These are the Questions

Chapter 4

It's funny, the internal clock that tells us when to move, think, breath. It seems to know everything. Even when something is coming. It tells us it's time to run to save us from danger.

John was never very good at listening to this part of himself.

For a while, he does. He goes along with it. He enters a room when he feels it's time. He leaves when his subconscious gives him that mental nudge 'let's get moving.' Not a second later, nor earlier.

John does not speak to him again. Well, not for a while, anyway. Later on, he'll think about all the time he spent-all the time he's wasted-on walking on the edge of lines. From ignoring what his brain tells him is dangerous. Sooner or later, he'll wonder what would have happened if he's just spoken to him. If he had sat in that chair in the cafeteria that first time he saw him. Really saw him.

But for now, they're a bit like planets in orbit. Revolving around each other, same place, and sometimes they can see the other over the horizon, but they just never quite get close enough to touch.

John is watching him from across the cafeteria. He is waiting for something.

***

What is it?

What are you waiting for?

***

John is laying in bed.

Which is not very unusual. He has done this almost every night of his life. Laid in a bed. And he never thinks about it, does he? None of us ever do. We never think about the dangers we are putting ourselves in when we pull the covers over us at night, we just do it. We don't think about how we are going to be lying here, unconscious, for several hours, when anything can happen. Anything can happen. We are always worried about so many things, and then we lay down, close our eyes, turn off our senses and say 'come at me.'

John has laid in many different places. He looks up at the ceiling and it is different than the one he would have seen a year ago.

And doesn't that bother you?

You think you sleep the same as you always have, but you don't. It's a different bed. It's a different mattress. It's different blankets from the ones you had when you were young. It's a different room, and different house, a different bloody continent.

John rolls over and just stares at the bedroom door because it's not the same as it was before. And the snoring coming from behind the wall is a different person than it was before.

And he is still the same.

***
"Do you ever notice?"
"Do you?"
"Do you?"

***

He has not spoken to Sherlock in over two weeks. Not in exactly sixteen days. That is 384 hours. The minutes do not matter.

John has never spoken to him for more than five minutes, and yet he feels himself somehow tethered to him. He feels that, for some reason, they must meet again. John feels an indescribable amount of pressure sinking on his shoulders when ever he thinks about it. He must speak to him.

***

When John sees him at lunch the next day, the whole rooms atmosphere begins to shift. The clock above the kitchen doorway has slowed, and John can hear nothing but his own breathing.

He's sick of this. Every time they're in the same room, it's like there's a siren ringing loud. Look at me, it says. And John does.

When this happens, he is always attracted not by some quantifiable, external beauty, but by something deep down, something absolute. For want of a better word, call it magnetism. Like it or not, it's a kind of power that snares people and reels them in.

When Sherlock tips his neck back and looks heavenward, John realizes that he never even stood a chance.

***

It is the next night when John is lying in bed-again-that it happens. There is nothing special about this night. The wind does not blow differently. He does not feel alarm bells going off in his brain as he says goodnight, and travels up the stairs to his bedroom. This is an ordinary night. Alison made pasta, he ate it, helped clean up, and did his homework on the sitting room floor.

He is nearly sleeping-drifting between that stage of full awareness and unconsciousness, when he feels the bed dip beside him. And see? Anything can happen while your sleeping. For all he knows, that could be a crazy axe murderer. A raccoon with rabies. He wasn't aware, and now anything can happen.

What does happen then is a surprise. Not more so a surprise than if it was a crazy axe murderer, or an ill raccoon. Those would both be pretty shocking, but when a cold hand grabs his own, and inky curls tickle his noes, he finds which one he perfers.

Sherlock does not speak a word, and John finds the thick silence in the room cold and unrelenting, daring him to breach it.

So he doesn't. He lies still as the boy curls against him, and drifts off into unconsciousness.

After all, who knows? Anything can happen while your asleep.