Chapter Text
John doesn't catch a single glimpse of Sherlock for two days, because the outpatient clinic the surgeon mans on Tuesdays is in another building and there's a neurosurgical conference taking place in a neighbouring hospital that requires Holmes' presence. John was supposed to attend as well, but they still have several anaesthetists on leave so he is forced to stay on the OR floor.
On Thursday morning Lorna, a nurse from the outpatient clinic hurries after him as he's walking from the locker lounge to a staff meeting. "John?"
John slows his steps but doesn't stop since he's already running late. Lorna matches his pace towards the administration building. "I hate to ask, but..." she starts, sounding hopeful.
John stops and sips the coffee he's holding. "Shoot." He has always liked Lorna. She understands anaesthesia's point of view, has a lot of experience, is very good with patients of all ages and does her work with confidence.
"It's Dr Holmes' Friday case. I know he's doing a preop visit today, and I was hoping you could sneak in and make sure it goes okay," Lorna suggests.
"I'm not his babysitter," John says, "if there's a problem you should take it up with Lestrade. Besides, as far as I know there haven't been all that many complaints from patients lately," John says. He has no idea if this is the case but he doesn't like to talk down colleagues. On the other hand, he usually doesn't obfuscate to help their reputations either.
"John, I know, I know, but it's just that I really don't want this family to go through anything worse than they have to." Lorna is practically begging.
John exhales, looking apologetic.
Lorna bites her lip. She's clearly serious and not about to drop the case anytime soon. "The patient's name is Noah. He's five, John. He's got a medulloblastoma. Mom's friends with my neighbour. They're in shock. I'm not having Holmes trample all over these people," she says determinedly.
John closes his eyes. Lorna's right. John digs out the week's OR schedule from his pocket. One of the senior registrars has been assigned to the case, and with people off sick, in all likelyhood John will be the one to supervise anyway. "Have you any idea what time Holmes is headed to the paeds ward?" John asks.
Lorna's eyes light up. "After two, I think, since that's when their staff meeting ends. John, I'll owe you one. Or two. Or a hundred."
John smiles. "Don't worry about it."
At two in the afternoon, John lingers outside the patient room assigned to Noah Gilliam, age five and a half years.
Holmes strides down the corridor at five past two. His steps come to a screetching halt when he spots John. His gaze is cold. "What the hell are you doing here?" Sherlock demands.
"I'm on the case tomorrow," John answers, trying to sound like what he's said is somehow self-evident.
"Anaesthesia usually does separate preop visits." Holmes reminds him in a suspicious tone. "You're here to spy on me." It's not a question, it's an accusation.
"The preop nurse thought that I should join you," John explains.
"Do you always do the nurses' bidding? Quite unbecoming of a physician to allow oneself to be bullied like that."
"They did assign me as your counselor for these sorts of things," John reminds him.
Sherlock looks like he would prefer the sun to go supernova than to continue such a relationship. He says nothing further to John. Instead he straightens his jacket, opens the door and walks in, John trailing behind him.
At least Sherlock doesn't try to slam the door in his face.
What they've entered is a single room with an adjustable hospital bed suitable for a child less than ten years old. On the bed sits a boy who seems to be the right age to be their patient. He looks pale as he scrutinizes a page in the book he's holding.
Next to the bed, a thirtysomething blond woman is cradling a baby. In the corner, a man whose facial features much resemble those of the little boy's, is talking on the phone. He quickly ends the call when he notices the doctors enter.
Holmes ignores the parents altogether, grabs a chair and plonks it next to the bed.
The little boy looks up, studying Holmes' face. He doesn't look alarmed. He must be getting used to strange people appearing in this room at all hours already.
"Hello Noah," Holmes says, sounding not cold but not exactly very empathetic either.
"Hi," Noah answers shyly.
"I'm Doctor Holmes. I'm a surgeon. Do you know what that means?"
Noah frowns and then nods. "You cut people open," he replies. The mother looks alarmed but John tries to reassure her with a sympathetic glance. It seems to work for now.
"Do you know why?" Holmes asks the boy.
Noah fingers the book he had been holding, now lying next to him on the bed where he had dropped it. "You try to make people better."
Holmes smiles slightly."Very good."
He glances at the book Noah is now holding. "'The Big Book of Brains'", Sherlock reads from the cover. It's a children's book John has seen before - geared towards school-aged children, it explains all sorts of things about how the brain works and what can go wrong with it.
"You can read?" Sherlock asks, not exactly sounding surprised. Noah nods proudly.
"Have mummy and daddy explained why you're in this hospital?" Sherlock then inquires.
John exchanges a worried glance with the father, who takes a step closer. "Dr Holmes, we haven't really, we thought he'd be scared, maybe we should talk without Noah first---"
Holmes silences him with a single glance and turns back towards Noah.
"The other doctor said that there's a tumour in my head. They thought I wasn't listening."
The mother passes the infant to the father and turns away, tears falling down her face. John passes her a tissue, watching Sherlock carefully.
"Do you know what a tumour is?" Sherlock asks.
"It's something bad. My fish had a tumour. It died," Noah says, lower lip quivering.
"Well, your fish didn't have a good surgeon now did it?" Sherlock asks and Noah stares at him.
"Are you a good surgeon?" Noah asks, fingers curling into the duvet he's sitting on.
"Yes, I am."
"Can you take away the tumour?"
"I will try my best to do just that."
"Do you have to cut my head open for that?"
The fathers tries to open his mouth but John lifts his hand to stop him.
Sherlock looks apologetic. "It's a bit like if you have a clock that no longer ticks, it needs to be opened to repair it."
Noah nods. "Are you gonna do it with a saw?" he asks, sounding very nervous.
Sherlock shakes his head. "No. We have better tools for that."
"Daddy fixes computers. He says that the tools you can buy in the supermarket are not small enough or the right shape for computers."
"Well that's how it works with the brain as well. We have special brain tools."
Sherlock turns in his seat point at John. "This is Dr Watson. He will look after you the whole time when I work. He'll make sure you're asleep and don't feel a thing while I take out the tumour. Does that sound okay?"
Noah nods enthusiastically.
Tears are still falling down Mrs Gilliam's cheek but she's smiling now. She steps closer and squeezes her fingers around Noah's shoulder.
Holmes momentarily leans his palms on his knees and then stands up and walks out without a further word.
John can't help but chuckle. Noah has now picked up the TV remote and is flicking through channels. Mr and Mrs Gilliam look a bit shellshocked.
"If you have any questions I'll be happy to answer," John offers.
"No, it's---- fine," Mr Gilliam says, sounding surprised at his own words. He looks at his son, who looks as carefree as a five-yeard old with brain cancer could possible ever be and then smiles at John. "It's going to be fine."
After verifying some details of Noah's medical history with his parents, John excuses himself and starts walking down the skybridge towards the adjoining building.
He spots Sherlock standing on a balcony off the skybridge, smoking. He has barricaded the door open with his shoe and is standing at the edge of the balcony with the other shoe in his left leg and just and a sock in his right one.
As far as John is aware these balconies are kept locked. Sherlock must've picked the lock. Unsurprising.
"Those things'll kill you," John remarks and joins Sherlock on the balcony.
"Mm," Sherlock says, not turning to look at him. He seems to be observing the traffic meandering past.
"You were brilliant," John says breathlessly. "And lovely."
Sherlock turns and stares at him for a moment, expression hard to interpret before grinding the butt of the cigarette under his heel. "I remember what it was like to be little, to understand more than the adults ever thought, but get constantly ignored," he says bitterly.
"I'm sorry," John says, "for a lot of things."
Sherlock regards him with a regretful look. "You shouldn't concern yourself with such things."
John bites his lip. "I shouldn't care? You care, judging by what happened two days ago."
Sherlock's scrutinizing gaze seems to scan John's face. "What you said, the term you used was... Accurate but I find it hard to embrace that... notion."
John stops leaning onto the railing and straightens his spine, not shying from Sherlock's piercing gaze. "Forget what I said," he tells Sherlock, "what I should've said is that you should stop putting yourself down. I think you're absolutely amazing and bloody gorgeous and we're going to fix that little boy. Because you can do that. And I get to help. The rest of it doesn't matter. Anderson and the rest of the clowns can go fuck themselves."
Sherlock is staring at him with a confounded expression.
John smiles and delivers a chaste but sincere, lingering kiss on Sherlock's cheek somewhere on the soft bit just in front of the ear. Sherlock closes his eyes momentarily.
John steps back, admiring a repeat of the adorable blush he has witnessed once before. John makes a decision to try and produce a repeat of it every chance he gets, although Sherlock will likely murder him with his bare hands if anyone else ever witnesses such a spectacle.
Sherlock blinks. Twice. "I don't know how to respond."
"Well, you could ask me again to join you for a pint," John suggests.
Over the next weeks, they devise a system. John accompanies Sherlock to all of his preoperative visits and Sherlock uses John's reactions to gauge when to shut up. When things go tits-up like they still often do, John proverbially mops up the mess.
They meet up for lunches and discuss some basic things about listening, showing empathy and answering questions honestly but encouragingly. Sherlock is suspicious, but eager to learn when it comes to John's advice, and some of it begins to actually rub off. His conduct, when he's trying to be nice, still seems a bit theatrical, as though scripted, but it's still a major improvement to leaving patients and their loved ones in tears.
In the OR, they slowly develop into a formidable team. John begins to enjoy the days he's assigned to Sherlock's cases. Sherlock still insist on no conversation and playing his own music when he's wielding the scalpel, but John convinces him to introduce some well-known post-Baroque compositions into his collection, and a couple months later the whole OR team is humming along to a familiar passage from Wagner's Lohengrin.
After four weeks, Sherlock's nose is still slightly swollen. An official complaint about Philip Anderson is filed by John after dragging Sherlock to see one of the hospital's otorhinolaryngologists. The fact that only one participant in the argument has a hairline fracture in their nose after all tips the scales in Sherlock's favour when the event is evaluated by their superiors. Anderson receives a warning - his second ever, and seems to decide to lay low. For how long, no one knows.
It's a Monday in March when Sherlock finally accepts an invitation from John to join him and some other doctors for a cafeteria lunch. Before he has always declined with some transparently flimsy excuse. Based on everything John has now learned about the man, he has deduced that the reason has probably been his worries about what others think of him, and his difficulties in reading other people's reactions.
During the meal, Sherlock brings up John's still dismal housing situation and tells him that months after the Council hearing, Dr Baxter had contacted him, having decided that the most important thing was that the mystery of her wife's death had been resolved, and that a young lad like Sherlock deserved another chance. The man had then offered Sherlock one of the apartments he owns as a side business as a rental for a nominal fee. A collegial peace offering.
"It would be a terrible waste, all that space just for myself. I hardly take up any. Besides, it would be convenient to share some of the chores."
John twiddles a forkful of roast beef in his fingers. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying we ought to be flatmates." After this announcement, Sherlock gazes around the table nervously. No one looks alarmed, judgmental or mocking, so Sherlock focuses on attacking his mashed potatoes with his cutlery.
"I think--" John says with a wry expression, "I'd very much like that."
"Excellent. You could drive us to work," Holmes then ventures to suggests, beaming.
"Can't you drive yourself? We don't always have the same shift schedule, you know."
"I don't have a driver's licence. Never learned to drive. My parents always had a chauffeur and after I turned eighteen and moved to London, driving never seemed all that convenient."
"Well, I don't have a car so the Tube it is," John says.
"I have one," Sherlock says, digs out his phone, taps some keys and a picture of a car appears. A very nice car. A very, very, very nice car.
Dr Marsh, a cardiologist with a penchant for golf and such cars, leans into peer at the phone screen. He whistles. "Is that a BMW M5?"
Sherlock nods.
"Fucking hell," Marsh says in a very appreciative tone.
John is astonished. "You bought a car when you can't even drive?"
"My fellow surgeons at The National were clearly of the disposition that such a car was a part of proper lifestyle for a succesful surgeon."
John leans his head on his fingers. "You're a brilliant idiot."
"That's an oxymoron, John." Sherlock pockets his phone.
"That is some sort of a moron alright," John says, smiling.
"If you're done berating me for reasons unknown, I would like a confirmation that the housing issue is settled." He looks expectant, biting his lip in a nervous manner.
John takes a moment, forking peas into his mouth.
The past few months have been interesting to say the least. He has broken into a hospital, kissed a man, seen some of the most exhilarating and amazing surgical work in his career and had fun. So much fun. He no longer fears going home to his bleak apartment, because he knows that he will see Sherlock the next day at work. The only thing he still hates are weekends, when there's nothing exciting happening.
Living with Sherlock could fix that, couldn't it?
After the chaste peck on the cheek on the balcony they have been sort of circling one another, both perhaps waiting for the other to make a further move. The flutter in John's stomach that he had at first tried to ignore, but which like a very persistent itch kept coming back and distracting him, is getting worse. It's currently making his gaze wander to certain physical attributes of the neurosurgeon currently seated across the table.
The luminous, interesting, ridiculous, insecure, mysterious, trusting, vile, barking mad, gorgeous Sherlock.
The car might also be a nice perk.
"Yes," John says. "Yes, to all of it."
"There's just one problem," Sherlock replies, looking deadpan.
John raises his brows.
"There's.... Only one bedroom," Sherlock says quietly, glancing around. No one seems to be listening.
John draws in a breath. He realizes that when Sherlock had announced that John was attracted to him, John had never asked whether the opposite was true as well. That issue seems to be settled now, judging by the unmistakable glint in Sherlock's eye and the warm palm that has now snaked its way onto John's knee underneath the table.
"I think we could make it work," John says, smiling.
- The End -