Quickly establish just how fast or slow you want the relationship to go. It's often hard to keep your hands off the person you're dating if they live in the same flat. It's even harder (no pun intended) if they can easily tell whenever you're feeling, well, interested. Just remember, you can say no to sex, even if your relationship started because you shagged in your lounge after an adrenaline fueled run through the city chasing a dog walker/murder suspect.

The shower had just reached optimal temperature and John had just taken himself in hand when he heard the door open and feet not so quietly shuffling into the room.

"I locked the door for a reason," he gritted.

"Once you've breached more than one of someone else's orifices, they're allowed to walk in on you in the bathroom."

"You're not joining me, Sherlock."

"It's water conservation, and I thought I might help you with your erection."

"That counts as sex. I thought we agreed on this."

"Six dates is absurd. Most popular woman's magazines dictate three or four dates is enough as is, and that's with men who are relative strangers before dating."

"We'll talk about this later. Go."

"Just kissing?"

"No."

"Can I watch?"

"If you're here, it counts."

John shuffled into the kitchen, hair still damp, wearing only his pajama pants and a content smile. Sherlock was seated at the table, prodding some mould samples and looking exceptionally cross.

"You do know why I want to wait, right?" John began.

He sat down across the table from his flatmate, where there was, surprisingly, a cup of tea waiting for him.

"You're worried our relationship will become strictly physical, which is absolutely rubbish. We've had a relationship for quite some time now."

"Friendship is not the same as dating," John corrected. "Thanks for the tea, by the way. Didn't know you could make it."

"It's simple enough."

"Try it more often, then. We get on, that's all we know. I don't know if you like to hold hands in public or cuddling on the couch or how you feel about anniversaries. They're little things, but they're important. Sex complicates things, it moves relationships at a faster pace."

"Your notions are idiotic. There's no reason for you to masturbate in the shower when you have a willing partner living with you."

"And that's it," John stated. "We live together. We're best mates. Once is one thing, but if we start shagging regularly before we know for sure that we're compatible in that way, it'll ruin a lot of things. Six dates isn't that many, honestly."

"We've gone on two," Sherlock scowled. "It has been two weeks. Your libido is more active than mine, I don't know why we're doing this if you're punishing yourself as well."

"It'll be the same as before, we handled that, but now we can acknowledge that we're going somewhere with this."

Sherlock glared at him from across the table and continued prodding the mould. Silently, John rose out of his seat and walked over to his flatmate, grabbing his chair and moving it so it was facing him. The petri dishes on the table clattered. John smirked as he sunk down on the other man's lap.

"You've ruined my experiment," Sherlock pouted.

"Stop being such a child. I forgot to mention the part where I'd very much so like to take you up on the kissing offer from earlier."

"Oh."

They pressed their foreheads together, John suppressing a giggle for a few brief moments. He started the kiss, the almost chaste meeting of two mouths. The second one proved awkward, both attempting to use tongues at almost the same moment, but then settling into some sort of rhythm. John's hands tangled themselves in Sherlock's hair while Sherlock's hands busied themselves exploring every inch of exposed flesh they could without passing over some unseen barrier. The kiss deepened, becoming a delicious movement of teeth and tongues until Sherlock moaned and John realized he had begun unbuttoning his flatmate's shirt. John pulled away, forcing himself to frown.

"Controlled kissing," he panted. "It's like an experiment, yeah?"

Furthermore, set aside guidelines as to what constitutes as dating and what are normal activities. Cuddling on the sofa does not necessarily count as an impromptu date. Also, normal flatmate activities shouldn't be considered proper dates. (It's up to you to decide if dates interrupted by trips to crime scenes count.)

John watched as Sherlock practically sprinted up the stairs, the bags in his hands rustling as he made it up the seventeen steps. He grinned to himself as he headed up, not quite matching his pace, but with a sort of joy people shouldn't feel just because their flatmate bothered to go shopping with them.

"I think this is the first time you've ever been to the store with me," John said as he placed his bags on the table.

"It's not that difficult to do the shopping," Sherlock scoffed. He had already deposited his bags and positioned himself near the fridge, likely in an attempt to be in John's way as much as possible.

"I like the company sometimes. You should help me more often."

"Does this count for you?"

"As a date?" John asked, holding a head of lettuce. "No, it's errands."

"Yes, but we went out together and we enjoyed each other's company. That seems close enough to your previously stated definition of a date."

"If I counted every time we had a giggle in public as a date, we'd have shagged within the first two weeks of living together."

"Well why didn't you then?"

"Because it's not- this is normal flatmate things. We should have been doing this the whole time."

John opened the fridge door, carefully inspecting the contents for the safest place to put the lettuce.

"Not unlike the sex you continue to deny us," Sherlock stated.

Without replying, John closed the refrigerator door and raised himself on tip toe to give the other man a small, hopeful kiss.

"Is that aftershave I smell? Then I'll count this as a quarter of a date."

He giggled and then nestled his head against Sherlock's neck, planting delicate kisses and softly humming to himself.

Don't forget what your responsibilities as a flatmate are. Someone picks up the tab at a restaurant when you're dating but that doesn't mean one of you should be solely responsible for the heating bill. Also, you can't let housekeeping slide just because the person you're living with happens to be quite infatuated with you.

"I'm going to freeze my bollocks off," John exclaimed. "It's so cold."

He made his way into the kitchen, bare feet feeling frozen on the floor. Tea was the only clear solution he could think of for this particular problem. He pulled down two mugs and put the kettle on.

"I'd prefer if you didn't," Sherlock commented, following behind him. "I'm quite fond of the idea of you being fully intact. Good morning."

Sherlock pressed himself along John's back, attempting to wrap the ends of his dressing gown around the increasingly fidgety man.

"Morning," John replied, sounding more relaxed.

"Slept well?"

"Too cold. Did you pay your share of the heating bill?"

"Of course not," Sherlock murmured into John's neck. "I thought you were going to pay this month, since I've been covering all of our dates."

"That's not how this works. You have to pay every month and you have to tell me when you don't ahead of time so I can sleep in peace."

He felt the man behind him shrug and then the soft pressure of kisses along his shoulder as his t-shirt was pulled aside. His toes curled on the cold floor and he couldn't help but smile. Then the kettle hissed and he moved forward. He poured the water into the mugs and deposited a tea bag in each as Sherlock searched for the sugar. As he padded over to the fridge, he cast an appreciative glance over to his flatmate's arse as Sherlock leaned over the table to grab the sugar. He stood with the fridge door open for a few moments before speaking.

"Is that semen next to the butter?"

"Don't worry, it's mine."

"That wasn't really the concern."

Not everything has to be neatly labeled, but make sure you have some sort of "accepted title" for your flatmate/significant other/delicately ego-ed love interest who needs a surprising amount of affirmation in their personal life.

John looked over his shoulder, casting one last glance at his Uni friend, who he chanced upon in the street. He had managed to get Sherlock to go to the store with him again and they were walking home, enjoying the night air as best as they could.

"Didn't think I'd ever see him again," he said. "We played rugby together. He was rubbish. I thought he moved to Scotland."

"He did, but he cheated on his wife and she kicked him out. He likely moved to London for better employment opportunities, or to avoid his girlfriend who didn't know he was married," Sherlock mumbled beside him.

"Remember that discussion I had about you deducing my friends?"

"Please, he made everything painfully obvious. Why did you tell him that I'm your flatmate?"

"Because you are," John replied, sounding far more confused than Sherlock thought he should be.

"Yes, but that's the most basic label for our relationship, and not descriptive at all."

"Is this about the friend-colleague thing again?" John asked. "I apologized for that. We're flatmates, that's the easiest way to describe it. Besides."

John held up his left hand, which was firmly clasped in the other man's gloved right hand.

"He's not the only one who made everything painfully obvious," John continued, smiling.

"I'd still like something official. A word that isn't so sterile and inefficient. I like everything categorized."

"That's fine."

"You'd probably object to the term 'partner' this early in the relationship, but 'boyfriend' is too juvenile for my taste."

"Partner is fine," John stated. "I think it sums everything up as nicely as it can. It covers flatmates, friends, even colleagues, and will sound less awkward than lovers."

"I don't know. I quite like lovers, now that you mention it."

Make sure you get your work done. It's very easy to not get much work done when the most distracting thing in the world lives in the same building as you do. There's really no hope for this. Locking yourself in your room to get something done will not help when you hear explosions in the kitchen or get your lock frequently picked by your partner.

It was probably nothing, likely just the microwave malfunctioning. Or a pot boiling some odd substance.

"John!"

"I'm trying to work on my blog, can you handle this yourself?"

"This may involve acid."

John practically barrel rolled out of bed, hastily making his way down the stairs. He tripped on the bottom step, half expecting there to be more.

"False alarm," Sherlock announced from the kitchen. "The experiment is going as expected."

"Why are you using my kettle for an experiment?"

"Because I need it, obviously. Why were you blogging in just your pants?"

"I was in my room, alone, peacefully enjoying some quiet time, which between my job, cases, and dating a complete lunatic, I don't get much of."

Sherlock strode out of the kitchen, approaching John and greeting him with a warm kiss.

"You've been up in your room all day. I miss you."

"You lock yourself in your room often too."

"Not since we started this," Sherlock defended.

"I'll come out into the lounge if you promise to not try to distract me."

"You know I don't do commonplace promises, John."

John went back to his room and returned a few minutes later with his laptop and, to Sherlock's dismay, a pair of trousers and jumper on. He settled on the couch, attempting to make himself as comfortable as possible. Sherlock puttered quietly around the kitchen for a few minutes more, casting glances at John every so often. Soon enough, he sat on the opposite end of the sofa, reading some oversized Russian book.

"You're distracting me," John said.

"I'm reading."

"If you're going to distract me by reading, you might as well do it closer to me."

John patted the seat next to him and sent an inviting smile in his flatmate's direction. Within an instant, Sherlock had repositioned himself shoulder to shoulder with John who squeezed his knee before returning to typing.

"You should really learn how to type properly," Sherlock commented, casting him a sidelong glance.

"I know how," John defended.

"You would get your task at hand done a lot sooner so that we could have a nice snog on the sofa."

"I said no distractions, remember?"

"I happen to have evidence that suggests that my kissing ability is quite above the level of being a simple distraction. Perhaps I'm wrong, though."

"Are you attempting at being a tease?"

"Why, John, is it working?"

The laptop clicked shut.