Hey. Not much of a story here - more feeling-out the characters than anything - but I thought maybe someone would like it, or at least give me some feedback.
Watson doesn't scream.
When he falls asleep he's out cold, a log, dead to the world. He doesn't get restless until the early morning, most times. He starts out shifting in his sleep - a turn to the side, a furrowed brow, his hand ghosting across his body, unknowingly, to rest on the opposite shoulder.
The restlessness mounts slowly, quietly building on itself until John flinches onces, away from something that isn't there, and that's it. After that there are no holds barred, except that Sherlock has never heard him make a sound.
Usually he wakes up right away, some self-conserving part of his mind throwing him upright before the dream gets any further. Sometimes John gets as far as thrashing, sometimes he'll knock something off the bedstand before his night-time hallucinations will let him go, and sometimes he literally has to shake himself awake before he's free.
He gasps then, in the freedom of the real world; his dreams, if no less vivid, are at least correctly identified as imagination or memory.
And he shakes. John doesn't get up until he's controlled his breathing, forces himself to sit or lie still, taking breaths so deep they shudder through him, until he's instilled the beginnings of calm.
He tries to wait until the shaking isn't obvious before coming downstairs, Sherlock knows, or until he has regained some of his already slight facial color.
Sherlock can't always hear what's going on in John's bedroom - at least not when he's not paying attention - but the signs of a nightmare are so painfully obvious he doesn't have to.
"You're up early," he'll say, with a glance at his flatmate that lasts only long enough to diagnose, and not long enough that John will realize it. The doctor wants to think he's retaining some semblance of emotional privacy, and Sherlock lets him, even if he doesn't know why.
It's closer to five-thirty than quarter of six when John comes down the stairs with a too-even step. He's already dressed, and his hands are in his pockets. Sherlock wonders if he should point out that trying to hide his emotional state only makes it more obvious (not that it needs to be), but he doesn't. This isn't a conversation they've had, because it isn't one that John wants, and Sherlock has left it alone.
The nightmares don't interfere with John's mediocre abilities as a Consulting Detective's assistant, so the fact that a part of Sherlock wants to tell his flatmate that he's forgotten to uncrease his brow is entirely illogical.
"You're up early," he says without inflection, letting his gaze sit for two moments too long, before shifting it back to his book.
"Right," John says, clearing his throat when his voice catches with sleep. He looks at Sherlock as Sherlock looked at him, then shakes his head and turns to the kitchen. "Do you want tea, then?"
That's all. What do you think? Accurate/inaccurate/probably I should just leave now and not come back? Write me a couple words if you have time.