"Sir, he's coming round."
"Thank god, finally. Sherlock, Sherlock can you hear me?"
"Please be patient sir, he could go into shock if you wake him too quickly. That bullet wound was just AWFUL…sorry, how did you say he got it?"
"With all due respect, miss nurse…lady… well, it's Sherlock. And it's 8 in the morning. Even if he has been out for two days, he knows its morning and so he's going to be a lazy bugger for hours unless I hassle him. See? There we go! Good morning, Sherlock! You alright?" Sherlock blearily half-opened his eyes and immediately tightly closed them again, groaning loudly. "I told you to keep the fairies out of my bedroom, John! Too sparkly!" he tried to curl up in the foetal position and then realised he had an I.V drip in his arm. He stared at it in wonder, completely oblivious to John's gaping mouth. "It's the painkillers, sir." the nurse explained helpfully to John, trying very hard not to giggle. "They work wonderfully, but they have certain…hallucinogenic side-effects on some patients."
"No no no drugs! Lestrade…Lestrade will search the flat again! And I promised Mummy!" Sherlock loudly interrupted in the voice of a pedantic eight-year-old, tugging at the tube in his arm. It took four nurses to hold Sherlock down and persuade him not to take the drip out. Knowing that reasoning with the nurses was a lost cause, Sherlock turned his biggest, saddest puppy eyes to John, who nearly melted even before Sherlock spoke, in his wobbly sobby voice, "but John, I NEED to go home. What if Mrs. Hudson takes my skull while I'm away? What if she reads my mail? What if-John, what if she CLEANS?" Sherlock begged, his voice a terrified breathy squeak. John shook his head in utter disbelief and simply laid a gentle hand on Sherlock's shoulder, trying to be reassuring. It was all he could do to keep a straight face as he told him. "don't fret, I'll protect all your dangerous experiments and creepy possessions." this seemed to be all the incredibly high version of Sherlock needed, and so he snuggled down into his pile of pillows, mumbling something that sounded like "thankyou darling", but could just as easily have been "fang-toothed marlin." In Sherlock's present state, both seemed fairly equally plausible.
John decided to stay at the hospital for the night, but badly needed food, and bumped into Mycroft on the way down to the cafeteria to eat dinner. Or more accurately, Mycroft's wildly swinging umbrella hit John's shin in a crowded hallway and turned his psychosomatic limp into a real limp for the rest of the night. Mycroft was 'making visits to my dear brother as often as my busy schedule will allow', in his words. Which meant that this was his second visit since Sherlock had been admitted nearly three days previously, and the first visit had been merely to sign all the health insurance paperwork with a bulky bodyguard standing by, much to the excitement of the young and gossipy female nurses. Instead, Mycroft had somehow organised with the doctors that all information about Sherlock's vital signs, prognosis, medication etc. was to be streamed directly to Mycroft's phone. "A sign of the times, I'm afraid." He smiled apologetically to John as they ate, John having bought some rather cold Chinese, whilst Mycroft produced a pre-packaged salad from his briefcase with the slight grimace of a man that knew he would probably never shift those stubborn ten pounds that Sherlock was always teasing him about. "So how did Sherlock actually get that wound?" John sighed exasperatedly, hoping he wouldn't have the same gruesome flashbacks as the last five times he'd had to explain. No luck. "Well, a while ago, Sherlock and I…well, mostly Sherlock…helped to break a smuggling ring transporting valuable antiques from China to the U.K, the Black Lotus. The leader of their operations in London is apparently dead now, and even though she was murdered by her boss her son blamed Sherlock for her death. He tracked down Sherlock and tried to kill him. I came home just in time to see him shoot Sherlock. But the assassin came off worse, if you can believe it. Sergeant Donovan is apparently bored out of her mind monitoring him down in ICU." Watson's phone buzzed in his pocket. "Sorry, gimme a sec." 1 new message-Sherlock Holmes.
john the elvs keep gigle and unicorn is munchng on te qilt HELPP.
"Oh god, they increased his dose again." John groaned, looking up to find Mycroft already turning to leave. "You drove for an hour to see your brother and now you won't even come upstairs and say hello? What meeting or conference or phone call is so important that you can't even stay with your own brother, and leave him to be cared for by his housemate?" John demanded, trying to quell his rising fury. Mycroft looked down at his feet ashamed, his umbrella hanging limply by his side. Even the umbrella looked apologetic. "John, one thing you have to understand about Sherlock is that he's proud, incredibly proud. If I went up there and saw him now, my genius brother reduced to a babbling simpleton…he'd never forgive me."
"So what makes you think he'll be fine with me seeing him like this?"
"…because he doesn't think of you as just his housemate, John." And Mycroft swivelled and strode away quickly, before John could recover enough from this unexpected show of trust to ask him just what he meant.
John could hear Sherlock from several hundred metres down the hallway as he hurried back, his whiny, childish voice confirming that he was very, very high indeed. Several young nurses crowded around the window, peering in at Sherlock and whispering. "What?" the boldest of them asked, seeing Watson's annoyed expression. "He's gorgeous!"
"sooo cute!" chorused the other nurses at various ridiculously high pitches. John rolled his eyes and pushed the door open. But it was impossible to stay mad at the sight of Sherlock's radiant smile that shone out as soon as he saw John. It felt to John like someone had just wrapped his heart in a fluffy blanket (merino sheep's wool, obviously), given it a cup of hot chocolate (with two marshmallows) and sat it next to a roaring fire (real wood, not those horrible gas ones). It felt like…home. And then Sherlock started to whine. "Jooooohhhhhnnn, I'm so HUNGRY. And the unicorn ate my blanket!" there were still five blankets on the bed, as there had been when John left, and there was a bowl of soup on a table less than half a metre from Sherlock's hand, but John had realised quite quickly that the rational, logical part of Sherlock's brain was probably still in that induced coma. He missed it, although he would never, ever admit it, especially not to Sherlock. He picked up the bowl of soup that was lukewarm by now, and despite Sherlock's protests that the spoon was actually a lizard, he somehow succeeded in feeding Sherlock the whole bowl, deciding to just ignore the chorus of muffled 'awwwwwww!' noises coming from just outside the door. Thankfully one of the senior doctors quickly dispersed the nurses and respectfully closed the blinds. Sherlock managed to sit up straight in bed for the first time after he finished eating, and leaned over to rest his head on John's right shoulder. "Mmmmm, warm Johnny." he murmured, snuggling into John's woollen sweater. John was too shocked to do anything except sit there as Sherlock rubbed against him like a cat, mind furiously whirling around in circles. Was this the way Sherlock really felt, and the medication was just taking away his mental walls and inhibitions? Or was this just the medicine talking, and Sherlock was really just what he always seemed-repressed, nearly asexual and totally uninterested in whatever it was that John actually felt towards him? Sherlock wound his arms around John's waist, and John realised that whatever the answer was, right now he didn't care. Sherlock might be the same obsessive sociopath again the minute he left the hospital, but for now he had all he had ever yearned for from Sherlock, and even if the walls crashed back down tomorrow he still had this to treasure forever. "Silly tube, stopping me from hugging my John-John!" Sherlock muttered crossly, and before John could stop him Sherlock yanked the drip from his arm. "Oh god, Sherlock, no!" John shouted, running out to the hall in search of a nurse to put it back in. It took half-an-hour to get out the shards of needle that Sherlock had broken off when he yanked it and to put a new needle in, thirty minutes of Sherlock putting on a brave face even as his arm bled and the level of painkillers in his bloodstream dropped back down to where he was in serious pain again. John took a breath to ask the nurse to give him something, she couldn't see that Sherlock was in pain, his tensed shoulders and teeth biting his lip were too subtle…and he breathed out again. It was Sherlock. Stubbornly stupidly brave Sherlock. He didn't want to admit it, he couldn't, and so John would only anger and insult him by admitting it for him. At last the new needle was in and the nurse gone, and Sherlock's sly death drip on the edge of a blanket started to relax. A single tear rolled down his cheek, and he reached up quickly to scrub it away. John caught him by the wrist. "Let it fall." he whispered. "It's okay." The silence was heavy with Sherlock's decision. Finally, he sighed tiredly, and more tears fell. John let go of his wrist, and Sherlock curled his fingers around John's, cautiously, tentatively, so afraid. John squeezed his hand tightly. "The medication is kicking back in again." Sherlock said, slightly sadly. He looked over at John for the first time since he had broken the needle, eyes still shining and lips trembling. He leaned forward, slowly, falteringly, and his lips met John's halfway. There was fear and nervousness in Sherlock's kiss, but something else, something soft and bright and indefinable, that immediately had John wishing that they would never have to let go. And then, all too soon, he felt Sherlock's lips drawing away, curling upwards into a silly smile, and suddenly he fell back onto the pillows, chuckling. "Bunny rabbits!" he joyfully declared to a now very dejected John.
"Goodnight, Sherlock."