I used to be a person, John Watson thinks, stirring tea with a spoon that Sherlock Holmes put in his mouth three months ago and which John has been saving for a Very Bad Day.

Today John is going into Sherlock's room.

He has been putting this off for three months, despite having absolutely nothing better to do.

John puts too much sugar in his tea and tries not to think about how every night he has stood in the doorway for two hundred and twenty one seconds and breathed Sherlock Holmes in. As if perhaps John's lungs could breathe for him, since Sherlock, lazy bastard, is currently unable to do it himself. There have been 92 such nights since- but John is trying to be normal, and normal people do not keep count of exactly how many interminable terrible deathly days their best friend has been dead and

John can feel himself cracking, just a bit. He was always so rational; it's why he was a good soldier, at least until he made the supremely idiotic and undeservedly lucky mistake of getting shot.

He cannot regret that, not anymore. Not when it brought him to London with its bills and surgeries and necessary flatmates, and then murders and madness and Chinese and violin music at all hours and toes in the butter caddy and oh god

Sherlock

he misses him like an ache deep in his bones, in his sinews and cells and appendix, the useful bits and the useless bits of of John Watson miss Sherlock Holmes like air, like adenosine triphosphate, like DNA.

That's the feeling he's been trying to pinpoint for almost a quarter year now. His DNA is gone. The code, the reasoning behind him, missing. His cells sit, gathering dust, awaiting instructions that will never, ever, come, because Sherlock Holmes unraveled his DNA and pulled it out of his ears and stuffed it in the pocket of that marvelous coat, like a schoolboy hoarding twine.

John Watson kisses a silver spoon, because its owner is indisposed, and wonders when, exactly, he went mad.

Please excuse any OOC; this is my first fic for any fandom, and I'm not quite used to writing other people's characters. Reviews will help me get better.

Update: Now on AO3, along with some other work.