Work Text:
Breakfast was already made. Tea was ready. Clothes were neatly pressed and ready to go. Shaving, done. Brushing teeth, done. One by one, he ticked off the items in his mental list. He checked the time.
"Fuck. It's not even 5:00 am."
Sherlock hadn't said a word, but did help himself to a few slices of toast, and a mug of tea, as John shuffled back to their bed, muttering under his breath. "Still another four hours before I have to go to work, and fucking sleep won't come ..."
John lay in bed, book propped on his knees, as he tried to use the endless litany that helped him sleep before. "Olfactory, optic, oculomotor, trochlear, trigeminal, abducens, facial, vestibulocochlear, glossopharyngeal, vagus, spinal accessory, hypoglossa."
He went through the bones of the feet, the regions of the brain, the major blood vessels, starting from the right ventricle, and onwards. Nothing was working.
He felt the right side of the mattress dip.
"Roll over," Sherlock said.
John was confused. Sherlock knew that John hated sleeping while anyone was touching him. Call it hair-trigger nerves, built up over years of military service, or hair-trigger nerves built up by living with a madman who thought that 3:30 AM on a Wednesday night was a perfectly reasonable hour to rouse oneself out of bed and go haring off into the night. Either way, whenever someone was touching, cuddling, or doing something similar before sleeping, John would gently disengage before he moved completely to his side of the bed, cocooned himself safely in a blanket, and fell asleep himself. Being touched while trying to sleep was just too distracting.
However, at this hour of the day, he wasn't about to complain. Even if he couldn't get to sleep, maybe he'd be able to at least relax for a bit. John rolled over, still keeping his book propped up. He felt the warm bare chest press gently against his back. He felt Sherlock's arms wrap possessively around himself. Valiantly, he kept reading.
Sherlock's breathing kept slowing down, with each passing breath. John found his own breathing follow the same pattern, unconsciously. The warmth from Sherlock seeped past John's defences, and made him feel snug, and very comfortable. Still, he read on.
He didn't know when the transition between struggling to keep his eyes open, and the book falling carelessly down to the floor happened, but when it did, he fell blissfully asleep. Finally, the two men were matching their breathing, and running gently into the land of dreams, at least for a few more hours.