He pressed his face into dream-Sherlock's neck, breathing in his warmth and scent. He ran his fingers through the soft curls, distantly noting that they were never any longer or shorter, frozen in time. He didn't care. Those kinds of details bothered him only when he was awake, in retrospect. In the grim light of morning he would flagellate himself with these small observations, but in the hazy delirious dreamspace they didn't matter at all. The only thing that mattered was that when he traced his fingers through the curls, tugging a little, Sherlock sighed in pleasure and nuzzled into the top of his head in return.
He took in a deep shuddering breath, and then let it out along with the question he had been holding inside him since the day he met Sherlock.
"Why me?" he asked. "I'm so...ordinary." He felt a flush of shame creep up his neck. He hadn't meant to expose himself so much.
Sherlock breathed deeply, and John thought at first that he wouldn't answer. What could he say, after all? His voice, when it came, was a surprise — the deep rich baritone purring around John, soothing the raw edges of his nerves.
"Never ordinary, John. How could you think that?" The deep voice resonated with gentle reproof. "You have always been different from the rest. Surprising. Confounding." Sherlock paused, and placed a kiss on the crown of John's head that sent pleasure rippling down his spine. "Extraordinary," Sherlock breathed into his hair. "My John."
John pressed his face deeper into Sherlock's neck, joy bursting from his heart and radiating out toward his fingertips.
As usual, he mocked himself brutally for it the next day. He lay in the tangle of sweat-sour sheets, the taste of stale whiskey and self-loathing bitter on his tongue. How pathetic was he, how irreparably broken, that this was his idea of a relationship? His own subconscious, putting words of affection and reassurance in the mouth of a phantom.
There was no good end to this. The only question was in exactly which way it would all go to hell, and yet...
Extraordinary. My John.
Now that the first flush of shame and self-recrimination was fading, John felt an echo of the joy that had washed over him at the words. And he already knew that next Friday he would do it again.
John opened his eyes, the familiar blissful haze thrumming through him as he saw Sherlock standing in the doorway. He absently noted that his lucid dreaming was becoming even more vivid - everything seemed a little bit sharper, a little bit more clear. Even Sherlock looked a bit different — his hair shorter, his face thinner.
John opened his arms in welcome, as usual. "Come here then, love."
Mild surprise penetrated his floaty, comfortable haze as Sherlock seemed to linger in the doorway. That was new. Sherlock suddenly bounded forward, falling to his knees beside the bed.
"John...I —" he started, the words stopping with a stammer as John's hand came up to cup his cheek, thumb tracing the sharp cheekbone soothingly.
"S'allright," John slurred. Sherlock looked worried, and that wasn't right. He reached down, pulling at Sherlock's collar, and then his sleeve, until Sherlock was up on the bed next to him. That was better. This was how things were supposed to be.
John buried his face into Sherlock's neck. It was cooler than it usually was, slightly rain-dampened, but the scent was even more vivid than usual. John breathed it in for a just a moment before feeling Sherlock jerk back in — surprise? alarm?
"John..." Sherlock started again. John distantly noted that Sherlock was shaking, a fine tremor throughout his body. How odd. Almost like Sherlock was scared. Maybe his subconscious was twisting things again. It made sense now that he thought of it. Sherlock had always reassured John in these dreams. Now his subconscious wanted to be the one doing the reassuring. Well, fair enough, he could do that.
He pulled Sherlock closer, tangling their bodies together in the familiar way, rubbing his back and murmuring into the skin of his collarbone.
"It's okay, Sherlock. Hush. I've got you. I won't let you fall."
He felt Sherlock take one sharp stuttering breath against his hair, and then another. Then the fine tremor turned into a shudder. John held him tightly, soothing him with one hand through his hair and another tracing gentle circles on his shuddering back as Sherlock shook with suppressed, ragged sobs.
"I've got you, love. I've got you. I won't let you fall."
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