Dine and Dash… From Sherlock

"John!"

He felt warm and very comfortable and didn't feel at all like answering Sherlock.

"John!"

The first shout had been tinged with panic, but now his flatmate's voice was purely angry. John groaned and snuggled a little further down into his chair. It wasn't generally the most comfortable place to snooze, but just now, he felt unusually drowsy.

"JOHN!" There were rapid footsteps coming through the kitchen and John tensed in the knowledge that he would soon be ripped from his cocoon of sleep. "My experiment! The specimens on the stove. Where have they gone? JOHN -"

The footsteps abruptly stopped.

John's eyes snapped open. Sherlock was standing in the entrance to the sitting room. His face had gone white and he let out a strangled sort of gasp.

"What?" Momentary dread blossomed in John's stomach. "Are you alright?"

Sherlock didn't speak for a minute, and then his pale eyes narrowed. John followed his glare to the object in the middle of his own lap, the thing that he had supposed was a blanket in his sleep, and the reason he was so comfy and warm.

There was a cat curled up on John Watson's lap.

"It's a cat." John said in bewilderment.

"What a brilliant deduction."

"Why is there a cat sitting on me, Sherlock?" He looked up, but his flatmate was padding around the chair with a definite air of unease. Apparently, the consulting detective had had nothing to do with this. Well, that was a change.

John pulled himself into a more upright sitting position. The cat, a tortoiseshell with black ears, opened one eye to peer at him, and then tucked its head back into the ball of fur. It didn't seem at all concerned that its perch was a complete stranger, in a stranger place than most strange places were.

John rubbed his eyes, "Mrs. Hudson doesn't -"

"No, she doesn't have a cat, John." Suddenly, Sherlock snatched up an empty cup from the chair's arm. "She did it!"

"What?"

"The cat!" Sherlock thrust the cup into John's face and dashed off to the kitchen before returning just as quickly. "She ate my experiment. Look at her whiskers! Look at your tea cup!"

"My tea cup?" John leaned forward so the cat was tucked up against his chest. Sherlock looked like he was about to hit the feline with the tea cup, and he was less likely to do that with his flatmate in the way. "What does my tea cup have to do with it, and what experiment are you talking about?"

Interfering with Sherlock's experiments in any way usually led to casualties in some form, so he couldn't image an animal eating any of them. Animals usually had more common sense than that.

"You didn't finish your tea. That's why it's sitting on the arm of the chair and not on the end table. But the cup is empty and I can see two short hairs in the bottom. This is a gluttonous feline."

John poked at the tea-drinking cat. It flattened its ears, but didn't move. "Well, it shouldn't be in here anyways. Maybe it got in your window, off the fire escape."

"Closed. And it's too fat to be a stray. It must belong to the new tenant downstairs."

For no discernible reason, John and Sherlock had found themselves situated as Mrs. Hudson's favourite tenants, despite the fact that their escapades often resulted in a veritable revolving door on all the other flats in the building. New tenants were too common to take any particular note of.

Sherlock stalked over to the couch and thrust a long arm down behind it. He felt around, and then leaned over the back, legs kicking at the air to keep himself from disappearing headfirst behind the couch. John stifled a laugh.

Then Sherlock emerged, brandishing a butterfly net, his hair flipped completely out of place.

"Don't even think of trying to net the cat while it's sitting on me." John warned. "My tetanus shots might be up to date, but I don't particularly feel like getting sliced up today."

"Just push it off. Then I'll catch it."

John gave the cat a nudge with his elbow, more willing to sacrifice his jumper than his hand. The cat's claws dug into his pant leg.

His elbow retreated, and the claws retracted.

"Damn."

Sherlock snarled in agreement. He dropped the butterfly net and stomped over to the desk in the corner.

"Sherlock!" John frowned. "Don't even think about getting out my pistol."

He wondered how effective his warning tone would be on the consulting detective, given that he was currently the hostage of an animal barely larger than a football.

The lock on the drawer sprung open, and in a moment of serendipity, for John and the cat at least, they heard a voice from downstairs.

"Rover! ROVER!"

There were light footsteps on the stairs, and Sherlock paused to look at their open flat door. The footsteps slowed, and then a young woman appeared at their doorway. She was wearing a loose jumper, smudged with dust, and her ponytail of long black hair was considerable disheveled. John was immediately struck by the resemblance of her nose to a baby carrot, but he suppressed the thought before it could lead to considerations of snowmen with ponytails.

The young lady poked her head through the doorway tentatively. "Excuse me. I don't want to bother you, but I'm looking for my cat."

Sherlock gave the woman a sweeping glance, and didn't deign to reply, so she looked further in, to see John with the cat still positioned on his lap.

"Oh! Rover." She blushed, which was something John had never seen on a snowman. "I'm so sorry. I just moved in downstairs and I didn't realise she had wandered off while I was unpacking."

"Your cat is named 'Rover'." Sherlock's voice was monotone, and John frowned.

"Yes." The girl took a step into their flat. "She's a little bit too friendly for her own good. Do you mind?" She motioned to the rest of the room.

"Yes."

"No." John glowered at Sherlock and insisted. "No. Do come in. For some reason animals seem to like sitting on me."

She came in hesitantly and tiptoed over to collect the cat from John's lap, looking around with curiosity. John was slightly indignant at the ease with which she handled the clawed animal and hitched it up to loll over her shoulder.

"Mrs. Hudson told me her very best tenants lived in 221b. I'm Eleanor Mallard: basement level." She offered Sherlock a hand, and he looked at it scepticaly.

"Sherlock!" John barked. There was no need to scare away Mrs. Hudson's tenant before she even moved all the way in. "Be polite. I'm John Watson, and that's Sherlock Holmes. Nice to meet you." The army doctor got to his feet and leveled a glare at his flatmate.

"Her cat ate my experiment!"

"Sherlock."

"It took me weeks to find a set of ears that fit all the criteria."

Poor Miss Mallard looked a little confused. "Ears?"

Sherlock closed the desk drawer with a bang. "Yes ears. I was measuring the effect of metallic piercings on skin cell decay. At least, that was what I was planning on doing."

John swallowed. "The cat ate your ears? The ones that were on the stove this morning?"

"Yes. I'm sure of it."

"Sherlock, cats aren't -"

Miss Mallard interrupted. "Excuse me. You're saying my cat ate a pair of ears. I don't understand. Rover chewed the ears off something?" She turned widening eyes to John. "Did - did you leave out a roast pig?"

John brushed off his pants, cat hair drifting down to the carpet. Here came the part that would send Mrs. Hudson's new tenant packing.

"I said ears. Just ears. If I had meant anything else, I would have specified. And they were human. Pig cell decay is irrelevant to the majority of murder cases."

"Oh." Her lip quivered for a moment, and she held the cat tighter. "You don't eat them... yourselves?"

"No. Goodness no." John smiled. "Sherlock just does experiments, you see. Science, chemistry and stuff. He works with the police."

Sherlock huffed, and moved over to the couch. "I'm a consulting detective. The police consult me. I don't 'work with them'."

The last phrase was emphasised by his expressive flop onto the couch's surface.

"Oh."

John felt bad. Poor Miss Mallard, and poor Mrs. Hudson. Her new tenant's expression was quickly morphing from unease to fear. The young lady probably wasn't a bad sort. But it was never a good idea to introduce oneself to Sherlock over the destruction of one of his experiments.

The young lady's nostril's flared with alarm, and John wondered if baby carrots very commonly developed symmetrical cysts. His medical studies had restricted themselves to the afflictions of fauna and not flora.

"I'm very sorry. Rover eats everything she can get her hands on... I mean paws. I do feed her, but..." She set the cat down on the carpet, where it promptly rolled over onto its back. Digging in the pockets of her jeans, she worried, "I suppose that wild cats eat humans, if they have too. I don't eat meat myself, so I really don't have any idea -" Their young neighbour looked to John. "How much were your ears worth?"

"Oh, don't worry abo-"

Sherlock cut John off, arching his back against the couch, and looking at them upside down. John was afraid to know why he was suddenly interested.

"You're a botanist. Rare flora. Do you work at the Royal Botanical Gardens?"

Miss Mallard's eyes widened. "Yes. The Kew Gardens. How did you know?"

Sherlock gave one of his more frightening smiles. "Simple observation. Have you worked there long?"

"About a year now." She looked to John, and he tried to smile reassuringly. "Do you... have I... met you before? Or you go to the gardens often?"

Sherlock flipped over onto his stomach. "No. Although you have some fantastic specimens." He indicated the rolled up sleeves of her jumper. "The fact that you haven't even trimmed your hair in the last five months suggests your tan is from work and not vacation. Your hands are slightly paler than your arms, but there's no distinct tan line. So you wear more than one pair of gloves on a regular basis, all year round. Working gloves then.

"The type of calluses on your hands indicates you use a variety of tools, mostly for digging. But not just with gloves on. Your nails are short, but buffed and painted. Not chewed; you care about their appearance but you don't grow them out? Too hard to keep them clean. Not construction or landscaping: you'd keep your gloves on and your hands clean. You do fine work without gloves, and manual labour with different sets of gloves."

Finally deigning to sit up, Sherlock waved a hand in their neighbour's general direction. "Your cat has a name more common to canines, and the wear on your shoes suggests you spend a lot of time walking. I would therefore assume you would prefer to have a dog, but cannot afford it. If we consider the portion of your income you must put towards rent in this part of town, you could not possibly afford to come in contact with the high quality of perlite that left that residue on your watch. Plus it would be impossible to raise orchids in Mrs. Hudson's basement suite. Therefore you come in contact with them at work."

There were several moments silence before Miss Mallard was able to close her mouth enough to formulate coherent words. As it was, the 'Wow' that followed still came out sounding more like 'Wuuuuuuuh'.

She tried again. "Wow. That's really something. You're very... observant, Sherlock, mm, Mr. Holmes."

John took this moment to smile beatifically at their fellow housemate and knelt down to scratch Rover's head in a friendly sociable-type manner. It was unlikely things could be repaired at this point. A little bit of Watson-normal seldom erased the shock of Sherlock-abnormal.

But to his great surprise, Sherlock rose from the couch and gave their young neighbour his own smile, the gentle, completely charming and disarming kind he only used when worming his way into or out of place he ought not to be.

Miss Mallard's hands stopped twisting in a nervous fashion, and Sherlock tilted his head to one side. "It's just a habit of mine: the way I look at things. I hope I didn't offend you."

He smiled again, and Miss Mallard blushed happily. "Oh no, that's quite all right. You just startled me, and everything you said was quite true. I can see why the police want to work with you."

To his credit, Sherlock's smile didn't even stall at the mention of his pet peeve. Instead he knelt to smoothly lever her cat off the floor and picked it up, stroking it naturally while John gaped.

The cat blinked back at consulting detective in a contented manner, and Sherlock raised an eyebrow in what must have been feigned amusement. "She certainly is friendly isn't she? I hope that eating those pieces of my experiment doesn't upset her stomach at all." He turned to look at Miss Mallard with concerned eyes. "It might be unusual fare for a domestic cat, but they were clean and weren't chemically treated."

One look in those pale blue eyes, and their hapless neighbour was scrambling to apologize once more, awkwardly reclaiming her animal from Sherlock's long arms.

"I'm so sorry about that. She has a very strong stomach and I'm sure Rover will be fine, but I should have kept a closer eye on her, and I just moved in and isn't this a terrible way to greet your new neighbours-." Sherlock squinted in sympathy. "I wish there was something I could do to make up for it."

Reaching out to scratch Rover's head in an affectionate fashion, Sherlock shook his head. "Don't worry about it. Replacing them will be more a matter of convenience than expense, anyways." He patted her on the shoulder as she moved out the door, muttering her thanks and appreciation. "I hope the rest of your unpacking goes well. It was nice to meet you Miss Mallard, and feel free to come up again if you need anything at all."

John watched his flatmate call the last bit down the stairs of 221 Baker St. and wondered if he should be taking his own pulse. If he wasn't dead, then something was seriously wrong, and perhaps he was hallucinating.

The focus of his consternation turned and stalked back to the couch, dropping into a seated position and steepling his fingers.

"Sherlock, what was that about? Dare I even ask why you felt it was worth your time to play nice with our new neighbour?"

Sherlock didn't even glance his way. "What would be considered a proper housewarming gift for a new neighbour? You must have more experience in these things than I do, John."

"I'm sorry, what?

"A housewarming gift. Don't pretend you didn't hear me at such a distance."

John slowly returned to his armchair and sat down gingerly, pulling the union jack pillow to his chest as if it might ward off Sherlock's response to his next question.

"Why do you want to welcome our new neighbour?"

When the consulting detective finally looked up at him, John could see his eyes were already focused far away from their flat.

"Do you know how difficult it can be, to get ones hands on some of the more rare, poisonous flora, in today's market?"

"Oh no."

Sherlock smiled, and it was his terrifying smile again.

"Oh yes."