A/N: Horror isn't really my writing genre so this may fall short of scary, but hopefully it may make you go 'eww!' in the right place lol This story will jump backwards and forwards in time - if I'm in italics from now on, it means it's 'the past', and hopefully it won't get confusing! As always, reviews appreciated :-)
Chapter 3
John woke to agonizingly bright artificial light and tightly tucked bed sheets. Neither would indicate he was home in his own bed, so presumably he got lucky at the party, but really…? Did she have some kind of nursing fetish, wrapping him up in bed so tight he couldn't move? Apart from the pain of the gunshot, his abiding bad memory of his hospital stay in Afghanistan was over-zealous nurses and their bed-tucking. He turned his head to see if the girl was still in bed with him and gave a yelp of surprise to find Mycroft Holmes by his bedside, calmly reading the newspaper. Sensing movement he lowered the paper and grimaced at the former army doctor.
"Doctor Watson! So glad you decided to re-join the land of the living at last." He folded the newspaper tidily and placed it carefully on the bed, crossing his legs and flicking imaginary lint from his trousers. "I was starting to think you'd given up. Decided to fade away to join my brother."
John scowled at the thin red-haired man's patronizing smile. "Where am I?" Mycroft raised his eyebrows and pointedly looked around the clinical white room with its beeping machinery and pristine metal framed bed. John followed his eyes up the length of the IV stand that was delivering fluid into the cannula in his arm. "Ok, which hospital? Not Bart's."
"Good Lord, no. There isn't a hospital in London, NHS or private that could handle your particular malady. You are in a specialist facility that deals in… containment."
John inspected the IV bag but there was nothing on it to indicate its contents. Antibiotics probably. He didn't feel any kind of wooziness often associated with intravenous analgesics, and he wasn't aware of any pain.
"Wait. So I'm in some kind of quarantine for infectious diseases? And yet you're sitting there right by me, totally unconcerned; not even a rudimentary face mask. I don't believe the great Mycroft Holmes is any more immune to contagion than the next human being. So what have I got? And how? I was at a party last night…"
"You were here last night. In fact you have been here for three weeks. You were brought here directly from the party following the… incident. Unfortunately the perpetrator escaped which is something we must remedy; however, my priority is getting you back on your feet."
"Very noble of you Mycroft. I didn't believe you had a caring bone in your body. Sherlock never seemed to think so." John couldn't figure out how Mycroft had even known he would be at a party, and he felt discomforted the other man had been keeping tabs on him since Sherlock's suicide. His activities had become altogether less wholesome over the last year, not something he was proud of.
Mycroft chuckled. "I would not disappoint you Doctor Watson by claiming to be a caring individual. I do however have a keen sense of justice, and Sherlock would want me to ensure that punishment was dealt where deserved. Firstly… you asked me a question about your disease?" John winced at the word disease, his guilty conscience bringing up all he could recall about STDs but quickly dismissing them. None that he was aware of would require him to be contained in a hospital room that appeared to have a reinforced steel door and no windows. He just nodded at the man to continue. "What do you know of lycanthropy Doctor?"
"Um… it's a delusional psychosis in which the patient believes they can, or have, transformed into an animal, generally a wolf. Rare, I believe. Not something I've encountered in my career."
"I'm speaking of the blood-borne disease that causes significant biological changes in the human body. It is incurable, I'm afraid."
John stared at him open-mouthed, his lips finally twitching into an incredulous grin. "Well, well, Mycroft Holmes has a secret." The thin man inclined his head, waiting for him to continue. "Mycroft Holmes is a fan of bad horror; who would have thought it? It's a fantasy, a fiction!" he guffawed, slapping a hand against the covers gleefully.
"And yet here we are you and I. I can assure you Doctor Watson, lycanthropy is quite real, and as I said, sadly incurable. All we can do is teach you to manage your condition." The elder Holmes wasn't smiling, his face a blank mask in the face of John's giggling disbelief. He sighed and stood, looming over the chuckling man. "Perhaps a demonstration?"
He laid one hand on John's belly, which was weird enough, and stared down at it with a look of intense concentration. John glanced curiously at the odd man and then down at his hand. Mycroft's fingernails began to thicken and form into claws, the joints on his fingers reversing and his thumb contorting and shortening until a huge hairless paw rested on his stomach. John retched and fought to swallow bile, breathing heavily and scooting up the bed away from the horrific thing that had been Mycroft's hand. The other man was sweating and panting with the effort of the partial change, all his customary composure shattered. When John started gagging again, drawing his knees up to his chest and dropping his forehead to rest on them, Mycroft wheeled away cradling the paw in his unchanged hand and leaned heavily against the wall, gasping through the pain as the change retreated.
"Oh my god, fucking hell, oh god, what the actual fuck? Mycroft what the fuck?" he babbled, voice rising and becoming shriller in his panic. He daren't raise his head for fear of what he might see. His breathing was all to hell and he couldn't seem to get it back under control. When Mycroft gently touched his shoulder he screamed, curling into a ball as far from the other man as the IV would allow.
"I'm sorry," Mycroft said regretfully. "I believe that was necessary, but obviously distressing for you. You will have questions, which I'll try to answer in good time, but right now I think you could do with a break from my company and some food. I'll have something brought to you. When you're ready to talk have someone send for me."