John woke up, groggy with too little sleep, and opened an eye to see Sherlock sitting at his bedside, his hands covering his face as if caught weeping. John closed his eye again, too tired to be angry with the man and not wanting to deal with anything else. Just as he was starting to drift off again, he felt Sherlock cautiously touch his thumb, two fingers brushing his as if to check that he was, in fact, a solid three dimensional man. John twisted his hand to grab Sherlock's, caught for a moment by an urge to determine the same thing, that he hadn't been trapped in a particularly depressing phase of hallucinatory madness, that Sherlock Holmes was in fact alive and whole and in his hospital room. Sherlock's hand was warm in his, his long nails scraping the side of his palm and dragging him back into the reality where he was holding Sherlock's hand and they both knew it. But it felt good and to release it was to acknowledge it and John decided it would be all around easier if he gave up and went back to sleep.
~~/~~
When John was awoken again for another round of antibiotic pills, pain medication, and bandage changes, Sherlock was sitting in his usual chair, an empty cafeteria tray marking his last meal. He was wearing a purple shirt now and his hair was wet. He'd showered. John frowned, thinking back. He was fairly sure Sherlock had never changed or eaten while Harry was around. Didn't want to leave him alone with her, perhaps. She never let him sleep. John sat up for the morning nurse Tessa and didn't mention it. Sherlock met his gaze and quickly looked away. They weren't mentioning the hands thing either then, John accepted gratefully.
"Mrs. Hudson is doing well," Sherlock announced. The Vicodin was too weak. He could feel his pulse in his back and shoulders and the nurse tugging at his bandages was not helping that. John pulled his attention away from his throbbing wounds.
"Have you.." He asked, unsure how to start. Sherlock hesitated, likely processing the almost endless possible questions he could have asked to narrow in on the most plausible. "Told her then?" John clarified, keeping his breath shallow, trying not to go off on another coughing fit.
He'd suffered so much, mourning. Surely Mrs. Hudson had as well. He didn't much know. He'd been at the bedsit and killing people, not taking care of her.
"I told her I'm alive, that I faked it but not how, and that you did not know. She hit me with a skillet," Sherlock recounted, sounding affronted.
John grinned and Sherlock's eyes shone with relief. John sobered, his mood dropping at the sight.
I don't like seeing him happy, he realized, disturbed. The light and hope in Sherlock's eyes died precipitously.
"I told her to come tomorrow at noon," Sherlock added stiffly. John nodded, ignoring it. He could understand Sherlock's logic. The skin graft was healing nicely - supposedly he'd be able to lie on his back without the pillow supports that night. Mrs. Hudson need never know about his back. Sherlock leaned back in his chair, his pale eyes caught on John's.
"You never answered. Moriarty. My death. You are angry," he commented.
We're doing this now? John wondered, closing his eyes. The nurse hesitated, her soft fingers pausing in her work painfully removing his bandages. Sherlock scoffed at him.
"Why does it change so much?" he snarled.
"What?" John snapped, his eyes flying open. Sherlock pushed himself up from his chair.
"You've said exactly seventeen words to me since I arrived," he growled. John swallowed. Just like Sherlock to count.
"When was the last time you ate? What? Kind of him. Have you told her then? What?" Sherlock listed, sneering and wandering around the hospital room. He threw up his hands suddenly, his face contorting with rage. "Yes, I faked my death. Clearly, you mourned. Is that better than dead? I'm back and we're both alive, why is that not the end of it?" he complained, walking across the room to shut the door in the face of another nurse who was just about to enter. He'd learned the check up schedule, apparently.
"So, I'm supposed to explain to you why being able to make me mourn for a year is damaging to friendship, is that it?" John asked, blinking. Sherlock scoffed. The nurse reached for the pile of dry bandages she'd placed on the bed. Sherlock's eyes flicked to her and flicked away, apparently unconcerned by what he saw in her.
"I was willing to give up London and break my arm to keep you alive. No, I don't understand why that's so hurtful to you," Sherlock replied. John held his breath while the nurse lifted up his torn arms, needing to wrap beneath them. He'd had time to think about this, hanging on a hook with Mike.
"You'd been lying to me for months before you jumped. You didn't tell me half of what you knew," John hissed, hating how restrained he was. "You want to know why Moriarty tried to keep me hostage with only one inexperienced man? Because he thought of me exactly as you did," John accused, wishing senselessly for a gun in his hand. Sherlock drew himself up.
"You were not my pet," he pronounced. John snorted.
"I wasn't your partner, not anymore, not by then," he replied, itching to walk out of the room. Usually he'd slam a door between them, content himself with the last word, and go buy a beer. Now he was stuck in a hospital room with glaringly bright lights and a nurse mummy wrapping him and trying not to listen. Sherlock stared at him, his mouth opening and closing like a fish and sat down, collapsing into his thinking pose. Did he always do that after their arguments? John wished he knew. He certainly didn't remember Sherlock ever appearing to listen to him, but then he'd never stayed long enough to find out. John watched him, unsure what more to say.
"John -" Sherlock started, his voice thin.
"I don't know -" John interrupted. "Why I'm allowing you in here," he finished. Sherlock swallowed, his eyes dropping into that 'lost' expression he'd had in Baskerville.
"It stresses you, when I leave," Sherlock announced. John clenched his teeth, wanted to push all of the damn monitors out of the room. But it wouldn't matter. Sherlock was brilliant. He'd see it anyway.
"Get out," John snarled. Sherlock paused, his face draining. John ignored him, knowing he'd obey. He always did when it mattered. Sherlock got up quietly, his hands shaking quietly at his side, and left, closing the door behind him. Finally John could breathe.
"Ex boyfriend?" the nurse asked softly. John sighed. Of course that had had a witness.
"I have absolutely no idea," he answered honestly. Tessa chuckled.
"I know how that is," she replied. John shook his head.
"We weren't ever together, I think. But sometimes, back then, I wondered if he knew that and now I wonder if I did. I gave up so much for him, without a thought, just to be in his company..," John trailed off, unsure what more to say, to explain their co-dependent insanity. The nurse hummed and John jerked, realizing how much he'd said.
Tie him up and hold him over a volcano's edge. And on that day, you will finally meet the man.
Apparently not, John reflected. Apparently you just had to have access to the opiates afterward.
"He's never left the hospital," Tessa said, layering a salve over his wounds. "All the nurses think it's romantic. We've got a bet going, buying slots on when he'll leave. Looks like Grace wins, if he's left the building now," she added. John held back a smirk, remembering Sherlock's story. Mrs. Hudson had either brought a skillet to the hospital or Sherlock had already left, if only the once. It was just like the man to sneak out when he could walk through the front door. Perhaps he didn't like the nurse who'd had that time slot, John thought, though how Sherlock knew about the bet was beyond him.
John smiled grimly and shook his head.
"He's in the morgue," he guessed. The nurse's fingers paused again. "Don't ask," he added.
"Does he have access?" she asked and John resisted an urge to shrug. It'd only hurt.
"He knows Molly Hooper," he replied and Tessa hummed, starting in her work again.
"I don't know her," she admitted.
"Let her know I'm here, won't you?" he asked finally and she cut herself another strip of medical tape.
"I'll send someone down," she offered.
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me, it's in my best interest. I've got the slot that says Mr. Holmes stays until you leave. I've read your blog, you know. Always wondered if you two were together. Never did think he was really dead," she replied. John sighed. It was inevitable they'd be recognized.
"Don't tell the press," he pleaded and she snorted.
"Like I need a bunch of idiots getting in the way of my job? No, thank you," she answered and John thanked her again. "Get some sleep," she ordered, finishing his bandages.
~~/~~
"How's he doing then?" Molly asked nervously.
"Epidermis is frozen at the toenails. The freezer is not evenly chilled," Sherlock murmured without looking up from the seam he was sewing into the corpse's chest wall. Michael Limon, Moriarty's hired goon 'Mike'. It was difficult to find an employee with no principles, much less one who'd uphold a contract. Michael Limon filled in the missing details of multiple crimes he'd uncovered in his investigation of Moriarty's network.
"Um. I meant John?" Molly murmured. Sherlock blinked.
"Oh." He paused in his sewing, unsure what to say. "He kicked me out."
Molly crossed the room with the corpse's information tag. She slipped the tag over Mike's toe and hugged his chart to her chest.
"Is he very injured?" she asked.
"Dislocated shoulder and a healing skin graft. Symptoms of dehydration and early stage pneumonia both highly diminished."
"Oh. That's not so bad," she replied. Sherlock cut away his extra thread with a flourish.
"That is not what I said," he replied, setting the skin sewing kit back on the gurney tray.
"Is it then? So bad?" she pressed, squeezing the chart tighter.
"I just described his injuries," Sherlock said, baffled. Molly reddened.
"No, it's just -" she started but stopped. Sherlock waited but she did not seem inclined to tell him what it was 'just'.
"Then… why'd he kick you out? If he's in pain?" Molly asked instead.
"Because I told him he couldn't," Sherlock answered. That reaction, at least, he understood. Pride was something his family had in surplus. Sherlock stared down at Mike's chilled face, wondering if he'd feel better if he'd killed him. Saved John. John would feel worse. Pride. John needed to have killed Mike himself.
"Maybe not… the best thing to say?" Molly stammered.
"I don't know the 'best thing to say'," Sherlock snarled, turning toward her. "In case you had not observed, I am not skilled at being gentle or subtle or kind. It is why I do not associate with fragile people."
Molly Hooper notwithstanding, he corrected himself, watching as the woman seemed to deflate. She put down Limon's file, biting her lip. She watched him quietly and Sherlock glared around the room for work to bury himself in. There was nothing. The morgue laboratory looked as it ever had.
"Maybe if you don't know what to say ... You should listen?" she suggested, moving to put Limon's body away.
"John does not express himself in words," Sherlock confessed, dropping himself into one of the lab stools. Life had become grim indeed when he was asking Molly Hooper for help relating to a man. John would laugh at him, if he weren't feeling so miserably taciturn.
"How does he?" Molly blurted. Sherlock snorted at the irony.
"Physically. He frowns, stares at the ceiling, clenches his fist -"
Flushes. Sweats. Inhales. Hardens. Moments Sherlock was not supposed to see, not supposed to notice.
"Oh. Well, all that must hurt right now," Molly commented uselessly. Sherlock smothered an impulse to slam his fist into Michael Simon's still face. It was freezer burned on the ears. He'd content himself with that.
~~/~~
Bach rose from his deathbed, just to get to the piano and finish it before he died. John fought to free his arms but they wouldn't budge. He arched his back away. He was going to get burned again.
He started to wake up and flailed, feeling fingers tug against his wrist and elbow, keeping his arms at his sides.
Don't fight. Don't tear the I.V, he thought illogically, trying to stay still, but his head was in water and he needed to breathe.
An alarm sounded, followed by a dozen footsteps. John jerked awake, trying to pull away, to see nurses swarming his room. All of the machines on him were screaming. He inhaled and something quieted and blipped and the rushing nurses hesitated from where they were pulling out syringes and holding an oxygen mask to his face. A crash cart. Code blue. John exhaled slowly, understanding. He'd stopped breathing and somebody had noticed.
"Sorry, sorry," he said, pulling the mask away from his face and glancing between the frenzied workers. "Nightmares."
The nurses nodded and reassured him and started checking his vitals and writing down notes. John blew out a heavy breath, frustrated, his conclusion obvious. Sometimes he stopped breathing in his nightmares, now. He wondered if he'd done that before the waterboarding. Less likely, certainly.
The last nurses filed out, leaving a very scared Molly Hooper standing in their wake, clasping her hands together tightly. She stood against the doorjam, out of their way, her eyes wide with fear. She met John's gaze only to swallow and look away.
Picture 17, time stamp 11:46:02, Sherlock's bloody arm, the bone sticking up through the skin. Case # 135642685, examiner: Molly Hooper.
"Hello, Molly," John said, doing his best to sound calm and strong straight out of a nightmare that still had his heart beating wildly in his chest and his breath coming in uneven gasps.
"I-" Molly started and scrambled out of the room.
Well, that's another relationship gone , John thought, turning his head to look out the window at the tall buildings beyond the hospital room. There was very little he cared to do about that.
~~/~~
"He's going to know." Sherlock sounded frustrated.
He's back, John thought, hating his own deep relief. He exhaled slowly, settling back into his pillow.
"He's fucking asleep," Harry replied. John squinted an eye open to see her taking a drink from a brown paper bag half-hidden in her purse. He closed his eye again, deciding that this time he was most certainly not making her drinking his problem. He had enough problems, he'd say.
"He'll know," Sherlock replied, apparently deciding not to inform her that John was awake. John had no illusions that the genius had known the moment he'd started listening.
"What, you'll tell him? Who stuck a beer up your ass? And why the hell do you care what I drink?" Harry scoffed.
"He'll care," Sherlock replied.
"Yeah," Harry scoffed. "I don't get that either."
John desperately wanted her gone now. That or to fall back asleep. Neither seemed particularly likely.
"No, I don't either. You're intolerable," Sherlock replied, sounding like he was agreeing.
"Fuck you too, then," Harry said, her voice approaching the door. It slammed closed behind her.
"Thank you," John murmured, relieved with the quiet.
"Oh, any time, certainly," Sherlock replied, sounding quite cheerful about the notion.
~~/~~
John woke up to see Sherlock and Harry sitting at opposite sides of the room, both looking furious. Harry was tearing into a bag of crisps like its existence offended her. Sherlock was glaring at the ceiling and muttering about the number of water stains in the ceiling tiles.
John turned on the television, strongly preferring not to engage with either of them. Sherlock glared at Harry, apparently deciding that was her fault. Harry huffed out a breath and grabbed her purse.
"Unbelievable," she scoffed, leaving the room. Sherlock opened his mouth to speak.
"Don't," John ordered. Sherlock, for once, obeyed.
~~/~~
Mrs. Hudson arrived that afternoon, walking through the open door with a basket piled high with tupperware of baked goods. Her face fell at the sight of the tower of uneaten snack crisp bags taking up two of their chairs.
"I brought some food," she said apologetically and John did his best to smile. "Oh, dear," she said, glancing over his body.
John coughed out a laugh at the greeting. It'd been too long since he'd seen the woman. They'd gone to the grave and she'd left before he'd said a word. He much preferred to grieve and heal alone. But it was good to see the unflappable woman now.
"Oh! You must be Harry," Mrs. Hudson cooed, walking forward toward where Harry sat in the corner with the crisps collection. Harry smiled but did not stand up.
"Do I know you?" she asked and Mrs. Hudson hesitated.
"I'm John's landlady, dear. Landlady, mind. I'm a business woman," Mrs. Hudson replied, turning to John, her eyebrows high. John remembered not to shrug his injured shoulders and settled for greeting her. Mrs. Hudson handed off her basket to Sherlock.
"Crumpets, banana bread, proper tea, and biscuits. Thank you," Sherlock said without looking at the contents.
"Oh you, showing off," Mrs. Hudson scolded. Sherlock started rummaging through the tupperware, checking his answers and Mrs. Hudson tutted at him, as if nothing had changed between them at all. She sat down beside John. Her eyes shone with pleasure at seeing her boys again and John's words got caught in his throat. "How are you, dear? You look a right mess."
"Better," John promised, watching as Sherlock tore into the basket of food. Mrs. Hudson looked him over carefully, her gaze falling over the healing wound on his leg, his bandaged hand, and bruised arms. John coughed, not wanting to talk about it.
"How long until you are discharged, then?" she asked, changing the subject, and John coughed again, stress taking its toll. Where would he go, then? Mrs. Hudson's eyes softened, her forced enthusiasm falling away.
"Not long, probably," he answered. Mrs. Hudson took his hand, wrapping her warm, wrinkled fingers around his palm.
"If the nurses wouldn't stop pestering him every hour, he'd have been healed already," Harry pointed out. Mrs. Hudson turned to John, frowning.
"You're a doctor, dear. Should I talk to someone about leaving you to sleep?" she offered. John exhaled slowly, surprised by how relieved he was to see her. Mrs. Hudson was a lovely woman. He'd forgotten that, somewhere in his grief.
"I've offered that like three times. He won't protest," Harry commented. Sherlock frowned.
"No, that's false," he said. Harry turned on John.
"Have I not mentioned how rude the nurses are here? You know I have," she argued. John wanted to shrug but his shoulders would barely move in their bindings. He decided not to fight the point. Harry scoffed, digging in her purse for something and hiding it under her shirt. John ignored her and she left the room. Mrs. Hudson watched her go, her eyebrows high, and settled into the chair by John's side. She squeezed his fingers again, gaining his attention.
"You'll be going home with us, you realize," she said softly. John started to shake his head but she pointed at his face. "No arguments, young man. You need someone to get you back on your feet, and there's nothing in that bedsit of yours but bugs. I don't care how many trollops you drag home, you'll be staying at Baker Street. That's what family is for," she insisted. John squeezed her hand, grateful for the sentiment, preparing himself to refuse her. He didn't want to see what Sherlock had done with the apartment, having returned on his own. He didn't want to see the place looking like it had, an abandoned flat housing all of his old nightmares. And if it'd changed, if Mrs. Hudson had finally rented it out and someone else was there, if Sherlock was staying in 221C? John didn't want to know.
Mrs. Hudson gently turned his face with her finger, to gaze into his eyes.
"You're coming home with us," she ordered, glancing at the door with concern in her eyes. Thinking about Harry, John thought, wondering what Harry had done to create a bad impression so quickly.
"Excellent," Sherlock said, nodding firmly, shoving the basket aside. John didn't reply.
Excellent. Hardly.
"I'll sign the papers," Sherlock said, standing.
"We won't press it, dear," she said. Sherlock hesitated, glancing between them, frowning in confusion. Mrs. Hudson squeezed John's hand again, her gaze sympathetic, understanding more than John really wanted her to. "Now, tell me you killed whoever did this," she ordered. John blinked. Sherlock looked thrilled.
"I did," John replied and Mrs. Hudson patted his hand.
"That's my boys," she said happily.
John glanced between her and Sherlock, unsure what to say. In barely two weeks he'd gone from mourning Sherlock and his life with the man, to having it all back but in shatters. That didn't mean he could step back into the life he'd loved and pretend it had never changed. Sherlock stared out at nothing, his light eyes burning. John watched him until a harried nurse came in to give him his medicine, Harry walking in behind her.
"I have to say, I can't wait until you're discharged. You will not believe how smart one of those nurses just was to me. Hold on, I'll tell you," Harry started, dumping her new snacks in another hospital chair, ignoring the nurse checking John's leg for signs of infection, who was now looking remarkably less patient. Mrs. Hudson watched her, her eyebrows high, and John turned on the television again, deciding it was better to deal with none of them at all.
~~/~~
A/N: I have no idea why, but Harry drives me up a wall. What do you think of her? Think I judge her too harshly, that Sherlock & John are being jerks, relate to her at all?