5.
"So all along it was the wife's best friend? Who'd have thought?" John asked, grinning, as he and Sherlock climbed the stairs after having successfully closed a case.
"I did," Sherlock retorted, and the pair descended into giggles as Sherlock placed his right hand on the doorknob and breezed into the living room.
The living room which had been completely tidied and rearranged in their absence.
Sherlock felt the smile slide off his face as surely as his brain was screaming. NO NO NO NO NO NO NO where has everything gone? It's all too different and it just doesn't look right and how on Earth am I supposed to find anything I'm looking for now and SERIOUSLY where has everything disappeared too, has it all been thrown out? NO there might have been important stuff there I need and WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO MY EXPERIMENTS? I put ALL that time into them and now they've just disappeared for good and now I'll never get my results and so many cases could potentially go unsolved and I'll have to live with that uncertainty...
Sherlock barely noticed John bracing himself as he stuck his head out of the door and yelled "MRS. HUDSON!" The long-suffering landlady came scurrying up the stairs and just as she was about to open her mouth to speak Sherlock began on his own outburst.
"WHAT POSSESSED YOU TO COMPLETELY RUIN THE ROOM? I DARESAY YOU ALSO SAW DISTURBED MY SOCK INDEX? TELL ME YOU HAVEN'T BEEN AT MY BEDROOM TOO, I HAD SOME VERY IMPORTANT EXPERIMENTS IN THERE..." Sherlock could feel himself shaking, but not just in anger - there was something else inexplicable Sherlock was usually rather good at keeping out.
"But dear, the place was such a mess, there were things growing in here..."
"THAT WAS THE POINT!" roared Sherlock. "I THOUGHT YOU WEREN'T OUR HOUSEKEEPER ANYWAY!"
"I'm not, deary, but I do worry about your health," Mrs. Hudson said. "Even if you don't care about your own health you can't expect poor John to suffer too..."
"That's all right, Mrs. Hudson," John said calmly, watching Sherlock worriedly. "Your efforts are appreciated, but I'll take it from here."
"Yes, that's probably for the best," Mrs. Hudson said as Sherlock collapsed onto the sofa with his arms clasped around his knees, and started rocking back and forth. "I'll be downstairs if you need me."
"Thank you," John said, closing the door after Mrs Hudson. When the sound of her shuffling slippers had disappeared and Sherlock heard her door closing downstairs he burst into tears.
"It's okay, Sherlock," John said, extending his hand for a second and resting it reassuringly on Sherlock's shoulder when the latter didn't swat it away.
"No, John, it's not," Sherlock sniffled. "Everything is different and I liked having that certainty that I would be able to find anything exactly when the thought occurred to me to look for it and a lot of my hard work has vanished probably never to be seen again and this is all just too much. Too much change in one go is very bad." Sherlock wiped his nose in his own knee (I don't even care about my trousers, I can always get Mycroft to dry-clean them or something) and John looked at him with a pitying expression.
"DON'T PITY ME!" Sherlock screamed, burying his face in his trousers, more tears dripping from his eyes.
"Sherlock, it's fine," John said as calmly as possible. "It's all fine. Look, I am going to give you a hug. If you're not all right with that, let me know in the next five seconds." Sherlock said nothing and, as promised, five seconds later he felt John's arms around him and Sherlock took his face out of his knees and pressed it into his friend's fluffy-jumpered shoulder.
Despite Sherlock's lack of understanding on the topic of other people's personal space, he generally disliked being touched to such an extent that he once ended up in a holding cell for two hours for threatening to stab Anderson in the jugular with a fountain pen when he accidentally brushed against the consulting detective walking through a door. However, Sherlock found that he had absolutely no objection to John firmly holding him with just the right amount of pressure, and even found that he felt... safe. John was giving him something to concentrate on that overrode the chaos in his head screaming for the room to go back to normal, and the conflict he felt knowing that it just couldn't. All of Sherlock's negative thought processes were being replaced by the sensation of safety and comfort he was receiving from John, who was forming a barrier and shutting out the nasty world in a way that almost nothing else was able to.
Sherlock lost count of how long John's arms stayed enveloping him, but a few minutes after he was aware he had stopped crying John let go, still gently grasping his arms, and examined Sherlock's tear-stained visage. "Are you going to be all right now? I know it frustrates you but it will all be okay."
Sherlock nodded jerkily, raising one corner of his mouth in an uncertain looking half-smile. "Thank you, John," he said, pulling a tissue out of his pocket and noisily blowing his nose on it.
"I'm rather glad you saved that one up, I'm rather fond of this jumper," John remarked. He immediately started giggling and it may have taken a couple of seconds, but Sherlock found that he was able to join in. John really had done a remarkable job of clearing his head, which wasn't a claim that could be held by anybody else.
Author's notes: I think now would be a good opportunity for me to make a few notes (or a lot, rereading - oops. You can skip this if you like), before I post the final chapter. Firstly, thank you for reading this and to those who have reviewed, it always genuinely astonishes me that anybody would want to read my ramblings. For the record, I'm not fishing for compliments, that's an honest "WHOA you're all so nice." I won't pressure you into reviewing because I don't do that, but if you do choose to, know that it is much appreciated. :)
Anyway, my main reason for this section now is to add a bit of detail (picked up on by at least one person - nice one, Telosphilos) and that is that these chapters have been based on symptoms of Asperger syndrome, which is something I personally have and that it is widely acknowledged Sherlock probably has in both the canon and the BBC adaptation (I'm not overly familiar with other adaptations, I admit). I wanted to write a story incorporating some actual accounts of the syndrome (for instance, the scenario in this chapter was based on an incident just a couple of weeks ago in which my parents invaded my room while I was at work, went through absolutely everything and "tidied up", by which I mean "threw loads of stuff out and broke my microscope," but I didn't have a John so I was stuck fuming with nothing to distract me) and to possibly help people to understand Aspergers and Sherlock a bit better. (Though of course I shan't be so arrogant as to claim to completely understand the character, just that I may have a bit more insight than most I wanted to share.)
It is also probably worth noting that not all of these symptoms are actually shown in the canon or canon-canon (I hope that makes as much sense to you as it does to me) but some are implied - for example, in the BBC adaptation of Hounds Sherlock tries to disorientate John with the bright lights and loud noises which can be seen as an indication that that is what would disorientate him, and he assumes it would be the same with John. (Just speculation, of course, but it makes the most sense to me.)
My personal headcanon is that John's pretty good at dealing with Sherlock because as a GP he recognised the symptoms - here in the UK a general practitioner is often the first place you go with suspected Aspergers if you want a diagnosis because they can refer you to specialists. Well, that's what happened with me, anyway.
If anybody has any questions do feel free to ask, this is a very misunderstood topic and I would be happy to share some insight. :)
For those who aren't really interested in the above explanation, the story also serves as a Johnlock bromance. I gave you a Johnlock brohug, be happy. :D
The final chapter shall be up in the next few days - I would say tomorrow but I tend to get bored so it might be but I can't promise.