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John breathed out a steady sigh when Sherlock finally went still and silent beside him. ‘It’s like traveling with a two year old’ he reflected as he tucked a blanket over his friend, who had spent the first 2 hours of their 7 hour flight fidgeting and complaining until John had begged him to just shut up and try to sleep. This led to another hour of tossing and turning and trying to fold his impossibly long legs into something like a comfortable position. Finally John had passed over his own earphones and put on Radiohead, which was guaranteed to relax Sherlock within minutes. Within a half hour he had settled into a light sleep, and John held himself still and steady, praying that the man would just sleep until they landed.
He didn’t count on Sherlock being so deeply asleep that he was almost impossible to rouse. As the captain announced they were landing soon, John began poking various parts of Sherlock, finally seizing hold of a shoulder and shaking him. Sherlock just let out a humph and attempted to roll over, actually pulling the blanket over his head. “Sherlock, wake up, we’re landing.”
“Don’t wanna” was the muffled response.
John rolled his eyes. “You are actually a child,” he stated. “Come on, Sherlock, you need to be alert. You’re the one who insisted we get started right away.”
“I’ll be alert when we land. Leave me alone.”
John was satisfied by the tone of his voice that he wasn’t in danger of going back to sleep, and turned his attention to looking out the window at the sights of New York City.
They land at noon, local time, and have an appointment with their client. Once he is back in sleuth mode, Sherlock is awake and focused and energetic. John stands near him and nods occasionally, feeling more lethargic as time drags on. His feet follow Sherlock’s but his head feels like it’s filled with cotton. The image of himself with stuffing coming out of his ears makes John giggle, suddenly and rather inappropriately. The client, a woman whose husband has recently been murdered, turns an angry eye on John who mumbles an apology and decides it might be better if he waits for Sherlock outside. Sherlock does not take his eyes off the woman throughout this exchange. John leans against the wall outside and shuts his eyes, just for a moment.
“John. Wake up.” Sherlock nudges him.
“Not asleep,” he retorts quickly, but when he opens his eyes it is significantly darker than it had been when he walked outside.
“I’m finished. We can go to the hotel and you can get some sleep.”
Sherlock whirls away and John is buffeted along behind him, still feeling strangely slow and heavy. “Jet lag doesn’t usually get me this badly. Guess I’m getting old.”
Sherlock slows his pace so John can catch up. “Are you sure you feel well? Your cheeks are a bit flushed.”
“Fine, I’m fine.”
But he isn’t fine, and they’ve not been checked into their rooms for very long before he reaches this realization. He is alternately burning up and freezing. He makes a valiant effort to go to the chemist he spotted downstairs, but makes it as far as Sherlock’s room next door before realizing he will not be able to remain upright. He knocks hesitantly at the door. Sherlock opens it immediately, takes one look at John, and ushers him into the room. “Just lie down. I’ll be back.”
John hasn’t the strength to do anything but exactly what Sherlock has ordered. He crawls into the bed and weakly tries to ruck up the comforter with his feet before giving it up as a bad job and falling asleep on top of it. He is woken by Sherlock’s finger poking him directly in the center of his forehead. “You have to wake up and take this medicine.”
“Couldn’t have found a gentler way of doing that? God, but your fingers are bony.” John rubs the spot on his forehead. Sherlock has laid out what seems like the entire contents of the drugstore. “Jesus, Sherlock, I just needed some flu pills.”
“Well I don’t know what the best is. So, just tell me what you want. Can’t hurt to have the rest on hand.”
John attempts to stand from the bed and select what he needs, but is seized by a wave of dizziness. Sherlock places a hand firmly on John’s shoulder and pushes him back. “Just sit there, would you? I can get what you need.”
John’s pride wants to bristle, but as his brain currently feels as if it’s being squeezed out through his nose, he points limply at a box of dark blue pills. He watches with vague amusement as Sherlock wrestles the pills from their packaging and thrusts them at John, followed by a cup of water. He wants to laugh, somehow, at the image of Sherlock as his caretaker, but he is too grateful to risk sending him into a sulk. He swallows the pills and falls back against the pillows. “I’ll get back to my own room, just… one minute.”
When John opens his eyes he experiences a moment of sheer panic before he realizes where he is. Hotel, sick, Sherlock. The room is mostly dark, save a sliver of light coming from what must be the loo, where the door has been left cracked open. John cannot see anything in the shape of a Sherlock on the opposite bed, nor the chair, so he’s most likely haring around New York City in the middle of the night. John pushes himself up, noting dimly that he is now definitely underneath covers that he was on top of when he slept. “I must’ve been knocked out,” he muttered.
“Yes, you didn’t even grumble at me.”
At the sound of Sherlock’s voice in his ear John leaps off the bed, now noticing that his shoes and socks have been removed. “Sherlock, Jesus, I thought you were out! There’s another bed, you know!”
“I wanted this one. I always sleep in the bed closest to the door.”
“This one was occupied, you prat.” But John cannot really say he’s angry. He stumps off to the toilet and blinks at himself in the mirror. “Christ, I really do look terrible.”
“Yes, you do. I’d get back into bed.” This time Sherlock’s voice is immediately on the other side of the door.
“Sherlock, we’ve talked about lurking outside bathroom doors. It’s impolite.”
There’s a pause, then a quiet, “I thought you might be sick. I have water.”
John opens the door and finds Sherlock, in his pajamas and bare feet, hair flattened on one side, holding a paper cup of water out towards John. Something about the sight makes John’s chest ache. He takes the cup and doesn’t point out that if he were in need of water, there is a tap in the very room he’s standing in. Which makes John wonder where Sherlock got this water. He steps back out into the room and sees that Sherlock has filled a line of little paper cups and set them on the desk. He decides to continue his plan of not mentioning any of these things. When he picks his way back to the bed and trips over his shoes, however, he cannot refrain from stating, “You took my shoes off.”
Sherlock lifts an eyebrow. “Would you have been more comfortable trying to sleep in them?”
“And the socks?”
“You never sleep with socks. Even in the dead of winter.”
“Okay… fair enough, I guess.” He bends to take his shoes and socks in hand and Sherlock is at his side in a flash. “Oi, Sherlock, I’m just picking these up. Figured I’d head back to my own room.”
Sherlock looks severely put out at this. “But everything you need is here! The medicine, and water, and…” he trails off.
“I can take the medicine with me. And my room has water, too, you know. I’d like to change my clothes anyway.”
Sherlock sheepishly points at the opposite bed, where John notices his pajamas folded in a little pile. He shakes his head. “You went into my room and got all my things. Course you did. Wouldn’t occur to you that’s a little invasive.” John’s head has started pounding again and he wagers he has less than 2 minutes of being able to stand upright. “It’s the flu, Sherlock, I’m still plenty capable of taking care of myself. I’m not a bloody child!” he snaps.
Sherlock’s face goes slack. “I just thought that… well, I was wrong. I’m sorry. Here, all your things are here already, I’ll go to the other room. Just… please lie down, will you?” Sherlock picks up his bag and exits the room, leaving John feeling a bit wrong footed. This, if he’s honest, is a position he often finds himself in with Sherlock. He pulls on his pajamas and tries to fall back asleep but a pang of guilt overwhelms him when he once again surveys the miniature drugstore and water dispensary Sherlock had established for his benefit. It was perhaps invasive, but clearly Sherlock was trying to help. It’s hardly Sherlock’s fault John can’t stand being treated like anybody’s patient.
“Oh, hell,” he grumbles, dragging his hand over his face. He’ll have to apologize or he’ll never sleep. He spends a few moments marshalling his strength and pushes off the bed. His pride keeps quiet as he rather inelegantly wraps himself in the spare blanket. He makes sure he has his keycard (more than one uncomfortable night in the hallway has taught him never forget the keycard when the room’s not in your name) and trundles the few steps to the room which is now Sherlock’s. He knocks tentatively and is nearly sucked into the room by the force of the door swinging inward. He is unable to begin his apology for being rude because Sherlock actually hugs him, envelops him entirely in his spindly arms and clutches – actually clutches – John to his chest. At first he keeps his spine rigid and his arms are still dumbly wrapped inside his blanket cocoon, so that they must make a ridiculous image, with John just sort of propped against Sherlock. Despite his initial shock and discomfort at accepting such a gesture, John starts to relax inside Sherlock’s arms, the heat of Sherlock’s body bleeding into him. He cannot work his arms out of his blanket, pinned as he is, so he settles for tucking his head beneath Sherlock’s chin and sort of wriggling.
After just a moment too long, Sherlock gently pushes John upright and chivvies his blanketed self onto the bed. John is sidetracked by a 2 minute coughing spurt, while Sherlock sits beside him and rubs his back throughout. When he’s finished he manages to begin the apology he came here to deliver. “You were just trying to help. I shouldn’t have been ungrateful.”
“Don’t worry John. I didn’t realize you were so grumpy when you were ill. I should’ve given you space.”
“Bit unusual though. Not unwelcome, mind you, just unusual. That you’d suddenly turn into a bloody nursemaid on me.”
Sherlock is silent, and he’s dropped his hand from John’s back. “I know. It’s just that, nobody should have to be sick alone. I’ve never liked it. I didn’t consider that other people might not feel that way, too.”
“Not that I don’t appreciate the gesture. I’m embarrassed, mostly. Don’t like being sick. Don’t like needing help. Showing weakness, you know, all that.” John isn’t sure he’d share that normally, and of course it’s hardly the whole story. But in the quiet dark of the room, side by side on the bed, with the memory of Sherlock’s hand rubbing a soothing track over his back, it feels fine. They sit in silence for a few minutes. “I’ll owe you one, then. Next time you’re ill, you get the full nurse John treatment.”
He can sense rather than see Sherlock’s slight smile. “You’re my doctor, John; you’ve tended to me plenty of times.”
This is true, John has long since lost count of the bandages and ice packs and antiseptic cream and finger splints he’s applied to Sherlock in the history of their friendship.
“Well, I’ve never hugged you just to make you feel better. I’ve never hugged you at all. So. I at least owe you that.”
Sherlock tenses slightly but replies, “Fair enough.”
John allows Sherlock to steer him back to the room, give him more medicine and another cup of water, and to smooth the blankets over him once he tucks himself into bed. Sherlock lies on the other bed, facing John, and instructs John to wake him at once if he needs anything. John is drifting back to sleep and misses the other words Sherlock murmurs across the space between the beds.
He awakes feeling slightly better, and sees Sherlock curled up on the opposite bed, a hand flung off the edge, as if he were reaching out to John in the night. That image closes John’s throat and he coughs, twice, loudly, and Sherlock starts awake quicker than John has ever seen. He staggers into the bathroom, mumbling “get you fresh water,” and something has started rising inside of John, something which he suddenly thinks must have been there for ages and ages, but quiet. Whatever it is, it’s getting louder and louder. By the time Sherlock returns and thrusts a cup of water and 2 flu capsules at him, it is deafening. He struggles to a sitting position and jumps when Sherlock suddenly has an arm around his back, supporting him so John can tip his back and swallow his medicine. It is unaccountable the way he wants to turn his face into Sherlock’s neck and stay there. He feels Sherlock tense to pull away and can’t stand it, suddenly, that he will be sitting here without the warmth of Sherlock’s arm on his back. He gives in to the temptation and rests his head on Sherlock’s shoulder. Sherlock makes a pleased noise and squeezes John a little closer, using his free hand to take the cup away and set it on the bedside table.
“’s actually pretty nice, being looked after,” John admits, and permits himself to stay there, telling himself he’ll move in a minute. It is quite a bit longer than that, though, before he senses a fine tension running through Sherlock. “Are you uncomfortable? Let me—“ and he straightens up, pushes himself away, feels Sherlock’s arm slip free of his waist, drop to the bed with a thump. “Idiot, don’t let me cut off your circulation.”
“It was… fine.” But he says it softly and John can hardly hear it for the roaring in his ears.
He leans back against the headboard but doesn’t put any more space between them. Works his own arm around Sherlock’s back. Puts his head back down on Sherlock’s shoulder, attempts not to nuzzle his neck. This is just the medicine, he’s drowsy and dopey and not thinking properly. “Were you sick a lot? As a kid, I mean.”
“Why would think so?”
“Pretty strong feelings that someone ought to be taken care of. Makes me think, maybe you weren’t?”
Sherlock is quiet for long enough that John is nearly asleep when he answers softly. “Not when I was a child, no, but later, yes, I was very sick. And I was alone.”
John’s mind is working very slowly but he gets there. He wants to ask it carefully, to be gentle, but he can’t. “Withdrawals?”
He feels Sherlock nod, and this time he doesn’t resist the urge to push his face into the crook of Sherlock’s neck. He opens his eyes and gazes at Sherlock’s pale skin, the little mole on his throat, and he presses his lips against it before he thinks. “I wish I’d been there with you. To take care of you.”
Sherlock is perfectly still, and through the haze of medicine John has a flash of panic that he’s just done something completely inappropriate and, to Sherlock, possibly extremely offensive. Finally he breaks the silence. “Sorry, Sherlock, it’s the medicine, and I’m tired, and—“ Sherlock turns his head and presses his lips against John’s hair in something which is not quite a kiss. He stays there, quiet, for long enough that the pills start to make the edges fuzzy and John’s eyelids feel too heavy. Eventually Sherlock forms quiet words into John’s hair.
“If you’d been there, John, I wouldn’t have been sick in the first place.”
It doesn’t fully penetrate John’s haze but he drifts off to sleep with a sense that Sherlock has just said something gravely important.
When he wakes a few hours later, it is early afternoon. He shakes his head at the way time disappears when one is sick. It doesn’t take much to realize that he is alone in the room, that Sherlock is gone. John gets up and washes his face, cleans his teeth, manages to change into jeans and a jumper. This takes all the energy he had, and he slumps into the armchair and flicks on the telly, trying his best not to worry about where Sherlock has gone. If not for the army of discarded paper cups, John might believe he’d dreamed the entire thing. He blindly flips through channels without seeing or hearing anything. The roaring in his head has only gotten steadily louder, and he closes his eyes against the pain in his sinuses and tries to breathe steadily to avoid another coughing fit. He’d meant what he said to Sherlock, he hated being sick, resented it really. He hadn’t been sick much in his life, had no childhood experiences with people fussing over him. There were a few girlfriends who nursed him through particularly bad hangovers, but he always ended up feeling vaguely ashamed and apologetic.
Then he was responsible for taking care of others, and though under normal circumstances his bedside manner was kind and compassionate, most of the medicine he practiced in Afghanistan didn’t allow for that. He didn’t coddle. People were either living or they were dying, and he reasoned that whether or not he smiled when he told them that would hardly matter. So when he was shot, he didn’t want to be coddled. He was going to die, he knew it, and he’d just as soon do it without fanfare. But he was their friend, he was Doc. And they thought they would lose him, with the hours he’d laid bleeding before they’d been clear to get him to the field hospital, with the infection and the fever. And then he was a surgeon with a bad shoulder, a limp and a tremor in his hand. He was useless, and when he was transferred out of his own hospital at Camp Bastion, the looks on the faces of his friends, his fellow doctors and nurses, had made him sick to his stomach. He did not want to be pitied, but he knew he was on his way out, and the one thing he’d ever done well was being taken away from him.
He’d laid in Queen Elizabeth, knowing the Army was finished with him, and having not one clue what he would do with himself when he was discharged. He had visitors, people he barely knew and some he didn’t know at all, just people wanting to wish an injured soldier well, and god knows he wished he could appreciate the sentiment, but he didn’t want to be gawked at. He couldn’t take the sympathetic, or worse admiring, little noises people made when they heard how he was injured trying to save civilians. It wasn’t heroism. He was a doctor. There were injured women and children, and as a doctor at Camp Bastion he treated everyone, including the enemy, and he treated them the same, because it was his job. He’d never thought it right to feel proud of yourself for just doing your job, and didn’t want others to feel proud of him either. Because for the ones he did treat and save, there were fifty more who died under his hands, bloody and screaming and so far from home.
John was so lost in these thoughts that he didn’t register Sherlock’s entrance until the man was right before him, kneeling in front of the chair. “John, are you all right?”
He drifted back from the places his memory had taken him. “Yeah. Sherlock, I’m fine. I was just…” but he finds he cannot finish, because he doesn’t know why he should be thinking of Afghanistan here, in a quiet safe room thousands of miles away.
“You’re not fine; you had that look on,” Sherlock argues.
“Which look would that be?”
“The one you have when you wake up from a nightmare so bad that you decide not to go back to sleep, even though you’re exhausted. When you stand in the kitchen gritting your teeth because you feel like you have sand in them.”
John is silent. He nods, eventually, and doesn’t yell at Sherlock about privacy, about not saying everything he thinks, because how could he miss it? Sherlock sees everything, and John’s never really endeavored to hide this from Sherlock. From everyone else, yes, but not from Sherlock. He’d see it anyway, and why shouldn’t his one real friend understand why he sometimes cried out in the night, why the thing he feels most in the presence of death is not fear or sadness like most people, or even interest like Sherlock, but resignation. Because they all died screaming and bloody and so far from home, and he almost did, too. And once Sherlock was sick, detoxing and sweating and vomiting and keening and crying, and he was alone.
He doesn’t realize he’s crying until he feels Sherlock’s fingers, cold from outside, tracing the path of his tears over his cheeks. As always, he somehow divines what John is thinking. “We’re not alone, now, John.”
“Maybe I ought to be.” And he doesn’t realize that he feels it until he says it, but that’s exactly what it is. Why should he be cared for when he couldn’t save them? He shakes his head and lets out an angry sob. “Fuck it, Sherlock, it’s been 2 years I’ve been back. I should be over this.”
“How can you expect that of yourself? You never got help, not properly, you sat in that woman’s office and didn’t speak for three quarters of an hour once a week. You started a blog about yourself and made it about me. You run after me and protect me and you neglect yourself, over and over. You get wrapped in a bomb jacket and you tell the madman who put you there to go ahead and blow it up, just so long as I run. God, John. Don’t you ever stop?”
It’s obviously a speech Sherlock’s had brewing inside him for ages, and by the time he spits out the last word, he’s breathing as if he’s run miles. There are still tears coming down John’s face, and Sherlock’s fingers are still brushing them away. John laughs, then, a shaky and uncertain thing which makes Sherlock want to crush him against his own chest and hold him there, possibly forever.
“What’s in these flu pills?” he giggles, but Sherlock keeps him fixed with a hard stare, and doesn’t smile. John becomes aware that Sherlock’s hands have stopped caressing his cheeks, that they are gripping the arms of the chair, knuckles white with the effort of a fight that John doesn’t understand, but that he wants to end. He sighs and leans forward, touching his forehead to Sherlock’s, beyond caring that he is clammy and damp with sweat and tears and cannot possibly smell good. He works Sherlock’s fingers off the chair and holds them within his own, gently. Sherlock doesn’t move away, or speak, and is breathing so shallowly John can barely feel it. They both have their eyes closed, and it is the easiest thing John’s ever done to bring Sherlock’s fingers to his lips, to press kisses against the pads of his fingers. To slide out of the chair into Sherlock’s lap, to close his fist around the fingers he’s kissed, to clasp that hand against his chest.
“You’re right. We’re not alone now. Thank god. Thank Sherlock,” he smiles, and Sherlock’s eyelids flutter, and John kisses them, and it isn’t until he’s doing so that he discovers he’s always wanted to.
Sherlock is trembling slightly, but John is entirely steady, as he is always is when he is terrified. He would’ve been well enough to remain in the Army if they’d foregone antibiotics and physical therapy and psychiatrists, and just given him Sherlock Holmes.
It is four days before John feels well enough to fly home, and they are four days of indescribably gentle touches and brief, chaste kisses, and Sherlock is absent for hours at a time tying up loose ends on the case, which he’d of course solved on that first day. When he is gone, John sleeps and showers and searches himself for embarrassment or shame or regret, and finds none.
On the flight back, Sherlock sleeps and John watches him. He watches him as he wakes and as they disembark and collect their luggage. He watches how Sherlock does not look at him, does not speak. And when they head home, John winds his fingers through Sherlock’s in the taxi. At this, Sherlock visibly relaxes. “So it wasn’t just the flu pills?” and god help him, he tries to pass it off as a joke, but John knows better. When they find themselves back in their flat, John wastes no time pushing his hands into that brilliant mop of hair and tilting his face up, meeting Sherlock’s lips and setting them both on fire. When they finally pull away, Sherlock laughs and laughs, and his pale cheeks are dotted with two bright flushes of red.
John pushes him into bed and Sherlock lights up, but when he leaves and returns with two flu pills and the paper cup he’d taken from the room as a memento, Sherlock stares at him, bewildered. John chuckles at his confusion. “You’ll be glad I did this in about an hour.”
Just over an hour later, Sherlock is sweating and freezing and coughing helplessly while John holds him gently and strokes his hair back from his face. He maneuvers them into lying side by side on the bed. John works his arms around Sherlock and rests his chin on top of Sherlock’s mad hair, and hugs him close. “There,” he says as he presses a kiss to his damp forehead, “we’re even.”
Sherlock goes still at these words. “So is that the end of it, then?”
John laughs and tightens his hold on Sherlock’s back. “You nutter. It’s the very beginning.”