John was in the middle of a rather pleasant dream, and there was something tickling his face. He snorted a bit and flailed a hand towards the offending thing, and if he had been more awake, he might have been more worried about the childish prank that sometimes cropped up during his time in the army, where you squirt shaving cream in your victim's hand and then tickle their face. As it was, he was only concerned with burrowing back down into the dream, where there were hands and lips and a tongue and it was just...very...pleasant.
The tickling thing stopped for a moment, but then returned. This time, the dream dissipated completely and John dragged his eyelids open. He found himself staring directly into a familiar pair of eyes. John swore a bit under his breath, mostly because he was startled. The tickling thing was Sherlock's long index finger ghosting trails along his skin: right now he was caressing the spot between his eyebrows.
It had been months since Sherlock's return, and John was already mostly used to sharing a space with him again. He seldom had nightmares related to that day anymore, and he didn't jump or shout anymore when he opened the microwave and found himself staring at a body part—or the charred remains of one. On occasion, when he woke up to an empty bed, he felt a cold panic spread through him, starting with his stomach and moving outwards into his limbs, but so far every time, he'd found Sherlock in the kitchen or the living room or looking out the window.
Rarely did he find the man stretched out on top of him, watching him with a secret smile.
"What're you doing?" he asked groggily, trying a second time to bat Sherlock's hand away. "'m asleep."
"No you're not." Sherlock's voice was, of course, deep and measured and not froggy in the least. "You don't talk in your sleep."
John did his best to ignore him and turn onto his side. Under his careful (okay, nagging) supervision, Sherlock had been gaining back most of the weight that he had lost when he "died", but he still wasn't "normal" again. It didn't take much effort from John to push him off onto another side of the bed. Didn't do much for his finger, though: it simply moved to trace the curve of the outside of his ear.
"Sherlock, I'm tired. It's Christmas morning and all I want to do is enjoy my day off and right now that means sleeping. Can't you go experiment on a half-decaying liver for a few more hours?"
"You're terribly whiny early in the morning," Sherlock teased. John would have rolled his eyes, if he weren't clenching them shut against the harsh overhead light. He heard his partner draw in a breath, and then shift behind him. "John, I mean it. Everyone's coming over in two hours and we haven't gotten anything done yet."
"You mean I haven't gotten anything done yet." It had been Mrs. Hudson's idea for everyone to have Christmas breakfast together, but somehow John and Sherlock had been the ones wrangled into preparing everything. Remembering Sherlock's attempts at a decent cup of tea, John had, of course, stepped in and volunteered to do the cooking.
"I'll help. Just tell me what you want to do." Sherlock said, and tugged gently on John's ear. He groaned. It was strange that Sherlock was so willing to partake in such an event, but John didn't want to argue or draw too much attention to it. If he started talking too much about what had happened while he was gone, Sherlock slipped into a stormy, volatile mood and often stalked out of the flat for hours on end. John definitely preferred this side of him. He turned back onto his back with a long-suffering sigh and looked at the other man. His dark hair had finally grown out of the awful buzz-cut he'd worn it in while he was...doing whatever needed to be done for three years, and the fourth thing that John had done when Sherlock announced that he was back for good, honest (after kissing Sherlock senseless, then trying to retreat to his room in humiliation and shock that he'd done such a thing, then breaking down into a fit of incoherent giggles when Sherlock returned the favor), was make him shave the awful patchy beard that once sat like a stain on his distinctive jawline. Except for the new marks and scars, and the slightest disfigurement of a broken nose that had healed badly, he looked much like his old self, and John had always been rubbish at denying the old Sherlock much of anything, let alone now.
"First," John said as he struggled to sit up in bed. "I am going to get started on the breakfast and you will be in charge of making sure there are no human remains on the table or crime scene photographs in the sitting room."
"I don't see why. Everyone already knows what this place looks like most of the time." Sherlock's voice was beginning to grow dark, and John could only grin at him. He leaned over to press a kiss to his lips.
"We're pretending that they don't, okay? Besides, you're the one who woke me up to get ready. If you don't actually want to help, I'll just go back to sleep..."
Sherlock mumbled something that John didn't quite catch, but rolled out of the bed. John followed suit, and slipped into the bathroom. A quick shower and a shave and he would be ready to start the day.
Sherlock had just begun to mope around the kitchen when someone came knocking on the door, so John shooed him to go answer it. After a moment, Mrs. Hudson floated into the kitchen, carrying a tray laden with a wide array of her homemade biscuits. John greeted her warmly and directed her to place them on the table, and couldn't help noticing the way she kept making little excuses to touch Sherlock. When she thought he wasn't looking, she looked at him with such adoration (and perhaps no small quantity of disbelief) that John had to smile every time he caught her. He remembered with a pang the letters they'd exchanged after he moved across town, how they grew shorter and shorter until finally it seemed like they weren't arriving at all. He'd hated to think of her in that big empty building, but he also didn't like hearing about the tiny, cramped place she wound up sharing with her sister and her brother-in-law.
When Sherlock and John went to visit her after his return, she had looked pale and drawn, worse even than the time she was captured by the Americans. When he first saw her, he seriously reconsidered allowing her to see Sherlock—he was afraid that she would have a heart attack—but quite the opposite happened. At first, she had been angry, and had drawn herself up taller than ever and gone off on such a shouting trip than even John, who had stared down drill sergeants and terrorists alike, had felt like hiding. Sitting next to him on the horrible flowered couch, he'd felt Sherlock begin to cringe, then slump and, caught up in his desire to protect the man and thus keep him from fleeing, John slipped his hand behind him to rest just at the small of his back. His thumb moved gently, in a way that he hoped was comforting, and after a moment or two, Sherlock seemed to relax against him a bit. At some point, Mrs. Hudson saw what was happening and calmed down, switching into Mother Hen mode and tutting at Sherlock about his drawn cheekbones and dull skin. John was certain that her homemade biscuits played no small role in Sherlock's healthier weight.
He could hear them in the next room—Mrs. Hudson fussing about something or other and Sherlock saying nothing at all. He could picture exactly how the other man would look, probably standing near the window while their landlady fiddled with the ornaments they'd filled the tree with (mostly cheap plastic junk from the sales bins and pound shops that began to shed their glitter the instant they were unpackaged). It felt good. It felt...normal.
Well, as normal as he could expect things to get while dating Sherlock Holmes.