Disclaimer: not mine. Don't sue.
Muse
Life could be surreal sometimes. It was supposed to be a minor annoyance, not a life changing event. John Watson was a journalist. He usually wrote crime news. So, his job entailed recounting grisly accidents. Murders, if he was lucky. Serial killers were an unexpected blessing. (He might be a bit cynic, yeah, but do you know how much a good writer can milk such a subject?)
A colleague was ill, though, so he agreed to interview a ballet...étoile, was that the term even for male dancers? He didn't even know. He would need to do research before actually writing anything. He had to meet Sherlock Holmes. A stage name – too weird not to be so – but a catchy one, for sure. Oh, well. It would be boring, but he could ask the standard questions. When have you started considering this career, what are your hobbies, are you attached and so on.
He didn't expect Sherlock to loudly proclaim his own boredom upon meeting him. Or the man announcing that he'd answer questions if he could pose them too, to marginally entertain himself and in the interest of fairness. John agreed. He could erase them from the article and be done with that, and if Sherlock was bizarre it only added to the quirky characterization he'd write.
John certainly didn't predict that Sherlock would deduce his whole personal life – but a couple of details he actually queried about – and ask for confirmation of his inferences. If he hadn't filled in for Julian at the last minute, John would suspect the man to be a creep who researched him and seriously ponder going to the police. As it was, he could only utter superlatives in an almost breathless voice, making Sherlock preen under the praise.
He ended that interview being offered a flat share, "because you don't like your current home and I find you interesting," and accepting against his better judgement. So here he was, under Sherlock's spell, no matter how much of a git the other man might sometimes be or how little of him he saw. In truth, Sherlock seemed to live inside the gym. (There's dedication to one's work, which John understood. And then there was Sherlock. His own category.) but the man lived for the applause, and would give his all to deserve it. John would tell him he only has to exist and be himself to be kudized, but he was too embarrassed to do so.
Still, sometimes, Sherlock deduced people for the fun of it (John's as well as his now). Watson couldn't help but feel that Sherlock had missed his true life calling. So, once, he got a crime scene's photos and asked Sherlock to deduce them.
"Do you need a hand writing the article?" Sherlock had inquired, somehow snidely.
"It's an experiment," he replied calmly.
Sherlock had agreed then (nothing better to do, after all)...and two weeks later his deductions were proved correct by the police's arrest of the guilty man.
Sherlock wouldn't leave the stage to work for the police. Of course not. It would be ridiculous to throw away his career like that. He couldn't do that to his fans. Or to himself. He wouldn't survive out of his habitat.
But John's secret dream had always been to foray into creative writing, instead of simply reporting what happened. He thought he'd write a mystery novel – you know what they say, write about what you know – and he had a few good plots in mind. Yet he'd always been stumped by the need to find an adequate main character. His friends on the police force weren't exactly hero material. That problem just dissolved. Sherlock would never be a detective. But John had found his perfect Muse.