First fanfic in this fandom. Tell me how I did, okay?
Every kid was afraid of the dark. Except young John Watson. His parents thought it was just pleasant dreams that made the baby giggle at night or that he thought the shapes and shadows illuminated by the moon was simply funny. Little John was simply a brave little boy when he didn't ask for a night light, and he was usually too sleepy for bed time stories to be needed. When he was old enough to be able to answer inquisitive questions, people would know he himself wasn't sure why the dark never bothered him, and he would leave out the part where the dark felt almost safe, familiar. He couldn't say he liked it, not at the time, but he was comfortable with it. But though John was getting old- when being ten was a worthy achievement- he was still so young and he was still young when he first met him.
He was a tall boy, as tall as the shadows in the corner of John's room, and just as fluid, he thought. His hair was a dark cloud of inky black curls, his coat cut from the night sky, his skin pale as the moon. John was hardly into poetry, but he tried after that night to describe the boy, even just to himself, and he never was quite satisfied with the words he could come up with. This boy, this boy from the shadows smiled at him, shyly, and John could have sworn he saw all the universe and its brilliance in the boy's otherwise black eyes. He could only come up with so few a word to describe that moment. Brilliant, awe-inspiring, wonderful. But most importantly- and perhaps should have been surprisingly, it felt familiar. He thought it might have been a dream, at first. But he remembered he only really saw the boy- the night boy, as he grew accustomed to call him- because he had woken up. Before that... before that he was sure he only saw him in his dreams, felt his presence while he slept.
That night he hadn't gone back to sleep. He couldn't, not when his friend was there ready to play- to really play, and talk and just really be with each other. The night boy knew many curious things, things about other children, about some that John knew, about their dreams, and John's dreams, too. They talked and played until John couldn't keep his eyes open, and the night boy coaxed him to go to sleep, promising he'll be back. He came back for many nights to come after that.
So young John was never afraid of the dark, and he never found any reason to be. The night was a very close friend of his.