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John Watson would like it to be known that he is aware of the fact that sometimes things just Happen . There are things that are planned meticulously and nicely (things that John arguably favors) and there are things that just inexplicably appear.
Money, for example. Most of the time it is earned and built towards, but sometimes money just Happens , like winning a lottery or finding a coin on the sidewalk.
Cats, for another example. Sometimes people will spend months planning and researching before even considering talking about getting one, and sometimes cats just Happen , staring you down from their perch atop of your fridge as if you’re the one trespassing.
Guess which hypothetical is relevant to the situation at hand.
“There’s a cat on the fridge,” says master detective Sherlock Holmes, dropping his grocery bags next to the kitchen sink and straightening up to blink slowly up at the black-furred creature, who blinks back.
John doesn’t have the energy to be confused by the cat — he’d stayed up far too late and woken up far too early, spent most of the day stumbling through the supermarket to pick out food they could somewhat afford, sat cross-legged on the floor of the toy aisle with Sherlock as the detective had pointed out all the anatomical inaccuracies of the little plastic dinosaurs on display with the enthusiasm of a TED talk presenter, and mourned his bank balance all the way back home — so instead of questioning the situation, he goes “yes, there is,” and collapses on the sofa with a sigh like a deflating balloon. God, It’s cold in here.
Archie comes skittering out of one of the bedrooms to jump and land squarely on John’s stomach, knocking a wheeze and a tired little chuckle out of the doctor and prompting a long hiss from the top of the fridge. John peers over Archie’s head to see the cat’s fur on end and its ears drawn back, glaring at him.
“Ah,” says Sherlock, fascinated. “She doesn’t like the dog.”
“Yeah, mate, I’ve gathered,” John says, scratching at Archie’s ears as he pants warm air into his face. “Could you find a way to get it out, please? Because I like the dog, and I would rather he not get scratched by it.”
Sherlock regards him with big eyes, expression unreadable, before he goes “Her.”
“Sorry?”
“It’s a her.” The detective looks back up at the cat and moves forward to study it better. It’s still on edge, tail flicking wildly as it stares at Archie and then down at Sherlock. “Male cats typically have rounded, soft faces, and hers is rather angled, see? Females also tend to be less sociable and far more sensible.” He blinks slowly at the cat again, who seems to relax as he does.
“You’re a doctor, Watson,” the detective continues snidely, not taking his eyes off the cat. “I’d have hoped you would be able to distinguish one’s sex, given your profession.”
“I—“ John sputters. “I’m— I know how to distinguish male and female, Sherlock , just not for cats! I’m a doctor , not a bloody vet!”
Sherlock ignores him, brow furrowed as if he’s remembered something, and suddenly moves away to rustle through one of their grocery bags, pulling out a tin of tuna that John has no memory of purchasing and prying it open to place before the cat. She sniffs at his hand, then at the tin, and gives Sherlock a long, calculating look before dipping her head to eat. Sherlock watches, his gaze similar to one of a babysitter seeing if they had correctly placated the baby.
John can see where this is going. “Sherlock, you are not keeping that cat.”
The detective huffs. “I hadn’t expressed an interest to do anything of the sort.”
“Yeah, you did! Your eyes are all— all wet a-and sad and— I dunno, you look like you want to!”
Both Sherlock and the cat turn to stare him down with hilariously similar appall in their eyes. Archie glances at them and snuffles away to hide his face into John’s shoulder.
“I am not keeping the cat. She’s her own cat.” As if to prove his point, Sherlock reaches up to pluck her off the top of the fridge (only after she had lost interest in eating, John notices) and places her on the sill of an open window, which suddenly explains both where the chill had been coming from and how the cat had managed to get in in the first place. “Look, see? Free to leave whenever she pleases.” He pauses. “And do not call my eyes wet or sad ever again.”
John snorts, and cracks a grin despite himself. “Alright, mate.”
The cat flicks her tail high, looking up to consider Sherlock, narrowing her eyes toward John and Archie, and eventually, finally leaping outside, landing on the roof of a nearby building and stalking off into the night.
Sherlock watches. He doesn’t leave the window for a while.
—
She comes back, of course. Because John Watson can never get anything he wants, and Sherlock Holmes almost always does.
He would have put a stop to it, if he’d noticed anything out of the ordinary earlier, but to be fair, John’s not half as good at drawing conclusions from his surroundings as Sherlock is. He doesn’t notice the amount of time Sherlock now spends lurking around the pet aisle at Tesco’s, or that the kitchen window remains more open than closed lately, or their oddly growing supply of cat-friendly meats in the fridge.
Free to leave whenever she pleases, Sherlock had said, and had failed to mention that she’s also apparently free to barge in whenever she pleases. But John should have really known better.
“Sherlock, I’m gonna go take Archie for a walk, do you want to come with oh fucking Christ,” John says as he opens the door to Sherlock’s room and is met with a black loaf of fur glowering at him from the edge of the Sherlock’s bed.
Archie spots her and opts to hide behind John’s leg defeatedly. In theory, he’s twice her size and should be able to handle her easily should they ever fight, but there’s something in her bullet-steel eyes that makes him avoid her at all costs.
“Why is she here again?”
Sherlock shifts at his spot at the head of the bed and, blinking up at him from behind a laptop – John’s, no doubt. He’d started using it to spy on their discord server since its members keep having heart attacks whenever he so much as picks up his own phone and they’re a little less rowdy about John since he’s a lot less hard to reach (but again, it’s sort of like saying one airhorn is quieter than the other). “I told you. She’s her own cat. She goes wherever she sees fit.”
“Y’can't just– Sherlock, she can’t be here,” John protests exasperatedly.
“Why ever not?”
“Well, because, firstly, she doesn’t like Archie–”
“I don’t like Archie, Watson.”
“–and he’s scared shitless around her, and I don’t want my dog getting anxiety. Secondly, we don’t know where she came from. She could already have an owner, or– or worse, she’s feral and she’s bringing fleas and ticks and stuff into the apartment and I do not want any of us getting bugs. Y’know? I want a nice, bug-free apartment!”
Sherlock watches him as he speaks, looking vaguely amused, before reaching out to take the cat in his hands, holding her below her front legs to show her to John. She mrrrps faintly in surprise but doesn’t fight, much to John’s bewilderment.
“No collar or chip; no indentation in the fur of her neck, either, so either she’s never had one or she did but quite a long time ago. One of her eyes is smaller than the other, a result of past head trauma, and both the legs on her left aren’t bent correctly— old injuries most likely gained from someone throwing her out of a car onto the road, and injuries that clearly healed without proper medical attention. So she’s belonged to people before – if you can call whoever did that to her people, because I personally would not – which means that she’s a stray, not feral. She’s somewhat comfortable around people, despite clearly being mistreated before. And no fleas or ticks of any kind, because I’ve been washing her. Quite well, I might add.” He wiggles his grip on her, so it looks like she’s waving her paws serenely at Watson’s face before Sherlock lets her go. “Satisfied?”
John scrunches up his nose. “Still doesn’t mean you can keep her.”
“I am not keeping her. She just visits from time to time.” Sherlock pets the cat’s head lightly, clinically; like he’d read the definition of the word once and is performing on textbook knowledge of the act rather than on experience. “No one’s keeping her.”
Archie whines from behind John and the cat draws her ears back with a displeased mrrrrn noise in response, and Christ, this is his life now. Playing peacemaker for animals.
“Okay, well.” He accepts defeat and toes Archie away from Sherlock’s room and toward the front door. “Don’t keep her around too long.” He pauses. “What do you mean, you don’t like Archie?”
Sherlock hums, occupied with scratching behind that damned cat’s ears. “Bye, Watson.”
Archie sniffs.
On the walk, John realizes that he’d never actually noticed the state of the cat before – how her legs were a little strange, how her eyes were misshapen. How she’s been through a lot more than he’d been aware of. He thinks of how similar her eyes are to Sherlock’s, steely and calculating but offering something deeper and vulnerable should you care enough to look, and then Archie tries to pee on the wheel of someone’s pram and it’s hard to think of much after that.
–
He’d never actually considered the possibility that Sherlock was going to name her.
She’s been waltzing in and out of their apartment for a while now, this unnamed black cat, slinking around like she owns the place. More often than not she’ll greet Sherlock at the door when they come back from a case or just simply shopping, winding around his legs and even chirping a few meows of welcome in John’s direction, too, waiting patiently for someone to set down a plate of food for her (she’s perfectly comfortable eating food from Sherlock or Mariana; she has to pace around the plate to inspect it from all sides if John gives her any). She warms up to Mariana instantly, which makes Mariana fall in love with her just as quickly. She likes to sleep on top of the fridge and occasionally curled up in Sherlock’s lap, because both places get her away from Archie.
Even then, though, she and Archie have slowly come to tolerate each other, or at least, they don’t make goblin-esque noises at each other whenever they’re in a room together anymore. Archie has slowly become less afraid of her and more probingly curious, sniffing cautiously at places she’s been or gently pawing at her tail or head. She allows it, grumbling and batting at him with a paw when she inevitably gets sick of it, but there’s no clear anger or fear under her actions anymore — nothing more than mild annoyance now.
Since she’s clearly not going to be a temporary fixture in their life, John had begrudgingly supposed that he better start getting used to her, as well. He buys a litterbox and leaves notes for Sherlock to get more cat food if he notices that they’re running low. He grows accustomed to her inexplicable feline urge to pad all over his laptop keyboard, sighing and making sure she doesn’t delete any of his audio files. He considers surprising Sherlock by gifting her an actual cat bed, but both she and the detective seem content enough with her sleeping at the foot of Sherlock’s own, and so decides against it.
He also begins to notice her injuries, now that she spends more time around him — she doesn’t limp, exactly, but there’s some strangely uneven weight distribution between her right side and left, like she doesn’t trust her left legs to carry her well enough. It aches a little, perhaps because it hits a bit too close to home, but John doesn’t linger on it. She was hurt, and now she isn’t, and that’s all there is to it.
He notes, briefly, how leg injuries are not that different across species.
(Sometimes John will allow himself to reach to pet her, and she'll let him with remarkably little pushback despite how wary she is of him. She blinks slowly as she watches his movements, eyes piercing but not unwelcoming. He’s reminded, again, of Sherlock’s eyes, and then stops himself before that train of thought gets too far.)
One day, when they’re both draped over the sofa with Archie passed out over John’s lap and the cat idly pawing biscuits into Sherlock’s thigh, all listening languidly to the rain pattering the roof, Sherlock goes “I want to name her.”
John lifts his head to look at him sleepily. “Name her what?”
“Something nice.” The detective blinks once. Twice. “Ketamine.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Opioid.”
“Sherlock, please don’t name the cat after any Class A drugs.”
“I want to name her after something I like.”
John groans. Sherlock studies him as he strokes a hand down the cat’s back, looking enormously entertained. It’s a wonder how he can make his expression so fond without even smiling.
“Name her… Brachiosaurus or something, I dunno.”
“She looks nothing like a brachiosaurus.”
“She looks nothing like a bloody opioid!”
Sherlock cracks a grin, falling silent for a beat before saying in a voice that is not so much quiet as it is soft , low against the hum of the rain outside, “I like bees.”
“What?”
“Apis koschevnikovi. That’s her name.”
“What?”
“I like bees!”
“That explains nothing.”
“Regardless. Apis koschevnikovi. That’s her name now. I’ve decided.” He goes to scratch her head and asks her softly “what do you think?” as she leans into his touch with a satisfied trill.
“ Okay ,” John says, because he can’t think of anything better to say. “Can I call her, like… I dunno, Apis, for short?”
Sherlock tilts his head at him. “Why would you need to call her anything? I thought you didn’t like her.”
“No, I— I just— I did like her! I mean, I like her now , I guess I just— had to get used to her.” He breathes, then continues. “Like I had to get used to you, I suppose.”
He doesn’t mention two pairs of eyes that gleam like ice, or a stare like steel that constantly picks things apart and rebuilds them from the ground up but a stare that is somehow still warm, still willing to give trust and love, or old aches that are hard to see unless you look for them, or how cats and people are pretty similar, all things considered.
“Hm,” says Sherlock Holmes. “I suppose, yes.”
Apis suddenly stretches lazily and yawns wide, bumping her head against Sherlock’s hand one more time and padding delicately over the sofa to rest, to the surprise of everyone in the room, beside Archie’s head. The dog snorts in his sleep and she bonks her head against his nose before curling up to sleep, as well.
“What,” says John, because a cat has just barged into his life and Sherlock has named it after a bee and now she is finally getting on with his dog, and he has forgotten the holy rule that sometimes things, as stupid and inexplicable and strange as they are, just Happen.
And Sherlock laughs, proper and genuine.