Norbury

      Sherlock is not paying attention to him or the outside world, lost in his mind. If John gets close enough he can hear the gears turning. Not that he ever gets that close, on purpose. But this time, he had heard a little noise coming from the soft, subdued form of his-- his friend, and it was simply in his nature to go check on the man. Especially after everything that had just happened with them (both to and between them and in their own separate lives). He'd heard it all the way from the kitchen, for chrissake, where he'd been reading a newspaper and sipping a lukewarm cup of tea. This was incredibly unusual, this little whimper, unless Sherlock had started making noises while in his mind palace during the time they'd been estranged. Or while he was away, after the fall... Perhaps the drugs had somehow changed him this way? The withdrawal? Or had John simply not been paying attention?

What a sad thought that was.

He'd gone over to check on him, to see that he was still breathing and whole and then continue on with this nonsense of a day. This was perhaps the, what? Second time he'd been at 221B without physical obligation since Mary died? And already he was slipping back into these routines, taking care of Sherlock without a question asked. Not like Sherlock would ever ask, anyway.

John doesn't notice anything outright unusual. Posture a little strained, as though something is pinching him. Fingers steepled stiffly over his plush lips. (He would not dwell on the fact that he'd thought of those lips as 'plush'.) His eyelids stretched thinly over the rapidly moving pools beneath them. If this man were in any way an ordinary person (which John was starting to suspect more and more), he would hazard to say he looked a upset and unhappy, as though trapped in a nightmare.

The push he gives isn't really that hard, but it's enough to make Sherlock jolt out of his head with a terrible grunt. He didn't used to do that, either. In the past he was always only ever annoyed that he'd been brought out before he was ready. But just then, he'd made a sound, a guttural thing that rang more like a hurt animal than an annoyed detective.

"Sherlock...." John wants to offer him a sandwich, an apology, tea. Something to relieve the pressure inside his chest, something to make that sad little ghost on Sherlock's face go away.

He sighs before John can make any such move, any raw emotions being swept away by a mask of annoyance."What do you want, John? What was so important I must be removed from what is sure to be proved far more important tasks?"

At that, John can't help but roll his eyes. "'Far more important things,' I'm sure. More important than eating something? You haven't eaten all morning, and with the withdrawal you're going through I'd say it's pretty important to get some food in you."

Sherlock rolls his eyes in return but, remarkably, makes no protest. He rises from his seat with another little grunt, one that's just too forceful to be only from heaving himself from the chair, but John doesn't say anything about it and neither does Sherlock.

It's surprising little victories like this that tell John that Sherlock is not the man he once was. Even after he'd come back from his two-year 'holiday', he'd still been stubborn and contradictory, refusing food and Lestrade's inquiries (and John's care, what little of it he'd offered). It was far tamer than he was before the-- before the fall, but this version of Sherlock was almost foreign to him. This man that hurt (is that what it was?) and played with Rosie and ate when John asked him to and took long naps on the couch. John felt a soft, heavy twang in his chest at the possibility that his angered actions -- his distance, his betrayal, his marriage -- had changed Sherlock, even if for the better.

"What would you like to eat?"

"Ehh," he says distractedly, flying through the kitchen with his billowing dressing gown preparing to make a fresh kettle. "Whatever you're having is fine with me."