It starts with a painfully vibrant skid piercing through their eardrums.

Their hearts skip a beat.

Their heads snap forward.

"Jesus Christ!"

Screaming.

The last thing they both hear is the sound of glass shattering before they black out.

John always dreaded the sound of sirens.

"Out of the way, we've got a severe TBI!"

"Move move move!"

"He's fading in and out of consciousness!"

"Code blue! Code blue!"

When Sherlock opens his eyes, he doesn't know who he is anymore. Quite literally.

There's a faint, steady beep ringing in his ears, and for a while he believe it's in his head and that he's going crazy, but then he feels a needle digging deep into his arm and realizes that he's in a hospital hooked up to a heart monitor. He feels a presence beside him, but when he tried to turn his head, he quickly learns that he can't. It's painful, and he's stuck staring up at the dismal cream-colored ceiling.

He lies there for what seems like a decade, trying to remember what the hell just happened, but thinking gives him a headache so he stops trying. He settles on figuring out which parts of his body he can still function with. He can feel both his arms, that much was settled when he felt the IV. He inconspicuously wiggles his toes and lets out a tiny sigh of relief in knowing his legs seem to be okay, only to wince in pain in realizing it hurts to sigh. He brings the arm that doesn't have a needle sticking in it up to his chest and feels the brace that's pressing down onto his torso, fit snugly, perhaps a bit too tight.

Just then, the body next to him stirs. Sherlock hears a soft inhale of breath, and even without looking he understands that whoever is sitting next to him is slowly waking up. He strains his eyes to the side, trying to get a good look at whoever this person was. Male, obviously, by the fresh musky scent emitting from this person's body. Sherlock decides to close his eyes again and pretend he's still asleep. One can learn a lot about a relationship based on how another person reacts while they're sleeping.

The chair creaks and Sherlock can tell the man is leaning forward. He feels the back of an ice cold hand on his cheek and the temperature itself nearly makes him opens his eyes back up, but then he feels the hand stroking his face and decides against it. Yes, this is definitely a man's hand. His left, based on the positioning of his fingers. There's a cold metal brushing across his cheekbones, cooler than the rest of the hand if that's even possible. Wedding ring, perhaps.

The man leans forward a bit more and Sherlock can feel hot breath hovering over him, a strange contrast to the frozen hand. Although if his breath wasn't warm, Sherlock couldn't have been sure this person was even alive.

He feels a pair of lips descend upon his and immediately shoots his eyes wide open and lets out and strangled gasp, realizing that this situation could get dangerous quickly.

The man instantly steps back, return Sherlock's gasp with one of his own, a bit more drawn-out. Oh, it must be nice to breathe. Sherlock's actually a bit jealous.

"Sherlock!" The man cries, as if he were an ecstatic father who had just found his missing son of three years.

Who?

Sherlock's only response is to blink at the ceiling and wonder who this man was. His voice didn't sound familiar whatsoever. Then again, the name Sherlock didn't sound familiar either.

The man lets out a relieved chuckle, and then a choked up sob, and then he says to Sherlock "wait right here Sherlock, I'll get a nurse. Oh what am I saying where could you possibly go? I'll be back, I promise."

And with that, he's gone and Sherlock is all alone in his solitary room, painstakingly silent save for that confounding steady beep of his heart monitor. Sherlock. Sherlock. Why did he keep calling him Sherlock? Is that his name? What an odd thing to call someone.

The man returns just a short while later and brings with him another set of footprints. Female, judging by the sound the soles of her shoes make.

"Sherlock Holmes," the lady remarks, flipping a page on her clipboard. "Awake at last. I'd say you've had a bit of a rough week. Can you speak?" She leans over so that Sherlock can see her smiling. The other man leans over too, and Sherlock can finally see his face.

Sherlock parts his lips, realizes there's no moisture in his throat, and regrettably croaks out the inevitably "who are you?"

He watches the other man's face fall drastically in a blink of an eye.

The nurse looks a bit concerned. "Oh dear." She turns to the man and says to him "Doctor Watson,, it'd be best if you stepped outside for a minute. I was afraid something like this might happen."

Watson. The man named Watson gave Sherlock one last nearly disappointing glance before shuffling away from the scene as the nurse wrapped a compression sleeve around Sherlock's arm.

When John walks back into the room, two other men accompany him, one wearing a white lab coat and a stethoscope and the other wearing a stuck-up fancy black suit. Sherlock can recognize neither of them.

Sherlock is sitting up now, it makes it easier to breath. He can look John straight up and down. Short, stiff, one arm wrapped up in a white cast up to his elbow and a scar hardly a week old running down the side of his face.

The man in the white coat, a doctor obviously, takes a seat beside Sherlock and immediately asks, "Do you know who you are?"

Sherlock swallows. The nurse had given him water, but his throat still feels dry. "No," he rasps. He's almost afraid to admit.

"Do you know who either of these men are?" The doctor points to the only other two people in the room.

"No," is Sherlock's reluctant answer. He has an aching feeling he should, but he can only make guesses. The short man's name is Watson, he's of the military-or used to be, and more than likely judging by the cast had been in the same accident as Sherlock. The taller man was lean and well-dressed. His black dress shoes were shining. Government worker, no doubt, although Sherlock couldn't recall the slightest bit what he had to have done wrong to have a government official standing in his hospital room.

The doctor continues with his questions. "What is the last date you remember?"

Sherlock struggles to remember, but thinking hurts, and he lets out a strained but exasperated sigh. "I don't know. It's all…foggy."

"Your name is Sherlock Holmes. You've been in an accident," the doctor explains. "You were in a cab in the midst of a storm."

"With him?" Sherlock slowly raised an arm to point at John. John's lips tighten at his movement.

The doctor nods. "The cab flipped over. You suffered massive head trauma and a few broken ribs."

"Massive head trauma?" John all but snorts. "Are you going to mention there was a giant shard of glass sticking out of his head?"

Dear lord, that sounded frightening, even to Sherlock.

The doctor then turns to John and the mystery man, who hadn't said a word the entire time. In fact, Sherlock couldn't be sure he had even moved a muscle. Even his face seemed to be a vacant stoic stare the entire conversation. "Post-traumatic amnesia," the doctor says. "How severe depends on how long it lasts, really, but it doesn't look good. Might have to start from scratch. Slowly, mind you. Give him general ideas first, then dig into particulars. He'll be staying here for a few days and then he'll be off. I've prescribed painkillers."

And with that, the doctor stands up and walks away, followed by the government official, whose presence seemed more to Sherlock like a waste of precious oxygen. He and Doctor Watson were the only ones in the room. The deafening silent room. And they stare. Stare straight at each other, neither of them adverting his gaze. Sherlock is studying him. He doesn't want to ask. Whoever this man is, he seems important enough to Sherlock to stay by his unconscious side, and then there was that terribly intimate moment where they had very nearly kissed. Sherlock had his suspicious, but he didn't want to jump to conclusions before he had gathered all the facts.

"Who was that man?" Sherlock asked, instead referring to the man in the black suit.

John clears his throat and looks back towards the door like the man would have still be there, being the first to break eye contact. "Oh, um, Mycroft. Mycroft Holmes."

Sherlock raises his eyebrow. "Holmes? A relative?" Holmes is not a very common last name, and if it is indeed Sherlock's, Mycroft might not be so far off.

John nods. "Brother. Older brother."

"I see." For some reason, the thought of having an older brother did not appeal to him at all. He hesitated, looked John straight in the eye, and asked the inevitable. "And you are?"

John chews on his bottom lip like he's gravely upset but trying his hardest to hide it. "John," he finally says. "John Watson."

When it's clear he won't say much else, Sherlock responds with "and our relationship?"

John pauses again, this silence longer than the last, like he's trying to think of a way to put it. Sherlock had to have gone through countless numbers of ideas and scenarios already before John finally spoke in the most robotic tone humanely possible, with absolutely no emotions seeping from his voice.

"Flatmates. We're flatmates."

Sherlock blinks. "I see."

Another more than awkward silence.

John clears his throat again. "I'll…uh, leave you alone to sort things out I suppose. I'll be back tomorrow. See how you're doing, yeah?"

Sherlock just shuts his lips as tight as possible.