A Different Side to Sherlock

Sherlock didn't like hospitals.

Well, it was a given that no one actually liked hospitals. Sherlock liked the lab and he liked the morgue, but he hated the actual hospital bit of it.

Besides, he was used to St Bartholomew's.

He shifted down in the uncomfortable chair, blowing out a sigh through air-conditioner chapped lips. The actual rooms were the coldest, like death themselves, but the cafeteria was no better. The air conditioner was blasting, cold air ruffling his hair. The food held the consistency of plastic. The coffee tasted like shit, he decided, as he took another unsatisfying drink of it.

He pushed himself to his feet and, stopping to pour the entire cupful of coffee into the bin, excited the room. It was sheer, dogged determination that was keeping him on his feet at this point. The call had come in at the tail-end of particularly gruesome and rightfully exciting case; he hadn't had time to catch up on energy or sleep. Hospital coffee wasn't going to have much of an effect on him now, especially not when it tasted like that.

"Sherlock!"

Sherlock glanced over his shoulder, surprise filtering through his veins as he stared back into eyes that reflected his own. Blue-green-gray-silver, a modge-podge of colours that never seemed to really belong anywhere except on his own face and in the face of his mother.

"Mother," he said, turning around.

It was as far as he got before her arms were around him and he stiffened out of reflex, looking helplessly over his mother's head towards his father, who just stared back at him with a mixture of concern and resignation. It turned stern as Sherlock met his gaze and he nodded towards his wife.

Sherlock sighed and slipped his arms awkwardly around his mother's frame. He'd never been one for the hugging lark. "... Why are you here?" he asked shortly, pulling away.

Wanda looked up at him. "Sherlock. He's our son, and your brother. We came as soon as we heard."

Sherlock tipped his head slightly. "... It's just pneumonia. They said that he'll get better."

"Just pneumonia?" Wanda exclaimed. "Sherlock, that's life threatening!"

Sherlock shrugged listlessly. "I suppose. I highly doubt the head of the British government is going to go down by pneumonia, though. He'll go in a much more stupid fashion. Like choking on a power smoothie drink when a diet phase takes him," he said in a monotone.

"Sherlock!" Wanda sighed. "Come on. You were going back to his room."

"Mhmm."

He pulled his hand free of his mother's and started down the hallway, shoving his hands into his pockets. He hadn't even known that his parents were coming. And over something like pneumonia... If it were something like cancer, he supposed it was understandable. Maybe even a simple surgery, worse than appendicitis but not as bad as an amputation, but... pneumonia? Although, his parents had been there when he'd gotten shot, too, apparently. He didn't remember much, because he'd been unconscious for nearly a week, but he had snatches of memories of them being there.

"Has he been awake?"

Sherlock shook his head, left to right. "Not since I've been here."

"You look horrible, too, Sherlock. When's the last time that you slept? Have you been eating? Is John making sure that-"

"Mother," Sherlock interrupted, turning his head as she reached to brush away his hair from his face. "Weren't you here for Mycroft, not for me?"

She half huffed, half sighed. "I worry about you, too, love."

"Don't call me that."

"You're my son," she replied stubbornly.

Sherlock rolled his eyes and jabbed the button for the lift, striding in as the doors opened. His left temple was throbbing beneath his skin, too out of reach for paracetamol to hit. He needed to sleep. Unfortunately, he also knew that his nerves were strung too tightly for him to be able to do just that.

"Has John been here?" Timothy asked, filing in behind Sherlock and Wanda.

Sherlock leaned against the wall. "No. He's at work."

"Did you tell him?" Wanda pressed.

Sherlock rubbed his forehead. "I told him earlier today. He told me that I should have told him the other day when I found out. Said he'll be here later, although I'm not sure why. It's not like he particularly cares for him, either."

"Oh, that's not true. He cares for your brother as much as you do."

Sherlock huffed through his nose. The lift doors dinged open on their floor and he strode out, leading the way back to the room Mycroft was staying in.

John frankly couldn't believe how ridiculously stupid Sherlock could be.

You don't even like Mycroft.

That had been Sherlock's argument as to why he hadn't bothered to tell him that Mycroft had been in hospital in the throes of a horrible pneumonia. No, he didn't want to go out for tea with Mycroft, but he did owe him infinitely for things that he almost wished he didn't. But, more than that, whatever Sherlock said, John knew that Sherlock cared a lot, lot more about Mycroft than he let on. If anyone hurt Mycroft (not that anyone would be so careless), Sherlock would beat that person half to death without, of course, letting anyone know that he was the one doing the beating in Mycroft's name.

So, John was worried about Mycroft and Sherlock both. Mostly Sherlock now, now that he had learned that Mycroft was on the road to recovery, but he was still definitely worried about the both of them.

John glanced at the room numbers as he walked, coming to a stop outside of the room the hospital had said. (Not Sherlock. Sherlock hadn't told the room number before hanging up. Hanging up without preamble, he had noted. Sherlock usually signalled he was hanging up, even if it was with a "I'm hanging up." click that echoed in John's ear halfway through a conversation.)

He was just about to pull open the door when he glanced up reflexively through the door window.

Sherlock and his mum were standing in the middle of the room next to Mycroft's bed. They weren't looking at him, though. They were facing each other, more or less, but there was something... off.

Sherlock's mum had her arms around Sherlock's skinny (skinnier than usual, John could see his ribs on occasion these days) waist, hugging him close. That wasn't overly weird itself. Sherlock wasn't hugging her back, his arms limp at his sides, not out of the ordinary, either.

But the way they were standing, Wanda hugging him and Sherlock just taking it... The only ever person that John was aware that Sherlock accepted hugs from was himself and that had been at the wedding.

Sherlock's shoulders slumped. His arms didn't come up to hug his mum back, but his entire body seemed to curl around her, wildly curling hair framing a pale face that drooped forward to press against his mum's shoulder.

John's hand fell away from the door handle.

He wasn't going to interrupt now. Sherlock probably wouldn't talk to him for a week if he walked in on him being... vulnerable. Especially over Mycroft. John would give him the benefit for the doubt for a little while. Ten or twenty minutes, with a cup of coffee in the café.

John was just glad that Sherlock had someone there with him that knew how to handle him. There was a time where John had thought that no one could tame Sherlock Holmes, not even himself, but it seemed like Sherlock had a lot more people there to take care of him than even he himself knew.

John was glad for that.

If Sherlock didn't take care of himself, at least someone would pick up the slack somewhere.

John went back twenty minutes later, a cup of crap coffee in his hand and something like apprehension in his veins. Unlike before, though, he didn't stop to look in the window because he'd never get in to talk to them if he worried about interrupting each time. It wasn't like he was walking in on anything untoward or anything, although Sherlock probably thought any sort of physical, comforting contact was.

It didn't matter, though. Sherlock was asleep when John walked into the room.

The only difference was that he was sprawled out on the sofa with his head in his mum's lap while she stroked her fingers through his hair.

Mr and Mrs Holmes both glanced up when John walked in.

"Oh, hello, John," Mrs Holmes greeted, smiling up at him.

"Hi." He shifted a bit, looking between Sherlock's sleeping face and Mrs Holmes and Mycroft. "How is he? Mycroft, I mean."

She followed his gaze. "Oh, the doctors have a good prognosis for him. They told us as much on the phone, but we had to come here and make sure for ourselves."

John nodded. "That's good. Good to hear. I wish one of them would have told me before this... I could have stopped it being so severe if I'd been there to see him."

"Neither of them are really good at that, relying on people. As much as I try to tell Sherlock and Mike, neither of them, do they, hun?"

"Troublemakers from the start," Mr Holmes added, nodding over the magazine he was paging through.

"Although that's expected, coming from him," Mrs Holmes added, jerking her thumb towards her husband before returning her fingers to Sherlock's hair. "But he's just as bad," she said. "I don't know if Mike should be in that hospital bed or if Sherlock should."

John sighed. "Yeah, he's still into bad habits. Not eating, not sleeping, constant cases."

"The usual," Mrs Holmes said.

John nodded, allowing it. "Yes." He looked at Sherlock's sleeping face. "It's just worse right now since he's worried... no matter if he says he's not," he muttered.

"Oh, I know he is. He isn't usually so sluggish. Emotion does that to his brilliant brain, doesn't it?" She brushed hair out of Sherlock's face.

"It does. He's getting better, though," John added, ducking his head a bit. "A little. When I first met him, he was... cold. A calculating machine. And he's still calculating now, but... different. He cares about us, his friends. He actually has friends. He lets us in more than he used to... which was not at all."

Mrs Holmes smiled. "I've noticed that, too. He was never particularly social when he was a child, either, but I can see how he's grown out of that shell. A little bit," she added, eyes twinkling.

John laughed. "Just a little, yeah."

"I am right here, you know," Sherlock said abruptly. His eyes didn't open and only his lips moved.

John jumped a bit. "Sherlock! I thought you were asleep."

Mrs Holmes swatted his shoulder gently. "It's not nice to eavesdrop."

"I was trying to sleep," Sherlock said dryly. His eyes finally pulled open, although they were still lacking the usual spark, glazed with exhaustion. He seemed just listless. "But you two kept talking. I still don't know why all of you are here."

"He's our son, Sherlock!"

"'Cuz we're all worried about you guys."

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "If you're going to be here, just sit and be still and silent. I might actually be able to sleep."

"Do you want me to stay?" John asked flatly, flexing his fingers around the coffee cup.

Sherlock drew his legs up in response, clearing up a spot on the sofa. "Sit. Shut up."

"Sherlock," Mrs Holmes chastised.

Sherlock sighed heavily as John sank onto the sofa. "Mother, John knows about my way of communicating. He hasn't left after all these years; I highly doubt that he's going anywhere because of this."

"Oi, you don't know that," John protested jokingly, refraining from shoving Sherlock's legs off his lap when they inevitably ended up stretched across it.

"Yes, I do," Sherlock said simply, his eyes fluttering shut.

John rolled his eyes.

"Do the thing you were doing."

John was about to ask what? when he realised Sherlock wasn't talking to him. He was talking to his mum and, as John watched, Mrs Holmes resumed kneading her fingers against Sherlock's scalp and through his hair.

Amazing, John thought. Sherlock was a totally different person right now. It was amazing to see, honestly. And a nice change.

John shook his head slightly and set his coffee down, reaching for one of the old magazines in the room.

I wanted some Sherlock/parents fluff. I'm really in the mood for emotional Sherlock. I love Series Three so much for that particular reason. xD

PS. I know Sherlock's mummy's name begins with an M, but I can't picture them (at least her) with any other name than their real names because they just LOOK like a Wanda and Timothy.

I do not own Sherlock. Thanks for reading!