For this prompt on the meme of kink:

"John compliments someone else in the way he usually does Sherlock (that's amazing, extraordinary etc) in Sherlock's hearing, once or multiple times. Cue Sherlock becoming paranoid, and desperately scrambling around doing increasingly ridiculous things to prove to John that he is the brilliant one. John has no idea why Sherlock is behaving so oddly. Whether they figure it out or not is up to you.

(Bonus points if the complimentee is Anderson.)"


Parties. There was a reason Sherlock Holmes hated them - well, several reasons, boiling down to a combination of the alcohol and noise and amount of half-witted people gathered in one spot, not to mention the general pointlessness of lingering near the munchies table picking at Doritos when he could just as well have been having Chinese with John in a quiet restaurant winding down at the end of a long and tedious case.

Unfortunately, Lestrade had had other ideas. The 'Blacktown Butcher', as the media had nicknamed him, infamous for carving up five women before Scotland Yard came to their senses and called Sherlock in, two more before Sherlock worked out who he was, and had been in the process of slicing and dicing an eighth when the police burst into his warehouse (always a warehouse, uncreative, uncreative) and announced he was under arrest. Now the butcher was behind bars and Sherlock had been forced into this utterly hateful conglomeration of plebeian police officers celebrating their victory with plastic cups of champagne and snacks from the vending machine down the hall.

Hardly Sherlock's idea of a good time.

He would have been out of there as soon as the case was over if it wasn't for a certain John Watson, who had thwarted his plans by accepting a drink, joining in the inane toasts (to things like 'justice' which Sherlock personally thought was absurd, justice was a concept and honouring it like a person was really kind of pointless) and was now laughing and joking with a group of officers some way away, totally oblivious to Sherlock's suffering.

Yes, suffering! Because it was honestly painful to think about how much time he was wasting standing here eating slightly stale corn chips watching Anderson making a fool of himself by… actually, he wasn't sure what Anderson was doing, but it was stupid, whatever it was.

"Having fun?"

Lestrade had come up by his shoulder, nursing a cup of tea (where did he get tea from, there was only champagne here, Sherlock wanted tea too).

Sherlock didn't bother responding to such an asinine question, though he did deign to give Lestrade a quick glance (wife hasn't called, just spoke to Dimmock, needs to floss teeth) before giving a disdainful sniff and consuming another dorito.

"John seems to be enjoying himself," Lestrade continued, gazing over at said doctor who was currently watching Anderson with rapt attention as the other man spoke animatedly. From this distance Sherlock couldn't hear what he was saying but if he was reading the lips correctly (and of course he was, because the great Holmes is never incorrect) it was something to do with dinosaur fossils.

Okay, this was going too far, since when was John interested in paleontology?

"And I personally thought Gregg was a bit unfair, you're not even listening to me, are you?"

Sherlock turned his attention back to Lestrade irritably. "Of course not," he replied. "Not when you're talking about such menial things."

Lestrade just gave a long suffering sigh, patted Sherlock on the arm and muttered something about Masterchef and going to the pub before exiting the room. Sherlock watched him leave with barely contained envy (how come HE gets to escape?) before deciding that enough was enough. Sherlock didn't want to be here therefore they would leave and John would just have to deal with being dragged away from the free drinks and Anderon's apparently riveting-

"Brilliant!"

Sherlock froze, immediately attuned to that tone of voice. That was John's Sherlock-you-are-so-amazing tone, and he automatically preened. Although to be honest, he wasn't quite certain what John was praising him for, because the only spectacular thing he had done in the last few minutes was polish off the last of the chips so as to deprive the Yarders of the junk food. Really he was doing them a favour, some of them had mentioned diets which they were quite obviously breaking.

Perhaps John was praising him for simply existing, which he wouldn't be surprised about. Sherlock was quite aware that he was an extraordinary person, on a higher intellectual plane than most other humans-

"Really, that's amazing."

And crash! Back down to reality as he realised with growing horror that John's comments were addressed to, of all people… Anderson?

It was like a slap in the face. Sherlock could actually feel his blood growing cold. To add insult to injury, John was now shaking Anderson's hand - Anderson, who made lame Jurassic Park references and was about as amazing as a tin of corned beef.

With great effort Sherlock managed to adjust his features from stunned mullet to angry scowl to mask of aloof scornfulness, and walked calmly over to stand next to John, glowering at Anderson.

"Sherlock," John greeted with a smile, as if he hadn't just committed an act of complete and utter betrayal.

"John," Sherlock replied coldly. "Anderson." This last word said with the sort of derision he usually reserved for comments about Mycroft's diet.

Anderson just gave him an odd look. "Evening," he said carefully, as though Sherlock's greeting had to be some sort of trap. Sherlock wanted to shake John; couldn't he see that Anderson was obviously one of the dimmer specimens of humanity?

"We've been having a fascinating chat," John went on. "Anderson went on a paleontology excursion to the Sahara last year, dug up dinosaur bones and everything."

"How intriguing," Sherlock said flatly.

"It's actually quite interesting!" John continued, oblivious to Sherlock's mental anguish.

Anderson gave a tight smile. "I suppose you're as knowledgeable about dinosaurs as you are about everything else?" he asked Sherlock, and Sherlock picked up on the underlying challenge. This was obviously some sort of test… Anderson was questioning his genius. This was Anderson's area of expertise. He thought he knew more about this.

The problem was, he apparently did. Sherlock wracked his brains for any sort of intelligent fact he could find about prehistoric wildlife. He rummaged furiously through his mental filing cabinet only to find that, heavens above, he'd deleted it. This was on par with the Solar System incident. After all, dinosaurs were extinct, why the blazes would he ever need to know about them?

"I tend to devote my studies to more useful pursuits," Sherlock finally said, and Anderson smirked at him, actually smirked, the little snot.

Sherlock smirked back. "I see you've been having problems with your wife," he continued, and Anderson's face twisted into a scowl. "My my, she's started refusing to do your laundry, has she? That is terrible, especially considering Donovan's moved on to Gregson, really, that woman needs to start carrying her own deodorant in her purse. It seems both your woman have gone off yo-"

He broke off as John elbowed him.

John elbowed him!

He was stunned into silence and Anderson took the opportunity to cut in.

"At least I have a woman," he replied, which wasn't the most intelligent comeback but you know, it was the principle of the matter, having the last word and all. "Goodnight John," he added, and strode off, casting a discreet glance in Donovan's direction as he did so.

Sherlock finally recovered himself and turned to John with a glare.

"That was rude," John said, and sounded disappointed. Anger, Sherlock could deal with, but disappointment tended to cut deep into him and bring up all those despised feelings that he hated thinking about.

"That was Anderson," Sherlock pointed out, as though it explained everything, but John was shaking his head.

"No, Sherlock, that was rude. And don't start telling me that Anderson's an idiot, because to you everyone who's not 10x above average intelligence is an idiot. To you, I'm an idiot."

Sherlock opened his mouth to protest but John barelled on.

"Anderson actually knows a lot about that stuff. I found it interesting." He paused and took a breath, then gave Sherlock a slight smile, which in John-language meant that the lesson about how not to be socially awkward was over and whatever transgression Sherlock had made was forgiven. "Now that that's over with, let's get back to the flat, I'm exhausted. Have you eaten?"

Sherlock nodded mutely, but his brain was stuck on 'really, that's amazing' and 'I found it interesting'. This was not how the world worked. What if John didn't think he was amazing any more? Oh, it seemed like a childish thing to worry about, but right now it was a very real concern. A very real danger.

Sherlock was the amazing one. The brilliant one.

His brain worked furiously as they exited the building and hailed a cab. He would just have to regain John's attentions. Prove to him that he was the one worthy of praise. Not Anderson, and certainly not dinosaurs.

Challenge accepted.


A/N: It's been quite a while since I wrote anything Sherlock, so constructive criticism is greatly appreciated! Please and thank you.

First time posting in this fandom too, so I'm a bit nervous.