Sherlock is a difficult partner to work with.
In conjunction with the chapter 'Strange Predicament' in the story Colour of Light Part III.
Let Me In
Jane Watson was a doctor: a trauma surgeon, in fact. A damn good one. She graduated top of her class. She was also a Captain in Her Majesty's Royal Army which was a feat in itself for one so young and she was highly decorated to boot.
So why, then, she was demoted to a bloody coat rack for her crazy flatmate as he went haring off into the derelict warehouse in search of the drug operation that was Sherlock's current case, she didn't know.
"'Wait here, Jane,' he says. 'I'll only be a moment,' he says," Jane grumbles under her breath as she checks her watch for the fourth time in thirty minutes. "'Hold my coat, I don't want to snag it on the fence,' he says." She kicks a rock away from her with perhaps a little too much force. "'I'll come 'round front and let you in,' he says!" She really needed to stop talking to herself now.
Fed up with just standing there, Jane decides to walk around to the back of the warehouse so see if there was another way in.
She was about to try the steel doors on the side of the building before she heard shouting and swearing coming from the other side. She barely had a chance to dive behind a skip tucked up against the wall before they were flung open and a group of men ran out.
"Fuck where's the van?" one of them shouts dragging his fingers through his lanky blonde hair.
"It's 'round the corner, come on!" another one says, and they all tear off down the street. Jane holds her breath until she can hear the growl of an engine and shrieking tyres retreating down the road.
Just to be safe she waits five whole minutes before rushing inside.
"Sherlock?" she calls out into the dimness. She has a strange twisty feeling in her gut when she is met with nothing but silence. "Sherlock?" She hurries down a dark corridor and rounds the corner into the main part of the warehouse. In the centre of the large room is what appears to be a meth lab and an assembly line of sorts abandoned in the crux of operation. Upon further examination, she can see the evidence of a struggle.
Glass beakers, a portable propane camping stove, and a table were upturned and scattered about the floor, and a small television was smashed in by someone's shoe of all things. A very familiar, and expensive looking shoe.
"Sherlock!" she yells, and tries to calm the frenetic beating of her heart so she could listen. She hears the anemic whine of a phone, and searches the floor. There in a pile of rubbish, is Sherlock's phone, screen cracked beyond repair, and flickering lightly. She picks it up and tries to get it to unlock, but it's completely broken. She can see there's an incoming text from Lestrade, but there's no way for her to get at it. She hopes that means he's on his way at least. "SHERLOCK!" she bellows, panic clawing its way up her throat.
Suddenly she hears a banging off somewhere to her left, and she takes off in that direction.
She rounds the corner of some rusty scaffolding and is met with a door that reads 'Boiler Room One' and she shoulders it open. The banging is at its loudest, and she travels down the claustrophobic corridor lined with leaky pipes and the strong smell of mildew.
"Sherlock!" she calls again, feeling turned about in this veritable labyrinth. The banging suddenly stops, its last echo ricocheting off the walls around her adding to the confusion. She holds her breath.
Then, from the back corner of the room she hears a weak, "Jane?"
"Oh thank god!" she says rushing to the sound of Sherlock's voice. She nearly falls through the floor that has been corroded by the damp, and has to grab onto a near by pipe for support.
"Careful!" Sherlock's voice shouts up at her from below. She peers down into the hole and sees Sherlock standing in a part of the building's basement, apparently. A very flooded basement by the looks of it, the water reaching all the way to Sherlock's armpits.
"How did you get down there?" she says and looks around for something to hoist him out.
"Oh, y'know. Th-thought I'd g-go for a swim," Sherlock tries to say sarcastically, but the effect is diminished due to his chattering teeth. "They threw me d-down here. What d-do you th-think?" he snaps.
"Hang on," Jane says spotting a length of sturdy chain piled in the corner. She threads it through a strong looking pipe, and snakes the rest down the hole. "Don't let go," she snarls down at him, and then braces herself on the ground, feet firmly planted on the pipe and wall in front of her. She feels a sharp tug at the chain, and begins pulling with all her strength.
The chain slips twice, causing the skin on the palms of her hands to break open and bleed a little, but if she lets go now, she won't have the strength to pull him all the way up. She grits her teeth, and throws all of her stamina into the task until Sherlock's dark head appears at the top. His arms flail, scrabbling for purchase as he tries to throw his upper body over the lip. Once he has some sort of leverage, Jane lunges forward and grips him by the forearms and pulls him out the rest of the way. He immediately curls on his side and shivers violently.
"Are you hurt?" she asks.
"N-not too much. Knocked me around a b-bit. Just c-c-cold," he says and closes his eyes as deep tremors wrack his body. His lips and fingers are an alarming shade of blue, and Jane recognises the beginning stages of hypothermia.
"I'll be right back," she says and bolts to her feet, sprinting back out to the main room where she dropped Sherlock's coat earlier. She also snatches his phone from off of the floor for good measure, and runs back to the boiler room.
Sherlock has managed to pull himself to a somewhat upright position, and Jane doesn't waste any time hauling him to his feet and stripping off his sopping wet blazer and dress shirt.
"If you w-wanted me to t-take my clothes off, all you had to d-do was ask," he says cheekily, and sags against her. She doesn't comment on this, and instead unbuckles his belt with all the professional distance of a doctor she can summon, and pulls off his trousers and remaining shoe. She drapes his wool coat around his bare shoulders and guides him to sit against the wall before he collapses completely.
"Close your eyes," she orders.
"Why?" he asks deliriously.
"You're hypothermic, and need to get your core body temp up," she says matter-of-fact, and hikes the fair isle jumper she was wearing over her head. His eyes widen comically before closing, and she quickly toes off her shoes and strips likewise down to her underclothes. After hesitating for only a moment, she situates herself sideways in his lap, and winds an arm around his waist, pressing as much of her chest and abdomen as close as she can to his where she knows most of the heat will be conserved. She pulls the coat tight about them, and rests her free hand on his chest as he wraps his shaking arms around her. They sit in silence for a while until Sherlock's spasms turn into a much gentler shivering.
"You're warm," Sherlock murmurs resting his chin atop her head.
"That's the point," she grumbles. "And you're an idiot by the way."
"I had everything under control," he remarks, subconsciously pulling her closer to him. "You're like a miniature furnace."
"And you smell like a sewer," she says.
"Did you call Lestrade?"
"No."
"What? Why?" he asks perplexed.
"Because someone thought it would be a good idea to drain the battery on my phone forcing me to leave it behind to charge," she says and clenches the fist resting on the maniac's chest. She hisses in pain, forgetting about her raw palms. Sherlock pulls away a little and gingerly takes her hand so he could inspect the angry welts and shredded skin. She winces.
"It's no matter. He'll be here eventually. I set up a timed message with the details of our whereabouts set to go off unless I entered the password proving I was all right. Good idea too, seeing as how I was ambushed the moment I walked in and thrown down there," he shivers again, and she pushes her head back under his chin to close the frigid gap of air he created.
"Is that what spooked them?" she asks despite her growing anger.
"Undoubtedly," he says and she can feel him grin. "I triggered my phone to send another message that looped back around as a decoy from Lestrade saying he was bringing half the Met along with him."
"But they escaped."
"Yes. They most likely ran straight to their safe house. The one which they were talking about like imbeciles before they caught me. I managed to fire off the location before they took my phone away."
"Clever you," she says, voice dripping with disdain. "'I'm Sherlock Holmes, and I always work alone because no one can compete with my massive intellect.'"
"You're…angry?" Sherlock asks bemusedly.
"Yep."
"…Why?"
"You honestly don't know do you?" Jane asks and pushes away so she could look him in the face. He blinks at her in confusion. "Do you know what could have happened if I didn't show up? You could have died."
"But you did show up."
"Yeah only because I'm probably more insane than you are."
"What do you mean?"
"You dragged me out of the flat with no explanation except for an off-hand comment about drug dealers, and left me outside a dodgy abandoned warehouse without any instructions except to hold your bloody coat, and then against my better judgment, I entered said warehouse after I saw a group of said drug dealers run out of it."
"Your point?"
"The point is, Sherlock, you didn't tell me anything about what you were up to. You kept me in the dark. You didn't let me in. And if I were anybody else, you probably would be slowly freezing to death right now. Why do you ask for my help anyway if you clearly don't want it?"
"Jane I…do want your help. I just — I've never had a colleague before and it's…different. I'm not entirely sure what all that entails. No one's ever wanted to put up with me for this long," he admits. Jane is surprised at his honesty, and is actually stunned out of her rant. She lowers her head against his chest again and chalks it up to the hypothermia.
"I'm not as smart as you, Sherlock. I usually don't leap to conclusions like you do, and I need you to tell me what's going on from time to time. Or at least let me know somehow if I need to be there to pull you out of a hole," she says, and that elicits a low rumble of laughter from him. "We need a better system."
"Agreed," Sherlock says and buries his face in the crook of her neck. "Nose is cold," he mumbles, and she laughs despite herself. He was like an overgrown cat.
"Yeah it is," Jane says and ties to shrug him off, but he just tightens his hold. Something dawns on her. "Hey, when you get a new phone can you set up another automatic message thing?"
"You mean the timer?" he asks sleepily, warm breath ghosting over her collar bone making her skin tickle. She feels his muscles slacken as he finally begins to relax into their shared warmth.
"Yeah. Something to go off and let me know you're in trouble if we get separated. A code word or a phrase or something." She waits for a moment for his answer, but he just sighs gently against her. "Sherlock," she prods. "We need a code."
"Vatican cameos," he murmurs nonsensically already halfway gone to sleep.
"All right, but if you ask me later I'm going to say you came up with it and remind you that we cuddled and you fell asleep on my shoulder just to spite you," she whispers and adjusts the collar of his coat against the nape of his neck to keep the draught at bay.
AN: Wow I must really love you guys or something. Updating the series twice in one day, shucks, you guys are fantastic. So enjoy! And I really can't tell you how grateful I am to receive your wonderful comments! Like I said your encouragement fans the flames and I just can't stop writing!