Trains and Taxis

A/N: I had a bad dream so I wrote this to cheer me up. It's Johnlock and it's the slashiest thing I've written, don't like, don't read and all that jazz. Kindly beta'd by FezzesRCool25 and Dainton, cheers guys :) Slight angst warning at the start and fluff warning at the end, set post Reichenbach return - if that makes sense.

It was cruelly ironic, Sherlock thought, that barely 3 weeks after being accepted back into John's life the man in question should nearly be ripped out of existence entirely.

It was the 17:21 London Paddington train that John was only supposed to have been aboard for 24 minutes before it stopped back in London where he could have got into a taxi and made his way back to the flat. No doubt tired after a day handling a recovering Harry.

John was already 20 minutes and 11 seconds late when Sherlock got the phone call. Lestrade. Sherlock nearly ignored it and resumed counting and scraping on his violin but curiosity did, after all, kill the cat.

"What?" There was a long suffering sigh on the other end of the phone.

"You need to get yourself down to Bart's, John's train crashed." Looking back, Sherlock finds it remarkable that Lestrade would ever be able to say something that would cause something horribly icy to smother his insides. "Sherlock?" His thoughts were racing past too quickly for him to seize one and voice it. At some point the violin bow slipped from his hand and clattered to the floor. "He's alright, Sherlock. I just thought you'd want to know."

"Of course I'd want to know." Sherlock snapped, it had only been 3 weeks since his return and he was sick to the stomach of people questioning his motives, trying to protect John from him.

When, in reality, if John was going to continue to pull stunts like this then it was Sherlock who needed to be protected from John.

It took less than 5 seconds for Sherlock to pull on his coat and scarf and be thundering down the stairs, deaf to Mrs Hudson's cries of protest.

:||||||||:

"I told you get a taxi!" Sherlock snarled as he reached the foot of John's bed. The nurse that had been tailing him through the ward shared a worried glance with the doctor, who was filling in a chart for John, before turning back the way they came.

"Excuse me sir, numerous visitors are not allowed at this time." The doctor shook his head and Sherlock glared at him before – numerous? Only then did he spot Lestrade, drinking cheap coffee in the bedside chair. Fury bubbled and melted the ice.

"Then he can leave!"

"Sherlock!" John warned, obviously trying to calm him down but failing miserably. He didn't appear to be too badly damaged: a darkening bruise in the space between his temple and his left eye (slight concussion maybe?), a small cut on his jaw and the return of his limp by the looks of the way he was holding his leg.

"You could have died." Sherlock accused and watched the edges of John's lips quirk up a little. This wasn't funny, why did John find this funny?

"That's a little bit rich coming from you." Lestrade scoffed and Sherlock visibly bristled. The doctor – no, stupid! – trainee doctor (young, overly smart dress, two bottles of hand sanitizer, what looked like, no what was, legible hand writing) was watching the exchanges like a tennis match and looked away, blushing, when Sherlock caught him staring.

"Why are you still here?" Sherlock turned to Lestrade and he gaped. John let out a sigh.

"Because I'm a Detective Inspector. I hear about these things and I knew John was on the train so I came up to check he was alright."

"How?"

He watched Lestrade and John share an uneasy look before the latter sighed again.

"Because he told me you were going to be alone and dangerous for a few hours while he went to visit Harry. And he told me he was going on the train because of the ridiculous taxi prices." Sherlock nearly growled; he'd had this discussion with John before he left. Taxi prices were hardly a problem when one had a brother who was the British government.

"Mycroft-"

"Sherlock, I refuse to have your brother pay for a taxi for me to go and see my sister when he's already paying the costs for her rehab!" John seemed shocked at his own outburst and gave the trainee doctor an apologetic glance.

"I didn't think you-"

"Yes, I know about that."

A silence fell on the ward, John watching Sherlock carefully, Lestrade pulling a face that signified the start of a headache and glaring at Sherlock glaring at everyone.

"Right! Just give me a second to run this past Dr Jones and then you should be free to go!" The trainee chirped and sped off. He wasn't going to last very long if he couldn't handle a civilised disagreement between three professionals.

:||||||||:

"If I hadn't of been on that train a lot more people would have been seriously injured." John reminded him quietly that night over a cup of tea and a Chinese take-away. His lips quirked up at the sides again when Sherlock merely huffed.

:||||||||:

If John hadn't noticed him at least once by now then Sherlock felt he should be concerned for both their safeties.

He'd been . . . following him. Not everywhere, he never actually went into the surgery where John still did his bit of locum work still (and still tiptoed around Sarah like she was going to fire him, or ask him on another date, any second) and he wasn't exactly allowed back into Scotland Yard yet (he had been, of course) so John couldn't be followed in there. But overall, Sherlock knew he'd done a brilliant job of ensuring John didn't do anything dangerous, or stupid or set foot anywhere near a train.

There had been a few near misses where Sherlock was almost too late ducking out of sight and John must have seen his coat flapping around a corner. When this happened John would stare bemusedly at the spot for a few seconds before limping off to his destination. Then there was the time when Sherlock didn't manage to arrive back at the flat before John so had to deal with the plethora of demands as to his whereabouts until he had finally snapped: "For God's sake John, I haven't been out chasing Moriarty!" and John had sulked in his room for the rest of the night and refused to talk to him.

Funny, Lestrade hadn't thrown a case his way since they had argued at the hospital but Sherlock was far from bored, trailing about London after John, it was sort of . . . exhilarating.

Now, Sherlock was in full stealth mode, predicting which aisles John would be avoiding so he could monitor his movements in the local Sainsbury's. A few people had given him an odd look when he'd sprinted the length of the bakery aisle before John turned the corner and he suspected that a shop assistant had trained the CCTV cameras on him for safety precautions. Either that or Mycroft had cottoned on to what he's been doing and Sherlock hoped that wasn't the case, he doubted his brother would be very understanding.

And, oh dammit, John was heading down this aisle now! Sherlock only had one option if he wanted to keep his cover. Ignoring the startled yelp of the woman next to him, stupid woman, shrieking like that was sure to get John's attention, he rolled under a display stand, stacked with different (and equally as unappetising) fruits and vegetables.

He resisted the immediate urge to sneeze. Cleaners here obviously only see to the visible areas and Sherlock felt lucky that rats favour meat over fruit and veg. The annoying, stupid woman wheeled her trolley away in disgust and Sherlock lay there and listened as John's footsteps and the clack of his cane drew closer. John stopped at the display stand and if Sherlock had wanted, he could have reached out and grabbed his ankle. He jumped when John called out his name.

"Sherlock, get out from under there." There was a pause in which Sherlock considered staying where he was and being silent so John would think he'd made a mistake, but then stupid people would think John was mad and Sherlock wasn't having that. With a strange amount of ease, he kicked himself out from under the display and accepted the hand John offered. Sherlock nearly smiled at the wide-eyed stares from the passing shoppers as the child they expected to crawl out from under the stand was actually a 6 foot man with a long, dusty coat and rotten lettuce in his hair. John looked like he was trying not to laugh and hastily arranged his features into a disapproving look. "What are you doing here?"

"Shopping." Sherlock replied in his bored voice and this time John couldn't keep the amusement from his face.

"Really? What part of shopping requires you to do a kamikaze roll underneath the fruit and veg display?" Sherlock chose to examine the potatoes instead of looking John in the eye. "You've been following me."

"Excellent analysis, John." Sherlock rather suspected the irony was wasted.

"Not just today though, you've been stalking me around London since we got back from the hospital!"

"Stalking is a very negative word, Jo-"

"-Stalking is exactly the right word to use. May I ask why?" John was clenching and unclenching his hand again.

Sherlock decided he could lie, and John would realise and not talk to him for the rest of the night which he didn't want, he could crawl back under the display and then John would get embarrassed and leave and probably not talk to him for the rest of the night, which he didn't want, or he could tell him the truth and then John could react in such a variety of different ways, including going home and not talking to him for the rest of the night, it was impossible to predict what he'd do which Sherlock did not like. At all.

"You could have died." Sherlock blurted out and then scolded himself mentally. That was not amongst his eloquent and carefully selected choice replies. The bruising had gone down on his face and John had told him cheerfully this morning that the cut on his jaw wasn't going to scar. Sherlock had resisted the urge to tell him it wouldn't matter, he'd still see it. "I was just making sure you weren't doing anything stupid." John actually chuckled at that.

"You followed me around for three days to make sure I didn't get on a train?" Sherlock wasn't about to mention that he'd followed John around for practically 3 years to make sure he didn't leave so he just jerked his head in a nod. "Oh my God, you idiot."

When Sherlock glanced up John was smiling and he could have sworn he wasn't that close before. Unexpectedly - see this was what happened when you told the truth - John rocked up onto the balls of his feet and planted a second long kiss on Sherlock's lips. Sherlock froze, panicked, cursed his hard drive a total of four times and vaguely appreciated the feeling before stepping back with a gasp, suddenly in need of oxygen. John apparently went through a similar process.

"God! Sorry, Sherlock I didn't think! I didn't-" Sherlock watched John back away and, with a jolt, realised that if he didn't do something his blogger was probably going to go row with the chip and pin machine, go back to the flat and not talk to him for the rest of the evening. Which he didn't want. At all. His hand found John's wrist and gripped it tight. He was able to pull him back in slowly.

"Everyone's watching, John." Sherlock flicked his gaze over to a woman who was gawking at them both avidly, a bag of apples forgotten in her hands. This was rather scary, Sherlock mused amongst the other, significantly less calm thoughts. In fact, this was about 10 times as scary as a dose of H.O.U.N.D gas. He seemed to be shaking just as much.

"I know. God I'm so sorry, we don't have to talk about this, just-"

"The pet food aisle will be empty though."

For the first time, Sherlock observes that not only daring criminal chases have the ability to cure a psychosomatic limp.