A/N: I felt you guys deserved a longer chapter after the particularly short one and this one beats them both! Thanks for the reviews and all the follows and favourites, I appreciate it ever so much.
0o0
When John had returned to the flat he arrived to the not unusual scene of Sherlock laying on the couch in his blue bathrobe, hands beneath his chin in a prayer position and eyes staring up at the ceiling vacantly.
The doctor wordlessly went to the kitchen and made himself a cup of tea and took it to his bedroom for the night. He didn't much feel like having to be in the room with Sherlock, not tonight. Sipping the remnants of the tea, he noticed the dregs and watched them swirl about forming a nonsensical but altogether interesting shape. He put the cup down and flicked off the lights, getting into bed, leg still slightly pulsating with the ache of that day. He anticipated the pain would all be over tomorrow and that thoughts of the question he'd been asked would be forgotten too. He tossed and turned in his dreams as dust filled images of a lanky man spread themselves throughout his unconscious.
Sherlock had since come to and could hear faint gasps, sighs and cries from the second floor. He had been listening to the sounds for the past two hours and decided to do something that was becoming increasingly less out of the ordinary – going upstairs and checking on John.
He didn't know when the habit exactly had started (that's a lie, he did, he just didn't want to think about this new-forming habit and what it could mean) but when he would hear the noises John sometimes made, he felt a strange sensation overtake him and the only way to get rid of it was to go and check on his flatmate.
He climbed the stairs carefully, not wanting to make a sound. John was a particularly light sleeper. When he'd reached the top, he stood outside the door that was open only a crack. The bed was partly visible – John was covered in a layer of sweat, mouth open and his stomach rising and falling quite quickly. Sherlock stood peering in for a bit longer until John seemed to have calmed down and then departed down the stairs to his usual spot in the living room to wait until morning.
o0o
That morning John made two servings of fried eggs and bacon accompanied by toast and jam with a cup of tea. He set down the dishes on the table, looking pleased with himself.
"Sherlock!"
He barely raised his eyes to look in John's direction, voice plainly bored, "Yes John?"
"I made some breakfast and you haven't eaten in three days. Only answer I'm accepting is you sitting down and eating!"
Sherlock audibly sighed, got up and went over to the table in the most dramatic fashion he could muster. John had just started consuming the food and Sherlock had to admit, he despised eating but the food looked, well, quite eatable. The two were taking in food in silence. John having laid the newspaper next to his meal was reading while using both hands for holding his fork and knife. Sherlock had a bite and, as his mind so often did, was thinking to no end. It hadn't stopped bothering him yet; this was another mystery to solve, one that seemed so simple upon first glance but so much harder with further inspection. That was one reason he liked John, he wasn't ordinary, he was somehow always full of surprises.
He waited until he finished chewing his second bite before bringing up the thing that had sent his mind racking for the past eleven hours.
"John?"
The older man looked away from the article he had been reading about two men that seemed to be eating each other alive, the start of the 'Zombie Apocalypse' some people claimed. Rubbish as usual, he'd seen that sort of thing when people were drugged up. They were usually stopped before it got to that point though.
"Yes?"
Sherlock's eyebrows furrowed together, the uncertainty of not knowing the solution hanging onto him. "What exactly did you mean yesterday? Could you elaborate a bit further?"
"Yesterday, what?"
John knew perfectly well what Sherlock was asking but hoped maybe he could evade the subject instead by acting clueless. He was not so lucky.
Sherlock knew it was obvious what he meant, and that John understood, but decided to humour him.
"Emotional pain being comparable to the physical."
John looked at Sherlock before conceding, "Well, I know you've probably never gone through anything of the sort, but sometimes having something happen to you emotionally can induce actual physical pain. On the other hand, it can instead be brand new and unique phenomena that you've never felt before; they can send you into the highest high!" John lightly smiled while looking somewhere past Sherlock's head as he said this before pausing to finish. "And sometimes they can send you into the lowest lows," he looked back at Sherlock, "Yeah, being shot hurt like hell but…other things have hurt much worse."
After John made no intention to continue, Sherlock simply muttered a reply to indicate that he had heard him and they continued their meals.
He began pondering this novel information. 'Brand new and unique phenomena,' had he experienced that at all lately? He thought back to the previous night and recalled the sensations he felt in his body but not being able to understand what they were or why they were happening. Could they be some sort of indication of…feelings?
What would be a normal thing to feel that would cause you to check up on someone when they seem to be in distress?
Sadness? No, that's possible to be at play, of course, but not on its own. This was something a bit more complicated than mere sadness.
Guilt? Also possible but what could Sherlock possibly be feeling guilty about? He's done things deemed by society as terrible but he's never felt any remorse for how he acts and he definitely wasn't going to start now.
Worry? That… seemed to hit the nail right on the head. It was almost the same feeling he had had at the pool when the red light graced John's forehead, when he offered his life in exchange for Sherlock's, the feeling that almost went away when he tore off John's bomb-ridden jacket. But Sherlock hadn't been able to fully escape that feeling since.
He couldn't understand, though, how could his…worry…for John ever compare to being struck so hard you're on the ground barely breathing? As he got further lost in his cognitions, he remembered a moment when he'd been in such physical agony, a brush with death he had had a few years ago; then to the moment when he had felt such betrayal… hurt, even, when he thought John had been Moriarty. That fleeting moment when time seemed to have stood still and he had felt like a lost child as John spoke words that didn't seem to make sense emanating from his mouth.
Thankfully, it hadn't been John. John was ever faithful, his only friend, someone he could trust with his life. It was normal to feel worry for him, right? Then again, Sherlock was ever anything but normal.
