On the tenth day of Sherlockmas: Through the Storm, for redvalerian
Author: musamihi
Title: Through the Storm
A gift for: redvalerian
Characters/Pairing: Sherlock/John
Category: Slash
Rating: R
Warnings: Prescription drug use, physical injury (non-graphic)
Summary: Sherlock and John are trapped in a frozen wilderness after a case takes a bad turn. Sherlock thinks they're doomed, but there's something about John he hasn't counted on.
Author's Notes: Happy holidays, redvalerian! I hope you enjoy this. ♥
There was a storm - high, black and boiling - on the horizon. It was three or four hours away, Sherlock thought, given the pitch of the wind and the dead still of the gnarled trees on the most distant visible ridge. His phone hadn't had any service for two days, and no power for the better part of one, but judging by the weather forecast patterns for the previous week he estimated they could expect a blizzard of significant proportions.
They were, unfortunately, about a twelve-hour march from anything like civilization - if John's ankle hadn't been swollen up thicker than his calf. As it was, they had no choice but to shelter in place, until he could think of something. (Until Mycroft tracked whatever trail his mobile had left before it had given up the ghost.)
Sheltering in place, of course, assumed some form of shelter. The clump of dead trees they'd found had few advantages beyond being short and withered enough that the wind would be unlikely to haul it out of the ground. It was rotted, damp, and offered roughly ninety degrees of coverage against the likely angle of the wind. Sherlock was not optimistic, but he had eliminated all current possible options, and knew that all that remained was a change of circumstances - a fluke - a lucky break.
Sometimes, when one eliminated the impossible, there was nothing left.
"John." He reached down to stop the sudden lurching motion - John trying to drag himself to standing.
John was pale, almost as white as the twisted wood curling out of the ground behind him. "We have to get moving."
"To where, precisely? We have to stay put." Sherlock succeeded in sitting him back down into the frigid, mossy earth. "We've no hope of being found unless we keep to one place."
"Who knows where to find us?" John's voice was strained. No doubt the pain was bad enough, but Sherlock was certain most of the tension came from a need to bring them both to safety.
"Now? No one. We're banking on the ingenuity of others. Not a wager I'd make if I could help it, but -"
"What do you mean, no one? You said you knew he was going to throw us off the train, didn't you tell anyone we were -"
"I knew he was going to try to throw us off the train." He didn't relish the jobs that hung on bluffing rather than pure logic, but honestly, that's why he'd brought John along on an international case he'd normally have handled by himself: normally, he could be relied upon to add value to such a situation. But then, normally he didn't flub his parachute falls quite so badly; normally, he didn't wind up with what was possibly a broken ankle in the middle of a deeply unfriendly wilderness. "I reckoned his possibility of success at some five percent. But five percent is still five percent."
John was quiet for a few moments, breathing deeply to distribute the pain. "And so - now we're out in the middle of nowhere, no one knows where we are, I can't bloody well walk, and the weather's about to go utterly -"
"That's right."
There was no sense sugar-coating anything. John would have to cope with the reality of the matter. They were about as likely to freeze to death as they were to do anything else. How John would feel about it, he didn't know - badly, probably, with his usual ridiculous tendency to take responsibility for things he had no control over - but personally, he was not at all surprised to find he was more annoyed than distressed. He had been wrong, and so here they were; and if they were saved, he'd have Mycroft to thank for it. It wasn't the end he'd have cared for, but it was the end he had.
For some time, John said nothing. When he tried to stand again, Sherlock pressed his hand onto his shoulder, and kept it firmly in place when John's hand latched onto his wrist. "You can't walk. We're staying."
"We can't stay."
"And yet," Sherlock persisted, stubborn as fact, "you can't walk."
John swallowed and set his jaw. Sherlock could see the reluctant progression of thoughts moving across his brow. "In the bag," he said at last, "I packed some pain killers."
"And you think they'll help? You still won't be able to walk."
"We have to try."
Sherlock disagreed completely - the last thing they could do was try - but perhaps John's resolve would change if he were drugged. And so he dug into the little shoulder bag they'd carried, and pulled out the appropriate bottle.
John shook himself out two of them, threw them onto the back of his tongue, swallowed, shut his eyes, and waited.
After a while, Sherlock sat to wait beside him. There was nothing else to do.
The storm grew in the sky, eating up more and more of the arc visible above the trees. Sherlock pulled his coat tighter around himself, and then pulled John to his chest to preserve as much warmth as possible. John's fatigue and the fact that neither of them had eaten in twelve hours or so had the effect he'd thought it would: the painkillers were doing their job rather better than they would have otherwise. It was better, maybe, Sherlock thought with a pang, that he should be asleep for it - or half asleep. Freezing was a slow, tired, business.
He regretted it extremely. He thought about saying so - John might appreciate it, after all - but when he glanced down at the face resting against his chest, the eyes were shut, the brow slack, the pain that had gathered there quite wiped away. He said nothing. When the wind picked up and the first white ribbons of whipping snow began to wander through the trees, he took a dose of the drugs himself - an act of nostalgia as much as a palliative. It would ease his passing, but it was also a familiar sensation, those narcotics piercing the clarity of his thought and lulling him into lovely, blurry rest.
Oh course, he, too, was exhausted; he, too, had last eaten a day ago. Soon, curled around John's steady warmth, he was asleep.
He woke with a buzz in his brain, with suspicion foremost in his mind, and with the sudden, shocking realization that all was absolutely silent - he jolted, threw his arms back against the sheltering tree trunk (letting John fall loose into his lap) and turned his face sharply up to the sky.
It was black - no - white - no - deeply, darkly gray. The grey of impenetrable snow. Faintly, behind that plane of color, he could see the outlines of the meagre trees whipping back and forth. By all indications the storm was raging around him in full force. But he was dry; he was, he realized, quite warm. Glancing down at John to ensure he was still at peace (and still warm, and still with pulse), he reached up to try to touch the snow he could see rushing by above him.
With a hiss, he jerked his hand back. It was freezing, cold, raw. But here, within a certain radius around him - around them - the air was warm, even cozy. He wondered if he was hallucinating. There seemed no other explanation. Freezing wasn't short and clean; surely there were neurological effects.
But then John stirred - and moaned. The cold bit suddenly into Sherlock's skin before retreating once more as John shifted against him. Sherlock tightened his grip on him, gathering him up against himself as close as he could, but it was clear whatever protection they had gained was thinning. "John." He chafed the other man's back, leaning down to press his lips to his ear. "You're awake - come on."
"I'm awake." John tried to sit up, but Sherlock seized him before he could move too far away. "God, this thing hurts like a fucking -"
"John - look." Sherlock took John's face in his hands, turning it up to his own, dipping in to kiss his mouth - dry and cool, a quick brush to gather his attention - before pointing his gaze to the space above them. "You see?"
John saw, he could tell - but he wasn't making sense of it, any better than Sherlock had. Well - perhaps that had been too much to hope for. "What - where are we?" John asked. "Why is it -"
"We're in the same place. I don't know." A theory began to form. Sherlock was starting to shiver again; necessity was the mother of invention. "The pain's returned, you said?"
"Sure, that stuff's wearing off - it's all right. It's just my - fucking hell!" John all but howled the last two words as Sherlock (with a silent apology) leaned down to jab at John's swollen ankle. In that moment whatever had protected them snapped, and the snow beat against them full force, building in the folds of John's jacket and the hollows of his hair. Sherlock closed his eyes tightly against it, pulling John's face almost forcefully to him again. He kissed him, his fingers tucked behind John's ears, pushing into his hair; his mouth stung under the fierce cold of the snow and the soft, tepid surface of John's lips. He had to distract him, had to push the pain away from John's mind even if he couldn't lessen it immediately. He let his tongue press lightly against John's lower lip, feeling John's mouth open slightly (a reflex, no doubt, a response to this pattern of behavior so intimately familiar that John couldn't help but fall back upon muscle memory). He pushed slowly, softly into John's mouth, sucking tenderly at the tip of his tongue, coaxing. It was a slow, halting process, but the cold began to thin around them, the snow to drift less heavily. After a minute or two, Sherlock could open his eyes without being blinded. He breathed heavily, warm against John's mouth, and felt the same coming back to him.
"You need to take some more."
"What?" John's voice was muffled against Sherlock's skin - and, understandably, a bit put out. "More -"
"You have to dull the pain again. As much as you can."
"Well if you wouldn't fucking hit it, I might -"
"Just - here." Sherlock already had a couple of pills in his hand; he held them an inch away from John's mouth. "Please. Consider it an experiment."
John swallowed the pills, less obediently than grudgingly, and settled once again into the shelter of Sherlock's arms. It was an experiment he should have conducted long ago, Sherlock knew - he hadn't put the pieces together as soon as he should have, not wanting to believe, perhaps, that something so ridiculously improbable had been living in close quarters with him for so long. On that hideously arctic January night when he'd first taken John into his bed - when he'd curled his fingers like claws into John's waist, slid into the hot grip of his strong thighs, fucked him relentlessly and watched the small of his back create a perfect little curve as John arched into the mattress, taut with desire - on that night, when he'd finally looked up from his frenzy to see the windows, once frosted solid, covered only in droplets that might have come from a spring rain - on that night, when the rest of London was still plunged deep in ruthless winter, he ought to have known there was something.
But he'd put the thought out of his mind.
Now, as John slid back into sleep - and, more importantly, back into comfort, back into union as he rested against Sherlock's chest, his ear heavy against Sherlock's ribs and half sealed over his heartbeat - he was forced to take it more seriously. The warmth that had enveloped them before returned, pushing the snow further and further away from them until they lay in a safe, dry space about the size of a small hut.
There was something about John that was keeping them alive. That much on its own came as no surprise to him. In some ways, he thought it might have been connected to the bit of John that always shone at the edges of his consciousness when he was at the brink of something cold and dark, the part of him that had kept him, if not alive, at least in one piece. He had never before wondered what it was, perhaps because he had never felt he had to. It was effective - it worked - it was essential to him, no matter what it was.
And tonight it kept them through the storm. The hours passed; the winds rose and died; the snow set upon one last howling attack before subsiding to a gentle, peaceful sunrise, reddening the newly clean landscape all around them. Everything was soft edges and unbroken fields. John woke, once again in pain, and Sherlock knew by the bite of cold against his face that their protection was gone again for the time being.
But - as he always did, somehow - John had bought them another chance, a little more time.
Title: Through the Storm
A gift for: redvalerian
Characters/Pairing: Sherlock/John
Category: Slash
Rating: R
Warnings: Prescription drug use, physical injury (non-graphic)
Summary: Sherlock and John are trapped in a frozen wilderness after a case takes a bad turn. Sherlock thinks they're doomed, but there's something about John he hasn't counted on.
Author's Notes: Happy holidays, redvalerian! I hope you enjoy this. ♥
There was a storm - high, black and boiling - on the horizon. It was three or four hours away, Sherlock thought, given the pitch of the wind and the dead still of the gnarled trees on the most distant visible ridge. His phone hadn't had any service for two days, and no power for the better part of one, but judging by the weather forecast patterns for the previous week he estimated they could expect a blizzard of significant proportions.
They were, unfortunately, about a twelve-hour march from anything like civilization - if John's ankle hadn't been swollen up thicker than his calf. As it was, they had no choice but to shelter in place, until he could think of something. (Until Mycroft tracked whatever trail his mobile had left before it had given up the ghost.)
Sheltering in place, of course, assumed some form of shelter. The clump of dead trees they'd found had few advantages beyond being short and withered enough that the wind would be unlikely to haul it out of the ground. It was rotted, damp, and offered roughly ninety degrees of coverage against the likely angle of the wind. Sherlock was not optimistic, but he had eliminated all current possible options, and knew that all that remained was a change of circumstances - a fluke - a lucky break.
Sometimes, when one eliminated the impossible, there was nothing left.
"John." He reached down to stop the sudden lurching motion - John trying to drag himself to standing.
John was pale, almost as white as the twisted wood curling out of the ground behind him. "We have to get moving."
"To where, precisely? We have to stay put." Sherlock succeeded in sitting him back down into the frigid, mossy earth. "We've no hope of being found unless we keep to one place."
"Who knows where to find us?" John's voice was strained. No doubt the pain was bad enough, but Sherlock was certain most of the tension came from a need to bring them both to safety.
"Now? No one. We're banking on the ingenuity of others. Not a wager I'd make if I could help it, but -"
"What do you mean, no one? You said you knew he was going to throw us off the train, didn't you tell anyone we were -"
"I knew he was going to try to throw us off the train." He didn't relish the jobs that hung on bluffing rather than pure logic, but honestly, that's why he'd brought John along on an international case he'd normally have handled by himself: normally, he could be relied upon to add value to such a situation. But then, normally he didn't flub his parachute falls quite so badly; normally, he didn't wind up with what was possibly a broken ankle in the middle of a deeply unfriendly wilderness. "I reckoned his possibility of success at some five percent. But five percent is still five percent."
John was quiet for a few moments, breathing deeply to distribute the pain. "And so - now we're out in the middle of nowhere, no one knows where we are, I can't bloody well walk, and the weather's about to go utterly -"
"That's right."
There was no sense sugar-coating anything. John would have to cope with the reality of the matter. They were about as likely to freeze to death as they were to do anything else. How John would feel about it, he didn't know - badly, probably, with his usual ridiculous tendency to take responsibility for things he had no control over - but personally, he was not at all surprised to find he was more annoyed than distressed. He had been wrong, and so here they were; and if they were saved, he'd have Mycroft to thank for it. It wasn't the end he'd have cared for, but it was the end he had.
For some time, John said nothing. When he tried to stand again, Sherlock pressed his hand onto his shoulder, and kept it firmly in place when John's hand latched onto his wrist. "You can't walk. We're staying."
"We can't stay."
"And yet," Sherlock persisted, stubborn as fact, "you can't walk."
John swallowed and set his jaw. Sherlock could see the reluctant progression of thoughts moving across his brow. "In the bag," he said at last, "I packed some pain killers."
"And you think they'll help? You still won't be able to walk."
"We have to try."
Sherlock disagreed completely - the last thing they could do was try - but perhaps John's resolve would change if he were drugged. And so he dug into the little shoulder bag they'd carried, and pulled out the appropriate bottle.
John shook himself out two of them, threw them onto the back of his tongue, swallowed, shut his eyes, and waited.
After a while, Sherlock sat to wait beside him. There was nothing else to do.
The storm grew in the sky, eating up more and more of the arc visible above the trees. Sherlock pulled his coat tighter around himself, and then pulled John to his chest to preserve as much warmth as possible. John's fatigue and the fact that neither of them had eaten in twelve hours or so had the effect he'd thought it would: the painkillers were doing their job rather better than they would have otherwise. It was better, maybe, Sherlock thought with a pang, that he should be asleep for it - or half asleep. Freezing was a slow, tired, business.
He regretted it extremely. He thought about saying so - John might appreciate it, after all - but when he glanced down at the face resting against his chest, the eyes were shut, the brow slack, the pain that had gathered there quite wiped away. He said nothing. When the wind picked up and the first white ribbons of whipping snow began to wander through the trees, he took a dose of the drugs himself - an act of nostalgia as much as a palliative. It would ease his passing, but it was also a familiar sensation, those narcotics piercing the clarity of his thought and lulling him into lovely, blurry rest.
Oh course, he, too, was exhausted; he, too, had last eaten a day ago. Soon, curled around John's steady warmth, he was asleep.
He woke with a buzz in his brain, with suspicion foremost in his mind, and with the sudden, shocking realization that all was absolutely silent - he jolted, threw his arms back against the sheltering tree trunk (letting John fall loose into his lap) and turned his face sharply up to the sky.
It was black - no - white - no - deeply, darkly gray. The grey of impenetrable snow. Faintly, behind that plane of color, he could see the outlines of the meagre trees whipping back and forth. By all indications the storm was raging around him in full force. But he was dry; he was, he realized, quite warm. Glancing down at John to ensure he was still at peace (and still warm, and still with pulse), he reached up to try to touch the snow he could see rushing by above him.
With a hiss, he jerked his hand back. It was freezing, cold, raw. But here, within a certain radius around him - around them - the air was warm, even cozy. He wondered if he was hallucinating. There seemed no other explanation. Freezing wasn't short and clean; surely there were neurological effects.
But then John stirred - and moaned. The cold bit suddenly into Sherlock's skin before retreating once more as John shifted against him. Sherlock tightened his grip on him, gathering him up against himself as close as he could, but it was clear whatever protection they had gained was thinning. "John." He chafed the other man's back, leaning down to press his lips to his ear. "You're awake - come on."
"I'm awake." John tried to sit up, but Sherlock seized him before he could move too far away. "God, this thing hurts like a fucking -"
"John - look." Sherlock took John's face in his hands, turning it up to his own, dipping in to kiss his mouth - dry and cool, a quick brush to gather his attention - before pointing his gaze to the space above them. "You see?"
John saw, he could tell - but he wasn't making sense of it, any better than Sherlock had. Well - perhaps that had been too much to hope for. "What - where are we?" John asked. "Why is it -"
"We're in the same place. I don't know." A theory began to form. Sherlock was starting to shiver again; necessity was the mother of invention. "The pain's returned, you said?"
"Sure, that stuff's wearing off - it's all right. It's just my - fucking hell!" John all but howled the last two words as Sherlock (with a silent apology) leaned down to jab at John's swollen ankle. In that moment whatever had protected them snapped, and the snow beat against them full force, building in the folds of John's jacket and the hollows of his hair. Sherlock closed his eyes tightly against it, pulling John's face almost forcefully to him again. He kissed him, his fingers tucked behind John's ears, pushing into his hair; his mouth stung under the fierce cold of the snow and the soft, tepid surface of John's lips. He had to distract him, had to push the pain away from John's mind even if he couldn't lessen it immediately. He let his tongue press lightly against John's lower lip, feeling John's mouth open slightly (a reflex, no doubt, a response to this pattern of behavior so intimately familiar that John couldn't help but fall back upon muscle memory). He pushed slowly, softly into John's mouth, sucking tenderly at the tip of his tongue, coaxing. It was a slow, halting process, but the cold began to thin around them, the snow to drift less heavily. After a minute or two, Sherlock could open his eyes without being blinded. He breathed heavily, warm against John's mouth, and felt the same coming back to him.
"You need to take some more."
"What?" John's voice was muffled against Sherlock's skin - and, understandably, a bit put out. "More -"
"You have to dull the pain again. As much as you can."
"Well if you wouldn't fucking hit it, I might -"
"Just - here." Sherlock already had a couple of pills in his hand; he held them an inch away from John's mouth. "Please. Consider it an experiment."
John swallowed the pills, less obediently than grudgingly, and settled once again into the shelter of Sherlock's arms. It was an experiment he should have conducted long ago, Sherlock knew - he hadn't put the pieces together as soon as he should have, not wanting to believe, perhaps, that something so ridiculously improbable had been living in close quarters with him for so long. On that hideously arctic January night when he'd first taken John into his bed - when he'd curled his fingers like claws into John's waist, slid into the hot grip of his strong thighs, fucked him relentlessly and watched the small of his back create a perfect little curve as John arched into the mattress, taut with desire - on that night, when he'd finally looked up from his frenzy to see the windows, once frosted solid, covered only in droplets that might have come from a spring rain - on that night, when the rest of London was still plunged deep in ruthless winter, he ought to have known there was something.
But he'd put the thought out of his mind.
Now, as John slid back into sleep - and, more importantly, back into comfort, back into union as he rested against Sherlock's chest, his ear heavy against Sherlock's ribs and half sealed over his heartbeat - he was forced to take it more seriously. The warmth that had enveloped them before returned, pushing the snow further and further away from them until they lay in a safe, dry space about the size of a small hut.
There was something about John that was keeping them alive. That much on its own came as no surprise to him. In some ways, he thought it might have been connected to the bit of John that always shone at the edges of his consciousness when he was at the brink of something cold and dark, the part of him that had kept him, if not alive, at least in one piece. He had never before wondered what it was, perhaps because he had never felt he had to. It was effective - it worked - it was essential to him, no matter what it was.
And tonight it kept them through the storm. The hours passed; the winds rose and died; the snow set upon one last howling attack before subsiding to a gentle, peaceful sunrise, reddening the newly clean landscape all around them. Everything was soft edges and unbroken fields. John woke, once again in pain, and Sherlock knew by the bite of cold against his face that their protection was gone again for the time being.
But - as he always did, somehow - John had bought them another chance, a little more time.