A/N: Sorry about the wait. I've been trying to get my college stuff together. Thanks so much for the fantastic response and all of the suggestions. They were great! Keep them coming…

SLEEPING

When he thinks back, years later, to when their relationship first shifted, John finds he isn't able to point to one thing in particular. That he can't quite pin down the moment when they'd gone from flatmates to friends. From colleagues to 'hetero-life-partners', regardless of how much disdain he feels for the phrase. In truth, it's not something he thinks about all that much. Still, from time to time when he wakes up in the middle of the night, rolling his eyes at Sherlock's complete lack of personal boundaries but shifting slightly to make room for the madman in his bed, he thinks back to the first time and tries to figure out how he'd gotten from there to here.

It had been about 14 months into their partnership when John found himself on the wrong end of a knife. They'd been pursuing a murder for nearly three days, always two steps behind him. He was the sort that Sherlock became giddy about; the crafty criminally insane sort that saw no difficulty in slitting someone's throat for no other reason than because it made him happy. Sherlock had been after this guy for years, nay, decades, as he told him. Houdini, Sherlock called him once or twice, though the rest of the NSY referred to him as the comeback killer. Even under the strict surveillance of 24 hour security and monitoring, the killer always managed to return to the crime scene and deliver a solitary black rose. And nobody knew how.

Sherlock had looked at the case from every different angle. He had tried chasing him down, setting traps, forensics, M.O.s, he had investigated every laboratory in Britain that manipulated rose genes, had tracked down all distributors and had nearly gotten himself sent to prison for impersonating an officer – Lestrade of course, who had worked with Mycroft to get him off the charges. This was John's second encounter with Houdini, who always had an escape plan at the ready no matter what scenario he had gotten himself into.

It was at a country home where they finally found him, with a garden full of black roses and neighbours who reported that they saw him once a day to fetch the paper; that he opened his shades part way and closed them at exactly the same time at night; that he never spoke to anyone and that he had aroused the suspicions of just about everyone in the small community.

They had been investigating the house, drawn in by the lack of car and a report from a house-bound elderly neighbour that the suspect had left the house that morning unexpectedly.

The cellar, which John had been eager to investigate ("he's too smart to leave anything down there. He knows that's the first place anyone will look…") had turned up nothing, as he'd expected.

John pocketed his torch as he got to the top of the steps, checking his phone and finding the direction to search the downstairs bathroom. Shutting the cellar door behind him, he couldn't get any sort of grasp about what happened next. He felt the sudden jerking, ripping pain and his vision went white. Whatever it was entered his side and he knew immediately that it had pierced his liver. He gasped for breath between screams and collapsed, the penknife still lodged in his side. He didn't even notice banging his head against the tile, in too much pain already and instantly falling unconscious.

He woke up and Sherlock was sitting beside him, reading the paper. Two days had passed, he realised as he skimmed the front page. Suspected Murderer Bludgeoned to Death in Home. He turned his eyes skyward and wondered how the hell Mycroft is going to get him out of this one.

"Lestrade knows… I had him on back-up. He drove you to the hospital but you lost quite a bit of blood. Not quite as much as Lucas Mason, however. And yes, he was the killer. He told me he would take care of it. I trust he and my brother will settle it." Sherlock said, rapidly tapping out a few doses of morphine.

John didn't speak; could barely breathe from pain and felt the morphine seeming to hit him all at once. As he drifted away on a sea of narcotics, he decided to leave the messy business in Sherlock's hands, for once too exhausted to worry about the younger man.

Lestrade dropped by later that night, subtly informing him that Sherlock hadn't sleep at all while John was unconscious, and when Sherlock was asked to leave the room while John was bathed and changed, the nurse let him know they had been under special orders to allow him to stay as long as he liked and that he'd not yet left.

Three days passed by and he was reluctantly released, hardly able to walk and still in such pain. He felt unbearably nauseous from the medication, finding he can't quite remember it being this horrible upon his first rehabilitation. At home, it was as though they were still in hospital for all the time that Sherlock sat at his bedside. Except he also had to play nurse and was shockingly capable.

And Sherlock did not sleep. Not once that John had seen.

He woke up one night and found the detective kneeling slumped beside John's bed, an arm spayed beside his head, looking more like he'd passed out than fallen asleep. He shook the man awake and told him in no uncertain terms that, for the love of god, he needed to get some proper rest.

He didn't react when Sherlock got to his feet, cracking that elegant swan-like neck of his, and climbed in beside him. They laid stiff for a few elongated moments of uncertainty, both waiting for John's response. Between the pain, exhaustion and opioids, nothing about this felt real. He thought back on that night they'd spent together on the sofa, John feverishly huddled against Sherlock's chest, feeding off the heat of both their bodies and wondered why the torrent of thought seemed to slow to sap.

The words that jumped automatically to his mouth became stuck in his oesophagus and he heard them come out in a jumble of syllables unrecognizable as words. He adjusted himself, feeling a magnetic push and pull between the pulse of their bodies like an electric current, uncomfortable and hypnotic all at once. Sherlock was close enough to feel the heat of his body and the slowing rise and fall of his chest, just far enough that they aren't at risk of touching unnecessarily. He was on his back, uncomfortable with the position and knew that he'd need to turn completely over to get into a position where he feels settled and the recent stab wound isn't irritated.

Fuck it, he thought, because this was his bed, damn it, and he'd sleep whichever way he wanted, and since when had either of them been impeded by personal space and boundaries anyway? The man had killed someone for him not days ago. If he was bothered by John sprawling himself over him then he could get out and sleep in his own damn bed, couldn't he?

With a grunt, John turned over and pressed his head against the space between his flatmate's shoulder and neck, wondering how it was possible that it could feel like that spot was custom made to cushion John's head, and sidled closer, situating himself so that he was actually comfortable for once in the past week and letting out a sleepy huff. He wondered passively how this was going to end up, telling himself he didn't care either way.

He tensed, feeling an arm coming up to cushion his uninjured side; waiting for the resistance without breathing and hoped it wasn't going to be too awkward. That he won't have to hear the derision in Sherlock's voice. Instead he heard a quiet sound. Contentment. Dear god, was it even possible for Sherlock to make that noise when there weren't dead bodies present?

He didn't have long to feel satisfaction, for the second his body senses it can relax, it ushers him back in to a state of unconsciousness, Sherlock keeping him fixed in place against him.

He woke three times to find the still prone and drowsing body beneath his and shook off the urge to escape this incriminating position. He was bedridden for the next three days at least; he may as well be comfortable. He slept on and off until the early afternoon and wondered how he could feel so restful and comfortable with a stab wound.

It's something they almost never talked about, at least not in words.

When enough time passes, John wonders when exactly he'd stopped the internal diatribe about why he was allowing this to happen and started rolling over half asleep to press his forehead against the other man's shoulder. He imagines that it's likely around the same time he'd conceded to sharing his life and his bed with another man, but such was the way the universe worked. You never got what you thought you deserved. But life found a way of giving you just what you needed.