John dreams of Afghanistan.
Of blinding heat, the feeling of the sun seeping into your skin, the slide of sweat on the inside of his uniform. Those bloody long sleeves, he would have given anything to be able to roll those damn sleeves up. The fabric itched. Sand found its way inside.
He dreams of the noise, miniature explosions from guns, bigger ones erupting around him, shouts for medical help from all around him. Moans, crying, agonized screams. Crackling radios telling them to move closer. A blur of light and sound and panic that spins faster and faster out of control until John wakes up panting and panicking and searching for something, anything, anyone to pull him back.
There's nothing, like always.
John doesn't dream about Afghanistan anymore (rotten place, anyway).
Instead, he dreams about London. He sees black cabs and small white pills, a speculative expression, calm, considering death in the interest of science. He hears one gunshot. He never gets to see who it hit in the dream.
There are mazes. Forever mazes. A flat, the city, a building full of classrooms. He runs forever, until his lungs are raw and chapped and his legs are about to give out. Then he runs some more. He runs and runs, and always ends up in the wrong place, never in the place he wanted or expected to be but always right where he was most needed.
He wakes up shaking and smiling.
John still dreams about London, but it's darker now.
There are voices. They're begging for help. It's not coming. One by one, the voices cut off. Everything moves in short bursts and long pauses. People are dying, but he can't see them, or hear them, or help them. He tries anyway, he runs around but it's pointless, he'll never save them.
Now it's his turn and he's surrounded by push-button death but he will not beg, he will not. It's boring, and the cat comes out to play and he realizes that he still can do something, there's one more life he can save. And not just any life but what a life, blazing everywhere at the speed of light, not just any mind but what a mind, like a train running off it's tracks, out of control and brilliant and everything you never expected, and not just any body but what a body, like a meteor streaking across the sky, be grateful you got a glimpse.
But now there are small red dots and they're dancing across that life, that mind, that body and John's afraid he's rather shown his hand.
John dreams about dogs.
No, not dogs. Hounds, always hounds, and the psychotic things have invaded a white and sterile lab. It's hard to imagine a hell hound stalking around this tightly controlled environment, drool dripping from it's teeth and red eyes illuminating its path, but there it is, John saw it, saw it right there!
There's a hole in the cage, oh god, oh god, and John locks himself in but the beast is snarling and raging and undoing the lock oh god.
But as the door to the cage swings open, the hound stands up, loses its fur, loses its glowing red eyes, has them replaced by sharp green ones that are almost obscured by a mess of curly black hair and Sherlock is there. John has never felt happier before, ever, in a dream or real life.
He's pissed as hell when he wakes up. What a horrible trick that had been.
John doesn't sleep anymore.
At least, not intentionally. He has it all worked out. He putters about his day, not doing much of anything except trying to remember to keep breathing, eating, blinking. All those things happy people find effortless. It's almost too much now to go to the store for groceries. Everything just seems so much more difficult now, and John doesn't know why. Except for sleep. John knows why sleep is harder, because he doesn't have to sleep to dream. Every time he closes his eyes he can see the dark figure tip gracefully off the rooftop, his coat billowing behind him, his legs running in the air. The pool of blood on the sidewalk. Those lifeless green eyes. God.
It's the legs that haunt him. They had been circling, sprinting through the air with nothing for purchase. Had he wanted to stop? Did he change his mind, a second too late, and attempt to find something in the air rushing by him, anything to catch himself on?
There was nothing. John knows that better than anyone, except perhaps Sherlock himself, who is not really in a position to know anything right now.
John just keeps breathing until he wakes up on the couch or at the kitchen counter with ten, even twenty hours of his life eclipsed in a dreamless sleep. These are small mercies.
John wakes up screaming.
Almost every night. It's why Mary eventually broke up with him. He can never remember why, can never hold on to anything in the dream except pure terror, and god knows there's been enough of that in his past. He could be dreaming about any event in his life since he was twenty. Maybe even fifteen. But somehow John knows that's not it. John knows it's Sherlock, and he's happy he can't remember his dreams.
He wakes up angry, but a hollow kind of angry that's really only hurt and loss.
John is dreaming.
He must be.
Because Sherlock is standing right in front of him, smiling proudly, as though he's just pulled off the best and most amazing trick ever and is waiting for John to congratulate him.
John winds up and lands a right hook to Sherlock's cheek. He's not sure why he does it. He's had this dream before, but before he always kissed Sherlock. There's something weird about this dream, though. It leaves John with the impression that there is something important here, something beyond the confines of the immediate situation.
Sherlock whispers to John that he's awake, that this is real, and drops a kiss onto his jaw. The world goes fuzzy and soft and John knows now that he's not sleeping, but he's not conscious, either.
He wakes up and Sherlock is still there. The world stays soft and inviting, but pulls itself into sharp, clear focus one more time.
John doesn't dream.
He braces himself for them every night, but nights come and go in dreamless stupors.
John is still frightened when he wakes up, sometimes frightened enough to roll over and wake Sherlock, who grumbles into his pillow that yes, he is still alive, and yes, he still loves John with his whole amazing life and brain and body, and shouldn't this all be bloody well obvious?
Sherlock softens his grumbling with a kiss to the tip of John's nose. John closes his eyes and goes back to sleep.
John has never felt happier before, ever, in a dream or real life.