Chapter 14- Splintered Glass.

They were all on edge, and Sherlock was unnecessarily suspicious of everything that came close to either John or him, even going so far as to test random objects for substances that John had never even heard of.

Mr Watson, who could not return home, for none of them knew how to fully handle the procedure, was staying for a little while at the school, in the rooms that belonged to Gregory Lestrade, but were never used.

Mr Watson settled in well, and took a liking to Sherlock, talking fine so long as he ignored the fact that the boy shared a room with his own son. (John had sort of migrated there, a little frightened by Anderson and his various tasteless partners.)

The school wondered about the absence of the two teachers, and of the strangest two students, and were also baffled by the man that arrived back at the school with them, but their questions went unanswered.

The police wanted an explanation too, but did not get one, for Sherlock refused to talk until they got Moriarty's last move, and Mycroft had agreed with him.

Nothing happened for over a week, except Sherlock bunked all lessons, and John stayed with him.

And Mycroft didn't tell them off.

It took a week for Sherlock to sleep, and when he did, John finally noticed something.

Neither had looked at the evidence, they had a silent mutual agreement that doing so would make everything worse.

Sherlock had spent the first few days in a shock that he would not admit to, and the next few after questioning his own behaviour, and the abnormality of merely feeling happy for John, and not even close to sorry for himself.

Comforting Sherlock, John had taken all of the evidence, and put it in a cardboard box, without properly looking through any of it.

But once Sherlock was finally asleep, the urge to look through their work was all to much to ignore, though he had tried to almost obsessively.

After two hours, he finally gave in, gently moving the tall brunette that had both arms wrapped around him, and tip-toed over to the other side of the room.

With Sherlock, out of sight was out of mind, and John had placed the box in his schoolbag, away from Sherlock's prying eyes.

Luckily, he had remembered not to zip it up, and when he got the box out, the young boy had only to undo one button, extracting the container without waking his friend.

Within the box, all the evidence was placed neatly in chronological order, and it didn't take John very ling to sort through it all.

But because everything was upside-down, to be placed back as it was before, John finally realised that there was something both him and Sherlock had missed.

The note, with the colour picture. It had been typed, even though it looked like this had been done onto an old bit of mail. At the time, they had been analysing the picture, not that you don't print out something onto an old bit of mail.

But he had.

There was a postage stamp, and a date. But no address. Unusual, but it did make it all look less obvious than if there was some long piece of information.

It wouldn't be an address of any importance, anyway.

John held the stamp under their small lamp, and nearly cried out in shock.

That was the last thing he'd been expecting.

He recognised the stamp immediately, he had seen it many times. The small image was of a large building, with a logo over the top. The school logo. That stamp was on every letter home, every sports day, extra work file, detention letter.

The date beneath it was of that very day.

So, quite definitely deliberate.

But, it didn't have a time.

There was, however, a cartoon style, jagged bubble around the stamp, like usually shown in comics.

Panicking only slightly, John flipped the picture over and back several times, before his eyed caught something. In the picture, there was a clock.

With a time on it, obviously. Digital, with 'made in England' on the side, writing he was just able to see.

Made in England. That wasn't ordinary, England was hardly the country known for exporting electronics.

Made in England.

It finally clicked.

The time read 11: 49.

It was currently 11: 38.

In eleven minutes, the school would explode.

"Sherlock. Sherlock." John ran back over to him, shaking the other boy. Sherlock would know what to do. Sherlock always knew what to do.

Sherlock didn't move. He was fast asleep.

John placed the stamped note right under his nose, in case he woke up, then ran down to Mycroft and Greg's room, which was three corridors across.

There, he pounded frantically against the door, waking up half the hallway.

A groggy Mycroft opened the door, took one look at John, and snapped into business mode.

"What is it?"

"At 11:49, the whole school is going to explode." He wasn't going to dance around it. They needed to think of something, and think of it fast.

Mycroft just accepted this, without any questions as to how or what.

"Okay, where's Sherlock?"

"Wouldn't wake up."

Mycroft looked concerned but shook it off.

"I'll start getting people out. You, hit the nearest fire alarm, then get Sherlock."

John nodded in response, then took off back down the hallway, running as fast as he could.

The school fire alarms were fairly old, and had no 'Break Glass' panel. He merely had to jump, and hit the flat metal circle, which immediately started ringing.

A few floors up, he could faintly hear the next one go off; at least the whole system was in order.

Then, he ran back, hoping Sherlock was finally up.

When he got into their room, the bed was empty, and John was filled with a relief.

Relief that was short lived, as he realised that Sherlock wasn't in his rooms at all.

John was suddenly overcome with panic, now only for Sherlock.

He looked up and down the hallway, noticed that Sherlock was nowhere to be seen, then left the building with the crowds, hoping Sherlock had done similar.

Outside, he quickly found Mycroft and Greg, in matching grey pyjamas, something that normally would have amused both him and Sherlock.

"Where's Sherlock?" Both of the men looked at him curiously.

"We thought he was with you." Mycroft frowned in confusion.

"I went to check on him, but he wasn't in there. Nowhere in sight."

John turned away, eyes scanning the crowd.

"Fuck, shit, shit. Shit." He spun in a circle, still looking for his brunette companion.

"Sherlock, where are you?" Neither of the two guys next to him were commenting, and they looked almost as distressed as John felt.

"One minute." The eldest Holmes muttered, now joining in the search for his brother.

"JOHN!" He turned towards the voice he so easily recognised, noticing Sherlock running up to him, as fast as he could through the crowd.

All three of the others sighed in relief. Trust Sherlock to show up in the nick of time.

He had barely reached John before there was an loud bang, but not the explosion they had expected. Nope, and implosion of all of the buildings closest to the people. All except one.

The block of rooms, the one that included Sherlock's, exploded, causing Splintered bits of glass to fly, landing only centimetres from the teenagers at the front of the group. And they had still been pretty far back.

As that noise ended, that of the talk of students and teachers alike rose, and though the event had ended, they could still barely hear the people standing next to them.

Now Sherlock was safe, John looked around for the eldest Watson, until Sherlock lifted one pale hand to point at a large gaggle of teachers, one of which who had engaged Mr Watson in conversation.

He was alright. Everyone was alright.

"Well done, John." Sherlock was impressed and pleased he hadn't had to play hero.

John blushed slightly, but slapped Sherlock lightly on the back of the head.

"You scared me, you git.""I'm sorry."

"You better be." John tried to frown at him, but didn't quite manage. He was too giddy on the fact that everyone was ALIVE.

And that was a strong damn thing to be drunk on.

Sherlock leaned down, and pressed a kiss to John's lips. He, too, could not have been any higher.

John kissed him back, and not a single narrow-minded student commented.

Trust an explosion to put everything into perspective.

THE END

A/N- THE END! I actually finished this! Wow, this is also my longest finished fic. Quite proud of myself, actually. This was originally going to end in fluff 'n' smut, but hey-ho. Want some of that, check out my other Sherlock fics.

I might add an epilogue, at some later point, not sure. Right now I'm celebrating a solved sort of case. XD Please review, you have reached the end!