John is no stranger to being woken up at odd hours by his enigmatic flat mate. He has been barged in upon during sleep no less than four times with declarations of the game being afoot, of cases that simply must be solved and twenty-four hour Chinese places with sesame chicken that simply must be eaten after said cases have been solved. On those nights, John has returned to bed in the early hours of the morning, barely being able to shut his eyes and calm his adrenaline-spiked heartbeat before his alarm goes off.
Sometimes it's the violin that pulls John from his rest, when Sherlock himself should be sleeping, when his playing becomes slightly less than perfect and he gets frustrated, drawing the bow violently against the strings, just long enough to wake John. Sherlock always seems to realize his mistake, however belatedly, silencing the violin's caterwauling almost as abruptly as he starts it, transitioning immediately into some soft lullaby or another, undoing the damage and sending John back to sleep within minutes.
Twice, John has been woken by explosions. Small ones, too be sure, experiments gone wrong that set off the fire alarm and had John all but tripping down the stairs and into the kitchen to ensure that Sherlock hadn't seriously injured himself (or the flat) this time. On one of these two such occasions, he simply took one look at Sherlock, turned around, and laughed himself all the way back upstairs into bed, falling back to sleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow. Sherlock's eyebrow had only taken a week to grow back, and John had never been more endeared to Sherlock than when he'd noticed Sherlock pouting at his own appearance in the mirror every time he thought John wasn't looking.
Of course, John has been woken by nightmares. He doesn't count those as being Sherlock's doing- in fact, the nightmares have become few and far between and faded almost completely since he moved into Baker Street. He believes he has Sherlock Holmes to thank for that.
One night, The Night, a week or so after the bomb vest and the darkened swimming pool, after yet another case with a different villain but a similar life-threatening climax, John decides that enough is enough. On this night, when he and Sherlock come home (mostly) unscathed, John barely hesitates before taking Sherlock by the shoulders and kissing him thoroughly, right there in the front hallway, consequences be damned. He hadn't planned far enough ahead to hope that Sherlock might kiss him back, but had he been hoping, he would not have been disappointed.
On this night, John falls asleep with Sherlock in his arms, sweat cooling on their skin, moonlight and the city's glow streaming in through the window of Sherlock's bedroom, pooling in the sheets around them and spreading across the floor. John drifts off slowly, exhausted in the best way, an enormous weight lifted from his shoulders and the warmth of Sherlock's body melting him into the mattress. It's bound to be the best sleep of his life, he thinks, his last thought before unconsciousness takes him.
On this night, John is woken up by Sherlock once again, just not in a way that he ever has been before.
Even in his sleep, John can sense Sherlock watching him, calculating stare glued to John's face, deducing who knows what. That state would normally be unnerving, but he isn't really bothered by it until he feels Sherlock slide away, not out of bed but just to the other side of it, just out of John's reach. It's then that John resurfaces.
"Sherlock," he whispers, not opening his eyes, already knowing the answer to the question he's about to ask. "You up?"
Sherlock doesn't answer- John can hear him nodding, though, the rustle of his hair against the pillowcase, the only sound besides their breathing, deafening in the relative silence of the room.
"What time's'it?" John slurs, still not awake enough to enunciate, apparently. He scrubs a hand over his face, blinking his heavy eyelids and allowing his eyes to adjust to the dim, pale light.
"Just after three." Sherlock isn't looking at John anymore, John notes- there must be something quite interesting on the wall over John's shoulder, for all Sherlock's eyes seem to be boring a hole in it.
"Sherlock," John says again. "Is something wrong?"
"You never said why," Sherlock answers, after a short moment's pause.
"Why what?"
"After you kissed me and I asked you why, you said it was because you'd-"
"-fallen in love with you, yeah." Even in the dark, John can see Sherlock blushing despite his pensive expression. John can't help but smile just a little.
"But why?" Sherlock asks. "I've been running scenarios in my mind, trying to understand how and when it could have happened, and I-" he frowns. "There are variables missing. I clearly don't have enough data."
"Oh, Sherlock." John reaches out, pushing Sherlock's hair back from his forehead, drawing his thumb across Sherlock's cheek. It's remarkable, really, in the worst possible way, how little Sherlock actually thinks of himself when the whole world (barring John) sees him as some kind of egomaniac.
"You're in luck," John tells him. "I can tell you exactly how it happened."
"You can?"
"I can." John nods. "What happened was that you saved my life."
Sherlock narrows his eyes. "I've saved your life on multiple occasions, John, you'll have to be more specific."
Yeah, there's the ego, John thinks, less so with malice and more so with unbridled affection.
"I ran into an old friend from uni one day, said he could help me find a flat mate. Took me to the lab at St. Bart's, our old stomping ground. And there was this bloke, with fantastic hair and incredible cheekbones who opened his mouth right away and told me stuff a stranger couldn't know, invited me to live with him and-"
"That's just the story of how we met," Sherlock points out, obviously still confused, though he has moved closer to John again, close enough that John can feel his body heat and count his eyelashes.
"Exactly," John explains. "We met."
"You said I saved you."
"Yeah. I was spiraling, Sherlock. I was going nowhere- had no direction to go in anyway, even if I could have gotten myself going again at all. And then I met you. If I hadn't, well- I don't like to think about what I might have done."
Sherlock doesn't answer- he simply presses forward and kisses John, putting his cold hand to the back of John's neck while he breathes his next question into John's mouth.
"When did you realise?" he wonders, pulling back just far enough to look John in the eye. "How long have you-"
"-loved you? God, I don't know. Since I killed a man for you. Since you cured my limp. Since 'Afghanistan or Iraq'."
Sherlock has tears in his eyes when he kisses John this time. John brushes them away and kisses Sherlock back and keeps on kissing him, doesn't stop kissing him until the only word Sherlock remembers is John's name, until they're both coming apart all over again, clinging to each other without the slightest intention of ever letting go.
"You," Sherlock starts, still out of breath, voice more tender than John ever thought it could be. "You saved me too." He crawls into John's arms as soon as
John offers them. "You save me everyday."
John falls asleep smiling. Sherlock does too.