Disclaimer: The characters of Sherlock are not mine, nor is the story, nor are the characters from the original stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I make no monetary profit from this.
Note: Hello. Sorry for the extremely long wait between updates. (Things happened, some of them involved dogs, and a lot of them involved me not writing.) Thank you kindly for the reviews, and for your patience!
The Seduction of John S. Willoughby
Part Twenty-Three
Sherlock stopped John from bursting out from behind the curtains when the woman pulled out her gun by viciously tightening his grip on John's hand – Jesus, he was strong for such a skinny man – and giving it a sharp, lateral tug that was a sharp, lateral No that brooked no argument.
The curtains stirred. John glared at Sherlock – what did he think he was doing, she could hurt someone, maybe Milverton, maybe them, maybe even herself – but he barely had time to be indignant and then shocked and then horrified before it was all over, terminally so in Milverton's case. The woman hadn't paid any attention to them at all. She probably had never even known they were there.
John rushed over to where Milverton was sprawled ungainly on the floor. He didn't look right. Of course he didn't look right, being shot six times at close range would do that to people, but he looked it in such a way that it didn't look as though he could be put right again, and John knew about things like that.
"There was nothing we could have done for him," said Sherlock, seizing a large throw pillow from the sofa and stripping it of its zippered case. "He was dead by the second shot."
John grimaced as he stripped off a glove to check for signs of life anyway. Sherlock was right of course. It was chilling to think, but the murderess must have spent a good deal of time thinking how she could do the most damage with her six bullets. She might even have practiced. "We could at least call 999," he said. "Let someone know."
"Let someone know? Good Samaritan burglars, isn't that nice?"
"We can't just leave him here!" It already piqued John's conscience – as if robbing the man hadn't been enough – that they'd let him be killed in the first place. All right, maybe the man had deserved it, because, well, you had to admit that some people did, but you couldn't watch it happen and not do anything. It was…it was wrong.
"Yes, we can," said Sherlock from where he had knelt down in front of the safe with his newly acquired pillow case. "Someone already knows." And he proceeded to shovel the safe's contents into the thing quite indiscriminately.
"What?"
Sherlock looked pointedly over his shoulder at his flatmate. "Do I really have to point out that he wasn't driving the car?"
The penny dropped as John realized that he had watched Milverton get out of the back of the vehicle. He wondered how Sherlock could have possibly known – what he possibly could have seen – but this train of thought was rapidly halted by a loud pounding on the front door.
"Mister Milverton! You okay, Mister Milverton?" There was a crash, as of a door being forced open. John looked at the office door apprehensively as the heavy steps out in the hallway drew nearer.
"French door?" he asked.
"French door," agreed Sherlock. He gave the pillow case a shake to resettle its contents and zipped it shut. "And out the back garden. Now."
And they ran out the door, down the path at the side of the house, and into the shrubbery. Sherlock went fast despite the bundle he was clutching to his chest, it was those damnably long legs of his, and John lagged behind a little, doing his best to keep up. He was spurred on by the sounds of someone – the driver, presumably – bursting into the room behind them and a voice barking at someone else to call the police, which all too quickly changed into the sounds of someone running after them.
There was a brick wall about six feet high at the end of the garden. Sherlock lobbed the pillow case over the thing, took a running leap, hooked his hands on the top, and swung himself over it easily. John tried to follow suit, but as he was pulling himself up, a bit of the mortar crumbled beneath his hands – it didn't want to take his weight apparently: undernourished consulting detectives, yes but well-fed ex-army doctors, no. He slid down, and tried again at another spot.
"Come on!" hissed Sherlock from the other side.
"I'm trying, I really am, wait, will you!" John threw himself at the wall. Everything held this time. He didn't manage it as gracefully or as quickly as Sherlock (bloody flying ballerina), but he was getting there, he'd gotten his elbows up, and all he had to do was swing a leg over, and then the other one…and someone yanked at his ankle, hard. He almost lost his grip, and his chin banged painfully on the bricks.
John swore. He kicked at the man holding him, and squirmed, and went on shouting abuse as his injured shoulder screamed in protest at the strain. It occurred to him that the right and noble thing to do would be to tell Sherlock to forget him and leg it. But he wasn't going to tell Sherlock that because he was bloody well going – to – get – loose.
A luckily-aimed kick caught Milverton's driver on the chin and the man fell backward with a thump. Muttering an apology, John heaved himself up and over the wall. He landed untidily at Sherlock's feet, and his flatmate reached out a hand to steady him.
"You all right?" Sherlock had already taken off the balaclava. His curls were all tumbled and askew, and he was holding that secret-stuffed pillow of his by a corner, dangling it at his side. A slightly alarmed expression contributed to the child-surprised-out-of-bed-with-a-security-pillow look.
"Yeah, well." John yanked off his mask, took a deep breath of air unfiltered by knitted wool. "Good enough."
On the other side of the wall, the driver began to raise a great hue and cry about thieves and murderers. Sherlock hefted the pillow, cradling it in the crook of his arm.
"Up for a run?" he asked.
"When you are."
They took off. It wasn't a very long run, nothing that had John feeling like he could handle a marathon decently (provided that it was held at night, with a criminal to be chased as a sort of incentive). Sherlock hailed the first cab they saw when they emerged from garden they had fallen into, and they threw themselves into the back seat just as the sirens began to sound on Milverton's street.
xxx
When they finally, finally reached 221B Baker Street, the door to the flat had never been a more welcome sight. The ride back had been quiet and tense, with even Sherlock sitting up a little straighter at every flash of blue or red light they passed. It had to be a miracle, John thought, that not a single policeman had so much as looked into the cab. If one had, he probably would have taken them in for questioning on the basis of John's furtive looks alone.
He stood at the foot of the stairs breathing relief, good humor leaking back into him with the familiar light and the scent of Mrs. Hudon's potpourri . "Just so you know," he said lightly as Sherlock locked the door behind them, "I never want to do anything like that again."
"Oh really?"
"Really."
"Well, if I do, I'm not taking you along. You'd get us caught."
"What?" That was unfair. That was distinctly unfair. John had spotted Milverton's car, hadn't he? And the curtains had been his idea. And if this was about being caught at the wall, that was just ruddy unfair.
"For a start, you're only wearing one glove."
John made a very small, very soft 'oh' as he realized that in addition to being little scraped from hanging on to the wall and a little bloody from Charles Milverton (most of that mess had been scraped off on the wall), his right hand was also more than a little gloveless. His glove, as far as he knew, was still lying in Milverton's office, next to Milverton's dead body, and while it didn't have 'John H. Watson' written on the inside with a felt-tip pen, well, it might be enough. The people who worked forensics weren't complete idiots, whatever Sherlock thought.
"The security camera will show the police that we didn't kill Milverton, going by the angle of it," said Sherlock as he began to stammer an apology. "And that's all they'll have to go on." He pushed something into John's hands. "I told you I wasn't going to prison for housebreaking."
The glove. Of course it was the glove. He must have picked it up off of the floor. John seemed to remember that he'd gotten out of the house before Sherlock had – he'd been closer to the French doors – and he just might have seen his flatmate stop and stoop to pick something up off of the floor. "You idiot," said John feelingly. "You just had to scare me, didn't you?"
"I trust you'll be more careful next time." Sherlock grinned, clearly pleased with himself.
"What makes you so sure there'll be a next time?"
"I thought you were going to stick around."
"Only if you're not going to make a career out of burgling other people. Or, if you do make a habit of it, don't expect me to join in."
"Fair enough. If you're sure about that."
"Of course I'm sure—"
"But I'm glad you came with me tonight." Sherlock lowered his bundle onto the first step of the stairs. "And I'm glad you decided to stay," he continued carefully. "I was afraid – I didn't think you would."
He stood there, just inside John's personal space, and for a bit it seemed like he might say more. But he didn't. He merely began to look increasingly uncomfortable and off-balance until he moved.
It could have been anything, that tilting forward of his. In other, different universes, it could have turned into Sherlock Holmes picking up the pillow, or going upstairs, or even losing his balance entirely to fall on his face. In this one though, he moved closer, angled his head downward, and touched his lips to John Watson's.
It was like combustion sometimes is, spontaneous and inexplicable. John felt his mouth open against Sherlock's, felt their teeth click together as he – God help him, he wasn't doing anything to stop this, was he – as he tipped into the kiss, because that was what it was, there was no other word for it, it was another bleeding kiss, he was kissing Sherlock Holmes, actively kissing Sherlock Holmes, and it felt…right, they fit somehow, even when Sherlock, encouraged, put a hand on the back of his neck and another on his waist, only it wasn't quite all right because John didn't know what to do with his hands, one was holding his glove and the other was a bit of a bloody mess, and he was holding both awkwardly out to the side, and, Jesus, it was Milverton's blood, they'd just seen the man gunned down and now they were snogging, and aside from being gay or more than mildly bisexual (oh dear God), that probably meant he was a cold-blooded bastard too, didn't it?
No, John wanted to say. Wait.
If only for him to rearrange his hands and his priorities, and to check his conscience to make sure that he wanted this, that it wasn't just hormone-driven pouncing-on-the-first-available-moving-thing, that it wasn't something he'd regret in the morning, that it wasn't something Sherlock would regret in the morning, and, well, that they both meant it, basically. He just wanted to be sure.
Not now.
Only he didn't want to say it because saying things like that at times like this could close all sorts of doors that you didn't mean to shut, at least not forever, and not so that you needed a crowbar or a tank to get them open again. That was what was wrong with the idea of moving out. He didn't want to end up having a Sherlock-shaped hole in his universe, because Sherlock, as a friend or a…a…whatever, he was – he was worth living for.
Well. That was a revelation.
Even if he was, come to think of it, on some level, still angry at the man. Or he should have been, anyway.
No, no, no, too much, he was thinking too much, he was thinking too damn much, it was Sherlock whose brain was supposed to be all over the place, not him…
It stopped, eventually. John couldn't have said which of them pulled away first (Sherlock probably knew). He was still holding his arms out stiffly, rather like a penguin. Sherlock had moved back a little, had taken his hand away from John's waist. He was taking deep, measured breaths, and was looking quite surprised, as though he couldn't really believe what he had actually gone and done.
They stayed like that for a while, neither daring to move. John was very much aware of the hand that was still resting lightly on his neck, and the way that his flatmate was studying him, his lips (and it was only now that John saw – no, sorry, observed – the cupid's bow) pressed together, as he regarded the doctor as carefully and thoroughly as if he had been a particularly useful piece of evidence. The scrutiny was a little unnerving, and John wondered what he could be looking for.
Quite suddenly, Sherlock snatched his hand back, and walked deliberately up the stairs without so much as a backward glance.
There might have been an invitation in there. And John might have said yes if he had been asked. Aloud. In definite terms. But he hadn't been. And he was tired and a little sore in some places, and he'd just committed robbery and witnessed a murder and snogged his flatmate, and he wasn't sure what you did after that. He sank down next to the pillow, burying his face in his hands. Wasn't there a manual for this sort of thing? Like a sort of more graphic etiquette book, maybe?
A door slammed somewhere above him. All right, maybe it hadn't been an invite. Or if it had been, it had come with a definite expiration.
It was quite some time before John followed Sherlock up to the flat. He left the pillowcase on the sofa, for Sherlock to find in the morning, before going even further upstairs to his own room.