Title: Light/Dark

Words: 747

Spoilers: A Study in Pink only

TW: Drug use, blood, mentioned nudity

Posted on Tumblr for a Johnlock Exchange challenge. ageofzero . tumblr post/ 36947998347/ too-fucking-lazy-to-type-right-now-but-yeah-i

When he takes drugs (the kind that make life interesting and dangerous), Sherlock manages to dream. Most of it is colour and insanity, to combat the strict order from his memories that he tries to escape. The order that shapes like Mycroft and colours a dull orange. His mind is chaos, rage and stircrazy and restless. As such, he moves deeper in his dreams, past memory and colour. The deeper he goes (the more drug he intakes), the closer he gets to the darkness. That would be fine with him. The darkness is something interesting and new and he can't see to the bottom of it. It just begs to be explored.

That would be fine, but he never reaches that point. A bright, quite blinding light takes hold of him. The light smells of blood, a lot of blood. His eyes are always blind to the light, but he can feel it on his face, gripping by the wrist and pulling him from the darkness. He usually wakes up as he's pulled away. He wakes up with the last tendrils of his high fading away, but never wakes up in darkness.

One day, he intentionally overdoses. The darkness meets him and tries to swallow him the moment his eyes close in reality, and the darkness swallows his eyes first in the dream. But again, the light grabs him by the arm and pulls. Its other hand brushes lightly on his cheek, and clears his sight. It pulls him away, back into colour, and they stand on even ground, finally. They stand on something, and Sherlock finally gets to look at the light as its intensity fades and takes the shape of a man. At least, the shape is masculine; the light doesn't come with genitals, so he decides that gender doesn't honestly matter much in the dream. The blood comes from a wound in his shoulder, that looks suspiciously like a bullet wound. Sherlock looks further down, and sees one leg is marked up oddly. He supposes they're supposed to look like scars, but they have no texture to them, and they're smudged oddly. He doesn't have the mental capacity to figure out what it means, but then, he gets distracted by the fact that the light is talking to him in a warm voice.

"You're supposed to wake up." The light says, worried. "What did you do?"

"Overdosed, most likely." Sherlock replies. His voice feels distorted as he realises that he's still there because his body cannot wake up. "What's your name?"

"What's yours?" The light asks in return.

"You've been rescuing me, so you think. You should know my name."

"I don't, though. Don't need to know someone's name to want to help them. Besides, I'm not exactly sure of mine. Everything's hazy, here." He smiles up at Sherlock.

"You're bleeding."

"Yeah, every time." They both look at his wounded shoulder, and watch for a few seconds as it bleeds slowly. Sherlock is intrigued, but the light was resigned. "Doesn't hurt."

"Are you an angel?"

"Do you believe in angels?"

"No."

"Then I'm obviously not an angel." His smile brightens up the space around them, and Sherlock can see colours clearer than he could before. But when he looks again, the smile is a sad one. "You won't remember me, or this."

"Nonsense." Sherlock manages a scoff at the thought.

"You won't. I know. Don't you dare overdose again."

"I won't remember, how will your warning stick?" Sherlock looks down at his saviour, and the light leans up to kiss him softly.

Sherlock wakes with the ghost impression of a kiss and his brother glaring at him. He's been moved to a hospital, and the fluorescent light above is blinding. He turns to glare at his brother in return, and the dream fades away as they argue. Sherlock never overdoses again.

—

John Watson is a soldier, returned from Afghanistan, with a brother who has a drinking problem, a psychosomatic limp, a doctor trained at Bart's, and quite possibly a potential flatmate. Sherlock sees all of this, easily. None of that really makes him aware of the fact that he wants to smile and wink as he rushes out of the lab to do what he does best.

But then, he doesn't remember that the light had John's face. He doesn't remember that, until a gun is fired and the man who fired it is standing unobtrusively behind a police line looking for him.