John spent a week at the Holmes', listening to mummy's forties music and Mycroft's phone vibrate. He sat by Sherlock's bed most of the time, but Sherlock himself rarely spoke.

It was he who felt out of place. This whole time he couldn't put into words how much he owed his friend. Sherlock felt personally guilty, he felt almost introuble.

Not even Sherlock Holmes could tell himself, "That if you release everything that plagues your mind, in a small fit of luck, you will get better." But he knew it was true.

It was cancer, the kind that has killed their dear Uncle, the type that runs through your blood, it was. And it only got worse, to most. Sherlock woke up on a Sunday evening, needle being poked through his arm and a stern faced brother looking him square in the eye.

"What the hell are you doing to me?" Sherlock smacked the elder doctor's arm away. Mycroft snorts displeased, "You've went four months, two weeks, one day, and six hours without treatment whatsoever, dear brother." A bag of solution is placed above Sherlock's head where his other IV sits, "It's time to start the therapy unless you crave dying."

Mycroft was being dramatic. Sherlock had a good six months without treatment before any serious internal organ faliure, but John didn't. He scrambles from his chair, the one he had lulled off at, "What? Fuck sherlock, I know you were doing bad, but you didn't even help yourself?!"

Two. Two outraged men onlooked Sherlock.

"I saw no need in quickening my end. Chemotherapy did just that with Uncle, remember Mycroft?"

John and the other Holmes boy stared a moment, and John just couldn't believe his eyes. He scoffed, rolling his eyes and throwing a hand to his head. "So, this all... Let me get this straight..." John didn't, wouldn't, couldn't look at anyone, "Because of this Uncle, who... and forgive me for saying this... fucking killed himself for, god forbid, wanting to get himself rid of any self harming cells in his bloody body... Because of him, you won't even have one try at chemo? Even when you are in one of the better stages of cancer?"

John just didn't understand how influenced this unnamed Uncle was on him.

"That's not all, John." Sherlock sat up, joints popped in the process. "Oh please, just tell me! Quit this secret shit because one of them has already tried to kill you." The army doctor suppressed his yell while the greying, family doctor fled the room.

"Right, Mycroft, privacy please." The words left Sherlock's mouth and Mycroft was quick to reply, "I refuse, and would be chuffed to hear what you have to say." John nods, "Agreed, enlighten us."

Sherlock shrivels again, to that corner he knows too well, a place he once frequented in his teen years. The room, tall windows open, a roomy, comfortable place, turns colorless. "I'd rather it stay in confidentiality, considering it has to do with my personal emotion and John alone." Or, in John's translated version that he revised in his head, "I desperately need to share my feelings with you, John."

And it scared, choked, moved John beyond any words he tried to speak, "I need to walk." So, he left the room, closing the door behind him so Mycroft wouldn't catch which hallway he took or if it was the stairs.

...

Two days pass.

On one, John tried to get into Sherlock's room, but nurses couldn't grant him access. Later that day he found out Sherlock went ahead with chemo. Despite everything Sherlock needed to say, get out, he went forward with chemo.

The third day, everyone buzzed by him in a fog. Mycroft warned him that Sherlock was having a bad day, John barely remembers replying with, "Fuck you and his bad day." Mummy Holmes caught him at lunch, forcing him to eat, "Sweetheart you haven't eaten in awhile, I insist." Father Holmes made a first appearance, going by everyone much like John was, then again, Father Holmes was said not to be a people's man.

Two in the afternoon came by, and he finally had enough. What was Sherlock going to say? How could knowing whatever he was going to say make anything better? But sitting on your ass would cement the last question to a 'It won't'.

John creaked in the room. It smelled funny, like the disgusting drag he made his patience in the military drink when they couldn't keep food down. He hasn't smelled that in a decade, though.

"Hey, feeling off, yeah?" He sweet talked the genius whose closed eye clenched then slivered open. The first thing he did was roll forward and spew stomach content onto the floor. John ran to him, leaning him back and wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve. "I want to hear what you had to say. Sound nice, hm? And nobody is coming in, I promise."

The detective looked with sleepy eyes to his doctor, smiling with one corner of his mouth. "You want to hear or have to?"

The other looked to him fondly, "I want to hear it so badly, that I have to."