Hello everyone! Again, the litany of I'm very, very, very sorry that this chapter took so long! I'm currently participating in Nanowrimo, which is taking up a surprising amount of time, along with school, sports, and playing in my school's orchestra. High school is definitely no joke. I'm sure that we can all agree with that one! Anyways, here's another chapter! (Looks like things are really starting to ~heat up!~ (shhh, just read and the pun will become abundantly clear!) Now, onward, faithful readers! :) Disclaimer: I don't own Sherlock or any associated characters!
Chapter Twenty-Five
Three weeks later, John woke to the sound of screaming.
"Holy—" He leapt from the bed, surrounded by dizzying noise: a high, metallic screech that seemed to be coming from inside his head. "Sherlock!"
But he was alone in the dormitory room, and the screaming belonged to the fire alarm. John staggered, snatching a jacket from the back of the chair. He pulled jeans over his boxers, hopped madly around pulling on socks and trainers. Piss poor time for a bloody fire drill, he thought hotly—it was late, almost eleven o'clock, and nearly everyone was in their dormitory rooms.
And then John smelled smoke.
It's real, he thought groggily, and ran for the door. Where the hell was Sherlock? Outside, students thronged the hallways, a disorganized crowd whose collective voice rose high-pitched, almost panicked.
"Which bloody idiot pulled the bloody fire alarm?" Lawrence materialized beside John. "I'll bet it was that arsehole Anderson."
John had never particularly adored Anderson, what with his weird hair and decidedly creepy appearance, but he was sure that this was no prank.
"There's smoke, you idiot!" Tom Washington socked Lawrence's shoulder. "This is a real fire!"
They filed downstairs quickly; the smoke was growing thicker. John took several shallow breaths, wishing sorely that Sherlock were beside him.
Then they came down the bottom of the stairs, and there were dozens of girls exiting the building, and Sally Donovan appeared beside John and as they came outside she grabbed his arm and said,
"Look!"
John looked.
The roof of the neighboring building was on fire.
"Fuck!" Lawrence yelped. "They've torched the bleeding roof!"
"My God," Sally breathed. "John."
John swallowed stiffly. "Have you seen Sherlock?"
"No," She said softly. They watched flames lick at the inky sky. Smoke curled and billowed, noxious. John saw a familiar figure, clothed in a dark jacket, standing on tiptoe to peer over people's heads.
"Sherlock!" He cried, suddenly and almost breathlessly relieved. "Hell, do you see it?"
"No, John," Sherlock deadpanned, pushing his hands into his pockets. "I wasn't aware that there was any sort of, say, burning building lingering somewhere in my field of vision."
"It's a dormitory," John said, ignoring this quip.
"I was supposed to room there," Sherlock said. "Got switched around on the first day of school—lucky break, I suppose."
"No kidding." John muttered. There was the wail of sirens; someone had called the fire brigade. Teachers hurried through the crowd, half-heartedly attempting to quiet things down—it was hardly going to work, John thought laughingly. He was going to make a joke, try to lighten up the situation—until a second siren approached, screaming, throwing dizzy red and blue lights across the crowd of students, and people began to murmur, and the murmur rose to a cry.
"What's happening?" John asked; he recognized the approach of an ambulance. It was Sally Donovan who answered him, rushing up to John and Sherlock with her cheeks flushed.
"There was a student out of bed—when the fire started, I mean, he was there, he got caught in it—they found him in the stairwell."
"What?" John gaped. Talk of the casualty was spreading like wildfire—that a year ten student had been caught in the fire, was unconscious, was dead. "Is it true?"
"Of course not," Sherlock said airily. "The boy's not dead. Look at the teachers' faces. They're calm enough. Those certainly aren't the faces of teachers who've got a dead student on their hands. He's probably breathed in some obscene amount of smoke and fainted..."
John felt a flash of doubt. That a student was injured, perhaps seriously, changed everything. No longer was it alright to joke around and carry on—there was something more serious at stake now.
If there was, though, the other students hardly seemed to notice. People were shouting, crazed with the weird, wired energy of being awake and alive, alive in the face of flames, danger, a fallen comrade, out in the cold dark night, standing shoulder to shoulder with friends, roommates under those distant stars.
...
Sherlock was trying to edge closer to the fire brigade—this was all very interesting, he thought...the possibility of a real arson case—when he saw the dark figure sprinting into the woods. Something like a cold wind pricked at the back of his neck; something was not right here.
A student wouldn't flee, not unless they'd been the one to light the match. And even so, they'd turn back, try to mingle with the rest of us—unless they're a complete idiot. Possible, but unlikely.
Mind racing, Sherlock inched through the throngs of chattering students, towards the fire brigade's lurid truck. The ambulance was idling nearby; a thin boy's frame, inert, strapped to a stretcher. Sherlock recognized him as a tenth year, a boy who played lacrosse. A group of firemen had scaled the roof by way of a long white ladder atop the truck, and were dousing the fire with jets of water. Smoke twisted wildly above the roof's slate tiles; even from here, Sherlock could see extensive damage.
Repairs were going to be expensive, and someone was going to pay.
...
"Sherlock!" John caught Sherlock's shoulder. The taller boy had been meandering through the crowd, trying to get closer to the base of the building. "Hell, I thought I'd lost you back there."
"What?" Sherlock sounded absent-minded. "No, of course not."
"Where were you, anyways?"
"Library." Sherlock said distantly. He was watching the last of the flames sputter madly as they were extinguished. Water dripped steadily from the slate roof, a false rain.
The last of the fire brigade was descending from the roof, coiling up hoses by the time Sherlock's eyes left the building.
"What is it?"
"What?" He sounded vacant.
"You look...spacey."
"Oh, it's nothing," Sherlock said quietly, but his eyes shifted from student to student, and when the teachers began to round everyone and herd them back into the dormitories, Sherlock seized John's arm and pulled him into the shadows of the burnt building.
"What?" John bounced up and down on his heels; it was very cold outside, and he'd forgotten his good jacket. There was still slushy snow on the ground, and all of the trees were skeletal against the dark sky.
"There's something amiss," Sherlock said. "This wasn't an accident."
"Well, no shit, Sherlock," John cupped his hands around his face and blew into them. Then he started and said, "Wait...what?"
"Arson," Sherlock said quietly. They stepped into the shadow of the doorway while a group of teachers led some shivering students past.
"Someone set the roof on fire?" John rolled his eyes. Even for Sherlock's "eye for crime", this felt a little farfetched.
"Yes..." Sherlock squinted up, into the smoky skies directly overhead. "Yes, they did."
"Right." John heard the dubious tone in his voice. "Why would they do that, again?"
Sherlock did not reply. As soon as the last teachers were out of sight, he skirted along the side of the building, heading for the stairs.
"Sherlock!" John grabbed Sherlock's shoulder, suppressing a gasp as one of the office ladies came round the corner.
"Boys!" She chided loudly, "Get back to your dormitories this instant!"
"Of course," John hauled Sherlock away, nodding, forcing a smile. "On our way."
As they climbed the stairs, Sherlock hissed,
"What was that for?"
"Do you honestly want to conduct a bloody investigation? It was an accident, Sherlock."
"I must say, Watson, that I am not entirely convinced."
...
They waited until midnight. Then, with the stars glinting coldly overhead, John and Sherlock crept silently through the hallways and up to the roof. There was ice up here; John placed every step carefully, treading lightly. Sherlock moved with a feline grace, no awkward stooping or creeping. He seemed so sure of every movement, John thought, and he felt almost...proud.
"Look, John," Sherlock said quietly, and indicated a point somewhere across the rood. John looked. The burned section of roof was cavernous, jagged and cruelly dark. There was soot and pale, snowy ash. It looked like the set of a zombie film.
"Well?"
Sherlock paused. "I..."
"Don't know?"
"No!" Sherlock paced around the edge of their roof. He was, John realized, searching for footprints. Or fingerprints. Or both.
"Right. Course not." John's lips felt numb. He tried to jog in place without slipping off the edge of the roof; this was difficult because, thought gently-sloped, the slate tiles were very icy. He crept closer to the edge.
And that was when he saw it.
"Sherlock," John said, and bent over. "Sherlock, look at this."
"What?"
He held up the blue plastic lighter.
Sherlock's eyes went wide. He looked strangely triumphant, taking the lighter in gloved hands and gazing, sharp-eyed, towards the woods.
"Of course," Sherlock said softly.
"Of course?" John tried to jog in place without tumbling from the rooftop. "What're on about, Sherlock?"
Sherlock's eyes flashed in the moonlight; it was obvious that his mind was whirling madly. But he shook his head and said,
"Nothing."
"Really, now? You drag me up here, and we find evidence, and it's nothing?"
John scooted along the edge of the roof. The wind was picking up now, hurling snowy ash into their faces and eyes. John pulled his scarf up over his nose and tried to breathe through his mouth; the tiles beneath his hands were slick with ice and rime, and slipping seemed inevitable. No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than Sherlock lost his footing on the slate and, in a lighting-strike moment of terror, tumbled to the edge of the roof.
"Sherlock!" John gasped, the name ragged in his throat.
"John!" One of Sherlock's gloved hands found John's; with the other he held tight to the roof's metal gutter.
John could barely breathe. He wrapped cold-numbed fingers around Sherlock's hand and tried to pull the other boy up and over the edge. It was a frigid and slippery few moments—John's breath burned his throat; his heartbeat rushed in his ears—and then Sherlock had found his foothold, had pulled himself up again, and they were scrambling over the slate, towards the iron ladder that would lead them back to safety, warmth.
By the time they staggered back into the hallway, John was practically shaking. He all but hauled Sherlock down the hall and slammed 221B's door.
"Sherlock," John said, stripping off his jacket and gloves. "What the hell is going on?"
Sherlock removed his own winter clothing with infuriating casualty; he took the lighter from his pocket with gloved hands and dropped it carefully into a plastic bag grabbed from the desk.
"I expect that you're going to dust it for fingerprints later," John said somewhat snappishly.
"That's exactly what I'm going to do." Sherlock tossed his jacket over the back of his chair. John watched, disbelieving, as Sherlock cleared a stack of papers from the desk and began to sift through his supplies.
"Are you serious?"
Sherlock deigned to reply. Instead, he went about dusting the lighter for fingerprints—employing the use of a length of cellophane and some black powder.
John went and took a shower, leaving Sherlock to his devices, and when he came out shaking water from his damp hair, Sherlock was on the phone.
"...Yes. That's fine—by Friday is alright. What? No, I can't wait until next Monday, Mycroft. Honestly, this is a matter of upmost importance!"
John rolled his eyes, nearly laughing. Sherlock was pacing, obviously tormented by his older brother's ignorance.
"No, Mycroft, this isn't one of my schoolboy exploits," Sherlock snapped. "And I'll thank you if you will kindly—" He paused, glanced down at his mobile phone. Turned to John. "He's hung up on me."
"Well, I can't imagine why," John returned loftily, balling up his jacket and lobbing it into the closet.
Sherlock sat down at the desk.
"What are you doing, anyways?" John queried. Sherlock held the dusted lighter up, tilting it. His eyes flickered across the plastic; he seemed at once present and very far away.
"Someone's had their hands all over this thing. I intend to find out who."
"Through...Mycroft?"
Sherlock smirked at the mention of his brother's name. "I can assure you, John—in ten years, Mycroft is going to be the British Government. Hell, he's halfway there already."
"Is he?"
"Mycroft's name opens doors," Sherlock said. John knew at once that this was the truth; these Holmes brothers, so weird and clever and cold, seemed to embody a facet of British culture that John had witnessed only from the outside: the frosty, professional gentleman, a good old boy from an esteemed family, from wealth, likely a spacious home in Kensington, or out in the countryside, near a lake. They would grow up educated, born somehow more intelligent than their proletariat associates. They'd become government officials, working not out of dreary gray cubicles but wood-paneled offices in marble-floored buildings.
John couldn't imagine that future for Sherlock.
"I know," He said softly. "It opens doors."
"We'll find out who set that fire, John," Sherlock rose and crossed the room. He put a hand on John's shoulders.
"It was stupid, anyways," John muttered. "What we just did."
"What do you mean?"
"Going out on the roof like that. You could have fallen." He had not realized it until now, but John felt jarred. His heart was beating loudly in his ears and throat. "You could have killed yourself, Sherlock."
"You're shaking," Sherlock said.
"I'm fine." John mumbled as Sherlock embraced him. "I'm fine, it's stupid, it's nothing, Sherlock, I'm fine."
But he wasn't fine. Seeing Sherlock on the edge of the roof like that had set something on edge inside of him, steel grating against steel. Maybe it was stupid, but watching Sherlock put himself in danger was like watching Harry in trouble, like watching his mum in trouble. Family. Or something close to it, anyways.
"I love you, you idiot," John said, and put his arms around Sherlock and refused to let go. "You bloody, stupid, idiot."
But as he said this, John felt doubt prick at the fine hairs on the back of his neck. He pulled away, remembering suddenly something that Sherlock had said earlier.
"Sherlock...you didn't say—earlier, about the dormitory building."
"What was that?" Sherlock was examining the lighter again.
"You said that you were supposed to room there."
"I was, yes. What of it?"
"Nothing," John said. "Nothing at all."
But it wasn't nothing. It wasn't nothing at all. It was, John felt with unexpected conviction, most definitely something.