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"I will burn the heart out of you," hisses the disembodied voice and it repeats on infinite, gouging craters and pockmarks into his skin and when he looks down there's a gaping hole in his chest surpassing the size of every other chunk of flesh torn away to nothing -- it's all just transport -- and there's nothing inside-- but of course, it's never been there, he realizes with a dawning horror. The voice reads his mind.
"Oh, tricky, aren't we?" Laughter like pins and needles. A high-pitched noise replaces it moments later -- shell shock? a very distant portion of his rational mind guesses, but then it's wiped away when suddenly there's screaming everywhere, everywhere and now the hole where his heart should be hurts.
Hurts? Understatement. Feels like open heart surgery without the anaesthetic not that he's had it before. What's going on? Falling. Falling to the floor, knuckles white as death as he clutches the smoking hole. John will fix it.
Instant of irrational understanding.
(Oxymoron? Irrelevant. Delete it.)
The screaming is his own, and Moriarty knows, he knows his secret, he's found where he hides his heart and of course it hurts, you idiot, because John is at the dimly lit pool and this time he did not figure it out in time, and impossibly even the water is burning, pulsing like a heartbeat faster and faster and faster---
Sherlock inhales sharply as his eyes shoot open. He sits up in one swift movement, fists shaking imperceptibly beside him.
Saturday morning, caseless, raining, bored, heart is fine, making tea, barely awake himself by the sound of his footsteps.
No, not his heart. Only a dream. Stupid to think of him in that sense.
John. Just John. Hebrew origins, most common name in England from 1550 to the mid twentieth century. Original meaning: Graced by Yahweh. John the Baptist. John Lennon. John F. Kennedy. John---
Stop.
Step away. Backpedal, reduce, reduce, reduce.
A quiet knock at his door.
"Sherlock?" Hesitant. Hoping he's awake.
"What?" Make it short. Bored. Uninterested. Normal.
"Oh, good, you're up." Obviously. John pushes the door open and wanders in and if this isn't the best acting Sherlock's done since uni he doesn't know what is.
Sherlock sits at the edge of his bed and takes the tea John offers without comment. This is routine.
"Sleep well?"
"Fine." He lets the hot tea warm the hole in his chest.
And then there's comfortable companionship for the rest of the morning. Lestrade doesn't text him with any cases, and it continues to rain. By ten John's off to work.
Sherlock's eyes most definitely don't follow him on his way out.
It's sheer absence that makes him put down the experiment the moment the doctor is out of sight because to hell with finding a way to break down the polyhedral protein shell of the Halothiobacillus neapolitanus. He lets it breathe and thrive on its petri dish even as a few of its unfortunate siblings suffocate from lack of oxygen, trapped between the slide and its plastic covering. (Between a rock an a hard place. Idiom. Useless. Delete it.) Obligate aerobes, just like him. Why can't he breathe? He's sure there's air in this room but he's suffocating as much as the bacteria on the slide.
With every barrier down, it might as well be the neapolitanus examining him -- that's ridiculous-- so he turns away and goes to his room, idly hoping there wouldn't be an infestation by the time John came home but then again, that would only be ordinary. Expected. Safe.
Sherlock retrieves his violin from the trunk at the end of his bed and he plays until his fingertips bleed, and then he plays some more. The music sounds like chlorinated water with screaming grace notes in a key made of dissonance.
Eight hours later he hasn't forgotten about the experiment, obviously, but that's what he tells John with a nonchalant shrug and an offhanded comment when the doctor stomps in demanding reasons.
As always there's an hour or so of angry fuming and pointed ignoring that settles to defeated acceptance and eventually there's tea and biscuits courtesy of Mrs. Hudson along with harmless chat about the weather that Sherlock knows is John's way of saying "You're still an idiot but I forgive you".
"Are you listening, Sherlock?"
"Of course."
"Right. Well, like I said. I'm off to bed. It's been a long day." Pointed pause. Sherlock knows he's waiting for an apology, and that John also knows he won't get one.
"Fine. Goodnight."
A sigh. "Yes, right, goodnight."
Sherlock doesn't lift his eyes from the scientific journal he's reading but he listens as John trudges up the stairs, washes up, changes, undoes one of the military corners of his bed and settles in for sleep. Before long there is nothing but silence to accompany Sherlock's mind.
He swallows, closes the book, and opens the door to his mind palace. He's slept yesterday. He won't need to dream again for two more nights, at the most frugal estimate. Three if John doesn't notice.
He isn't quite able to stop himself from hoping it's two.