Chapter 1

It started with one word. Colleague. Sherlock pursed his lips. He didn't realize how unpleasant this word could be until he heard John correct him as he introduced John to Sebastian.

"Friend?" Sebastian had asked.

"Colleague." John interjected immediately, eager to cover the word "friend".

He'd just given John a look then, but didn't say anything. Frankly, he didn't think that he'd really minded that much. But it turned out that he did mind, and his irritation (No, not yet irritation. It was just something that bothered him at the time) chose to manifest itself in the form of an extra ticket to the circus show. It had been easy to justify his actions to himself as wanting to investigate their acrobat and nothing more.

That look on John's face as he turned up by the ticket booth to interrupt his date with Sarah was strangely satisfying. He allowed himself a small smile which quickly faded, chased away by the beep sounding from the machine hooked up to John and bringing him back to the present.

Sherlock ran his eyes for what seemed like the hundredth time over John's sleeping form on the bed. It has been approximately one full day since that incident by the pool and John showed no sign of change since they brought him in the hospital room after the operation. The doctors said that no change is good news; it means he's stable. But he was not entirely convinced that that qualified as good news. No change means that John wouldn't be talking to him and chiding him for his experiments. No change means that John wouldn't be coming home from the grocery after yet another bout with the checkout machine. No change means that John wouldn't be running just behind him and stopping, out of breath, to share a laugh over the absurdity of the situation.

He spent a few more moments just staring at John's chest rising and falling with each breath and suddenly as if unable to sit still for much longer, he started pacing the length of the room until he'd counted backwards and forwards how many steps it took to get back to John's side, with each trip back becoming a little bit faster as he'd imagined he'd turn back to find John looking at him, finally awake.

As suddenly as he'd gotten up to walk, he slumped down on the chair once more, completely drained yet unable to sleep. Unable to even stop thinking for a moment. His mind was filled to the point of overload with every memory connected to John.

"John."

The sound of John's name lingered in the air, and strangely enough, even the mere echo of his name brought a small amount of comfort to Sherlock. Any other time he would've commented, "fascinating" and perhaps started an experiment to test if it would work the same at different times of the day and said with different tones of voice.

But now it only brought him closer to the realization that the increasingly most important person in his life is lying still and unable to sit up with him and talk to him in that matter-of-fact way he does that brings his feet back on solid ground when he gets too lost in his head sometimes. Without the solid dependability of John behind him as he works, he feels disoriented. It was as if the street signs have all been replaced by strange symbols he can't decipher.

"John."

And this time, the sound of his name brought him no comfort. Only the awareness that John wouldn't reply to his call.