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It is so, so quiet.
And almost completely pitch dark, save for some street lights and torch beams occasionally waving about the treeline.
Police cars are littered about, several meters from the road, all parked in the grass. There's a smattering of officers, but many are still in their vehicles to converse without disrupting the environment outside.
John Watson is among the ones in the grass, just as quiet. His arms are crossed over his chest to try and cut his shivering. It's too damn cold, even if November is drawing near.
Sherlock is standing beside John, shivering just as much, hands fisting in the soft fabric of his jumper.
Their suspect is a murderer.
Not much of a suspect anymore, actually. They had found their evidence and tracked him down.
A killer, in cold blood.
Sherlock's least favorite sort of case. Gore really isn't his favorite, it never has been. Not to mention he'd already been running himself ragged with cases since the conclusions of what John had titled ‘The Illustrious Client’ and ‘The Noble Bachelor’. Their first two adventures together, the first two real episodes to the podcast. He wasn't quite run-down to the point of constant fatigue, but the weight of the following smaller cases was starting to bog him down.
There weren't any other big adventures that were episode-worthy, not since those first two episodes. If there were, Sherlock would be greatly surprised and overwhelmingly pleased. At least, right before John would decide to bludgeon him for how much editing he'd have to do.
This one wasn't episode-worthy either. No, not long enough.
But Sherlock doesn't have time to think about this. He doesn't have time to think about how tired he is, the tension in his shoulders, the episodes John may put out. No. He has to keep himself alert.
His gaze is trained on the forest before them, the entrance darkened and looming at the bottom of the hill.
He's waiting.
Perhaps the killer is, too.
“Is it going to be much longer?” John whispers. “I'm fairly sure my balls froze off at least fifteen minutes ago.”
“Oh, It won't be much longer,” Sherlock reassures him. “I'm sure of it.”
John is content with that. For now. He doesn't turn his gaze back to the entrance. “Thank God. I'm not sure how much longer I can stand in the cold for.”
Sherlock seconds that, but he doesn't say so. The joints of his hands protest each time he clenches and unclenches his fists.
“How do you think we're going to do this?” John asks.
Sherlock hears him. His eyes narrow just slightly, down at the entrance of the forest. It's off to the side of a winding road in an expanse of countryside, untrodden, unknown, uneven. Treacherous, depending on the person. But here they all are, standing, on edge, gazing down at the entrypoint–
“Sherlock?”
“I'm thinking,” Sherlock says.
“About…?” John prompts.
But Sherlock can't reply. His mind is far too busy, trying to imagine each possible outcome. What to do. When to do it. How. He doesn't mind sharing his thought processes with John, but tonight he just can't get the words to his lips.
“Right, okay, great,” John utters, as the window for Sherlock to share pulls shut.
Another long stretch of time passes them by. What feels like a quiet eternity.
John's hand comes out, down, in Sherlock's direction. John is trying to get something… Trying to interact while also being quiet to let Sherlock think. It's beckoning, palm-up. Sherlock isn't sure what the gesture is asking of him. Any other time, perhaps, he would grasp it, but not now.
That opportunity closes, too, when John's hand retracts.
Just as Sherlock looks back up–
A flash.
A glimpse, just barely.
Movement. A rustle.
Anyone else would've taken it for just an animal, something native in the forest, something small, undetectable. But not Sherlock. No, he recognizes it. A shoe, perhaps, or an elbow, the faint thump of a footstep.
Not an animal, no. A monster.
Sherlock tears through the field, weaving between cars. He snatches an unattended pair of cuffs that an officer had left on the hood of their vehicle (seriously, who does that?) and swears he can hear the collective cursing of every single individual behind him as he sprints full-pelt across the clearing.
Every movement uncalculated– felt, rather, with excellent prediction. This section of woods is not one he's been through before, but his eyes have adjusted to the low lighting. His vision is sharp as ever.
His gun rattles faintly in his coat, carefully tucked away, but still knocking into his hip bone with each footstep.
The clock is ticking.
It feels as though the world vanishes around him.
There's nothing but the chase at hand, the blood pounding in his ears, and his own steady breaths.
The police are definitely after him just as much as they're after the killer.
Sherlock only has a limited amount of time to take his chances. A few minutes, at most.
He trusts his ear. He trusts the quiet of the woods. He trusts the steady ground beneath his feet, as uneven as it may be. He trusts his sight.
That is his mistake. His only mistake tonight, in the terms of his work, but one that will likely end up with a lost chase or worse.
Maybe he wasn't expecting the slight drop, the placement of a rougher area, the height of the root, the sharp turn. His ankle twists, rolls.
Sherlock's body screams in adrenaline-muddled agony, alerting him to a sudden, severe wrongness in his next step with the same foot. He staggers, but he persists.
Every step he takes thereafter is in defiance of what may very well be his own death tonight.
The rest blurs.
***
“You got really lucky, you know that?”
John is kneeling in front of him, on the rug in the lounge. His hands are warm and real, carefully turning his ankle this way and that.
“I… wouldn't call it luck,” Sherlock says.
John gives a great scoff and looks up at him. “You could've died!”
“I knew what I was doing. If I hadn't taken that chance, we wouldn't have caught him,” Sherlock explains. He still feels out of breath, he can still feel almost a hunting instinct in his bones. “I had to. It couldn't have gone any other way.”
“It was a reckless choice, and had he turned around to see you fall or something, you'd be dead,” John refutes, his hands still.
“Well, it's not my fault the ground was so uneven.”
“It’s your fault for not thinking about that.”
“I did think about it, you–”
Sherlock takes a deep breath through his nose. He sits back and crosses his arms, and gives a long, slow exhale.
He's trying to steady himself and it isn't working.
John glances up at him once more. “Your work is– I mean, your work is great, you know, you just sometimes aren't the most careful.”
Sherlock wrinkles his nose. I exercised utmost caution and you're still blaming me for something that was an accident, an unplanned circumstance– He doesn't argue. He clenches his jaw shut.
When John sits back, Sherlock leans forward. “Twist or sprain, Doctor?” The title isn't a jab. It's more of a joke on the situation, frankly.
“Just a twist,” John answers, brows pinched like he's debating something. “Doesn't seem bad enough to be a sprain, but we'll see how it is in a couple of days.” He gets up, with a slight wobble and a wordless noise of complaint. “I'm going to wrap it anyway. You might not need it for long, but if you're going to be running around, you'll definitely want it for stability.”
John pats Sherlock's knee. “Sit tight.” He turns to go and find the elastic bandages.
Sherlock's eyes trace John's back as he goes.
The habitually straight posture, the line of his shoulders, the soft hair at the back of his neck that's not long enough yet to be bothersome, the small mole in the space behind his right ear.
A few moments later, John turns the corner into the kitchen, then returns with the roll of bandages and an icepack from the freezer.
When John kneels back down in front of him and begins to wrap his ankle, Sherlock draws a breath. “Are you angry with me?” He inquires, making positively sure his tone hasn't changed since their last comments to one another.
“No,” John says. “No, no, I'm not angry with you. Just–” He takes a breath, his hands moving in a smooth, almost unconscious motion, the bandages sweeping from around the top of Sherlock's foot to under the arch. “Just glad.”
“Glad?”
“Yeah, I'm glad you're alright.” The warmth from John's hands is now muted through the bandages. “It's been a long night, I'm a little shaken, but it's… Yeah. We're good.”
He's glad.
“Just wish you were a little more careful, is all,” John tacks on.
“Hmmm,” Sherlock hums.
He's glad.
Sherlock's head goes weirdly fuzzy, just for a minute. John props his foot up on the coffee table, and sets the ice pack down on his ankle.
“Do you want something for the pain?”
“No, this is fine.”
John smiles ever so fondly at Sherlock, in a way he himself likely doesn't notice.
Sherlock gives him a lingering glance in the dim light, watching as he turns once again. Tracing the freckles on John's cheeks with his eyes.
“Thank you,” Sherlock says to John's back, letting the words leave him. It simply seemed the best thing to say, for lack of anything better.
“It's no problem, mate,” John says, offering him a slightly brighter smile over his shoulder.
A quiet moment passes as John leaves him there to put the bandages away. The wrap is sturdy, and the pressure is more comforting than upsetting. He shifts a little, and the ice pack crinkles quietly.
Sherlock wrings his hands in his lap.
He's… Mostly steady, now, but he can almost feel each footfall on rough ground once again. Each breath, each beat of his heart.
But he remembers the click of the handcuffs.
He remembers that it's over now.
John, instead of going to shower like he usually would at this time, returns to the lounge. He turns off the lamp next to the sofa and settles down next to Sherlock. The light from his phone is the only illumination left in the room, save for soft city lights through the window.
“This okay?” John asks.
“Very,” Sherlock says.
They shift a little closer to one another as a few minutes pass.
Sherlock had started out by paying attention to John's phone, making comments here and there about a post or a video that would come up.
Eventually, though, his attention split off.
The shapes of the furniture in the lounge are still recognizable, but not as prominent.
It feels like it's just them.
Just him and John.
Sherlock doesn't really notice when he starts to lean, and lean, and lean a little heavier. And he's certainly not conscious enough to right himself by the time his head settles on John's shoulder.
They're touching from shoulder to hip to knee, and John's side is intoxicatingly warm.
The tension bleeds from Sherlock, and the world somehow grows even more distanced.
He's out cold by the time Archie wanders by. The dog snuffles at Sherlock's knee before electing to lay across John's lap, keeping one tentative paw resting on Sherlock's thigh.
It certainly wasn't the most ideal night, but Sherlock wouldn't dream of being anywhere else.
Especially now that he knows he can have this.