They stopped at a pub on the way back to the inn for food (for John although, amused, John watched Sherlock absently eat most of the chips off his plate while they talked). They stayed late, Sherlock filling him in on the details of the Switzerland case. And in the end when he revealed, with a flourish of surprisingly adept comedic timing, that it was in fact the butler who did it, John burst out laughing. He laughed genuinely enough that he was able to catch one of Sherlock's rare, self-conscious smiles: hint of colour at his cheeks, eyes lowered bashfully.
John knew that before they'd met no one had ever considered Sherlock funny. Sarcastic, sure, but incapable of any joking, light-hearted humour. He knew this because the first few times John had laughed at something Sherlock said, his face had gone blank with surprise before eventually smiling sheepishly himself. Since then Sherlock had endeavoured to make other jokes with varying levels of success. Timing and audience were still an issue (John recalled with a shiver the, "Well, Mrs. Higgins if your husband had kept his head in the situation I'd be able to solve the problem much faster," comment in reference to the recently decapitated Mr. Higgins, whose head inconveniently had not been present at the crime scene), but Sherlock had undoubtedly improved. John couldn't help feeling a warm fondness for the consulting detective who, icy by default, nevertheless appeared to be pleased with himself if he could make John laugh.
John's good humour lasted until they arrived back at the inn and he discovered Sherlock's accommodation plan for the night.
"What do you mean you're staying in my room tonight? It's tiny. There's only one bed!" John said, standing in the lobby, scandalised.
"You chose an inn that has a total of six rooms, all of which are full. What did you expect?"
"I expected to be staying here by myself. I expected a nice, peaceful holiday," John said, voice rising as Sherlock walked away from him toward the stairs.
Sherlock pulled a key from his pocket as they reached the door to the room. "Relax, I had them bring up a spare bed."
He opened the door and John saw his relatively small room reduced by half with a portable bed crammed in.
"It's small," John said, eyeing it sceptically.
"Exactly, I also thought that you should take it."
"No, that's not what I meant," John backpedalled quickly.
"It's logical. You're shorter, so you can have the shorter bed."
"I'm only a few inches shorter than you," John muttered. The man thought he was a giant (no doubt a consequence of his ego). But in fact the detective was just six feet tall. People meeting him for the first time consistently remarked that he was shorter than they expected, and John had not failed to notice that Sherlock was shorter than his brother. (He would remind the detective of this if he ever wanted a rematch of their fight today.)
John crossed his arms. "How about this logic? This is my room, that's my bed, and you are not supposed to be here."
"Or, how about this?" Sherlock asked, swiftly removing his shoes, hopping onto John's bed and sitting cross-legged—coat and all—on top of the freshly made bedclothes. "I'm here first."
John had the briefest glimpse of what it must have been like to be Mycroft, and felt a sudden, bizarre pang of sympathy for the man.
"All right, Sherlock, I don't care," John said, feeling resignation sweep through him as he suddenly became aware of how tired he was.
"I knew you'd see the indisputable quality of my reasoning," Sherlock said distractedly. He was looking around at the room. "God hotels are dismal places. You couldn't have found one where they do more than pretend to hoover?" He wrinkled his nose at the carpet in an altogether spoilt fashion.
"This coming from the man who grows mould experiments in the kitchen sink," John said, grabbing a clean t-shirt and his pyjama trousers.
"That is for the progress of science," Sherlock replied. "There is nothing scientifically productive about poor hoovering."
John shook his head. "Right, I'm going to have a shower." But Sherlock probably didn't hear him. He was already leaning over the side of the bed and pulling his laptop from his bag, probably to check the news for new murders.
The hot water felt wonderful as John washed away the dirt and sweat from the afternoon, pieces of grass sliding down the drain as he rinsed the shampoo from his hair. Rubbing soap across his body he felt the spots on his arms where Sherlock had gripped him during their fight, and the spot on his hip where he'd hit the ground. There was no doubt he would have bruises tomorrow.
When John finally lay down on the spare bed it was not as terrible as he'd imagined. He stretched his aching muscles. Sherlock rose from the bigger bed and paused. "You're not going to take my bed while I'm gone?"
"No, Sherlock," John muttered sleepily. "I'm not going to take my bed while you're gone."
Sherlock seemed satisfied by this, because he disappeared into the bathroom. Exhaustion hit John like a wave, and soon he was drifting toward sleep, lulled by the sound of the water from the shower.
He was briefly roused back to consciousness when Sherlock re-entered the room.
"John?" Sherlock said quietly from next bed.
"Hm?" he responded, half asleep.
"I know Hell doesn't exist, but, erm, what you said before… It was—or, I wanted to…"
Eyes still closed John smiled. Sherlock's fumbling was reserved only for attempts at sentiment.
"You're welcome," John said, saving Sherlock the trouble, and fell fast asleep.
It was close to three-thirty in the morning when Sherlock's eyes flew open. He had dozed off sitting up in bed with the laptop balanced on his legs. He estimated, considering the screensaver and battery level, that he'd been asleep for about an hour.
But he was awake now. Why? Sound. Movement. What was it? Rustle of sheets. John.
Sherlock shut the glaring screen and allowed his eyes to adjust to the dark. He sat up straighter to see John's bed.
John had kicked the sheets off of his legs, lying on his back, upper body twisted in them. He moved again, violently tossing to his right, and flipping onto his back again.
Sherlock recognised it immediately. He'd known about John's nightmares from the moment they'd met in the lab at Barts. He'd observed it. Tired, under-eye circles plus psychosomatic limp plus PTSD equals nightmares. But he'd cleared those up along with the limp. There had been no nightmares at Baker Street.
Not until after the pool.
Semtex, snipers. The first nightmare had been the next night after the confrontation with Moriarty. But Sherlock didn't understand it. After Moriarty left John had been fine…
"I guess this means you didn't get the milk, then?" John asked as they swung open the doors of the school pool and stepped out into the car park. Moriarty and his snipers were long gone. There was no sign he had been there at all.
Sherlock laughed and stopped and turned to face John. The cool night air intensified the heady rush coursing through him: endorphins flooding in the wake of adrenaline. God, he had almost shot the explosive vest, taking the building and everyone down in one rhapsodic wave of destruction. What fun. John's flushed face mirrored Sherlock's own high, and he wondered how he'd ever been satisfied doing this alone.
"No, I didn't do that, no," he admitted through a grin.
"It's never going to be as simple as milk with you, is it?"
Sherlock shrugged. "Milk is boring."
"That's true." John said, smiling. He turned his head to look at a point across the car park that Sherlock couldn't see.
"Forgive me?" Sherlock asked, stuffing his hands into the front pockets of his trousers and posing two questions at once.
John was still looking away, preoccupied. "Always," he said lightly.
Always? Sherlock didn't know whether John meant it as a description: 'I'm always forgiving you when you turn our kitchen into a biohazard, when you steal my laptop, and when you get us into a hostage situation in lieu of grocery shopping,' or as a promise: 'I will always forgive you,' which caused him to feel a brief tightening in his chest. He didn't have time to decide, because in the next moment John looked back at Sherlock, focusing brightly on his face and saying in a clearer, more present voice, "So what's open at this hour?"
Sherlock blinked to refocus. "There's a Chinese a few blocks from here…"
From Semtex to Szechuan in less than an hour. John was fine. Better than fine. He was running with the danger that kept his limp away and his hands steady.
So why was it that the next night, after John had gone to bed and Sherlock was awake doing research, he heard John yell out from his bedroom upstairs?
Without thinking Sherlock dropped the soil sample he'd been holding and sprinted up the stairs. Thoughts of Moriarty and snipers flashed in his mind as he banged open the door to John's bedroom.
John was in his bed, propped up on his elbows, breathing hard.
"Are you all right?" Sherlock demanded, palpable urgency in his voice. He scanned the room quickly. No sign of intrusion. Where was the bloody light switch? He fumbled for it against the wall, but stopped when John moved, sitting up fully into the light slanting through his bedroom window, running his hands through his hair.
"Yeah, I'm fine. It was just…" He exhaled heavily. The moon cast enough light for Sherlock to see traces of perspiration around his temples, lines of tension in his face. Nightmare. He let his hand drop away from the light switch.
Light, he knew, was supposed to scare away the monsters of the subconscious, but somehow he felt that John wouldn't want light. Glaring, exposing, unforgiving light forcing the moment into reality. In the dark the scene could exist somewhere between waking and sleeping; a liminal space where words and actions have softer consequences.
"Nightmare," John said curtly. He flicked his eyes up at Sherlock for a fraction of a second before looking back down at his sheets. Embarrassed. "Sorry if I woke you."
"I was up."
John nodded and looked toward the window. He was clearly still shaken. Sherlock hesitated, uncertain how to proceed. He could be callous, would be if it were anyone else. Can we reserve the shouting for real danger? He examined his flatmate. John's breathing was still slightly rapid, though returning to normal. His hair was sticking out in odd places from the pillow, fair enough to look almost silver in the pale light. Callous wasn't an option.
He looked at John's chest. He was wearing a t-shirt, The Who, one of John's favourites, faded and worn. He remembered the vest that had been strapped there last night. He remembered his own hands shaking as he undid the fastenings. He couldn't pull it off fast enough. He'd actually yanked John's shoulder hard enough to hurt as he ripped off the coat.
And what could he say now? John, what are you afraid of?
"Do you want to watch me use a density gradient column to compare soil samples?"
John looked over at him and smiled ruefully. "No, thanks, Sherlock. I'm fine. Have to get some sleep before my shift…"
Back downstairs Sherlock stretched out on the couch, soil research abandoned for the moment. It was the first nightmare, as far as Sherlock could deduce (and that was pretty far) that John had had since moving to Baker Street. John's nightmares had been placeholders for the real danger John needed to keep him steady. At Baker Street there was no need for nightmares.
But the pool… What had it been about the pool? Something had affected him differently. Had John been afraid of Moriarty? Clearly not; he'd grabbed him at the first opportunity. If your sniper pulls that trigger, Mr. Moriarty, we both go up. The corner of Sherlock's mouth twitched at the memory. John wasn't afraid of Moriarty. So what was it?
In the following three weeks John had six more nightmares. He didn't always shout out loud like the first time, but Sherlock, awake most nights working or neglecting sleep as a general habit, had listened carefully for sounds of movement—distress—and crept up the stairs each time he heard it.
John kept his door ajar and it was easy to push it open. From his position in the doorway he could see John tossing and turning, muttering incoherently, hands working, jaw clenching. But Sherlock never woke him. He knew John would be embarrassed, like the first night. So instead Sherlock waited, watching, muscles tensed, standing by in case… In case what? He didn't know. But he stayed anyway, ducking back away from the door if John woke up or eventually turning away after John stilled and his breathing steadied.
What was he seeing? Was it the pool every time? Or had the experience been triggering? An opening of gates that allowed memories of the war to come flooding back into his unconscious mind. John, what are you afraid of?
In the fourth week the nightmares subsided and they didn't return. Even after The Woman's case there were no nightmares of American agents with guns at his neck, and after Baskerville there were no nightmares of gigantic hounds in secret labs. John wasn't afraid of dying. That wasn't it.
When Sherlock returned to London after his 'suicide,' the first thing he noticed was John's ridiculous moustache. The second thing he noticed was that John was tired. Purple under his eyes like bruises. Nightmares or insomnia? Either way he estimated the cause was withdrawal. By being unable to work with Sherlock, John had been deprived of regular exposure to danger. Cold turkey. Memories of the war creeping back without better threats to replace them. I'm sorry, John.
"Nightmares," Mary said simply when he caught her alone. "I thought you'd know—you lived with him."
"Did he tell you what they're about?"
She shrugged. "You know, the war. He said he's had them ever since they sent him back to London."
Interesting. Besides the few weeks following the pool there had been no nightmares when John lived at Baker Street. Why had he lied?
She looked at him curiously then. "He never mentioned them to you?"
"No," Sherlock said, already turning away.
It was an abrupt end to the interview, but then he had never been interested in talking to Mary for longer than what was absolutely necessary.
Sherlock found himself standing at the side of John's bed. He didn't remember getting to his feet or crossing the small hotel room. Automatic actions. No conscious thought required. In his sleep John turned onto his left side, facing him, and Sherlock tensed. He could see the tightness in John's jaw, his closed eyes squeezing shut harder as if he could prevent himself from seeing what was not visible. John, what are you afraid of?
Sherlock clenched and flexed his hands looking down at the first person he'd ever been able to call a friend. John. Intriguingly complex John. He had liked him from the moment he'd set eyes on him. John's voice, his moderate dress (masculine but neat, casual but coordinated), his good physical condition (minus the psychosomatic limp), the fact that he was left-handed (Sherlock liked the deviance from the ordinary, along with the idea that John lived in a mirrored world), etc. Sherlock had been surprised—he'd assumed he would never meet a person he approved of so readily.
But then John was a man comprised of contradictions, and Sherlock couldn't resist contradictions. The man who walked into the lab that day was a left-handed doctor who'd learned to shoot with his right. A soldier and a doctor: a killer and a healer. A man who limped from a shoulder wound: a backward trauma that caused him to literally ache for the war, an outward manifestation mirroring Sherlock's own internal damage. Of course he'd known the cure.
Sherlock realised his own jaw had tightened in imitation of his sleeping friend and though he consciously relaxed it, his concern increased. He'd been able to cure John's nightmares the first time, but not the second. When Sherlock returned to London, and John resumed working with him, he assumed the nightmares would subside like they had before. But they hadn't.
John rolled onto his back and spoke incoherently. Although Sherlock couldn't make out any individual words, the distress in his voice was cutting. Sherlock started to reach out, but pulled his hand back. If he woke him, John would be embarrassed and upset and Sherlock wouldn't know what to say.
He ran his eyes over John's sleeping form. Fascinating. A soldier who regularly faced murderers unflinching, yet was wrecked by the shadows of his mind. An enigma: the real danger invigorating, the unreal debilitating.
He'd never met anyone like John before—there was no one like John—and not in his wildest dreams had he imagined he would ever meet someone he liked so much. John groaned and rolled and Sherlock's muscles tensed. He felt helpless, paralysed. He couldn't move forward and he wouldn't move back. How could he save John from his own mind?
He wished he could open John's head—precise incisions, careful parting of the skull, delicate handling of the soft brain tissue: John's brain. Why are you doing this to John? he'd ask it with his forceps and dissecting probe. But gently. The brain that tortured John at night was the same one that chose his jumpers in the morning. The same one that knew how to make risotto with peas and could fire kill shots though a window. The same one that teased Sherlock about his coat and his cheekbones and made them giggle at crime scenes. It was the same brain that had chosen to come back to Baker Street.
John groaned again. Perhaps it was his proximity to John now (he'd always maintained his distance in the doorway when observing previous nightmares), or perhaps it was a composite result of how much they had been through together since the pool, but Sherlock realised he wouldn't be able to watch this time. It was imaginary pain, but real suffering. And Sherlock couldn't watch John suffer.
He considered his options. What had Mary done when John's nightmares woke her? (Of course they would have woken her; John's nightmares were violent and they shared the same bed.) Probably something like putting her arms around him, cooing comfort, stoking his hair and soothing. Sherlock frowned. This course of action was fraught with problems, the foremost being that Holmeses do not coo, under any circumstances. Plus, John would wake up yelling about not being gay again, and the commotion would probably cause the neurotic old lady in the next room (yes, he knew all about her: the science of deduction) to bang on their door, ironically shouting at them for making a disturbance. So that was out.
John's breathing quickened and he shook his head from side to side: no.
Settling on a decision, he tore himself away from John's side and quietly slipped back into his bed, prepared to feign sleep in an instant.
Then Sherlock Holmes threw a pillow at Dr. Watson's head and directly pretended he hadn't.