"John, could you head to OR nine? Naho's still waking up the patient on eight and we're expecting an emergency craniotomy any minute."
"No problem," John tells them, swallows down the last of his stale cup of coffee and heads from his office to the OR floor. Naho Akamine, the unit's current neuroanaesthesia fellow, is perfectly capable of keeping the reins tight on several things at once, but anaesthesia induction and the weaning off of a respirator phase requires constant presence and vigilance. She and John are on call, so John is the logical choice for starting a new case.
He enters through the main doors since there's no patient in the theatre yet. Once the operation is underway, traffic is limited to a side door to ensure maximum cleanliness. His smile widens as he takes in Navendra Williams, an experienced nurse waiting for him, a set of syringes already containing everything they'll need. "What have we got?"
Williams points to a computer screen on the corner table. "Acute subdural, Coumadin countered with vitamin K at A&E."
John grabs a stool and begins browsing the electronic patient records. Some of the information won't have been entered yet, but some of the lab work ought to be there already, as well any information from any prior visits the patient may have had to the hospital. "K's too slow – we'll need K-dependent factor concentrate. Check the tables for the dose, there's no recent weight but we'll go by 85kgs to be on the safe side. INR looks to be 2.1."
Williams acknowledges this and gets to it while John continues reading. Male, 46 years of age, diet-managed hypercholesterolaemia and Coumadin as a preventative medication for blood clots; the patient had had a deep leg vein clot a few years prior. No predisposing factors had been found. No allergies. As for why he is currently unconscious and awaiting emergency surgery; he had tripped on something, fell, hit his head on a mantelpiece, was initially only disoriented but soon fell unconscious. A head CT revealed that a blood vessel had ruptured under the tight structure known as dura on top of the brain and the bleed and the forming clot are now pressing on the brain, causing unconsciousness. A relatively common neurosurgical emergency, it tends to carry a good prognosis when managed swiftly.
As sorry as he is for the patient, John is glad to get to handle this. He has now been the Clinical Director for a year, and the plentiful admin duties are severely cutting into his OR hours. Being on-call compensates for that, but only a small number of cases handled outside office hours are what he has been specially trained to do: neurosurgery.
He's particularly glad for the opportunity tonight because he knows who else is on call.
"Bloods ordered?" John asks the assisting nurse.
She nods. "Six RBCs, four FFPs, four thrombocytes."
"Excellent." This must've been Naho's doing. John walks to the window in the wall between the two ORs and gives a thumbs-up to his young colleague who nods and continues typing up what must be a report for the post-anaesthesia recovery area on a computer while the scrub nurse is pulling drapes off the patient's neck.
A rolling sound and footsteps echo down the corridor. Williams opens the main doors, and an A&E department gurney is wheeled in, carrying the already intubated patient. John is glad to see an arterial line already in place. Their start will be swift.
Handover report begins, given by an A&E emergency physician. John had skimmed through the patient's name but in his haste, it hadn't properly latched onto his memory. Now, when he hears it out loud, it catches his attention.
"Mr Holmes' GCS on site was 4, necessitating intubation-"
John grabs an emergency services transport form from the gurney. Holmes, Mycroft. The surname is not that uncommon, but the first name is just as strangely ridiculous as Sherlock's. This can't be a father – not enough of an age difference. A spouse is not a possibility since that would be John himself and they're not married – yet. A cousin or an uncle?
Ignoring the rest of the report, John goes back to the computer and quickly pulls up the patient's personal information.
Next of kin: Violet and Charles Holmes.
Those names John is familiar with: Sherlock's parents. Everything now connects in his head at the speed of lightning: this must be the brother Sherlock rarely even mentions. He never talks about his family much anyway.
Shit.
It doesn't change anything, but something tells John he needs to improvise. The A&E doctor ends his report, and eyes turn to John for instructions. "For all intents and purposes, this man is now a John Doe, and I don't have the time to explain why," he says sternly and takes up his position behind the patient's head. Curling his fingers around the chin and the intubation tube and shoving his other hand under the patient's head, he waits for others to follow suit and grab on. "The tubing of the portable respirator should be long enough to lift first and then hook him up to the workstation. All monitor cables clear?"
An escorting A&E nurse nods. Together, on John's count of three, they lift the patient from the gurney onto the operating table, positioning him so that his head rests on a metal stand attached to the head of it. They quickly swap the A&E monitoring equipment – still not interchangeable with OR gear – with their own, hook the patient up to the anaesthesia workstation's respirator and administer a set of medications to deepen the sedation the patient had been under. "Can we work in an entropy sensor or will that be in the way of the incision?"
"Left parietal, so it should work," the scrub nurse informs John as she continues opening up boxes of sterile surgical tools. A temperature gauge is quickly slipped into the back of the patient's throat, a nasogastric tube threaded into the oesophagus, and they're ready to go. The blood products haven't arrived yet, which is worrying – the patient's initial blood panel had shown that a lot of his platelets had already been consumed by the bleed.
John grits his teeth when he sees Williams pick up the phone to summon the surgeon. He knows Sherlock is still finishing up another case in OR seven, so there will be little time for him to survey the information on this new surgery beyond the bare necessities. He often acquaints himself with the next emergency patient in the OR they are already being prepped in. John hopes he just might be able to withhold the patient's name long enough.
Sherlock is brilliant. Sherlock is talented, well-trained, fast and trailblazing. Sherlock is also a bit mad and utterly gorgeous and John loves him to bits, but his confidence can be as brittle as spun sugar, and something tells John operating on his brother could well put a chink in that armour.
It takes less than two minutes for the OR doors to swing open and Sherlock to march in, a sweaty curl escaping from underneath a surgical cap. He's had a long day already.
"Ah, John. Time for a refresher course for the paper pusher, then?" he teases as he surveys the CT images pulled up onto the OR's big wall screen.
Before accepting his current position, John had worried how Sherlock might react to being under him in the command structure. It has all gone much smoother than he could ever have anticipated. Sherlock does, on occasion, assume that John exists solely to make sure others do his bidding, but a discipline lesson at home sorts things out rather quickly. Sherlock is very willing to be under him off the clock, too.
"No, I just like to watch you getting bored." The evacuation of a subdural haematoma is one of the simpler intracranial operations, and Sherlock has done over five hundred of them. Bread-and-butter. Except for when the patient is….
"No," Sherlock says, and his tone makes John look up first at him, then the screen.
John had forgotten that the patient's name is embedded into each image.
"No," Sherlock repeats, panic biting at the edges of his tone now. He pivots on his heel and marches out of the OR.
Williams is looking at John, eyes wide, then realisation dawns. She glances at the patient. "Is he-"
John doesn't stop to answer. A quick glance at the monitors tells him that while the patient is far from stable, they will be even less so if he doesn't drag their surgeon back into the OR. The bony skull needs to be opened before the pressure inside it builds to catastrophic levels.
John's bad shoulder twinges as he barges through the door so quickly he bumps it into the frame.
Sherlock is pacing the hall, pale, fingertips digging into his temples. John walks up to him, grabs his wrists and makes him stop.
"I can't John, you have to call someone in, call Matthews, you need to-"
John shakes his wrists to get his attention. He tries to fix the sea glass eyes with his own gaze. "Sherlock. There isn't anyone. Summer holidays, remember? The thing you never want to take, yeah? Matthews lives closest, but he's in Wales. You're the only senior in town. You need to do this."
Sherlock pinches his eyes shut. "I can't."
"Look at me."
Sherlock shakes his head.
"Look at me," John commands again. "William Sherlock Scott Holmes, the light of my life, the bee's knees of intracranial surgery, look at me."
Eyes fly open, pupils blown wide with nearly uncontrollable panic.
Sherlock doesn't freeze, he doesn't freak out when it comes to what he does better than most of his colleagues: operating on the brains and spines of other humans. Yet, there are things that pierce through his defences as though they were made of smoke. John is certain he hasn't even begun to skim the surface of all those things, and now is not the time. Any surgeon would be extremely anxious about operating on a family member, but there is no option here, and he's not going to let the worst happen. Whatever stress Sherlock is in right now, the grief and guilt over not doing this, over letting his brother be injured or killed by what he could have fixed, would cause much worse damage.
John lets go of one shaking hand and forcibly drags Sherlock back into the OR. Fingers gripped around his wrist like a vice, he manhandles his fiancée to the wall screen and stabs the CT image still visible with his forefinger. "What do you see?"
Sherlock blinks at him. "Acute subdural haematoma, left parietal hemisphere. No associated intracerebral bleeding. Midline shift approximately 1,5 centimetres."
"What do we do with those?"
"Emergency evacuation," Sherlock replies and there's indignation there now, which is great because an annoyed Sherlock is not a panicking Sherlock.
"You could do this pissed as a newt, with your eyes closed and one hand tied behind your back. Do it."
He lets go. Sherlock squares his shoulders, eyes still fixed on John and completely obvious to the other staff staring at the strange spectacle.
John glances at the monitors. The patient's – he also tries not to call him Sherlock's brother in his head – blood pressure had been 174/90 when the EMTs had arrived on site, so he's going to aim for a minimum of 155 systolic until the dura has been opened. When the pressure inside the skull is peaking, blood pressure needs to be higher in order to compensate for the force it needs to push against.
The blood pressure is now 140/87. Bearable, but not good enough. He steps to the infusor pump tower and raises the infusion rate of the noradrenaline Williams has already started.
Sherlock's eyes narrow as he studies the images on the screen. Then, he grabs the marker pen offered, draws a slightly shaky line on the patient's now shaved head, then accepts a syringe of local anaesthetic which he uses to numb the future incision site.
John notices he's averting his gaze from the patient's face. At least he's getting on with it.
Soon, Sherlock disappears outside the door to wash up, and the scrub nurse begins hastily washing the patient's scalp.
John breathes a sigh of relief when Sherlock re-enters, hands held above his waist as he waits for the disinfectant to dry. With a mask on, John can't gauge his expression as well as before, but focus has replaced panic in his gaze, and he nods to John while grabbing and unfolding the sterile surgical gown left for him on a side table.
Between them, a set of instrument tables separates John's territory from Sherlock's.
Soon, John breathes a sigh of relief as he watches the steadiness and skill of Sherlock's hands as he saws off a piece of the skull, the scrub nurse irrigating the wound to prevent the drill from overheating. The identity of the patient lying is now hidden by green surgical drapes, but not forgotten.
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"I hardly even remembered you had a brother," John speaks up forty minutes later when Sherlock requests the piece of bone removed from the skull back for reinsertion. John slides in another IV cannula into the patient's arm now that they've finally received some blood products. There had been diffuse bleeding from tiny vessels throughout the surgery pointing to the patient's clotting factors having run out, and the blood that had trickled into the indicator chamber of the first cannula John had inserted on top of the ones done by EMTs at the start of the surgery had looked thin and watery, diluted by the crystalloid fluids used for volume replacement in place of blood products. John curses the emergency services' overzealous fluid administration and the slowness of the blood bank; the patient had only received about a litre of balanced fluids in the OR on his orders, despite the fact that there had been some additional bleeding during the surgery, because clotting factors diluted to nothing won't do much to control the situation. Now they're running red blood cells, fresh frozen plasma teeming with clotting factors and platelets as fast as possible.
All in all, everything had still gone as well as they could have hoped. The clot had been removed, a small artery still bleeding controlled, leaving no extensive swelling. The surgical field is now dry and clean and John had seen himself how much space had been restored to between the brain and its bony home. The patient is stable and Sherlock is closing up the opening he'd made.
"I don't ramble on about any other people I dislike, so why would I waste breath on him?" Sherlock asks, stretching his neck as he receives a needle and thread locked into a pair of forceps.
"I just thought your siblings would be a thing I should know about."
"Sibling, singular. There was a sister but she died young."
"What does your brother do, then?" John could call the man by his first name, but he's still a patient under their care right now and that wouldn't feel appropriate somehow.
"He's as close to an evil overlord as one can get."
John raises his brows as Sherlock glances at him.
Sherlock huffs, which usually translates to him yielding to John's nagging about something. "Oh, all right. He's the managing director of Meyer-Hessen."
John easily recognises the name of one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world.
Sherlock rolls his eyes as he lets the scrub nurse cut the thread. "Like I said, evil overlord."
"It doesn't sound like you, slagging on Big Pharma," John remarks. After all, John seems to recall that another company had bought Sherlock's anti-siphon shunt valve patent rights some time before they had met.
Sherlock stays silent for a moment as he snaps off the blue plastic tags holding the folded scalp flap away from the surgical field. John loves watching Sherlock at what he does best, those long violinist's hands making art out of what used to be the chore of barbers before surgery joined the rest of medicine as a revered speciality. It's a pity they don't get to do all that many OR cases together anymore.
"He's not evil because of his work. He's foul because he's Mycroft."
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Neurosurgeons don't tend to hang around to see whether the patient wakes up. Usually, they head to their offices and expect the post-anaesthesia recovery unit to tell them how the patient is doing.
Not tonight. Sherlock stays in the OR, breathing into John's neck as they slowly bring his brother out of anaesthesia. This is not an active process, more of a turning off the propofol tap and waiting.
And Sherlock is terrible at waiting in particular. John has barely begun the process before he's already coaxing open eyelids, peering into pupils and pressing down above the patient's eyes.
"Stop poking him. It's no point turning his supraorbital nerve into mush since his entropy level's barely fifty and I haven't even reversed his relaxant. He wouldn't be able to react even if he could."
"Well, get to it, then!" Sherlock snaps at him and receives a warning glare from John.
Thirty agonising minutes of watching Sherlock pace, blather about risk levels and glial cell regeneration and idiot brothers and their idiot renovation projects and why couldn't he just stay in Zurich where he belongs, he should have sold that stupid townhouse years ago-
"Sherlock?" John asks gently, grabbing a syringe for emptying the air cuff of the intubation tube.
"He always shows up at the most inopportune times, so why should this be any different-"
"Sherlock."
"He's going to humiliate me, I know it, he's going to treat me like a child, like he always does and-"
"Sherlock!" John commands, and finally, a connection is made.
Sherlock strides to the patient's side just as the man's eyes open. They're unfocused, sleepy but the pupils dilate normally when John flicks a small lamp across. He requests a hand squeeze and is satisfied to witness his patient purposefully trying to cough the intubation tube out instead of his windpipe convulsing around it in a primitive manner. This is good – very good, in fact. Subdural hematomas, when promptly evacuated, often lead to patients making a full recovery as long as they wake up without issue and don't have any residual symptoms such as hemiparesis. Someone as young and relatively healthy as this man has all the chances in the world to do well.
If they happen to get a good neurosurgeon, that is. In that respect as well, Mr Mycroft Holmes has been outstandingly lucky.
"Coughing can raise the ICP," Sherlock reminds him snootily, "shouldn't you give him more propofol?"
"Not at this point, Mr Backseat Driver. He's ready for extubation." John notices Sherlock has taken a step back, arms wrapped around himself. All this micromanagement is one of his more obvious nervous tics.
John removes the intubation tube and drops it into a bin extended towards him by Nurse Williams.
His gaze locks with Mycroft Holmes', now much more alert, even suspicious in his confusion. He looks up and notices Sherlock has left the theatre.
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How strange it is to see the insides of someone's skull before actually getting to talk to them, John thinks first thing after waking up sometime around the afternoon. Most strange details of being a doctor fly by his awareness, horrifying laymen at dinner parties when doctors start sharing tales although they shouldn't. Sometimes, just sometimes, he realises the absurdity of it and the benefit of sharing his life with someone who understands.
This is his favourite part of being on call, this waking up at an indecently late hour, arms full of sleeping Sherlock. He's so distant from the persona he projects at work, looking much younger than his years and considerably more innocent. The sight makes John's heart ache with more love than should be legal or humanly possible. This cherub-curled man, whose intelligence rivals those of Nobelists but who can act like a three-year old when the hospital cafeteria runs out of Pepsi. This doctor who can be both the greatest of healers and the biggest of dicks (often towards the same patient). This odd creature who is all John's, yet fiercely independent in a way that makes him so fucking proud of all the hardships he knows Sherlock has had to endure.
Sometimes Sherlock is a dick at home, too, though, particularly when he doesn't receive his usual breakfast of two pieces of toast glued together with an ungodly amount of honey within three minutes of waking up.
Sherlock sneezes, then yawns.
"Morning breath, love," John gripes. After being on call, Sherlock tends to just faceplant on the bed, regardless of whether it's already occupied, without brushing his teeth or having a shower. John is only vaguely disturbed by the thought that whatever bits of brain and drops of blood he has caught in his unruly hair always escaping the OR scrub caps will then be transferred to their king-sized bed. It's still less disturbing than some of Sherlock's experiments on human tissue. God only knows where he procures all those brains from.
Sherlock's arm shoots out from under the duvet, creeping over John towards the bedside cabinet. He fumbles around blindly and John nudges the phone into his hand.
While waiting for the hospital call centre to pick up, Sherlock sits up, providing John with an unparalleled view of his naked torso in the sunlight streaming through the window. He reaches out, but Sherlock frowns and swats his hand away.
"Neurosurgical ward, please," he requests, his tone already having adopted his sharp, uncompromising work persona.
There will be no lazy post-call sex today, John tells himself. Sherlock must be worried about his brother, even though the news last night had been good.
After the surgery, John and Nurse Williams had escorted the patient to the post-anaesthesia recovery area for the standard 6-hour observation period. Sherlock had insisted that it be doubled; "you have to tick all the boxes, John, otherwise you can believe he'll sue us both".
"He'd sue his own brother?" John had asked, and Sherlock had looked at him like he'd said something funny. Maybe that litigation thing works both ways, then.
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"Tie and cufflinks, Sherlock? We're visiting a patient, not having an audience with the Queen." Usually, Sherlock wears a suit and a dress shirt without any adornments for work, when he isn't in scrubs.
"Oh, you have no idea what you're talking about. He's not going to like you, by the way."
"Is he going to warn me off and threaten me like a proper big brother?"
"If he does, you ought to take it seriously. Under his direction, that company would sell missiles to North Korea if it could. He's a much more dangerous man than you could ever imagine."
"Even dangerous men have soft spots. Maybe one for a little brother?"
Sherlock groans. "Unfortunately, yes, and also the most condescending attitude to what he sees as bricolage, such as a career in surgery."
"Most parents would be proud."
"Well, he's not a parent, thankfully. He sees no point in anything that does significantly help one accumulate either wealth of power."
"Someone might argue being able to save people is a big responsibility and a power game."
"Perhaps yesterday may have given him some new perspective on exactly that," Sherlock muses but his tone is sceptical.
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Before heading to the neurosurgical ward, John pops into the locker room to change and to his office to fetch some papers. He has no idea what Sherlock does meanwhile; he hopes it isn't sneaking out for a cigarette. He is supposed to have quit – again.
They meet up by the lifts, and John has to work at it to keep up with Sherlock as the man purposefully strides the halls to the ward. He's envious of Sherlock's long, spidery legs at the best of times, and now he's walking like the devil is nipping at his heels, likely trying to get on with things before he chickens out of facing his brother.
There are no hellos exchanged when a nurse pulls aside the curtain separating Mycroft Holmes from his neighbours. This is a room featured with continued monitoring equipment – not where they'd usually put patients after a successful, uncomplicated subdural evacuation. Sherlock must have pulled some strings, possibly using John's name as leverage as he tends to do. Prat.
The older Holmes is reading The Times, which he folds up onto the bedside cabinet while regarding his brother in a collected but hardly joyful manner. The head of the bed has been raised to a half-sitting position, and his hands are now clasped together on the sheet. He manages to look more regal than ill, John thinks, even though the bandage wrapped around his head dilutes the effect. Even though subdural haemorrhages are something he has seen hundreds of, it never ceases to amaze him how fast the patients tend to recover, many of them making a return to their old lives without any long-term disability. Some patients even have difficulty believing what has happened to them since they only remember being fine and then waking up… quite fine. The sutured-up hole in the head does provide some reality therapy, at least. The older Holmes had been still drowsy from surgery when John's shift had ended, but he knows the man will have been explained by the ward nurses and rounding doctors what had transpired.
"Morning," Sherlock offers.
Mycroft's surprisingly light baritone wastes no time in addressing Sherlock. "Who authorised your stunt last night?"
Sherlock turns to John, looking sarcastically conspiratorial. "I'd say we can rule his cognitive function as normal. At least his worst traits are intact."
John finds it easy to stifle a grin since he finds himself indignant on Sherlock's behalf. If he hadn't gotten his act together, his brother would not be reading a newspaper right now. Instead, he might be lying on a trolley with a name tag tied to his toe.
Sherlock then glances at the ceiling in an aborted eye roll. "'Thank you, Brother Mine, for saving my brain and my life,'" he parrots. "We don't have neurosurgeons queuing up to poke around your calvaria. Waiting for someone else would have decimated your brain, and the GMC does condone providing emergency treatment to relatives to save their lives, which means that you can save the barrister's fee."
Family, John thinks. Can't live with them, can't live without them. He half expects a thank-you, but only hears an amicable 'I see', instead, from their patient.
The Holmes in the bed then shifts his attention to John, who feels like he's being given a forensic once-over. The sight does not seem to please the observer. "Bedding the nurses, are we Sherlock? At least that prophetic rumour came true, then."
John gapes. Has Sherlock even told his brother about the two of them? His parents know, to some extent, so it would be logical that Mycroft knew, too, but….
Obviously catching on to his surprise, Holmes now looks exasperated. "It's written all over the both of you. My brother has never been good at containing his excitement when someone gives him a new toy."
"John is not a nurse," Sherlock says indignantly. "He's an anaesthesiologist," he corrects, and the pride in his voice surprises John. He had once given Sherlock a massive bollocking over a conversation he'd overheard him having with another surgeon about most anaesthetists being failed surgeons or lazy bums. At the end of that day's surgery, John had told Sherlock he was going to go have tea since Sherlock's massive brain should be easily able to do both his job and John's, since the latter's is something even a lazy failure of a bum could handle.
Sherlock had actually apologised. Not by saying sorry, but through a complicated and frankly quite boring lecture on the benefits of anaesthesiology to the development of many surgical techniques and the advancement of intensive care which had been important to modern neurosurgery.
"I get it, you're an idiot and I love you," John had told him.
"How could you possibly derive me being an idiot from that? I have just wasted two hours of research into the history of medicine on you."
That had made John want to apologise.
John sees Sherlock worry his lip as his fingers briefly fly up to the engagement ring hung around his neck on a gold chain. John wears his own in a similar manner since they're not allowed in the OR. Neither tends to bother with transferring the ring to their finger on their days off.
Sherlock draws a nervous breath. Their interactions just now confirm what John has already suspected: that the brothers truly don't keep in touch much.
"John is my anaesthetist and my partner. As you should already know."
"As I told you before, I shall congratulate you, once some level of evidence of the longevity of this dalliance presents itself. Please refrain from rambling more to Mummy about supposedly being involved with someone."
"We've been together for a year and a half already," John says and retracts the 'Sir' the man's naturally authoritative demeanour seems to demand. He doesn't like the man, so he's hardly going to bow down to him, Sherlock's brother or not, patient or not.
The older Holmes leans forward slightly. "Surname?"
"Watson."
"Dr Watson? The doctor Watson, who salvaged my brother's career?" Something in the man's demeanour seems to soften, and the next words out of his mouth take John by surprise: "My apologies. I am not entirely sure my circumspect brother has even underlined the fact that the person he claims to be involved with is you. In addition, I am still tired from yesterday, and your outfit misled me.
John had changed into his scrubs. He's not entirely sure why. Being a doctor tends to give one a certain air of assumed respectability, but he tended to forget that in his scrubs he does not look all that much alike from the other OR staff. Sherlock, on the other hand, looks like he does during his outpatient clinic days – which he hates since they entail talking to patients and their family members – impeccably tailored and perfectly balanced between neat and formal.
Sherlock would normally be loath to admit his career needed salvaging, but he seems to have a vested interest in selling the concept of John to his brother despite obviously not having a very high opinion of the man.
"And you'd do well to respect him for that," he snootily directs his brother.
"You live in Switzerland, then?" John asks in what he hopes is a polite tone. Sherlock had ranted about the fact that his brother stayed abroad until he saw fit to come to London to oversee the renovations of some Mayfair estate and had the utter gall to get himself injured on Sherlock's watch.
"My work practically requires it. Regretfully, it also means I see very little of Sherlock." To John's surprise, the man sounds genuinely chagrined over the fact.
Sherlock looks still to be bristling but says nothing. Technically, what his brother had remarked is true: Sherlock's career could have ended if John hadn't worked out the solution to a patient death he was on trial for. It had not been Sherlock's fault that a colleague's wife had died on the table. It had been an unfortunate clerical error, a bureaucratic fuck-up.
"I was not told you were romantically involved, though it would not be the first important announcement Sherlock has kept from me. He's always been so resentful. I am pleased to make your acquaintance," he says curtly.
"Likewise," John says, shakes the hand offered, then clasps his hands behind his back in parade rest.
"John is also my boss," Sherlock admits behind gritted teeth.
"So, what's this brotherly feud about, then?" John plucks up the courage to ask.
"Too much history between us, Dr Watson. Old scores. Resentments."
"Nicked all his Smurfs? Broke his Action Man?" John grins.
Both Holmeses look appalled at the suggestion of having spent their childhood with such toys.
"He tries to micromanage me-"
"He would rather make the most idiotic life decisions just to spite me-"
Both brothers begin their complaints at the same time, and after realising it snap their mouths shut.
"He even sold his patent elsewhere, even though I could have protected his interests best in such a major deal," Mycroft tells John with a weary glance at Sherlock.
"You've never approved or acknowledged any achievement of mine until one comes along that makes your nostrils flare with the smell of money," Sherlock accuses.
"You have no experience in forging corporate deals. Tell me, dear brother, how much did you manage to wring out of Steadman for the valve rights?"
"Four point three million," Sherlock informs him with his nose stuck up.
John nearly chokes on his own spit. Four what now?!
"It's worth significantly more, which even you must be well aware," Mycroft remarks dismissively.
John is still reeling. "You have. Four million pounds?" he manages to blurt out, brain short circuiting.
He knew Sherlock was not short on cash – he tended to throw money around quite happily when they went on holidays. At home, however, his wardrobe was the only constant vacuum of dough but apart from it, he didn't seem very interested in his finances, leading to John sorting out all the bills. He had suspected there might be a trust fund or something behind Sherlock's situation, but…. this? He'd known about Sherlock's invention, it had been all the rage in conference circles, so it was logical that some medical equipment company would have bought the rights.
"Where is it?" he hears himself ask.
Sherlock shrugs. "Somewhere. Some account. I don't keep track of it."
Mycroft's eyebrows rise up in a manner that tells of years of exercise of such facial expression. "You see, Dr Watson, why it would have been pertinent for my brother to have someone oversee that interaction?"
"You could retire," John tells Sherlock while trying to blink away his shock, "you could do whatever you wanted." He doesn't say we – despite being engaged to the man, it's Sherlock's money. John wants to carry his own weight when it comes to daily expenses.
"As much as you might be tempted by a leisurely existence sipping beer on a beach in a resort in some third world country, my brain would stagnate and shrivel into a raisin. I can't not work."
Mycroft turns to John. "You may notice how my brother's medical aspirations are more based on avoiding tedium than any genuine desire to help mankind. I have always found it slightly disturbing that his idea of fun entails slicing up people's brains."
"I should have given you a lobotomy while I was at it; would have made you much more agreeable," Sherlock mutters and crosses his arms tightly.
John is tempted to laugh – he can now imagine the two brothers as children, having some petty squabble. Lord knows he fights with his sister just the same as adults as they did when they were children or teenagers.
"Even if he doesn't do it out of love for his fellow man, he is rather brilliant at it," John says. Sherlock has been his great defender today, which is extraordinary from a man who thinks 'idiot' is an endearment, so he feels like he needs to return the favour.
"A thank-you might be nice," Sherlock says petulantly.
Mycroft's lids close and then open in an open display of indignation. "Really, Sherlock. Must we do such a thing? I very much doubt you jumped at the chance to do the surgery, so we are both victims of circumstance. It is a relief, however, that the end result is satisfactory."
John suspects that will have to do. "Come visit sometimes," he tells the older Holmes. "I make a mean spaghetti carbonara."
"John!" Sherlock protests.
As though John would miss a chance to learn more about things Sherlock doesn't want to talk about. Embarrassing, endearing sibling things, stories from formative years, adorable little quirks materialising in childhood. He wants to know all of it, and he has a hunch that this sibling rivalry might be just the thing to coax such ammunition out of the barrel by exposing Sherlock to his brother.
"I would be delighted," the older Holmes replies with a tone completely devoid of enjoyment, but John thinks he manages to spot a twinkle of curiosity in the man's gaze.
"They'll discharge you in a few days. I'm sure the registrars will do an adequate job in keeping you alive until then," Sherlock says. As a newly minted consultant, he's obligated to oversee the ward one day a week, which he usually schemes to delegate to someone else. When John had first met him he'd been just a fellow with a court case hanging over his head like the Sword of Damocles, and that case had led to him being counselled by John in dealing with the human side of medicine – he'd been really struggling with his patient and family member interactions. He can now easily manage telling people good news since such news tends to smooth whatever brusqueness he might exhibit in delivering it. Delivering bad news, however, is still a bit of a project, and he tends to bring John along to salvage things. It's a pity they don't get to do all that many OR cases together anymore.
The conversation seems to have died down, and Mycroft is regarding his brother expectantly.
"I shall leave you to your convalescence," Sherlock says, "tell them to page me if there's a complication."
John cringes. This is exactly what he has tried to hammer into Sherlock's brain – do not be a pessimist in front of patients; give them hope and confidence that everything will go well. On the other hand, Mycroft Holmes is probably used to his insensitive output.
Mycroft dismisses them with a nod. "Dr Watson," he acknowledges.
John is almost tempted to cheerily tell the man to get well soon, just to see Sherlock's face but his fiancée has already skulked out of the room.
John catches up with him in the hallway.
"Just don't cook him carbonara," Sherlock warns him as they head towards the lifts, "his cholesterol levels are appalling as is."
- The End -