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He could have almost sworn the ceiling was moving, swirling in swatches of white and dirty, weathered off-white. The surface was covered in that sort of Braille-like bumped texture that held no semblance of a pattern and flaked away easily when he was angered enough to throw something upward. It became almost a visual illusion the longer he stared at it, as if there was some secret meaning that he – of all people – couldn’t decipher. It was teasing and taunting him, it seemed, but only on the worst nights and days when his eyes ached and his body refused to move.
Sherlock had experienced trouble sleeping since he was young. Across the range of his life, it had always either been a matter of insomnia or a matter of stubbornness that kept him awake. There had never been any magic cure for it, no lullaby or security item that had calmed him, no warm glass of milk or cuddle to help him nod off. Not that Sherlock would have accepted that, of course. Had anyone attempted to touch or coddle him, more than likely the raven-haired child would have kicked and screamed and been even more averse to sleeping than before.
One night long ago, Mycroft had attempted in his inexperienced, teenaged way to get Sherlock to bed. He’d checked for monsters, assured Sherlock that it was alright, and alas failed. Disheartened, the elder Holmes began to rant on and on for what seemed like hours about how his younger brother was being a stubborn brat and that here was the reason that Mother couldn’t put up with him. It took Mycroft a solid ten minutes to realize that the monotony and tone of his own developing voice had lulled Sherlock to sleep. Though it was effective – and to Mycroft, even mildly touching – it was never done again. Mycroft refused to make it a habit and if that meant that Sherlock suffered another multiple day bout of no sleep that left him irritated and mindlessly frustrated, so be it.
University had been a challenge. Studying binges and nights spent roaming the campus and spying on the professors were frequent. When time came that Sherlock had reached the end of his energy and exertion, body near limp with fatigue and mind beginning to reel, he finally discovered a lovely alternative to spending the night thrashing in his bed out of pure exasperation: drugs. It was wonderful, for a time. Every three days, he would load that syringe and plunge down, letting the substance spread through his veins and relax every part of him one muscle at a time. It wasn’t so much sleep that followed as forced unconsciousness, which was every bit all the same to Sherlock.
It took years for the use to begin taking a terrible toll on Sherlock. After three forced stints in rehabilitation and two self-managed detoxifications, he had distanced himself from the idiotic stuff of his own accord. There had been relapses, and there were still the so-dubbed “danger nights,” but Sherlock was more than willing to walk away without a second look back.
So he realized there was no solution to this. No magic fix to keep him from lying awake, aching and completely spent, staring at the ceiling as if it were the most intriguing collection of matter in the universe. His toes tingled from his feet hanging off the edge of his bed and not moving a fraction of an inch in the last two-and-a-half hours, and his head pounded with the effort of keeping itself running required. Multiple times, he had tried to close his eyes, only to find it feeling terribly uncomfortable and being irked by the sensation of his eyelids burning.
Instead of counting sheep, Sherlock attempted run through things that were child’s play for him: classification of burns, timing and bruising color, the amount of blood someone needs to lose before their motor skills are severely impaired. Yet still he found his eyes popping back open, staring straight at that dreadful mess of paint and plaster above him.
The knock upon the door was startling, though not entirely unexpected. Sherlock was never one to hole up for a nap at half one in the afternoon.
“Sherlock?” John called, the addressed counting four…three…two…one…before the door opened with a slow creak. Sherlock was tempted to just close his eyes and feign sleep for the other man would no doubt offer to help and coddle him so.
“I’m fine, thank you. You’re excused,” Sherlock replied in a short tone, eyes still locked skyward.
The sound of a long-suffering huff traveled through the room. John did have a temper, and he was prone to terrible fits of anger and insult (although it was usually provoked), but it was in the most frustrating times that he seemed the calmest. This aspect of him irritated Sherlock to his wit’s end.
“Doesn’t work like that,” John said with a chuckle, moving further into the room without permission, Sherlock’s face twisting in a scowl in response. No one had invited him in. Didn’t he know that that was rude? The hypocrite. “What are you doing?”
“Studying the carbon content in the room,” Sherlock mumbled sardonically as he rubbed the heels of his palms into his eyes. “I’m trying to sleep and you’re disturbing me.”
“It doesn’t look like a great success.”
“Piss off.”
Sherlock dared to think that John seemed even amused now. Part of him wanted to shake the other man, just to elicit a reaction. Perhaps he’d knock Sherlock out cold. Two birds, one stone. He’d punched him square in the face before; it wasn’t such a far-fetched thought.
“How many days since you last slept?” John inquired, inching closer until his knees were almost against the edge of the bed, arms crossed and gaze peering downward.
“Five.”
An elongated, disapproving sigh.
“You know that when you do that, you’re running your brain ragged, right?” John replied in a frustrated tone. “Especially when you only rectify it with a nap. That’s like letting a battery die and only charging it a quarter of the way before using it again. You need to sleep. Actually sleep, Sherlock.”
“That’s what I am trying to do, obviously. Yet you continue talking.”
“You aren’t getting anywhere on your own, apparently,” John retorted.
“So what, you’re going to assist me?” Sherlock said with a scowl, brows furrowed even though he had forced his eyes closed halfway through John’s rant.
“Yep,” John murmured, digging his hands under Sherlock’s shoulder and hip, simultaneously moving him upward on the bed and rolling him onto his side.
“What in the hell are you doing, John?” Sherlock said, intending it to come out much more offended, but his fatigue not quite allowing it to do so.
“I’ve seen you out stone cold before. You’re a side sleeper. Lying on your back is going to get you nowhere very quickly. Not to mention that it’s a stupid idea to leave your feet hanging off the edge. That can’t be comfortable.”
A grunt and an incoherent mumble could be heard somewhere from a face buried halfway into a pillow, half-hearted but thoroughly frustrated. Sherlock wasn’t ever one to be (literally, in this case) pushed around, but there was a certain trust in John and an occasional relenting to his medical judgment.
“I know, shut up,” John said in that fond, affectionate voice that Sherlock so hated (or so he convinced himself). Even just from the shift in position, Sherlock felt his muscles calming, unintentionally digging his face into the pillow in comfort.
Though he didn’t move, Sherlock blinked as he felt the figure slink away from the bedroom. Why had he expected the other man to say? That was…idiotic. Why had he wanted him to stay? Viciously sentimental. However, his mind soon trailed off from that as he heard first the scraping of a kitchen chair, and shortly thereafter the heavy footfalls of someone of John’s stature plus an approximately ten- to twenty-pound object. Then the thud of it behind him and the sound of someone dropping into it met his ears.
“I suppose you’re just going to watch me?” he muttered with a smirk, voice a bit muffled by the soft fabric of the pillow beneath his cheek.
“I’m going to watch you until you bloody well go to sleep,” John retorted, kicking off his shoes and placing his feet, ankle over ankle, on the mattress near to Sherlock’s back. His foot wiggled, tapping an absent, steady rhythm into Sherlock’s back that the detective would never admit was a lulling comfort. “And I’m going to read aloud.”
“Oh god,” Sherlock moaned, shifting his arms until the rested, one beneath the pillow and the other around it. “What is your novel of choosing? One of those highly romanticized poets, or a droning, ill-written military account?”
“Neither, you prat,” John responded with a minimal irritation as he let the pages fall open in his lap. “I’m not all predictable, you know. Even to you. I’ve got Plato, The Symposium, for your information.”
Sherlock brows rose as he blinked. That was far out of left field, to be sure. But he supposed he should have predicted it. John had never posed himself as a pseudo-intellectual, though, so perhaps he was one of the existing rarities that merely appreciated the text without claiming it as a manner of asserting his intelligence in social circles. Sherlock responded with only a grunt, the most common form of approval that he bestowed upon the other man.
“Good, you aren’t going to fight me,” John said, a pleased smirk upon his face. “I have passages marked that I like. That’s what I’ll read so that I don’t get bored. They’re a bit too sentimental for you, I should think.”
“Love is born into every human being,” John started after he cleared his throat, beginning to read in a voice that was neither too soft nor too stern, legible but at just the right volume for the naked ear. “It calls back the halves of our original nature together,” he recited, eyes fixed upon Sherlock’s back in the hopes that he might not have been listening to the meaning of the words, only the soft vibration of his voice. “It tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature.”
Unlucky for him, or perhaps in a more favorable circumstance, Sherlock was still listening, even through a dulled, nearly sleep-addled mind. Perhaps something of him softened in sentiment with his tiredness, but the words did have bearing on him; words that should never dare be spoken, acted upon, nor blatantly addressed between them. Rather, the statement of it under the guise of quotation was a more suitable realm of communication.
“And so, when a person meets the half that is his very own, whatever he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, then something wonderful happens,” John continued, a soft, knowing smile upon his face. Maybe somewhere in a place that was more fearless, he hoped that Sherlock truly understood. “The pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy, and one will not be out of the other’s sight, as I may say, even for a moment…”
Vicious sentiment, Sherlock thought again. He was right. John was still predictable in that sense, whatever his choice in literature was. Despite knowing that he took the title for ‘human being most terrible at expressing emotion,’ Sherlock knew from eavesdropping on John’s romantic pursuits that the doctor wasn’t quite the best either. Perhaps he didn’t even try with these women, if the words being spoken to him now meant as much as it seemed. Seething sentiment that Sherlock returned, but could never express, preferring to listen closely to John hiding behind the words of another.
“Love is the name for our pursuit of wholeness, for our desire to be complete,” John said, and shortly thereafter with a smile observed the slow, steady rise and fall of Sherlock’s body and the soft snore of a man finally relenting to his body’s urges, lulled by a trusted voice and a soft expression of love.