Disclaimer: Even the show Sherlock is fanfiction basing itself on Conan Doyle's works . . . so no, there's no way this could be mine.
"For God's sake, I said silence!" Sherlock snapped, not bothering to take his eyes off his laptop to look at John.
John finished yet another bout of coughing. "I can't help it—I'm sick! And it's your bloody fault! You never let me get a bit of rest, you keep me out in all weathers—it's a bloody winter in London, Sherlock! It never stops raining! A sensible person would stay indoors!" With this, he was overtaken by another round of coughs, though he seemed indignant about being unable to continue.
"Sensible people don't solve crimes."
"And unsensible people like you can't keep themselves fed and clothed! You're lucky you have me and Mrs. Hudson—"
"Mrs. Hudson and I." Sherlock's eyes had still not left the computer screen.
"Well, you're bloody lucky you have the two of us to take care of you, because it's quite evident that you couldn't manage it yourself!"
"I managed perfectly well before you moved in, thank you very much, John. And you'll notice that I am in perfect health. You seem to be the one who's ill. Think, John—what does that tell you about our respective abilities to take care of ourselves?"
John was coughing too hard to respond.
"Very well, get some sleep, then," Sherlock said, pressing his fingertips together in their trademark steeple position and still not looking at John. "You'll be quieter that way."
John huffed off, and, though Sherlock wasn't listening for it specifically, he heard the familiar pattern of John's steps as he made his way around the upstairs bedroom: taking off his watch and leaving it on the dresser, retrieving his pajamas from the chair on which he'd thrown them—what? Three nights ago? Yes, that was the last time they'd slept long enough to bother changing—and then entering the upstairs bathroom to brush his teeth before returning to the bedroom to sleep. The pattern was interrupted, though, and the interruptions bothered Sherlock far more than the ordinary percussion of pre-bed footsteps. Sherlock knew how to tune out something he heard frequently; the newness in the pattern was what distracted him. Tonight John stopped frequently in the middle of getting to one of the normal destinations, and, during those pauses, Sherlock could hear the muffled sound of coughing.
Why couldn't John have the decency to keep silent? Sherlock was trying to work. This was a particularly difficult puzzle, too—he'd yet to find a connection to Moriarty, but it had to be there somewhere. No one else would have managed to connect a Middle Eastern assassins' guild with a gang of British narcotraffickers. At least, no one else beside himself.
Mycroft had brought the case of the Middle Eastern assassins to Sherlock, while the mess with the narcotraffickers had come from the London police. No one else believed there was a connection yet, but any other explanation was unthinkable; the mobile phone Sherlock had nicked from one of his domestic quarries had a long history on its SIM card that showed many calls to area codes in the Middle East, all to contacts identified only by code names. Why exactly the assassins were suddenly in England—the identities of their targets, or whether they had any connections with the drug trade—had yet to be worked out.
Sherlock got up from his laptop and began pacing. He made his way to his maps (world and London municipality, for this case) and scrutinized the pins, showing the movements and known locations of the suspects. Such photographs as he had of the suspects were pinned up alongside the maps, and he peered at them, searching for anything he had missed.
In some ways, Sherlock already had everything worked out, and that was what was so frustrating about this case. What victims there were had been killed by overdoses or by drugs that had been poisoned, in the case of the narcotraffickers, and by sniper bullets, in the case of the assassins' guild. Cause of death and even identity of killer were easy, almost too easy, but motive and connection were still elusive. Those were harder to deduce from a simple set of physical facts that lay before him like so many Post-It noted clues whenever he looked at a cadaver.
"John, I don't suppose you noticed anything strange when we followed Lestrade on that drugs bust? Was there anything Middle Eastern in the flat? Were there rifles? There weren't, were there? No . . . No, it looked like the scene of an ordinary drugs bust. Handguns, like traffickers would use, not rifles. Those would have indicated snipers, but they weren't there. I don't suppose you've seen anything I haven't, John?"
Sherlock looked around for his sounding board before realizing he'd sent him off to bed. He rolled his eyes, muttered a curse under his breath, and marched upstairs. He had the feeling that the answer did not lie in his Mind Palace, waiting for him to figure it out; either he needed more information, in which case he would need to go out and gather it, or he needed a second opinion. Either way, John had to be awake.
The first thing Sherlock saw when he opened the door was the bright red splash across John's sheets. His first thought, of course, was murder—in their line of work, one could hardly be faulted for assuming the worst—but a moment's pause allowed him to notice the sound of John's raspy breathing filling the room. He was alive, then.
Sherlock stepped closer to the bed and took out a pair of latex gloves from his coat pocket, where he always kept extras. A swipe of his finger later, he was bringing the liquid close to his eyes for a more thorough investigation. He rubbed his forefinger against his thumb, spreading the liquid in order to separate it, which would prove to him whether it was what he thought it was.
Blood. Saliva. Mucus. Mucus would be from the lungs, but the blood was from the windpipe, rubbed raw from days of abrasive use, i.e. coughing. Coughing was the result of a viral infection, worsened by lack of rest and exposure to the elements. Shivering—evidence of a fever, supported by the flush in the cheeks. Virus had been incubating in the body for a minimum of five days, and five days ago victim had been . . . ah, yes.
Five days ago, Sherlock and John had been using Sherlock's homeless network to find out more about the London narcotraffickers. The homeless network was hardly the most sanitary place to find leads, but Sherlock never worried about that; he never got sick. John hadn't protested—it had been a long time since he'd complained about the lengths to which Sherlock was willing to go to get a lead.
Sherlock returned to scrutinizing the John. Pain: minimal, given that he was currently asleep. Pain upon waking: considerable in the throat and quite possibly in the head as well, since John was almost certainly dehydrated. Other issues: waking in a puddle of one's own blood was, at the least, disconcerting and was also bound to be sticky.
It would probably be a good idea to change John's sheets, but Sherlock did not do laundry. Instead, he clambered down the stairs, taking some care to be quiet in order to avoid waking John but bothering far less about precautions than he would have if he'd been on a case. A few turns round the staircase later and Sherlock entered Mrs. Hudson's apartment.
"Mrs. Hudson?" he called, striding through her kitchen with his usual immaculate posture and incorrigible volume.
"What is it, Sherlock?" Mrs. Hudson inquired, entering the kitchen.
Sherlock cleared his throat. "It's John. He seems to have taken ill and he's coughed blood on his sheets, and I—"
Mrs. Hudson was already on her way upstairs, berating Sherlock all the way. "What did you think was going to happen, dragging him out to help you with cases in all weather like that? You don't even let him get proper sleep! I know you don't get sick, but it's not poor John's fault that he's not superhuman like you are. You can't expect him to keep up with you all the time! Really, have you ever stopped to think about the effect you have on him?"
"No. I believe you are well aware of the things I consider important and that an analysis of my impact on anyone has never ranked highly."
"Well, you may as well start now," she hissed, suddenly lowering her voice as she approached the upstairs bedroom.
Mrs. Hudson came abreast with John's bed and immediately put a hand to the man's forehead. "Good heavens, Sherlock, you should have let me have a look at him two days ago when he started coughing! He's burning up!"
"All I wanted you to do, Mrs. Hudson, was change the sheets. I'm under the impression that John will not appreciate waking up in his own blood."
"I'm your landlady, not your housekeeper," Mrs. Hudson recited, but she bustled out of the room and came back a few minutes later with fresh sheets and multiple down comforters, along with a hot water bottle. She stripped the sheets on John's bed and replaced them immediately, but, even in that brief break of being uncovered, John's shivering worsened noticeably. Soon he was tucked in with the hot water bottle and covered with a pile of bedding, and Mrs. Hudson was staring once again at Sherlock.
"What?" Sherlock snapped. "You seem to want something from me, but I haven't the faintest idea what it is."
Mrs. Hudson threw up her arms. "An apology! Some remorse, perhaps! You've caused John a considerable amount of pain and inconvenience, and—"
"And expressing remorse to you will remedy this?" Sherlock's fingertips were pressed together again in their usual position, forefingers hovering near his chin.
"You've put John through a lot, you know, and never once have I seen you thank him or apologize. And I think that ought to change, especially now that you've gotten him this sick, and I see no evidence that it will! How am I supposed to know if you're planning on changing if you don't tell me?"
"You don't observe, Mrs. Hudson." Sherlock sighed. "How often do I watch someone change the sheets for someone else? Why am I still here? Why have I not left already and sought out Lestrade to try to garner more information on this case?"
Mrs. Hudson shrugged and shook her head.
"I will remain in this room, Mrs. Hudson, until John wakes up, and at that time I will say to him what I see fit, which I assure you will be gentler than my usual speech. Pleased?" With this, Sherlock sat gingerly at the foot of the bed, sinking into the pile of bedding with which Mrs. Hudson had just dressed the bed. His posture was straight as usual, so his balance needed no aid, but he laid his right hand on the bedding in a manner that seemed almost protective.
"If you say so. I'm going to go make some tea and put it in your microwave. Heat it up for John when he wakes up, all right? It's not for you; it's for him."
"Understood," Sherlock replied, watching Mrs. Hudson's back as it retreated from the room. At least she had the sense to close the door behind her.
When Mrs. Hudson was gone, Sherlock elected to reflect on his impact on John, which he had accurately admitted was not a priority in his thought processes. Certainly, he asked John to accompany him into all sorts of dangers in all weathers at all hours, but this was all to serve his work and his genius. Was that not evident? Certainly his speech did not follow usual cadences or use typical societal phrases, but these habits of speech made one boring and served no real purpose. What was wrong, then?
As Anderson would have said at such a moment, Sociopath, hmm. Yeah, I can see that coming through.
All right then. Time to be boring. What would an ordinary person think? He had very limited experience in this question, and had hitherto had very little interest, but he could remember some occasions on which ordinary people had expressed their sentiments to him.
Certainly, there was something wrong with how sick John was and how long Sherlock had let his condition worsen without even giving him a few hours off to catch some sleep. An ordinary person might apologize. Perhaps an ordinary person would even try to help.
John knew that Sherlock was not ordinary. He wouldn't expect Sherlock to act like an ordinary person.
Perhaps John could use an ordinary person right now. It was, as both John and Mrs. Hudson had pointed out, Sherlock's fault that John was so sick.
Sherlock sighed. He had very little experience being sick, so he didn't even know where to start. He was tempted to find his violin—was music healing? He'd heard it somewhere, probably on the telly when John had shown him what programs were—but he'd promised Mrs. Hudson to stay in the room, and it would probably wake John up anyway.
"I'm awake, you know," John rasped.
Sherlock's head jerked to the right, toward John, seemingly involuntarily. The smile and release of breath were equally outside of Sherlock's control. "Your breathing pattern didn't change," he accused after a second of collecting himself.
"I've been captured by terrorists. You think that waking up to my flatmate rowing with my landlady would make my breathing patterns change?" He broke down coughing, covering his mouth with his forearm, which was promptly splattered with blood. "You're a bastard, Sherlock," John continued when he had finished coughing and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.
"If you're only just realizing this, I'm disappointed in you."
"Oh, for God's sake, Sherlock," John spat before having another coughing fit.
Sherlock took the fit as an opportunity to order his thoughts. When John's coughs subsided, Sherlock said, "Your accusation is properly grounded. I have indeed treated you inhumanely. I do not know that I have ever treated anyone humanely, but then, if I were to have an exception, it ought to be you."
John raised his eyebrows. "Oh?"
Sherlock closed his eyes for a moment. "Yes, John. I'm aware that you are helpful to me in more ways than I anticipated when I took you on as a flatmate. I am further aware that you have set aside things that you wanted in order to continue to be helpful to me. If there is such a thing as deserving humane treatment, that is what you have achieved—indeed I believe you reached that level within 48 hours of moving in with me. Yet I have not treated you humanely."
John coughed. "You wouldn't be Sherlock Holmes if you did."
One corner of Sherlock's mouth turned upward. "I could try."
John coughed again, wiping away yet more blood with his now-sodden sleeve. "Really."
Sherlock stood, which was harder than he had anticipated due to the sinkhole of bedding from which he had to emerge. He strode to John's drawer, yanked it open, and rifled through the contents until he found the desired item. Without even turning to face the bed, Sherlock tossed it over his shoulder. He heard a soft thud, cloth landing on cloth, and knew he had hit his mark. This was confirmed a moment later when he heard the sounds of John removing his shirt and replacing it.
Sherlock waited until John had finished changing to turn; he didn't mind seeing John's body or John seeing his, but he knew that John felt differently about such things. Sherlock picked up the discarded nightshirt—he was still wearing his gloves, so even the bloody sleeve didn't bother him—and prepared to bring it downstairs. Perhaps, just this once, he could do a bit of laundry.
John coughed. "Some paper toweling would have been more useful."
Sherlock's eyebrows twitched just a bit before he stopped the reaction from showing. "Of course." He headed downstairs.
A/N: Favorites and reviews are lovely!