Sherlock's lips catch petulance and melancholia in the weeks before he crosses over into sensibility, and until then John watches him slump all over the flat.
Because of course Sherlock's right, it would be boring.
John had countered that it would be good for business, and Sherlock had waved his hand—dull—before collapsing onto the sofa in a puddle of blue satin and refusing everything beyond the scope of nicotine for the next three days.
Sherlock had taken on their latest client—a rather predictable vigilante justice type—merely to appease John's conscience, and his usual game of taunting the Yard with the exact degree of idiocy they had once again demonstrated themselves to possess was proving unsatisfying. Their latest attempt to indict him for tax code violations—tax code, as though he were as crass as Al Capone—was pathetic, really, and he had texted Detective Inspector Lestrade to tell him just that, along with a plea that the next cretin to try and take him down be accustomed to using at least fifteen percent of his cranial capacity.
The next cretin turns out to be James Moriarty, and Sherlock doesn't need to sleep.
"He wants to be kidnapped," Sherlock remarks on the afternoon of the third murder.
John lets the 'sorry?' go unsaid, Sherlock doesn't shoot him a look that would crumple steel, and they move without hindrance into Sherlock's explanation. They've found that cutting out the extras can save a lot of time.
"Consulting Detective, John."
John hums lightly in understanding. When they'd picked up their first case—they were more like requests, really, but Sherlock liked the clinical sound, so cases it was—Sherlock had joked that they print business cards that featured the epigraph Consulting Criminal. "Dear Sherlock," John had chuckled, "will you fix it for me?" Sherlock might even have gnawed at an entire leg of chicken that day.
"Not a coincidence," says Sherlock.
"I didn't say it was."
"You were thinking it. What he calls himself…no, he wants to get to me, but not as much as he wants me to get to him."
"Not much of an instinct for self-preservation," says John, glaring a bit as Sherlock turns away from him to intercept yet another text. He can't allow himself to feel bad for long; Sherlock's infinitely more preferable when he's got a case, vacillating between the jumped-up heat of a tungsten bulb and the low-slung haze of deep thought.
"He's a fan," Sherlock says, and the corners of his mouth turn down in a minor indulgence of disgust.
John flicks through the papers and he knows that Sherlock loves it.