[fic] sherlock - hurry home (3/3)
_____
ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN
The force of his body hitting the water knocks him out.
By all accounts, he should be dead.
_____
He struggles into consciousness as someone drags him out of the water. They pull on his arms and there’s an intense pain in his left shoulder. He wants them to stop. He chokes up water but most of it drips right back into his nose, some dribbling down his chin. He should sit up. They’re still dragging him.
He feels light-headed even lying on the ground. The wound in his shoulder throbs slowly when they stop pulling at him. His hearing is too fuzzy to make out the words that they’re saying. Someone applies pressure to his shoulder. He chokes up water again and this time someone turns his head so it all dribbles out onto the wet pebbles.
His vision swims. The darkness swallows him back up.
_____
The next time he fights his way into semi-consciousness, he’s on a bed and his shoulder is bandaged. There’s blood dripping from a bag to an IV in his arm. He stares at a stain on the ceiling for a long time before becoming alert enough to actually look at it.
He doesn’t know where he is. He doesn’t know what day it is. He’s naked under the sheets. His gun is gone. His earpiece is gone.
Sherlock.
Sherlock probably thinks he’s dead.
John pulls the sheet off him with clumsy fingers that don’t grasp quite as well as he’s used to. His feet hit the ground and he yanks the IV out. Every movement sends a burning pain from his left shoulder. He stumbles across the floor to the closet and pulls it open with some effort. It’s empty. He looks back at the sheet. Well fuck.
He moves back towards the bed and pulls the sheet off. He uses both arms to drape it around himself, gritting his teeth against the pain in his left.
He makes it halfway down the hall in search of anything that looks like a phone when they finally notice he’s up. A man hurries over as he leans against the wall and pants.
“What are you doing out of bed?” the man asks in Urdu.
“I need a phone,” John says and he’s half certain that the words aren’t right at all, not that the man can even understand them through his slurred speech. “I’m not dead,” John says in English and he’s seized with the sudden terror that Sherlock will do something monumentally stupid.
There’s a flurry of activity around him. Someone carefully gets an arm under his right shoulder and they half pull, half carry John back towards the room he just left. “Phone,” John repeats. He tries to struggle but can only manage to wiggle away weakly with sharp pains in his left shoulder all the while.
He’s forced back onto the bed. “I want to talk to Sherlock,” John says to the woman who puts the IV back into his right arm. She smiles at him and pushes a syringe into the pump. John thinks he might have spoken in English. Then it’s too hard to think and he sinks back into a quiet stupor.
_____
LONDON, ENGLAND
Nine returns later that night, in the early hours of the morning. Sherlock lies in bed, staring up at the ceiling. Nine takes a seat by his bed and manoeuvres the bed into an upright position so that Sherlock is sitting up. He glances out the open door. The security guard sitting outside is sipping on coffee and reading a magazine.
“I have a present for you, Sherlock,” Nine says.
Sherlock does not respond. Nine pulls a laptop out of his briefcase and sets it on Sherlock’s knees. Sherlock looks at it blankly as it starts up.
“I hope you’ll like my present,” Nine says. He swivels the laptop to face him briefly as he connects the computer to his phone to use as a modem. A few clicks and he turns the laptop back towards Sherlock.
Sherlock sits up, his eyes riveted on the screen. There’s no sound but it shows John speaking to a man at the side of his bed, gesturing at his bandaged shoulder and shaking his head. Sherlock touches the screen.
“Oh, you do like it,” Nine says, smiling.
“Is it real?” They’re the first real words Sherlock has said in over a week. His voice is hoarse from disuse.
“Very real,” Nine says and shuts the laptop, “He’s alive.”
“What do you want?” Sherlock asks.
Nine packs the laptop away. “I want you to get better, Sherlock,” he says, “And once you’re outside, come find me and we can go visit him together.”
_____
Mycroft comes to take him home.
Sherlock winds the scarf around his neck and shrugs on his coat. He doesn’t even look at Mycroft.
Mycroft takes him back to Vauxhall because he can’t be anywhere without supervision. He drops Sherlock off at his office--his old office, maybe, if he’s been fired for his breakdown. He’s supposed to keep his door open so the people outside can make sure he’s not committing suicide while he sits at his desk chair. Sherlock wants to laugh at them.
He sits for only a few minutes before he gets up and walks around the cubicles outside. He finds John’s cubicle and sits in his chair. He looks at John’s handwriting on John’s calendar and the old cup of coffee he had never thrown away. All the water has evaporated out, leaving a dried brown scum.
For the first time since John’s transmitter had gone silent, Sherlock feels like crying.
_____
“You must know who I am by now,” Nine says.
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry it had to be done this way,” Nine says, “But I had to show you, you see. About your brother.”
Sherlock doesn’t respond for a moment. And then he says, “Yes.”
_____
It’s absurdly easy to slip Mycroft’s tails. He heads back to 221B to throw things into a bag and walks three streets away before calling a cab to take him to the airfield Nine had given him. With any luck it would be another thirty minutes before Mycroft noticed that Sherlock was gone. He’d left code running on his computer but anyone would be able to look in and see he wasn’t there.
Nine meets him on the runway. They’re taking a private jet to Pakistan and it roars to life the moment an attendant closes the airplane door.
“Buckle up,” Nine sings and he grins at Sherlock.
_____
Sherlock wants to grip the armrests tight but he also doesn’t want to show Nine any sign of weakness. “You still haven’t told me what you want.”
“All in good time,” Nine say. He turns his head to look at Sherlock. “We can discuss that after we land.”
Sherlock says nothing as he looks at the back of the seat in front of him.
_____
Just a week ago, he had been directing John down this highway to his death. Sherlock hates himself.
He wishes the car would go faster.
_____
John is asleep when they arrive. Sherlock freezes in the doorway and stares for a moment before he clears the space between them in three strides and looks down.
Nine closes the door. Sherlock fumbles for the bedside light and turns it on. John looks okay--he’s not pale and his breathing is steady. There is white gauze wrapped loosely around his shoulder, but beyond that, John looks fine. Sherlock slowly drops into a kneel and presses his forehead against John’s bed, trying to control the sudden gasping sobs that rise unbidden out of his throat.
“Sherlock?”
John’s voice, confused. Sherlock jerks back and stares at John’s open eyes through the blurriness of tears.
“John.”
“Come here,” John says and scoots over. There’s barely enough space for one grown man on the bed, let alone two--but Sherlock climbs in carefully and settles along John’s side. He shuts his eyes and scrubs at his face but John catches his wrist and kisses the corner of Sherlock’s eye. He kisses the tears on Sherlock’s cheek down to the side of Sherlock’s mouth and then he kisses him with closed lips. Sherlock curves a hand around John’s jaw and parts his lips, draws in a shaking breath.
“I was scared,” John whispers against his lips, “That you--” John swallows and Sherlock can feel the movement against the side of his wrist. “Sherlock you have to promise me. You can’t--not ever--okay?”
John’s crying too now. Sherlock brushes a thumb at the tear that slips from the inner corner of John’s eye.
John turns and pulls Sherlock closer into a hug, his left arm around Sherlock’s shoulder as he buries his face in Sherlock’s hair, “You have to promise me.”
_____
There’s no window in John’s room. When Sherlock wakes, he lifts his arm to check his watch. It’s nearly seven in the morning in London. Which means it’s--
“Can you hear the call to midday prayer?” John whispers.
“How long have you been awake?” Sherlock asks.
“A couple of hours,” John says. He smiles crookedly. Sherlock traces his lips lightly with his fingertips.
“You know where we are?” John murmurs, “You know who they are?”
“I know enough,” Sherlock says.
“Will he be expecting you?” John asks. He doesn’t move his arm from Sherlock’s waist. Sherlock strokes the side of John’s nose, touches his eyebrows.
“He can wait,” Sherlock murmurs and sits up to take off his shirt.
_____
Sherlock moves slowly, sliding up and down John’s cock in a lazy rhythm as if they’ve got all the time in the world. He breathes against John’s ear while John runs his hands up and down Sherlock’s sides, and kisses Sherlock’s shoulder. It’s not about coming or even seeking pleasure, it’s about their skin pressed together and sharing space, about reassurance and being alive to do this.
_____
“You’re very talented, Sherlock. I think you know what I want from you,” Nine says when Sherlock finally comes looking for him later that afternoon.
“And if I don’t?” Sherlock asks.
“I would suggest that you reconsider,” Nine says.
Sherlock looks at him.
“John’s recovering nicely, isn’t he?” Nine asks. He smiles. “How many people do you think attended his funeral? It was supposed to be today, wasn’t it?”
Sherlock’s eyes narrow.
“Why don’t we think about what you get if you do?” Nine continues, “We have a common enemy, Sherlock. Someone we both would like to see suffer very much. We can work together toward the same goals. I have resources at my fingertips you couldn’t even dream of.” He leans towards Sherlock. “Efficiency is key, wouldn’t you say?”
Sherlock looks at him but doesn’t reply.
“The answer is obvious,” Nine says, “But I’ll give you time to think about it.”
He’s still smiling as he leaves.
_____
John sits outside. Someone gave him back his laundered clothes and John touches the bullethole in the left shoulder of his suit jacket as he looks down the main road of the village. One of the men followed him outside and he smokes a pipe now as he leans against the wall of the house. John is fairly sure that the man is supposed to be his guard.
He doesn’t know where he is. He doesn’t have any of his identification much less either of his guns. It’d be easy to get them replaced but John doesn’t have easy access to a phone inside the house. And every time he steps outside, there’s always someone there, smoking and watching his every move.
There’s little doubt about it. John doesn’t have to be locked into a hole to realise that he’s a prisoner.
Sherlock sits down next to him. He reaches down and sifts dirt through his fingers.
“I wonder how Harry’s doing,” John murmurs.
The last of the dirt falls out of Sherlock’s hand. He claps them clean. “We could fly back to London.”
“We can’t fly back to London,” John says, “Nine’s not going to let us fly back to London.”
Sherlock looks away, down the street of the village.
“This isn’t the life I imagined for us,” John says.
_____
Sherlock’s gone by the time John wakes up and he doesn’t show up for breakfast either. John waits for another hour in case his meeting with Nine is running long, but eventually he turns to one of the men who are perpetually watching him and he asks, “Where’s Sherlock?” His accent is awkward, his tongue fumbling around the foreign words.
“Gone,” the man replies, “You are to stay here.”
“Is Nine still here?” John asks.
The man looks confused. “Who?”
“Your boss,” John says.
“Moriarty?” the man asks, “No, he is gone also.”
John’s heart beats faster. He has a name. He doesn’t know how it will help him but he hopes it will. “When will they be back?”
“You ask too many questions,” the man says and goes back to his newspaper.
_____
John finds that he has an easier time wandering around the house unnoticed after lunch. It’s how he finds the storage room full of AK47 rifles and several large boxes with the Lockheed Martin logo stamped in a corner. He’d need a crowbar or at least something less blunt than an AK47 to open them though, so instead he looks for any sort of product description and ends up copying several serial numbers from the bottoms of the crate onto the palm of his hand with a half broken ball point pen. He’s spent long enough on military bases to recognize the first few numbers for what the crates contain though: long range missiles.
John wonders if he had a Geiger counter, would he be able to find evidence of weapons grade uranium somewhere in the house just waiting to be shipped off to the right bidder? John wouldn’t put it past Nine. How many other places across the world did he have setups like this?
The next time he tries to get into the same room, it’s locked. None of the other rooms contain anything interesting. The others keep their phones on their person and John hasn’t managed to find one unattended. They won’t let him go farther than half a street from the front doors.
There’s nothing to do except wait for Sherlock to come back.
_____
Sherlock returns at night, five days later. He refuses dinner and goes to splash water on his face in the bathroom. John hears Sherlock’s voice and the bathroom door close. He’s halfway across the room and about to go knock on the closed door before deciding that he doesn’t want to attack Sherlock with questions if he needs his space. He climbs back into bed.
Ten minutes later, Sherlock slips under the covers, greeting him with a soft kiss. He sighs into John’s mouth and closes his eyes and looks so tired that John keeps his questions to himself and lets him sleep.
_____
“I hacked into the US department of defence,” Sherlock tells him the next morning while he takes a shower. John sits on the toilet. He doesn’t need to use anything in the bathroom but he wants to be near Sherlock. “Nine wanted a few forged documents to be put in the system.”
“Forged documents?”
“Missile launch directives,” Sherlock says.
“Well he’s certainly got the missiles,” John says, “So where’s he going to launch them?”
Sherlock shuts the water off. He pulls back the shower curtain. His voice is quiet. “Iran.”
John meets his eyes. “More war.”
“Sell to the highest bidder,” Sherlock agrees, “How much do you think Ahmadinejad would be willing to pay to get his hands on weapons grade uranium?”
“Sherlock,” John says quietly, “We can’t let this happen.”
Sherlock wraps a towel around himself and doesn’t say anything.
_____
Sherlock has another prolonged meeting with Nine.
John sits outside and writes a list of all the arguments why they can’t stay silent, why they need to get back to London and warn everyone. But he’s known Sherlock for almost half his life now. He can read volumes in the slant of Sherlock’s shoulders and the nuanced tone of Sherlock’s voice. He knows what Sherlock will say, how he’ll argue back, and none of it will have anything to do with the rest of the world.
He asks his unofficial guard if he can borrow a match. He looks at John suspiciously but hands one over anyway. John sets the list on fire and watches the ash float away in the wind.
_____
In the afternoon, Nine packs them all into three cars and a truck carrying one of the large crates John saw. They drive two hours to the middle of nowhere. They file out of the cars and form a loose half circle around the truck. One of the men pries open the crate with a crowbar while another two start setting up the missile launcher.
“Since none of us can be there in person,” Nine says, “I thought we’d have a little demonstration of sorts.”
It takes less than ten minutes for everything to be set up. There’s a ten second delay between the launch of the missile and the explosion. There’s a blinding white sheet of flame for only half a moment before it dies away and half the face of the foothill crumbles away.
The men around him are cheering and applauding. John looks away and notices that Nine’s been looking at him. Nine smiles when John catches his eye and looks away at the rising dust.
“You're all about to become very rich men,” Nine says.
_____
John’s watched more missile attacks than he wants to remember. Mostly while he was in Afghanistan and Iraq but it’s hard to forget the sound of a missile exploding even from miles away. It’s hard to forget walking through the wreckage, listening to children screaming for their parents lying half crushed in the streets where military factories and residential areas had existed side by side for decades. It’s hard to forget the smell of acrid smoke that settled into his clothes and threaded into his nightmares for years afterward.
He stares out the window as they drive back to the house. He’d rather die than let Nine drag them all into another hellish decade of fighting, of civilian deaths numbering in the tens of thousands.
He needs to leave. He needs to tell someone.
_____
“We have to go,” John says when they’re alone in the room with the door closed, “We have to go tonight.”
“They’ll be up celebrating tonight,” Sherlock says, “Maybe tomorrow would be a better choice.”
“Right,” John says, stepping forward into Sherlock’s space, “So you don’t actually intend to ever leave.”
“Tell me,” Sherlock says, “Say we leave tonight. Say we steal the car keys and can get somewhere where Nine can’t find us. Say we get a phone. You call and explain what happened. What’s to say they don’t come and arrest us on the spot? I’m not exactly innocent here.” He takes a breath and keeps eye contact. “In half a year’s time, we can go back to London and we can have everything we could possibly want, John.”
“Have you ever walked through a battlefield?” John asks. His voice sounds like it’s coming from far away. “Houses burning. Arms torn out of their sockets and strewn on the streets. Flies everywhere. And the smell.” He’s holding on to the front of Sherlock’s shirt now, still looking up into Sherlock’s eyes. “And children coming up to you with blood caked onto their skin and they’re begging you for water. But your supply line’s dried up and you don’t even have enough to go around for your soldiers.” He swallows. “You just murdered that little girl and you know it.”
Sherlock is silent, watching him.
“Your brother sent me there,” John says, “Parts of me have never returned.”
Sherlock touches his wrist.
“I want a world where eighteen year old boys aren’t sent to patrol through kneefuls of blood and sewage,” John says, “I want a world where six year old children don’t have to bury their parents.” He breathes. “I’m going to go whether you follow me or not.”
Sherlock closes his hand around John’s wrist. “If I do anything wrong, Nine will cut your fingers off one by one.”
“He’s probably good at thinking up ways to kill people too, isn’t he?”
Sherlock laughs except it’s not a laugh. When he speaks, it’s in a rush, “When I thought you were dead, I wanted to die. I stopped thinking. I stopped existing in any way that mattered. I was waiting for my body to catch up.”
John touches his cheek and Sherlock puts his hand on top of John’s, staring down at him still. “I can’t do that again, John. I can’t, not when I can stop it.”
“You can’t stop me,” John whispers, “You have to come with me.”
_____
They wait until it’s nearly three in the morning. The car keys are hung on a radio in Nine’s locked office. It takes John a moment to pick the lock while Sherlock stands lookout. Eventually the door opens and John grabs all of the car keys for good measure. John considers taking one of the phones too but it’d be too easy for Nine to track their location with it.
John has no idea where they are but Sherlock drives confidently, even in the dark. It doesn’t take too long before they see the lights of Islamabad glittering in the distance.
_____
John doesn’t have the key to the flat in Islamabad any more but he picks this lock too with a paperclip and a rusty nail he finds on the ground. The passport and extra identification are exactly where he left them in the drawer of the bedroom desk. There’s a box of ammunition in there too and John wishes that he had the gun to go along with it.
_____
The machine accepts Jamie Solomon's credit card and the flight attendant prints out their boarding passes. The flight to London doesn’t leave for another hour and a half. None of the stores are open--John looks longingly for a moment at the clothes and sunglasses that would help them blend into the crowd better.
He finds a public telephone and feeds several coins into it. When he dials the number for Mycroft’s office, he’s met with dead silence. He realizes that the sticker under the dial says that the phone doesn’t do international calls. He hisses a frustrated sigh between his teeth and sets the phone back into its cradle.
He asks the flight attendant if he can borrow the phone behind the desk. She points at the public telephone and only shakes her head when he tells her that it doesn’t make international calls. He half wants to lean over the counter and grab it from her desk but he knows he shouldn’t cause a scene, not when they were so close to leaving.
He wonders if anyone at the house has woken up yet, if they’ve been discovered.
_____
Sherlock lifts the armrest between the two of them and settles against John’s side. John puts an arm around him and stares out the window. They’re situated over a wing so John has to crane his neck to watch the ground receding away from view. Sherlock has a hand on John’s leg and his fingers tap a quick rhythm against his knee, the only outward signal of Sherlock’s anxiety.
_____
John intends to go straight to a pay phone to call Mycroft but they see Five standing with his arms crossed in the waiting area as they exit the boarding bridge.
“We saw your credit card activity,” Five says as they walk towards the parking garages, “Nine’s been kidnapped so we’ve all been on edge. I’ve been sent to come pick you up.” He glances back with a smile at John. “Good to see you alive.”
“Nine hasn’t been kidnapped,” John says, “We need to see M.”
“He’s at a safehouse right now,” Five says, “I’ll take you to him.”
_____
“What did you mean Nine hasn’t been kidnapped?” Five asks while they’re on the motorway, “Do you know where he is?”
“He’s a terrorist,” John says, “He’s been working with them for a while now.”
“I see,” Five says, “Well, I hope you have a lot of evidence to back your accusations.”
Sherlock takes John’s hand and squeezes it. John looks at him. Sherlock shakes his head almost imperceptibly, eyes straight forward. He knows something John doesn’t.
“Why is M at a safehouse?” John asks.
Five has a gun in a shoulder holster. He probably has knives on him too. There’s nothing in the backseat except fast food napkins and plastic bags. There’s a briefcase on the front seat that John can’t reach. There might be something in the trunk--a wrench at least for flat tires--but John doubts he can get to any of that.
“Threat on his life,” Five says, “Kidnappers said he’d be next if they didn’t cough up the ransom for Nine.” He looks at them in the rearview mirror. “We’re all a little on edge.”
_____
The position of the sun suggests that they’ve been going southwest from the airport for two hours. They turn off the A31 and pass a series of farmhouses before turning onto an overgrown road leading into the woods. Tree branches claw at the side of Five’s car but he doesn’t pay them any mind. They eventually get to a dilapidated stone farmhouse that looks like it hasn’t been used for ages.
Five hits a button on the roof of his car. The door of the attached garage opens. There’s an ancient tractor sitting at the back of the large space. Five drives the car into the garage and John makes note of the exits-one door leading outside in the back and another one to their left that presumably led into the house. There are boxes stacked along the back.
They are the only car here. John looks at Sherlock. Sherlock shakes his head minutely.
“Alright,” Five says, shutting the engine. They get out of the car. They have to pass the boxes on their way in and John tries to sniff them discreetly when Five’s back is turned. Faint scent of motor oil--but that could just be the fact that they’re standing in a garage.
There’s a letter opener in a cup of pens on the kitchen counter. John slips it into his pocket.
Five leads them down a set of stairs into the finished basement. John exchanges a look with Sherlock. At the bottom, Five gestures for them to go ahead. It’s his way of trapping them with no exit. John hesitates. Sherlock steps ahead of him, into Five’s space and turns his head to look at Five.
“Would you have shot him,” Sherlock asks, “Even if M had said no?”
Five draws his gun and touches it to bottom of Sherlock’s chin, “Walk down the hall. Second door to your right.” He looks at John. “You first or I’ll blow your boyfriend’s head off.”
John starts walking.
“I don’t think you will,” Sherlock says and John wishes he would shut up, stop goading the man into shooting him. “Otherwise we would already be dead.”
“Don’t push your luck, kid,” Five says and shoves Sherlock down the hall. He corrals the two of them into a room that looks like a stripped down office. John tries to look for an opening to try to stab him with the letter opener but Five stays behind them with his gun trained on Sherlock.
“When’s the launch?” Five asks.
“You don’t know?” Sherlock asks.
“Like I said,” Five says with a snarl of a smile, “We’ve all been on edge.”
“I don’t know,” Sherlock answers.
The gunshot seems like it’s too loud to fit into the small room. John chokes off a shout, his hands going instinctively to his side.
“I don’t play around,” Five says, “And while the boss might like that big brain of yours, he doesn’t give a shit about your little boyfriend.”
“Tomorrow,” Sherlock says, “In the early morning.”
The pain is too much. John steadies himself on the desk, smearing blood onto the dark wood. Five looks at him. Sherlock is making every effort not to.
“Fine,” Five says, “I’ll go grab the first aid kit. Don’t fuck with me and we won’t have a repeat incident.”
He steps out and locks the door. Sherlock is immediately on John, pulling his hands away from the mess of blood in effort to assess the damage. Sherlock’s pale and his hands are shaking.
“Listen,” John says through his gritted teeth as he pulls Sherlock with him to the front of the room where Five won’t be able to see them through the window in the door. “Take the letter opener out of my pocket. When he comes in, stab him in the neck. I’ll manoeuvre around and try to knock him out on the table. If you don’t get it in him with the first surprise attack, do whatever you can to knock the gun out of his hands.”
“You’re bleeding,” Sherlock says.
“Shut up and do as I tell you,” John says with as much steel he can muster, “That’s an order.”
Sherlock pulls the letter opener out of his pocket. John takes off his jacket and ties it around his torso tightly. His blood seeps through almost immediately. He ignores it and tries to keep his head clear and alert.
When Five opens the door, Sherlock waits for him to step in and put the first aid kit on the table before he attacks from behind. The letter opener doesn’t make it into Five’s neck but Sherlock manages to drive it into the space between his collarbone and his shoulder. Five roars and drives his elbow into the side of Sherlock’s head, whirling around to aim his gun just as John tackles him into the table.
By some miracle, John’s trajectory slams Five’s head into the top of the table, a sickening crack of bone against wood before the man slumps to the ground, still.
John grabs the gun from his hand while Sherlock pulls out his phone and his keys.
“Is he dead?” Sherlock asks.
“I don’t care,” John says as he pilfers ammunition from the inside of Five’s suit jacket and takes the first aid kit, “We’ll lock the door. We need to get to an area with reception.”
Sherlock puts his shoulder under John’s arm, looking down at the soaked-through suit jacket still tied around his middle. “We need to go to hospital.”
“Okay,” John says as he locks the door behind him. They go down the hall and are halfway up the stairs when the sound of a gunshot rings out behind him.
“Should have killed him,” Sherlock hisses.
John doesn’t answer, just hurries up the stairs and through the kitchen with Sherlock supporting him. A bullet hits the wall where John’s hand had been only a moment ago as they hurry into the garage.
John flips open one of the boxes. C-4. He was right after all.
“Other side of the car,” John orders and they manage to dive behind it just as the door opens with a furious Five aiming at them. The glass of the car shatters. John shoots back and the door closes momentarily.
“Sherlock,” John says, “We need to blow up this car.”
“Seems like a sane idea,” Sherlock growls but he crawls over to the fuel tank door and opens it with a twist of the key. He tears off a long strip of his sleeve. Five returns with harassing fire but John manages a lucky shot that gets him across the back of the hand.
“When you set it on fire--”
“Run like hell,” Sherlock agrees as he feeds the cloth into the tank.
John touches the wound on his side and breathes in and out to calm himself before expertly reloading the gun. He looks at Sherlock who is fumbling with a lighter. “Wait until he closes the door after shooting at us again.”
Sherlock nods, his eyes flicking down to John’s side.
The door opens. Five is shooting only with one hand. It’s not time to feel victorious yet. John waits before shooting back and half his bullets ping off the closed door.
“Go,” Sherlock says as he lights the end of the cloth.
They run.
_____
Everything explodes in a flash of light. One wall collapses with a shuddering rumble and half the house follows with a symphony of creaking splinters. After a moment of settling, the house burns from the inside out with a steady yellow glow.
Two silhouettes make it halfway into the field before one collapses.
_____
“Stay with me,” Sherlock begs as he slaps John’s face and moves to hold pressure at his side, “John you have to stay with me.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” John says but his eyes are slipping shut and he’s trying his hardest but it’s just so hard to stay awake, “I promise you.”
“I called,” Sherlock says, “I called and they’ll be here any minute, John please.”
“Good,” John says and his speech slurs, “You did good.”
“I never promised you,” Sherlock says, “I never promised you. You have to stay John.”
“I’ll be fine,” John says but the darkness pulls him down.
_____
John wakes up in a hospital bed. Sherlock is asleep on the couch at the foot of his bed with a blanket draped around him. His laptop is on the small table next to the chairs and his coat is draped over the end of John’s bed. John half wants to wake Sherlock and ask him to crawl into the hospital bed with him but doesn’t manage to actually form the words. He’s back asleep before he knows it.
When he wakes up again, he catches Sherlock walking out the door. He paces back and forth in front of John’s room as he speaks on the phone, running a hand through his curls and looking annoyed with the person on the other end. Eventually he snaps a goodbye and steps back into John’s room.
“Who was that?” John asks. Sherlock whirls around and stares for a moment before breaking into a grin.
“Some bureaucratic idiot,” he says, “They’re launching an investigation and want me to go down.”
“You should go,” John says.
Sherlock picks up his hand and kisses his palm. He keeps it there as he talks into John’s skin. “They can kiss my arse.” He adds with some satisfaction: “Mycroft’s been sacked.”
John laughs. It hurts his side but that just serves to make him laugh more. Sherlock is grinning fully now, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he looks down at John and John is so desperately happy to be alive so he can see this: Sherlock’s smile.
_____
The bed is far too small but they manage to fit anyway, with both of them on their sides. Sherlock strokes the soft skin behind John’s ear and his lips brush against John’s forehead when he speaks in a hushed voice. “You said you imagined another life for us when we were in Islamabad.”
He pulls away slightly and looks down at John. John opens his eyes.
John feels Sherlock’s voice more than he hears it. “What kind of life did you imagine?”
_____
EPILOGUE
The front door slams shut louder than usual which means that Sherlock’s client that morning had probably been abysmally stupid. Sherlock flounces into the room and tosses his coat onto his chair before throwing himself at the couch, declaring, “I give up.”
“You have to remember that none of them are experts,” John says, flipping his notes shut.
“They don’t have to be experts to realize that I’m clearly the only consultant they have who knows what he’s doing,” Sherlock says, “If they want to ignore my advice, they deserve whatever happens to their network when internet vigilantes come for them.”
“Is that what you’re calling yourself now?”
“Make me some tea,” Sherlock demands and turns to sulk into the cushions.
John obliges. He’s been staring at his textbook all morning anyway. He’s pulling mugs from the cupboard when Sherlock slides his thumbs into the belt loops at the front of John’s trousers.
“I changed my mind,” Sherlock growls into John’s ear, “I want your cock instead.”
“You have fifteen minutes before I leave for my renal lecture,” John informs him and suppresses a shiver when Sherlock licks up his neck from his shoulder. Sherlock’s fingers slip beneath his boxers and John tilts his head with a hitched breath when Sherlock fists his cock and slowly strokes.
“Chair,” Sherlock says and draws his hand away. John takes a seat in the kitchen chair and Sherlock properly pulls the zip of his trousers all the way down. John spreads his legs and lets Sherlock pulls his trousers to his knees. He pushes his fingers into Sherlock’s curls and laughs when Sherlock nuzzles his cock through the fabric.
“Ten minutes,” John says, grinning. Sherlock smirks as he pulls John out of his underwear. He presses a closed mouth kiss to the tip before parting his lips and taking all of John with a single swallow. John chokes. Sherlock hums around him and pins John’s stuttering hips down to the chair. Sherlock pulls back, a hint of teeth against the underside of his cock and he fists the base, cheeks hollowed with the effort of sucking.
And then he’s sliding down again, taking all of John in and it’s probably the hottest thing that John has ever seen. John is barely aware of the noises he’s making and the intensity of his orgasm takes him by surprise, an overwhelming pleasure that makes his vision white out and his legs go weak.
Sherlock licks him clean before tucking him back in and pulling his trousers up for him. John feebly tries to button himself and Sherlock laughs as he kisses him. John can taste himself in Sherlock’s mouth.
“You’re two minutes late,” Sherlock says against his lips.
John swears and starts to throw notebooks into his book bag. “Oh,” he says as he swings the bag onto his shoulder and grabs his wallet, “Some constable called. Lestrade was it? He said he had a new computer virus for you to look at. Said it might be related to a murder.”
Sherlock goes to his coat for his phone. “Did he say what kind of murder?”
“No clue,” John grabs his thermos of coffee and kisses Sherlock at the corner of his mouth, “Sounds fun though. Stay safe.” Then he’s down the stairs and off to class.
Sherlock texts Constable Lestrade back. Maybe the day will turn out interesting after all.