Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Greg sighed and frowned at the file he was trying to study, trying to rub the growing ache from his forehead with the fingers of his free hand. Unfortunately, a fresh wave of sharp words from the opposite end of the conference room made it clear that his efforts weren't likely to succeed. Sally Donovan and Phil Anderson had gone five rounds already on the trace evidence that had been pulled from the counterfeit bills, and they didn't show signs of coming to an amicable agreement anytime soon.

"I'm telling you, those results of yours can't possibly be right," Sally was stubbornly repeating. "I'm inclined to believe Holmes on this one. The theory you've cooked up doesn't make a lick of sense!"

"It would, if you just listen to my reasoning! You keep on interrupting! And where is Sherlock, anyway?"

"Last I heard, he was in the lab. At Barts."

"I have a lab, too," Phil whined. "I don't see why he can't just run his unnecessary, duplicate tests here. At the least it would make the chain-of-evidence paperwork cleaner!" He turned his head in Greg's direction, obviously angling for a nod of support from higher up, but Greg flipped a page and pretended he wasn't listening.

Sally snorted derisively. "Might have something to do with the times you threatened to have him arrested for tampering with your equipment..."

"I was in the right, there! You even said so, Sally!" He crossed his arms and sank into a mean slouch. "But, still."

When Greg's phone began to ring, it was a relief. He stood, replacing the useless file with its brethren on the table, and escaped to the hallway before answering.

"John," he sighed. "Tell me you've got something? I should have eaten supper hours ago."

"Not quite yet, I'm afraid," John's voice crackled and popped on the other end of the line. "Sherlock's still—"

"Still what? John? John?" Greg frowned down at his mobile, and after a beat of silence it rang again.

"Sorry," said John. "It's this phone. It keeps cutting . . . me, ever since . . . of a minor chemical spill Sunday. Haven't . . . chance to take it in, yet."

"Ri-ight. Where are you?"

"On my . . . back to Barts. Sher . . . me run out to get—"

"John, are you still there? Hello? God." Greg made it most of the way back to his office before the phone rang a third time, and when it connected he spoke quickly. "Look, how about I just meet you at the lab?"

"Sure. Sorry, Greg . . . have results for you soon."

Shaking his head, Greg unlocked his office just long enough to retrieve his coat and shut off the lights. On his way back out, he passed the cubicle where DS Patel was busy at his computer.

"Off out?" Ronny asked him, raising his head and tossing the longest bit of his glossy black hair from his face. "Have we pinned down the source of the cash, then?"

"Not yet, but we've gotta be close now. I'm running over to Barts; let the bickering children know, and keep an eye on 'em, would you?"

"Sure thing, sir." His dark eyes flashed with mirth; he was the youngest on their team by nearly five years, as well as least senior. "Any orders you want me to pass along?"

"Nah, they already know what they should be working on. If they're not at each other's throats, anyway. I'll be in touch."

Greg wasn't feeling all that alert—it had been a long and frustrating day—so he decided to forego the use of a fleet car and hop on the Tube instead. Cabs were all well and good, but something about riding the trains always seemed to comfort him, especially in the slightly less hectic hours of the evening. It was like connecting with a slice of the living, breathing city, coexisting briefly with widely diverse strangers who generally shared a common sense of quiet courtesy. Every time he emerged from an Underground station, bustling along in a crowd, Greg relished the sense of peace he'd gained; it was a small thing, but the air tasted just a little sweeter.

He was still hungry, and tired, but when he entered St Bartholomew's he had a spring in his step. Before he even reached the lifts, he recognised John's figure up ahead of him. The doctor was walking slowly with his sandy head bent low over his phone, and a few thick books tucked under one arm.

"Hey, John, wait up," Greg called, sidestepping a few oncoming nurses and orderlies and half-jogging to overtake him.

John looked up with raised eyebrows. "Hi. Why'd you text me asking for a progress report, when you were already on your way over here?"

"What?" Tapping the lift call button, Greg peered down at the received message his friend was showing him. "No, I sent you that ages ago. You just got that? I thought you were calling me, before, to respond to it!"

John glared at his damaged device. "Bloody junk. First thing tomorrow, I swear, I'm getting it replaced."

They rode down to the quiet hall adjacent to the morgue, tracing familiar steps to Sherlock's favourite lab in companionable silence. Greg glanced aside through the small window of the morgue office's door as they passed, on the off chance he might see Molly. Her schedule tended to be erratic, but tonight her thickset colleague's blond head was bent over the intake desk. Greg smothered the tiny flash of disappointment, instead hoping she was enjoying a pleasant night off. Perhaps she and Simon were on a date.

It'd be nice to have a date, he caught himself thinking, and rolled his eyes a little at his wistfulness. It had been just over two months since his fiancée had returned to the States, and it would be nearly two months more before she came back to London. Greg wasn't experiencing the desperate, uncertain longing he'd suffered the last time they'd been apart this long—having a clear, set date to look forward to and a ring on her finger helped immensely—but he couldn't deny that he was lonely without Anna.

John pushed through the lab door, saying, "I've brought your books, and your DI. Any luck?"

But the room was empty.

"Where's he gone?" Greg wondered aloud, while John simply huffed an annoyed breath through his nose and stepped over to drop the books beside the abandoned microscope.

"God only knows what that impatient prat's got up to." John tapped out a quick text message while shuffling through the various papers and notes left near the workstation.

"Could be nothing. Could be he's in the loo."

"No, look! Here it is, see? I knew it! He narrowed down the particulate origin while I was gone, after all, and didn't fucking bother waiting for me. Here's the address, right here!"

Greg accepted the slip of paper being brandished before his face. "Okay, calm down. It's no problem. We know where he's gone; he can't have left all that long ago..."

"Calm down? You know as well as I do the sort of shit Sherlock gets himself into when he goes off looking for bloody trouble on his own! Does Jeff Hope ring a damn bell?"

Pursing his lips, Greg nodded. "All right, fine. Let's go get a cab right now and see if we can't catch up."

On the ride across town, Greg did his best to calm his friend's temper, but John was in no mood to be soothed. Despite Greg's efforts, John was still actively seething when their cab pulled up to the darkened and downtrodden Southfields commercial strip indicated on Sherlock's hastily scrawled note.

"We've been over this, I don't even know how many times. It's like he has the impulse control of a three-year-old," John groused as he pulled out cash for the fare.

The mention of children suddenly brought to mind the joke Greg had shared with Ronny earlier, and he realised he hadn't thought to check in before leaving Barts. He reached into the breast pocket of his suit jacket—then the pockets of his coat—then, frowning deeply, he patted down his trousers before starting all over again and hoping for a different result.

"Damn," he breathed, looking down the road in the direction the cab had driven. Had he dropped it in the seat? Thinking back, he seemed to recall having been jostled on his way off the Tube, as well... "I've lost my sodding phone," he told John.

"Mm. That's too bad," John muttered absently, standing on tiptoes and cupping his hands to peer through a dark window.

"You're damn right it is," Greg hissed. He stepped up close behind the shorter man, instinctively blocking easy view of John's suspicious-looking movements. "Are you sure Sherlock's here? Doesn't look like anyone is. What are you hoping to accomplish with this, exactly?" Glancing around the shadows of the sleeping street, Greg suddenly felt exposed and out of his depth. He may have a warrant card in his wallet, but if he and John were caught out alone snooping around without a good reason, it might not do him very much good.

John grunted. "He's here. This is the place, I can feel it. C'mon, there's surely a way around back." Off he went around the corner, slinking quickly into the gloom with the grim determination of a soldier, and after a second's nervous hesitation Greg hurried along after him.

Between this building and the next behind it, there was even less light; only two wall fixtures were in working order along the entire alleyway. A tall pile of discarded shipping pallets hulked threateningly at one wall, and a little further down a large and battered-looking skip blocked the sight line to one of the closed shops' rear doors.

The quiet here felt oppressive, and Greg couldn't help but lower his voice to a whisper. "John. I'm not loving this."

John didn't respond directly to him; instead he began to muse aloud in a hushed and angry voice, pacing down the centre of the alley with his friend close at his heels. "He's got to have come this way. I just have to think like him, right? Okay. So I'm Sherlock. I'm a ridiculous, overconfident git who loves nothing more than to break into locked buildings and risk my neck while my faithful partner stays shut outside..."

"Clearly, you've got some resentment over past events to work through, here. But—"

"I've used my brilliant bloody head to figure out where those faked Euros were picked up, and what better way to follow that up than to go on in alone and search out the proof? Especially if there's any chance at all someone's waiting to break my bloody head while I'm at it!" John stepped up to one of the doors and tested it, to no avail.

Greg didn't have much to dispute John's tirade. He'd witnessed similar behaviour from his wayward consultant numerous times, over the years, and it had certainly made him feel angry and protective. Still, none of that quite measured up to the possessive fury of John as a boyfriend, apparently.

Before he could say anything more to try and pacify John, they heard a noise, the metallic squeal of a door being opened, perhaps a few metres farther on.

John perked up. "There he is," he growled softly, and drew breath to call out for Sherlock—the hair on the back of Greg's neck prickled and he reached forward to lay a warning hand on John's shoulder.

At that, thankfully, John seemed to regain his common sense somewhat. Blinking up at Greg's worried expression, he allowed Greg to pull them backwards a pace towards the nearest wall.

It wasn't Sherlock; or, if it was, he'd made some new friends. Big ones, judging by the size of the shadows they could see moving on the ground. The figures themselves were blocked, for the moment, by the bulk of the skip.

John tensed under Greg's hand, and a split second later the sound of his phone's text alert trilled. It seemed loud as a scream, echoing in the closely walled space. Wincing, John pulled it from his pocket and looked down; standing so near, Greg could see the message as John read it:

Meeting OF, will return to Barts in 45 min. I traced the particulate source but it's too risky to investigate on our own. Wait at the lab for me, please -SH

Greg got the sense that John was stunned—as for himself, he felt like the bottom had dropped out of his stomach—but there was no time to share a reaction over it. In the seconds that followed, their attention was necessarily focused on more pressing matters.

Four men—no, five. Two of them were big, meaty fighters, two of them quick and vicious, and the last one wielded a pipe or something that he swung in the half-dark. They came on fast, with wordless yells; they wasted no time on taunts or questions, but simply attacked the violators of their territory.

Greg cursed and stepped aside automatically, giving himself and John each room to move with the nearest wall angled a pace behind their backs. John dropped low and sprang in to clock the lead attacker with a surprisingly speedy uppercut—Greg managed to get in a solid punch or three, weaving and spinning to dodge the blows aimed at his face—for a handful of moments they each gave as good as they got, outnumbered and unprepared as they were. But then John took the swinging pipe to one arm before being thrown bodily into the pallets, and one of the big blokes grabbed Greg around the neck and held him in place for four punishing blows to the gut, and John's second cry of pain was unmistakable but Greg couldn't see him anymore, and when Greg landed hard on his knees, gasping, something came down forcefully on the back of his head—

Eventually, Greg became aware of pain.

The sensation was inconsistent, radiating in waves between head, shoulder and stomach, fading in and out along with strange voices and a loudly puttering engine. He registered motion, next: a bump and sway, vibration, cold metal against his face. The smell of petrol was intense and sickening. Greg coughed and tried to turn his mouth away from the floor; spittle smeared his cheek and he whimpered at the sharp ache in his shoulder.

"Shut it, you," a rough voice spoke from somewhere above him—and then he was stepped on, the bad shoulder grinding down into the vehicle's floor under a heavy boot until stars exploded behind his eyes and he was out again.

The second time Greg dragged himself back to consciousness, there was no movement, and no sound. Eyes closed, he took tentative stock of his situation: Upright, against a wall. Cold. No shoes, no coat or jacket. My hands, cuffed? No, tied—shoulder's fucked, Christ...

He coughed a little, and again it provoked a tiny, hoarse groan; an answering noise drew his eyes open, and he squinted into the darkness. There was a thin line of light somewhere off to his right, but he couldn't make out much of his surroundings.

"Greg?"

"John," he rasped. "Thank God. Are you okay?"

John's voice was thick and congested. "Had better days. Had worse, too." There was a strange, soft utterance that Greg interpreted as a rueful chuckle.

"Any idea where we are?"

"A cellar?" John guessed. "Can't say much more, from here."

"I can't even see you from here. Where are you?" The string of words was enough to set off another painful cough. Everything from his ribs to his hips was an indistinct mass of hurt.

"I think I can get closer to you," grunted John. "Only my hands are tied—ahh, piss—"

"John?"

"It's my arm," he panted. "I'm—okay. I'm fine." Soon his figure lurched into view; he staggered over and awkwardly used one shoulder against the wall to lever himself down beside Greg.

Greg let him have a moment to breathe heavily through his mouth, slowly clearing obvious pain from his features. What he could see of John's face was streaked with darkness; his nose had been bleeding, and possibly something on his scalp too.

"All right," Greg said softly. Now that they were close, they didn't have to strain to whisper across the room. "Broken, you think?"

"No. Wrong sort of pain. Don't think my nose is, either. The rest all feels like simple contusions. You?"

"Left shoulder hurts like hell. Dislocated, probably. They coshed me over the head at least once, and my guts feel a bit scrambled."

John twisted his head around and squinted at him. "Your breathing sounds okay from here. Any trouble?"

"Not so far. Just a little wheezy."

"What about your gut, then? I don't see any stain on your shirt; do you feel any wetness? Is it a sharp or dull pain? Where's the worst of it?"

Greg smirked a little at the sudden onslaught of doctorly questioning. "I've had worse, don't think I'm bleeding, pretty much dull all over, and none of it holds a damn candle to my shoulder."

"Good." He sighed. "I'm sorry, Greg."

"Yeah, all right."

"No, really. If I hadn't been—"

"John. Just leave it." Greg hadn't meant to sound so gruff; he swallowed and tried again, more gently. "What's done is done."

John turned to face forward, and they sat for a few minutes in silence, taking stock of their dismal situation.