Work Text:
This is hard, John thought, staring at the computer screen. No, not hard. Impossible. It’s bloody impossible.
The list of symptoms on the desk beside John had to be a part of something bigger, and he knew it. However, finding a name for… whatever it was… was a different story. Web fucking MD. That’s about how useless he felt in that moment. His patient needed a diagnosis. Needed treatment. She needed him to be competent enough to help.
John stared harder. As if the intensity of his glare had some direct effect on how quickly or easily information would make itself available. If only he could invent such a thing, he’d make millions.
Tip-tap. Tip-tap. He pecked at the keys, searching one of the same four or five phrases for the eighteen or nineteen millionth fucking time. Despite knowing the definition of insanity, at least according to… whoever the hell said it… he kept doing the same exact thing, mostly because he didn’t know what else to do. He wasn’t interested in discussing the finer points of what that said about his current sanity level—or lack thereof.
John had been going like this for most of a month, growing more and more despondent with each passing day. The mystery was eating away at him, hollowing him into little more than a shell of who he was supposed to be. But, goddammit, he was supposed to be a healer. Feeling so helpless, so impotent… it wasn’t pleasant.
By the time Sherlock—the infamous Mr. Everything-Else-Is-Transport—started pushing John to eat, there was already a problem. He could barely remember that food was a necessity of life most days, and even he knew John wasn’t getting enough of it. That’s a bad sign.
Any of that hardly mattered, though—including food. John’s patient, Valerie, was dying. He could see her getting weaker and weaker with each appointment. Saw the disappointment in her eyes and heard it drip from her voice every time he had to tell her, “Not yet, but I’m still working on it.”
She would simply look away, nod, and try to covertly wipe a tear.
“We’ll figure it out,” he promised her.
“Yeah, during my autopsy,” she whispered, rubbing her thumb over the photo that lived in her wallet. Her daughter’s face was split into a wide smile—the way kids’ faces often do when they’re trying a bit too hard—and light danced in her eyes.
How did a seven-year-old girl, who had already lost her father, look so happy? John met him in the Army. Saw the grenade that took him—and several others—out skitter to a stop just a few meters away.
‘Mark, watch out!’ John had screamed, as if anyone could hear him. As if the warning would have changed anything even if his words hadn’t been drowned out by gunfire and shouting. The men closest to him were able to take cover, but there was nothing he could do for Mark. The damage was unimaginable. He’d never get those images out of his mind.
“Dr. Watson?” he heard, quietly and in the distance. “John!” came a bit louder.
“Hm?” He looked up from the stack of papers—reminding himself that the war was behind him—to see a very worried looking Valerie.
“Are you okay?” asked the woman whose daughter he refused to allow to become an orphan.
“Mm. Yeah, fine. Sorry about that. Got a bit lost in my own head.”
“No, it’s… I mean, well… I guess I was just hoping you’d figured out… n-never mind.” She stood, gathered her purse, scarf, and coat, and made a beeline for the door.
“Valerie, wait.” John stood, too, and made his way around the desk. He placed a hand on each of her shoulders and squeezed gently. “I’m going to sort this out. You’re going to see your Lilah graduate and get married and meet your grandchildren. I’ll make sure of it.”
Valerie smiled a smile that looked more like a frown and nodded. Between her greying skin and the way she shuffled when she walked, you’d have thought the woman was closer to seventy than forty. Whatever she had was killing her, and John couldn’t let that happen.
Another month passed, and Valerie was deteriorating at lightning speed. She’d been John’s patient for at least eight months, but her condition had grown much worse over the last few. He probably wouldn’t have another eight months to figure it out. Not unless he wanted to prove her autopsy theory right.
Footsteps from behind.
“Huh? Who?” John startled awake at his desk, spinning in his chair.
There stood Sherlock, wearing a suit and holding an oversized red heart. “I… was just going to leave this here,” he said.
“Wha—why?”
“It’s Valentine’s Day.” Sherlock looked petrified of the words escaping his lips.
“Already? But how? I didn’t—I mean… are we—”
“No. Or… yes? I’m not sure I understand the question.”
“Sorry. I just… didn’t manage, well… I didn’t remember. And I didn’t realise you’d want to—”
“I don’t. It’s a commercially formulated holiday designed to wick money away from anyone who dare care about someone romantically.”
“Then what’s what?” John pointed at the obviously-a-fucking-Valentine.
“It’s nothing really. A bit silly, I guess.”
“May I?”
Sherlock placed the card into John’s open, outstretched hand. “Sorry if I’ve overstepped—”
“Tropheryma whippelii?”
“It’s—”
“The bacteria that causes Whipple’s disease.”
“—what Valerie has. I know how hard you’ve been working, and I didn’t want to undermine—”
“Why didn’t I think of that?” John quietly chastised himself, scrambling to his feet and throwing his arms around Sherlock’s neck. There were tears stinging at the corner of his eyes when he finally pulled back.
“I know it’s not much, but—”
“Sherlock, this is absolutely amazing. The best gift anyone’s ever given me.”
“I simply couldn’t watch you continue to put so much stress on yourself. I wanted to ease your mind.”
“Do you realise what you’ve given me?”
“A cardboard heart in an alarming shade of red with the name of a bacteria scrawled across it?”
“Well, yes… I suppose. But it’s more than that. You’ve given me the power to save a life. Whipple’s disease is entirely treatable. Curable, even. Now I can ensure that Lilah doesn’t lose her mother the way she already lost her father.”
“So, you like it, then?”
“Shut up.” John pressed his lips to Sherlock’s for the first time in weeks. “And thank you,” he whispered against the kiss.
Sherlock’s fingers threaded through John’s hair as the kiss deepened and he groaned into John’s open mouth. “I’ve missed you.”
“Sofa,” John quietly commanded, dragging Sherlock toward the couch by his lapels, stripping him of his jacket, and shoving him onto the leather cushions.
He hurriedly untucked Sherlock’s shirt and plunged both hands up and under it. He read the detective’s body like braille, stopping to roll each nipple between his thumb and forefinger just hard enough to reward him with a satisfying gasp. John smiled.
Next, he made quick work of buttons and zips, already rolling his hips against Sherlock’s. He stroked the ever-growing bulge in Sherlock’s pants with the heel of his hand and bit down hard on his own lip to subdue the wanton moan playing at the back of his throat.
He finally freed Sherlock’s erection just moments before his own and licked a wide stripe up the center of his palm. Taking both cocks in hand, John began to stroke them together, wriggling anxiously in Sherlock’s lap.
Sherlock’s lids were already beginning to droop when he sucked two of his own fingers into his mouth and then worked that hand under the elastic of John’s pants—the ones that matched the Valentine’s Day heart. Perhaps it was a subconscious choice.
Saliva-slicked fingers teased at John’s entrance then slipped inside. The sound he’d threatened to make earlier came without warning this time, ten times louder and far more lasciviously than John might have ever expected. He didn’t even know he could sound quite like that, and judging from the twitch of prick in his hand—the one that didn’t belong to him, neither did Sherlock.
John ground against Sherlock’s fingers. Both sets of hips snapped in time, forcing their cocks roughly through a tightly encircled fist. And, given their somewhat extended sexual hiatus of late, they both soon spilled over the edge. John first, with Sherlock following closely behind.
By the time John rolled off of Sherlock, snugged himself tightly against his detective’s side so as to avoid either of them tumbling off the sofa, both of their shirts were already lost causes.
“Well, that was unexpected,” Sherlock chuckled into the silence of their afterglow.
“No it wasn’t.” John pressed a kiss to Sherlock’s jaw and nosed at his cheekbone. “You damn well knew that would get you laid.”
“I wouldn’t say I knew.” Sherlock smirked. “Suspect, maybe. Definitely hoped.”
“So, you knew.”
Sherlock shrugged.
“I feel like a bit of an arse. You gave me this amazing gift, and I don’t have anything for you.”
“I thought about getting you something else, you know. Something more material. But finding the perfect gift for such an astounding man isn’t as easy as simply solving a case.”
John hated Sherlock sometimes. He could seem so thoughtlessly cruel under some circumstances, and yet—at times like these—he was effortlessly kind and wonderful. “You’re a marvel, Sherlock Holmes. An absolute treasure sometimes. And I owe you a gift.”
“You’ve already given me all I need.”
“I don’t care how good it may have been, an orgasm hardly count—”
“No… not that, though I am appreciative. I mean… you. You offer me the constancy of a love and friendship I’ll never truly feel I deserve. You’re a daily reminder that I’m more than the well-oiled machine of my mind. That I have worth and value as a person, not just as a tool. When you look at me, I’m not the means to an end—I am an ‘end’ in and of itself. You’re my doctor, my blogger, and my conductor of light, and I’ll never require a single thing more from you for the rest of our days.”
See? Right there, that’s why John hated him. He hadn’t carefully formulated a speech. He hadn't stood in front of a mirror and practiced those words. They were the ones that naturally came, and they were stunningly sincere.
Blinking back a tear and swallowing around the lump in his throat, John kissed Sherlock’s temple and whispered in his ear, “Happy Valentine’s Day, Sherlock.”
“The same to you,” Sherlock said, turning onto his side and slotting himself against John—his back to John’s front. He laced their fingers over his abdomen and heaved a relaxed, sated sigh. “When we wake up, we’re getting takeaway and then going for round two.”
“And three, if I have my way.” John laughed. And it was a happy Valentine’s Day indeed.