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Rain in the desert is breathtaking, completely alien after a lifetime of British downpours.
John remembers vividly the distinct crackle and rumble of the heavens before they open, before the Afghan sands are drenched in water untinged by the smog of a busy city. He remembers the way everything stops, the way every living thing from the tiniest, hardiest plants to the bloodthirstiest Taliban pause for the duration of the rainstorm to simply sit back and watch the miracle of nature. British soldiers flocked outside, some crying under the cover of the water, 'home' an acute pain in their chests both amplified and eased by the rain. John remembers even the rushed, everlasting thrum of his field hospital slowing at the rarity.
The photo is different to the video, though both are of the same content - John, sat in front of a field hospital window, gazing out at the torrential rain with a faintly wistful smile on his face. It's blurry if you look closely and he's in the middle of blinking so it looks a little funny. He's in surgery clothes, fresh out of six-hour operation to patch up somebody's legs and torso - he remembers it, remembers the exhaustion and the sense of guilty victory that comes with lives saved but limbs lost.
The video is different.
You can hear the rain, for one, and the thunder; loud and overwhelming, immediate. The film had started rolling just half a second before the thunder hit. The camera's quality is more than sound enough to make you look to the windows automatically to watch. It's a minute and a half long and full of camaraderie, the man behind the camera one of John's own soldiers. Around a minute in, John laughs, and even he has to admit that the backlighting and the angle don't do half bad things for his looks. The laugh is warm as well, infectious, undeniably cheerful despite the warzone.
"Winters," John says, onscreen. He's just spotted the cameraman, two seconds in, and his eyes narrow at the camera. "Where'd you get your hands on a camera?"
The camera moves as Winters laughs. "You know I have to walk around to strengthen my leg, don't you, Captain? M'just doing my necessary exercises. Plus a little motivation, of course."
John's lips twitch. "It doesn't hurt that Maisie's in the ward one over, either, does it?"
"No idea what you're talking about, sir," Winters says cheerfully.
An eyebrow raise. "Absolutely. You're a romantic, mate, don't deny it. I see those books you have next to you whenever I check in on you."
There's a waggled finger, and audible smiling to go along with the content sort of expression John is wearing. He looks relaxed there, at ease, even though he remembers the window was cold and the rain is loud and he's visibly tired enough to fall asleep in the middle of heavy gunfire.
"This is all well and good, but it doesn't explain the camera. Or why it's pointed at me."
"Picturesque," Winters offers. "I ever tell you my Dad was a photographer?"
John laughs now, head thudding back against the wall of the window inset. The one-minute mark, or just over. "By your tall tales, mate, your Dad has been everything from a bank robber to the person he's stealing from. Most consistent thing he is is a criminal. I'm willing to bet a fiver he has no idea what half of the lenses on the market back home do, let alone explain 'em to me."
"Oh, yeah?" Winters challenges. He's laughing, and it significantly takes away from the bite the words could have had. The camera catches a slight intake of breath, hardly audible beneath the unrelenting rain, and John remembers this, remembers his mouth opening to speak more.
"Watson?" A nurse interrupts. . "Explosion on the western front lines, rain impeding retrieval but little action causing similar ETA. Significant bleeding, five, death toll so far at three. Commands?"
John's face slides closed, back to a doctor and a soldier, calm and steady and dangerous in a quiet sort of way. A blink of the eye and he's off of the windowsill, striding offscreen. The camera swings to follow, catches slight bloodsplattering from the previous patient just as Watson does. He shucks it off immediately, calls for Winters to "put your leg to use and take that to the scrubbers, would you?" even in the midst of throwing technical vocabulary back and forth with the nurse.
Winters moves forward, goes to collect the surgery uniform, and just before the camera clicks off and the rain goes silent and it catches a murmur of, "Fancy medical gibberish. Easy to forget how smart that Hamish lad is, eh? Saves your life and then never takes any credit. Confusing, backwards, loveable bastard."
It's not the only video John has of Afghanistan - there are many, just over half of which barely (if at all) have him in them, thank God, and three times as many photographs - but he likes the rain and the friendly conversation, and the warmth of the memories of a man from his own corps it brings.
John has the videos on a handful of cheap memory sticks, since that was the most of surplus tech the his squadron had been able to get their dirty mitts on when he was discharged. Photos are on several more handfuls of memory sticks, and even though he's since had most of them printed off at some point he keeps the digital copies. Everything is in a battered old first aid tin from one of the world wars that Utterson had used as a lunch box.
John has added to it since, stacks of photographs of his childhood and his youth and his army days all jumbled together in a poor sense of chronological order. The gaps in-between are scattered with USB drives labelled carefully with pieces of yellowing masking tape.
He should have known that Sherlock would find the box eventually.
Stuffed deep in his wardrobe though it may be, and as camouflaged as he manages to make it (shadows and untidy bundles of clothing mask it quite nicely, particularly with its black colour), Sherlock is Sherlock, and he finds it during one bored spree around Easter.
Ironically enough, he watches the rainy, post-surgery video first, cuing it up just as John is walking through the door after going out to get milk.
"Coming down in stair rods, isn't it?" He says, attempting to shake his hair dry like a dog. And then, noticing his box: "Hey, what are you doing with that?"
Sherlock looks like a cat who has been caught red-handed and is attempting to pass it off as being deliberate. "I should imagine that's obvious."
"You went into my room?" John asks. "Why were you in my wardrobe?"
"It was on your bed, actually." Sherlock smirks. "I believe you forgot to put everything back after you looked at it. Though thank you for telling me where to find it in the future."
"How long have you had it? Since I left?"
"About five minutes," Sherlock corrects. This is more proof that he'd thought John had gone to work - he never starts anything five minutes before John come home, unless that thing is sulking or positioning himself so he can pretend not to have moved all day. "I would have started on the pictures, but your USB labels weren't exactly making a lot of sense."
"Curiosity killed the cat," John accuses. He tries to remember what he put on the labels that would confuse Sherlock so much. When he crosses the room to pick one up, it simply says, nuts & bolts, SD, hap. bi. Simple enough, surely? Two videos and a handful of photos.
Sherlock lets the insinuations of that slide in favour of watching him. "It's a system?" he says with some surprise.
John has no idea what Sherlock's found on his face, but he half-shrugs. "A loose system. Essentially just wrote which videos are on it."
Sherlock eyes the box with an arched eyebrow. "They're all videos?"
"No, most of them are digital copies of the photos I printed out. Only some have videos."
"What's this, then?"
Sherlock gestures to the screen, apparently having decided John is in a good enough mood to answer any and all questions. It's the start of the video with the rain and the windowsill. John wonders what deductions he can make purely based off this frame.
"What do you think?"
Sherlock looks at him for a second, assessing. He must have found whatever he was looking for, because he turns back to the video. "You've just come out of a long surgery. You're tired, you've been awake for a long time, but you won't be sleeping for a while yet. Used to it - routine. Baggage under eyes don't match the ageing or the crumpling of your clothes. It's a rare rain, I can see a few drops on the window, and you're missing England: most likely the fact that its rain is harder, since this appears to be simply a drizzle. Wistful smile, obvious. Field hospital, given you're fresh out of surgery and comfortable with your surroundings, including the man who's holding the camera. You know him well - even though you haven't consciously spotted him, your subconscious recognises him as a non-threat. Probably one of your own soldiers."
John smiles. "Correct on most counts. There are more than a few drops of rain." Sherlock opens his mouth, but John rolls his eyes. "Click play and see."
He plays it. There's almost a startle at the nearly solid wall of rain-sound that hits them both, but Sherlock hides it well. The conversation plays out, though the rain continues to attempt to obliterate every scrap of other audio.
They hit the one-minute mark, and Onscreen John laughs. Reality John thinks Sherlock might be blushing.
The video ends. There is a moment of silence.
Sherlock says, "That man - Winters, was it? - was correct about at least one thing, you know."
John had been slipping steadily back into thought. "What?" And then, having absorbed the full sentence: "What do you mean, at least?"
"It is very -" Sherlock gives the word pointed weight, meeting John's eyes. "- easy to forget how intelligent you actually are."
John blinks at him. It's ironic, but he's absolutely dumbfounded. "Um. . ."
Sherlock plucks the memory stick John is still holding out of his fingers and studies its label. "What's on this one?"
"Nuts & bolts is the entire Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers sitting around having a conversation. One of the only ones of all of us." John smirks a little. "Lots of innuendos and sex jokes."
"And SD?"
"Sand Dunes. It wasn't Winters, but one of us liked taking photos. York, her name was. She had a good eye for them. Absolute demon at poker."
"Hap. Bi?"
"It's an abbreviation. Happy Birthday. Mine," he says. "Fuckers baked me a rainbow cake. I thought they'd have forgotten the promise, all those months after I came out."
"Bi," Sherlock breathes, looking like he does when things slot together for him during a case. "It's a pun title."
"It is." Sherlock lets him take the USB back. He twirls it absently in his fingers and eyes him warily. "If you're not comfortable wit-"
"I assure you, I'm not uncomfortable. If anything," Sherlock says, his finger ceasing its quietly anxious tap-tap-tap on the desk, "I'm actually a little relieved."
"Are you," John deadpans. This could go where he hopes it will, or it could go entirely the other way and land in experiment territory.
"Don't be an idiot, I'm gay." Sherlock snorts. "I find it hard to believe that your first thought was that I would use you in experiments -"
John gives him his best sceptical look and turns to make tea. "Do you?"
Sherlock makes a slight face to concede the point and clicks onto the next thing on the memory stick - some pictures, if John remembers correctly.
"Do you want to know another thing Winters was right about?" Sherlock calls.
John waits until the kettle has filled and the tap has been turned off to answer. "Sure."
"You're very loveable," Sherlock says, and refuses to say anything more on the matter.