Broken & Fixed
CfC is coming along, I promise. But if you all wanted to wish for a very borning school day, that wouldn't go amiss...
Fill for this prompt that I am using to fill 71)Broken on my sherlock100 table.
Paring: John/Lestrade
Rating: PG
Warnings: Lestrade Whump
Wordcount: 2,263
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Sherlock was annoyed. Very, very annoyed. John had left for the shopping ages ago and still wasn’t back. Sherlock was bored, and he needed milk to complete his experiment. Also, although Sherlock would never admit it, not even under torture, boredom was slightly less boring with his blogger around.
He almost ignored the text from Mycroft. He would have ignored the text, but the world was so incredibly dull.
University College Hospital.
GL in CCU. Irate JW confined to waiting room.
Come at once.
-MH
For once in his life, Sherlock did as his brother suggested without complaint or argument.
Sherlock hears John long before he sees him. “He’s my boyfriend. And don’t you feed me any of that bullshite. I’m a bloody doctor, now someone tell me what the hell is going on.”
On glance was all it took for Sherlock to assess the situation. John Watson, to the untrained observer, did look irate. To his best friend, John looked scared witless. John was an individual of courage and steel, loyal to a fault and protective to the end, even to his own detriment. One of the people he cared about had been hurt. More importantly, he had been hurt when John hadn’t been able to help him. Even worse, John could help him now, and he wasn’t. Dr. Watson would fight through hell and high water to reach DI Lestrade at the moment. One incompetent nurse wasn’t going to be a problem.
John, on the other hand, would be. A somewhat short, but very deadly problem dressed in a deceptively non-threatening wooly jumper.
Sherlock closed the distance between him and John with a few long strides, placing a hand on John’s shoulder. To most, it seemed reassuring. And Sherlock had meant it as such, but if could also be construed as restraining, so be it.
“John,” he murmured quietly.
“They won’t tell me anything. They keep stonewalling me because I’m not his emergency contact. The only reason I know is because Sally called me when they were on route. And if this upstart little twat of a nurse doesn’t get out of my way in the next four seconds…”
Sherlock physically dragged John to the waiting room before he committed any crimes that his boyfriend would later have to incarcerate him for.
“I just feel so bloody useless,” John said, burying his head in his hands after Sherlock had forced him into a chair.
As he placed a hand awkwardly on John’s back, Sherlock knew exactly how he felt.
-------------------------
“Why aren't you his emergency contact?” Sherlock asked suddenly after over half an hour of silence.
John pulled himself out of his thoughts regarding just how difficult it would be to wrangle the needed names out of Greg or Sally to answer the consulting detective’s question.
“It hasn’t quite been two months, Sherlock. Not very long, as relationships go.”
“You and Lestrade are both very serious men. You’d known each other and been close for several months before you made the decision to become involved. You’re both ridiculously responsible; therefore I doubt you would have elected to cease using protection over three weeks ago if you weren’t in it for, as they say, ‘the long haul’. Lestrade listing you as his emergency contact seems a trivial step in comparison.”
John should have been used to it at this point. He really should have - but he wasn’t. “How did you…never mind. No, really. I’m sure I don’t want to know.”
There was silence again. Sherlock was strangely quite and remarkably still. John was surprised he wasn’t bouncing off the walls. John, on the other hand, paced restlessly back and forth. His focus was centered on two ideas at the moment.
One was to take care of Greg. The thing John had learned about Greg, over the course of their relationship was that he worked hard. He worked too hard. The DI believed in what he did, he believed in justice, and if he had to work himself to the bone for people to get it, then that was what he was going to do. John had the sneaking suspicion that he would be almost as bad as Sherlock in terms of post-injury recovery and would need close supervision.
The other was to find the punks responsible for his partner’s current state and demonstrate his marksmanship skills and his knowledge of human anatomy and the nervous system.
John was so absorbed in his own head that he didn’t notice Sherlock had moved until he heard his baritone from the other end of the room. He couldn’t make out the words, but the tone was smooth and entreating. John snorted. Sherlock was clearly slipping into one of his personas in the hopes of shamming the nurse into letting them through. John wished him the best of luck.
“New shift,” Sherlock told him as they made there way to the DI’s room. “If you’re charms failed, John, I didn’t think it was worth the efforts of a self-professed sociopath. The only advantage I have is my looks, and as she was lesbian, that wasn’t going to win me any favors.”
John laughed.
----------------------------------
The first thing Greg Lestrade heard when he woke in the hospital that afternoon was the sound of familiar bickering.
“He’s a member of Scotland Yard. All he’d have to do is flash his warrant card and he’d be at your bedside!”
“And all you’d have to do is flash his warrant card and you’d be at my bedside. One call to your brother would also achieve the same result.”
“Has he been nicking my warrant cards again?” Greg croaked out, blinking his eyes open slowly.
John was sitting in a chair pulled close to the right side of the bed. His hair was a mess, his clothes were rumpled, his eyes had dark circles underneath, and his face was pinched with worry even as he smiled down at the bleary-eyed detective.
Sherlock, on the other hand, looked, as always, as if he’d walked off the pages of an upscale magazine. He’d somehow managed to wedge his feet onto his own chair, had his arms wrapped around them, and his head resting on his knees. Lestrade recognized the ridiculous expression on his face from the times he’d turned Sherlock away from a crime scene and quickly concluded he was sulking.
“Yes,” Sherlock replied petulantly from his corner. “You keep using my nicotine patches, drinking the last of the tea, and using all the hot water. I need the water to be hot, from the tap hot, to properly conduct my current experiment.”
John wrapped his hands carefully around Greg’s right one (the one that wasn’t in a cast) and squeezed it gently before bringing it to his lips for a tender kiss. “How’re you doing?”
Greg cracked a weak smile, trying not to be bothered by the swelling around his eye. “You tell me, Doc.”
John’s smile vanished. “Split lip, black eye, bruised ribs, broken wrist, and a dislocated shoulder. Not to mention the stab would that just missed your left iliac artery. You could have died, bled out on the concrete.”
John took a deep shuddering breath as he started up into the fluorescents, blinking rapidly.
“You should see the other blokes,” Greg offered pertinently, trying to cheer John up.
“He intends to,” Sherlock remarked from behind his phone, seemingly absorbed with whatever was on the screen.
Greg’s eye’s snapped to John. Gone were the tears and the worry, replaced by a perfectly blank mask that revealed nothing. On John’s normally emotive face, it spoke volumes more than whatever he was hiding underneath it.
“No,” Gregory ordered firmly, staring him down.
John didn’t even blink.
“John…” Greg trailed off, realizing he didn’t have enough information to be suitably threatening.
“Hamish,” Sherlock offered helpfully without looking away from his mobile.
“Thank you. John Hamish Watson, if you even…wait. Hamish? Seriously?” Greg asked, laughing despite his ribs’ protests.
“It was my mother’s maiden name,” John muttered, stony exterior starting to slip.
“Hamish, though? Really?”
“I believe you had a point you were trying to make?” John asked wryly.
“Right. John Hamish Watson, if you even think about leaving me here to go after those hoodlums, I will discharge myself from this hospital against medical advice and come arrest you personally. Are we clear?”
John was quiet for a long time. He studied Greg’s face, and then the wall, his brow furrowed in thought. About three minutes later he nodded reluctantly.
“No court would convict him,” Sherlock inserted suddenly. “That is, if anyone could find the bodies,” he amended.
“The peanut gallery should be quiet now, if he ever wants to see one of my crime scenes again,” Lestrade said firmly, glaring at Sherlock. “Besides, I’m going to need some looking after, as much as I loathe to admit it. Who would take care of me if my doctor was out administering vigilante justice?”
John smiled. “Well, that won’t be a problem now, will it?”
Sherlock looked at Lestrade with mounting horror and sympathy in his eyes. “You poor sod.”
-------------------------------
When Sherlock had warned him in the hospital, Greg had thought he'd simply been overreacting. He'd seen Sherlock after an injury and knew the man was a nightmare. What he hadn't know was how intimidating and overbearing John could be when he was in doctor mode.
A week into his house arrest, Greg was starting to wish he had let John go after the gang. At least that way he might have had a small break from John's smothering.
When Lestrade called Sherlock to help spring him, Sherlock laughed.
"I did warn you," he said once he had finished chuckling.
"No, really. I don't think I can take much more of this. He's pushing fluids and food in my face every four seconds, my room is starting to feel like a prison, he won't let me do anything for myself. You've got to help me!"
"I would have to be insane to cross him when he's like this. And you did ask for it."
"Anything Sherlock. No, really, anything."
"Have fun, Lestrade, and get well soon."
John banged on the door to bathroom. "Greg? You alright in there?"
"Fine!" he called back.
Something in his tone must have given him away, because John was inside in a matter of seconds. His look of concern hardened as his brow furrowed in suspicion as he saw the DI sitting on a still lidded toilet holding his mobile. His eyebrow raised and his lips pressed together in a thin line. Greg waited for the forthcoming outburst, but it didn't come. John just stared him down. Stoic and silent. They stayed like that for several minutes before Gregory broke down.
"Look, I really appreciate that you're taking care of me. I love that you want to stay with me until I get well, but you are suffocating me."
John stayed stiff and frozen for a several seconds before his shoulders relaxed and he gave Greg an embarrassed grin. "Too much?"
"A bit, yeah."
"Sorry. When I couldn't get in to see you at the hospital, I panicked. And then when I found out what could have happened...Christ, Greg, you were about three centimeters away from bleeding to death..."
Greg took a long look at John, finally seeing the dark circles under his bloodshot eyes, the three day old clothes and other signs of worry.
"You need to come over here. Right now," Greg demanded.
"Why?"
"Because I want to kiss you senseless, but my ribs don't quite feel up to moving at the moment."
John complied. It didn’t last nearly as long as Greg would have liked, but his ribs and shoulder made having a long, proper snog difficult, and neither of them had had a chance to brush their teeth or shave, but it was still John. The kiss was tender and sweet and perfect because it wasn’t. It was perfect because it felt like a routine, like something they could do every morning for a very, very long time.
They spend the rest of the day on the couch, curled up together under the blanket, catching up on all the Doctor Who they missed because of various cases and such.
“So, what were you and Sherlock arguing about when I was coming round?” Greg asked between episodes.
“I’ve actually been meaning to talk to you about that,” John said staring straight ahead. “Waiting at the hospital, it got me thinking, and I was wondering…how would you feel about me making you my emergency contact?”
John’s voice may have sounded calm, but Greg could tell by his ramrod straight back and tense jaw that he was anything but. For someone who lived with the most observant man in the world, John could be incredibly dense at times.
“Of course, you daft idiot. I don’t care how much of a strop it puts Sherlock in. You’ll be mine, yeah?”
“You really want to deal with this every time?”
“I’m going to anyway. Might as well speed the process along and save the nurses a giant headache.”
John gave Greg a sheepish smile before settling into the couch and wrapping an arm around him. He pressed a tender kiss to Greg’s forehead and ran his fingers absentmindedly through his gray hair while watching the opening for the next episode.
Lestrade couldn’t help but think, as he nestled back into the covers and up against John’s shoulder, that maybe being stuck at home for another two weeks won’t be so bad after all.
Fill for this prompt that I am using to fill 71)Broken on my sherlock100 table.
Paring: John/Lestrade
Rating: PG
Warnings: Lestrade Whump
Wordcount: 2,263
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Sherlock was annoyed. Very, very annoyed. John had left for the shopping ages ago and still wasn’t back. Sherlock was bored, and he needed milk to complete his experiment. Also, although Sherlock would never admit it, not even under torture, boredom was slightly less boring with his blogger around.
He almost ignored the text from Mycroft. He would have ignored the text, but the world was so incredibly dull.
University College Hospital.
GL in CCU. Irate JW confined to waiting room.
Come at once.
-MH
For once in his life, Sherlock did as his brother suggested without complaint or argument.
Sherlock hears John long before he sees him. “He’s my boyfriend. And don’t you feed me any of that bullshite. I’m a bloody doctor, now someone tell me what the hell is going on.”
On glance was all it took for Sherlock to assess the situation. John Watson, to the untrained observer, did look irate. To his best friend, John looked scared witless. John was an individual of courage and steel, loyal to a fault and protective to the end, even to his own detriment. One of the people he cared about had been hurt. More importantly, he had been hurt when John hadn’t been able to help him. Even worse, John could help him now, and he wasn’t. Dr. Watson would fight through hell and high water to reach DI Lestrade at the moment. One incompetent nurse wasn’t going to be a problem.
John, on the other hand, would be. A somewhat short, but very deadly problem dressed in a deceptively non-threatening wooly jumper.
Sherlock closed the distance between him and John with a few long strides, placing a hand on John’s shoulder. To most, it seemed reassuring. And Sherlock had meant it as such, but if could also be construed as restraining, so be it.
“John,” he murmured quietly.
“They won’t tell me anything. They keep stonewalling me because I’m not his emergency contact. The only reason I know is because Sally called me when they were on route. And if this upstart little twat of a nurse doesn’t get out of my way in the next four seconds…”
Sherlock physically dragged John to the waiting room before he committed any crimes that his boyfriend would later have to incarcerate him for.
“I just feel so bloody useless,” John said, burying his head in his hands after Sherlock had forced him into a chair.
As he placed a hand awkwardly on John’s back, Sherlock knew exactly how he felt.
-------------------------
“Why aren't you his emergency contact?” Sherlock asked suddenly after over half an hour of silence.
John pulled himself out of his thoughts regarding just how difficult it would be to wrangle the needed names out of Greg or Sally to answer the consulting detective’s question.
“It hasn’t quite been two months, Sherlock. Not very long, as relationships go.”
“You and Lestrade are both very serious men. You’d known each other and been close for several months before you made the decision to become involved. You’re both ridiculously responsible; therefore I doubt you would have elected to cease using protection over three weeks ago if you weren’t in it for, as they say, ‘the long haul’. Lestrade listing you as his emergency contact seems a trivial step in comparison.”
John should have been used to it at this point. He really should have - but he wasn’t. “How did you…never mind. No, really. I’m sure I don’t want to know.”
There was silence again. Sherlock was strangely quite and remarkably still. John was surprised he wasn’t bouncing off the walls. John, on the other hand, paced restlessly back and forth. His focus was centered on two ideas at the moment.
One was to take care of Greg. The thing John had learned about Greg, over the course of their relationship was that he worked hard. He worked too hard. The DI believed in what he did, he believed in justice, and if he had to work himself to the bone for people to get it, then that was what he was going to do. John had the sneaking suspicion that he would be almost as bad as Sherlock in terms of post-injury recovery and would need close supervision.
The other was to find the punks responsible for his partner’s current state and demonstrate his marksmanship skills and his knowledge of human anatomy and the nervous system.
John was so absorbed in his own head that he didn’t notice Sherlock had moved until he heard his baritone from the other end of the room. He couldn’t make out the words, but the tone was smooth and entreating. John snorted. Sherlock was clearly slipping into one of his personas in the hopes of shamming the nurse into letting them through. John wished him the best of luck.
“New shift,” Sherlock told him as they made there way to the DI’s room. “If you’re charms failed, John, I didn’t think it was worth the efforts of a self-professed sociopath. The only advantage I have is my looks, and as she was lesbian, that wasn’t going to win me any favors.”
John laughed.
----------------------------------
The first thing Greg Lestrade heard when he woke in the hospital that afternoon was the sound of familiar bickering.
“He’s a member of Scotland Yard. All he’d have to do is flash his warrant card and he’d be at your bedside!”
“And all you’d have to do is flash his warrant card and you’d be at my bedside. One call to your brother would also achieve the same result.”
“Has he been nicking my warrant cards again?” Greg croaked out, blinking his eyes open slowly.
John was sitting in a chair pulled close to the right side of the bed. His hair was a mess, his clothes were rumpled, his eyes had dark circles underneath, and his face was pinched with worry even as he smiled down at the bleary-eyed detective.
Sherlock, on the other hand, looked, as always, as if he’d walked off the pages of an upscale magazine. He’d somehow managed to wedge his feet onto his own chair, had his arms wrapped around them, and his head resting on his knees. Lestrade recognized the ridiculous expression on his face from the times he’d turned Sherlock away from a crime scene and quickly concluded he was sulking.
“Yes,” Sherlock replied petulantly from his corner. “You keep using my nicotine patches, drinking the last of the tea, and using all the hot water. I need the water to be hot, from the tap hot, to properly conduct my current experiment.”
John wrapped his hands carefully around Greg’s right one (the one that wasn’t in a cast) and squeezed it gently before bringing it to his lips for a tender kiss. “How’re you doing?”
Greg cracked a weak smile, trying not to be bothered by the swelling around his eye. “You tell me, Doc.”
John’s smile vanished. “Split lip, black eye, bruised ribs, broken wrist, and a dislocated shoulder. Not to mention the stab would that just missed your left iliac artery. You could have died, bled out on the concrete.”
John took a deep shuddering breath as he started up into the fluorescents, blinking rapidly.
“You should see the other blokes,” Greg offered pertinently, trying to cheer John up.
“He intends to,” Sherlock remarked from behind his phone, seemingly absorbed with whatever was on the screen.
Greg’s eye’s snapped to John. Gone were the tears and the worry, replaced by a perfectly blank mask that revealed nothing. On John’s normally emotive face, it spoke volumes more than whatever he was hiding underneath it.
“No,” Gregory ordered firmly, staring him down.
John didn’t even blink.
“John…” Greg trailed off, realizing he didn’t have enough information to be suitably threatening.
“Hamish,” Sherlock offered helpfully without looking away from his mobile.
“Thank you. John Hamish Watson, if you even…wait. Hamish? Seriously?” Greg asked, laughing despite his ribs’ protests.
“It was my mother’s maiden name,” John muttered, stony exterior starting to slip.
“Hamish, though? Really?”
“I believe you had a point you were trying to make?” John asked wryly.
“Right. John Hamish Watson, if you even think about leaving me here to go after those hoodlums, I will discharge myself from this hospital against medical advice and come arrest you personally. Are we clear?”
John was quiet for a long time. He studied Greg’s face, and then the wall, his brow furrowed in thought. About three minutes later he nodded reluctantly.
“No court would convict him,” Sherlock inserted suddenly. “That is, if anyone could find the bodies,” he amended.
“The peanut gallery should be quiet now, if he ever wants to see one of my crime scenes again,” Lestrade said firmly, glaring at Sherlock. “Besides, I’m going to need some looking after, as much as I loathe to admit it. Who would take care of me if my doctor was out administering vigilante justice?”
John smiled. “Well, that won’t be a problem now, will it?”
Sherlock looked at Lestrade with mounting horror and sympathy in his eyes. “You poor sod.”
-------------------------------
When Sherlock had warned him in the hospital, Greg had thought he'd simply been overreacting. He'd seen Sherlock after an injury and knew the man was a nightmare. What he hadn't know was how intimidating and overbearing John could be when he was in doctor mode.
A week into his house arrest, Greg was starting to wish he had let John go after the gang. At least that way he might have had a small break from John's smothering.
When Lestrade called Sherlock to help spring him, Sherlock laughed.
"I did warn you," he said once he had finished chuckling.
"No, really. I don't think I can take much more of this. He's pushing fluids and food in my face every four seconds, my room is starting to feel like a prison, he won't let me do anything for myself. You've got to help me!"
"I would have to be insane to cross him when he's like this. And you did ask for it."
"Anything Sherlock. No, really, anything."
"Have fun, Lestrade, and get well soon."
John banged on the door to bathroom. "Greg? You alright in there?"
"Fine!" he called back.
Something in his tone must have given him away, because John was inside in a matter of seconds. His look of concern hardened as his brow furrowed in suspicion as he saw the DI sitting on a still lidded toilet holding his mobile. His eyebrow raised and his lips pressed together in a thin line. Greg waited for the forthcoming outburst, but it didn't come. John just stared him down. Stoic and silent. They stayed like that for several minutes before Gregory broke down.
"Look, I really appreciate that you're taking care of me. I love that you want to stay with me until I get well, but you are suffocating me."
John stayed stiff and frozen for a several seconds before his shoulders relaxed and he gave Greg an embarrassed grin. "Too much?"
"A bit, yeah."
"Sorry. When I couldn't get in to see you at the hospital, I panicked. And then when I found out what could have happened...Christ, Greg, you were about three centimeters away from bleeding to death..."
Greg took a long look at John, finally seeing the dark circles under his bloodshot eyes, the three day old clothes and other signs of worry.
"You need to come over here. Right now," Greg demanded.
"Why?"
"Because I want to kiss you senseless, but my ribs don't quite feel up to moving at the moment."
John complied. It didn’t last nearly as long as Greg would have liked, but his ribs and shoulder made having a long, proper snog difficult, and neither of them had had a chance to brush their teeth or shave, but it was still John. The kiss was tender and sweet and perfect because it wasn’t. It was perfect because it felt like a routine, like something they could do every morning for a very, very long time.
They spend the rest of the day on the couch, curled up together under the blanket, catching up on all the Doctor Who they missed because of various cases and such.
“So, what were you and Sherlock arguing about when I was coming round?” Greg asked between episodes.
“I’ve actually been meaning to talk to you about that,” John said staring straight ahead. “Waiting at the hospital, it got me thinking, and I was wondering…how would you feel about me making you my emergency contact?”
John’s voice may have sounded calm, but Greg could tell by his ramrod straight back and tense jaw that he was anything but. For someone who lived with the most observant man in the world, John could be incredibly dense at times.
“Of course, you daft idiot. I don’t care how much of a strop it puts Sherlock in. You’ll be mine, yeah?”
“You really want to deal with this every time?”
“I’m going to anyway. Might as well speed the process along and save the nurses a giant headache.”
John gave Greg a sheepish smile before settling into the couch and wrapping an arm around him. He pressed a tender kiss to Greg’s forehead and ran his fingers absentmindedly through his gray hair while watching the opening for the next episode.
Lestrade couldn’t help but think, as he nestled back into the covers and up against John’s shoulder, that maybe being stuck at home for another two weeks won’t be so bad after all.