XXV
Steps
It was impossible to tell if Sherlock wanted to be famous.
On one hand, he took great pride in himself and his work (as evident by his website and the ostentatious way he set about dissecting police investigations). On the other, he hated being around people whom he deemed "lesser" than him (which was pretty much everyone).
On one hand, he loved being flattered by comments such as "brilliant" and "intriguing". On the other, he was incompetent when it came to social interactions (any witnessed conversation with Molly quickly led to embarrassment on the observer's part).
This argument went nowhere.
Stride
When he was a child, he wanted to be famous. The world was supposed to revolve around him, but instead it shunned and ignored him, leaving him to watch the other kids with the shiny playthings he could never have.
How foolish his mind had been then, desperate for glittery (but temporary) joys. There was much more sophisticated pleasure to be found in the darkness behind the stage. Now he pulled the strings, watching the world react. He was no more than a phantom to them, but from this vantage point, the world became his plaything.
And it was glorious.
Stumble
As a male DI, it took much resistance to embarrassment to admit he had once wanted to be an actor.
Fame's allure had worn off with time, but he wondered whether it would have been a better life, the actor's world of make-believe… and then he would walk into a room of journalists, thanking God he had had the sense to ignore that childish need to be seen and appreciated.
But then – particularly after a day of witnessing the worst humanity could offer – he would speculate whether it would have been better to pretend, rather than see it for real.
Leap
It was ridiculous.
But then much of his life after meeting Sherlock had been ridiculous.
His blog hadn't meant to be much. But as the years rolled on and he continued recounting the idiosyncratic genius of his flatmate and the bizarre, dangerous cases, the number of hits continued to grow until he had thousands of followers from every country imaginable and he was pestered by e-mailed requests from television programmes for interviews and book companies for publishing rights.
After a while, Sherlock said that accidental fame suited him, but warned against getting an "inflated ego".
That was ridiculous as well.
Fall
Jealousy was a purposeless emotion; when it wasn't harassing him, it was replaced by irritating feelings of resentment for a blog.
So what if John wrote it? So what if it had more hits than his own website? Hit numbers lied – most of those people probably didn't even read it, they probably got there by accident.
These accidental visitors had accidentally made John famous; now people wanted to talk to his flatmate about him. Why they couldn't be bothered to talk to him about himself, he didn't know…
… but he wouldn't want to talk to them anyway, the dullards.