Body Swap

1.

John Watson was dreaming about it again. This particular dream came to him every so often – maybe once every month. Each time it was pretty much the same, as were the after effects: whenever he dreamt it he would wake up shivering, sweating and he would spend the next few days in a complete stupor sat in front of the TV with untouched mugs of tea littered around him. Some part of him knew that this was going to happen, and yet there was nothing he could do to stop it. John Watson, the man who felt so strong and powerful when he was tending wounds on a battlefield or helping Sherlock close in on a killer, was rendered powerless by a mere dream.

Oh, but it wasn't just a dream.

Screaming, shouting, gunfire. None of this bothered him. All it did was heighten his senses and alertness – it was like Sherlock had said from the moment that they'd met; John thrived in situations like these. Give him a hint of danger or the thrill of living on borrowed time and he was most certainly in his element, even if he wasdreaming. No, it wasn't the carnage around him that made this dream so horrific, it was the body – the person – lying in front of him.

Sherlock.

It wasn't always Sherlock. Sometimes it was Harry, when he had been going out with Sarah she'd featured in the dream a couple of times and once Mrs. Hudson had made a strangely disturbing appearance. Nonetheless, each time John found himself dreaming this he knew that, inevitably, he would find a body stretched out on the dusty ground in front of him. He knew that their blood would be staining the dirt beneath them. Now, as he collapsed by Sherlock's spread-eagled body John's trembling fingers reached out and traced the ragged hole in the detective's ruined suit. One part of his brain that had never forgotten the all important training was screaming at him, telling him that this was a battlefield, that there had to be a tent or a place of safety nearby that he could take the patient to. But all that John could do was bend over Sherlock's torso and try to fight the familiar sobs rising in his chest.

"Always in danger, weren't you?" he murmured brokenly, forgetting that he himself was in just as much danger as Sherlock had been only a few minutes ago, judging by the warmth of the body and the amount of blood. "Always thinking, but not always about what would happen to you. God, Sherlock, why couldn't you have taken your goddamn blinkers off and thought for a second, huh?"

When he had been in Afghanistan, John had known most of the soldiers surrounding him. Whenever he had been needed, there was always a slight pain in his chest at the sight of someone he knew gasping for air and begging for her – a pain that went away as soon as he began to help. But had he ever really cared about any of them? Of course he cared that someone was hurt, but his immediate thoughts had always been practical: what had happened, what was wrong, what could he do? In the dream it was different. It was people he truly knew and cared about – even when Harry was at her worst it shattered him to see blood trickling out of a gunshot wound in her forehead.

"Hey!" Startled, John looked up from Sherlock's body and found himself staring at a gun. No matter how many times he had to live through this, it still shocked him. The speaker was American, and when John moved his head slightly he could see that the soldier was young, or at least looked it. Once he had seen John's face, the soldier's expression changed to one of bemusement. "I don't know who you are or what you're doing in the middle of this, but unless you got uniform on under those clothes I gotta get you outta here." he said, lowering his gun and tugging at John's sleeve urgently.

Resisting, John tried to prise the soldier's fingers away. Couldn't he see that he was busy? Couldn't he see the body lying at his feet? Did he expect that John would just get up and leave Sherlock lying here alone?

"No." John said as loudly as possible. His hand that wasn't trapped by the soldier's grip rested on his friend's shoulder. "I won't leave him here!" The hand on his arm held tighter and began to pull him away from his friend.

"Oh, for Christ's sake." The soldier grunted and began to haul John away with both hands. Once, maybe, John would have been able to do more than resist – but now, he was unable to do anything but shout out Sherlock's name again and again until his voice cracked. Heels dragging and gouging out ugly lines in the ground, he closed his eyes. John was still chanting out Sherlock's name as the sounds around him faded and the tight grip on his arms loosened to nothing.

"Sher –" John clapped a hand over his mouth as he jerked upright and opened his eyes immediately. He wasn't particularly worried about waking Sherlock up – after all, how many times had he been awoken when his insomniac flatmate decided that 4 am was a perfect time to begin experimenting how playing a violin affected the running pattern of a common hamster on a wheel. (What Sherlock had done with the hamster after John had stormed out of his room threatening to force-feed Sherlock the hamster, the hamster cage and his violin unless he packed it in and at least pretended to be normal until 7am.) No, he wasn't worried about waking Sherlock per-say – it was more like he didn't want Sherlock to hear his name being shouted and take it as an invitation to come into John's room. The dream made John feel more vulnerable than ever, and Sherlock wasn't exactly the best person to comfort a terrified, sleep-deprived ex-army doctor, despite the length of time that they'd been flatmates. Groaning, John flopped back onto his bed and desperately tried to close his eyes and get back to sleep, hoping that this time would be different from the others – that maybe he'd be able to get up the next morning and act like a fully-functioning human being.

Of course, no such luck.

"Why didn't you sleep?" John started and turned at the sound of Sherlock's voice from the kitchen. Despite himself, he couldn't help the spark of relief he felt at seeing his flatmate alive – since the dream there had been a small knot of worry twisting away inside his chest.

"A dream," he said shortly, wondering if Sherlock would pick up the hint and hopefully leave him alone. Or that, more likely, Sherlock would display his classic indifference and assume that he'd performed the necessary morning interaction.

Sherlock studied him for a moment and then nodded almost imperceptibly. "You dreamed about me," he said, casually walking into the room and folding himself into his armchair. John watched him with wide eyes.

"What? No! I – Sherlock, you can't possibly know that. It's not something you just pick up on." If anything was going to rouse John from the stupor he was already settling into, it was plain old embarrassment. He could already feel the tips of his ears reddening and wished that he'd stayed in bed staring at the ceiling for a while longer.

"Of course I can. You were startled by my voice, obviously, but when you saw me you looked both a little relieved and anxious. Despite this, you haven't pointed out the fact that I have made myself tea using your mug, or that everything I'm wearing today is green (an unfortunate mistake). There are plenty of other details that you not only didn't mention, but you failed to notice. In some situations I would be inclined to think that you noticed but didn't want to talk and therefore said nothing, but I believe you haven't looked at me closely enough since my initial greeting, even though you looked, I believe, happy to see me. The likelihood is that you're embarrassed about something. What could embarrass you between now and last night, as the last time I saw you, you were going to bed? Obviously, you dreamt about me."

"I –" John hesitated and looked down briefly as he suddenly saw a vision of Sherlock sprawled in the middle of a warzone. "Yeah." he finished lamely, sighing through his nose and still not looking at Sherlock. His hand was clenching the arm of his chair and he wanted nothing more than to be left alone to try and rid himself of the dream that was still invading his thoughts.

Sherlock cleared his throat. "John, if –"

"I'm fine, Sherlock. Fine. Now you can stay here if you want, but I'm about to put on Friends or America's Next Top Model and continue watching shows like that for a very long time." Before Sherlock could speak John held up his hand. "And you're not allowed to say anything whilst I watch." He heard Sherlock's chair creak as the detective sighed and stood up.

"I was going out anyway."

As the door slammed, John reached for the remote and turned the television on; fighting the urge to run after Sherlock and check that there weren't any bullets in his body.