Title: Something Like Hydrophobia and Acrophobia at the Same Time
Pairing/Characters: Sherlock/John in either a reeeeeally close friendship, or pre-slash. Take your pick.
Rating: PG-13, let's say.
Word count: A little under 3700.
Summary: In which Sherlock and John have a case near Niagara Falls, and John has a deeply seated fear of waterfalls. Hilarity does not quite ensue.
Warnings: Set after "The Great Game," so there are bound to be spoilers. Also, there's a scene describing a dead body with really bad wounds, so watch out. Lastly, this is un-Beta'd and un-Brit-Picked. So you must be forgiving if it's horrible.
Disclaimer: If I owned Sherlock and John, I'd be happy with just that and wouldn't feel the need to invent phobias for them and then immediately send them to countries in which their phobias become manifest. So obviously I don't, and I'm making no monies.

John, Sherlock knew, was not a man of many fears. Granted, his mild post-traumatic-stress-disorder had lent him the odd nightmare—first solely about Afghanistan and later about Afghanistan and darkened pools. And then of course there were those pesky trust issues. They didn't seem to apply to Sherlock, whom John trusted and even, well, cared for in a remarkably small amount of time—but the point was they were real. Sherlock could see them in the way John often avoided other people's gazes when speaking about himself, as if he hoped that people would assume he was lying if he wouldn't look them in the eye. He didn't like letting anyone in—all the way in, at least.

But, again, he didn't seem to have any trouble letting Sherlock in. Likely it was that John believed that Sherlock could figure out anything he wasn't told, so to save time, John oftentimes opted for just telling.

Which is how Sherlock found out about John's deeply seated fear of waterfalls. Given the situation, Sherlock probably could have deduced this fact from John's actions and reactions, but John saved him the trouble—or perhaps the fun.

It'd started with an e-mail from Mycroft—addressed to Sherlock but sent to John's inbox.

"Bloody—! Sherlock! Why does the Holmes family take such offense to the idea of respecting my property as mine?"

In lieu of answering, Sherlock padded over from the sofa to where John sat seething in his usual chair and took the laptop.

"Oh, I get it—because you and your brother need it more. For security. Right. Never mind if someone ever comes to realize that your name and mine are somehow connected."

Sherlock smiled at the exasperated, half-hearted bitterness in John's voice, but still did not deign to speak. His sharp eyes flitted over the message for a few seconds longer, and then he handed the computer back to John. "Read it aloud, John, if you would."

At least John knew to no longer question that command—it was something about the fact that hearing the words helped solidify them in Sherlock's mind, or something. Helped him process information and mull over possibilities at the same time. Or maybe he just enjoyed telling John what to do. That was probably it.

"Er, right," said John as Sherlock laid back down on the sofa, closing his eyes and pressing his long fingers together at the tips. "It reads: 'Sherlock. An English agent has gone missing in Ontario, Canada, in close vicinity to Niagara—'" Without so much as an apology, he stopped reading, making a small choking sound in the back of his throat.

Sherlock, his nose scrunching up but his eyes remaining closed, looked more than a little annoyed at the interruption of data. "Yes, yes, Niagara Falls. Please go on."

John cleared his throat in apparent discomfort. "Right. Um. 'The agent was meant to deliver to the Canadian government a series of important documents pertaining to a two Canadian criminals detained here in the UK. It is of the utmost importance that this man and his documents be found. The criminals could go free unless they reach the right hands. More information is attached, as well as plane tickets and hotel reservations for yourself and Dr. Watson. Mycroft.'" John's stomach did a sloppy, unpracticed somersault. "Hell. He wants us to go to Niagara Falls?"

Sherlock cocked an eyebrow. "I'm surprised you're not more pleased. Aren't the Falls supposed to be one of those scenic, romantic little spots that people like you seem to love so much?"

John skidded over the veiled condescension with practice. "Well, some people, yes, but so is the Eiffel Tower! Why can't anybody ever send us to Paris? Is that so much to ask of criminals?"

Sherlock sensed something of a deflection in John's words, which wasn't an altogether uncommon feature in their conversations…but it was an altogether annoying one.

"Do you object to taking this case?" he asked evenly. "Do you have some repressed terror of Canadians that you've neglected to make me aware of?" He smiled wryly for a moment, but stopped once he saw the grave look on his friend's face. "John?"

"It's not Canadians, stupid," John protested meekly. "It's…well, don't make fun of me, but it's…waterfalls."

There was a beat of silence, of simply looking into each other's eyes without moving a muscle. And then:

"Waterfalls?"

"Yes. I don't like them, never have. Even seeing them on the telly makes me uncomfortable." He sighed. "It's irrational."

And then John's gaze fell to his feet, while Sherlock remained staring, jarringly silent. He was cataloguing information, fitting this phobia into the folder of knowledge he had already amassed about his flat-mate, making sure it corresponded with all the other files. He saw how the subject alone had already caused the lines around John's mouth and eyes to deepen. Saw how his shoulders had gone rigid, and how his left hand shivered just the slightest bit, almost imperceptibly. For a brief, blazing moment Sherlock wanted to still that trembling hand with both of his own, but he rallied at the last moment and fought the urge back.

Instead, he said, "So you do object to taking this case." It wasn't a question; it was a deduction.

And for a fraction of a moment, Sherlock could see that he was right—the hand stilled of its own volition, damn—but it was obvious that John, too, was attempting to shove his emotions aside. Except, rather than unwonted tenderness, John was battling relief.

By the end of Sherlock's next breath, John had won his battle. His head snapped up. "No, I don't object. Of course I don't object. I wouldn't let you leave the country without me if there was any way I could help you."

"You won't be any help to me at all if you're battling your own personal issues the entire time we're there."

It is important to note, here, that Sherlock spoke a very specific sort of English. Although his words sounded a trifle hurtful, what he said was actually his equivalent of saying, 'I don't want to make you do anything that might damage you psychologically. You're too important.'

John, thankfully, understood Sherlock-English, although he couldn't speak it himself. So he made due with: "Sod that. We might not even have to go near the Falls. I'm going." Which, in John's version of English, which Sherlock could likewise understand but not speak—or rather it was that he did not often wish to speak it—meant: 'I'm not letting you go alone. Bad things happen when we abandon each other. I'm going, phobia or no phobia.'

And that was that.

In the end, there really was no functional reason that John should have come to Ontario with Sherlock. Their hotel room had a spectacular view of a section of the Falls, which undid John's composure almost instantly. He fought not to show it, but of course there was no hiding anything from Sherlock, especially when the detective was waiting for it; at the first sign of quickened breath, Sherlock hastened to pull the heavy curtains closed with such force that John worried numbly that they would come off their rings.

Despite this small yet telling incident, John wouldn't allow himself to be abandoned in the hotel room with the same tenacity that he wouldn't allow himself to be abandoned in London. While Sherlock admired John's doggedness in nearly any other situation, he regretted not being more stubborn in insisting that there was no need for John to accompany him on his investigations, which would lead them past the Falls several times.

But John could be terribly bloody-minded when he wanted to be, so even if it meant that his hand would shake or that he would accidentally slip into military rest if he didn't pay attention, he was going to be helpful, damn it. He made extra efforts to pipe up when Sherlock was questioning locals, to try to contribute as much to the case as possible. He even paid for the tea when they stopped at a small café for lunch without even making Sherlock waste the energy to tell him to.

As far as Sherlock was concerned, the case was insultingly simple—the agent had obviously made the wrong sort of enemies by coming to deliver the incriminating documents to the government. After only two days of searching the vicinity morgue by morgue, they eventually found the agent, stone dead—although stone was perhaps the wrong thing to compare him to. Maybe shredded cheese was better.

He'd been found at the base of the Falls in one of those metal barrels that daredevils sometimes used to dive over the brink—quite an illegal and conspicuous activity. The authorities of course saw the barrel go over and had immediately gone to fish the barrel out of the water to arrest the daredevil—but obviously there had been something wrong with the make of the barrel, because it had collapsed in on itself, crushing the man inside.

John could handle the morgue, could function rather well in the environment despite the Cause of Death. "This man can't have been dead for more than twenty-four hours," he observed quietly, eliciting a sharp click from Sherlock's throat.

"Well, no," said the medical examiner. "He was only brought in yesterday."

Sherlock swore. "John! He was alive when we got here! And the entire time I've been looking for a body!" he hissed. "Why would his captors keep him alive for a week before sending him over the Falls?"

"Captors?" echoed the examiner, whom the two Englishmen easily ignored.

"Maybe he didn't have the papers on him when they kidnapped him," John suggested. "And they—"

"And they were trying to get information as to the papers' location, yes, of course!" Thus encouraged, Sherlock completely did away with the sheet covering the corpse's mangled and crushed body. Had there been anyone in the room whose occupation did not normally include horribly abused bodies, alive or dead, somebody surely would have gasped in horror. As it was, the coroner, doctor, and detective were very calm at the sight of the agent's broken, torn, and twisted body. Without the sheet, it was possible to observe all of the man's extensive injuries—knocked-in head, broken neck, rawness on wrists and ankles, no doubt where his captors had bound him, numerous deep cuts where the collapsed metal had sliced into his skin, large bruises from where he'd been beaten or else knocked around inside the barrel—all in one grim sweep of the eyes.

"And this was in a barrel," John murmured hollowly, sounding as deeply hurt as if it were Harry that he was staring down at on the morgue's pull-out tray.

This time, Sherlock's hand did move down to still John's, although it only made it to John's wrist, no lower. Nevertheless, John did seem to calm to the point of only mild discomfort, and only got better as Sherlock whispered, "A very badly made, almost certainly tampered-with barrel, produced by people who wanted this to look like a horrible accident."

The morgue-worker laughed uncomfortably. "So I take it this wasn't just a horrible accident?"

"Brilliant deduction," Sherlock quipped, meeting the third man's brown eyes. John knew that Sherlock couldn't have forgotten that the man was there, but he'd probably been blocking out the information. "This man was most definitely kidnapped by men hoping to force the release of their detained comrades in England. Nasty buggers," he murmured with nothing less than glee, his mind buzzing. "So the question is: where are the papers now? Likely they've been destroyed. So where are the killers? They have no real reason to leave the area, unless they fear that they've been seen—or else perhaps they wish to go to England to retrieve their comrades…"

Letting go of his friend's wrist, Sherlock proceeded to reach into John's coat-pocket and pull out John's mobile. He typed a quick text, likely to Mycroft, before returning the phone to John's pocket. The coroner watched this chain of events with mildly interested eyes and a quirked eyebrow. He gave another nervous laugh when he realized that John was watching his face.

'Number of continents in which there live people who believe that Sherlock and I are shagging,' thought John, 'now up to two.'

"Come, John. There's nothing more to learn here." He took John's hand with deliberation this time, pulling him out of the room without so much as a nod of thanks to the helpful coroner.

It was harder for John once they were out in the open again, what with the Falls in such conspicuously close proximity. In fact, if anything, seeing the English agent's shattered body made his symptoms even worse. Walking became a real ordeal as his limp decided to return in full. Eventually he had to stop walking altogether, nearly pulling Sherlock, who still held his hand, off his feet.

"What are you going to do now?" he asked, not quite looking his flat-mate in the eye.

"I'm going to begin re-questioning the people who knew our unfortunate government agent. Perhaps the news of his death will make them more willing to be open with me." He paused, staring at John as if there was a complicated ciphered message on his forehead. "And then I was going to travel to up to the brink of the Falls to see if I could track this barrel to its source."

John flinched, and then pulled his hand away, shoving it into his pocket to fist around his mobile. "You see, that's what I was worried about. I'm sorry, Sherlock, but I can't go up there. I'm—I'm feeling pretty ill right now out here. Can I go back to the hotel room?"

A couple of emotions briefly fought for dominance over Sherlock's features—annoyance, of course, and…relief? What was that about? As it was, he settled predictably for annoyance. "Well of course you can, John, don't be stupid."

"Do you mind if I do?" 'Are you disappointed in me?'

"Not in the least. I told you I already thought that you'd be spectacularly useless on this case." 'You lasted quite a long time, actually. I can take care of things from here. Take a nap.'

"Oh, sod off." 'Thanks for understanding.'

Sherlock laughed—the chuckle this time, not the bark or the cackle—and one quick, anxious hand shot out to push a strand of hair away from John's face; he'd let it grow too long. Then Sherlock did that odd winking-and-tongue-clicking thing before turning on his heel and leaving John alone.

It wasn't until he'd been back in the hotel room for fifteen minutes that John realized that he liked the idea of Sherlock plummeting down the face of a waterfall exactly as much as he liked the idea of the same fate befalling himself. The sudden, unexpected panic was so terribly gripping that he could no longer focus on his idea of making tea. Instead he took out his mobile and typed what was most likely the most insipid, pathetic little message to ever leave his outbox.

A ding! sounded off from the direction of the bed-area. Bemused, John went to investigate. And lo, there it was—Sherlock's mobile on the bed he had claimed as his own. Right. John thought he remembered something about Sherlock complaining that he was tired of his brother's constant prying calls, but John had obviously been so busy mentally preparing himself for the day's excursions that he'd missed his flat-mate's decision to leave it in the room.

For a moment John considered deleting the incriminating message, but eventually decided against it for pure lack of motivation. Part of him wanted to see how Sherlock would react to it. So instead he decided to strip down to his undershirt and shorts, and then he proceeded to attempt to sleep off the effects of his not-altogether-irrational fear.

He didn't quite manage to sleep dreamlessly, though. There wasn't a whole terrible lot going on visually, but there was an outright cacophony of noise to abuse his mental eardrums. There was the sound of machine guns and 'He's gone, Dr. Watson! Let him go!' and 'Hiii!' and more machine guns and explosions and 'You've rather shown your hand there, Dr. Watson,' and always, always, the sound of pounding, cascading, relentless water.

And then: "John? John, wake up. It's over."

John cracked his eyes open. Sherlock was there—of course he was there—kneeling at the side of his bed, his chin resting just so on the edge of the mattress. His long white hand was resting on John's bare upper arm.

"What's over?" John asked, speech slurring a bit due to stubborn grogginess. "The case? You've solved it?"

Sherlock scoffed. "'Solved' is hardly the correct word. Such a petty little problem, really—"

This made John bristle a little. "Sherlock. A man died. That isn't petty."

Sherlock had the decency to look indulgently contrite. Sociopath or not, he was trying to learn some manners from John, if only to please his friend. "Poor wording, forgive me. A simple problem. The killers were daft enough to allow themselves to be seen by an officer as they left the brink after dumping our agent in the current. He was able to give a rather comprehensive description of the criminals. They had fled a few cities over. The local force there caught them almost an hour after we put them on the alert. I swear I was only here to play a game of connect-the-dots. Mycroft will regret sending us here. The ends didn't justify the means."

As he said this last bit, his hand ghosted lightly up John's arm, stopping near the base of his neck. And then the hand disappeared, tangling itself with the rest of Sherlock's ridiculously long limbs. 'Are you alright?'

"So we're done here, then?" 'I'll be perfectly fine as soon as we're home.'

"Quite." He stood then, and then moved to his bed to take inventory on missed calls and texts from the day. John rolled onto his back and screwed his eyes shut once he remembered his stupid, sniveling little text—

"'Please don't fall in'?" read Sherlock, sounding absolutely perplexed and even hurt that the idea had ever even crossed John's mind. "Really?"

"I was in the middle of a panic attack; I can't be held responsible for my texts," John groaned as he pressed a hand to his eyes.

The mattress sunk a little when Sherlock sat down beside John, crossing his legs primly and removing John's hand from his face. He set it down almost gently along the curve of John's side. "John Watson. Do you really think that I'd be stupid or absent-minded enough—in any situation—to stumble into a waterfall?"

John laughed, although the sound was mildly insincere. "This isn't a psychosomatic limp, Sherlock. I'm not sure you can reason this phobia out of me. That's the point of phobias, I imagine. They're unreasonable."

Sherlock did not laugh. He looked paler than usual; his omnipresent scarf was oddly missing, so John could easily watch as Sherlock's Adam's-apple bobbed up and down as he attempted to literally swallow down some difficult emotion. His hand once more alighted on John's arm—the wrist again. "John, I'm not talking only about the waterfalls. I'm talking about life-and-death situations in general, let's say. I…I cannot promise that I'll never put our lives in danger again—"

"Not with him still alive," John murmured, staring at Sherlock's hand on his skin.

Sherlock's lips twitched. "Precisely. But my point is…I'm not going to be so foolhardy anymore. I can't be. Not with—not with you involved." He almost sounded angry then, frustrated with everything having to do with anything. It passed though, it always passed, and his voice returned to its normal, slightly impassive inflection. "I want to be…more careful, I suppose."

John stared up at his flat-mate—no, his friend. Was this really Sherlock Holmes?

Well, of course it was, because he decided just then to read John's mind. "But don't think I'm doing this solely for your peace of mind, oh no. I'm much too selfish for that. No, I want the two of us to be relatively safe for my own reasons."

That whole speech was probably total rubbish, but John didn't mind. "But there'll still be a little bit of danger, right?"

Sherlock beamed—a shocking, unexpected gift. "Well, of course, more than a little. I simply can't abide by boredom.

'God, I love you,' thought John, dazedly. 'You and your stupid, brilliant mind and your terror of boredom.'

But John didn't say that. Instead he said, "Well then, all things considered, I'm glad you didn't fall into the Falls, if it meant that I could get that rock-solid promise from you." Which basically meant exactly what he was thinking.

Sherlock gave another smile, a gentler one than before, one John never saw him give anyone else. It's was Sherlock's Just-For-John smile. "You nodded, you know. At the pool, there near the end when I had my gun out and was ready to blow us all to grimy little bits of flesh," he murmured, as if this little fact was the encryption key to decoding the cipher of John's very being. For all John knew, it was.

"Yeah," said John. "I guess I did."

"Well, I'm very glad you did, and that we both lived to not regret it." Which basically translated loosely into: 'God, I love you. You and your stupid, romantic little mind and your terror of waterfalls.'

"Me too," said John, eliciting a small, fond scoff from Sherlock as he rose off the bed.

"Try to go back to sleep, John. It's two in the morning. We've got a plane to catch at six."

"At six? You…you…you sociopath."

And Sherlock just laughed.