To try and understand you

I'll try to stick as close to the original characters as possible, but as Irene Adler already pointed out: „[...] the problem with a disguise? However hard you try, it's always a self-portrait." Little instructions for the better understanding of my style :D
"..." = talking
/.../ = thoughts
'…' = quotations
I am not natively speaking English, but I do consider myself quite good, nevertheless there, of course, will probably some typos an the like and my style might just so happen to not appeal you that much ^^'' (I do appreciate criticism if any of that is the case – I want to improve and be likeable in the end, wouldn't I?)
I do wish you to have fun reading the first, yet maybe not all that catchy, chapter.

Chapter 1 - The Message

/"The stuff that you wanted to say... Say it now!"/
Yeah, of course. Of course not! Of course he couldn't say it. How could he?! Was he really supposed to tell his (former) therapist all that's in his heart?!
Sure, that would've been just normal, but... He couldn't tell Sherlock; couldn't tell himself, so how was he supposed to tell a practically stranger person?! No, that was simply impossible.
The cab he had called finally slowed down. As if in trance he got out of the car and automatically approached and entered the house, climbed the stairs, pushed open the door and sank into his armchair. Placed his arms on the armrests. His body hugging the back of the piece of furniture. Legs leaning against the foot of the chair. And still you could see the tension: The head just didn't want to relax back into the neck. Dark, grey circles beneath his eyes, but his eyelids just didn't want to meet. He was overtired. Mercilessly overtired, but he just couldn't sleep in the last three days. He was absent most of the time – just like now – but that wasn't enough for his body to recover, of course, and the doctor knew that perfectly.
He wouldn't be able to sleep. Not with the thought of Sherlock supposedly being dead. Pah: 'supposedly'... he had seen it himself very clearly – the jump, the corpse, the funeral... Somehow he always thought Sherlock would survive anything, just to prove his superiority. No, Sherlock Holmes would not die that easily. Yet the corpse...
An inner conflict broke out, turned into a fight, ended up in a war. "Tse!" John uttered scornfully. /I return from war, meet the probably most remarkable personality, make him my first friend since all the suffering that I've seen and now that he is gone I return to war again. Mental war somehow seems to be a lot more unnerving than Afghanistan, though... Astonishing, isn't it? How a single person can turn another live upside down just by.../ He did not dare to finish his thought. It would just feel as if he'd betray him, deny him... deny his brilliance.

"John, what are doing again? Why do you still come up here instead of joining me downstairs? I don't want to push you out of here every day..."

John awakened from his trance.

"John... You should really go and search a new flat. It isn't good for either of us, if you come and sit here every day."

But he just didn't want to move. He wanted to wake up from this endless nightmare.

"It's fine Mrs. Hudson, just leave me alone." short, laconic, determinant.

Fine? Nothing was fine, absolutely nothing. Without knowing whether or not Mrs. had left or not, he just went absent again.
Fine was nothing, and he sat there until evening, not moving at all. Eventually he lifted jerkily, reeling for a second or two and actually made his way downstairs, not to visit his landlady, but to get the newspaper, to search for a flat that needed to be rented urgently. And he found something. Pretty far from Baker Street – pretty appealing. He called the given number and asked for a visit, then he made himself some tea. And then he got back into the armchair and sat there all night, just looking into nothingness.

The next day he went to get his appointment for visiting the flat. He took a shower and tried his best for his looks, which was a challenge due to his current state, and met the person – an effort he wouldn't have put into this if he didn't seriously want to escape the life he had lived with his best friend. He tried to be as natural in his politeness as possible, though he never had been good at hiding his feelings. Unlike Sherlock, that always so cold, arrogant idiot, who left him without giving him a real explanation. Left him with all this pain... Still, he got the flat and moved in very soon and after a while he also searched for a job nearby.

Two years passed. John had met someone. A woman his age – Mary. Her attempts to flirt with him he didn't even notice. For him she was his best friend, helping him handle his grief. She had moved in with him because she herself had just left her boyfriend and didn't want to leave John alone – so they shared the flat. Just like back then, with him. He even stopped thinking his name over the time, though he did open more and more, lived like a human again and he came to terms with his death, had never managed to overcome it, though.

One day, when he was at the supermarket with Mary, his phone rang. Mary was standing right next to him and Mycroft didn't contact him for over a year now. Irritatedly he took the device out of his pocket and turned on the display.

1 message from Sherlock Holmes

John's heart stopped beating for a moment that felt like at least half a minute.
That was impossible! Sherlock's phone was in their former flat. The police had him take it with him and he remembered perfectly throwing it onto his bed! Therefore it was impossible for someone to play a trick on him and the old lady would most likely not do something like this!
John just continued staring at the device in his uncontrollably shaking hand. Finally he opened the message with an unbearably fast beating heart.

5.38 pm | Come here, solve my case. SH