Sherlock fanfiction - Patients
I wanted to write a one off today and there was a prompt on the Make Me A Monday post on sherlockbbc that I quite liked, so I tried my hand at it :)
Title: Patients
Tv show: Sherlock
Rating: K
Characters: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson,
Genre: Fluff
Summary: See prompt below
Note: I didn't use a beta for it and I'm not a native speaker of English, so do point out any mistakes I made. Especially in the case of Britpicking :)
Word Count: 1911
Written: June 2011
Prompt by piplover
Sherlock is sick and miserable, but it's flu season or something and John is just too busy to come home at the drop of a hat. Especially since he thinks Sherlock is just exaggerating because he's bored.
So Sherlock makes an appointment to visit John as his patient.
Can be humorous, but would prefer John to be in his doctor mode and Sherlock too sick and miserable to be trouble. Bonus if it's his tonsils or an ulcer or something not simply passing.
Patients
“Thank you, doctor.”
“Any time, Mrs Dayner. Bye Lisa.”
“Say thank you to the doctor, Lisa.”
“Thank you,” a girl’s soft voice whispered.
“Bye bye.”
John closed the door behind the mother and her 6 year old daughter. Croup was a dreadful disease for young children.
He sat back down behind his desk. It was a Friday. It seemed on that day people lined up to get an appointment for a check up, right before the weekend started.
His phone vibrated in his pocket. He rolled his eyes.
Not again.
“Sherlock, I can’t come home.”
“But I need you to.”
“What you need is rest. Just remain quiet, don’t open any windows and just lay on the couch with a book. Be patient and you’ll be fine in no time.”
“John, you need to come home.”
“I’m not coming home, Sherlock. I’m far too busy and you can take care of yourself. It’s just a cold and you're just bored.”
Through the phone he could hear Sherlock sniffing and coughing. He wasn't sure whether the cold was real. Sherlock was good at faking anything and it might as well be that he was just bored from having no cases these last few days or mad with John because he has been working overtime so much lately. It looked quite convincing, he had adopted an even lower and raspier voice, but knowing Sherlock he was probably just bored and wanted John to amuse him.
He had witnessed an unbearable Sherlock this morning who would hardly let him out of the house, begging for attention. At one point John half expected Sherlock to drop down on his knees from pure misery and beg John to stay at home by holding on to his leg.
It hadn’t come to that, but Sherlock had thrown John’s keys in the toilet in an attempt to stop him from leaving the house. Luckily Mrs Hudson was home and Sherlock apparently felt too weak to go down the stairs and make hers disappear mysteriously as well.
He had called him childish, but in Sherlock’s case that was often a moot point and it seemed he didn’t even take it as an insult anymore.
“But I am ill!”
“I can see that,” John replied as he had put his shoes on. He was never really on time in the mornings, and getting ready was always a bit of a rush job. He didn’t have time to deal with a moaning Sherlock. There were other patients to see. A cold wasn't the end of the world and after all, Sherlock did like to be dramatic.
“You’re a doctor, aren’t you?” Sherlock said as he curled up on the couch, facing John on the seat across from him, wearing his blue pyjama’s and robe.
John sighed as he tied his shoelaces. “Yes, and my diagnosis is that you have a cold and a lack of attention which can be dealt with swiftly as long as you stay inside, take rest, drink lots of tea and,” he looked at him sternly for the most important part of his advice, “keep out of trouble. Then I’ll be home in no time.”
Sherlock snorted. “I’m too sick to make tea.”
“If you’re well enough to talk so much, you’re well enough to make yourself a cup of tea. Bye. And behave!” He pointed a finger at Sherlock and raised his eyebrows, as if to ask for confirmation.
“Fine,” Sherlock replied as if he were incredibly offended. “But don’t come crawling back here later tonight for some post-work shenanigans when I’m half passed out from misery.”
Shenanigans? John rolled his eyes as he went out the door. He was sure he didn't want to know what sort of experiments Sherlock conducted when he wasn't home. The smell of burnt substances had become but all too familiar to him.
“Tell Mrs Hudson to hide her keys before you toss those out as well.” John kept muttering to himself as he left 221B.
He had called him five times at work. Asking him to come home. Asking led to begging. Begging led to whining.
“But I have put the kettle on and I’m really not able to make myself a cup. You need to come home and put the kettle off!”
John frowned to himself. “You honestly can’t make your way into the kitchen, even though you apparently have just a few minutes ago?”
“No.”
“Then let the tea run cold.”
“You need to turn the kettle off.”
John sighed, without letting Sherlock hear it, into his phone. He’d have to call Mrs Hudson.
“Can’t you reach Mrs Hudson?”
“No. She left five minutes after you did.” He made it sound as if they had made a conspiracy against him.
“I’m really sorry Sherlock, but I have patients waiting for me here, I can’t just go home in the middle of the work day.”
“It’s almost lunch time.”
“I don’t have lunch time.”
“Of course you have lunch time.”
John rubbed his forehead. His head was starting to hurt. Ten patients together here were easier than one ill and bored Sherlock at home.
“I am really sorry, Sherlock,” John said again in his most sympathetic tone, “but I cannot leave. I have far too many patients to see. If you really feel so bad, you should call Mrs Hudson. I’m sure she’d be willing to come back a little early.”
“Her reasons for going out are of less importance than yours? I can phone her up, but not you?”
John grimaced. “Or your brother.”
John heard a loud snort and a bang on the other side of the line.
“Mycroft doesn’t come near sick people.”
“Of course he doesn’t,” John heard himself whimper.
“So will you come?”
“No! Sherlock, I really have to go. I’m hanging up now, bye.”
He still heard Sherlock mutter as he took away the phone from his ear. He took a deep breath. He wasn’t looking forward to coming home tonight.
His lunch break was filled with patients who needed to be squeezed in last minute. There was a stomach virus going around that specifically seemed to target young teenagers.
“Send the next one in,” John asked Dana, the GP assistant of the practice. He had just put the folder away of the 15 year old who dealt with irritable bowel syndrome. The stomach virus made her feel particularly miserable.
As he looked out of the window at an ambulance racing by, the door swept open and in came whooshing a familiar figure.
“What the… What are you doing here?”
“Seeing a doctor.”
“You can’t just see any GP you want on any given day! You have been assigned your own!''
“I assigned you to be mine,” Sherlock said as he unbuttoned his coat and dropped down in the seat across from him. He did look a bit miserable, John thought to himself, still recovering from this surprise appearance.
Suddenly he noticed Sherlock was still wearing his pyjamas under his coat. “You’re… you’re still wearing your pyjamas.”
His flatmate merely shrugged.
“If you couldn’t even turn the kettle off, how the hell did you get here?”
“Cab.”
Sherlock didn’t seem comfortable. His usual leant back pose was missing. His back was hunched forward and his legs were firmly set on the ground, hands on his knees. He looked pale, as ever, but his eyes weren’t as clear as they usually were. He seemed to stare at nothing in particular, not able to focus on anything. He seemed quieter than he had been this morning.
“Fine,” John said as he stood up and walked around his desk. He’d better examine him after all. He grabbed a thermometer and stuck it in Sherlock’s ear, while holding his head steady.
“Careful.”
John had heard that one before and he had to restrain from pushing Sherlock’s head further to the side and make him feel even more uncomfortable.
As the thermometer beeped, John let go of Sherlock’s head. Apparently he had been holding Sherlock’s curls a bit too tightly, because Sherlock gave him what looked like a proper evil eye.
“Oh,” John responded to the numbers. “38,7. That’s…”
“You thought I was making it up.”
John looked at Sherlock in slight embarrassment. The detective stared back, but it wasn’t his usual hypnotising gaze. “Well… yes. A bit. Overreacting, mostly. You’re good at that, you know? How’s your throat?”
“Like a razor.”
“How’s talking?” John sat down on the edge of the desk.
“Painful.” He glared at John as if that question was the most ridiculous ever.
John nodded. He really did look positively miserable. He wasn't faking it. He didn't even make an attempt to talk or seek John's sympathy. He seemed like a sack of potatoes, the way he was sitting in his seat. A blue sack of potatoes.
“Open your mouth.”
Sherlock obeyed and ah’ed on command.
“Bit red. Probably an infection.”
“Meaning?”
John glanced at Sherlock from under his eyebrows.
“I know what an infection is. Treatment?”
“Antibiotics. At least for a week.”
Sherlock didn’t seem happy. “I don’t want medication.”
John snorted. “You’ll have to.”
“Will it go away on its own?” Sherlock seemed to slide further down the chair.
“Perhaps. But it will take you longer to recover and as I recall our conversation this morning that wasn’t an option for you.”
Sherlock was annoyed, but then seemed to think of something.
“Will you come home with me now?”
John smiled. “I wish I could, but… I really do!” Sherlock had snorted at John’s sudden change of heart. “But I still have a long list of patients to see who are just as ill as you are and are in need of treatment too.”
“So you acknowledge that I am really ill?”
“You’re ill. I wouldn’t go as far as really ill.”
Sherlock eyes narrowed.
“I will make it as quick as possible, okay?”
Sherlock looked up, still not too happy. “Fine.”
“Shall I call you a cab? I’ll take the medication home with me tonight.”
“I can’t get it now?”
“You’ll have to run by the pharmacy first.”
“You bring it.”
John felt like a parent whose sick child needs to be taken home by the school janitor and who has to put a kid's movie on to keep it occupied while the parent's still at work. “I will.”
John phoned a cab while Sherlock seemed to slide back down his chair, pyjamas revealed, coat almost touching the floor. He let his head hang backwards, but, as he quickly seemed to come to the conclusion that that was an even more painful position, he bent forwards and put his head in his hands.
When the cab arrived only a few minutes later, John walked Sherlock outside.
“I’ll call Mrs Hudson. She will make you a cup of tea. You crawl into bed, you hear me?”
Sherlock merely nodded. John felt him leaning on him. Couldn't be easy walking with a fever like that.
“Baker Street, please,” John told the cab driver. “And could you watch him when he gets out of the cab? He’s quite ill. No funny business, Sherlock,” John told him firmly.
Sherlock shook his head, as he got in and hang back on the backseat of the cab.
John shut the door and the cab set off home. I’ll be damned, John thought to himself. Sherlock is capable of letting other people take care of him.
Title: Patients
Tv show: Sherlock
Rating: K
Characters: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson,
Genre: Fluff
Summary: See prompt below
Note: I didn't use a beta for it and I'm not a native speaker of English, so do point out any mistakes I made. Especially in the case of Britpicking :)
Word Count: 1911
Written: June 2011
Prompt by piplover
Sherlock is sick and miserable, but it's flu season or something and John is just too busy to come home at the drop of a hat. Especially since he thinks Sherlock is just exaggerating because he's bored.
So Sherlock makes an appointment to visit John as his patient.
Can be humorous, but would prefer John to be in his doctor mode and Sherlock too sick and miserable to be trouble. Bonus if it's his tonsils or an ulcer or something not simply passing.
Patients
“Thank you, doctor.”
“Any time, Mrs Dayner. Bye Lisa.”
“Say thank you to the doctor, Lisa.”
“Thank you,” a girl’s soft voice whispered.
“Bye bye.”
John closed the door behind the mother and her 6 year old daughter. Croup was a dreadful disease for young children.
He sat back down behind his desk. It was a Friday. It seemed on that day people lined up to get an appointment for a check up, right before the weekend started.
His phone vibrated in his pocket. He rolled his eyes.
Not again.
“Sherlock, I can’t come home.”
“But I need you to.”
“What you need is rest. Just remain quiet, don’t open any windows and just lay on the couch with a book. Be patient and you’ll be fine in no time.”
“John, you need to come home.”
“I’m not coming home, Sherlock. I’m far too busy and you can take care of yourself. It’s just a cold and you're just bored.”
Through the phone he could hear Sherlock sniffing and coughing. He wasn't sure whether the cold was real. Sherlock was good at faking anything and it might as well be that he was just bored from having no cases these last few days or mad with John because he has been working overtime so much lately. It looked quite convincing, he had adopted an even lower and raspier voice, but knowing Sherlock he was probably just bored and wanted John to amuse him.
He had witnessed an unbearable Sherlock this morning who would hardly let him out of the house, begging for attention. At one point John half expected Sherlock to drop down on his knees from pure misery and beg John to stay at home by holding on to his leg.
It hadn’t come to that, but Sherlock had thrown John’s keys in the toilet in an attempt to stop him from leaving the house. Luckily Mrs Hudson was home and Sherlock apparently felt too weak to go down the stairs and make hers disappear mysteriously as well.
He had called him childish, but in Sherlock’s case that was often a moot point and it seemed he didn’t even take it as an insult anymore.
“But I am ill!”
“I can see that,” John replied as he had put his shoes on. He was never really on time in the mornings, and getting ready was always a bit of a rush job. He didn’t have time to deal with a moaning Sherlock. There were other patients to see. A cold wasn't the end of the world and after all, Sherlock did like to be dramatic.
“You’re a doctor, aren’t you?” Sherlock said as he curled up on the couch, facing John on the seat across from him, wearing his blue pyjama’s and robe.
John sighed as he tied his shoelaces. “Yes, and my diagnosis is that you have a cold and a lack of attention which can be dealt with swiftly as long as you stay inside, take rest, drink lots of tea and,” he looked at him sternly for the most important part of his advice, “keep out of trouble. Then I’ll be home in no time.”
Sherlock snorted. “I’m too sick to make tea.”
“If you’re well enough to talk so much, you’re well enough to make yourself a cup of tea. Bye. And behave!” He pointed a finger at Sherlock and raised his eyebrows, as if to ask for confirmation.
“Fine,” Sherlock replied as if he were incredibly offended. “But don’t come crawling back here later tonight for some post-work shenanigans when I’m half passed out from misery.”
Shenanigans? John rolled his eyes as he went out the door. He was sure he didn't want to know what sort of experiments Sherlock conducted when he wasn't home. The smell of burnt substances had become but all too familiar to him.
“Tell Mrs Hudson to hide her keys before you toss those out as well.” John kept muttering to himself as he left 221B.
He had called him five times at work. Asking him to come home. Asking led to begging. Begging led to whining.
“But I have put the kettle on and I’m really not able to make myself a cup. You need to come home and put the kettle off!”
John frowned to himself. “You honestly can’t make your way into the kitchen, even though you apparently have just a few minutes ago?”
“No.”
“Then let the tea run cold.”
“You need to turn the kettle off.”
John sighed, without letting Sherlock hear it, into his phone. He’d have to call Mrs Hudson.
“Can’t you reach Mrs Hudson?”
“No. She left five minutes after you did.” He made it sound as if they had made a conspiracy against him.
“I’m really sorry Sherlock, but I have patients waiting for me here, I can’t just go home in the middle of the work day.”
“It’s almost lunch time.”
“I don’t have lunch time.”
“Of course you have lunch time.”
John rubbed his forehead. His head was starting to hurt. Ten patients together here were easier than one ill and bored Sherlock at home.
“I am really sorry, Sherlock,” John said again in his most sympathetic tone, “but I cannot leave. I have far too many patients to see. If you really feel so bad, you should call Mrs Hudson. I’m sure she’d be willing to come back a little early.”
“Her reasons for going out are of less importance than yours? I can phone her up, but not you?”
John grimaced. “Or your brother.”
John heard a loud snort and a bang on the other side of the line.
“Mycroft doesn’t come near sick people.”
“Of course he doesn’t,” John heard himself whimper.
“So will you come?”
“No! Sherlock, I really have to go. I’m hanging up now, bye.”
He still heard Sherlock mutter as he took away the phone from his ear. He took a deep breath. He wasn’t looking forward to coming home tonight.
His lunch break was filled with patients who needed to be squeezed in last minute. There was a stomach virus going around that specifically seemed to target young teenagers.
“Send the next one in,” John asked Dana, the GP assistant of the practice. He had just put the folder away of the 15 year old who dealt with irritable bowel syndrome. The stomach virus made her feel particularly miserable.
As he looked out of the window at an ambulance racing by, the door swept open and in came whooshing a familiar figure.
“What the… What are you doing here?”
“Seeing a doctor.”
“You can’t just see any GP you want on any given day! You have been assigned your own!''
“I assigned you to be mine,” Sherlock said as he unbuttoned his coat and dropped down in the seat across from him. He did look a bit miserable, John thought to himself, still recovering from this surprise appearance.
Suddenly he noticed Sherlock was still wearing his pyjamas under his coat. “You’re… you’re still wearing your pyjamas.”
His flatmate merely shrugged.
“If you couldn’t even turn the kettle off, how the hell did you get here?”
“Cab.”
Sherlock didn’t seem comfortable. His usual leant back pose was missing. His back was hunched forward and his legs were firmly set on the ground, hands on his knees. He looked pale, as ever, but his eyes weren’t as clear as they usually were. He seemed to stare at nothing in particular, not able to focus on anything. He seemed quieter than he had been this morning.
“Fine,” John said as he stood up and walked around his desk. He’d better examine him after all. He grabbed a thermometer and stuck it in Sherlock’s ear, while holding his head steady.
“Careful.”
John had heard that one before and he had to restrain from pushing Sherlock’s head further to the side and make him feel even more uncomfortable.
As the thermometer beeped, John let go of Sherlock’s head. Apparently he had been holding Sherlock’s curls a bit too tightly, because Sherlock gave him what looked like a proper evil eye.
“Oh,” John responded to the numbers. “38,7. That’s…”
“You thought I was making it up.”
John looked at Sherlock in slight embarrassment. The detective stared back, but it wasn’t his usual hypnotising gaze. “Well… yes. A bit. Overreacting, mostly. You’re good at that, you know? How’s your throat?”
“Like a razor.”
“How’s talking?” John sat down on the edge of the desk.
“Painful.” He glared at John as if that question was the most ridiculous ever.
John nodded. He really did look positively miserable. He wasn't faking it. He didn't even make an attempt to talk or seek John's sympathy. He seemed like a sack of potatoes, the way he was sitting in his seat. A blue sack of potatoes.
“Open your mouth.”
Sherlock obeyed and ah’ed on command.
“Bit red. Probably an infection.”
“Meaning?”
John glanced at Sherlock from under his eyebrows.
“I know what an infection is. Treatment?”
“Antibiotics. At least for a week.”
Sherlock didn’t seem happy. “I don’t want medication.”
John snorted. “You’ll have to.”
“Will it go away on its own?” Sherlock seemed to slide further down the chair.
“Perhaps. But it will take you longer to recover and as I recall our conversation this morning that wasn’t an option for you.”
Sherlock was annoyed, but then seemed to think of something.
“Will you come home with me now?”
John smiled. “I wish I could, but… I really do!” Sherlock had snorted at John’s sudden change of heart. “But I still have a long list of patients to see who are just as ill as you are and are in need of treatment too.”
“So you acknowledge that I am really ill?”
“You’re ill. I wouldn’t go as far as really ill.”
Sherlock eyes narrowed.
“I will make it as quick as possible, okay?”
Sherlock looked up, still not too happy. “Fine.”
“Shall I call you a cab? I’ll take the medication home with me tonight.”
“I can’t get it now?”
“You’ll have to run by the pharmacy first.”
“You bring it.”
John felt like a parent whose sick child needs to be taken home by the school janitor and who has to put a kid's movie on to keep it occupied while the parent's still at work. “I will.”
John phoned a cab while Sherlock seemed to slide back down his chair, pyjamas revealed, coat almost touching the floor. He let his head hang backwards, but, as he quickly seemed to come to the conclusion that that was an even more painful position, he bent forwards and put his head in his hands.
When the cab arrived only a few minutes later, John walked Sherlock outside.
“I’ll call Mrs Hudson. She will make you a cup of tea. You crawl into bed, you hear me?”
Sherlock merely nodded. John felt him leaning on him. Couldn't be easy walking with a fever like that.
“Baker Street, please,” John told the cab driver. “And could you watch him when he gets out of the cab? He’s quite ill. No funny business, Sherlock,” John told him firmly.
Sherlock shook his head, as he got in and hang back on the backseat of the cab.
John shut the door and the cab set off home. I’ll be damned, John thought to himself. Sherlock is capable of letting other people take care of him.