I've seen lots of metas on ASIB that have addressed all my questions but one. Upon receiving Irene's phone, left on the mantle at the Christmas party, why does Sherlock shut John out of his bedroom and tell him that he's fine? Why does he shut John out?
Moments before John had given Sherlock flack on his blog for failure to solve a case, which is something Sherlock is sensitive about. And we know from the previous episode, TGG, that Sherlock is HELLA-sensitive about John writing about his inability to understand human emotions, too.
Then Sherlock deduces that Molly is in love with him and accidentally humiliates her. He clearly feels bad about that, and of course he would. After all, that hits Sherlock in several sore spots:
- He missed something, when at that point his entire sense of self-worth was predicated on being the guy who doesn’t miss anything. That stings him on a personal level; he’d be irked about that even if no one else was there.
- He missed EXACTLY the sort of thing John was talking about, right at a time when he was fixated on John’s perception of his capacity for romance.
- He’s embarrassed himself in front of a bunch of people by being wrong about something that was obvious to them. Sherlock is rarely the most clueless person in the room and he doesn’t handle it well emotionally.
- If someone genuinely likes Sherlock, he hates making them feel bad or failing them in any way. He’s just realized that Molly genuinely likes him more than he knew, and he’s just deeply upset her.
Now keep in mind that on top of all this, Sherlock was already on edge about John, and how John was going to abandon him for Christmas, and how he had to hang around all these other people when social gatherings aren’t his thing. That’s enough to make anyone go hide in their room.
But THEN, the same moment he realizes Molly is in love with him, he also deduces that Irene is too. (He pieces it together when he realizes that, just like Molly, Irene’s wrapping paper matches her lipstick. Rewatch it if you need to, it’s made explicit by the visual of Irene’s lips.) His failure to accept that as a serious possibility and not some manipulative ploy on Irene’s part may have literally GOTTEN HER KILLED.
I repeat: SHERLOCK HOLMES MISSED THE OBVIOUS AND SOMEONE DIED. And not just a random person, which we know from TGG is enough to bother Sherlock, but SOMEONE WHO GENUINELY LIKED HIM AND REALLY DID NEED HIS PROTECTION.
Once Irene’s phone is in Sherlock’s hand, he feels like the biggest unforgivable failure in the world. Everything just crashed down around him, and everyone is judging him for the Molly thing because they don’t even know how much worse he actually is. They’re all just trying to enjoy a Christmas party like normal people whose idiocy doesn’t get others killed, and there he is, the giant arsehole who always manages to ruin everything. That’s why he dreads social gatherings. He always finds a way.
Sherlock is coming from a lifetime of feeling out of place, so this is basically a nightmare scenario. I mean, literally: imagine what one of Sherlock’s nightmares would be like, and it would be like this Christmas party. Big social gathering, he fucks everything up, the talent he credits for John’s companionship fails him in front of John and validates John’s perception that he’s an unfeeling monster, he upsets people who love him, they judge him, he gets someone killed, yadda yadda. That scene is like Sherlock nightmare Bingo. All that’s missing is John being kidnapped.
So when John latches onto the whole phone thing, he’s only wanting to know if Sherlock is going to sleep with Irene; John doesn’t know she’s dead quite yet. But in that moment, Sherlock is wracked with guilt and insecurities. Sherlock feels hunted by someone who just wrote a blog entry about how he didn’t solve something and is constantly criticizing his inability to understand things like romance. So no, he doesn’t want to look at John when he tells Mycroft Irene is dead. He doesn’t want to look at anyone. He doesn’t even want to even be calling his brother about it, but he has to. I mean, calling Mycroft because he’s a fuck up who missed something to tune of FATAL consequences is pretty awful for Sherlock already.
Can you imagine how Sherlock feels? Heeey Mycroft, I’m not as smart as you, as always, and someone died for it. Heeey John, you were right, I’m as clueless and lacking in empathy as you always write me. If you yelled at me when that old lady got blown up and that wasn’t even my fault, you’re going to really hate me now.
You’d shut the door in John’s face too, wouldn’t you? I would, anyway. I mean, I have a FANTASTIC relationship with my husband, I’m not scared to be vulnerable in front of him, I never worry that he’s going to leave — but if some failing of mine got someone killed I’d have a lot of trouble facing anyone right after hearing the news, especially if I knew other people absolutely would not have fucked up if they were in my position. Sherlock, however, doesn’t have any of those positives going for him in ASiP. He’s just sad, anxious, and insecure, waiting for the failure that will make John stop valuing his deductive abilities and move out.
Sherlock rarely allows anyone to see him when he’s vulnerable prior to S3, really. He just turns and walks away sometimes, like when John told him no one was reading his blog earlier that episode; he shuts down and just wants a door between himself and the rest of the world so he has time to reaffirm his grip on his self-control.
