A/N: This is set a month after "Personal Information" and deals heavily with the events in that story, so if you haven't read that yet, you should do so. Silverwolf04 and mustangwoman, this one's for you. You know why... As always: I do not own, nor do I profit from. Enjoy!


Sherlock was concentrating.

This was difficult.

Normally it was not difficult, but normally, he did not need to concentrate when John had his shirt off. At least, he did not have concentrate on things other than immediate concerns when he managed to get John half-naked. It was a blessing, he supposed, that this had never been required on a case, but he was also hard pressed to come up with a reason why John would have to strip down for a case. Considering this would be immensely entertaining, except that he had to concentrate.

John was drowsing, somewhere between being awake and half-asleep, his head lolled forward, but every so often, he'd make an "mmph" sound, either in protest or approval, or a bit of both. Sherlock found this distracting as well and used his considerable control over his mind to remain focused, because if he slipped up, John would retaliate somehow.

Not that Sherlock thought John would ever actually hurt him, because he could also rein himself in very quickly, but he'd defend himself against pain first, without thinking about it. That was simply instinct. Especially when dealing with an old wound that was already aching.

The weather was changing, and rain was moving in.

This always made John's shoulder hurt, and the unseasonal nature of the rain was making it somewhat worse, because he wasn't used to it in the summer. It was cooler than normal for July, but not terribly so, warm enough still that the flat was a pleasant temperature and John could relax properly even without a shirt on (Sherlock could think of a number of ways to get John to relax without anything on, but John was being stubborn), and it cooled down enough at night to sleep well, without resorting to the air conditioning unit John had made them buy two years ago. Sherlock didn't like the forced cold air – it felt false and smelled odd, even though it did make the temperature in the flat much more tolerable during the worst of the summer heat waves.

"Mmm…" John said, or sighed, as Sherlock carefully worked his long fingers around the old scar, massaging into aching muscles. John had taken some ibuprofen, but it didn't help much when the weather changed quickly. Sherlock kept a sharp ear open for the first sign of the rain, but it was still coming, not quite arrived yet. He hoped John would be able to sleep that night, since the doctor seemed to be invested in a regular sleep schedule. Sherlock could think of an infinite number of things more interesting than sleeping – who wanted to fritter their life away in semi-consciousness? He understood the value when he needed to, but he didn't understand people who really enjoyed it. Like John.

Sherlock didn't bring up the possibility of taking something stronger for the pain. After Edinburgh, he was set on not mentioning the word "morphine" again if he could avoid it. In fact, he was fairly set on not mentioning their last trip to Edinburgh at all, because he'd made a right idiot of himself in the vaults, and he didn't want to contemplate how Mycroft was or what he was doing or where he was doing whatever it was he was doing. Sherlock had no interest in speculation, nor did he have much interest in his brother and his brother's son.

He hadn't seen his brother since the previous month, and had only heard from him once, briefly, via text message, alerting Sherlock that David was returned safely and more or less unharmed. Sherlock wasn't entirely certain he cared, although John seemed to want to know. Sherlock had no desire to get further implicated in his brother's life and actions, and wanted to be well out of it if consequences came down from whoever Mycroft's superiors were. It wasn't likely to be pretty.

John hissed, dragging Sherlock back to the present.

"Sorry," Sherlock said quickly, automatically. John was one of the only people he apologized to, and the only one to whom he ever meant it on a regular basis. Especially when it involved accidentally aggravating the old injury.

He refocused his concentrating, shifting slightly on the couch to prevent his legs from falling asleep. John sighed again and tilted his head more to the right. Growing bored, Sherlock leaned forward gently and kissed John's shoulder once, lightly, then again, moving one hand away so he could trail his lips up toward John's neck. The doctor made a contented noise, but then said:

"No, you don't. You're not getting out of this that easily."

Sherlock growled against John's skin, hoping to get the reaction he was looking for, but John held firm.

"Shoulder still hurts," John said pointedly.

With a put-upon sigh, Sherlock leaned back and resumed massaging, taking care not to press too deeply despite his desire to get John to tell him to stop and continue with something else instead. It probably wouldn't work anyway, and John might call the whole thing off just to annoy him.

Sherlock kept working, carefully, then leaned in again after five minutes, placing a kiss just below John's ear. The doctor raised his head and twisted it slightly, his brown eyes amused.

"Give it up, Holmes," he said. "You still have work to do."

"Blast," Sherlock protested, blowing a sigh into John's ear.

He was right.

The sudden light lit up the edges of the windows, flashing across the flat, which had, up until that moment, been lit only by a single lamp, to keep the atmosphere dim and relaxed. John instinctively shielded his eyes by dropping his head and holding his crossed arms in front of his face; Sherlock had less training in this regard and pulled back, turning his face away from the window, toward the bedroom, closing his eyes hard.

The sound wave hit him like a hammer, making him wince. John was off the couch in an instant, then crouching and ducking his head back down when another blast lit up the room, slamming them with the sound. Sherlock stood hurriedly after the second explosion. John was already pulling his shirt back on, going for his shoes, acting completely on trained instinct. Sherlock followed his lead, knowing John had much more experience and expertise in this. He waited for another blast, but none seemed forthcoming, and John threw the door open, clattering down the steps.

"Stay inside!" the doctor yelled at Mrs. Hudson, holding up a warding hand at her as she appeared in her doorway. "Call 999!"

She glanced between the two of them for a moment, but was ignored as John charged out the main door, Sherlock half a step behind him. The doctor took only half a moment to assess the situation and turned to run north, up the street. Sherlock kept up with him easily, his longer legs making up for John's trained and urgent speed.

It was just over a block, and they could see the glow of the blaze from their flat, lighting up the darkness like an old coastal beacon. In the distance, Sherlock caught the sound of sirens on the breeze, still far off but closing. More immediate noises filled the air: car alarms set off by the shock wave, people screaming. There was already a flow of people running past them in the opposite direction, almost matched by the people running with them, toward the flames and the source of the blast.

It appeared to be two separate things: a car which was now blazing, burning brightly, and a multi-storey flat, from which he could see flames licking at open windows. Glass was shattered on the concrete and smoke choked the air, along with the screams and the distant but growing sounds of sirens. John was plunging past the crowd that was gathering, keeping itself away from the car, and Sherlock went after him without question. Nothing was going to stop John from doing what he was trained to do, and Sherlock was damned if he was going to let his husband go in there alone. The crowds were confusing, bodies everywhere in the smoke and darkness, lit up by flames, shifting and getting in the way. Some people were trying to pull back from the scene, while residents from the flats beside the one on fire were fleeing their homes, carrying odd assortments of possessions, or children, or pets, or attempting to carry all of these things. Some people were resisting having to leave, insisting that they needed to go back for some precious thing or another, as if their lives were not the most precious thing they could take out of the danger.

There were people rushing into the chaos, though, trying to get a handle on the situation, trying to help somehow. The darkness and the smoke were making it difficult to put together any patterns, to determine who was helping and who was hindering, who was attempting to rescue, and who was in need of rescue. He glanced up; he could see faces in the windows of the burning building, above the flames. And in the windows of the adjacent buildings, some people who were just watching, as if the shock of the incident was too much to react against.

"Get out! Bloody well get out!" he heard someone yell and realized it was John. The sound was lost over the crackle of flames and the human chaos around them.

There were people coming out of the affected building suddenly, and Sherlock noted that, at ground level, the fire seemed to be concentrated in the back of the building, leaving the front entrance relatively safe, although it would not be so for long. People were yelling at cross-purposes, tugging others away from the burning building. Sherlock followed John toward the blaze, disliking the situation but unwilling at all to let John out of his sight. John would be all heroic because that was what his training entailed, and he was a doctor, but Sherlock wasn't going to lose him to any kind of stupidity. And he himself would be much better at picking up on details like when a wall was about to collapse or a window about to blow out.

The fire was already spreading.

And it began to rain.

"You're bloody kidding, right?" Sherlock growled to himself, to the weather, knowing the flames in the flat and from the burning car were too hot to be put out by a summer storm, although it may help temper things long enough for the fire department to arrive.

He saw a woman rounding up two frightened children, towing them away as they tried to stumble toward the car, then being joined by a man peeling away from the crowd who herded them toward safety, or as much a safety as there was in the unnaturally bright night. The smoke made him cough and grimace, but he ignored that as he caught up with John, who had crouched down to help a fallen man to his feet, wrapping one of the man's arms around his own shoulders.

Must hurt, Sherlock noted absently, although John had probably forgotten about the aching pain. He wrapped the man's other arm around his own shoulders, nodding once at John, and they walked him slowly in step away from the building. There was a gash on the side of his head, pouring blood. Head wound, which meant a lot of blood but not necessarily a deep injury, although a concussion was likely. Given the man's glassy eyes and unbalanced gait, this seemed to be the case. He was concentrating hard, but still stumbling. Clear indications that his head was more than a little addled.

A gust of wind caught the flames and they roared for a moment. John ducked, dragging Sherlock and the man between them down toward the pavement momentarily, then hustled them away. He entrusted the injured man to someone and turned back, heading into the smoke and the fray again, Sherlock right behind him. Another figure appeared in the haze, moving past them, stunned, and Sherlock pointed her in the right direction and gave her a small shove to keep her going.

He almost tripped over someone who was on the ground next to an unmoving body, getting ready to shoulder the young man to get him out of danger. Sherlock cursed and so did the rescuer, looking up. His face was wrapped in a scarf against the smoke – Sherlock barely had a moment to wonder why he'd had a scarf on him in the July weather.

Grey eyes met green through the smoke and fire-tinged darkness, and recognition flashed in both sets of eyes. Sherlock didn't let himself stop, didn't let himself draw attention to it or think about it, because John was still moving, and Sam was shouldering the young man he'd been crouching next to, getting him out of the way. Sherlock kept his attention in front of him, following John up the front steps to herd some people fleeing the burning building. The fire was spreading now, undaunted by the rain, but the sirens were almost on them.

He looked up when they got the small, sobbing crowd away from the building, seeing Sam moving through the haze again, clearing a spot for the unconscious man he'd been carrying. He looked up and met Sherlock's eyes again, giving the smallest of nods, then glanced away, in the direction of the rapidly approaching sirens. He gave an order to someone standing over him to watch the young man and started to head back, as if to resume his rescue attempts.

On the way by, he reached out, pressing something into Sherlock's palm. The consulting detective pocketed the mobile without even looking at it. Sam vanished as the police arrived, pulling off his scarf, turning into another Londoner watching the scene, or trying to get away from it. Sherlock understood; Sam wouldn't go unnoticed by the London police if any of them happened to have worked with him in Charing Cross or at Scotland Yard. Given the size of the emergency, Sherlock suspected he could easily have run into one person he knew, and, although he did not look quite the same, a good police officer would recognize him.

Sherlock put all of this out of his mind within a second as the first of the emergency vehicles began to arrive. He kept up with John, who attached himself to a paramedic's unit and began treating some of the injured who were brought over to them. Sherlock was by no means a doctor, but could follow directions and think under pressure, so he listened to John, obeying the doctor's barked commands when needed and staying out of the way when not. He tried to gauge the situation, determine what had happened, but there were too many people, too many police officers, paramedics, and fire fighters, all adding to the confusion caused by the flames and the smoke.

It was hours before the fire was controlled and out, spreading to a neighbouring building before it could be contained. It was hours more until the wounded were all shipped to hospitals and the police rounded up all those involved in any rescue efforts to talk to them. Sherlock actually knew some of the officers, who kindly spoke to him and John early on. He had worked with these two once or twice, and they had been appropriately impressed by his deductive abilities. John gave them their numbers in case they needed to answer further questions and Sherlock suspected strongly they would be hearing from Lestrade in short order. John declined any medical treatment for either of them, pointing out he was a doctor.

When they finally seemed to be left alone, standing in a still large crowd of people in the fading night, John looked up at Sherlock, as if mildly surprised to find him there. Then he rubbed his arms and shivered once. It was still raining, not hard, but almost mistily, so that there was no escape from it, and cold wound into the bones, defiant against any clothing or the lingering heat from the building and vehicle fires.

"Let's go home," John said, nodding down the street. They made their way through the crowds, mostly people still gawking now, but irate cabbies trying to get through and extraneous police and fire fighters milling around, trying to figure out if they should still be there or should be leaving the scene. John and Sherlock were largely ignored, until they came back into the flat to find Mrs. Hudson waiting for them. John filled her in as best he could, and Sherlock dispensed of her fussing, herding John up the stairs and back into their flat.

They stripped down in the bathroom without preamble and climbed into the shower, the water running grey with soot and smoke from their hair and skin. When clean, Sherlock noticed his own skin was redder. John's was too.

"From the heat," John said. "Not burns, though."

They washed and got out, leaving their smoky clothing in a heap on the bathroom floor. In their bedroom, John shuffled into pyjamas and crawled into bed. Sherlock changed as well, getting in beside his husband. He didn't feel particularly tired, more wound up from the experience, but John was asleep almost as soon as his head touched his pillow. Sherlock looked at the clock – he'd have to call John out from work later in the morning. There was no way he was letting John be an idiot and go in after that, with what would amount to little sleep after a night of smoke inhalation and emergency medicine.

He thought he wouldn't sleep, until fatigue hit him suddenly and he closed his eyes, wrapping himself snugly against John, who murmured and responded with his own embrace, nuzzling his face against Sherlock's neck and chest, so that a flash of desire coursed through Sherlock. He was too tired to do anything about it, however, and he knew John was not about to wake up.

It was in the moment before he went to sleep, when he was unable to wrench himself back to consciousness, that he remembered the phone Sam had given him, still in the pocket of his trousers on the bathroom floor. Sherlock grunted in displeasure, then surrendered to sleep, having no other option. It would have to wait.