Sherlock Holmes and John Watson

Disclaimer: Well then, here we go again… I don't own it.

*A/N* So I've had this ridiculous little idea of letting two Sherlock characters meet at 02:43 am and see where it goes. I've started out with the obvious one, tell me any pairing you like and I'll do what I can to make it into a little one-shot. Hope you like this one.

The explosion is ringing in my ears. Before I know it, I'm out of bed, gun cocked and at the ready, adrenaline burning through my veins. I can hear my own heartbeat drumming in my ears.

My brain's completely empty. Utter concentration. Nothing else than my finger on the trigger.

It takes me ages to recognise my small dark bedroom. In my flat in Baker Street, London, England. Not Afghanistan, not even remotely. The night air's far too cold for that anyway.

Panting and shuddering, I drop back on the bed and wait for my system to slow down.

I stare at the gun in my hand and start to wonder where the hell I even got that from so quickly. I could swear I'd placed it in the drawer the other night.

Okay, yeah, I guess I should take out the bullets over night, just to be safe. I'm a danger to myself, and my flatmate. A sudden image of Sherlock running into the room in the dead of night comes to my mind and I shudder. That could have easily happened.

For God's sake, alright, maybe I'm not entirely stable. But I'm seriously working on it.

Then the source of the noise that woke me dawns on me. And, as much as I feared for his life seconds ago, I'm bloody furious at the idiot right now.

"Sherlock!"

I stomp down the stairs, not exactly worried to wake Mrs Hudson since she can impossibly have overheard the explosion, either.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" I rip open the living room door and find my friend - how else could it be - fully dressed in the kitchen, Bunsen burner in one hand and a little test tube in the other. Massive mess on the kitchen table, obviously. Actually it's lucky the table doesn't have a hole in it.

"I found the culprit for the Thompson case!" he replies, looking slightly confused about my rage.

"Marvellous. At 2:40 in the morning!"

"Yeah, well, I'm meeting Lestrade at nine and I needed this done before and the Warner one, and that's presumably going to take me a while. And since I won't need much sleep before Wednesday, I thought I'd take care of it now."

I can't believe him. I really just can't. "Well, next time you might want to include in your sodding schedule that you might wake people if you blow up a fucking teapot or whatever that used to be-"

"It's actually an old radio."

"I don't bloody care!"

He's looking really dumbfounded now. Since he obviously doesn't understand why I'm so angry, but even him as the world's biggest ignorant had to notice I'm kind of cross, he tries for an unconvincing: "Ah, I'm… sorry. Won't happen again."

"Won't happen again is great, yeah, cheers," I growl through clenched teeth, trying to convince myself to let it be and go to bed. He won't get it anyway.

"Isn't that what one should be saying?" he inquires, visibly unsatisfied with the result of his method.

"You just can't do that to someone with a goddamned trauma, Sherlock! You scared the hell out of me!"

Realization dawns on his face.

"Oh. I didn't think of that."

"You don't say?"

He actually looks kind of guilty now. "You shouldn't be sleeping with a gun," he mutters then. I don't know where he deduced that from now, but I've given up asking.

"You shouldn't be imitating bombs in the dead of night!"

"No. You're right. I'm sorry."

Wow. I can't believe it. He means it. I'm immediately comforted.

"Just make sure it doesn't happen again, alright?"

"Right." He gently whirls the liquid in his test tube. "Could you hold that for a second?"

"No. I'm going back to bed."

"The effect of the adrenaline won't wear off for the next twenty minutes." Sherlock answers matter-of-factly and holds out the test tube to me. "You might as well make yourself useful."

For a split second, I really want to slap him, but then I have to grin.

If he could maintain his humility for more than thirty seconds, I would have worried about him. It might have been a sign for a fatal illness.

Maybe I'm crazy because it's quarter to three in the morning and I'm standing in the kitchen in my pyjamas, assisting some experiment that I don't even remotely understand, and I really don't want to be anywhere else.

Please take a moment to review.