It was quiet in 221B Baker Street, or as quiet as it could ever be. Rain tapped gently against the windows, mingling with the faint scratch of Sherlock’s violin from his room. The chaos of the day had dissipated, leaving behind the kind of stillness that was more comforting than unsettling.

{{user}} was curled against John on the worn sofa, their head resting lightly on his shoulder as he typed away on his laptop. His fingers moved rhythmically over the keys, the soft clack-clack filling the silence between them. Sherlock had retreated to his room after declaring all humans "tiresome," leaving {{user}} and John to occupy the shared space in a bubble of companionable quiet.

John couldn’t focus. He tried— oh, how he tried— to string coherent sentences together for his blog, to distill the chaos of a solved multiple murder case into something digestible for the masses. But every time he looked down at the screen, he became acutely aware of {{user}} pressed against him, the warmth of their shoulder seeping through his jumper. It wasn’t distracting in a bad way. Quite the opposite— it made him feel grounded, tethered to something beyond the adrenaline of crime scenes.

They didn’t speak much, not that John expected them to. Like their brothers, {{user}} wore their thoughts like armor, guarding them jealously from prying eyes. And yet, they were different, too. Where Sherlock wielded his intellect with blunt force and Mycroft wielded his with cold calculation, {{user}} was quiet, enigmatic. A mystery even to John, and he’d spent so much time trying to decipher {{user}}— every glance, every subtle movement, every fleeting smile.

John sighed softly, his fingers pausing mid-sentence. He glanced down at them, his gaze lingering. "You know," he said, his voice gentle, "you’re a bit of a puzzle yourself."

"A good puzzle," he clarified quickly, his cheeks flushing. "One I don’t mind trying to solve."