I'm not sleeping anymore. This sprouted from that. John will be largely sleepy through most of this.
He lay curled in the warmth of his bed; the cushy, plush, clean hell of his ravaging dreams and waited patiently in the unconscious haze between dreams and wakefulness. This was his private torture: being so completely exhausted he could not bear to wake, yet being so completely alert of the mind that sleep escaped him. Every few hours he would glance at the clock, aware of the night rapidly dwindling into nothingness, yet not sure how to alter its speed.
He lay, half under his blanket; arms flung up in half-surrender, caressing the pillows beneath his head waiting for blackness to turn to dreams or darkness to turn to morning. The red lights of his alarm clock burned into the back of his mind like a brand, hot and painful as they ticked away the hours till five.
Eleven came and went under his watchful eye; then in a flash twelve crept upon him. He could not tell what consciousness was and what sleep was, except by the numbers that continued moving steadily upwards. In a flash twelve became two, as he nodded off, barely recognizing the sleep for what it was, and John stopped caring for time anymore.
He merely wanted some significant rest before work, at six. In a dreary haze the minutes flew past, unwatched and unwanted. No dreams visited the restless sleeper, which was a blessing in itself, yet neither did sleep ease his aching body or calm his warring mind.
John became duly aware of the floor groaning, but believed only that a dream had finally fallen upon him and cursed his bad luck. He'd had dreams before of someone being in the flat. There was no one in the flat.
He felt a shadow ease across his bed with a sigh, causing the old cushion to groan and complain. John still only registered only half of the sensation, being drunk on the fumes of Morpheus which he had sought so greedily mere minutes before. The sensation of pressure was nothing new in his dreams. With his PTSD griping him at every waking turn, he often had dreams so vivid; he had trouble convincing himself they were only in his mind. Heat, pressure, noise, all was a part of his nightly schedule.
Hands clamped down over his own, and he still felt, in a detached sense, that he was dreaming. His mind rolled with exhaustion and he wondered without words what tricks his sleep addled brain was trying to play on him now. The iron grip of the hands mingled with his fingers and he felt his heartbeat in his hands; pulsating aggressively under pressure. His wrists were crying out with surprise being buried in the plush pillow
Something pressed against his neck, sucking slightly and the pain in his shoulder startled him bolt-upright in his bed, gasping in surprise at the empty room lit only by detached shreds of moonlight that pierced through his blinds and stabbed into his bed.
He rubbed his trick-shoulder that had been aggravated in a dream and sighed, rolling the bone beneath the puckered scar and tracing over the bumpy ridges with his finger; shuddering in disgust and awe.
He was alone in his room. Alone in his flat. There was no one with him at all. He mulled over these depressing thoughts until he could hardly stand it, but he still couldn't shake the sensation that had left him sweating in the dark, panting. His heart was trying to burst out of his chest by hammering against the walls as fast and as hard as it could.
"No one's here. Can't you see that?" he told himself for the final time. Alone and scared, he practiced the deep breathing exercises that his therapist had been teaching him.
He couldn't fight, however, the gnawing feeling that he was missing something. He checked the clock. It said three-forty-four. He groaned tremendously and rolled himself out of bed, flinching slightly as his bare feet touched his soft, downy slippers on the floor. He went to his nightstand by the window and quietly pulled the drawer open. Blindly, he groped in the dark cave, over magazines and pens, searching for his gun.
It wasn't there.
John started the breathing exercises again.
"Okay, no need to panic." He told himself quite rationally. "I've been a bit scatterbrained lately; I may have left it out in the living room."
Having nothing else to do, he decided to get out of bed and check.
The sitting room of the flat was a tomb of shadows. Every piece of furniture had a halo of light around it as moonlight hit the cloud of dust that perpetually drifted in the flat. John largely ignored the dust as he searched for his gun in the dark, running his hand over every flat surface and even some of the sofa.
When he had finished running over the sofa he thought to himself "This is dumb! I'm going to be exhausted for work! I should be asleep!" and he angrily went to search for it in the kitchen as a last resort.
The kitchen was spotless, and at first glance it was obvious that the gun was not there. Every counter was clear except for one to the right of the fridge. One single glass of milk waited patiently for someone to drink it. John picked up the chilled glass, deciding at a glance that he had poured it before he'd gotten that phone call from Sarah and gone to bed. He emptied it into the sink, letting the beads of icy water collect on his fingertips and the pale, creamy fluid coat the sink briefly before disappearing.
His gun was gone. He couldn't find it anywhere. Not that it was really important that night. There was no one in the flat, he could see that.
"Mycroft." He came to the conclusion a few seconds after he'd searched his nightstand. Only the eldest Holmes would have the audacity to come into his home and take his gun, because only the oldest Holmes thought he was a risk with it.
Okay, he'd threatened to use it on him one time, but only because of all the surprise visits and kidnappings. He really didn't care for Mycroft anymore, and didn't appreciate being treated like a suicide risk.
He put the glass in the sink, rinsed it out and wearily trudged back to his bedroom. Sleep was calling him, with its coy smile and shy touch, and he was too seduced by it to pretend to resist.
He collapsed into the bed, too tired to care about anything, not wanting to see the numbers of the clock, not wondering what had happened to his gun, beloved keep-sake of his adventures, begging to Morpheus for a dream to launch him off into another two hours of rest before he was forced to face that day.
Only one thing gnawed at the back of his mind. The milk was ice cold.
