The first sign of trouble came right after John pried the boot open with a crowbar. The clatter of metal was lost under the high-pitched yips and howls, but Sherlock quite clearly heard John breathe, "Oh!" in a tone Sherlock had never before imagined.
Sherlock finished restraining the last of the thieves using zip-ties stolen from Lestrade for just that purpose. Then he rose just in time to see John, almost glowing with happiness, turn away from the boot clutching an armload of squirming black and white fur.
John should have asked after the dog-nappers. He should have asked if the area was secured or if Sherlock had called the police or the dog-breeder who'd hired them or if Sherlock was all right. That was how things worked. At the end of the case, John handled all the irritating little details, wrapping things up with concise questions and statements. By now, in fact, half of Scotland Yard flat-out refused to deal directly with Sherlock, preferring to go through John's services as a Sherlock-to-stupid-people translator.
This time, though... This time, John gave Sherlock a truly idiotic grin and said, "Look at them, Sherlock! Aren't they adorable?"
Trouble, Sherlock thought.
If only he'd known just how right he was.
The second sign came when they found a taxi willing to take two very muddy adults and eight yelping, barking, bouncing puppies all the way across London. John corralled five of them on his lap and at his feet, leaving Sherlock to deal with three. One of them — a very determined puppy with a rounded muzzle and a triangle of white fur between its ice-blue eyes — kept attempting to scale Sherlock's chest and bite his chin.
Its teeth were ridiculously sharp. There was no good biological reason for such dental sharpness at all. It was small enough that it was probably still suckling, but with teeth like that, no bitch would tolerate feeding the little monster. What were the teeth for? To take down miniature deer?
"Aw, look," John said, grinning his silly grin right at Sherlock, stealing his breath in a very alarming sort of way. "He likes you."
"It is attempting to eat my face," Sherlock corrected stiffly. The puppy smelled like mud and wet fur, but when it exhaled, its breath was sweet and not too unpleasant. But still, it was trying to eat his face, and it refused to stop when he pushed it back down.
Laughing, John switched out the carnivorous puppy for one of the other ones. The triangle-marked one licked at John's face, and John's grin went even wider. "Puppy breath," he said inanely, and kissed the puppy right on the muzzle.
Sherlock nearly died of jealousy on the spot.
The third sign came when they delivered the puppies, now muddy after having climbed all over their erstwhile rescuers, back to the breeder. "Oh, my babies!" she cooed, and spread her arms. For one terrible moment, Sherlock's jealousy found a new target as he thought she was about to embrace John. But she went for the puppies, taking an armload out of Sherlock's coat, which John had finally used to wrap up the whole bundle of them.
Then the two of them were on the floor, with Sherlock's coat (wet in spots — apparently the puppies weren't housetrained) flopped open, and the puppies spilled everywhere like lava from a volcano. The triangle-marked one made a beeline for Sherlock, leaped up, and attacked his shoe with a squeak that wasn't nearly as ferocious as it probably hoped.
"Sherlock!" John snapped before he could do more than tense his leg. John's dark blue eyes (darker than the puppies' eyes, rich and beautiful and the type of deep blue that always captured Sherlock's attention) went very hard. But before Sherlock needed to remind John just how much his shoes had cost, John claimed the puppy and grinned again, saying, "Silly puppy! No going after Sherlock's shoes. He's worse than most women about his shoes."
Sherlock glared and huffed and looked away, saying, "Yes, well. Case solved. Must go now."
"Oh, stay a bit," the breeder offered. "I'll make tea and write you a cheque. I can't tell you how grateful I am."
Beaming with pleasure, John made no effort to get up off the floor, instead allowing the puppies to climb all over him.
John always felt a curious mixture of guilt and relief whenever he deposited a client's check into the new shared bank account. Not even two months had passed since he and Sherlock had become... whatever they were. Boyfriends? Lovers? Life partners? John had asked Sherlock once, only to receive a scientific answer that would have baffled someone with a PhD in chemistry. As best he could tell, Sherlock considered himself and John to be two complementary molecules, but then there'd been something about ionization and energy-to-mass conversion and he'd lost the thread of the whole thing.
Just thinking about it made his head hurt. He wasn't stupid, despite what Sherlock still claimed on occasion. He just didn't like chemistry. In fact, he'd taken precisely as much chemistry as was required to get a medical degree and not a single class more.
And obviously he was exhausted if he was thinking about chemistry. He hung his coat and gave the flat a quick look for any hazards, corpses, or other danger signs that would warn him his whatever was home and bored. But the flat was peaceful and quiet, precisely the environment John needed. The bank had been crowded and the streets were rainy and traffic made it faster to walk home than to take a taxi. So John toed off his shoes, made a cup of tea, and settled down on the sofa, intending to see what was on the telly, but he never made it as far as the remote.
Some fuzzy time later, he awoke to Sherlock saying, "John. John. Wake up now."
As late as a year ago, John had been in the habit of snapping violently awake at the least noise. He'd calmed down a bit since, but it had taken a month of sleeping with Sherlock to fully break him of the habit. His boyfriend-lover-life-partner-whatever was more like an octopus in his sleep, all long limbs and grabby hands.
Sherlock Holmes, a cuddler. Who ever would have guessed?
So now, John floated lazily up out of sleep, which was, in truth, much better than jolting awake on a shot of headache-inducing adrenaline. "Wuh?" he asked eloquently, blinking up at Sherlock, whose skin had taken on a faintly yellow glow from the streetlights filtered through the sheer curtains.
"Brilliant observation. I brought you something," Sherlock said grudgingly.
The words meant more than the tone. Sherlock wasn't one for romance in the least. His idea of a nice gift often involved weapons — not that John objected to either the tiny, easily-concealed .25 or the Uzi. (Seriously? An Uzi? John was still waiting for the bloody MoD to swoop down on Baker Street and arrest them both as arms dealers.)
The broadsword had been a bit much, but John had mounted it on the bedroom wall all the same. If nothing else, he figured he could use it for a fancy dress party or something.
So he sat up, asking, "What implement of death have you —"
Sherlock interrupted him not with words but with a gesture, extracting a ball of black and white fur from inside his coat, where said ball of black and white fur had shed everywhere over Sherlock's gorgeous black suit and purple shirt. If glares could kill, then everyone in central London would have been dead, but Sherlock's right hand was gently cradling the puppy, and his left was cupped over the puppy's back. His fingertips were moving just slightly in soothing little circles.
"My god," John breathed, feeling himself grinning so broadly that his face threatened to crack. He scrambled to his feet, sending the telly remote flying and almost knocking over his neglected cup of tea. "Sherlock..."
Gently, he took the puppy from Sherlock's outstretched hands, and only then did he recognize the triangular white marking on the puppy's head, a little arrow pointing directly down between two ice-blue eyes that reminded John so much of Sherlock's. They should have been cold eyes, hard like glass, but John could see the warmth and love in both sets.
He cradled the puppy to his chest, laughing as the warm tongue licked at his jaw. "Sherlock," he said wonderingly, even though he knew how Sherlock hated it when he repeated nonsense. "This is — You went back," he said. "To the breeder."
"Obviously." Sherlock turned his back and took his time to get rid of his coat and scarf. He brusquely swiped at the fur as he turned back around, head down to hide his expression.
"You didn't steal him, did you?" John asked only because that was the type of thing Sherlock would do.
There was the death-glare again.
"Sorry! Sherlock, he's wonderful," John said apologetically, switching the puppy to a one-armed grip. The puppy bit his ear hard, though he stopped when John tapped his nose with two fingers. When the puppy licked as though in apology, John grinned and held out his hand to Sherlock. "Thank you, love."
Gently, Sherlock took his hand and allowed John to draw him close. "He's trouble."
"So are you," John said, turning slightly away so he could kiss Sherlock without crushing the puppy.
"He bites."
"Again, so do you."
Sherlock's hand tightened on John's as he returned the kiss a bit more enthusiastically. "He's... not unpleasant."
"You can be not-unpleasant, when you try," John pointed out, trying to kiss Sherlock a third time, though his grin made it a bit difficult.
"Wonderful. My life's ambition is to be not-unpleasant."
John laughed and let go of Sherlock's hand to pull him close. The puppy, excited by the new contact, squirmed and kicked so he could lick both their faces. "What should we name him?" John asked as the scent of puppy breath washed over them both.
"Trouble."
"Trouble it is," John agreed contentedly.