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The light shifts constantly on the pale skin of the boy who’s holding the gun, a shivering aquamarine movement over the steady hand and an almost bloodless face.
John knows that person standing there - weak from fever, fueled by pure adrenaline - isn’t a boy anymore. He’s a man, and a damaged one at that, but right now he doesn’t look it. Not here, where his sinewy body is perfectly outlined by the contrast of tight black fabric against diluted blue water and walls and his tangle of curls are still perfectly tamed into a style that makes him look more like a choir boy than a grown man aiming a gun at a psychopath.
They’re in a trap - positions locked and red dots from laser aims following their every move. In front of them, a madman laughs in a sing-song voice and John knows that this isn’t the time to feel - it’s a time to plan, to act, to win.
Except that he can’t win this. He’s the hostage, not the hero. It’s a new arrangement - the war hero is now the booty and the self-proclaimed sociopath who prefers cocaine to human interaction is the one buying them time and who isn't hesitating to risk everything for… this. For them.
The silence over the water is palpable and John can hear every breath from the two men standing there, maintaining the terror balance and the snarling dialogue that isn’t really a dialogue. There’s a faint hint of hesitation in Sherlock’s words. One so slight that it will only ever be detectable to John, one so unexpected that John breaks another sweat and feels his pulse like a crawling all over his skin.
John can hear his own breath, can hear the too quick intakes of stuffed air.
And he wishes that the rapid breathing was only due to the stress - he almost wishes it was pure dread.
But it isn’t, it’s far more complicated and dubitable than that. It’s a shiver running over the skin of his back, underneath the vest of explosives, a shiver of...want. Impossible, feverish want. Because he’s never seen anything like this in his life, and he’s seen more than anyone ought to.
John is a soldier, and he knows that there’s absolutely nothing aesthetic about violence. There’s no such thing as ‘beautiful brutality’ or ‘poetic justice’, not when it comes to men holding guns and aiming them at each other. He’s been to war, he’s been freed from every misconception regarding the mythical aesthetic of killing or cause others to. There’s nothing even remotely palatable about power plays like the one taking place right in front of him.
Still.
Still, John is painfully aware that he’s never seen anything more beautiful than this in his whole life.
He’s wrapped up in semtex and what remains of their lives could most likely be measured in minutes, maybe seconds, and John should be appalled, be terrified, be hypervigilant. Instead, he’s breathing too fast from watching the way the water in the pool is perfectly mirroring the heterochromic eyes of the boy who isn’t a boy, and John shouldn’t be imagining what those eyes would look like after Sherlock’s been thoroughly fucked, breathing heavily as he looks up at John, surprised and bereft of words.
But he does imagine just that, and the images shifts faster than the flickers of light on the walls of the pool. Feverish, forbidden, absurd.
Far more beautiful than anything has the right to be.
Sherlock; untouchable, cold.
At least John had thought that that was what he was - unattainable, detached. But he doesn’t look it, no, not like this, when dread has chased away the last traces of feverish flush from his cheeks, erasing the last hint of color on his skin. It’s nothing but a canvas now, reflecting the light surrounding them. And John can read the panic that's barely hidden under a layer sarcastic words and the perfect throw of an USB to the man who will most likely be the end of them.
It’s not fair.
It shouldn’t have been Moriarty who got to be the one who got to do this, got to--
And John knows it then, knows it like he’s never before known anything, not outside his worst nightmares.
He knows that he can’t unsee this. He knows that if he gets out of this building and its floating shades of blue with his blood still inside his body and his heart still pumping it around in his veins, then he will do whatever it takes to ensure that it's he, and he alone, that will get to shatter that perfect, cold boy who looks like he was made out of white kevlar.
Next time, it will be because of him, it simply has to be.
There’s no way round it - it won’t be Moriarty gets to be the one who breaks that almost-perfect facade and reveal that one slight shiver of panic, it will be John. It will be John’s hands, steady and relentless, around the wrists of the boy who will no longer be holding the gun, who will no longer be in control, who will not have one single sarcastic word left on his tongue.
And there’s nothing sensual or remotely sexual about being soaked in your own sweat in a too-big parka or being called a pet by one of the men who’s in fighting for control in a situation where he himself is nothing but a pawn in a destructive, insane game. But it doesn’t seem to matter, because in John’s mind, it’s he who disarms Sherlock, taking the gun from that precise, steady hand and throwing it aside, knowing that he will do things that will get through Sherlock’s skin in a far more literal way than Moriarty and this madness ever could.
And there’s a phone signal breaking the tension. It's also breaking the game, because Moriarty walks away now, saying his goodbyes like a man who’s certain that he’s still on top of the game.
But John is the one who is being freed from explosives by pale, long fingers that are no longer steady, fingers that have finally broken out in tremors and are almost shaking too much to get John out of the death-trap he’s been wrapped up in.
Moriarty has left the room, paused the game and left them to their panting breaths and fumbling fingers, and John is looking down at Sherlock, who is on his knees on the dirty floor in front of him, desperate, no longer managing to hold the edges of his exterior together. Panic spills through the cracks, onto the mouldy tiles he’s kneeling on.
And John knows it then, knows it as he meets Sherlock's shifting, shaken gaze and instinctively grabs his wrist, stilling a trembling, fumbling hand.
John's knows that he's not going to waste his time trying to break through kevlar.
He's already got a clear line of fire through the gaps in the kevlar, right in front of him, where Sherlock is looking up at him through the clearly visible cracks.