Title: Of London Rain

Author: Still Waters

Fandom: Sherlock (BBC)

Disclaimer: I do not own Sherlock. Just playing, with love and respect to those who brought these characters to life.

Summary: John always slept well when it rained.

Written: Draft: 5/30/13. Edited 5/31/13, 6/4/13.

Notes: A "middle of the night" idea involving both the "Sherlock" and "Merlin" fandoms, this short character study was inspired by a straight week and a half of rain, followed by further reflection on both John's wardrobe and his scene with Mycroft in front of Speedy's at the end of "A Scandal in Belgravia." I found it interesting how John didn't even attempt to step under the café's awning while talking to Mycroft, even though he was already soaked from the rain. As always, I truly hope I did the characters justice. Thank you for reading and for your continued support. I cherish every response.

It was raining again.

John lay in bed, one arm pillowed behind his head, the other across his abdomen, a faint, relaxed smile on his lips. Eyes closed, his full attention belonged to the sound of wind and water against glass and stone.

He loved the rain.

While others grumbled about the damp in their bones, cursed gray skies and interrupted plans, and cut themselves off with raincoats, hoods, and umbrellas, he embraced the rain – everything from light mist to pounding downpours. It was why John – a man all too familiar with the importance of being prepared – lived in a city of wellies and brollies without owning so much as a hooded jacket. Because while proper raingear would keep him dry, it would also physically separate him from the rain rushing past his ears to impact skin, fabric, and pavement; would distort the sound of water falling from cloudy skies, sodden trees, building rooftops, and his own soaked hair.

Why on earth would he want to remove himself from all that?

In rain, John found peace. Grounding. Rain was the steady massage of a shower easing healed muscles spasming in the grips of painful memory. It was the antithesis of barren, violent desert. It was guessing whether Sherlock was going to yell at the rain for interrupting his thinking, or challenge himself to compose a song to the metronome of nature against sitting room windows. Rain was London. England. Home.

But most of all, rain was everything that the white noise machine at his therapist's office wasn't – for in rain, there was privacy. It was a curtain of water separating him from a sea of hoods, brollies, and rushing footsteps seeking dryness. A steady stream of innocuous sound to focus on, bringing his mind the stillness that tended to elude him during trained breathing exercises and the normalcy of civilian life, yet came naturally in the middle of danger and chaos. It was in Mother Nature's soothing white noise that nightmares were drowned before they could attack; where the rush of water in his ears swept away the crowding, insidious presence of rumination.

There was no pain and overwhelming memory, no self-doubt or depression, no jaw-tightened, spine-stiffened, fist-clenched emotional control. In the noise of rainfall, John found blessed silence and solitude. Surrounded by water, he breathed, not like a man drowning, but one finally on solid land.

A flurry of octave-jumping notes challenged the rain's welcome insulation as Sherlock attacked nature's audacity at interrupting genius with rapid bowing; an aggressive compositional assault in staccato syncopation to each wind-blown crash of water against foggy glass.

But John's focus never wavered, even as he acknowledged his flatmate's sudden presence with a brief, self-congratulatory quirk of the lips; having correctly guessed Sherlock's rainy evening behavior for the third time that month.

John let out a long breath, the violin fading into the familiar sounds of the rain, becoming a soft undercurrent of connectedness - of friendship and home - within the wider distance the white noise provided him. The music went on, augmenting, but never overshadowing, John's secluded stillness; both a rarity bordering on impossibility considering that it was Sherlock's forceful personality at the bow, and a quiet expression of the almost symbiotic give-and-take that Sherlock and John inexplicably, naturally, shared.

Time passed.

Rain shook the window. The violin rose in threatening crescendo. And John, in the midst of the cascading chaos of precipitation and Sherlock Holmes, found silence in sound; privacy without loneliness.

Relief and gratitude washed across his face as his breathing deepened without even the barest hint of trained, conscious control.

John would sleep well tonight. He knew it.

He always slept well when it rained.