A Study in Sleep Deprivation

“John?”
He looked up from his clipboard, startled to see me there. I tried not to do a once-over of him, but failed.
Spilled coffee on his trouser leg; one circular spot the size of a pound coin and four drips downward. Knocked it over in a haste to stand up from the desk. Cuffs of his white lab coat slightly wet. Just washed his hands. Left pocket of his lab coat not weighed down with his mobile. Probably left it in the office, which is why he never answered my texts. Slight sticking of his right shoe to the floor as he hurried over to me. Accidentally stepped in something less than desirable and no time to clean. Dark circles under his weary-looking eyes. Rough night at the A&E.
Every deduction was like a knife to my frontal lobe.
John stopped just before me, concern taking over his face.
“Sherlock, what’s the matter? Are you okay? I thought you were asleep.”
I shook my head, frowning when the movement made my head swim.
“Couldn’t sleep.”
John nodded and glanced at his watch.
“I’m off duty in fifteen minutes. Will you wait for me?”
“Yes.”
He smiled cautiously, as if he was afraid I was going to collapse right there.
“You can wait in my office. You remember where it is?”
“Yes.”
He squeezed my arm as I walked off round the corner. I was pleased to realise I remembered the way well enough that I could keep my head down while I walked.
His office was a small room on the second floor. It overlooked the garden behind the hospital and was well-lit during the day. In the room was a desk, three chairs, a bookshelf, and a small sofa behind the desk.
I flopped down on the sofa without turning on the light, closing my eyes and willing (unsuccessfully) my mind to stop racing.
We’d just finished a case, and I was nearing four days without sleep, the upper limit even for me. After cases I tended to sleep for roughly eighteen hours beginning almost immediately after I entered the flat. Not this time. This time I’d not been able to shut off my mind when I’d collapsed into bed. I’d laid in bed awake for three hours, run over the entire case in my mind, alphabetised the periodic table, made a mental list of my favourite elements in the periodic table from Plutonium to Helium, decided I wanted to adopt a dog, further weighed the pros and cons of each of forty of my favourite breeds, decided on an Italian Greyhound, and was in the process of naming said Italian Greyhound when I developed the splitting headache that drove me out of bed to the A&E where John worked.
Defaulting to the least mind-consuming strategy I had, I began airplaying my favourite Mozart violin concerto. This tactic served me well until John came to get me.
He snapped on the light and I automatically began deducing the room. I squeezed my eyes shut after a moment.
“Oh. Sorry,” I heard, followed by the sounds of him hanging up his lab coat and putting on his jacket. A drawer opened and closed and then there was a brush of fingers against my wrist. I opened my eyes to see John’s face less than a foot in front of me, effectively blocking out the rest of the room.
“Ready?” He asked quietly.
“Yes.”
On the way out I kept my eyes down. The cool night air felt glorious and smelled of London in a way that was both puzzling and relaxing. So many different scents mixed together, so many that I couldn’t identify a single one.
I hailed a cab and was pleased that the one that we clambered into was freshly cleaned and almost completely devoid of deducible prints, tears, fibres, and spills.
John was silent as we rode to the flat. Over the past year he’d grown accustomed to these bouts of hypersensitivity of mine. Sensory overload, he called them, though I disagreed. It was not that sensory input was painful so much as I was unable to turn off the hyper-acute mental processes that were so useful in a case so I was unable to ignore anything at all, from the humming of a refrigerator to the scratch of a tag in my clothing to a book sticking out two centimetres more than the next on a bookshelf across the room. He argued that that was what he meant.
We finally reached Baker Street and John led me inside. The flat was exactly how I left it and thankfully nothing screamed at me for deduction. I shed my coat, scarf, shoes, socks, and belt on my path to the bedroom, dropping them on the floor. John, who usually chastised me for doing just that, said nothing as he hung up his own jacket and took off his own shoes.
I quickly took off my shirt and climbed into bed, relishing the feel of my bare torso against the soft sheets, a huge difference from the crinkly material of the shirt that was usually okay but had become unbearable.
I heard the shower turn on and seven minutes later John came into the room, smelling like John and soap and nothing else. He was dressed only in his red pants, which made me smile.
He climbed into bed on the other side of me and immediately wrapped his arms around my middle before pressing his lips to mine.
His mouth was soft, the kiss unhurried. As it slowly deepened, fewer and fewer persistent thoughts flashed before me until finally our tongues twined together and the only thing in my mind was the feel of his mouth on mine, his arms around me.
That was the only way I’d ever found to quiet my mind, and John was only too willing to help.
We pulled apart but stayed close, our noses nearly touching, and I sighed contentedly.
“I love you,” was the last thing I heard John whisper before I slipped gratefully into a dreamless sleep.