It was just short of a month. Just short of a month of living with Sherlock Holmes, and already John trusted the detective with his life. He had never planned on telling anyone, but he loved the thrill that came with accompanying Sherlock.
After saying goodnight, John curled up in bed for what he thought would be a normal night's sleep. The hours of darkness seemed to be going well.
At about eleven, the thunderstorm struck. It was so close it shook the little flat; the noise deafening.
John tried ignoring it, but he hated not knowing when the next flash of light would intrude through the windows; when the next boom of thunder would resonate through the house. It was too loud, too violating. And it brought him back more forcefully than any nightmare ever would. Back to the war.
The lightning became the flashes of incendiary; the thunder became grenades and shrapnel and lives that couldn't be saved.
John buried his face in his pillow and felt tears squeeze out of his tightly-shut eyes. His heart was pounding and unreasonable but overpowering fear surged through him.
The storm got louder and brighter, moving closer. It must have been hanging right over the flat.
At last, John couldn't take it any more. He got up and stumbled, hands over his ears, to Sherlock's room. He'd never been inside it before, and he wasn't sure how Sherlock would react, but it seemed like the only choice he had. He knocked.
Of course, the sound was drowned out.
John tentatively opened the door. "Sherlock?"
The consulting detective was laying on his bed, hands resting on his lips as if he were praying. "Ah. John."
"Uh, I…" Now that he was actually in the room, John had no idea how to phrase what he'd wanted to say. "I…"
"You what?" asked Sherlock calmly.
John took a deep breath. "I'mafraidofthunder."
"Could you repeat that?" asked Sherlock, raising his eyebrows.
"I'm kind of maybe afraid. Of thunder." John hung his head. "I'm an idiot."
Sherlock sat up. "It makes perfect sense, really. It sounds like artillery and explosives, doesn't it?"
Hearing it coming from someone else was too much. It was too real. Crying again, John nodded, wiping away tears with the heel of his hand. "C-can I stay with you? Just until it's o-over?"
Sherlock looked taken aback. He obviously didn't know how to respond. "I… I suppose so." Looking back on that night, he didn't know why he let John stay. He figured it was a mixture of understanding the connection between the storm and the war, then looking at John and knowing that he experienced that fear a hundred fold. He felt a sudden urge to protect John, who was just a little doctor, standing in the doorway hugging himself in his too-big pyjamas that were slipping off one shoulder.
"Thanks, 'Lock," John said sleepily, already beginning to doze off. He trotted over to Sherlock's bed and plopped himself down, not wanting to get under the blankets just in case it disrupted the consulting detective, who was sitting on top of them. He contented himself by curling up, and was soon fast asleep.
Sherlock sat, awake. 'Lock… The nickname floated around his head. No one had called him a nickname. He wasn't sure he'd even ever wanted one, until it came from John. He looked down at the little doctor, just sleeping peacefully.
A surge of love swelled up in Sherlock, and he didn't know what to do. It was all new and confusing. But whenever a rumble of thunder interrupted the night and sent a shiver through John's sleeping body, Sherlock would run his hand through the unusually unruly hair of his blogger and everything would be alright again.
His hand resting in John's soft hair, Sherlock sighed. I, he thought, could get used to living like this.