John Watson stood, rubbing his sleep tired eyes and trying to leash his fraying temper. It was one thing, he thought, to lose sleep when there was work to be done, that meant lives being saved, they were making a difference on those nights. However, on nights like this one, when there wasn't a case to interest the bored detective, he was in no mood to give up sleep because his flat mate needed something to amuse him.
He pulled his dressing gown more tightly around him and walked into the barely lit sitting room of their shared flat. The detective stood in the center of the room, using what looked to be one of John's shirts, to wave away plumes of noxious smelling smoke. That's what had driven the good doctor from his sleep, the smell of smoke, and the sound of alarms ringing all throughout the flat. After dashing out of bed and finding that the flat wasn't actually on fire he stood in the hall, doing his best to calm himself so he could face his friend without throttling him.
He walked forward and grabbed Sherlock by the shoulder "Bloody hell Sherlock, what on earth were you trying to do!?" The detective just shook off John's touch and moved to curl up in his chair, grabbing his precious violin on the way. "If you really must know, I was working on an experiment, when my attention was caught by something else, and my mixture that I had been heating on the stove exploded." He said this as if he were at no fault in the matter, in fact it seemed as if he were the one who were inconvenienced by the new development. "Honestly John, if you hadn't confiscated my lab gear, I wouldn't have bothered with using the bloody stove, and nothing would have happened."
Realizing that He'd get nowhere in this argument, John stormed into the kitchen to clean the mess he knew Sherlock wouldn't bother with. Halfway through clearing away the mess, he began to wonder how a graduate chemist, had managed to create such a dramatic explosion by complete accident. So taking some of his friend's methods into account, he began to observe the details of the mostly wrecked kitchen. Various household chemicals, some from Sherlock's on personal store, and shattered glass littering the floor. Then after checking over the stove he knew he'd been right, the stove had been turned on its highest setting, the explosion that drove him from sleep hadn't been an accident.
This wasn't the first time the brilliant detective had pulled a stunt like this one. On nights when he was especially bored, or still slightly rattled from a trying case, he'd do nearly anything to get John to stay up and distract him. Once he'd woken John at 4:30 in the morning to examine a scratch that was barely three inches long, claiming that he was sure he'd contracted an infection that would be life threatening if not treated in that very moment. Another time he'd sat with his back pressed against John's bedroom door and played songs from The Lion King on his violin, claiming that they'd been stuck in his head and he hadn't even realized that he'd been sitting where the noise would be loud enough to affect John. Each time John had been ready to punch the brilliant detective but one look at the man's face had him feeling hesitant to leave him alone. He'd realized that Sherlock only done things like this on nights when he was struggling to cope with whatever happened in that funny head of his. Sometimes this meant bouts of intense anxiety and restlessness that prevented him from sitting still for hours on end, and other times he seemed fall into the blackest of depressions. No matter the cause, he always felt obligated to sit and do his best to soothe whatever ills his dear friend seemed to be facing.
So John stood from wiping the last of the sludge of Sherlock's experiment from the walls, and walked back into the sitting room where his friend sat, staring morosely into the fire. John cleared his throat and the detective looked up to meet his gaze slowly. "Funny how you managed to blow up the stove, but you've created far more elaborate concoctions with more unstable supplies, without any trouble whatsoever." Sherlock just huffed a breath, made something of a "hmph" noise, and turned over in his chair. John crossed the room, kneeling down in front of the chair to meet his friend's eyes. Sherlock, I'm going to make a deduction, you can tell me at the end if I'm correct." The detective nodded his head and John began speaking, "I deduce, that you after trying and failing to sleep, went looking for the cigarettes that I know you had hidden in the umbrella stand in the hall, that I took the liberty of removing from the house before you ever got the chance to smoke them. Then decided that you couldn't stand being up alone any longer, so you took to the kitchen, staging a minor explosion, knowing that it would wake me the minute the alarms went off." You can tell me if I got that right.
For a moment the detective looked incredulous, "Honestly John, I'm a grown man, if you think I'd blow up the kitchen just for attention you're mad!" John just laughed at the outrage on his friend's face. "Why on earth would you even assume that?" Pouted Sherlock. John considered his friend for a moment, they'd had a particularly nasty case that spanned well over a week. Some children of a wealthy businessman had been kidnapped, and held for ransom. Sadly even the brilliant detective couldn't stop the cruel thug that was meant to be guarding the kids, after finding that they were trying to escape, he'd killed the girl as a warning to the others. They'd managed to rescue the other three, but his friend had been heavily affected by what he took to be a personal failure. That had been three days ago, he'd just started to act like himself again, but John could still see the slightly haunted look in the other man's eyes. Looking him over, he knew he could push the issue, and make him admit to his schemes in the kitchen, but he didn't want to push his when he was already so rattled. So John opted for a simple reply, one that stuck out from their first case together. "Because." John said grinning, "you're an idiot".
With those familiar words, Sherlock looked up and chuckled softly. "Yes, I suppose I am, but I'm your idiot, Doctor Watson. With that John stood and held out a hand, which the detective took without question. John pulled him to his feet and led him over to the couch, and settled them both in and nestled into the blankets strewn across it. Sherlock leaned slightly into the other man's shoulder and John just pulled him a bit closer. It was far more consoling than romantic. That was a gap they didn't feel the need to bridge yet. They were the best of friends, colleagues, partners, flatmates, but it didn't really matter what title you decided to attach to the men curled on the couch, they'd go to the ends of the earth to chase away the nightmares when one needed the other. So they sat curled like that until both men fell asleep, and neither dreamed about the horrible events that had haunted them for that last few days.