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John’s eyes blinked open.
It was the middle of the night, and there was the cry again. Yet again.
He rubbed his eyes, checked the clock: 4 a.m. Before that it had been 2 a.m. And before that 12 a.m. The human body needed some uninterrupted sleep, didn’t it? It was hard to remember; he was so tired.
The screams grew louder, intensity increasing with the volume.
He’d tried ignoring it, one night, to his shame—one exhausted night, when it was the fourth time he’d got up and the sleep deprivation had momentarily overwhelmed his sense of duty. But the crying hadn’t stopped. Well. It might have, eventually.
John had tried ignoring it. He hadn’t lasted more than a minute.
He stilled himself and looked inside. He was feeling… anger, frustration, resentment. He waited a few moments, breathing through all of that until the worst negative emotion left there was the resignation, and that almost smothered by the compassion and the privilege of responsibility. It was what the psychologist had advised when he’d explained his worry that he couldn’t deal with Rosie’s midnight wakings—his paralysing fear that if he touched her with all those terrible feelings burning inside, with no partner to spell him, he might end up losing his temper and hurting her. An apparently reasonable fear, given what he'd done to Sherlock later that day.
Although, of course, it hadn’t actually been the psychologist who’d told him that. But John had been religiously practising the technique for two weeks straight before he’d found out that his psychologist had, in fact, been Sherlock’s psycho sister dressed as the psychologist she’d murdered. And despite the fact that having been told by her that there were 'no wrong feelings' gave him the willies, it had worked better for him than anything Ella had ever said, which just went to show… something.
John swung his feet out of bed and pulled on his dressing gown.
Carefully, and with a glance at the silent corner of his room, he made his way downstairs and padded through the darkness of the flat towards the source of the earsplitting wails, which were getting louder as he approached. He opened the door, slipped through. Knelt by the side of the bed.
“Sherlock,” he said, as low and calm as he could. “Sherlock, wake up. You’re having another nightmare. It’s only a dream. Sherlock.”
He reached a hand onto Sherlock’s shoulder and shook him gently.
“Victor!” cried Sherlock and sat bolt upright, the sheet falling to his waist as he seized John’s wrist in a bruising grip. John could have broken the hold, easily. He gritted his teeth, feeling the bones creak, and didn’t. “Victor, I couldn’t find—”
Sherlock broke off, obviously coming the rest of the way awake, his hard drive rebooting or whatever it was it did, making him release his too-tight grasp on John’s wrist like he’d been burned.
“Sorry,” he said shortly. “The same again? Yes, obviously.”
John nodded, and Sherlock closed his eyes, his face visibly aflame even in the washed-out paleness of the streetlights filtering through the curtains.
“Eurus said I used to scream all night,” he muttered. “Like I was going to burst.”
“Sounds about right,” agreed John.
“No wonder Mummy and Father went along with letting me forget them both entirely. Did I wake Rosie?”
“She’s fine.” John shook his head. “Sleeping like a baby. Trust me, we’d hear her from here if she wasn’t; that child has quite the set of lungs. Better than yours, and I should know,” he smirked darkly, earning a huff that could have been a laugh. “Perhaps she likes the noise, she never slept like this at—” he paused, and readjusted what he was going to say. He was still getting used to living back here again. “At the house.”
He licked his lips, waiting a moment.
“Sherlock…”
Sherlock flopped back onto the bed, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Yes, I know.”
“I didn’t say—”
“You didn’t have to. ‘This isn’t normal.’ ‘This can’t go on.’ ‘You’ve got to see someone.’ I know.”
John laughed, short and bitter. “Well, since the most successful psychological appointment I’ve ever had was not with a psychologist at all—and since that was only truly surpassed by the mind trick you pulled on my leg—I’d have to say I’m not exactly a believer in the idea that a Holmes’s brain is a job for a professional.”
“She shot at you,” smirked Sherlock, still half-hidden behind his hands. “That’s always been an excellent restorative as far as you’re concerned. Perhaps she knows how to cure me, too.”
“Probably not the best idea to ask her,” admitted John. “Sherlock…”
He put his hand back on Sherlock’s bare shoulder and squeezed.
“It will get better. I’ve had my share of nightmares—”
There was another half-humorous huff of breath. “So have I. I’ve been tortured, John, among"—he glanced at John—"other things. This seems... excessive.”
John shrugged. “Your best friend died and you felt like it was your fault for failing him. It affects you at a different level.”
“Sorry," mumbled Sherlock, almost on reflex, as he did these days whenever they came close to the topic.
“Not really what I meant.” John brushed it off, because he really hadn't meant to heap that back on Sherlock’s shoulders right now. After Mary, John was fairly certain he understood anyway. “You were only a child, you didn't have the tools to deal with it—and I guess, the way you repressed the memories, you never dealt with them properly. Or at all. They may be years old, but to that child they’re brand new. It takes time to wear off those sharp edges, time living with them. If you want to see someone about it, I think you should. It does help, I think. Or you can talk to me. But this doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you. It just means you are… like all of us… human.”
“I…” Sherlock pulled his hands away from his eyes and opened them again, staring straight up at the ceiling, blinking fast and taking deep, painful sounding breaths. “John, I really want a hit right now,” he said quietly.
John hauled himself off his knees and sat down gingerly on the side of the bed, his hip nudging against the warmth of Sherlock’s side.
“Thank you,” he said, because it was the first time Sherlock had ever actually admitted to that—ever admitted to being anything other than completely in control of his addiction. The psychologist’s office didn't count; this wasn’t for a case, a part-truth deliberately revealed to manipulate the listener. There was no ulterior motive here. Probably.
John wasn’t sure he’d ever seen the man beside him so vulnerable. The resurfacing memories hadn’t changed Sherlock, not in essence, but they’d changed his ability to be honest about who he was. Perhaps changed his ability to identify who that was in the first place.
Apart from the screaming, it didn’t seem to be such a bad change at all.
“Is the flat actually clean, like you said? No emergency stash you’ve forgotten to mention that’s preying on your mind?”
Sherlock gave a small, tight shake of his head. “It’s clean,” he said. “I’d have to send a message to one of the network to pass on to Wiggins and then—” He stopped himself, taking another deep breath, this one slower. “It’s clean. But take my phone, please. And I probably shouldn’t stand in the window. I’m seeing her tomorrow. I can’t… I can’t afford even the smallest slip right now.”
“Or ever,” remonstrated John, and pocketed the device from the bedside table, “given what you’ve done to your kidneys.”
But he squeezed Sherlock’s shoulder again, glad that even if Sherlock had never found a good enough reason for his own sake, he’d finally found some reason that worked for him. Someone who needed him—not to trash himself for them—but to stay clean for them.
In the morning, once the craving had died down a little, they’d have to work out how to cut off that access point as best they could. Perhaps pay off key members of the homeless network to refuse certain requests; bribing the suppliers had worked for giving up smoking, after all. Perhaps put the fear of God into Bill Wiggins if he ever enabled Sherlock in another relapse. Mycroft would be delighted to help with that, John was sure. Perhaps he already had done; it was possible Sherlock’s imagined path wouldn’t go as smoothly as he thought—but that was a matter for tomorrow.
They sat in silence for a few moments, until eventually, John dug into Sherlock’s side with a friendly elbow.
“Crap telly?” he suggested, trying not to think longingly of his bed. Sherlock obviously wasn’t going to be getting any more sleep, which meant John wasn’t going to either. “Or shall I check the website? Perhaps there’s a case you can make a 4am start on.”
“Unlikely to be anything worthwhile,” grumped Sherlock, but in the semi-interested way that meant he was considering it.
“Oh, I bet you can’t clear everything there before Mycroft’s car comes to get you—seven-thirty, right? That’s three and a half hours—and I mean everything, too, no skipping over cases because you claim they’re too obvious. I want to understand the solutions to them all.”
“Could be more challenging,” said Sherlock, giving John a dubious once-over as he swung his legs out of bed and drew the sheet around himself to bring with him. Normally, John would have made at least a token effort to convince him to get dressed, but right now they both knew it wouldn’t be wise to leave him alone even for a moment.
“And you’re going to have to work through an internet buddy,” jibed John, as they walked out to the living room. “No communication devices for you—and no complaints about slow typing either—that’s your rule at work, not mine!”
Sherlock turned on the light in the living room, making John blink owlishly, trying to clear the graininess from his eyes, and managing to swallow what felt like an enormous yawn before it could develop.
He gave John an oblique smile.
“You’re a good friend, John Watson,” he said.
Three hours later, John found himself coming half awake at the sensation of Mary’s warm body shifting under his weight, his head heavy on her shoulder. Had he fallen asleep sitting up? He clutched onto her side, not wanting her to leave just yet.
“John,” she whispered, her voice pitched strangely low, “let me go, I need to get Rosie.”
“Mwffle,” he agreed, barely registering the wail from upstairs as she extracted herself and he slumped further downward into blessed, horizontal sleep. Thank God it was her turn this time.
“Go back to sleep,” she whispered, “I’ll leave her with Mrs Hudson when I need to go.”
“Mff, love you,” mumbled John, sinking fast into oblivion.
“Yes, John, I’m well aware,” she told him, apparently deeply amused about something. “My deductive powers are entirely sound. Now, go back to sleep.”
John did.