Weeks passed after Sherlock's unexpected nighttime visit, until one night, after dinner, something happened. Something so out of the ordinary, something so small, yet so earth-shatteringly significant, that it would literally change everything. Or, well, it would change everything concerning Sherlock and John and their life at 221B Baker Street. This small thing happened after a particularly eventful but very satisfying day, during the course of which the world's only consulting detective and his faithful sidekick slash bodyguard slash friend slash private medical examiner – and let's not go into the other possibilities that less savoury magazines have come up with, please choose whichever role you deem appropriate at any given time – had solved not one, but two cases, one of which involved the high-profile kidnapping of the son of a well-known industrialist. Lestrade had been very grateful for their help, as he always was, Mycroft had texted Sherlock to thank him for the adequately swift closure of this particular case, and – much to everyone's surprise – even Donovan had managed to sort of snarl a 'thank you' in their general direction.

Regardless to say that the two men had returned home in an extremely happy state of mind. John had suggested that this particularly fine day merited opening the bottle of champagne another client had given them a few weeks back and Sherlock, who normally wasn't inclined to celebrate the wrapping up of a case in any sort of way other than closing the case file, agreed, thus surprising John for the second time that day. After they'd emptied the bottle, a feat during which John for once had talked more than Sherlock, who for once had seemed much more interested in listening to John's voice instead of to his own, the good doctor had asked his good friend to set the table while he'd occupy himself with preparing their celebratory meal.

Sherlock had obliged and as John was busy cooking their dinner the energetic detective more than made up for his previous silence by continously rambling on about how everything had come together so neatly today, about how he'd been on a roll, how dismayed Donovan and Anderson had looked and suddenly he managed to surprise John for the third time in a row by admitting that he couldn't have done it without his friend's help.
"I'm sure you could have, Sherlock," John said while stirring the sauce for the pasta.
"Nonsense. You either say that because you try to be polite or because it's what over thirty years of socially acceptable behaviour have taught you to say. You know me, John. I'm not the kind of person to compliment people on a regular basis, so when I do, I expect you to not just be grateful for it, but to own the damned compliment. So, go ahead: Own it, doctor Watson. Come on. You know you want to."

John couldn't help but smile at Sherlock's unique way of trying to get his point across without sounding too demanding, which was always a feat when it came to the younger of the two Holmes brothers. After meeting Mycroft for the first time he'd expected the older Holmes to have more of a problem with being unable to order people around, but Mycroft seemed quite capable of merely suggesting or asking for things. At times John wondered if that was simply due to Mycroft's slight advantage in age or if it had to do with the fact that Mycroft dealed with stubborn people on a regular basis. Surely living with Sherlock had given the man the patience of a saint. John's smile widened, secure as he was in the knowledge that his friend couldn't see it. So what did that say about him living with Sherlock for almost two years now?
"Well, alright then: Thank you. And you're welcome."
John was right: Sherlock couldn't see the smile, but he could damn well hear it in the doctor's voice, which in turn made the detective smile. In a rare display of something closely resembling empathy Sherlock let John have his moment before he dove head-first into the remainder of the day's recap, unburdened by the fact that the only other person present had been right beside him the entire time and could probably even expand on the story in certain places, especially when Sherlock had gone off on one of his characteristic monologues or his trademark wild dashes.

By now John, being used to his flat mate's almost instinctual need to go over recent events at least once while in the relative safety of their home, settled into what he'd secretly come to call his 'yes dear'-mode. This mode consisted of him sort of listening to Sherlock and either nodding, uttering the occasional 'yes' or make a variety of noncommittal sounds that could've meant anything, like the word 'aloha'. Sherlock either didn't notice or didn't mind this at all, because he'd never commented on it in any way. To John the latter option sounded like the more sensible one, since Sherlock – who was, after all, the world's only consulting detective – should've surely noticed it when most of the doctor's answers or agreements were nothing more than vague sounds or words.

While John busied himself with the pasta and the sauce, Sherlock gradually fell silent, the breaks between his sentences growing larger until, after one particularly large gap of non-sound, he mentioned Donovan's odd behaviour one more time and shut his mouth. He placed his elbows on the table, folded his hands and rested his head against them, thus obscuring his unusually motionless mouth, and shifted his attention from listening to his own voice – an activity he'd not only grown fond of ever since he'd heard himself speak for the first time, but which he had perfected to the exclusion of even hearing other people talk when he opened his mouth – to watching John perform his magic. Because magic it was, at least to Sherlock, to see his flat mate turn mundane ingredients into something that was not just edible, but downright mouth-wateringly tasty.

It had always fascinated Sherlock to no end how cooking a meal that didn't give one a bad case of indigestion – at best – was a skill that kept eluding him, even though his understanding of even the most basic chemical processes that someone employed to gain a result that wasn't met with wrinkled noses and utterances of disgust, was far above and beyond that of almost every other person on the planet. In fact, in watching John prepare their meals, Sherlock saw nothing short of a miracle, especially since the good doctor had exhibited a near-instinctual grasp of exactly which flavours suited the finicky genius particularly well.

And finicky Sherlock was. Oh yes. If John had asked Mycroft about Sherlock's eating habits he would've been blown away by the sheer amount of tricks that had had to be used in the Holmes' household over the course of many, many years to at least try to get the benjamin of the family to at least put something in his mouth – other than the usual things Sherlock put in his mouth, which consisted of non-edible foreign objects such as pebbles, leaves, grass, dirt, dust, insects and even animal excrements – and just try it for heaven's sake!

To anyone else who hadn't had the (mis)fortune of having had to put up with Sherlock's downright refusal to even so much as give any kind of food the time of day – which would've been a strange sight indeed, although both Mycroft and John would never put it past Sherlock to have tried this at least once in his life – the problem would seem trivial, since one would kindly suggest to just stuff all sorts of digestable things into the man's mouth when he was – oh lord, the irony! – consumed by yet another case, another mystery. After all, when Sherlock's brain was for the most part occupied with fitting all the pieces of a tantalizing puzzle together, it seemed to simply forget it had actually come into the possession of a body since egg and sperm had met, and should supply said body with a sufficient amount of fuel to not only keep the body, but itself going as well.

However, Sherlock wouldn't be the Sherlock John has come to know and love (yes, love, darn it, for lack of a better word, because at this moment in time he will kindly pretend his flatmate doesn't have any insufferable character traits and habits which would cause most sane people to either run away screaming or plot his death in all sorts of creative ways) if something as relatively straight-forward as being fed various kinds of food during such periods was exactly that: straight-forward. Of course it wasn't straight-forward, because even though Sherlock's mind tended to drift to places most people can only ever hope to glimpse on a particularly good day, his taste buds and stomach were always preoccupied with merely one thing: to make sure no icky-tasting food stuff got past the detective's amazingly flexible and, some might add delectable, lips.

Which is why, due to all the aforementioned reasons, or, well, it actually is just one reason, John had taken it upon himself from the first time he'd set foot in their shared kitchen to not just be the resident doctor but also the resident cook. He'd theorized, and quite rightly so, that virtually anything he would create in that kitchen would outstrip Sherlock's culinary 'experiments' by lightyears in terms of both being enjoyable – for himself – and being tasteful enough for his lanky friend to at least sit down at the table and share the meal. To John's – and, as Sherlock would only ever admit to himself after three months, to Sherlock's – delight he'd not only turned out to be an accomplished cook, but his meals were met with such enthusiasm that Sherlock actually stopped working on a case and sat down to eat whenever John called him.

No matter how engrossed Sherlock was in his work, the words "dinner's ready!" always found their way straight into his brain and thus directed his body to get its butt off the chair and make its way to the source of those delicious scents. However – and this was something none other than Mycroft had observed during his sparse visits – this only occurred when those exact words were spoken by John. It was a small clue, but a clue nonetheless, and Mycroft had been unable to keep one of the corners of his mouth from twitching ever so slightly as he'd mulled over the possible implications of this little tidbit of information, one which Sherlock had failed and continued to fail to pick up on.