With the exception of the morning, the rest of the day passed almost unnoticed for John . He did his lesson with such low enthusiasm that, by the end of his first hour, half of the students were asleep and he too was finding it hard to keep himself awake. A very odd exception was Sherlock, who, instead of his usual passivity, was looking directly at him with a rather evident interest. Were that because of the case he had solved or because he was interested in 'studying' a sleepy professor, John didn't know. And he didn't know how he could be so attentive and awake either, when he had slept less than John. He wondered whether he were a robot or something similar.

At two o' clock p.m. he needed to go home. He badly needed it. But he had two appointments with two students at three and he had to wait. What the two students blabbed about for almost an hour, he couldn't guess. He had tried to listen to them carefully, but their voices were so slow, so soft, that all he could think about was his own bed.

At four in the afternoon he finally reached his flat and immediately aimed to his bedroom. To his soft mattress. To his lovely pillow. He didn't even undress. He just threw himself on it and started snoring as soon as his head hit the pillow. He woke up at three in the morning, restored but with thoughts puzzling him.

The conversation with Laura was the most significant, the most prominent.

She had insinuated that him, John, had some sort of relationship with Sherlock. Like he was the kind of man that had no moral values. Like he was the kind of man that shagged his students. How could she believe that? How could she even think about it? It was madness! Sherlock was just a…what was Sherlock for him? Hardest question in the whole goddamn world. It wasn't the first time he questioned himself about their relationship. But it was the first time he tried to analyse it from a different perspective. He, John Watson, the professor John H. Watson defined it just as a weird friendship. But 'friends'. That wasn't a word that fitted Sherlock Holmes. So was Sherlock his friend? He was his student. Utterly brilliant student. And with a hobby that captivated John's attention. But a friend? There was nothing 'friendly' in their killers' hunts. Yet there had been the rather intimate night in Sherlock's flat. But he had been drunk. Yes, Sherlock had been 'awkwardly friendly', but it had ended in nothing. So, no, not friends. He remembered Lestrade's words: I'm no one to him. Those words fitted John too. Nobody. A bloody nobody with whom Sherlock liked hanging around. A bloody nobody with whom Sherlock happened to act differently. A bloody nobody.

But from an exterior perspective? From Laura's perspective? He rationalised.

He called Sherlock by his first name. Sherlock called him 'John', not professor Watson. Sherlock had his phone number. His mobile phone number. And he had appeared at the restaurant where he had been dining. He had to admit that all the clues he had gathered led to a 'I am in a relationship with Sherlock Holmes'. Except that it wasn't true. In the slightest. First: he wasn't gay, so why should one think that he liked a male student? Second: he was not attracted to him. Third: for the fuck's sake! Was he really analysing whether he were or not in a romantic relationship with Sherlock?

Laura was right. From the outside it might have looked rather suspicious, but it was not for him. It was…it was Sherlock. That was all. As Lestrade had said. He was Sherlock. People couldn't just understand, they had to accept.

And if Laura didn't accept because she couldn't understand, that wasn't his problem anymore. He picked up the phone to send her a message anyway, telling her that he understood her point of view, but that he didn't regret his acquaintance with the man. But, like it had already happened a billion of times in the last few weeks, his brain thought one thing and his body did quite the opposite. He deleted Laura's number from his phone. When he did it, he noticed the five unread messages Sherlock had sent him on Friday, which he hadn't read yet.

Need you. – SH.

Need you. – SH.

Where are you? Lestrade has got a case for us. –SH.

Evening out with professor Collins? Dull. There's a case waiting. –SH.

Coming to get you. – SH.

Yes. Sherlock was just Sherlock to him. He defied any definition. Nevertheless he thought he needed to build some barriers between them anew. He was still a professor and really didn't want people to think that he was some sort of a pervert. Neither he wanted to ruin Sherlock's reputation. Not that the young man really had a good one either. But adding a 'my organic chemistry professor fancies me' to his already disastrous curriculum wasn't something that John was wishing for. And he had to agree one more time: from an outside perspective it all looked like he, John Watson, fancied Sherlock Holmes. Or even that (he almost laughed at the thought) Sherlock Holmes fancied John Watson. Except it wasn't like that. Especially the latter statement. That was the most absurd, unreal, impossible thing he could've ever thought about. He shook his head at his foolishness and went back to sleep.

The following Tuesday and Wednesday everything went back to normality. The drowsiness had disappeared thanks to his almost twelve hours of sleeping and his lessons went back to top-notch. He was happy of seeing his students appreciating his way of teaching. He never brooded too much over it because it wasn't his proper job, but every time a student sent him an appreciation mail or just listened interested to what he was saying, he had to admit he felt proud of himself.

On Thursday morning he woke up with a strange feeling. He couldn't understand what it was: he had just felt it when he had opened his eyes, when he had had breakfast and now he was feeling it on his way to the university. It was one of those sensation one would rather avoid for it made him feel uneasy. There was nothing wrong obviously. John had expected Laura to call him or text him, but it hadn't happened. He had expected her to face him at the university, that hadn't happened either. John had concluded that she didn't want to see him anymore and that, yes, probably she was still in love with her ex as Sherlock had suggested. So there was really nothing wrong.

Except that on that precise Thursday Holmes (he was trying to go back to the surname) wasn't sitting at his place in the last row. One more time he was nowhere to be seen. Lately the young man had never missed a lesson. Never. At least not John's. He knew for a fact indeed, from other teachers, that he still didn't attend most of the lessons but John's. He had felt rather proud of it. Yet on that precise Thursday the student (yes, student) Sherlock Holmes wasn't there.

Like the other times John felt as he was missing an important piece in his routine. Like he was lacking oxygen, but less violently. It just felt… discomforting. Terribly discomforting. The familiar black curls, the blue eyes fixed on him, the knowledge that Holmes wasn't following a single word of his explanation: all this was missing. And all this made John more and more uneasy on that weird Thursday.

When he finished at the university, he wanted to go to do some shopping again, since his last shopping raid had finished in milk and potatoes splattered on the floor. But, as soon as he exited the building, he thought it was better doing something else, in order to make that sensation of uneasiness vanish. He decided for a pizza dinner and to go to the cinema afterwards. He didn't mind which film as long as it distracted him. In the end he chose the new Bond film, although he hadn't liked the trailer. Everything would do to distract him anyway. It wasn't as bad as he had thought it was and he came out of the cinema happily relaxed.

It was almost ten o'clock and he was starting to feel tired once again. Nothing unusual had happened for the whole day, so he discarded the sensation that something was wrong as a stupid thought of his suspicious mind. He couldn't have been more wrong than in that moment, he would've thought later.

As he climbed upstairs, he immediately noticed that his flat's door was slightly open. His first thought was 'burglars', replaced one second later by 'Sherlock'. He couldn't be certain of it, but that odd feeling he had had the whole day seemed to lead directly to that. He slowly opened the door noticing, in the dim light of the late evening, that there was a figure curled on the armchair. Obviously Sherlock. He switched on the light, fearing that the young man was wounded again.

But Sherlock seemed unharmed. He had his head resting on one arm of the seat and his whole lean body perfectly fit in the less than two thousand five hundred centimetres of the armchair, his own arms surrounding his knees as if he was trying to shield himself from the world. He seemed to be peacefully sleeping.

"Sherlock?", John asked tentatively.

But the young man didn't answer. He was asleep, then.

John moved to the fridge and took a glass of water, drinking it slowly, enjoying the fresh water down into his stomach. Fresh water to clear his ideas. What the hell was Sherlock (yes, yes he couldn't call him Holmes, he got that) doing in his flat this time? No evident wound. No evident whatsoever. He was just sleeping. He could've done it in his own flat, for the heaven's sake! Yet John didn't want to wake him up. He moved to switch off the light to let him sleep in peace.

"I'm not sleeping.", a deep voice, full of what John would have called 'sadness', came from the armchair "But turn the light off."

John returned in front of Sherlock. Now he could clearly see Sherlock's eyes slightly open glittering in the darkened room, sparkles from the streets' lights in them. John sat leg-crossed on the floor looking at him.

"Why are you here?", he asked, feeling the barriers he had started to build already crumbling.

But the young man didn't answer. He stayed there, fixing an invisible point beyond John, looking like he was in a world of his own where John couldn't reach him. He seemed fragile one more time. Just as when he had slept in John's bed wounded, but more deeply this time. His eyes not only showed pain, they showed…John couldn't quite define it. They stayed in silence, John not knowing what to say and unwilling to leave, Sherlock lost. Yes, thought John, he seemed lost. Like all his certainties had been destroyed. John knew that sensation too well. It was the same sensation that had haunted him in many and one night, the sensation that everything was evanescent and ephemeral. The sensation that you were just an useless point in the vastness of the universe. Yet John couldn't quite associate that kind of thoughts with the young man. The man who was always so brilliant, so full of himself, so proud of his arrogance. Like the other time there were two Sherlock in front of his eyes, a specular image of a man that, one more time, John didn't know at all.

Ten minutes later, while John was still wandering in his own thoughts, Sherlock answered his prior question.

"I feel…empty."

And silence fell again.

There were no noises in the room, just Sherlock's and John's slow breaths. Everything around seemed to transcend the dimensions of space and time. And John didn't know what to do. He wanted to help. But how? He couldn't even quite understand what was going on.

"Why?", was the only question that came to his mind, a stupid one.

Sherlock didn't answer. Minutes passed. John felt tired, but not enough to fall asleep. He wanted to be there, conscious, and it seemed that his body was more than willing to comply his silent request. He waited, until the young man answered again in a soft whisper.

"I don't know. I just feel it."

John started to think about the times he had felt empty. They had all started with nightmares of his days and nights in Afghanistan. His bad memories of bombs falling, of dead kids, of people screaming had been the trigger for him. Maybe it was the same for Sherlock. Maybe he was haunted by bad memories too. But what bad memories could a young man like him have? A single word echoed, screamed, exploded in his head. Rehab. He knew too well what rehab meant, since his sister had been there too a long time before. And he also knew that he had promised himself to not talk about it anymore with Sherlock. But what if? What if it could help him? He took a deep breath.

"Are you suffering from bad memories?", the question sounded so wrong.

Sherlock sighed in the darkness, but John couldn't recognise whether it was a yes or no. He went on, knowing there was no turning back from what he was about to say.

"Is it about the…", he felt a grip on his heart "…rehab? Something related to it?"

This time the answer came immediately.

"It's not about that."

"I'm sorry for having asked that.", replied John, at a loss "I didn't want to bring out the topic the previous time either."

"You shouldn't be sorry."

"But…I hurt you.", John found himself answering.

"You didn't."

Silence fell again. John moved on the floor and turned, leaning his back and his head onto the armchair. He was all of a sudden so near Sherlock he could almost feel his breath on his hair. He closed his eyes.

"I'm sorry anyway.", he exhaled, opening his eyes again.

Sherlock hummed in response, then said:

"I don't know why I feel this way, John. I don't know. I…"

The young man's voice cracked and John was sure he was silently shedding some tears. John didn't turn, but stayed still, hesitant. Minutes passed one more time. Neither Sherlock nor John moved from their position. At some point Sherlock dropped his left hand near John's head. Almost unconsciously John raised his and held the young man's. It was mostly soft with harder parts on the fingertips, a sort of callosity of which he wasn't able to determine the origin. But most of all it was warm, human. The sign that Sherlock Holmes was a human like him was all enveloped in that warmth.

Minutes later he heard the calm breath of the other man. Sherlock had finally fallen asleep, probably exhausted by his own thoughts. John closed his eyes and he also fell asleep seconds later.

When he woke up in the morning he was extremely drowsy. Eyes still closed, he thought about the weird dream he had made during the night. For it had been a dream, he was certain of that. Sherlock in his flat curled in the armchair, him holding the young man's hand. Just a weird dream. Until he sensed his hand still tangled with other fingers. Sherlock's long, lean fingers. It hadn't been a dream at all. Damn. He gulped and stood up immediately, trying to regain his composure, trying to persuade himself he was still dreaming.

He paced twice in the living room, Sherlock still asleep. Damn, damn, damn. He moved to the bathroom and took a handful of freezing water, splashing it on his face, on his hair, until he was sure he was completely awake. Fuck. He couldn't believe what had happened. He couldn't believe that he, after all his mind speeches about his own inappropriate behaviour, had done the exact opposite. He felt guilty. It shouldn't have happened. Yet he knew he would have felt guiltier if he had asked Sherlock to leave. Nevertheless, no. He hadn't behaved as he should have. That was the point. For god's sake. He was a professor.

He returned back to the living room, hoping that Sherlock was still asleep. His wish went unheard. The young man was standing in the living room, staring at him as he exited the bathroom. His eyes still showing the same vulnerability as the previous night. John approached to him, ready to apologise, but also ready to say that it should never happen again.

"Listen…", he started.

But the young man moved fast towards him, closing the distance between them. In two steps he was in front of John, eyes fixed on him. John didn't understand what was happening until he felt Sherlock's lips on his. A gentle brush, nothing more. He had kissed him. Sherlock had kissed him. John froze still. Then pushed the young man away.

"What the hell, Sherlock!", he yelled.

The young man stepped back, a cold expression on his face. He left the flat in seconds, calmly, without uttering a word. John stayed motionless in his spot, still questioning himself whether it hadn't all been just a weird dream. Except he knew it hadn't.