There is a certain sanctity in a dream that goes unspoken.

John Watson knew this from experience. When he was away at war and the after-images of bloody faces and bullet-riddled torsos would come back to haunt him in his sleep, he would wake up knowing that he had been heard tossing and turning and maybe even crying. No one ever said anything to him about it (though he knew from the concerned, irritated, and sometimes mocking glances that his nightmares were not a secret), and the doctor never bothered to explain himself.

Never bothered, or rather, made a conscious decision not to.

Talking about it, he decided, would only make it real. There was no actual proof of the horrible scenes that caused his heart to pound and his voice to cry out in the dark, and as long as he didn't tell anybody, there never would be. So he would go through his day tending to wounds and pretending that he hadn't seen ones much, much worse just a few hours before, and even he almost believed himself after a while.

His fears had been confirmed when he came back to London and (at his sister's insistence) started seeing a therapist. Against his will, he had told her of his dreams, and then they had come back, giving him many sleepless nights and a limp in his leg—the right one, just like the one he'd seen torn from a man's body in an explosion. It wasn't until he met Sherlock and he was finally able to do something worthwhile again, helping to catch bad guys as he ran about the city with his crazy, brilliant madman of a flatmate, that the nightmares finally stopped.

It was that same crazy, brilliant madman that caused the nightmares to come back, this time worse than ever. John could hardly close his eyes anymore without seeing blood and death and things that made him want to scream and cry and vomit all at once. It wasn't really that the blood was any bloodier or the death any less permanent that made him shriek loudly enough to wake Mrs. Hudson; it was that it was Sherlock. On the battlefield or on the cold, hard streets of London, the lifeless faces always belonged to Sherlock. And they continued to belong to Sherlock weeks after he would wake to find Sherlock, alive and un-bloodied and infuriatingly calm, sitting in the corner of his room and playing the violin like he hadn't just come back from the dead.

A month since Sherlock's return, and John's nightmares had finally ceased, allowing him the peaceful sleep he hadn't had since his best friend had jumped off the roof of St. Bart's. John was grateful. Even when he'd gone back to his therapist after Sherlock's alleged death, he hadn't told her about the nightmares, thoroughly believing that doing so would only make his friend deader. He could let himself hold onto some tiny hope that Sherlock would somehow return, if only he didn't let himself or anyone else know that the detective died not just once, but every single night.

Which was why John found it very strange to be back in therapy, trying to decide whether or not to divulge the details of an entirely different kind of dream he'd been having as of late. Silently questioning his sanity, he fiddled with his sleeve while trying to weigh the pros and cons of escaping through the window.

"John."

His mind was pulled away from his escape plan to find his therapist staring at him with a mix of concern and exasperation. "Oh. Erm, yes?" was all he could think to say.

"It's been more than ten minutes. Do you want to tell me why you're here?"

John opened his mouth, closed it again, shook his head. "No, not really."

Ella let out a heavy sigh. "Look, I do have other patients to see, and I did just barely manage to squeeze you in when you called at the last minute. I don't mind sitting here in silence for your allotted time if that's what you think will help you, but I do only have another fifteen minutes before my next patient comes in, so if there's something you want to say…"

"I had a dream about Sherlock." The words fell out of the army doctor's mouth before he could stop them.

His therapist sighed again, this time sounding somewhat relieved. "Okay. That's progress. So, you had a dream about Sherlock. And I'm guessing this dream upset you?"

John hesitated, then nodded.

"John, you know it's normal to have nightmares about your best friend, especially after the shock he gave you just last month. You believed he was dead for three years, and it's likely part of your subconscious still believes it. Dreaming about his death…"

"It wasn't that kind of dream. I mean, it was…for a long time." He winced at his own admission. "But not this one. This one was…different."

"Oh?" said Ella. "How so?"

"You know…" John could feel his face heat up, and he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "Er…you know…"

"I really won't unless you tell me."

John took a deep breath. Better to just get it over with.

"Itwasasexdream."

If possible, his face grew even warmer.

Several seconds passed before he realised that his eyes were closed tightly. He opened them slowly, one at a time. Ella was staring back at him, looking as relaxed as ever. If she was surprised, John thought, she did a really good job of hiding it.

"I see," said his therapist finally. "And this bothers you?"

"Well of course it bloody well bothers me!" he said, a bit louder than he had intended. "It's Sherlock-bloody-Holmes! How am I supposed to go about my life, living with and solving mysteries with a man I dream-fucked?"

"So you were in the dominant position in this dream." Ella scribbled something in her notes. "Interesting."

"What? No it is not interesting! I mean, that's not the point!" John said, aware that he probably sounded slightly manic.

"Then what is the point?"

"The point?" John jumped up from his chair. "Oh, I'll tell you what the point is. The point is…" He stopped mid-sentence unsure how to continue. What was he supposed to say? That he had not been nearly as uncomfortable as he thought he should have been upon waking up hard and sweaty over a dream having entirely too much to do with his best friend? That after all of the hundreds of grizzly and horrible nightmares he'd had about said best friend's death, never speaking a word of it to his therapist for fear that they would come true, one racy dream had him spilling his guts?

"John, it's nothing to be ashamed of. A sex dream about your best friend is every bit as normal as a dream about him dying. You've been through a lot of stress concerning Sherlock, and it's not surprising that you might feel a special connection with him that, in your dreams, manifests itself in the form of a sexual relationship. It's a perfectly natural reaction."

"Yeah?" he said. "Yeah. Maybe you're right. Maybe it doesn't mean anything. But even if it doesn't, how am I going to react next time I see Sherlock? It's not like I can avoid him for long. What if I see him and I feel the same 'special bond' or whatever that I felt in my dream, huh? What then?"

"Well, I doubt that. Most dreams like this turn out to be nothing more than that: dreams. Just because they may reflect feelings you've repressed doesn't mean you're going to act on them in real life. Sure, you may feel a little awkward, but I'm sure Sherlock won't notice."

"Oh god." John made a mental note to kick himself later. "I completely forgot about Sherlock noticing. I was so busy thinking about trying not to jump his bones that I forgot that the man is a sodding detective! And a genius one at that! I've seen Sherlock deduce people's porn habits by their shirt sleeves and their evil plans by the pupils of their eyes. Even if I manage to keep it together perfectly, he'll know. Who am I kidding, he probably already knows!"

And with that, the army doctor rushed through the door of the therapist's office without so much as a goodbye, quite nearly running over the middle-aged woman waiting outside the office door and for once not caring in the slightest.

Soon, he found himself standing in the doorway of 221B, panting slightly from his run up the stairs, and staring at the lithe form of his flatmate as he bent over a beaker of blue chemicals, at a complete loss as to what to do next. Sherlock, for his part, was ignoring John entirely.

They stayed in their respective positions, unspeaking, for what felt to John like an eternity. Finally, without bothering to look up from his experiment, Sherlock spoke up.

"Close the door, John. My experiment needs to be kept at a precise temperature and you're letting the heat out."

"Sorry," John mumbled, a little dazed. He shut the door and they resumed their uncomfortable silence, John staring at his flatmate in mild terror and Sherlock seemingly unaware of the whole thing.

"Do you know?" This time it was John who broke the silence. He gulped as Sherlock finally looked up.

The detective stared at him, expression almost blank, and John felt as though he was being looked through rather than looked at. Then he said the words John had been dreading, and the doctor found himself feeling rather ill.

"Of course, John."

Just like Ella, Sherlock seemed impossibly calm about the whole thing. John almost wished he would make some snippy remark about being married to his work or about sentiment being stupid, just so he would know how to react. Why did everyone have to stare at him like that? Like it was all fine and they understood? What was he supposed to say to that?

He finally settled for stammering out a few terse replies while sneaking away towards his room so he could lock himself in and never come out. "Oh," he said. "Well. Then. That's…well that's that, isn't it? Okay. I'll just er…"

"John, I know you're trying to get back to your room unnoticed, but let me just remind you that it is exceedingly rare for me not to notice even the most well-executed of escape plans. Yours, by the way, isn't even very good."

"Right," John said, visibly deflating somewhat. "Of course."

Sherlock raise a single eyebrow, never breaking eye contact with his flustered friend. "Don't take it personally. Almost everyone—"

"No! No, Sherlock, do not tell me how I'm just as stupid as everyone else who doesn't have your giant brain. Not today. And for god's sake stop looking at me like that!"

"Like what?"

"Like some sort of stupid bug that's flying around annoying you. I'll be perfectly happy to leave you in peace and go up to my room. You can go back to whatever experiment you're doing and we can act like this never happened, but if you're going to call me out on trying to leave, at least stop being such a prat for five minutes and let me talk for once! Can you do that for me?"

Sherlock started to open his mouth as though to protest but stopped himself. He nodded solemnly.

"Good," said John. He began to pace back and forth across the floor. "Alright. So, just so we're on the same page, we are talking about the…dream I had last night. Correct?"

Sherlock nodded again.

"Look, Sherlock, I don't see any reason this has to get in the way of our friendship. I talked to my therapist, and she said it's perfectly normal to have…those kinds of dreams after, well, you know, something like what I've been through with you."

He looked up to see Sherlock with that infernal eyebrow raised again. "Oh for crying out loud, you know exactly what I mean! Three years, Sherlock. For three years, I had to go every day of my life believing that I watched my best friend die! Don't pretend you don't know exactly how much I was hurting. And then, all of a sudden, here you are! Back from the dead! And I'm just supposed to accept you back into my life like nothing ever happened? Like I didn't dream of you dying, over and over again, every night since you jumped off of that bloody roof?" He sighed. "Funny, I guess dreaming about you has been the cause of a lot of my problems as of late."

Sherlock was still at his seat at the dining table, staring at John thoughtfully. As the older man finished his speech, he slowly got up from his chair and walked carefully, almost cautiously, toward John, as if his friend was a frightened animal who might get scared by any sudden movement and run away. But John didn't run away; he remained firmly in his spot as the consulting detective drew nearer, until he found himself suddenly enveloped in a pair of thin but strong arms.

To say John was surprised at his friend's gesture would have been an understatement. In all the years the two men had been friends, Sherlock had only ever hugged John once, and that was on the day he 'returned from the dead,' when John's conflicting emotions of joy, anger, and disbelief left him in a fit of hysteria.

Still, John welcomed the comforting warmth of the other body pressed close to his own, and he wrapped his arms around the detective's thin frame, burying his face in his bony shoulder. It shouldn't have been very comfortable considering how painfully thin Sherlock was, but after several seconds, John realised that he didn't want to let go.

And so he didn't let go, at least not until several minutes later when Sherlock finally spoke.

"John?" he said.

"Hm?"

"Would you kindly relinquish my body for one moment? I think my experiment is burning a hole through the dining table."

"Okay." John started to loosen his hold on the detective when the words sunk in. "Wait. What?"

But by then Sherlock was already back at the table, using something that looked disturbingly like one of John's jumpers to mop up the blue goop that had overflowed from its beaker and had, sure enough, very nearly burnt a hole through the wood.

"Sherlock!" John said, seeing the large, blackened dent left in the top of the table. "What are we going to tell Mrs. Hudson?"

"I wasn't planning on telling her anything," Sherlock said, swiping a fruit bowl off the counter and placing it over the offending burn mark. "See? Good as new."

"No, Sherlock, it's really not…" John started, but then caught sight of the detective's grin. He couldn't help but grin back himself. "Tosser," he said affectionately.

"Imbecile," Sherlock threw back, still grinning.

"Oi!" John exclaimed, though he wasn't offended.

Sherlock chuckled deeply. "Term of endearment, I assure you."

"Careful, Sherlock. Keep that up and people might start to suspect you have a heart after all."

"I do have a heart," Sherlock said. "It's simply two sizes too small." They both had a laugh at that one. "But John?"

"Yeah?"

"In all seriousness, you do know that you are the most important thing in my life, right?"

Now it was John's turn to raise his eyebrows. "What happened to being married to your work?"

"Well," said Sherlock, and John was suddenly aware of their proximity. How had he not noticed that Sherlock was practically hovering above him? "After my work caused so much pain to the person I cared most about, we decided it was best to just be friends."

"Is that so?" John asked, feeling more than a little lightheaded. In his mind's eye, he flashed back to the dream he'd had the night before. He and Sherlock sharing a heated kiss. He and Sherlock undressing each other as they made their way toward Sherlock's bedroom. He and Sherlock—

"I have a question."

John's thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Sherlock's voice. "Er…okay."

"You mentioned the other dreams you'd had of me, the one's where I die. But I know you hadn't been to see your therapist since a few weeks after I faked my death. You told me yourself that you'd gone a couple of times and it hadn't helped. A couple of times is hardly enough time to get into dream logic, what with all the other problems you had to work out. I'm guessing you didn't want to talk about them. Understandable; ignoring things that are upsetting is a common defense mechanism. But!" Sherlock, if possible, stepped even more into John's personal space. "You felt the need to talk about the dream you had last night with both your therapist and me."

"Th-that's right," said John, trying to keep his voice steady and failing miserably.

"So here's my question for you, John Watson." Sherlock narrowed his eyes; John gulped. "Why?"

"Why?" John repeated dumbly.

"Yes, you heard me. Why? Why did you feel the need to discuss it?" His ice-cold eyes shifted back and forth as if searching John's own for an answer. "Is it possible that you didn't want to ignore this one? Could it be that you, despite your own self-professed heterosexuality, wanted this dream to—"

John never found out what Sherlock was going to accuse him of. Then again, he was too busy attacking the taller man's lips (and, in all probability, proving Sherlock's point) to care.

Sherlock did not seem at all surprised at having his speech interrupted in such a manner. He probably even deduced that this would happen, John thought vaguely as Sherlock bit down gently on his lower lip, causing the doctor to moan softly into his mouth. Almost unconsciously, he began to run his right hand up Sherlock's arm until it came to rest in the detective's messy curls, his left hand sliding down to grab at his full backside.

While John's hands explored, Sherlock was busy tugging at the hem of John's beige jumper while he slowly but surely backed John into his bedroom door. They stayed against the door for a while, lips only breaking apart when it was necessary in order to remove a layer of clothing, until finally they stood there in just their pants, one thin layer of clothing separating each of them from baring it all.

"Bed?" Sherlock said, trailing his eyes down John's body and then quickly back up again.

"Yep," was all John had to say on the matter before pushing the door open and stumbling inside, pulling Sherlock in with him.

Before long they found themselves on the bed, John hovering above Sherlock as Sherlock tugged at John's last layer of clothing.

"Sherlock, wait."

The other man stared up at him, looking puzzled but removing his hands from John's hips all the same.

"I hate to ruin the mood and all," said John, "but I have a question for you too."

"If you're going to ask me whether or not I'm sure about this, I can assure you that I would not be attempting to remove all of your clothing if I wasn't."

"No, no. It's not that," John said, sitting up so he was on his knees, legs still resting on either side of Sherlock's. "It's just…I have to know. I know you're brilliant and all, but how did you deduce about my dream?"

He saw Sherlock smirk in the dimly-lit room. "Do the words "Sherlock, I need to be inside of you right now' ring any bells?"

John wrinkled his brow. "No…?"

"Really? Because that's what I heard you screaming last night."

All of a sudden, John was very glad for the poor lighting in the room. He knew his face must have been a very interesting shade of red.

"Did you? Oh. Erm. Well…that's…"

"Embarrassing?"

"Yeah," John nodded in the dark.

"John, I assure you, you have nothing to worry about. As you would probably say, it's all fine."

"Really?"

"Really." John could barely see anymore as the last rays of sun disappeared from behind the curtains (when did it get to be so late?), but he was fairly certain he saw Sherlock smile reassuringly.

"Although," Sherlock continued. "If you are really that concerned, you may want to refrain from talking this time, just so I don't hear the repeat performance from my room. You would think that someone who knows he talks in his sleep would learn to monitor what he says when he suspects he might be dreaming."

"Huh? But Sherlock, we are in your room. And dreaming? What are you…?"

John Watson sat up in bed and looked around. Sherlock was nowhere to be found, and John realised he was back in his own room with damp sheets wrapped tightly around his sweaty (but clothed) body. The clock on the nightstand read 4:12 AM.

"Shit," he said.

Hello! If you've stuck around this long, congratulations! And thank you for reading. As you might (or might not) have noticed, I'm brand new to writing Sherlock fanfiction. Though I did used to write for different shows on a different account, way, way back in the day (meaning like 2-3 years ago). I don't like to beg for reviews, but if you have any thoughts on how my first story went/what I might improve upon for next time, I'd love to hear your feedback. :)

Later,

Abs