Fic: In A Nightmare

[tunes84]

Title: In A Nightmare
Author: tunes84
Rating: T
Genre: Angst
Characters: Sherlock, John
Word Count: 400
Summary: Before John, Sherlock slept. After John, Sherlock has nightmares.

Warnings: Bit of vivid imagery of Sherlock's nightmares.

A/N: For patster223 , who wanted a story to a song off The Antlers album, Hospice. So I picked "Epilogue" because it always strikes me when I hear it. In my head, it's set after TGG for one certain line, really.

Disclaimer: I do not own Sherlock.

 

Sherlock slept before John. He slept whenever he wanted, for as much or as little time as he felt necessary without interruption or complaint, and quite peacefully at that. Sleeping, boring as it may be, is vital; it’s also good for Sherlock’s mind as it is quiet, giving him much needed alone time to think.

Before John, as if there ever were such a thing, life was simple.

After John, the only thing he knows now, he wakes up every night in the morgue.

Sherlock falls beside John whose wide eyes are horrified while his mouth is open mid-scream. He’s being buried, half alive, possibly dead. Sherlock is never really sure, but they are there in the morgue, every night, until he decides to stop sleeping.

To be so brilliant, Sherlock feels quite helpless in the face of what he doesn’t understand. Before John, these things never mattered to him.

After John, there’s fire everywhere.

Sleep is natural, and Sherlock finds himself unable to stay awake forever even if he tries and knows it’s an unreachable goal. He wakes up in his bed, eyes alight as John’s body bursts into flames beside him. Sherlock’s arms and legs feel like dead weight; he can’t move them. His heart, his soul is being burned out of him. Burned so hot from the inside and he just can’t move. He lies there, John cursing, screaming, blaming. And Sherlock apologizes, in tears, too late.

Then he wakes in bed again, neither before John nor after. Sherlock’s body feels twisted, he is out of breath and his head is slick from sweat and swimming with black spots attacking each other in front of his eyes. As he does every night that he sleeps, Sherlock crawls from bed on unsteady legs and quietly creeps along until he reaches John’s room where he pulls back the duvet and sinks onto the mattress. John stirs, blinks wearily, but says nothing as Sherlock lies down and places his hand on John’s chest in search of his beating heart. They will stare at each other, like they’ve done each time before and will do each time after, John reassuring him without a single word and Sherlock too terrified to utter a sound.

Even as he lies there in the shadows of After-John nightmares, he’s mostly deleted what it was like before. And the fact that he doesn’t regret it is what scares him the most.