Work Text:
In his sleep, John Watson runs.
Not literally, of course. That would be disruptive and, while interesting, a definite bother. Imagine the things he’d knock over. The shelves and such would be fine, but experiments could not be allowed to be compromised because a soldier’s dreams refused to leave the sand wastes behind.
No, John doesn’t sleepwalk, but he runs all the same.
Sherlock tucks the curtains to the sides and watches from the foot of the bed as John twitches, spasms, sweats and chokes and breathes, dappled by moonlight, patterned by clouds. It’s oddly distressing, seeing his face screwed up in terror, then confusion, then grief, one after the other, moisture at his temple or beneath his arms or leaking from the corners of his eyes. There’s something in it that latches onto Sherlock and twists.
Sherlock makes mental lists of John’s expressions, despite that ache- or perhaps because of it. John Watson is new, John Watson is novel and strange and oddly wonderful, utterly comprehensible while simultaneously entirely baffling. Sherlock takes pride in his ability to understand people; he could hardly construct anything useful in a crime scene without understanding motivation and behavior, and disregard for propriety doesn’t necessarily indicate obliviousness. Talking with suspects would do him no good if he couldn’t read them. He knows humans, and he understands them, and he would understand John too if he could just make sense of one thing-
Why does he stay?
One blanket-covered leg lurches forward, a rushed step, and a noise creaks out from John’s throat. Sherlock suddenly has the strangest feeling that he isn’t in the room. There’s no Sherlock here, no silent presence; John is alone and afraid and so very helpless, and the whimper falls like a single piece of gravel tumbling into the abyss of the night, a cry that is finished before it starts.
He’s running from fatality even as he sprints toward danger. Isn’t that how John always operates? He loves the rush. He lives for the adrenalin. He can’t stay out of danger, because danger is why he is. He sprints from the explosion and hurtles toward gunfire.
He flies from the war and falls into a sociopath’s den.
Sherlock is not a sociopath, whatever he may say and whatever he may occasionally begin to believe. He makes mistakes (There’s Always Something), and he regrets (I’ve Just Got One), and he loves (...). But he’s as dangerous as if he were one, as careless of others and goal-oriented as though he truly had no purpose but his own whims, and it can’t possibly be good for John.
John, who likes people but only sort of. John, who shoots to kill. John, who cares about image and jumpers and makes excellent tea, who is poor with technology and wonderful with Sherlock, who runs in his sleep like it will get him anywhere but dead.
Why does he stay?
Sherlock is not considerate. Sherlock is not kind. Sherlock is not the kind of person anyone in their right mind should enjoy being around.
Why does he stay?
When John breathes, it’s like the city is breathing with him.
There are things to which Sherlock is tied. One of those is London. Another is The Work. Mycroft, Mrs. Hudson, Gregory Lestrade. And most recently, John Watson, who has somehow managed to bypass the majority of the list and lash himself tightly to the sense of peace that Sherlock once could only get by wandering the city or solving a case. To Sherlock, London and John are much the same, and they breathe together, the pulsing lights and the heaving chest extensions of something frighteningly like happiness.
(He would compare John to a crime scene, a puzzle like no other, but ‘John’ and ‘dead’ don’t mix. Irrational, but. Well.)
John is tied to-
His sister, danger, his gun, whatever girlfriend he has at the moment, what he perceives as his duty. Sherlock.
Does Sherlock give John peace like London? Somehow he doubts it. John runs from the war and runs toward Sherlock, but that doesn’t mean Sherlock soothes anything. It may be the opposite; Sherlock burns. He brings down the murderers and the thieves on their little flat. John loves danger, but runs from fatality, and Sherlock isn’t always sure which of the two is to be found on Baker Street.
So now, watching as John runs from his memories and the shadows of clouds brush across his nose and brow, Sherlock asks himself a question and finds that he does not know the answer.