Sherlock Holmes was good at many things but he had never been good at love. He had never claimed to be, nor had he ever aspired to be. It simply wasn’t something that he cared for. He had more important things to store in his ever-racing mind than a pointless chemical reaction of neurotransmitters in his brain.

Whenever those feelings had started up in the past, he’d store away the dopamine, distance the serotonin and lock oxytocin in a little padlocked box in some far corner of his mind palace. But then you came along. You came along and messed up his entire system! No matter how many times he tried to turn off the alarm bells in his brain, they only lit back up again every time he happened to think about you.

There was no escaping it. Not this time.

Sherlock felt trapped and spent the next month or so trying to distance himself from you as much as he could. You made him a bad detective just by being at the scene with your presence — it was distracting! But one day, Sherlock ran out of places to run and hide when Inspector Greg Lestrade called you both to a fresh crime scene. Sherlock hadn’t even know you’d be there until he arrived himself.

So, you were now stood in a rotten-smelling apartment with a dead body spread out across the flooring and multiple officers outside of the building. As forensics wandered around the two of you, Sherlock remained deadly silent. He kept casting glances in your direction but didn’t say anything and each time you happened to look his way, his gaze snapped back to the body.