Title: The Great Holmes Swap Summary: Anthea finally agrees to date John if he can prove that living with Sherlock is much harder than coping with Mycroft, but when they switch lives, chaos, hilarity and true love ensues. Chapter 5.
Pairings: Sherlock/John, Mycroft/Anthea,
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Humour/Romance
Warnings: Slash, domestic scenes and too much George Clooney.
AN: Thank you to sherlock2040 for the original concept and adamsgirl42 for being a great beta.
Whitehall, the hallowed corridors of power, where the government was seamless run by an army of civil-servants. At the heart of this magnificent building was the Blue Room, a palatial conference arena that once played host to Winston Churchill's war cabinet and the peace talks which led to the Good Friday Agreement.
If John was overawed by Mycroft's country house, entering Whitehall produced a whole new level of amazement that he had never experience before. The sumptuous oak panelling coupled with the lush vermillion carpet made John feel like he had stepped back to a time when Britain controlled an Empire upon which the sun never set.
Mycroft, on the other hand, looked completely composed despite the deepening red marks on his nose and forehead. His aristocratic comportment prevented anyone from making eye contact with his various wounds.
The parking regulation meeting had not yet begun but the personnel were already helping themselves to wine and soft drinks that had been laid out on a splendid mahogany conference table in the Blue Room. They looked like typical bureaucrats: overweight middle aged men in Spencer Hart suits and over polished shoes. The conversation was jovial but dull and John, who had never worked in an office, was silently appalled by the banal jokes being told in the crowd.
When Mycroft entered the room, his presence was immediately felt by the gathered bureaucrats. Some looked slightly panicked, whilst others put on brave face and welcomed the most dangerous man they would ever meet with open arms.
John felt rather sorry for the soft, overindulged paper-pushers who had to spend every working hour directly under the nose of Mycroft Holmes. The man probably ate their self-esteems for breakfast and then viciously crunched through their hopes and dreams for lunch.
Mycroft was smiling calmly at a perspiring office worker who had decided to attempt a conversation with the shadow ruler of Britain. He was a fat, balding specimen who had more ambition than was particularly healthy for a man of his position. John tried to look like he actually belonged amongst the opulent decor and smartly dressed civil servants but his oatmeal jumper and denim jeans simply looked out of place in this formal atmosphere.
The meeting began not long after John's awkward introduction to several members of the civil service. They had smiled politely but didn't try to hide the looks of curiosity and disdain at Mycroft's new PA. He was very much relieved when the attention in the room shifted to the large projector.
Parking regulations was probably the most boring subject John had ever had the misfortune of being lectured on. After ten minutes of mind numbing figures, he suddenly felt a suicidal urge to re-enlist and go on another tour of Afghanistan. At least in the middle of the desert surrounded by hostile forces there were no parking regulations. John found himself daydreaming of combat operations whilst the obese man giving the presentation whittled on about judicial allocation of spaces.
As if by magic or perhaps pure good fortune, the fire alarm went off like an air raid siren right in the middle of a particular boring discussion over permits. John sprung to his feet with military swiftness and automatically assessed the nearest exits. The fat, indolent bureaucrats simply sat looking like stunned sheep waiting for someone to give instructions.
John wondered briefly if he should just let natural selection take its course but then he decided that letting a room full of people burn was somewhat amoral.
"Everybody to the nearest fire escape," snapped John,
"It's must be a drill," said one rotund man, "we get them -,"
Before he could finish the sentence the antique windows came crashing in a thunderous shower of glittering shard.
Two hundred year old sash windows disintegrated like fragile ice sculptures as a team of black clad special agents abseiled into the room. By the way they moved, John could tell they were servicemen – possibly SAS or even Special Branch. Four of them carried semi-automatic pistols of the type commonly issued to military personnel on Black Ops. The other two held hand pistols very similar to the one that John had left behind in 221B.
Unarmed and fully exposed to their line of fire, John hastily raised his arms in the universal gesture for surrender. Around him a pandemonium of confusion and fear erupted through the conference room. Glasses of red wine and champagne went flying in all directions as the civil servants tried to hide under the table or run to the nearest exit.
The special ops team merely watched and waited as the panicked bureaucrats tried in vain to wrestle open the locked doors. They stood in formation but did not engage their weapons because they really didn't need ammunition to control this particular flock of sheep.
"What do you want?" John asked calmly.
Although special ops never wore insignia on their uniforms, John knew that smashing through the windows of Whitehall was not a routine manoeuvre for any of Her Majesty's Special Services. These men were not friendly servants of the government, they had another agenda altogether.
In the distance the alarm continued to whine but John understood that back-up wasn't going to arrive any time soon.
"We want everyone to calm down," replied their spokes person. He was a tall Caucasian male with startling blue eyes and a fashionable smattering of stubble around his chin. "You will not be hurt if you obey our instructions."
John glanced around the room and spotted Mycroft still sitting nonchalantly in his chair, looking for all the world as if nothing had happened. He wasn't sure whether to admire the man's bravery or curse his arrogance.
"What do you want?" repeated John steadily. The other people in the room had fallen silent as they huddled in tearful groups under the table and against the doors.
"We want your full co-operation," demanded the spokesman smoothly. "We do not want to hurt anyone."
"Why are you here?" whimpered a particularly brave man from under the table.
"We have some demands we would like to make to Her Majesty's Security Services,"
"Oh dear god, we're being held hostage," cried a hysterical man, who was hiding very unsuccessfully behind a lampshade.
John refrained from rolling his eyes at the sheer stupidity of everyone in the room. He needed a plan and none of the soft, fat laden office workers were going to be of any help. Falling back on his military training, John used his peripheral vision to assess the possible exit routes from the room. The windows were an option but the room was seven floors up and he had no idea if there was a feasible ledge wrapping around the building for them to escape. The doors were locked but not barred so with the right amount of leverage and his credit card, John could open them. Otherwise, there was the gigantic fireplace, which would have a correspondingly big chimney.
Presently he turned his attention back to the team of armed men, who were still patiently waiting for their hostages to quietly surrender. Six heavily armed, highly trained ex-servicemen were more than a match for John in his current precarious state. On the bright side, they did not seem intent on doing anything more than displaying their weapons for the time being. By the way these men casually handled their guns, John could tell they had years of experience in combat and they would be excellent marksmen if the need arose.
Mycroft was still casually browsing through the new parking regulations handbook and steadfastly ignoring the group of dangerous criminals who had just come crashing through the window. Perhaps he was waiting for MI5 to come to the rescue but from the audacity of the hostage takers' entrance, John believed the alarm system had been hijacked and no-one knew of their predicament.
One slightly built man dropped a portable platform crammed with a high-tech array of communications equipment on the table. The quivering bureaucrats shuffled hastily away as if the platform contained high grade explosives. John eyed the computer interface in plain view from where he was standing. These particular criminals didn't feel the need to disguise their faces or their equipment which did not bode well for anyone's chances of survival.
"Why us?" demanded John quietly.
The tall spokesman merely smiled back at him with cold blue eyes.
"Why not?" he asked casually, "you are just as good anyone else,"
"Who are you working for?" asked John calmly.
"No-one that you would know," replied the other man cryptically.
"How long are you intending to hold us for?"
"However long it takes to get the government to agree to our terms, but I assure you things would go much faster if Lord Salisbury co-operates."
John looked about the room trying to identify the mysterious Lord Salisbury. He had not been introduced to all the people in the room and he was now greatly regretting the lack of intelligence. He spotted one particularly terrified man wedged uncomfortably under a plush blue sofa so that only his broad backside was visible. From the way he was wriggling around like a hapless maggot, John was savagely delighted that the man's girth had trapped him beneath the ostentatious piece of furniture.
Could this dull, brainless specimen of humanity be Lord Salisbury? Thought John, he certainly fits the mould – but then again so do most of the people in this room.
His first priority was to get to Lord Salisbury before the crack team of ex-Black Ops could. Unfortunately for John, they apparently knew who Lord Salisbury was.
"Look," said John hoping he could stall for some time, "you obviously have a plan and we are in no position to oppose you, so there's no need to hurt any of us. Why don't you just contact the government and start negotiations straight away?"
The spokesman looked down at John with curiosity but his mild features and fluffy jumper were the hallmarks of a harmless man. After a minute of intense scrutiny, the black clad criminal turned away, completely losing interest in the short man with prematurely greying hair.
"Lord Salisbury," he said after a moment of silence, "we hope that you will co-operate."
To John's utter astonishment Mycroft Holmes looked up disdainfully from the parking regulations handbook and smiled sarcastically back at their captor.
Lord Salisbury? Thought John, well I should have guess by the size of his house – but that would make Sherlock some sort of minor nobility...
"You certainly have my attention, Mr ..."
"Bond," replied the villain, "James Bond."
Mycroft's smile only widened as he made a great show of scrutinising the spokesman from head to toe. John knew that Mycroft has already deduced a thousand useful facts from their hostage-taker before the man had even shaken the broken glass out of his hair.
"Well, Mr Bond, what would you like to negotiate?" replied Mycroft calmly.
Several overweight members of the meeting peered out from their respective hiding places with a looks of fear and awe.
"Your guaranteed support for the upcoming Pharmaceutical Bill for starters," replied the tall Caucasian man.
"You have gone to a lot of trouble for one lobbyist, Mr Bond," said Mycroft with a hint of amusement, "all you had to do was arrange a meeting through my PA."
John's heart leapt to his throat when the spokesman lifted his semi-automatic pistol and pulled off the safety latch with a thunderous clap.
"I am a believer in aggressive negotiations," he replied coldly.
Mycroft Holmes stared impassively down the barrel of the military issue weapon, his expression unchanged. John grudgingly felt his respect for Mycroft grow by several degrees. He had experience the terror of being held at gun point many times and he had never truly conquered that chilling fear.
"I can see that," said Mycroft with a lavish dose of irony colouring his tone, "but there is no need to frighten the general public over such a trivial matter. I suggest we adjourn to the adjacent room and discuss your terms in more comfortable surroundings: the Red Room, perhaps? It is completely sound proof. I'm sure you've been professional enough to secure every room in this suite?"
Several members of the team looked apprehensive at Mycroft's suggestion. The young, lithe man at the communications hub started typing something into his expensive computer. From John's vantage point, he could just make out the commands going into the problem. The criminals appeared to running some sort of signal jamming program and their resident computer whizz had just reinstated several CCTV cameras inside the room. However from the image displayed on the screen, John could tell that a feedback loop of images recorded during the meeting were being fed back into the camera. As far as security were aware, the Blue Room was still occupied by doe eyed civil servants wasting public money on unnecessary bureaucracy.
The spokesman and perhaps leader stared at Mycroft coldly for several seconds before making a unilateral decision.
"Very well, open the doors to the Red Room."
For a split second, another man: short, stocky and badly shaven, looked as if he was about to argue but one look from his commander made him stay silent.
"Oh," added Mycroft, "Bring my PA along too."
He gestured absently in John's direction as if he was nothing more than a glass of wine Mycroft wanted to finish.
The short stocky man grabbed John's arm and manhandled him to the nearest set of doors. Several terrified civil servants scattered in his wake. Mycroft followed calmly behind nonchalantly swinging his umbrella.
Three men came into the room with them: the ring leader with piercing blue eyes, his stocky second-in-command and a third man who looked terribly young but just as frightening.
John was unceremoniously dumped in a chair, whilst Mycroft gracefully sat down in another. Two kidnappers stood behind them menacingly, whilst their leader rounded on Mycroft with his automatic pistol.
"Now we are alone, Lord Salisbury, here are the demands."
He produced a thin sheet of paper with an extensive list, which John could not quite make out. Mycroft studiously read through the document and then deliberately scrunched up the paper into a ball.
"This is a ridiculous, it cannot be done," he said haughtily.
To John's horror, the ringleader raised his gun and pointed straight at Mycroft's forehead. The safety latch had been removed and the criminal's finger was curled tightly around the trigger. A tiny amount of pressure would result in Mycroft's brains being splattered all over the expensive upholstery.
In the face of imminent death, Mycroft Holmes merely laughed languidly as if negotiating at gun point was the most mundane part of his job.
Christ, that man has no sense of self-preservation, thought John desperately. Even Sherlock had the good sense to rethink his attitude when faced with the prospect of having his brains blow out by a sniper. There was only one way forwards: if Mycroft refused to save himself, John would have to do it for him.
He eyed the fireplace, the windows and doors looking for a feasible exit. As he glanced towards the ceiling, he saw a ventilation shaft fitted into the Styrofoam ceiling tiles. The sterile white tiles clashed horribly with the dark oak panelling but their presence indicated that an extensive ventilation system had been installed. If they could enter the ducts, there was a good chance they would be able to crawl into an adjacent room.
However before they could conduct this daring escape, John had to take down three heavily armed ex-special agents with his bare hands. Thankfully he at least had the vague semblance of a plan.
This almost makes me miss the Taliban, he thought cynically, but as Harry always said "you only die once".
John started to hyperventilate and tremble like a man on the edge of having a panic attack. At first the two lackeys simply ignored him, engross by the steadily rising tension in the room. However when John gasped weakly and collapsed onto the floor clutching his chest, he caught the attention of the whole room.
"Boss," drawled the short stocky man, "I think this one's having a heart attack."
The adrenaline rush was enough to make John perspire convincingly and years of watching patients struggling with angina allowed John to pull off all the other symptoms.
Their leader's attention was still fixated on Mycroft Holmes and the screwed up ball of paper he held tightly in one hand.
"We'll deal with him," snapped the painfully young man.
He approached John's prone body and made the last mistake of his life.
John's arms shot out and grabbed the semi-automatic pistol with both hands. In a split second he pulled the assailant down on top of his own body to give him cover and with one swift movement detached the gun from its sling hanging around the man's neck. The element of surprise was enough to stun his opponent for a few precious seconds. By the time the young man's reflexes kick it in it was already too late. John had lined up the barrel of the gun squashed between them and he fired. A sicken burst of thunderous shots cracked through the air. The dull wet splashing noises told him that the bullets had penetrated through the body lying above him. A muffled scream from beyond John's vision signalled that he had also hit the second man, who had predictably rushed to his comrade's defence.
John flipped the corpse off his body and covered his vulnerable position with another burst of gun fire. He had no time to look over at Mycroft as he jumped to his feet with lightening speed and rolled behind a couch to dodge the gun fire from the injured man. The ornate couch took a vicious pounding as his stocky opponent emptied an entire round of ammunition into the plush cushions. Pieces of fabric and splintered wood exploded from the furniture, covering John with a fine layer of debris.
He retaliated by slotting his gun underneath the couch and firing at the other man's feet. A vicious bloodied howl confirmed he had mortally wounded the enemy and pushing the advantage like he had learned in Helmand, John broke cover to finish the second man off. It was all over in under a minute: two bleeding corpses and a thousand bullet holes littered the room.
His risky strategy had paid off but unfortunately it meant that he had to leave Mycroft Holmes to mercy of the ringleader. To John's immense relief: the leader, unwilling to risk taking his eyes off Mycroft and equally unwilling to kill the man, had not joined in the gunfight. Instead, he had dragged Mycroft from his chair at gun point and was now holding a hand gun to his temple.
"Move and I will shoot him," snarled the only remain criminal in the room.
John had planned for this development but his opponent was a veteran of aggressive negotiations. He had carefully positioned himself so that John could not possibly take him out with a well aimed bullet from any angle.
"Okay," replied John, who had ducked back behind the splintered couch, "you win, don't hurt him."
The enemy didn't reply but John could hear his laboured breathing as they reached an impasse.
"Drop your weapons, and come out with your hands up, do it now or I will kill him,"
"No you won't," said John calmly, although his heart was pounding in his throat. "You need him too much."
"You don't want to call my bluff," snarled the other man, "don't underestimate the things that I will do to survive."
John cradled the semi-automatic weapon against his chest and leaned his side against the bullet ridden couch. He really didn't want to find out what this man would do when cornered and right now his opponent sounded desperate. This wasn't the situation he had hoped for but then no plan ever survived the battle.
"Alright," he conceded, "I'm going to slide my gun towards you,"
"Do it now" shouted the other man.
John reluctantly slid the weapon under the couch and watched it career into the open, stopping just a few metres short of Mycroft's over polished black shoes. He was now facing a potentially unstable criminal empty handed.
"Come out with your hands up," demanded his enemy.
John had very little choice in the matter but moving towards Mycroft meant getting closer to the discarded gun, so he obediently stepped out from behind the couch.
What happened next would amaze and amuse John for weeks to come, much to Sherlock's dismay.
He knew instantly from the look in his opponent's eyes that John Hamish Watson was a dead man. He was going to die ridden with bullet holes, slumped against the splintered remnants of a red couch. In that moment of realisation, John mentally prepared himself for inevitably death. He thought lovingly of the people he would leave behind: Sherlock, Harry, Mrs Hudson, Sarah, and he thought longingly of all the things that he had never been able to do: sky dive, cruise the Caribbean, make up with Harry.
In that split second of reconciliation with death, John felt only a calm acceptance of the end to his life. As he breathed out, he looked back into the face of his murderer and smiled.
As if on cue, Mycroft Holmes, the indolent lazy bureaucrat, sprang into action. Before John's bewildered eyes he swung the stupid umbrella he insisted on carrying straight into the assailant's face. The umbrella would not have done any damage had it merely been an umbrella but this particularly specimen belonged to Mycroft Holmes. With a smooth twist of the ebony handle, a wickedly sharp blade sprung out from the metal tip and impaled their kidnapper right through the skull with a resounding crunch.
The corpse instantly dropped to the floor and his gun clattered harmlessly onto the gun beside Mycroft's polished shoes. A single trickle of blood oozed out from the dead man's brain and dripped unceremoniously onto the plush cream carpet.
John's gormless expression must have been particularly impressive because Mycroft casually picked up his phone and snapped a picture of John gaping like a beached whale.
"You killed him," whimpered John.
"The licence to kill is just one of the perks of my job," replied Mycroft genially.
"You killed him with your brolly," reiterated John in a strangled tone.
"No," replied Mycroft studiously, "I killed him with my umbrella."
John stared at him silently for nearly a minute and then burst into the hysterical laughter. Despite the carnage of the room and the three corpses littering the floor, John couldn't stop the uncontrollable mirth escaping. He fell over sideways with pure glee and collapsed onto floor gasping for breath.
"Dr Watson," continued Mycroft sternly, "kindly refrain from drooling on the carpet,"
"Your – brolly!" choked John between fits of laughter,
"I assume you have an escape plan,"
John wiped the tears from his eyes and clambered back to his feet.
"Oh God, where can I get one of those?"
"It's classified," said Mycroft with a dark smile that caused John to sober up immediately. His previous mirth suddenly turned to ice cold dread.
Mycroft's creepy demeanour seemed positively menacing in the light of what had just happened. The professional way in which he despatched the last man was decidedly worrying. The fact that a crack team of rouge special agents went to all this trouble to threaten Mycroft, or rather Lord Salisbury, was even more worrying.
"Er – I think we should try to escape using the vents in the ceiling," muttered John. He felt an icy shiver slither its way down his neck as he looked into Mycroft's unwavering reptilian gaze.
Mycroft's ominous smile never faltered as he looked back patiently at John.
"I think we should start stacking chairs then?" suggest Mycroft.
John nodded silently and made a strong mental note never to get too close Mycroft's umbrella.
It took three stacked chairs and several bullet ridden cushions from the sofa for John to reach the opening of the ventilation shaft. Although, Mycroft was the taller of the two, John decided this was not the right time to suggest that Mycroft should perform some legwork. Instead he perched precariously on the cushions and pushed open the cast iron grid separating them from freedom.
John hauled himself diagonally through the square opening and clambered into the metal shaft. The tunnel was wide enough for a grown man to crawl about on hands and knees but it was stiflingly hot and terribly claustrophobic. John had been stuck in worse places but he doubted Mycroft Holmes would be able to stomach this until he remember just how proficiently the last rouge special agent had been dispatched by a flick of Mycroft's wrists.
John turned back to call out to Mycroft but as he looked down through the iron grid, he saw Mycroft straightening up from a crouched position, slipping something indiscernible into his breast pocket.
What was the infernal man up to?
"You can come up now, I can see another opening just metres away," called John after Mycroft had resumed his original position.
"That will be the opening to the Violet Suite," replied Mycroft calmly,
John watched with bated breath as the other man climbed up the hazardously stacked pile of furniture and finally reached up to open the iron covering.
He scouted back to give Mycroft a hand, but after his companion's head and shoulders emerged through the square opening, Mycroft suddenly stopped short.
"Come on, Mycroft," snapped John. He was afraid that the office bound bureaucrat had abruptly baulked at the conditions inside the shaft.
"John..." said Mycroft softly but his tone was belied with an underlying currently of dark menace,
"What?"
"I'm stuck," replied Mycroft.
Not even Mycroft's most menacing glare could stop John from taking a picture of the most dangerous man in Britain wedged in a ventilator shaft.
This was definitely going on Facebook!
AN: This chapter is much more action than comedy but hopefully the humour aficionados have not been put off by this. For all the people who requested BAMF!John, I hope you enjoyed his martial prowess and seen as John got to be a hero, I thought Mycroft should have his moment as well. We all know that umbrella is not just an umbrella.