"You want me to take what?"
"Anti-depressants, John. The staff and I have noticed that you seem to be struggling, and we believe that medication would make the transition easier for you."
"No. I'm not depressed, I'm just a bit...frustrated. It'll get better once I'm out of the hospital. Besides, it's only been a little over a week. You can't honestly expect me to be okay so soon."
"No. Of course not. But it generally takes a few weeks for the medication to start working, anyway, and we'd like to make sure that we get the prescription right before you're released to go home."
"So you're drugging me now so I won't be unhappy later?"
"Well, that's not quite how I would put it..."
John took a slow and measured breath before responding to the doctor. "I don't want to be medicated. Not right now. Why don't we wait, and if things don't get better, then we try them?"
The bearded doctor frowned, but eventually nodded. "Fair enough. You know, I believe I'm finally seeing what makes you and your partner get along so well. You're both stubborn as mules." He smiled and left the room before John could yell at him that Sherlock wasn't his boyfriend.
With an angry sigh, John flopped back against his pillow. He could kill Sherlock for not being there to help ward off the physician and his insistence that John be medicated. Then again, he suspected that Sherlock would've agreed with the doctor. He hadn't particularly been a bundle of roses to be around as of late.
It's not like John had anything against anti-depressants; on the contrary, he had seen how much they had helped his mother when her daughter's drinking and husband's abuse had taken a toll on her emotional well-being. He just didn't want them. Not in this situation. Not when taking them meant that Moriarty had managed to wriggle beneath his skin and fill him with a toxin that no amount of dialysis could purge from his bloodstream. No, Jim could break him physically, but John refused to admit that the damage went any deeper than his skin and bone.
-oOo-oOo-oOo-
Sherlock glanced down at his watch. He had told John that he was just going to their flat to shower and gather some more supplies for their extended stay at the hospital, and that he would only be gone for a couple of hours. It had been exactly one hour since he had left John's room, and forty-five minutes since Moran had stepped into the building that Sherlock was currently watching. Given that Sherlock still needed to stop by the flat to shower and grab some random items to uphold his ruse, he could stand and wait for twenty more minutes before he would need to head off to the flat. He didn't much like the idea of abandoning his mission before it was completed, but he could always track Moran down a second time. Mycroft had been rather charitable by allowing Sherlock the services of some of his agents, and Sherlock was certain that these same men wouldn't have trouble pinning Sebastian a second time.
That is, unless Moriarty happened to notice his right-hand man being tailed. Then things would become a bit more complicated. But Sherlock doubted that Jim took the time to look after anyone other than himself. Misplaced affection for Moran aside, Jim was an incredibly selfish individual.
Shifting uncomfortably among small fort of rubbish he had built for surveillance purposes, Sherlock scowled into his binoculars once again. He couldn't tell what was going on in the building, and it was beginning to irritate him immensely. He couldn't even see through the windows to lip read because of how heavily tinted they were. He was very disappointed about this, because he'd been teaching himself how to lip read in the hospital for this specific purpose. This, and the fact that he'd noticed John tended to mumble a lot while sleeping drugged, and he really wanted to know what he was saying. He didn't count it as an invasion of privacy since he mostly only learned that John dreamed about jam and hammer head sharks a lot. Both of which confused Sherlock, but he didn't ever mention it for fear of John snapping at him for reading his lips in the first place.
Anyway, back on the task at hand...
He peered down at the door once again, momentarily wondering if maybe Moran had escaped through one of the side doors without him noticing. This was highly unlikely, but altogether possible. He groaned once again as he looked at his watch. Time was up. He needed to be heading to Baker Street so he could make it back to the hospital before John started throwing a fit. They really were becoming frighteningly co-dependent.
And then the hulking man stepped out of the building. Sherlock tensed, wondering what he should do now. It would take at least fifteen minutes to complete his work with Moran, probably more, given the sheer size of the man. This would make him late, which would make John question what he had been doing, which would lead to Sherlock having to lie to John more, and he really did hate lying to John. He always felt as if he were committing some sort of crime.
Stepping from his hiding place, Sherlock quickly made his decision. John was probably sleeping, anyway, and wouldn't even notice or care if he was a bit late. Besides, he was doing this for John in the first place.
-oOo-oOo-oOo-
"You're not very clever, are you?"
The pasty faced detective grinned down at him, somehow looking both pleased and haughty at the same time. Sebastian had seen that same expression on Jim's face a multitude of times, but it usually made him want to do obscene things to the mad man, not break his teeth out as he wanted to now with Sherlock.
"Bugger off."
"See, now that just proves my point. I have a variety of appendages that you could have instructed me to force into a variety of orifices, and yet you chose the most worn-out curse of them all. Not a bit clever, then."
Sebastian was silently seething on the floor. Again, his intelligence was often insulted by Jim, but he never really minded it. He had never much liked school, anyway, and he knew that he was hired for his muscle, not his brains. But when this skeleton-thin bastard kept calling him stupid, well, Sebastian couldn't help but have some gory fantasies with this prick as the victim.
"Your first mistake, of course, was getting in a cab without first checking to see whom was driving it. I thought even you would know to do that, given your involvement in all those cabbie murders."
Sebastian felt like spitting fire, but he knew that it was mostly anger at himself for being so stupid. Yes, the arse had a point. He should've known better than to get in a cab without checking for danger first. Rookie mistake.
"Then you didn't even notice when we took a wrong turn. Then another. Then another. And another, until we were headed for the completely opposite end of the city. Really, now, are all you normal folk so dense, or are you just exceptionally moronic?"
Twisting against his bindings, Sebastian fought to lash out at the detective. He was furious now, and all he wanted was to hear the satisfying crunch of Sherlock's bones beneath his boots. Of course, the detective would never had been dumb enough to stand within range of his legs. Fuck.
"What do you want then, Holmes? Are you going to torture me for information? It's a lost cause. I've had much worse than you try and fail." He felt his blood rushing through his veins, but not out of fear. Certainly not. He was just pissed.
"Not at all. I just need you to deliver a message for me. And don't worry, you won't even have to memorize anything. I know that would be far beyond your mental capabilities. All you have to do is hold very very still..."
Sherlock raised a gun and leveled it directly at Sebastian. At first, he thought that the detective was aiming for his head, but then the gun dropped and fired at his right shoulder. He screamed, but it was quickly cut off by a second shot that struck him in his left thigh, slightly above his knee. That was it, then. Symmetry and retribution. He was meant to be the completion of the analogy; if Moriarty and Sherlock were two sides of the same coin, then Sebastian and Watson were also so. Now they were mirror images of each other, each broken where the other was whole. Even Sebastian could appreciate the poetry of it.
Sherlock wiped his fingerprints from the gun before placing it in Sebastian's lap. "There are no bullets in it, so don't even bother."
Sebastian simply gave a grunt of acknowledgment as Sherlock tapped on the phone that Moriarty had provided him when he was first hired. He heard the familiar beep of a text message being sent, followed by a buzz that meant the GPS feature had been activated. Sherlock turned about and gave Sebastian a pleasant smile before strolling out the door, calling out behind himself, "Hope you don't bleed out."
-oOo-oOo-oOo-
"You're late." John was warily looking Sherlock over as if expecting him to dematerialize at any second.
"I brought you a treat." Sherlock grinned and dropped a bag on John's lap. "I asked your doctor if I could bring you back a proper dinner. He seemed pretty keen on the idea. Thought it might help your sour mood."
Excitedly rummaging through the bag, John gave a little exclamation of happiness. "Oh thank God!"
"You can call me Sherlock."
John hardly looked up to spare Sherlock an eye roll before plunging back into the brown paper bag. "That's an old joke. And cheesy. I'd expect better of you. Oh! You got biscuits! I could kiss you."
"And that brings your homoerotic tally to two against my zero. Really, John, it's like you're not even trying."
John simply chuckled and chucked a package of sweets at Sherlock. "It was an exaggeration. Anyway, what are these for?"
John was holding up a rather large container of jam and a stuffed hammer head shark with a look of confusion. "Well, I think it's pretty obvious, John. The jam is for the bread and the stuffed toy is so you don't have to cling to me while you sleep."
John lightly blushed at the mention of his new need to be touching some part of Sherlock while he was sleeping, but he quickly covered it with a grin. "Er, thanks, I guess."
"Of course." Sherlock dragged over the table that usually rested in the corner of the room and began arranging their dinner on it. He was abruptly interrupted, however, by John shoving the stuffed shark down into the folds of his coat. "Um, John?"
"Well, if you expect that you relieve you of sleep monitoring duties, then it at least should smell like you." John's expression stated that this was clearly the most obvious and logical thought progression in the history of mankind, and that Sherlock was a fool not to realize it.
"Oh. That makes sense." Sherlock shifted his position so that the shark was tucked more deeply into his coat, allowing for more of his scent to soak through the fabric. He couldn't help but smile at the thought of John cuddling with it during the night and finding comfort from whatever demons tormented him in his sleep.
Author: So sorry about all the Sherlockian jokes I've sprinkled throughout here; I couldn't resist. I'm assuming that most of you know their origins, though, so it's all good. Thank you once again for continuing to read and review. I can honestly say that writing this has been a blast thanks to all the wonderful feedback.