John forced his eyes open, mumbling Sherlock's name.

He had blacked out, but he couldn't have been unconscious for more than a minute.

They were still in the car, people were still milling about, chattering loudly, and Sherlock hadn't moved.

"Sherlock?" John asked. He reached across the cab, pressing his fingers against Sherlock's throat. A pulse beat reassuringly under John's fingers. John sighed quietly in relief.

He fumbled with his seatbelt. His fingers were slow and clumsy and he had to really focus on removing it. He lost a few precious seconds that he should have lost on Sherlock on his seatbelt.

"Sherlock?" he asked again, shivering as he slid across the seat. His entire body hurt. His head was pounding and his neck was aching. He had the vague impression that his entire body had been thrown forward at the impact, most likely giving John a case of whiplash, but he didn't care about that right now. He needed to see what had happened to Sherlock.

"Sherlock, are you okay?" he murmured, manoeuvering so he could look more closely at Sherlock. He didn't want to move him, barely dared to move at all himself just in case he jarred Sherlock's body.

His head might be hurting, but he didn't forget his medical training. Do not move the victim.

John shivered again, hard enough that he could have called it a convulsion.

"Just... calm down, John Watson," he muttered, carefully leaning forward to inspect the wound on Sherlock's head. As far as he could tell, it was just a scape from some of the glass that had busted out from Sherlock's window. A rather sizeable scrape, mind, but there was nothing else to explain where the scrape had come from.

Sherlock groaned just then, a sound barely heard over the hustle and bustle that was people outside.

(He had a moment of wondering why nobody was making to help, but people had probably already called 999 and lots of people probably didn't want to have to deal with the ramifications that could come with injury or death of an injured person. Great to be a civilian.)

"Sherlock?"

"... John...?" Sherlock blinked his eyes open, tilting his head too quickly towards John. John watched Sherlock wince in pain, a look of confusion crossing his eyes.

"No, don't move around; you need to stay still," he breathed.

He licked his lips, preparing to say something else probably unsatisfying to their circumstances. He tasted blood. Irritably, he swiped the back of his hand across his mouth. When he removed it, it was covered in blood.

He panicked a bit more than his professional mind should have allowed.

"John... your nose is bleeding..." Sherlock said, and John relaxed slightly when he realized that was the source for the blood. But all the blood...

He raised his shaking fingers to his nose gingerly. Spasms of pain erupted from the pressure and he felt the urge to vomit up everything he'd eaten in the past day.

"... Broken nose," Sherlock was saying. "Concussion..."

Sherlock was shaking. John could see his hair trembling with the motion.

"Right," John muttered, ignoring the blood. "Take deep breaths. Help'll... help'll be here soon, I'd imagine." John took a quick look out Sherlock's would-be window, blanching. He swore very loudly when he realized that the car had only come to a stop because Sherlock's side of the cab had slammed into a utility pole, thus pinning Sherlock's door shut. He looked back at his side of the cab. His door was completely smashed in, but the window was somehow still intact.

Unyielding panic swelled when he realized that they were essentially trapped in the backseat of the car.

"O-Okay." He was shaking so hard that his teeth were chattering together. He took a deep breath and set his jaw, looking back at Sherlock. "You've got a sizeable... sizeable gash on the side of your head." Oh, he was going to be sick. He swallowed hard. "Your face is cut up a bit and there's glass in your hair..."

"And you've got a concussion and a broken nose," Sherlock finished, sitting up a bit. He visibly paled.

"What's wrong?"

Sherlock shook his head, a barely noticeable motion. "Head hurts."

"You've probably got a concussion, too. We both might..." He trailed off as black spots erupted in front of his vision, the overwhelming feeling of nausea prompting him to press a hand over his mouth. He had a concussion. The nausea and the headache were a very good sign of it.

"Whiplash." Sherlock finished John's sentence as though he had already guessed what he was going to say.

John murmured an almost silent affirmative, removing his hand when he was sure that he wasn't going to vomit. The blood from his nose was doing nothing to help.

"Is this... exciting enough for you?" John griped, although only halfheartedly. John had once remarked that he preferred the James Bond lifestyle over the life of a careless civilian anyday, but this was taking it a bit far.

"Never..." Sherlock replied breathlessly.

John looked back at him sharply in time to watch the detective's eyes flutter shut.

"Sherlock? Sherlock!" John scrambled to make sure that his friend was still breathing, that his heart was still beating, that he was alive, because he had to stay alive-

"Sherlock, no, no, no, Sherlock, stay awake, mate. This isn't the time for a kip, you sodding bastard! Wake up! Sherlock? Sherlock!"


This chapter probably comes across as a bit slow and sleepy, but that's just from John's mind. Time continues as normal outside of their concussive states, although not that much time has passed at all.

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