"Research and Development" (Great Mouse Detective, rated G), 2014 JWP Prompt #29
Title: Research and Development
Author: gardnerhill
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes (Great Mouse Detective)
Pairing: Basil/Dawson
Word Count: 1692
Rating: G
Warning: Mousely scrumpings heavily implied but not shown.
Summary: Need to prepare for a dangerous case? Landlady chucked you out? Head to the library.
Author's Notes: For the 2014 July Watson’s Woes Prompt #29, brought to you by amindamazed: Fraught With Possibilities. Use at least one of these as the inspiration for today's entry: brothers, cleaning house, tools of the trade, nightmares, friends in high places.
I used all of the “possibilities” in this offering, which is a sequel to my GMD story Mice Are Friends, Not Food.
Mrs Judson had gone into a frenzy of tidiness. Plead with her though he might, Basil could not dissuade her from her bout of seasonal cleaning (I, a wiser mouse in the ways of women than my friend, did not even try to argue with our good landlady). So out we went with the carpets and the lampshades - and not a few threats of her using the carpet-beater or dust-mop on our backs if we dared show a whisker for the next 24 hours.
I took a philosophical approach as well as my carpet-bag. “It can’t be helped, old boy. Let’s go find a night’s lodging.”
“Dawson, she will wash my test tubes!”
I heroically refrained from rolling my eyes as I strapped my umbrella to my bag. Basil of Baker Street is fearless in the face of a criminal of any species attempting to kill him, but as petulant as a newly-furred pup when he is inconvenienced. “Which will make our rooms smell a good deal better, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“And it’s pouring outside! How does she expect to beat her carpets or dust the shades in that?” Basil gestured outside the door to the sheeting rain.
“She won’t - our human flatmates are away on a case and she can use their sitting room to air everything out.” I stroked my moustache with a finger, knowing just how to distract Basil. “Besides, we’ve our own job ahead of us that requires research. What better time to take advantage of it?”
He took the bait, as I’d hoped, and sounded a good deal cheerier. “Quite right, dear fellow! There’s a number of lovely moustels in the British Library - I lived in one before you came to London. We’ll be quite undisturbed by unreasonable landladies whilst we learn all we can about black-backed gulls.”
The early-April weather was indeed terrible - whilst running to catch a ride on a hansom cab’s undercarriage we had to dodge the unrelenting rain, and during the ride we did our best to avoid the clots of mud and street-filth thrown up by the horse’s hooves like incoming ordnance. Basil did better than I, but we were both damp, bedraggled and mud-flecked by the time we alighted at the site on Euston Road, and I was nearly in as much of a pet as was Basil at first (Basil, however, now cheerful at the prospect of work). That same hour saw us settled into a neat little room for two in the great library not far from the BIRDS section, and cleaned up enough for civilised company.
Some rodential bumpkins from the wild - perhaps even a few of my brothers and sisters who’d remained in the field with our parents instead of heading off for the city - might see that brilliant centre of learning in the heart of the Empire as merely a splendid repository of treated leather and vellum and tallow candles, with plenty of paper for nesting material. But a true member of Mousedom regards reading as a treasure greater even than a full stomach promised by a quick nibble on a tome’s binding or glue. We cherish the books as much as do the humans - and our own bookbinders do a brisk business in transforming those monstrous creations into properly-sized editions. One such was a lovely printing of British Birds, wherein I happily settled at a table, whilst Basil took up Birds of the Coast beside me. For the next hour or so the only sound was the rustle of pages, the scratching of pens on paper whilst we jotted down important bits, and the rain outside. A pipe would have been a perfect addition to the work, but smoking was not permitted in either the library proper nor the mouse annex.
But as I took notes, I became more and more apprehensive. It was not the details of the black-backed gulls’ nesting habits (either in clusters on shoals with other gulls, or on roofs in city settings, three eggs to a nest, between late April and late June), but the other facts (…the biggest of the gulls, dwarfing even the large herring gull…eats everything from rubbish to fish to small birds, and has even been known to pick off small sick lambs…fierce and aggressive…)
“A productive day!” Basil shuffled the papers on which he’d been writing. He held out his hand and pulled his features into a scowl. “Now let’s have your paper, Dawson.”
Despite myself, I chuckled at his uncanny imitation of an overbearing schoolmaster as I gave him my notes, and was shushed by the mole at the information kiosk.
“Enough work for the day, I think.” Basil laid my papers atop his and smiled at me. “A cup of tea and a cheese sandwich in the library shop - the Cheddar here is exemplary, Doctor - and then a return to our room.”
As it was just past two in the afternoon - hardly the time to retire to one’s room to sleep - I smiled back and took his paw to rise from my seat.
***
The egg loomed over me like a boulder - it should have only come up to my waist. I pushed at it, levering it out of the nest in which I stood. Out it rolled, to Basil - who disappeared beneath it, crushed to death. I’m sorry, I’m sorry! The gull screaming was louder, the great white brute hovered over me with its bill as long as me and sharp as a spear. I frantically tried to escape the nest, but my foot was caught by the laced twigs. Down came the beak.
I jolted awake, and lay still for a long time taking deep breaths until I felt in my bones that I was safe. Only a nightmare.
I was alone in the bed. Basil sat at the room’s desk in his blue dressing gown poring over our notes, a teapot at his elbow - so much for ‘enough work for the day.’ On the other hand, I was relieved that my agitation during my dream hadn’t awakened him.
“The time is half six, David,” Basil said without looking in my direction. His voice was coolly detached - all of him was bound up in his notes. “I have slept sufficiently, thanks to our postprandial activity - it is an agreeable side-effect of our relationship.”
I shook my head just a little as I arose to wash and dress. I knew my Basil before ever I took him for lover; I was the romantic in this family, not he. The fact that he had eaten and slept at all during the pursuit of a case was all my doing, and we both knew it. I too had benefited from our midafternoon tryst; I was relaxed down to my bones despite the nightmare.
I joined him at the desk when I was presentable. “Do you need me to leave?”
“No, I would like you as sounding-board.” Basil spread out our notes, on which he had jotted down more scribbles and a few diagrams involving eggs, nests and levers. “Our best chance for collecting the eggs for our clients will occur in the next two months. This will give us plenty of time to fail in the attempt and learn from our failures - as long as we make no fatal failures.”
“Agreed.” I poured a cup of tea for myself and ignored the nearly-full cool cup by my friend. “Which means we both do it, or neither does it.”
Basil nodded, again without looking in my direction. “We run a greater chance of keeping each other alive. I shall certainly rely upon your soldier’s nerves during this case, Doctor. I also want to enlist the Baker Street Whiskers on this one - not to do the dangerous work, of course, but to scatter through London and note the location of inhabited nests for black-backed gulls on city roofs so that we may map them out.”
“Excellent suggestion.” I drank my tea. “Employ the biggest rats only - Jennie Tilson, her littermates, their friends at the breweries and the bakeries - the ones most able to fight off or flee from a gull attack, just in case.” I poked a finger at Basil’s notes, for emphasis. “And stress to the girls that if they deliberately endanger themselves to help you, they can’t work for you again. I don’t want those youngsters to pay for our folly.”
“Also agreed.”
“Three eggs to a nest,” I said out loud, quoting the notes I’d taken from my book. “Both parents share nest-sitting duties and are fiercely protective. It might be a tail-hair less dangerous to take one egg from each of three nests, rather than to empty one nest completely and incur the wrath of the parents. The gull pairs might be less murderous if we leave them two eggs to sit on.”
“My thoughts also. Gulls with an empty nest have nothing to lose and will not hesitate to hunt us down. But with eggs left to care for, they’ll have to stay on their nests and will be hampered in their desire for revenge.”
I set down my teacup and sighed. “Then there’s what to do with the eggs themselves.” A sling of some sort? How to keep them covered?
“We’ll let our clients take care of that part.”
Of course - their bills were big enough to pick up their own eggs, and they could fly them to their nest, one at a time.
I felt a stirring of excitement, sitting next to Basil as my partner in the firm - quite unlike the one I’d felt earlier in bed with Basil as my lover. The part of me that had joined the Army for a bit of adventure was completely on board with this impossible case, and I quite looked forward to it.
My whiskers twitched. It was really too bad of me, but I couldn’t help it. “Basil, my boy, if we manage to pull this one off, and make a pair of giant murderous flying birds indebted to us? Then we truly shall have friends in high places.”
I deserved the thump, so I held still for it.
Author: gardnerhill
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes (Great Mouse Detective)
Pairing: Basil/Dawson
Word Count: 1692
Rating: G
Warning: Mousely scrumpings heavily implied but not shown.
Summary: Need to prepare for a dangerous case? Landlady chucked you out? Head to the library.
Author's Notes: For the 2014 July Watson’s Woes Prompt #29, brought to you by amindamazed: Fraught With Possibilities. Use at least one of these as the inspiration for today's entry: brothers, cleaning house, tools of the trade, nightmares, friends in high places.
I used all of the “possibilities” in this offering, which is a sequel to my GMD story Mice Are Friends, Not Food.
Mrs Judson had gone into a frenzy of tidiness. Plead with her though he might, Basil could not dissuade her from her bout of seasonal cleaning (I, a wiser mouse in the ways of women than my friend, did not even try to argue with our good landlady). So out we went with the carpets and the lampshades - and not a few threats of her using the carpet-beater or dust-mop on our backs if we dared show a whisker for the next 24 hours.
I took a philosophical approach as well as my carpet-bag. “It can’t be helped, old boy. Let’s go find a night’s lodging.”
“Dawson, she will wash my test tubes!”
I heroically refrained from rolling my eyes as I strapped my umbrella to my bag. Basil of Baker Street is fearless in the face of a criminal of any species attempting to kill him, but as petulant as a newly-furred pup when he is inconvenienced. “Which will make our rooms smell a good deal better, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“And it’s pouring outside! How does she expect to beat her carpets or dust the shades in that?” Basil gestured outside the door to the sheeting rain.
“She won’t - our human flatmates are away on a case and she can use their sitting room to air everything out.” I stroked my moustache with a finger, knowing just how to distract Basil. “Besides, we’ve our own job ahead of us that requires research. What better time to take advantage of it?”
He took the bait, as I’d hoped, and sounded a good deal cheerier. “Quite right, dear fellow! There’s a number of lovely moustels in the British Library - I lived in one before you came to London. We’ll be quite undisturbed by unreasonable landladies whilst we learn all we can about black-backed gulls.”
The early-April weather was indeed terrible - whilst running to catch a ride on a hansom cab’s undercarriage we had to dodge the unrelenting rain, and during the ride we did our best to avoid the clots of mud and street-filth thrown up by the horse’s hooves like incoming ordnance. Basil did better than I, but we were both damp, bedraggled and mud-flecked by the time we alighted at the site on Euston Road, and I was nearly in as much of a pet as was Basil at first (Basil, however, now cheerful at the prospect of work). That same hour saw us settled into a neat little room for two in the great library not far from the BIRDS section, and cleaned up enough for civilised company.
Some rodential bumpkins from the wild - perhaps even a few of my brothers and sisters who’d remained in the field with our parents instead of heading off for the city - might see that brilliant centre of learning in the heart of the Empire as merely a splendid repository of treated leather and vellum and tallow candles, with plenty of paper for nesting material. But a true member of Mousedom regards reading as a treasure greater even than a full stomach promised by a quick nibble on a tome’s binding or glue. We cherish the books as much as do the humans - and our own bookbinders do a brisk business in transforming those monstrous creations into properly-sized editions. One such was a lovely printing of British Birds, wherein I happily settled at a table, whilst Basil took up Birds of the Coast beside me. For the next hour or so the only sound was the rustle of pages, the scratching of pens on paper whilst we jotted down important bits, and the rain outside. A pipe would have been a perfect addition to the work, but smoking was not permitted in either the library proper nor the mouse annex.
But as I took notes, I became more and more apprehensive. It was not the details of the black-backed gulls’ nesting habits (either in clusters on shoals with other gulls, or on roofs in city settings, three eggs to a nest, between late April and late June), but the other facts (…the biggest of the gulls, dwarfing even the large herring gull…eats everything from rubbish to fish to small birds, and has even been known to pick off small sick lambs…fierce and aggressive…)
“A productive day!” Basil shuffled the papers on which he’d been writing. He held out his hand and pulled his features into a scowl. “Now let’s have your paper, Dawson.”
Despite myself, I chuckled at his uncanny imitation of an overbearing schoolmaster as I gave him my notes, and was shushed by the mole at the information kiosk.
“Enough work for the day, I think.” Basil laid my papers atop his and smiled at me. “A cup of tea and a cheese sandwich in the library shop - the Cheddar here is exemplary, Doctor - and then a return to our room.”
As it was just past two in the afternoon - hardly the time to retire to one’s room to sleep - I smiled back and took his paw to rise from my seat.
***
The egg loomed over me like a boulder - it should have only come up to my waist. I pushed at it, levering it out of the nest in which I stood. Out it rolled, to Basil - who disappeared beneath it, crushed to death. I’m sorry, I’m sorry! The gull screaming was louder, the great white brute hovered over me with its bill as long as me and sharp as a spear. I frantically tried to escape the nest, but my foot was caught by the laced twigs. Down came the beak.
I jolted awake, and lay still for a long time taking deep breaths until I felt in my bones that I was safe. Only a nightmare.
I was alone in the bed. Basil sat at the room’s desk in his blue dressing gown poring over our notes, a teapot at his elbow - so much for ‘enough work for the day.’ On the other hand, I was relieved that my agitation during my dream hadn’t awakened him.
“The time is half six, David,” Basil said without looking in my direction. His voice was coolly detached - all of him was bound up in his notes. “I have slept sufficiently, thanks to our postprandial activity - it is an agreeable side-effect of our relationship.”
I shook my head just a little as I arose to wash and dress. I knew my Basil before ever I took him for lover; I was the romantic in this family, not he. The fact that he had eaten and slept at all during the pursuit of a case was all my doing, and we both knew it. I too had benefited from our midafternoon tryst; I was relaxed down to my bones despite the nightmare.
I joined him at the desk when I was presentable. “Do you need me to leave?”
“No, I would like you as sounding-board.” Basil spread out our notes, on which he had jotted down more scribbles and a few diagrams involving eggs, nests and levers. “Our best chance for collecting the eggs for our clients will occur in the next two months. This will give us plenty of time to fail in the attempt and learn from our failures - as long as we make no fatal failures.”
“Agreed.” I poured a cup of tea for myself and ignored the nearly-full cool cup by my friend. “Which means we both do it, or neither does it.”
Basil nodded, again without looking in my direction. “We run a greater chance of keeping each other alive. I shall certainly rely upon your soldier’s nerves during this case, Doctor. I also want to enlist the Baker Street Whiskers on this one - not to do the dangerous work, of course, but to scatter through London and note the location of inhabited nests for black-backed gulls on city roofs so that we may map them out.”
“Excellent suggestion.” I drank my tea. “Employ the biggest rats only - Jennie Tilson, her littermates, their friends at the breweries and the bakeries - the ones most able to fight off or flee from a gull attack, just in case.” I poked a finger at Basil’s notes, for emphasis. “And stress to the girls that if they deliberately endanger themselves to help you, they can’t work for you again. I don’t want those youngsters to pay for our folly.”
“Also agreed.”
“Three eggs to a nest,” I said out loud, quoting the notes I’d taken from my book. “Both parents share nest-sitting duties and are fiercely protective. It might be a tail-hair less dangerous to take one egg from each of three nests, rather than to empty one nest completely and incur the wrath of the parents. The gull pairs might be less murderous if we leave them two eggs to sit on.”
“My thoughts also. Gulls with an empty nest have nothing to lose and will not hesitate to hunt us down. But with eggs left to care for, they’ll have to stay on their nests and will be hampered in their desire for revenge.”
I set down my teacup and sighed. “Then there’s what to do with the eggs themselves.” A sling of some sort? How to keep them covered?
“We’ll let our clients take care of that part.”
Of course - their bills were big enough to pick up their own eggs, and they could fly them to their nest, one at a time.
I felt a stirring of excitement, sitting next to Basil as my partner in the firm - quite unlike the one I’d felt earlier in bed with Basil as my lover. The part of me that had joined the Army for a bit of adventure was completely on board with this impossible case, and I quite looked forward to it.
My whiskers twitched. It was really too bad of me, but I couldn’t help it. “Basil, my boy, if we manage to pull this one off, and make a pair of giant murderous flying birds indebted to us? Then we truly shall have friends in high places.”
I deserved the thump, so I held still for it.