Nicely beta'd by Swimmergirl0726
Once they got home they happily ordered Chinese takeaway and Sherlock actually ate. John could not remember the last time he had felt so content going to bed, but that night he did. There was a surprising calm in the flat that allowed him to fall asleep without nightmares for once.
He woke up the next morning with traces of last night's contentment still at the back of his mind, yet a larger part told him that something was wrong. He was shivering slightly and his head was pounding uncomfortably. Flu, or something worse… he was frighteningly aware of the message in his cup from last night. Had he underestimated that threat from two weeks ago?
Saturday had arrived and John accepted the impossibility of falling back asleep as he dragged himself out of bed and made sure that there was tea and toast in the flat. He was still exhausted and felt like life was getting increasingly out of control. Not only was his professional life turning into a mess, but he could tell that he was running a temperature which might be the result of complete exhaustion or whatever he had unintentionally ingested in that coffee the night before.
That life with Sherlock was strange and confusing was nothing new, he enjoyed that, and in a twisted way the strange threat he had received in that toilet was almost par for the course. The developments at work, however, were not; and it somehow threw him off to find that for some reason he could not pinpoint everyone seemed to be turning on him. Not on Sherlock, which would be normal, but on him, and for the first time he entertained the idea that this was all linked. Could it be that his new horrid boss was somehow in cahoots with the man from the toilet… it seemed a paranoid notion… but not impossible.
Equally, he was fairly sure that the fact that he felt like death warmed over was linked to the strange message in his coffee cup the night before. The only comfort was that the messages, both the one in person in the toilet and the one in the cup, seemed to indicate that this madman wanted him alive. He wouldn't be able to be a pawn in the project of torturing Sherlock if he wasn't there and living through this process. So he was only mildly worried to find that as soon as he had finished his breakfast his stomach rebelled and he found himself in the bathroom expelling tea and toast with painful force.
"Are you alright?" Sherlock was standing in the doorway, looking concerned but not overly so.
"Yes, probably the flu." John mumbled looking up at his flatmate with tired eyes. Maybe he should just tell him. No, he would not play straight into the hands of this madman. As long as he did not get worse, as long as this was really just a bug, or at the very least a mild case of poisoning, he would say nothing. John, there is no such thing as a mild case of poisoning, poisoning is bad; His subconscious reprimanded him, but he pushed it to the back of his mind as he rinsed his mouth and took his temperature.
Thirty eight point one it read, and John heaved a sigh. Paracetamol and bed, he decided, no not bed, sofa… just in case this was something more sinister and he needed to be close enough to Sherlock to at least hope that the detective would notice if he fell asleep and did not wake up. If you're even entertaining that notion you should tell him… his subconscious chastised him but no, he simply couldn't. He was not helpless, just tired and ill.
In the end he spent two absolutely miserable days on the sofa. His temperature rose slowly from thirty eight to peak at thirty nine point six, and he had to admit that he was genuinely worried at that point.
The high of the case from the previous night had left Sherlock calmer than John had seen him in weeks and he was surprisingly both attentive and concerned. He brought tea and paracetamol, both of which John promptly vacated in the toilet again mere minutes after having received them.
After two days of throwing up everything he put in his mouth, things finally eased off and the panic that had been rising at the back of John's mind eased with it. He was able to eat again, the fever that had been steadily climbing began to go down and he felt better.
The relief was indescribable when he was once again able to eat toast and have it stay in his system. By Monday afternoon his temperature was approaching normal and he no longer worried that he might have been seriously poisoned, it really had just been a matter of the flu, right?
He clutched at that imaginary straw as he slowly returned to normal. He silently wondered when he was ever going to get a restful weekend but he didn't mind when Sherlock burst into his room and told him they had a client coming and was he healthy enough to attend without contaminating the client?