"You had to pick the worst night in the world to take a case like this," John grumbled apprehensively. Watching the snow from the window at home was one thing, but being out driving in it was quite another. He winced as he felt the tires rasp beneath them.
"I don't control the weather. By all means, put in my share of the rent this month as well if you object to how I earn my keep. I don't recall begging you to join me, either," Sherlock answered smoothly, gripping the steering wheel tightly and cringing a bit himself. They were crawling along at about a third of the speed limit by now, the snow falling so thickly they could barely see past the front of the car.
"Lestrade's going to have your guts for garters if you get in an accident, Sherlock. How you got him to lend you his car when...do you even have a license?!"
"He never asked."
"Oh, hell," John sighed, tightening his seat belt. "How can you see anything anymore?! I can't make out the road! How do you even know which side you're on?"
"I can't, and I don't. Now shut up; you're distracting me." Holmes' tone finally betrayed his nerves, breaking oddly and belying his cool, calm demeanor.
"Careful, careful..." Watson whimpered disobediently. "Don't adjust the-"
"I said shut up!"
They suddenly saw that the car they'd been following for the last half hour was much closer than it had been. Sherlock hit the brake and immediately lost control. They went into a spin, shrieking and swearing to beat the band. Once, twice, three times around. They stopped in the middle of the road, facing the wrong way. Both of them stared straight ahead, trembling.
"You scream like a girl," Sherlock observed, trying to master his shaky voice.
"So...so do you. For a minute I thought we had a Yorkie in the back seat, actually."
They laughed nervously, then they got going again. It took several tries and about five minutes just to get the car facing the right way, but they were soon off again.
"That wasn't so bad," Watson lied with a falsely cheerful grin. "Got the blood pumping, though."
"Yes. Nothing to it. We're nearly through the worst of it. We..we'll be perfectly fine."
Watson gave a wild laugh at this, dragging it down to a streak of manic giggles. "Oh, Sherlock. You may be brilliant, but you're a terrible liar."
"So are you."
They hadn't been back on their way for ten minutes before they went into another spin. And another...Soon, both of them began doubting that this miserable night would ever end, that they'd be stuck sliding in the snow and ice forever and they'd never reach their destination.
Therefore, it was almost a relief when their journey was finally cut short.
This time, as they spun, Sherlock tore his hands from the wheel, clutched at John's hands while they cursed and beseeched and screamed. With a scrape and a thwump! they found themselves at an immovable standstill.
They looked out the car windows, saw long tufts of grass, discarded license plates, and an ominous-looking dead deer.
For some reason, this made them break out into hysterical laughter again. Slapping each other's shoulders, ruffling each other's hair, peering out to see how far they'd fallen. "Good news, John. We've stopped." Holmes shut off the ignition and threw his head back, still reeling from their dive.
"Oh, thank god. You didn't kill us after all."
"Of course I didn't kill us," the detective groused.
"Nearly."
Sherlock stopped pouting long enough to ask, "You're not hurt, are you?"
"No, fine. You?"
"Never better." He chuckled again, looking back up at the road where he saw the dim glow of passing headlights of more fortunate motorists than themselves. "You know...I think I can safely say that we had a pretty close shave of it there."
"Oh, you think?"
"Don't panic, John. All right? I'm going to call a tow truck and a cab, and we'll be back home before you know it."
Watson wasn't convinced. "Are you suggesting that a tow truck and a cab are going to drive all the way out here in this?!"
The thought obviously hadn't crossed his mind. He appeared to add this new bit of information to his computations and changed gears. He tapped a few buttons on his phone, rolling his eyes in annoyance with a haughty huff. "Evening, Lestrade, it's me. Well, bad news, we're experiencing a slight setback..."
"Slight setback? Dammit, Sherlock, get him to send help!"
Holmes made a shushing face at him and waved his remark aside. Watson lunged at the phone, wrested it from his friend's grasp and called into it, "Use the phone's signal to track us. I have no idea where we are. Send somebody, quickly!" Then he hung up and thrust it back at Sherlock who pocketed it with a cool expression. Then, the car moved slightly, as though it were top-heavy. The men clasped hands with each other, looking startled.
"Look, I think we'd better get in the back seat. Keep us from tipping over," John suggested.
After a swift computation of the car's distribution of weight, Sherlock came to the same conclusion. "Good thinking. You go first."
"I'm not going first! You go; you're lighter."
"I'm also taller. Just go. I'm right behind you."
The car scooted another inch and John hopped over into the back seat, quickly followed by Sherlock. They sat uncomfortably, wincing at the cold seats. "Perhaps we should have left the car running, to keep the heat on?"
"And breathe carbon monoxide? Be my guest. None for me, thanks," Sherlock drawled testily.
"Be quicker than freezing to death," John remarked with a shrug, pulling his coat around himself more tightly.
Sherlock stared at him intently for a minute, then scooted closer to him, pulling their bodies together. It didn't escape his notice that his friend immediately blushed with a soft gasp and then cuddled in without question. Both men were still quite shaken from their wild ride, and so held tight to each other without a second's embarrassment. "Shhh," he hushed soothingly. "I'll keep you warm."
"Always wanted..." Watson confessed softly. "So good, so good."
The normally cold and calculating man smiled at this, brushing his gloved fingers against Watson's face. He leaned in a bit more and kissed his forehead, nuzzling him softly as though they'd always been this familiar. It certainly didn't feel strange. "You know, they call me a freak; they think I don't have feelings, that I'm a living machine."
"Don't know where they get that idea," Watson mumbled with a touch of sarcasm.
Another kiss, more soft shushing. "...but I think you knew from the beginning. You could see what those idiots I'd known for years before I met you, you could see what they never could. I may not be like them, but I'm still human. It's because I didn't want them to see, and I think I wanted you to. I knew I liked you the minute we met. You...were just who I needed."
John cuddles into his friend's arms, "You were just who I needed, too." Then he paused. "If either of us says 'You complete me', the other shoots to kill, right?"
"Of course."
"Deal." And they shook hands on it. They repositioned themselves some more, arranging their coats around them both to serve as blankets, while they lay cozily in each other's arms. They found that they were exhausted from the long drive and the stress, and they quietly dozed off together.
They were roused by a sound that seemed to come from far away. Sirens... Holmes vaguely awoke, cataloging two police cars. One of them had a rusty door handle on the passenger side.
Detective Inspector Lestrade cried out at the sight of his car, wading knee-deep in snow to get down to it. The front seats were empty, making him go into a moment of panic. "Where are they?!" He looked over and saw Sergeant Sally Donovan on the other side of the car with a shocked look on her face. He heard the click of a camera taking a picture.
"Here, sir!"
"Are they alive?!"
"They...look alive, sir."
Then he saw it, too: Sherlock Holmes with his head resting on John Watson's shoulder, their arms tight around each other beneath their coats. He sighed, which may have masked an "aww", before muttering. "When I get my hands on those two..."
John was jerked dully into consciousness again, finding himself being carried by someone, carried out into the cold and snow again. He shivered, mumbling incoherently. The next thing he knew, he was guided into a thankfully warm police car. He heard vaguely the sound of an engine running, heard the sounds of another person in the seat next to him. "Sherlock?" he asked, rubbing his eyes.
"It's me, it's Greg," Lestrade answered, nudging the heat up a bit more for the sake of his guest.
Those words went straight to his brain and triggered the panic button. "Sherlock?! Where is he?! What have you done with him? I can't leave him! Where? Help him, please help him! Is he all right? Oh, god, was he dead?! Where is he?"
Lestrade recoiled at the normally stable one of the pair having a fit. "Hey, calm down, he's fine. Sally's got him in the next car. We're just waiting for the ambulance to get here to get you two checked out."
This visibly calmed him. He sank back into his seat, hugging his coat around himself. "We made it. Thank goodness that's over. Never going out in this weather again. Sorry about your car, Inspector. You're insured, right?"
In the car just in front of them, a very groggy Sherlock Holmes was just realizing there had been a change. He felt next to him, where John had been, and grew more alert and aware by the second. "John? Where's John?!" He looked to his right and saw Sally sitting in the driver's seat. She regarded him with a pert smirk of her usual dislike. "Tell me where he his! What happened? What are you doing here? Get John! Somebody, we can't just leave him!"
"Cool it, freak. Your buddy's okay. Lestrade's got him, see?"
He turned around in his seat in time to see his friend coming down from his own moment of panic. The two saw each other and waved, communicating through gestures that they're both all right. Signs of relief.
"He's alive. He's all right," Sherlock breathed, calming down again.
Sally still stared at him, like she was trying to figure him out. Then, she showed him the picture she'd snapped. "You guys look cute together, for a couple of kooks."
Sherlock looked at it hungrily, actually smiling. "Think you could send me that?" The two of them looked so peaceful and cozy. He would love to have a souvenir of the first time he'd held him.
"You're not afraid of me showing it to people?"
"No, should I be? Quite a flattering picture, actually."
Holmes' look of total unconcern baffled Sergeant Donovan, who'd hoped she'd just gotten a hold of some good blackmail material. Disappointed by this, she acquiesced to send him the picture.
Sherlock's phone dinged as it received the picture message. A few taps and he sent it along to John as well. He turned around and saw him smile at it and show it to Lestrade, who looked from Watson to the car in front of them, clearly unable to see why Watson looked so positively giddy.
He grinned back over at Sally in his usual infuriating way. "So, old friend, I bet you begged and pleaded to be part of my rescue team. You probably pinned all of your hopes on getting to be the one who found me. Oh, you know how much I enjoy these little chats of ours, Sally, but I'm afraid there can never be anything between us." He waved the picture of him and Watson cuddled up together. "Spoken for. Such a pity for you. I hear Anderson's wife is going to be out of town during the week of the twelfth, so there's always that. Poor substitute, I realize, but you're used to taking what you can get."
She snarled at him, but he just kept grinning like it was his birthday. "Cute, funny."
"John seems to think so." He actually laughed out loud, feeling thoroughly above such insects as the woman in the next seat. Not even her usual cutting words and cold stares could get him down; he was in love!
Soon, there was a wail of another siren, and an ambulance pulled up to the scene. Sherlock and Watson allowed themselves to be escorted in. They took a seat together on a gurney while the medics wrapped them in blankets and checked them over for signs of injury, frostbite, and hypothermia. Just before the doors were slammed shut, they resumed the position they'd been in while in the back seat of Lestrade's car. As they sat cocooned together, their lips met, softly and sweetly. The medics tried not to stare, but there was little else to look at and their eyes kept getting drawn to the cozy couple they'd just picked up. Sherlock glanced up for just a second and gave them a candid smirk.
"Oh, go ahead and watch."