#asip

A Study in Pink is my favorite episode! I love it because it’s where we see Sherlock and John first meet, and we get to see all the reasons why they’re drawn to each other so powerfully.

ASIP establishes several ideas that are incredibly important for the rest of the show. Here I’m going to try to focus on four core ideas. First, from the very first moment when we meet him, Sherlock is immediately portrayed as a character who knows he’s gay and is fully at peace with that side of himself. Second, over the course of ASIP, we see Sherlock express interest in John and then start to fall in love with him. Third, ASIP shows that John is interested in and attracted to Sherlock, but it also implies that John isn’t yet sure how he feels about Sherlock—or perhaps isn’t even fully aware of how he feels about him. And finally, in ASIP Sherlock and John both save each other from suicide or at least suicidal ideation. I’m going to spend this section of the meta discussing each of these ideas in turn, and a few other things more briefly.

First, let’s talk about Sherlock and his sexuality.

When we first meet Sherlock, he’s in the morgue at Bart’s with Molly, beating a corpse. The second scene that he appears in—the lab scene where Sherlock meets John for the first time—also briefly includes Molly. In these first two scenes, the writers deliberately introduced Molly alongside Sherlock to demonstrate that Sherlock is not interested in women romantically.

In the first scene, Molly attempts to ask Sherlock out on a date by asking him if he’d like to “have coffee,” and Sherlock turns her down by briskly giving her his coffee order. Then in the lab scene, Sherlock accepts a cup of coffee from Molly and then promptly turns and walks away from her. In her “Subversion and Sherlock” series, @loudest-subtext-in-tv (who I’m going to call LSIT from here on out) explains that Sherlock’s body language, the choreography of his movements, and the camera work in these two scenes all work together to convey the idea that Sherlock is not interested in women. In the morgue, Sherlock is shown at a distance from Molly and he’s focused on his notes; in the lab, he immediately walks away from her after taking the coffee and only looks back at that part of the room (at John) when Molly has left. These are our first clues that Sherlock is gay—he has absolutely no interest in Molly, and the show creators even visually separate him from her.

Sherlock knew exactly what Molly was trying to do when she tried to ask him out. When Sherlock points out that she’s put on lipstick, he looks at her very carefully, and then when Molly says that she “just refreshed it a bit,” he pulls his head back slowly and almost warily, as if having a moment of comprehension. Sherlock then pointedly turns her down, and the way he does it is so very different from how we’ll later see him turn down John at Angelo’s. Sherlock doesn’t stop to consider Molly’s offer for an instant. Instead, he rejects her in a way that leaves absolutely no room for doubt or compromise, and even suggests that he would never consider saying yes to a date with her.

So from the very beginning, in the very first scenes where we meet Sherlock, the writers have chosen to introduce Sherlock to the audience by showing him unambiguously demonstrate disinterest in a woman and promptly turn down the offer of a date with her. Notably, Molly’s character is original to the BBC show; she isn’t an adaptation of any particular character from the Sherlock Holmes canon by Arthur Conan Doyle. Although Molly becomes more important later on, originally, the whole point of Molly’s character was to show us that Sherlock isn’t interested in women. This is true in these early scenes from ASIP, and Molly is used this way throughout S1.  

In addition to showing us that Sherlock isn’t interested in women, ASIP does a great deal to establish that Sherlock is interested in men and is entirely comfortable with this aspect of himself. Sherlock’s relationship to sex and sexual attraction specifically might be more complicated, as we’ll get hints of in later episodes, but Sherlock always appears to fully understand that he’s into men at least romantically and that he’s totally okay with that. (Personally, I read Sherlock as homoromantic and demisexual, which means that he’s only romantically and aesthetically attracted to men, and he’ll only experience sexual attraction with someone who he already has an emotional bond with.)

We get clear evidence of this from Sherlock’s behavior when other characters assume that he and John might be a couple. When Sherlock and John go to look at 221B together, Mrs. Hudson tells John about the second bedroom upstairs hesitantly, as if she can’t quite tell if Sherlock and John are together. After she’s said this, John glances at Sherlock to see how he’ll react, and Sherlock doesn’t so much as bat an eye. Later on, Sherlock isn’t bothered at all when Angelo assumes that John is his date, and he doesn’t do or say anything to contradict Angelo. Sherlock is totally fine with other people perceiving him as gay, and it doesn’t seem to surprise him.

During the dinner scene at Angelo’s, of course, Sherlock explicitly says that girlfriends aren’t really his area and affirms that he knows it would be perfectly fine for him to have a boyfriend. The dialogue in this scene is extremely careful and serves to give us clear evidence that Sherlock is gay—there’s really no point to this dialogue otherwise. Sherlock specifically repeats the word “girlfriend” back at John when he says “Girlfriend? No, not really my area.” He doesn’t say that “dating” isn’t his area or that “romance” isn’t his area. Then when John brings up the possibility of Sherlock having a boyfriend, Sherlock doesn’t offer any kind of correction until John directly asks him if he actually has a boyfriend. Sherlock even seems a bit puzzled—perhaps even dismayed—that John feels the need to state out loud that it would be fine for Sherlock to have a boyfriend. For Sherlock, this is a total non-issue.

ASIP even suggests that Sherlock is already out to a certain extent. Mrs. Hudson, Angelo, and Mycroft are all introduced as people who have known Sherlock for some time, and all three of them seem to think that Sherlock is gay. Mrs. Hudson and Angelo immediately assume that Sherlock and John are a couple when they see the two of them together. It could be that Mrs. Hudson and Angelo are both just exceptionally open-minded, but they both come to this conclusion so readily that it seems likely that they might have thought Sherlock was gay before John turned up. After all, most people generally assume that a person is straight until they’re given evidence otherwise (as Sherlock himself does with Harry), and this would have been especially true in 2010. So the fact that these characters don’t assume that Sherlock is straight suggests that they have some reason to think he’s gay. Mycroft also makes a joke about Sherlock and John being a couple, saying to John, “Might we be expecting a happy announcement by the end of the week?” when he meets him at the warehouse. Mycroft delivers this comment sarcastically, but it still implies that he believes Sherlock is gay and that John being of romantic interest to Sherlock isn’t outside the realm of possibility. There are a million other things Mycroft could have said to John to be snarky, so by choosing this line for Mycroft, the writers deliberately reinforced the same pattern that we see with Mrs. Hudson and Angelo: the people who already know Sherlock believe he’s gay or wouldn’t be surprised if he were.

ASIP also establishes that whenever someone suggests that Sherlock and John are a couple, Sherlock will never, ever correct them. He doesn’t contradict Mrs. Hudson, and he doesn’t contradict Angelo. John often does correct people, but Sherlock never does. He’s not bothered by this and doesn’t want to correct people, both because he’s comfortable with his own homosexuality and because he likes John and likes being seen as his partner.

Which brings us to Sherlock’s feelings for John!

Sherlock appears to have been attracted to John and interested in him almost from the very first moment when he met him in the lab at Bart’s. When they meet, Sherlock wants to learn more about John, hopes they will become flatmates, and starts trying to make himself seem interesting to John so that he’ll stick around. Although this starts out as just interest, I think Sherlock starts to fall in love with John in earnest by the end of the episode. My thoughts on this are influenced by both the gay unaired pilot and by the final aired version of ASIP. I think reading these two versions alongside each other can be instructive, because noting what stayed the same and what changed between the unaired and the final versions can help us discern some of the writers’ intentions for ASIP.

When John and Mike walk into the lab at Bart’s where Sherlock is working, Sherlock looks up from what he’s doing and looks directly at John. From that moment on, I think nearly everything about Sherlock’s behavior towards John in ASIP demonstrates that he’s interested in him, wants to learn more about him, and wants him to stick around.

Right after John and Mike walk in, Sherlock asks to borrow Mike’s phone. John then lends Sherlock his instead, and Sherlock asks him “Afghanistan or Iraq?” We later learn that Sherlock deduced a great deal about John just from looking at him, and even more from borrowing his phone. This makes me suspect that Sherlock asked to borrow Mike’s phone already knowing that Mike wouldn’t have it on him and hoping that John might offer his. As @221behavior has pointed out, Sherlock’s pretense for asking to borrow Mike’s phone was that there was no signal on his, but Sherlock never has any issues with cell service inside the labs in Bart’s ever again. We see him text other people from inside Bart’s in both TGG and TRF, which suggests that he might have been lying about the lack of a signal in ASIP.

For Sherlock, borrowing John’s phone served at least three purposes. First, it gave him the chance to deduce John from his phone, and therefore learn even more about him. Second, it gave him an opportunity to try to impress John with his deductions before winking and bowing out of the lab with a flourish. And finally, as my lovely beta reader @thegildedbee pointed out to me, it also gave Sherlock the opportunity to leave a few texts on John’s phone that he knew John would look at later, which lets him portray himself as mysterious and intriguing.

After he’s borrowed the phone, Sherlock tells John that potential flatmates should know the worst about each other. To me, Sherlock’s behavior during this part of the conversation seems more like that of someone displaying interest in a potential romantic partner than someone interested in a potential flatmate. First, Sherlock totally doesn’t tell John the worst things about living with him. He says “I play the violin when I’m thinking, sometimes I don’t talk for days on end. Would that bother you?” not “I will regularly keep human body parts in the fridge.” Sherlock is purposely self-censoring a bit to try to avoid scaring John off! This might be consistent with someone looking for a flatmate, but then Sherlock does something that I think is especially telling: he doesn’t ask about John’s annoying habits. He doesn’t feel a need to know them, because he’s already interested in John and wants to get to know him better. This strikes me as the behavior of someone who’s interested in someone romantically more than someone genuinely just looking for a person they’d be compatible to live with. Sherlock has already seen something in John that he’s drawn to.

I love how during the lab scene, we also get not one, not two, but five shots of Mike giving Sherlock and John happy, knowing, and slightly smug smiles. Mike is totally thinking, “I am so good at setting people up. These two are going to love each other.” Indeed, Mike. Indeed.

After the lab scene, Sherlock is visibly nervous around John in their next few scenes together. He’s clearly nervous when he meets John at 221B to have him look at the flat. He really wants John to like the flat and move in with him! Just look at Sherlock’s expression as he lets John into the sitting room and the way he carefully hovers nearby, waiting for John’s reaction. When John implies that the flat is messy, Sherlock starts anxiously trying to tidy it up.

During the taxi ride to the crime scene in Brixton, Sherlock looks calm and aloof when he’s showing off for John with his deductions. But after John compliments him, Sherlock looks puzzled and touched. After the “What do people normally say?” / “Piss off” exchange, there’s this cute little moment where Sherlock nervously looks away from John and out the window: fantastic gif set of this here. Just watch Sherlock’s face throughout this scene. Sherlock is interested in John, but he’s shy!

After Sherlock and John inspect Jennifer Wilson’s body at the abandoned house in Brixton, Sherlock runs off on his own to search for her pink case—he’s used to working on his own, so stopping to wait for John and explain everything to him doesn’t come naturally to Sherlock yet. But once he’s found the case and has brought it back to 221B, Sherlock wants to invite John to participate in the case again, and he wants to have the chance to tell John about his progress so far. So, Sherlock texts him: “Baker Street. Come at once if convenient. SH.” When John doesn’t respond immediately, Sherlock double-messages him, like he’s anxiously texting his crush, because he is: “If inconvenient, come anyway. SH.” Cute.

After John arrives at Baker Street, Sherlock asks to borrow John’s phone, pointlessly cuddles John’s heart phone for a moment before handing it back to him, and asks John to send a text. Then Sherlock explains his progress on the case and invites John to dinner.

I love that Sherlock called ahead to the restaurant to reserve a table—Billy the waiter removes a little “Reserved” sign as they sit down, and Billy and Angelo both act like they were expecting Sherlock and a guest. We don’t see Sherlock call ahead, so clearly he did this before John showed up at Baker Street. So Sherlock did not text John and ask him to come all the way across London just to send a text—he asked John to come over so that he could invite him out to dinner. Sherlock totally treated their evening together as a date, even if he didn’t say as much to John.

When Sherlock and John get back to 221B from Angelo’s, John asks what they were doing there if catching the murderer was such a long shot. After a pause, Sherlock says a little awkwardly, “Oh, just passing the time.” Read: “I just wanted to hang out with you.” Again, cute. Gif set here.

When Sherlock and John are in the downstairs hallway of 221B catching their breath, Sherlock’s behavior is very similar to how he acted in the cab on the way to Brixton. He pretends to be confident when he calls out to Mrs. Hudson that John is going to move in. But when John turns away to answer the door and takes his cane from Angelo, Sherlock turns his head and blows out a little breath in a way that shows his nerves. Sherlock really, really wants John to like him and to stick around.

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Once they go up to the flat, Sherlock is obviously embarrassed and angry about the pretend drugs bust. This, like so much of Sherlock’s behavior throughout the entire show, is all about John. From Lestrade’s behavior and dialogue in this scene, I think it’s safe to assume that Lestrade already knows Sherlock has used in the past. From the scene in Brixton, we’ve also already learned that Sherlock knows most of the officers on the force don’t like him and isn’t all that bothered by it (except for the fact that Anderson in particular really gets under his skin). Based on this, it seems unlikely that Sherlock would be embarrassed by the idea that Lestrade and his colleagues suspect he’s used before. Instead, Sherlock’s angry reaction comes from the fact that he really, really wants John to stay. He freaks out a bit in this scene because he’s worried that John will lose interest in him if he thinks he’s a drug user. Perhaps Sherlock is especially anxious about this because he already knows that John has a tense relationship with his sister, in no small part because she has a substance abuse problem.

So, Sherlock’s nervous behavior around John throughout the episode indicates that he’s interested in John. Moreover, it’s significant that Sherlock makes a meaningful effort to include John in the case in ASIP. He slips up in Brixton by leaving John at the crime scene, and of course he also leaves 221B with Jeff Hope without telling John about it. But before that, Sherlock invited John along with him to investigate twice, and he sometimes (although not always) pauses to explain things to John and to answer his questions. Over and over again in S1, we’ll see that Sherlock doesn’t do this for anyone else. Moreover, Sally, Mycroft, and Lestrade all make comments to John that suggest that Sherlock has never invited anyone else along to investigate with him before, and that he doesn’t usually open up to other people. Sally: “He doesn’t have friends. So who are you?” Mycroft: “You’ve met him. How many friends do you imagine he has?” John: “You know him better than I do.” / Lestrade: “I’ve known him for five years and no, I don’t.” Clearly, for Sherlock, there’s something different about John.

In addition, when Angelo brings John his cane and John realizes that his limp is totally gone, we see that Sherlock feels genuine warmth and joy when he’s able to make things better for John. Sherlock watches the exchange between John and Angelo with such a warm, genuine smile on his face; he wants John around and enjoys helping him. (LSIT pointed this out in her reading of ASIP here.)

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thegildedbee also made a nice observation about this moment while beta reading this for me. If Sherlock just wanted to show off, then he could have just told John that he wasn’t using his cane anymore. But Sherlock doesn’t do that. Instead, he texts Angelo and asks him to bring the cane over to 221B, so Angelo is the one who hands it to John. For Sherlock, the moment where he proves that John’s limp was psychosomatic and is gone now isn’t about showing off for John, it’s about doing something nice for him.

This is excellent evidence of Sherlock’s deeply caring nature, which we’ll see again and again throughout the show. For now, I think it’s also a lovely part of ASIP because it shows that Sherlock is interested in John for good reasons. Sherlock wants to be someone who can be good for John. He’s not looking for a relationship that is transactional or one-sided, and he’s not just looking for an assistant. Instead, Sherlock shows signs of wanting to begin a genuinely caring and giving relationship with John.

If you’re with me so far, then you’re probably asking something like this: If Sherlock is so interested in John, then why did he tell him that he’s married to his work and isn’t looking for a relationship during the dinner scene at Angelo’s? Basically, I think that in the moment, Sherlock felt that John was coming onto him too fast and he panicked a bit and tried to slow things down.

To me, this actually makes a ton of sense. Remember, Sherlock and John have just met and they don’t know each other very well yet. And although Sherlock has friends and acquaintances who like him (Mike, Mrs. Hudson, Angelo), it seems that he doesn’t usually open up to other people very much, and especially not very quickly. Lestrade even tells John that he’s known Sherlock for five years but doesn’t think he knows Sherlock any better than John does after having just met him the day before. So although Sherlock was interested in John almost immediately, by the time of the dinner scene he didn’t feel ready to make his romantic interest clear. Also, being interested in someone isn’t the same thing as being sure that you’re into them. When he invited John to dinner, I think Sherlock was waiting to see what more he could learn about John and where things would go before he thought seriously about making a move. So when John seems to start flirting with him, it’s not unreasonable for Sherlock to feel a bit nervous about it.

I also think it’s very unlikely that Sherlock has ever been in a serious romantic relationship before. Throughout ASIP, Sherlock is portrayed as something of a loner. Mrs. Hudson and Angelo clearly adore him, but we don’t get the sense that he has a lot of friends closer to his own age, or even that he’s ever expended much effort to make any. In ASIB, we learn that Sherlock hasn’t had sex before. Given all of that, it seems unlikely that Sherlock has ever had a long-term boyfriend, so it seems perfectly natural that he would get nervous and try to retreat a bit when John tries to move things along more quickly than Sherlock feels ready for.

I mean, just watch Sherlock’s face before he lets John down in the most tactful and kindest way imaginable. He looks so nervous, and there are a few seconds when he visibly seems to be considering what John has just said, its implications, and what he should say in response. He’s not quite his usual, confident self in this moment—this is a moment where he looks a bit more vulnerable because he’s not quite sure how to proceed at first and he wants to get it right.

Sherlock gently lets John down by saying “I think you should know that I consider myself married to my work, and while I’m flattered by your interest, I’m really not looking for any…,” at which point John interrupts to quickly insist that he wasn’t asking him out. Even before John says anything, though, Sherlock’s voice gets noticeably quiet and unsure at the end as he trails off. Again, he’s shy! This might also clue us into the fact that Sherlock isn’t being entirely truthful about being married to his work and uninterested in romance—Sherlock himself doesn’t appear totally confident in this statement. His delivery isn’t at all like the way he confidently asserted “I know it’s fine” when affirming that he knew it was fine to have a boyfriend just a moment before.

I think it’s interesting that this is actually a change from the unaired pilot. In the unaired pilot, Sherlock said “I’m really not looking for any kind of—” before getting interrupted by John, and he placed a very forceful emphasis on the word “any.” When you watch the unaired pilot and the aired version of ASIP back-to-back, it’s clear that in the aired version, the creators made Sherlock not only much cooler on the exterior, but also much more hesitant and nervous towards John. They seem to have intentionally changed this aspect of Sherlock’s characterization because they wanted to set the show up for a slow burn romance arc. (More on that in just a bit.) So anyway, the point is that Sherlock turned John down very forcefully in the dinner scene in the unaired pilot, but in the aired version, he comes across as much more nervous around John and far less confident in his decision to turn him down. Again, Sherlock really is interested in him, but he’s a bit nervous and shy, because he hasn’t really done this before!

In my opinion, the scene in the car park at the very end of ASIP shows us the moment when Sherlock starts to fall in love with John. This is when his interest turns into something more.

The key moment comes when Sherlock is talking to Lestrade about the shooter who killed the cabbie. During his conversation with Lestrade, Sherlock appears very composed at first and confidently begins a string of deductions while Lestrade listens attentively. Sherlock describes the shooter as a crack shot who is acclimatized to violence, but who also has strong moral principles. Then as Sherlock says “nerves of steel” in a slightly slower, more breathy voice, his eyes find John across the car park, and he breaks off mid-sentence as his expression changes. A small frown appears on Sherlock’s face as he looks at John. Looking extremely distracted, Sherlock then tells Lestrade to ignore everything he just said. He manages to shake Lestrade off and immediately walks over to John to talk. You can see a lot of this in this gif set.

Figuring out that John was the shooter should have been an incredibly easy deduction for Sherlock with all the information that he had at that point. And Sherlock had been sitting outside the crime scene for at least some amount of time by then, since all the police and other emergency response staff had time to show up and to keep putting a shock blanket on him. I don’t think it would have taken Sherlock nearly as much time to figure out that it was John as it took him to explain the details to Lestrade out loud, so I think the change in Sherlock’s expression right around “nerves of steel” reveals something other than his realization that John shot the cabbie. Sherlock already knew that. Instead, this is the moment when Sherlock starts to fall for John—and just as importantly, Sherlock immediately recognizes what he feels. His moment of confusion, the break in his composure, the little crease that appears between his eyebrows, and his distraction as he walks over to John are all evidence that Sherlock is quickly processing his feelings and attempting to compose himself again before he talks to John.

Lestrade sees right through Sherlock and gives him a very knowing smile behind his back as he walks over to John, which is honestly super cute.

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Lestrade is such a proud dad to Sherlock throughout the show. I love that about him.

Right after shaking off Lestrade, Sherlock flirts with John fairly openly. He seems more comfortable around him now, but also a bit excited, happy, and nervous as he asks John to dinner. I don’t think John recognizes what’s happened here and how Sherlock might see their dinner date, but I definitely think Sherlock does! Sherlock knows he’s starting to fall in love with John, so he purposely asks him out.

They made the flirtatiousness of this scene even more open in the unaired pilot. Honestly, the version from the unaired pilot is one of my favorite scenes in the entire show, if not my favorite. In the pilot it’s just so obvious that Sherlock and John are both falling for each other here. Check out this absolutely fantastic gif set from @darlingbenny. Their nervous excitement is so palpable and beautiful. There’s their slowly spreading smiles, and the fact that they both turn away from each other while smiling at the same moment. Then Sherlock nervously bites his lower lip and looks down to steel himself before he looks back up at John and asks hopefully, “Dinner?”

I mean. Sherlock’s face in this scene is absolutely the face of someone asking their crush out.

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The creators chose to tone this scene down in the aired version of ASIP to make what was going on a little less obvious. In the aired version, this moment happens much faster and our view of Sherlock’s and John’s faces isn’t nearly as clear. Instead of seeing each of their faces full-on so that we can see their full expressions, we see them both in profile. The lighting is also significantly darker. But Sherlock’s genuine smile, the short moment when he looks away, his little pause before asking John to dinner, the nervous bite of his lower lip, and his hopeful request are all still there. Gifs here.

I think this indicates that the writers decided to essentially keep the broad contours of Sherlock’s side of the story the same between the two versions of ASIP. In both versions, we’re meant to understand that Sherlock was immediately attracted to John and then started to fall for him in earnest by the end of the episode. The writers probably decided that they needed to change this ending scene, though, so that they could build Sherlock and John’s romance arc more gradually. The ending scene in the unaired pilot is lovely, but it doesn’t give us the same slow burn that the aired version of ASIP sets up and that S1-S2 then deliver. If they’d stuck with the tone of the unaired pilot, this would have been a very different show, to put it mildly!

So Sherlock falls in love first. And it’s not hard to see why Sherlock adores John almost instantly and then falls for him hard by the end of the episode. Throughout their interactions in ASIP, John acts interested in Sherlock and his work, shows that he both gets and enjoys Sherlock’s dark and quirky sense of humor, and praises Sherlock for abilities that Sherlock clearly sees as core to who he is, but that many of the other people he regularly interacts with either denigrate or dismiss. When Sherlock and John examine Jennifer Wilson’s body in Brixton, Sherlock sees that John is an independent thinker who isn’t intimidated by him and who is willing to offer his own ideas, as 221behavior has explained. Then when Sherlock realized that John shot the cabbie, he would have understood that John had dashed across London as soon as he learned that Sherlock was in danger and performed an incredibly impressive feat of marksmanship in order to save Sherlock’s life. Moreover, in this Brit-picking post about gun laws in the UK, @7-percent points out that John’s gun is super, super illegal and that John could have faced anywhere from fifteen to thirty years in prison for what he did that night. Sherlock would have known all of this, so he understood the significance of the risk that John took for him. Even better for Sherlock, John doesn’t even seem particularly ruffled by this. He’s totally ready to climb on board Sherlock’s dangerous lifestyle, and his actions that night also give Sherlock a signal that his moral compass aligns fairly closely with Sherlock’s own. So there’s a lot for Sherlock to like about John! Overall, Sherlock probably thinks that John might be someone he can truly be himself around, and that John might even like him for it. Sherlock also smiles at John when John calls him an idiot in the car park, so Sherlock seems to really like that John is willing to both praise him and to call him out on his bullshit. On top of all this, we later learn in S3 that Sherlock believes John is physically beautiful. So, Sherlock falls in love. And from here on out, he has it bad.

Lately, I’ve been having some lovely conversations with LSIT about Sherlock’s character and what we know about him before the start of the show. And at the start of her Sherlock 2.0 Reading, LSIT writes this: “deep down Sherlock longs for romance and he knows it.” That line has really stayed with me ever since I first read it. That’s it, that’s who Sherlock is in just a few words. Throughout the rest of the show, we’ll see that Sherlock is deeply romantic. Twice in the show, in TEH and TST, Sherlock implies that he believes in the concept of “the one.” (In TEH, he says to the girl who was getting catfished, “And you really thought he was the one, didn’t you? The love of your life?” Then in TST, he says to Lestrade about the woman he has a date with, “Trust me, though, she’s not right for you. She’s not the one.”) In TSOT, Sherlock gives an incredibly romantic speech to John at his wedding. And in TAB, we see that Sherlock has this insane, over-the-top romantic imagination (just one great example of that here).

But before the start of the show, Sherlock seems very much alone. He probably feels that he’s too weird and off-putting to form close friendships with other people, and it’s probably hard for him to even find people who he’d like to get to know better in the first place, because his mind just moves too quickly. Everyone else just seems too boring or too superficial to be worth getting to know on a deeper level. Sherlock has probably never had a serious romantic relationship before, and although he longs for romance desperately, he likely fears that he will never find “the one.”

Then in walks John. And John is perfect for Sherlock.

So. What about John’s side of the story in ASIP?

I think John was immediately intrigued by Sherlock when he met him, and he feels a powerful attraction to Sherlock throughout the episode. However, the writers seem to have intentionally made the romantic nature of John’s attraction to Sherlock slightly more ambiguous in the aired version of ASIP than in the unaired pilot.

John is clearly drawn to Sherlock after Bart’s. Instead of being put off by Sherlock’s deductions about him in the lab, John is impressed. He goes home, googles Sherlock, and then types up a little blog post about how “charming” Sherlock was. Sherlock’s behavior might have come across as abrasive to anyone else, but John finds him fascinating, and he shows up right on time the next day to meet him at 221B so that he can learn more about him. Mycroft is also correct when he says that John is very loyal to Sherlock very quickly. Even at the crime scene in Brixton (before John encounters Mycroft), when Sally tries to tell John to stay away from Sherlock, John’s expression immediately becomes tense and defiant as he listens to her. Evidently, John is much more willing to trust Sherlock than to trust Sally. John then shows his loyalty to Sherlock even more clearly when he turns down Mycroft’s offer of money to spy on Sherlock and doesn’t let Mycroft intimidate him and scare him away. John is intrigued enough by Sherlock that he wants to figure him out for himself, and he trusts his own ability to read Sherlock rather than just listening to what other people say about him.

John also gets Sherlock’s quirky sense of humor right from the first, and he clearly shares it. (This is one of the many things that I love about Sherlock and John together.) For example, when John goes back to 221B after meeting Mycroft, he’s obviously annoyed that Sherlock wants him to text for him instead of getting up off the sofa to do it himself. But when Sherlock says it’s a pity that John didn’t take the money from Mycroft because they could have split it, John smiles genuinely. Sherlock’s joke very easily breaks through his annoyance.

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Shortly afterwards, John also laughs a little after Sherlock’s joke about the skull attracting attention when he talks out loud to help him think. John really likes this part of Sherlock’s personality.

After the dinner scene at Angelo’s, John loves chasing after the cab with Sherlock and giggles right alongside him in the entryway at Baker Street. Right after that, John defends Sherlock in front of Lestrade and the other police officers during the fake drugs bust. And of course, John rushes out of 221B to save Sherlock when he locates Jennifer Wilson’s phone and realizes that Sherlock went with the cabbie—then he even shoots the cabbie to save Sherlock’s life! All of this demonstrates that John is strongly attracted to Sherlock in some way and that he’s willing to take significant risks with and for Sherlock almost immediately.

In the unaired pilot, I think the writers made John’s attraction to Sherlock obviously romantic (and sexual, especially in the dinner scene). John’s facial expressions during the ending scene strongly suggest that they initially intended to show John starting to fall in love by the end of ASIP, just as Sherlock does. Just look at John’s face here, especially in the third gif.

To me, though, things seem a bit different and a bit more ambiguous in the aired version.

In part, this is because of how the writers chose to heighten our awareness of John’s difficulty in readjusting to civilian life in the aired version. In comparison to the unaired pilot, in the aired version John is portrayed as more depressed and more alienated from other people. First, the aired version starts with John’s intense nightmare about Afghanistan, which isn’t shown in the unaired pilot. Then instead of sharing a leisurely and friendly lunch with Mike as he does in the unaired pilot, John just gets coffee with Mike and awkwardly sits next to him on a park bench; the way John interacts with Mike is decidedly less friendly and less personal in the aired version.

When John meets Sherlock, Sherlock immediately offers John a way out of his depression by providing him with the dangerous and exciting lifestyle that Mycroft tells us John craves…in a scene that doesn’t appear in the unaired pilot at all. While we might infer from the unaired version that John’s longing for a dangerous lifestyle is one of the reasons why he’s drawn to Sherlock, in the aired version we’re explicitly told that this is so. In the aired version of ASIP, then, it’s more obvious that Sherlock offers John something that John wants and that isn’t necessarily romantic. That certainly doesn’t foreclose the possibility of romantic attraction, but it does indicate that the writers wanted to make John’s side of the story a bit more nuanced and complicated.

Ultimately, I think that in ASIP, John is interested in Sherlock romantically and sexually, but his interest hasn’t really developed in anything more yet. He hasn’t yet started to truly fall in love—or if he has, he hasn’t quite worked that out for himself, yet.

As I’ve been saying, there’s a lot for John to like about Sherlock. John thinks that Sherlock is charming and funny, he’s absolutely amazed by Sherlock’s abilities as a detective, and he loves working on the serial suicides case with him. John also probably realizes early on that Sherlock is quite similar to himself in a lot of ways—he’s not someone who can be satisfied with ordinary life, he craves adventure and danger. John might also even feel a bit flattered that Sherlock decides to welcome him into his world—to see the battlefield with him—when Sherlock so clearly doesn’t do this for anyone else. Furthermore, John’s behavior at Angelo’s demonstrates that John finds Sherlock sexually attractive. But at Angelo’s, after John tries to feel Sherlock out a bit, John thinks he gets a pretty clear rejection from Sherlock. After that, John backs down and tries to keep things strictly platonic between the two of them. After a few more months of living with Sherlock, that will start to become harder and harder for John as his romantic interest in Sherlock develops into something far more and he starts to truly fall in love. But I think that for now, in ASIP, John isn’t quite there yet.

Let’s start by talking about John’s behavior at Angelo’s. John deliberately brings up the topic of girlfriends and boyfriends and directly asks Sherlock if he has a girlfriend. After Sherlock’s very gay response of “Girlfriend? No, not really my area,” John asks Sherlock if he has a boyfriend twice, once to ask the question, and then again a second time after he thinks that Sherlock didn’t give him a direct answer. Clearly, John really wants to know. When Sherlock says no after the second ask, John licks his lips while staring at Sherlock and says “Right, okay, you’re unattached, like me. Fine, good.” This freaks Sherlock out a bit, so John backs down and tries to reassure Sherlock by saying “No, I’m not asking—no. I’m just saying, it’s all fine.” Gifs of most of this here.

John’s behavior in this scene provides one of our early clues that John is attracted to men and aware of it. John deliberately tries to figure out if Sherlock has a partner and could be gay, and he responds to learning that Sherlock is single and probably interested in men by telling Sherlock that he is also single. Okay. So John is trying to feel Sherlock out. Then when Sherlock indicates that he’s uncomfortable with where this conversation has headed, John is very respectful of Sherlock’s boundaries and backs down. Notably, however, John does so in a way that intentionally leaves his own sexuality unclear. Although John will repeatedly insist that he and Sherlock aren’t a couple and that he isn’t gay throughout the rest of the show, John will never actually say that he’s not bisexual or not attracted to Sherlock. Moreover, as LSIT has pointed out, John will never knowingly say “I’m not gay” within earshot of Sherlock. John doesn’t want Sherlock to think that he could never be interested in him and he always phrases things to leave that door open. The dinner scene in ASIP establishes this pattern early on.

Still, I think the nature of John’s feelings for Sherlock is left a bit ambiguous at this point. There’s some stuff about the Angelo’s scene that’s kind of weird as far as John’s behavior goes. In this scene, it actually takes John a minute to compute what Sherlock implied when he said “Girlfriend? No, not really my area.” There’s a notable pause before John says “oh, right” in a tone of dawning comprehension and asks “Do you have a boyfriend?” (You can kind of see the pause in this gif set, but it’s more obvious in the actual episode.) It apparently took John a minute to figure out that Sherlock is gay, even right after he’d just seen not one, but two people who already know Sherlock assume that he himself is Sherlock’s boyfriend, and after he’s heard Mycroft’s comment at the warehouse. This implies that John didn’t actually start the conversation at Angelo’s with the intention of figuring out whether or not Sherlock is gay.

Right after that slip-up, John’s lip lick seems so out of place—and Sherlock certainly thinks it is, which is part of why he gets so alarmed—that I think it could have been subconscious on John’s part. Given that, it’s possible that John sort of let things run away from him a bit in this scene—he might not have meant to hit on Sherlock quite so openly. It could be that John knew exactly what he was doing, but it could also be that he felt attracted to Sherlock, but hadn’t fully worked that out for himself yet or paused to think about how he felt.

Either way, the lip lick and the way John stares at Sherlock in that moment certainly suggest sexual attraction. And after this scene, John feels that he’s received a clear rejection from Sherlock, so he decides to back down and just keep getting to know Sherlock as a friend.

Related to all of this, I think it’s time to talk about John’s relationship to his sexuality.

John’s behavior at Angelo’s indicates that John is attracted to men, and he’s probably well aware of that. Importantly, though, other pieces of evidence from the show suggest that John has never had sex with a man before.

Early on, we learn that no one in John’s immediate circle knows that he’s attracted to men. Harry and the other people who comment on John’s first blog post about Sherlock are surprised when they think that John’s interest in Sherlock comes across as gay. At the very least, this tells us that John has never had a boyfriend who he was “out” with before: he’s closeted. But going beyond that, TSOT gives us clues that John has never had a sexual encounter with a man, either. First, John and Sholto’s interactions in that episode heavily imply that John and Sholto had feelings for each other when they were in the army, but never acted on them. That fits very well with the idea that John has never been with a man before. Second, in the mind palace scene where Sherlock is trying to work out how the women who work for Sholto are connected to each other, Sherlock asks “Do you have a secret you’ve never told anyone?” and John suddenly shows up to anxiously ask, “What d’you mean?” John’s secret is that he’s bisexual/attracted to men, and the fact that he’s never told anyone indicates that he’s never acted on his attraction to men. He’s always kept his bisexuality a secret.

Together, I think these clues indicate that John has long known that he’s attracted to men, but he’s never actually dated or slept with a man before. Many thanks to LSIT for talking this through with me! Realizing that John has probably never had sex with a man before has had a big impact on how I see his relationship to his sexuality and his reticence about admitting his same-sex attraction.

On that note, to my eye, ASIP offers some of our first clues that John isn’t entirely comfortable with his attraction to men. I think this is in large part due to the fact that John hasn’t been with a man before. John’s attraction to men is a side of himself that he would like to explore more, but it’s one that he doesn’t feel fully comfortable with yet because he hasn’t ever been in a position where he’s felt safe exploring it. For these reasons, John is still closeted, and he’s uncomfortable being perceived as queer.

As I’ll talk about later on, in ASIB we get clues that John was raised in a homophobic household. John’s father in particular was very homophobic, and as a result, John was hesitant to act on his attraction to men when he was younger. After that, John joined the army. There was some kind of attraction between him and Sholto, but the army wasn’t a safe or accepting place for homosexual relationships, either, so John wasn’t out then and didn’t pursue anything with Sholto. (And Sholto was his commanding officer, anyway—it would have been messy and dangerous for that reason, too.) John’s willingness to hit on Sherlock at Angelo’s suggests that by the time he gets back to London, John might be starting to feel like it’s safe for him to be a bit more open about his attraction to men, and to perhaps begin pursuing same-sex relationships. But John has never come out before, and that’s still something that he’ll approach with hesitancy.

In ASIP, John is still in the closet, and he’s quick to correct other people who assume that he and Sherlock are a couple. When Mrs. Hudson makes her comment about two bedrooms, John says “Of course we’ll be needing two” in a puzzled voice, as if thinking otherwise would never have even occurred to him. John’s tone with Angelo is also rather sharp when he insists that he’s not Sherlock’s date. Both of these moments happen before Sherlock’s apparent rejection of John during the dinner scene at Angelo’s, so John doesn’t yet have Sherlock’s rejection as a reason to be upset about people noticing that he’s attracted to Sherlock. I think this indicates that John doesn’t think of himself as someone who presents as queer, and he’s a bit surprised and uncomfortable when other people seem to clock it so quickly.

During the scene at Angelo’s, John quickly backs down when Sherlock tries to let him down gently. While it’s great that John shows respect for Sherlock’s boundaries, John also appears quite uncomfortable as the conversation ends. After John insists that “It’s all fine” and Sherlock says “Good. Thank you” and looks away, John looks thoroughly startled, as if he’s not quite sure what just happened—and might be a bit worried about how much he just let on.

In ASIP, we also learn that John has a queer sister who is out, but who John doesn’t get along with. A lot of fans have explained that Harry is a mirror for John, and it’s very likely that John doesn’t get along with Harry because he sees too much of himself in her. Although it’s certainly true that John doesn’t approve of Harry’s drinking, I think it’s also possible that the tension between John and Harry is meant to indicate that John isn’t fully at peace with his sexuality. For John, Harry’s struggles in her marriage and her drinking might represent the apparent dangers of trying to live one’s life out. We never meet Harry on screen, and the only times we ever see John interact with her are on his blog. It’s only once John has overcome his discomfort with his sexuality that he’ll be able to truly reconcile with Harry and we might meet her on the show.

It’s interesting to me that in one of the very first scenes in ASIP, Mike suggests to John that he reach out to Harry for help and John immediately dismisses the idea: “Yeah, like that’s gonna happen.” Perhaps subtextually, we could read this as Mike suggesting to John that things could be better for him if he were more in touch with the queer side of himself and less guarded against it—an idea that John is very quick, at this early stage of his character development, to dismiss. Mike then suggests that John get a flatmate, which leads John to Sherlock. For John, Sherlock is the solution to his lingering internal conflict over his sexuality. Falling in love with Sherlock will offer John a way to gradually come to terms with his own queerness and to finally let his barriers down.

Throughout the show, other characters—Sherlock, Mycroft, and even Irene—will nudge John in the direction of facing and accepting his queerness. One of John’s tasks as a character is to finally do so. I really like the idea that this moment with Mike might establish that pattern early on. I’ll also note that this comment from Mike isn’t in the unaired pilot; in the unaired version, Mike goes straight to suggesting a flatshare. Adding a mention of Harry to this scene is a small change that the writers might have made to slip in more clues that John isn’t entirely comfortable with his sexuality.

So, to put all of this together. I think that at the start of the show, John is aware that he’s attracted to men and he’d like to be able to act on that, but it’s never felt safe for him to do so and he’s still a bit nervous about it. Especially because he’s never been with a man, John isn’t used to thinking of himself as gay or bi, and he’s not comfortable being perceived that way by other people. He’s more uncomfortable with his queer sexuality than Sherlock is, because Sherlock is truly chill with it. But John is accepting of queerness in others, and I think that whatever discomfort he experiences is probably relatively mild.

In later episodes, once John starts to realize that he’s falling for Sherlock, John becomes especially nervous about being perceived as queer because he doesn’t want Sherlock to realize that he’s in love with him. John doesn’t think that Sherlock returns his feelings, so for John, it’s humiliating to have other people constantly clocking his same-sex attraction when that attraction is focused on Sherlock and when John hasn’t been able to act on it, despite wanting to. As Sherlock and John’s friendship strengthens, however, John remains hopeful about Sherlock and does want something more with him. John can never truly give up on the idea of having romance with Sherlock, even if he sometimes wishes he could.

As the show unfolds, falling in love with Sherlock prompts John to gradually overcome whatever hesitance about his sexuality he may have had before. Falling in love with Sherlock makes John much more comfortable with his queer sexuality, so that he will be able to share this side of himself with the person he’s meant to be with. To the extent that John remains uncomfortable with being seen as gay or bi in later episodes, it’s probably because his queer sexuality is so tied up with his feelings for Sherlock. For a long time, John feels deeply uncomfortable with his love for Sherlock because he fears that Sherlock will never love him back. When Sherlock and John finally get together, though, all of that will go away.

To conclude this part for now, I’m not sure that John really knows what he’s feeling as early as ASIP, or that he stops to examine his feelings all that closely during his first two heady days of knowing Sherlock. He certainly experiences a powerful draw to Sherlock, but we’ll need to look at the subsequent episodes to see how John’s feelings and reactions to them will evolve.

This is something that I’ll emphasize throughout this meta, but in general, I think that Sherlock is consistently in much better touch with his own feelings than John is with his. It thus makes a great deal of sense to me that Sherlock falls in love first and recognizes what he’s feeling almost immediately, but that it takes John a bit longer to get there and to figure it out.

Sherlock’s and John’s differing levels of comfort with their own queerness also contrast Sherlock and John with each other from early on in the show, and I think this is actually very true to ACD canon. There is an excellent post about this here, which you should go read (it’s short!). In ACD canon, Holmes is a character who has entirely rejected the task of trying to pass as heterosexual, or as “normal” in many other ways, too. Meanwhile, Watson is just as weird as Holmes, but he clings to heteronormativity even though it doesn’t reflect who he truly is—in reality, Watson is utterly fascinated by Holmes and by Holmes’s rejection of so many of society’s standards. Sherlock’s and John’s characterizations in Sherlock replicate these essentials in a modern context. In ASIP, Sherlock is presented as a loner who shuns many of society’s standards and is fully at peace with his own homosexuality. John, meanwhile, is struggling to fit in upon returning to London and hasn’t fully embraced his own sexuality. But still, he’s immediately fascinated by Sherlock, and at heart John is just as weird and unconventional as Sherlock is. John often hides it better than Sherlock does, though, because he cares about conforming, while Sherlock does not. I don’t necessarily think that John has internalized any self-hatred due to his sexuality, but he’s more disposed to hide his sexuality than Sherlock is.

This is part of the beauty of Johnlock. It allows us to imagine how, over time and through their relationship with each other, Sherlock will learn to open up to other people and to overcome the isolation that his rejection of society’s standards initially forced upon him, while John will become more comfortable with his attraction to the unusual and the “queer” and will learn to embrace it.

There’s one last thing that I’d like to talk about before moving on from ASIP, and that’s the theme of suicide. Even though all the “serial suicides” in ASIP were actually murders, the central case is meant to get us thinking about suicide. This is because both John and Sherlock are portrayed as suicidal or as borderline-suicidal when we first meet them.

Almost everything that we learn about John in the first few minutes of the episode is meant to illustrate how much John is struggling with his return to civilian life, and these details heavily imply that John may be suicidal. John suffers from PTSD and is having nightmares. He’s living in a bare, impersonal flat where one of his only personal possessions is an illegal firearm. He’s barely eating and he seems uninterested in food: when he first wakes up and sits down to stare at his empty blog, all he has next to him to eat for breakfast is an apple, which we don’t actually see him eat. Later on, John has coffee with Mike instead of getting lunch with him, even though it was lunchtime when they ran into each other—Sherlock says so when John and Mike arrive at Bart’s. John doesn’t have a job, and he doesn’t seem to be searching for one. He goes to therapy, but he seems to barely talk to his therapist. After his therapist encourages him to start a blog, John does it, but his early blog posts are all about how it’s “pointless” and nothing happens to him. As the episode goes on, we also learn that John doesn’t want to talk to Harry or ask her for help, even though she’s worried about him.

At the start of ASIP, then, John is a man who feels that he has nothing left to live for and nothing to look forward to. He’s not planning ahead, and he doesn’t want help. It doesn’t take much of a stretch of the imagination to suspect that John’s gun might have been starting to look darkly tempting to him.

Then there’s Sherlock. On the surface, Sherlock seems much more buoyant than John, and he’s definitely someone who’s planning ahead; when we meet him, Sherlock is actively soliciting cases from Lestrade and he’s just moved into a new flat. But Sherlock treats his own life incredibly lightly, and there are hints that Sherlock doesn’t feel fulfilled and might not find suicide unthinkable.

First, there’s a very telling scene that got cut from the final shooting script. This is from pg. 11 of the ASIP script found here.

Lestrade: Okay. What am I getting wrong this time? Sherlock: No notes. No prior sign. Each of them in a strange location that means nothing to them where they’ve never gone before…. That’s not how I’d kill myself. On Lestrade. Glances uneasily at the edge of the roof, where Sherlock is standing. Lestrade: …so. How are you doing these days?

Obviously, this scene foreshadows Sherlock’s apparent suicide in TRF. (Although this scene got cut, TBB includes a few shots of Sherlock standing at the edges of roofs and looking down, so the writers still foreshadowed Sherlock’s fall in S1.) But more than that, it gives us a glimpse into Sherlock’s frame of mind before he met John. Lestrade can see enough to fear that Sherlock may be at risk of killing himself, and Sherlock’s dialogue delicately suggests that he’s thought about how he’d do it.

In the final shooting script, this scene was meant to be our first introduction to Sherlock: it’s placed shortly before the moment when he unzips the body bag at Bart’s. When we first meet Sherlock, then, it’s through a scene that’s written to imply that Sherlock might be suicidal.

Second, there’s Sherlock’s willingness to play the cabbie’s game with the pills. Sherlock chose the correct pill, but his behavior in that scene is meant to demonstrate that he risks his life unnecessarily because he’s bored. Sherlock feels deeply unsatisfied and unfilled with his life as it stands, and he’s skirting the edge of suicide as a result.

Meeting each other is what drags John and Sherlock each out of it. As soon as John meets Sherlock, Sherlock gives John a purpose again and offers him a return to the battlefield that Mycroft tells us John misses and that we can clearly see John feels empty without. Sherlock gives John things to look forward to again. And for Sherlock, it’s literally John’s crack shot through the window that jerks him out of the game that he was playing with the cabbie, which I think is meant to symbolize that John saves him from his suicidal thoughts. With John in his life now, Sherlock won’t be nearly so bored anymore. As he starts to fall in love, Sherlock, too, has something new to live for.

Before he met John, Sherlock might have also felt depressed and suicidal because he feared that he would never fall in love. Sherlock craves romance and a deep, fulfilling romantic relationship with someone who truly understands him, and he probably suffered from extreme loneliness before he met John. But John is perfect for him, he’s Sherlock’s “one”! So when John enters Sherlock’s life, John saves him from being suicidal. (My thanks to LSIT for talking some of that through with me.)

By the end of the episode, Sherlock and John have both saved each other, within just about 36 hours of meeting each other. John has even saved Sherlock twice. It’s all very romantic.

There’s also a small detail from TRF that reinforces this idea. After Sherlock gets out of the cab that Moriarty was driving, he stands distractedly in the middle of the street and gets saved from being hit by a car by one of the assassins. When Sherlock shakes the assassin’s hand in thanks, the guy gets murdered by one of the other assassins. John then runs up to Sherlock, and Sherlock says to John, “He saved my life but he couldn’t touch me.”

This line is about Sherlock and John, and it describes the overall arc of their relationship in S1-S2. In ASIP, Sherlock and John were both suicidal, but they met each other at just the right time for them to completely turn each other’s lives around. They saved each other, but then throughout S1-S2, they both felt that they couldn’t take their relationship further by making it into something romantic and by sharing physical intimacy together. They saved each other’s lives, but they couldn’t touch each other. Great meta on this here.

I lied, I have one more thing. ASIP also establishes a pattern that holds all throughout S1-S2 regarding Moriarty. Every episode of S1-S2 ends with some sort of reminder that Moriarty is out there as a dangerous threat to Sherlock and John. Sherlock first learns Moriarty’s name in ASIP. TBB ends with General Shan getting shot on the orders of “M” (M might actually be Mycroft acting on orders from Moriarty, as per LSIT’s M-theory—but if that’s the case, then the closing scene is still about Moriarty as a dangerous threat). TGG ends with the pool scene, of course. ASIB reveals towards the end that Irene was working for Moriarty. THOB ends with the “Get Sherlock” scene that shows Moriarty being released from confinement. And then there’s TRF, which obviously ends with Moriarty defeating Sherlock. This fits with Moriarty’s role as the central villain in the show. This show is a romance, and Moriarty is the villain—his job is to keep Sherlock and John apart romantically. It’s significant, then, that even in episodes where Moriarty’s role isn’t immediately apparent, we are always reminded that Moriarty is a constant threat. My thanks to thegildedbee for reminding me of this for ASIP. As she pointed out, just when Sherlock is saved by John, Moriarty enters the story as the antagonist threatening to keep the two of them apart.

Thank you for reading so far!!