Work Text:
The baby cries. This one is always howling. Nanny walks the floor with him, bouncing, singing, rocking. But these new teeth are only the latest reason for him to scream. Nothing is helping. She lays him in his cot, gives her arms a rest. Goes to her room. Comes back to find the other, the quiet one, out of bed, standing in the middle of the room. Small and plump with his thumb in his mouth, he stares at the crib, then toddles toward it. Stands there watching his brother, clutching one of the spindles with the hand not in his mouth. But Nanny has no time for the toddler. The terror is still screaming. So up he comes, and down they go into the rocking chair. From her pocket she takes a small bottle of whiskey -- always a last resort, but his screaming must stop. A few drops on her fingers, rubbed into the sore gums. A few more applications, and finally the screaming tapers off, baby fingers grasping as he sucks on her fingers. Nanny keeps rocking, hoping the peace lasts, watched by two sets of pale blue eyes.
***
It’s a fever, picked up God knows where. This one never stays where he’s told to. Sister’s seen him in her infirmary more than any of the others. Still talking his usual brand of nonsense, but this time its attributable to delirium, and not the typical twaddle. She checks his pulse, checks the watch pinned to her lapel. A cool hand to his forehead tells her he’s still burning up. He’s restless, keeps plucking the covers and muttering.
“Pretty little apis, always flying, always busy, someday I will come and visit you, I will.”
“You hush now, and swallow this med’cine,” she tells him, helping him sit up and swallow the bitter liquid on the spoon. “No more silly talk about flying apes. What kind of talk is that for a little gentleman, nearly eight years old?”
“Not apes, Sister. No. Don’t want apes, they’re not my friends...” he mumbles as the nurse plumps up his pillow and straightens the covers yet again.
“Well what I want is for you to lie still and go to sleep.”
“Shan’t,” he said, even as he yawns widely, and curls onto his side.
The nurse checks his pulse again, his arm pale and slim against the coverlet. The boy’s pulse thuds slower now as the drugs take effect.
“That’s right, my boy, you go to sleep, and in the morning I’ll bring you some nice tea with honey. Go down a treat that will.”
“Honey … from … my friends,” the small boys muttered into his pillow. Nurse smiled, shook her head, and turned down the lights.
****
Sometimes he has to go inside his head. It’s not like when the thoughts thrum through him while he works, flushing his skin and racing his heart. The other times, the long slow stretches where he never gets out of bed, or finds himself staring out the window for hours, or flops on the battered sofa, fingertips to his lips, he buries himself inside his thoughts. The surround him like the fog sometimes surrounds London. Only by keeping very still can he maintain any grasp on the way back to what might laughingly be called The Real World.
His awareness shrinks or expands depending on how deep inside his head he finds himself. But there’s only so long he can control that level of oblivion. It hurts to keep one’s brain tethered, and sometimes he can’t do it. Sometimes its all too easy to find oblivion at the prick of a hypodermic.
This time he’s between cases, and he’s been lying on the couch, unmoving for 30 hours. He’s been dimly aware of John going and coming, clattering around in the kitchen, and slumped in his chair tapping on his laptop. But its all vague. Cups of tea keep arriving within his arms reach. He’ll hear the thump of the cup on the wood of the table, or smell the faint scent of cardamom, or bergamot, but there is not energy to reach for the cups. And they go away eventually anyway.
At one point, he’s vaguely aware of John perched on the edge of the coffee table, and then the gentle touch of his fingers to Sherlock’s wrist.
“Christ,” John mutters, and then there is the faint breeze of the door opening, and the soft click of the door latch, and he is alone again. And he smiles.