Just a short idea I had.
Disclaimer: I am not Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss, or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. So I do not own Sherlock. Such a bloody shame.
When Sherlock Holmes met John Watson, he wouldn't have expected the former army doctor to leave such an impression on him. Even more so, he wouldn't have expected that other people would notice the impression John made long before Sherlock himself did.
If someone asked him if he had friends before John, he would have scoffed at their question. John was the first and only person he would call his friend. Certainly, there were others that he considered friends (colleagues, he reminded himself mentally), but John was his best friend.
Before John Watson became a fixture in his life, he would have shunned the idea of feelings. He would deny experiencing emotions and insist that he deleted feelings from his mind to make more room for the multiple trains of thought that constantly raced against each other through the tunnels of his brain.
That was why Sherlock couldn't describe how he felt when he staged his death. Sadness? Fear? He decided that it was a mixture of the two. He remembered standing on the ledge of the building, his hand trembling as he spoke to John on the phone.
He stayed in hiding for months. When he finally returned, John was furious with him. And Sherlock couldn't blame him. After John almost broke the consulting detective's nose, he realized that what Sherlock had done had been to protect him. Eventually things became the way they were months ago.
John opened the door and entered the room. "You were right. The woman was murdered by her brother in law. Lestrade's taking him in now."
"Of course it was the brother in law. I'm always right," Sherlock said incredulously.
John smirked. "Whatever you say." He sat down in the chair beside Sherlock's bed. "This is the fourth case you've solved in two weeks. Maybe you'll go home soon."
Sherlock shrugged. "I wouldn't count on that. The nurses say I'm too crazy to leave anytime soon."
John frowned in disapproval and reached for his friend's hand. "Don't listen to them. They're wrong, alright? You aren't crazy, Sherlock."
"Don't be ridiculous, John, of course I am. Without crazy people, the world would be unbearably boring."
John chuckled. "I expected you'd say that." He leaned back in the chair. "I'd like to get out of here soon. Just listen to what your doctors say, alright?"
"Why would I do that? They don't possess the intelligence of a squirrel. They're only slightly smarter than Anderson," he scoffed, earning a glare from a nurse that had entered the room. The nurse started to administer the medication to him. "Why are you doing that?" he demanded. "I don't need it."
"He's perfectly lucid right now, nurse," John insisted. "He doesn't need to be medicated."
"See? He says I'm lucid. Isn't that convincing?"
"Yeah. Real convincing," she muttered, moving past them and closing the door loudly behind them.
"What an idiot," Sherlock commented.
"I really don't understand why they give me the medication every time you come to visit. That's the only time when I'm not bored out of my mind."
John smiled sadly. "Maybe one day we'll have an interrupted visit. I'll try to come earlier one day. But these people really have impeccable timing, huh?"
"They really do, don't they? I don't see why they can't drug me when everything is dull so I could sleep through the boredom." The medication was already beginning to make him sleepy but Sherlock felt anger start to rise within him. "God, John, I hate it here sometimes! They're always cutting our visits short. It happens every time."
"I know, buddy." John leaned forward closer to his best friend. "I promise you, you'll go home one day. Alright? You'll go home and we'll be solving crimes together again. I may even let you shoot your smiley face on the wall. How does that sound?"
"The day can't come soon enough," Sherlock mumbled, his eyelids starting to droop and his voice slowing under the effects of his medicine.
"Just rest. I'll return tomorrow."
"Please do," Sherlock murmured before he gave into sleep. He slept soundly for the rest of the night, comforted by the thought that his best friend would visit him again.
When Mycroft came by to check on his younger brother the next morning, he was surprised to find him still asleep in bed. The medicine, though intended to keep him asleep throughout the night, sometimes didn't work and Sherlock would wake up in the late night hours screaming and when Mycroft checked on him, would find him angrily curled into a ball.
He sat by his brother's bedside and waited for him to wake up. It didn't long for Sherlock to open his eyes, slightly groggy after what Mycroft hoped had been a good night's rest.
"How did you sleep last night?" Mycroft asked once Sherlock had time to awaken.
"Fairly well, actually."
"That's good. You haven't had a good night in a while."
Suddenly his eyes lit up. "John was here," he noted. "When he visits, he comes around the same time before night. It's rather predictable."
"I suppose it is predictable," Mycroft mused.
"I always seem to sleep better after John visits. It's possible that's the reason why he visits so late in the evening," Sherlock contemplated.
"Oh?"
"But the nurses always interrupt us. They'll come in here and administer my medicine even when John and I both tell them I'm lucid. It's incredibly stupid of them, I think."
Mycroft swallowed hard. "It is, isn't it?" He was relieved to see his little brother so calm but that didn't stop the sadness from rising inside him.
He didn't have the heart to remind Sherlock that John had been dead for a year.
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