Can you believe I wrote all of this just now, at 2:45 a.m.? Anyway, this is more of a ficlet than a drabble, but I like the way it turned out. I just love the way Sherlock thinks and feels - it's so rich and deep.
Lost
He had dashed out of the new sitting room, only vaguely careful not to trip over any of the objects he had lying about the place from the move, filled with more energy than he'd had in weeks as his previously idle brain was suddenly spinning with images and thoughts of fatal pills and apparent suicides and obvious murders and complex plans and hidden connections and idiotic inspectors and chemicals and deductions and clues and ideas and theories and a thousand other things that automatically accompanied the thrill of a new, interesting case.
Fairly flying on an intellectual high, he swiped his favorite overcoat from where he had draped it over the knob of his bedpost and slipped his arms through the black sleeves with elegant grace. He grasped his scarf from around the wax figure behind the door and nimbly began to tie it around his neck as he reached the top of the stairs that led to the street – and to his newest puzzle.
Just before he took the first step, however, there was a sudden, angry-sounding shout from the sitting room, and it took him a moment to break through his haze of elation and comprehend whose voice it was and what words were said. Amidst Mrs. Hudson's kindly reassuring, "It's all right, dear; I've got a hip," he stopped long enough to decipher what would make the gentle-looking Dr. John Watson so obviously incensed – nothing dear Mrs. Hudson had said, certainly. And though he was not the most sensitive of men, Sherlock was sure he had said and done nothing which would generate such a rise from the doctor about his bad leg. What, then?
Then it struck him. A military doctor, that's what John was, and one who had survived a near-fatal battle in Afghanistan. He'd read articles concerning the mental effects war may have upon soldiers upon returning to society. Who was to say that such things did not affect the doctors as well? If his first impression was correct, John Watson was a man of action, one who needed something to do perhaps almost as much as Sherlock himself did. Perhaps the sudden loneliness and lack of work were doing the same to John as what they did to Sherlock. Perhaps, somewhere past the unemotional face and empty eyes, John was lost and looking for some way out…or someone to help him find it.
Sherlock wrinkled his brow. He could not explain the sudden sentimentalism which had somehow leaked into his thoughts, or the overwhelming urge to turn back, but for some inexplicable reason he did just that. He forced himself not to wonder at the groundless fondness that was quickly endearing a perfect stranger to him as he took two steps backwards to stand in the doorway.
Later, as he found himself seated in a comfortable diner chair at the Chinese buffet on Baker Street, listening to John's half-teasing rant about how he should tell him next time so that they might face the danger together, he realized that perhaps John wasn't the only one of the two of them who had been lost.