Sherlock was asleep when John walked back into his room. And when he woke, he gave John no opportunity to return to their previous conversation. John had had all of his arguments worked out in his head on the journey back to the hospital, but as soon as he saw Sherlock they all seemed empty and facile. For every argument, every protestation or defence that he had thought of, he could hear Sherlock's cutting retort, see the exasperated expression on his face that implied that John was being an idiot yet again, and so John kept his arguments to himself.

Besides, Sherlock obviously wasn't in the mood for conversation. His previous calmness had disappeared entirely, in one of those mercurial changes of mood that John knew so well. He was now bored and frustrated and making no attempt to conceal the fact. He reminded John of one of the lions at London Zoo, stalking round his enclosure, snarling at anyone who came too near. The fact that Sherlock could only just about walk to the tiny en-suite bathroom without assistance and so prowling around the room was entirely off the agenda did little to improve his mood. Instead, he was sitting up in bed, drumming his fingers against the iPad on his lap impatiently, and snapping at John whenever he opened his mouth.

John had seen him in this mood many, many times before. Sherlock Holmes needed a case. But of course he already had a case - Magnussen's. His frustration this time came from his inability to investigate it past the superficial without the ability to leave his hospital room and a frustrated Sherlock was an unpredictable one, as John knew only too well. Sherlock was obsessed with Magnussen in a way that John hadn't since Moriarty died. There was the same mad gleam in his eyes, the same obsession with taking the man down, no matter what the cost. John tried hard not to let himself reflect how it had worked out last time.

'Sherlock, why don't you just leave it?' he asked finally, as Sherlock yet again unlocked the iPad, did a lightning-fast Google search, clicked through a few pages, then threw the device onto the bed on frustration only to repeat the process again a few minutes later.

He had changed the language on it to some strange alphabet that John strongly suspected was Korean. It would be unlikely to prevent Mycroft from hacking into it, but it certainly prevented John from reading his notes upside down or seeing what he was googling. Magnussen's picture was harder to disguise though, as was the unmistakable images of Singapore harbor.

'Magnussen is in the Far East?' he asked.

'Magnussen is everywhere, ' Sherlock said, tapping his fingers against the iPad in frustration. 'I can't stay here John, ' he said. 'The WiFi signal is so slow it's practically clockwork. And I need to get our and talk to people. I can't work here. There are too many distractions.' As if on cue, a nurse knocked on the door, wheeling in an obs machine. She was young and pretty. Sherlock sighed, held out his arm in resignation for the blood pressure cuff and closed his eyes to express his displeasure. John made a vague attempt to flirt with her while she checked Sherlock's blood pressure, pulse and temperature, hoping her to distract him into letting him see the readings. But while she was obviously flattered by the attention, she kept the screen on the machine turned alway form John and the chart was too far away for him to see what she was writing on it. No clues there then. Being cut out of any knowledge about Sherlock's medical condition was driving him insane. He was going to have to do some information digging of his own later.

'You're not well enough to leave hospital yet, Sherlock,' John said firmly as soon as the door had closed behind the nurse.

Sherlock opened his eyes and gave him that look - the one that expressed both distant and the fact that he thought John was a complete idiot. 'I can lie around at Baker Street as well as I can here, ' he said. 'There is significantly superior WiFi there and less distractions. I'm told that doctors can still be enticed to do home visits on occasion, if the financial incentive is large enough, and there are always taxis to take me to those who refuse to leave the building. Nothing is insurmountable, John.'

'You're on a two hour infusion of anti-fungals once a day,' John said reasonably. 'How do you think you're going to get those if you leave?' Sherlock did not answer, merely lifted one eyebrow in an elegant manner that John couldn't help but wish that he could imitate. It was a feat that he had spent hours as a child in front of the mirror trying to achieve. He wondered if it was a genetic trait, like tongue rolling. And if so, would his child inherit the ability from Mary and be able to achieve what he couldn't? One thing of many?

He was tired and he was aware that his mind was wandering. Wrenching his attention back to the matter at hand, he stared at Sherlock, trying to work out what he was implying, but not wanting to give him the satisfaction of asking. When he finally worked it out, the implications smacked him round the face like a wet fish.

'What - no! Sherlock you're crazy. I'm not going to give you your anti-fungals don't be ridiculous.'

'Why not? It wouldn't exactly be hard for a man with your medical qualifications. I could probably do it myself for that matter. Ping on some plastic gloves, quick squirt of the line, shove a giving set into the bag, plumb in it, set the drip rate, hang the bag and off you go. Two hours later you perform the reverse maneuver. Hardly a complex procedure, John. There hardly seems a point in me sitting here for twenty two hours a day between infusions for that.'

'And the echocardiograms, and the consultant reviews, and the blood tests?'

'Could be done as outpatients, exactly. I'm glad you agree.'

John groaned. 'Sherlock, no. Come on, be sensible.'

'It's perfectly sensible, John, ' Sherlock said, leaning forward in the bed and fixing John with that slightly manic look that John knew so well. 'I have my own private physician, that's you by the way, administering medication in Baker Street where I can work, uninterrupted, with the benefit of decent WiFi. How can you possibly fail to see the logic in that?'

John stared at him for several minutes before firmly saying, 'No.'

Sherlock raised one eyebrow at him again but it wasn't going to work. John wasn't playing. There was absolutely no way that he was going to help Sherlock leave hospital against medical advice so that he could get home to Baker Street and resume his usual frenetic rate of work.

Plus he realised, rather uncomfortably, that he rather liked having Sherlock here, contained in a room, in a bed. There was something calming about his trips to the hospital, about the hours spent in this room, the murmur or conversation of even the quiet companionship while Sherlock tapped on the iPad or they watched day time television with each other, Sherlock shouting out in frustration at the idiocy of the game show contestants. It reminded John of the early days in Baker Street, between cases. Of the days before Moriarty, before Mary, before Sherlock disappeared and came back somehow older and more solemn. He had never talked to John about what had happened during his time away but whatever it was had changed him irrevocably. Sometimes John wondered how much of the change was what had happened to him in Serbia, and how much was the inescapable fact that was Mary. Has he done this to Sherlock by changing everything? By making it impossible for them to return to what they had had? He had thought that he was moving on, but now - now, he couldn't help feeling regret.

Would a true friend not have waited longer before moving on? Because even before The Fall as John liked to think of it, he had known somewhere deep within himself that what he felt for Sherlock Holmes went beyond friendship. It hadn't been sexual precisely, but the adoration that he felt for the man went far beyond what he had felt since he was a child. Sherlock had been a bright hero, in his eyes, and he had made everyone else John had encountered since seem dull in comparison. Sherlock had, and always would, shone with a light of his own. He had told John that he was neither a hero, nor an angel but somehow John wasn't so sure. And wasn't that part of it? This man who seemed to transcend nearly all human needs and conventions was now reduced to a patient in the bed, human and vulnerable after all. And thus made him - accessible, reachable, obtainable even.

There was a calm in having Sherlock like this, anchored to a bed. He was suddenly predictable. John didn't have to worry about him walking through the door with a harpoon, covered in blood, or finding all seven of Snow White's dwarves sitting in the living room when he returned from an out of hours shift. And John found he rather liked that. Now that the uncertainty of the previous few weeks was over, he was appreciating this little hiatus of sanity and normality. The truth was that he didn't want Sherlock to go home to Baker Street. Because at least here he was safe, and well looked after, and John didn't have to worry about him.

And in Baker Street he wouldn't get to sit with him like this, hour after hour. And he wouldn't get to watch him sleep, to observe in detail how his dark eyelashes curled on his cheek, the soft, regular rhythm of his breathing. Sometimes he thought that was how he loved Sherlock most. When he was sleeping, when he could watch him without fear of observation of discovery. In those moment he was John's, and John's alone. And the truth was that he wasn't ready to share him. Not yet.

'And that's your final word on the matter?'

Sherlock's voice cut through John's contemplation like a knife.

'When you're formally discharged then I'll take you home to Baker Street in a bloody Bentley if that's what you want. But until then, you stay here.'

'Fine,' Sherlock said, then grabbed his iPad, and started typing with a new freneticism and that was the last word that John got out of him for the next three hours.

...

John should have known that Sherlock wouldn't leave it there. He should have felt it in the air, something crackling, like an old sailor sniffing the salt on the morning air and declaring that a storm was brewing. But he didn't. He missed all of the signs. Even Mrs Hudson deciding to give 221b a spring clean didn't tip him off.

And more telling still, should have been Sherlock's relative silence on the matter. He had had the odd grumble about being stuck in hospital, and rather hopefully suggested that John might be able to assist him in leaving, but in retrospect, the sustained campaign of logic and blistering deduction about John's reasons for refusing and what he had had for breakfast that morning had been missing. Sherlock had been - calm, strangely calm, and apparently resigned to staying put where he was. In his room on the private ward at The London. The goons guarding the door has also disappeared, and John couldn't wondering if Mycroft has struck some deal with Sherlock - Sherlock stayed put and Mycroft left him to his research. He had stupidly assumed that this was part of the reason for Sherlock's relative quiet on the subject of leavinf.

And so when only two days after John had refused to become Sherlock's personal physician, he walked into his room to find him fully dressed, and placing the last of his belongings in the leather hold-all on the bed, he was more surprised than he probably should have been.

'What are you doing?' he asked, stupidly.

'Leaving,' Sherlock said. 'As soon as my lift gets here.'

'Didn't I already say no to this?' John asked, more irritated than he would have imagined possible. Was that Sherlock's plan? To discharge himself anyway and then assume that John would help him rather than leaving him without treatment?'

'Your help will not be required,' Sherlock told him. 'I've made other arrangements.'

'You've - what?'

'You're not the only medically trained individual in London, John. You declined to assist and so I found another suitably trained professional to help.' He turned to zip up his bag and John was left staring, open mouthed at his back.

'Close your mouth, John, you look like a goldfish,' Sherlock said without turning round. And John found himself closing his mouth with a snap before he had time for the annoyance to creep in.

'You're a bloody idiot you know that?' he snapped.

'Your insight into the situation is blistering in its perception as always,' Sherlock murmured before sitting down on the bed next to his bag rather too quickly for John's liking.

'You okay?' he murmured.

Sherlock shook his head slightly. 'Fine,' he said, with more confidence than John suspected that he felt. He knew thus Sherlock. The upright one, the one who kept himself tall and energetic even when he was exhausted. The one who didn't eat, or sleep when he was on a case. He couldn't bear to think of him going back to that as soon as he got back to Baker Street.

John looked at him closely. Even the effort of packing his bag had left him looking tired and pale.

'Be sensible,' he said. 'Stay for another few days at least. Then if you what to leave, we can discuss what I can do to help.' Negotiation. The thing that he'd sworn that he wouldn't do.

'Too late, ' Sherlock said, sitting up straighter and rubbing his hands together. 'The plans are in place, the papers are signed. My days of lying in a hospital bed are over.'

'And what about your days of lying on a mortuary slab - hmmmm?' John was angry now and didn't see a reason to hide it.

'Because that's where you going to end up Sherlock if you keep going like this. Is that what you want?'

'Don't be overly dramatic, John.'

'Does Mycroft know about this?' John asking, sensing that a change of tack was in order.

'That's irrelevant.' Sherlock said

'So what - you're just going to walk out of here and you think that he won't notice?'

'In case you haven't noticed, John, Mycroft has bigger things than his little brother to worry about at the moment.'

Thinking about it, Mycroft has been oddly quiet recently. 'Where is he anyway?' John asked.

'Abroad somewhere,' Sherlock said, waving a hand airily, 'Middle East, I presume, sorting out some international conflict or another.'

He seemed strangely unbothered by Mycroft's location and his words were slurring slightly. John lent in closer, grabbing Sherlock's chin one in one hand to stop him turning his head away and saw that his pupils were tiny, almost pinpoints. He groaned. 'Have you been sneaking in morphine again?' he asked exasperated.

'Just enough to get me home, John,' came the reply.

'Billy?' John asked. 'Christ, Sherlock, is that why you're so keen to get home? So that you can start using again, I thought we'd been through this!'

'I have to get back to Baker Street so I can work,' Sherlock told him firmly. 'I thought that you understood that.'

'On nailing Magnussen? Sherlock, you do realise that this could kill you, don't you? Is the man really worth dying for?'

'Oh for heavens, sake, don't be so histrionic John. I have no intention of dying. I have far too much work to do.'

They were interrupted by a soft knock on the door. John turned to see - Mary. His wife, mother of his unborn child and saw for the first time since Leinster Gardens, not an enemy, but an ally.

'Hello Sherlock,' she said, her quick eyes taking in his clothes and the packed bag on the bed. 'All packed up and ready to go, I see.'

Her tone was neutral. Afterwards John would realise that there had been no surprise in her voice, but at the time all he saw was the one person he knew who Sherlock might listen to.

'Talk him out of this harebrained scheme, will you? He's not well enough to leave hospital.'

Mary looked at Sherlock, and Sherlock looked at Mary. A silent conversation seemed to be occurring between them that John was frustrated to have no part of.

'What's going on?' John asked finally.

'I'm sorry, John,' Mary said quietly. 'But I owe him.'

John frowned, still unable to understand what was going on.

'You ready?' Mary asked Sherlock. He nodded, and she walked back outside the room, wheeled in the waiting wheelchair, and then when he had slowly lowered himself into it, picked up his bag and placed it across his lap.

'Come on then, let's get you home,' she said, wheeling the chair out of the room and towards the lift. It was only then that John noticed the car keys dangling from her hand.

'You can't be serious,' John murmured to the empty room. Then recovering his senses he turned and sprinted out of the door, and towards the lift, jamming his foot between the doors just before they closed. 'Mary, stop, please,' he said. 'Don't help him do this.'

Mary turned to look at him, 'He's not yours to keep, John,' she said obliquely, and with a well aimed kick that he didn't even see coming, dislodged his foot from the door and John was left, staring at the closed door, and wondering how on earth they had got here.

He didn't know what he was more angry at - that Sherlock was leaving hospital, this cocoon from the outside world where he had had him almost entirely to himself; that Mary was helping him and in so doing forcing herself into both of their lives again; or that Mary understood something that he hadn't until she had told him - that he had wanted Sherlock for himself, vulnerable, helpless and needing his care and protection.

He didn't need John to look after him anymore, now he had Mary. She had somehow managed to both take Sherlock away from him and swiftly sidestep into his place in Sherlock's life. He walked back into Sherlock's now empty room, threw himself onto the bed like a child and screamed silently into the pillow in frustration.