Disclaimer: I don't own Sherlock. I bet you could've deduced that for yourselves, though. Enjoy!
Bang!
Oh no, thought John Watson wearily as he cracked bleary eyes and shifted listlessly under the covers. He's at it again.
Bang!
"Sherl—" John's voice was a wispy rasp of a sound, barely audible. He licked dry and cracked lips, swallowed around an odd lump in his throat, and tried again. "Sherlock!"
Bang!
Resigned now, John sighed and grunted his way to a sitting position on the edge of the bed, stretching his achy body. It was strange; one of the many lingering habits from his days of service was the tendency towards early rising, and he was almost always awake, dressed, and downstairs long before Sherlock. When Sherlock got there first, either he hadn't slept because he was the famous consulting detective and sleep was for normal people with average brains, or he was simply carrying one day over into another, lost in the thought or speculation brought on by a case. But John had not been aware that any new case had turned up, much less been accepted, so, the former it was. He'd better go down and placate his outrageously bored flatmate before Sherlock started shooting something other than the wall. Shaking a head that somehow felt heavier than usual, John glanced at the clock on the bedside table.
12:37.
What? No. That wasn't possible. He couldn't have overslept that long! How could it be past noon already? What was wrong with him? Was he ill? Slinging the blankets aside ruthlessly with one hand, John jumped to his feet and immediately flung out his arms to keep his balance as a swell of vertigo pushed at him and his eyes darkened momentarily.
Bang!
"Dammit, Sherlock…" John growled, rubbing at his eyes. Worrying about his own health would have to wait. When his vision cleared and his body was under control once more, John thudded down the stairs, almost missing the bottom step in his hurry.
Sherlock's yellow, perforated smiley face on the wall had gained a friend in John's absence. Wobbling over to Sherlock, John tugged the gun from the man's now-slackened hand and clicked the safety back on. He pulled a breath into lungs that felt like they'd been lined at the bottoms with lead and were now less than three quarters their normal size.
"Ah. John. There you are", Sherlock said with satisfaction, still studying the opposite wall. "I was beginning to wonder."
Breathing heavily, John crossed to his favorite armchair and lowered himself into it, hands clenched on the arms for support. He palmed his forehead wearily. "Sherlock…you're going to be the death of me", he murmured between huffs.
Sherlock chuckled. "You've had plenty of opportunities for that, John. You threw yourself into a war and still couldn't manage it." A pause to acknowledge a new twinge of thought. "Are you postulating that I am worse than a war?"
No answer.
"John?" Now Sherlock turned his head at the lack of an expected response, eyebrows surging together and downward, to see the doctor hunched over in his chair, one hand on his chest, fingers and thumb kneading into the breastbone, the other pinching the bridge of his nose. "John? What are you doing?" Now Sherlock looked again, closer, his trained eyes picking up John's abnormally flushed cheeks and slightly shaking hands, the sweat that was beginning to pearl up on his drawn forehead, his closed eyes and how his thin mouth was set tight in a grimace.
"John, are you alright?" Sherlock asked, coolly.
"…yeah, yeah, fine. I'm fine." John did not look up at him.
"You don't look well."
"I'm okay, Sherlock, really."
Sherlock's eyes narrowed. "If you say so."
"Dammit, Sherlock, I'm fine, alright? I'm fine, I just…I just need some breakfast." Lurching to his feet, John tottered into the kitchen, followed by Sherlock's even narrower eyes.
"It's a quarter to one, John", Sherlock reminded him quietly.
"Lunch, then!" came the heated retort.
Sherlock moved to pull the morning paper from under a book on the desk where he'd stashed it that morning whilst waiting for John and thumbed it open. His eyes flicked from the print up to where John was clattering around in the kitchen, impossibly taking in the words and every single one of the other man's movements simultaneously. After a few moments, bored with the paper, Sherlock rustled it back on the desk and walked into the kitchen.
John was fighting with the glasses in one of the cabinets, trying to sort out which ones were clean and which ones had been used recently to store poison or acid or whatever else Sherlock had been experimenting with lately. Finally, frustrated, he chose one and plucked at it. Unfortunately, the cup slipped out of his grasp and began its descent to a shattering doom on the floor below. Snapping out one pale, long-fingered hand, Sherlock caught the cup solidly in his palm with a thunk! and John, not having realized he was there, started and whipped around. He teetered, his concentrated ability to balance now overloaded entirely, and in one sweeping movement Sherlock had clapped the cup on the countertop and, with both arms now free, caught John in them.
Sherlock steadied John, one hand gripping his upper arm and the other curved around his body to press firmly against his back. Bewildered, John blinked furiously, looking first to the hand on his arm, then to the shoulder of the arm behind him, and finally up at Sherlock's face.
"I believe we have established you are neither fine nor okay", Sherlock rumbled quietly, his clear silvery eyes boring steadily into John's dark, befuddled ones.
John opened and closed his mouth a few times, trying to form words that wouldn't come. Without warning, his rubbery legs refused to hold his weight any longer, even with Sherlock's help, and buckled completely.
Thank God Sherlock had picked up on some invisible warning sign, otherwise John would have been sprawled on the kitchen floor just then. John was the doctor, but Sherlock was the detective, and he knew the mechanics of the human body almost just as well; in some cases, he understood them better. This was one of those cases. John collapsed, and just as swiftly as before, Sherlock had swept his right arm under John's knees and extended his left so that it cupped John's left shoulder. Before the other man even knew what had happened, he was lying bridal style, cradled securely in Sherlock's long arms.
"Ah…Sh-Sherlock…?" John squeaked, thoroughly shocked. In reply, Sherlock strode, not up the stairs to John's bedroom, or even back into the sitting room, but through the other doorway in the kitchen, into his own room. Placing his burden gently, tenderly on the bed, Sherlock slid his arms out from under John's shaking body and reached to snap the folded-down comforter up and over him. Before it had even drifted fully back down again, Sherlock had left and returned, bearing a glass of water, paracetamol, and a thermometer. Without a word, he had deposited them on the nightstand and left to put the kettle on.
John had never in all his life, not even during his time with Sherlock, been so utterly nonplussed. If only his head would stop spinning…maybe then he'd be able to get a handle on whatever had just happened. Obediently, he placed the thermometer under his tongue, and when it beeped, he checked it. 39 degrees Celsius. So he did have a fever. He felt his throat for his glands, which were expectedly swollen, and took his own racing pulse just to confirm it.
After downing the water and the medicine with it, John gratefully lay back against the pillow. Sherlock's pillow, he thought. He knew he should be at least a little hesitant about sleeping in Sherlock's bed, on Sherlock's pillow which smelled just like him, but his body and head were reminding him fervently that they did not wish to be working anymore and that sleep was now the top priority. He yawned widely, flinched at the pain the yawn caused in his throat, and let his eyes sink slowly shut.
He didn't hear the teakettle whistle, nor did he notice when Sherlock entered the room with a steaming mug of tea which was placed carefully on the bedside table. He stirred a bit when Sherlock reached out and gently pulled the thick comforter back up from where it had slid off John's shoulder, and sighed rather happily when he felt the hand linger, warm and solid and soothing, there on his arm.
Sick he might be, but Sherlock was there. Fussy, childish, manic, haughty, incorrigible, impossible Sherlock. Brilliant, thrilling, talented, incredible, supportive, marvelous Sherlock. John knew he would be well looked after.