Title: Love Like Burning
Fandom: Sherlock BBC
Pairing: Implied Sherlock/John, John/Mary
Rating: G
Length: 350 words
Content notes: Fire, PTSD
Summary: Some of the night mares that ride through John's mind



221 Baker Street is burning.

The rooms go up in flames one by one, wallpaper curling from the walls, picture frames twisting, ceilings collapsing, beds turned to pyres. Heat devils catch up Sherlock's papers and send them spiraling upwards, while books fall to the floor already in ashes. John's chair and Sherlock's catch fire simultaneously, as if in mutual combustion.

In the kitchen, acrid steam rises from burst jars and beakers, their contents bubbling and scorching across the countertops, or igniting in the air. Flames race across old wood, and the refrigerator filled with small horrors tilts and falls through burning boards, crashing into the basement. Mrs. Hudson screams.

John's terrified heart beats and beats, but he's a soldier, he clenches his teeth against this new pain that sears his heart. Breathe. Mary turns, her bridal dress in ashes, she opens her arms to him, smiling. John runs to her. His heart blisters and burns.

"Two hundred and twenty one different types of ash," Sherlock says, flicking away a cigarette. Lestrade pulls up a sleeve, revealing patchwork skin.

Breathe.

Fireworks explode in the distance, and the Guy bends in the heat as if bowing to the interloper interred at its feet. John tries to scream. Sherlock, Mary pull him from the tangle of petrol-soaked boards and branches. Breathe. Breathe.

Baker Street burns. The skull falls from the blackened mantle and lands in a ruined heap of wood and broken strings. The two long windows shatter, raining down glass on Molly, cinder-smudged and mournful. The stairway hangs suspended against a wall of flame, then collapses slowly, in a delirium of slow-motion. Mycroft's umbrella swings carelessly. The roof caves in.

Sherlock is falling, his elegant coat is on fire, swirling around him, cloaking him in flames. "Sherlock!" John's heart is a burning building. Sherlock falls. John breathes in fire, breathes out ashes, blinks the smoke from his eyes. Sherlock falls.

"Sherlock!"

After that one name is wrenched from him, John's throat closes. His mouth open in a silent scream, he awakens in the dark, bolt upright, gasping, sweating, alone, and cold.