Work Text:
CRASH!
John stirred, images behind his eyes and tormenting him. Always torturing him, since his return to England and still long after his sessions with his useless therapist; the monsters that haunted him have not ended their attacks in his sleep--the only place where John was vulnerable.
They never feel like they end, clawing through his mind and often blossoming into horrors that never happened. Scenarios that terrified him and even places that he'd never hoped to visit again always ended up sneaking up on him like a strike from a venomous snake and spreading through his entire being as even the sheets under his knuckles didn't seem to give him the support that he so needed.
Warmth surrounded him. He was suffocating, in his mind's eye. The fox hole was around him, the crashing continued with a rain of rubble that never seemed to end on his helmet. The constant worry of his troupe, the young men that had just started only months ago. The ones that still had the lingering hope of home, family and love. A future. Another crash, this one shaking him, making him thrash around to feel if he could save someone from ash, rocks and anything else that could kill someone with a single strategic hit to the temple.
Warmth came again. This time, it was more comforting, sweeter. No answer came behind his eyes, only a montage of images impaling him until he found himself gasping for air as if he had been under water longer than he should have been. Feeling constricted, he struggled for only a moment until he realized that the warmth that bled through his terrors and brought him back to reality had no other source than Sherlock Holmes himself at his front, eyes worried and searching John's tired ones.
"You were having a nightmare." This was not a question, John knew. Sherlock had obviously not been sleeping and was probably watching John as he normally does and the storm that was outside their flat had triggered John's memory of the war (or perhaps many wars,) that he'd endured. "I now realize that this was probably not the best course of action in order to help--" The hug started to recede, but John's hands returned it as soon as he turned to face his lover, head buried in him, shuddering at how nice it felt to be held and to be comforted for once--instead of the one that did the comforting. "Oh," came the rumble hum from Sherlock, tightening his grip once more, making John feel safe as another crash seemed to shake the entire flat.
He couldn't remember the last time that a storm was this bad, this triggering. He was only glad of Sherlock who now understood the meaning of fear due to watching John night in and out, fighting off terrors of his past and demons that he could never defeat on his own, and as sleep took him once more in Sherlock's warmth, he knew he didn't have to.