The good doctor's abandoned him again tonight, gone out to dinner with some generic new woman, and Sherlock's finding himself increasingly resentful. Worse, he's bored. He's fussed with his violin and checked on some experiments, but nothing seems to be calming his agitation.
Irritably, he rummages through the drawer in the small shared desk, shifting papers around until he finds what he was looking for. His hands close around a small leather-bound volume, and he fishes it out of the drawer, mindful not to disturb anything else.
He stokes the fire and drops abruptly into his own chair, his gaze absorbed in the pages of the little volume. He picks a page at random, scanning it intently. Deborah. Was she the one with the dogs? Unimportant. Meticulously, he removes the page with her name, phone number, and email address, and tosses it into the fireplace. Michelle. Simpering, dull. Up in flames. Rose-Marie. Notable only due to the fact that she tossed a drink in Sherlock's face. Emma. That name doesn't even conjure up an image, so memorable was she.
He repeats the process until there's more empty space than paper, and finally tosses the whole thing into the hearth.
Sherlock feels a strange sense of satisfaction as he watches the tongues of flame consume what's left of John's little black book.