2. in the hospital
"Oh, I'm sorry, I'm really, really sorry,.."
Sherlock wrapped himself in the sheet. Though the body language screamed resentment and non-interest to the maximum, his detective hearing got every mutter and mumble from the apologizing doctor to whom he was now throwing his back. Even the high-pitched complaints from the other end did not escape him.
"Please…Don't hang up." he was not given time to finish. Sighing loud, John turned around to the something-like-a-snowball now sitting on the hospital bed, which seemed to have grown eyes on its back and were scoffing at his stare. "If you really meant no disturbance, you would have got the call in the corridor." Rather than feigning a complaint to inform your flatmate that you, good doctor John Watson, had again sacrifice his date for the sake of babysitting you.
"Shut up, Sherlock. I did not mean that." His head spinning in a mess, John was far above childish feud "I just…"
The halt proved Sherlock's prediction, "Didn't want to inform the whole corridor you have been dumped again."
"...Yeah, yes."
John had really grown beyond Sherlock and his tease. He pulled the chair next to him, sat straight down and began pulling newspapers.
"Good deduction."
Sherlock, seeing his bomb sink into human-free and thus human-safe open water, gave a deadly glare at the chair and the sandy hair above it. He buried his head even deeper into his pillow.
Silence. John kept a countdown to himself, 5,4,3,2…
"John, I need water."
John sighed, got up and handed a glass over. Usually when silence protest lasted less than 5 seconds, it meant Sherlock was on the edge of boredom. And this bored genius didn't even seem bothered to take it. He sipped it while John was holding the glass and immediately sank back to his pillow.
"Sherlock , you need to drink more fluid." John still held the glass and pushed it to Sherlock, "Now, you need…"
"Oh, for god's sake! John, can you cease for a minute to be professional? Keep that "do-this-and-you-get-better" doctor-to-children stuff away from me! Staying in hospital only gets me bored and bored to death even more quickly. I NEED a case!"
"I said no way!" John pushed him onto bed - not with so much force as to touch his wounds, "Sherlock, it has been only two days since your last case and 9 hours since you came around. So can you just keep quiet?"
"So who put me into a coma in the first place?"
For some better-keep-it-silent shamefulness Sherlock didn't continue with his accusation. Yet the glower spoke for itself "You punched me into it." The consequent coma was entirely a result of narcotic.
"That is because you were running around covered in blood and still refused to get onto the ambulance."
"The case was not finished!"
"Dressing change." Door opened and a nurse entered. She gave John a glaring scold. "Sir, I thought you were aware not to disturb the patient during visiting hours."
"...I'm sorry." John shrugged in compromise - a token of good attitude. And then he added, trying to keep Sherlock under management, "Lestrade is taking care of it. For once in a while you should put your trust in the Yard."
"In fact," she cleared her throat, a little distasteful about what she saw. "You could leave your friend alone…" "no", Sherlock interjected, promptly and firmly, "he stays with me."
"Mr. Holmes…" she furled her eyebrows at the answer and its assertiveness. "Please trust that we are capable of taking good care of you…"
"Really? As a nurse who had a fight with her boyfriend after movie last night and later got drunk in a bar, you are sure of that? Sorry, though you have got your license for three years and performed rather professionally at work, but John Watson is as professional and plus a doctor. So leave your work to him."
Here it went again. John felt his heart went out to her, but in between watching her suffering and venting Sherlock's anger for no reason, he decided to choose the latter.
"But..." The poor nurse, obviously unwarned of the omniscient deduction power, picked up the last sentence for defense.
"But he's not our doctor..."
"But you're not him. Go away."
John frowned like thunder as the nurse walked out yet forgot to take the lingering suspicion with her – the hovering unease all thanks to "but you are not him."
Shouldn't people feel it a bliss for this "only you not anyone else" uniqueness? But Sherlock had nothing slightly resembling "people". The self-diagnosed sociopath could conjure up justification for everything that slip his lips, which John knew too well to feel obliged for this everything to be statements of gratitude or love or whatsoever. And plus he just broke up with his girlfriend – fine, he admitted it, being dumped because the girlfriend grew jealous of the flatmate again.
"Grow up Sherlock!" He moved to the bed stand and began to check medicine bottles in silent angst. " Don't drag us into a couple just because you are too shy to have it changed."
The consulting detective gaped and almost, well almost, stroke back the two clauses that put him in shame before his high functioning brain paused him with a siren alarm: wait and see if John gets her back. Mining field avoided, tactic change. "John, be professional, don't dump your post-breakup misery onto your patient."
Dumping? All you have ever done is barking orders at me, scaring the nurse off with this nobody-fancies-to-know privacy, pushing me into the job which is supposed to be done by her and now she even believes I am gay, only because you are bored and you want to take on the world with your smart arse, and you are accusing me of dumping my misery on you?!
Having spent so much time with Sherlock not in vain, John had mastered the art of thinking one thing, saying another, doing still another. Why else the triple conflict between thoughts, words and deeds? He would think about, "when the hell could we not have body parts in the fridge?" When he actually said, "Sherlock, sort out your stuff." Then he crammed milk and break into whatever space he could manage. He would debate "Shit, I am going to screw up my work tomorrow." When he heard his self say, "Oh God, another 10 minutes." Then he struggled to get up and followed Sherlock to crime scenes. And this time he actually heard himself cursing and yelling to shoot the criminal, when he concentrated mainly on the getting-nowhere verbal suggestion "You are wounded. Get onto the ambulance!" and eventually unhelpfully punched him and shoved the passed out detective into the car.
Therefore John, cursing the brat under excellent self control, set to preparethe bandage and the disinfectant.In between his doctor routine, he eyed Sherlock and asked how he was feeling.
Sherlock did not seem to take it. "Bored", he rolled his eyes with a casual air.
"No one asked you this!"
The criminal chopped Sherlock in his left shoulder with a blunt instrument. Although he was there to prevent the further injuries to the collarbone, Sherlock sank into hemorrhagic shock because of the excessive bleeding. The shimmering dark marks of blood on his coat choked John whenever he thought about it.
"Does it hurt now? Your pillow is pressing against your wound."
"I said, bored." Sherlock frowned and muttered as he looked away. " That is what drives me mad, not the pain."
Oh… John jerked his eyebrows and closed in to fixate Sherlock's drifing eyes - I guess you are just too shy to say "No, don't worry." Or "Thank you for your concern"？
For response he got a glower –are you changing or not?
"Sherlock, let me remind you one more time. Watch the occasion." John stopped teasing and sounded serious as he helped Sherlock out of the hospital dress and untied his gauze. More than often Sherlock couldn't help himself praising the criminal for being "fantastic" even in front of the victims' families. Sergeant Donoven loathed him for this and over stressed her tone when she called him freak. John knew Sherlock to be fine with it until this time when he almost bled to death. "You cannot top the case above everything else. You almost got yourself killed. How can you jeopardize your life for the sake of thrills? Let alone it being unnecessary."
He knew his words were getting nowhere. It was as useless as telling your friend "Protect your self. Don't get killed" before they walked onto the battle field. He understood how intransigent Sherlock could be. He never listened to him, not to anyone. But John couldn't help himself from thinking about it. He had enjoyed and clung to the adventures they had to keep on with his life. So when he was knocked out and kidnapped by the Chinese cult, planted with bombs by Moriarty or threatened for a code at gunpoint, he just took and accepted it as a part of their adventures, necessary and inevitable. Yet he couldn't afford any possible loss of Sherlock, not to the slightest
"…John."
"…" This time a John Watson made it to Sherlock's side. But what if he had not made it?
"John."
"…" How about next time? What if he could not make it the next time?
"John，so now you understand how I felt, when you were tied, packed and delivered to me with planted bombs or pointed guns.
"…What?"
"If you were not such an idiot, you could have avoid these avoidable dangers and thus saved me tons of trouble when I tried to solve cases."
The job was done. Sherlock did his bottoms with his good hand and wrapped himself up in the sheet, throwing John his back again.
"…OK." John turned to put away the bottles and jars, when he heard over the clattering, "Thank you for your concern."
A million facts had warned John not to appear anywhere near the consulting detective when he was disengaged from cases, not even for 5 seconds, because you never knew if his racing-to-smoking brain would just go off and blow the by-standers. But now John had to appear by his side day and night.
At midnight Sherlock was burning, thanks to the clinical complications, running a fever of 39 Celsius. For every 20 minutes, John had to remove the cooling towel and additionally cope with a wide range of fever talks. He must sue this hospital, he swore to God! Even though Sherlock had been observant and mean and a pain in the arse, that would not make up for the hospital staff to just walk by this particular ward with "Go Away" stuck on the door. He twisted his anger into the towel - these guys were doing nothing more than playing on-lookers. And oh, he deserved all the OT bills and perhaps also a bonus, since the patient was far more than being an average pain in the arse.
"You are making noise."
Sherlock mumbled in his dizziness, disturbed maybe by the dripping water, maybe by the raging thinking going on John's part.
Ok, all right…I am not going to punch you since you are sick. For the thousandth time the good doctor reigned himself with the sheer force of will power. He had lost count as for many times he had done this. If Sherlock was not sick, the prior sentence might well end with "since you are solving a crime." or "since you are in the pit of boredom." or the ultimate version of cosmic tolerance "since you are the world's only high functioning sociopathic consulting detective."
"Keep your towel away from me." For the first time in hours, Sherlock seemed to be aware of another human being's attendance. He opened his eyes and the innocent towel suffered his glower.
"If you wish to burn your intelligence down to the human average, I have no objection."
"Don't put that thing on my head!" He tossed the towel precisely into John's hands." I don't want to look like an idiot."
"You ARE an idiot." The towel was packed and made its way back on the detective's head. "Hey, don't shake!"
When Sherlock came around the next morning, he could tell it was 9 am by the solar position and was confirmed by a glance at the bedstand, 9:07. The towel was gone from his head in the basin. Clumsily folded, not quite John. Apparently he had been too drained to care about this last night - or perhaps to until this morning. Sofa seemed intact.
"John？"
Sherlock called but there was no doctor in the room. Familiar footsteps were approaching up from the corridor.
"Sherlock? did you wake up？"
The door opened with a fluffy head.
For a fleeting moment, Sherlock thought his hard drive had indeed crashed and burnt. Then John shoved in, one arm holding a giant toy bear, the other their breakfast. The truth was the bear was so overwhelming to John, he could only see his path by tilting his head. The sandy bear and the sandy hair of John, why else Sherlock came under the illusion the good doctor had transformed into a giant toy?
Oh, there was another one. obviously, the bear's stripped jumper.
The jumper. That explained the harmony between man and his toy. "John, I have no idea that you share your taste with teddy bear."
"Whatever you want to say. Shut up." God knew that Sherlock's fever persisted until 8 in the morning and he had copped for a whole night with senseless talks and with hard doubts as which talks were grumbles and which pure nonsenses. The constant concern about a massively intellectual creature was beyond someone at his brain level. John's brain was yelling a strike. He just got changes wrong when he bought breakfast. He felt if he didn't get himself into bed any sooner, his brain system would simply crash.
That John had not sleep last night paused Sherlock when John shoved the toy bear into his arms. He did not even object before he realized what had happened and John had already curled under blanket on the sofa.
"John, remove this!"
"I am taking the sofa. The bear stays on yours." John shot him the last angry look before closing his eyes
"It is not mine. Don't mess it up."
Sod it. Mess up? How can you mess up with a teddy bear, autopsy?
"…"