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The first time John sees the cat is his first morning in his new flat.
The sun is just starting to rise when he comes yawning into the sitting room. It’s still dark, and he’s still half asleep, and the large shadow that leaps from the couch onto the windowsill almost gives him a heart attack.
He hits the light switch, knocking over several books and a surprisingly durable table lamp in his haste to reach it, and stares.
The cat, if the monster can be called that, stares back.
It is sleek and pitch black and has the most eerily pale eyes John has ever seen.
It is also huge.
“Hello,” says John as his heart rate returns to normal. At least he’s completely awake now. “Where did you come from, then?”
It has no collar, but it looks far too clean to be a stray. A runaway housecat, maybe?
There is a tentative knock on his open door, and John turns to find Mrs. Hudson, his new landlady, peering in.
“Is everything alright, dear? I thought I heard a noise.”
“Fine. Yes. Sorry about that,” says John, waving at the upturned lamp in explanation. “Umm. I don’t suppose you have any idea where this cat came from?”
“Oh!” she says. “I’m so sorry. I should have warned you. He has been spending rather a lot of time here lately.”
“He’s yours, then?”
“Oh, no, dear. He comes and goes as he pleases. You’ll have to keep the windows closed if you want to keep him out. I have no idea how he manages to get up so high, but he does. He’s a sweetheart, though. Doesn’t even scratch the furniture.”
John hums in acknowledgement as he moves closer to the window.
The warning growl and flexing claws make him jerk his hand back long before he makes contact.
“Sweetheart, you say?” he asks dubiously.
“Oh don’t worry,” says Mrs. Hudson, joining him by the window and reaching out to run her fingers over the cat’s bristling back. The cat allows the contact for less than a second before jumping outside and disappearing from view.
“If you do something he doesn’t like he just leaves. He wouldn’t hurt you,” she adds.
+
John leaves the windows open, but he doesn’t see the cat again until a week later.
“Mrao,” it says the moment he finishes opening the container of sashimi Mrs. Hudson had given him when he got home from work. (‘I thought I’d give it a try, but I just don’t like it at all. Wouldn’t want it to go to waste, though.’)
John almost drops the whole thing.
He briefly wonders if that’s what the cat had been aiming for.
“Is this going to be a thing?” he asks. “Keep that up and one day my heart really will give out. What will you do then, hmm?”
The cat pads over, winding itself around John’s legs and purring like a tractor.
John sighs and puts the container on the floor. It’s not like he is a big fan of raw fish either.
That night, the cat follows John into the bedroom and makes itself comfortable on his chest. He reaches up to scratch its head, but is again warned away by a low growl and claws digging into his skin.
“Seriously?” he asks. “So, what? You can use me as your personal pillow, but I can’t even touch you?”
The growl turns into a purr, and John huffs out a laugh.
For the first time since he came back to London, he sleeps the whole night through without a single nightmare.
+
The one time John brings Sarah home, the cat attacks her ankles as soon as she’s through the door.
She lets out a startled ‘oh!’ and tries to jump away.
“Hey!” John shouts, making a grab for the animal, but his surprise makes him too slow. By then the cat is already vaulting onto the couch and tearing into John’s favourite throw pillow.
John chases it around the room as it first moves on to the curtains and then starts knocking various knickknacks from shelves and tables. Finally it races into John’s bedroom and goes quiet.
“I thought you said he was friendly,” Sarah ventures into the sudden silence.
“He is!” says John. “I have no idea what’s gotten into him.”
“Maybe he’s jealous,” says Sarah, her lips twitching with amusement. “Doesn’t want to share his human.”
John snorts.
“So my cat is a possessive jerk. Well, I guess I’m glad I’m finding this out sooner rather than later in our relationship.”
Sarah smiles, then nods at the disaster area his previously neat sitting room has been turned into.
“So. I guess this means our date is getting cut a little short.”
“Yeah,” John sighs. “I’m so sorry, Sarah. Not exactly how I imagined the evening going.”
When John gets back upstairs after seeing Sarah out, the cat is nowhere to be seen.
+
It comes back a few nights later, cautiously arranging itself on John’s lap and pushing its head against his hand while he’s watching telly.
John is pretty sure that cats evolved the ability to purr solely as a method of enslaving human beings via emotional manipulation.
“That’s cheating, you know,” he says reproachfully, even as he continues stroking the soft, silky fur.
“Does your running my guests off mean you see this as your home too, now?” he asks a little later, when they’re lying in bed. “I suppose I should give you a name, if I’m going to be keeping you.”
Finding a name that fits turns out to be unexpectedly difficult.
+
When John comes home from work the next day, there is a stranger in his flat and the floor is littered with half-unpacked boxes.
The situation is so bizarre that for a moment John wonders if he’s dreaming. Or dead. Because it doesn’t look like he’s being robbed. Robbers don’t bring stuff in; they take it away. What it does look like is someone moving in to his flat while he’s still living in it.
“Who the hell are you and what the hell are you doing in my flat?” he demands when some of the initial shock wears off.
The man looks decidedly unimpressed.
“Really, John,” he says. “You’re the one who told me I can stay. Good timing on your part, by the way, seeing as I have recently found myself in need of a new living space.”
“You…” John starts, then pauses. He takes in the man’s tall, thin frame, his dark hair, his pale grey eyes, and mentally smacks himself on the forehead. It’s so obvious; John can’t believe it took him so long to notice.
“Does this mean I finally get to learn your name?” John asks.
“Sherlock Holmes,” the man replies readily, covering the space between them with two long strides and holding out his hand.
The handshake feels more than a little surreal (we’ve been sleeping together for weeks, thinks John, and he moved in before telling me who he is, and now we are shaking hands as if we are strangers, which I suppose is true as well), and lasts a tad too long.
“I would appreciate it if you would keep my... ability, shall we call it, a secret,” Sherlock says when they eventually let go. “It won’t be much of an advantage if it becomes common knowledge.”
“Right. Of course,” says John. “What happened to your old flat?” he adds after a brief silence.
“A minor accident with one of my experiments,” Sherlock scowls.
“A minor accident,” John repeats.
“Which may have resulted in a small explosion.”
“A small explosion.”
“Yes, a small explosion. Are you going to repeat everything I say?”
John grins, but before he can say anything else there are running footsteps on the stairs behind him and a vaguely familiar-looking man is half-jogging through the open door. It takes John a couple of seconds to realize that he is the police officer whose picture John had seen in yesterday’s paper.
“There’s been a fourth, and something is different this time,” Sherlock says before the policeman can even open his mouth, his expression one of barely concealed delight. “Where?”
“Brixton, Lauriston Gradens,” says the policeman.
“What’s new about this one? You wouldn’t have come to me otherwise.”
“You know how they never leave notes?”
“Yes?”
“This one did. Will you come?”
+
John finding out that Sherlock Holmes is a lot more than an unusually large and temperamental cat changes many things. Most for the better. (For the first time in many months, John feels happy.)
One thing it doesn’t change is Sherlock’s habit of sleeping on John’s chest.
End.