Hurt Comfort

Still.

After ten full minutes of hacking, Sherlock finally caught his breath. Exhausted from all the effort, he slumped back down. "Laptop." He heaved.
John shook his head, " Sleep." John and Lestrade headed to the kitchen, and Sherlock too tired to protest. Closed his eyes and listened to the quiet, yet frantic conversation. "Is he gonna be okay, I mean he looks like he should be in hospital." Lestrade said glancing over at Sherlock. "What does he even have?"
"Pneumonia," Sherlock wheezed, "Obviously."
He sighed, exhausted, staring at Lestrade's blank face.
"High fever. Chest pain. Blueish...ness. But mostly the antibiotics. You don't give antibiotics for viral pneumonia." He rolled his eyes, and repeated. "Obvious. " Sherlock heard Lestrade snickering before he dozed off.
"I don't understand it," John told Lestrade quietly. "His fever should be coming down with the antibiotics."
Lestrade could only shrug. "What is it?"
"40.4 degrees."
"Blimey."
John nodded, replacing the damp cloths that he had positioned on Sherlock everywhere he could possibly could.
"If this doesn't start working soon we'll have to throw him in the tub." 
Lestrade nodded grimly.
"Anything I can do now?"
"Pass me the thermometer?"
Lestrade nodded, and passed it to him. He felt a bit like a nurse. He shook his head. No.
John slipped the thermometer out from under Sherlock's tongue, where he had been struggling to keep it for the last two minutes. Despite being almost unconscious, Sherlock apparently still objecting to things being in his mouth.
Glancing at the display, he groaned.
"What?" Lestrade asked.
"It's 40.5," he replied grimly. "Can you go fill up the tub? Lukewarm please."
Lestrade nodded and headed off.
"Well," John said to Sherlock, knowing full well he wasn't listening. "You're not going to like this. But that's too bad."
He disconnected the IV from Sherlock's arm and hesitated before removing the nasal cannula from his face. He sat there for a moment, staring worriedly at the pulse ox monitor, seeing the numbers slowly slipping down.
He heard the water in the bathroom turn off and Lestrade reappeared.
"We're going to have to do this fast," he said.
Lestrade nodded, looking a tiny bit afraid.
"You wanna grab his legs?"
Lestrade obeyed, and together they managed to heave the fevered detective into the bathroom. Clothes and all, they attempted not so gracefully to get him in the tub without hurting him.
The result was a mess.

As soon as Sherlock was in the water he started making dreadful noises and flailing about. It probably felt like ice to him, John realized. After some of the longest moments of his life, worrying about his dropping sats and even possibly hurting himself in this state, John decided that was probably enough.
"Okay," he said to Lestrade over the grumbling. "Grab his feet." And together they hauled the soaking wet detective out of the bath.
"Probably would have been better if we had taken some of his clothes off first," John admitted.
Lestrade chuckled, and John was tempted to. Probably would have if Sherlock hadn't started coughing at that exact second. (What was it Mycroft said to him the first time they met? He does love to be dramatic...)

They were hacking coughs, and as John grabbed Sherlock around the chest to heave him up to a sitting position, he could feel them racking his entire body.
Lestrade looked concerned and John couldn't blame him.
"Can you go grab the pulse ox machine and the oxygen tank and mask?"
Lestrade nodded and hurried off. John sat with Sherlock, hoping, no, praying, that it would stop.
And it did. Just not in the way John was hoping for.
"DAMMIT, Sherlock!"
Mycroft was right. Definitely a flair for the dramatic.
Lestrade came rushing back in just in time to see John place Sherlock flat on his back, not breathing.
"Put the clip on his finger. Hand me the mask and crank it up," he ordered.
Lestrade obeyed, face expressionless. John glared at the pulse ox monitor as if he could will it to work faster. Perhaps it worked. Either way, the number was extremely distressing.
"Really, Sherlock? 65? You would, wouldn't you," he muttered while snapping the mask on his face and kneading Sherlock's breastbone with his knuckles. If that didn't work...

But it did work. And well. Sherlock gasped and groaned in pain, but gasping and groaning was good. He was breathing. It meant living. 
John leaned shakily against the wall and wiped the tears from his eyes, watching the numbers slowly rising.
Lestrade was entirely unnerved. First the bathtub incident, which was bad enough on its own, not to mention that Sherlock just happened to stop breathing afterwards. It was like... punishment.