere with Sarah. Then, of course, there was the whole nearly-killed-by-a-bomb-toting-psychopath (and yes, that was the right word for that bastard) issue. Over the last two weeks he’d felt as if he had just returned from the war again, and that small, angry part of him had become rather dissatisfied and prone to snap at the slightest provocation.
But at three in the morning that part of John seemed very petty and small indeed. And while his flatmate could be annoying and exhausting and, yes, sometimes he had the urge to smack him, he was also there. Occasionally, as he was drifting off to sleep, John realized just how alone he was in the world. This didn’t frighten him much; he had never been what you would call a social butterfly. But sometimes, late at night, he did wish his life didn’t echo quite so much. Having Sherlock around was reassuring-he was tall enough to muffle the reverberations.
“You don’t kick in your sleep, do you?” John asked finally, rearranging his sheets and settling back against his pillow.
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Did you just admit that?” John demanded, turning over onto his good shoulder and putting his back to the detective, staring at the paisley wallpaper. “You honestly don’t know something about yourself?”
“I’ve never claimed to know everything in the universe, John,” Sherlock retorted, and there was an edge of weariness to his voice that was unfamiliar and unsettling.
John’s hand tightened around the edge of the sheets; it suddenly felt as though there were snakes writhing in his stomach. Holmes was worried about something, preoccupied, and he could guess the topic.
“…Sherlock, are you alright?”
“Go to sleep, John.”
---
“You talk in your sleep,” Sherlock announced the next day as they were sitting down to breakfast. John had awoken minutes earlier to find the other side of the bed empty, an indentation in the pillow the only evidence that Sherlock had been there at all.
He glanced up from his plate of scrambled eggs. “Oh. Sorry about that.”
“There’s no need to apologize.” He was very precise in his movements as he spread jam across his toast. Every line of his body was straight and steady-there was no hint of last night’s strained tension. John took this as a good sign and felt his own back straighten in response.
“So, what’s the plan for today?” John asked brightly. “Taking the case from that duchess?”
“No. There’s nothing there to interest me.”
“…Disappearing staff and ghostly encounters don’t interest you?”
“There isn’t the slightest thing occurring in that house that could be considered supernatural. The duchess has a quack for a doctor, who’s been inappropriately mixing her medication and causing her to hallucinate. As for the disappearing staff, the woman’s husband is very free with his charms and is simply paying off the maids to disappear when he’s through with them.”
“You never even met these people, Sherlock. You only got the phone call yesterday.”
“As I said, nothing there to interest me. At all.”
“So what is the plan, then?”
“Haven’t decided yet. Might spend the day with the network. Familiarize myself with new contacts.”
John sighed. He knew what that meant-sneaking around dark back alleys and abandoned tube tunnels, rubbing elbows with the unfortunates Sherlock had transformed into one of the greatest spy systems in London.
Sherlock was staring at him. He could feel those pale eyes on him; the hairs on the back of his neck were standing to military attention in response. He finally looked up from his eggs.
“I wasn’t suggesting you waste your day with me, John,” Sherlock said calmly.
He hesitated. He could go out to lunch with Harry, as she’d been pressuring him to do for months. He could run errands, pick up more milk (where did it all disappear to? He never saw Sherlock actually drink any of it), stop in at the clinic and pick up an extra shift. He could try to talk things out with Sarah and get a better idea of where they stood.
But then he’d only have half a mind on what he was doing. He knew he would be thinking about Sherlock all day, worrying that he was getting himself into another scrape, or perhaps running into one of Moriarty’s vicious little traps. For a man who gave the impression of being supremely capable and confident, he sure did need a lot of help from his ‘idiot blogger’.
It was funny, considering how distant and remote Sherlock always seemed, that it was becoming harder and harder to get through a day without spending it by his side.
“I know you weren’t,” John said finally. “You don’t have to. Where shall we start?”
---
The hot water felt miraculous on his shoulders as he leaned his forehead against the tiled wall. He may not have that bothersome limp any more-and no matter what Sherlock said, even psychosomatic limps are painful, at least in the mind-but his shoulder still ached constantly in this damp, chilly weather. Spending almost an entire day tramping around London, talking to various homeless and delinquents in as discreet a manner as possible, was exhausting.
The faucet handle squeaked shrilly as he turned the shower off; he made a mental note to ask Mrs. Hudson to have a plumber look at it. With the steady hiss of the water gone, he could hear Sherlock downstairs with his violin. Playing something haunting and melancholy.
“You were in there for almost an hour,” his flatmate said as he walked into the room in a tee shirt and sweat pants, hair mussed and still wet.
“Yep,” he replied noncommittally.
“Mrs. Hudson will be angry with us if she doesn’t have any hot water for her herbal soothers.”
“I’ll blame you,” John said, picking up the book he had left beside his chair the night before.
For several minutes there was a companionable silence between them as John read and Sherlock stared into the fireplace, violin in his lap and bow twirling in his long fingers. A car alarm began to wail in the street below, and for a split second John felt his whole body tighten as if in preparation for a blow before he recognized the sound and sucked in a quick breath.
“John.”
He looked up from his book to find his flatmate staring at him again. “Yes?”
A pause stretched between them, and it seemed as though Sherlock was struggling to say something. Which was preposterous-Sherlock had never had a problem finding the right words, or in speaking them plainly, bluntly, even cruelly. John had never known a man with a tongue as sharp and ready as Sherlock Holmes’.
Sherlock sighed; it was more a short puff of irritation than a sigh. “Damn it.”
“Sherlock?” said John, confused.
“How are you, John?” he said sharply, eyes fixing on him, fingers tight around the violin bow.
“I’m, I’m fine,” he said awkwardly, licking his suddenly dry lips. “…Is something wrong?”
“You haven’t been acting like yourself lately. Not since the pool,” Sherlock said after a shorter pause, as if swallowing some distasteful medicine. As if trying to get something painful done and over with.
“What do you mean?” John demanded. “I get up at the same time, I run errands, I cook dinner, I ask you about your cases, I go to the surgery. Same old, same old.”
“You’ve black circles under your eyes, which are always bloodshot, so I know you haven’t been sleeping well,” Sherlock began in that cadence John knew very well by now-he was running through a mental list of clues and observations he’d been compiling. “You’re not quite limping again, but there’s a definite awkward stiffness to your gait. At the slightest unexpected sound, you jolt as if shocked, and you flinch every time one of our phones rings or gets a message. You took your gun out of the drawer,” he gestures with his bow. “And put it under your bedside table the day we came back, just within reach of the bed. I know you’ve been cleaning it every evening. All of these reactions are understandable after what you’ve just been through, but there’s one other detail that puzzles me.”
“Oh?” John said.
“Yes. You’ve stopped complaining about my experiments and mess. You haven’t mentioned the head in the refrigerator once, and you haven’t asked me to do the shopping. I’ve used your computer twice without asking for prior permission and you haven’t said a word.”
John stared at him blankly, still confused. “…Maybe that’s because I’ve got other things on my mind? I mean, as you said, I’ve been through something most people would call traumatic.”
“But that can’t be all of it,” Sherlock said leaning forward towards him, hands under his chin and eyes narrowed. “You were a soldier, John; you’ve been in far more dangerous situations. And despite what your idiot of a therapist said, you never suffered from post-traumatic stress. What about this incident is different?”
“I dunno, maybe the fact that I didn’t expect to have explosions strapped to me,” John snapped irritably. “When I went overseas, I knew what to expect-hell, I’d signed up for the whole bloody mess. You can’t say the same about stepping out of here, intending to visit Sarah and instead finding myself at a pool, turned into a walking bomb.”
He picked up his book and flipped the page with an angry flick of his wrist, forcing his attention back to the printed words.
After a moment, Sherlock settled his violin on his shoulder and began playing a piece by Mendelssohn-John’s favourite piece, in fact, and despite everything he felt a smile twitch at his lips. It was Sherlock’s way of apologizing without having to say the words at all, and when he played that well, John couldn’t help but accept it.
Twenty minutes and two pieces later, John was marking his place and pushing himself out of his comfortable chair with a yawn. Sherlock wiped a cloth over the violin’s strings before placing the instrument carefully into its velvet case, his long fingers deftly snapping the catches. John wondered how someone who could show that much love and consideration to an inanimate object could be so utterly useless with breathing beings.
“I’m off,” he said, stretching until his back popped. “Got the clinic in the morning.”
“I’ll be up in a few minutes,” Sherlock said casually, dismissively, as he made his way over to the bookcase.
“Didn’t you clean off your bed yet?”
“Nope. It doesn’t bother you, does it? Sharing a bed?” He glanced over his shoulder, face utterly expressionless. “I can sleep on the sofa, if it does.”
John only shook his head slightly before walking out of the room.
“I’ll do my best not to wake you when I come up,” Sherlock called after him.
---
He was dreaming, he must be dreaming, this wasn’t happening. No, this wasn’t-it already had. This had come and gone, he couldn’t change what happened, no matter what he said or did, or didn’t say or do.
He realized all of this in a flash of surreal clarity, and wished he could find some comfort in the knowledge. But no, there could be no comfort in it, because he was paralyzed with fear and watching it happen again, as he had dozens of times in the past year.
It unfolded as it always had. The anticlimactic pop, the sudden pain, the fall to the rocky dirt. And he was lying there, immobile, unable to speak as Christian took that one last step-
The explosion of earth and light and blood, and it was raining down around him, falling onto his face, and he realized through the numb first moment of shock that it wasn’t only dirt clogging his eyelashes. It wasn’t tears that were dampening his face, because he hadn’t had the chance to cry yet, no-it was blood. So much blood, the air had gone pinkish with it, the ground was splattered with it, and it was as if the lanky young man who had pushed him back to safety, who had only moments before been smiling at him, had simply vaporized.
He lurched upright, gasping for breath, his shirt sticking to his hot skin. For one wild moment the room was foreign and strange to him. The paisley wallpaper was unfamiliar, the bed felt too big.
“John.”
Everything snapped into focus as he turned sharply at the quiet voice. Sherlock was sitting beside him, impossibly long legs stretched out across the duvet, back pressed to the wall, his blue robe cinched tightly around his waist. His expression was unreadable.
“Sorry if I woke you,” John managed to say hoarsely, trying to steady his breathing. It was difficult-his lungs were cramping, as if he’d been holding his breath for too long. He realized he must look a sorry state. Probably red in the face, eyes glazed and wild, sweat trickling down his neck. He tried to focus on this, on the embarrassment of being caught in a nightmare like a little boy, rather than on the all-too-vivid images emblazoned across his mind.
“Do you need some water?” Sherlock asked.
“What? No, no,” John shook his head.
“Do you often have that nightmare?”
“Uh, occasionally.” His heart was finally starting to slow into a more comfortable rhythm; the burn of adrenaline in his veins subsided.
“Who was Christian?”
He stared at Sherlock in the semi-darkness. “How the hell do you know his name?” His voice came out brittle, uneven.
“As I said this morning, you talk in your sleep.” He still hadn’t moved, hands laced together and lying on his stomach. “I would guess that he was a soldier, but you know how I hate to go off of assumptions.”
John hesitated. He had never spoken of Christian-not to the unhelpful therapist, not to Harry. It had never felt right to speak of him with people who would never understand. And, looking at Sherlock in the late night gloom, those long legs stretched before him, angular face full of shadows-the sharp pang of familiarity was painful. Something clicked inside John Watson’s head, and he realized just why he had been so quick to trust Sherlock Holmes, and why his dreams had become especially terrifying.
“He was a friend,” he said finally, quietly, rubbing his hands across his face. “My best mate, in the Army. We only knew each other a couple of months, but it felt like we’d known each other our whole lives. He had this manner about him-got under most people’s skin. Very confident, very certain; he liked to show off sometimes, prove how good he was. Most of the guys thought he was an insufferable prat, but I liked him. Life was more interesting around Christian, and he was a good man for all of his dramatics. Always had my back when things got rough, yeah?”
“How did he die?” The question was delivered somewhat clinically, utterly devoid of emotion-but then John hadn’t expected sympathy from Sherlock.
“Land mine,” he said bluntly, falling silent.
“He died in front of you, didn’t he?”
John’s hands clenched into fists. “We’d been out on patrol with five other guys,” he heard himself saying, the words tumbling out of him awkwardly. “Making our way back to the camp. And suddenly we’re in the middle of a firefight. Christian and I were ahead of the others, completely in the open-the others dropped down behind some cover, but we didn’t have anything. I was hit, and I didn’t even realize it for a moment-the shock dulled the immediate pain-but Christian knew. He pushed me back and started to run-I don’t know what the hell he thought he was doing, maybe trying to pull their attention away from me, draw their fire, and then he hit the land mine. Took me almost a minute to realize what had happened. Just kept staring at the spot where he’d been, at the bits of uniform and pack and limbs that had been my best friend-”
The gasped breath hitched painfully in his throat, silencing him. He stared at the wall. Tried to focus on the hideous paisley print because he sure as hell didn’t want to start crying in front of Sherlock Holmes.
Several minutes ticked by, each second loudly counted by the antique alarm clock by the bed.
“…For my part, John, I’m sorry.”
He must still be dreaming; he had to have imagined that tone of voice, the sincerity, those implausible words coming out of that particular mouth. Sherlock never apologized, not really, because snide jibes and words laced with sarcasm didn’t count. He looked at him finally, brow furrowed.
“What do you mean, you’re sorry? What the hell do you have to be sorry for? You didn’t make the land mine, you didn’t pull any triggers, you never even knew I existed when it happened.”
“I’m sorry for making you relive the death of your closest friend,” Sherlock retorted, and some of the habitual, reassuring sharpness was back to his voice. “For making you a target in Moriarity’s little game. Everything that happened at the pool-it’s perfectly logical that you’d be thinking about Christian as a result. Hence the reoccurring nightmares.”
“You know what? You’re a bloody idiot sometimes.”
“Oh?” His eyebrow twitched incredulously.
“Never mind,” John said, shoving back the bedsheets and climbing out of bed. “I’m going to sleep on the sofa. Good night.”
---
John didn’t see much of Sherlock the next day. He kept himself occupied outside of the flat working a half shift at the surgery, posting some bills, avoiding Harry’s daily texts, and having an early dinner at a little Thai place he’d become fond of. He didn’t think about the night before, or the insight that had struck him, or Christian.
It was nearly nine when he finally climbed the stairs to 221b, pausing on the landing to wish Mrs. Hudson a good night and thank her for the jammy dodgers she’d left on the kitchen table a few days ago. Sherlock was standing by the right window-hands shoved into his pockets, suit jacket unbuttoned, his back to the door-when John entered.
“Good day?” Sherlock asked casually.
“Middling. Yourself?”
“Fairly boring.”
“I see the wall’s still in one piece,” John said lightly. “So it couldn’t have been too boring.”
“Lestrade called-apparently there’s a cat burglar lifting expensive trinkets out of the bedrooms of the gentry. His higher ups wanted him to pressure me into helping. I said I might look into it.”
“That’s kind of you. I’m making tea, do you want any?”
“No, thank you.”
The refrigerator door slammed shut.
“Exactly when are you going to take that head back to St. Bart’s? There’s never any room for the carrots with it in the crisper bin.”
“I don’t understand why you would need to keep carrots in there.”
“Because it’s meant for vegetables, to keep them fresh. And crisp. That’s why it’s called the vegetable crisper, Sherlock.”
“Yes, I understand that, John, but what could you possibly want carrots for?”
“What is it with you and carrots? They’re good in soup!”
“Soup, ha! No one ever eats the carrots in their soup; they just scoop around them.”
“I eat the carrots in my soup! In fact, they’re one of my favorite things about soup!”
Sherlock suddenly grinned, and John realized how ridiculous they must seem, shouting across the room at one another about carrots.
“I’m glad to see something of your old housewifery reasserting itself,” Sherlock said archly, dropping into his chair with a careless spread of limbs. It was a wonder none of the furniture’s springs had collapsed from the strain yet, the way the man abused everything.
“And here I thought you didn’t like it when I nagged you,” John said, stirring his cup. “Given all of the prima donna hissy fits you throw.”
“It’s nice to have a good sulk once in a while,” Sherlock said, smiling. “And anyway, it would be too god awful boring around here if you didn’t natter on about every little thing.”
“Oh, thanks,” John retorted curtly. “Wanna watch some telly?”
“Drivel. Brain rot. A waste of my impressive faculties.”
“Big Brother’s on. I’ll let you hurl insults at the chavs.”
“…Fine.”
---
“Seriously, though, when are you going to use your own bed again? Everyone thinks we’re shagging already-I don’t want Lestrade to find out we’re sleeping in the same bed.”
“Oh, what does it matter what the imbeciles at the Yard think, anyway?” Sherlock threw himself back against the pillow, limbs tucked in close, a perfectly straight line across the bed.
“Do you really sleep like that? On top of the sheets, in your robe?”
“What else would you suggest?”
“You could at least use the duvet,” John suggested. “It would be more comfortable.”
“Perhaps my idea of comfort is different from yours.”
“Fine, fine,” John muttered, turning off the light.
When he jolted awake, the clock read 2:38. He was struggling to catch his breath, and he knew he’d had another nightmare.
He also realized there was a hand around his arm, and that it had been the touch that had woken him.
“Sorry,” he said, looking up at the ceiling. “You’d probably get more sleep with the engine bits than with me, the rate this is going.”
“Was it the same dream?”
“It’s always the same dream.”
“…Then why did you call out my name?”
John took a deep, steadying breath and tried to organize his thoughts. Sherlock’s hand slid down his arm to his wrist; he was taking his pulse, measuring just how stressed he was.
“This morning,” Sherlock said. “I looked up your friend. Christian Marchbanks, that was his name, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Awarded two medals posthumously for bravery-no doubt they were a comfort to his mother. He was an only child, and his professors called him brilliant, ambitious, and focused. They also noted that he was extremely anti-social and went to great lengths to distance himself from his classmates and discourage any sort of close relationships. He never had a girlfriend to his contemporaries’ knowledge. A genius-level IQ and a biting wit, as evidenced by his political and scientific essays. When asked why he enlisted, his only explanation was, “I was tired of feeling useless.” A generally good-looking young man, as far as average tastes run. Fancied himself a collector of rare books and obscure knowledge.”
“That’s Christian,” John said softly.
“He sounded incredibly interesting. I would have liked to have met him.”
“You know that wonderful brain you’re always bragging about?” John asked the darkness. “Does it have blinkers on?”
“What do you mean?”
“Really, are you that blind? He could have been your brother, Sherlock. Oh, he was nothing like Mycroft,” he said quickly. “He could have been your twin, I suppose. Do you see? Any of it?”
The clock ticked.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, I don’t have many friends,” John said. “Everyone says I’ve got trust issues. There’re blokes like Mike that I’m friendly with, sure. Go to the pub, have a bit of a chat. Simple stuff, yeah? But I can’t really call them friends. All my life, I can count the people I’d die for-the people I’d kill for-on one hand. Christian was one of them.”
John looked over at his strange, exasperating flatmate. A man with an impossible name and an impossible life, who was still gripping his wrist as if he’d forgotten to let go.
Sherlock turned his head, the light from the window falling across his face, and his pale eyes met John’s steadily. His hand squeezed the arm it held, just the slightest of pressures.
“The pool. Moriarty. The bomb. You weren’t frightened for yourself, were you, John?”
“No.”
“I never asked you to worry about me.”
“I know you didn’t.”
“Thank you, John.”
“…Does your bed really have engine parts in it?”
“Yes.”
“Was that just a convenient excuse to keep a closer eye on me?”
“Do you really think I would stoop to something like that?”
“Thank you, Sherlock. For caring.”
“I don’t care. I just wanted to figure out why my blogger had stopped writing about my adventures.”
“I thought you didn’t like me calling them adventures.”
“Stop arguing with me and go to sleep.”
John smiled and waited for Sherlock to let go of his arm.
He fell asleep waiting.