Title: Art
Characters: Joan, Sherlock, a little Clyde
Genre: Friendship/Humor
"I have come to the conclusion," stated Sherlock, coming to sprawl across the couch, feet in extravagant socks sticking in the air. "That the state of our kitchen is not a mess, but actually a form of art."
Joan sent him a withering look from over the experiment she was performing for her ongoing training with the doll house. She didn't even want to acknowledge his statement, but ended up asking anyway, "By what standard are you basing this new determination?"
"By the fact that we live in a world of random happenstance and we put much non random work into the collection of used dished and leftovers that adorn our counters," Sherlock stated this as though it was the most logical conclusion in the world.
Joan rolled her eyes and could only say to that, "I think your deduction skills are getting rusty. That or you really don't want to clean up."
Sherlock sighed. "My experimental breakfast left quite the impression upon the area."
"I thought it was worth it, if that makes you feel any better," Joan looked up at him. "Clyde seemed to like the extra effort as well."
"Well, what tortoise would turn down honey covered lettuce?" Sherlock asked, but she could tell he was a bit buoyed by her compliments. But he still did not seem motivated enough to venture into the kitchen.
"Why did you make the breakfast in the first place?" Joan asked. "Not to be insulting, but such elaborate meals are more your brother's forte."
"I needed a new stimulus to work on an old case I had taken up for something to do. Sometimes it takes making something new to figure out something old," he explained, stretching his toes so the polkadots turned to ovals .
"So you made food and solved a cold case before the morning hardly started," Joan said, nodding and peering into the doll house with a doll corpse in each room. She was suppose to solve each case, and then clean up and make her own for Sherlock to solve. It was to help her understand how crime was carried out so she could more easily deduce it. At first she had found it really weird to set up the little dolls' demises, but she also saw why it was useful when she entered real crime scenes. "Would cleaning help you clean your mind palace or whatever that non medically sound belief is that you hold?"
Sherlock actually looked thoughtful for a moment, and then his face lit up. He stood and hurried to the kitchen, giving her a little pat on the head as he passed. "That is brilliant Watson, thank you!"
She just shook her head in resignation and gently took Clyde out of the doll house, muttering, "You are contaminating the scene." It didn't even come to her mind that this was an odd thing to say to a tortoise.
And so just another day started in the brownstone.