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John dreams of Sherlock.
Not frequently—not in any way frequently enough—but now and again, John dreams of Sherlock. Ella says this is to be expected, that it is his subconscious’ way of processing the loss, but it doesn't feel like a process to John; it feels like Sherlock, creeping into his room after dark, the way he used to when he’d solved a case and wanted John to hear it, the way he did when he’d suddenly realized they needed to dash off to Battersea to look through a skip in an alleyway he’d forgotten was there.
The first time—in the first dream, John corrects himself—Sherlock didn’t even speak. John woke to find him in the bed, long and self-contained, even in sleep, on top of the coverlet. He was dressed, as usual, in a two piece suit; his shoes were on and firmly laced, and even his expression remained drawn and tight, as if he’d fallen asleep while in his mind palace and hadn't realized it yet.
John didn't so much as shift to the side, couldn't bear even a full indrawn breath, in case it broke the dream. Sherlock lay on his back, his curls spread across John’s extra pillow; his chest rose and fell, and John watched. He watched a murmur pass over Sherlock’s lips, watched the twitch of his eyes behind his eyelids; John listened to his breath as if it were a symphony. But sleep is ruthless; the dreaming mind has no pity on the waking one, and before long, John was waking to pale London light and an empty room.
It was just a dream. It didn't mean anything. John hadn't even gotten to say anything to Sherlock—not any of the things that whispered themselves against the inside of his skull all day until he thought he’d go mad.
*
John doesn’t like to lock the flat at night. It’s irrational, he’s aware of that. Not because Sherlock is dead and won’t be coming round in the middle of the night, but because there are no locks between John and the outside world to which Sherlock doesn’t have a key. And if there were any, John thinks with a wry twist to his mouth, Sherlock would just pick them anyway. So it doesn’t matter if he leaves the windows unlatched, or if Mrs Hudson refuses to leave the door to the street unlocked, because if Sherlock wants to get in, he’ll find a way. It’s only... it’s only that John wants the dreams to happen. He wants to let Sherlock know that he’s invited.
*
The second time Sherlock came to John, he was bleeding, wounded.
John woke to the pressure of long fingers on his shoulder, the slight shake that meant quietly now.
“Sherlock?” John mumbled, rolling toward the figure standing over him, peering at him in the darkness, and reached for the bedside lamp.
“No,” Sherlock whispered, and it sounded like a hiss. “No light.”
John blinked, trying to clear the sleep-muzz from his eyes. “What is it, then?” he asked.
“I... I need some help,” Sherlock said. Something in his voice sounded a bell deep in John’s chest, and he sat up suddenly.
“What is it? What’s going on?”
Later on, John will hate himself for all the questions he didn’t ask, for all the words he didn’t say. But in the dream, it seemed, he could do nothing but react. Sherlock needed help, so John provided it.
Sherlock sat down beside John on the bed, and amazingly, he had a cup of tea in his hand. “Drink this,” he said. “I need you alert.”
John drank the tea—quickly, despite the harsh burn of it in his mouth—and set it hastily on the table beside the bed. “Show me,” he said.
Sherlock lifted his curls off the left side of his brow, revealing a deep gash of several inches in length.
“Sherlock—what? I need the light. I need to see what you’ve done to yourself—”
“No, no light. And I need you to be quick, John. I don’t have much time.”
“I can’t stitch you in the dark, Sherlock.”
“Then don’t stitch it.”
“All right. All right.” John stood and paced in a tight circle for a moment, threading his fingers through his own hair. “Can you go to the window?”
Sherlock’s eyes locked on his for a moment, and the moonlight reflected in them, wary and calculating.
“Very briefly. I cannot stress enough the need for you to hurry.”
“Yes, all right, fine. Sit here.” John pulled his desk chair to the window and his medical bag from beneath the bed. “I think I’m going to have to—”
“No. Don’t cut my hair.”
John huffed out a weary breath. “You don’t want much, do you? If I’m going to do this properly—”
“I don’t need you to do it properly. I just need you to fix it!”
Fix it. John’s hands worked as if they were attached to someone else as they smoothed back Sherlock’s hair and cleaned out the wound. Seven quick stitches, while Sherlock’s knuckles tightened to white where they gripped the window sill. Seven stitches weren’t quite enough to close it, not all the way, but they might do to get things started, if Sherlock could keep them clean and dry. John carefully taped a bandage onto a temple that should have taken more than seven stitches to put back together—
His fingers stilled on Sherlock’s hair. “Sherlock—”
The world seemed suddenly very heavy and dense, as if the air itself was trying to suffocate him. Sherlock was supposed to be dead, and yet he could feel his damp curls beneath the pads of his fingers. He swayed gently on his feet, and the moon shone sharp slices of light into the room. “Sherlock.”
“Thank you, John.” Sherlock’s hand rested on his for a moment. “You’ll need to get back in bed now.”
I should have learned by now not to drink anything he hands me, John thought, in the dream, and he felt the rasp of a blanket against his shoulder, the cool silk of Sherlock’s hand across his brow.
In the morning, his chair was tucked neatly beneath his desk, where it always was, and the cup of tea he’d drank before bed was on the night stand.
*
In the third dream, John never saw Sherlock at all, so he’s not entirely sure that it counts. But in the dream, he heard the front door to the flat, and before even pulling on his dressing gown, he ran down the stairs to the living room. There was no one there, but the sound of the slammed door remained in his mind, reverberating in the silence, and John could have sworn that there was something on the bookshelf not quite as it had been. It was nothing he could name—although Sherlock probably could have; Sherlock would have seen a change in the dust line or a minute shift in the way the books were aligned, revealing part of a cover as yet unbleached by the sun—but there was something different about the files that Sherlock had kept on his past cases.
John went to the window. There was no billowing Belstaff on the street. He went back to the shelf. Was the M folder pushed in too far?
He heard the sound of the outside door, the one to the street, and ran back to the window.
It might have been the corner of Speedy’s awning, flapping in the breeze. It might have been.
John woke in the morning with the M folder clutched in his arms.
*
John eats spicy food before bed. He goes to sleep in front of the telly. He drinks too much caffeine and reads in bed.
Back when he dreamed of the desert, Ella gave him a list of things to do to help him avoid nightmares. John breaks every rule.
He thinks of Sherlock as he twists in the covers, willing sleep to come. He remembers him, right down to the bits of hair in the sink after Sherlock shaved. Sometimes, in desperation, he opens the door to Sherlock’s room and stands on the cold hardwood floors in his bare feet, breathing deeply of a smell that only exists now in his imagination.
*
In the fourth, Sherlock was kissing him. John knew it was a dream, knew it even as it was happening, because that had never happened in his waking life, even if he’d sometimes thought... even if he’d sometimes dreamed it then.
Sherlock was in the bed, beneath the covers this time, his cold feet pressed to John’s shins and his fingers making icy patterns on John’s neck. His mouth was warm, though, warm and pressing into John’s, and Sherlock tasted of Chinese takeaway, which was an odd detail, he thought fuzzily, for his dreaming mind to supply.
He didn’t ask what Sherlock was doing, because it was a dream, and so it didn’t matter. He only reached out, closed the distance between them, folded himself into Sherlock’s embrace. With his tongue, he traced Sherlock’s crooked bottom teeth, felt their edges against his lips, felt the insistent pressing of Sherlock’s nose into his cheek.
His back was bare, and John smoothed over it with his palms, felt the wings of Sherlock’s shoulderblades beneath his skin. He felt Sherlock’s breath in his neck, heard his gasp, the tickle and flutter of his curls, curls everywhere, Sherlock.
John felt like crying as Sherlock’s fingers, warmer now, grasped the hem of his t-shirt and began to lift it, pulling it over his head, and then returning to tug him closer, to bring them chest to chest. Sherlock bit his shoulder, and John felt the press of his teeth, the wet slide of his tongue; he smelled unfamiliar soap and cigarette smoke.
“Please,” he whispered, and Sherlock echoed, “Please.”
Sherlock hooked a leg around one of his, and John writhed, squirmed against him, because if this was a dream, he wanted everything, every single touch, every single cell of Sherlock’s. He wanted to count Sherlock’s eyelashes, to taste the backs of his knees.
“Please,” he said again.
“What?” Sherlock said against his mouth. “What?”
“Anything.”
It was Sherlock who reached into his pants, Sherlock who brought them together inside the heat of his fist, but it was John who set the rhythm, who took Sherlock’s face into his hands and kissed him until he came.
And it was John who woke confused and shirtless and alone.
*
In the fifth, he wept.
Sherlock sat beside him, on the couch where he’d fallen asleep. John opened his eyes and saw him there, and Sherlock said nothing, but let his eyes travel over John’s face, over his body, curled underneath a blue blanket. Sherlock’s eyes drank him in, and his expression was so starved, as if he would never have enough time to look at John again.
John sat up. He reached out and grasped the cuff of Sherlock’s coat because he didn’t quite dare to reach for a man who wasn’t there. “You’re dead,” he said, low, and Sherlock just blinked back at him.
“You’re dead,” he said again, and his voice broke a bit on the end, just as he felt his face begin to crumple. John raised his hands to his face. “I...” he said through his fingers.
“I miss you,” he said into Sherlock’s shoulder as the stranger at the end of the couch wound himself around John like a scarf, like that blue cashmere scarf he could feel against his face. “I miss you so fucking much.”
“John,” Sherlock said, and his voice was choked, muffled against John’s hair. John could feel Sherlock’s fists in his own gray t-shirt. “Shh, John. This is all a dream.”