Tirck, tick, tick.
He goes over his list again.
Tick, tick.
Today has been rather… interesting.
Tick.
Each emotion, written in his own flowery hand, stares up at him from the small, pocket-sized journal. It's categorized by general feeling, and each spreads out from there.
Love, joy, surprise, anger, fear. Those are the basics.
It took his almost a month to be able to find all the words he possibly could, and he's still been adding through the years.
He places a little black check next to lust.
Tick.
He's still surprised (which had been marked off a little over a year ago) whenever he looks through the book, takes note of each little check, each X that had been scribbled out.
He places a check beside envy, then flips through and puts one next to shame, taking his pen quickly and effectively to the X beside it.
Tick, tick, invalid.
Slowly, very slowly, he flips back to the beginning of the book, the very first category containing the "most basic of the human emotions".
Tick.
He wonders when exactly he fell in love with John Watson.