THE THINGS WE DON'T DELETE

by marylouleach

AU fic. I know it's been done before but i wanted to try it out. Here's a look at Sherlock and John's relationship if they had met as kids and the trials they faced on the way to becoming the men they are today. After a falling out Sherlock pushed John out of his life but now John would need him more than ever. Sherlock hopes it's just not too late. Sorry no slash.

4. Chapter 4 COMFORT

CHAPTER 4. COMFORT

Intense pain, that's what greeted John, intense pain and blinding lights. He couldn't remember where he was, or how he got there but he knew he didn't like it. He was cold so damn cold, someone a woman in a lab coat frowned looking at a medical chart she put a syringe to the IV to his right.

A hospital then, god, his shoulder burned, everything pained him. He wanted to ask something but couldn't think of anything to say. The soldier felt like a fish out of water, his mouth dry, cracked lips moving but no sound escaping.

This wasnt the desert, but he was just in the desert. Trying to breathe in but something constricted his chest, and it burned it burned to breathe, his throat felt so dry he wanted to call for water, wanted to sit up but he felt so heavy. Someone was talking to him, he tried to concentrate on the voices. To sort them, who was he? John H. Watson, captain of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers. Yes, he had gone out on patrol-maybe? Was this hell? It was cold, so very cold, his throat dry, water, he wondered where his canteen had gone to. Someone must have read his mind because a straw was pressed to his chapped lips.

A dark haired man stood now at his side, a frown on his pale face, those gray eyes piercing and John thought he knew him, but couldn't quite place it.

"John?" Sherlock watched John's sky blue eyes open slowly, trying to focus, the dark haired detective moved towards the hospital cot, resisting the urge to touch his friend to place a reassuring hand on his arm or even take the injured soldiers callused hands and squeeze. Something that John had done when their roles had been reversed. Sherlock desperately kept his eyes on his injured friend, sky blue eyes, glassy, wild unfocused.

Sherlock settled for holding a straw for John to drink greedily from, one of the nurses an irritatingly dull woman had instructed him that the oxygen flowing through the tubes would dry out the injured soldiers throat and mouth, he would be thirsty, water or ice chips could sooth the discomfort.

"Slowly." Sherlock soothed with a surprised gentleness that even he hadn't known he possessed.

A quick observation told Sherlock his friend had aged over the past five years. More lines to his face and around his eyes, he looked thin now, a sickly green under the hallows beneath the glassy eyes.

John wanted so very badly to ask where he was, and how he got there. The gray eyes staring intensely into his own suddenly heavy lidded ones. The unusual eyes seemed intelligent, was he another doctor a surgeon? No. There was something else, something John was forgetting.

The nurse came in again interrupting John's muddled thoughts, and John wanted to tell her not to dose him again, the pain was acceptable, it reminded him he was alive. Desperately wanting the haze to lift, wanted to tell those gray eyes he was alright and if he'd just stop looking as if John kicked his puppy or sprouted fangs and horns he'd appreciate it.

"No." John managed but it came out as a pitiful groan. The nurse didn't even turn his way, instead she continued to change his IV bag, a syringe ready in her other hand. John needed to speak, he turned his head the pain from this action made the world spin briefly but he pushed past it, blue eyes searching for the gray. "No" he pleaded, his body to heavy, he could only turn his head back to the woman with the syringe, now injecting the morphine into his IV . His last somewhat coherent thoughts remained on the gray eyes, the ones he tried to make his wishes understood to, failing of course, but still the familiar stranger looked hurt, and sad but why?

"No." Sherlock heard the injured soldiers plea, John tried to turn away, to look at the nurse pleadingly. Clearly rejecting Sherlock, even in this drug addled state, with a high fever raging his ex friend recognized the detective and refused the offered comfort. Then the drugs caused the bruised eye lids to flutter closed and the feverish John Watson drifted back into a deep dreamless sleep. Sherlock clutched the safety bar of John's bed, the rejection made him feel an emotion he thought he could delete, or rather thought he had deleted. Rejection. What had he expected, why would John accept comfort from the man that caused this? It was acceptable to be angry. Justified.