It's paralyzing.
It feels like he's drowning. His heart is clenching wildly in his chest, a cold sweat coating his skin, and John's wakes, trying to force air into his lungs. His windpipe is closing up, and oh God, he can't breathe, he can't breathe.
The ex-army doctor stumbles from his bed, and into the bathroom. After splashing his face with cold water, John sinks to the floor, leaning against the bath, trying to force the clinging nightmare away. Chest heaving with each breath, he eventually allows his head to fall in between his knees, hoping it will get his breathing under control.
The panic attack takes longer than usual to dissipate, and when it does, John knows from the painful tremors traveling through his leg that he won't be getting back to his bed anytime soon. So he curls up on the cold floor, wrapping himself in His blue bathrobe that John had fallen asleep in. The silk surrounds him like a cocoon, bathing him in a sort of comfort and he-
Inhales.
Exhales.
Inhales.
Exhales.
Inhales.
Until his shaky breathing slows. He begins his list of 'real and not real' in his head, a supposed coping mechanism, but all it seems to do is make his depression worse. It does, however, keep him from going absolutely insane.
Tea. Real.
Harry. Real.
Richard Brook. Not Real.
Moriarty. Real.
Lestrade. Real.
Mycroft. Not Real.
Sherlock. Real.
Real.
Myself.

...

Somewhere in the flat, a clock strikes three.
John sleeps.

#############

One week later, John limps into 221b, laden with shopping, to find Sherlock Holmes sitting in his armchair.

Sherlock straightens up when John enters, expecting yelling, violence, maybe even fainting. But John just freezes in place, staring silently. After a moment, he closes his eyes tight, a while knuckled grip on his cane, and then continues on into the kitchen. The sounds of domestic tea making float into the living room, and Sherlock slowly sits. When John comes in and sets a cup of tea in front of the detective, he just murmurs a 'Thank you'.

John doesn't speak.

That night they order Chinese and watch crap telly together from opposite sides of the couch. Sherlock eats because he wants to make John- his John- happy. John, who has already accepted Sherlock being there, all in silence. Sherlock is afraid to touch him, wants to give him space. (Although he wants nothing more than to cling to the smaller man, to bury his face into his neck; crawl into his heart and never leave).

It's been such a long time away from him.

After John goes up to bed, Sherlock sits on the couch a long while, trying to wrap his head around how to deal with this.

##############

The next few days are hard. Sherlock finds he makes no progress with John. The man barely talks to Sherlock, barely even looks at him. And it's scary. This is not the John Sherlock knows... Every day, John leaves for work before Sherlock gets up. When Sherlock wakes, he eats, and then tries to do something that will quell his boredom without angering John. (That means no experiments).
When John arrives home, Sherlock is there to greet him, trying to earn back his friendship.

"I made dinner, John."
"I cleaned, John."
"I made you a sock index, John."

But nothing works. John just looks sad- always so sad- and then retreats into the kitchen to make tea.

###############

...He's mumbling again...
Sherlock had noticed it the second day of being back... Sometimes John would just start mumbling, and he wouldn't stop for hours. Sherlock had tried to figure out what John was saying (the old John used to grumble out loud whenever something pissed him off) but had no luck. The words were too fast and too soft, and John often stopped speaking when Sherlock was close by.
So the days drug on, and Sherlock was slowly going insane. He didn't know how to earn his John back. He would rather have been kicked out than to be treated like this. He just wanted John to DO something! To scream, to fight, ANYTHING. Anything but this.

############

... Night time is the worst for Sherlock.

Night time was when Sherlock sat, curled up in a ball in John's armchair, listening to his blogger's sobs echo through the flat. It was physically painful to listen; to hear and know that it was entirely his fault. It was his fault, and he couldn't do anything about it.
Sometimes he would hear something crash and break. He used to go in after John was asleep to clean up whatever it was, but he stopped after coming in one night to find an unconscious feverish John, curled up in his blue bathrobe, gun in his hand.
Sherlock stared, and then quietly removed the gun from John's hand. The bullets were then unloaded, one by one. The safety was on, but seeing the muzzle pressed to his Love's temple made him sick to his stomach.

The weapon was hidden in Sherlock's room, under his mattress, in the box that held his own choice of destruction.

It wasn't until he sneaked back down into John's armchair that he realized how bad he was shaking.

###########

Sherlock has been back for two weeks when he figures it all out.

John's mumbling.
He's up strangely early, and he pads quietly as possible into the kitchen just in case John's still asleep. Upon reaching the door, however, Sherlock stops in his tracks, seeing John standing at the stove making breakfast. His back is to him, so the mumbling fails to cease this time. Sherlock listens, and frowns when he finally picks up on the words.

"Shoulder. Real. Leg. Not Real. The clinic. Real. Nightmares. Not Real. Moriarty. Real…"

Sherlock's brain whirls in confusion before coming to a sudden, screeching stop.

No.

It couldn't be, it couldn't… and yet the explanation was staring him in the face, the only one that made any kind of sense.

"…John."

John's shoulders tensed at the sound of Sherlock's voice, and he stopped mumbling, slowly turning around to face the taller man, tea clutched tightly in his hands. Sherlock hesitated briefly, but then slowly began to lift his hand to point to his own chest, hoping his assumptions weren't true. His voice came out strangled when he spoke.

"Real."

John's jaw clenches, the look in his eyes getting colder, stormier.

"No."

That single word brought Sherlock's world crashing down.

He stormed over to John, heart hammering in his chest.

"REAL, John. I. Am. REAL! You HAVE to see, PLEASE, John. Please. Don't just… you can't… leave me… I know I don't deserve it but please. I'm REAL!"

John had backed up against the counter, trembling, shaking his head in disbelief, and Sherlock didn't know what else to do, so he just grabbed him by the shoulders, rattling him a bit. John gasped, as if in pain or shock. Sherlock barely noticed, boarder lining on frantic.

"JOHN."

John's mug fell to the floor, smashing into pieces, but the two men barely registered the crash.

Slowly, John reached up to press a hand to Sherlock's chest, over his heart.

"… Real…?"

His voice was wrecked, hoarse and God, if it wasn't the most beautiful thing Sherlock had ever heard. He placed a hand on John's cheek, savoring the soft noise the man made, how his eyes fluttered closed.

When those blue eyes opened again, they were filled with tears. The doctor forced back a sob, hands clenching reflexively in his detective's white dress shirt.

"Sh... Sh…erlock."

And Sherlock's knees hit the floor with a dull thud, right into the shards of the broken mug, but he didn't care. All he cared about doing was wrapping his arms around John's waist, pushing his face into the man's stomach, into the softness of his navy jumper.

"I'm sorry; I'm sorry, so sorry. I didn't want to leave you, I had to, they were going to kill you… I… I couldn't lose you indefinitely. Please, I'm sorry. I'm real and I'm sorry…"

John threaded his fingers into the soft curls being offered to him, in a daze.

Real, real, real.

#############

It became a thing for them.

Every night when John went to bed, no matter where Sherlock was, he'd find him and tell him goodnight. Sometimes he'd say goodnight with words, but most of the time he'd say goodnight with a brush of his fingertips across Sherlock's nape, or maybe over one of those insane cheekbones; maybe he'd run his fingers through those curls. (He liked having his hair played with, Sherlock did- he'd always curl up in John's lap on the couch in front of the telly, like a cat. John would absentmindedly stroke those inky locks, watching them slip softly through his fingers, until his eye lids grew heavy).

Occasionally, if John had had a particularly rough day, he'd hug Sherlock goodnight, clinging to him like his life depended on it. The detective would hold his little blogger close to his heart until all was okay. (Or as okay as things would ever be).

After that, John would study Sherlock for a few seconds, eyes soft, and anyone would be able to tell that John was taking it all in, rejoicing inside, convincing himself that Sherlock was indeed

Real.

Real.

Real.

And then John would leave, and go up to his room; would just lie in bed wondering just what the hell they were.

And how he shouldn't waste a miracle.

But how do you go about telling your once seemingly asexual, once dead flat mate that you're in love with him?

Of course, it's not like they ACTED like normal flat mates. They were too close, too personal, too comfortable. Especially now. And of course EVERYONES had that 'Shit, I'm in love with my best friend' moment before.

… But when your best friend is the subject of your worst nightmares, accidentally made you suicidal, and yet is also your favourite, and now only, masturbation fantasy, things get a little worrying.

############

It turns out, as things often do, not to be as hard as John thought it would be.

Their night time routine was the same for days, until the night Sherlock followed John up to bed.

The doctor had been lying in bed for about an hour or so, and was about to drift off to sleep, when there was a soft knock on his door.

"…John?"

The door opened, and John watched the tall figure step almost shyly into his room.

"Yes, Sherlock, is something the matter?"

There was a pause, and then-

"N… No… Not really. I just…"

"Just what?"

John sat up a bit, leaning against the headboard, wincing at the stiffness in his shoulder, but ignoring it. He waited for his flat mate to speak, and sighed when he didn't.

"C'mere then. There's room."

He'd barely finished speaking when a ball of gangly limbs catapulted onto his bed. The dark headed man straddled the other's hips, getting comfortable, making the blogger blush.

"Sherlock, what-"

"You love me."

It wasn't a question.

John swallowed hard, looking up at the gorgeous man in his lap. Of course he'd figured it out, of course he knew. Not that the fact had been hidden very well in the first place, but-

"Johnnnnnn."

Sherlock whined, wriggling his hips, making John gasp.

"Dammit, Sherlock, you can't just-"

"You. Love. Me.?"

This time it WAS a question, and John answered it with a kiss, soft at first, slow, delving his tongue into Sherlock's mouth cheekily before pulling away.

"What does that tell you?"

Sherlock beamed, and bent to push his face into John's neck, wrapping his long arms around him. It was quiet for a moment before Sherlock's low rumble of a murmur broke the silence.

"… Real…"

##################

It was still hard for John. He had spent two weeks thinking that his best friend- and now lover, had all been a figment of his imagination. He hadn't been crazy, hadn't been hallucinating, but he sure as hell thought he had been.

It scared him.

It scared him to know that he couldn't tell what was real and what wasn't. So he continued his list of real and not real. Some days he just felt so confused; like he didn't know which way was up. He genuinely didn't know what was a dream and what wasn't, and Sherlock would rub his back through his panic attacks. He needed touch, needed physicality, needed to be reminded over and over again that he himself was real.

John knew all this was yet another symptom of his PTSD. He hated it. Sherlock being back hadn't helped it, only proved the symptoms harder to get under control. He couldn't even walk without his cane. Every time he tried, his leg would clench up in pain, and then collapse.

What John hated most is that his leg was something that was most definitely not real… But there was nothing he could do to convince his body otherwise.

He could tell Sherlock was worried about him, but he honestly didn't know what to do to make anything better. Sherlock seemed to understand this, and would stick to helping John at night, in bed.

#############

"My death, John."

"N… Not real."

Sherlock smiles, flicking his thumb over the tip of John's cock, making his lover moan brokenly.

"Molly."

"Wha-? Sherlock, I don't really want to think about Molly right nah-ah…"

The man's hips bucked off the bed as the detective gently squeezed the hard member in his hand.

"John-"

"Fine! Real! R… Real."

"Good, John."

Sherlock all but purred the words, moving to kiss the doctor, who was now clinging to him.

"Hmm, need you, John."

The shorter man shivered, nodding quickly, and began to move, but this opposite pushed him back.

"No, I want it like this. Just me, working for you."

John swallowed hard, shakily, his mind flashing to delicious images. He was about to tell Sherlock that he simply could not keep saying things like that when the man in question took John's pause as an opportunity to guide two of the blogger's fingers back and into his entrance, gasping softly.

"Pleeeassseeee."

"Sherlock… I… you're already-"

"I did it in the shower, John. By myself… Just for you. Wanted it to be you. Need you."

Sherlock looked far too innocent and proud for those dirty words to be falling past his perfect lips. Before John's mind could start working again to even think of a response, Sherlock scooted back, positioning himself, and slid down onto John's length, moaning obscenely.

"Perfect, John. Perfect. You're perfect, every time… "

And so was their almost nightly routine. It went on longer than needed, longer than John needed it, the listing just becoming a sort of foreplay, or comfort.

The days passed, forming weeks, months. They still tried for normal every day. John worked at the clinic; Sherlock (eventually) started taking cases again. They were there through the late nights, the panic attacks, the experiments, the take out dinners. They were there for each other. They tried to ignore the bad, the things that weren't getting better.

They had each other, so there was nothing else to fear.

They each vowed secretly to themselves that as long as they had each other, they would be happy. Everything else could come crashing down… But they had their one miracle, and that was good enough.

So they went about their lives, hope somewhat faded into the darkness. Both men still had nightmares, panic attacks. Sherlock struggled with his addictions that had popped back up during the time separated from John. John struggled with accepting the fact that he would probably never walk by himself again.

But they struggled together, and that's what was important.

Until one day when John is tidying up their bedroom, and hears a crash, and a half cut off yell of pain. He runs into the living room to find Sherlock on the ground, a ladder at his side. The detective is cradling his arm, already waving John away.

"M'fine, fine. I think I might've broken my arm, but I'm fine."

The doctor sighs at his idiot boyfriend, and pulls him up to the couch to have a look.

"… It's sprained probably, but not broken, you stupid git. Now stay there, I'll make up an ice pack."

John shakes his head, talking while walking into the kitchen.

"You know, sometimes I wonder at how you can actually be a genius, because honestly. You are the most irresponsible, accident prone, immature child I know."

When he reenters the living room, Sherlock is staring at him.

"What? Don't look at me like that. This is your fault."

"John."

"What?"

The detective gestures, and John looks down at himself, confused.

He's walking. He's standing.

His cane is in their room and he ran- ran- into the living room, and-

John sits heavily next to Sherlock, emotion welling up in his throat. He fixes the ice pack onto Sherlock's hurt arm, and then shakily tries to stand again, to walk around.

He does everything so smoothly it's as if the problem hadn't existed in the first place.

"John."

The ex-soldier looks over at his lover, and the look on the taller man's face is so proud, so happy, so real, that John knows, he just knows.

Everything is going to be okay.