Characters: Lestrade, John, Sherlock

POV: Alternating (John and Greg)

Prompt: Greg is sick and John takes care of him, with a side of Sherlock being… well, Sherlock.

Submitted by: Talitha

Warnings: This one is really long, you guys...

It's a bright, muggy day in London, and the crime scene is unfortunately situated outside, where the sun is relentlessly beating down on everyone assembled. It seems the criminal population of the metro area has not gotten the memo that it's too bloody hot outside for this.

John wipes sweat from the back of his neck and stands up from where he's been examining the body of a man who has no blood left. There is no blood at the crime scene, either, so the question is - where is it? "Right," he says, placing his hands on his hips and staring down at the body. "Looks like he was bled out - deliberately. The purple marks round his eyes indicate he must have been strung upside down while he bled to death. Jesus."

At his shoulder, Lestrade nods his agreement. "Mm-hm."

Sherlock is kneeling on the other side of the body, peering through his magnifying glass. "No defensive wounds. He knew whomever did the cutting. Tiny puncture mark on the left side of the neck - possibly sedated. He didn't put up a fight, but you'll want to take fingernail scrapings anyway - could still be trace evidence there."

"Mm-hm," Greg agrees.

John scratches at his stubble, frowning as he watches Sherlock work. "There aren't any ligature marks on his ankles or anything," he points out.

"So hung upside down but not by his feet," the detective processes aloud. He pulls up the victim's pant legs to inspect his calves. No marks there, either. "We'll need to get the body to the morgue so I can check the rest of it. He was definitely upside down and bled out slowly."

Wincing, John wipes his forehead. "Like an animal at slaughter."

Beside him, Lestrade shivers. "Mm-hm."

"How could he have dropped off a body right in the middle of the street and not been noticed?" John wonders aloud, glancing around the street. It's a residential area, lots of houses around, surely somebody had to have noticed something.

"Mm-hm," Lestrade hums again.

This catches John's attention, and he turns to look at the DI. For the first time, he notices the way his shoulders curve inward and the way his arms are crossed tightly over his chest, so unlike his normal, easy posture. "You okay?"

"Mm-hm," Greg says, but then he starts and meets John's gaze. "What? Oh, yeah. 'M fine. Just… y'know, this." He gestures toward the body, and Sherlock flitting busily around it.

John narrows his eyes suspiciously. "You sure?"

"Yep."

Greg is not fine. In fact, he feels like he's been hit by a bus. But this is the biggest case of the year - and possibly the foreseeable future - and he can't just walk away in the middle of an investigation this serious. The more time he spends on his feet, though, the more he curses the rotten timing - he feels like death warmed over and is starting to look it, too.

Sherlock straightens up and bounds over to where Greg and John are standing, his eyes twinkling with barely-contained glee. "I've texted Molly instructions to process this one through quickly so that we can take a look at the body. Lestrade, I'll also need the victim's personal effects, as well as the key to his storage unit. I need to inspect his bicycle."

"His bicycle?" Greg echoes, barely keeping up. Okay, not really keeping up at all. "Why his bicycle."

"Just a hunch, nothing solid." Sherlock waves a hand dismissively. Then he's staring him down. Or he seems to be. Is he? Yes, he is. He's deducing him to bits. Don't say anything, you great big git.

John's got eyes on him again, too. "You okay?" he repeats.

"Fine," Lestrade insists again, but he can hear the uncertainty in his own voice and thinks he could have done better than that.

"Nope," Sherlock chirps. He could sound a little less pleased, but Greg doesn't think he's even trying.

"Yeah, no, you look a bit peaky." John has stepped a little closer and is frowning up at him now.

Greg laughs nervously and steps back. "Come on, you guys, we've got work to do."

Sherlock lifts an eyebrow.

Greg's vision starts to swim a little, and it has nothing to do with the heat.

Then, suddenly, John's hands are on him, one on his upper arm and one on his waist, pushing him to sit down on the kerb. He doesn't remember taking the three steps toward the street, but knows he must have. John is finishing a sentence that Greg doesn't quite register except for the words shut up, Sherlock tacked onto the end. Greg presses a hand to the side of his foggy head and exhales.

John seems like he's trying to be discrete. He's casually sat down on the kerb beside him with his arms resting on his knees. "Take it easy for a minute," he suggests. Greg can feel him watching his face. "Any better?"

Greg nods. "Told you, I'm fine."

"Oh, right, I see that." Amusement lilts John's voice. "You seem great. Except for the part where you nearly collapsed on a crime scene, but I suppose that was just for show. Have you eaten this morning?"

"Yeah, few hours ago."

"You might be coming down with something. Do you feel ill?"

With a resigned sigh, Greg nods. "Yeah, a bit. Since last night. I think you're right." He passes a hand over his face. "Rotten timing."

"You should go home. We'll handle it. I'll even make sure Sherlock plays nice with the other boys."

Unable to stifle it, Greg laughs. "Right! I'm sure he'll cooperate." Sniffling, he glances over his shoulder to see the detective in question once again examining the body, entirely uninterested in what John and Greg are doing. Greg clears his throat and shakes his head and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, willing himself to get it together. "No, I can't just let this one go. The pressure's on from up top, and the media and everything. I'll be fine."

John's face goes through a change that Greg has seen before, settling on a look usually reserved for Sherlock when he's being stubborn or reckless or rude. "Ah, no," he says firmly. "If you're ill, you don't need to go running about in this heat, especially not if this case is going to drag on as long as I think it is. Besides, you'll get everyone else sick, too."

Greg is getting tired of repeating himself. "I'm fine. It'll pass."

"You look like shit," John says in a low voice. "And I'm sure you feel worse. And you're shivering, even though it's forty degrees out - that means fever. So you can stop denying it." He exhales audibly. "You can come with us, then. Back to Baker Street. We can work from there, and it saves you running about."

"Well, someone still has to do the running about," Greg points out.

"We'll figure it out."

John is relieved when Greg finally agrees to come back with him. Honestly, when he's on a big case like this, Lestrade can be just as bad as Sherlock when it comes to neglecting himself in the name of the work. Truth be told, though, John doesn't have much room to talk. He's been known to suffer through illnesses in order to follow Sherlock across rooftops, too. Adrenaline junkies don't stop being adrenaline junkies when they're unwell.

The cab ride back is quiet, except for Sherlock asking for clarification (again) as to why Greg should convalesce at their flat. At John's sharp tone, he concludes the conversation quickly, but with a quick, "Don't contaminate my evidence." To which Greg curtly reminds him that it's actually his evidence, and that Sherlock is just borrowing it. The consulting detective, of course, has no rebuttal for this.

When they first arrive home, John is steeling himself for battle. But, it turns out, Lestrade is an easy patient. He accepts the cups of tea John presses into his hand, answers honestly when asked how he's feeling, and even at one point puts down the crime scene report to lie down on the couch for a spell. For years, John has dealt mostly with Sherlock - nursing ills, stitching wounds, insisting on rest and fluids - and it's been an uphill battle every time. With as dedicated as Greg is to his work, he had expected a similar power struggle.

But then, Sherlock does it partially out of a pathological need to defy authority. Greg doesn't have that problem.

Regardless, John finds himself questioning: is Greg just an easy patient, or is he much worse off than he seems?

Around lunchtime, Molly texts Sherlock and lets him know that the body is ready for him to examine at the morgue. Between the three of them, they decide that Greg should stay here while John and Sherlock see to it. Someone needs to cross-reference soil samples anyway, apparently, and it's one of the few specimens that Greg can't contaminate, so the job falls to him.

"Will you be alright on your own?" John asks as he puts on his coat.

"He'll be fine," Sherlock interjects impatiently. "There's tea and toast and Mrs. Hudson. He isn't dying. I need you at the morgue."

Greg nods his agreement and holds up a printed-out guide to soil deposits in West London. "I'll hold down the fort."

The door slams shut and Greg drops his head into his hands. Death warmed over would be an improvement from where he is now. He doesn't want the others to know, because no doubt John would urge him to go home and Sherlock would be annoyed at his uselessness, and he simply can't turn his back on this case. When a man is bled like a side of meat and left in the middle of residential neighborhood, amidst children and families, the public demands answers. Hell, Greg wants answers.

In the privacy of the vacated flat, Greg drops his reports down on the coffee table and sits back on the sofa, letting his head fall backward onto the cool leather. Part of him thinks he should just go home, spare the others the inconvenience, but he just can't let go of the case.

His head is pounding, though, which is making it nearly impossible to think coherently. He suspects John was right about the fever, too - he does have the chills, but he can feel how hot his own skin is. Nausea has been building all day as well, uncoiling menacingly in the pit of his stomach.

Just be still a minute, Greg thinks. It'll pass. It isn't passing… Wait… No, it isn't passing. Actually, it's getting worse. Yes, definitely worse. Somehow, he manages to leap up and get to the bathroom in time to avoid vomiting all over himself.

After it's over, he's kneeling on the floor, clutching the cold porcelain of the toilet bowl, struggling to get his breath back, and finally thinks, Yeah, I should go home.

"Meat hooks," Sherlock says with evident delight as they get out of a cab at 221B. His examination of the body has brightened his mood considerably - not that he wasn't already indecently excited at the prospect of this particular murder in the first place.

"Meat hooks," John repeats. "So you've said, twice now. Care to elaborate?"

"Meat hooks in the backs of his knees," he explains. "We didn't see the wounds because the body was face-up at the scene."

John winces. "He was hung from meat hooks while he bled out?" He feels vaguely nauseous. "That's disgusting."

"Yes!" Sherlock agrees, but his tone is inappropriately pleased.

John pays the cabbie and follows Sherlock inside, ruminating on the darker side of human nature - what pushes a man to cold-blooded murder? Fighting in a war is one thing, killing in a war, even; but how do you get to the point where you're actually considering dragging someone into a dark room somewhere and hanging them bodily from a pair of meat hooks - "Oy!" John bumps into Sherlock, who has stopped short at the bottom of the stairs.

"John," the detective says simply, his eyes on the upper landing.

John follows his gaze and sees Lestrade shutting the door behind himself and moving with no small difficulty toward the stairs. He looks rather disorientated, and John finds himself rather worried. "Greg?" He pushes past Sherlock and climbs the stairs to head off the DI. Not quick enough. Lestrade either misses his footing or is just unsteady, it's not clear, but all of a sudden he's lurching forward. John takes the last few stairs two at a time and braces Greg up under the arm. He can feel Sherlock behind him suddenly as well, with a hand in the small of his back, ready to catch him should he and Lestrade both go tumbling down the staircase.

"Where are you going?" John demands irritably, levering the DI back onto the top step with some difficulty.

"Escaping," is Greg's inexplicable reply.

"Escaping?" John echoes. He feels a bit like a trained parrot recently. "From…?"

Greg makes a vague gesture at the door to unit B, and slumps a little on John's shoulder.

Delirious? He didn't seem that ill. "Hey. Stand up. Come on. I'm afraid you aren't going anywhere." From beyond the DI's bulk, John can see Sherlock brush past and unlock the door, pushing it open before coming back to help John with Greg.

"The case," Greg whines. "The blood."

"Meat hooks!" Sherlock merrily chirps.

John interjects: "Not now!" The two of them half-drag Greg back to the sofa and dump him down on it. John glares down at the DI while Sherlock goes back to shut the door. "Where in the hell were you going?"

"Yard," Greg replies.

"I'm sure that would have gone great." Carefully, John presses the back of his hand to Greg's ashen face. His skin is so hot it's almost painful. "Jesus, Greg, you could have called! Have you anything else going on - coughing, pain? Vomiting?"

"No."

"Yes," Sherlock calls from the bathroom. John hears the toilet flush.

Greg grunts his displeasure.

"Okay, I lied earlier. You are as bad as he is. Worse, possibly. Ridiculous," John huffs. "Lie down."

"The case - " Greg insists.

John pushes him back with a firm hand on his chest. "Nope."

Greg does not consider himself a particularly brilliant man. Not thick or stupid or anything, mind you, but definitely not genius-level intellect. That's under the best of circumstances. Right now, though, he's not even sure he'd be able to dress himself if need be, and thinks it's very possible he'd put his shoes on his head and his hat on his feet. His world is upside-down.

He feels dreadful. He has the chills and his stomach is in knots and he can't seem to form a coherent thought. At one point while he was alone in the flat, he trudged all the way to Sherlock's room, looking for his cat, before he remembered he doesn't have a cat. Then he thought he'd go to the crime scene, but John said no, and now here he is and he feels dreadful.

John is talking. Greg isn't sure what's being said, but he feels cool hands against his skin - first his face and then his wrist and then his belly. He groans at the sudden swell of pain through his abdomen and pushes John's hands away. Then, in a sudden moment of clarity, he remembers something. "Sherlock. What about meat hooks?" He blinks his blurry vision clear and tries to crane his neck to see him past John's shoulder.

"The victim was positioned upon meat hooks and bled out like a shekhted cow," Sherlock reports dutifully.

Greg's stomach rolls. "Shekhted?" he repeats, trying to fixate on something other than the image of a man bleeding out upside-down.

He can almost hear Sherlock's eyes rolling at his stupidity. "Shechita. Jewish kosher slaughter. Deep slice to the throat," he explains, sounding put-out.

"Now's not really the time," John warns Sherlock off.

It doesn't matter. Greg can feel himself slipping. The force of John's actions and orders was enough to lay him out flat, and the sofa is very comfortable, the leather nice and cool; he can feel his eyelids growing heavy. "Should probably get home," he mumbles uselessly.

John laughs, flaring the dull ache in Greg's head to a fever pitch. "Not sure how you're going to manage that, mate."

"Ugh."

John's brow is furrowed as he watches Greg drift off. He straightens, stretches, and scratches at his five o'clock shadow.

Across the room, Sherlock gives an exasperated sigh. "He's not dying, John." He fiddles with the dials on the microscope, even though there is no slide in it.

For a moment, John thinks about giving Sherlock a lecture about the hippocratic oath and empathy, and trying to make him understand that since Lestrade is his friend, too, he cares about his health, so on and so forth, but knows it will likely fall on deaf ears. Then he realises. "Hang on… you're jealous." John is all but crowing at having deduced the consulting detective.

Sherlock sighs and rolls his eyes, predictably.

John's suspicions are confirmed. "Ha. My concern is all well and good until it's directed at someone else."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"You know what I think?"

"Yes," drawls Sherlock, clearly bored.

"I think you like it. You like it when I chase you around the flat and pester you about food and rest and the state of your health."

"Honestly, John, considering the obscene number of investigations that you have obstructed with your constant mother-henning, I really don't see how you are reaching that conclusion." Sherlock rolls his eyes again and turns his back, his long fingers sifting through case paperwork.

The smirk on John's face might be just a tiny bit self-satisfied and smug.

Greg sleeps through the better part of the day. On some level, he's aware of this, and he's also aware of the fact that he's still at Baker Street and not his own place, but he's too miserable to care.

He's swimming. Swimming is nice, he likes swimming, but this is mud and not water and he's not getting anywhere. He keeps pushing, but his muscles are screaming and he can't see where he's going. He claws through the murky sludge, gasping for breath with each stroke. He can see light each time his fingers break through, but those tiny pinpoints of hope never get closer, and there is silt in his eyes and his mouth. It tastes like copper.

Then, suddenly, he's standing in Baker Street. The flat is empty of furniture. The body of the bloodless man is lying naked and face down in the middle of the sitting room. Sherlock's voice says something about fingerprint bruises and embittered brothers-in-law. John's voice joins in and says something about calling the police.

"I am the police," Greg points out, but they don't seem to hear him. "Where are you?" he wonders aloud to the empty flat.

Lestrade's fever is worrying. It's fairly rare for a healthy adult to suffer a fever so bad that it becomes dangerous, John knows, but he doesn't like the way Greg seems borderline delirious. He struggles in and out of wakefulness throughout the afternoon and into the evening before finally settling into a restless sleep punctuated with vague mumbling.

Out of the blue, Sherlock lets a petri dish fall onto the table with a clatter, and slumps back in his chair, looking thoroughly put-out.

"What is it?" John asks. He is sitting on the coffee table, placing a cool flannel on Greg's forehead and chest, and looks up to watch his flatmate fume.

"Straightforward. He was beating his wife."

"Who?"

"The victim," Sherlock groans. "Craig Daniel. He was murdered by his psychopathic brother-in-law. Vengeance killing. Fingerprint bruises on the throat and wrists, not visible to the naked eye because of the blood loss. Straightforward."

"I'll call the police," John offers, pulling out his mobile.

"No. I need to test a theory first. I have to be certain." Sherlock stands and gathers his mobile and suit jacket. "Coming?"

John glances at Greg, who groans and turns his head.

"He's not dying," Sherlock says again.

"Sorry. I think I'd better stay."

Murder.

Greg is thinking about murder. He's seen a lot of murder. But then, when your job is to police a city as huge and diverse and teeming with life as London, you're bound to see some murder. Now, usually, it's accompanied by a whole lot of blood, but clearly there are some exceptions.

Meat hooks.

Greg winces, his dream-world self conjuring up an image of a man hanging naked and bleeding from industrial packing plant meat hooks. The sight is uncomfortable to say the least. Sweat beads on his forehead and his stomach churns and roils. Caught somewhere between asleep and awake, he hears himself groan, his voice rough and hoarse. He tries to speak, but he's not sure if any words come out. They must have done, though: he hears John reply.

"Shh," John soothes. "Sherlock has it all in hand."

Somehow, that doesn't make Greg feel much better. But there isn't a thing he can do about it.

Dark is gathering on Baker Street when Lestrade's fever finally breaks. John has unceremoniously dropped himself into his armchair, the telly remote in one hand and his phone in the other (new text message - S Holmes - Donovan in charge of investigation now. Kill me please. SH) and the milky glow of the television casts deep shadows over his face. He hears Greg sigh and looks over to find him drenched in sweat and stirring uncomfortably - his temperature is coming down finally. John drops both items onto the side table and stands, crosses the room, bends over his patient. "Greg? You with me?"

In response, the DI screws up his face and blinks his eyes open, his gaze foggy and confused. "John?"

"S'alright. How are you feeling?"

"Disgusting."

John helps him sit up, and hands him a cup of lukewarm tea. "Slowly," he urges, and watches as his instructions are heeded. "Sherlock and Sally are in Chiswick serving an arrest warrant."

Greg looks up sharply. "What?"

"Yeah. Sherlock sorted it all out this afternoon. Bit anticlimactic, really."

Lestrade nods his agreement. "If you go in for that sort of thing," he adds in jest, but then wraps an arm around his middle.

"Easy there." John watches his face pale slightly, but is relieved when his colour returns quickly enough.

Suddenly, the door bangs open and Sherlock sweeps in. "That was annoying," he states flatly, kicking the door shut. His eyes alight on Greg, sitting companionably beside John on the sofa. "Oh. Are you feeling better?"

"Yeah, thanks for - "

"Good." Sherlock drops his phone and his jacket down on the table. "That was getting dull."

John and Greg exchange a look and together roll their eyes heavenward.

Author's Note: Thanks, everyone, for your well wishes and kind words and for all the congratulations sent my way. For those who have asked, the baby is a girl and we called her Ruby. :) I'll post pics on Tumblr later.

As to this story - yes, I took the meat hooks and drained blood idea straight from Dexter. If you haven't watched it, you should!