Sherlock Holmes Fic: History, Repeating Itself (Chapter Nine, Holmes/Watson, R)
ONLY ONE MORE CHAPTER TO GO, GUYS. It will be up tomorrow if it kills me.
Title: History, Repeating Itself (Chapter Nine)
Rating: R
Pairing: Holmes/Watson
Warnings: Violence, alcohol and marijuana use, general debauchery, copious use of coarse language.
Spoilers: None, except for Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, Chapter Five, Chapter Six, Chapter Seven, and Chapter Eight of this story.
Author's Notes: This is a fill for an AWESOME prompt at shkinkmeme; both the prompt and the fill thread can be found here. I will continue posting the chapters bit-by-bit there and then archiving them on my journal for the duration of this story.
Chapter Summary: John Watson does what must be done.
Chapter Nine: On Doing the Impossible in the Name of Necessity
We waited.
We waited.
We waited, and we started to give up hope. He'd said 48 hours and it had been longer than that since he'd recorded the video--what if we'd missed it? What if we'd taken too long to figure out the message behind his phone call? What if the pulse had been sent out before we'd even bothered to get the computer open, and he was prone on the floor somewhere, already lost to us?
We waited, and we all dealt with the stress differently. Miles kept clenching and unclenching his fists, his grip on whatever he was holding going white-knuckled and then slack. He broke two coffee mugs by dropping them, and crushed a full soda can between his fingers absently, looking shocked when the spray hit him in the face. Dante, in the corner--who didn't even know Holmes but seemed to have taken a personal hold of the case--kept muttering under his breath, trying random hacks into his own copied version of my hard drive. Joseph twitched, little jerks of his arms and legs betraying his tension.
For my part, I sat still, tracing the grain of the wooden table with my thumb and hoping, hoping, hoping.
We waited and waited and waited, and at 9:15 my computer started beeping. We all jumped and ran to it, and watched with baited breath as a loading screen came up. We watched, and the screen coalesced into a map, with a small, blinking green dot on it.
We were all still for a minute.Then Miles let out a whoop of joy and I nearly fell to my knees. He was far--nearly two hours away--but there were a helicopter waiting on the roof, a pilot at the ready, and ground units ready to mobilize all over the state. We scrambled over each other, grabbing the weapons and bags we'd laid out, and then Miles was screaming "Go, go, go," and those of us who were flying headed up to the roof.
To this day, I am sickeningly, heart-wrenchingly grateful that I was one of those people.
Miles Holmes takes up a lot of space in a helicopter. So does Joseph, whose last name I have never once been told. So do I--I'm not fat by any stretch of the imagination, but I am tall, and my shoulders didn't stop being broad when I got shot in the leg. Our pilot wasn't a small guy, and the other two team members who'd come with us were both build like linebackers. It was a tight squeeze, and I've never been more okay with being uncomfortable. All I could think about was getting to Holmes, was finding Holmes alive, was pulling Holmes into my arms and--
Well. I'm sure you can imagine the rest of that sentence.
Both Miles and Joseph were on the phone for almost the entire 45 minute ride, barking orders to the local police departments in the area. I wondered idly how they could hear themselves think with all the noise, with all the stress, but that might have been because I was barely holding it together. When I look back on it, I remember that I was shaking; I remember getting concerned looks from the pilot, from the agents we'd brought with us. At the time I wasn't aware of much except how fast we were going. I kept leaning over to check that, to confirm it was as fast as possible.
I don't know what I thought I was going to do if it wasn't, but it helped, god knows why. I think Miles and Joseph stayed on their phones for the same reason--any distraction was a good distraction. What a hash those other agents must have thought we were making of the thing, three emotionally invested people on a rescue mission, two of them not even members of the Bureau, one of them not even trained. I didn't worry about that then. I didn't worry about much, then, other than getting to Holmes.
Ten minutes before we landed, Miles and Joseph ended their calls and turned to us. "Okay, boys," Joseph yelled into the headset he'd finally put back on, "this is what we're going to do. The tracking pulse was coming out of a private compound about 15 clicks up. We're going to land before that and go on foot so we don't spook them--the place is surrounded, but they've got a hostage, so they've got an advantage."
"We think he's probably in the middle building," Miles continued, "based on the data, but it's nearly an hour old and they couldn't move him. He's still in there unless they've got tunnels out, but we don't know his condition--nobody moves until our word, you got that?"
Everyone nodded but me. I was suddenly very focused on my own shoes.
"You got that, solider?" Joseph yelled. I looked up at nodded curtly at him, but I knew it was a fucking lie. I knew I'd move whenever I thought I had to.
I knew I wouldn't be able to stop myself.
We landed a few minutes later, the plan firmly in place, and got out of the chopper as fast as we could. Miles led us forward, crouching low and moving through the trees. I was the last person behind him but still making damned good time for a guy with one bad leg, for a guy who had never been trained in this particular brand of mission before. They'd given me a gun--a small revolver, nothing fancy--and made me sign about 15 documents saying I wouldn't sue them. I was still getting looks that said "liability," but I ignored them.
The area was heavily wooded. There were brambles and bushes to duck under, trees to slide behind. But we were soon in view of the compound; two guards were at the front gate, chattering nervously between themselves. It was clear that something had them on high alert.
"Shit," Miles hissed. "They've been tipped. Last I talked to the locals there weren't any front guards."
"We'll have to take them out," Joseph whispered back. "Blake, Ferguson, on my mark. Minimal impact--we don't want to alert anyone. Go!"
At this last Blake and Ferguson--and I'll be honest, I might be remembering those names totally wrong--moved soundlessly. I couldn't see them for a second and then, suddenly, they were each grappling with a guard. It felt like the fight took ten minutes, but it probably took three. It probably took one, really; no one had a chance to make any noise and soon we were slipping inside, looking around.
The lights were out in every building but the center one. I was already walking forward when Miles put a hand to my chest. "Shhhh," he hissed, and then--
The last time I had heard gunfire, real gunfire, was in Iraq. Based on my reaction to the facsimile of it in the club, I'd imagined I would fall to pieces if I ever heard a real close-range shot again. I was wrong--or then again, maybe I wasn't. Maybe I was already so far gone that there was nothing more my PTSD could do.
In any case, I was already on the ground when Miles gave the order to get down. He and Joseph were already rolling, responding to the source of the noise--the direction of the crossfire made me think sniper, but I wasn't sure. I didn't bother stopping to check, just dragging myself forward in a frantic, cramped crawl.
"You stupid fuck," I could hear Miles yelling. I could hear sirens too, the local guys bursting through the gate, but the gunshots had stopped. Before anyone could grab me I threw myself up onto my feet and half-ran, half limped into the main building. Miles was at my back in an instant, Blake and Ferguson behind him. I could hear Joseph outside, screaming orders to the local cops.
"You motherfucking suicidal little--" Miles began, but there were guards bursting out from behind closed doors. He swore again and started firing.
"Watson," he yelled, "don't you fucking dare--"
"You've got this, right?" I called back, and ran down the hall.
No, I have no idea how I didn't get shot. No, I have no idea how many of those fuckers I wounded--I know I drew my gun, know I pulled the trigger more than once. My brain was running on adrenaline and sleeplessness, and all I knew--all I could remember ever knowing--that if there were this many guards out here, the person they were protecting had to be at the end of the hall. And maybe that person didn't have Holmes anymore, maybe Holmes was somewhere else, but he would know where that was.
Some days I think that it was some kind of divine providence that got me through that hallway. Some days I think it was luck. Holmes says it was obviously the driving force of my everlasting loooove, but I think he just doesn't like to talk about it. Considering everything, I can't really blame him.
There was a door at the end of the hallway. I didn't even try the doorknob--I know because my shoulder wasn't doing awesome before I shoved my way through it, knocking it off it's fucking hinges. I'm still in PT for that, and it is still, to the day, motherfucking worth it.
There was a man in a business suit standing there. He looked--well, he looked a lot like I imagined a Russian drug king might look. Dark hair, a hooked nose, a cocked gun in his hand, an expression of inexpressible malice across his face.
"Oh," he said, laughing a little on the word. "Isn't this just like the movies. At the last minute, the hero bursts in to save the day. Well, Mr. Watson, I'm afraid you're a little too late. It's a shame I'll have to kill you too."
And you know, it might have stopped me. The expression, the clearly murderous intent in his tone, the obvious loaded weapon in his hand. It might have stopped me, except that I could see a body behind him, crumpled and bleeding on the floor. His face was turned away from me, but I'd have known him anywhere--and even if I wouldn't have, the hair was a dead fucking giveaway.
Holmes.
I looked at Mihailov like he was a bug on the bottom of my fucking shoe. "You motherfucker," I hissed, "do you think you fucking scare me?"
I don't know what happened next--it all happened too quickly for me to tell. He fired, I know that, but I don't remember if I moved before or after his shot. Logic says before; logic says at that range, if I'd moved after, it would have killed me. But logic said I wouldn't have made it through the hallway, too. Logic said I would never have moved in with a man named Sherlock Holmes, fallen madly in love with him and followed him into a den of fucking thieves.
Logic said a lot of stupid things.
He fired and I moved; who knows which came first. I do recall the look of surprised fury that crossed his face right before I hit him in the side of his neck with my cane, dropping my gun to swing it like a baseball bat. Some people might have gone for his head, I guess. Some might have gone for his stomach. I was training to be a fucking doctor; I knew where his pressure points were.
God, in retrospect, I can't believe I didn't stop to see if I'd killed him. I'm a lot of things but I'm not a murderer, no matter how enraged I was. But I was too far gone by that point to care; I watched him crumple and then I dropped my cane and stumbled over to Holmes' body, sitting him up and feeling desperately for a pulse, hearing the words too late over and over and over, a hideous echo.
The moment that his eyes fluttered open was the single best moment of my life, bar none. Fuck graduating college. Fuck my military commendations. Fuck every little victory that's ever come to me--that moment, seeing his eyelashes move, still nearly brings me to tears.
He coughed, once, twice, and blinked up at me. There was a haze of pain in his gaze, but he was still him, he was still fucking breathing. I smiled at him, my cheeks hurting with the effort of it, as the gunfire in the background faded out of my hearing.
"John," he rasped. Then: "I'm alive?"
"Fuck, I have never been so glad to say yes to something," I whispered, checking him over as I did so. A couple of broken ribs, definitely, and there was a cut on his face, right under the faded scar of the burn he'd made me look at months before. The fingers on his left hand were badly broken; I wanted to cry, looking at them, but my buoying joy at the sheer sounding of his broken breaths wouldn't allow it. He was bleeding heavily--cuts up his arms, across his legs--but nothing that indicated he was going to bleed out before we got him to a hospital.
"I didn't tell them," he choked. "I didn't, I didn't give them anything, they don't know--"
"Holmes, I don't care if you sold them every state secret we've got," I told him, and then I took his face between my hands and kissed him. It was a gentle kiss, probably more than he could handle, but I couldn't help myself--I was so relieved, so fucking glad he was alive, that I had to do something. He moaned softly; in pleasure or pain, I'm still not sure. I pulled back from him, cupping his face in my hand.
He looked at me for a long moment. Then he winced and lifted his hand--his right hand, the hand they hadn't mangled--and touched the tender skin underneath my blackened eye.
"You're hurt," he whispered. It was the single most ridiculous thing he'd ever said to me, and he's said a lot of ridiculous things. I laughed, a broken, sobbing sound.
"Holmes," I said, the words strangled, "I love you so fucking much."
He smiled then. There was blood on his teeth and I couldn't bear it, all the emotion, all the fucking adrenaline crashing around me, so I turned my face so my mouth met the inside of his palm. I kissed him again, tasting the salty undersides of each of his fingers, trying to keep myself together for long enough for the team outside to--
"You motherfucking--" Miles started, bursting through the door. Then he took in the scene in front of him--the crumpled body on the floor, his brother in tatters, me crouched next to him, unable to stop kissing his palm. He was quiet for a long moment.
Then: "Well," Miles said, sounding like he might cry himself, "let's hope this bastard is alive. I want the chance to kill him my fucking self."
--
It took less time than I'd imagined it might to get a clean-up crew in, to round up the last straggling henchmen. Miles, after a cursory check as to his brother's livelihood, had more or less taken control, barking orders at anyone in range. For my part, I'd pretty much stopped paying attention to everything when Holmes' eyelids started to droop.
"I'm tired," he said, leaning toward me. I wanted nothing more than to let him sleep, but the was the chance he was concussed--I couldn't risk it.
"Hey," I said, tilting his chin up. "Hey, hey, you've got to stay awake, man. You've got to stay awake--"
"This isn't midterm season," he told me crossly. "I can sleep if I want, there aren't any whiny undergrads to stop me." Then he winced, looked me over with confused eyes. "That didn't make sense, did it? Shit, I don't--maybe I shouldn't sleep, but I'm so tired--"
His eyelids drooped again, and I started to panic. I knew, of course, that an ambulance was coming, but I couldn't let go of the idea that he was dying, that he was already dead. To have come this close to lose him--
"Tell me a story," I said. I wanted to shake him to keep him up, but I didn't want to hurt him, didn't want to jostle his ribs or his broken hand. He smiled up at me with bleary eyes.
"One time there was this crazy dude who planted apple trees," he started, and I laughed, pressing our foreheads together. "He wandered around in forests and then one time he planted too many seeds or some shit and then everyone ate apples instead of bananas, which are better for you--because--electrolytes. The end?"
"You lunatic," I murmured, so flush with relief that I could hardly bear it, "that's not how that story goes at all." He nodded, and then swallowed. From the sound he made, I could tell it was painful.
"John," he said, and he suddenly sounded a little scared--or at least, as scared as someone could sound with a voice that seemed to have been dragged across shards of glass. I pulled back and looked at him, pushing the hair out of his eyes. He gave me a quivering smile.
"I think I should be sorry about some stuff--I think I shouldn't have--"
"Don't," I said softly. "There's nothing you shouldn't have done."
"That's so not true," a third voice cut in. I glanced up sharply, but it was Miles standing above his with his arms crossed. There was a large gun in his right hand, dangling idly. I edged away from it a little.
"First of all," he said, "you shouldn't have told me you could handle this job, because I fucking believed you, Sherlock, and when I say 'I fucking believed you' I mean 'even the part where you said you wouldn't get hurt.' Secondly, you shouldn't have kept shit from me, because I could have helped you. And thirdly, you definitely shouldn't have set yourself up for capture without fucking telling me about it."
Holmes craned his neck up. It looked like it took a lot of effort.
"You're really fucking tall," he said, blinking. "Like, really tall. When'd you get so tall?"
"Goddamn it," Miles growled. Then he looked at me; I shrugged. "You're getting a lecture again when you're going to remember it," he told his brother, pointing a finger. Holmes smiled up at him, his mouth still bloody, and Miles winced.
"His ambulance is here," he said to me. I nodded, unwilling to move away. Miles sighed.
"Watson," he said, "I can't let you get in the ambulance."
"Mmhmm," I murmured, smiling reassuringly at Holmes. Then I actually processed what he'd said and whipped me head around, careful not to move any part of my body that was touching my injured friend.
"I'm sorry," I hissed, "what?"
"I can't let you go with him--wait, wait, let me explain." He sighed, scrubbing a hand across his face. "I have to get you to the safehouse, Watson. These guys--we have to hide you for awhile. I'm not sure how long. It's not safe."
"But it's safe for him?" I cried, looking back at Holmes, who was blinking up at the ceiling with a vacant expression. Miles sighed again.
"We've got a cover set up for him. A guy just died en route to the closest hospital. We've worked out a way to swap him out with that identity, but we have to get you out of here. We're not going to keep him there any longer than we have to--a couple of hours, maybe. Overnight at most."
"I am not leaving him--"
"Well you're not going to be any good to him dead--"
"I'm happy to take that fucking risk, as you may have noticed--"
"Running through a hallway of half-cocked guns is not the same as avoiding a trained fucking hit man--"
"Appleseed," Holmes coughed. I turned back to him; his eyes were slightly more focused than they had been, but not much. He smiled weakly at me.
"Do what he says, man," he murmured. His voice was almost entirely gone, and I wondered if he'd been screaming, wondered what had left it so raw. "I don't want anyone to hit you more."
He touched my eye again, and I shuddered under his fingers. "I don't want to let you out of my sight," I admitted. "Not for…uh…for the rest of my life, actually. Like, ever. Ever."
"I know I'm a lot of trouble," he said softly, which wasn't what I'd meant at all. "But Miles wouldn't take me anywhere bad. My bong's probably lonely, you should go see it."
"Holmes," I started.
"Shhh," he murmured. "You make this weird face when you're freaking out, did you know that? It's like--like, uh--" He scrunched up his face, trying to imitate me, and then let out a little gasp of pain when that aggravated the cut there. "Fuck, that was a bad plan."
"The longer we argue about this the longer it'll take to get him to a doctor," Miles cut in tersely. "The EMT's are here. I've got a guy ready to take you to the safehouse. Let go of him, Watson."
And, god help me, I did. Holmes smiled up as the medics rushed in, loading him onto a stretcher. I took his hand, squeezing briefly as he passed me, and he bit his lip, giving me a look that said a lot more than it should have been able to.
"Thank you," Miles said quietly. He pressed a cell phone into my palm. "I'll keep you updated. Dante and Joseph are going to take you home."
I walked out after them, watched Holmes get loaded into an ambulance bay, watched Miles and two agents climb in after him, flanking him. A cop climbed into the front, and then they were gone.
"C'mon, kid," Joseph said, "time to head out."
Title: History, Repeating Itself (Chapter Nine)
Rating: R
Pairing: Holmes/Watson
Warnings: Violence, alcohol and marijuana use, general debauchery, copious use of coarse language.
Spoilers: None, except for Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, Chapter Five, Chapter Six, Chapter Seven, and Chapter Eight of this story.
Author's Notes: This is a fill for an AWESOME prompt at shkinkmeme; both the prompt and the fill thread can be found here. I will continue posting the chapters bit-by-bit there and then archiving them on my journal for the duration of this story.
Chapter Summary: John Watson does what must be done.
Chapter Nine: On Doing the Impossible in the Name of Necessity
We waited.
We waited.
We waited, and we started to give up hope. He'd said 48 hours and it had been longer than that since he'd recorded the video--what if we'd missed it? What if we'd taken too long to figure out the message behind his phone call? What if the pulse had been sent out before we'd even bothered to get the computer open, and he was prone on the floor somewhere, already lost to us?
We waited, and we all dealt with the stress differently. Miles kept clenching and unclenching his fists, his grip on whatever he was holding going white-knuckled and then slack. He broke two coffee mugs by dropping them, and crushed a full soda can between his fingers absently, looking shocked when the spray hit him in the face. Dante, in the corner--who didn't even know Holmes but seemed to have taken a personal hold of the case--kept muttering under his breath, trying random hacks into his own copied version of my hard drive. Joseph twitched, little jerks of his arms and legs betraying his tension.
For my part, I sat still, tracing the grain of the wooden table with my thumb and hoping, hoping, hoping.
We waited and waited and waited, and at 9:15 my computer started beeping. We all jumped and ran to it, and watched with baited breath as a loading screen came up. We watched, and the screen coalesced into a map, with a small, blinking green dot on it.
We were all still for a minute.Then Miles let out a whoop of joy and I nearly fell to my knees. He was far--nearly two hours away--but there were a helicopter waiting on the roof, a pilot at the ready, and ground units ready to mobilize all over the state. We scrambled over each other, grabbing the weapons and bags we'd laid out, and then Miles was screaming "Go, go, go," and those of us who were flying headed up to the roof.
To this day, I am sickeningly, heart-wrenchingly grateful that I was one of those people.
Miles Holmes takes up a lot of space in a helicopter. So does Joseph, whose last name I have never once been told. So do I--I'm not fat by any stretch of the imagination, but I am tall, and my shoulders didn't stop being broad when I got shot in the leg. Our pilot wasn't a small guy, and the other two team members who'd come with us were both build like linebackers. It was a tight squeeze, and I've never been more okay with being uncomfortable. All I could think about was getting to Holmes, was finding Holmes alive, was pulling Holmes into my arms and--
Well. I'm sure you can imagine the rest of that sentence.
Both Miles and Joseph were on the phone for almost the entire 45 minute ride, barking orders to the local police departments in the area. I wondered idly how they could hear themselves think with all the noise, with all the stress, but that might have been because I was barely holding it together. When I look back on it, I remember that I was shaking; I remember getting concerned looks from the pilot, from the agents we'd brought with us. At the time I wasn't aware of much except how fast we were going. I kept leaning over to check that, to confirm it was as fast as possible.
I don't know what I thought I was going to do if it wasn't, but it helped, god knows why. I think Miles and Joseph stayed on their phones for the same reason--any distraction was a good distraction. What a hash those other agents must have thought we were making of the thing, three emotionally invested people on a rescue mission, two of them not even members of the Bureau, one of them not even trained. I didn't worry about that then. I didn't worry about much, then, other than getting to Holmes.
Ten minutes before we landed, Miles and Joseph ended their calls and turned to us. "Okay, boys," Joseph yelled into the headset he'd finally put back on, "this is what we're going to do. The tracking pulse was coming out of a private compound about 15 clicks up. We're going to land before that and go on foot so we don't spook them--the place is surrounded, but they've got a hostage, so they've got an advantage."
"We think he's probably in the middle building," Miles continued, "based on the data, but it's nearly an hour old and they couldn't move him. He's still in there unless they've got tunnels out, but we don't know his condition--nobody moves until our word, you got that?"
Everyone nodded but me. I was suddenly very focused on my own shoes.
"You got that, solider?" Joseph yelled. I looked up at nodded curtly at him, but I knew it was a fucking lie. I knew I'd move whenever I thought I had to.
I knew I wouldn't be able to stop myself.
We landed a few minutes later, the plan firmly in place, and got out of the chopper as fast as we could. Miles led us forward, crouching low and moving through the trees. I was the last person behind him but still making damned good time for a guy with one bad leg, for a guy who had never been trained in this particular brand of mission before. They'd given me a gun--a small revolver, nothing fancy--and made me sign about 15 documents saying I wouldn't sue them. I was still getting looks that said "liability," but I ignored them.
The area was heavily wooded. There were brambles and bushes to duck under, trees to slide behind. But we were soon in view of the compound; two guards were at the front gate, chattering nervously between themselves. It was clear that something had them on high alert.
"Shit," Miles hissed. "They've been tipped. Last I talked to the locals there weren't any front guards."
"We'll have to take them out," Joseph whispered back. "Blake, Ferguson, on my mark. Minimal impact--we don't want to alert anyone. Go!"
At this last Blake and Ferguson--and I'll be honest, I might be remembering those names totally wrong--moved soundlessly. I couldn't see them for a second and then, suddenly, they were each grappling with a guard. It felt like the fight took ten minutes, but it probably took three. It probably took one, really; no one had a chance to make any noise and soon we were slipping inside, looking around.
The lights were out in every building but the center one. I was already walking forward when Miles put a hand to my chest. "Shhhh," he hissed, and then--
The last time I had heard gunfire, real gunfire, was in Iraq. Based on my reaction to the facsimile of it in the club, I'd imagined I would fall to pieces if I ever heard a real close-range shot again. I was wrong--or then again, maybe I wasn't. Maybe I was already so far gone that there was nothing more my PTSD could do.
In any case, I was already on the ground when Miles gave the order to get down. He and Joseph were already rolling, responding to the source of the noise--the direction of the crossfire made me think sniper, but I wasn't sure. I didn't bother stopping to check, just dragging myself forward in a frantic, cramped crawl.
"You stupid fuck," I could hear Miles yelling. I could hear sirens too, the local guys bursting through the gate, but the gunshots had stopped. Before anyone could grab me I threw myself up onto my feet and half-ran, half limped into the main building. Miles was at my back in an instant, Blake and Ferguson behind him. I could hear Joseph outside, screaming orders to the local cops.
"You motherfucking suicidal little--" Miles began, but there were guards bursting out from behind closed doors. He swore again and started firing.
"Watson," he yelled, "don't you fucking dare--"
"You've got this, right?" I called back, and ran down the hall.
No, I have no idea how I didn't get shot. No, I have no idea how many of those fuckers I wounded--I know I drew my gun, know I pulled the trigger more than once. My brain was running on adrenaline and sleeplessness, and all I knew--all I could remember ever knowing--that if there were this many guards out here, the person they were protecting had to be at the end of the hall. And maybe that person didn't have Holmes anymore, maybe Holmes was somewhere else, but he would know where that was.
Some days I think that it was some kind of divine providence that got me through that hallway. Some days I think it was luck. Holmes says it was obviously the driving force of my everlasting loooove, but I think he just doesn't like to talk about it. Considering everything, I can't really blame him.
There was a door at the end of the hallway. I didn't even try the doorknob--I know because my shoulder wasn't doing awesome before I shoved my way through it, knocking it off it's fucking hinges. I'm still in PT for that, and it is still, to the day, motherfucking worth it.
There was a man in a business suit standing there. He looked--well, he looked a lot like I imagined a Russian drug king might look. Dark hair, a hooked nose, a cocked gun in his hand, an expression of inexpressible malice across his face.
"Oh," he said, laughing a little on the word. "Isn't this just like the movies. At the last minute, the hero bursts in to save the day. Well, Mr. Watson, I'm afraid you're a little too late. It's a shame I'll have to kill you too."
And you know, it might have stopped me. The expression, the clearly murderous intent in his tone, the obvious loaded weapon in his hand. It might have stopped me, except that I could see a body behind him, crumpled and bleeding on the floor. His face was turned away from me, but I'd have known him anywhere--and even if I wouldn't have, the hair was a dead fucking giveaway.
Holmes.
I looked at Mihailov like he was a bug on the bottom of my fucking shoe. "You motherfucker," I hissed, "do you think you fucking scare me?"
I don't know what happened next--it all happened too quickly for me to tell. He fired, I know that, but I don't remember if I moved before or after his shot. Logic says before; logic says at that range, if I'd moved after, it would have killed me. But logic said I wouldn't have made it through the hallway, too. Logic said I would never have moved in with a man named Sherlock Holmes, fallen madly in love with him and followed him into a den of fucking thieves.
Logic said a lot of stupid things.
He fired and I moved; who knows which came first. I do recall the look of surprised fury that crossed his face right before I hit him in the side of his neck with my cane, dropping my gun to swing it like a baseball bat. Some people might have gone for his head, I guess. Some might have gone for his stomach. I was training to be a fucking doctor; I knew where his pressure points were.
God, in retrospect, I can't believe I didn't stop to see if I'd killed him. I'm a lot of things but I'm not a murderer, no matter how enraged I was. But I was too far gone by that point to care; I watched him crumple and then I dropped my cane and stumbled over to Holmes' body, sitting him up and feeling desperately for a pulse, hearing the words too late over and over and over, a hideous echo.
The moment that his eyes fluttered open was the single best moment of my life, bar none. Fuck graduating college. Fuck my military commendations. Fuck every little victory that's ever come to me--that moment, seeing his eyelashes move, still nearly brings me to tears.
He coughed, once, twice, and blinked up at me. There was a haze of pain in his gaze, but he was still him, he was still fucking breathing. I smiled at him, my cheeks hurting with the effort of it, as the gunfire in the background faded out of my hearing.
"John," he rasped. Then: "I'm alive?"
"Fuck, I have never been so glad to say yes to something," I whispered, checking him over as I did so. A couple of broken ribs, definitely, and there was a cut on his face, right under the faded scar of the burn he'd made me look at months before. The fingers on his left hand were badly broken; I wanted to cry, looking at them, but my buoying joy at the sheer sounding of his broken breaths wouldn't allow it. He was bleeding heavily--cuts up his arms, across his legs--but nothing that indicated he was going to bleed out before we got him to a hospital.
"I didn't tell them," he choked. "I didn't, I didn't give them anything, they don't know--"
"Holmes, I don't care if you sold them every state secret we've got," I told him, and then I took his face between my hands and kissed him. It was a gentle kiss, probably more than he could handle, but I couldn't help myself--I was so relieved, so fucking glad he was alive, that I had to do something. He moaned softly; in pleasure or pain, I'm still not sure. I pulled back from him, cupping his face in my hand.
He looked at me for a long moment. Then he winced and lifted his hand--his right hand, the hand they hadn't mangled--and touched the tender skin underneath my blackened eye.
"You're hurt," he whispered. It was the single most ridiculous thing he'd ever said to me, and he's said a lot of ridiculous things. I laughed, a broken, sobbing sound.
"Holmes," I said, the words strangled, "I love you so fucking much."
He smiled then. There was blood on his teeth and I couldn't bear it, all the emotion, all the fucking adrenaline crashing around me, so I turned my face so my mouth met the inside of his palm. I kissed him again, tasting the salty undersides of each of his fingers, trying to keep myself together for long enough for the team outside to--
"You motherfucking--" Miles started, bursting through the door. Then he took in the scene in front of him--the crumpled body on the floor, his brother in tatters, me crouched next to him, unable to stop kissing his palm. He was quiet for a long moment.
Then: "Well," Miles said, sounding like he might cry himself, "let's hope this bastard is alive. I want the chance to kill him my fucking self."
--
It took less time than I'd imagined it might to get a clean-up crew in, to round up the last straggling henchmen. Miles, after a cursory check as to his brother's livelihood, had more or less taken control, barking orders at anyone in range. For my part, I'd pretty much stopped paying attention to everything when Holmes' eyelids started to droop.
"I'm tired," he said, leaning toward me. I wanted nothing more than to let him sleep, but the was the chance he was concussed--I couldn't risk it.
"Hey," I said, tilting his chin up. "Hey, hey, you've got to stay awake, man. You've got to stay awake--"
"This isn't midterm season," he told me crossly. "I can sleep if I want, there aren't any whiny undergrads to stop me." Then he winced, looked me over with confused eyes. "That didn't make sense, did it? Shit, I don't--maybe I shouldn't sleep, but I'm so tired--"
His eyelids drooped again, and I started to panic. I knew, of course, that an ambulance was coming, but I couldn't let go of the idea that he was dying, that he was already dead. To have come this close to lose him--
"Tell me a story," I said. I wanted to shake him to keep him up, but I didn't want to hurt him, didn't want to jostle his ribs or his broken hand. He smiled up at me with bleary eyes.
"One time there was this crazy dude who planted apple trees," he started, and I laughed, pressing our foreheads together. "He wandered around in forests and then one time he planted too many seeds or some shit and then everyone ate apples instead of bananas, which are better for you--because--electrolytes. The end?"
"You lunatic," I murmured, so flush with relief that I could hardly bear it, "that's not how that story goes at all." He nodded, and then swallowed. From the sound he made, I could tell it was painful.
"John," he said, and he suddenly sounded a little scared--or at least, as scared as someone could sound with a voice that seemed to have been dragged across shards of glass. I pulled back and looked at him, pushing the hair out of his eyes. He gave me a quivering smile.
"I think I should be sorry about some stuff--I think I shouldn't have--"
"Don't," I said softly. "There's nothing you shouldn't have done."
"That's so not true," a third voice cut in. I glanced up sharply, but it was Miles standing above his with his arms crossed. There was a large gun in his right hand, dangling idly. I edged away from it a little.
"First of all," he said, "you shouldn't have told me you could handle this job, because I fucking believed you, Sherlock, and when I say 'I fucking believed you' I mean 'even the part where you said you wouldn't get hurt.' Secondly, you shouldn't have kept shit from me, because I could have helped you. And thirdly, you definitely shouldn't have set yourself up for capture without fucking telling me about it."
Holmes craned his neck up. It looked like it took a lot of effort.
"You're really fucking tall," he said, blinking. "Like, really tall. When'd you get so tall?"
"Goddamn it," Miles growled. Then he looked at me; I shrugged. "You're getting a lecture again when you're going to remember it," he told his brother, pointing a finger. Holmes smiled up at him, his mouth still bloody, and Miles winced.
"His ambulance is here," he said to me. I nodded, unwilling to move away. Miles sighed.
"Watson," he said, "I can't let you get in the ambulance."
"Mmhmm," I murmured, smiling reassuringly at Holmes. Then I actually processed what he'd said and whipped me head around, careful not to move any part of my body that was touching my injured friend.
"I'm sorry," I hissed, "what?"
"I can't let you go with him--wait, wait, let me explain." He sighed, scrubbing a hand across his face. "I have to get you to the safehouse, Watson. These guys--we have to hide you for awhile. I'm not sure how long. It's not safe."
"But it's safe for him?" I cried, looking back at Holmes, who was blinking up at the ceiling with a vacant expression. Miles sighed again.
"We've got a cover set up for him. A guy just died en route to the closest hospital. We've worked out a way to swap him out with that identity, but we have to get you out of here. We're not going to keep him there any longer than we have to--a couple of hours, maybe. Overnight at most."
"I am not leaving him--"
"Well you're not going to be any good to him dead--"
"I'm happy to take that fucking risk, as you may have noticed--"
"Running through a hallway of half-cocked guns is not the same as avoiding a trained fucking hit man--"
"Appleseed," Holmes coughed. I turned back to him; his eyes were slightly more focused than they had been, but not much. He smiled weakly at me.
"Do what he says, man," he murmured. His voice was almost entirely gone, and I wondered if he'd been screaming, wondered what had left it so raw. "I don't want anyone to hit you more."
He touched my eye again, and I shuddered under his fingers. "I don't want to let you out of my sight," I admitted. "Not for…uh…for the rest of my life, actually. Like, ever. Ever."
"I know I'm a lot of trouble," he said softly, which wasn't what I'd meant at all. "But Miles wouldn't take me anywhere bad. My bong's probably lonely, you should go see it."
"Holmes," I started.
"Shhh," he murmured. "You make this weird face when you're freaking out, did you know that? It's like--like, uh--" He scrunched up his face, trying to imitate me, and then let out a little gasp of pain when that aggravated the cut there. "Fuck, that was a bad plan."
"The longer we argue about this the longer it'll take to get him to a doctor," Miles cut in tersely. "The EMT's are here. I've got a guy ready to take you to the safehouse. Let go of him, Watson."
And, god help me, I did. Holmes smiled up as the medics rushed in, loading him onto a stretcher. I took his hand, squeezing briefly as he passed me, and he bit his lip, giving me a look that said a lot more than it should have been able to.
"Thank you," Miles said quietly. He pressed a cell phone into my palm. "I'll keep you updated. Dante and Joseph are going to take you home."
I walked out after them, watched Holmes get loaded into an ambulance bay, watched Miles and two agents climb in after him, flanking him. A cop climbed into the front, and then they were gone.
"C'mon, kid," Joseph said, "time to head out."