In the next month, Sherlock had to undergo some procedures he found quite annoying. First of all, he was always put under surveillance.
Mrs Hudson had moved in with him to make sure he wouldn't try to kill himself again.
She was his constant shadow, and that was starting to bother him slightly. She'd even follow him to the bathroom, closing her eyes every time he took a shower or changed clothes.
Whenever he left the house, Mycroft's drones would chase after him, observing his every move.
Objects like knifes, guns, pills, razors and ropes had been removed from his house, and if he needed to cut his food or shave his beard, someone else - like Mrs Hudson - would do it for him.
He had to go to therapy sessions twice a week and he'd been prescribed antidepressants, but only someone else could give them to him.
It all felt like a prison, sometimes, or like he was participating in Big Brother, with eyes constantly on him.
Other than that, he was put on a temporary leave from work, as his therapist felt he needed time to rest.
Truth was, his days had become boring and empty without a case to solve and a John to hold.
Sherlock felt all that was unnecessary.
Sure, he had overdosed on pills, but he had calculated the right amount of the substance for it to put him out for a while, but not enough to kill him.
In fact, he had changed his mind last minute. Dying sure would have grabbed John's attention, but he wouldn't have been there to receive it.
Therefore, he wanted to scare him, to get him to feel guilty and essentially come to him.
That had, indeed, worked.
Sherlock was aware that something like that sounded insane, but no one would have ever known.
John's month had also been hard.
He couldn't see or speak to Sherlock - Mycroft had been very clear about it- and he, too, had to go through therapy to even learn to be OK again.
He was glad his days were always busy, filled with caring for his daughter, bonding with his sister and going to work.
Mrs Hudson, Molly, Mycroft and everyone else were all very cold towards John. They'd stopped talking to him all together and wouldn't say hello to him if they ran into him.
Lestrade was the only one who half understood, but being Sherlock's friend inevitably put him on his side.
Whenever he caught himself being sad about his friends' detachment, John would just tell himself that they all needed time and that it was understandable why they sided with Sherlock - the person who they thought was the victim of the situation.
Another thing that kept his mind out of it and that his therapist had advised, was dating again.
He was getting familiar with Grindr and Tinder, so he began dating a different person every night.
Men, women, it didn't matter, but none of them would ever go past chaste kissing, at most.
That until he met Oliver.
Oliver was a younger man, in his thirties, and he was... peculiar.
He had lots of pets: four dogs, two cats, five turtles and six different kinds of birds, for he was a veterinarian.
The first time John had stayed over, he'd stumbled on one of the bird cages.
Oliver, however, had not expressed anger on the incident.
He was kind, generous and also very polite. He would always listen when John spoke and he seemed to appreciate him a lot.
Sherlock, of course, had to be kept in the dark about the whole thing.
One thing that John's sister had noticed about Oliver when he showed up at her doorstep to pick up her brother, was that he looked an awful lot like Sherlock.
He had black curls, light green eyes and loved to wear long coats.
The only thing that differentiated him from Sherlock - physically speaking - was the unusual, astronomical length of his neck.
John would always laugh at her every time she made an observation about how similar the two men were.
"Don't be silly," he'd say, chuckling "that man is nothing like him."
That was the thing. It didn't matter how perfect Oliver was, he just wasn't Sherlock.
So, it wouldn't be unusual for John to imagine he was actually kissing and touching Sherlock - he just had to close his eyes.
Sure, it was hard sometimes to keep himself from saying the wrong name during certain moments, but that wasn't too much of a problem.
Sometimes, when he'd sleep at Oliver's place, in his bed, he wouldn't bask into the warmth of the other man's arms wrapped around him, on the contrary, he would almost hate it.
Not as much as he'd hate the sounds of the parrots screeching at night, though.
He was starting to think that this new adjustment wasn't the happiest he could find, but he still wanted to convince himself that distance from Sherlock was for the best.
After all, he'd never fight with Oliver and he didn't drive him mad.
But, boy, did he miss his annoying detective.
Sherlock found his new lifestyle to be too smothering. Mycroft was too protective and he didn't understand that, as much as his little brother was in pain and wasn't the happiest person alive, it wasn't the best way to deal with him.
Sherlock felt like he was a baby that needed constant attention, that couldn't take care of himself.
It had been a month and John still hadn't shown up, not even via text or calls.
Sherlock had tried to contact him many times, but his baby-sitters had stopped him from making that mistake.
He wondered just how much longer of that torture he had to endure before he could breathe again.
Sherlock wasn't really smiling even when his face begged to differ, it was just the stupid antidepressants making him think he was feeling somewhat good.
But they weren't as powerful as John was.
He was aware that John had been the worst type of drug he'd ever had to deal with.
His kisses were addictive as crack, especially when they were on his neck, and basically everything about him was so inebriating that Sherlock just couldn't get enough of the extreme euphoria he'd feel when in his presence.
It was true that, like every drug, too much of it reveals itself to be damaging, even if it feels good at first.
He and John were fighting all the time towards the end of their relationship, because they were always together, both at home and at work, and it was starting to take its toll on the both of them.
When the pairing first got together, things weren't as smooth as they'd appeared to be.
It had taken a very long time to convince John to become more than friends.
Their relationship had always been ambiguous - there was mental attraction on both parts - but John was scared and kept saying that he was not gay.
However, his love for the detective had become too much for him to ignore, so he had finally given in when, exactly a year before, Sherlock had kissed him out of nowhere.
John never wanted to hold hands or be affectionate in public as he felt it was embarrassing.
Sherlock never liked this aspect of his behaviour, so it would often be the cause of many arguments between the two.
Of course, nobody was surprised when they came out publicly, but John never introduced Sherlock as his boyfriend, to the new people he'd meet - he'd always refer to him as his colleague or words similar to it, and that also never failed to piss Sherlock off.
It was like John had a case of internalised homophobia towards himself.
One good thing about their constant fights was what would happen right after, meaning make up sex, or just a tearful display of affection.
But apparently newly Mycroft-like stuck-up John didn't find it to be enough.
A month after the breakup, Sherlock both hated and loved John to the core.
How could he have decided to give up on them, just because of those disagreements?
Yes, those moments were undoubtedly stressful, but Sherlock felt that a love like theirs was too important to throw away over a bit of bickering.
It seemed to him like John didn't care too much, and would have let Sherlock kill himself over him.
The detective kept count of each day he'd spend without his lover.
He wouldn't sleep much and if he did sleep, he'd dream of them being happy together, which was even more painful than thinking about the bad times.
Especially remembering the sweetness of their love making encounters, the way their bodies collided in utter ecstasy and the feelings that took over them both.
Even though the people around him would tell him to start dating again, once they saw that he was more stable (but that was just another of his tricks), Sherlock would look at them as if they were crazy.
How could they think that, after such an intense relationship, he'd find himself willing to be with someone else just a month later?
Normal people just didn't understand.
Molly, for one, was trying to insinuate herself deeper into his life.
He knew that she was helplessly in love with him, but Sherlock just didn't like women.
He'd tried to be with them in the past, but to no avail.
They did nothing to him, ever more so now that all he had in his mind was John.
It wasn't unusual for him to snap at Mrs Hudson or flip off his brother's flying cameras as they followed him whenever he'd set foot out of his house.
He missed his freedom so much, yet it seemed like everyone around him was terrified of the simplest things he'd do.
One night, he decided to sneak out.
It was around midnight and Mrs Hudson was already asleep on an armchair she'd put in Sherlock's room, and the detective silently dressed up and left.
He knew that Mycroft's drones would start working every time he'd walk out the door, because of a transmitter installed in his phone, so he left without it.
Making sure no one was following him, Sherlock made a run for it and escaped to the centre of London, looking for a random case to investigate.
He just needed to feel alive again.
Nothing. No one seemed to misbehave that night in London. Nothing strange,
out of the ordinary.
Sherlock huffed in boredom as he walked through his big city.
It still felt good, though, to be away from his friends' overwhelming chokehold, for once.
Sherlock felt like his freedom had been given back to him, like he could do anything he wanted and no one would judge him for it.
When he got to a street filled with pubs, he noticed that two men were walking around, holding hands.
Somehow, a weird feeling got to his stomach. It was some sort of envy, those people were unknowingly cruel for rubbing their relationship in his face, now that he didn't have a hand to hold.
Curious to see where the happy couple was headed - wondering if they'd be tonight's case - he began following them from afar.
One of them was wearing a long, light brown coat and he had short, curly hair. He was a lot taller than the other one, who had a sombrero hat on.
There must have been a Mexican night at one of the nearby pubs, he deduced.
They had not been together a long time, as they seemed to be all over each other, and they had surely drunk a lot, for they were stumbling.
Sherlock could hear them laughing softly, which added to that feeling in his stomach.
Still nothing strange was happening.
All of sudden, the two men stopped walking.
The tall one grabbed the short one's shoulder and pushed him to a wall, still in the midst of giggles.
Sherlock found it to be nauseating.
Then, the tall guy kissed the other one in a pretty racy way.
"Viva la vida!" said the tall guy in his very tipsy voice, after pulling away.
It was surely the first spanish phrase that had come to his mind, Sherlock observed.
He was sure that, at this point, nothing cool would happen, so he decided to leave the scene.
But nothing could prepare him for what happened next.
As soon as he started making his way back home, he heard it, the unmistakable sound of John Watson's voice.
Sherlock froze. The world meant to tell him that his John, who he'd broken up with not a month before, was there, kissing another guy, all happy and giddy?
He prayed to be wrong, so he was extremely disappointed when, upon turning around, his eyes confirmed to him that the guy with the sombrero was, indeed, John.
It was like someone had stabbed him in the stomach with a glass shard and enjoyed themselves, watching as he bled.