Sherlock didn't stay in his room for long. He never did; too little to do in there, compared with the diversions offered by the mess of the living room. It was comfortable, where his room lacked a certain personality - John's personality, Sherlock thought idly, as he sifted through the stack of newspaper clippings he'd been curating over the past year or so. His flatmate had left the armchair a few minutes after Sherlock himself had retreated, probably waiting only until the flush in his cheeks had died down a little before moving. He hadn't anticipated the effect he had been having on John recently – it was behaviour he'd grown to expect from a certain kind of woman that he particularly disliked, and of course a certain kind of man, too, though John didn't fit this description as he currently understood it. Sherlock was used to being the centre of attention, this was true, and whilst not particularly vain (Deerstalker aside – he picked it up from where John had tossed it and placed it firmly on his head, and shivered pleasantly at the warmth it offered) he was serviceably aware of his own moderate-if-unconventional good looks. He dressed himself well because his work required it; there's simply no place for a poorly-attired genius in this town, and Sherlock for one was not going to give up his position of begrudged respect simply for refusing to buy a well-cut suit.

He stayed in the living room for the remainder of the evening, and well into the night found diversion in the form of alphabetising his books, a few lesser experiments, some light reading here and there. He put his mind to the study of the stars, as gaps in his knowledge displeased him so, and with not inconsiderate effort spent the small hours mapping out the constellations on the ceiling with a silver pen found in Mrs Hudson's christmas box. Said effort, it turns out, was the final push he needed, and as dawn broke Sherlock finally fell over the precipice of sleep. It was like this that John found him, sprawled under inky heavens, metallic smears highlighting the promontories of his cheekbones. With little thought as to how appropriate an action it was – he had woke from fitful sleep and ventured into their living quarters only for tea and paracetamol – John first sat, and then laid himself down too, crown-to-crown and parallel with Sherlock, his last act before falling back to sleep being to reach over his head and remove the Deerstalker once and for all, throwing it far into the corner of the room, to disappear behind the sofa and mingle with the dust.

They wake slowly, but simultaneously. Sherlock first, as in every pursuit; arching his back from the floor and blinking furiously at the beam of mote-flecked light that had turned his eyelids to tissue. The motion of his spine and the shiver it sent through the floorboards stirred John sufficiently for him to roll onto his side, a position that gave him a clean line of sight to the underside of the most distant sofa, and the hat that lay under it. Only now did Sherlock acknowledge that he was not alone on the floor – he'd deny this, later, observational genius and all – and noting his gaze from the position of his head shifted slightly to the right, so as to see what had made John gulp and stiffen.

"Interesting." Sherlock turned his eyes back to the stars.

- - - - - - - - - - - - – -

In the weeks that followed, the doctor found himself more time for work, spent the evenings with his less enigmatic colleagues, and generally put quite a lot of effort into making himself scarce. The chance to further his practise was fulfilling, his new friends perfectly congenial, but all the while he was conscious that there was somewhere else he should be, another person he ought to be beside. It's not that he misses the detective work; Mycroft still drops the odd case into his lap when Sherlock is being particularly petulant, and he will still assist his flatmate when the questions he is asked are actually pertinent to his expertise, but rather, as the dull ache in his chest will attest to, he misses the detective. Sherlock, to his credit, took the hint fairly early on. The texts thinned out to a solitary message a day, enquiring as to the time when he would be returning home; he'd cut his caseload dramatically since the starry night, instead taking to experiment and chat shows with alarming fervour, and thanks to quite repetitive viewings of culinary programmes had begun to learn to cook, much to John's surprise and suspicion. He saw it for what it was: a deliberate step backwards, to create a life reprehensibly perfect. The only constant, the thing that linked before to after, was the Deerstalker – Sherlock had taken to wearing it religiously in John's presence, and the thought of what it represented was enough to deepen the regret he already felt so surely.

It took Mycroft to break the silence, in the end.

"You do understand, don't you," the older man said, off-hand, when his hand caught the doors of the lift John used to exit his surgery, "quite the change you've brought about in him?"

He didn't need to point out the subject of his question.

"I didn't do anything," John muttered, stabbing the button for the ground floor with bitten nails.

"I understand he informed you that he was aware of your attraction to him."

"...Yes. I've no idea why he's acting so oddly now, though. You know, for him. He cooks, Mycroft. It's strange."

"Don't you see?" Mycroft pulled firmly on John's shoulders, so as to get a clear view of his face. "He's trying to win you back."

"But I never left! I upped my hours and made some friends in the process. The fact that it means I spend less time with him is unfortunate, but perhaps a good thing, in the long run. It was unhealthy, the time we spent together. I didn't want to..." John paused, making to leave the lift as it pulled into his floor, but Mycroft stuck his hand out and hit the door closure button.

"You didn't want to what, John?"

"As thrilling and beguiling and bloody exciting as he is to be around, I didn't want to fall for him," John glared at Mycroft for drawing this out from him, and pushed him away from the control panel to open the door manually, "because we both know how badly that would end."

Sherlock was miserable when alone. The thought came upon him suddenly, and the flash of deep, raw feeling that accompanied it was enough to force him into an armchair. He hadn't thought himself capable of misery. It was far too loaded an emotion to apply to him, too redolent of cheap melodrama and, well, Stephen King. Which is not to say he isn't capable of melodrama, he conceded – it's just that his particular brand is far from tawdry, and often completely constructed to ease a spell of boredom. He was willing to admit to missing John, in the sense that all superheroes need a sidekick, and would even go so far as to agree that his absence was partly his fault. He had over-reacted, he decided, with the cooking and cleaning and general domestic about-face. John was clearly not so bothered by his looks as to warrant all that. It was this side of relationships that were largely a mystery to him – he could deal perfectly well with the doing of interesting things, had no shortage of anecdotes to draw on, understood the mechanics of sexual relations well enough to assure himself that when the time comes he would be adequately competent. But making himself care, finding it in himself to not bore of a person – it was a task he'd never fully completed. John was growing tiresome in his distance, any closeness they had once shared was being torn asunder by his refusal to return to their previous intimacy. He had even gone so far as to complain to Mycroft about it, asking him to source a new flatmate if John was going to continue to pull away from him. He recognised the signs well enough to know that if something didn't change between them soon, then nothing ever would.

And so it was that John returned home, still flustered from his encounter with the other Holmes brother, to a house resolutely not tidied, and a kitchen returned to the filth he had grown distantly accustomed to. It was meticulous, the dirt – no area remained un-sullied by paper or ink, fluids of indeterminate origin returned a welcome tack to the linoleum. There were, he noted with unfaltering enthusiasm, body parts in the bread bin.

His first thought was to check for a ransom note. Bloodstains, perhaps. A foreign weapon embedded in the sofa. But no, things were in order, of sorts – Sherlock's brogues were strewn around the front door, as was once usual, his coat hanging on the back of a chair. His deerstalker perched on the skull. Oh. Oh.

"You missed me," he said quietly to the room, observation rather than accusation.

"I gather it was mutual."

John spun round, a smile blossoming on his face before he made it through the full 180 degrees.

"Well. I can't say I didn't enjoy the peace and quiet," he admitted. "Though your cooking is truly awful."

Sherlock grinned, and moved to pull on shoes and coat.

"Thank God, I was beginning to lose all hope of ever enjoying that interminable activity. Takeaway? I fancy chinese. I'll pay."

"You're bloody right you'll pay."

Sherlock had nearly made it out of the door before John's next question occurred to him.

"No hat, Sherlock?"

"Not today, John."