Sherlock ran down the hall and crouched inside a doorway hiding from his pursuers. Gunshots rang out all around him. Where is John? In all the commotion Sherlock had lost him. He was trying to make out exactly what had happened; it had all happened so quickly. Sherlock had had such a clear idea of how the night was going to play out but it had not gone that way at all. He was certain the suspect was acting alone but he had backup, backup that Sherlock and John weren't prepared for. Sherlock assumed that John would be just fine. John had the gun. Sherlock, however, did not.
Sherlock and John had been investigating a particularly dangerous murder case. John had practically smiled when Sherlock had told him it could be dangerous and that John should bring his gun. Sherlock and John had tracked the suspect to an abandoned warehouse where Sherlock was sure they could capture him long before Lestrade and his men could manage to make an appearance. But the suspect had caught on and had been prepared for them. When Sherlock and John had realized what had happened they separated in attempt to confuse the attackers. But that was quite a while ago and Sherlock had yet to see John. He actually took it as an assurance that he continued to hear gunshots in the distance; if John had been hit there would be no more.
He wasn't entirely sure he had lost the enemy but the gunshots seemed to be more distant. Sherlock snuck a look around the corner. Down the hall he saw John. John spotted him too "Sherlock!" and started running towards him. Sherlock felt the shot before he even heard it or saw it. The impact hit him heavily in the arm and he staggered to the ground just a few feet from John. Blood ran down his arm and he gripped it with his other arm and ducked back in the door way.
John's mouth dropped open in alarm for a second before he snapped back. He lifted his gun and searched for the attacker but he was already gone. Instead of pursuing him like Sherlock would have wanted him to, John ran to his side instead. "Sherlock are you alright?"
"I'm fine, its not a serious wound," and it wasn't. The bullet had landed in Sherlock's arm but he could tell it was superficial. John ripped Sherlock's shirt a bit to get a better look at it but he could not conceal the look of horror on his face.
"You're not fine! You've been shot," John was practically screaming and seemed frozen in place. He was starting to lose it.
"Please John, get a grip on yourself." He'd never seen John like this. He knew John was upset but he couldn't become unglued right now. John always was extremely steady in high pressure situations. He liked them even. He never panicked but he was very close to it now.
Sherlock heard the cop cars outside and was glad for it. Everything about this night was going wrong and he couldn't wait for it to be over.
Sherlock and John returned home several hours later, with Sherlock sporting a newly stitched and bandaged arm. It'd been superficial as he had assumed and he hardly thought it warranted a trip to the A&E but John had been so insistent that Sherlock hadn't wanted to argue with him. When Sherlock had started to protest John had looked at him and spoke with such intensity Sherlock had been caught off guard. "Can't you just take care of yourself for once, Sherlock?" The way he looked at Sherlock and the tone in his voice said that he was mad. Sherlock had to admit that the evening was a distressing one but could John really be mad at him? It certainly hadn't been Sherlock's intention to get them into such a situation.
Whatever John was thinking, Sherlock had agreed to treatment and had suffered hours waiting in the A&E with the masses, which he hated. John, who should have been happy since he was getting what he wanted, said barely a word the entire time. He'd hardly even looked at Sherlock. Sherlock had only been living with John for a few months but he knew that both of these things were very unusual. Usually John hovered constantly. He was always nagging Sherlock to take of himself, always trying to get him to eat and sleep and other tedious things. He thought that John would have had lots to say about a gunshot wound but he didn't.
Sherlock hadn't felt the need to fill the silence so they waited in silence, only broken by the doctors and other medical professionals as they'd x-rayed, stitched and bandaged his arm. The bullet had just grazed the outside of his arm, missing the bone, and it wasn't very deep, so it had been easy to remove. They'd given Sherlock some medicine and sent him and John home. Again, he would have thought John would have been happy or at least relived but John was still clearly upset. Even on the way home when things should have felt lighter, John sat in silence.
Sherlock could tell he was mad. Sherlock wasn't sure he deserved it but at he could at least understand it. Sherlock hated making mistakes and he had made a very large mistake on this case one that had ended up in the shoot off they had experienced early that evening. Sherlock could understand that John might be mad at him for landing them in such a dangerous situation; he was so emotional at times. But Sherlock hardly thought he deserved the cold shoulder. Sherlock hated mistakes more than anyone; he didn't need someone reminding him that he'd made one.
But Sherlock decided that if John was going to get mad and stew over it then he could go right ahead and do it. If John wasn't going to bring it up Sherlock surely wasn't. John was the one that always wanted to talk about feelings and if he didn't want to talk now Sherlock surely didn't want to. When they got to the flat Sherlock went straight to the kitchen and made some tea. His arm, which hadn't hurt in the heat of the moment, was starting to feel the pain as the excitement of the night was wearing off. He really just wanted to relax and try to figure out how he had made the error on this case. He didn't particularly want to talk to John but he thought it would be obviously rude to not even offer, so he asked "Any tea for you?"
John was just standing in the middle of the living room just looking off into the distance. Sherlock wasn't sure that John was going to respond at first but after a minute of silence he did though he still didn't look at Sherlock when he did. "No. I'm going to bed."
Sherlock watched as John walked slowly toward the stairs up to his room. Sherlock was having a hard time making sense of John's behavior. He and John had been in a number of compromising situations already in the few months they'd been working together and he'd never seen John act this way. Granted, none of them had been quite this bad but he had never seen John react this way to danger. From the moment they met he knew that John thrived on danger. But what he saw tonight was fear.
The anger was clearly written all over. His face was flushed and he wore an almost constant frown. That, coupled with his clenched fists and the tone of voice he'd used with Sherlock clearly indicated that he was angry. Anyone could have made such an obvious deduction. But the fear was a little harder to see and most people would have missed it. His eyes showed fear. When his hands weren't clenched they shook a little. While they waited in the A&E his leg had shook up and down intermittently which showed he was anxious.
Sherlock made his tea and filled a cup with it. He took it and sat down in his chair by the fireplace. So much was wrong about this evening. His mistake on the case was very troubling but he also had to admit to himself that John's behavior was equally troubling. John had gotten angry plenty of times but it was over minor things like not going to the grocery store or taking the trash out. But never over something that had involved Sherlock's work. And Sherlock didn't like the feel of it.
Sherlock sipped his tea slowly and sank deep into thought.
Sometime later, Sherlock was deep inside of his mind when horrible screams jarred him back to reality. Given the line of work he was in, he couldn't say that he had never heard such screams. But when he thought about the situations that had elicited such screams bad things came to mind. A person only made sounds like that when they were in terrible danger or pain. And these screams were coming from a grown man. That was even worse. But not just any man. These screams were coming from John.
Sherlock's feet were on the floor and running before his mind could even finish the thought. John was screaming in absolute terror at the top of his lungs. How long had he been like that and Sherlock had missed it? He mentally chastised himself for going so deeply inside his mind.
Sherlock was at John's door in a matter of seconds prepared for a fight. But he was not prepared for what he actually found there. He threw open the door to find John thrashing wildly about in his bed. His bedside lamp was on, which Sherlock thought was odd given John was asleep, and it cast haunting shadows on John's face. John was having a horrible nightmare. He twisted his body back and forth and tore at the sheets. He continued to scream. Sherlock was frozen for a second as he watched John's terror. He knew that John use to have nightmares but he had never witnessed one himself.
Sherlock ran to the bed and put his hands on John's shoulders. It was hard to keep hold of him but he tried to shake him. "John! John, wake up!" He screamed to be heard over John, anything to wake him up, but John did not hear him. If anything it appeared to make things worse. John acted as if he were being attacked. He bolted upright in bed and grabbed Sherlock's hands and tore at them. He went from screaming in general to screaming "No!" over and over and over again.
Sherlock dropped his hands immediately but not before John had managed to leave some really nasty scratches on his hands. Sherlock hovered over John "John! Its Sherlock! Its me, Sherlock! Wake up!" he said it over and over again but John did not hear him. He hesitated to touch him again since he did not want to make things worse.
Sherlock didn't know what to do. John remained sitting up in bed and continued to scream. This did not appear to be a just night mare. John's actions were too intense to be a nightmare and Sherlock should have been able to awaken him if it were a night mare.
Suddenly, the events of the night began to piece together. Post traumatic stress, yes, that had to be it. Of course, he should have noticed the signs at once. Their dangerous encounter earlier in the evening had brought memories of the war back to John. Sherlock felt bad that he had made the wrong assumptions. He just had not thought that John had suffered from the condition.
Sherlock stood nervously by the bed. What did someone do when someone was having a nightmare? He'd tried to wake up John; that's what you were supposed to do right? But it hadn't worked. What did you do then? Sherlock didn't even dream. Dreaming was something that normal people's minds did with all the excess and poorly organized information that they filled their heads with. He had no experience with nightmares himself and he had never been around someone who suffered them.
Think, Sherlock, think. Blunt force had not worked. Sherlock searched his mind, his memories, books he'd read, things people had said, for a clue as to what might help John. Oh. A distant memory came to mind. That was it. People often comforted someone who was having a nightmare. Nightmares caused strong emotional responses in those who suffered from them such as an overwhelming sense of anxiety and terror, so it was appropriate to comfort them in some way. But how could Sherlock comfort John?
Sherlock wasn't good at comforting. It just wasn't something that he did and he was torn about what he should do for John. At that moment, almost as if he could hear Sherlock's thoughts, John cried out "Help me! No! Someone help me."
That was all. Sherlock put aside his own feelings and sat on the bed beside John. He grabbed him, rather forcibly since there was no other way to grab someone who was thrashing about like John was, and held him close. John continued to thrash around for a few moments more, unaware of where he was or what was really going on, trapped in a dark world that Sherlock could not see. But Sherlock held him close and eventually his struggling got weaker and weaker. He whipped his head back and forth and Sherlock took one of his arms and pulled John's head close to his chest, against his heart.
After a while, the screaming stopped replaced with a most pitiful sounding whimpering. John was suddenly gasping for air, his body catching up to all the screaming he had been doing. Now that he wasn't struggling so much Sherlock could loosen his grip a little so it was less like he was binding John down. He kept one hand on John's head holding it to his chest and the other on his back rubbing back and forth. John grabbed at Sherlock's shirt and held a fist full of it in his hand. He felt John gasping for a while but he eventually could tell the by the rhythm of his breaths that he had fallen into a normal sleep though his grip remained tight on Sherlock's shirt.
Sherlock was relived that John had finally found his way out of whatever terrifying dream had taken hold of him. He had to admit it troubled him to see John this way. John had been so out of it that he hadn't even awoken or became aware of where he really was. Sherlock wasn't familiar with nightmares but he was pretty sure that wasn't normal. He didn't like seeing John's mind being held hostage by fear
He was also glad that he had been able to find a way to make John calm down. It felt very strange to be in John's bed holding him close to his chest like this but Sherlock had had no other idea what to do. Besides, it had worked and that's really all he cared about. Hopefully, John would awake and make a joke about it and they could have a good laugh and forget that this night had happened.
Sherlock thought about getting up now that John was a sleep. His heart rate had finally slowed down as had his breathing and he was limp against Sherlock. But Sherlock was afraid to move because he really didn't want to disturb John and possibly upset his sleep again. He reached over and turned the light off before laying himself and John down. He hoped that this would be the last of it. He still heard John's screams ringing in his ears and he hoped that it was something he never had to hear again. Just the memory of them was enough to unsettle him. But something told him that this was only the beginning of dark and long night.
Any guesses as to what's going on in John's head? Please read and review-my stories feel lonely without it.