Here goes my first Sherlock fic...!
Speaking Your Language
John sighed for the umpteenth time. They had been driving like this for three hours, their quarry long since vanished into the distance in a superior, faster, more modern car, and even Sherlock was starting to show the strain as his bruised and dirtied fingers clutched at the steering wheel, a trickle of sweat stinging the cut on his cheek and mingling with the blood as it swirled down his pale skin.
It was swelteringly hot, the midday sun beating down on the dusty, reddened earth broken only here and there by the thin patches of dark green, skinny plants determined to eke out a form of life in this arid backwater. John had long since abandoned his woolly jumper, discarding it amongst the other junk in the backseat and even Sherlock had undone the button on his suit jacket. They had both wound down their windows as far as possible, the air-con in this heap of metal long dead.
Why Constantinou couldn't have arranged to meet his accomplices in a nice café next to a bright and bustling beach with a cooling breeze, instead of in the middle of a ramshackle, abandoned shepherd's shack in the middle of rural Greece, with no sign of life for miles, John did not know but he resented it bitterly. He was desperately thirsty, exhausted, he was pretty sure he'd broken a rib and to top it all off, all three men had managed to get away.
With a clunk and a groan, the car suddenly halted in the middle of the dusty road.
John blinked. He looked around at Sherlock with wide eyes; Sherlock made no move, just continued to grip the steering wheel with white knuckles and stared at the long, straight road ahead of them.
"Sherlock," John started. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Sherlock, the car – the damn car's stopped."
"Well deduced, John," Sherlock merely replied in a low voice, still not moving.
"Great, this is just great, this is – what the hell are we going to do now, Sherlock?!" John hissed through his teeth.
Sherlock took a deep breath and slowly moved to unbuckle his seatbelt.
"I suggest we get out of the car – quickly, John!" he barked.
Slipping smoothly from the car, Sherlock strode promptly away, a tight grip on John's arm ensuring the other man was with him and also moving quickly. When he deemed they'd reached a suitable distance, he spun around and surveyed the car, and not a moment too soon. Smoke was forcing its way out of the bonnet and with a loud smash, the glass in all the windows shattered and tinkled to the ground as flames burst up, disintegrating fabric, melting plastic and twisting metal.
John moaned softly. "My jumper was in there!"
Sherlock rolled his eyes and turned around, starting to stride purposefully down the empty road.
"Come on, John!" he called.
John stared blankly after him for a moment, then hurried to catch up. The air was even hotter out here without the breeze caused by the motion of the car to cool his sticky skin.
"Where are we going? There's nothing up this way, Sherlock, the road just goes nowhere, it's just dust and rocks!"
"Well, turn back if you like, John, but there was nothing behind us for the last three hours, so I'm going to stick with this direction, I think."
John peered ahead of them, squinting against the sun, seeing nothing but blue sky, red earth and the air shimmering over the broken tarmac road. He sighed, licked his parched lips with his dry tongue and picked his way tiredly after Sherlock.
The afternoon was waning, although the temperature had barely dropped, when the olive-skinned, middle-aged man plopped back down in his chair, scratching at his chest. The little electric fan propped up next to the till on the counter did little to reduce the dry heat in his small shop, but it was better than nothing and he was grateful for it. He popped open the fresh bottle of water he'd just taken from the fridge in the back room and took a couple of gulps, feeling a little spill over his chapped lips and trickle over his stubbly chin. Heaving a sigh, he wiped at the moisture gathering on the bald crown of his head, before shoving a thick-fingered hand down the front of his holey vest and withdrawing a half-empty pack of cigarettes.
He had just lit up when he heard the unusual sound of the door opening. Glancing up, his jaw dropped at the sight of two battered and unkempt men hobbling towards him. The cigarette fell from his lips and tumbled to the floor, forgotten.
Sherlock frowned and moved around to the back of the counter, grimacing slightly in discomfort as he bent down to pick up the cigarette.
"How silly to waste it," he murmured and, ignoring the state of the shop floor, he popped it between his own lips and took a long drag.
"Sherlock!" John admonished, frowning.
"What, John? After all we've just been through, you're going to deny me this tiny relief?" Sherlock snorted in reply.
John pinched his lips but didn't pursue the matter. Instead he turned to the Greek man sitting behind the counter and tried to find the energy to paste a friendly smile onto his weather-beaten face.
"Er, hi," he said. "Um… our car broke down, quite a way away actually, I don't suppose you know the way to the nearest town and if there's a bus or taxi that would take us there?"
The shopkeeper only stared at him, before turning to peer back at Sherlock in what seemed to be a mixture of fear and disbelief at his bleeding, dishevelled state.
After a minute, John tried again.
"Er, sorry – is there a town near here? A town? Bus? Car we could use?"
The man looked back at him and shrugged.
"You don't know?" John frowned.
"English, John, he doesn't speak English!" Sherlock rolled his eyes at John's stupidity as he stubbed out the cigarette on the counter and moved to stand next to John in front of the shopkeeper. "Français? he asked. The man shook his head. "Deutsch?" The shopkeeper merely shrugged. "Español? Italiano? Türkçe?" The man frowned and tossed his head, tutting loudly. "Svenska? Suomi? Íslenska? Kiswahili?"
The man backed away, shaking his head furiously as Sherlock kept listing languages at him, until he reached the doorway into the back room. He turned his head and called out, though kept his eyes on Sherlock, and rummaged around on a shelf as if searching for something.
"…Nihongo?" Sherlock continued, determined to find some way to communicate with this man that he and John were in desperate need of food, water, rest and first aid.
"Sherlock, Sherlock, stop," John rested a weary hand on his friend's arm. "God, for once you're bloody useless! How many languages do you speak? And yet the one we actually need, bloody Greek, and you don't speak a word!" His shoulders started to shake as he began to chuckle, the sounds spilling from his mouth growing increasingly higher and louder.
Sherlock frowned. "John, stop that! And for your information, I can speak Greek, just not the modern version! And we're here for help, not to discuss the finer points of Homeric epic or Sophoclean tragedy!"
John burst out laughing at that, only finally managing to control himself when the shopkeeper returned, a younger, taller and burlier version of himself with a darker mop of unruly black curls following behind. The son held a grubby, worn book in his hands which he thrust at John and Sherlock, scanning them suspiciously, his eyes lingering on the dust and bruises on their skin, the tears in their clothing and the deep cut on Sherlock's face. They were obviously lost and filthy from the road, but John could tell that the young man had probably been in a few fights himself and recognised the telltale signs on them.
"Ellinika," the old man said, nodding at the book that had been shoved into John's hands. John looked at it; it was an English/Greek dictionary. Sighing at the effort this whole debacle was taking when all he wanted to do was drink an ocean's worth of water and then curl up in a warm, clean bed, he flipped the book open and began to search for words to explain their predicament. Then he stopped.
"Sherlock, I can't bloody read these letters," he said.
"Don't you know the Greek alphabet, John?" Sherlock asked, surprised.
"What, do you? Since it's the one language you apparently don't know!" John retorted.
"I still know the alphabet, John – how did you get anywhere with science and maths, in fact, how did become a doctor without knowing some of the Greek alphabet?" Sherlock replied incredulously.
John glared at him and thrust the book at him. "You do the talking," he barked.
"Fine." Sherlock took the book and flipped through the pages. "Car, car," he mumbled as he searched. "Ah, erm… ato… no, auto…kinee… ah! Aftokinito! Um…is… oh, eemeh, no, eeneh…aftokinito eeneh…broken down. Erm…"
John half-frowned, half-smirked at the difficulties Sherlock was having. The old man and son also seemed to find his struggle amusing, though the son still bore a wary expression on his face.
"Argh!" Sherlock flung his hands up in the air, fed up of trying to translate into a language he didn't know. "Our," he pointed at himself and John, "car," he mimed turning a steering wheel, "has broken down. Broken down! We need help! Help!"
"Sherlock, if they didn't understand me when I spoke English, they're not going to understand you, now, are they?" John reminded him gently.
"Our – aftokinito eeneh – broken down! Caput! Dead!" Sherlock roared, dragging a bloodied and dirtied finger across his neck in the universal gesture of slashing a throat.
The faces of the two Greek men in front of him drained of colour and the old shopkeeper started stuttering in horror as his son bared his teeth and tensed his suddenly thick, muscular arms.
"Um, Sherlock," John started, his eyes wide in panic, "I don't know what you think you just said to them, but I think we should run!"
"Yes… I concur," Sherlock agreed, spinning on his heel and darting for the door a little too late as a large, heavy body careened into his back and pinned him to the floor.
"Really, Sherlock, it's bad enough what you get up to at home, but do you have to cause havoc with our international relations as well? I really haven't got time to spare for pacifying the Greek ambassador and you know my stomach can't take that awful liquor they like to drink."
"Mycroft, I assure you, it was simply a misunderstanding."
"Hmm. Well, I hope so, Sherlock, I've rather had enough of cleaning up your messes for the time being. So you weren't threatening to kill those men and there really were no dead bodies in your car?"
"Of course not!"
"Well, you never know! You cleaned up the evidence rather neatly at any rate, though a car fire is hardly an original solution, Sherlock; I had thought you were more imaginative than that."
"Mycroft, I just told you there were no bodies in the car! And the fire was incidental. So now that that's sorted, I think we're done here, why don't you go and bugger off!"
A.N. Hope you enjoyed that! I'm sorry for any stereotyping, but as I'm half Greek myself, I hope I can get away with it. I'm also not used to transliterating Greek into the English alphabet, so hope that it came across ok (and what Sherlock was trying to say was understandable).
Please review and let me know what you think, I'm always grateful for constructive criticism, particularly as it's been ages since I wrote anything and I've never written Sherlock before! Sorry if it's OC, I will try to improve.