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“Do you mind if I get that?”
“Oh please. You’ve only got the rest of your life.”
John could barely stay focused as too many thoughts and feelings were going through his head. How the hell was Sherlock going to get them out of this one? They had snipers on them from all angles, Sherlock was pointing his gun at the bloody bomb that was strapped to John not too long ago, and Moriarty was taking a fucking phone call. If they made it out of this without any injuries it would be a miracle.
Moriarty answered his phone, but Sherlock made eye contact with John as he did. He glanced toward the pool, and started counting down from three with his other hand… he wanted to set off the bomb. When he was done counting down, Sherlock would give John a head start to the pool as a distraction (he’d also throw up the jacket), and Sherlock would shoot the bomb. John steeled himself and silently got into a running position on the floor.
Three…
Two…
One…
John immediately ran between Sherlock and Moriarty, threw the jacket above them, and jumped into the pool. The moment was like slow motion as he saw Sherlock’s face in a stoic manner, heard the snipers miss him and hit the concrete of the floor, and soon felt water surround him. The last thing he heard before the force of the explosion pushed him into the water was a gunshot, and Moriarty’s final words,
“Fuck!”
The soldier had been pushed down several feet into the water and tried to stay down for as long as possible. He practically got pushed to the other side of the pool from the waves being shifted with severe force. The thing that brought him up a bit too early was Sherlock; he wasn’t conscious or moving. John swam to Sherlock’s limp form as fast as he could with little air, and started pulling him to land. They were able to breach the surface, but Sherlock was still not awake. John struggled to keep the detective above water level as he tried to swim to the other side of the pool.
John managed to pull Sherlock up the only ladder that survived the explosion, and upon further inspection, Sherlock was in pretty bad shape. His hair was singed, one of his ears were bleeding, and he had second degree burns on his back. Because of the burns, John tried to be as gentle as possible when placing Sherlock on the ground. He still wasn’t breathing or conscious. John acted as quickly as he could and decided CPR would be better to start with. If he started trying to get them out of the building, he’d lose valuable time to save Sherlock.
He started as you would with a drowning victim: tilting Sherlock’s head to the side for the water to come out of his lungs. A good amount did, but it didn’t seem to be enough. John moved Sherlock’s head back and slightly up where he started to breathe air into the detective’s lungs. After that, he started pushing down on Sherlock’s chest continually and repeated the cycle for three rounds until he started hearing something above him.
It had just registered that the building was on fire… and there was a beam right above them about to fall. Sherlock still wasn’t conscious!
“You had better wake up you git!” John yelled at him.
More sounds of the building shifting alerted John that it was close to collapsing. He started to cough on the smoke as he picked Sherlock up, and the beam came crashing down, however he felt himself be pushed into the wall by a larger body. When the smoke cleared, he saw Sherlock leaning against him in a protective matter and vomiting water.
“You absolute bastard!” John yelled. “How long have you been awake!?”
“Thirty seconds…” Sherlock wheezed.
The building looked like it was about to be crashing down on them and they only had a bit of a tunnel through the debris to get out of the main swimming area. John grabbed Sherlock tight around the waist and said,
“The building is coming down, we have to go!”
They started moving as a unit through the building. They had to dodge other parts of the building that were falling down, random spouts of fire that would shoot at them, Sherlock even, despite the state he was in, managed to save them from a large cement wall that almost fell on them. John’s lungs felt like they were filled with stones, he struggled to keep Sherlock’s back covered, and was sure his shoes were getting melted to the floor.
It felt like an eternity before they made it outside into the cooling night air. Someone must have called 999 already because there were already emergency crews around the building. John called over for an ambulance and some paramedics managed to take Sherlock out of his arms to transfer him to a stretcher.
John was put in a shock blanket and was asked questions by the police (namely Lestrade, lord knew why he got called in). He managed to be able to ride with Sherlock in the ambulance, but it took Sherlock threatening to reveal which driver the female paramedic was sleeping with and on what days of the week. On the ride over, the paramedics cut Sherlock’s clothes off, and diagnosed that he had second degree burns on his back irritated by the chlorine in the pool, but nothing else. John was thankful that Sherlock hadn’t been hurt any more than that, seeing him on bedrest for weeks would be a pain to both of them.
It seemed that John had dozed off though because it was suddenly ten minutes later in the ambulance and Sherlock’s hand grabbed onto his own hand. It was… strange… in a nice way. It almost brought back feelings he had the first night they had dinner together, but he was shut down by Sherlock when asking about relationships. John had shoved those feelings into a box in his mind since then, yet they were starting to seep out from that single gesture of holding his hand.
He looked at Sherlock, and the detective’s expression was pained yet… scared. He didn’t seem to think John would wake up as he schooled his features immediately and tried to pull his hand away. John just held on tighter, and smiled weakly at his friend as a way to say that it was okay.
It would all be okay.