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swissmargTitle: The Case of the Vanishing Pants; Part Two - The Plutonium Pellets
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
swissmarg
Beta Reader:obsessionality
Rating: R
Characters: John, Sherlock; pre-slash? unrequited? idek
Summary: Five times John and Sherlock lost their pants in the course of a case.
Word count: 5,531
Warnings: Full male nudity, suicidal ideation, possible cancer trigger. Science sacrificed at the altar of plotty hand-waving.
Disclaimer: The original Sherlock Holmes stories were written by Arthur Conan Doyle, and are now in the public domain. The BBC version upon which this story is based was created by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat. This is a transformative fanwork which was created solely for fun, not material gain.
Part One - The Dehydrator
The new year found Sherlock accepting an assignment from Mycroft. It was a fairly straightforward case of weapons-grade nuclear material being sold under the table, but the regular intelligence channels hadn't been able to uncover the pipeline. Quite frankly, it wasn't the sort of thing that Sherlock normally took on, especially since it entailed doing Mycroft a favour.
When John asked Sherlock why he'd agreed to do it, he mumbled something about being bored, and then insisted that John come over to 221B right away to discuss it, even though it was nearly ten p.m.
"You don't need an excuse to see me, you know," John told Sherlock when he arrived half an hour later, bearing a takeaway bag of döner kebab.
"I wouldn't need one if you'd move back," Sherlock said, following John into the kitchen. He unpacked the foil-wrapped sandwiches and serviettes while John got out the plates.
"Ah, so this is just an excuse to get me up here. What did you do, leave your phone across the room again?" John teased.
Sherlock smiled and shook his head. "I can function perfectly well without you, you know."
John sat down and gave him a look that was simultaneously amused and questioning.
Sherlock picked up his kebab, trying to find the most strategic place to start on the overstuffed pocket. "I just don't want to," he continued, and took a bite, sending bits of onion and drips of sauce onto his plate.
A tingle that had nothing to do with the garlic sauce lodged itself in the upper part of John's chest as Sherlock caught his eye. "Keep that up and I just might take you up on it," John said, trying to keep his tone playfully light. It wasn't easy.
Sherlock smiled and winked, and John cleared his throat awkwardly and cast about for another topic, because: what? He and Sherlock did not flirt. Even in that warehouse, when they'd both stripped down to the altogether, there hadn't been any hint of coquetterie. Well, aside from John declaring his undying affection, and Sherlock inviting John to ogle his bits and offering to give up consulting for his sake. Nothing much really.
Christ Almighty. Maybe they did flirt now.
John was helpless to stop his heart rate from increasing at that little insight, which wouldn't escape Sherlock's notice, and suddenly, he was really rather desperate for a change of topic. John honestly didn't know where he wanted to take this, or even if he wanted to take this anywhere. He wanted more than anything - despite his better judgment - to have Sherlock in his life, and to be a part of Sherlock's life, but a romantic involvement would be even more complicated and fraught than their previous relationship had been. He'd said he needed to keep a part of himself separate, and that was still true. He couldn't, in all fairness both to himself and any potential partner, embark on a personal relationship knowing that he wasn't ready to share his heart completely.
And despite knowing that Sherlock could see right through him, and that he was taking the coward's way out, he deflected by asking about Mycroft's case. Sherlock easily shifted gears - although not without first giving John a long, searching look - and outlined the basics, at one point going over to his desk to retrieve a folder for John to flip through.
"So, let me see if I understand," John said after he'd skimmed through the hastily put together sheets of information. "They know where the plutonium's being taken from, but they can't tell how it's getting out?"
"Precisely."
"Seems pretty straightforward. Monitor all the shipments in and out. I mean, these containers are pretty big." John pointed at a photograph of a lorry passing through the gates of the facility. "It's not like someone's going to sneak one out in their briefcase."
"We're only talking a couple of kilograms in total so far," Sherlock said. "Enough to make a rather nasty bomb, at any rate. It's entirely likely that someone is, in fact, sneaking it out in bits in their briefcase. Except security is obviously very tight. The workers undergo searches and scans before leaving to prevent exactly this scenario from happening."
"One of the guards is being bribed," John said with a shrug.
"Possibly," Sherlock concurred. "But if so, they're very, very good. They've had an internal investigation going on for two weeks now, and they're still coming up with missing material. The Home Office is extremely keen to plug the leak, for obvious reasons."
"So you're - we're -" he corrected himself when he saw Sherlock open his mouth, "supposed to have a look, see if we can find the crooked guard?"
"Or find an alternative explanation." Sherlock licked some sauce from his fingers, his mischievous expression making it clear which scenario he preferred.
John quickly looked away from the pink tongue flicking over the long, lithe fingers, instead picking up the folder and shuffling through the photographs again. One of them showed the plutonium pellets as they came off the assembly line.
"You know," John joked, "these remind me of licorice allsorts. The round ones, you know?" He grinned and held the picture up for Sherlock to see.
Sherlock stared at it for a moment. Then his eyes went round, and he exclaimed: "Oh! Yes, John! Yes!"
John was so distracted by the vision of Sherlock shouting his name with a look of blissful epiphany that Sherlock had to ask his followup question a second time: "Have you ever heard of a drug mule?"
"Sorry, drug mule?" John blinked stupidly, still in a daze. "You mean- Hang on," he said, pushing all thoughts of other scenarios in which Sherlock might cry out his name like that from his mind, "you think someone's eating the plutonium?"
"Yes!" Sherlock said with unconcealed glee. "It wouldn't show up in a body search, not even on a low-level x-ray."
"Wouldn't the radiation still be picked up by a Geiger counter?"
Sherlock grabbed the file and pawed through it, looking for a reference. "Plutonium only emits very low energy radiation," he said, pointing to a line on a printout. "It wouldn't penetrate the layers of skin, fat, and muscle. Brilliant."
John, however, was still sceptical. "But wouldn't it - I don't know - kill the courier?"
Sherlock stood up and began talking very fast, waving his hands around. "Eventually, but when it's bound in this form, plutonium's fairly non-reactive. They're only taking a few pellets at a time. If they swallow them at the end of their shift, get out quickly, and expel them as soon as possible once they're outside, the exposure should be minimal." Sherlock whirled around and fixed John with glittering eyes. "We've got them."
======
They didn't have them. Not quite, anyway.
"Eight more minutes until the shift's over," John reminded Sherlock, glancing nervously at the door to the employees' locker room. They were both suited up in blue workers' coveralls similar to the ones used at crime scenes.
Sherlock, his eyes closed and his ear pressed against the yellow locker, ignored him completely. Two more delicate half-twists of the combination dial, and the locker clicked open.
They were nearly through with the entire row, looking for evidence for Sherlock's 'alternative theory' for how the plutonium was being smuggled out. So far, they'd found a baggie with four joints (which Sherlock proclaimed 'medicinal'), another one with two joints and two grams of loose marijuana ('recreational'), six party pills ('barely street quality, she was cheated'), a pornographic magazine ('closeted homosexual, repressing'), several condoms ('desperate', 'affair', 'overcompensating', 'for God's sake, why is he even bothering'), and various prescription and over-the-counter medications ('boring!').
While Sherlock worked, John thought once more - he hardly thought of anything else these days - about returning to Baker Street, and the possibility of a new dynamic between them. Now that he was involved in Sherlock's work again, he had to admit it would be more convenient if he were on the premises. There hadn't been an urgent summons to a crime scene since John had started accompanying Sherlock again, but John wasn't sure how exactly it would work if Sherlock had to wait for him to make his way across the city in the middle of the night; chances were Sherlock would either rip someone's (most likely Anderson's) head off before John got there, or John would arrive to find only the clean-up crew left.
It seemed that Sherlock really did work better with him around. Whether that was because he needed a sounding board, or that he could focus better knowing that John was watching his back, or that John actually was able to contribute something, as he had with the hint about the allsorts, the important thing for John was that he felt needed. He had a purpose, he could apply his skills in a useful way, and there was almost always some degree of excitement, whether in the form of a chase, or playacting, or simply the thrill of seeing Sherlock crack a riddle.
In fact, he probably would have agreed to move back in already if it weren't for the complication of this new... thing. Yes, John loved Sherlock. He wanted him to be healthy, and happy, and John was healthier and happier when he knew that Sherlock was. All well and good, and if they shared a flat, it would be easier for both of those things to remain true. It didn't really need to go any further than that.
However, since Sherlock's return, there had been times when John had felt they were on the cusp of something else, something that apparently went both ways. Their first time back at Angelo's, in the same booth they'd had the night of the Hope case, they'd been sharing a bottle of wine and dawdling over their meal. Sherlock had been staring out the window, and John had jokingly asked if he was looking for a taxi. They'd looked at each other then, Sherlock returning John's playful grin with a quiet smile, almost shy, both of them obviously remembering their conversation from that first night. But neither of them had said anything, and they'd let the moment pass.
There had been other moments, too, the latest one being the other night, after they'd finished their kebabs and discussed what they'd need to get into the facility today. It had been nearly midnight, and John had said something about needing to get home, and Sherlock had said, "Why don't you just stay." He'd been at the window, one finger holding back the curtain so he could look down at the street, and then he'd turned to John, who was sitting at the desk. Their eyes met, and John knew Sherlock wasn't just offering him the couch for the night. It would have been so easy to reach out and take his hand. He'd almost done it. Instead, John had looked away and said he needed to hurry to catch the last train.
Even then, if it had been only John having these moments, if he had been the only one having to deal with an unrequited infatuation – something he had gathered ample experience with by this stage of his life - he wouldn't be having cold feet about taking up residence in his old room again. He could handle that. He could quite happily live with Sherlock, loving him quietly, simply enjoying his friendship and the cases and the madness.
The complication was that John didn't think he was the only one experiencing these feelings. Sherlock seemed to be asking for something too, testing the waters and gently prodding, and John knew that if they ever did agree to try this out, there would be no going back. And that meant it could quite possibly ruin the best friendship either of them had ever had.
John's thoughts were interrupted by Sherlock holding out a small injection bottle he'd found in the latest locker. "Sandostatin," he read from the label. "John?"
John took the bottle and studied it. "I'd have to check in the drug dictionary to be sure, but I think it's an anti-diarrheal. Powerful one, not a first line medication."
"And Tagamet," Sherlock said, shaking a blister pack from the same locker. "I think we've found our man. J. Phillips." He read off the name written on masking tape stuck to the top of the door. He flicked his fingers at the jacket. "Approximately sixteen stone at five foot nine-ish. Carrying a nice amount of padding, enough to outsmart a Geiger counter, although if he's been expelling his stomach contents regularly over the past couple of weeks he may have lost some weight."
John glanced into the locker. There was a snapshot stuck to the inside of the door, showing a woman and a teenage girl sitting in a garden. Even John could guess they were probably the man's family. "Why would he need something to slow down his digestion?" he asked. "I would think he'd want to move it through as quickly as possible."
"He needs to stop the pellets from entering his intestine at all. I'll bet when we look it up, that-" Sherlock pointed at the vial that was still in John's hand. "-will be shown to delay the evacuation of the stomach into the duodenum. He'll have the syrup of ipecac in his car."
"God, that's-" John stopped midsentence as the door opened, and a gaunt man in a coverall identical to the ones they were wearing came in. He took one wide-eyed look at John, Sherlock, and the open locker, did an about-face, and fled.
John was after him in a second, but got tangled up with a woman entering the room. By the time he got out into the corridor after stammering out an apology, he found himself facing several more blue-clad employees coming towards him. He pushed his way through them with Sherlock hot on his heels, and just caught sight of the man slipping through a door at the end of the hall.
"I thought you said he was overweight," John yelled as they dashed after him.
"His jacket says he is. I didn't know he already had cancer. There's always something!"
They had to stop at the door for Sherlock to slide his badge through the card reader and punch in an access code.
"That's not something he's just picked up in the last few weeks," John pointed out. "He must have had it before he agreed to steal the plutonium."
The door unlocked and they rushed through in time to see another door halfway down the next corridor swing shut.
"Yes, and that's why he's not worried about getting sick from it," Sherlock said as they ran. "He's going to die anyway."
The second door led to a stairwell, where they could hear footsteps clattering below them. They flew down after the suspect, passing several floors before Sherlock grabbed John's arm to stop him and signalled for silence. They heard another door open and close somewhere below.
"Two more," Sherlock said, and leapt down the next flight.
They emerged into a bare concrete corridor, lit only by red emergency lights on the ceiling, their wire caging casting strange shadows on the walls. Off to the right, they could hear footsteps, although the lights didn't reach far enough for them to see anything.
"Where does he think he's going?" John hissed. "He can't imagine he's going to escape. I mean, we know who he is!"
"That hardly matters. He only needs to get this last batch out and ensure that the agreed-on payment is deposited in his wife's account. And I don't think he's trying to get away from us." Sherlock started, unhurriedly, down the corridor in the direction of the footsteps.
"What, a trap?" John asked. "One unarmed man in the terminal stages of cancer with a belly full of plutonium? What's he going to do, explode on us?" It was ridiculous. On the other hand... "He can't, right? Explode, I mean," he clarified.
"Hardly," Sherlock scoffed. "As I said, the pellets are largely unreactive. He'd need several kilograms for a sustainable reaction.
"And the unarmed part..." John ventured, moving more cautiously now, peering ahead into the red-tinged shadows. "Do you think he has a weapon stashed? Is that why he's brought us down here?"
"Always possible, but the chances that he's managed to smuggle a firearm into a nuclear facility are slim at best, and even if he has, it hardly makes sense to have left it in such a hard-to-reach place. He couldn't possibly count on being able to get down here if he were ever found out. No, I rather think he's making this up as he goes along, but he does have the home court advantage. Ah. And here we are."
J. Phillips was standing in the middle of the corridor, one hand on a metal wheel attached to a thick pipe that ran down from the ceiling to the floor.
"You're going to stop right there," he said, breathing hard from his run. "And I'm going to nip into the lift here, go back upstairs, and walk out. And that's the last anyone will ever see of me."
"I presume you have some reason why we should agree to this plan," Sherlock drawled, confident.
"You'll have stopped the leak. And my family will be provided for."
"Yes, we figured that part out long ago," Sherlock said disdainfully. "But tell me: why shouldn't we stop you from walking out now? Why should we let you make your last delivery? No one's holding your family hostage. At worst, if you're caught now, they'll be left with a payout from your life insurance when you eventually succumb to your..." Sherlock looked him over. "...pancreatic cancer? Which they wouldn't get if you go through with your current plan to kill yourself."
"How did- Never mind," Phillips said. "I'm doing them a kindness. The medical bills are only going to get worse, and they don't need to watch me being eaten from the inside out. The insurance would only have paid fifty thousand pounds. The people I'm doing this little assignment for are paying ten times that."
"Then you're being cheated. You should have held out for a least two million."
"Sherlock," John said, giving him a warning look. Then he turned to Phillips. "Look, I know your situation is desperate, but think of what these people will do with the plutonium. They're hardly going to use it to provide humanitarian aid. Why don't you cooperate, help us find them and recover what you've already delivered."
"What do I care if some maniacs in the Middle East want to blow each other up?" Phillips asked, sounding slightly hysterical. "They're going to do it either way, might as well get some use out of it."
"And what about your own family? Whether they condone what you've done or not, believe me, they won't thank you for killing yourself." John took a chance and advanced one step closer. He couldn't see a weapon, and Phillips' body language wasn't telegraphing any intent to attack. It was going to be strange enough saying what he needed to with Sherlock present, so he wanted to give himself at least the illusion of a private conversation.
"I know how it feels," John said. "Someone I-" He hesitated, unsure which tense to use, but decided to go for the simpler one. "Someone I loved very much killed himself. Right in front of me. And I-" John closed his eyes, unable to stop the emotions from surfacing at the wretched memory. "It destroyed me," he continued in a whisper.
When he had control of his voice again, he opened his eyes and went on. "I lost my father to cancer. Kidney, untreatable. And yes, it was bloody torture watching him go, knowing there was nothing I could do, that anyone could do. But we had time. We talked, and went through all his old photo albums, and he had his old mates round, and he and my sister even made a kind of peace before he went. Cancer's a bitch, but it's just something that happens. You can understand it. But killing yourself-"
He looked Phillips in the eye and spoke with all the force and conviction of two years of believing that Sherlock was dead. "The people you leave behind, they will never get over it. Ever. They'll always wonder if there was something they could have done, why they didn't see the signs, why they weren't enough, why their love wasn't enough. The fact that you're dying anyway won't change that. And trying to make it into something that you're doing for them... that's just setting them up for the worst kind of survivor's guilt.
"You have a daughter," John said. Phillips was watching him, his eyes wide with grief and desperation. John waited until he nodded before continuing. "Do you want her to go through the rest of her life knowing her father killed himself for her? How will that make her feel? Do you think she'll ever have enough self-assurance to live up to that?"
"Maybe. Maybe," Phillips said, his voice trembling. He shook his head. "I'll think about it. But I have to complete the delivery. Either way. Are you going to try to stop me?"
"We have to," John said gently. "You understand that."
He took another step forward, but Phillips tensed and gripped the metal wheel with both hands.
"This is a pressure release valve for the cooling tanks. The water's not radioactive enough to burn you right away, but you'll want to get it washed off as quickly as possible. And I wouldn't advise wandering around, either. You'll only spread the contamination." He looked John in the eye, and he clearly meant it when he said, "I'm sorry. There's an alarm a few yards back that you can use to call a decon team. I'd appreciate it if you'd give me thirty seconds at least." And then he spun the wheel.
John and Sherlock both darted forward, John reaching for the valve and Sherlock for Phillips. A high-pressure stream of hot water was already spewing out, gushing across the concrete and soaking them both.
"Sherlock, stop! Christ!" John shouted as he grappled to turn the wheel back, momentarily more worried about being scalded by the hot water than about radioactivity.
Sherlock tried to skirt the stream and pursue Phillips, who was already stepping into the waiting lift, but he couldn't avoid the water blasting him along one side.
"John!" he bellowed, hesitating between reaching an arm out to block the lift and going back to help John.
With one more mighty wrench, John succeeded in closing off the valve, just as the door to the lift shut on Phillips.
Sherlock stood there with an angry scowl on his face. "We could have had him!"
"We got him, Sherlock, we know who he is," John said tightly. "Turn the information over to Mycroft. He'll have someone pick him up." He stalked back down the corridor until he found the emergency box Phillips had mentioned, and pulled the lever. A squawking, intermittent siren began sounding. John tried to find a dry spot on his coverall and gingerly wiped at his face.
"It was a bluff," Sherlock spat. "That water's no more radioactive than tap water."
"It's been nice knowing you then," John quipped. When Sherlock's expression didn't change, John shook his head and said, "I couldn't take that chance. What if it was? What if it is? I had to try and contain the damage, for the sake of public safety."
"And your safety?" Sherlock demanded. "Look at you, you're soaked."
"You didn't exactly get away scot free yourself," John noted, pointing at Sherlock's left side, where his coverall was stained dark blue and his hair was dripping down over his ear. "If you'd stayed back, you wouldn't have got any on you."
Sherlock glared at John, then stomped around, flicking the water out of his hair and stabbing at his phone, which wasn't picking up a signal. It wasn't long before several workers showed up in head-to-toe white protective gear, brandishing Geiger counters and herding John and Sherlock into the (now empty) lift.
Sherlock tried to impress upon them the importance of stopping Phillips before he could leave the premises, but since no one had been informed of Sherlock and John's visit, it took them the entire trip to the ceramic-walled decontamination chamber before one of the team members grasped what exactly was going on. Even though someone hurried off to make a call at that point, it was disappointingly clear that any intervention would be too late.
John already knew what was coming after that; he'd drilled decontamination following a chemical weapons attack when he was in the army. First, their clothing was removed with care to minimise the chance of any contaminants on the outside layers coming in contact with their skin as they were disrobed.
Sherlock was still disgruntled over Phillips' escape, and wasn't looking at John. It was hardly an intimate atmosphere, anyway, with each of them having a worker who looked like a cross between a beekeeper and an astronaut fussing over them (John couldn't even tell if he was being undressed by a man or a woman; not that it mattered), and two more taking readings on their discarded clothing and furiously making labels and taking notes.
"Seems like this is becoming a habit," John said, attempting to lighten the mood.
Sherlock frowned at him crossly as the worker assigned to him helped him out of his trousers.
"Us ending up naked and the suspect getting away, I mean," John explained. Black pants again, he noted. He wondered fleetingly whether Sherlock owned any other colours. He, of course, had the bog standard white boxers with the open fly. He tried not to worry whether they were clean as his worker shimmied them expertly down his legs. He looked down at the kneeling figure. Whoever it was, they clearly had practice with this.
Sherlock snorted in grudging amusement. John felt the soft glow of proprietary satisfaction at causing the reaction, and at the same time was relieved to see that Sherlock had his head turned away as John was exposed. It wasn't clear whether he was purposely looking in another direction, or whether he was genuinely interested in the two workers who were doing the paperwork at a table off to the side. Of course, Sherlock had seen him before, in the dehydrator, and hadn't shown any particular interest then, either.
"We should probably work on improving our collar rate," Sherlock agreed. John secretly noted that he didn't say anything about changing the part where they ended up naked. Well, all he cared about was solving the case, after all.
And there went Sherlock's pants.
Standing, John had a better view of the three-and-a-half inches. Once again, he noted that Sherlock's penis (obviously unexcited by the situation, not that John was either) and scrotum were darker than the rest of his skin, and his testicles hung low and loose. No. No, he was not looking at Sherlock's genitals. He was looking at... Sherlock's ribs. Yes. As a doctor and a caring friend, he was pleased to note that they weren't as prominent as he'd thought they might be. Sherlock wasn't really too thin, he just had a slender build. And now he saw that Sherlock was watching him looking him over out of the corner of his eye, the hint of a smirk on his face, and John really needed to just keep his eyes forward.
Parade rest, Watson.
And time for a distraction before things became really quite awkward. John looked down at the worker in front of him, who was now peeling off John's socks.
"Maybe Donovan was only decontaminating Anderson," John said, glancing in Sherlock's general direction, but not - not - looking any higher than his feet. "You know, when you deduced her..." John pointed at his own knees.
Sherlock grinned, then chuckled. "God, I hope so. Makes for a much more pleasant image."
John laughed in return, maybe more forcefully than was appropriate, but he needed to let the tension out somehow.
And now came the fun part.
Once their clothes were bagged and tagged and they'd been subjected once more to the indecency of the clicking Geiger counter probe, two of the workers left, and the other two unhooked the hoses from the wall. Sherlock and John were instructed to close their eyes and keep their mouths shut, and then came the sound of water on tiles.
As the (surprisingly warm and pleasant) stream beat down on him, sluicing off any potential poison, John thought again about Sherlock's apparent lack of discomfiture at being naked around him. Maybe Sherlock wasn't even interested in a sexual relationship, John considered. Maybe he was just reacting to the signals that John was sending out, engaging in mirroring as he tried to figure out what was expected of him. John was aware that his behaviour had shifted since Sherlock's return, and Sherlock, hypersensitive as he was, would definitely have picked up on that. Maybe he had always seemed like a nonsexual being because he was, in fact, asexual. He clearly wanted John around, wanted to live with him; but he probably just wanted things to go back to the way they were before he left (impossible, but that didn't mean he couldn't want it).
Or maybe it wasn't impossible. Maybe if John went back to acting the way he had before - no more pining looks, no more double entendres, no more projecting his own emotions onto Sherlock - then things would actually be the way they were before.
Except John would continue to be aware of his feelings of strong affection for his flatmate, feelings that would never be returned in kind. But if he never acted inappropriately, never gave Sherlock any reason to be ill at ease - it could work. It would work. John was - if not miserable, then at least discontent - with the way things were now. He missed Sherlock when he wasn't with him, and got a little thrill every time they were together, even when they were being locked in ovens or sprayed with radioactive waste. It wasn't all about the thrills, either. It was about belonging, and being understood. He wasn't complete without Sherlock, and he suspected that Sherlock felt much the same.
As the shower ended and they were checked over once more for residual radioactivity, John let himself look over at Sherlock. The water was running in rivulets down his shoulders and chest, accentuating his lean lines. He did have a lovely body, and John allowed himself the admission, because he knew now that he wasn't going to act on it or do anything to jeopardise their friendship. But he could admire Sherlock, and appreciate all the good things about him, of which there were more than most people realised.
Sherlock's hair was plastered to his head, which made his face look even longer and his features more prominent than they actually were. He opened his eyes, blinking the water out of them, and met John's gaze.
John grinned and wiped a hand over his face to get rid of the water before he spoke.
"Do you still have a room free?" he asked. "It's just that if we're both going to be glowing in the dark, it's probably best to keep the zone of contamination limited."
"Yes, I know how important public safety is to you." Sherlock appeared amused.
"Public safety is... No, you know what? Screw public safety. You and me together, we're a goddamn hazard to public safety, is what we are. If I move back in with you, the city of London's threat level's going to bottom out at 'substantial'." John was smiling so wide his face was going to hurt, but he couldn't help it. The prospect was delightful.
Sherlock grinned giddily as he started to towel off with the thin, white flannels they were given. "The only drawback is, I'm afraid Mycroft will be rather pleased."
"I think causing a radioactive spill might balance things out all round. Especially if we say he's the one who provided your badge."
"Oh, I made a slight alteration so that it actually is his name on the badge," Sherlock said smugly. "Call me 'Mycroft'," he added, sotto voce.
John laughed. "Oh God, he's going to fry us alive."
"Serves him right for roping me into this." Sherlock put on his best self-righteous face.
John took one of the fresh blue coveralls they were being provided, as their clothes would have to be washed separately. As he did, he smirked to himself. John wasn't entirely stupid, and Sherlock had been fairly transparent about his reasons for taking the case. John wouldn't say anything about it, though.
He was going to be very good about not saying anything.
======
Go to Part Three - The Resiniferatoxin
Author:
swissmargBeta Reader:
obsessionalityRating: R
Characters: John, Sherlock; pre-slash? unrequited? idek
Summary: Five times John and Sherlock lost their pants in the course of a case.
Word count: 5,531
Warnings: Full male nudity, suicidal ideation, possible cancer trigger. Science sacrificed at the altar of plotty hand-waving.
Disclaimer: The original Sherlock Holmes stories were written by Arthur Conan Doyle, and are now in the public domain. The BBC version upon which this story is based was created by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat. This is a transformative fanwork which was created solely for fun, not material gain.
Part One - The Dehydrator
Part Two - The Plutonium Pellets
The new year found Sherlock accepting an assignment from Mycroft. It was a fairly straightforward case of weapons-grade nuclear material being sold under the table, but the regular intelligence channels hadn't been able to uncover the pipeline. Quite frankly, it wasn't the sort of thing that Sherlock normally took on, especially since it entailed doing Mycroft a favour.
When John asked Sherlock why he'd agreed to do it, he mumbled something about being bored, and then insisted that John come over to 221B right away to discuss it, even though it was nearly ten p.m.
"You don't need an excuse to see me, you know," John told Sherlock when he arrived half an hour later, bearing a takeaway bag of döner kebab.
"I wouldn't need one if you'd move back," Sherlock said, following John into the kitchen. He unpacked the foil-wrapped sandwiches and serviettes while John got out the plates.
"Ah, so this is just an excuse to get me up here. What did you do, leave your phone across the room again?" John teased.
Sherlock smiled and shook his head. "I can function perfectly well without you, you know."
John sat down and gave him a look that was simultaneously amused and questioning.
Sherlock picked up his kebab, trying to find the most strategic place to start on the overstuffed pocket. "I just don't want to," he continued, and took a bite, sending bits of onion and drips of sauce onto his plate.
A tingle that had nothing to do with the garlic sauce lodged itself in the upper part of John's chest as Sherlock caught his eye. "Keep that up and I just might take you up on it," John said, trying to keep his tone playfully light. It wasn't easy.
Sherlock smiled and winked, and John cleared his throat awkwardly and cast about for another topic, because: what? He and Sherlock did not flirt. Even in that warehouse, when they'd both stripped down to the altogether, there hadn't been any hint of coquetterie. Well, aside from John declaring his undying affection, and Sherlock inviting John to ogle his bits and offering to give up consulting for his sake. Nothing much really.
Christ Almighty. Maybe they did flirt now.
John was helpless to stop his heart rate from increasing at that little insight, which wouldn't escape Sherlock's notice, and suddenly, he was really rather desperate for a change of topic. John honestly didn't know where he wanted to take this, or even if he wanted to take this anywhere. He wanted more than anything - despite his better judgment - to have Sherlock in his life, and to be a part of Sherlock's life, but a romantic involvement would be even more complicated and fraught than their previous relationship had been. He'd said he needed to keep a part of himself separate, and that was still true. He couldn't, in all fairness both to himself and any potential partner, embark on a personal relationship knowing that he wasn't ready to share his heart completely.
And despite knowing that Sherlock could see right through him, and that he was taking the coward's way out, he deflected by asking about Mycroft's case. Sherlock easily shifted gears - although not without first giving John a long, searching look - and outlined the basics, at one point going over to his desk to retrieve a folder for John to flip through.
"So, let me see if I understand," John said after he'd skimmed through the hastily put together sheets of information. "They know where the plutonium's being taken from, but they can't tell how it's getting out?"
"Precisely."
"Seems pretty straightforward. Monitor all the shipments in and out. I mean, these containers are pretty big." John pointed at a photograph of a lorry passing through the gates of the facility. "It's not like someone's going to sneak one out in their briefcase."
"We're only talking a couple of kilograms in total so far," Sherlock said. "Enough to make a rather nasty bomb, at any rate. It's entirely likely that someone is, in fact, sneaking it out in bits in their briefcase. Except security is obviously very tight. The workers undergo searches and scans before leaving to prevent exactly this scenario from happening."
"One of the guards is being bribed," John said with a shrug.
"Possibly," Sherlock concurred. "But if so, they're very, very good. They've had an internal investigation going on for two weeks now, and they're still coming up with missing material. The Home Office is extremely keen to plug the leak, for obvious reasons."
"So you're - we're -" he corrected himself when he saw Sherlock open his mouth, "supposed to have a look, see if we can find the crooked guard?"
"Or find an alternative explanation." Sherlock licked some sauce from his fingers, his mischievous expression making it clear which scenario he preferred.
John quickly looked away from the pink tongue flicking over the long, lithe fingers, instead picking up the folder and shuffling through the photographs again. One of them showed the plutonium pellets as they came off the assembly line.
"You know," John joked, "these remind me of licorice allsorts. The round ones, you know?" He grinned and held the picture up for Sherlock to see.
Sherlock stared at it for a moment. Then his eyes went round, and he exclaimed: "Oh! Yes, John! Yes!"
John was so distracted by the vision of Sherlock shouting his name with a look of blissful epiphany that Sherlock had to ask his followup question a second time: "Have you ever heard of a drug mule?"
"Sorry, drug mule?" John blinked stupidly, still in a daze. "You mean- Hang on," he said, pushing all thoughts of other scenarios in which Sherlock might cry out his name like that from his mind, "you think someone's eating the plutonium?"
"Yes!" Sherlock said with unconcealed glee. "It wouldn't show up in a body search, not even on a low-level x-ray."
"Wouldn't the radiation still be picked up by a Geiger counter?"
Sherlock grabbed the file and pawed through it, looking for a reference. "Plutonium only emits very low energy radiation," he said, pointing to a line on a printout. "It wouldn't penetrate the layers of skin, fat, and muscle. Brilliant."
John, however, was still sceptical. "But wouldn't it - I don't know - kill the courier?"
Sherlock stood up and began talking very fast, waving his hands around. "Eventually, but when it's bound in this form, plutonium's fairly non-reactive. They're only taking a few pellets at a time. If they swallow them at the end of their shift, get out quickly, and expel them as soon as possible once they're outside, the exposure should be minimal." Sherlock whirled around and fixed John with glittering eyes. "We've got them."
======
They didn't have them. Not quite, anyway.
"Eight more minutes until the shift's over," John reminded Sherlock, glancing nervously at the door to the employees' locker room. They were both suited up in blue workers' coveralls similar to the ones used at crime scenes.
Sherlock, his eyes closed and his ear pressed against the yellow locker, ignored him completely. Two more delicate half-twists of the combination dial, and the locker clicked open.
They were nearly through with the entire row, looking for evidence for Sherlock's 'alternative theory' for how the plutonium was being smuggled out. So far, they'd found a baggie with four joints (which Sherlock proclaimed 'medicinal'), another one with two joints and two grams of loose marijuana ('recreational'), six party pills ('barely street quality, she was cheated'), a pornographic magazine ('closeted homosexual, repressing'), several condoms ('desperate', 'affair', 'overcompensating', 'for God's sake, why is he even bothering'), and various prescription and over-the-counter medications ('boring!').
While Sherlock worked, John thought once more - he hardly thought of anything else these days - about returning to Baker Street, and the possibility of a new dynamic between them. Now that he was involved in Sherlock's work again, he had to admit it would be more convenient if he were on the premises. There hadn't been an urgent summons to a crime scene since John had started accompanying Sherlock again, but John wasn't sure how exactly it would work if Sherlock had to wait for him to make his way across the city in the middle of the night; chances were Sherlock would either rip someone's (most likely Anderson's) head off before John got there, or John would arrive to find only the clean-up crew left.
It seemed that Sherlock really did work better with him around. Whether that was because he needed a sounding board, or that he could focus better knowing that John was watching his back, or that John actually was able to contribute something, as he had with the hint about the allsorts, the important thing for John was that he felt needed. He had a purpose, he could apply his skills in a useful way, and there was almost always some degree of excitement, whether in the form of a chase, or playacting, or simply the thrill of seeing Sherlock crack a riddle.
In fact, he probably would have agreed to move back in already if it weren't for the complication of this new... thing. Yes, John loved Sherlock. He wanted him to be healthy, and happy, and John was healthier and happier when he knew that Sherlock was. All well and good, and if they shared a flat, it would be easier for both of those things to remain true. It didn't really need to go any further than that.
However, since Sherlock's return, there had been times when John had felt they were on the cusp of something else, something that apparently went both ways. Their first time back at Angelo's, in the same booth they'd had the night of the Hope case, they'd been sharing a bottle of wine and dawdling over their meal. Sherlock had been staring out the window, and John had jokingly asked if he was looking for a taxi. They'd looked at each other then, Sherlock returning John's playful grin with a quiet smile, almost shy, both of them obviously remembering their conversation from that first night. But neither of them had said anything, and they'd let the moment pass.
There had been other moments, too, the latest one being the other night, after they'd finished their kebabs and discussed what they'd need to get into the facility today. It had been nearly midnight, and John had said something about needing to get home, and Sherlock had said, "Why don't you just stay." He'd been at the window, one finger holding back the curtain so he could look down at the street, and then he'd turned to John, who was sitting at the desk. Their eyes met, and John knew Sherlock wasn't just offering him the couch for the night. It would have been so easy to reach out and take his hand. He'd almost done it. Instead, John had looked away and said he needed to hurry to catch the last train.
Even then, if it had been only John having these moments, if he had been the only one having to deal with an unrequited infatuation – something he had gathered ample experience with by this stage of his life - he wouldn't be having cold feet about taking up residence in his old room again. He could handle that. He could quite happily live with Sherlock, loving him quietly, simply enjoying his friendship and the cases and the madness.
The complication was that John didn't think he was the only one experiencing these feelings. Sherlock seemed to be asking for something too, testing the waters and gently prodding, and John knew that if they ever did agree to try this out, there would be no going back. And that meant it could quite possibly ruin the best friendship either of them had ever had.
John's thoughts were interrupted by Sherlock holding out a small injection bottle he'd found in the latest locker. "Sandostatin," he read from the label. "John?"
John took the bottle and studied it. "I'd have to check in the drug dictionary to be sure, but I think it's an anti-diarrheal. Powerful one, not a first line medication."
"And Tagamet," Sherlock said, shaking a blister pack from the same locker. "I think we've found our man. J. Phillips." He read off the name written on masking tape stuck to the top of the door. He flicked his fingers at the jacket. "Approximately sixteen stone at five foot nine-ish. Carrying a nice amount of padding, enough to outsmart a Geiger counter, although if he's been expelling his stomach contents regularly over the past couple of weeks he may have lost some weight."
John glanced into the locker. There was a snapshot stuck to the inside of the door, showing a woman and a teenage girl sitting in a garden. Even John could guess they were probably the man's family. "Why would he need something to slow down his digestion?" he asked. "I would think he'd want to move it through as quickly as possible."
"He needs to stop the pellets from entering his intestine at all. I'll bet when we look it up, that-" Sherlock pointed at the vial that was still in John's hand. "-will be shown to delay the evacuation of the stomach into the duodenum. He'll have the syrup of ipecac in his car."
"God, that's-" John stopped midsentence as the door opened, and a gaunt man in a coverall identical to the ones they were wearing came in. He took one wide-eyed look at John, Sherlock, and the open locker, did an about-face, and fled.
John was after him in a second, but got tangled up with a woman entering the room. By the time he got out into the corridor after stammering out an apology, he found himself facing several more blue-clad employees coming towards him. He pushed his way through them with Sherlock hot on his heels, and just caught sight of the man slipping through a door at the end of the hall.
"I thought you said he was overweight," John yelled as they dashed after him.
"His jacket says he is. I didn't know he already had cancer. There's always something!"
They had to stop at the door for Sherlock to slide his badge through the card reader and punch in an access code.
"That's not something he's just picked up in the last few weeks," John pointed out. "He must have had it before he agreed to steal the plutonium."
The door unlocked and they rushed through in time to see another door halfway down the next corridor swing shut.
"Yes, and that's why he's not worried about getting sick from it," Sherlock said as they ran. "He's going to die anyway."
The second door led to a stairwell, where they could hear footsteps clattering below them. They flew down after the suspect, passing several floors before Sherlock grabbed John's arm to stop him and signalled for silence. They heard another door open and close somewhere below.
"Two more," Sherlock said, and leapt down the next flight.
They emerged into a bare concrete corridor, lit only by red emergency lights on the ceiling, their wire caging casting strange shadows on the walls. Off to the right, they could hear footsteps, although the lights didn't reach far enough for them to see anything.
"Where does he think he's going?" John hissed. "He can't imagine he's going to escape. I mean, we know who he is!"
"That hardly matters. He only needs to get this last batch out and ensure that the agreed-on payment is deposited in his wife's account. And I don't think he's trying to get away from us." Sherlock started, unhurriedly, down the corridor in the direction of the footsteps.
"What, a trap?" John asked. "One unarmed man in the terminal stages of cancer with a belly full of plutonium? What's he going to do, explode on us?" It was ridiculous. On the other hand... "He can't, right? Explode, I mean," he clarified.
"Hardly," Sherlock scoffed. "As I said, the pellets are largely unreactive. He'd need several kilograms for a sustainable reaction.
"And the unarmed part..." John ventured, moving more cautiously now, peering ahead into the red-tinged shadows. "Do you think he has a weapon stashed? Is that why he's brought us down here?"
"Always possible, but the chances that he's managed to smuggle a firearm into a nuclear facility are slim at best, and even if he has, it hardly makes sense to have left it in such a hard-to-reach place. He couldn't possibly count on being able to get down here if he were ever found out. No, I rather think he's making this up as he goes along, but he does have the home court advantage. Ah. And here we are."
J. Phillips was standing in the middle of the corridor, one hand on a metal wheel attached to a thick pipe that ran down from the ceiling to the floor.
"You're going to stop right there," he said, breathing hard from his run. "And I'm going to nip into the lift here, go back upstairs, and walk out. And that's the last anyone will ever see of me."
"I presume you have some reason why we should agree to this plan," Sherlock drawled, confident.
"You'll have stopped the leak. And my family will be provided for."
"Yes, we figured that part out long ago," Sherlock said disdainfully. "But tell me: why shouldn't we stop you from walking out now? Why should we let you make your last delivery? No one's holding your family hostage. At worst, if you're caught now, they'll be left with a payout from your life insurance when you eventually succumb to your..." Sherlock looked him over. "...pancreatic cancer? Which they wouldn't get if you go through with your current plan to kill yourself."
"How did- Never mind," Phillips said. "I'm doing them a kindness. The medical bills are only going to get worse, and they don't need to watch me being eaten from the inside out. The insurance would only have paid fifty thousand pounds. The people I'm doing this little assignment for are paying ten times that."
"Then you're being cheated. You should have held out for a least two million."
"Sherlock," John said, giving him a warning look. Then he turned to Phillips. "Look, I know your situation is desperate, but think of what these people will do with the plutonium. They're hardly going to use it to provide humanitarian aid. Why don't you cooperate, help us find them and recover what you've already delivered."
"What do I care if some maniacs in the Middle East want to blow each other up?" Phillips asked, sounding slightly hysterical. "They're going to do it either way, might as well get some use out of it."
"And what about your own family? Whether they condone what you've done or not, believe me, they won't thank you for killing yourself." John took a chance and advanced one step closer. He couldn't see a weapon, and Phillips' body language wasn't telegraphing any intent to attack. It was going to be strange enough saying what he needed to with Sherlock present, so he wanted to give himself at least the illusion of a private conversation.
"I know how it feels," John said. "Someone I-" He hesitated, unsure which tense to use, but decided to go for the simpler one. "Someone I loved very much killed himself. Right in front of me. And I-" John closed his eyes, unable to stop the emotions from surfacing at the wretched memory. "It destroyed me," he continued in a whisper.
When he had control of his voice again, he opened his eyes and went on. "I lost my father to cancer. Kidney, untreatable. And yes, it was bloody torture watching him go, knowing there was nothing I could do, that anyone could do. But we had time. We talked, and went through all his old photo albums, and he had his old mates round, and he and my sister even made a kind of peace before he went. Cancer's a bitch, but it's just something that happens. You can understand it. But killing yourself-"
He looked Phillips in the eye and spoke with all the force and conviction of two years of believing that Sherlock was dead. "The people you leave behind, they will never get over it. Ever. They'll always wonder if there was something they could have done, why they didn't see the signs, why they weren't enough, why their love wasn't enough. The fact that you're dying anyway won't change that. And trying to make it into something that you're doing for them... that's just setting them up for the worst kind of survivor's guilt.
"You have a daughter," John said. Phillips was watching him, his eyes wide with grief and desperation. John waited until he nodded before continuing. "Do you want her to go through the rest of her life knowing her father killed himself for her? How will that make her feel? Do you think she'll ever have enough self-assurance to live up to that?"
"Maybe. Maybe," Phillips said, his voice trembling. He shook his head. "I'll think about it. But I have to complete the delivery. Either way. Are you going to try to stop me?"
"We have to," John said gently. "You understand that."
He took another step forward, but Phillips tensed and gripped the metal wheel with both hands.
"This is a pressure release valve for the cooling tanks. The water's not radioactive enough to burn you right away, but you'll want to get it washed off as quickly as possible. And I wouldn't advise wandering around, either. You'll only spread the contamination." He looked John in the eye, and he clearly meant it when he said, "I'm sorry. There's an alarm a few yards back that you can use to call a decon team. I'd appreciate it if you'd give me thirty seconds at least." And then he spun the wheel.
John and Sherlock both darted forward, John reaching for the valve and Sherlock for Phillips. A high-pressure stream of hot water was already spewing out, gushing across the concrete and soaking them both.
"Sherlock, stop! Christ!" John shouted as he grappled to turn the wheel back, momentarily more worried about being scalded by the hot water than about radioactivity.
Sherlock tried to skirt the stream and pursue Phillips, who was already stepping into the waiting lift, but he couldn't avoid the water blasting him along one side.
"John!" he bellowed, hesitating between reaching an arm out to block the lift and going back to help John.
With one more mighty wrench, John succeeded in closing off the valve, just as the door to the lift shut on Phillips.
Sherlock stood there with an angry scowl on his face. "We could have had him!"
"We got him, Sherlock, we know who he is," John said tightly. "Turn the information over to Mycroft. He'll have someone pick him up." He stalked back down the corridor until he found the emergency box Phillips had mentioned, and pulled the lever. A squawking, intermittent siren began sounding. John tried to find a dry spot on his coverall and gingerly wiped at his face.
"It was a bluff," Sherlock spat. "That water's no more radioactive than tap water."
"It's been nice knowing you then," John quipped. When Sherlock's expression didn't change, John shook his head and said, "I couldn't take that chance. What if it was? What if it is? I had to try and contain the damage, for the sake of public safety."
"And your safety?" Sherlock demanded. "Look at you, you're soaked."
"You didn't exactly get away scot free yourself," John noted, pointing at Sherlock's left side, where his coverall was stained dark blue and his hair was dripping down over his ear. "If you'd stayed back, you wouldn't have got any on you."
Sherlock glared at John, then stomped around, flicking the water out of his hair and stabbing at his phone, which wasn't picking up a signal. It wasn't long before several workers showed up in head-to-toe white protective gear, brandishing Geiger counters and herding John and Sherlock into the (now empty) lift.
Sherlock tried to impress upon them the importance of stopping Phillips before he could leave the premises, but since no one had been informed of Sherlock and John's visit, it took them the entire trip to the ceramic-walled decontamination chamber before one of the team members grasped what exactly was going on. Even though someone hurried off to make a call at that point, it was disappointingly clear that any intervention would be too late.
John already knew what was coming after that; he'd drilled decontamination following a chemical weapons attack when he was in the army. First, their clothing was removed with care to minimise the chance of any contaminants on the outside layers coming in contact with their skin as they were disrobed.
Sherlock was still disgruntled over Phillips' escape, and wasn't looking at John. It was hardly an intimate atmosphere, anyway, with each of them having a worker who looked like a cross between a beekeeper and an astronaut fussing over them (John couldn't even tell if he was being undressed by a man or a woman; not that it mattered), and two more taking readings on their discarded clothing and furiously making labels and taking notes.
"Seems like this is becoming a habit," John said, attempting to lighten the mood.
Sherlock frowned at him crossly as the worker assigned to him helped him out of his trousers.
"Us ending up naked and the suspect getting away, I mean," John explained. Black pants again, he noted. He wondered fleetingly whether Sherlock owned any other colours. He, of course, had the bog standard white boxers with the open fly. He tried not to worry whether they were clean as his worker shimmied them expertly down his legs. He looked down at the kneeling figure. Whoever it was, they clearly had practice with this.
Sherlock snorted in grudging amusement. John felt the soft glow of proprietary satisfaction at causing the reaction, and at the same time was relieved to see that Sherlock had his head turned away as John was exposed. It wasn't clear whether he was purposely looking in another direction, or whether he was genuinely interested in the two workers who were doing the paperwork at a table off to the side. Of course, Sherlock had seen him before, in the dehydrator, and hadn't shown any particular interest then, either.
"We should probably work on improving our collar rate," Sherlock agreed. John secretly noted that he didn't say anything about changing the part where they ended up naked. Well, all he cared about was solving the case, after all.
And there went Sherlock's pants.
Standing, John had a better view of the three-and-a-half inches. Once again, he noted that Sherlock's penis (obviously unexcited by the situation, not that John was either) and scrotum were darker than the rest of his skin, and his testicles hung low and loose. No. No, he was not looking at Sherlock's genitals. He was looking at... Sherlock's ribs. Yes. As a doctor and a caring friend, he was pleased to note that they weren't as prominent as he'd thought they might be. Sherlock wasn't really too thin, he just had a slender build. And now he saw that Sherlock was watching him looking him over out of the corner of his eye, the hint of a smirk on his face, and John really needed to just keep his eyes forward.
Parade rest, Watson.
And time for a distraction before things became really quite awkward. John looked down at the worker in front of him, who was now peeling off John's socks.
"Maybe Donovan was only decontaminating Anderson," John said, glancing in Sherlock's general direction, but not - not - looking any higher than his feet. "You know, when you deduced her..." John pointed at his own knees.
Sherlock grinned, then chuckled. "God, I hope so. Makes for a much more pleasant image."
John laughed in return, maybe more forcefully than was appropriate, but he needed to let the tension out somehow.
And now came the fun part.
Once their clothes were bagged and tagged and they'd been subjected once more to the indecency of the clicking Geiger counter probe, two of the workers left, and the other two unhooked the hoses from the wall. Sherlock and John were instructed to close their eyes and keep their mouths shut, and then came the sound of water on tiles.
As the (surprisingly warm and pleasant) stream beat down on him, sluicing off any potential poison, John thought again about Sherlock's apparent lack of discomfiture at being naked around him. Maybe Sherlock wasn't even interested in a sexual relationship, John considered. Maybe he was just reacting to the signals that John was sending out, engaging in mirroring as he tried to figure out what was expected of him. John was aware that his behaviour had shifted since Sherlock's return, and Sherlock, hypersensitive as he was, would definitely have picked up on that. Maybe he had always seemed like a nonsexual being because he was, in fact, asexual. He clearly wanted John around, wanted to live with him; but he probably just wanted things to go back to the way they were before he left (impossible, but that didn't mean he couldn't want it).
Or maybe it wasn't impossible. Maybe if John went back to acting the way he had before - no more pining looks, no more double entendres, no more projecting his own emotions onto Sherlock - then things would actually be the way they were before.
Except John would continue to be aware of his feelings of strong affection for his flatmate, feelings that would never be returned in kind. But if he never acted inappropriately, never gave Sherlock any reason to be ill at ease - it could work. It would work. John was - if not miserable, then at least discontent - with the way things were now. He missed Sherlock when he wasn't with him, and got a little thrill every time they were together, even when they were being locked in ovens or sprayed with radioactive waste. It wasn't all about the thrills, either. It was about belonging, and being understood. He wasn't complete without Sherlock, and he suspected that Sherlock felt much the same.
As the shower ended and they were checked over once more for residual radioactivity, John let himself look over at Sherlock. The water was running in rivulets down his shoulders and chest, accentuating his lean lines. He did have a lovely body, and John allowed himself the admission, because he knew now that he wasn't going to act on it or do anything to jeopardise their friendship. But he could admire Sherlock, and appreciate all the good things about him, of which there were more than most people realised.
Sherlock's hair was plastered to his head, which made his face look even longer and his features more prominent than they actually were. He opened his eyes, blinking the water out of them, and met John's gaze.
John grinned and wiped a hand over his face to get rid of the water before he spoke.
"Do you still have a room free?" he asked. "It's just that if we're both going to be glowing in the dark, it's probably best to keep the zone of contamination limited."
"Yes, I know how important public safety is to you." Sherlock appeared amused.
"Public safety is... No, you know what? Screw public safety. You and me together, we're a goddamn hazard to public safety, is what we are. If I move back in with you, the city of London's threat level's going to bottom out at 'substantial'." John was smiling so wide his face was going to hurt, but he couldn't help it. The prospect was delightful.
Sherlock grinned giddily as he started to towel off with the thin, white flannels they were given. "The only drawback is, I'm afraid Mycroft will be rather pleased."
"I think causing a radioactive spill might balance things out all round. Especially if we say he's the one who provided your badge."
"Oh, I made a slight alteration so that it actually is his name on the badge," Sherlock said smugly. "Call me 'Mycroft'," he added, sotto voce.
John laughed. "Oh God, he's going to fry us alive."
"Serves him right for roping me into this." Sherlock put on his best self-righteous face.
John took one of the fresh blue coveralls they were being provided, as their clothes would have to be washed separately. As he did, he smirked to himself. John wasn't entirely stupid, and Sherlock had been fairly transparent about his reasons for taking the case. John wouldn't say anything about it, though.
He was going to be very good about not saying anything.
======
Go to Part Three - The Resiniferatoxin
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-07-08 08:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-09 07:37 am (UTC)I really hope he isn't
And bravo they will live together again!
(In decontamination thou the clothes aren't returned, they are disposed of because they keep the radiation)
no subject
Date: 2012-07-09 07:55 am (UTC)And hopefully we will find out whether it is all in John's head or not pretty soon!
Thank you for the comment. :)
no subject
Date: 2012-07-09 06:27 pm (UTC)To quote our beloved Dr. Watson, 'Fantastic!'
Date: 2012-10-02 02:06 am (UTC)The abundance of emotional tugs and humor is in a very satisfying balance here, and "Do you still have a room free?".. onward had me grinning like a loon.
Re: To quote our beloved Dr. Watson, 'Fantastic!'
Date: 2012-10-02 06:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-15 12:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-16 07:22 am (UTC)