Fiction: Johnny Cat. Chapter 1: On His Own
Title: Johnny Cat
Rating: PG
Pairings: John and Sherlock, platonic
Warnings: A couple of mildly bawdy jokes
Word Count: Just over 24,000
Summary: Sherlock is left to cope on his own while John is away at a medical conference in New York. Asexual Sherlock. Hetero John. And a cat. A light and sentimental tale of two friendships.
Author's Note: This story is complete. I will be posting a new chapter every three days. Also, I owe a tremendous debt to my amazing and patient beta ShouldBeOverThis who, because of a far more important Real Life event, had to bow out. My thoughts are with her.
Johnny Cat
Chapter 1: On His Own
"I'll just be gone a few days," John said as he hauled his computer bag and small, well-worn duffel to the door. "My plane gets in Friday evening. There's plenty of food in the fridge, and, if you need anything, Mrs. Hudson usually runs to the market on Wednesdays." John looked over at Sherlock who had been rooted to the couch since the early hours of the morning.
"Sherlock, are you even listening?"
Sherlock had not taken his eyes off the book he was reading. Why should he? He knew it verbatim, John's "I'm going away" speech. And since Sherlock would rather think about the processes outlined in "The Amateur Embalmers Handbook" than about the fact that John would be gone for almost a week, he chose not to listen.
John didn't travel often, which suited Sherlock just fine. Although he'd never admit it, he was always miserable if John were gone for more than a day. What made it worse was that Sherlock knew there'd been a time, not a year back, before he'd started this flat-sharing arrangement with the good doctor, when he'd managed perfectly well on his own. He just couldn't, for the life of him, remember how.
It wasn't that Sherlock didn't enjoy being alone; he did. It was just that when John was off traveling without him, Sherlock, going about his day, would find himself being caught off guard again and again by the irrational feeling that he'd lost something important so that he was now unbalanced, incomplete. It was like he'd become one those amputees he'd read about in a journal article who, weeks after surgery, could still feel the absent limb and so was doomed to grieve afresh every time he tried to use it. For Sherlock, who prided himself both on his independence and his immunity to the sway of sentiment, the very neediness implied by these feelings was as disturbing as the feelings themselves. Add boredom to the mix and Sherlock would really begin to unhinge.
Once John had spent a weekend out of town with his then girlfriend, and it was a mere four hours before Sherlock was filling John's empty chair with a crude dummy made out of John's clothes stuffed with newspaper and topped with the skull he usually kept on the mantelpiece. The dummy, with its comforting John-esque appearance, had made for a fair substitute as it gave Sherlock something to talk to…well, talk at, but only for two days. For when John had gone away again, this time for three days to attend a wedding in Sussex, the dummy, being useless at making tea and, more importantly, at proclaiming Sherlock's brilliance with a heartfelt "That was amazing!" just hadn't been enough. Sherlock had ended up shooting so many holes in the wall that it had taken him eight hours to fabricate a wallpaper patch good enough to hide the damage and, more to the point, hide just how much John had been missed.
So from the day John had announced his travel plans, Sherlock began the mental equivalent of gritting his teeth. Coping for four days without John was, indeed, going to be a challenge.
"Friday evening, then. Off you go," Sherlock said, finally giving John his full attention and a pressed smile of reassurance.
John smiled back, then sighed. He always missed Sherlock, though he never said so, not in words. Instead, before going away, John would linger in the hallway, seemingly unable to wind up his protracted goodbye, his eyes searching Sherlock's face for a sign, a silent promise that Sherlock would still be there at Baker Street, safe and well, upon his return.
While John never knew exactly what Sherlock did during John's absences, when he returned, Sherlock always looked a little thinner, a little more disheveled, and a whole lot more tightly wound than when he left him. So, while John enjoyed taking a break from the wild and unpredictable life he shared with his eccentric friend, he found that after a couple of days he was anxious to get home. In fact, even after John had crossed that familiar threshold, neither he nor Sherlock could quite fully relax until John's travel bag was unpacked and stowed out of sight.
Satisfied at last and seeing no reason to delay any longer, John picked up his bags and headed out. The door closed, and Sherlock immediately picked up his phone, just to be certain he hadn't missed a text from Lestrade about being needed on a case. He hadn't. Pity. A case was just the distraction he craved.
Fortunately Sherlock had already come up with an alternative activity to engage his restless brain. Leaning back on his couch, he began drawing up a list of ingredients and equipment he'd need to procure if he were to comparing the various methods he'd been reading about that morning. When he got to the issue of what specimen to embalm (fingers or mice were good candidates because they were small and easy to store) he realized that it just wasn't the same without John there to object. He considered texting John about his plans, but realized that the tetchy reply, no matter how cleverly cutting, would be no substitute for John bristling with annoyance in person. Suddenly his experiment had become less interesting.
Sherlock was growing increasingly agitated but resisted the urge to get out John's gun from under the cleaning supplies in the kitchen (where John had been sure Sherlock would never look) and instead picked up his violin. It was not yet noon and already the day seemed interminably long.
Lestrade texted that evening, just as Sherlock had finished hanging the last of the targets on the wall. There'd been a double homicide in a locked room. Sherlock was so excited he pitched John's gun (thankfully, not loaded) onto the couch and turned two gleeful pirouettes about the living room. All the details of similar cases started pouring to the fore of his brain as he instinctively geared up for the challenge.
"Excellent-I've come across more interesting variations in locked-room scenarios than in any other…"
Sherlock cut himself off realizing he was talking to no one. Immediately he felt a sharp twinge of discord. Unacceptable. Sherlock thought he'd better devise a way to keep from forgetting that John wasn't with him. He took a scissors into John's room, cut off a length of yarn from an old jumper, and tied the string tightly around his finger. It was uncomfortably tight but probably not tight enough to do any permanent damage, at least not in four days. Sherlock had just finished when a second text arrived telling him that medical examiner assigned the case was actually looking forward to working with him. The case must be really stumping him if Lestrade was compelled to add this extra inducement to ensure Sherlock's help. This, in fact, proved to be true. But Sherlock's euphoria was short-lived, for the case which held so much promise as a high quality and long lasting distraction turned out to be a colossal disappointment as the whole thing was over, tied up in a drab little bow, in one measly hour.
"I am so tired of living in a world of idiots," thought Sherlock, glaring out the window with scorn at the offending cars and pedestrians as the cab took him back to Baker Street.
It had taken half an hour to piece together the entire crime and another ten minutes to rail at the police and the criminal for being complete wastes of space and air and whatever other resources were being squandered in keeping their pathetic little brains functioning at the level of pithed frogs. Sherlock was livid and had no problem telling the world about it. Did they really need him to point out the obvious scuff marks on the floor, marks clearly indicating that the bookcase slid to reveal (surprise) a hidden door? The books were all glued in place, for Christ's sake! And the criminal was no better, leaving bloody fingerprints on the back of the bookcase and posting the whole incident on his blog in a not so cryptic entry, "Did some spring cleaning today, with my Glock 19." That the murderer turned out to be the ex-boyfriend of the murdered woman, that he had killed the couple for revenge for being thrown over, who could have foreseen such an unexpected result?
Sherlock, not even sure that the obvious sarcasm of his tirade had penetrated their skulls, stormed off yelling, "I'd say call me if you find yourselves out of your depth, but today that would include your autonomic bodily functions, so don't bother."
His mood did not improve until he was home, turning his key in his front door, for it was there that something warm and soft rubbed against his legs.
Chapter 2: A New Flatmate