John woke with an arm around his chest. A very masculine arm. He followed the line of the arm with his eyes up to the shoulder where it was connected, then looked at the face the shoulder belonged to. What he found was a softly snoring Sherlock.
The doctor frowned. He didn't feel like he had a hangover and he certainly didn't feel like he had a gap in his memory, but he had no idea what Sherlock was doing in his bed or how he had got there. Not that it was an entirely bad thing, it was just unexpected. He reached down with his left hand, trying not to disturb the detective and checked that he still had his pants on. He did, which was a good thing, because if they had shagged and he didn't remember it, he would have been furious.
With a snuffle, the detective shifted, stretched and opened his eyes. He immediately jerked away from John and sat up, facing away from him, one leg hanging off the bed. "I apologise. I didn't intend to fall asleep on your bed."
"That's... fine, but why were you in here at all?" John asked, trying to make his tone light. "Some experiment, I imagine."
Sherlock shook his head, then looked down at the floor, his leg swinging like a child's. After a long, painful silence, he turned to look at his friend. "I never appreciated the power of dreams, not the ones like you have." The detective looked back at the floor. "Not until I went away."
The silence this time was so fragile that John found himself holding his breath. He needed to hear what his friend had to say if Sherlock needed to say it, but he dreaded it nonetheless.
"There's this dream. The first time I had it, I was cold and hungry and had narrowly missed capture. In it, I came home and I went to find you. When you saw me, you smiled. You were so glad I wasn't dead. Before either of us could speak, an assassin I had missed put a bullet in your brain. It hit you right between the eyes." Sherlock stopped talking and glanced at his friend.
John was tempted to speak, but sensed there was more to come, so kept silent.
"I had that dream nearly every night whilst I was away. I thought it was gone forever, but..." Sherlock sighed and looked at the doctor. "Last night, when I woke from it, I had to see you. I needed to know that you were safe. Breathing. Alive. Foolish, I know."
Sherlock sounded so ashamed and John wouldn't have that. "No. It's not foolish. It's human." He reached out and grasped Sherlock's arm. "It's okay. Anytime you need to see me, don't worry about waking me up. Just do it. If you need to stay... that's okay too." He hesitated before continuing, "If you think it would help, you could just sleep with me. Maybe it would keep the nightmares away. If it didn't," the doctor shrugged, "I would be right here when you woke up." It would test John's restraint, having Sherlock share his bed, but if it would help his friend, who was he not to offer?
The detective's expression was one of rare vulnerability. "You would let me do that?"
"Sherlock, you can have anything you need from me, anything you want. It's yours for the taking. Come here." John tugged on Sherlock's arm and the detective let himself be pulled back into the bed to lay next to his friend. "You can have this."
The detective rolled over so he could wrap his arm around John. It felt good being here next to him. Sherlock thought he could be content with this forever. Then again, maybe when he didn't feel so broken, maybe he'd want more. He'd have to wait and see. For now, he was grateful to have a place of safety with John.