Then there is the time Sherlock gets shot.
They trace a confidence scheme to this little laundry on the east end, in the back room of which Sherlock assures John they will find at least 35 thousand quid in cash and no more than five but no less than three men, ages 29 to 40, with two guns among them.
"That's what you said about the last place," whispers John. Sherlock actually pouts.
"That's where I thought it was. John, you knowthe statistical unlikelihood of my being wrong twice in a row. Besides, I'm positive this time."
"You were positive last time. I'm not calling Dimmock just to raid a perfectly innocent Suds4Less."
"There is nothing perfectly innocent about using a numeral in place of a word," Sherlock mumbles, and John rolls his eyes.
"Let's just check it out first."
"I mentioned the guns among them, correct?"
"Afghanistan, remember? Give me some credit."
Sherlock quirks his mouth in an unreadable expression that might be an unwillingness to have his hesitancy associated with a lack of credit to John, and says nothing. They both draw their guns and advance silently on the laundry.
"No more than five, right?" John whispers.
"And no less than three," Sherlock whispers back.
John nods. "That's just fine."
There are four, actually, but it isn't precisely fine. John is served well by the instincts Afghanistan has lent him; Sherlock's instincts are of a different kind less useful here, and though he may be a master of baritsu, it is not to the extent of dodging bullets. One catches him in the right knee and he goes down.
Two of the men are dead before John quite realizes what he's doing and the other two are running and Sherlock is telling John to follow them, he's fine, and John is laughing shrilly because, yeah, that's not going to happen.
"It glanced," Sherlock is grunting through gritted teeth, hands clutched around his knee and blood seeping through his laced fingers. John kneels over him, his hands spread over Sherlock's hands, getting blood on them both. "It glanced, that's all, I'm fine, don't let them get away."
"I'm not leaving, you idiot," John fires back, unbuckling his belt. "Straighten your leg."
"I can't."
"Straighten it!" John barks in his best army tone. Sherlock straightens his leg.
"I'm not going to die, John," he hisses as John cinches his belt around Sherlock's thigh. "It's too complex an injury to do anything with now! There's no point in staying. You can still catch them if you take the street outside down to—"
"No I can't," snaps John, fumbling to send a text on his phone, hands slippery with Sherlock's blood. "It's too late, I can't catch them. I wouldn't if I could, you stupid berk."
"There's no point to staying," Sherlock gasps pointlessly.
"I'm not staying because there's a point," John bellows suddenly. "I'm staying because you're my… you're my bloody husband and you've been shot in the damn knee!"
Sherlock is, at that, mercifully shocked into silence, but only for a moment. He sees a moment of bewilderment replace frustration on John's face, and he grins tightly through the pain.
"Particularly bloody, at the moment," he quips, panting a little. "Have you only just realized I'm your husband, John? Again? I really feel the surprise should have worn off by now. It's been six years." He takes a shuddering breath and tries to sit up. "This is why I never celebrate our anniversaries, out of concern for your heart. I never know what reminder of our state of bliss is going to startle you."
"You don't celebrate our anniversary because you can't be arsed to know what month it is," says John, replacing Sherlock's hands with his own on the wounded knee. "Stop moving."
"It's February."
"It's April. Stop moving."
"I know we were married in April, I meant what month it is now."
"So did I. Stop moving or so help me I will shoot you in the other knee."
"Oh," says Sherlock. He stops moving. There is a brief silence. "Happy anniversary."
John snorts. "Early by a week and a half, but thanks. Happy anniversary to you too."
"A week and a half," he repeats, his eyes squeezed shut. A pause. "We'll go somewhere."
"You've been shot in the knee, Sherlock. We're not going anywhere for a while. Points for the sentiment, though." He shifts his legs beneath him and Sherlock hisses at the changing pressure on his knee. "Sorry."
"You texted Dimmock?"
"Yeah, he's bringing an ambulance."
They are quiet for a few long minutes, John pressing Sherlock's injury, Sherlock focusing on breathing slowly. Suddenly, Sherlock grins a wide, wild grin.
"What is it now?" asks John. Sherlock turns the grin on his husband.
"I have a battle wound, John," he says, as though he's been given a fantastic present. John rolls his eyes.
"That wouldplease you, wouldn't it? You won't be so excited being stuck in a wheelchair for weeks. I don't trust you on crutches. You'll be a peach in physical therapy, too."
"No, John, I mean… I've got a battle wound." He smiles like a little boy on his birthday, like John's hands aren't red from holding Sherlock's blood in his leg. "Like you."
John blinks and sits back on his heels when he realizes what Sherlock is saying.
"Like me?" He blinks again, several times, too rapidly. "Sherlock…"
The sound of nearing ambulance sirens interrupts the thought and John sighs as gustily as though he'd been holding his breath since the sound of the gunshot.
"Make sure they leave a scar," says Sherlock urgently, grabbing John's wrist.
"You don't want a scar," John says. "Scars are hell. You don't want a scar."
Sherlock just looks at him as though John has misunderstood. "Yes, I do."
John stares, swallows thickly.
"You were shot," he says. "There will be a scar."
Sherlock nods, satisfied, as the police cars and the ambulance pull up outside. They hear shouting and the slamming of car doors.
"Happy anniversary," says John. Sherlock just grins.
The wound is not quite, as Sherlock guessed, glancing, but having come in from the side it is not nearly as bad as it could have been. John, who has seen too many gunshot wounds, is not willing to make any guesses at all. Upon first hearing the extent of the damage—joint intact, nerve damage minimal to nearly nothing—John excuses himself to the hospital restroom and vomits from relief.
When Sherlock comes home from the hospital, John goes upstairs and brings back down a cane. Sherlock frowns and, even though he is more at crutch stage at the moment, is about to reject it for sign of weakness when it strikes a memory; it is John's cane, of course, the utilitarian aluminum cane he was leaning on on when they first met. Sherlock smiles at that, and takes it.
Several months later, when John buys him a gentleman's cane of dark wood, Sherlock has gotten used to the weight and drama of a cane in his hand, learned its particular art of gesticulation, and accepts the more permanent version without complaint. He never leans heavily on the cane—never leans at all unless the weather is wrong, or at home when there is nobody but John to see. But its presence is straight and solid by him, until soon nobody really remembers what Sherlock looks like without the elegant instrument there swinging dramatically as he walks and balancing his profile as he stands.
There is physical therapy, of course, at which Sherlock is, of course, a peach. John does not permit him to complain. Walking is a luxury now, a privilege he should not necessarily have been allowed. Sherlock acknowledges this silently and does not bring up that it was technically the fault of John's recklessness, not his own, that he was shot at all. Not more than once or twice. Not directly. John does tend to do even more chores and fetching things than he did before, however, and with less complaint.
Mycroft, meanwhile, makes the two dead con men at the laundry disappear. Nobody at the Yard questions it, not even Anderson.