Chapter Text
“What are you doing, John?” Sherlock looked perplexed as he walked into the kitchen.
John brought the earpieces of his stethoscope out of his ears and asked, “What was that?”
“What are you doing? Why are you listening to your own heart?”
John pulled the instrument out of his own shirt and tapped on the diaphragm as if performing an audio test on a microphone. “I dunno what’s wrong with this bloody thing. I couldn’t hear Mrs Bellfrey’s murmur at all yesterday. I’m not getting any of the high pitch sounds I should. It must be broken.” John stared at the stethoscope in disgust. “Damn thing cost a fortune too.”
Sherlock sighed and took the item from John’s hands. “It can’t be broken. It’s a diaphragm with a membrane connected to a hollow tube. What could possibly be broken?” Sherlock assessed the thing, turning it over in his hands contemplating on what had gone wrong, taking it apart in his own mind.
John took the stethoscope from Sherlock’s unresisting hold and put the earpieces back in his own ears, handing Sherlock the chest piece. “Put this over your heart,” John instructed.
“Wouldn’t it be more efficient if I listened?”
John pulled back on one earpiece. “I don’t think it’s actually broken. I think it really just needs to be calibrated properly.”
“Calibrated?”
“Yes.”
At Sherlock’s look of confusion, John continued. “It’s the latest thing. We just had the company sales rep come in to the office and show us this little number. There are small amplifiers within the tubing of the stethoscope. To calibrate it, you have to pinch the tubing while you’re listening.” John held his breath a moment, unsure if Sherlock would buy into the load of shite he was feeding him.
“Mmm…” Sherlock replied noncommittally before placing the chest piece against his own chest.
“Here, let me see it.” John took hold of the other end and guided it to a few different spots, squeezing the tubing between his thumb and forefinger of his other hand as he moved it along, his brow pinched in concentration. John stopped and had a look of frustration on his face. “I really need to get this right. I think if I just … here, have a seat a minute. Breath sounds are much more high-pitched.”
Sherlock sighed, “dull.”
“I made you tea. Just sit and have your tea and read the papers. You won’t even notice I’m here.”
“Why can’t you calibrate your new doctor toy while you listen to your own lungs then?”
“Lung sounds are much more discernible from the back. It’ll just take a minute and I really would appreciate your help,” John said hopefully.
Sherlock huffed and plopped himself down on a kitchen chair, pulling his dressing gown around himself.
“You’ll have to move your shirt then,” John looked apologetic. Sherlock glared but complied, tossing his dressing gown to the floor followed quickly by his button-down shirt. “There we go. Take some deep breaths,” John instructed as he, once again, moved the chest piece around Sherlock’s body.
John removed the earpieces and handed Sherlock his shirt. “Ta, big help that was. Works much better now.”
“Mmm…” Sherlock nodded as he read the morning paper. “Lady Dahlek has had her priceless family heirloom pendant stolen last evening from an ‘impenetrable’ safe. I guess it wasn’t as impenetrable as she thought then, was it?” Sherlock smiled seemingly having forgotten that he no longer had a shirt on.
“Do you know who did it?”
“Of course not. I’m not a magician. I’d have to see the crime scene, which I wasn’t invited to nor do I have any interest in.” Sherlock smirked, his eyes still on the article.
John assessed his friend’s look before he nodded quickly. “Yeah. You know.”
Sherlock smiled and took a sip of his tea.
John looked at the sleeping form of his roommate as he attempted to assess what he could get away with during his nap. Sherlock had put his button-down shirt back on as well as his red dressing gown hours previous. He was barefooted but that did John a minimum amount of good in the grand scheme of things. There is only so much one can tell about the general health of a person just by his feet. He doubted Sherlock would sleep through a neuro exam which involved some poking, shining a bright light in his eyes, not to mention following commands. An abdominal assessment would require him rucking up Sherlock’s shirt and the position he had fallen asleep in didn’t permit that to happen without a good deal of rustling about. No way Sherlock would sleep through it.
It would be so much easier if Sherlock would stop being such a wanker and just have a bloody physical like the rest of society. Like adults do. Apparently the Master of His Own Transport is above all that. John was sure he ran his own labs on himself but John had fixed him up too many times over the last few months to not want a baseline assessment. It was obvious the man didn’t have his own primary doctor given that he always insisted that John treat his many and sundry injuries. After doing a look up in the NHS system, he saw that there was no physical exam recorded. He had plenty of records from early days and some hospital records dated several years ago, all drug-related issues, but it seemed as though Sherlock hadn’t seen a physician in many years. John sighed and got back to his task. He had to complete as much of a history and physical as he could without Sherlock knowing. Knowing would only result in refusal and what Sherlock didn’t know, couldn’t hurt him.
John noticed Sherlock’s carotid pulse beating against his neck. It was easily seen with his neck turned the way it was so John decided a good cardiovascular assessment would be easy enough. He’d already listened to his heart that morning. Getting his blood pressure would be difficult, but he had a plan for that.
Once he had finished counting the pulses, he listened to the blood pumping through the large vessel by placing his stethoscope right over the big artery very, very lightly and only after he had warmed the diaphragm up in his hands thoroughly. Once that was done, Sherlock only twitched slightly as John gently placed his forefinger against the edge of his wrist, feeling for the radial pulse.
John stared at Sherlock’s bare feet. He warmed up his own hands by rubbing them together briskly. Slowly and very quietly, John shifted position and sat on the edge of the coffee table by Sherlock’s feet. He had one leg bent and hidden under the opposite limb, but the other foot was hanging off the end of the arm of the sofa and easy to access. Feet were much more sensitive so John knew he’d have to have a soft touch. He felt like a pervert stalking over Sherlock’s sleeping body, touching him without his consent like this, but, he’d already resigned himself as to the necessity of his actions. Holding his breath, John reached out, gradually guiding his hand to assess the pulse point on Sherlock’s pale foot. If Sherlock slept through this, John decided he could probably get away with a look into at least one of his ears with the otoscope he brought home from the surgery.
Sherlock’s eyes snapped open at the feel of John’s hand wrapped around his bare foot. He hissed in a breath of air and rolled his eyes. “John.”
John let go of his flatmate and jumped back as though he’d been burned. “Dammit, you’re a light sleeper … Jeezus Sherlock!”
“You think I’m a light sleeper because I felt my foot being manhandled while I’m having a kip on the sofa? Mrs. Hudson at 2am doped up on her herbal soothers would have woken to that stimulus, John.”
“Sorry … sorry, I was just …”
“You were examining my feet. Why?”
“I was just … they looked cold, so …”
“No.”
“What?”
“You’re obviously attempting to complete a physical examination without me knowing about it. If you’d thought my feet were cold, you would have simply put a blanket over them. If you were just trying to assess if they were cold, you would have put the back of your hand against the bottom of my foot. Back of the hand is more sensitive to temperature. You were assessing my pulse. Physical exam, obviously. You didn’t ask me because you’re certain I would refuse, rightfully so. Although I am curious to see how you would manage the hernia check without my catching on, I think it’s gone on long enough. Thank you for your services, doctor. I think we’re through here.” Sherlock pulled his dressing gown over his feet curling himself up in a ball rolling onto his side facing the back of the sofa.
“Sherlock … “
“Did Mycroft insist or is this sorry attempt your own doing?”
“Sherlock you do need a physical exam.”
“Right. This is you.”
“C’mon. I’ve seen you in all manner of undress. There is nothing to be afraid of.”
Sherlock turned to glare at John. “I’m not afraid. Why would I be afraid?”
“Well then why? We all have it done. It’d be different if you were twenty or you didn’t have a drug history or you didn’t go flying about after criminals all the time or you sought medical attention at appropriate times, but you are, in fact, thirty-six years old, you have an extensive drug history, you leap into danger all the time and you are a professional at hiding injuries at the best of times and complete rubbish at taking doctor’s orders to rest and recuperate properly at the worst of times. You have horrible coping mechanisms when stressed …”
“I do NOT get stressed!”
“Yeah, you do. When you’re bored, you are stressed. I have no idea what your blood pressure runs …”
“My blood pressure is …”
“No,” John interrupted before Sherlock could finish his sentence. “No, you don’t know what it is either. Despite what you think about your ‘transport’,” John used air quotes to emphasize his point, “it does not simply obey commands to be healthy. You do actually have to check things over to make sure you are running smoothly.”
Sherlock sat up on the sofa, never taking his eyes off of John. He sighed.
“All right, John. I will comply with your obsessive need to examine me.”
“Seriously?”
“I will even make an appointment and come down to the surgery so you can do a proper job of it.”
‘Uh oh,’ thought John.
“If …”
“Oh, here we go …” John ran a hand through his hair, looked at his feet knowing this was going to cost him. He knew it wasn’t going to be that easy.
“If I can examine you afterward.”
John looked up, surprised. “What?”
“As you know, having a thorough knowledge of the human body has helped me in my work. So far the only practical knowledge I’ve been exposed to is with corpses. I would like to examine a living, breathing body …”
“Person,” John corrected.
“Person, and well … you are living and breathing. More or less.”
John laughed. “Yes, more or less.” He gave Sherlock a pensive look. “What kind of examining will you be doing?”
“Just the basics, maybe some reflexes,” Sherlock shrugged a shoulder dismissively.
John thought he could probably handle Sherlock with a little rubber hammer tapping at his knees and his elbows. Knowing Sherlock though, that probably wasn’t going to cut it. “No drugs,” John demanded.
“Of course not.”
“You’re not going to make me strip down and rub my belly and pat my head or anything humiliating like that.”
“No, not unless you make me do it first.”
“I have a feeling you’ll find a way to humiliate me regardless.”
“I promise to be … nice. I won’t do anything you wouldn’t do to any other patient.”
“I’m sorry, did you just promise to be ‘nice’?”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“I dunno. Are you physically capable of being nice? I’ve never seen that before so I don’t even know what that looks like on you.”
“Oh, shut it.”
“Oi.” John thought about the havoc Sherlock could wreak if given free rein on John’s body. He knew he wasn’t going to get away without being humiliated in some way. He thought about his own modesty and what Sherlock would most likely subject him to which made John shudder to think about. He’d been in the military and been in sports so he had seen and had been seen naked by a number of people. None that would be as scrutinizing as Sherlock but it wasn’t as if he had anything to hide and he wasn’t all that attached to his modesty anyway. What could possibly go wrong? “All right, Sherlock, we’ll take turns playing doctor but I have my own quid pro quo.”
“What?”
“You have to stop refusing physical exams. You submit to a comprehensive one at least once per year and when injured AND you tell me when you’re injured, every time you are injured, not just the ones I witness and not just the ones you feel like bothering with.”
Sherlock huffed.
“Sherlock,” John chided.
“Well, I’ll be propped up on top of the kitchen table all the time, won’t I?”
“Sherlock.”
“All right, fine. Best to stock up on plasters then.”
“Or you could be a bit more careful.”
Sherlock just gave John a dismissive snort as if to say “you don’t really believe that would work, do you?”