Work Text:
Sometimes John dreams that Sherlock is not dead. Sometimes he dreams another story. A tale straight out of Faerie.
Though when he wakes, spent and sticky, in soiled sheets, he doesn’t try to pretend that this was a child’s story.
Sherlock’s absence has left him empty, more broken than the wounded soldier that had first limped up the stairs into 221B. John fills the space as best he can, with dreams, with half-cracked theories and paper-thin realities.
He never questions now, that when the moon crests the Thames, a forest creeps onto Baker Street, and a faun with sylvan eyes skirts the carpets on rust-coloured feet.
That once the creature has satisfied his curiosity scenting the flat, stroking the skull on the mantelpiece, he will crawl onto the sofa, quiet as a trusting child, and tumble into sleep.
It is here that John finds him in the mornings, one antler shadowed ear curled upon a cushion, long limbs sprawled, naked and tawny. And here that it ceases to be a children’s story.
The faun will wake and smile at him, though he never speaks, reach up and pull him down against that thundering heart and that lithe, warm body…
And when John wakes for the second time, his bed cold and empty, he wants more than right has reason, to believe.
