John lay there letting the cold seep into his bones until his teeth were chattering and he realized he was seriously risking hypothermia. His mind was almost blank and he focused only on the practicality of getting himself up and dressed. It was hard to keep entirely focused because his mind felt very numb and his vision seemed to want to play tricks with him.
Finally he stood staring ahead of himself and steeled himself for what was to come. 'You don't tell anyone', he felt like laughing, who would he tell. He had just been mercilessly raped by four policemen, friends of his friends, he was absolutely under no circumstances going to tell anyone about this. How on earth he would keep it from Sherlock he didn't know but he would have to.
The walk home was excruciating, he was sick twice and several times he thought that his legs were going to give way and he would not be able to get back up. He knew for a fact that they were no longer inside him but he still felt the throb of his inside as though someone was pumping up and into him. Probably the swelling he tried to analyse, it will stop, it has to stop. When he finally stood outside 221B he was ready to collapse, the world around him seemed to be constantly swaying and the pain was so all encompassing that he didn't know where one area of pain ended and the next began. He was going to have to have a look at himself before going to bed. He dreaded it but there was no choice, he had to know how bad things were.
With teeth gritted he made his way up the stars in steps that were not at all as steady as he would have liked, forcing himself not to stop on the way so as not to make Sherlock suspicious. As he got to the landing he could hear Sherlock rummaging around in the kitchen, still at his experiment, probably a good thing John thought as he gingerly shrugged out of his jacket.
"I'm going to have a bath and then I'm going to bed" he stated as loudly as he could manage without his voice breaking. Sherlock merely hummed slightly from the kitchen, clearly completely absorbed in his work. John made it to the bathroom and sank down on the toilet seat as he turned the taps on drawing a bath. Normally he would have preferred a shower but he did not feel like standing up for any length of time so a bath would have to do.
Slowly and gingerly he started to strip off his clothes, forcing himself to be silent as he jostled sore bruises and aching limbs. His hands didn't quite want to work, he was shaking and bending his right wrist felt like someone was stabbing nails through it. With his shirt off he could tell that he would have to be careful to hide this from Sherlock.
The wrists were the worst off and he was not entirely sure that nothing has been cracked in the right one because three of his fingers really did not want to bend without excruciating pain, but his whole upper body was artistically covered in marks that he knew would turn into full blown bruises.
He stood and pulled down his jeans, then the world swam and he was on the floor. He wasn't sure if it was the sudden movement, the head injury, the pain in his inside or the sight of his jeans covered in blood that had sent him to the floor but he scrambled up again, head into the bowl of the toilet, and retched and retched even though his stomach was empty.
Sherlock was on his feet and running toward the bathroom as soon as he heard the thump and the desperate retching. "John?" Sherlock pounded on the door but his only reply was more sounds of John retching. "John are you alright?"
Nothing now, just silence and Sherlock started to feel a little panicked. "John, answer me right now or I will break this door down." He had never broken a door down in his life despite the many strange situations he had found himself in, resourcefulness was usually his forte, not brute strength.
He was just about to turn around and get his lock picking tools, a far more sensible choice than trying to break the door he figured when a weak reply from the other side of the door reached him.
"Sorry, Sherlock, too much to drink" John managed as he leaned against the wall trying to catch his breath "I just need to sleep it off." His voice was slurred but he figures it may at least partly be genuinely due to the three and a half pints he had managed during the evening. What had he been thinking?
Sherlock breathe a sigh of relief, "Told you that you should have come home with me, you'll only have yourself to blame when you feel like death warmed over tomorrow." Sherlock shrugged and returned to his experiment.
John lay in the scalding bath watching it slowly turn pink as his blood dissolved in it. He knew it always looks more when dissolved in a bath so he wasn't too worried. When the water started to turn cold he gingerly picked himself up and dried off with slow and measured movements. He was still bleeding but not as badly. 'Good' he thought as he carefully made his way back to his bedroom. He was terrified of the idea of having to get medical attention for this. He was worried enough about the wrist, no way of explaining that particular kind of bleeding off to any medical professional. He played with the pill bottle he still had sat in his bedside table from when he still woke up with pain shooting through his leg for no apparent reason. He knew he shouldn't take anything with the amount he had had to drink but at that moment he honestly didn't care. He swallowed two little pills down and with a towel pressed between his legs to protect the sheets he slipped off into a fretful sleep.