5
Sherlock was vaguely aware of being cold. He wondered, briefly, what idiot had dragged him out into frozen London to solve this case, before he realized that he wasn't outside in frozen London at all, but safely in his bedroom.
"John... John?" He cleared his throat, trying to sit up. It didn't go over well. Every part of his body rejected the idea of movement, and his head flopped back onto the pillow uselessly. He couldn't hear past the thumping in his ears, but there was a dull ringing in the background.
"... lock?"
Sherlock blinked hard, trying to chase away the headache and trying to focus more on the words that were being said now. Someone... Had to be John, then...
"Sherlock? Hey, look at me."
Right. John. It was John. He sounded far away, though. Or maybe Sherlock just couldn't hear past the thumping in his ears.
"Sherlock?"
Right, finding John. John was worrying needlessly. Sherlock, vaguely, wondered if John was cold, too, because it was so freezing that it couldn't have just been a by-product of his own mind. He blinked his eyes open again, squinting against the light and the spinning motion, eventually settling his gaze on the doctor in the room.
"There you are. Sherlock, I need you to drink something." Dull, boring, Sherlock wanted to say, but he couldn't find the proper ambition to voice the words. He closed his eyes instead. "Sherlock? No, no, no, I need you to stay awake."
Go away, John. I want to sleep, he was thinking. He wasn't entirely sure that he could voice the whole sentence. He didn't really want to bother telling John in the first place, because it didn't matter to John, wouldn't matter, even if John sounded a bit frantic at the thought of Sherlock falling back asleep.
He grumbled unintelligibly when John started prodding at him, shaking his shoulder. "Come on, Sherlock. Drink some water for me."
"No..." he grumbled, reaching around to push John's hand again. "Leave me... alone," he slurred, swallowing. Sluggish, he felt sluggish. Mentally sluggish. He was being inarticulate...
"If I sounded like I was asking, let me make it clear: I wasn't asking. Drink some water."
Sherlock shivered, reaching to grip the blankets when John suddenly pulled them off.
"Sit up." Uncharacteristic sharpness to John's voice, unhappiness... Worry, concern...
"It's gone up...?" he mumbled sleepily, making the effort to sit up. It was an effort. He thought he was going to fall backwards again when John splayed his fingers against his back, creating a support.
"Yes. Yes, it's at forty. Drink this." There was a cup pressed to his lips. He leaned back. "Sherlock!" John snapped angrily. Sherlock sighed, raising a hand clumsily to grab the cup. John's fingers didn't let go of it, either, but Sherlock settled for guiding it, at least. "Thank you..." John muttered, after a moment, carefully watching Sherlock.
"Forty isn't..." Sherlock started, but he had to pause to cough, and John interrupted in the pause.
"Forty is bad; don't say that it isn't. Anything above forty and it could cause brain damage; you and I both know that."
Brain damage... Oh. Oh, right, he did know that. Maybe that's why it was getting ever increasingly harder to focus. to function. Of course, he also knew that it was going to take more than a fever to damage his brain...
"John," he rasped, attempting to swing his legs over the side of the bed.
"Wai- What are you doing?"
"Toilet," he responded shortly, closing his eyes on the sudden black spot dancing along the edges of his vision. "I..." he trailed off, swallowing against the rise of nausea. This was unfortunate. Resting was... dull. But movement seemed to end with overwhelming nausea.
"Yes, right, okay. Are you going to be sick again?" John slipped his arm around Sherlock's back, his fingers knitting into the tight cotton of his button-down shirt.
Sherlock hesitated a moment before raising his arm, settling it around John's shoulders. "No..." he muttered, slumping slightly against John when they stood. "Transport's... betraying me..." he muttered, attempting to find his feet to stand on his own.
"Yes, well... if you'd stop- ow- if you'd stop treating your body like transport, it might feel less inclined to rebel now and again- ow, Sherlock, there is a wall here, in case you have failed to notice."
"I didn't fail to notice... never fail to notice..." he muttered, removing his arm from John's shoulders. "I'm fine... Go about... your... business," he finished lamely, attempting to have fished for words better suited for the sentence and having failed.
"Sherlock, you are my business. You cannot walk."
"I'm fine," he repeated, clutching at the wall as a support.
"Sherlock-"
"I'd like some tea, doctor," he said quickly, cutting John off.
John watched him for a moment. "Okay. Right. Fine. Don't complain when you fall on your face. But I'm not making you tea. You're getting nothing hot."
Sherlock frowned, shifting his weight and tightening his grip on the countertop. "Ginger ale, then."
"With ice."
"Fine."
"Thank you." With that, John turned and walked out. Sherlock sighed heavily.
After he had relieved his transport of its latest deprecating need and washed his hands, he was faced with the rather real possibility of collapsing if he tried to walk back to his bedroom. His legs were shaking, ashamedly, and it was just his tenacious grip on the countertop that kept him upright. He could just sleep on the bathroom floor- it might actually help, the cool tile instead of blankets- but he figured that he would be extremely uncomfortable and John would yell at him when he found out.
Speaking of John, it didn't take so long to pour a glass of ginger ale and throw some ice in it. Conclusion, he was waiting. Waiting for Sherlock to actually... Well, the doctor was trying to prove a point.
His grip faltered slightly and he nearly fell; he leaned his weight against the counter, trying to ignore the steady thumping of his heartbeat in his ears. He closed his eyes.
"John...!"
Quiet footsteps. Steady, controlled- oh, his head. A thousand needles- no- a thousand knives, scraping away at his right temple. He raised a hand blindly to press at the point of pain, forgetting that he had been holding himself up.
The world suddenly rushed past him and even more surprising was the pain that assailed him when he actually hit the ground.
He groaned slightly before clamping his teeth shut. He opened his eyes, which he had squeezed shut against the pain unconsciously, to find John hovering a few feet in front of him.
"What?" John's voice was crisp and brisk. "Something's new."
He wanted to respond. Wanted to say something about how hitting the floor probably hadn't been beneficial, how John should be doing his job. How, yes, the headache had taken on a new extreme, but he'd just take paracetamol and sleep it off. Wanted to say that he thought he might vomit again, or how his eyes were starting to burn- wait, were his eyes tearing up because of the pain? That was new; he was exceedingly tolerate to any sort of pain-
He closed his eyes again.
"Sherlock? Sherlock, look at me. Talk to me. What's happening?"
"Please," he spat, biting off the word like it was poison. Because that was the word that John had been waiting for, wasn't it? Please, John, help me. Please, because I'm too sick to do anything. Please, John, make the fever go away... 'Please' was a sign of weakness, and Sherlock hated the word.
But, then again, from John's new tone of voice, perhaps 'please' hadn't been the word he was looking for, anyway.
"Shit... I need to call the hospital or-or Mycroft, at least-"
Sherlock wrenched his eyes open. "No."
"Sherlock-"
"No," he repeated. He struggled to find his bearings past the mind-numbing pain growing in his head. He wouldn't go to a hospital and he most certainly wouldn't let Mycroft know he was ill. He would rather-
He squeezed his eyes shut hard, blinking against the pain.
"Sleep," he stated.
"Sherlock, are you hearing yourself? You're ill with- I don't even know! It could be progressing to pneumonia, for all I know! You need medical attention, well, more medical attention that I can give you."
"Sleep," he stressed, managing to push himself up slightly. John, thankfully, took over from there, taking most of his weight as, together, they got Sherlock back to his feet. "Just... let me..." he trailed off. Pain again. Daggers in his mind. What was he saying?
"Sleep," John said.
Sherlock glanced at him briefly. "What?"
"'Just let me sleep.' That's what you were trying to say?"
"Yes... Yes, of course," he muttered. "Obviously."
He carefully crawled back into bed, resisting the urge to just fall onto the duvet again. That would probably do more harm than good, especially from the bruise he thought might be forming from scraping his arm on the drawer handle when he'd fallen. He reached for the blankets but, when he couldn't find them, realized that John had whisked them off the bed entirely.
"What... are... you doing?" he muttered, looking at him.
"Sherlock, you can't be covered up. You are too hot. You need to take those clothes off, too. They can't be comfortable and it's not helping."
"Connotation..." Sherlock muttered.
"I don't care about the connotation right now."
"That's a first..." he murmured, rubbing an arm across his eyes. Oh, he wanted to sleep. It was too cold, and he wanted to sleep...
Movement across his chest. He flinched automatically, moving his arm to see the world again. John was watching him warily, his fingers working against the buttons on Sherlock's shirt. Sherlock frowned. "Leave it."
"Well, you won't do it!" John said quickly, dropping his gaze back to the buttons. "You're always so damn stubborn... it wouldn't kill you to just... work with people." He wrenched the last button free. "Sit up."
"You make everything so awkward..."
"Well, I'm sorry. Connotation or not, I usually don't undress my patients. Sit up."
Sherlock sighed. John was going to kill him. Going to kill him with this constant wake up, go to sleep, sit up, lay down...
John offered a hand. Sherlock took it.
"Thank you," John said, slipping Sherlock's shirt off.
"Can I sleep now?" Sherlock griped, shivering as John walked past, creating a breeze.
"No." Sherlock suddenly received a face-full of fabric- his pyjama pants. "Put those on. I'm not doing it."
"Cheers," he muttered. "Thanks for that... small amount of privacy..." he coughed, almost smiling despite the pain the motion brought.
John watched him for a moment before shaking his head, walking to the hall. "Just change your pants, Sherlock. You're smiling. I'm concerned about your mental health."
Sherlock laughed slightly, rubbing at his forehead again.
Sherlock's not getting better. In fact, he's getting rather worse, but, you know, at least this chapter ends with a nice picture: Sherlock laughing. Even if he is laughing from... illness. Being... somewhat out of his mind palace. Unable to find his bearings- Okay, I'll shut up.
Keep the reviews coming, please and thanks. :3 I love your support.
Btw- new pen name, if anyone's interested, is from Third Star, as is my avatar. I don't dislike the name Summer now, nor do I care less for Sherlock. Third Star just really hit me and... yeah. Either way, I'm supporting Benny. /hopeless
ALSO. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ANDREW SCOTT. It wouldn't be Sherlock without you! Although, now the question is... Who will be Sherlock's nemesis in the upcoming series'? xD
