Chapter Text
As soon as Marco had reached the small counter and was busy measuring out tea, Sherlock winked at Mrs. Hudson, who turned away from them to watch the broad-shouldered guard with a fond expression. John looked on in bemusement, but was quickly pulled down the corridor leading to the file room.
Sherlock released his arm when they were far enough down the corridor to be invisible from most parts of the office, and soon they were standing in front of an imposing metal door with an input screen let into the wall next to it. Sherlock approached it confidently and typed in what must have been the numbers from Mrs. Hudson’s biscuit drawer.
John cleared his throat. “And this area isn’t under video surveillance?”
The door hissed and Sherlock pushed it open. “Don’t worry,” he answered, obviously already preoccupied with the next step of the plan. John followed him into the room and shut the door behind him. By the time he turned around, Sherlock had already found the correct section of the shelves and was pulling files out and discarding them almost instantly. John took a moment to look around and was astonished to find that the room wasn’t precisely small. There were about five rows of shelves, each several metres long.
Sherlock was softly cursing as he flipped through the files. Apart from that, the only sound that could be heard was the whirring of the bright overhead lights. John put his ear against the door to check whether someone was approaching already, but wasn’t surprised when he heard nothing. It was unlikely he’d be able to hear anything through that door.
He scanned the room for hidden cameras for a few minutes until eventually Sherlock triumphantly exclaimed, “Yes!” John reflexively shushed him, but stepped closer to be able to catch a glance at the file.
“I’ve found it,” Sherlock grinned. The file was comparatively thin, as John had expected, but Sherlock seemed to have found something of interesting in the few scant pages anyway.
“What’s it say?” John asked.
Sherlock looked up at him, eyes glinting. “This isn’t the first time the Bachunters stepped foot on M27. Not by a long shot.”
“So...”
“They went there regularly. One small ship at a time, leaving again a few hours later. Obviously the human government regarded it as safer not to intervene.”
“Didn’t want to start a war. Makes sense, considering recent events...” John mused. “So what were they doing there?”
“That’s where the geographical conditions are important. There are caves, and many of them. Some are at least a mile deep. Combining that with what looks like regular delivery flights, which question does that pose?”
“What are they hiding there?” John realised.
“Exactly. There’s no mention here of what it could be, although I imagine if it were weapons, the humans would have done something about it by now.” Sherlock shoved the file back into its place and clasped his hands together, making a sound that could almost have qualified as a giggle. “Now it’s getting really interesting.”
John cleared his throat. “That’s all fine and well, but how do we get out of here now?”
“Don’t worry,” Sherlock said, grinning and putting his hands on John’s shoulders. “Now don’t be alarmed...” And with that he pulled John in for a tight hug. His face he buried in John’s neck, warm breath raising gooseflesh.
John felt frozen, unsure of how to react – and his racing heart wasn’t particularly helpful in that respect either – when Sherlock hissed, “Put your arms around me!” and John couldn’t help but obey, awkwardly hugging Sherlock.
Next, several things happened at once. There was a click from the door, Sherlock grasped John’s arse with both hands, the door flew open, and three armed guards stormed inside, guns pointing at Sherlock and John.
“Step apart and put your hands up right now!” one of them commanded in a calm but firm voice.
“Can’t you see you’re interrupting?” Sherlock grumbled into John’s neck, but loudly enough to be audible to the guards. “We’re busy,” he continued, licking a hot strip up to John’s earlobe. “Aren’t we, John?”
John’s hands tightened around Sherlock’s back. “Y-yeah,” he forced out, voice hoarse, and then cleared his throat, adding, “Go away please.”
“I really must insist you step apart now,” came a refined voice from behind the three guards.
Sherlock sagged against John with a groan. “Go away, Mycroft.”
“Sherlock,” John muttered. “Maybe we should really...” He began to extract himself from Sherlock’s grasp.
“Oh, now you’ve done it, Mycroft,” Sherlock groaned, stepping away from John and raising his hands. “Go on, then, lead us to our cells.”
***
They were not led to any cells, instead taking the room’s other exit and, five minutes later, they were sitting around Mycroft’s desk in Mycroft’s actual office, which was far more practical in design than his antechamber.
The guards were waiting outside and although Mycroft was fixing them with a stern glare, Sherlock’s smirk meant that John was unable to take the situation seriously.
After a beat of silence, Mycroft seemed to realize that they would not be intimidated. “Although we are all aware of what happened, let us just go through the obvious questions you could expect to be asked in this situation. First of all, what were you doing down there?”
“Visiting Mrs. Hudson,” Sherlock said. “Obviously.”
Mycroft pressed his lips together. “Let me rephrase that. What were you doing in a room full of top-secret files?”
“John wanted to use the toilet.” Sherlock shrugged.
“And you had to come along?”
“He didn’t know where it was, did he.”
Mycroft raised an eyebrow. “Neither did you, apparently.”
“I thought I did. I was wrong.”
Mycroft let out a startled laugh that John sympathised with entirely. “You admit you were wrong? I should mark the date in my calendar. That doesn’t answer, however, how you managed to enter the room.”
“Quite by coincidence,” Sherlock assured promptly. “Isn’t that right, John?”
“Oh, absolutely,” he affirmed. “You said it was worth a try and typed in a few numbers. Who’d have thought it would work?”
“Who indeed,” Mycroft said, scribbling something down. “To sum it up: after the two of you had entered a high-security area simply to pay a visit to Mrs. Hudson, you decided to go to the toilet together. Said toilet you expected to find behind a door protected by a guard and an eight figures long code, which you typed in correctly entirely by chance. Not five minutes later we find you in that room; not, as may have been expected, looking for a porcelain bowl in which to relieve yourselves, but united in a tight embrace.” He glanced up from his notes. “And you expect me to believe this?”
They stared back at him, expressions blank.
“Well, yes,” John said. “It’s the truth, after all.”
Mycroft raised an eyebrow. “That’s good, then. Because if you had wanted to get a look at the file on M27, all you would have had to do was ask.”
Sherlock smiled. “If we had, hypothetically speaking, wanted to do that, we would have preferred to make sure we really knew everything there was to know.”
“Are you suggesting I would have held back information?”
Sherlock shrugged and stood. John followed his lead, and just before they were both out the door, Sherlock turned back to his brother and said, “I can always tell when you’re lying. Your lips move.”
The door closed on Mycroft exasperatedly rolling his eyes.
***
Both Sherlock and John erupted into laughter the moment the door had closed, and didn’t let up until they’d reached their room.
Grinning, John sat down on the sofa. “What the hell did we just do?”
“Didn’t you like it?” Sherlock asked and then proceeded to lie down on the sofa with his head in John’s lap, smiling up at him.
“It was brilliant,” John said with a laugh. “Just brilliant.”
Slowly, they calmed down, until they were left just looking at each other and smiling. John had to wonder why Sherlock had decided to lie down this way, but he was far from complaining. They were so comfortable with each other that physical closeness seemed like the next logical step. Then again, this was closer than he’d ever been with his best friends. And still John didn’t mind.
He did, however, feel a blush rising on his cheeks as he stared down into Sherlock’s eyes, pale and all-seeing as they were. Sherlock opened his mouth slightly as if to say something, but nothing came out. Another moment passed before he sat up rapidly, clearing his throat. John put his hands in his lap, feeling oddly bereft.
“So, um,” he said when the silence became too awkward. “What do we do now?”
Sherlock folded his hands under his chin. “There are two things we have to find out, and it isn’t clear whether they’re interconnected. One, what are they hiding on M27? Two, who’s behind the incident you were involved in?”
John raised an eyebrow. “I think I’ve got more questions than that.” When Sherlock looked at him quizzically, John continued, “Why did I get out of it alive, for one thing?”
“We’ve been through this already. Whoever is behind this has two safety nets, two people he can use as scapegoats. The first one is you, the second one is Anderson. I can’t believe you weren’t clear about that.”
“Well, sorry,” John answered, not sorry at all. “A lot has been happening these past few days.”
John couldn’t quite place Sherlock’s expression as he said, “Maybe you should take a break then. Go back to your own room.” He seemed... certainly frustrated and annoyed, but that wasn’t all.
John took a deep breath, then sighed and stood up. “I’m going to the pub.” Sherlock was obviously overreacting. It was better to leave for an hour or two than to have this escalate into a fight. Wherever “this” had even come from.
Sherlock scoffed, lying down on the sofa with his face buried against the backrest. “Have fun with the barkeeper,” he muttered darkly.
After staring at him for a moment longer, John left without another word.
***
The pub turned out to be relatively empty, which wasn’t surprising, seeing as it wasn’t even three in the afternoon yet. Steve, the barkeeper he’d... talked to the night before, was nowhere to be seen, so John assumed it wasn’t his shift at the moment.
John walked over to the bar and sat down on one of the stools, ordering a beer. While he rationally knew that they hadn’t even had a real fight, he couldn’t deny that he had a slight lump in his throat. There was also the fact that Sherlock was contradicting himself. He’d obviously been annoyed with John, and yet when John had announced he was leaving, Sherlock had seemed almost jealous that he was going to spend time with someone else.
Or had it been more than that? Had he been jealous that John was going to have sex with someone else?
But John didn’t want to have sex with Steve. Did he want to have sex with Sherlock? Did Sherlock want to have sex with him?
It was a strange concept. They’d only just met, and yet it felt like they’d been friends forever. Even when Sherlock had basically asked him to move in with him, it hadn’t felt suggestive. It had seemed genuinely friendly. But still, when John thought about Sherlock’s head in his lap, things weren’t so simple.
“What’s troubling you, sweetheart?”
John’s head snapped up and he looked in the direction the voice had come from. There, just two stools away from John, a woman was sitting with her back against the wall at the end of the bar. Her hair was pulled back and her lips were painted red, and she was wearing a one-piece pilot uniform.
She shrugged, smirking slightly. “I might be able to help.” Her voice was soft but firm, almost designed to seduce.
“I’m fine, thank you,” he said, friendly but direct, and made to turn back to his beer.
“You’re John Watson, aren’t you?” His gaze snapped back to her in an instant. “Sherlock’s new... friend.”
“You know Sherlock?” he asked, suddenly interested.
Her grin widened. “I know him very well indeed.”
John’s heart leapt into his throat. “Were you, erm, intimate..?” he couldn’t help but ask.
The woman laughed. “How delightfully direct! But no, we weren’t. Although I will say we came close to it sometimes.”
“What stopped you?”
She shrugged. “He did. How did he put it?” She licked her lips, thinking. “He doesn’t do that kind of thing. That was it.”
“What thing? Relationships?”
Again the woman laughed. “Oh no, that wasn’t what I was looking for at all.”
John frowned. “So he didn’t want sex.” That correlated with what he’d heard, and while he could certainly believe it, it still didn’t quite ring true.
“That’s right.” She sighed theatrically. “He’s not my usual, but it would have been nice nonetheless.”
John thought that Sherlock couldn’t really be anyone’s ‘usual’. He was just too unique for that. But he had to concede the point. There was no doubt it would have been nice. “So,” he said, about to ask what her usual type was when it occurred to him that he hadn’t even asked what her name was.
She chuckled. “I’m Irene Adler. I’m going to the Central Administration to train fighter-jet pilots.”
“Are you required to wear your uniform right now?” he asked.
“No.” She raised her glass to her lips and took a delicate sip. “But it looks good, doesn’t it?”
“Oh, um, yes, it does,” John said, taken by surprise.
Irene laughed softly. “Don’t worry. It’s not you I’m after.” She looked out into the room. John followed her gaze and found that it was directed at a young woman sitting alone at a table. She was very determinedly staring down into her cup.
“Molly Hooper,” Irene commented quietly. “Got her medical degree this year and is now working at the sickbay.”
“She seems sweet,” John said.
“She is. She’s also interesting,” Irene said, not taking her eyes off Molly.
“Well, I’ll leave you to it then,” John said, draining his beer.
“Mm.” She hesitated a moment. “John, listen. Sherlock rarely lets anyone get this close to him. You should think about what’s happening between the two of you and for how long you can expect to have it.”
John struggled to come up with a response, but before he could even say anything, Irene interrupted. “Now shoo. I’m busy.”