Chapter Text
What had felt like a startled jerk that awoke him from a restless dream, was probably nothing more than a flinch of his mind, for as Sherlock looked around the room, it was clear that he hadn't truly moved.
The room was mostly dark, except for the glow of the medical equipment, and the tv that was silently playing an old rerun of Miss Marple. He looked around and found John asleep next to him, his head resting on the edge of the bed near Sherlock’s right hand.
John was just close enough that Sherlock could reach out with fingertips, burying them in the hair at the crown of John’s head. Something that he had longed to do for nearly a decade, but never thought he would ever get the opportunity. He wasn’t sure why he did it now. Whether he just didn’t give a damn any more, or if it was morphine courage, or a bit of both, he stroked the hair back and forth, a soothing touch. He wanted to speak, to wake John, but his throat was so dry that the words evaporated before they made it to his lips, so instead, he just continued to scratch small gentle circles along John's scalp until he began to stir.
In that liminal state between true sleep and wakefulness, it only took John a moment before he realised it wasn't the wind brushing against his hair.
"Sherlock?" he asked, hope causing his voice to catch in his throat.
He lifted his head and found Sherlock's eyes open. Not just open, but watching him. Emotion thick in his voice, John choked out a wet laugh, and instead of diving for Sherlock and wrapping him up in a bear hug like he wanted so desperately to do, he grasped at Sherlock's hand with both of his and clung on for dear life.
"You're awake... Oh god, you're awake...I was starting to worry...with the pneumonia, and how weak your body was...normally people take ages to wake from an induced coma, but you took an age and a half."
In his head, Sherlock heard himself say, "Normal is vastly overrated," but the words came out croaky and pinched and were only half audible. Sherlock scowled at his own ineptitude at speaking, even though he knew it was just for dehydration and lack of use.
“Some water would be nice” came out as, “-wat- -ice-“ as he motioned to his mouth with his free hand.
He had so many things he needed to say. So many questions that they were all jumbled in his head fighting for top priority.
"Watice? Is that a person?" John's relief was momentarily swept away by puzzlement. However, as soon as Sherlock started feebly pointing to his mouth, John was able to connect the dots and in a rush said, "Water! Yeah, of course you need water."
John gave Sherlock's hand a gentle squeeze before he got up and hurried to the table at the foot of Sherlock's bed. On it was a pitcher of water, a cup, and a bendy straw. John filled the cup up as much as he dared then turned back to Sherlock.
"Can I raise your bed a bit? I don't want you trying to sit up just yet."
Sherlock looked like he wanted to argue, but after trying to sit up despite John's words, and he found he couldn't, he nodded but scowled the entire time John was raising the back of his bed.
Still trying to prove himself capable, Sherlock tried to take the cup from John's hand, but John refused to release his grip, even when Sherlock's fingers encompassed his over the cup.
"As glad as I am you're well enough to be a stubborn git," John said fondly, "you're still weak and it's my turn for once to take care of you. So let me, yeah?"
As much as he wanted to protest he quite liked the idea of John caring for him, even if it was just for a brief moment. His oesophagus felt like it would stick together if he didn’t get a drink, so instead of fighting for the cup, he held it with him. He also held John’s gaze as he sucked down the ice cold water like a man who had been lost in the desert.
When the dry slurps indicated that he had gone through all the water John had given him, he relaxed back into his pillow, suddenly feeling completely exhausted from the small exertion of drinking water from a straw.
“John,” The name didn’t hurt his throat, even if it was a few octaves lower and raspier than normal. “Why do I have a catheter?”
"So you didn't wee yourself while lazing about this past week." John went for a teasing tone, hoping it would lessen the panic in Sherlock's mind as he slowly became aware of his surroundings.
It wasn't uncommon for coma patients to wake up with a broad sense of confusion. The fact that Sherlock remembered his name was actually surprising to John, and he couldn't help smiling fondly down at Sherlock while trying his best not to laugh at the dazed look of confusion on Sherlock's face.
"Why don't we assume you know who I am, you know who you are, and if you saw Mycroft you'd pretend you didn't remember him..." John said as he refilled Sherlock's cup, only half way this time, and passed it over into Sherlock's tremulous care. "But everything else is either a blur, or gone. Yeah?"
Sherlock thought for a moment while he sipped the second cup of water. Slower this time, thanks to the knowledge of the catheter. The last thing he could firmly remember was being shot. Unfortunately that wasn’t just a dream. Beyond that he couldn’t tell which memories were real and which were just fragments of dreams.
“That’s a safe assumption,” he said around the straw, brow still furrowed. “Did I get a dog?”
“No, no dog that I am aware of. Can’t imagine Mrs H would be too keen on that.” John mused, wondering what other thoughts swirled in his friend's mind.
“Mmm, shame. I quite like dogs,” Sherlock told him, very matter of fact. “I feel like I have gone into a film sequel and I know many different quotes, but I am unsure if they are in the film we are seeing or another.” Normally he didn’t ascribe to such imagery, but at the moment he was just grateful to string a coherent sentence together.
“We should watch more movies John. I know how much you appreciate the medium.”
"Mo -" incredulous, John looked up from where he was texting Mycroft to let him know Sherlock was awake, and gawked at his friend, "Movies? We should watch more movies? We, meaning me and you. You want to watch more movies?"
The bridge of Sherlock's nose did the thing where it wrinkled, his eyebrows came very close to touching, and his nostrils flared.
"Right, yes," John said, holding a hand up in surrender. "We can watch more movies. But before we can do that...chat first, or nurses first? Be aware you've been asleep and very ill for a little over a week, so they're bound to make quite a fuss over you."
"Are the nurses even necessary?" Sherlock asked instead of providing John with a direct answer. "You are a doctor after all."
"I am," John answered, choosing his words as carefully as he could. "However I am not employed by London General, nor am I your doctor in this case. So chat first?"
Dejected as he was that John was refusing to save him from having to interact with a full medical team, Sherlock nodded. Hungry for any bit of information that might fill in the gaps, he turned his full attention to John, fighting through the fog of exhaustion to soak in every word.
"I'm just going to sort of rip off the plaster," John announced. He'd had plenty of time to think about this conversation and to prepare a sort of CliffsNotes version of the events leading up to this moment. "Mary, my wife, shot you, and on your order I'm pretending I don't want to see her six feet under the moment after my daughter is born."
That was certainly a lot of information to receive in under a minute. He remembered being shot. Had hoped that Mary being the shooter was part of his coma dreams, but alas it seemed not.
Daughter. John’s daughter. John was going to have a child in a few months and here he was going off about dogs and movies. He needed to focus on what was important. Why couldn’t he focus? The more he tried to focus on finding the details to what John had just told him, the more things slipped through his grasp. He would chase the thought down a corridor, only to turn a corner and have it completely vanish, replaced with the Nando’s cockerel, staring at him with its blank eyes.
“A week? What else have I missed?” Sherlock tried to focus on John and not the Nando’s rooster standing behind him.
"A lot," John went for brutally honest as he settled back in his chair. "DNA test proves she's mine, I did the blood draw, Molly did the test... Erm..."
John scrubbed a hand over his face and let out a long and exasperated sigh.
"I tried to get into the thumb drive Mary gave us, but it's password protected. Mycroft has had a team working on it for about four days now. I haven't heard if they've been successful or not."
Sherlock didn't seem at all surprised at the mention of a password but he wasn't offering up the answer which meant he either didn't know, or was still too drugged up to recall that precious piece of information.
"Mary and I are both pretending... She talks the talk, says she wants to get back to how things were but it's glaringly obvious neither of us mean it. She did slip up though," John said with a wry smile. "She admitted she was checking my location through our phones."
"Yeah, that chicken is terrifying, isn't it?" He said when Sherlock's eyes slid past him for the fifth time. "It's from Greg and the team. I feel like it's plotting my murder alongside Mary. It's always just... staring."
“You can see it too? That’s certainly a relief.” Sherlock tried to digest all that John had just told him, but he was ashamed to admit that he had already forgotten the majority of it past ‘she's mine.’
“I never thought I would say it, but…I don’t think I will be taking on any more murder cases for a while after all this. Chicken or otherwise.” Sherlock allowed his head to lull to the side, gaze shift from John to his bare arms.
Even for him, he was startlingly pale in the low light of the room, but even more unfortunate than his pallor, was seeing a few of the faded scars that he had tried so desperately to hide from John for the past year. He knew it was futile to hide the evidence now, but still he tried to wiggle his hand under the thin blanket, frustrated when his iv got caught, bringing more attention to the movement.
"Hey..." John said softly, instantly coming to Sherlock's aid. He unlopped the blanket from the connector on Sherlock's IV. When Sherlock was no longer at risk of pulling the needle out of his hand sideways, John slid his fingers around Sherlock's wrist, thumbing a faint scar along Sherlock's ulna.
He knew Sherlock would hate pity but he couldn't help feeling sad for everything Sherlock had gone through for them. For him. It made having to cuddle and play house with his wife pale in comparison.
He also knew he was giving himself and his emotions away. He didn't need a mirror to know his face was knit together with concern, or that his lips were drawn back into a tight line.
"Mycroft told you..." Sherlock sighed but couldn't bring himself to pull his wrist free of John's hand. Not when he'd spent years wishing John would touch him like this.
"Erm...made me aware is more like it," John said after a moment with a dip of his head. "Whatever he could say in about forty-five seconds...I know. I would have gone with you, Sherlock," squeezing Sherlock's wrist as tightly as he dared, John leaned forward in his chair until his head was in Sherlock's space. Close enough to kiss, his brain supplied out of the blue, shocking him just enough to move back a fraction and shake his head. "I would have fought alongside you, died alongside you. You didn't have to do that alone, but it's not lost on me what you did for me...us."
Sherlock held John’s gaze for as long as he dared, before the intensity of it became too much to bear.
“Yes…well….Us is a bit different now, isn’t it?” Sherlock didn’t know why he said it. He didn’t want to say it, even if he had meant it. He hadn’t anticipated John moving on.
Though, to be fair, he hadn’t anticipated being gone for two years. He really shouldn’t blame John for his desire for normality, should he? This was definitely not the time to get lost in the tangled jungle of all of those feelings. Of course the coma brain couldn’t wipe out the memory of those, would it? Would have been nice if they had. He thought idly as he watched the look of guilt and hurt wash over John’s features from his remark.
"Yeah..." John said eventually in a flat tone, releasing Sherlock's wrist in favour of picking at an invisible spot on his trousers.
For a moment he allowed himself to feel the weight of the moment; the guilt brought on by events set in play by his decisions. Sherlock wouldn't be lying here recovering from near death twice in one calendar month if it hadn't been for his wife.
A wife John had spent significantly less time with than Sherlock in that same month. A wife John was willing to see rot in prison or in the ground without one iota of remorse.
He could sit here and feel guilty for Sherlock's sake. Or he could do something about it, starting with getting Sherlock well enough to leave hospital so they could work out Mary's deal together.
"Us is a bit different," he said with a tight smile. "It's us against my murderous wife. We haven't done that before."
Before Sherlock could answer, John leaned forward a second time. Only this time, instead of reaching for Sherlock's hand again, he reached for the call button attached to Sherlock's bed, and called for the nurses.